PART TWO, CHAPTER 4.
ANTHONY AND FLORA.
Marlow emerged out of the shadow of the bookcase to get himself a cigarfrom a box which stood on a little table by my side. In the full lightof the room I saw in his eyes that slightly mocking expression withwhich he habitually covers up his sympathetic impulses of mirth and pitybefore the unreasonable complications the idealism of mankind puts intothe simple but poignant problem of conduct on this earth.
He selected and lit the cigar with affected care, then turned upon me.I had been looking at him silently.
"I suppose," he said, the mockery of his eyes giving a pellucid qualityto his tone, "that you think it's high time I told you somethingdefinite. I mean something about that psychological cabin mystery ofdiscomfort (for it's obvious that it must be psychological) whichaffected so profoundly Mr Franklin the chief mate, and had evendisturbed the serene innocence of Mr Powell, the second of the ship_Ferndale_, commanded by Roderick Anthony--the son of the poet, youknow."
"You are going to confess now that you have failed to find it out," Isaid in pretended indignation.
"It would serve you right if I told you that I have. But I won't. Ihaven't failed. I own though that for a time, I was puzzled. However,I have now seen our Powell many times under the most favourableconditions--and besides I came upon a most unexpected source ofinformation... But never mind that. The means don't concern you exceptin so far as they belong to the story. I'll admit that for some timethe old-maiden-lady-like occupation of putting two and two togetherfailed to procure a coherent theory. I am speaking now as aninvestigator--a man of deductions. With what we know of RoderickAnthony and Flora de Barral I could not deduct an ordinary maritalquarrel beautifully matured in less than a year--could I. If you ask mewhat is an ordinary marital quarrel I will tell you, that it is adifference about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr Powelltold us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a rowabout, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from pervertedambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors toohumble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenomsthe play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or wordsof perfidious compassion. However, the Anthonys were free from alldemoralising influences. At sea, you know, there is no gallery. Youhear no tormenting echoes of your own littleness there, where either agreat elemental voice roars defiantly under the sky or else an elementalsilence seems to be part of the infinite stillness of the universe."
Remembering Flora de Barral in the depths of moral misery, and RoderickAnthony carried away by a gust of tempestuous tenderness, I askedmyself, Is it all forgotten already? What could they have found toestrange them from each other with this rapidity and this thoroughnessso far from all temptations, in the peace of the sea and in an isolationso complete that if it had not been the jealous devotion of thesentimental Franklin stimulating the attention of Powell, there wouldhave been no record, no evidence of it at all.
I must confess at once that it was Flora de Barral whom I suspected. Inthis world as at present organised women are the suspected half of thepopulation. There are good reasons for that. These reasons are sodiscoverable with a little reflection that it is not worth my while toset them out for you. I will only mention this: that the part fallingto women's share being all "influence" has an air of occult andmysterious action, something not altogether trustworthy like all naturalforces which, for us, work in the dark because of our imperfectcomprehension.
"If women were not a force of nature, blind in its strength andcapricious in its power, they would not be mistrusted. As it is onecan't help it. You will say that this force having been in the personof Flora de Barral captured by Anthony ... Why yes. He had dealt withher masterfully. But man has captured electricity too. It lights himon his way, it warms his home, it will even cook his dinner for him--very much like a woman. But what sort of conquest would you call it?He knows nothing of it. He has got to be mighty careful what he isabout with his captive. And the greater the demand he makes on it inthe exultation of his pride the more likely it is to turn on him andburn him to a cinder..."
"A far-fetched enough parallel," I observed coldly to Marlow. He hadreturned to the armchair in the shadow of the bookcase. "But acceptingthe meaning you have in your mind it reduces itself to the knowledge ofhow to use it. And if you mean that this ravenous Anthony--"
"Ravenous is good," interrupted Marlow. "He was a-hungering anda-thirsting for femininity to enter his life in a way no mere feministcould have the slightest conception of. I reckon that this accounts formuch of Fyne's disgust with him. Good little Fyne. You have no ideawhat infernal mischief he had worked during his call at the hotel. Butthen who could have suspected Anthony of being a heroic creature. Thereare several kinds of heroism and one of them at least is idiotic. It isthe one which wears the aspect of sublime delicacy. It is apparentlythe one of which the son of the delicate poet was capable."
He certainly resembled his father, who, by the way, wore out two womenwithout any satisfaction to himself, because they did not come up to hissupra-refined standard of the delicacy which is so perceptible in hisverses. That's your poet. He demands too much from others. Theinarticulate son had set up a standard for himself with that need forembodying in his conduct the dreams, the passion, the impulses the poetputs into arrangements of verses, which are dearer to him than his ownself--and may make his own self appear sublime in the eyes of otherpeople, and even in his own eyes.
Did Anthony wish to appear sublime in his own eyes? I should not liketo make that charge; though indeed there are other, less noble,ambitions at which the world does not dare to smile. But I don't thinkso; I do not even think that there was in what he did a conscious andlofty confidence in himself, a particularly pronounced sense of powerwhich leads men so often into impossible or equivocal situations.Looked at abstractedly (the way in which truth is often seen in its realshape) his life had been a life of solitude and silence--and desire.
Chance had thrown that girl in his way; and if we may smile at hisviolent conquest of Flora de Barral we must admit also that this eagerappropriation was truly the act of a man of solitude and desire; a manalso, who, unless a complete imbecile, must have been a man of long andardent reveries wherein the faculty of sincere passion matures slowly inthe unexplored recesses of the heart. And I know also that a passion,dominating or tyrannical, invading the whole man and subjugating all hisfaculties to its own unique end, may conduct him whom it spurs anddrives, into all sorts of adventures, to the brink of unfathomabledangers, to the limits of folly, and madness, and death.
To the man then of a silence made only more impressive by theinarticulate thunders and mutters of the great seas, an utter strangerto the clatter of tongues, there comes the muscular little Fyne, themost marked representative of that mankind whose voice is so strange tohim, the husband of his sister, a personality standing out from themisty and remote multitude. He comes and throws at him more talk thanhe had ever heard boomed out in an hour, and certainly touching thedeepest things Anthony had ever discovered in himself, and flings wordslike "unfair" whose very sound is abhorrent to him. Unfair! Undueadvantage! He! Unfair to that girl? Cruel to her!
No scorn could stand against the impression of such charges advancedwith heat and conviction. They shook him. They were yet vibrating inthe air of that stuffy hotel-room, terrific, disturbing, impossible toget rid of, when the door opened and Flora de Barral entered.
He did not even notice that she was late. He was sitting on a sofaplunged in gloom. Was it true? Having himself always said exactly whathe meant he imagined that people (unless they were liars, which ofcourse his brother-in-law could not be) never said more than they meant.The deep chest voice of little Fyne was still in his ear. "He knows,"Anthony said to himself. He thought he had better go away and never seeher again. But she stood there before him accusing and appealing. Howcould he abandon her? That
was out of the question. She had no one.Or rather she had someone. That father. Anthony was willing to takehim at her valuation. This father may have been the victim of the mostatrocious injustice. But what could a man coming out of jail do? Anold man too. And then--what sort of man? What would become of themboth? Anthony shuddered slightly and the faint smile with which Florahad entered the room faded on her lips. She was used to his impetuoustenderness. She was no longer afraid of it. But she had never seen himlook like this before, and she suspected at once some new cruelty oflife. He got up with his usual ardour but as if sobered by a momentousresolve and said:
"No. I can't let you out of my sight. I have seen you. You have toldme your story. You are honest. You have never told me you loved me."
She waited, saying to herself that he had never given her time, that hehad never asked her! And that, in truth, she did not know!
I am inclined to believe that she did not. As abundance of experienceis not precisely her lot in life, a woman is seldom an expert in mattersof sentiment. It is the man who can and generally does "see himself"pretty well inside and out. Women's self-possession is an outwardthing; inwardly they flutter, perhaps because they are, or they feelthemselves to be, encaged. All this speaking generally. In Flora deBarral's particular case ever since Anthony had suddenly broken his wayinto her hopeless and cruel existence she lived like a person liberatedfrom a condemned cell by a natural cataclysm, a tempest, an earthquake;not absolutely terrified, because nothing can be worse than the eve ofexecution, but stunned, bewildered--abandoning herself passively. Shedid not want to make a sound, to move a limb. She hadn't the strength.What was the good? And deep down, almost unconsciously she was seducedby the feeling of being supported by this violence. A sensation she hadnever experienced before in her life.
She felt as if this whirlwind were calming down somehow! As if thisfeeling of support, which was tempting her to close her eyes deliriouslyand let herself be carried on and on into the unknown undefiled by vileexperiences, were less certain, had wavered threateningly. She tried toread something in his face, in that energetic kindly face to which shehad become accustomed so soon. But she was not yet capable ofunderstanding its expression. Scared, discouraged on the threshold ofadolescence, plunged in moral misery of the bitterest kind, she had notlearned to read--not that sort of language.
If Anthony's love had been as egoistic as love generally is, it wouldhave been greater than the egoism of his vanity--or of his generosity,if you like--and all this could not have happened. He would not havehit upon that renunciation at which one does not know whether to grin orshudder. It is true too that then his love would not have fasteneditself upon the unhappy daughter of de Barral. But it was a love bornof that rare pity which is not akin to contempt because rooted in anoverwhelmingly strong capacity for tenderness--the tenderness of thefiery predatory kind--the tenderness of silent solitary men, thevoluntary, passionate outcasts of their kind. At the same time I amforced to think that his vanity must have been enormous.
"What big eyes she has," he said to himself amazed. No wonder. She wasstaring at him with all the might of her soul awakening slowly from apoisoned sleep, in which it could only quiver with pain but couldneither expand nor move. He plunged into them breathless and tense,deep, deep, like a mad sailor taking a desperate dive from the mastheadinto the blue unfathomable sea so many men have execrated and loved atthe same time. And his vanity was immense. It had been touched to thequick by that muscular little feminist, Fyne. "I! I! Take advantageof her helplessness. I! Unfair to that creature--that wisp of mist,that white shadow homeless in an ugly dirty world. I could blow heraway with a breath," he was saying to himself with horror. "Never!"All the supremely refined delicacy of tenderness, expressed in so manyfine lines of verse by Carleon Anthony, grew to the size of a passionfilling with inward sobs the big frame of the man who had never in hislife read a single one of those famous sonnets singing of the mosthighly civilised, chivalrous love, of those sonnets which ... You knowthere's a volume of them. My edition has the portrait of the author atthirty, and when I showed it to Mr Powell the other day he exclaimed:"Wonderful! One would think this the portrait of Captain Anthonyhimself if..." I wanted to know what that if was. But Powell could notsay. There was something--a difference. No doubt there was--infineness perhaps. The father, fastidious, cerebral, morbidly shrinkingfrom all contacts, could only sing in harmonious numbers of what the sonfelt with a dumb and reckless sincerity.
Possessed by most strong men's touching illusion as to the frailness ofwomen and their spiritual fragility, it seemed to Anthony that he wouldbe destroying, breaking something very precious inside that being. Infact nothing less than partly murdering her. This seems a very extremeeffect to flow from Fyne's words. But Anthony, unaccustomed to thechatter of the firm earth, never stayed to ask himself what value thesewords could have in Fyne's mouth. And indeed the mere dark sound ofthem was utterly abhorrent to his native rectitude, sea-salted, hardenedin the winds of wide horizons, open as the day.
He wished to blurt out his indignation but she regarded him with anexpectant air which checked him. His visible discomfort made heruneasy. He could only repeat "Oh yes. You are perfectly honest. Youmight have, but I dare say you are right. At any rate you have neversaid anything to me which you didn't mean."
"Never," she whispered after a pause.
He seemed distracted, choking with an emotion she could not understandbecause it resembled embarrassment, a state of mind inconceivable inthat man.
She wondered what it was she had said; remembering that in very truthshe had hardly spoken to him except when giving him the bare outline ofher story which he seemed to have hardly had the patience to hear,waving it perpetually aside with exclamations of horror and anger, withfiercely sombre mutters "Enough! Enough!" and with alarming starts froma forced stillness, as though he meant to rush out at once and takevengeance on somebody. She was saying to herself that he caught herwords in the air, never letting her finish her thought. Honest.Honest. Yes certainly she had been that. Her letter to Mrs Fyne hadbeen prompted by honesty. But she reflected sadly that she had neverknown what to say to him. That perhaps she had nothing to say.
"But you'll find out that I can be honest too," he burst out in amenacing tone, she had learned to appreciate with an amused thrill.
She waited for what was coming. But he hung in the wind. He lookedround the room with disgust as if he could see traces on the walls ofall the casual tenants that had ever passed through it. People hadquarrelled in that room; they had been ill in it, there had been miseryin that room, wickedness, crime perhaps--death most likely. This wasnot a fit place. He snatched up his hat. He had made up his mind. Theship--the ship he had known ever since she came off the stocks, hishome--her shelter--the uncontaminated, honest ship, was the place.
"Let us go on board. We'll talk there," he said. "And you will have tolisten to me. For whatever happens, no matter what they say, I cannotlet you go."
You can't say that (misgivings or no misgivings) she could have doneanything else but go on board. It was the appointed business of thatmorning. During the drive he was silent. Anthony was the last man tocondemn conventionally any human being, to scorn and despise evendeserved misfortune. He was ready to take old de Barral--the convict--on his daughter's valuation without the slightest reserve. But lovelike his, though it may drive one into risky folly by the proudconsciousness of its own strength, has a sagacity of its own. And now,as if lifted up into a higher and serene region by its purpose ofrenunciation, it gave him leisure to reflect for the first time in theselast few days. He said to himself: "I don't know that man. She doesnot know him either. She was barely sixteen when they locked him up.She was a child. What will he say? What will he do? No, he concluded,I cannot leave her behind with that man who would come into the world asif out of a grave."
They went on board in silence, and it was after showing her r
ound andwhen they had returned to the saloon that he assailed her in his fiery,masterful fashion. At first she did not understand. Then when sheunderstood that he was giving her her liberty she went stiff all over,her hand resting on the edge of the table, her face set like a carvingof white marble. It was all over. It was as that abominable governesshad said. She was insignificant, contemptible. Nobody could love her.Humiliation clung to her like a cold shroud--never to be shaken off,unwarmed by this madness of generosity.
"Yes. Here. Your home. I can't give it to you and go away, but it isbig enough for us two. You need not be afraid. If you say so I shallnot even look at you. Remember that grey head of which you have beenthinking night and day. Where is it going to rest? Where else if nothere, where nothing evil can touch it. Don't you understand that Iwon't let you buy shelter from me at the cost of your very soul. Iwon't. You are too much part of me. I have found myself since I cameupon you and I would rather sell my own soul to the devil than let yougo out of my keeping. But I must have the right."
He went away brusquely to shut the door leading on deck and came backthe whole length of the cabin repeating:
"I must have the legal right. Are you ashamed of letting people thinkyou are my wife?"
He opened his arms as if to clasp her to his breast but mastered theimpulse and shook his clenched hands at her, repeating: "I must have theright if only for your father's sake. I must have the right. Wherewould you take him? To that infernal cardboard box-maker. I don't knowwhat keeps me from hunting him up in his virtuous home and bashing hishead in. I can't bear the thought. Listen to me, Flora! Do you hearwhat I am saying to you? You are not so proud that you can't understandthat I as a man have my pride too?"
He saw a tear glide down her white cheek from under each lowered eyelid.Then, abruptly, she walked out of the cabin. He stood for a moment,concentrated, reckoning his own strength, interrogating his heart,before he followed her hastily. Already she had reached the wharf.
At the sound of his pursuing footsteps her strength failed her. Wherecould she escape from this? From this new perfidy of life taking uponitself the form of magnanimity. His very voice was changed. Thesustaining whirlwind had let her down, to stumble on again, weakened bythe fresh stab, bereft of moral support which is wanted in life morethan all the charities of material help. She had never had it. Never.Not from the Fynes. But where to go? Oh yes, this dock--a placid sheetof water close at hand. But there was that old man with whom she hadwalked hand in hand on the parade by the sea. She seemed to see himcoming to meet her, pitiful, a little greyer, with an appealing look andan extended, tremulous arm. It was for her now to take the hand of thatwronged man more helpless than a child. But where could she lead him?Where? And what was she to say to him? What words of cheer, of courageand of hope? There were none. Heaven and earth were mute, unconcernedat their meeting. But this other man was coming up behind her. He wasvery close now. His fiery person seemed to radiate heat, a tinglingvibration into the atmosphere. She was exhausted, careless, afraid tostumble, ready to fall. She fancied she could hear his breathing. Awave of languid warmth overtook her, she seemed to lose touch with theground under her feet; and when she felt him slip his hand under her armshe made no attempt to disengage herself from that grasp which closedupon her limb, insinuating and firm.
He conducted her through the dangers of the quayside. Her sight wasdim. A moving truck was like a mountain gliding by. Men passed by asif in a mist; and the buildings, the sheds, the unexpected open spaces,the ships, had strange, distorted, dangerous shapes. She said toherself that it was good not to be bothered with what all these thingsmeant in the scheme of creation (if indeed anything had a meaning), orwere just piled-up matter without any sense. She felt how she hadalways been unrelated to this world. She was hanging on to it merely bythat one arm grasped firmly just above the elbow. It was a captivity.So be it. Till they got out into the street and saw the hansom waitingoutside the gates Anthony spoke only once, beginning brusquely but in amuch gentler tone than she had ever heard from his lips.
"Of course I ought to have known that you could not care for a man likeme, a stranger. Silence gives consent. Yes? Eh? I don't want any ofthat sort of consent. And unless some day you find you can speak--No!No! I shall never ask you. For all the sign I will give you you may goto your grave with sealed lips. But what I have said you must do!"
He bent his head over her with tender care. At the same time she felther arm pressed and shaken inconspicuously, but in an undeniable manner."You must do it." A little shake that no passer-by could notice; andthis was going on in a deserted part of the dock. "It must be done.You are listening to me--eh? or would you go again to my sister?"
His ironic tone, perhaps from want of use, had an awful gratingferocity.
"Would you go to her?" he pursued in the same strange voice. "Your bestfriend! And say nicely--I am sorry. Would you? No! You couldn't.There are things that even you, poor dear lost girl, couldn't stand.Eh? Die rather. That's it. Of course. Or can you be thinking oftaking your father to that infernal cousin's house. No! Don't speak.I can't bear to think of it. I would follow you there and smash thedoor!"
The catch in his voice astonished her by its resemblance to a sob. Itfrightened her too. The thought that came to her head was: "Hemustn't." He was putting her into the hansom. "Oh! He mustn't, hemustn't." She was still more frightened by the discovery that he wasshaking all over. Bewildered, shrinking into the far off corner,avoiding his eyes, she yet saw the quivering of his mouth and made awild attempt at a smile, which broke the rigidity of her lips and sether teeth chattering suddenly.
"I am not coming with you," he was saying. "I'll tell the man--I can't.Better not. What is it? Are you cold? Come! What is it? Only to goto a confounded stuffy room, a hole of an office. Not a quarter of anhour. I'll come for you--in ten days. Don't think of it too much.Think of no man, woman or child of all that silly crowd cumbering theground. Don't think of me either. Think of yourself. Ha! Nothingwill be able to touch you then--at last. Say nothing. Don't move.I'll have everything arranged; and as long as you don't hate the sightof me--and you don't--there's nothing to be frightened about. One oftheir silly offices with a couple of ink-slingers of no consequence;poor, scribbling devils."
The hansom drove away with Flora de Barral inside, without movement,without thought, only too glad to rest, to be alone and still movingaway without effort, in solitude and silence.
Anthony roamed the streets for hours without being able to remember inthe evening where he had been--in the manner of a happy and exultinglover. But nobody could have thought so from his face, which bore nosigns of blissful anticipation. Exulting indeed he was but it was aspecial sort of exultation which seemed to take him by the throat likean enemy.
Anthony's last words to Flora referred to the registry office where theywere married ten days later. During that time Anthony saw no one oranything, though he went about restlessly, here and there, amongst menand things. This special state is peculiar to common lovers, who areknown to have no eyes for anything except for the contemplation, actualor inward, of one human form which for them contains the soul of thewhole world in all its beauty, perfection, variety and infinity. Itmust be extremely pleasant. But felicity was denied to RoderickAnthony's contemplation. He was not a common sort of lover; and he waspunished for it as if Nature (which it is said abhors a vacuum) were sovery conventional as to abhor every sort of exceptional conduct.Roderick Anthony had begun already to suffer. That is why perhaps hewas so industrious in going about amongst his fellow-men who would havebeen surprised and humiliated, had they known how little solidity andeven existence they had in his eyes. But they could not suspectanything so queer. They saw nothing extraordinary in him during thatfortnight. The proof of this is that they were willing to transactbusiness with him. Obviously they were; since it is then that the offerof chartering his ship for the special purp
ose of proceeding to theWestern Islands was put in his way by a firm of shipbrokers who had nodoubt of his sanity.
He probably looked sane enough for all the practical purposes ofcommercial life. But I am not so certain that he really was quite saneat that time.
However, he jumped at the offer. Providence itself was offering himthis opportunity to accustom the girl to sea-life by a comparativelyshort trip. This was the time when everything that happened, everythinghe heard, casual words, unrelated phrases, seemed a provocation or anencouragement, confirmed him in his resolution. And indeed to be busywith material affairs is the best preservative against reflection,fears, doubts--all these things which stand in the way of achievement.I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sortof relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
And Anthony was extremely careful in preparing for himself and for theluckless Flora, an impossible existence. He went about it with no moretremors than if he had been stuffed with rags or made of iron instead offlesh and blood. An existence, mind you, which, on shore, in the thickof mankind, of varied interests, of distractions, of infiniteopportunities to preserve your distance from each other, is hardlyconceivable; but on board ship, at sea, _en tete-a-tete_ for days andweeks and months together, could mean nothing but mental torture, anexquisite absurdity of torment. He was a simple soul. His hopelesslymasculine ingenuousness is displayed in a touching way by his care toprocure some woman to attend on Flora. The condition of guaranteedperfect respectability gave him moments of anxious thought. When heremembered suddenly his steward's wife he must have exclaimed _eureka_with particular exultation. One does not like to call Anthony an ass.But really to put any woman within scenting distance of such a secretand suppose that she would not track it out! No woman, however simple,could be as ingenuous as that. I don't know how Flora de Barralqualified him in her thoughts when he told her of having done thisamongst other things intended to make her comfortable. I should thinkthat, for all _her_ simplicity, she must have been appalled. He stoodbefore her on the appointed day outwardly calmer than she had ever seenhim before. And this very calmness, that scrupulous attitude which hefelt bound in honour to assume then and for ever, unless she wouldcondescend to make a sign at some future time, added to the heaviness ofher heart innocent of the most pardonable guile.
The night before she had slept better than she had done for the past tennights. Both youth and weariness will assert themselves in the endagainst the tyranny of nerve-racking stress. She had slept but she wokeup with her eyes full of tears. There were no traces of them when shemet him in the shabby little parlour downstairs. She had swallowed themup. She was not going to let him see. She felt bound in honour toaccept the situation for ever and ever unless--Ah, unless ... Shedissembled all her sentiments but it was not duplicity on her part. Allshe wanted was to get at the truth; to see what would come of it.
She beat him at his own honourable game and the thoroughness of herserenity disconcerted Anthony a bit. It was he who stammered when itcame to talking. The suppressed fierceness of his character carried himon after the first word or two masterfully enough. But it was as ifthey both had taken a bite of the same bitter fruit. He was thinkingwith mournful regret not unmixed with surprise: "That fellow Fyne hasbeen telling me the truth. She does not care for me a bit." Ithumiliated him and also increased his compassion for the girl who inthis darkness of life, buffeted and despairing, had fallen into the gripof his stronger will, abandoning herself to his arms as on a night ofshipwreck. Flora on her side with partial insight (for women are neverblind with the complete masculine blindness) looked on him with somepity; and she felt pity for herself too. It was a rejection, a castingout; nothing new to her. But she who supposed all her sensibility deadby this time, discovered in herself a resentment of this ultimatebetrayal. She had no resignation for this one. With a sort of mentalsullenness she said to herself: "Well, I am here. I am here without anynonsense. It is not my fault that I am a mere worthless object ofpity."
And these things which she could tell herself with a clear conscienceserved her better than the passionate obstinacy of purpose could serveRoderick Anthony. She was much more sure of herself than he was. Suchare the advantages of mere rectitude over the most exalted generosity.
And so they went out to get married, the people of the house where shelodged having no suspicion of anything of the sort. They were onlyexcited at a "gentleman friend" (a very fine man too) calling on MissSmith for the first time since she had come to live in the house. Whenshe returned, for she did come back alone, there were allusions made tothat outing. She had to take her meals with these rather vulgar people.The woman of the house, a scraggy, genteel person, tried even toprovoke confidences. Flora's white face with the deep blue eyes did notstrike their hearts as it did the heart of Captain Anthony, as the veryface of the suffering world. Her pained reserve had no power to awethem into decency.
Well, she returned alone--as in fact might have been expected. Afterleaving the Registry Office Flora de Barral and Roderick Anthony hadgone for a walk in a park. It must have been an East-End park but I amnot sure. Anyway that's what they did. It was a sunny day. He said toher: "Everything I have in the world belongs to you. I have seen tothat without troubling my brother-in-law. They have no call tointerfere."
She walked with her hand resting lightly on his arm. He had offered itto her on coming out of the Registry Office, and she had accepted itsilently. Her head drooped, she seemed to be turning matters over inher mind. She said, alluding to the Fynes: "They have been very good tome." At that he exclaimed:
"They have never understood you. Well, not properly. My sister is nota bad woman, but..."
Flora didn't protest; asking herself whether he imagined that he himselfunderstood her so much better. Anthony dismissing his family out of histhoughts went on: "Yes. Everything is yours. I have kept nothing back.As to the piece of paper we have just got from that miserablequill-driver if it wasn't for the law, I wouldn't mind if you tore it uphere, now, on this spot. But don't you do it. Unless you should someday feel that--"
He choked, unexpectedly. She, reflective, hesitated a moment thenmaking up her mind bravely.
"Neither am I keeping anything back from you."
She had said it! But he in his blind generosity assumed that she wasalluding to her deplorable history and hastened to mutter:
"Of course! Of course! Say no more. I have been lying awake thinkingof it all no end of times."
He made a movement with his other arm as if restraining himself fromshaking an indignant fist at the universe; and she never even attemptedto look at him. His voice sounded strangely, incredibly lifeless incomparison with these tempestuous accents that in the broad fields, inthe dark garden had seemed to shake the very earth under her weary andhopeless feet.
She regretted them. Hearing the sigh which escaped her Anthony insteadof shaking his fist at the universe began to pat her hand resting on hisarm and then desisted, suddenly, as though he had burnt himself. Thenafter a silence:
"You will have to go by yourself to-morrow. I ... No, I think Imustn't come. Better not. What you two will have to say to eachother--"
She interrupted him quickly:
"Father is an innocent man. He was cruelly wronged."
"Yes. That's why," Anthony insisted earnestly. "And you are the onlyhuman being that can make it up to him. You alone must reconcile himwith the world if anything can. But of course you shall. You'll haveto find words. Oh you'll know. And then the sight of you, alone, wouldsoothe--"
"He's the gentlest of men," she interrupted again.
Anthony shook his head. "It would take no end of generosity, no end ofgentleness to forgive such a dead set. For my part I would have likedbetter to have been killed and done with at once. It could not havebeen worse for you--and I suppose it was of you that he was thinkingmost while those infernal lawyers were badgering him in cour
t. Of you.And now I think of it perhaps the sight of you may bring it all back tohim. All these years, all these years--and you his child left alone inthe world. I would have gone crazy. For even if he had done wrong--"
"But he hasn't," insisted Flora de Barral with a quite unexpectedfierceness. "You mustn't even suppose it. Haven't you read theaccounts of the trial?"
"I am not supposing anything," Anthony defended himself. He justremembered hearing of the trial. He assured her that he was away fromEngland, the second voyage of the _Ferndale_. He was crossing thePacific from Australia at the time and didn't see any papers for weeksand weeks. He interrupted himself to suggest:
"You had better tell him at once that you are happy."
He had stammered a little, and Flora de Barral uttered a deliberate andconcise "Yes."
A short silence ensued. She withdrew her hand from his arm. Theystopped. Anthony looked as if a totally unexpected catastrophe hadhappened.
"Ah," he said. "You mind..."
"No! I think I had better," she murmured.
"I dare say. I dare say. Bring him along straight on board to-morrow.Stop nowhere."
She had a movement of vague gratitude, a momentary feeling of peacewhich she referred to the man before her. She looked up at Anthony.His face was sombre. He was miles away and muttered as if to himself:
"Where could he want to stop though?"
"There's not a single being on earth that I would want to look at hisdear face now, to whom I would willingly take him," she said extendingher hand frankly and with a slight break in her voice, "but you--Roderick."
He took that hand, felt it very small and delicate in his broad palm.
"That's right. That's right," he said with a conscious and hastyheartiness and, as if suddenly ashamed of the sound of his voice, turnedhalf round and absolutely walked away from the motionless girl. He evenresisted the temptation to look back till it was too late. The gravelpath lay empty to the very gate of the park. She was gone--vanished.He had an impression that he had missed some sort of chance. He feltsad. That excited sense of his own conduct which had kept him up forthe last ten days buoyed him no more. He had succeeded!
He strolled on aimlessly a prey to gentle melancholy. He walked andwalked. There were but few people about in this breathing space of apoor neighbourhood. Under certain conditions of life there is preciouslittle time left for mere breathing. But still a few here and therewere indulging in that luxury; yet few as they were Captain Anthony,though the least exclusive of men, resented their presence. Solitudehad been his best friend. He wanted some place where he could sit downand be alone. And in his need his thoughts turned to the sea which hadgiven him so much of that congenial solitude. There, if always with hisship (but that was an integral part of him) he could always be assolitary as he chose. Yes. Get out to sea!
The night of the town with its strings of lights, rigid, and crossedlike a net of flames, thrown over the sombre immensity of walls, closedround him, with its artificial brilliance overhung by an emphaticblackness, its unnatural animation of a restless, overdriven humanity.His thoughts which somehow were inclined to pity every passing figure,every single person glimpsed under a street lamp, fixed themselves atlast upon a figure which certainly could not have been seen under thelamps on that particular night. A figure unknown to him. A figure shutup within high unscaleable walls of stone or bricks till next morning... The figure of Flora de Barral's father. De Barral the financier--the convict.
There is something in that word with its suggestions of guilt andretribution which arrests the thought. We feel ourselves in thepresence of the power of organised society--a thing mysterious in itselfand still more mysterious in its effect. Whether guilty or innocent, itwas as if old de Barral had been down to the Nether Regions. Impossibleto imagine what he would bring out from there to the light of this worldof uncondemned men. What would he think? What would he have to say?And what was one to say to him?
Anthony, a little awed, as one is by a range of feelings stretchingbeyond one's grasp, comforted himself by the thought that probably theold fellow would have little to say. He wouldn't want to talk about it.No man would. It must have been a real hell to him.
And then Anthony, at the end of the day in which he had gone through amarriage ceremony with Flora de Barral, ceased to think of Flora'sfather except, as in some sort, the captive of his triumph. He turnedto the mental contemplation of the white, delicate and appealing facewith great blue eyes which he had seen weep and wonder and lookprofoundly at him, sometimes with incredulity, sometimes with doubt andpain, but always irresistible in the power to find their way right intohis breast, to stir there a deep response which was something more thanlove--he said to himself,--as men understand it. More? Or was it onlysomething other? Yes. It was something other. More or less.Something as incredible as the fulfilment of an amazing and startlingdream in which he could take the world in his arms--all the sufferingworld--not to possess its pathetic fairness but to console and cherishits sorrow.
Anthony walked slowly to the ship and that night slept without dreams.
Chance: A Tale in Two Parts Page 11
