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.