But there was one at least who did not laugh in court. That person was
the accused. The notorious de Barral did not laugh because he was
indignant. He was impervious to words, to facts, to inferences. It
would have been impossible to make him see his guilt or his folly--either
by evidence or argument--if anybody had tried to argue.
Neither did his daughter Flora try to argue with him. The cruelty of her
position was so great, its complications so thorny, if I may express
myself so, that a passive attitude was yet her best refuge--as it had
been before her of so many women.
For that sort of inertia in woman is always enigmatic and therefore
menacing. It makes one pause. A woman may be a fool, a sleepy fool, an
agitated fool, a too awfully noxious fool, and she may even be simply
stupid. But she is never dense. She's never made of wood through and
through as some men are. There is in woman always, somewhere, a spring.
Whatever men don't know about women (and it may be a lot or it may be
very little) men and even fathers do know that much. And that is why so
many men are afraid of them.
Mr. Smith I believe was afraid of his daughter's quietness though of
course he interpreted it in his own way.
He would, as Mr. Powell depicts, sit on the skylight and bend over the
reclining girl, wondering what there was behind the lost gaze under the
darkened eyelids in the still eyes. He would look and look and then he
would say, whisper rather, it didn't take much for his voice to drop to a
mere breath--he would declare, transferring his faded stare to the
horizon, that he would never rest till he had "got her away from that
man."
"You don't know what you are saying, papa."
She would try not to show her weariness, the nervous strain of these two
men's antagonism around her person which was the cause of her languid
attitudes. For as a matter of fact the sea agreed with her.
As likely as not Anthony would be walking on the other side of the deck.
The strain was making him restless. He couldn't sit still anywhere. He
had tried shutting himself up in his cabin; but that was no good. He
would jump up to rush on deck and tramp, tramp up and down that poop till
he felt ready to drop, without being able to wear down the agitation of
his soul, generous indeed, but weighted by its envelope of blood and
muscle and bone; handicapped by the brain creating precise images and
everlastingly speculating, speculating--looking out for signs, watching
for symptoms.