第48章

"No--of course! You ought not to have helped him at all. I can't bear--" He bowed, and she stopped, ashamed. "How much does he owe altogether?""About thirteen hundred pounds. It isn't much, of course. But there is something else--""Worse?"

Rosek nodded.

"I am afraid to tell you; you will think again perhaps that I am trying to make capital out of it. I can read your thoughts, you see. I cannot afford that you should think that, this time."Gyp made a little movement as though putting away his words.

"No; tell me, please."

Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

"There is a man called Wagge, an undertaker--the father of someone you know--""Daphne Wing?"

"Yes. A child is coming. They have made her tell. It means the cancelling of her engagements, of course--and other things."Gyp uttered a little laugh; then she said slowly:

"Can you tell me, please, what this Mr.--Wagge can do?"Again Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

"He is rabid--a rabid man of his class is dangerous. A lot of money will be wanted, I should think--some blood, perhaps."He moved swiftly to her, and said very low:

"Gyp, it is a year since I told you of this. You did not believe me then. I told you, too, that I loved you. I love you more, now, a hundred times! Don't move! I am going up to Gustav."He turned, and Gyp thought he was really going; but he stopped and came back past the line of the window. The expression of his face was quite changed, so hungry that, for a moment, she felt sorry for him. And that must have shown in her face, for he suddenly caught at her, and tried to kiss her lips; she wrenched back, and he could only reach her throat, but that he kissed furiously. Letting her go as suddenly, he bent his head and went out without a look.

Gyp stood wiping his kisses off her throat with the back of her hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be treated like this? What HAVE I done?" No answer came. And such rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her hands, and biting the lips he would have kissed. Then, going to her bureau, she took up her address book and looked for the name: Wing, 88, Frankland Street, Fulham.

Unhooking her little bag from off the back of the chair, she put her cheque-book into it. Then, taking care to make no sound, she passed into the hall, caught up her sunshade, and went out, closing the door without noise.

She walked quickly toward Baker Street. Her gardening-hat was right enough, but she had come out without gloves, and must go into the first shop and buy a pair. In the choosing of them, she forgot her emotions for a minute. Out in the street again, they came back as bitterly as ever. And the day was so beautiful--the sun bright, the sky blue, the clouds dazzling white; from the top of her 'bus she could see all its brilliance. There rose up before her the memory of the man who had kissed her arm at the first ball. And now--this! But, mixed with her rage, a sort of unwilling compassion and fellow feeling kept rising for that girl, that silly, sugar-plum girl, brought to such a pass by--her husband.

These feelings sustained her through that voyage to Fulham. She got down at the nearest corner, walked up a widish street of narrow grey houses till she came to number eighty-eight. On that newly scrubbed step, waiting for the door to open, she very nearly turned and fled. What exactly had she come to do?

The door was opened by a servant in an untidy frock. Mutton! The smell of mutton--there it was, just as the girl had said!

"Is Miss--Miss Daphne Wing at home?"

In that peculiar "I've given it up" voice of domestics in small households, the servant answered:

"Yes; Miss Disey's in. D'you want to see 'er? What nyme?"Gyp produced her card. The maid looked at it, at Gyp, and at two brown-painted doors, as much as to say, "Where will you have it?"Then, opening the first of them, she said:

"Tyke a seat, please; I'll fetch her."

Gyp went in. In the middle of what was clearly the dining-room, she tried to subdue the tremor of her limbs and a sense of nausea.

The table against which her hand rested was covered with red baize, no doubt to keep the stains of mutton from penetrating to the wood.

On the mahogany sideboard reposed a cruet-stand and a green dish of very red apples. A bamboo-framed talc screen painted with white and yellow marguerites stood before a fireplace filled with pampas-grass dyed red. The chairs were of red morocco, the curtains a brownish-red, the walls green, and on them hung a set of Landseer prints. The peculiar sensation which red and green in juxtaposition produce on the sensitive was added to Gyp's distress.

And, suddenly, her eyes lighted on a little deep-blue china bowl.

It stood on a black stand on the mantel-piece, with nothing in it.

To Gyp, in this room of red and green, with the smell of mutton creeping in, that bowl was like the crystallized whiff of another world. Daphne Wing--not Daisy Wagge--had surely put it there!

And, somehow, it touched her--emblem of stifled beauty, emblem of all that the girl had tried to pour out to her that August afternoon in her garden nearly a year ago. Thin Eastern china, good and really beautiful! A wonder they allowed it to pollute this room!

A sigh made her turn round. With her back against the door and a white, scared face, the girl was standing. Gyp thought: 'She has suffered horribly.' And, going impulsively up to her, she held out her hand.

Daphne Wing sighed out: "Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen!" and, bending over that hand, kissed it. Gyp saw that her new glove was wet. Then the girl relapsed, her feet a little forward, her head a little forward, her back against the door. Gyp, who knew why she stood thus, was swept again by those two emotions--rage against men, and fellow feeling for one about to go through what she herself had just endured.