Beyond Part 31

It gave her a sort of evil pleasure that they would find him like that in the morning when she was gone. She went back to her baby and, with infinite precaution, lifted it, still sleeping, cus.h.i.+on and all, and stole past him up the stairs that, under her bare feet, made no sound.

Once more in her locked room, she went to the window and looked out. It was just before dawn; her garden was grey and ghostly, and she thought: 'The last time I shall see you. Good-bye!'

Then, with the utmost speed, she did her hair and dressed. She was very cold and s.h.i.+very, and put on her fur coat and cap. She hunted out two jerseys for the baby, and a certain old camel's-hair shawl. She took a few little things she was fondest of and slipped them into her wrist-bag with her purse, put on her hat and a pair of gloves. She did everything very swiftly, wondering, all the time, at her own power of knowing what to take. When she was quite ready, she scribbled a note to Betty to follow with the dogs to Bury Street, and pushed it under the nursery door. Then, wrapping the baby in the jerseys and shawl, she went downstairs. The dawn had broken, and, from the long narrow window above the door with spikes of iron across it, grey light was striking into the hall. Gyp pa.s.sed Fiorsen's sleeping figure safely, and, for one moment, stopped for breath. He was lying with his back against the wall, his head in the hollow of an arm raised against a stair, and his face turned a little upward. That face which, hundreds of times, had been so close to her own, and something about this crumpled body, about his tumbled hair, those cheek-bones, and the hollows beneath the pale lips just parted under the dirt-gold of his moustache--something of lost divinity in all that inert figure--clutched for a second at Gyp's heart. Only for a second. It was over, this time! No more--never again! And, turning very stealthily, she slipped her shoes on, undid the chain, opened the front door, took up her burden, closed the door softly behind her, and walked away.

Part III

I

Gyp was going up to town. She sat in the corner of a first-cla.s.s carriage, alone. Her father had gone up by an earlier train, for the annual June dinner of his old regiment, and she had stayed to consult the doctor concerning "little Gyp," aged nearly nineteen months, to whom teeth were making life a burden.

Her eyes wandered from window to window, obeying the faint excitement within her. All the winter and spring, she had been at Mildenham, very quiet, riding much, and pursuing her music as best she could, seeing hardly anyone except her father; and this departure for a spell of London brought her the feeling that comes on an April day, when the sky is blue, with snow-white clouds, when in the fields the lambs are leaping, and the gra.s.s is warm for the first time, so that one would like to roll in it. At Widrington, a porter entered, carrying a kit-bag, an overcoat, and some golf-clubs; and round the door a little group, such as may be seen at any English wayside station, cl.u.s.tered, filling the air with their clean, slightly drawling voices. Gyp noted a tall woman whose blonde hair was going grey, a young girl with a fox-terrier on a lead, a young man with a Scotch terrier under his arm and his back to the carriage. The girl was kissing the Scotch terrier's head.

"Good-bye, old Ossy! Was he nice! Tumbo, keep DOWN! YOU'RE not going!"

"Good-bye, dear boy! Don't work too hard!"

The young man's answer was not audible, but it was followed by irrepressible gurgles and a smothered:

"Oh, Bryan, you ARE--Good-bye, dear Ossy!" "Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" The young man who had got in, made another unintelligible joke in a rather high-pitched voice, which was somehow familiar, and again the gurgles broke forth. Then the train moved. Gyp caught a side view of him, waving his hat from the carriage window. It was her acquaintance of the hunting-field--the "Mr. Bryn Summer'ay," as old Pettance called him, who had bought her horse last year. Seeing him pull down his overcoat, to bank up the old Scotch terrier against the jolting of the journey, she thought: 'I like men who think first of their dogs.' His round head, with curly hair, broad brow, and those clean-cut lips, gave her again the wonder: 'Where HAVE I seen someone like him?' He raised the window, and turned round.

"How would you like--Oh, how d'you do! We met out hunting. You don't remember me, I expect."

"Yes; perfectly. And you bought my horse last summer. How is he?"

"In great form. I forgot to ask what you called him; I've named him Hotspur--he'll never be steady at his fences. I remember how he pulled with you that day."

They were silent, smiling, as people will in remembrance of a good run.

Then, looking at the dog, Gyp said softly:

"HE looks rather a darling. How old?"

"Twelve. Beastly when dogs get old!"

There was another little silence while he contemplated her steadily with his clear eyes.

"I came over to call once--with my mother; November the year before last. Somebody was ill."

"Yes--I."

"Badly?"

Gyp shook her head.

"I heard you were married--" The little drawl in his voice had increased, as though covering the abruptness of that remark. Gyp looked up.

"Yes; but my little daughter and I live with my father again." What "came over" her--as they say--to be so frank, she could not have told.

He said simply:

"Ah! I've often thought it queer I've never seen you since. What a run that was!"

"Perfect! Was that your mother on the platform?"

"Yes--and my sister Edith. Extraordinary dead-alive place, Widrington; I expect Mildenham isn't much better?"

"It's very quiet, but I like it."

"By the way, I don't know your name now?"

"Fiorsen."

"Oh, yes! The violinist. Life's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?"

Gyp did not answer that odd remark, did not quite know what to make of this audacious young man, whose hazel eyes and lazy smile were queerly lovable, but whose face in repose had such a broad gravity. He took from his pocket a little red book.

"Do you know these? I always take them travelling. Finest things ever written, aren't they?"

The book--Shakespeare's Sonnets--was open at that which begins:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove--"

Gyp read on as far as the lines:

"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compa.s.s come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks But bears it out even to the edge of doom--"

and looked out of the window. The train was pa.s.sing through a country of fields and d.y.k.es, where the sun, far down in the west, shone almost level over wide, whitish-green s.p.a.ce, and the spotted cattle browsed or stood by the ditches, lazily flicking their tufted tails. A shaft of sunlight flowed into the carriage, filled with dust motes; and, handing the little book back through that streak of radiance, she said softly:

"Yes; that's wonderful. Do you read much poetry?"

"More law, I'm afraid. But it is about the finest thing in the world, isn't it?"

"No; I think music."

"Are you a musician?"

"Only a little."