Beyond

At dinner he drank champagne, and benevolence towards all the world spread in his being. Watching the smoke of his cigar wreathe about him, he thought: ‘Must send that chap a wire.’ After all, he was a fellow being – might be suffering, as he himself had suffered only two hours ago. To keep him in ignorance – it wouldn’t do! And he wrote out the form —

     “All well, a daughter. – WINTON,”

and sent it out with the order that a groom should take it in that night.

Gyp was sleeping when he stole up at ten o’clock.

He, too, turned in, and slept like a child.

XI

Returning the next afternoon from the first ride for several days, Winton passed the station fly rolling away from the drive-gate with the light-hearted disillusionment peculiar to quite empty vehicles.

The sight of a fur coat and broad-brimmed hat in the hall warned him of what had happened.

“Mr. Fiorsen, sir; gone up to Mrs. Fiorsen.”

Natural, but a d – d bore! And bad, perhaps, for Gyp. He asked:

“Did he bring things?”

“A bag, sir.”

“Get a room ready, then.”

To dine tete-a-tete with that fellow!

Gyp had passed the strangest morning in her life, so far. Her baby fascinated her, also the tug of its lips, giving her the queerest sensation, almost sensual; a sort of meltedness, an infinite warmth, a desire to grip the little creature right into her – which, of course, one must not do. And yet, neither her sense of humour nor her sense of beauty were deceived. It was a queer little affair with a tuft of black hair, in grace greatly inferior to a kitten. Its tiny, pink, crisped fingers with their infinitesimal nails, its microscopic curly toes, and solemn black eyes – when they showed, its inimitable stillness when it slept, its incredible vigour when it fed, were all, as it were, miraculous. Withal, she had a feeling of gratitude to one that had not killed nor even hurt her so very desperately – gratitude because she had succeeded, performed her part of mother perfectly – the nurse had said so – she, so distrustful of herself! Instinctively she knew, too, that this was HER baby, not his, going “to take after her,” as they called it. How it succeeded in giving that impression she could not tell, unless it were the passivity, and dark eyes of the little creature. Then from one till three they had slept together with perfect soundness and unanimity. She awoke to find the nurse standing by the bed, looking as if she wanted to tell her something.

“Someone to see you, my dear.”

And Gyp thought: ‘He! I can’t think quickly; I ought to think quickly – I want to, but I can’t.’ Her face expressed this, for the nurse said at once:

“I don’t think you’re quite up to it yet.”

Gyp answered:

“Yes. Only, not for five minutes, please.”

Her spirit had been very far away, she wanted time to get it back before she saw him – time to know in some sort what she felt now; what this mite lying beside her had done for her and him. The thought that it was his, too – this tiny, helpless being – seemed unreal. No, it was not his! He had not wanted it, and now that she had been through the torture it was hers, not his – never his. The memory of the night when she first yielded to the certainty that the child was coming, and he had come home drunk, swooped on her, and made her shrink and shudder and put her arm round her baby. It had not made any difference. Only – Back came the old accusing thought, from which these last days she had been free: ‘But I married him – I chose to marry him. I can’t get out of that!’ And she felt as if she must cry out to the nurse: “Keep him away; I don’t want to see him. Oh, please, I’m tired.” She bit the words back. And presently, with a very faint smile, said:

“Now, I’m ready.”

She noticed first what clothes he had on – his newest suit, dark grey, with little lighter lines – she had chosen it herself; that his tie was in a bow, not a sailor’s knot, and his hair brighter than usual – as always just after being cut; and surely the hair was growing down again in front of his ears. Then, gratefully, almost with emotion, she realized that his lips were quivering, his whole face quivering. He came in on tiptoe, stood looking at her a minute, then crossed very swiftly to the bed, very swiftly knelt down, and, taking her hand, turned it over and put his face to it. The bristles of his moustache tickled her palm; his nose flattened itself against her fingers, and his lips kept murmuring words into the hand, with the moist warm touch of his lips. Gyp knew he was burying there all his remorse, perhaps the excesses he had committed while she had been away from him, burying the fears he had felt, and the emotion at seeing her so white and still. She felt that in a minute he would raise a quite different face. And it flashed through her: “If I loved him I wouldn’t mind what he did – ever! Why don’t I love him? There’s something loveable. Why don’t I?”

He did raise his face; his eyes lighted on the baby, and he grinned.

“Look at this!” he said. “Is it possible? Oh, my Gyp, what a funny one! Oh, oh, oh!” He went off into an ecstasy of smothered laughter; then his face grew grave, and slowly puckered into a sort of comic disgust. Gyp too had seen the humours of her baby, of its queer little reddish pudge of a face, of its twenty-seven black hairs, and the dribble at its almost invisible mouth; but she had also seen it as a miracle; she had felt it, and there surged up from her all the old revolt and more against his lack of consideration. It was not a funny one – her baby! It was not ugly! Or, if it were, she was not fit to be told of it. Her arm tightened round the warm bundled thing against her. Fiorsen put his finger out and touched its cheek.

“It IS real – so it is. Mademoiselle Fiorsen. Tk, tk!”

The baby stirred. And Gyp thought: ‘If I loved I wouldn’t even mind his laughing at my baby. It would be different.’

“Don’t wake her!” she whispered. She felt his eyes on her, knew that his interest in the baby had ceased as suddenly as it came, that he was thinking, “How long before I have you in my arms again?” He touched her hair. And, suddenly, she had a fainting, sinking sensation that she had never yet known. When she opened her eyes again, the economic agent was holding something beneath her nose and making sounds that seemed to be the words: “Well, I am a d – d fool!” repeatedly expressed. Fiorsen was gone.

Seeing Gyp’s eyes once more open, the nurse withdrew the ammonia, replaced the baby, and saying: “Now go to sleep!” withdrew behind the screen. Like all robust personalities, she visited on others her vexations with herself. But Gyp did not go to sleep; she gazed now at her sleeping baby, now at the pattern of the wall-paper, trying mechanically to find the bird caught at intervals amongst its brown-and-green foliage – one bird in each alternate square of the pattern, so that there was always a bird in the centre of four other birds. And the bird was of green and yellow with a red beak.

On being turned out of the nursery with the assurance that it was “all right – only a little faint,” Fiorsen went down-stairs disconsolate. The atmosphere of this dark house where he was a stranger, an unwelcome stranger, was insupportable. He wanted nothing in it but Gyp, and Gyp had fainted at his touch. No wonder he felt miserable. He opened a door. What room was this? A piano! The drawing-room. Ugh! No fire – what misery! He recoiled to the doorway and stood listening. Not a sound. Grey light in the cheerless room; almost dark already in the hall behind him. What a life these English lived – worse than the winter in his old country home in Sweden, where, at all events, they kept good fires. And, suddenly, all his being revolted. Stay here and face that father – and that image of a servant! Stay here for a night of this! Gyp was not his Gyp, lying there with that baby beside her, in this hostile house. Smothering his footsteps, he made for the outer hall. There were his coat and hat. He put them on. His bag? He could not see it. No matter! They could send it after him. He would write to her – say that her fainting had upset him – that he could not risk making her faint again – could not stay in the house so near her, yet so far. She would understand. And there came over him a sudden wave of longing. Gyp! He wanted her. To be with her! To look at her and kiss her, and feel her his own again! And, opening the door, he passed out on to the drive and strode away, miserable and sick at heart. All the way to the station through the darkening lanes, and in the railway carriage going up, he felt that aching wretchedness. Only in the lighted street, driving back to Rosek’s, did he shake it off a little. At dinner and after, drinking that special brandy he nearly lost it; but it came back when he went to bed, till sleep relieved him with its darkness and dreams.

XII

Gyp’s recovery proceeded at first with a sure rapidity which delighted Winton. As the economic agent pointed out, she was beautifully made, and that had a lot to do with it!

Before Christmas Day, she was already out, and on Christmas morning the old doctor, by way of present, pronounced her fit and ready to go home when she liked. That afternoon, she was not so well, and next day back again upstairs. Nothing seemed definitely wrong, only a sort of desperate lassitude; as if the knowledge that to go back was within her power, only needing her decision, had been too much for her. And since no one knew her inward feelings, all were puzzled except Winton. The nursing of her child was promptly stopped.

It was not till the middle of January that she said to him.

“I must go home, Dad.”

The word “home” hurt him, and he only answered:

“Very well, Gyp; when?”

“The house is quite ready. I think I had better go to-morrow. He’s still at Rosek’s. I won’t let him know. Two or three days there by myself first would be better for settling baby in.”

“Very well; I’ll take you up.”

He made no effort to ascertain her feelings toward Fiorsen. He knew too well.

They travelled next day, reaching London at half-past two. Betty had gone up in the early morning to prepare the way. The dogs had been with Aunt Rosamund all this time. Gyp missed their greeting; but the installation of Betty and the baby in the spare room that was now to be the nursery, absorbed all her first energies. Light was just beginning to fail when, still in her fur, she took a key of the music-room and crossed the garden, to see how all had fared during her ten weeks’ absence. What a wintry garden! How different from that languorous, warm, moonlit night when Daphne Wing had come dancing out of the shadow of the dark trees. How bare and sharp the boughs against the grey, darkening sky – and not a song of any bird, not a flower! She glanced back at the house. Cold and white it looked, but there were lights in her room and in the nursery, and someone just drawing the curtains. Now that the leaves were off, one could see the other houses of the road, each different in shape and colour, as is the habit of London houses. It was cold, frosty; Gyp hurried down the path. Four little icicles had formed beneath the window of the music-room. They caught her eye, and, passing round to the side, she broke one off. There must be a fire in there, for she could see the flicker through the curtains not quite drawn. Thoughtful Ellen had been airing it! But, suddenly, she stood still. There was more than a fire in there! Through the chink in the drawn curtains she had seen two figures seated on the divan. Something seemed to spin round in her head. She turned to rush away. Then a kind of superhuman coolness came to her, and she deliberately looked in. He and Daphne Wing! His arm was round her neck. The girl’s face riveted her eyes. It was turned a little back and up, gazing at him, the lips parted, the eyes hypnotized, adoring; and her arm round him seemed to shiver – with cold, with ecstasy?

Again that something went spinning through Gyp’s head. She raised her hand. For a second it hovered close to the glass. Then, with a sick feeling, she dropped it and turned away.

Never! Never would she show him or that girl that they could hurt her! Never! They were safe from any scene she would make – safe in their nest! And blindly, across the frosty grass, through the unlighted drawing-room, she went upstairs to her room, locked the door, and sat down before the fire. Pride raged within her. She stuffed her handkerchief between her teeth and lips; she did it unconsciously. Her eyes felt scorched from the fire-flames, but she did not trouble to hold her hand before them.

Suddenly she thought: ‘Suppose I HAD loved him?’ and laughed. The handkerchief dropped to her lap, and she looked at it with wonder – it was blood-stained. She drew back in the chair, away from the scorching of the fire, and sat quite still, a smile on her lips. That girl’s eyes, like a little adoring dog’s – that girl, who had fawned on her so! She had got her “distinguished man”! She sprang up and looked at herself in the glass; shuddered, turned her back on herself, and sat down again. In her own house! Why not here – in this room? Why not before her eyes? Not yet a year married! It was almost funny – almost funny! And she had her first calm thought: ‘I am free.’

But it did not seem to mean anything, had no value to a spirit so bitterly stricken in its pride. She moved her chair closer to the fire again. Why had she not tapped on the window? To have seen that girl’s face ashy with fright! To have seen him – caught – caught in the room she had made beautiful for him, the room where she had played for him so many hours, the room that was part of the house that she paid for! How long had they used it for their meetings – sneaking in by that door from the back lane? Perhaps even before she went away – to bear his child! And there began in her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense of outrage – a spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb, unconscious – to decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have slipped away from her heart, and be a thing almost abhorrent.

She huddled nearer the fire, feeling cold and physically sick. And suddenly the thought came to her: ‘If I don’t let the servants know I’m here, they might go out and see what I saw!’ Had she shut the drawing-room window when she returned so blindly? Perhaps already – ! In a fever, she rang the bell, and unlocked the door. The maid came up.

“Please shut the drawing-room, window, Ellen; and tell Betty I’m afraid I got a little chill travelling. I’m going to bed. Ask her if she can manage with baby.” And she looked straight into the girl’s face. It wore an expression of concern, even of commiseration, but not that fluttered look which must have been there if she had known.

“Yes, m’m; I’ll get you a hot-water bottle, m’m. Would you like a hot bath and a cup of hot tea at once?”

Gyp nodded. Anything – anything! And when the maid was gone, she thought mechanically: ‘A cup of hot tea! How quaint! What should it be but hot?’

The maid came back with the tea; she was an affectionate girl, full of that admiring love servants and dogs always felt for Gyp, imbued, too, with the instinctive partisanship which stores itself one way or the other in the hearts of those who live in houses where the atmosphere lacks unity. To her mind, the mistress was much too good for him – a foreigner – and such ‘abits! Manners – he hadn’t any! And no good would come of it. Not if you took her opinion!

“And I’ve turned the water in, m’m. Will you have a little mustard in it?”

Again Gyp nodded. And the girl, going downstairs for the mustard, told cook there was “that about the mistress that makes you quite pathetic.” The cook, who was fingering her concertina, for which she had a passion, answered:

“She ‘ides up her feelin’s, same as they all does. Thank ‘eaven she haven’t got that drawl, though, that ‘er old aunt ‘as – always makes me feel to want to say, ‘Buck up, old dear, you ain’t ‘alf so precious as all that!’”

And when the maid Ellen had taken the mustard and gone, she drew out her concertina to its full length and, with cautionary softness, began to practise “Home, Sweet Home!”

To Gyp, lying in her hot bath, those muffled strains just mounted, not quite as a tune, rather as some far-away humming of large flies. The heat of the water, the pungent smell of the mustard, and that droning hum slowly soothed and drowsed away the vehemence of feeling. She looked at her body, silver-white in the yellowish water, with a dreamy sensation. Some day she, too, would love! Strange feeling she had never had before! Strange, indeed, that it should come at such a moment, breaking through the old instinctive shrinking. Yes; some day love would come to her. There floated before her brain the adoring look on Daphne Wing’s face, the shiver that had passed along her arm, and pitifulness crept into her heart – a half-bitter, half-admiring pitifulness. Why should she grudge – she who did not love? The sounds, like the humming of large flies, grew deeper, more vibrating. It was the cook, in her passion swelling out her music on the phrase,

     “Be it ne-e-ver so humble,      There’s no-o place like home!”XIII

That night, Gyp slept peacefully, as though nothing had happened, as though there were no future at all before her. She woke into misery. Her pride would never let her show the world what she had discovered, would force her to keep an unmoved face and live an unmoved life. But the struggle between mother-instinct and revolt was still going on within her. She was really afraid to see her baby, and she sent word to Betty that she thought it would be safer if she kept quite quiet till the afternoon.

She got up at noon and stole downstairs. She had not realized how violent was her struggle over HIS child till she was passing the door of the room where it was lying. If she had not been ordered to give up nursing, that struggle would never have come. Her heart ached, but a demon pressed her on and past the door. Downstairs she just pottered round, dusting her china, putting in order the books which, after house-cleaning, the maid had arranged almost too carefully, so that the first volumes of Dickens and Thackeray followed each other on the top shell, and the second volumes followed each other on the bottom shelf. And all the time she thought dully: ‘Why am I doing this? What do I care how the place looks? It is not my home. It can never be my home!’

For lunch she drank some beef tea, keeping up the fiction of her indisposition. After that, she sat down at her bureau to write. Something must be decided! There she sat, her forehead on her hand, and nothing came – not one word – not even the way to address him; just the date, and that was all. At a ring of the bell she started up. She could not see anybody! But the maid only brought a note from Aunt Rosamund, and the dogs, who fell frantically on their mistress and instantly began to fight for her possession. She went on her knees to separate them, and enjoin peace and good-will, and their little avid tongues furiously licked her cheeks. Under the eager touch of those wet tongues the band round her brain and heart gave way; she was overwhelmed with longing for her baby. Nearly a day since she had seen her – was it possible? Nearly a day without sight of those solemn eyes and crinkled toes and fingers! And followed by the dogs, she went upstairs.

The house was invisible from the music-room; and, spurred on by thought that, until Fiorsen knew she was back, those two might be there in each other’s arms any moment of the day or night, Gyp wrote that evening:

“DEAR GUSTAV, – We are back. – GYP.”

What else in the world could she say? He would not get it till he woke about eleven. With the instinct to take all the respite she could, and knowing no more than before how she would receive his return, she went out in the forenoon and wandered about all day shopping and trying not to think. Returning at tea-time, she went straight up to her baby, and there heard from Betty that he had come, and gone out with his violin to the music-room.

Bent over the child, Gyp needed all her self-control – but her self-control was becoming great. Soon, the girl would come fluttering down that dark, narrow lane; perhaps at this very minute her fingers were tapping at the door, and he was opening it to murmur, “No; she’s back!” Ah, then the girl would shrink! The rapid whispering – some other meeting-place! Lips to lips, and that look on the girl’s face; till she hurried away from the shut door, in the darkness, disappointed! And he, on that silver-and-gold divan, gnawing his moustache, his eyes – catlike – staring at the fire! And then, perhaps, from his violin would come one of those swaying bursts of sound, with tears in them, and the wind in them, that had of old bewitched her! She said:

“Open the window just a little, Betty dear – it’s hot.”

There it was, rising, falling! Music! Why did it so move one even when, as now, it was the voice of insult! And suddenly she thought: “He will expect me to go out there again and play for him. But I will not, never!”

She put her baby down, went into her bedroom, and changed hastily into a teagown for the evening, ready to go downstairs. A little shepherdess in china on the mantel-shelf attracted her attention, and she took it in her hand. She had bought it three and more years ago, when she first came to London, at the beginning of that time of girl-gaiety when all life seemed a long cotillion, and she its leader. Its cool daintiness made it seem the symbol of another world, a world without depths or shadows, a world that did not feel – a happy world!

She had not long to wait before he tapped on the drawing-room window. She got up from the tea-table to let him in. Why do faces gazing in through glass from darkness always look hungry – searching, appealing for what you have and they have not? And while she was undoing the latch she thought: ‘What am I going to say? I feel nothing!’ The ardour of his gaze, voice, hands seemed to her so false as to be almost comic; even more comically false his look of disappointment when she said:

“Please take care; I’m still brittle!” Then she sat down again and asked:

“Will you have some tea?”

“Tea! I have you back, and you ask me if I will have tea Gyp! Do you know what I have felt like all this time? No; you don’t know. You know nothing of me – do you?”

A smile of sheer irony formed on her lips – without her knowing it was there. She said:

“Have you had a good time at Count Rosek’s?” And, without her will, against her will, the words slipped out: “I’m afraid you’ve missed the music-room!”

His stare wavered; he began to walk up and down.

“Missed! Missed everything! I have been very miserable, Gyp. You’ve no idea how miserable. Yes, miserable, miserable, miserable!” With each repetition of that word, his voice grew gayer. And kneeling down in front of her, he stretched his long arms round her till they met behind her waist: “Ah, my Gyp! I shall be a different being, now.”

And Gyp went on smiling. Between that, and stabbing these false raptures to the heart, there seemed to be nothing she could do. The moment his hands relaxed, she got up and said:

“You know there’s a baby in the house?”

He laughed.

“Ah, the baby! I’d forgotten. Let’s go up and see it.”

Gyp answered:

“You go.”

She could feel him thinking: ‘Perhaps it will make her nice to me!’ He turned suddenly and went.

She stood with her eyes shut, seeing the divan in the music-room and the girl’s arm shivering. Then, going to the piano, she began with all her might to play a Chopin polonaise.

That evening they dined out, and went to “The Tales of Hoffmann.” By such devices it was possible to put off a little longer what she was going to do. During the drive home in the dark cab, she shrank away into her corner, pretending that his arm would hurt her dress; her exasperated nerves were already overstrung. Twice she was on the very point of crying out: “I am not Daphne Wing!” But each time pride strangled the words in her throat. And yet they would have to come. What other reason could she find to keep him from her room?

But when in her mirror she saw him standing behind her – he had crept into the bedroom like a cat – fierceness came into her. She could see the blood rush up in her own white face, and, turning round she said:

“No, Gustav, go out to the music-room if you want a companion.”

He recoiled against the foot of the bed and stared at her haggardly, and Gyp, turning back to her mirror, went on quietly taking the pins out of her hair. For fully a minute she could see him leaning there, moving his head and hands as though in pain. Then, to her surprise, he went. And a vague feeling of compunction mingled with her sense of deliverance. She lay awake a long time, watching the fire-glow brighten and darken on the ceiling, tunes from “The Tales of Hoffmann” running in her head; thoughts and fancies crisscrossing in her excited brain. Falling asleep at last, she dreamed she was feeding doves out of her hand, and one of them was Daphne Wing. She woke with a start. The fire still burned, and by its light she saw him crouching at the foot of the bed, just as he had on their wedding-night – the same hungry yearning in his face, and an arm outstretched. Before she could speak, he began: