Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (402 page)

“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.