Contrary to her hopes she found Anthony yet in the saloon. Sitting in his armchair 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 sympathiser. 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.