No. I suppose the girl Flora went on that errand reasonably. And then,
why! This was the moment for which she had lived. It was her only point
of contact with existence. Oh yes. She had been assisted by the Fynes.
And kindly. Certainly. Kindly. But that's not enough. There is a kind
way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their
hearts while it saves their outer envelope. How cold, how infernally
cold she must have felt--unless when she was made to burn with
indignation or shame. Man, we know, cannot live by bread alone but hang
me if I don't believe that some women could live by love alone. If there
be a flame in human beings fed by varied ingredients earthly and
spiritual which tinge it in different hues, then I seem to see the colour
of theirs. It is azure . . . What the devil are you laughing at . . . "
Marlow jumped up and strode out of the shadow as if lifted by indignation
but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know
women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine.
But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt,
crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool
of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And
when there is a spark there can always be a flame . . . "
He went back into the shadow and sat down again.
"I don't mean to say that Flora de Barral was one of the sort that could
live by love alone. In fact she had managed to live without. But still,
in the distrust of herself and of others she looked for love, any kind of
love, as women will. And that confounded jail was the only spot where
she could see it--for she had no reason to distrust her father.
She was there in good time. I see her gazing across the road at these
walls which are, properly speaking, awful. You do indeed seem to feel
along the very lines and angles of the unholy bulk, the fall of time,
drop by drop, hour by hour, leaf by leaf, with a gentle and implacable
slowness. And a voiceless melancholy comes over one, invading,
overpowering like a dream, penetrating and mortal like poison.
When de Barral came out she experienced a sort of shock to see that he
was exactly as she remembered him. Perhaps a little smaller. Otherwise
unchanged. You come out in the same clothes, you know. I can't tell
whether he was looking for her. No doubt he was. Whether he recognized
her? Very likely. She crossed the road and at once there was reproduced
at a distance of years, as if by some mocking witchcraft, the sight so
familiar on the Parade at Brighton of the financier de Barral walking
with his only daughter. One comes out of prison in the same clothes one
wore on the day of condemnation, no matter how long one has been put away
there. Oh, they last! They last! But there is something which is
preserved by prison life even better than one's discarded clothing. It
is the force, the vividness of one's sentiments. A monastery will do
that too; but in the unholy claustration of a jail you are thrown back
wholly upon yourself--for God and Faith are not there. The people
outside disperse their affections, you hoard yours, you nurse them into
intensity. What they let slip, what they forget in the movement and
changes of free life, you hold on to, amplify, exaggerate into a rank
growth of memories. They can look with a smile at the troubles and pains
of the past; but you can't. Old pains keep on gnawing at your heart, old
desires, old deceptions, old dreams, assailing you in the dead stillness
of your present where nothing moves except the irrecoverable minutes of
your life.