Fleda felt the full need of giving a reason for her departure; but at
first she only said with cheerful frankness: "I departed."
Her companion again looked at her in silence. "I thought you had gone to
her for several months."
"Well," Fleda replied, "I couldn't stay. I didn't like it. I didn't like
it at all--I couldn't bear it," she went on. "In the midst of those
trophies of Poynton, living with them, touching them, using them, I felt
as if I were backing her up. As I was not a bit of an accomplice, as I
hate what she has done, I didn't want to be, even to the extent of the
mere look of it--what is it you call such people?--an accessory after
the fact." There was something she kept back so rigidly that the joy of
uttering the rest was double. She felt the sharpest need of giving him
all the other truth. There was a matter as to which she had deceived
him, and there was a matter as to which she had deceived Mrs. Gereth,
but her lack of pleasure in deception as such came home to her now. She
busied herself with the tea and, to extend the occupation, cleared the
table still more, spreading out the coarse cups and saucers and the
vulgar little plates. She was aware that she produced more confusion
than symmetry, but she was also aware that she was violently nervous.
Owen tried to help her with something: this made rather for disorder.
"My reason for not writing to you," she pursued, "was simply that I was
hoping to hear more from Ricks. I've waited from day to day for that."
"But you've heard nothing?"
"Not a word."
"Then what I understand," said Owen, "is that, practically, you and
Mummy have quarreled. And you've done it--I mean you personally--for
_me_."
"Oh no, we haven't quarreled a bit!" Then with a smile: "We've only
diverged."
"You've diverged uncommonly far!"--Owen laughed back. Fleda, with her
hideous crockery and her father's collections, could conceive that these
objects, to her visitor's perception even more strongly than to her own,
measured the length of the swing from Poynton and Ricks; she was aware
too that her high standards figured vividly enough even to Owen's
simplicity to make him reflect that West Kensington was a tremendous
fall. If she had fallen it was because she had acted for him. She was
all the more content he should thus see she _had_ acted, as the cost of
it, in his eyes, was none of her own showing. "What seems to have
happened," he exclaimed, "is that you've had a row with her and yet not
moved her!"
Fleda considered a moment; she was full of the impression that,
notwithstanding her scant help, he saw his way clearer than he had seen
it at Ricks. He might mean many things; and what if the many should mean
in their turn only one? "The difficulty is, you understand, that she
doesn't really see into your situation." She hesitated. "She doesn't
comprehend why your marriage hasn't yet taken place."
Owen stared. "Why, for the reason I told you: that Mona won't take
another step till mother has given full satisfaction. Everything must be
there. You see, everything _was_ there the day of that fatal visit."
"Yes, that's what I understood from you at Ricks," said Fleda; "but I
haven't repeated it to your mother." She had hated, at Ricks, to talk
with him about Mona, but now that scruple was swept away. If he could
speak of Mona's visit as fatal, she need at least not pretend not to
notice it. It made all the difference that she had tried to assist him
and had failed: to give him any faith in her service she must give him
all her reasons but one. She must give him, in other words, with a
corresponding omission, all Mrs. Gereth's. "You can easily see that, as
she dislikes your marriage, anything that may seem to make it less
certain works in her favor. Without my telling her, she has suspicions
and views that are simply suggested by your delay. Therefore it didn't
seem to me right to make them worse. By holding off long enough, she
thinks she may put an end to your engagement. If Mona's waiting, she
believes she may at last tire Mona out." That, in all conscience, Fleda
felt was lucid enough.
So the young man, following her attentively, appeared equally to feel.
"So far as that goes," he promptly declared, "she _has_ at last tired
Mona out." He uttered the words with a strange approach to hilarity.
Fleda's surprise at this aberration left her a moment looking at him.
"Do you mean your marriage is off?"
Owen answered with a kind of gay despair. "God knows, Miss Vetch, where
or when or what my marriage is! If it isn't 'off,' it certainly, at the
point things have reached, isn't _on_. I haven't seen Mona for ten days,
and for a week I haven't heard from her. She used to write me every
week, don't you know? She won't budge from Waterbath, and I haven't
budged from town." Then he suddenly broke out: "If she _does_ chuck me,
will mother come round?"
Fleda, at this, felt that her heroism had come to its real test--felt
that in telling him the truth she should effectively raise a hand to
push his impediment out of the way. Was the knowledge that such a motion
would probably dispose forever of Mona capable of yielding to the
conception of still giving her every chance she was entitled to? That
conception was heroic, but at the same moment it reminded Fleda of the
place it had held in her plan, she was also reminded of the not less
urgent claim of the truth. Ah, the truth--there was a limit to the
impunity with which one could juggle with it! Wasn't what she had most
to remember the fact that Owen had a right to his property and that he
had also her vow to stand by him in the effort to recover it? How did
she stand by him if she hid from him the single way to recover it of
which she was quite sure? For an instant that seemed to her the fullest
of her life she debated. "Yes," she said at last, "if your marriage is
really abandoned, she will give up everything she has taken."
"That's just what makes Mona hesitate!" Owen honestly exclaimed. "I mean
the idea that I shall get back the things only if she gives me up."
Fleda thought an instant. "You mean makes her hesitate to keep you--not
hesitate to renounce you?"
Owen looked a trifle bewildered. "She doesn't see the use of hanging on,
as I haven't even yet put the matter into legal hands. She's awfully
keen about that, and awfully disgusted that I don't. She says it's the
only real way, and she thinks I'm afraid to take it. She has given me
time and then has given me again more. She says I give Mummy too much.
She says I'm a muff to go pottering on. That's why she's drawing off so
hard, don't you see?"
"I don't see very clearly. Of course you must give her what you offered
her; of course you must keep your word. There must be no mistake about
_that_!" the girl declared.
Owen's bewilderment visibly increased. "You think, then, as she does,
that I _must_ send down the police?"
The mixture of reluctance and dependence in this made her feel how much
she was failing him. She had the sense of "chucking" him too. "No, no,
not yet!" she said, though she had really no other and no better course
to prescribe. "Doesn't it occur to you," she asked in a moment, "that if
Mona is, as you say, drawing away, she may have, in doing so, a very
high motive? She knows the immense value of all the objects detained by
your mother, and to restore the spoils of Poynton she is ready--is that
it!--to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice is that of an engagement she had
entered upon with joy."
Owen had been blank a moment before, but he followed this argument with
success--a success so immediate that it enabled him to produce with
decision: "Ah, she's not that sort! She wants them herself," he added;
"she wants to feel they're hers; she doesn't care whether I have them or
not! And if she can't get them she doesn't want _me_. If she can't get
them she doesn't want anything at all."
This was categoric; Fleda drank it in. "She takes such an interest in
them?"
"So it appears."
"So much that they're _all_, and that she can let everything else
absolutely depend upon them?"
Owen weighed her question as if he felt the responsibility of his
answer. But that answer came in a moment, and, as Fleda could see, out
of a wealth of memory. "She never wanted them particularly till they
seemed to be in danger. Now she has an idea about them; and when she
gets hold of an idea--Oh dear me!" He broke off, pausing and looking
away as with a sense of the futility of expression: it was the first
time Fleda had ever heard him explain a matter so pointedly or embark at
all on a generalization. It was striking, it was touching to her, as he
faltered, that he appeared but half capable of floating his
generalization to the end. The girl, however, was so far competent to
fill up his blank as that she had divined, on the occasion of Mona's
visit to Poynton, what would happen in the event of the accident at
which he glanced. She had there with her own eyes seen Owen's betrothed
get hold of an idea. "I say, you know, _do_ give me some tea!" he went
on irrelevantly and familiarly.
Her profuse preparations had all this time had no sequel, and, with a
laugh that she felt to be awkward, she hastily complied with his
request. "It's sure to be horrid," she said; "we don't have at all good
things." She offered him also bread and butter, of which he partook,
holding his cup and saucer in his other hand and moving slowly about the
room. She poured herself a cup, but not to take it; after which, without
wanting it, she began to eat a small stale biscuit. She was struck with
the extinction of the unwillingness she had felt at Ricks to contribute
to the bandying between them of poor Mona's name; and under this
influence she presently resumed: "Am I to understand that she engaged
herself to marry you without caring for you?"
Owen looked out into Raphael Road. "She _did_ care for me awfully. But
she can't stand the strain."
"The strain of what?"
"Why, of the whole wretched thing."
"The whole thing has indeed been wretched, and I can easily conceive its
effect upon her," Fleda said.
Her visitor turned sharp round. "You _can_?" There was a light in his
strong stare. "You can understand it's spoiling her temper and making
her come down on _me_? She behaves as if I were of no use to her at
all!"