The Spoils of Poynton

'It's too wonderful, what you've done with the house!'—the visitor met her friend's eyes. They lighted up with joy—that friend herself so pleased with what she had done. This was not at all, in its accidental air of enthusiasm, what Fleda wanted to have said: it offered her as stupidly announcing from the first minute on whose side she was. Such was clearly the way Mrs. Gereth took it: she threw herself upon the delightful girl and tenderly embraced her again; so that Fleda soon went on, with a studied difference and a cooler inspection: 'Why, you brought away absolutely everything!'

'Oh no, not everything; I saw how little I could get into this scrap of a house. I only brought away what I required.'

Fleda had got up; she took a turn round the room. 'You 'required' the very best pieces—the morceaux de musee, the individual gems!'

'I certainly didn't want the rubbish, if that's what you mean.' Mrs. Gereth, on the sofa, followed the direction of her companion's eyes; with the light of her satisfaction still in her face, she slowly rubbed her large, handsome hands. Wherever she was, she was herself the great piece in the gallery. It was the first Fleda had heard of there being 'rubbish' at Poynton, but she didn't for the moment take up this insincerity; she only, from where she stood in the room, called out, one after the other, as if she had had a list in her hand, the pieces that in the great house had been scattered and that now, if they had a fault, were too much like a minuet danced on a hearth-rug. She knew them each, in every chink and charm—knew them by the personal name their distinctive sign or story had given them; and a second time she felt how, against her intention, this uttered knowledge struck her hostess as so much free approval. Mrs. Gereth was never indifferent to approval, and there was nothing she could so love you for as for doing justice to her deep morality. There was a particular gleam in her eyes when Fleda exclaimed at last, dazzled by the display: 'And even the Maltese cross!' That description, though technically incorrect, had always been applied, at Poynton, to a small but marvelous crucifix of ivory, a masterpiece of delicacy, of expression, and of the great Spanish period, the existence and precarious accessibility of which she had heard of at Malta, years before, by an odd and romantic chance—a clue followed through mazes of secrecy till the treasure was at last unearthed.

''Even' the Maltese cross?' Mrs. Gereth rose as she sharply echoed the words. 'My dear child, you don't suppose I'd have sacrificed that! For what in the world would you have taken me?'

'A bibelot the more or the less,' Fleda said, 'could have made little difference in this grand general view of you. I take you simply for the greatest of all conjurers. You've operated with a quickness— and with a quietness!' Her voice trembled a little as she spoke, for the plain meaning of her words was that what her friend had achieved belonged to the class of operation essentially involving the protection of darkness. Fleda felt she really could say nothing at all if she couldn't say that she knew what the danger had been. She completed her thought by a resolute and perfectly candid question: 'How in the world did you get off with them?'

Mrs. Gereth confessed to the fact of danger with a cynicism that surprised the girl. 'By calculating, by choosing my time. I was quiet, and I was quick. I man?uvred; then at the last rushed!' Fleda drew a long breath: she saw in the poor woman something much better than sophistical ease, a crude elation that was a comparatively simple state to deal with. Her elation, it was true, was not so much from what she had done as from the way she had done it—by as brilliant a stroke as any commemorated in the annals of crime. 'I succeeded because I had thought it all out and left nothing to chance: the whole process was organized in advance, so that the mere carrying it into effect took but a few hours. It was largely a matter of money: oh, I was horribly extravagant—I had to turn on so many people. But they were all to be had—a little army of workers, the packers, the porters, the helpers of every sort, the men with the mighty vans. It was a question of arranging in Tottenham Court Road and of paying the price. I haven't paid it yet; there'll be a horrid bill; but at least the thing's done! Expedition pure and simple was the essence of the bargain. 'I can give you two days,' I said; 'I can't give you another second.' They undertook the job, and the two days saw them through. The people came down on a Tuesday morning; they were off on the Thursday. I admit that some of them worked all Wednesday night. I had thought it all out; I stood over them; I showed them how. Yes, I coaxed them, I made love to them. Oh, I was inspired—they found me wonderful. I neither ate nor slept, but I was as calm as I am now. I didn't know what was in me; it was worth finding out. I'm very remarkable, my dear: I lifted tons with my own arms. I'm tired, very, very tired; but there's neither a scratch nor a nick, there isn't a teacup missing.' Magnificent both in her exhaustion and in her triumph, Mrs. Gereth sank on the sofa again, the sweep of her eyes a rich synthesis and the restless friction of her hands a clear betrayal. 'Upon my word,' she laughed, 'they really look better here!'

Fleda had listened in awe. 'And no one at Poynton said anything? There was no alarm?'

'What alarm should there have been? Owen left me almost defiantly alone: I had taken a time that I had reason to believe was safe from a descent.' Fleda had another wonder, which she hesitated to express: it would scarcely do to ask Mrs. Gereth if she hadn't stood in fear of her servants. She knew, moreover, some of the secrets of her humorous household rule, all made up of shocks to shyness and provocations to curiosity—a diplomacy so artful that several of the maids quite yearned to accompany her to Ricks. Mrs. Gereth, reading sharply the whole of her visitor's thought, caught it up with fine frankness. 'You mean that I was watched—that he had his myrmidons, pledged to wire him if they should see what I was 'up to'? Precisely. I know the three persons you have in mind: I had them in mind myself. Well, I took a line with them—I settled them.'

Fleda had had no one in particular in mind; she had never believed in the myrmidons; but the tone in which Mrs. Gereth spoke added to her suspense. 'What did you do to them?'

'I took hold of them hard—I put them in the forefront. I made them work.'

'To move the furniture?'

'To help, and to help so as to please me. That was the way to take them; it was what they had least expected. I marched up to them and looked each straight in the eye, giving him the chance to choose if he'd gratify me or gratify my son. He gratified me. They were too stupid!'

Mrs. Gereth massed herself there more and more as an immoral woman, but Fleda had to recognize that she too would have been stupid and she too would have gratified her. 'And when did all this take place?'

'Only last week; it seems a hundred years. We've worked here as fast as we worked there, but I'm not settled yet: you'll see in the rest of the house. However, the worst is over.'

'Do you really think so?' Fleda presently inquired. 'I mean, does he, after the fact, as it were, accept it?'

'Owen—what I've done? I haven't the least idea,' said Mrs. Gereth.

'Does Mona?'

'You mean that she'll be the soul of the row?'

'I hardly see Mona as the 'soul' of anything,' the girl replied. 'But have they made no sound? Have you heard nothing at all?'

'Not a whisper, not a step, in all the eight days. Perhaps they don't know. Perhaps they're crouching for a