The Spoils of Poynton

'I'm sorry he's out. He's always out—all day long.'

Mrs. Brigstock's round eyes grew rounder. 'All day long?'

'All day long,' Fleda smiled.

'Leaving you quite to yourself?'

'A good deal to myself, but a little, to-day, as you see, to Mr. Gereth,—' and the girl looked at Owen to draw him into their sociability. For Mrs. Brigstock he had immediately sat down; but the movement had not corrected the sombre stiffness taking possession of him at the sight of her. Before he found a response to the appeal addressed to him Fleda turned again to her other visitor. 'Is there any purpose for which you would like my father to call on you?'

Mrs. Brigstock received this question as if it were not to be unguardedly answered; upon which Owen intervened with pale irrelevance: 'I wrote to Mona this morning of Miss Vetch's being in town; but of course the letter hadn't arrived when you left home.'

'No, it hadn't arrived. I came up for the night—I've several matters to attend to.' Then looking with an intention of fixedness from one of her companions to the other, 'I'm afraid I've interrupted your conversation,' Mrs. Brigstock said. She spoke without effectual point, had the air of merely announcing the fact. Fleda had not yet been confronted with the question of the sort of person Mrs. Brigstock was; she had only been confronted with the question of the sort of person Mrs. Gereth scorned her for being. She was really, somehow, no sort of person at all, and it came home to Fleda that if Mrs. Gereth could see her at this moment she would scorn her more than ever. She had a face of which it was impossible to say anything but that it was pink, and a mind that it would be possible to describe only if one had been able to mark it in a similar fashion. As nature had made this organ neither green nor blue nor yellow, there was nothing to know it by: it strayed and bleated like an unbranded sheep. Fleda felt for it at this moment much of the kindness of compassion, since Mrs. Brigstock had brought it with her to do something for her that she regarded as delicate. Fleda was quite prepared to help it to perform, if she should be able to gather what it wanted to do. What she gathered, however, more and more, was that it wanted to do something different from what it had wanted to do in leaving Waterbath. There was still nothing to enlighten her more specifically in the way her visitor continued: 'You must be very much taken up. I believe you quite espouse his dreadful quarrel.'

Fleda vaguely demurred. 'His dreadful quarrel?'

'About the contents of the house. Aren't you looking after them for him?'

'She knows how awfully kind you've been to me,' Owen said. He showed such discomfiture that he really gave away their situation; and Fleda found herself divided between the hope that he would take leave and the wish that he should see the whole of what the occasion might enable her to bring to pass for him.

She explained to Mrs. Brigstock. 'Mrs. Gereth, at Ricks, the other day, asked me particularly to see him for her.'

'And did she ask you also particularly to see him here in town?' Mrs. Brigstock's hideous bonnet seemed to argue for the unsophisticated truth; and it was on Fleda's lips to reply that such had indeed been Mrs. Gereth's request. But she checked herself, and before she could say anything else Owen had addressed their companion.

'I made a point of letting Mona know that I should be here, don't you see? That's exactly what I wrote her this morning.'

'She would have had no doubt you would be here, if you had a chance,' Mrs. Brigstock returned. 'If your letter had arrived it might have prepared me for finding you here at tea. In that case I certainly wouldn't have come.'

'I'm glad, then, it didn't arrive. Shouldn't you like him to go?' Fleda asked.

Mrs. Brigstock looked at Owen and considered: nothing showed in her face but that it turned a deeper pink. 'I should like him to go with me.' There was no menace in her tone, but she evidently knew what she wanted. As Owen made no response to this Fleda glanced at him to invite him to assent; then, for fear that he wouldn't, and would thereby make his case worse, she took upon herself to declare that she was sure he would be very glad to meet such a wish. She had no sooner spoken than she felt that the words had a bad effect of intimacy: she had answered for him as if she had been his wife. Mrs. Brigstock continued to regard him as if she had observed nothing, and she continued to address Fleda: 'I've not seen him for a long time—I've particular things to say to him.'

'So have I things to say to you, Mrs. Brigstock!' Owen interjected. With this he took up his hat as if for an immediate departure.

The other visitor meanwhile turned to Fleda. 'What is Mrs. Gereth going to do?'

'Is that what you came to ask me?' Fleda demanded.

'That and several other things.'

'Then you had much better let Mr. Gereth go, and stay by yourself and make me a pleasant visit. You can talk with him when you like, but it is the first time you've been to see me.'

This appeal had evidently a certain effect; Mrs. Brigstock visibly wavered. 'I can't talk with him whenever I like,' she returned; 'he hasn't been near us since I don't know when. But there are things that have brought me here.'

'They are not things of any importance,' Owen, to Fleda's surprise, suddenly asserted. He had not at first taken up Mrs. Brigstock's expression of a wish to carry him off: Fleda could see that the instinct at the bottom of this was that of standing by her, of seeming not to abandon her. But abruptly, all his soreness working within him, it had struck him that he should abandon her still more if he should leave her to be dealt with by her other visitor. 'You must allow me to say, you know, Mrs. Brigstock, that I don't think you should come down on Miss Vetch about anything. It's very good of her to take the smallest interest in us and our horrid little squabble. If you want to talk about it, talk about it with me.' He was flushed with the idea of protecting Fleda, of exhibiting his consideration for her. 'I don't like your cross-questioning her, don't you see? She's as straight as a die: I'll tell you all about her!' he declared with an excited laugh. 'Please come off with me and let her alone.'

Mrs. Brigstock, at this, became vivid at once; Fleda thought she looked most peculiar. She stood straight up, with a queer distention of her whole person and of everything in her face but her mouth, which she gathered into a small, tight orifice. Fleda was painfully divided; her joy was deep within, but it was more relevant to the situation that she should not appear to associate herself with the tone of familiarity in which Owen addressed a lady who had