CHAPTER XIV
A COLD, evening sky was over London as Geoffrey and Felicia drove through wet squares and streets. Here, too, the storm had lifted, and between its darkness and the darkness of the coming night was the still moment of bleak and bitter twilight; strips of chill radiance behind the tattered trees; the pallid sky shining from the puddles of the roadway.
They had hardly spoken to each other during the walk; the wait at the desolate little station; the journey in the train. Geoffrey had merely expressed the hope that she was not cold; she had feared that he was hungry, had begged him to buy a sandwich. Once or twice from their corners of the railway carriage they had gravely smiled at each other. Now in the cab they neither spoke nor smiled.
Felicia’s mood was that of the bleak, still pause between the storm and the darkness. It had its peace, its colourless peace. She could not look back at the storm and the coming darkness seemed impenetrable, but already her thoughts stole towards it, seeing, as if in a dream, Maurice, comforted; feeling his hand in hers.
She had a dreaming, a sorrowing presage that he had already returned, already knew the truth, that she would find him waiting, hopeless, yet waiting hopelessly for help.
From her letter he would look up at her—returned to him. And, though the thought wept for his pain, in her weariness it had lost its fear. There was peace in its very sadness. For then there need be no horrid crash of revelation for her to face. In silence she would hold out her arms to him. And “poor, poor Maurice,” her heart whispered.
The river, when they reached the Embankment, had the sky’s cold stillness; a drowned face looking up at its ghost. Felicia, shivering a little, said that it was very chilly. A stir of fear came with the sudden hope that Maurice was not waiting for her. She would rather face crashes than have him waiting—alone—with her letter. Hope and its fear were like a rising of life, of eagerness in her. She leaned her head from the window of the rattling four-wheeler to direct the cabman; explaining: “They often take a longer way here.”
“I will see you up to the door of the flat,” said Geoffrey.
She nodded, then said, “But if he is there? If Maurice should come to the door?”
“But he doesn’t return till to-morrow.”