Chance

Marlow emerged out of the shadow of the book-case to get himself a cigar

from a box which stood on a little table by my side. In the full light

of the room I saw in his eyes that slightly mocking expression with which

he habitually covers up his sympathetic impulses of mirth and pity before

the unreasonable complications the idealism of mankind puts into the

simple but poignant problem of conduct on this earth.

He selected and lit the cigar with affected care, then turned upon me, I

had been looking at him silently.

"I suppose," he said, the mockery of his eyes giving a pellucid quality

to his tone, "that you think it's high time I told you something

definite. I mean something about that psychological cabin mystery of

discomfort (for it's obvious that it must be psychological) which

affected so profoundly Mr. Franklin the chief mate, and had even

disturbed the serene innocence of Mr. Powell, the second of the ship

Ferndale, commanded by Roderick Anthony--the son of the poet, you

know."

"You are going to confess now that you have failed to find it out," I

said in pretended indignation.

"It would serve you right if I told you that I have. But I won't. I

haven't failed. I own though that for a time, I was puzzled. However, I

have now seen our Powell many times under the most favourable

conditions--and besides I came upon a most unexpected source of

information . . . But never mind that. The means don't concern you

except in so far as they belong to the story. I'll admit that for some

time the old-maiden-lady-like occupation of putting two and two together

failed to procure a coherent theory. I am speaking now as an

investigator--a man of deductions. With what we know of Roderick Anthony

and Flora de Barral I could not deduct an ordinary marital quarrel

beautifully matured in less than a year--could I? If you ask me what is

an ordinary marital quarrel I will tell you, that it is a difference

about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr. Powell told us when

we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and

nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition,

for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and

obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by

stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious

compassion. However, the Anthonys were free from all demoralizing

influences. At sea, you know, there is no gallery. You hear no

tormenting echoes of your own littleness there, where either a great

elemental voice roars defiantly under the sky or else an elemental

silence seems to be part of the infinite stillness of the universe.