The Halo Part 28

As full of humble doubts as he had been the night he asked her to marry him, his honest eyes s.h.i.+ning with the tears she had arrested in their course, he kissed her hand and withdrew.

When she had heard the front door close she went to a mirror on the wall and looked at herself.

"And now, you loathsome creature," she said aloud, fiercely, "you must make up your mind what you are going to do."

Like many nervous people, she had a habit of walking while she thought hard, and now after a few turns up and down the overcrowded room she went upstairs, put on a hat, and, leaving the excited Tommy a prey to a most maddening attack of thwarted curiosity, left the house.

She walked rapidly, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing, a rather ferocious frown causing many people to stare at her in surprise. She wore a delicately hued French frock and a mauve hat covered with blue convolvuli, but in her extraordinary self-absorption and intentness of thought there was something uncivilised about her. Her clothes were unsuited to her, and she walked as if quite alone in a vast plain.

Her answer to Theo? What was it to be? Should she find it here, in Sloane Street? How could she decide, not having the remotest idea what effect her decision would have on Joyselle? Could she live without him?

As things now stood, he might, on her announcement that she was willing to marry Theo in, say, three months' time, fly to the ends of the earth that he might hide his own suffering, or--he might have the strength to endure it in silence for his son's sake.

If on the other hand she said no, that she could not marry his son, would he look on her decision as perfidy, and refuse to see her ever again, or--A man in a hansom swore softly with relief as she just escaped being knocked down by his horse, and quite unconscious of her danger, hurried on, her head bent.

Or--would he then--allow himself to love her--to love her frankly, so far as she was concerned?

At the corner of Sloane Square a man coming towards her saw her trance-like condition, and stopping short, forced her almost to run into his arms. "I beg your pardon," she began mechanically, and then her face changed. "You, Gerald! How d'ye do?"

She had not seen him for days, and then it had been in the evening, so that now in the strong afternoon sun she saw with a momentary shock that he looked very ill indeed.

"Seedy?" she asked, some una.n.a.lysed feeling of understanding urging her to an unusual gentleness of tone.

"Yes. What is wrong with you, Brigit?"

She had never forgiven him the affair of the evening when Tommy had walked in his sleep, but her mind was too full of her own trouble to have much room for resentment, and his value as an enemy had gone down.

He looked too broken and ill to be dangerous.

"I--I'm all right," she returned.

"Where are you walking so fast?"

"I'm just walking."

"I see. A race with the demons," he said in a curious, hurried voice. "I do it, too. Everyone does, it seems. I just met Joyselle tearing out Chelseaward--the father, I mean."

She looked up at him, her face clearing. "Ah!"

"Yes. I like him. He is a great artist and--a whole man. No disrespect to your young man, my dear," he added, with a dismal attempt of his old jaunty manner.

"Yes; he is 'a whole man.' Well, I must get on. Good-bye." With a nod she left him and hurried on.

To Chelsea? Yes; No. 16-1/2 t.i.te Street--she knew. She had never seen the house, but she had heard the number. No one ever went there. Madame Joyselle had never been, and Theo only once. Why was he "tearing" there at that hour? Because, of course, he wanted to be alone. There had certainly been a row of some kind, of which Theo had not told her. The old woman in Normandy had written, oh, yes; but then there must have been a great _pourparler_, and even Felicite had grown angry. Poor Felicite! To-night--oh, yes; at a dance at the Newlyns; she must give Theo his answer. At a dance!

But how could she decide until she knew what Victor--"_Hansom!_" Her own voice surprised her as a pistol shot might have done. "t.i.te Street, Chelsea, 16-1/2."

The cabby, who was a romanticist and fed his brain on pabulum from the pen of Mr. Fergus Hume and other ingenious concocters of peripatetic mystery, wondered as he gave his horse a meaning lash with his whip--a tribute to the beauty of the fare--"Wot the d.i.c.kens she was h'up to, with 'er big eyes and 'er 'ealthy pallor."

It further excited the excellent man's interest to be obliged, when he had arrived at his destination, to remind his fare that they had done so. "'Ere y'are, miss," he murmured soothingly down the trap. "Shall I wait?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

The house was an old one with a broad, low front door and shallow, much-worn oak stairs. In answer to Brigit's knock a Gamp-like person with a hare-lip appeared, and informing her curtly that Mr. Joyselle had come in only a few minutes before, added that she might go up--"To the top, miss, an' there's only one door when you've got up."

Brigit almost ran up the four flights, and then, when opposite the door, sat down on the top step and hid her face in her hands.

What should she say? Why had she come? Would he be glad to see her--or shocked? Worse still, would he accept her coming as an act of filial devotion?

No. That she would not allow.

Her mind, boiling, as it were, with a thousand ingredients, she could hardly be said to be thinking. Realising perfectly that she had behaved outrageously, sincerely ashamed of herself and full of remorse, yet her own position and her own welfare had never for a second ceased to be her chief concern. Suffering was of a certainty in store for some of the actors in the drama, but she held the centre of the stage and meant to avoid as much pain as possible. For her love for Joyselle was, of course, a purely selfish one. For several minutes she sat crouching on the stairs, utterly undecided as to what her next step was to be. Then a sound from within the room behind her caused her to turn sharply. A sound of--not music, but of pitiless, furious sc.r.a.ping and grinding on a violin.

Could it be Joyselle? It was horrible, like the cries of some animal in agony. And it went on and on and on.

"It must be Victor," she whispered; "it is his room. But--oh, how frightful! Has he gone mad? Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d!"

Rising, she stood for a horrible minute bending towards the door, and then with a quick movement opened it and went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a large window in the roof let in a square of cross daylight that looked like an island in a surrounding sea of dusky darkness; and in the light stood Joyselle, his back to her, his head bent over his violin in a way almost grotesque, as he groaned and tore at the hapless strings with venomous energy.

Brigit stood, unable to move. It is always an uncanny thing to watch for any length of time a person who believes himself to be absolutely alone, and when, as in this case, the person is undergoing, and giving full vent to a very strong emotion, the strangeness is increased tenfold.

The man was, it was plain, after a week's tremendous and for him wholly unusual self-restraint, now giving full rein to his great rage over his miserable situation. As he played, she could see the muscles of his strong neck move under the brown skin, and his shoulders rise and fall tumultuously with his uneven breaths. The din he made was almost unbearable, and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut it out.

The room was very large, and high, and round it, half-way up the dull yellow walls, ran an old carved gallery, relic of the time when it had been the studio of a hare-brained painter, a friend of Hazlitt and Coleridge, a believer in poor young Keats while the rest of the world laughed at him--in the very early days.

In those days feasts had been held here, and in the gallery, hidden behind flowering dwarf peach-trees in tubs, stringed instruments were played--very softly, for the painter of one good picture and dozens of bad ones, had taste--while his guests sat at his board. Stories are still told of the small table that used to be brought into the room at the end of dinner by two little Ethiopians in white tunics. An ancient table with faded gilding just visible on the claw feet that looked out from under its petticoat of finest damask; and on it priceless gold and silver bowls and salvers of all shapes, full of the most marvellous fruits from all countries, some of which fruits were never seen elsewhere in England. All dead and gone to dust years ago, host and guest and grinning little Ethiopians. Joyselle had told Brigit this story, and now as she stood watching him vent his wrath and anguish on his faithful Amati, a kind of vision came to her; and she seemed to see the room as it used to be--vaguely, the big table with six or eight men sitting around it drinking wine, and, more distinctly, the heaped-up bowls and plates of fruit----

Half hypnotised she stood there, her hands pressed to her ears until, with a final excruciating dig into the strings, he dropped his left arm and turned.

For a moment he, in his square of light, did not see her in the dusk under the gallery. Then he took a step forward, and with a low cry caught her in his arms and crushed her and the violin painfully to his breast.

"_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_," he repeated over and over, kissing her roughly, "you have come. Then you know, ma Brigitte, you know!"

"Yes, I know," she admitted sullenly. "Let me go, Victor, you--you hurt me."

He dropped his arms and she withdrew a few steps. He was very pale and his hair was ruffled.

"You--it was good of you to come," he said after a pause. "Then, you are not angry?"

"No."

"Brigit--_je t'aime, je t'aime_. I am infamous, I am a monster, a father to be execrated by all honest men and women, but--I love you!"

He laid the violin down in a chair and came to her. "_Et toi?_" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.