Chance Part 42

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 pa.s.sive 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 ma.s.s 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."

And before the young man could answer, Anthony had disappeared in the stern-cabin, burdened and exulting.

"Instructions," commented Mr Powell. "That was all right. Very likely; but they would be such instructions as, I thought to myself, no ship's officer perhaps had ever been given before. It made me feel a little sick to think what they would be dealing with, probably. But there! Everything that happens on board ship on the high seas has got to be dealt with somehow. There are no special people to fly to for a.s.sistance. And there I was with that old man left in my charge. When he noticed me looking at him he started to shuffle again athwart the saloon. He kept his hands rammed in his pockets, he was as stiff-backed as ever, only his head hung down. After a bit he says in his gentle soft tone: 'Did you see it?'"

There were in Powell's head no special words to fit the horror of his feelings. So he said--he had to say something, "Good G.o.d! What were you thinking of, Mr Smith, to try to..." And then he left off. He dared not utter the awful word poison. Mr Smith stopped his prowl.

"Think! What do you know of thinking? I don't think. There is something in my head that thinks. The thoughts in men, it's like being drunk with liquor or--You can't stop them. A man who thinks will think anything. No. But have you seen it. Have you?"

"I tell you I have! I am certain!" said Powell forcibly. "I was looking at you all the time. You've done something to the drink in that gla.s.s."

Then Powell lost his breath somehow. Mr Smith looked at him curiously, with mistrust.

"My good young man, I don't know what you are talking about. I ask you--have you seen? Who would have believed it? with her arms round his neck. When! Oh! Ha! Ha! You did see! Didn't you? It wasn't a delusion--was it? Her arms round ... But I have never wholly trusted her."

"Then I flew out at him, said Mr Powell. I told him he was jolly lucky to have fallen upon Captain Anthony. A man in a million. He started again shuffling to and fro. 'You too,' he said mournfully, keeping his eyes down. 'Eh? Wonderful man? But have you a notion who I am?

Listen! I have been the Great Mr de Barral. So they printed it in the papers while they were getting up a conspiracy. And I have been doing time. And now I am brought low.' His voice died down to a mere breath.

'Brought low.'"

He took his hands out of his pocket, dragged the cap down on his head and stuck them back into his pockets, exactly as if preparing himself to go out into a great wind. "But not so low as to put up with this disgrace, to see her, fast in this fellow's clutches, without doing something. She wouldn't listen to me. Frightened? Silly? I had to think of some way to get her out of this. Did _you_ think she cared for him? No! Would anybody have thought so? No! She pretended it was for my sake. She couldn't understand that if I hadn't been an old man I would have flown at his throat months ago. As it was I was tempted every time he looked at her. My girl. Ough! Any man but this. And all the time the wicked little fool was lying to me. It was their plot, their conspiracy! These conspiracies are the devil. She has been leading me on, till she has fairly put my head under the heel of that jailer, of that scoundrel, of her husband... Treachery! Bringing me low. Lower than herself. In the dirt. That's what it means. Doesn't it? Under his heel!"

He paused in his restless shuffle and again, seizing his cap with both hands, dragged it furiously right down on his ears. Powell had lost himself in listening to these broken ravings, in looking at that old feverish face when, suddenly, quick as lightning, Mr Smith spun round, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the captain's gla.s.s and with a stifled, hurried exclamation, "Here's luck," tossed the liquor down his throat.

"I know now the meaning of the word 'Consternation,'" went on Mr Powell. "That was exactly my state of mind. I thought to myself directly: There's nothing in that drink. I have been dreaming, I have made the awfullest mistake!"

Mr Smith put the gla.s.s down. He stood before Powell unharmed, quieted down, in a listening att.i.tude, his head inclined on one side, chewing his thin lips. Suddenly he blinked queerly, grabbed Powell's shoulder and collapsed, subsiding all at once as though he had gone soft all over, as a piece of silk stuff collapses. Powell seized his arm instinctively and checked his fall; but as soon as Mr Smith was fairly on the floor he jerked himself free and backed away. Almost as quick he rushed forward again and tried to lift up the body. But directly he raised his shoulders he knew that the man was dead! Dead!

He lowered him down gently. He stood over him without fear or any other feeling, almost indifferent, far away, as it were. And then he made another start and, if he had not kept Mrs Anthony always in his mind, he would have let out a yell for help. He staggered to her cabin door, and, as it was, his call for "Captain Anthony" burst out of him much too loud; but he made a great effort of self-control. "I am waiting for my orders, sir," he said outside that door distinctly, in a steady tone.

It was very still in there; still as death. Then he heard a shuffle of feet and the captain's voice "All right. Coming." He leaned his back against the bulkhead as you see a drunken man sometimes propped up against a wall, half doubled up. In that att.i.tude the captain found him, when he came out, pulling the door to after him quickly. At once Anthony let his eyes run all over the cabin. Powell, without a word, clutched his forearm, led him round the end of the table and began to justify himself. "I couldn't stop him," he whispered shakily. "He was too quick for me. He drank it up and fell down." But the captain was not listening. He was looking down at Mr Smith, thinking perhaps that it was a mere chance his own body was not lying there. They did not want to speak. They made signs to each other with their eyes. The captain grasped Powell's shoulder as if in a vice and glanced at Mrs Anthony's cabin door, and it was enough. He knew that the young man understood him. Rather! Silence! Silence for ever about this. Their very glances became stealthy. Powell looked from the body to the door of the dead man's state-room. The captain nodded and let him go; and then Powell crept over, hooked the door open and crept back with fearful glances towards Mrs Anthony's cabin. They stooped over the corpse.

Captain Anthony lifted up the shoulders.

Mr Powell shuddered. "I'll never forget that interminable journey across the saloon, step by step, holding our breath. For part of the way the drawn half of the curtain concealed us from view had Mrs Anthony opened her door; but I didn't draw a free breath till after we laid the body down on the swinging cot. The reflection of the saloon light left most of the cabin in the shadow. Mr Smith's rigid, extended body looked shadowy too, shadowy and alive. You know he always carried himself as stiff as a poker. We stood by the cot as though waiting for him to make us a sign that he wanted to be left alone. The captain threw his arm over my shoulder and said in my very ear: 'The steward'll find him in the morning.'

"I made no answer. It was for him to say. It was perhaps the best way.

It's no use talking about my thoughts. They were not concerned with myself, nor yet with that old man who terrified me more now than when he was alive. Him whom I pitied was the captain. He whispered: 'I am certain of you, Mr Powell. You had better go on deck now. As to me...' and I saw him raise his hands to his head as if distracted. But his last words before we stole out that cabin stick to my mind with the very tone of his mutter--to himself, not to me:--

"No! No! I am not going to stumble now over that corpse."

"This is what our Mr Powell had to tell me," said Marlow, changing his tone. I was glad to learn that Flora de Barral had been saved from _that_ sinister shadow at least falling upon her path.

We sat silent then, my mind running on the end of de Barral, on the irresistible pressure of imaginary griefs, crushing conscience, scruples, prudence, under their ever-expanding volume; on the sombre and venomous irony in the obsession which had mastered that old man.

"Well," I said.

"The steward found him," Mr Powell roused himself. "He went in there with a cup of tea at five and of course dropped it. I was on watch again. He reeled up to me on deck pale as death. I had been expecting it; and yet I could hardly speak. 'Go and tell the captain quietly,' I managed to say. He ran off muttering 'My G.o.d! My G.o.d!' and I'm hanged if he didn't get hysterical while trying to tell the captain, and start screaming in the saloon, 'Fully dressed! Dead! Fully dressed!' Mrs Anthony ran out of course but she didn't get hysterical. Franklin, who was there too, told me that she hid her face on the captain's breast and then he went out and left them there. It was days before Mrs Anthony was seen on deck. The first time I spoke to her she gave me her hand and said, 'My poor father was quite fond of you, Mr Powell.' She started wiping her eyes and I fled to the other side of the deck. One would like to forget all this had ever come near her."

But clearly he could not, because after lighting his pipe he began musing aloud: "Very strong stuff it must have been. I wonder where he got it. It could hardly be at a common chemist. Well, he had it from somewhere--a mere pinch it must have been, no more."

"I have my theory," observed Marlow, "which to a certain extent does away with the added horror of a coldly premeditated crime. Chance had stepped in there too. It was not Mr Smith who obtained the poison. It was the Great de Barral. And it was not meant for the obscure, magnanimous conqueror of Flora de Barral; it was meant for the notorious financier whose enterprises had nothing to do with magnanimity. He had his physician in his days of greatness. I even seem to remember that the man was called at the trial on some small point or other. I can imagine that de Barral went to him when he saw, as he could hardly help seeing, the possibility of a 'triumph of envious rivals'--a heavy sentence."

I doubt if for love or even for money, but I think possibly, from pity that man provided him with what Mr Powell called "strong stuff." From what Powell saw of the very act I am fairly certain it must have been contained in a capsule and that he had it about him on the last day of his trial, perhaps secured by a st.i.tch in his waistcoat pocket. He didn't use it. Why? Did he think of his child at the last moment? Was it want of courage? We can't tell. But he found it in his clothes when he came out of jail. It had escaped investigation if there was any.

Chance had armed him. And chance alone, the chance of Mr Powell's life, forced him to turn the abominable weapon against himself.

I imparted my theory to Mr Powell who accepted it at once as, in a sense, favourable to the father of Mrs Anthony. Then he waved his hand. "Don't let us think of it."

I acquiesced and very soon he observed dreamily:

"I was with Captain and Mrs Anthony sailing all over the world for near on six years. Almost as long as Franklin."

"Oh yes! What about Franklin?" I asked.

Powell smiled. "He left the _Ferndale_ a year or so afterwards, and I took his place. Captain Anthony recommended him for a command. You don't think Captain Anthony would chuck a man aside like an old glove.

But of course Mrs Anthony did not like him very much. I don't think she ever let out a whisper against him but Captain Anthony could read her thoughts."

And again Powell seemed to lose himself in the past. I asked, for suddenly the vision of the Fynes pa.s.sed through my mind.