Mrs. Brigstock, in the doorway, stood
looking from one of the occupants of the room to the
other; then they saw her eyes attach themselves to
a small object that had lain hitherto unnoticed on
the carpet. This was the biscuit of which, on
giving Owen his tea, Fleda had taken a perfunctory
nibble: she had immediately laid it on the table,
and that subsequently, in some precipitate movement,
she should have brushed it off was doubtless a sign
of the agitation that possessed her. For Mrs.
Brigstock there was apparently more in it than met
the eye. Owen at any rate picked it up, and Fleda
felt as if he were removing the traces of some scene
that the newspapers would have characterized as lively.
Mrs. Brigstock clearly took in also the sprawling
tea-things and the mark as of high water in the full
faces of her young friends. These elements made
the little place a vivid picture of intimacy.
A minute was filled by Fleda’s relief at finding
her visitor not to be Mrs. Gereth, and a longer space
by the ensuing sense of what was really more compromising
in the actual apparition. It dimly occurred to
her that the lady of Ricks had also written to Waterbath.
Not only had Mrs. Brigstock never paid her a call,
but Fleda would have been unable to figure her so
employed. A year before the girl had spent a day
under her roof, but never feeling that Mrs. Brigstock
regarded this as constituting a bond. She had
never stayed in any house but Poynton where the imagination
of a bond, one way or the other, prevailed. After
the first astonishment she dashed gayly at her guest,
emphasizing her welcome and wondering how her whereabouts
had become known at Waterbath. Had not Mrs. Brigstock
quitted that residence for the very purpose of laying
her hand on the associate of Mrs. Gereth’s misconduct?
The spirit in which this hand was to be laid our young
lady was yet to ascertain; but she was a person who
could think ten thoughts at once a circumstance
which, even putting her present plight at its worst,
gave her a great advantage over a person who required
easy conditions for dealing even with one. The
very vibration of the air, however, told her that
whatever Mrs. Brigstock’s spirit might originally
have been, it had been sharply affected by the sight
of Owen. He was essentially a surprise: she
had reckoned with everything that concerned him but
his presence. With that, in awkward silence,
she was reckoning now, as Fleda could see, while she
effected with friendly aid an embarrassed transit
to the sofa. Owen would be useless, would be
deplorable: that aspect of the case Fleda had
taken in as well. Another aspect was that he
would admire her, adore her, exactly in proportion
as she herself should rise gracefully superior.
Fleda felt for the first time free to let herself
“go,” as Mrs. Gereth had said, and she
was full of the sense that to “go” meant
now to aim straight at the effect of moving Owen to
rapture at her simplicity and tact. It was her
impression that he had no positive dislike of Mona’s
mother; but she couldn’t entertain that notion
without a glimpse of the implication that he had a
positive dislike of Mrs. Brigstock’s daughter.
Mona’s mother declined tea, declined a better
seat, declined a cushion, declined to remove her boa:
Fleda guessed that she had not come on purpose to be
dry, but that the voice of the invaded room had itself
given her the hint.
“I just came on the mere chance,”
she said. “Mona found yesterday, somewhere,
the card of invitation to your sister’s marriage
that you sent us, or your father sent us, some time
ago. We couldn’t be present it
was impossible; but as it had this address on it I
said to myself that I might find you here.”
“I’m very glad to be at home,” Fleda
responded.
“Yes, that doesn’t happen
very often, does it?” Mrs. Brigstock looked
round afresh at Fleda’s home.
“Oh, I came back from Ricks
last week. I shall be here now till I don’t
know when.”
“We thought it very likely you
would have come back. We knew of course of your
having been at Ricks. If I didn’t find you
I thought I might perhaps find Mr. Vetch,” Mrs.
Brigstock went on.
“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 been, and was perhaps still, about to become his
mother-in-law. She laid on Mrs. Brigstock’s
arm a repressive hand. Mrs. Brigstock, however,
had already exclaimed on her having so wonderful a
defender. “He speaks, upon my word, as if
I had come here to be rude to you!”
At this, grasping her hard, Fleda
laughed; then she achieved the exploit of delicately
kissing her. “I’m not in the least
afraid to be alone with you, or of your tearing me
to pieces. I’ll answer any question that
you can possibly dream of putting to me.”
“I’m the proper person
to answer Mrs. Brigstock’s questions,”
Owen broke in again, “and I’m not a bit
less ready to meet them than you are.” He
was firmer than she had ever seen him: it was
as if she had not known he could be so firm.
“But she’ll only have
been here a few minutes. What sort of a visit
is that?” Fleda cried.
“It has lasted long enough for
my purpose. There was something I wanted to know,
but I think I know it now.”
“Anything you don’t know
I dare say I can tell you!” Owen observed as
he impatiently smoothed his hat with the cuff of his
coat.
Fleda by this time desired immensely
to keep his companion, but she saw she could do so
only at the cost of provoking on his part a further
exhibition of the sheltering attitude, which he exaggerated
precisely because it was the first thing, since he
had begun to “like” her, that he had been
able frankly to do for her. It was not in her
interest that Mrs. Brigstock should be more struck
than she already was with that benevolence. “There
may be things you know that I don’t,” she
presently said to her, with a smile. “But
I’ve a sort of sense that you’re laboring
under some great mistake.”
Mrs. Brigstock, at this, looked into
her eyes more deeply and yearningly than she had supposed
Mrs. Brigstock could look; it was the flicker of a
certain willingness to give her a chance. Owen,
however, quickly spoiled everything. “Nothing
is more probable than that Mrs. Brigstock is doing
what you say; but there’s no one in the world
to whom you owe an explanation. I may owe somebody
one I dare say I do; but not you, no!”
“But what if there’s one
that it’s no difficulty at all for me to give?”
Fleda inquired. “I’m sure that’s
the only one Mrs. Brigstock came to ask, if she came
to ask any at all.”
Again the good lady looked hard at
her young hostess. “I came, I believe,
Fleda, just, you know, to plead with you.”
Fleda, with a bright face, hesitated
a moment. “As if I were one of those bad
women in a play?”
The remark was disastrous. Mrs.
Brigstock, on whom her brightness was lost, evidently
thought it singularly free. She turned away, as
from a presence that had really defined itself as
objectionable, and Fleda had a vain sense that her
good humor, in which there was an idea, was taken
for impertinence, or at least for levity. Her
allusion was improper, even if she herself wasn’t;
Mrs. Brigstock’s emotion simplified: it
came to the same thing. “I’m quite
ready,” that lady said to Owen rather mildly
and woundedly. “I do want to speak to you
very much.”
“I’m completely at your
service.” Owen held out his hand to Fleda.
“Good-bye, Miss Vetch. I hope to see you
again to-morrow.” He opened the door for
Mrs. Brigstock, who passed before the girl with an
oblique, averted salutation. Owen and Fleda,
while he stood at the door, then faced each other
darkly and without speaking. Their eyes met once
more for a long moment, and she was conscious there
was something in hers that the darkness didn’t
quench, that he had never seen before and that he
was perhaps never to see again. He stayed long
enough to take it to take it with a sombre
stare that just showed the dawn of wonder; then he
followed Mrs. Brigstock out of the house.