Throwing on a cloak she walked out into the moonlit garden, and went slowly down the whitened road toward the station. A magical, dewless night! The moonbeams had stolen in to the beech clump, frosting the boles and boughs, casting a fine ghostly grey over the shadow-patterned beech-mast. Gyp took the short cut through it.
Not a leaf moved in there, no living thing stirred; so might an earth be where only trees inhabited! She thought: 'I'll bring him back through here.' And she waited at the far corner of the clump, where he must pass, some little distance from the station. She never gave people unnecessary food for gossip--any slighting of her irritated him, she was careful to spare him that. The train came in; a car went whizzing by, a cyclist, then the first foot-passenger, at a great pace, breaking into a run. She saw that it was he, and, calling out his name, ran back into the shadow of the trees. He stopped dead in his tracks, then came rushing after her.
That pursuit did not last long, and, in his arms, Gyp said:
"If you aren't too hungry, darling, let's stay here a little--it's so wonderful!"They sat down on a great root, and leaning against him, looking up at the dark branches, she said:
"Have you had a hard day?"
"Yes; got hung up by a late consultation; and old Leyton asked me to come and dine."Gyp felt a sensation as when feet happen on ground that gives a little.
"The Leytons--that's Eaton Square, isn't it? A big dinner?""No. Only the old people, and Bertie and Diana.""Diana? That's the girl we met coming out of the theatre, isn't it?""When? Oh--ah--what a memory, Gyp!"
"Yes; it's good for things that interest me.""Why? Did she interest you?"
Gyp turned and looked into his face.
"Yes. Is she clever?"
"H'm! I suppose you might call her so."
"And in love with you?"
"Great Scott! Why?"
"Is it very unlikely? I am."
He began kissing her lips and hair. And, closing her eyes, Gyp thought: 'If only that's not because he doesn't want to answer!'
Then, for some minutes, they were silent as the moonlit beech clump.
"Answer me truly, Bryan. Do you never--never--feel as if you were wasting yourself on me?"She was certain of a quiver in his grasp; but his face was open and serene, his voice as usual when he was teasing.
"Well, hardly ever! Aren't you funny, dear?"
"Promise me faithfully to let me know when you've had enough of me.
Promise!"
"All right! But don't look for fulfilment in this life.""I'm not so sure."
"I am."
Gyp put up her lips, and tried to drown for ever in a kiss the memory of those words: "But I say--you ARE wasting yourself."IV
Summerhay, coming down next morning, went straight to his bureau;his mind was not at ease. "Wasting yourself!" What had he done with that letter of Diana's? He remembered Gyp's coming in just as he finished reading it. Searching the pigeonholes and drawers, moving everything that lay about, he twitched the bust--and the letter lay disclosed. He took it up with a sigh of relief:
"DEAR BRYAN, "But I say--you ARE wasting yourself. Why, my dear, of course!
'Il faut se faire valoir!' You have only one foot to put forward;the other is planted in I don't know what mysterious hole. One foot in the grave--at thirty! Really, Bryan! Pull it out.
There's such a lot waiting for you. It's no good your being hoity-toity, and telling me to mind my business. I'm speaking for everyone who knows you. We all feel the blight on the rose.
Besides, you always were my favourite cousin, ever since I was five and you a horrid little bully of ten; and I simply hate to think of you going slowly down instead of quickly up. Oh! I know 'D--n the world!' But--are you? I should have thought it was 'd--ning' you!
Enough! When are you coming to see us? I've read that book. The man seems to think love is nothing but passion, and passion always fatal. I wonder! Perhaps you know.
"Don't be angry with me for being such a grandmother.
"Au revoir.
"Your very good cousin, "DIANA LEYTON."
He crammed the letter into his pocket, and sat there, appalled. It must have lain two days under that bust! Had Gyp seen it? He looked at the bronze face; and the philosopher looked back from the hollows of his eyes, as if to say: "What do you know of the human heart, my boy--your own, your mistress's, that girl's, or anyone's?
A pretty dance the heart will lead you yet! Put it in a packet, tie it round with string, seal it up, drop it in a drawer, lock the drawer! And to-morrow it will be out and skipping on its wrappings. Ho! Ho!" And Summerhay thought: 'You old goat. You never had one!' In the room above, Gyp would still be standing as he had left her, putting the last touch to her hair--a man would be a scoundrel who, even in thought, could-- "Hallo!" the eyes of the bust seemed to say. "Pity! That's queer, isn't it? Why not pity that red-haired girl, with the skin so white that it burns you, and the eyes so brown that they burn you--don't they?" Old Satan! Gyp had his heart; no one in the world would ever take it from her!
And in the chair where she had sat last night conjuring up memories, he too now conjured. How he had loved her, did love her!
She would always be what she was and had been to him. And the sage's mouth seemed to twist before him with the words: "Quite so, my dear! But the heart's very funny--very--capacious!" A tiny sound made him turn.
Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.
"Hallo!" he said.
"Hallo, Baryn!" She came flying to him, and he caught her up so that she stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed out hair.
"Well, Gipsy! Who's getting a tall girl?"
"I'm goin' to ride."
"Ho, ho!"
"Baryn, let's do Humpty-Dumpty!"
"All right; come on!" He rose and carried her upstairs.
Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy women for a quarter of an hour after they are "quite ready," and at little Gyp's shout of, "Humpty!" she suspended her needle to watch the sacred rite.
