"You must not think that all this had lasted a long time. She had taken
fright at our behaviour and turned to the captain pitifully. "What is it
you are concealing from me?" A straight question--eh? I don't know what
answer the captain would have made. Before he could even raise his eyes
to her she cried out "Ah! Here's papa" in a sharp tone of relief, but
directly afterwards she looked to me as if she were holding her breath
with apprehension. I was so interested in her that, how shall I say it,
her exclamation made no connection in my brain at first. I also noticed
that she had sidled up a little nearer to Captain Anthony, before it
occurred to me to turn my head. I can tell you my neck stiffened in the
twisted position from the shock of actually seeing that old man! He had
dared! I suppose you think I ought to have looked upon him as mad. But
I couldn't. It would have been certainly easier. But I could not. You
should have seen him. First of all he was completely dressed with his
very cap still on his head just as when he left me on deck two hours
before, saying in his soft voice: "The moment has come to go to
bed"--while he meant to go and do that thing and hide in his dark cabin,
and watch the stuff do its work. A cold shudder ran down my back. He
had his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his arms were pressed close
to his thin, upright body, and he shuffled across the cabin with his
short steps. There was a red patch on each of his old soft cheeks as if
somebody had been pinching them. He drooped his head a little, and
looked with a sort of underhand expectation at the captain and Mrs.
Anthony standing close together at the other end of the saloon. The
calculating horrible impudence of it! His daughter was there; and I am
certain he had seen the captain putting his finger on his lips to warn
me. And then he had coolly come out! He passed my imagination, I assure
you. After that one shiver his presence killed every faculty in
me--wonder, horror, indignation. I felt nothing in particular just as if
he were still the old gentleman who used to talk to me familiarly every
day on deck. Would you believe it?"
"Mr. Powell challenged my powers of wonder at this internal phenomenon,"
went on Marlow after a slight pause. "But even if they had not been
fully engaged, together with all my powers of attention in following the
facts of the case, I would not have been astonished by his statements
about himself. Taking into consideration his youth they were by no means
incredible; or, at any rate, they were the least incredible part of the
whole. They were also the least interesting part. The interest was
elsewhere, and there of course all he could do was to look at the
surface. The inwardness of what was passing before his eyes was hidden
from him, who had looked on, more impenetrably than from me who at a
distance of years was listening to his words. What presently happened at
this crisis in Flora de Barral's fate was beyond his power of comment,
seemed in a sense natural. And his own presence on the scene was so
strangely motived that it was left for me to marvel alone at this young
man, a completely chance-comer, having brought it about on that night.