“What on earth are you so dismal about?” I cried, being genuinely surprised and puzzled. “One would think the girl was a state prisoner under your care.”
And suddenly I became still more surprised at myself, at the way I had somehow taken for granted things which did appear queer when one thought them out.
“But why this secrecy? Why did they elope—if it is an elopement? Was the girl afraid of your wife? And your brother-in-law? What on earth possesses him to make a clandestine match of it? Was he afraid of your wife too?”
Fyne made an effort to rouse himself.
“Of course my brother-in-law, Captain Anthony, the son of …” He checked himself as if trying to break a bad habit. “He would be persuaded by her. We have been most friendly to the girl!”
“She struck me as a foolish and inconsiderate little person. But why should you and your wife take to heart so strongly mere folly—or even a want of consideration?”
“It’s the most unscrupulous action,” declared Fyne weightily—and sighed.
“I suppose she is poor,” I observed after a short silence. “But after all …”
“You don’t know who she is.” Fyne had regained his average solemnity.
I confessed that I had not caught her name when his wife had introduced us to each other. “It was something beginning with an S- wasn’t it?” And then with the utmost coolness Fyne remarked that it did not matter. The name was not her name.
“Do you mean to say that you made a young lady known to me under a false name?” I asked, with the amused feeling that the days of wonders and portents had not passed away yet. That the eminently serious Fynes should do such an exceptional thing was simply staggering. With a more hasty enunciation than usual little Fyne was sure that I would not demand an apology for this irregularity if I knew what her real name was. A sort of warmth crept into his deep tone.
“We have tried to befriend that girl in every way. She is the daughter and only child of de Barral.”
Evidently he expected to produce a sensation; he kept his eyes fixed upon me prepared for some sign of it. But I merely returned his intense, awaiting gaze. For a time we stared at each other. Conscious of being reprehensibly dense I groped in the darkness of my mind: De Barral, De Barral—and all at once noise and light burst on me as if a window of my memory had been suddenly flung open on a street in the City. De Barral! But could it be the same? Surely not!
“The financier?” I suggested half incredulous.
“Yes,” said Fyne; and in this instance his native solemnity of tone seemed to be strangely appropriate. “The convict.”
Marlow looked at me, significantly, and remarked in an explanatory tone:
“One somehow never thought of de Barral as having any children, or any other home than the offices of the “Orb”; or any other existence, associations or interests than financial. I see you remember the crash …”
“I was away in the Indian Seas at the time,” I said. “But of course—”
“Of course,” Marlow struck in. “All the world … You may wonder at my slowness in recognizing the name. But you know that my memory is merely a mausoleum of proper names. There they lie inanimate, awaiting the magic touch—and not very prompt in arising when called, either. The name is the first thing I forget of a man. It is but just to add that frequently it is also the last, and this accounts for my possession of a good many anonymous memories. In de Barral’s case, he got put away in my mausoleum in company with so many names of his own creation that really he had to throw off a monstrous heap of grisly bones before he stood before me at the call of the wizard Fyne. The fellow had a pretty fancy in names: the “Orb” Deposit Bank, the “Sceptre” Mutual Aid Society, the “Thrift and Independence” Association. Yes, a very pretty taste in names; and nothing else besides—absolutely nothing—no other merit. Well yes. He had another name, but that’s pure luck—his own name of de Barral which he did not invent. I don’t think that a mere Jones or Brown could have fished out from the depths of the Incredible such a colossal manifestation of human folly as that man did. But it may be that I am underestimating the alacrity of human folly in rising to the bait. No doubt I am. The greed of that absurd monster is incalculable, unfathomable, inconceivable. The career of de Barral demonstrates that it will rise to a naked hook. He didn’t lure it with a fairy tale. He hadn’t enough imagination for it …”
“Was he a foreigner?” I asked. “It’s clearly a French name. I suppose it was his name?”
“Oh, he didn’t invent it. He was born to it, in Bethnal Green, as it came out during the proceedings. He was in the habit of alluding to his Scotch connections. But every great man has done that. The mother, I believe, was Scotch, right enough. The father de Barral whatever his origins retired from the Customs Service (tide-waiter I think), and started lending money in a very, very small way in the East End to people connected with the docks, stevedores, minor barge-owners, ship-chandlers, tally clerks, all sorts of very small fry. He made his living at it. He was a very decent man I believe. He had enough influence to place his only son as junior clerk in the account department of one of the Dock Companies. “Now, my boy,” he said to him, “I’ve given you a fine start.” But de Barral didn’t start. He stuck. He gave perfect satisfaction. At the end of three years he got a small rise of salary and went out courting in the evenings. He went courting the daughter of an old sea-captain who was a churchwarden of his parish and lived in an old badly preserved Georgian house with a garden: one of these houses standing in a reduced bit of “grounds” that you discover in a labyrinth of the most sordid streets, exactly alike and composed of six-roomed hutches.
Some of them were the vicarages of slum parishes. The old sailor had got hold of one cheap, and de Barral got hold of his daughter—which was a good bargain for him. The old sailor was very good to the young couple and very fond of their little girl. Mrs. de Barral was an equable, unassuming woman, at that time with a fund of simple gaiety, and with no ambitions; but, woman-like, she longed for change and for something interesting to happen now and then. It was she who encouraged de Barral to accept the offer of a post in the west-end branch of a great bank. It appears he shrank from such a great adventure for a long time. At last his wife’s arguments prevailed. Later on she used to say: ‘It’s the only time he ever listened to me; and I wonder now if it hadn’t been better for me to die before I ever made him go into that bank.’
You may be surprised at my knowledge of these details. Well, I had them ultimately from Mrs. Fyne. Mrs. Fyne while yet Miss Anthony, in her days of bondage, knew Mrs. de Barral in her days of exile. Mrs. de Barral was living then in a big stone mansion with mullioned windows in a large damp park, called the Priory, adjoining the village where the refined poet had built himself a house.
These were the days of de Barral’s success. He had bought the place without ever seeing it and had packed off his wife and child at once there to take possession. He did not know what to do with them in London. He himself had a suite of rooms in an hotel. He gave there dinner parties followed by cards in the evening. He had developed the gambling passion—or else a mere card mania—but at any rate he played heavily, for relaxation, with a lot of dubious hangers on.
Meantime Mrs. de Barral, expecting him every day, lived at the Priory, with a carriage and pair, a governess for the child and many servants. The village people would see her through the railings wandering under the trees with her little girl lost in her strange surroundings. Nobody ever came near her. And there she died as some faithful and delicate animals die—from neglect, absolutely from neglect, rather unexpectedly and without any fuss. The village was sorry for her because, though obviously worried about something, she was good to the poor and was always ready for a chat with any of the humble folks. Of course they knew that she wasn’t a lady—not what you would call a real lady. And even her acquaintance with Miss Anthony was only a cottage-door, a village-street acquaintance. Carleon Anthony was a tremendous aristocrat (his father had been a “restoring”