Beyond

J >> John Galsworthy >> Beyond


"Mum doesn't live with us, Grandy; she lives away somewhere, I think. Is
it with Baryn?"

Winton stared, and answered:

"Perhaps it is, sweetheart; but don't say that to anybody but me. Don't
ever talk of Baryn to anyone else."

"Yes, I know; but where is he, Grandy?"

What could Winton answer? Some imbecility with the words "very far" in
it; for he had not courage to broach the question of death, that mystery
so hopelessly beyond the grasp of children, and of himself--and others.

He rode a great deal with the child, who, like her mother before her,
was never so happy as in the saddle; but to Gyp he did not dare suggest
it. She never spoke of horses, never went to the stables, passed all the
days doing little things about the house, gardening, and sitting at her
piano, sometimes playing a little, sometimes merely looking at the keys,
her hands clasped in her lap. This was early in the fateful summer,
before any as yet felt the world-tremors, or saw the Veil of the Temple
rending and the darkness beginning to gather. Winton had no vision
of the coif above the dark eyes of his loved one, nor of himself in a
strange brown garb, calling out old familiar words over barrack-squares.
He often thought: 'If only she had something to take her out of
herself!'

In June he took his courage in both hands and proposed a visit to
London. To his surprise, she acquiesced without hesitation. They went up
in Whit-week. While they were passing Widrington, he forced himself to
an unnatural spurt of talk; and it was not till fully quarter of an
hour later that, glancing stealthily round his paper, he saw her sitting
motionless, her face turned to the fields and tears rolling down it. And
he dared not speak, dared not try to comfort her. She made no sound, the
muscles of her face no movement; only, those tears kept rolling down.
And, behind his paper, Winton's eyes narrowed and retreated; his face
hardened till the skin seemed tight drawn over the bones, and every inch
of him quivered.

The usual route from the station to Bury Street was "up," and the cab
went by narrow by-streets, town lanes where the misery of the world is
on show, where ill-looking men, draggled and over-driven women, and the
jaunty ghosts of little children in gutters and on doorsteps proclaim,
by every feature of their clay-coloured faces and every movement of
their unfed bodies, the post-datement of the millennium; where the lean
and smutted houses have a look of dissolution indefinitely put off, and
there is no more trace of beauty than in a sewer. Gyp, leaning forward,
looked out, as one does after a long sea voyage; Winton felt her hand
slip into his and squeeze it hard.

That evening after dinner--in the room he had furnished for her mother,
where the satinwood chairs, the little Jacobean bureau, the old brass
candelabra were still much as they had been just on thirty years
ago--she said:

"Dad, I've been thinking. Would you mind if I could make a sort of home
at Mildenham where poor children could come to stay and get good air and
food? There are such thousands of them."

Strangely moved by this, the first wish he had heard her express since
the tragedy, Winton took her hand, and, looking at it as if for answer
to his question, said:

"My dear, are, you strong enough?"

"Quite. There's nothing wrong with me now except here." She drew his
hand to her and pressed it against her heart. "What's given, one can't
get back. I can't help it; I would if I could. It's been so dreadful for
you. I'm so sorry." Winton made an unintelligible sound, and she went
on: "If I had them to see after, I shouldn't be able to think so much;
the more I had to do the better. Good for our gipsy-bird, too, to have
them there. I should like to begin it at once."

Winton nodded. Anything that she felt could do her good--anything!

"Yes, yes," he said; "I quite see--you could use the two old cottages to
start with, and we can easily run up anything you want."

"Only let me do it all, won't you?"

At that touch of her old self, Winton smiled. She should do everything,
pay for everything, bring a whole street of children down, if it would
give her any comfort!

"Rosamund'll help you find 'em," he muttered. "She's first-rate at all
that sort of thing." Then, looking at her fixedly, he added: "Courage,
my soul; it'll all come back some day."

Gyp forced herself to smile. Watching her, he understood only too well
the child's saying: "Mum lives away somewhere, I think."

Suddenly, she said, very low:

"And yet I wouldn't have been without it."

She was sitting, her hands clasped in her lap, two red spots high in her
cheeks, her eyes shining strangely, the faint smile still on her
lips. And Winton, staring with narrowed eyes, thought: 'Love! Beyond
measure--beyond death--it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been
without it. Why?'


Three days later, leaving Gyp with his sister, he went back to Mildenham
to start the necessary alterations in the cottages. He had told no one
he was coming, and walked up from the station on a perfect June
day, bright and hot. When he turned through the drive gate, into the
beech-tree avenue, the leaf-shadows were thick on the ground, with
golden gleams of the invincible sunlight thrusting their way through.
The grey boles, the vivid green leaves, those glistening sun-shafts
through the shade entranced him, coming from the dusty road. Down in
the very middle of the avenue, a small, white figure was standing, as if
looking out for him. He heard a shrill shout.

"Oh, Grandy, you've come back--you've come back! What FUN!"

Winton took her curls in his hand, and, looking into her face, said:

"Well, my gipsy-bird, will you give me one of these?"

Little Gyp looked at him with flying eyes, and, hugging his legs,
answered furiously:

"Yes; because I love you. PULL!"