Part 11 (1/2)
”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 embarra.s.sing 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 cla.s.ses. 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 some 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, etcetera, etcetera.
All the time Fyne felt subtly in that man's manner a derisive disapproval of everything that was not lower middle cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sured 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 authorised 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 appet.i.te 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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.
PART ONE, CHAPTER 5.
THE TEA-PARTY.
”Amiable personality,” I observed seeing Fyne on the point of falling into a brown study. But I could not help adding with meaning: ”He hadn't the gift of prophecy though.”
Fyne got up suddenly with a muttered ”No, evidently not.” He was gloomy, hesitating. I supposed that he would not wish to play chess that afternoon. This would dispense me from leaving my rooms on a day much too fine to be wasted in walking exercise. And I was disappointed when picking up his cap he intimated to me his hope of seeing me at the cottage about four o'clock--as usual.
”It wouldn't be as usual.” I put a particular stress on that remark.
He admitted, after a short reflection, that it would not be. No. Not as usual. In fact it was his wife who hoped, rather, for my presence.
She had formed a very favourable opinion of my practical sagacity.
This was the first I ever heard of it. I had never suspected that Mrs Fyne had taken the trouble to distinguish in me the signs of sagacity or folly. The few words we had exchanged last night in the excitement--or the bother--of the girl's disappearance, were the first moderately significant words which had ever pa.s.sed between us. I had felt myself always to be in Mrs Fyne's view her husband's chess-player and nothing else--a convenience--almost an implement.
”I am highly flattered,” I said. ”I have always heard that there are no limits to feminine intuition; and now I am half inclined to believe it is so. But still I fail to see in what way my sagacity, practical or otherwise, can be of any service to Mrs Fyne. One man's sagacity is very much like any other man's sagacity. And with you at hand--”