“I like the things he says.”
“You understand each other pretty well,” I observed.
“I know his sort,” said Powell, going to the window to look at his cutter still riding to the flood. “He’s the sort that’s always chasing some notion or other round and round his head just for the fun of the thing.”
“Keeps them in good condition,” I said.
“Lively enough I dare say,” he admitted.
“Would you like better a man who let his notions lie curled up?”
“That I wouldn’t,” answered our new acquaintance. Clearly he was not difficult to get on with. “I like him, very well,” he continued, “though it isn’t easy to make him out. He seems to be up to a thing or two. What’s he doing?”
I informed him that our friend Marlow had retired from the sea in a sort of halfhearted fashion some years ago.
Mr. Powell’s comment was: “Fancied had enough of it?”
“Fancied’s the very word to use in this connection,” I observed, remembering the subtly provisional character of Marlow’s long sojourn amongst us. From year to year he dwelt on land as a bird rests on the branch of a tree, so tense with the power of brusque flight into its true element that it is incomprehensible why it should sit still minute after minute. The sea is the sailor’s true element, and Marlow, lingering on shore, was to me an object of incredulous commiseration like a bird, which, secretly, should have lost its faith in the high virtue of flying.
II
The Fynes and the Girlfriend
We were on our feet in the room by then, and Marlow, brown and deliberate, approached the window where Mr. Powell and I had retired. “What was the name of your chance again?” he asked. Mr. Powell stared for a moment.
“Oh! The Ferndale. A Liverpool ship. Composite built.”
“Ferndale,” repeated Marlow thoughtfully. “Ferndale.”
“Know her?”
“Our friend,” I said, “knows something of every ship. He seems to have gone about the seas prying into things considerably.”
Marlow smiled.
“I’ve seen her, at least once.”
“The finest sea-boat ever launched,” declared Mr. Powell sturdily. “Without exception.”
“She looked a stout, comfortable ship,” assented Marlow. “Uncommonly comfortable. Not very fast though.”
“She was fast enough for any reasonable man—when I was in her,” growled Mr. Powell with his back to us.
“Any ship is that—for a reasonable man,” generalized Marlow in a conciliatory tone. “A sailor isn’t a globetrotter.”
“No,” muttered Mr. Powell.
“Time’s nothing to him,” advanced Marlow.
“I don’t suppose it’s much,” said Mr. Powell. “All the same a quick passage is a feather in a man’s cap.”
“True. But that ornament is for the use of the master only. And by the by what was his name?”
“The master of the Ferndale? Anthony. Captain Anthony.”
“Just so. Quite right,” approved Marlow thoughtfully. Our new acquaintance looked over his shoulder.
“What do you mean? Why is it more right than if it had been Brown?”
“He has known him probably,” I explained. “Marlow here appears to know something of every soul that ever went afloat in a sailor’s body.”
Mr. Powell seemed wonderfully amenable to verbal suggestions for looking again out of the window, he muttered:
“He was a good soul.”
This clearly referred to Captain Anthony of the Ferndale. Marlow addressed his protest to me.
“I did not know him. I really didn’t. He was a good soul. That’s nothing very much out of the way—is it? And I didn’t even know that much of him. All I knew of him was an accident called Fyne.”
At this Mr. Powell who evidently could be rebellious too turned his back squarely on the window.
“What on earth do you mean?” he asked. “An—accident—called Fyne,” he repeated separating the words with emphasis.
Marlow was not disconcerted.
“I don’t mean accident in the sense of a mishap. Not in the least. Fyne was a good little man in the Civil Service. By accident I mean that which happens blindly and without intelligent design. That’s generally the way a brother-in-law happens into a man’s life.”
Marlow’s tone being apologetic and our new acquaintance having again turned to the window I took it upon myself to say:
“You are justified. There is very little intelligent design in the majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that. Intelligence leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. I know you are not a cynic.”
Marlow smiled his retrospective smile which was kind as though he bore no grudge against people he used to know.
“Little Fyne’s marriage was quite successful. There was no design at all in it. Fyne, you must know, was an enthusiastic pedestrian. He spent his holidays tramping all over our native land. His tastes were simple. He put infinite conviction and perseverance into his holidays. At the proper season you would meet in the fields, Fyne, a serious-faced, broad-chested, little man, with a shabby knapsack on his back, making for some church steeple. He had a horror of roads. He wrote once a little book called the Tramp’s Itinerary, and was recognised as an authority on the footpaths of England. So one year, in his favourite over-the-fields, back-way fashion he entered a pretty Surrey village where he met Miss Anthony. Pure
