Chance - A Tale in Two Parts

e, approached the window where Mr. Powell and I had retired. "What was t

A Liverpool ship.

ted Marlow though

ow

every ship. He seems to have gone about

ow s

her, at l

nched," declared Mr. Powell s

hip," assented Marlow. "Uncommonly

nable man-when I was in her," grow

" generalized Marlow in a conciliatory

ttered M

ng to him," a

r. Powell. "All the same a quick pa

the use of the master only. An

Ferndale? Anthony

Marlow thoughtfully. Our new acqu

is it more right than

rlow here appears to know something of every

le to verbal suggestions for looking

a good

n Anthony of the Ferndale. Marl

nothing very much out of the way-is it? And I didn't even know

could be rebellious too turned

. "An-accident-called Fyne," he repea

s not dis

le man in the Civil Service. By accident I mean that which happens blindly and without

new acquaintance having again turned to

ity of marriages; but they are none the worse for that. Intelligence lea

which was kind as though he bore no

g 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 accident, you see. They came to an understanding, across some stile, most likely. Little Fyne held very solemn v

ied on clandesti

to general conversation. But my simple Fyne made use of Captain Anthony for that purpose, or else I would never even have heard of the man. "My wife's sailor-brother" was the phrase. He trotted out the sailor-brother in a pretty wide range of subjects: Indian and colonial affairs, matters of trade, talk of travels, of seaside

e-dweller's temperament. He was a massive, implacable man with a handsome face, arbitrary and exacting with his dependants, but marvellously suave in his manner to admiring strangers. These contrasted displays must have been particularly exasperating to his long-suffering family. After his second wife's death his boy, whom he persisted by a mere whim in educating at home, ran away in conventional style and, as if disgusted with the amenities of civilization, threw himself, figuratively speaking, into the sea. The daughter (the elder of the two children) either from compassion or because women are naturally more enduri

hion, being blessed besides by three healthy, active, self-reliant children, all girls. They were all pedestrians too. Even the youngest would wander away for miles if not restrained. Mrs. Fyne had a ruddy out-of-doors complexio

re she swung and of course he would sleep on board. Never slept away from the cutter while on a cruise. He was gone in a moment, unceremoniously, but giving us no offence and leaving behind an impressi

fident hope of coming

He will be easy to find any week-end," he remarked ring

*

daily facts, about daily things, about daily men. It is the most respectable faculty of the human mind-in fact I cannot conceive the uses of an incurious mind. It would be like a chamber perpetually locked up. But in this par

e with the Fynes, in the country. This chance meeting with a man who had sailed with Captain Anthony had revived it. It had revived it to some purpose, to such purpose that to me too was given

htly you said you didn'

w." He had just arrived in London from a long voyage, and, directly his occupations permitted, was coming down to stay with his relatives for a few weeks. No doubt we two should fin

n the children were silent and as if contemptuous of each other and of their elders. Fyne muttered sometimes deep down in his chest some insignificant remark. Mrs. Fyne smiled mechanically (she had splendid teeth) while distributing tea and bread and butter. A something which was not coldness, nor yet indifference, but a sort of peculiar self-possession gave her the appearance of a very trustworthy, very capable and excellent

use Fyne. But I soon discovered that he could hardly tell one from the other, though obviously their presence met with his solemn approval. These girls in fact came for Mrs. Fyne. They treated her with admiri

eam of something inward which resembled sly satisfaction. Of the divine frivolity of laughter he was only capable

you," I asserte

beat me," Marlow

the bottom of the garden with the girl-friend of the week. She always walked off directly after tea with her arm round the girl-friend's waist. Marlow said that there was only

of which it had been excavated. He shouted warningly to her from below where he happened to be passing. She was really in considerable danger. At

the foolhardiness of the average girl and remembering some other instances of the kind, when she came into view walking down the steep curve of the road. She had Mrs. Fyne's walking-stick and was escorted by the Fyne dog. Her dead white face struck me with ast

nal resistance by which a dog makes himself practically immovable by anything short of a kick. She looked over her shoulder and her arched eyebrows frowned above her blanched face. It was almost a scowl. Then the expression changed. She looked unhappy. "

m the distanc

ke him to the cottag

vancing towards her. She looked very hurt, apparently by the desertion of the d

ust. It vanished in the distance, and presently we came up with him lying on the grass. He panted in the shade of the hedge with shi

me with me," she

nt to protest against your reckless proceedings. What made you come so near the edge of that quarry? The earth might have

shouldn't be as rec

eak her neck for all I cared. This was considerably more than I meant, but I don't like rude girls. I had been introduced to her only the day before-at the round tea-table-an

that some regard for others should stand in the way of one's playing with danger. I urged playfully the distress of the poor Fynes in case of accident, if nothing else. I told her that she did not know the bucolic mind. Had she given occasion for a coroner's inquest the verdict wo

e me look at her again. I perceived then that her thick eyelashes were wet. This surprising discovery silenced me as you may guess. She looked unhappy. And-I don't know how to s

d wagging his stumpy tail very, very slowly, with an air of concentrated attention. The girl-friend of th

n-law was expected next day but he didn't know whether he was a chess-player. Captain Anthony ("the son of the poet-you know") was of a retiring disposition, shy with strangers, unused to society and very much devoted to his calling, Fyne explained. All the time they had been ma

k till it seemed hardly worth while to go back. But as I had kept on

eetings. He only exclaimed Oh! on recognizing me, and stopped irresolute. When I asked him if he had been expecting somebody by that train he didn't seem to know. He stammered disconnectedly. I looked hard at him. To all appearances he was perfectly sober; moreover to suspect Fyne of a lapse from the proprieties high or low, great or small, was absurd. He was also a too serious and deliberate person to go mad suddenly. But as he seemed to have forgotten

e mark of a certain prosaic fitness-because a sailor is not an adventurer. I expressed no regret at missing Captain Anthony and we proceeded in silence t

e hovered, clearly on the lookout for him. She was alone. The children must have been already in bed and I saw no

ught me up and slowed down to my strolling gait which must have been infinitely irksome to his high pedestrian faculties. I am sure that all his muscular person must have suffered from awful physical boredom; but he did no

nk he answered by a deep, gravely accented: "Thanks, I will" as though it were a response in church. His face as seen in the lamplight gave me no clue to the character of the impending communication; as indeed from the nature of

e to befriend, counsel, and guide young girls of all sorts on the path of life. It was a vo

ble conviction that he was exasperated by something in particular. In the unworthy hope of be

s ideas of a walk were extensive, but the girl did not turn up for lunch, nor yet for tea, nor yet for dinner. She had not turned up by footpath, road or rail. He had been reluctant to make inquiries. It would have set a

ony. Going to bed was out of the question-neither could any ste

ember. Was she a girl with dark hair and blue eyes? I asked further. He really couldn't tell what colour her

e to her husband's gravity no more than evanescent shadows. However, with but lit

en getting up as if moved by a spring he snatched his cap off the table. "She may b

skies. Daylight is friendly to man toiling under a sun which warms his heart; and cloudy soft nights are more kindly to our littleness. I nearly ran back again to my lighted parlour; Fyne fussing in a knicker-bocker suit before the hosts of heaven, on a shadowy earth, abo

t alight to guide the lost wanderer. Inside, at the table bearing the lamp, we saw Mrs. Fyne sitting with folded arms and not a hair of her head out of place. She lo

into their graves, she had adopted that cool, detached manner to meet her gifted father's outbreaks of selfish temper. It had now become a second nature. I suppose she was always like that; even in the very hour of el

k. Somehow I couldn't. But I said nothing. None of us said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each othe

onds for miles around. It was extremely gruesome. I murmured something about communicating with the young lady's relatives. It seemed to

g, I said: "Nothing of this can be done till to-morrow. But as you have given me an insight into the nature of your thoughts I can tell yo

of it till that very moment. It was like a startling revelation; the past throwing a sinister light on the future. Fyne opened his mouth gravely and as

w how I hate walking-at least on solid, rural earth; for I can walk a ship's deck a whole foggy night through, if necessary, and think little of it. There is some satisfaction too in playing the vagabond in the stree

yne watched me go out after he

*

yes, even when he has given up the hope of being buried at sea; about the last hope a sailor gives up consciously after he has been, as it does happen, deco

ave gone shrinkingly on such an errand. But not a bit of it. The force of pedestrian genius I suppose. I raced by his side in

city; but Marlow pausing with a whimsic

rom glamorous reticency. And then, why should I upset myself? A woman is not necessarily either a doll or an angel to me. She is a human being, very much like myself. And I hav

heavy with dew. There were also concealed mudholes in there. We crept and tumbled and felt about with our hands along the ground. We got wet, scratched, and plastered with mire all over our nether garments. Fyne fell suddenly into a strange cavity-probably a

dew-soaked vegetation. He struck matches, several of them too, as if to make absolutely sure that the vanished girl-friend of his wife w

upposed that any sane girl would go

ensitive (an effect of irritation) to the tonalities, I may say, of this affair, I felt that it was only an imperfect, reserved, thankfulness, wit

l difference, temperament being immutable, is the parent of hate. That's why religious quarrels are the fiercest of all. My temperament, in matters pertaining to solid land, is the temperament of leisurely movement, of deliberate gait. And there was that little Fyne pounding along the road in a most offensive manner; a man wedded to thick-soled, laced boots; whereas my temperament demands t

. He tramped on, and all he did was to ejaculate

. . . I am af

ainst a lot of low stars at no very great distance, but as we advanced new stretches of whitey-brown ribbon seemed to come up from under the black ground. I observed, as we went by, the lamp in

ed, "you don't think t

Fyne uttered a solemn: "Certainly not," with profound assurance. But immediately after he a

morning to commit suicide," I declared cru

ct it was neither

ent away. She was amazing in a sort of unsubtle way; crudely amazing-I thought. Why crudely? I don't know. Perhaps because I saw her then in a crude light. I mean this materially-in the light of an unshaded lamp. O

e current of their unexciting life, in which the cutting of bread and butter appeared to me, by a long way, the most dangerous episode. Sometimes I amused myself by supposing that to their minds this world of ours must be wearing a perfectly overwhelming aspect, and that their heads contained respectively awfully serious and extremely desperate thoughts-and trying to

n. Queer enough they were. Is there a human being that isn't that-more or less secretly? But whatever their secret, it was manifest to me that it was neither subtle nor profound. They were a good, stupid, ea

echo of her words in the garden. We three looked at each other as if on the brink of a disclosure. I don't know whether she was vexed at my presence. It could hardly be called intrusion-could it? Little Fyne began it. It had to go on. We stood before

in an accident, M

cking her up with all the weight of his solemn presence. Nothing more absurd could be conceived. It was delic

her answer I became mentally aware of three trained dogs dancing on their hind legs. I don't know why. Per

n to disappear

much for my endurance. In an instant I found myself out of the dan

nyhow, regardless . . . I've had the privilege of meeting that reckless and

red at her. How provoking she was! So I went on to finish my tirade. "She struck

ore than any man, for instance?" inquired Mrs. Fyne with a

ions and even of strangers to be disregarded? I asked Mrs. Fyne if she did not think it was a sort of duty to sho

r knocked

or a w

ghten me fully. There must have been things not fit for a man to hear. But shortly, and as far as my bewilderment allowed me to grasp its na?ve atrociousness, it was something like this: that no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman (who by the mere fact of her sex was the predestined victim of conditio

reshness by fatigue; at her eyes dimmed by this senseless vigil. I looked also at Fyne; the mud was drying on him; he was obviously tired. The

o consideration . . . W

anything, anything may be expected. So even my astonishment did not last very long. How far she developed and illustrated that conscienceless and austere doctrine to the girl-friends, who were mere transient shadows to her husband, I could not tell. Any length I supposed. And h

the fullest responsibility," I said. "I am the only ridiculous person in this-this-I don't know how to call it-pe

er the post-office than the cottage and I would send them off the first thing in the morning. I supposed the

r downcast by then, t

y no one," he s

," I ex

y," said cu

osity was a

see. An

id "Yes" impulsively, and then qualified the affirm

ht was not sufficiently advanced for the stars to have paled; and the earth seemed to me more profoundly asleep-perhaps because I was alone now. Not having Fyne with me to set the pace I let myself drift, rather than

nts only was dead? But no; it couldn't be, since Fyne had said just before that "there was really no one" to communicate with. No one

est, without smiles and without guile. But he had his solemnities and she had her reveries, her lurid, violent, crude reveries. And I thought with some sadness that all these revolts and indignations, all these protests, revulsions of feeling, pangs of suffering and of rage, expressed but the uneasiness of sensual beings trying for their share in the joys of form, colour, sensations-the only riches of our world of senses. A poet may be a simple being but he is bound to be various and full of wiles, ingenious and irritable. I reflected on the variety of ways the ingenuity of the late bard

ing behind an awful smell. I fled from it up the stairs and went to bed in the dark. My slumbers-I suppose the one good in

weakens the impulse to action; an overstocked one leads gently to idiocy. But Mrs. Fyne's individualist woman-doctrine, na?vely unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions s

uline decency. Cautiousness too is foreign to them-the heavy reasonable cautiousness which is our glory. And if they had it they would make of it a thing of passion, so that its own mother-I mean the mother of cautiousness-wouldn't recognize it. Prudence with them is a matter o

to agree to all th

d descriptively to his captain-what prevents them from "coming on deck and playing hell with the ship" generally, is that something in them precise and mysterious, acting both as restraint and as inspiration; their femininity in short which they think they can

h days. They are perfection for remaining indoors. And I enjoyed it temperamentally in a chair, my feet up on the sill of the open window, a book in my hands and the murmured harmonies of wind and sun in my heart making an accompaniment to the rhythms of my author. Then l

as heartily as my sin

r, Fyne entered. I treated him without ceremony and only waved

eard-mid

put my feet to the ground swiftly. That fellow was always making me do things in subtle discord with my meditati

night on the road that it wa

of tone. "Farce be hanged! She has bolted with my wife's brother, Captain Anthony." This outburst was followed

y examples of varied consistency. This was the discomf

t go together. Is it a suspicion o

in comminatory tones. "By previous a

too was a runaway match, which even got into the papers in its time, because the late indignant poet had no discretion and sought to avenge this outrage publicly in some absurd way before a bewigged judge. The

rality. It made you laugh at its transparent simplicity. But that authorship was revealed to me much later. I didn't of course ask Fyne what work his wife was engaged on; but I marvelled to myself at her complete ignorance of the world, of her own sex and of the other kind of sinners. Yet, where could she have got any experience? Her father had kept her strictly cloistered. Marriage with Fyne was