Chance

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Chance


"I should call it the peace of the sea," said Mr. Charles Powell in an
earnest tone but looking at us as though he expected to be met by a laugh
of derision and were half prepared to salve his reputation for common
sense by joining in it. But neither of us laughed at Mr. Charles Powell
in whose start in life we had been called to take a part. He was lucky
in his audience.

"A very good name," said Marlow looking at him approvingly. "A sailor
finds a deep feeling of security in the exercise of his calling. The
exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth
that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded."

"Gospel truth," assented Mr. Powell. "No! they cannot be evaded."

That an excellent understanding should have established itself between my
old friend and our new acquaintance was remarkable enough. For they were
exactly dissimilar--one individuality projecting itself in length and the
other in breadth, which is already a sufficient ground for irreconcilable
difference. Marlow who was lanky, loose, quietly composed in varied
shades of brown robbed of every vestige of gloss, had a narrow, veiled
glance, the neutral bearing and the secret irritability which go together
with a predisposition to congestion of the liver. The other, compact,
broad and sturdy of limb, seemed extremely full of sound organs
functioning vigorously all the time in order to keep up the brilliance of
his colouring, the light curl of his coal-black hair and the lustre of
his eyes, which asserted themselves roundly in an open, manly face.
Between two such organisms one would not have expected to find the
slightest temperamental accord. But I have observed that profane men
living in ships like the holy men gathered together in monasteries
develop traits of profound resemblance. This must be because the service
of the sea and the service of a temple are both detached from the
vanities and errors of a world which follows no severe rule. The men of
the sea understand each other very well in their view of earthly things,
for simplicity is a good counsellor and isolation not a bad educator. A
turn of mind composed of innocence and scepticism is common to them all,
with the addition of an unexpected insight into motives, as of
disinterested lookers-on at a game. Mr. Powell took me aside to say,

"I like the things he says."

"You understand each other pretty well," I observed.

"I know his sort," said Powell, going to the window to look at his cutter
still riding to the flood. "He's the sort that's always chasing some
notion or other round and round his head just for the fun of the thing."

"Keeps them in good condition," I said.

"Lively enough I dare say," he admitted.

"Would you like better a man who let his notions lie curled up?"

"That I wouldn't," answered our new acquaintance. Clearly he was not
difficult to get on with. "I like him, very well," he continued, "though
it isn't easy to make him out. He seems to be up to a thing or two.
What's he doing?"

I informed him that our friend Marlow had retired from the sea in a sort
of half-hearted fashion some years ago.

Mr. Powell's comment was: "Fancied had enough of it?"

"Fancied's the very word to use in this connection," I observed,
remembering the subtly provisional character of Marlow's long sojourn
amongst us. From year to year he dwelt on land as a bird rests on the
branch of a tree, so tense with the power of brusque flight into its true
element that it is incomprehensible why it should sit still minute after
minute. The sea is the sailor's true element, and Marlow, lingering on
shore, was to me an object of incredulous commiseration like a bird,
which, secretly, should have lost its faith in the high virtue of flying.



CHAPTER TWO--THE FYNES AND THE GIRL-FRIEND


We were on our feet in the room by then, and Marlow, brown and
deliberate, approached the window where Mr. Powell and I had retired.
"What was the name of your chance again?" he asked. Mr. Powell stared
for a moment.

"Oh! The _Ferndale_. A Liverpool ship. Composite built."

"_Ferndale_," repeated Marlow thoughtfully. "_Ferndale_."

"Know her?"

"Our friend," I said, "knows something of every ship. He seems to have
gone about the seas prying into things considerably."

Marlow smiled.

"I've seen her, at least once."

"The finest sea-boat ever launched," declared Mr. Powell sturdily.
"Without exception."

"She looked a stout, comfortable ship," assented Marlow. "Uncommonly
comfortable. Not very fast tho'."

"She was fast enough for any reasonable man--when I was in her," growled
Mr. Powell with his back to us.

"Any ship is that--for a reasonable man," generalized Marlow in a
conciliatory tone. "A sailor isn't a globe-trotter."

"No," muttered Mr. Powell.

"Time's nothing to him," advanced Marlow.

"I don't suppose it's much," said Mr. Powell. "All the same a quick
passage is a feather in a man's cap."

"True. But that ornament is for the use of the master only. And by the
by what was his name?"

"The master of the _Ferndale_? Anthony. Captain Anthony."

"Just so. Quite right," approved Marlow thoughtfully. Our new
acquaintance looked over his shoulder.

"What do you mean? Why is it more right than if it had been Brown?"

"He has known him probably," I explained. "Marlow here appears to know
something of every soul that ever went afloat in a sailor's body."

Mr. Powell seemed wonderfully amenable to verbal suggestions for looking
again out of the window, he muttered:

"He was a good soul."

This clearly referred to Captain Anthony of the _Ferndale_. Marlow
addressed his protest to me.

"I did not know him. I really didn't. He was a good soul. That's
nothing very much out of the way--is it? And I didn't even know that
much of him. All I knew of him was an accident called Fyne.

At this Mr. Powell who evidently could be rebellious too turned his back
squarely on the window.

"What on earth do you mean?" he asked. "An--accident--called Fyne," he
repeated separating the words with emphasis.

Marlow was not disconcerted.

"I don't mean accident in the sense of a mishap. Not in the least. Fyne
was a good little man in the Civil Service. By accident I mean that
which happens blindly and without intelligent design. That's generally
the way a brother-in-law happens into a man's life."

Marlow's tone being apologetic and our new acquaintance having again
turned to the window I took it upon myself to say:

"You are justified. There is very little intelligent design in the
majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that. Intelligence
leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. I know you are not a
cynic."

Marlow smiled his retrospective smile which was kind as though he bore no
grudge against people he used to know.

"Little Fyne's marriage was quite successful. There was no design at all
in it. Fyne, you must know, was an enthusiastic pedestrian. He spent
his holidays tramping all over our native land. His tastes were simple.
He put infinite conviction and perseverance into his holidays. At the
proper season you would meet in the fields, Fyne, a serious-faced, broad-
chested, little man, with a shabby knap-sack on his back, making for some
church steeple. He had a horror of roads. He wrote once a little book
called the 'Tramp's Itinerary,' and was recognised as an authority on the
footpaths of England. So one year, in his favourite over-the-fields,
back-way fashion he entered a pretty Surrey village where he met Miss
Anthony. Pure accident, you see. They came to an understanding, across
some stile, most likely. Little Fyne held very solemn views as to the
destiny of women on this earth, the nature of our sublunary love, the
obligations of this transient life and so on. He probably disclosed them
to his future wife. Miss Anthony's views of life were very decided too
but in a different way. I don't know the story of their wooing. I
imagine it was carried on clandestinely and, I am certain, with
portentous gravity, at the back of copses, behind hedges . . .

"Why was it carried on clandestinely?" I inquired.

"Because of the lady's father. He was a savage sentimentalist who had
his own decided views of his paternal prerogatives. He was a terror; but
the only evidence of imaginative faculty about Fyne was his pride in his
wife's parentage. It stimulated his ingenuity too. Difficult--is it
not?--to introduce one's wife's maiden name into general conversation.
But my simple Fyne made use of Captain Anthony for that purpose, or else
I would never even have heard of the man. "My wife's sailor-brother" was
the phrase. He trotted out the sailor-brother in a pretty wide range of
subjects: Indian and colonial affairs, matters of trade, talk of travels,
of seaside holidays and so on. Once I remember "My wife's sailor-brother
Captain Anthony" being produced in connection with nothing less recondite
than a sunset. And little Fyne never failed to add "The son of Carleon
Anthony, the poet--you know." He used to lower his voice for that
statement, and people were impressed or pretended to be."

The late Carleon Anthony, the poet, sang in his time of the domestic and
social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his
object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand
years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and
feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know. His
poems read like sentimental novels told in verse of a really superior
quality. You felt as if you were being taken out for a delightful
country drive by a charming lady in a pony carriage. But in his domestic
life that same Carleon Anthony showed traces of the primitive
cave-dweller's temperament. He was a massive, implacable man with a
handsome face, arbitrary and exacting with his dependants, but
marvellously suave in his manner to admiring strangers. These contrasted
displays must have been particularly exasperating to his long-suffering
family. After his second wife's death his boy, whom he persisted by a
mere whim in educating at home, ran away in conventional style and, as if
disgusted with the amenities of civilization, threw himself, figuratively
speaking, into the sea. The daughter (the elder of the two children)
either from compassion or because women are naturally more enduring,
remained in bondage to the poet for several years, till she too seized a
chance of escape by throwing herself into the arms, the muscular arms, of
the pedestrian Fyne. This was either great luck or great sagacity. A
civil servant is, I should imagine, the last human being in the world to
preserve those traits of the cave-dweller from which she was fleeing. Her
father would never consent to see her after the marriage. Such
unforgiving selfishness is difficult to understand unless as a perverse
sort of refinement. There were also doubts as to Carleon Anthony's
complete sanity for some considerable time before he died.

Most of the above I elicited from Marlow, for all I knew of Carleon
Anthony was his unexciting but fascinating verse. Marlow assured me that
the Fyne marriage was perfectly successful and even happy, in an earnest,
unplayful fashion, being blessed besides by three healthy, active, self-
reliant children, all girls. They were all pedestrians too. Even the
youngest would wander away for miles if not restrained. Mrs. Fyne had a
ruddy out-of-doors complexion and wore blouses with a starched front like
a man's shirt, a stand-up collar and a long necktie. Marlow had made
their acquaintance one summer in the country, where they were accustomed
to take a cottage for the holidays . . .

At this point we were interrupted by Mr. Powell who declared that he must
leave us. The tide was on the turn, he announced coming away from the
window abruptly. He wanted to be on board his cutter before she swung
and of course he would sleep on board. Never slept away from the cutter
while on a cruise. He was gone in a moment, unceremoniously, but giving
us no offence and leaving behind an impression as though we had known him
for a long time. The ingenuous way he had told us of his start in life
had something to do with putting him on that footing with us. I gave no
thought to seeing him again.

Marlow expressed a confident hope of coming across him before long.

"He cruises about the mouth of the river all the summer. He will be easy
to find any week-end," he remarked ringing the bell so that we might
settle up with the waiter.

* * * * *

Later on I asked Marlow why he wished to cultivate this chance
acquaintance. He confessed apologetically that it was the commonest sort
of curiosity. I flatter myself that I understand all sorts of curiosity.
Curiosity about daily facts, about daily things, about daily men. It is
the most respectable faculty of the human mind--in fact I cannot conceive
the uses of an incurious mind. It would be like a chamber perpetually
locked up. But in this particular case Mr. Powell seemed to have given
us already a complete insight into his personality such as it was; a
personality capable of perception and with a feeling for the vagaries of
fate, but essentially simple in itself.

Marlow agreed with me so far. He explained however that his curiosity
was not excited by Mr. Powell exclusively. It originated a good way
further back in the fact of his accidental acquaintance with the Fynes,
in the country. This chance meeting with a man who had sailed with
Captain Anthony had revived it. It had revived it to some purpose, to
such purpose that to me too was given the knowledge of its origin and of
its nature. It was given to me in several stages, at intervals which are
not indicated here. On this first occasion I remarked to Marlow with
some surprise:

"But, if I remember rightly you said you didn't know Captain Anthony."

"No. I never saw the man. It's years ago now, but I seem to hear solemn
little Fyne's deep voice announcing the approaching visit of his wife's
brother "the son of the poet, you know." He had just arrived in London
from a long voyage, and, directly his occupations permitted, was coming
down to stay with his relatives for a few weeks. No doubt we two should
find many things to talk about by ourselves in reference to our common
calling, added little Fyne portentously in his grave undertones, as if
the Mercantile Marine were a secret society.

You must understand that I cultivated the Fynes only in the country, in
their holiday time. This was the third year. Of their existence in town
I knew no more than may be inferred from analogy. I played chess with
Fyne in the late afternoon, and sometimes came over to the cottage early
enough to have tea with the whole family at a big round table. They sat
about it, an unsmiling, sunburnt company of very few words indeed. Even
the children were silent and as if contemptuous of each other and of
their elders. Fyne muttered sometimes deep down in his chest some
insignificant remark. Mrs. Fyne smiled mechanically (she had splendid
teeth) while distributing tea and bread and butter. A something which
was not coldness, nor yet indifference, but a sort of peculiar
self-possession gave her the appearance of a very trustworthy, very
capable and excellent governess; as if Fyne were a widower and the
children not her own but only entrusted to her calm, efficient,
unemotional care. One expected her to address Fyne as Mr. When she
called him John it surprised one like a shocking familiarity. The
atmosphere of that holiday was--if I may put it so--brightly dull.
Healthy faces, fair complexions, clear eyes, and never a frank smile in
the whole lot, unless perhaps from a girl-friend.

The girl-friend problem exercised me greatly. How and where the Fynes
got all these pretty creatures to come and stay with them I can't
imagine. I had at first the wild suspicion that they were obtained to
amuse Fyne. But I soon discovered that he could hardly tell one from the
other, though obviously their presence met with his solemn approval.
These girls in fact came for Mrs. Fyne. They treated her with admiring
deference. She answered to some need of theirs. They sat at her feet.
They were like disciples. It was very curious. Of Fyne they took but
scanty notice. As to myself I was made to feel that I did not exist.

After tea we would sit down to chess and then Fyne's everlasting gravity
became faintly tinged by an attenuated gleam of something inward which
resembled sly satisfaction. Of the divine frivolity of laughter he was
only capable over a chess-board. Certain positions of the game struck
him as humorous, which nothing else on earth could do . . .

"He used to beat you," I asserted with confidence.

"Yes. He used to beat me," Marlow owned up hastily.

So he and Fyne played two games after tea. The children romped together
outside, gravely, unplayfully, as one would expect from Fyne's children,
and Mrs. Fyne would be gone to the bottom of the garden with the girl-
friend of the week. She always walked off directly after tea with her
arm round the girl-friend's waist. Marlow said that there was only one
girl-friend with whom he had conversed at all. It had happened quite
unexpectedly, long after he had given up all hope of getting into touch
with these reserved girl-friends.

One day he saw a woman walking about on the edge of a high quarry, which
rose a sheer hundred feet, at least, from the road winding up the hill
out of which it had been excavated. He shouted warningly to her from
below where he happened to be passing. She was really in considerable
danger. At the sound of his voice she started back and retreated out of
his sight amongst some young Scotch firs growing near the very brink of
the precipice.

"I sat down on a bank of grass," Marlow went on. "She had given me a
turn. The hem of her skirt seemed to float over that awful sheer drop,
she was so close to the edge. An absurd thing to do. A perfectly mad
trick--for no conceivable object! I was reflecting on the foolhardiness
of the average girl and remembering some other instances of the kind,
when she came into view walking down the steep curve of the road. She
had Mrs. Fyne's walking-stick and was escorted by the Fyne dog. Her dead
white face struck me with astonishment, so that I forgot to raise my hat.
I just sat and stared. The dog, a vivacious and amiable animal which for
some inscrutable reason had bestowed his friendship on my unworthy self,
rushed up the bank demonstratively and insinuated himself under my arm.

The girl-friend (it was one of them) went past some way as though she had
not seen me, then stopped and called the dog to her several times; but he
only nestled closer to my side, and when I tried to push him away
developed that remarkable power of internal resistance by which a dog
makes himself practically immovable by anything short of a kick. She
looked over her shoulder and her arched eyebrows frowned above her
blanched face. It was almost a scowl. Then the expression changed. She
looked unhappy. "Come here!" she cried once more in an angry and
distressed tone. I took off my hat at last, but the dog hanging out his
tongue with that cheerfully imbecile expression some dogs know so well
how to put on when it suits their purpose, pretended to be deaf.

She cried from the distance desperately.

"Perhaps you will take him to the cottage then. I can't wait."

"I won't be responsible for that dog," I protested getting down the bank
and advancing towards her. She looked very hurt, apparently by the
desertion of the dog. "But if you let me walk with you he will follow us
all right," I suggested.

She moved on without answering me. The dog launched himself suddenly
full speed down the road receding from us in a small cloud of dust. It
vanished in the distance, and presently we came up with him lying on the
grass. He panted in the shade of the hedge with shining eyes but
pretended not to see us. We had not exchanged a word so far. The girl
by my side gave him a scornful glance in passing.

"He offered to come with me," she remarked bitterly.

"And then abandoned you!" I sympathized. "It looks very unchivalrous.
But that's merely his want of tact. I believe he meant to protest
against your reckless proceedings. What made you come so near the edge
of that quarry? The earth might have given way. Haven't you noticed a
smashed fir tree at the bottom? Tumbled over only the other morning
after a night's rain."

"I don't see why I shouldn't be as reckless as I please."

I was nettled by her brusque manner of asserting her folly, and I told
her that neither did I as far as that went, in a tone which almost
suggested that she was welcome to break her neck for all I cared. This
was considerably more than I meant, but I don't like rude girls. I had
been introduced to her only the day before--at the round tea-table--and
she had barely acknowledged the introduction. I had not caught her name
but I had noticed her fine, arched eyebrows which, so the physiognomists
say, are a sign of courage.

I examined her appearance quietly. Her hair was nearly black, her eyes
blue, deeply shaded by long dark eyelashes. She had a little colour now.
She looked straight before her; the corner of her lip on my side drooped
a little; her chin was fine, somewhat pointed. I went on to say that
some regard for others should stand in the way of one's playing with
danger. I urged playfully the distress of the poor Fynes in case of
accident, if nothing else. I told her that she did not know the bucolic
mind. Had she given occasion for a coroner's inquest the verdict would
have been suicide, with the implication of unhappy love. They would
never be able to understand that she had taken the trouble to climb over
two post-and-rail fences only for the fun of being reckless. Indeed even
as I talked chaffingly I was greatly struck myself by the fact.

She retorted that once one was dead what horrid people thought of one did
not matter. It was said with infinite contempt; but something like a
suppressed quaver in the voice made me look at her again. I perceived
then that her thick eyelashes were wet. This surprising discovery
silenced me as you may guess. She looked unhappy. And--I don't know how
to say it--well--it suited her. The clouded brow, the pained mouth, the
vague fixed glance! A victim. And this characteristic aspect made her
attractive; an individual touch--you know.

The dog had run on ahead and now gazed at us by the side of the Fyne's
garden-gate in a tense attitude and wagging his stumpy tail very, very
slowly, with an air of concentrated attention. The girl-friend of the
Fynes bolted violently through the aforesaid gate and into the cottage
leaving me on the road--astounded.

A couple of hours afterwards I returned to the cottage for chess as
usual. I saw neither the girl nor Mrs. Fyne then. We had our two games
and on parting I warned Fyne that I was called to town on business and
might be away for some time. He regretted it very much. His brother-in-
law was expected next day but he didn't know whether he was a
chess-player. Captain Anthony ("the son of the poet--you know") was of a
retiring disposition, shy with strangers, unused to society and very much
devoted to his calling, Fyne explained. All the time they had been
married he could be induced only once before to come and stay with them
for a few days. He had had a rather unhappy boyhood; and it made him a
silent man. But no doubt, concluded Fyne, as if dealing portentously
with a mystery, we two sailors should find much to say to one another.

This point was never settled. I was detained in town from week to week
till it seemed hardly worth while to go back. But as I had kept on my
rooms in the farmhouse I concluded to go down again for a few days.

It was late, deep dusk, when I got out at our little country station. My
eyes fell on the unmistakable broad back and the muscular legs in cycling
stockings of little Fyne. He passed along the carriages rapidly towards
the rear of the train, which presently pulled out and left him solitary
at the end of the rustic platform. When he came back to where I waited I
perceived that he was much perturbed, so perturbed as to forget the
convention of the usual greetings. He only exclaimed Oh! on recognizing
me, and stopped irresolute. When I asked him if he had been expecting
somebody by that train he didn't seem to know. He stammered
disconnectedly. I looked hard at him. To all appearances he was
perfectly sober; moreover to suspect Fyne of a lapse from the proprieties
high or low, great or small, was absurd. He was also a too serious and
deliberate person to go mad suddenly. But as he seemed to have forgotten
that he had a tongue in his head I concluded I would leave him to his
mystery. To my surprise he followed me out of the station and kept by my
side, though I did not encourage him. I did not however repulse his
attempts at conversation. He was no longer expecting me, he said. He
had given me up. The weather had been uniformly fine--and so on. I
gathered also that the son of the poet had curtailed his stay somewhat
and gone back to his ship the day before.