Chance

and ‘my dear,’ remarking to her that she was not very big, ‘there’s not much of you my dear,’ in a familiarly disparaging tone. Then turning to Mrs. Fyne, and quite loud ‘She’s very white in the face. Why’s that?’ To this Mrs. Fyne made no reply. She had put the girl’s hair up that morning with her own hands. It changed her very much, observed Fyne. He, naturally, played a subordinate, merely approving part. All he could do for Miss de Barral personally was to go downstairs and put her into the fly himself, while Miss de Barral’s nearest relation, having been shouldered out of the way, stood by, with an umbrella and a little black bag, watching this proceeding with grim amusement, as it seemed. It was difficult to guess what the girl thought or what she felt. She no longer looked a child. She whispered to Fyne a faint ‘Thank you,’ from the fly, and he said to her in very distinct tones and while still holding her hand: ‘Pray don’t forget to write fully to my wife in a day or two, Miss de Barral.’ Then Fyne stepped back and the cousin climbed into the fly muttering quite audibly: ‘I don’t think you’ll be troubled much with her in the future;’ without however looking at Fyne on whom he did not even bestow a nod. The fly drove away.

V

The Tea-Party

“ ‘Amiable personality,’ I observed seeing Fyne on the point of falling into a brown study. But I could not help adding with meaning: ‘He hadn’t the gift of prophecy though.’

“Fyne got up suddenly with a muttered ‘No, evidently not.’ He was gloomy, hesitating. I supposed that he would not wish to play chess that afternoon. This would dispense me from leaving my rooms on a day much too fine to be wasted in walking exercise. And I was disappointed when picking up his cap he intimated to me his hope of seeing me at the cottage about four o’clock⁠—as usual.

“ ‘It wouldn’t be as usual.’ I put a particular stress on that remark. He admitted, after a short reflection, that it would not be. No. Not as usual. In fact it was his wife who hoped, rather, for my presence. She had formed a very favourable opinion of my practical sagacity.

“This was the first I ever heard of it. I had never suspected that Mrs. Fyne had taken the trouble to distinguish in me the signs of sagacity or folly. The few words we had exchanged last night in the excitement⁠—or the bother⁠—of the girl’s disappearance, were the first moderately significant words which had ever passed between us. I had felt myself always to be in Mrs. Fyne’s view her husband’s chess-player and nothing else⁠—a convenience⁠—almost an implement.

“ ‘I am highly flattered,’ I said. ‘I have always heard that there are no limits to feminine intuition; and now I am half inclined to believe it is so. But still I fail to see in what way my sagacity, practical or otherwise, can be of any service to Mrs. Fyne. One man’s sagacity is very much like any other man’s sagacity. And with you at hand⁠—’

“Fyne, manifestly not attending to what I was saying, directed straight at me his worried solemn eyes and struck in:

“ ‘Yes, yes. Very likely. But you will come⁠—won’t you?’

“I had made up my mind that no Fyne of either sex would make me walk three miles (there and back to their cottage) on this fine day. If the Fynes had been an average sociable couple one knows only because leisure must be got through somehow, I would have made short work of that special invitation. But they were not that. Their undeniable humanity had to be acknowledged. At the same time I wanted to have my own way. So I proposed that I should be allowed the pleasure of offering them a cup of tea at my rooms.

“A short reflective pause⁠—and Fyne accepted eagerly in his own and his wife’s name. A moment after I heard the click of the gate-latch and then in an ecstasy of barking from his demonstrative dog his serious head went past my window on the other side of the hedge, its troubled gaze fixed forward, and the mind inside obviously employed in earnest speculation of an intricate nature. One at least of his wife’s girlfriends had become more than a mere shadow for him. I surmised however that it was not of the girlfriend but of his wife that Fyne was thinking. He was an excellent husband.

“I prepared myself for the afternoon’s hospitalities, calling in the farmer’s wife and reviewing with her the resources of the house and the village. She was a helpful woman. But the resources of my sagacity I did not review. Except in the gross material sense of the afternoon tea I made no preparations for Mrs. Fyne.

“It was impossible for me to make any such preparations. I could not tell what sort of sustenance she would look for from my sagacity. And as to taking stock of the wares of my mind no one I imagine is anxious to do that sort of thing if it can be avoided. A vaguely grandiose state of mental self-confidence is much too agreeable to be disturbed recklessly by such a delicate investigation. Perhaps if I had had a helpful woman at my elbow, a dear, flattering acute, devoted woman⁠ ⁠… There are in life moments when one positively regrets not being married. No! I don’t exaggerate. I have said⁠—moments, not years or even days. Moments. The farmer’s wife obviously could not be asked to assist. She could not have been expected to possess the necessary insight and I doubt whether she would have known how to be flattering enough. She was being helpful in her own way, with an extraordinary black bonnet on her head, a good mile off by that time, trying to discover in the village shops a piece of eatable cake.