Читать книгу The Return of the Prodigal - Sinclair May - Страница 12

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He went away the following week to the North, and remained there for six months. His honor prescribed a considerable term of absence. It compelled him to keep away from her for some time after his return. He told himself that she had the consolation of her gift.

Meanwhile no sign of it had reached him since the day he left her. Julia could give him no news of her; she believed, but was not certain, that Freda was away. When he called in Montagu Street he was told that Miss Farrar had given up her rooms and gone abroad.

He wrote to the address given him, and heard from her by return. She told him that she was very well; that San Remo was very beautiful; that she was sure he would be glad to hear that a small income had been left to her, enough to relieve her from the necessity of writing—she had not, in fact, written a line in the last year—otherwise, of course, he would have heard from her. "It rather looks," she added, "as if poverty had been my inspiration."

In every word he read her desire to spare him.

It had not stayed with her, then? The slender flame had died in her, the sudden spirit had fled. Well, if it had to go, it was better that it should go this way, all at once, rather than that they should have had to acknowledge any falling-off from the delicate perfection of her gift.

Three months later a letter from his friend, Mrs. Dysart, informed him of Freda's death at San Remo early in the spring.

Mrs. Dysart had seen her there. She was now staying with her niece, Julia Nethersole, and desired to see him. She was sure that he would want to hear about their friend.

He remembered Mrs. Dysart as a small, robust, iron-gray woman—sharp-tongued, warm-hearted, terrifically observant. Though childless, she had always struck him as almost savagely maternal. He dreaded the interview, for he had had some vague idea that she had not appreciated Freda. Besides, his connection with Miss Farrar was so public that Mrs. Dysart would have no delicacy in approaching it.

Mrs. Dysart proved more reticent than he had feared. The full flow of her reminiscences began only under pressure.

The news of Miss Farrar's death, she said, came to her as a shock, but hardly as a surprise.

"You were not with her, then?" he said.

"No one was with her."

The words dropped into a terrible silence. A sound broke it, the sound of some uneasy movement made by Julia.

"When did you see her last?" he asked.

"I saw her last driving on the sea front at San Remo. If you could call it seeing her. She was all huddled up in furs and rugs and things. Just a sharp white slip of a face and two eyes gazing at nothing out of the carriage window. She looked as if something had scared her."

And it was of her that he had been afraid!

"Do you know," he said presently, "what she died of?"

"No. It was supposed that, some time or other, she must have had some great shock."

Caldecott shifted his position.

"The doctors said there was no reason why she should have died. She could have lived well enough if she had wanted to. The terrible thing was that she didn't want. If you ask me what she died of I should say she was either scared to death or starved."

"Surely," he said, "surely she had enough?"

"Oh, she had food enough to eat, and clothes enough to cover her, and fire enough to warm her. But she starved."

"What do you suppose," said Julia, "the poor girl wanted?"

"Nothing, my dear, that you would understand."

He was at a loss to account for the asperity of the little lady's tone; but he remembered that Julia had never been a favorite with her aunt.

"I'm convinced," said Mrs. Dysart, "that woman died for want of something. Something that she'd got used to till it was absolutely necessary to her. Something, whatever it was, that had completely satisfied her. When she found herself without it, that, I imagine, constituted the shock. And she wasn't strong enough to stand it, that was all."

Mrs. Dysart spoke to her niece, but he felt that there was something in her, fiery and indignant, that hurled itself across Julia at him.

He changed the subject.

"She—she left nothing?"

"Not a note, not a line."

"Ah, well, what we have is beautiful enough for anybody."

"I wonder if you have any idea what you might have had? If you even knew what it was you had?"

"I never presumed," he said, "to understand her. I've hardly ever known any woman properly but one."

"And knowing one woman—properly or improperly—won't help you to understand another. I never knew there was so much in her."

"She didn't know it herself. She used to say it wasn't in her. It was the most mysterious thing I ever saw."

It was his turn to shelter himself behind Freda's gift. He piled up words, and his mind cowered behind them, thinking no thought, seeing nothing but Freda's dead face with its shut eyes.

"What was it?" he said. "Where did it come from?"

"It came," said Mrs. Dysart, "from somewhere deep down in her heart, a part of her that had only one chance to show itself." She rose and delivered herself of all her fire. "There was something in Freda infinitely greater, infinitely more beautiful, than her gift. It showed itself only once in her life. When it couldn't show itself any more the gift left her. We can't account for it."

He followed her to the door. She pressed his hand as she said good-bye to him, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"I told you," she said, "to do all you could for her. She knew that you had done—all you could."

He bowed his head to her rebuke.