And though things do happen like that sometimes, as I sat in my chair,
quite innocently alongside the Captain's ventilator, and sucked at my
cigar, I was taken aback. It was like a voice coming up from the
tomb--the tomb of a buried past. In a way it was a relief, for I was
becoming so involved in Jack's domestic life that I was losing touch
with the outside world altogether. The sound of that name recalled to me
my old, unregenerate, wandering self. I had not forgotten him. One never
forgets a master of illusion, such as he surely was. But the very
existence of so imaginative a man seemed doubtful in the company of
matter-of-fact, open-minded, good old honest Jack. Jack's lack of the
power of dissembling and allusion was devastating. He had no more
_nuance_, as the French say, than a fog-horn. Think of a man who could
say to the wife of his bosom, the goddess before whom he worshipped with
preposterous self-abasement--'One word, and home you go!' Jack would
have had one word for Macedoine and one only--Faker. But I have found,
in the course of my rolling existence, that fakers are often more
interesting, intrinsically, than careful, honest men.
"And I had heard, in a round-about way, some years before, that Captain
Macedoine had not only been an illustrious faker but a fairly competent
swindler as well. We were discharging machinery and stores at Cristobal,
when a young chap who'd been Junior Fourth in the old Maracaibo Line
came aboard and had a chat. He was one of those who hadn't gone home.
Indeed, he was able to take out his final papers--never mind how--as
soon as he was paid off, and being a decent young chap, fairly clever
and a good mixer, he had soon gotten a billet in the Canal Zone. For
some reason or other he had liked me when we were shipmates. I
remembered him as having no aptitude for the sea. He had a sweet-heart
in England he was always talking about, but he married in the States, of
course. Well, young Cotter, with his little waxed moustache and his
superior bank clerk's manner, walked aboard, shook me warmly by the
hand, and gave me an immense quantity of miscellaneous news. What with
the Yucatan ships calling three or four times a week, Cotter was up to
date with everything happening from Galveston to Biloxi and from Tampa
to Boston. Did I remember So-and-so--chap with a squint, or a mole, or
a broken finger, as the case might be. Cotter always emphasized a man's
physical defects in alluding to him. And so the talk came round to 'Oh,
did I remember that chap with the solemn face and the big stomach?
Captain Macedoine we used to call him? Why, didn't you hear? Extradition
order. Yes! The cunning old guy had a dozen opium dives off Rampart
Street in full swing. Must have been coining money. No, they never got
him. He had left England by that time. Nobody knows where he is now, I
suppose. Smart, eh?' Such was Captain Macedoine to me as I sat listening
to the good Jack sputtering in his cabin:
"'Great Christopher! And who in thunder gave you a name like that. What
is it, again?' And then Mrs. Evans interposing with 'That will do, dear.
She can't help her name.'
"'A h--l of a name for a servant,' muttered Jack.
"Well, poor Jack found that taking his family to sea was a more
formidable affair than he had imagined. The fact was, Jack, although he
had been married six years, knew no more about married life than a
bachelor. He hadn't spent more than a week at one time alongside of his
wife. Many sea-faring men are like this. The very routine of ordinary
household existence is novel to them. They live voyage after voyage at
sea, dreaming of an impossibly perfect existence ashore, and their brief
holidays, in their wives' houses only confirm them in the delusion that
shore life is heaven, and life on board ship hell. Whereas, you know, it
is really the other way round."
"Oh, I say!" said Inness, who, in spite of Oxford, retained his
illusions.
"What rot, Spenlove!" said the First Lieutenant, a gentleman still
unmarried, but rigidly engaged.
"Ah, but you forget," retorted Mr. Spenlove, laughing softly as he gazed
up at the moon now high over the cliff. He looked very like a benevolent
satyr as he sat leaning forward in his chair, his chin on his hands, his
trim gray beard pushed out, and his curiously slanted black eyebrows
raised--"You forget that I am dealing with basic realities. You forget
that ninety-nine sailor-men out of each hundred feed themselves
exclusively on dreams. You are like the donkey who imagines he sees a
resplendent carrot hung in front of him. It is not only that he never
gets the carrot. There never was any carrot for him to get. I
repeat--dear old Jack Evans was not a bit singular in his illusions, any
more than Captain Macedoine was in his. They believed in them a bit
longer than you young fellows do nowadays, that's all."
"Well, go on," suggested the Doctor, and moved out of the moonlight into
the shadow, so that Mr. Spenlove remained alone and appeared to be
talking to himself.
"Of course, so far, I hadn't seen any of the party save Jack.
I'd been ashore when they arrived--did I say we were in
Middlesborough-on-Tees?--for I had friends at Stockton. I was really
concerned, for knowing what a headlong, forthright fool Jack was, I
expected to do or say something that might spoil his life's happiness.
And here he was complicating matters ten-fold by bringing a nurse-girl,
a 'governess.' And while I sat there pondering upon the possibilities,
the Mate came up with an expression of immense cunning on his face, his
hand funnelled round his mouth, and whispered 'Seen 'em, Mister?'
"I shook my head. Mr. Bloom, Basil Bloom, had been only a couple of
trips with us, and I knew Jack had very little use for him. Mr. Bloom,
indeed, was one of those extraordinary men who go to sea year after
year, and not only do they never seem to attain to any decent mastery of
their profession, but in their speech and manner and appearance they
resemble piano-tuners or billiard-markers more than sailors. Bloom had a
moustache like an Italian hair-dresser's, immense, fine, full, and
silky, with moist red lips eternally parting and showing a set of
perfect false teeth. His papers were miracles of eulogy, his discharges,
save that he had been in a good many ships, without blemish. And yet
from the moment he had come jauntily on board the previous voyage, Jack
had been straining like a terrier on the leash. Mr. Bloom seemed to do
nothing right. It had been my lot to hear both sides of the question.
Jack, over a whiskey-and-soda in my room, would bewail his fate at
having an agricultural labourer sent him as chief officer; and next day,
Mr. Bloom, bringing me the position and distance run, would twirl his
moustache and allude to the amazingly incompetent persons who secured
commands nowadays. Of course I sided with Jack. Mr. Bloom was nothing to
me. He was the sort of man I would much rather hit in the face than
shake hands with. The man didn't _look_ like a sailor. He had no
sea-going gear. Jack nearly had a seizure on my settee when he told me
the new Mate was patrolling the bridge in red silk socks, patent-leather
dress-pumps, and an old Norfolk jacket. When we began to roll off Ushant
and ship a few seas, it appeared Mr. Bloom had neither oilskins nor
sea-boots. To see him skipping along through green sea water in his
dress-pumps, to look at the patent log, was a revelation of human
improvidence. Here was a man the wrong side of forty, and he hadn't the
sense to bring suitable clothing to sea with him! At the table he
bewildered, angered, and contradicted poor old Jack with political
argument. Once, after getting his anchors fouled, and firing his
clutch-blocks, and otherwise making a mess of things on the
forecastle-head, he had the temerity to tell Jack that 'every
ship-master ought to have tariff-reform at his finger-ends.' Jack nearly
had apoplexy. He managed to sputter out that 'every mate ought to have
his job at his finger-ends, or else go home and buy a farm.' Mr. Bloom,
holding his fine military figure erect and delicately preening his
moustache, told me afterward 'That's the worst of these young
ship-masters--they think insults are arguments.'
"Now I saw trouble ahead for Jack with Mr. Bloom on board. I don't
pretend to have a very profound insight into human character, but I had
an indefinable conviction that Mrs. Evans would look favourably upon Mr.
Basil Bloom. Oh, no, I don't mean that my prurient mind was gloating
over the destruction of Jack's marital bliss. Not at all. I never liked
Madeline, but I do her the justice of proclaiming her inviolable
chastity. What I mean is, I felt that she had more in common
intellectually with Mr. Bloom than with us. He had a good deal of the
fussiness of middle-aged shore-people, clearing his throat, coughing
behind his hand, saying 'excuse me,' smoothing his hair with his palm,
and referring to things he had seen 'in the papers.' And in spite of his
inadequate sea-going gear, he invariably appeared in a more or less
clean stiff collar. A woman, I mean a genteel woman, will never utterly
condemn any man so long as he wears a collar. This would not have
mattered save that Jack and I invariably abandoned collars as soon as
the pilot had left.
"So, when Mr. Basil Bloom, in a dirty gray lounge suit, brown Oxford
shoes, a grimy collar, and a deer-stalker hat, bent over me and enquired
if I had seen the arrivals, I shook my head and got up to walk away. But
Mr. Bloom detained me. Had I not seen the nurse? Nice little piece of
goods. And the baby was a little angel. Between me and him, he was good
enough to say, we ought to have a very pleasant trip, what with ladies
on board, what? And Mr. Bloom, settling his dirty collar and concealing
a brilliant smile behind a hairy, ringed hand, walked off to superintend
his neglected work.
"I was not such a fool as to assume that I could any longer stroll into
Jack's room and have a chat. I am not afraid of women, but I regard
their lairs with considerable trepidation. On board an old tramp steamer
a woman is nothing less than a scourge. There is no place for her, and
consequently you never know where you may find her. If you walk to and
fro on the deck, you are probably keeping her awake. If you go out on
deck in your shirt-sleeves, or come from a bath with a towel round you,
you are outraging her modesty. If you use the ordinary jargon of the
sea, she writes home that the engineers are awfully coarse on her
husband's ship. You moon about in a furtive fashion, closing doors and
ventilators when you converse with one another, and pray for the day
when she will quit the ship and return to the semi-detached mansion in
the suburbs where she reigns as queen, Captain So-and-So's wife. I felt
sadly, as I sat in my room, that my friendship with Jack would remain
for a few weeks in a state of suspended animation. I got up several
times, unconsciously, to go along, and had to sit down again. And as I
sat there, the alleyway was darkened and the familiar stout figure and
short red neck appeared. I had a little table in my room and as a rule
sat behind it on the settee, while Jack sprawled in an old easy chair I
had bought in Savannah, a chair out of an old plantation mansion. Jack
sank into it and remained silent while I poured out two pegs and
squirted some soda-water into them. I knew perfectly well, or thought I
did, that he needed some restorative after his recent adventures. He
drank it thirstily and set the glass on the table.
"'Fred,' he said, in the cautious whisper which, as I have said,
becomes second nature when there is a woman on board, 'Fred, I've made
an infernal fool of meself. They've let me in at the office.'
"'Why,' I said, 'I thought they did you rather well, giving you
permission to take Mrs. Evans _and_ the youngster. You know how they
wired Tompkins once: '_No children_'?'
"'You don't know nothing about it,' says Jack, who was invariably hard
on English when he was moved. 'It's a case of wheels within wheels. They
only did that to get this gel out for nothing. She's going out to her
father in the Grecian Arches, and some clever fool in the office thought
of sending her down to Mrs. Evans to see if she'd do to look after the
kid.'
"'Well, it's only her grub for a fortnight or so,' I remarked.
"Jack looked solemnly at me and shook his head.
"'Have you seen her?'
"'No,' I said, 'Mr. Bloom told me she was a nice little piece of goods.'
Jack snorted.
"'He's down in the cabin now talking about what's on at the theatres.
Fred, I'm in for trouble, and you'll have to stand by me.'
"And he was, for you must bear in mind that there were others on board
besides Mr. Bloom. There was the Second Mate, a young man whose
prospects were tarnished by a weakness for secret drinking. And there
was young Siddons, a stripling just out of his apprenticeship and
uncertificated, the son of a well-to-do merchant in a country town. Jack
used to say there was too much of the lah-di-dah about him, and was down
on him time and again. All the same he liked the boy, as I did, too, for
Siddons was a gentleman--the only one on board, I used to think. He got
the D. S. O. the other day for bombing something or other in Germany. He
was what modern, educated smart women call 'a charming boy' or 'a pretty
little boy.' Not that he was effeminate, by any means. He was simply one
of those to whom virtuous sentiment is a passionate necessity. Instead
of playing in the gutters of life, as so many of us do, his young body
and soul were on tip-toe for the coming of love. You can see it when
they are like that. There is a thirsty look about the lips, a turn for
moodiness, a sudden dilation of the pupils as they catch your glance,
and a quick flush, very pretty to see. And sometimes, I am informed,
they find a woman worthy of the gifts they bear....
"We had a couple of engineers, too, but they were scarcely to be classed
with young Siddons. They were like a good many of us, useful,
shop-soiled articles with plenty of the meretricious conventional
sexuality which passes for passion when stimulated. But neither of them
would have got a look from a modern, educated smart woman. The Third I
didn't know very much about. He came and went, and the principal
impression I have of him now is that he was married. The Second had what
I should call an oppressively incondite mind. He had a cold avidity for
facts. Unlike most seamen he never read fiction unless it was some book
which had achieved notoriety for what is called frankness. He had a
bookshelf in his cabin containing his shore-going boots and a derby hat,
a Whittaker's Almanac, a Who's Who, several year-books, and a shilling
encyclopedia. It was astonishing, the comfort he seemed to derive from
knowing the census-returns of Bolivia, or the Republican majority in
Oregon, or the number of microbes in a pint of milk. But it did no one
any harm. I only mention it because he, too, in his way, fell in love
with Artemisia and for a time neglected his familiar preoccupations.
"For that is what it amounted to--that we all fell in love. Each of us
had to measure ourselves by this standard. At certain times in our lives
we all have to drop what we are doing and submit ourselves to the test.
I'm afraid most of us don't cut a very brilliant figure. It is fortunate
for us that one can achieve success in a lower class, and can pass
muster as human beings because we are honest or sober or clever, and
not simply because we are worthy of love. All the same, I fancy the
contempt which some of us pour upon the lucky ones is born of envy. We
wish to be like them in our heart of hearts. I used to have the most
preposterous dreams of being the lover of some proud, beautiful girl I
had read about or seen in the street.
"Artemisia was like that. She was one of those beings who inspire love,
who are the living embodiments of that tender philosophy which makes
every adjustment of our lives by sentiment alone, and who convince us,
by a gesture, a glance, a timbre in their voices, that our lightest
fancy is a grave resolution of the soul.
"It would be easy, of course, to jeer at a crowd of simple,
half-educated shell-backs losing their hearts to a lady-passenger's
maid, but that would not be a fair account of it. We were not simple in
that sense. My experience is that contact with the great elemental
realities does not breed simplicity so much as a sort of cunning. We
live deprived of so many of the amenities of culture and wealth that we
cannot credit our good fortune when anything really fine comes in our
way. We are not to be had. We are cautious. These good things are for
shore people. And we get into the habit of good-humoured humility,
discounting ourselves and our shipmates beyond recall. We say, 'only
fools and drunkards go to sea,' and that indicates pretty accurately the
value we place upon our hopes and aspirations.
"And so you must not expect me to give you vivid accounts of passionate
declarations of love under the Mediterranean moon, or of desperate
knife-work in the dark with Artemisia bending over the dying man and
kissing his death-dewed forehead in a last farewell. The voyage went on
much as usual outwardly. The days are gone, if they ever existed, when
love ruled the camp or the quarter deck. Yet there was a subtle change.
Men went about their various tasks with an air of charged expectancy.
Now and again a couple could be seen talking earnestly together. The
weather, until we passed Gibraltar, was against any dramatic
developments. Mrs. Evans and Angelina kept below. Only once, at dusk,
while we were passing the Burlings, off Portugal, I looked over the rail
of the bridge-deck and saw young Siddons leaning on the bulwarks below,
his head turned toward someone I could not see. He was laughing as
happily as a child. Leaning over a little further I saw a girl's finely
articulated hand and a corner of a white apron.
"But most of us had no chance. It sounds a strange thing to say, but it
was almost as if Mrs. Evans herself regarded me as married to her. As
though because I had been the means of their meeting, I was entitled to
a sort of founder's share in Angelina! I was in the way to becoming an
expert in infant's complaints. And Jack seemed to think that when I came
into the cabin to talk, he had the right of going off duty, so to speak,
and would go up to the chart room to have a smoke. No, I didn't go
simply to catch a glimpse of Artemisia, though she was worth glimpsing.
I went from a sense of social duty. I felt I owed it to Jack to be
sociable with his wife. And perhaps, too, there was an idea at the back
of my head that contact with Mrs. Evans was a corrective to any tendency
I might have to make a fool of myself over any young woman. That was
Mrs. Evans' specialty, you might say. She didn't mean it, but
unconsciously she shrivelled at the least breath of desire. I used to
watch apprehensively for the blank look in the eyes, the tightening of
the lips, the infinitesimal drawing back of the head, as of a snake
about to strike. There was something sharply astringent about her then,
like biting inadvertently into a green banana. And yet she had her gusts
of enthusiasm over 'darling Babs.' The child was a monster of egoism, as
may be imagined. She was very like her father physically--full-blooded,
plump, bold-eyed, and with a perfectly devilish temper. Without warning
she would explode, scream, scratch, bite, and kick, until she got what
she wanted, when she would subside as suddenly into a self-centred
silence broken by hiccoughs and chokes. She wanted everything--the watch
and money out of your pocket and heart and liver out of your body.
'Angel child!' her mother would call her, and hang fondly over the
odious little brat. For the angel child was still supposed to be
'delicate.' Mrs. Evans had a case of champagne and a stock of Bovril,
and I dare say some of the displays I witnessed were due in part to
intoxication. The carpenter was busy all day making gates and fences
round the companion and bridge deck to prevent the delicate child from
crawling out and getting slung overboard. I used to sit in the cabin
with the angelic Babs on my knee, from which she was always slipping,
listening to Mrs. Evans' account of the diphtheria, and watching
Artemisia moving noiselessly to and fro in the bedroom or sitting just
inside the spare stateroom door sewing. I never enjoyed looking at a
girl so much in my life. She was not pretty in the ordinary sense of the
word. Her skin was not the buttery yellow you associate with
half-breeds. It was more the russet brown of a sunburned blonde. Her
cheeks had a soft peachy glow under the brown bloom that was beautiful.
And yet she did not give one the impression of sheer innocence and
youth which was implied in her unique complexion. Her eyes were
perfectly steady and unabashed, her figure was more mature and matronly
than Mrs. Evans', and she had a gravity of poise and deliberate movement
that one associates with the reflection born of experience. She gave me
the impression, I may say, of a young person who had chanced upon some
astounding revelation, and who was preoccupied with both past and future
more than the immediate present. It made her more attractive than less,
I think. She established a certain careless fondness for talking to Mr.
Chief, as she called me. I dare say I was in love with her even then.
She had a personality. I think Jack, who for all his crude psychology
was a pretty shrewd judge of humanity, saw something beyond a mere
desirable young girl in this nurse. He used to follow her round with his
eyes as though he couldn't make her out. He couldn't recover from the
shock of her name. He would sit in the saloon watching her with the
child, and mutter 'Artemisia! Humph!' She would glance up from her
occupation and regard him with steady, meditative eyes. I was fascinated
by the name myself. It recalled Captain Macedoine to me. It was like
him. Imagine that name reverberating down through the ages from ancient
Attica to classical France, taken out across the Western Ocean by
forlorn _emigres_, who clung to their pretty trashy artificialities in
spite of, or perhaps because of, the frightfulness of the wilderness,
handed on by sentimental and aristocratic Creoles, filched by German
Jews and prosperous mulattos, picked up right in the gutter by a supreme
illusionist and given to a young person who seemed half school-girl and
half adventuress.
"For it was perfectly obvious to me that whether I had diagnosed her
character truly or not, she was not at all a suitable temperament to
have about a child. There was, for instance, something ominous in the
sudden quiet with which she would regard the angelic Babs when that
odious little being began to pull her hair or jump on her feet or thump
her across the back with the heavy cabin ruler. These things happened to
me, too; but I could scarcely expect to escape. I was Jack's chum. I was
a bachelor and therefore credited with a deep and passionate love of
children. Artemisia, however, was a stranger. When something
particularly outrageous occurred, Mrs. Evans, glancing up, would murmur,
'Oh, Babs, dear!' and then, to my considerable embarrassment, I would
find Artemisia's eyes fixed inscrutably upon mine as she fended off the
attentions of her charge. And so, when I rose one fine evening as we
sailed along the Spanish coast, and she followed me up on deck, I felt
that she was about to take me into her confidence. I looked round as
she slammed the wicket which the carpenter had made to keep Babs from
tumbling down and breaking her neck, and the girl's face was close to
mine. We laughed quietly in the faint light that came up from the cabin.
After all, there was not such a frightful disparity in our ages. As we
walked aft along the bridge deck, and stood between the funnel casing
and the life boats--a matter of seconds--I might have given a swerve to
both our destinies. There are moments, you know, when one can spring
over the most frightful chasms in one's journey through life, and land
with both feet on mossy banks and enamelled meads. It was possibly such
a moment, only I didn't take the chance. As I said, I prefer the part of
super in the play--one sees so much more than either spectator or hero.
And I think she saw, too, in the same flash of intelligence. And so,
nothing happened. When she spoke she merely asked in a low tone what the
punishment was for infanticide.
"'You know, Mr. Chief,' she went on, putting up her arms and swinging
gently on the life-lines of the boats, 'It isn't fair. I'd never have
taken it on if I'd known what I was in for. I have a devil of a temper.
I'm sure I shall do something to that child.'
"'To keep it quiet?' I suggested. She nodded rapidly.
"'For good!' she replied, and added: 'They never used to let me have
anything to do with the kids at school.'
"'Because of the temper?' She nodded again.
"'I nearly killed a girl once,' she remarked, calmly.
"'Oh, tut-tut!' I said, but she insisted, and her eyes gleamed with a
sudden vixenish anger. 'Yes, Mr. Chief. She was a tall, fair girl with
yellow hair and a lovely complexion, like an advertisement for soap. She
hated me, and told the girls I would only be a nigger where she came
from. Her father was in the Civil Service somewhere. And she kept on
calling me nigger, and the other girls followed her lead until I was
nearly _crazy_. And one night I went into the lavatory and put a piece
of caustic soda into her sponge as it lay on the rack. And the next
morning when she was washing there was a horrible row, and she ran up
and down the bedroom screaming, and her face was all one smear of
crimson and purple. She had to go to hospital and it took months to
heal. The sponge was left in the water and there was nothing to show,
but the girls knew I'd done it because I didn't run and see what was the
matter. They didn't call me nigger any more, Mr. Chief.'
"I said I supposed not, and enquired if Mrs. Evans knew this story.
Artemisia shrugged her shoulders and showed the tip of her tongue. 'I
wouldn't tell _her_ much,' she replied.
"'And you are going out to see your father?' she nodded. 'He wants me to
help him in his business.'
"'He's not a captain now, I suppose?' I asked her, to see how much she
knew. She was unconcerned. 'No, he retired from the sea when I was a
little girl. We came home from the States. We lived near Saxhambury
then. Do you know it? Father was very unfortunate. He lost on some of
his investments and had to go abroad again. He was in Egypt a long
while.'
"'And you haven't seen him since when?' I hazarded.
"'Oh, I met him when he came to Paris on business. You see, the company
he's in now is French, and he is in a very important position out
there.'
"It was clear she knew nothing. She had been brought up upon the
customary vague references to 'position,' and so on, with which young
people in the middle classes are inducted into the real world. One could
imagine her telling her school-chums how her father had 'an important
position out there,' and their subsequent awe and envy. I can remember a
boy at school saying his dad was 'on the Continent,' when his fond
parent had gone for a week-end at Boulogne. We were impressed. And I
wondered what old Macedoine's job might happen to be. So I said that I
had once been shipmates with a Captain Macedoine out in New Orleans. She
exclaimed: 'Were you really! How funny!' and suddenly dropped her voice
to a whisper. 'Were you friends, as you are with Captain Evans?' I said
no, not exactly, and looked up at the figure of young Siddons on the
bridge. He was looking at us, and paused in his walk to and fro trying
to make out who I might be. I was thinking of him and wondering, when I
heard her say that her father did not like America; he was never happy
there. He was misunderstood. Well, many a man has been unhappy and
misunderstood in America. Some men are so exacting in their ideals that
no country can hope to win their approbation. Captain Macedoine was
evidently still on a pilgrimage seeking a home for his wounded spirit. I
asked his daughter if he were happy and understood in Ipsilon. She
regarded me with attention for a moment, as though she suspected me of
irony. Then she said, in the grave tones that middle-class people
reserve for the vital themes of life, that he had a good position and
excellent prospects. And then she left me with a murmur about 'the kid'
and I began to walk to and fro. I was amused. I tried to figure out the
salient features of a 'position' which would meet with the approval of a
man with Macedoine's record. And the prospects! For mind you, he must
have experienced a severe blow when those Federal secret service men had
ferreted out his dealings in the opium traffic and his plan for
establishing himself in England had gone to smash. And in what way could
this young person assist him in his business? I was intrigued, as they
say, but I could form no theory which would adequately account for so
many disparate premises. After all, such musings are their own reward.
The event robs them of their early glamour. I did not even confide in
any one else on the ship. There is a pleasure in an unshared scandal
which many men and all women seem to overlook. It added, I may say, to
the joys of being a super in the play. And when Mr. Basil Bloom, our
effulgent chief mate, informed me one evening that I seemed to be very
chummy with Miss Macedoine, I only smiled and asked him if he had
designs on her himself. He twisted his moustache, looked scornfully at
the horizon, and was evidently perturbed. He had referred
grandiloquently, during the previous voyages, to a peerless female whom
he called 'the future Mrs. Bloom.' This lady lived at Greenwich, and we
had reason to believe that Mr. Bloom, on the strength of his genteel
manners, formidable moustache, and optimistic temperament, had been
sponging on her family for some months before he joined the _Manola_.
'I'll tell the young lady,' I said, 'and perhaps you'll get some
encouragement.' He assured me first that I needn't trouble, and then
added that he knew I was the last person in the world to think less of a
man if he changed his mind. This was so infernally unfair to the lady at
Greenwich that I laughed in his face and walked away.
"The Second Mate took a different line. He was a quiet, inoffensive
creature, and usually preoccupied with a feeble struggle which he
maintained against whiskey. He had a delicately coloured, spiritual,
refined face, with the salient points slightly sharpened, and he seemed
to have neither thoughts, hopes, nor aspirations. However, his finely
chiselled features appeared one day while we were in Alexandria with the
addition of a greenish-yellow puff below the left eye, and the mess-room
boy informed us that the Second Mate was having his meals in his room in
future. There was a laugh from the Third Engineer, and I said nothing,
for I had a notion he and the Second Mate had been ashore together. But
the mess-room boy, whose slant eyes and long nose worried into all the
scandal of the ship, added that young Mr. Siddons had blacked the Second
Mate's eye for him, over the nurse. I told him to dry up. To tell the
truth I was getting tired of the episode. I felt the whole thing was
becoming tawdry and dropping to a rather low plane. I wasn't willing to
admit this to myself, mind you, because it involved my old friend Jack.
I mean it would be the Commander's fault if we all slumped into the mire
together over this young woman. That's what commanders are for--to raise
the tone. That's what a good many of them lack the character to do.
Personal courage, professional skill, long experience, will carry a man
through among men. When there are women in the case, a man needs
something else. What? Well, it may sound strange to you, but I should
call it simplicity of heart. It is almost the only thing women
instinctively respect and fear. Good old Jack was simple in his way, but
I doubted his ability to handle a crisis. I was thankful when we were
through with Alexandria and were heading north for Ipsilon.
"For just as we were entering this sea cluttered with islands so thick
you can always see four or five and sometimes a dozen at once, so we
were in the midst of a score of dubious possibilities. Here was Jack
avoiding me in an apologetic fashion. Here was the Chief Mate whispering
to Mrs. Evans. Here was the Second Mate sitting in remote and solitary
grandeur in his little cubby-hole, comforting himself with a bottle of
Turkish gin. Here was young Siddons, very youthful-looking and shy,
miserable because the Captain was looking black about something. Only
the angel child and her mother seemed untouched by the horrible
paralysis which was creeping upon us and for which they were primarily
responsible. At all hours you could hear the roars of rage from the
cabin when it wanted something--the roar, the squeals, the kicks, the
hiccoughs, and the final sullen silence of satiety. I tell you, that
woman and her baby were driving us all, including her husband, crazy,
and she sat there oblivious. She wasn't even aware that Artemisia hated
her.
"I don't know exactly what Jack had expected me to do to help him. No
doubt if I had proposed to Artemisia during the voyage, married her in
Alexandria, and left her ashore in a flat out at Mex or Gabbari he would
have been satisfied. I should have got him out of a hole and got myself
into one, which appeals to most of us. Or I might have acted like a man
without any emotions at all, and repelled Artemisia's confidences with
chilling disdain. This would have set a good example to the others, he
may have thought. I have never gone in for setting a good example,
however. I have found that even those who follow the example hate the
man who sets it. And in addition, with the curious intuition of the
illiterate, Jack suspected I had not been perfectly frank with him as to
my intimacy with her. And so we were all on the watch, alert, uneasy,
silent, and unhappy.
"I still went in to see Mrs. Evans of an evening. To tell the truth she
fascinated me. I had always held the theory that no married woman could
be an absolute fool. It had seemed to me that such contact with the
realities of life as marriage involved must leave some austere mark of
intelligence, some tinge of altruism, upon the most superficial. She
seemed to disprove this. For her the world did not exist save for the
'angel child.' Even her husband was now only the nearly indispensable
producer of income. She talked, not of him, or of her family, not of Art
or Life or Death or the world to come, not even of Home or the things
she had seen in Alexandria. She had seen nothing in Alexandria. She had
declined to let Jack take her to Cairo 'because of the expense.' She
read no books nor papers. She dressed in perfect propriety. And all the
time she talked about the child, one hand near the child, her eyes fixed
on the child's movements or repose. I think the voyage was a revelation
to Jack. He was finding his place in the world. He was thinking in his
honest, clumsy way. He never took his wife for a trip again. He loved
his child as much as any man could, but this ingrowing infatuation, to
the exclusion of every other desirable thing in the world, was
fatiguing.
"And Artemisia! She sat in her little spare cabin opening on the saloon,
and now and again she would raise her shoulders, draw a deep breath, let
them drop again as though in despair, and go on with her sewing. She
would laugh at me when I tried to amuse the child and distract it from
some preposterous desire. It was not easy. Her tenacity of purpose was
appalling. She was yelling one evening for someone to open the great
medicine chest that stood by the brass fireplace. I tried the
time-honoured ruses for placating the young. I said there was a lion
inside who would jump out and eat Babs. I pretended to go and find the
key and came back with the news that naughty Mr. Siddons had dropped it
into the sea. The brat stopped to breathe for a moment and a faintly
human expression came over the stupendously smug little face. I followed
this up by a story of how Mr. Siddons had shown me how to make a pin
float on the water. I hastily poured some water into a glass, got a
piece of blotting paper, laid my pin on it, and waited for the homely
trick to succeed. I had no luck somehow. The pin went to the bottom and
Babs' opinion of me went with it. She suddenly remembered about the
medicine chest and gave a preliminary yell. Mrs. Evans said, 'Oh,
Babbsy, darling!' I got up and went out on deck. We were running among
the islands. Away to the east-ward I could see the lights of the
Roumania Lloyd mail-boat going south. Suddenly two hands grabbed the
lappets of my patrol-coat, a dark, fluffy head leaned for a delicious
moment against my chest, and Artemisia gurgled, 'Oh, Mister Chief, isn't
she just a little fiend?' She had been listening to my blandishments and
had witnessed the final destruction of my hopes. She put her hands
behind her back, threw up her head, and regarded me with amusement.
'Why,' she whispered, 'why didn't you open the medicine chest, and give
her the prussic-acid to play with?' And then, without waiting for an
answer, she turned and looked across at the islands we were passing. She
sighed. 'Just look at them! How do they know which is Ipsilon? Mister
Chief, Mister Chief, I am afraid.'
"'What of?' I asked. She sighed again.
"'Of the future,' she said. 'This is a change for me. I don't know
what's coming. I haven't had any luck yet.'
"I asked her in what way.
"'You know, Mister Chief, I have been in several situations. I was a
typist....' she shrugged her shoulders.
"'Your father will be here,' I suggested, but she paid no attention,
merely looking at the dark blots on the sea that were islands. And then
she remarked in a perfectly level and unconcerned voice that sometimes
she wished she was dead. I patted her on the shoulder.
"'Go to bed, my child,' I remarked, coldly, 'you'll feel better in the
morning. You won't wish you were dead when Captain Macedoine comes
aboard to fetch you.'
"She walked away in silence and went down to the cabin. I have often
wondered if she had not intended to make some sort of confession.
Perhaps it was a moment in her life when she became suddenly aware of
her insecurity, of her lack of the kindly props and supports which hold
most of us up and give us a good opinion of ourselves. For really she
lacked everything. As I found out later, as she stood talking to me that
evening and trying to find some easy yet adequate method of taking me
into her confidence without losing my esteem, she lacked everything that
most girls have. She was one of those tragic figures who even lack
innocence without having gained any corresponding experience. And
perhaps she felt for a moment the shadow of her destiny upon her, and
seeing the dark path among the islands she was to tread, shrank back,
doubtful even of the power of her father to carry her through."