Maurice and Felicia walked along the lane where they had first met; she
was going home and he to go that evening. It was a farewell walk. On the
hill-top, in the garden he was at last to see, they were to say
good-bye--good-bye for a little while. Felicia, in her new and blissful
confidence, did not even think of asking for how long, it seemed sure to
be so short. But Maurice was already asking himself the question,
battling creeping doubts with passionate asseverations. And better than
passionate asseverations was the meeting of such doubts by holding her
more closely in the deep, lonely lane, dispelling shadows from his mind
with a kiss. To hold her, to kiss her, was to keep alight a flame of joy
within him, a flame that drooped and flickered when those sad thoughts
blew over it; and without was sadness too; the fragrance of the white
traveller's-joy in the hedges seemed a sigh; the soft evening, the pale
clouded sky, were grey-habited nuns, whispering of the crumbling of
earthly hopes.
That Felicia heard no such whispers, no such sighs, her pensive but
steadily gazing profile showed. The pensiveness was a dove brooding on a
secure peace; her eyes, gazing ahead, had the gravity of a child's
seeing happy visions. He felt a pang of envy. Or was it ignorance that
kept fear from her? Again he turned her face, white flower that it was,
to him, bending his lips to hers. Only so he found some of her peace,
her serenity.
Felicia, after the kiss, still looked at him. "I would do anything for
you--suffer anything," she said.
"I don't want you ever to suffer for me."
"I would almost rather. It would make even deeper roots."
"And if the suffering were poverty, grinding poverty?--I am very poor,
Felicia"--Maurice's voice hurried, broke a little--"I have nothing."
"I should like showing you how little I mind. We can both work. I have
always thought that I might make something by giving lessons in
music--or translating; I am a good linguist." Her realism was a new
aspect of her. Her steadiness, then, had not faced mere visions. But
such realism perplexed, almost dismayed him. A laborious union had never
entered his mind. Her words conjured up a grey picture of unrelieved
effort, a wife striving beside him in obscurity. It hurt him more for
her than for himself, though for himself it gave a tremor of shrinking.
"You work, darling! Absurd! Besides, London swarms with music-teachers,
with translators. No, no; something will turn up for me. I can put such
heaps of irons in the fire. I may suddenly become a popular
portrait-painter--charge a thousand apiece for my pictures; two or three
a year would keep us going beautifully. Or I may write a book."
"Papa and I live on as many hundreds!" Felicia ejaculated, in her smile
a touch of maternal tolerance for such improbabilities.
In his strong reaction from that grim picture she had so calmly drawn he
could laugh at the thought of the little hundreds. Yet that even those
base rungs of the ladder were not beneath his feet gave him a chill.
Among the pines, as they began to climb, the wind sighed, and the sun,
far below and far away over the grey wastes of evening, made only a
sullenly smouldering line of embers on a cloud-barred horizon. They
paused to look back at it.
"How one feels the autumn--almost like winter already," said Felicia,
leaning against him. "It is like our music of yesterday morning, isn't
it?--a sadness so beautiful to look at from our happiness."
But already Maurice's momentary energy had crumbled. The melancholy of
the wind, the sunset, seized him like a presage.
"Oh! Felicia," he exclaimed, holding her closely, "will you always love
me? You are so much stronger than I am."
"But Maurice--dear--the only strong thing in me is my love for you."
"No, no; not only that. You are not afraid so easily as I am. And this
parting--you can bear it--with such calm!"
There was almost the sob of a reproach in his voice as he leaned his
cheek to hers for comfort. The echo--as of an alien knock at the doors
of her happiness, went through the peace, the radiance within. Tears
sprang to her eyes.
"Why, Maurice!--calm! It's only that loving you--having you to love me
is so great, so wonderful, that even yet I can only feel the
thankfulness--the beauty. Don't you know that when you are gone my life
will be only a waiting?" The tremor of pain in her, her trust in him,
roused again a flare of his manliness.
"Not for long, dearest. Waiting isn't a keen enough word for what I
shall feel. Longing, longing, until I see you again."
"Oh! it will be keener than mere waiting with me, too." She felt dimly
that she must not shackle him in the fight he was going to make for her
by showing him what pain to her would be in the waiting.
They walked on. As they neared the house Felicia said, in a voice that
had regained its quiet, "We must tell papa."
Again in Maurice was that crumbling. The last embers of intoxication
seemed, as she spoke, to die, to leave him looking at ashen realities.
He would conquer poverty. Yes; but bind himself and her to face it--as
yet menacing and unconquered? That would be to wrong her more deeply
than she could understand. She must be free--free before the world; and
fidelity to him merely a matter of feeling. And, thinking of freedom,
his mind, with a pang of self-scorn, looked back for an ugly moment at
the forfeited refuge--at Angela--not yet openly forfeited.
"No, dearest," he said, flushing in the twilight and feeling that, in
spite of its loss of intoxication, his love for her had never been so
strong as in its uprising over such thoughts, "Not yet. Let it be our
secret. My affairs are in such a mess--I must not go to your father
until they are really straightened. I really ought not to have told you
until they were straight; but I could not help that. It seemed almost
weak-spirited to go without telling you, for such a grubby little
reason--a reason that can't touch us--but that must shut out others.
Don't you think so? Darling, I have not hurt you--already?"
Nothing in the bent, listening profile told him so; the fear came with a
sudden glimpse of a craven self, lest she should see it too. But the
eyes raised to his held, with a new patience, no new vision of him. Her
smile in its grave acceptance of burdens still found joy in the bearing
of burdens for their love's sake. "No; how could it hurt me? I see that
you are right. We will keep our secret to ourselves for a little while."
It was now her trust that seemed to him almost as terrible as the
dreaded lack of it had been. Cruel, he thought, that mere material
circumstance should toss one's helpless mind like a shuttlecock from one
fear to another. But--"Only a very little while," he said, nerving
himself to be what she thought him.
Felicia, pushing open the garden gate, stepped inside; the gate swung
to. She held his hand over it.
"So this is the garden. It is exquisite to leave you here among all
these flowers; to think of you loving me and waiting for me in all this
serenity." He smiled, looking quickly from her to the irises, the
pansies, the roses. But the smile faded. "Ah! but how can I wait!--how
can I bear to leave you!" His pain, his fear, surged up in the words. He
hid his face on her shoulder, longing for a strength that would banish
them; her trust in his strength hurt him too much to give it; but when
she kissed him fear was soothed. Only--how would it be when she was no
longer there to kiss him?
Her hand for a long moment had pressed his head to her breast; then she
moved from him, saying, "You will be late for your train, dear Maurice,
and I shall be late for my dinner. Papa must be waiting."
Maurice, to spend this last day with her, was to take an evening train
that would get him to London in time to catch the Scotch express. He
must go sandwiched but dinnerless. They had laughed over the sacrifice.
He had now, again, to laugh, brokenly.
"How can you think of trains?"
"I am thinking most of the train that will bring you back." Once more
her trust struck flame from him. "Ah!--soon! soon!" he said. They kissed
silently. He saw the tears in her eyes and adored her for the strength
that, for his sake, mastered pain and did not let her fear.