Chance, Joseph Conrad [10 best novels of all time TXT] 📗

Here Mr. Powell fairly burst into tears.  “No one could help loving Captain Anthony.  I leave you to imagine what he was to her.  Yet before the week was out it was she who was helping me to pull myself together.”

“Is Mrs. Anthony in England now?” I asked after a while.

He wiped his eyes without any false shame.  “Oh yes.”  He began to look for matches, and while diving for the box under the table added: “And not very far from here either.  That little village up there—you know.”

“No!  Really!  Oh I see!”

Mr. Powell smoked austerely, very detached.  But I could not let him off like this.  The sly beggar.  So this was the secret of his passion for sailing about the river, the reason of his fondness for that creek.

“And I suppose,” I said, “that you are still as ‘enthusiastic’ as ever.  Eh?  If I were you I would just mention my enthusiasm to Mrs. Anthony.  Why not?”

He caught his falling pipe neatly.  But if what the French call effarement was ever expressed on a human countenance it was on this occasion, testifying to his modesty, his sensibility and his innocence.  He looked afraid of somebody overhearing my audacious—almost sacrilegious hint—as if there had not been a mile and a half of lonely marshland and dykes between us and the nearest human habitation.  And then perhaps he remembered the soothing fact for he allowed a gleam to light up his eyes, like the reflection of some inward fire tended in the sanctuary of his heart by a devotion as pure as that of any vestal.

It flashed and went out.  He smiled a bashful smile, sighed:

“Pah!  Foolishness.  You ought to know better,” he said, more sad than annoyed.  “But I forgot that you never knew Captain Anthony,” he added indulgently.

I reminded him that I knew Mrs. Anthony; even before he—an old friend now—had ever set eyes on her.  And as he told me that Mrs. Anthony had heard of our meetings I wondered whether she would care to see me.  Mr. Powell volunteered no opinion then; but next time we lay in the creek he said, “She will be very pleased.  You had better go to-day.”

The afternoon was well advanced before I approached the cottage.  The amenity of a fine day in its decline surrounded me with a beneficent, a calming influence; I felt it in the silence of the shady lane, in the pure air, in the blue sky.  It is difficult to retain the memory of the conflicts, miseries, temptations and crimes of men’s self-seeking existence when one is alone with the charming serenity of the unconscious nature.  Breathing the dreamless peace around the picturesque cottage I was approaching, it seemed to me that it must reign everywhere, over all the globe of water and land and in the hearts of all the dwellers on this earth.

Flora came down to the garden gate to meet me, no longer the perversely tempting, sorrowful, wisp of white mist drifting in the complicated bad dream of existence.  Neither did she look like a forsaken elf.  I stammered out stupidly, “Again in the country, Miss . . . Mrs . . . ”  She was very good, returned the pressure of my hand, but we were slightly embarrassed.  Then we laughed a little.  Then we became grave.

I am no lover of day-breaks.  You know how thin, equivocal, is the light of the dawn.  But she was now her true self, she was like a fine tranquil afternoon—and not so very far advanced either.  A woman not much over thirty, with a dazzling complexion and a little colour, a lot of hair, a smooth brow, a fine chin, and only the eyes of the Flora of the old days, absolutely unchanged.

In the room into which she led me we found a Miss Somebody—I didn’t catch the name,—an unobtrusive, even an indistinct, middle-aged person in black.  A companion.  All very proper.  She came and went and even sat down at times in the room, but a little apart, with some sewing.  By the time she had brought in a lighted lamp I had heard all the details which really matter in this story.  Between me and her who was once Flora de Barral the conversation was not likely to keep strictly to the weather.

The lamp had a rosy shade; and its glow wreathed her in perpetual blushes, made her appear wonderfully young as she sat before me in a deep, high-backed arm-chair.  I asked:

“Tell me what is it you said in that famous letter which so upset Mrs. Fyne, and caused little Fyne to interfere in this offensive manner?”

“It was simply crude,” she said earnestly.  “I was feeling reckless and I wrote recklessly.  I knew she would disapprove and I wrote foolishly.  It was the echo of her own stupid talk.  I said that I did not love her brother but that I had no scruples whatever in marrying him.”

She paused, hesitating, then with a shy half-laugh:

“I really believed I was selling myself, Mr. Marlow.  And I was proud of it.  What I suffered afterwards I couldn’t tell you; because I only discovered my love for my poor Roderick through agonies of rage and humiliation.  I came to suspect him of despising me; but I could not put it to the test because of my father.  Oh!  I would not have been too proud.  But I had to spare poor papa’s feelings.  Roderick was perfect, but I felt as though I were on the rack and not allowed even to cry out.  Papa’s prejudice against Roderick was my greatest grief.  It was distracting.  It frightened me.  Oh!  I have been miserable!  That night when my poor father died suddenly I am certain they had some sort of discussion, about me.  But I did not want to hold out any longer against my own heart!  I could not.”

She stopped short, then impulsively:

“Truth will out, Mr. Marlow.”

“Yes,” I said.

She went on musingly.

“Sorrow and happiness were mingled at first like darkness and light.  For months I lived in a dusk of feelings.  But it was quiet.  It was warm . . . ”

Again she paused, then going back in her thoughts.  “No!  There was no harm in that letter.  It was simply foolish.  What did I know of life then?  Nothing.  But Mrs. Fyne ought to have known better.  She wrote a letter to her brother, a little later.  Years afterwards Roderick allowed me to glance at it.  I found in it this sentence: ‘For years I tried to make a friend of that girl; but I warn you once more that she has the nature of a heartless adventuress . . . ’  Adventuress!” repeated Flora slowly.  “So be it.  I have had a fine adventure.”

“It was fine, then,” I said interested.

“The finest in the world!  Only think!  I loved and I was loved, untroubled, at peace, without remorse, without fear.  All the world, all life were transformed for me.  And how much I have seen!  How good people were to me!  Roderick was so much liked everywhere.  Yes, I have known kindness and safety.  The most familiar things appeared lighted up with a new light, clothed with a loveliness I had never suspected.  The sea itself! . . . You are a sailor.  You have lived your life on it.  But do you know how beautiful it is, how strong, how charming, how friendly, how mighty . . . ”

I listened amazed and touched.  She was silent only a little while.

“It was too good to last.  But nothing can rob me of it now . . .  Don’t think that I repine.  I am not even sad now.  Yes, I have been happy.  But I remember also the time when I was unhappy beyond endurance, beyond desperation.  Yes.  You remember that.  And later on, too.  There was a time on board the Ferndale when the only moments of relief I knew were when I made Mr. Powell talk to me a little on the poop.  You like him?—Don’t you?”

“Excellent fellow,” I said warmly.  “You see him often?”

“Of course.  I hardly know another soul in the world.  I am alone.  And he has plenty of time on his hands.  His aunt died a few years ago.  He’s doing nothing, I believe.”

“He is fond of the sea,” I remarked.  “He loves it.”

“He seems to have given it up,” she murmured.

“I wonder why?”

She remained silent.  “Perhaps it is because he loves something else better,” I went on.  “Come, Mrs. Anthony, don’t let me carry away from here the idea that you are a selfish person, hugging the memory of your past happiness, like a rich man his treasure, forgetting the poor at the gate.”

I rose to go, for it was getting late.  She got up in some agitation and went out with me into the fragrant darkness of the garden.  She detained my hand for a moment and then in the very voice of the Flora of old days, with the exact intonation, showing the old mistrust, the old doubt of herself, the old scar of the blow received in childhood, pathetic and funny, she murmured, “Do you think it possible that he should care for me?”

“Just ask him yourself.  You are brave.”

“Oh, I am brave enough,” she said with a sigh.

“Then do.  For if you don’t you will be wronging that patient man cruelly.”

I departed leaving her dumb.  Next day, seeing Powell making preparations to go ashore, I asked him to give my regards to Mrs. Anthony.  He promised he would.

“Listen, Powell,” I said.  “We got to know each other by chance?”

“Oh, quite!” he admitted, adjusting his hat.

“And the science of life consists in seizing every chance that presents itself,” I pursued.  “Do you believe that?”

“Gospel truth,” he declared innocently.

“Well, don’t forget it.”

“Oh, I!  I don’t expect now anything to present itself,” he said, jumping ashore.

He didn’t turn up at high water.  I set my sail and just as I had cast off from the bank, round the black barn, in the dusk, two figures appeared and stood silent, indistinct.

“Is that you, Powell?” I hailed.

“And Mrs. Anthony,” his voice came impressively through the silence of the great marsh.  “I am not sailing to-night.  I have to see Mrs. Anthony home.”

“Then I must even go alone,” I cried.

Flora’s voice wished me “bon voyage” in a most friendly but tremulous tone.

“You shall hear from me before long,” shouted Powell, suddenly, just as my boat had cleared the mouth of the creek.

“This was yesterday,” added Marlow, lolling in the arm-chair lazily.  “I haven’t heard yet; but I expect to hear any moment . . .  What on earth are you grinning at in this sarcastic manner?  I am not afraid of going to church with a friend.  Hang it all, for all my belief in Chance I am not exactly a pagan . . . ”

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHANCE***