Beyond

J >> John Galsworthy >> Beyond


Gyp's moral and spiritual growth was not the sort of subject that Winton
could pay much attention to. It was pre-eminently a matter one did not
talk about. Outward forms, such as going to church, should be preserved;
manners should be taught her by his own example as much as possible;
beyond this, nature must look after things. His view had much real
wisdom. She was a quick and voracious reader, bad at remembering what
she read; and though she had soon devoured all the books in Winton's
meagre library, including Byron, Whyte-Melville, and Humboldt's
"Cosmos," they had not left too much on her mind. The attempts of her
little governess to impart religion were somewhat arid of result, and
the interest of the vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice of scepticism
soon put into the same category as the interest of all the other males
she knew. She felt that he enjoyed calling her "my dear" and patting her
shoulder, and that this enjoyment was enough reward for his exertions.

Tucked away in that little old dark manor house, whose stables alone
were up to date--three hours from London, and some thirty miles from The
Wash, it must be confessed that her upbringing lacked modernity. About
twice a year, Winton took her up to town to stay with his unmarried
sister Rosamund in Curzon Street. Those weeks, if they did nothing else,
increased her natural taste for charming clothes, fortified her teeth,
and fostered her passion for music and the theatre. But the two main
nourishments of the modern girl--discussion and games--she lacked
utterly. Moreover, those years of her life from fifteen to nineteen were
before the social resurrection of 1906, and the world still crawled like
a winter fly on a window-pane. Winton was a Tory, Aunt Rosamund a Tory,
everybody round her a Tory. The only spiritual development she underwent
all those years of her girlhood was through her headlong love for her
father. After all, was there any other way in which she could really
have developed? Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form
that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but
to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with
perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or
speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes
and voices of other men--all this was precious to her beyond everything.
If she inherited from him that fastidious sense of form, she also
inherited his capacity for putting all her eggs in one basket. And since
her company alone gave him real happiness, the current of love flowed
over her heart all the time. Though she never realized it, abundant love
FOR somebody was as necessary to her as water running up the stems of
flowers, abundant love FROM somebody as needful as sunshine on
their petals. And Winton's somewhat frequent little runs to town, to
Newmarket, or where not, were always marked in her by a fall of the
barometer, which recovered as his return grew near.

One part of her education, at all events, was not neglected--cultivation
of an habitual sympathy with her poorer neighbours. Without concerning
himself in the least with problems of sociology, Winton had by nature
an open hand and heart for cottagers, and abominated interference with
their lives. And so it came about that Gyp, who, by nature also never
set foot anywhere without invitation, was always hearing the words:
"Step in, Miss Gyp"; "Step in, and sit down, lovey," and a good many
words besides from even the boldest and baddest characters. There
is nothing like a soft and pretty face and sympathetic listening for
seducing the hearts of "the people."

So passed the eleven years till she was nineteen and Winton forty-six.
Then, under the wing of her little governess, she went to the hunt-ball.
She had revolted against appearing a "fluffy miss," wanting to be
considered at once full-fledged; so that her dress, perfect in fit, was
not white but palest maize-colour, as if she had already been to dances.
She had all Winton's dandyism, and just so much more as was appropriate
to her sex. With her dark hair, wonderfully fluffed and coiled, waving
across her forehead, her neck bare for the first time, her eyes really
"flying," and a demeanour perfectly cool--as though she knew that light
and movement, covetous looks, soft speeches, and admiration were her
birthright--she was more beautiful than even Winton had thought her. At
her breast she wore some sprigs of yellow jasmine procured by him from
town--a flower of whose scent she was very fond, and that he had never
seen worn in ballrooms. That swaying, delicate creature, warmed by
excitement, reminded him, in every movement and by every glance of her
eyes, of her whom he had first met at just such a ball as this. And by
the carriage of his head, the twist of his little moustache, he conveyed
to the world the pride he was feeling.

That evening held many sensations for Gyp--some delightful, one
confused, one unpleasant. She revelled in her success. Admiration was
very dear to her. She passionately enjoyed dancing, loved feeling that
she was dancing well and giving pleasure. But, twice over, she sent away
her partners, smitten with compassion for her little governess sitting
there against the wall--all alone, with no one to take notice of her,
because she was elderly, and roundabout, poor darling! And, to that
loyal person's horror, she insisted on sitting beside her all through
two dances. Nor would she go in to supper with anyone but Winton.
Returning to the ballroom on his arm, she overheard an elderly woman
say: "Oh, don't you know? Of course he really IS her father!" and an
elderly man answer: "Ah, that accounts for it--quite so!" With those
eyes at the back of the head which the very sensitive possess, she could
see their inquisitive, cold, slightly malicious glances, and knew they
were speaking of her. And just then her partner came for her.

"Really IS her father!" The words meant TOO much to be grasped this
evening of full sensations. They left a little bruise somewhere, but
softened and anointed, just a sense of confusion at the back of her
mind. And very soon came that other sensation, so disillusioning, that
all else was crowded out. It was after a dance--a splendid dance with
a good-looking man quite twice her age. They were sitting behind some
palms, he murmuring in his mellow, flown voice admiration for her dress,
when suddenly he bent his flushed face and kissed her bare arm above the
elbow. If he had hit her he could not have astonished or hurt her more.
It seemed to her innocence that he would never have done such a thing if
she had not said something dreadful to encourage him. Without a word she
got up, gazed at him a moment with eyes dark from pain, shivered, and
slipped away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed up,
tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their corners, he knew
something dire had happened, and his eyes boded ill for the person who
had hurt her; but she would say nothing except that she was tired and
wanted to go home. And so, with the little faithful governess, who,
having been silent perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of
conversation, they drove out into the frosty night. Winton sat beside
the chauffeur, smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his
ears, his eyes stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn fur
cap. Who had dared upset his darling? And, within the car, the little
governess chattered softly, and Gyp, shrouded in lace, in her dark
corner sat silent, seeing nothing but the vision of that insult. Sad end
to a lovely night!

She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while a sort of coherence was
forming in her mind. Those words: "Really IS her father!" and that
man's kissing of her bare arm were a sort of revelation of sex-mystery,
hardening the consciousness that there was something at the back of her
life. A child so sensitive had not, of course, quite failed to feel the
spiritual draughts around her; but instinctively she had recoiled
from more definite perceptions. The time before Winton came was all
so faint--Betty, toys, short glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called
"Papa." As in that word there was no depth compared with the word "Dad"
bestowed on Winton, so there had been no depth in her feelings towards
the squire. When a girl has no memory of her mother, how dark are many
things! None, except Betty, had ever talked of her mother. There was
nothing sacred in Gyp's associations, no faiths to be broken by any
knowledge that might come to her; isolated from other girls, she
had little realisation even of the conventions. Still, she suffered
horribly, lying there in the dark--from bewilderment, from thorns
dragged over her skin, rather than from a stab in the heart. The
knowledge of something about her conspicuous, doubtful, provocative of
insult, as she thought, grievously hurt her delicacy. Those few
wakeful hours made a heavy mark. She fell asleep at last, still all
in confusion, and woke up with a passionate desire to KNOW. All that
morning she sat at her piano, playing, refusing to go out, frigid to
Betty and the little governess, till the former was reduced to tears
and the latter to Wordsworth. After tea she went to Winton's study, that
dingy little room where he never studied anything, with leather chairs
and books which--except "Mr. Jorrocks," Byron, those on the care of
horses, and the novels of Whyte-Melville--were never read; with prints
of superequine celebrities, his sword, and photographs of Gyp and of
brother officers on the walls. Two bright spots there were indeed--the
fire, and the little bowl that Gyp always kept filled with flowers.

When she came gliding in like that, a slender, rounded figure, her
creamy, dark-eyed, oval face all cloudy, she seemed to Winton to have
grown up of a sudden. He had known all day that something was coming,
and had been cudgelling his brains finely. From the fervour of his
love for her, he felt an anxiety that was almost fear. What could
have happened last night--that first night of her entrance into
society--meddlesome, gossiping society! She slid down to the floor
against his knee. He could not see her face, could not even touch her;
for she had settled down on his right side. He mastered his tremors and
said:

"Well, Gyp--tired?"

"No."

"A little bit?"

"No."

"Was it up to what you thought, last night?"

"Yes."

The logs hissed and crackled; the long flames ruffled in the
chimney-draught; the wind roared outside--then, so suddenly that it took
his breath away:

"Dad, are you really and truly my father?"

When that which one has always known might happen at last does happen,
how little one is prepared! In the few seconds before an answer that
could in no way be evaded, Winton had time for a tumult of reflection.
A less resolute character would have been caught by utter mental
blankness, then flung itself in panic on "Yes" or "No." But Winton was
incapable of losing his head; he would not answer without having faced
the consequences of his reply. To be her father was the most warming
thing in his life; but if he avowed it, how far would he injure her love
for him? What did a girl know? How make her understand? What would her
feeling be about her dead mother? How would that dead loved one feel?
What would she have wished?

It was a cruel moment. And the girl, pressed against his knee, with face
hidden, gave him no help. Impossible to keep it from her, now that her
instinct was roused! Silence, too, would answer for him. And clenching
his hand on the arm of his chair, he said:

"Yes, Gyp; your mother and I loved each other." He felt a quiver go
through her, would have given much to see her face. What, even now, did
she understand? Well, it must be gone through with, and he said:

"What made you ask?"

She shook her head and murmured:

"I'm glad."

Grief, shock, even surprise would have roused all his loyalty to the
dead, all the old stubborn bitterness, and he would have frozen up
against her. But this acquiescent murmur made him long to smooth it
down.

"Nobody has ever known. She died when you were born. It was a fearful
grief to me. If you've heard anything, it's just gossip, because you go
by my name. Your mother was never talked about. But it's best you should
know, now you're grown up. People don't often love as she and I loved.
You needn't be ashamed."

She had not moved, and her face was still turned from him. She said
quietly:

"I'm not ashamed. Am I very like her?"

"Yes; more than I could ever have hoped."

Very low she said:

"Then you don't love me for myself?"

Winton was but dimly conscious of how that question revealed her
nature, its power of piercing instinctively to the heart of things, its
sensitive pride, and demand for utter and exclusive love. To things that
go too deep, one opposes the bulwark of obtuseness. And, smiling, he
simply said:

"What do you think?"

Then, to his dismay, he perceived that she was crying--struggling
against it so that her shoulder shook against his knee. He had hardly
ever known her cry, not in all the disasters of unstable youth, and she
had received her full meed of knocks and tumbles. He could only stroke
that shoulder, and say:

"Don't cry, Gyp; don't cry!"

She ceased as suddenly as she had begun, got up, and, before he too
could rise, was gone.

That evening, at dinner, she was just as usual. He could not detect the
slightest difference in her voice or manner, or in her good-night kiss.
And so a moment that he had dreaded for years was over, leaving only the
faint shame which follows a breach of reticence on the spirits of those
who worship it. While the old secret had been quite undisclosed, it had
not troubled him. Disclosed, it hurt him. But Gyp, in those twenty-four
hours, had left childhood behind for good; her feeling toward men had
hardened. If she did not hurt them a little, they would hurt her! The
sex-instinct had come to life. To Winton she gave as much love as ever,
even more, perhaps; but the dew was off.


III


The next two years were much less solitary, passed in more or less
constant gaiety. His confession spurred Winton on to the fortification
of his daughter's position. He would stand no nonsense, would not have
her looked on askance. There is nothing like "style" for carrying the
defences of society--only, it must be the genuine thing. Whether at
Mildenham, or in London under the wing of his sister, there was no
difficulty. Gyp was too pretty, Winton too cool, his quietness too
formidable. She had every advantage. Society only troubles itself to
make front against the visibly weak.

The happiest time of a girl's life is that when all appreciate and covet
her, and she herself is free as air--a queen of hearts, for none of
which she hankers; or, if not the happiest, at all events it is the
gayest time. What did Gyp care whether hearts ached for her--she knew
not love as yet, perhaps would never know the pains of unrequited
love. Intoxicated with life, she led her many admirers a pretty dance,
treating them with a sort of bravura. She did not want them to be
unhappy, but she simply could not take them seriously. Never was any
girl so heart-free. She was a queer mixture in those days, would give
up any pleasure for Winton, and most for Betty or her aunt--her little
governess was gone--but of nobody else did she seem to take account,
accepting all that was laid at her feet as the due of her looks, her
dainty frocks, her music, her good riding and dancing, her talent for
amateur theatricals and mimicry. Winton, whom at least she never failed,
watched that glorious fluttering with quiet pride and satisfaction. He
was getting to those years when a man of action dislikes interruption of
the grooves into which his activity has fallen. He pursued his hunting,
racing, card-playing, and his very stealthy alms and services to lame
ducks of his old regiment, their families, and other unfortunates--happy
in knowing that Gyp was always as glad to be with him as he to be with
her. Hereditary gout, too, had begun to bother him.

The day that she came of age they were up in town, and he summoned her
to the room, in which he now sat by the fire recalling all these things,
to receive an account of his stewardship. He had nursed her greatly
embarrassed inheritance very carefully till it amounted to some twenty
thousand pounds. He had never told her of it--the subject was dangerous,
and, since his own means were ample, she had not wanted for anything.
When he had explained exactly what she owned, shown her how it was
invested, and told her that she must now open her own banking account,
she stood gazing at the sheets of paper, whose items she had been
supposed to understand, and her face gathered the look which meant that
she was troubled. Without lifting her eyes she asked:

"Does it all come from--him?"

He had not expected that, and flushed under his tan.

"No; eight thousand of it was your mother's."

Gyp looked at him, and said:

"Then I won't take the rest--please, Dad."

Winton felt a sort of crabbed pleasure. What should be done with that
money if she did not take it, he did not in the least know. But not to
take it was like her, made her more than ever his daughter--a kind of
final victory. He turned away to the window from which he had so often
watched for her mother. There was the corner she used to turn! In
one minute, surely she would be standing there, colour glowing in her
cheeks, her eyes soft behind her veil, her breast heaving a little with
her haste, waiting for his embrace. There she would stand, drawing up
her veil. He turned round. Difficult to believe it was not she! And he
said:

"Very well, my love. But you will take the equivalent from me instead.
The other can be put by; some one will benefit some day!"

At those unaccustomed words, "My love," from his undemonstrative lips,
the colour mounted in her cheeks and her eyes shone. She threw her arms
round his neck.

She had her fill of music in those days, taking piano lessons from a
Monsieur Harmost, a grey-haired native of Liege, with mahogany cheeks
and the touch of an angel, who kept her hard at it and called her his
"little friend." There was scarcely a concert of merit that she did not
attend or a musician of mark whose playing she did not know, and, though
fastidiousness saved her from squirming in adoration round the feet of
those prodigious performers, she perched them all on pedestals, men and
women alike, and now and then met them at her aunt's house in Curzon
Street.

Aunt Rosamund, also musical, so far as breeding would allow, stood for
a good deal to Gyp, who had built up about her a romantic story of love
wrecked by pride from a few words she had once let drop. She was a tall
and handsome woman, a year older than Winton, with a long, aristocratic
face, deep-blue, rather shining eyes, a gentlemanly manner, warm heart,
and one of those indescribable, not unmelodious drawls that one connects
with an unshakable sense of privilege. She, in turn, was very fond of
Gyp; and what passed within her mind, by no means devoid of shrewdness,
as to their real relationship, remained ever discreetly hidden. She was,
so far again as breeding would allow, something of a humanitarian and
rebel, loving horses and dogs, and hating cats, except when they had
four legs. The girl had just that softness which fascinates women who
perhaps might have been happier if they had been born men. Not that
Rosamund Winton was of an aggressive type--she merely had the resolute
"catch hold of your tail, old fellow" spirit so often found in
Englishwomen of the upper classes. A cheery soul, given to long coats
and waistcoats, stocks, and a crutch-handled stick, she--like her
brother--had "style," but more sense of humour--valuable in musical
circles! At her house, the girl was practically compelled to see fun
as well as merit in all those prodigies, haloed with hair and filled to
overflowing with music and themselves. And, since Gyp's natural sense
of the ludicrous was extreme, she and her aunt could rarely talk about
anything without going into fits of laughter.

Winton had his first really bad attack of gout when Gyp was twenty-two,
and, terrified lest he might not be able to sit a horse in time for the
opening meets, he went off with her and Markey to Wiesbaden. They had
rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse, overlooking the gardens, where leaves
were already turning, that gorgeous September. The cure was long and
obstinate, and Winton badly bored. Gyp fared much better. Attended
by the silent Markey, she rode daily on the Neroberg, chafing at
regulations which reduced her to specified tracks in that majestic
wood where the beeches glowed. Once or even twice a day she went to the
concerts in the Kurhaus, either with her father or alone.

The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most
violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift
sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and
moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very
broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those
little whiskers seemed to Gyp awful--indeed, he seemed rather awful
altogether--but his playing stirred and swept her in the most uncanny
way. He had evidently remarkable technique; and the emotion, the intense
wayward feeling of his playing was chiselled by that technique, as if
a flame were being frozen in its swaying. When he stopped, she did not
join in the tornado of applause, but sat motionless, looking up at him.
Quite unconstrained by all those people, he passed the back of his hand
across his hot brow, shoving up a wave or two of that queer-coloured
hair; then, with a rather disagreeable smile, he made a short supple bow
or two. And she thought, "What strange eyes he has--like a great cat's!"
Surely they were green; fierce, yet shy, almost furtive--mesmeric!
Certainly the strangest man she had ever seen, and the most frightening.
He seemed looking straight at her; and, dropping her gaze, she clapped.
When she looked again, his face had lost that smile for a kind of
wistfulness. He made another of those little supple bows straight at
her--it seemed to Gyp--and jerked his violin up to his shoulder.
"He's going to play to me," she thought absurdly. He played without
accompaniment a little tune that seemed to twitch the heart. When he
finished, this time she did not look up, but was conscious that he gave
one impatient bow and walked off.

That evening at dinner she said to Winton:

"I heard a violinist to-day, Dad, the most wonderful playing--Gustav
Fiorsen. Is that Swedish, do you think--or what?"

Winton answered:

"Very likely. What sort of a bounder was he to look at? I used to know a
Swede in the Turkish army--nice fellow, too."

"Tall and thin and white-faced, with bumpy cheek-bones, and hollows
under them, and queer green eyes. Oh, and little goldy side-whiskers."

"By Jove! It sounds the limit."

Gyp murmured, with a smile:

"Yes; I think perhaps he is."

She saw him next day in the gardens. They were sitting close to the
Schiller statue, Winton reading The Times, to whose advent he looked
forward more than he admitted, for he was loath by confessions of
boredom to disturb Gyp's manifest enjoyment of her stay. While perusing
the customary comforting animadversions on the conduct of those
"rascally Radicals" who had just come into power, and the account of a
Newmarket meeting, he kept stealing sidelong glances at his daughter.

Certainly she had never looked prettier, daintier, shown more breeding
than she did out here among these Germans with their thick pasterns, and
all the cosmopolitan hairy-heeled crowd in this God-forsaken place! The
girl, unconscious of his stealthy regalement, was letting her clear eyes
rest, in turn, on each figure that passed, on the movements of birds
and dogs, watching the sunlight glisten on the grass, burnish the copper
beeches, the lime-trees, and those tall poplars down there by the water.
The doctor at Mildenham, once consulted on a bout of headache, had
called her eyes "perfect organs," and certainly no eyes could take
things in more swiftly or completely. She was attractive to dogs, and
every now and then one would stop, in two minds whether or no to put
his nose into this foreign girl's hand. From a flirtation of eyes with
a great Dane, she looked up and saw Fiorsen passing, in company with
a shorter, square man, having very fashionable trousers and a corseted
waist. The violinist's tall, thin, loping figure was tightly buttoned
into a brownish-grey frock-coat suit; he wore a rather broad-brimmed,
grey, velvety hat; in his buttonhole was a white flower; his
cloth-topped boots were of patent leather; his tie was bunched out at
the ends over a soft white-linen shirt--altogether quite a dandy! His
most strange eyes suddenly swept down on hers, and he made a movement as
if to put his hand to his hat.