The Return of the Prodigal Part 52

"I'm afraid I didn't think anything of Miss Tancred."

"Did you dislike her?"

"N-no. I only found her a little difficult to talk to."

"Oh. Well, that's not what I came to consult you about. I want you to help me. I am going to elope----"

"You don't mean to say so----"

"To elope with Miss Tancred--run away with her--take her out of this. It's the only way."

"The only way to what?"

"To save her. But I shall do nothing rash, nothing that would cause a scandal in the county. I shall simply take her up to town with me when I go back on Monday. My week isn't up; but--well--my temper is.

So far it's all open and aboveboard----"

"Yes--yes. And where do I come in?"

"Oh, _you_--if you wouldn't mind staying where you are and keeping the Colonel in play till we've got safe across the Channel----"

"The Channel?"

"The Channel, my friend. Where else should we be safe?"

"That means that I've got to stick here till----"

"Till Wednesday."

"Good heavens! Another week! Not if I know it."

"Yes; it's awful, I know; but not as bad as it might have been. You won't have to talk to Miss Tancred. By the way, she says you are the only man who ever tried to talk to her--to understand her. What a dreadful light on her past! Think what her life must have been."

"Not very amusing, I imagine."

"Amusing! _Think_ of it. Thirty years in this hole, where you can't breathe, and without a soul to speak to except the Colonel. Not that the Colonel is a soul--he's much too dense."

"To be anything but a body?"

"And all the time she has loathed it--loathed it. You see, she's got cosmopolitan blood in her veins. Her mother--you know about her mother?"

"I know nothing about her except that she did a great many bad things--I mean pictures--for which I hope Heaven may forgive her."

"Don't be brutal. She's dead now and can't do any more. When she was alive she was a Russian or a Pole or something funny, and mad on traveling, always going from one place to another--a regular rolling stone; till one day she rolled up to the Colonel's feet, and then----"

"Well?"

"He picked her up and put her in his pocket, and she never rolled any further. He packed her off to England and made her sit in this dreadful old family seat of his till she died of it. That's the sort of woman Miss Tancred's mother was, and Miss Tancred takes after her mother. She's a cosmopolitan, too."

"Rubbish! No woman can be a cosmopolitan." He said it in the same tone in which he had told Frida that no woman could have a pure pa.s.sion for Nature. "And Miss Tancred, though nice, strikes me as peculiarly provincial. I shouldn't have thought----"

"There are things in her you'd never have thought of. It's wonderful how she comes out when you know her."

"She certainly has come out wonderfully since you came on the scene." (The words he used had a familiar ring. It was exactly what Mrs. Fazakerly had said to him.)

"I? I've not had anything to do with it. It was you; she told me. It wasn't just that you understood her; you made her understand herself; you made her feel; you stirred up all the pa.s.sion in her."

"I don't understand you," he said coldly.

"Well, I think if you can understand Miss Tancred you might understand _me_. Compared with Frida I'm simplicity itself."

"When did I do these things?"

"Why, when you told her to let herself go. When you showed her your sketches and talked to her about the places, and the sea, all the things you had seen; the things she had dreamed of and never seen."

The young girl spoke as if she was indignant with him for reveling in opportunities that were Frida's by right.

"But she shall see them. She shall go away from this, and be herself and n.o.body else in the world."

"It's too late--it's not as if she were young."

"Young? She's a good deal younger than I am, though she's thirty and I'm twenty-four--twenty-five next September. Frida's young because she's got the body of a woman, the mind of a man, and the soul of a baby. She'll begin where other women end, will Frida. Wait till she's been abroad with me, and you'll see how her soul will come on, in a more congenial climate."

"Where are you going?"

"We're going everywhere. Venice--Rome--Florence--the Mediterranean--the regular thing. And to all sorts of queer outlandish places besides--Scandinavia, the Hebrides, and Iceland; everywhere that you can go to by sea. The sea----That's you again."

"The deuce it is! I doubt if I've done the kind thing, then. I seem to have roused pa.s.sions which will never be satisfied. When she comes back----"

Miss Chatterton's voice sank. "She never will come back."

"Never? How about the Colonel?"

Miss Chatterton smiled. "That's the beauty of it. It's the neatest, sweetest, completest little plot that ever was invented, and it's simplicity itself, like its inventor--that's me. I suppose you know all about Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"Well, not all. Who _could_ know all about Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"You know enough, I daresay. By taking her away--I mean Frida--we force the Colonel's hand."

"You might explain."

"I never saw a man who wanted so many things explained. Don't you see that, as long as Frida stays at home, petting and pampering him and doing all his work for him, he'll never take the trouble to marry; but as soon as she goes away, and stays away----"

"I see, I see; he marries. You force his hand--and heart."

"Exactly. And, if he marries, Frida stays away altogether. She's free."

"Yes; she's free. If she goes; but she'll never go."