Mrs. Fyne heard all this without turning her head away from the window. Fyne on the hearthrug had to listen and to look on too. I shall not try to form a surmise as to the real nature of the suspense. Their very goodness must have made it very anxious. The girl’s hands were lying in her lap; her head was lowered as if in deep thought; and the other went on delivering a sort of homily. Ingratitude was condemned in it, the sinfulness of pride was pointed out—together with the proverbial fact that it “goes before a fall.” There were also some sound remarks as to the danger of nonsensical notions and the disadvantages of a quick temper. It sets one’s best friends against one. “And if anybody ever wanted friends in the world it’s you, my girl.” Even respect for parental authority was invoked. “In the first hour of his trouble your father wrote to me to take care of you—don’t forget it. Yes, to me, just a plain man, rather than to any of his fine West-End friends. You can’t get over that. And a father’s a father no matter what a mess he’s got himself into. You ain’t going to throw over your own father—are you?”
It was difficult to say whether he was more absurd than cruel or more cruel than absurd. Mrs. Fyne, with the fine ear of a woman, seemed to detect a jeering intention in his meanly unctuous tone, something more vile than mere cruelty. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw the girl raise her two hands to her head, then let them fall again on her lap. Fyne in front of the fire was like the victim of an unholy spell—bereft of motion and speech but obviously in pain. It was a short pause of perfect silence, and then that “odious creature” (he must have been really a remarkable individual in his way) struck out into sarcasm.
“Well? . . . ” Again a silence. “If you have fixed it up with the lady and gentleman present here for your board and lodging you had better say so. I don’t want to interfere in a bargain I know nothing of. But I wonder how your father will take it when he comes out . . . or don’t you expect him ever to come out?”
At that moment, Mrs. Fyne told me she met the girl’s eyes. There was that in them which made her shut her own. She also felt as though she would have liked to put her fingers in her ears. She restrained herself, however; and the “plain man” passed in his appalling versatility from sarcasm to veiled menace.
“You have—eh? Well and good. But before I go home let me ask you, my girl, to think if by any chance you throwing us over like this won’t be rather bad for your father later on? Just think it over.”
He looked at his victim with an air of cunning mystery. She jumped up so suddenly that he started back. Mrs. Fyne rose too, and even the spell was removed from her husband. But the girl dropped again into the chair and turned her head to look at Mrs. Fyne. This time it was no accidental meeting of fugitive glances. It was a deliberate communication. To my question as to its nature Mrs. Fyne said she did not know. “Was it appealing?” I suggested. “No,” she said. “Was it frightened, angry, crushed, resigned?” “No! No! Nothing of these.” But it had frightened her. She remembered it to this day. She had been ever since fancying she could detect the lingering reflection of that look in all the girl’s glances. In the attentive, in the casual—even in the grateful glances—in the expression of the softest moods.
“Has she her soft moods, then?” I asked with interest.
Mrs Fyne, much moved by her recollections, heeded not my inquiry. All her mental energy was concentrated on the nature of that memorable glance. The general tradition of mankind teaches us that glances occupy a considerable place in the self-expression of women. Mrs. Fyne was trying honestly to give me some idea, as much perhaps to satisfy her own uneasiness as my curiosity. She was frowning in the effort as you see sometimes a child do (what is delightful in women is that they so often resemble intelligent children—I mean the crustiest, the sourest, the most battered of them do—at times). She was frowning, I say, and I was beginning to smile faintly at her when all at once she came out with something totally unexpected.
“It was horribly merry,” she said.
I suppose she must have been satisfied by my sudden gravity because she looked at me in a friendly manner.