第82章

"Say? What can anyone say? From your point of view, or his, it's rotten, of course. But in her position, anything's rotten."At that encouraging word, the flood-gates gave way in Lady Summerhay, and she poured forth a stream of words.

"Oh, my dear, can't you pull up? I've seen so many of these affairs go wrong. It really is not for nothing that law and conventions are what they are--believe me! Really, Bryan, experience does show that the pressure's too great. It's only once in a way--very exceptional people, very exceptional circumstances.

You mayn't think now it'll hamper you, but you'll find it will--most fearfully. It's not as if you were a writer or an artist, who can take his work where he likes and live in a desert if he wants.

You've got to do yours in London, your whole career is bound up with society. Do think, before you go butting up against it! It's all very well to say it's no affair of anyone's, but you'll find it is, Bryan. And then, can you--can you possibly make her happy in the long-run?"She stopped at the expression on his face. It was as if he were saying: "I have left your world. Talk to your fellows; all this is nothing to me.""Look here, Mother: you don't seem to understand. I'm devoted--devoted so that there's nothing else for me.""How long will that last, Bryan? You mean bewitched."Summerhay said, with passion:

"I don't. I mean what I said. Good-night!" And he went to the door.

"Won't you stay to dinner, dear?"

But he was gone, and the full of vexation, anxiety, and wretchedness came on Lady Summerhay. It was too hard! She went down to her lonely dinner, desolate and sore. And to the book on dreams, opened beside her plate, she turned eyes that took in nothing.

Summerhay went straight home. The lamps were brightening in the early-autumn dusk, and a draughty, ruffling wind flicked a yellow leaf here and there from off the plane trees. It was just the moment when evening blue comes into the colouring of the town--that hour of fusion when day's hard and staring shapes are softening, growing dark, mysterious, and all that broods behind the lives of men and trees and houses comes down on the wings of illusion to repossess the world--the hour when any poetry in a man wells up.

But Summerhay still heard his mother's, "Oh, Bryan!" and, for the first time, knew the feeling that his hand was against everyone's.

There was a difference already, or so it seemed to him, in the expression of each passer-by. Nothing any more would be a matter of course; and he was of a class to whom everything has always been a matter of course. Perhaps he did not realize this clearly yet;but he had begun to take what the nurses call "notice," as do those only who are forced on to the defensive against society.

Putting his latch-key into the lock, he recalled the sensation with which, that afternoon, he had opened to Gyp for the first time--half furtive, half defiant. It would be all defiance now. This was the end of the old order! And, lighting a fire in his sitting-room, he began pulling out drawers, sorting and destroying. He worked for hours, burning, making lists, packing papers and photographs. Finishing at last, he drank a stiff whisky and soda, and sat down to smoke. Now that the room was quiet, Gyp seemed to fill it again with her presence. Closing his eyes, he could see her there by the hearth, just as she stood before they left, turning her face up to him, murmuring: "You won't stop loving me, now you're so sure I love you?" Stop loving her! The more she loved him, the more he would love her. And he said aloud: "By God!

I won't!" At that remark, so vehement for the time of night, the old Scotch terrier, Ossian, came from his corner and shoved his long black nose into his master's hand.

"Come along up, Ossy! Good dog, Oss!" And, comforted by the warmth of that black body beside him in the chair, Summerhay fell asleep in front of the fire smouldering with blackened fragments of his past.

XI

Though Gyp had never seemed to look round she had been quite conscious of Summerhay still standing where they had parted, watching her into the house in Bury Street. The strength of her own feeling surprised her, as a bather in the sea is surprised, finding her feet will not touch bottom, that she is carried away helpless--only, these were the waters of ecstasy.

For the second night running, she hardly slept, hearing the clocks of St. James's strike, and Big Ben boom, hour after hour. At breakfast, she told her father of Fiorsen's reappearance. He received the news with a frown and a shrewd glance.

"Well, Gyp?"

"I told him."

His feelings, at that moment, were perhaps as mixed as they had ever been--curiosity, parental disapproval, to which he knew he was not entitled, admiration of her pluck in letting that fellow know, fears for the consequences of this confession, and, more than all, his profound disturbance at knowing her at last launched into the deep waters of love. It was the least of these feelings that found expression.

"How did he take it?"