Felicia, in answering, felt that she could with him be so entirely her whole self that she need not show her whole self; it was easier for her to give him her soul dressed in tender humour, beribboned with quizzical freaks of fancy. It was his understanding of her, his consequent perfect possession, that lifted her life into the new sense of power and freedom, for was it not freedom and power when every faculty was effective, bore fruit in his responsiveness?
Not till late October was the beauty of the new life touched by a breath of doubt or sadness. A dejection, then, showed itself in Maurice’s letters, a dejection that coincided with his return to London after his round of country visits, coincided with his taking stock, as it were, of his situation and looking his powers and resources in the face. The letters then became at once more passionate and more infrequent. He must not sadden his darling, and the analysis of his glooms could only sadden her. He was working—it gave him less time for writing—luckily for her. In her answers Felicia’s courage steadily smiled, held out an unfaltering hand to help him over the morass of melancholy; but the melancholy, more and more, like a fog closing round him, seemed to shut him from her. Her apprehensions from vague became cutting. She did not know a touch of distrust, but the separation, the sadness, hurt too much. “Come and see me; spend a day. We can walk in the woods. It will give you strength and me too,” she wrote.
Maurice only sorrowfully answered, in a letter like the slow rolling of big tears, that he must not; it wouldn’t mean strength, it would mean disablement. He must wait until he had more right to see her. He begged her to love—love—love him. After the glory of golden days and thoughts, of deep, glad breathing in a crystal air, this change was like a labouring breath, and like the change in the year—the grey and amethyst of late autumn. The old loneliness returned again and again, but with a poignant stab that no former loneliness had known. Bereavement seemed to hover near her.
Gathering late roses in the garden one day she faced, for the first time, her own fears—saw that they were fears. She had not heard for a week from Maurice, and his last letter had been little more than a plaintive sigh of self-pity. For the first time Felicia was asking herself if joy was not to be a distant, a far distant thing. She saw more clearly the forces against him—forces that her young ardour had barely glanced at; she did not distrust his love—that would have been too horrible a wrenching of the new doubled life, but she distrusted his strength before such obstacles.
The roses were fragrant, fragile, white, the outer petals streaked with a hardy red. When she had filled her basket she went to the gate and leaned over it, looking vaguely down the road. The thought of that summer evening was with her, the life there had been in it—deep, sweet life—in the pain, the trust. The facing of a long, blank patience was almost death-like, almost like the shutting of the eyes, a yielding of oneself to the earth, with a faith in final resurrection—where?—when?—who knew?—for all light in a shrouded present. Felicia shook off the simile, with a fear that Maurice’s plaintiveness was infecting her. He had more right to it—burdened fighter. Her love a burden?—again her heart dropped. She bent her face to the roses. Their sweetness went through her like a smile. She sighed, her eyes closed, over the relief of her own gratitude for such smiles. When she looked up again she saw a man’s figure among the pines below. It was only for a moment that her heart could stand still with joyous questioning—joy so keen that it seemed to leave the heart it passed from bleeding; for in another she saw that it was not Maurice, and then, with a wholesome surprise, the staunching of the wound, that the wayfarer was Geoffrey Daunt. In knee-breeches, shooting-cap and coat, he looked a veritable Apollo straying, incongruously garbed, through a landscape beautiful enough to match him. Felicia, finding still that wholesome staunching in surprise, watched the nearing perfection appreciatively for some time before definitely wondering what brought it there. He himself, as he approached, showed no surprise. His eyes, as he doffed his cap, met hers calmly. He had quite the air of having come to find her and of having expected to find her leaning on the gate and watching him.
Felicia held out her hand. “Are you with Aunt Kate? Have you been shooting? You haven’t lost your way?”
Geoffrey, while she asked these questions, held her hand over the gate and, though as unperturbed as ever, seemed somewhat at a loss for an answer. Dropping her hand, his eyes went from her to the house, the garden and away to the hills.
“You are high up here,” he observed. “No, I haven’t lost my way. I knew this road led past you. Yes, I am with your aunt for the week-end. I have been shooting.”
“It is rather good shooting, I believe. Uncle Cuthbert prides himself on it, I know.”
“Very good,” he answered, with still his vagueness.