“Yes, Mrs. Fyne,” I said, smiling no longer. “I see. It would have been horrible even on the stage.”
“Ah!” she interrupted me—and I really believe her change of attitude back to folded arms was meant to check a shudder. “But it wasn’t on the stage, and it was not with her lips that she laughed.”
“Yes. It must have been horrible,” I assented. “And then she had to go away ultimately—I suppose. You didn’t say anything?”
“No,” said Mrs. Fyne. “I rang the bell and told one of the maids to go and bring the hat and coat out of the cab. And then we waited.”
I don’t think that there ever was such waiting unless possibly in a jail at some moment or other on the morning of an execution. The servant appeared with the hat and coat, and then, still as on the morning of an execution, when the condemned, I believe, is offered a breakfast, Mrs. Fyne, anxious that the white-faced girl should swallow something warm (if she could) before leaving her house for an interminable drive through raw cold air in a damp four-wheeler—Mrs. Fyne broke the awful silence: “You really must try to eat something,” in her best resolute manner. She turned to the “odious person” with the same determination. “Perhaps you will sit down and have a cup of coffee, too.”
The worthy “employer of labour” sat down. He might have been awed by Mrs. Fyne’s peremptory manner—for she did not think of conciliating him then. He sat down, provisionally, like a man who finds himself much against his will in doubtful company. He accepted ungraciously the cup handed to him by Mrs. Fyne, took an unwilling sip or two and put it down as if there were some moral contamination in the coffee of these “swells.” Between whiles he directed mysteriously inexpressive glances at little Fyne, who, I gather, had no breakfast that morning at all. Neither had the girl. She never moved her hands from her lap till her appointed guardian got up, leaving his cup half full.
“Well. If you don’t mean to take advantage of this lady’s kind offer I may just as well take you home at once. I want to begin my day—I do.”
After a few more dumb, leaden-footed minutes while Flora was putting on her hat and jacket, the Fynes without moving, without saying anything, saw these two leave the room.
“She never looked back at us,” said Mrs. Fyne. “She just followed him out. I’ve never had such a crushing impression of the miserable dependence of girls—of women. This was an extreme case. But a young man—any man—could have gone to break stones on the roads or something of that kind—or enlisted—or—”
It was very true. Women can’t go forth on the high roads and by-ways to pick up a living even when dignity, independence, or existence itself are at stake. But what made me interrupt Mrs. Fyne’s tirade was my profound surprise at the fact of that respectable citizen being so willing to keep in his home the poor girl for whom it seemed there was no place in the world. And not only willing but anxious. I couldn’t credit him with generous impulses. For it seemed obvious to me from what I had learned that, to put it mildly, he was not an impulsive person.