"No, no!" protested Mrs. Fyne. "It is your former governess who is
horrid and odious. She is a vile woman. I cannot tell you that she was
mad but I think she must have been beside herself with rage and full of
evil thoughts. You must try not to think of these abominations, my dear
child."
They were not fit for anyone to think of much, Mrs. Fyne commented to me
in a curt positive tone. All that had been very trying. The girl was
like a creature struggling under a net.
"But how can I forget? she called my father a cheat and a swindler! Do
tell me Mrs. Fyne that it isn't true. It can't be true. How can it be
true?"
She sat up in bed with a sudden wild motion as if to jump out and flee
away from the sound of the words which had just passed her own lips. Mrs.
Fyne restrained her, soothed her, induced her at last to lay her head on
her pillow again, assuring her all the time that nothing this woman had
had the cruelty to say deserved to be taken to heart. The girl,
exhausted, cried quietly for a time. It may be she had noticed something
evasive in Mrs. Fyne's assurances. After a while, without stirring, she
whispered brokenly: "That awful woman told me that all the world would call papa these awful
names. Is it possible? Is it possible?"
Mrs. Fyne kept silent.
"Do say something to me, Mrs. Fyne," the daughter of de Barral insisted
in the same feeble whisper.
Again Mrs. Fyne assured me that it had been very trying. Terribly
trying. "Yes, thanks, I will." She leaned back in the chair with folded
arms while I poured another cup of tea for her, and Fyne went out to
pacify the dog which, tied up under the porch, had become suddenly very
indignant at somebody having the audacity to walk along the lane. Mrs.
Fyne stirred her tea for a long time, drank a little, put the cup down
and said with that air of accepting all the consequences: "Silence would have been unfair. I don't think it would have been kind
either. I told her that she must be prepared for the world passing a
very severe judgment on her father . . . "
* * * * *
"Wasn't it admirable," cried Marlow interrupting his narrative.
"Admirable!" And as I looked dubiously at this unexpected enthusiasm he
started justifying it after his own manner.
"I say admirable because it was so characteristic. It was perfect.
Nothing short of genius could have found better. And this was nature! As
they say of an artist's work: this was a perfect Fyne.
Compassion--judiciousness--something correctly measured. None of your
dishevelled sentiment. And right! You must confess that nothing could
have been more right. I had a mind to shout "Brava! Brava!" but I did
not do that. I took a piece of cake and went out to bribe the Fyne dog
into some sort of self-control. His sharp comical yapping was
unbearable, like stabs through one's brain, and Fyne's deeply modulated
remonstrances abashed the vivacious animal no more than the deep, patient
murmur of the sea abashes a nigger minstrel on a popular beach. Fyne was
beginning to swear at him in low, sepulchral tones when I appeared. The
dog became at once wildly demonstrative, half strangling himself in his
collar, his eyes and tongue hanging out in the excess of his
incomprehensible affection for me. This was before he caught sight of
the cake in my hand. A series of vertical springs high up in the air
followed, and then, when he got the cake, he instantly lost his interest
in everything else.