The Return of the Prodigal Part 54

"I am," said Durant calmly. He had caught a furtive flash from Frida's eyes that lighted upon, glanced off him and fell to the ground. The woman in her had appealed to his chivalry. At the same instant there was a swish, as if the skirts of heaven were trailing across the earth, and the rain came down. He hastily thrust Miss Tancred's arms into the sleeves of her mackintosh and wriggled into his own. The final speeches were short and to the point.

"Mr. Durant," said Miss Chatterton, "you are a hero."

"Frida," said the Colonel, "you are a fool." And for once Durant was inclined to agree with him. The more so as Miss Tancred took advantage of his engagement with his mackintosh to enthrone herself on the driver's high seat. She said good-by to the Colonel, and gathered up the reins; Miss Chatterton climbed up beside her; Polly gave a frantic plunge and a dash forward; and the hero was obliged to enter the dogcart after the deft fas.h.i.+on of a footman, with a run and a flying leap into the back seat.

Miss Chatterton was unkind enough to laugh. "Well done!" said she.

"Sit tight, and try to look as chivalrous as I'm sure you feel."

But it is hard to look or feel chivalrous sitting on a back seat in a wet mackintosh with a thunderstorm pouring down your neck and into your ears, and a woman, possessed by all the devils, driving furiously to an express train that she can never catch. In that lunatic escape from Coton Manor she had not looked back once; she left Durant to contemplate a certain absurd little figure that stood under an immense Doris portico, regarding the face of the sky.

The main thoroughfare of Whithorn-in-Arden was scored like the bed of a torrent, and fringed with an ochreish sc.u.m tossed up from the churning loam. The church clock struck three as they dashed through.

"You'll never do it," said Durant; "it's a good twenty minutes from here."

"In the brougham it is. Polly will do it in ten--with me driving her."

She did it in seven. Durant had pictured the two ladies scurrying along the platform, and himself, a dismal figure, aiding their unlovely efforts to board a departing train; as it was, the three minutes saved allowed Frida to achieve her flight with dignity.

For two out of those three minutes he stood outside their carriage window, beyond the shelter of the station roof, with the rain from the ornamental woodwork overflowing on to his innocent head. He was trying to smile.

"Heroic," murmured Miss Chatterton; and her eyebrows intimated that she saw pathos in his appearance. As for Frida, her good-by was so curt and cold that Durant, who had suffered many things in redeeming the discourtesy of his former att.i.tude to her, was startled and not a little hurt. His plain, lean face, that seemed to have grown still plainer and leaner under the las.h.i.+ng of the rain, set again in its habitual expression of repugnance; hers paled suddenly to a lighter sallow than before; the hand she had given to him withdrew itself in terror from his touch. He drew himself up stiffly, raising a hat that was no hat but a gutter, and the train crawled out of the station.

He stood yet another minute staring at the naked rails, two s.h.i.+ning parallel lines that seemed to touch and vanish, over the visible verge, into the gray fringe of the infinite where the rain washed out the world.

And then he saw nothing but Frida Tancred, sitting on the edge of the fir plantation and gazing into the distance; he heard his own voice saying to her, "Let yourself go, Miss Tancred; let yourself go!"

And she was gone.

XIII

All that Durant got out of Polly was the privilege of driving her home, through mud and rain, at a melancholy trot. True, he was in no hurry to get back; so he let her take her own pace, in pity for her trembling limbs and straining heart. Polly had done all she knew for her mistress in that frantic dash for freedom and the express; and, when he thought of what Frida Tancred's life had been, he guessed that the little animal was used to carrying her through worse storms than this.

The storm was over now; it had driven the clouds into the north, where they hung huddled and piled in a vast amphitheater; other clouds, charged with light now instead of darkness, were still rolling up from the south, east and west, their wings closed till the sky was shut in like Whithorn-in-Arden, ringed with its clouds as Arden with its woods; above, beneath, there rose the same immense, impenetrable boundary, green on the earth and gray in heaven.

And Frida Tancred had escaped from these confines, would never come back to dwell in them again; she had said so, and he believed her.

To be sure, she had shown weakness at the last, she had been driven to juggle with the conscience that would not let her go; had she not persuaded it that she was leaving the Colonel for the Colonel's good? But once gone, once there, away over the border and safe in the promised land, she would see clearly, she would realize her right to be happy in the glorious world.

Not that these things could have happened without Georgie Chatterton. He had nothing but admiration for that young woman; there had been daring in her conquest of Frida Tancred, there were ingenuity and determination in the final elopement. Was it possible that he was piqued at the insignificance of the part she had a.s.signed to him? She had left him to settle up the sordid accounts while she ran away with the lady. He had got to say to Colonel Tancred, "Colonel Tancred, I am not your daughter's seducer and abductor; I am only a miserable accessory after the fact." In other words, Miss Chatterton had reminded him that he was too late.

Too late indeed, it seemed. Whether or not Miss Chatterton's faith in him had failed her at the last moment, but when he came down to dinner that evening he found that she had been beforehand with him; there was nothing left for him to do.

The Colonel looked up smiling from a telegram. "News from St.

Pancras. Miss Chatterton is carrying my daughter off to the Continent."

"I'm delighted to hear it. It will do her all the good in the world."

"Yes, yes; I'm glad she should have the opportunity. I made a little tour on the Continent myself when I was a young man, and I've felt a brighter fellow for it ever since."

"Really?"

"Yes. One's apt to get into a groove staying at home so much.

There's nothing like rubbing brains with foreigners. It stretches you out, clears you of all your narrow insular prejudices, brings you in touch"--Durant quivered; he knew it was coming--"in touch with fresh ideas. I don't know how you feel about it, but six months of it was enough to convince me that there's no place like England, and no people like English people, and no house like my own. As for Frida, a very little goes a long way with Frida; she'll be sick of it in six weeks, but she'll settle down all the better for the change."

"You think so?"

"I do. She may be a little unsettled at first. Her poor mother was just the same--restless, restless. But she settled down."

The Colonel made no further allusion to his daughter's absence. He was presently disturbed about another matter, bustling about the room, wondering, questioning, and exclaiming, "I have lost my little meteorological chronicle? Has anybody seen my little meteorological chronicle? Now, where did I have it last? I wonder if I could have left it with my other papers in Frida's room?"

But Frida's room, the room where she did all her father's writing, and her own reading and dreaming when she had time to read and dream, Frida's room was locked, and n.o.body could find the key. The Colonel, more than ever convinced that his meteorological chronicle was concealed in Frida's room, ordered the door to be burst open.

Durant lent a shoulder to the work and entered somewhat precipitately, followed by the Colonel.

The meteorological chronicle, the labor of years, was found where its author had left it, on his writing-table, together with his other papers, business letters, household accounts, Primrose League programs, all carefully sorted, dated, and docketed. Many of the letters had been answered; they lay, addressed in Frida's handwriting, ready for the post. She had left her work in such perfect order that a new secretary could have been fitted into her place without a hitch. The fact was eloquent of finality and the winding up of affairs; but certain other details were more eloquent still.

Order on the writing-table; in the rest of the room confusion and disarray, rifled bookcases and dismantled walls. Fresh squares of wall-paper outlined in cobwebs marked the places where the great maps had hung. The soul of the room was gone from it with the portrait of the late Mrs. Tancred; the watercolor drawings, sad work of her restless fingers, were no longer there. The furniture had been pushed aside to make room for the deed of desecration; the floor was littered with newspapers and straw; an empty packing-case lay on its side, abandoned, in a corner.

The Colonel opened round eyes of astonishment, but his mustache was still. He rang the bell and summoned the servants. Under severe cross-examination, Chaplin, the footman, gave evidence that three packing-cases had left Coton Manor for the station early in the morning before the bursting of the storm. Frida, too, had discerned the face of the sky, and--admirable strategist!--had secured her transports. The Colonel dismissed his witnesses, and appealed helplessly to Durant; indeed, the comprehension in the young man's face gave him an appearance of guilty complicity.

"What does it mean, Durant? what does it mean?"

Durant smiled, not without compa.s.sion. When a young woman arranges her accounts, and makes off with three packing-cases, containing her library and her mother's portrait, the meaning obviously is that she is not coming back again in a hurry. He suggested that perhaps Miss Tancred proposed to make a lengthier stay on the Continent than had been surmised.

"The whole thing," said the Colonel, "is incomprehensible to me."

For the rest of the evening he remained visibly subdued by the presence of the incomprehensible; after coffee he pulled himself together and prepared to face it.

"There will be no whist this evening," he announced. "You will excuse me, Durant; I have an immensity of work on hand. Chaplin, put some whiskey and water in the study, and light the little lamp on my literary machine."

Tuesday morning's post brought explanation. Two letters lay on the breakfast table, both from a fresh hotel, the _Hotel Metropole_, both addressed in Frida Tancred's handwriting, one to the Colonel and the other to Durant. Durant's ran thus:

"DEAR MR. DURANT:--You will explain everything to my father, won't you? I have done my best, but he will never see it; it is the sort of thing he never could see--my reasons for going away and staying away. They are hard to understand, but, as far as I have made them out myself, it seems that I went away for his sake; but I believe, in fact I know, that I shall stay away for my own. You will understand it; we thrashed it all out that Sat.u.r.day afternoon--you remember?--and you understood then. And so I trust you.

"Always sincerely yours,

"FRIDA TANCRED.

"P.S.--Write and tell me how he takes it. I can see it--so clearly!--from his point of view. I hope he will not be unhappy.

"P.P.S.--We sail to-morrow."

He was still knitting his brows over the opening sentences when the Colonel flicked his own letter across the table.

"Read this, Durant, and tell me what you think of it."

Durant read:

"MY DEAR FATHER:--You will see from Georgie's telegram that we shall be leaving England to-morrow. I did not tell you this before because it would have meant so much explanation, and if we once began explaining things I don't think I should ever have gone at all. And I had to go. Believe me, I was convinced that in going I was doing the best thing for you. I thought you had been making sacrifices for my sake, and that you would be happier without me, though you would not say so. Whether I could have brought myself to leave you without the help of this conviction, and whether I have the conviction strongly still, I cannot say; it is hard to be perfectly honest, even with myself.