Ten days after his visit she received a communication from Mrs.
Gereth--a telegram of eight words, exclusive of signature and date.
"Come up immediately and stay with me here"--it was characteristically
sharp, as Maggie said; but, as Maggie added, it was also
characteristically kind. "Here" was an hotel in London, and Maggie had
embraced a condition of life which already began to produce in her some
yearning for hotels in London. She would have responded in an instant,
and she was surprised that her sister seemed to hesitate. Fleda's
hesitation, which lasted but an hour, was expressed in that young lady's
own mind by the reflection that in obeying her friend's summons she
shouldn't know what she should be "in for." Her friend's summons,
however, was but another name for her friend's appeal; and Mrs. Gereth's
bounty had laid her under obligations more sensible than any reluctance.
In the event--that is at the end of her hour--she testified to her
gratitude by taking the train and to her mistrust by leaving her
luggage. She went as if she had gone up for the day. In the train,
however, she had another thoughtful hour, during which it was her
mistrust that mainly deepened. She felt as if for ten days she had sat
in darkness, looking to the east for a dawn that had not yet glimmered.
Her mind had lately been less occupied with Mrs. Gereth; it had been so
exceptionally occupied with Mona. If the sequel was to justify Owen's
prevision of Mrs. Brigstock's action upon her daughter, this action was
at the end of a week as much a mystery as ever. The stillness, all
round, had been exactly what Fleda desired, but it gave her for the time
a deep sense of failure, the sense of a sudden drop from a height at
which she had all things beneath her. She had nothing beneath her now;
she herself was at the bottom of the heap. No sign had reached her from
Owen--poor Owen, who had clearly no news to give about his precious
letter from Waterbath. If Mrs. Brigstock had hurried back to obtain that
this letter should be written, Mrs. Brigstock might then have spared
herself so great an inconvenience. Owen had been silent for the best of
all reasons--the reason that he had had nothing in life to say. If the
letter had not been written he would simply have had to introduce some
large qualification into his account of his freedom. He had left his
young friend under her refusal to listen to him until he should be able,
on the contrary, to extend that picture; and his present submission was
all in keeping with the rigid honesty that his young friend had
prescribed.
It was this that formed the element through which Mona loomed large;
Fleda had enough imagination, a fine enough feeling for life, to be
impressed with such an image of successful immobility. The massive
maiden at Waterbath _was_ successful from the moment she could entertain
her resentments as if they had been poor relations who needn't put her
to expense. She was a magnificent dead weight; there was something
positive and portentous in her quietude. "What game are they all
playing?" poor Fleda could only ask; for she had an intimate conviction
that Owen was now under the roof of his betrothed. That was stupefying
if he really hated Mona; and if he didn't really hate her what had
brought him to Raphael Road and to Maggie's? Fleda had no real light,
but she felt that to account for the absence of any result of their last
meeting would take a supposition of the full sacrifice to charity that
she had held up before him. If he had gone to Waterbath it had been
simply because he had to go. She had as good as told him that he would
have to go; that this was an inevitable incident of his keeping perfect
faith--faith so literal that the smallest subterfuge would always be a
reproach to him. When she tried to remember that it was for herself he
was taking his risk, she felt how weak a way that was of expressing
Mona's supremacy. There would be no need of keeping him up if there were
nothing to keep him up to. Her eyes grew wan as she discerned in the
impenetrable air that Mona's thick outline never wavered an inch. She
wondered fitfully what Mrs. Gereth had by this time made of it, and
reflected with a strange elation that the sand on which the mistress of
Ricks had built a momentary triumph was quaking beneath the surface. As
The Morning Post still held its peace, she would be, of course, more
confident; but the hour was at hand at which Owen would have absolutely
to do either one thing or the other. To keep perfect faith was to inform
against his mother, and to hear the police at her door would be Mrs.
Gereth's awakening. How much she was beguiled Fleda could see from her
having been for a whole month quite as deep and dark as Mona. She had
let her young friend alone because of the certitude, cultivated at
Ricks, that Owen had done the opposite. He had done the opposite indeed,
but much good had that brought forth! To have sent for her now, Fleda
felt, was from this point of view wholly natural: she had sent for her
to show at last how much she had scored. If, however, Owen was really at
Waterbath the refutation of that boast was easy.
Fleda found Mrs. Gereth in modest apartments and with an air of fatigue
in her distinguished face--a sign, as she privately remarked, of the
strain of that effort to be discreet of which she herself had been
having the benefit. It was a constant feature of their relation that
this lady could make Fleda blench a little, and that the effect
proceeded from the intense pressure of her confidence. If the confidence
had been heavy even when the girl, in the early flush of devotion, had
been able to feel herself most responsive, it drew her heart into her
mouth now that she had reserves and conditions, now that she couldn't
simplify with the same bold hand as her protectress. In the very
brightening of the tired look, and at the moment of their embrace, Fleda
felt on her shoulders the return of the load, so that her spirit frankly
quailed as she asked herself what she had brought up from her trusted
seclusion to support it. Mrs. Gereth's free manner always made a joke of
weakness, and there was in such a welcome a richness, a kind of familiar
nobleness, that suggested shame to a harried conscience. Something had
happened, she could see, and she could also see, in the bravery that
seemed to announce it had changed everything, a formidable assumption
that what had happened was what a healthy young woman must like. The
absence of luggage had made this young woman feel meagre even before her
companion, taking in the bareness at a second glance, exclaimed upon it
and roundly rebuked her. Of course she had expected her to stay.
Fleda thought best to show bravery too, and to show it from the first.
"What you expected, dear Mrs. Gereth, is exactly what I came up to
ascertain. It struck me as right to do that first. I mean to ascertain,
without making preparations."
"Then you'll be so good as to make them on the spot!" Mrs. Gereth was
most emphatic. "You're going abroad with me."