"Very well, sir."
The butler did not shut the street door after Fyne, but remained on the
doorstep for a while, looking up and down the street in the spirit of
independent expectation like a man who is again his own master. Mrs.
Fyne hearing her husband return came out of the room where the girl was
lying in bed. "No change," she whispered; and Fyne could only make a
hopeless sign of ignorance as to what all this meant and how it would
end.
He feared future complications--naturally; a man of limited means, in a
public position, his time not his own. Yes. He owned to me in the
parlour of my farmhouse that he had been very much concerned then at the
possible consequences. But as he was making this artless confession I
said to myself that, whatever consequences and complications he might
have imagined, the complication from which he was suffering now could
never, never have presented itself to his mind. Slow but sure (for I
conceive that the Book of Destiny has been written up from the beginning
to the last page) it had been coming for something like six years--and
now it had come. The complication was there! I looked at his unshaken
solemnity with the amused pity we give the victim of a funny if somewhat
ill-natured practical joke.
"Oh hang it," he exclaimed--in no logical connection with what he had
been relating to me. Nevertheless the exclamation was intelligible
enough.
However at first there were, he admitted, no untoward complications, no
embarrassing consequences. To a telegram in guarded terms dispatched to
de Barral no answer was received for more than twenty-four hours. This
certainly caused the Fynes some anxiety. When the answer arrived late on
the evening of next day it was in the shape of an elderly man. An
unexpected sort of man. Fyne explained to me with precision that he
evidently belonged to what is most respectable in the lower middle
classes. He was calm and slow in his speech. He was wearing a frock-
coat, had grey whiskers meeting under his chin, and declared on entering
that Mr. de Barral was his cousin. He hastened to add that he had not
seen his cousin for many years, while he looked upon Fyne (who received
him alone) with so much distrust that Fyne felt hurt (the person actually
refusing at first the chair offered to him) and retorted tartly that he,
for his part, had _never_ seen Mr. de Barral, in his life, and that,
since the visitor did not want to sit down, he, Fyne, begged him to state
his business as shortly as possible. The man in black sat down then with
a faint superior smile.
He had come for the girl. His cousin had asked him in a note delivered
by a messenger to go to Brighton at once and take "his girl" over from a
gentleman named Fyne and give her house-room for a time in his family.
And there he was. His business had not allowed him to come sooner. His
business was the manufacture on a large scale of cardboard boxes. He had
two grown-up girls of his own. He had consulted his wife and so that was
all right. The girl would get a welcome in his home. His home most
likely was not what she had been used to but, etc. etc.
All the time Fyne felt subtly in that man's manner a derisive disapproval
of everything that was not lower middle class, a profound respect for
money, a mean sort of contempt for speculators that fail, and a conceited
satisfaction with his own respectable vulgarity.
With Mrs. Fyne the manner of the obscure cousin of de Barral was but
little less offensive. He looked at her rather slyly but her cold,
decided demeanour impressed him. Mrs. Fyne on her side was simply
appalled by the personage, but did not show it outwardly. Not even when
the man remarked with false simplicity that Florrie--her name was Florrie
wasn't it? would probably miss at first all her grand friends. And when
he was informed that the girl was in bed, not feeling well at all he
showed an unsympathetic alarm. She wasn't an invalid was she? No. What
was the matter with her then?
An extreme distaste for that respectable member of society was depicted
in Fyne's face even as he was telling me of him after all these years. He
was a specimen of precisely the class of which people like the Fynes have
the least experience; and I imagine he jarred on them painfully. He
possessed all the civic virtues in their very meanest form, and the
finishing touch was given by a low sort of consciousness he manifested of
possessing them. His industry was exemplary. He wished to catch the
earliest possible train next morning. It seems that for seven and twenty
years he had never missed being seated on his office-stool at the factory
punctually at ten o'clock every day. He listened to Mrs. Fyne's
objections with undisguised impatience. Why couldn't Florrie get up and
have her breakfast at eight like other people? In his house the
breakfast was at eight sharp. Mrs. Fyne's polite stoicism overcame him
at last. He had come down at a very great personal inconvenience, he
assured her with displeasure, but he gave up the early train.
The good Fynes didn't dare to look at each other before this unforeseen
but perfectly authorized guardian, the same thought springing up in their
minds: Poor girl! Poor girl! If the women of the family were like this
too! . . . And of course they would be. Poor girl! But what could they
have done even if they had been prepared to raise objections. The person
in the frock-coat had the father's note; he had shown it to Fyne. Just a
request to take care of the girl--as her nearest relative--without any
explanation or a single allusion to the financial catastrophe, its tone
strangely detached and in its very silence on the point giving occasion
to think that the writer was not uneasy as to the child's future.
Probably it was that very idea which had set the cousin so readily in
motion. Men had come before out of commercial crashes with estates in
the country and a comfortable income, if not for themselves then for
their wives. And if a wife could be made comfortable by a little
dexterous management then why not a daughter? Yes. This possibility
might have been discussed in the person's household and judged worth
acting upon.
The man actually hinted broadly that such was his belief and in face of
Fyne's guarded replies gave him to understand that he was not the dupe of
such reticences. Obviously he looked upon the Fynes as being
disappointed because the girl was taken away from them. They, by a
diplomatic sacrifice in the interests of poor Flora, had asked the man to
dinner. He accepted ungraciously, remarking that he was not used to late
hours. He had generally a bit of supper about half-past eight or nine.
However . . .
He gazed contemptuously round the prettily decorated dining-room. He
wrinkled his nose in a puzzled way at the dishes offered to him by the
waiter but refused none, devouring the food with a great appetite and
drinking ("swilling" Fyne called it) gallons of ginger beer, which was
procured for him (in stone bottles) at his request. The difficulty of
keeping up a conversation with that being exhausted Mrs. Fyne herself,
who had come to the table armed with adamantine resolution. The only
memorable thing he said was when, in a pause of gorging himself "with
these French dishes" he deliberately let his eyes roam over the little
tables occupied by parties of diners, and remarked that his wife did for
a moment think of coming down with him, but that he was glad she didn't
do so. "She wouldn't have been at all happy seeing all this alcohol
about. Not at all happy," he declared weightily.
"You must have had a charming evening," I said to Fyne, "if I may judge
from the way you have kept the memory green."
"Delightful," he growled with, positively, a flash of anger at the
recollection, but lapsed back into his solemnity at once. After we had
been silent for a while I asked whether the man took away the girl next
day.
Fyne said that he did; in the afternoon, in a fly, with a few clothes the
maid had got together and brought across from the big house. He only saw
Flora again ten minutes before they left for the railway station, in the
Fynes' sitting-room at the hotel. It was a most painful ten minutes for
the Fynes. The respectable citizen addressed Miss de Barral as "Florrie"
and "my dear," remarking to her that she was not very big "there's not
much of you my dear" in a familiarly disparaging tone. Then turning to
Mrs. Fyne, and quite loud "She's very white in the face. Why's that?" To
this Mrs. Fyne made no reply. She had put the girl's hair up that
morning with her own hands. It changed her very much, observed Fyne. He,
naturally, played a subordinate, merely approving part. All he could do
for Miss de Barral personally was to go downstairs and put her into the
fly himself, while Miss de Barral's nearest relation, having been
shouldered out of the way, stood by, with an umbrella and a little black
bag, watching this proceeding with grim amusement, as it seemed. It was
difficult to guess what the girl thought or what she felt. She no longer
looked a child. She whispered to Fyne a faint "Thank you," from the fly,
and he said to her in very distinct tones and while still holding her
hand: "Pray don't forget to write fully to my wife in a day or two, Miss
de Barral." Then Fyne stepped back and the cousin climbed into the fly
muttering quite audibly: "I don't think you'll be troubled much with her
in the future;" without however looking at Fyne on whom he did not even
bestow a nod. The fly drove away.