'And Ann might always marry again, I suppose, said Mildred.
Then she thought this was incautious. She did not want to confuse Hugh's simple mind with hints of further complications.
She need not have worried. Hugh said, shaking his head, 'Oh, I doubt it. Who would want to marry poor Ann?
Mildred felt that by now she had had enough. She was confident that she had set the balance level. She was confident too that whatever she might decide as a result of her further reflections she could make Hugh decide too. She wanted to get away and reflect. She said abruptly, 'I must go'.
She went back to pick up her gloves and bag which she had laid on the mantelpiece underneath the Tintoretto. She looked up at the gorgeous valuable trouble-making object. Hugh followed her saying, 'Mildred, I can't tell you how grateful —
'But I haven't decided anything yet, said Mildred. 'I mean, you haven't decided anything. There are too many factors, Hugh. I saw the thing too simply at first. You were quite right to hesitate. It's a big decision. You don't have to make it in a hurry. You really must reflect further, don't you think?
'Reflect further, well, yes, perhaps, said Hugh eagerly. 'But you'll help me reflect, won't you? You don't feel imposed upon, do you, Mildred? You've understood it all so quickly and so well. You help me marvellously to know what I think.
'I'll help you if you want it, said Mildred. 'I'll always help you if you want it. She took her things.
'Ah, my dear Mildred, said Hugh, suddenly rapt into a soft dream lid taking hold of the mantelpiece. 'If you only knew! To be at my age so foolishly in love!
Mildred felt her tears coming now. There was no resisting them.
She turned half about and saw that the rain had stopped and it was a little brighter outside. To conceal her filling eyes she reached up and switched out the light above the picture.
Chapter Twenty
'AND what will Hugh decide?
'He'll decide what I tell him to decide. Felix was exceedingly upset by Mildred's story, and was upset too by her manner of telling it. Yet he could not help pausing, as he so often did at moments when he most apprehended her difference from himself, to admire his sister. She had presented the issues with a ruthless frankness which he respected though it made him shrink. She was in the more delicate affairs of life, positively military.
They were in the drawing-room at Seton Blaise. The weather had reestablished itself and out of a sky sparsely scattered with small white clouds a fairly determined sun shone upon the mid-summer garden which, refreshed by recent rains and now dried by sunshine and a gentle west wind, combined a clean matutinal freshness with the luxuriance of a tropical forest.
'Of course, said Felix, 'none of your predictions is certain. They have already been over the ground a number of times.
'You want to know the future in detail, said Mildred. 'Perhaps soldiers always do. But the future isn't like that. She spoke in a tired way and sat down on the window-seat in the bow-window. The sunlight found the faded yellow in her untidy fluff of grey hair. Although it was evening she was still wearing the tweeds in which she had arrived post haste from London.
'It is when it comes to it, said Felix gloomily. 'That's the trouble. Don't be metaphysical. One can only go by probabilities. She pulled a white foxglove out of the vase on the table and began switching it nervously about.
Felix, who had been wandering about the room, paused by the window. Outside, Humphrey could be seen, remote on the far side of the stream, motionless, as if he had been put there by a painter, facing the house with head thrown back in the attitude of one expecting to be addressed at any moment by a cry or a shot. His white hair made a vivid highlight in the unbroken greenness of the scene.
'What a trio weare! said Mildred, following his glance. 'All of us in love! And poor Humphrey always wanting not only the unmentionable but the unattainable! But at least Humpo tries. He deploys his resources.
'Anyway the probabilities are not the point, said Felix. He set off gain, receding into the dimmer part of the room which was rich and hazy with summer light.
'What else is the point, for heaven's sake? said Mildred. 'Haven't we agreed that you have more chance of Ann if Randall goes than I have of Hugh if Randall stays? She began to dismember the foxglove.
Felix did not like this way of putting it. He did not like this degree of explicitness at all. And he was appalled as well as impressed by Mildred's grasp of the present issue simply as a conflict between her merits and his.
'I mean, he said, 'we are not thinking about it in the right way . Isn't the main question one about Hugh and Randall? And isn't it plain that what Hugh proposes to do is something impossible, simply not done?
'It'll be done if Hugh does it, said Mildred impatiently. 'And in a way he's dying to. The thing has caught his imagination. You neglect t he sense in which the act would be a good act. It's not just a matter of our ends and means. For Hugh it would be something splendid in itself, whatever its results: a vicarious violence, a symbolic redemption of me past.
'I'm precisely objecting to your regarding it as just a matter of our ends and means! said Felix. 'And I don't see why we should take Hugh's romanticism as our standard eimer. The past is dear at sixty thousand pounds, and money won't buy spiritual goods anyway. But apart from that, what about Randall? It could hardly be other than bad for him.
'You leave me gasping, said Mildred. She had pulled all me flowers off the foxglove and was arranging mem on the table. 'Money will buy spiritual goods, as a moment's reflection would show you. And is this really a moment for worrying about the moral character of your rival? Randall's character can surely look after itself by now. She added, 'I must say, I can't help rather admiring Randall. To be a cad on quite such a scale has something sublime about it.
Felix's feelings about Randall were by now mixed up to the point of explosion. He could not help feeling guilty before Ann's husband. His sense of me purely proprietory rights of marriage was very strong; and although he had not even been tempted to break the seventh commandment, he had certainly broken the tenth. Jealousy, envy, contempt, anger, guilt, and a kind of pure amazement which was analogous to, though not exactly akin to, admiration strove confusedly together in his bosom.
'So you see, Mildred went on, 'the pattern does emerge pretty clearly. This talk with you has helped enormously. I can see it all now. And Hugh must be allowed his crime. Don't you think? She began to crush the foxglove flowers one by one between her fingers.
'Nothing is clear to me, said Felix. He put his hand into his pocket, where it came into contact with Marie-Laure's unanswered letter. 'I hate anything of this importance being done by money.
'It will be done, however it is done, by violence. And money is only one kind of violence. It's simply a matter of taste that one likes it less than screaming and shedding blood.
'Don't try to confuse me, Mildred, said Felix. 'I just hate juxtaposing anything like this with — Ann. Whatever will Ann think of it?
'Ann won't know, said Mildred composedly.
'Oh, yes she will! I shall tell her, if no one else does.
'You won't be in a position to tell her, dear, until after the deed is done.
Felix knelt on the window-seat, looking out. The boards groaned under his weight. Humphrey could be seen sauntering away now, his hands in his pockets. He had the look of an idle discontented boy. Felix restrained himself from cursing aloud. He did not want things to happen in this way. Yet, as Mildred said, whatever way they happened would be an ugly way. Perhaps what he was so much disliking was being 'made to see the ugliness and to be, however remotely, a party to it. What was right here?