The position of a bit of furniture was one that Fleda could conscientiously2 accept, and she by no means insisted on so high a place in the list. This communication made her easier, if only by its acknowledgment that her friend had some thing left: it still implied recognition of the principle of property. Something to hate, and to hate "comfortably," was at least not the utter destitution3 to which, after their last interview, she had helplessly seemed to see Mrs. Gereth go forth4. She remembered indeed that, in the state in which they first saw it, she herself had "liked" the blessed refuge of Ricks; and she now wondered if the tact5 for which she was commended had then operated to make her keep her kindness out of sight. She was at present ashamed of such obliquity6, and made up her mind that if this happy impression, quenched7 in the spoils of Poynton, should revive on the spot, she would utter it to her companion without reserve. Yes, she was capable of as much "action" as that: all the more that the spirit of her hostess seemed, for the time at least, wholly to have failed. Mrs. Gereth's three minutes with Owen had been a blow to all talk of travel, and after her woeful hour at Maggie's she had, like some great moaning, wounded bird, made her way, with wings of anguish8, back to the nest she knew she should find empty. Fleda, on that dire9 day, could neither keep her nor give her up; she had pressingly offered to return with her, but Mrs. Gereth, in spite of the theory that their common grief was a bond, had even declined all escort to the station, conscious apparently10 of something abject11 in her collapse12 and almost fiercely eager, as with a personal shame, to be unwatched. All she had said to Fleda was that she would go back to Ricks that night, and the girl had lived for days after with a dreadful image of her position and her misery13 there. She had had a vision of her now lying prone14 on some unmade bed, now pacing a bare floor like a lioness deprived of her cubs15. There had been moments when her mind's ear was strained to listen for some sound of grief wild enough to be wafted16 from afar. But the first sound, at the end of a week, had been a note announcing, without reflections, that the plan of going abroad had been abandoned. "It has come to me indirectly17, but with much appearance of truth, that they are going—for an indefinite time. That quite settles it; I shall stay where I am, and as soon as I've turned round again I shall look for you." The second letter had come a week later, and on the 15th Fleda was on her way to Ricks.
Her arrival took the form of a surprise very nearly as violent as that of the other time. The elements were different, but the effect, like the other, arrested her on the threshold: she stood there stupefied and delighted at the magic of a passion of which such a picture represented the low-water mark. Wound up but sincere, and passing quickly from room to room, Fleda broke out before she even sat down. "If you turn me out of the house for it, my dear, there isn't a woman in England for whom it wouldn't be a privilege to live here." Mrs. Gereth was as honestly bewildered as she had of old been falsely calm. She looked about at the few sticks that, as she afterwards phrased it, she had gathered in, and then hard at her guest, as if to protect herself against a joke sufficiently18 cruel. The girl's heart gave a leap, for this stare was the sign of an opportunity. Mrs. Gereth was all unwitting; she didn't in the least know what she had done, and as Fleda could tell her Fleda suddenly became the one who knew most. That counted for the moment as a magnificent position; it almost made all the difference. Yet what contradicted it was the vivid presence of the artist's idea. "Where on earth did you put your hand on such beautiful things?"
"Beautiful things?" Mrs. Gereth turned again to the little worn, bleached19 stuffs and the sweet spindle-legs. "They're the wretched things that were here—that stupid, starved old woman's."
"The maiden20 aunt's, the nicest, the dearest old woman that ever lived? I thought you had got rid of the maiden aunt."
"She was stored in an empty barn—stuck away for a sale; a matter that, fortunately, I've had neither time nor freedom of mind to arrange. I've simply, in my extremity21, fished her out again."
"You've simply, in your extremity, made a delight of her." Fleda took the highest line and the upper hand, and as Mrs. Gereth, challenging her cheerfulness, turned again a lustreless22 eye over the contents of the place, she broke into a rapture23 that was unforced, but that she was conscious of an advantage in being able to feel. She moved, as she had done on the previous occasion, from one piece to another, with looks of recognition and hands that lightly lingered, but she was as feverishly24 jubilant now as she had formerly25 been anxious and mute. "Ah, the little melancholy26, tender, tell-tale things: how can they not speak to you and find a way to your heart? It's not the great chorus of Poynton; but you're not, I'm sure, either so proud or so broken as to be reached by nothing but that. This is a voice so gentle, so human, so feminine—a faint, far-away voice with the little quaver of a heart-break. You've listened to it unawares; for the arrangement and effect of everything—when I compare them with what we found the first day we came down—shows, even if mechanically and disdainfully exercised, your admirable, infallible hand. It's your extraordinary genius; you make things 'compose' in spite of yourself. You've only to be a day or two in a place with four sticks for something to come of it!"
"Then if anything has come of it here, it has come precisely28 of just four. That's literally29, by the inventory30, all there are!" said Mrs. Gereth.
"If there were more there would be too many to convey the impression in which half the beauty resides—the impression, somehow, of something dreamed and missed, something reduced, relinquished31, resigned: the poetry, as it were, of something sensibly gone." Fleda ingeniously and triumphantly32 worked it out. "Ah, there's something here that will never be in the inventory!"
"Does it happen to be in your power to give it a name?" Mrs. Gereth's face showed the dim dawn of an amusement at finding herself seated at the feet of her pupil.
"I can give it a dozen. It's a kind of fourth dimension. It's a presence, a perfume, a touch. It's a soul, a story, a life. There's ever so much more here than you and I. We're in fact just three!"
"Oh, if you count the ghosts!"
"Of course I count the ghosts. It seems to me ghosts count double—for what they were and for what they are. Somehow there were no ghosts at Poynton," Fleda went on. "That was the only fault."
Mrs. Gereth, considering, appeared to fall in with the girl's fine humor. "Poynton was too splendidly happy."
"But it's cured of that now," her companion added.
"Yes, henceforth there'll be a ghost or two."
Mrs. Gereth thought again: she found her young friend suggestive. "Only she won't see them."
"No, 'she' won't see them." Then Fleda said, "What I mean is, for this dear one of ours, that if she had (as I know she did; it's in the very taste of the air!) a great accepted pain—"
She had paused an instant, and Mrs. Gereth took her up. "Well, if she had?"
Fleda still hesitated. "Why, it was worse than yours."
Mrs. Gereth reflected. "Very likely." Then she too hesitated. "The question is if it was worse than yours."
"Mine?" Fleda looked vague.
"Precisely. Yours."
At this our young lady smiled. "Yes, because it was a disappointment. She had been so sure."
"I see. And you were never sure."
"Never. Besides, I'm happy," said Fleda.
Mrs. Gereth met her eyes awhile. "Goose!" she quietly remarked as she turned away. There was a curtness34 in it; nevertheless it represented a considerable part of the basis of their new life.
On the 18th The Morning Post had at last its clear message, a brief account of the marriage, from the residence of the bride's mother, of Mr. Owen Gereth of Poynton Park to Miss Mona Brigstock of Waterbath. There were two ecclesiastics35 and six bridesmaids and, as Mrs. Gereth subsequently said, a hundred frumps, as well as a special train from town: the scale of the affair sufficiently showed that the preparations had been complete for weeks. The happy pair were described as having taken their departure for Mr. Gereth's own seat, famous for its unique collection of artistic36 curiosities. The newspapers and letters, the fruits of the first London post, had been brought to the mistress of Ricks in the garden; and she lingered there alone a long time after receiving them. Fleda kept at a distance; she knew what must have happened, for from one of the windows she saw her rigid37 in a chair, her eyes strange and fixed38, the newspaper open on the ground and the letters untouched in her lap. Before the morning's end she had disappeared, and the rest of that day she remained in her room: it recalled to Fleda, who had picked up the newspaper, the day, months before, on which Owen had come down to Poynton to make his engagement known. The hush39 of the house was at least the same, and the girl's own waiting, her soft wandering, through the hours: there was a difference indeed sufficiently great, of which her companion's absence might in some degree have represented a considerate recognition. That was at any rate the meaning Fleda, devoutly40 glad to be alone, attached to her opportunity. Mrs. Gereth's sole allusion41, the next day, to the subject of their thoughts, has already been mentioned: it was a dazzled glance at the fact that Mona's quiet pace had really never slackened.
Fleda fully27 assented42. "I said of our disembodied friend here that she had suffered in proportion as she had been sure. But that's not always a source of suffering. It's Mona who must have been sure!"
"She was sure of you!" Mrs. Gereth returned. But this didn't diminish the satisfaction taken by Fleda in showing how serenely43 and lucidly44 she could talk.
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1
brutally
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| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
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conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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destitution
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| n.穷困，缺乏，贫穷 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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obliquity
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| n.倾斜度 | |
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quenched
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| 解（渴）( quench的过去式和过去分词 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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10
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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cubs
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| n.幼小的兽，不懂规矩的年轻人( cub的名词复数 ) | |
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wafted
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| v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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lustreless
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| adj.无光泽的，无光彩的，平淡乏味的 | |
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rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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31
relinquished
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| 交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃 | |
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32
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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34
curtness
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| n.简短；草率；简略 | |
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35
ecclesiastics
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| n.神职者，教会，牧师( ecclesiastic的名词复数 ) | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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39
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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40
devoutly
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| adv.虔诚地，虔敬地，衷心地 | |
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41
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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42
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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44
lucidly
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| adv.清透地，透明地 | |
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