Beyond Part 53

They opened out to each other more in those few days at Tunbridge Wells than they had for years. Whether the process of bathing softened his crust, or the air that Mr. Wagge found "a bit--er--too irony, as you might say," had upon Winton the opposite effect, he certainly relaxed that first duty of man, the concealment of his spirit, and disclosed his activities as he never had before--how such and such a person had been set on his feet, so and so sent out to Canada, this man's wife helped over her confinement, that man's daughter started again after a slip.

And Gyp's child-wors.h.i.+p of him bloomed anew.

On the last afternoon of their stay, she strolled out with him through one of the long woods that stretched away behind their hotel. Excited by the coming end of her self-inflicted penance, moved by the beauty among those sunlit trees, she found it difficult to talk. But Winton, about to lose her, was quite loquacious. Starting from the sinister change in the racing-world--so plutocratic now, with the American seat, the increase of bookmaking owners, and other tragic occurrences--he launched forth into a jeremiad on the condition of things in general. Parliament, he thought, especially now that members were paid, had lost its self-respect; the towns had eaten up the country; hunting was threatened; the power and vulgarity of the press were appalling; women had lost their heads; and everybody seemed afraid of having any "breeding." By the time little Gyp was Gyp's age, they would all be under the thumb of Watch Committees, live in Garden Cities, and have to account for every half-crown they spent, and every half-hour of their time; the horse, too, would be an extinct animal, brought out once a year at the lord-mayor's show. He hoped--the deuce--he might not be alive to see it. And suddenly he added: "What do you think happens after death, Gyp?"

They were sitting on one of those benches that crop up suddenly in the heart of nature. All around them briars and bracken were just on the turn; and the hum of flies, the vague stir of leaves and life formed but a single sound. Gyp, gazing into the wood, answered:

"Nothing, Dad. I think we just go back."

"Ah--My idea, too!"

Neither of them had ever known what the other thought about it before!

Gyp murmured:

"La vie est vaine-- Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine, Et puis bonjour!"

Not quite a grunt or quite a laugh emerged from the depths of Winton, and, looking up at the sky, he said:

"And what they call 'G.o.d,' after all, what is it? Just the very best you can get out of yourself--nothing more, so far as I can see. Dash it, you can't imagine anything more than you can imagine. One would like to die in the open, though, like Whyte-Melville. But there's one thing that's always puzzled me, Gyp. All one's life one's tried to have a single heart. Death comes, and out you go! Then why did one love, if there's to be no meeting after?"

"Yes; except for that, who would care? But does the wanting to meet make it any more likely, Dad? The world couldn't go on without love; perhaps loving somebody or something with all your heart is all in itself."

Winton stared; the remark was a little deep.

"Ye-es," he said at last. "I often think the religious johnnies are saving their money to put on a horse that'll never run after all. I remember those Yogi chaps in India. There they sat, and this jolly world might rot round them for all they cared--they thought they were going to be all right themselves, in Kingdom Come. But suppose it doesn't come?"

Gyp murmured with a little smile:

"Perhaps they were trying to love everything at once."

"Rum way of showing it. And, hang it, there are such a lot of things one can't love! Look at that!" He pointed upwards. Against the grey bole of a beech-tree hung a board, on which were the freshly painted words:

PRIVATE

TRESPa.s.sERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

"That board is stuck up all over this life and the next. Well, WE won't give them the chance to warn us off, Gyp."

Slipping her hand through his arm, she pressed close up to him.

"No, Dad; you and I will go off with the wind and the sun, and the trees and the waters, like Procris in my picture."

VI

The curious and complicated nature of man in matters of the heart is not sufficiently conceded by women, professors, clergymen, judges, and other critics of his conduct. And naturally so, since they all have vested interests in his simplicity. Even journalists are in the conspiracy to make him out less wayward than he is, and dip their pens in epithets, if his heart diverges inch or ell.

Bryan Summerhay was neither more curious nor more complicated than those of his own s.e.x who would condemn him for getting into the midnight express from Edinburgh with two distinct emotions in his heart--a regretful aching for the girl, his cousin, whom he was leaving behind, and a rapturous antic.i.p.ation of the woman whom he was going to rejoin.

How was it possible that he could feel both at once? "Against all the rules," women and other moralists would say. Well, the fact is, a man's heart knows no rules. And he found it perfectly easy, lying in his bunk, to dwell on memories of Diana handing him tea, or glancing up at him, while he turned the leaves of her songs, with that enticing mockery in her eyes and about her lips; and yet the next moment to be swept from head to heel by the longing to feel Gyp's arms around him, to hear her voice, look in her eyes, and press his lips on hers. If, instead of being on his way to rejoin a mistress, he had been going home to a wife, he would not have felt a particle more of spiritual satisfaction, perhaps not so much. He was returning to the feelings and companions.h.i.+p that he knew were the most deeply satisfying spiritually and bodily he would ever have. And yet he could ache a little for that red-haired girl, and this without any difficulty. How disconcerting! But, then, truth is.

From that queer seesawing of his feelings, he fell asleep, dreamed of all things under the sun as men only can in a train, was awakened by the hollow silence in some station, slept again for hours, it seemed, and woke still at the same station, fell into a sound sleep at last that ended at Willesden in broad daylight. Dressing hurriedly, he found he had but one emotion now, one longing--to get to Gyp. Sitting back in his cab, hands deep-thrust into the pockets of his ulster, he smiled, enjoying even the smell of the misty London morning. Where would she be--in the hall of the hotel waiting, or upstairs still?

Not in the hall! And asking for her room, he made his way to its door.

She was standing in the far corner motionless, deadly pale, quivering from head to foot; and when he flung his arms round her, she gave a long sigh, closing her eyes. With his lips on hers, he could feel her almost fainting; and he too had no consciousness of anything but that long kiss.

Next day, they went abroad to a little place not far from Fecamp, in that Normandy countryside where all things are large--the people, the beasts, the unhedged fields, the courtyards of the farms guarded so squarely by tall trees, the skies, the sea, even the blackberries large. And Gyp was happy. But twice there came letters, in that too-well-remembered handwriting, which bore a Scottish postmark. A phantom increases in darkness, solidifies when seen in mist. Jealousy is rooted not in reason, but in the nature that feels it--in her nature that loved desperately, felt proudly. And jealousy flourishes on scepticism. Even if pride would have let her ask, what good? She would not have believed the answers. Of course he would say--if only out of pity--that he never let his thoughts rest on another woman. But, after all, it was only a phantom. There were many hours in those three weeks when she felt he really loved her, and so--was happy.

They went back to the Red House at the end of the first week in October. Little Gyp, home from the sea, was now an almost accomplished horsewoman. Under the tutelage of old Pettance, she had been riding steadily round and round those rough fields by the linhay which they called "the wild," her firm brown legs astride of the mouse-coloured pony, her little brown face, with excited, dark eyes, very erect, her auburn crop of short curls flopping up and down on her little straight back. She wanted to be able to "go out riding" with Grandy and Mum and Baryn. And the first days were spent by them all more or less in fulfilling her new desires. Then term began, and Gyp sat down again to the long sharing of Summerhay with his other life.

VII

One afternoon at the beginning of November, the old Scotch terrier, Ossian, lay on the path in the pale suns.h.i.+ne. He had lain there all the morning since his master went up by the early train. Nearly sixteen years old, he was deaf now and disillusioned, and every time that Summerhay left him, his eyes seemed to say: "You will leave me once too often!" The blandishments of the other nice people about the house were becoming to him daily less and less a subst.i.tute for that which he felt he had not much time left to enjoy; nor could he any longer bear a stranger within the gate. From her window, Gyp saw him get up and stand with his back ridged, growling at the postman, and, fearing for the man's calves, she hastened out.

Among the letters was one in that dreaded hand writing marked "Immediate," and forwarded from his chambers. She took it up, and put it to her nose. A scent--of what? Too faint to say. Her thumb nails sought the edge of the flap on either side. She laid the letter down. Any other letter, but not that--she wanted to open it too much. Readdressing it, she took it out to put with the other letters. And instantly the thought went through her: 'What a pity! If I read it, and there was nothing!'

All her restless, jealous misgivings of months past would then be set at rest! She stood, uncertain, with the letter in her hand. Ah--but if there WERE something! She would lose at one stroke her faith in him, and her faith in herself--not only his love but her own self-respect.

She dropped the letter on the table. Could she not take it up to him herself? By the three o'clock slow train, she could get to him soon after five. She looked at her watch. She would just have time to walk down. And she ran upstairs. Little Gyp was sitting on the top stair--her favourite seat--looking at a picture-book.

"I'm going up to London, darling. Tell Betty I may be back to-night, or perhaps I may not. Give me a good kiss."

Little Gyp gave the good kiss, and said:

"Let me see you put your hat on, Mum."

While Gyp was putting on hat and furs, she thought: "I shan't take a bag; I can always make s.h.i.+ft at Bury Street if--" She did not finish the thought, but the blood came up in her cheeks. "Take care of Ossy, darling!" She ran down, caught up the letter, and hastened away to the station. In the train, her cheeks still burned. Might not this first visit to his chambers be like her old first visit to the little house in Chelsea? She took the letter out. How she hated that large, scrawly writing for all the thoughts and fears it had given her these past months! If that girl knew how much anxiety and suffering she had caused, would she stop writing, stop seeing him? And Gyp tried to conjure up her face, that face seen only for a minute, and the sound of that clipped, clear voice but once heard--the face and voice of one accustomed to have her own way. No! It would only make her go on all the more. Fair game, against a woman with no claim--but that of love. Thank heaven she had not taken him away from any woman--unless--that girl perhaps thought she had! Ah! Why, in all these years, had she never got to know his secrets, so that she might fight against what threatened her? But would she have fought? To fight for love was degrading, horrible! And yet--if one did not? She got up and stood at the window of her empty carriage. There was the river--and there--yes, the very backwater where he had begged her to come to him for good. It looked so different, bare and shorn, under the light grey sky; the willows were all polled, the reeds cut down. And a line from one of his favourite sonnets came into her mind:

"Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."

Ah, well! Time enough to face things when they came. She would only think of seeing him! And she put the letter back to burn what hole it liked in the pocket of her fur coat.

The train was late; it was past five, already growing dark, when she reached Paddington and took a cab to the Temple. Strange to be going there for the first time--not even to know exactly where Harcourt Buildings were. At Temple Lane, she stopped the cab and walked down that narrow, ill-lighted, busy channel into the heart of the Great Law.

"Up those stone steps, miss; along the railin', second doorway." Gyp came to the second doorway and in the doubtful light scrutinized the names. "Summerhay--second floor." She began to climb the stairs. Her heart beat fast. What would he say? How greet her? Was it not absurd, dangerous, to have come? He would be having a consultation perhaps.

There would be a clerk or someone to beard, and what name could she give? On the first floor she paused, took out a blank card, and pencilled on it:

"Can I see you a minute?--G."