Flora, not of course in the swim of those happenings at Joyflelds, could not be got to take the matter very seriously. In fact--beyond what concerned Felix himself and poetry--the matter that she did take seriously had yet to be discovered. Hers was one of those semi-detached natures particularly found in Hampstead. When exhorted to help tackle the question, she could only suggest that Felix should take them all abroad when he had finished 'The Last of the Laborers.' A tour, for instance, in Norway and Sweden, where none of them had ever been, and perhaps down through Finland into Russia.
Feeling like one who squirts on a burning haystack with a garden syringe, Felix propounded this scheme to his little daughter. She received it with a start, a silence, a sort of quivering all over, as of an animal who scents danger. She wanted to know when, and being told--'not before the middle of August', relapsed into her preoccupation as if nothing had been said. Felix noted on the hall table one afternoon a letter in her handwriting, addressed to a Worcester newspaper, and remarked thereafter that she began to receive this journal daily, obviously with a view to reports of the coming assizes. Once he tried to break through into her confidence. It was August Bank Holiday, and they had gone out on to the heath together to see the people wonderfully assembled.
Coming back across the burnt-up grass, strewn with paper bags, banana peel, and the cores of apples, he hooked his hand into her arm.
"What is to be done with a child that goes about all day thinking and thinking and not telling anybody what she is thinking?"
She smiled round at him and answered:
"I know, Dad. She IS a pig, isn't she?"
This comparison with an animal of proverbial stubbornness was not encouraging. Then his hand was squeezed to her side and he heard her murmur:
"I wonder if all daughters are such beasts!"
He understood well that she had meant: 'There is only one thing I want--one thing I mean to have--one thing in the world for me now!'
And he said soberly:
"We can't expect anything else."
"Oh, Daddy!" she answered, but nothing more.
Only four days later she came to his study with a letter, and a face so flushed and troubled that he dropped his pen and got up in alarm.
"Read this, Dad! It's impossible! It's not true! It's terrible!
Oh! What am I to do?"
The letter ran thus, in a straight, boyish handwriting:
"ROYAL CHARLES HOSTEL, WORCESTER, Aug. 7th.
"MY NEDDA, "I have just seen Bob tried. They have given him three years' penal. It was awful to sit there and watch him. He can never stand it. It was awful to watch him looking at ME. It's no good.
I'm going to give myself up. I must do it. I've got everything ready; they'll have to believe me and squash his sentence. You see, but for me it would never have been done. It's a matter of honour. I can't let him suffer any more. This isn't impulse.
I've been meaning to do it for some time, if they found him guilty.
So in a way, it's an immense relief. I'd like to have seen you first, but it would only distress you, and I might not have been able to go through with it after. Nedda, darling, if you still love me when I get out, we'll go to New Zealand, away from this country where they bully poor creatures like Bob. Be brave! I'll write to-morrow, if they let me.
"Your "Derek."
The first sensation in Felix on reading this effusion was poignant recollection of the little lawyer's look after Derek had made the scene at Tryst's committal and of his words: 'Nothing in it, is there?' His second thought: 'Is this the cutting of the knot that I've been looking for?' His third, which swept all else away: 'My poor little darling! What business has that boy to hurt her again like this!'
He heard her say:
"Tryst told me himself he did it, Dad! He told me when I went to see him in the prison. Honour doesn't demand what isn't true! Oh, Dad, help me!"
Felix was slow in getting free from the cross currents of reflection. "He wrote this last night," he said dismally. "He may have done it already. We must go and see John."
Nedda clasped her hands. "Ah! Yes!"
And Felix had not the heart to add what he was thinking: 'Not that I see what good he can do!' But, though sober reason told him this, it was astonishingly comforting to be going to some one who could be relied on to see the facts of the situation without any of that 'flimflam' with which imagination is accustomed to surround them. "And we'll send Derek a wire for what it's worth."
They went at once to the post-office, Felix composing this message on the way: 'Utterly mistaken chivalry you have no right await our arrival Felix Freeland.' He handed it to her to read, and passed it under the brass railing to the clerk, not without the feeling of shame due from one who uses the word chivalry in a post-office.
On the way to the Tube station he held her arm tightly, but whether to impart courage or receive it he could not have said, so strung-up in spirit did he feel her. With few words exchanged they reached Whitehall. Marking their card 'Urgent,' they were received within ten minutes.