"A very singular prohibition," remarked Mrs. Fyne after a short silence.
"He seemed to love the child."
She was puzzled. But I surmised that it might have been the sullenness
of a man unconscious of guilt and standing at bay to fight his
"persecutors," as he called them; or else the fear of a softer emotion
weakening his defiant attitude; perhaps, even, it was a self-denying
ordinance, in order to spare the girl the sight of her father in the
dock, accused of cheating, sentenced as a swindler--proving the
possession of a certain moral delicacy.
Mrs. Fyne didn't know what to think. She supposed it might have been
mere callousness. But the people amongst whom the girl had fallen had
positively not a grain of moral delicacy. Of that she was certain. Mrs.
Fyne could not undertake to give me an idea of their abominable
vulgarity. Flora used to tell her something of her life in that
household, over there, down Limehouse way. It was incredible. It passed
Mrs. Fyne's comprehension. It was a sort of moral savagery which she
could not have thought possible.
I, on the contrary, thought it very possible. I could imagine easily how
the poor girl must have been bewildered and hurt at her reception in that
household--envied for her past while delivered defenceless to the tender
mercies of people without any fineness either of feeling or mind, unable
to understand her misery, grossly curious, mistaking her manner for
disdain, her silent shrinking for pride. The wife of the "odious person"
was witless and fatuously conceited. Of the two girls of the house one
was pious and the other a romp; both were coarse-minded--if they may be
credited with any mind at all. The rather numerous men of the family
were dense and grumpy, or dense and jocose. None in that grubbing lot
had enough humanity to leave her alone. At first she was made much of,
in an offensively patronising manner. The connection with the great de
Barral gratified their vanity even in the moment of the smash. They
dragged her to their place of worship, whatever it might have been, where
the congregation stared at her, and they gave parties to other beings
like themselves at which they exhibited her with ignoble
self-satisfaction. She did not know how to defend herself from their
importunities, insolence and exigencies. She lived amongst them, a
passive victim, quivering in every nerve, as if she were flayed. After
the trial her position became still worse. On the least occasion and
even on no occasions at all she was scolded, or else taunted with her
dependence. The pious girl lectured her on her defects, the romping girl
teased her with contemptuous references to her accomplishments, and was
always trying to pick insensate quarrels with her about some "fellow" or
other. The mother backed up her girls invariably, adding her own silly,
wounding remarks. I must say they were probably not aware of the
ugliness of their conduct. They were nasty amongst themselves as a
matter of course; their disputes were nauseating in origin, in manner, in
the spirit of mean selfishness. These women, too, seemed to enjoy
greatly any sort of row and were always ready to combine together to make
awful scenes to the luckless girl on incredibly flimsy pretences. Thus
Flora on one occasion had been reduced to rage and despair, had her most
secret feelings lacerated, had obtained a view of the utmost baseness to
which common human nature can descend--I won't say _a propos de bottes_
as the French would excellently put it, but literally _a propos_ of some
mislaid cheap lace trimmings for a nightgown the romping one was making
for herself. Yes, that was the origin of one of the grossest scenes
which, in their repetition, must have had a deplorable effect on the
unformed character of the most pitiful of de Barral's victims. I have it
from Mrs. Fyne. The girl turned up at the Fynes' house at half-past nine
on a cold, drizzly evening. She had walked bareheaded, I believe, just
as she ran out of the house, from somewhere in Poplar to the
neighbourhood of Sloane Square--without stopping, without drawing breath,
if only for a sob.
"We were having some people to dinner," said the anxious sister of
Captain Anthony.
She had heard the front door bell and wondered what it might mean. The
parlourmaid managed to whisper to her without attracting attention. The
servants had been frightened by the invasion of that wild girl in a muddy
skirt and with wisps of damp hair sticking to her pale cheeks. But they
had seen her before. This was not the first occasion, nor yet the last.
Directly she could slip away from her guests Mrs. Fyne ran upstairs.
"I found her in the night nursery crouching on the floor, her head
resting on the cot of the youngest of my girls. The eldest was sitting
up in bed looking at her across the room."
Only a nightlight was burning there. Mrs. Fyne raised her up, took her
over to Mr. Fyne's little dressing-room on the other side of the landing,
to a fire by which she could dry herself, and left her there. She had to
go back to her guests.
A most disagreeable surprise it must have been to the Fynes. Afterwards
they both went up and interviewed the girl. She jumped up at their
entrance. She had shaken her damp hair loose; her eyes were dry--with
the heat of rage.
I can imagine little Fyne solemnly sympathetic, solemnly listening,
solemnly retreating to the marital bedroom. Mrs. Fyne pacified the girl,
and, fortunately, there was a bed which could be made up for her in the
dressing-room.
"But--what could one do after all!" concluded Mrs. Fyne.
And this stereotyped exclamation, expressing the difficulty of the
problem and the readiness (at any rate) of good intentions, made me, as
usual, feel more kindly towards her.
Next morning, very early, long before Fyne had to start for his office,
the "odious personage" turned up, not exactly unexpected perhaps, but
startling all the same, if only by the promptness of his action. From
what Flora herself related to Mrs. Fyne, it seems that without being very
perceptibly less "odious" than his family he had in a rather mysterious
fashion interposed his authority for the protection of the girl. "Not
that he cares," explained Flora. "I am sure he does not. I could not
stand being liked by any of these people. If I thought he liked me I
would drown myself rather than go back with him."
For of course he had come to take "Florrie" home. The scene was the
dining-room--breakfast interrupted, dishes growing cold, little Fyne's
toast growing leathery, Fyne out of his chair with his back to the fire,
the newspaper on the carpet, servants shut out, Mrs. Fyne rigid in her
place with the girl sitting beside her--the "odious person," who had
bustled in with hardly a greeting, looking from Fyne to Mrs. Fyne as
though he were inwardly amused at something he knew of them; and then
beginning ironically his discourse. He did not apologize for disturbing
Fyne and his "good lady" at breakfast, because he knew they did not want
(with a nod at the girl) to have more of her than could be helped. He
came the first possible moment because he had his business to attend to.
He wasn't drawing a tip-top salary (this staring at Fyne) in a
luxuriously furnished office. Not he. He had risen to be an employer of
labour and was bound to give a good example.
I believe the fellow was aware of, and enjoyed quietly, the consternation
his presence brought to the bosom of Mr. and Mrs. Fyne. He turned
briskly to the girl. Mrs. Fyne confessed to me that they had remained
all three silent and inanimate. He turned to the girl: "What's this
game, Florrie? You had better give it up. If you expect me to run all
over London looking for you every time you happen to have a tiff with
your auntie and cousins you are mistaken. I can't afford it."
Tiff--was the sort of definition to take one's breath away, having regard
to the fact that both the word convict and the word pauper had been used
a moment before Flora de Barral ran away from the quarrel about the lace
trimmings. Yes, these very words! So at least the girl had told Mrs.
Fyne the evening before. The word tiff in connection with her tale had a
peculiar savour, a paralysing effect. Nobody made a sound. The relative
of de Barral proceeded uninterrupted to a display of magnanimity. "Auntie
told me to tell you she's sorry--there! And Amelia (the romping sister)
shan't worry you again. I'll see to that. You ought to be satisfied.
Remember your position."
Emboldened by the utter stillness pervading the room he addressed himself
to Mrs. Fyne with stolid effrontery:
"What I say is that people should be good-natured. She can't stand being
chaffed. She puts on her grand airs. She won't take a bit of a joke
from people as good as herself anyway. We are a plain lot. We don't
like it. And that's how trouble begins."
Insensible to the stony stare of three pairs of eyes, which, if the
stories of our childhood as to the power of the human eye are true, ought
to have been enough to daunt a tiger, that unabashed manufacturer from
the East End fastened his fangs, figuratively speaking, into the poor
girl and prepared to drag her away for a prey to his cubs of both sexes.
"Auntie has thought of sending you your hat and coat. I've got them
outside in the cab."
Mrs. Fyne looked mechanically out of the window. A four-wheeler stood
before the gate under the weeping sky. The driver in his conical cape
and tarpaulin hat, streamed with water. The drooping horse looked as
though it had been fished out, half unconscious, from a pond. Mrs. Fyne
found some relief in looking at that miserable sight, away from the room
in which the voice of the amiable visitor resounded with a vulgar
intonation exhorting the strayed sheep to return to the delightful fold.
"Come, Florrie, make a move. I can't wait on you all day here."
Mrs. Fyne heard all this without turning her head away from the window.
Fyne on the hearthrug had to listen and to look on too. I shall not try
to form a surmise as to the real nature of the suspense. Their very
goodness must have made it very anxious. The girl's hands were lying in
her lap; her head was lowered as if in deep thought; and the other went
on delivering a sort of homily. Ingratitude was condemned in it, the
sinfulness of pride was pointed out--together with the proverbial fact
that it "goes before a fall." There were also some sound remarks as to
the danger of nonsensical notions and the disadvantages of a quick
temper. It sets one's best friends against one. "And if anybody ever
wanted friends in the world it's you, my girl." Even respect for
parental authority was invoked. "In the first hour of his trouble your
father wrote to me to take care of you--don't forget it. Yes, to me,
just a plain man, rather than to any of his fine West-End friends. You
can't get over that. And a father's a father no matter what a mess he's
got himself into. You ain't going to throw over your own father--are
you?"
It was difficult to say whether he was more absurd than cruel or more
cruel than absurd. Mrs. Fyne, with the fine ear of a woman, seemed to
detect a jeering intention in his meanly unctuous tone, something more
vile than mere cruelty. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw
the girl raise her two hands to her head, then let them fall again on her
lap. Fyne in front of the fire was like the victim of an unholy
spell--bereft of motion and speech but obviously in pain. It was a short
pause of perfect silence, and then that "odious creature" (he must have
been really a remarkable individual in his way) struck out into sarcasm.
"Well? . . . " Again a silence. "If you have fixed it up with the lady
and gentleman present here for your board and lodging you had better say
so. I don't want to interfere in a bargain I know nothing of. But I
wonder how your father will take it when he comes out . . . or don't you
expect him ever to come out?"
At that moment, Mrs. Fyne told me she met the girl's eyes. There was
that in them which made her shut her own. She also felt as though she
would have liked to put her fingers in her ears. She restrained herself,
however; and the "plain man" passed in his appalling versatility from
sarcasm to veiled menace.
"You have--eh? Well and good. But before I go home let me ask you, my
girl, to think if by any chance you throwing us over like this won't be
rather bad for your father later on? Just think it over."
He looked at his victim with an air of cunning mystery. She jumped up so
suddenly that he started back. Mrs. Fyne rose too, and even the spell
was removed from her husband. But the girl dropped again into the chair
and turned her head to look at Mrs. Fyne. This time it was no accidental
meeting of fugitive glances. It was a deliberate communication. To my
question as to its nature Mrs. Fyne said she did not know. "Was it
appealing?" I suggested. "No," she said. "Was it frightened, angry,
crushed, resigned?" "No! No! Nothing of these." But it had frightened
her. She remembered it to this day. She had been ever since fancying
she could detect the lingering reflection of that look in all the girl's
glances. In the attentive, in the casual--even in the grateful
glances--in the expression of the softest moods.
"Has she her soft moods, then?" I asked with interest.
Mrs Fyne, much moved by her recollections, heeded not my inquiry. All
her mental energy was concentrated on the nature of that memorable
glance. The general tradition of mankind teaches us that glances occupy
a considerable place in the self-expression of women. Mrs. Fyne was
trying honestly to give me some idea, as much perhaps to satisfy her own
uneasiness as my curiosity. She was frowning in the effort as you see
sometimes a child do (what is delightful in women is that they so often
resemble intelligent children--I mean the crustiest, the sourest, the
most battered of them do--at times). She was frowning, I say, and I was
beginning to smile faintly at her when all at once she came out with
something totally unexpected.
"It was horribly merry," she said.
I suppose she must have been satisfied by my sudden gravity because she
looked at me in a friendly manner.
"Yes, Mrs. Fyne," I said, smiling no longer. "I see. It would have been
horrible even on the stage."
"Ah!" she interrupted me--and I really believe her change of attitude
back to folded arms was meant to check a shudder. "But it wasn't on the
stage, and it was not with her lips that she laughed."
"Yes. It must have been horrible," I assented. "And then she had to go
away ultimately--I suppose. You didn't say anything?"
"No," said Mrs. Fyne. "I rang the bell and told one of the maids to go
and bring the hat and coat out of the cab. And then we waited."
I don't think that there ever was such waiting unless possibly in a jail
at some moment or other on the morning of an execution. The servant
appeared with the hat and coat, and then, still as on the morning of an
execution, when the condemned, I believe, is offered a breakfast, Mrs.
Fyne, anxious that the white-faced girl should swallow something warm (if
she could) before leaving her house for an interminable drive through raw
cold air in a damp four-wheeler--Mrs. Fyne broke the awful silence: "You
really must try to eat something," in her best resolute manner. She
turned to the "odious person" with the same determination. "Perhaps you
will sit down and have a cup of coffee, too."
The worthy "employer of labour" sat down. He might have been awed by
Mrs. Fyne's peremptory manner--for she did not think of conciliating him
then. He sat down, provisionally, like a man who finds himself much
against his will in doubtful company. He accepted ungraciously the cup
handed to him by Mrs. Fyne, took an unwilling sip or two and put it down
as if there were some moral contamination in the coffee of these
"swells." Between whiles he directed mysteriously inexpressive glances
at little Fyne, who, I gather, had no breakfast that morning at all.
Neither had the girl. She never moved her hands from her lap till her
appointed guardian got up, leaving his cup half full.
"Well. If you don't mean to take advantage of this lady's kind offer I
may just as well take you home at once. I want to begin my day--I do."
After a few more dumb, leaden-footed minutes while Flora was putting on
her hat and jacket, the Fynes without moving, without saying anything,
saw these two leave the room.
"She never looked back at us," said Mrs. Fyne. "She just followed him
out. I've never had such a crushing impression of the miserable
dependence of girls--of women. This was an extreme case. But a young
man--any man--could have gone to break stones on the roads or something
of that kind--or enlisted--or--"
It was very true. Women can't go forth on the high roads and by-ways to
pick up a living even when dignity, independence, or existence itself are
at stake. But what made me interrupt Mrs. Fyne's tirade was my profound
surprise at the fact of that respectable citizen being so willing to keep
in his home the poor girl for whom it seemed there was no place in the
world. And not only willing but anxious. I couldn't credit him with
generous impulses. For it seemed obvious to me from what I had learned
that, to put it mildly, he was not an impulsive person.
"I confess that I can't understand his motive," I exclaimed.
"This is exactly what John wondered at, at first," said Mrs. Fyne. By
that time an intimacy--if not exactly confidence--had sprung up between
us which permitted her in this discussion to refer to her husband as
John. "You know he had not opened his lips all that time," she pursued.
"I don't blame his restraint. On the contrary. What could he have said?
I could see he was observing the man very thoughtfully."
"And so, Mr. Fyne listened, observed and meditated," I said. "That's an
excellent way of coming to a conclusion. And may I ask at what
conclusion he had managed to arrive? On what ground did he cease to
wonder at the inexplicable? For I can't admit humanity to be the
explanation. It would be too monstrous."
It was nothing of the sort, Mrs. Fyne assured me with some resentment, as
though I had aspersed little Fyne's sanity. Fyne very sensibly had set
himself the mental task of discovering the self-interest. I should not
have thought him capable of so much cynicism. He said to himself that
for people of that sort (religious fears or the vanity of righteousness
put aside) money--not great wealth, but money, just a little money--is
the measure of virtue, of expediency, of wisdom--of pretty well
everything. But the girl was absolutely destitute. The father was in
prison after the most terribly complete and disgraceful smash of modern
times. And then it dawned upon Fyne that this was just it. The great
smash, in the great dust of vanishing millions! Was it possible that
they all had vanished to the last penny? Wasn't there, somewhere,
something palpable; some fragment of the fabric left?
"That's it," had exclaimed Fyne, startling his wife by this explosive
unseating of his lips less than half an hour after the departure of de
Barral's cousin with de Barral's daughter. It was still in the dining-
room, very near the time for him to go forth affronting the elements in
order to put in another day's work in his country's service. All he
could say at the moment in elucidation of this breakdown from his usual
placid solemnity was:
"The fellow imagines that de Barral has got some plunder put away
somewhere."
This being the theory arrived at by Fyne, his comment on it was that a
good many bankrupts had been known to have taken such a precaution. It
was possible in de Barral's case. Fyne went so far in his display of
cynical pessimism as to say that it was extremely probable.
He explained at length to Mrs. Fyne that de Barral certainly did not take
anyone into his confidence. But the beastly relative had made up his low
mind that it was so. He was selfish and pitiless in his stupidity, but
he had clearly conceived the notion of making a claim on de Barral when
de Barral came out of prison on the strength of having "looked after" (as
he would have himself expressed it) his daughter. He nursed his hopes,
such as they were, in secret, and it is to be supposed kept them even
from his wife.
I could see it very well. That belief accounted for his mysterious air
while he interfered in favour of the girl. He was the only protector she
had. It was as though Flora had been fated to be always surrounded by
treachery and lies stifling every better impulse, every instinctive
aspiration of her soul to trust and to love. It would have been enough
to drive a fine nature into the madness of universal suspicion--into any
sort of madness. I don't know how far a sense of humour will stand by
one. To the foot of the gallows, perhaps. But from my recollection of
Flora de Barral I feared that she hadn't much sense of humour. She had
cried at the desertion of the absurd Fyne dog. That animal was certainly
free from duplicity. He was frank and simple and ridiculous. The
indignation of the girl at his unhypocritical behaviour had been funny
but not humorous.
As you may imagine I was not very anxious to resume the discussion on the
justice, expediency, effectiveness or what not, of Fyne's journey to
London. It isn't that I was unfaithful to little Fyne out in the porch
with the dog. (They kept amazingly quiet there. Could they have gone to
sleep?) What I felt was that either my sagacity or my conscience would
come out damaged from that campaign. And no man will willingly put
himself in the way of moral damage. I did not want a war with Mrs. Fyne.
I much preferred to hear something more of the girl. I said:
"And so she went away with that respectable ruffian."
Mrs. Fyne moved her shoulders slightly--"What else could she have done?"
I agreed with her by another hopeless gesture. It isn't so easy for a
girl like Flora de Barral to become a factory hand, a pathetic seamstress
or even a barmaid. She wouldn't have known how to begin. She was the
captive of the meanest conceivable fate. And she wasn't mean enough for
it. It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously
unfitted for the fate awaiting them on this earth. As I don't want you
to think that I am unduly partial to the girl we shall say that she
failed decidedly to endear herself to that simple, virtuous and, I
believe, teetotal household. It's my conviction that an angel would have
failed likewise. It's no use going into details; suffice it to state
that before the year was out she was again at the Fynes' door.
This time she was escorted by a stout youth. His large pale face wore a
smile of inane cunning soured by annoyance. His clothes were new and the
indescribable smartness of their cut, a _genre_ which had never been
obtruded on her notice before, astonished Mrs. Fyne, who came out into
the hall with her hat on; for she was about to go out to hear a new
pianist (a girl) in a friend's house. The youth addressing Mrs. Fyne
easily begged her not to let "that silly thing go back to us any more."
There had been, he said, nothing but "ructions" at home about her for the
last three weeks. Everybody in the family was heartily sick of
quarrelling. His governor had charged him to bring her to this address
and say that the lady and gentleman were quite welcome to all there was
in it. She hadn't enough sense to appreciate a plain, honest English
home and she was better out of it.
The young, pimply-faced fellow was vexed by this job his governor had
sprung on him. It was the cause of his missing an appointment for that
afternoon with a certain young lady. The lady he was engaged to. But he
meant to dash back and try for a sight of her that evening yet "if he
were to burst over it." "Good-bye, Florrie. Good luck to you--and I
hope I'll never see your face again."
With that he ran out in lover-like haste leaving the hall-door wide open.
Mrs. Fyne had not found a word to say. She had been too much taken aback
even to gasp freely. But she had the presence of mind to grab the girl's
arm just as she, too, was running out into the street--with the haste, I
suppose, of despair and to keep I don't know what tragic tryst.
"You stopped her with your own hand, Mrs. Fyne," I said. "I presume she
meant to get away. That girl is no comedian--if I am any judge."
"Yes! I had to use some force to drag her in."
Mrs. Fyne had no difficulty in stating the truth. "You see I was in the
very act of letting myself out when these two appeared. So that, when
that unpleasant young man ran off, I found myself alone with Flora. It
was all I could do to hold her in the hall while I called to the servants
to come and shut the door."
As is my habit, or my weakness, or my gift, I don't know which, I
visualized the story for myself. I really can't help it. And the vision
of Mrs. Fyne dressed for a rather special afternoon function, engaged in
wrestling with a wild-eyed, white-faced girl had a certain dramatic
fascination.
"Really!" I murmured.
"Oh! There's no doubt that she struggled," said Mrs. Fyne. She
compressed her lips for a moment and then added: "As to her being a
comedian that's another question."
Mrs. Fyne had returned to her attitude of folded arms. I saw before me
the daughter of the refined poet accepting life whole with its
unavoidable conditions of which one of the first is the instinct of self-
preservation and the egoism of every living creature. "The fact remains
nevertheless that you--yourself--have, in your own words, pulled her in,"
I insisted in a jocular tone, with a serious intention.
"What was one to do," exclaimed Mrs. Fyne with almost comic exasperation.
"Are you reproaching me with being too impulsive?"
And she went on telling me that she was not that in the least. One of
the recommendations she always insisted on (to the girl-friends, I
imagine) was to be on guard against impulse. Always! But I had not been
there to see the face of Flora at the time. If I had it would be
haunting me to this day. Nobody unless made of iron would have allowed a
human being with a face like that to rush out alone into the streets.
"And doesn't it haunt you, Mrs. Fyne?" I asked.
"No, not now," she said implacably. "Perhaps if I had let her go it
might have done . . . Don't conclude, though, that I think she was
playing a comedy then, because after struggling at first she ended by
remaining. She gave up very suddenly. She collapsed in our arms, mine
and the maid's who came running up in response to my calls, and . . . "
"And the door was then shut," I completed the phrase in my own way.
"Yes, the door was shut," Mrs. Fyne lowered and raised her head slowly.
I did not ask her for details. Of one thing I am certain, and that is
that Mrs. Fyne did not go out to the musical function that afternoon. She
was no doubt considerably annoyed at missing the privilege of hearing
privately an interesting young pianist (a girl) who, since, had become
one of the recognized performers. Mrs. Fyne did not dare leave her
house. As to the feelings of little Fyne when he came home from the
office, via his club, just half an hour before dinner, I have no
information. But I venture to affirm that in the main they were kindly,
though it is quite possible that in the first moment of surprise he had
to keep down a swear-word or two.
* * * * *
The long and the short of it all is that next day the Fynes made up their
minds to take into their confidence a certain wealthy old lady. With
certain old ladies the passing years bring back a sort of mellowed
youthfulness of feeling, an optimistic outlook, liking for novelty,
readiness for experiment. The old lady was very much interested: "Do let
me see the poor thing!" She was accordingly allowed to see Flora de
Barral in Mrs. Fyne's drawing-room on a day when there was no one else
there, and she preached to her with charming, sympathetic authority: "The
only way to deal with our troubles, my dear child, is to forget them. You
must forget yours. It's very simple. Look at me. I always forget mine.
At your age one ought to be cheerful."
Later on when left alone with Mrs. Fyne she said to that lady: "I do hope
the child will manage to be cheerful. I can't have sad faces near me. At
my age one needs cheerful companions."
And in this hope she carried off Flora de Barral to Bournemouth for the
winter months in the quality of reader and companion. She had said to
her with kindly jocularity: "We shall have a good time together. I am
not a grumpy old woman." But on their return to London she sought Mrs.
Fyne at once. She had discovered that Flora was not naturally cheerful.
When she made efforts to be it was still worse. The old lady couldn't
stand the strain of that. And then, to have the whole thing out, she
could not bear to have for a companion anyone who did not love her. She
was certain that Flora did not love her. Why? She couldn't say.
Moreover, she had caught the girl looking at her in a peculiar way at
times. Oh no!--it was not an evil look--it was an unusual expression
which one could not understand. And when one remembered that her father
was in prison shut up together with a lot of criminals and so on--it made
one uncomfortable. If the child had only tried to forget her troubles!
But she obviously was incapable or unwilling to do so. And that was
somewhat perverse--wasn't it? Upon the whole, she thought it would be
better perhaps--
Mrs. Fyne assented hurriedly to the unspoken conclusion: "Oh certainly!
Certainly," wondering to herself what was to be done with Flora next; but
she was not very much surprised at the change in the old lady's view of
Flora de Barral. She almost understood it.
What came next was a German family, the continental acquaintances of the
wife of one of Fyne's colleagues in the Home Office. Flora of the
enigmatical glances was dispatched to them without much reflection. As
it was not considered absolutely necessary to take them into full
confidence, they neither expected the girl to be specially cheerful nor
were they discomposed unduly by the indescribable quality of her glances.
The German woman was quite ordinary; there were two boys to look after;
they were ordinary, too, I presume; and Flora, I understand, was very
attentive to them. If she taught them anything it must have been by
inspiration alone, for she certainly knew nothing of teaching. But it
was mostly "conversation" which was demanded from her. Flora de Barral
conversing with two small German boys, regularly, industriously,
conscientiously, in order to keep herself alive in the world which held
for her the past we know and the future of an even more undesirable
quality--seems to me a very fantastic combination. But I believe it was
not so bad. She was being, she wrote, mercifully drugged by her task.
She had learned to "converse" all day long, mechanically, absently, as if
in a trance. An uneasy trance it must have been! Her worst moments were
when off duty--alone in the evening, shut up in her own little room, her
dulled thoughts waking up slowly till she started into the full
consciousness of her position, like a person waking up in contact with
something venomous--a snake, for instance--experiencing a mad impulse to
fling the thing away and run off screaming to hide somewhere.
At this period of her existence Flora de Barral used to write to Mrs.
Fyne not regularly but fairly often. I don't know how long she would
have gone on "conversing" and, incidentally, helping to supervise the
beautifully stocked linen closets of that well-to-do German household, if
the man of it had not developed in the intervals of his avocations (he
was a merchant and a thoroughly domesticated character) a psychological
resemblance to the Bournemouth old lady. It appeared that he, too,
wanted to be loved.
He was not, however, of a conquering temperament--a kiss-snatching, door-
bursting type of libertine. In the very act of straying from the path of
virtue he remained a respectable merchant. It would have been perhaps
better for Flora if he had been a mere brute. But he set about his
sinister enterprise in a sentimental, cautious, almost paternal manner;
and thought he would be safe with a pretty orphan. The girl for all her
experience was still too innocent, and indeed not yet sufficiently aware
of herself as a woman, to mistrust these masked approaches. She did not
see them, in fact. She thought him sympathetic--the first expressively
sympathetic person she had ever met. She was so innocent that she could
not understand the fury of the German woman. For, as you may imagine,
the wifely penetration was not to be deceived for any great length of
time--the more so that the wife was older than the husband. The man with
the peculiar cowardice of respectability never said a word in Flora's
defence. He stood by and heard her reviled in the most abusive terms,
only nodding and frowning vaguely from time to time. It will give you
the idea of the girl's innocence when I say that at first she actually
thought this storm of indignant reproaches was caused by the discovery of
her real name and her relation to a convict. She had been sent out under
an assumed name--a highly recommended orphan of honourable parentage. Her
distress, her burning cheeks, her endeavours to express her regret for
this deception were taken for a confession of guilt. "You attempted to
bring dishonour to my home," the German woman screamed at her.
Here's a misunderstanding for you! Flora de Barral, who felt the shame
but did not believe in the guilt of her father, retorted fiercely,
"Nevertheless I am as honourable as you are." And then the German woman
nearly went into a fit from rage. "I shall have you thrown out into the
street."
Flora was not exactly thrown out into the street, I believe, but she was
bundled bag and baggage on board a steamer for London. Did I tell you
these people lived in Hamburg? Well yes--sent to the docks late on a
rainy winter evening in charge of some sneering lackey or other who
behaved to her insolently and left her on deck burning with indignation,
her hair half down, shaking with excitement and, truth to say, scared as
near as possible into hysterics. If it had not been for the stewardess
who, without asking questions, good soul, took charge of her quietly in
the ladies' saloon (luckily it was empty) it is by no means certain she
would ever have reached England. I can't tell if a straw ever saved a
drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair
pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of
despair. Suicide, I suspect, is very often the outcome of mere mental
weariness--not an act of savage energy but the final symptom of complete
collapse. The quiet, matter-of-fact attentions of a ship's stewardess,
who did not seem aware of other human agonies than sea-sickness, who
talked of the probable weather of the passage--it would be a rough night,
she thought--and who insisted in a professionally busy manner, "Let me
make you comfortable down below at once, miss," as though she were
thinking of nothing else but her tip--was enough to dissipate the shades
of death gathering round the mortal weariness of bewildered thinking
which makes the idea of non-existence welcome so often to the young.
Flora de Barral did lie down, and it may be presumed she slept. At any
rate she survived the voyage across the North Sea and told Mrs. Fyne all
about it, concealing nothing and receiving no rebuke--for Mrs. Fyne's
opinions had a large freedom in their pedantry. She held, I suppose,
that a woman holds an absolute right--or possesses a perfect excuse--to
escape in her own way from a man-mismanaged world.
* * * * *
What is to be noted is that even in London, having had time to take a
reflective view, poor Flora was far from being certain as to the true
inwardness of her violent dismissal. She felt the humiliation of it with
an almost maddened resentment.
"And did you enlighten her on the point?" I ventured to ask.
Mrs. Fyne moved her shoulders with a philosophical acceptance of all the
necessities which ought not to be. Something had to be said, she
murmured. She had told the girl enough to make her come to the right
conclusion by herself.
"And she did?"
"Yes. Of course. She isn't a goose," retorted Mrs. Fyne tartly.
"Then her education is completed," I remarked with some bitterness.
"Don't you think she ought to be given a chance?"
Mrs. Fyne understood my meaning.
"Not this one," she snapped in a quite feminine way. "It's all very well
for you to plead, but I--"
"I do not plead. I simply asked. It seemed natural to ask what you
thought."
"It's what I feel that matters. And I can't help my feelings. You may
guess," she added in a softer tone, "that my feelings are mostly
concerned with my brother. We were very fond of each other. The
difference of our ages was not very great. I suppose you know he is a
little younger than I am. He was a sensitive boy. He had the habit of
brooding. It is no use concealing from you that neither of us was happy
at home. You have heard, no doubt . . . Yes? Well, I was made still
more unhappy and hurt--I don't mind telling you that. He made his way to
some distant relations of our mother's people who I believe were not
known to my father at all. I don't wish to judge their action."
I interrupted Mrs. Fyne here. I had heard. Fyne was not very
communicative in general, but he was proud of his father-in-law--"Carleon
Anthony, the poet, you know." Proud of his celebrity without approving
of his character. It was on that account, I strongly suspect, that he
seized with avidity upon the theory of poetical genius being allied to
madness, which he got hold of in some idiotic book everybody was reading
a few years ago. It struck him as being truth itself--illuminating like
the sun. He adopted it devoutly. He bored me with it sometimes. Once,
just to shut him up, I asked quietly if this theory which he regarded as
so incontrovertible did not cause him some uneasiness about his wife and
the dear girls? He transfixed me with a pitying stare and requested me
in his deep solemn voice to remember the "well-established fact" that
genius was not transmissible.
I said only "Oh! Isn't it?" and he thought he had silenced me by an
unanswerable argument. But he continued to talk of his glorious father-
in-law, and it was in the course of that conversation that he told me
how, when the Liverpool relations of the poet's late wife naturally
addressed themselves to him in considerable concern, suggesting a
friendly consultation as to the boy's future, the incensed (but always
refined) poet wrote in answer a letter of mere polished _badinage_ which
offended mortally the Liverpool people. This witty outbreak of what was
in fact mortification and rage appeared to them so heartless that they
simply kept the boy. They let him go to sea not because he was in their
way but because he begged hard to be allowed to go.
"Oh! You do know," said Mrs. Fyne after a pause. "Well--I felt myself
very much abandoned. Then his choice of life--so extraordinary, so
unfortunate, I may say. I was very much grieved. I should have liked
him to have been distinguished--or at any rate to remain in the social
sphere where we could have had common interests, acquaintances, thoughts.
Don't think that I am estranged from him. But the precise truth is that
I do not know him. I was most painfully affected when he was here by the
difficulty of finding a single topic we could discuss together."
While Mrs. Fyne was talking of her brother I let my thoughts wander out
of the room to little Fyne who by leaving me alone with his wife had, so
to speak, entrusted his domestic peace to my honour.
"Well, then, Mrs. Fyne, does it not strike you that it would be
reasonable under the circumstances to let your brother take care of
himself?"
"And suppose I have grounds to think that he can't take care of himself
in a given instance." She hesitated in a funny, bashful manner which
roused my interest. Then:
"Sailors I believe are very susceptible," she added with forced
assurance.
I burst into a laugh which only increased the coldness of her observing
stare.
"They are. Immensely! Hopelessly! My dear Mrs. Fyne, you had better
give it up! It only makes your husband miserable."
"And I am quite miserable too. It is really our first difference . . . "
"Regarding Miss de Barral?" I asked.
"Regarding everything. It's really intolerable that this girl should be
the occasion. I think he really ought to give way."
She turned her chair round a little and picking up the book I had been
reading in the morning began to turn the leaves absently.
Her eyes being off me, I felt I could allow myself to leave the room. Its
atmosphere had become hopeless for little Fyne's domestic peace. You may
smile. But to the solemn all things are solemn. I had enough sagacity
to understand that.
I slipped out into the porch. The dog was slumbering at Fyne's feet. The
muscular little man leaning on his elbow and gazing over the fields
presented a forlorn figure. He turned his head quickly, but seeing I was
alone, relapsed into his moody contemplation of the green landscape.
I said loudly and distinctly: "I've come out to smoke a cigarette," and
sat down near him on the little bench. Then lowering my voice:
"Tolerance is an extremely difficult virtue," I said. "More difficult
for some than heroism. More difficult than compassion."
I avoided looking at him. I knew well enough that he would not like this
opening. General ideas were not to his taste. He mistrusted them. I
lighted a cigarette, not that I wanted to smoke, but to give another
moment to the consideration of the advice--the diplomatic advice I had
made up my mind to bowl him over with. And I continued in subdued tones.
"I have been led to make these remarks by what I have discovered since
you left us. I suspected from the first. And now I am certain. What
your wife cannot tolerate in this affair is Miss de Barral being what she
is."
He made a movement, but I kept my eyes away from him and went on
steadily. "That is--her being a woman. I have some idea of Mrs. Fyne's
mental attitude towards society with its injustices, with its atrocious
or ridiculous conventions. As against them there is no audacity of
action your wife's mind refuses to sanction. The doctrine which I
imagine she stuffs into the pretty heads of your girl-guests is almost
vengeful. A sort of moral fire-and-sword doctrine. How far the lesson
is wise is not for me to say. I don't permit myself to judge. I seem to
see her very delightful disciples singeing themselves with the torches,
and cutting their fingers with the swords of Mrs. Fyne's furnishing."
"My wife holds her opinions very seriously," murmured Fyne suddenly.
"Yes. No doubt," I assented in a low voice as before. "But it is a mere
intellectual exercise. What I see is that in dealing with reality Mrs.
Fyne ceases to be tolerant. In other words, that she can't forgive Miss
de Barral for being a woman and behaving like a woman. And yet this is
not only reasonable and natural, but it is her only chance. A woman
against the world has no resources but in herself. Her only means of
action is to be what _she is_. You understand what I mean."
Fyne mumbled between his teeth that he understood. But he did not seem
interested. What he expected of me was to extricate him from a difficult
situation. I don't know how far credible this may sound, to less solemn
married couples, but to remain at variance with his wife seemed to him a
considerable incident. Almost a disaster.
"It looks as though I didn't care what happened to her brother," he said.
"And after all if anything . . . "