Paths of Judgement Part 23

She had turned away, thrilling with her spiritual splendour. From apparent failure she sprang to triumph. And, with a final flashing vision of a Pilgrim's Chorus marching past Venusburg to a kingdom of the sky, she added, resting eyes of saintly solemnity on her antagonist: "G.o.d bless you."

She was gone; and not moving, not looking at Geoffrey, Felicia said, "I have been horrible. I could not help it."

"You are all right," said Geoffrey, coming from the window, "you seemed pretty horrible, and that gave her one of the best times of her life.

You positively buckled the wings on her shoulders. But she knows you're right, and she won't forgive you for it, either."

"To have a person who hates you say 'G.o.d bless you'--it frightens me."

"Nonsense. It was an ugly missile, I own; but it's the worst she can shy at you. Now come and play for me," said Geoffrey.

CHAPTER VI

Angela walked away breathing quickly. Her exaltation still floated her above her anger, but through the anger and through the exaltation a deep sense of injury and humiliation rose again and again, bringing tears to her eyes. And under what circ.u.mstances had Felicia rejected her outstretched hand, striking down its patient pitifulness? The suspicions of her first entrance into the room gathered around her, cloaked her warmly; there was a shiver in that sense of humiliation. Exaltation, too, was a cold thing if one suspected that others did not see one as exalted. Angela hardly knew that the hot currents of feeling that poured through her heart were those of hatred.

And hardly had she walked five minutes than she met Mr. Merrick, strolling in all his handsome dignity down the street.

There was no project in Angela; only the blind instinct to seize him, to use him; a weapon, perhaps an avenging weapon.

A fire was blazing in her, and by its glare through darkness she saw only fitfully her own desires. She held out her hand with a quick smile.

"Dear Mr. Merrick, I had hoped to see you to-day. Will you walk back with me a little?"

She realized that Mr. Merrick's slight knowledge of her could not be a very friendly one, but she guessed him to be susceptible to atonement.

Firmly and quickly she went on, "I have always wanted to talk to you and always missed the chance. We disagree, I think, about many things--and disagreement always attracts me. I long at once to get the larger sight, to test my truths by other's truths. I so respect honesty, conviction, talent, even when used for purposes that oppose my own."

Mr. Merrick, feeling a deep surprise and, perhaps, a touch of suspicion, bowed gravely and turned to walk beside her.

"I have so wanted to ask you about your life, about the steps of thought that have led you to your present position; for you must recognize that it is a position--and that to have achieved it implies responsibilities."

Still with large gravity Mr. Merrick inclined his head, finding no ready words in answer to such comprehensive interest.

Angela was not wanting in humour, and a malicious thought of _Maitre Corbeau, sur un arbre perche_, flashed through her mind. He evidently accepted her implied homage as a making of amends fully due to his distinction.

"I have tried so often to really know you," Angela said, smiling plaintively, though lightly; "especially since reading your essay on 'Credulity' last spring. But I can never find you."

"Ah, yet I am often at home at this hour."

The touch of surprised suspicion was gone; Mr. Merrick spoke with benignity.

"Ah, but it's difficult, you see." Angela's smile gained at once in gaiety and plaintiveness. "I had so hoped to see more of you all; I hoped when your daughter came to London that as an old friend of her husband's--he is like a brother to me--was, I perhaps should say--she would let me be her friend too. London is a big, ugly place for a fresh young creature. I know it so well. I should have liked to hold her hand as it were, while she made her first steps in the muddy, slippery world."

Mr. Merrick looked now a trifle perplexed, and Angela felt that she had gone a little too fast as he said, "I have been with Felicia from almost the beginning of her London life; and since I fancy that I know the world better than any young woman can know it"--he inclined himself to Angela with a slight, paternal irony of manner--"she has had her hand held. I have watched over my young nestlings," Mr. Merrick added, smiling kindly upon her.

"Yes, yes," she hurried to say, "a man knows more, of course--can guard from anything obvious; but the things to be guarded against in our complex modern life are not the obvious things; they are breaths, whispers, vague touches in the dark. Dear Mr. Merrick,"--her gentle look had now its rallying touch of boldness--"men do not hear or feel the things I mean. And, again, you are a man of the world, but your daughter is not a woman of the world. I know what you have wished for her--to keep your rose-bud sheltered, the dew still upon it; so often the ideal of the father when he has seen life in all its dangerous reality. You have succeeded; she is a rose-bud with the dew on it. Dear Mr. Merrick, keep it dewy." Her smile straight into his eyes was grave, steady.

Maitre Corbeau was flattered by her words, her look. The vague self-distrust that often fluttered in him, that fear of perhaps lacking what she so delightfully saw in him, was still. He had hardly grasped the significance of her allusions.

"You see," Angela went on quietly,--she was by now quite sincerely in the very frame of mind her words fitted, warning, protective, benignant, exalted in his eyes so that the mood of that final "G.o.d bless you" was with her again, a mist that shut out flames,--"You see, your daughter is younger than I am. In one sense--it may sound odd, but I am very clear-sighted in all matters of sympathy--in one sense I doubt whether she could understand you as I do."

Angela's voice was as mild and smooth as milk and honey as she glided to another turn of her labyrinth. "There is an inevitable narrowness, intolerance, in youth; something cruel in the clearness of young minds, unable to see beyond their own acuteness. It didn't surprise me that neither she nor Maurice appreciated your essay. I disagreed with it, but I saw the bigness of my opponent, saw all the thought and life and suffering that underlay every sentence; and when I realized that they saw only the little superficial things, that they laughed at the shrubs and thickets and didn't even look up at the mountain, I felt all the strange situation, all the pain it must be to you; felt, forgive me if I say too much, your loneliness."

Mr. Merrick was amazed, perhaps more amazed by this revelation of some unkind disloyalty in his children, than gratified by Angela's sympathy.

But though he could feel little grat.i.tude he felt no distrust; and his injuries suddenly lowered, even larger than he had fancied. Maurice too!

There was treachery then as well as disloyalty. The sudden grievance could not be kept down.

"I am surprised at Maurice. He urged me to publish, seemed to see nothing but the mountain," he said.

Angela felt a hasty recoil from this false step; she had imagined the dissuasions both Felicia's and Maurice's.

"Oh, about Maurice I don't know," she said quickly; "it was in my talk with her about it that I saw her dislike--and only inferred his." She felt that she had dogged all sorts of funny, half-hidden little dangers--Maurice's aroused enmity was the plainest of them--and what was she racing towards? what her object? She could not see. Felicia took all from her, would share not a jot or t.i.ttle of her rich possessions; well then, she would keep what came. Besides, Felicia was in peril. Yes, there was the object. She heaved a sigh as it emerged once more before her.

Mr. Merrick, after a silence not without its dignity, forbearing further comment on the revelation, went on: "Yes, loneliness is the lot of age. Youth is narrow. I don't complain; one can't when one understands. Before her marriage Felicia was my complaisant little echo.

I filled her mind with all it owns. Now other interests have pushed me out."

The object, the beneficent object, was now so clear, that the dubious meaning of that sudden dodge was comfortably obscured; with one's eye on a beacon one could no longer glance at these wayside mishaps. She had a look of quiet homage for his generosity, as she said, "As to interests that push you out I hardly care for one. Your daughter's feeling about your essay could hardly have been spontaneous in your complaisant echo; it's the rarest women, the strongest only, who do not echo some one; I imagined that in this case she echoed her husband, but I see the larger influence. My Cousin Geoffrey was with your daughter when I came this afternoon. I hoped to see her alone--to see you; but I felt that I was interrupting. He admires your daughter greatly. The dewy rose attracts after dusty, practical life; it's pleasant, after turmoil, to inhale the perfume. As I say, frankly, it is an influence that I regret."

"He is Maurice's most intimate friend," said Mr. Merrick quickly.

She felt his involuntary clutch at the answer to an intimation he hardly recognized.

"Yes, he is," she a.s.sented, "but not the friend I would have chosen for Maurice either. Maurice wants an ideal in life, an impetus away from dreams and dilettante dawdling into n.o.ble action. Geoffrey is pinned to activity, indeed, but hardly in its n.o.ble forms; pinned rather to the practical, the expedient, the continual compromise of political life that tends, I think, to eat away all sense of moral responsibility. Not a good influence for either of your nestlings. I am very frank, Mr.

Merrick, but I have known both these men so well, since boyhood.

Geoffrey is strong, and Maurice, with all his charm, is weak; the contrast must tell. Geoffrey predominates over Maurice and will, I fear, over your daughter. Already we have found his influence working. Women echo the strongest. Here I am, at home. It was so good of you to come with me. I am so glad of our talk. Won't you lunch with me and my father on Friday? Lord Challoner is to be with us--a clever man; he will be delighted to meet you. You and he will talk while papa and I listen. I love to watch minds striking sparks. You will come?"

"With pleasure." Mr. Merrick's varying emotions culminated for the moment in gratification. Lord Challoner was a very clever man; Lady Angela well known as a very clever woman. The responsibilities of his recognized worth wrought in him as he walked homeward.

CHAPTER VII

The talk had been as suave as the ascent of a rocket; and once its destined height attained its transformation into successive explosive shocks swiftly followed. Felicia, shortly after her father's return, burst into Maurice's dressing-room. She had known a tormenting doubt of her own distrust; now her indignation was sure of itself, her distrust was justified; there was almost a relief in the fulness of her anger.

"Maurice, what do you think has happened?" she demanded.

Maurice was just finishing his dressing. He looked round at her inquiringly, laying down his brushes. Felicia's indignations were rare, and therefore rather alarming; but seeing that this indignation was in no way connected with himself--Felicia's whole aspect irradiated a sense of union, a conviction that he was to second her in her indignation--he took up the brushes again and put a finishing touch to his hair. "What is it?" he asked, wondering if Mr. Merrick had suddenly become insufferable, and rather hoping that such was the case and that Felicia would initiate a movement to get rid of him. "Nothing to bother you about your father, dear?" he added.

"Exactly. You remember last summer--Lady Angela and papa's article? She came here this afternoon and asked me to forgive her. I couldn't; it seemed cruel, I know; but I felt through and through me that I must not trust her. She went away, forgiving me, and now papa tells me that she met him and has been talking with him, and that he finds her charming, and that he is going to lunch with her! Imagine the audacity!"

Maurice, looking at her in the mirror, had turned white, feeling serpent-coils tightening about him again.

"How astonishing!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. But more than astonishment, he felt a sickening fear. What had Angela intended? What did she now intend?

"We must prevent it," said Felicia. "I hate, dear, to bring you into it, but you must see as I do that it's impossible. Try to explain it to papa; try to make him feel that she cannot be trusted, that she will poison everything; that in trusting her he divides himself from me."