"Yes,"--Angela did not look up from her tea-cup--"people who have in their lives what one longs to put into everybody"s life."
"You mean that we are dedicated merely to happiness?" Felicia smiled, a little disturbed, as she remembered she had long ago been, by Geoffrey"s manner of mild ridicule.
"No, no; only that it has dedicated itself to you. You must let me come often and look at you. You must let an old friendship like mine and Maurice"s be included in the new relationship. I am included, am I not?
just as Geoffrey, I feel sure, is. You, too, must think of me as an old friend, Mrs. Wynne. You must make use of me if there are any things you want to do, any people you want to meet. You must let me help you in your quest. I can hand on to you a good many of the toys that make a London season enjoyable."
Felicia felt her old hostility rising; for the sake of a pathos she surmised in Angela, she controlled it, asking, still lightly, as she arranged her tea-cups, "What quest do you mean?"
"Why, the quest of youth and happiness--success in life. It is a pity that it should be seen as a toy before the time comes for a sad seeing of things. I always think of you as the lover of life personified, always see you crowned with roses and walking under sunny skies."
Felicia, re-filling Geoffrey"s cup and helping herself to a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, made no comment on this vision. But Geoffrey did not let it pa.s.s. "What do you mean by life?" he asked.
Angela still seemed to muse. "Oh, in this instance, I don"t mean life in its sense of expansion through self-sacrifice, of self-achievement through renunciation, but in the happy, finite sense, the illusion through which we must rise to reality, the rose and sunlight sense, the bread-and-b.u.t.ter sense, in fact," she added, raising her eyes to Felicia and smiling.
"Why not _pate de foie gras_ sandwiches?" asked Felicia; "they are even happier. Do have one."
"Yes, the _pate de foie gras_ sense, too. My first impression of you was that--None for me, thanks. Do you remember, Geoffrey, we first saw Mrs.
Wynne eating sandwiches?--five, I think you made the number--and isn"t it right and fitting that she should have sandwiches and roses? I want her to let me give her all I may."
Felicia now leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and fixed on Angela a look both firm and gay. "Why do you think such things of me?"
she asked.
"Things?--what things?" Angela"s smile was neither firm nor gay. She felt suddenly confronted, before a witness, too, and she remembered Felicia"s crude disposition for forcing issues just when one most intended avoiding them. Geoffrey"s cold, unvarying eye was upon her. It was a married hostility she had before her, and, in the little moment of confusion, she saw clearly her hatred of Maurice"s wife. Yes, she was again face to face with hate; but they pushed her to it; for she had come as love personified, as a most magnanimous angel, and she had the right to scorn both Maurice and his wife if Maurice"s letter had spoken the truth--if Felicia"s love and Geoffrey"s charity had forced him into marriage. But had it spoken the truth? Had it? That question had beaten in her brain for months. And the suspicion that Maurice, still talking in his group at the other side of the room, avoided her, filled her with an added bitterness which only an exaggeration of her outward self enabled her to hide.
"What things?" she repeated, conscious that she seemed to blink before something blinding.
"Horrid things!" Felicia decisively, though still gaily, answered.
"My dear child!" Angela breathed with a long sigh. "What have you been thinking of _me_? What do _you_ mean?"
"I haven"t set out on a quest for roses and sandwiches. I don"t ask for either. You don"t really know me at all, so please don"t talk about me as if you did."
Her manner, that put the episode on a half-playful footing, completed Angela"s discomfiture. Unless she showed her hate, what should she say?
Flight was safer than possibility of shameful exposure. She rose to go, murmuring, as she took Felicia"s hand: "I am sorry--sorry. You have not understood."
"It seemed to me that you did not."
Maurice was approaching them at last, and, the impulse of flight arrested, Angela rejoined: "I am afraid that you hardly want me to understand." Maurice was beside her; she could safely say it, sheltered from rejoinder by his eagerness.
"You are not going, my dear Angela?" He took her hand, speaking very quickly. "I haven"t seen you. Do stay." Meeting his eyes where a shallow sincerity seemed to glitter over depths he could not show, Angela recovered herself and could again take up a weapon.
"I am afraid that I am not really wanted, my dear Maurice," she said, standing between husband and wife, still holding Felicia"s hand as he held hers, smiling from one to the other, a brave, kind smile. "I am afraid that I am a quite unnecessary fourth here. Our old trio has another head. I had hoped that I might, as a friendly hangeron, not be in the way; but I am. I feel that I am."
"Trio? Oh, you mean Geoffrey?" Maurice was perplexed, yet spoke with a gallant lightness--the concealing glitter emphasized, while Geoffrey, all placidity, queried--
"Was I ever one of a trio? That"s news to me."
Angela turned her head to glance at him.
"So you will forsake me--even in the past? Well, I abdicate all claims."
"But we don"t--we don"t, my dear Angela! We don"t abdicate our claims to you. It"s not a trio," said Maurice, "it"s a circle--isn"t it, Felicia?
Let us all join hands. Come in, Geoffrey."
"No, no," Angela softly echoed his laugh. "I will come again--and look at you all. But indeed I abdicate all my tiny claims. Remember me, my dear Mrs. Wynne, if I can ever be of any use." She pressed Felicia"s hand and turned away. Maurice went with her into the hall. Her wrap lay there and he held it for her.
"You may trust me, Maurice, for ever," she whispered, as she slid into it. She did not meet his glance of helpless confusion; but she knew that all glitter had left him.
Driving away in her carriage, she leaned her head back in the corner, where she shrank and burst into tears.
In the drawing-room the last people were going, Mrs. Cuthbert among them. "I hear your father is coming to live with you, Felicia," she said.
"Yes. It is too lonely for him now."
"He won"t be able to let the house, I fear."
"For the present the house is to be shut up, and we may go down to it for week-ends."
"It is always a rather dangerous experiment, you know, Felicia, a third person between a young couple."
"We must risk it," Felicia laughed.
When, after this final grunt, her aunt had gone, she and Geoffrey were alone.
He was standing at the window, and she joined him there and looked out at the silver river with a slow russet sail upon it. The sense of peace and confidence, felt on the day of their last meeting, was with her; but it was more easy to speak with perfect openness since she need not speak of themselves.
She repressed the impulsive "How she dislikes me!" that might seem to claim his sympathy for her painful part in the recent little drama; she need never claim his sympathy; and a curious sense of loyalty to Angela made her subst.i.tute, "How I dislike her. You must know it, so I may as well say it."
"That explains her unpleasantness, you think?" Geoffrey"s voice was as detached and impartial as if he were questioning the validity of a dubious clause in a dubious bill.
"Yes, if she feels my dislike even when I try not to show it. Perhaps she didn"t mean to be unpleasant."
"Perhaps she didn"t know that she meant it."
"But it"s pitiful--if she thinks she has lost friends."
"Pretty brazen of Angela--that a.s.sumption."
"But aren"t you rather cruel?" She tried to smile, but a glance at her face showed him how hurt, how tossed by conjecture and regret she was.
Geoffrey did not speak his own crueller thought, a thought in which he recognized a complacent vindictiveness--"She is furiously jealous of you." Accepting her reproach he merely said, "Angela makes me cruel. I enjoy showing her her own real meaning."
"That is indeed cruel--to enjoy it. I hate showing her, and yet I feel forced to let her know what her meaning seems to me. But I"m more sorry than I can say for it all--for her being in my life in any way. Yet she is in it. She is the centre of Maurice"s old life. Most of his friends are hers, and she was his nearest friend--next to you. She blights everything." Her voice had a tremor.
"That is tremendously exaggerating her importance. I shouldn"t have suspected you of such weakness. She doesn"t really make you sad?"
"She does, rather."
"Only on her own account then--not on your own."