He had uttered the hope that he should see her the next day, but Fleda
could easily reflect that he wouldn't see her if she were not there to
be seen. If there was a thing in the world she desired at that moment,
it was that the next day should have no point of resemblance with the
day that had just elapsed. She accordingly aspired to an absence: she
would go immediately down to Maggie. She ran out that evening and
telegraphed to her sister, and in the morning she quitted London by an
early train. She required for this step no reason but the sense of
necessity. It was a strong personal need; she wished to interpose
something, and there was nothing she could interpose but distance, but
time. If Mrs. Brigstock had to deal with Owen she would allow Mrs.
Brigstock the chance. To be there, to be in the midst of it, was the
reverse of what she craved: she had already been more in the midst of it
than had ever entered into her plan. At any rate she had renounced her
plan; she had no plan now but the plan of separation. This was to
abandon Owen, to give up the fine office of helping him back to his own;
but when she had undertaken that office she had not foreseen that Mrs.
Gereth would defeat it by a manoeuvre so simple. The scene at her
father's rooms had extinguished all offices, and the scene at her
father's rooms was of Mrs. Gereth's producing. Owen, at all events, must
now act for himself: he had obligations to meet, he had satisfactions to
give, and Fleda fairly ached with the wish that he might be equal to
them. She never knew the extent of her tenderness for him till she
became conscious of the present force of her desire that he should be
superior, be perhaps even sublime. She obscurely made out that
superiority, that sublimity, mightn't after all be fatal. She closed her
eyes and lived for a day or two in the mere beauty of confidence. It was
with her on the short journey; it was with her at Maggie's; it glorified
the mean little house in the stupid little town. Owen had grown larger
to her: he would do, like a man, whatever he should have to do. He
wouldn't be weak--not as she was: she herself was weak exceedingly.
Arranging her few possessions in Maggie's fewer receptacles, she caught
a glimpse of the bright side of the fact that her old things were not
such a problem as Mrs. Gereth's. Picking her way with Maggie through the
local puddles, diving with her into smelly cottages and supporting her,
at smellier shops, in firmness over the weight of joints and the taste
of cheese, it was still her own secret that was universally inter-woven
In the puddles, the cottages, the shops she was comfortably alone with
it; that comfort prevailed even while, at the evening meal, her
brother-in-law invited her attention to a diagram, drawn with a fork on
too soiled a tablecloth, of the scandalous drains of the Convalescent
Home. To be alone with it she had come away from Ricks; and now she knew
that to be alone with it she had come away from London. This advantage
was of course menaced, but not immediately destroyed, by the arrival, on
the second day, of the note she had been sure she should receive from
Owen. He had gone to West Kensington and found her flown, but he had got
her address from the little maid and then hurried to a club and written
to her. "Why have you left me just when I want you most?" he demanded.
The next words, it was true, were more reassuring on the question of his
steadiness. "I don't know what your reason may be," they went on, "nor
why you've not left a line for me; but I don't think you can feel that I
did anything yesterday that it wasn't right for me to do. As regards
Mrs. Brigstock, certainly, I just felt what was right and I did it. She
had no business whatever to attack you that way, and I should have been
ashamed if I had left her there to worry you. I won't have you worried
by any one; no one shall be disagreeable to you but me. I didn't mean to
be so yesterday, and I don't to-day; but I'm perfectly free now to want
you, and I want you much more than you've allowed me to explain. You'll
see if I'm not all right, if you'll let me come to you. Don't be
afraid--I'll not hurt you nor trouble you. I give you my honor I'll not
hurt any one. Only I _must_ see you, on what I had to say to Mrs. B. She
was nastier than I thought she could be, but I'm behaving like an angel.
I assure you I'm all right--that's exactly what I want you to see. You
owe me something, you know, for what you said you would do and haven't
done; what your departure without a word gives me to understand--doesn't
it?--that you definitely can't do. Don't simply forsake me. See me, if
you only see me once. I shan't wait for any leave--I shall come down
to-morrow. I've been looking into trains and find there's something that
will bring me down just after lunch and something very good for getting
me back. I won't stop long. For God's sake, be there."
This communication arrived in the morning, but Fleda would still have
had time to wire a protest. She debated on that alternative; then she
read the note over and found in one phrase an exact statement of her
duty. Owen's simplicity had expressed it, and her subtlety had nothing
to answer. She owed him something for her obvious failure, and what she
owed him was to receive him. If indeed she had known he would make this
attempt she might have been held to have gained nothing by her flight.
Well, she had gained what she had gained--she had gained the interval.
She had no compunction for the greater trouble she should give the young
man; it was now doubtless right that he should have as much trouble as
possible. Maggie, who thought she was in her confidence, but was
immensely not, had reproached her for having left Mrs. Gereth, and
Maggie was just in this proportion gratified to hear of the visitor with
whom, early in the afternoon, she would have to ask to be left alone.
Maggie liked to see far, and now she could sit upstairs and rake the
whole future. She had known that, as she familiarly said, there was
something the matter with Fleda, and the value of that knowledge was
augmented by the fact that there was apparently also something the
matter with Mr. Gereth.
Fleda, downstairs, learned soon enough what this was. It was simply
that, as he announced the moment he stood before her, he was now all
right. When she asked him what he meant by that state he replied that he
meant he could practically regard himself henceforth as a free man: he
had had at West Kensington, as soon as they got into the street, such a
horrid scene with Mrs. Brigstock.
"I knew what she wanted to say to me: that's why I was determined to get
her off. I knew I shouldn't like it, but I was perfectly prepared," said
Owen. "She brought it out as soon as we got round the corner; she asked
me point-blank if I was in love with you."
"And what did you say to that?"
"That it was none of her business."
"Ah," said Fleda, "I'm not so sure!"
"Well, _I_ am, and I'm the person most concerned. Of course I didn't use
just those words: I was perfectly civil, quite as civil as she. But I
told her I didn't consider she had a right to put me any such question.
I said I wasn't sure that even Mona had, with the extraordinary line,
you know, that Mona has taken. At any rate the whole thing, the way _I_
put it, was between Mona and me; and between Mona and me, if she didn't
mind, it would just have to remain."