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.