"And then the marriage in most cases turns out no worse than the average,
to say the least of it."
Mrs. Fyne was disappointed by the optimistic turn of my sagacity. She
rested her eyes on my face as though in doubt whether I had enough
femininity in my composition to understand the case.
I waited for her to speak. She seemed to be asking herself; Is it after
all, worth while to talk to that man? You understand how provoking this
was. I looked in my mind for something appallingly stupid to say, with
the object of distressing and teasing Mrs. Fyne. It is humiliating to
confess a failure. One would think that a man of average intelligence
could command stupidity at will. But it isn't so. I suppose it's a
special gift or else the difficulty consists in being relevant.
Discovering that I could find no really telling stupidity, I turned to
the next best thing; a platitude. I advanced, in a common-sense tone,
that, surely, in the matter of marriage a man had only himself to please.
Mrs. Fyne received this without the flutter of an eyelid. Fyne's
masculine breast, as might have been expected, was pierced by that old,
regulation shaft. He grunted most feelingly. I turned to him with false
simplicity. "Don't you agree with me?"
"The very thing I've been telling my wife," he exclaimed in his extra-
manly bass. "We have been discussing--"
A discussion in the Fyne menage! How portentous! Perhaps the very first
difference they had ever had: Mrs. Fyne unflinching and ready for any
responsibility, Fyne solemn and shrinking--the children in bed upstairs;
and outside the dark fields, the shadowy contours of the land on the
starry background of the universe, with the crude light of the open
window like a beacon for the truant who would never come back now; a
truant no longer but a downright fugitive. Yet a fugitive carrying off
spoils. It was the flight of a raider--or a traitor? This affair of the
purloined brother, as I had named it to myself, had a very puzzling
physiognomy. The girl must have been desperate, I thought, hearing the
grave voice of Fyne well enough but catching the sense of his words not
at all, except the very last words which were:
"Of course, it's extremely distressing."
I looked at him inquisitively. What was distressing him? The purloining
of the son of the poet-tyrant by the daughter of the financier-convict.
Or only, if I may say so, the wind of their flight disturbing the solemn
placidity of the Fynes' domestic atmosphere. My incertitude did not last
long, for he added:
"Mrs. Fyne urges me to go to London at once."
One could guess at, almost see, his profound distaste for the journey,
his distress at a difference of feeling with his wife. With his serious
view of the sublunary comedy Fyne suffered from not being able to agree
solemnly with her sentiment as he was accustomed to do, in recognition of
having had his way in one supreme instance; when he made her elope with
him--the most momentous step imaginable in a young lady's life. He had
been really trying to acknowledge it by taking the rightness of her
feeling for granted on every other occasion. It had become a sort of
habit at last. And it is never pleasant to break a habit. The man was
deeply troubled. I said: "Really! To go to London!"
He looked dumbly into my eyes. It was pathetic and funny. "And you of
course feel it would be useless," I pursued.
He evidently felt that, though he said nothing. He only went on blinking
at me with a solemn and comical slowness. "Unless it be to carry there
the family's blessing," I went on, indulging my chaffing humour steadily,
in a rather sneaking fashion, for I dared not look at Mrs. Fyne, to my
right. No sound or movement came from that direction. "You think very
naturally that to match mere good, sound reasons, against the passionate
conclusions of love is a waste of intellect bordering on the absurd."
He looked surprised as if I had discovered something very clever. He,
dear man, had thought of nothing at all.
He simply knew that he did not want to go to London on that mission. Mere
masculine delicacy. In a moment he became enthusiastic.
"Yes! Yes! Exactly. A man in love . . . You hear, my dear? Here you
have an independent opinion--"
"Can anything be more hopeless," I insisted to the fascinated little
Fyne, "than to pit reason against love. I must confess however that in
this case when I think of that poor girl's sharp chin I wonder if . . . "
My levity was too much for Mrs. Fyne. Still leaning back in her chair
she exclaimed:
"Mr. Marlow!"
* * * * *
As if mysteriously affected by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began
to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee
however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up
quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to
discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental
journey. He, too, apparently, had confidence in my sagacity. It was
touching, this confidence. It was at any rate more genuine than the
confidence his wife pretended to have in her husband's chess-player, of
three successive holidays. Confidence be hanged! Sagacity--indeed! She
had simply marched in without a shadow of misgiving to make me back her
up. But she had delivered herself into my hands . . . "
Interrupting his narrative Marlow addressed me in his tone between grim
jest and grim earnest:
"Perhaps you didn't know that my character is upon the whole rather
vindictive."
"No, I didn't know," I said with a grin. "That's rather unusual for a
sailor. They always seemed to me the least vindictive body of men in the
world."
"H'm! Simple souls," Marlow muttered moodily. "Want of opportunity. The
world leaves them alone for the most part. For myself it's towards women
that I feel vindictive mostly, in my small way. I admit that it is
small. But then the occasions in themselves are not great. Mainly I
resent that pretence of winding us round their dear little fingers, as of
right. Not that the result ever amounts to much generally. There are so
very few momentous opportunities. It is the assumption that each of us
is a combination of a kid and an imbecile which I find provoking--in a
small way; in a very small way. You needn't stare as though I were
breathing fire and smoke out of my nostrils. I am not a women-devouring
monster. I am not even what is technically called "a brute." I hope
there's enough of a kid and an imbecile in me to answer the requirements
of some really good woman eventually--some day . . . Some day. Why do
you gasp? You don't suppose I should be afraid of getting married? That
supposition would be offensive . . . "
"I wouldn't dream of offending you," I said.
"Very well. But meantime please remember that I was not married to Mrs.
Fyne. That lady's little finger was none of my legal property. I had
not run off with it. It was Fyne who had done that thing. Let him be
wound round as much as his backbone could stand--or even more, for all I
cared. His rushing away from the discussion on the transparent pretence
of quieting the dog confirmed my notion of there being a considerable
strain on his elasticity. I confronted Mrs. Fyne resolved not to assist
her in her eminently feminine occupation of thrusting a stick in the
spokes of another woman's wheel.
She tried to preserve her calm-eyed superiority. She was familiar and
olympian, fenced in by the tea-table, that excellent symbol of domestic
life in its lighter hour and its perfect security. In a few severely
unadorned words she gave me to understand that she had ventured to hope
for some really helpful suggestion from me. To this almost chiding
declaration--because my vindictiveness seldom goes further than a bit of
teasing--I said that I was really doing my best. And being a
physiognomist . . . "
"Being what?" she interrupted me.
"A physiognomist," I repeated raising my voice a little. "A
physiognomist, Mrs. Fyne. And on the principles of that science a
pointed little chin is a sufficient ground for interference. You want to
interfere--do you not?"
Her eyes grew distinctly bigger. She had never been bantered before in
her life. The late subtle poet's method of making himself unpleasant was
merely savage and abusive. Fyne had been always solemnly subservient.
What other men she knew I cannot tell but I assume they must have been
gentlemanly creatures. The girl-friends sat at her feet. How could she
recognize my intention. She didn't know what to make of my tone.
"Are you serious in what you say?" she asked slowly. And it was
touching. It was as if a very young, confiding girl had spoken. I felt
myself relenting.
"No. I am not, Mrs. Fyne," I said. "I didn't know I was expected to be
serious as well as sagacious. No. That science is farcical and
therefore I am not serious. It's true that most sciences are farcical
except those which teach us how to put things together."
"The question is how to keep these two people apart," she struck in. She
had recovered. I admired the quickness of women's wit. Mental agility
is a rare perfection. And aren't they agile! Aren't they--just! And
tenacious! When they once get hold you may uproot the tree but you won't
shake them off the branch. In fact the more you shake . . . But only
look at the charm of contradictory perfections! No wonder men give
in--generally. I won't say I was actually charmed by Mrs. Fyne. I was
not delighted with her. What affected me was not what she displayed but
something which she could not conceal. And that was emotion--nothing
less. The form of her declaration was dry, almost peremptory--but not
its tone. Her voice faltered just the least bit, she smiled faintly; and
as we were looking straight at each other I observed that her eyes were
glistening in a peculiar manner. She was distressed. And indeed that
Mrs. Fyne should have appealed to me at all was in itself the evidence of
her profound distress. "By Jove she's desperate too," I thought. This
discovery was followed by a movement of instinctive shrinking from this
unreasonable and unmasculine affair. They were all alike, with their
supreme interest aroused only by fighting with each other about some man:
a lover, a son, a brother.
"But do you think there's time yet to do anything?" I asked.
She had an impatient movement of her shoulders without detaching herself
from the back of the chair. Time! Of course? It was less than forty-
eight hours since she had followed him to London . . . I am no great
clerk at those matters but I murmured vaguely an allusion to special
licences. We couldn't tell what might have happened to-day already. But
she knew better, scornfully. Nothing had happened.
"Nothing's likely to happen before next Friday week,--if then."
This was wonderfully precise. Then after a pause she added that she
should never forgive herself if some effort were not made, an appeal.
"To your brother?" I asked.
"Yes. John ought to go to-morrow. Nine o'clock train."
"So early as that!" I said. But I could not find it in my heart to
pursue this discussion in a jocular tone. I submitted to her several
obvious arguments, dictated apparently by common sense but in reality by
my secret compassion. Mrs. Fyne brushed them aside, with the
semi-conscious egoism of all safe, established, existences. They had
known each other so little. Just three weeks. And of that time, too
short for the birth of any serious sentiment, the first week had to be
deducted. They would hardly look at each other to begin with. Flora
barely consented to acknowledge Captain Anthony's presence. Good
morning--good night--that was all--absolutely the whole extent of their
intercourse. Captain Anthony was a silent man, completely unused to the
society of girls of any sort and so shy in fact that he avoided raising
his eyes to her face at the table. It was perfectly absurd. It was even
inconvenient, embarrassing to her--Mrs. Fyne. After breakfast Flora
would go off by herself for a long walk and Captain Anthony (Mrs. Fyne
referred to him at times also as Roderick) joined the children. But he
was actually too shy to get on terms with his own nieces.
This would have sounded pathetic if I hadn't known the Fyne children who
were at the same time solemn and malicious, and nursed a secret contempt
for all the world. No one could get on terms with those fresh and comely
young monsters! They just tolerated their parents and seemed to have a
sort of mocking understanding among themselves against all outsiders, yet
with no visible affection for each other. They had the habit of
exchanging derisive glances which to a shy man must have been very
trying. They thought their uncle no doubt a bore and perhaps an ass.
I was not surprised to hear that very soon Anthony formed the habit of
crossing the two neighbouring fields to seek the shade of a clump of elms
at a good distance from the cottage. He lay on the grass and smoked his
pipe all the morning. Mrs. Fyne wondered at her brother's indolent
habits. He had asked for books it is true but there were but few in the
cottage. He read them through in three days and then continued to lie
contentedly on his back with no other companion but his pipe. Amazing
indolence! The live-long morning, Mrs. Fyne, busy writing upstairs in
the cottage, could see him out of the window. She had a very long sight,
and these elms were grouped on a rise of the ground. His indolence was
plainly exposed to her criticism on a gentle green slope. Mrs. Fyne
wondered at it; she was disgusted too. But having just then 'commenced
author,' as you know, she could not tear herself away from the
fascinating novelty. She let him wallow in his vice. I imagine Captain
Anthony must have had a rather pleasant time in a quiet way. It was, I
remember, a hot dry summer, favourable to contemplative life out of
doors. And Mrs. Fyne was scandalized. Women don't understand the force
of a contemplative temperament. It simply shocks them. They feel
instinctively that it is the one which escapes best the domination of
feminine influences. The dear girls were exchanging jeering remarks
about "lazy uncle Roderick" openly, in her indulgent hearing. And it was
so strange, she told me, because as a boy he was anything but indolent.
On the contrary. Always active.
I remarked that a man of thirty-five was no longer a boy. It was an
obvious remark but she received it without favour. She told me
positively that the best, the nicest men remained boys all their lives.
She was disappointed not to be able to detect anything boyish in her
brother. Very, very sorry. She had not seen him for fifteen years or
thereabouts, except on three or four occasions for a few hours at a time.
No. Not a trace of the boy, he used to be, left in him.
She fell silent for a moment and I mused idly on the boyhood of little
Fyne. I could not imagine what it might have been like. His dominant
trait was clearly the remnant of still earlier days, because I've never
seen such staring solemnity as Fyne's except in a very young baby. But
where was he all that time? Didn't he suffer contamination from the
indolence of Captain Anthony, I inquired. I was told that Mr. Fyne was
very little at the cottage at the time. Some colleague of his was
convalescing after a severe illness in a little seaside village in the
neighbourhood and Fyne went off every morning by train to spend the day
with the elderly invalid who had no one to look after him. It was a very
praiseworthy excuse for neglecting his brother-in-law "the son of the
poet, you know," with whom he had nothing in common even in the remotest
degree. If Captain Anthony (Roderick) had been a pedestrian it would
have been sufficient; but he was not. Still, in the afternoon, he went
sometimes for a slow casual stroll, by himself of course, the children
having definitely cold-shouldered him, and his only sister being busy
with that inflammatory book which was to blaze upon the world a year or
more afterwards. It seems however that she was capable of detaching her
eyes from her task now and then, if only for a moment, because it was
from that garret fitted out for a study that one afternoon she observed
her brother and Flora de Barral coming down the road side by side. They
had met somewhere accidentally (which of them crossed the other's path,
as the saying is, I don't know), and were returning to tea together. She
noticed that they appeared to be conversing without constraint.
"I had the simplicity to be pleased," Mrs. Fyne commented with a dry
little laugh. "Pleased for both their sakes." Captain Anthony shook off
his indolence from that day forth, and accompanied Miss Flora frequently
on her morning walks. Mrs. Fyne remained pleased. She could now forget
them comfortably and give herself up to the delights of audacious thought
and literary composition. Only a week before the blow fell she,
happening to raise her eyes from the paper, saw two figures seated on the
grass under the shade of the elms. She could make out the white blouse.
There could be no mistake.
"I suppose they imagined themselves concealed by the hedge. They forgot
no doubt I was working in the garret," she said bitterly. "Or perhaps
they didn't care. They were right. I am rather a simple person . . . "
She laughed again . . . "I was incapable of suspecting such duplicity."
"Duplicity is a strong word, Mrs. Fyne--isn't it?" I expostulated. "And
considering that Captain Anthony himself . . . "
"Oh well--perhaps," she interrupted me. Her eyes which never strayed
away from mine, her set features, her whole immovable figure, how well I
knew those appearances of a person who has "made up her mind." A very
hopeless condition that, specially in women. I mistrusted her concession
so easily, so stonily made. She reflected a moment. "Yes. I ought to
have said--ingratitude, perhaps."
After having thus disengaged her brother and pushed the poor girl a
little further off as it were--isn't women's cleverness perfectly
diabolic when they are really put on their mettle?--after having done
these things and also made me feel that I was no match for her, she went
on scrupulously: "One doesn't like to use that word either. The claim is
very small. It's so little one could do for her. Still . . . "
"I dare say," I exclaimed, throwing diplomacy to the winds. "But really,
Mrs. Fyne, it's impossible to dismiss your brother like this out of the
business . . . "
"She threw herself at his head," Mrs. Fyne uttered firmly.
"He had no business to put his head in the way, then," I retorted with an
angry laugh. I didn't restrain myself because her fixed stare seemed to
express the purpose to daunt me. I was not afraid of her, but it
occurred to me that I was within an ace of drifting into a downright
quarrel with a lady and, besides, my guest. There was the cold teapot,
the emptied cups, emblems of hospitality. It could not be. I cut short
my angry laugh while Mrs. Fyne murmured with a slight movement of her
shoulders, "He! Poor man! Oh come . . . "
By a great effort of will I found myself able to smile amiably, to speak
with proper softness.
"My dear Mrs. Fyne, you forget that I don't know him--not even by sight.
It's difficult to imagine a victim as passive as all that; but granting
you the (I very nearly said: imbecility, but checked myself in time)
innocence of Captain Anthony, don't you think now, frankly, that there is
a little of your own fault in what has happened. You bring them
together, you leave your brother to himself!"
She sat up and leaning her elbow on the table sustained her head in her
open palm casting down her eyes. Compunction? It was indeed a very off-
hand way of treating a brother come to stay for the first time in fifteen
years. I suppose she discovered very soon that she had nothing in common
with that sailor, that stranger, fashioned and marked by the sea of long
voyages. In her strong-minded way she had scorned pretences, had gone to
her writing which interested her immensely. A very praiseworthy thing
your sincere conduct,--if it didn't at times resemble brutality so much.
But I don't think it was compunction. That sentiment is rare in women
. . . "
"Is it?" I interrupted indignantly.
"You know more women than I do," retorted the unabashed Marlow. "You
make it your business to know them--don't you? You go about a lot
amongst all sorts of people. You are a tolerably honest observer. Well,
just try to remember how many instances of compunction you have seen. I
am ready to take your bare word for it. Compunction! Have you ever seen
as much as its shadow? Have you ever? Just a shadow--a passing shadow!
I tell you it is so rare that you may call it non-existent. They are too
passionate. Too pedantic. Too courageous with themselves--perhaps. No
I don't think for a moment that Mrs. Fyne felt the slightest compunction
at her treatment of her sea-going brother. What _he_ thought of it who
can tell? It is possible that he wondered why he had been so insistently
urged to come. It is possible that he wondered bitterly--or
contemptuously--or humbly. And it may be that he was only surprised and
bored. Had he been as sincere in his conduct as his only sister he would
have probably taken himself off at the end of the second day. But
perhaps he was afraid of appearing brutal. I am not far removed from the
conviction that between the sincerities of his sister and of his dear
nieces, Captain Anthony of the _Ferndale_ must have had his loneliness
brought home to his bosom for the first time of his life, at an age,
thirty-five or thereabouts, when one is mature enough to feel the pang of
such a discovery. Angry or simply sad but certainly disillusioned he
wanders about and meets the girl one afternoon and under the sway of a
strong feeling forgets his shyness. This is no supposition. It is a
fact. There was such a meeting in which the shyness must have perished
before we don't know what encouragement, or in the community of mood made
apparent by some casual word. You remember that Mrs. Fyne saw them one
afternoon coming back to the cottage together. Don't you think that I
have hit on the psychology of the situation? . . . "
"Doubtless . . . " I began to ponder.
"I was very certain of my conclusions at the time," Marlow went on
impatiently. "But don't think for a moment that Mrs. Fyne in her new
attitude and toying thoughtfully with a teaspoon was about to surrender.
She murmured:
"It's the last thing I should have thought could happen."
"You didn't suppose they were romantic enough," I suggested dryly.
She let it pass and with great decision but as if speaking to herself,
"Roderick really must be warned."
She didn't give me the time to ask of what precisely. She raised her
head and addressed me.
"I am surprised and grieved more than I can tell you at Mr. Fyne's
resistance. We have been always completely at one on every question. And
that we should differ now on a point touching my brother so closely is a
most painful surprise to me." Her hand rattled the teaspoon brusquely by
an involuntary movement. "It is intolerable," she added
tempestuously--for Mrs. Fyne that is. I suppose she had nerves of her
own like any other woman.
Under the porch where Fyne had sought refuge with the dog there was
silence. I took it for a proof of deep sagacity. I don't mean on the
part of the dog. He was a confirmed fool.