"Just before," and indulged himself with a weighty period of solemn
silence.
De Barral, he resumed suddenly, was not coming to Brighton for week-ends
regularly, then. Must have been conscious already of the approaching
disaster. Mrs. Fyne avoided being drawn into making his acquaintance,
and this suited the views of the governess person, very jealous of any
outside influence. But in any case it would not have been an easy
matter. Extraordinary, stiff-backed, thin figure all in black, the
observed of all, while walking hand-in-hand with the girl; apparently
shy, but--and here Fyne came very near showing something like
insight--probably nursing under a diffident manner a considerable amount
of secret arrogance. Mrs. Fyne pitied Flora de Barral's fate long before
the catastrophe. Most unfortunate guidance. Very unsatisfactory
surroundings. The girl was known in the streets, was stared at in public
places as if she had been a sort of princess, but she was kept with a
very ominous consistency, from making any acquaintances--though of course
there were many people no doubt who would have been more than willing
to--h'm--make themselves agreeable to Miss de Barral. But this did not
enter into the plans of the governess, an intriguing person hatching a
most sinister plot under her severe air of distant, fashionable
exclusiveness. Good little Fyne's eyes bulged with solemn horror as he
revealed to me, in agitated speech, his wife's more than suspicions, at
the time, of that, Mrs., Mrs. What's her name's perfidious conduct. She
actually seemed to have--Mrs. Fyne asserted--formed a plot already to
marry eventually her charge to an impecunious relation of her own--a
young man with furtive eyes and something impudent in his manner, whom
that woman called her nephew, and whom she was always having down to stay
with her.
"And perhaps not her nephew. No relation at all"--Fyne emitted with a
convulsive effort this, the most awful part of the suspicions Mrs. Fyne
used to impart to him piecemeal when he came down to spend his week-ends
gravely with her and the children. The Fynes, in their good-natured
concern for the unlucky child of the man busied in stirring casually so
many millions, spent the moments of their weekly reunion in wondering
earnestly what could be done to defeat the most wicked of conspiracies,
trying to invent some tactful line of conduct in such extraordinary
circumstances. I could see them, simple, and scrupulous, worrying
honestly about that unprotected big girl while looking at their own
little girls playing on the sea-shore. Fyne assured me that his wife's
rest was disturbed by the great problem of interference.
"It was very acute of Mrs. Fyne to spot such a deep game," I said,
wondering to myself where her acuteness had gone to now, to let her be
taken unawares by a game so much simpler and played to the end under her
very nose. But then, at that time, when her nightly rest was disturbed
by the dread of the fate preparing for de Barral's unprotected child, she
was not engaged in writing a compendious and ruthless hand-book on the
theory and practice of life, for the use of women with a grievance. She
could as yet, before the task of evolving the philosophy of rebellious
action had affected her intuitive sharpness, perceive things which were,
I suspect, moderately plain. For I am inclined to believe that the woman
whom chance had put in command of Flora de Barral's destiny took no very
subtle pains to conceal her game. She was conscious of being a complete
master of the situation, having once for all established her ascendancy
over de Barral. She had taken all her measures against outside
observation of her conduct; and I could not help smiling at the thought
what a ghastly nuisance the serious, innocent Fynes must have been to
her. How exasperated she must have been by that couple falling into
Brighton as completely unforeseen as a bolt from the blue--if not so
prompt. How she must have hated them!
But I conclude she would have carried out whatever plan she might have
formed. I can imagine de Barral accustomed for years to defer to her
wishes and, either through arrogance, or shyness, or simply because of
his unimaginative stupidity, remaining outside the social pale, knowing
no one but some card-playing cronies; I can picture him to myself
terrified at the prospect of having the care of a marriageable girl
thrust on his hands, forcing on him a complete change of habits and the
necessity of another kind of existence which he would not even have known
how to begin. It is evident to me that Mrs. What's her name would have
had her atrocious way with very little trouble even if the excellent
Fynes had been able to do something. She would simply have bullied de
Barral in a lofty style. There's nothing more subservient than an
arrogant man when his arrogance has once been broken in some particular
instance.
However there was no time and no necessity for any one to do anything.
The situation itself vanished in the financial crash as a building
vanishes in an earthquake--here one moment and gone the next with only an
ill-omened, slight, preliminary rumble. Well, to say 'in a moment' is an
exaggeration perhaps; but that everything was over in just twenty-four
hours is an exact statement. Fyne was able to tell me all about it; and
the phrase that would depict the nature of the change best is: an instant
and complete destitution. I don't understand these matters very well,
but from Fyne's narrative it seemed as if the creditors or the
depositors, or the competent authorities, had got hold in the twinkling
of an eye of everything de Barral possessed in the world, down to his
watch and chain, the money in his trousers' pocket, his spare suits of
clothes, and I suppose the cameo pin out of his black satin cravat.
Everything! I believe he gave up the very wedding ring of his late wife.
The gloomy Priory with its damp park and a couple of farms had been made
over to Mrs. de Barral; but when she died (without making a will) it
reverted to him, I imagine. They got that of course; but it was a mere
crumb in a Sahara of starvation, a drop in the thirsty ocean. I dare say
that not a single soul in the world got the comfort of as much as a
recovered threepenny bit out of the estate. Then, less than crumbs, less
than drops, there were to be grabbed, the lease of the big Brighton
house, the furniture therein, the carriage and pair, the girl's riding
horse, her costly trinkets; down to the heavily gold-mounted collar of
her pedigree St. Bernard. The dog too went: the most noble-looking item
in the beggarly assets.
What however went first of all or rather vanished was nothing in the
nature of an asset. It was that plotting governess with the trick of a
"perfect lady" manner (severely conventional) and the soul of a
remorseless brigand. When a woman takes to any sort of unlawful
man-trade, there's nothing to beat her in the way of thoroughness. It's
true that you will find people who'll tell you that this terrific
virulence in breaking through all established things, is altogether the
fault of men. Such people will ask you with a clever air why the servile
wars were always the most fierce, desperate and atrocious of all wars.
And you may make such answer as you can--even the eminently feminine one,
if you choose, so typical of the women's literal mind "I don't see what
this has to do with it!" How many arguments have been knocked over (I
won't say knocked down) by these few words! For if we men try to put the
spaciousness of all experiences into our reasoning and would fain put the
Infinite itself into our love, it isn't, as some writer has remarked, "It
isn't women's doing." Oh no. They don't care for these things. That
sort of aspiration is not much in their way; and it shall be a funny
world, the world of their arranging, where the Irrelevant would
fantastically step in to take the place of the sober humdrum Imaginative
. . . "