“I was the first to see Mrs Anthony,” related Powell, “because I was facing aft. The captain, noticing my eyes, looked quickly over his shoulder and at once put his finger to his lips to caution me. As if I were likely to let out anything before her! Mrs Anthony had on a dressing-gown of some grey stuff with red facings and a thick red cord round her waist. Her hair was down. She looked a child; a pale-faced child with big blue eyes and a red mouth a little open showing a glimmer of white teeth. The light fell strongly on her as she came up to the end of the table. A strange child though; she hardly affected one like a child, I remember. Do you know,” exclaimed Mr Powell, who clearly must have been, like many seamen, an industrious reader, “do you know what she looked like to me with those big eyes and something appealing in her whole expression. She looked like a forsaken elf. Captain Anthony had moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the tray was. I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it made a great contrast. It was wonderful, for, with his beard cut to a point, his swarthy, sunburnt complexion, thin nose and his lean head there was something African, something Moorish in Captain Anthony. His neck was bare; he had taken off his coat and collar and had drawn on his sleeping jacket in the time that he had been absent from the saloon. I seem to see him now. Mrs Anthony too. She looked from him to me—I suppose I looked guilty or frightened—and from me to him, trying to guess what there was between us two. Then she burst out with a ‘What has happened?’ which seemed addressed to me. I mumbled ‘Nothing! Nothing, ma’am,’ which she very likely did not hear.
“You must not think that all this had lasted a long time. She had taken fright at our behaviour and turned to the captain pitifully. ‘What is it you are concealing from me?’ A straight question—eh? I don’t know what answer the captain would have made. Before he could even raise his eyes to her she cried out ‘Ah! Here’s papa!’ in a sharp tone of relief, but directly afterwards she looked to me as if she were holding her breath with apprehension. I was so interested in her that, how shall I say it, her exclamation made no connection in my brain at first. I also noticed that she had sidled up a little nearer to Captain Anthony, before it occurred to me to turn my head. I can tell you my neck stiffened in the twisted position from the shock of actually seeing that old man! He had dared! I suppose you think I ought to have looked upon him as mad. But I couldn’t. It would have been certainly easier. But I could
“Mr Powell challenged my powers of wonder at this internal phenomenon,” went on Marlow after a slight pause. “But even if they had not been fully engaged, together with all my powers of attention in following the facts of the case, I would not have been astonished by his statements about himself. Taking into consideration his youth they were by no means incredible; or, at any rate, they were the least incredible part of the whole. They were also the least interesting part. The interest was elsewhere, and there of course all he could do was to look at the surface. The inwardness of what was passing before his eyes was hidden from him, who had looked on, more impenetrably than from me who at a distance of years was listening to his words. That what presently happened at this crisis in Flora de Barral’s fate was beyond his power of comment, seemed in a sense natural. And his own presence on the scene was so strangely motived that it was left for me to marvel alone at this young man, a completely chance-comer, having brought it about on that night.”
Each situation created either by folly or wisdom has its psychological moment. The behaviour of young Powell with its mixture of boyish impulses combined with instinctive prudence, had not created it—I can’t say that—but had discovered it to the very people involved. What would have happened if he had made a noise about his discovery? But he didn’t. His head was full of Mrs Anthony and he behaved with a discretion beyond his years. Some nice children often do; and surely it is not from reflection. They have their own inspirations. Young Powell’s inspiration consisted in being “enthusiastic” about Mrs Anthony. ‘Enthusiastic’ is really good. And he was amongst them like a child, sensitive, impressionable, plastic—but unable to find for himself any sort of comment.
I don’t know how much mine may be worth; but I believe that just then the tension of the false situation was at its highest. Of all the forms offered to us by life it is the one demanding a couple to realise it fully, which is the most imperative. Pairing off is the fate of mankind. And if two beings thrown together, mutually attracted, resist the necessity, fail in understanding and voluntarily stop short of the—the embrace, in the noblest meaning of the word, then they are committing a sin against life, the call of which is simple. Perhaps sacred. And the punishment of it is an invasion of complexity, a tormenting, forcibly tortuous involution of feelings, the deepest form of suffering from which indeed something significant may come at last, which may be criminal or heroic, may be madness or wisdom—or even a straight if despairing decision.
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 passive 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
