The Return of the Prodigal Part 6

Miss Nethersole drew a perceptible breath before going in deeper.

"I've heard people praising his faithfulness to his wife's memory.

They little know. He was loyal enough to the poor woman while she lived, but he's giving her away now with a vengeance. Several very nice women would have been more than willing to marry him; but as soon as he knew it----"

"Knew it? How could he know it?"

"Well, the ladies were very transparent, some of them. And when they weren't there was always some kind person there to make them so. And when he saw through them--he was off. You could see the horror of it coming over him, and his poor terrified eyes protesting--'I'd do anything for you--anything, my dear girl, but that.'"

Julia paused, as if on the brink of something still profounder.

Evidently she abhorred the plunge, while Freda shrank from the horrible exposure of the shallower waters.

"And those women," said Julia, after meditation, "wondered why they lost their friend. They might have kept him if they'd only kept their heads."

It was at this point that Freda felt that Julia was trying to drag her in with her.

"How awful," said she, "to feel that you'd driven a man away!"

"It might be more awful," said Julia, "for him to feel he had to go."

"That's it," said Freda. "_Had_ he?"

"Well, if he was honorable, what else was there for him to do?"

"To stay by those women, and see them through--if he was honorable."

"Oh--if they'd have been content with that. But you see, my dear, they all wanted to marry him."

"If they did," said Freda, "that shows that they didn't really care."

"They cared too much, I'm afraid."

"Oh, no. Not enough. If they'd cared enough they'd have got beyond that. However much they wanted it, they'd have given it up, rather than let him go."

As she said it she felt a blessed sense of relief. The deeper they went the more the waters covered her.

"You'll never get a man," said Julia, "to understand that. If _he_ cares for a woman he won't be put off with anything short of marrying her. So he naturally supposes----"

Julia had now gone as deep as she could go.

"Yes," said Freda. "It's in the things he naturally supposes that a man goes so wrong."

"Is it?" Julia paused again. "I don't know whether you realize it, but you and I are the only women Mr. Caldecott ever goes to see. I dare say you were surprised when he told you about me. I was amazed when he told me about you. I've no doubt he made each of us think we were the one exception. You see, we are rather exceptional women, from his unhappy point of view. He knows that I understand him, and I'm sure he thinks that he understands you----"

"So he feels safe with me?"

"Gloriously safe. _You_ are a genius, above all the little feminine stupidities that terrify him so. From you he expects nothing but the unexpected. You're outside all his rules. I'm so much inside them that he knows exactly what to expect. So he's safe with both of us.

It's the betwixt-and-between people that he dreads."

Julia rose up from the depths rosy and refreshed. Freda panted with a horrible exhaustion.

"I see," she said. And presently she found that it was time for her to go.

III

The cool, bright air out of doors touched her like a reminding hand.

She turned awkwardly into the street that led from Bedford Square to her own place. Wilton Caldecott and she had often walked along that street together. She felt like one called upon to play a new part on a familiar stage, where every object suggested insanely, irrelevantly, the older inspiration.

Not that her conversation with Julia, or, rather (she corrected herself) Julia's conversation with her, had altered anything. It had all been so natural, so unamazing, like a conversation between two persons in a dream. They had both seemed so ripe for their hour that, when it struck, it brought no sense of the unusual. Only when she lit her lamp in her room, and received the full shock of the old intimate reality, did it occur to her that it was, after all, for Julia Nethersole, a rather singular outpouring. The more she thought of it the more startling it seemed--Julia's flinging off of the reticence that had wrapped her round. Freda was specially appalled by the audacity with which Julia had dragged Wilton Caldecott's history into the light of day. Her own mind had always approached it shyly and tenderly, with a sort of feeling that, after all, perhaps she would rather not know. To Freda Julia seemed to have taken leave suddenly of her senses, to have abandoned all propriety. One did, at supreme moments, leave many things behind one; but Freda was not aware that any moment in their intercourse had yet counted as supreme.

Could Julia have meant anything by it? If so, what was it that she precisely meant? The beginning of their conversation provided no clue to its end. What possible connection could there be between her, Freda's gift, such as it was, and Wilton Caldecott's marriage?

But as she pieced together, painfully, the broken threads she saw that it did somehow hang together. She recalled that there had been something almost ominous in the insistence with which Julia had held her to her gift. Julia's manner had conveyed her disinclination to acknowledge Wilton's part in it, her refusal to regard him as indispensable in the case. She had implied, with the utmost possible delicacy, that it would be well for Freda if she could contrive to moderate her enthusiasm, to be a little less grateful; to cultivate, in a word, her independence.

It was then that she had gone down into her depths. And emerging, braced and bracing from the salt sea, she had landed Freda safe on the high ledge, where she was henceforth to stand solitary, guarding her gift.

It was, in short, a friendly warning to the younger woman to keep her head if she wished to keep their friend.

Freda remembered her first disgraceful fear of Julia, her feeling that Julia would presently take something--she hardly knew what--away from her. That came of letting her imagination play too freely round Wilton Caldecott's friend. What was there to alarm her in the candid Julia? Wasn't it as if Julia, in their curious conversation, had given herself up sublimely for Freda to look at and see for herself that there was nothing in her to be afraid of?

It was possible that Julia had seen things in _her_. Freda had a little thrill of discomfort at that thought; but she rallied from it bravely. What if Julia did see? She was not aware of anything that she was anxious to conceal from her. Least of all had she desired to hide her part in Wilton Caldecott. It was, if you came to think of it, the link between her and Julia, the ground of their acquaintance. She could not suspect Julia of any vulgar desire to take _that_ away from her.

If there had been any lapse from high refinement it had been in her own little cry of "Ah, you don't know him," into which poor Freda now felt that she had poured the very soul of pa.s.sionate possession.

But Julia had been perfect. She had in effect said: "I see--and you won't mind my seeing--that your friendship for Wilton Caldecott is your dearest and purest possession, as it's mine. I'm not ashamed to own it. And I'll show you how to keep it. Take care of the gift--the gift. It'll see you both through." Julia had been fine.

What else _could_ she be? Of course she had seen; and she had sacrificed her reticence beautifully, because it was the only way.

It was, said Freda to herself, what _she_ would have done if she had been in Julia's place, and had seen.

Having reconstructed Julia, she unlocked the drawer that held the hidden treasure, the thing that he had said was so perfect, the last consummate manifestation of the gift. They had found between them the right word for it. It was only a gift, a thing that he had given her, that if he chose he could at any moment take away. What had come from her came only through him. She owned, with a sort of exultation, that there was nothing in the least creative in her. She had not one virile quality; only this receptivity of hers, infinitely plastic, infinitely tender. What lay in the lamplight under her caressing hand had been born of their friendship. It was their spiritual child.

She bowed her head and kissed it.

She said to herself: "It is not me, but his part in me that he loves. If I am true to it he will be true to me."

As she raised her head her eyes were wet with tears. She looked round the room. Everything in it (but the thing that lay there under her hand) seemed suddenly to have lost its interest and its charm.

Something had gone from it, something that had been living with her in secret for many days, that could not live with her now any more.

It had dropped into the deep when Julia stripped herself (it now seemed to Freda) and took her shining, sacrificial plunge.

"What, after all," said Freda, "has she taken from me? Nothing that I ever really had."

IV

It was Sunday afternoon. Caldecott made a point of going to see Miss Nethersole on Sunday afternoons. He felt so safe with Julia.

This particular Sunday afternoon was their first since Julia had become acquainted with Miss Farrar. It was therefore inevitable that their talk should turn to her.

"Your friend is charming," said Julia.