Chance

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Chance


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 growing excited. "From behind this." He
grasped the curtain and glaring at the silent Anthony flung it back
disclosing the forepart of the saloon. There was on one to be seen.

Powell had not expected to see anybody. "But," he said to me, "I knew
very well there was an ear listening and an eye glued to the crack of a
cabin door. Awful thought. And that door was in that part of the saloon
remaining in the shadow of the other half of the curtain. I pointed at
it and I suppose that old man inside saw me pointing. The captain had a
wonderful self-command. You couldn't have guessed anything from his
face. Well, it was perhaps more thoughtful than usual. And indeed this
was something to think about. But I couldn't think steadily. My brain
would give a sort of jerk and then go dead again. I had lost all notion
of time, and I might have been looking at the captain for days and months
for all I knew before I heard him whisper to me fiercely: "Not a word!"
This jerked me out of that trance I was in and I said "No! No! I didn't
mean even you."

"I wanted to explain my conduct, my intentions, but I read in his eyes
that he understood me and I was only too glad to leave off. And there we
were looking at each other, dumb, brought up short by the question "What
next?"

"I thought Captain Anthony was a man of iron till I saw him suddenly
fling his head to the right and to the left fiercely, like a wild animal
at bay not knowing which way to break out . . . "

* * * * *

"Truly," commented Marlow, "brought to bay was not a bad comparison; a
better one than Mr. Powell was aware of. At that moment the appearance
of Flora could not but bring the tension to the breaking point. She came
out in all innocence but not without vague dread. Anthony's exclamation
on first seeing Powell had reached her in her cabin, where, it seems, she
was brushing her hair. She had heard the very words. "What are you
doing here?" And the unwonted loudness of the voice--his voice--breaking
the habitual stillness of that hour would have startled a person having
much less reason to be constantly apprehensive, than the captive of
Anthony's masterful generosity. She had no means to guess to whom the
question was addressed and it echoed in her heart, as Anthony's voice
always did. Followed complete silence. She waited, anxious, expectant,
till she could stand the strain no longer, and with the weary mental
appeal of the overburdened. "My God! What is it now?" she opened the
door of her room and looked into the saloon. Her first glance fell on
Powell. For a moment, seeing only the second officer with Anthony, she
felt relieved and made as if to draw back; but her sharpened perception
detected something suspicious in their attitudes, and she came forward
slowly.

"I was the first to see Mrs. Anthony," related Powell, "because I was
facing aft. The captain, noticing my eyes, looked quickly over his
shoulder and at once put his finger to his lips to caution me. As if I
were likely to let out anything before her! Mrs. Anthony had on a
dressing-gown of some grey stuff with red facings and a thick red cord
round her waist. Her hair was down. She looked a child; a pale-faced
child with big blue eyes and a red mouth a little open showing a glimmer
of white teeth. The light fell strongly on her as she came up to the end
of the table. A strange child though; she hardly affected one like a
child, I remember. Do you know," exclaimed Mr. Powell, who clearly must
have been, like many seamen, an industrious reader, "do you know what she
looked like to me with those big eyes and something appealing in her
whole expression. She looked like a forsaken elf. Captain Anthony had
moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the
tray was. I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it
made a great contrast. It was wonderful, for, with his beard cut to a
point, his swarthy, sunburnt complexion, thin nose and his lean head
there was something African, something Moorish in Captain Anthony. His
neck was bare; he had taken off his coat and collar and had drawn on his
sleeping jacket in the time that he had been absent from the saloon. I
seem to see him now. Mrs. Anthony too. She looked from him to me--I
suppose I looked guilty or frightened--and from me to him, trying to
guess what there was between us two. Then she burst out with a "What has
happened?" which seemed addressed to me. I mumbled "Nothing! Nothing,
ma'am," which she very likely did not hear.

"You must not think that all this had lasted a long time. She had taken
fright at our behaviour and turned to the captain pitifully. "What is it
you are concealing from me?" A straight question--eh? I don't know what
answer the captain would have made. Before he could even raise his eyes
to her she cried out "Ah! Here's papa" in a sharp tone of relief, but
directly afterwards she looked to me as if she were holding her breath
with apprehension. I was so interested in her that, how shall I say it,
her exclamation made no connection in my brain at first. I also noticed
that she had sidled up a little nearer to Captain Anthony, before it
occurred to me to turn my head. I can tell you my neck stiffened in the
twisted position from the shock of actually seeing that old man! He had
dared! I suppose you think I ought to have looked upon him as mad. But
I couldn't. It would have been certainly easier. But I could _not_. You
should have seen him. First of all he was completely dressed with his
very cap still on his head just as when he left me on deck two hours
before, saying in his soft voice: "The moment has come to go to
bed"--while he meant to go and do that thing and hide in his dark cabin,
and watch the stuff do its work. A cold shudder ran down my back. He
had his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his arms were pressed close
to his thin, upright body, and he shuffled across the cabin with his
short steps. There was a red patch on each of his old soft cheeks as if
somebody had been pinching them. He drooped his head a little, and
looked with a sort of underhand expectation at the captain and Mrs.
Anthony standing close together at the other end of the saloon. The
calculating horrible impudence of it! His daughter was there; and I am
certain he had seen the captain putting his finger on his lips to warn
me. And then he had coolly come out! He passed my imagination, I assure
you. After that one shiver his presence killed every faculty in
me--wonder, horror, indignation. I felt nothing in particular just as if
he were still the old gentleman who used to talk to me familiarly every
day on deck. Would you believe it?"

"Mr. Powell challenged my powers of wonder at this internal phenomenon,"
went on Marlow after a slight pause. "But even if they had not been
fully engaged, together with all my powers of attention in following the
facts of the case, I would not have been astonished by his statements
about himself. Taking into consideration his youth they were by no means
incredible; or, at any rate, they were the least incredible part of the
whole. They were also the least interesting part. The interest was
elsewhere, and there of course all he could do was to look at the
surface. The inwardness of what was passing before his eyes was hidden
from him, who had looked on, more impenetrably than from me who at a
distance of years was listening to his words. What presently happened at
this crisis in Flora de Barral's fate was beyond his power of comment,
seemed in a sense natural. And his own presence on the scene was so
strangely motived that it was left for me to marvel alone at this young
man, a completely chance-comer, having brought it about on that night.

Each situation created either by folly or wisdom has its psychological
moment. The behaviour of young Powell with its mixture of boyish
impulses combined with instinctive prudence, had not created it--I can't
say that--but had discovered it to the very people involved. What would
have happened if he had made a noise about his discovery? But he didn't.
His head was full of Mrs. Anthony and he behaved with a discretion beyond
his years. Some nice children often do; and surely it is not from
reflection. They have their own inspirations. Young Powell's
inspiration consisted in being "enthusiastic" about Mrs. Anthony.
'Enthusiastic' is really good. And he was amongst them like a child,
sensitive, impressionable, plastic--but unable to find for himself any
sort of comment.

I don't know how much mine may be worth; but I believe that just then the
tension of the false situation was at its highest. Of all the forms
offered to us by life it is the one demanding a couple to realize it
fully, which is the most imperative. Pairing off is the fate of mankind.
And if two beings thrown together, mutually attracted, resist the
necessity, fail in understanding and voluntarily stop short of the--the
embrace, in the noblest meaning of the word, then they are committing a
sin against life, the call of which is simple. Perhaps sacred. And the
punishment of it is an invasion of complexity, a tormenting, forcibly
tortuous involution of feelings, the deepest form of suffering from which
indeed something significant may come at last, which may be criminal or
heroic, may be madness or wisdom--or even a straight if despairing
decision.

Powell on taking his eyes off the old gentleman noticed Captain Anthony,
swarthy as an African, by the side of Flora whiter than the lilies, take
his handkerchief out and wipe off his forehead the sweat of anguish--like
a man who is overcome. "And no wonder," commented Mr. Powell here. Then
the captain said, "Hadn't you better go back to your room." This was to
Mrs. Anthony. He tried to smile at her. "Why do you look startled? This
night is like any other night."

"Which," Powell again commented to me earnestly, "was a lie . . . No
wonder he sweated." You see from this the value of Powell's comments.
Mrs. Anthony then said: "Why are you sending me away?"

"Why! That you should go to sleep. That you should rest." And Captain
Anthony frowned. Then sharply, "You stay here, Mr. Powell. I shall want
you presently."

As a matter of fact Powell had not moved. Flora did not mind his
presence. He himself had the feeling of being of no account to those
three people. He was looking at Mrs. Anthony as unabashed as the
proverbial cat looking at a king. Mrs. Anthony glanced at him. She did
not move, gripped by an inexplicable premonition. She had arrived at the
very limit of her endurance as the object of Anthony's magnanimity; she
was the prey of an intuitive dread of she did not know what mysterious
influence; she felt herself being pushed back into that solitude, that
moral loneliness, which had made all her life intolerable. And then, in
that close communion established again with Anthony, she felt--as on that
night in the garden--the force of his personal fascination. The passive
quietness with which she looked at him gave her the appearance of a
person bewitched--or, say, mesmerically put to sleep--beyond any notion
of her surroundings.

After telling Mr. Powell not to go away the captain remained silent.
Suddenly Mrs. Anthony pushed back her loose hair with a decisive gesture
of her arms and moved still nearer to him. "Here's papa up yet," she
said, but she did not look towards Mr. Smith. "Why is it? And you? I
can't go on like this, Roderick--between you two. Don't."

Anthony interrupted her as if something had untied his tongue.

"Oh yes. Here's your father. And . . . Why not. Perhaps it is just as
well you came out. Between us two? Is that it? I won't pretend I don't
understand. I am not blind. But I can't fight any longer for what I
haven't got. I don't know what you imagine has happened. Something has
though. Only you needn't be afraid. No shadow can touch you--because I
give up. I can't say we had much talk about it, your father and I, but,
the long and the short of it is, that I must learn to live without
you--which I have told you was impossible. I was speaking the truth. But
I have done fighting, or waiting, or hoping. Yes. You shall go."

At this point Mr. Powell who (he confessed to me) was listening with
uncomprehending awe, heard behind his back a triumphant chuckling sound.
It gave him the shudders, he said, to mention it now; but at the time,
except for another chill down the spine, it had not the power to destroy
his absorption in the scene before his eyes, and before his ears too,
because just then Captain Anthony raised his voice grimly. Perhaps he
too had heard the chuckle of the old man.

"Your father has found an argument which makes me pause, if it does not
convince me. No! I can't answer it. I--I don't want to answer it. I
simply surrender. He shall have his way with you--and with me. Only,"
he added in a gloomy lowered tone which struck Mr. Powell as if a pedal
had been put down, "only it shall take a little time. I have never lied
to you. Never. I renounce not only my chance but my life. In a few
days, directly we get into port, the very moment we do, I, who have said
I could never let you go, I shall let you go."

To the innocent beholder Anthony seemed at this point to become
physically exhausted. My view is that the utter falseness of his, I may
say, aspirations, the vanity of grasping the empty air, had come to him
with an overwhelming force, leaving him disarmed before the other's mad
and sinister sincerity. As he had said himself he could not fight for
what he did not possess; he could not face such a thing as this for the
sake of his mere magnanimity. The normal alone can overcome the
abnormal. He could not even reproach that man over there. "I own myself
beaten," he said in a firmer tone. "You are free. I let you off since I
must."

Powell, the onlooker, affirms that at these incomprehensible words Mrs.
Anthony stiffened into the very image of astonishment, with a frightened
stare and frozen lips. But next minute a cry came out from her heart,
not very loud but of a quality which made not only Captain Anthony (he
was not looking at her), not only him but also the more distant (and
equally unprepared) young man, catch their breath: "But I don't want to
be let off," she cried.

She was so still that one asked oneself whether the cry had come from
her. The restless shuffle behind Powell's back stopped short, the
intermittent shadowy chuckling ceased too. Young Powell, glancing round,
saw Mr. Smith raise his head with his faded eyes very still, puckered at
the corners, like a man perceiving something coming at him from a great
distance. And Mrs. Anthony's voice reached Powell's ears, entreating and
indignant.

"You can't cast me off like this, Roderick. I won't go away from you. I
won't--"

Powell turned about and discovered then that what Mr. Smith was puckering
his eyes at, was the sight of his daughter clinging round Captain
Anthony's neck--a sight not in itself improper, but which had the power
to move young Powell with a bashfully profound emotion. It was different
from his emotion while spying at the revelations of the skylight, but in
this case too he felt the discomfort, if not the guilt, of an unseen
beholder. Experience was being piled up on his young shoulders. Mrs.
Anthony's hair hung back in a dark mass like the hair of a drowned woman.
She looked as if she would let go and sink to the floor if the captain
were to withhold his sustaining arm. But the captain obviously had no
such intention. Standing firm and still he gazed with sombre eyes at Mr.
Smith. For a time the low convulsive sobbing of Mr. Smith's daughter was
the only sound to trouble the silence. The strength of Anthony's clasp
pressing Flora to his breast could not be doubted even at that distance,
and suddenly, awakening to his opportunity, he began to partly support
her, partly carry her in the direction of her cabin. His head was bent
over her solicitously, then recollecting himself, with a glance full of
unwonted fire, his voice ringing in a note unknown to Mr. Powell, he
cried to him, "Don't you go on deck yet. I want you to stay down here
till I come back. There are some instructions I want to give you."