CHAPTER XIV
A cold, evening sky was over London as Geoffrey and Felicia drove through wet squares and streets. Here, too, the storm had lifted, and between its darkness and the darkness of the coming night was the still moment of bleak and bitter twilight; strips of chill radiance behind the tattered trees; the pallid sky shining from the puddles of the roadway.
They had hardly spoken to each other during the walk; the wait at the desolate little station; the journey in the train. Geoffrey had merely expressed the hope that she was not cold; she had feared that he was hungry, had begged him to buy a sandwich. Once or twice from their corners of the railway carriage they had gravely smiled at each other. Now in the cab they neither spoke nor smiled.
Felicia's mood was that of the bleak, still pause between the storm and the darkness. It had its peace, its colourless peace. She could not look back at the storm and the coming darkness seemed impenetrable, but already her thoughts stole towards it, seeing, as if in a dream, Maurice, comforted; feeling his hand in hers.
She had a dreaming, a sorrowing presage that he had already returned, already knew the truth, that she would find him waiting, hopeless, yet waiting hopelessly for help.
From her letter he would look up at her--returned to him. And, though the thought wept for his pain, in her weariness it had lost its fear. There was peace in its very sadness. For then there need be no horrid crash of revelation for her to face. In silence she would hold out her arms to him. And "poor, poor Maurice," her heart whispered.
The river, when they reached the Embankment, had the sky's cold stillness; a drowned face looking up at its ghost. Felicia, shivering a little, said that it was very chilly. A stir of fear came with the sudden hope that Maurice was not waiting for her. She would rather face crashes than have him waiting--alone--with her letter. Hope and its fear were like a rising of life, of eagerness in her. She leaned her head from the window of the rattling four-wheeler to direct the cabman; explaining: "They often take a longer way here."
"I will see you up to the door of the flat," said Geoffrey.
She nodded, then said, "But if he is there? If Maurice should come to the door?"
"But he doesn't return till to-morrow."
"He may be there--I think he is there."
"Well--the maid would come to the door. Besides--if he did--what more simple than to shake his hand and say good-bye to you both?"
She said quietly, "We shall not see you again--for how long?"
"Oh, it will be quite natural that I should now go under for some years," Geoffrey answered as quietly. "Some day, when you and Maurice feel like seeing me----"
"Yes; some day," Felicia answered, with her head again out of the window.
His dull ache of misery had been so steady that he was surprised to find it capable of a deeper pang. He had almost the impulse to ask her if her quiet were wrung from such agony as his. The next moment he was hating himself for the whimpering selfishness that could not feel gladness for her fortitude. Yet the plaint was there, and it dimly guessed at a woman's capacity, strange in its sanity, its acceptance of compromise, for two lives; her absorption in response to the claim that she may listen to. He himself had helped to lock her into that smaller room of her heart and now she must live in it, since the high and beautiful chambers were closed to her for ever. In the smaller room, too, was the love cruelly wounded, wounded by her hand. Her whole nature was now an eagerness to staunch, uplift, console.
The cab drew up before the block of flats, and while Geoffrey, saying that he would walk back to his rooms, paid the man, Felicia went inside and rang beside the lift for the porter. Geoffrey had joined her when the man appeared.
Yes, he said, Mr. Wynne had come back that afternoon. No, Mr. Wynne had not been out again, though he had sent the maid away soon after arriving. He knew that he had not gone out for he had been sitting in the hall all day.
There had evidently been talk, Geoffrey saw. Felicia saw nothing, thought of nothing but Maurice's presence above; her heart seemed choked in its beating. She made no objection to Geoffrey following her into the lift.
They stepped out together and, before the foolishly decorative little door that Maurice had so often jested over they paused, the porter still lingering.
"You can go," said Geoffrey cheerfully; "I prefer walking down."
The man reluctantly descended and then Geoffrey rang.
Felicia leaned against the wall, seeing Maurice's eyes as he had said good-bye to her, hearing his, "It seems to me an eternity before I shall see you again." He had read her letter, alone. Remorse gave her the sense of swooning to all about her.
With almost a start she saw that Geoffrey still rang; and now he knocked as well.
"Maurice must be asleep," she said.
Geoffrey, his finger pressed on the electric bell, nodded.
She had answered, "The eternity will pass." It seemed an eternity. And it had passed. Yes, here she was again, before the familiar door, and in a moment he would see her.
"I should think that by now he would be awake. Don't you think that he must be awake by now?" she repeated the question almost irritably as he did not answer her; adding, "Perhaps he guesses that it is we, and will not see us. Oh Geoffrey--Geoffrey. How could I have written such a letter!"
"It will be all right when you see each other. You must meet his despair, of course." Geoffrey, his shoulder turned to her, continued to knock loudly. The draughty landing with its twilight square of window open to a damp brick wall, was vault-like in its cold; Felicia, clasping her arms, shivered.
Geoffrey presently said, "I shall have to break the glass and open the door."
At this she started from her place, caught back his hand.
"No, no! He can't have waked yet. He is worn out--tired--imagine how tired! Go on ringing. Knock again."
Her face showed a horror that did not know itself.
"I think I had better break the door," said Geoffrey, gently; putting her back.
She dropped to helpless submission.
The glass panel crashed in under the sharp blow and putting his hand through the aperture Geoffrey drew the bolt.
Inside was complete darkness. A touch at the electric button near the door and the little hall, its closed doors, its chairs, table, jar of laurel-leaves, flashed upon them.
Geoffrey still kept Felicia behind him.
"Let me go first," he said.
"You! First! No, no, I must see him first."
But firmly now he held her back.
"Felicia, you must wait here. Maurice may be ill."
She had seized his arms to push by him and they stood clutching each other in the brilliant light.
"Ill!" she repeated. "And I am not to go to him! My husband!"
Something in her stricken face, her fixed eyes, made him yield.
"Come then, let us go together."
"No." Her thrust against him did not relax. "I must go alone; I must see him alone; I must speak to him alone."
Geoffrey clasped his arm around her. "Felicia, understand me, you shall not go alone. We are too near to be separated--in this. We must go together."
He saw that his words tore from her mind the veil that covered horror. She submitted, grasping, yet pushing from her, the arm that held her.
"To our room--first. The light is turned in the same place--near the door."
Geoffrey flung open the door. It did not need the light to show them that the room was empty; the desolate evening sky again confronted them at the window. They drew back.
"The drawing-room--the studio--he could not easily hear in the studio."
Geoffrey knew that her hope was desperate--almost mechanical. They looked into the drawing-room; went through the dining-room to the studio. All were empty. They retraced their steps. Her hand no longer grasped and repelled his arm. She leaned upon it.
"His dressing-room--across the passage," she half whispered.
If only, Geoffrey thought, she would faint in his arms so that he might lay her down and go alone. But her swiftness equalled his. Neither could hesitate. He threw open the door of the little dressing-room.
Darkness again. The curtain drawn before the window with its courtyard aspect. Geoffrey's hand felt for the electric button, trembled before it found it. Light came like a shock in the darkness. Maurice lay at their feet.
The pistol had not fallen from his hand, though the open fingers no longer held it. He had not shot himself through the head. Thank God for that, Geoffrey found himself trivially thinking; his head was unmarred and beautiful. One hardly noticed the breast's tragic disarray.
As Felicia put away his arm and left him it was now Geoffrey who leaned, weak, nerveless against the wall.
He watched her kneel beside her husband, and, softly pushing the pistol from his hand, take the empty, open hand in hers.
With a look of tender wonder, like a mother with her sleeping child, she slightly touched his hair and brow. It was still with wonder that she looked up at Geoffrey.
"He is dead," she said in a hushed and gentle voice, as the mother says: "He is sleeping."
Geoffrey's white, silent face, the tears so strangely running down it, over his cheeks, into the corners of his lips, gave her a shudder. Her eyes turned again to the serenity, the slumbering serenity, of the dead face.
For long moments she sat still, while Geoffrey stifled his sobs.
"Is my letter there?" she said at last. He saw the open letter on the dressing table; near it was a sealed envelope.
He forced himself to cross the room to them. The dressing table was behind her; he lifted the letters above her head; the envelope was addressed to Mrs. Wynne. Hesitating, he glanced down, and saw that she had raised her head, that her eyes were on him. She put up her hand.
"Wait--not now."
"I want it now," she commanded with her emotionless gentleness. Now--while I am still stupefied; he understood. He gave it to her and turned aside while she read, down there, at his feet, beside Maurice.
The letter was not long. He heard her hand fall softly with it. She sat, the vacant hand before her face, bowed over her husband.
Geoffrey could not speak to her and he could not leave her. He stood looking down at the dressing table--empty but for its little ivory tray, its pin-cushion. Maurice had not unpacked his dressing-case. A photograph of Felicia was stuck into the glass; not the framed one; that was packed too; he had taken it with him. This was a profile; not good; making her too sad, as Maurice had said.
He heard now that she wept.
He could not speak to her, he could not leave her, yet in his wretchedness he felt himself an alien, a merciless onlooker, till the tearing thought of Maurice, lying there, dead, seemed to justify his presence by his grief.
And presently he felt a touch on his hand. He looked down at her. Her face still hidden she held up the letter to him.
"I am to read it, Felicia? You wish me to read it?"
"He is ours. It is because of you--because of you that I----" She could not finish, and again he understood that she would say that because of him she could look on her dead husband with a right to her despair. He had given him back to her and her to him.
"Dearest Felicia," he read, "I was a coward. But I always loved you most--even when I lied to her. And now there is nothing in the world for me but you. And I am unworthy of you--and of my friend. All I can do for you is to set you free. Do you remember Maeterlinck's poem, darling? I do smile; not only so that you shan't cry, but for pure joy that at last I can really do something not ignoble in your eyes. Darling--darling--it is only horrible because I can't see you again, and because you hate me and perhaps may still hate me and not believe me. Don't, ah! don't hate me. Love me again when I am no longer there to give you pain. Be happy, dearest one.--MAURICE."
A groan broke from Geoffrey's lips. Had it been any other woman at his feet, however his understanding might have condoned her innocent guilt, he must at the moment have shrunk from her. As it was, his groan was half for her, for the hideous helplessness of her remorse. His love yearned over her, and longed, in speechlessness, to shield her from herself.
"Oh, Maurice--my Maurice, I have killed you," Felicia said. "How can I live?"
He knelt beside her, his eyes on the piteous hand that blindly, patiently, wiped away the tears that fell and fell. He could not look at Maurice.
And with her sense of his nearness, his grief and his compassion, she shuddered with dreadful sobs.
"He went through that agony alone. He was so afraid of loneliness--so afraid of fear. He was like a little child. He came back to me--loving me--and he found that I had left him. He died thinking that I might always hate him. I can't live. I can't."
Geoffrey could not think clearly. No phrases of consolation came to him to lift her from her despair. He was with her in it. He could not lift her yet.
And it was no selfish claim that rose to his lips; rather it was the succouring instinct of life that spoke through him to show her life's supreme imperative as, putting his hand on hers and Maurice's, he stammered, "You must, you must. For me."
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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
The Confounding of Camilia=> The Confounding of Camelia {title page}
an idolent=> an indolent {pg 14}
You wont like Geoffrey=> You won't like Geoffrey {pg 35}
milien=> milieu {pg 40}
tenacious worldiness=> tenacious worldliness {pg 48}
clearer vison=> clearer vision {pg 79}
he ammended=> he amended {pg 129}
unobstrusiveness=> unobtrusiveness {pg 176}
resistlessness=> restlessness {pg 303}
dependance=> dependence {pg 305}
End of Project Gutenberg's Paths of Judgement, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick