Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (403 page)

“Oh!  You do know,” said Mrs. Fyne after a pause.  “Well — I felt myself very much abandoned.  Then his choice of life — so extraordinary, so unfortunate, I may say.  I was very much grieved.  I should have liked him to have been distinguished — or at any rate to remain in the social sphere where we could have had common interests, acquaintances, thoughts.  Don’t think that I am estranged from him.  But the precise truth is that I do not know him.  I was most painfully affected when he was here by the difficulty of finding a single topic we could discuss together.”

While Mrs. Fyne was talking of her brother I let my thoughts wander out of the room to little Fyne who by leaving me alone with his wife had, so to speak, entrusted his domestic peace to my honour.

“Well, then, Mrs. Fyne, does it not strike you that it would be reasonable under the circumstances to let your brother take care of himself?”

“And suppose I have grounds to think that he can’t take care of himself in a given instance.”  She hesitated in a funny, bashful manner which roused my interest.  Then:

“Sailors I believe are very susceptible,” she added with forced assurance.

I burst into a laugh which only increased the coldness of her observing stare.

“They are.  Immensely!  Hopelessly!  My dear Mrs. Fyne, you had better give it up!  It only makes your husband miserable.”

“And I am quite miserable too.  It is really our first difference . . . “

“Regarding Miss de Barral?” I asked.

“Regarding everything.  It’s really intolerable that this girl should be the occasion.  I think he really ought to give way.”

She turned her chair round a little and picking up the book I had been reading in the morning began to turn the leaves absently.

Her eyes being off me, I felt I could allow myself to leave the room.  Its atmosphere had become hopeless for little Fyne’s domestic peace.  You may smile.  But to the solemn all things are solemn.  I had enough sagacity to understand that.

I slipped out into the porch.  The dog was slumbering at Fyne’s feet.  The muscular little man leaning on his elbow and gazing over the fields presented a forlorn figure.  He turned his head quickly, but seeing I was alone, relapsed into his moody contemplation of the green landscape.

I said loudly and distinctly: “I’ve come out to smoke a cigarette,” and sat down near him on the little bench.  Then lowering my voice: “Tolerance is an extremely difficult virtue,” I said.  “More difficult for some than heroism.  More difficult than compassion.”

I avoided looking at him.  I knew well enough that he would not like this opening.  General ideas were not to his taste.  He mistrusted them.  I lighted a cigarette, not that I wanted to smoke, but to give another moment to the consideration of the advice — the diplomatic advice I had made up my mind to bowl him over with.  And I continued in subdued tones.

“I have been led to make these remarks by what I have discovered since you left us.  I suspected from the first.  And now I am certain.  What your wife cannot tolerate in this affair is Miss de Barral being what she is.”

He made a movement, but I kept my eyes away from him and went on steadily.  “That is — her being a woman.  I have some idea of Mrs. Fyne’s mental attitude towards society with its injustices, with its atrocious or ridiculous conventions.  As against them there is no audacity of action your wife’s mind refuses to sanction.  The doctrine which I imagine she stuffs into the pretty heads of your girl-guests is almost vengeful.  A sort of moral fire-and-sword doctrine.  How far the lesson is wise is not for me to say.  I don’t permit myself to judge.  I seem to see her very delightful disciples singeing themselves with the torches, and cutting their fingers with the swords of Mrs. Fyne’s furnishing.”

“My wife holds her opinions very seriously,” murmured Fyne suddenly.

“Yes.  No doubt,” I assented in a low voice as before.  “But it is a mere intellectual exercise.  What I see is that in dealing with reality Mrs. Fyne ceases to be tolerant.  In other words, that she can’t forgive Miss de Barral for being a woman and behaving like a woman.  And yet this is not only reasonable and natural, but it is her only chance.  A woman against the world has no resources but in herself.  Her only means of action is to be what she is.  You understand what I mean.”

Fyne mumbled between his teeth that he understood.  But he did not seem interested.  What he expected of me was to extricate him from a difficult situation.  I don’t know how far credible this may sound, to less solemn married couples, but to remain at variance with his wife seemed to him a considerable incident.  Almost a disaster.

“It looks as though I didn’t care what happened to her brother,” he said.  “And after all if anything . . . “

I became a little impatient but without raising my tone:

“What thing?” I asked.  “The liability to get penal servitude is so far like genius that it isn’t hereditary.  And what else can be objected to the girl?  All the energy of her deeper feelings, which she would use up vainly in the danger and fatigue of a struggle with society may be turned into devoted attachment to the man who offers her a way of escape from what can be only a life of moral anguish.  I don’t mention the physical difficulties.”

Glancing at Fyne out of the corner of one eye I discovered that he was attentive.  He made the remark that I should have said all this to his wife.  It was a sensible enough remark.  But I had given Mrs. Fyne up.  I asked him if his impression was that his wife meant to entrust him with a letter for her brother?

No.  He didn’t think so.  There were certain reasons which made Mrs. Fyne unwilling to commit her arguments to paper.  Fyne was to be primed with them.  But he had no doubt that if he persisted in his refusal she would make up her mind to write.

“She does not wish me to go unless with a full conviction that she is right,” said Fyne solemnly.

“She’s very exacting,” I commented.  And then I reflected that she was used to it.  “Would nothing less do for once?”

“You don’t mean that I should give way — do you?” asked Fyne in a whisper of alarmed suspicion.

As this was exactly what I meant, I let his fright sink into him.  He fidgeted.  If the word may be used of so solemn a personage, he wriggled.  And when the horrid suspicion had descended into his very heels, so to speak, he became very still.  He sat gazing stonily into space bounded by the yellow, burnt-up slopes of the rising ground a couple of miles away.  The face of the down showed the white scar of the quarry where not more than sixteen hours before Fyne and I had been groping in the dark with horrible apprehension of finding under our hands the shattered body of a girl.  For myself I had in addition the memory of my meeting with her.  She was certainly walking very near the edge — courting a sinister solution.  But, now, having by the most unexpected chance come upon a man, she had found another way to escape from the world.  Such world as was open to her — without shelter, without bread, without honour.  The best she could have found in it would have been a precarious dole of pity diminishing as her years increased.  The appeal of the abandoned child Flora to the sympathies of the Fynes had been irresistible.  But now she had become a woman, and Mrs. Fyne was presenting an implacable front to a particularly feminine transaction.  I may say triumphantly feminine.  It is true that Mrs. Fyne did not want women to be women.  Her theory was that they should turn themselves into unscrupulous sexless nuisances.  An offended theorist dwelt in her bosom somewhere.  In what way she expected Flora de Barral to set about saving herself from a most miserable existence I can’t conceive; but I verify believe that she would have found it easier to forgive the girl an actual crime; say the rifling of the Bournemouth old lady’s desk, for instance.  And then — for Mrs. Fyne was very much of a woman herself — her sense of proprietorship was very strong within her; and though she had not much use for her brother, yet she did not like to see him annexed by another woman.  By a chit of a girl.  And such a girl, too.  Nothing is truer than that, in this world, the luckless have no right to their opportunities — as if misfortune were a legal disqualification.  Fyne’s sentiments (as they naturally would be in a man) had more stability.  A good deal of his sympathy survived.  Indeed I heard him murmur “Ghastly nuisance,” but I knew it was of the integrity of his domestic accord that he was thinking.  With my eyes on the dog lying curled up in sleep in the middle of the porch I suggested in a subdued impersonal tone: “Yes.  Why not let yourself be persuaded?”

I never saw little Fyne less solemn.  He hissed through his teeth in unexpectedly figurative style that it would take a lot to persuade him to “push under the head of a poor devil of a girl quite sufficiently plucky” — and snorted.  He was still gazing at the distant quarry, and I think he was affected by that sight.  I assured him that I was far from advising him to do anything so cruel.  I am convinced he had always doubted the soundness of my principles, because he turned on me swiftly as though he had been on the watch for a lapse from the straight path.

“Then what do you mean?  That I should pretend!”

“No!  What nonsense!  It would be immoral.  I may however tell you that if I had to make a choice I would rather do something immoral than something cruel.  What I meant was that, not believing in the efficacy of the interference, the whole question is reduced to your consenting to do what your wife wishes you to do.  That would be acting like a gentleman, surely.  And acting unselfishly too, because I can very well understand how distasteful it may be to you.  Generally speaking, an unselfish action is a moral action.  I’ll tell you what.  I’ll go with you.”

He turned round and stared at me with surprise and suspicion.  “You would go with me?” he repeated.

“You don’t understand,” I said, amused at the incredulous disgust of his tone.  “I must run up to town, to-morrow morning.  Let us go together.  You have a set of travelling chessmen.”

His physiognomy, contracted by a variety of emotions, relaxed to a certain extent at the idea of a game.  I told him that as I had business at the Docks he should have my company to the very ship.

“We shall beguile the way to the wilds of the East by improving conversation,” I encouraged him.

“My brother-in-law is staying at an hotel — the Eastern Hotel,” he said, becoming sombre again.  “I haven’t the slightest idea where it is.”

“I know the place.  I shall leave you at the door with the comfortable conviction that you are doing what’s right since it pleases a lady and cannot do any harm to anybody whatever.”

“You think so?  No harm to anybody?” he repeated doubtfully.

“I assure you it’s not the slightest use,” I said with all possible emphasis which seemed only to increase the solemn discontent of his expression.

“But in order that my going should be a perfectly candid proceeding I must first convince my wife that it isn’t the slightest use,” he objected portentously.

“Oh, you casuist!” I said.  And I said nothing more because at that moment Mrs. Fyne stepped out into the porch.  We rose together at her appearance.  Her clear, colourless, unflinching glance enveloped us both critically.  I sustained the chill smilingly, but Fyne stooped at once to release the dog.  He was some time about it; then simultaneously with his recovery of upright position the animal passed at one bound from profoundest slumber into most tumultuous activity.  Enveloped in the tornado of his inane scurryings and barkings I took Mrs. Fyne’s hand extended to me woodenly and bowed over it with deference.  She walked down the path without a word; Fyne had preceded her and was waiting by the open gate.  They passed out and walked up the road surrounded by a low cloud of dust raised by the dog gyrating madly about their two figures progressing side by side with rectitude and propriety, and (I don’t know why) looking to me as if they had annexed the whole country-side.  Perhaps it was that they had impressed me somehow with the sense of their superiority.  What superiority?  Perhaps it consisted just in their limitations.  It was obvious that neither of them had carried away a high opinion of me.  But what affected me most was the indifference of the Fyne dog.  He used to precipitate himself at full speed and with a frightful final upward spring upon my waistcoat, at least once at each of our meetings.  He had neglected that ceremony this time notwithstanding my correct and even conventional conduct in offering him a cake; it seemed to me symbolic of my final separation from the Fyne household.  And I remembered against him how on a certain day he had abandoned poor Flora de Barral — who was morbidly sensitive.

I sat down in the porch and, maybe inspired by secret antagonism to the Fynes, I said to myself deliberately that Captain Anthony must be a fine fellow.  Yet on the facts as I knew them he might have been a dangerous trifler or a downright scoundrel.  He had made a miserable, hopeless girl follow him clandestinely to London.  It is true that the girl had written since, only Mrs. Fyne had been remarkably vague as to the contents.  They were unsatisfactory.  They did not positively announce imminent nuptials as far as I could make it out from her rather mysterious hints.  But then her inexperience might have led her astray.  There was no fathoming the innocence of a woman like Mrs. Fyne who, venturing as far as possible in theory, would know nothing of the real aspect of things.  It would have been comic if she were making all this fuss for nothing.  But I rejected this suspicion for the honour of human nature.

I imagined to myself Captain Anthony as simple and romantic.  It was much more pleasant.  Genius is not hereditary but temperament may be.  And he was the son of a poet with an admirable gift of individualising, of etherealizing the common-place; of making touching, delicate, fascinating the most hopeless conventions of the, so-called, refined existence.

What I could not understand was Mrs. Fyne’s dog-in-the-manger attitude.  Sentimentally she needed that brother of hers so little!  What could it matter to her one way or another — setting aside common humanity which would suggest at least a neutral attitude.  Unless indeed it was the blind working of the law that in our world of chances the luckless must be put in the wrong somehow.