Paths of Judgement Part 22

CHAPTER V

The spring and summer were over and autumn already growing bleak when Geoffrey one afternoon drove to Chelsea. He drove there often, on his free Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days, since the Wynnes, after their round of country visits, had returned to London, usually finding Felicia alone, for Maurice was really working at a portrait, and Mr. Merrick spent most of his time at his club, watching life from its windows with an ironic eye. At tea-time Maurice would appear, tired yet merry, from the studio; friends came in, the quiet s.h.i.+ning hour broke into sparkling facets; but the hours alone with her were personal possessions to Geoffrey, jewels that strung themselves in a rosary through his weeks and months. They talked, or Felicia played to him, declaring that his taste for music grew; they often sat silent, she sewing and he watching her. The thickets had been th.o.r.n.y of late, he had discovered that a curtailed and uncertain income could make life curiously nagging and difficult, but from these brambles it was comforting to look at the atoning cause of them. The hours with her so justified his first groping simile of the sunny opening among trees, gra.s.s, clouds and sky. His confidence in her happiness irradiated his own problems.

This afternoon the confidence received a little shock. He came late, after tea-time, and walking before the maid into the drawing-room had time, before Felicia saw him, to grasp the disturbing significance of her att.i.tude. She was sitting alone near the window, her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands. For a moment he thought that she was crying, and, like a pang, the memory of sunlight among young birches, snowdrops, a distant bird-song, went through him.

Felicia, however, was not crying; and as she looked round at him, he saw that the att.i.tude might have been one of merely momentary weariness.

"I was almost asleep," she said.

Taking up a bit of sewing she began to talk about the political prospects. "I hear that you are not altogether in sympathy with the Government," she said.

"I'm not--not altogether."

"I even hear that you may resign."

"Perhaps I would," said Geoffrey, leaning back and smoothing his hand over his hair, "if I could afford it. I serve my own purposes better by remaining in office."

"Do you mean that you can't afford--financially--to risk failure?"

Felicia asked. "I never a.s.sociated you with compromise."

"It's not my own failure, but the failure of the policy I believe in that I might risk by refusing to compromise. One fights for one's cause in politics with all sorts of weapons. As for personal failure, I may not be put to too stringent a test; I may make enough money to float me to absolute independence. Did you know that I was a ferocious gambler--and not only on the Stock Exchange, but with cards?"

The placidity with which he showed her his faults always amused Felicia, even when she could not share it. He made no effort to win good opinion--not even hers.

"I have heard, and to tell you the truth I am sorry about the cards."

"Why?"

"I don't like the idea of a pastime becoming so significant. To say the least of it--it's not fitting."

"Well," said Geoffrey, laughing, "I won't do it any more. You are quite right."

"Oh, not on account of what I say, please," she protested, slightly flus.h.i.+ng; "you must judge for yourself."

"So I do. I have judged. You may be sure I would never yield anything I believed in--even to please you. I have always disliked the significance cards might come to a.s.sume, so I yield, and gladly, since it does please you."

"That is a relief. I could not bear to be a standard. And I can't believe," she added, "that your winnings at cards can have any significance for your career."

"Ah, any stick counts in the raft that keeps one floated. But as for my career, if I've an object, you mustn't think it a career. I don't bother much about my career. I'm a converted character, you see."

"Converted! You? From what and to what?"

Felicia's face, on its background of sky and river, turned on him the look he loved--fond and mocking. He returned it, smiling, but gravely.

"It is quite true. It's not that I care less for my ambitions, but differently. My goal has s.h.i.+fted, and everything is at once more simple and more complex; the aims are bigger and far simpler; the fight is bigger, too, but more complex than when the fight was personal. I shouldn't mind failure, really, or beginning over again. You converted me, you see."

"I?" said Felicia, with more sadness than surprise.

"Yes, you. Your courage, your sincerity, your faith, that wasn't the least blind but counted the costs and took the risk every time. Oh, don't protest; indeed, I hardly know how or why I felt it of you; merely my whole interpretation of things began to twirl on another axis. The idealistic philosophies of my college days came back to me--with all sorts of personal meanings in them. I began to trust life and its significance, since I trusted you so utterly."

"You almost terrify me," said Felicia; "would the world turn round the other way again if I proved horrid?"

"Oh, no, that is done with. If you proved horrid I would suffer, but the world would continue to turn in the right direction--despite your wrongness."

"Ah, that's a real conversion then." Felicia rose, laying down her work.

She was touched, near tears. Standing beside him and looking down at him she said, "Shall I play to you?"

"Do," said Geoffrey, but taking her hand he held it for a moment, adding quietly, in almost a matter-of-fact voice, "Dear."

He had let go her hand as quietly when Angela was ushered in.

Angela and Felicia had not met since that night of the past spring, and the parting then made future meetings improbable.

Felicia had put Angela and Angela's meaning behind her, and had not doubted that Angela would acquiesce in mutual forgetfulness. It was astonis.h.i.+ng and very disconcerting to see again this spectre rise, and rise, as always it seemed, in Geoffrey's presence.

She advanced into the room, smiling vaguely--vaguely hesitating, an intentness under the hesitation.

Felicia still stood beside Geoffrey, and before he, too, rose, and faced the unwelcome guest, their att.i.tude almost implied the clasp of hands that Angela had not seen.

Her eyes fluttered quickly from one to the other and then fixed in a long gaze on Felicia.

"Dear Mrs. Wynne, I wanted to see you alone," she said.

Geoffrey, at this, turning his back, strolled to the window.

Angela's purpose swiftly put him aside, would not linger; "I won't wrangle with Geoffrey; besides, he really makes no difference," she said. "For such a long time I have wanted to see you--ever since that night--but you have been away, and so have I. I have been wretched about that night. I could not bear to think that you misunderstood me so cruelly. I have come to beg you to forgive me. It was presumptuous of me to think for a moment that you would care for what I thought or felt, or that my sympathy could be anything but indifferent to you. It was only a blunder. I did not realize that you disliked me so much."

Felicia's amazement struggled between a dim belief and a vivid disbelief. The uppermost feeling came out, but in a dismayed voice, for that half-belief plucked at her--"I think that you have always disliked me--really I do."

"I have longed to love you!" cried Angela; "longed to love you--if you would let me;" and, as she heard the intolerable beauty of these words, she burst into tears.

Felicia turned her eyes on Geoffrey; his back to the window, he leaned on the window-sill, folding his arms. Stupefied, Felicia's eyes questioned him, "Shall I believe her? Shall I put my arms around her?"

It was her impulse, the quick response of her tenderness to suffering.

But under the impulse something strong held her back, something that made it a false one, partaking of the falseness that aroused it; and Geoffrey's sombre look at her seconded the distrust. She stood silent and helpless.

Angela uncovered her eyes. "Don't you believe me?" she asked.

"I will try to," Felicia stammered, "if you will give me time--help me to----"

"You are very pitiless," said Angela in a voice that had caught back its full self-control. "Very hard and pitiless."

"What can I do? I cannot trust your affection; really I cannot. That is the truth."

"It is that that is hard and pitiless--to think of one's truth more than of another's pain."

"You always say the right thing," Felicia answered gravely; she could but recognize the other's seeming right; there was no irony in the words.

"I have come to you with love," said Angela, controlling an anger that made her voice tremble slightly, "and you have rejected me. I have given you my best. But sincerity and love shrivel before such cruel scepticism as yours. I am sad, sad for you, because to the sceptic all life must turn to ashes. You are the spirit that denies: I don't distrust my own flowers because when you look at them they die. I am sorry for you. You live in a world where I cannot breathe. Good-bye."