Chance

by Joseph Conrad

  The form of her lips (I could see them under the brim of her hat) was suddenly altered into a line of seriousness. The parasol stopped swinging.

  “I have given him what he wanted—that’s myself,” she said without a tremor and with a striking dignity of tone.

  Impressed by the manner and the directness of the words, I hesitated for a moment what to say. Then made up my mind to clear up the point.

  “And you have got what you wanted? Is that it?”

  The daughter of the egregious financier de Barral did not answer at once this question going to the heart of things. Then raising her head and gazing wistfully across the street noisy with the endless transit of innumerable bargains, she said with intense gravity:

  “He has been most generous.”

  I was pleased to hear these words. Not that I doubted the infatuation of Roderick Anthony, but I was pleased to hear something which proved that she was sensible and open to the sentiment of gratitude which in this case was significant. In the face of man’s desire a girl is excusable if she thinks herself priceless. I mean a girl of our civilisation which has established a dithyrambic phraseology for the expression of love. A man in love will accept any convention exalting the object of his passion and in this indirect way his passion itself. In what way the captain of the ship Ferndale gave proofs of lover-like lavishness I could not guess very well. But I was glad she was appreciative. It is lucky that small things please women. And it is not silly of them to be thus pleased. It is in small things that the deepest loyalty, that which they need most, the loyalty of the passing moment, is best expressed.

  She had remained thoughtful, letting her deep motionless eyes rest on the streaming jumble of traffic. Suddenly she said:

  “And I wanted to ask you—I was really glad when I saw you actually here. Who would have expected you here, at this spot, before this hotel! I certainly never ... You see it meant a lot to me. You are the only person who knows ... who knows for certain...”

  “Knows what?” I said, not discovering at first what she had in her mind. Then I saw it. “Why can’t you leave that alone?” I remonstrated, rather annoyed at the invidious position she was forcing on me in a sense. “It’s true that I was the only person to see,” I added. “But, as it happens, after your mysterious disappearance I told the Fynes the story of our meeting.”

  Her eyes raised to mine had an expression of dreamy, unfathomable candour, if I dare say so. And if you wonder what I mean I can only say that I have seen the sea wear such an expression on one or two occasions shortly before sunrise on a calm, fresh day. She said as if meditating aloud that she supposed the Fynes were not likely to talk about that. She couldn’t imagine any connection in which... Why should they?

  As her tone had become interrogatory I assented. “To be sure. There’s no reason whatever”—thinking to myself that they would be more likely indeed to keep quiet about it. They had other things to talk of. And then remembering little Fyne stuck upstairs for an unconscionable time, enough to blurt out everything he ever knew in his life, I reflected that he would assume naturally that Captain Anthony had nothing to learn from him about Flora de Barral. It had been up to now my assumption too. I saw my mistake. The sincerest of women will make no unnecessary confidences to a man. And this is as it should be.

  “No—no!” I said reassuringly. “It’s most unlikely. Are you much concerned?”

  “Well, you see, when I came down,” she said again in that precise demure tone, “when I came down—into the garden Captain Anthony misunderstood—”

  “Of course he would. Men are so conceited,” I said.

  I saw it well enough that he must have thought she had come down to him. What else could he have thought? And then he had been “gentleness itself.” A new experience for that poor, delicate, and yet so resisting creature. Gentleness in passion! What could have been more seductive to the scared, starved heart of that girl? Perhaps had he been violent, she might have told him that what she came down to keep was the tryst of death—not of love. It occurred to me as I looked at her, young, fragile in aspect, and intensely alive in her quietness, that perhaps she did not know herself then what sort of tryst she was coming down to keep.

  She smiled faintly, almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused to smiling, at my cheap jocularity. Then she said with that forced precision, a sort of conscious primness:

  “I didn’t want him to know.”

  I approved heartily. Quite right. Much better. Let him ever remain under his misapprehension which was so much more flattering for him.

  I tried to keep it in the tone of comedy; but she was, I believe, too simple to understand my intention. She went on, looking down.

  “Oh! You think so? When I saw you I didn’t know why you were here. I was glad when you spoke to me because this is exactly what I wanted to ask you for. I wanted to ask you if you ever meet Captain Anthony—by any chance—anywhere—you are a sailor too, are you not?—that you, would never mention—never—that—that you had seen me over there.”

  “My dear young lady,” I cried, horror-struck at the supposition. “Why should I? What makes you think I should dream of...”

  She had raised her head at my vehemence. She did not understand it. The world had treated her so dishonourably that she had no notion even of what mere decency of feeling is like. It was not her fault. Indeed, I don’t know why she should have put her trust in anybody’s promises. But I thought it would be better to promise. So I assured her that she could depend on my absolute silence.

  “I am not likely to ever set eyes on Captain Anthony,” I added with conviction—as a further guarantee.

  She accepted my assurance in silence, without a sign. Her gravity had in it something acute, perhaps because of that chin. While we were still looking at each other she declared:

  “There’s no deception in it really. I want you to believe that if I am here, like this, to-day, it is not from fear. It is not!”

  “I quite understand,” I said. But her firm yet self-conscious gaze became doubtful. “I do,” I insisted. “I understand perfectly that it was not of death that you were afraid.”

  She lowered her eyes slowly, and I went on:

  “As to life, that’s another thing. And I don’t know that one ought to blame you very much—though it seemed rather an excessive step. I wonder now if it isn’t the ugliness rather than the pain of the struggle which...”

  She shuddered visibly: “But I do blame myself,” she exclaimed with feeling. “I am ashamed.” And, dropping her head, she looked in a moment the very picture of remorse and shame.

  “Well, you will be going away from all its horrors,” I said. “And surely you are not afraid of the sea. You are a sailor’s granddaughter, I understand.”

  She sighed deeply. She remembered her grandfather only a little. He was a clean-shaven man with a ruddy complexion and long, perfectly white hair. He used to take her on his knee, and putting his face near hers, talk to her in loving whispers. If only he were alive now...

  She remained silent for a while.

  “Aren’t you anxious to see the ship?” I asked.

  She lowered her head still more so that I could not see anything of her face.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  I had already the suspicion that she did not know her own feelings. All this work of the merest chance had been so unexpected, so sudden. And she had nothing to fall back upon, no experience but such as to shake her belief in every human being. She was dreadfully and pitifully forlorn. It was almost in order to comfort my own depression that I remarked cheerfully:

  “Well, I know of somebody who must be growing extremely anxious to see you.”

  “I am before my time,” she confessed simply, rousing herself. “I had nothing to do. So I came out.”

  I had the sudden vision of a shabby, lonely little room at the other end of the town. It had grown intolerable to her restlessness. The mere thought of it oppressed her. Flora de Barra
l was looking frankly at her chance confidant.

  “And I came this way,” she went on. “I appointed the time myself yesterday, but Captain Anthony would not have minded. He told me he was going to look over some business papers till I came.”

  The idea of the son of the poet, the rescuer of the most forlorn damsel of modern times, the man of violence, gentleness and generosity, sitting up to his neck in ship’s accounts amused me. “I am sure he would not have minded,” I said, smiling. But the girl’s stare was sombre, her thin white face seemed pathetically careworn.

  “I can hardly believe yet,” she murmured anxiously.

  “It’s quite real. Never fear,” I said encouragingly, but had to change my tone at once. “You had better go down that way a little,” I directed her abruptly.

  I had seen Fyne come striding out of the hotel door. The intelligent girl, without staying to ask questions, walked away from me quietly down one street while I hurried on to meet Fyne coming up the other at his efficient pedestrian gait. My object was to stop him getting as far as the corner. He must have been thinking too hard to be aware of his surroundings. I put myself in his way, and he nearly walked into me.

  “Hallo!” I said.

  His surprise was extreme. “You here! You don’t mean to say you have been waiting for me?”

  I said negligently that I had been detained by unexpected business in the neighbourhood, and thus happened to catch sight of him coming out.

  He stared at me with solemn distraction, obviously thinking of something else. I suggested that he had better take the next city-ward tram-car. He was inattentive, and I perceived that he was profoundly perturbed. As Miss de Barral (she had moved out of sight) could not possibly approach the hotel door as long as we remained where we were I proposed that we should wait for the car on the other side of the street. He obeyed rather the slight touch on his arm than my words, and while we were crossing the wide roadway in the midst of the lumbering wheeled traffic, he exclaimed in his deep tone, “I don’t know which of these two is more mad than the other!”

  “Really!” I said, pulling him forward from under the noses of two enormous sleepy-headed cart-horses. He skipped wildly out of the way and up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision; his mind had nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, and while in the act of sailing gravely through the air, he continued to relieve his outraged feelings.

  “You would never believe! They are mad!”

  I took care to place myself in such a position that to face me he had to turn his back on the hotel across the road. I believe he was glad I was there to talk to. But I thought there was some misapprehension in the first statement he shot out at me without loss of time, that Captain Anthony had been glad to see him. It was indeed difficult to believe that, directly he opened the door, his wife’s “sailor-brother” had positively shouted: “Oh, it’s you! The very man I wanted to see.”

  “I found him sitting there,” went on Fyne impressively in his effortless, grave chest voice, “drafting his will.”

  This was unexpected, but I preserved a non-committal attitude, knowing full well that our actions in themselves are neither mad nor sane. But I did not see what there was to be excited about. And Fyne was distinctly excited. I understood it better when I learned that the captain of the Ferndale wanted little Fyne to be one of the trustees. He was leaving everything to his wife. Naturally, a request which involved him into sanctioning in a way a proceeding which he had been sent by his wife to oppose, must have appeared sufficiently mad to Fyne.

  “Me! Me, of all people in the world!” he repeated portentously. But I could see that he was frightened. Such want of tact!

  “He knew I came from his sister. You don’t put a man into such an awkward position,” complained Fyne. “It made me speak much more strongly against all this very painful business than I would have had the heart to do otherwise.”

  I pointed out to him concisely, and keeping my eyes on the door of the hotel, that he and his wife were the only bond with the land Captain Anthony had. Who else could he have asked?

  “I explained to him that he was breaking this bond,” declared Fyne solemnly. “Breaking it once for all. And for what—for what?”

  He glared at me. I could perhaps have given him an inkling for what, but I said nothing. He started again:

  “My wife assures me that the girl does not love him a bit. She goes by that letter she received from her. There is a passage in it where she practically admits that she was quite unscrupulous in accepting this offer of marriage, but says to my wife that she supposes she, my wife, will not blame her—as it was in self-defence. My wife has her own ideas, but this is an outrageous misapprehension of her views. Outrageous.”

  The good little man paused and then added weightily:

  “I didn’t tell that to my brother-in-law—I mean, my wife’s views.”

  “No,” I said. “What would have been the good?”

  “It’s positive infatuation,” agreed, little Fyne, in the tone as though he had made an awful discovery. “I have never seen anything so hopeless and inexplicable in my life. I—I felt quite frightened and sorry,” he added, while I looked at him curiously asking myself whether this excellent civil servant and notable pedestrian had felt the breath of a great and fatal love-spell passing him by in the room of that East-End hotel. He did look for a moment as though he had seen a ghost, an other-world thing. But that look vanished instantaneously, and he nodded at me with mere exasperation at something quite of this world—whatever it was. “It’s a bad business. My brother-in-law knows nothing of women,” he cried with an air of profound, experienced wisdom.

  What he imagined he knew of women himself I can’t tell. I did not know anything of the opportunities he might have had. But this is a subject which, if approached with undue solemnity, is apt to elude one’s grasp entirely. No doubt Fyne knew something of a woman who was Captain Anthony’s sister. But that, admittedly, had been a very solemn study. I smiled at him gently, and as if encouraged or provoked, he completed his thought rather explosively.

  “And that girl understands nothing... It’s sheer lunacy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “whether the circumstances of isolation at sea would be any alleviation to the danger. But it’s certain that they shall have the opportunity to learn everything about each other in a lonely tête-à-tête.”

  “But dash it all,” he cried in hollow accents which at the same time had the tone of bitter irony—I had never before heard a sound so quaintly ugly and almost horrible—“You forget Mr Smith.”

  “What Mr Smith?” I asked innocently.

  Fyne made an extraordinary simiesque grimace. I believe it was quite involuntary, but you know that a grave, much-lined, shaven countenance when distorted in an unusual way is extremely apelike. It was a surprising sight, and rendered me not only speechless but stopped the progress of my thought completely. I must have presented a remarkably imbecile appearance.

  “My brother-in-law considered it amusing to chaff me about us introducing the girl as Miss Smith,” said Fyne, going surly in a moment. “He said that perhaps if he had heard her real name from the first it might have restrained him. As it was, he made the discovery too late. Asked me to tell Zoe this together with a lot more nonsense.”

  Fyne gave me the impression of having escaped from a man inspired by a grimly playful ebullition of high spirits. It must have been most distasteful to him; and his solemnity got damaged somehow in the process, I perceived. There were holes in it through which I could see a new, an unknown Fyne.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” he went on, “but she looks upon her father exclusively as a victim. I don’t know,” he burst out suddenly through an enormous rent in his solemnity, “if she thinks him absolutely a saint, but she certainly imagines him to be a martyr.”

  It is one of the advantages of that magnificent invention, the prison, that you may forget people whom are put there as though the
y were dead. One needn’t worry about them. Nothing can happen to them that you can help. They can do nothing which might possibly matter to anybody. They come out of it, though, but that seems hardly an advantage to themselves or anyone else. I had completely forgotten the financier de Barral. The girl for me was an orphan, but now I perceived suddenly the force of Fyne’s qualifying statement, “to a certain extent.” It would have been infinitely more kind all round for the law to have shot, beheaded, strangled, or otherwise destroyed this absurd de Barral, who was a danger to a moral world inhabited by a credulous multitude not fit to take care of itself. But I observed to Fyne that, however insane was the view she held, one could not declare the girl mad on that account.

  “So she thinks of her father—does she? I suppose she would appear to us saner if she thought only of herself.”

  “I am positive,” Fyne said earnestly, “that she went and made desperate eyes at Anthony...”

  “Oh come!” I interrupted. “You haven’t seen her make eyes. You don’t know the colour of her eyes.”

  “Very well! It don’t matter. But it could hardly have come to that if she hadn’t... It’s all one, though. I tell you she has led him on, or accepted him, if you like, simply because she was thinking of her father. She doesn’t care a bit about Anthony, I believe. She cares for no one. Never cared for anyone. Ask Zoe. For myself I don’t blame her,” added Fyne, giving me another view of unsuspected things through the rags and tatters of his damaged solemnity. “No! by heavens, I don’t blame her—the poor devil.”

  I agreed with him silently. I suppose affections are, in a sense, to be learned. If there exists a native spark of love in all of us, it must be fanned while we are young. Hers, if she ever had it, had been drenched in as ugly a lot of corrosive liquid as could be imagined. But I was surprised at Fyne obscurely feeling this.

  “She loves no one except that preposterous advertising shark,” he pursued venomously, but in a more deliberate manner. “And Anthony knows it.”