Never! Never would she show him or that girl that they could hurt her! Never! They were safe from any scene she would make--safe in their nest! And blindly, across the frosty grass, through the unlighted drawing-room, she went upstairs to her room, locked the door, and sat down before the fire. Pride raged within her. She stuffed her handkerchief between her teeth and lips; she did it unconsciously. Her eyes felt scorched from the fire-flames, but she did not trouble to hold her hand before them.
Suddenly she thought: 'Suppose I HAD loved him?' and laughed. The handkerchief dropped to her lap, and she looked at it with wonder--it was blood-stained. She drew back in the chair, away from the scorching of the fire, and sat quite still, a smile on her lips.
That girl's eyes, like a little adoring dog's--that girl, who had fawned on her so! She had got her "distinguished man"! She sprang up and looked at herself in the glass; shuddered, turned her back on herself, and sat down again. In her own house! Why not here--in this room? Why not before her eyes? Not yet a year married!
It was almost funny--almost funny! And she had her first calm thought: 'I am free.'
But it did not seem to mean anything, had no value to a spirit so bitterly stricken in its pride. She moved her chair closer to the fire again. Why had she not tapped on the window? To have seen that girl's face ashy with fright! To have seen him--caught--caught in the room she had made beautiful for him, the room where she had played for him so many hours, the room that was part of the house that she paid for! How long had they used it for their meetings--sneaking in by that door from the back lane? Perhaps even before she went away--to bear his child! And there began in her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense of outrage--a spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb, unconscious--to decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have slipped away from her heart, and be a thing almost abhorrent.
She huddled nearer the fire, feeling cold and physically sick. And suddenly the thought came to her: 'If I don't let the servants know I'm here, they might go out and see what I saw!' Had she shut the drawing-room window when she returned so blindly? Perhaps already--!
In a fever, she rang the bell, and unlocked the door. The maid came up.
"Please shut the drawing-room, window, Ellen; and tell Betty I'm afraid I got a little chill travelling. I'm going to bed. Ask her if she can manage with baby." And she looked straight into the girl's face. It wore an expression of concern, even of commiseration, but not that fluttered look which must have been there if she had known.
"Yes, m'm; I'll get you a hot-water bottle, m'm. Would you like a hot bath and a cup of hot tea at once?"Gyp nodded. Anything--anything! And when the maid was gone, she thought mechanically: 'A cup of hot tea! How quaint! What should it be but hot?'
The maid came back with the tea; she was an affectionate girl, full of that admiring love servants and dogs always felt for Gyp, imbued, too, with the instinctive partisanship which stores itself one way or the other in the hearts of those who live in houses where the atmosphere lacks unity. To her mind, the mistress was much too good for him--a foreigner--and such 'abits! Manners--he hadn't any! And no good would come of it. Not if you took her opinion!
"And I've turned the water in, m'm. Will you have a little mustard in it?"Again Gyp nodded. And the girl, going downstairs for the mustard, told cook there was "that about the mistress that makes you quite pathetic." The cook, who was fingering her concertina, for which she had a passion, answered:
"She 'ides up her feelin's, same as they all does. Thank 'eaven she haven't got that drawl, though, that 'er old aunt 'as--always makes me feel to want to say, 'Buck up, old dear, you ain't 'alf so precious as all that!'"And when the maid Ellen had taken the mustard and gone, she drew out her concertina to its full length and, with cautionary softness, began to practise "Home, Sweet Home!"To Gyp, lying in her hot bath, those muffled strains just mounted, not quite as a tune, rather as some far-away humming of large flies. The heat of the water, the pungent smell of the mustard, and that droning hum slowly soothed and drowsed away the vehemence of feeling. She looked at her body, silver-white in the yellowish water, with a dreamy sensation. Some day she, too, would love!
Strange feeling she had never had before! Strange, indeed, that it should come at such a moment, breaking through the old instinctive shrinking. Yes; some day love would come to her. There floated before her brain the adoring look on Daphne Wing's face, the shiver that had passed along her arm, and pitifulness crept into her heart--a half-bitter, half-admiring pitifulness. Why should she grudge--she who did not love? The sounds, like the humming of large flies, grew deeper, more vibrating. It was the cook, in her passion swelling out her music on the phrase, "Be it ne-e-ver so humble, There's no-o place like home!"XIII
That night, Gyp slept peacefully, as though nothing had happened, as though there were no future at all before her. She woke into misery. Her pride would never let her show the world what she had discovered, would force her to keep an unmoved face and live an unmoved life. But the struggle between mother-instinct and revolt was still going on within her. She was really afraid to see her baby, and she sent word to Betty that she thought it would be safer if she kept quite quiet till the afternoon.
