"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 Grünbaum, 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 café, 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 café, 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 theManolawere 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 theManolayou 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 theManola, 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 soexperienced... 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 desolatefaubourg."
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 theVia 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 theVia 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 astonishingentourageof 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 theVia Egnatiathan 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 theVia 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 rôle 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 theVia 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.'"
"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 theconcierge, 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 façades, with their enigmatic shutters, a sensation of extraordinary loneliness and dreary failure. I envisaged theManolalying 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 thetempoof 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 theVia 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 theRue 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 wordsÉcole 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 ofkiosquesjoined 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 thekiosquesand 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 thekiosqueand 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 thekiosque, 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 littlekiosque, 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, theRue Paleologuewas 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 acoup d' étâtand 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 régime. 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 queerménages. 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 anæsthetic 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 theManola'sfunnel. 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 régime. 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, theManolahad 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.'