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 (shecorrected 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 tomoderate 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 inher. 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 takethataway 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 passionate 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 elsecouldshe 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, whatshewould 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."
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.
"Yes," he said, "yes." He seemed reluctant to acknowledge it. Julia made a note of the reluctance.
"You must be very proud of her."
He challenged the assertion with a glance which questioned her right to make it. Julia saw that his mind was balancing itself on some fine and perilous edge, and that it was as yet unaware of its peril.
"Of course you're proud of her," said she, in a voice that steadied him.
"Of course I am," he agreed.
"Is it really true that she owes everything to you?"
"No," he said, "it isn't in the least true."
"She says so."
"Oh, that's her pretty way of putting it."
"She thinks it."
"Not she. If she does it's because she's made that way. She's awfully nice, you know."
"She's too nice—to be allowed to——"
"Well?"
"To throw herself away."
"She isn't throwing herself away. She's found the one thing she can do, and she's doing it divinely. I never met a woman who was so sure of herself."
"Oh, she's sure enough, poor child."
"I say, you don't mean to tell me you don't believe in her? Not that it matters whether you do or not."
"Thank you. I'm not talking about her genius, or whatever the thing is. I've no doubt it's everything you say. If she'd only keep to that—the one thing shecanbe sure of. Unless, of course, you've made her sure."
"What do you mean?"
"Ah, if I only knew whatyoumeant."
"What I mean?"
"Yes, what you mean to do."
He laughed. "I don't mean to 'do' anything at present."
"Well, then——"
"Why, what do you suppose I ought to do?"
"I don't know that it's for me to say."
"You may as well, while you're about it."
"If I could only make you see——" She mentally drew back.
"Well? What do you want to make me see?"
"What you've done already to that unhappy woman."
"Unhappy? She's considerably happier than she was when I first knew her."
"That's it," she said, "that's just it. Where are your eyes? Can't you see she's in love with you?"
He did not meet her advancing gaze.
"What makes you think so?" he said.
"The way she talks about you."
He smiled. "You don't allow for picturesque exaggeration."
"My dear, when a woman exaggerates to that extent it generally means one thing."
"Not with her. She wouldn't do it if it meant that. She'd be afraid to let herself go. And she isn't afraid.She just piles it on because she's so sure of herself—so sure that she isn't what you say she is."
"I don't say she knows she's in love with you. She doesn't know it."
"Can you be in love without knowing it?"
"She could. If she knew it, do you think she'd have let me see it? And do you think I'd have given her away? I wouldn't now, only I know what you are, and she doesn't."
"No, indeed. You're right enough there."
They paused on that.
"You're quite sure," she said, "that you can't——"
It was as if she probed him, delicately, on behalf of their tragic friend. She turned her eyes away as she did it, that she might not see him shrink.
"No," he said. "Never again. Never again."
She withdrew the pressure of the gentle finger that had given him pain. "I only thought—" she murmured.
"What did you think?"
"That it might be nice for both of you."
"It wouldn't be nice for either of us. Not nice at all."
"Well, then, I can only see one thing."
"I know. You're going to say I must leave off seeing her?"
"No. I don't say that."
"I do, though. If I were sure——"
"You may be sure of one thing. That she doesn't know what's the matter with her—yet. She mustn't know. If you do go and see her, you must be careful not to let her find out. I did my best to hide it, to cover it up, so that she shouldn't see."
"Your suspicion?"
"What do you think we're made of? The truth—the truth."
"If this is the truth, I mustn't, of course, go near her. But I know you're mistaken."
"Have I ever been mistaken? Have I ever told you wrong?"
"Well, Julia, you're a very wise woman, and I'll admit that, when you've warned me off anybody, you've warned me for my good."
She colored. "I'm not warning you 'off' anybody now. I've warned you before for your own sake. I'm warning you this time for hers."
"I see. I see that, all right. But—you never saw a woman like her, did you? I wonder if you understand her."
"I do understand her. You can't look at her and not see that she has a profound capacity for suffering."
"I know."
Of course he knew. Hadn't he called her the Musa Dolorosa?
"Just because," said Julia, "she has imagination."
He had said good-bye and was going; but at the doorway he turned to her again.
"No," he said, "you're wrong, Julia. She's not like that."
Julia arched her brows over eyes tender with compassion—compassion for his infinite stupidity.
"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and waved him away as a creature hopeless, impossible to help.
He closed the door and stood with his back to it, facing her.
"Well," he said, "you may be right; but before I do anything I must be sure."
"How do you propose to make sure?"
"I shall go and see her."
"Of course," said Julia, "you'll go and see her."
He went on to Montagu Street, so convinced was he that Julia was mistaken.
Freda knew well what she was going to say to him. She had chosen her path, the highest, the farthest from the abyss. Once there she could let herself go.
He himself led her there; he started her. He brought praises of the gift.
Other people, he said, were beginning to rave about it now.
"I wish they wouldn't," said she. "It makes me feel so dishonest."
"Dishonest?"
"As if I'd taken something that didn't belong to me. It doesn't belong to me."
"What doesn't?"
"It—the gift! I feel as if it had never had anything—really—to do with me."
"Ah, that's the way to tell that you've got it."
"I know, but I don't mean that. I mean—it does belong so very much to somebody else, that I ought almost to give it back."
He had always wondered how she did it. Now for one moment he believed that she was about to clear up her little mystery. She was going to tell him that she hadn't done it at all, that somebody else had borrowed her name for some incomprehensible purpose of concealment. She was going to make an end of Freda Farrar.
"Of course," she said, "I know you don't want it back."
"I?"
"Yes. It's really yours, you know. I should never have had it at all if it hadn't been for you."
"I'm very glad," he said gravely, "if I've helped you."
He was thinking, "She does really rather pile it on."
Freda went piling it on more. She felt continuously that the gift would see them through. She would hold it well before him, and turn it round and round, that he might see for himself that there was nothing that could be considered sinister behind it. Her passionate concentration on it would show that therewasnothing behind, no vision of anything darker and deeper. It was as if she said to him, "I know the dreadful thing you're afraid of. I'm showing you what it is, so that you needn't think it's that."
Not that she was afraid of his thinking it. She had set her happiness high, in a pure serene place, safe from the visitations of his terror. She conceived that the peace of it might in time come to constitute a kind of happiness for him. That gross fear could never arise between him and her. All the same, she perceived that a finer misgiving might menace his perfect peace. He might, if he were subtle enough, imagine that she was giving him too much, and that he owed her something. His chivalry might become uneasy. She must show him how perfectly satisfied she was. He must see that the thing she had hold of was great, was immense, that it filled her life to the brim, so that there wasn't any room for anything else. How could he owe her anything when he had given her that?
She must make him see it very clearly.
"It wasn't only that youhelped," she said, "to bring it out of me. It wasn't in me. When it came, it seemed to come from somewhere outside. Somebody musthave put it into me. I believe such a thing is possible. And there wasn't anybody, you know, but you."
"I doubt," said he, "the possibility. Anyhow, you may safely leave me out of it."
"Think," she said, "think of the time when you were left out of it, when it was only me. It's inconceivable—the difference——"
"Let's leave it at that. Why rub the bloom off the mystery?"
"Do I rub the bloom off?"
"Yes, if you make out that I had anything to do with it."
"If it's mystery you want, don't you see that's the greatest mystery of all—your having had to do with it?"
"But why should I, of all people? Is there any sign of Freda Farrar in anything I did before I knew her?"
"Is there any sign of her in anything she did before she knew you?"
He was silent.
"Then," said Freda, "if it isn't you it's we. We've collaborated."
If he had not been illumined by the horrid light Julia had given him he would have said that this was only Freda's way, another form of her adorable extravagance. Now he wondered.
Poor Freda went on piling up her defenses. "Don't you see?" said she. "That's why I feel so sure of it. If it had been just me, I should never have been sure a minute. It might have gone any day, and I should have known that there was no more where it came from. But, if it's you, I can simply lean back on it and rest. Don't you see?"
"No," he said, "I don't see."
(He was saying to himself: "I'm afraid Julia was right about her. Only she doesn't know it.")
"You must leave me out of it. You mustn't let yourself think that you rest on anything or anybody but yourself."
It was what Julia had said, searching her with her woman's eyes. He did not look at her as he said it.
Her nerves still shook under Julia's distant and delicate admonition to her to keep her head. It struck her that he was repeating the warning in a still more delicate and distant manner. She wondered was it possible that he was beginning to be afraid? Couldn't he see that he was safe with her? That they were safe with one another? What was she doing now but letting him see how safe they were? Hadn't she just given to their relations the last touch of spiritual completion? She had made a place for him where he could come and go at will, and rest without terror. Couldn't he see that she had set her house of life above all that, so high that nobody down here could see what went on up there, and wonder at his going out and coming in?
Keep her head, indeed! Her untroubled and untrammeled movements on her heights proved how admirably she kept it.
"You see," he continued, "it's not as if I could be always here, on the spot."
His voice still sounded the distant note of warning. It told her that there was something that he wished to makehersee.
Her best answer to that was silence, and a sincere front intimating that she saw everything, and that there was nothing to touch her in the thingshesaw.
"And as it happens" (Caldecott's voice shook a little), "I'm going away next week. I shall be away a very long time."
She knew that he did not look at her now lest he should see her wince. She did not wince.
"Well," said she, "I shall be here when you come back."
It was then that she saw the terror in his face.
"Of course," he said, "I hope—very much—you will be here."
She felt that he, like Julia, was leading her to the edge of the deep dividing place, and that he paused miserably where Julia had plunged. She saw him trying to bridge the gulf, to cover it, with decent, gentle commonplaces and courtesies. Then he went away.
What had she done to make him afraid of her? Or was it what she had said? The other day, before she had seen Julia, she could have said anything to him. Now it seemed there was nothing that she could say.
What was it that he had seen in her?
That was it. With all his wonderful comprehension he had failed her in the ultimate test—the ability to see what was in her. He had seen nothing but one thing, the thing he was accustomed to see, the material woman's passion to pursue, to make captive, to possess. He would go thinking all his life that it was she who had failed, she who, by her vulgarity, had made it impossible for him to remain her friend. She supposed shehadpiled it up too high. It was her very defenses that had betrayed her, made her more flagrant and exposed.
She bowed herself for hours to the scourging of that thought till the thought itself perished from exhaustion.
She knew that it was not so. He held her higher than that.
He was not afraid. He was only sorry for her. He had tried to be more tender to her than she was herself.He was going away because his honor, his masculine honor, told him that if he could not marry her there was nothing else for him to do. He was trying to spare her pain. It was very honorable of him, she knew.
But it would have been more honorable still if he had stayed; if he had trusted her to keep her friendship incorruptible by pain. Or rather, if he had seen that no pain could touch her, short of the consummate spiritual torture he was inflicting now.
There were moments when she stood back from the torture self-delivered. When she heard herself saying to him: "I know why you're going. It's because you think I wanted you to give me something that you can't give me. Don't you see that if you can't give it me it doesn't matter? It's, after all, so little compared with what you have given me. Is it honorable to take that away? Don't you see how you're breaking faith with me? Don't you see that you've made me ashamed, and that nothing can be worse to bear than that?"
Then she knew that she would never be able to say that to him. She would never be able to say anything to him any more. She wondered whether he had made those other women ashamed when he broke loose from them. Was she ashamed, did she suffer, the woman who had caught and held him, and hurt him so?
At the thought of his hurt her passion had such pity that it cried out in her, "What have they done to you that you can't see?"
He went away the following week to the North, and remained there for six months. His honor prescribeda 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 alwaysstruck 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 enoughto 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.Inever 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.
Upstairs Julia was waiting for him. Her pale face turned to him as he came in.
He saw a hunger in it that was not of the soul.
He had never been greatly interested in Julia's soul, and till now her face had told him nothing of it. It had clipped it tight, like the covers of a narrow book. He had never cared to open it. Freda's soul was like an illuminated missal, treasured under transparence; its divine secret flamed, unafraid, in scarlet and gold.
He did not take his seat beside her, but stood off from her, distant and uneasy. She rose and laid her hand upon his arm, and he drew back from her touch.
"Wilton," she said, "you are not going to let this trouble you?"
"What's the good of talking? It won't undo what we did."
"Whatwedid?"
"I, then."
"What else could you do?"
He did not answer, and she murmured, "Or I? I was right. Shewasin love with you."
He turned on her.
"I wish," he said, "you had never told me."
Gibson used to say that he would never marry, because no other woman could be half as nice as his own mother. Then, of course, he broke his mother's heart by marrying a woman who was not nice at all.
He was a powerful fellow with a plain, square face, and a manner that was perfection to the people whom he liked. Unfortunately they were very few. He did not like any of the ladies whom his mother wanted him to like, not even when they reproduced for him her gentle, delicate distinction.
The younger Mrs. Gibson had none of it. But she had ways with her, and a power that was said to reside supremely in her hands, her arms, and her hair. Especially her hair (she was the large white and golden kind). It was long as a lasso and ample as a cloak. Gibson loved her hair. The sight and the scent of it filled him with folly. He liked to braid and unbraid it, to lay his face against it, to plunge his hands through the coolness into the warmth of it.
It seemed to him to give out the splendor and vitality of her, to have a secret sympathy with the thought that stirred beneath it.
She had a trick, when she was thinking of caressing it, of winding and unwinding the little curls that sprang, aureolewise, above her temples. That was oneof her ways, and it brought her hands and arms into play with stupendous effect.
He would sit opposite her a whole evening, watching it, dumb with excess of happiness.
It took him six months to find out that the trick he admired so much was a sign that his wife was bored to extinction.
"Is there anything you want?" he said.
She laughed hysterically.
"You've only to say what you want, and I'll get it for you, if it can be got."
"It could be got all right," said she. "But I doubt whether you'd care very much to get it."
"What is it? Tell me—tell me."
"Well—you're very nice, my dear, I know. But before I married you I used—though you mightn't think it—to be received in society."
He took her back to it. He said he was a selfish brute to want to keep her to himself. That speech amused Mrs. Gibson immensely. She had a curious and capricious sense of humor. It made her very adaptable and tided them both over a sharp season of infelicity.
Hitherto Mrs. Gibson had been merely bored. Now she was seized with a malady of unrest. Any other man but Gibson would have been driven mad with her nerves.
"You're doing too much, you know," he said, soothing her. "You're tired."
She raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, no," she said, "nottired."
He meditated.
"What you want," said he, "is a thorough change."
"My dear," said she, "I didn't know you were so clever."
"Would you like me to take a cottage in the country?"
"A cottage? In the country?"
"Well, of course, not too far from town. Some place where I could run down for the week-ends."
"You couldn't," said she, "be running down oftener?"
"No," he said, "I'm afraid I couldn't just at present."
"Don't you think it might be a trifle lonely?"
"You can have anyone you like to stay with you."
She smiled.
"And you really want to take it? This cottage?"
"Yes."
"Well, then," said she, "take it by all means, and lose no time."
He took it, and went down with her for the first week-end.
It was a tiny place. But some one had built a comfortable smoking-room at the back. It opened by glass doors into the garden.
One Sunday evening they were sitting together in the smoking-room when she flung herself down on the floor beside him and laid her head on his knee. She seized his hand and drew it down to her.
"As you are going to leave me to-morrow," she said, "you can stroke my hair to-night."
He went down every week-end. And every week-end he found an improvement in his wife's health. When he complimented her upon her appearance, she told him she had been gardening. He took it as an excellent sign that she should be fond of gardening.
Then one day Gibson (who worked like ten horses to provide all the things that his wife wanted) got ill and was told to take a month off in the country.
That was in the middle of the week. He saw hisdoctor early in the evening and took the last train down. The cottage was several miles from the nearest telegraph office, so that he arrived before the wire that should have announced his coming.
A short cut from the station brought him to the back of the house through a little wood that screened it. The wood path led into his garden by a private gate which was always locked.
He climbed the gate and crossed the grass plot to the glass doors of the smoking-room. The lamps were lit there, and Gibson, as he approached, could see his wife sitting in the low chair opposite his. His heart bounded at the sight of her. He was glad to think that she sat in his room when he was away. He walked quickly over the grass and stood at the glass doors looking in.
She was lying back in the low chair. Inhischair, which a curtain had concealed from him until now, there sat a man he knew. He recognized the narrow shoulders and the head with the sleek brown hair, showing a little sallow patch of baldness at the back. From a certain tenseness in the man's attitude he knew that his gaze was fastened on the woman who faced them. Her left arm was raised, its long, loose sleeve fell back and bared it. Her fingers twisted and untwisted a little straying curl.
The man could bear it no longer. He jumped up and went to her. He knelt beside her. With one hand he seized her arm by the full white wrist and dragged it down and held it to his lips. The other hand smoothed back her hair into its place and held it there. His fine, nervous fingers sank through the deep, silky web to the white, sensitive skin. The woman threw back her head and closed her eyes, every nerve throbbing felinely under the caress she loved.
The man rose with an uneasy movement that brought him to the back of her chair. He stooped and whispered something. She flung up her arms and drew down his face to hers under the white arch they made.
Gibson did nothing scandalous. He went round quietly to the front door and let himself in with his latch-key. When he entered the smoking-room he found his wife there alone. She stood on his hearth, and met him with hard eyes, desperate and defiant.
"What have you to say for yourself?" he said.
"Everything," said she. "Of course you will divorce me."
"Will a separation not satisfy you?"
"No," she said, "it will not. If you haven't had proof enough I can give you more. Or you can ask the servants."
He had always given her what she wanted. He gave it her now.
Gibson went back to his mother.
The incident left him apparently unscathed. He showed no signs of trouble until four years after, when his mother died. Then the two shocks rolled into one, and for a year Gibson was a wreck.
At last he was told, as he had been told before, to stop work and go away—anywhere—for a rest. He went to a small seaside town in East Devon.
The man's nature was so sound that in a month's time he recovered sufficiently to take an interest in what was going on around him.
He was lodged in one of a row of small houses facing the esplanade. Each had its own plot of green garden spread before it, and a flagged pathway leading fromthe gate to the door. Path and garden were raised a good half-foot above the level of the sidewalk, and this half-foot, Gibson observed, was a serious embarrassment to his next-door neighbors.
Twice a day a bath-chair with an old gentleman in it would emerge from thedoorwayof the house next door. It was drawn by two little ladies, a dark one and a fair one, whom Gibson judged to be the old gentleman's daughters. He must have weighed considerably, that old gentleman, and the ladies (especially the dark one) were far too young and small and tender for such draft-work. Four times a day at the garden-gate a struggle took place between little ladies and the bath-chair. Gibson could see them from his window where he lay, supine in his nervous apathy. Their going out was only less fearful than their coming in. Going out, it was very hard to prevent the back wheels from slipping down with a bump on to the pavement and shaking the old gentleman horribly. Coming in, they risked overturning him altogether.
You would not have known that there was any struggle going on. The old gentleman bore himself with so calm and high a heroism; the little ladies were sustained by so pure a sense of the humors of the bath-chair. No sharp, irritating cries escaped them. They did nothing but laugh softly as they pulled and pushed and tugged with their women's arms, and heaved with delicate shoulders, or hung on, in their frenzy, from behind while the bath-chair swayed ponderously and perilously above the footway.
Gibson sometimes wondered whether he oughtn't to rush out and help them. But he couldn't. He didn't really care.
His landlady told him that the old gentleman was a General Richardson, that he was paralyzed, that hisdaughters waited on him hand and foot, that they were too poor to afford a man-servant to look after him and push the bath-chair. It wasn't much of a life, the woman said, for the two young ladies. Gibson agreed that it wasn't much of a life, certainly.
What pleased him was the fine levity with which they took it. He was always meeting them in their walks on the esplanade. Sometimes they would come racing down the wind with the bath-chair, their serge skirts blown forward, their hair curling over the brims of their sailor hats. (The dark one was particularly attractive in a high wind.) Then they would come back much impeded, their skirts wrapped tight above their knees, their little bodies bent to the storm, their faces wearing still that invincible gaiety of theirs. Sometimes, on a gentle incline, they would let the bath-chair run on a little by itself, till it threatened a dangerous independence, when they would fly after it at the top of their speed and arrest it just in time. Gibson could never make out whether they did this for their own amusement or the old gentleman's. But sometimes, when the General came careering past him, he could catch the glance of a bright and affable eye that seemed to call on him to observe the extent to which an old fellow might enjoy himself yet.
Gibson's lodging gave him endless opportunity for studying the habits of his little ladies. He learned that they did everything in turns. They took it in turns to pull the bath-chair and to push it. They took it in turns to read aloud to the old gentleman, and to put him to bed at night and get him up in the morning. They took it in turns to go to church (did they become suddenly serious, he wondered, there?), and in turns to air themselves on a certain little plateau on the cliffside.
He was next to find out that they nursed the monstrous ambition of urging the bath-chair up the hill and landing it on the plateau. Gibson was sorry for them, for he knew they could never do it. But such was their determination that each time he encountered them on the hill they had struggled a little farther up it.
The road had a sort of hump in it just before it forked off on to the cliff. That baffled them.
At last, as he himself was returning from the plateau, he came upon the sisters right in the middle of the rise, locked in deadly combat with the bath-chair. Pressed against it, shoulder to shoulder, they resisted its efforts to hurl itself violently backward down the hill. The General, as he clung to the arms of the chair, preserved his attitude of superb indifference to the event.
Gibson leaped to their assistance. With a threefold prodigious effort they topped the rise, and in silence, in a sort of solemn triumph, the bath-chair was wheeled on to the plateau.
He liked the simplicity with which they accepted his aid, and he liked the way they thanked him, both sisters becoming very grave all at once. It was the fair one who spoke. The dark one only bowed and smiled as he lifted his cap and turned away.
"It's all very well," he heard her saying, "but how are we going to get him down again?"
How were they?
He hung about the cliffside till the time came for them to return, when he presented himself as if by accident.
"You must allow me," he said, "to see you safe to the bottom of the hill."
They allowed him.
"You see" (the General addressed his daughters as they paused halfway), "we've accomplished it, and no bones are broken."
"Yes," said Gibson, "but isn't the expedition just a little dangerous?"
"Ah," said the General, "I've risked my life too many times to mind a little danger now."
Gibson's eyebrows said plainly, "It wasn'tyourlife, old boy, I was thinking of."
The sisters looked away.
"You must never attempt that again," he said gravely, as he parted from them at the foot of the hill.
Gibson felt that he had done a good morning's work. He had saved the lives of the three Richardsons, and he had found out that the fair one's name was Effie, and the dark one's Phœbe.
After that the acquaintance ripened. They exchanged salutes whenever they met. Then Gibson, moved beyond endurance by their daily strife with the bath-chair, was generally to be seen at their gateway in time to help them.
As the days grew longer the Richardsons began to take their tea out of doors on their grass-plot. And then it seemed to strike them all at once that the gentleman next door was lonely, and one afternoon they invited him to tea.
Then Gibson had his tea served onhisgrass plot, and invited the Richardsons, and the Richardsons (they were so absurdly grateful) invited him to supper and to spend the evening. They thanked him for coming. "It was such a pleasure," Effie said (Effie was the elder), "such a great pleasure to Father."
Gibson hardly thought his society could be a pleasure to anyone, but he tried to make himself useful. He engaged himself as the General's bath-chair man.He bowled him along at the round pace he loved, while the little ladies, Effie and Phœbe, trotted after them, friendly and gay.
And he began to go in and out next door as a matter of course, till it was open to the little sisters to regard him as their own very valuable property. But they were not going to be selfish about him. Oh, no! They took him, as they took everything else, in turns. They tried hard to divide him fairly. If he attached himself to Effie (the fair one), Effie would grow uneasy, and she would get up and positively hand him over to Phœbe (the dark one). If Phœbe permitted herself to talk to him for any while, her eyes would call to Effie, and when Effie came she would slip away and take up her sad place by the General's armchair. In their innocent rivalry it was who could give him more up to the other. And, as Phœbe was the more determined little person, it was Phœbe who generally had it her own way. "Father," too, came in for his just share. Gibson felt that he would not be tolerated on any footing that kept "Father" out of it. There was also a moment in the evening when he would be led up to the armchair, and both Effie and Phœbe would withdraw and leave him to that communion.
There was a third sister he knew now. She was the eldest, and her name was Mary. She was away somewhere in the north, recovering, he gathered, from "Father" (of course, they took it in turns to recover from him), while Father wandered up and down the south coast, endeavoring, vainly, to recover from himself. They told Gibson that the one thing that spoiled it all (the joy, they meant, of their intercourse with him) was the thought that Mary was "missing it." Had Mary been there she would have had to have her share, her fourth.
Presently he realized that Phœbe (he supposed because of her superior determination) had effaced herself altogether. She was always doing dreary things, he noticed, out of her turn. Then he perceived a change in her. Little Phœbe, in consequence of all the dreary things she did, was beginning to grow thin and pale. She looked as though she wanted more of the tonic air of the cliffside. She did still take her turn at climbing to the plateau and sitting there all alone. But that, Gibson reflected, was after all, for Phœbe, a very dreary thing to do.
One evening he took courage, and asked Phœbe to come for a walk to the cliffside with him.
Phœbe did not answer all at once. She shrank, he could see, from the enormity of having him all to herself.
"Go," said Effie, "it will do you worlds of good."
"Yougo."
Effie laughed and shook her head.
"Come too, then. Mr. Gibson, say she's to come too."
"You know," said Effie, "it's my turn to stay with Father."
She said it severely, as if Phœbe had been trying unfairly to deprive her of a privilege and a delight. They were delicious, Phœbe and Effie, but it was Phœbe that he wanted this time.
They set out at a brisk pace that brought the blood to Phœbe's cheeks and made her prettier than ever. Phœbe, of course, had done her best to make her prettiness entirely unobtrusive. She wore a muslin skirt and a tie, and a sailor hat that was not specially becoming to her small head, and her serge skirt had to be both wide and short because of pushing the bath-chair about through all kinds of weather. But the seawind caught her; it played with her hair; it blew a little dark curl out of place to hang distractingly over Phœbe's left ear; it blew the serge skirt tight about her limbs, and showed him, in spite of Phœbe, how prettily Phœbe was made.
"Why didn't you back me up?" said Phœbe. "She wanted to come all the time."
He turned, as he walked, to look at her.
"Why didn't I back you up? Do you really want to know why?"
Whenever he took that tone Phœbe looked solemn and a little frightened. She was frightened now, too frightened to answer him.
"Because," said he, "I wanted you all to myself."
"Oh——" Phœbe drew a long, terrified breath.
There are many ways of saying "Oh," but Gibson had never, never in his whole life heard any woman say it as Phœbe said it then. It meant that she was staggered at anybody's having the temerity to want anything all to himself.
"Do you think me very selfish?"
Phœbe assured him instantly that that had never been her idea of him.
"Shall I tell you who is selfish?"
Phœbe's little mouth hardened. She was so dreadfully afraid that he was going to say "Your father."
"You," he said, "you."
"I'm afraid I am," said she. "It's so hard not to be."
He stood still in his astonishment, so that she had to stand still, too.
"Of course it's hard not to give up things, when you like giving them up. But your sister likes giving them up, too, and it's selfish of you to prevent her, isn't it?"
"Oh, but you don't know what it's been—Effie's life and Mary's."
"And yours——"
"Oh, no, I'm happy enough. I'm the youngest."
"You mean you've had a year or two less of it."
"Yes. They never told me, for fear of making me unhappy, when Father's illness came."
"How long ago was that?"
"Five years ago. I was at school."
He made a brief calculation. During the two years of his married life Phœbe had been a child at school.
"And two years," said Phœbe, "is a long time to be happy in."
"Yes," he said, "it's a long time."
"And then," she went on presently, "I'm so much stronger than Effie and Mary."
"Not strong enough to go dragging that abominable bath-chair about."
"Not strong enough? Look——"
She held out her right arm for him to look at; under her muslin blouse he saw its tense roundness, and its whiteness through the slit above her wrist.
His heart stirred in him. Phœbe's arms were beautiful, and they were strong to help.
"I wish," he said, "I could make it better for you."
"Oh, but youhavemade it better for us. You can't think what a difference you've made."
"Have I? Have I?"
"Yes. Effie said so only the other day. She wrote it to Mary. And Mary says it's a shame she can't be here. It is, you know. It makes us feel so mean having you all to ourselves like this."
He laughed. He laughed whenever he thought of it. There was nobody who could say things as Phœbe said them.
"I wish," said she, "you knew Mary. You'd like her so."
"I'm sure I should if she's at all like you."
(Her innocence sheltered him, made him bold.)
"Oh, but she isn't."
And he listened while she gave him a long list of Mary's charms. (Dear little, tender, unconscious Phœbe.)
"She sounds," he said, "very like you."
"She isn't the least bit like me. You don't know me."
"Don't I?"
"Mary's coming back at the end of the month. Then either I or Effie will go away. Do you think you'll still be here?"
He seemed to her to answer absently.
"Which of you, did you say, was going away?"
"Well—it's Effie's turn."
"Yes," he said, "I think I shall still be here."
One night, a week later, the two sisters sat talking together long after "Father" had been put to bed.
"Phœbe," said Effie, "why did you want me to come with you and Mr. Gibson?"
"Because——" said Phœbe.
"My dear, it's you he likes, not me."
"Don't, Effie."
"But it's true," said Effie.
"How can you tell?" said Phœbe, and she felt perfidious.
"Isn't he always going about with you?"
But Phœbe was ingenious in the destruction of her own joy.
"Oh," said she, "that's his cunning. He likes you dreadfully. He goes about with me, just to hide it."
"You goose."
"Are you sure, Effie, you don't care?"
"Not a rap."
"You never have? Not in the beginning?"
"Certainly not in the beginning. I only thought he might be nice for you."
"You didn't even want to divide him?"
Effie shook her head vehemently.
"Well—he's the only thing I ever wanted all to myself. If——" Then Phœbe looked frightened. "Effie," she said, "he's never said anything."
"All the same, youknow."
"Can you know?"
"I think so," said Effie.
Gibson had been talking a long time to Phœbe. They were sitting together on the beach, under the shadow of the cliff. He was trying to form Phœbe's mind. Phœbe's mind was deliciously young, and it had the hunger and thirst of youth. A little shy and difficult to approach, Phœbe's mind, but he had found out what it liked best, and it pleased him to see how confidingly and delicately it, so to speak, ate out of his hand.
He puzzled her a good deal. And she had a very pretty way of closing her eyes when she was puzzled. In another woman it would have meant that he was boring her; Phœbe did it to shut out the intolerable light of knowledge.
"Ah!—don't," he cried.
"Don't shut my eyes? I always shut my eyes when I'm trying to think," said Phœbe.
He said nothing. That was not what he had meant when he had said "Don't."
"Am I boring you?" he said presently. His tone jarred a little on Phœbe; he had such a nice voice generally.
"No," said she. "Why?"
"Because you keep on doing that."
"Doing what?"
"That."
"Oh!—this?"
She put up her hand and untwisted the little tendril of brown hair that hung deliciously over her left ear.
"I always do that when I'm thinking."
He very nearly said, "Then, for God's sake, don't think."
But Phœbe was always thinking now. He had given her cause to think.
He began to hate the little brown curl that hung over her left ear, though it was anguish to him to hate anything that was Phœbe's. He looked out with nervous anxiety for the movement of her little white hand. He said to himself, "If she does it again, I can't come near her any more."
Yet he kept on coming; and was happy with her until Phœbe (poor, predestined little Phœbe) did it again. Gibson shuddered with the horror of the thing. He kept on saying to himself, "She's sweet, she's good, she's adorable. It isn't her fault. But I can't—I can't sit in the room with it."
And the next minute Phœbe would be so adorable that he would repent miserably of his brutality.
Then, one hot, still evening, he was alone with her in the little sitting-room. Outside, on the grass plot, her father sat in his bath-chair while Effie read aloudto him (out of her turn). Her voice made a cover for Gibson's voice and Phœbe's.
Phœbe was dressed (for the heat) in a white gown with wide, open sleeves. Her low collar showed the pure, soft swell of her neck to the shoulder-line.
She was sitting upright and demure in a straight-backed chair, with her hands folded quietly in her lap.
"That isn't a very comfortable chair you've got," he said.
He knew that she was tired with pushing the bath-chair about all day.
"It's the one I always sit in," said Phœbe.
"Well, you're not going to sit in it now," he said.
He drew the armchair out of its sacred corner and made her sit in that. He put a cushion at her head and a footstool at her feet.
"You make my heart ache," he said.
"Do I?"
He could not tell whether the little shaking breath she drew were a laugh or a sigh.
She lay back, letting her tired body slacken into rest.
The movement loosened the little combs that kept the coil of her brown hair in place. Phœbe abhorred dishevelment. She put up her hands to her head. Her wide sleeve fell back, showing the full length of her white arms.
He saw another woman stretching her arms to the man who leaned above her. He saw the movement of her hands—hands of the same texture and whiteness as her body, instinct with its impulses. A long procession of abominations passed through the white arch of her arms—the arch she raised in triumph and defiance, immortalizing her sin.
He was very tender with Phœbe that night, for his heart was wrung with compunction.
"She's adorable," he said to himself; "but I can't live withthat."
Gibson left by the early train next day. He went without saying good-bye and without leaving an explanation or an address.
Phœbe held her head high, and said, day after day, "There's sure to be a letter."
Three weeks passed and no letter came. Phœbe saw that it was all over.
One day she was found (Effie found her) on her bed, crying. She was so weak she let Effie take her in her arms.
"If I only knew what I had done," she said. "Oh, Effie! what could have made him go away?"
"I can't tell, my lamb. You mustn't think about him any more."
"I can't help thinking. You see, it's not as if he hadn't been so nice."
"He couldn't have been nice to treat you that way."
"He didn't," said Phœbe fiercely. "He didn't treat me any way. I sometimes think I must have made it all up out of my own head. Did I?"
"No, no. I'm sure you didn't."
"It would have been awful of me. But I'd rather be awful than have to think that he was. What is my worst fault, Effie?"
"Your worst fault, in his eyes, is that you have none."
Phœbe sat up on the edge of the bed. She was thinking hard. And as she thought her hand went up, caressing unconsciously the little brown curl.
"If I only knew," said she, "what I had done!"
Gibson never saw Phœbe Richardson again. But a year later, as he turned suddenly on to the esplanade of a strange watering-place, he encountered the bath-chair,drawn by Effie and another lady. He made way, lifting his cap mechanically to its occupant.
The General looked at him. The courteous old hand checked itself in the salute. The affable smile died grimly.
Effie turned away her head. The other lady (it must have been "Mary") raised her eyes in somber curiosity.
Phœbe was not with them. Gibson supposed that she was away somewhere, recovering, in her turn.