Yet he was certainly working hard--perhaps harder than
ever. She would hear him, across the garden, going over and over a
passage, as if he never would be satisfied. But his playing seemed
to her to have lost its fire and sweep; to be stale, and as if
disillusioned. It was all as though he had said to himself: "What's the
use?" In his face, too, there was a change. She knew--she was certain
that he was drinking secretly. Was it his failure with her? Was it the
girl? Was it simply heredity from a hard-drinking ancestry?
Gyp never faced these questions. To face them would mean useless
discussion, useless admission that she could not love him, useless
asseveration from him about the girl, which she would not believe,
useless denials of all sorts. Hopeless!
He was very irritable, and seemed especially to resent her music
lessons, alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt
that he despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was
often impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct
with the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to
the nursery, much to Betty's alarm, and take up the baby; be charming
with it for about ten minutes, then suddenly dump it back into its
cradle, stare at it gloomily or utter a laugh, and go out. Sometimes,
he would come up when Gyp was there, and after watching her a little in
silence, almost drag her away.
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