Fleda hesitated; she had not quite had a definite idea. "Well--he'll
give them up."
"Give what up?"
"Why, those beautiful things."
"Give them up to whom?" Mrs. Gereth more boldly stared.
"To you, of course--to enjoy, to keep for yourself."
"And leave his house as bare as your hand? There's nothing in it that
isn't precious."
Fleda considered; her friend had taken her up with a smothered ferocity
by which she was slightly disconcerted. "I don't mean of course that he
should surrender everything; but he might let you pick out the things to
which you're most attached."
"I think he would if he were free," said Mrs. Gereth.
"And do you mean, as it is, that _she_'ll prevent him?" Mona Brigstock,
between these ladies, was now nothing but "she."
"By every means in her power."
"But surely not because she understands and appreciates them?"
"No," Mrs. Gereth replied, "but because they belong to the house and the
house belongs to Owen. If I should wish to take anything, she would
simply say, with that motionless mask: 'It goes with the house.' And day
after day, in the face of every argument, of every consideration of
generosity, she would repeat, without winking, in that voice like the
squeeze of a doll's stomach: 'It goes with the house--it goes with the
house.' In that attitude they'll shut themselves up."
Fleda was struck, was even a little startled with the way Mrs. Gereth
had turned this over--had faced, if indeed only to recognize its
futility, the notion of a battle with her only son. These words led her
to make an inquiry which she had not thought it discreet to make before;
she brought out the idea of the possibility, after all, of her friend's
continuing to live at Poynton. Would they really wish to proceed to
extremities? Was no good-humored, graceful compromise to be imagined or
brought about? Couldn't the same roof cover them? Was it so very
inconceivable that a married son should, for the rest of her days, share
with so charming a mother the home she had devoted more than a score of
years to making beautiful for him? Mrs. Gereth hailed this question with
a wan, compassionate smile; she replied that a common household, in such
a case, was exactly so inconceivable that Fleda had only to glance over
the fair face of the English land to see how few people had ever
conceived it. It was always thought a wonder, a "mistake," a piece of
overstrained sentiment; and she confessed that she was as little capable
of a flight of that sort as Owen himself. Even if they both had been
capable, they would still have Mona's hatred to reckon with. Fleda's
breath was sometimes taken away by the great bounds and elisions which,
on Mrs. Gereth's lips, the course of discussion could take. This was the
first she had heard of Mona's hatred, though she certainly had not
needed Mrs. Gereth to tell her that in close quarters that young lady
would prove secretly mulish. Later Fleda perceived indeed that perhaps
almost any girl would hate a person who should be so markedly averse to
having anything to do with her. Before this, however, in conversation
with her young friend, Mrs. Gereth furnished a more vivid motive for her
despair by asking how she could possibly be expected to sit there with
the new proprietors and accept--or call it, for a day, endure--the
horrors they would perpetrate in the house. Fleda reasoned that they
wouldn't after all smash things nor burn them up; and Mrs. Gereth
admitted when pushed that she didn't quite suppose they would. What she
meant was that they would neglect them, ignore them, leave them to
clumsy servants (there wasn't an object of them all but should be
handled with perfect love), and in many cases probably wish to replace
them by pieces answerable to some vulgar modern notion of the
convenient. Above all, she saw in advance, with dilated eyes, the
abominations they would inevitably mix up with them--the maddening
relics of Waterbath, the little brackets and pink vases, the sweepings
of bazaars, the family photographs and illuminated texts, the "household
art" and household piety of Mona's hideous home. Wasn't it enough simply
to contend that Mona would approach Poynton in the spirit of a
Brigstock, and that in the spirit of a Brigstock she would deal with her
acquisition? Did Fleda really see _her_, Mrs. Gereth demanded, spending
the remainder of her days with such a creature's elbow in her eye?
Fleda had to declare that she certainly didn't, and that Waterbath had
been a warning it would be frivolous to overlook. At the same time she
privately reflected that they were taking a great deal for granted, and
that, inasmuch as to her knowledge Owen Gereth had positively denied his
betrothal, the ground of their speculations was by no means firm. It
seemed to our young lady that in a difficult position Owen conducted
himself with some natural art; treating this domesticated confidant of
his mother's wrongs with a simple civility that almost troubled her
conscience, so deeply she felt that she might have had for him the air
of siding with that lady against him. She wondered if he would ever know
how little really she did this, and that she was there, since Mrs.
Gereth had insisted, not to betray, but essentially to confirm and
protect. The fact that his mother disliked Mona Brigstock might have
made him dislike the object of her preference, and it was detestable to
Fleda to remember that she might have appeared to him to offer herself
as an exemplary contrast. It was clear enough, however, that the happy
youth had no more sense for a motive than a deaf man for a tune, a
limitation by which, after all, she could gain as well as lose. He came
and went very freely on the business with which London abundantly
furnished him, but he found time more than once to say to her, "It's
awfully nice of you to look after poor Mummy." As well as his quick
speech, which shyness made obscure--it was usually as desperate as a
"rush" at some violent game--his child's eyes in his man's face put it
to her that, you know, this really meant a good deal for him and that he
hoped she would stay on. With a person in the house who, like herself,
was clever, poor Mummy was conveniently occupied; and Fleda found a
beauty in the candor and even in the modesty which apparently kept him
from suspecting that two such wiseheads could possibly be occupied with
Owen Gereth.