"You and Mr. Wynne seem to be great friends, Felicia," Mrs. Merrick said
to her niece on the following day. She was laying the papers and
magazines on a small table in more even rows, the occupation a cover for
a conversation significant, Felicia felt at once, but feigning
desultoriness. Mrs. Merrick's mind was of the order that infers
matrimonial projects from the smallest indications, and to her vision
the indications here were not small. Walks, talks, practisings on piano
and violin--whatever Mr. Wynne's projects, Felicia ought not to count
upon them. Mrs. Merrick felt a certain acrid interest in her niece's
worldly welfare. A too sumptuous match might, indeed, have distressed
her more deeply than a disastrous one; but Mr. Wynne was in no sense a
good match, although he might be a luxury to which Lady Angela could
treat herself. Marriage for Felicia must be a more serious matter, not
quite of bread and butter, but of, at all events, a decent and secure
establishment.
These were Mrs. Merrick's thoughts while she sorted the papers and
remarked upon the rapid friendship.
"You know," she said, laying the one magazine upon the other, "that he
is very poor. I fancy he has no settled income at all."
It had come, the inevitable grunt in the midst of the pastoral. Even in
her displeasure, Felicia could feel some amusement in the sudden simile
that suggested Aunt Kate as the unobserved pig in its pig-sty among the
orchards and rose-hedges where she had been happily strolling. She could
almost see a flexible, inquiring snout pushing between the palings,
above it the scrutiny of an observant eye. The simile so softened the
displeasure that her voice had all its indolent mildness as she asked,
"What has his poverty got to do with his friendship, Aunt Kate?" After
all, it was easy to lean over the palings, and with a stick, indulgently
to scratch the creature's back.
"Ah! nothing--nothing at all, no doubt, especially since it is said that
he is all but engaged to Lady Angela. He has admired her for years."
"And what then? Are any of his friendships a menace to his engagement do
you think?"
"Of course not, Felicia. You jump at such odd conclusions. And I did not
say that he was engaged, merely that he had admired her for years. It's
improbable that Lady Angela would accept him."
"At all events, a friendship of two days' standing can hardly be
affected by anything you may or may not have heard. _You_ mustn't jump
at odd conclusions, Aunt Kate." Felicia could not repress this as she
put her book under her arm and stepped from the window on to the lawn.
In spite of the lightness of her tone, the grunt had come as an ugly
interruption in a melodious mood. To hear such things did affect the two
days' friendship, though she did not believe them. She had known him for
only two days, but the two days had been hers so exclusively that any
other "admiration" must mean very little. Not that the two days meant
much to either of them, she assured herself. They had only strolled
among rose-hedges. A pity, though, that the pig-sty had to be faced.
On the lawn coming towards her were Angela, Maurice and Geoffrey. They
personified the new life into which she seemed to have entered. To see
them together pushed her back once more into the place of spectator.
Felicia had time to recognize her own hurt and almost angry mood as she
approached them and smiled at them in passing. But Angela, with a
winning hand held out, detained her. "You are so fond of walking. Won't
you come with us? Just about the grounds?" she said. She drew Felicia's
hand within her arm. "I am not very strong, so I can't make magnificent
expeditions as you do--Maurice tells me--with him before breakfast. But
even a little walk has twice the value if it's a talking walk, don't you
think?"
"I suppose it has," said Felicia, feeling a slight confusion as she
walked between them.
"Though a silent walk, with a companion one cares for, has even more,
perhaps," Angela added. "Don't you love silence?"
"I have had so much of it," said Felicia.
"So much silence; how exquisite! Isn't that a picture, Maurice, that she
makes for us! Much silence ought to mean much peace, much happiness,
much growth. You and your father on your hill-top; Maurice has told me
of it." Again she smiled from him to Felicia, the gentle link between
them. "Do you understand one another so well that you need talk very
little?"
"Oh! we talk a good deal, though we understand one another, I hope. I
only meant that there was no one else to talk to, and that one could
have so much silence as not to care much about it."
Lady Angela made her feel immature and irritable; and could the
shrinking irritability be simply--she asked it of herself with quite a
pang of self-disgust--a latent sense of contrast, of jealousy? But it
was prior to, deeper than, any possible jealousy; she could exonerate
herself from the pettiness, though wondering if the deeper cause were
more creditable. What creditable cause could there be for disliking Lady
Angela, so exquisite, so tender, holding her hand so closely within hers
as they walked? Yet she knew that she wanted, like a rude child, to push
her away; and though that rudimentary instinct must be controlled, her
eye in going over her went with something of a child's large coldness.
Angela wore, on the hot summer afternoon, a trailing dress of white. A
scarf of gauze and lace fell from her shoulders to her feet. Her arms
and breast glimmered through dim old laces. Enfolded as she was with
transparent whiteness, she looked exquisitely undressed--a wan
Aphrodite rising through faint foam. Ridiculous, indeed, Felicia
thought, that this spiritual creature should arouse in her a Puritanic
rigour, so that she was glad of the crisp creak of her own linen frock,
stiff with much laundering, quite badly cut, she unregretfully knew--a
frock simply, and in no sense an ornament. She was glad that she had not
put on her better dress, the white lawn, with its flutter and its charm.
Let the contrast be as obvious as possible--as unbecoming to herself as
possible.
"You must let me come and see you on your hill-top some day when I am
here again," Angela went on; "may I? I can't tell you how people
interest me. I have always loved to look at other people's
lives--haven't I, Maurice?" Geoffrey walked a little apart, smoking;
none of her pretty appeals included him.
"To meddle as well as look, you think--don't you?" and her smile was now
half sad in its humour.
"Oh, you meddle quite nicely," Maurice said; "Let her meddle with you,
Miss Merrick, if she longs to; it will give her lots of pleasure and do
you no harm."
"Rather scant encouragement for you!" laughed Angela, looking down, for
she was the taller of the two, at Felicia; "but may I? What I really
want of you is your help in a little general meddling here. I have been
talking with your aunt about the village people. There seems so much to
be done; and so much apathy, so much deadness. I am afraid it is a
struggle for your poor aunt, and of course she has not the gift, the
grace, the charm that you could bring to the struggle. What charities
are you interested in? What do you suggest? You mustn't think me a Don
Quixote--tilting at other people's windmills; but wherever I go I
confess I try to do something. I want to help people. What else is there
to live for?"
"I don't help anybody," said Felicia, nerving herself to resoluteness,
for she disliked putting a smudge beside the flowing loveliness of Lady
Angela's signature; "I don't know anything about the charities here. We
never go to church, and the charities are connected with that. We are
quite the black sheep of the parish, and black sheep can't be of much
use, except as warnings, I suppose."
It was ugly, it was uncouth; Lady Angela made her feel both; and after
the smudge was made there was silence for quite a long moment while they
turned among the laurels of the shrubbery, she, Angela and Maurice still
abreast, while Mr. Daunt and his cigar came behind them.
The fragrance of the cigar was pleasant to Felicia, gave emphasis to her
reckless little sense of satisfaction in doing for herself in all their
eyes, if need be. After all, they were not her life, and for having
fancied herself a part, perhaps a rather important part, of one of their
lives she needed, no doubt, this smart little dose of self-mortification.
But Angela, with a closer pressure of the hand, was speaking. "May I
help _you_, then, to be of more use?" she said; "I know how
circumstances--material circumstances--interfere. You live so far from
the village, and your father's interests, your interests, are
intellectual, not ethical. You haven't had an opportunity for thinking
about all the responsibilities of this difficult life of ours. I should
love to talk to you about it all--the giving of oneself, the life for
others, which is the only true living. You haven't seen the spiritual
and practical side of things--for practical and spiritual are one in
reality. We know, only to do."
They had emerged once more upon the lawn, and Felicia was now between
Angela and Geoffrey Daunt, who still strolled a little apart, looking at
the tree-tops. Maurice smiled first at her and then at Angela, as though
finding a whimsical humour in the situation. He must sympathize with
Angela. How could he not? Did not she herself sympathize? Were not these
thoughts her own familiar thoughts? Yet her one impulse was to disown
them when put before her in that soft, rapt voice; she found herself
contemplating them with no sense of communion, with a dull, hard
indifference, rather. She almost thought that she preferred pigs behind
their palings to seraphs in laces.
"I know very little," she said; "I certainly do nothing."
"Oh, come now!" Maurice broke in. "You talk to your father; you make a
beautiful garden; you play magnificently. Do you call that doing
nothing? And you were telling me last evening of the teas you loved
giving in the garden to the village children--pets of yours. I have no
doubt your teas give more pleasure than heaps of highly organized
charities."
"Ah! you do interest yourself then!" Angela turned on her a look of
bright reproach. "How can you say you do nothing? I am so _glad_ you
have the children--so glad that you don't shut yourself away in a palace
of art; nothing is more dangerous than that."
"That's a hit at me," Maurice declared; "I inhabit the dangerous palace,
and don't intend to come out of it, either, although Angela is always
sounding her trumpet at its gate."
Geoffrey, flicking the ash from his cigar, now asked, "Might not a
shrine, conceivably, be sometimes as dangerous as a palace?"
The tide, Felicia felt, as far as it had a direction, was with her and
against Angela; but the fact only heightened her angry discomposure. She
would not be drawn into a contest with Angela; she would not bid for
approbation. That she seemed to have gained it made her angrier. Mr.
Daunt was a half-insolent coxcomb, and she did not want Maurice to
defend her motives.
Angela's eyes turned in a long gaze upon Geoffrey, who had asked his
light question as casually as he blew smoke rings into the air. "My dear
Geoffrey," she said, "you say things at times that make me wonder
whether you have not very delicate perceptions as well as a ruthless
will. I don't quite know what, to your mind, your meaning may be, but to
mine it is deep. Any height that separates us from life is dangerous; is
that it? Yet may not the shrine be brought amidst the turmoil, the
suffering of life--so that those who see it may touch it and be healed?"
"It depends upon what's in it, my dear Angela." Geoffrey watched his
last, and very perfect ring, float softly against the blue.
"A shrine implies some sanctified presence."
"I am afraid that I haven't much faith in miraculous healings."
"In anything, Geoffrey?"
"In no words," the Olympian answered. The sun glittered upon his golden
head as he turned to smile at Angela with, Felicia felt, implacable
indifference. Their walk had brought them near the house again.
"I must go and finish my book," said Felicia; "after these shrines and
palaces I shall feel that I am creeping into a ditch when I return to
it. I hope that ditches aren't dangerous, too."
"Why do you also pretend not to be clever?" Angela asked her softly,
suddenly, smiling closely into her eyes. "What is the book?" She bent
her head to the title, looking up at once gravely. "You like him?"
"I said it was like creeping into a ditch. But there is a certain
splendour to be found even in ditches--he shows it to one, I think."
Angela put a hand on her arm; "Don't read him. A lily should not look at
ditches."
"I am going to crawl to the very end of mine--muddy ordeal though it
is," Felicia declared, trying to keep defiance from her smile, and aware
that the Olympian was looking at her and that she was flushing. Her
detached student's interest was probably branded in all their eyes with
some crude and ugly interpretation. Well, let them think what they liked
of her. She turned and went into the house. This had not been a
melodious afternoon.
"Poor child!" sighed Angela, "poor child! What a _milieu_! An infidel
papa and decadent literature."
"Well, it has raised a lily, you see," Maurice remarked.
"Has it?" said Angela. "Poor child. I long to help her."