“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 hush. Yes, I wished myself dead. But Mrs Anthony was a
brick.
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 armchair. 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....”