PART II - THE KNIGHT - CHAPTER FIVE - THE GREAT DE BARRAL

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PART II - THE KNIGHT: CHAPTER FIVE - THE GREAT DE BARRAL

Renovated certainly the saloon of the Ferndale was to receive the
"strange woman." The mellowness of its old-fashioned, tarnished
decoration was gone. And Anthony looking round saw the glitter, the
gleams, the colour of new things, untried, unused, very bright--too
bright. The workmen had gone only last night; and the last piece of
work they did was the hanging of the heavy curtains which looped
midway the length of the saloon--divided it in two if released,
cutting off the after end with its companion-way leading direct on
the poop, from the forepart with its outlet on the deck; making a
privacy within a privacy, as though Captain Anthony could not place
obstacles enough between his new happiness and the men who shared
his life at sea. He inspected that arrangement with an approving
eye then made a particular visitation of the whole, ending by
opening a door which led into a large stateroom made of two knocked
into one. It was very well furnished and had, instead of the usual
bedplace of such cabins, an elaborate swinging cot of the latest
pattern. Anthony tilted it a little by way of trial. "The old man
will be very comfortable in here," he said to himself, and stepped
back into the saloon closing the door gently. Then another thought
occurred to him obvious under the circumstances but strangely enough
presenting itself for the first time. "Jove! Won't he get a
shock," thought Roderick Anthony.

He went hastily on deck. "Mr. Franklin, Mr. Franklin." The mate
was not very far. "Oh! Here you are. Miss . . . Mrs. Anthony'll
be coming on board presently. Just give me a call when you see the
cab."

Then, without noticing the gloominess of the mate's countenance he
went in again. Not a friendly word, not a professional remark, or a
small joke, not as much as a simple and inane "fine day." Nothing.
Just turned about and went in.

We know that, when the moment came, he thought better of it and
decided to meet Flora's father in that privacy of the main cabin
which he had been so careful to arrange. Why Anthony appeared to
shrink from the contact, he who was sufficiently self-confident not
only to face but to absolutely create a situation almost insane in
its audacious generosity, is difficult to explain. Perhaps when he
came on the poop for a glance he found that man so different
outwardly from what he expected that he decided to meet him for the
first time out of everybody's sight. Possibly the general secrecy
of his relation to the girl might have influenced him. Truly he may
well have been dismayed. That man's coming brought him face to face
with the necessity to speak and act a lie; to appear what he was not
and what he could never be, unless, unless -

In short, we'll say if you like that for various reasons, all having
to do with the delicate rectitude of his nature, Roderick Anthony (a
man of whom his chief mate used to say: he doesn't know what fear
is) was frightened. There is a Nemesis which overtakes generosity
too, like all the other imprudences of men who dare to be lawless
and proud . . . "

"Why do you say this?" I inquired, for Marlow had stopped abruptly
and kept silent in the shadow of the bookcase.

"I say this because that man whom chance had thrown in Flora's way
was both: lawless and proud. Whether he knew anything about it or
not it does not matter. Very likely not. One may fling a glove in
the face of nature and in the face of one's own moral endurance
quite innocently, with a simplicity which wears the aspect of
perfectly Satanic conceit. However, as I have said it does not
matter. It's a transgression all the same and has got to be paid
for in the usual way. But never mind that. I paused because, like
Anthony, I find a difficulty, a sort of dread in coming to grips
with old de Barral.

You remember I had a glimpse of him once. He was not an imposing
personality: tall, thin, straight, stiff, faded, moving with short
steps and with a gliding motion, speaking in an even low voice.
When the sea was rough he wasn't much seen on deck--at least not
walking. He caught hold of things then and dragged himself along as
far as the after skylight where he would sit for hours. Our, then
young, friend offered once to assist him and this service was the
first beginning of a sort of friendship. He clung hard to one--
Powell says, with no figurative intention. Powell was always on the
lookout to assist, and to assist mainly Mrs. Anthony, because he
clung so jolly hard to her that Powell was afraid of her being
dragged down notwithstanding that she very soon became very sure-
footed in all sorts of weather. And Powell was the only one ready
to assist at hand because Anthony (by that time) seemed to be afraid
to come near them; the unforgiving Franklin always looked wrathfully
the other way; the boatswain, if up there, acted likewise but
sheepishly; and any hands that happened to be on the poop (a feeling
spreads mysteriously all over a ship) shunned him as though he had
been the devil.

We know how he arrived on board. For my part I know so little of
prisons that I haven't the faintest notion how one leaves them. It
seems as abominable an operation as the other, the shutting up with
its mental suggestions of bang, snap, crash and the empty silence
outside--where an instant before you were--you WERE--and now no
longer are. Perfectly devilish. And the release! I don't know
which is worse. How do they do it? Pull the string, door flies
open, man flies through: Out you go! Adios! And in the space
where a second before you were not, in the silent space there is a
figure going away, limping. Why limping? I don't know. That's how
I see it. One has a notion of a maiming, crippling process; of the
individual coming back damaged in some subtle way. I admit it is a
fantastic hallucination, but I can't help it. Of course I know that
the proceedings of the best machine-made humanity are employed with
judicious care and so on. I am absurd, no doubt, but still . . . Oh
yes it's idiotic. When I pass one of these places . . . did you
notice that there is something infernal about the aspect of every
individual stone or brick of them, something malicious as if matter
were enjoying its revenge of the contemptuous spirit of man. Did
you notice? You didn't? Eh? Well I am perhaps a little mad on
that point. When I pass one of these places I must avert my eyes.
I couldn't have gone to meet de Barral. I should have shrunk from
the ordeal. You'll notice that it looks as if Anthony (a brave man
indubitably) had shirked it too. Little Fyne's flight of fancy
picturing three people in the fatal four wheeler--you remember?--
went wide of the truth. There were only two people in the four
wheeler. Flora did not shrink. Women can stand anything. The dear
creatures have no imagination when it comes to solid facts of life.
In sentimental regions--I won't say. It's another thing altogether.
There they shrink from or rush to embrace ghosts of their own
creation just the same as any fool-man would.

No. I suppose the girl Flora went on that errand reasonably. And
then, why! This was the moment for which she had lived. It was her
only point of contact with existence. Oh yes. She had been
assisted by the Fynes. And kindly. Certainly. Kindly. But that's
not enough. There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures
which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer
envelope. How cold, how infernally cold she must have felt--unless
when she was made to burn with indignation or shame. Man, we know,
cannot live by bread alone but hang me if I don't believe that some
women could live by love alone. If there be a flame in human beings
fed by varied ingredients earthly and spiritual which tinge it in
different hues, then I seem to see the colour of theirs. It is
azure . . . What the devil are you laughing at . . . "

Marlow jumped up and strode out of the shadow as if lifted by
indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You
say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too
close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of WOMAN. In all of
them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast
and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is
something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there
can always be a flame . . . "

He went back into the shadow and sat down again.

"I don't mean to say that Flora de Barral was one of the sort that
could live by love alone. In fact she had managed to live without.
But still, in the distrust of herself and of others she looked for
love, any kind of love, as women will. And that confounded jail was
the only spot where she could see it--for she had no reason to
distrust her father.

She was there in good time. I see her gazing across the road at
these walls which are, properly speaking, awful. You do indeed seem
to feel along the very lines and angles of the unholy bulk, the fall
of time, drop by drop, hour by hour, leaf by leaf, with a gentle and
implacable slowness. And a voiceless melancholy comes over one,
invading, overpowering like a dream, penetrating and mortal like
poison.

When de Barral came out she experienced a sort of shock to see that
he was exactly as she remembered him. Perhaps a little smaller.
Otherwise unchanged. You come out in the same clothes, you know. I
can't tell whether he was looking for her. No doubt he was.
Whether he recognized her? Very likely. She crossed the road and
at once there was reproduced at a distance of years, as if by some
mocking witchcraft, the sight so familiar on the Parade at Brighton
of the financier de Barral walking with his only daughter. One
comes out of prison in the same clothes one wore on the day of
condemnation, no matter how long one has been put away there. Oh,
they last! They last! But there is something which is preserved by
prison life even better than one's discarded clothing. It is the
force, the vividness of one's sentiments. A monastery will do that
too; but in the unholy claustration of a jail you are thrown back
wholly upon yourself--for God and Faith are not there. The people
outside disperse their affections, you hoard yours, you nurse them
into intensity. What they let slip, what they forget in the
movement and changes of free life, you hold on to, amplify,
exaggerate into a rank growth of memories. They can look with a
smile at the troubles and pains of the past; but you can't. Old
pains keep on gnawing at your heart, old desires, old deceptions,
old dreams, assailing you in the dead stillness of your present
where nothing moves except the irrecoverable minutes of your life.

De Barral was out and, for a time speechless, being led away almost
before he had taken possession of the free world, by his daughter.
Flora controlled herself well. They walked along quickly for some
distance. The cab had been left round the corner--round several
corners for all I know. He was flustered, out of breath, when she
helped him in and followed herself. Inside that rolling box,
turning towards that recovered presence with her heart too full for
words she felt the desire of tears she had managed to keep down
abandon her suddenly, her half-mournful, half-triumphant exultation
subside, every fibre of her body, relaxed in tenderness, go stiff in
the close look she took at his face. He WAS different. There was
something. Yes, there was something between them, something hard
and impalpable, the ghost of these high walls.

How old he was, how unlike!

She shook off this impression, amazed and frightened by it of
course. And remorseful too. Naturally. She threw her arms round
his neck. He returned that hug awkwardly, as if not in perfect
control of his arms, with a fumbling and uncertain pressure. She
hid her face on his breast. It was as though she were pressing it
against a stone. They released each other and presently the cab was
rolling along at a jog-trot to the docks with those two people as
far apart as they could get from each other, in opposite corners.

After a silence given up to mutual examination he uttered his first
coherent sentence outside the walls of the prison.

"What has done for me was envy. Envy. There was a lot of them just
bursting with it every time they looked my way. I was doing too
well. So they went to the Public Prosecutor--"

She said hastily "Yes! Yes! I know," and he glared as if resentful
that the child had turned into a young woman without waiting for him
to come out. "What do you know about it?" he asked. "You were too
young." His speech was soft. The old voice, the old voice! It
gave her a thrill. She recognized its pointless gentleness always
the same no matter what he had to say. And she remembered that he
never had much to say when he came down to see her. It was she who
chattered, chattered, on their walks, while stiff and with a
rigidly-carried head, he dropped a gentle word now and then.

Moved by these recollections waking up within her, she explained to
him that within the last year she had read and studied the report of
the trial.

"I went through the files of several papers, papa."

He looked at her suspiciously. The reports were probably very
incomplete. No doubt the reporters had garbled his evidence. They
were determined to give him no chance either in court or before the
public opinion. It was a conspiracy . . . "My counsel was a fool
too," he added. "Did you notice? A perfect fool."

She laid her hand on his arm soothingly. "Is it worth while talking
about that awful time? It is so far away now." She shuddered
slightly at the thought of all the horrible years which had passed
over her young head; never guessing that for him the time was but
yesterday. He folded his arms on his breast, leaned back in his
corner and bowed his head. But in a little while he made her jump
by asking suddenly:

"Who has got hold of the Lone Valley Railway? That's what they were
after mainly. Somebody has got it. Parfitts and Co. grabbed it--
eh? Or was it that fellow Warner . . . "

"I--I don't know," she said quite scared by the twitching of his
lips.

"Don't know!" he exclaimed softly. Hadn't her cousin told her? Oh
yes. She had left them--of course. Why did she? It was his first
question about herself but she did not answer it. She did not want
to talk of these horrors. They were impossible to describe. She
perceived though that he had not expected an answer, because she
heard him muttering to himself that: "There was half a million's
worth of work done and material accumulated there."

"You mustn't think of these things, papa," she said firmly. And he
asked her with that invariable gentleness, in which she seemed now
to detect some rather ugly shades, what else had he to think about?
Another year or two, if they had only left him alone, he and
everybody else would have been all right, rolling in money; and she,
his daughter, could have married anybody--anybody. A lord.

All this was to him like yesterday, a long yesterday, a yesterday
gone over innumerable times, analysed, meditated upon for years. It
had a vividness and force for that old man of which his daughter who
had not been shut out of the world could have no idea. She was to
him the only living figure out of that past, and it was perhaps in
perfect good faith that he added, coldly, inexpressive and thin-
lipped: "I lived only for you, I may say. I suppose you understand
that. There were only you and me."

Moved by this declaration, wondering that it did not warm her heart
more, she murmured a few endearing words while the uppermost thought
in her mind was that she must tell him now of the situation. She
had expected to be questioned anxiously about herself--and while she
desired it she shrank from the answers she would have to make. But
her father seemed strangely, unnaturally incurious. It looked as if
there would be no questions. Still this was an opening. This
seemed to be the time for her to begin. And she began. She began
by saying that she had always felt like that. There were two of
them, to live for each other. And if he only knew what she had gone
through!

Ensconced in his corner, with his arms folded, he stared out of the
cab window at the street. How little he was changed after all. It
was the unmovable expression, the faded stare she used to see on the
esplanade whenever walking by his side hand in hand she raised her
eyes to his face--while she chattered, chattered. It was the same
stiff, silent figure which at a word from her would turn rigidly
into a shop and buy her anything it occurred to her that she would
like to have. Flora de Barral's voice faltered. He bent on her
that well-remembered glance in which she had never read anything as
a child, except the consciousness of her existence. And that was
enough for a child who had never known demonstrative affection. But
she had lived a life so starved of all feeling that this was no
longer enough for her. What was the good of telling him the story
of all these miseries now past and gone, of all those bewildering
difficulties and humiliations? What she must tell him was difficult
enough to say. She approached it by remarking cheerfully:

"You haven't even asked me where I am taking you." He started like
a somnambulist awakened suddenly, and there was now some meaning in
his stare; a sort of alarmed speculation. He opened his mouth
slowly. Flora struck in with forced gaiety. "You would never,
guess."

He waited, still more startled and suspicious. "Guess! Why don't
you tell me?"

He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward towards her. She got hold
of one of his hands. "You must know first . . . " She paused, made
an effort: "I am married, papa."

For a moment they kept perfectly still in that cab rolling on at a
steady jog-trot through a narrow city street full of bustle.
Whatever she expected she did not expect to feel his hand snatched
away from her grasp as if from a burn or a contamination. De Barral
fresh from the stagnant torment of the prison (where nothing
happens) had not expected that sort of news. It seemed to stick in
his throat. In strangled low tones he cried out, "You--married?
You, Flora! When? Married! What for? Who to? Married!"

His eyes which were blue like hers, only faded, without depth,
seemed to start out of their orbits. He did really look as if he
were choking. He even put his hand to his collar . . . "

"You know," continued Marlow out of the shadow of the bookcase and
nearly invisible in the depths of the arm-chair, "the only time I
saw him he had given me the impression of absolute rigidity, as
though he had swallowed a poker. But it seems that he could
collapse. I can hardly picture this to myself. I understand that
he did collapse to a certain extent in his corner of the cab. The
unexpected had crumpled him up. She regarded him perplexed,
pitying, a little disillusioned, and nodded at him gravely: Yes.
Married. What she did not like was to see him smile in a manner far
from encouraging to the devotion of a daughter. There was something
unintentionally savage in it. Old de Barral could not quite command
his muscles, as yet. But he had recovered command of his gentle
voice.

"You were just saying that in this wide world there we were, only
you and I, to stick to each other."

She was dimly aware of the scathing intention lurking in these soft
low tones, in these words which appealed to her poignantly. She
defended herself. Never, never for a single moment had she ceased
to think of him. Neither did he cease to think of her, he said,
with as much sinister emphasis as he was capable of.

"But, papa," she cried, "I haven't been shut up like you." She
didn't mind speaking of it because he was innocent. He hadn't been
understood. It was a misfortune of the most cruel kind but no more
disgraceful than an illness, a maiming accident or some other
visitation of blind fate. "I wish I had been too. But I was alone
out in the world, the horrid world, that very world which had used
you so badly."

"And you couldn't go about in it without finding somebody to fall in
love with?" he said. A jealous rage affected his brain like the
fumes of wine, rising from some secret depths of his being so long
deprived of all emotions. The hollows at the corners of his lips
became more pronounced in the puffy roundness of his cheeks.
Images, visions, obsess with particular force, men withdrawn from
the sights and sounds of active life. "And I did nothing but think
of you!" he exclaimed under his breath, contemptuously. "Think of
you! You haunted me, I tell you."

Flora said to herself that there was a being who loved her. "Then
we have been haunting each other," she declared with a pang of
remorse. For indeed he had haunted her nearly out of the world,
into a final and irremediable desertion. "Some day I shall tell you
. . . No. I don't think I can ever tell you. There was a time when
I was mad. But what's the good? It's all over now. We shall
forget all this. There shall be nothing to remind us."

De Barral moved his shoulders.

"I should think you were mad to tie yourself to . . . How long is it
since you are married?"

She answered "Not long" that being the only answer she dared to
make. Everything was so different from what she imagined it would
be. He wanted to know why she had said nothing of it in any of her
letters; in her last letter. She said:

"It was after."

"So recently!" he wondered. "Couldn't you wait at least till I came
out? You could have told me; asked me; consulted me! Let me see--"

She shook her head negatively. And he was appalled. He thought to
himself: Who can he be? Some miserable, silly youth without a
penny. Or perhaps some scoundrel? Without making any expressive
movement he wrung his loosely-clasped hands till the joints cracked.
He looked at her. She was pretty. Some low scoundrel who will cast
her off. Some plausible vagabond . . . "You couldn't wait--eh?"

Again she made a slight negative sign.

"Why not? What was the hurry?" She cast down her eyes. "It had to
be. Yes. It was sudden, but it had to be."

He leaned towards her, his mouth open, his eyes wild with virtuous
anger, but meeting the absolute candour of her raised glance threw
himself back into his corner again.

"So tremendously in love with each other--was that it? Couldn't let
a father have his daughter all to himself even for a day after--
after such a separation. And you know I never had anyone, I had no
friends. What did I want with those people one meets in the City.
The best of them are ready to cut your throat. Yes! Business men,
gentlemen, any sort of men and women--out of spite, or to get
something. Oh yes, they can talk fair enough if they think there's
something to be got out of you . . . " His voice was a mere breath
yet every word came to Flora as distinctly as if charged with all
the moving power of passion . . . "My girl, I looked at them making
up to me and I would say to myself: What do I care for all that! I
am a business man. I am the great Mr. de Barral (yes, yes, some of
them twisted their mouths at it, but I WAS the great Mr. de Barral)
and I have my little girl. I wanted nobody and I have never had
anybody."

A true emotion had unsealed his lips but the words that came out of
them were no louder than the murmur of a light wind. It died away.

"That's just it," said Flora de Barral under her breath. Without
removing his eyes from her he took off his hat. It was a tall hat.
The hat of the trial. The hat of the thumb-nail sketches in the
illustrated papers. One comes out in the same clothes, but
seclusion counts! It is well known that lurid visions haunt
secluded men, monks, hermits--then why not prisoners? De Barral the
convict took off the silk hat of the financier de Barral and
deposited it on the front seat of the cab. Then he blew out his
cheeks. He was red in the face.

"And then what happens?" he began again in his contained voice.
"Here I am, overthrown, broken by envy, malice and all
uncharitableness. I come out--and what do I find? I find that my
girl Flora has gone and married some man or other, perhaps a fool,
how do I know; or perhaps--anyway not good enough."

"Stop, papa."

"A silly love affair as likely as not," he continued monotonously,
his thin lips writhing between the ill-omened sunk corners. "And a
very suspicious thing it is too, on the part of a loving daughter."

She tried to interrupt him but he went on till she actually clapped
her hand on his mouth. He rolled his eyes a bit but when she took
her hand away he remained silent.

"Wait. I must tell you . . . And first of all, papa, understand
this, for everything's in that: he is the most generous man in the
world. He is . . . "

De Barral very still in his corner uttered with an effort "You are
in love with him."

"Papa! He came to me. I was thinking of you. I had no eyes for
anybody. I could no longer bear to think of you. It was then that
he came. Only then. At that time when--when I was going to give
up."

She gazed into his faded blue eyes as if yearning to be understood,
to be given encouragement, peace--a word of sympathy. He declared
without animation "I would like to break his neck."

She had the mental exclamation of the overburdened.

"Oh my God!" and watched him with frightened eyes. But he did not
appear insane or in any other way formidable. This comforted her.
The silence lasted for some little time. Then suddenly he asked:

"What's your name then?"

For a moment in the profound trouble of the task before her she did
not understand what the question meant. Then, her face faintly
flushing, she whispered: "Anthony."

Her father, a red spot on each cheek, leaned his head back wearily
in the corner of the cab.

"Anthony. What is he? Where did he spring from?"

"Papa, it was in the country, on a road--"

He groaned, "On a road," and closed his eyes.

"It's too long to explain to you now. We shall have lots of time.
There are things I could not tell you now. But some day. Some day.
For now nothing can part us. Nothing. We are safe as long as we
live--nothing can ever come between us."

"You are infatuated with the fellow," he remarked, without opening
his eyes. And she said: "I believe in him," in a low voice. "You
and I must believe in him."

"Who the devil is he?"

"He's the brother of the lady--you know Mrs. Fyne, she knew mother--
who was so kind to me. I was staying in the country, in a cottage,
with Mr. and Mrs. Fyne. It was there that we met. He came on a
visit. He noticed me. I--well--we are married now."

She was thankful that his eyes were shut. It made it easier to talk
of the future she had arranged, which now was an unalterable thing.
She did not enter on the path of confidences. That was impossible.
She felt he would not understand her. She felt also that he
suffered. Now and then a great anxiety gripped her heart with a
mysterious sense of guilt--as though she had betrayed him into the
hands of an enemy. With his eyes shut he had an air of weary and
pious meditation. She was a little afraid of it. Next moment a
great pity for him filled her heart. And in the background there
was remorse. His face twitched now and then just perceptibly. He
managed to keep his eyelids down till he heard that the 'husband'
was a sailor and that he, the father, was being taken straight on
board ship ready to sail away from this abominable world of
treacheries, and scorns and envies and lies, away, away over the
blue sea, the sure, the inaccessible, the uncontaminated and
spacious refuge for wounded souls.

Something like that. Not the very words perhaps but such was the
general sense of her overwhelming argument--the argument of refuge.

I don't think she gave a thought to material conditions. But as
part of that argument set forth breathlessly, as if she were afraid
that if she stopped for a moment she could never go on again, she
mentioned that generosity of a stormy type, which had come to her
from the sea, had caught her up on the brink of unmentionable
failure, had whirled her away in its first ardent gust and could be
trusted now, implicitly trusted, to carry them both, side by side,
into absolute safety.

She believed it, she affirmed it. He understood thoroughly at last,
and at once the interior of that cab, of an aspect so pacific in the
eyes of the people on the pavements, became the scene of a great
agitation. The generosity of Roderick Anthony--the son of the poet-
-affected the ex-financier de Barral in a manner which must have
brought home to Flora de Barral the extreme arduousness of the
business of being a woman. Being a woman is a terribly difficult
trade since it consists principally of dealings with men. This man-
-the man inside the cab--cast oft his stiff placidity and behaved
like an animal. I don't mean it in an offensive sense. What he did
was to give way to an instinctive panic. Like some wild creature
scared by the first touch of a net falling on its back, old de
Barral began to struggle, lank and angular, against the empty air--
as much of it as there was in the cab--with staring eyes and gasping
mouth from which his daughter shrank as far as she could in the
confined space.

"Stop the cab. Stop him I tell you. Let me get out!" were the
strangled exclamations she heard. Why? What for? To do what? He
would hear nothing. She cried to him "Papa! Papa! What do you
want to do?" And all she got from him was: "Stop. I must get out.
I want to think. I must get out to think."

It was a mercy that he didn't attempt to open the door at once. He
only stuck his head and shoulders out of the window crying to the
cabman. She saw the consequences, the cab stopping, a crowd
collecting around a raving old gentleman . . . In this terrible
business of being a woman so full of fine shades, of delicate
perplexities (and very small rewards) you can never know what rough
work you may have to do, at any moment. Without hesitation Flora
seized her father round the body and pulled back--being astonished
at the ease with which she managed to make him drop into his seat
again. She kept him there resolutely with one hand pressed against
his breast, and leaning across him, she, in her turn put her head
and shoulders out of the window. By then the cab had drawn up to
the curbstone and was stopped. "No! I've changed my mind. Go on
please where you were told first. To the docks."

She wondered at the steadiness of her own voice. She heard a grunt
from the driver and the cab began to roll again. Only then she sank
into her place keeping a watchful eye on her companion. He was
hardly anything more by this time. Except for her childhood's
impressions he was just--a man. Almost a stranger. How was one to
deal with him? And there was the other too. Also almost a
stranger. The trade of being a woman was very difficult. Too
difficult. Flora closed her eyes saying to herself: "If I think
too much about it I shall go mad." And then opening them she asked
her father if the prospect of living always with his daughter and
being taken care of by her affection away from the world, which had
no honour to give to his grey hairs, was such an awful prospect.

"Tell me, is it so bad as that?"

She put that question sadly, without bitterness. The famous--or
notorious--de Barral had lost his rigidity now. He was bent.
Nothing more deplorably futile than a bent poker. He said nothing.
She added gently, suppressing an uneasy remorseful sigh:

"And it might have been worse. You might have found no one, no one
in all this town, no one in all the world, not even me! Poor papa!"

She made a conscience-stricken movement towards him thinking: "Oh!
I am horrible, I am horrible." And old de Barral, scared, tired,
bewildered by the extraordinary shocks of his liberation, swayed
over and actually leaned his head on her shoulder, as if sorrowing
over his regained freedom.

The movement by itself was touching. Flora supporting him lightly
imagined that he was crying; and at the thought that had she smashed
in a quarry that shoulder, together with some other of her bones,
this grey and pitiful head would have had nowhere to rest, she too
gave way to tears. They flowed quietly, easing her overstrained
nerves. Suddenly he pushed her away from him so that her head
struck the side of the cab, pushing himself away too from her as if
something had stung him.

All the warmth went out of her emotion. The very last tears turned
cold on her cheek. But their work was done. She had found courage,
resolution, as women do, in a good cry. With his hand covering the
upper part of his face whether to conceal his eyes or to shut out an
unbearable sight, he was stiffening up in his corner to his usual
poker-like consistency. She regarded him in silence. His thin
obstinate lips moved. He uttered the name of the cousin--the man,
you remember, who did not approve of the Fynes, and whom rightly or
wrongly little Fyne suspected of interested motives, in view of de
Barral having possibly put away some plunder, somewhere before the
smash.

I may just as well tell you at once that I don't know anything more
of him. But de Barral was of the opinion, speaking in his low voice
from under his hand, that this relation would have been only too
glad to have secured his guidance.

"Of course I could not come forward in my own name, or person. But
the advice of a man of my experience is as good as a fortune to
anybody wishing to venture into finance. The same sort of thing can
be done again."

He shuffled his feet a little, let fall his hand; and turning
carefully toward his daughter his puffy round cheeks, his round chin
resting on his collar, he bent on her the faded, resentful gaze of
his pale eyes, which were wet.

"The start is really only a matter of judicious advertising.
There's no difficulty. And here you go and . . . "

He turned his face away. "After all I am still de Barral, THE de
Barral. Didn't you remember that?"

"Papa," said Flora; "listen. It's you who must remember that there
is no longer a de Barral . . . " He looked at her sideways
anxiously. "There is Mr. Smith, whom no harm, no trouble, no wicked
lies of evil people can ever touch."

"Mr. Smith," he breathed out slowly. "Where does he belong to?
There's not even a Miss Smith."

"There is your Flora."

"My Flora! You went and . . . I can't bear to think of it. It's
horrible."

"Yes. It was horrible enough at times," she said with feeling,
because somehow, obscurely, what this man said appealed to her as if
it were her own thought clothed in an enigmatic emotion. "I think
with shame sometimes how I . . . No not yet. I shall not tell you.
At least not now."

The cab turned into the gateway of the dock. Flora handed the tall
hat to her father. "Here, papa. And please be good. I suppose you
love me. If you don't, then I wonder who--"

He put the hat on, and stiffened hard in his corner, kept a sidelong
glance on his girl. "Try to be nice for my sake. Think of the
years I have been waiting for you. I do indeed want support--and
peace. A little peace."

She clasped his arm suddenly with both hands pressing with all her
might as if to crush the resistance she felt in him. "I could not
have peace if I did not have you with me. I won't let you go. Not
after all I went through. I won't." The nervous force of her grip
frightened him a little. She laughed suddenly. "It's absurd. It's
as if I were asking you for a sacrifice. What am I afraid of?
Where could you go? I mean now, to-day, to-night? You can't tell
me. Have you thought of it? Well I have been thinking of it for
the last year. Longer. I nearly went mad trying to find out. I
believe I was mad for a time or else I should never have thought . .
. "

"This was as near as she came to a confession," remarked Marlow in a
changed tone. "The confession I mean of that walk to the top of the
quarry which she reproached herself with so bitterly. And he made
of it what his fancy suggested. It could not possibly be a just
notion. The cab stopped alongside the ship and they got out in the
manner described by the sensitive Franklin. I don't know if they
suspected each other's sanity at the end of that drive. But that is
possible. We all seem a little mad to each other; an excellent
arrangement for the bulk of humanity which finds in it an easy
motive of forgiveness. Flora crossed the quarter-deck with a
rapidity born of apprehension. It had grown unbearable. She wanted
this business over. She was thankful on looking back to see he was
following her. "If he bolts away," she thought, "then I shall know
that I am of no account indeed! That no one loves me, that words
and actions and protestations and everything in the world is false--
and I shall jump into the dock. THAT at least won't lie."

Well I don't know. If it had come to that she would have been most
likely fished out, what with her natural want of luck and the good
many people on the quay and on board. And just where the Ferndale
was moored there hung on a wall (I know the berth) a coil of line, a
pole, and a life-buoy kept there on purpose to save people who
tumble into the dock. It's not so easy to get away from life's
betrayals as she thought. However it did not come to that. He
followed her with his quick gliding walk. Mr. Smith! The liberated
convict de Barral passed off the solid earth for the last time,
vanished for ever, and there was Mr. Smith added to that world of
waters which harbours so many queer fishes. An old gentleman in a
silk hat, darting wary glances. He followed, because mere existence
has its claims which are obeyed mechanically. I have no doubt he
presented a respectable figure. Father-in-law. Nothing more
respectable. But he carried in his heart the confused pain of
dismay and affection, of involuntary repulsion and pity. Very much
like his daughter. Only in addition he felt a furious jealousy of
the man he was going to see.

A residue of egoism remains in every affection--even paternal. And
this man in the seclusion of his prison had thought himself into
such a sense of ownership of that single human being he had to think
about, as may well be inconceivable to us who have not had to serve
a long (and wickedly unjust) sentence of penal servitude. She was
positively the only thing, the one point where his thoughts found a
resting-place, for years. She was the only outlet for his
imagination. He had not much of that faculty to be sure, but there
was in it the force of concentration. He felt outraged, and perhaps
it was an absurdity on his part, but I venture to suggest rather in
degree than in kind. I have a notion that no usual, normal father
is pleased at parting with his daughter. No. Not even when he
rationally appreciates "Jane being taken off his hands" or perhaps
is able to exult at an excellent match. At bottom, quite deep down,
down in the dark (in some cases only by digging), there is to be
found a certain repugnance . . . With mothers of course it is
different. Women are more loyal, not to each other, but to their
common femininity which they behold triumphant with a secret and
proud satisfaction.

The circumstances of that match added to Mr. Smith's indignation.
And if he followed his daughter into that ship's cabin it was as if
into a house of disgrace and only because he was still bewildered by
the suddenness of the thing. His will, so long lying fallow, was
overborne by her determination and by a vague fear of that regained
liberty.

You will be glad to hear that Anthony, though he did shirk the
welcome on the quay, behaved admirably, with the simplicity of a man
who has no small meannesses and makes no mean reservations. His
eyes did not flinch and his tongue did not falter. He was, I have
it on the best authority, admirable in his earnestness, in his
sincerity and also in his restraint. He was perfect. Nevertheless
the vital force of his unknown individuality addressing him so
familiarly was enough to fluster Mr. Smith. Flora saw her father
trembling in all his exiguous length, though he held himself stiffer
than ever if that was possible. He muttered a little and at last
managed to utter, not loud of course but very distinctly: "I am
here under protest," the corners of his mouth sunk disparagingly,
his eyes stony. "I am here under protest. I have been locked up by
a conspiracy. I--"

He raised his hands to his forehead--his silk hat was on the table
rim upwards; he had put it there with a despairing gesture as he
came in--he raised his hands to his forehead. "It seems to me
unfair. I--" He broke off again. Anthony looked at Flora who
stood by the side of her father.

"Well, sir, you will soon get used to me. Surely you and she must
have had enough of shore-people and their confounded half-and-half
ways to last you both for a life-time. A particularly merciful lot
they are too. You ask Flora. I am alluding to my own sister, her
best friend, and not a bad woman either as they go."

The captain of the Ferndale checked himself. "Lucky thing I was
there to step in. I want you to make yourself at home, and before
long--"

The faded stare of the Great de Barral silenced Anthony by its
inexpressive fixity. He signalled with his eyes to Flora towards
the door of the state-room fitted specially to receive Mr. Smith,
the free man. She seized the free man's hat off the table and took
him caressingly under the arm. "Yes! This is home, come and see
your room, papa!"

Anthony himself threw open the door and Flora took care to shut it
carefully behind herself and her father. "See," she began but
desisted because it was clear that he would look at none of the
contrivances for his comfort. She herself had hardly seen them
before. He was looking only at the new carpet and she waited till
he should raise his eyes.

He didn't do that but spoke in his usual voice. "So this is your
husband, that . . . And I locked up!"

"Papa, what's the good of harping on that," she remonstrated no
louder. "He is kind."

"And you went and . . . married him so that he should be kind to me.
Is that it? How did you know that I wanted anybody to be kind to
me?"

"How strange you are!" she said thoughtfully.

"It's hard for a man who has gone through what I have gone through
to feel like other people. Has that occurred to you? . . . " He
looked up at last . . . "Mrs. Anthony, I can't bear the sight of
the fellow." She met his eyes without flinching and he added, "You
want to go to him now." His mild automatic manner seemed the effect
of tremendous self-restraint--and yet she remembered him always like
that. She felt cold all over.

"Why, of course, I must go to him," she said with a slight start.

He gnashed his teeth at her and she went out.

Anthony had not moved from the spot. One of his hands was resting
on the table. She went up to him, stopped, then deliberately moved
still closer. "Thank you, Roderick."

"You needn't thank me," he murmured. "It's I who . . . "

"No, perhaps I needn't. You do what you like. But you are doing it
well."

He sighed then hardly above a whisper because they were near the
state-room door, "Upset, eh?"

She made no sign, no sound of any kind. The thorough falseness of
the position weighed on them both. But he was the braver of the
two. "I dare say. At first. Did you think of telling him you were
happy?"

"He never asked me," she smiled faintly at him. She was
disappointed by his quietness. "I did not say more than I was
absolutely obliged to say--of myself." She was beginning to be
irritated with this man a little. "I told him I had been very
lucky," she said suddenly despondent, missing Anthony's masterful
manner, that something arbitrary and tender which, after the first
scare, she had accustomed herself to look forward to with
pleasurable apprehension. He was contemplating her rather blankly.
She had not taken off her outdoor things, hat, gloves. She was like
a caller. And she had a movement suggesting the end of a not very
satisfactory business call. "Perhaps it would be just as well if we
went ashore. Time yet."

He gave her a glimpse of his unconstrained self in the low vehement
"You dare!" which sprang to his lips and out of them with a most
menacing inflexion.

"You dare . . . What's the matter now?"

These last words were shot out not at her but at some target behind
her back. Looking over her shoulder she saw the bald head with
black bunches of hair of the congested and devoted Franklin (he had
his cap in his hand) gazing sentimentally from the saloon doorway
with his lobster eyes. He was heard from the distance in a tone of
injured innocence reporting that the berthing master was alongside
and that he wanted to move the ship into the basin before the crew
came on board.

His captain growled "Well, let him," and waved away the ulcerated
and pathetic soul behind these prominent eyes which lingered on the
offensive woman while the mate backed out slowly. Anthony turned to
Flora.

"You could not have meant it. You are as straight as they make
them."

"I am trying to be."

"Then don't joke in that way. Think of what would become of--me."

"Oh yes. I forgot. No, I didn't mean it. It wasn't a joke. It
was forgetfulness. You wouldn't have been wronged. I couldn't have
gone. I--I am too tired."

He saw she was swaying where she stood and restrained himself
violently from taking her into his arms, his frame trembling with
fear as though he had been tempted to an act of unparalleled
treachery. He stepped aside and lowering his eyes pointed to the
door of the stern-cabin. It was only after she passed by him that
he looked up and thus he did not see the angry glance she gave him
before she moved on. He looked after her. She tottered slightly
just before reaching the door and flung it to behind her nervously.

Anthony--he had felt this crash as if the door had been slammed
inside his very breast--stood for a moment without moving and then
shouted for Mrs. Brown. This was the steward's wife, his lucky
inspiration to make Flora comfortable. "Mrs. Brown! Mrs. Brown!"
At last she appeared from somewhere. "Mrs. Anthony has come on
board. Just gone into the cabin. Hadn't you better see if you can
be of any assistance?"

"Yes, sir."

And again he was alone with the situation he had created in the
hardihood and inexperience of his heart. He thought he had better
go on deck. In fact he ought to have been there before. At any
rate it would be the usual thing for him to be on deck. But a sound
of muttering and of faint thuds somewhere near by arrested his
attention. They proceeded from Mr. Smith's room, he perceived. It
was very extraordinary. "He's talking to himself," he thought. "He
seems to be thumping the bulkhead with his fists--or his head."

Anthony's eyes grew big with wonder while he listened to these
noises. He became so attentive that he did not notice Mrs. Brown
till she actually stopped before him for a moment to say:

"Mrs. Anthony doesn't want any assistance, sir."

This was you understand the voyage before Mr. Powell--young Powell
then--joined the Ferndale; chance having arranged that he should get
his start in life in that particular ship of all the ships then in
the port of London. The most unrestful ship that ever sailed out of
any port on earth. I am not alluding to her sea-going qualities.
Mr. Powell tells me she was as steady as a church. I mean unrestful
in the sense, for instance in which this planet of ours is
unrestful--a matter of an uneasy atmosphere disturbed by passions,
jealousies, loves, hates and the troubles of transcendental good
intentions, which, though ethically valuable, I have no doubt cause
often more unhappiness than the plots of the most evil tendency.
For those who refuse to believe in chance he, I mean Mr. Powell,
must have been obviously predestined to add his native ingenuousness
to the sum of all the others carried by the honest ship Ferndale.
He was too ingenuous. Everybody on board was, exception being made
of Mr. Smith who, however, was simple enough in his way, with that
terrible simplicity of the fixed idea, for which there is also
another name men pronounce with dread and aversion. His fixed idea
was to save his girl from the man who had possessed himself of her
(I use these words on purpose because the image they suggest was
clearly in Mr. Smith's mind), possessed himself unfairly of her
while he, the father, was locked up.

"I won't rest till I have got you away from that man," he would
murmur to her after long periods of contemplation. We know from
Powell how he used to sit on the skylight near the long deck-chair
on which Flora was reclining, gazing into her face from above with
an air of guardianship and investigation at the same time.

It is almost impossible to say if he ever had considered the event
rationally. The avatar of de Barral into Mr. Smith had not been
effected without a shock--that much one must recognize. It may be
that it drove all practical considerations out of his mind, making
room for awful and precise visions which nothing could dislodge
afterwards.

And it might have been the tenacity, the unintelligent tenacity, of
the man who had persisted in throwing millions of other people's
thrift into the Lone Valley Railway, the Labrador Docks, the Spotted
Leopard Copper Mine, and other grotesque speculations exposed during
the famous de Barral trial, amongst murmurs of astonishment mingled
with bursts of laughter. For it is in the Courts of Law that Comedy
finds its last refuge in our deadly serious world. As to tears and
lamentations, these were not heard in the august precincts of
comedy, because they were indulged in privately in several thousand
homes, where, with a fine dramatic effect, hunger had taken the
place of Thrift.

But there was one at least who did not laugh in court. That person
was the accused. The notorious de Barral did not laugh because he
was indignant. He was impervious to words, to facts, to inferences.
It would have been impossible to make him see his guilt or his
folly--either by evidence or argument--if anybody had tried to
argue.

Neither did his daughter Flora try to argue with him. The cruelty
of her position was so great, its complications so thorny, if I may
express myself so, that a passive attitude was yet her best refuge--
as it had been before her of so many women.

For that sort of inertia in woman is always enigmatic and therefore
menacing. It makes one pause. A woman may be a fool, a sleepy
fool, an agitated fool, a too awfully noxious fool, and she may even
be simply stupid. But she is never dense. She's never made of wood
through and through as some men are. There is in woman always,
somewhere, a spring. Whatever men don't know about women (and it
may be a lot or it may be very little) men and even fathers do know
that much. And that is why so many men are afraid of them.

Mr. Smith I believe was afraid of his daughter's quietness though of
course he interpreted it in his own way.

He would, as Mr. Powell depicts, sit on the skylight and bend over
the reclining girl, wondering what there was behind the lost gaze
under the darkened eyelids in the still eyes. He would look and
look and then he would say, whisper rather, it didn't take much for
his voice to drop to a mere breath--he would declare, transferring
his faded stare to the horizon, that he would never rest till he had
"got her away from that man."

"You don't know what you are saying, papa."

She would try not to show her weariness, the nervous strain of these
two men's antagonism around her person which was the cause of her
languid attitudes. For as a matter of fact the sea agreed with her.

As likely as not Anthony would be walking on the other side of the
deck. The strain was making him restless. He couldn't sit still
anywhere. He had tried shutting himself up in his cabin; but that
was no good. He would jump up to rush on deck and tramp, tramp up
and down that poop till he felt ready to drop, without being able to
wear down the agitation of his soul, generous indeed, but weighted
by its envelope of blood and muscle and bone; handicapped by the
brain creating precise images and everlastingly speculating,
speculating--looking out for signs, watching for symptoms.

And Mr. Smith with a slight backward jerk of his small head at the
footsteps on the other side of the skylight would insist in his
awful, hopelessly gentle voice that he knew very well what he was
saying. Hadn't she given herself to that man while he was locked
up.

"Helpless, in jail, with no one to think of, nothing to look forward
to, but my daughter. And then when they let me out at last I find
her gone--for it amounts to this. Sold. Because you've sold
yourself; you know you have."

With his round unmoved face, a lot of fine white hair waving in the
wind-eddies of the spanker, his glance levelled over the sea he
seemed to be addressing the universe across her reclining form. She
would protest sometimes.

"I wish you would not talk like this, papa. You are only tormenting
me, and tormenting yourself."

"Yes, I am tormented enough," he admitted meaningly. But it was not
talking about it that tormented him. It was thinking of it. And to
sit and look at it was worse for him than it possibly could have
been for her to go and give herself up, bad as that must have been.

"For of course you suffered. Don't tell me you didn't? You must
have."

She had renounced very soon all attempts at protests. It was
useless. It might have made things worse; and she did not want to
quarrel with her father, the only human being that really cared for
her, absolutely, evidently, completely--to the end. There was in
him no pity, no generosity, nothing whatever of these fine things--
it was for her, for her very own self such as it was, that this
human being cared. This certitude would have made her put up with
worse torments. For, of course, she too was being tormented. She
felt also helpless, as if the whole enterprise had been too much for
her. This is the sort of conviction which makes for quietude. She
was becoming a fatalist.

What must have been rather appalling were the necessities of daily
life, the intercourse of current trifles. That naturally had to go
on. They wished good morning to each other, they sat down together
to meals--and I believe there would be a game of cards now and then
in the evening, especially at first. What frightened her most was
the duplicity of her father, at least what looked like duplicity,
when she remembered his persistent, insistent whispers on deck.
However her father was a taciturn person as far back as she could
remember him best--on the Parade. It was she who chattered, never
troubling herself to discover whether he was pleased or displeased.
And now she couldn't fathom his thoughts. Neither did she chatter
to him. Anthony with a forced friendly smile as if frozen to his
lips seemed only too thankful at not being made to speak. Mr. Smith
sometimes forgot himself while studying his hand so long that Flora
had to recall him to himself by a murmured "Papa--your lead." Then
he apologized by a faint as if inward ejaculation "Beg your pardon,
Captain." Naturally she addressed Anthony as Roderick and he
addressed her as Flora. This was all the acting that was necessary
to judge from the wincing twitch of the old man's mouth at every
uttered "Flora." On hearing the rare "Rodericks" he had sometimes a
scornful grimace as faint and faded and colourless as his whole
stiff personality.

He would be the first to retire. He was not infirm. With him too
the life on board ship seemed to agree; but from a sense of duty, of
affection, or to placate his hidden fury, his daughter always
accompanied him to his state-room "to make him comfortable." She
lighted his lamp, helped him into his dressing-gown or got him a
book from a bookcase fitted in there--but this last rarely, because
Mr. Smith used to declare "I am no reader" with something like pride
in his low tones. Very often after kissing her good-night on the
forehead he would treat her to some such fretful remark: "It's like
being in jail--'pon my word. I suppose that man is out there
waiting for you. Head jailer! Ough!"

She would smile vaguely; murmur a conciliatory "How absurd." But
once, out of patience, she said quite sharply "Leave off. It hurts
me. One would think you hate me."

"It isn't you I hate," he went on monotonously breathing at her.
"No, it isn't you. But if I saw that you loved that man I think I
could hate you too."

That word struck straight at her heart. "You wouldn't be the first
then," she muttered bitterly. But he was busy with his fixed idea
and uttered an awfully equable "But you don't! Unfortunate girl!"

She looked at him steadily for a time then said "Good-night, papa."

As a matter of fact Anthony very seldom waited for her alone at the
table with the scattered cards, glasses, water-jug, bottles and
soon. He took no more opportunities to be alone with her than was
absolutely necessary for the edification of Mrs. Brown. Excellent,
faithful woman; the wife of his still more excellent and faithful
steward. And Flora wished all these excellent people, devoted to
Anthony, she wished them all further; and especially the nice,
pleasant-spoken Mrs. Brown with her beady, mobile eyes and her "Yes
certainly, ma'am," which seemed to her to have a mocking sound. And
so this short trip--to the Western Islands only--came to an end. It
was so short that when young Powell joined the Ferndale by a
memorable stroke of chance, no more than seven months had elapsed
since the--let us say the liberation of the convict de Barral and
his avatar into Mr. Smith.

For the time the ship was loading in London Anthony took a cottage
near a little country station in Essex, to house Mr. Smith and Mr.
Smith's daughter. It was altogether his idea. How far it was
necessary for Mr. Smith to seek rural retreat I don't know. Perhaps
to some extent it was a judicious arrangement. There were some
obligations incumbent on the liberated de Barral (in connection with
reporting himself to the police I imagine) which Mr. Smith was not
anxious to perform. De Barral had to vanish; the theory was that de
Barral had vanished, and it had to be upheld. Poor Flora liked the
country, even if the spot had nothing more to recommend it than its
retired character.

Now and then Captain Anthony ran down; but as the station was a real
wayside one, with no early morning trains up, he could never stay
for more than the afternoon. It appeared that he must sleep in town
so as to be early on board his ship. The weather was magnificent
and whenever the captain of the Ferndale was seen on a brilliant
afternoon coming down the road Mr. Smith would seize his stick and
toddle off for a solitary walk. But whether he would get tired or
because it gave him some satisfaction to see "that man" go away--or
for some cunning reason of his own, he was always back before the
hour of Anthony's departure. On approaching the cottage he would
see generally "that man" lying on the grass in the orchard at some
distance from his daughter seated in a chair brought out of the
cottage's living room. Invariably Mr. Smith made straight for them
and as invariably had the feeling that his approach was not
disturbing a very intimate conversation. He sat with them, through
a silent hour or so, and then it would be time for Anthony to go.
Mr. Smith, perhaps from discretion, would casually vanish a minute
or so before, and then watch through the diamond panes of an
upstairs room "that man" take a lingering look outside the gate at
the invisible Flora, lift his hat, like a caller, and go off down
the road. Then only Mr. Smith would join his daughter again.

These were the bad moments for her. Not always, of course, but
frequently. It was nothing extraordinary to hear Mr. Smith begin
gently with some observation like this:

"That man is getting tired of you."

He would never pronounce Anthony's name. It was always "that man."

Generally she would remain mute with wide open eyes gazing at
nothing between the gnarled fruit trees. Once, however, she got up
and walked into the cottage. Mr. Smith followed her carrying the
chair. He banged it down resolutely and in that smooth inexpressive
tone so many ears used to bend eagerly to catch when it came from
the Great de Barral he said:

"Let's get away."

She had the strength of mind not to spin round. On the contrary she
went on to a shabby bit of a mirror on the wall. In the greenish
glass her own face looked far off like the livid face of a drowned
corpse at the bottom of a pool. She laughed faintly.

"I tell you that man's getting--"

"Papa," she interrupted him. "I have no illusions as to myself. It
has happened to me before but--"

Her voice failing her suddenly her father struck in with quite an
unwonted animation. "Let's make a rush for it, then."

Having mastered both her fright and her bitterness, she turned
round, sat down and allowed her astonishment to be seen. Mr. Smith
sat down too, his knees together and bent at right angles, his thin
legs parallel to each other and his hands resting on the arms of the
wooden arm-chair. His hair had grown long, his head was set
stiffly, there was something fatuously venerable in his aspect.

"You can't care for him. Don't tell me. I understand your motive.
And I have called you an unfortunate girl. You are that as much as
if you had gone on the streets. Yes. Don't interrupt me, Flora. I
was everlastingly being interrupted at the trial and I can't stand
it any more. I won't be interrupted by my own child. And when I
think that it is on the very day before they let me out that you . .
. "

He had wormed this fact out of her by that time because Flora had
got tired of evading the question. He had been very much struck and
distressed. Was that the trust she had in him? Was that a proof of
confidence and love? The very day before! Never given him even
half a chance. It was as at the trial. They never gave him a
chance. They would not give him time. And there was his own
daughter acting exactly as his bitterest enemies had done. Not
giving him time!

The monotony of that subdued voice nearly lulled her dismay to
sleep. She listened to the unavoidable things he was saying.

"But what induced that man to marry you? Of course he's a
gentleman. One can see that. And that makes it worse. Gentlemen
don't understand anything about city affairs--finance. Why!--the
people who started the cry after me were a firm of gentlemen. The
counsel, the judge--all gentlemen--quite out of it! No notion of .
. . And then he's a sailor too. Just a skipper--"

"My grandfather was nothing else," she interrupted. And he made an
angular gesture of impatience.

"Yes. But what does a silly sailor know of business? Nothing. No
conception. He can have no idea of what it means to be the daughter
of Mr. de Barral--even after his enemies had smashed him. What on
earth induced him--"

She made a movement because the level voice was getting on her
nerves. And he paused, but only to go on again in the same tone
with the remark:

"Of course you are pretty. And that's why you are lost--like many
other poor girls. Unfortunate is the word for you."

She said: "It may be. Perhaps it is the right word; but listen,
papa. I mean to be honest."

He began to exhale more speeches.

"Just the sort of man to get tired and then leave you and go off
with his beastly ship. And anyway you can never be happy with him.
Look at his face. I want to save you. You see I was not perhaps a
very good husband to your poor mother. She would have done better
to have left me long before she died. I have been thinking it all
over. I won't have you unhappy."

He ran his eyes over her with an attention which was surprisingly
noticeable. Then said, "H'm! Yes. Let's clear out before it is
too late. Quietly, you and I."

She said as if inspired and with that calmness which despair often
gives: "There is no money to go away with, papa."

He rose up straightening himself as though he were a hinged figure.
She said decisively:

"And of course you wouldn't think of deserting me, papa?"

"Of course not," sounded his subdued tone. And he left her, gliding
away with his walk which Mr. Powell described to me as being as
level and wary as his voice. He walked as if he were carrying a
glass full of water on his head.

Flora naturally said nothing to Anthony of that edifying
conversation. His generosity might have taken alarm at it and she
did not want to be left behind to manage her father alone. And
moreover she was too honest. She would be honest at whatever cost.
She would not be the first to speak. Never. And the thought came
into her head: "I am indeed an unfortunate creature!"

It was by the merest coincidence that Anthony coming for the
afternoon two days later had a talk with Mr. Smith in the orchard.
Flora for some reason or other had left them for a moment; and
Anthony took that opportunity to be frank with Mr. Smith. He said:
"It seems to me, sir, that you think Flora has not done very well
for herself. Well, as to that I can't say anything. All I want you
to know is that I have tried to do the right thing." And then he
explained that he had willed everything he was possessed of to her.
"She didn't tell you, I suppose?"

Mr. Smith shook his head slightly. And Anthony, trying to be
friendly, was just saying that he proposed to keep the ship away
from home for at least two years. "I think, sir, that from every
point of view it would be best," when Flora came back and the
conversation, cut short in that direction, languished and died.
Later in the evening, after Anthony had been gone for hours, on the
point of separating for the night, Mr. Smith remarked suddenly to
his daughter after a long period of brooding:

"A will is nothing. One tears it up. One makes another." Then
after reflecting for a minute he added unemotionally:

"One tells lies about it."

Flora, patient, steeled against every hurt and every disgust to the
point of wondering at herself, said: "You push your dislike of--of-
-Roderick too far, papa. You have no regard for me. You hurt me."

He, as ever inexpressive to the point of terrifying her sometimes by
the contrast of his placidity and his words, turned away from her a
pair of faded eyes.

"I wonder how far your dislike goes," he began. "His very name
sticks in your throat. I've noticed it. It hurts me. What do you
think of that? You might remember that you are not the only person
that's hurt by your folly, by your hastiness, by your recklessness."
He brought back his eyes to her face. "And the very day before they
were going to let me out." His feeble voice failed him altogether,
the narrow compressed lips only trembling for a time before he added
with that extraordinary equanimity of tone, "I call it sinful."

Flora made no answer. She judged it simpler, kinder and certainly
safer to let him talk himself out. This, Mr. Smith, being naturally
taciturn, never took very long to do. And we must not imagine that
this sort of thing went on all the time. She had a few good days in
that cottage. The absence of Anthony was a relief and his visits
were pleasurable. She was quieter. He was quieter too. She was
almost sorry when the time to join the ship arrived. It was a
moment of anguish, of excitement; they arrived at the dock in the
evening and Flora after "making her father comfortable" according to
established usage lingered in the state-room long enough to notice
that he was surprised. She caught his pale eyes observing her quite
stonily. Then she went out after a cheery good-night.

Contrary to her hopes she found Anthony yet in the saloon. Sitting
in his arm-chair at the head of the table he was picking up some
business papers which he put hastily in his breast pocket and got
up. He asked her if her day, travelling up to town and then doing
some shopping, had tired her. She shook her head. Then he wanted
to know in a half-jocular way how she felt about going away, and for
a long voyage this time.

"Does it matter how I feel?" she asked in a tone that cast a gloom
over his face. He answered with repressed violence which she did
not expect:

"No, it does not matter, because I cannot go without you. I've told
you . . . You know it. You don't think I could."

"I assure you I haven't the slightest wish to evade my obligations,"
she said steadily. "Even if I could. Even if I dared, even if I
had to die for it!"

He looked thunderstruck. They stood facing each other at the end of
the saloon. Anthony stuttered. "Oh no. You won't die. You don't
mean it. You have taken kindly to the sea."

She laughed, but she felt angry.

"No, I don't mean it. I tell you I don't mean to evade my
obligations. I shall live on . . . feeling a little crushed,
nevertheless."

"Crushed!" he repeated. "What's crushing you?"

"Your magnanimity," she said sharply. But her voice was softened
after a time. "Yet I don't know. There is a perfection in it--do
you understand me, Roderick?--which makes it almost possible to
bear."

He sighed, looked away, and remarked that it was time to put out the
lamp in the saloon. The permission was only till ten o'clock.

"But you needn't mind that so much in your cabin. Just see that the
curtains of the ports are drawn close and that's all. The steward
might have forgotten to do it. He lighted your reading lamp in
there before he went ashore for a last evening with his wife. I
don't know if it was wise to get rid of Mrs. Brown. You will have
to look after yourself, Flora."

He was quite anxious; but Flora as a matter of fact congratulated
herself on the absence of Mrs. Brown. No sooner had she closed the
door of her state-room than she murmured fervently, "Yes! Thank
goodness, she is gone." There would be no gentle knock, followed by
her appearance with her equivocal stare and the intolerable: "Can I
do anything for you, ma'am?" which poor Flora had learned to fear
and hate more than any voice or any words on board that ship--her
only refuge from the world which had no use for her, for her
imperfections and for her troubles.

Mrs. Brown had been very much vexed at her dismissal. The Browns
were a childless couple and the arrangement had suited them
perfectly. Their resentment was very bitter. Mrs. Brown had to
remain ashore alone with her rage, but the steward was nursing his
on board. Poor Flora had no greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had
no greater sympathizer. And Mrs. Brown, with a woman's quick power
of observation and inference (the putting of two and two together)
had come to a certain conclusion which she had imparted to her
husband before leaving the ship. The morose steward permitted
himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell's hearing. It was
in the officers' mess-room at the end of a meal while he lingered
after putting a fruit pie on the table. He and the chief mate
started a dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the
sallow steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling
upwards his eyes, sentimental in a red face. Young Powell had heard
a lot of that sort of thing by that time. It was growing
monotonous; it had always sounded to him a little absurd. He struck
in impatiently with the remark that such lamentations over a man
merely because he had taken a wife seemed to him like lunacy.

Franklin muttered, "Depends on what the wife is up to." The steward
leaning against the bulkhead near the door glowered at Powell, that
newcomer, that ignoramus, that stranger without right or privileges.
He snarled:

"Wife! Call her a wife, do you?"

"What the devil do you mean by this?" exclaimed young Powell.

"I know what I know. My old woman has not been six months on board
for nothing. You had better ask her when we get back."

And meeting sullenly the withering stare of Mr. Powell the steward
retreated backwards.

Our young friend turned at once upon the mate. "And you let that
confounded bottle-washer talk like this before you, Mr. Franklin.
Well, I am astonished."

"Oh, it isn't what you think. It isn't what you think." Mr.
Franklin looked more apoplectic than ever. "If it comes to that I
could astonish you. But it's no use. I myself can hardly . . . You
couldn't understand. I hope you won't try to make mischief. There
was a time, young fellow, when I would have dared any man--any man,
you hear?--to make mischief between me and Captain Anthony. But not
now. Not now. There's a change! Not in me though . . . "

Young Powell rejected with indignation any suggestion of making
mischief. "Who do you take me for?" he cried. "Only you had better
tell that steward to be careful what he says before me or I'll spoil
his good looks for him for a month and will leave him to explain the
why of it to the captain the best way he can."

This speech established Powell as a champion of Mrs. Anthony.
Nothing more bearing on the question was ever said before him. He
did not care for the steward's black looks; Franklin, never
conversational even at the best of times and avoiding now the only
topic near his heart, addressed him only on matters of duty. And
for that, too, Powell cared very little. The woes of the apoplectic
mate had begun to bore him long before. Yet he felt lonely a bit at
times. Therefore the little intercourse with Mrs. Anthony either in
one dog-watch or the other was something to be looked forward to.
The captain did not mind it. That was evident from his manner. One
night he inquired (they were then alone on the poop) what they had
been talking about that evening? Powell had to confess that it was
about the ship. Mrs. Anthony had been asking him questions.

"Takes interest--eh?" jerked out the captain moving rapidly up and
down the weather side of the poop.

"Yes, sir. Mrs. Anthony seems to get hold wonderfully of what one's
telling her."

"Sailor's granddaughter. One of the old school. Old sea-dog of the
best kind, I believe," ejaculated the captain, swinging past his
motionless second officer and leaving the words behind him like a
trail of sparks succeeded by a perfect conversational darkness,
because, for the next two hours till he left the deck, he didn't
open his lips again.

On another occasion . . . we mustn't forget that the ship had
crossed the line and was adding up south latitude every day by then
. . . on another occasion, about seven in the evening, Powell on
duty, heard his name uttered softly in the companion. The captain
was on the stairs, thin-faced, his eyes sunk, on his arm a Shetland
wool wrap.

"Mr. Powell--here."

"Yes, sir."

"Give this to Mrs. Anthony. Evenings are getting chilly."

And the haggard face sank out of sight. Mrs. Anthony was surprised
on seeing the shawl.

"The captain wants you to put this on," explained young Powell, and
as she raised herself in her seat he dropped it on her shoulders.
She wrapped herself up closely.

"Where was the captain?" she asked.

"He was in the companion. Called me on purpose," said Powell, and
then retreated discreetly, because she looked as though she didn't
want to talk any more that evening. Mr. Smith--the old gentleman--
was as usual sitting on the skylight near her head, brooding over
the long chair but by no means inimical, as far as his unreadable
face went, to those conversations of the two youngest people on
board. In fact they seemed to give him some pleasure. Now and then
he would raise his faded china eyes to the animated face of Mr.
Powell thoughtfully. When the young sailor was by, the old man
became less rigid, and when his daughter, on rare occasions, smiled
at some artless tale of Mr. Powell, the inexpressive face of Mr.
Smith reflected dimly that flash of evanescent mirth. For Mr.
Powell had come now to entertain his captain's wife with anecdotes
from the not very distant past when he was a boy, on board various
ships,--funny things do happen on board ship. Flora was quite
surprised at times to find herself amused. She was even heard to
laugh twice in the course of a month. It was not a loud sound but
it was startling enough at the after-end of the Ferndale where low
tones or silence were the rule. The second time this happened the
captain himself must have been startled somewhere down below;
because he emerged from the depths of his unobtrusive existence and
began his tramping on the opposite side of the poop.

Almost immediately he called his young second officer over to him.
This was not done in displeasure. The glance he fastened on Mr.
Powell conveyed a sort of approving wonder. He engaged him in
desultory conversation as if for the only purpose of keeping a man
who could provoke such a sound, near his person. Mr. Powell felt
himself liked. He felt it. Liked by that haggard, restless man who
threw at him disconnected phrases to which his answers were, "Yes,
sir," "No, sir," "Oh, certainly," "I suppose so, sir,"--and might
have been clearly anything else for all the other cared.

It was then, Mr. Powell told me, that he discovered in himself an
already old-established liking for Captain Anthony. He also felt
sorry for him without being able to discover the origins of that
sympathy of which he had become so suddenly aware.

Meantime Mr. Smith, bending forward stiffly as though he had a
hinged back, was speaking to his daughter.

She was a child no longer. He wanted to know if she believed in--in
hell. In eternal punishment?

His peculiar voice, as if filtered through cotton-wool was inaudible
on the other side of the deck. Poor Flora, taken very much
unawares, made an inarticulate murmur, shook her head vaguely, and
glanced in the direction of the pacing Anthony who was not looking
her way. It was no use glancing in that direction. Of young
Powell, leaning against the mizzen-mast and facing his captain she
could only see the shoulder and part of a blue serge back.

And the unworried, unaccented voice of her father went on tormenting
her.

"You see, you must understand. When I came out of jail it was with
joy. That is, my soul was fairly torn in two--but anyway to see you
happy--I had made up my mind to that. Once I could be sure that you
were happy then of course I would have had no reason to care for
life--strictly speaking--which is all right for an old man; though
naturally . . . no reason to wish for death either. But this sort
of life! What sense, what meaning, what value has it either for you
or for me? It's just sitting down to look at the death, that's
coming, coming. What else is it? I don't know how you can put up
with that. I don't think you can stand it for long. Some day you
will jump overboard."

Captain Anthony had stopped for a moment staring ahead from the
break of the poop, and poor Flora sent at his back a look of
despairing appeal which would have moved a heart of stone. But as
though she had done nothing he did not stir in the least. She got
out of the long chair and went towards the companion. Her father
followed carrying a few small objects, a handbag, her handkerchief,
a book. They went down together.

It was only then that Captain Anthony turned, looked at the place
they had vacated and resumed his tramping, but not his desultory
conversation with his second officer. His nervous exasperation had
grown so much that now very often he used to lose control of his
voice. If he did not watch himself it would suddenly die in his
throat. He had to make sure before he ventured on the simplest
saying, an order, a remark on the wind, a simple good-morning.
That's why his utterance was abrupt, his answers to people
startlingly brusque and often not forthcoming at all.

It happens to the most resolute of men to find himself at grips not
only with unknown forces, but with a well-known force the real might
of which he had not understood. Anthony had discovered that he was
not the proud master but the chafing captive of his generosity. It
rose in front of him like a wall which his respect for himself
forbade him to scale. He said to himself: "Yes, I was a fool--but
she has trusted me!" Trusted! A terrible word to any man somewhat
exceptional in a world in which success has never been found in
renunciation and good faith. And it must also be said, in order not
to make Anthony more stupidly sublime than he was, that the
behaviour of Flora kept him at a distance. The girl was afraid to
add to the exasperation of her father. It was her unhappy lot to be
made more wretched by the only affection which she could not
suspect. She could not be angry with it, however, and out of
deference for that exaggerated sentiment she hardly dared to look
otherwise than by stealth at the man whose masterful compassion had
carried her off. And quite unable to understand the extent of
Anthony's delicacy, she said to herself that "he didn't care." He
probably was beginning at bottom to detest her--like the governess,
like the maiden lady, like the German woman, like Mrs. Fyne, like
Mr. Fyne--only he was extraordinary, he was generous. At the same
time she had moments of irritation. He was violent, headstrong--
perhaps stupid. Well, he had had his way.

A man who has had his way is seldom happy, for generally he finds
that the way does not lead very far on this earth of desires which
can never be fully satisfied. Anthony had entered with extreme
precipitation the enchanted gardens of Armida saying to himself "At
last!" As to Armida, herself, he was not going to offer her any
violence. But now he had discovered that all the enchantment was in
Armida herself, in Armida's smiles. This Armida did not smile. She
existed, unapproachable, behind the blank wall of his renunciation.
His force, fit for action, experienced the impatience, the
indignation, almost the despair of his vitality arrested, bound,
stilled, progressively worn down, frittered away by Time; by that
force blind and insensible, which seems inert and yet uses one's
life up by its imperceptible action, dropping minute after minute on
one's living heart like drops of water wearing down a stone.

He upbraided himself. What else could he have expected? He had
rushed in like a ruffian; he had dragged the poor defenceless thing
by the hair of her head, as it were, on board that ship. It was
really atrocious. Nothing assured him that his person could be
attractive to this or any other woman. And his proceedings were
enough in themselves to make anyone odious. He must have been
bereft of his senses. She must fatally detest and fear him.
Nothing could make up for such brutality. And yet somehow he
resented this very attitude which seemed to him completely
justifiable. Surely he was not too monstrous (morally) to be looked
at frankly sometimes. But no! She wouldn't. Well, perhaps, some
day . . . Only he was not going ever to attempt to beg for
forgiveness. With the repulsion she felt for his person she would
certainly misunderstand the most guarded words, the most careful
advances. Never! Never!

It would occur to Anthony at the end of such meditations that death
was not an unfriendly visitor after all. No wonder then that even
young Powell, his faculties having been put on the alert, began to
think that there was something unusual about the man who had given
him his chance in life. Yes, decidedly, his captain was "strange."
There was something wrong somewhere, he said to himself, never
guessing that his young and candid eyes were in the presence of a
passion profound, tyrannical and mortal, discovering its own
existence, astounded at feeling itself helpless and dismayed at
finding itself incurable.

Powell had never before felt this mysterious uneasiness so strongly
as on that evening when it had been his good fortune to make Mrs.
Anthony laugh a little by his artless prattle. Standing out of the
way, he had watched his captain walk the weather-side of the poop,
he took full cognizance of his liking for that inexplicably strange
man and saw him swerve towards the companion and go down below with
sympathetic if utterly uncomprehending eyes.

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Smith came up alone and manifested a desire
for a little conversation. He, too, if not so mysterious as the
captain, was not very comprehensible to Mr. Powell's uninformed
candour. He often favoured thus the second officer. His talk
alluded somewhat enigmatically and often without visible connection
to Mr. Powell's friendliness towards himself and his daughter. "For
I am well aware that we have no friends on board this ship, my dear
young man," he would add, "except yourself. Flora feels that too."

And Mr. Powell, flattered and embarrassed, could but emit a vague
murmur of protest. For the statement was true in a sense, though
the fact was in itself insignificant. The feelings of the ship's
company could not possibly matter to the captain's wife and to Mr.
Smith--her father. Why the latter should so often allude to it was
what surprised our Mr. Powell. This was by no means the first
occasion. More like the twentieth rather. And in his weak voice,
with his monotonous intonation, leaning over the rail and looking at
the water the other continued this conversation, or rather his
remarks, remarks of such a monstrous nature that Mr. Powell had no
option but to accept them for gruesome jesting.

"For instance," said Mr. Smith, "that mate, Franklin, I believe he
would just as soon see us both overboard as not."

"It's not so bad as that," laughed Mr. Powell, feeling
uncomfortable, because his mind did not accommodate itself easily to
exaggeration of statement. "He isn't a bad chap really," he added,
very conscious of Mr. Franklin's offensive manner of which instances
were not far to seek. "He's such a fool as to be jealous. He has
been with the captain for years. It's not for me to say, perhaps,
but I think the captain has spoiled all that gang of old servants.
They are like a lot of pet old dogs. Wouldn't let anybody come near
him if they could help it. I've never seen anything like it. And
the second mate, I believe, was like that too."

"Well, he isn't here, luckily. There would have been one more
enemy," said Mr. Smith. "There's enough of them without him. And
you being here instead of him makes it much more pleasant for my
daughter and myself. One feels there may be a friend in need. For
really, for a woman all alone on board ship amongst a lot of
unfriendly men . . . "

"But Mrs Anthony is not alone," exclaimed Powell. "There's you, and
there's the . . . "

Mr. Smith interrupted him.

"Nobody's immortal. And there are times when one feels ashamed to
live. Such an evening as this for instance."

It was a lovely evening; the colours of a splendid sunset had died
out and the breath of a warm breeze seemed to have smoothed out the
sea. Away to the south the sheet lightning was like the flashing of
an enormous lantern hidden under the horizon. In order to change
the conversation Mr. Powell said:

"Anyway no one can charge you with being a Jonah, Mr. Smith. We
have had a magnificent quick passage so far. The captain ought to
be pleased. And I suppose you are not sorry either."

This diversion was not successful. Mr. Smith emitted a sort of
bitter chuckle and said: "Jonah! That's the fellow that was thrown
overboard by some sailors. It seems to me it's very easy at sea to
get rid of a person one does not like. The sea does not give up its
dead as the earth does."

"You forget the whale, sir," said young Powell.

Mr. Smith gave a start. "Eh? What whale? Oh! Jonah. I wasn't
thinking of Jonah. I was thinking of this passage which seems so
quick to you. But only think what it is to me? It isn't a life,
going about the sea like this. And, for instance, if one were to
fall ill, there isn't a doctor to find out what's the matter with
one. It's worrying. It makes me anxious at times."

"Is Mrs. Anthony not feeling well?" asked Powell. But Mr. Smith's
remark was not meant for Mrs. Anthony. She was well. He himself
was well. It was the captain's health that did not seem quite
satisfactory. Had Mr. Powell noticed his appearance?

Mr. Powell didn't know enough of the captain to judge. He couldn't
tell. But he observed thoughtfully that Mr. Franklin had been
saying the same thing. And Franklin had known the captain for
years. The mate was quite worried about it.

This intelligence startled Mr. Smith considerably. "Does he think
he is in danger of dying?" he exclaimed with an animation quite
extraordinary for him, which horrified Mr. Powell.

"Heavens! Die! No! Don't you alarm yourself, sir. I've never
heard a word about danger from Mr. Franklin."

"Well, well," sighed Mr. Smith and left the poop for the saloon
rather abruptly.

As a matter of fact Mr. Franklin had been on deck for some
considerable time. He had come to relieve young Powell; but seeing
him engaged in talk with the "enemy"--with one of the "enemies" at
least--had kept at a distance, which, the poop of the Ferndale being
aver seventy feet long, he had no difficulty in doing. Mr. Powell
saw him at the head of the ladder leaning on his elbow, melancholy
and silent. "Oh! Here you are, sir."

"Here I am. Here I've been ever since six o'clock. Didn't want to
interrupt the pleasant conversation. If you like to put in half of
your watch below jawing with a dear friend, that's not my affair.
Funny taste though."

"He isn't a bad chap," said the impartial Powell.

The mate snorted angrily, tapping the deck with his foot; then:
"Isn't he? Well, give him my love when you come together again for
another nice long yarn."

"I say, Mr. Franklin, I wonder the captain don't take offence at
your manners."

"The captain. I wish to goodness he would start a row with me.
Then I should know at least I am somebody on board. I'd welcome it,
Mr. Powell. I'd rejoice. And dam' me I would talk back too till I
roused him. He's a shadow of himself. He walks about his ship like
a ghost. He's fading away right before our eyes. But of course you
don't see. You don't care a hang. Why should you?"

Mr. Powell did not wait for more. He went down on the main deck.
Without taking the mate's jeremiads seriously he put them beside the
words of Mr. Smith. He had grown already attached to Captain
Anthony. There was something not only attractive but compelling in
the man. Only it is very difficult for youth to believe in the
menace of death. Not in the fact itself, but in its proximity to a
breathing, moving, talking, superior human being, showing no sign of
disease. And Mr. Powell thought that this talk was all nonsense.
But his curiosity was awakened. There was something, and at any
time some circumstance might occur . . . No, he would never find out
. . . There was nothing to find out, most likely. Mr. Powell went
to his room where he tried to read a book he had already read a good
many times. Presently a bell rang for the officers' supper.

Content of PART II - THE KNIGHT CHAPTER FIVE - THE GREAT DE BARRAL [Joseph Conrad's novel: Chance]

_

Read next: PART II - THE KNIGHT: CHAPTER SIX - . . . A MOONLESS NIGHT, THICK WITH STARS ABOVE, VERY DARK ON THE WATER

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