Each situation created either by folly or wisdom has its psychological moment. The behaviour of young Powell with its mixture of boyish impulses combined with instinctive prudence, had not created it—I can’t say that—but had discovered it to the very people involved. What would have happened if he had made a noise about his discovery? But he didn’t. His head was full of Mrs Anthony and he behaved with a discretion beyond his years. Some nice children often do; and surely it is not from reflection. They have their own inspirations. Young Powell’s inspiration consisted in being “enthusiastic” about Mrs Anthony. ‘Enthusiastic’ is really good. And he was amongst them like a child, sensitive, impressionable, plastic—but unable to find for himself any sort of comment.
I don’t know how much mine may be worth; but I believe that just then the tension of the false situation was at its highest. Of all the forms offered to us by life it is the one demanding a couple to realise it fully, which is the most imperative. Pairing off is the fate of mankind. And if two beings thrown together, mutually attracted, resist the necessity, fail in understanding and voluntarily stop short of the—the embrace, in the noblest meaning of the word, then they are committing a sin against life, the call of which is simple. Perhaps sacred. And the punishment of it is an invasion of complexity, a tormenting, forcibly tortuous involution of feelings, the deepest form of suffering from which indeed something significant may come at last, which may be criminal or heroic, may be madness or wisdom—or even a straight if despairing decision.
Powell on taking his eyes off the old gentleman noticed Captain Anthony, swarthy as an African, by the side of Flora whiter than the lilies, take his handkerchief out and wipe off his forehead the sweat of anguish—like a man who is overcome. “And no wonder,” commented Mr Powell here. Then the captain said, “Hadn’t you better go back to your room.” This was to Mrs Anthony. He tried to smile at her. “Why do you look startled? This night is like any other night.”
“Which,” Powell again commented to me earnestly, “was a lie... No wonder he sweated.” You see from this the value of Powell’s comments. Mrs Anthony then said: “Why are you sending me away?”
“Why! That you should go to sleep. That you should rest.” And Captain Anthony frowned. Then sharply, “You stay here, Mr Powell. I shall want you presently.”
As a matter of fact Powell had not moved. Flora did not mind his presence. He himself had the feeling of being of no account to those three people. He was looking at Mrs Anthony as unabashed as the proverbial cat looking at a king. Mrs Anthony glanced at him. She did not move, gripped by an inexplicable premonition. She had arrived at the very limit of her endurance as the object of Anthony’s magnanimity; she was the prey of an intuitive dread of she did not know what mysterious influence; she felt herself being pushed back into that solitude, that moral loneliness, which had made all her life intolerable. And then, in that close communion established again with Anthony, she felt—as on that night in the garden—the force of his personal fascination. The passive quietness with which she looked at him gave her the appearance of a person bewitched—or, say, mesmerically put to sleep—beyond any notion of her surroundings.
After telling Mr Powell not to go away the captain remained silent. Suddenly Mrs Anthony pushed back her loose hair with a decisive gesture of her arms and moved still nearer to him. “Here’s papa up yet,” she said, but she did not look towards Mr Smith. “Why is it? And you? I can’t go on like this, Roderick—between you two. Don’t.”
Anthony interrupted her as if something had untied his tongue.
“Oh yes. Here’s your father. And ... Why not. Perhaps it is just as well you came out. Between us two? Is that it? I won’t pretend I don’t understand. I am not blind. But I can’t fight any longer for what I haven’t got. I don’t know what you imagine has happened. Something has though. Only you needn’t be afraid. No shadow can touch you—because I give up. I can’t say we had much talk about it, your father and I, but, the long and the short of it is, that I must learn to live without you—which I have told you was impossible. I was speaking the truth. But I have done fighting, or waiting, or hoping. Yes. You shall go.”
At this point Mr Powell who (he confessed to me) was listening with uncomprehending awe, heard behind his back a triumphant chuckling sound. It gave him the shudders, he said, to mention it now; but at the time, except for another chill down the spine, it had not the power to destroy his absorption in the scene before his eyes, and before his ears too, because just then Captain Anthony raised his voice grimly. Perhaps he too had heard the chuckle of the old man.
“Your father has found an argument which makes me pause, if it does not convince me. No! I can’t answer it. I—I don’t want to answer it. I simply surrender. He shall have his way with you—and with me. Only,” he added in a gloomy lowered tone which struck Mr Powell as if a pedal had been put down, “only it shall take a little time. I have never lied to you. Never. I renounce not only my chance but my life. In a few days, directly we get into port, the very moment we do, I, who have said I could never let you go, I shall let you go.”
To the innocent beholder Anthony seemed at this point to become physically exhausted. My view is that the utter falseness of his, I may say, aspirations, the vanity of grasping the empty air, had come to him with an overwhelming force, leaving him disarmed before the other’s mad and sinister sincerity. As he had said himself he could not fight for what he did not possess; he could not face such a thing as this for the sake of his mere magnanimity. The normal alone can overcome the abnormal. He could not even reproach that man over there. “I own myself beaten,” he said in a firmer tone. “You are free. I let you off since I must.”
Powell, the onlooker, affirms that at these incomprehensible words Mrs Anthony stiffened into the very image of astonishment, with a frightened stare and frozen lips. But next minute a cry came out from her heart, not very loud but of a quality which made not only Captain Anthony (he was not looking at her), not only him but also the more distant (and equally unprepared) young man, catch their breath: “But I don’t want to be let off,” she cried.
She was so still that one asked oneself whether the cry had come from her. The restless shuffle behind Powell’s back stopped short, the intermittent shadowy chuckling ceased too. Young Powell, glancing round, saw Mr Smith raise his head with his faded eyes very still, puckered at the corners, like a man perceiving something coming at him from a great distance. And Mrs Anthony’s voice reached Powell’s ears, entreating and indignant.
“You can’t cast me off like this, Roderick. I won’t go away from you. I won’t—”
Powell turned about and discovered then that what Mr Smith was puckering his eyes at, was the sight of his daughter clinging round Captain Anthony’s neck—a sight not in itself improper, but which had the power to move young Powell with a bashfully profound emotion. It was different from his emotion while spying at the revelations of the skylight, but in this case too he felt the discomfort, if not the guilt, of an unseen beholder. Experience was being piled-up on his young shoulders. Mrs Anthony’s hair hung back in a dark mass like the hair of a drowned woman. She looked as if she would let go and sink to the floor if the captain were to withhold his sustaining arm. But the captain obviously had no such intention. Standing firm and still he gazed with sombre eyes at Mr Smith. For a time the low convulsive sobbing of Mr Smith’s daughter was the only sound to trouble the silence. The strength of Anthony’s clasp pressing Flora to his breast could not be doubted even at that distance, and suddenly, awakening to his opportunity, he began to partly support her, partly carry her in the direction of her cabin. His head was bent over her solicitously, then recollecting himself, with a glance full of unwonted fire, his voice ringing in a note unknown to Mr Powell, he cried to him, “Don’t you go on deck yet. I want you to stay down here till I come back. There are some instructions I want to give you.”