"Well, it wasn't so very like his daughter after all, not really so like her as Pollyni was like Mrs. Saratov. The woman in the photo was undeniably beautiful, but it was the beauty of the octaroon. The large eyes and the full, sensuous lips expressed with sombre emphasis the great enigma of race. In her daughter this enigma had been transmuted into an intensely personal thing, a seductive mystery that made men love her at the same time that it overshadowed love and filled them with anxiety for their spiritual safety. There was none of her radiant, aggressive insouciance in the photograph. It was the portrait of a clinging and rapacious female. A soft and delicious parasite, the victim of an immense and tragic error. I heard Captain Macedoine, while I sat with the photograph in my hand, telling of the almost incredible happiness of his home life in the little wooden cottage amid the tall grasses out on Tchoupitoulas Street. It all came back to me as I listened. The clangour of the box-cars being switched where the trolley bumped along the docks; the dry and dismal stretch of Poydras Street in the evening, the stark warehouses of Calliope, and then mile on mile of verandahed shabbiness, getting more and more open, with fields and cross-roads running down into mere vague vacancies, or perhaps a shy, solitary cottage. And the extraordinary sunsets over the lake—sunsets like vast flat washes of crimson and gamboge and violet, which were wiped out as by a hasty hand and left the wide-spacedfaubourgsa prey to the murmurous onslaught of insects and the hollow boom of enormous frogs. And the two women sat in rapt silence, absorbing the romantic story with its romantic setting. An artificial story, if you like, as everything about Captain Macedoine was artificial. It was almost as if he had achieved his destiny by coming at last to that extraordinary concoction of artificialities which we call New Orleans, where dead civilizations lie superimposed one upon the other like leaves in a rotten old book, where you can cut down through them, from the mail-steamer and the trolley-car and the fake religion, right down to the poisonous swamp and the Voodoo frenzy. It was a place whose very silences were eloquent of sadness and frustrated achievement, and he chose it as the scene of incredible happiness! For he conceived an affection for the city which led him to say in so many words that it was the only possible place to live, in the United States. His patrician up-bringing and cosmopolitan career, it seems, had brought him to the same view of our western civilization as Mrs. Saratov. It was this peculiar notion once more obtruded upon me that stung me into speech with him.
"'You really think that?' 'You prefer this sort of place, for instance, to New England?'
"'Oh there's no comparison,' he returned. 'Here you have absolute freedom. There you are strapped down in a groove and remain there, unless you fancy going to prison.' And he laughed contemptuously, as at some reminiscence.
"'What do you understand by freedom?' I demanded and he bent his gaze moodily upon the shadows as though seeking to elucidate some depressing problem.
"'There are a good many answers to that question,' he said at length, 'but I should say, in my case, that it means deliverance from the Anglo-Saxon's infernal ideas of morality.' The last words came out with what was almost a snarl. He put the things he had been showing us back in the bag and locked it. 'Will you put it back, my dear?' he murmured with a smile. 'We must pick out something for you when ... eh?' The girl gave him an affectionate glance and carried the bag away into the dusk.
"'Then I take it, Captain, you are doing well here?' I observed. He shrugged his shoulders.
"'So-so,' he answered. 'So-so. Political troubles have interfered so far, but it is upon them really that we build, you know. Our losses will be more than made good shortly.'
"'But I was given to understand that the Minister of the Interior declined to authorize the concessions.'
"Captain Macedoine became extremely human. He grinned behind his chunky hand.
"'Pardon me for laughing,' he returned. 'The Minister of the Interior has gone on a long tour in Anatolia, for his health. It is quite possible he will remain down there. It would certainly be a sensible thing to do.'
"'Why, what do you mean?' I asked.
"'Is it possible you do not know?' he said in a pitying tone. 'The English newspapers print a great deal of football news and racing, but a matter like this is passed over in silence. Eh? What? These ladies know. I know. But you don't know. Your captain does not know either, I dare say. Nor your owners. I was prepared for this three months back, I may say. My affiliations with various syndicates enabled me to draw the necessary deductions. I chartered three ships, borrowing the money at very high interest. Those ships are loading stores and ammunition in Glasgow. They will arrive in about three weeks.'
"'Ammunition?' I repeated, rather suspecting his sanity. This was in 1912, remember.
"'Dear me, yes,' he answered with another pitying smile. 'Didn't you know really? There will be war you know. Next week possibly. Perhaps to-morrow. Why,' he added with considerable animation, 'it might start to-night!'"
Mr. Spenlove, seated on the extreme edge of his little deck-stool, his knees out, his hands lightly inserted in his trouser pockets, paused again in his narrative and looked over his shoulder as the quartermaster at the gangway rang four bells. The moon was gone behind the vast mass of rock which had been used by him as a material background to the fantastic tale he was telling in his own introspective and irritating manner. Out beyond the sharp black silhouette of the headland the open water was a dazzling glitter that contrasted oddly with the profound obscurity of the tiny haven. From time to time a silent form had risen from the chairs beneath the awning and gone forward to the navigating bridge, returning in the same unobtrusive fashion. And as Mr. Spenlove paused, and the clear-toned bronze bell rang four strokes that echoed musically from the cliff, another form, moving with care, emerged from the ward-room scuttle and set down a tray on a small table. There was a movement among the deck chairs as feet came down softly and felt for discarded shoes, and the surgeon, clearing his throat noisily, stood up and yawned. One by one the officers who had thus elected to pass a night in conversation took from the tray a cup of the British Navy's celebrated cocoa and returned to their chairs. Mr. Spenlove, still sitting upright and looking round as though he expected someone to contradict him, put out his hand, and the night-steward placed in it the remaining cup before moving off and vanishing into the shadows, shot by gleams of brass handrails and polished oak, of the companion. Mr. Spenlove, his head cocked slightly on one side, his dark elvish eyebrows raised satirically, and his sharp, short beard moving slightly, stirred his cocoa. He betrayed no concern as to the state of mind of his audience. He was well aware that the perfect listener does not exist. The novelist is more fortunate. For every hundred persons who deign to take up his book and trifle with it for an hour, putting it down upon the slightest pretext and perhaps forgetting to finish it, there will be one enthusiast who savors every word, notes the turn of a phrase, and enjoys the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the style. One must not expect this when telling a tale, except perhaps when one is a boy, and the dormitory is hushed to listen, and one goes on and on until honest snores register satiety. Mr. Spenlove, stirring and sipping his cocoa, stared straight across at Grünbaum's house, which the current had now brought before him, and composed his thoughts before going on to the final conclusion of his story. He was moved somewhat himself because the mere act of narration had evoked memories whose strength he had perhaps underestimated since they had remained dormant so long, and the immediate stress of the great conflict, in which they were all leisurely participating, had led him to imagine that the world before the war was dead and gone. Which it wasn't, he reflected, setting down his cup and beginning to roll a cigarette ... not by a long shot; and remained silent yet a little longer, marvelling at the extraordinary triviality of such things as war, against the sombre verities of Race and Love and Despair.
And then he suddenly became aware that the shoes had been again softly discarded, and he heard the creak of the trestles as the navigating officer stretched himself on his camp-bed alongside the hand-steering gear. Rolling a cigarette Mr. Spenlove began again.
"I doubt if you can conceive now," he remarked, "how that bland announcement of a possible war before morning startled and shocked me. I doubt if anybody realizes how such things tore our hearts before those autumn days in nineteen fourteen. Some of you may remember when war was declared between England and the Boer Republics. Quite a little thrill in London; a romantic feeling that the die was cast, and all that sort of thing. But that was far away across the sea, a diminutive business which it pleased us to consider one of our punitive expeditions. War, the collision of European hosts, was a subject for literature and art. It wouldn't ever happen again. The Turks and Italians had been at war and it had been a decorous affair involving some nebulous actions in Cyrenaica—a locality we had never heard of before—and a few amusing incidents at sea. I remember we were pursued all one morning by an indignant Italian scout-ship during that war, who wanted to know why we hadn't stopped at her signal. I believe, as a matter of fact, the mate on the bridge had been making himself a hammock and hadn't seen anything. And when they did catch us up our skipper simply broke out the Red Ensign, showed his codeflags, and went ahead. War? We hadn't any conception of what the word meant. Our troops were always walloping some tribe or other in India and so forth, and we lived in a peaceful, orderly world.
"But Captain Macedoine's remark that war might break out at any time had something, intangible if you like, to corroborate it. It was in the air. It was very evident in that crowded café when the robust gentleman in the frock coat and fez and wearing a silver star was working his hearers up to a hoarse, guttural frenzy about something—probably our old friend Liberty. There was a destroyer in the harbour near us—a dingy-looking and obsolete craft with low, sullen funnels and a disagreeable array of torpedo-tubes with the fat snouts of torpedoes lurking under the hoods. In those days a war-ship of any sort made one think all sorts of chaotic thoughts. And now he had mentioned it to me, a good many other things came to mind which pointed toward some readjustment of power. Our sudden charter for Saloniki, for example, breaking in on our pleasant, regular jog-trot trip to keep the great mills of northern Italy going. Yes, I believed him in spite of my prejudice, and I showed it by taking my leave with a certain degree of haste and starting for the ship. We always do that. It is our idea of safety—to get back to the ship. Habit and duty constrain us. But I had to be shown the way. It was a dark, moonless night and I had very little notion how to proceed. We bade Captain Macedoine good-night and he immediately assumed the manner of an aged ecclesiastic. He became much older. I don't know whether you will get just what I mean, but the mere fact that he was holding the centre of the stage, that we were all looking at him and listening to him and thinking about him, had seemed to inform him with an actual access of vitality. But when I started from my motionless pose in the background and scraped my chair and muttered something about having to get back to the ship, he seemed to fade. He looked at me for an instant in an attentive and perplexed fashion, as though he could hardly account for my presence.
"'I never cared for the sea,' he murmured. 'A preposterous life. All the disadvantages of being in jail with—what was it? Something or other ... I forget ... well, you must come again. Always pleased, you know....'
"And then, outside, Mrs. Sarafov insisted that I would lose my way. Pollyni must go with me and show me a short route to a landing-stage where I could get a boat. We stood in the clear darkness of the high, narrow sidewalk, and I could feel the girl move closer to me as she lifted her chin and smiled into my eyes. What? Lyrical? Well, I can tell you that you would have been lyrical, too, doctor. I was thirty-five, you know, and I had never been in close contact with beautiful women before. Just as Artemisia had her own secret lure, a lure founded on her exquisite, derisive humour and her sombre heritage, so this extraordinarily seductive and friendly young person, an entrancing character composed of Eastern mystery and Western frankness, appealed irresistibly to the connoisseur in a man. She was sex, and nothing but sex, yet she maintained without effort the rôle of being merely a dear friend of Captain Macedoine's daughter.
"'You must come again,' said Mrs. Sarafov, drawing her shawl round her fine shoulders. 'We don't often see people from the other side. In the afternoon, eh? And Miss Macedoine, she'll come over.'
"'Then you don't think there will be any trouble?' I asked. 'Any fighting, I mean.'
"'We never interfere in politics,' she answered, drily. 'So long as you mind your own business and let them fight it out among 'emselves, you're safe enough here, I should say.'
"'What is it all about?' I demanded.
"'That's more than I can tell you,' she answered with disarming candour. 'Taxes mostly, I guess. But you have to pay 'em to somebody.' And then she added cryptically: 'I don't know as we'll be any better off if they was to win.'
"Well, we talked a little longer and then the girl, who had run into the house for a shawl, stepped along beside me with her long, sure-footed stride and we started up the dark street. There were very few lights about now and from time to time she put her hand on my arm as we came to a gap in the sidewalk.
"'And so,' I said in a low tone, 'you are a great friend of Miss Macedoine, I understand.'
"'Oh, yes,' she said. 'I like her very much. She tells me everything.'
"'Everything?' She nodded, leaning forward and looking up at me in a certain demure, elvish fashion.
"'Yes!' she replied, dwelling on the word with tremendous emphasis. 'Everything. About you, when you come to see her in London, you know. Oh, she like you. She like you very much. When she know you have come, she'll be crazy.'
"'But you know,' I protested, 'you know I'm only a sort of friend.'
"'Oh, yes!' again with the dwelling accent. 'Of course, a friend. And she talk and talk and tell me all about you and say to me: 'No, he'll never come. I'll never see him again. Forget it,' and then she sits and looks at the sea for an hour. And when I say to her: 'Why don't you write?' she say, 'I have,' and is all sad and miserable.'
"'But she didn't tellmethis when she wrote.'
"'No?' said the girl with a faintly sarcastic inflection. 'Well, she wouldn't ... I suppose.'
"'Besides which,' I went on, 'she gave me to understand she was living with this Monsieur Kinaitsky, so....'
"'He supports her,' she said, 'she's very lucky.'
"'How?' I asked, astonished at this peculiar sentiment.
"'Because he never goes near her for, oh, since this three months. He's married, you know. You'll pass his house in the boat, only there's a fog on the Gulf to-night. And he supports four others. Very rich. And so long as she stays round she can do what she likes.'
"'Would you mind telling me, my dear,' I said, 'why this gentleman supports all these ... er ... strangers?' She shrugged her shoulders and took my arm daintily.
"'Because he's rich, I suppose,' she remarked. 'They all do it here. In England—no?' she added in inquiry.
"'Well, not on such a lavish scale,' I admitted. 'Then there would be no harm in my going to see her where she lives?'
"'Oh, sure! She wants you to. I'll go to-morrow, eh? And tell her you will come? What time?'
"'What about the afternoon?'
"'Yes. And now I'll tell you how to get there.'
"'You'd better write it down,' I said, 'when we come to a light.'
"As we approached the road running parallel to the curve of the Gulf the air became heavy and moist. It was October, with a chill in the midnight air. And for another thing, it was as quiet as any country road of an autumn night at home. Our feet padded softly on the matted leaves lying wet on the path when we turned into the main road, and through the gardens of the villas came a faint breath of air laden with salt and the dead odours of the river delta. We seemed to be alone in the world, we two, as we hurried along in the darkness, and the girl pressed more closely to me as though for protection against unseen dangers. And yet, so crystal clear was her soul, that there lay on my mind a delicious fancy that she was deliberately impersonating the woman who had talked to her of me, that she was offering herself as a chaste and temporary substitute for the being whom, so she assumed, we both loved.
"And I," said Mr. Spenlove, after some business with a reluctant match, "was not prepared, just then, to deny it. It would be absurd and misleading to speak of a community of interest as love, yet we are driven to discover some reason for what we call love apart from the appeal of sex. Otherwise a pretty promiscuous kettle of fish! Where does it begin and out of what does it grow? I'm not asking because I imagine I shall get any answer. I'm inclined to believe the origin of love is as obscure as that of life itself. I put the thought into words, because at that moment, with that girl beside me, with the whole mundane contraption of existence obliterated by a damp, foggy darkness, with the moisture dripping hurriedly from invisible trees, and the immediate future rendered ominous by Captain Macedoine's remarks, I felt a conviction that I was closer to the solution of the problem than I had ever been before. Or since, for that matter. Closer, I say. I was aware of it without being actually able to take hold of it. Nor did I try to take hold of it. I was still in that condition of mucilaginous uncertainty toward my emotions in which most of us English seem to pass our days. Foreigners are led to imagine we really take no interest in the subject of love, for example, we are so scared of any approach to the flames of desire. We compromise by floating down some economic current into the broad river of matrimony. We have a genius for emotional relinquishment. We—you—are born compromisers. We are so sure that we shall never know the supreme raptures of passion that most of us never do know them. And in any case we are so rattled by the mere proximity of love that we never seem to get any coherent conception of its nature. And I was not much of an exception. I have no supreme secret to impart to you. As I have said, I ampar excellencea super in the play. For a few memorable moments I was entrusted with the part of a principal. It was not my fault, after all, that nothing came of it. I sometimes wonder whatwouldhave come of it, had not her sinister destiny intervened....
"And then suddenly our feet struck timber that rang hollow and I made out a slender jetty running into the fog. The girl moved ahead, drawing me after her as she scanned the water with her other hand shading her eyes. For a moment she stood listening and then she uttered a melodious contralto shout for someone named 'Makri!' I can recall, as I repeat the word, the name of that obscure and unknown boatman, the very timbre of her voice, the poise of her form, and the firm flexure of her fingers on mine. And for that moment, as we stood waiting and the boat came slowly and silently toward us with the standing figure of the oarsman lost in the higher fog, I had an extraordinary impression, clear and diminutive as a vignette, that I loved her and that she, in some mysterious fashion, could love me without jeopardizing her own destiny. A folly, of course; but I insist it gave me an inkling, that brief illumination, of the actual nature of love."
At this momentous declaration Mr. Spenlove suddenly relapsed into a pause that became a silence, as though he were still under the influence of that illumination of which he spoke, and were pondering it to the extent of forgetting his audience altogether. And it was a suspicion of this amiable idiosyncrasy which caused the surgeon to make a remark. Mr. Spenlove gave a grunt of assent.
"Yes," he said. "You are right. But this is not a supreme secret. I can only offer you the suggestion that what you call a love affair is really only a sequence of innumerable small passions. Yes, for a moment, you know, I saw them plainly enough—a procession of tiny, perfect things, moments, gestures, glances, and silences each complete and utterly beautiful in itself, preoccupied with its own perfection. Scientific? Not at all. Intuition and nothing else. One did not indulge in science with that magical girl holding one's hand. Science is only a sort of decorous guesswork at the best, guesswork corroborated by facts. In the presence of a woman like that, you know! At this distance of time, my friends, I can tell you that this girl, the chance acquaintance of a chance evening, imposed her personality upon me as the very genius of the tender passion. Yet I had but that one rhythmical moment by which to judge—and the boat, a long and elegantly carved affair of cedar wood decorated with brass bulbs, slid softly alongside, a tiny lantern glowing between the thwarts; like some perilous bark of destiny, and she a charming, enigmatic spirit watching with gracious care my departure for an alluring yet unknown shore.
"For that is what it was. I stepped into that long, narrow affair, with its tall, gondola-like prow and absurd brass balls, and I left my youth behind on the hollow-sounding boards of that jetty. No, there is nothing to laugh at in a man of thirty-five leaving his youth behind. There are men who have seen their own daughters married, and retain for themselves the hearts of adventurous boys. From the formidable ramparts of half a century they can leap down and frolic with the young fellows who for the first time are in love, or seeing the world, or holding down a job, or reading Balzac. I cannot compete with such men. Youth fills me with awe. It is something I believe I had once, but I am not sure. I watch them nowadays, with their unerring cruelty of instinct, their clear egotism, their uncanny intuition and sophistication, and I wonder if I were ever like that, a sort of callow and clever young god! I wonder, too, whether a good deal of the modern misery and unhappiness isn't simply due to women being at a loss, as it were, to know just what the new and improved breed of young men want. All this talk of women themselves becoming modern is so much flub-dub. Look at Mrs. Evans. She was, and is, coeval with the Jurassic Period. And women are continually trying to get back there. You may ask me how I know this, and I can only tell you that I have an emotional conviction—the strongest conviction in the world, born of the tremendous experience which was coming upon me.
"And the first thing which, you might say, certified my new status as a grown-up human being, was my promise to go and see Captain Macedoine's daughter. I mean I made that promise without a shadow of reservation. In youth we hedge, we balk, we bilk, over and over again. Fidelity is unattractive to us. We cannot see that to keep a promise made to a woman is a species of spiritual strength. It may be a foolish promise made to a worthless woman, but that is of no importance. In youth we go on breaking away, breaking away, for one reason or another, until we have not even faith in ourselves, until we lose sight of the essential nature of true fidelity, which is a blind disregard of our own immediate well being. And I was astonished, as I sat in that boat and floated away into the gray void of the fog, with the girl, the shore, the sky, all gone, that she had infected me with her romantic view of life. I had always preserved a sort of semi-religious notion that love, for me personally you know, was bound to be an affair of highly respectable and virtuous character. I don't know why, I'm sure, but I had that illusion. But I discovered in that fog-bound boat that I knew very little about myself after all, that the future was absolutely unknown to me beyond the grand fact that I was going to the address which the girl had repeated twice in her musical contralto, and that I was mysteriously exalted about it.
"I was steering, you know, and had let things go a bit, I suppose, under the stress of my thoughts, when I realized the boatman was calling to me and waving an arm. I collected my wits and looked round. There was a methodical sound of oars and in a moment a large boat loomed close to us and I saw the ghostly figures of the four rowers, their bodies rising to full height as they plunged their oars in deep and then fell slowly backward to the thwarts. And as the boat moved forward again in one of its long, rhythmical surges and the stern of her came into the faint radiance of our small lantern I saw a bent figure with a fez lean suddenly forward, grasping the gunwale with one hand and his coat collar with the other and stare at us with a fixed, crouching intensity that was familiar. I was perfectly certain it was M. Nikitos, and in the mental excitement of wondering what he might be doing at that hour in a four-oared boat, I was turning my own craft round in a half circle. I heard voices in the fog, the voice of M. Nikitos giving strident orders and hoarse growls of assent from the toiling boatman. The sounds died away and I became aware of other sounds close by, the long hiss and slap of the sea against masonry, and voices. Voices clamouring and protesting and calling aimlessly and interjecting unheeded remarks into other voices engaged in torrential vituperation. And then my boatman stood up suddenly, his tall form rising and falling into the fog like some comic contrivance as the swell tossed the boat perilously near the sea-wall, and uttered a sharp, monosyllabic comment. The voices ceased as though by magic, and a grave question came out of the invisible air, which my boatman, leaning out and laying hold of the stones, answered in a quiet and competent fashion. You must understand that I had not seen this man, yet he had already made that impression upon me. The whole business to me, a strange and somewhat exalted Englishman sitting in a reeling row-boat and wondering whether he was about to be dashed to pieces against the stones, savoured of a carefully rehearsed performance. And when a flight of balustraded marble steps came into dim view and a tall figure in silk pajamas, a fur overcoat, and a fez came slowly down into the light of our lantern I gave up and just waited for things to happen. Up above I could now descry the chorus which had been creating such an uproar, a motley collection of male and female retainers in various stages of undress, and holding a number of alarming looking weapons, standing in a row looking down at us in astonishment. And I was just feeling exasperated at being so completely in the dark because I could not understand a word these people were saying, when the tall bizarre person in the fur coat and pajamas leaned over and said:
"'I understand you are an Englishman from one of the ships?'
"'Yes,' I said. 'That is so. What is the matter, may I ask?'
"'An attempt,' said he, 'at robbery and perhaps upon my life. You saw a boat?'
"'Yes,' I said, 'we saw a boat. Was that the man who has been attempting robbery?'
"'The leader,' said he; 'we have the others,' he looked at his retainers, who looked down at us in a most theatrical way.
"'Do you know who he was—the leader?' I asked. All this time I was sitting in the dancing boat while the boatman fended her off with his long arms.
"'No, I regret not.'
"'I can tell you, if you want to know,' I said. He leaned down to get a good look at me, looked back over his shoulder, and called in a reproving voice, upon which one of his minions flew down with a lantern, and we viewed each other in the glare.
"'I think it will be better if you accept my hospitality,' he said, studying me thoughtfully. 'My carriage will take you back to your ship.' He spoke again to my man who replied with grave decorum. I saw him now, a tall, sunburned fellow with an immense black moustache, a round flat cap on his black head, and an embroidered coat with innumerable small buttons and frogs. He held the boat a little nearer in shore and I stepped on to the sea-worn marble stairway. And without a word, in accordance with the magical nature of the affair, my romantic boatman, who had borne me away from my youth and who had proceeded methodically to bear me onward toward my inevitable destiny, pushed off with an oar into the fog and was lost.
"And I assure you," insisted Mr. Spenlove in an aggrieved tone, "that I have the same memory of the scene which followed as one has of a complicated dream. I am not prepared, at this moment, to go into a court of law and swear to all that passed between myself and that perturbed gentleman in the silk pajamas and the fur overcoat. I was living very intensely at the time, you must remember. The exact incidence of the adventure was not clear to me until I was back on the ship. Even when we sat in an apartment of immense size and sombre magnificence, and he said courteously, 'Have we by any chance met before?' I did not fully wake up. I said:
"'I believe so, but I must admit I have forgotten your name.'
"'That is easy,' he smiled. 'It is Kinaitsky. I am equally guilty—more so, for I am not certain whether I have seen you....' he paused as he passed me some cigarettes.
"'At the —— Hotel in London,' I suggested. He pondered for a moment, observing me intently.
"'It would be as well to give me the details,' he remarked. 'Since you are about to do me a valuable service, I should know to whom I am indebted.'
"I told him. He remained silent for quite a while and I sat enjoying a perfect cigarette and an almost equally perfect glass of wine. At length he said:
"'And I understand that your interest in this lady has led you here?'
"'Oh, no,' I assured him. 'People in my walk of life can't do things like that. It just happens my ship's charter was changed, that is all. You can call it good luck, if you like, or bad.'
"'Pardon,' he said, studying me and feeling in the pocket of his overcoat, 'but I am not clear yet just what your intentions are.'
"'I don't know myself,' I answered, foolishly. 'I must see her first. You understand, she wants to see me, as a friend.' He smiled and became grave again at once.
"'I,' he remarked, stiffly, 'have not seen her since my marriage. I allow her an income, of course. I regard that as a simple duty to those who have been under my protection. I may tell you, Monsieur, that she is quite free to dispose of herself.... But things are very unsettled here, as you may know. I have large interests which involve me in political affairs. This present affair is of that nature. And I may observe that you were good enough to say you recognized the man who escaped in that boat. I am at a loss to understand how this can be, but let that pass. Who was he?'
"'I was talking to him only to-day,' I returned. 'He calls himself Stepan Nikitos, and he told me he wrote articles on internationalism in a paper called thePhos. He is the sort of man who would write fluently no doubt on internationalism, for he seems to be an Egyptian Greek with a strain of Armenian in him. Personally, I believed him to be simply a runner for a ship-chandler of whom perhaps you have heard—Captain Macedoine.'
"M. Kinaitsky sat with one arm on the little table between us and regarded me from under sharp black brows with motionless interest. As I mentioned the name of Captain Macedoine he stroked his moustache, and then drew his other hand from his pocket and placed on the table a heavy American revolver.
"'Pardon,' he said, 'but I am unable to see how you come to know this Nikitos.... Oh, he is a ship-chandler, you say. Well, he may be that also. But you are not conversant with affairs here or you would appreciate the danger of being friendly with internationalists. That by the way. Your friend,' he went on with gentle irony, 'came here to-night with three men such as can be hired for a fewdrachmain any of the alleys of theCité Saul, to obtain some important documents from my safe. Unfortunately for them the safe is of the latest London pattern with a time-lock, which I bought when in England last year. They only succeeded in alarming my servants and we secured the three men. The leader, this Nikitos, who is well-known as one of those who sell information to the Hellenic Government, a spy and a harbour pimp, escaped. A most unfortunate accident.'
"'But what harm can such a disreputable being do to a man like you?' I enquired in astonishment. M. Kinaitsky spun the chambers of the revolver with his finger.
"'It is impossible,' he observed, calmly, 'to conceive of a state of things in which a disreputable being can not do harm to one who cherishes his reputation. Consider——' he went on, his finger leaving the weapon and levelled at me. 'He has nothing to lose. He is the dupe of desperate and cunning persons who wish to destroy the government. He is poor, and he probably is driven by some woman to obtain money for her gratification at all costs.'
"'No,' I said. 'You don't know M. Nikitos. He has a very peculiar attitude toward women. You might almost call him vociferously virtuous. Perhaps,' I added, 'you do not know either that he was supposed to marry Captain Macedoine's daughter? She turned him out. They were on the Island of Ipsilon together.'
"I don't know," said Mr. Spenlove, "how I expected him to take this, but I was surprised at his composure. I did not take into adequate consideration the fact that women were not the same phenomena to him that they were to me. I forgot the 'four others' who were being kept in loose boxes, so to speak, out of a deference to that complex yet extremely admirable reluctance of his to abandon those who had reposed in the broad shadow of his protection and who had been honoured by his august notice. I have never been able, by the by, to make up my mind whether I myself admired or loathed this singular idiosyncrasy.
"'You mean,' he questioned, quietly, 'that she was his mistress on the island?' I shook my head.
"'No,' I said, 'that's the very thing I don't mean. And as I told you, Nikitos has not that temperament. He makes rather a hobby of his own chastity.'
"M. Kinaitsky regarded me with interest. 'I mean,' I added, 'his emotions are his mistresses, so to speak. Therearesome men,' I went on in doubtful fashion, 'to whom women make no positive appeal. But perhaps....'
"'Oh, undoubtedly!' he startled me by agreeing with sudden emphasis. 'Undoubtedly! But if not women, what?' he demanded.
"'Well,' I said, slowly, 'he struck me as being just what you describe him—in with some political crowd. I don't speak the language, you must remember, and have only a hazy notion of what all this trouble is about, but in theCafé OdéonI gathered from various obscure hints that he was part of the show. And another thing, Monsieur, he certainly gave me to understand that he meditated some sort of revenge upon the person who had robbed him of this girl. That was how he put it, you know. He is quite unable to believe that she detested him. He is ignorant of the details of her life lately, I may say. He even suspected me of having abducted her. Made some very violent threats, but I put that down to his mania for long words.'
"M. Kinaitsky looked at me with grave concern.
"'This is very serious,' he remarked at length, 'very serious. It is only a matter of days, hours, before he learns anything he wishes. The government at Constantinople have been most negligent in their attitude toward the revolutionary leaders here.'
"'What alarms you?' I enquired.
"'Everything!' he returned, getting up and walking to and fro on the polished parquetry flooring, his arms folded, his head bent. 'Everything!' He halted suddenly in his advance toward the far end of the room which opened upon a small byzantine balcony and looked at me over his shoulder.
"'I believe,' he said, slowly, 'that you are entirely trustworthy——'
"'I feel flattered,' I murmured.
"'But for one thing,' he went on, 'I cannot account to myself for your connection with Mademoiselle Macedoine. I ask myself—what is he doing there? I cannot answer.'
"'Why are you so anxious about a thing like that when you have so many cares?' I demanded.
"'Because,' said he, 'I wish to make use of you. The news you bring me to-night is, to me personally, by reason of my position here as an Ottoman subject, extremely important. I propose to you that you take a package of papers to my brother in London. I shall leave for Constantinople by the four o'clock train to-morrow. If you will call here at three to-morrow I will have them ready for you and will see you safe to your ship where no doubt you have a safe on board. I can assure you that when you deliver these papers to my brother he will reimburse you for your trouble. Or if you prefer——'
"'No,' said, 'I will do it with pleasure for nothing.'
"'Impossible,' he retorted, gravely, coming up to the table again. 'It is a commission and will be generously rewarded.'
"'You anticipate trouble then?' I suggested.
"'Monsieur,' said he, 'I anticipate the worst kind of trouble. I have known of it for some time, but the happenings of to-night prove that I was mistaken as to the time.'
"'It will be better if I know nothing about it,' I said. 'I will call at three or earlier. I have an appointment ashore to-morrow afternoon but I can come here first.'
"'You go to Mademoiselle Macedoine, perhaps?' I nodded. 'Give her my respects,' he murmured, regarding me steadily. 'My respects. It would be impertinent no doubt to refer again to your own future movements?'
"And you know," said Mr. Spenlove, breaking off in his narrative abruptly, "I had no words to reply. I was stricken with a species of intellectual consternation at the incredible gulf which separated me from that man emotionally. I was staggered by the vision which persistently came before me of those four unknown women, quite possibly beautiful young women, though of this I had no actual proof, dwelling in discreet seclusion and serving no useful purpose in the world beyond the gratification of a plutocrat's ego-mania. If that can be called useful. And there was also, in addition to these, this girl whom I knew. Five of them: and they were not even permitted to be wicked! And I had to wrestle with this outrageous problem of our relative status as human beings at the same time that my own attitude toward this girl was assuming an intensely personal character. My soul, or that fugitive and ineluctable entity which does duty for a sailorman's soul, was stamping up and down inside of me, waving its arms, protesting with all its suddenly released energy against this man, denying him any knowledge of what we call love, at all. I wanted to assail him with denunciations for the monstrous self-esteem which sentenced those delicate creatures to a shadowy and volitionless stagnation. I accused him of the destruction of their immortal souls, forgetting in my romantic warmth that in all probability he didn't believe they had any. But of course, being an Englishman, I remained perfectly quiescent and inarticulate. I believe I reached for another cigarette before picking up my hat. And I dare say I smiled. We have peculiar ways of defending ourselves in such crises. He assumed a puzzled air as he held out his hand.
"'Englishmen are ice,' he remarked, 'where women are concerned. I have frequently observed it.Sang froidas we say in French. The phrase must have been inspired by the contemplation of an Englishman....'
"'And we shook hands. I said nothing, which doubtless confirmed him in his illusions about us. But the point is, I was equally mistaken about him, I could not believe him capable of what we call love. I was, as I say, mistaken. But as I followed him out to the front of his house, where his patient minions waited with lanterns which shed flickering rays over enormous shrubs and about the trunks of tall cypresses, and stood at length beside a fantastic barouche, with a sleepy driver on the box, I had a moment of illumination. I asked myself why I applied this test of love to a man like him, a man in the midst of extraordinary predicaments—a man who perhaps had suffered the pangs of hell for love and had recovered, who quite possibly had run up and down the whole gamut of human emotions while I was idiotically spending my years tinkling on a couple of notes. The stupid injustice of my interior anger came home to me, and I sought again for the reason why I demanded of him my own occidental idealism. The answer struck me as unexpectedly as a sudden blow. It was because of my own attitude toward the girl. As I took my seat in the carriage and reached out mechanically to shake hands once more, I saw her as clearly as though she were there before me, the bought chattel of a cultivated polygamist, and the blood rushed to my head in a sudden surge. I leaned back as the horses started at the crack of the whip. I felt sick and humiliatingly impotent. I saw Love and Romance for what they are in this iron world of ours—ragged outcasts shivering in the streets, the abject dependents of the rich. And I saw myself for what I was, too, for the matter of that, a reed shaken by the winds of desire, an emotional somnambulist terrified at the apparition of his own destiny."
"No," said Mr. Spenlove in reply to a murmured protest, "I am not libelling humanity at all. We are a very fine lot of fellows, no doubt. As I mentioned a little while ago, the new generation seem to be a distinct advance in evolutionary types over us older and more imperfect organisms. To watch a modern youth with a woman, to hear him recount his extensive and peculiar experiences with women, to study his detached and factory-built emotions toward women—the outcome of our modern craze for quantity-production, is an instructive and somewhat alarming pastime for one weathering middle age. An improvement, of course. All progress means that, I am informed. But I am not telling you the adventures of a super-man, only a super in the play. What? No, I didn't run down love, as you call it, at all. My quarrel was not with love, or even the sexual manifestation of it which pre-occupies you all so much. I simply doubted your knowledge of it. I suggested that the majority of men never know very much about it save in a scared and furtive fashion. I hinted that you never fully realized the terrific importance of romantic ideas in the world; that you make a joke of the whole business, filling your rooms with pictures of well-nourished young women in amorous poses, filling your minds with mocking travesties and sly anecdotes of those great souls who have left us the records of their emotional storms and ship-wrecks. I am telling you the story of Captain Macedoine's daughter. Eh? Well, I am coming to that ... it seems we shall be here till morning.
"It once occurred to me," he went on, meditatively, "that a good deal of the unreality of people in books is due to the homogeneity of their emotions. A man in love, for example, is in love right to the end, or to the point where the mechanism of the story renders it necessary to introduce another state of affairs. Anybody who has been in love, or cherished a hatred, or espoused a doctrine, or done anything invoking the deep chords, knows that this is not so. There is the reaction. When I got aboard theManolaonce more and stood in the middle of my stuffy little cabin on the port side of the engine hatch, I was a cold and discouraged pessimist. The oil lamp on my table showed me my domain. A cockroach was making its way methodically round and round a covered plate of sandwiches, while its brother or possibly a distant relation was enjoying a good tuck-in of the cocoa at the bottom of a cup. Down below I heard the bang of a bucket, and I reflected that the donkeyman, after cleaning his fires and sweeping his tubes, was washing himself in the stoke-hold. The night watchman in the galley was drying heavy flannels over the stove and the warm, offensive odour hung in the air. On the big mirror which I have mentioned, I saw a memorandum written with a piece of soap: 'Steering Gear.' I recalled that I must get the Mate to take up the slack in his tiller-head in the morning. I was overwhelmed with the hard, gritty facts of existence, an existence the most discouraging and drab on earth I imagine, unless one has some fine romantic ideal before one. And I stood there, irresolute, looking at my figure in the glass, which reminded me of a badly painted ancestral portrait, and wondered whether I was capable of a fine romantic ideal. There lies the trouble with most of us, I fancy. We lose our youth and we fail to lay hold of the resolution of manhood. And before we know it we have drifted moodily into forlorn by-ways of sensuality....
"Because I knew that if I went to see that girl next day I could no longer maintain a detached air of being a kind of benevolent and irresponsible guardian. All the unusual and melodramatic happenings of the evening were unable to blind me to the basic fact that our relations had changed, and I dared not follow them, even in thought, to their logical consequences. And yet I dared not retreat. I had that much imaginative manhood! I could not face a future haunted by her questing, derisive, contemptuous smile. As I lay down and watched the lamp giving out its last spasmodic flickers before it left me in darkness, I thought I saw her, say a year hence, in a vague yet dreadful environment, halting her racing thoughts to remember for a moment the man who had failed her in a time of need. I saw the shrug and the sudden turn of the shoulders, the curl of the lip, the evanescent flash of the eyes.... No, I couldn't do it. And I couldn't forego the exquisite seduction of a future glowing with the iridescent colours of romantic folly....
"And so," said Mr. Spenlove, after one of his pauses, "I went."
And for those who make a hobby of the irony of fate, I remember that but for the innocent and haphazard intervention of a perfectly irrelevant individual, I shouldn't have been able to get ashore at all. I woke early. For some mysterious reason connected with tonnage, the oldManolahad a small bathroom at the after end of the bridge deck, a most unusual appurtenance in a tramp steamer of her day, as some of you fellows know well enough. I had fixed up a contraption by which I could pump sea water through a home-made shower. I was in this place having a wash down and towelling vigorously when I heard the steward talking to the cook outside the porthole. He was saying that he was going ashore to the market to get some fresh green stuff and the cook was to tell the old man that he would be back by eight o'clock. The steward, an extremely quiet and modest creature with the ferocious name of Tonderbeg, was standing close by, and the blue wreathes from his cigarette curled into the port. He looked up and saw me, making a slight bow and smile, and raising his hand in an automatic way to the salute.
"'Goot morning, Mister Chief,' he said. 'A fine morning, Sir.' I conceded this and asked him if it was far to the market.
"'Not far. Just a nice walk for a morning like dis, Sir. A very interesting place, the market. In the Old Town.'
"'Well', I said, 'if you'll wait a few minutes, I'll take a walk up there with you.'
"His good-looking blond features became suffused with a warm gratification and his Teutonic voice went back into his throat, as it were.
"'W'y,' he announced, impressively, 'it would be a pleasure, Mister Chief. I'll chust get de sailor wid de bag.' And he disappeared.
"And I was mysteriously elated. It is useless to attempt any analysis of those fugitive gleams of the future which occasionally distract our minds. Nevertheless I recall it now with irresistible conviction—I was mysteriously elated. I filled my case with cigarettes, took my cap and stick, went back for a handkerchief, and slipped a couple of sovereigns into my pocket with the idea, I suppose, of purchasing fruit. I found my friend Tonderbeg standing by the gangway talking to the Captain. Jack had come up in his pajamas, a remarkable suit of broad purple and saffron stripes, and he stood there yawning and rubbing his massive hairy bosom.
"'Why, where you been, Fred?' he demanded, slyly, 'I'm surprised at you. I thought you was a respectable man.'
"'Well, Jack,' I said, 'as far as I know, I am.' He looked at me for a moment, his head thrown back, his powerful hands flat on his breast, and his big blood-shot brown eyes twinkled.
"'You know what I mean, Fred,' he muttered. 'I'm only jokin'. When are you comin' back? I'm goin' up to the agent's at ten.'
"'Oh, we'll be back to breakfast. It isn't six yet.'
"As we walked along the quays, I looked out beyond the tiny harbour in which theManolawas berthed. The waters of the Gulf lay like a sheet of planished steel beneath a canopy of lead-coloured clouds. A couple of steamers at anchor, their bows pointing toward us, were reflected with uncanny exactitude in the motionless water below them. And away beyond lay the sullen and bleak masses of the Chalcidice and the far watershed of the Vardar, leading the eye at length to the immense, snow-streaked peak of Olympos, flushing as some majestic woman might flush, in the first rays of the sun, hidden as yet behind the symmetrical cone of Mount Athos. I discovered that I had stopped to look at all this and I realized with a slight shock that Mr. Tonderbeg was expressing his approval. He said it was very fine.
"'You admire scenery?' I asked him as we walked on.
"'Very much,' he assured me. 'But by scenery I mean mountains. They are very elevating, in my opinion, Mister Chief. Where I come from, Schleswig, you know, we have very fine mountains.' And he coughed deferentially behind his hand.
"'What's your notion of being elevated?' I enquired.
"'Well, Mister Chief,' he said in a deep tone, 'it is only natural for a respectable man to improve himself, and to cultivate his mind, if you know what I mean. And I find good scenery very improving. It gives me good ideas. When I come to all dese different places I write home to a little friend o' mine and tell all about it.'
"'What does your friend think about it?' He smiled.
"'Well, Mister Chief, when I say a little friend o' mine, I mean my gel in North Shields, you understand. She's a school teacher, very well educated. Yes, I should say she's had a splendid education. She writes me very fine letters. A fine thing, education, Mister Chief. For shore people, of course. People like you an' me, goin' to sea, don't get it. But I think a man ought to improve himself and cultivate his mind. This way up to the market.'
"I regarded Mr. Tonderbeg with a perfectly sincere respect. On board ship his efficiency had been of that extreme kind which causes one to lose sight altogether of the individual responsible for it. He had so merged himself into the routine of the day that one had difficulty in realizing his existence. And in the mood I was in that morning, a mood of reckless emotional adventure, I found a certain wicked pleasure in teasing him into a foolish loquacity. He was evidently very anxious to talk to someone about his little friend. She corrected his mistakes in English grammar, I learned, for he mournfully confessed to many errors in writing. But what impressed me about him was the astounding familiarity he seemed to have with his destiny. He knew that an old friend, a retired sea-captain, would give him a job as assistant steward in a certain 'home' for the indigent mariner. He knew that in time he would become steward, which would provide a job for his wife. He saw right on into his middle age. For all I know he knew just about when he would die and where he would go afterward. And he was a good ten years younger than I was! All mapped out! There seemed to be as much adventure in the future for him as for a young and exemplary vegetable. He would grow old, and the young person who had been afflicted with a splendid education would grow old with him, immured in the discreet official quarters of the home for indigent seamen. As if a seaman were ever anything else but indigent! And when I suggested that a trifle more pay for the seaman would render the home unnecessary he put his head on one side and explained tolerantly that they 'would only spend it on booze.'
"'And better do that and die dead drunk than end up in a home,' I muttered. He didn't hear me, I am glad to think now. I should have regretted the slightest scratching of the immaculate surface of his respectable equanimity. He was certainly thrown off his balance a few moments later, and it is quite possible that had he heard my subversive remark he might have abandoned me as hopeless. He maintained on the voyage home the attitude of a deeply religious parent mourning for a reprobate son, but not without hopes for his ultimate reclamation.
"I think our conversation ended there. I remember we were passing up a rather narrow and smelly street where donkeys, with immense panniers of vegetables, were continually fouling each other, and then pausing with infuriating composure while their fezzed proprietors wrenched them apart. And I remember Mr. Tonderbeg insinuating himself past them in a manner perfectly decorous and suitable in a foreigner among natives, yet accompanied by an expression on his blond features which seemed to betray a regretfully low estimate of a population deficient in the ability to improve themselves and cultivate fine ideas. I say I remember this because the next time I looked at him his expression had changed. He had flushed to a dark terra-cotta, his eyes were cast down, and his mouth was curled into an extraordinary and complex sneer and grin. 'Des women!' he said, hoarsely. 'They won't let you alone. Impudent pieces!' And he stopped at a fish stall. I was going to ask him what he was talking about when I saw what had outraged his modesty. It was Pollyni Sarafov, a big basket in her hand, standing in front of a booth on the further side of the market and waving to attract my attention. I gave Mr. Tonderbeg a glance as I left him, abandoned him. He did not see me. He was still standing at the fish stall examining a number of loathsome cuttle fish who were regarding him with a fixed and terrible stare from among their many arms. I went straight over to the girl.
"Mind, I don't blame Mr. Tonderbeg very much. There was something about that girl which would give a man like him all sorts of alarming thoughts. She would not elevate him. She was the negation of respectability. Her shining bronze hair was tied up in a scarf of blue silk, her cotton dress was shockingly short, and her feet were shod with a pair of old Turkish slippers. And her basket contained a miscellaneous assortment of esoteric comestibles which would later appear in an astonishingly appetizing form at the table. She greeted me with a naïve delight, a tacit confidence that I shared her view of the situation, and had managed to meet her by some tremendoustour-de-forceof romantic intuition.
"'And who's that man?' she demanded, nodding toward the respectable Tonderbeg. I looked at him. He was sidling along the booths, followed by an impassive seaman with a neatly rolled sack under his arm, and he was glancing stealthily in our direction, his features almost dark with shame.
"'That's our steward,' I told her. 'He doesn't think much of you. He thought you were giving him the glad eye, I'm afraid.'
"'Him!' she queried, and regarded him for a moment. And then she changed the subject. She wished to know if I was going up to see Artemisia. And when I hinted at the early hour, she declared that it was a good time. She would be so glad, she thought. And when she said she was ready, having bought all she needed, and that a carriage was waiting for her up the hill near theVia Egnatia, I took her basket and we moved on. And we left Mr. Tonderbeg behind, left him full of the inward rage which boils up when envy and decorum are run together in our hearts. There was nothing the matter with him, understand. I mean, there was nothing one could do for him. He was one of those bland human organisms who simply fly right off the handle when they encounter a foreign morality. It's an ethnical problem, I suppose. Why do I tell you of this Tonderbeg? Irrelevant? Well, but he wouldn't have been, if I had carried out the momentous scheme I had in mind. I thought you would have grasped that. And I sometimes wonder whether his respectable mind had not elucidated some inkling of this from a word perhaps overheard as he passed the captain's door, on the voyage home, and nursed a grievance against fate for depriving him of that piquant experience which I had had in store for him!
"And when we had climbed into the grubby little hired hack, a very different vehicle from Mr. Kinaitsky's patrician affair, and the die seemed definitely cast, I found myself recalling again and again a remark which old Jack Evans had made his own. 'A man's a damn fool to bother with a gel at all, unless he's going to marry her!' The ripe fruit of his experience in the world! I had agreed with him, too. I recalled his short, stout, unromantic figure standing in an authoritative attitude with his hand on the rail, looking across the blue glitter of the Mediterranean, seeing nothing of it, dreaming of that semi-detached affair in Threxford which contained the angel child and her desiccated mother. It is easy enough and indicative of wisdom to agree in such cases. But I would remind you that I had no such dream of the future inmyhead as I sat beside this foreign girl and drove along theVia Egnatiato meet Captain Macedoine's daughter once more. With more experience of the world of sentiment I might possibly have gone so far as to envisage the probable outcome of the adventure. But the point is that for all my thirty-five years, I had no such experience at all. And women are quick as lightning to perceive this. You can bring them nothing which they prize with such tender solicitude as a mature and inexperienced heart. Neither callow adolescence nor a smart worldly knowledge of their own weaknesses is any match for it. And why? Well, I imagine it is because they feel safe without losing any of the perilous glamour of love. It gives the fundamental maternal instinct in their bosoms full scope without embarrassing them with either a puling infant or a doddery prodigal. It may even play up to a rudimentary desire to be not merely the agent of an instinct but the inspiration of an individual. Cleverness in a woman is very often only the objective aspect of fidelity to an ideal.
"You may imagine I said nothing of this to the girl beside me. Instead I asked her when she was going to get married, and she said 'By and by.' When he came, not before. It was obvious that she awaited her destiny without misgiving and that she was at that stage when women really love vicariously or not at all. For she suddenly demanded if I was going to take Artemisia away to England when my ship sailed. We had turned out of the noisyVia Egnatiaand were climbing a steep, narrow street leading toward the citadel, a street of an extraordinary variety of architecture, whose houses lunged out over the roadway in coloured balconies and bellying iron grilles. And the whole barbaric vista led the eye inexorably upward till it caught the culminating point of a lofty and slender minaret springing from a clump of cypresses and glittering white in the morning sun. The street itself was still in cool shadow, and at the doors, kneeling upon the fantastic littlepavésof mosaic, or rubbing pieces of polished brass, were bare-footed women with picturesque dresses and formidable ankles.
"Yes, she wanted to know, but I discovered just then that a man may work himself up to a certain high resolution without feeling either proud or happy. One seems to go into great affairs in a kind of preoccupied daze. It is possible the Latin, the Celt, and the Slav have the power to visualize themselves objectively when they assume an heroic character. We are singularly deficient in this respect, I observe. No Englishman is a hero to himself. And a merciless analyst might go so far as to say that my entire behaviour was no more estimable than M. Kinaitsky's, that I had but one selfish motive, which was to protect myself from a woman's contempt. Viewed at a distance, I believe there was more in me than that. There is a radiant glow about it all, for me, which convinces that for once I had laid hold of the real thing. A magnificent memory! It is something, I submit, to cherish in one's heart even a solitary episode untarnished by any ignoble shame.
"'You shall see, my dear,' I said, enigmatically, and then the carriage stopped with a jerk and she appeared in a suddenly opened doorway, bursting out, as it were, holding herself back with her hands on the posts and devouring me with a look of extraordinary questing delight. It was as though she wished to divine the very roots of my emotions. I sat there, a tongue-tied fool, until Pollyni pushed me gently. Why didn't I get out? So I got out and stood before her.
"She was changed. I suppose I ought to have had the wit to expect that, but the fact remains that my first feeling was astonishment. She stood a foot or so above me on the doorstep, and this vantage, together with a species of gravity in her demeanour, conveyed an impression of tall aloofness. As she stood there, composed and curious, in a loose blue gown and her hair spread around her shoulders, the fine pale olive of her forearms emerging and her fingers lightly laced, one thought of vestal virgins, priestesses of obscure cults, and of the women who figure in the fantastic stories of the Middle Ages. She was changed, and the difficult element in the case was that she seemed to have changed for the better. And suddenly the old familiar derisive smile broke, the white teeth drew in the red lower lip, and she put her hand on my shoulder. 'Come in,' she said in a low voice. 'I never really believed you would come at all! And, Polly dear,' she added to the girl in the carriage, 'won't you come up later and we'll go out—you know——' and she waved her hand upward.
"'I'll come,' said Miss Sarafov with decision, and spoke rapidly to the driver, who turned his horses round and began the descent to theVia Egnatia.
"'So you have come at last,' said Captain Macedoine's daughter, as we reached a small room opening on a balcony above. There was another small room behind and this seemed to be the extent of her domain.
"'Yes,' I said, 'and now I am here, tell me what you think of it all.'
"'Think of what?' she demanded, sitting down near me.
"'Well,' I replied, 'of our relations chiefly. What am I supposed to be? What do you want of me? You see,' I went on, slowly, 'I have thought a great deal about you ever since you called me to London. A great deal, I assure you. But I am not a very courageous person, my dear, and I am afraid of my thoughts running away from me. I should not like you to think me a fool, you know.'
"'I should never do that,' she remarked in a low murmur. 'You are my true friend, I know.'
"'And what is a true friend to do for a girl in your position?' I asked, bluntly, looking round the tiny chamber with its red and white tiled floor and octagonal tables. She looked at me for a moment and then out of the window, and sighed.
"'Aren't you happy here?' I asked. She continued to look out of the window while she answered me.
"'Do you want me to be quite plain?' she enquired. 'Well, then, I will tell you that except this,' and she made a gesture indicating her surroundings, 'there is nothing for me to do. If I leave here where shall I go? This is a funny place, I can tell you. And this won't last forever, either, even if I wanted it to.'
"'But why can't you go and look after your father?' I asked, helplessly.
"'Because I told him a lot of lies about being married,' she said, sharply, 'and I would rather die than tell him I'm somebody's keep.'
"'You needn't have said that,' I said, unsteadily, 'and you needn't tell him anything of the sort. Tell him just whatever you please and I will back you up and make it the truth.'
"'What makes you say I needn't have said it?' she asked, looking full at me. 'You asked, didn't you?'
"'Well, it hurt me for one thing,' I told her, 'and for another, being bitter won't help matters. Do you suppose I haven't a pretty good idea of your situation here? And if I hadn't had any intention of helping you, why should I have come? I promised you I would always be your friend, because I had never met any one so forlorn. And I will keep that promise to the limit. And now,' I added, 'suppose I told you what happened last night.'
"She sat perfectly still, watching me while I recounted my singular adventure with M. Kinaitsky. It was only when I mentioned what he had said of her being quite free to dispose of herself that she gave a quick, sarcastic shrug.
"'I know,' she said. 'So he told me when he got married. But this is a funny place, I can tell you. You think I can walk out of this house and do what I like, get a job, rent a house? I can't. He knows well enough I'm stuck here unless I go to theOmphaleor theOttoman House, or one of those horrible places. And then,' she added, 'it wouldn't be long before I'd be sitting in theOdéonhalf the night and wishing I was dead.'
"'You know,' I said, severely, 'that if you had the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort you wouldn't breathe a word of it to me of all people.'
"For a moment she held out, smirking a little.
"'You fancy yourself,' she said, quoting a by-gone London phrase.
"'To that extent,' I insisted. 'What do you suppose I came up here for? Why did I wander all over Saloniki last night trying to find you? To hear you say things like that? What do you suppose I am made of? Listen!'
"I don't suppose men often tell a woman the things I told her then, but it was imperative that I should clear away the difficulties between us. I had to convince her that I was not to be humbugged by her fatal inherited proclivity for a grandiose emotional rôle, a proclivity for playing up to some mysterious imaginary being which she labelled herself and strove to erect in the mind of her protagonist. It wouldn't do. There was something numbing in the spectacle of her attempt to present herself as already a painted shadow in the purlieus of a Levantine city. In the long blue dressing gown, against a lemon-tinted stone wall, the morning sun irradiating the exquisite, exotic face, she had an adult air, so to speak, an air of lovely maturity and grave virtue. I would say she looked much more like a saint than a sinner, if I could reach any satisfactory conclusions as to the nature of a saint. I talked, as they say, straight, and the culmination of my invective was a blunt statement about her intelligence.
"'You aren't clever enough to be as bad as you try to make out,' I said, and she looked down at her hands.
"'All the same,' she remarked almost to herself, 'you are taking an awful risk in talking to me like this. How do you know I shouldn't go—go to pot altogether, later on? I'm thinking of you, you know,' she added.
"'There you go again!' I exclaimed. She put up her hand as a token of surrender, and there came into her voice that unforgettably alluring timbre which, as I told you before, evoked mysterious memories and invested her with an extraordinary quality which one might almost describe as spiritual iridescence, a glamour of sybillant charm and delicious abandon."
"And there, you know," said Mr. Spenlove in a low tone, "the story ought to finish. That's where, when I recall the whole history of Captain Macedoine's daughter, I should like it to finish—on a final note of a supreme memory of that day. I would have had it forever wrapped in the gracious radiance of romance. Which, I suppose, is more than is granted to any of us. So, though it would not do for me to break the silence in which one buries the fragrant bodies of dead moments, there is something more to tell. Of M. Nikitos, for example, and the reproaches, courteously worded, of M. Kinaitsky....
"We went for what in England we would call a picnic. Pollyni came back about ten, in a fresh carriage whose driver had celebrated a day's contract by coloured ribbons on the horses' head-stalls and a dark red rose thrust over one of his own ears, in bizarre contrast to the almost incredible dilapidation of his clothes. An old woman, whose features were shrivelled to the colour and consistency of a peeled walnut, placed between our feet a basket out of which stuck the necks of wine bottles. I didn't ask where we were going, for I didn't care. I remember, however, demanding an explanation of the heavy explosions which had begun somewhere in the neighbourhood, and their telling me it was a blasting party in a quarry just behind the houses and outside the city wall. And I recall another incident, when we reached the barrier at the Great Tower, where a squad of fezzed and moustached guards debated among themselves the wisdom of permitting us to pass out. Very serious, not to say uneasy, they seemed, the heavy explosions causing them to look over their shoulders apprehensively even while they held their bayonets, long, sharp, unpleasant affairs, across the breasts of the horses. But finally they let us go, and after a half hour or so of the boulevards we came to a road leading across the plain to a town a few miles away. That is a memory, too—the wide plain of pale saffron earth, the dancing blue sea, the turquoise sky piled here and there with immense snowy billowings of autumn clouds, the girdle of grim and inaccessible peaks, and the compact little town of white houses buried in a circular plaque of foliage in the middle distance. And then at the roadside, squatting on their haunches with their rifles between their knees, very dusty and enigmatic, lines of soldiers on the march. I remember it as one remembers an unusual dream, a vague blur behind the sharper memories that intervene.
"And out of the mists of impressions came the fact that we were going to this toy town in the middle distance to visit Pollyni's uncle, a gentleman who had been to America also, and having dug trenches for drains and conduits in New York City for a year or two, had returned and bought the principal café in the village. There was a moment when the place lost the qualities of a water-colour painting and began to assume the aspects of reality, when the homogeneous colouring of the land became broken up into tobacco fields and vineyards and vegetable patches, with an occasional pony walking round a mediæval contraption which brought minute buckets of water up from a well and trickled them into a wooden sluice. And these in turn gave place to a sketchy and winding earthen road which twisted among shabby houses with forlorn sheds in which tobacco leaves hung drying on poles, and fowls pecked in a disillusioned fashion while they meditated upon the formidable problem of existence. And then we passed houses standing aloof and forbidding, shut up, apparently uninhabited, houses which had quite simply tumbled down for lack of support, houses with the front door upstairs, and houses without any doors at all as far as one could see. We passed them and our driver cracked his whip with great energy, the horses stumbled against big stones or into rain gullies, an occasional human stared woodenly at us; and suddenly we came round an intricate curve of the street and we were in the little square of the village, a square canopied by an immense tree and overhanging eaves. In the centre stood a worn old well-curb where bare-legged girls fished up dripping petroleum cans and staggered across to open doors, most of the water running unregarded through a hole in the bottom. If you could call it a square, when it had six or seven irregular sides, with the streets running into it in a furtively tangential fashion and the corners of it cool and dark even at noon-tide under that patriarchal tree which had been planted by a patriarch, no doubt, while he was digging the well. This was the end of our journey, where we got out, and the carriage rumbled away into the green gloom beyond to some convenient stable, while we were welcomed by a gentleman with a soft voice and very loud western clothing like that affected by race-track folk, who stood in front of an extremely vacant looking café. He had a watch-chain with massive gold links and an enormous obsolete gold coin depending from his coat lapel. His boots were shiny and globular of toe, and I gathered, as the day wore on, that he represented Occidental Prosperity in that simple community and was charitably excused from such glaring solecisms on that ground. They found no fault with him for having an adventurous spirit which had carried him to the Country of the Mad beyond the sea, for he had shown his ultimate wisdom by coming back to live in a civilized part of the world. In fact, by the way they drifted in during the afternoon and sat at adjacent tables while he held forth bilingually upon his experiences in a Hoboken sewer, it was evident that in addition to being a stout burgess of the township, he was a species of Sinbad to them, with preposterous but intriguing stories of subterranean cities where vast and brilliant chariots roared through interminable passages; of heaven-scaling towers where myriads fought for silks and jewels, for gold and silver, for purple and fine linen; of streets above which insane railway trains hurtled and shrieked and groaned as they carried the demented inhabitants on endless journeys to nowhere in particular for no ascertainable reasons. For mind you, they displayed no desire whatever to emulate the daring feats of those who had gone to America. They sat there for a time, smokingnarghilehsor cigarettes, looking thoughtfully at the floor between their outlandish shoes, and then drifted away to attend, it is to be presumed, to various affairs. I doubt whether my confirmation of these improbabilities was of much avail in convincing them that he was not simply exercising the ancient rights of the teller of tales, and striving to terrify them with stories of genii in bottles and carpets that flew through the air. And he certainly had no intention of going back. He had 'enough mon' now,' he remarked, 'and who but a lunatic would ever venture into such a pandemonium save for the purpose of getting 'mon'.' The bare idea of living permanently in that country and exposing one's soul to the destructive action of their peculiar political ideas had never entered his head. They had called him 'a crazy mutt' because, forsooth, he had quit when his belt was sufficiently loaded with 'mon'. Now why should they do that? Why should he go on living in hell when he had the price of paradise strapped about his middle? It was a baffling problem. Yet they did it. Even now, as he spoke, out there across the world, millions of people on an island the size of Ipsilon or even smaller than Naxos, were rushing to and fro like maniacs. For of course he was under the impression that Manhattan, with the adjacent coast beyond the river, was all there was of America. For all he knew the subway ran to San Francisco and New Orleans was a mile or two below Staten Island. Listening to him, it was perfectly easy to visualize the growth of ancient tales of foreign parts. When I think of him nowadays, and observe the noise and chaffering of political people who are vociferously claiming for such as he what they call self-determination or what in those illiterate days was known as autonomy, I am constrained to a great amazement. We shall see some strange signs and portents later, if I am not in error.