Download to read offline
![6 Introduction
American Management Association / www.amanet.org
large.” Interestingly, the more internally oriented factor of financial perfor-
mance is outweighed by externally oriented factors (vision, pioneering, and
impact on industry).
Mayo and Nohria then identified and explored three executive arche-
types: entrepreneurs, leaders, and managers. Yet even though representa-
tives of each type enjoyed significant success for themselves and their
organizations, the authors draw the following conclusion:
[L]ong-term success is not derived from the sheer force of an individu-
al’s personality and character. Without a sensitivity to context, long-
term success is unlikely and an individual risks being surpassed by
competitors or falling victim to hubris. Companies do not succeed or
fail in a vacuum.6
It’s this pivotal factor that leadership guru Warren Bennis, whom we’ll
meet again later, calls adaptive capacity: the ability to be attuned to develop-
ments in the external environment and to act on these changes accordingly.
It’s this ability to anticipate and engage with these changing dynamics that
make organizations—and their leaders—successful over the long run. Arie
de Geus, the author of The Living Company, and a lifelong scholar in future-
orientation and learning organizations, observed in a study he conducted
during his years at Shell, that most commercial corporations have dramatic
life expectancies. They die prematurely and rarely outlive the life expec-
tancy of human beings, which is around seventy-five years.
But some do. A handful of companies on the planet have lived for hun-
dreds of years.7
And when de Geus studied those few companies that had
been successful in navigating through the decades and centuries of change,
he observed that they shared a strong sense of sensitivity to their environ-
ment. They always seemed to excel at anticipation, keeping their feelers
out, tuned to whatever was going on around them. And they reacted timely
to the changing conditions.8
So, context sensitivity and adaptive capacity are critical elements in de-
veloping visionary capacity. Hence, they are given a prominent role in
our exploration, which includes practical approaches for nurturing these
abilities.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/5903890-250605074420-87219132/75/Robjan-De-Jong-On-Looking-Ahead-De-Jong-Robjan-35-2048.jpg)
![10 Introduction
American Management Association / www.amanet.org
how long it takes. Particularly [for] companies going through a cultural
transformation it takes closer to ten years to get it done.”14
Witness the print
industry: In December 2012, Newsweek published its last print issue after its
subscriber base and advertising revenue had shrunk by 50 percent and 80
percent, respectively, over ten years. (In March 2014 Newsweek relaunched
its print edition under new ownership and with a different business model
that no longer relies on advertising income.)
This is the publishing industry’s new reality. An aging subscriber base
won’t get replaced with new, younger subscribers that have grown used to
free digital content. At the same time and as a result, advertisers are in-
creasingly moving to digital platforms, depleting the second main income
stream for the print industry. Publishers soon need to face the obvious
choice: Follow Newsweek’s December 2012 decision and stop printing, or
reinvent oneself to find a new, profitable model. (A third possibility is to
mindlessly stick your head in the sand and hope it will all blow over, a strat-
egy that, at the time of this writing, still has a remarkable popularity.)
Most executives lean toward the second option, transform, even
though—as pointed out by Bill George—transformation tends to be slow
and results in the immediate future are likely to be weak. From the long-
term point of view, though, it’s their only option. So, if you are leading a
publishing house today, you better have a compelling vision for the future
of your business. It won’t be easy, but it should have the highest priority
over anything else. And you better be prepared to fight a battle with
short-termism. You will need shareholders with a long-term perspective
who will allow you the time to transform. This is what Paul Polman under-
stood so well when he led his organization forward: On this journey, there
is no room for short-term-oriented hedge fund managers who enter only
with an interim perspective to make a quick win (even though they would
never admit that).
To conclude, a powerful vision isn’t just nice to have. It’s the most im-
portant tool in the transformational leader’s toolbox. “Where there is no
vision, there is no hope,” is how George Washington Carver dramatically
put it. You need a compelling story to inspire people to join the transforma-
tional journey and persuade them to stick around for the long run. But how
do you do that? That’s the real question. And that’s where we are heading.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/5903890-250605074420-87219132/75/Robjan-De-Jong-On-Looking-Ahead-De-Jong-Robjan-39-2048.jpg)
![The Groundwork 17
American Management Association / www.amanet.org
his ability to look well into the future and develop a clear and unconven-
tional direction for Dubai stands out in the region. Neighboring countries
such as Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, which similarly accumulated
tremendous wealth from their oil reserves, now look up to Dubai as they
start to wake up to a reality in which their oil exports and income will begin
to diminish in the foreseeable future. But they are twenty years behind
Dubai, where the Sheikh saw this inevitable change much earlier and de-
veloped the emirate’s post-oil-era direction.
Therefore, a vision is the essential starting point from which to develop
a strategic agenda that ensures you get where you want to be and helps you
tackle any barriers that might come up in the process. “Strategic planning
is worthless unless there is first a strategic vision,” the prominent futurist
John Naisbitt once said.
A Vision Stretches the Imagination
A potent vision takes us beyond the obvious into the unknown and stretches
the boundaries of what we conventionally think up to that point in time.
President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech to a joint session of Congress, an-
nouncing the goal of “put[ting] a man on the moon by the end of the de-
cade,” stretched the imagination of a nation. It became not only a source of
patriotic pride, but also a driving force behind a tremendous amount of
technological and educational innovation.
Admittedly, it was also fueled by Cold War tensions: The speech was
delivered a month after the embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs invasion as
well as the Soviet Union’s achievement of manned space flight. After care-
ful examination of their options, President Kennedy and a small group of
high-ranking officials concluded that putting a man on the moon was the
best way to beat the Soviets. But the challenge was a colossal one. Kennedy
stressed, “No single space project . . . will be more impressive to mankind,
or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be
so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
It was a powerful long-term perspective that surpassed the obvious,
stretching the imagination into unconventional territory without becoming
absurd—otherwise it would have quickly lost its power.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/5903890-250605074420-87219132/75/Robjan-De-Jong-On-Looking-Ahead-De-Jong-Robjan-46-2048.jpg)
![20 a n t i c i p a t e
American Management Association / www.amanet.org
Where managers act to limit choices, leaders develop fresh approaches
to long-standing problems and open issues to new options. To be effec-
tive, leaders must project their ideas onto images that excite people and
only then develop choices that give those images substance.4
That image is the vision. The four purposes of vision we just covered
illustrate the key differences between leaders and managers once more. A
manager’s role is a very important one (let’s not underestimate the inherent
difficulties of being a good manager!), but it essentially boils down to keep-
ing things on track. A leader’s role is fundamentally different. It’s about
transformation, about motivating and inspiring people to move toward a
new reality. Another eminent thinker we met before, John Kotter, contin-
ued the path broken open by Zaleznik. In his 1990 article “What Leaders
Really Do,” Kotter stated: “What leaders really do is prepare the organiza-
tion for change and help them cope as they struggle through it.”5
To achieve
this organizational change, a leader must stretch the imagination, challenge
the status quo, show a way forward, break through existing paradigms,
energize and mobilize people to follow . . . In other words, a leader needs
all the elements a vision brings.
So how does a vision connect with contemporary views on leadership?
The concept of leadership is a dynamic one, trending through strategic
leadership, situational leadership, authentic leadership, charismatic
leadership, team leadership, servant leadership, and vigilant leadership,
to name a few. But ever since Zaleznik and Kotter paved the way for
seeing leadership in the light of pressing for change, most attention in
the arena of leadership research goes toward transformational leadership,6
emphasizing intrinsic motivation, follower development, inspiration,
and
empowerment—all elements that are closely aligned with contem-
porary thinking about success in a turbulent, increasingly uncertain, and
complex world.
In his standard work, Leadership: Theory and Practice, Peter Northouse,
a professor at Western Michigan University, defines transformational lead-
ership as:
[T]he process whereby a person engages with others and creates a con-
nection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/5903890-250605074420-87219132/75/Robjan-De-Jong-On-Looking-Ahead-De-Jong-Robjan-49-2048.jpg)
![The Groundwork 25
American Management Association / www.amanet.org
goal of making lots of money, hitched his vision to the unfairness that
only the happy few could afford well-designed furniture.
At least one of these two emotional factors—unconventionality and
noble cause—should be present in order to allow emotional attachment to
a vision. Ideally, though, a vision should include both. Consider the case of
Peter Kapitein: The idea of transforming cancer from a lethal to a chronic
disease by 2020 is both unconventional and noble.
Logos, Ethos, and Pathos
Are these elements of direction setting and emotional engagement the only
key ingredients? Not quite. There is a third and final ingredient that’s of
crucial importance when creating a powerful vision. Nearly 2,500 years
ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle already described the art of persua-
sion, of getting people to follow a leader. In On Rhetoric (350 BCE) he
wrote:
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are
three kinds. [ . . . ] Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal char-
acter when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. [...]
Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech
stirs their emotions. [ . . . ] Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the
speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by
means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.10
According to Aristotle, in order to persuade followers, a leader needs (in
reverse order) convincing arguments, the emotions they elicit, and credibil-
ity. Today we refer to his threefold description as Logos, Pathos, and Ethos—
the cornerstones for creating engagement.
Logos means that the message needs to make sense and not crumble
under scrutiny. Followers must be able to understand the rationale of what
you are trying to do. In Aristotle’s words, “persuasion is effected through
the speech itself when we have proved a truth or apparent truth by means
of persuasive arguments.” If the argument isn’t logically consistent, it’s un-
likely that followers will buy into it (or at least not with the intensity we’d](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/5903890-250605074420-87219132/75/Robjan-De-Jong-On-Looking-Ahead-De-Jong-Robjan-54-2048.jpg)
Robjan De Jong On Looking Ahead De Jong Robjan
- 1. Robjan De JongOn Looking Ahead De Jong Robjan download https://ebookbell.com/product/robjan-de-jong-on-looking-ahead-de- jong-robjan-11807780 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
- 2. Here are somerecommended products that we believe you will be interested in. You can click the link to download. Anticipate De Jong Robjan https://ebookbell.com/product/anticipate-de-jong-robjan-231849328 Advanced Digital Auditing Theory And Practice Of Auditing Complex Information Systems And Technologies Egon Berghout https://ebookbell.com/product/advanced-digital-auditing-theory-and- practice-of-auditing-complex-information-systems-and-technologies- egon-berghout-46871172 Through A Catholic Lens Religious Perspectives Of Nineteen Film Directors From Around The World Peter Malone https://ebookbell.com/product/through-a-catholic-lens-religious- perspectives-of-nineteen-film-directors-from-around-the-world-peter- malone-6652578 Modern Actuarial Risk Theory Rob Kaas Marc Goovaerts Jan Dhaene https://ebookbell.com/product/modern-actuarial-risk-theory-rob-kaas- marc-goovaerts-jan-dhaene-4265648
- 3. Modern Actuarial RiskTheory Using R 2nd Edition Professor Rob Kaas https://ebookbell.com/product/modern-actuarial-risk-theory- using-r-2nd-edition-professor-rob-kaas-4259598 Management Of Urological Cancers In Older People 1st Edition Jan Willem Coebergh Md https://ebookbell.com/product/management-of-urological-cancers-in- older-people-1st-edition-jan-willem-coebergh-md-4387738 What We Know About Cscl And Implementing It In Higher Education Computersupported Collaborative Learning Series 1st Edition Janwillem Strijbos https://ebookbell.com/product/what-we-know-about-cscl-and- implementing-it-in-higher-education-computersupported-collaborative- learning-series-1st-edition-janwillem-strijbos-2007300 To Slip The Surly Bonds Joelle Presby Rob Howell Sarah A Hoyt Richard Fox James Young Christopher G Nuttall Taylor Anderson Kacey Ezell Monalisa Foster Justin Watson Jim Curtis Jan Niemczyk William Alan Webb https://ebookbell.com/product/to-slip-the-surly-bonds-joelle-presby- rob-howell-sarah-a-hoyt-richard-fox-james-young-christopher-g-nuttall- taylor-anderson-kacey-ezell-monalisa-foster-justin-watson-jim-curtis- jan-niemczyk-william-alan-webb-230224550 Pro Spring 1st Corrected Ed Corr 2nd Printing Harrop Rob Machacek https://ebookbell.com/product/pro-spring-1st-corrected-ed-corr-2nd- printing-harrop-rob-machacek-55687688
- 6. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Anticipate
- 7. This page intentionallyleft blank
- 8. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org t h e a r t o f l e a d i n g b y l o o k i n g a h e a d Anticipate Rob-Jan de Jong American Management Association New York • Atlanta • Brussels • Chicago • Mexico City • San Francisco Shanghai • Tokyo • Toronto • Washington, D.C.
- 9. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Bulk discounts available. For details visit: www.amacombooks.org/go/specialsales Or contact special sales: Phone: 800-250-5308 E-mail: specialsls@amanet.org View all the AMACOM titles at: www.amacombooks.org American Management Association: www.amanet.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in ren- dering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data De Jong, Rob-Jan. Anticipate : the art of leading by looking ahead / Rob-Jan de Jong. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8144-4907-3 -- ISBN 0-8144-4907-7 1. Leadership. 2. Creative ability in business. 3. Strategic planning. I. Title. HD57.7.D4 2015 658.4’092--dc23 2014024651 © 2015 Rob-Jan de Jong. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Associa- tion, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. The scanning, uploading, or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the express permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only autho- rized electronic editions of this work and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials, electronically or otherwise. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. About AMA American Management Association (www.amanet.org) is a world leader in talent development, advancing the skills of individuals to drive business success. Our mission is to support the goals of individuals and organizations through a complete range of products and services, including class- room and virtual seminars, webcasts, webinars, podcasts, conferences, corporate and government solutions, business books, and research. AMA’s approach to improving performance combines ex- periential learning—learning through doing—with opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of one’s career journey. Printing number 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- 10. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Dedicated to my father, whose life stance continues to inspire me— I wish you were still here to witness.
- 11. This page intentionallyleft blank
- 12. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xxi Introduction 1 Unraveling the Mystery | The Vision Thing | Context Sensitivity | Short- Termism | Long-Term Language | The Battle PART 1: VISIONARY CONTENT 11 Chapter 1: The Groundwork 13 Your Personal Vision | Vision 101 | Transformational Leadership | The Alpe d’HuZes | Core Ingredients | Logos, Ethos, and Pathos | The Dark Side Chapter 2: Tapping into Your Imagination 31 Rejuvenated Restaurants | N.N. Living in a Permanent Present | The Image of the Future | Alice in Wonderland | Schemas, Assumptions, and Frames | Two-Faced Friends | Eternal Truths | The Grand Illusion
- 13. viii Contents American Management Association/ www.amanet.org | Cognitive Dissonance | Neural Networks | Breaking the Frame | That’s Funny | Lateral Thinking | WWGD | Blue Ocean PART 2: VISIONARY PRACTICES 55 Chapter 3: Developing Your Visionary Capacity 57 Visionary Shoes | Made, Not Born| Contained Emergence | A Develop- ment Framework | Seeing Things Early | Connecting the Dots | 2x2 | Followers | Trend Hoppers | Historians, or Cynics | The Visionary | Deepening the Framework | Narcissistic Distraction Chapter 4: Seeing Things Early 83 Reducing Thoughtlessness | Signal and Noise | The Theory of the Car Crash | Market Transitions | Toys in the Boardroom | The Priming Phenomenon | FuturePriming | FutureFacts | More Manifestations | The Four Golden Rules | Food for Thought | Missing Traffic Signs | Rubber Hits the Road | Creativity Ignited Chapter 5: Connecting the Dots 109 June 12, 2005 | A Belgian Tale | Black Swan? | The Tunnel Vision | Irrationality Rules | Frame Blindness | Overconfidence | The Mysteri- ous Guru | Creating Memories of the Future | Shell’s Awakening | The Fall of Fortis | Groupthink | So What? | Brilliant or Foolish? | Respon- sible Visionary Leadership PART 3: VISIONARY SELF 149 Chapter 6: Your Visionary Self 151 On Becoming a Visionary Leader | You! | Utzon’s Masterpiece | Jump- ing Off the Eiffel Tower | Passion and Authenticity | Discovery Mode | Covey, Stories, and Pearls | Mediating Reality | Danone’s Ecosystem
- 14. Contents ix American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org Chapter 7: Mindful Behavior 173 Solar Roadways | Mindfulnesslessness | Foolish Consistency | Mindful- ness, Take Two | Curiosity | Powerful Questions | Conversation Surprise | Working Your Swing | Recategorizing Practices | New Information Practices | Multiple View Practices PART 4: VISIONARY COMMUNICATION 197 Chapter 8: Igniting Your Followers 199 Hygiene Factors | Gettysburg Address | The Power of Language | Workhorse Verbs | Notions of Loss | A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words | Memorable Metaphors | Actionable Analogies | Let Me Tell You a Story . . . | Data with a Soul | Jobs & Pausch | Visionary Checklist Appendix A: Strategic Questionnaire 229 Appendix B: Values List 233 Appenix C: 25 Visionary Development Practices 237 Notes 243 Index 255 About the Author 265 Free Sample Chapter from Leading at The Edge by Dennis N. T. Perkins, with Margaret P. Holtman and Jillian B. Murphy 266
- 15. This page intentionallyleft blank
- 16. Preface When I graduatedfrom high school some thirty years ago, the school’s principal—who had also been our draconian German class teacher—subtly criticized my attitude of continuous challenge during the diploma cere- mony. After putting in a few nice words for my parents, he mentioned that he would remember me as a vigilant student who was always willing to point out a different perspective. I think he was just trying to tell me that I had behaved like a wiseass know-it-all more often than he had liked. I was raised in Europe (the Netherlands) and went through high school in the early eighties, amid vivid political debate about the pros and cons of capitalism vs. those of socialism, the madness of the nuclear arms race both sides had entered, Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars protection program, the birth of Poland’s Solidarity union and many other Cold War–related West vs. East themes. The school’s principal was known to uphold right-of- center opinions, and I would oppose him with leftish arguments. But when we moved to our next class and found ourselves discussing the same themes with a left-wing-oriented teacher, I’d just as easily morph into the right-of- center rationale. Just for argument’s sake. This was probably more than just a teenager trying to make sense of the world around him. I was fascinated by the debate, and my curiosity about the other side of an argument—any argument—withheld me from com- mitting to one worldview. The issues seemed too complex for that. The American Management Association / www.amanet.org
- 17. xii Preface American Management Association/ www.amanet.org curiosity remained; later in life, I transformed it into an interest in explor- ing and challenging what is seemingly taken for granted (keeping the an- noyance factor in check). This book emerged from that same fascination with questioning what might seem simple and mundane, clear and understood, but on second thought isn’t that easy at all. As we progress to discover the art of anticipat- ing the future, we’ll go in depth, exploring the seemingly straightforward concept called vision, a word often and readily used in the domain of busi- ness and political leadership. Some scholars call it the hallmark of leader- ship, others list it among the three or four central themes, and yet others put it on a different pedestal—you’ll rarely find anyone who does not deem it an important leadership theme. In real life, the importance of vision is eas- ily acknowledged as well. In business, for example, we frequently find peo- ple criticizing their superiors for their lack of it. But then, when it comes to developing our own vision, it’s suddenly no longer duck soup. We wonder if it’s really that important, and even if we are convinced, it’s not clear to us how we should actually go about foretast- ing the future. It seems to come naturally to the larger-than-life kind of leaders who seemingly effortlessly inspire with a compelling big-picture story. But for us mortal souls, artfully looking ahead, anticipating the fu- ture, and inspiring others with a gripping vision does not come easy. Nor does it top our to-do list of important matters to work on in terms of grow- ing our leadership persona. I find such contradictions fascinating. Theoretically top of the list, in practice bottom of the list. It got me wondering why we struggle with this issue. How do we concretely engage with the future? We’re all fascinated by it; we all have dreams and ambitions. We all make plans, and most of us like to be part of something that’s fascinating and energizing. So engaging with the future, and the things it might have in store for us, should by defi- nition be of interest to us. But where does it disconnect? Or better, what could we do to make it better connect? To get a deeper understanding of how this process of engagement with the future works (or doesn’t work) with leaders and aspiring leaders, I ran a survey several years ago to test this phenomenon. The survey used a four- level scale that indicated the degree of someone’s “future engagement.” I
- 18. Preface xiii American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org gathered answers from 210 people from a wide range of different indus- tries. When I asked people what they do, concretely, to stay in touch with relevant future developments, the answer always included “reading news- papers,” “talking with customers/colleagues,” and other methods of “stay- ing up-to-date.” These are all smart things to do—and I encourage you to continue doing them—but they’re level 1 activities in terms of future en- gagement and developing visionary capacity. News facts and developments in your industry are mostly concerned with what has been, or at most what is. The bulk of what you find in the newspaper is about what happened yesterday, not about what will happen tomorrow. Monitoring the news therefore marks level 1. I found a near 100 percent score for activities at this level. As every professional can be expected to actively follow the news, this high score was unsurprising. Since level 1 is concerned with today and yesterday, level 2 involves con- sciously seeking out sources that specialize in covering future developments. Reading industry analyst reports and attending conferences with a focus on the future are examples of level 2 activities. The positive responses halved: 47 percent reported to have attended a conference or seminar focused on their industry’s future in the last six months. About a third (36 percent) had in recent months asked a team member to make an analysis of develop- ments in the sector, and 24 percent had outsourced that kind of analysis to an outside expert. Averaging these statistics would not be appropriate, but gut feeling tells us the amount of level 2 engagement is at least half of level 1. (See Figure P-1.) What the first two levels have in common, and what sets them apart from levels 3 and 4, is that they are both levels of passive engagement with the future. You’re merely a consumer of other people’s brainwork. Con- fucius clearly understood the significant difference between passive and active engagement when he said: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” Fresh ideas, new insights, and real learning are rooted in active engage- ment with the future, which is therefore the distinctive feature of the levels
- 19. xiv Preface American Management Association/ www.amanet.org 3 and 4. At level 3 you are actively engaged in future-oriented activities, such as trend analysis, modeling, and simulation, or some of the other tools and techniques that support you at this level. Your active participation in these active forms of exploring “what might be” will provide you with self-generated insights. These insights are much more likely to have a pro- found impact on your ability to anticipate and look ahead. Notwithstanding this promising return on investment, when the re- spondents to my survey were asked about their level 3 engagement activi- ties, the percentage took another free fall and landed at 35 percent. The reason most often mentioned is time consumption. Many leaders report that they lack the time to “do the Vision Thing.” So they outsource it, leaving a strategy department or project (or even worse, a consultant) to Figure P-1. Levels of future engagement.
- 20. Preface xv American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org do the work. This effectively puts the leader back at level 1 or 2: passively reading findings that have been produced by others. So we would benefit from a fourth—and most heightened—level of future engagement: active, systematic visionary development on an ongo- ing, somewhat effortless basis. Level 4 would be the ideal to strive for: You reap the insightful benefits of level 3, yet without its drawback of substan- tial time and effort that hamper your active participation. It requires an internalized way of working with the future through habits and practices that continually nurture your visionary capacity. I found that only 18 per- cent of people operate at this most productive level. In conclusion, despite the widespread acknowledgment of its impor- tance, there is a steep downward slope in how leaders fruitfully engage with the future to develop their forward-oriented perspective. My ongoing exploration of this topic over the years has led me to believe that anyone can improve their visionary side. Substantially, even. This also—and especially—applies to those who do not aspire to become larger- than-life heroes, but who do want to be a source of inspiration to their fol- lowers and want to lead their teams and organizations with energizing direction and purpose. The first step on this journey is a personal one; one that helps you de- velop the various dimensions of your visionary self through an integrated perspective, bringing together your rational mind, your imagination, your emotions, your character, your values, your behavior, and your words. This is what is in store for you. With this work, I intend to bring out the best future-oriented leader you could possibly be by helping you reach lev- els 3 and 4: productive—and often effortless—engagement with the future. So you will lead by looking ahead, and your views, expressions, and deeds will ignite and inspire others to see an alluring perspective to actively work toward. I trust this interests you, because, to paraphrase the futurist Adam Kahane, the future is where you will spend the rest of your life. Reading Support In contemplating this book, I noticed I kept going back and forth between providing academic concepts and readily applicable, practical ideas. I didn’t want to write yet another shallow “how to” book that lacked academic
- 21. xvi Preface American Management Association/ www.amanet.org solidity. At the same time, overburdening largely practical readers with heavy academic concepts was not my intention, either. Developing a powerful vision calls for the integration of various fields of expertise, including creative, psychological, strategic, behavioral, and narrative disciplines. So there is a lot to tap into. As a result, I have included solid academic research concepts in combination with practical ideas, tools, and approaches that I know from experience will help you develop your visionary swing. I have grouped them into four different parts (see Fig- ure P-2), marking the key stops we will make: Part 1: Visionary Content The first stop focuses on important elementary matters in the art of looking ahead, such as the essential ingredients a powerful vision consists of and the notions that define, form, and shape it (Chapter 1). To generate resourceful ideas that constitute your vision, you will need the ability to tap into your imagination, which is why we will spend time exploring what it takes to unlatch your creative, imaginary side (Chapter 2). Part 2: Visionary Practices In this second part the focus is on understanding and building a develop- mental framework to nurture your visionary capacity constantly and delib- erately (Chapter 3). We will discover that there are two key developmental dimensions that direct your growth: your ability to see change early (Chap- ter 4) and your ability to connect the dots (Chapter 5). We cover practical, real-life approaches to enact on these dimensions, starting with a novel one Figure P-2. Four parts of visionary development.
- 22. Preface xvii American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org called FuturePriming in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, we work on the ability to responsibly create coherence in your vision while keeping an eye on the risk of tunnel vision. Part 3: Visionary Self At the third stop, your visionary self, we move on to the personal and be- havioral dimension of visionary capacity; we look at mindsets, attitudes, and values to ensure the crucially important authenticity of your vision (Chapter 6) as well as productive behaviors and practices to allow your per- sonal growth to take place (Chapter 7). Part 4: Visionary Communication Finally, we arrive at the critical ability to verbalize and communicate your vision powerfully. This marks our fourth and final stop, visionary commu- nication (Chapter 8), which aims to make your vision speak not only to the heads, but also to the hearts of your followers. Mastery The journey we’ll be taking together in this book isn’t the one you will undertake to absorb these ideas. That will be an individual journey. It will lead you to find opportunities in your own life, your own reality; it will lead you to work with your own challenges and potential, to put these ideas to work, to play with them, experience them, struggle with them, and trans- form them into something you can make your own. Mastery follows a familiar route. (See Figure P-3.) Developing your visionary side is similar to other things you’ve learned, from biking to mathematics, technical to management skills. You will need to build your awareness and understanding of the various concepts involved. Next, you will need to step onto the practice field and start exploring your talents— possibly even your hidden talents. This deliberate exposure should help you figure out what works well for you and what doesn’t. You’ll gradually migrate from experimenting to deliberately integrating your newly developed practices into your leadership repertoire (implementing). Even-
- 23. xviii Preface American Management Association/ www.amanet.org tually, they’ll become second nature to you, in ways that fit your personal style and preferences (internalizing). To make sure you’ll move beyond awareness and understanding, and actually get your feet wet and try things out, I’ve included various “prac- tices” throughout. These practices are simple ideas and exercises for you to experiment with, to take from the pages of this book, and to incorporate into your daily leadership reality. I strongly encourage you to actively engage with these practices. They can be found on the website www.visionarycapacity.com, which complements this book and includes many other resources for you to engage with. To make this as practical as possible, QR codes have been inserted to create easy access and provide further detail, background, references, video, and other media, using your smartphone as a QR code scanner. If QR scanning is not for you, you can visit the site and enter the practice number below the QR image. You will be able to explore a wealth of ideas to experiment with and that you can access whenever real life calls for it. Collectively, this book and the digital support will provide you with what you need to create habits that will improve your visionary swing. Figure P-3. Route to mastery.
- 24. Preface xix American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org Many of these practices will stretch you into your discomfort zone. They might require some effort at times. But as our lives are already busy enough, most of them are focused on doing things differently rather than doing more things. They will help you make the move from intellectually grasp- ing the ideas to developing routines that will make them work for you in the daily leadership practice called life. Practice P-1. Sample QR Code
- 25. This page intentionallyleft blank
- 26. Acknowledgments First and foremost,a work like this could not have come to life without the home front support that allowed me the many hours away from my fa- therly duties—thank you, and I promise to catch up now. Taken as a whole, this book has benefited tremendously from the com- ments and insights given to me by Jim Keen over the years. I extend my deepest gratitude to him for our conversations, and my appreciation for our friendship. In the same vein, Tom Cummings has been instrumental in my personal transformation from the strategy to the leadership field. Without his support, and his nerve to put me in front of his clients, I would not have developed the insights laid out in this book. Thank you for our enduring friendship as well. My agent Steve Harris has provided invaluable support to get this work noticed—thank you. Many colleagues and friends made the book a lot better. I’m particularly thankful for the patience of Jeanine Jansen and Jaap de Jonge, who scruti- nized drafts of the text and provided very helpful suggestions for improve- ment. The multidisciplinary angle I have taken on the subject was made possible by the numerous talented people I have met and worked with over the years. They helped me develop an understanding and appreciation for the subject that reached far beyond what I could have imagined by myself. Here’s the roll call of great people, in no particular order: Jack Pinter, Nick American Management Association / www.amanet.org
- 27. xxii Acknowledgments American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org Van Heck, David Pearl, Thomas ten Kortenaar, Alison Peirce, Josh Patel, Paul Schoemaker, Bruce van Barthold, Didier Marlier, Elizabeth Lank, Beatrijs Verploeg, Lizzy Allen, and Eric Vogt. I’d like to add to this list those brave souls who allowed me a chance to voice my ideas in front of their clients, providing me with a great platform to get feedback, confront questions, identify my blind spots, and receive the encouragement to pur- sue. The continued roll call of people I’m grateful to: Lizette Cohen, Selma Spaas, Samantha Howland, Griet Ceuleers, Marianne van Iperen, Nel Hil- debrand, Dave Heckman, Deb Giffen, Stan Steverink, Joris De Boulle, Claire Teurlings, Angelica Thijssen, Gonca Borekci, Esin Akay, Anna Os- terlund, Saskia Vos, Ron Ettinger, and the many other clients who gave me a chance to play. Lastly, I am deeply indebted to my editors, Lauren Starkey and Maud Bovelander, whose masterly skills—and gentle ways of treating my short- comings—did wonders to this manuscript; my illustrator, Jet Steverink, for her artful creative interpretations; and to Teun Steverink for his skill and diligence in putting together a beautiful short movie of this book.
- 28. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Anticipate
- 29. This page intentionallyleft blank
- 30. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Introduction Everything is the same until it is not. —ellen Langer Unraveling the Mystery “What’s the one word you find in every definition of leadership?” I’ve asked that question many times to various audiences of senior executives around the world at the start of leadership sessions I run with them. I know what’s coming. The word vision is almost always fired back at me. Appar- ently it’s a no-brainer that leaders should, first and foremost, be skilled in the art of looking ahead and have a vision. But then something interesting happens. I point out that they are all leaders and ask them if they have a vision. Surprisingly (or maybe not), only a few, if any, of the executives raise their hands. This remarkable response got me thinking. If vision is one of the first things we think of when it comes to leadership—at least in theory—why is it so hard to find in practice? It can’t be because there’s no need for vision. In fact, a frequently heard complaint in the lower ranks of organizations is that their top leaders lack a clear vision. There’s a strong desire for leader- ship that anticipates the future and brings direction, meaning, and inspira-
- 31. 2 Introduction American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org tion. So if leaders and followers alike believe in its importance, why do so few leaders practice it? For some, a compelling vision is like a fine work of art: it’s admired, but considered out of reach for mortal souls like ourselves to create. Or it’s a luxury, something we’ll get to once we’ve got the time; right now we’re just too busy with the more immediate issues, overwhelmed by our managerial responsibilities. But is the absence really due to a perceived lack of ability or time? Or is something else going on here? As I thought about an answer, I started to explore the art of looking ahead and its expressions such as vision and anticipation. You’d think something as universally acknowledged as a critical leadership quality would be the subject of countless books, tools, and required MBA courses designed to help you grow your ability to become more visionary and future- oriented. We all recognize the importance of good health, and we find thousands of books devoted to helping us develop a healthy lifestyle. But that’s not true for visionary leadership. There’s almost nothing that explains how to develop and nurture our visionary capacity. At least not with the soundness, rigor, and practicality you would look for with such an important leadership quality. So maybe we can attribute the lack of visionary leadership to an absence of knowledge and understanding about how to grow this quality. That ab- sence would explain the lack of developmental guidance. After all, how would you be able to develop your visionary self if you don’t have a clear idea of what it consists of? And subsequently, how would you know where to start and what to focus on if you wanted to become better at the art of leading by looking ahead? If this lack of understanding is true, then the start point toward visionary leadership depends on knowledge and devel- opmental guidance. Waiting for inspiration to strike just isn’t working. This book is about unraveling the mystery of the thing called vision, in its broadest sense. From increasing our ability to look ahead and anticipate the future to turning that ability into a compelling story that ignites your followers. It’s about demystifying the thing leaders, and their followers, say is so important, but that they struggle with to put into practice. We’ll take vision from the realm of the mysterious into the real world, providing guid- ance for those who wish to become a more visionary and inspirational leader. Hopefully that includes you.
- 32. Introduction 3 American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org The Vision Thing The January 26, 1987, issue of Time magazine featured an article on George H. W. Bush, who was serving as vice president under Ronald Reagan. It was common knowledge that he would run for president in the upcoming election. In “Where Is the Real George Bush?” journalist Robert Ajemian explored what the candidate-to-be stood for, what inspired him, what mo- tivated him, and—above all—where he would take the United States if elected.1 A close friend of Bush confided to the reporter that he had urged the vice president to step back, retreat to Camp David for a few days, and reflect upon these important questions. Unimpressed, Bush responded with exasperation: “Oh, you mean for ‘the vision thing.’ ” Unconvinced, he ig- nored the advice. Depending on your political views, you might wince or even chuckle at this story. You might remember that it haunted Bush throughout his career. In fact, nowadays the unfortunate quote is part of his official biography on the United States Senate website.2 Some argue that his inability and unwill- ingness to create a vision was one of the main reasons Bush lost to Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.3 It is tempting to ridicule him for this quote. To be fair, though, it’s not easy to be good at the Vision Thing. Of course we want the world’s most powerful man to be more inspired in his ideas about the future, but we also need to acknowledge that creating and communicating a vision—espe- cially a powerful, compelling one—is incredibly challenging. Even for those who aspire to lead a nation. Creating a vision requires ideas, ideally intriguing and refreshing ideas that trigger people’s interest, curiosity, and excitement. It requires engage- ment with your imagination and an ability to think outside the clichéd box. It requires an open mind and willingness to listen to others’ unconventional ideas and, in a responsible way, incorporate these ideas into your own per- spectives. It requires clarity of thought on what you fundamentally stand for: the values you maintain, the beliefs that are dear to you, the enduring commitments you have set out for yourself. Finally, it requires the courage to voice your vision, to stand up for it, and to battle the resistance you’ll inevitably face in return. Because an effec- tive vision by definition has to be original, and therefore to some degree be
- 33. 4 Introduction American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org provocative, maybe even slightly controversial. After all, there’s very little “vision” in more of the same. And because a vision deals with the future, which is by definition unknown, it is surrounded by uncertainty. Here’s where a fear factor enters the equation: Your vision could turn out to be wrong. And since we’ve evolved with the notion that being wrong is a bad thing, it hampers our ability to stand out with something creative and dif- ferent. But as the educationalist Ken Robinson once said, “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with something original.” So, as much as we agree that leaders need the ability to look ahead, there’s very little understanding of how to develop this competence and improve visionary capacity. It’s also typically misunderstood. The reason might stem from the belief that it takes too much time. Or that our over- whelming short-term focus can’t prioritize it. Or that someone is either born visionary or not. It’s this same confusion Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter observed in his landmark article, “What Leaders Really Do.” He writes: “Most discussions of vision have the tendency to degenerate into the mystical. The implication is that vision is something mysterious that mere mortals, even talented ones, could never hope to have.”4 But developing a powerful vision isn’t magic. It’s not easy, but nei- ther is it magic. The truth—the premise of this book, in fact—is that all of us can be- come more visionary. My take on the term visionary (which we’ll get to later) isn’t larger-than-life, born-with-it-or-not. Instead, I believe it’s some- thing that can be developed, something that’s practical and real, something that can be embraced by anyone willing to invest time into it. It’s a lot like playing golf or tennis: We can all learn how to play these sports. Sure, some of us are better than others as a result of practice combined with persever- ance and some natural ability. But practice and perseverance can take you a long way. I believe the best thing you can give your followers is inspiration and purpose. It’s my intention with this book to coach you on this journey. You can become a leader who provides authentic inspiration, fueled with en- ergy, passion, and meaning. In other words, you can become a leader who understands and harnesses the art of looking ahead and who seizes the real power of the Vision Thing.
- 34. Introduction 5 American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org Context Sensitivity Let’s bring some gravitas to the argument that vision is a critical element of leadership. In an impressive effort to understand the secrets of leadership success, Harvard’s Anthony Mayo and Nitin Nohria conducted an exhaus- tive study of a thousand of the twentieth century’s most influential business leaders.5 The results are extensively documented in their book, In Their Time, which provides many insights about the Vision Thing that we will review throughout. But let’s first look at some of their statistical findings. To determine those influential leaders—those who shape the way we live, work, and interact even today—Mayo and Nohria asked 7,000 execu- tives to rank a list of 1,000 individuals. In addition, they asked respondents for their definition of a “great business leader”—what are factors that make people great? On the latter question, five factors (see Figure I-1) dominated the re- sponses: Number one was the ability to articulate and harness a strategy/vision for the company. Nearly a quarter of the respondents rated this quality highest, followed closely by “pioneering” and “impact on the industry at Figure I-1. Key factors for great business leaders.
- 35. 6 Introduction American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org large.” Interestingly, the more internally oriented factor of financial perfor- mance is outweighed by externally oriented factors (vision, pioneering, and impact on industry). Mayo and Nohria then identified and explored three executive arche- types: entrepreneurs, leaders, and managers. Yet even though representa- tives of each type enjoyed significant success for themselves and their organizations, the authors draw the following conclusion: [L]ong-term success is not derived from the sheer force of an individu- al’s personality and character. Without a sensitivity to context, long- term success is unlikely and an individual risks being surpassed by competitors or falling victim to hubris. Companies do not succeed or fail in a vacuum.6 It’s this pivotal factor that leadership guru Warren Bennis, whom we’ll meet again later, calls adaptive capacity: the ability to be attuned to develop- ments in the external environment and to act on these changes accordingly. It’s this ability to anticipate and engage with these changing dynamics that make organizations—and their leaders—successful over the long run. Arie de Geus, the author of The Living Company, and a lifelong scholar in future- orientation and learning organizations, observed in a study he conducted during his years at Shell, that most commercial corporations have dramatic life expectancies. They die prematurely and rarely outlive the life expec- tancy of human beings, which is around seventy-five years. But some do. A handful of companies on the planet have lived for hun- dreds of years.7 And when de Geus studied those few companies that had been successful in navigating through the decades and centuries of change, he observed that they shared a strong sense of sensitivity to their environ- ment. They always seemed to excel at anticipation, keeping their feelers out, tuned to whatever was going on around them. And they reacted timely to the changing conditions.8 So, context sensitivity and adaptive capacity are critical elements in de- veloping visionary capacity. Hence, they are given a prominent role in our exploration, which includes practical approaches for nurturing these abilities.
- 36. Introduction 7 American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org Short-Termism To enter this exploration of the Vision Thing with our eyes wide-open, we must understand its greatest enemy. While the world is in many ways still dealing with the consequences of the worldwide financial crisis that has dominated the news since 2008, the “whodunit” question continues to surface in discussions. Yet the complex and systemic nature of the collapse makes the finger-pointing arbitrary. There were greedy bankers and hedge fund managers driven by the prom- ise of fat bonuses; slacking regulators who turned a blind eye; central bank- ers who kept interest rates at irresponsibly low levels; ratings agencies that were unwilling to assess risks appropriately; unrealistic politicians who re- fused to tackle the tough issues; and reckless consumers who used credit to live beyond their means. They all played a role. And they all suffered from the same disease called short-termism. They valued short-term gains above long-term, some- what foreseeable, consequences—whether at personal, organizational, or societal levels. “Anyone who is willing to postpone the long-term strategy to make the short-term numbers is in route to going out of business,” warned Bill George, Harvard Business School professor and former Medtronic CEO, in a plea to rethink capitalism.9 He is very concerned about the effects of excessive Wall Street orientation and the aggressive in- fluence of activist shareholders looking for short-term gains. As an advo- cate of the long-term perspective, his recommendation is that “it’s extremely important for management of a company and the board of directors to get alignment over the long-term goals and objectives and strategy to get there, and then to shape its investor base to match that goal. Do not let your share- holders manage you; you have to manage them. You have to say what we’re going to be.” Hence, he’s not merely finger-pointing external forces, but he under- lines the responsibility of developing a clear future-oriented perspective in order to fight the pressures that work against it. In itself, this is nothing new, and if anything, it should be one of the most important lessons learned from the crisis that hit us so hard. Remarkably though, that research by McKinsey five years after the near meltdown of 2008 seems to suggest that little of that learning has actually
- 37. 8 Introduction American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org taken root. Sixty-three percent of responding managers admitted that the pressure to make high short-term profits had increased since the start of the crisis, and nearly four out of five managers (79 percent) reported that maxi- mizing profits for the next two years was still a priority.10 Most (86 percent) declared that using a longer time horizon to make business decisions would positively affect corporate performance. The awareness seems to be there, but regrettably, despite the ice-cold shower of the financial crisis, the lessons are not learned or applied. Short-termism has not been overthrown; instead it seems to have increased. Today, bankers heading financial institutions that were bailed out by public money because of their recklessness have their confidence back and are arguing against intensified regulatory oversights. We’re supposed to learn from the past, but short-term success appears to shield our willingness to accept long-term implications. Long-Term Language Fortunately, there are a few enlightened leaders who have learned from these mistakes. Sir David Walker, the chairman of Barclays Bank since 2012, publicly admitted that investment bankers’ focus on short-term tar- gets has caused enormous damages.11 More concretely, Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever since 2009, doesn’t just talk the talk. Polman decided short- term investor anxiety would hinder his plan for structural renewal of the company, designed to prepare it for the future and for long-term benefits. He set lofty and challenging transformational goals for the company (and himself), such as a 50 percent reduction of the greenhouse gas impact of Unilever products and 100 percent sustainable sourcing of raw materials, and pledged to help one billion people improve hygiene. He recognizes that such shifts require time and perseverance, and the road ahead is not a straight line. Short-term investors breathing down his neck would be un- suitable for this journey, so he did away with quarterly earnings reporting and told hedge funds they are no longer welcome as investors12 —a huge and controversial step for a publicly listed multinational. Leaders like Walker and Polman are up against a tough opponent. Short-termism has deep roots, and the influence of short-term-oriented in- vestors continues to grow. But at the same time another study pointed out that blaming short-termism on external factors is too simplistic.13 Francois
- 38. Introduction 9 American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org Brochet, George Serafeim, and Maria Loumioti analyzed the language used in over 70,000 earnings conference calls by more than 3,600 companies between 2002 and 2008. By counting the words and phrases that suggest both short- and long-term emphases, they found that businesses that leaned strongly toward short-term results, judged by the language they used, at- tracted short-term-oriented investors. Short-termism, then, is at least par- tially self-imposed and not just externally enforced by investors. It’s no surprise that family businesses, by and large, have weathered the financial crisis much better than those operating under markets mantras. Stijn Swinkels, currently the seventh-generation family member heading international brewery Bavaria Beer, likes to say that “we borrow the com- pany from our children.” A mindset defined by such values makes it far less likely to lose sight of the long term than a mindset that keeps thinking of “quarterly results” and “increasing shareholder value.” On the bright side, there is hope. Executives can influence the type of investors they attract, just as Paul Polman found, by adjusting the horizon they take when communicating about their business. The absence of a long-term view, or the inability to formulate and communicate one power- fully, not only draws like-minded investors but also reinforces short-term thinking and behavior. The presence of a powerful vision attracts a differ- ent type of investor. The Battle Can a vision survive against this backdrop of intrinsic, hard-to-battle short-termism? It’s a tough question. Short-termism is the biggest enemy of developing visionary capacity for both the organization and the individ- ual leader. Compelling visions rarely have immediate monetary returns. In fact, the immediate consequences of a powerful vision might be detrimen- tal to short-term results. The fear of affecting these short-term results often prevents leaders from making the kinds of organizational transformations they would want to make if they were faithful to their long-term view. To return to Bill George’s thoughts once more, he underscores this long-term responsibility in current leadership. “You cannot put a strategy in place today in the pharmaceutical industry, in the automobile industry, in the food industry with less than a seven- to ten-year time frame. That’s
- 39. 10 Introduction American ManagementAssociation / www.amanet.org how long it takes. Particularly [for] companies going through a cultural transformation it takes closer to ten years to get it done.”14 Witness the print industry: In December 2012, Newsweek published its last print issue after its subscriber base and advertising revenue had shrunk by 50 percent and 80 percent, respectively, over ten years. (In March 2014 Newsweek relaunched its print edition under new ownership and with a different business model that no longer relies on advertising income.) This is the publishing industry’s new reality. An aging subscriber base won’t get replaced with new, younger subscribers that have grown used to free digital content. At the same time and as a result, advertisers are in- creasingly moving to digital platforms, depleting the second main income stream for the print industry. Publishers soon need to face the obvious choice: Follow Newsweek’s December 2012 decision and stop printing, or reinvent oneself to find a new, profitable model. (A third possibility is to mindlessly stick your head in the sand and hope it will all blow over, a strat- egy that, at the time of this writing, still has a remarkable popularity.) Most executives lean toward the second option, transform, even though—as pointed out by Bill George—transformation tends to be slow and results in the immediate future are likely to be weak. From the long- term point of view, though, it’s their only option. So, if you are leading a publishing house today, you better have a compelling vision for the future of your business. It won’t be easy, but it should have the highest priority over anything else. And you better be prepared to fight a battle with short-termism. You will need shareholders with a long-term perspective who will allow you the time to transform. This is what Paul Polman under- stood so well when he led his organization forward: On this journey, there is no room for short-term-oriented hedge fund managers who enter only with an interim perspective to make a quick win (even though they would never admit that). To conclude, a powerful vision isn’t just nice to have. It’s the most im- portant tool in the transformational leader’s toolbox. “Where there is no vision, there is no hope,” is how George Washington Carver dramatically put it. You need a compelling story to inspire people to join the transforma- tional journey and persuade them to stick around for the long run. But how do you do that? That’s the real question. And that’s where we are heading.
- 40. American Management Association/ www.amanet.org Pa r t 1
- 41. This page intentionallyleft blank
- 42. 1 The Groundwork Mostly, however,it is the future that has attracted man’s dreams, hopes, and fears. The future rather than the past is seen as holding the key to the riddle of his existence. —fred Polak Your Personal Vision I’ve been toying with the word vision for a long time. In two decades of work with arrived and aspiring leaders, from executive boardrooms to business school classrooms, I’ve noticed that the word instantly stirs up pas- sionate debate. Debate about our company vision, debate about whether or not our leaders have one, debate on the current humdrum or unrealistic version that’s on the company website, and debate about whether it is of any real value at all to have a vision. I’ve heard everything from “Finally, we’re talking about what’s really important,” to “Oh please! Not another hazy discussion on that abstract notion that won’t help me deliver results.” What I’ve learned from these debates is that the Vision Thing intrigues and frustrates at the same time. We look up to people and companies that seemed to have mastered it, but feel thwarted in achieving similar results. Most people agree that, when understood and practiced well, vision can be American Management Association / www.amanet.org
- 43. 14 a nt i c i p a t e American Management Association / www.amanet.org an extraordinarily powerful concept; a tool, in fact, that significantly bol- sters your ability to influence. Highly respected scholars in the field of lead- ership even put vision at the center of it. Harvard Business School professor Abraham Zaleznik declared vision the hallmark of leadership,1 and when Warren Bennis studied leaders he noticed that “of all the characteristics that distinguished the individuals, the most pivotal was a concern with a guiding purpose, an overarching vision.”2 But when the idea of a vision isn’t framed properly, it quickly becomes muddy and fuzzy, incomplete and unproductive, and loses the interest of those you wish to engage. A proper understanding and agreement of terms around the concept of vision is therefore essential, so I’ll first clarify in this chapter what I do and don’t mean when using the term before we start improving your ability to make it work for you. Above all, I want to make a clear distinction between the company vi- sion and your personal vision. In contrast to most strategy textbooks that usually allude to company vision, we will focus on your personal vision throughout this work. My aim is to increase your personal visionary capacity and bring out what a powerful vision can do for your personal leadership— whether or not you are hierarchically in a senior position. After all, vision is not an exclusive for those in top-ranked positions. I have seen many people lower down the ranks galvanize their teams with a highly motivating and inspiring future-oriented perspective. Those team members took energy from the personal vision of the one leader that was most relevant for them: their immediate boss. That energy did not depend on the company vision; it was the boss’s personalized version that made it work. It was the boss’s attitude to look ahead and go beyond the immediate reality of today that provided meaning and direction. Admittedly, in a corporate context, it often does imply that your personal vision as a leader needs to reasonably align and live within the constraints of the company vision. But to me that’s in a way just an aside, just as your personal vision needs to live within ethical and legal boundaries. That’s not what this is about. Your compelling story has everything to do with igniting excitement in those people who look to you for leadership. Your personal imagination and inspiration is what counts for them. It’s your dedication and your authenticity that they are looking for; it’s about the story that you bring to them, and much less about what is stated on the corporate website.
- 44. The Groundwork 15 AmericanManagement Association / www.amanet.org I’m not implying that a company vision statement is not useful or desir- able. Crisp, empowering company statements can be extraordinary useful. Microsoft’s original idea of “having a computer in every home running Mi- crosoft software” is often rightfully cited as a showcase of excellent com- pany vision statements. Less glamorous firms like Progressive Insurance have managed to arrive at a rich company vision statement. Progressive’s vision is “to reduce the human trauma associated with automobile acci- dents,” which has opened up new areas of servicing clients and outper- forming peers by operating differently and offering “unusual” products and services. Or think of Ben and Jerry’s mission: “Making the best possible ice cream, in the nicest possible way.” These are examples of very powerful company vision statements. Un- fortunately, these great examples often seem to be the exception to the rule. With the rule being that in most companies the company vision is good stuff for the marketing department that—after lengthy debate—ends up pulling together a series of trendy buzzwords to dazzle the public. The statement usually lacks all the ingredients of a powerful vision—including something that inspires, such as unconventionality, meaning, and authen- ticity. But all that is company vision terrain. The one I talk about throughout this book is your personal vision, the compelling future orientation you want to develop to ignite your followers. It is a leadership marker, some- thing that reflects who you are as a leader and inspires others to enlist for action—regardless of whether that is three or 30,000 people. Vision 101 Let’s explore some basic themes first, before we move to a more founda- tional perspective later on in this chapter. A vision is future-oriented. That probably sounds quite self-evident. Yet there is quite a bit more to this obvious observation. Since it is about the future, which is intrinsically uncertain, it is predominantly a product of imagination. You might have some beliefs, hunches, and past patterns to support your ideas, but it remains an opinion that cannot be backed up with factual experiences, research, and other quantifiable data. That simple real- ity already explains why people find it so difficult to imaginatively look
- 45. 16 a nt i c i p a t e American Management Association / www.amanet.org ahead, since we have mostly evolved in a business reality where facts and figures are deemed very important. So unlocking your imagination is an important aspect of developing your ability to anticipate. A vision is therefore a particular form of opinion. It’s one that—when done right—evokes energy and inspiration. A well-developed vision stim- ulates our thinking and opens us up to new possibilities. This creativity as- pect unleashes playfulness and curiosity, which produces positive energy. This makes it very different from opinions based purely on logic and rea- soning, which quickly bog us down and impede our imagination. Powerful visions have at least four fundamental purposes. A Vision Shows the Path Forward A vision provides guidance and direction about where an organization (or a country, a team, or any other group) is headed. In the traditional notion of strategy, the vision is the starting point. It helps everyone involved decide what to focus on, what horizon we aim for, what boundaries and constraints to be wary of, and subsequently how to set priorities, resolve conflicts, and overcome the inevitable challenges that arise as strategy rolls out. Take, for example, the state of Dubai, which grew in just a few decades from a desert village into a glittering global financial hub and tourist desti- nation. This development stemmed from the vision of one man, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. Realizing that the region’s oil supply would one day run out, he transformed Dubai into a modern city that would be able to thrive in an oil-free future. The Sheikh’s book, aptly titled My Vision, provided explicit directions, which have been followed diligently since the early 1990s, for achieving a high growth rate. Focusing on excel- lence in service and industry, he oversaw the development of Dubai with a vision that was clear, direction setting, and left little room for misinterpre- tation. Without doubt the Sheikh’s deep pockets of oil wealth have been instru- mental in realizing this imagined future—it wasn’t his innovative capacity that got him to accumulate this wealth. And from our contemporary view on management, we can have reservations about aspects of the aristocratic leadership style of the region. But those objections aside, it is evident that
- 46. The Groundwork 17 AmericanManagement Association / www.amanet.org his ability to look well into the future and develop a clear and unconven- tional direction for Dubai stands out in the region. Neighboring countries such as Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, which similarly accumulated tremendous wealth from their oil reserves, now look up to Dubai as they start to wake up to a reality in which their oil exports and income will begin to diminish in the foreseeable future. But they are twenty years behind Dubai, where the Sheikh saw this inevitable change much earlier and de- veloped the emirate’s post-oil-era direction. Therefore, a vision is the essential starting point from which to develop a strategic agenda that ensures you get where you want to be and helps you tackle any barriers that might come up in the process. “Strategic planning is worthless unless there is first a strategic vision,” the prominent futurist John Naisbitt once said. A Vision Stretches the Imagination A potent vision takes us beyond the obvious into the unknown and stretches the boundaries of what we conventionally think up to that point in time. President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech to a joint session of Congress, an- nouncing the goal of “put[ting] a man on the moon by the end of the de- cade,” stretched the imagination of a nation. It became not only a source of patriotic pride, but also a driving force behind a tremendous amount of technological and educational innovation. Admittedly, it was also fueled by Cold War tensions: The speech was delivered a month after the embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs invasion as well as the Soviet Union’s achievement of manned space flight. After care- ful examination of their options, President Kennedy and a small group of high-ranking officials concluded that putting a man on the moon was the best way to beat the Soviets. But the challenge was a colossal one. Kennedy stressed, “No single space project . . . will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” It was a powerful long-term perspective that surpassed the obvious, stretching the imagination into unconventional territory without becoming absurd—otherwise it would have quickly lost its power.
- 47. 18 a nt i c i p a t e American Management Association / www.amanet.org A Vision Challenges the Status Quo and Breaks Through Existing Paradigms In addition to stretching the imagination, a well-developed vision can pro- vide new and previously “unseen” opportunities. Challenging our current way of thinking can help us break through existing paradigms to find fresh ways of working, thinking, and behaving. This is why unlocking your imagination, freeing yourself from the constraints of existing assumptions, beliefs, and dogmas, is vital to nurturing your visionary capacity. We’ll ex- plore this subject more extensively in the next chapter, but let’s briefly look at the story of IKEA to illustrate the point. Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA’s Swedish founder, became one of the wealthi- est people of our time by building an empire on his vision that “design furniture should not only be accessible to the happy few.” He wanted to offer attractive, functional products in a low price range. But this is where the vision ran into difficulties. It either had to over- come barriers—namely, the existing furniture industry model—or remain a dream. Kamprad needed to find a way to get to prices well below stan- dard levels, breaking through the paradigms of traditional thinking (or, in this case, traditional ways of production, distribution, and sales). He chal- lenged the entire model of the furniture industry by handing over the parts and assembly instructions to the end user. Kamprad created a highly effi- cient model that significantly cut back on production and distribution costs. IKEA’s philosophy, “You do a little, we do a little, together we save a lot,” succinctly captures the company’s focus on customer involvement and cost savings. Experimentation, challenging conventions, and willingness to embrace failure—all are required to successfully toy with reality, as Kamprad did. Also, at IKEA the path from concept to industry leader wasn’t as smooth as it seems when the story gets retold decades later. The real story was one of trial and error, with some smart ideas and some crazy ones (“Manland,” an area of the store dubbed “daycare for dudes,” may be one of them). But fundamental to the journey was a recognition that the current belief system needed to be challenged in order to reach the “better future.” That’s what a powerful vision can provide.
- 48. The Groundwork 19 AmericanManagement Association / www.amanet.org A Vision Energizes and Mobilizes Finally, a powerful vision provides something very few other leadership tools can: It has the potential to galvanize those you lead. A vision inspires people to put their best effort into the cause. It unites them around a shared purpose, gives meaning to the day job, and mobilizes them into action. Think of what Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson ac- complished with their visions. And it’s not only these larger-than-life, charismatic leaders who benefit from a vision’s energizing power. It also works for people with names such as Peter Kapitein, Scott Brusaw, Chanda Kochhar, Jørn Utzon, Taïg Khris, and Malcolm McLean. You might not have heard of them, but you’ll meet them in this book. They are fairly “ordinary” people—probably much more like you and me—who also made the Vision Thing work for them by mobilizing people behind their endeavors and dreams, inspiring them with a direction-setting, imaginative, and often paradigm-breaking idea, and following through on them with passion and dedication. Transformational Leadership In 1977, Abraham Zaleznik of Harvard Business School threw a rock in the pond of management theory with his article “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” and invigorated a vivid debate among academics around the theme of leadership. The field hasn’t been the same since. In his article, Zaleznik pointed out that management theory had missed half the picture thus far. The focus had been on rationality and control, with themes such as goals, organization structures, and resources. The view of the manager was that of a problem solver, succeeding through hard work, analytical abilities, and tough-mindedness. But “managerial leadership unfortunately does not necessarily ensure imagination, creativity, or ethical behavior in guiding the destinies of corporate enterprises,”3 he pointed out. He brought forward avant-garde themes such as inspiration, integrity, emotional commitment, drives, and motivation; themes we now commonly associate with leadership and that seem so obvious once expressed. In real- izing this kind of leadership, he underlined the importance of vision:
- 49. 20 a nt i c i p a t e American Management Association / www.amanet.org Where managers act to limit choices, leaders develop fresh approaches to long-standing problems and open issues to new options. To be effec- tive, leaders must project their ideas onto images that excite people and only then develop choices that give those images substance.4 That image is the vision. The four purposes of vision we just covered illustrate the key differences between leaders and managers once more. A manager’s role is a very important one (let’s not underestimate the inherent difficulties of being a good manager!), but it essentially boils down to keep- ing things on track. A leader’s role is fundamentally different. It’s about transformation, about motivating and inspiring people to move toward a new reality. Another eminent thinker we met before, John Kotter, contin- ued the path broken open by Zaleznik. In his 1990 article “What Leaders Really Do,” Kotter stated: “What leaders really do is prepare the organiza- tion for change and help them cope as they struggle through it.”5 To achieve this organizational change, a leader must stretch the imagination, challenge the status quo, show a way forward, break through existing paradigms, energize and mobilize people to follow . . . In other words, a leader needs all the elements a vision brings. So how does a vision connect with contemporary views on leadership? The concept of leadership is a dynamic one, trending through strategic leadership, situational leadership, authentic leadership, charismatic leadership, team leadership, servant leadership, and vigilant leadership, to name a few. But ever since Zaleznik and Kotter paved the way for seeing leadership in the light of pressing for change, most attention in the arena of leadership research goes toward transformational leadership,6 emphasizing intrinsic motivation, follower development, inspiration, and empowerment—all elements that are closely aligned with contem- porary thinking about success in a turbulent, increasingly uncertain, and complex world. In his standard work, Leadership: Theory and Practice, Peter Northouse, a professor at Western Michigan University, defines transformational lead- ership as: [T]he process whereby a person engages with others and creates a con- nection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the
- 50. The Groundwork 21 AmericanManagement Association / www.amanet.org leader and the follower. This type of leadership is attentive to the needs and motives of followers and tries to help followers reach their fullest potential.7 The concept of transformational leadership is very rich; it includes moral standards, role modeling, ethics, and other important concepts. But central to this view on leadership is the role of a compelling vision. Accord- ing to Northouse: The vision is a focal point for transformational leadership. It gives the leader and the organization a conceptual map for where the organiza- tion is headed; it gives meaning and clarifies the organization’s identity. Furthermore, the vision gives followers a sense of identity within the organizations and also a sense of self-efficacy.8 So again, as stated in the introduction, a vision is more than a nice-to- have. It’s not something we should get to once we have the luxury to think about it. It’s the cornerstone in contemporary thinking on leadership and a critical aspect for everyone aspiring to lead. The Alpe d’HuZes So far, I’ve relied on larger-than-life examples of leaders to demonstrate the points. While these leaders serve well as illustrations, since we all know them, they come with a risk of alienation. Visionary leadership isn’t just for charismatic, legendary heroes who seemingly stepped down from heaven to personally do God’s work on earth. It is just as useful to far less heroic and iconic people working in less glamorous roles under less obvious spot- lights. Take Peter Kapitein, an “ordinary” program manager at the Central Bank of the Netherlands. His story starts with a diagnosis of lymph node cancer in January 2005. With treatment, his cancer was brought under con- trol, and he joined several other cancer patients and cycling fanatics to raise funds for cancer research. They started an event they call the Alpe d’HuZes, playfully morphing the name of the legendary French mountain Alpe d’Huez that is often the decisive leg in the Tour de France cycling race.
- 51. 22 a nt i c i p a t e American Management Association / www.amanet.org The Zes in the name means “six” in Dutch, because here’s what the event entails: Kapitein and his group decided to scale the famous moun- tain not once, but six times in one day. To put that in perspective: the Alpe d’Huez has twenty-one hairpin turns that need to be navigated while climbing 13.8 kilometers at an average gradient of 7.9 percent. It’s a seri- ous climb with some daunting slopes that takes a professional cyclist about an hour to complete and a well-trained amateur about one and a half hours. That’s one and a half hours of straight uphill climbing. It’s bad enough to go up once. But Kapitein’s group decided to do it six times in one day! The event ran for the first time in 2006 with Kapitein and a handful of friends and supporters. Today, it’s the largest cancer research fund-raising initiative in the Netherlands, with over 15,000 participants in 2012. From an original 400,000 euros raised in 2006, the Alpe d’HuZes now raises more than 20 million euros annually. But despite its incredible success and glorious legacy, this community of cycling fanatics has faced—and continues to face—tragedy as well. Each year, several participants can no longer make the climb, losing or having lost their battle against cancer. One of them was Bas Mulder, an Alpe d’HuZes founder. He continued to participate despite the recurrence of his cancer, following his life’s motto to never give up. His perseverance and positivism became a source of great inspiration to many. In 2010, he lost his battle and passed away at age 24. At his close friend’s funeral, Kapitein vowed to find out why cancer had spared him but not his friend Bas Mulder. He followed through on his promise by starting a new initiative, Inspire2Live (www.inspire2live.org), with the aim to bring together the world’s leading researchers and institu- tions to accelerate the fight against cancer. Supported by his employer, he spent several months traveling and meet- ing with some of the world’s most renowned thought leaders on cancer treatment. On January 14, 2011, Kapitein hosted a conference called “Un- derstanding Life” in Amsterdam. He invited all the people he had spoken with. On that day, eighty of the world’s leading cancer experts, including several Nobel Prize winners, showed up. But wait a second. Why would these highly successful and sought-after thought leaders from around the globe show up at a conference arranged
- 52. The Groundwork 23 AmericanManagement Association / www.amanet.org by a banking manager? If you’re among that selective breed of world-class doctors and researchers, you manage your time very carefully. There’s no shortage of conferences and events around the world that want you as a speaker or guest. You could attend one every day if you wanted to. And although Kapitein had learned a lot about cancer over the years and clearly knew his way around the field, he didn’t hold any significant academic cre- dentials or remarkable research results—important factors for attracting top researchers to a conference. So why would they travel all the way to Amsterdam for his conference? The answer is simple. Kapitein focused the invitation and discussion on one thing only: his vision that, by 2020, cancer would no longer be a deadly disease but a chronic one. Instead of seeking a cure, he sought ways to con- trol it, much like what the medical community did with HIV two decades earlier. That’s what convinced them to join and compelled them to con tribute. The world’s leading scientists wholeheartedly embraced Kapitein’s re- casting of Kennedy’s “man on the moon by the end of the decade” vision. They concluded the conference by declaring the vision feasible. It would neither be easy nor straightforward, and it might not apply to all types of cancer. But for the first time, the lack of cooperation and practice-sharing between the different cancer disciplines was addressed and discussed. A concerted effort between them would make it possible to significantly out- perform the current pace of development. This was the story that mobi- lized them to go to Amsterdam and work toward this shared goal. In this way, an “ordinary” person like Peter Kapitein—no larger-than- life leader—is getting the Vision Thing to work for him and making the adjective ordinary a misnomer. He provides direction, stretches the imagi- nation, breaks through paradigms, and energizes and mobilizes a large group of people to join and work toward his vision. Core Ingredients So far, I’ve loosely described the components that constitute a vision, its four key purposes, and an idea of the power it could give you as a leader. Let’s now dig deeper and identify the specific core ingredients that combine to create great results on the vision front.
- 53. 24 a nt i c i p a t e American Management Association / www.amanet.org We’ve seen that there are always elements of guidance and direction set- ting: A vision shows us a future ideal to strive for. The element of direction setting is critical, because followers use it to guide the decisions they make, the initiatives they start, and the priorities they set. “Since the function of leadership is to produce change, setting the direction of that change is fun- damental to leadership,”9 Harvard Business School’s John Kotter affirms. But that’s only the rational, cerebral part; it needs something else, some- thing more, to make it compelling and powerful. Followers need to feel something in order to really spark their enthusiasm. They need to be touched emotionally; they need to feel motivated and energized. When this emotional dimension comes together with the cognitive one, the inspira- tional level rises significantly. In Chapter 3—in the section titled Visionary Shoes—we’ll explore some research into the followers’ effect of a vision and discover that emotional engagement has even more impact on followers than the rational aspect does. So how does this emotional layer become part of it? How can you make your future-oriented story touch your followers emotionally and reach their hearts rather than their heads? There are two elements that predom- inantly ignite this emotional factor: • Unconventionality. Unconventionality triggers emotions such as curi- osity, excitement, desire, optimism, and empowerment. President Kennedy’s vision is one example I’ve already cited. Steve Jobs was a master at making this connection, grasping every opportunity to tell his people that “at Apple we are revolutionizing the world.” Jobs consistently emphasized the unconventionality of whatever Apple was doing. Remember the “Think different” slogan? We also see this connection at play in Kamprad’s unconventional furniture model at IKEA and Kapitein’s unconventional view on the future of cancer research. • Connection to a Noble Cause. This connection sparks emotions such as pride, belonging, willingness, passion, nobility, warmth, empathy, and trust. Just to be clear, the noble cause need not be something as hippy-ish and vague as peace on earth. “Revolutionizing the world at Apple” involves a noble cause: drastically improving the accessibility and usability of technology. Kamprad, while pursuing a less noble
- 54. The Groundwork 25 AmericanManagement Association / www.amanet.org goal of making lots of money, hitched his vision to the unfairness that only the happy few could afford well-designed furniture. At least one of these two emotional factors—unconventionality and noble cause—should be present in order to allow emotional attachment to a vision. Ideally, though, a vision should include both. Consider the case of Peter Kapitein: The idea of transforming cancer from a lethal to a chronic disease by 2020 is both unconventional and noble. Logos, Ethos, and Pathos Are these elements of direction setting and emotional engagement the only key ingredients? Not quite. There is a third and final ingredient that’s of crucial importance when creating a powerful vision. Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle already described the art of persua- sion, of getting people to follow a leader. In On Rhetoric (350 BCE) he wrote: Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. [ . . . ] Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal char- acter when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. [...] Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. [ . . . ] Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.10 According to Aristotle, in order to persuade followers, a leader needs (in reverse order) convincing arguments, the emotions they elicit, and credibil- ity. Today we refer to his threefold description as Logos, Pathos, and Ethos— the cornerstones for creating engagement. Logos means that the message needs to make sense and not crumble under scrutiny. Followers must be able to understand the rationale of what you are trying to do. In Aristotle’s words, “persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or apparent truth by means of persuasive arguments.” If the argument isn’t logically consistent, it’s un- likely that followers will buy into it (or at least not with the intensity we’d
- 55. Other documents randomlyhave different content
- 56. little hall. Felicia’sparting kiss had quieted his worst fear—the fear lest her love suspected past wrongs in him, a baseless fear he now saw, and with this steadying of the nerves he could see the other fear as baseless too. Angela would never turn despicably on him; besides, even if she did, Felicia would never believe her, her jealousy would piteously interpret her desperation. There was further relief in thinking Felicia unjust. The thing must be patched up, and Felicia brought to see that common fairness demanded a certain toleration of Angela. Mr. Merrick was reading a paper with a pretence at absorption, and Maurice guessed that he was very angry. Neither commented on Felicia’s absence, and they went in silence into the little dining-room. “So you are going to make friends with Angela,” Maurice observed lightly, when the servant had gone. “Felicia has spoken to you, I infer,” said Mr. Merrick, sipping his soup in slow and regular spoonfuls. His father-in-law’s aggressively noisy manner of imbibing soup had long been a thorn in the flesh to Maurice. It was peculiarly irritating to-night. He could but hold Mr. Merrick responsible for all the vexatious situation. Silly, gullible old fool! He could almost have uttered the words as the sibilant mouthfuls succeeded one another. How obvious, in looking at him, that Angela could only have captured him as a tool. To think that, again cast the danger-signal on the situation, made it more than vexatious. Maurice forcibly quieted his mental comments, since to think his father-in-law a silly old fool roused again his worst suspicions of Angela. “Naturally, she has spoken to me,” he said. “I trust that you do not share her morbid hatred.” “I don’t know about a morbid hatred,” Maurice answered, controlling his impatience with the more success now that the soup was done. “I see a very normal antagonism of temperament. Angela is all artificiality, and Felicia all reality; but I do think,” he added, “that Felicia has the defects of her qualities. She scorns artificiality too quickly. Her scorns outshoot the mark. I don’t think that poor Angela, with all her attitudinising, meant any harm this afternoon. Why should she? It was, I own, rather hard on her to come to beg for forgiveness, and to have Felicia refuse to forgive her.” Mr. Merrick had not dared openly to express his angers and grievances, for then he must reveal their source, and that he felt to be inadvisable; but
- 57. the latent angersonly awaited their opportunity. “Upon my word! Forgiveness for what?” he demanded. Maurice recoiled as Angela that afternoon had recoiled. He had intended a cheery, mending talk, and he had not intended that it should lead him to this. He could not tell Mr. Merrick the cause of Angela’s visit—that he had jested with her over the very article he had urged him to publish. “I don’t quite know what happened,” he said, searching his mind for a safe clue. “Felicia, as you know, didn’t like that article of yours; Angela spoke to her about it—it was in the summer—there was some misunderstanding; Felicia resented her sympathy.” Matters were becoming clear, luridly clear, to Mr. Merrick’s mind, and Angela gained all that Felicia lost. “Indeed,” he said, ominously, “she criticizes her own father and resents the frank and more intelligent criticism of a friend.” “No, no!” Maurice was feeling a rush of stupefaction. What had he done? This was not the clue. “Felicia, as far as I understand, didn’t initiate the criticism—resented Angela’s.” “I see; I understand. It is the proffered friendship she rejects; the community, not the criticism.” Mr. Merrick felt that in Angela’s interpretation of the scene he held a touchstone of its real significance, invisible to Maurice. And how noble had been her further reticence. His anger rose with redoubled vigour over the slight obstacle Maurice had thrown before it. “I see it all,” he repeated; “the quixotic generosity of Lady Angela’s seeking for reconciliation, and Felicia’s rejection of her. As I say, a morbid hatred, and that only, explains it, and it explains it all.” Maurice was silent, with a sort of despair he felt that so, in its false truth, the situation must rest. “At all events,” he said, “I don’t suppose that under the circumstances you will really care to accept this invitation of Angela’s.” “I have accepted it.” “Grant that it’s a bit indelicate of her to steal such a march on Felicia. It looks like retaliation, you know.” Mr. Merrick flushed. “I do myself and her the honour to think that it looks like friendship for myself.” Fresh lights were breaking on him every moment. Dewy roses in danger; perilous influences. “I do her the further
- 58. honour,” he wenton, “to believe that Felicia’s rejection of her does not alter her wish to do well by Felicia. For my part I will do my best to atone to her for the cruel affront that she has received at my daughter’s hands.” Maurice, after the uncomfortable meal was over, almost feared to go to Felicia’s room with his news of defeat. He feared, too, with this new weakness born of his new self-disgust, that her love already had taken on that shadow of suspicion and distrust that he dreaded. He was feeling a sort of giddiness from the hateful pettiness of complexity that enmeshed him. He even imagined he might find her crying in bed, and dinnerless, a horribly effective form of feminine pathos that he had never yet had to face in her. The sight of a tray outside her door reassured him as to the dinner, and it was with a sense of exquisite relief, a sense of dear, sane, commonplace effacing silly doubts that he found her engaged in the very feminine but very unpathetic occupation of tidying her drawers. She sat—her lap filled with gloves, ribbons and handkerchiefs, and was folding and rearranging, apparently intent on her occupation. Her eyes, as she looked round at him, gave him once more that sense of quiet security. She had faced the situation, seen its triviality, recovered her humour and her calm. Maurice at once saw the situation as only trivial too. “Well?” Felicia asked, laying a lawn collar in its place. “Well, dear, I’m afraid he is unmalleable. He is going.” Felicia’s face hardened a little, but not, he knew, towards himself. “He sees the strain, the unnaturalness he makes?” “Try not to mind, dear. You’ll find that it will adjust itself.” Maurice had not guessed, nor had Felicia herself even, the almost panic sense of dismay and danger that underlay her determined activity, her determined cheerfulness. Angela seemed to threaten all her life. Worst of all, though Felicia clung blindly to her instinct, she seemed to threaten her very power of judging, feeling clearly. Darts of self-distrust went through her, and following them, strange disintegrating longings to justify Angela by that self-distrust, to own herself hard, cruel, and to find peace. Her mind played her these will-of-the-wisp tricks, tempting her—to what bogs and quicksands? Under the shifting torment only the instinct held firm, and with shut eyes it clung to courage as her only safeguard; courage to face the tangled life, and the greater courage needed to face the tangled thoughts and conscience. It kept the quiet in her voice, her eyes, as she answered now.
- 59. “I mind, ofcourse; but I believe that with time he will come back to me. I shan’t oppose him. As long, dear, as she doesn’t come between you and me, it’s really all right.”
- 60. “Y CHAPTER VIII ES, ithad become impossible,” said Geoffrey. He was standing before her in the little room overlooking the river where they so often talked. “I couldn’t submit to being dragged helplessly at the wheels of a chariot that I would have driven in precisely the opposite direction.” He smiled a little as he added, “So you see before you a ruined man. Are you pleased with me that I’ve embraced failure?” Lightness of voice went with the smile, and, superficially, the old manner of holding out a sugar-plum to a child. Felicia, knowing what his resignation of office meant to him, was too much distressed by what she felt beneath the lightness to respond in the playful key. “You are not a ruined man,” she said; “I’m not pleased that you should call yourself that. You really can’t afford to re-enter the House as an independent member?” “No,” said Geoffrey, shortly; “I can afford nothing but drudgery.” “Drudging with you will only be a stepping-stone back to power.” He was studying her as he stood before her, seeing suddenly after his momentary self-absorption, her pallor and thinness. She almost reminded him of the ghostly Felicia, the Felicia of tears and helpless grief; the Felicia of that distant day among the birch-woods. This Felicia was not helpless, not weeping, not quite so wan, but her looks made an ominous echo. He took a seat beside her. “Your father still goes constantly to Angela?” he asked. Felicia nodded gravely, yet without plaintiveness. Geoffrey made no comment on the affirmation. In silence for some moments, he told himself that this daily growing alienation accounted for the air of pain and tension. “I must actually seem to you to whine over myself,” he said, presently. “Of course, I know that the drudgery is only a stepping-stone. I must fill my pockets with ammunition; find the pebble for my sling before I confront Goliath again. But tell me something.... I may ask it?” He hesitated. Under his light firmness he knew a shattered, groping mood. He could not think with clearness either for her or himself, and only felt that he must ask. “Anything you like,” Felicia answered gravely.
- 61. “Are you happy?” Hehad never come so near as in asking the question; they both felt it. Some barrier was gone; the barrier of her happiness, perhaps. Felicia knew that the little moment suddenly trembled for her with that sense of nearness; in another she felt that her sadness would be a stronger barrier. She looked up from her sewing. “You know what I feel about papa and Lady Angela. I feel it foolishly perhaps.” “Apart from that, it’s a pain, I know, but one can adjust oneself to pain.” “Apart from that, am I happy? What do you mean by happiness?” “Are you satisfied? Is your life growing? Is it glad?” Each question was a stone thrown into a deep, deep well of sadness, but she answered with serenity over these shaken depths, even smiling at him with a flicker of the old malice. “It would not grow if I were satisfied, nor, perhaps, if I were altogether glad.” She saw by the look of accepted gloom that came to his face that he knew himself banished from that moment of nearness, and over the barrier felt herself putting out a hand of tender compunction and comradeship, as she went on more gravely, “I think I am happy, but happiness is not a thing one can look at. It’s like a bird singing in a tree—one parts the branches to see it and it is silent.” “You hear it singing, then, when I don’t ask you questions?” He had grasped the metaphorical hand, understanding and grateful; understanding, at all events, as much as she herself did. “Yes; and when I don’t stop to listen for it.” They talked on again: of his situation, his projects, but these things were now far from their minds. The fact of his broken life no longer held Geoffrey’s thoughts; they were in a chaos of doubts and surmises. He had ruined himself, then, that she might hear the bird sing, and it was silent; and was it only silent? Had it flown? For the first time since he had played the part of a happy fate in her life he knew a passionate regret for what he had done. No doubt, no surmise, touched her love for her husband. The regret was for the chance he had lost—that other chance of making her happy. Why hadn’t he ruthlessly held on to the advantage circumstance gave him, the advantage not only over Maurice’s poverty, but over Maurice’s
- 62. weakness? A luridthought went over that weakness. Would he, Geoffrey, whatever his poverty, have given her up? The “no” that thrilled sternly through his blood told him that to his strength the triumph might have come. He only quelled the tumult by remembering her strength. Dubious peace—to think that her strength would never have let him hope; her strength was great, no doubt, but was it as great as he had imagined? And would it have held her faithful to a finally fickle Maurice? Above all, would it have outmatched his own through years? The tumult was rising again, and he saw that the sudden, wild regret had been like the opening of a flood- gate to such tumults. He must endure them with as much composure as he could muster from contemplation of the fact that the past was irrevocable, that he had given her to her husband, and that she loved her husband; the last fact in particular laid a chill, sane hand on retrospect. He and Felicia were still talking when Mr. Merrick entered. Far from assuming a culprit’s humility, Mr. Merrick’s demeanour of late showed, towards Maurice and Felicia, an aggressive indifference, and towards Geoffrey a portentous gravity. He had made a habit of coming in upon tête-à-têtes, taking up a book, and seating himself, with a frosty nod and air of remonstrant determination that was more than a hint for Geoffrey’s departure. Geoffrey had ignored the hint on several recent occasions, continuing to talk until Maurice’s appearance seemed to relieve Mr. Merrick from some sense of grim obligation; he would then arise, with no word, and stalk away. Geoffrey felt amusement in watching these manoeuvres, giving very little thought to their significance, and finding a schoolboy fun in the conviction that he annoyed Mr. Merrick very much by outsitting him. But to-day he was in no mood for annoying Mr. Merrick; Mr. Merrick’s appearance, indeed, annoyed him too vividly for him to feel the fun of retaliation. He got up at once, and before the other had taken his place near the window. “Good-bye,” he said, taking Felicia’s hand; his eyes lingered on her pallor, her wanness. “I won’t silence the bird any more. I’ll see you soon again. Tell Maurice I’m sorry to miss him.” He departed, and Mr. Merrick, arrested in his usual routine, paused, book in hand, on his way to his chair. His frustrated passive energy took form in speech. He sat down and opened the book, observing, “I am sorry, Felicia, to be obliged to send any
- 63. of your guestsaway.” Felicia had noticed and wondered at the interruptions, hardly suspecting them of purpose, but now all manner of latent irritations leaped up in her. To-day, especially, she had resented her father’s appearance. She had needed Geoffrey, the haven of his silence and his strength. After that one strange moment of inner trembling, the old sense of quiet skies and an encircling shore had returned, and she had rested in it. Now, looking up, her face sharpened with quick suspicion and quick resentment, she asked, “Obliged? Send my guests away? Indeed, papa, you could not do that.” Her voice rather alarmed Mr. Merrick; it revealed a more resolute hostility than he had suspected; and real hostility, final or open hostility between him and his child, Mr. Merrick, in his heart of hearts, feared more than any calamity. Flattered vanity, injured trust, real anxiety for her welfare, had all helped to float his new independence, but he never contemplated really sailing away from her. He nerved himself now with the thought of his duty. Swinging his foot, speaking with measured definiteness, his eyes on his book, he said, “I shall at all events do my utmost to protect you from an undesirable intimacy.” Felicia’s quick heart guessed at the alarm that nerved itself, and now, after the moment in which her anger rose, her sense of the ludicrous shook the anger to sudden laughter. “Papa! how ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Really, your prejudices shouldn’t make you say and do such foolish and such futile things. Mr. Daunt is my dearest friend—Maurice’s dearest friend.” “It is a friendship I regret for both of you. Maurice is weak, Mr. Daunt is strong; he dominates you both.” “What folly, my dear father!” “Very well, Felicia, folly be it. I can only say that your conduct in this, as in other respects, deeply distresses me. You are altogether changed.” “I changed? In what respect?” Mr. Merrick paused to review swiftly all the respects, before saying, “You have become cynical, ungenerous, disloyal.” Felicia’s amusement hardened to stern gravity. She grew even paler, laying down her sewing as she said, “Ungenerous? Disloyal? I?”
- 64. “You, Felicia. Ithas given me the very greatest pain.” “How have I been ungenerous? disloyal?” Her father did not meet her eyes. “You have been ungenerous to a very noble woman, who only asked to be your friend. You have been disloyal to me.” “To you!” Her interjections were like swift knives, cutting at his careful deliberateness. “What do you mean?” “You thought fit, moved by this influence that I deplore—quite apart from its open antagonism to my claims on you—to scoff and jeer at my essay. It would have been enough to have expressed your dislike to me alone.” His eyes now turned to her. She gazed at him with an almost stupid astonishment. Suddenly she rose. As if some hateful revelation had torn stupefaction from her,—“That horrible woman!” she cried. “It was your husband who told me,” said Mr. Merrick quickly. “Maurice told you that I had scoffed at your essay with that woman?” Her eyes now had a corpse-like vacancy, very unpleasant to meet; only his consciousness of integrity enabled Mr. Merrick to keep his own steady. “Scoff is perhaps too strong a word. You allowed her to see to the full your dislike, your scorn, and then repulsed her sympathy. That is what Maurice gave me to understand, and that, I don’t fancy you can deny, is the truth.” Felicia, looking now about her vaguely, sank again in her chair. Her silence, her dazed helplessness, tinged Mr. Merrick’s displeasure with a slight compunction. “There, child,” he said, rising as he spoke, “don’t feel like that about it. Any injury that I may have received is fully forgiven. The only real harm is your irrational hatred,—don’t stare like that, Felicia—your irrational hatred, as I say, and the influence that I protest against and must always protest against.” Still she was silent, though her gaze had dropped from him. Her silence, her look of disproportionate dismay, perturbed and rather embarrassed him. He yielded to the magnanimity of a pat on the head as he passed her on his way out of the room, saying, “Think it all over; think better of it all.” Pausing at the door, he added, “She bears no grudge, not the faintest;
- 65. understands you betterthan you do yourself, my poor child.” She still sat, lying back in her chair, her eyes cast down, her hands intertwisted in her lap. It was uncomfortable to leave her so, but after all, the punishment was deserved, her very silence proved as much; and he had done his duty. Felicia was hardly conscious of his presence, his voice or his going; the words went over her head like the silly cries of a flight of cranes; when the door was closed it was as if the cranes had passed. She was alone on a great empty moor, it seemed, an empty, lowering sky above her. This, then, was the truth. Her husband was a false, a craven man. Fiercely, yet with a languid fierceness, as of slow flames, feeling an immense fatigue, as though she had been beaten with scourges, her thoughts stripped him of all her sweet seeings of him. Shallow, impressionable, weak, his love for her the only steady thing in him; his loyalty to her as unsteady as a flame in the wind; his love, perhaps, steady only because she was strong. She could feel no pity; rather she felt that she spurned him from her. In her weariness it seemed to her that for a long time she had been trying to love him, and that now the effort was snapped. And her scorn of him passed into self-scorn. Fatal weakness and blindness not to have seen him truly from the first, not to have felt that her craving for love, her love for his love, had been more than any love for him. In her deep repulsion from him and all he signified, his individuality and its fears, its sadness, its devotion, were unreal to her, blotted out in scorn—scorn, the distorter of all truth—as unreal as her love for it had been. And with her recognized weakness and despair came, with the memory of that trembling nearness, the thought of Geoffrey, and her heart suddenly cried out for him, for his strength, his unwavering truth. She closed her eyes, holding the thought close. Some one entered, and she opened her eyes on Maurice. He had worked all the afternoon. The sitter was gone. He beamed with conscious merit, deserving her approbation, quite like a child let loose from school; smiling and radiant. He came to her as she lay sunken in the chair, leaned to her for a kiss, and paused, meeting the hard fixed look of her eyes. “What is the matter, dearest?” he asked, and his heart began to shake. “Why did you tell papa that lie?”
- 66. He hardly understoodthe question, but her tone struck through him like a knife. “What lie?” “You told him that I talked to Lady Angela of my dislike for his article.” “Didn’t you?” Maurice asked feebly, for his brain was whirling. The added baseness did not urge her voice from its horrible, icy calm. “I, Maurice? When you—you only talked to her of it?” “Felicia, I swear you have mistaken it. Don’t kill me in looking like that. Let me think. I told him—yes—I had to explain how it happened—your anger towards Angela, your sending her away. I muddled into the whole thing. I suppose I let him think that you had talked. How could I tell him that it was I? For Heaven’s sake, be merely just, darling,—Felicia,—how could I tell him that, when I am half responsible for his publishing it? You remember the mess I got into to please you?” “To please me? You are a coward, Maurice.” She turned her eyes from him. Maurice stood before her, miserably, abjectly silent. Moments went by, and still she sat with stern, averted eyes that seemed to look away from him for ever. It was not even as if she paused to give a final verdict; it was as though in her last words she had condemned him, and as if, now, he were a thing put by and forgotten. But though, her brow on her clenched hand, her eyes fixed, half looking down, she seemed a figure of stony immutability, more than if she looked at him, she was aware of his misery, his abjectness, his piteous loss of all smiles and happy radiance. Her own words—“a lie,” “a coward,” echoed. Insufferable shocks of feeling, indistinguishable, immense, went through her; and suddenly the surging sense of her own cruelty, his piteousness, made a long cry within her. She could not bear to be so cruel; she could not bear to have him suffer. The inner cry came in a stifled moan to her lips. “Maurice!” She covered her face with her hands. He fell on his knees beside her, his heart almost broken by sudden hope. They clung together like two children. “Forgive me; forgive me,” she repeated. “Forgive me. Nothing—nothing could deserve such cruelty. My poor, poor Maurice; I didn’t love you. I was so cruel that I didn’t love you any longer.” She looked into his blue eyes, his face, quivering with sincerity. With the confession, the awful moments of hatred drifted into nightmare unreality. His need of her, his love for her, were the only realities; they engulfed the
- 67. vision of herself—dry,bitter, bereft of her love for him. It flitted away—a bat—in the sad, white dawn. It was she, who, holding him to her, explained, to herself as well as to him, how it all happened; an involved, sudden twist of circumstance before which he had been bewildered, weak. “And weakness is more forgiveable—so far more forgiveable than cruelty, dear— dear,” she said. “Horrible I! to have had such thoughts.” She could forgive him. She could not forgive herself for having hated him. The very memory trembled in her like a living thing. No tenderness was great enough to atone. Later on, when Mr. Merrick appeared, Maurice rose, and with unflinching distinctness put the whole piece of comic tragedy before him, sparing himself in nothing. After the searing torture he had undergone, he felt no pain in the avowal. Mr. Merrick’s red displeasure rather amused him, so delicious was the sense of utterly redeeming himself in Felicia’s eyes. It was Felicia who felt the pang for her father’s wounded vanity and for the ugly picture that Maurice must present to him. “You have behaved in a way I don’t care to characterize,” Mr. Merrick remarked, when Maurice had finished with “If I had only had Felicia’s courage at the beginning—only frankly told you that I didn’t like the article —if I hadn’t been over-anxious to please you and her, I wouldn’t have got myself into such a series of messes.” And now Maurice, his head held high, his thumbs in his pockets, looking as if, with gallant indifference, he were facing cannon that he scorned, replied that he deserved any reproach. “Maurice has been weak, too complaisant,” said Felicia, “but there has been a half-truth in all he said; he kept back the whole for fear of hurting you. Forgive us both.” “You have nothing to forgive in Felicia,” said Maurice; “she has been the target, I think, for all our egotisms to stab.” “Indeed, Maurice, indeed. I am not in any way aware of having wounded my child except where your tergiversation opened her to my just reproach. If she has been a target you have hidden behind it.” “Exactly.” Maurice received the raking fire with undisturbed equanimity. “In future you’ll remember that whatever I say she can never deserve reproach.”
- 68. T Felicia was protestingagainst this too sweeping defence, when Mr. Merrick interrupted her with “I only beg that in the future you will not whet your consciences on my feelings. Pray consider me, if only slightly.” Felicia looked, when her father went out, too dejected as a result of this scene of dauntless penance. “Smile, smile, darling,” Maurice begged, raising her hand to his lips, and feeling like a knight returned to his lady, shrived of misdeed by peril bravely fronted. “Tell me it really is all over. Tell me that I pleased you—that it was what you would have hoped of me.” “Yes; you were all that I wished. It is only that I am sorry for him. He is like a hurt child, Maurice.” “He will forget and forgive in a day or two. We will pet him; make much of him. Can I do anything more to feel that I am fully loved again?” She leaned her forehead against his arm, tired with a spiritual and bodily fatigue that made her voice dim and slumberous as she answered, “Don’t ever remind me that you were not.” CHAPTER IX HE news of Geoffrey’s resignation of office was a tonic to Maurice’s new energy. It spurred him to fuller deserving of such sacrifice. He finished the portrait over which he had been loitering, with a sudden vigour that seemed in its auspicious result to promise more originality than he had ever shown, and in pursuance of the new resolution, he accepted another order—a dull and wealthy old ecclesiastic in a cathedral town—an order, in spite of remunerativeness, that he would certainly have refused a month before, as absolutely clogging to all inspiration. “I shall have to leave Felicia to you for perhaps over a fortnight,” he said to Mr. Merrick, as, in a hansom they drove to an evening party. Felicia preceded them with the friend at whose house they had dined. Maurice had carried out his project of “petting” his father-in-law, but in spite of his butterfly manner of gaiety Mr. Merrick’s mood showed little relaxation; his wounds were deep; they rankled; and now he received the news of guardianship, which Maurice imparted with an air of generous self- sacrifice, gravely.
- 69. “It’s our firstseparation,” Maurice added. “You will have her all to yourself. My loss will be your gain.” His smile left Mr. Merrick’s gravity unchanged. The opportunity seemed to have come for the discharge of a painful duty. “That I am to have Felicia all to myself, I question,” he said, looking ahead at the swift lights of the moving town; for he did not care to meet his son-in-law’s eyes while he seized the opportunity. “Well,”—Maurice good-humouredly yielded to his funny exactitude —“not altogether; her friends will relieve guard now and then.” It was wiser to reach his purpose by slow approaches; Mr. Merrick evenly remarked, “My guard shall be unbroken,” adding, “It will be doubly necessary.” He was rewarded by a light note of wonder in Maurice’s voice. “You seem to take it very seriously, my dear father.” “I take it seriously, Maurice.” Even from Mr. Merrick’s complacency such magnified significance was perplexing; Maurice turned an inquiring gaze upon him. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I regret this departure of yours, Maurice. I beg you to reconsider it.” “My dear father, what are you talking about?” “You should not leave Felicia. She is exposed to certain influences—to a certain influence—that I deeply disapprove. She is unruly, reckless. I pretend to no further authority. She defies me.” “Will you explain yourself?” The patience of Maurice’s tone was ironic. “I will speak plainly, since you force it. Mr. Daunt is too much with Felicia.” “Geoffrey! He can’t be too much with her.” Maurice’s nerves, since the last scene with Felicia, had been on edge. Only a contemptuous amusement steadied them now. Mr. Merrick’s paternal anxiety, alloyed though it was with the latent desire to hit back, was sincere; Maurice saw in it only a pompous, an idiotic impertinence. Mr. Merrick’s voice hardened to as open an hostility as his son-in-law’s. “People notice it. There is talk about it. I will not stand by and see my child’s name become the plaything of malicious gossip.”
- 70. “Who notices it?Who talks about it? What utter and damnable folly!” “I decline to enter into an unbefitting altercation with you, Maurice. Your friend is obviously in love with your wife, and Felicia allows him to be too much with her.” “Is this pure imagination on your part? I know, of course, that there’s never been any love lost between you and Geoffrey.” “I have been warned,” said Mr. Merrick, reluctant, yet with redoubled dignity. Maurice’s smouldering nerves struck to flame, and an ugly illumination glared at him. “This can be no one but Angela,” he said. It was difficult to keep dignity under eyes that seemed to take him by the throat; in the struggle to look firmly back Mr. Merrick was silent. “Come. Own to it. The venomous liar!” Maurice added in a low voice, studying the revelations of the other’s wrathful helplessness. “I have no wish to deny it, and I must forbid you to speak in that manner of a woman who honours you by calling you her friend.” “I know Angela better than you do,” Maurice laughed. His fury almost passed away from its derivative object. “The fact remains that people talk, and that truest kindness warned me of it.” “If people talk it’s she who makes them. I’ve known—ever since I married her—that Geoffrey loved Felicia.” Maurice flung him the truth scornfully. “Yet you speak of lies!” “I know my friend, and honour him, as you don’t seem to know or honour your daughter.” “I know human nature as you don’t seem to know it. It’s a dangerous intimacy. I insist on my right to protect my daughter.” “You insult her by claiming such a right. Don’t speak to me of this again.” Maurice, as he said it, grew suddenly white with a new thought. “And never dare,” he added, turning eyes that quelled even Mr. Merrick’s fully-armed championship, “never dare tell Felicia that you have discussed her with that woman.”
- 71. “You may besure that I would not expose Lady Angela to Felicia’s misconception.” Mr. Merrick, in his realized helplessness, cast about him for some retaliatory weapon. He seized the first that offered itself. “And since my meaning as Felicia’s father seems gone, I had better go myself. I am not needed, since you say so, by either of you.” It was the idlest threat. In utter astonishment he heard Maurice answering, “I’ve thought more than once of suggesting it. By all means.” “I will remain with Felicia while you are away.” “As you please.” “I will leave directly after your return.” “When you will.” Maurice’s voice was quieter. The unexpected prospect of relief mollified him. “It’s a pity, for Felicia will suffer, but she herself must see that it doesn’t do. You have made life too uncomfortable for both of us. And after this! Well, you’ve made things impossible. For a time you had better realize what your daughter is away from her, realize how little she needs any one’s protection. It’s settled then; you go, on my return.” Mr. Merrick bowed. He was aghast, outraged, more than all, wounded. The hurt child whimpered and then fairly howled within him, while, in silence, he smiled ironically. They reached their destination, Maurice in a growing rage that for once obliterated his fears. It was like strong wine that uplifted, made him almost glad. He left his father-in-law and made his way through the crowded rooms in search of Felicia. He needed to look into her limpid eyes after this hissing of serpents. But instead of Felicia he found Angela. For the distasteful monotony of these assemblies Angela had always an air of patient disdain; and to-night, under a high wreath of white flowers, her face more than ever wore its mask of languid martyrdom. She was in white, perfumed like a lily. Maurice felt a keener gladness on seeing her. His wrath, running new currents of vigour through him, carried him past any hesitation. At last he would have it out with Angela. “I want to speak to you,” he said. “Is there any place where one can get out of this crowd?”
- 72. Angela saw ina flash that a crisis had arrived; and in another that she had been working towards such a crisis, living for it, since Maurice had cast her off. For a moment, beneath the rigour of his eyes—to see Maurice unflinching was a new experience—her spirit quailed, then soared, exulting in the thought of final contest. Since he wished it—yes, they would speak openly. He should at last hear all—her hate, her love, her supplication. She was an intimate in the house where Maurice and Felicia were formal guests; her quick mind seized all possibilities. “Yes,” she said, “there is a little room—a little boudoir. No one ever goes there on nights like these.” Her self-mastery was all with her as she moved beside him through the crowd. She was able, over the tumult of hope and fear, to speak calmly, to smile at friends her weary, fragile smile. “Aren’t these scenes flimsy and sad?” she said. “How much happiness, how much reality do they express, do you think?” Maurice forced himself to reply. “They express a lot of greediness and falseness; those are real enough.” “That is true, Maurice,” she said gently; “so true that I sometimes think I would rather be a washerwoman bending in honest work over my tubs; one would be nearer the realities one cares for.” They left the reception-rooms, and she was silent when faces were no longer about them. She led him down a passage, across a book-filled room, a student’s lamp its only light, and softly turning the handle of a further door, opened it on the quiet of a little room, discreetly frivolous with the light gaiety of Louis XV decorations, empty of all significance but that of smiling background for gay confidences or pouting coquettries. Not exactly the background for such a scene as she and Maurice must enact, yet Angela triumphed in the contrast. Tragic desolation, splendid sincerities would gain value from their trivial setting. Her passion, her misery, would menace more strangely, implore more piteously among nymphs and garlands. She dropped into a chair, and put out her hand to a jar of white azaleas. She asked no question, but she looked at him steadily. Maurice had closed the door and stood near it, his back to it, at a distance from her. The sound of the world outside—the world that smiled and pouted—was like the faint hum of a top. “How have you dared warn my father-in-law against Geoffrey?” asked Maurice. He was nerved to any truth.
- 73. Angela made noreply, her long, deep eyes on him while, automatically, her hand passed over the azaleas. “How could you betray my confidence in you? What a fool I was to trust you!” “Betray you?” she murmured. “You pursue me and my happiness!” Maurice cried, and hot tears of self- pity started to his eyes. Her eyes dropped. That his hand should deal this blow! “I pursue you?—and your happiness, Maurice?” she repeated. “Can you deny it? Since we came back to England you have been a poison in our lives.” She was struggling with the moment’s dreadful bitterness. Over the bleeding pain of it her sense of his cruel injustice sustained her to a retort: “I have betrayed nothing. You are the only betrayer, Maurice. You betrayed my love; you betrayed your wife to me.” “Great heavens!” Maurice dropped his forehead on clenched hands, “it was to spare you!” “I guessed it,” said Angela, while her hand still passed lightly over the azaleas. They were silent for a moment, and presently in a voice, steady, even gentle, she went on, “I have wished, sincerely wished, to be your wife’s friend. Even after she refused my friendship, I have wished to guard her, at least, from malicious gossip. You know what London is. You and I and your wife live in among people who regard old-fashioned scruples intellectually, not morally; but your wife’s position is not great enough to allow her to be reckless. Even without such knowledge as mine to reveal it, Geoffrey’s love for her makes her conspicuous. They are here together to-night. I saw them at a concert the other day; met them in the Park before that. When last I went to your house I found them together, alone, and—I understand your wife, Maurice—she would think no harm of it—I think she had just kissed him; no harm, Maurice,”—before his start her voice did not quicken, “she would imagine that she kissed him as a brother. He held her hand, I think. I felt it my duty to put petty conventions and reticences aside, and for her sake, for your sake, Maurice, to warn her father, with all delicacy, all caution. I believe it, with all my soul, to be a perilous intimacy. That is my betrayal.”
- 74. Maurice’s brain swamwith the picture she flashed upon it. Only for a moment;—Felicia’s smile went like a benison over it. Even if it were true, he could look at the picture, after that first pause of breathlessness, steadily. Even if it were true, he could smile back, understanding. “Geoffrey has all my trust,” he said; “I have all Felicia’s love.” “You think so,” said Angela quietly. Again her eyes fell before his, but her face remained fixed in its conviction of sincerity. “How dare you, Angela.” Still looking down, she went on as steadily as before, her voice anchored with its weight of woe,—how he loved Felicia!—“I dare because I believe that she loves him most. Her love for you and your weakness is maternal by now. I know it, I feel it; I can see it when she looks at you and at him. She loves him as she has never loved you. And I! Oh, Maurice—Maurice—I!” She suddenly cast her arms upon the table, her head fell upon them; terror, regret, and passionate longing swept over her; her voice broke and she burst into sobs. “Couldn’t I have let her go from you? Has it not been nobility in me to guard her—for you? She has never loved you, and I—Maurice, you know, you know—how I have loved you, how I love you! Forgive me! Have pity on me!” Maurice, frowning darkly, sick with unwilling pity, hating to feel that she deserved pity and that he hated her, turned his eyes away. She had terrified him too much; had dared to lay desecrating hands on the thing dearest to him in the world. Something, and not the least best thing in him, froze before her cry for pity and made him incapable of forgiveness. For once in his life he hardened into resistant strength. His silence was more horrible to Angela than any look, any word. She raised her head and saw his averted eyes. Only humiliation remained for her. She rose. Her wreath of flowers, loosened, had slipped to one side, she put up a vague hand to it, moaning “Maurice!” Still he looked away, with odd, startled eyes that did not think of her. The wonder of the shot that had passed through his heart was still felt more as a surprise than as a pain. She knew that she would always see him so—erect, beautiful, startled from a shot. She tottered to him; she fell before him and grasped his arms. “Oh pity me! Don’t be so cruel. What wrong have I done? Despise me—but pity me.”
- 75. “G “I cannot,” hesaid. “Then kiss me—once—only once.” “I cannot,” he repeated, still not looking at her. “Have you never loved me? Never really loved me—as you love her?” she said, shuddering and hiding her face as she crouched at his feet. “Never!” Swaying, trembling violently, she arose. She threw wide her arms, seized him, and closing her eyes to his look of passionate repulsion, kissed him on his brow, cheek, lips, before, almost striking her from him, he broke from her, burst open the door and left her. CHAPTER X EOFFREY, dear old boy, walk home with me, will you?” On the steps, after seeing Felicia and her friend into their carriage, Maurice put his hand through Geoffrey’s arm. “I’ve had a row with my father-in-law—would rather not see him just now.” They crossed the square together. Maurice was feeling no reaction to weakness after his strength. The scene was like a distant memory, and that strange shot that had hurt, had pierced him with such a pang—not of suspicion, not of foreboding, but of wonder, deep, sad wonder. He felt a sort of languor after pain, and, as they walked, went on dreamily: “Such a queer evening, Geoffrey, horrible!—yet no, splendid too. Facing things is splendid isn’t it? I want to tell you something, Geoffrey— to confess something—I want you to know. That winter—when I thought I could not marry Felicia, I went pretty far with Angela. I thought everything was up with me; I didn’t care much where I drifted. And I did drift. Nothing much more than there has always been, Geoffrey; with Angela it was never a case of playing with fire, the danger was of getting frozen into the ice. It was abominable of me—caddish;” Maurice’s dreamy voice had a dignity that seemed to hold all other reproach than his own at arm’s length, a dignity so strange and new that Geoffrey even at the moment’s great upsurging of bitterness, regret and question could repress it as unworthy, not only of himself, but of Maurice. “Abominable—abominable,” Maurice repeated, “for I let her think—more than ever—that I cared—something. She is odious to me, Geoffrey. I can’t be just to her.”
- 76. Geoffrey said nothing,but his quiet profile made confidences as easy as peaceful breathing; the confidences that could be told. The others—ah! that distant wailing of regret. But in this dreamy mood even that was very distant. “Perhaps, dear old fellow—if I’d told you—on that night, you wouldn’t have cared to help me.” Maurice stated the fact calmly, looked at it calmly. “In that case—what would I be, Geoffrey?—if you and Felicia had not made me?” In the still, sleeping town, chill with a coming dawn, they were as near as spirits, walking together through old memories. “I would have cared to help you—and her,” said Geoffrey. “Ah! well; perhaps;” Maurice sighed a little. “While I’m away, Geoffrey, see a lot of Felicia, and, Geoffrey, see that Angela doesn’t get near her. Her silly old father dislikes you, but you won’t mind that. He suspected you of being in love with her, so I informed him that he was right. Dear old Geoff! You will see after her?” “I don’t mind the father; I would mind making it difficult for her to get on with him.” “Oh! you won’t. He’s had to accept it. I wouldn’t like to go if you weren’t here to see after her. So you don’t regret making me?” “Making you and her so happy?” Geoffrey smiled, humouring his child- like mood. “I do make her happy? You see it. It’s your reward, my dear friend. That’s what I want to say to you. I’ve said it often enough to myself. You shall never regret it, so help me God.” Without looking at him Geoffrey put his hand on Maurice’s, pressing it firmly. Dimly, he felt, among crowding shapes of accepted sorrow, only a peace, a thankfulness. “You see,” Maurice stammered, “I should die without her. She is life to me, Geoffrey. You don’t know what you’ve given me—I hardly knew. She is life to me—that’s all; and I should die without her.” The talk with Geoffrey seemed like a dream the next day. It was not real; Maurice’s conscience could not call such faint confession real. Yet, in spirit, it had been more real than the reality which eyed it sadly. In spite of sadness it went with him like a thought of peace, of safety.
- 77. Felicia, when sheheard of her father’s proposed and accepted departure, acquiesced with even more cheerfulness than he had hoped for, and when Maurice, flushing a little, told her of Mr. Merrick’s resolution to protect her, she said that she had suspected that. “I am glad you let him know the truth, too. It’s really better to let him see that he has only discovered what no one wishes to conceal.” She looked musingly up at her husband. Though she looked clearly, no consciousness in her answering his flush, a faint trail of cloud drifted—faint and far—across the quiet sky of her thoughts, or was it a little wind that blew apart the veil of white serenity, showing darkness behind it? That turning of her weariness and wretchedness to Geoffrey—the memory of it was like the drifting cloud, or like the revealing wind. Dimly the darkness faded. The turning had been because of cruel passion, that horrible moment of mistaken hatred. The cloud melted, or was it self- reproach that once more drew the veil of tenderness across the dark? Maurice, gazing, saw only the musing thought. “I can’t blame him—really—either, Maurice. You and I know how Geoffrey loves me, but we can hardly expect papa to see that as an accepted fact nor to recognize the calibre of such a love.” It was his recognition of the calibre of Geoffrey’s love that kept Maurice’s faith high above even a self-dishonouring twinge of jealousy. Yet the sadness, as for might-have-beens in which he had no share, still was with him. The vision of that unseen kiss was with him too. He did not believe it true, though his love for Felicia almost claimed it true; it beautified her—that kiss of reverent pity and tenderness. The toad Angela flung became a flower on Felicia’s breast; that he could smile at such a vision was his flower, too; but the vision was part of the sadness. He saw himself shut out from a strange, great realm—colourless, serene, like a country of glorious mountain peaks before the dawn, a realm that he, in some baffling way, seemed to have defrauded for ever of its sunrise. He put aside the oppression, saying, “You don’t mind, so much then, his going?” “I am sorry, of course. But he made things too difficult. It will be easier to get back to the old fondness if we are not too near. And he will enjoy, when things blow over, coming to us for short visits.” The prospective peace, he saw, left her, with a sort of lassitude, a little indifferent to her father’s pathos. Before this placidity his sadness became a sudden throb of gloom.
- 78. “You do mindmy going?” he asked. Felicia was sitting on the window seat and had looked down into the street far below for his coming cab. She glanced up quickly at him as he stood beside her, seeing the shadow in his eyes. “Dear goose!” She drew him down on the seat, her hand in his, “Mind your going? I hate it. But it’s only for a fortnight—less, if you are lucky with your work.” “Only a fortnight!” Maurice repeated, half playfully, but half fretfully too. “You can say that! It’s our first parting, Felicia. It seems to me an eternity before I shall see you again.” She still looked into his eyes, seeing, under the playfulness, the fretfulness, all that he had suffered during these last weeks of entanglement. Leaning her head on his shoulder, she said dreamily: “Don’t go.” “Really?” Sunlight streamed through clouds, “Really you say don’t go? And my duty? my work? all the virtues you make me believe in?” “I want to keep you near me, to comfort you for it all,” Felicia said. He understood the reference to his pain. The very sweetness nerved his growing strength, the resolution to be worthy. With his arms around her he whispered that he adored her and that he would go and work so well that she should be proud of him. She listened, her eyes closed, yet, when he had spoken, still dreamily she repeated, “Don’t go.” “Are you tempting me? because if you are, if you really want me to stay, I can’t go.” She did not reply for a long time, lying quietly against his shoulder, her hand in his. They heard the cab drive up. “I suppose you must go,” she said, “Yes, of course, you must. Only, isn’t it happy, sitting here together? You must go, though I want you to stay, for I really am sensible; I know there is a grown-up world; but sitting here makes it seem unreal, and I think of sweet, silly things, like children’s games on a long summer afternoon.” She straightened herself, sighing, smiling, then as she looked at him, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. In her eyes sudden tears answered them. “It’s that we have been rather unhappy, isn’t it, dear Maurice?”
- 79. M “Never, never again,”he whispered; and, in a voice that took her back to such a distant day; “Do you remember once, long ago, when I first knew you, I told you that it was lack, not loss, I dreaded—it’s only loss I dread now, for my life is full. And with you to prop me I am growing into such a real personality that I shall lose even my cowardly dread of loss. I’ll never make you unhappy any more.” “Ah! but what about me? It’s I who have made you unhappy, dear. Forgive me everything. You shall have no more dreads.” She leaned to kiss his forehead, rising, her hands in his. Compunction for the weakness that had showed him her unwillingness to let him go, smote her. Her strength more than ever, now that it was triumphing, must nerve his growing strength. “Never, never again,” she repeated. “So go, dear, have all the virtues. We will both work. The eternity will pass.” CHAPTER XI R. MERRICK, when Maurice had gone, made no reference to his own expulsion, and faced his daughter at meals in frigid silence. They saw little of each other now. Felicia was busy with her writing, with her friends. The days passed quickly. Geoffrey appeared punctually every day, but only for short visits. He told her that the readjustment of his life to its lower key kept him frightfully busy. He looked jaded, harassed. Over these visits Mr. Merrick, oddly enough, no more mounted guard. Indeed, beneath the frigidity, the hurt child had howled itself into a frightened silence. Mr. Merrick’s foundations seemed giving way beneath him, and, to add to the sense of general crumbling, he had not heard from Angela for many days. That his child should cast him off made a desolation so large that it was only dimly realized. Angela’s defection was a concentrated, a sharp bitterness. He evaded its contemplation by accusing himself of over-imaginativeness—nerves on edge—no wonder—and went to her one afternoon at tea-time. Maurice’s fortnight was nearly over, and the time of his own departure drew near. Already he had meditated a retreat on Paris, a week there to make the descent from London to the country less of a horrid jolt.
- 80. Angela was athome, alone, and looking, to Mr. Merrick’s sharpened suspicions, colder, different. She was so white, so haggard that he hoped that ill-health and not change towards himself might be the cause of difference. At all events she was hardly beautiful, and something in her face, baffled, rapacious, dimly suggested a hovering, hungry bird of prey. Mr. Merrick felt uncomfortable, and, weakness in discomfort taking shelter in appeal and pathos, he found himself announcing to Angela his virtual dismissal from his children’s roof. After all, as he reflected, it was in a sense Angela’s doing. She might now at least from the frankness of the intimacy she had made between them, show him comprehension and compassion. “To speak plainly, I’ve been turned out,” he said, stirring the cup of tea she had handed him. “Turned out?” repeated Angela, with an impersonal vagueness, quite as if it had been a stray dog of which they were speaking. Mr. Merrick’s suspicion grew past alarm to resentment, and resentment cowered under a more sturdy manner of pathos as of one who faced fate’s unjust bolts with erect bearing and unconquerable gaze. “Our friendship, it seems, is unforgiveable. It was a choice between it and them. I couldn’t submit to such intolerable dictation.” Angela felt as if, after a long drowning swoon under water, she were being resuscitated to painful life by blows upon her head. She, so blameless, having done no wrong except love with a fatal fidelity; she, crushed, humiliated, was to feel another lash. Even her kindness to this pompous fool was to be made a scourge for her. Mr. Merrick saw that she grew more white as, with folded arms, she drooped her head and looked up at him from sombre brows. “They can’t forgive you that? They hate me so much?” “Apparently,” said Mr. Merrick, his growing sense of the indignity of his situation giving him a deeper gloom of manner. “The crisis was brought about by my venturing to warn Maurice on the subject you have spoken of.” “And you told him who had warned you? I see.” Mr. Merrick took hasty refuge before the cutting quality of her voice. “He sprang at the conclusion and defied me to deny that it was you. He was outrageous. I have had to defend you as well as myself, Lady Angela.” “He accused me of falseness?”
- 81. “Insolently.” It waswell that she should know how much he had had to champion her. “I don’t care to recall the terms.” But Mr. Merrick was feeling an odd satisfaction in recalling them. His heart, before this rebuffing friend, before her icy eyes and icy voice, was calling out for Felicia— Felicia whom he had lost because of this,—did she not suggest something snake-like? His wounded affection, his wounded vanity, longed for such comfort as Felicia alone could give. It would be well could he believe Lady Angela—if not a liar, at least a presumptuous busy-body. His first impressions of her were flooding his mind again. “I could not forgive the insolence,” he said, “although I can conceive it possible that you and I have been to a certain extent mistaken. Such a mistake must naturally wound Maurice and Felicia.” Angela leaned back in her chair, her long eyes on him, and he felt, like a palpable atmosphere, the enmity between them. “As it happens, Maurice told me that he had always known of his friend’s love for Felicia,” he pursued. “It’s in no sense an ordinary case of attraction, you see. A Dante and Beatrice affair. He has absolute trust in his friend, Maurice has, and I, of course, have absolute trust in Felicia. Not that I approve; I would have felt it my duty to protest in any case.” “You think that I imputed some wrong that was not there, and that owing to me this breach has come between you and your daughter?” said Angela. “I hold you in no way to blame. Without a full knowledge of facts— Maurice’s knowledge the most important of them—one may naturally draw false inferences. We were both a little hasty in judging.” Mr. Merrick essayed a generous smile. A deep flush passed over Angela’s face. For a long moment she was silent, her eyes on him; then, in a voice harsh and monotonous she said— “I hardly know what facts may mean to you—or inferences. Maurice, before he married your daughter, told me that Geoffrey had paid him to marry her. They live upon Geoffrey’s money. He has ruined his career for your daughter’s sake. These are further facts, Mr. Merrick. Have I indeed been a little hasty in my inferences?” Mr. Merrick, his tea-cup in his hand, his face with as yet merely a look of wonder on it, sat dumb. “You now see the knowledge that underlay my warnings. What Geoffrey’s motives were I cannot say; purely disinterested, perhaps;
- 82. T apparently your daughterwas dying for love of Maurice. Whether they have remained so disinterested is for you to judge. But I hope you will acquit my warnings of hastiness.” “Maurice told you?” Mr. Merrick repeated. He chiefly felt a deep, personal humiliation. “As he told me everything at that time.” Mr. Merrick rose unsteadily, putting down his tea-cup upon the table. “The scoundrel!” he said. “Which one do you mean?” “The scoundrel! I mean Maurice. She shall know him.” Angela’s eyes glittered. “I think it well that all the truth should be known,” she said. CHAPTER XII HAT evening, by special messenger, a note reached Angela. “Will you come to me,”—the words crossed the page with the swift steadiness of an arrow—“and repeat to me the calumnies that you have spoken to my father. I shall regard a refusal as a retractation.” Angela traced her own answer with a deliberateness that savoured to her mind of unwavering benevolence. “I will be with you at eleven to-morrow morning. Do not think that I come as an enemy. Be as strong to hear the truth as I to speak it.” She kept the boy waiting while she copied and re-copied the words into a larger, firmer script in which there should be no hint of threat or unsteadiness. Between the sending of this acceptance of challenge and the hour of the interview next day Angela’s mind, like a wreck, was tossed from shuddering heights to engulfing abysses. Since the moment when she had crawled at Maurice’s feet her image of herself had been broken, unseizable. She no longer knew herself, she, the uplifter, a crouching suppliant. What she had further done—that final, passionate abandonment where vindictive fury, worship, and desperate appeal to the very rudiments of feeling were indistinguishably mingled,—she could not look at steadily. Yet, in swift glances as at something dazzling and appalling, she could just snatch a
- 83. vision of anot ignoble Angela. There had been splendour in those hopeless kisses, a blinding splendour; she must veil her eyes from it. Most terrible of all was the seeing of herself slip and slide from a serene eminence down into a slimy, warring world. The betrayal of Maurice had not been in her ideal of herself; it forcibly abased her to a level of soiling realities—hatreds, jealousies, revenges. With sick revulsion she could imagine herself feebly turning—though bones were broken—feebly crawling up again from the abyss, either by some retractation, or by withholding from Felicia the ultimate humiliations she could inflict upon her. She might evade the cruellest truth; spare her the deepest wounds and so hug once more the thought of her own loyalty to the man who had struck her from him, a loyalty crowned with a halo of martyrdom. But so to turn would be to own herself abased; to see herself in the mud; and Angela could not for long see herself in the mud. Then, in the swing of reaction, her head reeled with the old illusion of height; she was again on her illumined pinnacle, ruthless through very pity, wounding with the sharp, necessary truth; stern to the glamour of a loyalty grown craven, saving Felicia from a falsity that must corrode her life. A pitiful, relentless angel. She saw the sword, the wings—white, strong, rustling, the splendid impassivity of her face. Yet on the pinnacle the darting terrors of the abyss went through her. Was not the truth what Maurice had said—what he had looked—so horribly looked—and not what he had written; that he had written to spare her; had never loved her? She turned shuddering from the thought as she had shuddered at his feet. If that indeed were truth he must convince Felicia of it. The fact of his written words was there, surely unforgiveable; the fact of Geoffrey’s love was there; was not the fact of a dim, growing love for Geoffrey there too? She had said it; she believed it; and again, upon the pinnacle, the hands of miry hopes clawed at her. Hardly could Maurice forgive the betrayal. Yet—had he not once loved her? The memory, sweet and terrible of that far-away spring day—his kiss and his embrace— faltered, “yes,” though it wept in saying it. Should Felicia prove to him that Angela had only spoken truth might not the showing of the letter be one day forgiven by a man scorned, abandoned? She had been forced to the showing by all their guilty incredulity, and to save Felicia from the trap laid for her, to save her from Geoffrey’s scheming passion—so could she dress her
- 84. motive—had pointed outthe trap, the danger. Where lay her guilt, if, after this, Felicia chose to verify all her prophecies by walking straight into the trap? It had not been to kill her love for her husband, but to warn her of Geoffrey’s love that the letter was shown. So her thoughts groped in the dubious future; and when despair flung her back again on the black present, hatred, hatred for Maurice, and the recklessness of hatred, caught her, clasped her, sustained her from falling, and hurried her on all trembling with the final thought that if hope were dead, there was nothing to lose in betrayal, nothing to gain in loyalty. As she drove next morning to Felicia, the day’s clear sunlight, the almost wintry freshness of the air, lifted her mood once more to steadiness. She beat off debasing visions, pushed away miry hands, told herself that neither hope nor hatred was with her. And she felt herself standing high in sunlight as she waited for Felicia in the little drawing-room, its windows open on the blue, the brightness. She felt herself in tune with purity and radiance. Dressed from head to foot in spotless white, the long flowing of her fur- edged cloak monastic in simplicity, the white sweep of a bird’s breast about her head, she was as pitying and as picturesque as a sculptured saint looking down through centuries of woe from the lofty niche of a cathedral; and a more human but as consolatory a simile showed her as a Dorothea waiting in all her tender strength and helpfulness for a fragile, tawdry Rosamund. But when Felicia entered, and as she turned to her from the window, a mood as high, as inflexible as her own,—higher, more inflexible, she felt, in a crash that had a crumbling quality—met her in Felicia’s eyes. For a moment Angela was afraid, felt herself rocking in her niche; in the next the recollection of her truth upheld her. Truth, pity and tenderness; with these she would meet this stony, hating creature. “You see,” she said, “I have not refused to come to you.” “You had to come, after what you had said,” said Felicia. It was a preliminary only; the pause before conflict. Angela’s eyes went over her. Felicia wore her customary blue serge, her lawn collar and black bow. In her place, Angela thought, she would have felt the effectiveness of an unrelieved black dress; a comment followed by a further recognition of Felicia’s indifference to effectiveness that left another little trail of fear. She had slept; well, perhaps. Her eye-lids showed no languor. Her face was white, cold, composed. Hardly fragile. Certainly not tawdry. From this re-
- 85. adjustment to realityAngela glanced out at the sky. She must grasp at all her strength. She must pray for strength. With her eyes on the sky her mind sped hastily through the uplifting supplication—haunted as it sped by a thought of pursuit that gave a shadow-simile of a fleeing through caverns. But she brought back gentle eyes to Felicia. “Mrs. Wynne, you have never understood me; never believed me; you have always misunderstood, and mistrusted me, as you do now. I have been forced to this,” said Angela, keeping all her quiet while Felicia stood before her with her stony face. “I have watched you like a child wandering in the dark. I have seen you come to the brink of a pit in the darkness. I have put out my hand to save you. That is all my fault.” “By the pit, you mean, I suppose, Mr. Daunt’s love for me. As my father told you, I have known, my husband has known, from before my marriage, that he loved me. You did not only warn. You lied. About my husband,” Felicia’s eyes did not change, as she said the word, looking straight at Angela. Since the night before when her father had told her vile falsehoods she had felt not one doubt of Angela’s falsity. A white heat of utter scorn had never left her. She would have scorned her too much to see her had not her father’s frenzied belief pushed her to this elemental conflict. She would tell Angela again and again that she was a liar. “How you hate me,” Angela now said. “And how you hate me.” “I do not. I pity you. I want to help you.” “I will pity you if you confess that you have lied.” “If it were to help you I could almost do it—though that would indeed be to lie. I believe that truth is the only helper. Your husband was paid to marry you.” Felicia’s eyes received it unflinchingly. “It may be so. Geoffrey is generous enough; Maurice is enough his friend to accept his help. I will ask him to tell me all the truth. Your implication was that my husband married me through pity.” “You are very sure of people’s love for you.” Angela saw herself lashed by the hatred of these two men, by the scorn of this woman whom they loved. Her voice shook. “I am perfectly sure of their love.”
- 86. “Yet your husband’slove was not always yours.” She was horribly unmoved by half truths; this again she accepted. “Maurice may once have cared for you. Since he has known me he has loved me. I cannot spare you when you come between me and my husband.” “Since he knew you he loved me—loved me most!” Angela could scarcely draw her breath. “He married you from pity—it is not a lie—loving me. And I loved him—I love him now! It is the cross of my life! It crushes me!” Her breast panted with the labouring breath; she threw her cloak back from her shoulders and kept her hands at her throat, even then conscious of the gesture’s dramatic beauty. “He is unworthy of it—that I know. He is incapable of the sacred passion I feel. He loves most the one he is with, and when he was with me—before you took him from me—he loved me most —before God I believe it—and with the best love of which he is capable. I would have lifted him—inspired him—he used to say I would. He told me that he loved me and that only my wealth had kept him from me—the day that Geoffrey came with his news of you. I would have redeemed him had not you made a claim on his weakness, his pity.” “I know that you are lying,” said Felicia. But as she listened, as she spoke, old doubts, old fears flitted across the dimness of the past. “Then,”—Angela’s breath failed her; she drew Maurice’s letter from her breast and put it in Felicia’s hand—“read that,” she half whispered. And as she did this she knew that she had rolled to the very bottom of the abyss. It was only a glance of horrid wonder. She could not look at herself. She could not turn her eyes from the moment’s supreme vengeance. She stood watching her rival—her victim—yes, yes, those voices from the abyss were true—watched her cheeks grow ashen, her eyes freeze, her beauty waver, change to something strange, rigid, mask-like. But Felicia, as she read on to the end, and then, mechanically turning to the first page, read once more, did not think of Angela or even know that she was there. As she read and the blood seemed slowly crushed out of her heart, she forgot Angela, forgot herself, fixed in a frozen contemplation of Maurice’s perfidy, a trance-like stare at him and at Geoffrey; Maurice who had abased, Geoffrey who had exalted her. Geoffrey held up from the dust, where Maurice struck her, some piteous, alien creature. But this new revelation of Geoffrey was dimmed again by the written words and the
- 87. thought they hammeredon her brain: “My husband’s words.” Then at last identity whispered “of me.” They ran, the words, like flame, scorching, blackening her past with him. Meanest, weakest, cruellest. Most dastardly of all, most loathly, was his love for her, his facile adaptation of his life to hers, his fawning dependence on the nature nearest him. Most horrible it was to know—for she knew it— that he indeed loved her. An acted lie—while he could betray her to another woman—would have made him less odious to her. That he could at once love and betray was the horror. She hated him. She had shut her eyes again and again so that in seeing too clearly she might not love him less; they were widely open now and they saw more than the loss of love. With all the force of her crucified trust and tenderness, all the passion of her shattered pride, she hated him. Raising her eyes she saw Angela standing and looking at her. Angela was distant, unreal, a picture hung before dying eyes. She felt no hatred for Angela; instead, with the terrible clearness of her new vision, she felt a far- away and contemptuous pity. She saw both herself and Angela caught in the same net of falsity; both she and Angela in their struggles were piteous. Angela had been ugly in her struggle, but she could not feel that she hated her. She turned her head away, looking vaguely around her at the room that had become unfamiliar, ominous. A chair was near her, one she and Maurice had bought together. She sank upon it thinking dimly—“This was home.” “You see—I did not lie to you,” said Angela. That Felicia should show no anger, should not writhe and curse beneath the foot upon her neck, made her wonder—in another of those crumbling flashes—whether indeed her foot was upon Felicia’s neck. She had struck her down, she had humbled her, but was she not now to be allowed to forgive, to staunch the wounds with magnanimity and sorrow? Was it possible that the horrid image of her was the true one? Was it possible that Felicia too, was seeing her in the mire? She repeated: “You see I did not lie to you.” “No,” said Felicia, folding her husband’s letter as she spoke, “you didn’t lie.”
- 88. Welcome to ourwebsite – the perfect destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world, offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to self-development guides and children's books. More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and personal growth every day! ebookbell.com