Chapter 16 (2)
“I cared, I cared, I cared!” – Fleda moaned it as defiantly as if she were confessing a misdeed. “How couldn't I care? But you mustn't, you must never, never ask! It isn't for us to talk about,” she insisted. “Don't speak of it, don't speak!” It was easy indeed not to speak when the difficulty was to find words. He clasped his hands before her as he might have clasped them at an altar; his pressed palms shook together while he held his breath and while she stilled herself in the effort to come round again to the real and the right. He assisted this effort, soothing her into a seat with a touch as light as if she had really been something sacred. She sank into a chair and he dropped before her on his knees; she fell back with closed eyes and he buried his face in her lap. There was no way to thank her but this act of prostration, which lasted, in silence, till she laid consenting hands on him, touched his head and stroked it, held it in her tenderness till he acknowledged his long density. He made the avowal seem only his – made her, when she rose again, raise him at last, softly, as if from the abasement of shame. If in each other's eyes now, however, they saw the truth, this truth, to Fleda, looked harder even than before – all the harder that when, at the very moment she recognised it, he murmured to her ecstatically, in fresh possession of her hands, which he drew up to his breast, holding them tight there with both his own: “I'm saved, I'm saved – I am ! I'm ready for anything. I have your word. Come!” he cried, as if from the sight of a response slower than he needed, and in the tone he so often had of a great boy at a great game.
She had once more disengaged herself with the private vow that he shouldn't yet touch her again. It was all too horribly soon – her sense of this was rapidly surging back. “We mustn't talk, we mustn't talk; we must wait!” she intensely insisted. “I don't know what you mean by your freedom; I don't see it, I don't feel it. Where is it yet, where, your freedom? If it's real there's plenty of time, and if it isn't there's more than enough. I hate myself,” she protested, “for having anything to say about her: it's like waiting for dead men's shoes! What business is it of mine what she does? She has her own trouble and her own plan. It's too hideous to watch her and count on her!” Owen's face, at this, showed a reviving dread, the fear of some darksome process of her mind. “If you speak for yourself I can understand. But why is it hideous for me?” “Oh, I mean for myself!” Fleda said impatiently. “ I watch her, I count on her: how can I do anything else? If I count on her to let me definitely know how we stand I do nothing in life but what she herself has led straight up to. I never thought of asking you to ‘get rid of her' for me, and I never would have spoken to you if I hadn't held that I am rid of her, that she has backed out of the whole thing. Didn't she do so from the moment she began to put it off? I had already applied for the licence; the very invitations were half addressed. Who but she, all of a sudden, demanded an unnatural wait? It was none of my doing; I had never dreamed of anything but coming up to the scratch.” Owen grew more and more lucid and more confident of the effect of his lucidity. “She called it ‘taking a stand', to see what mother would do. I told her mother would do what I would make her do; and to that she replied that she would like to see me make her first. I said I would arrange that everything should be all right, and she said she really preferred to arrange it herself. It was a flat refusal to trust me in the smallest degree. Why then had she pretended so tremendously to care for me? And of course at present,” said Owen, “she trusts me, if possible, still less.” Fleda paid this statement the homage of a minute's muteness. “As to that, naturally, she has reason.” “Why on earth has she reason?” Then, as his companion, moving away, simply threw up her hands, “I never looked at you – not to call looking – till she had regularly driven me to it,” he went on. “I know what I'm about. I do assure you I'm all right!” “You're not all right – you're all wrong!” Fleda cried in despair. “You mustn't stay here, you mustn't!” she repeated with clear decision. “You make me say dreadful things, and I feel as if I made you say them.” But before he could reply she took it up in another tone. “Why in the world, if everything had changed, didn't you break off?” “I—?” The inquiry seemed to have moved him to stupefaction. “Can you ask me that question when I only wanted to please you? Didn't you seem to show me, in your wonderful way, that that was exactly how? I didn't break off just on purpose to leave it to Mona. I didn't break off so that there shouldn't be a thing to be said against me.” The instant after her challenge Fleda had faced him again in self-reproof. “There isn't a thing to be said against you, and I don't know what nonsense you make me talk! You have pleased me, and you've been right and good, and it's the only comfort, and you must go. Everything must come from Mona, and if it doesn't come we've said entirely too much. You must leave me alone – forever.” “Forever?” Owen gasped. “I mean unless everything is different.” “Everything is different, when I know you!” Fleda winced at his knowledge; she made a wild gesture which seemed to whirl it out of the room. The mere allusion was like another embrace. “You don't know me – you don't – and you must go and wait! You mustn't break down at this point.” He looked about him and took up his hat: it was as if in spite of frustration he had got the essence of what he wanted and could afford to agree with her to the extent of keeping up the forms. He covered her with his fine, simple smile, but made no other approach. “Oh, I'm so awfully happy!” he exclaimed. She hesitated; she would only be impeccable even though she should have to be sententious. “You'll be happy if you're perfect!” she risked. He laughed out at this, and she wondered if, with a new-born acuteness, he saw the absurdity of her speech and that no one was happy just because no one could be what she so easily prescribed. “I don't pretend to be perfect, but I shall find a letter to-night!” “So much the better, if it's the kind of one you desire.” That was the most she could say, and having made it sound as dry as possible she lapsed into a silence so pointed as to deprive him of all pretext for not leaving her. Still, nevertheless, he stood there, playing with his hat and filling the long pause with a strained and anxious smile. He wished to obey her thoroughly, to appear not to presume on any advantage he had won from her; but there was clearly something he longed for beside. While he showed this by hanging on she thought of two other things. One of these was that his countenance, after all, failed to bear out his description of his bliss. As for the other, it had no sooner come into her head than she found it seated, in spite of her resolution, on her lips. It took the form of an inconsequent question. “When did you say Mrs Brigstock was to have gone back?” Owen stared. “To Waterbath? She was to have spent the night in town, don't you know? But when she left me after our talk I said to myself that she would take an evening train. I know I made her want to get home.” “Where did you separate?” Fleda asked. “At the West Kensington station – she was going to Victoria. I had walked with her there, and our talk was all on the way.” Fleda pondered a moment. “If she did go back that night you would have heard from Waterbath by this time.” “I don't know,” said Owen. “I thought I might hear this morning.” “She can't have gone back,” Fleda declared. “Mona would have written on the spot.” “Oh, yes, she will have written bang off!” Owen cheerfully conceded. Fleda thought again. “So that, even in the event of her mother's not having got home till the morning you would have had your letter at the latest to-day. You see she has had plenty of time.” Owen hesitated; then “Oh, she's all right!” he laughed. “I go by Mrs Brigstock's certain effect on her – the effect of the temper the old lady showed when we parted. Do you know what she asked me?” he sociably continued. “She asked me in a kind of nasty manner if I supposed you ‘really' cared anything about me. Of course I told her I supposed you didn't – not a solitary rap. How could I ever suppose you do, with your extraordinary ways? It doesn't matter; I could see she thought I lied.” “You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time,” Fleda suggested. “By Jove, I did – for you ! It was only for you.” Something in this touched the girl so that for a moment she could not trust herself to speak. “You're an honest man,” she said at last. She had gone to the door and opened it. “Good-bye.” Even yet, however, Owen hung back. “But even if there's no letter—” he began. He began, but there he left it.
“You mean even if she doesn't let you off? Ah, you ask me too much!” Fleda spoke from the tiny hall, where she had taken refuge between the old barometer and the old mackintosh. “There are things too utterly for yourselves alone. How can I tell? What do I know? Good-bye, good-bye! If she doesn't let you off it will be because she is attached to you.” “She's not, she's not: there's nothing in it! Doesn't a fellow know? – except with you !” Owen ruefully added. With this he came out of the room, lowering his voice to secret supplication, pleading with her really to meet him on the ground of the negation of Mona. It was this betrayal of his need of support and sanction that made her retreat, harden herself in the effort to save what might remain of all she had given, given probably for nothing. The very vision of him as he thus morally clung to her was the vision of a weakness somewhere at the core of his bloom, a blessed manly weakness of which, if she had only the valid right, it would be all a sweetness to take care. She faintly sickened, however, with the sense that there was as yet no valid right poor Owen could give. “You can take it from my honour, you know,” he painfully brought out, “that she loathes me.” Fleda had stood clutching the knob of Maggie's little painted stair-rail; she took, on the stairs, a step backward. “Why then doesn't she prove it in the only clear way?” “She has proved it. Will you believe it if you see the letter?” “I don't want to see any letter,” said Fleda. “You'll miss your train.” Facing him, waving him away, she had taken another upward step; but he sprang to the side of the stairs, and brought his hand, above the banister, down hard on her wrist. “Do you mean to tell me that I must marry a woman I hate?” From her step she looked down into his raised face. “Ah, you see it's not true that you're free!” She seemed almost to exult. “It's not true, it's not true!” He only, at this, like a buffeting swimmer, gave a shake of his head and repeated his question: “Do you mean to tell me I must marry such a woman?” Fleda hesitated; he held her fast. “No. Anything is better than that.” “Then, in God's name, what must I do?” “You must settle that with Mona. You mustn't break faith. Anything is better than that. You must at any rate be utterly sure. She must love you – how can she help it? I wouldn't give you up!” said Fleda. She spoke in broken bits, panting out her words. “The great thing is to keep faith. Where is a man if he doesn't? If he doesn't he may be so cruel. So cruel, so cruel, so cruel!” Fleda repeated. “I couldn't have a hand in that, you know: that's my position – that's mine. You offered her marriage. It's a tremendous thing for her.” Then looking at him another moment, “ I wouldn't give you up!” she said again. He still had hold of her arm; she took in his blank dread. With a quick dip of her face she reached his hand with her lips, pressing them to the back of it with a force that doubled the force of her words. “Never, never, never!” she cried; and before he could succeed in seizing her she had turned and, flashing up the stairs, got away from him even faster than she had got away at Ricks.
