Chance Part 40

Mr Powell did not wait for more. He went down on the main deck.

Without taking the mate's jeremiads seriously he put them beside the words of Mr Smith. He had grown already attached to Captain Anthony.

There was something not only attractive but compelling in the man. Only it is very difficult for youth to believe in the menace of death. Not in the fact itself, but in its proximity to a breathing, moving, talking, superior human being, showing no sign of disease. And Mr Powell thought that this talk was all nonsense. But his curiosity was awakened. There was something, and at any time some circ.u.mstance might occur ... No, he would never find out ... There was nothing to find out, most likely. Mr Powell went to his room where he tried to read a book he had already read a good many times. Presently a bell rang for the officers' supper.

PART TWO, CHAPTER 6.

A MOONLESS NIGHT, THICK WITH STARS ABOVE, VERY DARK ON THE WATER.

In the mess-room Powell found Mr Franklin hacking at a piece of cold salt beef with a table knife. The mate, fiery in the face and rolling his eyes over that task, explained that the carver belonging to the mess-room could not be found. The steward, present also, complained savagely of the cook. The fellow got things into his galley and then lost them. Mr Franklin tried to pacify him with mournful firmness.

"There, there! That will do. We who have been all these years together in the ship have other things to think about than quarrelling among ourselves."

Mr Powell thought with exasperation: "Here he goes again," for this utterance had nothing cryptic for him. The steward having withdrawn morosely, he was not surprised to hear the mate strike the usual note.

That morning the mizzen topsail-tie had carried away (probably a defective link) and something like forty feet of chain and wire-rope, mixed up with a few heavy iron blocks, had crashed down from aloft on the p.o.o.p with a terrifying racket.

"Did you notice the captain then, Mr Powell. Did you notice?"

Powell confessed frankly that he was too scared himself when all that lot of gear came down on deck to notice anything.

"The gin-block missed his head by an inch," went on the mate impressively. "I wasn't three feet from him. And what did he do? Did he shout, or jump, or even look aloft to see if the yard wasn't coming down too about our ears in a dozen pieces? It's a marvel it didn't.

No, he just stopped short--no wonder; he must have felt the wind of that iron gin-block on his face--looked down at it, there, lying close to his foot--and went on again. I believe he didn't even blink. It isn't natural. The man is stupefied."

He sighed ridiculously and Mr Powell had suppressed a grin, when the mate added as if he couldn't contain himself:

"He will be taking to drink next. Mark my words. That's the next thing."

Mr Powell was disgusted.

"You are so fond of the captain and yet you don't seem to care what you say about him. I haven't been with him for seven years, but I know he isn't the sort of man that takes to drink. And then--why the devil should he?"

"Why the devil, you ask. Devil--eh? Well, no man is safe from the devil--and that's answer enough for you," wheezed Mr Franklin not unkindly. "There was a time, a long time ago, when I nearly took to drink myself. What do you say to that?"

Mr Powell expressed a polite incredulity. The thick, congested mate seemed on the point of bursting with despondency. "That was bad example though. I was young and fell into dangerous company, made a fool of myself--yes, as true as you see me sitting here. Drank to forget.

Thought it a great dodge."

Powell looked at the grotesque Franklin with awakened interest and with that half-amused sympathy with which we receive unprovoked confidences from men with whom we have no sort of affinity. And at the same time he began to look upon him more seriously. Experience has its prestige.

And the mate continued:

"If it hadn't been for the old lady, I would have gone to the devil. I remembered her in time. Nothing like having an old lady to look after to steady a chap and make him face things. But as bad luck would have it, Captain Anthony has no mother living, not a blessed soul belonging to him as far as I know. Oh, ay, I fancy he said once something to me of a sister. But she's married. She don't need him. Yes. In the old days he used to talk to me as if we had been brothers," exaggerated the mate sentimentally. "'Franklin,'--he would say--'this ship is my nearest relation and she isn't likely to turn against me. And I suppose you are the man I've known the longest in the world.' That's how he used to speak to me. Can I turn my back on him? He has turned his back on his ship; that's what it has come to. He has no one now but his old Franklin. But what's a fellow to do to put things back as they were and should be. Should be--I say!"

His starting eyes had a terrible fixity. Mr Powell's irresistible thought, "he resembles a boiled lobster in distress," was followed by annoyance. "Good Lord," he said, "you don't mean to hint that Captain Anthony has fallen into bad company. What is it you want to save him from?"

"I do mean it," affirmed the mate, and the very absurdity of the statement made it impressive--because it seemed so absolutely audacious.

"Well, you have a cheek," said young Powell, feeling mentally helpless.

"I have a notion the captain would half kill you if he were to know how you carry on."

"And welcome," uttered the fervently devoted Franklin. "I am willing, if he would only clear the ship afterwards of that ... You are but a youngster and you may go and tell him what you like. Let him knock the stuffing out of his old Franklin first and think it over afterwards.

Anything to pull him together. But of course you wouldn't. You are all right. Only you don't know that things are sometimes different from what they look. There are friendships that are no friendships, and marriages that are no marriages... Phoo! Likely to be right--wasn't it? Never a hint to me. I go off on leave and when I come back, there it is--all over, settled! Not a word beforehand. No warning. If only: 'What do you think of it, Franklin?'--or anything of the sort. And that's a man who hardly ever did anything without asking my advice.

Why! He couldn't take over a new coat from the tailor without ... first thing, directly the fellow came on board with some new clothes, whether in London or in China, it would be: 'Pa.s.s the word along there for Mr Franklin. Mr Franklin wanted in the cabin.' In I would go. 'Just look at my back, Franklin. Fits all right, doesn't it?' And I would say: 'First-rate, sir,' or whatever was the truth of it. That or anything else. Always the truth of it. Always. And well he knew it; and that's why he dared not speak right out. Talking about workmen, alterations, cabins... Phoo! ... instead of a straightforward--'Wish me joy, Mr Franklin!' Yes, that was the way to let me know. G.o.d only knows what they are--perhaps she isn't his daughter any more than she is... She doesn't resemble that old fellow. Not a bit. Not a bit.

It's very awful. You may well open your mouth, young man. But for goodness' sake, you who are mixed up with that lot, keep your eyes and ears open too in case--in case of--I don't know what. Anything. One wonders what can happen here at sea! Nothing. Yet when a man is called a jailer behind his back."

Mr Franklin hid his face in his hands for a moment and Powell shut his mouth, which indeed had been open. He slipped out of the mess-room noiselessly. "The mate's crazy," he thought. It was his firm conviction. Nevertheless, that evening, he felt his inner tranquillity disturbed at last by the force and obstinacy of this craze. He couldn't dismiss it with the contempt it deserved. Had the word "jailer" really been p.r.o.nounced? A strange word for the mate to even _imagine_ he had heard. A senseless, unlikely word. But this word being the only clear and definite statement in these grotesque and dismal ravings was comparatively restful to his mind. Powell's mind rested on it still when he came up at eight o'clock to take charge of the deck. It was a moonless night, thick with stars above, very dark on the water. A steady air from the west kept the sails asleep. Franklin mustered both watches in low tones as if for a funeral, then approaching Powell:

"The course is east-south-east," said the chief mate distinctly.

"East-south-east, sir."

"Everything's set, Mr Powell."

"All right, sir."

The other lingered, his sentimental eyes gleamed silvery in the shadowy face. "A quiet night before us. I don't know that there are any special orders. A settled, quiet night. I dare say you won't see the captain. Once upon a time this was the watch he used to come up and start a chat with either of us then on deck. But now he sits in that infernal stern-cabin and mopes. Jailer--eh?"

Mr Powell walked away from the mate and when at some distance said, "d.a.m.n!" quite heartily. It was a confounded nuisance. It had ceased to be funny; that hostile word "jailer" had given the situation an air of reality.

Franklin's grotesque mortal envelope had disappeared from the p.o.o.p to seek its needful repose, if only the worried soul would let it rest a while. Mr Powell, half sorry for the thick little man, wondered whether it would let him. For himself, he recognised that the charm of a quiet watch on deck when one may let one's thoughts roam in s.p.a.ce and time had been spoiled without remedy. What shocked him most was the implied aspersion of complicity on Mrs Anthony. It angered him. In his own words to me, he felt very "enthusiastic" about Mrs Anthony.

"Enthusiastic" is good; especially as he couldn't exactly explain to me what he meant by it. But he felt enthusiastic, he says. That silly Franklin must have been dreaming. That was it. He had dreamed it all.

a.s.s. Yet the injurious word stuck in Powell's mind with its a.s.sociated ideas of prisoner, of escape. He became very uncomfortable. And just then (it might have been half an hour or more since he had relieved Franklin) just then Mr Smith came up on the p.o.o.p alone, like a gliding shadow and leaned over the rail by his side. Young Powell was affected disagreeably by his presence. He made a movement to go away but the other began to talk--and Powell remained where he was as if retained by a mysterious compulsion. The conversation started by Mr Smith had nothing peculiar. He began to talk of mail-boats in general and in the end seemed anxious to discover what were the services from Port Elizabeth to London. Mr Powell did not know for certain but imagined that there must be communication with England at least twice a month.

"Are you thinking of leaving us, sir; of going home by steam? Perhaps with Mrs Anthony," he asked anxiously.

"No! No! How can I?" Mr Smith got quite agitated, for him, which did not amount to much. He was just asking for the sake of something to talk about. No idea at all of going home. One could not always do what one wanted and that's why there were moments when one felt ashamed to live. This did not mean that one did not want to live. Oh no!

He spoke with careless slowness, pausing frequently and in such a low voice that Powell had to strain his hearing to catch the phrases dropped overboard as it were. And indeed they seemed not worth the effort. It was like the aimless talk of a man pursuing a secret train of thought far removed from the idle words we so often utter only to keep in touch with our fellow beings. An hour pa.s.sed. It seemed as though Mr Smith could not make up his mind to go below. He repeated himself. Again he spoke of lives which one was ashamed of. It was necessary to put up with such lives as long as there was no way out, no possible issue. He even alluded once more to mail-boat services on the East coast of Africa and young Powell had to tell him once more that he knew nothing about them.

"Every fortnight, I thought you said," insisted Mr Smith. He stirred, seemed to detach himself from the rail with difficulty. His long, slender figure straightened into stiffness, as if hostile to the enveloping soft peace of air and sea and sky, emitted into the night a weak murmur which Mr Powell fancied was the word, "Abominable" repeated three times, but which pa.s.sed into the faintly louder declaration: "The moment has come--to go to bed," followed by a just audible sigh.

"I sleep very well," added Mr Smith in his restrained tone. "But it is the moment one opens one's eyes that is horrible at sea. These days!

Oh, these days! I wonder how anybody can..."

"I like the life," observed Mr Powell.

"Oh, you. You have only yourself to think of. You have made your bed.

Well, it's very pleasant to feel that you are friendly to us. My daughter has taken quite a liking to you, Mr Powell."

He murmured, "Good-night" and glided away rigidly. Young Powell asked himself with some distaste what was the meaning of these utterances.

His mind had been worried at last into that questioning att.i.tude by no other person than the grotesque Franklin. Suspicion was not natural to him. And he took good care to carefully separate in his thoughts Mrs Anthony from this man of enigmatic words--her father. Presently he observed that the sheen of the two deck dead-lights of Mr Smith's room had gone out. The old gentleman had been surprisingly quick in getting into bed. Shortly afterwards the lamp in the foremost skylight of the saloon was turned out; and this was the sign that the steward had taken in the tray and had retired for the night.

Young Powell had settled down to the regular officer-of-the-watch tramp in the dense shadow of the world decorated with stars high above his head, and on earth only a few gleams of light about the ship. The lamp in the after skylight was kept burning through the night. There were also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The bra.s.ses of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached, as if phosph.o.r.escent, against the black and spangled background of the horizon.

Young Powell, in the silence of the ship, reinforced by the great silent stillness of the world, said to himself that there was something mysterious in such beings as the absurd Franklin, and even in such beings as himself. It was a strange and almost improper thought to occur to the officer of the watch of a ship on the high seas on no matter how quiet a night. Why on earth was he bothering his head? Why couldn't he dismiss all these people from his mind? It was as if the mate had infected him with his own diseased devotion. He would not have believed it possible that he should be so foolish. But he was--clearly.

He was foolish in a way totally unforeseen by himself. Pushing this self-a.n.a.lysis further, he reflected that the springs of his conduct were just as obscure.

"I may be catching myself any time doing things of which I have no conception," he thought. And as he was pa.s.sing near the mizzen-mast he perceived a coil of rope left lying on the deck by the oversight of the sweepers. By an impulse which had nothing mysterious in it, he stooped as he went by with the intention of picking it up and hanging it up on its proper pin. This movement brought his head down to the level of the glazed end of the after skylight--the lighted skylight of the most private part of the saloon, consecrated to the exclusiveness of Captain Anthony's married life; the part, let me remind you, cut off from the rest of that forbidden s.p.a.ce by a pair of heavy curtains. I mention these curtains because at this point Mr Powell himself recalled the existence of that unusual arrangement, to my mind.

He recalled them with simple-minded compunction at that distance of time. He said: "You understand that directly I stooped to pick up that coil of running gear--the spanker foot-outhaul, it was--I perceived that I could see right into that part of the saloon the curtains were meant to make particularly private. Do you understand me?" he insisted.

I told him that I understood; and he proceeded to call my attention to the wonderful linking up of small facts, with something of awe left yet, after all these years, at the precise workmanship of chance, fate, providence, call it what you will! "For, observe, Marlow," he said, making at me very round eyes which contrasted funnily with the austere touch of grey on his temples, "observe, my dear fellow, that everything depended on the men who cleared up the p.o.o.p in the evening leaving that coil of rope on the deck, and on the topsail-tie carrying away in a most incomprehensible and surprising manner earlier in the day, and the end of the chain whipping round the coaming and shivering to bits the coloured gla.s.s-pane at the end of the skylight. It had the arms of the city of Liverpool on it; I don't know why unless because the _Ferndale_ was registered in Liverpool. It was very thick plate-gla.s.s. Anyhow, the upper part got smashed, and directly we had attended to things aloft Mr Franklin had set the carpenter to patch up the damage with some pieces of plain gla.s.s. I don't know where they got them; I think the people who fitted up new bookcases in the captain's room had left some spare panes. Chips was there the whole afternoon on his knees, messing with putty and red-lead. It wasn't a neat job when it was done, not by any means, but it would serve to keep the weather out and let the light in. Clear gla.s.s. And of course I was not thinking of it. I just stooped to pick up that rope and found my head within three inches of that clear gla.s.s, and--dash it all! I found myself out. Not half an hour before I was saying to myself that it was impossible to tell what was in people's heads or at the back of their talk, or what they were likely to be up to. And here I found myself up to as low a trick as you can well think of. For, after I had stooped, there I remained prying, spying, anyway looking, where I had no business to look. Not consciously at first, may be. He who has eyes, you know, nothing can stop him from seeing things as long as there are things to see in front of him. What I saw at first was the end of the table and the tray clamped on to it, a patent tray for sea use, fitted with holders for a couple of decanters, water-jug and gla.s.ses. The glitter of these things caught my eye first; but what I saw next was the captain down there, alone as far as I could see; and I could see pretty well the whole of that part up to the cottage piano, dark against the satin-wood panelling of the bulkhead. And I remained looking. I did. And I don't know that I was ashamed of myself either, then. It was the fault of that Franklin, always talking of the man, making free with him to that extent that really he seemed to have become our property, his and mine, in a way. It's funny, but one had that feeling about Captain Anthony. To watch him was not so much worse than listening to Franklin talking him over. Well, it's no use making excuses for what's inexcusable. I watched; but I dare say you know that there could have been nothing inimical in this low behaviour of mine. On the contrary. I'll tell you now what he was doing. He was helping himself out of a decanter. I saw every movement, and I said to myself mockingly as though jeering at Franklin in my thoughts 'Hallo! Here's the captain taking to drink at last.' He poured a little brandy or whatever it was into a long gla.s.s, filled it with water, drank about a fourth of it and stood the gla.s.s back into the holder. Every sign of a bad drinking bout, I was saying to myself, feeling quite amused at the notions of that Franklin. He seemed to me an enormous a.s.s; with his jealousy and his fears. At that rate a month would not have been enough for anybody to get drunk. The captain sat down in one of the swivel armchairs fixed around the table; I had him right under me and as he turned the chair slightly, I was looking, I may say, down his back. He took another little sip and then reached for a book which was lying on the table. I had not noticed it before. Altogether the proceedings of a desperate drunkard--weren't they? He opened the book and held it before his face. If this was the way he took to drink, then I needn't worry. He was in no danger from that, and as to any other, I a.s.sure you no human being could have looked safer than he did down there. I felt the greatest contempt for Franklin just then, while I looked at Captain Anthony sitting there with a gla.s.s of weak brandy-and-water at his elbow and reading in the cabin of his ship, on a quiet night--the quietest, perhaps the finest, of a prosperous pa.s.sage. And if you wonder why I didn't leave off my ugly spying I will tell you how it was. Captain Anthony was a great reader just about that time; and I, too, I have a great liking for books. To this day I can't come near a book but I must know what it is about. It was a thickish volume he had there, small close print, double columns--I can see it now. What I wanted to make out was the t.i.tle at the top of the page. I have very good eyes but he wasn't holding it conveniently-- I mean for me up there. Well, it was a history of some kind, that much I read and then suddenly he bangs the book face down on the table, jumps up as if something had bitten him and walks away aft.