Chance by Joseph Conrad (free novel 24 .TXT) 📖

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Mrs. Brown had been very much vexed at her dismissal.  The Browns were a childless couple and the arrangement had suited them perfectly.  Their resentment was very bitter.  Mrs. Brown had to remain ashore alone with her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board.  Poor Flora had no greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathizer.  And Mrs. Brown, with a woman’s quick power of observation and inference (the putting of two and two together) had come to a certain conclusion which she had imparted to her husband before leaving the ship.  The morose steward permitted himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell’s hearing.  It was in the officers’ mess-room at the end of a meal while he lingered after putting a fruit pie on the table.  He and the chief mate started a dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the sallow steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling upwards his eyes, sentimental in a red face.  Young Powell had heard a lot of that sort of thing by that time.  It was growing monotonous; it had always sounded to him a little absurd.  He struck in impatiently with the remark that such lamentations over a man merely because he had taken a wife seemed to him like lunacy.

Franklin muttered, “Depends on what the wife is up to.”  The steward leaning against the bulkhead near the door glowered at Powell, that newcomer, that ignoramus, that stranger without right or privileges.  He snarled:

“Wife!  Call her a wife, do you?”

“What the devil do you mean by this?” exclaimed young Powell.

“I know what I know.  My old woman has not been six months on board for nothing.  You had better ask her when we get back.”

And meeting sullenly the withering stare of Mr. Powell the steward retreated backwards.

Our young friend turned at once upon the mate.  “And you let that confounded bottle-washer talk like this before you, Mr. Franklin.  Well, I am astonished.”

“Oh, it isn’t what you think.  It isn’t what you think.”  Mr. Franklin looked more apoplectic than ever.  “If it comes to that I could astonish you.  But it’s no use.  I myself can hardly . . . You couldn’t understand.  I hope you won’t try to make mischief.  There was a time, young fellow, when I would have dared any man—any man, you hear?—to make mischief between me and Captain Anthony.  But not now.  Not now.  There’s a change!  Not in me though . . . ”

Young Powell rejected with indignation any suggestion of making mischief.  “Who do you take me for?” he cried.  “Only you had better tell that steward to be careful what he says before me or I’ll spoil his good looks for him for a month and will leave him to explain the why of it to the captain the best way he can.”

This speech established Powell as a champion of Mrs. Anthony.  Nothing more bearing on the question was ever said before him.  He did not care for the steward’s black looks; Franklin, never conversational even at the best of times and avoiding now the only topic near his heart, addressed him only on matters of duty.  And for that, too, Powell cared very little.  The woes of the apoplectic mate had begun to bore him long before.  Yet he felt lonely a bit at times.  Therefore the little intercourse with Mrs. Anthony either in one dog-watch or the other was something to be looked forward to.  The captain did not mind it.  That was evident from his manner.  One night he inquired (they were then alone on the poop) what they had been talking about that evening?  Powell had to confess that it was about the ship.  Mrs. Anthony had been asking him questions.

“Takes interest—eh?” jerked out the captain moving rapidly up and down the weather side of the poop.

“Yes, sir.  Mrs. Anthony seems to get hold wonderfully of what one’s telling her.”

“Sailor’s granddaughter.  One of the old school.  Old sea-dog of the best kind, I believe,” ejaculated the captain, swinging past his motionless second officer and leaving the words behind him like a trail of sparks succeeded by a perfect conversational darkness, because, for the next two hours till he left the deck, he didn’t open his lips again.

On another occasion . . . we mustn’t forget that the ship had crossed the line and was adding up south latitude every day by then . . . on another occasion, about seven in the evening, Powell on duty, heard his name uttered softly in the companion.  The captain was on the stairs, thin-faced, his eyes sunk, on his arm a Shetland wool wrap.

“Mr. Powell—here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give this to Mrs. Anthony.  Evenings are getting chilly.”

And the haggard face sank out of sight.  Mrs. Anthony was surprised on seeing the shawl.

“The captain wants you to put this on,” explained young Powell, and as she raised herself in her seat he dropped it on her shoulders.  She wrapped herself up closely.

“Where was the captain?” she asked.

“He was in the companion.  Called me on purpose,” said Powell, and then retreated discreetly, because she looked as though she didn’t want to talk any more that evening.  Mr. Smith—the old gentleman—was as usual sitting on the skylight near her head, brooding over the long chair but by no means inimical, as far as his unreadable face went, to those conversations of the two youngest people on board.  In fact they seemed to give him some pleasure.  Now and then he would raise his faded china eyes to the animated face of Mr. Powell thoughtfully.  When the young sailor was by, the old man became less rigid, and when his daughter, on rare occasions, smiled at some artless tale of Mr. Powell, the inexpressive face of Mr. Smith reflected dimly that flash of evanescent mirth.  For Mr. Powell had come now to entertain his captain’s wife with anecdotes from the not very distant past when he was a boy, on board various ships,—funny things do happen on board ship.  Flora was quite surprised at times to find herself amused.  She was even heard to laugh twice in the course of a month.  It was not a loud sound but it was startling enough at the after-end of the Ferndale where low tones or silence were the rule.  The second time this happened the captain himself must have been startled somewhere down below; because he emerged from the depths of his unobtrusive existence and began his tramping on the opposite side of the poop.

Almost immediately he called his young second officer over to him.  This was not done in displeasure.  The glance he fastened on Mr. Powell conveyed a sort of approving wonder.  He engaged him in desultory conversation as if for the only purpose of keeping a man who could provoke such a sound, near his person.  Mr. Powell felt himself liked.  He felt it.  Liked by that haggard, restless man who threw at him disconnected phrases to which his answers were, “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Oh, certainly,” “I suppose so, sir,”—and might have been clearly anything else for all the other cared.

It was then, Mr. Powell told me, that he discovered in himself an already old-established liking for Captain Anthony.  He also felt sorry for him without being able to discover the origins of that sympathy of which he had become so suddenly aware.

Meantime Mr. Smith, bending forward stiffly as though he had a hinged back, was speaking to his daughter.

She was a child no longer.  He wanted to know if she believed in—in hell.  In eternal punishment?

His peculiar voice, as if filtered through cotton-wool was inaudible on the other side of the deck.  Poor Flora, taken very much unawares, made an inarticulate murmur, shook her head vaguely, and glanced in the direction of the pacing Anthony who was not looking her way.  It was no use glancing in that direction.  Of young Powell, leaning against the mizzen-mast and facing his captain she could only see the shoulder and part of a blue serge back.

And the unworried, unaccented voice of her father went on tormenting her.

“You see, you must understand.  When I came out of jail it was with joy.  That is, my soul was fairly torn in two—but anyway to see you happy—I had made up my mind to that.  Once I could be sure that you were happy then of course I would have had no reason to care for life—strictly speaking—which is all right for an old man; though naturally . . . no reason to wish for death either.  But this sort of life!  What sense, what meaning, what value has it either for you or for me?  It’s just sitting down to look at the death, that’s coming, coming.  What else is it?  I don’t know how you can put up with that.  I don’t think you can stand it for long.  Some day you will jump overboard.”

Captain Anthony had stopped for a moment staring ahead from the break of the poop, and poor Flora sent at his back a look of despairing appeal which would have moved a heart of stone.  But as though she had done nothing he did not stir in the least.  She got out of the long chair and went towards the companion.  Her father followed carrying a few small objects, a handbag, her handkerchief, a book.  They went down together.

It was only then that Captain Anthony turned, looked at the place they had vacated and resumed his tramping, but not his desultory conversation with his second officer.  His nervous exasperation had grown so much that now very often he used to lose control of his voice.  If he did not watch himself it would suddenly die in his throat.  He had to make sure before he ventured on the simplest saying, an order, a remark on the wind, a simple good-morning.  That’s why his utterance was abrupt, his answers to people startlingly brusque and often not forthcoming at all.

It happens to the most resolute of men to find himself at grips not only with unknown forces, but with a well-known force the real might of which he had not understood.  Anthony had discovered that he was not the proud master but the chafing captive of his generosity.  It rose in front of him like a wall which his respect for himself forbade him to scale.  He said to himself: “Yes, I was a fool—but she has trusted me!”  Trusted!  A terrible word to any man somewhat exceptional in a world in which success has never been found in renunciation and good faith.  And it must also be said, in order not to make Anthony more stupidly sublime than he was, that the behaviour of Flora kept him at a distance.  The girl was afraid to add to the exasperation of her father.  It was her unhappy lot to be made more wretched by the only affection which she could not suspect.  She could not be angry with it, however, and out of deference for that exaggerated sentiment she hardly dared to look otherwise than by stealth at the man whose masterful compassion had carried her off.  And quite unable to understand the extent of Anthony’s delicacy, she said to herself that “he didn’t care.”  He probably was beginning at bottom to detest her—like the governess, like the maiden lady, like the German woman, like Mrs. Fyne, like Mr. Fyne—only he was extraordinary, he was generous.  At the same time she had moments of irritation.  He was violent, headstrong—perhaps stupid.  Well, he had had his way.

A man who has had his way is seldom happy, for generally he finds that the way does not lead very far on this earth of desires which can never be fully satisfied.  Anthony had entered with extreme precipitation the enchanted gardens of Armida saying to himself “At last!”  As to Armida, herself, he was not going