CHAPTER XII

Maurice and Felicia walked along the lane where they had first met; she was going home and he to go that evening. It was a farewell walk. On the hill-top, in the garden he was at last to see, they were to say good-bye--good-bye for a little while. Felicia, in her new and blissful confidence, did not even think of asking for how long, it seemed sure to be so short. But Maurice was already asking himself the question, battling creeping doubts with passionate asseverations. And better than passionate asseverations was the meeting of such doubts by holding her more closely in the deep, lonely lane, dispelling shadows from his mind with a kiss. To hold her, to kiss her, was to keep alight a flame of joy within him, a flame that drooped and flickered when those sad thoughts blew over it; and without was sadness too; the fragrance of the white traveller's-joy in the hedges seemed a sigh; the soft evening, the pale clouded sky, were grey-habited nuns, whispering of the crumbling of earthly hopes.

That Felicia heard no such whispers, no such sighs, her pensive but steadily gazing profile showed. The pensiveness was a dove brooding on a secure peace; her eyes, gazing ahead, had the gravity of a child's seeing happy visions. He felt a pang of envy. Or was it ignorance that kept fear from her? Again he turned her face, white flower that it was, to him, bending his lips to hers. Only so he found some of her peace, her serenity.

Felicia, after the kiss, still looked at him. "I would do anything for you--suffer anything," she said.

"I don't want you ever to suffer for me."

"I would almost rather. It would make even deeper roots."

"And if the suffering were poverty, grinding poverty?--I am very poor, Felicia"--Maurice's voice hurried, broke a little--"I have nothing."

"I should like showing you how little I mind. We can both work. I have always thought that I might make something by giving lessons in music--or translating; I am a good linguist." Her realism was a new aspect of her. Her steadiness, then, had not faced mere visions. But such realism perplexed, almost dismayed him. A laborious union had never entered his mind. Her words conjured up a grey picture of unrelieved effort, a wife striving beside him in obscurity. It hurt him more for her than for himself, though for himself it gave a tremor of shrinking.

"You work, darling! Absurd! Besides, London swarms with music-teachers, with translators. No, no; something will turn up for me. I can put such heaps of irons in the fire. I may suddenly become a popular portrait-painter--charge a thousand apiece for my pictures; two or three a year would keep us going beautifully. Or I may write a book."

"Papa and I live on as many hundreds!" Felicia ejaculated, in her smile a touch of maternal tolerance for such improbabilities.

In his strong reaction from that grim picture she had so calmly drawn he could laugh at the thought of the little hundreds. Yet that even those base rungs of the ladder were not beneath his feet gave him a chill.

Among the pines, as they began to climb, the wind sighed, and the sun, far below and far away over the grey wastes of evening, made only a sullenly smouldering line of embers on a cloud-barred horizon. They paused to look back at it.

"How one feels the autumn--almost like winter already," said Felicia, leaning against him. "It is like our music of yesterday morning, isn't it?--a sadness so beautiful to look at from our happiness."

But already Maurice's momentary energy had crumbled. The melancholy of the wind, the sunset, seized him like a presage.

"Oh! Felicia," he exclaimed, holding her closely, "will you always love me? You are so much stronger than I am."

"But Maurice--dear--the only strong thing in me is my love for you."

"No, no; not only that. You are not afraid so easily as I am. And this parting--you can bear it--with such calm!"

There was almost the sob of a reproach in his voice as he leaned his cheek to hers for comfort. The echo--as of an alien knock at the doors of her happiness, went through the peace, the radiance within. Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Why, Maurice!--calm! It's only that loving you--having you to love me is so great, so wonderful, that even yet I can only feel the thankfulness--the beauty. Don't you know that when you are gone my life will be only a waiting?" The tremor of pain in her, her trust in him, roused again a flare of his manliness.

"Not for long, dearest. Waiting isn't a keen enough word for what I shall feel. Longing, longing, until I see you again."

"Oh! it will be keener than mere waiting with me, too." She felt dimly that she must not shackle him in the fight he was going to make for her by showing him what pain to her would be in the waiting.

They walked on. As they neared the house Felicia said, in a voice that had regained its quiet, "We must tell papa."

Again in Maurice was that crumbling. The last embers of intoxication seemed, as she spoke, to die, to leave him looking at ashen realities. He would conquer poverty. Yes; but bind himself and her to face it--as yet menacing and unconquered? That would be to wrong her more deeply than she could understand. She must be free--free before the world; and fidelity to him merely a matter of feeling. And, thinking of freedom, his mind, with a pang of self-scorn, looked back for an ugly moment at the forfeited refuge--at Angela--not yet openly forfeited.

"No, dearest," he said, flushing in the twilight and feeling that, in spite of its loss of intoxication, his love for her had never been so strong as in its uprising over such thoughts, "Not yet. Let it be our secret. My affairs are in such a mess--I must not go to your father until they are really straightened. I really ought not to have told you until they were straight; but I could not help that. It seemed almost weak-spirited to go without telling you, for such a grubby little reason--a reason that can't touch us--but that must shut out others. Don't you think so? Darling, I have not hurt you--already?"

Nothing in the bent, listening profile told him so; the fear came with a sudden glimpse of a craven self, lest she should see it too. But the eyes raised to his held, with a new patience, no new vision of him. Her smile in its grave acceptance of burdens still found joy in the bearing of burdens for their love's sake. "No; how could it hurt me? I see that you are right. We will keep our secret to ourselves for a little while." It was now her trust that seemed to him almost as terrible as the dreaded lack of it had been. Cruel, he thought, that mere material circumstance should toss one's helpless mind like a shuttlecock from one fear to another. But--"Only a very little while," he said, nerving himself to be what she thought him.

Felicia, pushing open the garden gate, stepped inside; the gate swung to. She held his hand over it.

"So this is the garden. It is exquisite to leave you here among all these flowers; to think of you loving me and waiting for me in all this serenity." He smiled, looking quickly from her to the irises, the pansies, the roses. But the smile faded. "Ah! but how can I wait!--how can I bear to leave you!" His pain, his fear, surged up in the words. He hid his face on her shoulder, longing for a strength that would banish them; her trust in his strength hurt him too much to give it; but when she kissed him fear was soothed. Only--how would it be when she was no longer there to kiss him?

Her hand for a long moment had pressed his head to her breast; then she moved from him, saying, "You will be late for your train, dear Maurice, and I shall be late for my dinner. Papa must be waiting."

Maurice, to spend this last day with her, was to take an evening train that would get him to London in time to catch the Scotch express. He must go sandwiched but dinnerless. They had laughed over the sacrifice. He had now, again, to laugh, brokenly.

"How can you think of trains?"

"I am thinking most of the train that will bring you back." Once more her trust struck flame from him. "Ah!--soon! soon!" he said. They kissed silently. He saw the tears in her eyes and adored her for the strength that, for his sake, mastered pain and did not let her fear.