The house was an old one with a broad, low front door and shallow,
much-worn oak stairs. In answer to Brigit's knock a Gamp-like person
with a hare-lip appeared, and informing her curtly that Mr. Joyselle had
come in only a few minutes before, added that she might go up--"To the
top, miss, an' there's only one door when you've got up."
Brigit almost ran up the four flights, and then, when opposite the door,
sat down on the top step and hid her face in her hands.
What should she say? Why had she come? Would he be glad to see her--or
shocked? Worse still, would he accept her coming as an act of filial
devotion?
No. That she would not allow.
Her mind, boiling, as it were, with a thousand ingredients, she could
hardly be said to be thinking. Realising perfectly that she had behaved
outrageously, sincerely ashamed of herself and full of remorse, yet her
own position and her own welfare had never for a second ceased to be her
chief concern. Suffering was of a certainty in store for some of the
actors in the drama, but she held the centre of the stage and meant to
avoid as much pain as possible. For her love for Joyselle was, of
course, a purely selfish one. For several minutes she sat crouching on
the stairs, utterly undecided as to what her next step was to be. Then a
sound from within the room behind her caused her to turn sharply. A
sound of--not music, but of pitiless, furious scraping and grinding on a
violin.
Could it be Joyselle? It was horrible, like the cries of some animal in
agony. And it went on and on and on.
"It must be Victor," she whispered; "it is his room. But--oh, how
frightful! Has he gone mad? Oh, my God, my God!"
Rising, she stood for a horrible minute bending towards the door, and
then with a quick movement opened it and went in.
The curtains were drawn, but a large window in the roof let in a square
of cross daylight that looked like an island in a surrounding sea of
dusky darkness; and in the light stood Joyselle, his back to her, his
head bent over his violin in a way almost grotesque, as he groaned and
tore at the hapless strings with venomous energy.
Brigit stood, unable to move. It is always an uncanny thing to watch for
any length of time a person who believes himself to be absolutely alone,
and when, as in this case, the person is undergoing, and giving full
vent to a very strong emotion, the strangeness is increased tenfold.
The man was, it was plain, after a week's tremendous and for him wholly
unusual self-restraint, now giving full rein to his great rage over his
miserable situation. As he played, she could see the muscles of his
strong neck move under the brown skin, and his shoulders rise and fall
tumultuously with his uneven breaths. The din he made was almost
unbearable, and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut it out.
The room was very large, and high, and round it, half-way up the dull
yellow walls, ran an old carved gallery, relic of the time when it had
been the studio of a hare-brained painter, a friend of Hazlitt and
Coleridge, a believer in poor young Keats while the rest of the world
laughed at him--in the very early days.
In those days feasts had been held here, and in the gallery, hidden
behind flowering dwarf peach-trees in tubs, stringed instruments were
played--very softly, for the painter of one good picture and dozens of
bad ones, had taste--while his guests sat at his board. Stories are
still told of the small table that used to be brought into the room at
the end of dinner by two little Ethiopians in white tunics. An ancient
table with faded gilding just visible on the claw feet that looked out
from under its petticoat of finest damask; and on it priceless gold and
silver bowls and salvers of all shapes, full of the most marvellous
fruits from all countries, some of which fruits were never seen
elsewhere in England. All dead and gone to dust years ago, host and
guest and grinning little Ethiopians. Joyselle had told Brigit this
story, and now as she stood watching him vent his wrath and anguish on
his faithful Amati, a kind of vision came to her; and she seemed to see
the room as it used to be--vaguely, the big table with six or eight men
sitting around it drinking wine, and, more distinctly, the heaped-up
bowls and plates of fruit----
Half hypnotised she stood there, her hands pressed to her ears until,
with a final excruciating dig into the strings, he dropped his left arm
and turned.
For a moment he, in his square of light, did not see her in the dusk
under the gallery. Then he took a step forward, and with a low cry
caught her in his arms and crushed her and the violin painfully to his
breast.
"_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_," he repeated over and over, kissing her roughly,
"you have come. Then you know, ma Brigitte, you know!"
"Yes, I know," she admitted sullenly. "Let me go, Victor, you--you hurt
me."
He dropped his arms and she withdrew a few steps. He was very pale and
his hair was ruffled.
"You--it was good of you to come," he said after a pause. "Then, you are
not angry?"
"No."
"Brigit--_je t'aime, je t'aime_. I am infamous, I am a monster, a father
to be execrated by all honest men and women, but--I love you!"
He laid the violin down in a chair and came to her. "_Et toi?_" he asked
hoarsely.
The moment had come when she _must_ think, she told herself, but her
brain refused to work. The only thing that mattered was that he should
stay. What must she say, truth or lie, that would inspire that
necessity?
She stared at him blankly, and then, before she could speak, he knelt
at her feet and pressed a fold of her dress to his face.
"Victor," she said slowly, trembling so she could hardly stand, "you
will not--leave me?"
And Joyselle caught her up off the floor and held her as if she had been
a baby.
"_Dieu merci_," he cried. "_Dieu merci._"