Chance

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Chance


From Mr. Powell's description Franklin was a short, thick black-haired
man, bald on the top. His head sunk between the shoulders, his staring
prominent eyes and a florid colour, gave him a rather apoplectic
appearance. In repose, his congested face had a humorously melancholy
expression.

The ship-keeper having given him up all the keys and having been chased
forward with the admonition to mind his own business and not to chatter
about what did not concern him, Mr. Franklin went under the poop. He
opened one door after another; and, in the saloon, in the captain's state-
room and everywhere, he stared anxiously as if expecting to see on the
bulkheads, on the deck, in the air, something unusual--sign, mark,
emanation, shadow--he hardly knew what--some subtle change wrought by the
passage of a girl. But there was nothing. He entered the unoccupied
stern cabin and spent some time there unscrewing the two stern ports. In
the absence of all material evidences his uneasiness was passing away.
With a last glance round he came out and found himself in the presence of
his captain advancing from the other end of the saloon.

Franklin, at once, looked for the girl. She wasn't to be seen. The
captain came up quickly. 'Oh! you are here, Mr. Franklin.' And the mate
said, 'I was giving a little air to the place, sir.' Then the captain,
his hat pulled down over his eyes, laid his stick on the table and asked
in his kind way: 'How did you find your mother, Franklin?'--'The old
lady's first-rate, sir, thank you.' And then they had nothing to say to
each other. It was a strange and disturbing feeling for Franklin. He,
just back from leave, the ship just come to her loading berth, the
captain just come on board, and apparently nothing to say! The several
questions he had been anxious to ask as to various things which had to be
done had slipped out of his mind. He, too, felt as though he had nothing
to say.

The captain, picking up his stick off the table, marched into his state-
room and shut the door after him. Franklin remained still for a moment
and then started slowly to go on deck. But before he had time to reach
the other end of the saloon he heard himself called by name. He turned
round. The captain was staring from the doorway of his state-room.
Franklin said, "Yes, sir." But the captain, silent, leaned a little
forward grasping the door handle. So he, Franklin, walked aft keeping
his eyes on him. When he had come up quite close he said again, "Yes,
sir?" interrogatively. Still silence. The mate didn't like to be stared
at in that manner, a manner quite new in his captain, with a defiant and
self-conscious stare, like a man who feels ill and dares you to notice
it. Franklin gazed at his captain, felt that there was something wrong,
and in his simplicity voiced his feelings by asking point-blank:

"What's wrong, sir?"

The captain gave a slight start, and the character of his stare changed
to a sort of sinister surprise. Franklin grew very uncomfortable, but
the captain asked negligently:

"What makes you think that there's something wrong?"

"I can't say exactly. You don't look quite yourself, sir," Franklin
owned up.

"You seem to have a confoundedly piercing eye," said the captain in such
an aggressive tone that Franklin was moved to defend himself.

"We have been together now over six years, sir, so I suppose I know you a
bit by this time. I could see there was something wrong directly you
came on board."

"Mr. Franklin," said the captain, "we have been more than six years
together, it is true, but I didn't know you for a reader of faces. You
are not a correct reader though. It's very far from being wrong. You
understand? As far from being wrong as it can very well be. It ought to
teach you not to make rash surmises. You should leave that to the shore
people. They are great hands at spying out something wrong. I dare say
they know what they have made of the world. A dam' poor job of it and
that's plain. It's a confoundedly ugly place, Mr. Franklin. You don't
know anything of it? Well--no, we sailors don't. Only now and then one
of us runs against something cruel or underhand, enough to make your hair
stand on end. And when you do see a piece of their wickedness you find
that to set it right is not so easy as it looks . . . Oh! I called you
back to tell you that there will be a lot of workmen, joiners and all
that sent down on board first thing to-morrow morning to start making
alterations in the cabin. You will see to it that they don't loaf. There
isn't much time."

Franklin was impressed by this unexpected lecture upon the wickedness of
the solid world surrounded by the salt, uncorruptible waters on which he
and his captain had dwelt all their lives in happy innocence. What he
could not understand was why it should have been delivered, and what
connection it could have with such a matter as the alterations to be
carried out in the cabin. The work did not seem to him to be called for
in such a hurry. What was the use of altering anything? It was a very
good accommodation, spacious, well-distributed, on a rather old-fashioned
plan, and with its decorations somewhat tarnished. But a dab of varnish,
a touch of gilding here and there, was all that was necessary. As to
comfort, it could not be improved by any alterations. He resented the
notion of change; but he said dutifully that he would keep his eye on the
workmen if the captain would only let him know what was the nature of the
work he had ordered to be done.

"You'll find a note of it on this table. I'll leave it for you as I go
ashore," said Captain Anthony hastily. Franklin thought there was no
more to hear, and made a movement to leave the saloon. But the captain
continued after a slight pause, "You will be surprised, no doubt, when
you look at it. There'll be a good many alterations. It's on account of
a lady coming with us. I am going to get married, Mr. Franklin!"



CHAPTER TWO--YOUNG POWELL SEES AND HEARS


"You remember," went on Marlow, "how I feared that Mr. Powell's want of
experience would stand in his way of appreciating the unusual. The
unusual I had in my mind was something of a very subtle sort: the unusual
in marital relations. I may well have doubted the capacity of a young
man too much concerned with the creditable performance of his
professional duties to observe what in the nature of things is not easily
observable in itself, and still less so under the special circumstances.
In the majority of ships a second officer has not many points of contact
with the captain's wife. He sits at the same table with her at meals,
generally speaking; he may now and then be addressed more or less kindly
on insignificant matters, and have the opportunity to show her some small
attentions on deck. And that is all. Under such conditions, signs can
be seen only by a sharp and practised eye. I am alluding now to troubles
which are subtle often to the extent of not being understood by the very
hearts they devastate or uplift.

Yes, Mr. Powell, whom the chance of his name had thrown upon the floating
stage of that tragicomedy would have been perfectly useless for my
purpose if the unusual of an obvious kind had not aroused his attention
from the first.

We know how he joined that ship so suddenly offered to his anxious desire
to make a real start in his profession. He had come on board breathless
with the hurried winding up of his shore affairs, accompanied by two
horrible night-birds, escorted by a dock policeman on the make, received
by an asthmatic shadow of a ship-keeper, warned not to make a noise in
the darkness of the passage because the captain and his wife were already
on board. That in itself was already somewhat unusual. Captains and
their wives do not, as a rule, join a moment sooner than is necessary.
They prefer to spend the last moments with their friends and relations. A
ship in one of London's older docks with their restrictions as to lights
and so on is not the place for a happy evening. Still, as the tide
served at six in the morning, one could understand them coming on board
the evening before.

Just then young Powell felt as if anybody ought to be glad enough to be
quit of the shore. We know he was an orphan from a very early age,
without brothers or sisters--no near relations of any kind, I believe,
except that aunt who had quarrelled with his father. No affection stood
in the way of the quiet satisfaction with which he thought that now all
the worries were over, that there was nothing before him but duties, that
he knew what he would have to do as soon as the dawn broke and for a long
succession of days. A most soothing certitude. He enjoyed it in the
dark, stretched out in his bunk with his new blankets pulled over him.
Some clock ashore beyond the dock-gates struck two. And then he heard
nothing more, because he went off into a light sleep from which he woke
up with a start. He had not taken his clothes off, it was hardly worth
while. He jumped up and went on deck.

The morning was clear, colourless, grey overhead; the dock like a sheet
of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of warehouses, of
hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved here and there on
the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside with clothes-bags and
wooden chests at their feet. Others were coming down the lane between
tall, blind walls, surrounding a hand-cart loaded with more bags and
boxes. It was the crew of the _Ferndale_. They began to come on board.
He scanned their faces as they passed forward filling the roomy deck with
the shuffle of their footsteps and the murmur of voices, like the
awakening to life of a world about to be launched into space.

Far away down the clear glassy stretch in the middle of the long dock Mr.
Powell watched the tugs coming in quietly through the open gates. A
subdued firm voice behind him interrupted this contemplation. It was
Franklin, the thick chief mate, who was addressing him with a watchful
appraising stare of his prominent black eyes: "You'd better take a couple
of these chaps with you and look out for her aft. We are going to cast
off."

"Yes, sir," Powell said with proper alacrity; but for a moment they
remained looking at each other fixedly. Something like a faint smile
altered the set of the chief mate's lips just before he moved off forward
with his brisk step.

Mr. Powell, getting up on the poop, touched his cap to Captain Anthony,
who was there alone. He tells me that it was only then that he saw his
captain for the first time. The day before, in the shipping office, what
with the bad light and his excitement at this berth obtained as if by a
brusque and unscrupulous miracle, did not count. He had then seemed to
him much older and heavier. He was surprised at the lithe figure, broad
of shoulder, narrow at the hips, the fire of the deep-set eyes, the
springiness of the walk. The captain gave him a steady stare, nodded
slightly, and went on pacing the poop with an air of not being aware of
what was going on, his head rigid, his movements rapid.

Powell stole several glances at him with a curiosity very natural under
the circumstances. He wore a short grey jacket and a grey cap. In the
light of the dawn, growing more limpid rather than brighter, Powell
noticed the slightly sunken cheeks under the trimmed beard, the
perpendicular fold on the forehead, something hard and set about the
mouth.

It was too early yet for the work to have begun in the dock. The water
gleamed placidly, no movement anywhere on the long straight lines of the
quays, no one about to be seen except the few dock hands busy alongside
the _Ferndale_, knowing their work, mostly silent or exchanging a few
words in low tones as if they, too, had been aware of that lady 'who
mustn't be disturbed.' The _Ferndale_ was the only ship to leave that
tide. The others seemed still asleep, without a sound, and only here and
there a figure, coming up on the forecastle, leaned on the rail to watch
the proceedings idly. Without trouble and fuss and almost without a
sound was the _Ferndale_ leaving the land, as if stealing away. Even the
tugs, now with their engines stopped, were approaching her without a
ripple, the burly-looking paddle-boat sheering forward, while the other,
a screw, smaller and of slender shape, made for her quarter so gently
that she did not divide the smooth water, but seemed to glide on its
surface as if on a sheet of plate-glass, a man in her bow, the master at
the wheel visible only from the waist upwards above the white screen of
the bridge, both of them so still-eyed as to fascinate young Powell into
curious self-forgetfulness and immobility. He was steeped, sunk in the
general quietness, remembering the statement 'she's a lady that mustn't
be disturbed,' and repeating to himself idly: 'No. She won't be
disturbed. She won't be disturbed.' Then the first loud words of that
morning breaking that strange hush of departure with a sharp hail: 'Look
out for that line there,' made him start. The line whizzed past his
head, one of the sailors aft caught it, and there was an end to the
fascination, to the quietness of spirit which had stolen on him at the
very moment of departure. From that moment till two hours afterwards,
when the ship was brought up in one of the lower reaches of the Thames
off an apparently uninhabited shore, near some sort of inlet where
nothing but two anchored barges flying a red flag could be seen, Powell
was too busy to think of the lady 'that mustn't be disturbed,' or of his
captain--or of anything else unconnected with his immediate duties. In
fact, he had no occasion to go on the poop, or even look that way much;
but while the ship was about to anchor, casting his eyes in that
direction, he received an absurd impression that his captain (he was up
there, of course) was sitting on both sides of the aftermost skylight at
once. He was too occupied to reflect on this curious delusion, this
phenomenon of seeing double as though he had had a drop too much. He
only smiled at himself.

As often happens after a grey daybreak the sun had risen in a warm and
glorious splendour above the smooth immense gleam of the enlarged
estuary. Wisps of mist floated like trails of luminous dust, and in the
dazzling reflections of water and vapour, the shores had the murky semi-
transparent darkness of shadows cast mysteriously from below. Powell,
who had sailed out of London all his young seaman's life, told me that it
was then, in a moment of entranced vision an hour or so after sunrise,
that the river was revealed to him for all time, like a fair face often
seen before, which is suddenly perceived to be the expression of an inner
and unsuspected beauty, of that something unique and only its own which
rouses a passion of wonder and fidelity and an unappeasable memory of its
charm. The hull of the _Ferndale_, swung head to the eastward, caught
the light, her tall spars and rigging steeped in a bath of red-gold, from
the water-line full of glitter to the trucks slight and gleaming against
the delicate expanse of the blue.

"Time we had a mouthful to eat," said a voice at his side. It was Mr.
Franklin, the chief mate, with his head sunk between his shoulders, and
melancholy eyes. "Let the men have their breakfast, bo'sun," he went on,
"and have the fire out in the galley in half an hour at the latest, so
that we can call these barges of explosives alongside. Come along, young
man. I don't know your name. Haven't seen the captain, to speak to,
since yesterday afternoon when he rushed off to pick up a second mate
somewhere. How did he get you?"

Young Powell, a little shy notwithstanding the friendly disposition of
the other, answered him smilingly, aware somehow that there was something
marked in this inquisitiveness, natural, after all--something anxious.
His name was Powell, and he was put in the way of this berth by Mr.
Powell, the shipping master. He blushed.

"Ah, I see. Well, you have been smart in getting ready. The
ship-keeper, before he went away, told me you joined at one o'clock. I
didn't sleep on board last night. Not I. There was a time when I never
cared to leave this ship for more than a couple of hours in the evening,
even while in London, but now, since--"

He checked himself with a roll of his prominent eyes towards that
youngster, that stranger. Meantime, he was leading the way across the
quarter-deck under the poop into the long passage with the door of the
saloon at the far end. It was shut. But Mr. Franklin did not go so far.
After passing the pantry he opened suddenly a door on the left of the
passage, to Powell's great surprise.

"Our mess-room," he said, entering a small cabin painted white, bare,
lighted from part of the foremost skylight, and furnished only with a
table and two settees with movable backs. "That surprises you? Well, it
isn't usual. And it wasn't so in this ship either, before. It's only
since--"

He checked himself again. "Yes. Here we shall feed, you and I, facing
each other for the next twelve months or more--God knows how much more!
The bo'sun keeps the deck at meal-times in fine weather."

He talked not exactly wheezing, but like a man whose breath is somewhat
short, and the spirit (young Powell could not help thinking) embittered
by some mysterious grievance.

There was enough of the unusual there to be recognized even by Powell's
inexperience. The officers kept out of the cabin against the custom of
the service, and then this sort of accent in the mate's talk. Franklin
did not seem to expect conversational ease from the new second mate. He
made several remarks about the old, deploring the accident. Awkward.
Very awkward this thing to happen on the very eve of sailing.

"Collar-bone and arm broken," he sighed. "Sad, very sad. Did you notice
if the captain was at all affected? Eh? Must have been."

Before this congested face, these globular eyes turned yearningly upon
him, young Powell (one must keep in mind he was but a youngster then) who
could not remember any signs of visible grief, confessed with an
embarrassed laugh that, owing to the suddenness of this lucky chance
coming to him, he was not in a condition to notice the state of other
people.

"I was so pleased to get a ship at last," he murmured, further
disconcerted by the sort of pent-up gravity in Mr. Franklin's aspect.

"One man's food another man's poison," the mate remarked. "That holds
true beyond mere victuals. I suppose it didn't occur to you that it was
a dam' poor way for a good man to be knocked out."

Mr. Powell admitted openly that he had not thought of that. He was ready
to admit that it was very reprehensible of him. But Franklin had no
intention apparently to moralize. He did not fall silent either. His
further remarks were to the effect that there had been a time when
Captain Anthony would have showed more than enough concern for the least
thing happening to one of his officers. Yes, there had been a time!

"And mind," he went on, laying down suddenly a half-consumed piece of
bread and butter and raising his voice, "poor Mathews was the second man
the longest on board. I was the first. He joined a month later--about
the same time as the steward by a few days. The bo'sun and the carpenter
came the voyage after. Steady men. Still here. No good man need ever
have thought of leaving the _Ferndale_ unless he were a fool. Some good
men are fools. Don't know when they are well off. I mean the best of
good men; men that you would do anything for. They go on for years, then
all of a sudden--"

Our young friend listened to the mate with a queer sense of discomfort
growing on him. For it was as though Mr. Franklin were thinking aloud,
and putting him into the delicate position of an unwilling eavesdropper.
But there was in the mess-room another listener. It was the steward, who
had come in carrying a tin coffee-pot with a long handle, and stood
quietly by: a man with a middle-aged, sallow face, long features, heavy
eyelids, a soldierly grey moustache. His body encased in a short black
jacket with narrow sleeves, his long legs in very tight trousers, made up
an agile, youthful, slender figure. He moved forward suddenly, and
interrupted the mate's monologue.

"More coffee, Mr. Franklin? Nice fresh lot. Piping hot. I am going to
give breakfast to the saloon directly, and the cook is raking his fire
out. Now's your chance."

The mate who, on account of his peculiar build, could not turn his head
freely, twisted his thick trunk slightly, and ran his black eyes in the
corners towards the steward.

"And is the precious pair of them out?" he growled.

The steward, pouring out the coffee into the mate's cup, muttered moodily
but distinctly: "The lady wasn't when I was laying the table."

Powell's ears were fine enough to detect something hostile in this
reference to the captain's wife. For of what other person could they be
speaking? The steward added with a gloomy sort of fairness: "But she
will be before I bring the dishes in. She never gives that sort of
trouble. That she doesn't."

"No. Not in that way," Mr. Franklin agreed, and then both he and the
steward, after glancing at Powell--the stranger to the ship--said nothing
more.

But this had been enough to rouse his curiosity. Curiosity is natural to
man. Of course it was not a malevolent curiosity which, if not exactly
natural, is to be met fairly frequently in men and perhaps more
frequently in women--especially if a woman be in question; and that woman
under a cloud, in a manner of speaking. For under a cloud Flora de
Barral was fated to be even at sea. Yes. Even that sort of darkness
which attends a woman for whom there is no clear place in the world hung
over her. Yes. Even at sea!

* * * * *

And this is the pathos of being a woman. A man can struggle to get a
place for himself or perish. But a woman's part is passive, say what you
like, and shuffle the facts of the world as you may, hinting at lack of
energy, of wisdom, of courage. As a matter of fact, almost all women
have all that--of their own kind. But they are not made for attack. Wait
they must. I am speaking here of women who are really women. And it's
no use talking of opportunities, either. I know that some of them do
talk of it. But not the genuine women. Those know better. Nothing can
beat a true woman for a clear vision of reality; I would say a cynical
vision if I were not afraid of wounding your chivalrous feelings--for
which, by the by, women are not so grateful as you may think, to fellows
of your kind . . .

"Upon my word, Marlow," I cried, "what are you flying out at me for like
this? I wouldn't use an ill-sounding word about women, but what right
have you to imagine that I am looking for gratitude?"

Marlow raised a soothing hand.

"There! There! I take back the ill-sounding word, with the remark,
though, that cynicism seems to me a word invented by hypocrites. But let
that pass. As to women, they know that the clamour for opportunities for
them to become something which they cannot be is as reasonable as if
mankind at large started asking for opportunities of winning immortality
in this world, in which death is the very condition of life. You must
understand that I am not talking here of material existence. That
naturally is implied; but you won't maintain that a woman who, say,
enlisted, for instance (there have been cases) has conquered her place in
the world. She has only got her living in it--which is quite
meritorious, but not quite the same thing.

All these reflections which arise from my picking up the thread of Flora
de Barral's existence did not, I am certain, present themselves to Mr.
Powell--not the Mr. Powell we know taking solitary week-end cruises in
the estuary of the Thames (with mysterious dashes into lonely creeks) but
to the young Mr. Powell, the chance second officer of the ship
_Ferndale_, commanded (and for the most part owned) by Roderick Anthony,
the son of the poet--you know. A Mr. Powell, much slenderer than our
robust friend is now, with the bloom of innocence not quite rubbed off
his smooth cheeks, and apt not only to be interested but also to be
surprised by the experience life was holding in store for him. This
would account for his remembering so much of it with considerable
vividness. For instance, the impressions attending his first breakfast
on board the _Ferndale_, both visual and mental, were as fresh to him as
if received yesterday.

The surprise, it is easy to understand, would arise from the inability to
interpret aright the signs which experience (a thing mysterious in
itself) makes to our understanding and emotions. For it is never more
than that. Our experience never gets into our blood and bones. It
always remains outside of us. That's why we look with wonder at the
past. And this persists even when from practice and through growing
callousness of fibre we come to the point when nothing that we meet in
that rapid blinking stumble across a flick of sunshine--which our life
is--nothing, I say, which we run against surprises us any more. Not at
the time, I mean. If, later on, we recover the faculty with some such
exclamation: 'Well! Well! I'll be hanged if I ever, . . . ' it is
probably because this very thing that there should be a past to look back
upon, other people's, is very astounding in itself when one has the time,
a fleeting and immense instant to think of it . . . "