XVIII

She was slow to take in the announcement, but when she had done so she

felt it to be more than her cup of bitterness would hold. Her bitterness

was her anxiety, the taste of which suddenly sickened her. What had she

become, on the spot, but a traitress to her friend? The treachery

increased with the view of the friend's motive, a motive magnificent as

a tribute to her value. Mrs. Gereth had wished to make sure of her and

had reasoned that there would be no such way as by a large appeal to her

honor. If it be true, as men have declared, that the sense of honor is

weak in women, some of the bearings of this stroke might have thrown a

light on the question. What was now, at all events, put before Fleda was

that she had been made sure of, for the greatness of the surrender

imposed an obligation as great. There was an expression she had heard

used by young men with whom she danced: the only word to fit Mrs.

Gereth's intention was that Mrs. Gereth had designed to "fetch" her. It

was a calculated, it was a crushing bribe; it looked her in the eyes and

said simply: "That's what I do for you!" What Fleda was to do in return

required no pointing out. The sense, at present, of how little she had

done made her almost cry aloud with pain; but her first endeavor, in the

face of the fact, was to keep such a cry from reaching her companion.

How little she had done Mrs. Gereth didn't yet know, and possibly there

would be still some way of turning round before the discovery. On her

own side too Fleda had almost made one: she had known she was wanted,

but she had not after all conceived how magnificently much. She had been

treated by her friend's act as a conscious prize, but what made her a

conscious prize was only the power the act itself imputed to her. As

high, bold diplomacy it dazzled and carried her off her feet. She

admired the noble risk of it, a risk Mrs. Gereth had faced for the

utterly poor creature that the girl now felt herself. The change it

instantly wrought in her was, moreover, extraordinary: it transformed at

a touch her emotion on the subject of concessions. A few weeks earlier

she had jumped at the duty of pleading for them, practically quarreling

with the lady of Ricks for her refusal to restore what she had taken.

She had been sore with the wrong to Owen, she had bled with the wounds

of Poynton; now however, as she heard of the replenishment of the void

that had so haunted her, she came as near sounding an alarm as if from

the deck of a ship she had seen a person she loved jump into the sea.

Mrs. Gereth had become in a flash the victim; poor little Ricks had been

laid bare in a night. If Fleda's feeling about the old things had taken

precipitate form the form would have been a frantic command. It was

indeed for mere want of breath that she didn't shout: "Oh, stop

them--it's no use; bring them back--it's too late!" And what most kept

her breathless was her companion's very grandeur. Fleda distinguished as

never before the purity of such a passion; it made Mrs. Gereth august

and almost sublime. It was absolutely unselfish--she cared nothing for

mere possession. She thought solely and incorruptibly of what was best

for the things; she had surrendered them to the presumptive care of the

one person of her acquaintance who felt about them as she felt herself,

and whose long lease of the future would be the nearest approach that

could be compassed to committing them to a museum. Now it was indeed

that Fleda knew what rested on her; now it was also that she measured as

if for the first time Mrs. Gereth's view of the natural influence of a

fine acquisition. She had adopted the idea of blowing away the last

doubt of what her young friend would gain, of making good still more

than she was obliged to make it the promise of weeks before. It was one

thing for the girl to have heard that in a certain event restitution

would be made; it was another for her to see the condition, with a noble

trust, treated in advance as performed, and to be able to feel that she

should have only to open a door to find every old piece in every old

corner. To have played such a card was therefore, practically, for Mrs.

Gereth, to have won the game. Fleda had certainly to recognize that, so

far as the theory of the matter went, the game had been won. Oh, she had

been made sure of!

She couldn't, however, succeed for so very many minutes in deferring her

exposure. "Why didn't you wait, dearest? Ah, why didn't you wait?"--if

that inconsequent appeal kept rising to her lips to be cut short before

it was spoken, this was only because at first the humility of gratitude

helped her to gain time, enabled her to present herself very honestly as

too overcome to be clear. She kissed her companion's hands, she did

homage at her feet, she murmured soft snatches of praise, and yet in the

midst of it all was conscious that what she really showed most was the

wan despair at her heart. She saw Mrs. Gereth's glimpse of this despair

suddenly widen, heard the quick chill of her voice pierce through the

false courage of endearments. "Do you mean to tell me at such an hour as

this that you've really lost him?"

The tone of the question made the idea a possibility for which Fleda had

nothing from this moment but terror. "I don't know, Mrs. Gereth; how can

I say?" she asked. "I've not seen him for so long; as I told you just

now, I don't even know where he is. That's by no fault of his," she

hurried on: "he would have been with me every day if I had consented.

But I made him understand, the last time, that I'll receive him again

only when he's able to show me that his release has been complete and

definite. Oh, he can't yet, don't you see, and that's why he hasn't been

back. It's far better than his coming only that we should both be

miserable. When he does come he'll be in a better position. He'll be

tremendously moved by the splendid thing you've done. I know you wish me

to feel that you've done it as much for me as for Owen, but your having

done it for me is just what will delight him most! When he hears of it,"

said Fleda, in desperate optimism, "when he hears of it--" There indeed,

regretting her advance, she quite broke down. She was wholly powerless

to say what Owen would do when he heard of it. "I don't know what he

won't make of you and how he won't hug you!" she had to content herself

with lamely declaring. She had drawn Mrs. Gereth to a sofa with a vague

instinct of pacifying her and still, after all, gaining time; but it was

a position in which her great duped benefactress, portentously patient

again during this demonstration, looked far from inviting a "hug." Fleda

found herself tricking out the situation with artificial flowers, trying

to talk even herself into the fancy that Owen, whose name she now made

simple and sweet, might come in upon them at any moment. She felt an

immense need to be understood and justified; she averted her face in

dread from all that she might have to be forgiven. She pressed on her

companion's arm as if to keep her quiet till she should really know, and

then, after a minute, she poured out the clear essence of what in

happier days had been her "secret." "You mustn't think I don't adore him

when I've told him so to his face. I love him so that I'd die for him--I

love him so that it's horrible. Don't look at me therefore as if I had

not been kind, as if I had not been as tender as if he were dying and my

tenderness were what would save him. Look at me as if you believe me, as

if you feel what I've been through. Darling Mrs. Gereth, I could kiss

the ground he walks on. I haven't a rag of pride; I used to have, but

it's gone. I used to have a secret, but every one knows it now, and any

one who looks at me can say, I think, what's the matter with me. It's

not so very fine, my secret, and the less one really says about it the

better; but I want you to have it from me because I was stiff before. I

want you to see for yourself that I've been brought as low as a girl can

very well be. It serves me right," Fleda laughed, "if I was ever proud

and horrid to you! I don't know what you wanted me, in those days at

Ricks, to do, but I don't think you can have wanted much more than what

I've done. The other day at Maggie's I did things that made me,

afterwards, think of you! I don't know what girls may do; but if he

doesn't know that there isn't an inch of me that isn't his--!" Fleda

sighed as if she couldn't express it; she piled it up, as she would have

said; holding Mrs. Gereth with dilated eyes, she seemed to sound her for

the effect of these words. "It's idiotic," she wearily smiled; "it's so

strange that I'm almost angry for it, and the strangest part of all is

that it isn't even happiness. It's anguish--it was from the first; from

the first there was a bitterness and a kind of dread. But I owe you

every word of the truth. You don't do him justice, either: he's a dear,

I assure you he's a dear. I'd trust him to the last breath; I don't

think you really know him. He's ever so much cleverer than he makes a

show of; he's remarkable in his own shy way. You told me at Ricks that

you wanted me to let myself go, and I've 'gone' quite far enough to

discover as much as that, as well as all sorts of other delightful

things about him. You'll tell me I make myself out worse than I am,"

said the girl, feeling more and more in her companion's attitude a

quality that treated her speech as a desperate rigmarole and even

perhaps as a piece of cold immodesty. She wanted to make herself out

"bad"--it was a part of her justification; but it suddenly occurred to

her that such a picture of her extravagance imputed a want of gallantry

to the young man. "I don't care for anything you think," she declared,

"because Owen, don't you know, sees me as I am. He's so kind that it

makes up for everything!"

This attempt at gayety was futile; the silence with which, for a minute,

her adversary greeted her troubled plea brought home to her afresh that

she was on the bare defensive. "Is it a part of his kindness never to

come near you?" Mrs. Gereth inquired at last. "Is it a part of his

kindness to leave you without an inkling of where he is?" She rose again

from where Fleda had kept her down; she seemed to tower there in the

majesty of her gathered wrong. "Is it a part of his kindness that, after

I've toiled as I've done for six days, and with my own weak hands, which

I haven't spared, to denude myself, in your interest, to that point that

I've nothing left, as I may say, but what I have on my back--is it a

part of his kindness that you're not even able to produce him for me?"

There was a high contempt in this which was for Owen quite as much, and

in the light of which Fleda felt that her effort at plausibility had

been mere groveling. She rose from the sofa with an humiliated sense of

rising from ineffectual knees. That discomfort, however, lived but an

instant: it was swept away in a rush of loyalty to the absent. She

herself could bear his mother's scorn; but to avert it from his sweet

innocence she broke out with a quickness that was like the raising of an

arm. "Don't blame him--don't blame him: he'd do anything on earth for

me! It was I," said Fleda, eagerly, "who sent him back to her; I made

him go; I pushed him out of the house; I declined to have anything to

say to him except on another footing."

Mrs. Gereth stared as at some gross material ravage. "Another footing?

What other footing?"

"The one I've already made so clear to you: my having it in black and

white, as you may say, from her that she freely gives him up."

"Then you think he lies when he tells you that he has recovered his

liberty?"

Fleda hesitated a moment; after which she exclaimed with a certain hard

pride: "He's enough in love with me for anything!"

"For anything, apparently, except to act like a man and impose his

reason and his will on your incredible folly. For anything except to put

an end, as any man worthy of the name would have put it, to your

systematic, to your idiotic perversity. What are you, after all, my

dear, I should like to know, that a gentleman who offers you what Owen

offers should have to meet such wonderful exactions, to take such

extraordinary precautions about your sweet little scruples?" Her

resentment rose to a strange insolence which Fleda took full in the face

and which, for the moment at least, had the horrible force to present to

her vengefully a showy side of the truth. It gave her a blinding glimpse

of lost alternatives. "I don't know what to think of him," Mrs. Gereth

went on; "I don't know what to call him: I'm so ashamed of him that I

can scarcely speak of him even to _you_. But indeed I'm so ashamed of

you both together that I scarcely know in common decency where to look."

She paused to give Fleda the full benefit of this remarkable statement;

then she exclaimed: "Any one but a jackass would have tucked you under

his arm and marched you off to the Registrar!"

Fleda wondered; with her free imagination she could wonder even while

her cheek stung from a slap. "To the Registrar?"

"That would have been the sane, sound, immediate course to adopt. With a

grain of gumption you'd both instantly have felt it. _I_ should have

found a way to take you, you know, if I'd been what Owen's supposed to

be. _I_ should have got the business over first; the rest could come

when you liked! Good God, girl, your place was to stand before me as a

woman honestly married. One doesn't know what one has hold of in

touching you, and you must excuse my saying that you're literally

unpleasant to me to meet as you are. Then at least we could have talked,

and Owen, if he had the ghost of a sense of humor, could have snapped

his fingers at your refinements."

This stirring speech affected our young lady as if it had been the shake

of a tambourine borne towards her from a gypsy dance: her head seemed to

go round and she felt a sudden passion in her feet. The emotion,

however, was but meagrely expressed in the flatness with which she heard

herself presently say: "I'll go to the Registrar now."

"Now?" Magnificent was the sound Mrs. Gereth threw into this

monosyllable. "And pray who's to take you?" Fleda gave a colorless

smile, and her companion continued: "Do you literally mean that you

can't put your hand upon him?" Fleda's wan grimace appeared to irritate

her; she made a short, imperious gesture. "Find him for me, you

fool--_find_ him for me!"

"What do you want of him," Fleda sadly asked, "feeling as you do to both

of us?"

"Never mind how I feel, and never mind what I say when I'm furious!"

Mrs. Gereth still more incisively added. "Of course I cling to you, you

wretches, or I shouldn't suffer as I do. What I want of him is to see

that he takes you; what I want of him is to go with you myself to the

place." She looked round the room as if, in feverish haste, for a mantle

to catch up; she bustled to the window as if to spy out a cab: she would

allow half an hour for the job. Already in her bonnet, she had snatched

from the sofa a garment for the street: she jerked it on as she came

back. "Find him, find him," she repeated; "come straight out with me, to

try, at least, to get at him!"

"How can I get at him? He'll come when he's ready," Fleda replied.

Mrs. Gereth turned on her sharply. "Ready for what? Ready to see me

ruined without a reason or a reward?"

Fleda was silent; the worst of it all was that there was something

unspoken between them. Neither of them dared to utter it, but the

influence of it was in the girl's tone when she returned at last, with

great gentleness: "Don't be harsh to me--I'm very unhappy." The words

produced a visible impression on Mrs. Gereth, who held her face averted

and sent off through the window a gaze that kept pace with the long

caravan of her treasures. Fleda knew she was watching it wind up the

avenue of Poynton--Fleda participated indeed fully in the vision; so

that after a little the most consoling thing seemed to her to add: "I

don't see why in the world you take so for granted that he's, as you

say, 'lost.'"

Mrs. Gereth continued to stare out of the window, and her stillness

denoted some success in controlling herself. "If he's not lost, why are

you unhappy?"

"I'm unhappy because I torment you, and you don't understand me."

"No, Fleda, I don't understand you," said Mrs. Gereth, finally facing

her again. "I don't understand you at all, and it's as if you and Owen

were of quite another race and another flesh. You make me feel very

old-fashioned and simple and bad. But you must take me as I am, since

you take so much else _with_ me!" She spoke now with the drop of her

resentment, with a dry and weary calm. "It would have been better for me

if I had never known you," she pursued, "and certainly better if I

hadn't taken such an extraordinary fancy to you. But that too was

inevitable: everything, I suppose, is inevitable. It was all my own

doing--you didn't run after me: I pounced on you and caught you up.

You're a stiff little beggar, in spite of your pretty manners: yes,

you're hideously misleading. I hope you feel how handsome it is of me to

recognize the independence of your character. It was your clever

sympathy that did it--your extraordinary feeling for those accursed

vanities. You were sharper about them than any one I had ever known, and

that was a thing I simply couldn't resist. Well," the poor lady

concluded after a pause, "you see where it has landed us!"

"If you'll go for him yourself, I'll wait here," said Fleda.

Mrs. Gereth, holding her mantle together, appeared for a while to

consider.

"To his club, do you mean?"

"Isn't it there, when he's in town, that he has a room? He has at

present no other London address," Fleda said: "it's there one writes to

him."

"How do _I_ know, with my wretched relations with him?" Mrs. Gereth

asked.

"Mine have not been quite so bad as that," Fleda desperately smiled.

Then she added: "His silence, _her_ silence, our hearing nothing at

all--what are these but the very things on which, at Poynton and at

Ricks, you rested your assurance that everything is at an end between

them?"

Mrs. Gereth looked dark and void. "Yes, but I hadn't heard from you then

that you could invent nothing better than, as you call it, to send him

back to her."

"Ah, but, on the other hand, you've learned from them what you didn't

know--you've learned by Mrs. Brigstock's visit that he cares for me."

Fleda found herself in the position of availing herself of optimistic

arguments that she formerly had repudiated; her refutation of her

companion had completely changed its ground.

She was in a fever of ingenuity and painfully conscious, on behalf of

her success, that her fever was visible. She could herself see the

reflection of it glitter in Mrs. Gereth's sombre eyes.

"You plunge me in stupefaction," that lady answered, "and at the same

time you terrify me. Your account of Owen is inconceivable, and yet I

don't know what to hold on by. He cares for you, it does appear, and yet

in the same breath you inform me that nothing is more possible than that

he's spending these days at Waterbath. Excuse me if I'm so dull as not

to see my way in such darkness. If he's at Waterbath he doesn't care for

you. If he cares for you he's not at Waterbath."

"Then where is he?" poor Fleda helplessly wailed. She caught herself up,

however; she did her best to be brave and clear. Before Mrs. Gereth

could reply, with due obviousness, that this was a question for her not

to ask, but to answer, she found an air of assurance to say: "You

simplify far too much. You always did and you always will. The tangle of

life is much more intricate than you've ever, I think, felt it to be.

You slash into it," cried Fleda finely, "with a great pair of shears,

you nip at it as if you were one of the Fates! If Owen's at Waterbath

he's there to wind everything up."

Mrs. Gereth shook her head with slow austerity. "You don't believe a

word you're saying. I've frightened you, as you've frightened me: you're

whistling in the dark to keep up our courage. I do simplify, doubtless,

if to simplify is to fail to comprehend the insanity of a passion that

bewilders a young blockhead with bugaboo barriers, with hideous and

monstrous sacrifices. I can only repeat that you're beyond me. Your

perversity's a thing to howl over. However," the poor woman continued

with a break in her voice, a long hesitation and then the dry triumph of

her will, "I'll never mention it to you again! Owen I can just make out;

for Owen _is_ a blockhead. Owen's a blockhead," she repeated with a

quiet, tragic finality, looking straight into Fleda's eyes. "I don't

know why you dress up so the fact that he's disgustingly weak."

Fleda hesitated; at last, before her companion's, she lowered her look.

"Because I love him. It's because he's weak that he needs me," she

added.

"That was why his father, whom he exactly resembles, needed _me_. And I

didn't fail his father," said Mrs. Gereth. She gave Fleda a moment to

appreciate the remark; after which she pursued: "Mona Brigstock isn't

weak; she's stronger than you!"

"I never thought she was weak," Fleda answered. She looked vaguely round

the room with a new purpose: she had lost sight of her umbrella.

"I did tell you to let yourself go, but it's clear enough that you

really haven't," Mrs. Gereth declared. "If Mona has got him--"

Fleda had accomplished her search; her interlocutress paused. "If Mona

has got him?" the girl inquired, tightening the umbrella.

"Well," said Mrs. Gereth profoundly, "it will be clear enough that Mona

_has_."

"Has let herself go?"

"Has let herself go." Mrs. Gereth spoke as if she saw it in every

detail.

Fleda felt the tone and finished her preparation; then she went and

opened the door. "We'll look for him together," she said to her friend,

who stood a moment taking in her face. "They may know something about

him at the Colonel's."

"We'll go there." Mrs. Gereth had picked up her gloves and her purse.

"But the first thing," she went on, "will be to wire to Poynton."

"Why not to Waterbath at once?" Fleda asked.