The Spoils of Poynton

This communication arrived in the morning, but Fleda would still have had time to wire a protest. She debated on that alternative; then she read the note over and found in one phrase an exact statement of her duty. Owen's simplicity had expressed it, and her subtlety had nothing to answer. She owed him something for her obvious failure, and what she owed him was to receive him. If indeed she had known he would make this attempt she might have been held to have gained nothing by her flight. Well, she had gained what she had gained—she had gained the interval. She had no compunction for the greater trouble she should give the young man; it was now doubtless right that he should have as much trouble as possible. Maggie, who thought she was in her confidence, but was immensely not, had reproached her for having left Mrs. Gereth, and Maggie was just in this proportion gratified to hear of the visitor with whom, early in the afternoon, she would have to ask to be left alone. Maggie liked to see far, and now she could sit upstairs and rake the whole future. She had known that, as she familiarly said, there was something the matter with Fleda, and the value of that knowledge was augmented by the fact that there was apparently also something the matter with Mr. Gereth.

Fleda, downstairs, learned soon enough what this was. It was simply that, as he announced the moment he stood before her, he was now all right. When she asked him what he meant by that state he replied that he meant he could practically regard himself henceforth as a free man: he had had at West Kensington, as soon as they got into the street, such a horrid scene with Mrs. Brigstock.

'I knew what she wanted to say to me: that's why I was determined to get her off. I knew I shouldn't like it, but I was perfectly prepared,' said Owen. 'She brought it out as soon as we got round the corner; she asked me point-blank if I was in love with you.'

'And what did you say to that?'

'That it was none of her business.'

'Ah,' said Fleda, 'I'm not so sure!'

'Well, I am, and I'm the person most concerned. Of course I didn't use just those words: I was perfectly civil, quite as civil as she. But I told her I didn't consider she had a right to put me any such question. I said I wasn't sure that even Mona had, with the extraordinary line, you know, that Mona has taken. At any rate the whole thing, the way I put it, was between Mona and me; and between Mona and me, if she didn't mind, it would just have to remain.'

Fleda was silent a little. 'All that didn't answer her question.'

'Then you think I ought to have told her?'

Again our young lady reflected. 'I think I'm rather glad you didn't.'

'I knew what I was about,' said Owen. 'It didn't strike me that she had the least right to come down on us that way and ask for explanations.'

Fleda looked very grave, weighing the whole matter. 'I dare say that when she started, when she arrived, she didn't mean to 'come down.''

'What then did she mean to do?'

'What she said to me just before she went: she meant to plead with me.'

'Oh, I heard her!' said Owen. 'But plead with you for what?'

'For you, of course—to entreat me to give you up. She thinks me awfully designing—that I've taken some sort of possession of you.'

Owen stared. 'You haven't lifted a finger! It's I who have taken possession.'

'Very true, you've done it all yourself.' Fleda spoke gravely and gently, without a breath of coquetry. 'But those are shades between which she's probably not obliged to distinguish. It's enough for her that we're singularly intimate.'

'I am, but you're not!' Owen exclaimed.

Fleda gave a dim smile. 'You make me at least feel that I'm learning to know you very well when I hear you say such a thing as that. Mrs. Brigstock came to get round me, to supplicate me,' she went on; 'but to find you there, looking so much at home, paying me a friendly call and shoving the tea-things about—that was too much for her patience. She doesn't know, you see, that I'm after all a decent girl. She simply made up her mind on the spot that I'm a very bad case.'

'I couldn't stand the way she treated you, and that was what I had to say to her,' Owen returned.

'She's simple and slow, but she's not a fool: I think she treated me, on the whole, very well.' Fleda remembered how Mrs. Gereth had treated Mona when the Brigstocks came down to Poynton.

Owen evidently thought her painfully perverse. 'It was you who carried it off; you behaved like a brick. And so did I, I consider. If you only knew the difficulty I had! I told her you were the noblest and straightest of women.'

'That can hardly have removed her impression that there are things I put you up to.'

'It didn't,' Owen replied with candor. 'She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent.'

'What did she mean by that?'

'As you may suppose, I particularly inquired. Do you know what she had the cheek to tell me?' Owen asked. 'She didn't better it much: she said she meant that it's excessively unnatural.'

Fleda considered afresh. 'Well, it is!' she brought out at last.

'Then, upon my honor, it's only you who make it so!' Her perversity was distinctly too much for him. 'I mean you make it so by the way you keep me off.'

'Have I kept you off to-day?' Fleda sadly shook her head, raising her arms a little and dropping them.

Her gesture of resignation gave him a pretext for catching at her hand, but before he could take it she had put it behind her. They had been seated together on Maggie's single sofa, and her movement brought her to her feet, while Owen, looking at her reproachfully, leaned back in discouragement. 'What good does it do me to be here when I find you only a stone?'