"So that of course she misses them."
"Misses them--rather! She was awfully sweet on them." Fleda remembered how sweet Mona had been, and reflected that if that was the sort of plea he had prepared it was indeed as well he shouldn"t see his mother. This was not all she wanted to know, but it came over her that it was all she needed. "You see it puts me in the position of not carrying out what I promised," Owen said. "As she says herself"--he hesitated an instant--"it"s just as if I had obtained her under false pretenses."
Just before, when he spoke with more drollery than he knew, it had left Fleda serious; but now his own clear gravity had the effect of exciting her mirth. She laughed out, and he looked surprised, but went on: "She regards it as a regular sell."
Fleda was silent; but finally, as he added nothing, she exclaimed: "Of course it makes a great difference!" She knew all she needed, but none the less she risked, after another pause, an interrogative remark. "I forget when it is that your marriage takes place?"
Owen came away from the fire and, apparently at a loss where to turn, ended by directing himself to one of the windows. "It"s a little uncertain; the date isn"t quite fixed."
"Oh, I thought I remembered that at Poynton you had told me a day, and that it was near at hand."
"I dare say I did; it was for the 19th. But we"ve altered that--she wants to shift it." He looked out of the window; then he said: "In fact, it won"t come off till Mummy has come round."
"Come round?"
"Put the place as it was." In his offhand way he added: "You know what I mean!"
He spoke not impatiently, but with a kind of intimate familiarity, the sweetness of which made her feel a pang for having forced him to tell her what was embarra.s.sing to him, what was even humiliating. Yes indeed, she knew all she needed: all she needed was that Mona had proved apt at putting down that wonderful patent-leather foot. Her type was misleading only to the superficial, and no one in the world was less superficial than Fleda. She had guessed the truth at Waterbath and she had suffered from it at Poynton; at Ricks the only thing she could do was to accept it with the dumb exaltation that she felt rising. Mona had been prompt with her exercise of the member in question, for it might be called prompt to do that sort of thing before marriage. That she had indeed been premature who should say save those who should have read the matter in the full light of results? Neither at Waterbath nor at Poynton had even Fleda"s thoroughness discovered all that there was--or rather, all that there was not--in Owen Gereth. "Of course it makes all the difference!" she said in answer to his last words. She pursued, after considering: "What you wish me to say from you then to your mother is that you demand immediate and practically complete rest.i.tution?"
"Yes, please. It"s tremendously good of you."
"Very well, then. Will you wait?"
"For Mummy"s answer?" Owen stared and looked perplexed; he was more and more fevered with so much vivid expression of his case. "Don"t you think that if I"m here she may hate it worse--think I may want to make her reply bang off?"
Fleda thought. "You don"t, then?"
"I want to take her in the right way, don"t you know?--treat her as if I gave her more than just an hour or two."
"I see," said Fleda. "Then, if you don"t wait--good-bye."
This again seemed not what he wanted. "Must _you_ do it bang off?"
"I"m only thinking she"ll be impatient--I mean, you know, to learn what will have pa.s.sed between us."
"I see," said Owen, looking at his gloves. "I can give her a day or two, you know. Of course I didn"t come down to sleep," he went on. "The inn seems a horrid hole. I know all about the trains--having no idea you were here." Almost as soon as his interlocutress he was struck with the absence of the visible, in this, as between effect and cause. "I mean because in that case I should have felt I could stop over. I should have felt I could talk with you a blessed sight longer than with Mummy."
"We"ve already talked a long time," smiled Fleda.
"Awfully, haven"t we?" He spoke with the stupidity she didn"t object to.
Inarticulate as he was, he had more to say; he lingered perhaps because he was vaguely aware of the want of sincerity in her encouragement to him to go. "There"s one thing, please," he mentioned, as if there might be a great many others too. "Please don"t say anything about Mona."
She didn"t understand. "About Mona?"
"About its being _her_ that thinks she has gone too far." This was still slightly obscure, but now Fleda understood. "It mustn"t seem to come from _her_ at all, don"t you know? That would only make Mummy worse."
Fleda knew exactly how much worse, but she felt a delicacy about explicitly a.s.senting: she was already immersed moreover in the deep consideration of what might make "Mummy" better. She couldn"t see as yet at all; she could only clutch at the hope of some inspiration after he should go. Oh, there was a remedy, to be sure, but it was out of the question; in spite of which, in the strong light of Owen"s troubled presence, of his anxious face and restless step, it hung there before her for some minutes. She felt that, remarkably, beneath the decent rigor of his errand, the poor young man, for reasons, for weariness, for disgust, would have been ready not to insist. His fitness to fight his mother had left him--he wasn"t in fighting trim. He had no natural avidity and even no special wrath; he had none that had not been taught him, and it was doing his best to learn the lesson that had made him so sick. He had his delicacies, but he hid them away like presents before Christmas. He was hollow, perfunctory, pathetic; he had been girded by another hand. That hand had naturally been Mona"s, and it was heavy even now on his strong, broad back. Why then had he originally rejoiced so in its touch? Fleda dashed aside this question, for it had nothing to do with her problem. Her problem was to help him to live as a gentleman and carry through what he had undertaken; her problem was to reinstate him in his rights. It was quite irrelevant that Mona had no intelligence of what she had lost--quite irrelevant that she was moved not by the privation, but by the insult: she had every reason to be moved, though she was so much more movable, in the vindictive way, at any rate, than one might have supposed--a.s.suredly more than Owen himself had imagined.
"Certainly I shall not mention Mona," Fleda said, "and there won"t be the slightest necessity for it. The wrong"s quite sufficiently yours, and the demand you make is perfectly justified by it."
"I can"t tell you what it is to me to feel you on my side!" Owen exclaimed.
"Up to this time," said Fleda, after a pause, "your mother has had no doubt of my being on hers."
"Then of course she won"t like your changing."
"I dare say she won"t like it at all."
"Do you mean to say you"ll have a regular kick-up with her?"
"I don"t exactly know what you mean by a regular kick-up. We shall naturally have a great deal of discussion--if she consents to discuss the matter at all. That"s why you must decidedly give her two or three days."
"I see you think she _may_ refuse to discuss it at all," said Owen.
"I"m only trying to be prepared for the worst. You must remember that to have to withdraw from the ground she has taken, to make a public surrender of what she has publicly appropriated, will go uncommonly hard with her pride."
Owen considered; his face seemed to broaden, but not into a smile. "I suppose she"s tremendously proud, isn"t she?" This might have been the first time it had occurred to him.
"You know better than I," said Fleda, speaking with high extravagance.
"I don"t know anything in the world half so well as you. If I were as clever as you I might hope to get round her." Owen hesitated; then he went on: "In fact I don"t quite see what even you can say or do that will really fetch her."
"Neither do I, as yet. I must think--I must pray!" the girl pursued, smiling. "I can only say to you that I"ll try. I _want_ to try, you know--I want to help you." He stood looking at her so long on this that she added with much distinctness: "So you must leave me, please, quite alone with her. You must go straight back."
"Back to the inn?"
"Oh no, back to town. I"ll write to you to-morrow."
He turned about vaguely for his hat.
"There"s the chance, of course, that she may be afraid."
"Afraid, you mean, of the legal steps you may take?"
"I"ve got a perfect case--I could have her up. The Brigstocks say it"s simple stealing."
"I can easily fancy what the Brigstocks say!" Fleda permitted herself to remark without solemnity.
"It"s none of their business, is it?" was Owen"s unexpected rejoinder.
Fleda had already noted that no one so slow could ever have had such rapid transitions.
She showed her amus.e.m.e.nt. "They"ve a much better right to say it"s none of mine."
"Well, at any rate, you don"t call her names."
Fleda wondered whether Mona did; and this made it all the finer of her to exclaim in a moment: "You don"t know what I shall call her if she holds out!"
Owen gave her a gloomy glance; then he blew a speck off the crown of his hat. "But if you do have a set-to with her?"
He paused so long for a reply that Fleda said: "I don"t think I know what you mean by a set-to."