Chance

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.