FELICITA'S REFUSAL.
Now there was no longer a doubt weighing upon his spirit, Felix longed
to tell his mother all. The slight cloud that had arisen of late years
between them was so gossamer-like yet, that the faintest breath could
drive it away. Though her boy was not the brilliant genius she had
secretly and fondly hoped he would prove, he was still dearer to
Felicita than ought else on earth or, indeed, in heaven; and her love
for him was deeper than she supposed. On his part he had never lost that
chivalrous tenderness, blended with deferential awe, with which he had
regarded her from his early boyhood. His love for Alice was so utterly
different from his devotion to her, that he had never compared them, and
they had not come into any kind of collision yet.
Felix sought his mother in her library. Felicita was alone, reading in
the light of a lamp which shed a strong illumination over her. In his
eyes she was incomparably the loveliest woman he had ever seen, not even
excepting Alice; and the stately magnificence of her velvet dress, and
rich lace, and costly jewels, was utterly different from that of any
other woman he knew. For Mrs. Pascal dressed simply, as became the wife
of a country rector; and Phebe, in her studio, always wore a blouse or
apron of brown holland, which suited her well, making her homely and
domestic in appearance as she was in nature. Felicita looked like a
queen in his eyes.
When she heard his voice speaking to her, having not caught the sound of
his step on the soft carpet, Felicita looked up with a smile in her dark
eyes. In a day or two her son was about to leave her roof, and her heart
felt very soft toward him. She had scarcely realized that he was a man,
until she knew that he had decided to have a place and a dwelling of his
own.
She stretched out both hands to him, with a gesture of tenderness
peculiar to herself, and shown only to him. It was as if one hand could
not link them closely enough; could not bring them so nearly heart to
heart. Felix took them both into his own, and knelt down before her; his
young face flushed with eagerness, and his eyes, so like her own,
fastened upon hers.
"Your face speaks for you," she said, pressing one of her rare kisses
upon it. "What is it my boy has to tell me?"
"Oh, mother," he cried, "you will never think I love you less than I
have always done? See, I kiss your feet still as I used to do when I was
a boy."
He bent his head to caress the little feet, and then laid it on his
mother's lap, while she let her white fingers play with his hair.
"Why should you love me less than you have always done?" she asked, in a
sweet languid voice. "Have I ever changed toward you, Felix?"
"No, mother, no," he answered, "but to-night I feel how different I am
from what I was but a year or two ago. I am a man now; I was a boy
then."
"You will always be a boy to me," she said, with a tender smile.
"Yet I am as old as my father was when you were married," he replied.
Felicita's face grew white, and she leaned back in her chair with a
sudden feeling of faintness. It was years since the boy had spoken of
his father; why should he utter his name now? He had raised his head
when he felt her move, and her dim and failing eyes saw his face in a
mist, looking so like his father when she had known him first, that she
shrank from him, with a terror and aversion too deep to be concealed.
"Roland!" she cried.
He did not speak or move, being too bewildered and wonderstruck at his
mother's agitation. Felicita hid her face in her white hands, and sat
still recovering herself. The pang had been sudden, and poignant; it had
smitten her so unawares that she had betrayed its anguish. But, she felt
in an instant, her boy had no thought of wounding her; and for her own
sake, as well as his, she must conquer this painful excitement. There
must be no scene to awaken observation or suspicion.
"Mother, forgive me," he exclaimed, "I did not mean to distress you."
"No," she breathed with difficulty, "I am sure of it. Go on Felix."
"I came to tell you," he said gravely, "that as long as I can
remember--at least as long as we have been in London and known the
Pascals--I have loved Alice. Oh, mother, I've thought sometimes you
seemed as fond of her as you are of Hilda. You will be glad to have her
as your daughter?"
Felicita closed her eyes with a feeling of helpless misery. She could
hardly give a thought to Felix and the words he uttered; yet it was
those words which brought a flood of hidden memories and fears sweeping
over her shrinking soul. It was so long since she had thought much of
Roland! She had persuaded herself that as so many years had passed by
bringing to her no hint or token of his existence, he must be dead; and
as one dead passes presently out of the active thoughts, busy only with
the present, so had her husband passed away from her mind into some dim,
hidden cell of memory, with which she had long ceased to trouble
herself.
Her husband seemed to stand before her as she had seen him last, a
haggard, way-worn, ruined man, beggared and stripped of all that makes
life desirable. And this was only six months after he had lost all. What
would he be after thirteen years if he was living still?
But if it had appeared to her out of the question to face and bear the
ignominy and disgrace he had brought upon her thirteen years ago, how
utterly impossible it was now. She could never retrace her steps. To
confess the deception she had herself consented to, and taken part in,
would be to pull down with her own hands the fair edifice of her life.
The very name she had made for herself, and the broader light in which
her fame had placed her, made any repentance impossible. "A city that is
set on a hill cannot be hid." Her hill was not as lofty as she had once
fancied it would be; but still she was not on the low and safer level
of the plain. She was honorably famous. She could not stain her honor by
the acknowledgment of dishonor. The chief question, after all, was
whether Roland was alive or dead.
Her colorless face and closed eyes, the expression of unutterable
perplexity and anguish in her knitted brows and quivering lips, filled
Felix with wonder and grief. He had risen from his kneeling posture at
her feet, and now his reverential awe of her yielded to the tender
compassion of a man for a weak and suffering woman. He drew her beloved
head on to his breast, and held her in a firm and loving grasp.
"I would not grieve or pain you for worlds," he said falteringly, "nor
would Alice. I love you better than myself; as much as I love her. We
will talk of it another day, mother."
She pressed close to him, and he felt her arms strained about him, as if
she could not hold him near enough to her. It seemed to him as if she
was striving to draw him into the very heart of her motherhood; but she
knew how deep the gulf was between her and him, and shuddered at her own
loneliness.
"It is losing you, my son," she whispered with her quivering lips.
"No, no," he said eagerly; "it is not losing me, but finding another
child. Don't take a gloomy view of it, mother. I shall be as happy as my
father was with you."
He could not keep himself from thinking of his father, or of speaking of
him. He understood more perfectly now what his father's worship of his
mother had been; the tenderness of a stronger being toward a weaker one,
blended with the chivalrous homage of a generous nature to the one woman
chosen to represent all womanhood. There was a keener trouble to him
to-night, than ever before, in the thought that his mother was a widow.
"Leave me now, Felix," she said, loosing him from her close embrace, and
shutting her eyes from the sight of him. "Do not let any one come to me
again to-night. I must be alone."
But when she was alone it was only to let her thoughts whirl round and
round in one monotonous circle. If Roland was dead, her secret was
safe, and Felix might be happy. If he was not dead, Felix must not marry
Alice Pascal. She had not looked forward to this difficulty. There had
been an unconscious and vague feeling in her heart that her son loved
her too passionately to be easily pleased by any girl; and, almost
unawares to herself, she had been in the habit of comparing her own
attractions and loveliness with those of the younger women who crossed
his path. Yet there was no personal vanity in the calm conviction she
possessed that Felix had never seen a woman more beautiful and
fascinating than the mother he had always admired with so much
enthusiasm.
She was not jealous of Alice Pascal, she said to herself, and yet her
heart was sore when she said it. Why could not Felix remain simply
constant to her? He was the only being she had ever really loved; and
her love for him was deeper than she had known it to be. Yet to crush
his hopes, to wound him, would be like the bitterness of death to her.
If she could but let him marry his Alice, how much easier it would be
than throwing obstacles in the way of his happiness; obstacles that
would seem but the weak and wilful caprices of a foolish mother.
When the morning came, and Canon Pascal made his appearance, Felicita
received him in her library, apparently composed, but grave and almost
stern in her manner. They were old friends; but the friendship on his
side was warm and genial, while on hers it was cold and reserved. He
lost no time in beginning on the subject which had brought him to her.
"My dear Felicita," he said, "Felix tells me he had some talk with you
last night. What do you think of our young people?"
"What does Alice say?" she asked.
"Oh, Alice!" he answered in an amused yet tender tone; "she would be of
one mind with Felix. There is something beautiful in the innocent,
unworldly love of children like these, who are ready to build a nest
under any eaves. Felicita, you do not disapprove of it?"
"I cannot disapprove of Alice," she replied gloomily; "but I do
disapprove of Felix marrying so young. A man should not marry under
thirty."
"Thirty!" echoed Canon Pascal; "that would be in seven years. It is a
long time; but if they do not object I should not. I'm in no hurry to
lose my daughter. But they will not wait so long."
"Do not let them be engaged yet," she said in hurried and sad tones.
"They may see others whom they would love more. Early marriages and long
engagements are both bad. Tell them from me that it is better for them
to be free a while longer, till they know themselves and the world
better. I would rather Felix and Hilda never married. When I see Phebe
so free from all the gnawing cares and anxieties of this life, and so
joyous in her freedom, I wish to heaven I could have had a single life
like hers."
"Why! Felicita!" he exclaimed; "this is morbid. You have never forgiven
God for taking away your husband. You have been keeping a grudge against
Him all these years of your widowhood."
"No, no!" she interrupted; "it is not that. They married me too soon, my
uncle and Mr. Sefton. I never loved Roland as I ought. Oh! if I had
loved him, how different my life would have been, and his!"
Her voice faltered and broke into deep sobs, which cut off all further
speech. For a few minutes Canon Pascal endeavored to reason with her and
comfort her, but in vain. At length he quietly went away and sent Phebe
to her. There could be no more discussion of the subject for the
present.