Chance: A Tale in Two Parts by Joseph Conrad
PART ONE, CHAPTER 7.
ON THE PAVEMENT.
Fyne was not willing to talk; but as I had been already let into thesecret, the fair-minded little man recognised that I had some right toinformation if I insisted on it. And I did insist, after the thirdgame. We were yet some way from the end of our journey.
"Oh, if you want to know," was his somewhat impatient opening. And thenhe talked rather volubly. First of all his wife had not given him toread the letter received from Flora (I had suspected him of having it inhis pocket), but had told him all about the contents. It was not at allwhat it should have been even if the girl had wished to affirm her rightto disregard the feelings of all the world. Her own had been trampledin the dirt out of all shape. Extraordinary thing to say--I wouldadmit, for a young girl of her age. The whole tone of that letter waswrong, quite wrong. It was certainly not the product of a--say, of awell-balanced mind.
"If she were given some sort of footing in this world," I said, "if onlyno bigger than the palm of my hand, she would probably learn to keep abetter balance."
Fyne ignored this little remark. His wife, he said, was not the sort ofperson to be addressed mockingly on a serious subject. There was anunpleasant strain of levity in that letter, extending even to thereferences to Captain Anthony himself. Such a disposition was enough,his wife had pointed out to him, to alarm one for the future, had allthe circumstances of that preposterous project been as satisfactory asin fact they were not. Other parts of the letter seemed to have achallenging tone--as if daring them (the Fynes) to approve her conduct.And at the same time implying that she did not care, that it was fortheir own sakes that she hoped they would "go against the world--thehorrid world which had crushed poor papa."
Fyne called upon me to admit that this was pretty cool--considering.And there was another thing, too. It seems that for the last six months(she had been assisting two ladies who kept a kindergarten school inBayswater--a mere pittance), Flora had insisted on devoting all herspare time to the study of the trial. She had been looking up files ofold newspapers, and working herself up into a state of indignation withwhat she called the injustice and the hypocrisy of the prosecution. Herfather, Fyne reminded me, had made some palpable hits in his answers inCourt, and she had fastened on them triumphantly. She had reached theconclusion of her father's innocence, and had been brooding over it.Mrs Fyne had pointed out to him the danger of this.
The train ran into the station and Fyne, jumping out directly it came toa standstill, seemed glad to cut short the conversation. We walked insilence a little way, boarded a bus, then walked again. I don't supposethat since the days of his childhood, when surely he was taken to seethe Tower, he had been once east of Temple Bar. He looked about himsullenly; and when I pointed out in the distance the rounded front ofthe Eastern Hotel at the bifurcation of two very broad, mean, shabbythoroughfares, rising like a grey stucco tower above the lowly roofs ofthe dirty-yellow, two-storey houses, he only grunted disapprovingly.
"I wouldn't lay too much stress on what you have been telling me," Iobserved quietly as we approached that unattractive building. "No manwill believe a girl who has just accepted his suit to be notwell-balanced,--you know."
"Oh, accepted his suit," muttered Fyne, who seemed to have been verythoroughly convinced indeed. "It may have been the other way about."And then he added: "I am going through with it."
I said that this was very praiseworthy but that a certain moderation ofstatement--He waved his hand at me and mended his pace. I guessed thathe was anxious to get his mission over as quickly as possible. Hebarely gave himself time to shake hands with me and made a rush at thenarrow glass door with the words Hotel Entrance on it. It swung tobehind his back with no more noise than the snap of a toothless jaw.
The absurd temptation to remain and see what would come of it got overmy better judgment. I hung about irresolute, wondering how long anembassy of that sort would take, and whether Fyne on coming out wouldconsent to be communicative. I feared he would be shocked at finding methere, would consider my conduct incorrect, conceivably treat me withcontempt. I walked off a few paces. Perhaps it would be possible toread something on Fyne's face as he came out; and, if necessary, I couldalways eclipse myself discreetly through the door of one of the bars.The ground floor of the Eastern Hotel was an unabashed pub, withplate-glass fronts, a display of brass rails, and divided into manycompartments each having its own entrance.
But of course all this was silly. The marriage, the love, the affairsof Captain Anthony were none of my business. I was on the point ofmoving down the street for good when my attention was attracted by agirl approaching the hotel entrance from the west. She was dressed verymodestly in black. It was the white straw hat of a good form andtrimmed with a bunch of pale roses which had caught my eye. The wholefigure seemed familiar. Of course! Flora de Barral. She was makingfor the hotel, she was going in. And Fyne was with Captain Anthony! Tomeet him could not be pleasant for her. I wished to save her from theawkwardness, and as I hesitated what to do she looked up and our eyeshappened to meet just as she was turning off the pavement into the hoteldoorway. Instinctively I extended my arm. It was enough to make herstop. I suppose she had some faint notion that she had seen me beforesomewhere. She walked slowly forward, prudent and attentive, watchingmy faint smile.
"Excuse me," I said directly she had approached me near enough."Perhaps you would like to know that Mr Fyne is upstairs with CaptainAnthony at this moment."
She uttered a faint "Ah! Mr Fyne!" I could read in her eyes that shehad recognised me now. Her serious expression extinguished the imbecilegrin of which I was conscious. I raised my hat. She responded with aslow inclination of the head while her luminous, mistrustful, maiden'sglance seemed to whisper, "What is this one doing here?"
"I came up to town with Fyne this morning," I said in a businessliketone. "I have to see a friend in East India Dock. Fyne and I partedthis moment at the door here..." The girl regarded me with darkeningeyes ... "Mrs Fyne did not come with her husband," I went on, thenhesitated before that white face so still in the pearly shadow throwndown by the hat-brim. "But she sent him," I murmured by way of warning.
Her eyelids fluttered slowly over the fixed stare. I imagine she wasnot much disconcerted by this development. "I live a long way fromhere," she whispered.
I said perfunctorily, "Do you?" And we remained gazing at each other.The uniform paleness of her complexion was not that of an anaemic girl.It had a transparent vitality and at that particular moment the faintestpossible rosy tinge, the merest suspicion of colour; an equivalent, Isuppose, in any other girl to blushing like a peony, while she told methat Captain Anthony had arranged to show her the ship that morning.
It was easy to understand that she did not want to meet Fyne. And whenI mentioned in a discreet murmur that he had come because of her lettershe glanced at the hotel door quickly, and moved off a few steps to aposition where she could watch the entrance without being seen. Ifollowed her. At the junction of the two thoroughfares she stopped inthe thin traffic of the broad pavement and turned to me with an air ofchallenge. "And so you know."
I told her that I had not seen the letter. I had only heard of it. Shewas a little impatient. "I mean all about me."
Yes. I knew all about her. The distress of Mr and Mrs Fyne--especially of Mrs Fyne--was so great that they would have shared itwith anybody almost--not belonging to their circle of friends. Ihappened to be at hand--that was all.
"You understand that I am not their friend. I am only a holidayacquaintance."
"She was not very much upset?" queried Flora de Barral, meaning, ofcourse, Mrs Fyne. And I admitted that she was less so than herhusband--and even less than myself. Mrs Fyne was a very self-possessedperson whom nothing could startle out of her extreme theoreticalposition. She did not seem startled when Fyne and I proposed going tothe quarry.
"You put that notion into their heads," the girl said.
She was looking at me with extreme attention, and murmured:
"Is that what you called it to them? Tempting..."
"No. I told them that you were making up your mind and I came alongjust then. I told them that you were saved by me. My shout checkedyou..." She moved her head gently from right to left in negation.--"No?Well, have it your own way."
I thought to myself: She has found another issue. She wants to forgetnow. And no wonder. She wants to persuade herself that she had neverknown such an ugly and poignant minute in her life. "After all," Iconceded aloud, "things are not always what they seem."
Her little head with its deep blue eyes, eyes of tenderness and angerunder the black arch of fine eyebrows was very still. The mouth lookedvery red in the white face peeping from under the veil, the littlepointed chin had in its form something aggressive. Slight and evenangular in her modest black dress she was an appealing and--yes--she wasa desirable little figure.
Her lips moved very fast asking me:
"And they believed you at once?"
"Yes, they believed me at once. Mrs Fyne's word to us was `Go!'"
A white gleam between the red lips was so short that I remaineduncertain whether it was a smile or a ferocious baring of little eventeeth. The rest of the face preserved its innocent, tense andenigmatical expression. She spoke rapidly.
"No, it wasn't your shout. I had been there some time before you sawme. And I was not there to tempt Providence, as you call it. I went upthere for--for what you thought I was going to do. Yes. I climbed twofences. I did not mean to leave anything to Providence. There seem tobe people for whom Providence can do nothing. I suppose you are shockedto hear me talk like that?"
I shook my head. I was not shocked. What had kept her back all thattime, till I appeared on the scene below, she went on, was neither fearnor any other kind of hesitation. One reaches a point, she said withappalling youthful simplicity, where nothing that concerns one mattersany longer. But something did keep her back. I should have neverguessed what it was. She herself confessed that it seemed absurd tosay. It was the Fyne dog.
Flora de Barral paused, looking at me with a peculiar expression andthen went on. You see, she imagined the dog had become extremelyattached to her. She took it into her head that he might fall over orjump down after her. She tried to drive him away. She spoke sternly tohim. It only made him more frisky. He barked and jumped about herskirt in his usual, idiotic, high spirits. He scampered away in circlesbetween the pines charging upon her and leaping as high as her waist.She commanded, "Go away. Go home." She even picked up from the grounda bit of a broken branch and threw it at him. At this his delight knewno bounds; his rushes became faster, his yapping louder; he seemed to behaving the time of his life. She was convinced that the moment shethrew herself down he would spring over after her as if it were part ofthe game. She was vexed almost to tears. She was touched too. Andwhen he stood still at some distance as if suddenly rooted to the groundwagging his tail slowly and watching her intensely with his shining eyesanother fear came to her. She imagined herself gone and the creaturesitting on the brink, its head thrown up to the sky and howling forhours. This thought was not to be borne. Then my shout reached herears.
She told me all this with simplicity. My voice had destroyed herpoise--the suicide poise of her mind. Every act of ours, the mostcriminal, the most mad, presupposes a balance of thought, feeling andwill, like a correct attitude for an effective stroke in a game. And Ihad destroyed it. She was no longer in proper form for the act. Shewas not very much annoyed. Next day would do. She would have to slipaway without attracting the notice of the dog. She thought of thenecessity almost tenderly. She came down the path carrying her despairwith lucid calmness. But when she saw herself deserted by the dog, shehad an impulse to turn round, go up again and be done with it. Not eventhat animal cared for her--in the end.
"I really did think that he was attached to me. What did he want topretend for, like this? I thought nothing could hurt me any more. Ohyes. I would have gone up, but I felt suddenly so tired. So tired.And then you were there. I didn't know what you would do. You mighthave tried to follow me and I didn't think I could run--not up hill--notthen."
She had raised her white face a little, and it was queer to hear her saythese things. At that time of the morning there are comparatively fewpeople out in that part of the town. The broad interminable perspectiveof the East India Dock Road, the great perspective of drab brick walls,of grey pavement, of muddy roadway rumbling dismally with loaded cartsand vans lost itself in the distance, imposing and shabby in itsspacious meanness of aspect, in its immeasurable poverty of forms, ofcolouring, of life--under a harsh, unconcerned sky dried by the wind toa clear blue. It had been raining during the night. The sunshineitself seemed poor. From time to time a few bits of paper, a littledust and straw whirled past us on the broad flat promontory of thepavement before the rounded front of the hotel.
Flora de Barral was silent for a while. I said:
"And next day you thought better of it."
Again she raised her eyes to mine with that peculiar expression ofinformed innocence; and again her white cheeks took on the faintesttinge of pink--the merest shadow of a blush.
"Next day," she uttered distinctly, "I didn't think. I remembered.That was enough. I remembered what I should never have forgotten.Never. And Captain Anthony arrived at the cottage in the evening."
"Ah yes. Captain Anthony," I murmured. And she repeated also in amurmur, "Yes! Captain Anthony." The faint flush of warm life left herface. I subdued my voice still more and not looking at her: "You foundhim sympathetic?" I ventured.
Her long dark lashes went down a little with an air of calculateddiscretion. At least so it seemed to me. And yet no one could say thatI was inimical to that girl. But there you are! Explain it as you may,in this world the friendless, like the poor, are always a littlesuspect, as if honesty and delicacy were only possible to the privilegedfew.
"Why do you ask?" she said after a time, raising her eyes suddenly tomine in an effect of candour which on the same principle (of thedisinherited not being to be trusted) might have been judged equivocal.
"If you mean what right I have..." She moved slightly a hand in a wornbrown glove as much as to say she could not question anyone's rightagainst such an outcast as herself.
I ought to have been moved perhaps; but I only noted the total absenceof humility.--"No right at all," I continued, "but just interest. MrsFyne--it's too difficult to explain how it came about--has talked to meof you--well--extensively."
No doubt Mrs Fyne had told me the truth, Flora said brusquely with anunexpected hoarseness of tone. This very dress she was wearing had beengiven her by Mrs Fyne. Of course I looked at it. It could not havebeen a recent gift. Close-fitting and black, with heliotrope silkfacings under a figured net, it looked far from new, just on this sideof shabbiness; in fact, it accentuated the slightness of her figure, itwent well in its suggestion of half mourning with the white face inwhich the unsmiling red lips alone seemed warm with the rich blood oflife and passion.
Little Fyne was staying up there an unconscionable time. Was hearguing, preaching, remonstrating? Had he discovered in himself acapacity and a taste for that sort of thing? Or was he perhaps, in anintense dislike for the job, beating about the bush and only puzzlingCaptain Anthony, the providential man, who, if he expected the girl toappear at any moment, must have been on tenterhooks all the time, andbeside himself with impatience to see the back of his brother-in-law.How was it that he had not got rid of Fyne long before in any case? Idon't mean by actually throwing him out of the window, but in some otherresolute manner.
Surely Fyne had not impressed him. That he was an impressionable man Icould not doubt. The presence of
It so happened that in their wanderings to and fro our glances met.They met and remained in contact more familiar than a hand-clasp, morecommunicative, more expressive. There was something comic too in thewhole situation, in the poor girl and myself waiting together on thebroad pavement at a corner public-house for the issue of Fyne'sridiculous mission. But the comic when it is human becomes quicklypainful. Yes, she was infinitely anxious. And I was asking myselfwhether this poignant tension of her suspense depended--to put itplainly--on hunger or love.
The answer would have been of some interest to Captain Anthony. For mypart, in the presence of a young girl I always become convinced that thedreams of sentiment--like the consoling mysteries of Faith--areinvincible; that it is never never reason which governs men and women.
Yet what sentiment could there have been on her part? I remembered hertone only a moment since when she said: "That evening Captain Anthonyarrived at the cottage." And considering, too, what the arrival ofCaptain Anthony meant in this connection, I wondered at the calmnesswith which she could mention that fact. He arrived at the cottage. Inthe evening. I knew that late train. He probably walked from thestation. The evening would be well advanced. I could almost see a darkindistinct figure opening the wicket gate of the garden. Where was she?Did she see him enter? Was she somewhere near by and did she hearwithout the slightest premonition his chance and fateful footsteps onthe flagged path leading to the cottage door? In the shadow of thenight made more cruelly sombre for her by the very shadow of death hemust have appeared too strange, too remote, too unknown to impresshimself on her thought as a living force--such a force as a man canbring to bear on a woman's destiny.
She glanced towards the hotel door again; I followed suit and then oureyes met once more, this time intentionally. A tentative, uncertainintimacy was springing up between us two. She said simply: "You arewaiting for Mr Fyne to come out; are you?"
I admitted to her that I was waiting to see Mr Fyne come out. That wasall. I had nothing to say to him.
"I have said yesterday all I had to say to him," I added meaningly. "Ihave said it to them both, in fact. I have also heard all they had tosay."
"About me?" she murmured.
"Yes. The conversation was about you."
"I wonder if they told you everything."
If she wondered I could do nothing else but wonder too. But I did nottell her that. I only smiled. The material point was that CaptainAnthony should be told everything. But as to that I was very certainthat the good sister would see to it. Was there anything more todisclose--some other misery, some other deception of which that girl hadbeen a victim? It seemed hardly probable. It was not even easy toimagine. What struck me most was her--I suppose I must call it--composure. One could not tell whether she understood what she had done.One wondered. She was not so much unreadable as blank; and I did notknow whether to admire her for it or dismiss her from my thoughts as apassive butt of ferocious misfortune.
Looking back at the occasion when we first got on speaking terms on theroad by the quarry, I had to admit that she presented some points of aproblematic appearance. I don't know why I imagined Captain Anthony asthe sort of man who would not be likely to take the initiative; notperhaps from indifference but from that peculiar timidity before womenwhich often enough is found in conjunction with chivalrous instincts,with a great need for affection and great stability of feelings. Suchmen are easily moved. At the least encouragement they go forward withthe eagerness, with the recklessness of starvation. This accounted forthe suddenness of the affair. No! With all her inexperience this girlcould not have found any great difficulty in her conquering enterprise.She must have begun it. And yet there she was, patient, almost unmoved,almost pitiful, waiting outside like a beggar, without a right toanything but compassion, for a promised dole.
Every moment people were passing close by us, singly, in two and threes;the inhabitants of that end of the town where life goes on unadorned bygrace or splendour; they passed us in their shabby garments, with sallowfaces, haggard, anxious or weary, or simply without expression, in anunsmiling sombre stream not made up of lives but of mere unconsideredexistences whose joys, struggles, thoughts, sorrows and their very hopeswere miserable, glamourless, and of no account in the world. And whenone thought of their reality to themselves one's heart became oppressed.But of all the individuals who passed by none appeared to me for themoment so pathetic in unconscious patience as the girl standing beforeme; none more difficult to understand. It is perhaps because I wasthinking of things which I could not ask her about.
In fact we had nothing to say to each other; but we two, strangers as wereally were to each other, had dealt with the most intimate and final ofsubjects, the subject of death. It had created a sort of bond between,us. It made our silence weighty and uneasy. I ought to have left herthere and then; but, as I think I've told you before, the fact of havingshouted her away from the edge of a precipice seemed somehow to haveengaged my responsibility as to this other leap. And so we had still anintimate subject between us to lend more weight and more uneasiness toour silence. The subject of marriage. I use the word not so much inreference to the ceremony itself (I had no doubt of this, CaptainAnthony being a decent fellow) or in view of the social institution ingeneral, as to which I have no opinion, but in regard to the humanrelation. The first two views are not particularly interesting. Theceremony, I suppose, is adequate; the institution, I dare say, is usefulor it would not have endured. But the human relation thus recognised isa mysterious thing in its origins, character and consequences.Unfortunately you can't buttonhole familiarly a young girl as you woulda young fellow. I don't think that even another woman could really doit. She would not be trusted. There is not between women that fund ofat least conditional loyalty which men may depend on in their dealingswith each other. I believe that any woman would rather trust a man.The difficulty in such a delicate case was how to get on terms.
So we held our peace in the odious uproar of that wide roadway throngedwith heavy carts. Great vans carrying enormous piled-up loads advancedswaying like mountains. It was as if the whole world existed only forselling and buying and those who had nothing to do with the movement ofmerchandise were of no account.
"You must be tired," I said. One had to say something if only to assertoneself against that wearisome, passionless and crushing uproar. Sheraised her eyes for a moment. No, she was not. Not very. She had notwalked all the way. She came by train as far as Whitechapel Station andhad only walked from there.
She had had an ugly pilgrimage; but whether of love or of necessity whocould tell? And that precisely was what I should have liked to get at.This was not however a question to be asked point-blank, and I could notthink of any effective circumlocution. It occurred to me too that shemight conceivably know nothing of it herself--I mean by reflection.That young woman had been obviously considering death. She had gone thelength of forming some conception of it. But as to its companionfatality--love, she, I was certain, had never reflected upon itsmeaning.
With that man in the hotel, whom I did not know, and this girl standingbefore me in the street I felt that it was an exceptional case. He hadbroken away from his surroundings; she stood outside the pale. Oneaspect of conventions which people who declaim against them lose sightof is that conventions make both joy and suffering easier to bear in abecoming manner. But those two were outside all conventions. Theywould be as untrammelled in a sense as the first man and the firstwoman. The trouble was that I could not imagine anything about Flora deBarral and the brother of Mrs Fyne. Or, if you like, I could imagine_anything_ which comes practically to the same thing. Darkness andchaos are first cousins. I should have liked to ask the girl for a wordwhich would give my imagination its line. But how was one to venture sofar? I can be rough sometimes but I am not naturally impertinent. Iwould hav
She seemed glad I had spoken at last and glad of the opportunity tospeak herself.
"Yes. He said he would--this morning. Did you say you did not knowCaptain Anthony?"
"No. I don't know him. Is he anything like his sister?"
She looked startled and murmured "Sister!" in a puzzled tone whichastonished me. "Oh! Mrs Fyne," she exclaimed, recollecting herself,and avoiding my eyes while I looked at her curiously.
What an extraordinary detachment! And all the time the stream of shabbypeople was hastening by us, with the continuous dreary shuffling ofweary footsteps on the flagstones. The sunshine falling on the grime ofsurfaces, on the poverty of tones and forms seemed of an inferiorquality, its joy faded, its brilliance tarnished and dusty. I had toraise my voice in the dull vibrating noise of the roadway.
"You don't mean to say you have forgotten the connection?"
She cried readily enough: "I wasn't thinking." And then, while Iwondered what could have been the images occupying her brain at thistime, she asked me: "You didn't see my letter to Mrs Fyne--did you?"
"No. I didn't," I shouted. Just then the racket was distracting, apair-horse trolly lightly loaded with loose rods of iron passing slowlyvery near us. "I wasn't trusted so far." And remembering Mrs Fyne'shints that the girl was unbalanced, I added: "Was it an unreservedconfession you wrote?"
She did not answer me for a time, and as I waited I thought that there'snothing like a confession to make one look mad; and that of allconfessions a written one is the most detrimental all round. Neverconfess! Never, never! An untimely joke is a source of bitter regretalways. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, butbecause it is untimely. And a confession of whatever sort is alwaysuntimely. The only thing which makes it supportable for a while iscuriosity. You smile? Ah, but it is so, or else people would be sentto the rightabout at the second sentence. How many sympathetic soulscan you reckon on in the world? One in ten, one in a hundred--in athousand--in ten thousand? Ah! What a sell these confessions are!What a horrible sell! You seek sympathy, and all you get is the mostevanescent sense of relief--if you get that much. For a confession,whatever it may be, stirs the secret depths of the hearer's character.Often depths that he himself is but dimly aware of. And so therighteous triumph secretly, the lucky are amused, the strong aredisgusted, the weak either upset or irritated with you according to themeasure of their sincerity with themselves. And all of them in theirhearts brand you for either mad or impudent...
I had seldom seen Marlow so vehement, so pessimistic, so earnestlycynical before. I cut his declamation short by asking what answer Florade Barral had given to his question. "Did the poor girl admit firingoff her confidences at Mrs Fyne--eight pages of close writing--thatsort of thing?"
Marlow shook his head.
She did not tell me. I accepted her silence, as a kind of answer andremarked that it would have been better if she had simply announced thefact to Mrs Fyne at the cottage. "Why didn't you do it?" I askedpoint-blank.
She said: "I am not a very plucky girl." She looked up at me and addedmeaningly: "And _you_ know it. And you know why."
I must remark that she seemed to have become very subdued since ourfirst meeting at the quarry. Almost a different person from thedefiant, angry and despairing girl with quivering lips and resentfulglances.
"I thought it was very sensible of you to get away from that sheerdrop," I said.
She looked up with something of that old expression.
"That's not what I mean. I see you will have it that you saved my life.Nothing of the kind. I was concerned for that vile little beast of adog. No! It was the idea of--of doing away with myself which wascowardly. That's what I meant by saying I am not a very plucky girl."
"Oh!" I retorted airily. "That little dog. He isn't really a badlittle dog." But she lowered her eyelids and went on:
"I was so miserable that I could think only of myself. This was mean.It was cruel too. And besides I had _not_ given it up--not then."
Marlow changed his tone.
"I don't know much of the psychology of self-destruction. It's a sortof subject one has few opportunities to study closely. I knew a manonce who came to my rooms one evening, and while smoking a cigarconfessed to me moodily that he was trying to discover some graceful wayof retiring out of Existence. I didn't study his case, but I had aglimpse of him the other day at a cricket match, with some women, havinga good time. That seems a fairly reasonable attitude. Considered as asin, it is a case for repentance before the throne of a merciful God.But I imagine that Flora de Barral's religion under the care of thedistinguished governess could have been nothing but outward formality.Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is onlyunderstandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature.But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak--why sheshould writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought ofgetting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse--that I could not understand. I thought it was very likely some obscureinfluence of common forms of speech, some traditional or inheritedfeeling--a vague notion that suicide is a legal crime; words of oldmoralists and preachers which remain in the air and help to form all theauthorised moral conventions. Yes, I was surprised at her remorse. Butlowering her glance unexpectedly till her dark eyelashes seemed to restagainst her white cheeks she presented a perfectly demure aspect. Itwas so attractive that I could not help a faint smile. That Flora deBarral should ever, in any aspect, have the power to evoke a smile wasthe very last thing I should have believed. She went on after a slighthesitation:--
"One day I started for there, for that place."
Look at the influence of a mere play of physiognomy! If you rememberwhat we were talking about you will hardly believe that I caught myselfgrinning down at that demure little girl. I must say too that I feltmore friendly to her at the moment than ever before.
"Oh, you did? To take that jump? You are a determined young person.Well, what happened that time?"
An almost imperceptible alteration in her bearing; a slight droop of herhead perhaps--a mere nothing--made her look more demure than ever.
"I had left the cottage," she began a little hurriedly. "I was walkingalong the road--you know, _the_ road. I had made up my mind I was notcoming back this time."
I won't deny that these words spoken from under the brim of her hat (ohyes, certainly, her head was down--she had put it down) gave me athrill; for indeed I had never doubted her sincerity. It could neverhave been a make-believe despair.
"Yes," I whispered. "You were going along the road."
"When..." Again she hesitated with an effect of innocent shyness worldsasunder from tragic issues; then glided on--"When suddenly CaptainAnthony came through a gate out of a field."
I coughed down the beginning of a most improper fit of laughter, andfelt ashamed of myself. Her eyes raised for a moment seemed full ofinnocent suffering and unexpressed menace in the depths of the dilatedpupils within the rings of sombre blue. It was--how shall I say it?--anight effect when you seem to see vague shapes and don't know whatreality you may come upon at any time. Then she lowered her eyelidsagain, shutting all mysteriousness out of the situation except for thesobering memory of that glance, nightlike in the sunshine, expressivelystill in the brutal unrest of the street.
"So Captain Anthony joined you--did he?"
"He opened a field-gate and walked out on the road. He crossed to myside and went on with me. He had his pipe in his hand. He said: `Areyou going far this morning?'"
These words (I was watching her white face as she spoke) gave me aslight shudder. She remained demure, almost prim. And I remarked:
"You have been talking togeth
"Not more than twenty words altogether since he arrived," she declaredwithout emphasis. "That day he had said `Good morning' to me when wemet at breakfast two hours before. And I said good morning to him. Idid not see him afterwards till he came out on the road."
I thought to myself that this was not accidental. He had been observingher. I felt certain also that he had not been asking any questions ofMrs Fyne.
"I wouldn't look at him," said Flora de Barral. "I had done withlooking at people. He said to me: `My sister does not put herself outmuch for us. We had better keep each other company. I have read everybook there is in that cottage.' I walked on. He did not leave me. Ithought he ought to. But he didn't. He didn't seem to notice that Iwould not talk to him."
She was now perfectly still. The wretched little parasol hung downagainst her dress from her joined hands. I was rigid with attention.It isn't every day that one culls such a volunteered tale on a girl'slips. The ugly street-noises swelling up for a moment covered the nextfew words she said. It was vexing. The next word I heard was"worried."
"It worried you to have him there, walking by your side."
"Yes. Just that," she went on with downcast eyes. There was somethingprettily comical in her attitude and her tone, while I pictured tomyself a poor white-faced girl walking to her death with an unconsciousman striding by her side. Unconscious? I don't know. First of all, Ifelt certain that this was no chance meeting. Something had happenedbefore. Was he a man for a _coup-de-foudre_, the lightning stroke oflove? I don't think so. That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare.A world of inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would verysoon end in barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man(not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out inall his potentialities often by the most insignificant little things--aslong as they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face atan unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek oftenlooked at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged withastonishing significance. These are great mysteries, of course. Magicsigns.
I don't know in what the sign consisted in this case. It might havebeen her pallor (it wasn't pasty nor yet papery) that white face witheyes like blue gleams of fire and lips like red coals. In certainlights, in certain poises of head it suggested tragic sorrow. Or itmight have been her wavy hair. Or even just that pointed chin stuck outa little, resentful and not particularly distinguished, doing away withthe mysterious aloofness of her fragile presence. But any way at agiven moment Anthony must have suddenly _seen_ the girl. And then, thatsomething had happened to him. Perhaps nothing more than the thoughtcoming into his head that this was "a possible woman."
Followed this waylaying! Its resolute character makes me think it wasthe chin's doing; that "common mortal" touch which stands in such goodstead to some women. Because men, I mean really masculine men, thosewhose generations have evolved an ideal woman, are often very timid.Who wouldn't be before the ideal? It's your sentimental trifler, whohas just missed being nothing at all, who is enterprising, simplybecause it is easy to appear enterprising when one does not mean to putone's belief to the test.
Well, whatever it was that encouraged him, Captain Anthony stuck toFlora de Barral in a manner which in a timid man might have been calledheroic if it had not been so simple. Whether policy, diplomacy,simplicity, or just inspiration, he kept up his talk, rather deliberate,with very few pauses. Then suddenly as if recollecting himself:
"It's funny. I don't think you are annoyed with me for giving you mycompany unasked. But why don't you say something?"
I asked Miss de Barral what answer she made to this query.
"I made no answer," she said in that even, unemotional low voice whichseemed to be her voice for delicate confidences. "I walked on. He didnot seem to mind. We came to the foot of the quarry where the roadwinds up hill, past the place where you were sitting by the roadsidethat day. I began to wonder what I should do. After we reached the topCaptain Anthony said that he had not been for a walk with a lady foryears and years--almost since he was a boy. We had then come to where Iought to have turned off and struck across a field. I thought ofmaking a run of it. But he would have caught me up. I knew he would;and, of course, he would not have allowed me. I couldn't give him theslip."
"Why didn't you ask him to leave you?" I inquired curiously.
"He would not have taken any notice," she went on steadily. "And whatcould I have done then? I could not have started quarrelling with him--could I? I hadn't enough energy to get angry. I felt very tiredsuddenly. I just stumbled on straight along the road. Captain Anthonytold me that the family--some relations of his mother--he used to knowin Liverpool was broken up now, and he had never made any friends since.All gone their different ways. All the girls married. Nice girls theywere and very friendly to him when he was but little more than a boy.He repeated: `Very nice, cheery, clever girls.' I sat down on a bankagainst a hedge and began to cry."
"You must have astonished him not a little," I observed.
Anthony, it seems, remained on the road looking down at her. He did notoffer to approach her, neither did he make any other movement orgesture. Flora de Barral told me all this. She could see him throughher tears, blurred to a mere shadow on the white road, and then againbecoming more distinct, but always absolutely still and as if lost inthought before a strange phenomenon which demanded the closest possibleattention.
Flora learned later that he had never seen a woman cry; not in that way,at least. He was impressed and interested by the mysteriousness of theeffect. She was very conscious of being looked at, but was not able tostop herself crying. In fact, she was not capable of any effort.Suddenly he advanced two steps, stooped, caught hold of her hands lyingon her lap and pulled her up to her feet; she found herself standingclose to him almost before she realised what he had done. Some peoplewere coming briskly along the road and Captain Anthony muttered: "Youdon't want to be stared at. What about that stile over there? Can wego back across the fields?"
She snatched her hands out of his grasp (it seems he had omitted to letthem go), marched away from him and got over the stile. It was a bigfield sprinkled profusely with white sheep. A trodden path crossed itdiagonally. After she had gone more than half-way she turned her headfor the first time. Keeping five feet or so behind, Captain Anthony wasfollowing her with an air of extreme interest. Interest or eagerness.At any rate she caught an expression on his face which frightened her.But not enough to make her run. And indeed it would have had to besomething incredibly awful to scare into a run a girl who had come tothe end of her courage to live.
As if encouraged by this glance over the shoulder Captain Anthony cameup boldly, and now that he was by her side, she felt his nearnessintimately, like a touch. She tried to disregard this sensation. Butshe was not angry with him now. It wasn't worth while. She wasthankful that he had the sense not to ask questions as to this crying.Of course he didn't ask because he didn't care. No one in the worldcared for her, neither those who pretended nor yet those who did notpretend. She preferred the latter.
Captain Anthony opened for her a gate into another field; when they gotthrough he kept walking abreast, elbow to elbow almost. His voicegrowled pleasantly in her very ear. Staying in this dull place wasenough to give anyone the blues. His sister scribbled all day. It waspositively unkind. He alluded to his nieces as rude, selfish monkeys,without either feelings or manners. And he went on to talk about hisship being laid up for a month and dismantled for repairs. The worstwas that on arriving in London he found he couldn't get the rooms he wasused to, where they made him as comfortable as such a confirmed sea-dogas himself could be anywhere on shore.
In the effort to subdue by dint of talking and to keep in check themysterious, the profound attraction he felt already for that delicatebeing of flesh and blood, with pale cheeks, with, darkened eyelids andeyes scalded with hot tea
This gave one a view of Captain Anthony as a hermit withdrawn from awicked world. It was amusingly unexpected to me and nothing more. Butit must have appealed straight to that bruised and battered young soul.Still shrinking from his nearness she had ended by listening to him withavidity. His deep murmuring voice soothed her. And she thoughtsuddenly that there was peace and rest in the grave too.
She heard him say: "Look at my sister. She isn't a bad woman by anymeans. She asks me here because it's right and proper, I suppose, butshe has no use for me. There you have your shore people. I quiteunderstand anybody crying. I would have been gone already, only, truthto say, I haven't any friends to go to." He added brusquely: "And you?"
She made a slight negative sign. He must have been observing her,putting two and two together. After a pause he said simply: "When Ifirst came here I thought you were governess to these girls. My sisterdidn't say a word about you to me."
Then Flora spoke for the first time.
"Mrs Fyne is my best friend."
"So she is mine," he said without the slightest irony or bitterness, butadded with conviction: "That shows you what life ashore is. Much betterbe out of it."
As they were approaching the cottage he was heard again as though a longsilent walk had not intervened: "But anyhow I shan't ask her anythingabout you."
He stopped short and she went on alone. His last words had impressedher. Everything he had said seemed somehow to have a special meaningunder its obvious conversational sense. Till she went in at the door ofthe cottage she felt his eyes resting on her.
That is it. He had made himself felt. That girl was, one may say,washing about with slack limbs in the ugly surf of life with noopportunity to strike out for herself, when suddenly she had been madeto feel that there was somebody beside her in the bitter water. A mostconsiderable moral event for her; whether she was aware of it or not.They met again at the one o'clock dinner. I am inclined to think that,being a healthy girl under her frail appearance, and fast walking andwhat I may call relief-crying (there are many kinds of crying) makingone hungry, she made a good meal. It was Captain Anthony who had noappetite. His sister commented on it in a curt, businesslike manner,and the eldest of his delightful nieces said mockingly: "You have beentaking too much exercise this morning, Uncle Roderick." The mild UncleRoderick turned upon her with a "What do you know about it, young lady?"so charged with suppressed savagery that the whole round table gave onegasp and went dumb for the rest of the meal. He took no notice whateverof Flora de Barral. I don't think it was from prudence or anycalculated motive. I believe he was so full of her aspects that he didnot want to look in her direction when there were other people to hamperhis imagination.
You understand I am piecing here bits of disconnected statements. Nextday Flora saw him leaning over the field-gate. When she told me this, Ididn't of course ask her how it was she was there. Probably she couldnot have told me how it was she was there. The difficulty here is tokeep steadily in view the then conditions of her existence, acombination of dreariness and horror.
That hermit-like but not exactly misanthropic sailor was leaning overthe gate moodily. When he saw the white-faced restless Flora driftinglike a lost thing along the road he put his pipe in his pocket andcalled out "Good morning, Miss Smith" in a tone of amazing happiness.She, with one foot in life and the other in a nightmare, was at the sametime inert and unstable, and very much at the mercy of sudden impulses.She swerved, came distractedly right up to the gate and looking straightinto his eyes: "I am not Miss Smith. That's not my name. Don't call meby it."
She was shaking as if in a passion. His eyes expressed nothing; he onlyunlatched the gate in silence, grasped her arm and drew her in. Thenclosing it with a kick--
"Not your name? That's all one to me. Your name's the least thingabout you I care for." He was leading her firmly away from the gatethough she resisted slightly. There was a sort of joy in his eyes whichfrightened her. "You are not a princess in disguise," he said with anunexpected laugh she found blood-curdling. "And that's all I care for.You had better understand that I am not blind and not a fool. And thenit's plain for even a fool to see that things have been going hard withyou. You are on a lee shore and eating your heart out with worry."
What seemed most awful to her was the elated light in his eyes, therapacious smile that would come and go on his lips as if he weregloating over her misery. But her misery was his opportunity and herejoiced while the tenderest pity seemed to flood his whole being. Hepointed out to her that she knew who he was. He was Mrs Fyne'sbrother. And, well, if his sister was the best friend she had in theworld, then, by Jove, it was about time somebody came along to lookafter her a little.
Flora had tried more than once to free herself, but he tightened hisgrasp of her arm each time and even shook it a little without ceasing tospeak. The nearness of his face intimidated her. He seemed striving tolook her through. It was obvious the world had been using her ill. Andeven as he spoke with indignation the very marks and stamp of thisill-usage of which he was so certain seemed to add to the inexplicableattraction he felt for her person. It was not pity alone, I take it.It was something more spontaneous, perverse and exciting. It gave himthe feeling that if only he could get hold of her, no woman would belongto him so completely as this woman.
"Whatever your troubles," he said, "I am the man to take you away fromthem; that is, if you are not afraid. You told me you had no friends.Neither have I. Nobody ever cared for me as far as I can remember.Perhaps you could. Yes, I live on the sea. But who would you beparting from? No one. You have no one belonging to you."
At this point she broke away from him and ran. He did not pursue her.The tall hedges tossing in the wind, the wide fields, the clouds drivingover the sky and the sky itself wheeled about her in masses of green andwhite and blue as if the world were breaking up silently in a whirl, andher foot at the next step were bound to find the void. She reached thegate all right, got out, and, once on the road, discovered that she hadnot the courage to look back. The rest of that day she spent with theFyne girls who gave her to understand that she was a slow andunprofitable person. Long after tea, nearly at dusk, Captain Anthony(the son of the poet) appeared suddenly before her in the little gardenin front of the cottage. They were alone for the moment. The wind haddropped. In the calm evening air the voices of Mrs Fyne and the girlsstrolling aimlessly on the road could be heard. He said to herseverely:
"You have understood?"
She looked at him in silence.
"That I love you," he finished.
She shook her head the least bit.
"Don't you believe me?" he asked in a low, infuriated voice.
"Nobody would love me," she answered in a very quiet tone. "Nobodycould."
He was dumb for a time, astonished beyond measure, as he well might havebeen. He doubted his ears. He was outraged.
"Eh? What? Can't love you? What do you know about it? It's myaffair, isn't it? You dare say _that_ to a man who has just told you!You must be mad!"
"Very nearly," she said with the accent of pent-up sincerity, and evenrelieved because she was able to say something which she felt was true.For the last few days she had felt herself several times near thatmadness which is but an intolerable lucidity of apprehension.
The clear voices of Mrs Fyne and the girls were coming nearer, soundingaffected in the peace of the passion-laden earth. He began storming ather hastily.
"Nonsense! Nobody can ... Indeed! Pah! You'll have to be shown thatsomebody can. I can. Nobody..." He made a contemptuous hissing noise."More likely _you_ can't. They have done something to you.Something's crushed your pluck. You can't face a man--that's what itis. W
She did not answer. He muttered, "Not that I care," and fell silent,because the fatuous self-confident chatter of the Fyne girls could beheard at the very gate. But they were not going to bed yet. Theypassed on. He waited a little in silence and immobility, then stampedhis foot and lost control of himself. He growled at her in a savagepassion. She felt certain that he was threatening her and calling hernames. She was no stranger to abuse, as we know, but there seemed to bea particular kind of ferocity in this which was new to her. She beganto tremble. The especially terrifying thing was that she could not makeout the nature of these awful menaces and names. Not a word. Yet itwas not the shrinking anguish of her other experiences of angry scenes.She made a mighty effort, though her knees were knocking together, andin an expiring voice demanded that he should let her go indoors. "Don'tstop me. It's no use. It's no use," she repeated faintly, feeling aninvincible obstinacy rising within her, yet without anger against thatraging man.
He became articulate suddenly, and, without raising his voice, perfectlyaudible.
"No use? No use! You dare stand here and tell me that--you white-facedwisp, you wreath of mist, you little ghost of all the sorrow in theworld. You dare! Haven't I been looking at you? You are all eyes.What makes your cheeks always so white as if you had seen something ...Don't speak. I love it--No use! And you really think that I can now goto sea for a year or more, to the other side of the world somewhere,leaving you behind. Why! You would vanish ... what little there is ofyou. Some rough wind will blow you away altogether. You have noholding ground on earth. Well, then trust yourself to me--to the sea--which is deep like your eyes."
She said: "Impossible." He kept quiet for a while, then asked in atotally changed tone, a tone of gloomy curiosity:
"You can't stand me then? Is that it?"
"No," she said, more steady herself. "I am not thinking of you at all."
The inane voices of the Fyne girls were heard over the sombre fieldscalling to each other, thin and clear. He muttered: "You could try to.Unless you are thinking of somebody else."
"Yes. I am thinking of somebody else, of someone who has nobody tothink of him but me."
His shadowy form stepped out of her way, and suddenly leaned sidewaysagainst the wooden support of the porch. And as she stood still,surprised by this staggering movement, his voice spoke up in a tonequite strange to her.
"Go in then. Go out of my sight--I thought you said nobody could loveyou."
She was passing him when suddenly he struck her as so forlorn that shewas inspired to say: "No one has ever loved me--not in that way--ifthat's what you mean. Nobody, would."
He detached himself brusquely from the post, and she did not shrink; butMrs Fyne and the girls were already at the gate.
All he understood was that everything was not over yet. There was notime to lose; Mrs Fyne and the girls had come in at the gate. Hewhispered "Wait" with such authority (he was the son of Carleon Anthony,the domestic autocrat) that it did arrest her for a moment, long enoughto hear him say that he could not be left like this to puzzle over hernonsense all night. She was to slip down again into the garden lateron, as soon as she could do so without being heard. He would be therewaiting for her till--till daylight. She didn't think he could go tosleep, did she? And she had better come, or--he broke off on anunfinished threat.
She vanished into the unlighted cottage just as Mrs Fyne came up to theporch. Nervous, holding her breath in the darkness of the living-room,she heard her best friend say: "You ought to, have joined us, Roderick."And then: "Have you seen Miss Smith anywhere?"
Flora shuddered, expecting Anthony to break out into betrayingimprecations on Miss Smith's head, and cause a painful and humiliatingexplanation. She imagined him full of his mysterious ferocity. To hergreat surprise, Anthony's voice sounded very much as usual, with perhapsa slight tinge of grimness. "Miss Smith! No. I've seen no MissSmith."
Mrs Fyne seemed satisfied--and not much concerned really.
Flora, relieved, got clear away to her room upstairs, and shutting herdoor quietly, dropped into a chair. She was used to reproaches, abuse,to all sorts of wicked ill-usage--short of actual beating on her body.Otherwise inexplicable angers had cut and slashed and trampled down heryouth without mercy--and mainly, it appeared, because she was thefinancier de Barral's daughter and also condemned to a degrading sort ofpoverty through the action of treacherous men who had turned upon herfather in his hour of need. And she thought with the tenderest possibleaffection of that upright figure buttoned up in a long frock-coat,soft-voiced and having but little to say to his girl. She seemed tofeel his hand closed round hers. On his flying visits to Brighton hewould always walk hand in hand with her. People stared covertly atthem; the band was playing; and there was the sea--the blue gaiety ofthe sea. They were quietly happy together.--It was all over!
An immense anguish of the present wrung her heart, and she nearly criedaloud. That dread of what was before her which had been eating up hercourage slowly in the course of odious years, flamed up into an accessof panic, that sort of headlong panic which had already driven her outtwice to the top of the cliff-like quarry. She jumped up saying toherself: "Why not now? At once! Yes. I'll do it now--in the dark!"The very horror of it seemed to give her additional resolution.
She came down the staircase quietly, and only on the point of openingthe door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, sheremembered Captain Anthony's threat to stay in the garden all night.She hesitated. She did not understand the mood of that man clearly. Hewas violent. But she had gone beyond the point where things matter.What would he think of her coming down to him--as he would naturallysuppose. And even that didn't matter. He could not despise her morethan she despised herself. She must have been light-headed because thethought came into her mind that should he get into ungovernable furyfrom disappointment, and perchance strangle her, it would be as good away to be done with it as any.
"You had that thought," I exclaimed in wonder.
With downcast eyes and speaking with an almost painstaking precision(her very lips, her red lips, seemed to move just enough to be heard andno more), she said that, yes, the thought came into her head. Thismakes one shudder at the mysterious ways girls acquire knowledge. Forthis was a thought, wild enough, I admit, but which could only have comefrom the depths of that sort of experience which she had not had, andwent far beyond a young girl's possible conception of the strongest andmost veiled of human emotions.
"He was there, of course?" I said.
"Yes, he was there." She saw him on the path directly she steppedoutside the porch. He was very still. It was as though he had beenstanding there with his face to the door for hours.
Shaken up by the changing moods of passion and tenderness, he must havebeen ready for any extravagance of conduct. Knowing the profoundsilence each night brought to that nook of the country, I could imaginethem having the feeling of being the only two people on the wide earth.A row of six or seven lofty elms just across the road opposite thecottage made the night more obscure in that little garden. If these twocould just make out each other that was all.
"Well! And were you very much terrified?" I asked.
She made me wait a little before she said, raising her eyes: "He wasgentleness itself."
I noticed three abominable, drink-sodden loafers, sallow and dirty, whohad come to range themselves in a row within ten feet of us against thefront of the public-house. They stared at Flora de Barral's back withunseeing, mournful fixity. "Let's move this way a little," I proposed.
She turned at once and we made a few paces; not too far to take us outof sight of the hotel door, but very nearly. I could just keep my eyeson it. After all, I had not been so very long with the girl. If youwere t
I felt like a blackmailer all the same when I made my attempt with alight-hearted remark.
"And so you gave up that walk you proposed to take?"
"Yes, I gave up the walk," she said slowly before raising her downcasteyes. When she did so it was with an extraordinary effect. It was likecatching sight of a piece of blue sky, of a stretch of open water. Andfor a moment I understood the desire of that man to whom the sea and skyof his solitary life had appeared suddenly incomplete without thatglance which seemed to belong to them both. He was not for nothing theson of a poet. I looked into those unabashed eyes while the girl wenton, her demure appearance and precise tone changed to a very earnestexpression. Woman is various indeed.
"But I want you to understand, Mr.." she had actually to think of myname... "Mr Marlow, that I have written to Mrs Fyne that I haven'tbeen--that I have done nothing to make Captain Anthony behave to me ashe had behaved. I haven't. I haven't. It isn't my doing. It isn't myfault--if she likes to put it in that way. But she, with her ideas,ought to understand that I couldn't, that I couldn't--I know she hatesme now. I think she never liked me. I think nobody ever cared for me.I was told once nobody could care for me; and I think it is true. Atany rate I can't forget it."
Her abominable experience with the governess had implanted in herunlucky breast a lasting doubt, an ineradicable suspicion of herself andof others. I said:
"Remember, Miss de Barral, that to be fair you must trust a manaltogether--or not at all."
She dropped her eyes suddenly. I thought I heard a faint sigh. I triedto take a light tone again, and yet it seemed impossible to get off theground which gave me my standing with her.
"Mrs Fyne is absurd. She's an excellent woman, but really you couldnot be expected to throw away your chance of life simply that she mightcherish a good opinion of your memory. That would be excessive."
"It was not of my life that I was thinking while Captain Anthony was--was speaking to me," said Flora de Barral with an effort.
I told her that she was wrong then. She ought to have been thinking ofher life, and not only of her life but of the life of the man who wasspeaking to her too. She let me finish, then shook her headimpatiently.
"I mean--death."
"Well," I said, "when he stood before you there, outside the cottage, hereally stood between you and that. I have it out of your own mouth.You can't deny it."
"If you will have it that he saved my life, then he has got it. It wasnot for me. Oh no! It was not for me that I--It was not fear! There!"She finished petulantly: "And you may just as well know it."
She hung her head and swung the parasol slightly to and fro. I thoughta little.
"Do you know French, Miss de Barral?" I asked.
She made a sign with her head that she did, but without showing anysurprise at the question and without ceasing to swing her parasol.
"Well then, somehow or other I have the notion that Captain Anthony iswhat the French call _un galant homme_. I should like to think he isbeing treated as he deserves."
The form of her lips (I could see them under the brim of her hat) wassuddenly altered into a line of seriousness. The parasol stoppedswinging.
"I have given him what he wanted--that's myself," she said without atremor and with a striking dignity of tone.
Impressed by the manner and the directness of the words, I hesitated fora moment what to say. Then made up my mind to clear up the point.
"And you have got what you wanted? Is that it?"
The daughter of the egregious financier de Barral did not answer at oncethis question going to the heart of things. Then raising her head andgazing wistfully across the street noisy with the endless transit ofinnumerable bargains, she said with intense gravity:
"He has been most generous."
I was pleased to hear these words. Not that I doubted the infatuationof Roderick Anthony, but I was pleased to hear something which provedthat she was sensible and open to the sentiment of gratitude which inthis case was significant. In the face of man's desire a girl isexcusable if she thinks herself priceless. I mean a girl of ourcivilisation which has established a dithyrambic phraseology for theexpression of love. A man in love will accept any convention exaltingthe object of his passion and in this indirect way his passion itself.In what way the captain of the ship _Ferndale_ gave proofs of lover-likelavishness I could not guess very well. But I was glad she wasappreciative. It is lucky that small things please women. And it isnot silly of them to be thus pleased. It is in small things that thedeepest loyalty, that which they need most, the loyalty of the passingmoment, is best expressed.
She had remained thoughtful, letting her deep motionless eyes rest onthe streaming jumble of traffic. Suddenly she said:
"And I wanted to ask you--I was really glad when I saw you actuallyhere. Who would have expected you here, at this spot, before thishotel! I certainly never ... You see it meant a lot to me. You arethe only person who knows ... who knows for certain..."
"Knows what?" I said, not discovering at first what she had in hermind. Then I saw it. "Why can't you leave that alone?" Iremonstrated, rather annoyed at the invidious position she was forcingon me in a sense. "It's true that I was the only person to see," Iadded. "But, as it happens, after your mysterious disappearance I toldthe Fynes the story of our meeting."
Her eyes raised to mine had an expression of dreamy, unfathomablecandour, if I dare say so. And if you wonder what I mean I can only saythat I have seen the sea wear such an expression on one or two occasionsshortly before sunrise on a calm, fresh day. She said as if meditatingaloud that she supposed the Fynes were not likely to talk about that.She couldn't imagine any connection in which... Why should they?
As her tone had become interrogatory I assented. "To be sure. There'sno reason whatever"--thinking to myself that they would be more likelyindeed to keep quiet about it. They had other things to talk of. Andthen remembering little Fyne stuck upstairs for an unconscionable time,enough to blurt out everything he ever knew in his life, I reflectedthat he would assume naturally that Captain Anthony had nothing to learnfrom him about Flora de Barral. It had been up to now my assumptiontoo. I saw my mistake. The sincerest of women will make no unnecessaryconfidences to a man. And this is as it should be.
"No--no!" I said reassuringly. "It's most unlikely. Are you muchconcerned?"
"Well, you see, when I came down," she said again in that precise demuretone, "when I came down--into the garden Captain Anthonymisunderstood--"
"Of course he would. Men are so conceited," I said.
I saw it well enough that he must have thought she had come down to him.What else could he have thought? And then he had been "gentlenessitself." A new experience for that poor, delicate, and yet so resistingcreature. Gentleness in passion! What could have been more seductiveto the scared, starved heart of that girl? Perhaps had he been violent,she might have told him that what she came down to keep was the tryst ofdeath--not of love. It occurred to me as I looked at her, young,fragile in aspect, and intensely alive in her quietness, that perhapsshe did not know herself then what sort of tryst she was coming down tokeep.
She smiled faintly, almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused tosmiling, at my cheap jocularity. Then she said with that forcedprecision, a sort of consci
"I didn't want him to know."
I approved heartily. Quite right. Much better. Let him ever remainunder his misapprehension which was so much more flattering for him.
I tried to keep it in the tone of comedy; but she was, I believe, toosimple to understand my intention. She went on, looking down.
"Oh! You think so? When I saw you I didn't know why you were here. Iwas glad when you spoke to me because this is exactly what I wanted toask you for. I wanted to ask you if you ever meet Captain Anthony--byany chance--anywhere--you are a sailor too, are you not?--that you,would never mention--never--that--that you had seen me over there."
"My dear young lady," I cried, horror-struck at the supposition. "Whyshould I? What makes you think I should dream of..."
She had raised her head at my vehemence. She did not understand it.The world had treated her so dishonourably that she had no notion evenof what mere decency of feeling is like. It was not her fault. Indeed,I don't know why she should have put her trust in anybody's promises.But I thought it would be better to promise. So I assured her that shecould depend on my absolute silence.
"I am not likely to ever set eyes on Captain Anthony," I added withconviction--as a further guarantee.
She accepted my assurance in silence, without a sign. Her gravity hadin it something acute, perhaps because of that chin. While we werestill looking at each other she declared:
"There's no deception in it really. I want you to believe that if I amhere, like this, to-day, it is not from fear. It is not!"
"I quite understand," I said. But her firm yet self-conscious gazebecame doubtful. "I do," I insisted. "I understand perfectly that itwas not of death that you were afraid."
She lowered her eyes slowly, and I went on:
"As to life, that's another thing. And I don't know that one ought toblame you very much--though it seemed rather an excessive step. Iwonder now if it isn't the ugliness rather than the pain of the strugglewhich..."
She shuddered visibly: "But I do blame myself," she exclaimed withfeeling. "I am ashamed." And, dropping her head, she looked in amoment the very picture of remorse and shame.
"Well, you will be going away from all its horrors," I said. "Andsurely you are not afraid of the sea. You are a sailor's granddaughter,I understand."
She sighed deeply. She remembered her grandfather only a little. Hewas a clean-shaven man with a ruddy complexion and long, perfectly whitehair. He used to take her on his knee, and putting his face near hers,talk to her in loving whispers. If only he were alive now...
She remained silent for a while.
"Aren't you anxious to see the ship?" I asked.
She lowered her head still more so that I could not see anything of herface.
"I don't know," she murmured.
I had already the suspicion that she did not know her own feelings. Allthis work of the merest chance had been so unexpected, so sudden. Andshe had nothing to fall back upon, no experience but such as to shakeher belief in every human being. She was dreadfully and pitifullyforlorn. It was almost in order to comfort my own depression that Iremarked cheerfully:
"Well, I know of somebody who must be growing extremely anxious to seeyou."
"I am before my time," she confessed simply, rousing herself. "I hadnothing to do. So I came out."
I had the sudden vision of a shabby, lonely little room at the other endof the town. It had grown intolerable to her restlessness. The merethought of it oppressed her. Flora de Barral was looking frankly at herchance confidant.
"And I came this way," she went on. "I appointed the time myselfyesterday, but Captain Anthony would not have minded. He told me he wasgoing to look over some business papers till I came."
The idea of the son of the poet, the rescuer of the most forlorn damselof modern times, the man of violence, gentleness and generosity, sittingup to his neck in ship's accounts amused me. "I am sure he would nothave minded," I said, smiling. But the girl's stare was sombre, herthin white face seemed pathetically careworn.
"I can hardly believe yet," she murmured anxiously.
"It's quite real. Never fear," I said encouragingly, but had to changemy tone at once. "You had better go down that way a little," I directedher abruptly.
I had seen Fyne come striding out of the hotel door. The intelligentgirl, without staying to ask questions, walked away from me quietly downone street while I hurried on to meet Fyne coming up the other at hisefficient pedestrian gait. My object was to stop him getting as far asthe corner. He must have been thinking too hard to be aware of hissurroundings. I put myself in his way, and he nearly walked into me.
"Hallo!" I said.
His surprise was extreme. "You here! You don't mean to say you havebeen waiting for me?"
I said negligently that I had been detained by unexpected business inthe neighbourhood, and thus happened to catch sight of him coming out.
He stared at me with solemn distraction, obviously thinking of somethingelse. I suggested that he had better take the next city-ward tram-car.He was inattentive, and I perceived that he was profoundly perturbed.As Miss de Barral (she had moved out of sight) could not possiblyapproach the hotel door as long as we remained where we were I proposedthat we should wait for the car on the other side of the street. Heobeyed rather the slight touch on his arm than my words, and while wewere crossing the wide roadway in the midst of the lumbering wheeledtraffic, he exclaimed in his deep tone, "I don't know which of these twois more mad than the other!"
"Really!" I said, pulling him forward from under the noses of twoenormous sleepy-headed cart-horses. He skipped wildly out of the wayand up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision; his mindhad nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, andwhile in the act of sailing gravely through the air, he continued torelieve his outraged feelings.
"You would never believe! They _are_ mad!"
I took care to place myself in such a position that to face me he had toturn his back on the hotel across the road. I believe he was glad I wasthere to talk to. But I thought there was some misapprehension in thefirst statement he shot out at me without loss of time, that CaptainAnthony had been glad to see him. It was indeed difficult to believethat, directly he opened the door, his wife's "sailor-brother" hadpositively shouted: "Oh, it's you! The very man I wanted to see."
"I found him sitting there," went on Fyne impressively in hiseffortless, grave chest voice, "drafting his will."
This was unexpected, but I preserved a non-committal attitude, knowingfull well that our actions in themselves are neither mad nor sane. ButI did not see what there was to be excited about. And Fyne wasdistinctly excited. I understood it better when I learned that thecaptain of the _Ferndale_ wanted little Fyne to be one of the trustees.He was leaving everything to his wife. Naturally, a request whichinvolved him into sanctioning in a way a proceeding which he had beensent by his wife to oppose, must have appeared sufficiently mad to Fyne.
"Me! Me, of all people in the world!" he repeated portentously. But Icould see that he was frightened. Such want of tact!
"He knew I came from his sister. You don't put a man into such anawkward position," complained Fyne. "It made me speak much morestrongly against all this very painful business than I would have hadthe heart to do otherwise."
I pointed out to him concisely, and keeping my eyes on the door of thehotel, that he and his wife were the only bond with the land CaptainAnthony had. Who else could he have asked?
"I explained to him that he was breaking this bond," declared Fynesolemnly. "Breaking it once for all. And for what--for what?"
He glared at me. I could perhaps have given him an inkling for what,but I said nothing. He started again:
"My wife assures me that the girl does not love him a bit. She goes bythat letter she received from her. There is a passage in it where shepractically admits that she was quite unscrupulous in accepting thisoffe
The good little man paused and then added weightily:
"I didn't tell that to my brother-in-law--I mean, my wife's views."
"No," I said. "What would have been the good?"
"It's positive infatuation," agreed, little Fyne, in the tone as thoughhe had made an awful discovery. "I have never seen anything so hopelessand inexplicable in my life. I--I felt quite frightened and sorry," headded, while I looked at him curiously asking myself whether thisexcellent civil servant and notable pedestrian had felt the breath of agreat and fatal love-spell passing him by in the room of that East-Endhotel. He did look for a moment as though he had seen a ghost, another-world thing. But that look vanished instantaneously, and henodded at me with mere exasperation at something quite of this world--whatever it was. "It's a bad business. My brother-in-law knows nothingof women," he cried with an air of profound, experienced wisdom.
What he imagined he knew of women himself I can't tell. I did not knowanything of the opportunities he might have had. But this is a subjectwhich, if approached with undue solemnity, is apt to elude one's graspentirely. No doubt Fyne knew something of a woman who was CaptainAnthony's sister. But that, admittedly, had been a very solemn study.I smiled at him gently, and as if encouraged or provoked, he completedhis thought rather explosively.
"And that girl understands nothing... It's sheer lunacy."
"I don't know," I said, "whether the circumstances of isolation at seawould be any alleviation to the danger. But it's certain that theyshall have the opportunity to learn everything about each other in alonely _tete-a-tete_."
"But dash it all," he cried in hollow accents which at the same time hadthe tone of bitter irony--I had never before heard a sound so quaintlyugly and almost horrible--"You forget Mr Smith."
"What Mr Smith?" I asked innocently.
Fyne made an extraordinary simiesque grimace. I believe it was quiteinvoluntary, but you know that a grave, much-lined, shaven countenancewhen distorted in an unusual way is extremely apelike. It was asurprising sight, and rendered me not only speechless but stopped theprogress of my thought completely. I must have presented a remarkablyimbecile appearance.
"My brother-in-law considered it amusing to chaff me about usintroducing the girl as Miss Smith," said Fyne, going surly in a moment."He said that perhaps if he had heard her real name from the first itmight have restrained him. As it was, he made the discovery too late.Asked me to tell Zoe this together with a lot more nonsense."
Fyne gave me the impression of having escaped from a man inspired by agrimly playful ebullition of high spirits. It must have been mostdistasteful to him; and his solemnity got damaged somehow in theprocess, I perceived. There were holes in it through which I could seea new, an unknown Fyne.
"You wouldn't believe it," he went on, "but she looks upon her fatherexclusively as a victim. I don't know," he burst out suddenly throughan enormous rent in his solemnity, "if she thinks him absolutely asaint, but she certainly imagines him to be a martyr."
It is one of the advantages of that magnificent invention, the prison,that you may forget people whom are put there as though they were dead.One needn't worry about them. Nothing can happen to them that you canhelp. They can do nothing which might possibly matter to anybody. Theycome out of it, though, but that seems hardly an advantage to themselvesor anyone else. I had completely forgotten the financier de Barral.The girl for me was an orphan, but now I perceived suddenly the force ofFyne's qualifying statement, "to a certain extent." It would have beeninfinitely more kind all round for the law to have shot, beheaded,strangled, or otherwise destroyed this absurd de Barral, who was adanger to a moral world inhabited by a credulous multitude not fit totake care of itself. But I observed to Fyne that, however insane wasthe view she held, one could not declare the girl mad on that account.
"So she thinks of her father--does she? I suppose she would appear tous saner if she thought only of herself."
"I am positive," Fyne said earnestly, "that she went and made desperateeyes at Anthony..."
"Oh come!" I interrupted. "You haven't seen her make eyes. You don'tknow the colour of her eyes."
"Very well! It don't matter. But it could hardly have come to that ifshe hadn't... It's all one, though. I tell you she has led him on, oraccepted him, if you like, simply because she was thinking of herfather. She doesn't care a bit about Anthony, I believe. She cares forno one. Never cared for anyone. Ask Zoe. For myself I don't blameher," added Fyne, giving me another view of unsuspected things throughthe rags and tatters of his damaged solemnity. "No! by heavens, I don'tblame her--the poor devil."
I agreed with him silently. I suppose affections are, in a sense, to belearned. If there exists a native spark of love in all of us, it mustbe fanned while we are young. Hers, if she ever had it, had beendrenched in as ugly a lot of corrosive liquid as could be imagined. ButI was surprised at Fyne obscurely feeling this.
"She loves no one except that preposterous advertising shark," hepursued venomously, but in a more deliberate manner. "And Anthony knowsit."
"Does he?" I said doubtfully.
"She's quite capable of having told him herself," affirmed Fyne, withamazing insight. "But whether or no, _I've_ told him."
"You did? From Mrs Fyne, of course."
Fyne only blinked owlishly at this piece of my insight.
"And how did Captain Anthony receive this interesting information?" Iasked further.
"Most improperly," said Fyne, who really was in a state in which hedidn't mind what he blurted out. "He isn't himself. He begged me totell his sister that he offered no remarks on her conduct. Veryimproper and inconsequent. He said--I was tired of this wrangling. Itold him I made allowances for the state of excitement he was in."
"You know, Fyne," I said, "a man in jail seems to me such an incredible,cruel, nightmarish sort of thing that I can hardly believe in hisexistence. Certainly not in relation to any other existences."
"But dash it all," cried Fyne, "he isn't shut up for life. They aregoing to let him out. He's coming out! That's the whole trouble. Whatis he coming out to, I want to know? It seems a more cruel businessthan the shutting him up was. This has been the worry for weeks. Doyou see now?"
I saw, all sorts of things! Immediately before me I saw the excitementof little Fyne--mere food for wonder. Further off, in a sort of gloomand beyond the light of day and the movement of the street, I saw thefigure of a man, stiff like a ramrod, moving with small steps, a slightgirlish figure by his side. And the gloom was like the gloom ofvillainous slums, of misery, of wretchedness, of a starved and degradedexistence. It was a relief that I could see only their shabby hopelessbacks. He was an awful ghost. But indeed to call him a ghost was onlya refinement of polite speech, and a manner of concealing one's terrorof such things. Prisons are wonderful contrivances. Shut--open. Veryneat. Shut--open. And out comes some sort of corpse, to wander awfullyin a world in which it has no possible connections and carrying with itthe appalling tainted atmosphere of its silent abode. Marvellousarrangement. It works automatically, and, when you look at it, theperfection makes you sick; which for a mere mechanism is no meantriumph. Sick and scared. It had nearly scared that poor girl to herdeath. Fancy having to take such a thing by the hand! Now I understoodthe remorseful strain I had detected in her speeches.
"By Jove!" I said. "They are about to let him out! I never thought ofthat."
Fyne was contemptuous either of me or of things at large.
"You didn't suppose he was to be kept in jail for life?"
At that moment I caught sight of Flora de Barral at the junction of thetwo streets. Then some vehicles following each other in quicksuccession hid from my sight the black slight figure with just a touchof colour in her hat. She
That was just it. His wife and he had been perfectly aware of it. Ofcourse the girl never talked of her father with Mrs Fyne. I supposewith her theory of innocence she found it difficult. But she must havebeen thinking of it day and night. What to do with him? Where to go?How to keep body and soul together? He had never made any friends. Theonly relations were the atrocious East-End cousins. We know what theywere. Nothing but wretchedness, whichever way she turned in an unjustand prejudiced world. And to look at him helplessly she felt would betoo much for her.
I won't say I was thinking these thoughts. It was not necessary. Thiscomplete knowledge was in my head while I stared hard across the wideroad, so hard that I failed to hear little Fyne till he raised his deepvoice indignantly.
"I don't blame the girl," he was saying. "He is infatuated with her.Anybody can see that. Why she should have got such a hold on him Ican't understand. She said `Yes' to him only for the sake of thatfatuous, swindling father of hers. It's perfectly plain if one thinksit over a moment. One needn't even think of it. We have it under herown hand. In that letter to my wife she says she has actedunscrupulously. She has owned up, then, for what else can it mean, Ishould like to know. And so they are to be married before that oldidiot comes out.--He will be surprised," commented Fyne suddenly in astrangely malignant tone. "He shall be met at the jail door by a MrsAnthony, a Mrs Captain Anthony. Very pleasant for Zoe. And for all Iknow, my brother-in-law means to turn up dutifully too. A little familyevent. It's extremely pleasant to think of. Delightful. A charmingfamily party. We three against the world--and all that sort of thing.And what for. For a girl that doesn't care twopence for him."
The demon of bitterness had entered into little Fyne. He amazed me asthough he had changed his skin from white to black. It was quite aswonderful. And he kept it up, too.
"Luckily there are some advantages in the--the profession of a sailor.As long as they defy the world away at sea somewhere eighteen thousandmiles from here, I don't mind so much. I wonder what that interestingold party will say. He will have another surprise. They mean to draghim along with them on board the ship straight away. Rescue work. Justthink of Roderick Anthony, the son of a gentleman, after all..."
He gave me a little shock. I thought he was going to say the "son ofthe poet" as usual; but his mind was not running on such vanities now.His unspoken thought must have gone on "and uncle of my girls." Isuspect that he had been roughly handled by Captain Anthony up there,and the resentment gave a tremendous fillip to the slow play of hiswits. Those men of sober fancy, when anything rouses their imaginativefaculty, are very thorough. "Just think!" he cried. "The three of themcrowded into a four-wheeler, and Anthony sitting deferentially oppositethat astonished old jail-bird!"
The good little man laughed. An improper sound it was to come from hismanly chest; and what made it worse was the thought that for the leastthing, by a mere hair's breadth, he might have taken this affairsentimentally. But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist. Hisbrother-in-law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shorepeople, a perfect philistine with a heart like a flint. What Fyneprecisely meant by "wrangling" I don't know, but I had no doubt thatthese two had "wrangled" to a profoundly disturbing extent. How muchthe other was affected I could not even imagine; but the man before mewas quite amazingly upset.
"In a four-wheeler! Take him on board!" I muttered, startled by thechange in Fyne.
"That's the plan--nothing less. If I am to believe what I have beentold, his feet will scarcely touch the ground between the prison-gatesand the deck of that ship."
The transformed Fyne spoke in a forcibly lowered tone which I heardwithout difficulty. The rumbling, composite noises of the street werehushed for a moment, during one of these sudden breaks in the traffic asif the stream of commerce had dried up at its source. Having anunobstructed view past Fyne's shoulder, I was astonished to see that thegirl was still there. I thought she had gone up long before. But therewas her black slender figure, her white face under the roses of her hat.She stood on the edge of the pavement as people stand on the bank of astream, very still, as if waiting--or as if unconscious of where shewas. The three dismal, sodden loafers (I could see them too; theyhadn't budged an inch) seemed to me to be watching her. Which washorrible.
Meantime Fyne was telling me rather remarkable things--for him. Hedeclared first it was a mercy in a sense. Then he asked me if it werenot real madness, to saddle one's existence with such a perpetualreminder. The daily existence. The isolated sea-bound existence. Tobring such an additional strain into the solitude already trying enoughfor two people was the craziest thing. Undesirable relations were badenough on shore. One could cut them or at least forget their existencenow and then. He himself was preparing to forget his brother-in-law'sexistence as much as possible.
That was the general sense of his remarks, not his exact words. Ithought that his wife's brother's existence had never been veryembarrassing to him but that now of course he would have to abstain fromhis allusions to the "son of the poet--you know." I said "yes, yes," inthe pauses because I did not want him to turn round; and all the time Iwas watching the girl intently. I thought I knew now what she meantwith her "He was most generous." Yes. Generosity of character maycarry a man through any situation. But why didn't she go then to hergenerous man? Why stand there as if clinging to this solid earth whichshe surely hated as one must hate the place where one has beentormented, hopeless, unhappy? Suddenly she stirred. Was she going tocross over? No. She turned and began to walk slowly close to thecurbstone, reminding me of the time when I discovered her walking nearthe edge of a ninety-foot sheer drop. It was the same impression, thesame carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanginglightly clasped in front--only now a small sunshade was dangling fromthem. I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards theinconspicuous door with the words _Hotel Entrance_ on the glass-panels.
She was abreast of it now and I thought that she would stop again; butno! She swerved rigidly--at the moment there was no one near her; shehad that bit of pavement to herself--with inanimate slowness as if movedby something outside herself.
"A confounded convict," Fyne burst out.
With the sound of that word offending my ears I saw the girl extend herarm, push the door open a little way and glide in. I saw plainly thatmovement, the hand put out in advance with the gesture of asleep-walker.
She had vanished, her black figure had melted in the darkness of theopen door. For some time Fyne said nothing; and I thought of the girlgoing upstairs, appearing before the man. Were they looking at eachother in silence and feeling they were alone in the world as loversshould at the moment of meeting? But that fine forgetfulness was surelyimpossible to Anthony the seaman directly after the wrangling interviewwith Fyne the emissary of an order of things which stops at the edge ofthe sea. How much he was disturbed I couldn't tell because I did notknow what that impetuous lover had had to listen to.
"Going to take the old fellow to sea with them," I said. "Well I reallydon't see what else they could have done with him. You told yourbrother-in-law what you thought of it? I wonder how he took it."
"Very improperly," repeated Fyne. "His manner was offensive, derisive,from the first. I don't mean he was actually rude in words. Hang itall, I am not a contemptible ass. But he was exulting at having gothold of a miserable girl."
"It is pretty certain that she will be much less poor and miserable," Imurmured.
It looked as if the exultation of Captain Anthony had got on Fyne'snerves. "I told the fellow very plainly that he was abominably selfishin this," he affirmed unexpectedly.
"You did! Selfish!" I said rather taken aback. "But wha
"What do you know about it," growled Fyne. The rents and slashes of hissolemnity were closing up gradually but it was going to be a surlysolemnity. "Generosity! I am disposed to give it another name. No.Not folly," he shot out at me as though I had meant to interrupt him."Still another. Something worse. I need not tell you what it is," headded with grim meaning.
"Certainly. You needn't--unless you like," I said blankly. Little Fynehad never interested me so much since the beginning of the deBarral-Anthony affair when I first perceived possibilities in him. Thepossibilities of dull men are exciting because when they happen theysuggest legendary cases of "possession," not exactly by the devil but,anyhow, by a strange spirit.
"I told him it was a shame," said Fyne. "Even if the girl did make eyesat him--but I think with you that she did not. Yes! A shame to takeadvantage of a girl's distress--a girl that does not love him in theleast."
"You think it's so bad as that?" I said. "Because you know I don't."
"What can you think about it," he retorted on me with a solemn stare."I go by her letter to my wife."
"Ah! that famous letter. But you haven't actually read it," I said.
"No, but my wife told me. Of course it was a most improper sort ofletter to write considering the circumstances. It pained Mrs Fyne todiscover how thoroughly she had been misunderstood. But what is writtenis not all. It's what my wife could read between the lines. She saysthat the girl is really terrified at heart."
"She had not much in life to give her any very special courage for it,or any great confidence in mankind. That's very true. But this seemsan exaggeration."
"I should like to know what reasons you have to say that," asked Fynewith offended solemnity. "I really don't see any. But I had sufficientauthority to tell my brother-in-law that if he thought he was going todo something chivalrous and fine he was mistaken. I can see very wellthat he will do everything she asks him to do--but, all the same, it israther a pitiless transaction."
For a moment I felt it might be so. Fyne caught sight of an approachingtram-car and stepped out on the road to meet it. "Have you a morecompassionate scheme ready?" I called after him. He made no answer,clambered on to the rear platform, and only then looked back. Weexchanged a perfunctory wave of the hand. We also looked at each other,he rather angrily, I fancy, and I with wonder. I may also mention thatit was for the last time. From that day I never set eyes on the Fynes.As usual the unexpected happened to me. It had nothing to do with Florade Barral. The fact is that I went away. My call was not like hercall. Mine was not urged on me with passionate vehemence or tendergentleness made all the finer and more compelling by the allurements ofgenerosity which is a virtue as mysterious as any other but having aglamour of its own. No, it was just a prosaic offer of employment onrather good terms which, with a sudden sense of having wasted my time onshore long enough, I accepted without misgivings. And once started outof my indolence I went, as my habit was, very, very far away and for along, long time. Which is another proof of my indolence. How far Florawent I can't say. But I will tell you my idea: my idea is that she wentas far as she was able--as far as she could bear it--as far as she hadto...