第65章

I

Gyp was going up to town. She sat in the corner of a first-class carriage, alone. Her father had gone up by an earlier train, for the annual June dinner of his old regiment, and she had stayed to consult the doctor concerning "little Gyp," aged nearly nineteen months, to whom teeth were making life a burden.

Her eyes wandered from window to window, obeying the faint excitement within her. All the winter and spring, she had been at Mildenham, very quiet, riding much, and pursuing her music as best she could, seeing hardly anyone except her father; and this departure for a spell of London brought her the feeling that comes on an April day, when the sky is blue, with snow-white clouds, when in the fields the lambs are leaping, and the grass is warm for the first time, so that one would like to roll in it. At Widrington, a porter entered, carrying a kit-bag, an overcoat, and some golf-clubs; and round the door a little group, such as may be seen at any English wayside station, clustered, filling the air with their clean, slightly drawling voices. Gyp noted a tall woman whose blonde hair was going grey, a young girl with a fox-terrier on a lead, a young man with a Scotch terrier under his arm and his back to the carriage. The girl was kissing the Scotch terrier's head.

"Good-bye, old Ossy! Was he nice! Tumbo, keep DOWN! YOU'RE not going!""Good-bye, dear boy! Don't work too hard!"

The young man's answer was not audible, but it was followed by irrepressible gurgles and a smothered:

"Oh, Bryan, you ARE-- Good-bye, dear Ossy!" "Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" The young man who had got in, made another unintelligible joke in a rather high-pitched voice, which was somehow familiar, and again the gurgles broke forth. Then the train moved. Gyp caught a side view of him, waving his hat from the carriage window.

It was her acquaintance of the hunting-field--the "Mr. Bryn Summer'ay," as old Pettance called him, who had bought her horse last year. Seeing him pull down his overcoat, to bank up the old Scotch terrier against the jolting of the journey, she thought: 'Ilike men who think first of their dogs.' His round head, with curly hair, broad brow, and those clean-cut lips, gave her again the wonder: 'Where HAVE I seen someone like him?' He raised the window, and turned round.

"How would you like-- Oh, how d'you do! We met out hunting. You don't remember me, I expect.""Yes; perfectly. And you bought my horse last summer. How is he?""In great form. I forgot to ask what you called him; I've named him Hotspur--he'll never be steady at his fences. I remember how he pulled with you that day."They were silent, smiling, as people will in remembrance of a good run.

Then, looking at the dog, Gyp said softly:

"HE looks rather a darling. How old?"

"Twelve. Beastly when dogs get old!"

There was another little silence while he contemplated her steadily with his clear eyes.

"I came over to call once--with my mother; November the year before last. Somebody was ill.""Yes--I."

"Badly?"

Gyp shook her head.

"I heard you were married--" The little drawl in his voice had increased, as though covering the abruptness of that remark. Gyp looked up.

"Yes; but my little daughter and I live with my father again."What "came over" her--as they say--to be so frank, she could not have told.

He said simply:

"Ah! I've often thought it queer I've never seen you since. What a run that was!""Perfect! Was that your mother on the platform?""Yes--and my sister Edith. Extraordinary dead-alive place, Widrington; I expect Mildenham isn't much better?""It's very quiet, but I like it."

"By the way, I don't know your name now?"

"Fiorsen."

"Oh, yes! The violinist. Life's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?"Gyp did not answer that odd remark, did not quite know what to make of this audacious young man, whose hazel eyes and lazy smile were queerly lovable, but whose face in repose had such a broad gravity.

He took from his pocket a little red book.

"Do you know these? I always take them travelling. Finest things ever written, aren't they?"The book--Shakespeare's Sonnets--was open at that which begins:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove--"Gyp read on as far as the lines:

"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks But bears it out even to the edge of doom--"and looked out of the window. The train was passing through a country of fields and dykes, where the sun, far down in the west, shone almost level over wide, whitish-green space, and the spotted cattle browsed or stood by the ditches, lazily flicking their tufted tails. A shaft of sunlight flowed into the carriage, filled with dust motes; and, handing the little book back through that streak of radiance, she said softly:

"Yes; that's wonderful. Do you read much poetry?""More law, I'm afraid. But it is about the finest thing in the world, isn't it?""No; I think music."

"Are you a musician?"

"Only a little."

"You look as if you might be."

"What? A little?"

"No; I should think you had it badly."

"Thank you. And you haven't it at all?"

"I like opera."

"The hybrid form--and the lowest!"

"That's why it suits me. Don't you like it, though?""Yes; that's why I'm going up to London."

"Really? Are you a subscriber?"

"This season."

"So am I. Jolly--I shall see you."

Gyp smiled. It was so long since she had talked to a man of her own age, so long since she had seen a face that roused her curiosity and admiration, so long since she had been admired. The sun-shaft, shifted by a westward trend of the train, bathed her from the knees up; and its warmth increased her light-hearted sense of being in luck--above her fate, instead of under it.