Chance by Joseph Conrad (novels to read TXT) 📕

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 God!  My God!” 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 stitch 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 passed through my mind.

“Any children?”

Powell gave a start.  “No!  No!  Never had any children,” and again subsided, puffing at his short briar pipe.

“Where are they now?” I inquired next as if anxious to ascertain that all Fyne’s fears had been misplaced and vain as our fears often are; that there were no undesirable cousins for his dear girls, no danger of intrusion on their spotless home.  Powell looked round at me slowly, his pipe smouldering in his hand.

“Don’t you know?” he uttered in a deep voice.

“Know what?”

“That the Ferndale was lost this four years or more.  Sunk.  Collision.  And Captain Anthony went down with her.”

“You don’t say so!” I cried quite affected as if I had known Captain Anthony personally.  “Was—was Mrs. Anthony lost too?”

“You might as well ask if I was lost,” Mr. Powell rejoined so testily as to surprise me.  “You see me here,—don’t you.”

He was quite huffy, but noticing my wondering stare he smoothed his ruffled plumes.  And in a musing tone.

“Yes.  Good men go out as if there was no use for them in the world.  It seems as if there were things that, as the Turks say, are written.  Or else fate has a try and sometimes misses its mark.  You remember that close shave we had of being run down at night, I told you of, my first voyage with them.  This go it was just at dawn.  A flat calm and a fog thick enough to slice with a knife.  Only there were no explosives on board.  I was on deck and I remember the cursed, murderous thing looming up alongside and Captain Anthony (we were both on deck) calling out, “Good God!  What’s this!  Shout for all hands, Powell, to save themselves.  There’s no dynamite on board now.  I am going to get the wife! . . ”  I yelled, all the watch on deck yelled.  Crash!”

Mr. Powell gasped at the recollection.  “It was a Belgian Green Star liner, the Westland,” he went on, “commanded by one of those stop-for-nothing skippers.  Flaherty was his name and I hope he will die without absolution.  She cut half through the old Ferndale and after the blow there was a silence like death.  Next I heard the captain back on deck shouting, “Set your engines slow ahead,” and a howl of “Yes, yes,” answering him from her forecastle; and then a whole crowd of people up there began making a row in the fog.  They were throwing ropes down to us in dozens, I must say.  I and the captain fastened one of them under Mrs. Anthony’s arms: I remember she had a sort of dim smile on her face.”

“Haul up carefully,” I shouted to the people on the steamer’s deck.  “You’ve got a woman on that line.”

The captain saw her landed up there safe.  And then we made a rush round our decks to see no one was left behind.  As we got back the captain says: “Here she’s gone at last, Powell; the dear old thing!  Run down at sea.”

“Indeed she is gone,” I said.  “But it might have been worse.  Shin up this rope, sir, for God’s sake.  I will steady it for you.”

“What are you thinking about,” he says angrily.  “It isn’t my turn.  Up with you.”

These were the last words he ever spoke on earth I suppose.  I knew he meant to be the last to leave his ship, so I swarmed up as quick as I could, and those damned lunatics up there grab at me from above, lug me in, drag me along aft through the row and the riot of the silliest excitement I ever did see.  Somebody hails from the bridge, “Have you got them all on board?” and a dozen silly asses start yelling all together, “All saved!  All saved,” and then that accursed Irishman on the bridge, with me roaring No!  No! till I thought my head would burst, rings his engines astern.  He rings the engines astern—I fighting like mad to make myself heard!  And of course . . . ”

I saw tears, a shower of them fall down Mr. Powell’s face.  His voice broke.

“The Ferndale went down like a stone and Captain Anthony went down with her, the finest man’s soul that ever left a sailor’s body.  I raved like a maniac, like a devil, with a lot of fools crowding round me and asking, “Aren’t you the captain?”

“I wasn’t fit to tie the shoe-strings of the man you have drowned,” I screamed at them . . .  Well!  Well!  I could see for myself that it was no good lowering a boat.  You couldn’t have seen her alongside.  No use.  And only think, Marlow, it was I who had to go and tell Mrs. Anthony.  They had taken her down below somewhere, first-class saloon.  I had to go and tell her!  That Flaherty, God forgive him, comes to me as white as a sheet, “I think you are the proper person.”  God forgive him.  I wished to die a hundred times.  A lot of kind ladies, passengers, were chattering excitedly around Mrs. Anthony—a real parrot house.  The ship’s doctor went before me.  He whispers right and left and then there falls a sudden