"What thing?" I asked. "The liability to get penal servitude is so far
like genius that it isn't hereditary. And what else can be objected to
the girl? All the energy of her deeper feelings, which she would use up
vainly in the danger and fatigue of a struggle with society may be turned
into devoted attachment to the man who offers her a way of escape from
what can be only a life of moral anguish. I don't mention the physical
difficulties."
Glancing at Fyne out of the corner of one eye I discovered that he was
attentive. He made the remark that I should have said all this to his
wife. It was a sensible enough remark. But I had given Mrs. Fyne up. I
asked him if his impression was that his wife meant to entrust him with a
letter for her brother?
No. He didn't think so. There were certain reasons which made Mrs. Fyne
unwilling to commit her arguments to paper. Fyne was to be primed with
them. But he had no doubt that if he persisted in his refusal she would
make up her mind to write.
"She does not wish me to go unless with a full conviction that she is
right," said Fyne solemnly.
"She's very exacting," I commented. And then I reflected that she was
used to it. "Would nothing less do for once?"
"You don't mean that I should give way--do you?" asked Fyne in a whisper
of alarmed suspicion.
As this was exactly what I meant, I let his fright sink into him. He
fidgeted. If the word may be used of so solemn a personage, he wriggled.
And when the horrid suspicion had descended into his very heels, so to
speak, he became very still. He sat gazing stonily into space bounded by
the yellow, burnt-up slopes of the rising ground a couple of miles away.
The face of the down showed the white scar of the quarry where not more
than sixteen hours before Fyne and I had been groping in the dark with
horrible apprehension of finding under our hands the shattered body of a
girl. For myself I had in addition the memory of my meeting with her.
She was certainly walking very near the edge--courting a sinister
solution. But, now, having by the most unexpected chance come upon a
man, she had found another way to escape from the world. Such world as
was open to her--without shelter, without bread, without honour. The
best she could have found in it would have been a precarious dole of pity
diminishing as her years increased. The appeal of the abandoned child
Flora to the sympathies of the Fynes had been irresistible. But now she
had become a woman, and Mrs. Fyne was presenting an implacable front to a
particularly feminine transaction. I may say triumphantly feminine. It
is true that Mrs. Fyne did not want women to be women. Her theory was
that they should turn themselves into unscrupulous sexless nuisances. An
offended theorist dwelt in her bosom somewhere. In what way she expected
Flora de Barral to set about saving herself from a most miserable
existence I can't conceive; but I verify believe that she would have
found it easier to forgive the girl an actual crime; say the rifling of
the Bournemouth old lady's desk, for instance. And then--for Mrs. Fyne
was very much of a woman herself--her sense of proprietorship was very
strong within her; and though she had not much use for her brother, yet
she did not like to see him annexed by another woman. By a chit of a
girl. And such a girl, too. Nothing is truer than that, in this world,
the luckless have no right to their opportunities--as if misfortune were
a legal disqualification. Fyne's sentiments (as they naturally would be
in a man) had more stability. A good deal of his sympathy survived.
Indeed I heard him murmur "Ghastly nuisance," but I knew it was of the
integrity of his domestic accord that he was thinking. With my eyes on
the dog lying curled up in sleep in the middle of the porch I suggested
in a subdued impersonal tone: "Yes. Why not let yourself be persuaded?"
I never saw little Fyne less solemn. He hissed through his teeth in
unexpectedly figurative style that it would take a lot to persuade him to
"push under the head of a poor devil of a girl quite sufficiently
plucky"--and snorted. He was still gazing at the distant quarry, and I
think he was affected by that sight. I assured him that I was far from
advising him to do anything so cruel. I am convinced he had always
doubted the soundness of my principles, because he turned on me swiftly
as though he had been on the watch for a lapse from the straight path.
"Then what do you mean? That I should pretend!"
"No! What nonsense! It would be immoral. I may however tell you that
if I had to make a choice I would rather do something immoral than
something cruel. What I meant was that, not believing in the efficacy of
the interference, the whole question is reduced to your consenting to do
what your wife wishes you to do. That would be acting like a gentleman,
surely. And acting unselfishly too, because I can very well understand
how distasteful it may be to you. Generally speaking, an unselfish
action is a moral action. I'll tell you what. I'll go with you."
He turned round and stared at me with surprise and suspicion. "You would
go with me?" he repeated.
"You don't understand," I said, amused at the incredulous disgust of his
tone. "I must run up to town, to-morrow morning. Let us go together.
You have a set of travelling chessmen."
His physiognomy, contracted by a variety of emotions, relaxed to a
certain extent at the idea of a game. I told him that as I had business
at the Docks he should have my company to the very ship.
"We shall beguile the way to the wilds of the East by improving
conversation," I encouraged him.
"My brother-in-law is staying at an hotel--the Eastern Hotel," he said,
becoming sombre again. "I haven't the slightest idea where it is."
"I know the place. I shall leave you at the door with the comfortable
conviction that you are doing what's right since it pleases a lady and
cannot do any harm to anybody whatever."
"You think so? No harm to anybody?" he repeated doubtfully.
"I assure you it's not the slightest use," I said with all possible
emphasis which seemed only to increase the solemn discontent of his
expression.
"But in order that my going should be a perfectly candid proceeding I
must first convince my wife that it isn't the slightest use," he objected
portentously.
"Oh, you casuist!" I said. And I said nothing more because at that
moment Mrs. Fyne stepped out into the porch. We rose together at her
appearance. Her clear, colourless, unflinching glance enveloped us both
critically. I sustained the chill smilingly, but Fyne stooped at once to
release the dog. He was some time about it; then simultaneously with his
recovery of upright position the animal passed at one bound from
profoundest slumber into most tumultuous activity. Enveloped in the
tornado of his inane scurryings and barkings I took Mrs. Fyne's hand
extended to me woodenly and bowed over it with deference. She walked
down the path without a word; Fyne had preceded her and was waiting by
the open gate. They passed out and walked up the road surrounded by a
low cloud of dust raised by the dog gyrating madly about their two
figures progressing side by side with rectitude and propriety, and (I
don't know why) looking to me as if they had annexed the whole country-
side. Perhaps it was that they had impressed me somehow with the sense
of their superiority. What superiority? Perhaps it consisted just in
their limitations. It was obvious that neither of them had carried away
a high opinion of me. But what affected me most was the indifference of
the Fyne dog. He used to precipitate himself at full speed and with a
frightful final upward spring upon my waistcoat, at least once at each of
our meetings. He had neglected that ceremony this time notwithstanding
my correct and even conventional conduct in offering him a cake; it
seemed to me symbolic of my final separation from the Fyne household. And
I remembered against him how on a certain day he had abandoned poor Flora
de Barral--who was morbidly sensitive.
I sat down in the porch and, maybe inspired by secret antagonism to the
Fynes, I said to myself deliberately that Captain Anthony must be a fine
fellow. Yet on the facts as I knew them he might have been a dangerous
trifler or a downright scoundrel. He had made a miserable, hopeless girl
follow him clandestinely to London. It is true that the girl had written
since, only Mrs. Fyne had been remarkably vague as to the contents. They
were unsatisfactory. They did not positively announce imminent nuptials
as far as I could make it out from her rather mysterious hints. But then
her inexperience might have led her astray. There was no fathoming the
innocence of a woman like Mrs. Fyne who, venturing as far as possible in
theory, would know nothing of the real aspect of things. It would have
been comic if she were making all this fuss for nothing. But I rejected
this suspicion for the honour of human nature.
I imagined to myself Captain Anthony as simple and romantic. It was much
more pleasant. Genius is not hereditary but temperament may be. And he
was the son of a poet with an admirable gift of individualising, of
etherealizing the common-place; of making touching, delicate, fascinating
the most hopeless conventions of the, so-called, refined existence.
What I could not understand was Mrs. Fyne's dog-in-the-manger attitude.
Sentimentally she needed that brother of hers so little! What could it
matter to her one way or another--setting aside common humanity which
would suggest at least a neutral attitude. Unless indeed it was the
blind working of the law that in our world of chances the luckless _must_
be put in the wrong somehow.
And musing thus on the general inclination of our instincts towards
injustice I met unexpectedly, at the turn of the road, as it were, a
shape of duplicity. It might have been unconscious on Mrs. Fyne's part,
but her leading idea appeared to me to be not to keep, not to preserve
her brother, but to get rid of him definitely. She did not hope to stop
anything. She had too much sense for that. Almost anyone out of an
idiot asylum would have had enough sense for that. She wanted the
protest to be made, emphatically, with Fyne's fullest concurrence in
order to make all intercourse for the future impossible. Such an action
would estrange the pair for ever from the Fynes. She understood her
brother and the girl too. Happy together, they would never forgive that
outspoken hostility--and should the marriage turn out badly . . . Well,
it would be just the same. Neither of them would be likely to bring
their troubles to such a good prophet of evil.
Yes. That must have been her motive. The inspiration of a possibly
unconscious Machiavellism! Either she was afraid of having a sister-in-
law to look after during the husband's long absences; or dreaded the more
or less distant eventuality of her brother being persuaded to leave the
sea, the friendly refuge of his unhappy youth, and to settle on shore,
bringing to her very door this undesirable, this embarrassing connection.
She wanted to be done with it--maybe simply from the fatigue of
continuous effort in good or evil, which, in the bulk of common mortals,
accounts for so many surprising inconsistencies of conduct.
I don't know that I had classed Mrs. Fyne, in my thoughts, amongst common
mortals. She was too quietly sure of herself for that. But little Fyne,
as I spied him next morning (out of the carriage window) speeding along
the platform, looked very much like a common, flustered mortal who has
made a very near thing of catching his train: the starting wild eyes, the
tense and excited face, the distracted gait, all the common symptoms were
there, rendered more impressive by his native solemnity which flapped
about him like a disordered garment. Had he--I asked myself with
interest--resisted his wife to the very last minute and then bolted up
the road from the last conclusive argument, as though it had been a
loaded gun suddenly produced? I opened the carriage door, and a vigorous
porter shoved him in from behind just as the end of the rustic platform
went gliding swiftly from under his feet. He was very much out of
breath, and I waited with some curiosity for the moment he would recover
his power of speech. That moment came. He said "Good morning" with a
slight gasp, remained very still for another minute and then pulled out
of his pocket the travelling chessboard, and holding it in his hand,
directed at me a glance of inquiry.
"Yes. Certainly," I said, very much disappointed.