CHAPTER IX

The news of Geoffrey's resignation of office was a tonic to Maurice's new energy. It spurred him to fuller deserving of such sacrifice. He finished the portrait over which he had been loitering, with a sudden vigour that seemed in its auspicious result to promise more originality than he had ever shown, and in pursuance of the new resolution, he accepted another order--a dull and wealthy old ecclesiastic in a cathedral town--an order, in spite of remunerativeness, that he would certainly have refused a month before, as absolutely clogging to all inspiration.

"I shall have to leave Felicia to you for perhaps over a fortnight," he said to Mr. Merrick, as, in a hansom they drove to an evening party. Felicia preceded them with the friend at whose house they had dined.

Maurice had carried out his project of "petting" his father-in-law, but in spite of his butterfly manner of gaiety Mr. Merrick's mood showed little relaxation; his wounds were deep; they rankled; and now he received the news of guardianship, which Maurice imparted with an air of generous self-sacrifice, gravely.

"It's our first separation," Maurice added. "You will have her all to yourself. My loss will be your gain."

His smile left Mr. Merrick's gravity unchanged. The opportunity seemed to have come for the discharge of a painful duty.

"That I am to have Felicia all to myself, I question," he said, looking ahead at the swift lights of the moving town; for he did not care to meet his son-in-law's eyes while he seized the opportunity.

"Well,"--Maurice good-humouredly yielded to his funny exactitude--"not altogether; her friends will relieve guard now and then."

It was wiser to reach his purpose by slow approaches; Mr. Merrick evenly remarked, "My guard shall be unbroken," adding, "It will be doubly necessary."

He was rewarded by a light note of wonder in Maurice's voice. "You seem to take it very seriously, my dear father."

"I take it seriously, Maurice."

Even from Mr. Merrick's complacency such magnified significance was perplexing; Maurice turned an inquiring gaze upon him.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"I regret this departure of yours, Maurice. I beg you to reconsider it."

"My dear father, what _are_ you talking about?"

"You should not leave Felicia. She is exposed to certain influences--to a certain influence--that I deeply disapprove. She is unruly, reckless. I pretend to no further authority. She defies me."

"Will you explain yourself?" The patience of Maurice's tone was ironic.

"I will speak plainly, since you force it. Mr. Daunt is too much with Felicia."

"Geoffrey! He can't be too much with her."

Maurice's nerves, since the last scene with Felicia, had been on edge. Only a contemptuous amusement steadied them now. Mr. Merrick's paternal anxiety, alloyed though it was with the latent desire to hit back, was sincere; Maurice saw in it only a pompous, an idiotic impertinence.

Mr. Merrick's voice hardened to as open an hostility as his son-in-law's.

"People notice it. There is talk about it. I will not stand by and see my child's name become the plaything of malicious gossip."

"Who notices it? Who talks about it? What utter and damnable folly!"

"I decline to enter into an unbefitting altercation with you, Maurice. Your friend is obviously in love with your wife, and Felicia allows him to be too much with her."

"Is this pure imagination on your part? I know, of course, that there's never been any love lost between you and Geoffrey."

"I have been warned," said Mr. Merrick, reluctant, yet with redoubled dignity.

Maurice's smouldering nerves struck to flame, and an ugly illumination glared at him. "This can be no one but Angela," he said.

It was difficult to keep dignity under eyes that seemed to take him by the throat; in the struggle to look firmly back Mr. Merrick was silent.

"Come. Own to it. The venomous liar!" Maurice added in a low voice, studying the revelations of the other's wrathful helplessness.

"I have no wish to deny it, and I must forbid you to speak in that manner of a woman who honours you by calling you her friend."

"I know Angela better than you do," Maurice laughed. His fury almost passed away from its derivative object.

"The fact remains that people talk, and that truest kindness warned me of it."

"If people talk it's she who makes them. I've known--ever since I married her--that Geoffrey loved Felicia." Maurice flung him the truth scornfully.

"Yet you speak of lies!"

"I know my friend, and honour him, as you don't seem to know or honour your daughter."

"I know human nature as you don't seem to know it. It's a dangerous intimacy. I insist on my right to protect my daughter."

"You insult her by claiming such a right. Don't speak to me of this again." Maurice, as he said it, grew suddenly white with a new thought. "And never dare," he added, turning eyes that quelled even Mr. Merrick's fully-armed championship, "never dare tell Felicia that you have discussed her with that woman."

"You may be sure that I would not expose Lady Angela to Felicia's misconception."

Mr. Merrick, in his realized helplessness, cast about him for some retaliatory weapon. He seized the first that offered itself. "And since my meaning as Felicia's father seems gone, I had better go myself. I am not needed, since you say so, by either of you."

It was the idlest threat. In utter astonishment he heard Maurice answering, "I've thought more than once of suggesting it. By all means."

"I will remain with Felicia while you are away."

"As you please."

"I will leave directly after your return."

"When you will." Maurice's voice was quieter. The unexpected prospect of relief mollified him. "It's a pity, for Felicia will suffer, but she herself must see that it doesn't do. You have made life too uncomfortable for both of us. And after this! Well, you've made things impossible. For a time you had better realize what your daughter is away from her, realize how little she needs any one's protection. It's settled then; you go, on my return."

Mr. Merrick bowed. He was aghast, outraged, more than all, wounded. The hurt child whimpered and then fairly howled within him, while, in silence, he smiled ironically. They reached their destination, Maurice in a growing rage that for once obliterated his fears. It was like strong wine that uplifted, made him almost glad.

He left his father-in-law and made his way through the crowded rooms in search of Felicia. He needed to look into her limpid eyes after this hissing of serpents. But instead of Felicia he found Angela.

For the distasteful monotony of these assemblies Angela had always an air of patient disdain; and to-night, under a high wreath of white flowers, her face more than ever wore its mask of languid martyrdom. She was in white, perfumed like a lily.

Maurice felt a keener gladness on seeing her. His wrath, running new currents of vigour through him, carried him past any hesitation. At last he would have it out with Angela.

"I want to speak to you," he said. "Is there any place where one can get out of this crowd?"

Angela saw in a flash that a crisis had arrived; and in another that she had been working towards such a crisis, living for it, since Maurice had cast her off. For a moment, beneath the rigour of his eyes--to see Maurice unflinching was a new experience--her spirit quailed, then soared, exulting in the thought of final contest. Since he wished it--yes, they would speak openly. He should at last hear all--her hate, her love, her supplication. She was an intimate in the house where Maurice and Felicia were formal guests; her quick mind seized all possibilities. "Yes," she said, "there is a little room--a little boudoir. No one ever goes there on nights like these." Her self-mastery was all with her as she moved beside him through the crowd. She was able, over the tumult of hope and fear, to speak calmly, to smile at friends her weary, fragile smile.

"Aren't these scenes flimsy and sad?" she said. "How much happiness, how much reality do they express, do you think?"

Maurice forced himself to reply. "They express a lot of greediness and falseness; those are real enough."

"That is true, Maurice," she said gently; "so true that I sometimes think I would rather be a washerwoman bending in honest work over my tubs; one would be nearer the realities one cares for."

They left the reception-rooms, and she was silent when faces were no longer about them. She led him down a passage, across a book-filled room, a student's lamp its only light, and softly turning the handle of a further door, opened it on the quiet of a little room, discreetly frivolous with the light gaiety of Louis XV decorations, empty of all significance but that of smiling background for gay confidences or pouting coquettries. Not exactly the background for such a scene as she and Maurice must enact, yet Angela triumphed in the contrast. Tragic desolation, splendid sincerities would gain value from their trivial setting. Her passion, her misery, would menace more strangely, implore more piteously among nymphs and garlands.

She dropped into a chair, and put out her hand to a jar of white azaleas. She asked no question, but she looked at him steadily. Maurice had closed the door and stood near it, his back to it, at a distance from her. The sound of the world outside--the world that smiled and pouted--was like the faint hum of a top.

"How have you dared warn my father-in-law against Geoffrey?" asked Maurice. He was nerved to any truth.

Angela made no reply, her long, deep eyes on him while, automatically, her hand passed over the azaleas.

"How could you betray my confidence in you? What a fool I was to trust you!"

"Betray you?" she murmured.

"You pursue me and my happiness!" Maurice cried, and hot tears of self-pity started to his eyes. Her eyes dropped. That his hand should deal this blow!

"I pursue you?--and your happiness, Maurice?" she repeated.

"Can you deny it? Since we came back to England you have been a poison in our lives."

She was struggling with the moment's dreadful bitterness. Over the bleeding pain of it her sense of his cruel injustice sustained her to a retort: "I have betrayed nothing. You are the only betrayer, Maurice. You betrayed my love; you betrayed your wife to me."

"Great heavens!" Maurice dropped his forehead on clenched hands, "it was to spare you!"

"I guessed it," said Angela, while her hand still passed lightly over the azaleas.

They were silent for a moment, and presently in a voice, steady, even gentle, she went on, "I have wished, sincerely wished, to be your wife's friend. Even after she refused my friendship, I have wished to guard her, at least, from malicious gossip. You know what London is. You and I and your wife live in among people who regard old-fashioned scruples intellectually, not morally; but your wife's position is not great enough to allow her to be reckless. Even without such knowledge as mine to reveal it, Geoffrey's love for her makes her conspicuous. They are here together to-night. I saw them at a concert the other day; met them in the Park before that. When last I went to your house I found them together, alone, and--I understand your wife, Maurice--she would think no harm of it--I think she had just kissed him; no harm, Maurice,"--before his start her voice did not quicken, "she would imagine that she kissed him as a brother. He held her hand, I think. I felt it my duty to put petty conventions and reticences aside, and for her sake, for your sake, Maurice, to warn her father, with all delicacy, all caution. I believe it, with all my soul, to be a perilous intimacy. That is my betrayal."

Maurice's brain swam with the picture she flashed upon it. Only for a moment;--Felicia's smile went like a benison over it. Even if it were true, he could look at the picture, after that first pause of breathlessness, steadily. Even if it were true, he could smile back, understanding.

"Geoffrey has all my trust," he said; "I have all Felicia's love."

"You think so," said Angela quietly. Again her eyes fell before his, but her face remained fixed in its conviction of sincerity.

"How dare you, Angela."

Still looking down, she went on as steadily as before, her voice anchored with its weight of woe,--how he loved Felicia!--"I dare because I believe that she loves him most. Her love for you and your weakness is maternal by now. I know it, I feel it; I can see it when she looks at you and at him. She loves him as she has never loved you. And I! Oh, Maurice--Maurice--I!" She suddenly cast her arms upon the table, her head fell upon them; terror, regret, and passionate longing swept over her; her voice broke and she burst into sobs. "Couldn't I have let her go from you? Has it not been nobility in me to guard her--for you? She has never loved you, and I--Maurice, you know, you know--how I have loved you, how I love you! Forgive me! Have pity on me!"

Maurice, frowning darkly, sick with unwilling pity, hating to feel that she deserved pity and that he hated her, turned his eyes away. She had terrified him too much; had dared to lay desecrating hands on the thing dearest to him in the world. Something, and not the least best thing in him, froze before her cry for pity and made him incapable of forgiveness. For once in his life he hardened into resistant strength.

His silence was more horrible to Angela than any look, any word. She raised her head and saw his averted eyes. Only humiliation remained for her. She rose. Her wreath of flowers, loosened, had slipped to one side, she put up a vague hand to it, moaning "Maurice!"

Still he looked away, with odd, startled eyes that did not think of her. The wonder of the shot that had passed through his heart was still felt more as a surprise than as a pain.

She knew that she would always see him so--erect, beautiful, startled from a shot. She tottered to him; she fell before him and grasped his arms. "Oh pity me! Don't be so cruel. What wrong have I done? Despise me--but pity me."

"I cannot," he said.

"Then kiss me--once--only once."

"I cannot," he repeated, still not looking at her.

"Have you never loved me? Never really loved me--as you love her?" she said, shuddering and hiding her face as she crouched at his feet.

"Never!"

Swaying, trembling violently, she arose. She threw wide her arms, seized him, and closing her eyes to his look of passionate repulsion, kissed him on his brow, cheek, lips, before, almost striking her from him, he broke from her, burst open the door and left her.