She had an impatient movement of her shoulders without detaching herself
from the back of the chair. Time! Of course? It was less than forty-
eight hours since she had followed him to London . . . I am no great
clerk at those matters but I murmured vaguely an allusion to special
licences. We couldn't tell what might have happened to-day already. But
she knew better, scornfully. Nothing had happened.
"Nothing's likely to happen before next Friday week,--if then."
This was wonderfully precise. Then after a pause she added that she
should never forgive herself if some effort were not made, an appeal.
"To your brother?" I asked.
"Yes. John ought to go to-morrow. Nine o'clock train."
"So early as that!" I said. But I could not find it in my heart to
pursue this discussion in a jocular tone. I submitted to her several
obvious arguments, dictated apparently by common sense but in reality by
my secret compassion. Mrs. Fyne brushed them aside, with the
semi-conscious egoism of all safe, established, existences. They had
known each other so little. Just three weeks. And of that time, too
short for the birth of any serious sentiment, the first week had to be
deducted. They would hardly look at each other to begin with. Flora
barely consented to acknowledge Captain Anthony's presence. Good
morning--good night--that was all--absolutely the whole extent of their
intercourse. Captain Anthony was a silent man, completely unused to the
society of girls of any sort and so shy in fact that he avoided raising
his eyes to her face at the table. It was perfectly absurd. It was even
inconvenient, embarrassing to her--Mrs. Fyne. After breakfast Flora
would go off by herself for a long walk and Captain Anthony (Mrs. Fyne
referred to him at times also as Roderick) joined the children. But he
was actually too shy to get on terms with his own nieces.
This would have sounded pathetic if I hadn't known the Fyne children who
were at the same time solemn and malicious, and nursed a secret contempt
for all the world. No one could get on terms with those fresh and comely
young monsters! They just tolerated their parents and seemed to have a
sort of mocking understanding among themselves against all outsiders, yet
with no visible affection for each other. They had the habit of
exchanging derisive glances which to a shy man must have been very
trying. They thought their uncle no doubt a bore and perhaps an ass.
I was not surprised to hear that very soon Anthony formed the habit of
crossing the two neighbouring fields to seek the shade of a clump of elms
at a good distance from the cottage. He lay on the grass and smoked his
pipe all the morning. Mrs. Fyne wondered at her brother's indolent
habits. He had asked for books it is true but there were but few in the
cottage. He read them through in three days and then continued to lie
contentedly on his back with no other companion but his pipe. Amazing
indolence! The live-long morning, Mrs. Fyne, busy writing upstairs in
the cottage, could see him out of the window. She had a very long sight,
and these elms were grouped on a rise of the ground. His indolence was
plainly exposed to her criticism on a gentle green slope. Mrs. Fyne
wondered at it; she was disgusted too. But having just then 'commenced
author,' as you know, she could not tear herself away from the
fascinating novelty. She let him wallow in his vice. I imagine Captain
Anthony must have had a rather pleasant time in a quiet way. It was, I
remember, a hot dry summer, favourable to contemplative life out of
doors. And Mrs. Fyne was scandalized. Women don't understand the force
of a contemplative temperament. It simply shocks them. They feel
instinctively that it is the one which escapes best the domination of
feminine influences. The dear girls were exchanging jeering remarks
about "lazy uncle Roderick" openly, in her indulgent hearing. And it was
so strange, she told me, because as a boy he was anything but indolent.
On the contrary. Always active.