Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (394 page)

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 naïvely 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.