Paths of Judgement Part 13

Lord Glaston and his daughter installed themselves in the Eaton Square house that was part of Angela's large inheritance from her mother.

Maurice never felt his environment so absolutely adapted to the needs of his taste as in Angela's house, where nothing made bids for notice, and where the charmed spirit melted into mere acquiescence with surrounding harmony. He and Angela had together created much of the harmony, for the house had come to her frowning with Mid-Victorian rigours. They had sought furniture, pictures and porcelain together, and as he and Angela sat in the boudoir, with its pale eighteenth century tints, its subtly-carved furniture, and the mellow greys of its St. Aubins and Eisens, he felt that after a period of tumult and turmoil he was once more almost at home in an atmosphere all peace and suavity. A glance at the realities that prowled outside made this inner bower the quieter, and he could but remember that he had only to put out his hand to make it part of his life; had had only to put out his hand; he amended the slip loyally, yet lazily, too, as he leaned with Angela over a portfolio of old prints. Angela was at her best; gentle, unemphatic, and also a little lazy; not in her exalted mood that sometimes fatigued and made him satirical. She did not speak at all of Trensome Hall. It might have been a dream of no importance; it seemed indeed something like a dream to Maurice as he sat there, and a dream in which he had played a foolish and an ugly part--as one sometimes does in dreams.

Angela was at her loveliest. Her delicate face most pleased him when least serious, and now, as her long eyes glanced round at him, the dim gold of her hair almost touched his cheek, he felt that it would be curiously easy to slip an arm around her (her tea-gown, too, was perfect, seemed to invite encircling)--kiss her and say "Let this go on." Of course he would not do it; Maurice wrinkled his brows a little as he looked at the print she held up.

"Do you know," said Angela, again glancing at him, and seeing that he was not thinking of the print, "I have a plan, Maurice. You have never painted my portrait. I am going to give you an order. You must paint my portrait. I want you to begin at once."

"That will be delightful," said Maurice. From a pecuniary point of view the order indeed was highly welcome; from other points of view not exactly unwelcome, only a little disquieting.

"You must come here to do it," Angela went on, patting the edges of the prints into place and closing the portfolio. "There is an excellent light in the music-room. I will wear white; I should like whiteness only on the dark of mere distance, an emerging soft and radiant from gloom. I do want you to make a success of it, Maurice; not only for my own sake, but for yours. You know, I think the time has come for you to strike some decisive blow. You diffuse yourself too much. You must write a great book, or paint a great picture. I want to be the picture,--selfish I!--I want to link myself, you see, with greatness." She still patted the edges of her prints, speaking with candid sweetness.

Maurice, as was often the case, was half-charmed into taking her at her own valuation, as all candour, all sweetness, and, guessing at the further feelings underlying the frankness, he felt it peculiarly generous. After all, there was something coa.r.s.e and petty in caution.

She claimed nothing; why imply that she did by any reticence on his part? How ugly such a reticence would be!

"Will you inspire the book too? It's my only chance for greatness," he asked, smiling.

"Who knows? Perhaps I may." Her answering smile was even lighter than his own. "But it can't be consciously. You must find; I can't give." She got up and walked to the fire, displaying a back flowing with faultless lines from the sloping shoulders, their fragile, exaggerated grace, to the curve of the long, lace train. Angela was intellectually ensconced in mountain fastnesses, where any appeal not purely spiritual was stonily regarded, but her very beautiful body was as keenly conscious of itself, of its every pose and movement, as that of the crudest coquette.

Angela's coquetry was not crude; it wound itself through her mental att.i.tude as pervasively, but as delicately, as the narrow black ribbons curved through the laces of her dress. It now said, "Look at me; follow me," and Maurice, after the startled moment where he surveyed that queer little speech as to his finding and her not giving--was it a very clever, a very courageous, a very pathetic speech?--looked at her, and followed, joined her at the fireplace, and as her hand rested on the mantelpiece he put his, in an impulse he was hardly conscious of, lightly upon it.

Angela said nothing, but she lifted her appealing eyes to him.

"If I could paint you so!" said Maurice, removing his hand and wondering at himself. He did not go further than this, but the things that she might well have expected him to say after it made him uncomfortable.

Angela felt more than discomfort; it was a real anguish of baffled hope.

Yet she was almost sure, now, that he would go further.

And by imperceptible degrees, during the mornings that followed in the music-room, he did.

He definitely determined nothing; the facts of life seemed to bear him towards a definition over which his will had no control. There was the past, the golden haze, the sweet golden haze, and sweet Felicia; but the self that had wandered into it with her already seemed illusory. The present self, its crushing necessities, its really tempting escape from them, was too vivid a reality to make memory of much avail.

Felicia had charmed him more deeply than Angela could ever charm; yet, since the self which had so truly loved her was already dim, unseizable, Angela's half real, half artificial attraction counted for more than the dear impossible past.

The pa.s.sionate sadness of the letters he sent to Felicia was sincere, for in writing to her he caught together all his memories, and they pressed on his heart with a great weight of regret. He wrote of hope deferred, of possible hopelessness, feeling courageous, and avoiding the worst pang of all--that dread of playing an ugly part in Felicia's eyes--that dread of her seeing cowardice instead of courage--by telling himself that finally to renounce her would show the truest love for her.

From these crises of almost despair he drifted on to a long silence, a kind silence surely, from which she must draw her own conclusions. She would of course take time in doing so, give him the benefit--poor darling!--of every doubt, and if, at the last moment, anything did turn up he could still claim her and explain the impossibility of writing when there was only despair to write of.

During these weeks of drifting he saw little of Geoffrey, and when they met, Felicia was as unmentioned as though, to both, she had been the slightest, least significant of episodes. With all his confiding tendency, Maurice could not well confide to Geoffrey that the wild-rose flirtation had become a serious love affair, and, in the same breath that the long dallying with Angela was on the verge of becoming serious too. With all his hard common sense Geoffrey might look unpleasantly askance at this taking on of a new love before the old was off, and until there was no chance at all of the old love being on again, Geoffrey might as well think him still engaged in undecisive dallying.

The very fact of long intimacy, of the taking for granted of a closeness that made questionings unnecessary, kept their minds apart.

But on a morning in early March, Maurice, while putting the finishing touches to his portrait of Angela, was facing at once despair and an aching freedom. The day before had unchained at his heels a pack of howling debts; he had run before them to the only refuge; a letter, after a month of silence, that practically set Felicia free. He had wept in writing it, allowing the irrepressible tears to splash upon the paper, bitterly smiling at himself for the craven little consolation he recognized in this testimony to his grief. And, with the half appeal of the tears for pity, was another appeal--a spontaneous clutch at the brightness he must thrust from his life--for her love.

He would not clearly see that in so clinging he set himself--rather than Felicia--free. Heavy gloom had settled upon him, a gloom that filled the letter with dismal sincerity. That it had been sincere he felt to be proved by the fact that no sense of relief had followed its despatch. He was free, but free in a black world, and he felt, as a result, even less drawn to Angela than usual, even more unwilling to accept the now inevitable escape. But with the new sense of freedom was a new sense of recklessness, the sense that he had, in some untraceable way--(for what could he have done, disasters crowding thick upon him?) made himself only fit for the lower thing; so that, at all events, he might as well make the most of it.

Poor Angela! to be so accepted! The irony of it turned to pity for her as he looked at her sitting there in her white dress, pale, and with an air of deep weariness. She seemed to droop before him as she sat in the keen spring light; to droop, to appeal, and yet to be very proud, ready for resentment almost. Maurice saw all this, and his comprehension gave a touch of real emotion to his pity and to his recklessness. Pity for himself mingled with his pity for her. What a queer mess they were in--poor things!--both of them. His mind, sick with self-a.n.a.lysis, self-scorn and self-defence, lurched, exhausted, on to a longing for her to comfort him, to show him, in loving him, that he was not base, only fatally pursued by life.

When she stepped down from the stand that had been put at the end of the room, she did not, as usual, come to his side to see the progress he had made. She went to the window, her hands clasped behind her, a rigidity in the lines of her slender, half-swathed arms. Maurice painted for a moment, then looked at her, added another touch, stared at his palette, laid it down, and joined her.

She did not turn her head to him, and suddenly he guessed that there were tears in her eyes. His own grew wet again with that mingled pity.

Her hand fell to her side. He took it in his. Still she did not look at him. She stood waiting, anything but proud, and yet ready in all the humiliation of her helpless avowal, to flash suddenly into scorn and anger. The something of splendour in this att.i.tude gave Maurice the final impetus. He was glad to yield at last to feeling alone, to almost irresistible feeling. It was as though he had stood for long on the sh.o.r.e waiting for the tide, and that its slow rising had culminated in this sudden wave that just lifted him off his feet. Really she was lovely; she was piteous; and she could console him for being forced to take her. His arm went round her; he turned her head gently, saw the tears, and kissed her.

"Oh, Maurice!" her lips breathed under his, "how I love you!"

"And I----" he stammered. "Angela--it has been--you understood--you are so horribly rich, and I so horribly poor." He wanted her to console him for the fact that had tarnished everything, and the longing was so great that he grasped at this falsification of all his hesitation. It was rapture to Angela. He was transfigured by the avowal; and her heart, sick for so long with doubt, seemed to expand like a storm-beaten flower in sunlight. She herself was transfigured; saw that the starved, straining self she had known was a lower self, distorted, difficult to read clearly; this happy self was real at last. His arms were around her. She would be n.o.ble, beneficent to all the world. All who came near her would be the happier for her happiness. How weak she really was--who so needed love to lean on!

"I understood--I hoped it was that," she said in a trembling voice.

At a step outside they moved apart, yet not soon enough Maurice felt, but for the significance of the situation to be very obvious to Lord Glaston as he came briskly in.

If Lord Glaston had ever felt dismayed by his daughter's vagary he had long outworn the feeling. He was an easy-going man, cynical and tolerant; he liked Maurice. Angela could suit herself. He now threw Maurice a bright "Hullo!" hesitated for a moment, and, as nothing was said, he sauntered into the room and looked at the portrait. "Capital, really capital, Wynne," he a.s.serted. "A little too thin and woe-begone, perhaps."

Maurice's mind was revolving like a kaleidoscope; the dominant thought was that he could not yet make it an open engagement. And Angela would understand that they must see one another again before admitting the world to their new knowledge. He longed to escape, to think. He made his farewells, smiled at Angela, and departed.

CHAPTER XV

Felicia received the letter on that early spring morning, and after the weeks of anguish and humiliating fear felt, with all her despair, the exquisite relief of pity. When he had been so cruelly silent the worst part of her pain had been the seeing of him as cruel--perhaps faithless.

Now, as Maurice had hoped, she saw him beaten down, vanquished by fate.

She was buried, dead, but in the darkness were no more struggles with nightmares. She read his letter quietly and did not weep, and after her morning duties were done, she went out--walked in her garden, in the woods, back through the garden to the road that led downwards among the pines. It was easier, as she walked mechanically in the fresh, chill, radiant day to grow one with her hopelessness, to accept the fact that the coffin-lid was really screwed down; easier to accept and not to think. She was afraid of sitting still alone.

Her head bent, her eyes followed the line of young gra.s.s that bordered the little footpath. Above, the pine branches still sparkled with moisture, and a tiny stream, a braided radiance ran singing a clear, shrill note beside her. Her life would go on, creeping in its narrow limits, like the footpath, with its bordering of green, no doubt; she could not see it yet, but it would grow. The sanity of the simile, after that s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g down of the coffin-lid on dead hope, was part of its bitterness. A sorrow like this would kill all great hope, cripple one, yet leave a capacity for trivial, monotonous alleviations that meant nothing. Yet as she told herself that she must try to see the ironic and sane aspect of the case, the fact of the gra.s.s border, the fact that tragedy would not keep its tragic demeanour, must try to see even the deeper sanity of the fact that the daily fulfilling of duty might come to sing a song like that of the thread-like brook beside the path, her eyes were filling at last with tears, and they were slowly rolling down her cheeks as she looked up to find Geoffrey Daunt confronting her.

Geoffrey was as unexpected, as handsome, and, apparently, as composed as ever. Three former visits had given to the unexpected a certain happy familiarity. She had been glad to see him, and although, as she looked at him through tears, she could not say that she was glad to see him now, there was relief in the sight, almost comfort in the sense of momentary escape from the crushing weight of full realization.

She was too well sunken in sorrow to feel minor embarra.s.sments, and while she held out her hand she wiped away her tears with no explanatory word or look.

"How nice to see you. Are you again at Aunt Kate's?" she asked.

Geoffrey, with an openness neither inquisitive nor indifferent, watched her dry her tears. She felt that he would have wiped away his own with as quiet a candour--imagine Geoffrey Daunt in tears!--and have taken it for granted that no one would ask questions. She could count upon his reticence. Already there were bonds of understanding between them.

He hesitated, however, for a moment before saying, "No; I came down to see you. Have you time for me?--time for a walk, I mean?"

She said that she had come out for a walk, and that he could have all the time he wanted, wondering if her changed looks struck him too forcibly. She knew that during these past weeks she had come to look very ghostly. Perhaps his way of turning his eyes from her now was part of the reticence.

"Where is the view you spoke of when I first came?" he asked. "You have never showed it to me yet."

She answered, "I am glad that you remember that there is a view. We can reach it more quickly by going through the pine woods."

They entered the grave, scented silences.

Geoffrey had not seen her for a month, and, more than she could have guessed, he found her changed. It had been with a conscious steadying of his countenance that he met her tear-filled eyes, and now, as with bent head she walked beside him, he looked at her fragile profile.

She was horribly changed, and her smile had shocked him more than her tears; it had the alien sweetness of death. What sudden sorrow had come into her life? What had happened to her? The new wonder mingled with the old one, the wonder that had been with him for months and that now knew itself.

The longing to help her grief and to speak his own new knowledge was like a cry in him, but he did not speak as they walked upward through the solemn aisles. He felt as if he and Felicia, she with her sorrow, he with his wonderful knowledge, were walking in some sublime cathedral where in their mutual ignorance they were yet secretly near each other.

In his hard, strong heart was a trembling sense of consecration.

Suddenly, from the dimness, they were out upon the open hill-top. Pale sunshine, an azure sky, swept them around. They were high above all the surrounding country. Beneath them were the blue-black pine-woods, slopes of pale dun and green, the shadow and sunlight of hill and valley, and all the delicate tracery of tree and earth still unveiled. Among the vague purples of the lower woods the roads ran like white ribbons. Here on the hill-top the wind blew steadily, sadly, in spite of all the gold and azure. Felicia's long black scarf fluttered against it, and she put her hand to her hat, standing looking away to the horizon, a slender silhouette of black, almost forgetting her companion, conscious only of her aching bereavement. She turned at last to Geoffrey, and found from the almost dreamy intentness of his gaze that he had been as absorbed in her as she in her own sad consciousness.