CHAPTER X

"Geoffrey, dear old boy, walk home with me, will you?" On the steps, after seeing Felicia and her friend into their carriage, Maurice put his hand through Geoffrey's arm. "I've had a row with my father-in-law--would rather not see him just now." They crossed the square together. Maurice was feeling no reaction to weakness after his strength. The scene was like a distant memory, and that strange shot that had hurt, had pierced him with such a pang--not of suspicion, not of foreboding, but of wonder, deep, sad wonder.

He felt a sort of languor after pain, and, as they walked, went on dreamily: "Such a queer evening, Geoffrey, horrible!--yet no, splendid too. Facing things is splendid isn't it? I want to tell you something, Geoffrey--to confess something--I want you to know. That winter--when I thought I could not marry Felicia, I went pretty far with Angela. I thought everything was up with me; I didn't care much where I drifted. And I did drift. Nothing much more than there has always been, Geoffrey; with Angela it was never a case of playing with fire, the danger was of getting frozen into the ice. It was abominable of me--caddish;" Maurice's dreamy voice had a dignity that seemed to hold all other reproach than his own at arm's length, a dignity so strange and new that Geoffrey even at the moment's great upsurging of bitterness, regret and question could repress it as unworthy, not only of himself, but of Maurice. "Abominable--abominable," Maurice repeated, "for I let her think--more than ever--that I cared--something. She is odious to me, Geoffrey. I can't be just to her."

Geoffrey said nothing, but his quiet profile made confidences as easy as peaceful breathing; the confidences that could be told. The others--ah! that distant wailing of regret. But in this dreamy mood even that was very distant. "Perhaps, dear old fellow--if I'd told you--on that night, you wouldn't have cared to help me."

Maurice stated the fact calmly, looked at it calmly. "In that case--what would I be, Geoffrey?--if you and Felicia had not made me?"

In the still, sleeping town, chill with a coming dawn, they were as near as spirits, walking together through old memories.

"I would have cared to help you--and her," said Geoffrey.

"Ah! well; perhaps;" Maurice sighed a little. "While I'm away, Geoffrey, see a lot of Felicia, and, Geoffrey, see that Angela doesn't get near her. Her silly old father dislikes you, but you won't mind that. He suspected you of being in love with her, so I informed him that he was right. Dear old Geoff! You will see after her?"

"I don't mind the father; I would mind making it difficult for her to get on with him."

"Oh! you won't. He's had to accept it. I wouldn't like to go if you weren't here to see after her. So you don't regret making me?"

"Making you and her so happy?" Geoffrey smiled, humouring his child-like mood.

"I do make her happy? You see it. It's your reward, my dear friend. That's what I want to say to you. I've said it often enough to myself. You shall never regret it, so help me God."

Without looking at him Geoffrey put his hand on Maurice's, pressing it firmly. Dimly, he felt, among crowding shapes of accepted sorrow, only a peace, a thankfulness.

"You see," Maurice stammered, "I should die without her. She is life to me, Geoffrey. You don't know what you've given me--I hardly knew. She is life to me--that's all; and I should die without her."

The talk with Geoffrey seemed like a dream the next day. It was not real; Maurice's conscience could not call such faint confession real. Yet, in spirit, it had been more real than the reality which eyed it sadly. In spite of sadness it went with him like a thought of peace, of safety.

Felicia, when she heard of her father's proposed and accepted departure, acquiesced with even more cheerfulness than he had hoped for, and when Maurice, flushing a little, told her of Mr. Merrick's resolution to protect her, she said that she had suspected that. "I am glad you let him know the truth, too. It's really better to let him see that he has only discovered what no one wishes to conceal." She looked musingly up at her husband. Though she looked clearly, no consciousness in her answering his flush, a faint trail of cloud drifted--faint and far--across the quiet sky of her thoughts, or was it a little wind that blew apart the veil of white serenity, showing darkness behind it? That turning of her weariness and wretchedness to Geoffrey--the memory of it was like the drifting cloud, or like the revealing wind. Dimly the darkness faded. The turning had been because of cruel passion, that horrible moment of mistaken hatred. The cloud melted, or was it self-reproach that once more drew the veil of tenderness across the dark?

Maurice, gazing, saw only the musing thought.

"I can't blame him--really--either, Maurice. You and I know how Geoffrey loves me, but we can hardly expect papa to see that as an accepted fact nor to recognize the calibre of such a love."

It was his recognition of the calibre of Geoffrey's love that kept Maurice's faith high above even a self-dishonouring twinge of jealousy. Yet the sadness, as for might-have-beens in which he had no share, still was with him. The vision of that unseen kiss was with him too. He did not believe it true, though his love for Felicia almost claimed it true; it beautified her--that kiss of reverent pity and tenderness. The toad Angela flung became a flower on Felicia's breast; that he could smile at such a vision was his flower, too; but the vision was part of the sadness. He saw himself shut out from a strange, great realm--colourless, serene, like a country of glorious mountain peaks before the dawn, a realm that he, in some baffling way, seemed to have defrauded for ever of its sunrise. He put aside the oppression, saying, "You don't mind, so much then, his going?"

"I am sorry, of course. But he made things too difficult. It will be easier to get back to the old fondness if we are not too near. And he will enjoy, when things blow over, coming to us for short visits."

The prospective peace, he saw, left her, with a sort of lassitude, a little indifferent to her father's pathos. Before this placidity his sadness became a sudden throb of gloom.

"You do mind _my_ going?" he asked.

Felicia was sitting on the window seat and had looked down into the street far below for his coming cab. She glanced up quickly at him as he stood beside her, seeing the shadow in his eyes.

"Dear goose!" She drew him down on the seat, her hand in his, "Mind your going? I hate it. But it's only for a fortnight--less, if you are lucky with your work."

"Only a fortnight!" Maurice repeated, half playfully, but half fretfully too. "You can say that! It's our first parting, Felicia. It seems to me an eternity before I shall see you again."

She still looked into his eyes, seeing, under the playfulness, the fretfulness, all that he had suffered during these last weeks of entanglement. Leaning her head on his shoulder, she said dreamily: "Don't go."

"Really?" Sunlight streamed through clouds, "Really you say don't go? And my duty? my work? all the virtues you make me believe in?"

"I want to keep you near me, to comfort you for it all," Felicia said. He understood the reference to his pain. The very sweetness nerved his growing strength, the resolution to be worthy. With his arms around her he whispered that he adored her and that he would go and work so well that she should be proud of him. She listened, her eyes closed, yet, when he had spoken, still dreamily she repeated, "Don't go."

"Are you tempting me? because if you are, if you really want me to stay, I can't go."

She did not reply for a long time, lying quietly against his shoulder, her hand in his. They heard the cab drive up.

"I suppose you must go," she said, "Yes, of course, you must. Only, isn't it happy, sitting here together? You must go, though I want you to stay, for I really am sensible; I know there is a grown-up world; but sitting here makes it seem unreal, and I think of sweet, silly things, like children's games on a long summer afternoon."

She straightened herself, sighing, smiling, then as she looked at him, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. In her eyes sudden tears answered them.

"It's that we have been rather unhappy, isn't it, dear Maurice?"

"Never, never again," he whispered; and, in a voice that took her back to such a distant day; "Do you remember once, long ago, when I first knew you, I told you that it was lack, not loss, I dreaded--it's only loss I dread now, for my life is full. And with you to prop me I am growing into such a real personality that I shall lose even my cowardly dread of loss. I'll never make you unhappy any more."

"Ah! but what about me? It's I who have made you unhappy, dear. Forgive me everything. You shall have no more dreads."

She leaned to kiss his forehead, rising, her hands in his. Compunction for the weakness that had showed him her unwillingness to let him go, smote her. Her strength more than ever, now that it was triumphing, must nerve his growing strength.

"Never, never again," she repeated. "So go, dear, have all the virtues. We will both work. The eternity will pass."