Mrs. Merrick sent a cart for her niece's box next morning, and Felicia
set out in the afternoon to walk the two miles to Trensome Hall, happy
in the buoyancy of a sunny, breezy day. She responded easily to sunshine
and buoyancy, and, in spite of her pessimistic education, easily
expected happiness. Sometimes it seemed that it might be waiting for her
behind every bush, for youth and an ardent temperament are more potent
mood-makers than rational reflection. And, indeed, it did lurk, smiling,
behind all the bushes to-day, for Felicia's mood was happy. She saw it
in the blue and white of the high summer sky, in the sun-dappled woods,
in the wild-flowers of the hedge-row; she heard it in the mazurka-like
song of a bird hidden in green mysteries of shade; she felt it in the
warm, fresh breeze that swayed light shadows across the road. It was
only an intensifying of the sense of response when, at a turning of the
road, she met a young man, who seemed quite magically to personify the
breeziness, the brightness, the mazurka-like element of the day. Coming
thus upon each other, both smiling to themselves, both looking,
listening, and, as it were, expectant, it seemed only natural that
their eyes should dwell upon each other with frank interest. Their steps
slackened, a mute, pleased query passed between them, and the young man,
doffing his hat, and giving Felicia as he did so a vivid impression of
sunlit auburn hair, said, "I beg your pardon, but I am sure that you are
Miss Merrick."
"And you are Mr. Wynne," said Felicia, for she was quite sure he was not
the ambitious politician. Their certainty about one another was as
natural as all the rest.
"I came to meet you," said Mr. Wynne. "I heard that you were arriving
this afternoon, and that you lived on top of a hill and had a wonderful
garden; and as I love gardens and hill-tops I thought I would try to
meet you as near them as possible."
Maurice Wynne was also telling himself that he loved meeting Miss
Merrick.
Felicia on this day was dressed in white. Her hat had a wreath of white
roses, and, tying under her chin, shaded her thick, smooth hair--hair
the colour of sandal-wood--and her pale face. He would have climbed any
number of hills to see the face--so significant, so resolute, so
delicate.
Her small, square chin, narrowing suddenly from rounded cheeks, her
wide, firm lips, her nose and forehead, and the broad sweep of her
eye-brows, had all this quality of resolute delicacy. In the pale yet
vivid tints of her face her clear grey eyes seemed dark, and her
eyelashes slanted across them like sunshine on deep pools of woodland
water. Maurice was seeing all this, delightedly,--and that through the
child-like moulding of the cheek, the lips' sweetness, the eyes'
tranquillity, ran a latent touch of mischievous gaiety--a dryad laughing
a little at her own new soul.
"You have missed the climb and the garden in meeting me," said Felicia,
"unless you follow this road straight on, and that will lead you to
them----"
"Perhaps you will show me both on some other day," said Maurice, "since
I haven't missed you." He had turned to walk beside her, and Felicia,
also making inner comments, reflected that a person so assured of his
own graceful intentions could hardly be anything but graceful. His
looks, his words, implied happy things with as much conviction as the
bird still sang on behind them.
"It isn't in any way an unusual garden, though the view from it is
unusual."
"I am sure that your garden is unusual--just as this first stage of my
journey towards it has been. It is very unusual to meet a Watteau figure
in a Watteau landscape."
"If you had started a little earlier," Felicia said, smiling, "and met
me on the hill-side, I shouldn't have been so in harmony. There the
pine-woods are very grave, and a Watteau figure would have been
incongruous."
"Incongruous, but almost more delightfully unusual," he returned; "there
would have been a pathos in it then. I am a painter of sorts, and so I
may tell you, may I not, that the picture you made as you fluttered in
the shadow and sunlight around that green turn of the road, was quite
bewilderingly radiant and charming?"
Felicia was amused and a little confused by the fact that he might say
it, so oddly this young man seemed to have taken possession of her. Once
more, that he should express his pleasure in her picturesqueness seemed
as inevitable as the bird's song. She could hardly feel that his rights
were only those of a stranger. Anything she said, she felt sure, he
would like, and a person who likes anything one says is no stranger. So,
if he would, he might say that she was like a Watteau and had made a
picture. She had experienced, for her part, something of the same
sensation. Maurice had been a radiant and delightful apparition.
He was a slender young man, tall, narrow-shouldered, lightly made. Hair,
small pointed beard, and the slight moustache that swept up from his
lips, were of that vivid auburn. His skin was feminine in its clear pink
and white. One might have felt the brilliancy of his eyes as hard had
not their blue been so caressing. His look, with its intent sympathy,
his smile, claiming intimacy with child-like trust, were all response
and understanding. He enveloped one like a sunbeam. A species of
sparkling emotion shone from him. He really dazzled Felicia a little. He
was so much an incarnation of sunlight that her own happy mood seemed to
have walked with her straight into a sort of fairy-tale--into a
veritable Watteau landscape, at all events, where happiness was the
only natural thing in the world.
As they approached the lodge-gates--they had been talking without pause
of music, books, pictures, even about life--he asked her how she had
guessed that he was Maurice Wynne--"Because there is only one of
you--but there are several of _us_--Mrs. Merrick's guests, I mean."
"She told me about her guests. There were only two young men, and one of
them sounded rather stately, overpowering, so I knew you were the
other."
"Poor Geoffrey!" Maurice ejaculated with a laugh, "how you have guessed
at him! But he is a good deal more than that, all the same. And he is a
tremendous friend of mine."
"Is he? I hope you don't mind my flippancy; it was founded on the merest
scrap of conjecture."
"It isn't flippancy; it's intuition. Geoffrey _is_ that, only he is
more. I don't mind a bit--I wouldn't mind flippancy, only I feel bound
to testify. Geoffrey is the best of friends to me, you see; has been
since our boyhood." His smiling homage was an even nicer indication of
character than his charm and happiness. Felicia inwardly accorded a cool
approval to the stately friend.
"I suppose you have heard about the others, too," Maurice went on;
"Angela Bagley is another great chum of mine. I wonder how she will
strike you. You must tell me--even if it's flippant. She is clever, too;
at all events, she is very effective."
"Do you think they are the same thing?"
"Effectiveness is the only test of cleverness, isn't it?"
"If the people one affects are clever, one must be clever to affect
them, I suppose."
"But if they are stupid?" smiled Maurice, "and such heaps of people are,
aren't they?"
"Yet it is clever to take that into account and to make what one wants
out of their stupidity."
"Ah, exactly; that is what Geoffrey does," said Maurice. It was what she
had imagined of him. "And such cleverness is, to you, a very ugly
thing," he added.
"Oh; I don't know." Felicia flushed a little, realizing that they were
going rather far since it was of his friend they were talking. "It would
depend, wouldn't it, on what he wanted to get out of their stupidity?"
"He wants to get power."
"Well, there again, for what end?"
"Isn't power an end in itself?"
"I should think it ought to have an aim."
"Such as making the stupid less stupid? raising the masses? all that
sort of thing?"
"It is the part of the powerful person to say that."
Maurice continued smilingly to look at her. "You won't like Geoffrey,"
he observed. "But though he hasn't ideals I will say of him that he is
dear of the usual reproach of the politician--he claims none. Now Lady
Angela does," he went on, in a sequence that again gave Felicia that
rather alarming sense of sudden intimacy. "She lives under tremendously
high pressure, you know." They had passed down the uninteresting avenue,
its trees marking sections of flat, green country, and as the house was
reached Felicia felt the moment deferred for learning more precisely in
what this pressure consisted.