IV

A week later Owen Gereth came down to inform his mother that he had

settled with Mona Brigstock; but it was not at all a joy to Fleda,

conscious how much to himself it would be a surprise, that he should

find her still in the house. That dreadful scene before breakfast had

made her position false and odious; it had been followed, after they

were left alone, by a scene of her own making with her extravagant

friend. She notified Mrs. Gereth of her instant departure: she couldn't

possibly remain after being offered to Owen, that way, before her very

face, as his mother's candidate for the honor of his hand. That was all

he could have seen in such an outbreak and in the indecency of her

standing there to enjoy it. Fleda had on the prior occasion dashed out

of the room by the shortest course and in her confusion had fallen upon

Mona in the garden. She had taken an aimless turn with her, and they had

had some talk, rendered at first difficult and almost disagreeable by

Mona's apparent suspicion that she had been sent out to spy, as Mrs.

Gereth had tried to spy, into her opinions. Fleda was sagacious enough

to treat these opinions as a mystery almost awful; which had an effect

so much more than reassuring that at the end of five minutes the young

lady from Waterbath suddenly and perversely said: "Why has she never had

a winter garden thrown out? If ever I have a place of my own I mean to

have one." Fleda, dismayed, could see the thing--something glazed and

piped, on iron pillars, with untidy plants and cane sofas; a shiny

excrescence on the noble face of Poynton. She remembered at Waterbath a

conservatory where she had caught a bad cold in the company of a stuffed

cockatoo fastened to a tropical bough and a waterless fountain composed

of shells stuck into some hardened paste. She asked Mona if her idea

would be to make something like this conservatory; to which Mona

replied: "Oh no, much finer; we haven't got a winter garden at

Waterbath." Fleda wondered if she meant to convey that it was the only

grandeur they lacked, and in a moment Mona went on: "But we have got a

billiard-room--that I will say for us!" There was no billiard-room at

Poynton, but there would evidently be one, and it would have, hung on

its walls, framed at the "Stores," caricature-portraits of celebrities,

taken from a "society-paper."

When the two girls had gone in to breakfast it was for Fleda to see at a

glance that there had been a further passage, of some high color,

between Owen and his mother; and she had turned pale in guessing to what

extremity, at her expense, Mrs. Gereth had found occasion to proceed.

Hadn't she, after her clumsy flight, been pressed upon Owen in still

clearer terms? Mrs. Gereth would practically have said to him: "If

you'll take _her_, I'll move away without a sound. But if you take any

one else, any one I'm not sure of, as I am of her--heaven help me, I'll

fight to the death!" Breakfast, this morning, at Poynton, had been a

meal singularly silent, in spite of the vague little cries with which

Mrs. Brigstock turned up the underside of plates and the knowing but

alarming raps administered by her big knuckles to porcelain cups. Some

one had to respond to her, and the duty assigned itself to Fleda, who,

while pretending to meet her on the ground of explanation, wondered what

Owen thought of a girl still indelicately anxious, after she had been

grossly hurled at him, to prove by exhibitions of her fine taste that

she was really what his mother pretended. This time, at any rate, their

fate was sealed: Owen, as soon as he should get out of the house, would

describe to Mona that lady's extraordinary conduct, and if anything more

had been wanted to "fetch" Mona, as he would call it, the deficiency was

now made up. Mrs. Gereth in fact took care of that--took care of it by

the way, at the last, on the threshold, she said to the younger of her

departing guests, with an irony of which the sting was wholly in the

sense, not at all in the sound: "We haven't had the talk we might have

had, have we? You'll feel that I've neglected you, and you'll treasure

it up against me. _Don't_, because really, you know, it has been quite

an accident, and I've all sorts of information at your disposal. If you

should come down again (only you won't, ever,--I feel that!) I should

give you plenty of time to worry it out of me. Indeed there are some

things I should quite insist on your learning; not permit you at all, in

any settled way, _not_ to learn. Yes indeed, you'd put me through, and I

should put you, my dear! We should have each other to reckon with, and

you would see me as I really am. I'm not a bit the vague, mooning, easy

creature I dare say you think. However, if you won't come, you won't;

_n'en parlons plus_. It _is_ stupid here after what you're accustomed

to. We can only, all round, do what we can, eh? For heaven's sake, don't

let your mother forget her precious publication, the female magazine,

with the what-do-you-call-'em?--the grease-catchers. There!"

Mrs. Gereth, delivering herself from the doorstep, had tossed the

periodical higher in air than was absolutely needful--tossed it toward

the carriage the retreating party was about to enter. Mona, from the

force of habit, the reflex action of the custom of sport, had popped

out, with a little spring, a long arm and intercepted the missile as

easily as she would have caused a tennis-ball to rebound from a racket.

"Good catch!" Owen had cried, so genuinely pleased that practically no

notice was taken of his mother's impressive remarks. It was to the

accompaniment of romping laughter, as Mrs. Gereth afterwards said, that

the carriage had rolled away; but it was while that laughter was still

in the air that Fleda Vetch, white and terrible, had turned upon her

hostess with her scorching "How _could_ you? Great God, how _could_

you?" This lady's perfect blankness was from the first a sign of her

serene conscience, and the fact that till indoctrinated she didn't even

know what Fleda meant by resenting her late offense to every

susceptibility gave our young woman a sore, scared perception that her

own value in the house was just the value, as one might say, of a good

agent. Mrs. Gereth was generously sorry, but she was still more

surprised--surprised at Fleda's not having liked to be shown off to Owen

as the right sort of wife for him. Why not, in the name of wonder, if

she absolutely _was_ the right sort? She had admitted on explanation

that she could see what her young friend meant by having been laid, as

Fleda called it, at his feet; but it struck the girl that the admission

was only made to please her, and that Mrs. Gereth was secretly surprised

at her not being as happy to be sacrificed to the supremacy of a high

standard as she was happy to sacrifice her. She had taken a tremendous

fancy to her, but that was on account of the fancy--to Poynton of

course--Fleda herself had taken. Wasn't this latter fancy then so great

after all? Fleda felt that she could declare it to be great indeed when

really for the sake of it she could forgive what she had suffered and,

after reproaches and tears, asseverations and kisses, after learning

that she was cared for only as a priestess of the altar and a view of

her bruised dignity which left no alternative to flight, could accept

the shame with the balm, consent not to depart, take refuge in the thin

comfort of at least knowing the truth. The truth was simply that all

Mrs. Gereth's scruples were on one side and that her ruling passion had

in a manner despoiled her of her humanity. On the second day, after the

tide of emotion had somewhat ebbed, she said soothingly to her

companion: "But you _would_, after all, marry him, you know, darling,

wouldn't you, if that girl were not there? I mean of course if he were

to ask you," Mrs. Gereth had thoughtfully added.

"Marry him if he were to ask me? Most distinctly not!"

The question had not come up with this definiteness before, and Mrs.

Gereth was clearly more surprised than ever. She marveled a moment. "Not

even to have Poynton?"

"Not even to have Poynton."

"But why on earth?" Mrs. Gereth's sad eyes were fixed on her.

Fleda colored; she hesitated. "Because he's too stupid!" Save on one

other occasion, at which we shall in time arrive, little as the reader

may believe it, she never came nearer to betraying to Mrs. Gereth that

she was in love with Owen. She found a dim amusement in reflecting that

if Mona had not been there and he had not been too stupid and he verily

had asked her, she might, should she have wished to keep her secret,

have found it possible to pass off the motive of her action as a mere

passion for Poynton.

Mrs. Gereth evidently thought in these days of little but things

hymeneal; for she broke out with sudden rapture, in the middle of the

week: "I know what they'll do: they _will_ marry, but they'll go and

live at Waterbath!" There was positive joy in that form of the idea,

which she embroidered and developed: it seemed so much the safest thing

that could happen. "Yes, I'll have you, but I won't go _there_!" Mona

would have said with a vicious nod at the southern horizon: "we'll leave

your horrid mother alone there for life." It would be an ideal solution,

this ingress the lively pair, with their spiritual need of a warmer

medium, would playfully punch in the ribs of her ancestral home; for it

would not only prevent recurring panic at Poynton--it would offer them,

as in one of their gimcrack baskets or other vessels of ugliness, a

definite daily felicity that Poynton could never give. Owen might manage

his estate just as he managed it now, and Mrs. Gereth would manage

everything else. When, in the hall, on the unforgettable day of his

return, she had heard his voice ring out like a call to a terrier, she

had still, as Fleda afterwards learned, clutched frantically at the

conceit that he had come, at the worst, to announce some compromise; to

tell her she would have to put up with the girl, yes, but that some way

would be arrived at of leaving her in personal possession. Fleda Vetch,

whom from the first hour no illusion had brushed with its wing, now held

her breath, went on tiptoe, wandered in outlying parts of the house and

through delicate, muffled rooms, while the mother and son faced each

other below. From time to time she stopped to listen; but all was so

quiet she was almost frightened: she had vaguely expected a sound of

contention. It lasted longer than she would have supposed, whatever it

was they were doing; and when finally, from a window, she saw Owen

stroll out of the house, stop and light a cigarette and then pensively

lose himself in the plantations, she found other matter for trepidation

in the fact that Mrs. Gereth didn't immediately come rushing up into her

arms. She wondered whether she oughtn't to go down to her, and measured

the gravity of what had occurred by the circumstance, which she

presently ascertained, that the poor lady had retired to her room and

wished not to be disturbed. This admonition had been for her maid, with

whom Fleda conferred as at the door of a death-chamber; but the girl,

without either fatuity or resentment, judged that, since it could render

Mrs. Gereth indifferent even to the ministrations of disinterested

attachment, the scene had been tremendous.

She was absent from luncheon, where indeed Fleda had enough to do to

look Owen in the face; there would be so much to make that hateful in

their common memory of the passage in which his last visit had

terminated. This had been her apprehension at least; but as soon as he

stood there she was constrained to wonder at the practical simplicity of

the ordeal--a simplicity which was really just his own simplicity, the

particular thing that, for Fleda Vetch, some other things of course

aiding, made almost any direct relation with him pleasant. He had

neither wit, nor tact, nor inspiration: all she could say was that when

they were together the alienation these charms were usually depended on

to allay didn't occur. On this occasion, for instance, he did so much

better than "carry off" an awkward remembrance: he simply didn't have

it. He had clean forgotten that she was the girl his mother would have

fobbed off on him; he was conscious only that she was there in a manner

for service--conscious of the dumb instinct that from the first had made

him regard her not as complicating his intercourse with that personage,

but as simplifying it. Fleda found beautiful that this theory should

have survived the incident of the other day; found exquisite that

whereas she was conscious, through faint reverberations, that for her

kind little circle at large, whom it didn't concern, her tendency had

begun to define itself as parasitical, this strong young man, who had a

right to judge and even a reason to loathe her, didn't judge and didn't

loathe, let her down gently, treated her as if she pleased him, and in

fact evidently liked her to be just where she was. She asked herself

what he did when Mona denounced her, and the only answer to the question

was that perhaps Mona didn't denounce her. If Mona was inarticulate he

wasn't such a fool, then, to marry her. That he was glad Fleda was there

was at any rate sufficiently shown by the domestic familiarity with

which he said to her: "I must tell you I've been having an awful row

with my mother. I'm engaged to be married to Miss Brigstock."

"Ah, really?" cried Fleda, achieving a radiance of which she was

secretly proud. "How very exciting!"

"Too exciting for poor Mummy. She won't hear of it. She has been slating

her fearfully. She says she's a 'barbarian.'"

"Why, she's lovely!" Fleda exclaimed.

"Oh, she's all right. Mother must come round."

"Only give her time," said Fleda. She had advanced to the threshold of

the door thus thrown open to her and, without exactly crossing it, she

threw in an appreciative glance. She asked Owen when his marriage would

take place, and in the light of his reply read that Mrs. Gereth's

wretched attitude would have no influence at all on the event,

absolutely fixed when he came down, and distant by only three months. He

liked Fleda's seeming to be on his side, though that was a secondary

matter, for what really most concerned him now was the line his mother

took about Poynton, her declared unwillingness to give it up.

"Naturally I want my own house, you know," he said, "and my father made

every arrangement for me to have it. But she may make it devilish

awkward. What in the world's a fellow to do?" This it was that Owen

wanted to know, and there could be no better proof of his friendliness

than his air of depending on Fleda Vetch to tell him. She questioned

him, they spent an hour together, and, as he gave her the scale of the

concussion from which he had rebounded, she found herself saddened and

frightened by the material he seemed to offer her to deal with. It _was_

devilish awkward, and it was so in part because Owen had no imagination.

It had lodged itself in that empty chamber that his mother hated the

surrender because she hated Mona. He didn't of course understand why she

hated Mona, but this belonged to an order of mysteries that never

troubled him: there were lots of things, especially in people's minds,

that a fellow didn't understand. Poor Owen went through life with a

frank dread of people's minds: there were explanations he would have

been almost as shy of receiving as of giving. There was therefore

nothing that accounted for anything, though in its way it was vivid

enough, in his picture to Fleda of his mother's virtual refusal to move.

That was simply what it was; for didn't she refuse to move when she as

good as declared that she would move only with the furniture? It was the

furniture she wouldn't give up; and what was the good of Poynton without

the furniture? Besides, the furniture happened to be his, just as

everything else happened to be. The furniture--the word, on his lips,

had somehow, for Fleda, the sound of washing-stands and copious bedding,

and she could well imagine the note it might have struck for Mrs.

Gereth. The girl, in this interview with him, spoke of the contents of

the house only as "the works of art." It didn't, however, in the least

matter to Owen what they were called; what did matter, she easily

guessed, was that it had been laid upon him by Mona, been made in effect

a condition of her consent, that he should hold his mother to the

strictest accountability for them. Mona had already entered upon the

enjoyment of her rights. She had made him feel that Mrs. Gereth had been

liberally provided for, and had asked him cogently what room there would

be at Ricks for the innumerable treasures of the big house. Ricks, the

sweet little place offered to the mistress of Poynton as the refuge of

her declining years, had been left to the late Mr. Gereth, a

considerable time before his death, by an old maternal aunt, a good lady

who had spent most of her life there. The house had in recent times been

let, but it was amply furnished, it contained all the defunct aunt's

possessions. Owen had lately inspected it, and he communicated to Fleda

that he had quietly taken Mona to see it. It wasn't a place like

Poynton--what dower-house ever was?--but it was an awfully jolly little

place, and Mona had taken a tremendous fancy to it. If there were a few

things at Poynton that were Mrs. Gereth's peculiar property, of course

she must take them away with her; but one of the matters that became

clear to Fleda was that this transfer would be immediately subject to

Miss Brigstock's approval. The special business that she herself now

became aware of being charged with was that of seeing Mrs. Gereth safely

and singly off the premises.

Her heart failed her, after Owen had returned to London, with the

ugliness of this duty--with the ugliness, indeed, of the whole close

conflict. She saw nothing of Mrs. Gereth that day; she spent it in

roaming with sick sighs, in feeling, as she passed from room to room,

that what was expected of her companion was really dreadful. It would

have been better never to have had such a place than to have had it and

lose it. It was odious to _her_ to have to look for solutions: what a

strange relation between mother and son when there was no fundamental

tenderness out of which a solution would irrepressibly spring! Was it

Owen who was mainly responsible for that poverty? Fleda couldn't think

so when she remembered that, so far as he was concerned, Mrs. Gereth

would still have been welcome to have her seat by the Poynton fire. The

fact that from the moment one accepted his marrying one saw no very

different course for Owen to take made her all the rest of that aching

day find her best relief in the mercy of not having yet to face her

hostess. She dodged and dreamed and romanced away the time; instead of

inventing a remedy or a compromise, instead of preparing a plan by which

a scandal might be averted, she gave herself, in her sentient solitude,

up to a mere fairy tale, up to the very taste of the beautiful peace

with which she would have filled the air if only something might have

been that could never have been.

V

"I'll give up the house if they'll let me take what I require!" That, on

the morrow, was what Mrs. Gereth's stifled night had qualified her to

say, with a tragic face, at breakfast. Fleda reflected that what she

"required" was simply every object that surrounded them. The poor woman

would have admitted this truth and accepted the conclusion to be drawn

from it, the reduction to the absurd of her attitude, the exaltation of

her revolt. The girl's dread of a scandal, of spectators and critics,

diminished the more she saw how little vulgar avidity had to do with

this rigor. It was not the crude love of possession; it was the need to

be faithful to a trust and loyal to an idea. The idea was surely noble:

it was that of the beauty Mrs. Gereth had so patiently and consummately

wrought. Pale but radiant, with her back to the wall, she rose there

like a heroine guarding a treasure. To give up the ship was to flinch

from her duty; there was something in her eyes that declared she would

die at her post. If their difference should become public the shame

would be all for the others. If Waterbath thought it could afford to

expose itself, then Waterbath was welcome to the folly. Her fanaticism

gave her a new distinction, and Fleda perceived almost with awe that she

had never carried herself so well. She trod the place like a reigning

queen or a proud usurper; full as it was of splendid pieces, it could

show in these days no ornament so effective as its menaced mistress.

Our young lady's spirit was strangely divided; she had a tenderness for

Owen which she deeply concealed, yet it left her occasion to marvel at

the way a man was made who could care in any relation for a creature

like Mona Brigstock when he had known in any relation a creature like

Adela Gereth. With such a mother to give him the pitch, how could he

take it so low? She wondered that she didn't despise him for this, but

there was something that kept her from it. If there had been nothing

else it would have sufficed that she really found herself from this

moment the medium of communication with him.

"He'll come back to assert himself," Mrs. Gereth had said; and the

following week Owen in fact reappeared. He might merely have written,

Fleda could see, but he had come in person because it was at once

"nicer" for his mother and stronger for his cause. He didn't like the

row, though Mona probably did; if he hadn't a sense of beauty he had

after all a sense of justice; but it was inevitable he should clearly

announce at Poynton the date at which he must look to find the house

vacant. "You don't think I'm rough or hard, do you?" he asked of Fleda,

his impatience shining in his idle eyes as the dining-hour shines in

club-windows. "The place at Ricks stands there with open arms. And then

I give her lots of time. Tell her she can remove everything that belongs

to her." Fleda recognized the elements of what the newspapers call a

deadlock in the circumstance that nothing at Poynton belonged to Mrs.

Gereth either more or less than anything else. She must either take

everything or nothing, and the girl's suggestion was that it might

perhaps be an inspiration to do the latter and begin again on a clean

page. What, however, was the poor woman, in that case, to begin with?

What was she to do at all, on her meagre income, but make the best of

the _objets d'art_ of Ricks, the treasures collected by Mr. Gereth's

maiden aunt? She had never been near the place: for long years it had

been let to strangers, and after that the foreboding that it would be

her doom had kept her from the abasement of it. She had felt that she

should see it soon enough, but Fleda (who was careful not to betray to

her that Mona had seen it and had been gratified) knew her reasons for

believing that the maiden aunt's principles had had much in common with

the principles of Waterbath. The only thing, in short, that she would

ever have to do with the objets d'art of Ricks would be to turn them out

into the road. What belonged to her at Poynton, as Owen said, would

conveniently mitigate the void resulting from that demonstration.

The exchange of observations between the friends had grown very direct

by the time Fleda asked Mrs. Gereth whether she literally meant to shut

herself up and stand a siege, or whether it was her idea to expose

herself, more informally, to be dragged out of the house by constables.

"Oh, I prefer the constables and the dragging!" the heroine of Poynton

had answered. "I want to make Owen and Mona do everything that will be

most publicly odious." She gave it out that it was her one thought now

to force them to a line that would dishonor them and dishonor the

tradition they embodied, though Fleda was privately sure that she had

visions of an alternative policy. The strange thing was that, proud and

fastidious all her life, she now showed so little distaste for the

world's hearing of the squabble. What had taken place in her above all

was that a long resentment had ripened. She hated the effacement to

which English usage reduced the widowed mother: she had discoursed of it

passionately to Fleda; contrasted it with the beautiful homage paid in

other countries to women in that position, women no better than herself,

whom she had seen acclaimed and enthroned, whom she had known and

envied; made in short as little as possible a secret of the injury, the

bitterness she found in it. The great wrong Owen had done her was not

his "taking up" with Mona--that was disgusting, but it was a detail, an

accidental form: it was his failure from the first to understand what it

was to have a mother at all, to appreciate the beauty and sanctity of

the character. She was just his mother as his nose was just his nose,

and he had never had the least imagination or tenderness or gallantry

about her. One's mother, gracious heaven, if one were the kind of fine

young man one ought to be, the only kind Mrs. Gereth cared for, was a

subject for poetry, for idolatry. Hadn't she often told Fleda of her

friend Madame de Jaume, the wittiest of women, but a small, black,

crooked person, each of whose three boys, when absent, wrote to her

every day of their lives? She had the house in Paris, she had the house

in Poitou, she had more than in the lifetime of her husband (to whom, in

spite of her appearance, she had afforded repeated cause for jealousy),

because she had to the end of her days the supreme word about

everything. It was easy to see that Mrs. Gereth would have given again

and again her complexion, her figure, and even perhaps the spotless

virtue she had still more successfully retained, to have been the

consecrated Madame de Jaume. She wasn't, alas, and this was what she had

at present a magnificent occasion to protest against. She was of course

fully aware of Owen's concession, his willingness to let her take away

with her the few things she liked best; but as yet she only declared

that to meet him on this ground would be to give him a triumph, to put

him impossibly in the right. "Liked best"? There wasn't a thing in the

house that she didn't like best, and what she liked better still was to

be left where she was. How could Owen use such an expression without

being conscious of his hypocrisy? Mrs. Gereth, whose criticism was often

gay, dilated with sardonic humor on the happy look a dozen objects from

Poynton would wear and the charming effect they would conduce to when

interspersed with the peculiar features of Ricks. What had her whole

life been but an effort toward completeness and perfection? Better

Waterbath at once, in its cynical unity, than the ignominy of such a

mixture!

All this was of no great help to Fleda, in so far as Fleda tried to rise

to her mission of finding a way out. When at the end of a fortnight Owen

came down once more, it was ostensibly to tackle a farmer whose

proceedings had been irregular; the girl was sure, however, that he had

really come, on the instance of Mona, to see what his mother was doing.

He wished to satisfy himself that she was preparing her departure, and

he wished to perform a duty, distinct but not less imperative, in regard

to the question of the perquisites with which she would retreat. The

tension between them was now such that he had to perpetrate these

offenses without meeting his adversary. Mrs. Gereth was as willing as

himself that he should address to Fleda Vetch whatever cruel remarks he

might have to make: she only pitied her poor young friend for repeated

encounters with a person as to whom she perfectly understood the girl's

repulsion. Fleda thought it nice of Owen not to have expected her to

write to him; he wouldn't have wished any more than herself that she

should have the air of spying on his mother in his interest. What made

it comfortable to deal with him in this more familiar way was the sense

that she understood so perfectly how poor Mrs. Gereth suffered, and that

she measured so adequately the sacrifice the other side did take rather

monstrously for granted. She understood equally how Owen himself

suffered, now that Mona had already begun to make him do things he

didn't like. Vividly Fleda apprehended how _she_ would have first made

him like anything she would have made him do; anything even as

disagreeable as this appearing there to state, virtually on Mona's

behalf, that of course there must be a definite limit to the number of

articles appropriated. She took a longish stroll with him in order to

talk the matter over; to say if she didn't think a dozen pieces, chosen

absolutely at will, would be a handsome allowance; and above all to

consider the very delicate question of whether the advantage enjoyed by

Mrs. Gereth mightn't be left to her honor. To leave it so was what Owen

wished; but there was plainly a young lady at Waterbath to whom, on his

side, he already had to render an account. He was as touching in his

offhand annoyance as his mother was tragic in her intensity; for if he

couldn't help having a sense of propriety about the whole matter, so he

could as little help hating it. It was for his hating it, Fleda

reasoned, that she liked him so, and her insistence to his mother on the

hatred perilously resembled, on one or two occasions, a revelation of

the liking. There were moments when, in conscience, that revelation

pressed her; inasmuch as it was just on the ground of her not liking him

that Mrs. Gereth trusted her so much. Mrs. Gereth herself didn't in

these days like him at all, and she was of course and always on Mrs.

Gereth's side. He ended really, while the preparations for his marriage

went on, by quite a little custom of coming and going; but on no one of

these occasions would his mother receive him. He talked only with Fleda

and strolled with Fleda; and when he asked her, in regard to the great

matter, if Mrs. Gereth were really doing nothing, the girl usually

replied: "She pretends not to be, if I may say so; but I think she's

really thinking over what she'll take." When her friend asked her what

Owen was doing, she could have but one answer: "He's waiting, dear lady,

to see what _you_ do!"

Mrs. Gereth, a month after she had received her great shock, did

something abrupt and extraordinary: she caught up her companion and went

to have a look at Ricks. They had come to London first and taken a train

from Liverpool Street, and the least of the sufferings they were armed

against was that of passing the night. Fleda's admirable dressing-bag

had been given her by her friend. "Why, it's charming!" she exclaimed a

few hours later, turning back again into the small prim parlor from a

friendly advance to the single plate of the window. Mrs. Gereth hated

such windows, the one flat glass, sliding up and down, especially when

they enjoyed a view of four iron pots on pedestals, painted white and

containing ugly geraniums, ranged on the edge of a gravel-path and doing

their best to give it the air of a terrace. Fleda had instantly averted

her eyes from these ornaments, but Mrs. Gereth grimly gazed, wondering

of course how a place in the deepest depths of Essex and three miles

from a small station could contrive to look so suburban. The room was

practically a shallow box, with the junction of the walls and ceiling

guiltless of curve or cornice and marked merely by the little band of

crimson paper glued round the top of the other paper, a turbid gray

sprigged with silver flowers. This decoration was rather new and quite

fresh; and there was in the centre of the ceiling a big square beam

papered over in white, as to which Fleda hesitated about venturing to

remark that it was rather picturesque. She recognized in time that this

remark would be weak and that, throughout, she should be able to say

nothing either for the mantelpieces or for the doors, of which she saw

her companion become sensible with a soundless moan. On the subject of

doors especially Mrs. Gereth had the finest views: the thing in the

world she most despised was the meanness of the single flap. From end to

end, at Poynton, there were high double leaves. At Ricks the entrances

to the rooms were like the holes of rabbit-hutches.

It was all, none the less, not so bad as Fleda had feared; it was faded

and melancholy, whereas there had been a danger that it would be

contradictious and positive, cheerful and loud. The house was crowded

with objects of which the aggregation somehow made a thinness and the

futility a grace; things that told her they had been gathered as slowly

and as lovingly as the golden flowers of Poynton. She too, for a home,

could have lived with them: they made her fond of the old maiden-aunt;

they made her even wonder if it didn't work more for happiness not to

have tasted, as she herself had done, of knowledge. Without resources,

without a stick, as she said, of her own, Fleda was moved, after all, to

some secret surprise at the pretensions of a shipwrecked woman who could

hold such an asylum cheap. The more she looked about the surer she felt

of the character of the maiden-aunt, the sense of whose dim presence

urged her to pacification: the maiden-aunt had been a dear; she would

have adored the maiden-aunt. The poor lady had had some tender little

story; she had been sensitive and ignorant and exquisite: that too was a

sort of origin, a sort of atmosphere for relics and rarities, though

different from the sorts most prized at Poynton. Mrs. Gereth had of

course more than once said that one of the deepest mysteries of life was

the way that, by certain natures, hideous objects could be loved; but it

wasn't a question of love, now, for these: it was only a question of a

certain practical patience. Perhaps some thought of that kind had stolen

over Mrs. Gereth when, at the end of a brooding hour, she exclaimed,

taking in the house with a strenuous sigh: "Well, something can be done

with it!" Fleda had repeated to her more than once the indulgent fancy

about the maiden-aunt--she was so sure she had deeply suffered. "I'm

sure I hope she did!" was, however, all that Mrs. Gereth had replied.