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?" [pg 46]
"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 there was nothing 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 you helped," she said, "to bring it out of me. it wasn't in me. when it came, it seemed to come from somewhere outside. somebody must [pg 47] have 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." [pg 48]
(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 make her see.
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 things he saw.
"and as it happens" (caldecott's voice shook a little), "i'm going away next week. i shall be away a very long time." [pg 49]
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 she had piled 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. [pg 50] 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?"
