Paths of Judgement

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

During these weeks of drifting he saw little of Geoffrey, and when they met, Felicia was as unmentioned as though, to both, she had been the slightest, least significant of episodes. With all his confiding tendency, Maurice could not well confide to Geoffrey that the wild-rose flirtation had become a serious love affair, and, in the same breath that the long dallying with Angela was on the verge of becoming serious too. With all his hard common sense Geoffrey might look unpleasantly askance at this taking on of a new love before the old was off, and until there was no chance at all of the old love being on again, Geoffrey might as well think him still engaged in undecisive dallying. The very fact of long intimacy, of the taking for granted of a closeness that made questionings unnecessary, kept their minds apart.

But on a morning in early March, Maurice, while putting the finishing touches to his portrait of Angela, was facing at once despair and an aching freedom. The day before had unchained at his heels a pack of howling debts; he had run before them to the only refuge; a letter, after a month of silence, that practically set Felicia free. He had wept in writing it, allowing the irrepressible tears to splash upon the paper, bitterly smiling at himself for the craven little consolation he recognized in this testimony to his grief. And, with the half appeal of the tears for pity, was another appeal—a spontaneous clutch at the brightness he must thrust from his life—for her love.

He would not clearly see that in so clinging he set himself—rather than Felicia—free. Heavy gloom had settled upon him, a gloom that filled the letter with dismal sincerity. That it had been sincere he felt to be proved by the fact that no sense of relief had followed its despatch. He was free, but free in a black world, and he felt, as a result, even less drawn to Angela than usual, even more unwilling to accept the now inevitable escape. But with the new sense of freedom was a new sense of recklessness, the sense that he had, in some untraceable way—(for what could he have done, disasters crowding thick upon him?) made himself only fit for the lower thing; so that, at all events, he might as well make the most of it.

Poor Angela! to be so accepted! The irony of it turned to pity for her as he looked at her sitting there in her white dress, pale, and with an air of deep weariness. She seemed to droop before him as she sat in the keen spring light; to droop, to appeal, and yet to be very proud, ready for resentment almost. Maurice saw all this, and his comprehension gave a touch of real emotion to his pity and to his recklessness. Pity for himself mingled with his pity for her. What a queer mess they were in—poor things!—both of them. His mind, sick with self-analysis, self-scorn and self-defence, lurched, exhausted, on to a longing for her to comfort him, to show him, in loving him, that he was not base, only fatally pursued by life.

When she stepped down from the stand that had been put at the end of the room, she did not, as usual, come to his side to see the progress he had made. She went to the window, her hands clasped behind her, a rigidity in the lines of her slender, half-swathed arms. Maurice painted for a moment, then looked at her, added another touch, stared at his palette, laid it down, and joined her.

She did not turn her head to him, and suddenly he guessed that there were tears in her eyes. His own grew wet again with that mingled pity. Her hand fell to her side. He took it in his. Still she did not look at him. She stood waiting, anything but proud, and yet ready in all the humiliation of her helpless avowal, to flash suddenly into scorn and anger. The something of splendour in this attitude gave Maurice the final impetus. He was glad to yield at last to feeling alone, to almost irresistible feeling. It was as though he had stood for long on the shore waiting for the tide, and that its slow rising had culminated in this sudden wave that just lifted him off his feet. Really she was lovely; she was piteous; and she could console him for being forced to take her. His arm went round her; he turned her head gently, saw the tears, and kissed her.

“Oh, Maurice!” her lips breathed under his, “how I love you!”

“And I——“ he stammered. “Angela—it has been—you understood—you are so horribly rich, and I so horribly poor.” He wanted her to console him for the fact that had tarnished everything, and the longing was so great that he grasped at this falsification of all his hesitation. It was rapture to Angela. He was transfigured by the avowal; and her heart, sick for so long with doubt, seemed to expand like a storm-beaten flower in sunlight. She herself was transfigured; saw that the starved, straining self she had known was a lower self, distorted, difficult to read clearly; this happy self was real at last. His arms were around her. She would be noble, beneficent to all the world. All who came near her would be the happier for her happiness. How weak she really was—who so needed love to lean on!

“I understood—I hoped it was that,” she said in a trembling voice.

At a step outside they moved apart, yet not soon enough Maurice felt, but for the significance of the situation to be very obvious to Lord Glaston as he came briskly in.