Beyond. Galsworthy John
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an angel, felt the firmness of her flesh, as though debating whether she were letting it deteriorate. He seemed really to have missed “his little friend,” to be glad at seeing her again; and Gyp, who never could withstand appreciation, smiled at him. More people came. She saw Rosek talking to her husband, and the young alabaster girl standing silent, her lips still a little parted, gazing up at Fiorsen. A perfect figure, though rather short; a dovelike face, whose exquisitely shaped, just-opened lips seemed to be demanding sugar-plums. She could not be more than nineteen. Who was she?
A voice said almost in her ear:
“How do you do, Mrs. Fiorsen? I am fortunate to see you again at last.”
She was obliged to turn. If Gustav had given her away, one would never know it from this velvet-masked creature, with his suave watchfulness and ready composure, who talked away so smoothly. What was it that she so disliked in him? Gyp had acute instincts, the natural intelligence deep in certain natures not over intellectual, but whose “feelers” are too delicate to be deceived. And, for something to say, she asked:
“Who is the girl you were talking to, Count Rosek? Her face is so lovely.”
He smiled, exactly the smile she had so disliked at Wiesbaden; following his glance, she saw her husband talking to the girl, whose lips at that moment seemed more than ever to ask for sugar-plums.
“A young dancer, Daphne Wing – she will make a name. A dove flying! So you admire her, Madame Gyp?”
Gyp said, smiling:
“She’s very pretty – I can imagine her dancing beautifully.”
“Will you come one day and see her? She has still to make her debut.”
Gyp answered:
“Thank you. I don’t know. I love dancing, of course.”
“Good! I will arrange it.”
And Gyp thought: “No, no! I don’t want to have anything to do with you! Why do I not speak the truth? Why didn’t I say I hate dancing?”
Just then a bell sounded; people began hurrying away. The girl came up to Rosek.
“Miss Daphne Wing – Mrs. Fiorsen.”
Gyp put out her hand with a smile – this girl was certainly a picture. Miss Daphne Wing smiled, too, and said, with the intonation of those who have been carefully corrected of an accent:
“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, how beautifully your husband plays – doesn’t he?”
It was not merely the careful speech but something lacking when the perfect mouth moved – spirit, sensibility, who could say? And Gyp felt sorry, as at blight on a perfect flower. With a friendly nod, she turned away to Fiorsen, who was waiting to go up on to the platform. Was it at her or at the girl he had been looking? She smiled at him and slid away. In the corridor, Rosek, in attendance, said:
“Why not this evening? Come with Gustav to my rooms. She shall dance to us, and we will all have supper. She admires you, Madame Gyp. She will love to dance for you.”
Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say: “I don’t want to come. I don’t like you!” But all she could manage was:
“Thank you. I – I will ask Gustav.”
Once in her seat again, she rubbed the cheek that his breath had touched. A girl was singing now – one of those faces that Gyp always admired, reddish-gold hair, blue eyes – the very antithesis of herself – and the song was “The Bens of Jura,” that strange outpouring from a heart broken by love:
“And my heart reft of its own sun – ”
Tears rose in her eyes, and the shiver of some very deep response passed through her. What was it Dad had said: “Love catches you, and you’re gone!”
She, who was the result of love like that, did not want to love!
The girl finished singing. There was little applause. Yet she had sung beautifully; and what more wonderful song in the world? Was it too tragic, too painful, too strange – not “pretty” enough? Gyp felt sorry for her. Her head ached now. She would so have liked to slip away when it was all over. But she had not the needful rudeness. She would have to go through with this evening at Rosek’s and be gay. And why not? Why this shadow over everything? But it was no new sensation, that of having entered by her own free will on a life which, for all effort, would not give her a feeling of anchorage or home. Of her own accord she had stepped into the cage!
On the way to Rosek’s rooms, she disguised from Fiorsen her headache and depression. He was in one of his boy-out-of-school moods, elated by applause, mimicking her old master, the idolatries of his worshippers, Rosek, the girl dancer’s upturned expectant lips. And he slipped his arm round Gyp in the cab, crushing her against him and sniffing at her cheek as if she had been a flower.
Rosek had the first floor of an old-time mansion in Russell Square. The smell of incense or some kindred perfume was at once about one; and, on the walls of the dark hall, electric light burned, in jars of alabaster picked up in the East. The whole place was in fact a sanctum of the collector’s spirit. Its owner had a passion for black – the walls, divans, picture-frames, even some of the tilings were black, with glimmerings of gold, ivory, and moonlight. On a round black table there stood a golden bowl filled with moonlight-coloured velvety “palm” and “honesty”; from a black wall gleamed out the ivory mask of a faun’s face; from a dark niche the little silver figure of a dancing girl. It was beautiful, but deathly. And Gyp, though excited always by anything new, keenly alive to every sort of beauty, felt a longing for air and sunlight. It was a relief to get close to one of the black-curtained windows, and see the westering sun shower warmth and light on the trees of the Square gardens. She was introduced to a Mr. and Mrs. Gallant, a dark-faced, cynical-looking man with clever, malicious eyes, and one of those large cornucopias of women with avid blue stares. The little dancer was not there. She had “gone to put on nothing,” Rosek informed them.
He took Gyp the round of his treasures, scarabs, Rops drawings, death-masks, Chinese pictures, and queer old flutes, with an air of displaying them for the first time to one who could truly appreciate. And she kept thinking of that saying, “Une technique merveilleuse.” Her instinct apprehended the refined bone-viciousness of this place, where nothing, save perhaps taste, would be sacred. It was her first glimpse into that gilt-edged bohemia, whence the generosities, the elans, the struggles of the true bohemia are as rigidly excluded as from the spheres where bishops moved. But she talked and smiled; and no one could have told that her nerves were crisping as if at contact with a corpse. While showing her those alabaster jars, her host had laid his hand softly on her wrist, and in taking it away, he let his fingers, with a touch softer than a kitten’s paw, ripple over the skin, then put them to his lips. Ah, there it was – the – the TECHNIQUE! A desperate desire to laugh seized her. And he saw it – oh, yes, he saw it! He gave her one look, passed that same hand over his smooth face, and – behold! – it showed as before, unmortified, unconscious. A deadly little man!
When they returned to the salon, as it was called, Miss Daphne Wing in a black kimono, whence her face and arms emerged more like alabaster than ever, was sitting on a divan beside Fiorsen. She rose at once and came across to Gyp.
“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen” – why did everything she said begin with “Oh” – “isn’t this room lovely? It’s perfect for dancing. I only brought cream, and flame-colour; they go so beautifully with black.”
She threw back her kimono for Gyp to inspect her dress – a girdled cream-coloured shift, which made her ivory arms and neck seem more than ever dazzling; and her mouth opened, as if for a sugar-plum of praise. Then, lowering her voice, she murmured:
“Do you know, I’m rather afraid of Count Rosek.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know; he’s so critical, and smooth, and he comes up so quietly. I do think your husband plays wonderfully. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, you are beautiful, aren’t you?” Gyp laughed. “What would you like me to dance first? A waltz of Chopin’s?”
“Yes; I love