"The day after she had found Owen at your feet. She knows everything."
Fleda shook her head sadly; she was more startled than she cared to
show. This odd journey of Mrs. Brigstock's, which, with a simplicity
equal for once to Owen's, she had not divined, now struck her as having
produced the hush of the last ten days. "There are things she doesn't
know!" she presently exclaimed.
"She knows he would do anything to marry you."
"He hasn't told her so," Fleda said.
"No, but he has told you. That's better still!" laughed Mrs. Gereth. "My
dear child," she went on with an air that affected the girl as a sort of
blind profanity, "don't try to make yourself out better than you are.
_I_ know what you are. I haven't lived with you so much for nothing.
You're not quite a saint in heaven yet. Lord, what a creature you'd have
thought me in my good time! But you do like it, fortunately, you idiot.
You're pale with your passion, you sweet thing. That's exactly what I
wanted to see. I can't for the life of me think where the shame comes
in." Then with a finer significance, a look that seemed to Fleda
strange, she added: "It's all right."
"I've seen him but twice," said Fleda.
"But twice?" Mrs. Gereth still smiled.
"On the occasion, at papa's, that Mrs. Brigstock told you of, and one
day, since then, down at Maggie's."
"Well, those things are between yourselves, and you seem to me both poor
creatures at best." Mrs. Gereth spoke with a rich humor which tipped
with light for an instant a real conviction. "I don't know what you've
got in your veins: you absurdly exaggerated the difficulties. But enough
is as good as a feast, and when once I get you abroad together--!" She
checked herself as if from excess of meaning; what might happen when she
should get them abroad together was to be gathered only from the way she
slowly rubbed her hands.
The gesture, however, made the promise so definite that for a moment her
companion was almost beguiled. But there was nothing to account, as yet,
for the wealth of Mrs. Gereth's certitude: the visit of the lady of
Waterbath appeared but half to explain it. "Is it permitted to be
surprised," Fleda deferentially asked, "at Mrs. Brigstock's thinking it
would help her to see you?"
"It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools,"
said Mrs. Gereth. "If a cow should try to calculate, that's the kind of
happy thought she'd have. Mrs. Brigstock came down to plead with me."
Fleda mused a moment. "That's what she came to do with _me_," she then
honestly returned. "But what did she expect to get of you, with your
opposition so marked from the first?"
"She didn't know I want _you_, my dear. It's a wonder, with all my
violence--the gross publicity I've given my desires. But she's as stupid
as an owl--she doesn't feel your charm."
Fleda felt herself flush slightly, but she tried to smile. "Did you tell
her all about it? Did you make her understand you want me?"
"For what do you take me? I wasn't such a donkey."
"So as not to aggravate Mona?" Fleda suggested.
"So as not to aggravate Mona, naturally. We've had a narrow course to
steer, but thank God we're at last in the open!"
"What do you call the open, Mrs. Gereth?" Fleda demanded. Then as the
other faltered: "Do you know where Mr. Owen is to-day?"
Mrs. Gereth stared. "Do you mean he's at Waterbath? Well, that's your
own affair. I can bear it if _you_ can."
"Wherever he is, I can bear it," Fleda said. "But I haven't the least
idea where he is."
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Mrs. Gereth broke out with a
change of note that showed how deep a passion underlay everything she
had said. The poor woman, catching her companion's hand, however, the
next moment, as if to retract something of this harshness, spoke more
patiently. "Don't you understand, Fleda, how immensely, how devotedly,
I've trusted you?" Her tone was indeed a supplication.
Fleda was infinitely shaken; she was silent a little. "Yes, I
understand. Did she go to you to complain of me?"
"She came to see what she could do. She had been tremendously upset, the
day before, by what had taken place at your father's, and she had posted
down to Ricks on the inspiration of the moment. She hadn't meant it on
leaving home; it was the sight of you closeted there with Owen that had
suddenly determined her. The whole story, she said, was written in your
two faces: she spoke as if she had never seen such an exhibition. Owen
was on the brink, but there might still be time to save him, and it was
with this idea she had bearded me in my den. 'What won't a mother do,
you know?'--that was one of the things she said. What wouldn't a mother
do indeed? I thought I had sufficiently shown her what! She tried to
break me down by an appeal to my good nature, as she called it, and from
the moment she opened on _you_, from the moment she denounced Owen's
falsity, I was as good-natured as she could wish. I understood that it
was a plea for mere mercy, that you and he between you were killing her
child. Of course I was delighted that Mona should be killed, but I was
studiously kind to Mrs. Brigstock. At the same time I was honest, I
didn't pretend to anything I couldn't feel. I asked her why the marriage
hadn't taken place months ago, when Owen was perfectly ready; and I
showed her how completely that fatuous mistake on Mona's part cleared
his responsibility. It was she who had killed _him_--it was she who had
destroyed his affection, his illusions. Did she want him now when he was
estranged, when he was disgusted, when he had a sore grievance? She
reminded me that Mona had a sore grievance too, but she admitted that
she hadn't come to me to speak of that. What she had come to me for was
not to get the old things back, but simply to get Owen. What she wanted
was that I would, in simple pity, see fair play. Owen had been awfully
bedeviled--she didn't call it that, she called it 'misled'--but it was
simply you who had bedeviled him. He would be all right still if I would
see that you were out of the way. She asked me point-blank if it was
possible I could want him to marry you."
Fleda had listened in unbearable pain and growing terror, as if her
interlocutress, stone by stone, were piling some fatal mass upon her
breast. She had the sense of being buried alive, smothered in the mere
expansion of another will; and now there was but one gap left to the
air. A single word, she felt, might close it, and with the question that
came to her lips as Mrs. Gereth paused she seemed to herself to ask, in
cold dread, for her doom. "What did you say to that?" she inquired.
"I was embarrassed, for I saw my danger--the danger of her going home
and saying to Mona that I was backing you up. It had been a bliss to
learn that Owen had really turned to you, but my joy didn't put me off
my guard. I reflected intensely for a few seconds; then I saw my issue."
"Your issue?" Fleda murmured.
"I remembered how you had tied my hands about saying a word to Owen."
Fleda wondered. "And did you remember the little letter that, with your
hands tied, you still succeeded in writing to him?"
"Perfectly; my little letter was a model of reticence. What I remembered
was all that in those few words I forbade myself to say. I had been an
angel of delicacy--I had effaced myself like a saint. It was not for me
to have done all that and then figure to such a woman as having done the
opposite. Besides, it was none of her business."
"Is that what you said to her?" Fleda asked.
"I said to her that her question revealed a total misconception of the
nature of my present relations with my son. I said to her that I had no
relations with him at all, and that nothing had passed between us for
months. I said to her that my hands were spotlessly clean of any attempt
to make him make up to you. I said to her that I had taken from Poynton
what I had a right to take, but had done nothing else in the world. I
was determined that if I had bit my tongue off to oblige you I would at
least have the righteousness that my sacrifice gave me."
"And was Mrs. Brigstock satisfied with your answer?"
"She was visibly relieved."
"It was fortunate for you," said Fleda, "that she's apparently not aware
of the manner in which, almost under her nose, you advertised me to him
at Poynton."
Mrs. Gereth appeared to recall that scene; she smiled with a serenity
remarkably effective as showing how cheerfully used she had grown to
invidious allusions to it. "How should she be aware of it?"
"She would if Owen had described your outbreak to Mona."
"Yes, but he didn't describe it. All his instinct was to conceal it from
Mona. He wasn't conscious, but he was already in love with you!" Mrs.
Gereth declared.