The Return of the Prodigal Part 10

"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 s.h.i.+fted 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, const.i.tuted 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.

VII

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."

"What _we_ did?"

"I, then."

"What else could you do?"

He did not answer, and she murmured, "Or I? I was right. She _was_ in love with you."

He turned on her.

"I wish," he said, "you had never told me."

THE FAULT

I

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.