Beyond

J >> John Galsworthy >> Beyond


"Can you manage?"

Miss Daphne had already shed half her garments.

"Oh, I'm so excited, Mrs. Fiorsen! I do hope I shall dance well."

Gyp stole back to the house; it being Sunday evening, the servants had
been easily disposed of. She sat down at the piano, turning her eyes
toward the garden. A blurred white shape flitted suddenly across
the darkness at the far end and became motionless, as it might be a
white-flowering bush under the trees. Miss Daphne had come out, and
was waiting for the moon. Gyp began to play. She pitched on a little
Sicilian pastorale that the herdsmen play on their pipes coming down
from the hills, softly, from very far, rising, rising, swelling to full
cadence, and failing, failing away again to nothing. The moon rose
over the trees; its light flooded the face of the house, down on to the
grass, and spread slowly back toward where the girl stood waiting. It
caught the border of sunflowers along the garden wall with a stroke of
magical, unearthly colour--gold that was not gold.

Gyp began to play the dance. The pale blurr in the darkness stirred. The
moonlight fell on the girl now, standing with arms spread, holding out
her drapery--a white, winged statue. Then, like a gigantic moth she
fluttered forth, blanched and noiseless flew over the grass, spun and
hovered. The moonlight etched out the shape of her head, painted her
hair with pallid gold. In the silence, with that unearthly gleam of
colour along the sunflowers and on the girl's head, it was as if a
spirit had dropped into the garden and was fluttering to and fro, unable
to get out.

A voice behind Gyp said: "My God! What's this? An angel?"

Fiorsen was standing hall-way in the darkened room staring out into the
garden, where the girl had halted, transfixed before the window, her
eyes as round as saucers, her mouth open, her limbs rigid with interest
and affright. Suddenly she turned and, gathering her garment, fled, her
limbs gleaming in the moonlight.

And Gyp sat looking up at the apparition of her husband. She could just
see his eyes straining after that flying nymph. Miss Daphne's faun! Why,
even his ears were pointed! Had she never noticed before, how like a
faun he was? Yes--on her wedding-night! And she said quietly:

"Daphne Wing was rehearsing her new dance. So you're back! Why didn't
you let me know? Are you all right--you look splendid!"

Fiorsen bent down and clutched her by the shoulders.

"My Gyp! Kiss me!"

But even while his lips were pressed on hers, she felt rather than
saw his eyes straying to the garden, and thought, "He would like to be
kissing that girl!"

The moment he had gone to get his things from the cab, she slipped out
to the music-room.

Miss Daphne was dressed, and stuffing her garments into the green linen
bag. She looked up, and said piteously:

"Oh! Does he mind? It's awful, isn't it?"

Gyp strangled her desire to laugh.

"It's for you to mind."

"Oh, I don't, if you don't! How did you like the dance?"

"Lovely! When you're ready--come along!"

"Oh, I think I'd rather go home, please! It must seem so funny!"

"Would you like to go by this back way into the lane? You turn to the
right, into the road."

"Oh, yes; please. It would have been better if he could have seen the
dance properly, wouldn't it? What will he think?"

Gyp smiled, and opened the door into the lane. When she returned,
Fiorsen was at the window, gazing out. Was it for her or for that flying
nymph?


IX


September and October passed. There were more concerts, not very well
attended. Fiorsen's novelty had worn off, nor had his playing sweetness
and sentiment enough for the big Public. There was also a financial
crisis. It did not seem to Gyp to matter. Everything seemed remote and
unreal in the shadow of her coming time. Unlike most mothers to be, she
made no garments, no preparations of any kind. Why make what might never
be needed? She played for Fiorsen a great deal, for herself not at all,
read many books--poetry, novels, biographies--taking them in at the
moment, and forgetting them at once, as one does with books read just to
distract the mind. Winton and Aunt Rosamund, by tacit agreement, came
on alternate afternoons. And Winton, almost as much under that shadow as
Gyp herself, would take the evening train after leaving her, and spend
the next day racing or cub-hunting, returning the morning of the day
after to pay his next visit. He had no dread just then like that of an
unoccupied day face to face with anxiety.

Betty, who had been present at Gyp's birth, was in a queer state. The
obvious desirability of such events to one of motherly type defrauded
by fate of children was terribly impinged on by that old memory, and a
solicitude for her "pretty" far exceeding what she would have had for
a daughter of her own. What a peony regards as a natural happening to
a peony, she watches with awe when it happens to the lily. That other
single lady of a certain age, Aunt Rosamund, the very antithesis to
Betty--a long, thin nose and a mere button, a sense of divine rights and
no sense of rights at all, a drawl and a comforting wheeze, length and
circumference, decision and the curtsey to providence, humour and none,
dyspepsia, and the digestion of an ostrich, with other oppositions--Aunt
Rosamund was also uneasy, as only one could be who disapproved heartily
of uneasiness, and habitually joked and drawled it into retirement.

But of all those round Gyp, Fiorsen gave the most interesting display.
He had not even an elementary notion of disguising his state of mind.
And his state of mind was weirdly, wistfully primitive. He wanted Gyp
as she had been. The thought that she might never become herself again
terrified him so at times that he was forced to drink brandy, and come
home only a little less far gone than that first time. Gyp had often to
help him go to bed. On two or three occasions, he suffered so that he
was out all night. To account for this, she devised the formula of a
room at Count Rosek's, where he slept when music kept him late, so as
not to disturb her. Whether the servants believed her or not, she never
knew. Nor did she ever ask him where he went--too proud, and not feeling
that she had the right.

Deeply conscious of the unaesthetic nature of her condition, she was
convinced that she could no longer be attractive to one so easily upset
in his nerves, so intolerant of ugliness. As to deeper feelings about
her--had he any? He certainly never gave anything up, or sacrificed
himself in any way. If she had loved, she felt she would want to give up
everything to the loved one; but then--she would never love! And yet he
seemed frightened about her. It was puzzling! But perhaps she would not
be puzzled much longer about that or anything; for she often had the
feeling that she would die. How could she be going to live, grudging her
fate? What would give her strength to go through with it? And, at times,
she felt as if she would be glad to die. Life had defrauded her, or
she had defrauded herself of life. Was it really only a year since that
glorious day's hunting when Dad and she, and the young man with the
clear eyes and the irrepressible smile, had slipped away with the hounds
ahead of all the field--the fatal day Fiorsen descended from the clouds
and asked for her? An overwhelming longing for Mildenham came on her, to
get away there with her father and Betty.

She went at the beginning of November.

Over her departure, Fiorsen behaved like a tired child that will not go
to bed. He could not bear to be away from her, and so forth; but when
she had gone, he spent a furious bohemian evening. At about five, he
woke with "an awful cold feeling in my heart," as he wrote to Gyp next
day--"an awful feeling, my Gyp; I walked up and down for hours" (in
reality, half an hour at most). "How shall I bear to be away from you at
this time? I feel lost." Next day, he found himself in Paris with Rosek.
"I could not stand," he wrote, "the sight of the streets, of the garden,
of our room. When I come back I shall stay with Rosek. Nearer to the
day I will come; I must come to you." But Gyp, when she read the letter,
said to Winton: "Dad, when it comes, don't send for him. I don't want
him here."

With those letters of his, she buried the last remnants of her feeling
that somewhere in him there must be something as fine and beautiful
as the sounds he made with his violin. And yet she felt those letters
genuine in a way, pathetic, and with real feeling of a sort.

From the moment she reached Mildenham, she began to lose that
hopelessness about herself; and, for the first time, had the sensation
of wanting to live in the new life within her. She first felt it, going
into her old nursery, where everything was the same as it had been when
she first saw it, a child of eight; there was her old red doll's house,
the whole side of which opened to display the various floors; the worn
Venetian blinds, the rattle of whose fall had sounded in her ears so
many hundred times; the high fender, near which she had lain so often
on the floor, her chin on her hands, reading Grimm, or "Alice in
Wonderland," or histories of England. Here, too, perhaps this new child
would live amongst the old familiars. And the whim seized her to face
her hour in her old nursery, not in the room where she had slept as a
girl. She would not like the daintiness of that room deflowered. Let
it stay the room of her girlhood. But in the nursery--there was safety,
comfort! And when she had been at Mildenham a week, she made Betty
change her over.

No one in that house was half so calm to look at in those days as Gyp.
Betty was not guiltless of sitting on the stairs and crying at odd
moments. Mrs. Markey had never made such bad soups. Markey so far forgot
himself as frequently to talk. Winton lamed a horse trying an impossible
jump that he might get home the quicker, and, once back, was like an
unquiet spirit. If Gyp were in the room, he would make the pretence of
wanting to warm his feet or hand, just to stroke her shoulder as he went
back to his chair. His voice, so measured and dry, had a ring in
it, that too plainly disclosed the anxiety of his heart. Gyp, always
sensitive to atmosphere, felt cradled in all the love about her.
Wonderful that they should all care so much! What had she done for
anyone, that people should be so sweet--he especially, whom she had so
grievously distressed by her wretched marriage? She would sit staring
into the fire with her wide, dark eyes, unblinking as an owl's at
night--wondering what she could do to make up to her father, whom
already once she had nearly killed by coming into life. And she began to
practise the bearing of the coming pain, trying to project herself into
this unknown suffering, so that it should not surprise from her cries
and contortions.

She had one dream, over and over again, of sinking and sinking into a
feather bed, growing hotter and more deeply walled in by that which
had no stay in it, yet through which her body could not fall and reach
anything more solid. Once, after this dream, she got up and spent the
rest of the night wrapped in a blanket and the eider-down, on the old
sofa, where, as a child, they had made her lie flat on her back from
twelve to one every day. Betty was aghast at finding her there asleep
in the morning. Gyp's face was so like the child-face she had seen
lying there in the old days, that she bundled out of the room and cried
bitterly into the cup of tea. It did her good. Going back with the tea,
she scolded her "pretty" for sleeping out there, with the fire out, too!

But Gyp only said:

"Betty, darling, the tea's awfully cold! Please get me some more!"


X


From the day of the nurse's arrival, Winton gave up hunting. He could
not bring himself to be out of doors for more than half an hour at a
time. Distrust of doctors did not prevent him having ten minutes
every morning with the old practitioner who had treated Gyp for mumps,
measles, and the other blessings of childhood. The old fellow--his name
was Rivershaw--was a most peculiar survival. He smelled of mackintosh,
had round purplish cheeks, a rim of hair which people said he dyed, and
bulging grey eyes slightly bloodshot. He was short in body and wind,
drank port wine, was suspected of taking snuff, read The Times, spoke
always in a husky voice, and used a very small brougham with a very old
black horse. But he had a certain low cunning, which had defeated many
ailments, and his reputation for assisting people into the world stood
extremely high. Every morning punctually at twelve, the crunch of his
little brougham's wheels would be heard. Winton would get up, and,
taking a deep breath, cross the hall to the dining-room, extract from
a sideboard a decanter of port, a biscuit-canister, and one glass. He
would then stand with his eyes fixed on the door, till, in due time, the
doctor would appear, and he could say:

"Well, doctor? How is she?"

"Nicely; quite nicely."

"Nothing to make one anxious?"

The doctor, puffing out his cheeks, with eyes straying to the decanter,
would murmur:

"Cardiac condition, capital--a little--um--not to matter. Taking its
course. These things!"

And Winton, with another deep breath, would say:

"Glass of port, doctor?"

An expression of surprise would pass over the doctor's face.

"Cold day--ah, perhaps--" And he would blow his nose on his
purple-and-red bandanna.

Watching him drink his port, Winton would mark:

"We can get you at any time, can't we?"

And the doctor, sucking his lips, would answer:

"Never fear, my dear sir! Little Miss Gyp--old friend of mine. At her
service day and night. Never fear!"

A sensation of comfort would pass through Winton, which would last
quite twenty minutes after the crunching of the wheels and the mingled
perfumes of him had died away.

In these days, his greatest friend was an old watch that had been his
father's before him; a gold repeater from Switzerland, with a chipped
dial-plate, and a case worn wondrous thin and smooth--a favourite of
Gyp's childhood. He would take it out about every quarter of an hour,
look at its face without discovering the time, finger it, all smooth and
warm from contact with his body, and put it back. Then he would listen.
There was nothing whatever to listen to, but he could not help it. Apart
from this, his chief distraction was to take a foil and make passes at
a leather cushion, set up on the top of a low bookshelf. In these
occupations, varied by constant visits to the room next the nursery,
where--to save her the stairs--Gyp was now established, and by
excursions to the conservatory to see if he could not find some new
flower to take her, he passed all his time, save when he was eating,
sleeping, or smoking cigars, which he had constantly to be relighting.

By Gyp's request, they kept from him knowledge of when her pains began.
After that first bout was over and she was lying half asleep in the old
nursery, he happened to go up. The nurse--a bonny creature--one of
those free, independent, economic agents that now abound--met him in the
sitting-room. Accustomed to the "fuss and botheration of men" at
such times, she was prepared to deliver him a little lecture. But, in
approaching, she became affected by the look on his face, and, realizing
somehow that she was in the presence of one whose self-control was
proof, she simply whispered:

"It's beginning; but don't be anxious--she's not suffering just now.
We shall send for the doctor soon. She's very plucky"; and with an
unaccustomed sensation of respect and pity she repeated: "Don't be
anxious, sir."

"If she wants to see me at any time, I shall be in my study. Save her
all you can, nurse."

The nurse was left with a feeling of surprise at having used the word
"Sir"; she had not done such a thing since--since--! And, pensive, she
returned to the nursery, where Gyp said at once:

"Was that my father? I didn't want him to know."

The nurse answered mechanically:

"That's all right, my dear."

"How long do you think before--before it'll begin again, nurse? I'd like
to see him."

The nurse stroked her hair.

"Soon enough when it's all over and comfy. Men are always fidgety."

Gyp looked at her, and said quietly:

"Yes. You see, my mother died when I was born."

The nurse, watching those lips, still pale with pain, felt a queer pang.
She smoothed the bed-clothes and said:

"That's nothing--it often happens--that is, I mean,--you know it has no
connection whatever."

And seeing Gyp smile, she thought: 'Well, I am a fool.'

"If by any chance I don't get through, I want to be cremated; I want to
go back as quick as I can. I can't bear the thought of the other thing.
Will you remember, nurse? I can't tell my father that just now; it might
upset him. But promise me."

And the nurse thought: 'That can't be done without a will or something,
but I'd better promise. It's a morbid fancy, and yet she's not a morbid
subject, either.' And she said:

"Very well, my dear; only, you're not going to do anything of the sort.
That's flat."

Gyp smiled again, and there was silence, till she said:

"I'm awfully ashamed, wanting all this attention, and making people
miserable. I've read that Japanese women quietly go out somewhere by
themselves and sit on a gate."

The nurse, still busy with the bedclothes, murmured abstractedly:

"Yes, that's a very good way. But don't you fancy you're half the
trouble most of them are. You're very good, and you're going to get
on splendidly." And she thought: 'Odd! She's never once spoken of her
husband. I don't like it for this sort--too perfect, too sensitive; her
face touches you so!'

Gyp murmured again:

"I'd like to see my father, please; and rather quick."

The nurse, after one swift look, went out.

Gyp, who had clinched her hands under the bedclothes, fixed her eyes
on the window. November! Acorns and the leaves--the nice, damp, earthy
smell! Acorns all over the grass. She used to drive the old retriever
in harness on the lawn covered with acorns and the dead leaves, and the
wind still blowing them off the trees--in her brown velvet--that was a
ducky dress! Who was it had called her once "a wise little owl," in
that dress? And, suddenly, her heart sank. The pain was coming again.
Winton's voice from the door said:

"Well, my pet?"

"It was only to see how you are. I'm all right. What sort of a day is
it? You'll go riding, won't you? Give my love to the horses. Good-bye,
Dad; just for now."

Her forehead was wet to his lips.

Outside, in the passage, her smile, like something actual on the air,
preceded him--the smile that had just lasted out. But when he was back
in the study, he suffered--suffered! Why could he not have that pain to
bear instead?

The crunch of the brougham brought his ceaseless march over the carpet
to an end. He went out into the hall and looked into the doctor's
face--he had forgotten that this old fellow knew nothing of his special
reason for deadly fear. Then he turned back into his study. The wild
south wind brought wet drift-leaves whirling against the panes. It was
here that he had stood looking out into the dark, when Fiorsen came down
to ask for Gyp a year ago. Why had he not bundled the fellow out neck
and crop, and taken her away?--India, Japan--anywhere would have
done! She had not loved that fiddler, never really loved him.
Monstrous--monstrous! The full bitterness of having missed right action
swept over Winton, and he positively groaned aloud. He moved from the
window and went over to the bookcase; there in one row were the few
books he ever read, and he took one out. "Life of General Lee." He
put it back and took another, a novel of Whyte Melville's: "Good for
Nothing." Sad book--sad ending! The book dropped from his hand and fell
with a flump on the floor. In a sort of icy discovery, he had seen his
life as it would be if for a second time he had to bear such loss. She
must not--could not die! If she did--then, for him--! In old times they
buried a man with his horse and his dog, as if at the end of a good run.
There was always that! The extremity of this thought brought relief. He
sat down, and, for a long time, stayed staring into the fire in a sort
of coma. Then his feverish fears began again. Why the devil didn't they
come and tell him something, anything--rather than this silence, this
deadly solitude and waiting? What was that? The front door shutting.
Wheels? Had that hell-hound of an old doctor sneaked off? He started
up. There at the door was Markey, holding in his hand some cards. Winton
scanned them.

"Lady Summerhay; Mr. Bryan Summerhay. I said, 'Not at home,' sir."

Winton nodded.

"Well?"

"Nothing at present. You have had no lunch, sir."

"What time is it?"

"Four o'clock."

"Bring in my fur coat and the port, and make the fire up. I want any
news there is."

Markey nodded.

Odd to sit in a fur coat before a fire, and the day not cold! They said
you lived on after death. He had never been able to feel that SHE was
living on. SHE lived in Gyp. And now if Gyp--! Death--your own--no great
matter! But--for her! The wind was dropping with the darkness. He got up
and drew the curtains.

It was seven o'clock when the doctor came down into the hall, and stood
rubbing his freshly washed hands before opening the study door. Winton
was still sitting before the fire, motionless, shrunk into his fur coat.
He raised himself a little and looked round dully.

The doctor's face puckered, his eyelids drooped half-way across his
bulging eyes; it was his way of smiling. "Nicely," he said; "nicely--a
girl. No complications."

Winton's whole body seemed to swell, his lips opened, he raised his
hand. Then, the habit of a lifetime catching him by the throat, he
stayed motionless. At last he got up and said:

"Glass of port, doctor?"

The doctor spying at him above the glass thought: 'This is "the
fifty-two." Give me "the sixty-eight"--more body.'

After a time, Winton went upstairs. Waiting in the outer room he had a
return of his cold dread. "Perfectly successful--the patient died from
exhaustion!" The tiny squawking noise that fell on his ears entirely
failed to reassure him. He cared nothing for that new being. Suddenly he
found Betty just behind him, her bosom heaving horribly.

"What is it, woman? Don't!"

She had leaned against his shoulder, appearing to have lost all sense of
right and wrong, and, out of her sobbing, gurgled:

"She looks so lovely--oh dear, she looks so lovely!"

Pushing her abruptly from him, Winton peered in through the just-opened
door. Gyp was lying extremely still, and very white; her eyes, very
large, very dark, were fastened on her baby. Her face wore a kind of
wonder. She did not see Winton, who stood stone-quiet, watching, while
the nurse moved about her business behind a screen. This was the first
time in his life that he had seen a mother with her just-born baby. That
look on her face--gone right away somewhere, right away--amazed him. She
had never seemed to like children, had said she did not want a child.
She turned her head and saw him. He went in. She made a faint motion
toward the baby, and her eyes smiled. Winton looked at that swaddled
speckled mite; then, bending down, he kissed her hand and tiptoed away.

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.