Chance

by Joseph Conrad

  Now and then Captain Anthony ran down; but as the station was a real wayside one, with no early morning trains up, he could never stay for more than the afternoon. It appeared that he must sleep in town so as to be early on board his ship. The weather was magnificent and whenever the captain of the Ferndale was seen on a brilliant afternoon coming down the road Mr Smith would seize his stick and toddle off for a solitary walk. But whether he would get tired or because it gave him some satisfaction to see “that man” go away—or for some cunning reason of his own, he was always back before the hour of Anthony’s departure. On approaching the cottage he would see generally “that man” lying on the grass in the orchard at some distance from his daughter seated in a chair brought out of the cottage’s living-room. Invariably Mr Smith made straight for them and as invariably had the feeling that his approach was not disturbing a very intimate conversation. He sat with them, through a silent hour or so, and then it would be time for Anthony to go. Mr Smith, perhaps from discretion, would casually vanish a minute or so before, and then watch through the diamond panes of an upstairs room “that man” take a lingering look outside the gate at the invisible Flora, lift his hat, like a caller, and go off down the road. Then only Mr Smith would join his daughter again.

  These were the bad moments for her. Not always, of course, but frequently. It was nothing extraordinary to hear Mr Smith begin gently with some observation like this:

  “That man is getting tired of you.”

  He would never pronounce Anthony’s name. It was always “that man.”

  Generally she would remain mute with wide open eyes gazing at nothing between the gnarled fruit trees. Once, however, she got up and walked into the cottage. Mr Smith followed her carrying the chair. He banged it down resolutely and in that smooth inexpressive tone so many ears used to bend eagerly to catch when it came from the Great de Barral he said:

  “Let’s get away.”

  She had the strength of mind not to spin round. On the contrary she went on to a shabby bit of a mirror on the wall. In the greenish glass her own face looked far off like the livid face of a drowned corpse at the bottom of a pool. She laughed faintly.

  “I tell you that man’s getting—”

  “Papa,” she interrupted him. “I have no illusions as to myself. It has happened to me before but—”

  Her voice failing her suddenly her father struck in with quite an unwonted animation. “Let’s make a rush for it, then.”

  Having mastered both her fright and her bitterness, she turned round, sat down and allowed her astonishment to be seen. Mr Smith sat down too, his knees together and bent at right angles, his thin legs parallel to each other and his hands resting on the arms of the wooden armchair. His hair had grown long, his head was set stiffly, there was something fatuously venerable in his aspect.

  “You can’t care for him. Don’t tell me. I understand your motive. And I have called you an unfortunate girl. You are that as much as if you had gone on the streets. Yes. Don’t interrupt me, Flora. I was everlastingly being interrupted at the trial and I can’t stand it any more. I won’t be interrupted by my own child. And when I think that it is on the very day before they let me out that you...”

  He had wormed this fact out of her by that time because Flora had got tired of evading the question. He had been very much struck and distressed. Was that the trust she had in him? Was that a proof of confidence and love? The very day before! Never given him even half a chance. It was as at the trial. They never gave him a chance. They would not give him time. And there was his own daughter acting exactly as his bitterest enemies had done. Not giving him time!

  The monotony of that subdued voice nearly lulled her dismay to sleep. She listened to the unavoidable things he was saying.

  “But what induced that man to marry you? Of course he’s a gentleman. One can see that. And that makes it worse. Gentlemen don’t understand anything about city affairs—finance. Why!—the people who started the cry after me were a firm of gentlemen. The counsel, the judge—all gentlemen—quite out of it! No notion of ... And then he’s a sailor too. Just a skipper—”

  “My grandfather was nothing else,” she interrupted. And he made an angular gesture of impatience.

  “Yes. But what does a silly sailor know of business? Nothing. No conception. He can have no idea of what it means to be the daughter of Mr de Barral—even after his enemies had smashed him. What on earth induced him—”

  She made a movement because the level voice was getting on her nerves. And he paused, but only to go on again in the same tone with the remark:

  “Of course you are pretty. And that’s why you are lost—like many other poor girls. Unfortunate is the word for you.”

  She said: “It may be. Perhaps it is the right word; but listen, papa. I mean to be honest.”

  He began to exhale more speeches.

  “Just the sort of man to get tired and then leave you and go off with his beastly ship. And anyway you can never be happy with him. Look at his face. I want to save you. You see I was not perhaps a very good husband to your poor mother. She would have done better to have left me long before she died. I have been thinking it all over. I won’t have you unhappy.”

  He ran his eyes over her with an attention which was surprisingly noticeable. Then said, “H’m! Yes. Let’s clear out before it is too late. Quietly, you and I.”

  She said as if inspired and with that calmness which despair often gives: “There is no money to go away with, papa.”

  He rose up straightening himself as though he were a hinged figure. She said decisively:

  “And of course you wouldn’t think of deserting me, papa?”

  “Of course not,” sounded his subdued tone. And he left her, gliding away with his walk which Mr Powell described to me as being as level and wary as his voice. He walked as if he were carrying a glass full of water on his head.

  Flora naturally said nothing to Anthony of that edifying conversation. His generosity might have taken alarm at it and she did not want to be left behind to manage her father alone. And moreover she was too honest. She would be honest at whatever cost. She would not be the first to speak. Never. And the thought came into her head: “I am indeed an unfortunate creature!”

  It was by the merest coincidence that Anthony coming for the afternoon two days later had a talk with Mr Smith in the orchard. Flora for some reason or other had left them for a moment; and Anthony took that opportunity to be frank with Mr Smith. He said: “It seems to me, sir, that you think Flora has not done very well for herself. Well, as to that I can’t say anything. All I want you to know is that I have tried to do the right thing.” And then he explained that he had willed everything he was possessed of to her. “She didn’t tell you, I suppose?”

  Mr Smith shook his head slightly. And Anthony, trying to be friendly, was just saying that he proposed to keep the ship away from home for at least two years: “I think, sir, that from every point of view it would be best,” when Flora came back and the conversation, cut short in that direction, languished and died. Later in the evening, after Anthony had been gone for hours, on the point of separating for the night, Mr Smith remarked suddenly to his daughter after a long period of brooding:

  “A will is nothing. One tears it up. One makes another.” Then after reflecting for a minute he added unemotionally:

  “One tells lies about it.”

  Flora, patient, steeled against every hurt and every disgust to the point of wondering at herself, said: “You push your dislike of—of—Roderick too far, papa. You have no regard for me. You hurt me.”

  He, as ever inexpressive to the point of terrifying her sometimes by the contrast of his placidity and his words, turned away from her a pair of faded eyes.

  “I wonder how far your dislike goes,” he began. “His very name sticks in your throat. I’ve noticed it. It hurts me. What do you think of that? You might remember that you are not the only person that’s hurt by your folly, by your hastiness, by
your recklessness.” He brought back his eyes to her face. “And the very day before they were going to let me out.” His feeble voice failed him altogether, the narrow compressed lips only trembling for a time before he added with that extraordinary equanimity of tone, “I call it sinful.”

  Flora made no answer. She judged it simpler, kinder and certainly safer to let him talk himself out. This, Mr Smith, being naturally taciturn, never took very long to do. And we must not imagine that this sort of thing went on all the time. She had a few good days in that cottage. The absence of Anthony was a relief and his visits were pleasurable. She was quieter. He was quieter too. She was almost sorry when the time to join the ship arrived. It was a moment of anguish, of excitement; they arrived at the dock in the evening and Flora after “making her father comfortable” according to established usage lingered in the state-room long enough to notice that he was surprised. She caught his pale eyes observing her quite stonily. Then she went out after a cheery good-night.

  Contrary to her hopes she found Anthony yet in the saloon. Sitting in his armchair at the head of the table he was picking up some business papers which he put hastily in his breast-pocket and got up. He asked her if her day, travelling up to town and then doing some shopping, had tired her. She shook her head. Then he wanted to know in a half-jocular way how she felt about going away, and for a long voyage this time.

  “Does it matter how I feel?” she asked in a tone that cast a gloom over his face. He answered with repressed violence which she did not expect:

  “No, it does not matter, because I cannot go without you. I’ve told you... You know it. You don’t think I could.”

  “I assure you I haven’t the slightest wish to evade my obligations,” she said steadily. “Even if I could. Even if I dared, even if I had to die for it!”

  He looked thunderstruck. They stood facing each other at the end of the saloon. Anthony stuttered. “Oh no. You won’t die. You don’t mean it. You have taken kindly to the sea.”

  She laughed, but she felt angry.

  “No, I don’t mean it. I tell you I don’t mean to evade my obligations. I shall live on ... feeling a little crushed, nevertheless.”

  “Crushed!” he repeated. “What’s crushing you?”

  “Your magnanimity,” she said sharply. But her voice was softened after a time. “Yet I don’t know. There is a perfection in it—do you understand me, Roderick?—which makes it almost possible to bear.”

  He sighed, looked away, and remarked that it was time to put out the lamp in the saloon. The permission was only till ten o’clock.

  “But you needn’t mind that so much in your cabin. Just see that the curtains of the ports are drawn close and that’s all. The steward might have forgotten to do it. He lighted your reading lamp in there before he went ashore for a last evening with his wife. I don’t know if it was wise to get rid of Mrs Brown. You will have to look after yourself, Flora.”

  He was quite anxious; but Flora as a matter of fact congratulated herself on the absence of Mrs Brown. No sooner had she closed the door of her state-room than she murmured fervently, “Yes! Thank goodness, she is gone.” There would be no gentle knock, followed by her appearance with her equivocal stare and the intolerable: “Can I do anything for you, ma’am?” which poor Flora had learned to fear and hate more than any voice or any words on board that ship—her only refuge from the world which had no use for her for her imperfections and for her troubles.

  Mrs Brown had been very much vexed at her dismissal. The Browns were a childless couple and the arrangement had suited them perfectly. Their resentment was very bitter. Mrs Brown had to remain ashore alone with her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathiser. And Mrs Brown, with a woman’s quick power of observation and inference (the putting of two and two together) had come to a certain conclusion which she had imparted to her husband before leaving the ship. The morose steward permitted himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell’s hearing. It was in the officers’ mess-room at the end of a meal while he lingered after putting a fruit pie on the table. He and the chief mate started a dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the sallow steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling upwards his eyes, sentimental in a red face. Young Powell had heard a lot of that sort of thing by that time. It was growing monotonous; it had always sounded to him a little absurd. He struck in impatiently with the remark that such lamentations over a man merely because he had taken a wife seemed to him like lunacy.

  Franklin muttered, “Depends on what the wife is up to.” The steward leaning against the bulkhead near the door glowered at Powell, that newcomer, that ignoramus, that stranger without right or privileges. He snarled:

  “Wife! Call her a wife, do you?”

  “What the devil do you mean by this?” exclaimed young Powell.

  “I know what I know. My old woman has not been six months on board for nothing. You had better ask her when we get back.”

  And meeting sullenly the withering stare of Mr Powell the steward retreated backwards.

  Our young friend turned at once upon the mate. “And you let that confounded bottle-washer talk like this before you, Mr Franklin. Well, I am astonished.”

  “Oh, it isn’t what you think. It isn’t what you think.” Mr Franklin looked more apoplectic than ever. “If it comes to that I could astonish you. But it’s no use. I myself can hardly ... You couldn’t understand. I hope you won’t try to make mischief. There was a time, young fellow, when I would have dared any man—any man, you hear?—to make mischief between me and Captain Anthony. But not now. Not now. There’s a change! Not in me though...”

  Young Powell rejected with indignation any suggestion of making mischief. “Who do you take me for?” he cried. “Only you had better tell that steward to be careful what he says before me or I’ll spoil his good looks for him for a month and will leave him to explain the why of it to the captain the best way he can.”

  This speech established Powell as a champion of Mrs Anthony. Nothing more bearing on the question was ever said before him. He did not care for the steward’s black looks; Franklin, never conversational even at the best of times and avoiding now the only topic near his heart, addressed him only on matters of duty. And for that, too, Powell cared very little. The woes of the apoplectic mate had begun to bore him long before. Yet he felt lonely a bit at times. Therefore the little intercourse with Mrs Anthony either in one dog-watch or the other was something to be looked forward to. The captain did not mind it. That was evident from his manner. One night he inquired (they were then alone on the poop) what they had been talking about that evening? Powell had to confess that it was about the ship. Mrs Anthony had been asking him questions.

  “Takes interest—eh?” jerked out the captain moving rapidly up and down the weather-side of the poop.

  “Yes, sir. Mrs Anthony seems to get hold wonderfully of what one’s telling her.”

  “Sailor’s granddaughter. One of the old school. Old sea-dog of the best kind, I believe,” ejaculated the captain, swinging past his motionless second officer and leaving the words behind him like a trail of sparks succeeded by a perfect conversational darkness, because, for the next two hours till he left the deck, he didn’t open his lips again.

  On another occasion ... we mustn’t forget that the ship had crossed the line and was adding up south latitude every day by then—on another occasion, about seven in the evening, Powell on duty, heard his name uttered softly in the companion. The captain was on the stairs, thin-faced, his eyes sunk, on his arm a Shetland wool wrap.

  “Mr Powell—here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give this to Mrs Anthony. Evenings are getting chilly.”

  And the haggard face sank out of sight. Mrs Anthony was surprised on seeing the shawl.

  “The captain wants you to put this on,” explained young Powell, and as she raised herself in her seat he d
ropped it on her shoulders. She wrapped herself up closely.

  “Where was the captain?” she asked.

  “He was in the companion. Called me on purpose,” said Powell, and then retreated discreetly, because she looked as though she didn’t want to talk any more that evening. Mr Smith—the old gentleman—was as usual sitting on the skylight near her head, brooding over the long chair but by no means inimical, as far as his unreadable face went, to those conversations of the two youngest people on board. In fact they seemed to give him some pleasure. Now and then he would raise his faded china eyes to the animated face of Mr Powell thoughtfully. When the young sailor was by, the old man became less rigid, and when his daughter, on rare occasions, smiled at some artless tale of Mr Powell, the inexpressive face of Mr Smith reflected dimly that flash of evanescent mirth. For Mr Powell had come now to entertain his captain’s wife with anecdotes from the not very distant past when he was a boy, on board various ships,—funny things do happen on board ship. Flora was quite surprised at times to find herself amused. She was even heard to laugh twice in the course of a month. It was not a loud sound but it was startling enough at the after-end of the Ferndale where low tones or silence were the rule. The second time this happened the captain himself must have been startled somewhere down below; because he emerged from the depths of his unobtrusive existence and began his tramping on the opposite side of the poop.

  Almost immediately he called his young second officer over to him. This was not done in displeasure. The glance he fastened on Mr Powell conveyed a sort of approving wonder. He engaged him in desultory conversation as if for the only purpose of keeping a man who could provoke such a sound, near his person. Mr Powell felt himself liked. He felt it. Liked by that haggard, restless man who threw at him disconnected phrases to which his answers were, “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Oh, certainly,” “I suppose so, sir,”—and might have been clearly anything else for all the other cared.