Chapter 8 (2)
Fleda knew exactly how much worse, but felt a delicacy about explicitly assenting: she was already immersed moreover in the deep consideration of what might make ‘Mummy' better. She couldn't see as yet at all; she could only clutch at the hope of some inspiration after he should go. Oh, there was a remedy, to be sure, but it was out of the question; in spite of which, in the strong light of Owen's troubled presence, of his anxious face and restless step, it hung there before her for some minutes. She felt that, remarkably, beneath the decent rigour of his errand, the poor young man, for reasons, for weariness, for disgust, would have been ready not to insist. His fitness to fight his mother had left him – he wasn't in fighting trim. He had no natural avidity and even no special wrath; he had none that had not been taught him, and it was doing his best to learn the lesson that had made him so sick. He had his delicacies, but he hid them away like presents before Christmas. He was hollow, perfunctory, pathetic; he had been girded by another hand. That hand had naturally been Mona's, and it was heavy even now on his strong, broad back. Why then had he originally rejoiced so in its touch? Fleda dashed aside this question, for it had nothing to do with her problem. Her problem was to help him to live as a gentleman and carry through what he had undertaken; her problem was to reinstate him in his rights. It was quite irrelevant that Mona had no intelligence of what she had lost – quite irrelevant that she was moved not by the privation but by the insult. She had every reason to be moved, though she was so much more movable, in the vindictive way at any rate, than one might have supposed – assuredly more than Owen himself had imagined.
“Certainly I shall not mention Mona,” Fleda said, “and there won't be the slightest necessity for it. The wrong's quite sufficiently yours, and the demand you make is perfectly justified by it.” “I can't tell you what it is to me to feel you on my side!” Owen exclaimed. “Up to this time,” said Fleda after a pause, “your mother has had no doubt of my being on hers.” “Then of course she won't like your changing.” “I dare say she won't like it at all.” “Do you mean to say you'll have a regular kick-up with her?” “I don't exactly know what you mean by a regular kick-up. We shall naturally have a great deal of discussion – if she consents to discuss the matter at all. That's why you must decidedly give her two or three days.” “I see you think she may refuse to discuss it at all,” said Owen. “I'm only trying to be prepared for the worst. You must remember that to have to withdraw from the ground she has taken, to make a public surrender of what she had publicly appropriated, will go uncommonly hard with her pride.” Owen considered; his face seemed to broaden, but not into a smile. “I suppose she's tremendously proud, isn't she?” This might have been the first time it had occurred to him. “You know better than I,” said Fleda, speaking with high extravagance.
“I don't know anything in the world half so well as you. If I were as clever as you I might hope to get round her.” Owen hesitated; then he went on: “In fact I don't quite see what even you can say or do that will really fetch her.” “Neither do I, as yet. I must think – I must pray!” the girl pursued, smiling. “I can only say to you that I'll try. I want to try, you know – I want to help you.” He stood looking at her so long on this that she added with much distinctness: “So you must leave me, please, quite alone with her. You must go straight back.” “Back to the inn?” “Oh, no, back to town. I'll write to you to-morrow.” He turned about vaguely for his hat. “There's the chance, of course, that she may be afraid.” “Afraid, you mean, of the legal steps you may take?” “I've got a perfect case – I could have her up. The Brigstocks say it's simply stealing.” “I can easily fancy what the Brigstocks say!” Fleda permitted herself to remark without solemnity. “It's none of their business, is it?” was Owen's unexpected rejoinder. Fleda had already noted that no one so slow could ever have had such quick transitions.
She showed her amusement. “They've a much better right to say it's none of mine.” “Well, at any rate you don't call her names.” Fleda wondered whether Mona did; and this made it all the finer of her to exclaim in a moment: “You don't know what I shall call her if she holds out!” Owen gave her a gloomy glance; then he blew a speck off the crown of his hat. “But if you do have a set-to with her?” He paused so long for a reply that Fleda said: “I don't think I know what you mean by a set-to.” “Well, if she calls you names.” “I don't think she'll do that.” “What I mean to say is, if she's angry at your backing me up – what will you do then? She can't possibly like it, you know.” “She may very well not like it; but everything depends. I must see what I shall do. You mustn't worry about me.” She spoke with decision, but Owen seemed still unsatisfied. “You won't go away, I hope?” “Go away?” “If she does take it ill of you.” Fleda moved to the door and opened it. “I'm not prepared to say. You must have patience and see.” “Of course I must,” said Owen – “of course, of course.” But he took no more advantage of the open door than to say: “You want me to be off, and I'm off in a minute. Only, before I go, please answer me a question. If you should leave my mother, where would you go?” Fleda smiled again. “I haven't the least idea.” “I suppose you'd go back to London.” “I haven't the least idea,” Fleda repeated. “You don't – a – live anywhere in particular, do you?” the young man went on. He looked conscious as soon as he had spoken; she could see that he felt himself to have alluded more grossly than he meant to the circumstance of her having, if one were plain about it, no home of her own. He had meant it as an allusion of a tender sort to all she would sacrifice in the case of a quarrel with his mother; but there was indeed no graceful way of touching on that. One just couldn't be plain about it. Fleda, wound up as she was, shrank from any treatment at all of the matter, and she made no answer to his question. “I won't leave your mother,” she said. “I'll produce an effect on her; I'll convince her absolutely.” “I believe you will, if you look at her like that!” She was wound up to such a height that there might well be a light in her pale, fine little face – a light that, while for all return at first she simply shone back at him, was intensely reflected in his own. “I'll make her see it; I'll make her see it!” – she rang out like a silver bell. She had at that moment a perfect faith that she should succeed; but it passed into something else when, the next instant, she became aware that Owen, quickly getting between her and the door she had opened, was sharply closing it, as might be said, in her face. He had done this before she could stop him, and he stood there with his hand on the knob and smiled at her strangely. Clearer than he could have spoken it was the sense of those seconds of silence.
“When I got into this I didn't know you, and now that I know you how can I tell you the difference? And she's so different, so ugly and vulgar, in the light of this squabble. No, like you I've never known one. It's another thing, it's a new thing altogether. Listen to me a little: can't something be done?” It was what had been in the air in those moments at Kensington, and it only wanted words to be a committed act. The more reason, to the girl's excited mind, why it shouldn't have words; her one thought was not to hear, to keep the act uncommitted. She would do this if she had to be horrid.
“Please let me out, Mr Gereth,” she said; on which he opened the door with a hesitation so very brief that in thinking of these things afterwards – for she was to think of them for ever – she wondered in what tone she could have spoken. They went into the hall, where she encountered the parlour-maid, of whom she inquired whether Mrs Gereth had come in.
“No, miss; and I think she has left the garden. She has gone up the back road.” In other words they had the whole place to themselves. It would have been a pleasure, in a different mood, to converse with that parlour-maid.
“Please open the house-door,” said Fleda.
Owen, as if in quest of his umbrella, looked vaguely about the hall – looked even wistfully up the staircase – while the neat young woman complied with Fleda's request. Owen's eyes then wandered out of the open door. “I think it's awfully nice here,” he observed. “I assure you I could do with it myself.” “I should think you might, with half your things here! It's Poynton itself – almost. Good-bye, Mr Gereth,” Fleda added. Her intention had naturally been that the neat young woman, opening the front door, should remain to close it on the departing guest. That functionary, however, had acutely vanished behind a stiff flap of green baize which Mrs Gereth had not yet had time to abolish. Fleda put out her hand, but Owen turned away – he couldn't find his umbrella. She passed into the open air – she was determined to get him out; and in a moment he joined her in the little plastered portico which had small resemblance to any feature of Poynton. It was, as Mrs Gereth had said, like the portico of a house in Brompton.
“Oh, I don't mean with all the things here,” he explained in regard to the opinion he had just expressed. “I mean I could put up with it just as it was; it had a lot of good things, don't you think? I mean if everything was back at Poynton, if everything was all right.” He brought out these last words with a sort of smothered sigh. Fleda didn't understand his explanation unless it had reference to another and more wonderful exchange – the restoration to the great house not only of its tables and chairs but of its alienated mistress. This would imply the installation of his own life at Ricks, and obviously that of another person. Such another person could scarcely be Mona Brigstock. He put out his hand now; and once more she heard his unsounded words. ‘With everything patched up at the other place I could live here with you . Don't you see what I mean?' Fleda saw perfectly and, with a face in which she flattered herself that nothing of this vision appeared, gave him her hand and said: “Good-bye, good-bye.” Owen held her hand very firmly and kept it even after an effort made by her to recover it – an effort not repeated, as she felt it best not to show she was flurried. That solution – of her living with him at Ricks – disposed of him beautifully and disposed not less so of herself; it disposed admirably too of Mrs Gereth. Fleda could only vainly wonder how it provided for poor Mona. While he looked at her, grasping her hand, she felt that now indeed she was paying for his mother's extravagance at Poynton – the vividness of that lady's public plea that little Fleda Vetch was the person to insure the general peace. It was to that vividness poor Owen had come back, and if Mrs Gereth had had more discretion little Fleda Vetch wouldn't have been in a predicament. She saw that Owen had at this moment his sharpest necessity of speech, and so long as he didn't release her hand she could only submit to him. Her defence would be perhaps to look blank and hard; so she looked as blank and as hard as she could, with the reward of an immediate sense that this was not a bit what he wanted. It even made him hang fire as if he were suddenly ashamed of himself, were recalled to some idea of duty and of honour. Yet he none the less brought it out: “There's one thing I dare say I ought to tell you, if you're going so kindly to act for me; though of course you'll see for yourself it's a thing it won't do to tell her .” What was it? He made her wait for it again, and while she waited, under firm coercion, she had the extraordinary impression that Owen's simplicity was in eclipse. His natural honesty was like the scent of a flower, and she felt at this moment as if her nose had been brushed by the bloom without the odour. The allusion was undoubtedly to his mother; and was not what he meant about the matter in question the opposite of what he said – that it just would do to tell her? It would have been the first time he had said the opposite of what he meant, and there was certainly a fascination in the phenomenon as well as a challenge to suspense in the ambiguity. “It's just that I understand from Mona, you know,” he stammered; “it's just that she has made no bones about bringing home to me—” He tried to laugh, and in the effort he faltered again. “About bringing home to you?” – Fleda encouraged him.
He was sensible of it, he achieved his performance. “Why, that if I don't get the things back – every blessed one of them except a few she'll pick out – she won't have anything more to say to me.” Fleda after an instant encouraged him again. “To say to you?” “Why, she simply won't marry me, don't you see?” Owen's legs, not to mention his voice, had wavered while he spoke, and she felt his possession of her hand loosen so that she was free again. Her stare of perception broke into a lively laugh. “Oh, you're all right, for you will get them. You will; you're quite safe; don't worry!” She fell back into the house with her hand on the door. “Good-bye, good-bye.” She repeated it several times, laughing bravely, quite waving him away and, as he didn't move and save that he was on the other side of it, closing the door in his face quite as he had closed that of the drawing-room in hers. Never had a face, never at least had such a handsome one, been so presented to that offence. She even held the door a minute, lest he should try to come in again. At last as she heard nothing she made a dash for the stairs and ran up.
