"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 that 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 an hesitation so very brief that in thinking of these things
afterwards--for she was to think of them forever--she wondered in what
tone she could have spoken. They went into the hall, where she
encountered the parlor-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
parlor-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
defense 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 honor. 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 odor. 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."