Paths of Judgement

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Dear, best old Geoffrey. He stepped perfectly into his place, neither holding back from it nor making it over-significant. The thought of his astonishing debt to Geoffrey brought no heartache; gratitude was for Felicia as well as for himself, for Felicia, too, was so happy. To show Geoffrey the happiness he had created was the only return he could make him; to show it frankly could give no pain to such magnanimity. That the magnanimity had its tragic element a soul quick to divine and sympathize like Maurice’s felt; but all he could do, now, was to keep his friend’s tragedy beautiful. And he vowed he would. Geoffrey should never regret, for Felicia would never regret. There was almost a sob of thankfulness in him as with this welling up again of strength and confidence he stood between them, leaning on them, and looked out at the shining river.

CHAPTER II

FELICIA did not regret; she accepted the fact of an achieved happiness almost as unquestioningly as Maurice; but there had been for her a phase of questioning and readjustment, a phase of acute loneliness when, with stupefaction, she realized that she had married a man whom she hardly knew.

It had been a strange, and for a time a disintegrating experience to see on what slight bases she had built the fabric of her devotion—to see that she had loved his love for her and that him she had hardly seen at all. Afterwards, with a tender sanity and wisdom, she had pushed new foundations under the edifice of their common life, new and stronger, surer props, no longer relying upon her need of him but upon his of her. She had the faculty for holding happiness, and, with something of the serenity and strength of nature, for making it over again when the first hold proved to be on something illusory. And, in this re-making, what had seemed illusion became real, once more, with a deeper reality. Understanding him, and loving him for himself, his love for her regained its value. But from the readjustment to life a new sense of gravity, of the risks one ran, had come to her. In looking back on her despair when she had almost lost him, she saw the something passionate and reckless, the quality of desperateness that must always make danger. Had Maurice not proved loveable her own vehemence would have been the cause of disaster, and since that fatal disaster was escaped, she felt herself strong enough to face any others, to adjust herself to any painful requirements of life.

The clear-sighted seeing of her husband had in it this element of pain. It was as if in all the outer courts of life she had found indeed the happiest companionship, but in the inmost temple a deeper loneliness, a loneliness that now—and this was the secret of achievement—meant strength and not weakness.

In all the tests of life he depended upon her, and his setting of his clock by her time frightened her sometimes, lest that inner strength should fail them both. She was the upholder; Maurice responded; he never inspired. She had moments—and in them the loneliness was ghastly—of seeing him as unsubstantial, elusive, almost parasitical in his charm; but the charm itself, his clasping and exquisite response, was too near and dear for these moments to be more than mere flashes. She brought from them a maternal gentleness of tolerance, and her own joy in being loved was still too deep for her to feel weariness. She had not yet clearly seen, with all her understanding, that beyond this sunny domain of his adoration she would always be alone.

A dissatisfaction that was hardly a pain was the purposelessness of their lives; it was a life of appreciation merely, appreciation of themselves, their friends, books, music, pictures.

“Darling, we have heaps and heaps of time for doing things; let’s just enjoy them now—while we are young and can. You don’t want me to be a County Councillor, do you? You don’t want, yourself, to sit on committees and be useful—like Angela, do you? There are such quantities of useful people in the world.”

Felicia had not suggested County Councils or committees, though she did attack his laziness, for Maurice had never been more lazy.

The goad was gone—the goad of obvious and pressing need, and, as if on a summer day of rowing, another hand had taken the sculls, he lay back in the boat and looked happily, thankfully, at the sky and woods and water.