XIV

The human creature has wonderful power of putting up with things. Gyp never really believed that Daphne Wing was of the past. Her sceptical instinct told her that what Fiorsen might honestly mean to do was very different from what he would do under stress of opportunity carefully put within his reach.

Since her return, Rosek had begun to come again, very careful not to repeat his mistake, but not deceiving her at all. Though his self-control was as great as Fiorsen's was small, she felt he had not given up his pursuit of her, and would take very good care that Daphne Wing was afforded every chance of being with her husband. But pride never let her allude to the girl. Besides, what good to speak of her? They would both lie—Rosek, because he obviously saw the mistaken line of his first attack; Fiorsen, because his temperament did not permit him to suffer by speaking the truth.

Having set herself to endure, she found she must live in the moment, never think of the future, never think much of anything. Fortunately, nothing so conduces to vacuity as a baby. She gave herself up to it with desperation. It was a good baby, silent, somewhat understanding. In watching its face, and feeling it warm against her, Gyp succeeded daily in getting away into the hypnotic state of mothers, and cows that chew the cud. But the baby slept a great deal, and much of its time was claimed by Betty. Those hours, and they were many, Gyp found difficult. She had lost interest in dress and household elegance, keeping just enough to satisfy her fastidiousness; money, too, was scarce, under the drain of Fiorsen's irregular requirements. If she read, she began almost at once to brood. She was cut off from the music-room, had not crossed its threshold since her discovery. Aunt Rosamund's efforts to take her into society were fruitless—all the effervescence was out of that, and, though her father came, he never stayed long for fear of meeting Fiorsen. In this condition of affairs, she turned more and more to her own music, and one morning, after she had come across some compositions of her girlhood, she made a resolution. That afternoon she dressed herself with pleasure, for the first time for months, and sallied forth into the February frost.

Monsieur Edouard Harmost inhabited the ground floor of a house in the Marylebone Road. He received his pupils in a large back room overlooking a little sooty garden. A Walloon by extraction, and of great vitality, he grew old with difficulty, having a soft corner in his heart for women, and a passion for novelty, even for new music, that was unappeasable. Any fresh discovery would bring a tear rolling down his mahogany cheeks into his clipped grey beard, the while he played, singing wheezily to elucidate the wondrous novelty; or moved his head up and down, as if pumping.

When Gyp was shown into this well-remembered room he was seated, his yellow fingers buried in his stiff grey hair, grieving over a pupil who had just gone out. He did not immediately rise, but stared hard at Gyp.

“Ah,” he said, at last, “my little old friend! She has come back! Now that is good!” And, patting her hand he looked into her face, which had a warmth and brilliance rare to her in these days. Then, making for the mantelpiece, he took therefrom a bunch of Parma violets, evidently brought by his last pupil, and thrust them under her nose. “Take them, take them—they were meant for me. Now—how much have you forgotten? Come!” And, seizing her by the elbow, he almost forced her to the piano. “Take off your furs. Sit down!”

And while Gyp was taking off her coat, he fixed on her his prominent brown eyes that rolled easily in their slightly blood-shot whites, under squared eyelids and cliffs of brow. She had on what Fiorsen called her “humming-bird” blouse—dark blue, shot with peacock and old rose, and looked very warm and soft under her fur cap. Monsieur Harmost's stare seemed to drink her in; yet that stare was not unpleasant, having in it only the rather sad yearning of old men who love beauty and know that their time for seeing it is getting short.

“Play me the 'Carnival,'” he said. “We shall soon see!”

Gyp played. Twice he nodded; once he tapped his fingers on his teeth, and showed her the whites of his eyes—which meant: “That will have to be very different!” And once he grunted. When she had finished, he sat down beside her, took her hand in his, and, examining the fingers, began:

“Yes, yes, soon again! Spoiling yourself, playing for that fiddler! Trop sympathique! The back-bone, the back-bone—we shall improve that. Now, four hours a day for six weeks—and we shall have something again.”

Gyp said softly:

“I have a baby, Monsieur Harmost.”

Monsieur Harmost bounded.

“What! That is a tragedy!” Gyp shook her head. “You like it? A baby! Does it not squall?”

“Very little.”

“Mon Dieu! Well, well, you are still as beautiful as ever. That is something. Now, what can you do with this baby? Could you get rid of it a little? This is serious. This is a talent in danger. A fiddler, and a baby! C'est beaucoup! C'est trop!”

Gyp smiled. And Monsieur Harmost, whose exterior covered much sensibility, stroked her hand.

“You have grown up, my little friend,” he said gravely. “Never mind; nothing is wasted. But a baby!” And he chirruped his lips. “Well; courage! We shall do things yet!”

Gyp turned her head away to hide the quiver of her lips. The scent of latakia tobacco that had soaked into things, and of old books and music, a dark smell, like Monsieur Harmost's complexion; the old brown curtains, the sooty little back garden beyond, with its cat-runs, and its one stunted sumach tree; the dark-brown stare of Monsieur Harmost's rolling eyes brought back that time of happiness, when she used to come week after week, full of gaiety and importance, and chatter away, basking in his brusque admiration and in music, all with the glamourous feeling that she was making him happy, and herself happy, and going to play very finely some day.

The voice of Monsieur Harmost, softly gruff, as if he knew what she was feeling, increased her emotion; her breast heaved under the humming-bird blouse, water came into her eyes, and more than ever her lips quivered. He was saying:

“Come, come! The only thing we cannot cure is age. You were right to come, my child. Music is your proper air. If things are not all what they ought to be, you shall soon forget. In music—in music, we can get away. After all, my little friend, they cannot take our dreams from us—not even a wife, not even a husband can do that. Come, we shall have good times yet!”

And Gyp, with a violent effort, threw off that sudden weakness. From those who serve art devotedly there radiates a kind of glamour. She left Monsieur Harmost that afternoon, infected by his passion for music. Poetic justice—on which all homeopathy is founded—was at work to try and cure her life by a dose of what had spoiled it. To music, she now gave all the hours she could spare. She went to him twice a week, determining to get on, but uneasy at the expense, for monetary conditions were ever more embarrassed. At home, she practised steadily and worked hard at composition. She finished several songs and studies during the spring and summer, and left still more unfinished. Monsieur Harmost was tolerant of these efforts, seeming to know that harsh criticism or disapproval would cut her impulse down, as frost cuts the life of flowers. Besides, there was always something fresh and individual in her things. He asked her one day:

“What does your husband think of these?”

Gyp was silent a moment.

“I don't show them to him.”

She never had; she instinctively kept back the knowledge that she composed, dreading his ruthlessness when anything grated on his nerves, and knowing that a breath of mockery would wither her belief in herself, frail enough plant already. The only person, besides her master, to whom she confided her efforts was—strangely enough—Rosek. But he had surprised her one day copying out some music, and said at once: “I knew. I was certain you composed. Ah, do play it to me! I am sure you have talent.” The warmth with which he praised that little “caprice” was surely genuine; and she felt so grateful that she even played him others, and then a song for him to sing. From that day, he no longer seemed to her odious; she even began to have for him a certain friendliness, to be a little sorry, watching him, pale, trim, and sphinx-like, in her drawing-room or garden, getting no nearer to the fulfilment of his desire. He had never again made love to her, but she knew that at the least sign he would. His face and his invincible patience made him pathetic to her. Women such as Gyp cannot actively dislike those who admire them greatly. She consulted him about Fiorsen's debts. There were hundreds of pounds owing, it seemed, and, in addition, much to Rosek himself. The thought of these debts weighed unbearably on her. Why did he, HOW did he get into debt like this? What became of the money he earned? His fees, this summer, were good enough. There was such a feeling of degradation about debt. It was, somehow, so underbred to owe money to all sorts of people. Was it on that girl, on other women, that he spent it all? Or was it simply that his nature had holes in every pocket?

Watching Fiorsen closely, that spring and early summer, she was conscious of a change, a sort of loosening, something in him had given way—as when, in winding a watch, the key turns on and on, the ratchet being broken. Yet he was certainly working hard—perhaps harder than ever. She would hear him, across the garden, going over and over a passage, as if he never would be satisfied. But his playing seemed to her to have lost its fire and sweep; to be stale, and as if disillusioned. It was all as though he had said to himself: “What's the use?” In his face, too, there was a change. She knew—she was certain that he was drinking secretly. Was it his failure with her? Was it the girl? Was it simply heredity from a hard-drinking ancestry?

Gyp never faced these questions. To face them would mean useless discussion, useless admission that she could not love him, useless asseveration from him about the girl, which she would not believe, useless denials of all sorts. Hopeless!

He was very irritable, and seemed especially to resent her music lessons, alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt that he despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was often impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to the nursery, much to Betty's alarm, and take up the baby; be charming with it for about ten minutes, then suddenly dump it back into its cradle, stare at it gloomily or utter a laugh, and go out. Sometimes, he would come up when Gyp was there, and after watching her a little in silence, almost drag her away.

Suffering always from the guilty consciousness of having no love for him, and ever more and more from her sense that, instead of saving him she was, as it were, pushing him down-hill—ironical nemesis for vanity!—Gyp was ever more and more compliant to his whims, trying to make up. But this compliance, when all the time she felt further and further away, was straining her to breaking-point. Hers was a nature that goes on passively enduring till something snaps; after that—no more.

Those months of spring and summer were like a long spell of drought, when moisture gathers far away, coming nearer, nearer, till, at last, the deluge bursts and sweeps the garden.

XV

The tenth of July that year was as the first day of summer. There had been much fine weather, but always easterly or northerly; now, after a broken, rainy fortnight, the sun had come in full summer warmth with a gentle breeze, drifting here and there scent of the opening lime blossom. In the garden, under the trees at the far end, Betty sewed at a garment, and the baby in her perambulator had her seventh morning sleep. Gyp stood before a bed of pansies and sweet peas. How monkeyish the pansies' faces! The sweet peas, too, were like tiny bright birds fastened to green perches swaying with the wind. And their little green tridents, growing out from the queer, flat stems, resembled the antennae of insects. Each of these bright frail, growing things had life and individuality like herself!

The sound of footsteps on the gravel made her turn. Rosek was coming from the drawing-room window. Rather startled, Gyp looked at him over her shoulder. What had brought him at eleven o'clock in the morning? He came up to her, bowed, and said:

“I came to see Gustav. He's not up yet, it seems. I thought I would speak to you first. Can we talk?”

Hesitating just a second, Gyp drew off her gardening-gloves:

“Of course! Here? Or in the drawing-room?”

Rosek answered:

“In the drawing-room, please.”

A faint tremor passed through her, but she led the way, and seated herself where she could see Betty and the baby. Rosek stood looking down at her; his stillness, the sweetish gravity of his well-cut lips, his spotless dandyism stirred in Gyp a kind of unwilling admiration.

“What is it?” she said.

“Bad business, I'm afraid. Something must be done at once. I have been trying to arrange things, but they will not wait. They are even threatening to sell up this house.”

With a sense of outrage, Gyp cried:

“Nearly everything here is mine.”

Rosek shook his head.

“The lease is in his name—you are his wife. They can do it, I assure you.” A sort of shadow passed over his face, and he added: “I cannot help him any more—just now.”

Gyp shook her head quickly.

“No—of course! You ought not to have helped him at all. I can't bear—” He bowed, and she stopped, ashamed. “How much does he owe altogether?”

“About thirteen hundred pounds. It isn't much, of course. But there is something else—”

“Worse?”

Rosek nodded.

“I am afraid to tell you; you will think again perhaps that I am trying to make capital out of it. I can read your thoughts, you see. I cannot afford that you should think that, this time.”

Gyp made a little movement as though putting away his words.

“No; tell me, please.”

Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

“There is a man called Wagge, an undertaker—the father of someone you know—”

“Daphne Wing?”

“Yes. A child is coming. They have made her tell. It means the cancelling of her engagements, of course—and other things.”

Gyp uttered a little laugh; then she said slowly:

“Can you tell me, please, what this Mr.—Wagge can do?”

Again Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

“He is rabid—a rabid man of his class is dangerous. A lot of money will be wanted, I should think—some blood, perhaps.”

He moved swiftly to her, and said very low:

“Gyp, it is a year since I told you of this. You did not believe me then. I told you, too, that I loved you. I love you more, now, a hundred times! Don't move! I am going up to Gustav.”

He turned, and Gyp thought he was really going; but he stopped and came back past the line of the window. The expression of his face was quite changed, so hungry that, for a moment, she felt sorry for him. And that must have shown in her face, for he suddenly caught at her, and tried to kiss her lips; she wrenched back, and he could only reach her throat, but that he kissed furiously. Letting her go as suddenly, he bent his head and went out without a look.

Gyp stood wiping his kisses off her throat with the back of her hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: “What have I done to be treated like this? What HAVE I done?” No answer came. And such rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her hands, and biting the lips he would have kissed. Then, going to her bureau, she took up her address book and looked for the name: Wing, 88, Frankland Street, Fulham. Unhooking her little bag from off the back of the chair, she put her cheque-book into it. Then, taking care to make no sound, she passed into the hall, caught up her sunshade, and went out, closing the door without noise.

She walked quickly toward Baker Street. Her gardening-hat was right enough, but she had come out without gloves, and must go into the first shop and buy a pair. In the choosing of them, she forgot her emotions for a minute. Out in the street again, they came back as bitterly as ever. And the day was so beautiful—the sun bright, the sky blue, the clouds dazzling white; from the top of her 'bus she could see all its brilliance. There rose up before her the memory of the man who had kissed her arm at the first ball. And now—this! But, mixed with her rage, a sort of unwilling compassion and fellow feeling kept rising for that girl, that silly, sugar-plum girl, brought to such a pass by—her husband. These feelings sustained her through that voyage to Fulham. She got down at the nearest corner, walked up a widish street of narrow grey houses till she came to number eighty-eight. On that newly scrubbed step, waiting for the door to open, she very nearly turned and fled. What exactly had she come to do?

The door was opened by a servant in an untidy frock. Mutton! The smell of mutton—there it was, just as the girl had said!

“Is Miss—Miss Daphne Wing at home?”

In that peculiar “I've given it up” voice of domestics in small households, the servant answered:

“Yes; Miss Disey's in. D'you want to see 'er? What nyme?”

Gyp produced her card. The maid looked at it, at Gyp, and at two brown-painted doors, as much as to say, “Where will you have it?” Then, opening the first of them, she said:

“Tyke a seat, please; I'll fetch her.”

Gyp went in. In the middle of what was clearly the dining-room, she tried to subdue the tremor of her limbs and a sense of nausea. The table against which her hand rested was covered with red baize, no doubt to keep the stains of mutton from penetrating to the wood. On the mahogany sideboard reposed a cruet-stand and a green dish of very red apples. A bamboo-framed talc screen painted with white and yellow marguerites stood before a fireplace filled with pampas-grass dyed red. The chairs were of red morocco, the curtains a brownish-red, the walls green, and on them hung a set of Landseer prints. The peculiar sensation which red and green in juxtaposition produce on the sensitive was added to Gyp's distress. And, suddenly, her eyes lighted on a little deep-blue china bowl. It stood on a black stand on the mantel-piece, with nothing in it. To Gyp, in this room of red and green, with the smell of mutton creeping in, that bowl was like the crystallized whiff of another world. Daphne Wing—not Daisy Wagge—had surely put it there! And, somehow, it touched her—emblem of stifled beauty, emblem of all that the girl had tried to pour out to her that August afternoon in her garden nearly a year ago. Thin Eastern china, good and really beautiful! A wonder they allowed it to pollute this room!

A sigh made her turn round. With her back against the door and a white, scared face, the girl was standing. Gyp thought: 'She has suffered horribly.' And, going impulsively up to her, she held out her hand.

Daphne Wing sighed out: “Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen!” and, bending over that hand, kissed it. Gyp saw that her new glove was wet. Then the girl relapsed, her feet a little forward, her head a little forward, her back against the door. Gyp, who knew why she stood thus, was swept again by those two emotions—rage against men, and fellow feeling for one about to go through what she herself had just endured.

“It's all right,” she said, gently; “only, what's to be done?”

Daphne Wing put her hands up over her white face and sobbed. She sobbed so quietly but so terribly deeply that Gyp herself had the utmost difficulty not to cry. It was the sobbing of real despair by a creature bereft of hope and strength, above all, of love—the sort of weeping which is drawn from desolate, suffering souls only by the touch of fellow feeling. And, instead of making Gyp glad or satisfying her sense of justice, it filled her with more rage against her husband—that he had taken this girl's infatuation for his pleasure and then thrown her away. She seemed to see him discarding that clinging, dove-fair girl, for cloying his senses and getting on his nerves, discarding her with caustic words, to abide alone the consequences of her infatuation. She put her hand timidly on that shaking shoulder, and stroked it. For a moment the sobbing stopped, and the girl said brokenly:

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I do love him so!” At those naive words, a painful wish to laugh seized on Gyp, making her shiver from head to foot. Daphne Wing saw it, and went on: “I know—I know—it's awful; but I do—and now he—he—” Her quiet but really dreadful sobbing broke out again. And again Gyp began stroking and stroking her shoulder. “And I have been so awful to you! Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, do forgive me, please!”

All Gyp could find to answer, was:

“Yes, yes; that's nothing! Don't cry—don't cry!”

Very slowly the sobbing died away, till it was just a long shivering, but still the girl held her hands over her face and her face down. Gyp felt paralyzed. The unhappy girl, the red and green room, the smell of mutton—creeping!

At last, a little of that white face showed; the lips, no longer craving for sugar-plums, murmured:

“It's you he—he—really loves all the time. And you don't love him—that's what's so funny—and—and—I can't understand it. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, if I could see him—just see him! He told me never to come again; and I haven't dared. I haven't seen him for three weeks—not since I told him about IT. What shall I do? What shall I do?”

His being her own husband seemed as nothing to Gyp at that moment. She felt such pity and yet such violent revolt that any girl should want to crawl back to a man who had spurned her. Unconsciously, she had drawn herself up and pressed her lips together. The girl, who followed every movement, said piteously:

“I don't seem to have any pride. I don't mind what he does to me, or what he says, if only I can see him.”

Gyp's revolt yielded to her pity. She said:

“How long before?”

“Three months.”

Three months—and in this state of misery!

“I think I shall do something desperate. Now that I can't dance, and THEY know, it's too awful! If I could see him, I wouldn't mind anything. But I know—I know he'll never want me again. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I do!”

A heavy sigh escaped Gyp, and, bending suddenly, she kissed the girl's forehead. Still that scent of orange blossom about her skin or hair, as when she asked whether she ought to love or not; as when she came, moth-like, from the tree-shade into the moonlight, spun, and fluttered, with her shadow spinning and fluttering before her. Gyp turned away, feeling that she must relieve the strain, and pointing to the bowl, said:

“YOU put that there, I'm sure. It's beautiful.”

The girl answered, with piteous eagerness:

“Oh, would you like it? Do take it. Count Rosek gave it me.” She started away from the door. “Oh, that's papa. He'll be coming in!”

Gyp heard a man clear his throat, and the rattle of an umbrella falling into a stand; the sight of the girl wilting and shrinking against the sideboard steadied her. Then the door opened, and Mr. Wagge entered. Short and thick, in black frock coat and trousers, and a greyish beard, he stared from one to the other. He looked what he was, an Englishman and a chapelgoer, nourished on sherry and mutton, who could and did make his own way in the world. His features, coloured, as from a deep liverishness, were thick, like his body, and not ill-natured, except for a sort of anger in his small, rather piggy grey eyes. He said in a voice permanently gruff, but impregnated with a species of professional ingratiation:

“Ye-es? Whom 'ave I—?”

“Mrs. Fiorsen.”

“Ow!” The sound of his breathing could be heard distinctly; he twisted a chair round and said:

“Take a seat, won't you?”

Gyp shook her head.

In Mr. Wagge's face a kind of deference seemed to struggle with some more primitive emotion. Taking out a large, black-edged handkerchief, he blew his nose, passed it freely over his visage, and turning to his daughter, muttered:

“Go upstairs.”

The girl turned quickly, and the last glimpse of her white face whipped up Gyp's rage against men. When the door was shut, Mr. Wagge cleared his throat; the grating sound carried with it the suggestion of enormously thick linings.

He said more gruffly than ever:

“May I ask what 'as given us the honour?”

“I came to see your daughter.”

His little piggy eyes travelled from her face to her feet, to the walls of the room, to his own watch-chain, to his hands that had begun to rub themselves together, back to her breast, higher than which they dared not mount. Their infinite embarrassment struck Gyp. She could almost hear him thinking: 'Now, how can I discuss it with this attractive young female, wife of the scoundrel who's ruined my daughter? Delicate-that's what it is!' Then the words burst hoarsely from him.

“This is an unpleasant business, ma'am. I don't know what to say. Reelly I don't. It's awkward; it's very awkward.”

Gyp said quietly:

“Your daughter is desperately unhappy; and that can't be good for her just now.”

Mr. Wagge's thick figure seemed to writhe. “Pardon me, ma'am,” he spluttered, “but I must call your husband a scoundrel. I'm sorry to be impolite, but I must do it. If I had 'im 'ere, I don't know that I should be able to control myself—I don't indeed.” Gyp made a movement of her gloved hands, which he seemed to interpret as sympathy, for he went on in a stream of husky utterance: “It's a delicate thing before a lady, and she the injured party; but one has feelings. From the first I said this dancin' was in the face of Providence; but women have no more sense than an egg. Her mother she would have it; and now she's got it! Career, indeed! Pretty career! Daughter of mine! I tell you, ma'am, I'm angry; there's no other word for it—I'm angry. If that scoundrel comes within reach of me, I shall mark 'im—I'm not a young man, but I shall mark 'im. An' what to say to you, I'm sure I don't know. That my daughter should be'ave like that! Well, it's made a difference to me. An' now I suppose her name'll be dragged in the mud. I tell you frankly I 'oped you wouldn't hear of it, because after all the girl's got her punishment. And this divorce-court—it's not nice—it's a horrible thing for respectable people. And, mind you, I won't see my girl married to that scoundrel, not if you do divorce 'im. No; she'll have her disgrace for nothing.”

Gyp, who had listened with her head a little bent, raised it suddenly, and said:

“There'll be no public disgrace, Mr. Wagge, unless you make it yourself. If you send Daphne—Daisy—quietly away somewhere till her trouble's over, no one need know anything.”

Mr. Wagge, whose mouth had opened slightly, and whose breathing could certainly have been heard in the street, took a step forward and said:

“Do I understand you to say that you're not goin' to take proceedings, ma'am?”

Gyp shuddered, and shook her head.

Mr. Wagge stood silent, slightly moving his face up and down.

“Well,” he said, at length, “it's more than she deserves; but I don't disguise it's a relief to me. And I must say, in a young lady like you, and—and handsome, it shows a Christian spirit.” Again Gyp shivered, and shook her head. “It does. You'll allow me to say so, as a man old enough to be your father—and a regular attendant.”

He held out his hand. Gyp put her gloved hand into it.

“I'm very, very sorry. Please be nice to her.”

Mr. Wagge recoiled a little, and for some seconds stood ruefully rubbing his hands together and looking from side to side.

“I'm a domestic man,” he said suddenly. “A domestic man in a serious line of life; and I never thought to have anything like this in my family—never! It's been—well, I can't tell you what it's been!”

Gyp took up her sunshade. She felt that she must get away; at any moment he might say something she could not bear—and the smell of mutton rising fast!

“I am sorry,” she said again; “good-bye”; and moved past him to the door. She heard him breathing hard as he followed her to open it, and thought: 'If only—oh! please let him be silent till I get outside!' Mr. Wagge passed her and put his hand on the latch of the front door. His little piggy eyes scanned her almost timidly.

“Well,” he said, “I'm very glad to have the privilege of your acquaintance; and, if I may say so, you 'ave—you 'ave my 'earty sympathy. Good-day.”

The door once shut behind her, Gyp took a long breath and walked swiftly away. Her cheeks were burning; and, with a craving for protection, she put up her sunshade. But the girl's white face came up again before her, and the sound of her words:

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I DO!”