Chance by Joseph Conrad (free novel 24 .TXT) 📖

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 class 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 finishing 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 assured 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 authorized 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 appetite 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 amusement, 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.

CHAPTER FIVE—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 passed 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—”

Fyne, manifestly not attending to what I was saying, directed straight at me his worried solemn eyes and struck in:

“Yes, yes.  Very likely.  But you will come—won’t you?”

I had made up my mind that no Fyne of either sex would make me walk three miles (there and back to their cottage) on this fine day.  If the Fynes had been an average sociable couple one knows only because leisure must be got through somehow, I would have made short work of that special invitation.  But they were not that.  Their undeniable humanity had to be acknowledged.  At the same time I wanted to have my own way.  So I proposed that I should be allowed the pleasure of offering them a cup of tea at my rooms.

A short reflective pause—and Fyne accepted eagerly in his own and his wife’s name.  A moment after I heard the click of the gate-latch and then in an ecstasy of barking from his demonstrative dog his serious head went past my window on the other side of the hedge, its troubled gaze fixed forward, and the mind inside obviously employed in earnest speculation of an intricate nature.  One at least of his wife’s girl-friends had become more than a mere shadow for him.  I surmised however that it was not of the girl-friend but of his wife that Fyne was thinking.  He was an excellent husband.

I prepared myself for the afternoon’s hospitalities, calling in the farmer’s wife and reviewing with her the resources of the house and the village.  She was a helpful woman.  But the resources of my sagacity I did not review.  Except in the gross material sense of the afternoon tea I made no preparations for Mrs. Fyne.

It was impossible for me to make any such preparations.  I could not tell what sort of sustenance she would look for from my sagacity.  And as to taking stock of the wares of my mind no one I imagine is anxious to do that sort of thing if it can be avoided.  A vaguely grandiose state of mental self-confidence is much too agreeable to be disturbed recklessly by such a delicate investigation.  Perhaps if I had had a helpful woman at my elbow, a dear, flattering acute, devoted woman . . . There are in life moments when one positively regrets not being married.  No!  I don’t exaggerate.  I have said—moments, not years or even days.  Moments.  The farmer’s wife obviously could not be asked to assist.  She could not have been expected to possess the necessary insight and I doubt whether she would have known how to be flattering enough.  She was being helpful in her own way, with an extraordinary black bonnet on her head, a good mile off by that time, trying to discover in the village shops a piece of eatable cake.  The pluck of women!  The optimism of the dear creatures!

And she managed to find something which looked eatable.  That’s all I know as I had no opportunity to observe the more intimate effects of that comestible.  I myself never eat cake, and Mrs. Fyne, when she arrived punctually, brought with her no appetite for cake.  She had no appetite for anything.  But she had a thirst—the sign of deep, of tormenting emotion.  Yes it was emotion, not the brilliant sunshine—more brilliant than warm as is the way of our discreet self-repressed, distinguished, insular sun, which would not turn a real lady scarlet—not on any account.  Mrs. Fyne looked even cool.  She wore a white skirt and coat; a white hat with a large brim reposed on her smoothly arranged hair.  The coat was cut something like an army mess-jacket and the style suited her.  I dare say there are many youthful subalterns, and not the worst-looking too, who resemble Mrs. Fyne in the type of face, in the sunburnt complexion, down to that something alert in bearing.  But not many would have had that aspect breathing a readiness to assume any responsibility under Heaven.  This is the sort of courage which ripens late in life and of course Mrs. Fyne was of mature years for all her unwrinkled face.

She looked round the room, told