The Return of the Prodigal Part 60

"Why are you always reminding me of what I was five years ago? I _have_ changed. Can't a man change if you give him five years to do it in?"

"Perhaps. It's a long time."

"Time? It's an eternity. If I was a brute to you, do you suppose the consciousness of my brutality isn't a far worse punishment than anything I could have made you feel?"

She raised her eyebrows. "What? Have you been suffering all this time--this eternity?"

"Yes. That is, I'm suffering enough now."

"Then perhaps you have some idea of what you made me feel."

"Again?"

"It's the first time I've reproached you with it, even in my thoughts."

He looked at her with unbelieving eyes. And yet he knew that it was true. Her sweetness, her lucidity, had been proof against the supreme provocation. She had forgiven, if she had not forgotten, the insult that no woman remembers and forgives.

As his eyes wandered the hand that had lain so lightly on his arm gripped it to command his attention, and he trembled through all his being. But she no longer shrank from him; she kept her hold, she tightened it, insisting.

"Oh, Maurice! haven't I told you that I understood?"

He smiled. "Yes. Thank G.o.d I can always appeal to your understanding, if I can't get at your heart. Supposing I didn't care for you then? Supposing I was too stupid to see what you were? Is five years, though it may be eternity, so long a time to learn to know you in? You take a great deal of learning, Frida; you are very difficult. There's so much more of you than any man can grasp. But you are the only woman I ever cared to know. I believe you have a thousand sides to you, and every one--every one I can see--appeals to me. There's no end to the interest. Whatever I see or don't see, I always find something more, and I never could be tired of looking."

She sighed and was silent.

"And you blame me because I couldn't see all this at once? Because it took me five years to love you? Remember, you were very cautious; you wouldn't let me see more than a bit at a time. But I love every bit of you--heart and soul, and body and brain; I love you as I never could love any other woman in the world--the world, Frida," he added, pointing the hackneyed phrase. "You _are_ the world."

They had never stopped pacing the deck together, as they talked, turn after turn, alike and yet unlike in their eagerness and unrest.

Now they stood still. Far off they could see the returning boat, a speck at the mouth of the harbor, and they knew that their time was short.

"Maurice," she said, "before you go I have a confession to make. I wasn't quite honest with you just now when I said I only liked you five years ago. I know very well that I loved you. The world has taught me so much."

The world! He frowned angrily as she said it. But through all his anger he admired the reckless n.o.bility of soul that had urged her to that last admission, by way of softening the pangs and penalties she dealt to him. Would any other woman have confessed as much to the man who had once despised her, and now found himself in her power?

She went on. "I thought you might like to know it. I've gone far enough, perhaps; but I'll go farther still. I believe I would give the world to be able to love you now."

"Frida, if you can go as far as that----"

"I can go no farther. No, Maurice, not one step."

"You can. I believe, even now, I could make you love me."

"No. You see, women in my position, my unfortunate position, want to be loved for themselves."

"I do love you for yourself. Do you doubt that, too?"

"I do not doubt it. I am quite sure of it. That's where it is. I know you love me for myself, and so many men have loved me--not for myself. Do you suppose that doesn't touch me? If anything could make me love you that would. And since it doesn't----"

The inference was obvious.

"Is it because you can't give up your life?"

"It is--partly. And yet I might do that. I did it once."

"You did, indeed. I can't conceive how you, being you, lived the life you did----"

"I owed it. It was the price of my freedom."

Her freedom! No wonder that she valued it, if she had paid that price!

She went on dreamily, as if speaking more to herself than him. "To have power over your life--to do what you like with it--take it up or throw it down, to fling it away if that seems the best thing to do. You're not fit to take up your life if you haven't the strength to put it down, too."

"Frida, if you were my wife you wouldn't have to put it down. I'm not asking you to give up the world for me; I'm not even asking you to give up one day of your life. Your life would be exactly what it is now--plus one thing. You'll say, 'What can I give you that you haven't got?' I can give you what you've never had. You don't know what a man's love is and can be; and you must own that without that knowledge your experience, even as experience, is not quite as complete as it might be."

The boat--the boat that was to take him to the sh.o.r.e--was getting nearer. It was his last chance. And while he staked everything on that chance, he thought of Frida as he had first seen her, as she sat tragically at the whist table at Coton Manor, dealing out the cards with deft and supple fingers.

Now she was dealing out his fate.

He remembered how she had said, "Mr. Durant wins because he doesn't care about the game." Because he cared--cared so supremely--was he going to lose?

There were so many things in Frida that he had not reckoned with.

She was an extraordinary mixture of impulse and reserve, and she had astonished him more than once by her readiness to give herself away; but beyond a certain point--the point of view in fact--her self-possession was complete. Still, he left no argument untried, for there was no knowing--no knowing what undiscovered spring he might chance to touch in that rich and subtle nature.

Her self-possession was absolute. She parried his probe with a thrust.

"It is your own fault if my experience isn't complete. You should have told me these things five years ago. As you say, n.o.body else has instructed me since."

"I dare say they've done their best. Of course, other men have loved you----"

"They haven't----"

"But I believe my love would be worth more to you than theirs, for the simple reason that I understand you too well to insist on it. I should always know how much and how little you wanted. For we are rather alike in some ways. I would leave you free."

"I know you would. I am sure. And I would--I would so gladly--but I can't! You see, Maurice, I _have_ loved you."

"All the more reason----"

"All the less. I knew what you thought and felt about me, and it made no difference; I loved you just the same, because I understood.

Then I had to fight it. It was hard work, but I did it very thoroughly. It will never have to be done again. Do you see?"

Yes; he saw very plainly. If Frida could not love him there was n.o.body but himself to blame. He also saw the advantage she had given him. She had owned that she had loved him, and he had hardly realized the full force of the pluperfect. What had been might be again. She was a woman in whom the primordial pa.s.sion, once awakened, is eternal.

He pressed his advantage home.

"And why had you to fight so hard?"

"Because the thing was stronger than myself, and I wouldn't be beaten. Because I hated myself for caring for you, as I hate myself now for not caring."