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He repeated: 'Very nice, cheery, clever girls. I sat down on a bank against a hedge and began to cry." "You must have astonished him not a little," I observed. Anthony, it seems, remained on the road looking down at her. He did not offer to approach her, neither did he make any other movement or gesture. Flora de Barral told me all this.
But it may be that I am underestimating the alacrity of human folly in rising to the bait. No doubt I am. The greed of that absurd monster is incalculable, unfathomable, inconceivable. The career of de Barral demonstrates that it will rise to a naked hook. He didn't lure it with a fairy tale. He hadn't enough imagination for it . . . " "Was he a foreigner?" I asked. "It's clearly a French name.
"After all I am still de Barral, the de Barral. Didn't you remember that?" "Papa," said Flora; "listen. It's you who must remember that there is no longer a de Barral . . . " He looked at her sideways anxiously. "There is Mr. Smith, whom no harm, no trouble, no wicked lies of evil people can ever touch." "Mr. Smith," he breathed out slowly. "Where does he belong to? There's not even a Miss Smith."
The housekeeper was distant in her manner. Moreover Mrs. de Barral was no foolish gossiping woman. But she made some confidences to Miss Anthony. Such wealth was a terrific thing to have thrust upon one she affirmed. Once she went so far as to confess that she was dying with anxiety. I am sure he won't know what to do with all that money people are giving to him to take care of for them.
He's one of those people who form no theories about facts. Straightforward people seldom do. Neither have they much penetration. But in this case it did not matter. I we have already the inner knowledge. We know the history of Flora de Barral. We know something of Captain Anthony. We have the secret of the situation. The man was intoxicated with the pity and tenderness of his part. Oh yes!
He had enough influence to place his only son as junior clerk in the account department of one of the Dock Companies. "Now, my boy," he said to him, "I've given you a fine start." But de Barral didn't start. He stuck. He gave perfect satisfaction. At the end of three years he got a small rise of salary and went out courting in the evenings.
He had developed the gambling passion or else a mere card mania but at any rate he played heavily, for relaxation, with a lot of dubious hangers on. Meantime Mrs. de Barral, expecting him every day, lived at the Priory, with a carriage and pair, a governess for the child and many servants.
I wondered greatly at my fat little financier's civility to that dubious personage when he asked me, as we resumed our respective seats, whether I knew who it was that had just gone out. On my shaking my head negatively he smiled queerly, said "De Barral," and enjoyed my surprise. Then becoming grave: "That's a deep fellow, if you like.
And now I think of it perhaps the sight of you may bring it all back to him. All these years, all these years and you his child left alone in the world. I would have gone crazy. For even if he had done wrong " "But he hasn't," insisted Flora de Barral with a quite unexpected fierceness. "You mustn't even suppose it. Haven't you read the accounts of the trial?"
Just try to enter into the feelings of a man whose imagination wakes up at the very moment he is about to enter the tomb . . . " "You must not think," went on Marlow after a pause, "that on that morning with Fyne I went consciously in my mind over all this, let us call it information; no, better say, this fund of knowledge which I had, or rather which existed, in me in regard to de Barral.
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