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 (she corrected
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 to
moderate 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 in _her_. 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
take _that_ away 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 else _could_ she 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, what _she_ would 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."