PART I - THE DAMSEL - CHAPTER FOUR - THE GOVERNESS

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PART I - THE DAMSEL: CHAPTER FOUR - THE GOVERNESS

And the best of it was that the danger was all over already. There
was no danger any more. The supposed nephew's appearance had a
purpose. He had come, full, full to trembling--with the bigness of
his news. There must have been rumours already as to the shaky
position of the de Barral's concerns; but only amongst those in the
very inmost know. No rumour or echo of rumour had reached the
profane in the West-End--let alone in the guileless marine suburb of
Hove. The Fynes had no suspicion; the governess, playing with cold,
distinguished exclusiveness the part of mother to the fabulously
wealthy Miss de Barral, had no suspicion; the masters of music, of
drawing, of dancing to Miss de Barral, had no idea; the minds of her
medical man, of her dentist, of the servants in the house, of the
tradesmen proud of having the name of de Barral on their books, were
in a state of absolute serenity. Thus, that fellow, who had
unexpectedly received a most alarming straight tip from somebody in
the City arrived in Brighton, at about lunch-time, with something
very much in the nature of a deadly bomb in his possession. But he
knew better than to throw it on the public pavement. He ate his
lunch impenetrably, sitting opposite Flora de Barral, and then, on
some excuse, closeted himself with the woman whom little Fyne's
charity described (with a slight hesitation of speech however) as
his "Aunt."

What they said to each other in private we can imagine. She came
out of her own sitting-room with red spots on her cheek-bones, which
having provoked a question from her "beloved" charge, were accounted
for by a curt "I have a headache coming on." But we may be certain
that the talk being over she must have said to that young
blackguard: "You had better take her out for a ride as usual." We
have proof positive of this in Fyne and Mrs. Fyne observing them
mount at the door and pass under the windows of their sitting-room,
talking together, and the poor girl all smiles; because she enjoyed
in all innocence the company of Charley. She made no secret of it
whatever to Mrs. Fyne; in fact, she had confided to her, long
before, that she liked him very much: a confidence which had filled
Mrs. Fyne with desolation and that sense of powerless anguish which
is experienced in certain kinds of nightmare. For how could she
warn the girl? She did venture to tell her once that she didn't
like Mr. Charley. Miss de Barral heard her with astonishment. How
was it possible not to like Charley? Afterwards with naive loyalty
she told Mrs. Fyne that, immensely as she was fond of her she could
not hear a word against Charley--the wonderful Charley.

The daughter of de Barral probably enjoyed her jolly ride with the
jolly Charley (infinitely more jolly than going out with a stupid
old riding-master), very much indeed, because the Fynes saw them
coming back at a later hour than usual. In fact it was getting
nearly dark. On dismounting, helped off by the delightful Charley,
she patted the neck of her horse and went up the steps. Her last
ride. She was then within a few days of her sixteenth birthday, a
slight figure in a riding habit, rather shorter than the average
height for her age, in a black bowler hat from under which her fine
rippling dark hair cut square at the ends was hanging well down her
back. The delightful Charley mounted again to take the two horses
round to the mews. Mrs. Fyne remaining at the window saw the house
door close on Miss de Barral returning from her last ride.

And meantime what had the governess (out of a nobleman's family) so
judiciously selected (a lady, and connected with well-known county
people as she said) to direct the studies, guard the health, form
the mind, polish the manners, and generally play the perfect mother
to that luckless child--what had she been doing? Well, having got
rid of her charge by the most natural device possible, which proved
her practical sense, she started packing her belongings, an act
which showed her clear view of the situation. She had worked
methodically, rapidly, and well, emptying the drawers, clearing the
tables in her special apartment of that big house, with something
silently passionate in her thoroughness; taking everything belonging
to her and some things of less unquestionable ownership, a jewelled
penholder, an ivory and gold paper knife (the house was full of
common, costly objects), some chased silver boxes presented by de
Barral and other trifles; but the photograph of Flora de Barral,
with the loving inscription, which stood on her writing desk, of the
most modern and expensive style, in a silver-gilt frame, she
neglected to take. Having accidentally, in the course of the
operations, knocked it off on the floor she let it lie there after a
downward glance. Thus it, or the frame at least, became, I suppose,
part of the assets in the de Barral bankruptcy.

At dinner that evening the child found her company dull and brusque.
It was uncommonly slow. She could get nothing from her governess
but monosyllables, and the jolly Charley actually snubbed the
various cheery openings of his "little chum"--as he used to call her
at times,--but not at that time. No doubt the couple were nervous
and preoccupied. For all this we have evidence, and for the fact
that Flora being offended with the delightful nephew of her
profoundly respected governess sulked through the rest of the
evening and was glad to retire early. Mrs., Mrs.--I've really
forgotten her name--the governess, invited her nephew to her
sitting-room, mentioning aloud that it was to talk over some family
matters. This was meant for Flora to hear, and she heard it--
without the slightest interest. In fact there was nothing
sufficiently unusual in such an invitation to arouse in her mind
even a passing wonder. She went bored to bed and being tired with
her long ride slept soundly all night. Her last sleep, I won't say
of innocence--that word would not render my exact meaning, because
it has a special meaning of its own--but I will say: of that
ignorance, or better still, of that unconsciousness of the world's
ways, the unconsciousness of danger, of pain, of humiliation, of
bitterness, of falsehood. An unconsciousness which in the case of
other beings like herself is removed by a gradual process of
experience and information, often only partial at that, with saving
reserves, softening doubts, veiling theories. Her unconsciousness
of the evil which lives in the secret thoughts and therefore in the
open acts of mankind, whenever it happens that evil thought meets
evil courage; her unconsciousness was to be broken into with profane
violence with desecrating circumstances, like a temple violated by a
mad, vengeful impiety. Yes, that very young girl, almost no more
than a child--this was what was going to happen to her. And if you
ask me, how, wherefore, for what reason? I will answer you: Why,
by chance! By the merest chance, as things do happen, lucky and
unlucky, terrible or tender, important or unimportant; and even
things which are neither, things so completely neutral in character
that you would wonder why they do happen at all if you didn't know
that they, too, carry in their insignificance the seeds of further
incalculable chances.

Of course, all the chances were that de Barral should have fallen
upon a perfectly harmless, naive, usual, inefficient specimen of
respectable governess for his daughter; or on a commonplace silly
adventuress who would have tried, say, to marry him or work some
other sort of common mischief in a small way. Or again he might
have chanced on a model of all the virtues, or the repository of all
knowledge, or anything equally harmless, conventional, and middle
class. All calculations were in his favour; but, chance being
incalculable, he fell upon an individuality whom it is much easier
to define by opprobrious names than to classify in a calm and
scientific spirit--but an individuality certainly, and a temperament
as well. Rare? No. There is a certain amount of what I would
politely call unscrupulousness in all of us. Think for instance of
the excellent Mrs. Fyne, who herself, and in the bosom of her
family, resembled a governess of a conventional type. Only, her
mental excesses were theoretical, hedged in by so much humane
feeling and conventional reserves, that they amounted to no more
than mere libertinage of thought; whereas the other woman, the
governess of Flora de Barral, was, as you may have noticed, severely
practical--terribly practical. No! Hers was not a rare
temperament, except in its fierce resentment of repression; a
feeling which like genius or lunacy is apt to drive people into
sudden irrelevancy. Hers was feminine irrelevancy. A male genius,
a male ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved
exactly as she did behave. There is a softness in masculine nature,
even the most brutal, which acts as a check.

While the girl slept those two, the woman of forty, an age in itself
terrible, and that hopeless young "wrong 'un" of twenty-three (also
well connected I believe) had some sort of subdued row in the
cleared rooms: wardrobes open, drawers half pulled out and empty,
trunks locked and strapped, furniture in idle disarray, and not so
much as a single scrap of paper left behind on the tables. The
maid, whom the governess and the pupil shared between them, after
finishing with Flora, came to the door as usual, but was not
admitted. She heard the two voices in dispute before she knocked,
and then being sent away retreated at once--the only person in the
house convinced at that time that there was "something up."

Dark and, so to speak, inscrutable spaces being met with in life
there must be such places in any statement dealing with life. In
what I am telling you of now--an episode of one of my humdrum
holidays in the green country, recalled quite naturally after all
the years by our meeting a man who has been a blue-water sailor--
this evening confabulation is a dark, inscrutable spot. And we may
conjecture what we like. I have no difficulty in imagining that the
woman--of forty, and the chief of the enterprise--must have raged at
large. And perhaps the other did not rage enough. Youth feels
deeply it is true, but it has not the same vivid sense of lost
opportunities. It believes in the absolute reality of time. And
then, in that abominable scamp with his youth already soiled,
withered like a plucked flower ready to be flung on some rotting
heap of rubbish, no very genuine feeling about anything could exist-
-not even about the hazards of his own unclean existence. A
sneering half-laugh with some such remark as: "We are properly sold
and no mistake" would have been enough to make trouble in that way.
And then another sneer, "Waste time enough over it too," followed
perhaps by the bitter retort from the other party "You seemed to
like it well enough though, playing the fool with that chit of a
girl." Something of that sort. Don't you see it--eh . . . "

Marlow looked at me with his dark penetrating glance. I was struck
by the absolute verisimilitude of this suggestion. But we were
always tilting at each other. I saw an opening and pushed my
uncandid thrust.

"You have a ghastly imagination," I said with a cheerfully sceptical
smile.

"Well, and if I have," he returned unabashed. "But let me remind
you that this situation came to me unasked. I am like a puzzle-
headed chief-mate we had once in the dear old Samarcand when I was a
youngster. The fellow went gravely about trying to "account to
himself"--his favourite expression--for a lot of things no one would
care to bother one's head about. He was an old idiot but he was
also an accomplished practical seaman. I was quite a boy and he
impressed me. I must have caught the disposition from him."

"Well--go on with your accounting then," I said, assuming an air of
resignation.

"That's just it." Marlow fell into his stride at once. "That's
just it. Mere disappointed cupidity cannot account for the
proceedings of the next morning; proceedings which I shall not
describe to you--but which I shall tell you of presently, not as a
matter of conjecture but of actual fact. Meantime returning to that
evening altercation in deadened tones within the private apartment
of Miss de Barral's governess, what if I were to tell you that
disappointment had most likely made them touchy with each other, but
that perhaps the secret of his careless, railing behaviour, was in
the thought, springing up within him with an emphatic oath of relief
"Now there's nothing to prevent me from breaking away from that old
woman." And that the secret of her envenomed rage, not against this
miserable and attractive wretch, but against fate, accident and the
whole course of human life, concentrating its venom on de Barral and
including the innocent girl herself, was in the thought, in the fear
crying within her "Now I have nothing to hold him with . . . "

I couldn't refuse Marlow the tribute of a prolonged whistle "Phew!
So you suppose that . . . "

He waved his hand impatiently.

"I don't suppose. It was so. And anyhow why shouldn't you accept
the supposition. Do you look upon governesses as creatures above
suspicion or necessarily of moral perfection? I suppose their
hearts would not stand looking into much better than other people's.
Why shouldn't a governess have passions, all the passions, even that
of libertinage, and even ungovernable passions; yet suppressed by
the very same means which keep the rest of us in order: early
training--necessity--circumstances--fear of consequences; till there
comes an age, a time when the restraint of years becomes
intolerable--and infatuation irresistible . . . "

"But if infatuation--quite possible I admit," I argued, "how do you
account for the nature of the conspiracy."

"You expect a cogency of conduct not usual in women," said Marlow.
"The subterfuges of a menaced passion are not to be fathomed. You
think it is going on the way it looks, whereas it is capable, for
its own ends, of walking backwards into a precipice.

When one once acknowledges that she was not a common woman, then all
this is easily understood. She was abominable but she was not
common. She had suffered in her life not from its constant
inferiority but from constant self-repression. A common woman
finding herself placed in a commanding position might have formed
the design to become the second Mrs. de Barral. Which would have
been impracticable. De Barral would not have known what to do with
a wife. But even if by some impossible chance he had made advances,
this governess would have repulsed him with scorn. She had treated
him always as an inferior being with an assured, distant politeness.
In her composed, schooled manner she despised and disliked both
father and daughter exceedingly. I have a notion that she had
always disliked intensely all her charges including the two ducal
(if they were ducal) little girls with whom she had dazzled de
Barral. What an odious, ungratified existence it must have been for
a woman as avid of all the sensuous emotions which life can give as
most of her betters.

She had seen her youth vanish, her freshness disappear, her hopes
die, and now she felt her flaming middle-age slipping away from her.
No wonder that with her admirably dressed, abundant hair, thickly
sprinkled with white threads and adding to her elegant aspect the
piquant distinction of a powdered coiffure--no wonder, I say, that
she clung desperately to her last infatuation for that graceless
young scamp, even to the extent of hatching for him that amazing
plot. He was not so far gone in degradation as to make him utterly
hopeless for such an attempt. She hoped to keep him straight with
that enormous bribe. She was clearly a woman uncommon enough to
live without illusions--which, of course, does not mean that she was
reasonable. She had said to herself, perhaps with a fury of self-
contempt "In a few years I shall be too old for anybody. Meantime I
shall have him--and I shall hold him by throwing to him the money of
that ordinary, silly, little girl of no account." Well, it was a
desperate expedient--but she thought it worth while. And besides
there is hardly a woman in the world, no matter how hard, depraved
or frantic, in whom something of the maternal instinct does not
survive, unconsumed like a salamander, in the fires of the most
abandoned passion. Yes there might have been that sentiment for him
too. There WAS no doubt. So I say again: No wonder! No wonder
that she raged at everything--and perhaps even at him, with
contradictory reproaches: for regretting the girl, a little fool
who would never in her life be worth anybody's attention, and for
taking the disaster itself with a cynical levity in which she
perceived a flavour of revolt.

And so the altercation in the night went on, over the irremediable.
He arguing "What's the hurry? Why clear out like this?" perhaps a
little sorry for the girl and as usual without a penny in his
pocket, appreciating the comfortable quarters, wishing to linger on
as long as possible in the shameless enjoyment of this already
doomed luxury. There was really no hurry for a few days. Always
time enough to vanish. And, with that, a touch of masculine
softness, a sort of regard for appearances surviving his
degradation: "You might behave decently at the last, Eliza." But
there was no softness in the sallow face under the gala effect of
powdered hair, its formal calmness gone, the dark-ringed eyes
glaring at him with a sort of hunger. "No! No! If it is as you
say then not a day, not an hour, not a moment." She stuck to it,
very determined that there should be no more of that boy and girl
philandering since the object of it was gone; angry with herself for
having suffered from it so much in the past, furious at its having
been all in vain.

But she was reasonable enough not to quarrel with him finally. What
was the good? She found means to placate him. The only means. As
long as there was some money to be got she had hold of him. "Now go
away. We shall do no good by any more of this sort of talk. I want
to be alone for a bit." He went away, sulkily acquiescent. There
was a room always kept ready for him on the same floor, at the
further end of a short thickly carpeted passage.

How she passed the night, this woman with no illusions to help her
through the hours which must have been sleepless I shouldn't like to
say. It ended at last; and this strange victim of the de Barral
failure, whose name would never be known to the Official Receiver,
came down to breakfast, impenetrable in her everyday perfection.
From the very first, somehow, she had accepted the fatal news for
true. All her life she had never believed in her luck, with that
pessimism of the passionate who at bottom feel themselves to be the
outcasts of a morally restrained universe. But this did not make it
any easier, on opening the morning paper feverishly, to see the
thing confirmed. Oh yes! It was there. The Orb had suspended
payment--the first growl of the storm faint as yet, but to the
initiated the forerunner of a deluge. As an item of news it was not
indecently displayed. It was not displayed at all in a sense. The
serious paper, the only one of the great dailies which had always
maintained an attitude of reserve towards the de Barral group of
banks, had its "manner." Yes! a modest item of news! But there was
also, on another page, a special financial article in a hostile tone
beginning with the words "We have always feared" and a guarded,
half-column leader, opening with the phrase: "It is a deplorable
sign of the times" what was, in effect, an austere, general rebuke
to the absurd infatuations of the investing public. She glanced
through these articles, a line here and a line there--no more was
necessary to catch beyond doubt the murmur of the oncoming flood.
Several slighting references by name to de Barral revived her
animosity against the man, suddenly, as by the effect of unforeseen
moral support. The miserable wretch! . . . "

"--You understand," Marlow interrupted the current of his narrative,
"that in order to be consecutive in my relation of this affair I am
telling you at once the details which I heard from Mrs. Fyne later
in the day, as well as what little Fyne imparted to me with his
usual solemnity during that morning call. As you may easily guess
the Fynes, in their apartments, had read the news at the same time,
and, as a matter of fact, in the same august and highly moral
newspaper, as the governess in the luxurious mansion a few doors
down on the opposite side of the street. But they read them with
different feelings. They were thunderstruck. Fyne had to explain
the full purport of the intelligence to Mrs. Fyne whose first cry
was that of relief. Then that poor child would be safe from these
designing, horrid people. Mrs. Fyne did not know what it might mean
to be suddenly reduced from riches to absolute penury. Fyne with
his masculine imagination was less inclined to rejoice extravagantly
at the girl's escape from the moral dangers which had been menacing
her defenceless existence. It was a confoundedly big price to pay.
What an unfortunate little thing she was! "We might be able to do
something to comfort that poor child at any rate for the time she is
here," said Mrs. Fyne. She felt under a sort of moral obligation
not to be indifferent. But no comfort for anyone could be got by
rushing out into the street at this early hour; and so, following
the advice of Fyne not to act hastily, they both sat down at the
window and stared feelingly at the great house, awful to their eyes
in its stolid, prosperous, expensive respectability with ruin
absolutely standing at the door.

By that time, or very soon after, all Brighton had the information
and formed a more or less just appreciation of its gravity. The
butler in Miss de Barral's big house had seen the news, perhaps
earlier than anybody within a mile of the Parade, in the course of
his morning duties of which one was to dry the freshly delivered
paper before the fire--an occasion to glance at it which no
intelligent man could have neglected. He communicated to the rest
of the household his vaguely forcible impression that something had
gone d-bly wrong with the affairs of "her father in London."

This brought an atmosphere of constraint through the house, which
Flora de Barral coming down somewhat later than usual could not help
noticing in her own way. Everybody seemed to stare so stupidly
somehow; she feared a dull day.

In the dining-room the governess in her place, a newspaper half-
concealed under the cloth on her lap, after a few words exchanged
with lips that seemed hardly to move, remaining motionless, her eyes
fixed before her in an enduring silence; and presently Charley
coming in to whom she did not even give a glance. He hardly said
good morning, though he had a half-hearted try to smile at the girl,
and sitting opposite her with his eyes on his plate and slight
quivers passing along the line of his clean-shaven jaw, he too had
nothing to say. It was dull, horribly dull to begin one's day like
this; but she knew what it was. These never-ending family affairs!
It was not for the first time that she had suffered from their
depressing after-effects on these two. It was a shame that the
delightful Charley should be made dull by these stupid talks, and it
was perfectly stupid of him to let himself be upset like this by his
aunt.

When after a period of still, as if calculating, immobility, her
governess got up abruptly and went out with the paper in her hand,
almost immediately afterwards followed by Charley who left his
breakfast half eaten, the girl was positively relieved. They would
have it out that morning whatever it was, and be themselves again in
the afternoon. At least Charley would be. To the moods of her
governess she did not attach so much importance.

For the first time that morning the Fynes saw the front door of the
awful house open and the objectionable young man issue forth, his
rascality visible to their prejudiced eyes in his very bowler hat
and in the smart cut of his short fawn overcoat. He walked away
rapidly like a man hurrying to catch a train, glancing from side to
side as though he were carrying something off. Could he be
departing for good? Undoubtedly, undoubtedly! But Mrs. Fyne's
fervent "thank goodness" turned out to be a bit, as the Americans--
some Americans--say "previous." In a very short time the odious
fellow appeared again, strolling, absolutely strolling back, his hat
now tilted a little on one side, with an air of leisure and
satisfaction. Mrs. Fyne groaned not only in the spirit, at this
sight, but in the flesh, audibly; and asked her husband what it
might mean. Fyne naturally couldn't say. Mrs. Fyne believed that
there was something horrid in progress and meantime the object of
her detestation had gone up the steps and had knocked at the door
which at once opened to admit him.

He had been only as far as the bank.

His reason for leaving his breakfast unfinished to run after Miss de
Barral's governess, was to speak to her in reference to that very
errand possessing the utmost possible importance in his eyes. He
shrugged his shoulders at the nervousness of her eyes and hands, at
the half-strangled whisper "I had to go out. I could hardly contain
myself." That was her affair. He was, with a young man's
squeamishness, rather sick of her ferocity. He did not understand
it. Men do not accumulate hate against each other in tiny amounts,
treasuring every pinch carefully till it grows at last into a
monstrous and explosive hoard. He had run out after her to remind
her of the balance at the bank. What about lifting that money
without wasting any more time? She had promised him to leave
nothing behind.

An account opened in her name for the expenses of the establishment
in Brighton, had been fed by de Barral with deferential lavishness.
The governess crossed the wide hall into a little room at the side
where she sat down to write the cheque, which he hastened out to go
and cash as if it were stolen or a forgery. As observed by the
Fynes, his uneasy appearance on leaving the house arose from the
fact that his first trouble having been caused by a cheque of
doubtful authenticity, the possession of a document of the sort made
him unreasonably uncomfortable till this one was safely cashed. And
after all, you know it was stealing of an indirect sort; for the
money was de Barral's money if the account was in the name of the
accomplished lady. At any rate the cheque was cashed. On getting
hold of the notes and gold he recovered his jaunty bearing, it being
well known that with certain natures the presence of money (even
stolen) in the pocket, acts as a tonic, or at least as a stimulant.
He cocked his hat a little on one side as though he had had a drink
or two--which indeed he might have had in reality, to celebrate the
occasion.

The governess had been waiting for his return in the hall,
disregarding the side-glances of the butler as he went in and out of
the dining-room clearing away the breakfast things. It was she,
herself, who had opened the door so promptly. "It's all right," he
said touching his breast-pocket; and she did not dare, the miserable
wretch without illusions, she did not dare ask him to hand it over.
They looked at each other in silence. He nodded significantly:
"Where is she now?" and she whispered "Gone into the drawing-room.
Want to see her again?" with an archly black look which he
acknowledged by a muttered, surly: "I am damned if I do. Well, as
you want to bolt like this, why don't we go now?"

She set her lips with cruel obstinacy and shook her head. She had
her idea, her completed plan. At that moment the Fynes, still at
the window and watching like a pair of private detectives, saw a man
with a long grey beard and a jovial face go up the steps helping
himself with a thick stick, and knock at the door. Who could he be?

He was one of Miss de Barral's masters. She had lately taken up
painting in water-colours, having read in a high-class woman's
weekly paper that a great many princesses of the European royal
houses were cultivating that art. This was the water-colour
morning; and the teacher, a veteran of many exhibitions, of a
venerable and jovial aspect, had turned up with his usual
punctuality. He was no great reader of morning papers, and even had
he seen the news it is very likely he would not have understood its
real purport. At any rate he turned up, as the governess expected
him to do, and the Fynes saw him pass through the fateful door.

He bowed cordially to the lady in charge of Miss de Barral's
education, whom he saw in the hall engaged in conversation with a
very good-looking but somewhat raffish young gentleman. She turned
to him graciously: "Flora is already waiting for you in the
drawing-room."

The cultivation of the art said to be patronized by princesses was
pursued in the drawing-room from considerations of the right kind of
light. The governess preceded the master up the stairs and into the
room where Miss de Barral was found arrayed in a holland pinafore
(also of the right kind for the pursuit of the art) and smilingly
expectant. The water-colour lesson enlivened by the jocular
conversation of the kindly, humorous, old man was always great fun;
and she felt she would be compensated for the tiresome beginning of
the day.

Her governess generally was present at the lesson; but on this
occasion she only sat down till the master and pupil had gone to
work in earnest, and then as though she had suddenly remembered some
order to give, rose quietly and went out of the room.

Once outside, the servants summoned by the passing maid without a
bell being rung, and quick, quick, let all this luggage be taken
down into the hall, and let one of you call a cab. She stood
outside the drawing-room door on the landing, looking at each piece,
trunk, leather cases, portmanteaus, being carried past her, her
brows knitted and her aspect so sombre and absorbed that it took
some little time for the butler to muster courage enough to speak to
her. But he reflected that he was a free-born Briton and had his
rights. He spoke straight to the point but in the usual respectful
manner.

"Beg you pardon, ma'am--but are you going away for good?"

He was startled by her tone. Its unexpected, unlady-like harshness
fell on his trained ear with the disagreeable effect of a false
note. "Yes. I am going away. And the best thing for all of you is
to go away too, as soon as you like. You can go now, to-day, this
moment. You had your wages paid you only last week. The longer you
stay the greater your loss. But I have nothing to do with it now.
You are the servants of Mr. de Barral--you know."

The butler was astounded by the manner of this advice, and as his
eyes wandered to the drawing-room door the governess extended her
arm as if to bar the way. "Nobody goes in there." And that was
said still in another tone, such a tone that all trace of the
trained respectfulness vanished from the butler's bearing. He
stared at her with a frank wondering gaze. "Not till I am gone,"
she added, and there was such an expression on her face that the man
was daunted by the mystery of it. He shrugged his shoulders
slightly and without another word went down the stairs on his way to
the basement, brushing in the hall past Mr. Charles who hat on head
and both hands rammed deep into his overcoat pockets paced up and
down as though on sentry duty there.

The ladies' maid was the only servant upstairs, hovering in the
passage on the first floor, curious and as if fascinated by the
woman who stood there guarding the door. Being beckoned closer
imperiously and asked by the governess to bring out of the now empty
rooms the hat and veil, the only objects besides the furniture still
to be found there, she did so in silence but inwardly fluttered.
And while waiting uneasily, with the veil, before that woman who,
without moving a step away from the drawing-room door was pinning
with careless haste her hat on her head, she heard within a sudden
burst of laughter from Miss de Barral enjoying the fun of the water-
colour lesson given her for the last time by the cheery old man.

Mr. and Mrs. Fyne ambushed at their window--a most incredible
occupation for people of their kind--saw with renewed anxiety a cab
come to the door, and watched some luggage being carried out and put
on its roof. The butler appeared for a moment, then went in again.
What did it mean? Was Flora going to be taken to her father; or
were these people, that woman and her horrible nephew, about to
carry her off somewhere? Fyne couldn't tell. He doubted the last,
Flora having now, he judged, no value, either positive or
speculative. Though no great reader of character he did not credit
the governess with humane intentions. He confessed to me naively
that he was excited as if watching some action on the stage. Then
the thought struck him that the girl might have had some money
settled on her, be possessed of some means, of some little fortune
of her own and therefore -

He imparted this theory to his wife who shared fully his
consternation. "I can't believe the child will go away without
running in to say good-bye to us," she murmured. "We must find out!
I shall ask her." But at that very moment the cab rolled away,
empty inside, and the door of the house which had been standing
slightly ajar till then was pushed to.

They remained silent staring at it till Mrs. Fyne whispered
doubtfully "I really think I must go over." Fyne didn't answer for
a while (his is a reflective mind, you know), and then as if Mrs.
Fyne's whispers had an occult power over that door it opened wide
again and the white-bearded man issued, astonishingly active in his
movements, using his stick almost like a leaping-pole to get down
the steps; and hobbled away briskly along the pavement. Naturally
the Fynes were too far off to make out the expression of his face.
But it would not have helped them very much to a guess at the
conditions inside the house. The expression was humorously puzzled-
-nothing more.

For, at the end of his lesson, seizing his trusty stick and coming
out with his habitual vivacity, he very nearly cannoned just outside
the drawing-room door into the back of Miss de Barral's governess.
He stopped himself in time and she turned round swiftly. It was
embarrassing; he apologised; but her face was not startled; it was
not aware of him; it wore a singular expression of resolution. A
very singular expression which, as it were, detained him for a
moment. In order to cover his embarrassment, he made some inane
remark on the weather, upon which, instead of returning another
inane remark according to the tacit rules of the game, she only gave
him a smile of unfathomable meaning. Nothing could have been more
singular. The good-looking young gentleman of questionable
appearance took not the slightest notice of him in the hall. No
servant was to be seen. He let himself out pulling the door to
behind him with a crash as, in a manner, he was forced to do to get
it shut at all.

When the echo of it had died away the woman on the landing leaned
over the banister and called out bitterly to the man below "Don't
you want to come up and say good-bye." He had an impatient movement
of the shoulders and went on pacing to and fro as though he had not
heard. But suddenly he checked himself, stood still for a moment,
then with a gloomy face and without taking his hands out of his
pockets ran smartly up the stairs. Already facing the door she
turned her head for a whispered taunt: "Come! Confess you were
dying to see her stupid little face once more,"--to which he
disdained to answer.

Flora de Barral, still seated before the table at which she had been
wording on her sketch, raised her head at the noise of the opening
door. The invading manner of their entrance gave her the sense of
something she had never seen before. She knew them well. She knew
the woman better than she knew her father. There had been between
them an intimacy of relation as great as it can possibly be without
the final closeness of affection. The delightful Charley walked in,
with his eyes fixed on the back of her governess whose raised veil
hid her forehead like a brown band above the black line of the
eyebrows. The girl was astounded and alarmed by the altogether
unknown expression in the woman's face. The stress of passion often
discloses an aspect of the personality completely ignored till then
by its closest intimates. There was something like an emanation of
evil from her eyes and from the face of the other, who, exactly
behind her and overtopping her by half a head, kept his eyelids
lowered in a sinister fashion--which in the poor girl, reached,
stirred, set free that faculty of unreasoning explosive terror lying
locked up at the bottom of all human hearts and of the hearts of
animals as well. With suddenly enlarged pupils and a movement as
instinctive almost as the bounding of a startled fawn, she jumped up
and found herself in the middle of the big room, exclaiming at those
amazing and familiar strangers.

"What do you want?"

You will note that she cried: What do you want? Not: What has
happened? She told Mrs. Fyne that she had received suddenly the
feeling of being personally attacked. And that must have been very
terrifying. The woman before her had been the wisdom, the
authority, the protection of life, security embodied and visible and
undisputed.

You may imagine then the force of the shock in the intuitive
perception not merely of danger, for she did not know what was
alarming her, but in the sense of the security being gone. And not
only security. I don't know how to explain it clearly. Look! Even
a small child lives, plays and suffers in terms of its conception of
its own existence. Imagine, if you can, a fact coming in suddenly
with a force capable of shattering that very conception itself. It
was only because of the girl being still so much of a child that she
escaped mental destruction; that, in other words she got over it.
Could one conceive of her more mature, while still as ignorant as
she was, one must conclude that she would have become an idiot on
the spot--long before the end of that experience. Luckily, people,
whether mature or not mature (and who really is ever mature?) are
for the most part quite incapable of understanding what is happening
to them: a merciful provision of nature to preserve an average
amount of sanity for working purposes in this world . . . "

"But we, my dear Marlow, have the inestimable advantage of
understanding what is happening to others," I struck in. "Or at
least some of us seem to. Is that too a provision of nature? And
what is it for? Is it that we may amuse ourselves gossiping about
each other's affairs? You for instance seem--"

"I don't know what I seem," Marlow silenced me, "and surely life
must be amused somehow. It would be still a very respectable
provision if it were only for that end. But from that same
provision of understanding, there springs in us compassion, charity,
indignation, the sense of solidarity; and in minds of any largeness
an inclination to that indulgence which is next door to affection.
I don't mean to say that I am inclined to an indulgent view of the
precious couple which broke in upon an unsuspecting girl. They came
marching in (it's the very expression she used later on to Mrs.
Fyne) but at her cry they stopped. It must have been startling
enough to them. It was like having the mask torn off when you don't
expect it. The man stopped for good; he didn't offer to move a step
further. But, though the governess had come in there for the very
purpose of taking the mask off for the first time in her life, she
seemed to look upon the frightened cry as a fresh provocation.
"What are you screaming for, you little fool?" she said advancing
alone close to the girl who was affected exactly as if she had seen
Medusa's head with serpentine locks set mysteriously on the
shoulders of that familiar person, in that brown dress, under that
hat she knew so well. It made her lose all her hold on reality.
She told Mrs. Fyne: "I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know
that I was frightened. If she had told me it was a joke I would
have laughed. If she had told me to put on my hat and go out with
her I would have gone to put on my hat and gone out with her and
never said a single word; I should have been convinced I had been
mad for a minute or so, and I would have worried myself to death
rather than breathe a hint of it to her or anyone. But the wretch
put her face close to mine and I could not move. Directly I had
looked into her eyes I felt grown on to the carpet."

It was years afterwards that she used to talk like this to Mrs.
Fyne--and to Mrs. Fyne alone. Nobody else ever heard the story from
her lips. But it was never forgotten. It was always felt; it
remained like a mark on her soul, a sort of mystic wound, to be
contemplated, to be meditated over. And she said further to Mrs.
Fyne, in the course of many confidences provoked by that
contemplation, that, as long as that woman called her names, it was
almost soothing, it was in a manner reassuring. Her imagination
had, like her body, gone off in a wild bound to meet the unknown;
and then to hear after all something which more in its tone than in
its substance was mere venomous abuse, had steadied the inward
flutter of all her being.

"She called me a little fool more times than I can remember. I! A
fool! Why, Mrs. Fyne! I do assure you I had never yet thought at
all; never of anything in the world, till then. I just went on
living. And one can't be a fool without one has at least tried to
think. But what had I ever to think about?"

"And no doubt," commented Marlow, "her life had been a mere life of
sensations--the response to which can neither be foolish nor wise.
It can only be temperamental; and I believe that she was of a
generally happy disposition, a child of the average kind. Even when
she was asked violently whether she imagined that there was anything
in her, apart from her money, to induce any intelligent person to
take any sort of interest in her existence, she only caught her
breath in one dry sob and said nothing, made no other sound, made no
movement. When she was viciously assured that she was in heart,
mind, manner and appearance, an utterly common and insipid creature,
she remained still, without indignation, without anger. She stood,
a frail and passive vessel into which the other went on pouring all
the accumulated dislike for all her pupils, her scorn of all her
employers (the ducal one included), the accumulated resentment, the
infinite hatred of all these unrelieved years of--I won't say
hypocrisy. The practice of perfect hypocrisy is a relief in itself,
a secret triumph of the vilest sort, no doubt, but still a way of
getting even with the common morality from which some of us appear
to suffer so much. No! I will say the years, the passionate,
bitter years, of restraint, the iron, admirably mannered restraint
at every moment, in a never-failing perfect correctness of speech,
glances, movements, smiles, gestures, establishing for her a high
reputation, an impressive record of success in her sphere. It had
been like living half strangled for years.

And all this torture for nothing, in the end! What looked at last
like a possible prize (oh, without illusions! but still a prize)
broken in her hands, fallen in the dust, the bitter dust, of
disappointment, she revelled in the miserable revenge--pretty safe
too--only regretting the unworthiness of the girlish figure which
stood for so much she had longed to be able to spit venom at, if
only once, in perfect liberty. The presence of the young man at her
back increased both her satisfaction and her rage. But the very
violence of the attack seemed to defeat its end by rendering the
representative victim as it were insensible. The cause of this
outrage naturally escaping the girl's imagination her attitude was
in effect that of dense, hopeless stupidity. And it is a fact that
the worst shocks of life are often received without outcries,
without gestures, without a flow of tears and the convulsions of
sobbing. The insatiable governess missed these signs exceedingly.
This pitiful stolidity was only a fresh provocation. Yet the poor
girl was deadly pale.

"I was cold," she used to explain to Mrs. Fyne. "I had had time to
get terrified. She had pushed her face so near mine and her teeth
looked as though she wanted to bite me. Her eyes seemed to have
become quite dry, hard and small in a lot of horrible wrinkles. I
was too afraid of her to shudder, too afraid of her to put my
fingers to my ears. I didn't know what I expected her to call me
next, but when she told me I was no better than a beggar--that there
would be no more masters, no more servants, no more horses for me--I
said to myself: Is that all? I should have laughed if I hadn't
been too afraid of her to make the least little sound."

It seemed that poor Flora had to know all the possible phases of
that sort of anguish, beginning with instinctive panic, through the
bewildered stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched
apprehension, down to the instinctive prudence of extreme terror--
the stillness of the mouse. But when she heard herself called the
child of a cheat and a swindler, the very monstrous unexpectedness
of this caused in her a revulsion towards letting herself go. She
screamed out all at once "You mustn't speak like this of Papa!"

The effort of it uprooted her from that spot where her little feet
seemed dug deep into the thick luxurious carpet, and she retreated
backwards to a distant part of the room, hearing herself repeat "You
mustn't, you mustn't" as if it were somebody else screaming. She
came to a chair and flung herself into it. Thereupon the somebody
else ceased screaming and she lolled, exhausted, sightless, in a
silent room, as if indifferent to everything and without a single
thought in her head.

The next few seconds seemed to last for ever so long; a black abyss
of time separating what was past and gone from the reappearance of
the governess and the reawakening of fear. And that woman was
forcing the words through her set teeth: "You say I mustn't, I
mustn't. All the world will be speaking of him like this to-morrow.
They will say it, and they'll print it. You shall hear it and you
shall read it--and then you shall know whose daughter you are."

Her face lighted up with an atrocious satisfaction. "He's nothing
but a thief," she cried, "this father of yours. As to you I have
never been deceived in you for a moment. I have been growing more
and more sick of you for years. You are a vulgar, silly nonentity,
and you shall go back to where you belong, whatever low place you
have sprung from, and beg your bread--that is if anybody's charity
will have anything to do with you, which I doubt--"

She would have gone on regardless of the enormous eyes, of the open
mouth of the girl who sat up suddenly with the wild staring
expression of being choked by invisible fingers on her throat, and
yet horribly pale. The effect on her constitution was so profound,
Mrs. Fyne told me, that she who as a child had a rather pretty
delicate colouring, showed a white bloodless face for a couple of
years afterwards, and remained always liable at the slightest
emotion to an extraordinary ghost-like whiteness. The end came in
the abomination of desolation of the poor child's miserable cry for
help: "Charley! Charley!" coming from her throat in hidden gasping
efforts. Her enlarged eyes had discovered him where he stood
motionless and dumb.

He started from his immobility, a hand withdrawn brusquely from the
pocket of his overcoat, strode up to the woman, seized her by the
arm from behind, saying in a rough commanding tone: "Come away,
Eliza." In an instant the child saw them close together and remote,
near the door, gone through the door, which she neither heard nor
saw being opened or shut. But it was shut. Oh yes, it was shut.
Her slow unseeing glance wandered all over the room. For some time
longer she remained leaning forward, collecting her strength,
doubting if she would be able to stand. She stood up at last.
Everything about her spun round in an oppressive silence. She
remembered perfectly--as she told Mrs. Fyne--that clinging to the
arm of the chair she called out twice "Papa! Papa!" At the thought
that he was far away in London everything about her became quite
still. Then, frightened suddenly by the solitude of that empty
room, she rushed out of it blindly.

With that fatal diffidence in well doing, inherent in the present
condition of humanity, the Fynes continued to watch at their window.
"It's always so difficult to know what to do for the best," Fyne
assured me. It is. Good intentions stand in their own way so much.
Whereas if you want to do harm to anyone you needn't hesitate. You
have only to go on. No one will reproach you with your mistakes or
call you a confounded, clumsy meddler. The Fynes watched the door,
the closed street door inimical somehow to their benevolent
thoughts, the face of the house cruelly impenetrable. It was just
as on any other day. The unchanged daily aspect of inanimate things
is so impressive that Fyne went back into the room for a moment,
picked up the paper again, and ran his eyes over the item of news.
No doubt of it. It looked very bad. He came back to the window and
Mrs. Fyne. Tired out as she was she sat there resolute and ready
for responsibility. But she had no suggestion to offer. People do
fear a rebuff wonderfully, and all her audacity was in her thoughts.
She shrank from the incomparably insolent manner of the governess.
Fyne stood by her side, as in those old-fashioned photographs of
married couples where you see a husband with his hand on the back of
his wife's chair. And they were about as efficient as an old
photograph, and as still, till Mrs. Fyne started slightly. The
street door had swung open, and, bursting out, appeared the young
man, his hat (Mrs. Fyne observed) tilted forward over his eyes.
After him the governess slipped through, turning round at once to
shut the door behind her with care. Meantime the man went down the
white steps and strode along the pavement, his hands rammed deep
into the pockets of his fawn overcoat. The woman, that woman of
composed movements, of deliberate superior manner, took a little run
to catch up with him, and directly she had caught up with him tried
to introduce her hand under his arm. Mrs. Fyne saw the brusque half
turn of the fellow's body as one avoids an importunate contact,
defeating her attempt rudely. She did not try again but kept pace
with his stride, and Mrs. Fyne watched them, walking independently,
turn the corner of the street side by side, disappear for ever.

The Fynes looked at each other eloquently, doubtfully: What do you
think of this? Then with common accord turned their eyes back to
the street door, closed, massive, dark; the great, clear-brass
knocker shining in a quiet slant of sunshine cut by a diagonal line
of heavy shade filling the further end of the street. Could the
girl be already gone? Sent away to her father? Had she any
relations? Nobody but de Barral himself ever came to see her, Mrs.
Fyne remembered; and she had the instantaneous, profound, maternal
perception of the child's loneliness--and a girl too! It was
irresistible. And, besides, the departure of the governess was not
without its encouraging influence. "I am going over at once to find
out," she declared resolutely but still staring across the street.
Her intention was arrested by the sight of that awful, sombrely
glistening door, swinging back suddenly on the yawning darkness of
the hall, out of which literally flew out, right out on the
pavement, almost without touching the white steps, a little figure
swathed in a holland pinafore up to the chin, its hair streaming
back from its head, darting past a lamp-post, past the red pillar-
box . . . "Here," cried Mrs. Fyne; "she's coming here! Run, John!
Run!"

Fyne bounded out of the room. This is his own word. Bounded! He
assured me with intensified solemnity that he bounded; and the sight
of the short and muscular Fyne bounding gravely about the
circumscribed passages and staircases of a small, very high class,
private hotel, would have been worth any amount of money to a man
greedy of memorable impressions. But as I looked at him, the desire
of laughter at my very lips, I asked myself: how many men could be
found ready to compromise their cherished gravity for the sake of
the unimportant child of a ruined financier with an ugly, black
cloud already wreathing his head. I didn't laugh at little Fyne. I
encouraged him: "You did!--very good . . . Well?"

His main thought was to save the child from some unpleasant
interference. There was a porter downstairs, page boys; some people
going away with their trunks in the passage; a railway omnibus at
the door, white-breasted waiters dodging about the entrance.

He was in time. He was at the door before she reached it in her
blind course. She did not recognize him; perhaps she did not see
him. He caught her by the arm as she ran past and, very sensibly,
without trying to check her, simply darted in with her and up the
stairs, causing no end of consternation amongst the people in his
way. They scattered. What might have been their thoughts at the
spectacle of a shameless middle-aged man abducting headlong into the
upper regions of a respectable hotel a terrified young girl
obviously under age, I don't know. And Fyne (he told me so) did not
care for what people might think. All he wanted was to reach his
wife before the girl collapsed. For a time she ran with him but at
the last flight of stairs he had to seize and half drag, half carry
her to his wife. Mrs. Fyne waited at the door with her quite
unmoved physiognomy and her readiness to confront any sort of
responsibility, which already characterized her, long before she
became a ruthless theorist. Relieved, his mission accomplished,
Fyne closed hastily the door of the sitting-room.

But before long both Fynes became frightened. After a period of
immobility in the arms of Mrs. Fyne, the girl, who had not said a
word, tore herself out from that slightly rigid embrace. She
struggled dumbly between them, they did not know why, soundless and
ghastly, till she sank exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children
were out with the two nurses. The hotel housemaid helped Mrs. Fyne
to put Flora de Barral to bed. She was as if gone speechless and
insane. She lay on her back, her face white like a piece of paper,
her dark eyes staring at the ceiling, her awful immobility broken by
sudden shivering fits with a loud chattering of teeth in the shadowy
silence of the room, the blinds pulled down, Mrs. Fyne sitting by
patiently, her arms folded, yet inwardly moved by the riddle of that
distress of which she could not guess the word, and saying to
herself: "That child is too emotional--much too emotional to be
ever really sound!" As if anyone not made of stone could be
perfectly sound in this world. And then how sound? In what sense--
to resist what? Force or corruption? And even in the best armour
of steel there are joints a treacherous stroke can always find if
chance gives the opportunity.

General considerations never had the power to trouble Mrs. Fyne
much. The girl not being in a state to be questioned she waited by
the bedside. Fyne had crossed over to the house, his scruples
overcome by his anxiety to discover what really had happened. He
did not have to lift the knocker; the door stood open on the inside
gloom of the hall; he walked into it and saw no one about, the
servants having assembled for a fatuous consultation in the
basement. Fyne's uplifted bass voice startled them down there, the
butler coming up, staring and in his shirt sleeves, very suspicious
at first, and then, on Fyne's explanation that he was the husband of
a lady who had called several times at the house--Miss de Barral's
mother's friend--becoming humanely concerned and communicative, in a
man to man tone, but preserving his trained high-class servant's
voice: "Oh bless you, sir, no! She does not mean to come back.
She told me so herself"--he assured Fyne with a faint shade of
contempt creeping into his tone.

As regards their young lady nobody downstairs had any idea that she
had run out of the house. He dared say they all would have been
willing to do their very best for her, for the time being; but since
she was now with her mother's friends . . .

He fidgeted. He murmured that all this was very unexpected. He
wanted to know what he had better do with letters or telegrams which
might arrive in the course of the day.

"Letters addressed to Miss de Barral, you had better bring over to
my hotel over there," said Fyne beginning to feel extremely worried
about the future. The man said "Yes, sir," adding, "and if a letter
comes addressed to Mrs. . . . "

Fyne stopped him by a gesture. "I don't know . . . Anything you
like."

"Very well, sir."

The butler did not shut the street door after Fyne, but remained on
the doorstep for a while, looking up and down the street in the
spirit of independent expectation like a man who is again his own
master. Mrs. Fyne hearing her husband return came out of the room
where the girl was lying in bed. "No change," she whispered; and
Fyne could only make a hopeless sign of ignorance as to what all
this meant and how it would end.

He feared future complications--naturally; a man of limited means,
in a public position, his time not his own. Yes. He owned to me in
the parlour of my farmhouse that he had been very much concerned
then at the possible consequences. But as he was making this
artless confession I said to myself that, whatever consequences and
complications he might have imagined, the complication from which he
was suffering now could never, never have presented itself to his
mind. Slow but sure (for I conceive that the Book of Destiny has
been written up from the beginning to the last page) it had been
coming for something like six years--and now it had come. The
complication was there! I looked at his unshaken solemnity with the
amused pity we give the victim of a funny if somewhat ill-natured
practical joke.

"Oh hang it," he exclaimed--in no logical connection with what he
had been relating to me. Nevertheless the exclamation was
intelligible enough.

However at first there were, he admitted, no untoward complications,
no embarrassing consequences. To a telegram in guarded terms
dispatched to de Barral no answer was received for more than twenty-
four hours. This certainly caused the Fynes some anxiety. When the
answer arrived late on the evening of next day it was in the shape
of an elderly man. An unexpected sort of man. Fyne explained to me
with precision that he evidently belonged to what is most
respectable in the lower middle classes. He was calm and slow in
his speech. He was wearing a frock-coat, had grey whiskers meeting
under his chin, and declared on entering that Mr. de Barral was his
cousin. He hastened to add that he had not seen his cousin for many
years, while he looked upon Fyne (who received him alone) with so
much distrust that Fyne felt hurt (the person actually refusing at
first the chair offered to him) and retorted tartly that he, for his
part, had NEVER seen Mr. de Barral, in his life, and that, since the
visitor did not want to sit down, he, Fyne, begged him to state his
business as shortly as possible. The man in black sat down then
with a faint superior smile.

He had come for the girl. His cousin had asked him in a note
delivered by a messenger to go to Brighton at once and take "his
girl" over from a gentleman named Fyne and give her house-room for a
time in his family. And there he was. His business had not allowed
him to come sooner. His business was the manufacture on a large
scale of cardboard boxes. He had two grown-up girls of his own. He
had consulted his wife and so that was all right. The girl would
get a welcome in his home. His home most likely was not what she
had been used to but, etc. etc.

All the time Fyne felt subtly in that man's manner a derisive
disapproval of everything that was not lower middle class, a
profound respect for money, a mean sort of contempt for speculators
that fail, and a conceited satisfaction with his own respectable
vulgarity.

With Mrs. Fyne the manner of the obscure cousin of de Barral was but
little less offensive. He looked at her rather slyly but her cold,
decided demeanour impressed him. Mrs. Fyne on her side was simply
appalled by the personage, but did not show it outwardly. Not even
when the man remarked with false simplicity that Florrie--her name
was Florrie wasn't it? would probably miss at first all her grand
friends. And when he was informed that the girl was in bed, not
feeling well at all he showed an unsympathetic alarm. She wasn't an
invalid was she? No. What was the matter with her then?

An extreme distaste for that respectable member of society was
depicted in Fyne's face even as he was telling me of him after all
these years. He was a specimen of precisely the class of which
people like the Fynes have the least experience; and I imagine he
jarred on them painfully. He possessed all the civic virtues in
their very meanest form, and the finishing touch was given by a low
sort of consciousness he manifested of possessing them. His
industry was exemplary. He wished to catch the earliest possible
train next morning. It seems that for seven and twenty years he had
never missed being seated on his office-stool at the factory
punctually at ten o'clock every day. He listened to Mrs. Fyne's
objections with undisguised impatience. Why couldn't Florrie get up
and have her breakfast at eight like other people? In his house the
breakfast was at eight sharp. Mrs. Fyne's polite stoicism overcame
him at last. He had come down at a very great personal
inconvenience, he assured her with displeasure, but he gave up the
early train.

The good Fynes didn't dare to look at each other before this
unforeseen but perfectly authorized guardian, the same thought
springing up in their minds: Poor girl! Poor girl! If the women
of the family were like this too! . . . And of course they would be.
Poor girl! But what could they have done even if they had been
prepared to raise objections. The person in the frock-coat had the
father's note; he had shown it to Fyne. Just a request to take care
of the girl--as her nearest relative--without any explanation or a
single allusion to the financial catastrophe, its tone strangely
detached and in its very silence on the point giving occasion to
think that the writer was not uneasy as to the child's future.
Probably it was that very idea which had set the cousin so readily
in motion. Men had come before out of commercial crashes with
estates in the country and a comfortable income, if not for
themselves then for their wives. And if a wife could be made
comfortable by a little dexterous management then why not a
daughter? Yes. This possibility might have been discussed in the
person's household and judged worth acting upon.

The man actually hinted broadly that such was his belief and in face
of Fyne's guarded replies gave him to understand that he was not the
dupe of such reticences. Obviously he looked upon the Fynes as
being disappointed because the girl was taken away from them. They,
by a diplomatic sacrifice in the interests of poor Flora, had asked
the man to dinner. He accepted ungraciously, remarking that he was
not used to late hours. He had generally a bit of supper about
half-past eight or nine. However . . .

He gazed contemptuously round the prettily decorated dining-room.
He wrinkled his nose in a puzzled way at the dishes offered to him
by the waiter but refused none, devouring the food with a great
appetite and drinking ("swilling" Fyne called it) gallons of ginger
beer, which was procured for him (in stone bottles) at his request.
The difficulty of keeping up a conversation with that being
exhausted Mrs. Fyne herself, who had come to the table armed with
adamantine resolution. The only memorable thing he said was when,
in a pause of gorging himself "with these French dishes" he
deliberately let his eyes roam over the little tables occupied by
parties of diners, and remarked that his wife did for a moment think
of coming down with him, but that he was glad she didn't do so.
"She wouldn't have been at all happy seeing all this alcohol about.
Not at all happy," he declared weightily.

"You must have had a charming evening," I said to Fyne, "if I may
judge from the way you have kept the memory green."

"Delightful," he growled with, positively, a flash of anger at the
recollection, but lapsed back into his solemnity at once. After we
had been silent for a while I asked whether the man took away the
girl next day.

Fyne said that he did; in the afternoon, in a fly, with a few
clothes the maid had got together and brought across from the big
house. He only saw Flora again ten minutes before they left for the
railway station, in the Fynes' sitting-room at the hotel. It was a
most painful ten minutes for the Fynes. The respectable citizen
addressed Miss de Barral as "Florrie" and "my dear," remarking to
her that she was not very big "there's not much of you my dear" in a
familiarly disparaging tone. Then turning to Mrs. Fyne, and quite
loud "She's very white in the face. Why's that?" To this Mrs. Fyne
made no reply. She had put the girl's hair up that morning with her
own hands. It changed her very much, observed Fyne. He, naturally,
played a subordinate, merely approving part. All he could do for
Miss de Barral personally was to go downstairs and put her into the
fly himself, while Miss de Barral's nearest relation, having been
shouldered out of the way, stood by, with an umbrella and a little
black bag, watching this proceeding with grim amusement, as it
seemed. It was difficult to guess what the girl thought or what she
felt. She no longer looked a child. She whispered to Fyne a faint
"Thank you," from the fly, and he said to her in very distinct tones
and while still holding her hand: "Pray don't forget to write fully
to my wife in a day or two, Miss de Barral." Then Fyne stepped back
and the cousin climbed into the fly muttering quite audibly: "I
don't think you'll be troubled much with her in the future;" without
however looking at Fyne on whom he did not even bestow a nod. The
fly drove away.

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

_

Read next: PART I - THE DAMSEL: CHAPTER FIVE - THE TEA-PARTY

Read previous: PART I - THE DAMSEL: CHAPTER THREE - THRIFT--AND THE CHILD

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