FLORA.

“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 _à propos de bottes_ as the French would excellently put it but

literally _à 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 Barrel’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 night-light 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 apologise 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

unsealing 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

visualised 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 recognised 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

seasickness, 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....”

I became a little impatient but without raising my tone: “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 verily

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 etherealising the commonplace; 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.