"I regret this departure of yours, Maurice. I beg you to reconsider it."
"My dear father, what _are_ you talking about?"
"You should not leave Felicia. She is exposed to certain influences--to a certain influence--that I deeply disapprove. She is unruly, reckless.
I pretend to no further authority. She defies me."
"Will you explain yourself?" The patience of Maurice"s tone was ironic.
"I will speak plainly, since you force it. Mr. Daunt is too much with Felicia."
"Geoffrey! He can"t be too much with her."
Maurice"s nerves, since the last scene with Felicia, had been on edge.
Only a contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt steadied them now. Mr. Merrick"s paternal anxiety, alloyed though it was with the latent desire to hit back, was sincere; Maurice saw in it only a pompous, an idiotic impertinence.
Mr. Merrick"s voice hardened to as open an hostility as his son-in-law"s.
"People notice it. There is talk about it. I will not stand by and see my child"s name become the plaything of malicious gossip."
"Who notices it? Who talks about it? What utter and d.a.m.nable folly!"
"I decline to enter into an unbefitting altercation with you, Maurice.
Your friend is obviously in love with your wife, and Felicia allows him to be too much with her."
"Is this pure imagination on your part? I know, of course, that there"s never been any love lost between you and Geoffrey."
"I have been warned," said Mr. Merrick, reluctant, yet with redoubled dignity.
Maurice"s smouldering nerves struck to flame, and an ugly illumination glared at him. "This can be no one but Angela," he said.
It was difficult to keep dignity under eyes that seemed to take him by the throat; in the struggle to look firmly back Mr. Merrick was silent.
"Come. Own to it. The venomous liar!" Maurice added in a low voice, studying the revelations of the other"s wrathful helplessness.
"I have no wish to deny it, and I must forbid you to speak in that manner of a woman who honours you by calling you her friend."
"I know Angela better than you do," Maurice laughed. His fury almost pa.s.sed away from its derivative object.
"The fact remains that people talk, and that truest kindness warned me of it."
"If people talk it"s she who makes them. I"ve known--ever since I married her--that Geoffrey loved Felicia." Maurice flung him the truth scornfully.
"Yet you speak of lies!"
"I know my friend, and honour him, as you don"t seem to know or honour your daughter."
"I know human nature as you don"t seem to know it. It"s a dangerous intimacy. I insist on my right to protect my daughter."
"You insult her by claiming such a right. Don"t speak to me of this again." Maurice, as he said it, grew suddenly white with a new thought.
"And never dare," he added, turning eyes that quelled even Mr. Merrick"s fully-armed championship, "never dare tell Felicia that you have discussed her with that woman."
"You may be sure that I would not expose Lady Angela to Felicia"s misconception."
Mr. Merrick, in his realized helplessness, cast about him for some retaliatory weapon. He seized the first that offered itself. "And since my meaning as Felicia"s father seems gone, I had better go myself. I am not needed, since you say so, by either of you."
It was the idlest threat. In utter astonishment he heard Maurice answering, "I"ve thought more than once of suggesting it. By all means."
"I will remain with Felicia while you are away."
"As you please."
"I will leave directly after your return."
"When you will." Maurice"s voice was quieter. The unexpected prospect of relief mollified him. "It"s a pity, for Felicia will suffer, but she herself must see that it doesn"t do. You have made life too uncomfortable for both of us. And after this! Well, you"ve made things impossible. For a time you had better realize what your daughter is away from her, realize how little she needs any one"s protection. It"s settled then; you go, on my return."
Mr. Merrick bowed. He was aghast, outraged, more than all, wounded. The hurt child whimpered and then fairly howled within him, while, in silence, he smiled ironically. They reached their destination, Maurice in a growing rage that for once obliterated his fears. It was like strong wine that uplifted, made him almost glad.
He left his father-in-law and made his way through the crowded rooms in search of Felicia. He needed to look into her limpid eyes after this hissing of serpents. But instead of Felicia he found Angela.
For the distasteful monotony of these a.s.semblies Angela had always an air of patient disdain; and to-night, under a high wreath of white flowers, her face more than ever wore its mask of languid martyrdom. She was in white, perfumed like a lily.
Maurice felt a keener gladness on seeing her. His wrath, running new currents of vigour through him, carried him past any hesitation. At last he would have it out with Angela.
"I want to speak to you," he said. "Is there any place where one can get out of this crowd?"
Angela saw in a flash that a crisis had arrived; and in another that she had been working towards such a crisis, living for it, since Maurice had cast her off. For a moment, beneath the rigour of his eyes--to see Maurice unflinching was a new experience--her spirit quailed, then soared, exulting in the thought of final contest. Since he wished it--yes, they would speak openly. He should at last hear all--her hate, her love, her supplication. She was an intimate in the house where Maurice and Felicia were formal guests; her quick mind seized all possibilities. "Yes," she said, "there is a little room--a little boudoir. No one ever goes there on nights like these." Her self-mastery was all with her as she moved beside him through the crowd. She was able, over the tumult of hope and fear, to speak calmly, to smile at friends her weary, fragile smile.
"Aren"t these scenes flimsy and sad?" she said. "How much happiness, how much reality do they express, do you think?"
Maurice forced himself to reply. "They express a lot of greediness and falseness; those are real enough."
"That is true, Maurice," she said gently; "so true that I sometimes think I would rather be a washerwoman bending in honest work over my tubs; one would be nearer the realities one cares for."
They left the reception-rooms, and she was silent when faces were no longer about them. She led him down a pa.s.sage, across a book-filled room, a student"s lamp its only light, and softly turning the handle of a further door, opened it on the quiet of a little room, discreetly frivolous with the light gaiety of Louis XV decorations, empty of all significance but that of smiling background for gay confidences or pouting coquettries. Not exactly the background for such a scene as she and Maurice must enact, yet Angela triumphed in the contrast. Tragic desolation, splendid sincerities would gain value from their trivial setting. Her pa.s.sion, her misery, would menace more strangely, implore more piteously among nymphs and garlands.
She dropped into a chair, and put out her hand to a jar of white azaleas. She asked no question, but she looked at him steadily. Maurice had closed the door and stood near it, his back to it, at a distance from her. The sound of the world outside--the world that smiled and pouted--was like the faint hum of a top.
"How have you dared warn my father-in-law against Geoffrey?" asked Maurice. He was nerved to any truth.
Angela made no reply, her long, deep eyes on him while, automatically, her hand pa.s.sed over the azaleas.
"How could you betray my confidence in you? What a fool I was to trust you!"
"Betray you?" she murmured.
"You pursue me and my happiness!" Maurice cried, and hot tears of self-pity started to his eyes. Her eyes dropped. That his hand should deal this blow!
"I pursue you?--and your happiness, Maurice?" she repeated.