"'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 reëchoed 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 aflair, as the French say, the sort offlairmost 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 therewassomething 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. Grünbaum'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 Grünbaum 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 débris of an old ore-tip. I moved slowly toward Grünbaum'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 Grünbaum'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 café 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 Grünbaum'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 aséanceof 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."
"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 itmightbe 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—butverb. sapas 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 Grünbaum'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 Grünbaum's orchard and Grünbaum'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. Grünbaum 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,Iresign. Like that. To-morrow also, Monsieur Spilliazeza, our invaluable manager of works, resigns! To-night, theOsmanlicalls for the mails. We go by theOsmanli, 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 Grünbaum 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 Grünbaum. Trying to get control. Grünbaum 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. Grünbaum 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 Grünbaum 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. Grünbaum 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 Grünbaum'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 o£ 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. Grünbaum, 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 theManola. 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 Grünbaum's islanders. I suppose the vein had petered out up there.... I don't know. One of Grünbaum'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 rôle 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, 'butyouwouldn'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?Youdon'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.Youcan 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 theOsmanli, 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. TheOsmanlicame 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!'"
"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 hygienicménage. 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 rôle 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. Childrenknow!'
"'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. Grünbaum, 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 café 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 bemarried. 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. Childrenknew. 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 todomuch.' 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—'WhenIwas commander, Mrs. Evans, I always insisted on the junior officers overseeing the routine of the ship. WhenIwas 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 heartsknow. 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 Grünbaum'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. Grünbaum 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 rôle 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, aLorelei, 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. Grünbaum 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 theManolawas 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.