THE GOOD-BYE
Frederik Grimm turned away from looking down at the pathetically small
figure in the darkened room. His face was expressionless. He had stood
there but a few minutes. And his eyes, riveted on the still, white
little form, had not softened nor blurred with tears.
Wearily he descended the gallery stairs into the living-room, where the
morning sunlight was already turning the desk bowl of roses into a riot
of burning colour.
He was halfway across the room, toward the door, when he was aware that
Kathrien had risen from the desk chair and was looking at him. Her look
was cold and devoid of pity as she surveyed him. But as he halted,
hesitant, the sunlight fell full on his face. And in the visage that had
seemed so vapidly blank to McPherson, she read much.
The cold glint died from her eyes and she stepped forward with hand
outstretched.
"Frederik," she said gently.
He came haltingly toward her. He held out his hand to meet hers. But he
could not touch the fingers that were waiting to press his own. His hand
fell limply to his side.
She understood. And the warm pity in her face deepened.
"I am sorry," she said simply.
"He is happier," muttered the man.
"I don't mean for Willem. For _you_. You understand what it all means at
last."
"And, too late," he assented. "It is always too late--when one
understands."
"It is never too late," she denied eagerly. "Frederik, you have
everything ahead of you. You can----"
"I have nothing ahead of me," he contradicted dully.
"You have wealth, youth, the power to undo what wrong you did,--to start
afresh----"
"As the broken-winged bird has the power to start a new flight. Don't
waste your divine sympathy on me, Kitty. It would be thrown away. In a
very little time, as Dr. McPherson has kindly pointed out to me, I shall
be convalescent from my attack of remorse. And then all life will lie
before me, as you say. All life except the one thing that makes life
worth living."
He stopped. For he saw she understood.
"You always understood," he went on, voicing his thought. "That was one
of the wonderful things about you, Kitty. Even now, you saw the pain I
am in. And it made you forget what you believe I am. It was sweet of
you. It will be good to remember."
"I wish I could help you," she said.
"You _have_ helped me," he answered. "For you've given me a Memory to
carry till I can shake off the load--till I can get clear of McPherson's
'man-built hell.' It won't be long. So don't worry. Even now, my common
sense tells me I've made a fool of myself. And I'm human enough to be
more ashamed of being a fool than of being a knave. I had everything in
my own hands. And I threw away the game because an attack of fright kept
me from playing my winning cards. Last night I was afraid of a ghost.
This morning I'm sane enough to know that ghosts were invented by the
first nervous man who was alone at night. This morning I am heart-broken
because my little boy lies dead. To-morrow I shall be sane enough to
know that it is as lucky for me as it is for him, that he died. And in
a week I'll be congratulating myself over it all and revelling in a
freedom and a fortune I've always craved. So you see I'm quite
incurable."
"Why do you say such things?" she cried. "You know they aren't true."
"When I said you 'always understand,' Kitty, I was wrong. You don't
understand. No woman understands--that a man doesn't reform. A good man
may have taken a wrong twist. And when he finds his way back to the
straight road, they say he has 'reformed.' He hasn't. He's only struck
his own natural gait again. As he was bound to. And _my_ kind of man
sometimes takes a momentary twist in the _right_ direction. Then people
say _he_ has reformed. And they are just as much mistaken as they were
in the other case. For, water won't run uphill after the first pressure
is withdrawn."
"But in the fires of affliction----"
"The fires of affliction," he retorted sadly, "have burned away the
dross from the pure gold of many a soul, I suppose. But no fires were
ever heated that could burn dross fiercely enough to turn it into gold.
Yet----"
He hesitated, then said, without daring to look at her:
"There's one thing I do want you to know, Kitty. Whatever I was and am,
and whatever shams went to make up my daily life here--you know my love
for _you_ was true and absolute and that I loved and _love_ you more
than the whole world besides?"
"Yes," she returned, unembarrassed. "I believe that, Frederik. In part.
You loved me as much as you could love any one. But----"
"Why must there be a 'but'?" he entreated.
"But," she went on with the relentlessness of the Young, "not as much as
you loved yourself."
"More! Ten thousand times more!" he declared vehemently.
"No," she contradicted. "For you didn't love me enough to give me up
when you knew I cared for another man. The Perfect Love would have----"
"The 'perfect love'!" he scoffed. "I have read of it. But I have yet to
see it."
"You cannot see it," she replied, "for the same reason I could not see
Oom Peter when he was fighting my battle here last night. My eyes were
blinded by the world I live in. Perfect love is everywhere. It is within
and about us. But----"
"But I would be too ignoble to recognise it if I chanced upon it?
Perhaps. But why strip me of my last illusion? In the torment of my
self-abasement this morning, I have clung to that one comfort: That I
love you with a love which a truly worthless man _could_ not feel. And
now----"
"_Don't_ misunderstand me," she begged, half-tearfully. "I----"
"You have shown me the truth. And I ought to thank you for it. Perhaps
some day I can. If I still remember it then. Good-bye, dear. I shan't be
here again. I've--I've left you a little present. Dr. McPherson will
give it to you."
"But I _can't_ take----"
"Oh, yes, you can. It isn't really from me. That's just another of my
lies to make a good impression. I've gotten so in the habit of telling
them that it is going to take me a long time to realise that one of the
chief advantages of being a rich man is the immunity from the need to
lie. The present isn't really from me. It's from Oom. Peter. You can't
refuse it from _him_. If you doubt it's Oom Peter's own direct gift, ask
Dr. McPherson. It was bad enough," he sighed, in mock despair, "for Oom
Peter to squander so much of my money while he was alive, without
keeping on doing it after he died. I hope he has stopped it at last. Or
I'll soon be reduced to standing at the subway steps with a tin cup in
my hand."
Through the forced lightness, whose effort wrung sweat from the man's
forehead, Kathrien was woman enough to see the mortal agony that lay
beneath. And again she held out her hand.
"Good-bye, Frederik," she said gently. "And may you be happy!"
He looked doubtfully at the shapely little hand. Then, with an
awkwardness strangely foreign to his normal grace, he took the hand in
both his own and stood a moment, looking down at it as though not
knowing what to do with it.
Then, very simply, he fell on his knees, touched the warm, roseleaf palm
to his lips, got up and, without looking back, hurried out of the house.
Kathrien watched his slender, carefully groomed figure until it was lost
at a turn in the rose bushes. Then she came back into the room and
stood beside Peter Grimm's old chair.
"Oom Peter!" she whispered. "This is my wedding day. You know it, don't
you? And--oh, please let me think you are close--_close_--beside me all
the time!"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Return of Peter Grimm, by David Belasco