And the best of it was that the danger was all over already. There was
no danger any more. The supposed nephew's appearance had a purpose. He
had come, full, full to trembling--with the bigness of his news. There
must have been rumours already as to the shaky position of the de
Barral's concerns; but only amongst those in the very inmost know. No
rumour or echo of rumour had reached the profane in the West-End--let
alone in the guileless marine suburb of Hove. The Fynes had no
suspicion; the governess, playing with cold, distinguished exclusiveness
the part of mother to the fabulously wealthy Miss de Barral, had no
suspicion; the masters of music, of drawing, of dancing to Miss de
Barral, had no idea; the minds of her medical man, of her dentist, of the
servants in the house, of the tradesmen proud of having the name of de
Barral on their books, were in a state of absolute serenity. Thus, that
fellow, who had unexpectedly received a most alarming straight tip from
somebody in the City arrived in Brighton, at about lunch-time, with
something very much in the nature of a deadly bomb in his possession. But
he knew better than to throw it on the public pavement. He ate his lunch
impenetrably, sitting opposite Flora de Barral, and then, on some excuse,
closeted himself with the woman whom little Fyne's charity described
(with a slight hesitation of speech however) as his "Aunt."
What they said to each other in private we can imagine. She came out of
her own sitting-room with red spots on her cheek-bones, which having
provoked a question from her "beloved" charge, were accounted for by a
curt "I have a headache coming on." But we may be certain that the talk
being over she must have said to that young blackguard: "You had better
take her out for a ride as usual." We have proof positive of this in
Fyne and Mrs. Fyne observing them mount at the door and pass under the
windows of their sitting-room, talking together, and the poor girl all
smiles; because she enjoyed in all innocence the company of Charley. She
made no secret of it whatever to Mrs. Fyne; in fact, she had confided to
her, long before, that she liked him very much: a confidence which had
filled Mrs. Fyne with desolation and that sense of powerless anguish
which is experienced in certain kinds of nightmare. For how could she
warn the girl? She did venture to tell her once that she didn't like Mr.
Charley. Miss de Barral heard her with astonishment. How was it
possible not to like Charley? Afterwards with naive loyalty she told
Mrs. Fyne that, immensely as she was fond of her she could not hear a
word against Charley--the wonderful Charley.
The daughter of de Barral probably enjoyed her jolly ride with the jolly
Charley (infinitely more jolly than going out with a stupid old riding-
master), very much indeed, because the Fynes saw them coming back at a
later hour than usual. In fact it was getting nearly dark. On
dismounting, helped off by the delightful Charley, she patted the neck of
her horse and went up the steps. Her last ride. She was then within a
few days of her sixteenth birthday, a slight figure in a riding habit,
rather shorter than the average height for her age, in a black bowler hat
from under which her fine rippling dark hair cut square at the ends was
hanging well down her back. The delightful Charley mounted again to take
the two horses round to the mews. Mrs. Fyne remaining at the window saw
the house door close on Miss de Barral returning from her last ride.
And meantime what had the governess (out of a nobleman's family) so
judiciously selected (a lady, and connected with well-known county people
as she said) to direct the studies, guard the health, form the mind,
polish the manners, and generally play the perfect mother to that
luckless child--what had she been doing? Well, having got rid of her
charge by the most natural device possible, which proved her practical
sense, she started packing her belongings, an act which showed her clear
view of the situation. She had worked methodically, rapidly, and well,
emptying the drawers, clearing the tables in her special apartment of
that big house, with something silently passionate in her thoroughness;
taking everything belonging to her and some things of less unquestionable
ownership, a jewelled penholder, an ivory and gold paper knife (the house
was full of common, costly objects), some chased silver boxes presented
by de Barral and other trifles; but the photograph of Flora de Barral,
with the loving inscription, which stood on her writing desk, of the most
modern and expensive style, in a silver-gilt frame, she neglected to
take. Having accidentally, in the course of the operations, knocked it
off on the floor she let it lie there after a downward glance. Thus it,
or the frame at least, became, I suppose, part of the assets in the de
Barral bankruptcy.
At dinner that evening the child found her company dull and brusque. It
was uncommonly slow. She could get nothing from her governess but
monosyllables, and the jolly Charley actually snubbed the various cheery
openings of his "little chum"--as he used to call her at times,--but not
at that time. No doubt the couple were nervous and preoccupied. For all
this we have evidence, and for the fact that Flora being offended with
the delightful nephew of her profoundly respected governess sulked
through the rest of the evening and was glad to retire early. Mrs.,
Mrs.--I've really forgotten her name--the governess, invited her nephew
to her sitting-room, mentioning aloud that it was to talk over some
family matters. This was meant for Flora to hear, and she heard
it--without the slightest interest. In fact there was nothing
sufficiently unusual in such an invitation to arouse in her mind even a
passing wonder. She went bored to bed and being tired with her long ride
slept soundly all night. Her last sleep, I won't say of innocence--that
word would not render my exact meaning, because it has a special meaning
of its own--but I will say: of that ignorance, or better still, of that
unconsciousness of the world's ways, the unconsciousness of danger, of
pain, of humiliation, of bitterness, of falsehood. An unconsciousness
which in the case of other beings like herself is removed by a gradual
process of experience and information, often only partial at that, with
saving reserves, softening doubts, veiling theories. Her unconsciousness
of the evil which lives in the secret thoughts and therefore in the open
acts of mankind, whenever it happens that evil thought meets evil
courage; her unconsciousness was to be broken into with profane violence
with desecrating circumstances, like a temple violated by a mad, vengeful
impiety. Yes, that very young girl, almost no more than a child--this
was what was going to happen to her. And if you ask me, how, wherefore,
for what reason? I will answer you: Why, by chance! By the merest
chance, as things do happen, lucky and unlucky, terrible or tender,
important or unimportant; and even things which are neither, things so
completely neutral in character that you would wonder why they do happen
at all if you didn't know that they, too, carry in their insignificance
the seeds of further incalculable chances.
Of course, all the chances were that de Barral should have fallen upon a
perfectly harmless, naive, usual, inefficient specimen of respectable
governess for his daughter; or on a commonplace silly adventuress who
would have tried, say, to marry him or work some other sort of common
mischief in a small way. Or again he might have chanced on a model of
all the virtues, or the repository of all knowledge, or anything equally
harmless, conventional, and middle class. All calculations were in his
favour; but, chance being incalculable, he fell upon an individuality
whom it is much easier to define by opprobrious names than to classify in
a calm and scientific spirit--but an individuality certainly, and a
temperament as well. Rare? No. There is a certain amount of what I
would politely call unscrupulousness in all of us. Think for instance of
the excellent Mrs. Fyne, who herself, and in the bosom of her family,
resembled a governess of a conventional type. Only, her mental excesses
were theoretical, hedged in by so much humane feeling and conventional
reserves, that they amounted to no more than mere libertinage of thought;
whereas the other woman, the governess of Flora de Barral, was, as you
may have noticed, severely practical--terribly practical. No! Hers was
not a rare temperament, except in its fierce resentment of repression; a
feeling which like genius or lunacy is apt to drive people into sudden
irrelevancy. Hers was feminine irrelevancy. A male genius, a male
ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved exactly as she
did behave. There is a softness in masculine nature, even the most
brutal, which acts as a check.
While the girl slept those two, the woman of forty, an age in itself
terrible, and that hopeless young "wrong 'un" of twenty-three (also well
connected I believe) had some sort of subdued row in the cleared rooms:
wardrobes open, drawers half pulled out and empty, trunks locked and
strapped, furniture in idle disarray, and not so much as a single scrap
of paper left behind on the tables. The maid, whom the governess and the
pupil shared between them, after finishing with Flora, came to the door
as usual, but was not admitted. She heard the two voices in dispute
before she knocked, and then being sent away retreated at once--the only
person in the house convinced at that time that there was "something up."
Dark and, so to speak, inscrutable spaces being met with in life there
must be such places in any statement dealing with life. In what I am
telling you of now--an episode of one of my humdrum holidays in the green
country, recalled quite naturally after all the years by our meeting a
man who has been a blue-water sailor--this evening confabulation is a
dark, inscrutable spot. And we may conjecture what we like. I have no
difficulty in imagining that the woman--of forty, and the chief of the
enterprise--must have raged at large. And perhaps the other did not rage
enough. Youth feels deeply it is true, but it has not the same vivid
sense of lost opportunities. It believes in the absolute reality of
time. And then, in that abominable scamp with his youth already soiled,
withered like a plucked flower ready to be flung on some rotting heap of
rubbish, no very genuine feeling about anything could exist--not even
about the hazards of his own unclean existence. A sneering half-laugh
with some such remark as: "We are properly sold and no mistake" would
have been enough to make trouble in that way. And then another sneer,
"Waste time enough over it too," followed perhaps by the bitter retort
from the other party "You seemed to like it well enough though, playing
the fool with that chit of a girl." Something of that sort. Don't you
see it--eh . . . "
Marlow looked at me with his dark penetrating glance. I was struck by
the absolute verisimilitude of this suggestion. But we were always
tilting at each other. I saw an opening and pushed my uncandid thrust.
"You have a ghastly imagination," I said with a cheerfully sceptical
smile.
"Well, and if I have," he returned unabashed. "But let me remind you
that this situation came to me unasked. I am like a puzzle-headed chief-
mate we had once in the dear old _Samarcand_ when I was a youngster. The
fellow went gravely about trying to "account to himself"--his favourite
expression--for a lot of things no one would care to bother one's head
about. He was an old idiot but he was also an accomplished practical
seaman. I was quite a boy and he impressed me. I must have caught the
disposition from him."
"Well--go on with your accounting then," I said, assuming an air of
resignation.
"That's just it." Marlow fell into his stride at once. "That's just it.
Mere disappointed cupidity cannot account for the proceedings of the next
morning; proceedings which I shall not describe to you--but which I shall
tell you of presently, not as a matter of conjecture but of actual fact.
Meantime returning to that evening altercation in deadened tones within
the private apartment of Miss de Barral's governess, what if I were to
tell you that disappointment had most likely made them touchy with each
other, but that perhaps the secret of his careless, railing behaviour,
was in the thought, springing up within him with an emphatic oath of
relief "Now there's nothing to prevent me from breaking away from that
old woman." And that the secret of her envenomed rage, not against this
miserable and attractive wretch, but against fate, accident and the whole
course of human life, concentrating its venom on de Barral and including
the innocent girl herself, was in the thought, in the fear crying within
her "Now I have nothing to hold him with . . . "
I couldn't refuse Marlow the tribute of a prolonged whistle "Phew! So
you suppose that . . . "
He waved his hand impatiently.
"I don't suppose. It was so. And anyhow why shouldn't you accept the
supposition. Do you look upon governesses as creatures above suspicion
or necessarily of moral perfection? I suppose their hearts would not
stand looking into much better than other people's. Why shouldn't a
governess have passions, all the passions, even that of libertinage, and
even ungovernable passions; yet suppressed by the very same means which
keep the rest of us in order: early training--necessity--circumstances--fear
of consequences; till there comes an age, a time when the restraint of
years becomes intolerable--and infatuation irresistible . . . "
"But if infatuation--quite possible I admit," I argued, "how do you
account for the nature of the conspiracy."
"You expect a cogency of conduct not usual in women," said Marlow. "The
subterfuges of a menaced passion are not to be fathomed. You think it is
going on the way it looks, whereas it is capable, for its own ends, of
walking backwards into a precipice.
When one once acknowledges that she was not a common woman, then all this
is easily understood. She was abominable but she was not common. She
had suffered in her life not from its constant inferiority but from
constant self-repression. A common woman finding herself placed in a
commanding position might have formed the design to become the second
Mrs. de Barral. Which would have been impracticable. De Barral would
not have known what to do with a wife. But even if by some impossible
chance he had made advances, this governess would have repulsed him with
scorn. She had treated him always as an inferior being with an assured,
distant politeness. In her composed, schooled manner she despised and
disliked both father and daughter exceedingly. I have a notion that she
had always disliked intensely all her charges including the two ducal (if
they were ducal) little girls with whom she had dazzled de Barral. What
an odious, ungratified existence it must have been for a woman as avid of
all the sensuous emotions which life can give as most of her betters.
She had seen her youth vanish, her freshness disappear, her hopes die,
and now she felt her flaming middle-age slipping away from her. No
wonder that with her admirably dressed, abundant hair, thickly sprinkled
with white threads and adding to her elegant aspect the piquant
distinction of a powdered coiffure--no wonder, I say, that she clung
desperately to her last infatuation for that graceless young scamp, even
to the extent of hatching for him that amazing plot. He was not so far
gone in degradation as to make him utterly hopeless for such an attempt.
She hoped to keep him straight with that enormous bribe. She was clearly
a woman uncommon enough to live without illusions--which, of course, does
not mean that she was reasonable. She had said to herself, perhaps with
a fury of self-contempt "In a few years I shall be too old for anybody.
Meantime I shall have him--and I shall hold him by throwing to him the
money of that ordinary, silly, little girl of no account." Well, it was
a desperate expedient--but she thought it worth while. And besides there
is hardly a woman in the world, no matter how hard, depraved or frantic,
in whom something of the maternal instinct does not survive, unconsumed
like a salamander, in the fires of the most abandoned passion. Yes there
might have been that sentiment for him too. There _was_ no doubt. So I
say again: No wonder! No wonder that she raged at everything--and
perhaps even at him, with contradictory reproaches: for regretting the
girl, a little fool who would never in her life be worth anybody's
attention, and for taking the disaster itself with a cynical levity in
which she perceived a flavour of revolt.
And so the altercation in the night went on, over the irremediable. He
arguing "What's the hurry? Why clear out like this?" perhaps a little
sorry for the girl and as usual without a penny in his pocket,
appreciating the comfortable quarters, wishing to linger on as long as
possible in the shameless enjoyment of this already doomed luxury. There
was really no hurry for a few days. Always time enough to vanish. And,
with that, a touch of masculine softness, a sort of regard for
appearances surviving his degradation: "You might behave decently at the
last, Eliza." But there was no softness in the sallow face under the
gala effect of powdered hair, its formal calmness gone, the dark-ringed
eyes glaring at him with a sort of hunger. "No! No! If it is as you
say then not a day, not an hour, not a moment." She stuck to it, very
determined that there should be no more of that boy and girl philandering
since the object of it was gone; angry with herself for having suffered
from it so much in the past, furious at its having been all in vain.
But she was reasonable enough not to quarrel with him finally. What was
the good? She found means to placate him. The only means. As long as
there was some money to be got she had hold of him. "Now go away. We
shall do no good by any more of this sort of talk. I want to be alone
for a bit." He went away, sulkily acquiescent. There was a room always
kept ready for him on the same floor, at the further end of a short
thickly carpeted passage.
How she passed the night, this woman with no illusions to help her
through the hours which must have been sleepless I shouldn't like to say.
It ended at last; and this strange victim of the de Barral failure, whose
name would never be known to the Official Receiver, came down to
breakfast, impenetrable in her everyday perfection. From the very first,
somehow, she had accepted the fatal news for true. All her life she had
never believed in her luck, with that pessimism of the passionate who at
bottom feel themselves to be the outcasts of a morally restrained
universe. But this did not make it any easier, on opening the morning
paper feverishly, to see the thing confirmed. Oh yes! It was there. The
Orb had suspended payment--the first growl of the storm faint as yet, but
to the initiated the forerunner of a deluge. As an item of news it was
not indecently displayed. It was not displayed at all in a sense. The
serious paper, the only one of the great dailies which had always
maintained an attitude of reserve towards the de Barral group of banks,
had its "manner." Yes! a modest item of news! But there was also, on
another page, a special financial article in a hostile tone beginning
with the words "We have always feared" and a guarded, half-column leader,
opening with the phrase: "It is a deplorable sign of the times" what was,
in effect, an austere, general rebuke to the absurd infatuations of the
investing public. She glanced through these articles, a line here and a
line there--no more was necessary to catch beyond doubt the murmur of the
oncoming flood. Several slighting references by name to de Barral
revived her animosity against the man, suddenly, as by the effect of
unforeseen moral support. The miserable wretch! . . . "
* * * * *
"--You understand," Marlow interrupted the current of his narrative,
"that in order to be consecutive in my relation of this affair I am
telling you at once the details which I heard from Mrs. Fyne later in the
day, as well as what little Fyne imparted to me with his usual solemnity
during that morning call. As you may easily guess the Fynes, in their
apartments, had read the news at the same time, and, as a matter of fact,
in the same august and highly moral newspaper, as the governess in the
luxurious mansion a few doors down on the opposite side of the street.
But they read them with different feelings. They were thunderstruck.
Fyne had to explain the full purport of the intelligence to Mrs. Fyne
whose first cry was that of relief. Then that poor child would be safe
from these designing, horrid people. Mrs. Fyne did not know what it
might mean to be suddenly reduced from riches to absolute penury. Fyne
with his masculine imagination was less inclined to rejoice extravagantly
at the girl's escape from the moral dangers which had been menacing her
defenceless existence. It was a confoundedly big price to pay. What an
unfortunate little thing she was! "We might be able to do something to
comfort that poor child at any rate for the time she is here," said Mrs.
Fyne. She felt under a sort of moral obligation not to be indifferent.
But no comfort for anyone could be got by rushing out into the street at
this early hour; and so, following the advice of Fyne not to act hastily,
they both sat down at the window and stared feelingly at the great house,
awful to their eyes in its stolid, prosperous, expensive respectability
with ruin absolutely standing at the door.
By that time, or very soon after, all Brighton had the information and
formed a more or less just appreciation of its gravity. The butler in
Miss de Barral's big house had seen the news, perhaps earlier than
anybody within a mile of the Parade, in the course of his morning duties
of which one was to dry the freshly delivered paper before the fire--an
occasion to glance at it which no intelligent man could have neglected.
He communicated to the rest of the household his vaguely forcible
impression that something had gone d---bly wrong with the affairs of "her
father in London."
This brought an atmosphere of constraint through the house, which Flora
de Barral coming down somewhat later than usual could not help noticing
in her own way. Everybody seemed to stare so stupidly somehow; she
feared a dull day.
In the dining-room the governess in her place, a newspaper half-concealed
under the cloth on her lap, after a few words exchanged with lips that
seemed hardly to move, remaining motionless, her eyes fixed before her in
an enduring silence; and presently Charley coming in to whom she did not
even give a glance. He hardly said good morning, though he had a half-
hearted try to smile at the girl, and sitting opposite her with his eyes
on his plate and slight quivers passing along the line of his
clean-shaven jaw, he too had nothing to say. It was dull, horribly dull
to begin one's day like this; but she knew what it was. These
never-ending family affairs! It was not for the first time that she had
suffered from their depressing after-effects on these two. It was a
shame that the delightful Charley should be made dull by these stupid
talks, and it was perfectly stupid of him to let himself be upset like
this by his aunt.
When after a period of still, as if calculating, immobility, her
governess got up abruptly and went out with the paper in her hand, almost
immediately afterwards followed by Charley who left his breakfast half
eaten, the girl was positively relieved. They would have it out that
morning whatever it was, and be themselves again in the afternoon. At
least Charley would be. To the moods of her governess she did not attach
so much importance.
For the first time that morning the Fynes saw the front door of the awful
house open and the objectionable young man issue forth, his rascality
visible to their prejudiced eyes in his very bowler hat and in the smart
cut of his short fawn overcoat. He walked away rapidly like a man
hurrying to catch a train, glancing from side to side as though he were
carrying something off. Could he be departing for good? Undoubtedly,
undoubtedly! But Mrs. Fyne's fervent "thank goodness" turned out to be a
bit, as the Americans--some Americans--say "previous." In a very short
time the odious fellow appeared again, strolling, absolutely strolling
back, his hat now tilted a little on one side, with an air of leisure and
satisfaction. Mrs. Fyne groaned not only in the spirit, at this sight,
but in the flesh, audibly; and asked her husband what it might mean. Fyne
naturally couldn't say. Mrs. Fyne believed that there was something
horrid in progress and meantime the object of her detestation had gone up
the steps and had knocked at the door which at once opened to admit him.
He had been only as far as the bank.
His reason for leaving his breakfast unfinished to run after Miss de
Barral's governess, was to speak to her in reference to that very errand
possessing the utmost possible importance in his eyes. He shrugged his
shoulders at the nervousness of her eyes and hands, at the half-strangled
whisper "I had to go out. I could hardly contain myself." That was her
affair. He was, with a young man's squeamishness, rather sick of her
ferocity. He did not understand it. Men do not accumulate hate against
each other in tiny amounts, treasuring every pinch carefully till it
grows at last into a monstrous and explosive hoard. He had run out after
her to remind her of the balance at the bank. What about lifting that
money without wasting any more time? She had promised him to leave
nothing behind.
An account opened in her name for the expenses of the establishment in
Brighton, had been fed by de Barral with deferential lavishness. The
governess crossed the wide hall into a little room at the side where she
sat down to write the cheque, which he hastened out to go and cash as if
it were stolen or a forgery. As observed by the Fynes, his uneasy
appearance on leaving the house arose from the fact that his first
trouble having been caused by a cheque of doubtful authenticity, the
possession of a document of the sort made him unreasonably uncomfortable
till this one was safely cashed. And after all, you know it was stealing
of an indirect sort; for the money was de Barral's money if the account
was in the name of the accomplished lady. At any rate the cheque was
cashed. On getting hold of the notes and gold he recovered his jaunty
bearing, it being well known that with certain natures the presence of
money (even stolen) in the pocket, acts as a tonic, or at least as a
stimulant. He cocked his hat a little on one side as though he had had a
drink or two--which indeed he might have had in reality, to celebrate the
occasion.
The governess had been waiting for his return in the hall, disregarding
the side-glances of the butler as he went in and out of the dining-room
clearing away the breakfast things. It was she, herself, who had opened
the door so promptly. "It's all right," he said touching his
breast-pocket; and she did not dare, the miserable wretch without
illusions, she did not dare ask him to hand it over. They looked at each
other in silence. He nodded significantly: "Where is she now?" and she
whispered "Gone into the drawing-room. Want to see her again?" with an
archly black look which he acknowledged by a muttered, surly: "I am
damned if I do. Well, as you want to bolt like this, why don't we go
now?"
She set her lips with cruel obstinacy and shook her head. She had her
idea, her completed plan. At that moment the Fynes, still at the window
and watching like a pair of private detectives, saw a man with a long
grey beard and a jovial face go up the steps helping himself with a thick
stick, and knock at the door. Who could he be?
He was one of Miss de Barral's masters. She had lately taken up painting
in water-colours, having read in a high-class woman's weekly paper that a
great many princesses of the European royal houses were cultivating that
art. This was the water-colour morning; and the teacher, a veteran of
many exhibitions, of a venerable and jovial aspect, had turned up with
his usual punctuality. He was no great reader of morning papers, and
even had he seen the news it is very likely he would not have understood
its real purport. At any rate he turned up, as the governess expected
him to do, and the Fynes saw him pass through the fateful door.
He bowed cordially to the lady in charge of Miss de Barral's education,
whom he saw in the hall engaged in conversation with a very good-looking
but somewhat raffish young gentleman. She turned to him graciously:
"Flora is already waiting for you in the drawing-room."
The cultivation of the art said to be patronized by princesses was
pursued in the drawing-room from considerations of the right kind of
light. The governess preceded the master up the stairs and into the room
where Miss de Barral was found arrayed in a holland pinafore (also of the
right kind for the pursuit of the art) and smilingly expectant. The
water-colour lesson enlivened by the jocular conversation of the kindly,
humorous, old man was always great fun; and she felt she would be
compensated for the tiresome beginning of the day.
Her governess generally was present at the lesson; but on this occasion
she only sat down till the master and pupil had gone to work in earnest,
and then as though she had suddenly remembered some order to give, rose
quietly and went out of the room.
Once outside, the servants summoned by the passing maid without a bell
being rung, and quick, quick, let all this luggage be taken down into the
hall, and let one of you call a cab. She stood outside the drawing-room
door on the landing, looking at each piece, trunk, leather cases,
portmanteaus, being carried past her, her brows knitted and her aspect so
sombre and absorbed that it took some little time for the butler to
muster courage enough to speak to her. But he reflected that he was a
free-born Briton and had his rights. He spoke straight to the point but
in the usual respectful manner.
"Beg you pardon, ma'am--but are you going away for good?"
He was startled by her tone. Its unexpected, unlady-like harshness fell
on his trained ear with the disagreeable effect of a false note. "Yes. I
am going away. And the best thing for all of you is to go away too, as
soon as you like. You can go now, to-day, this moment. You had your
wages paid you only last week. The longer you stay the greater your
loss. But I have nothing to do with it now. You are the servants of Mr.
de Barral--you know."
The butler was astounded by the manner of this advice, and as his eyes
wandered to the drawing-room door the governess extended her arm as if to
bar the way. "Nobody goes in there." And that was said still in another
tone, such a tone that all trace of the trained respectfulness vanished
from the butler's bearing. He stared at her with a frank wondering gaze.
"Not till I am gone," she added, and there was such an expression on her
face that the man was daunted by the mystery of it. He shrugged his
shoulders slightly and without another word went down the stairs on his
way to the basement, brushing in the hall past Mr. Charles who hat on
head and both hands rammed deep into his overcoat pockets paced up and
down as though on sentry duty there.
The ladies' maid was the only servant upstairs, hovering in the passage
on the first floor, curious and as if fascinated by the woman who stood
there guarding the door. Being beckoned closer imperiously and asked by
the governess to bring out of the now empty rooms the hat and veil, the
only objects besides the furniture still to be found there, she did so in
silence but inwardly fluttered. And while waiting uneasily, with the
veil, before that woman who, without moving a step away from the drawing-
room door was pinning with careless haste her hat on her head, she heard
within a sudden burst of laughter from Miss de Barral enjoying the fun of
the water-colour lesson given her for the last time by the cheery old
man.
Mr. and Mrs. Fyne ambushed at their window--a most incredible occupation
for people of their kind--saw with renewed anxiety a cab come to the
door, and watched some luggage being carried out and put on its roof. The
butler appeared for a moment, then went in again. What did it mean? Was
Flora going to be taken to her father; or were these people, that woman
and her horrible nephew, about to carry her off somewhere? Fyne couldn't
tell. He doubted the last, Flora having now, he judged, no value, either
positive or speculative. Though no great reader of character he did not
credit the governess with humane intentions. He confessed to me naively
that he was excited as if watching some action on the stage. Then the
thought struck him that the girl might have had some money settled on
her, be possessed of some means, of some little fortune of her own and
therefore--
He imparted this theory to his wife who shared fully his consternation.
"I can't believe the child will go away without running in to say good-
bye to us," she murmured. "We must find out! I shall ask her." But at
that very moment the cab rolled away, empty inside, and the door of the
house which had been standing slightly ajar till then was pushed to.
They remained silent staring at it till Mrs. Fyne whispered doubtfully "I
really think I must go over." Fyne didn't answer for a while (his is a
reflective mind, you know), and then as if Mrs. Fyne's whispers had an
occult power over that door it opened wide again and the white-bearded
man issued, astonishingly active in his movements, using his stick almost
like a leaping-pole to get down the steps; and hobbled away briskly along
the pavement. Naturally the Fynes were too far off to make out the
expression of his face. But it would not have helped them very much to a
guess at the conditions inside the house. The expression was humorously
puzzled--nothing more.
For, at the end of his lesson, seizing his trusty stick and coming out
with his habitual vivacity, he very nearly cannoned just outside the
drawing-room door into the back of Miss de Barral's governess. He
stopped himself in time and she turned round swiftly. It was
embarrassing; he apologised; but her face was not startled; it was not
aware of him; it wore a singular expression of resolution. A very
singular expression which, as it were, detained him for a moment. In
order to cover his embarrassment, he made some inane remark on the
weather, upon which, instead of returning another inane remark according
to the tacit rules of the game, she only gave him a smile of unfathomable
meaning. Nothing could have been more singular. The good-looking young
gentleman of questionable appearance took not the slightest notice of him
in the hall. No servant was to be seen. He let himself out pulling the
door to behind him with a crash as, in a manner, he was forced to do to
get it shut at all.
When the echo of it had died away the woman on the landing leaned over
the banister and called out bitterly to the man below "Don't you want to
come up and say good-bye." He had an impatient movement of the shoulders
and went on pacing to and fro as though he had not heard. But suddenly
he checked himself, stood still for a moment, then with a gloomy face and
without taking his hands out of his pockets ran smartly up the stairs.
Already facing the door she turned her head for a whispered taunt: "Come!
Confess you were dying to see her stupid little face once more,"--to
which he disdained to answer.
Flora de Barral, still seated before the table at which she had been
wording on her sketch, raised her head at the noise of the opening door.
The invading manner of their entrance gave her the sense of something she
had never seen before. She knew them well. She knew the woman better
than she knew her father. There had been between them an intimacy of
relation as great as it can possibly be without the final closeness of
affection. The delightful Charley walked in, with his eyes fixed on the
back of her governess whose raised veil hid her forehead like a brown
band above the black line of the eyebrows. The girl was astounded and
alarmed by the altogether unknown expression in the woman's face. The
stress of passion often discloses an aspect of the personality completely
ignored till then by its closest intimates. There was something like an
emanation of evil from her eyes and from the face of the other, who,
exactly behind her and overtopping her by half a head, kept his eyelids
lowered in a sinister fashion--which in the poor girl, reached, stirred,
set free that faculty of unreasoning explosive terror lying locked up at
the bottom of all human hearts and of the hearts of animals as well. With
suddenly enlarged pupils and a movement as instinctive almost as the
bounding of a startled fawn, she jumped up and found herself in the
middle of the big room, exclaiming at those amazing and familiar
strangers.
"What do you want?"
You will note that she cried: What do you want? Not: What has happened?
She told Mrs. Fyne that she had received suddenly the feeling of being
personally attacked. And that must have been very terrifying. The woman
before her had been the wisdom, the authority, the protection of life,
security embodied and visible and undisputed.
You may imagine then the force of the shock in the intuitive perception
not merely of danger, for she did not know what was alarming her, but in
the sense of the security being gone. And not only security. I don't
know how to explain it clearly. Look! Even a small child lives, plays
and suffers in terms of its conception of its own existence. Imagine, if
you can, a fact coming in suddenly with a force capable of shattering
that very conception itself. It was only because of the girl being still
so much of a child that she escaped mental destruction; that, in other
words she got over it. Could one conceive of her more mature, while
still as ignorant as she was, one must conclude that she would have
become an idiot on the spot--long before the end of that experience.
Luckily, people, whether mature or not mature (and who really is ever
mature?) are for the most part quite incapable of understanding what is
happening to them: a merciful provision of nature to preserve an average
amount of sanity for working purposes in this world . . . "
"But we, my dear Marlow, have the inestimable advantage of understanding
what is happening to others," I struck in. "Or at least some of us seem
to. Is that too a provision of nature? And what is it for? Is it that
we may amuse ourselves gossiping about each other's affairs? You for
instance seem--"
"I don't know what I seem," Marlow silenced me, "and surely life must be
amused somehow. It would be still a very respectable provision if it
were only for that end. But from that same provision of understanding,
there springs in us compassion, charity, indignation, the sense of
solidarity; and in minds of any largeness an inclination to that
indulgence which is next door to affection. I don't mean to say that I
am inclined to an indulgent view of the precious couple which broke in
upon an unsuspecting girl. They came marching in (it's the very
expression she used later on to Mrs. Fyne) but at her cry they stopped.
It must have been startling enough to them. It was like having the mask
torn off when you don't expect it. The man stopped for good; he didn't
offer to move a step further. But, though the governess had come in
there for the very purpose of taking the mask off for the first time in
her life, she seemed to look upon the frightened cry as a fresh
provocation. "What are you screaming for, you little fool?" she said
advancing alone close to the girl who was affected exactly as if she had
seen Medusa's head with serpentine locks set mysteriously on the
shoulders of that familiar person, in that brown dress, under that hat
she knew so well. It made her lose all her hold on reality. She told
Mrs. Fyne: "I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know that I was
frightened. If she had told me it was a joke I would have laughed. If
she had told me to put on my hat and go out with her I would have gone to
put on my hat and gone out with her and never said a single word; I
should have been convinced I had been mad for a minute or so, and I would
have worried myself to death rather than breathe a hint of it to her or
anyone. But the wretch put her face close to mine and I could not move.
Directly I had looked into her eyes I felt grown on to the carpet."
It was years afterwards that she used to talk like this to Mrs. Fyne--and
to Mrs. Fyne alone. Nobody else ever heard the story from her lips. But
it was never forgotten. It was always felt; it remained like a mark on
her soul, a sort of mystic wound, to be contemplated, to be meditated
over. And she said further to Mrs. Fyne, in the course of many
confidences provoked by that contemplation, that, as long as that woman
called her names, it was almost soothing, it was in a manner reassuring.
Her imagination had, like her body, gone off in a wild bound to meet the
unknown; and then to hear after all something which more in its tone than
in its substance was mere venomous abuse, had steadied the inward flutter
of all her being.
"She called me a little fool more times than I can remember. I! A fool!
Why, Mrs. Fyne! I do assure you I had never yet thought at all; never of
anything in the world, till then. I just went on living. And one can't
be a fool without one has at least tried to think. But what had I ever
to think about?"
"And no doubt," commented Marlow, "her life had been a mere life of
sensations--the response to which can neither be foolish nor wise. It
can only be temperamental; and I believe that she was of a generally
happy disposition, a child of the average kind. Even when she was asked
violently whether she imagined that there was anything in her, apart from
her money, to induce any intelligent person to take any sort of interest
in her existence, she only caught her breath in one dry sob and said
nothing, made no other sound, made no movement. When she was viciously
assured that she was in heart, mind, manner and appearance, an utterly
common and insipid creature, she remained still, without indignation,
without anger. She stood, a frail and passive vessel into which the
other went on pouring all the accumulated dislike for all her pupils, her
scorn of all her employers (the ducal one included), the accumulated
resentment, the infinite hatred of all these unrelieved years of--I won't
say hypocrisy. The practice of perfect hypocrisy is a relief in itself,
a secret triumph of the vilest sort, no doubt, but still a way of getting
even with the common morality from which some of us appear to suffer so
much. No! I will say the years, the passionate, bitter years, of
restraint, the iron, admirably mannered restraint at every moment, in a
never-failing perfect correctness of speech, glances, movements, smiles,
gestures, establishing for her a high reputation, an impressive record of
success in her sphere. It had been like living half strangled for years.
And all this torture for nothing, in the end! What looked at last like a
possible prize (oh, without illusions! but still a prize) broken in her
hands, fallen in the dust, the bitter dust, of disappointment, she
revelled in the miserable revenge--pretty safe too--only regretting the
unworthiness of the girlish figure which stood for so much she had longed
to be able to spit venom at, if only once, in perfect liberty. The
presence of the young man at her back increased both her satisfaction and
her rage. But the very violence of the attack seemed to defeat its end
by rendering the representative victim as it were insensible. The cause
of this outrage naturally escaping the girl's imagination her attitude
was in effect that of dense, hopeless stupidity. And it is a fact that
the worst shocks of life are often received without outcries, without
gestures, without a flow of tears and the convulsions of sobbing. The
insatiable governess missed these signs exceedingly. This pitiful
stolidity was only a fresh provocation. Yet the poor girl was deadly
pale.
"I was cold," she used to explain to Mrs. Fyne. "I had had time to get
terrified. She had pushed her face so near mine and her teeth looked as
though she wanted to bite me. Her eyes seemed to have become quite dry,
hard and small in a lot of horrible wrinkles. I was too afraid of her to
shudder, too afraid of her to put my fingers to my ears. I didn't know
what I expected her to call me next, but when she told me I was no better
than a beggar--that there would be no more masters, no more servants, no
more horses for me--I said to myself: Is that all? I should have laughed
if I hadn't been too afraid of her to make the least little sound."
It seemed that poor Flora had to know all the possible phases of that
sort of anguish, beginning with instinctive panic, through the bewildered
stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched apprehension, down to
the instinctive prudence of extreme terror--the stillness of the mouse.
But when she heard herself called the child of a cheat and a swindler,
the very monstrous unexpectedness of this caused in her a revulsion
towards letting herself go. She screamed out all at once "You mustn't
speak like this of Papa!"
The effort of it uprooted her from that spot where her little feet seemed
dug deep into the thick luxurious carpet, and she retreated backwards to
a distant part of the room, hearing herself repeat "You mustn't, you
mustn't" as if it were somebody else screaming. She came to a chair and
flung herself into it. Thereupon the somebody else ceased screaming and
she lolled, exhausted, sightless, in a silent room, as if indifferent to
everything and without a single thought in her head.
The next few seconds seemed to last for ever so long; a black abyss of
time separating what was past and gone from the reappearance of the
governess and the reawakening of fear. And that woman was forcing the
words through her set teeth: "You say I mustn't, I mustn't. All the
world will be speaking of him like this to-morrow. They will say it, and
they'll print it. You shall hear it and you shall read it--and then you
shall know whose daughter you are."
Her face lighted up with an atrocious satisfaction. "He's nothing but a
thief," she cried, "this father of yours. As to you I have never been
deceived in you for a moment. I have been growing more and more sick of
you for years. You are a vulgar, silly nonentity, and you shall go back
to where you belong, whatever low place you have sprung from, and beg
your bread--that is if anybody's charity will have anything to do with
you, which I doubt--"
She would have gone on regardless of the enormous eyes, of the open mouth
of the girl who sat up suddenly with the wild staring expression of being
choked by invisible fingers on her throat, and yet horribly pale. The
effect on her constitution was so profound, Mrs. Fyne told me, that she
who as a child had a rather pretty delicate colouring, showed a white
bloodless face for a couple of years afterwards, and remained always
liable at the slightest emotion to an extraordinary ghost-like whiteness.
The end came in the abomination of desolation of the poor child's
miserable cry for help: "Charley! Charley!" coming from her throat in
hidden gasping efforts. Her enlarged eyes had discovered him where he
stood motionless and dumb.
He started from his immobility, a hand withdrawn brusquely from the
pocket of his overcoat, strode up to the woman, seized her by the arm
from behind, saying in a rough commanding tone: "Come away, Eliza." In
an instant the child saw them close together and remote, near the door,
gone through the door, which she neither heard nor saw being opened or
shut. But it was shut. Oh yes, it was shut. Her slow unseeing glance
wandered all over the room. For some time longer she remained leaning
forward, collecting her strength, doubting if she would be able to stand.
She stood up at last. Everything about her spun round in an oppressive
silence. She remembered perfectly--as she told Mrs. Fyne--that clinging
to the arm of the chair she called out twice "Papa! Papa!" At the
thought that he was far away in London everything about her became quite
still. Then, frightened suddenly by the solitude of that empty room, she
rushed out of it blindly.
* * * * *
With that fatal diffidence in well doing, inherent in the present
condition of humanity, the Fynes continued to watch at their window.
"It's always so difficult to know what to do for the best," Fyne assured
me. It is. Good intentions stand in their own way so much. Whereas if
you want to do harm to anyone you needn't hesitate. You have only to go
on. No one will reproach you with your mistakes or call you a
confounded, clumsy meddler. The Fynes watched the door, the closed
street door inimical somehow to their benevolent thoughts, the face of
the house cruelly impenetrable. It was just as on any other day. The
unchanged daily aspect of inanimate things is so impressive that Fyne
went back into the room for a moment, picked up the paper again, and ran
his eyes over the item of news. No doubt of it. It looked very bad. He
came back to the window and Mrs. Fyne. Tired out as she was she sat
there resolute and ready for responsibility. But she had no suggestion
to offer. People do fear a rebuff wonderfully, and all her audacity was
in her thoughts. She shrank from the incomparably insolent manner of the
governess. Fyne stood by her side, as in those old-fashioned photographs
of married couples where you see a husband with his hand on the back of
his wife's chair. And they were about as efficient as an old photograph,
and as still, till Mrs. Fyne started slightly. The street door had swung
open, and, bursting out, appeared the young man, his hat (Mrs. Fyne
observed) tilted forward over his eyes. After him the governess slipped
through, turning round at once to shut the door behind her with care.
Meantime the man went down the white steps and strode along the pavement,
his hands rammed deep into the pockets of his fawn overcoat. The woman,
that woman of composed movements, of deliberate superior manner, took a
little run to catch up with him, and directly she had caught up with him
tried to introduce her hand under his arm. Mrs. Fyne saw the brusque
half turn of the fellow's body as one avoids an importunate contact,
defeating her attempt rudely. She did not try again but kept pace with
his stride, and Mrs. Fyne watched them, walking independently, turn the
corner of the street side by side, disappear for ever.
The Fynes looked at each other eloquently, doubtfully: What do you think
of this? Then with common accord turned their eyes back to the street
door, closed, massive, dark; the great, clear-brass knocker shining in a
quiet slant of sunshine cut by a diagonal line of heavy shade filling the
further end of the street. Could the girl be already gone? Sent away to
her father? Had she any relations? Nobody but de Barral himself ever
came to see her, Mrs. Fyne remembered; and she had the instantaneous,
profound, maternal perception of the child's loneliness--and a girl too!
It was irresistible. And, besides, the departure of the governess was
not without its encouraging influence. "I am going over at once to find
out," she declared resolutely but still staring across the street. Her
intention was arrested by the sight of that awful, sombrely glistening
door, swinging back suddenly on the yawning darkness of the hall, out of
which literally flew out, right out on the pavement, almost without
touching the white steps, a little figure swathed in a holland pinafore
up to the chin, its hair streaming back from its head, darting past a
lamp-post, past the red pillar-box . . . "Here," cried Mrs. Fyne; "she's
coming here! Run, John! Run!"
Fyne bounded out of the room. This is his own word. Bounded! He
assured me with intensified solemnity that he bounded; and the sight of
the short and muscular Fyne bounding gravely about the circumscribed
passages and staircases of a small, very high class, private hotel, would
have been worth any amount of money to a man greedy of memorable
impressions. But as I looked at him, the desire of laughter at my very
lips, I asked myself: how many men could be found ready to compromise
their cherished gravity for the sake of the unimportant child of a ruined
financier with an ugly, black cloud already wreathing his head. I didn't
laugh at little Fyne. I encouraged him: "You did!--very good . . .
Well?"
His main thought was to save the child from some unpleasant interference.
There was a porter downstairs, page boys; some people going away with
their trunks in the passage; a railway omnibus at the door,
white-breasted waiters dodging about the entrance.
He was in time. He was at the door before she reached it in her blind
course. She did not recognize him; perhaps she did not see him. He
caught her by the arm as she ran past and, very sensibly, without trying
to check her, simply darted in with her and up the stairs, causing no end
of consternation amongst the people in his way. They scattered. What
might have been their thoughts at the spectacle of a shameless middle-
aged man abducting headlong into the upper regions of a respectable hotel
a terrified young girl obviously under age, I don't know. And Fyne (he
told me so) did not care for what people might think. All he wanted was
to reach his wife before the girl collapsed. For a time she ran with him
but at the last flight of stairs he had to seize and half drag, half
carry her to his wife. Mrs. Fyne waited at the door with her quite
unmoved physiognomy and her readiness to confront any sort of
responsibility, which already characterized her, long before she became a
ruthless theorist. Relieved, his mission accomplished, Fyne closed
hastily the door of the sitting-room.
But before long both Fynes became frightened. After a period of
immobility in the arms of Mrs. Fyne, the girl, who had not said a word,
tore herself out from that slightly rigid embrace. She struggled dumbly
between them, they did not know why, soundless and ghastly, till she sank
exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children were out with the two nurses.
The hotel housemaid helped Mrs. Fyne to put Flora de Barral to bed. She
was as if gone speechless and insane. She lay on her back, her face
white like a piece of paper, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling, her
awful immobility broken by sudden shivering fits with a loud chattering
of teeth in the shadowy silence of the room, the blinds pulled down, Mrs.
Fyne sitting by patiently, her arms folded, yet inwardly moved by the
riddle of that distress of which she could not guess the word, and saying
to herself: "That child is too emotional--much too emotional to be ever
really sound!" As if anyone not made of stone could be perfectly sound
in this world. And then how sound? In what sense--to resist what? Force
or corruption? And even in the best armour of steel there are joints a
treacherous stroke can always find if chance gives the opportunity.
General considerations never had the power to trouble Mrs. Fyne much. The
girl not being in a state to be questioned she waited by the bedside.
Fyne had crossed over to the house, his scruples overcome by his anxiety
to discover what really had happened. He did not have to lift the
knocker; the door stood open on the inside gloom of the hall; he walked
into it and saw no one about, the servants having assembled for a fatuous
consultation in the basement. Fyne's uplifted bass voice startled them
down there, the butler coming up, staring and in his shirt sleeves, very
suspicious at first, and then, on Fyne's explanation that he was the
husband of a lady who had called several times at the house--Miss de
Barral's mother's friend--becoming humanely concerned and communicative,
in a man to man tone, but preserving his trained high-class servant's
voice: "Oh bless you, sir, no! She does not mean to come back. She told
me so herself"--he assured Fyne with a faint shade of contempt creeping
into his tone.
As regards their young lady nobody downstairs had any idea that she had
run out of the house. He dared say they all would have been willing to
do their very best for her, for the time being; but since she was now
with her mother's friends . . .
He fidgeted. He murmured that all this was very unexpected. He wanted
to know what he had better do with letters or telegrams which might
arrive in the course of the day.
"Letters addressed to Miss de Barral, you had better bring over to my
hotel over there," said Fyne beginning to feel extremely worried about
the future. The man said "Yes, sir," adding, "and if a letter comes
addressed to Mrs. . . . "