PART I - THE DAMSEL - CHAPTER SIX - FLORA

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PART I - THE DAMSEL: CHAPTER SIX - 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 e propos de bottes as the French would
excellently put it, but literally e 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 . . . "

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 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.

Content of PART I - THE DAMSEL CHAPTER SIX - FLORA [Joseph Conrad's novel: Chance]

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