When Felicia went up to her room her mind was running in a melancholy current that often underlay her surface ripple. She stood at her window looking out at the monotones of the night, and she sighed deeply. Self-pity caught her. This life of repression, of appreciation, of theory, how weary she was of it, how lonely she was in it! How wonderful it would be—she had a swift smile at herself for the turn of thought—to love, to be loved. She stood dreaming of this deliverance, this awakening.
Felicia’s ideas of love, despite the severely realistic literature and pessimistic theories that had nourished her youth, were as white, as gracious and as lofty as the shining crescent of the moon that hung in beauty over the pine-woods. She smiled, but with a little fear, analyzing the feminine waiting for a fairy prince, facing the fact that she was really ready to fall in love with the first nice person who presented himself for idealization. He must, of course, be possible; idealization had been impossible with the stupid men she had met at Trensome Hall; or the curate with his short legs and rabbit head. He must be possible—he must be delightful; and would he ever come? “Beware, Felicia,” she thought. “You are young; you are lonely; you are sentimental and idle; that’s a basis for mistakes and tragedies.” She laughed at herself, but as she leaned there and looked out, all the yearning, all the sadness and solemnity of the pine-woods, the moon and the sky, found an echo in her untried heart.
CHAPTER III
AUSTIN MERRICK had begun life inauspiciously. The younger son of an unimportant country squire, he had been none of the things which a younger son should be, neither industrious, nor independent, nor even anxious to please those who might help his disadvantages. He was helpless, and he would not recognize the fact; would ask for no help. He had loitered through college, fitting himself for no career, talking vaguely of a literary life and of a philosophic pursuit of truth. He was still pursuing it, very placidly, not at all chagrined, indeed quite the contrary, by the fact that his pursuit implied that other people’s apparent attainments rested on a highly illusory basis. Austin Merrick’s attitude had always been what it now was—a calm down-smiling from a hill-top upon other people’s dulness.
After travelling for some years, during which he published in the lesser reviews a few little articles of incoherent scepticism—the one book, as sceptical and even more incoherent, was of later date—Austin married a pretty American girl, who had a very small fortune.
Felicia Grey came from a little New England town, and after the death of a sternly practical father, a passionately transcendental mother, she seized upon an aunt, colourless and submissive, and came to Europe to see life.
She was highly educated and vastly ignorant. She intended to see life steadily, and to see it whole. The steadiness she certainly attained; she was fearless, eager, full of faith.
Austin Merrick met her at a Paris pension and his essentially irresolute soul was stirred by Miss Grey’s resolute eyes, eyes large and clear, like a boy’s. He stayed on at the pension and made Miss Grey’s acquaintance, an easy matter, for she had little conception of risks or of formalities, and regarded all individuals as offering deeply interesting experiences. The aunt sat reading Flaubert, with a dictionary, in her bedroom, finding the duty dimly alarming, and refreshing it by reversions to Emerson, while her niece went sight-seeing with the young Englishman whom the elder Miss Grey described in home letters as “very cultivated and high-minded,” adding that she imagined him to belong to an “aristocratic family.”
Felicia Grey’s crudeness, crisp and sparkling, Austin did not recognize; he thought wonderful in her what was only derivation, the absolute impartiality and courage of her outlook. She was startlingly indifferent to conventional claims, seriously uninfluenced by the world’s weights and measures. Austin, conscious in his inmost soul of being anything but indifferent and uninfluenced, leaned upon the support of her ignorant valour. She was as serene and strong as he pretended to be.
With her serenity and her indifference, she was immensely enthusiastic about the things she cared for. Humanity, Freedom, Progress,—these words with capital letters—that he already felt it to be the fashion to scoff at a little if one wanted to keep abreast of the latest scorn—were burning realities to Miss Grey, and as he was already in love with her, he did not dare to laugh at them. Indeed, Miss Grey had not much sense of humour, and did not understand subtle scorns. He was in love, glorying in the abandonment of the feeling, and very sincerely unaware that had Miss Grey not been modestly equipped with dollars he would not so have abandoned himself. It was, indeed, a very modest equipment, but with his own tiny allowance, that didn’t do at all—he was always in debt—would lift him above the material restrictions that had so long irked him. His indifference might really, then, equal hers.