Her relation with her wonderful friend had, however, in becoming a new
one, begun to shape itself almost wholly on breaches and omissions.
Something had dropped out altogether, and the question between them,
which time would answer, was whether the change had made them strangers
or yokefellows. It was as if at last, for better or worse, they were, in
a clearer, cruder air, really to know each other. Fleda wondered how
Mrs. Gereth had escaped hating her: there were hours when it seemed that
such a feat might leave after all a scant margin for future accidents.
The thing indeed that now came out in its simplicity was that even in
her shrunken state the lady of Ricks was larger than her wrongs. As for
the girl herself, she had made up her mind that her feelings had no
connection with the case. It was her pretension that they had never yet
emerged from the seclusion into which, after her friend's visit to her
at her sister's, we saw them precipitately retire: if she should
suddenly meet them in straggling procession on the road it would be time
enough to deal with them. They were all bundled there together, likes
with dislikes and memories with fears; and she had for not thinking of
them the excellent reason that she was too occupied with the actual. The
actual was not that Owen Gereth had seen his necessity where she had
pointed it out; it was that his mother's bare spaces demanded all the
tapestry that the recipient of her bounty could furnish. There were
moments during the month that followed when Mrs. Gereth struck her as
still older and feebler, and as likely to become quite easily amused.
At the end of it, one day, the London paper had another piece of news:
"Mr. and Mrs. Owen Gereth, who arrived in town last week, proceed this
morning to Paris." They exchanged no word about it till the evening, and
none indeed would then have been uttered had not Mrs. Gereth
irrelevantly broken out: "I dare say you wonder why I declared the other
day with such assurance that he wouldn't live with her. He apparently
_is_ living with her."
"Surely it's the only proper thing for him to do."
"They're beyond me--I give it up," said Mrs. Gereth.
"I don't give it up--I never did," Fleda returned.
"Then what do you make of his aversion to her?"
"Oh, she has dispelled it."
Mrs. Gereth said nothing for a minute. "You're prodigious in your choice
of terms!" she then simply ejaculated.
But Fleda went luminously on; she once more enjoyed her great command of
her subject: "I think that when you came to see me at Maggie's you saw
too many things, you had too many ideas."
"You had none," said Mrs. Gereth: "you were completely bewildered."
"Yes, I didn't quite understand--but I think I understand now. The case
is simple and logical enough. She's a person who's upset by failure and
who blooms and expands with success. There was something she had set her
heart upon, set her teeth about--the house exactly as she had seen it."
"She never saw it at all, she never looked at it!" cried Mrs. Gereth.
"She doesn't look with her eyes; she looks with her ears. In her own way
she had taken it in; she knew, she felt when it had been touched. That
probably made her take an attitude that was extremely disagreeable. But
the attitude lasted only while the reason for it lasted."
"Go on--I can bear it now," said Mrs. Gereth. Her companion had just
perceptibly paused.
"I know you can, or I shouldn't dream of speaking. When the pressure was
removed she came up again. From the moment the house was once more what
it had to be, her natural charm reasserted itself."
"Her natural charm!" Mrs. Gereth could barely articulate.
"It's very great; everybody thinks so; there must be something in it. It
operated as it had operated before. There's no need of imagining
anything very monstrous. Her restored good humor, her splendid beauty,
and Mr. Owen's impressibility and generosity sufficiently cover the
ground. His great bright sun came out!"
"And his great bright passion for another person went in. Your
explanation would doubtless be perfection if he didn't love you."