Chance by Joseph Conrad (novels to read TXT) 📕

“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, aye, 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: ‘Pass 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.  God 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 pronounced?  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, “Damn!” 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 poop 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 recognized that the charm of a quiet watch on deck when one may let one’s thoughts roam in space 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.  Ass.  Yet the injurious word stuck in Powell’s mind with its associated 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 poop 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 passed.  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 passed 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 attitude 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