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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Macedoine's Daughter, by William McFee
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Captain Macedoine's Daughter
+
+Author: William McFee
+
+Release Date: April 18, 2010 [EBook #32042]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN MACEDOINE'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            CAPTAIN MACEDOINE'S DAUGHTER
+
+                                  By William McFee
+
+Author of "ALIENS", "CASUALS OF THE SEA", "LETTERS FROM AN OCEAN TRAMP,"
+"PORT SAID MISCELLANY"
+
+
+Garden City    New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1920
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
+INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+     "It is an amiable but disastrous illusion on the part of the
+     western nations that they have created a monopoly in freedom and
+     truth and the right conduct of life."--_Mr. Spenlove_
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    PAULINE
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY
+
+
+There is an hour or so before the train comes puffing round the curve of
+the Gulf from Cordelio, and you are gone down into the garden for a
+while because the mosquitoes become tiresome later, and the great
+shadows of the cypresses are vanishing as the sun sinks behind the
+purple islands beyond the headlands. You will stay there for a while
+among the roses and jasmine, and then you will come in and say: "There
+it is!" And together we will slip and stumble and trot down the steep
+hillside to the level-crossing, and we will run along to the little
+station, so like ours in America. And when the train is come creaking
+and groaning and squealing to a standstill, I shall climb in, while you
+will stand for a moment looking.... You will wave as we start with the
+usual prodigious jerk, and then you will run back and climb up to the
+house again, banging the big iron gate securely shut....
+
+All just as before.
+
+But this time there is this difference, that I am not coming back. I am
+ordered to return to England, and I am to sail to-morrow morning. Now,
+as I have told you more than once, it is very difficult to know just how
+anything takes you because you have at your command an alluring
+immobility, a sort of sudden static receptiveness which is, to an
+Englishman, a Westerner that is, at once familiar and enigmatic. And
+when one has informed you, distinctly if ungrammatically, in three
+languages, that one is going away for good, and you assume for a moment
+that aforementioned immobility, and murmur "_C'est la guerre_," I ask
+you, what is one to think?
+
+And perhaps you will recall that you then went on brushing your hair
+precisely as though I had made some banal remark about the weather. A
+detached observer would say--"This woman has no heart. She is too stupid
+to understand." However, as I am something more than a detached
+observer, I know that in spite of that gruff, laconic attitude of yours,
+that enigmatic immobility, you realize what this means to us, to me, to
+you.
+
+So, while you are down in the garden, and the light is still quite good
+by this western window, I am writing this for you. As we say over in
+America, "Let me tell you something." I have written a book, and I am
+dedicating it to you. As you are aware, I have written books before.
+When I explained this to you you were stricken with that sudden
+silence, that attentive seriousness, if you remember, and regarded me
+for a long time without making any remark. Well, another one is done and
+I inscribe it to you. Of course I know perfectly well that books are
+nothing to you, that you read only the perplexing and defaced human
+hieroglyphics around you. I know that when you receive a copy of this
+new affair, through the British Post Office in the _Rue Franque_, you
+will not read it. You will lay it carefully in a drawer, and let it go
+at that. And knowing this, and without feeling sad about it, either,
+since I have no fancy for bookish women, I am anxious that you should
+read at least the dedication. So I am writing it here by the window,
+hurriedly, in words you will understand, and I shall leave it on the
+table, and you will find it later, when I am gone.
+
+Listen.
+
+The fact is, this dedication, like the book which follows after it, is
+not merely an act of homage. It is a symbol of emancipation from an
+influence under which I have lived for two thirds of your lifetime. I
+must tell you that I have always been troubled by visions of beings whom
+I call dream-women. I was a solitary child. Girls were disconcerting
+creatures who revealed to me only the unamiable sides of their natures.
+But I discovered that I possessed the power of inventing women who,
+while they only dimly resembled the neighbours, and acquired a few
+traits from the illustrations in books, were none the less
+extraordinarily real, becoming clearly visualized, living in my
+thoughts, drawing sustenance from secret sources, and inspiring me with
+a suspicion, never reaching expression, that they were really aspects of
+myself--what I would have been if, as I sometimes heard near relatives
+regret, I had been born a girl. And later, when I was a youth, and began
+to go out into the world, all those vague imaginings crystallized into a
+definite conception. She was everything I disliked--a tiny, slender
+creature with pale golden hair and pathetic blue eyes, and in my dreams
+she was always clinging to me, which I detested. I regarded myself with
+contempt for remaining preoccupied with a fancy so alien to my
+temperament. You might suppose that an image inspiring such antagonism
+would soon fade. On the contrary, she assumed a larger and larger
+dominion over my imagination. I fancied myself married to her, and for
+days the spell of such a dire destiny made me ill. It was summer time,
+and I lived on the upper floor of my mother's house in an outlying
+_faubourg_ of London, from the windows of which one could look across a
+wide wooded valley or down into the secluded gardens of the surrounding
+villas. And one evening I happened to look down and I saw, between the
+thickly clothed branches of the lime-trees, the woman of my dreams
+sitting in a neighbour's garden, nursing a baby, and rocking herself to
+and fro while she turned her childish features and pale blue eyes toward
+the house with an expectant smile. I sat at my window looking at this
+woman, some neighbour's recently married daughter no doubt, my thoughts
+in a flurry of fear, for she was just as I had imagined her. I wonder if
+I can make you understand that I did not want to imagine her at all,
+that I was helpless in the grip of my forebodings? For in the dream it
+was I who would come out of the drawing-room door on to the lawn, who
+would advance in an alpaca coat, put on after my return from business, a
+gold watch-chain stretched athwart my stomach, carpet slippers on my
+soft, untravelled feet, and would bend down to that clinging form....
+
+As I have told you, it was about that time that I left the _faubourgs_
+and went to live in a studio among artists. Without knowing it, I took
+the most certain method of depriving that woman of her power. Beyond the
+shady drives and prim gardens of the _faubourg_ her image began to
+waver, and she haunted my dreams no more. And I was glad of this because
+at that time I was an apprentice to Life, and there were so many things
+at which I wanted to try my hand that I had not time for what is known,
+rather vaguely, as love and romance and sentiment and so forth. I
+resented the intrusion of these sensuous phantoms upon the solitudes
+where I was struggling with the elementary rules of art. I was consumed
+with an insatiable ambition to write, to read, to travel, to talk, to
+achieve distinction. And curiously, I had an equally powerful instinct
+to make myself as much like other young men, in manner and dress and
+ideas, as possible. I was ashamed of my preoccupation with these
+creatures of my imagination, believing them peculiar to myself, and I
+hurried from them as one hurries from shabby relations. But before I was
+aware of it I had fallen into the toils of another dream-woman, an
+experienced, rapacious, and disdainful woman. I saw her in studios,
+where she talked without noticing me save out of the corner of her eye.
+I saw her at picture exhibitions, where she stood regarding the pictures
+satirically, speaking rapidly and disparagingly from between small white
+teeth and holding extravagant furs about her thin form. I had a notion,
+too, that she was married, and I waited in a temper of mingled pride,
+disgust, and fortitude for her to appear in the body. And then things
+began to happen to me with bewildering rapidity. In the space of a week
+I fell in love, I lost my employment, and I ran away to sea.
+
+Now it is of no importance to you what my employment was or how I lost
+it. Neither are you deeply interested in that sea upon which I spend my
+days, and which is to bear me away from you to-morrow. You come of
+inland stock, and the sea-coast of Bohemia, a coast of fairy lights and
+magic casements, is more in your way. But I know without asking that you
+will be eager to hear about the falling in love. Indeed this is the
+point of the story.
+
+The point is that an average young Englishman, as I was then, may quite
+possibly live and prosper and die, without ever getting to know anything
+about love at all! I told you this once, and you observed "My God!
+Impossible." And you added thoughtfully: "The Englishwomen--perhaps it
+is their fault." Well, it may be their fault, or the fault of their
+climate, which washes the vitality out of one, or of their religion,
+which does not encourage emotional adventure to any notable degree. The
+point is that the average young Englishman is more easily fooled about
+love than about anything else in the world. He accepts almost any
+substitute offered to him in an attractive package. I know this because
+I was an average young Englishman and I was extensively fooled about
+love. The whole social fabric of English life is engaged in
+manufacturing spurious counterfeits of the genuine article. And I fell,
+as we say in America, for a particularly cheap imitation called Ideal
+Love.
+
+Now you must not imagine that, because I had, as I say, fallen in love
+with Ideal Love, I was therefore free from the dream-woman of whom I
+have spoken. Not at all. She hovered in my thoughts and complicated my
+emotions. But I can hear you saying: "Never mind the dream-woman. Tell
+me about the real one, your ideal." Well, listen. She was small, thin,
+and of a dusky pallor, and her sharp, clever features were occasionally
+irradiated with a dry, satirical smile that had the cold, gleaming
+concentration of the beam of a searchlight. She had a large number of
+accomplishments, a phrase we English use in a most confusing sense,
+since she had never accomplished anything and never would. But the ideal
+part of her lay in her magnificent conviction that she and her class
+were the final embodiment of desirable womanhood. It was not she whom I
+loved. Indeed she was a rather disagreeable girl with a mania for using
+men's slang which she had picked up from college-boys. It was this ideal
+of English womanhood which deluded me, and which scared me for many
+years from examining her credentials.
+
+That is what it amounted to. For years after I had discovered that she
+thought me beneath her because I was not a college-boy, she continued
+to impose her personality upon me. Whenever I imagined for a moment that
+I might love some other kind of woman, I would see that girl's
+disparaging gray eyes regarding me with an attentive, satirical smile.
+And this obsession appeared to my befuddled mentality as a species of
+sacrifice. I imagined that I was remaining true to my Ideal! If you
+demand where I obtained these ideas, I can only confess that I had read
+of such sterile allegiances in books, and I had not yet abandoned the
+illusion that life was to be learned from literature, instead of
+literature from life. And, moreover, although we are accustomed to
+assume that all young men have a natural aptitude for love, I think
+myself that it is not so; that we have to acquire, by long practice and
+thought, the ability and the temperament to achieve anything beyond
+tawdry intrigues and banal courtships, spurious imitations which are
+exhibited and extensively advertised as the real thing. And again, while
+it may be true, as La Rochefoucauld declares in his "Maxims"--the thin
+book you have so often found by my chair in the garden--that a woman is
+in love with her first lover, and ever after is in love with love, it
+seems to me that with men the reverse is true. We spend years in falling
+in and out of love with love. The woman is only a lay figure whom we
+invest with the vague splendours of our snobbish and inexperienced
+imagination. A great passion demands as much knowledge and experience
+and aptitude as a great idea. I would almost say it requires as much
+talent as a work of art; indeed, the passion, the idea, and the work of
+art are really only three manifestations, three dimensions, of the same
+emotion. And the simple and sufficient reason why this book should be
+dedicated to you is, that but for you it would not have been written.
+
+And very often, I think, women marry men simply to keep them from ever
+encountering passion. Englishwomen especially. They are afraid of it.
+They think it wicked. So they marry him. Though they suspect that he
+will be able to sustain it when he has gotten more experience, they know
+that they themselves will never be the objects of it, so they trick him
+with one of the clever imitations I have mentioned. Everything is done
+to keep out the woman who can inspire an authentic passion. And the act
+of duping him is invariably attributed to what is called the mothering
+instinct, a craving to protect a young man from his natural destiny, the
+great adventure of life!
+
+However, after a number of years of sea-faring, during which I was
+obsessed by this sterile allegiance, and permitted many interesting
+possibilities to pass me without investigating them, I was once more in
+London, in late autumn. I call this sort of fidelity sterile because it
+is static, whereas all genuine emotion is dynamic--a species of growth.
+And I realized that beneath my conventional desire to see her again lay
+a reluctance to discover my folly. But convention was too strong for me,
+and by a fairly easy series of charitable arrangements I met her. And it
+was at a picture-show. I remember pondering upon this accident of place
+as I made my way along Bond Street in the afternoon sunshine, for I
+could not help thinking of that disdainful dream-woman who posed, in my
+imagination, as an authority on art. This, I suppose, was due to my
+prolonged study of the Italian Renaissance, a period to which I had kept
+my reading for a number of years. I remember giving up my ticket to a
+sleek-haired, frock-coated individual, and passing along a corridor hung
+with black velvet, against which were hung one or two large canvases in
+formidable gold frames, cunningly illuminated by concealed electric
+globes. A haughty creature stood by a table loaded with catalogues and
+deigned to accept my shilling. And then, feeling strange and _gauche_,
+as is only felt by the sea-farer ashore when he steps out of his
+authentic _milieu_, I passed through into the gallery, a high, dignified
+chamber full of the quiet radiance of beautiful pictures, the life-work
+of a man whom I had known. I found myself regretting that fate had not
+permitted me to remain in such an environment; but one cannot avoid
+one's destiny, and mine is to have an essentially middle-class mind, a
+_bourgeois_ mentality, which makes it impossible for me to live among
+artists or people of culture for any length of time. I should say that
+the reason for this is that such folk are not primarily interested in
+persons but in types and ideas, whereas I am for persons. Flowers and
+trees, perfumes and music, colours and children, are to me irrelevant.
+But every man and woman I meet is to me a fresh problem which engages my
+emotions. The talk about types is incomprehensible to me, for each fresh
+individual will throw me into a trance of speculation. But only when one
+has lived among clever people can one realize how tedious and monotonous
+their society can be. I was thinking about the man who had painted these
+pictures and how he had delighted to frighten me with his obscene
+comments about women, when I saw a woman far down on the left, a woman
+in an enormous hat, holding extravagant furs about her thin form, and
+talking to a tall, handsome man from between her small white teeth.
+
+For you will not be too much astonished to hear that this girl for whom
+I had cherished this sterile fidelity had become in all essentials the
+dream-woman who had been the bane of my life for so long. Perhaps she
+had always been the same and the illusion of youth had blinded me to her
+identity. Perhaps, on the other hand, she had really changed, for she
+was now twenty-five instead of twenty-one--ominous years in a woman's
+life. At any rate, I had changed for a certainty. While I still
+struggled against the bondage her personality imposed upon me, I no
+longer struggled in vain. I had been drawing stores of strength from
+toil, from the sea, from the bizarre phantasmagoria which the countries
+of the East had unrolled before my eyes. And I think she saw this at
+once, for she had no sooner introduced me to her companion, an actor who
+had recently married an eminent actress twice his own age, than she made
+our excuses and proposed an immediate departure.
+
+But it was too late. As we drove in a swiftly moving taxi-cab through
+the gay streets of West London, and on out to Richmond, where she was
+staying with friends, I knew that in the end I should be free. She was
+soon to be married, and in her satirical gray eyes I saw a desire to
+hold me permanently in a condition of chivalrous abnegation. On these
+terms I might achieve some sort of destiny without endangering her
+dominion. But I felt the winds of freedom blowing from the future on my
+face. I did not see then how it would come about: I did not even
+imagine the long years of moody and unprofitable voyaging which lay
+before me. But she saw that her own ideal of masculine modern womanhood
+no longer appeared to me the supremely evocative thing she claimed it to
+be, so that in time, in time, her power would depart. I can see her now,
+turned slightly away from me in the cab, regarding me over her shoulder
+from beneath that enormous hat, studying even then how she could keep me
+true to that worn-out creed, weighing who knows what reckless plans in
+her cool, clever brain....
+
+But it was a long time! For years yet I saw her before me whenever I
+thought of other women, and her disparaging, slightly satirical smile
+would interpose itself and hold me back from experimenting with fresh
+emotions. Even when war came and our spiritual and emotional worlds came
+crashing about our ears, her power waned but did not depart. I had no
+choice between this shadowy, reluctant fidelity and a descent into
+regions where I had neither the means nor the temperament to prosper.
+And so it went, until suddenly one day the whole thing came to an end.
+You will remember how I abruptly abandoned the story upon which I was
+engaged, and told you I had begun upon a tale you had told to me, the
+tale of Captain Macedoine's Daughter? Behold it, transmuted into
+something you would never recognize, as is the way of stories when a
+novelist of romantic tendencies gets at them! And what I want you to
+observe is that the inspiration, as far as I am concerned, was based
+upon your brief yet intensely vivid projection of your life in that dull
+street in a Saloniki _faubourg_, a street so like many of ours in the
+_faubourgs_ of London, stretching away into dim, dusty distances; but
+unlike ours in that beyond it rose ranges of hard, sharp mountains that
+looked as though they had been cut out of pasteboard, and stuck against
+a sky so unreal in its uncompromising blueness that it seemed to be
+aniline-dyed. And as the days passed, and the story grew, here by the
+blue waters of the Gulf I suddenly realized that the spell of the
+dream-woman had been broken, that behind my story of Captain Macedoine's
+Daughter another story was working out--the ghost of a story if you
+like--the drama of the end of an illusion. My old antagonist had met her
+match at last. She tried to frighten me with her slightly satirical
+smile. She invoked the innumerable memories and sentiments in which I
+had been born and reared. But she had met her match. I took her by the
+arm and opening the door, thrust her gently outside. And then, while you
+were down there in the garden, I went on to write the tale of Captain
+Macedoine's Daughter.
+
+There is another long-drawn shriek--the train is leaving the station
+next to ours--and I take a last look out upon the well-remembered view.
+Across the shining waters of the Gulf the lights of the city are
+glittering already against the many-coloured facades, with their marble
+and cedar balconies, their bright green jalousies and gay ensigns.
+Already the war-ships in the _rade_ are picked out in bright points, and
+the mast-head lights are winking rapid messages to each other. The
+western sky over the headland is a smoky orange with pale green and
+amber above, and the moon, an incredibly slender crescent of pure
+silver, hangs faintly over Mount Pagos. It is quite dark down under the
+cypresses, and a smell of humid earth mingles with the perfume of the
+jasmine.
+
+Yes, I am now quite ready. No, I have left nothing behind, except
+perhaps....
+
+Well, it is for you to say.
+
+    _Bairakli._
+    _W. M._
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN MACEDOINE'S DAUGHTER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+None of the men sitting in deck chairs under the awning were surprised
+to hear the Chief say that he had known Ipsilon in peace-time. So far H.
+M. S. _Sycorax_ had touched at no port, and patrolled no sea-route which
+that quiet and occasionally garrulous man had not known in peace-time.
+This was not surprising, as we have said, for he alone had been a
+genuine wanderer upon the face of the waters. The Commander, who lived
+in majestic seclusion in his own suite, had been all his life in the
+Pacific trade. The First, Second, and Third Lieutenants came out of
+western ocean liners. The Surgeon and Paymaster were "temporary" and
+only waited the last shot to return to the comfortable sinecures, which
+they averred awaited them in London and Edinburgh. So it happened that
+to the Chief alone the eastern Mediterranean was a known and experienced
+cruising ground; and when the _Sycorax_, detailed to escort convoys
+through the intricacies of the AEgean Archipelago, awaited her
+slow-moving charges in the netted and landlocked harbour of Megalovadi,
+in the Island of Ipsilon, Engineer-Lieutenant Spenlove, R. N. R., said
+he remembered being there eight or nine years ago, loading for
+Rotterdam.
+
+The others looked at him and then back at the enormous marble cliffs
+which threw shadows almost as solid as themselves upon the waters of the
+little bay, almost a cove. It was not so much that they expected
+Spenlove to tell them a story as that these men had not yet tired of
+each other's idiosyncrasies--another way of saying the _Sycorax_ was a
+happy ship. The infiltration of landsmen, in the persons of surgeon and
+paymaster, the occasional glimpses of one another caught during their
+sundry small actions with the enemy, kept their intercourse sweet and
+devoid of those poisonous growths of boredom and slander which too often
+accumulate upon a body of men at sea like barnacles on the hull.
+
+And in addition Spenlove was easy to look at, for he never returned the
+glance. He was a solidly built man of forty odd, with a neat gray beard
+and carefully tended hair. The surgeon once said Spenlove resembled an
+ambassador more than an engineer, and Spenlove, without in any way
+moving from his customary pose of alert yet placid abstraction, had
+murmured absently:
+
+"On one occasion, I was an ambassador. I will tell you about it some
+time."
+
+"Rotterdam?" observed Inness the paymaster--Inness was an Oxford man who
+had married into a wealthy merchant's family. He said "Rotterdam"
+because he had once been there.
+
+"Yes," said Spenlove. "Rotterdam for Krupp's of Essen. For three years
+Krupp's took a hundred thousand tons per annum of high-grade ore out of
+this little island alone. They took it in British bottoms to Rotterdam,
+and from there it went by way of their interminable canals to Essen. I
+know because I helped to take it. It was just about the time, too, that
+Chamberlain was preaching his crusade against the evils of Germany
+dumping her steel below cost price on our markets, and I was so
+indignant about it that I wrote to the newspapers. I often wrote to the
+newspapers in those days. I suppose we all catch the disease at some
+time or other. As a rule, of course, nothing happened save that the
+letter would not be printed, or else printed full of mistakes, with the
+vital paragraphs omitted for 'lack of space.' This letter wasn't printed
+either, but I received one in return from a fiery young member of
+Parliament who had just been returned on the Protective Tariff ticket.
+He asked for full details, which I sent to him. I believe he tried to
+make a question of it in the House, but he ran up against the Consular
+Service, and that did for him. You see, our Consul here was named
+Gruenbaum.
+
+"More than that," went on Mr. Spenlove, sitting upright in his
+deck-chair and looking attentively at a near-by ventilator; "more than
+that, Mr. Gruenbaum was resident concessionaire of the mining company, he
+owned the pumping-plant which irrigates yonder valley, he was connected
+by marriage with the Greek governor of the Island, who lives over in the
+tiny capital of Ipsilon, and he, Gruenbaum, was the richest man in the
+Cyclades. That was his house, that big square white barn with the three
+tall windows and the outside staircase. He was a man of enormous size
+and weight, and I daresay the people of the Island thought him a god. He
+certainly treated them most humanely. Every widow was pensioned by him,
+which was not very much after all, for they used to have precious little
+use for money. You could get a bottle of wine and a great basket of
+grapes and figs for a piece of soap, I remember. He built churches for
+them, too, like that one perched up there on the rock above his
+house--snow-white with a blue dome. You may have noticed the other day
+in the wireless news that the friends of freedom in Greece polished off
+a few of what were described as reactionaires. Put them up against a
+wall and pumped _mannlicher_ bullets into them. One of these obstacles
+to liberty was named Gruenbaum, I observed.
+
+"But what I was going to tell you about was a man who was at one time in
+Gruenbaum's employ, a man whom I had run against before, a Captain
+Macedoine. I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of him. He was a
+very remarkable man for all that. He wasn't a captain at all, really,
+you know. As it happens, I knew that much about him a long while back,
+when I was in the Maracaibo Line, running with mails, passengers, and
+fruit between Colombian ports and New Orleans. No; they were absorbed
+long ago. The big Yucatan Steamship Company opened its big jaws one day
+and gulped down the Maracaibo outfit at one swallow. And we all had to
+come home. It was a fairly lucrative billet while it lasted, and
+Macedoine, who was a chief steward, may have put by a good bit of money.
+He had that reputation, and judging by experience I should say at least
+half of what we heard was true. But what interested me when I was
+sailing with him was his character, as revealed by his hobby. For it was
+a hobby with him and a fairly expensive one, too, posing as an educated
+man of old family. It was the great preoccupation of his life. You might
+almost be justified in calling him an artist. He was a big, solemn,
+clean-shaven person, with an air of haughtiness which impressed
+passengers tremendously. It was this air which got him the nick-name of
+captain, and it stuck. Two or three young girls, who were making the
+trip, came up to him the first day out, and one of them exclaimed, 'Oh,
+Captain, can we ...' something or other. The skipper was a dried-up
+little shell-back who hated passengers and never came down on the
+promenade deck at all. The bell-hop, an immoral little demon in buttons,
+who had come from a reformatory, heard the remark and in a few minutes
+it was all over the pantry and glory-hole. 'Captain Macedoine.' When he
+gave one of the scullions a calling down next day, the man, a typical
+Louisiana nigger, answered in the inevitable musical drawl: 'All right,
+sah, Captain Macedoine!' It stuck. It hit the popular fancy. More than
+that, it hit his own fancy, too, for when he went home to England,
+'retired on a competency,' as he phrased it, he retired as Captain
+Macedoine; late of the American Merchant Marine.
+
+"But that was only a side issue. He let it be known, in the subtlest
+possible manner, that he was of ancient lineage. He had been heard to
+speak of Alexander of Macedon! Yes, you laugh; but you have not been to
+sea as long as I have. Such things are possible at sea. I have had a
+second engineer from Sunderland, a chap named Philip, who claimed Philip
+of Spain as his ancestor. There was Captain Gizzard, in my old London
+employ, who had a genealogical tree which traced the old fraud's descent
+from the Guiscards of Sicily. No! Captain Macedoine's illusions are
+common enough, I fancy, among men. It was only that instead of trying to
+master them and clear them away, he cultivated them until they grew to
+monstrous proportions and he lost sight of reality altogether. Or if you
+like, he was an artist, working upon himself as material, like those old
+masters we read about who devoted their lives to the accomplishment of
+obscure technical excellences that only the _cognoscenti_ could discover
+and enjoy."
+
+"Possibly," murmured the Surgeon, smiling in the darkness of the
+evening.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Spenlove, in a musing tone, "of course a certain
+latitude of analogy is permitted in describing one man to another, if we
+ever can describe him. That was how Macedoine struck me. The aim of his
+art was to conceal the artist, which I understand is sound aesthetics.
+And it was impossible not to admire his method, his style, if you like.
+There was nothing crude in it. So far from leaving nothing to chance, he
+left everything to chance. Take the case of his daughter. The brat in
+those days was a god-send to him. I used to think she was merely an
+invention, he was so circumstantial in his subtly shaded allusions. You
+might say that if she hadn't existed, the trend of his emotional
+development, the scheme on which he was engaged, would have compelled
+him to invent her. As I say, I did believe at one time he had invented
+her, for he was always inventing something. In some bewildering,
+indefinable way, we became aware, week by week, month by month, of a
+fresh touch, a new phase of Captain Macedoine. I don't pretend to know
+what final frame he proposed to give to the magnificent picture he was
+making. Perhaps he didn't know himself. Perhaps he had no ultimate
+design. Anyhow we never had it, for as I said, the company was absorbed
+and we all had to come home.
+
+"I admit I was surprised enough when I found out, quite accidentally,
+that he had married an octaroon. When I say married, I mean of course,
+as far as fidelity and maintenance was concerned. He rented a cottage
+out on Tchoupitoulas Street, where the mosquitoes sing loud enough to
+drown conversation, and the grass grows man-high between the road and
+the sidewalk. And there the woman lived a while and died. I was never in
+the house, but young Strellett, the second steward, who was lost when
+the _Toro_ turned over in the Yucatan channel, was married and lived
+not far from Macedoine's _menage_, and I can imagine the place.
+Strellett had a little three-roomed box where he lived with his big
+rosy-cheeked Irish wife, and there was something very homelike about it,
+for all the carpets and curtains and a good deal of the table-linen had
+come from the Maracaibo Line's cabins. Sent ashore to be cleaned, you
+know, and didn't get back. I dare say Macedoine's place was even more
+completely furnished at the company's expense. They all did it. Perhaps
+that was one of the reasons we all had to come home. That was ... yes,
+more than twenty years ago.
+
+"I'm afraid, though, there were not many of us like Macedoine. We didn't
+come home to retire on a competency. New Orleans used to be what they
+called 'a wide-open little town' and there were plenty of ways of
+getting rid of our wages, good as they were. However, that's a detail.
+We came home, except one or two youngsters who struck west and got into
+Nevada mining plants or San Francisco lumber ships. I was glad to come.
+I had a few shots in the locker and I went down into Hampshire to see my
+people. I didn't stay as long as I intended. Who of us ever does? After
+the first glow of welcome dies away, we have to depend on our personal
+attractions to keep people interested. We may keep the ball rolling a
+little longer if we get married or even engaged; but it is a sorry
+business after all. You fellows are for ever wanting the ship to go
+home. Well, you wait and see. You'll be glad to be back. When a man has
+got the sea-habit, his relations always regard him as a bit of a
+nuisance.
+
+"I went to sea again. I joined a London Company which I always call now
+'my old company' because I was so long with them, and have for them a
+peculiar sort of cantankerous affection. They paid infernally poor
+wages, they were always in a hole financially until the war made them
+multi-millionaires, and their accommodation was pretty poor. But for
+some reason or other men stayed with them. I believe it was because we
+were working for a private firm and not for one of those gigantic
+corporations without soul to be damned or body to be kicked, as the
+saying is. The firm were real people to us. They came down to see the
+ship in London River. Old Gannet--it was Gannet, Prawle and Co.--used to
+leave a ten-pound note on the Chief's wash-stand after he'd had a yarn
+and a cigar. Young Gannet, home for the holidays from Winchester
+College, would come down to St. Katherine's Dock and make himself
+squiffy with Madeira the skipper had brought home from the Islands.
+Prawle had been an office boy when old Gannet was young, and had worked
+up to a partnership and married Daisy Gannet. Smartest man on the
+Baltic Exchange, they used to say. Yes, their ships were fierce, but men
+stayed in them. Even now, with old Gannet dead and Prawle retired, and
+the management paying poor whiskey-soaked young Gannet three thousand a
+year to keep out of the office, the old skippers and chiefs are still
+ploughing the ocean for them. You see, we know their ways.
+
+"I went to sea, and kept on at it. You might say it was force of habit,
+for I must admit I could have had jobs ashore in those days. Not now.
+But then I could. But it grows on one, going to sea. And I was making
+friends. There's nothing like a ship-mate who is a friend. The mere fact
+of you or him joining another ship and sailing away is nothing. When you
+meet again you take up the tale where you dropped it, years before, half
+the world away. But you must be young. It is impossible to weld
+friendships when the heat of youth has gone out. Interests, family ties,
+danger, sorrow, all may do something, but only when you are young can
+you make the friendships that nothing can destroy."
+
+Mr. Spenlove paused, and for a moment there was no sound save the purr
+of the dynamos under their feet, the soft swish and suck of the waves
+flowing in and out of the under-cut marble cliffs, and the steady tramp
+of the Quartermaster patrolling to and fro at the gangway. One of the
+noticeable points about Spenlove was that he fitted into no standard
+gauge. Neither the Surgeon nor the Oxonian could "place" him precisely,
+they would confess. Nor could the more experienced lieutenants, highly
+certificated gentlemen from the Liverpool to New York Ferry steamers.
+With unconscious humour they "wondered such a man should go to sea." The
+notion that the sea should be peopled exclusively with moral and
+intellectual derelicts dies hard. The fact was, Mr. Spenlove was a
+connoisseur of humanity. He seemed to have met so many types that he
+unconsciously addressed himself to the fundamentals. He took the
+inevitable superficial features of one's character for granted. This
+made him easy to accept but difficult to understand. And so, when he
+spoke of friendship and youth, the other men did not laugh. They were
+silent--some with assent, some with doubt, and some, possibly, with
+regret.
+
+"I was second of one of their oldest boats for two years and Jack Evans
+was mate. Jack and I became friends. I don't mean that the Mate and the
+Second of that old ship went about with their arms wound round each
+other's necks. We were, on the contrary, very often at each other's
+throats, so to speak. Mates and second-engineers are professionally
+antagonistic. We had terrific altercations over stores, for the company
+patronized one of those old-fashioned ship chandlers who sent cabin,
+deck, and engine stores all in one chaotic heap. Jack would get my
+varnish and I would snaffle a couple of bolts of his canvas. But that
+would all blow away by tea time, when we'd go ashore and spend the
+evening together. Mind you, we were neither of us very good young men.
+We ... well, we had some good times and some bad ones. We were shifted
+together into another ship. Then Jack, who'd been nine solid years mate
+in the company and was getting so angry about it that the port-captain
+used to avoid him, Jack got a command. I shall never forget it. We were
+lying as peaceably as you please in the top corner of the old Queens
+Dock, Glasgow. It was Saturday night and all was snug for a quiet
+week-end. Jack and I were in his room under the bridge having a nip,
+when a telegraph-boy came clattering down the brass-edged staircase.
+Jack opened the wire, read it, and then gave me a thump on the back that
+nearly broke it. He was a stout, florid-faced, peppery little Welshman.
+What I liked about him was his crystal-clear character. What he thought
+came out like a shell out of a gun--with an explosion. 'The old thief's
+given me a ship at last!' he roared. And he had to pack and get away
+that night to Bristol. I went for a cab while he got his dunnage
+together. And I remember now, waiting on the platform at the Union
+Station for the train to move, with Jack in a corner of the compartment
+drunk as a lord, and snoring.
+
+"It was in London I met him again. We had had a collision and I was one
+of the witnesses called by the company to swear our ship was innocent.
+She wasn't: she wasn't: she did everything she shouldn't have done--but
+no matter. We all stayed at a little hotel in the Strand, getting a
+guinea a day expenses, and we all swore black was white, and the owners,
+our owners, lost the case. They had already lost the ship, so we were
+told to go home and wait a few weeks until they could get hold of
+another one cheap. Of course most of the crowd joined other companies,
+but I went off to Waterloo to inflict myself on my people in Hampshire
+again. And it was at the bookstall that I saw Jack staring at the
+illustrated papers and jangling the money in his pockets. He was in a
+very shabby condition, I may tell you. His chin was a rich growth of
+black stubble, his round protuberant brown eyes were blood-shot, and his
+clothes had been slept in, I'm sure. 'Thank God it's you, Fred,' he
+splutters out, for he jumped like a cat when I touched him. We went into
+the bar and he told me how he had fallen on such evil days. His ship
+had been away nearly a year on the west coast of South America. He
+hadn't spent a pound in the whole trip. No going ashore, nobody to speak
+to, nothing. And here he'd come into London River and paid off. It was
+easy to see what had happened. A young hot-blooded man with three or
+four hundred pounds in his pocket, and no decent friends in town. His
+contempt for himself was rather amusing. 'Take me away, Fred,' he
+implored. 'Take me somewhere where I shan't be tempted.'
+
+"'The fact is,' I said, as we made for the barber shop, 'you ought to
+get married, Jack.'
+
+"'Who'd have a drunken old swab like me?' he inquired, sadly. 'You know
+I've been brought up common.'
+
+"He was very contrite, but eventually, when he had got himself spruced
+up, changed his clothes and fetched his dunnage out of the terrible
+little hotel near Waterloo station where he had been lured, he began to
+take a less austere view of himself. He was determined, however, never
+to wallow in the mire again. He was a ship-master. His plump, rosy face
+grew pale and drawn at the possibilities which he had risked. He was a
+typical British sailor man. Riotous living was really distasteful to
+him, but he had no idea of getting rid of his money in any other way.
+However, I missed that train and took him down with me to Hampshire
+next day. It was one of the great deeds of my career. He fell in love
+the very first week."
+
+"But what has all this to do with Captain Macedoine and this Island of
+Ipsilon?" enquired the small, precise voice of the Paymaster.
+
+For a moment there was no reply. It was very dark under the awning now,
+for the moon was still behind the cliffs. Four bells rang at the
+gangway. Mr. Spenlove lit a cigarette and continued.
+
+"Have you ever seen a sea-captain in the throes of adoration? It is an
+astonishing sight. Jack was what he himself called 'open as the day.'
+Mind you, I had no ulterior motive in taking my old friend down home
+with me. I had no plain sisters or cousins to get settled in life. Both
+plain and pretty in our family were married and gone when we arrived. We
+lived, you know, just outside Threxford, a small town six miles from a
+railway, tucked away in the valley of the Threxe, about ten miles from
+where that small stream falls into the Channel. It was a lovely spot,
+but so dreadfully quiet I could never live there very long. Over the
+town hung a high hill crowned by the workhouse. You see, it was the
+workhouse master's daughter Jack had fallen in love with."
+
+"Captain Macedoine's daughter?" suggested the Paymaster.
+
+"No, a very different person, I assure you. Madeline Hanson had been
+brought up in a very secluded way. It couldn't have been otherwise. Old
+Hanson occupied a somewhat dubious position in the social life of
+England. A workhouse master is not the sort of man either rich or poor
+want to have much to do with. He is like the hangman or jailer or
+rag-and-bone man; a necessary evil. But he may be, as Hanson was, a most
+respectable person. And Madeline, his only child, was brought up in
+almost solitary confinement until she was twenty. I believe she went to
+an aunt in Portsmouth occasionally. Anyhow it suited her. She was a
+puny, flat-chested little girl, very prim and precise, and would bridle
+at once when any one laughed or made a joke. I never discovered exactly
+how Jack got acquainted with her. At church most likely, for he was in
+full cry after respectability and went to church regularly with my old
+people. I know we used to go fishing together at first, and later I
+found myself going alone, for Jack was meeting his inamorata, and going
+for walks. Oh, quite above board. Jack was 'open as the day.' He lost no
+time in marching up the hill to the workhouse (not the first time he'd
+been inside one, he assured me grimly) and informing Mr. Hanson that
+Captain Evans wished to pay attention to Miss Hanson. Whether old Hanson
+was a man of the world or not, I cannot say, but he certainly knew his
+daughter might go a long way farther and fare worse. Jack's affair
+prospered. I have often been curious to know just what they said to each
+other as they prowled about the lanes in the dark. I suppose it was a
+case of the attraction of opposites. For once, anyhow, in spite of
+novelists, the course of true love ran smooth.
+
+"Of course Jack had his fits of jealousy. You see, he couldn't
+understand how in the world he had managed to pick such a prize without
+having to shoot up the whole town. He even suspected me of having
+designs on his happiness, and I suddenly realized the tremendous
+difficulty of reassuring him. You know, it's a delicate business,
+disclaiming all desire for a woman. If you overdo it, you rouse
+suspicion at once. When I said, 'Oh, no, _I_ don't want to....' Jack was
+up and prancing about the room. 'Why, do you know anything?' he
+demanded. I soothed him, telling him he knew I wasn't a marrying man.
+'That be d--d for a tale. _I_ wasn't either till I met Madeline.' I had
+a stormy time. The contrast between Jack's volcanic temperament and the
+calm, meticulous flow of his courtship was comic. I was thankful when he
+was finally married and gone to Ilfrocombe for his highly respectable
+honeymoon. And then, a fortnight later, I got a telegram ordering me to
+join his ship, the _Manola_, at Newcastle, as chief. We were shipmates
+once more.
+
+"There now began for me an existence which is rather difficult to
+describe. In cargo-boats, as no doubt you know, the skipper and chief
+can easily be thrown together a good deal. Jack and I of course were.
+But Jack was under the impression that I existed for the sole purpose of
+listening to his rapturous idolizing of his darling wife. He wrote to
+her every day, and read the letter to me afterward. She wrote to him
+every day, and when we reached port and the mail came aboard, Jack would
+read the gist of it to me. It was like being married oneself. He would
+lie back in his deck chair on the bridge on fine evenings in the
+Mediterranean and suck at his cigar, sunk in thought. And then suddenly
+he would bring out some profoundly novel and original remark about
+Madeline. I had Madeline for breakfast, dinner, supper, and between
+meals. It was trying, but it was nothing compared with the frightful
+time I put in with him the voyage the baby was born. We were in Genoa,
+and he wired home every day. I would march him up town in the evening
+and stand him drinks, which he swallowed without looking at them. And it
+never entered his head that it was possibly less important to me than to
+him. When a telegram came, 'Daughter, both doing well,' he ordered grog
+for all hands, took me up town, and stood champagne to every Tom, Dick,
+and Harry in the Verdi Bar. I got him down to the harbour in a carriage
+and he wanted to fight me because I laughed when he told the driver that
+he was going to call the baby Angelina Madeline Evans.
+
+"He did, too. Life for me became impregnated with Madeline and Angelina
+as with a domestic odour. That marvellous child haunted my hours of
+leisure long before I had ever seen her. As the months and years passed,
+and Jack and I fared up and down the world together, I sometimes
+wondered whether we hadn't both married Madeline. Jack was a model
+husband. The notion that any other woman existed, or that any other man
+could love a woman as he loved Madeline, never entered his head. He was
+perfectly satisfied as long as one sat and listened to him talking about
+Madeline. I believe he would have urged me to go and do likewise, if he
+hadn't been convinced that no more Madelines were available. I believe,
+too, he thought me a bit of an ass to take him down and introduce him
+instead of marrying her myself. But as you will see, she and I were not
+affinities.
+
+"So life went on, and now I am coming to the time when Captain
+Macedoine's daughter comes into the thing. Oh, no, I haven't forgotten
+what I was talking about. Time passed, and one voyage we left home with
+Jack in an anxious frame of mind. The child was about five years old
+then and she was sick. Something the matter with her throat. Jack was
+like a caged bear when we got to sea. There was no wireless then, you
+know. You would have thought there had never been a sick child on earth
+before. 'Fred,' he would say, 'I left orders--get the best advice, best
+of everything. I don't give a damn what it costs,' And he'd prance to
+and fro. He never looked at the ship. If we dropped a knot below our
+customary two hundred a day, he'd be in my room growling, 'Aren't we
+ever goin' to get to Alexandria, Fred?' When we did get there he fled up
+to the post office to get his mail--forgot all about ours of course.
+'_Not yet out of danger--diphtheria_,' so ran the telegram in reply to
+his own frantic message. I never had such a time in my life. He was like
+a man demented. He would catch me by the shoulder and coat-collar and
+glare at me out of his bulging, blood-shot brown eyes, his fat cheeks
+all drawn into pouches, and stutter, 'Fred, this is the end o' me. If I
+lose one I lose both. My God, I've a good mind to go home. I tell you
+I'm going off my head. If I lose one I lose both. Madeline'll never live
+through the loss o' the child. What shall I do, oh, what shall I do?' I
+believe he used to go into his cabin, shut the door, and pester the
+Almighty with his petitions. You know, they say domestic ties strengthen
+a man's personality, stimulate him to ambition. I have not noticed it.
+On the contrary, it has often seemed to me that married men adopt the
+ethics of the jungle. Life for them is a case of the man and his mate
+against the world. The jungle reverberates with their cries of rage,
+jealousy, and amorous delight. What are literature and drama but the
+cooerdination of these elevated cat-calls?"
+
+"Oh, come!" murmured the Surgeon.
+
+"Well, isn't it?" demanded Mr. Spenlove. "What made this war so popular?
+Wasn't it simply because it supplied men who had been surfeited with
+love, with an almost forgotten inspiration? Hadn't we been bred for a
+generation on Love, beautiful Love, which laughed at locksmiths and made
+the world go round? And here came Hate to have a turn! I tell you,
+something _had_ to happen or we should all have gone crazy. Captain
+Evans, with his exalted notions of domestic affection, was our ideal. We
+were becoming monsters of marital egotism. You remember that song on the
+halls:
+
+    "_What more can you want when you've got your wife and kids,
+    And a nice little home of your own?_
+
+"That was rapidly becoming the sum total of England's morality. All men
+were 'men without a country' and they didn't much care even if they were
+citizens of a mean city, so long as their own contemptible little hutch
+was secure. I rather think the war has dealt that doctrine an ugly
+blow."
+
+"Well, go on," said somebody.
+
+"You must remember that Jack and his Madeline didn't simply look down on
+the rest of the world as sordid worms who couldn't appreciate such a
+holy passion. They didn't think of us at all. We didn't exist. Nothing
+existed--for them--outside that microscopic domestic circle. Madeline
+had been brought up to be refined, reserved, 'not like other girls.' She
+silently and unconsciously laid down a narrow-gauge line along which she
+and Jack were to advance through life, and Jack, who was one of those
+men who are very much what their wives make them, was only too glad to
+get his orders. And he, with the intuition of despair, knowing her to be
+besotted with pride in their child almost beyond endurance, gobbled
+hoarsely in my ear in the night watches that if one died the other would
+follow, and leave him desolate.
+
+"Well, the child didn't die. I have sometimes wondered whether it was
+anything more than a sore throat. It doesn't matter. When we came home,
+Angelina was on the mend, and the cable companies must have noticed a
+falling off in their receipts. I was relieved. I mean in mind. Jack tore
+off home for a night to see for himself. He told me afterward 'he nearly
+cracked Madeline's ribs,' he was so glad to see her. Mind, he'd only
+been away six weeks! Think of it, in the light of the recent years. Not
+that I believed him. Women like Mrs. Evans don't get their ribs cracked.
+No matter. My relief was speedily changed to grave apprehension when he
+came back to the ship accompanied by wife, child, and a nurse, and
+announced that he had obtained permission to take them a voyage. It was
+one of the unusual points of old Gannet's employ--he allowed each
+skipper and chief to take their wives one voyage per year. I had been
+through it before, and disliked the prospect. I have sometimes wondered
+whether old Gannet had a secret and sinister intention, for it is a fact
+that you can't honestly say you know a woman until you have been to sea
+with her. No woman looks her best, either physically or mentally, at
+sea. Oh, of course if you are married to her as well, the case is
+different. I offer no opinion. But I know of one young man at least who
+broke it off after enduring a voyage with a hen-pecked captain.
+
+"I misjudged Jack, however. Jack was his wife's slave, but he remained
+in command of his ship. You see he also had been at sea with skippers'
+wives in the past. 'One word, Madeline, and home you go,' came up the
+ventilator as I was sitting on the bridge after tea. I was astounded. It
+was a new Jack, or rather, the old fiery, original Jack. The next
+sentence, in reply to some inaudible remark of Madeline's, explained
+what I had thought was a quarrel. 'Well, we must have an understanding
+before we sail. I know what I'm talking about, dear. I've been Mate many
+a year and I never would stand the Skipper's missus interfering with the
+ship's discipline.'
+
+"I was admiring Jack for this sagacious warning when there came a squawl
+from his bathroom, where the nurse-girl was washing Angelina. Mrs. Evans
+rustled across, crying out instructions concerning Babs, as they called
+the youngster. And then came Jack's voice exploding in amazement.
+'_What's_ that gel's name, Madeline? _What'd_ you call her?' And a voice
+as clear, as soft and as pure as a silver bell answered:
+
+"'Artemisia Macedoine, Captain. That's my name.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+And though things do happen like that sometimes, as I sat in my chair,
+quite innocently alongside the Captain's ventilator, and sucked at my
+cigar, I was taken aback. It was like a voice coming up from the
+tomb--the tomb of a buried past. In a way it was a relief, for I was
+becoming so involved in Jack's domestic life that I was losing touch
+with the outside world altogether. The sound of that name recalled to me
+my old, unregenerate, wandering self. I had not forgotten him. One never
+forgets a master of illusion, such as he surely was. But the very
+existence of so imaginative a man seemed doubtful in the company of
+matter-of-fact, open-minded, good old honest Jack. Jack's lack of the
+power of dissembling and allusion was devastating. He had no more
+_nuance_, as the French say, than a fog-horn. Think of a man who could
+say to the wife of his bosom, the goddess before whom he worshipped with
+preposterous self-abasement--'One word, and home you go!' Jack would
+have had one word for Macedoine and one only--Faker. But I have found,
+in the course of my rolling existence, that fakers are often more
+interesting, intrinsically, than careful, honest men.
+
+"And I had heard, in a round-about way, some years before, that Captain
+Macedoine had not only been an illustrious faker but a fairly competent
+swindler as well. We were discharging machinery and stores at Cristobal,
+when a young chap who'd been Junior Fourth in the old Maracaibo Line
+came aboard and had a chat. He was one of those who hadn't gone home.
+Indeed, he was able to take out his final papers--never mind how--as
+soon as he was paid off, and being a decent young chap, fairly clever
+and a good mixer, he had soon gotten a billet in the Canal Zone. For
+some reason or other he had liked me when we were shipmates. I
+remembered him as having no aptitude for the sea. He had a sweet-heart
+in England he was always talking about, but he married in the States, of
+course. Well, young Cotter, with his little waxed moustache and his
+superior bank clerk's manner, walked aboard, shook me warmly by the
+hand, and gave me an immense quantity of miscellaneous news. What with
+the Yucatan ships calling three or four times a week, Cotter was up to
+date with everything happening from Galveston to Biloxi and from Tampa
+to Boston. Did I remember So-and-so--chap with a squint, or a mole, or
+a broken finger, as the case might be. Cotter always emphasized a man's
+physical defects in alluding to him. And so the talk came round to 'Oh,
+did I remember that chap with the solemn face and the big stomach?
+Captain Macedoine we used to call him? Why, didn't you hear? Extradition
+order. Yes! The cunning old guy had a dozen opium dives off Rampart
+Street in full swing. Must have been coining money. No, they never got
+him. He had left England by that time. Nobody knows where he is now, I
+suppose. Smart, eh?' Such was Captain Macedoine to me as I sat listening
+to the good Jack sputtering in his cabin:
+
+"'Great Christopher! And who in thunder gave you a name like that. What
+is it, again?' And then Mrs. Evans interposing with 'That will do, dear.
+She can't help her name.'
+
+"'A h--l of a name for a servant,' muttered Jack.
+
+"Well, poor Jack found that taking his family to sea was a more
+formidable affair than he had imagined. The fact was, Jack, although he
+had been married six years, knew no more about married life than a
+bachelor. He hadn't spent more than a week at one time alongside of his
+wife. Many sea-faring men are like this. The very routine of ordinary
+household existence is novel to them. They live voyage after voyage at
+sea, dreaming of an impossibly perfect existence ashore, and their brief
+holidays, in their wives' houses only confirm them in the delusion that
+shore life is heaven, and life on board ship hell. Whereas, you know, it
+is really the other way round."
+
+"Oh, I say!" said Inness, who, in spite of Oxford, retained his
+illusions.
+
+"What rot, Spenlove!" said the First Lieutenant, a gentleman still
+unmarried, but rigidly engaged.
+
+"Ah, but you forget," retorted Mr. Spenlove, laughing softly as he gazed
+up at the moon now high over the cliff. He looked very like a benevolent
+satyr as he sat leaning forward in his chair, his chin on his hands, his
+trim gray beard pushed out, and his curiously slanted black eyebrows
+raised--"You forget that I am dealing with basic realities. You forget
+that ninety-nine sailor-men out of each hundred feed themselves
+exclusively on dreams. You are like the donkey who imagines he sees a
+resplendent carrot hung in front of him. It is not only that he never
+gets the carrot. There never was any carrot for him to get. I
+repeat--dear old Jack Evans was not a bit singular in his illusions, any
+more than Captain Macedoine was in his. They believed in them a bit
+longer than you young fellows do nowadays, that's all."
+
+"Well, go on," suggested the Doctor, and moved out of the moonlight into
+the shadow, so that Mr. Spenlove remained alone and appeared to be
+talking to himself.
+
+"Of course, so far, I hadn't seen any of the party save Jack.
+I'd been ashore when they arrived--did I say we were in
+Middlesborough-on-Tees?--for I had friends at Stockton. I was really
+concerned, for knowing what a headlong, forthright fool Jack was, I
+expected to do or say something that might spoil his life's happiness.
+And here he was complicating matters ten-fold by bringing a nurse-girl,
+a 'governess.' And while I sat there pondering upon the possibilities,
+the Mate came up with an expression of immense cunning on his face, his
+hand funnelled round his mouth, and whispered 'Seen 'em, Mister?'
+
+"I shook my head. Mr. Bloom, Basil Bloom, had been only a couple of
+trips with us, and I knew Jack had very little use for him. Mr. Bloom,
+indeed, was one of those extraordinary men who go to sea year after
+year, and not only do they never seem to attain to any decent mastery of
+their profession, but in their speech and manner and appearance they
+resemble piano-tuners or billiard-markers more than sailors. Bloom had a
+moustache like an Italian hair-dresser's, immense, fine, full, and
+silky, with moist red lips eternally parting and showing a set of
+perfect false teeth. His papers were miracles of eulogy, his discharges,
+save that he had been in a good many ships, without blemish. And yet
+from the moment he had come jauntily on board the previous voyage, Jack
+had been straining like a terrier on the leash. Mr. Bloom seemed to do
+nothing right. It had been my lot to hear both sides of the question.
+Jack, over a whiskey-and-soda in my room, would bewail his fate at
+having an agricultural labourer sent him as chief officer; and next day,
+Mr. Bloom, bringing me the position and distance run, would twirl his
+moustache and allude to the amazingly incompetent persons who secured
+commands nowadays. Of course I sided with Jack. Mr. Bloom was nothing to
+me. He was the sort of man I would much rather hit in the face than
+shake hands with. The man didn't _look_ like a sailor. He had no
+sea-going gear. Jack nearly had a seizure on my settee when he told me
+the new Mate was patrolling the bridge in red silk socks, patent-leather
+dress-pumps, and an old Norfolk jacket. When we began to roll off Ushant
+and ship a few seas, it appeared Mr. Bloom had neither oilskins nor
+sea-boots. To see him skipping along through green sea water in his
+dress-pumps, to look at the patent log, was a revelation of human
+improvidence. Here was a man the wrong side of forty, and he hadn't the
+sense to bring suitable clothing to sea with him! At the table he
+bewildered, angered, and contradicted poor old Jack with political
+argument. Once, after getting his anchors fouled, and firing his
+clutch-blocks, and otherwise making a mess of things on the
+forecastle-head, he had the temerity to tell Jack that 'every
+ship-master ought to have tariff-reform at his finger-ends.' Jack nearly
+had apoplexy. He managed to sputter out that 'every mate ought to have
+his job at his finger-ends, or else go home and buy a farm.' Mr. Bloom,
+holding his fine military figure erect and delicately preening his
+moustache, told me afterward 'That's the worst of these young
+ship-masters--they think insults are arguments.'
+
+"Now I saw trouble ahead for Jack with Mr. Bloom on board. I don't
+pretend to have a very profound insight into human character, but I had
+an indefinable conviction that Mrs. Evans would look favourably upon Mr.
+Basil Bloom. Oh, no, I don't mean that my prurient mind was gloating
+over the destruction of Jack's marital bliss. Not at all. I never liked
+Madeline, but I do her the justice of proclaiming her inviolable
+chastity. What I mean is, I felt that she had more in common
+intellectually with Mr. Bloom than with us. He had a good deal of the
+fussiness of middle-aged shore-people, clearing his throat, coughing
+behind his hand, saying 'excuse me,' smoothing his hair with his palm,
+and referring to things he had seen 'in the papers.' And in spite of his
+inadequate sea-going gear, he invariably appeared in a more or less
+clean stiff collar. A woman, I mean a genteel woman, will never utterly
+condemn any man so long as he wears a collar. This would not have
+mattered save that Jack and I invariably abandoned collars as soon as
+the pilot had left.
+
+"So, when Mr. Basil Bloom, in a dirty gray lounge suit, brown Oxford
+shoes, a grimy collar, and a deer-stalker hat, bent over me and enquired
+if I had seen the arrivals, I shook my head and got up to walk away. But
+Mr. Bloom detained me. Had I not seen the nurse? Nice little piece of
+goods. And the baby was a little angel. Between me and him, he was good
+enough to say, we ought to have a very pleasant trip, what with ladies
+on board, what? And Mr. Bloom, settling his dirty collar and concealing
+a brilliant smile behind a hairy, ringed hand, walked off to superintend
+his neglected work.
+
+"I was not such a fool as to assume that I could any longer stroll into
+Jack's room and have a chat. I am not afraid of women, but I regard
+their lairs with considerable trepidation. On board an old tramp steamer
+a woman is nothing less than a scourge. There is no place for her, and
+consequently you never know where you may find her. If you walk to and
+fro on the deck, you are probably keeping her awake. If you go out on
+deck in your shirt-sleeves, or come from a bath with a towel round you,
+you are outraging her modesty. If you use the ordinary jargon of the
+sea, she writes home that the engineers are awfully coarse on her
+husband's ship. You moon about in a furtive fashion, closing doors and
+ventilators when you converse with one another, and pray for the day
+when she will quit the ship and return to the semi-detached mansion in
+the suburbs where she reigns as queen, Captain So-and-So's wife. I felt
+sadly, as I sat in my room, that my friendship with Jack would remain
+for a few weeks in a state of suspended animation. I got up several
+times, unconsciously, to go along, and had to sit down again. And as I
+sat there, the alleyway was darkened and the familiar stout figure and
+short red neck appeared. I had a little table in my room and as a rule
+sat behind it on the settee, while Jack sprawled in an old easy chair I
+had bought in Savannah, a chair out of an old plantation mansion. Jack
+sank into it and remained silent while I poured out two pegs and
+squirted some soda-water into them. I knew perfectly well, or thought I
+did, that he needed some restorative after his recent adventures. He
+drank it thirstily and set the glass on the table.
+
+"'Fred,' he said, in the cautious whisper which, as I have said,
+becomes second nature when there is a woman on board, 'Fred, I've made
+an infernal fool of meself. They've let me in at the office.'
+
+"'Why,' I said, 'I thought they did you rather well, giving you
+permission to take Mrs. Evans _and_ the youngster. You know how they
+wired Tompkins once: '_No children_'?'
+
+"'You don't know nothing about it,' says Jack, who was invariably hard
+on English when he was moved. 'It's a case of wheels within wheels. They
+only did that to get this gel out for nothing. She's going out to her
+father in the Grecian Arches, and some clever fool in the office thought
+of sending her down to Mrs. Evans to see if she'd do to look after the
+kid.'
+
+"'Well, it's only her grub for a fortnight or so,' I remarked.
+
+"Jack looked solemnly at me and shook his head.
+
+"'Have you seen her?'
+
+"'No,' I said, 'Mr. Bloom told me she was a nice little piece of goods.'
+Jack snorted.
+
+"'He's down in the cabin now talking about what's on at the theatres.
+Fred, I'm in for trouble, and you'll have to stand by me.'
+
+"And he was, for you must bear in mind that there were others on board
+besides Mr. Bloom. There was the Second Mate, a young man whose
+prospects were tarnished by a weakness for secret drinking. And there
+was young Siddons, a stripling just out of his apprenticeship and
+uncertificated, the son of a well-to-do merchant in a country town. Jack
+used to say there was too much of the lah-di-dah about him, and was down
+on him time and again. All the same he liked the boy, as I did, too, for
+Siddons was a gentleman--the only one on board, I used to think. He got
+the D. S. O. the other day for bombing something or other in Germany. He
+was what modern, educated smart women call 'a charming boy' or 'a pretty
+little boy.' Not that he was effeminate, by any means. He was simply one
+of those to whom virtuous sentiment is a passionate necessity. Instead
+of playing in the gutters of life, as so many of us do, his young body
+and soul were on tip-toe for the coming of love. You can see it when
+they are like that. There is a thirsty look about the lips, a turn for
+moodiness, a sudden dilation of the pupils as they catch your glance,
+and a quick flush, very pretty to see. And sometimes, I am informed,
+they find a woman worthy of the gifts they bear....
+
+"We had a couple of engineers, too, but they were scarcely to be classed
+with young Siddons. They were like a good many of us, useful,
+shop-soiled articles with plenty of the meretricious conventional
+sexuality which passes for passion when stimulated. But neither of them
+would have got a look from a modern, educated smart woman. The Third I
+didn't know very much about. He came and went, and the principal
+impression I have of him now is that he was married. The Second had what
+I should call an oppressively incondite mind. He had a cold avidity for
+facts. Unlike most seamen he never read fiction unless it was some book
+which had achieved notoriety for what is called frankness. He had a
+bookshelf in his cabin containing his shore-going boots and a derby hat,
+a Whittaker's Almanac, a Who's Who, several year-books, and a shilling
+encyclopedia. It was astonishing, the comfort he seemed to derive from
+knowing the census-returns of Bolivia, or the Republican majority in
+Oregon, or the number of microbes in a pint of milk. But it did no one
+any harm. I only mention it because he, too, in his way, fell in love
+with Artemisia and for a time neglected his familiar preoccupations.
+
+"For that is what it amounted to--that we all fell in love. Each of us
+had to measure ourselves by this standard. At certain times in our lives
+we all have to drop what we are doing and submit ourselves to the test.
+I'm afraid most of us don't cut a very brilliant figure. It is fortunate
+for us that one can achieve success in a lower class, and can pass
+muster as human beings because we are honest or sober or clever, and
+not simply because we are worthy of love. All the same, I fancy the
+contempt which some of us pour upon the lucky ones is born of envy. We
+wish to be like them in our heart of hearts. I used to have the most
+preposterous dreams of being the lover of some proud, beautiful girl I
+had read about or seen in the street.
+
+"Artemisia was like that. She was one of those beings who inspire love,
+who are the living embodiments of that tender philosophy which makes
+every adjustment of our lives by sentiment alone, and who convince us,
+by a gesture, a glance, a timbre in their voices, that our lightest
+fancy is a grave resolution of the soul.
+
+"It would be easy, of course, to jeer at a crowd of simple,
+half-educated shell-backs losing their hearts to a lady-passenger's
+maid, but that would not be a fair account of it. We were not simple in
+that sense. My experience is that contact with the great elemental
+realities does not breed simplicity so much as a sort of cunning. We
+live deprived of so many of the amenities of culture and wealth that we
+cannot credit our good fortune when anything really fine comes in our
+way. We are not to be had. We are cautious. These good things are for
+shore people. And we get into the habit of good-humoured humility,
+discounting ourselves and our shipmates beyond recall. We say, 'only
+fools and drunkards go to sea,' and that indicates pretty accurately the
+value we place upon our hopes and aspirations.
+
+"And so you must not expect me to give you vivid accounts of passionate
+declarations of love under the Mediterranean moon, or of desperate
+knife-work in the dark with Artemisia bending over the dying man and
+kissing his death-dewed forehead in a last farewell. The voyage went on
+much as usual outwardly. The days are gone, if they ever existed, when
+love ruled the camp or the quarter deck. Yet there was a subtle change.
+Men went about their various tasks with an air of charged expectancy.
+Now and again a couple could be seen talking earnestly together. The
+weather, until we passed Gibraltar, was against any dramatic
+developments. Mrs. Evans and Angelina kept below. Only once, at dusk,
+while we were passing the Burlings, off Portugal, I looked over the rail
+of the bridge-deck and saw young Siddons leaning on the bulwarks below,
+his head turned toward someone I could not see. He was laughing as
+happily as a child. Leaning over a little further I saw a girl's finely
+articulated hand and a corner of a white apron.
+
+"But most of us had no chance. It sounds a strange thing to say, but it
+was almost as if Mrs. Evans herself regarded me as married to her. As
+though because I had been the means of their meeting, I was entitled to
+a sort of founder's share in Angelina! I was in the way to becoming an
+expert in infant's complaints. And Jack seemed to think that when I came
+into the cabin to talk, he had the right of going off duty, so to speak,
+and would go up to the chart room to have a smoke. No, I didn't go
+simply to catch a glimpse of Artemisia, though she was worth glimpsing.
+I went from a sense of social duty. I felt I owed it to Jack to be
+sociable with his wife. And perhaps, too, there was an idea at the back
+of my head that contact with Mrs. Evans was a corrective to any tendency
+I might have to make a fool of myself over any young woman. That was
+Mrs. Evans' specialty, you might say. She didn't mean it, but
+unconsciously she shrivelled at the least breath of desire. I used to
+watch apprehensively for the blank look in the eyes, the tightening of
+the lips, the infinitesimal drawing back of the head, as of a snake
+about to strike. There was something sharply astringent about her then,
+like biting inadvertently into a green banana. And yet she had her gusts
+of enthusiasm over 'darling Babs.' The child was a monster of egoism, as
+may be imagined. She was very like her father physically--full-blooded,
+plump, bold-eyed, and with a perfectly devilish temper. Without warning
+she would explode, scream, scratch, bite, and kick, until she got what
+she wanted, when she would subside as suddenly into a self-centred
+silence broken by hiccoughs and chokes. She wanted everything--the watch
+and money out of your pocket and heart and liver out of your body.
+'Angel child!' her mother would call her, and hang fondly over the
+odious little brat. For the angel child was still supposed to be
+'delicate.' Mrs. Evans had a case of champagne and a stock of Bovril,
+and I dare say some of the displays I witnessed were due in part to
+intoxication. The carpenter was busy all day making gates and fences
+round the companion and bridge deck to prevent the delicate child from
+crawling out and getting slung overboard. I used to sit in the cabin
+with the angelic Babs on my knee, from which she was always slipping,
+listening to Mrs. Evans' account of the diphtheria, and watching
+Artemisia moving noiselessly to and fro in the bedroom or sitting just
+inside the spare stateroom door sewing. I never enjoyed looking at a
+girl so much in my life. She was not pretty in the ordinary sense of the
+word. Her skin was not the buttery yellow you associate with
+half-breeds. It was more the russet brown of a sunburned blonde. Her
+cheeks had a soft peachy glow under the brown bloom that was beautiful.
+And yet she did not give one the impression of sheer innocence and
+youth which was implied in her unique complexion. Her eyes were
+perfectly steady and unabashed, her figure was more mature and matronly
+than Mrs. Evans', and she had a gravity of poise and deliberate movement
+that one associates with the reflection born of experience. She gave me
+the impression, I may say, of a young person who had chanced upon some
+astounding revelation, and who was preoccupied with both past and future
+more than the immediate present. It made her more attractive than less,
+I think. She established a certain careless fondness for talking to Mr.
+Chief, as she called me. I dare say I was in love with her even then.
+She had a personality. I think Jack, who for all his crude psychology
+was a pretty shrewd judge of humanity, saw something beyond a mere
+desirable young girl in this nurse. He used to follow her round with his
+eyes as though he couldn't make her out. He couldn't recover from the
+shock of her name. He would sit in the saloon watching her with the
+child, and mutter 'Artemisia! Humph!' She would glance up from her
+occupation and regard him with steady, meditative eyes. I was fascinated
+by the name myself. It recalled Captain Macedoine to me. It was like
+him. Imagine that name reverberating down through the ages from ancient
+Attica to classical France, taken out across the Western Ocean by
+forlorn _emigres_, who clung to their pretty trashy artificialities in
+spite of, or perhaps because of, the frightfulness of the wilderness,
+handed on by sentimental and aristocratic Creoles, filched by German
+Jews and prosperous mulattos, picked up right in the gutter by a supreme
+illusionist and given to a young person who seemed half school-girl and
+half adventuress.
+
+"For it was perfectly obvious to me that whether I had diagnosed her
+character truly or not, she was not at all a suitable temperament to
+have about a child. There was, for instance, something ominous in the
+sudden quiet with which she would regard the angelic Babs when that
+odious little being began to pull her hair or jump on her feet or thump
+her across the back with the heavy cabin ruler. These things happened to
+me, too; but I could scarcely expect to escape. I was Jack's chum. I was
+a bachelor and therefore credited with a deep and passionate love of
+children. Artemisia, however, was a stranger. When something
+particularly outrageous occurred, Mrs. Evans, glancing up, would murmur,
+'Oh, Babs, dear!' and then, to my considerable embarrassment, I would
+find Artemisia's eyes fixed inscrutably upon mine as she fended off the
+attentions of her charge. And so, when I rose one fine evening as we
+sailed along the Spanish coast, and she followed me up on deck, I felt
+that she was about to take me into her confidence. I looked round as
+she slammed the wicket which the carpenter had made to keep Babs from
+tumbling down and breaking her neck, and the girl's face was close to
+mine. We laughed quietly in the faint light that came up from the cabin.
+After all, there was not such a frightful disparity in our ages. As we
+walked aft along the bridge deck, and stood between the funnel casing
+and the life boats--a matter of seconds--I might have given a swerve to
+both our destinies. There are moments, you know, when one can spring
+over the most frightful chasms in one's journey through life, and land
+with both feet on mossy banks and enamelled meads. It was possibly such
+a moment, only I didn't take the chance. As I said, I prefer the part of
+super in the play--one sees so much more than either spectator or hero.
+And I think she saw, too, in the same flash of intelligence. And so,
+nothing happened. When she spoke she merely asked in a low tone what the
+punishment was for infanticide.
+
+"'You know, Mr. Chief,' she went on, putting up her arms and swinging
+gently on the life-lines of the boats, 'It isn't fair. I'd never have
+taken it on if I'd known what I was in for. I have a devil of a temper.
+I'm sure I shall do something to that child.'
+
+"'To keep it quiet?' I suggested. She nodded rapidly.
+
+"'For good!' she replied, and added: 'They never used to let me have
+anything to do with the kids at school.'
+
+"'Because of the temper?' She nodded again.
+
+"'I nearly killed a girl once,' she remarked, calmly.
+
+"'Oh, tut-tut!' I said, but she insisted, and her eyes gleamed with a
+sudden vixenish anger. 'Yes, Mr. Chief. She was a tall, fair girl with
+yellow hair and a lovely complexion, like an advertisement for soap. She
+hated me, and told the girls I would only be a nigger where she came
+from. Her father was in the Civil Service somewhere. And she kept on
+calling me nigger, and the other girls followed her lead until I was
+nearly _crazy_. And one night I went into the lavatory and put a piece
+of caustic soda into her sponge as it lay on the rack. And the next
+morning when she was washing there was a horrible row, and she ran up
+and down the bedroom screaming, and her face was all one smear of
+crimson and purple. She had to go to hospital and it took months to
+heal. The sponge was left in the water and there was nothing to show,
+but the girls knew I'd done it because I didn't run and see what was the
+matter. They didn't call me nigger any more, Mr. Chief.'
+
+"I said I supposed not, and enquired if Mrs. Evans knew this story.
+Artemisia shrugged her shoulders and showed the tip of her tongue. 'I
+wouldn't tell _her_ much,' she replied.
+
+"'And you are going out to see your father?' she nodded. 'He wants me to
+help him in his business.'
+
+"'He's not a captain now, I suppose?' I asked her, to see how much she
+knew. She was unconcerned. 'No, he retired from the sea when I was a
+little girl. We came home from the States. We lived near Saxhambury
+then. Do you know it? Father was very unfortunate. He lost on some of
+his investments and had to go abroad again. He was in Egypt a long
+while.'
+
+"'And you haven't seen him since when?' I hazarded.
+
+"'Oh, I met him when he came to Paris on business. You see, the company
+he's in now is French, and he is in a very important position out
+there.'
+
+"It was clear she knew nothing. She had been brought up upon the
+customary vague references to 'position,' and so on, with which young
+people in the middle classes are inducted into the real world. One could
+imagine her telling her school-chums how her father had 'an important
+position out there,' and their subsequent awe and envy. I can remember a
+boy at school saying his dad was 'on the Continent,' when his fond
+parent had gone for a week-end at Boulogne. We were impressed. And I
+wondered what old Macedoine's job might happen to be. So I said that I
+had once been shipmates with a Captain Macedoine out in New Orleans. She
+exclaimed: 'Were you really! How funny!' and suddenly dropped her voice
+to a whisper. 'Were you friends, as you are with Captain Evans?' I said
+no, not exactly, and looked up at the figure of young Siddons on the
+bridge. He was looking at us, and paused in his walk to and fro trying
+to make out who I might be. I was thinking of him and wondering, when I
+heard her say that her father did not like America; he was never happy
+there. He was misunderstood. Well, many a man has been unhappy and
+misunderstood in America. Some men are so exacting in their ideals that
+no country can hope to win their approbation. Captain Macedoine was
+evidently still on a pilgrimage seeking a home for his wounded spirit. I
+asked his daughter if he were happy and understood in Ipsilon. She
+regarded me with attention for a moment, as though she suspected me of
+irony. Then she said, in the grave tones that middle-class people
+reserve for the vital themes of life, that he had a good position and
+excellent prospects. And then she left me with a murmur about 'the kid'
+and I began to walk to and fro. I was amused. I tried to figure out the
+salient features of a 'position' which would meet with the approval of a
+man with Macedoine's record. And the prospects! For mind you, he must
+have experienced a severe blow when those Federal secret service men had
+ferreted out his dealings in the opium traffic and his plan for
+establishing himself in England had gone to smash. And in what way could
+this young person assist him in his business? I was intrigued, as they
+say, but I could form no theory which would adequately account for so
+many disparate premises. After all, such musings are their own reward.
+The event robs them of their early glamour. I did not even confide in
+any one else on the ship. There is a pleasure in an unshared scandal
+which many men and all women seem to overlook. It added, I may say, to
+the joys of being a super in the play. And when Mr. Basil Bloom, our
+effulgent chief mate, informed me one evening that I seemed to be very
+chummy with Miss Macedoine, I only smiled and asked him if he had
+designs on her himself. He twisted his moustache, looked scornfully at
+the horizon, and was evidently perturbed. He had referred
+grandiloquently, during the previous voyages, to a peerless female whom
+he called 'the future Mrs. Bloom.' This lady lived at Greenwich, and we
+had reason to believe that Mr. Bloom, on the strength of his genteel
+manners, formidable moustache, and optimistic temperament, had been
+sponging on her family for some months before he joined the _Manola_.
+'I'll tell the young lady,' I said, 'and perhaps you'll get some
+encouragement.' He assured me first that I needn't trouble, and then
+added that he knew I was the last person in the world to think less of a
+man if he changed his mind. This was so infernally unfair to the lady at
+Greenwich that I laughed in his face and walked away.
+
+"The Second Mate took a different line. He was a quiet, inoffensive
+creature, and usually preoccupied with a feeble struggle which he
+maintained against whiskey. He had a delicately coloured, spiritual,
+refined face, with the salient points slightly sharpened, and he seemed
+to have neither thoughts, hopes, nor aspirations. However, his finely
+chiselled features appeared one day while we were in Alexandria with the
+addition of a greenish-yellow puff below the left eye, and the mess-room
+boy informed us that the Second Mate was having his meals in his room in
+future. There was a laugh from the Third Engineer, and I said nothing,
+for I had a notion he and the Second Mate had been ashore together. But
+the mess-room boy, whose slant eyes and long nose worried into all the
+scandal of the ship, added that young Mr. Siddons had blacked the Second
+Mate's eye for him, over the nurse. I told him to dry up. To tell the
+truth I was getting tired of the episode. I felt the whole thing was
+becoming tawdry and dropping to a rather low plane. I wasn't willing to
+admit this to myself, mind you, because it involved my old friend Jack.
+I mean it would be the Commander's fault if we all slumped into the mire
+together over this young woman. That's what commanders are for--to raise
+the tone. That's what a good many of them lack the character to do.
+Personal courage, professional skill, long experience, will carry a man
+through among men. When there are women in the case, a man needs
+something else. What? Well, it may sound strange to you, but I should
+call it simplicity of heart. It is almost the only thing women
+instinctively respect and fear. Good old Jack was simple in his way, but
+I doubted his ability to handle a crisis. I was thankful when we were
+through with Alexandria and were heading north for Ipsilon.
+
+"For just as we were entering this sea cluttered with islands so thick
+you can always see four or five and sometimes a dozen at once, so we
+were in the midst of a score of dubious possibilities. Here was Jack
+avoiding me in an apologetic fashion. Here was the Chief Mate whispering
+to Mrs. Evans. Here was the Second Mate sitting in remote and solitary
+grandeur in his little cubby-hole, comforting himself with a bottle of
+Turkish gin. Here was young Siddons, very youthful-looking and shy,
+miserable because the Captain was looking black about something. Only
+the angel child and her mother seemed untouched by the horrible
+paralysis which was creeping upon us and for which they were primarily
+responsible. At all hours you could hear the roars of rage from the
+cabin when it wanted something--the roar, the squeals, the kicks, the
+hiccoughs, and the final sullen silence of satiety. I tell you, that
+woman and her baby were driving us all, including her husband, crazy,
+and she sat there oblivious. She wasn't even aware that Artemisia hated
+her.
+
+"I don't know exactly what Jack had expected me to do to help him. No
+doubt if I had proposed to Artemisia during the voyage, married her in
+Alexandria, and left her ashore in a flat out at Mex or Gabbari he would
+have been satisfied. I should have got him out of a hole and got myself
+into one, which appeals to most of us. Or I might have acted like a man
+without any emotions at all, and repelled Artemisia's confidences with
+chilling disdain. This would have set a good example to the others, he
+may have thought. I have never gone in for setting a good example,
+however. I have found that even those who follow the example hate the
+man who sets it. And in addition, with the curious intuition of the
+illiterate, Jack suspected I had not been perfectly frank with him as to
+my intimacy with her. And so we were all on the watch, alert, uneasy,
+silent, and unhappy.
+
+"I still went in to see Mrs. Evans of an evening. To tell the truth she
+fascinated me. I had always held the theory that no married woman could
+be an absolute fool. It had seemed to me that such contact with the
+realities of life as marriage involved must leave some austere mark of
+intelligence, some tinge of altruism, upon the most superficial. She
+seemed to disprove this. For her the world did not exist save for the
+'angel child.' Even her husband was now only the nearly indispensable
+producer of income. She talked, not of him, or of her family, not of Art
+or Life or Death or the world to come, not even of Home or the things
+she had seen in Alexandria. She had seen nothing in Alexandria. She had
+declined to let Jack take her to Cairo 'because of the expense.' She
+read no books nor papers. She dressed in perfect propriety. And all the
+time she talked about the child, one hand near the child, her eyes fixed
+on the child's movements or repose. I think the voyage was a revelation
+to Jack. He was finding his place in the world. He was thinking in his
+honest, clumsy way. He never took his wife for a trip again. He loved
+his child as much as any man could, but this ingrowing infatuation, to
+the exclusion of every other desirable thing in the world, was
+fatiguing.
+
+"And Artemisia! She sat in her little spare cabin opening on the saloon,
+and now and again she would raise her shoulders, draw a deep breath, let
+them drop again as though in despair, and go on with her sewing. She
+would laugh at me when I tried to amuse the child and distract it from
+some preposterous desire. It was not easy. Her tenacity of purpose was
+appalling. She was yelling one evening for someone to open the great
+medicine chest that stood by the brass fireplace. I tried the
+time-honoured ruses for placating the young. I said there was a lion
+inside who would jump out and eat Babs. I pretended to go and find the
+key and came back with the news that naughty Mr. Siddons had dropped it
+into the sea. The brat stopped to breathe for a moment and a faintly
+human expression came over the stupendously smug little face. I followed
+this up by a story of how Mr. Siddons had shown me how to make a pin
+float on the water. I hastily poured some water into a glass, got a
+piece of blotting paper, laid my pin on it, and waited for the homely
+trick to succeed. I had no luck somehow. The pin went to the bottom and
+Babs' opinion of me went with it. She suddenly remembered about the
+medicine chest and gave a preliminary yell. Mrs. Evans said, 'Oh,
+Babbsy, darling!' I got up and went out on deck. We were running among
+the islands. Away to the east-ward I could see the lights of the
+Roumania Lloyd mail-boat going south. Suddenly two hands grabbed the
+lappets of my patrol-coat, a dark, fluffy head leaned for a delicious
+moment against my chest, and Artemisia gurgled, 'Oh, Mister Chief, isn't
+she just a little fiend?' She had been listening to my blandishments and
+had witnessed the final destruction of my hopes. She put her hands
+behind her back, threw up her head, and regarded me with amusement.
+'Why,' she whispered, 'why didn't you open the medicine chest, and give
+her the prussic-acid to play with?' And then, without waiting for an
+answer, she turned and looked across at the islands we were passing. She
+sighed. 'Just look at them! How do they know which is Ipsilon? Mister
+Chief, Mister Chief, I am afraid.'
+
+"'What of?' I asked. She sighed again.
+
+"'Of the future,' she said. 'This is a change for me. I don't know
+what's coming. I haven't had any luck yet.'
+
+"I asked her in what way.
+
+"'You know, Mister Chief, I have been in several situations. I was a
+typist....' she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"'Your father will be here,' I suggested, but she paid no attention,
+merely looking at the dark blots on the sea that were islands. And then
+she remarked in a perfectly level and unconcerned voice that sometimes
+she wished she was dead. I patted her on the shoulder.
+
+"'Go to bed, my child,' I remarked, coldly, 'you'll feel better in the
+morning. You won't wish you were dead when Captain Macedoine comes
+aboard to fetch you.'
+
+"She walked away in silence and went down to the cabin. I have often
+wondered if she had not intended to make some sort of confession.
+Perhaps it was a moment in her life when she became suddenly aware of
+her insecurity, of her lack of the kindly props and supports which hold
+most of us up and give us a good opinion of ourselves. For really she
+lacked everything. As I found out later, as she stood talking to me that
+evening and trying to find some easy yet adequate method of taking me
+into her confidence without losing my esteem, she lacked everything that
+most girls have. She was one of those tragic figures who even lack
+innocence without having gained any corresponding experience. And
+perhaps she felt for a moment the shadow of her destiny upon her, and
+seeing the dark path among the islands she was to tread, shrank back,
+doubtful even of the power of her father to carry her through."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Mr. Spenlove, sitting forward in his deck chair, felt in his pocket for
+his cigarette-case and looked round satirically into the profound shadow
+of the awning. He still preserved the appearance of a man talking to
+himself, but the fancy crossed his mind, as he glanced at the long
+horizontal forms in the deck chairs, that he was addressing a company of
+laid-out corpses. The air was very still, but a light breeze on the open
+water beyond the nets, and the full splendour of a circular moon,
+reminded him of an immense sheet of hammered silver. But Mr. Spenlove
+did not look long at the AEgean. He swivelled round a little and pointed
+with the burnt-out match at the large plain building he had indicated at
+the beginning of his story. It was not a beautiful building. It had the
+rectangular austerity of a continental customs house or English
+provincial "Athenaeum." It was built close to the cliff and the outer
+wall was provided with a flight of stairs which ascended, in a
+mysterious and disconcerting manner, to the second floor. All this was
+clearly visible in the brilliant moonlight, and even the long valley
+behind, with its dim vineyards and clumps of almond, olive, and fig
+trees half concealing the square white houses that dotted the
+perspective, were subtly indicated against the enormous background of
+the tunnelled uplands and bare limestone peaks. Mr. Spenlove held the
+match out for a moment and then flicked it away.
+
+"Romantic, isn't it? This was how it looked the night we anchored, and
+Artemisia came up to me as I stood by the engine-room skylights with my
+binoculars. It was she who pointed out to me how romantic it was. I
+asked her why. I said: 'This place is simply an iron mine. To-morrow
+they'll put us under those tips you see sticking out of the cliff there
+and a lot of frowsy Greeks will run little wooden trucks full of red
+dust and boulders and empty them with a crash into the ship. And
+there'll be red dust in the tea and the soup and in your hair and eyes
+and nose and mouth. And there'll be nothing but trouble all the time.
+Very romantic!' So I sneered, but she wasn't taken in by it a bit. She
+looked through the glasses, and laughed. 'Oh, it's beautiful!' she
+murmured, 'beautiful, beautiful.'
+
+"I said, 'How do beautiful things make you feel?' and she turned on me
+for a moment. 'You know,' she said, and was silent. And I did know. It
+was the bond between us. We had become aware of it unconsciously. It had
+nothing to do with our age or our sex or our position in life. It was
+the common ground of our intense anger with the other people on the
+ship. Do you know, I have often thought that Circe has been misjudged.
+Men become swinish before women who are unconscious of their unlovely
+transformation. Circe should be painted with her eyes fixed in severe
+meditation, oblivious of the grunting, squeaking beasts around her.
+Artemisia was like that. She really cared nothing for the ridiculous
+performances of the various animals on the ship. Nothing for the
+magniloquent Mr. Basil Bloom, clearing his throat behind his dirty hand;
+nothing for the Second Mate, with his perpetual expression of knowing
+something about her and being mightily amused by it. Nothing even for
+poor young Siddons, badly hit, moping out of sight, heaving prodigious
+sighs and getting wiggings for being absent-minded. As for the Second
+and Third, my particular henchmen, she didn't know they existed.
+Honourable! Why of course, they were all honourable in their intentions.
+Didn't Mr. Bloom express his willingness to throw over the young lady at
+Greenwich, although he owed her father fifty pounds? Didn't the Second
+Engineer drop a note down her ventilator saying he had a hundred in the
+Savings Bank and she had only to say the word? (And didn't Mrs. Evans
+pick it up and take it, speechless with annoyance, to Jack, who roared
+with laughter?) Honourable? Of course they all wanted to marry her.
+Swine are domestic animals."
+
+The Surgeon, who had caused this digression, made a vague murmur of
+protest. Mr. Spenlove drummed on the chair between his legs and shrugged
+his shoulders, but he didn't turn round.
+
+"I didn't offer to tell you a love-story. Captain Macedoine's daughter,
+if she means anything, means just this: that love means nothing. She
+passed through all the dirty little gum-shoe emotions which she inspired
+on the _Manola_ like a moonbeam through a foul alley. For it is foul,
+this eternal preoccupation with sex, like a lot of flies over a
+stagnant, fecundating pool. Beauty! You all talk largely of appreciating
+beauty, and you don't know, the most educated and cultured of you, the
+first thing about it. Your idea of beauty is a healthy young female
+without too many clothes. I tell you, I have seen ships so perfect and
+just in modelling that I have marvelled at the handiwork of my
+fellowmen. I have seen cities at sunrise so beautiful I have gone down
+to my room and shed tears of ridiculous sorrow. And I have seen the
+patrons of female beauty, too, coming back from the cities to the ships
+with dry palates, and their neckties under their ears....
+
+"Well! We stood there, and to ease the pressure of the moment she put up
+the binoculars and swept the little beach, finally coming to rest at the
+big house--Gruenbaum's house. While we had been talking a light had come
+out on the balcony, and figures began to move about with the precise and
+enigmatic motions of marionettes. Without glasses I could see Gruenbaum
+seated at a table with a big lamp over his head. Another figure moved to
+the open side and stood still. I was wondering what this portended when
+Gruenbaum half rose and waved his arms, and the other figure turned and
+dwindled rapidly into obscurity, suddenly coming into the light again at
+the other side of the table. And Artemisia said quietly, 'There's
+father!' and handed me the binoculars.
+
+"To say that I was interested would not put the matter in its true
+light. I was more than that. There was a fantastic quality in the whole
+business which was almost supernatural. It is strange enough to meet a
+person after many years; stranger still to meet one who has made a
+powerful yet unsympathetic impression upon you--to meet him with all
+your old dislikes and prejudices washed to a clear and colourless
+curiosity. But to see such a man as I saw Captain Macedoine, afar off,
+through an atmosphere charged with the electric blue radiance of
+moonlight, moving in an alien orbit, animated by unknown emotions--why,
+it was like seeing a man who was dead and gone to another world! I
+raised the glasses and focussed them. Captain Macedoine stood leaning
+heavily on his hands as they grasped the edge of the table, and he was
+staring straight out at me. Of course he could see nothing beyond the
+balcony, but the impression was exactly that of a man striving to win
+back across the gulf to his former existence. And his strained
+immobility was accentuated by the figure of Gruenbaum with his jerkily
+moving arms, his polished forehead gleaming in the lamplight, the
+gyrations of his chin as he turned every moment or so and looked up
+sideways at the other. Gruenbaum flourished papers, reaching out and
+rearranging them, throwing himself back in his chair and beating the
+table with a folded document to emphasize his words. And every now and
+again the whole scene grew dim as though it were a phantasmagoria, and
+about to dissolve, when the smoke from Gruenbaum's cigar floated and hung
+in the still air.
+
+"And I discovered, too, that I had no words in which to formulate the
+peculiar impressions this scene made upon me. I could find no adequate
+remark! The girl at my side, reaching out absently for the glasses,
+made no sign that this scene going on half a mile away was at all
+strange to her. For all one could gather, Captain Macedoine's daughter
+was accustomed to see her father submitting passively to the onslaughts
+of foreign concessionaires every day in the week. I gazed at her as she
+stood there by the awning-stanchion looking at her magnificent parent,
+and it was suddenly borne in upon me that it is a miracle we ever learn
+anything about each other at all in this world. There is nothing so
+inscrutable as an ordinary human being, I am convinced, and I have been
+watching them for thirty years. What we know and can tell, even the
+acutest of us, is no more than the postmark on a letter. What's
+inside--ah, if we only knew. What? Absurd? By no means. I believe
+married people do occasionally accomplish it in a small way. I mean I
+believe they attain to a fairly complete comprehension of each other's
+souls. But as to whether the game is worth the candle they never
+divulge....
+
+"Certainly Artemisia did not at that moment. She left me, as every woman
+I have ever met has left me, groping. She sighed softly and returned the
+glasses, remarking again, 'Yes, there's Father,' and bade me good-night
+without a word of explanation. Mind, I don't say I had any right to such
+a word. I don't even feel sure she understood anything at all about her
+father's position on that island. The bare fact remains that I expected
+some explanation simply because I credited her with a character light
+yet strong, and capable of supporting the weight of her father's
+confidence.
+
+"For observe; if this girl was ignorant of everything, if she came out
+here a mere child agape with curiosity, then Macedoine must have been
+that extremely rare phenomenon, a completely lonely man. And I was not
+prepared to admit the possibility of such an existence for him. He was
+one of those men who can live, no doubt, without friendship, but who
+must have their audience. So much at least I knew of him in the old days
+in the Maracaibo Line, when he would sit near us in Fabacher's on Royal
+Street, ostentatiously reading a month-old copy of the London _Financial
+News_. It was this incessant urge to inspire wonder which led him to
+hint, indirectly, that he had been at school at the Charterhouse. Risky?
+Of course it was risky; and I should never have plumbed the mystery but
+for a most unimpressionable London purser who informed me there was a
+ragged school for slum children in the Charterhouse district in the
+city. Not that it mattered. We were not Macedoine's game. It was the
+bishops and colonels and eminent surgeons who made the round trip of the
+West Indies with us whom he wished to impress. Whether he was a fraud
+or not, he certainly had acquired a way of ignoring common people such
+as we who go to sea. I knew he would regard good old Jack from such a
+lofty pinnacle that Jack would appear to him no more than one of the
+Greek labourers who shoved the little wooden cars along and tumbled
+their contents into the ship with a terrific clang of ironstone on iron,
+and clouds of red dust. I followed up this digression in my mind and
+arrived at the fascinating conclusion that if my recollection served me
+sufficiently well, he would not recognize me. He never had recognized
+me. I once had the pleasure of telling him that if his men didn't keep
+my room clean and tidy I would knock his head off. He never looked up
+from his desk until my grip on his collar tightened and his body began
+to rock to and fro. He complained to the Commander, who had been told of
+the incident by the Chief. 'Is this the engineer who assaulted you, Mr.
+Macedoine?' says the Captain. Macedoine examined me with a distant,
+preoccupied air, pressing his lips together and his eyebrows raised. He
+shrugged his shoulders, opened his lips with a slight smacking noise,
+and after quite a pause, a most imposing pause, he said he 'really
+couldn't say; these workmen were all so much alike when they were
+dirty....' Old Pomeroy--he was the first decent skipper the Maracaibo
+Line ever had--swung round on his chief steward and retorted: 'Then
+what the devil are you wasting all our time for?' He swung back to
+his desk again, muttering and slapping papers here and there.
+'Preposterous--doesn't know who assaulted him.... Never heard....' I was
+standing as stiff as a stanchion waiting for the Old Man to say I could
+go, when he saw Macedoine pussy-footing it to the door. 'Oh, and
+Macedoine,' called the Old Man. Macedoine stopped but did not look
+round. 'I expect the engineers on my ship to be referred to as
+engineers, not 'workmen.'' Silence, Macedoine looking at the back of his
+hand and smiling with the corner of his mouth pulled down.
+'_Understand!_' thundered the Old Man, rising from his chair but holding
+it by the arms. It was so sudden I nearly collapsed. I thought he was
+going to throw Macedoine through the door. That lofty personage was
+startled, too. He replied hastily: 'Oh, quite so, Captain, er....' when
+old Pomeroy sat down and dipping his pen in the ink, shut him up with
+'Then don't forget it, and don't wait.'
+
+"I mention this highly unusual episode for a special reason. It happened
+to provide one specific proof of my theory that Macedoine was an artist
+in his method of building up that grotesque effigy which he presented
+to the world as himself. He was like that eccentric rich person who once
+built a most astonishing house in Chelsea many years ago. You remember?
+It was called So-and-So's Folly. It stood on a valuable site, and each
+story was decorated in a different style. The basement was Ph[oe]nician
+and the roof was pure Berlin. But the horrible thing about that house
+was, not its bizarre commingling of periods, its terra-cotta tigers and
+cast-iron chrysanthemums, but the fact that inside it was a hollow,
+spider-haunted shell. There was not even a back to it. There were no
+floors laid on the joists, weathered planks blocked up the back, and a
+few forlorn green statues stood amid a dank jungle of creepers and grass
+and rubbish. Now that was how Macedoine impressed me, and what I was
+going to say was that by accident I obtained later a peep into his
+studio, so to speak, and saw his method of putting up that marvellous
+front, behind which, as you have already learned, there was nothing save
+the dreamy dirtiness of avarice and ego-mania. No, the solitary and
+grandiose idea in his mind precluded all recollection of individual
+humanity. It was not that he forgot us who had been his shipmates. He
+had never known us. We had not the wit to be knaves, or the credulity to
+accept him at his own colossal valuation. We ignored his enigmatic claim
+to greatness, while he passed sublimely along, disdainful of our
+obvious virtues. For it is presumable that we _had_ virtues, since the
+world--anxious for the replenishing of its larders--hails us nowadays as
+heroes because we prefer the dangers of sea-life to the tedious boredom
+of a shore-going existence....
+
+"Yes, I saw into his studio, watched the artist at work at first hand. I
+might claim the honour, indeed, of being one of the lumps of clay upon
+which he sought to model his design. Surely an authentic witness this;
+and I dare say the normal artist's material--since we are fond of saying
+he blows the breath of life into it--might not join in the universal
+praise bestowed upon its creator, but might indulge in ironic
+contemplation of its own birth-pangs and the strange fortunes of its
+pre-natal existence!
+
+"He did not appear, however, as my stimulated imagination had pictured
+him appearing, to dominate the situation on the _Manola_ and preoccupy
+us all with his personality and hypothetical power. Like a higher power,
+he remained invisible, and Captain Evans, going ashore in a boat with
+Artemisia and her belongings around him, was the first to encounter him
+in Gruenbaum's office. Encountered him, and came back bursting with the
+most astonishing tidings. I was sitting in my room that evening after
+tea, having a quiet pipe and a book, when Jack came down.
+
+"'Come along to my room, Fred,' he said, blowing clouds from his cigar.
+'I want to talk to you.'
+
+"'Why not here?' I suggested.
+
+"'No, I want the wife to hear it, too. The gel's gone and the kid's
+asleep. Come along.'
+
+"And highly mystified, I went along. It seemed like scandal, and I am
+not above such things once in a way, as you know. I went along, and
+found Mrs. Evans in her husband's cabin sewing. Nothing would do but I
+must have a cigar, and the angel child having been dosed with what her
+mother called 'chempeen', I had to have a glass of that, too. Jack was
+flushed and excited, and sat down beside me on the red plush settee.
+
+"'What do you say,' he began, in a low, husky tone, 'to a job ashore,
+Fred?'
+
+"So that was it. The age-old chimera of a 'job ashore.' I looked at Mrs.
+Evans. Her lips were shut to a thin line. I could see protest and
+dissent in every line of her body.
+
+"'For you or for me?' I enquired, softly.
+
+"'For me, and p'raps for you, too, if you play your cards. It's like
+this': and he began a long and complicated explanation. The gel's
+father, as he called Macedoine, had got the job of secretary to the
+company and somehow didn't hit it off with old Gruenbaum, who was
+resident concessionaire. Of course I knew Gruenbaum's father, who had
+been the original prospector when the island was Turkish, sold most of
+his holdings to the French company, but kept a tenth which descended to
+his son who had succeeded him in the concession. Well, Gruenbaum wouldn't
+hear of a lot of improvements which Macedoine wanted to introduce. The
+gel's father was full of modern ideas. Wanted to put in electric
+traction for the mines, with electric elevators and tips, and so on. He
+also wanted to develop the place, and had a plan for irrigation to
+attract settlers. Gruenbaum wouldn't hear of it. Very conservative
+Gruenbaum was. Got his tenth of the three francs per ton on the ore, and
+a thousand a year as manager, and was satisfied. Didn't want settlers.
+He was king of the island and he and Macedoine had had a row. Macedoine
+was sick of it. All this had been explained to Jack by a young Greek, a
+clerk in the office, who was sick of it, too, and was 'going in' with
+Macedoine in his new venture. And what was that? Well, it was this way:
+Macedoine, who had knocked about a bit, had taken an option on some
+sites in Saloniki, he had bought a sixty-fourth share in the Turkish
+steamboat which carried the mails to the islands, and he was going into
+the development of Saloniki. Had formed a small preliminary company,
+registered in Athens, to take up the options, and he wanted directors.
+This young Greek, Nikitos, was to be secretary, knowing the languages,
+you see. He wanted directors, practical men to superintend the actual
+business while he, Macedoine, you understand, would be free to control
+the financial side of the affair. Oh, it was a big thing. There was to
+be a big hotel, a big brewery, a big shipping business, a big real
+estate development in Macedonia, a big railroad system, and a big fleet
+of ships to carry away the freight which comes from all this. Everything
+was to be big, big! Jack blew clouds of smoke, big clouds, and
+flourished his fat hands in the air. 'What did I think? Wasn't it worth
+jumping at? Five founder's shares of a thousand drachmas each in the
+preliminary company, convertible into preferred stock in the big concern
+and ten thousand drachmas a year salary. Eh? What did I think? Wasn't it
+a sound investment? What about it?' And Jack bored into my ribs with his
+powerful finger.
+
+"I looked at Mrs. Evans. It was evident she had already heard something
+of this magnificent scheme for making us all millionaires, and her
+verdict was evident enough also. She never raised her eyes from her
+sewing where she sat in a cane chair, her hair smooth and shining, her
+dress smooth and shining, too, the embodiment of prim respectability and
+prudence. She had often inspired me with a crazy ambition to see her
+being chased by a lunatic with a razor in his hand, or pursued by a
+hungry Bengal tiger--to see her in some predicament which would crack
+the shell of middle-class reserve in which she was secreted and show me
+the live, scampering human being within: but just now I was appalled by
+the formidable aspect of her disapproval. Even Jack was aware of it, for
+he watched me to see what I would say. And what could I say? What could
+any sane human being, with a knowledge of the world, say? I didn't say
+anything. I scratched my chin and pretended to be thinking deeply.
+
+"For without claiming any especial perspicuity, I must confess that I
+have never been the raw material out of which 'suckers' are
+manufactured. It has always seemed to me pertinent to enquire, when
+Golcondas and Eldorados are offered for a song, why the vendor should be
+so anxious to hypothecate his priceless privileges. I suppose I am a
+skeptic. Business, after all, is very much like Religion: it is founded
+on Faith. And men like my friend Jack, for instance, have great faith in
+the written word, much more in the beautifully engraved word. For them
+all the elaborate bunkum by which the financial spell-binder conceals
+his sinister intentions is of no avail; the jargon of the prospectus,
+the glittering generalties, the superb optimism, the assumption of
+austere rectitude, the galaxy of distinguished patrons who for a
+consideration lend their names to the venture. For it is a venture, and
+men have always a pathetic hope that it may become an adventure as well,
+and that their ship will come labouring home, loaded with gold.
+
+"Women, especially married women, are not at all like that, but they are
+not so much skeptics as infidels. They start up at the first distant
+approach of the financier, every plume and pin-feather quivering. They
+don't believe a word of it. They go down on their knees to their
+husbands and beg and beseech and supplicate them to have nothing to do
+with it. They shed tears over their children. They write long letters of
+distracted eloquence to their mothers. The very extremity of their
+impotence lends a certain tragic dignity to their tantrums. Of course if
+the cruel domestic tyrant persists in casting his bread upon the waters
+and speculation turns out to be a huge success, these Cassandras spend
+the dividends with a sort of stern joy, as though the money were tainted
+and they must exchange it for something useless and inconvenient as soon
+as possible. They know, by instinct, I suppose, that a chiffonier or a
+Chippendale bedroom suite is not legal tender for stock. They feel
+they've _got_ something. It is a truism, I suppose, to say that women
+are implacable realists.
+
+"Mrs. Evans was. And she knew, too, that I was of her opinion in this
+matter. She never raised her eyes to look at me; but she knew. Her lips
+never relaxed from the rigid line they had assumed when I came down, as
+though she was still waiting, in severe patience, for me to do my
+obvious duty, and corroborate her opinion.
+
+"'What is he putting into it?' I asked, casually.
+
+"'He's the vendor,' retorted Jack, who had picked up the vernacular
+pretty quickly. 'He turns over his options and his share in this
+mail-boat for ten founder's shares and a seat on the board, see? Then,
+when the big company's formed, he takes up shares in that, and is voted
+a salary of twenty thousand drachmas a year as financial adviser. That's
+how Nikitos put it to me. Nikitos knows the country and he says there's
+any amount of capital available once the thing gets started. These
+tobacco growers don't know what to do with their money--keep it in those
+big Turkish trousers, most of it, he reckons. The great thing is to get
+in at the beginning. What do you say? He wants a ship-master and he
+wants a man with engineering experience to overlook the shipping
+business. I told Nikitos I'd talk it over with you. He says the skipper
+of that Swedish ship that's on the same charter as us is putting three
+hundred into it--seven thousand five hundred drachmas.'
+
+"'But what did Macedoine say?' I persisted.
+
+"Oh, I didn't see _him_,' admitted Jack, looking at the floor between
+his fat knees. 'Nikitos promised to arrange an interview if we decided
+to come in.'
+
+"There it was, you see, the touch of the Master. I could not help a
+silent tribute of admiration to Captain Macedoine for this remarkable
+reserve, this exquisite demonstration of psychological insight. A man of
+great affairs! A financial magnate, graciously extending to us the
+privilege of participating in his immense schemes. 'An interview could
+be arranged!' It was superb, this method of mesmerizing all the
+simple-minded skippers and chiefs who came in the iron-ore ships to
+Ipsilon. I had a brief but vivid vision of us all ashore in Saloniki
+squabbling and bluffing each other, while Macedoine sat enthroned,
+apart, the financial adviser, dwelling in oriental magnificence upon our
+contributions.
+
+"'What do you think, Mrs. Evans?' I asked, taking the bull by the horns.
+'Shall we gamble a hundred or so and get rich quick?'
+
+"'You're not married,' she replied, without looking up. 'You can spare
+it I dare say. It is different for Jack. He hasn't any money to throw
+away.'
+
+"'Well,' I said, 'I haven't any to throw away, either, I can assure you.
+I wouldn't go to sea if I had. But Jack thinks this is a great
+opportunity to invest his money where he can look after it. You see,
+he'll be drawing a salary as well when he's ashore in Saloniki.'
+
+"Still she didn't look up. She had not budged an inch from her
+conviction that I agreed with her.
+
+"'I couldn't think of living abroad,' she said, severely. 'I have Babs
+to consider.'
+
+"I'm afraid Jack hadn't thought of that. He hadn't visualized his wife
+and baby dwelling in a Turkish town, cut off by thousands of miles of
+ocean from home. He had been so preoccupied with the divine prospect of
+'a job ashore' that he had forgotten the environment. And we had been to
+Saloniki with coal, time and again. I can't say I blamed her. Residence
+in southeastern Europe has its drawbacks for a housewife. And quite
+apart from a natural repugnance to dirt, Mrs. Evans had an unnatural
+repugnance to anything foreign. She never really left England. She took
+it with her. She carried with her into her husband's cabin, and along
+the wild oriental foliage and architecture of Alexandrian streets, the
+prim and narrow ideals of her native valley. It never occurred to her
+that those people in turbans and fezzes were human. It never occurred to
+her when a French or Italian girl passed, dressed with the dainty and
+charming smartness of her race, that she might possibly be virtuous as
+well. She shrivelled at their very proximity, drawing the angelic Babs
+from their contamination. She was uneasy, and would continue to be
+uneasy, until she was safe at home once more in Threxford, England. That
+was the burden of her unuttered longing: to get home, to get home, back
+to the little semi-detached red-brick villa on the Portsmouth Road,
+which her father had given her for a wedding present and which fifty
+Macedoines would never induce her to sell.
+
+"For that is what it would mean if Jack invested even two hundred pounds
+in this wonderful enterprise to develop Macedonia. He had spent several
+hundred in furnishing the house, and since then most of his two hundred
+a year had gone in expenses, for he was no niggard either with himself
+or those he loved. Neither wife nor chick of his should ever lack for
+anything, he had told me proudly. If a neighbour's child got some
+expensive and useless contraption to pull about, Babs had one, too, the
+very next week. If a neighbour's wife got a fur coat, Mrs. Evans had
+orders to go and do likewise, a more expensive one if possible. What
+little he had was on deposit in the bank in his wife's name, so that she
+could draw on it while he was away.
+
+"And so I came round to the unpleasant conviction that while Mrs. Evans
+was silently awaiting my repudiation of the whole thing, her husband was
+expecting me to use my eloquence to persuade his wife to let him invest.
+They say a bachelor has no worries of his own. Which is as well, when
+his married friends endeavour to make him responsible for their own
+follies, and use him as a cushion to soften the family collisions. I was
+an old hand and slipped out. And I really was not thinking so much of my
+own two hundred pounds salted down in Home Rails, as of Jack's home,
+when I said, cheerfully:
+
+"'Well, this Captain Macedoine can't object to giving us a little more
+information. And he can't expect us to have the cash with us. We shall
+have to go home and sell something and--er--draw the money, eh?'
+
+"'It is quite out of the question,' said Mrs. Evans, biting her thread
+as though she was severing the spinal chord of the whole proposition.
+
+"'So what I suggest is, Jack will see Captain Macedoine and we'll take
+the voyage home to think about it.' And I looked at Mrs. Evans to
+approve my machiavellian astuteness.
+
+"'Oh, it's quite impossible, quite. I couldn't think of leaving England.
+And we couldn't spare the money.'
+
+"'We shouldn't need the house if we came out here,' said Jack, looking
+solemnly at his wife. She stiffened.
+
+"'We _can't_ sell the house,' she muttered through her teeth. 'Where
+should we live? I've told you. Jack, it's quite impossible.'
+
+"'The house 'ud fetch three hundred and fifty,' said Jack, looking at me
+with round solemn eyes, 'and the furniture 'ud fetch two hundred more.
+And there's--how much is there in the bank, Madeline? Say sixty odd. Six
+hundred pounds. You can live cheap in a place like Saloniki.'
+
+"I could see Mrs. Evans was going to pieces. She went dull red and then
+dull white, dropped a stitch or so, moved her feet, took a deep breath
+through her nostrils. I was seeing the human being at last. The lunatic
+with the razor was after her. The Bengal tiger was growling near by.
+
+"'Don't be in such a hurry,' I said, sharply, and for the first time
+that woman gave me a glance that might be tortured into a faint
+semblance of gratitude. 'I am not going into a thing until I've studied
+it, and nobody but a madman would commit himself on anybody's mere
+say-so. You see Macedoine, Jack, when you go ashore.'
+
+"'You'd better come, too,' he said, rather glumly. 'Old Gruenbaum wants
+some coal if you can spare it. Forty ton, he said. It'll be a fiver for
+you. Can you let him have it and get to Algiers?'
+
+"'I'll see,' I said. 'I'll go through the bunkers in the morning.' And
+we left the dangerous subject for the time being. It was positively
+refreshing to get out of the heavy atmosphere charged with Macedoine's
+grandiose schemes and Mrs. Evans' premonitions of disaster and beggary
+for herself and Babs. That angel child slept through it all on the far
+end of the big plush settee, fenced in with a teak bunk-board, one
+predatory hand clutching the throat of an enormous teddy bear whose eyes
+stared upward with the protruding fixity of strangulation, as though
+even in sleep she found it necessary to cause someone or something acute
+discomfort. Yes, it was refreshing, for I don't mind admitting that the
+petty graft of a five-pound note that I was to get from Gruenbaum for
+selling him forty tons of coal was more to me than all the cloudy
+millions of Macedoine's imagination. I am as anxious as any one to get
+something for nothing, but this Anglo-Hellenic Development Company, in
+which I was to get four hundred a year for living in Saloniki, didn't
+appeal. In the regions of fancy Macedoine was an incomparable
+inspiration; in business I preferred the unimaginative concessionaire.
+As I rose to go up on deck, I felt that whether Mrs. Evans was
+grateful or not I had earned her approbation. Perhaps she, with her
+feminine intuition--or possibly it was only the instinct of
+self-preservation--saw the necessity of flattering a poor silly single
+man, for she remarked, with her head bent over the child's to touch the
+tumbled locks:
+
+"'I'm sure Mr. Spenlove will give you the _best_ advice, dear.'
+
+"And I felt my bosom swell with pride. Oh, women are wonderful! Even an
+inferior woman, as Mrs. Evans was, with a soul like a parched pea, and a
+heart so narrow that there was scarcely room in it for husband and child
+at the same time, a woman of meagre physique and frumpish in dress--even
+she could do a little in the animal-taming way--could crack a whip and
+make the lords of the jungle jump through paper hoops, and eat out of
+her hand. Oh, yes! Even she could harness us and drive us tandem through
+the narrow gate of her desire. She was sure I would give dear Jack the
+_best_ advice. And in the glow of this benediction I departed.
+
+"Mr. Bloom was on deck, moving softly to and fro, smoking an immense
+meerschaum carved to the likeness of a skull. It was a warm evening and
+he had discarded coat and vest, displaying a soiled starched shirt and
+black suspenders inadequately furnished with buttons. The doorway was in
+shadow and for a moment I watched him, promenading in the moonlight. He
+had the air, as he stepped back and forth, of sharing his vigil with
+some invisible companion. At times he nodded, and waving his pipe toward
+the rail, might have been holding forth in unspoken words. Getting the
+best of the argument, of course, I reflected bitterly, and startled him
+by stepping out in front of him.
+
+"'Good evening, Chief. Fine night for courtin', eh? A night like this
+reminds me o' the time when I was master. The moonlight, and the cliff,
+like the Morro. I was under the Cuban flag then you know, Chief. This
+brings it all back.' He waved his grisly meerschaum and added: 'Lovely
+place, Havana.'
+
+"'Where's the Third Mate?' said Captain Evans, suddenly emerging from
+the dark doorway. 'He isn't in his cabin.'
+
+"'He went ashore with the pilot in the cutter, Sir,' said Mr. Bloom. 'I
+did think of blowin' the whistle, only it occurred to me it might
+disturb the baby.'
+
+"To this piece of extreme consideration Jack offered no reply. He walked
+along as far as the engine-hatch and then, putting his fingers in his
+mouth, blew a shrill blast that echoed and reechoed between the cliffs.
+Men began to move about the ship, and a sailor appeared with a
+hurricane-lamp. A faint cry came out of the intense shadow of the
+western shore and Jack answered it with a stentorian 'Cutter ahoy!' that
+boomed and reverberated over our heads and trailed away into a wild
+racket of distant laughter.
+
+"'Don't shout so loud, man,' I suggested, when a cry once more came out
+of the shadow and we could see a faint glow as of a lantern in a boat
+moving toward us.
+
+"'Just been havin' a little look round, I dessay,' remarked Mr. Bloom
+with a bland tolerance of youthful folly which I remember irritated me
+intolerably. Jack kept his gaze fixed on the slowly moving glow.
+
+"'There's something wrong,' he remarked, soberly, ignoring Mr. Bloom at
+his elbow.
+
+"'Oh, I don't think so, Captain. Only a ...'
+
+"'I tell you there's something wrong!' snarled Jack, turning on him
+suddenly. 'Stand by at the ladder there,' and the man with the
+hurricane-lamp said, quietly, 'Right, Sir.' Jack returned his gaze to
+the boat, which was approaching the edge of the shadow. How he knew, I
+don't pretend to explain. I take it he had a _flair_, as the French say,
+the sort of _flair_ most of us acquire in our own profession and take
+for granted, but which always appears uncanny in another. And it was
+remarkable how the conviction that there _was_ something wrong seized
+upon the ship and materialized in a line of shadowy figures leaning on
+the bulwarks and projecting grotesquely illuminated faces into the light
+of the lamp on the gangway.
+
+"'Mr. Siddons there?' called Jack, quietly, as the boat came into view
+in the moonlight. The man at the tiller sang out 'No, Sir,' as he put
+the rudder over and added, 'way 'nuff. Catch hold there!' and another
+figure stood up in the bows and laid hold of the grating.
+
+"'Stand by,' said Jack coming down to the after deck. 'Come up here,
+you,' he added, addressing the man who had spoken. The man, one of the
+sailors, came up.
+
+"'We were waitin' for Mr. Siddons, Sir, when you hailed.'
+
+"'What orders did he leave?'
+
+"'Said he was going up the beach a little way, Sir. Told us he wouldn't
+be long.'
+
+"'Where did you land the pilot?'
+
+"'At Mr. Gruenbaum's jetty, Sir. It's the best for a big boat.'
+
+"'Then where is he now?'
+
+"'I couldn't say, Sir,' said the man. 'He went up the path with the
+pilot; that's all we know.'
+
+"Jack took a turn along the deck.
+
+"'P'raps I'd better go and 'unt him up,' suggested Mr. Bloom, stroking
+his moustache.
+
+"'And leave me here with one mate and no pilot?' said Jack. 'Fred, you
+go.' He followed me into my room where I had a pocket-torch, and
+whispered, 'Go up yourself, Jack. See what I mean? He's a decent young
+feller, even if I do find fault. Don't let the men see anything.'
+
+"'You don't think he's gone on the booze?' I said, incredulously.
+
+"'I don't know what to think,' he retorted, irritably. 'I always thought
+he had plenty o' principle. You can't tell nowadays. But we don't want
+him to spoil himself at the beginning of his career. Understand what I
+mean?'
+
+"As I sat in the stern of the cutter while the men pulled back into the
+shadow which was about to engulf the ship (for the moon was setting) I
+felt I liked Jack the better for that kindly whisper out of earshot of
+the estimable Mr. Bloom. It was like him. Now and again you could look
+into the depths of his character, where dwelt the old immemorial virtues
+of truth and charity and loyalty to his cloth. I even twisted round on
+the gunwale as I steered and looked back affectionately at his short,
+corpulent figure walking to and fro on the bridge deck, worrying himself
+about the 'young feller,' the embodiment of a rough yet exquisite
+altruism. It seemed to me a manifestation of love at least as worthy of
+admiration as was his domestic fidelity. Oh, yes! You fellows call me a
+cynic, but I believe in love, nevertheless. It is only your intense
+preoccupation with one particular sort of love which evokes the cynicism
+and which inspires the monstrous egotism of women like Mrs. Evans.
+
+"'Hard over, Sir,' said the leading seaman. 'Way 'nuff, boys!' I flashed
+my torch upon the tiny jetty which Gruenbaum had made near his house, for
+he often went on fishing expeditions round the island, I had heard.
+Steps had been cut down from a path in the face of the cliff which led
+away up to some workings facing the sea, but which are out of sight.
+When I had climbed up the jetty I said:
+
+"'Now you wait here while I go along to the house, and make enquiries. I
+don't suppose he's very far off.'
+
+"I made my own way up the rough stones to the path, midway between the
+soft whisper of the waves and the frightful edge above my head and I
+felt a momentary vertigo. I was suspended in the depths of an
+impenetrable darkness. All things--the jetty, the boat, the path, were
+swallowed up. Even the ship was indicated only by the faint
+hurricane-lamp at the gangway and the reflection of the galley-fire
+against a bulkhead. Stone for building and for buttressing the
+mine-galleries had been quarried out below, and the path was under-cut
+and littered about with the debris of an old ore-tip. I moved slowly
+toward Gruenbaum's house, and as my eyes became accustomed to the
+darkness I saw another path, a more slanting stairway, on the face of
+the cliff. I paused. It was some hundred yards or so to where Gruenbaum's
+house stood, as you see, at the foot of the slope. In the darkness
+Jack's words seemed to me to shed light. There was something wrong. But
+if something was wrong, if young Siddons had come to some harm, how had
+it happened? He must have had some motive in leaving a cutter with six
+men to wait for him. As for my idiotic suggestion that he might have
+gone on the booze, there wasn't a cafe within three miles that young
+Siddons would enter. He must have had some plan. Of course we are told,
+with wearisome insistence, to look for the woman; but we don't in real
+life. We look for all sorts of motives before we look for the woman. And
+even if I did in this instance suppose for a moment that Siddons had
+gone off on some mysterious adventure involving say, Captain Macedoine's
+daughter, I was no further advanced. He could hardly have told the
+sailors to wait. It was against all traditions of the service. And as I
+was deciding that he must have come to harm, and wondering how the deuce
+I was to discover him, a light shone out for a moment above me, I saw a
+figure silhouetted in a doorway and then vanish. Someone had gone in. I
+started up the steep by-path to make enquiries. I knew the pilot, a
+predatory person from Samos, had a hutch on the mountain somewhere, and
+it occurred to me that he had negotiated the sale of a flask or two of
+the sweetish wine of the island, and young Siddons had seized the
+opportunity to get it aboard without the old man knowing it. Quite a
+rational theory, I thought, as I toiled up the path getting short of
+breath. And suddenly I came upon the door which had opened and closed, a
+door in a house like a square white flat-topped box, with a window in
+one side shedding a faint glow upon a garden of shrubs.
+
+"And now I was in a quandary. I sat down on a bowlder to take a breath.
+Supposing I knocked at the door and asked if any one had seen the Third
+Mate, and the inhabitants had not seen him and couldn't understand me, I
+should have done no good. And supposing they had seen him, or that he
+was inside, I should have some difficulty in explaining my interest in
+his private affairs. For I liked him, and we are always afraid of those
+whom we like. It is not only that we fear to tarnish our own reputation
+in their eyes, but we suffer a mingled terror and pleasure lest we
+discover them to be unworthy of their exalted position in our
+affections. So I got up and instead of knocking at the door I stepped
+among the shrubs and came to the window. And sitting close against the
+wall, with a small table in front of him and his head on his hand, sat
+Captain Macedoine.
+
+"He was old. He showed, as we say, the ravages of time. And not of time
+only. Time alone could not furrow a human face into so many distorting
+folds and wrinkles. As I recalled the sleek, full-fed condition of his
+big smooth-shaven face when I had known him in the old days, I was
+revolted at the change. It was as though an evil spirit had been
+striving for years to leave him, and had failed. The cheeks were sunk
+into furrows of gray stubble and had sagged into sardonic ridges round
+the thin, wavering line of the mouth. The red eyelids blinked and
+twitched among the innumerable seams that ran back to the sparse,
+iron-gray hair. The nose, quite a noble and aquiline affair once, was
+red at the end, and querulous, like the long lean chin and reedy neck.
+Only the brow gave any hint that he might not be a casual loafer at a
+railroad station willing to carry your grip for a few pennies. High,
+narrow, and revealed remorselessly by the passing of the years, it was
+the brow of the supreme illusionist, the victim of an implacable and
+sinister spiritual destiny. I have said that when I saw him the
+previous evening he had the look of a man trying to win back into the
+world. Now that I saw him more clearly, he looked as though he had come
+back, at some frightful cost, and regretted it.
+
+"He was listening to someone I could not see at the moment, and raising
+his eyes with a regularly recurring movement that was almost mechanical.
+I shifted a little to take in another view of the small, shabbily
+furnished room. Standing by the end of a sofa, on which I could see a
+girl's feet and skirt, was a dark young man brushing his frock coat and
+talking with what struck me as absurd eloquence. He had never shaved;
+his face was obscured in a sort of brown fungus and was blotchy about
+the forehead and chin. His black eyes rolled as he talked and flourished
+the brush. He seemed to be describing something highly creditable to
+himself. This, I may tell you, was Monsieur Nikitos, visible in business
+hours as a clerk at Gruenbaum's elbow, or in a bare barn of an outer
+office. He came over to the table, and sitting down near Captain
+Macedoine, opened an account book. This was evidently a _seance_ of the
+Anglo-Hellenic Development Company, I thought, and I moved back to the
+path. I had no desire to spy upon any of these people, you understand. I
+had to find Siddons, and even the intriguing amusement of watching a
+great illusionist had to recede before that urgent need. I regained the
+path below and thinking I would go down to the boat in case he had
+returned I started back. The torch showed me a steep descent of rubble
+where a cave-in had occurred, a gash in the edge of the path, I thought
+at first it was the way down to the jetty and I flashed the lamp
+steadily upon the bottom. There was someone lying down there. It was not
+long before I was kneeling over young Siddons.
+
+"At first, you know, I really thought he was dead. He was lying face
+upward and his forehead had been gouged open above the left eye with
+some jagged edge and was bleeding in thick, slow runnels that
+disappeared into his curly hair. He lay perfectly motionless, but as I
+bent over him and searched the soft, delicate face in the first horror
+of grief, the eyes opened wide and blinked in a gaze of unconscious
+enquiry.
+
+"'What is it, my boy?' I asked and after seeming to collect himself he
+asked, in perfect calmness:
+
+"'Who is that?'
+
+"'The Chief,' I answered. 'Did you fall?' He closed his eyes and made an
+effort to move. I put my arm around him. He said:
+
+"'Chief, is the boat still there?' I told him it was.
+
+"'Help me up. Be careful. I think my collar-bone is broken again. Oh,
+Lord! Does--does the Old Man know?'
+
+"'It was he sent me,' I said. 'He was afraid you had had an accident.
+Does that hurt?'
+
+"'No--but catch hold of me lower down, will you?'
+
+"'How did it happen? Did you slip?'
+
+"'Oh, Lord! Yes--slipped, you know--look out!'
+
+"'I thought you were dead,' I said jocularly, as we reached the path.
+
+"And under his breath he made a remark that Captain Macedoine's daughter
+had made to me not so many hours before.
+
+"He said he wished he was."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"By Jove," said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly, after a long silence, "I have
+often wondered what might have happened to us if young Siddons hadn't
+tumbled down there and smashed himself up. I mean, supposing our minds
+hadn't been taken off the great subject of Captain Macedoine's financial
+projects. Because, mind you, although I behaved in a very sagacious
+manner while discussing the matter with Jack and his wife, I'm not at
+all prepared to say that I wouldn't have submitted if Jack had urged it
+in his tempestuous way. The psychology of being stung is a very
+complicated affair. We pride ourselves on our strong, clear vision and
+so forth, but it is very largely bluff. We are all reeds shaken by the
+winds of desire. In spite of my sagacity the notion of making a fortune
+was alluring. When I came to think of it the idea of a few years of
+ruthless exploitation of the toiling inhabitants of a region for which I
+had no sympathy, followed by a dignified return to England with a sunny
+competence--say ten thousand a year, afforded an attractive field for
+the development of one's personality. I suppose it comes to all of us at
+times--a vision of ourselves with the power to expand to the utmost. And
+at the back of it all lay the exasperating and tantalizing thought that
+it _might_ be possible. The very preposterousness of the suggestion was
+in its favour, in a way. The very fact that nobody else had ever thought
+of making a fortune out of Macedonia led one to wonder if it might not
+be done. You get an idea like that in your head, and it lies there and
+simmers and seethes, and finally boils over and you have taken the
+plunge. That's what might have happened, if I had not gone ashore to
+look for young Siddons, and accidentally beheld the great Captain
+Macedoine himself and his lieutenant. I don't say that the mere view of
+these two worthies discussing their plans was sufficient to convince me
+of their rascality. I'm not convinced of that even now. What I did
+acquire, even before young Siddons drove the whole matter into the
+background, was a sudden sense of proportion. To associate a golden
+fortune with those two shabby and cadaverous birds of prey was too much.
+And when we got aboard again the whole proposition seemed to have
+vanished into thin air.
+
+"Of course everyone was excited. Jack had to take hold and give orders.
+He shut his wife and youngster up in their cabin, ordered us all out of
+the saloon except the steward, and set to work on young Siddons, who was
+lying on the table with a towel under his head. Mr. Bloom, who had been
+rushing to and fro making friends with the Second, the Third, and even
+the donkey man, in a frenzied attempt to get information about the coal
+which was to be sold the next day, now favoured me with a heart-to-heart
+talk on the subject of professional etiquette. It was a mistake, in his
+opinion as an experienced ship's officer, for the Captain to be a
+surgeon as well. It was time we took a firm stand. Owners should be
+informed that this primitive and obsolete state of affairs could be no
+longer tolerated. Now when he was sailing under the Cuban flag, they
+always carried a surgeon. Compelled to by law. Of course one couldn't
+let a man die for lack of attention; but if he was in Captain Evans'
+shoes, he would send in a report with a formal protest appended. Do
+everything courteously and in due form but--be firm! That was the
+trouble with sea-going officers--they were not firm with their
+employers. He himself, he was frank to say, had often given owners a
+piece of his mind, and no doubt he had suffered for it. And why? Simply
+because he got no support. Now he knew I wouldn't take any silly offence
+if he mentioned a personal matter, but really for Captain Evans to send
+an engineer ashore in a boat was in the highest degree unprofessional.
+It was a job for an executive officer, obviously. Not that he wished to
+criticise--far from it--but _verb. sap_ as they say at Oxford and
+Cambridge. A word to the right man, mind you, was worthy any amount of
+useless argument with--well, he wouldn't mention any names, but I knew
+what he meant, no doubt.
+
+"How long this enchanted imbecile would have continued his monologue I
+shouldn't care to say, if Jack had not called me down to help get young
+Siddons into his bunk. The collar-bone, broken more than once at
+football, would knit nicely, he said, and he had put a couple of neat
+stitches in the gash over the eye. Made him shout, Jack admitted as he
+washed his hands with carbolic soap, but what was a little pain compared
+with being disfigured for life? He reckoned it would heal up and leave
+no more than a faint scar. What did I reckon he was doing, eh? Funny for
+him to leave the boat. Very unusual. What did I think?
+
+"'Didn't he give you any explanation?' I enquired.
+
+"'Well, I suppose you can call it an explanation,' said Jack, 'in a way.
+He said he went ashore for a few minutes on a private matter, and he
+would appreciate it if I took his word. I'm supposed to keep the matter
+private, too, so keep your trap shut, Fred. Fact is,' he went on, 'it's
+that gel's at the bottom of it. He's one of those young fellers who take
+it hard when they do take it. What they call in novvels hopeless
+passion.'
+
+"I was surprised at Jack's penetration. Indeed I was surprised at his
+allusion to what he called 'novvels' for he had never, so far as I knew,
+read any. Perhaps he had taken a surreptitious squint at some of the
+exemplary serials which Mrs. Evans affected.
+
+"'Then you won't take any action?' I said.
+
+"'Why should I? He's had an accident, that's all. If he'd fell down and
+broke his neck, it would be different. As it is, he's had a lesson. I
+must go up and take a look round.'
+
+"Jack went up on deck to take a look at the mooring ropes, for the
+weather is treacherous in spring and autumn hereabouts, and more than
+once we had to slip and run out to sea. I stepped into the little
+alleyway on the port-side and walked along to young Siddons' room. The
+door was on the hook and a bright bar of light lay athwart the floor of
+the alleyway. He was lying on his back as we had left him, his
+unbandaged eye staring straight up at the deck overhead. As I opened the
+door and closed it behind me he turned that eye upon me without moving
+his head.
+
+"'All right?' I asked, just for something to say. He made a slight
+gesture with his hand, signifying, I imagine, that it was nothing. His
+face had that expression of formidable composure which the young assume
+to conceal their emotions. I don't know exactly why I bothered myself
+with him just then. Perhaps because there is for me a singular
+fascination in watching the young. I won't say it is affection, because
+our relations are usually of the sketchiest description. Sometimes I
+don't know them at all. I fancy it is because one sees oneself in them
+surrounded by the magical glamour of an incorruptible destiny. As we
+say, they are refreshing, even in their griefs, and there is something
+in the theory that we, as we are crossing the parched areas of middle
+age, can draw upon their spiritual vitality to our own advantage if not
+to theirs.
+
+"'Nothing you want, eh?' I said, looking round. The one bright eye
+stared straight up again.
+
+"'Will you do me a favour, Chief?' he asked in a low tone.
+
+"'Of course I will,' I answered. 'What is it?'
+
+"'If you wouldn't mind, when you go ashore, to see Miss Macedoine and
+tell her I am sorry she couldn't--you see,' he broke off, suddenly, 'I
+said I'd see her this evening. I went up ... she wasn't there. I
+couldn't wait ... boat waiting, you know. Then something ... well, I
+fell down. Would you mind?'
+
+"'I'll tell her,' I said. 'Is she fond of you?'
+
+"His eye closed and he lay as motionless as though he were dead.
+
+"'I don't suppose it matters now,' he remarked, very quietly. 'I shan't
+see her again, very likely. Only I thought--if you told her how it
+was ... you understand?'
+
+"'I tell you what I'll do,' I replied. 'I'll ask her to come and see
+you. Isn't that the idea?'
+
+"'Yes, that's the idea,' he returned with extraordinary bitterness.
+'That's all it's likely to be--an idea. I never did have any luck. It's
+always the way, somehow. The things you want ... you can't get. And now,
+this ... I say, Chief.'
+
+"'Well?'
+
+"'Excuse me, won't you, talking like this. I'm awfully grateful really.
+It means a good deal to me, if she only knows I meant to be there. She
+said I could--if I liked.'
+
+"'Isn't she playing with you?' I asked, harshly. He put up his hand.
+
+"'No, she's not that sort. She's different from other girls. She's had a
+rotten time ... I can't tell you.... It would have been different if she
+was coming home with us. Everything seems against me. No matter ... a
+chap has to put up with his luck, I suppose.'
+
+"'You'll pick up,' I suggested, without much brilliance I am afraid. He
+made no reply, lying with a sort of stern acquiescence in the enigmatic
+blows of fate.
+
+"And the next day, when the ore was crashing into the holds and the ship
+lay in a red fog of dust, Jack and I went ashore on our business. I
+remember Mr. Bloom walking to and fro on the bridge deck with the Second
+Mate, nudging him facetiously as they passed the Second, who was rigging
+his tackle over the bunker, and nodding toward us as we made our way
+among the ore-trucks and down to the beach. The Second had told me that
+'the nosey blighter' had been making inquiries about the coal, with sly
+innuendoes dusted over his sapient remarks. It was a subject to which
+Mr. Bloom's lofty conceptions of 'professional etiquette' would do full
+justice. As we climbed the steps which ran up outside Gruenbaum's house,
+I was wondering to myself if I should be able to redeem my promise to
+young Siddons. There seemed small likelihood of it unless I took Jack
+into our confidence. We entered a high stone passage through the farther
+end of which we could see Gruenbaum's orchard and Gruenbaum's five
+children playing under the trees in the care of a fat Greek woman. We
+turned to the left into an immense chamber with a cheap desk and office
+chair in one corner. The whitewashed walls were decorated with
+oleographs of imaginary Greek steamships, all funnels and bridge, with
+towering knife-like prows cleaving the Atlantic at terrific speed. There
+were advertisements of Greek and Italian insurance companies, too, and a
+battered yellow old map of the Cyclades. And standing at the tall
+windows was a figure in a frock coat squinting through a telescope. He
+put it down hurriedly as we entered, walked across to the desk, and
+resting his hand on it, made us a bow. This was Monsieur Nikitos, the
+lieutenant of the mighty enterprise. I must confess that his pose at
+that moment was less of the financier than of a world-famous virtuoso at
+the piano bowing to a tumult of applause.
+
+"'This is the Chief Engineer,' said Jack. The virtuoso favoured me with
+a special bow, and waved his hand to a couple of chairs.
+
+"'Take a seat, Captain. Take a seat, Mister Chief. Mr. Gruenbaum is
+engaged at the moment. I take the opportunity of mentioning the little
+matter we discussed yesterday, Captain. I have no doubt you will take
+shares in our company.'
+
+"Jack looked at me, and I regarded Monsieur Nikitos with fresh interest.
+He was a most mysterious creature to look at, now we were close to him.
+He was quite young, not more than twenty-five, and the black fuzz on his
+face gave him a singularly dirty appearance. As he sat in his swivel
+chair with the tails of his dusty frock coat draped over the arms,
+tapping his large white teeth with his pen and brushing his black hair
+from his blotchy forehead, he suddenly gave me the impression of a poet
+trying to think of a rhyme.
+
+"'We have decided,' I said, and he dropped his hands and inclined his
+ear, 'to think it over.' He slumped back in his chair, smiled, and shook
+his head. Then he straightened up and reaching for a ruler looked
+critically at it.
+
+"'We cannot wait. In affairs of finance one must think quickly, then
+act--so!' He snapped his thumb and finger. 'If not, the chance is gone.
+Now I show you. To-day, Captain Macedoine resigns. Yes! To-morrow, _I_
+resign. Like that. To-morrow also, Monsieur Spilliazeza, our invaluable
+manager of works, resigns! To-night, the _Osmanli_ calls for the mails.
+We go by the _Osmanli_, our vessel, to Saloniki. We arrive. We take
+action at once.' He waved his arms. 'Action! Next week it will be too
+late. Option taken up, work commenced, contracts awarded, organization
+complete. It is all here.' He tapped his forehead. 'I have it complete,
+in inauguration, here.' And he regarded us with a gaze of rapt
+abstraction in his brilliant black eyes.
+
+"I don't mind telling you that the chief impression this performance
+made upon me was that he was a lunatic. Jack was staring solemnly at
+him. I imagine he began to have doubts of the wisdom of entrusting this
+creature with real money. And then a bell tinkled, one of a pair of high
+dark folding doors opened, and I had a glimpse of a great room where an
+enormously fat man sat in the curve of a vast horseshoe shaped desk. It
+was only a momentary view, you understand, of the diffused light shed by
+three tall windows upon a chamber of unusual size. I had an impression
+of glancing into a museum, a glimpse of a statue, very white and tall
+with an arm broken off short, gleaming glass cases of small things that
+shone like opals and aquamarines, and great bunches of coral like
+petrified foam. I saw all this as the door stood for a moment, the
+fezzed head of a little old gentleman looking out and mumbling the word
+'_Kapitan!_' We stood up. Jack made a movement to go in. Monsieur
+Nikitos came between us and regarded us as though we were conspirators.
+
+"'Monsieur Gruenbaum will see the Kapitan,' he remarked in a loud voice,
+and then in a whisper, 'Of this--not a word,' And he pressed his
+knuckles to his lips. And then Jack passed into the room, the door
+closed softly, and I was alone with Monsieur Nikitos.
+
+"My feelings at that moment, you know, were mixed. I was astonished.
+I was amused. I was indignant. I looked at the frock-coated
+figure before me with an expression of profound distaste and
+contempt. He gave me a confidential smile and indicated a chair.
+I sat down, looking at the closed folding doors. And as I sat
+there I became aware that Monsieur Nikitos was indulging in
+a whispered monologue. I caught the words--man of wide views--great
+wealth--vast experience--unlimited prospects--unique grasp of
+detail--necessary in affairs--man of affairs ... and then, in
+a lower tone--daughter--beauty--happiness--future--efforts
+redoubled--found fortunes--ideals--cannot express feelings--humble
+aspirations--many years--ambition--travel....
+
+"I suppose I must have made some sound to indicate my coherent interest
+in this unlooked-for rigmarole, for he sprang up, and placed himself
+between me and the folding doors. He bent his head to my ear. He desired
+to know if I considered my Kapitan reliable. Would he invest? That was
+the thing. Would he invest? Had he character? Why did he ask? Because he
+had a design. The Swedish Kapitan who had invested was a single man, a
+man of no education, I was to understand--no culture. But my Kapitan was
+a married man. Of course he would settle in Saloniki, that fairest
+jewel in the Turkish crown. He himself knew a house in a good
+street--just the thing. He was anxious about this because he himself
+would shortly become a married man. He sat down abruptly and waved the
+ruler. As in a dream I sat there listening to his words. I have a notion
+now that he gave me his whole life history. I recall reference to--early
+years--great ambitions--great work--frustrated--years of exile--unique
+qualifications--international journalism--special correspondent--highly
+commended--friend of liberty--confidential agent, and so on. He had an
+immense command of rapidly enunciated phrases which were run together
+and interspersed with melodramatic pauses and gestures. And I said
+nothing--nothing at all. He ran on, apparently quite satisfied that I
+had a deep and passionate interest in his vapourings. As a matter of
+fact, I paid very little attention. I was wondering whether it would be
+worth my while to obtain an interview with the girl, if what he had
+hinted were true, that her assistance in her father's designs was to
+many this eloquent lieutenant and satisfy his 'humble aspirations.' And
+while I wondered I heard harsh words uttered within the folding
+doors--_confidence in my dispositions_--said a voice of grating
+power and guttural sound. Monsieur Nikitos looked at me for an
+instant and waved his ruler. He muttered. He alluded to tyrannical
+obstinacy--unimaginative autocracy--intolerable domination--and other
+polysyllabic enormities. The harsh voice went on in an unintelligible
+rumble, rising again to 'post of a secretarial nature--a man of
+undeserved misfortune--my disgust--effrontery to submit--resignation.' I
+listened, and Monsieur Nikitos, who was gazing at me, gradually assumed
+an expression of extreme alarm. He rose and went on tip-toe into the
+outer hall. He reappeared suddenly with a broad-brimmed felt hat on his
+head. He muttered some excuses--appointment--return immediately--urgent
+necessity--apologies--in a moment--and tip-toed away again, leaving me
+alone.
+
+"I was beginning to think Jack had forgotten all about me when he came
+out and closed the door behind him. We walked out into the passage
+together, but he made no remark until I asked him if it was all right
+about the coal. He said yes, it was all right, but what did I think?
+That chap Macedoine was a wrong-un, according to Gruenbaum. Trying to get
+control. Gruenbaum had sacked him. After fetching his daughter out for
+him, too. It was true, what Nikitos had told us. They were going all
+right but because they had to. Gruenbaum was in a devil of a rage over
+it. Had cabled to Paris to send out some more men. Good job he'd had
+the notion of asking Gruenbaum about it, eh? Might have lost our money.
+Now he came to think of it, that Greek didn't look very reliable. Was I
+coming back on board?
+
+"We paused on the beach, where a few fishing boats were drawn up and the
+nets lay in the sun drying.
+
+"'I don't think I will,' I said. 'I guess I'll take a walk up the cliff
+over there. When will you pull off to the buoys?'
+
+"'Not a minute after five,' he returned. 'It's none so safe here at
+night. Steam ready all the time remember, Fred. Gruenbaum was just giving
+me a friendly warning.'
+
+"I started off for a walk up the cliff. The point where the path cut
+round the corner stood sharp against the sky and led me on. As I gained
+the beginning of the rise I could look back and down into Gruenbaum's
+garden where lemon, fig, plum, and almond trees grew thickly above green
+grass cut into sectors by paths of white marble flags and with a
+fountain sending a thin jet into the air. I could see children playing
+about under the trees, but there were no birds. There were no birds on
+the island. I realized this perfectly irrelevant fact at that moment,
+and I became aware of the singular isolation of this man living under
+the gigantic shadow of the mountain. It gave me a sudden and profound
+consciousness of his extreme security against the designs oL imaginative
+illusionists. The vast bulk of the man became identified in my mind with
+the tremendous mass of rock against which I was leaning. The momentary
+glimpses into his office, the memory of the bizarre conjunction of
+ancient statuary with the furniture of business and money-making, the
+harsh voice reverberating through the lofty chambers, gave me a feeling
+that I had been assisting at some incredible theatrical performance. I
+started off again. I felt I needed a walk. After all, these reflections
+were but an idle fancy. Jack and I were not likely to risk our small
+savings in any such wild-cat schemes. Jack's words about pulling off to
+the buoys had recalled me to a sense of serious responsibility. One
+always had that hanging over one while in Ipsilon. Gruenbaum, from his
+secure fastness under the mountain, was familiar with the incalculable
+treachery of the wind and sea.
+
+"I was soon far above the habitation of men. Above me slanted the masses
+of weathered limestone and marble; below, reduced to the size of a
+child's toy, I could see the _Manola_. At intervals I could hear a faint
+rattle and another cloud of red dust would rise from her deck, like the
+smoke of a bombardment. Far below me were a tiny group of men at work in
+a quarry. They seemed to be engaged in some fascinating game. They
+clustered and broke apart, running here and there, crouching behind
+boulders, and remaining suddenly still. There would be a dull thump, a
+jet of smoke, and a few pieces of rock, microscopic to me, would tumble
+about. And then all the pigmy figures would run out again and begin
+industriously to peck at these pieces, like ants, and carry them, with
+tiny staggerings, out of sight. I watched them for a moment and then
+walked on until I came to the corner where the path curves to the right
+and eventually confronts the open sea. I was alone with the inaccessible
+summits and the soft murmur of invisible waves breaking upon half-tide
+rocks. I was in mid-air with a scene of extraordinary beauty and
+placidity spread before me. The sea, deep blue save where it shallowed
+into pale green around the farther promontory, was a mirror upon which
+the shadows of clouds flickered and passed like the moods of an innocent
+soul. In the distance lay the purple masses of other islands, asleep. It
+was as though I were gazing upon a beautiful and empty world, awaiting
+the inevitable moment when men should claim the right to destroy its
+loveliness....
+
+"At intervals along the face of the cliff were tunnels which led
+through the marble shell of the mountain into the veins of ore. I walked
+along looking for a place to sit down, stepping from tie to tie of the
+narrow-gauge track along which the mine trucks were pushed by Gruenbaum's
+islanders. I suppose the vein had petered out up there.... I don't know.
+One of Gruenbaum's dispositions, perhaps. Anyhow it was deserted. I came
+to a huge mass of rock projecting from the face, so that the track
+swerved outward to clear it. I walked carefully round and stopped
+suddenly.
+
+"She was sitting there, leaning against the entrance to a working, and
+looking out across the sea. Without alarm or resentment she turned her
+head slightly and looked at me, and then bent her gaze once more upon
+the distance. I hesitated for a moment, doubtful of her mood, and she
+spoke quietly.
+
+"'What is it?' she asked. I went up and stood by her.
+
+"'I have a message for you,' I remarked, and took out a cigarette. 'But
+I had no idea you were up here. In fact, I dare say I should have gone
+back on board without giving it to you.'
+
+"'What is it?' she said again, and this time she looked at me.
+
+"'You don't know, I suppose,' I said, 'that Siddons--the Third Mate--has
+had an accident?'
+
+"She looked away and paused before answering.
+
+"'I see,' she remarked, though what she saw I did not quite comprehend
+at the moment. It seemed a strange comment to make.
+
+"'Oh, come!' I said. 'Don't say you're not interested.'
+
+"'How did it happen?' she enquired, looking at her shoe.
+
+"I told her. She turned her foot about as though examining it, her
+slender hands clasped on her lap. She had an air of being occupied with
+some problem in which I had no part.
+
+"'And the message?' she said at length. I gave her that, too, briefly,
+and without any colouring of my own. She put one leg over the other,
+clasping her knee with her hands, and bent forward, looking suddenly at
+me from under bent brows.
+
+"'What can I do?' she demanded in a low tone.
+
+"'But don't you see,' I returned. 'He's in love with you.'
+
+"She gave a faint shrug of the shoulders and uttered a sound of
+amusement.
+
+"'Then you are indifferent?' I asked, annoyed.
+
+"'What else can I be?' she said. 'Boys always think they are in love. I
+don't think much of that sort of love.' And she fell silent again,
+looking at the sea.
+
+"'Look here, my dear,' I said abruptly, 'tell me about it. I'm in the
+dark. Can't I help you?'
+
+"'No,' she said. 'You can't. Nobody can help me. I'm in a fix.'
+
+"'But how?' I persisted.
+
+"'Do you suppose,' she said, slowly, 'that nobody has been in love with
+me before I came on your ship? I thought you'd understand, when I told
+you I had never had any luck. I haven't. I had no one to tell me. I
+thought people were kinder, you know--men, I mean. And now all I can do
+is wait ... wait. Sometimes I wish I was dead, wish I'd never been born!
+Before you came up, I was wondering if I couldn't just jump--finish it
+all up--no more waiting. And then I found I hadn't the pluck to do that.
+I tried to tell Mrs. Evans once, give her a hint somehow, but she
+doesn't understand. She's safe. She's got a husband as well as ... no
+matter. I was going to tell you, one evening, you remember, but I got
+scared. I didn't feel sure about you. Oh, I'm sorry, of course, about
+Mr. Siddons. I liked him, you know. He's a gentleman. But even gentlemen
+are very much the same as anybody else.'
+
+"'But what will you do?' I asked in astonishment.
+
+"'I must go with my father,' she replied, stonily. 'He wants me to be
+with him. He is not happy here. He is misunderstood. He is going into
+business with my--with another man. We are going to Saloniki. I dare
+say I shall do as he wishes. That's what a daughter should do, isn't
+it?' And her eyes flickered toward me again.
+
+"I didn't answer, and there was a long silence. I had no words of
+consolation for that solitary soul engaged in the sombre business of
+waiting. And I understood the trivial role which young Siddons played in
+her tragic experience. To her we were all pasteboard figures actuated by
+a heartless and irrelevant destiny. Fate had shut the door upon her with
+a crash, and she was alone with her griefs in an alien world. I put my
+arm round her shoulders. She looked at me with hard bright eyes, her red
+lips firmly set.
+
+"'Can I help you?' I whispered. She shook her head. 'At least,' I went
+on, 'you can write to me, if you were in trouble--ever. I would like you
+to feel that someone is thinking of you.'
+
+"'It's kind of you,' she said, with a faint smile, 'but _you_ wouldn't
+be able to do much. Oh! I know what men are,' she added with a
+hysterical little laugh. 'Always thinking of themselves. There's always
+that behind everything they do. They don't mean it, but it's there, all
+the time. Even you wouldn't do anything to make yourself uncomfortable,
+you know.'
+
+"'You don't think a great deal of us,' I remonstrated, taking my arm
+away.
+
+"'No, I don't!' she said with sudden hard viciousness of tone. 'I've had
+very little reason to, so far.'
+
+"'You are meeting trouble half way, going on like this,' I said,
+severely. 'Come now. I insist. Promise me you will write when you get to
+Saloniki. Here, I'll give you my address.' And I gave it to her. She
+sighed.
+
+"'I'm not afraid of life,' she said, 'when it is fair play. But I
+haven't had fair play. I've been up against it every time. If I got a
+chance----'
+
+"'What sort of a chance?' I asked, curiously. There was a look of savage
+determination on her face, and she clenched her teeth and hands on the
+word 'chance.'
+
+"'Oh, I'm not done yet,' she exclaimed to the air. 'I'm in a fix, but if
+I ever get out of it alive, look out!'
+
+"'What do you mean?' I asked again.
+
+"'Nothing that you would approve of,' she answered, dropping her voice.
+'Nothing any of you would approve of.'
+
+"'That means it's something foolish,' I remarked.
+
+"'Perhaps. We'll see,' she retorted.
+
+"'I would like to have taken a word back to young Siddons,' I hinted.
+'Just to show you cared a little.'
+
+"'But I don't!' she burst out. 'I don't! He bothered me to let him come
+and see me and I said--I don't know what I said. Tell him anything you
+like. I don't care. I'm sick of it all there!'
+
+"'You are making it very hard for me,' I said, gently, and she flung
+round suddenly and faced me, her eyes shining, her lips parted in a
+rather mirthless smile. She was an extraordinarily beautiful creature
+just then. Her face, with its slightly broad, firmly modelled nostrils,
+the small ears set close under the cloud of soft dark hair, and the
+thick black eyebrows, was informed with a kind of radiance that
+heightened the sinister impression of her scorn. She regarded me
+steadfastly as though she had had her curiosity suddenly aroused.
+
+"'You!' she said. 'Hard for you? What is there hard for you anywhere?
+_You_ don't take any chances. Humph!' and she turned away again.
+
+"'Just what does that mean?' I enquired. 'If you don't care anything
+about young Siddons, you're hardly likely to care much about any of the
+rest of us.'
+
+"'No?' she said, tauntingly. 'No?'
+
+"'I offered you my sympathy,' I began, and she turned on me again.
+
+"'This?' she asked, holding up the address I had given her. 'What's the
+good of this, if I wanted help?'
+
+"'But what can I do?' I insisted. 'Use me. Tell me what you want me to
+do!'
+
+"'Well,' she said in a dry, hard voice and looking away out to sea. 'I
+suppose you know what a girl in my position usually wants of a single
+man, don't you?'
+
+"'But, my child,' I said, 'this is extraordinary!'
+
+"'Oh, don't '_my child_' me,' she retorted in a passion. 'I thought you
+understood.'
+
+"Well, I suppose I had understood in a vague sort of way, but I
+certainly had not credited her with any active designs of this sort. And
+while I sat beside her reflecting upon the precarious nature of a
+bachelor's existence, I found she had glanced round upon me again, her
+expression at once critical and derisive. She saw through my sentimental
+interest in her affairs. She knew that at the first signal of danger to
+my own peace and position I would sheer off, regretfully but swiftly. Of
+course she was perfectly right. The mere thought of her father and his
+mangy lieutenant was sufficient. She had so much against her. It was
+horrible. As I sat there counting up the handicaps which Fate had
+imposed upon her I was aware of that critical and derisive smile
+regarding me over her shoulder. And I felt ashamed. I had an uneasy
+feeling that she was thinking of my severely paternal manner when I put
+my arm round her and made her take my address. She thought more of young
+Siddons, no doubt, more even of Nikitos, who was willing to marry her
+without knowing her secret, than she did of me. That is one of the
+penalties of remaining a super in the play. The leading lady regards you
+with critical derision or she doesn't regard you at all.
+
+"'Let us suppose,' I suggested after a silence, 'that I do understand.
+Then why do you turn down young Siddons?'
+
+"She made a sound and a gesture of impatience.
+
+"'Oh, because of any amount of reasons,' she said, looking out to sea
+again. 'A lot I'd see of him if he knew.'
+
+"'Doesn't he? He told me you had had a bad time.' She shrugged her
+shoulders.
+
+"'I told him some sort of tale, just to pass the time. I'm not such a
+fool. _You_ can tell him if you like,' she laughed shortly. 'I knew a
+girl in the office who was engaged. She told him one day, after making
+him promise to be her friend, and he nearly killed her, and left her.'
+
+"'Young Siddons wouldn't do that,' I asserted.
+
+"'No, he's a gentleman,' she sneered. 'He'd sail away. A handy
+profession, a sailor's!'
+
+"I must confess that I was hypocrite enough to be shocked at this. She
+wasn't far wrong, though. We do sail away, most of us, whether we are
+gentlemen or not. I suppose we are all of us, at times, the victims of
+the perplexing discrepancy between romance and reality. Only I wonder
+why it is so many of us recover, and think of our escapades with a
+shamefaced grin on our damaged countenances. They say these tremendous
+emotional experiences tend to make us nobler. Why is it, when we come to
+analyze ourselves and others in middle life, we seem to find nothing
+save the dried-up residues of dead passions and the dregs of
+relinquished aspirations? Why is it the young can see through our
+tattered make-ups and judge us so unfalteringly and with such little
+mercy? No doubt we get our revenge, if we live long enough and are
+sufficiently rapacious to take it!
+
+"Yes, I was shocked, and she regarded me with defiant derision in her
+bright dark eyes. She challenged me. I needn't tell you I did not then
+accept. Here was a woman making the supreme appeal, locked up in a
+castle kept by a whole regiment of ogres, and challenging me to come to
+her rescue. And, as she put it, I sailed away.
+
+"'And besides,' she broke in on me with a short laugh, 'thirty shillings
+a week! You can't keep house on that anywhere, as far as I know.'
+
+"This shocked me, too, until I reflected that this girl was not making
+sentimental overtures, that she was simply explaining her extremely
+secular reasons for rejecting a particular candidate. She was in that
+mood and predicament. You can call it, with a certain amount of truth, a
+girl's cross-roads. It certainly seems to me to be a more momentous
+point in a woman's life than the accepted and conventional crisis which
+confronts virginity. A man may successfully deceive a woman, as we
+phrase it (rather ineptly), and make not the smallest impression upon
+her personality or character. But the man who assumes the abandoned
+function of protector, no matter what you call him, is invested with
+tremendous powers. No power on earth can bring her back from the road on
+which he sets her feet. She's got to take her cue from him. I suppose
+she knows this, and when the time comes to mark down her victim she
+brings to the business all the resources of her feminine intuition and
+the remorseless judgment of a panther's spring. The ruthless reference
+to poor young Siddons' six pounds a month wages--thirty shillings a
+week--illustrates the mood exactly. Mind you, it is absurd to accuse a
+girl of being merely callous and mercenary when she talks like that. She
+is really merciful to her rejections in the long run. And she is
+proceeding on the very rational argument that a man's value to a woman
+may be roughly gauged by the value the world sets on him. She is not
+merely a greedy little fool. Women upon whom such decisions are forced
+achieve extraordinary skill in estimating the characters of men. Young
+chaps like Siddons simply don't count--they are thrown to the discard at
+once. Innocence and purity of soul are not negotiable assets in this
+sort of thing. Even men with merely a great deal of money are not so
+successful as one might imagine. They fizzle out if they lack the
+character which the woman admires. I have seen them fizzle. A man who
+roves as I do, reserving for himself, as I have insisted, the part of a
+super in the play, naturally has many opportunities of watching the
+lives of these emotional adventurers and the women who constitute the
+inspiration of the adventures. The singularity of the present instance
+was that, for the first time in my life, I was assisting at the
+inauguration of such a career. That is how I interpreted her enigmatic
+references to 'something I would not approve of.' And when I had got
+that far I could see it was useless to bring in Siddons any more. His
+destiny lay ahead. I have no doubt he achieved it with chivalrous
+rectitude. We English have a way of weathering the gales of passion.
+
+"I was turning these things over in my mind as we sat up there on the
+cliff and half regretting, perhaps, my usual inability to play up to my
+romantic situation when she raised her hand and pointed out to sea. The
+surface of the ocean lay like shimmering satin in the hush of the
+afternoon, but far away a small black blot, with a motionless trail of
+smoke astern, moved at the apex of a diverging ripple. She pointed to it
+and looked at me with that hard, bright, radiant smile. It certainly was
+significant. This was the _Osmanli_, the little tin-kettle steamboat in
+which her father had invested his capital, the humble beginning of that
+vast enterprise, the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. The actual
+presence of that forlorn little vessel made a profound difference to our
+words. It was impossible to deny that Captain Macedoine's dreams might
+come true after all. His remarkable countenance might yet feature in our
+magazines as one of our great captains of industry, while I, with old
+Jack, pursued our obscure ways, the victims of a never-ending regret.
+The _Osmanli_ came on, slowly pushing that immense ripple across the
+opaline floors. Perhaps the girl perceived the significance of this. Her
+hand dropped to her lap but she continued to regard me in a sort of
+defiant silence. There! she seemed to say, there lies our future, wide
+as the sea, glorious as the afternoon sun on purple isles and the
+fathomless blue of heavens! She was extraordinarily lovely. I found
+myself trying to picture the sort of man who would appear later to
+fashion her destiny--perhaps one of the capitalists who would inevitably
+be drawn into the great enterprise. She would develop tremendously. For
+a moment I felt an access of regret at my renunciation. Too late, no
+doubt. But I have not scrupled since to think of what might have been,
+had I not--well, lost my nerve, let us say, and preferred to keep in the
+cool, shadowy by-ways of life. That's what her bright, defiant smile
+really meant, I believe now. I was no use to her because I didn't dare
+to grab her and take the consequences. They say women nowadays are
+rebelling against being possessed. The trouble seems to be rather that
+so many men shrink from the trouble and the strain and responsibility
+that possession entails. Too much civilization, I suppose. We are afraid
+of looking foolish, afraid of taking a chance. We sail away. And when we
+read in the news of some intrepid soul who does take a chance, who
+snatches a breathless woman off her feet and gallops thundering through
+all our mean and cowardly conventions and finishes up perhaps with a
+bullet in his brain, we shrug and mutter that he was a fool. We remain
+safe and die in our beds, but we have to suffer in silence that bright,
+critical, derisive smile which means 'Thou art afraid!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Yes, afraid!" said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly, after another long pause, as
+though one of the silent and recumbent forms under the awning had
+contradicted him. "We have got so that no man dare do anything off his
+own bat, as we say. We hunt in packs. It makes no difference whether the
+individual man is a saint or a sinner.
+
+"We pull him down. Our whole scheme of life has been designed to put a
+premium on the tame and well-behaved, on the careful and steady
+householder and his hygienic _menage_. We read with regret of disorder
+in various parts of the world, and we despatch our legions from our own
+immaculate shores to 'restore order.' Punitive expeditions we call them.
+We have assumed the role of policeman in an ebullient world. Faith,
+Love, Courage, are well enough if they declare a dividend and fill up
+the necessary forms. We are dominated by the domestic. Women like Mrs.
+Evans wield enormous power. It is not so much that they have character
+as characteristics. They are the priestesses of the Temples of Home. I
+used to watch that woman on the voyage to England. I was inspired by a
+new and rabid curiosity. I wanted to see her in that aspect of security
+which had moved the girl with such bitterness. Because Mrs. Evans hadn't
+struck me as very safe when I had last seen her, sending out wireless
+calls to me in her extremity. She had been sure I would give dear Jack
+the best advice. That, in her private mind, was my mission on earth--to
+minister to the needs of her and her angel child. But she was safe now.
+She would greet me in what for her was almost a melting mood. I was the
+confidant of the angel child's imaginary maladies. I was permitted to be
+by while this precious being, sitting among blankets after her bath, was
+fed with a highly nitrogenous extract of something or other from a cup.
+Once I made a remark to the effect that they would have to get a fresh
+nurse when they got home. Mrs. Evans bridled. She drew down the corners
+of her mouth and remarked that in future she would look after Babs
+herself.
+
+"'But,' I said, 'if you could get a girl like Miss Macedoine.' Mrs.
+Evans kept her gaze on Babs, who was staring at me over the rim of the
+cup with her bold, protuberant black eyes like those of some marine
+animal.
+
+"'No,' she said, 'girls like that are too much trouble.'
+
+"'You mean--followers?' I suggested. Mrs. Evans turned red and moved
+slightly.
+
+"'She wasn't nice,' she replied, coldly, and pronounced it 'neyce.'
+
+"'Oh,' I said, 'I wasn't aware you knew.' She got redder.
+
+"'I don't know what you are talking about,' she muttered. 'As far as I
+could see, she was very fortunate in getting her passage out free, very
+fortunate. She was not neyce with Babs. Babs didn't take to her.
+Children _know_!'
+
+"'Still,' I said, looking at the omniscient Babs lying back in repletion
+and trying to decide upon some fresh demand, 'Still, I felt sorry for
+her, a pretty creature like that, at a dangerous age, you know...' I
+had to stop, for Mrs. Evans' usually pale features were a dull brick
+red. Her head was drawn back and she became rigid with disapproval. This
+is what I mean when I say such women wield enormous power. They are
+panoplied in prejudice and conventional purity. Mrs. Evans was like
+that. She was safe. She was a pure woman. I looked at her thin, peaked
+little features as she replaced the blanket about the kicking limbs of
+the angel child and thought of that girl with her bright, defiant,
+derisive smile challenging me to high adventure. Mrs. Evans' function in
+life was not to challenge but to disapprove. She could endure no
+discussion of the fundamentals. She could read tales of passion and
+rape, and not a flicker of emotion would cross that pallid face. But
+there must be no spoken word. Instinctively she drew back and became
+rigid, protecting her immaculate soul and the angel child from the
+faintest breath of reality. In that flat bosom raged a hatred, a horror,
+of beauty and the desire of it--a conviction that it was neither good
+nor evil, but simply strange, foreign, unknown, unsuitable; incompatible
+with the semi-detached house on the Portsmouth Road whose photograph
+hung on the bulkhead behind her. There was something shocking in the
+contrast this woman presented to her environment out there. Gruenbaum,
+living under the shadow of his mountain, claiming from the world
+'confidence in his dispositions'; Macedoine and his lieutenant devising
+fantastic skin-games to be played out among the haunts of the old
+Cabirian gods; Artemisia fighting her own sad little battle with the
+fates and steeling her soul with reckless resolutions; even old Jack, no
+bad prototype of the ancient ship-masters who ran their battered biremes
+up on yonder beach to mend their storm-strained gear--all were more or
+less congruous with this old Isle of Ipsilon, where Perseus grew to
+manhood and from whose shores he set out on his journey to find Medusa.
+But not she. She transcended experience. To know her made one
+incredulous of one's own spiritual adventures. One nursed indelicate and
+never-to-be-satisfied curiosities about her emotional divagations. She
+once confessed, in a tone of querulous austerity, that she 'lived only
+for the child.' Possibly this was the key. Beauty and Love, and even
+Life itself, as men understood them, were to her the shocking but
+inevitable conditions of attaining to an existence consecrated to her
+neat and toy-like ideal. I am only explaining how she impressed me. As
+you say, she was, and is, simply a respectable married woman. But
+respectable married women, when you live with them without being married
+to them, are sometimes very remarkable manifestations of human nature.
+
+"Yes, I used to watch that woman on the voyage home. I was full of
+curiosity about her. I was loth to believe in a human being so
+insensitive to what we usually call human emotions. There was difficulty
+about getting her ashore in Algiers. It was only when Jack said she
+would get smothered in coal-dust if she stayed that she consented to go
+at all. She came back with a very poor opinion of Africa. It appears
+that it was hot and they did not know at the cafe how to make tea. A
+mosquito had had the effrontery to bite Babs. I was informed of this
+momentous adventure after we had gone to sea again, though Mrs. Evans
+had been cultivating a certain evasion where I was concerned since our
+talk about Artemisia. She had sheered off from me and tried to pump Jack
+about the girl. He came to me, his bright brown eyes globular with the
+news. What did I know, eh? Missus was saying she'd heard there was
+something fishy about the gel. Not that he'd be surprised. It only
+showed, he went on, how particular a man had to be. Gel like that ought
+to be _married_. Mrs. Evans was very particular whom she had about.
+Always had been. I knew, of course, how carefully she'd been brought up.
+A lady. There was something about that gel ... no, he never could give
+it a name, but he didn't like it. Bad for the kid. Children _knew_. And
+they were the devil for picking things up. Here was Angelina, only the
+other night, getting him into a regular pickle because she'd heard him
+say 'damn' and brought it out plump in front of Mrs. Evans. Couldn't be
+too careful. Fancy a kid that age saying a thing like that--'Damn
+by-bye, damn by-bye!' Jack's eyes grew larger and more prominent. Mrs.
+Evans had been very upset when he had remarked irascibly that a ship was
+no place for a child anyway. No more it was. 'Fred'--(I could see this
+coming, mind you, a week before)--'Fred, my boy,' said he, 'I shall be
+glad when we get home. I can see it now. It's a mistake. I always said
+so when the commander brought his wife along.' It didn't do to take a
+woman away from where she belonged. She saw too much, as well. What did
+I think she said the other day? A fact. 'You and Mr. Spenlove don't seem
+to me to _do_ much.' Think of that! And sometimes he wondered if she
+didn't pay more attention to that infernal pier-head jumper, Bloom, than
+to her own husband. I should hear him at the cabin table--'When _I_ was
+commander, Mrs. Evans, I always insisted on the junior officers
+overseeing the routine of the ship. When _I_ was commander, I made it a
+rule that engineers should keep to their own part of the ship.' It was
+enough to make a man sick, but women didn't know any better.... Glad to
+get home. Was I going to Threxford?
+
+"Well, no, I didn't go down to Threxford. I went to the station to see
+them off from Glasgow, though. Mrs. Evans held up the angel child for me
+to kiss. 'Kiss Mr. Spenlove, Babsy, darling.' The youngster favoured me
+with one of her bold, predatory stares as she desisted from torturing
+her immense teddy bear for a moment. I had a sudden and disconcerting
+vision of Jack's daughter as she would be-well, as she is to-day, I
+expect ... a robust, self-centred, expensively attired autocrat, ruling
+her parents, her friends, and her adorers with the smooth efficiency of
+a healthy tigress. Jack once muttered to me that she'd 'knock the men
+over' and he seemed to take a certain grim relish in contemplating the
+future overthrow of the love-sick swains. And I saw in the background of
+this vision, as one sees a pale bluish shadow of a form in the
+background of a bright, highly coloured portrait, I saw Mrs. Evans,
+shrinking as the angel child developed, and cowering before that
+nonchalant vampirism. A well-nourished young cannibal, I figure her, for
+such characters need human beings for their sustenance, if you take the
+trouble to observe their habits. I suppose she regarded me as
+indigestible, for she kissed me without rapture, and I never saw her
+again.
+
+"And the next voyage we slipped back into our usual jog-trot round. Mr.
+Bloom, that fine flower of professional culture, was replaced by one of
+our skippers who had lost his license for a year for some highly
+technical reason. Jack was rather perturbed by the prospect of having a
+brother-captain under him, but the new chief-officer was temporarily
+stunned by the blow fate had dealt him and was a good fellow anyhow.
+Young Siddons, who was able to carry on by the time we sailed, said he
+was a jolly decent old sort. Young Siddons and I had a good many talks
+together that voyage. He was in sore need, you know, of somebody to
+confide in. We all need that when we are in love. It has been my lot,
+more than once, to be favoured with these confidences. Tactless? Oh, no.
+As the Evanses said about children, these young hearts _know_. Yes, we
+talked, and I received fresh light upon the mysteries of passion. As
+Jack had said, young Siddons was the sort to take it hard. His face grew
+thinner and there was a new and austere expression in his fine gray
+eyes. We say easily, oh, the young don't die of love! But don't they?
+Doesn't the youth we knew die? Don't we discover, presently, that a
+firmer and more durable and perhaps slightly less lovable character has
+appeared? So it seems to me. Not that Siddons was less lovable. But the
+gay and somewhat care-free youth who had laughed so happily on the
+voyage out when the girl had stopped for a while to chat with him was
+dead. He had a memory to feed on now, a sombre-sweet reminiscence dashed
+with the faint bitterness of an inevitable frustration. He took it out
+of me, so to speak, using me as a confessor, not of sins, but of
+illusions.
+
+"He enlightened me, moreover, concerning the mishap which had befallen
+him and thrown him so definitely out of the race. He had met M. Nikitos
+on his way up to keep his tryst. She was standing at the door above
+them, silhouetted against the light, when they met on the path below. In
+darkness, of course. The lieutenant of the Anglo-Hellenic Development
+Company had adopted an extremely truculent attitude. He did not allow,
+he said, people from the ship to seek interviews in that clandestine
+manner. Ordered young Siddons to depart. Which, of course, an Englishman
+couldn't tolerate from a beastly dago. Punched his head. M. Nikitos,
+familiar with the terrain, had flung a piece of rock, and young Siddons,
+stepping back quickly in the first agony of the blow, had fallen over
+the edge, where I had found him. This was illuminating. It explained a
+number of obscure points which had puzzled me. I wondered, as I heard
+it, whether the recital of this feat to Captain Macedoine and his
+daughter had made any difference in the latter's attitude toward the
+victor. She had not regarded him with any enthusiasm when I had talked
+with her on the cliff, I noticed. I wondered. For you must be prepared
+to hear that I was tremendously preoccupied with thoughts of her at that
+time. That is one of the inestimable privileges of being a mere super in
+the play. You haven't much to do and you can let your mind dwell upon
+the destiny of the leading lady. You can almost call it a hobby of mine,
+to dwell upon the fortunes of the men and women who pass across the
+great stage on which I have an obscure coign of vantage. Some prefer to
+find their interest in novels. They brood in secret upon the erotic
+exhalations which rise from the Temple of Art. But I am not much of a
+reader, and I prefer the larger freedom of individual choice.
+
+"And there was much in young Siddons which helped me to visualize the
+personality which had suddenly irradiated his soul. Of course he was
+English, with all the disabilities of his race to express emotion. But
+the need for sympathy triumphed over these, and he would come along to
+my room in the dog-watch when I learned something of the tremendous
+experience which had befallen him. The Second Engineer, who had
+apparently suffered very slightly indeed, for I saw him in Renfield
+Street one night with two young ladies on his way to the theatre,
+assumed an air of dry detachment when he noticed these visits. The
+Chief, I heard him growling to the Third one day when he thought I was
+out of earshot, was nursing the mates nowadays. I knew the Second
+disapproved of friendship on principle. His ideal was to be more or less
+at loggerheads with everybody. He would wait until you had made some
+ordinary human remark, when he would retire into his formidable arsenal
+of facts and figures, and returning with a large and hard chunk of
+information, throw it at you and knock you down with it. His
+unreasonableness lay in his failure to realize that a man cannot be your
+friend and your enemy at the same time, that people are never grateful
+for being set right. He had a dry and creaking efficiency which made him
+silently detested. I for one rejoiced when I heard indirectly, at a
+later period, that a widow of forty, with seven children, had sued him
+for breach-of-promise.
+
+"Young Siddons was unaware of the Second's disapproval, and would slip
+down after supper, ready to go on at eight, and smoke cigarettes on my
+settee. You men know how, in fine weather, when you walk to and fro on
+the bridge, the empty, dragging hours induce the shades of the past to
+come up and keep you company. We in the engine-room generally have
+enough to do to keep away the crowds of ghosts. We had fine weather most
+of the time and young Siddons would come down with a fresh set of
+impressions which he would try to explain to me. He had been down to see
+his people while we were at home and I imagine the impact of cheerful,
+prosperous, well-bred folk had done a lot to modify his views. It was
+difficult, he confided one evening, to reconcile one's feelings for a
+girl with the grave problem of one's 'people.' Some chaps had such
+thundering luck. There was his brother, articled to a solicitor, who had
+been engaged for three years to a doctor's daughter. They were just
+waiting until he was admitted. Now, what luck that was! Everything in
+good taste. She lived in the same road. He saw her every day. Her people
+were well off. When the time came the brother would have the usual
+wedding, go to Cromer for a honeymoon, and--start life. Young Siddons
+was puzzled by the fact that he himself had been bowled over by a girl
+who, he couldn't help admitting, would not have been approved by the
+'people' down in Herefordshire. He saw that! I could perceive in his air
+a rather amusing amazement that love was apparently the antithesis
+instead of the complement of happiness. Now how could that be? And yet
+he admitted he had never seen his brother display any rapture over his
+love affair with the doctor's daughter. Took it very much as a matter of
+course. Oh, a very nice girl, very nice. But ... he would fall silent,
+his chin on his hand, recalling the memory of Artemisia as she had
+seemed to him, an alluring and unattainable desire.
+
+"Yes, it was interesting, and it fed my interest in her. I was too
+experienced, I suppose, to expect to see her again, but it amused me to
+brood upon her destiny. And it was a wish to learn something about that
+strange trio that took me up to Gruenbaum's one afternoon when we
+arrived, and I had the privilege of an interview with the concessionaire
+himself. Surrounded by attentive minions, who had full 'confidence in
+his dispositions' he reposed, with the urbane placidity of a corpulent
+idol, in the curve of his great horseshoe desk. The yellow blinds were
+down over the tall windows against the westering sun, and the statue
+with the arm broken short gleamed like old ivory. It was startling to
+see a student's sword and long German pipe hanging crossed on the wall
+beside that ancient piece of statuary. Gruenbaum confessed, when I spoke
+of them, to being 'largely cosmopolitan,' though loyal of course to the
+Hellenic Government and his consular obligations to Great Britain. When
+I made mention of Macedoine, he frowned heavily and admitted that he had
+'taken the necessary steps.' The concessions in the Saloniki hinterland
+would be dealt with by the Paris House 'with a view to safe-guarding our
+interests.' No doubt the railroad to Uskub would in time render such
+concessions extremely valuable. M. Nikitos doubtless obtained this
+information surreptitiously from the official archives. But it was
+necessary that these financial dispositions should be in the hands of
+Western Europeans, since western capital was inevitably attracted to
+such enterprises. He himself was a man of western ideas. Educated in
+Berlin and Paris, he had been trained in affairs in Lombard Street. Our
+banking system was sound and our climate ferocious--so he summed us up
+more or less adequately. As regards the future of M. Macedoine he could
+tell me nothing. No doubt that gentleman would be fully occupied in
+setting his new venture on its feet. Oh, of course, these things
+occasionally prospered; but in the long run, stability of credit was
+essential. This, M. Macedoine, as far as could be ascertained, did not
+command.
+
+"The harsh, guttural, cultured voice rolled on--the voice of established
+authority, of resistless financial power. To the simple and insular
+intelligences of the islanders his potency must have seemed god-like
+indeed. In this forgotten island of the sea he had assumed the role of
+arbiter of their humble destinies, the source of their happiness, and
+the omnipotent guardian of their fortunes. He was the head of what is
+deprecatingly called in these days a Servile State. We are warned that
+democracy is advancing to sweep up all such anachronisms and cast them
+into the fire. I am not so sure. None of us, who have seen the new
+liberty stalking through the old lands like a pestilence, are altogether
+sure. After all, there is something to be said for the theory of a
+Golden Age....
+
+"The guttural voice rolled on. The business of the day was nearly over,
+and he spoke in general terms of the tendencies of the day. It was a
+mistake, he thought, to assume that all men were equal. He had not found
+it so. The Anglo-Saxon race had a genius for misgovernment on the
+democratic principle. He was not convinced that this could be applied to
+Southeastern Europe. Democracy was an illusion founded on a
+misconception. The power must be in one hand. Otherwise, chaos. Observe
+these works of supreme art about me--these exquisite examples of ancient
+craftsmanship--the products of a simple monarchic age. A man might be a
+slave, unlettered and unenfranchised, yet fashion works of imperishable
+beauty. Of course, the exponents of democracy denied this, but he
+himself was in a position to know. He had studied the past glories of
+the Cyclades. And he had failed to observe any striking improvement in
+human life when the fanatics of liberty assumed command. Liberty! It was
+a phantom, a _Lorelei_, singing to foolish idle men, luring them to
+destruction. All things, all men, are bound. This was a restless age. He
+regarded the future with some misgiving. We lacked men of strong
+character, animated by sound ideals, an aristocracy of intellect, with
+financial control.... These, of course, were large questions....
+
+"That is the memory I have of him, the reactionary whom the romantic
+votaries of liberty set up against a wall and shot full of holes the
+other day. I don't offer any opinion. I am only puzzled. I recall the
+man as I saw him that afternoon, in the midst of his prosperity and his
+life's work, the embodiment of a cultured despotism.
+
+"But of the girl he could tell me nothing, and it was of the girl I
+wished to hear. Gruenbaum would not have noticed her. His own
+divagations, his emotional odyssies, his mistresses, would be dim
+memories now, and he would not have noticed her. And as young Siddons
+gradually developed an air of gentle and resigned melancholy, one of
+those moods which are the aromatic cerements of a dead love, I
+discovered in myself an increasingly active desire to know what had
+happened to her. Because I didn't even know for certain whether she had
+married M. Nikitos. And when we got home once more and young Siddons
+bade us farewell to go up to sit for his examination, I was disappointed
+that, as far as I could see, the longing I had to follow the Macedoines
+in their strange career was not to be gratified. But this so often
+happens in my life that I am grown resigned. We sailed again, for
+Venice this time, and I admit that among the canals and palaces, with
+the extraordinary moods which that fair city evokes, I found my thoughts
+retiring from Ipsilon. We went to Spain to load that voyage, moreover,
+and that brought its own sheaf of alien impressions. Loaded in
+Cartagena, and in due course arrived at our old berth in the Queens
+Dock. All that is of no moment just now. What I was going to say was
+that I found among my few letters on arrival an envelope, addressed in
+an unfamiliar hand and with the crest of a great London hotel on the
+back. I opened it with only mild curiosity, saw it was addressed to
+'Dear Mr. Chief,' and turning the page, saw it was signed 'A. M.'
+
+"Yes, it was from her. It was a short, hurried scrawl in a rambling yet
+firm style, the down strokes heavy and black, half a dozen lines to the
+sheet. She wanted to see me. I turned it over and saw the date on the
+envelope was a week old. She wanted to see me if I was able to come to
+London. I was to ask for Madame Kinaitsky. She would be in London for
+two or three weeks. She did hope I could come. She had found out from
+the Company that the _Manola_ was due soon. And she was 'mine very
+sincerely.'
+
+"I admit I was, as they say, intrigued. I had given up all hope of
+hearing any more of her. And I was astonished. She was in London! I was
+to ask for Madame Kinaitsky. Was she married then, after all? I told
+Jack I had to go to London on family business, and took train that
+night, wiring to her that I would see her next day. I needed a spell
+from the ship, anyhow.
+
+"I did not, of course, put up at the immense and famous caravanserai
+from which she wrote. It was in the Strand, however, and the ancient and
+supposedly very inconvenient hotel which I usually patronize when in the
+metropolis was, as we say, just off the Strand. I took a room at Mason's
+Hotel, climbed up the dusky old staircase, and had a bath and a sleep
+after my night journey from the north. When I woke it was a sunny
+afternoon, in late September, the sort of day London sometimes gets
+after a summer of continuous cold rain and wind. I lunched and then I
+stepped across the Strand to call on Madame Kinaitsky. They say
+adventures are to the adventurous. Yet here was I, the least adventurous
+of mortals, travelling several hundred miles to meet an adventuress! I
+passed under the great arch into the courtyard where commissionaires of
+imperial magnificence were receiving and despatching motor cars that
+were like kings' palaces. One of these august beings deigned to direct
+me within. I sent up my name--Mr. Spenlove to see Madame Kinaitsky by
+appointment. I sat down, watching the staircase, wondering if she was
+in, if she would descend to see me, wondering what it was all about,
+anyhow. A page in blue and silver approached me and commanded me to
+follow him into the elevator. We flew to the third floor and we stepped
+out into a corridor with thick carpets on the floor and dim masterpieces
+on the walls. The page led me along and knocked at one of the many
+doors. I remember his small, piping voice saying 'Mr. Spenlove to see
+you,' and the door closing. She was before me, still holding the
+door-knob with both hands and looking at me over her shoulder with that
+bright, derisive, critical smile. An exquisite pose, girlish,
+fascinating, yet carrying with it an adumbration of power.
+
+"'Well,' she said, 'are you surprised?'
+
+"She took me into another room, a room with wide windows and a great
+balcony overlooking the river. It was a suite. Beyond I saw a bedroom,
+bathroom, dressing rooms. All around were boxes with the lids lying
+askew, and bearing the names of the famous modistes of London and Paris.
+There were hats, and coats, and lines of shoes, piles of silken stuffs,
+parasols in long pasteboard boxes; heaps of dresses breaking into a foam
+of white tissue paper. And on the tables were cases of perfume,
+satin-lined caskets of brushes and toilet articles, silver
+picture-frames, gold-chain bags, gloves, cigarette boxes. As I stood
+there taking this all in she came up and laughed, holding her lower lip
+between her teeth, as though challenging my criticism, and waiting with
+a certain amount of gallant trepidation for my verdict. She was enjoying
+my astonishment I dare say.
+
+"'I'm surprised,' I said, 'that you wanted to see me.'
+
+"She beckoned me to pass out on the balcony where were wicker chairs and
+tables. We sat down, and she told me, briefly, what had happened to her.
+
+"No, there was no regret that I could perceive. 'I had to get something
+to do,' she remarked, naively. Her father and the lieutenant, M.
+Nikitos, found themselves up against mysterious and unsuspected
+difficulties. The boiler of the _Osmanli_ collapsed and needed extended
+repair. The proposal that she should marry M. Nikitos was never
+seriously raised again. 'No, she had never had any intention ... that
+little shrimp!' They took a house and lived a while on credit. She had
+to do something. Her father lived in a sort of trance, dealing with the
+difficulties which beset his schemes like a child playing with bricks
+continually falling down. She had to do something, she reiterated,
+moving her gold bracelets to and fro on her wrist. And yet she was
+unable to do anything--at first. She was in the _Jardin de la Tour
+Blanche_ when Kinaitsky spoke to her. He, a man of wealth, of the world,
+a vigorous connoisseur of life, was at that time emotionally at large.
+He had had a furious row with a Syrian dancer ... so on and so forth.
+And he understood in a flash. It was plain that Artemisia would develop
+into one of those women who waste no time over dunderheads. When I said,
+reasonably enough, for she wore a wedding ring, 'Then you are not really
+married?' she clicked her tongue against her teeth and shrugged her
+shoulders. Oh, she was practising on me! I could see that. She thought,
+I suppose, that I was proof against her; but how she would have tortured
+young Siddons, for example, in love with her, young, sensitive,
+chivalrous, full of faith in the nobility of womanhood. Yes, Kinaitsky
+understood. He knew women. Fortunate man! He sent her a large sum of
+money, and told her to write to him when she was free. He had a big
+house fronting the Gulf. She turned Nikitos out to shift for himself,
+took charge of the house he had taken for them in the _Rue Paleologue_,
+and 'got through somehow,' as she put it. She was vague about this
+episode, which was not surprising. There was a certain art in the way
+she broke off with 'Mr. Chief, you can understand I was glad....' and
+rose to ring for tea. 'Yes,' she said, when she came back, 'and then I
+found myself free to--to do something.'
+
+"'Something, as you told me, I would not approve of?' I suggested. She
+broke into a smile and put her hand caressingly on my arm.
+
+"'Don't be cross,' she whispered, sweetly. 'I've had a rotten time, Mr.
+Chief. You know everything's been against me from the first.'
+
+"And while I sat there looking out over the golden mist of the river and
+succumbing to the magic of her voice, her presence, and the romantic
+glamour of her destiny, she began to hum an old air, watching me with a
+faint, derisive smile. 'Do you know that song?' she asked, and began to
+sing the words.
+
+    "'_Ah! Toncouton!
+    Mo connin toi;
+      To semble Morico:
+    Y 'a pas savon
+    Qui assez blanc
+    Pour laver to la peau._'"
+
+"'Where did you hear that?' I asked, for I knew it, a Creole song.
+
+"'My mother,' she said, quietly and sadly. 'Now do you understand? I
+could never be like other girls, Mr. Chief.' And she began again:
+
+    "'_Quand blancs la yo donne yo bal
+      To pas capable aller
+    Comment t 'a vaillant giabal
+      Toi qui l'aime briller!_'"
+
+"'That's me, now,' she said. 'I'm Toucouton after all. Well, I must make
+the best of it.' And she sat there, musing, with her hand on my arm.
+
+"'And your father--how is he?' I asked, to change the subject, for I was
+moved. An expression came into her face which reminded me of him, an
+expression of grave exaltation and secular raptness.
+
+"'Oh,' she said, 'he is developing his properties. There are many
+difficulties he did not expect. M. Kinaitsky has promised his
+assistance. They are having trouble with another company. And the
+_Osmanli_ needs overhauling. They are talking of building a dry-dock.'
+
+"The tea was brought out on the balcony by a menial in blue and silver
+livery with white silk stockings, his beautifully manicured hands
+arranging the service in front of her. Artemisia did not reply for a
+moment as she busied herself with pouring out the tea. She had put on a
+_peignoir_ of raw yellow silk covered with heavy gold thread embroidery,
+a barbaric thing that must have cost a hundred pounds at least. Round
+her neck was a fine chain of platinum holding a large sapphire. Her soft
+dark hair was fastened with a massive comb of silver. On her arm were a
+dozen bracelets of heavy gold. There was no need to ask about Kinaitsky.
+Infatuated! She nodded as much. Very rich. Tobacco estates. Selling his
+crop in London now. She rose and came back with a photograph in a large
+silver frame.
+
+"Well, he was an improvement upon M. Nikitos. Not old either, as I had
+for some reason imagined. Forty-five, I suppose; a solid, hook-nosed
+individual with the expensive, well-groomed air we associate with
+art-dealers. Fine eyes. I put down the picture and sipped my tea. This
+was all very well, but she had not asked me to come and see her simply
+to show off, surely.
+
+"'And you've called me all the way from Glasgow to see some pretty
+clothes?' I asked. She looked hard at me for a moment and then dropped
+her eyes and smiled. She spoke, and in her voice there was the peculiar
+bell-like resonance I remarked the first time I heard her pronounce her
+name.
+
+"'No, Mr. Chief,' she said, 'I have a favour to ask. A great favour.
+Will you do something for me? You did like me a little, you know.'
+
+"'Oh, are you sure of that?' I enquired, coldly, and she nodded with a
+sudden rapturous vivacity. I dare say she was. Very little of that
+nature escapes a woman who exists chiefly by her temperament. I had
+been sentimental on the cliff and begged her to use me. Well, I was
+still young enough to feel a thrill because a pretty woman appealed to
+me, because I had been singled out for that delicate honour. I did what
+any of you would have done. I consented. And then she told me hurriedly
+what she wanted me to do. I was ... yes, this was the man. I understood,
+eh? She had written him from Saloniki. No answer. He did not know she
+was in London. She could not go, did not want to go for that matter. It
+was all over for ever. But it was his child. If I went to him, told him
+I had come from out there and had seen her ... eh? She wanted him to
+take the child, later, and bring him up. As an Englishman. And I was to
+come back and tell her what he said.
+
+"And there I was, a respectable, sea-faring person, flying through
+London in a taxi-cab on a wild-goose chase at the behest of a girl who
+was rapturously sure I had liked her a little! It was an adventure which
+disproves the old proverb again. I found myself being carried northward,
+along streets of an intolerable meanness, past huge vulgar stores, among
+clanging street-cars and plunging motor-buses. I looked at the
+address--'Mr. Florian Kelly, 6 Kentish Studios, Kentish Town N. E.' This
+was Kentish Town. We swung round a corner by a huge terra-cotta subway
+station, shot up a drab street, turned into a narrow lane, and stopped
+opposite a tall green wooden wall. I got out, rather dazed, and telling
+the man to wait, looked about for an entrance. There was a door in the
+wall with the words 'Kentish Studios' over a bell handle. But the bell
+handle hung slack and I ventured to open the door. Evidently the
+taxi-driver had been there before, for he said: 'You'll find Number Six
+on the right, Sir.' I went in.
+
+"It was a long garden surrounded by high black buildings and very quiet.
+The wet summer had encouraged everything to grow, and the whole place
+was a rank green jungle. In the centre stood a statue, a nymph stained
+green and brown with the rain pouring through the foliage overhead. The
+rank grasses hung over the path and there was a damp smell. I walked
+along until I came to Number Six. It was one of a number of apartments
+in a long, low building with large skylights in the roof, a large window
+and a transom over each door. A fly-blown card over the bell-push
+announced Mr. Florian Kelly. As I pressed the button I heard a shrill
+laugh from one of the other studios. I was not surprised to find that
+the bell did not ring. I rapped with my stick, a fine manly voice
+remarked 'Oh, damn!' and there was a sound of footsteps. And then the
+door opened about six inches and a young man with a keen dark face and
+wearing a calico overall put his head out.
+
+"'Is it very important?' he asked, impatiently. 'I've got a model, you
+know.'
+
+"'Yes, very important,' I said. 'I have a cab waiting.'
+
+"He opened the door and I went in. It was one large room with a little
+scullery behind, a studio with a four-post bed in one corner, an easel
+in another, and a young woman in extreme deshabille, hastily covered
+with a travelling rug, seated on a dais near the window. On the walls
+were the usual studies, of street scenes mostly, and trees reflected in
+still water. On the easel was a half-finished poster for some theatrical
+announcement, a woman in a tragic attitude holding a knife and clutching
+her throat. Mr. Florian Kelly looked hard at me. I said:
+
+"'You used to know a Miss Macedoine, I believe.'
+
+"'Yes, to my cost,' he retorted, sharply. 'Miss Bailey, will you go and
+have your tea? Come back in an hour, say five sharp.' She stepped down
+and went to the back of the studio, and Mr. Kelly pulled a green curtain
+across behind her. 'It's very inconvenient you know,' he said, 'the
+first decent day I've had for weeks. I don't suppose you realize what
+light means to an artist.'
+
+"'I was sent by Miss Macedoine,' I began and he interrupted me: 'Oh,
+she's got you, too, has she? Well, look here my friend, I don't know who
+you are or what particular hold she's obtained over you, but if you take
+my advice you'll get out while the getting's good. And I can tell you
+this before you go any further, she's had all the money she's going to
+get from me.'
+
+"'Well,' I said, 'you needn't get excited about it. I haven't come to
+ask you for money.'
+
+"'Oh, I'm not excited,' he responded, grimly. 'I'm in full possession of
+all my faculties. One needs them when she's round. Where is she now? In
+the cab waiting to hear the result of the interview?'
+
+"'No,' I said; 'she's residing in Saloniki now.'
+
+"'Saloniki! Snakes! She's a wonder! Why, I understood the money she had
+from me and some others was to start her father in an oil business in
+Egypt. Are _you_ in the oil business? Or are you her father?'
+
+"'No, only a friend,' I said.
+
+"'Oh, only a friend. Poor chap! Well, that's all I was when she--wait a
+bit, will you? Have a peg?' And he brought out a bottle and some
+glasses. While we were drinking, Miss Bailey came out in her walking
+costume, and looking pleasantly at each of us in turn, went out to get
+her tea. When the door closed, Mr. Kelly flung back the curtain and sat
+down on the bed, indicating an easy chair.
+
+"'Look here,' said he, lighting a cigarette and throwing the package
+toward me. 'I'm not grousing you know. I tell you frankly, I was
+infatuated with her. I neglected my work. I spent my money. I wanted to
+marry her. She's that sort. Drives you mad. But she wouldn't. Nothing
+doing. She's like that. She makes you feel like one of these old
+knights. You want to protect her from the cruel world. You want to fling
+everything you've got at her feet, lie down and let her walk over you.
+Well, take my advice and don't do it!'
+
+"I thought it as well to interrupt him here and give him a more correct
+estimate of my part in the affair. He smoked his cigarette out and flung
+it in the fireplace.
+
+"'Oh,' he said. 'I see. Well, all I can say is you are very lucky. But
+you're mistaken about me, my friend. I'm not to be bled. I'm not
+grousing. I don't even regret the money she cost me, though it would be
+very useful to me now, when I'm driven to do posters instead of my real
+work. I believe it does a man good to go off his head sometimes about a
+woman. What I feel so disgusted about is the lies she told me. That's
+one of her characteristics, you know. She really believes them herself
+at the time. She's imaginative, if you like. Spins the most
+circumstantial terradiddles. For instance, how do you know her story is
+true? Have you seen ... eh?'
+
+"'No,' I admitted. 'I haven't.' He laughed and nursed his knee, rocking
+to and fro.
+
+"'She's clever!' he said, smiling. 'Mind, you're not to be blamed at
+all. As far as I can gather, you have nothing to regret. But if you get
+to Saloniki again, give her my love, and tell her I'm too poor, too
+busy, and too wise to be led into a mess like that again. I can't be
+angry with her because I'm so grateful to her for not taking me at my
+word, and hanging like a mill-stone on my neck for ever. Phew! The
+thought of it makes me cold all over! And yet....' And he held out his
+hand for the cigarettes. 'Isn't she beautiful? Eh? Isn't she wonderful?
+Man, I tell you I used to feel like crying sometimes, she was so lovely!
+Saloniki, eh? Well, she'll go far. She has the temperament and the
+talent. I wish her luck.'
+
+"'I am convinced,' I said, 'that you are taking a mistaken view of her.
+For instance, I certainly gathered that she was in love with you and
+believes you to be....' He stood up suddenly.
+
+"'In love with me? She may have been. I daresay she can convince herself
+she's in love with all of us. I told you she's imaginative. In love
+with me? Golly, I don't blame her. I nearly went out of my mind about
+her. There isn't a folly I didn't commit for--how long was it?--say six
+weeks. I shall never forget it. But a man in my position can't afford
+many of these episodes. They're too strenuous. I've got to work. If
+you'll excuse me, your cab is waiting and Miss Bailey will be back in a
+few minutes. She costs me three shillings an hour. You see,' he added,
+smiling, 'she's not in love with me! Love! My friend, the love those
+sort of women inspire never got a man anywhere. You can't escape it if
+it comes your way, it's true. You can only trust to the good Lord to let
+you off lightly. But flight is the bravest course. You have to be very
+rich and very strong in character if you are going in for that sort of
+thing. And this girl especially, because she does it by instinct. She
+works on you and gradually builds up in your mind an ideal woman who
+does duty for her. Oh, I know! She's a wonder. For instance,' and Mr.
+Kelly turned to me and held his index finger against my breast, 'why
+does she send you to me? Is she in want of money? Is she in danger? No.
+If she was, she knows I couldn't do anything for her if I would. She's
+doing it to impress you, to play up to the imaginary woman you've in
+your mind. As for this idea of sending a kid over here to be brought up
+an Englishman--phew! She's read something like that in a book, I'll bet.
+Well, here's Miss Bailey. You must excuse me. If you're in London next
+month, come and see my show at the New Gallery. And Sunday nights at
+supper. How I envy you going to the Mediterranean. My dream ...
+Good-bye.'
+
+"Well," said Mr. Spenlove, after a moment of silent reflection, "I came
+out of the Kentish Studios and climbed into my cab feeling very much as
+though I had been skinned. That terrible young man seemed to have left
+me without a single illusion about myself. I have discovered since that
+he is recognized now as a painter of unusual power. He is making a name.
+But to me he will always be the merciless analyst of human emotion. He
+had the bitterness of those who escape love. He spared neither himself,
+nor me, nor the girl. He almost frightened me with the accuracy of his
+diagnosis. As the cab sped along the Tottenham Court Road on its way
+back to the Strand I wondered what he would have thought of Captain
+Macedoine himself, that master of illusion who was always playing up to
+the imaginary being one had in one's mind. I suppose creative artists
+see through each other's tricks. An artist is one who imposes upon our
+legitimate aspirations.
+
+"I paid off the cab in the Strand and walked into the hotel. Men and
+women in evening dress were alighting for early theatre-dinners. I sent
+up my name as before. I had no very clear idea what I wanted to do. Oh,
+of course I wanted to see her again. I had no scruples. She was more
+interesting, more her father's daughter, than ever, to me now. As
+Florian Kelly had said, she was a wonder, but she could do me no harm.
+She was an artist, let us say, and as such I wished to see her at work.
+Beyond that there was another feeling, a sort of fatherly affection--a
+silly notion of protecting her from herself. But that young devil of a
+painter had divined that, too, and I sat down to wait, ashamed, amused,
+astonished. I recalled the conversations we had had on the ship and on
+the cliff, the subtle implication in her voice, the pity she had
+inspired in me by the contemplation of her disastrous fate. I had put my
+arm round her, given her my address, behaved like a sentimental old
+fool. And all the time her brain had been working, weighing, comparing,
+judging chances, and leading me on. But had she done so? Oh, women are
+wonderful! Their emotional imperturbability defies analysis. They weep,
+confess, cajole, attack, reproach, renounce, and at the end of it all
+you are as baffled as ever. Their souls are like those extraordinary
+bronze mirrors one sees nowadays. You look and see a picture. You go
+off in amused annoyance, your head over your shoulder, and see another
+picture. And when you come back again determined to be fair and candid,
+you see yet another picture, or perhaps a mere shining blank, a dazzling
+and expensive enigma. I knew all this. I saw all this; and yet I
+lingered. I was unable to resist the piquant pleasure of watching the
+girl, of occupying the position of confidant. I understood how the
+obscure husband of a celebrated theatrical star must feel without
+experiencing his grim regret. And when the page, in his blue and silver,
+with his miraculously brushed hair, and his expression of almost
+unearthly cleanliness, carried me upward once more, I had attained the
+right mood again for meeting these adventures in vicarious emotion.
+After all, for those of us to whom the avenues of fame, of wealth, of
+the domestic virtues are closed, there remains an occasional ramble in
+the romantic bye-ways of life. One may still meet young knights in
+shining armour, haughty kings and queens, and women with unfathomable
+eyes engaged upon mysterious quests. We can always run back to our old
+mother, the sea, and restore our souls upon her comfortable bosom.
+
+"And I found myself again in that palatial apartment. There was no one
+there apparently. The page had closed the door and left me. I turned at
+the sound of a voice and saw her standing in the doorway of the next
+room, a figure in pale, shimmering gold, holding back a _portiere_ of
+heavy dark blue velvet. Holding it back for me to enter, and watching me
+with the old, derisive, questioning smile.
+
+"'You have come back very quickly,' she said, going over to a lounge and
+patting a chair beside it.
+
+"'Why did you send me to him?' I demanded, good-humouredly. She lay down
+on the lounge and turned toward me, her head on her palm.
+
+"'What did he say?' she asked, and in her voice was that peculiar timbre
+of which I have already spoken, a delicate quality of tone that made one
+think of bells at a distance, a hint of fairy lands forlorn. I could
+understand how, to a young man in love with her, that exquisite
+modulation of tone would drive him mad.
+
+"'He was not sympathetic,' I replied. 'He seemed to jump to the
+conclusion you didn't really need any assistance from him. Disclaims any
+responsibility, in fact.'
+
+"'And you believed him?' she murmured.
+
+"'He was very frank,' I answered. 'He spared neither you nor himself. He
+was good enough to warn me against your tricks.'
+
+"'And you believed him?' she repeated with passionate intensity, her
+eyes burning bright, her teeth closing over the full red lip. 'Men
+always believe another man about a woman.'
+
+"'No, not altogether,' I protested. 'But he said you told him lies.'
+
+"She lay there looking at me for a while without speaking and then she
+got up slowly, yawned with a deliberate gesture of extreme gracefulness,
+and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"'And _that's_ all it amounted to!' she remarked with a smile of
+disdain. 'He adored me, he said. Never, never would he forget. I was the
+only girl he ever really loved! He wanted me to marry him and live in
+that--that place you saw. And when I told him what my mother was, he
+nearly went mad, and wanted to kill me and commit suicide. Did he tell
+you that?'
+
+"'No,' I admitted. 'He didn't become quite so confidential as that. But
+he accused you of faithlessness.'
+
+"'Me! How could I be faithful to a lunatic? I had to run away from him.
+He wasn't safe....'
+
+"'And what do you want me to do now?' I enquired. 'You must know, my
+dear, that I can't stay away from the ship. We sail in a week.'
+
+"'Oh,' she said, coming up to me and putting her hands on my shoulders
+so that the warm perfume of her body assailed me. 'To be my friend. A
+girl in my position, Mr. Chief, she needs to have a friend. I
+thought--well, I was mistaken. I thought he would have been different, a
+clever man like him. But they are all the same, all the same.' And her
+hands dropped.
+
+"'I said I'd be your friend,' I protested, 'but you didn't seem to think
+me worth while.'
+
+"'Always,' she whispered, regarding me, 'never mind what happens?'
+
+"'Yes!' I said, putting my arm round her. 'Tell me whatever you like.
+I'll always believe you,' She came close to me, and looking down she
+whispered in that sweet, resonant voice that made one think of distant
+chimes, 'For that I shall always love you.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Soft!" ejaculated Mr. Spenlove, looking round into the darkness and
+feeling for a fresh cigarette. "You have said it. I was soft. But when
+you come to think of it, what else could I have been? I am confessing
+myself before you. What did you want me to do? Invent a tale? In which I
+play a noble and manly part? A red-blooded story, as they say? A story
+in which I rescue a virtuous maiden from a gross plutocrat and marry
+her, the light dying away on a close-up picture of me bending over her
+while she holds up a replica of Jack's angel child? Why, even Jack would
+not endorse a yarn like that. I have a very clear memory of him suddenly
+spoiling the idyllic peace of a summer afternoon in the Mediterranean by
+dashing his magazine down on the deck and uttering a profane objurgation
+against what he called 'muck.' We were sliding blissfully along a
+cobalt-blue floor, a floor without a ripple as far as the eye could see.
+And there wasn't a woman or a baby, that we were aware of, within three
+or four hundred miles. Peace, perfect peace. And Jack, instead of
+realizing the extreme felicity of the actual moment, had been devouring
+a red-blooded story in which one of these dashing, daring, clean-cut
+merchant-captains had saved a beautiful virgin from a rascally
+foreigner. There was a picture of her being saved. Splendid! Specially
+written for people who love the sea!
+
+"No, I am confessing myself before you. Truth can be served in many
+ways, and this is mine. The fortunate being whose characters consist of
+homogeneous heroism and are compact of courage seem to elude my
+scrutiny. And even when I meet a clever and sensible genius like Florian
+Kelly, I cannot honestly say I admire him unreservedly. He gets on. He
+succeeds. He arrives. But people who arrive with the convenient
+punctuality of a railway timetable do not interest me. They lack the
+weaknesses which make men fascinating to my amateur fancy.
+
+"And so I am prepared to admit that she did what, in a previous moment
+of softness, I had asked her to do. She used me. She used me to feed her
+craving for influence over men, her inherited and insatiable desire for
+building up romantic and glamorous memories. Florian Kelly regarded her
+efforts with admiring exasperation, regretting their interference with
+his own designs upon our susceptibilities. Mrs. Evans had made a
+commotion like a bird defending her nest. Young Siddons had been bowled
+over, as he phrased it, and offered her something of no real value to an
+artist--a tender and inexperienced loyalty. Such women are episodic.
+Their lives are a string of jewels of varying value connected by a
+thread of no value at all. And I confess that to me the shame of being
+used by her was not apparent. She, the leading lady, selected me for a
+slightly higher role than that of a super in the play, and I found the
+position singularly agreeable. I was afflicted at the time with no rash
+desire to supplant the principal protagonists. It was a piquant and
+persuasive proof of the infinite variety of human relationships that she
+could bring me to meet the wealthy and powerful individual over whom she
+had cast the spell of her radiant personality. I mean the gross and
+licentious plutocrat of the red-blooded story. He came in as I was
+standing, hat in hand, ready to go, and he heard me described as 'an old
+friend, who knew her father years ago.' Which was true, though I was not
+sure Captain Macedoine would have endorsed the statement. Mr. Kinaitsky
+came forward with his hat on, removed it and one of his gloves, and
+shook hands with a courtly gesture. He looked older than his photograph.
+The fine gray hair fluffed out over the ears, the bushy brows shading
+voluptuous eyes, the swarthy cheeks and flexible lips gave him the air
+of a prosperous impresario. He brought in with him, however, an
+atmosphere of affairs. He nodded politely to the girl's explanation,
+patted her gently on the shoulder, and passed on to his room. Returning
+for a cigarette, and offering me the box, he remarked that he hoped I
+would excuse him as he was dining out and had to dress at once. He had
+had a fatiguing day in the city. Did I know London? A fine day. Would I
+excuse him once more? Turning to the girl, who was sitting on the arm of
+a chair, he took her chin in his hand and favoured her with a swift,
+masculine, appraising glance. She gave him one of her delicious,
+derisive smiles and whispered something, her eyes flickering toward me
+for an instant. He patted her cheek and turned away, remarking, 'Of
+course if she wished.' He would not be in till late. 'Amuse yourself,
+_ma chere_,' he added, and bowing slightly to me, went away to his bath.
+
+"There was something odd to me in this, but I found it was a
+characteristic of his infatuation to see as little of her as possible.
+He never took her anywhere and he never brought any of his friends to
+the hotels where they stayed. She had absolute freedom. He gave her
+whatever she demanded. But she must not bother him. And while she was
+absent getting a cloak, I looked around the room turning this unusual
+idiosyncrasy over in my mind. There was a smoking table in one corner
+and I observed a _tarbush_ on the lower shelf. Of course we ourselves
+often wear a fez while smoking; but the sight of it gave me a cue. For
+you must understand that, the normal Anglo-Saxon temperament, there is
+necessarily something disturbing about such an attitude toward a woman.
+Assuming the infatuation. And it occurred to me that herein lay the
+source of an unidentified impression which he had made upon me as he
+stood regarding the girl. And I saw as well the reason why she had
+harped so on needing 'a friend.' I looked at the _tarbush_, glowing
+bright red among the cedar-wood caskets and--yes, a _narghileh_ stood in
+the corner behind, the amber mouth-piece thrust into the coils of its
+own barbarically decorated tube. This man, for all his suave courtesy
+and western polish, would be the inheritor of oriental ideas. His
+attitude would be the attitude of the _pasha_ on his divan. He would not
+understand my sentimental affection for Artemisia, or Florian Kelly's
+panic-stricken rush from blind passion to a callous, worldly caution. In
+short, he was equipped precisely as Florian Kelly said we ought to be
+equipped before we embark upon an episode with such a woman. He had
+wealth and he had wisdom, not only the wisdom of the world, but the
+inherited sagacity of orientalized ancestors, the bearded owners of
+extensive domestic establishments.
+
+"Yes, he gave her absolute freedom, and demanded only absolute
+obedience. I could not help wondering how Mrs. Evans would have regarded
+such a proposition, and this led me to reflect that Jack's equipment was
+too primitive, too simple. We Westerners do not seem to prosper in such
+enterprises. We are hampered by our excessive idealism. Our training
+does not fit us for the role of pasha. We are unable to compass the art
+of intelligent infatuation. And I confess that at this close view of the
+understructure of a polygamous career, I was weak enough to feel
+scandalized. When she told me casually, as we sat at dinner, that Mr.
+Kinaitsky had a fiancee, a rich young Jewess in Saloniki, my appetite
+was affected. I felt that he was, well, a little beyond my range. Any
+faint notions I may have had of experimenting in that direction myself
+faded from view. Even the position of friend, of being a sort of deputy
+_amant-de-coeur_, was fraught with grave danger to my emotional
+stability. Very curious, I can assure you, to be suddenly apprised of
+the extreme fragility of one's moral fibre!
+
+"And the trouble with us is that we are usually unable to make out a
+very strong case for our side of the question. We point with a fine
+gesture toward the severely beautiful figure of Virtue, and the woman,
+following our instructions, looks and sees Mrs. Evans and the angel
+child. We point ecstatically to Love, and she shrugs her shoulders as
+the figure of young Siddons emerges, with his boyish mind choked with
+racial and social prejudices, his muzzy, impossible idealism, and his
+empty purse.
+
+"And mind you, she was naive enough or clever enough to play up to the
+highest possible estimate of such a situation. When I asked her how long
+this was going to last, she was charmingly vague and pensive. It was
+part of the bargain, I suppose, to furnish the necessary sentiment. And
+when I persisted, and wished to know what she would do then, she sighed
+and hoped I would always be her friend. Well, she was right about that.
+I was her friend until the time came, not so long after, when her need
+of friends ceased, when her homeless and undisciplined spirit was
+transported to a sphere uncomplicated, let us hope, by our terrestrial
+deficiencies. And I like to think that this friendship of ours,
+unsullied by conventional gallantry, was for her a source of comfort,
+and sustained her at times when the flames of exaltation burned low, and
+she was oppressed by the shadow of her destiny. But of course, this may
+be only one of my occidental illusions.
+
+"At the time, however, it seemed as though for me the adventure was
+already nothing more than an intriguing memory. From time to time I
+received postcards written from Paris, Munich, Vienna, Buda-Pesth,
+Prague, and Constantinople. And then, after a long silence, a brief
+letter telling me that she was living in an apartment, near the _Esky
+Djouma_, turning up out of the _Rue Eqnatia_, but that I was to write to
+the _Rue Paleologue_, and she would be sure to get it. Her father was
+much preoccupied with financial affairs. She wanted to know if I were
+coming to Saloniki. I was to be sure and let her know.
+
+"Well, there was nothing inherently impossible in my appearing in
+Saloniki. I had been there in the _Manola_ more than once with coal. At
+that time, however, we were busily shipping our mineral wealth, at
+cut-rate prices, to Italy, and the voyages alternated between Genoa and
+Ancona, calling at Tunis for iron ore to keep Krupp's gun-shops at Essen
+working full time. All three places were too far away for week-ending at
+Saloniki, and the charter was for a year. I wrote to her more than once.
+But I am no correspondent. I am unable to maintain the, to-me,
+unnatural mental contortions of translating a mood into a literary form.
+I can tell you--yes; but I regard with envy those fortunate souls who
+'pour themselves out' as we say, upon paper. Somehow or other, I am not
+to be poured out. And so our correspondence did not flourish with that
+tropical luxuriance which is so much appreciated by the world when we
+are dead and unable to protect ourselves. But I did not forget. I shall
+never forget that romantic encounter, the sweet, resonant voice coming
+across the rose-shaded supper-table, the exquisite face with the radiant
+and questing, derisive smile.
+
+"And then, with the matter-of-fact abruptness of sea-faring, I was
+informed that we were to proceed to the Bristol Channel and load steam
+coal for Saloniki. Jack was concerned at this, for it meant a longer
+voyage, and Mrs. Evans was in an interesting condition, as he put it.
+Jack had settled down. He was worried, of course, but his period of
+eccentric uxoriousness was over. He sighed occasionally for a 'shore
+job,' but he acknowledged the sense of my argument that he would be a
+fool to quit. He was already looking forward to the distant day when he
+could retire. Had saved a couple of hundred pounds and put it into oil
+shares, which were going up. His conversation contained less of Madeline
+and more of possible profits. In fact, Madeline disappeared, and was
+supplanted by a sober institution known as 'the Missus.' He had
+forgotten 'the gel,' I imagined, but it transpired that even upon him
+she had left her mark. On the voyage out, during a conversation about
+our probable port of loading, he suddenly expressed a curiosity as to
+what became o' that gel? What did I suppose? For I had not scrupled to
+keep my relations with Captain Macedoine's daughter to myself. I said I
+couldn't imagine. Probably married by this time. Ah! said Jack. Best
+thing, too. What was her name now? He'd forgotten. Ah! Fancy givin' a
+child a name like that! And another thing. We'd be able to have a look
+at the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. See what we'd missed, eh?
+Jack gave a fat chuckle. Oil for him! Something that was quoted on the
+Stock Exchange. Six per cent. and safe as houses. Safer! Tenants were so
+destructive nowadays, his father-in-law told him. For the workhouse
+master was an owner of small houses in a quiet way. A warm man. Had five
+hundred in these here oil shares. And so on.
+
+"No, I kept my romantic behaviour to myself. Jack would not understand
+my interest in 'that gel.' Before we left Cardiff I had written to the
+_Rue Paleologue_ to say that we were on our way, and gave the probable
+date of our arrival. And while we were on our way I turned over in my
+mind my reasons for writing to the _Rue Paleologue_. Middle age demands
+reasons. Well, I was hungry for sensations. In my youth I had a great
+ambition to seek adventure. Fate took me into a world of machine-belts,
+harsh language, and industrial dullness. I escaped from that into
+sea-life believing that I should find adventure. The greatest mistake
+imaginable! But I realized that it was not adventure I really craved
+after all--only sensations. A difficult case to prescribe for, I admit.
+One has to train oneself to perceive, to become aware of their
+proximity. I suppose this really is what used to pass as culture--the
+adventures of one's soul among the doubtful masterpieces which throng
+the dusty junk-shop we call the World. I played with the notion that in
+the _Rue Paleologue_ I might come upon an authentic piece.
+
+"I confess, though, that I had a certain diffidence about going ashore
+and calling, as we say, in a perfectly normal manner, upon Captain
+Macedoine. I really felt I had not sufficient excuse. And when we were
+able to go ashore, and I stepped across what is now satirically known as
+the _Place de la Liberte_, I compromised. I went into the _Odeon_, a
+lofty cafe on the corner, to have a drink and come to a decision. It was
+full. At the far end a big burly individual in a frock coat and a fez,
+with a silver star on his breast, was standing on a chair and delivering
+a harangue. A patriot. Waiters rushed to and fro bearing trays loaded
+with glasses. The murmur of conversation rose and fell around me. Here
+and there among the excited proletariat sat dignified old gentlemen with
+drooping moustaches sipping mastic, munching caviar sandwiches, and
+reading newspapers. And while I was rolling a cigarette I caught sight,
+at a corner table, of a familiar figure, a figure in a short shabby
+overcoat with a fur collar and a fur cap on his head, writing rapidly on
+a large sheet of the cafe paper. It was M. Nikitos, the lieutenant of
+the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. I had forgotten him, to tell the
+truth. Artemisia gave me the impression that he had dropped out of
+consideration. I was mistaken, it appears. He had not forgotten me,
+however. In due course he looked in my direction, looked again with
+attention, and I saw recognition come into his unprepossessing features.
+He rose up, gathered together his writing materials, and came over to my
+table. We shook hands. I invited him to have a drink, which he accepted
+with alacrity. He still had the air of a dirty virtuoso. He was good
+enough to say he remembered me perfectly in Ipsilon, of the _Manola_,
+ah, yes. Well, he was doing extremely well, having taken up
+international journalism. Was employed on the _Phos_, of which I might
+have heard. He didn't look as though international journalism had done
+much for him. His long French boots were burst at the sides and his
+linen was far from fresh. To my enquiry as to the prosperity of the
+great enterprise he raised his eyebrows and shoulders and exhibited a
+pair of unwashed palms, his forearms resting on the marble table. In
+time, in time, they would achieve success. But the conditions were
+highly unfavourable to financial operations. There was great political
+unrest. Revolution was in the air. Eventually Liberty would be
+triumphant, which was glorious, but in the meanwhile, finance
+languished. At present even a very sound scheme for building a dock was
+hung up for lack of adequate support from responsible capitalists.
+
+"'And Captain Macedoine--is he still in business?' I asked, casually. He
+opened his eyes and drew down the corners of his lips. Very sad.
+Confined to his apartment. He, M. Nikitos, the only friend faithful to
+him. Deserted by his daughter even. But still planning for the
+development of Macedonia. Colossal brain still working. Adverse
+circumstances, aided by Gruenbaum's company, preventing success.
+
+"This was surprising. Deserted by his daughter? I suggested to M.
+Nikitos that he must be under a misapprehension. He looked at me
+gloomily and shook his head. She had gone off, deluding her father with
+a story of marriage. He himself knew how much there was in that.
+Certainly she had got money from someone--but whom? Sooner or later he
+would discover. He had his own interest in that affair. After he had
+done everything for them when they first came to Saloniki, to show him
+the door.... When he did discover her and her lover, we would see.
+Straitened circumstances had prevented him from doing anything so far.
+But wait.
+
+"'Why, what would you do?' I asked, idly. The notion of this penurious
+little humbug getting in the way of a serene and powerful polygamist
+like Kinaitsky was entertaining. He looked down between his knees,
+presenting the crown of his greasy _tarbush_ at my breast as though he
+were about to butt me. He mumbled something. It was so preposterous I
+pretended I had misunderstood him.
+
+"'Oh, come!' I said. 'You must be joking. You can't interfere with
+anybody like that. She has a right to do as she pleases. Why bother
+about her? I happen to know she is very happy.'
+
+"He looked up at me sharply, and pulled his mouth to one side as though
+he were making a face at me.
+
+"'Happy?' he echoed. '_You_ know? Then it is with you.... It explains
+all those English clothes she had when I saw her at the White Tower. She
+was in a box with the family who live next door. Madame Sarafov....' He
+stared at me with his mouth fallen open, his whole body motionless. He
+gave me the impression of a man perched upon a perilous precipice,
+uncertain whether the next movement would plunge him to destruction.
+
+"'No,' I said, shaking my head, 'you are making a mistake. But I know.'
+He moved slightly, leaning forward.
+
+"'You know where she lives?' he muttered. 'This place where she is very
+happy?'
+
+"'No, I can't say I do,' I replied. 'You can hardly expect me to tell
+you, either, even if I knew, after what you said just now. Of course,' I
+went on, 'you spoke in hyperbole, but it would be scarcely the act of a
+gentleman to distress a woman by forcing yourself upon her.'
+
+"'Hyperbole?' he repeated, staring at me as though fascinated.
+'Gentleman ... distress?... she gave the Sarafov girl some English
+clothes. I never imagined for a moment.... Incredible _denouement_.' He
+looked suddenly discouraged. 'Then you have her in England.' A gleam of
+understanding came into his eyes. 'You have brought her back here?
+Well, do you know what she will do, now you have finished with her? She
+will----'
+
+"He stopped as I put up my hand. I said 'She is not my mistress, I tell
+you.' He brought his hand down with a crash on the table, so that the
+glasses jumped and the ink-bottle slipped off and emptied itself on the
+floor. One or two people looked at him, but most of the excitement
+centred round the robust person with the silver star, whose speech was
+being applauded with a tremendous amount of guttural approval. Nikitos
+stood up, towering over me in a threatening manner.
+
+"'Then who took her from me?' he snarled, 'who gave her the English
+clothes? You....' He sat down again and held up a menacing finger. 'You
+think, you imagine, that the destruction of my hopes is to be accepted
+with what you call philosophy? Well, yes.... I am philosophical----' he
+stooped without taking his eyes from mine and replaced the ink-bottle on
+the table. 'Listen, Monsieur. I am a pure man. In my travels, in Egypt,
+in Turkey, and in Europe, I keep myself--you understand--immaculate.
+Because I have here'--he tapped his dark forehead where the large flat
+black eyebrows were like symmetrical charcoal smudges--'I have here an
+undoubted ambition. In Egypt I was poor--very poor--very, very poor.
+Captain Macedoine, whom I met in my business, extends to me his
+generosity. To me, a poor interpreter in a firm of exporters, he offers
+his friendship. I confide to him my ambition, my dreams. My _metier_, I
+tell him, is politics; but of what use without the financial power? You
+comprehend, Monsieur? For me it was impossible to associate with a
+_demi-vierge_. I express myself to Captain Macedoine with great
+strength, for it is my business in Alexandria to introduce these ladies
+to the captains and the passengers. Captain Macedoine gives me his
+entire confidence. He tells me he has a daughter. When he is appointed
+to a position in Ipsilon he is good enough to obtain for me also a
+subordinate appointment. He brings his daughter from England. We are
+affianced. We come to Saloniki. I secure for them a good house, most
+suitable, in the _Rue Paleologue_. What then? Mademoiselle is
+_distrait_. She desires me to wait, a month, two, three. I do not
+understand, but it is as Mademoiselle wishes. And then Captain Macedoine
+becomes very ill. A terrible misfortune! I work. I think. I sacrifice
+myself. Mademoiselle is suddenly no longer _distrait_. She commands me
+to leave the house--I, Stepan Nikitos! You understand, Monsieur, that I
+have had much to bear. The _Osmanli_, our vessel, entering the harbour,
+is struck by another vessel, and sinks. Only her mast remains to see
+above the water. I have to go to Constantinople to get the insurance.
+Our concessions in Macedonia are no longer secure. And Captain Macedoine
+too ill to be informed! I struggle against those misfortunes. I am
+compelled to accept a position on the _Phos_ to earn the rent of my poor
+room and a little food. I go to Mademoiselle and I find she is gone. Her
+father receives me as always, with affection; but he grieves to tell me
+his daughter is married. Well, Monsieur, I have told you that, in
+Alexandria, I was of necessity a friend of the _demi-vierge_, and I am
+familiar with the significant change in the tone of these women when
+they have secured a wealthy lover. When Mademoiselle commanded me to
+leave the house I was not deceived. It was for me the destruction of my
+hopes and the birth of a resolution.'
+
+"He held his finger horizontal, pointing at my breast, as though his
+resolution was to take careful aim and shoot. 'Which nothing can kill,'
+he added, with calmness, and folded his arms on the table.
+
+"Now what struck me about these revelations of M. Nikitos, made across
+the sloppy marble-topped table of the _Odeon_, was what I may call their
+preoccupied sincerity. He conveyed the impression of being perfectly
+sincere and yet thinking of something else at the same time. And there
+was another peculiar thing about it. Although he addressed himself to me
+with exaggerated directness, I could not rid myself of the conviction
+that I knew no more of what he was really up to than if I were in a
+theatre watching him on the stage. For, remember, all the sounds, the
+cries of the fanatics, the guttural ebullience of the burly person with
+the silver star, the article for the _Phos_, half written in a spidery
+Greek script, the whole of the jangling uproar of the city, was within
+this man's cognizance, while to me it was a mere senseless cacophony.
+His assumption of lonely despair was not borne out by the subtle air he
+had of being in with all these people who were chaffering among
+themselves and applauding the rhetorician with his silver star. And the
+upshot was that I grew very much afraid of this sinister, shrunken
+figure whose hopes had been destroyed, and who was nursing with extreme
+care a new-born resolution 'which nothing could kill.' His singular
+claim to purity only added to this alarm. One is scarcely reassured by
+hearing that a man is not only desperate but immaculate. And I did what
+most of us would do under the circumstances. I got up to go. M. Nikitos
+gathered his manuscript together, stuffed it into his breast pocket and
+prepared to accompany me. As we came out upon the quay I turned to him.
+
+"'Are you coming down to the ship?' The question seemed to bring his
+thoughts to a standstill.
+
+"'The ship?' he repeated. 'Oh, no, Monsieur. Why should I go down to the
+ship? I will see you when you return.'
+
+"'Now see here,' I said, touching him on the shoulder, 'you must get all
+that nonsense out of your head about Miss Macedoine. If she has treated
+you badly the decent thing to do is to forget it. You may not be the
+only one, you know.'
+
+"'Forget it?' he asked, like an intelligent child, 'how can one forget
+it, Monsieur?'
+
+"'What I mean is, you must not annoy her if you ever meet her.'
+
+"'Annoy her?' he repeated in the same tone. 'I should not annoy. Our
+interview,' he added, reflectively, looking at his disintegrating boots,
+'would not take up more than a few moments. Very short. To the point, as
+you say.' And he regarded me with amusement.
+
+"I left him with a sudden gesture of impatience and he went off toward
+the offices of the _Phos_. Words broke out upon him like a rash: it was
+impossible to preserve one's credulity in the face of his enigmatic
+fluency. Impossible to maintain a grasp upon common facts and homely
+eventualities. I walked on past the dock-buildings and came to the
+station. And I wondered where the _Rue Paleologue_ might be. A
+cab-driver raised his whip as I halted, and moved slowly over to where I
+stood. He did not seem to have any clear ideas, but signified by a
+wealth of gesture that if I would get in he would find out. It was just
+dusk and I got in. We galloped away with a great deal of whip-cracking
+and noise of iron tires on the granite sets, past the _Odeon_ again, and
+onward along the quays. I reflected upon the attitude Nikitos had taken
+up toward Artemisia, but I could arrive at no opinion. One has very
+little data for gauging the mentality of a highly sophisticated but
+immaculate being. And I still retained the impression that she, under
+the powerful protection of Kinaitsky, would stand in very little danger
+from the annoyance of a journalist on the _Phos_. Nevertheless,
+idealists who take pride in their purity are dangerous, because they are
+incalculable. It is the only hold we have on most people in these days
+of extreme personal liberty--the sad but inexorable fact that they are
+not immaculate. It captured my imagination in spite of my distaste for
+the man, this conception he had evoked of himself pursuing his way
+through the unnameable wickedness of Levantine cities, yet bearing
+within an inviolable chastity. One felt there was something formidable
+in its mere existence, like vitriol, something not quite human, and
+therefore to be feared. It was like beholding a white-robed virgin with
+severe features bearing a palm amidst the groups of courtesans who were
+strolling along the quays, arm in arm, taking the air before engaging in
+the business of the evening.
+
+"There was a new twist given to my thoughts when the carriage pulled up
+and the driver spoke to a couple of these girls who were walking
+mincingly along in their high-heeled shoes. Evidently inquiring the way.
+They regarded me with friendly approval, but they shook their heads over
+the _Rue Paleologue_. We were about to drive on when one of them put her
+hand to her head with a gesture of recollection. She spoke to the
+driver--a musical and resonant torrent of words. We drove on, past the
+great bulk of the Tour Blanche, on into the darkness.
+
+"For the road here left the quay and began to wind between large houses
+embowered in trees. Those on the right faced the Gulf. No doubt in one
+of them Mr. Kinaitsky dwelt with his wealthy Hebrew bride. To the left
+could be seen avenues turning off. There was a great glare for a moment
+as we passed a building with tall windows--a factory of some sort. And
+then, after following this road for some time, we turned up one of the
+avenues into deeper darkness and a silence broken only by the clink of
+the harness and the soft sound of hoof and tire on loam and leaves. At
+the head of this road the carriage stopped, and the driver pointed with
+his whip, repeating the word _Paleologue_ to intimate that we were
+there.
+
+"I paid him and moved across the road in the direction indicated, and
+found my foot striking a hard sidewalk beneath trees. It was very dark.
+Here and there a grid of light was thrown on the road from a partly
+shuttered window, or a pale glow would silhouette a woman sitting in a
+doorway. There were many houses and I did not know the number I wanted.
+I moved slowly along, hesitating to ask. You see, I was not sure. And
+the language difficulty troubled me. These people spoke no intelligible
+word as far as I was concerned. But I was constrained to pause at
+length, and seeing some seated forms, outside a doorway in the darkness,
+I began by asking if this were really the _Rue Paleologue_. A tall woman
+rose from her chair and said 'Oui, Monsieur,' and I found myself in the
+dim light from a spacious tiled vestibule, floundering in the middle of
+whispered explanations. Their eyes seemed very large in the darkness,
+and their forms tall and ghostly. Suddenly one of the girls stepped into
+the light and I saw the broad, flat beauty of the Southern Slav. She
+stood there regarding me, her hands behind her, her chin raised. And
+then she remarked in a hoarse and musical tone, 'You English?' I said in
+some surprise that I was and asked if they spoke it. She said 'Why,
+sure,' and we all laughed.
+
+"Surprising? Well, yes, it was. Because the intonation was not English
+at all, but American. It was like reading a book in French and Italian
+and coming suddenly upon a sentence written in italics, in one's own
+tongue. The very isolation of it, adrift in a waste of partially
+intelligible expressions, doubles the luminous emphasis of it. I looked
+at them in astonishment, and they looked at each other and laughed
+again. And then they led the way into the house.
+
+"They were very much alike. That is to say, they resembled the portraits
+of the same handsome woman at the ages of thirteen, eighteen, and
+thirty-five. They were mother and daughters. And when I said I was
+looking for a Miss Macedoine, they uttered exclamations.
+
+"'Her father--he lives in the next house,' they said.
+
+"'I have heard,' I remarked, 'of a family named--what was it?--Sarafov.'
+And they nodded with animation. 'You got it,' said the elder girl. 'This
+is mother, Mrs. Sarafov. I'm Pollyni, and my sister here is Olga. Did
+Miss Macedoine tell you about it?'
+
+"'No,' I said, 'I heard in a round-about way. But tell me, where is
+she?'
+
+"They looked at each other. Mrs. Sarafov spoke.
+
+"'Are you the gentleman on the ship...?' I nodded. 'Well, I guess we can
+tell you. I suppose you know how she's fixed.' I nodded again. 'Well,
+she's got an apartment in the town. If you like we'll send a message to
+her, but she wouldn't be able to get here much before twelve o'clock.
+Perhaps you'd better call to-morrow. Afternoons she's free, you
+understand.'
+
+"But of course what I was thinking about at that particular moment was
+the problem of the Sarafovs themselves. It was simple enough. They had
+emigrated to New York some years before, Sarafov taking his wife and two
+young children to make his fortune in the Golden Country beyond the sea.
+Not much, according to our standards, no doubt, but a comfortable
+competence in Turkey where living was so cheap. So they had come back
+and settled in their native town, in the Frank Quarter, while Sarafov
+_pere_ continued for a year or so longer his accumulation of dollars.
+'Yes,' said Mrs. Sarafov. 'We liked America all right, after we got used
+to their ways, but this country's pretty good, too. And it's freer
+here,' she added, reflectively. This was so astonishing that I felt
+bound to demand some explanation. It was the first time I had heard of
+any one fleeing from America to seek liberty in the Sultan's dominions.
+'Why,' said Mrs. Sarafov, 'you can't do a thing in America without you
+get soaked for it, some way. And the prices! A dollar don't go any
+distance at all. My husband, he says, 'Yes, but you are handling the
+money, though.' That's like a man!'
+
+"They were astonishing. They sat there, those three extremely handsome
+females, easy and uncorseted, their white teeth gleaming, their perfect
+complexions glowing, their dark eyes and hair shining in the lamplight,
+and contradicted all the conventional notions I had ever held about
+American emigrants. They had no animus against America, you must
+remember, but they possessed something for which even the western
+republic cannot supply a substitute--a traditional love of the land of
+their ancestors. They had a perfectly steady and unsentimental grip upon
+realities. Liberty for them was not a frothy gabble of insincere
+verbiage, but a clear and concrete condition of body and soul. I suppose
+the perfectly healthy have no dreams. Their vitality, like the vitality
+of so many of the people in these regions, was extraordinary. It was
+like a radiance around them. They seemed independent of everything
+peculiar to our boasted western civilization. Neither patent medicines
+nor cosmetics nor municipal enterprise came into their lives at all.
+There were no books in the house. They produced figs in syrup, and
+sherbet and cognac, and a smooth red wine that was a most generous
+cordial. They gave me bread and raisins. They had all the things we read
+of, and strive to imitate, and which we imagine we buy in cans. They had
+no manners, for they ate with their fingers and licked them vigorously
+afterward; yet they conveyed the impression that their civilization was
+older than the ruined turrets above the city. They sat and moved with
+the poised rhythm and dignity of the larger carnivora. The girls
+reclined with an easy and assured relaxing of the limbs upon a settee of
+violet plush, and their grouping made me think instantly of ancient
+sculptural forms. They were without that _nuance_ and stealthy deception
+which gives us such a feeling of manly superiority over our own women,
+and without which masculine humour would die out. Perhaps it was
+because, not only did they dispense with what are called breakfast
+foods, but with breakfast itself, that they could sit there in the
+merciless glare of an unshaded kerosene lamp and defy one with their
+flawless and amiable personalities. And while I sat there and talked to
+them and ate their bizarre and appetizing provender, I became aware of
+something even more astonishing than their failure to use the
+immeasurable advantages of existence in a Brooklyn apartment, where the
+breath of life, warmed beyond endurance, came up out of mysterious grids
+in the walls and dried all the vitality out of them. It wasn't only
+that, it transpired. These women, with their quality of hard, practical
+devotion to a concrete bodily well-being, conveyed something beyond all
+that. For when I suggested that Artemisia's way of life must place her
+beyond their sympathies, they registered emphatic dissent. For why? They
+were unable to understand. They looked at each other.
+
+"'That's American,' said Mrs. Sarafov, distinctly.
+
+"'Not entirely,' I protested. 'It has a certain vogue in England also, I
+assure you. And personally,' I added, 'I am bound to say it makes a
+difference. I regret it.'
+
+"'But,' said Mrs. Sarafov, and she turned her eyes upon her younger
+daughter, who was going out with some dishes, 'But she must have a man
+to look after her.' She regarded me attentively. 'I suppose you know
+that she is very fond of you. She is always talking about how kind you
+were to her on the ship. And in London. She says you liked her at
+first. And I can't see,' she went on, 'why, if you regret it, as you
+say, you didn't look after her yourself. She would have gone.'
+
+"'And you think that would have made any difference?' I demanded. I was
+very much disturbed at this sudden turn of things. I seemed to be
+getting away from my cherished position as a super in the play. And it
+was the emotion educed from this conversation that revealed to me how
+these women had abandoned their life in America without regret. I had a
+vision of it suddenly as I looked at the other daughter's face. She was
+regarding me with a sort of raptness. The exquisite features glowed and
+the bright, bronze-coloured eyes burned above purple shadows like lamps
+above dark pools. Yes, I had a vision of it suddenly, and it was what we
+call, lightly, cynically, disapprovingly, Romance. It was simply
+this--that to them, what we deem a dangerous and useless appendage of
+our spiritual life is a tremendous and vital need. So tremendous and so
+vital that the external moral aspect of it was a matter of little
+importance. To put the case in point, they were interested in me not
+because I was a moral Englishman but because Artemisia was fond of me.
+It was for them as simple as breathing to go with the being one loved.
+And back of that there was another thing, which scared the modern and
+moral being within me still more. It followed, from their perfectly
+naive and innocent faith in Romance, that a woman was not a political
+equal of man, a strenuous co-educated, enfranchised voter, but a
+possession. The crown of her achievement was to be possessed by the man
+she loved. He might kill her or enslave her, but without men she was of
+no importance whatever. And I suspected that my own attitude which, mind
+you, is the attitude of most of us, to draw away at the approach of a
+compromising emotion, was difficult to comprehend. Especially when, in
+response to the inevitable question, I said I wasn't married or
+promised. They harped on it, those two, while the younger girl was in
+the kitchen. It was evident Artemisia had confided a great deal to them
+and they had talked and talked, turning this peculiar problem over in
+their minds, the problem of a man who persisted in remaining a super in
+the play. Barbarous of them? Well, let us say mediaeval. They lived in a
+world of harsh limitations and extraordinary latitudes. They were
+forbidden divorce and were accustomed to neighbours with a plurality of
+wives. They seemed to know nothing of the refinements of modern passion.
+For them it was a question of sex, without any admixture of social or
+racial distinctions. That Artemisia had had a lover in England was not a
+matter of amazement to them at all. What they couldn't understand was
+the reason why everything had to be driven underground. And the
+extremely _bourgeois_ conception of love culminating in a colourless
+civil contract between a good provider and a capable housekeeper, which
+was all they could see in American institutions--a civil contract which
+could apparently be shot to pieces upon any frivolous pretext, struck
+their mediaeval minds as profoundly irreligious and unpleasant.
+
+"And then," said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly turning and savagely addressing
+the silent and recumbent forms in the darkness of the awning, "I made
+another astonishing discovery. They respected Captain Macedoine. A nice
+old gentleman! They thought he was fine! I give you my word, when they
+told me that, and proposed that we go right in and see him, I obtained a
+glimmer of what Nietzsche must have meant when he spoke of the
+transvaluation of all values. I was startled by the sudden realization
+of how tenaciously I had been holding to my belief in that man's
+essential unworthiness. You regard a man for years as despicable and
+rotten, judging him as though you were God, and then you meet a woman
+who worships the very ground he treads on, or a child to whom he is a
+fanatically fond parent. Of course, the enthusiasm of Monsieur Nikitos
+for his patron was discounted for by my low estimate of Nikitos
+himself. Possibly, I mused in a startled way, as we entered the dark
+ante-room of Captain Macedoine's abode, M. Nikitos was regarded by a
+septuagenarian mother as an angel of light. The possibility remains in
+suspense, for of that gentleman's antecedents I don't recall any
+particulars. I saw him again, as you shall hear, but he failed to
+prepossess me in his favour. He departed from my view, a perplexing and
+polysyllabic problem, claiming for himself a useless and preposterous
+purity. But perhaps it was not so useless from his point of view.
+Perhaps he owed his brief political omnipotence, when the whole country
+flamed into battle, murder, and sudden death, to his peculiar mania for
+a spectacular chastity. They say men fear such freaks, and deem them
+endowed with sinister supernatural powers. Possibly. There are strange
+things embedded in that fierce lava-flow of the Balkan volcanoes,
+congealed agonies and solidified monstrosities of soul.
+
+"At first I could see nothing save that the chamber was large and lofty.
+Even at the moment it struck me--a sort of last attempt at superiority,
+you know--that it would be just like Captain Macedoine to live in a
+large and lofty chamber without much light. And then, as I saw him,
+propped up among cushions on an immense bed, with a table close at hand
+on which reposed writing materials, books, a photograph, and a small
+shaded lamp, I wondered why the characteristics which in him had created
+such animosity should take the form of an alluring hypnotism in his
+daughter. Such thoughts make one uneasy and anxious for one's position
+as a super in the play. For that was the upshot of it, that I was
+shakily anxious to see her again, to see Captain Macedoine because he
+was her father, to drift, I knew not where. I was a pretty spectacle to
+myself, I can assure you!
+
+"His illness had emaciated him, and the crimson bedspread, together with
+the long, drooping folds of the looped-up mosquito-bar, like the
+curtains of a catafalque, and a round cap he wore to cover his bald
+spot, gave him the air of some old pope holding an audience. He raised
+his eyes without lifting his head, and smiled as Madame Sarafov and her
+daughter, with measured strides that reminded one again of the larger
+carnivora, moved forward to the bedside. And he lifted his hand in a
+decidedly pontifical fashion, as though to bless them. I remained for a
+moment in the shadow before they turned and explained who I was; and the
+pale blue eyes, without any recognition, beamed upon me as upon a new
+and promising adherent to the faith. He was immensely improved, though
+very much nearer the grave than when I had seen him for that dubious
+moment through the window of his house in Ipsilon. The harsh ravages of
+a life of distorted ideals had been softened by illness to an ascetic
+benignity. And he talked. I was obliged to admit to myself that so far I
+had never seen him in private life. He talked and he was full of
+reminiscence. He had a musical tenor voice, and he spoke rapidly and
+with an unconcerned change from subject to subject which might be set
+down to garrulity. He gazed into the shadows as he talked and I
+listened, very much astonished. For it was not the talk of a wicked man
+or an unhappy man or even an unsuccessful man. It was rather the talk of
+an intelligent humbug, such as one might expect from the super-annuated
+and senile secretary of some rich and fantastic scientific society. He
+gave one that impression, that his whole life had been one of gentle
+dilletantism under the protecting shadow of giant vested interests. It
+was an astonishingly picturesque scene, the sort of _genre_ picture the
+Victorians did so well and for which we moderns have so profound a
+contempt. It might have been called 'The Old Professor Tells His Story.'
+It flowed from him. He had a fund of phrases, quite common no doubt, but
+which he used as though he had invented them himself. His long,
+rose-tinted, transparent nostrils moved at times. His hands lay on the
+bedspread, singularly small and chunky for so large a being, and he
+often withdrew his gaze suddenly from the shadows of the past and
+examined his knuckles with a sharp scrutiny that, I suppose, was merely
+a habit born of an unconscious reflex action, but gave one a notion that
+at times he began to doubt his own reality.
+
+"And then," said Mr. Spenlove after a pause, "I discovered that Captain
+Macedoine belonged to that class of raconteurs who do not believe in
+reticence on personal matters. I have very little of that sort of
+squeamishness myself, but he was much more confidential. If confidential
+is the word. Because there was no atmosphere of confession about his
+story. He frequently interjected the words, 'you know,' and it really
+seemed as if he assumed that we did know, and was just amusing himself.
+Or perhaps he was rehearsing for the day of judgment. No matter. He ran
+on. And we listened. We were interrupted once, when an elderly person,
+'My housekeepah,' as he called her, 'Madame Petronita,' came in with
+some sustaining liquid in a basin. And if you ask me what he talked
+about, I should say that he furnished us with a large number of details
+of his private life which the majority of us never mention even though
+we may not be ashamed of them. At this distance of time it presents to
+me the sort of memory which one retains of an interesting book read
+long ago. I remember him, you see, because of what happened afterward,
+because he was the father of this girl of whom I am telling you, and I
+recall the picture of him dispensing those amiable garrulities because
+it was as we sat there that the notion first came to me that he was
+really an original artist working upon himself and concealing himself
+behind the grandiose presentment of an impossibly superior and effulgent
+human being. All I had known of him or heard of him in the old days
+corroborated this notion of mine. 'We are a very old family, you know--I
+was a younger son, you know--I was at Charterhouse School, you know--we
+were very poor--a scholarship boy, you know.' This was addressed to a
+certain extent to me, as an Englishman, of course, but the glamour of
+his rich intonation enveloped those two beautiful women, mother and
+daughter, sitting there with their perfect parted lips and their
+extraordinarily seductive Slavonic eyes. It would be interesting, no
+doubt, to know just what they imagined lay in the portentous statement
+that Captain Macedoine had been sent as a poor boy--a day boy, he
+informed us meticulously--to that ancient foundation known as the
+Charterhouse--they with their oriental antecedents, their untrammelled
+comprehension of the romantic value of life, and their initiation into
+western ways in a Brooklyn apartment. Yet I'm not sure that deep did
+not call into deep, that they did not succeed in getting hold of his
+real meaning after all. As Mrs. Sarafov said to me afterward in the
+intense darkness of the street, 'Captain Macedoine, he goes 'way back, I
+guess'; and there was a peculiar inflection in her tone which brought to
+mind echoing corridors in the house of life.
+
+"Yes, he was a younger son and he went out into an unsympathetic world
+as a 'secretary'. Became a land-steward on great estates, secretary to a
+London club, which fell on evil days, and was--in short--shut up.
+Travelled for a while. I like that. It gave the obliging human
+imagination such scope in which to devise a romantic and Byronic
+pilgrimage for him. Accepted a post as purser on a grand duke's yacht.
+He began to move in exalted circles. Grand duchesses, princesses of
+principalities, eccentric millionaires, oriental potentates, and English
+nobles with Mediterranean villas came upon the stage and performed
+various evolutions which brought them into touch with the Grand Duke's
+purser. He was thanked for his services on one occasion by a fat,
+pop-eyed voluptuary who has become famous in history for scientific and
+cold-blooded political murders. Was offered a cigarette from the
+Imperial case which he accepted of course, but did not venture to
+smoke. Indeed, murmured Captain Macedoine with a faint smile, he had it
+still. 'My dear,' he addressed the girl Pollyni, 'if you will bring me
+the bag in the top drawer over there....' She came back into the circle
+of light bearing a small black bag of formidably heavy leather, the
+handle-straps sewn right round the body of it and the bronze hasp fitted
+with a massive brass padlock. It was a bag to inspire awe; and yet it
+made me smile. On one side the thick leather had been carefully pared
+away in three places. You see, I recognized that bag at once as one of
+the specie carriers of the Maracaibo Steamship Company, whose initials
+M. S. C. had been removed. It reminded me that after all I had known
+this personality, in the making, when he had not yet realized all his
+magnificent possibilities. In those days the furtive theft of a leather
+bag was all in the day's work. But when I looked at him again I was
+almost afraid to believe my own memories and conclusions. He held the
+bag before him, his small chunky hands gathered together on the handles,
+and gazed into the shadows with an expression of gentle and refined
+melancholy upon his face, as though he knew there might be nothing in
+the bag after all.
+
+"But there was. There were things in that bag I couldn't have believed
+existed out of a museum or a grand-opera property-room. There were his
+epaulettes and other insignia as a grand duke's purser, thick slices of
+gold and silver lace, buttons as large as medallions, and a badge like
+some ancient coat of arms done in glittering enamel. There were
+russia-leather boxes whose frayed edges still bore traces of exquisite
+gold-tooling and which, on being opened, bore within, delicately printed
+on their satin lining, the strange names of oriental and Levantine
+jewellers. And in one of these boxes, an oblong affair like the case of
+a cigar-holder, we were permitted to behold the cigarette which the
+great potentate had deigned to offer the Grand Duke's purser. A fat oval
+thing bearing an imperial monogram in gold. Captain Macedoine regarded
+it reverently as it lay on his palm. From His Majesty's own case, he
+observed in a deep abstraction. Part of the Old Order. Soon to go.... He
+spread out his bizarre possessions on the coverlet and showed us each in
+turn. There was a slip-ring for a cravat, of gold so heavy it could
+never be used, and with an incongruous emerald like a lump of bottle
+glass clamped to the centre of it. There was a stick-pin with a perfect
+knob of silly-looking rubies. There were cuff-buttons like Brazil nuts
+and about as beautiful, with diamonds in an eruption around the edges.
+There was a gold stop watch in a hunter case, with a chime and a
+coat-of-arms. And there was a gold cigarette case like a polished slab,
+almost insolent in its sheer, naked pricelessness. These, it appeared,
+were tokens of recognition from various wealthy personages who had been
+guests on the Grand Duke's yacht. It was customary, you know. There had
+been many others, which he did not regard with any particular sentiment,
+and had sold or exchanged for feminine trinkets for his dear Euphrosyne.
+There was a movement on the part of the two women as he pronounced this
+name and I looked at the girl. She met my gaze with a radiant smile and
+a little nod that seemed to mean 'Now we are coming to it.' As we were.
+For Captain Macedoine went on to inform us that one of the penalties of
+his wanderings among princes and plutocrats was an almost monastic habit
+of life. It would not have done, you know. He was the repository of
+discreet confidences, the inarticulate witness of august privacies. He
+occupied a position, so he seemed to imply, similar to that of the
+eunuchs of oriental empires, in so far as he was supposed to have no
+ascertainable human attributes beyond cupidity and intelligence. A
+seneschal! So it fell out that the Grand Duke, whose photograph showed a
+much be-whiskered person with very long thin legs and a huge nose, found
+himself without a purser one day. Captain Macedoine resigned. Under
+ordinary circumstances he would have returned to England and settled on
+a small estate in the country. But the circumstances were not ordinary.
+He had become the last of his line. The Macedoines had been dwindling
+for centuries. Did I believe in hereditary destinies? Families do die
+out, you know. So instead of taking the P. L. M. express from Cannes to
+Paris and so on to London, he took a passage to New York. First class,
+you know. As we reached this particular stage in Captain Macedoine's
+reminiscences, a brief and extraordinarily concentrated expression came
+into the pale blue eyes fixed on the shadows beyond the bed, his hands
+and nostrils remained momentarily rigid, as though a sharp memory had
+gone right through him and bereft him of all volition. And his eyes,
+closing, seemed to take his life with them and he became a corpse
+enjoying, let us say, a siesta. And this paroxysm, which gave me an
+uncomfortable feeling that Captain Macedoine was omitting the really
+interesting details of his departure from the Grand Duke's yacht, was
+construed by the Sarafov women as a symptom of mental anguish; and the
+girl, with a gesture almost divine in its exquisite and restrained
+impulsiveness, touched his arm. A smile suffused the man's features
+before he opened his eyes and turned them upon her with sacerdotal
+graciousness. The thing was so unreal that I was lost in a turmoil of
+effort to retain my hold upon actuality. The histrionic instinct gives
+one strange jolts when viewed close up. And through that turmoil I heard
+him telling them, as he had done before often enough no doubt, the story
+of how he met his dear Euphrosyne in the old French Quarter. And as he
+often said, you know, his dear Artemisia was the living image, you know,
+of her dear mother. His hand moved absently and the girl, anticipating
+his desire as though they had rehearsed the performance many times,
+leaned forward, took a photograph from the table, and handed it to me.
+His dear Euphrosyne!
+
+"Well, it wasn't so very like his daughter after all, not really so like
+her as Pollyni was like Mrs. Saratov. The woman in the photo was
+undeniably beautiful, but it was the beauty of the octaroon. The large
+eyes and the full, sensuous lips expressed with sombre emphasis the
+great enigma of race. In her daughter this enigma had been transmuted
+into an intensely personal thing, a seductive mystery that made men love
+her at the same time that it overshadowed love and filled them with
+anxiety for their spiritual safety. There was none of her radiant,
+aggressive insouciance in the photograph. It was the portrait of a
+clinging and rapacious female. A soft and delicious parasite, the
+victim of an immense and tragic error. I heard Captain Macedoine, while
+I sat with the photograph in my hand, telling of the almost incredible
+happiness of his home life in the little wooden cottage amid the tall
+grasses out on Tchoupitoulas Street. It all came back to me as I
+listened. The clangour of the box-cars being switched where the trolley
+bumped along the docks; the dry and dismal stretch of Poydras Street in
+the evening, the stark warehouses of Calliope, and then mile on mile of
+verandahed shabbiness, getting more and more open, with fields and
+cross-roads running down into mere vague vacancies, or perhaps a shy,
+solitary cottage. And the extraordinary sunsets over the lake--sunsets
+like vast flat washes of crimson and gamboge and violet, which were
+wiped out as by a hasty hand and left the wide-spaced _faubourgs_ a prey
+to the murmurous onslaught of insects and the hollow boom of enormous
+frogs. And the two women sat in rapt silence, absorbing the romantic
+story with its romantic setting. An artificial story, if you like, as
+everything about Captain Macedoine was artificial. It was almost as if
+he had achieved his destiny by coming at last to that extraordinary
+concoction of artificialities which we call New Orleans, where dead
+civilizations lie superimposed one upon the other like leaves in a
+rotten old book, where you can cut down through them, from the
+mail-steamer and the trolley-car and the fake religion, right down to
+the poisonous swamp and the Voodoo frenzy. It was a place whose very
+silences were eloquent of sadness and frustrated achievement, and he
+chose it as the scene of incredible happiness! For he conceived an
+affection for the city which led him to say in so many words that it was
+the only possible place to live, in the United States. His patrician
+up-bringing and cosmopolitan career, it seems, had brought him to the
+same view of our western civilization as Mrs. Saratov. It was this
+peculiar notion once more obtruded upon me that stung me into speech
+with him.
+
+"'You really think that?' 'You prefer this sort of place, for instance,
+to New England?'
+
+"'Oh there's no comparison,' he returned. 'Here you have absolute
+freedom. There you are strapped down in a groove and remain there,
+unless you fancy going to prison.' And he laughed contemptuously, as at
+some reminiscence.
+
+"'What do you understand by freedom?' I demanded and he bent his gaze
+moodily upon the shadows as though seeking to elucidate some depressing
+problem.
+
+"'There are a good many answers to that question,' he said at length,
+'but I should say, in my case, that it means deliverance from the
+Anglo-Saxon's infernal ideas of morality.' The last words came out with
+what was almost a snarl. He put the things he had been showing us back
+in the bag and locked it. 'Will you put it back, my dear?' he murmured
+with a smile. 'We must pick out something for you when ... eh?' The girl
+gave him an affectionate glance and carried the bag away into the dusk.
+
+"'Then I take it, Captain, you are doing well here?' I observed. He
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"'So-so,' he answered. 'So-so. Political troubles have interfered so
+far, but it is upon them really that we build, you know. Our losses will
+be more than made good shortly.'
+
+"'But I was given to understand that the Minister of the Interior
+declined to authorize the concessions.'
+
+"Captain Macedoine became extremely human. He grinned behind his chunky
+hand.
+
+"'Pardon me for laughing,' he returned. 'The Minister of the Interior
+has gone on a long tour in Anatolia, for his health. It is quite
+possible he will remain down there. It would certainly be a sensible
+thing to do.'
+
+"'Why, what do you mean?' I asked.
+
+"'Is it possible you do not know?' he said in a pitying tone. 'The
+English newspapers print a great deal of football news and racing, but a
+matter like this is passed over in silence. Eh? What? These ladies
+know. I know. But you don't know. Your captain does not know either, I
+dare say. Nor your owners. I was prepared for this three months back, I
+may say. My affiliations with various syndicates enabled me to draw the
+necessary deductions. I chartered three ships, borrowing the money at
+very high interest. Those ships are loading stores and ammunition in
+Glasgow. They will arrive in about three weeks.'
+
+"'Ammunition?' I repeated, rather suspecting his sanity. This was in
+1912, remember.
+
+"'Dear me, yes,' he answered with another pitying smile. 'Didn't you
+know really? There will be war you know. Next week possibly. Perhaps
+to-morrow. Why,' he added with considerable animation, 'it might start
+to-night!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Mr. Spenlove, seated on the extreme edge of his little deck-stool, his
+knees out, his hands lightly inserted in his trouser pockets, paused
+again in his narrative and looked over his shoulder as the quartermaster
+at the gangway rang four bells. The moon was gone behind the vast mass
+of rock which had been used by him as a material background to the
+fantastic tale he was telling in his own introspective and irritating
+manner. Out beyond the sharp black silhouette of the headland the open
+water was a dazzling glitter that contrasted oddly with the profound
+obscurity of the tiny haven. From time to time a silent form had risen
+from the chairs beneath the awning and gone forward to the navigating
+bridge, returning in the same unobtrusive fashion. And as Mr. Spenlove
+paused, and the clear-toned bronze bell rang four strokes that echoed
+musically from the cliff, another form, moving with care, emerged from
+the ward-room scuttle and set down a tray on a small table. There was a
+movement among the deck chairs as feet came down softly and felt for
+discarded shoes, and the surgeon, clearing his throat noisily, stood up
+and yawned. One by one the officers who had thus elected to pass a night
+in conversation took from the tray a cup of the British Navy's
+celebrated cocoa and returned to their chairs. Mr. Spenlove, still
+sitting upright and looking round as though he expected someone to
+contradict him, put out his hand, and the night-steward placed in it the
+remaining cup before moving off and vanishing into the shadows, shot by
+gleams of brass handrails and polished oak, of the companion. Mr.
+Spenlove, his head cocked slightly on one side, his dark elvish eyebrows
+raised satirically, and his sharp, short beard moving slightly, stirred
+his cocoa. He betrayed no concern as to the state of mind of his
+audience. He was well aware that the perfect listener does not exist.
+The novelist is more fortunate. For every hundred persons who deign to
+take up his book and trifle with it for an hour, putting it down upon
+the slightest pretext and perhaps forgetting to finish it, there will be
+one enthusiast who savors every word, notes the turn of a phrase, and
+enjoys the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the style. One must not expect
+this when telling a tale, except perhaps when one is a boy, and the
+dormitory is hushed to listen, and one goes on and on until honest
+snores register satiety. Mr. Spenlove, stirring and sipping his cocoa,
+stared straight across at Gruenbaum's house, which the current had now
+brought before him, and composed his thoughts before going on to the
+final conclusion of his story. He was moved somewhat himself because the
+mere act of narration had evoked memories whose strength he had perhaps
+underestimated since they had remained dormant so long, and the
+immediate stress of the great conflict, in which they were all leisurely
+participating, had led him to imagine that the world before the war was
+dead and gone. Which it wasn't, he reflected, setting down his cup and
+beginning to roll a cigarette ... not by a long shot; and remained
+silent yet a little longer, marvelling at the extraordinary triviality
+of such things as war, against the sombre verities of Race and Love and
+Despair.
+
+And then he suddenly became aware that the shoes had been again softly
+discarded, and he heard the creak of the trestles as the navigating
+officer stretched himself on his camp-bed alongside the hand-steering
+gear. Rolling a cigarette Mr. Spenlove began again.
+
+"I doubt if you can conceive now," he remarked, "how that bland
+announcement of a possible war before morning startled and shocked me. I
+doubt if anybody realizes how such things tore our hearts before those
+autumn days in nineteen fourteen. Some of you may remember when war was
+declared between England and the Boer Republics. Quite a little thrill
+in London; a romantic feeling that the die was cast, and all that sort
+of thing. But that was far away across the sea, a diminutive business
+which it pleased us to consider one of our punitive expeditions. War,
+the collision of European hosts, was a subject for literature and art.
+It wouldn't ever happen again. The Turks and Italians had been at war
+and it had been a decorous affair involving some nebulous actions in
+Cyrenaica--a locality we had never heard of before--and a few amusing
+incidents at sea. I remember we were pursued all one morning by an
+indignant Italian scout-ship during that war, who wanted to know why we
+hadn't stopped at her signal. I believe, as a matter of fact, the mate
+on the bridge had been making himself a hammock and hadn't seen
+anything. And when they did catch us up our skipper simply broke out the
+Red Ensign, showed his codeflags, and went ahead. War? We hadn't any
+conception of what the word meant. Our troops were always walloping some
+tribe or other in India and so forth, and we lived in a peaceful,
+orderly world.
+
+"But Captain Macedoine's remark that war might break out at any time had
+something, intangible if you like, to corroborate it. It was in the air.
+It was very evident in that crowded cafe when the robust gentleman in
+the frock coat and fez and wearing a silver star was working his hearers
+up to a hoarse, guttural frenzy about something--probably our old friend
+Liberty. There was a destroyer in the harbour near us--a dingy-looking
+and obsolete craft with low, sullen funnels and a disagreeable array of
+torpedo-tubes with the fat snouts of torpedoes lurking under the hoods.
+In those days a war-ship of any sort made one think all sorts of chaotic
+thoughts. And now he had mentioned it to me, a good many other things
+came to mind which pointed toward some readjustment of power. Our sudden
+charter for Saloniki, for example, breaking in on our pleasant, regular
+jog-trot trip to keep the great mills of northern Italy going. Yes, I
+believed him in spite of my prejudice, and I showed it by taking my
+leave with a certain degree of haste and starting for the ship. We
+always do that. It is our idea of safety--to get back to the ship. Habit
+and duty constrain us. But I had to be shown the way. It was a dark,
+moonless night and I had very little notion how to proceed. We bade
+Captain Macedoine good-night and he immediately assumed the manner of an
+aged ecclesiastic. He became much older. I don't know whether you will
+get just what I mean, but the mere fact that he was holding the centre
+of the stage, that we were all looking at him and listening to him and
+thinking about him, had seemed to inform him with an actual access of
+vitality. But when I started from my motionless pose in the background
+and scraped my chair and muttered something about having to get back to
+the ship, he seemed to fade. He looked at me for an instant in an
+attentive and perplexed fashion, as though he could hardly account for
+my presence.
+
+"'I never cared for the sea,' he murmured. 'A preposterous life. All the
+disadvantages of being in jail with--what was it? Something or other ...
+I forget ... well, you must come again. Always pleased, you know....'
+
+"And then, outside, Mrs. Sarafov insisted that I would lose my way.
+Pollyni must go with me and show me a short route to a landing-stage
+where I could get a boat. We stood in the clear darkness of the high,
+narrow sidewalk, and I could feel the girl move closer to me as she
+lifted her chin and smiled into my eyes. What? Lyrical? Well, I can tell
+you that you would have been lyrical, too, doctor. I was thirty-five,
+you know, and I had never been in close contact with beautiful women
+before. Just as Artemisia had her own secret lure, a lure founded on her
+exquisite, derisive humour and her sombre heritage, so this
+extraordinarily seductive and friendly young person, an entrancing
+character composed of Eastern mystery and Western frankness, appealed
+irresistibly to the connoisseur in a man. She was sex, and nothing but
+sex, yet she maintained without effort the role of being merely a dear
+friend of Captain Macedoine's daughter.
+
+"'You must come again,' said Mrs. Sarafov, drawing her shawl round her
+fine shoulders. 'We don't often see people from the other side. In the
+afternoon, eh? And Miss Macedoine, she'll come over.'
+
+"'Then you don't think there will be any trouble?' I asked. 'Any
+fighting, I mean.'
+
+"'We never interfere in politics,' she answered, drily. 'So long as you
+mind your own business and let them fight it out among 'emselves, you're
+safe enough here, I should say.'
+
+"'What is it all about?' I demanded.
+
+"'That's more than I can tell you,' she answered with disarming candour.
+'Taxes mostly, I guess. But you have to pay 'em to somebody.' And then
+she added cryptically: 'I don't know as we'll be any better off if they
+was to win.'
+
+"Well, we talked a little longer and then the girl, who had run into the
+house for a shawl, stepped along beside me with her long, sure-footed
+stride and we started up the dark street. There were very few lights
+about now and from time to time she put her hand on my arm as we came to
+a gap in the sidewalk.
+
+"'And so,' I said in a low tone, 'you are a great friend of Miss
+Macedoine, I understand.'
+
+"'Oh, yes,' she said. 'I like her very much. She tells me everything.'
+
+"'Everything?' She nodded, leaning forward and looking up at me in a
+certain demure, elvish fashion.
+
+"'Yes!' she replied, dwelling on the word with tremendous emphasis.
+'Everything. About you, when you come to see her in London, you know.
+Oh, she like you. She like you very much. When she know you have come,
+she'll be crazy.'
+
+"'But you know,' I protested, 'you know I'm only a sort of friend.'
+
+"'Oh, yes!' again with the dwelling accent. 'Of course, a friend. And
+she talk and talk and tell me all about you and say to me: 'No, he'll
+never come. I'll never see him again. Forget it,' and then she sits and
+looks at the sea for an hour. And when I say to her: 'Why don't you
+write?' she say, 'I have,' and is all sad and miserable.'
+
+"'But she didn't tell _me_ this when she wrote.'
+
+"'No?' said the girl with a faintly sarcastic inflection. 'Well, she
+wouldn't ... I suppose.'
+
+"'Besides which,' I went on, 'she gave me to understand she was living
+with this Monsieur Kinaitsky, so....'
+
+"'He supports her,' she said, 'she's very lucky.'
+
+"'How?' I asked, astonished at this peculiar sentiment.
+
+"'Because he never goes near her for, oh, since this three months. He's
+married, you know. You'll pass his house in the boat, only there's a fog
+on the Gulf to-night. And he supports four others. Very rich. And so
+long as she stays round she can do what she likes.'
+
+"'Would you mind telling me, my dear,' I said, 'why this gentleman
+supports all these ... er ... strangers?' She shrugged her shoulders and
+took my arm daintily.
+
+"'Because he's rich, I suppose,' she remarked. 'They all do it here. In
+England--no?' she added in inquiry.
+
+"'Well, not on such a lavish scale,' I admitted. 'Then there would be no
+harm in my going to see her where she lives?'
+
+"'Oh, sure! She wants you to. I'll go to-morrow, eh? And tell her you
+will come? What time?'
+
+"'What about the afternoon?'
+
+"'Yes. And now I'll tell you how to get there.'
+
+"'You'd better write it down,' I said, 'when we come to a light.'
+
+"As we approached the road running parallel to the curve of the Gulf the
+air became heavy and moist. It was October, with a chill in the midnight
+air. And for another thing, it was as quiet as any country road of an
+autumn night at home. Our feet padded softly on the matted leaves lying
+wet on the path when we turned into the main road, and through the
+gardens of the villas came a faint breath of air laden with salt and the
+dead odours of the river delta. We seemed to be alone in the world, we
+two, as we hurried along in the darkness, and the girl pressed more
+closely to me as though for protection against unseen dangers. And yet,
+so crystal clear was her soul, that there lay on my mind a delicious
+fancy that she was deliberately impersonating the woman who had talked
+to her of me, that she was offering herself as a chaste and temporary
+substitute for the being whom, so she assumed, we both loved.
+
+"And I," said Mr. Spenlove, after some business with a reluctant match,
+"was not prepared, just then, to deny it. It would be absurd and
+misleading to speak of a community of interest as love, yet we are
+driven to discover some reason for what we call love apart from the
+appeal of sex. Otherwise a pretty promiscuous kettle of fish! Where does
+it begin and out of what does it grow? I'm not asking because I imagine
+I shall get any answer. I'm inclined to believe the origin of love is
+as obscure as that of life itself. I put the thought into words, because
+at that moment, with that girl beside me, with the whole mundane
+contraption of existence obliterated by a damp, foggy darkness, with the
+moisture dripping hurriedly from invisible trees, and the immediate
+future rendered ominous by Captain Macedoine's remarks, I felt a
+conviction that I was closer to the solution of the problem than I had
+ever been before. Or since, for that matter. Closer, I say. I was aware
+of it without being actually able to take hold of it. Nor did I try to
+take hold of it. I was still in that condition of mucilaginous
+uncertainty toward my emotions in which most of us English seem to pass
+our days. Foreigners are led to imagine we really take no interest in
+the subject of love, for example, we are so scared of any approach to
+the flames of desire. We compromise by floating down some economic
+current into the broad river of matrimony. We have a genius for
+emotional relinquishment. We--you--are born compromisers. We are so sure
+that we shall never know the supreme raptures of passion that most of us
+never do know them. And in any case we are so rattled by the mere
+proximity of love that we never seem to get any coherent conception of
+its nature. And I was not much of an exception. I have no supreme
+secret to impart to you. As I have said, I am _par excellence_ a super
+in the play. For a few memorable moments I was entrusted with the part
+of a principal. It was not my fault, after all, that nothing came of it.
+I sometimes wonder what _would_ have come of it, had not her sinister
+destiny intervened....
+
+"And then suddenly our feet struck timber that rang hollow and I made
+out a slender jetty running into the fog. The girl moved ahead, drawing
+me after her as she scanned the water with her other hand shading her
+eyes. For a moment she stood listening and then she uttered a melodious
+contralto shout for someone named '_Makri!_' I can recall, as I repeat
+the word, the name of that obscure and unknown boatman, the very timbre
+of her voice, the poise of her form, and the firm flexure of her fingers
+on mine. And for that moment, as we stood waiting and the boat came
+slowly and silently toward us with the standing figure of the oarsman
+lost in the higher fog, I had an extraordinary impression, clear and
+diminutive as a vignette, that I loved her and that she, in some
+mysterious fashion, could love me without jeopardizing her own destiny.
+A folly, of course; but I insist it gave me an inkling, that brief
+illumination, of the actual nature of love."
+
+At this momentous declaration Mr. Spenlove suddenly relapsed into a
+pause that became a silence, as though he were still under the
+influence of that illumination of which he spoke, and were pondering it
+to the extent of forgetting his audience altogether. And it was a
+suspicion of this amiable idiosyncrasy which caused the surgeon to make
+a remark. Mr. Spenlove gave a grunt of assent.
+
+"Yes," he said. "You are right. But this is not a supreme secret. I can
+only offer you the suggestion that what you call a love affair is really
+only a sequence of innumerable small passions. Yes, for a moment, you
+know, I saw them plainly enough--a procession of tiny, perfect things,
+moments, gestures, glances, and silences each complete and utterly
+beautiful in itself, preoccupied with its own perfection. Scientific?
+Not at all. Intuition and nothing else. One did not indulge in science
+with that magical girl holding one's hand. Science is only a sort of
+decorous guesswork at the best, guesswork corroborated by facts. In the
+presence of a woman like that, you know! At this distance of time, my
+friends, I can tell you that this girl, the chance acquaintance of a
+chance evening, imposed her personality upon me as the very genius of
+the tender passion. Yet I had but that one rhythmical moment by which to
+judge--and the boat, a long and elegantly carved affair of cedar wood
+decorated with brass bulbs, slid softly alongside, a tiny lantern
+glowing between the thwarts; like some perilous bark of destiny, and she
+a charming, enigmatic spirit watching with gracious care my departure
+for an alluring yet unknown shore.
+
+"For that is what it was. I stepped into that long, narrow affair, with
+its tall, gondola-like prow and absurd brass balls, and I left my youth
+behind on the hollow-sounding boards of that jetty. No, there is nothing
+to laugh at in a man of thirty-five leaving his youth behind. There are
+men who have seen their own daughters married, and retain for themselves
+the hearts of adventurous boys. From the formidable ramparts of half a
+century they can leap down and frolic with the young fellows who for the
+first time are in love, or seeing the world, or holding down a job, or
+reading Balzac. I cannot compete with such men. Youth fills me with awe.
+It is something I believe I had once, but I am not sure. I watch them
+nowadays, with their unerring cruelty of instinct, their clear egotism,
+their uncanny intuition and sophistication, and I wonder if I were ever
+like that, a sort of callow and clever young god! I wonder, too, whether
+a good deal of the modern misery and unhappiness isn't simply due to
+women being at a loss, as it were, to know just what the new and
+improved breed of young men want. All this talk of women themselves
+becoming modern is so much flub-dub. Look at Mrs. Evans. She was, and
+is, coeval with the Jurassic Period. And women are continually trying to
+get back there. You may ask me how I know this, and I can only tell you
+that I have an emotional conviction--the strongest conviction in the
+world, born of the tremendous experience which was coming upon me.
+
+"And the first thing which, you might say, certified my new status as a
+grown-up human being, was my promise to go and see Captain Macedoine's
+daughter. I mean I made that promise without a shadow of reservation. In
+youth we hedge, we balk, we bilk, over and over again. Fidelity is
+unattractive to us. We cannot see that to keep a promise made to a woman
+is a species of spiritual strength. It may be a foolish promise made to
+a worthless woman, but that is of no importance. In youth we go on
+breaking away, breaking away, for one reason or another, until we have
+not even faith in ourselves, until we lose sight of the essential nature
+of true fidelity, which is a blind disregard of our own immediate well
+being. And I was astonished, as I sat in that boat and floated away into
+the gray void of the fog, with the girl, the shore, the sky, all gone,
+that she had infected me with her romantic view of life. I had always
+preserved a sort of semi-religious notion that love, for me personally
+you know, was bound to be an affair of highly respectable and virtuous
+character. I don't know why, I'm sure, but I had that illusion. But I
+discovered in that fog-bound boat that I knew very little about myself
+after all, that the future was absolutely unknown to me beyond the grand
+fact that I was going to the address which the girl had repeated twice
+in her musical contralto, and that I was mysteriously exalted about it.
+
+"I was steering, you know, and had let things go a bit, I suppose, under
+the stress of my thoughts, when I realized the boatman was calling to me
+and waving an arm. I collected my wits and looked round. There was a
+methodical sound of oars and in a moment a large boat loomed close to us
+and I saw the ghostly figures of the four rowers, their bodies rising to
+full height as they plunged their oars in deep and then fell slowly
+backward to the thwarts. And as the boat moved forward again in one of
+its long, rhythmical surges and the stern of her came into the faint
+radiance of our small lantern I saw a bent figure with a fez lean
+suddenly forward, grasping the gunwale with one hand and his coat collar
+with the other and stare at us with a fixed, crouching intensity that
+was familiar. I was perfectly certain it was M. Nikitos, and in the
+mental excitement of wondering what he might be doing at that hour in a
+four-oared boat, I was turning my own craft round in a half circle. I
+heard voices in the fog, the voice of M. Nikitos giving strident orders
+and hoarse growls of assent from the toiling boatman. The sounds died
+away and I became aware of other sounds close by, the long hiss and slap
+of the sea against masonry, and voices. Voices clamouring and protesting
+and calling aimlessly and interjecting unheeded remarks into other
+voices engaged in torrential vituperation. And then my boatman stood up
+suddenly, his tall form rising and falling into the fog like some comic
+contrivance as the swell tossed the boat perilously near the sea-wall,
+and uttered a sharp, monosyllabic comment. The voices ceased as though
+by magic, and a grave question came out of the invisible air, which my
+boatman, leaning out and laying hold of the stones, answered in a quiet
+and competent fashion. You must understand that I had not seen this man,
+yet he had already made that impression upon me. The whole business to
+me, a strange and somewhat exalted Englishman sitting in a reeling
+row-boat and wondering whether he was about to be dashed to pieces
+against the stones, savoured of a carefully rehearsed performance. And
+when a flight of balustraded marble steps came into dim view and a tall
+figure in silk pajamas, a fur overcoat, and a fez came slowly down into
+the light of our lantern I gave up and just waited for things to happen.
+Up above I could now descry the chorus which had been creating such an
+uproar, a motley collection of male and female retainers in various
+stages of undress, and holding a number of alarming looking weapons,
+standing in a row looking down at us in astonishment. And I was just
+feeling exasperated at being so completely in the dark because I could
+not understand a word these people were saying, when the tall bizarre
+person in the fur coat and pajamas leaned over and said:
+
+"'I understand you are an Englishman from one of the ships?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said. 'That is so. What is the matter, may I ask?'
+
+"'An attempt,' said he, 'at robbery and perhaps upon my life. You saw a
+boat?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'we saw a boat. Was that the man who has been attempting
+robbery?'
+
+"'The leader,' said he; 'we have the others,' he looked at his
+retainers, who looked down at us in a most theatrical way.
+
+"'Do you know who he was--the leader?' I asked. All this time I was
+sitting in the dancing boat while the boatman fended her off with his
+long arms.
+
+"'No, I regret not.'
+
+"'I can tell you, if you want to know,' I said. He leaned down to get a
+good look at me, looked back over his shoulder, and called in a
+reproving voice, upon which one of his minions flew down with a lantern,
+and we viewed each other in the glare.
+
+"'I think it will be better if you accept my hospitality,' he said,
+studying me thoughtfully. 'My carriage will take you back to your ship.'
+He spoke again to my man who replied with grave decorum. I saw him now,
+a tall, sunburned fellow with an immense black moustache, a round flat
+cap on his black head, and an embroidered coat with innumerable small
+buttons and frogs. He held the boat a little nearer in shore and I
+stepped on to the sea-worn marble stairway. And without a word, in
+accordance with the magical nature of the affair, my romantic boatman,
+who had borne me away from my youth and who had proceeded methodically
+to bear me onward toward my inevitable destiny, pushed off with an oar
+into the fog and was lost.
+
+"And I assure you," insisted Mr. Spenlove in an aggrieved tone, "that I
+have the same memory of the scene which followed as one has of a
+complicated dream. I am not prepared, at this moment, to go into a court
+of law and swear to all that passed between myself and that perturbed
+gentleman in the silk pajamas and the fur overcoat. I was living very
+intensely at the time, you must remember. The exact incidence of the
+adventure was not clear to me until I was back on the ship. Even when
+we sat in an apartment of immense size and sombre magnificence, and he
+said courteously, 'Have we by any chance met before?' I did not fully
+wake up. I said:
+
+"'I believe so, but I must admit I have forgotten your name.'
+
+"'That is easy,' he smiled. 'It is Kinaitsky. I am equally guilty--more
+so, for I am not certain whether I have seen you....' he paused as he
+passed me some cigarettes.
+
+"'At the ---- Hotel in London,' I suggested. He pondered for a moment,
+observing me intently.
+
+"'It would be as well to give me the details,' he remarked. 'Since you
+are about to do me a valuable service, I should know to whom I am
+indebted.'
+
+"I told him. He remained silent for quite a while and I sat enjoying a
+perfect cigarette and an almost equally perfect glass of wine. At length
+he said:
+
+"'And I understand that your interest in this lady has led you here?'
+
+"'Oh, no,' I assured him. 'People in my walk of life can't do things
+like that. It just happens my ship's charter was changed, that is all.
+You can call it good luck, if you like, or bad.'
+
+"'Pardon,' he said, studying me and feeling in the pocket of his
+overcoat, 'but I am not clear yet just what your intentions are.'
+
+"'I don't know myself,' I answered, foolishly. 'I must see her first.
+You understand, she wants to see me, as a friend.' He smiled and became
+grave again at once.
+
+"'I,' he remarked, stiffly, 'have not seen her since my marriage. I
+allow her an income, of course. I regard that as a simple duty to those
+who have been under my protection. I may tell you, Monsieur, that she is
+quite free to dispose of herself.... But things are very unsettled here,
+as you may know. I have large interests which involve me in political
+affairs. This present affair is of that nature. And I may observe that
+you were good enough to say you recognized the man who escaped in that
+boat. I am at a loss to understand how this can be, but let that pass.
+Who was he?'
+
+"'I was talking to him only to-day,' I returned. 'He calls himself
+Stepan Nikitos, and he told me he wrote articles on internationalism in
+a paper called the _Phos_. He is the sort of man who would write
+fluently no doubt on internationalism, for he seems to be an Egyptian
+Greek with a strain of Armenian in him. Personally, I believed him to be
+simply a runner for a ship-chandler of whom perhaps you have
+heard--Captain Macedoine.'
+
+"M. Kinaitsky sat with one arm on the little table between us and
+regarded me from under sharp black brows with motionless interest. As I
+mentioned the name of Captain Macedoine he stroked his moustache, and
+then drew his other hand from his pocket and placed on the table a heavy
+American revolver.
+
+"'Pardon,' he said, 'but I am unable to see how you come to know this
+Nikitos.... Oh, he is a ship-chandler, you say. Well, he may be that
+also. But you are not conversant with affairs here or you would
+appreciate the danger of being friendly with internationalists. That by
+the way. Your friend,' he went on with gentle irony, 'came here to-night
+with three men such as can be hired for a few _drachma_ in any of the
+alleys of the _Cite Saul_, to obtain some important documents from my
+safe. Unfortunately for them the safe is of the latest London pattern
+with a time-lock, which I bought when in England last year. They only
+succeeded in alarming my servants and we secured the three men. The
+leader, this Nikitos, who is well-known as one of those who sell
+information to the Hellenic Government, a spy and a harbour pimp,
+escaped. A most unfortunate accident.'
+
+"'But what harm can such a disreputable being do to a man like you?' I
+enquired in astonishment. M. Kinaitsky spun the chambers of the
+revolver with his finger.
+
+"'It is impossible,' he observed, calmly, 'to conceive of a state of
+things in which a disreputable being can not do harm to one who
+cherishes his reputation. Consider----' he went on, his finger leaving
+the weapon and levelled at me. 'He has nothing to lose. He is the dupe
+of desperate and cunning persons who wish to destroy the government. He
+is poor, and he probably is driven by some woman to obtain money for her
+gratification at all costs.'
+
+"'No,' I said. 'You don't know M. Nikitos. He has a very peculiar
+attitude toward women. You might almost call him vociferously virtuous.
+Perhaps,' I added, 'you do not know either that he was supposed to marry
+Captain Macedoine's daughter? She turned him out. They were on the
+Island of Ipsilon together.'
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Spenlove, "how I expected him to take this, but
+I was surprised at his composure. I did not take into adequate
+consideration the fact that women were not the same phenomena to him
+that they were to me. I forgot the 'four others' who were being kept in
+loose boxes, so to speak, out of a deference to that complex yet
+extremely admirable reluctance of his to abandon those who had reposed
+in the broad shadow of his protection and who had been honoured by his
+august notice. I have never been able, by the by, to make up my mind
+whether I myself admired or loathed this singular idiosyncrasy.
+
+"'You mean,' he questioned, quietly, 'that she was his mistress on the
+island?' I shook my head.
+
+"'No,' I said, 'that's the very thing I don't mean. And as I told you,
+Nikitos has not that temperament. He makes rather a hobby of his own
+chastity.'
+
+"M. Kinaitsky regarded me with interest. 'I mean,' I added, 'his
+emotions are his mistresses, so to speak. There _are_ some men,' I went
+on in doubtful fashion, 'to whom women make no positive appeal. But
+perhaps....'
+
+"'Oh, undoubtedly!' he startled me by agreeing with sudden emphasis.
+'Undoubtedly! But if not women, what?' he demanded.
+
+"'Well,' I said, slowly, 'he struck me as being just what you describe
+him--in with some political crowd. I don't speak the language, you must
+remember, and have only a hazy notion of what all this trouble is about,
+but in the _Cafe Odeon_ I gathered from various obscure hints that he
+was part of the show. And another thing, Monsieur, he certainly gave me
+to understand that he meditated some sort of revenge upon the person who
+had robbed him of this girl. That was how he put it, you know. He is
+quite unable to believe that she detested him. He is ignorant of the
+details of her life lately, I may say. He even suspected me of having
+abducted her. Made some very violent threats, but I put that down to his
+mania for long words.'
+
+"M. Kinaitsky looked at me with grave concern.
+
+"'This is very serious,' he remarked at length, 'very serious. It is
+only a matter of days, hours, before he learns anything he wishes. The
+government at Constantinople have been most negligent in their attitude
+toward the revolutionary leaders here.'
+
+"'What alarms you?' I enquired.
+
+"'Everything!' he returned, getting up and walking to and fro on the
+polished parquetry flooring, his arms folded, his head bent.
+'Everything!' He halted suddenly in his advance toward the far end of
+the room which opened upon a small byzantine balcony and looked at me
+over his shoulder.
+
+"'I believe,' he said, slowly, 'that you are entirely trustworthy----'
+
+"'I feel flattered,' I murmured.
+
+"'But for one thing,' he went on, 'I cannot account to myself for your
+connection with Mademoiselle Macedoine. I ask myself--what is he doing
+there? I cannot answer.'
+
+"'Why are you so anxious about a thing like that when you have so many
+cares?' I demanded.
+
+"'Because,' said he, 'I wish to make use of you. The news you bring me
+to-night is, to me personally, by reason of my position here as an
+Ottoman subject, extremely important. I propose to you that you take a
+package of papers to my brother in London. I shall leave for
+Constantinople by the four o'clock train to-morrow. If you will call
+here at three to-morrow I will have them ready for you and will see you
+safe to your ship where no doubt you have a safe on board. I can assure
+you that when you deliver these papers to my brother he will reimburse
+you for your trouble. Or if you prefer----'
+
+"'No,' said, 'I will do it with pleasure for nothing.'
+
+"'Impossible,' he retorted, gravely, coming up to the table again. 'It
+is a commission and will be generously rewarded.'
+
+"'You anticipate trouble then?' I suggested.
+
+"'Monsieur,' said he, 'I anticipate the worst kind of trouble. I have
+known of it for some time, but the happenings of to-night prove that I
+was mistaken as to the time.'
+
+"'It will be better if I know nothing about it,' I said. 'I will call at
+three or earlier. I have an appointment ashore to-morrow afternoon but I
+can come here first.'
+
+"'You go to Mademoiselle Macedoine, perhaps?' I nodded. 'Give her my
+respects,' he murmured, regarding me steadily. 'My respects. It would be
+impertinent no doubt to refer again to your own future movements?'
+
+"And you know," said Mr. Spenlove, breaking off in his narrative
+abruptly, "I had no words to reply. I was stricken with a species of
+intellectual consternation at the incredible gulf which separated me
+from that man emotionally. I was staggered by the vision which
+persistently came before me of those four unknown women, quite possibly
+beautiful young women, though of this I had no actual proof, dwelling in
+discreet seclusion and serving no useful purpose in the world beyond the
+gratification of a plutocrat's ego-mania. If that can be called useful.
+And there was also, in addition to these, this girl whom I knew. Five of
+them: and they were not even permitted to be wicked! And I had to
+wrestle with this outrageous problem of our relative status as human
+beings at the same time that my own attitude toward this girl was
+assuming an intensely personal character. My soul, or that fugitive and
+ineluctable entity which does duty for a sailorman's soul, was stamping
+up and down inside of me, waving its arms, protesting with all its
+suddenly released energy against this man, denying him any knowledge of
+what we call love, at all. I wanted to assail him with denunciations for
+the monstrous self-esteem which sentenced those delicate creatures to a
+shadowy and volitionless stagnation. I accused him of the destruction of
+their immortal souls, forgetting in my romantic warmth that in all
+probability he didn't believe they had any. But of course, being an
+Englishman, I remained perfectly quiescent and inarticulate. I believe I
+reached for another cigarette before picking up my hat. And I dare say I
+smiled. We have peculiar ways of defending ourselves in such crises. He
+assumed a puzzled air as he held out his hand.
+
+"'Englishmen are ice,' he remarked, 'where women are concerned. I have
+frequently observed it. _Sang froid_ as we say in French. The phrase
+must have been inspired by the contemplation of an Englishman....'
+
+"'And we shook hands. I said nothing, which doubtless confirmed him in
+his illusions about us. But the point is, I was equally mistaken about
+him, I could not believe him capable of what we call love. I was, as I
+say, mistaken. But as I followed him out to the front of his house,
+where his patient minions waited with lanterns which shed flickering
+rays over enormous shrubs and about the trunks of tall cypresses, and
+stood at length beside a fantastic barouche, with a sleepy driver on the
+box, I had a moment of illumination. I asked myself why I applied this
+test of love to a man like him, a man in the midst of extraordinary
+predicaments--a man who perhaps had suffered the pangs of hell for love
+and had recovered, who quite possibly had run up and down the whole
+gamut of human emotions while I was idiotically spending my years
+tinkling on a couple of notes. The stupid injustice of my interior anger
+came home to me, and I sought again for the reason why I demanded of him
+my own occidental idealism. The answer struck me as unexpectedly as a
+sudden blow. It was because of my own attitude toward the girl. As I
+took my seat in the carriage and reached out mechanically to shake hands
+once more, I saw her as clearly as though she were there before me, the
+bought chattel of a cultivated polygamist, and the blood rushed to my
+head in a sudden surge. I leaned back as the horses started at the crack
+of the whip. I felt sick and humiliatingly impotent. I saw Love and
+Romance for what they are in this iron world of ours--ragged outcasts
+shivering in the streets, the abject dependents of the rich. And I saw
+myself for what I was, too, for the matter of that, a reed shaken by the
+winds of desire, an emotional somnambulist terrified at the apparition
+of his own destiny."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"No," said Mr. Spenlove in reply to a murmured protest, "I am not
+libelling humanity at all. We are a very fine lot of fellows, no doubt.
+As I mentioned a little while ago, the new generation seem to be a
+distinct advance in evolutionary types over us older and more imperfect
+organisms. To watch a modern youth with a woman, to hear him recount his
+extensive and peculiar experiences with women, to study his detached and
+factory-built emotions toward women--the outcome of our modern craze for
+quantity-production, is an instructive and somewhat alarming pastime for
+one weathering middle age. An improvement, of course. All progress means
+that, I am informed. But I am not telling you the adventures of a
+super-man, only a super in the play. What? No, I didn't run down love,
+as you call it, at all. My quarrel was not with love, or even the sexual
+manifestation of it which pre-occupies you all so much. I simply doubted
+your knowledge of it. I suggested that the majority of men never know
+very much about it save in a scared and furtive fashion. I hinted that
+you never fully realized the terrific importance of romantic ideas in
+the world; that you make a joke of the whole business, filling your
+rooms with pictures of well-nourished young women in amorous poses,
+filling your minds with mocking travesties and sly anecdotes of those
+great souls who have left us the records of their emotional storms and
+ship-wrecks. I am telling you the story of Captain Macedoine's
+daughter. Eh? Well, I am coming to that ... it seems we shall be here
+till morning.
+
+"It once occurred to me," he went on, meditatively, "that a good deal of
+the unreality of people in books is due to the homogeneity of their
+emotions. A man in love, for example, is in love right to the end, or to
+the point where the mechanism of the story renders it necessary to
+introduce another state of affairs. Anybody who has been in love, or
+cherished a hatred, or espoused a doctrine, or done anything invoking
+the deep chords, knows that this is not so. There is the reaction. When
+I got aboard the _Manola_ once more and stood in the middle of my stuffy
+little cabin on the port side of the engine hatch, I was a cold and
+discouraged pessimist. The oil lamp on my table showed me my domain. A
+cockroach was making its way methodically round and round a covered
+plate of sandwiches, while its brother or possibly a distant relation
+was enjoying a good tuck-in of the cocoa at the bottom of a cup. Down
+below I heard the bang of a bucket, and I reflected that the donkeyman,
+after cleaning his fires and sweeping his tubes, was washing himself in
+the stoke-hold. The night watchman in the galley was drying heavy
+flannels over the stove and the warm, offensive odour hung in the air.
+On the big mirror which I have mentioned, I saw a memorandum written
+with a piece of soap: 'Steering Gear.' I recalled that I must get the
+Mate to take up the slack in his tiller-head in the morning. I was
+overwhelmed with the hard, gritty facts of existence, an existence the
+most discouraging and drab on earth I imagine, unless one has some fine
+romantic ideal before one. And I stood there, irresolute, looking at my
+figure in the glass, which reminded me of a badly painted ancestral
+portrait, and wondered whether I was capable of a fine romantic ideal.
+There lies the trouble with most of us, I fancy. We lose our youth and
+we fail to lay hold of the resolution of manhood. And before we know it
+we have drifted moodily into forlorn by-ways of sensuality....
+
+"Because I knew that if I went to see that girl next day I could no
+longer maintain a detached air of being a kind of benevolent and
+irresponsible guardian. All the unusual and melodramatic happenings of
+the evening were unable to blind me to the basic fact that our relations
+had changed, and I dared not follow them, even in thought, to their
+logical consequences. And yet I dared not retreat. I had that much
+imaginative manhood! I could not face a future haunted by her questing,
+derisive, contemptuous smile. As I lay down and watched the lamp giving
+out its last spasmodic flickers before it left me in darkness, I
+thought I saw her, say a year hence, in a vague yet dreadful
+environment, halting her racing thoughts to remember for a moment the
+man who had failed her in a time of need. I saw the shrug and the sudden
+turn of the shoulders, the curl of the lip, the evanescent flash of the
+eyes.... No, I couldn't do it. And I couldn't forego the exquisite
+seduction of a future glowing with the iridescent colours of romantic
+folly....
+
+"And so," said Mr. Spenlove, after one of his pauses, "I went."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+And for those who make a hobby of the irony of fate, I remember that but
+for the innocent and haphazard intervention of a perfectly irrelevant
+individual, I shouldn't have been able to get ashore at all. I woke
+early. For some mysterious reason connected with tonnage, the old
+_Manola_ had a small bathroom at the after end of the bridge deck, a
+most unusual appurtenance in a tramp steamer of her day, as some of you
+fellows know well enough. I had fixed up a contraption by which I could
+pump sea water through a home-made shower. I was in this place having a
+wash down and towelling vigorously when I heard the steward talking to
+the cook outside the porthole. He was saying that he was going ashore to
+the market to get some fresh green stuff and the cook was to tell the
+old man that he would be back by eight o'clock. The steward, an
+extremely quiet and modest creature with the ferocious name of
+Tonderbeg, was standing close by, and the blue wreathes from his
+cigarette curled into the port. He looked up and saw me, making a
+slight bow and smile, and raising his hand in an automatic way to the
+salute.
+
+"'Goot morning, Mister Chief,' he said. 'A fine morning, Sir.' I
+conceded this and asked him if it was far to the market.
+
+"'Not far. Just a nice walk for a morning like dis, Sir. A very
+interesting place, the market. In the Old Town.'
+
+"'Well', I said, 'if you'll wait a few minutes, I'll take a walk up
+there with you.'
+
+"His good-looking blond features became suffused with a warm
+gratification and his Teutonic voice went back into his throat, as it
+were.
+
+"'W'y,' he announced, impressively, 'it would be a pleasure, Mister
+Chief. I'll chust get de sailor wid de bag.' And he disappeared.
+
+"And I was mysteriously elated. It is useless to attempt any analysis of
+those fugitive gleams of the future which occasionally distract our
+minds. Nevertheless I recall it now with irresistible conviction--I was
+mysteriously elated. I filled my case with cigarettes, took my cap and
+stick, went back for a handkerchief, and slipped a couple of sovereigns
+into my pocket with the idea, I suppose, of purchasing fruit. I found my
+friend Tonderbeg standing by the gangway talking to the Captain. Jack
+had come up in his pajamas, a remarkable suit of broad purple and
+saffron stripes, and he stood there yawning and rubbing his massive
+hairy bosom.
+
+"'Why, where you been, Fred?' he demanded, slyly, 'I'm surprised at you.
+I thought you was a respectable man.'
+
+"'Well, Jack,' I said, 'as far as I know, I am.' He looked at me for a
+moment, his head thrown back, his powerful hands flat on his breast, and
+his big blood-shot brown eyes twinkled.
+
+"'You know what I mean, Fred,' he muttered. 'I'm only jokin'. When are
+you comin' back? I'm goin' up to the agent's at ten.'
+
+"'Oh, we'll be back to breakfast. It isn't six yet.'
+
+"As we walked along the quays, I looked out beyond the tiny harbour in
+which the _Manola_ was berthed. The waters of the Gulf lay like a sheet
+of planished steel beneath a canopy of lead-coloured clouds. A couple of
+steamers at anchor, their bows pointing toward us, were reflected with
+uncanny exactitude in the motionless water below them. And away beyond
+lay the sullen and bleak masses of the Chalcidice and the far watershed
+of the Vardar, leading the eye at length to the immense, snow-streaked
+peak of Olympos, flushing as some majestic woman might flush, in the
+first rays of the sun, hidden as yet behind the symmetrical cone of
+Mount Athos. I discovered that I had stopped to look at all this and I
+realized with a slight shock that Mr. Tonderbeg was expressing his
+approval. He said it was very fine.
+
+"'You admire scenery?' I asked him as we walked on.
+
+"'Very much,' he assured me. 'But by scenery I mean mountains. They are
+very elevating, in my opinion, Mister Chief. Where I come from,
+Schleswig, you know, we have very fine mountains.' And he coughed
+deferentially behind his hand.
+
+"'What's your notion of being elevated?' I enquired.
+
+"'Well, Mister Chief,' he said in a deep tone, 'it is only natural for a
+respectable man to improve himself, and to cultivate his mind, if you
+know what I mean. And I find good scenery very improving. It gives me
+good ideas. When I come to all dese different places I write home to a
+little friend o' mine and tell all about it.'
+
+"'What does your friend think about it?' He smiled.
+
+"'Well, Mister Chief, when I say a little friend o' mine, I mean my gel
+in North Shields, you understand. She's a school teacher, very well
+educated. Yes, I should say she's had a splendid education. She writes
+me very fine letters. A fine thing, education, Mister Chief. For shore
+people, of course. People like you an' me, goin' to sea, don't get it.
+But I think a man ought to improve himself and cultivate his mind. This
+way up to the market.'
+
+"I regarded Mr. Tonderbeg with a perfectly sincere respect. On board
+ship his efficiency had been of that extreme kind which causes one to
+lose sight altogether of the individual responsible for it. He had so
+merged himself into the routine of the day that one had difficulty in
+realizing his existence. And in the mood I was in that morning, a mood
+of reckless emotional adventure, I found a certain wicked pleasure in
+teasing him into a foolish loquacity. He was evidently very anxious to
+talk to someone about his little friend. She corrected his mistakes in
+English grammar, I learned, for he mournfully confessed to many errors
+in writing. But what impressed me about him was the astounding
+familiarity he seemed to have with his destiny. He knew that an old
+friend, a retired sea-captain, would give him a job as assistant steward
+in a certain 'home' for the indigent mariner. He knew that in time he
+would become steward, which would provide a job for his wife. He saw
+right on into his middle age. For all I know he knew just about when he
+would die and where he would go afterward. And he was a good ten years
+younger than I was! All mapped out! There seemed to be as much adventure
+in the future for him as for a young and exemplary vegetable. He would
+grow old, and the young person who had been afflicted with a splendid
+education would grow old with him, immured in the discreet official
+quarters of the home for indigent seamen. As if a seaman were ever
+anything else but indigent! And when I suggested that a trifle more pay
+for the seaman would render the home unnecessary he put his head on one
+side and explained tolerantly that they 'would only spend it on booze.'
+
+"'And better do that and die dead drunk than end up in a home,' I
+muttered. He didn't hear me, I am glad to think now. I should have
+regretted the slightest scratching of the immaculate surface of his
+respectable equanimity. He was certainly thrown off his balance a few
+moments later, and it is quite possible that had he heard my subversive
+remark he might have abandoned me as hopeless. He maintained on the
+voyage home the attitude of a deeply religious parent mourning for a
+reprobate son, but not without hopes for his ultimate reclamation.
+
+"I think our conversation ended there. I remember we were passing up a
+rather narrow and smelly street where donkeys, with immense panniers of
+vegetables, were continually fouling each other, and then pausing with
+infuriating composure while their fezzed proprietors wrenched them
+apart. And I remember Mr. Tonderbeg insinuating himself past them in a
+manner perfectly decorous and suitable in a foreigner among natives, yet
+accompanied by an expression on his blond features which seemed to
+betray a regretfully low estimate of a population deficient in the
+ability to improve themselves and cultivate fine ideas. I say I remember
+this because the next time I looked at him his expression had changed.
+He had flushed to a dark terra-cotta, his eyes were cast down, and his
+mouth was curled into an extraordinary and complex sneer and grin. 'Des
+women!' he said, hoarsely. 'They won't let you alone. Impudent pieces!'
+And he stopped at a fish stall. I was going to ask him what he was
+talking about when I saw what had outraged his modesty. It was Pollyni
+Sarafov, a big basket in her hand, standing in front of a booth on the
+further side of the market and waving to attract my attention. I gave
+Mr. Tonderbeg a glance as I left him, abandoned him. He did not see me.
+He was still standing at the fish stall examining a number of loathsome
+cuttle fish who were regarding him with a fixed and terrible stare from
+among their many arms. I went straight over to the girl.
+
+"Mind, I don't blame Mr. Tonderbeg very much. There was something about
+that girl which would give a man like him all sorts of alarming
+thoughts. She would not elevate him. She was the negation of
+respectability. Her shining bronze hair was tied up in a scarf of blue
+silk, her cotton dress was shockingly short, and her feet were shod with
+a pair of old Turkish slippers. And her basket contained a miscellaneous
+assortment of esoteric comestibles which would later appear in an
+astonishingly appetizing form at the table. She greeted me with a naive
+delight, a tacit confidence that I shared her view of the situation, and
+had managed to meet her by some tremendous _tour-de-force_ of romantic
+intuition.
+
+"'And who's that man?' she demanded, nodding toward the respectable
+Tonderbeg. I looked at him. He was sidling along the booths, followed by
+an impassive seaman with a neatly rolled sack under his arm, and he was
+glancing stealthily in our direction, his features almost dark with
+shame.
+
+"'That's our steward,' I told her. 'He doesn't think much of you. He
+thought you were giving him the glad eye, I'm afraid.'
+
+"'Him!' she queried, and regarded him for a moment. And then she changed
+the subject. She wished to know if I was going up to see Artemisia. And
+when I hinted at the early hour, she declared that it was a good time.
+She would be so glad, she thought. And when she said she was ready,
+having bought all she needed, and that a carriage was waiting for her
+up the hill near the _Via Egnatia_, I took her basket and we moved on.
+And we left Mr. Tonderbeg behind, left him full of the inward rage which
+boils up when envy and decorum are run together in our hearts. There was
+nothing the matter with him, understand. I mean, there was nothing one
+could do for him. He was one of those bland human organisms who simply
+fly right off the handle when they encounter a foreign morality. It's an
+ethnical problem, I suppose. Why do I tell you of this Tonderbeg?
+Irrelevant? Well, but he wouldn't have been, if I had carried out the
+momentous scheme I had in mind. I thought you would have grasped that.
+And I sometimes wonder whether his respectable mind had not elucidated
+some inkling of this from a word perhaps overheard as he passed the
+captain's door, on the voyage home, and nursed a grievance against fate
+for depriving him of that piquant experience which I had had in store
+for him!
+
+"And when we had climbed into the grubby little hired hack, a very
+different vehicle from Mr. Kinaitsky's patrician affair, and the die
+seemed definitely cast, I found myself recalling again and again a
+remark which old Jack Evans had made his own. 'A man's a damn fool to
+bother with a gel at all, unless he's going to marry her!' The ripe
+fruit of his experience in the world! I had agreed with him, too. I
+recalled his short, stout, unromantic figure standing in an
+authoritative attitude with his hand on the rail, looking across the
+blue glitter of the Mediterranean, seeing nothing of it, dreaming of
+that semi-detached affair in Threxford which contained the angel child
+and her desiccated mother. It is easy enough and indicative of wisdom to
+agree in such cases. But I would remind you that I had no such dream of
+the future in _my_ head as I sat beside this foreign girl and drove
+along the _Via Egnatia_ to meet Captain Macedoine's daughter once more.
+With more experience of the world of sentiment I might possibly have
+gone so far as to envisage the probable outcome of the adventure. But
+the point is that for all my thirty-five years, I had no such experience
+at all. And women are quick as lightning to perceive this. You can bring
+them nothing which they prize with such tender solicitude as a mature
+and inexperienced heart. Neither callow adolescence nor a smart worldly
+knowledge of their own weaknesses is any match for it. And why? Well, I
+imagine it is because they feel safe without losing any of the perilous
+glamour of love. It gives the fundamental maternal instinct in their
+bosoms full scope without embarrassing them with either a puling infant
+or a doddery prodigal. It may even play up to a rudimentary desire to be
+not merely the agent of an instinct but the inspiration of an
+individual. Cleverness in a woman is very often only the objective
+aspect of fidelity to an ideal.
+
+"You may imagine I said nothing of this to the girl beside me. Instead I
+asked her when she was going to get married, and she said 'By and by.'
+When he came, not before. It was obvious that she awaited her destiny
+without misgiving and that she was at that stage when women really love
+vicariously or not at all. For she suddenly demanded if I was going to
+take Artemisia away to England when my ship sailed. We had turned out of
+the noisy _Via Egnatia_ and were climbing a steep, narrow street leading
+toward the citadel, a street of an extraordinary variety of
+architecture, whose houses lunged out over the roadway in coloured
+balconies and bellying iron grilles. And the whole barbaric vista led
+the eye inexorably upward till it caught the culminating point of a
+lofty and slender minaret springing from a clump of cypresses and
+glittering white in the morning sun. The street itself was still in cool
+shadow, and at the doors, kneeling upon the fantastic little _paves_ of
+mosaic, or rubbing pieces of polished brass, were bare-footed women with
+picturesque dresses and formidable ankles.
+
+"Yes, she wanted to know, but I discovered just then that a man may
+work himself up to a certain high resolution without feeling either
+proud or happy. One seems to go into great affairs in a kind of
+preoccupied daze. It is possible the Latin, the Celt, and the Slav have
+the power to visualize themselves objectively when they assume an heroic
+character. We are singularly deficient in this respect, I observe. No
+Englishman is a hero to himself. And a merciless analyst might go so far
+as to say that my entire behaviour was no more estimable than M.
+Kinaitsky's, that I had but one selfish motive, which was to protect
+myself from a woman's contempt. Viewed at a distance, I believe there
+was more in me than that. There is a radiant glow about it all, for me,
+which convinces that for once I had laid hold of the real thing. A
+magnificent memory! It is something, I submit, to cherish in one's heart
+even a solitary episode untarnished by any ignoble shame.
+
+"'You shall see, my dear,' I said, enigmatically, and then the carriage
+stopped with a jerk and she appeared in a suddenly opened doorway,
+bursting out, as it were, holding herself back with her hands on the
+posts and devouring me with a look of extraordinary questing delight. It
+was as though she wished to divine the very roots of my emotions. I sat
+there, a tongue-tied fool, until Pollyni pushed me gently. Why didn't I
+get out? So I got out and stood before her.
+
+"She was changed. I suppose I ought to have had the wit to expect that,
+but the fact remains that my first feeling was astonishment. She stood a
+foot or so above me on the doorstep, and this vantage, together with a
+species of gravity in her demeanour, conveyed an impression of tall
+aloofness. As she stood there, composed and curious, in a loose blue
+gown and her hair spread around her shoulders, the fine pale olive of
+her forearms emerging and her fingers lightly laced, one thought of
+vestal virgins, priestesses of obscure cults, and of the women who
+figure in the fantastic stories of the Middle Ages. She was changed, and
+the difficult element in the case was that she seemed to have changed
+for the better. And suddenly the old familiar derisive smile broke, the
+white teeth drew in the red lower lip, and she put her hand on my
+shoulder. 'Come in,' she said in a low voice. 'I never really believed
+you would come at all! And, Polly dear,' she added to the girl in the
+carriage, 'won't you come up later and we'll go out--you know----' and
+she waved her hand upward.
+
+"'I'll come,' said Miss Sarafov with decision, and spoke rapidly to the
+driver, who turned his horses round and began the descent to the _Via
+Egnatia_.
+
+"'So you have come at last,' said Captain Macedoine's daughter, as we
+reached a small room opening on a balcony above. There was another small
+room behind and this seemed to be the extent of her domain.
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'and now I am here, tell me what you think of it all.'
+
+"'Think of what?' she demanded, sitting down near me.
+
+"'Well,' I replied, 'of our relations chiefly. What am I supposed to be?
+What do you want of me? You see,' I went on, slowly, 'I have thought a
+great deal about you ever since you called me to London. A great deal, I
+assure you. But I am not a very courageous person, my dear, and I am
+afraid of my thoughts running away from me. I should not like you to
+think me a fool, you know.'
+
+"'I should never do that,' she remarked in a low murmur. 'You are my
+true friend, I know.'
+
+"'And what is a true friend to do for a girl in your position?' I asked,
+bluntly, looking round the tiny chamber with its red and white tiled
+floor and octagonal tables. She looked at me for a moment and then out
+of the window, and sighed.
+
+"'Aren't you happy here?' I asked. She continued to look out of the
+window while she answered me.
+
+"'Do you want me to be quite plain?' she enquired. 'Well, then, I will
+tell you that except this,' and she made a gesture indicating her
+surroundings, 'there is nothing for me to do. If I leave here where
+shall I go? This is a funny place, I can tell you. And this won't last
+forever, either, even if I wanted it to.'
+
+"'But why can't you go and look after your father?' I asked, helplessly.
+
+"'Because I told him a lot of lies about being married,' she said,
+sharply, 'and I would rather die than tell him I'm somebody's keep.'
+
+"'You needn't have said that,' I said, unsteadily, 'and you needn't tell
+him anything of the sort. Tell him just whatever you please and I will
+back you up and make it the truth.'
+
+"'What makes you say I needn't have said it?' she asked, looking full at
+me. 'You asked, didn't you?'
+
+"'Well, it hurt me for one thing,' I told her, 'and for another, being
+bitter won't help matters. Do you suppose I haven't a pretty good idea
+of your situation here? And if I hadn't had any intention of helping
+you, why should I have come? I promised you I would always be your
+friend, because I had never met any one so forlorn. And I will keep that
+promise to the limit. And now,' I added, 'suppose I told you what
+happened last night.'
+
+"She sat perfectly still, watching me while I recounted my singular
+adventure with M. Kinaitsky. It was only when I mentioned what he had
+said of her being quite free to dispose of herself that she gave a
+quick, sarcastic shrug.
+
+"'I know,' she said. 'So he told me when he got married. But this is a
+funny place, I can tell you. You think I can walk out of this house and
+do what I like, get a job, rent a house? I can't. He knows well enough
+I'm stuck here unless I go to the _Omphale_ or the _Ottoman House_, or
+one of those horrible places. And then,' she added, 'it wouldn't be long
+before I'd be sitting in the _Odeon_ half the night and wishing I was
+dead.'
+
+"'You know,' I said, severely, 'that if you had the slightest intention
+of doing anything of the sort you wouldn't breathe a word of it to me of
+all people.'
+
+"For a moment she held out, smirking a little.
+
+"'You fancy yourself,' she said, quoting a by-gone London phrase.
+
+"'To that extent,' I insisted. 'What do you suppose I came up here for?
+Why did I wander all over Saloniki last night trying to find you? To
+hear you say things like that? What do you suppose I am made of?
+Listen!'
+
+"I don't suppose men often tell a woman the things I told her then, but
+it was imperative that I should clear away the difficulties between us.
+I had to convince her that I was not to be humbugged by her fatal
+inherited proclivity for a grandiose emotional role, a proclivity for
+playing up to some mysterious imaginary being which she labelled herself
+and strove to erect in the mind of her protagonist. It wouldn't do.
+There was something numbing in the spectacle of her attempt to present
+herself as already a painted shadow in the purlieus of a Levantine city.
+In the long blue dressing gown, against a lemon-tinted stone wall, the
+morning sun irradiating the exquisite, exotic face, she had an adult
+air, so to speak, an air of lovely maturity and grave virtue. I would
+say she looked much more like a saint than a sinner, if I could reach
+any satisfactory conclusions as to the nature of a saint. I talked, as
+they say, straight, and the culmination of my invective was a blunt
+statement about her intelligence.
+
+"'You aren't clever enough to be as bad as you try to make out,' I said,
+and she looked down at her hands.
+
+"'All the same,' she remarked almost to herself, 'you are taking an
+awful risk in talking to me like this. How do you know I shouldn't
+go--go to pot altogether, later on? I'm thinking of you, you know,' she
+added.
+
+"'There you go again!' I exclaimed. She put up her hand as a token of
+surrender, and there came into her voice that unforgettably alluring
+timbre which, as I told you before, evoked mysterious memories and
+invested her with an extraordinary quality which one might almost
+describe as spiritual iridescence, a glamour of sybillant charm and
+delicious abandon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And there, you know," said Mr. Spenlove in a low tone, "the story ought
+to finish. That's where, when I recall the whole history of Captain
+Macedoine's daughter, I should like it to finish--on a final note of a
+supreme memory of that day. I would have had it forever wrapped in the
+gracious radiance of romance. Which, I suppose, is more than is granted
+to any of us. So, though it would not do for me to break the silence in
+which one buries the fragrant bodies of dead moments, there is something
+more to tell. Of M. Nikitos, for example, and the reproaches,
+courteously worded, of M. Kinaitsky....
+
+"We went for what in England we would call a picnic. Pollyni came back
+about ten, in a fresh carriage whose driver had celebrated a day's
+contract by coloured ribbons on the horses' head-stalls and a dark red
+rose thrust over one of his own ears, in bizarre contrast to the almost
+incredible dilapidation of his clothes. An old woman, whose features
+were shrivelled to the colour and consistency of a peeled walnut,
+placed between our feet a basket out of which stuck the necks of wine
+bottles. I didn't ask where we were going, for I didn't care. I
+remember, however, demanding an explanation of the heavy explosions
+which had begun somewhere in the neighbourhood, and their telling me it
+was a blasting party in a quarry just behind the houses and outside the
+city wall. And I recall another incident, when we reached the barrier at
+the Great Tower, where a squad of fezzed and moustached guards debated
+among themselves the wisdom of permitting us to pass out. Very serious,
+not to say uneasy, they seemed, the heavy explosions causing them to
+look over their shoulders apprehensively even while they held their
+bayonets, long, sharp, unpleasant affairs, across the breasts of the
+horses. But finally they let us go, and after a half hour or so of the
+boulevards we came to a road leading across the plain to a town a few
+miles away. That is a memory, too--the wide plain of pale saffron earth,
+the dancing blue sea, the turquoise sky piled here and there with
+immense snowy billowings of autumn clouds, the girdle of grim and
+inaccessible peaks, and the compact little town of white houses buried
+in a circular plaque of foliage in the middle distance. And then at the
+roadside, squatting on their haunches with their rifles between their
+knees, very dusty and enigmatic, lines of soldiers on the march. I
+remember it as one remembers an unusual dream, a vague blur behind the
+sharper memories that intervene.
+
+"And out of the mists of impressions came the fact that we were going to
+this toy town in the middle distance to visit Pollyni's uncle, a
+gentleman who had been to America also, and having dug trenches for
+drains and conduits in New York City for a year or two, had returned and
+bought the principal cafe in the village. There was a moment when the
+place lost the qualities of a water-colour painting and began to assume
+the aspects of reality, when the homogeneous colouring of the land
+became broken up into tobacco fields and vineyards and vegetable
+patches, with an occasional pony walking round a mediaeval contraption
+which brought minute buckets of water up from a well and trickled them
+into a wooden sluice. And these in turn gave place to a sketchy and
+winding earthen road which twisted among shabby houses with forlorn
+sheds in which tobacco leaves hung drying on poles, and fowls pecked in
+a disillusioned fashion while they meditated upon the formidable problem
+of existence. And then we passed houses standing aloof and forbidding,
+shut up, apparently uninhabited, houses which had quite simply tumbled
+down for lack of support, houses with the front door upstairs, and
+houses without any doors at all as far as one could see. We passed them
+and our driver cracked his whip with great energy, the horses stumbled
+against big stones or into rain gullies, an occasional human stared
+woodenly at us; and suddenly we came round an intricate curve of the
+street and we were in the little square of the village, a square
+canopied by an immense tree and overhanging eaves. In the centre stood a
+worn old well-curb where bare-legged girls fished up dripping petroleum
+cans and staggered across to open doors, most of the water running
+unregarded through a hole in the bottom. If you could call it a square,
+when it had six or seven irregular sides, with the streets running into
+it in a furtively tangential fashion and the corners of it cool and dark
+even at noon-tide under that patriarchal tree which had been planted by
+a patriarch, no doubt, while he was digging the well. This was the end
+of our journey, where we got out, and the carriage rumbled away into the
+green gloom beyond to some convenient stable, while we were welcomed by
+a gentleman with a soft voice and very loud western clothing like that
+affected by race-track folk, who stood in front of an extremely vacant
+looking cafe. He had a watch-chain with massive gold links and an
+enormous obsolete gold coin depending from his coat lapel. His boots
+were shiny and globular of toe, and I gathered, as the day wore on, that
+he represented Occidental Prosperity in that simple community and was
+charitably excused from such glaring solecisms on that ground. They
+found no fault with him for having an adventurous spirit which had
+carried him to the Country of the Mad beyond the sea, for he had shown
+his ultimate wisdom by coming back to live in a civilized part of the
+world. In fact, by the way they drifted in during the afternoon and sat
+at adjacent tables while he held forth bilingually upon his experiences
+in a Hoboken sewer, it was evident that in addition to being a stout
+burgess of the township, he was a species of Sinbad to them, with
+preposterous but intriguing stories of subterranean cities where vast
+and brilliant chariots roared through interminable passages; of
+heaven-scaling towers where myriads fought for silks and jewels, for
+gold and silver, for purple and fine linen; of streets above which
+insane railway trains hurtled and shrieked and groaned as they carried
+the demented inhabitants on endless journeys to nowhere in particular
+for no ascertainable reasons. For mind you, they displayed no desire
+whatever to emulate the daring feats of those who had gone to America.
+They sat there for a time, smoking _narghilehs_ or cigarettes, looking
+thoughtfully at the floor between their outlandish shoes, and then
+drifted away to attend, it is to be presumed, to various affairs. I
+doubt whether my confirmation of these improbabilities was of much avail
+in convincing them that he was not simply exercising the ancient rights
+of the teller of tales, and striving to terrify them with stories of
+genii in bottles and carpets that flew through the air. And he certainly
+had no intention of going back. He had 'enough mon' now,' he remarked,
+'and who but a lunatic would ever venture into such a pandemonium save
+for the purpose of getting 'mon'.' The bare idea of living permanently
+in that country and exposing one's soul to the destructive action of
+their peculiar political ideas had never entered his head. They had
+called him 'a crazy mutt' because, forsooth, he had quit when his belt
+was sufficiently loaded with 'mon'. Now why should they do that? Why
+should he go on living in hell when he had the price of paradise
+strapped about his middle? It was a baffling problem. Yet they did it.
+Even now, as he spoke, out there across the world, millions of people on
+an island the size of Ipsilon or even smaller than Naxos, were rushing
+to and fro like maniacs. For of course he was under the impression that
+Manhattan, with the adjacent coast beyond the river, was all there was
+of America. For all he knew the subway ran to San Francisco and New
+Orleans was a mile or two below Staten Island. Listening to him, it was
+perfectly easy to visualize the growth of ancient tales of foreign
+parts. When I think of him nowadays, and observe the noise and
+chaffering of political people who are vociferously claiming for such as
+he what they call self-determination or what in those illiterate days
+was known as autonomy, I am constrained to a great amazement. We shall
+see some strange signs and portents later, if I am not in error.
+
+"For if there is one thing more than another which one gets from this
+old land, it is the conviction that it will not cease to be old because
+a few zealots march round it blowing the trumpets of a new and
+incomprehensible thing called Liberty. It is an amiable but disastrous
+illusion on the part of the western nations that they have created a
+monopoly in freedom and truth and the right conduct of life. As I have
+adumbrated to you more than once, I am not so sure of all this. The
+hoarse, guttural voice of Gruenbaum, whom the high priests of Liberty set
+against a wall the other day and shot dead, comes back to me across the
+years. 'An illusion, founded on a misconception.' Well, I wouldn't call
+that an entirely true definition of democracy as we in the west
+understand it. But if you took this late resident of Hoboken, now safely
+restored to his traditional environment, I should certainly say that
+your wonderful democracy was of no more use to him than some fabulously
+expensive and delicate scientific instrument, or the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford, or the Elgin marbles would be. The trouble is, you see, that so
+many of us in the world, inarticulate for the most part, don't want your
+progress, your tremendous journeys through the air, your new religions,
+or your improved breakfast foods. And we could endure even such a war as
+is going on now, if we only had peace in our hearts. For peace is not a
+merely negative thing, the absence of strife. It is something in itself,
+something you could definitely discern in the atmosphere of that
+forgotten village of the plain, under that patriarchal tree, audible in
+the clucking of the fowls under one's feet, and in the gurgle of the
+water the girls hauled up from the dank darkness of the old well. I
+recall one moment, after our meal in the late afternoon, as we sat on
+the little balcony above the cafe, smoking cigarettes and drinking
+coffee and mastic. A drowsy stillness had come over the place, as though
+it had been secretly enchanted. Over the way an old gentleman reposed in
+a chair outside his shop, asleep, a yellow cat in his arms. On the curb
+of the well a young girl sat swinging one leg as she peered down
+thoughtfully into the water. A pigeon cooed in the cot under the eaves
+near by. There was a low murmur of conversation from a neighbouring room
+where Pollyni was talking to her aunt, a large shy person, preoccupied
+with household cares. And gradually I seemed to lose my grip of reality
+altogether and passed into a kind of passionless ecstasy of existence,
+where everything which puzzles us in ordinary life presented a perfectly
+simple and amiable solution. One of the commonplaces of enchantment, I
+suppose. I became aware of Artemisia saying dreamily: 'That was a loud
+one. I shouldn't have thought we could hear them over here.' And I
+nodded, remembering a distant and heavy detonation. It was slowly
+dawning on my mind as I sat and smoked and murmured, that it was really
+quite impossible for the quarry-charges to be heard so far. 'But what
+could it be?' she asked, rousing. 'A gun perhaps. Sometimes ships come
+from the Bosphorus and fired shots in the Gulf. A long way off, of
+course. Perhaps a ship had come.' I told her what her father had said
+the night before, that a war might come soon. She nodded and was silent
+a moment before saying: 'I've heard that. Mrs. Sarafov said it might and
+she was sorry because nobody was ever any better off. They fight because
+the taxes are so heavy, and after the war the taxes are worse than ever,
+to pay for the war. She told me how the soldiers came home to Sofia
+after winning a war with the next country--I forget which--and there was
+a grand triumphal march through the streets, and then the soldiers
+discovered there was nothing for them to eat and they broke loose.
+Everybody locked themselves up in their houses while the shooting went
+on in the streets.'
+
+"'I believe,' I said, 'your father stands to make a lot of money out of
+this trouble when it comes.'
+
+"She turned quickly toward me but without taking her arms from the ledge
+of the balcony, pressing her adorable chin against her arm.
+
+"'I know this,' she said steadily, 'to-day has made it impossible to go
+back to my father. I don't mean for the reason that I mentioned this
+morning. Another reason.' And she sighed.
+
+"'What is that reason?' I asked gently.
+
+"'I'm a very unfortunate girl,' she muttered in a hoarse whisper, still
+looking steadily at me over her arm. 'I want to tell you so many things,
+and I can't, I can't.'
+
+"'But tell me the reason,' I persisted.
+
+"'Oh you must know ... I must get clear of the past--and the present. I
+must not tell you the things I know. Let me alone ... and perhaps in
+England I shall forget.'
+
+"And after that, of course, nothing could befall us save a silence, in
+which we endeavoured to adjust ourselves to the new emotion. For, mind
+you, I believe sometimes it would have worked out. She was a woman, and
+I believe that she would have conquered her destiny if she had gotten
+her chance.... No matter--a bald statement of belief gets us nowhere. So
+I shall remember her looking at me in her enchanting fashion over her
+arm, a light in her eyes like a light in the darkness at sea, flashing,
+and flashing and going out....
+
+"And it was after this silence had endured for a while that our
+attention was drawn from our own thoughts by a strange commotion. A
+number of the villagers suddenly appeared from round the corner of the
+street where we had come, preceding a carriage which moved slowly, being
+hampered by the people who pressed close to it all round. As if by magic
+the people of the houses opening upon the little square appeared at the
+doors and joined the crowd. And then, as the carriage arrived beneath
+us, it halted, and the horses looked round toward the well, and we saw
+on the seat of the carriage a man in some military uniform, a captain I
+imagine, lying diagonally across the vehicle, a handkerchief soaked in
+blood about his throat, a gash near one eye, and evidently a wound of
+some sort in the arm, for his hand, which pressed against the cushion,
+seemed to have adhered to it with the blood running down the sleeve.
+The man's dark features had grown livid and his head lolled back with
+closed eyes and sagging mouth. And then Pollyni came in quickly to fetch
+us down, and we went.
+
+"Our host, who stood by the carriage bareheaded and looking about him
+first toward one speaker and then another, gathering the scattered
+details of the story, had already sent a man away with a message, and he
+turned and came into the cafe, scratching his head and looking extremely
+serious. He said the officer was the son of his landlord, who lived on
+an estate at the far end of the town on the Seres Road. There had been a
+riot in the Israelite Quarter, the revolutionists had attacked a squad
+of soldiers going up to the garrison to change guard, and the military
+in clearing the streets had suffered some losses. The wounded man had
+been dragged from his horse and nearly killed before his men could
+rescue him. It was terrible for the old people. He had sent a messenger
+to prepare them. They would send for a doctor. Everything in Saloniki
+was in a bad way. Just as the carriage was well out of the city they
+heard a terrific explosion near the port, where the railway station was.
+Troops were already leaving for Monastir. And in reply to the question
+as to what we had better do, he eyed us reflectively and said perhaps
+we'd better beat it back as quick as we could. He'd send for our
+carriage at once, if we liked. It was obvious that while he figured on
+handling the situation with credit and possibly profit, he had no desire
+to be hampered by our presence. And it was certainly my own idea, too,
+to get back. That 'explosion near the port' worried me a good deal. If
+the _Manola_ were affected it would be necessary for me to be on hand.
+
+"'This settles it,' I said in a low tone as we waited for the carriage.
+'You must come with me. On the _Manola_ you will be safe.' In those
+days, of course, even the shabby old Red Ensign was an inviolable
+sanctuary. She nodded without speaking. Indeed she did not speak for
+some time after we had quitted the tortuous streets of the village and
+were entering upon the open plain, merely regarding me in an earnest
+abstracted fashion, so that I was moved to ask the reason. For she had
+the air of one pondering upon a course of action already decided, trying
+to see where it would lead.
+
+"'I was thinking,' she said, 'that it is funny you should be here, after
+all this time, and free to do--what you are doing. Most men, you
+know....' and she stopped.
+
+"'Most men what?' I demanded.
+
+"'Oh, there's generally someone they like at home, even if they aren't
+married. You aren't, are you?'
+
+"It wasn't a rude or a cruel question as she put it to me. It was, on
+the other hand, shockingly pathetic, and humble. It registered the
+frightful defencelessness of her position at last. It went to my heart.
+It moved me so profoundly that I could think of nothing adequate to
+reply, and she stared into my eyes in the gathering evening twilight,
+her own eyes extremely bright and feverish, like distant storm signals.
+
+"'Why torture yourself like this?' I asked at length. 'I happen to be
+that very common person, a man without ties.'
+
+"'I'm not sure that that would be a recommendation to most girls,' she
+reflected, audibly, 'because they think people without ties aren't
+likely to contract any. But that isn't what I meant. When I was on the
+_Manola_, coming out to Ipsilon, I got it fixed in my head you were a
+widower. You know,' she went on, 'you never did talk about yourself,
+always about me; and I wondered and wondered and finally decided that
+you'd had a loss and didn't want to talk about it. And that made me
+sorry for you. And then you remember, up on the cliff you made me
+promise to let you help me, and you seemed so _experienced_ ... well,
+when I was at that school you know, and we used to talk in the
+dormitory about the sort of men we wanted to marry, I used to say--'a
+widower, because.' And once a big lump of a girl who was always passing
+exams said: 'you mean because he has lived with a woman before,' and I
+said, 'a man didn't have to be married for that.' It got to the
+mistresses' ears and I was nearly expelled.'
+
+"She stopped, and I said 'Go on!'
+
+"'Oh, I'll go on,' she said with a laugh, looking up at Pollyni, who was
+sitting beside the driver and explaining something involving a great
+deal of gesture. 'I can't say I was ever happy at school, but at any
+rate I must have done pretty well, because I was always sorry to go
+away.'
+
+"'And where did you go?' I enquired.
+
+"'Sometimes my father had a house at the seaside, sometimes in the
+country. He would have a yacht, with a party of people who were all
+paying guests, of course. Or he would take a moor and have people down.
+And again he would have a place in London.'
+
+"'But do you mean to say your father fetched you home to spend your
+holidays among strangers?' I asked. 'I don't quite understand your
+father's attitude toward you.'
+
+"'I wish I knew myself,' she muttered, looking at her foot. 'You know,'
+she went on, 'we have always kept up a sort of arrangement in which he
+can't live without me and I am a passionately devoted daughter. I
+wouldn't tell any one else this,' she interpolated hurriedly in a
+whisper, 'but the fact is, I am not a passionately devoted daughter. I
+used to think I was. All the girls at school used to rave about their
+parents, so I raved about mine. Girls are fools,' she remarked,
+abruptly.
+
+"'In what way--raving?' I asked.
+
+"'Well,' she said, 'they go on and on, meaning no harm, I suppose. You
+know we used to tell each other we had the most wonderful sweethearts.
+One girl had a boy in New Zealand. Another was secretly engaged to a man
+who was in China. All very far away! So I wasn't to be done, and I
+bragged about a lover in Siberia. When they wanted to know about him I
+made up a long story. I said he was a Russian and I had met him in
+London and he'd gone back to Russia and got arrested and sent to
+Siberia. It was as true as their yarns, I dare say. And it's a fact I
+used to imagine myself in love with a tall fair man with a yellow beard.
+There was a Russian at father's house in Pimlico once, but he was an old
+cuckoo from the Consulate. I didn't like him.'
+
+"'I don't think, my dear,' I said, 'that I want to know any more about
+it. I believe I understand.'
+
+"'Yes,' she answered. 'I believe you do. I believed you would understand
+sooner or later, when I sent for you in London. I was a beast, then, but
+I don't regret it after all. I feel I could be anything to you, and
+you'd understand. Oh!' she muttered, clinging to me for a moment and
+staring across to where the sun, already set beyond the purple
+mountains, sent up broad bars of gold and crimson, reflected in the calm
+waters of the Gulf. 'Oh! How I have treated you!' and she sank into a
+silence of passionate regret that lasted until the darkness enfolded us
+and we had entered the long desolate _faubourg_."
+
+Mr. Spenlove stopped and rose from his seat on his little camp-stool.
+Walking to and fro in front of the recumbent forms of his brother
+officers, his hands in his pockets, his head on his breast, he seemed
+once again to have forgotten them. And they, perceiving by this time the
+impropriety of mundane interruptions at such a moment, awaited his
+resumption in silence.
+
+"After all," he remarked, suddenly stopping and staring down at the
+deck, "I lost her. I have said to you, at the beginning, that if her
+story means anything it means that love was nothing, and I had this in
+mind, for I lost her. And of what avail, I ask you, is an emotion so
+independent of our individual destinies that it can culminate at the
+very moment of disaster? It may be, of course, that what we call love
+is only the bright shadow on earth of some ulterior celestial passion;
+but life is too short and too unsatisfactory for one to cultivate such
+an exalted faith. And we crave a little logic of Fate when we suffer.
+If, for example, the crazy Nikitos, true to his word, had suddenly
+appeared before us in that narrow street off the _Via Egnatia_, and
+destroyed her as many were destroyed that day, one could submit as to a
+sinister but tangible manifestation of human folly. But to have happened
+as it did ... there was no sense in it. It was as though that girl, who
+had been from her birth a waif, the unhappy sport of spurious emotions,
+had angered Fate by stumbling upon something genuine after all, and was
+dismissed into the darkness in a moment of irascible petulance. And I
+suppose that I, if a man had any inherited right to expect that the law
+of compensation should be put in operation in his favour, should feel a
+grievance. But as I have remarked more than once, my attempts to be
+anything more than a super in the play have not been a shining success.
+So we can leave that out. There is no need to lose faith in Compensation
+because it is somewhat delayed....
+
+"But even from the standpoint of a detached and isolated event, there
+was nothing about it that a rational being could lay hold of for
+comfort. It was just one blind evil chance out of a million possible
+ones. I did not even see it happen. I was doing something which has no
+connection with my past or following existence--watching an Ottoman
+soldier, probably an Anatolian, crumple up and expire in the gutter of
+the _Via Egnatia_. I was watching with the close attention one
+inevitably bestows upon one's first violent death--as a matter of fact,
+I had never seen any one die, even in bed--and remaining securely wedged
+in a doorway a few yards up the street. I remember him as he paused for
+an instant in a sort of ecstasy, his face turned up toward the harsh
+bright glare of a naked electric bulb that hung from a trolley pole, his
+body momentarily poised as though defying his destiny. And then he
+twisted about in an extraordinarily complicated manner and fell, all of
+a piece, while a number of extremely active persons tore past him
+without any sound save a popping noise far down the street. That would
+be near the market, I reflected in my doorway. And as we should have to
+go that way in order to reach the ship, it struck me that it would be my
+duty to find another route. And from that I went on to visualize the
+consternation of my friend Jack, when I turned up with the astonishing
+_entourage_ of two women and a suitcase, and informed him of my
+determination. I had a tremendous desire to know, beforehand, just what
+he would do and say. He would stand by an old friend of course. But how?
+And while I reflected in my doorway and listened to the popping, which
+went on with varying intensity, still more figures sped past the end of
+my street. I recalled the perplexing fact that as we had driven into the
+town past the barrier, there had been no one on guard. I learned later
+that, with unbelievable stupidity, the authorities had sent the army out
+toward Monastir and had left the city with a mere handful of soldiers to
+deal with the revolutionaries. It was this fact, I suppose, of finding
+nobody on guard, which had frightened our driver, and no sooner had we
+alighted before the doorway in that steep, narrow street off the _Via
+Egnatia_ than he had demanded his fare and galloped away up hill and out
+of sight. 'You'll have to get another carriage,' Pollyni had told me in
+an anxious voice. 'You'll find one down near the big church.' The
+arrangement was that they would be ready by the time I returned.
+
+"But I had got no further than the corner when the first shots had been
+fired, and while I hesitated, a couple of soldiers had hurried along,
+looking back at every other stride, until suddenly one of them had been
+hit. And I had watched him die. I could still see him, an inert heap in
+the gutter. And while I debated what I was to do to get out of this
+unforeseen difficulty, the popping became a series of sharp, definite,
+staccato cracks, and a squad of soldiers, armed with short, blunt
+rifles, shuffled sideways into view. There was a species of discipline
+in their movements, for they deployed out over the road and dropped on
+one knee, while one of them stepped briskly to the curb and spoke in a
+harsh, authoritative tone to some invisible laggard. He came into view
+very slowly, dragging one leg, and halted, in the very middle of the
+street, his rifle pointing up hill, his face turned toward their
+assailants, his hand to his breast fumbling for cartridges. Now and
+again he lurched as though wounded, but he never relaxed his defiant
+glare. His hand worked quickly over the breech and he seemed about to
+swing his weapon round when he must have been hit again, for he toppled
+over and the thing went off with a flash and roar."
+
+Mr. Spenlove relinquished his leisurely pacing to and fro under the
+awning and sat down sideways on his camp-stool to roll and light a
+cigarette. His reflections while this was accomplished remained
+undisturbed, and his attitude conveyed an impression that he was
+listening with considerable bitterness to some imaginary reproaches from
+which he suddenly attempted to defend himself.
+
+"Not so easy," he muttered, flicking the match into the scupper. "Not so
+easy! Suppose I had suddenly broken out of that doorway and made off up
+the street? There is no reasonable grounds for doubt that the officer
+who was directing that little squad of disciplined men was the person
+who afterward gained the White Tower and held the city barrier and the
+sea-front until fresh troops arrived to overpower the apostles of
+liberty. Suppose, I say, I had suddenly scared him by bolting up that
+narrow street? No, not so easy. And yet it wasn't easy, either, to
+remain even as long as I did. For at a word from him the kneeling men
+raised their rifles and fired once, twice--a crescendo of crashes
+reverberating from the buildings opposite. And then they all ran
+diagonally across the street into the shadows, and for a space there was
+silence.
+
+"And even then," went on Mr. Spenlove, "I did not run. Not from courage,
+you understand, but fear. I tip-toed out of my doorway and walked
+quickly up the street without making any noise. I was preoccupied with
+the question of getting back to the ship. We should have to walk. I
+tried to lay out the city in my mind. If we walked upward say, and
+struck a street going westward and parallel with the _Via Egnatia_, we
+might eventually strike another thoroughfare running down to the port. I
+was thinking this out as I hurried. I considered the wisdom of remaining
+indoors until the morning, and I believe now that is what I would have
+done eventually, anyhow. I looked back several times. The electric
+globe, hanging high, had gone out or been put out, and there were no
+lights in any of the houses. I imagined the inmates sitting silently
+behind their shutters, listening and waiting for a renewal of the
+uproar. You must understand that I was experiencing nothing more than a
+very natural exaltation of nerves, with an undertow of anxiety for the
+ship. I pictured Jack in a great state, wondering where I was, a state
+probably complicated by the scandalized Tonderbeg's abashed revelations.
+As Jack grew older, he grew fond of saying there was no fool like an old
+fool, forgetting that there is another kind, the middle-aged fool, who
+has the distinction of comprehending and enjoying his folly. Of course,
+Tonderbeg would get himself snubbed, and Jack would retire to his cabin
+to muse upon the serious news. So I reflected as I hurried up that dark
+street toward a faint ray of light which indicated the door of her
+house. I had no forebodings up to this moment; only speculations. And
+even when that light was darkened for an instant as someone stood in the
+doorway, and I heard Pollyni's voice calling hoarsely to know who I was,
+I had no premonition. The next moment her high-heeled shoes clicked on
+the sidewalk as she ran toward me, and when she came up to me she
+grasped me and stared at me in a profoundly mysterious fashion. I will
+not say to you what I now believe lay at the back of that girl's mind.
+You would say I had lost my faith in humanity, but you would be
+mistaken. You would be forgetting her descent from the Pandour hordes
+who came galloping up out of the Caucasus so many centuries ago. You
+would be forgetting that to those people neither 'life, liberty, nor the
+pursuit of happiness' are particularly sacred things, or things to be
+achieved in a spirit of altruistic piety. But I can tell you it was
+because of that enigmatic stare of hers that I have emphasized her part
+in this story of Captain Macedoine's daughter. You might say she had the
+temperament for the leading role in the play.... She said in her hoarse
+musical contralto, 'We were ready and we were coming down to meet you.'
+
+"'Well?' I said. She stood in front of me, holding my arms and impeding
+my advance.
+
+"'Well!' she repeated, slowly. 'You do not know what has happened,' and
+again she regarded me in the way I have described.
+
+"'No,' I said, returning her scrutiny, 'I don't understand what you mean
+by what has happened. I have seen a shocking thing down there. They are
+fighting in the _Via Egnatia_. Some are dead. We can't go that way, I'm
+afraid.'
+
+"Suddenly she dropped her hands from my arms and breathed deeply.
+'Come!' she said, and hurried away from me. I had spoken the truth. I
+did not understand her, but her demeanour alarmed me. I followed,
+watching the silhouette of her body sway as she took her long strides. I
+had a fugitive notion that this performance was symbolical of our
+emotional existence--our souls pursue one another through a steep
+darkness, the victims of unpremeditated suspicions and fears. As she
+reached the lighted doorway she swung round and spread out her hands
+with a gesture of pity and grief. 'Look!' she said. 'As we came out
+someone fired. She was in front. It was not my fault.... You see.'
+
+"While she spoke I endeavoured to collect my forces. I looked down. I
+had a vivid impression of emerging from a place of imprisonment, a place
+of great noise and activity and warm, pleasant excitement, and of seeing
+before me a cold gray plain extending into the distance. And over this
+plain, I reflected, I was to travel, alone. I looked down, I say. I
+heard the girl beside me murmur hoarsely into my ear, and stoop to lift
+the form that lay motionless at our feet.
+
+"'No!' I said, drawing her back. 'This is for me to do. I will carry my
+own dead.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+"And the rest," said Mr. Spenlove in a colourless voice, "is by way of
+being an epilogue of detached and vagrant memories. They come to me now
+and again, a sad sequence of blurred pictures in which I can see my own
+figure in unfamiliar poses. There is the night which I passed in that
+house, a night of endless recapitulations and regrets. There was the
+moment when I turned from the bed, where the dead girl lay, and found
+the other girl, with her extraordinary vitality, close beside me,
+scrutinizing me as though I were a problem she found it impossible to
+solve. And when I walked through into the other room and sat down beyond
+a table on which a tiny oil lamp burned, she advanced into the circle of
+light, so that her shadow was gigantic on the wall and ceiling behind
+her, and looked across at me. There was a subtle change in her since we
+had met in the street outside. She seemed full of an insatiable
+curiosity to know my thoughts. And my thoughts just then were not for
+any one to know. My thoughts resembled a flock of wild birds which had
+been streaming steadily in one direction when a bomb had exploded among
+them and sent them swirling and careening in crazy circles. And she did
+this more than once. While I sat there in the semi-darkness beyond the
+circle of light she came in with some bread and a bottle of wine, and
+set a plate and glass beside them on the table, and then, after watching
+me for a moment, went away again. There was a faint murmur from below
+where a number of women from neighbouring houses were conversing in low
+tones with the old Greek woman who seemed to be the _concierge_, and
+thither no doubt the girl retired. And once while I drowsed for a spell
+I was aware of her as she stepped softly up to me, peered into my face,
+and then, as I opened my eyes, withdrew without speaking. Yes, I drowsed
+time and again; but toward dawn I grew wakeful and the necessity of
+returning to the ship became urgent once more. You will understand, of
+course, that it was not a fear of being killed that held me in that
+room. I was in a mood up there which rendered me perfectly indifferent
+to material risks of that nature. It was rather an illogical and
+irresistible instinct to play up to the event. I was intensely aware
+that the episode, by reason of its frustrating climax, was already
+standing away from me, and I was unable to relinquish my position. I
+felt that when I was gone away from that room I would be at the mercy of
+a frightful and solitary future. It may sound strange to you, spoken in
+cold blood, but that dead girl was nearer to me during my vigil than any
+living woman had ever been! I went over everything that had happened
+while I sat and watched the light of the three candles flicker over
+those exquisite features. And I discovered in the confused tangle of
+emotions one bright scarlet thread of gladness that no more harm could
+come to her. For mind you, I was wise enough to know the perilous
+problems in store for her, even if she had come home with us. I was
+under no illusions about either of us. It was the tremendous risks which
+had allured me. I have said I believed she would have won out, and I do.
+But how? Women win out in all sorts of extraordinary ways. I am not so
+sure some of them would not be better in their graves....
+
+"But I went down at last. And the girl Pollyni met me in the corridor
+below. She said: 'Are you going on board the ship?' 'Yes,' I answered,
+'I am going on board the ship. What else can I do?' She shrugged her
+shoulders and looked at the floor. I started to go out. I experienced a
+sudden irritable anger.
+
+"'Why do you ask?' I demanded.
+
+"'Well,' she said in a low tone, 'you know her father is sick.'
+
+"'Oh,' I answered, 'I will come ashore again, of course. But just now,
+you understand, I must go back. I may be wanted.' And I went out quickly
+into the chill air of the dawn.
+
+"And the intense silence of that cold, closed, steep street daunted me.
+I felt, as I surveyed those silent and repellent facades, with their
+enigmatic shutters, a sensation of extraordinary loneliness and dreary
+failure. I envisaged the _Manola_ lying snug and respectable at her
+berth in the little harbour, all the dingy details of her stark utility
+apparent in the transparent morning air. I saw myself ascending the
+gangway, and the startled air of amused surprise on the face of the
+night watchman projected abruptly from the gallery. I saw Jack, asleep
+in his room, his mouth open, his limbs flung wide, his hairy chest
+showing through the open pajamas, a rumbling snore filling the neat
+room. And I came to the singular and illogical conviction that if I went
+aboard immediately I would regret it. I should carry away with me into
+the future a memory of shabby and furtive behaviour. And I did not want
+that, I can assure you. I wanted this thing to remain somewhat as I had
+experienced it. I felt that I must make the most of it. We grow very
+humble in our emotional demands as we grow older, I observe. We who go
+to sea especially. One of the inevitable products of our rolling
+existence. And I stood, irresolute, in front of the open doorway leading
+to the flat above, and Pollyni Sarafov stood there watching me. She came
+down.
+
+"'Let me tell you something,' she began. 'I think you ought to go and
+see her father. Didn't you say you used to know him in America? Just
+think! She was all he had.'
+
+"'What am I to say to him if I go?' I demanded. 'You know very well that
+he thinks she is ... eh? How shall I explain when I come in?'
+
+"'Never mind that,' she said, shaking her head. 'You come.'
+
+"And she became extraordinarily light-hearted when I said I would. She
+ran in and got her hat and parasol. She came out prinking and clicking
+her high-heeled shoes, and she placed her hand as lightly as a feather
+upon my arm. Perhaps she really needed my support down that steep,
+narrow street, but I read into that delicate gesture a profound moral
+significance. And I can tell you another thing," added Mr. Spenlove with
+some vehemence. "I found myself regarding the whole sum of human grief
+with moody suspicion. I recalled a fine phrase I had once read of 'the
+great stream of human tears falling always through the shadows of the
+world,' and I dismissed it as fudge. I was half tempted to wonder
+whether the world, which had grown out of stage coaches and sailing
+ships and Italian opera, had not grown out of grief at the same time.
+And by heavens, what has happened during the past two or three years has
+only solidified that grisly conviction. We seem to have been born just
+in time to see the end of the spiritual world, the final disintegration
+of the grand passions of the human soul. Oh, we keep up a certain
+pretence from force of habit, but we are being forced to realize that
+the philosophers were on the right track when they foretold the
+subjugation of man by the instruments of civilization. Or you can say
+that the _tempo_ of our modern life is too fast to permit our accepted
+notions of the elemental comedy and tragedy of existence to register
+with any permanence. The newspaper scribbler talks incessantly of
+Armageddon, heroism, patriotism, sacrifice, and so on, and we wait in
+vain for our hearts to respond to their invocations. We discover with
+surprise that we are as incapable of profound sorrow as of a high
+resolve. We are swept on out of sight. We forget, or we die and are
+forgotten. We are beginning to wonder now and again whether all our
+boasted science and mechanical discoveries are not evil after all,
+whether the old monks were such bigoted fools as we have been taught to
+believe when they denounced knowledge as a danger to the soul. But we
+have very little time in which to reflect. We rush on to fresh
+improvements, and we find ourselves less admirable than before.
+
+"And so, as we went down that cold, remorseless street of shuttered
+houses, away from the chamber of death, we were silent, but we thought
+not at all of death. Perhaps we did at the turning into the _Via
+Egnatia_, for the dead soldier was still lying where he had fallen in
+the shallow channel that ran just there by an orchard wall. He was lying
+on his face, with his hands close to his head, and his pose gave one a
+peculiar impression that he was looking with intense curiosity into some
+subterranean chamber. His attitude was not at all suggestive of death.
+It was quite easy, looking across at him, to imagine him suddenly
+leaping to his feet, beckoning us to come and have a peep through his
+newly found hole. The soldiers we encountered hurriedly descending the
+street from the Citadel and running across to vanish into the White
+Tower were much more like dead men, strange to say. Their faces were
+pallid with lack of sleep, and they bore the hard-lipped stare of
+disciplined men who have suddenly lost faith in their commanders. They
+paid no more attention to us than to the stones of the roadway. They ran
+past us laden with bread and vegetables, hastily corralled from
+friendly houses built about the Citadel, for these were mostly families
+with military traditions. One carried on his curved back a newly
+slaughtered sheep, the bright red blood dribbling from the gashed
+gullets, and the animal's eyes looking back at us with an expression of
+intelligent comprehension, as though it were fully aware of the whole
+business. In the clear light of early morning there was a good deal of
+the automaton about all of us. And as we crossed the road where it
+debouched upon the quays and started to walk out of the city by the
+deserted barrier, a short and determined-looking person in a
+tight-fitting blue tunic looked out of the door of the Tower and eyed us
+critically. And I really believe the only reason why he neglected to
+tell one of his men to put an experimental bullet into us was the fact
+that the girl still had her hand on my arm. And she carried her parasol.
+We walked on and presently we were out of sight of the sea and the
+Tower. Across the blue sky large companies of billowing white clouds
+were gathering from the mouth of the Gulf. Suddenly Miss Sarafov
+murmured without taking her eyes from the ground.
+
+"'Was that man dead?'
+
+"Now," said Mr. Spenlove, "you may call me fanciful and overwrought, but
+I read into that simple question a secret desire to accustom my mind to
+the idea of death as a frequent and common sort of affair. I looked at
+her suspiciously and she raised her eyes to mine full of a clear
+feminine candour. She may have known that my morose taciturnity came
+from a consciousness that she had divined the fundamental flaw in my
+emotional equipment and was using it for her own purposes, but she did
+not show it. And while I was debating the question with myself, I heard
+her add, in a shy, delicate tone, 'There is a little garden just here,
+on the water.'
+
+"And from that moment I let her have her way and followed her lead. We
+crossed the street. I heard her say it was too early to go to the _Rue
+Paleologue_, which might be true, but struck me as irrelevant. And then
+my attention was drawn to a high square house standing in a dusty yard
+and decorated with a long board bearing the words _Ecole Universelle_.
+
+"'I was at school there before we went to America,' Miss Saratov
+remarked, poking at the place with her parasol. 'It was a good school
+then, very solid instruction,' she added, 'but now it isn't any good.'
+
+"'Is the instruction no longer sufficiently solid?' I asked.
+
+"'The mistresses are all progressives,' she returned. 'Here is the
+little garden,' and we came out upon a small place of grass and shrubs,
+flanked by a pair of _kiosques_ joined by a wooden balustrade. It was
+deserted, as one might expect at that hour; but Miss Sarafov remarked
+that we might have coffee and rusks if I liked, and walked across the
+sward to a door in a neighbouring house. I went into one of the
+_kiosques_ and sat facing the calm waters of the Gulf. Facing something
+else, too, which was anything but calm. For I was unable to rid myself
+of a fear that when this episode was completed I should be in a very
+difficult position. I should be like a man who had been struggling in
+the waves, only to find himself suddenly flung up high and dry upon a
+desolate and inhospitable shore, where he would in all probability
+perish of privation. And then, if you like to carry the parable a little
+further, this man becomes aware of a siren calling him back into the
+watery tumult.... And you know, I doubted my ability to manage the
+situation if I were to go back. One needs a special education, or let us
+say, temperament, to deal successfully with sirens. And as Miss Sarafov
+came into the _kiosque_ and sat down beside me, I felt the immediate
+necessity of making my position clear. I began at once to tell her that
+the events of the previous day had changed everything. I should in all
+probability never come to Saloniki again. And while I felt it my duty
+to see Captain Macedoine and also to return Miss Sarafov herself to her
+mother, I should then go back to the ship for good.
+
+"'And I shall never see you again,' she exclaimed, looking out across
+the Gulf, in a kind of magical abstraction.
+
+"'A small privation,' I murmured. She rose suddenly and stood by the
+door of the _kiosque_, her sturdy and extraordinarily vital figure
+silhouetted against the shining water.
+
+"'Not so small,' she muttered in her hoarse contralto, 'not so small,
+after what has happened.'
+
+"'What do you want, Miss Sarafov?' I asked, sharply. 'You seem to accuse
+me of a failure in friendship.'
+
+"'What do I want?' she echoed, without turning round. 'Why do you
+suppose I wanted Artemisia to send for you and go to England? Because
+she was going to take me, too.'
+
+"'Take you, too?' I said, feebly.
+
+"'Sure!' she shrilled, turning round, 'to live with her. She hadn't a
+friend in the world to turn to and she'd have gone crazy living alone in
+England while you were at sea. We had it fixed up. And now it is all
+over, and I have to stay here and live through--what? I don't know.'
+
+"'But I understood Captain Macedoine to hint that you were his
+favourite,' I observed.
+
+"'That's his way of talking. Mother thinks he's wonderful. Of course, if
+his investments went up, as they might if there was a revolution, he
+would be pretty rich. But just now his business doesn't bring in much.
+And it was Kinaitsky who started him in it. He owes Kinaitsky a lot of
+money.'
+
+"'And you think you would like to go to England?' I said. She shrugged
+her shoulders, and made a movement of her hand as though casting
+something away. 'No use talking about it,' she returned, gruffly. I was
+silent, and after she had watched me for a moment she came over quickly
+and sat down beside me again.
+
+"'Pardon,' she whispered, 'but I had so little time. I knew you would go
+away and I had to speak. I thought you might not be angry.'
+
+"'I am not,' I said, 'only sorry. You had made a very special place for
+yourself in my memory,' I went on. 'I wish you had not disillusioned me.
+You were entirely charming. Why should you go and spoil it all? I would
+have thought of you always as my friend's friend....'
+
+"She sat in a tense, eager pose looking up into my face, a pose that
+suddenly relaxed and she sighed. I did not see it then, in my exalted
+mood of idealized emotion; but I don't suppose a woman values any
+reputation less than one for altruistic charm. Probably because she is
+aware of its inevitably spurious nature. Miss Sarafov sighed, and the
+intense vitality of her features was obscured for an instant as by a
+shadow. An idea seemed to strike her and she looked intently at me
+again.
+
+"'Women don't matter much to you,' she observed, quietly, and fell
+silent again.
+
+"And here again," said Mr. Spenlove, "was a picture which comes back to
+me now--the scene in that little _kiosque_, a circular chamber crowded
+with the brilliant and disturbing reflections of the sunlight on the
+surface of the sea, shadow and gleam moving in complex rhythm across our
+faces and figures as we sat there, two beings destined to be forever
+strangers. She came into view for a little space, and vanished again, a
+mysterious, alluring, and magical presence, yet conveying no hint of any
+misfortune. She gave the impression of an easy and felicitous balance of
+forces, a complex of resilient strength, to which we poor Anglo-Saxons
+rarely attain. And sitting in the dancing reflections of the sunlights,
+she seemed a veritable emanation of the spirit of enchanted desire. I
+see her now, confronting the obscure motives of my behaviour in
+good-humoured sadness, while an ancient person in baggy black trousers
+and dingy scarlet sash tottered forward with a copper tray bearing tiny
+cups and a brass pot with a long handle.
+
+"And in direct sequence, not very clear but clear compared with the
+shadowy oblivion that intervened, comes a picture of him whom I have
+called more than once a master of illusion. And I suppose he has a right
+to the title for he maintained the pose to the end of the chapter. I had
+imagined that it would be a painful duty to break the news of his
+daughter's death to him. I saw myself offering my condolences and
+soothing a father's anguish. I pictured an old man bowed with grief. But
+it did not happen that way at all. I forgot that masters of illusion
+have no use for facts, not even for such facts as grief or death, until
+they have been transmuted into some strange emotional freaks which will
+inspire the spectator with awe. And Fate, who is something of an
+illusionist herself, plays into the hands of such as he.
+
+"I remember, for instance, sitting heavily in Mrs. Sarafov's front room,
+and telling that handsome, self-possessed woman in a few brief words
+what had happened to Captain Macedoine's daughter. How a wounded
+soldier's rifle, discharged by accident in our direction, had left us
+paralyzed and aghast at the inconceivable efficacy and finality of its
+achievement. I remember that, and then I remember following her into
+Captain Macedoine's house. About nine o'clock, I should say. And Mrs.
+Sarafov must have sent a messenger in advance, for Captain Macedoine
+already knew what I had to say. We stood in the vestibule near the foot
+of the stairs, Mrs. Sarafov whispering that he was being treated by his
+doctor with special baths. The doctor came every morning, I was informed
+in a respectful tone. And while we stood there, we heard a commotion
+upstairs, and a strange procession began to descend the narrow and
+shallow steps. I remember turning away hurriedly from a picture on the
+wall, a stark, angular composition of muscular male nudes in attitudes
+registering classical grief, of the body of Hector being brought back to
+the city--and finding Captain Macedoine, supported by a lean man in a
+frock coat and by two women, coming down. And perhaps it was the
+contemplation of that picture which called to my mind with irresistible
+force another picture, seen many years before. It was a picture of vivid
+colouring and violently complex action--the Emperor Vitellius coming
+down a steep, narrow street with the mob and the soldiery hacking and
+yelling and spitting around him, his gross corpulence rolling and
+rearing and staggering, the rich robes ripping away from the creases of
+sleezy tissue, the bright blood spurting from neck and arms, the eyes
+rolling wide, in a naked horror of dissolution, toward the flawless
+blue of a Roman sky. And the recollection was not so irrelevant as you
+might imagine. Captain Macedoine wore a voluminous bath robe of dark
+purple and he wore sandals on his feet. As he descended he rolled and
+staggered, and his supporters rolled and staggered to maintain
+themselves and him, all this commotion giving the little group the
+complicated activity of a crowd of people wrestling with an old man in a
+purple robe. And Mrs. Sarafov advanced to assist him, running up several
+steps and raising an arm, as though to strike, but with the real
+intention of support. I remember, too, the small wayward feet and the
+thick, smooth, hairless calves beneath the robe, strange in one so
+decrepit. I daresay, you know, he would have been something of that sort
+in that part of the world twenty generations earlier. Perhaps there was
+something aback of his adumbrations concerning his ancient lineage.
+Perhaps he was not simply a ship chandler in a small way, but the
+reincarnation of some sinister pro-consul who sat on the terrace of his
+marble villa among the distant ranges, and watched with a contemptuous
+and intellectual sneer the hordes of peasantry as they trudged into the
+cities to sacrifice their daughters to the savage and inexorable
+Cabirian deities. I had that fantastic notion as they paused at the
+foot of the stair and he moved his head slowly from side to side, the
+mouth pursed, the eyes set in a stony, unseeing stare, the bathrobe of
+purple towelling slipping from one shoulder. And then they moved forward
+again, away from me, into a room sparsely set with French furniture and
+dominated by a lofty chandelier still shrouded in its summer muslin, and
+the door swung to, leaving me to contemplate the picture in its
+tarnished frame of the body of Hector being brought back to Troy.
+
+"And I must have sat there, in a sort of cane lounge, for a long time,
+since when we emerged from the doorway, the doctor and I, the _Rue
+Paleologue_ was a shadowless glare of thin sunshine. He had come out of
+that room with bent head, closing the door absently and advancing toward
+the lounge where reposed his hat and stick beside me, when he took
+occasion to glance at me. Immediately he became alert and active.
+
+"'You have sustained a shock,' he murmured, counting my pulse.
+
+"'Is that it?' I returned, and he smiled, taking a capsule of white
+powder from his wallet and handing it to me. A carafe stood on a table
+near by. He poured out a glass of water.
+
+"'Looks like it,' he remarked in excellent colloquial idiom; 'put this
+on your tongue and wash it down with some water. Feel better? Come out
+into the fresh air. Take a drive with me if you like.'
+
+"'I want to talk to you,' I explained, as I followed him out. He hailed
+a man standing by a carriage several doors away and conversing with a
+servant.
+
+"'Very nice of you, I'm sure. Step in. Just the day for a
+constitutional,' And then, as we started off and the carriage rolled
+round the corner out of sight, his mood changed. 'Friend of the family?'
+he asked, keenly.
+
+"'You can call me that. Of Miss Macedoine certainly.'
+
+"'Now there was a woman!' he ejaculated, opening an immense cigarette
+case, like a bandolier, and offering it to me. 'I admire her very much,
+indeed. I was called in about a year ago. But you say you are a friend
+of hers. And she's dead. I suppose I shall have to go and attend to it.
+Only you know what's going on. This confounded Committee of Liberty and
+Progress have carried out a _coup d' etat_ and there'll be very little
+liberty of movement until they're squashed. Between ourselves, that is.
+Thank the Lord my practice is out here among the Europeans. And it's bad
+enough here, I can tell you.'
+
+"'You have lived in England?' I interposed.
+
+"His lean, dark face wrinkled with humour.
+
+"'Well, considering I was casualty surgeon at St. Barnabas Hospital for
+nearly three years, I rather think I have. Yes, I took my degrees at
+Guys, and I don't mind admitting I wish I was in London now. But I have
+an old mother and seven sisters who have never been farther than Volo in
+their lives, and so I resign myself.'
+
+"'Greek?' I enquired. He flushed dark red.
+
+"'Scarcely,' he said in a suppressed sort of voice. I won't bother you
+with local animosities. We are Spanish Jews. Not very good ones,
+perhaps, but we keep to ourselves and manage to keep the wolf from the
+door. And now,' he said with a brisk yet courteous movement of his hand
+to my arm, 'who the blazes are you, and what do you want to know?'
+
+"I told him succinctly, and he nodded to each fact of importance as he
+took it in.
+
+"'Mind you,' I told him, 'I don't defend her behaviour. She shouldn't
+have told her father she was married when she wasn't. He might have----'
+Doctor Sadura made a gesture of flinging something away impatiently.
+
+"'Oh, pardon me, but it wouldn't have made any difference with that old
+humbug.' I looked at him in amazement.
+
+"'I said humbug,' he insisted. 'A thorough old humbug. Do you know what
+he's suffering from? Illusions of grandeur, we call it in the
+profession. A form of megalomania. Oh, yes, he's got some money, no
+doubt, or I shouldn't render him professional services. But he thinks he
+owns the whole country clear up to Uskub. Burbles away for hours to me
+about his plans for developing the territory. He's got a lot of
+concessions that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. What's the
+use of concessions when the government's going in and out like a wheezy
+old concertina, when the agriculturalists simply wouldn't know what he
+was talking about and would come out with long knives and sickles and
+slash his developing parties about the legs? Rubbish! Illusions of
+grandeur, I tell you. As for the girl, you know her better than I do.
+The man who protected her, Kinaitsky, is a very fine chap indeed, but he
+isn't the sort of person I'd introduce to my sisters, if you know what I
+mean. Distinctly not.'
+
+"'And yet I understand he married a Jewess not long ago,' I said.
+
+"'Yes, very rich. Quite a different matter. Immense tobacco properties.
+You see, although he is not an Ottoman, his family have lived under
+Ottoman government so long that they are strong supporters of the old
+regime. They are like us Jews. They are good business men and they lend
+the old Ottoman families money in return for franchises which are very
+profitable to people with affiliations in Paris and London, and so
+forth. I don't say it's a perfect system,' Doctor Sadura went on, 'but
+it suits the country.'
+
+"'Then where does our friend with his illusions of grandeur come in?' I
+enquired.
+
+"'Nowhere, unless there was a revolution and a lot of these old estates
+came into the market, and the new government found time to think of him.
+But it is building on pretty rotten foundations, I can tell you. You
+don't suppose he is the first to think of such a thing.'
+
+"'No, there is a gentleman named Nikitos,' I remarked.
+
+"'I dare say there is,' said the doctor, 'but I never heard of him.'
+
+"'He aspired to the hand of Miss Macedoine,' I said, 'and he accompanied
+them here from the Island of Ipsilon.'
+
+"The doctor whistled. The carriage stopped at this moment in front of an
+imposing residence with gigantic iron gates shutting off a curved drive.
+The doctor alighted, turned round, and regarded me with considerable
+interest.
+
+"'Well, I'm blowed,' he observed, coolly, and at once attacked the
+massive gates. I watched him moving one of them very slowly and edging
+through. He was a most stimulating person to be with. Vitality radiated
+from him. I have no doubt he was a very successful physician. Whom he
+was attending within this opulent home I never knew--perhaps another
+case of illusions of grandeur. He came down the drive again quickly,
+slipped between the gates, and sprang in beside me. He gave me the
+impression of playing an extremely strong game of tennis.
+
+"'Well?' I said, as he slipped his wallet into the pocket in front of
+us, and took out his formidable cigarette case. 'Is M. Nikitos suffering
+from the same malady as Captain Macedoine?' The doctor made a grimace.
+
+"'I remember that chap,' he said, 'though I don't recall hearing his
+name. He acted on behalf of Captain Macedoine. An international
+journalist, whatever that may be. We are rather inclined to avoid
+journalists of all sorts here, you know. First I thought he had picked
+these people up at the Custom House and got himself appointed dragoman.
+Then I suspected when I was called in to see the girl that he and the
+old man were ... you understand that we doctors get into some queer
+_menages_. But aspired to the hand, you say.'
+
+"'Yes, and makes extravagant claims to what he calls purity.'
+
+"'Oh, that's a very common hallucination,' said the doctor. He laughed
+gratingly. 'Compared with the people who employ them, you know, they
+must in time get to feel they are immaculate. I don't blame them. But
+it's an hallucination.'
+
+"Do you explain everything in pathological terms?' I asked.
+
+"'How do you mean?' demanded he.
+
+"'You seem to imagine we are all the victims of some mental disease.'
+
+"'No, not at all. But the higher types of intellectualism appear to me
+slightly mad. The Ego,' added Doctor Sadura, 'is a very peculiar animal.
+It feeds on strange things like empire-building on a Balkan dung-heap,
+and purity, and--oh, all sorts of things.'
+
+"'Go on,' I said, 'you have evidently included me in the list. How would
+you describe it?'
+
+"'Well,' he replied, rubbing his nose, 'from what you tell me, I
+shouldn't pronounce you in any great danger of anything. We can say you
+have been suffering from a faith in an impracticable felicity.' And he
+laughed.
+
+"'But that is a condemnation of romance!' I protested. He shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"'We shall never run short of romance,' he declared. 'The great thing is
+to avoid getting mixed up in it or if you do, you mustn't imagine, as
+you were about to do, that it can be carried about the world. Of course
+I know there is a fatal fascination about the idea. I thought of
+something like that myself at one time. A wonderful experience! But it
+wouldn't have done.'
+
+"'You don't believe in love then?' I asked, curious to know how the
+brother of seven sisters regarded this matter.
+
+"'Oh, love!' he echoed, shrugging again. 'Love is nothing. It happens
+all the time to everybody. It Is the romantic business I thought you
+were speaking of.'
+
+"'You draw a distinction, then?'
+
+"'Why, of course. Look here, I'll tell you. I had a wild, romantic
+passion once. Think of it, a casualty surgeon in a London hospital,
+carried away, positively carried away. And the subject of it was an
+Irish colleen. Yes, I was infatuated simply and solely with that girl's
+green cloak and hood and her green stockings and black pumps. I have
+been told since by an Irishman that girls in Ireland never dream of
+wearing such a rig. That doesn't matter. I had read of Irish colleens,
+just as you, for example, might have read of Persian princesses or
+Russian countesses, and the glamour of it carried me away. And this
+colleen of mine, with her green cloak which she'd got from a theatrical
+costumier, represented a romantic ideal. Very nice clever sort of girl,
+a newspaper woman she was. But it wouldn't have done. Never try to make
+an episode anything else. We parted and I believe she's married now.'
+
+"'That about sums it up,' I said.
+
+"'It does. Get a night's sleep and you'll see it in the same light. You
+have had an accumulation of romantic impacts, and I expect a sea-going
+life leaves one very much at the mercy of stray impressions. A ship's
+surgeon once remarked to me that no human intellect could survive a
+nautical training.' And he laughed again.
+
+"That," said Mr. Spenlove, "was how he talked. A provocative, positive
+sort of man. There was, if you will excuse the simile, something
+antiseptic in his character. I could have driven about and talked to him
+all day. He was charged with sane opinions on life. Humorous, too. When
+I suggested that Captain Macedoine might not survive his daughter's
+death, he made the whimsical remark that illusions of grandeur act like
+an anaesthetic upon the patient's emotions. And I shall not forget the
+last remark he uttered as I stood beside his carriage to say farewell.
+The red roofs and domes of the city stretched away below us and I could
+see the smoke coming over the warehouse from the _Manola's_ funnel. He
+had promised to do certain things for me. If you climb up some day to
+the Protestant cemetery you will find out what some of those things
+were. And he was good enough to express a hope that I might come to
+Saloniki again. I replied that I had profited immensely by his
+conversation and he nodded, saying:
+
+"'Yes, that's right. But what you really need, you know, is what
+old-fashioned people in England call the consolation of religion.'
+
+"'That is a novel prescription for a doctor,' I retorted.
+
+"'Perhaps it is,' he admitted, holding out his hand, 'but depend upon
+it, nothing else will do.'
+
+"'You know the usual stereotyped advice is to get married?'
+
+"'You would still need the consolation of religion,' he remarked, dryly.
+'No, the fact is, real love is too uncertain, too uncommon.'
+
+"'Surely,' I protested.
+
+"'A fact,' he insisted, simply. 'I once picked up the works of a young
+Arab poetess who afterward slew herself in her lover's arms. And the
+burden of all her songs was that the only logical culmination of love,
+if it be genuine, is death. I offer you that for your Western mind to
+ponder. Good-bye and good luck.'
+
+"And there I was," said Mr. Spenlove, lighting a fresh cigarette, "with
+a whole brand-new set of consolatory impressions to brood upon, left to
+pursue my way back to the ship and take up a safe and humdrum existence
+once more. The episode was over, and it would be unwise to try and make
+it anything else. And I had been presented with a novel and extremely
+impracticable test of love which preoccupied by its stark beauty. I had
+the sudden fancy, as I climbed the ruined wall that runs down from the
+Citadel and started to thread the narrow streets toward the port, of
+that Arab poetess, buried in a fragrant and silent garden among
+cypresses, and her lover, whom I pictured an infidel, keeping her in
+memory by a bronze statuette. I saw it on a table in his room, a tiny
+thing of delicate art, the exquisite creature depicted at the supreme
+moment of death and passion. For of course the lover would not adopt
+that extreme view of his obligations toward love. Full of regret he
+would continue a mediocre existence....
+
+"And yet," said Mr. Spenlove, standing up and looking out from under
+bent brows at the faint lifting of the darkness beyond the headland,
+"and yet, my friends, as I picked my way down toward the port, it
+occurred to me to wonder whether our Western views are so full of
+ultimate wisdom as we imagine; whether there may not be something in
+life which we miss because we are so careful of life. At this moment we
+are vigorously striving to impose our Occidental conceptions of
+happiness and justice and government upon a good many millions to whom
+our arrogant assumptions of the Almighty's prerogatives is becoming an
+incomprehensible infliction. It wouldn't do, I suppose, to suggest that
+so far from being a matter of mathematical progression, life has a
+secret rhythm of its own. And while I was working away at this alarming
+line of thought, I was passing along narrow streets crammed with
+evidences of desires other than ours. I passed women veiled save for
+their sombre, enigmatic eyes. I passed the doors of temples where men
+lay prostrate upon strips of carpet, the saffron-coloured soles of their
+bare feet gleaming distinct in the sunlight. I was assailed by troops of
+children whose tremendous vitality and unabashed enterprise made me
+tremble with forebodings for the future. Was it possible, I wondered, if
+our system didn't give the less admirable and the cunning among us a
+long advantage? Which they were beginning to take, I added. I found
+myself endeavouring to take soundings and find out, so to speak, how far
+we were off shore. Mind you, it wasn't simply that as far as I could see
+we were busily producing an inferior social order. I was trying to
+think out what the ultimate consequences would be if we continued to
+dilute and rectify and sterilize our emotions. I wanted to see beyond
+that point, but I found I couldn't. I hadn't the power, and I'm afraid
+that nowadays I lack the courage as well.
+
+"And then I lost myself awhile in a bazaar where I saw sundry gentlemen
+from the country hurriedly disposing of short, blunt rifles at a
+reckless discount for cash, and eventually I came out into a steep
+street which led down to the sea, a street full of an advancing swarm of
+armed men and banners and carriages and the shrill blare of trumpets
+pulsed by the thudding of drums. A squad of motley individuals in
+civilian garb with red sashes across their bosoms and rifles in their
+hands marched ahead of a brass band and breasted the slope. At intervals
+came carriages containing the leaders of this new regime. I observed the
+burly person in the fez and wearing a silver star. He sat alone in an
+open landau, his frock coat gathered up so that his muscular haunches
+could be seen crushing the salmon-coloured upholstery, his massive
+calves almost bursting out of the cashmere trousers. He held himself
+rigidly upright, his hand at the salute, his big black eyes swivelling
+from side to side as the crowd surged up and applauded. He had been a
+driver on the railroad, I read later on, when his photo, with the silver
+star, appeared in our illustrated papers at home as one of the leaders
+of the Party of Liberty and Progress. Still an engine-driver, I should
+say, recalling him as he rode past that morning, not particularly
+attentive to signals or pressure gauges either, if what we hear be true.
+Broad-based he sat there, leaning slightly forward, the tight blue tunic
+creasing across the small of his strong, curved back, his short, thick
+feet encased in elastic side boots, his long nails curving over the ends
+of his fingers like claws. And it occurred to me, as I stood on the
+marble steps of that office building and watched him being borne upward
+to the Citadel where no doubt he rendered substantial aid to the cause
+of Liberty and Progress, that it is to the credit of the despots and
+cut-throats of history that they were perfectly honest in their
+behaviour. They sought dominion and got it. They sought gold and got it.
+They sought the blood and the concubines of their enemies and got them.
+And they rarely deemed it worth while to pretend that they were apostles
+of liberty and progress. That is one of our modern improvements.... I
+was musing thus as the platoons of ragged revolutionaries shuffled past,
+when I found myself gazing at M. Nikitos, seated with crossed legs in
+the corner of a shabby one-horse carriage, and raising an
+unpleasant-looking silk hat. He was, I take it, one of the secretaries
+of the Committee of Liberty and Progress, possibly their future
+international expert. It suddenly occurred to me that there is a
+gigantic brotherhood in the world, a brotherhood of those who have never
+willingly done a day's work in their lives and never intend to. We have
+been so mesmerized by the phrase the Idle Rich, that we have completely
+forgotten that sinister and perilous pestilence, the Idle Poor. Looking
+at M. Nikitos, with his hair standing straight up on the lower slopes of
+his head like fir trees on the sides of a mountain and his opaque black
+eyes staring with fanatical intensity at nothing in particular, one was
+irresistibly reminded of a fungus. The incipient black beard, which was
+making its appearance in patches on his chin and jaws, lent a certain
+strength to the impression of fungoid growth, and encouraged a dreadful
+sort of notion that he was beyond the normal and lovable passions of
+men. He was, you will remember, a pure man. He sat there, raising that
+horrible silk hat, exposing, with the mechanical regularity of an
+automaton his extraordinary frontal configuration, the apotheosis of
+undesirable chastity. And he had formed a resolution 'which nothing
+could kill.' I don't doubt it. The resolutions of an individual like
+that are as substantial and indestructible as he. They persist, in
+obedience to a melancholy law of human development, from one generation
+to another. They are as numerously busy just now, under the 'drums and
+tramplings' of the conflict, as maggots in a cheese. They have the
+elusive and impersonal mobility of a cloud of poisonous gases. They
+restore one's belief in a principle of evil, and they may scare us,
+ultimately, back from their wonderful Liberty and Progress, into an
+authentic faith in God.
+
+"And I also," resumed Mr. Spenlove, after a moment's silence, "formed a
+resolution, to refrain from any further participation in alien affairs.
+I found that I lacked courage for that enterprise, too. It is, after
+all, a dangerous thing to tamper with one's fundamental prejudices. They
+very often turn out to be the stark and ugly supports of our health and
+sanity. I resigned, not without a faint but undeniable tremor of relief,
+the part of a principal in the play. I have harped to you on this point
+of my relative importance in the story because it was as a mere super
+that I entered from the wings and it is as a super in the last act that
+I retire. I think it was the letter and package M. Kinaitsky sent down
+to the ship which scared me into obscurity. That and the news that the
+four o'clock express for Constantinople in which he had been travelling
+had been blown to atoms by the apostles of Liberty and Progress. You can
+say it completed the cure, if you like. To read that brief note of
+courteous and regretful reproach was like encountering a polite phantom.
+After recording his unalterable conviction that only death or a woman
+could have prevented an Englishman of honour from keeping an
+appointment, he begged to trespass so far upon my generous impulses as
+to send me the package, fully addressed to his brother in London. He
+would esteem it a favour if I would deliver it in person. The sudden
+alarming turn of events rendered it imperative to despatch these papers
+by a secure and unsuspected hand. Should nothing happen, it would be a
+simple matter for him to communicate with his brother when the present
+troubles were over. Otherwise ... and so on. He would not do more than
+allude to the question of recompense, which would be on a scale
+commensurate with the magnitude of the obligation. The Captain, no
+doubt, would consent to keep the package in his safe during the
+voyage....
+
+"Well, the _Manola_ had no safe, but Jack had a formidable old cash-box
+in his room, and it was with the idea of carrying out the behests of one
+who could no longer enforce them that I carried the big yellow envelope
+to Jack and told him how I came by it. Even when it was condensed to
+suit his bluff mentality, it was a long story. I was astonished at the
+abstraction into which it threw him. On the road he returned to it again
+and again. His imagination continually played round the history of 'that
+gel' as he called her. He could not get used to the startling fact that
+all this had been going on 'under his very nose, by Jingo!' and he
+hadn't had the slightest suspicion. 'Forgotten all about her, very
+nearly. And by the Lord, I thought you had, too, Fred.'
+
+"And I should like," said Mr. Spenlove, "to have heard him tell Mrs.
+Evans. Perhaps, though, it would not have proved so very sensational
+after all. It is exceedingly difficult to shock a woman who has been
+married for a number of years. They seem to undergo a process which,
+without affording them any direct glimpse into the bottomless pit,
+renders them cognizant of the dark ways of the human soul. Perhaps you
+don't believe this. Perhaps you think I am only trying to joke at the
+expense of a married woman I never liked. Well, try it. Take a benign
+matron of your own family, who has endured the racking strain of years
+of family life and tell her your own scandalous history, and she will
+amaze you by her serene acceptance of your infamous proceedings. So
+perhaps, as I say, I missed nothing very piquant after all. I had to
+content myself with the eloquent silence of the respectable but single
+Tonderbeg, moving about in the cabin, his blond head bent in gentle
+melancholy, his features composed into an expression of respectful
+forgiveness.
+
+"'But what was your idea, Fred?' says Jack to me on the road home. He
+wore habitually a mystified air when we were alone together in his
+cabin. Jack had become settled in life. His movements had grown more
+deliberate, and his choleric energy had mellowed into an assured
+demeanour of authority. You could imagine him the father of a young
+lady. He sat back in his big chair, motionless save for the cigar
+turning between thumb and finger, a typical ship-master. He was
+recognized by the law as competent to perform the functions of a
+magistrate on the high seas. He no longer plunged like an angry bull
+into rows with agents. He had arrived at that period of life when all
+the half-forgotten experiences of our youth, the foolish experiments,
+the humiliating reverses, come back to our chastened minds and assist us
+to impose our personalities upon a world ignorant of our former
+imperfections. And he sat there turning his cigar between thumb and
+finger, his bright and blood-shot brown eyes fixed in a sort of
+affectionate glare upon me, his old chum, who had suddenly left him
+spiritually in the lurch, so to speak. 'What was your idea, Fred? Do
+you mean to say you hadn't made any plans for the future at all? Just
+going to let the thing slide?' And the curious thing about his state of
+mind was that he was attracted by the idea without understanding it. As
+he sat watching me, mumbling about the future, and the taking of risks
+and what people at home would say, it was obvious that he was beginning
+to see the possibilities of such an adventure. He had a vague and
+nebulous glimpse of something that was neither furtive sensuality nor
+smug respectability. 'Like something in one of these here novels,' as he
+put it with unconscious pathos. And that, I suppose, was as near as he
+ever attained to an understanding of the romantic temperament. It was
+fine of him, for he got it through a very real friendship. 'I know you
+wouldn't do anything in the common way, Fred,' he observed after a long
+contemplation of his cigar.
+
+"'And would you have stood for it, Jack?' I asked him, 'seeing that Mrs.
+Evans would hardly have approved, I mean.' He roused up and worked his
+shoulders suddenly in a curious way, as though shifting a burden.
+
+"'Oh, as to that!' he broke out, and then after a pause he added, 'You
+can't always go by that. I'd stand for a whole lot from you, Fred.'
+
+"And with that, to the regret of Mr. Tonderbeg who was hovering about
+outside in the main cabin, our conversation ended.
+
+"We bunkered in Algiers and the newspapers gave us the news of the war.
+A war so insignificant that most of you young fellows have forgotten all
+about it. And the captain of a ship in the harbour, hearing we were from
+Saloniki, came over and informed us that he himself had been bound for
+that port, with a cargo of stores, but had received word to stop and
+wait for further orders. He was very indignant, for he had expected some
+pretty handsome pickings. The point of his story was that the stuff was
+for Macedoine & Co. who would be able to claim a stiff sum in
+compensation for non-delivery. I believe the case ran on for years in
+the courts, and the lawyers did very well out of it.
+
+"And when we reached Glasgow, I took the train to London to deliver the
+package M. Kinaitsky had entrusted to me. I was curious to learn
+something of that gentleman's affiliations in England, to discover, if
+you like, how his rather disconcerting mentality comported itself in a
+Western environment. The envelope was addressed to Rosemary Lodge,
+Hampstead, and I left Mason's Hotel in the Strand, on a beautiful day in
+late autumn, and took the Hamstead bus in Trafalgar Square. It was very
+impressive, that ascent of the Northern Heights of London, dragging
+through the submerged squalor of Camden Town, up through the dingy
+penury of Haverstock Hill, to the clear and cultured prosperity of the
+smuggest suburb on earth. I happened to know Hampstead since I had once
+met an artist who lived there, though his studio was in Chelsea. I may
+tell you about him some day. And when I had walked up the Parliament
+Hill Road and started across the Heath to find Rosemary Lodge, I had a
+fairly clear notion of what I should find. For of course it was only a
+lodge in the peculiar modern English sense. It is part of the harmless
+hypocrisy of this modern use of language, that one should live in tiny
+flats in London and call them 'mansions' while a large house standing in
+its own grounds is styled a lodge. M. Nicholas Kinaitsky evidently kept
+up an extensive establishment. There seemed a round dozen of servants.
+Two men and a boy were out in the grounds preparing the roses for the
+winter. A blue spiral of smoke was blowing away from the chimney of the
+hothouse against the north wall. And the house itself was one of those
+spacious and perfectly decorous affairs which have become identified
+with that extraordinary colony of wealthy aliens who make a specialty of
+being more English than the English. There was a tennis-court on one
+side of the house and a young man with a dark, clean-shaven face stood
+talking to a girl, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched in
+what one may call the public-school manner, the coat of arms of an
+ancient Oxford college glowing on the breast of his blue blazer. And
+indoors the same influence obtained. The pictures and books and
+furniture presented a front of impregnable insularity. Even the piano
+was English. Only a photograph in a frame of silver gilt, on a side
+table, gave a hint--the portrait of a lady with hair dressed in the
+style of German princesses of Queen Victoria's day, the sinuous curve of
+her high, tight bodice accented by the great bustle. I noted all this,
+and sat looking out of the window, which gave upon the autumn splendour
+of the Heath. There was a pond close by, and an old gentleman in white
+spats was stooping down to launch a large model yacht on the water. A
+fairly well-to-do old gentleman, by the gold coins on his watch-chain
+and the rings which sparkled on his hands. I wondered if he were a
+relative of the Kinaitskys or whether he only knew them. The yacht
+started off under a press of canvas, and the old gentleman set off at a
+trot round the edge, to meet it. I doubt if you could have seen a sight
+like that anywhere else in the world. He was perfectly unconscious of
+doing anything at all out of the common. And I dare say it is essential
+to the rounded completeness of English life that funny and wealthy old
+gentlemen should sail toy yachts on ponds, while cultured aliens amass
+fortunes on the Stock Exchange and some of us plow the ocean all our
+lives.
+
+"And then I was disturbed in my musings by a young lady entering the
+room, and I rose to explain myself.
+
+"I say she was a young lady, while you will observe I alluded only just
+now to a girl talking to a young man on the tennis-court. There was that
+difference. Without giving one any reason for supposing she was married,
+this one conveyed a subtle impression of being the mistress of the
+house. She was dark, athletic, simply dressed in black, and extremely
+plain.
+
+"'Father will be back from the city at half-past four,' she said, when I
+had explained my errand. 'I am so sorry you will have to wait. You will
+stay to dinner, of course.'
+
+"I said I did not know if I should stay to dinner as a matter of course,
+but I thanked her. We drifted into conversation and she gave a very
+clever impression of being a thorough woman of the world. She was not,
+of course. She was one of those unfortunate beings who are trained in
+all the arts of life and who become adepts in all those accomplishments
+which men take entirely for granted, and who are permitted to grow up
+imagining men are paladins. And when they marry they experience a shock
+from which they never recover. Being married is such a different affair
+from looking after your father's house. When I mentioned my errand, she
+said her mother and the widowed aunt were at Torquay. Her plain features
+were suffused with emotion when she mentioned the death of her uncle.
+She had been his favourite niece. He always paid them a brief visit when
+he came to London. Very brief. He had a great many people to see in
+town. Only last year he had given her a set of pearls. And Madame
+Kinaitsky was so young--it was tragic. The pater had gone over and met
+her in Paris and she would live with them in future. She stopped in the
+middle of this and looked at me.
+
+"'You met her, of course, out there?' she asked.
+
+"'Oh, dear no,' I said. "I am only a very casual acquaintance, you
+understand. I happened to be on the spot, and the very fact that I was
+not a regular friend gave your uncle the idea that his papers, whatever
+they are, would be safer with me. I was only too pleased to be of
+service. You see,' I went on, 'your uncle knew a friend of mine, and
+so....
+
+"'A friend of yours?' she queried.
+
+"'Yes, a business friend. Your uncle helped him and his daughter. It
+was the daughter I knew particularly.'
+
+"'Was she nice?' she demanded, eagerly. 'I mean, was she worthy of his
+help? He was so good. He helped everybody. There is an orphanage in
+Saloniki which he supported--oh, most generously. And he asked nothing
+in return. Oh!' she exclaimed, 'when I think of his life, always
+thinking of others and doing good, and how at last he found happiness
+for himself, and then this....' and she gazed out of the window at the
+old gentleman, who was in trouble with his yacht, which had capsized
+just beyond walking-stick reach. 'It was like him to trust a stranger,'
+she murmured.
+
+"'He was good enough to make use of me because I was an Englishman,' I
+replied.
+
+"'And that was like him, too,' she returned, kindling again. 'It was a
+great grief to him that business prevented him from living with us here
+in Hampstead. He loved the English ways. He used to say in joke that he
+would certainly marry an English wife if he could induce any of them to
+marry him. But of course he met his fate. He wrote hoping we would love
+her. We shall do that, of course, but----' she looked out again at the
+old gentleman who had found a small boy volunteer to paddle out,
+bare-legged, to salve the yacht.
+
+"'But what?' I asked.
+
+"'She will marry again,' Miss Kinaitsky remarked in a low tone. 'I am
+positive. I do not see how we can blame her. She submitted to the
+arrangement. But she did not love him. We feel it, because he spoke of
+her in such terms ... it was almost adoration. There was never any other
+woman for him....'
+
+"A silence fell between us because, as you can easily imagine, I had
+nothing to offer commensurate with the extraordinary exaltation of her
+mood. It was plain enough that to a woman like her love could not
+possibly be what I had conceived it. To her it was a divine flame
+through which she would discern the transfigured features of her
+beloved. To her it was a supreme sacrament administered in a sacred
+chamber whence had been shut out all the evil which impregnates the
+heart of man. And I sat there wondering. When I left that sumptuous and
+smoothly running mansion and walked out across the Heath in the dusk
+toward the Spaniards Inn, I was still wondering whether each of us could
+be right. And I wonder still. For if it were true that love were what
+she and her kind imagine it to be, then I had never seen it. To me it
+had been nothing so transcendentally easy as that. To me it had been an
+obscure commotion, an enigmatic storm on which the human soul, with its
+drogue of inherited sorrows, was flung on its beam ends, stove in and
+dismasted, while beyond, far off, there shone a faint light, the flash
+of a derisive smile, flashing and then suddenly going out. And even now,
+in the mists of the accumulating years, I wonder still."
+
+For the last time Mr. Spenlove paused, and stepping out to the rail, he
+stood there, with his back to the men who had listened to his story,
+silhouetted against the first pale flush of the dawn, looking away to
+the horizon where could be seen a tiny light, shrouded to point straight
+toward them, flashing once, twice, with mysterious caution, and then
+going out.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Captain Macedoine's Daughter, by William McFee
+
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