For their Odyssey they had gone to Spain--that brown un-European land of "lyrio" flowers, and cries of "Agua!" in the streets, where the men seem cleft to the waist when they are astride of horses, under their wide black hats, and the black-clothed women with wonderful eyes still look as if they missed their Eastern veils.
It had been a month of gaiety and glamour, last days of September and early days of October, a revel of enchanted wanderings in the streets of Seville, of embraces and laughter, of strange scents and stranger sounds, of orange light and velvety shadows, and all the warmth and deep gravity of Spain. The Alcazar, the cigarette-girls, the Gipsy dancers of Triana, the old brown ruins to which they rode, the streets, and the square with its grave talkers sitting on benches in the sun, the water-sellers and the melons;the mules, and the dark ragged man out of a dream, picking up the ends of cigarettes, the wine of Malaga, burnt fire and honey!
Seville had bewitched them--they got no further. They had come back across the brown uplands of Castile to Madrid and Goya and Velasquez, till it was time for Paris, before the law-term began.
There, in a queer little French hotel--all bedrooms, and a lift, coffee and carved beds, wood fires, and a chambermaid who seemed all France, and down below a restaurant, to which such as knew about eating came, with waiters who looked like monks, both fat and lean--they had spent a week. Three special memories of that week started up in the moonlight before Gyp's eyes: The long drive in the Bois among the falling leaves of trees flashing with colour in the crisp air under a brilliant sky. A moment in the Louvre before the Leonardo "Bacchus," when--his "restored" pink skin forgotten--all the world seemed to drop away while she listened, with the listening figure before her, to some mysterious music of growing flowers and secret life. And that last most disconcerting memory, of the night before they returned. They were having supper after the theatre in their restaurant, when, in a mirror she saw three people come in and take seats at a table a little way behind--Fiorsen, Rosek, and Daphne Wing! How she managed to show no sign she never knew! While they were ordering, she was safe, for Rosek was a gourmet, and the girl would certainly be hungry; but after that, she knew that nothing could save her being seen--Rosek would mark down every woman in the room! Should she pretend to feel faint and slip out into the hotel? Or let Bryan know? Or sit there laughing and talking, eating and drinking, as if nothing were behind her?
Her own face in the mirror had a flush, and her eyes were bright.
When they saw her, they would see that she was happy, safe in her love. Her foot sought Summerhay's beneath the table. How splendid and brown and fit he looked, compared with those two pale, towny creatures! And he was gazing at her as though just discovering her beauty. How could she ever--that man with his little beard and his white face and those eyes--how could she ever! Ugh! And then, in the mirror, she saw Rosek's dark-circled eyes fasten on her and betray their recognition by a sudden gleam, saw his lips compressed, and a faint red come up in his cheeks. What would he do? The girl's back was turned--her perfect back--and she was eating. And Fiorsen was staring straight before him in that moody way she knew so well. All depended on that deadly little man, who had once kissed her throat. A sick feeling seized on Gyp. If her lover knew that within five yards of him were those two men! But she still smiled and talked, and touched his foot. Rosek had seen that she was conscious--was getting from it a kind of satisfaction.
She saw him lean over and whisper to the girl, and Daphne Wing turning to look, and her mouth opening for a smothered "Oh!" Gyp saw her give an uneasy glance at Fiorsen, and then begin again to eat. Surely she would want to get away before he saw. Yes; very soon she rose. What little airs of the world she had now--quite mistress of the situation! The wrap must be placed exactly on her shoulders; and how she walked, giving just one startled look back from the door. Gone! The ordeal over! And Gyp said:
"Let's go up, darling."
She felt as if they had both escaped a deadly peril--not from anything those two could do to him or her, but from the cruel ache and jealousy of the past, which the sight of that man would have brought him.
Women, for their age, are surely older than men--married women, at all events, than men who have not had that experience. And all through those first weeks of their life together, there was a kind of wise watchfulness in Gyp. He was only a boy in knowledge of life as she saw it, and though his character was so much more decided, active, and insistent than her own, she felt it lay with her to shape the course and avoid the shallows and sunken rocks.
The house they had seen together near the river, under the Berkshire downs, was still empty; and while it was being got ready, they lived at a London hotel. She had insisted that he should tell no one of their life together. If that must come, she wanted to be firmly settled in, with little Gyp and Betty and the horses, so that it should all be for him as much like respectable married life as possible. But, one day, in the first week after their return, while in her room, just back from a long day's shopping, a card was brought up to her: "Lady Summerhay." Her first impulse was to be "not at home"; her second, "I'd better face it. Bryan would wish me to see her!" When the page-boy was gone, she turned to the mirror and looked at herself doubtfully. She seemed to know exactly what that tall woman whom she had seen on the platform would think of her--too soft, not capable, not right for him!--not even if she were legally his wife. And touching her hair, laying a dab of scent on her eyebrows, she turned and went downstairs fluttering, but outwardly calm enough.