Beyond

“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.

Summerhay had seated himself on the foot-rail of the bed, rounding his arms, sinking his neck, blowing out his cheeks to simulate an egg; then, with an unexpectedness that even little Gyp could always see through, he rolled backward on to the bed.

And she, simulating “all the king’s horses,” tried in vain to put him up again. This immemorial game, watched by Gyp a hundred times, had to-day a special preciousness. If he could be so ridiculously young, what became of her doubts? Looking at his face pulled this way and that, lazily imperturbable under the pommelings of those small fingers, she thought: ‘And that girl dared to say he was WASTING HIMSELF!’ For in the night conviction had come to her that those words were written by the tall girl with the white skin, the girl of the theatre – the Diana of his last night’s dinner. Humpty-Dumpty was up on the bed-rail again for the finale; all the king’s horses were clasped to him, making the egg more round, and over they both went with shrieks and gurgles. What a boy he was! She would not – no, she would not brood and spoil her day with him.

But that afternoon, at the end of a long gallop on the downs, she turned her head away and said suddenly:

“Is she a huntress?”

“Who?”

“Your cousin – Diana.”