"Tell me, is it so bad as that?"
She put that question sadly, without bitterness. The famous--or
notorious--de Barral had lost his rigidity now. He was bent. Nothing
more deplorably futile than a bent poker. He said nothing. She added
gently, suppressing an uneasy remorseful sigh: "And it might have been worse. You might have found no one, no one in
all this town, no one in all the world, not even me! Poor papa!"
She made a conscience-stricken movement towards him thinking: "Oh! I am
horrible, I am horrible." And old de Barral, scared, tired, bewildered
by the extraordinary shocks of his liberation, swayed over and actually
leaned his head on her shoulder, as if sorrowing over his regained
freedom.
The movement by itself was touching. Flora supporting him lightly
imagined that he was crying; and at the thought that had she smashed in a
quarry that shoulder, together with some other of her bones, this grey
and pitiful head would have had nowhere to rest, she too gave way to
tears. They flowed quietly, easing her overstrained nerves. Suddenly he
pushed her away from him so that her head struck the side of the cab,
pushing himself away too from her as if something had stung him.
All the warmth went out of her emotion. The very last tears turned cold
on her cheek. But their work was done. She had found courage,
resolution, as women do, in a good cry. With his hand covering the upper
part of his face whether to conceal his eyes or to shut out an unbearable
sight, he was stiffening up in his corner to his usual poker-like
consistency. She regarded him in silence. His thin obstinate lips
moved. He uttered the name of the cousin--the man, you remember, who did
not approve of the Fynes, and whom rightly or wrongly little Fyne
suspected of interested motives, in view of de Barral having possibly put
away some plunder, somewhere before the smash.
I may just as well tell you at once that I don't know anything more of
him. But de Barral was of the opinion, speaking in his low voice from
under his hand, that this relation would have been only too glad to have
secured his guidance.
"Of course I could not come forward in my own name, or person. But the
advice of a man of my experience is as good as a fortune to anybody
wishing to venture into finance. The same sort of thing can be done
again."
He shuffled his feet a little, let fall his hand; and turning carefully
toward his daughter his puffy round cheeks, his round chin resting on his
collar, he bent on her the faded, resentful gaze of his pale eyes, which
were wet.