To wake, and hear the birds at early practise, and feel that winter is over--is there any pleasanter moment?
That first morning in her new house, Gyp woke with the sparrow, or whatever the bird which utters the first cheeps and twitters, soon eclipsed by so much that is more important in bird-song. It seemed as if all the feathered creatures in London must be assembled in her garden; and the old verse came into her head:
"All dear Nature's children sweet Lie at bride and bridegroom's feet, Blessing their sense.
Not a creature of the air, Bird melodious or bird fair, Be absent hence!"She turned and looked at her husband. He lay with his head snoozled down into the pillow, so that she could only see his thick, rumpled hair. And a shiver went through her, exactly as if a strange man were lying there. Did he really belong to her, and she to him--for good? And was this their house--together? It all seemed somehow different, more serious and troubling, in this strange bed, of this strange room, that was to be so permanent.
Careful not to wake him, she slipped out and stood between the curtains and the window. Light was all in confusion yet; away low down behind the trees, the rose of dawn still clung. One might almost have been in the country, but for the faint, rumorous noises of the town beginning to wake, and that film of ground-mist which veils the feet of London mornings. She thought: "I am mistress in this house, have to direct it all--see to everything! And my pups!
Oh, what do they eat?"
That was the first of many hours of anxiety, for she was very conscientious. Her fastidiousness desired perfection, but her sensitiveness refused to demand it of others--especially servants.
Why should she harry them?
Fiorsen had not the faintest notion of regularity. She found that he could not even begin to appreciate her struggles in housekeeping. And she was much too proud to ask his help, or perhaps too wise, since he was obviously unfit to give it. To live like the birds of the air was his motto. Gyp would have liked nothing better; but, for that, one must not have a house with three servants, several meals, two puppy-dogs, and no great experience of how to deal with any of them.
She spoke of her difficulties to no one and suffered the more.
With Betty--who, bone-conservative, admitted Fiorsen as hardly as she had once admitted Winton--she had to be very careful. But her great trouble was with her father. Though she longed to see him, she literally dreaded their meeting. He first came--as he had been wont to come when she was a tiny girl--at the hour when he thought the fellow to whom she now belonged would most likely be out. Her heart beat, when she saw him under the trellis. She opened the door herself, and hung about him so that his shrewd eyes should not see her face. And she began at once to talk of the puppies, whom she had named Don and Doff. They were perfect darlings; nothing was safe from them; her slippers were completely done for; they had already got into her china-cabinet and gone to sleep there! He must come and see all over.
Hooking her arm into his, and talking all the time, she took him up-stairs and down, and out into the garden, to the studio, or music-room, at the end, which had an entrance to itself on to a back lane. This room had been the great attraction. Fiorsen could practice there in peace. Winton went along with her very quietly, making a shrewd comment now and then. At the far end of the garden, looking over the wall, down into that narrow passage which lay between it and the back of another garden he squeezed her arm suddenly and said:
"Well, Gyp, what sort of a time?"
The question had come at last.
"Oh, rather lovely--in some ways." But she did not look at him, nor he at her. "See, Dad! The cats have made quite a path there!"Winton bit his lips and turned from the wall. The thought of that fellow was bitter within him. She meant to tell him nothing, meant to keep up that lighthearted look--which didn't deceive him a bit!
"Look at my crocuses! It's really spring today!"It was. Even a bee or two had come. The tiny leaves had a transparent look, too thin as yet to keep the sunlight from passing through them. The purple, delicate-veined crocuses, with little flames of orange blowing from their centres, seemed to hold the light as in cups. A wind, without harshness, swung the boughs; a dry leaf or two still rustled round here and there. And on the grass, and in the blue sky, and on the almond-blossom was the first spring brilliance. Gyp clasped her hands behind her head.
"Lovely--to feel the spring!"
And Winton thought: 'She's changed!' She had softened, quickened--more depth of colour in her, more gravity, more sway in her body, more sweetness in her smile. But--was she happy?
A voice said:
"Ah, what a pleasure!"
The fellow had slunk up like the great cat he was. And it seemed to Winton that Gyp had winced.
"Dad thinks we ought to have dark curtains in the music-room, Gustav."Fiorsen made a bow.
"Yes, yes--like a London club."
Winton, watching, was sure of supplication in her face. And, forcing a smile, he said:
"You seem very snug here. Glad to see you again. Gyp looks splendid."Another of those bows he so detested! Mountebank! Never, never would he be able to stand the fellow! But he must not, would not, show it. And, as soon as he decently could, he went, taking his lonely way back through this region, of which his knowledge was almost limited to Lord's Cricket-ground, with a sense of doubt and desolation, an irritation more than ever mixed with the resolve to be always at hand if the child wanted him.
