"No. Come and look at my very favourite picture 'The Death of Procris.' What is it makes one love it so? Procris is out of drawing, and not beautiful; the faun's queer and ugly. What is it--can you tell?"
Summerhay looked not at the picture, but at her. In aesthetic sense, he was not her equal. She said softly:
"The wonder in the faun's face, Procris's closed eyes; the dog, and the swans, and the pity for what might have been!"Summerhay repeated:
"Ah, for what might have been! Did you enjoy 'Pagliacci'?"Gyp shivered.
"I think I felt it too much."
"I thought you did. I watched you."
"Destruction by--love--seems such a terrible thing! Now show me your favourites. I believe I can tell you what they are, though.""Well?"
"The 'Admiral,' for one."
"Yes. What others?"
"The two Bellini's."
"By Jove, you ARE uncanny!"
Gyp laughed.
"You want decision, clarity, colour, and fine texture. Is that right? Here's another of MY favourites."On a screen was a tiny "Crucifixion" by da Messina--the thinnest of high crosses, the thinnest of ******, humble, suffering Christs, lonely, and actual in the clear, darkened landscape.
"I think that touches one more than the big, idealized sort. One feels it WAS like that. Oh! And look--the Francesca's! Aren't they lovely?"He repeated:
"Yes; lovely!" But his eyes said: "And so are you."They spent two hours among those endless pictures, talking a little of art and of much besides, almost as alone as in the railway carriage. But, when she had refused to let him walk back with her, Summerhay stood stock-still beneath the colonnade. The sun streamed in under; the pigeons preened their feathers; people passed behind him and down there in the square, black and tiny against the lions and the great column. He took in nothing of all that. What was it in her? She was like no one he had ever known--not one! Different from girls and women in society as-- Simile failed. Still more different from anything in the half-world he had met! Not the new sort--college, suffrage! Like no one! And he knew so little of her! Not even whether she had ever really been in love. Her husband--where was he; what was he to her? "The rare, the mute, the inexpressive She!" When she smiled; when her eyes--but her eyes were so quick, would drop before he could see right into them! How beautiful she had looked, gazing at that picture--her favourite, so softly, her lips just smiling! If he could kiss them, would he not go nearly mad? With a deep sigh, he moved down the wide, grey steps into the sunlight. And London, throbbing, overflowing with the season's life, seemed to him empty.
To-morrow--yes, to-morrow he could call!
IV
After that Sunday call, Gyp sat in the window at Bury Street close to a bowl of heliotrope on the window-sill. She was thinking over a passage of their conversation.
"Mrs. Fiorsen, tell me about yourself."
"Why? What do you want to know?"
"Your marriage?"
"I made a fearful mistake--against my father's wish. I haven't seen my husband for months; I shall never see him again if I can help it. Is that enough?""And you love him?"
"No."
"It must be like having your head in chancery. Can't you get it out?""No."
"Why?"
"Divorce-court! Ugh! I couldn't!"
"Yes, I know--it's hellish!"
Was he, who gripped her hand so hard and said that, really the same nonchalant young man who had leaned out of the carriage window, gurgling with laughter? And what had made the difference? She buried her face in the heliotrope, whose perfume seemed the memory of his visit; then, going to the piano, began to play. She played Debussy, McDowell, Ravel; the chords of modern music suited her feelings just then. And she was still playing when her father came in. During these last nine months of his daughter's society, he had regained a distinct measure of youthfulness, an extra twist in his little moustache, an extra touch of dandyism in his clothes, and the gloss of his short hair. Gyp stopped playing at once, and shut the piano.
"Mr. Summerhay's been here, Dad. He was sorry to miss you."There was an appreciable pause before Winton answered:
"My dear, I doubt it."
And there passed through Gyp the thought that she could never again be friends with a man without giving that pause. Then, conscious that her father was gazing at her, she turned and said:
"Well, was it nice in the Park?"
"Thirty years ago they were all nobs and snobs; now God himself doesn't know what they are!""But weren't the flowers nice?"
"Ah--and the trees, and the birds--but, by Jove, the humans do their best to dress the balance!""What a misanthrope you're getting!"
"I'd like to run a stud for two-leggers; they want proper breeding.
What sort of a fellow is young Summerhay? Not a bad face."She answered impassively:
"Yes; it's so alive."
In spite of his self-control, she could always read her father's thoughts quicker than he could read hers, and knew that he was struggling between the wish that she should have a good time and the desire to convey some kind of warning. He said, with a sigh:
"What does a young man's fancy turn to in summer, Gyp?"Women who have subtle instincts and some experience are able to impose their own restraint on those who, at the lifting of a hand, would become their lovers. From that afternoon on, Gyp knew that a word from her would change everything; but she was far from speaking it. And yet, except at week-ends, when she went back to her baby at Mildenham, she saw Summerhay most days--in the Row, at the opera, or at Bury Street. She had a habit of going to St.
James's Park in the late afternoon and sitting there by the water.
Was it by chance that he passed one day on his way home from chambers, and that, after this, they sat there together constantly?
