Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

BEYOND

Part I

I

At the door of St. George’s registry office, Charles Clare Winton

strolled forward in the wake of the taxi-cab that was bearing his

daughter away with “the fiddler fellow” she had married. His sense of

decorum forbade his walking with Nurse Betty—the only other witness of

the wedding. A stout woman in a highly emotional condition would have

been an incongruous companion to his slim, upright figure, moving with

just that unexaggerated swing and balance becoming to a lancer of the

old school, even if he has been on the retired list for sixteen years.

Poor Betty! He thought of her with irritated sympathy—she need not have

given way to tears on the door-step. She might well feel lost now Gyp

was gone, but not so lost as himself! His pale-gloved hand—the one real

hand he had, for his right hand had been amputated at the wrist—twisted

vexedly at the small, grizzling moustache lifting itself from the

corners of his firm lips. On this grey February day he wore no overcoat;

faithful to the absolute, almost shamefaced quietness of that wedding,

he had not even donned black coat and silk hat, but wore a blue suit and

a hard black felt. The instinct of a soldier and hunting man to exhibit

no sign whatever of emotion did not desert him this dark day of his

life; but his grey-hazel eyes kept contracting, staring fiercely,

contracting again; and, at moments, as if overpowered by some deep

feeling, they darkened and seemed to draw back in his head. His face was

narrow and weathered and thin-cheeked, with a clean-cut jaw, small

ears, hair darker than the moustache, but touched at the side wings with

grey—the face of a man of action, self-reliant, resourceful. And his

bearing was that of one who has always been a bit of a dandy, and paid

attention to “form,” yet been conscious sometimes that there were things

beyond. A man, who, preserving all the precision of a type, yet had in

him a streak of something that was not typical. Such often have tragedy

in their pasts.

Making his way towards the park, he turned into Mount Street. There

was the house still, though the street had been very different then—the

house he had passed, up and down, up and down in the fog, like a ghost,

that November afternoon, like a cast-out dog, in such awful, unutterable

agony of mind, twenty-three years ago, when Gyp was born. And then to be

told at the door—he, with no right to enter, he, loving as he believed

man never loved woman—to be told at the door that SHE was dead—dead in

bearing what he and she alone knew was their child! Up and down in the

fog, hour after hour, knowing her time was upon her; and at last to be

told that! Of all fates that befall man, surely the most awful is to

love too much.

Queer that his route should take him past the very house to-day, after

this new bereavement! Accursed luck—that gout which had sent him to

Wiesbaden, last September! Accursed luck that Gyp had ever set eyes on

this fellow Fiorsen, with his fatal fiddle! Certainly not since Gyp had

come to live with him, fifteen years ago, had he felt so forlorn and fit

for nothing. To-morrow he would get back to Mildenham and see what hard

riding would do. Without Gyp—to be without Gyp! A fiddler! A chap who

had never been on a horse in his life! And with his crutch-handled cane

he switched viciously at the air, as though carving a man in two.

His club, near Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him so desolate.

From sheer force of habit he went into the card-room. The afternoon had

so darkened that electric light already burned, and there were the usual

dozen of players seated among the shaded gleams falling decorously on

dark-wood tables, on the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the

little gilded coffee-cups, the polished nails of fingers holding

cigars. A crony challenged him to piquet. He sat down listless. That

three-legged whist—bridge—had always offended his fastidiousness—a

mangled short cut of a game! Poker had something blatant in it. Piquet,

though out of fashion, remained for him the only game worth playing—the

only game which still had style. He held good cards and rose the winner

of five pounds that he would willingly have paid to escape the boredom

of the bout. Where would they be by now? Past Newbury; Gyp sitting

opposite that Swedish fellow with his greenish wildcat’s eyes. Something

furtive, and so foreign, about him! A mess—if he were any judge of horse

or man! Thank God he had tied Gyp’s money up—every farthing! And

an emotion that was almost jealousy swept him at the thought of the

fellow’s arms round his soft-haired, dark-eyed daughter—that pretty,

willowy creature, so like in face and limb to her whom he had loved so

desperately.

Eyes followed him when he left the card-room, for he was one who

inspired in other men a kind of admiration—none could say exactly why.

Many quite as noted for general good sportsmanship attracted no such

attention. Was it “style,” or was it the streak of something not quite

typical—the brand left on him by the past?

Abandoning the club, he walked slowly along the railings of Piccadilly

towards home, that house in Bury Street, St. James’s, which had been his

London abode since he was quite young—one of the few in the street that

had been left untouched by the general passion for puffing down and

building up, which had spoiled half London in his opinion.

A man, more silent than anything on earth, with the soft, quick, dark

eyes of a woodcock and a long, greenish, knitted waistcoat, black

cutaway, and tight trousers strapped over his boots, opened the door.

“I shan’t go out again, Markey. Mrs. Markey must give me some dinner.

Anything’ll do.”

Markey signalled that he had heard, and those brown eyes under eyebrows

meeting and forming one long, dark line, took his master in from head

to heel. He had already nodded last night, when his wife had said the

gov’nor would take it hard. Retiring to the back premises, he jerked his

head toward the street and made a motion upward with his hand, by which

Mrs. Markey, an astute woman, understood that she had to go out and shop

because the gov’nor was dining in. When she had gone, Markey sat down

opposite Betty, Gyp’s old nurse. The stout woman was still crying in a

quiet way. It gave him the fair hump, for he felt inclined to howl like

a dog himself. After watching her broad, rosy, tearful face in silence

for some minutes, he shook his head, and, with a gulp and a tremor of

her comfortable body, Betty desisted. One paid attention to Markey.

Winton went first into his daughter’s bedroom, and gazed at its emptied

silken order, its deserted silver mirror, twisting viciously at his

little moustache. Then, in his sanctum, he sat down before the fire,

without turning up the light. Anyone looking in, would have thought he

was asleep; but the drowsy influence of that deep chair and cosy fire

had drawn him back into the long-ago. What unhappy chance had made him

pass HER house to-day!

Some say there is no such thing as an affinity, no case—of a man, at

least—made bankrupt of passion by a single love. In theory, it may

be so; in fact, there are such men—neck-or-nothing men, quiet and

self-contained, the last to expect that nature will play them such a

trick, the last to desire such surrender of themselves, the last to

know when their fate is on them. Who could have seemed to himself, and,

indeed, to others, less likely than Charles Clare Winton to fall over

head and ears in love when he stepped into the Belvoir Hunt ballroom at

Grantham that December evening, twenty-four years ago? A keen soldier,

a dandy, a first-rate man to hounds, already almost a proverb in his

regiment for coolness and for a sort of courteous disregard of women

as among the minor things of life—he had stood there by the door, in no

hurry to dance, taking a survey with an air that just did not give an

impression of “side” because it was not at all put on. And—behold!—SHE

had walked past him, and his world was changed for ever. Was it an

illusion of light that made her whole spirit seem to shine through a

half-startled glance? Or a little trick of gait, a swaying, seductive

balance of body; was it the way her hair waved back, or a subtle scent,

as of a flower? What was it? The wife of a squire of those parts, with

a house in London. Her name? It doesn’t matter—she has been long enough

dead. There was no excuse—not an ill-treated woman; an ordinary, humdrum

marriage, of three years standing; no children. An amiable good fellow

of a husband, fifteen years older than herself, inclined already to be

an invalid. No excuse! Yet, in one month from that night, Winton and she

were lovers, not only in thought but in deed. A thing so utterly beyond

“good form” and his sense of what was honourable and becoming in an

officer and gentleman that it was simply never a question of weighing

pro and con, the cons had it so completely. And yet from that first

evening, he was hers, she his. For each of them the one thought was how

to be with the other. If so—why did they not at least go off together?

Not for want of his beseeching. And no doubt, if she had survived Gyp’s

birth, they would have gone. But to face the prospect of ruining

two men, as it looked to her, had till then been too much for that

soft-hearted creature. Death stilled her struggle before it was decided.

There are women in whom utter devotion can still go hand in hand with a

doubting soul. Such are generally the most fascinating; for the power of

hard and prompt decision robs women of mystery, of the subtle atmosphere

of change and chance. Though she had but one part in four of foreign

blood, she was not at all English. But Winton was English to his

back-bone, English in his sense of form, and in that curious streak of

whole-hearted desperation that will break form to smithereens in one

department and leave it untouched in every other of its owner’s life.

To have called Winton a “crank” would never have occurred to any one—his

hair was always perfectly parted; his boots glowed; he was hard and

reticent, accepting and observing every canon of well-bred existence.

Yet, in that, his one infatuation, he was as lost to the world and its

opinion as the longest-haired lentil-eater of us all. Though at any

moment during that one year of their love he would have risked his life

and sacrificed his career for a whole day in her company, he never, by

word or look, compromised her. He had carried his punctilious observance

of her “honour” to a point more bitter than death, consenting, even,

to her covering up the tracks of their child’s coming. Paying that

gambler’s debt was by far the bravest deed of his life, and even now its

memory festered.

To this very room he had come back after hearing she was dead; this very

room which he had refurnished to her taste, so that even now, with

its satinwood chairs, little dainty Jacobean bureau, shaded old brass

candelabra, divan, it still had an air exotic to bachelordom. There, on

the table, had been a letter recalling him to his regiment, ordered on

active service. If he had realized what he would go through before

he had the chance of trying to lose his life out there, he would

undoubtedly have taken that life, sitting in this very chair before the

fire—the chair sacred to her and memory. He had not the luck he wished

for in that little war—men who don’t care whether they live or die

seldom have. He secured nothing but distinction. When it was over, he

went on, with a few more lines in his face, a few more wrinkles in his

heart, soldiering, shooting tigers, pig-sticking, playing polo, riding

to hounds harder than ever; giving nothing away to the world; winning

steadily the curious, uneasy admiration that men feel for those who

combine reckless daring with an ice-cool manner. Since he was less of a

talker even than most of his kind, and had never in his life talked of

women, he did not gain the reputation of a woman-hater, though he so

manifestly avoided them. After six years’ service in India and Egypt, he

lost his right hand in a charge against dervishes, and had, perforce, to

retire, with the rank of major, aged thirty-four. For a long time he had

hated the very thought of the child—his child, in giving birth to whom

the woman he loved had died. Then came a curious change of feeling; and

for three years before his return to England, he had been in the habit

of sending home odds and ends picked up in the bazaars, to serve as

toys. In return, he had received, twice annually at least, a letter

from the man who thought himself Gyp’s father. These letters he read and

answered. The squire was likable, and had been fond of HER; and though

never once had it seemed possible to Winton to have acted otherwise than

he did, he had all the time preserved a just and formal sense of the

wrong he had done this man. He did not experience remorse, but he had

always an irksome feeling as of a debt unpaid, mitigated by knowledge

that no one had ever suspected, and discounted by memory of the awful

torture he had endured to make sure against suspicion.

When, plus distinction and minus his hand, he was at last back in

England, the squire had come to see him. The poor man was failing fast

from Bright’s disease. Winton entered again that house in Mount Street

with an emotion, to stifle which required more courage than any cavalry

charge. But one whose heart, as he would have put it, is “in the right

place” does not indulge the quaverings of his nerves, and he faced those

rooms where he had last seen her, faced that lonely little dinner with

her husband, without sign of feeling. He did not see little Ghita, or

Gyp, as she had nicknamed herself, for she was already in her bed; and

it was a whole month before he brought himself to go there at an hour

when he could see the child if he would. The fact is, he was afraid.

What would the sight of this little creature stir in him? When Betty,

the nurse, brought her in to see the soldier gentleman with “the leather

hand,” who had sent her those funny toys, she stood calmly staring with

her large, deep-brown eyes. Being seven, her little brown-velvet frock

barely reached the knees of her thin, brown-stockinged legs planted one

just in front of the other, as might be the legs of a small brown bird;

the oval of her gravely wondering face was warm cream colour without red

in it, except that of the lips, which were neither full nor thin, and

had a little tuck, the tiniest possible dimple at one corner. Her hair

of warm dark brown had been specially brushed and tied with a narrow red

ribbon back from her forehead, which was broad and rather low, and this

added to her gravity. Her eyebrows were thin and dark and perfectly

arched; her little nose was perfectly straight, her little chin in

perfect balance between round and point. She stood and stared till

Winton smiled. Then the gravity of her face broke, her lips parted,

her eyes seemed to fly a little. And Winton’s heart turned over within

him—she was the very child of her that he had lost! And he said, in a

voice that seemed to him to tremble:

“Well, Gyp?”

“Thank you for my toys; I like them.”

He held out his hand, and she gravely put her small hand into it. A

sense of solace, as if some one had slipped a finger in and smoothed his

heart, came over Winton. Gently, so as not to startle her, he raised her

hand a little, bent, and kissed it. It may have been from his instant

recognition that here was one as sensitive as child could be, or the way

many soldiers acquire from dealing with their men—those simple, shrewd

children—or some deeper instinctive sense of ownership between them;

whatever it was, from that moment, Gyp conceived for him a rushing

admiration, one of those headlong affections children will sometimes

take for the most unlikely persons.

He used to go there at an hour when he knew the squire would be asleep,

between two and five. After he had been with Gyp, walking in the park,

riding with her in the Row, or on wet days sitting in her lonely nursery

telling stories, while stout Betty looked on half hypnotized, a rather

queer and doubting look on her comfortable face—after such hours, he

found it difficult to go to the squire’s study and sit opposite him,

smoking. Those interviews reminded him too much of past days, when he

had kept such desperate check on himself—too much of the old inward

chafing against the other man’s legal ownership—too much of the debt

owing. But Winton was triple-proofed against betrayal of feeling. The

squire welcomed him eagerly, saw nothing, felt nothing, was grateful

for his goodness to the child. Well, well! He had died in the following

spring. And Winton found that he had been made Gyp’s guardian and

trustee. Since his wife’s death, the squire had muddled his affairs, his

estate was heavily mortgaged; but Winton accepted the position with an

almost savage satisfaction, and, from that moment, schemed deeply to get

Gyp all to himself. The Mount Street house was sold; the Lincolnshire

place let. She and Nurse Betty were installed at his own hunting-box,

Mildenham. In this effort to get her away from all the squire’s

relations, he did not scruple to employ to the utmost the power he

undoubtedly had of making people feel him unapproachable. He was never

impolite to any of them; he simply froze them out. Having plenty of

money himself, his motives could not be called in question. In one year

he had isolated her from all except stout Betty. He had no qualms, for

Gyp was no more happy away from him than he from her. He had but one bad

half-hour. It came when he had at last decided that she should be called

by his name, if not legally at least by custom, round Mildenham. It was

to Markey he had given the order that Gyp was to be little Miss Winton

for the future. When he came in from hunting that day, Betty was waiting

in his study. She stood in the centre of the emptiest part of that

rather dingy room, as far as possible away from any good or chattel. How

long she had been standing there, heaven only knew; but her round, rosy

face was confused between awe and resolution, and she had made a sad

mess of her white apron. Her blue eyes met Winton’s with a sort of

desperation.

“About what Markey told me, sir. My old master wouldn’t have liked it,

sir.”

Touched on the raw by this reminder that before the world he had been

nothing to the loved one, that before the world the squire, who had been

nothing to her, had been everything, Winton said icily:

“Indeed! You will be good enough to comply with my wish, all the same.”

The stout woman’s face grew very red. She burst out, breathless:

“Yes, sir; but I’ve seen what I’ve seen. I never said anything, but I’ve

got eyes. If Miss Gyp’s to take your name, sir, then tongues’ll wag, and

my dear, dead mistress—”

But at the look on his face she stopped, with her mouth open.

“You will be kind enough to keep your thoughts to yourself. If any word

or deed of yours gives the slightest excuse for talk—you go. Understand

me, you go, and you never see Gyp again! In the meantime you will do

what I ask. Gyp is my adopted daughter.”

She had always been a little afraid of him, but she had never seen that

look in his eyes or heard him speak in that voice. And she bent her

full moon of a face and went, with her apron crumpled as apron had never

been, and tears in her eyes. And Winton, at the window, watching the

darkness gather, the leaves flying by on a sou’-westerly wind, drank to

the dregs a cup of bitter triumph. He had never had the right to that

dead, forever-loved mother of his child. He meant to have the child.

If tongues must wag, let them! This was a defeat of all his previous

precaution, a deep victory of natural instinct. And his eyes narrowed

and stared into the darkness.

II

In spite of his victory over all human rivals in the heart of Gyp,

Winton had a rival whose strength he fully realized perhaps for the

first time now that she was gone, and he, before the fire, was brooding

over her departure and the past. Not likely that one of his decisive

type, whose life had so long been bound up with swords and horses,

would grasp what music might mean to a little girl. Such ones, he knew,

required to be taught scales, and “In a Cottage near a Wood” with other

melodies. He took care not to go within sound of them, so that he had

no conception of the avidity with which Gyp had mopped up all, and more

than all, her governess could teach her. He was blind to the rapture

with which she listened to any stray music that came its way to

Mildenham—to carols in the Christmas dark, to certain hymns, and one

special “Nunc Dimittis” in the village church, attended with a hopeless

regularity; to the horn of the hunter far out in the quivering, dripping

coverts; even to Markey’s whistling, which was full and strangely sweet.

He could share her love of dogs and horses, take an anxious interest

in her way of catching bumblebees in the hollow of her hand and putting

them to her small, delicate ears to hear them buzz, sympathize with her

continual ravages among the flowerbeds, in the old-fashioned garden,

full of lilacs and laburnums in spring, pinks, roses, cornflowers in

summer, dahlias and sunflowers in autumn, and always a little neglected

and overgrown, a little squeezed in, and elbowed by the more important

surrounding paddocks. He could sympathize with her attempts to draw

his attention to the song of birds; but it was simply not in him to

understand how she loved and craved for music. She was a cloudy little

creature, up and down in mood—rather like a brown lady spaniel that

she had, now gay as a butterfly, now brooding as night. Any touch of

harshness she took to heart fearfully. She was the strangest compound

of pride and sell-disparagement; the qualities seemed mixed in her so

deeply that neither she nor any one knew of which her cloudy fits were

the result. Being so sensitive, she “fancied” things terribly. Things

that others did to her, and thought nothing of, often seemed to her

conclusive evidence that she was not loved by anybody, which was

dreadfully unjust, because she wanted to love everyone—nearly. Then

suddenly she would feel: “If they don’t love me, I don’t care. I don’t

want anything of anybody!” Presently, all would blow away just like a

cloud, and she would love and be gay, until something fresh, perhaps not

at all meant to hurt her, would again hurt her horribly. In reality,

the whole household loved and admired her. But she was one of those

delicate-treading beings, born with a skin too few, who—and especially

in childhood—suffer from themselves in a world born with a skin too

many.

To Winton’s extreme delight, she took to riding as a duck to water, and

knew no fear on horseback. She had the best governess he could get her,

the daughter of an admiral, and, therefore, in distressed circumstances;

and later on, a tutor for her music, who came twice a week all the

way from London—a sardonic man who cherished for her even more secret

admiration than she for him. In fact, every male thing fell in love

with her at least a little. Unlike most girls, she never had an epoch

of awkward plainness, but grew like a flower, evenly, steadily. Winton

often gazed at her with a sort of intoxication; the turn of her head,

the way those perfectly shaped, wonderfully clear brown eyes would

“fly,” the set of her straight, round neck, the very shaping of her

limbs were all such poignant reminders of what he had so loved. And yet,

for all that likeness to her mother, there was a difference, both in

form and character. Gyp had, as it were, an extra touch of “breeding,”

more chiselling in body, more fastidiousness in soul, a little more

poise, a little more sheer grace; in mood, more variance, in mind, more

clarity and, mixed with her sweetness, a distinct spice of scepticism

which her mother had lacked.

In modern times there are no longer “toasts,” or she would have been one

with both the hunts. Though delicate in build, she was not frail, and

when her blood was up would “go” all day, and come in so bone-tired that

she would drop on to the tiger skin before the fire, rather than face

the stairs. Life at Mildenham was lonely, save for Winton’s hunting

cronies, and they but few, for his spiritual dandyism did not gladly

suffer the average country gentleman and his frigid courtesy frightened

women.

Besides, as Betty had foreseen, tongues did wag—those tongues of the

countryside, avid of anything that might spice the tedium of dull lives

and brains. And, though no breath of gossip came to Winton’s ears,

no women visited at Mildenham. Save for the friendly casual

acquaintanceships of churchyard, hunting-field, and local race-meetings,

Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex. This dearth developed

her reserve, kept her backward in sex-perception, gave her a faint,

unconscious contempt for men—creatures always at the beck and call of

her smile, and so easily disquieted by a little frown—gave her also a

secret yearning for companions of her own gender. Any girl or woman that

she did chance to meet always took a fancy to her, because she was so

nice to them, which made the transitory nature of these friendships

tantalizing. She was incapable of jealousies or backbiting. Let men

beware of such—there is coiled in their fibre a secret fascination!

Gyp’s moral and spiritual growth was not the sort of subject that Winton

could pay much attention to. It was pre-eminently a matter one did not

talk about. Outward forms, such as going to church, should be preserved;

manners should be taught her by his own example as much as possible;

beyond this, nature must look after things. His view had much real

wisdom. She was a quick and voracious reader, bad at remembering what

she read; and though she had soon devoured all the books in Winton’s

meagre library, including Byron, Whyte-Melville, and Humboldt’s

“Cosmos,” they had not left too much on her mind. The attempts of her

little governess to impart religion were somewhat arid of result, and

the interest of the vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice of scepticism

soon put into the same category as the interest of all the other males

she knew. She felt that he enjoyed calling her “my dear” and patting her

shoulder, and that this enjoyment was enough reward for his exertions.

Tucked away in that little old dark manor house, whose stables alone

were up to date—three hours from London, and some thirty miles from The

Wash, it must be confessed that her upbringing lacked modernity. About

twice a year, Winton took her up to town to stay with his unmarried

sister Rosamund in Curzon Street. Those weeks, if they did nothing else,

increased her natural taste for charming clothes, fortified her teeth,

and fostered her passion for music and the theatre. But the two main

nourishments of the modern girl—discussion and games—she lacked utterly.

Moreover, those years of her life from fifteen to nineteen were before

the social resurrection of 1906, and the world still crawled like a

winter fly on a window-pane. Winton was a Tory, Aunt Rosamund a Tory,

everybody round her a Tory. The only spiritual development she underwent

all those years of her girlhood was through her headlong love for her

father. After all, was there any other way in which she could really

have developed? Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form

that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but

to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with

perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or

speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes

and voices of other men—all this was precious to her beyond everything.

If she inherited from him that fastidious sense of form, she also

inherited his capacity for putting all her eggs in one basket. And since

her company alone gave him real happiness, the current of love flowed

over her heart all the time. Though she never realized it, abundant love

FOR somebody was as necessary to her as water running up the stems of

flowers, abundant love FROM somebody as needful as sunshine on

their petals. And Winton’s somewhat frequent little runs to town, to

Newmarket, or where not, were always marked in her by a fall of the

barometer, which recovered as his return grew near.

One part of her education, at all events, was not neglected—cultivation

of an habitual sympathy with her poorer neighbours. Without concerning

himself in the least with problems of sociology, Winton had by nature

an open hand and heart for cottagers, and abominated interference with

their lives. And so it came about that Gyp, who, by nature also never

set foot anywhere without invitation, was always hearing the words:

“Step in, Miss Gyp”; “Step in, and sit down, lovey,” and a good many

words besides from even the boldest and baddest characters. There

is nothing like a soft and pretty face and sympathetic listening for

seducing the hearts of “the people.”

So passed the eleven years till she was nineteen and Winton forty-six.

Then, under the wing of her little governess, she went to the hunt-ball.

She had revolted against appearing a “fluffy miss,” wanting to be

considered at once full-fledged; so that her dress, perfect in fit, was

not white but palest maize-colour, as if she had already been to dances.

She had all Winton’s dandyism, and just so much more as was appropriate

to her sex. With her dark hair, wonderfully fluffed and coiled, waving

across her forehead, her neck bare for the first time, her eyes really

“flying,” and a demeanour perfectly cool—as though she knew that light

and movement, covetous looks, soft speeches, and admiration were her

birthright—she was more beautiful than even Winton had thought her. At

her breast she wore some sprigs of yellow jasmine procured by him from

town—a flower of whose scent she was very fond, and that he had never

seen worn in ballrooms. That swaying, delicate creature, warmed by

excitement, reminded him, in every movement and by every glance of her

eyes, of her whom he had first met at just such a ball as this. And by

the carriage of his head, the twist of his little moustache, he conveyed

to the world the pride he was feeling.

That evening held many sensations for Gyp—some delightful, one confused,

one unpleasant. She revelled in her success. Admiration was very dear

to her. She passionately enjoyed dancing, loved feeling that she was

dancing well and giving pleasure. But, twice over, she sent away her

partners, smitten with compassion for her little governess sitting there

against the wall—all alone, with no one to take notice of her, because

she was elderly, and roundabout, poor darling! And, to that loyal

person’s horror, she insisted on sitting beside her all through two

dances. Nor would she go in to supper with anyone but Winton. Returning

to the ballroom on his arm, she overheard an elderly woman say: “Oh,

don’t you know? Of course he really IS her father!” and an elderly man

answer: “Ah, that accounts for it—quite so!” With those eyes at the

back of the head which the very sensitive possess, she could see their

inquisitive, cold, slightly malicious glances, and knew they were

speaking of her. And just then her partner came for her.

“Really IS her father!” The words meant TOO much to be grasped this

evening of full sensations. They left a little bruise somewhere, but

softened and anointed, just a sense of confusion at the back of her

mind. And very soon came that other sensation, so disillusioning, that

all else was crowded out. It was after a dance—a splendid dance with

a good-looking man quite twice her age. They were sitting behind some

palms, he murmuring in his mellow, flown voice admiration for her dress,

when suddenly he bent his flushed face and kissed her bare arm above the

elbow. If he had hit her he could not have astonished or hurt her more.

It seemed to her innocence that he would never have done such a thing if

she had not said something dreadful to encourage him. Without a word she

got up, gazed at him a moment with eyes dark from pain, shivered, and

slipped away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed up,

tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their corners, he knew

something dire had happened, and his eyes boded ill for the person who

had hurt her; but she would say nothing except that she was tired and

wanted to go home. And so, with the little faithful governess, who,

having been silent perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of

conversation, they drove out into the frosty night. Winton sat beside

the chauffeur, smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his

ears, his eyes stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn fur

cap. Who had dared upset his darling? And, within the car, the little

governess chattered softly, and Gyp, shrouded in lace, in her dark

corner sat silent, seeing nothing but the vision of that insult. Sad end

to a lovely night!

She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while a sort of coherence was

forming in her mind. Those words: “Really IS her father!” and that

man’s kissing of her bare arm were a sort of revelation of sex-mystery,

hardening the consciousness that there was something at the back of her

life. A child so sensitive had not, of course, quite failed to feel the

spiritual draughts around her; but instinctively she had recoiled

from more definite perceptions. The time before Winton came was all

so faint—Betty, toys, short glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called

“Papa.” As in that word there was no depth compared with the word “Dad”

bestowed on Winton, so there had been no depth in her feelings towards

the squire. When a girl has no memory of her mother, how dark are many

things! None, except Betty, had ever talked of her mother. There was

nothing sacred in Gyp’s associations, no faiths to be broken by any

knowledge that might come to her; isolated from other girls, she

had little realisation even of the conventions. Still, she suffered

horribly, lying there in the dark—from bewilderment, from thorns dragged

over her skin, rather than from a stab in the heart. The knowledge of

something about her conspicuous, doubtful, provocative of insult, as she

thought, grievously hurt her delicacy. Those few wakeful hours made a

heavy mark. She fell asleep at last, still all in confusion, and woke up

with a passionate desire to KNOW. All that morning she sat at her piano,

playing, refusing to go out, frigid to Betty and the little governess,

till the former was reduced to tears and the latter to Wordsworth. After

tea she went to Winton’s study, that dingy little room where he never

studied anything, with leather chairs and books which—except “Mr.

Jorrocks,” Byron, those on the care of horses, and the novels of

Whyte-Melville—were never read; with prints of superequine celebrities,

his sword, and photographs of Gyp and of brother officers on the walls.

Two bright spots there were indeed—the fire, and the little bowl that

Gyp always kept filled with flowers.

When she came gliding in like that, a slender, rounded figure, her

creamy, dark-eyed, oval face all cloudy, she seemed to Winton to have

grown up of a sudden. He had known all day that something was coming,

and had been cudgelling his brains finely. From the fervour of his

love for her, he felt an anxiety that was almost fear. What could

have happened last night—that first night of her entrance into

society—meddlesome, gossiping society! She slid down to the floor

against his knee. He could not see her face, could not even touch her;

for she had settled down on his right side. He mastered his tremors and

said:

“Well, Gyp—tired?”

“No.”

“A little bit?”

“No.”

“Was it up to what you thought, last night?”

“Yes.”

The logs hissed and crackled; the long flames ruffled in the

chimney-draught; the wind roared outside—then, so suddenly that it took

his breath away:

“Dad, are you really and truly my father?”

When that which one has always known might happen at last does happen,

how little one is prepared! In the few seconds before an answer that

could in no way be evaded, Winton had time for a tumult of reflection.

A less resolute character would have been caught by utter mental

blankness, then flung itself in panic on “Yes” or “No.” But Winton was

incapable of losing his head; he would not answer without having faced

the consequences of his reply. To be her father was the most warming

thing in his life; but if he avowed it, how far would he injure her love

for him? What did a girl know? How make her understand? What would her

feeling be about her dead mother? How would that dead loved one feel?

What would she have wished?

It was a cruel moment. And the girl, pressed against his knee, with face

hidden, gave him no help. Impossible to keep it from her, now that her

instinct was roused! Silence, too, would answer for him. And clenching

his hand on the arm of his chair, he said:

“Yes, Gyp; your mother and I loved each other.” He felt a quiver go

through her, would have given much to see her face. What, even now, did

she understand? Well, it must be gone through with, and he said:

“What made you ask?”

She shook her head and murmured:

“I’m glad.”

Grief, shock, even surprise would have roused all his loyalty to the

dead, all the old stubborn bitterness, and he would have frozen up

against her. But this acquiescent murmur made him long to smooth it

down.

“Nobody has ever known. She died when you were born. It was a fearful

grief to me. If you’ve heard anything, it’s just gossip, because you go

by my name. Your mother was never talked about. But it’s best you should

know, now you’re grown up. People don’t often love as she and I loved.

You needn’t be ashamed.”

She had not moved, and her face was still turned from him. She said

quietly:

“I’m not ashamed. Am I very like her?”

“Yes; more than I could ever have hoped.”

Very low she said:

“Then you don’t love me for myself?”

Winton was but dimly conscious of how that question revealed her

nature, its power of piercing instinctively to the heart of things, its

sensitive pride, and demand for utter and exclusive love. To things that

go too deep, one opposes the bulwark of obtuseness. And, smiling, he

simply said:

“What do you think?”

Then, to his dismay, he perceived that she was crying—struggling against

it so that her shoulder shook against his knee. He had hardly ever

known her cry, not in all the disasters of unstable youth, and she had

received her full meed of knocks and tumbles. He could only stroke that

shoulder, and say:

“Don’t cry, Gyp; don’t cry!”

She ceased as suddenly as she had begun, got up, and, before he too

could rise, was gone.

That evening, at dinner, she was just as usual. He could not detect the

slightest difference in her voice or manner, or in her good-night kiss.

And so a moment that he had dreaded for years was over, leaving only the

faint shame which follows a breach of reticence on the spirits of those

who worship it. While the old secret had been quite undisclosed, it had

not troubled him. Disclosed, it hurt him. But Gyp, in those twenty-four

hours, had left childhood behind for good; her feeling toward men had

hardened. If she did not hurt them a little, they would hurt her! The

sex-instinct had come to life. To Winton she gave as much love as ever,

even more, perhaps; but the dew was off.

III

The next two years were much less solitary, passed in more or less

constant gaiety. His confession spurred Winton on to the fortification

of his daughter’s position. He would stand no nonsense, would not have

her looked on askance. There is nothing like “style” for carrying the

defences of society—only, it must be the genuine thing. Whether at

Mildenham, or in London under the wing of his sister, there was no

difficulty. Gyp was too pretty, Winton too cool, his quietness too

formidable. She had every advantage. Society only troubles itself to

make front against the visibly weak.

The happiest time of a girl’s life is that when all appreciate and covet

her, and she herself is free as air—a queen of hearts, for none of which

she hankers; or, if not the happiest, at all events it is the gayest

time. What did Gyp care whether hearts ached for her—she knew not

love as yet, perhaps would never know the pains of unrequited love.

Intoxicated with life, she led her many admirers a pretty dance,

treating them with a sort of bravura. She did not want them to be

unhappy, but she simply could not take them seriously. Never was any

girl so heart-free. She was a queer mixture in those days, would give

up any pleasure for Winton, and most for Betty or her aunt—her little

governess was gone—but of nobody else did she seem to take account,

accepting all that was laid at her feet as the due of her looks, her

dainty frocks, her music, her good riding and dancing, her talent for

amateur theatricals and mimicry. Winton, whom at least she never failed,

watched that glorious fluttering with quiet pride and satisfaction. He

was getting to those years when a man of action dislikes interruption of

the grooves into which his activity has fallen. He pursued his hunting,

racing, card-playing, and his very stealthy alms and services to lame

ducks of his old regiment, their families, and other unfortunates—happy

in knowing that Gyp was always as glad to be with him as he to be with

her. Hereditary gout, too, had begun to bother him.

The day that she came of age they were up in town, and he summoned her

to the room, in which he now sat by the fire recalling all these things,

to receive an account of his stewardship. He had nursed her greatly

embarrassed inheritance very carefully till it amounted to some twenty

thousand pounds. He had never told her of it—the subject was dangerous,

and, since his own means were ample, she had not wanted for anything.

When he had explained exactly what she owned, shown her how it was

invested, and told her that she must now open her own banking account,

she stood gazing at the sheets of paper, whose items she had been

supposed to understand, and her face gathered the look which meant that

she was troubled. Without lifting her eyes she asked:

“Does it all come from—him?”

He had not expected that, and flushed under his tan.

“No; eight thousand of it was your mother’s.”

Gyp looked at him, and said:

“Then I won’t take the rest—please, Dad.”

Winton felt a sort of crabbed pleasure. What should be done with that

money if she did not take it, he did not in the least know. But not to

take it was like her, made her more than ever his daughter—a kind of

final victory. He turned away to the window from which he had so often

watched for her mother. There was the corner she used to turn! In

one minute, surely she would be standing there, colour glowing in her

cheeks, her eyes soft behind her veil, her breast heaving a little with

her haste, waiting for his embrace. There she would stand, drawing up

her veil. He turned round. Difficult to believe it was not she! And he

said:

“Very well, my love. But you will take the equivalent from me instead.

The other can be put by; some one will benefit some day!”

At those unaccustomed words, “My love,” from his undemonstrative lips,

the colour mounted in her cheeks and her eyes shone. She threw her arms

round his neck.

She had her fill of music in those days, taking piano lessons from a

Monsieur Harmost, a grey-haired native of Liege, with mahogany cheeks

and the touch of an angel, who kept her hard at it and called her his

“little friend.” There was scarcely a concert of merit that she did not

attend or a musician of mark whose playing she did not know, and, though

fastidiousness saved her from squirming in adoration round the feet of

those prodigious performers, she perched them all on pedestals, men and

women alike, and now and then met them at her aunt’s house in Curzon

Street.

Aunt Rosamund, also musical, so far as breeding would allow, stood for

a good deal to Gyp, who had built up about her a romantic story of love

wrecked by pride from a few words she had once let drop. She was a tall

and handsome woman, a year older than Winton, with a long, aristocratic

face, deep-blue, rather shining eyes, a gentlemanly manner, warm heart,

and one of those indescribable, not unmelodious drawls that one connects

with an unshakable sense of privilege. She, in turn, was very fond of

Gyp; and what passed within her mind, by no means devoid of shrewdness,

as to their real relationship, remained ever discreetly hidden. She was,

so far again as breeding would allow, something of a humanitarian and

rebel, loving horses and dogs, and hating cats, except when they had

four legs. The girl had just that softness which fascinates women who

perhaps might have been happier if they had been born men. Not that

Rosamund Winton was of an aggressive type—she merely had the resolute

“catch hold of your tail, old fellow” spirit so often found in

Englishwomen of the upper classes. A cheery soul, given to long coats

and waistcoats, stocks, and a crutch-handled stick, she—like her

brother—had “style,” but more sense of humour—valuable in musical

circles! At her house, the girl was practically compelled to see fun

as well as merit in all those prodigies, haloed with hair and filled to

overflowing with music and themselves. And, since Gyp’s natural sense

of the ludicrous was extreme, she and her aunt could rarely talk about

anything without going into fits of laughter.

Winton had his first really bad attack of gout when Gyp was twenty-two,

and, terrified lest he might not be able to sit a horse in time for the

opening meets, he went off with her and Markey to Wiesbaden. They had

rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse, overlooking the gardens, where leaves

were already turning, that gorgeous September. The cure was long and

obstinate, and Winton badly bored. Gyp fared much better. Attended

by the silent Markey, she rode daily on the Neroberg, chafing at

regulations which reduced her to specified tracks in that majestic

wood where the beeches glowed. Once or even twice a day she went to the

concerts in the Kurhaus, either with her father or alone.

The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most

violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift

sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and

moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very

broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those

little whiskers seemed to Gyp awful—indeed, he seemed rather awful

altogether—but his playing stirred and swept her in the most uncanny

way. He had evidently remarkable technique; and the emotion, the intense

wayward feeling of his playing was chiselled by that technique, as if

a flame were being frozen in its swaying. When he stopped, she did not

join in the tornado of applause, but sat motionless, looking up at him.

Quite unconstrained by all those people, he passed the back of his hand

across his hot brow, shoving up a wave or two of that queer-coloured

hair; then, with a rather disagreeable smile, he made a short supple bow

or two. And she thought, “What strange eyes he has—like a great cat’s!”

Surely they were green; fierce, yet shy, almost furtive—mesmeric!

Certainly the strangest man she had ever seen, and the most frightening.

He seemed looking straight at her; and, dropping her gaze, she clapped.

When she looked again, his face had lost that smile for a kind of

wistfulness. He made another of those little supple bows straight at

her—it seemed to Gyp—and jerked his violin up to his shoulder.

“He’s going to play to me,” she thought absurdly. He played without

accompaniment a little tune that seemed to twitch the heart. When he

finished, this time she did not look up, but was conscious that he gave

one impatient bow and walked off.

That evening at dinner she said to Winton:

“I heard a violinist to-day, Dad, the most wonderful playing—Gustav

Fiorsen. Is that Swedish, do you think—or what?”

Winton answered:

“Very likely. What sort of a bounder was he to look at? I used to know a

Swede in the Turkish army—nice fellow, too.”

“Tall and thin and white-faced, with bumpy cheek-bones, and hollows

under them, and queer green eyes. Oh, and little goldy side-whiskers.”

“By Jove! It sounds the limit.”

Gyp murmured, with a smile:

“Yes; I think perhaps he is.”

She saw him next day in the gardens. They were sitting close to the

Schiller statue, Winton reading The Times, to whose advent he looked

forward more than he admitted, for he was loath by confessions of

boredom to disturb Gyp’s manifest enjoyment of her stay. While perusing

the customary comforting animadversions on the conduct of those

“rascally Radicals” who had just come into power, and the account of a

Newmarket meeting, he kept stealing sidelong glances at his daughter.

Certainly she had never looked prettier, daintier, shown more breeding

than she did out here among these Germans with their thick pasterns, and

all the cosmopolitan hairy-heeled crowd in this God-forsaken place! The

girl, unconscious of his stealthy regalement, was letting her clear eyes

rest, in turn, on each figure that passed, on the movements of birds

and dogs, watching the sunlight glisten on the grass, burnish the copper

beeches, the lime-trees, and those tall poplars down there by the water.

The doctor at Mildenham, once consulted on a bout of headache, had

called her eyes “perfect organs,” and certainly no eyes could take

things in more swiftly or completely. She was attractive to dogs, and

every now and then one would stop, in two minds whether or no to put

his nose into this foreign girl’s hand. From a flirtation of eyes with

a great Dane, she looked up and saw Fiorsen passing, in company with

a shorter, square man, having very fashionable trousers and a corseted

waist. The violinist’s tall, thin, loping figure was tightly buttoned

into a brownish-grey frock-coat suit; he wore a rather broad-brimmed,

grey, velvety hat; in his buttonhole was a white flower; his

cloth-topped boots were of patent leather; his tie was bunched out at

the ends over a soft white-linen shirt—altogether quite a dandy! His

most strange eyes suddenly swept down on hers, and he made a movement as

if to put his hand to his hat.

’Why, he remembers me,’ thought Gyp. That thin-waisted figure with head

set just a little forward between rather high shoulders, and its long

stride, curiously suggested a leopard or some lithe creature. He touched

his short companion’s arm, muttered something, turned round, and came

back. She could see him staring her way, and knew he was coming simply

to look at her. She knew, too, that her father was watching. And she

felt that those greenish eyes would waver before his stare—that stare

of the Englishman of a certain class, which never condescends to

be inquisitive. They passed; Gyp saw Fiorsen turn to his companion,

slightly tossing back his head in their direction, and heard the

companion laugh. A little flame shot up in her.

Winton said:

“Rum-looking Johnnies one sees here!”

“That was the violinist I told you of—Fiorsen.”

“Oh! Ah!” But he had evidently forgotten.

The thought that Fiorsen should have picked her out of all that audience

for remembrance subtly flattered her vanity. She lost her ruffled

feeling. Though her father thought his dress awful, it was really rather

becoming. He would not have looked as well in proper English clothes.

Once, at least, during the next two days, she noticed the short, square

young man who had been walking with him, and was conscious that he

followed her with his eyes.

And then a certain Baroness von Maisen, a cosmopolitan friend of Aunt

Rosamund’s, German by marriage, half-Dutch, half-French by birth, asked

her if she had heard the Swedish violinist, Fiorsen. He would be, she

said, the best violinist of the day, if—and she shook her head. Finding

that expressive shake unquestioned, the baroness pursued her thoughts:

“Ah, these musicians! He wants saving from himself. If he does not halt

soon, he will be lost. Pity! A great talent!”

Gyp looked at her steadily and asked:

“Does he drink, then?”

“Pas mal! But there are things besides drink, ma chere.”

Instinct and so much life with Winton made the girl regard it as beneath

her to be shocked. She did not seek knowledge of life, but refused to

shy away from it or be discomfited; and the baroness, to whom innocence

was piquant, went on:

“Des femmes—toujours des femmes! C’est grand dommage. It will spoil his

spirit. His sole chance is to find one woman, but I pity her; sapristi,

quelle vie pour elle!”

Gyp said calmly:

“Would a man like that ever love?”

The baroness goggled her eyes.

“I have known such a man become a slave. I have known him running after

a woman like a lamb while she was deceiving him here and there. On ne

peut jamais dire. Ma belle, il y a des choses que vous ne savez pas

encore.” She took Gyp’s hand. “And yet, one thing is certain. With those

eyes and those lips and that figure, YOU have a time before you!”

Gyp withdrew her hand, smiled, and shook her head; she did not believe

in love.

“Ah, but you will turn some heads! No fear! as you English say. There is

fatality in those pretty brown eyes!”

A girl may be pardoned who takes as a compliment the saying that her

eyes are fatal. The words warmed Gyp, uncontrollably light-hearted in

these days, just as she was warmed when people turned to stare at her.

The soft air, the mellowness of this gay place, much music, a sense of

being a rara avis among people who, by their heavier type, enhanced her

own, had produced in her a kind of intoxication, making her what the

baroness called “un peu folle.” She was always breaking into laughter,

having that precious feeling of twisting the world round her thumb,

which does not come too often in the life of one who is sensitive.

Everything to her just then was either “funny” or “lovely.” And the

baroness, conscious of the girl’s chic, genuinely attracted by one so

pretty, took care that she saw all the people, perhaps more than all,

that were desirable.

To women and artists, between whom there is ever a certain kinship,

curiosity is a vivid emotion. Besides, the more a man has conquered, the

more precious field he is for a woman’s conquest. To attract a man who

has attracted many, what is it but a proof that one’s charm is superior

to that of all those others? The words of the baroness deepened in Gyp

the impression that Fiorsen was “impossible,” but secretly fortified the

faint excitement she felt that he should have remembered her out of all

that audience. Later on, they bore more fruit than that. But first came

that queer incident of the flowers.

Coming in from a ride, a week after she had sat with Winton under the

Schiller statue, Gyp found on her dressing-table a bunch of Gloire de

Dijon and La France roses. Plunging her nose into them, she thought:

“How lovely! Who sent me these?” There was no card. All that the German

maid could say was that a boy had brought them from a flower shop “fur

Fraulein Vinton”; it was surmised that they came from the baroness. In

her bodice at dinner, and to the concert after, Gyp wore one La France

and one Gloire de Dijon—a daring mixture of pink and orange against

her oyster-coloured frock, which delighted her, who had a passion for

experiments in colour. They had bought no programme, all music being

the same to Winton, and Gyp not needing any. When she saw Fiorsen come

forward, her cheeks began to colour from sheer anticipation.

He played first a minuet by Mozart; then the Cesar Franck sonata; and

when he came back to make his bow, he was holding in his hand a Gloire

de Dijon and a La France rose. Involuntarily, Gyp raised her hand to her

own roses. His eyes met hers; he bowed just a little lower. Then, quite

naturally, put the roses to his lips as he was walking off the platform.

Gyp dropped her hand, as if it had been stung. Then, with the swift

thought: “Oh, that’s schoolgirlish!” she contrived a little smile. But

her cheeks were flushing. Should she take out those roses and let them

fall? Her father might see, might notice Fiorsen’s—put two and two

together! He would consider she had been insulted. Had she? She could

not bring herself to think so. It was too pretty a compliment, as if

he wished to tell her that he was playing to her alone. The baroness’s

words flashed through her mind: “He wants saving from himself. Pity!

A great talent!” It WAS a great talent. There must be something worth

saving in one who could play like that! They left after his last solo.

Gyp put the two roses carefully back among the others.

Three days later, she went to an afternoon “at home” at the Baroness von

Maisen’s. She saw him at once, over by the piano, with his short, square

companion, listening to a voluble lady, and looking very bored and

restless. All that overcast afternoon, still and with queer lights in

the sky, as if rain were coming, Gyp had been feeling out of mood,

a little homesick. Now she felt excited. She saw the short companion

detach himself and go up to the baroness; a minute later, he was brought

up to her and introduced—Count Rosek. Gyp did not like his face; there

were dark rings under the eyes, and he was too perfectly self-possessed,

with a kind of cold sweetness; but he was very agreeable and polite, and

spoke English well. He was—it seemed—a Pole, who lived in London, and

seemed to know all that was to be known about music. Miss Winton—he

believed—had heard his friend Fiorsen play; but not in London? No? That

was odd; he had been there some months last season. Faintly annoyed at

her ignorance, Gyp answered:

“Yes; but I was in the country nearly all last summer.”

“He had a great success. I shall take him back; it is best for his

future. What do you think of his playing?”

In spite of herself, for she did not like expanding to this sphinxlike

little man, Gyp murmured:

“Oh, simply wonderful, of course!”

He nodded, and then rather suddenly said, with a peculiar little smile:

“May I introduce him? Gustav—Miss Winton!”

Gyp turned. There he was, just behind her, bowing; and his eyes had a

look of humble adoration which he made no attempt whatever to conceal.

Gyp saw another smile slide over the Pole’s lips; and she was alone

in the bay window with Fiorsen. The moment might well have fluttered a

girl’s nerves after his recognition of her by the Schiller statue, after

that episode of the flowers, and what she had heard of him. But life had

not yet touched either her nerves or spirit; she only felt amused and

a little excited. Close to, he had not so much that look of an animal

behind bars, and he certainly was in his way a dandy, beautifully

washed—always an important thing—and having some pleasant essence on his

handkerchief or hair, of which Gyp would have disapproved if he had been

English. He wore a diamond ring also, which did not somehow seem

bad form on that particular little finger. His height, his broad

cheek-bones, thick but not long hair, the hungry vitality of his face,

figure, movements, annulled those evidences of femininity. He was male

enough, rather too male. Speaking with a queer, crisp accent, he said:

“Miss Winton, you are my audience here. I play to you—only to you.”

Gyp laughed.

“You laugh at me; but you need not. I play for you because I admire you.

I admire you terribly. If I sent you those flowers, it was not to be

rude. It was my gratitude for the pleasure of your face.” His voice

actually trembled. And, looking down, Gyp answered:

“Thank you. It was very kind of you. I want to thank you for your

playing. It is beautiful—really beautiful!”

He made her another little bow.

“When I go back to London, will you come and hear me?”

“I should think any one would go to hear you, if they had the chance.”

He gave a short laugh.

“Bah! Here, I do it for money; I hate this place. It bores me—bores me!

Was that your father sitting with you under the statue?”

Gyp nodded, suddenly grave. She had not forgotten the slighting turn of

his head.

He passed his hand over his face, as if to wipe off its expression.

“He is very English. But you—of no country—you belong to all!”

Gyp made him an ironical little bow.

“No; I should not know your country—you are neither of the North nor of

the South. You are just Woman, made to be adored. I came here hoping

to meet you; I am extremely happy. Miss Winton, I am your very devoted

servant.”

He was speaking very fast, very low, with an agitated earnestness that

surely could not be put on. But suddenly muttering: “These people!”

he made her another of his little bows and abruptly slipped away. The

baroness was bringing up another man. The chief thought left by that

meeting was: “Is that how he begins to everyone?” She could not quite

believe it. The stammering earnestness of his voice, those humbly

adoring looks! Then she remembered the smile on the lips of the little

Pole, and thought: “But he must know I’m not silly enough just to be

taken in by vulgar flattery!”

Too sensitive to confide in anyone, she had no chance to ventilate the

curious sensations of attraction and repulsion that began fermenting in

her, feelings defying analysis, mingling and quarrelling deep down in

her heart. It was certainly not love, not even the beginning of that;

but it was the kind of dangerous interest children feel in things

mysterious, out of reach, yet within reach, if only they dared! And the

tug of music was there, and the tug of those words of the baroness about

salvation—the thought of achieving the impossible, reserved only for the

woman of supreme charm, for the true victress. But all these thoughts

and feelings were as yet in embryo. She might never see him again! And

she certainly did not know whether she even wanted to.

IV

Gyp was in the habit of walking with Winton to the Kochbrunnen, where,

with other patient-folk, he was required to drink slowly for twenty

minutes every morning. While he was imbibing she would sit in a remote

corner of the garden, and read a novel in the Reclam edition, as a daily

German lesson.

She was sitting there, the morning after the “at-home” at the Baroness

von Maisen’s, reading Turgenev’s “Torrents of Spring,” when she saw

Count Rosek sauntering down the path with a glass of the waters in his

hand. Instant memory of the smile with which he had introduced

Fiorsen made her take cover beneath her sunshade. She could see his

patent-leathered feet, and well-turned, peg-top-trousered legs go by

with the gait of a man whose waist is corseted. The certainty that he

wore those prerogatives of womanhood increased her dislike. How dare men

be so effeminate? Yet someone had told her that he was a good rider, a

good fencer, and very strong. She drew a breath of relief when he was

past, and, for fear he might turn and come back, closed her little

book and slipped away. But her figure and her springing step were more

unmistakable than she knew.

Next morning, on the same bench, she was reading breathlessly the scene

between Gemma and Sanin at the window, when she heard Fiorsen’s voice,

behind her, say:

“Miss Winton!”

He, too, held a glass of the waters in one hand, and his hat in the

other.

“I have just made your father’s acquaintance. May I sit down a minute?”

Gyp drew to one side on the bench, and he sat down.

“What are you reading?”

“A story called ’Torrents of Spring.’”

“Ah, the finest ever written! Where are you?”

“Gemma and Sanin in the thunderstorm.”

“Wait! You have Madame Polozov to come! What a creation! How old are

you, Miss Winton?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You would be too young to appreciate that story if you were not YOU.

But you know much—by instinct. What is your Christian name—forgive me!”

“Ghita.”

“Ghita? Not soft enough.”

“I am always called Gyp.”

“Gyp—ah, Gyp! Yes; Gyp!”

He repeated her name so impersonally that she could not be angry.

“I told your father I have had the pleasure of meeting you. He was very

polite.”

Gyp said coldly:

“My father is always polite.”

“Like the ice in which they put champagne.”

Gyp smiled; she could not help it.

And suddenly he said:

“I suppose they have told you that I am a mauvais sujet.” Gyp inclined

her head. He looked at her steadily, and said: “It is true. But I could

be better—much.”

She wanted to look at him, but could not. A queer sort of exultation had

seized on her. This man had power; yet she had power over him. If she

wished she could make him her slave, her dog, chain him to her. She had

but to hold out her hand, and he would go on his knees to kiss it. She

had but to say, “Come,” and he would come from wherever he might be.

She had but to say, “Be good,” and he would be good. It was her first

experience of power; and it was intoxicating. But—but! Gyp could never

be self-confident for long; over her most victorious moments brooded the

shadow of distrust. As if he read her thought, Fiorsen said:

“Tell me to do something—anything; I will do it, Miss Winton.”

“Then—go back to London at once. You are wasting yourself here, you

know. You said so!”

He looked at her, bewildered and upset, and muttered:

“You have asked me the one thing I can’t do, Miss—Miss Gyp!”

“Please—not that; it’s like a servant!”

“I AM your servant!”

“Is that why you won’t do what I ask you?”

“You are cruel.”

Gyp laughed.

He got up and said, with sudden fierceness:

“I am not going away from you; do not think it.” Bending with the utmost

swiftness, he took her hand, put his lips to it, and turned on his heel.

Gyp, uneasy and astonished, stared at her hand, still tingling from the

pressure of his bristly moustache. Then she laughed again—it was just

“foreign” to have your hand kissed—and went back to her book, without

taking in the words.

Was ever courtship more strange than that which followed? It is said

that the cat fascinates the bird it desires to eat; here the bird

fascinated the cat, but the bird too was fascinated. Gyp never lost

the sense of having the whip-hand, always felt like one giving alms, or

extending favour, yet had a feeling of being unable to get away, which

seemed to come from the very strength of the spell she laid on him.

The magnetism with which she held him reacted on herself. Thoroughly

sceptical at first, she could not remain so. He was too utterly morose

and unhappy if she did not smile on him, too alive and excited and

grateful if she did. The change in his eyes from their ordinary

restless, fierce, and furtive expression to humble adoration or wistful

hunger when they looked at her could never have been simulated. And

she had no lack of chance to see that metamorphosis. Wherever she went,

there he was. If to a concert, he would be a few paces from the door,

waiting for her entrance. If to a confectioner’s for tea, as likely as

not he would come in. Every afternoon he walked where she must pass,

riding to the Neroberg.

Except in the gardens of the Kochbrunnen, when he would come up humbly

and ask to sit with her five minutes, he never forced his company, or

tried in any way to compromise her. Experience, no doubt, served him

there; but he must have had an instinct that it was dangerous with one

so sensitive. There were other moths, too, round that bright candle, and

they served to keep his attentions from being too conspicuous. Did she

comprehend what was going on, understand how her defences were being

sapped, grasp the danger to retreat that lay in permitting him to

hover round her? Not really. It all served to swell the triumphant

intoxication of days when she was ever more and more in love with

living, more and more conscious that the world appreciated and admired

her, that she had power to do what others couldn’t.

Was not Fiorsen, with his great talent, and his dubious reputation,

proof of that? And he excited her. Whatever else one might be in his

moody, vivid company, one would not be dull. One morning, he told her

something of his life. His father had been a small Swedish landowner, a

very strong man and a very hard drinker; his mother, the daughter of a

painter. She had taught him the violin, but died while he was still a

boy. When he was seventeen he had quarrelled with his father, and had to

play his violin for a living in the streets of Stockholm. A well-known

violinist, hearing him one day, took him in hand. Then his father had

drunk himself to death, and he had inherited the little estate. He had

sold it at once—“for follies,” as he put it crudely. “Yes, Miss Winton;

I have committed many follies, but they are nothing to those I shall

commit the day I do not see you any more!” And, with that disturbing

remark, he got up and left her. She had smiled at his words, but within

herself she felt excitement, scepticism, compassion, and something she

did not understand at all. In those days, she understood herself very

little.

But how far did Winton understand, how far see what was going on? He

was a stoic; but that did not prevent jealousy from taking alarm, and

causing him twinges more acute than those he still felt in his left

foot. He was afraid of showing disquiet by any dramatic change, or he

would have carried her off a fortnight at least before his cure was

over. He knew too well the signs of passion. That long, loping, wolfish

fiddling fellow with the broad cheekbones and little side-whiskers (Good

God!) and greenish eyes whose looks at Gyp he secretly marked down,

roused his complete distrust. Perhaps his inbred English contempt for

foreigners and artists kept him from direct action. He COULD not take

it quite seriously. Gyp, his fastidious perfect Gyp, succumbing, even a

little to a fellow like that! Never! His jealous affection, too,

could not admit that she would neglect to consult him in any doubt or

difficulty. He forgot the sensitive secrecy of girls, forgot that his

love for her had ever shunned words, her love for him never indulged in

confidences. Nor did he see more than a little of what there was to see,

and that little was doctored by Fiorsen for his eyes, shrewd though

they were. Nor was there in all so very much, except one episode the day

before they left, and of that he knew nothing.

That last afternoon was very still, a little mournful. It had rained the

night before, and the soaked tree-trunks, the soaked fallen leaves gave

off a faint liquorice-like perfume. In Gyp there was a feeling, as if

her spirit had been suddenly emptied of excitement and delight. Was it

the day, or the thought of leaving this place where she had so enjoyed

herself? After lunch, when Winton was settling his accounts, she

wandered out through the long park stretching up the valley. The sky was

brooding-grey, the trees were still and melancholy. It was all a little

melancholy, and she went on and on, across the stream, round into a

muddy lane that led up through the outskirts of a village, on to the

higher ground whence she could return by the main road. Why must things

come to an end? For the first time in her life, she thought of Mildenham

and hunting without enthusiasm. She would rather stay in London. There

she would not be cut off from music, from dancing, from people, and

all the exhilaration of being appreciated. On the air came the shrilly,

hollow droning of a thresher, and the sound seemed exactly to express

her feelings. A pigeon flew over, white against the leaden sky; some

birch-trees that had gone golden shivered and let fall a shower of

drops. It was lonely here! And, suddenly, two little boys bolted out of

the hedge, nearly upsetting her, and scurried down the road. Something

had startled them. Gyp, putting up her face to see, felt on it soft

pin-points of rain. Her frock would be spoiled, and it was one she was

fond of—dove-coloured, velvety, not meant for weather. She turned for

refuge to the birch-trees. It would be over directly, perhaps. Muffled

in distance, the whining drone of that thresher still came travelling,

deepening her discomfort. Then in the hedge, whence the boys had bolted

down, a man reared himself above the lane, and came striding along

toward her. He jumped down the bank, among the birch-trees. And she

saw it was Fiorsen—panting, dishevelled, pale with heat. He must have

followed her, and climbed straight up the hillside from the path she

had come along in the bottom, before crossing the stream. His artistic

dandyism had been harshly treated by that scramble. She might have

laughed; but, instead, she felt excited, a little scared by the look on

his hot, pale face. He said, breathlessly:

“I have caught you. So you are going to-morrow, and never told me! You

thought you would slip away—not a word for me! Are you always so cruel?

Well, I will not spare you, either!”

Crouching suddenly, he took hold of her broad ribbon sash, and buried

his face in it. Gyp stood trembling—the action had not stirred her sense

of the ridiculous. He circled her knees with his arms.

“Oh, Gyp, I love you—I love you—don’t send me away—let me be with you! I

am your dog—your slave. Oh, Gyp, I love you!”

His voice moved and terrified her. Men had said “I love you” several

times during those last two years, but never with that lost-soul ring of

passion, never with that look in the eyes at once fiercely hungry and so

supplicating, never with that restless, eager, timid touch of hands. She

could only murmur:

“Please get up!”

But he went on:

“Love me a little, only a little—love me! Oh, Gyp!”

The thought flashed through Gyp: ’To how many has he knelt, I wonder?’

His face had a kind of beauty in its abandonment—the beauty that comes

from yearning—and she lost her frightened feeling. He went on, with his

stammering murmur: “I am a prodigal, I know; but if you love me, I will

no longer be. I will do great things for you. Oh, Gyp, if you will some

day marry me! Not now. When I have proved. Oh, Gyp, you are so sweet—so

wonderful!”

His arms crept up till he had buried his face against her waist. Without

quite knowing what she did, Gyp touched his hair, and said again:

“No; please get up.”

He got up then, and standing near, with his hands hard clenched at his

sides, whispered:

“Have mercy! Speak to me!”

She could not. All was strange and mazed and quivering in her, her

spirit straining away, drawn to him, fantastically confused. She could

only look into his face with her troubled, dark eyes. And suddenly she

was seized and crushed to him. She shrank away, pushing him back with

all her strength. He hung his head, abashed, suffering, with eyes shut,

lips trembling; and her heart felt again that quiver of compassion. She

murmured:

“I don’t know. I will tell you later—later—in England.”

He bowed, folding his arms, as if to make her feel safe from him. And

when, regardless of the rain, she began to move on, he walked beside

her, a yard or so away, humbly, as though he had never poured out those

words or hurt her lips with the violence of his kiss.

Back in her room, taking off her wet dress, Gyp tried to remember what

he had said and what she had answered. She had not promised anything.

But she had given him her address, both in London and the country.

Unless she resolutely thought of other things, she still felt the

restless touch of his hands, the grip of his arms, and saw his eyes as

they were when he was kissing her; and once more she felt frightened and

excited.

He was playing at the concert that evening—her last concert. And surely

he had never played like that—with a despairing beauty, a sort of

frenzied rapture. Listening, there came to her a feeling—a feeling of

fatality—that, whether she would or no, she could not free herself from

him.

V

Once back in England, Gyp lost that feeling, or very nearly. Her

scepticism told her that Fiorsen would soon see someone else who seemed

all he had said she was! How ridiculous to suppose that he would stop

his follies for her, that she had any real power over him! But, deep

down, she did not quite believe this. It would have wounded her belief

in herself too much—a belief so subtle and intimate that she was not

conscious of it; belief in that something about her which had inspired

the baroness to use the word “fatality.”

Winton, who breathed again, hurried her off to Mildenham. He had bought

her a new horse. They were in time for the last of the cubbing. And, for

a week at least, the passion for riding and the sight of hounds carried

all before it. Then, just as the real business of the season was

beginning, she began to feel dull and restless. Mildenham was dark; the

autumn winds made dreary noises. Her little brown spaniel, very old,

who seemed only to have held on to life just for her return, died. She

accused herself terribly for having left it so long when it was failing.

Thinking of all the days Lass had been watching for her to come home—as

Betty, with that love of woeful recital so dear to simple hearts, took

good care to make plain—she felt as if she had been cruel. For events

such as these, Gyp was both too tender-hearted and too hard on herself.

She was quite ill for several days. The moment she was better, Winton,

in dismay, whisked her back to Aunt Rosamund, in town. He would lose her

company, but if it did her good, took her out of herself, he would be

content. Running up for the week-end, three days later, he was relieved

to find her decidedly perked-up, and left her again with the easier

heart.

It was on the day after he went back to Mildenham that she received a

letter from Fiorsen, forwarded from Bury Street. He was—it said—just

returning to London; he had not forgotten any look she had ever given

him, or any word she had spoken. He should not rest till he could see

her again. “For a long time,” the letter ended, “before I first saw you,

I was like the dead—lost. All was bitter apples to me. Now I am a ship

that comes from the whirlpools to a warm blue sea; now I see again

the evening star. I kiss your hands, and am your faithful slave—Gustav

Fiorsen.” These words, which from any other man would have excited

her derision, renewed in Gyp that fluttered feeling, the pleasurable,

frightened sense that she could not get away from his pursuit.

She wrote in answer to the address he gave her in London, to say that

she was staying for a few days in Curzon Street with her aunt, who would

be glad to see him if he cared to come in any afternoon between five and

six, and signed herself “Ghita Winton.” She was long over that little

note. Its curt formality gave her satisfaction. Was she really mistress

of herself—and him; able to dispose as she wished? Yes; and surely the

note showed it.

It was never easy to tell Gyp’s feelings from her face; even Winton was

often baffled. Her preparation of Aunt Rosamund for the reception of

Fiorsen was a masterpiece of casualness. When he duly came, he, too,

seemed doubly alive to the need for caution, only gazing at Gyp when

he could not be seen doing so. But, going out, he whispered: “Not like

this—not like this; I must see you alone—I must!” She smiled and shook

her head. But bubbles had come back to the wine in her cup.

That evening she said quietly to Aunt Rosamund:

“Dad doesn’t like Mr. Fiorsen—can’t appreciate his playing, of course.”

And this most discreet remark caused Aunt Rosamund, avid—in a well-bred

way—of music, to omit mention of the intruder when writing to her

brother. The next two weeks he came almost every day, always bringing

his violin, Gyp playing his accompaniments, and though his hungry stare

sometimes made her feel hot, she would have missed it.

But when Winton next came up to Bury Street, she was in a quandary. To

confess that Fiorsen was here, having omitted to speak of him in

her letters? Not to confess, and leave him to find it out from Aunt

Rosamund? Which was worse? Seized with panic, she did neither, but

told her father she was dying for a gallop. Hailing that as the best

of signs, he took her forthwith back to Mildenham. And curious were her

feelings—light-hearted, compunctious, as of one who escapes yet knows

she will soon be seeking to return. The meet was rather far next day,

but she insisted on riding to it, since old Pettance, the superannuated

jockey, charitably employed as extra stable help at Mildenham, was to

bring on her second horse. There was a good scenting-wind, with rain

in the offing, and outside the covert they had a corner to

themselves—Winton knowing a trick worth two of the field’s at-large.

They had slipped there, luckily unseen, for the knowing were given to

following the one-handed horseman in faded pink, who, on his bang-tailed

black mare, had a knack of getting so well away. One of the whips, a

little dark fellow with smouldery eyes and sucked-in weathered cheeks,

dashed out of covert, rode past, saluting, and dashed in again. A jay

came out with a screech, dived, and doubled back; a hare made off across

the fallow—the light-brown lopping creature was barely visible against

the brownish soil. Pigeons, very high up, flew over and away to the next

wood. The shrilling voices of the whips rose from the covert-depths,

and just a whimper now and then from the hounds, swiftly wheeling their

noses among the fern and briers.

Gyp, crisping her fingers on the reins, drew-in deep breaths. It smelled

so sweet and soft and fresh under that sky, pied of blue, and of white

and light-grey swift-moving clouds—not half the wind down here that

there was up there, just enough to be carrying off the beech and oak

leaves, loosened by frost two days before. If only a fox would break

this side, and they could have the first fields to themselves! It was so

lovely to be alone with hounds! One of these came trotting out, a pretty

young creature, busy and unconcerned, raising its tan-and-white head,

its mild reproachful deep-brown eyes, at Winton’s, “Loo-in Trix!” What

a darling! A burst of music from the covert, and the darling vanished

among the briers.

Gyp’s new brown horse pricked its ears. A young man in a grey cutaway,

buff cords, and jack-boots, on a low chestnut mare, came slipping round

the covert. Oh—did that mean they were all coming? Impatiently she

glanced at this intruder, who raised his hat a little and smiled. That

smile, faintly impudent, was so infectious, that Gyp was melted to

a slight response. Then she frowned. He had spoiled their lovely

loneliness. Who was he? He looked unpardonably serene and happy sitting

there. She did not remember his face at all, yet there was something

familiar about it. He had taken his hat off—a broad face, very well

cut, and clean-shaved, with dark curly hair, extraordinary clear eyes, a

bold, cool, merry look. Where had she seen somebody like him?

A tiny sound from Winton made her turn her head. The fox—stealing out

beyond those further bushes! Breathless, she fixed her eyes on her

father’s face. It was hard as steel, watching. Not a sound, not a

quiver, as if horse and man had turned to metal. Was he never going to

give the view-halloo? Then his lips writhed, and out it came. Gyp cast a

swift smile of gratitude at the young man for having had taste and sense

to leave that to her father, and again he smiled at her. There were

the first hounds streaming out—one on the other—music and feather! Why

didn’t Dad go? They would all be round this way in a minute!

Then the black mare slid past her, and, with a bound, her horse

followed. The young man on the chestnut was away on the left. Only the

hunts-man and one whip—beside their three selves! Glorious! The brown

horse went too fast at that first fence and Winton called back: “Steady,

Gyp! Steady him!” But she couldn’t; and it didn’t matter. Grass, three

fields of grass! Oh, what a lovely fox—going so straight! And each

time the brown horse rose, she thought: “Perfect! I CAN ride! Oh, I am

happy!” And she hoped her father and the young man were looking. There

was no feeling in the world like this, with a leader like Dad, hounds

moving free, good going, and the field distanced. Better than dancing;

better—yes, better than listening to music. If one could spend one’s

life galloping, sailing over fences; if it would never stop! The new

horse was a darling, though he DID pull.

She crossed the next fence level with the young man, whose low chestnut

mare moved with a stealthy action. His hat was crammed down now, and his

face very determined, but his lips still had something of that smile.

Gyp thought: “He’s got a good seat—very strong, only he looks like

’thrusting.’ Nobody rides like Dad—so beautifully quiet!” Indeed,

Winton’s seat on a horse was perfection, all done with such a minimum

expenditure. The hounds swung round in a curve. Now she was with them,

really with them! What a pace—cracking! No fox could stand this long!

And suddenly she caught sight of him, barely a field ahead, scurrying

desperately, brush down; and the thought flashed through her: ’Oh! don’t

let’s catch you. Go on, fox; go on! Get away!’ Were they really all

after that little hunted red thing—a hundred great creatures, horses

and men and women and dogs, and only that one little fox! But then came

another fence, and quickly another, and she lost feelings of shame and

pity in the exultation of flying over them. A minute later the fox went

to earth within a few hundred yards of the leading hound, and she was

glad. She had been in at deaths before—horrid! But it had been a lovely

gallop. And, breathless, smiling rapturously, she wondered whether she

could mop her face before the field came up, without that young man

noticing.

She could see him talking to her father, and taking out a wisp of a

handkerchief that smelled of cyclamen, she had a good scrub round. When

she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at her

said: “You did go!” His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it a spice

of pleasant laziness. Gyp made him an ironical little bow, and murmured:

“My new horse, you mean.” He broke again into that irrepressible smile,

but, all the same, she knew that he admired her. And she kept thinking:

’Where HAVE I seen someone like him?’

They had two more runs, but nothing like that first gallop. Nor did she

again see the young man, whose name—it seemed—was Summerhay, son of a

certain Lady Summerhay at Widrington, ten miles from Mildenham.

All that long, silent jog home with Winton in fading daylight, she felt

very happy—saturated with air and elation. The trees and fields, the

hay-stacks, gates, and ponds beside the lanes grew dim; lights came up

in the cottage windows; the air smelled sweet of wood smoke. And, for

the first time all day, she thought of Fiorsen, thought of him almost

longingly. If he could be there in the cosy old drawing-room, to play

to her while she lay back—drowsing, dreaming by the fire in the scent of

burning cedar logs—the Mozart minuet, or that little heart-catching tune

of Poise, played the first time she heard him, or a dozen other of the

things he played unaccompanied! That would be the most lovely ending

to this lovely day. Just the glow and warmth wanting, to make all

perfect—the glow and warmth of music and adoration!

And touching the mare with her heel, she sighed. To indulge fancies

about music and Fiorsen was safe here, far away from him; she even

thought she would not mind if he were to behave again as he had under

the birch-trees in the rain at Wiesbaden. It was so good to be adored.

Her old mare, ridden now six years, began the series of contented

snuffles that signified she smelt home. Here was the last turn, and the

loom of the short beech-tree avenue to the house—the old manor-house,

comfortable, roomy, rather dark, with wide shallow stairs. Ah, she was

tired; and it was drizzling now. She would be nicely stiff to-morrow. In

the light coming from the open door she saw Markey standing; and while

fishing from her pocket the usual lumps of sugar, heard him say: “Mr.

Fiorsen, sir—gentleman from Wiesbaden—to see you.”

Her heart thumped. What did this mean? Why had he come? How had he

dared? How could he have been so treacherous to her? Ah, but he was

ignorant, of course, that she had not told her father. A veritable

judgment on her! She ran straight in and up the stairs. The voice of

Betty, “Your bath’s ready, Miss Gyp,” roused her. And crying, “Oh, Betty

darling, bring me up my tea!” she ran into the bathroom. She was safe

there; and in the delicious heat of the bath faced the situation better.

There could be only one meaning. He had come to ask for her. And,

suddenly, she took comfort. Better so; there would be no more secrecy

from Dad! And he would stand between her and Fiorsen if—if she decided

not to marry him. The thought staggered her. Had she, without knowing

it, got so far as this? Yes, and further. It was all no good; Fiorsen

would never accept refusal, even if she gave it! But, did she want to

refuse?

She loved hot baths, but had never stayed in one so long. Life was so

easy there, and so difficult outside. Betty’s knock forced her to get

out at last, and let her in with tea and the message. Would Miss Gyp

please to go down when she was ready?

VI

Winton was staggered. With a glance at Gyp’s vanishing figure, he said

curtly to Markey, “Where have you put this gentleman?” But the use of

the word “this” was the only trace he showed of his emotions. In that

little journey across the hall he entertained many extravagant thoughts.

Arrived at the study, he inclined his head courteously enough, waiting

for Fiorsen to speak. The “fiddler,” still in his fur-lined coat, was

twisting a squash hat in his hands. In his own peculiar style he was

impressive. But why couldn’t he look you in the face; or, if he did, why

did he seem about to eat you?

“You knew I was returned to London, Major Winton?”

Then Gyp had been seeing the fellow without letting him know! The

thought was chill and bitter to Winton. He must not give her away,

however, and he simply bowed. He felt that his visitor was afraid of

his frigid courtesy; and he did not mean to help him over that fear.

He could not, of course, realize that this ascendancy would not prevent

Fiorsen from laughing at him behind his back and acting as if he did not

exist. No real contest, in fact, was possible between men moving on such

different planes, neither having the slightest respect for the other’s

standards or beliefs.

Fiorsen, who had begun to pace the room, stopped, and said with

agitation:

“Major Winton, your daughter is the most beautiful thing on earth. I

love her desperately. I am a man with a future, though you may not think

it. I have what future I like in my art if only I can marry her. I have

a little money, too—not much; but in my violin there is all the fortune

she can want.”

Winton’s face expressed nothing but cold contempt. That this fellow

should take him for one who would consider money in connection with his

daughter simply affronted him.

Fiorsen went on:

“You do not like me—that is clear. I saw it the first moment. You are

an English gentleman”—he pronounced the words with a sort of irony—“I

am nothing to you. Yet, in MY world, I am something. I am not an

adventurer. Will you permit me to beg your daughter to be my wife?” He

raised his hands that still held the hat; involuntarily they had assumed

the attitude of prayer.

For a second, Winton realized that he was suffering. That weakness went

in a flash, and he said frigidly:

“I am obliged to you, sir, for coming to me first. You are in my house,

and I don’t want to be discourteous, but I should be glad if you would

be good enough to withdraw and take it that I shall certainly oppose

your wish as best I can.”

The almost childish disappointment and trouble in Fiorsen’s face changed

quickly to an expression fierce, furtive, mocking; and then shifted to

despair.

“Major Winton, you have loved; you must have loved her mother. I

suffer!”

Winton, who had turned abruptly to the fire, faced round again.

“I don’t control my daughter’s affections, sir; she will do as she

wishes. I merely say it will be against my hopes and judgment if she

marries you. I imagine you’ve not altogether waited for my leave. I was

not blind to the way you hung about her at Wiesbaden, Mr. Fiorsen.”

Fiorsen answered with a twisted, miserable smile:

“Poor wretches do what they can. May I see her? Let me just see her.”

Was it any good to refuse? She had been seeing the fellow already

without his knowledge, keeping from him—HIM—all her feelings, whatever

they were. And he said:

“I’ll send for her. In the meantime, perhaps you’ll have some

refreshment?”

Fiorsen shook his head, and there followed half an hour of acute

discomfort. Winton, in his mud-stained clothes before the fire,

supported it better than his visitor. That child of nature, after

endeavouring to emulate his host’s quietude, renounced all such efforts

with an expressive gesture, fidgeted here, fidgeted there, tramped the

room, went to the window, drew aside the curtains and stared out into

the dark; came back as if resolved again to confront Winton; then,

baffled by that figure so motionless before the fire, flung himself down

in an armchair, and turned his face to the wall. Winton was not cruel by

nature, but he enjoyed the writhings of this fellow who was endangering

Gyp’s happiness. Endangering? Surely not possible that she would accept

him! Yet, if not, why had she not told him? And he, too, suffered.

Then she came. He had expected her to be pale and nervous; but Gyp never

admitted being naughty till she had been forgiven. Her smiling face had

in it a kind of warning closeness. She went up to Fiorsen, and holding

out her hand, said calmly:

“How nice of you to come!”

Winton had the bitter feeling that he—he—was the outsider. Well, he

would speak plainly; there had been too much underhand doing.

“Mr. Fiorsen has done us the honour to wish to marry you. I’ve told him

that you decide such things for yourself. If you accept him, it will be

against my wish, naturally.”

While he was speaking, the glow in her cheeks deepened; she looked

neither at him nor at Fiorsen. Winton noted the rise and fall of the

lace on her breast. She was smiling, and gave the tiniest shrug of her

shoulders. And, suddenly smitten to the heart, he walked stiffly to the

door. It was evident that she had no use for his guidance. If her

love for him was not worth to her more than this fellow! But there his

resentment stopped. He knew that he could not afford wounded feelings;

could not get on without her. Married to the greatest rascal on earth,

he would still be standing by her, wanting her companionship and love.

She represented too much in the present and—the past. With sore heart,

indeed, he went down to dinner.

Fiorsen was gone when he came down again. What the fellow had said, or

she had answered, he would not for the world have asked. Gulfs

between the proud are not lightly bridged. And when she came up to say

good-night, both their faces were as though coated with wax.

In the days that followed, she gave no sign, uttered no word in any way

suggesting that she meant to go against his wishes. Fiorsen might not

have existed, for any mention made of him. But Winton knew well that

she was moping, and cherishing some feeling against himself. And this he

could not bear. So, one evening, after dinner, he said quietly:

“Tell me frankly, Gyp; do you care for that chap?”

She answered as quietly:

“In a way—yes.”

“Is that enough?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

Her lips had quivered; and Winton’s heart softened, as it always did

when he saw her moved. He put his hand out, covered one of hers, and

said:

“I shall never stand in the way of your happiness, Gyp. But it must BE

happiness. Can it possibly be that? I don’t think so. You know what they

said of him out there?”

“Yes.”

He had not thought she knew. And his heart sank.

“That’s pretty bad, you know. And is he of our world at all?”

Gyp looked up.

“Do you think I belong to ’our world,’ Dad?”

Winton turned away. She followed, slipping her hand under his arm.

“I didn’t mean to hurt. But it’s true, isn’t it? I don’t belong among

society people. They wouldn’t have me, you know—if they knew about

what you told me. Ever since that I’ve felt I don’t belong to them. I’m

nearer him. Music means more to me than anything!”

Winton gave her hand a convulsive grip. A sense of coming defeat and

bereavement was on him.

“If your happiness went wrong, Gyp, I should be most awfully cut up.”

“But why shouldn’t I be happy, Dad?”

“If you were, I could put up with anyone. But, I tell you, I can’t

believe you would be. I beg you, my dear—for God’s sake, make sure. I’ll

put a bullet into the man who treats you badly.”

Gyp laughed, then kissed him. But they were silent. At bedtime he said:

“We’ll go up to town to-morrow.”

Whether from a feeling of the inevitable, or from the forlorn hope that

seeing more of the fellow might be the only chance of curing her—he put

no more obstacles in the way.

And the queer courtship began again. By Christmas she had consented,

still under the impression that she was the mistress, not the slave—the

cat, not the bird. Once or twice, when Fiorsen let passion out of hand

and his overbold caresses affronted her, she recoiled almost with dread

from what she was going toward. But, in general, she lived elated,

intoxicated by music and his adoration, withal remorseful that she was

making her father sad. She was but little at Mildenham, and he, in

his unhappiness, was there nearly all the time, riding extra hard, and

leaving Gyp with his sister. Aunt Rosamund, though under the spell

of Fiorsen’s music, had agreed with her brother that Fiorsen was

“impossible.” But nothing she said made any effect on Gyp. It was new

and startling to discover in this soft, sensitive girl such a vein of

stubbornness. Opposition seemed to harden her resolution. And the good

lady’s natural optimism began to persuade her that Gyp would make a silk

purse out of that sow’s ear yet. After all, the man was a celebrity in

his way!

It was settled for February. A house with a garden was taken in St.

John’s Wood. The last month went, as all such last months go, in those

intoxicating pastimes, the buying of furniture and clothes. If it were

not for that, who knows how many engagement knots would slip!

And to-day they had been married. To the last, Winton had hardly

believed it would come to that. He had shaken the hand of her husband

and kept pain and disappointment out of his face, knowing well that

he deceived no one. Thank heaven, there had been no church, no

wedding-cake, invitations, congratulations, fal-lals of any kind—he

could never have stood them. Not even Rosamund—who had influenza—to put

up with!

Lying back in the recesses of that old chair, he stared into the fire.

They would be just about at Torquay by now—just about. Music! Who would

have thought noises made out of string and wood could have stolen her

away from him? Yes, they would be at Torquay by now, at their hotel. And

the first prayer Winton had uttered for years escaped his lips:

“Let her be happy! Let her be happy!”

Then, hearing Markey open the door, he closed his eyes and feigned

sleep.