Soon after Felicia went in to give her father his tea. He was sitting in the small room that was, at once, library and drawing-room. Above book-filled shelves the walls were whitewashed, and against this background tall porcelains and bronzes showed their delicate outlines, and some fine mezzotints after Reynolds and Gainsborough their harmonies of golden-greys and blacks. In a corner stood an ivory-coloured cast of the Flying Victory of Samothrace, and above it the thoughtful bust of Marcus Aurelius looked down upon its arrested swiftness, its still and glorious strength. From open windows, where white curtains flapped softly, one looked over the garden and pinewoods and valleys to the sky of luminous gold.
One note, only, jarred; a charcoal drawing of a woman’s head, hung prominently. Feebly ill-drawn, its over life-size exaggerated its absurdity; the eyes monstrously large, not well matched, all beaming high light and sentimental eyelash; the nose and mouth showing a rigid, a cloying sweetness. This production was the result of one of Mr. Merrick’s rare fits of active self-expression, and, excellent judge of art though he was, he was completely blind to the grotesqueness of the caricature of his dead wife. He had drawn it, many years ago, from life, and claimed to see in it a subtle and exquisite likeness. Felicia suffered, though with the silent and humorous resignation characteristic of her, from living with it, even when a photograph of her mother, standing near, corrected its travesty of her charming countenance.
Mr. Merrick was sitting in a deep armchair, his attitude of complete ease harmonizing with the tranquil room, though his eyes, as he looked up from the review he was reading, were irate. “The modern recrudescence of mysticism is truly disheartening, Felicia,” he said. “Have you read this article?”
Felicia, on her way to the tea-table, glanced at the title he held out, and nodded.
“How long will the human race, like an ostrich, hide its head from truth and, in the darkness, find revelation?”
“Why shouldn’t they make themselves comfortable in any way they can?” Felicia asked, measuring her tea into the teapot.
“Comfort at the cost of truth is a despicable immorality.”
“Well—what is truth? How is the poor ostrich to find it out? Besides, papa, you are comfortable, and the truths you believe in aren’t.” Her smile at him was one of the comforts Mr. Merrick most securely counted on. Felicia, in every way, made him comfortable, even when she argued with him, and by half-droll opposition called out his refutations.
“My dear child,” he now said, “your logic is truly feminine. I have never shirked an intellectual consequence. If, for the moment, I enjoy certain satisfactions, I never forget that my position is that of the condemned prisoner.”
“We certainly have a nicely furnished cell.”