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

I know it, because while Marlow was crossing the room I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.  He however never looked that way though it is possible that he, too, was aware of the passage of time.  He sat down heavily.

“Our friend Powell,” he began again, “was very anxious that I should understand the topography of that cabin.  I was interested more by its moral atmosphere, that tension of falsehood, of desperate acting, which tainted the pure sea-atmosphere into which the magnanimous Anthony had carried off his conquest and—well—his self-conquest too, trying to act at the same time like a beast of prey, a pure spirit and the “most generous of men.”  Too big an order clearly because he was nothing of a monster but just a common mortal, a little more self-willed and self-confident than most, may be, both in his roughness and in his delicacy.

As to the delicacy of Mr. Powell’s proceedings I’ll say nothing.  He found a sort of depraved excitement in watching an unconscious man—and such an attractive and mysterious man as Captain Anthony at that.  He wanted another peep at him.  He surmised that the captain must come back soon because of the glass two-thirds full and also of the book put down so brusquely.  God knows what sudden pang had made Anthony jump up so.  I am convinced he used reading as an opiate against the pain of his magnanimity which like all abnormal growths was gnawing at his healthy substance with cruel persistence.  Perhaps he had rushed into his cabin simply to groan freely in absolute and delicate secrecy.  At any rate he tarried there.  And young Powell would have grown weary and compunctious at last if it had not become manifest to him that he had not been alone in the highly incorrect occupation of watching the movements of Captain Anthony.

Powell explained to me that no sound did or perhaps could reach him from the saloon.  The first sign—and we must remember that he was using his eyes for all they were worth—was an unaccountable movement of the curtain.  It was wavy and very slight; just perceptible in fact to the sharpened faculties of a secret watcher; for it can’t be denied that our wits are much more alert when engaged in wrong-doing (in which one mustn’t be found out) than in a righteous occupation.

He became suspicious, with no one and nothing definite in his mind.  He was suspicious of the curtain itself and observed it.  It looked very innocent.  Then just as he was ready to put it down to a trick of imagination he saw trembling movements where the two curtains joined.  Yes!  Somebody else besides himself had been watching Captain Anthony.  He owns artlessly that this roused his indignation.  It was really too much of a good thing.  In this state of intense antagonism he was startled to observe tips of fingers fumbling with the dark stuff.  Then they grasped the edge of the further curtain and hung on there, just fingers and knuckles and nothing else.  It made an abominable sight.  He was looking at it with unaccountable repulsion when a hand came into view; a short, puffy, old, freckled hand projecting into the lamplight, followed by a white wrist, an arm in a grey coat-sleeve, up to the elbow, beyond the elbow, extended tremblingly towards the tray.  Its appearance was weird and nauseous, fantastic and silly.  But instead of grabbing the bottle as Powell expected, this hand, tremulous with senile eagerness, swerved to the glass, rested on its edge for a moment (or so it looked from above) and went back with a jerk.  The gripping fingers of the other hand vanished at the same time, and young Powell staring at the motionless curtains could indulge for a moment the notion that he had been dreaming.

But that notion did not last long.  Powell, after repressing his first impulse to spring for the companion and hammer at the captain’s door, took steps to have himself relieved by the boatswain.  He was in a state of distraction as to his feelings and yet lucid as to his mind.  He remained on the skylight so as to keep his eye on the tray.

Still the captain did not appear in the saloon.  “If he had,” said Mr. Powell, “I knew what to do.  I would have put my elbow through the pane instantly—crash.”

I asked him why?

“It was the quickest dodge for getting him away from that tray,” he explained.  “My throat was so dry that I didn’t know if I could shout loud enough.  And this was not a case for shouting, either.”

The boatswain, sleepy and disgusted, arriving on the poop, found the second officer doubled up over the end of the skylight in a pose which might have been that of severe pain.  And his voice was so changed that the man, though naturally vexed at being turned out, made no comment on the plea of sudden indisposition which young Powell put forward.

The rapidity with which the sick man got off the poop must have astonished the boatswain.  But Powell, at the moment he opened the door leading into the saloon from the quarter-deck, had managed to control his agitation.  He entered swiftly but without noise and found himself in the dark part of the saloon, the strong sheen of the lamp on the other side of the curtains visible only above the rod on which they ran.  The door of Mr. Smith’s cabin was in that dark part.  He passed by it assuring himself by a quick side glance that it was imperfectly closed.  “Yes,” he said to me.  “The old man must have been watching through the crack.  Of that I am certain; but it was not for me that he was watching and listening.  Horrible!  Surely he must have been startled to hear and see somebody he did not expect.  He could not possibly guess why I was coming in, but I suppose he must have been concerned.”  Concerned indeed!  He must have been thunderstruck, appalled.

Powell’s only distinct aim was to remove the suspected tumbler.  He had no other plan, no other intention, no other thought.  Do away with it in some manner.  Snatch it up and run out with it.

You know that complete mastery of one fixed idea, not a reasonable but an emotional mastery, a sort of concentrated exaltation.  Under its empire men rush blindly through fire and water and opposing violence, and nothing can stop them—unless, sometimes, a grain of sand.  For his blind purpose (and clearly the thought of Mrs. Anthony was at the bottom of it) Mr. Powell had plenty of time.  What checked him at the crucial moment was the familiar, harmless aspect of common things, the steady light, the open book on the table, the solitude, the peace, the home-like effect of the place.  He held the glass in his hand; all he had to do was to vanish back beyond the curtains, flee with it noiselessly into the night on deck, fling it unseen overboard.  A minute or less.  And then all that would have happened would have been the wonder at the utter disappearance of a glass tumbler, a ridiculous riddle in pantry-affairs beyond the wit of anyone on board to solve.  The grain of sand against which Powell stumbled in his headlong career was a moment of incredulity as to the truth of his own conviction because it had failed to affect the safe aspect of familiar things.  He doubted his eyes too.  He must have dreamt it all!  “I am dreaming now,” he said to himself.  And very likely for a few seconds he must have looked like a man in a trance or profoundly asleep on his feet, and with a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand.

What woke him up and, at the same time, fixed his feet immovably to the spot, was a voice asking him what he was doing there in tones of thunder.  Or so it sounded to his ears.  Anthony, opening the door of his stern-cabin had naturally exclaimed.  What else could you expect?  And the exclamation must have been fairly loud if you consider the nature of the sight which met his eye.  There, before him, stood his second officer, a seemingly decent, well-bred young man, who, being on duty, had left the deck and had sneaked into the saloon, apparently for the inexpressibly mean purpose of drinking up what was left of his captain’s brandy-and-water.  There he was, caught absolutely with the glass in his hand.

But the very monstrosity of appearances silenced Anthony after the first exclamation; and young Powell felt himself pierced through and through by the overshadowed glance of his captain.  Anthony advanced quietly.  The first impulse of Mr. Powell, when discovered, had been to dash the glass on the deck.  He was in a sort of panic.  But deep down within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him.  The captain came forward slowly.  With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, “Boatswain on the poop.”

The captain moved his head slightly as much as to say, “That’s all right”—and this was all.  Powell had no voice, no strength.  The air was unbreathable, thick, sticky, odious, like hot jelly in which all movements became difficult.  He raised the glass a little with immense difficulty and moved his trammelled lips sufficiently to form the words:

“Doctored.”

Anthony glanced at it for an instant, only for an instant, and again fastened his eyes on the face of his second mate.  Powell added a fervent “I believe” and put the glass down on the tray.  The captain’s glance followed the movement and returned sternly to his face.  The young man pointed a finger once more upwards and squeezed out of his iron-bound throat six consecutive words of further explanation.  “Through the skylight.  The white pane.”

The captain raised his eyebrows very much at this, while young Powell, ashamed but desperate, nodded insistently several times.  He meant to say that: Yes.  Yes.  He had done that thing.  He had been spying . . .  The captain’s gaze became thoughtful.  And, now the confession was over, the iron-bound feeling of Powell’s throat passed away giving place to a general anxiety which from his breast seemed to extend to all the limbs and organs of his body.  His legs trembled a little, his vision was confused, his mind became blankly expectant.  But he was alert enough.  At a movement of Anthony he screamed in a strangled whisper.

“Don’t, sir!  Don’t touch it.”

The captain pushed aside Powell’s extended arm, took up the glass and raised it slowly against the lamplight.  The liquid, of very pale amber colour, was clear, and by a glance the captain seemed to call Powell’s attention to the fact.  Powell tried to pronounce the word, “dissolved” but he only thought of it with great energy which however failed to move his lips.  Only when Anthony had put down the glass and turned to him he recovered such a complete command of his voice that he could keep it down to a hurried, forcible whisper—a whisper that shook him.

“Doctored!  I swear it!  I have seen.  Doctored!  I have seen.”

Not a feature of the captain’s face moved.  His was a calm to take one’s breath away.  It did so to young Powell.  Then for the first time Anthony made himself heard to the point.

“You did! . . . Who was it?”

And Powell gasped freely at last.  “A hand,” he whispered fearfully, “a hand and the arm—only the arm—like that.”

He advanced his own, slow, stealthy, tremulous in faithful reproduction, the tips of two fingers and the thumb pressed together and hovering above the glass for an instant—then the swift jerk back, after the deed.

“Like that,” he repeated