Beyond Part 42

"You can hardly expect me to like it for you, Bryan, even if she is what you say. And isn't there some story about--"

"My dear mother, the more there is against her, the more I shall love her--that's obvious."

Lady Summerhay sighed again.

"What is this man going to do? I heard him play once."

"I don't know. Nothing, I dare say. Morally and legally, he's out of court. I only wish to G.o.d he WOULD bring a case, and I could marry her; but Gyp says he won't."

Lady Summerhay murmured:

"Gyp? Is that her name?" And a sudden wish, almost a longing, not a friendly one, to see this woman seized her. "Will you bring her to see me? I'm alone here till Wednesday."

"I'll ask her, but I don't think she'll come." He turned his head away.

"Mother, she's wonderful!"

An unhappy smile twisted Lady Summerhay's lips. No doubt! Aphrodite herself had visited her boy. Aphrodite! And--afterward? She asked desolately:

"Does Major Winton know?"

"Yes."

"What does he say to it?"

"Say? What can anyone say? From your point of view, or his, it's rotten, of course. But in her position, anything's rotten."

At that encouraging word, the flood-gates gave way in Lady Summerhay, and she poured forth a stream of words.

"Oh, my dear, can't you pull up? I've seen so many of these affairs go wrong. It really is not for nothing that law and conventions are what they are--believe me! Really, Bryan, experience does show that the pressure's too great. It's only once in a way--very exceptional people, very exceptional circ.u.mstances. You mayn't think now it'll hamper you, but you'll find it will--most fearfully. It's not as if you were a writer or an artist, who can take his work where he likes and live in a desert if he wants. You've got to do yours in London, your whole career is bound up with society. Do think, before you go b.u.t.ting up against it!

It's all very well to say it's no affair of anyone's, but you'll find it is, Bryan. And then, can you--can you possibly make her happy in the long-run?"

She stopped at the expression on his face. It was as if he were saying: "I have left your world. Talk to your fellows; all this is nothing to me."

"Look here, Mother: you don't seem to understand. I'm devoted--devoted so that there's nothing else for me."

"How long will that last, Bryan? You mean bewitched."

Summerhay said, with pa.s.sion:

"I don't. I mean what I said. Good-night!" And he went to the door.

"Won't you stay to dinner, dear?"

But he was gone, and the full of vexation, anxiety, and wretchedness came on Lady Summerhay. It was too hard! She went down to her lonely dinner, desolate and sore. And to the book on dreams, opened beside her plate, she turned eyes that took in nothing.

Summerhay went straight home. The lamps were brightening in the early-autumn dusk, and a draughty, ruffling wind flicked a yellow leaf here and there from off the plane trees. It was just the moment when evening blue comes into the colouring of the town--that hour of fusion when day's hard and staring shapes are softening, growing dark, mysterious, and all that broods behind the lives of men and trees and houses comes down on the wings of illusion to repossess the world--the hour when any poetry in a man wells up. But Summerhay still heard his mother's, "Oh, Bryan!" and, for the first time, knew the feeling that his hand was against everyone's. There was a difference already, or so it seemed to him, in the expression of each pa.s.ser-by. Nothing any more would be a matter of course; and he was of a cla.s.s to whom everything has always been a matter of course. Perhaps he did not realize this clearly yet; but he had begun to take what the nurses call "notice," as do those only who are forced on to the defensive against society.

Putting his latch-key into the lock, he recalled the sensation with which, that afternoon, he had opened to Gyp for the first time--half furtive, half defiant. It would be all defiance now. This was the end of the old order! And, lighting a fire in his sitting-room, he began pulling out drawers, sorting and destroying. He worked for hours, burning, making lists, packing papers and photographs. Finishing at last, he drank a stiff whisky and soda, and sat down to smoke. Now that the room was quiet, Gyp seemed to fill it again with her presence.

Closing his eyes, he could see her there by the hearth, just as she stood before they left, turning her face up to him, murmuring: "You won't stop loving me, now you're so sure I love you?" Stop loving her!

The more she loved him, the more he would love her. And he said aloud: "By G.o.d! I won't!" At that remark, so vehement for the time of night, the old Scotch terrier, Ossian, came from his corner and shoved his long black nose into his master's hand.

"Come along up, Ossy! Good dog, Oss!" And, comforted by the warmth of that black body beside him in the chair, Summerhay fell asleep in front of the fire smouldering with blackened fragments of his past.

XI

Though Gyp had never seemed to look round she had been quite conscious of Summerhay still standing where they had parted, watching her into the house in Bury Street. The strength of her own feeling surprised her, as a bather in the sea is surprised, finding her feet will not touch bottom, that she is carried away helpless--only, these were the waters of ecstasy.

For the second night running, she hardly slept, hearing the clocks of St. James's strike, and Big Ben boom, hour after hour. At breakfast, she told her father of Fiorsen's reappearance. He received the news with a frown and a shrewd glance.

"Well, Gyp?"

"I told him."

His feelings, at that moment, were perhaps as mixed as they had ever been--curiosity, parental disapproval, to which he knew he was not ent.i.tled, admiration of her pluck in letting that fellow know, fears for the consequences of this confession, and, more than all, his profound disturbance at knowing her at last launched into the deep waters of love. It was the least of these feelings that found expression.

"How did he take it?"

"Rushed away. The only thing I feel sure of is that he won't divorce me."

"No, by George; I don't suppose even he would have that impudence!"

And Winton was silent, trying to penetrate the future. "Well," he said suddenly, "it's on the knees of the G.o.ds then. But be careful, Gyp."

About noon, Betty returned from the sea, with a solemn, dark-eyed, cooing little Gyp, brown as a roasted coffee-berry. When she had been given all that she could wisely eat after the journey, Gyp carried her off to her own room, undressed her for sheer delight of kissing her from head to foot, and admiring her plump brown legs, then cuddled her up in a shawl and lay down with her on the bed. A few sleepy coos and strokings, and little Gyp had left for the land of Nod, while her mother lay gazing at her black lashes with a kind of pa.s.sion. She was not a child-lover by nature; but this child of her own, with her dark softness, plump delicacy, giving disposition, her cooing voice, and constant adjurations to "dear mum," was adorable. There was something about her insidiously seductive. She had developed so quickly, with the graceful roundness of a little animal, the perfection of a flower. The Italian blood of her great-great-grandmother was evidently prepotent in her as yet; and, though she was not yet two years old, her hair, which had lost its baby darkness, was already curving round her neck and waving on her forehead. One of her tiny brown hands had escaped the shawl and grasped its edge with determined softness. And while Gyp gazed at the pinkish nails and their absurdly wee half-moons, at the sleeping tranquillity stirred by breathing no more than a rose-leaf on a windless day, her lips grew fuller, trembled, reached toward the dark lashes, till she had to rein her neck back with a jerk to stop such self-indulgence. Soothed, hypnotized, almost in a dream, she lay there beside her baby.

That evening, at dinner, Winton said calmly:

"Well, I've been to see Fiorsen, and warned him off. Found him at that fellow Rosek's." Gyp received the news with a vague sensation of alarm.

"And I met that girl, the dancer, coming out of the house as I was going in--made it plain I'd seen her, so I don't think he'll trouble you."

An irresistible impulse made her ask:

"How was she looking, Dad?"

Winton smiled grimly. How to convey his impression of the figure he had seen coming down the steps--of those eyes growing rounder and rounder at sight of him, of that mouth opening in an: "Oh!"

"Much the same. Rather flabbergasted at seeing me, I think. A white hat--very smart. Attractive in her way, but common, of course. Those two were playing the piano and fiddle when I went up. They tried not to let me in, but I wasn't to be put off. Queer place, that!"

Gyp smiled. She could see it all so well. The black walls, the silver statuettes, Rops drawings, scent of dead rose-leaves and pastilles and cigarettes--and those two by the piano--and her father so cool and dry!

"One can't stand on ceremony with fellows like that. I hadn't forgotten that Polish chap's behaviour to you, my dear."

Through Gyp pa.s.sed a quiver of dread, a vague return of the feelings once inspired by Rosek.

"I'm almost sorry you went, Dad. Did you say anything very--"

"Did I? Let's see! No; I think I was quite polite." He added, with a grim, little smile: "I won't swear I didn't call one of them a ruffian.