And, since Gyp's natural sense
of the ludicrous was extreme, she and her aunt could rarely talk about
anything without going into fits of laughter.
Winton had his first really bad attack of gout when Gyp was twenty-two,
and, terrified lest he might not be able to sit a horse in time for the
opening meets, he went off with her and Markey to Wiesbaden. They had
rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse, overlooking the gardens, where leaves
were already turning, that gorgeous September. The cure was long and
obstinate, and Winton badly bored. Gyp fared much better. Attended
by the silent Markey, she rode daily on the Neroberg, chafing at
regulations which reduced her to specified tracks in that majestic
wood where the beeches glowed. Once or even twice a day she went to the
concerts in the Kurhaus, either with her father or alone.
The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most
violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift
sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and
moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very
broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those
little whiskers seemed to Gyp awful--indeed, he seemed rather awful
altogether--but his playing stirred and swept her in the most uncanny
way. He had evidently remarkable technique; and the emotion, the intense
wayward feeling of his playing was chiselled by that technique, as if
a flame were being frozen in its swaying.
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