We were on our feet in the room by then, and Marlow, brown and deliberate, approached the window where Mr. Powell and I had retired. "What was the name of your chance again?" he asked. Mr.
Powell stared for a moment.
"Oh! The Ferndale. A Liverpool ship. Composite built.""Ferndale," repeated Marlow thoughtfully. "Ferndale.""Know her?"
"Our friend," I said, "knows something of every ship. He seems to have gone about the seas prying into things considerably."Marlow smiled.
"I've seen her, at least once."
"The finest sea-boat ever launched," declared Mr. Powell sturdily.
"Without exception."
"She looked a stout, comfortable ship," assented Marlow.
"Uncommonly comfortable. Not very fast tho'.""She was fast enough for any reasonable man--when I was in her,"growled Mr. Powell with his back to us.
"Any ship is that--for a reasonable man," generalized Marlow in a conciliatory tone. "A sailor isn't a globe-trotter.""No," muttered Mr. Powell.
"Time's nothing to him," advanced Marlow.
"I don't suppose it's much," said Mr. Powell. "All the same a quick passage is a feather in a man's cap.""True. But that ornament is for the use of the master only. And by the by what was his name?""The master of the Ferndale? Anthony. Captain Anthony.""Just so. Quite right," approved Marlow thoughtfully. Our new acquaintance looked over his shoulder.
"What do you mean? Why is it more right than if it had been Brown?""He has known him probably," I explained. "Marlow here appears to know something of every soul that ever went afloat in a sailor's body."Mr. Powell seemed wonderfully amenable to verbal suggestions for looking again out of the window, he muttered:
"He was a good soul."
This clearly referred to Captain Anthony of the Ferndale. Marlow addressed his protest to me.
"I did not know him. I really didn't. He was a good soul. That's nothing very much out of the way--is it? And I didn't even know that much of him. All I knew of him was an accident called Fyne.
At this Mr. Powell who evidently could be rebellious too turned his back squarely on the window.
"What on earth do you mean?" he asked. "An--accident--called Fyne,"he repeated separating the words with emphasis.
Marlow was not disconcerted.
"I don't mean accident in the sense of a mishap. Not in the least.
Fyne was a good little man in the Civil Service. By accident I mean that which happens blindly and without intelligent design. That's generally the way a brother-in-law happens into a man's life."Marlow's tone being apologetic and our new acquaintance having again turned to the window I took it upon myself to say:
"You are justified. There is very little intelligent design in the majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that.
Intelligence leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. Iknow you are not a cynic."
Marlow smiled his retrospective smile which was kind as though he bore no grudge against people he used to know.
"Little Fyne's marriage was quite successful. There was no design at all in it. Fyne, you must know, was an enthusiastic pedestrian.
He spent his holidays tramping all over our native land. His tastes were simple. He put infinite conviction and perseverance into his holidays. At the proper season you would meet in the fields, Fyne, a serious-faced, broad-chested, little man, with a shabby knap-sack on his back, making for some church steeple. He had a horror of roads. He wrote once a little book called the 'Tramp's Itinerary,'
and was recognised as an authority on the footpaths of England. So one year, in his favourite over-the-fields, back-way fashion he entered a pretty Surrey village where he met Miss Anthony. Pure accident, you see. They came to an understanding, across some stile, most likely. Little Fyne held very solemn views as to the destiny of women on this earth, the nature of our sublunary love, the obligations of this transient life and so on. He probably disclosed them to his future wife. Miss Anthony's views of life were very decided too but in a different way. I don't know the story of their wooing. I imagine it was carried on clandestinely and, I am certain, with portentous gravity, at the back of copses, behind hedges . . .
"Why was it carried on clandestinely?" I inquired.
"Because of the lady's father. He was a savage sentimentalist who had his own decided views of his paternal prerogatives. He was a terror; but the only evidence of imaginative faculty about Fyne was his pride in his wife's parentage. It stimulated his ingenuity too.
