IX

In knowing a while before all she needed, Fleda had been far from

knowing as much as that; so that once upstairs, where, in her room, with

her sense of danger and trouble, the age of Louis Seize suddenly struck

her as wanting in taste and point, she felt that she now for the first

time knew her temptation. Owen had put it before her with an art beyond

his own dream. Mona would cast him off if he didn't proceed to

extremities; if his negotiation with his mother should fail he would be

completely free. That negotiation depended on a young lady to whom he

had pressingly suggested the condition of his freedom; and as if to

aggravate the young lady's predicament designing fate had sent Mrs.

Gereth, as the parlor-maid said, "up the back road." This would give the

young lady more time to make up her mind that nothing should come of the

negotiation. There would be different ways of putting the question to

Mrs. Gereth, and Fleda might profitably devote the moments before her

return to a selection of the way that would most surely be tantamount to

failure. This selection indeed required no great adroitness; it was so

conspicuous that failure would be the reward of an effective

introduction of Mona. If that abhorred name should be properly invoked

Mrs. Gereth would resist to the death, and before envenomed resistance

Owen would certainly retire. His retirement would be into single life,

and Fleda reflected that he had now gone away conscious of having

practically told her so. She could only say, as she waited for the back

road to disgorge, that she hoped it was a consciousness he enjoyed.

There was something _she_ enjoyed; but that was a very different matter.

To know that she had become to him an object of desire gave her wings

that she felt herself flutter in the air: it was like the rush of a

flood into her own accumulations. These stored depths had been

fathomless and still, but now, for half an hour, in the empty house,

they spread till they overflowed. He seemed to have made it right for

her to confess to herself her secret. Strange then there should be for

him in return nothing that such a confession could make right! How could

it make right that he should give up Mona for another woman? His

attitude was a sorry appeal to Fleda to legitimate that. But he didn't

believe it himself, and he had none of the courage of his suggestion.

She could easily see how wrong everything must be when a man so made to

be manly was wanting in courage. She had upset him, as people called it,

and he had spoken out from the force of the jar of finding her there. He

had upset her too, heaven knew, but she was one of those who could pick

themselves up. She had the real advantage, she considered, of having

kept him from seeing that she had been overthrown.

She had moreover at present completely recovered her feet, though there

was in the intensity of the effort required to do so a vibration which

throbbed away into an immense allowance for the young man. How could she

after all know what, in the disturbance wrought by his mother, Mona's

relations with him might have become? If he had been able to keep his

wits, such as they were, more about him he would probably have felt--as

sharply as she felt on his behalf--that so long as those relations were

not ended he had no right to say even the little he had said. He had no

right to appear to wish to draw in another girl to help him to an

escape. If he was in a plight he must get out of the plight himself, he

must get out of it first, and anything he should have to say to any one

else must be deferred and detached. She herself, at any rate--it was her

own case that was in question--couldn't dream of assisting him save in

the sense of their common honor. She could never be the girl to be drawn

in, she could never lift her finger against Mona. There was something in

her that would make it a shame to her forever to have owed her happiness

to an interference. It would seem intolerably vulgar to her to have

"ousted" the daughter of the Brigstocks; and merely to have abstained

even wouldn't assure her that she had been straight. Nothing was really

straight but to justify her little pensioned presence by her use; and

now, won over as she was to heroism, she could see her use only as some

high and delicate deed. She couldn't do anything at all, in short,

unless she could do it with a kind of pride, and there would be nothing

to be proud of in having arranged for poor Owen to get off easily.

Nobody had a right to get off easily from pledges so deep, so sacred.

How could Fleda doubt they had been tremendous when she knew so well

what any pledge of her own would be? If Mona was so formed that she

could hold such vows light, that was Mona's peculiar business. To have

loved Owen apparently, and yet to have loved him only so much, only to

the extent of a few tables and chairs, was not a thing she could so much

as try to grasp. Of a different way of loving him she was herself ready

to give an instance, an instance of which the beauty indeed would not be

generally known. It would not perhaps if revealed be generally

understood, inasmuch as the effect of the particular pressure she

proposed to exercise would be, should success attend it, to keep him

tied to an affection that had died a sudden and violent death. Even in

the ardor of her meditation Fleda remained in sight of the truth that it

would be an odd result of her magnanimity to prevent her friend's

shaking off a woman he disliked. If he didn't dislike Mona, what was the

matter with him? And if he did, Fleda asked, what was the matter with

her own silly self?

Our young lady met this branch of the temptation it pleased her frankly

to recognize by declaring that to encourage any such cruelty would be

tortuous and base. She had nothing to do with his dislikes; she had only

to do with his good-nature and his good name. She had joy of him just as

he was, but it was of these things she had the greatest. The worst

aversion and the liveliest reaction moreover wouldn't alter the

fact--since one was facing facts--that but the other day his strong arms

must have clasped a remarkably handsome girl as close as she had

permitted. Fleda's emotion at this time was a wondrous mixture, in which

Mona's permissions and Mona's beauty figured powerfully as aids to

reflection. She herself had no beauty, and _her_ permissions were the

stony stares she had just practiced in the drawing-room--a consciousness

of a kind appreciably to add to the particular sense of triumph that

made her generous. I may not perhaps too much diminish the merit of that

generosity if I mention that it could take the flight we are considering

just because really, with the telescope of her long thought, Fleda saw

what might bring her out of the wood. Mona herself would bring her out;

at the least Mona possibly might. Deep down plunged the idea that even

should she achieve what she had promised Owen, there was still the

contingency of Mona's independent action. She might by that time, under

stress of temper or of whatever it was that was now moving her, have

said or done the things there is no patching up. If the rupture should

come from Waterbath they might all be happy yet. This was a calculation

that Fleda wouldn't have committed to paper, but it affected the total

of her sentiments. She was meanwhile so remarkably constituted that

while she refused to profit by Owen's mistake, even while she judged it

and hastened to cover it up, she could drink a sweetness from it that

consorted little with her wishing it mightn't have been made. There was

no harm done, because he had instinctively known, poor dear, with whom

to make it, and it was a compensation for seeing him worried that he

hadn't made it with some horrid mean girl who would immediately have

dished him by making a still bigger one. Their protected error (for she

indulged a fancy that it was hers too) was like some dangerous, lovely

living thing that she had caught and could keep--keep vivid and helpless

in the cage of her own passion and look at and talk to all day long. She

had got it well locked up there by the time that, from an upper window,

she saw Mrs. Gereth again in the garden. At this she went down to meet

her.

X

Fleda's line had been taken, her word was quite ready; on the terrace of

the painted pots she broke out before her interlocutress could put a

question. "His errand was perfectly simple: he came to demand that you

shall pack everything straight up again and send it back as fast as the

railway will carry it."

The back road had apparently been fatiguing to Mrs. Gereth; she rose

there rather white and wan with her walk. A certain sharp thinness was

in her ejaculation of "Oh!"--after which she glanced about her for a

place to sit down. The movement was a criticism of the order of events

that offered such a piece of news to a lady coming in tired; but Fleda

could see that in turning over the possibilities this particular peril

was the one that during the last hour her friend had turned up oftenest.

At the end of the short, gray day, which had been moist and mild, the

sun was out; the terrace looked to the south, and a bench, formed as to

legs and arms of iron representing knotted boughs, stood against the

warmest wall of the house. The mistress of Ricks sank upon it and

presented to her companion the handsome face she had composed to hear

everything. Strangely enough, it was just this fine vessel of her

attention that made the girl most nervous about what she must drop in.

"Quite a 'demand,' dear, is it?" asked Mrs. Gereth, drawing in her

cloak.

"Oh, that's what I should call it!" Fleda laughed, to her own surprise.

"I mean with the threat of enforcement and that sort of thing."

"Distinctly with the threat of enforcement--what would be called, I

suppose, coercion."

"What sort of coercion?" said Mrs. Gereth.

"Why, legal, don't you know?--what he calls setting the lawyers at you."

"Is that what he calls it?" She seemed to speak with disinterested

curiosity.

"That's what he calls it," said Fleda.

Mrs. Gereth considered an instant. "Oh, the lawyers!" she exclaimed

lightly. Seated there almost cosily in the reddening winter sunset, only

with her shoulders raised a little and her mantle tightened as if from a

slight chill, she had never yet looked to Fleda so much in possession

nor so far from meeting unsuspectedness halfway. "Is he going to send

them down here?"

"I dare say he thinks it may come to that."

"The lawyers can scarcely do the packing," Mrs. Gereth humorously

remarked.

"I suppose he means them--in the first place, at least--to try to talk

you over."

"In the first place, eh? And what does he mean in the second?"

Fleda hesitated; she had not foreseen that so simple an inquiry could

disconcert her. "I'm afraid I don't know."

"Didn't you ask?" Mrs. Gereth spoke as if she might have said, "What

then were you doing all the while?"

"I didn't ask very much," said her companion. "He has been gone some

time. The great thing seemed to be to understand clearly that he

wouldn't be content with anything less than what he mentioned."

"My just giving everything back?"

"Your just giving everything back."

"Well, darling, what did you tell him?" Mrs. Gereth blandly inquired.

Fleda faltered again, wincing at the term of endearment, at what the

words took for granted, charged with the confidence she had now

committed herself to betray. "I told him I would tell you!" She smiled,

but she felt that her smile was rather hollow and even that Mrs. Gereth

had begun to look at her with some fixedness.

"Did he seem very angry?"

"He seemed very sad. He takes it very hard," Fleda added.

"And how does _she_ take it?"

"Ah, that--that I felt a delicacy about asking."

"So you didn't ask?" The words had the note of surprise.

Fleda was embarrassed; she had not made up her mind definitely to lie.

"I didn't think you'd care." That small untruth she would risk.

"Well--I don't!" Mrs. Gereth declared; and Fleda felt less guilty to

hear her, for the statement was as inexact as her own. "Didn't you say

anything in return?" Mrs. Gereth presently continued.

"Do you mean in the way of justifying you?"

"I didn't mean to trouble you to do that. My justification," said Mrs.

Gereth, sitting there warmly and, in the lucidity of her thought, which

nevertheless hung back a little, dropping her eyes on the gravel--"my

justification was all the past. My justification was the cruelty--" But

at this, with a short, sharp gesture, she checked herself. "It's too

good of me to talk--now." She produced these sentences with a cold

patience, as if addressing Fleda in the girl's virtual and actual

character of Owen's representative. Our young lady crept to and fro

before the bench, combating the sense that it was occupied by a judge,

looking at her boot-toes, reminding herself in doing so of Mona, and

lightly crunching the pebbles as she walked. She moved about because she

was afraid, putting off from moment to moment the exercise of the

courage she had been sure she possessed. That courage would all come to

her if she could only be equally sure that what she should be called

upon to do for Owen would be to suffer. She had wondered, while Mrs.

Gereth spoke, how that lady would describe her justification. She had

described it as if to be irreproachably fair, give her adversary the

benefit of every doubt, and then dismiss the question forever. "Of

course," Mrs. Gereth went on, "if we didn't succeed in showing him at

Poynton the ground we took, it's simply that he shuts his eyes. What I

supposed was that you would have given him your opinion that if I was

the woman so signally to assert myself, I'm also the woman to rest upon

it imperturbably enough."

Fleda stopped in front of her hostess. "I gave him my opinion that

you're very logical, very obstinate, and very proud."

"Quite right, my dear: I'm a rank bigot--about that sort of thing!" and

Mrs. Gereth jerked her head at the contents of the house. "I've never

denied it. I'd kidnap--to save them, to convert them--the children of

heretics. When I know I'm right I go to the stake. Oh, he may burn me

alive!" she cried with a happy face. "Did he abuse me?" she then

demanded.

Fleda had remained there, gathering in her purpose. "How little you know

him!"

Mrs. Gereth stared, then broke into a laugh that her companion had not

expected. "Ah, my dear, certainly not so well as you!" The girl, at

this, turned away again--she felt she looked too conscious; and she was

aware that, during a pause, Mrs. Gereth's eyes watched her as she went.

She faced about afresh to meet them, but what she met was a question

that reinforced them. "Why had you a 'delicacy' as to speaking of Mona?"

She stopped again before the bench, and an inspiration came to her. "I

should think _you_ would know," she said with proper dignity.

Blankness was for a moment on Mrs. Gereth's brow; then light broke--she

visibly remembered the scene in the breakfast-room after Mona's night at

Poynton. "Because I contrasted you--told him _you_ were the one?" Her

eyes looked deep. "You were--you are still!"

Fleda gave a bold dramatic laugh. "Thank you, my love--with all the best

things at Ricks!"

Mrs. Gereth considered, trying to penetrate, as it seemed; but at last

she brought out roundly: "For you, you know, I'd send them back!"

The girl's heart gave a tremendous bound; the right way dawned upon her

in a flash. Obscurity indeed the next moment engulfed this course, but

for a few thrilled seconds she had understood. To send the things back

"for her" meant of course to send them back if there were even a dim

chance that she might become mistress of them. Fleda's palpitation was

not allayed as she asked herself what portent Mrs. Gereth had suddenly

perceived of such a chance: that perception could come only from a

sudden suspicion of her secret. This suspicion, in turn, was a tolerably

straight consequence of that implied view of the propriety of surrender

from which, she was well aware, she could say nothing to dissociate

herself. What she first felt was that if she wished to rescue the spoils

she wished also to rescue her secret. So she looked as innocent as she

could and said as quickly as possible: "For me? Why in the world for

me?"

"Because you're so awfully keen."

"Am I? Do I strike you so? You know I hate him," Fleda went on.

She had the sense for a while of Mrs. Gereth's regarding her with the

detachment of some stern, clever stranger. "Then what's the matter with

you? Why do you want me to give in?"

Fleda hesitated; she felt herself reddening. "I've only said your son

wants it. I haven't said _I_ do."

"Then say it and have done with it!"

This was more peremptory than any word her friend, though often speaking

in her presence with much point, had ever yet directly addressed to her.

It affected her like the crack of a whip, but she confined herself, with

an effort, to taking it as a reminder that she must keep her head. "I

know he has his engagement to carry out."

"His engagement to marry? Why, it's just that engagement we loathe!"

"Why should _I_ loathe it?" Fleda asked with a strained smile. Then,

before Mrs. Gereth could reply, she pursued: "I'm thinking of his

general undertaking--to give her the house as she originally saw it."

"To give her the house!" Mrs. Gereth brought up the words from the depth

of the unspeakable. The effort was like the moan of an autumn wind; it

was in the power of such an image to make her turn pale.

"I'm thinking," Fleda continued, "of the simple question of his keeping

faith on an important clause of his contract: it doesn't matter whether

it's with a stupid girl or with a monster of cleverness. I'm thinking of

his honor and his good name."

"The honor and good name of a man you hate?"

"Certainly," the girl resolutely answered. "I don't see why you should

talk as if one had a petty mind. You don't think so. It's not on that

assumption you've ever dealt with me. I can do your son justice, as he

put his case to me."

"Ah, then he did put his case to you!" Mrs. Gereth exclaimed, with an

accent of triumph. "You seemed to speak just now as if really nothing of

any consequence had passed between you."

"Something always passes when one has a little imagination," our young

lady declared.

"I take it you don't mean that Owen has any!" Mrs. Gereth cried with her

large laugh.

Fleda was silent a moment. "No, I don't mean that Owen has any," she

returned at last.

"Why is it you hate him so?" her hostess abruptly inquired.

"Should I love him for all he has made you suffer?"

Mrs. Gereth slowly rose at this and, coming across the walk, took her

young friend in her arms and kissed her. She then passed into one of

Fleda's an arm perversely and imperiously sociable. "Let us move a

little," she said, holding her close and giving a slight shiver. They

strolled along the terrace, and she brought out another question. "He

_was_ eloquent, then, poor dear--he poured forth the story of his

wrongs?"

Fleda smiled down at her companion, who, cloaked and perceptibly bowed,

leaned on her heavily and gave her an odd, unwonted sense of age and

cunning. She took refuge in an evasion. "He couldn't tell me anything

that I didn't know pretty well already."

"It's very true that you know everything. No, dear, you haven't a petty

mind; you've a lovely imagination and you're the nicest creature in the

world. If you were inane, like most girls--like every one, in fact--I

would have insulted you, I would have outraged you, and then you would

have fled from me in terror. No, now that I think of it," Mrs. Gereth

went on, "you wouldn't have fled from me; nothing, on the contrary,

would have made you budge. You would have cuddled into your warm corner,

but you would have been wounded and weeping and martyrized, and you

would have taken every opportunity to tell people I'm a brute--as indeed

I should have been!" They went to and fro, and she would not allow

Fleda, who laughed and protested, to attenuate with any light civility

this spirited picture. She praised her cleverness and her patience; then

she said it was getting cold and dark and they must go in to tea. She

delayed quitting the place, however, and reverted instead to Owen's

ultimatum, about which she asked another question or two; in particular

whether it had struck Fleda that he really believed she would comply

with such a summons.

"I think he really believes that if I try hard enough I can make you:"

after uttering which words our young lady stopped short and emulated the

embrace she had received a few moments before.

"And you've promised to try: I see. You didn't tell me that, either,"

Mrs. Gereth added as they went on. "But you're rascal enough for

anything!" While Fleda was occupied in thinking in what terms she could

explain why she had indeed been rascal enough for the reticence thus

denounced, her companion broke out with an inquiry somewhat irrelevant

and even in form somewhat profane. "Why the devil, at any rate, doesn't

it come off?"