These were neither more nor less than the things with which she had had
time to learn from Mrs. Gereth that Poynton overflowed. Poynton, in the
south of England, was this lady's established, or rather her
disestablished home, having recently passed into the possession of her
son. The father of the boy, an only child, had died two years before,
and in London, with his mother, Owen was occupying for May and June a
house good-naturedly lent them by Colonel Gereth, their uncle and
brother-in-law. His mother had laid her hand so engagingly on Fleda
Vetch that in a very few days the girl knew it was possible they should
suffer together in Cadogan Place almost as much as they had suffered
together at Waterbath. The kind colonel's house was also an ordeal, but
the two women, for the ensuing month, had at least the relief of their
confessions. The great drawback of Mrs. Gereth's situation was that,
thanks to the rare perfection of Poynton, she was condemned to wince
wherever she turned. She had lived for a quarter of a century in such
warm closeness with the beautiful that, as she frankly admitted, life
had become for her a kind of fool's paradise. She couldn't leave her own
house without peril of exposure. She didn't say it in so many words, but
Fleda could see she held that there was nothing in England really to
compare to Poynton. There were places much grander and richer, but there
was no such complete work of art, nothing that would appeal so to those
who were really informed. In putting such elements into her hand fortune
had given her an inestimable chance; she knew how rarely well things had
gone with her and that she had tasted a happiness altogether rare.
There had been in the first place the exquisite old house itself, early
Jacobean, supreme in every part: it was a provocation, an inspiration, a
matchless canvas for the picture. Then there had been her husband's
sympathy and generosity, his knowledge and love, their perfect accord
and beautiful life together, twenty-six years of planning and seeking, a
long, sunny harvest of taste and curiosity. Lastly, she never denied,
there had been her personal gift, the genius, the passion, the patience
of the collector--a patience, an almost infernal cunning, that had
enabled her to do it all with a limited command of money. There wouldn't
have been money enough for any one else, she said with pride, but there
had been money enough for her. They had saved on lots of things in life,
and there were lots of things they hadn't had, but they had had in every
corner of Europe their swing among the Jews. It was fascinating to poor
Fleda, who hadn't a penny in the world nor anything nice at home, and
whose only treasure was her subtle mind, to hear this genuine English
lady, fresh and fair, young in the fifties, declare with gayety and
conviction that she was herself the greatest Jew who had ever tracked a
victim. Fleda, with her mother dead, hadn't so much even as a home, and
her nearest chance of one was that there was some appearance her sister
would become engaged to a curate whose eldest brother was supposed to
have property and would perhaps allow him something. Her father paid
some of her bills, but he didn't like her to live with him; and she had
lately, in Paris, with several hundred other young women, spent a year
in a studio, arming herself for the battle of life by a course with an
impressionist painter. She was determined to work, but her impressions,
or somebody's else, were as yet her only material. Mrs. Gereth had told
her she liked her because she had an extraordinary _flair_; but under
the circumstances a _flair_ was a questionable boon: in the dry places
in which she had mainly moved she could have borne a chronic catarrh.
She was constantly summoned to Cadogan Place, and before the month was
out was kept to stay, to pay a visit of which the end, it was agreed,
should have nothing to do with the beginning. She had a sense, partly
exultant and partly alarmed, of having quickly become necessary to her
imperious friend, who indeed gave a reason quite sufficient for it in
telling her there was nobody else who understood. From Mrs. Gereth there
was in these days an immense deal to understand, though it might be
freely summed up in the circumstance that she was wretched. She told
Fleda that she couldn't completely know why till she should have seen
the things at Poynton. Fleda could perfectly grasp this connection,
which was exactly one of the matters that, in their inner mystery, were
a blank to everybody else.
The girl had a promise that the wonderful house should be shown her
early in July, when Mrs. Gereth would return to it as to her home; but
even before this initiation she put her finger on the spot that in the
poor lady's troubled soul ached hardest. This was the misery that
haunted her, the dread of the inevitable surrender. What Fleda had to
sit up to was the confirmed appearance that Owen Gereth would marry Mona
Brigstock, marry her in his mother's teeth, and that such an act would
have incalculable bearings. They were present to Mrs. Gereth, her
companion could see, with a vividness that at moments almost ceased to
be that of sanity. She would have to give up Poynton, and give it up to
a product of Waterbath--that was the wrong that rankled, the humiliation
at which Fleda would be able adequately to shudder only when she should
know the place. She did know Waterbath, and she despised it--she had
that qualification for sympathy. Her sympathy was intelligent, for she
read deep into the matter; she stared, aghast, as it came home to her
for the first time, at the cruel English custom of the expropriation of
the lonely mother. Mr. Gereth had apparently been a very amiable man,
but Mr. Gereth had left things in a way that made the girl marvel. The
house and its contents had been treated as a single splendid object;
everything was to go straight to his son, and his widow was to have a
maintenance and a cottage in another county. No account whatever had
been taken of her relation to her treasures, of the passion with which
she had waited for them, worked for them, picked them over, made them
worthy of each other and the house, watched them, loved them, lived with
them. He appeared to have assumed that she would settle questions with
her son, that he could depend upon Owen's affection. And in truth, as
poor Mrs. Gereth inquired, how could he possibly have had a
prevision--he who turned his eyes instinctively from everything
repulsive--of anything so abnormal as a Waterbath Brigstock? He had been
in ugly houses enough, but had escaped that particular nightmare.
Nothing so perverse could have been expected to happen as that the heir
to the loveliest thing in England should be inspired to hand it over to
a girl so exceptionally tainted. Mrs. Gereth spoke of poor Mona's taint
as if to mention it were almost a violation of decency, and a person who
had listened without enlightenment would have wondered of what fault the
girl had been or had indeed not been guilty. But Owen had from a boy
never cared, had never had the least pride or pleasure in his home.
"Well, then, if he doesn't care!"--Fleda exclaimed, with some
impetuosity; stopping short, however, before she completed her sentence.