Beyond Part 8

The question had come at last.

"Oh, rather lovely--in some ways." But she did not look at him, nor he at her. "See, Dad! The cats have made quite a path there!"

Winton bit his lips and turned from the wall. The thought of that fellow was bitter within him. She meant to tell him nothing, meant to keep up that lighthearted look--which didn't deceive him a bit!

"Look at my crocuses! It's really spring today!"

It was. Even a bee or two had come. The tiny leaves had a transparent look, too thin as yet to keep the sunlight from pa.s.sing through them.

The purple, delicate-veined crocuses, with little flames of orange blowing from their centres, seemed to hold the light as in cups. A wind, without harshness, swung the boughs; a dry leaf or two still rustled round here and there. And on the gra.s.s, and in the blue sky, and on the almond-blossom was the first spring brilliance. Gyp clasped her hands behind her head.

"Lovely--to feel the spring!"

And Winton thought: 'She's changed!' She had softened, quickened--more depth of colour in her, more gravity, more sway in her body, more sweetness in her smile. But--was she happy?

A voice said:

"Ah, what a pleasure!"

The fellow had slunk up like the great cat he was. And it seemed to Winton that Gyp had winced.

"Dad thinks we ought to have dark curtains in the music-room, Gustav."

Fiorsen made a bow.

"Yes, yes--like a London club."

Winton, watching, was sure of supplication in her face. And, forcing a smile, he said:

"You seem very snug here. Glad to see you again. Gyp looks splendid."

Another of those bows he so detested! Mountebank! Never, never would he be able to stand the fellow! But he must not, would not, show it.

And, as soon as he decently could, he went, taking his lonely way back through this region, of which his knowledge was almost limited to Lord's Cricket-ground, with a sense of doubt and desolation, an irritation more than ever mixed with the resolve to be always at hand if the child wanted him.

He had not been gone ten minutes before Aunt Rosamund appeared, with a crutch-handled stick and a gentlemanly limp, for she, too, indulged her ancestors in gout. A desire for exclusive possession of their friends is natural to some people, and the good lady had not known how fond she was of her niece till the girl had slipped off into this marriage. She wanted her back, to go about with and make much of, as before. And her well-bred drawl did not quite disguise this feeling.

Gyp could detect Fiorsen subtly mimicking that drawl; and her ears began to burn. The puppies afforded a diversion--their points, noses, boldness, and food, held the danger in abeyance for some minutes. Then the mimicry began again. When Aunt Rosamund had taken a somewhat sudden leave, Gyp stood at the window of her drawing-room with the mask off her face. Fiorsen came up, put his arm round her from behind, and said with a fierce sigh:

"Are they coming often--these excellent people?"

Gyp drew back from him against the wall.

"If you love me, why do you try to hurt the people who love me too?"

"Because I am jealous. I am jealous even of those puppies."

"And shall you try to hurt them?"

"If I see them too much near you, perhaps I shall."

"Do you think I can be happy if you hurt things because they love me?"

He sat down and drew her on to his knee. She did not resist, but made not the faintest return to his caresses. The first time--the very first friend to come into her own new home! It was too much!

Fiorsen said hoa.r.s.ely:

"You do not love me. If you loved me, I should feel it through your lips. I should see it in your eyes. Oh, love me, Gyp! You shall!"

But to say to Love: "Stand and deliver!" was not the way to touch Gyp.

It seemed to her mere ill-bred stupidity. She froze against him in soul, all the more that she yielded her body. When a woman refuses nothing to one whom she does not really love, shadows are already falling on the bride-house. And Fiorsen knew it; but his self-control about equalled that of the two puppies.

Yet, on the whole, these first weeks in her new home were happy, too busy to allow much room for doubting or regret. Several important concerts were fixed for May. She looked forward to these with intense eagerness, and pushed everything that interfered with preparation into the background. As though to make up for that instinctive recoil from giving her heart, of which she was always subconscious, she gave him all her activities, without calculation or reserve. She was ready to play for him all day and every day, just as from the first she had held herself at the disposal of his pa.s.sion. To fail him in these ways would have tarnished her opinion of herself. But she had some free hours in the morning, for he had the habit of lying in bed till eleven, and was never ready for practise before twelve. In those early hours she got through her orders and her shopping--that pursuit which to so many women is the only real "sport"--a chase of the ideal; a pitting of one's taste and knowledge against that of the world at large; a secret pa.s.sion, even in the beautiful, for making oneself and one's house more beautiful. Gyp never went shopping without that faint thrill running up and down her nerves. She hated to be touched by strange fingers, but not even that stopped her pleasure in turning and turning before long mirrors, while the saleswoman or man, with admiration at first crocodilic and then genuine, ran the tips of fingers over those curves, smoothing and pinning, and uttering the word, "moddam."

On other mornings, she would ride with Winton, who would come for her, leaving her again at her door after their outings. One day, after a ride in Richmond Park, where the horse-chestnuts were just coming into flower, they had late breakfast on the veranda of a hotel before starting for home. Some fruit-trees were still in blossom just below them, and the sunlight showering down from a blue sky brightened to silver the windings of the river, and to gold the budding leaves of the oak-trees. Winton, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, stared down across the tops of those trees toward the river and the wooded fields beyond.

Stealing a glance at him, Gyp said very softly:

"Did you ever ride with my mother, Dad?"

"Only once--the very ride we've been to-day. She was on a black mare; I had a chestnut--" Yes, in that grove on the little hill, which they had ridden through that morning, he had dismounted and stood beside her.

Gyp stretched her hand across the table and laid it on his.

"Tell me about her, dear. Was she beautiful?"

"Yes."

"Dark? Tall?"

"Very like you, Gyp. A little--a little"--he did not know how to describe that difference--"a little more foreign-looking perhaps. One of her grandmothers was Italian, you know."

"How did you come to love her? Suddenly?"

"As suddenly as"--he drew his hand away and laid it on the veranda rail--"as that sun came on my hand."

Gyp said quietly, as if to herself:

"Yes; I don't think I understand that--yet."

Winton drew breath through his teeth with a subdued hiss.

"Did she love you at first sight, too?"

He blew out a long puff of smoke.

"One easily believes what one wants to--but I think she did. She used to say so."

"And how long?"

"Only a year."