Mr. Spenlove, sitting forward in his deck chair, felt in his pocket for
his cigarette-case and looked round satirically into the profound shadow
of the awning. He still preserved the appearance of a man talking to
himself, but the fancy crossed his mind, as he glanced at the long
horizontal forms in the deck chairs, that he was addressing a company of
laid-out corpses. The air was very still, but a light breeze on the open
water beyond the nets, and the full splendour of a circular moon,
reminded him of an immense sheet of hammered silver. But Mr. Spenlove
did not look long at the AEgean. He swivelled round a little and pointed
with the burnt-out match at the large plain building he had indicated at
the beginning of his story. It was not a beautiful building. It had the
rectangular austerity of a continental customs house or English
provincial "Athenaeum." It was built close to the cliff and the outer
wall was provided with a flight of stairs which ascended, in a
mysterious and disconcerting manner, to the second floor. All this was
clearly visible in the brilliant moonlight, and even the long valley
behind, with its dim vineyards and clumps of almond, olive, and fig
trees half concealing the square white houses that dotted the
perspective, were subtly indicated against the enormous background of
the tunnelled uplands and bare limestone peaks. Mr. Spenlove held the
match out for a moment and then flicked it away.
"Romantic, isn't it? This was how it looked the night we anchored, and
Artemisia came up to me as I stood by the engine-room skylights with my
binoculars. It was she who pointed out to me how romantic it was. I
asked her why. I said: 'This place is simply an iron mine. To-morrow
they'll put us under those tips you see sticking out of the cliff there
and a lot of frowsy Greeks will run little wooden trucks full of red
dust and boulders and empty them with a crash into the ship. And
there'll be red dust in the tea and the soup and in your hair and eyes
and nose and mouth. And there'll be nothing but trouble all the time.
Very romantic!' So I sneered, but she wasn't taken in by it a bit. She
looked through the glasses, and laughed. 'Oh, it's beautiful!' she
murmured, 'beautiful, beautiful.'
"I said, 'How do beautiful things make you feel?' and she turned on me
for a moment. 'You know,' she said, and was silent. And I did know. It
was the bond between us. We had become aware of it unconsciously. It had
nothing to do with our age or our sex or our position in life. It was
the common ground of our intense anger with the other people on the
ship. Do you know, I have often thought that Circe has been misjudged.
Men become swinish before women who are unconscious of their unlovely
transformation. Circe should be painted with her eyes fixed in severe
meditation, oblivious of the grunting, squeaking beasts around her.
Artemisia was like that. She really cared nothing for the ridiculous
performances of the various animals on the ship. Nothing for the
magniloquent Mr. Basil Bloom, clearing his throat behind his dirty hand;
nothing for the Second Mate, with his perpetual expression of knowing
something about her and being mightily amused by it. Nothing even for
poor young Siddons, badly hit, moping out of sight, heaving prodigious
sighs and getting wiggings for being absent-minded. As for the Second
and Third, my particular henchmen, she didn't know they existed.
Honourable! Why of course, they were all honourable in their intentions.
Didn't Mr. Bloom express his willingness to throw over the young lady at
Greenwich, although he owed her father fifty pounds? Didn't the Second
Engineer drop a note down her ventilator saying he had a hundred in the
Savings Bank and she had only to say the word? (And didn't Mrs. Evans
pick it up and take it, speechless with annoyance, to Jack, who roared
with laughter?) Honourable? Of course they all wanted to marry her.
Swine are domestic animals."
The Surgeon, who had caused this digression, made a vague murmur of
protest. Mr. Spenlove drummed on the chair between his legs and shrugged
his shoulders, but he didn't turn round.
"I didn't offer to tell you a love-story. Captain Macedoine's daughter,
if she means anything, means just this: that love means nothing. She
passed through all the dirty little gum-shoe emotions which she inspired
on the _Manola_ like a moonbeam through a foul alley. For it is foul,
this eternal preoccupation with sex, like a lot of flies over a
stagnant, fecundating pool. Beauty! You all talk largely of appreciating
beauty, and you don't know, the most educated and cultured of you, the
first thing about it. Your idea of beauty is a healthy young female
without too many clothes. I tell you, I have seen ships so perfect and
just in modelling that I have marvelled at the handiwork of my
fellowmen. I have seen cities at sunrise so beautiful I have gone down
to my room and shed tears of ridiculous sorrow. And I have seen the
patrons of female beauty, too, coming back from the cities to the ships
with dry palates, and their neckties under their ears....
"Well! We stood there, and to ease the pressure of the moment she put up
the binoculars and swept the little beach, finally coming to rest at the
big house--Gruenbaum's house. While we had been talking a light had come
out on the balcony, and figures began to move about with the precise and
enigmatic motions of marionettes. Without glasses I could see Gruenbaum
seated at a table with a big lamp over his head. Another figure moved to
the open side and stood still. I was wondering what this portended when
Gruenbaum half rose and waved his arms, and the other figure turned and
dwindled rapidly into obscurity, suddenly coming into the light again at
the other side of the table. And Artemisia said quietly, 'There's
father!' and handed me the binoculars.
"To say that I was interested would not put the matter in its true
light. I was more than that. There was a fantastic quality in the whole
business which was almost supernatural. It is strange enough to meet a
person after many years; stranger still to meet one who has made a
powerful yet unsympathetic impression upon you--to meet him with all
your old dislikes and prejudices washed to a clear and colourless
curiosity. But to see such a man as I saw Captain Macedoine, afar off,
through an atmosphere charged with the electric blue radiance of
moonlight, moving in an alien orbit, animated by unknown emotions--why,
it was like seeing a man who was dead and gone to another world! I
raised the glasses and focussed them. Captain Macedoine stood leaning
heavily on his hands as they grasped the edge of the table, and he was
staring straight out at me. Of course he could see nothing beyond the
balcony, but the impression was exactly that of a man striving to win
back across the gulf to his former existence. And his strained
immobility was accentuated by the figure of Gruenbaum with his jerkily
moving arms, his polished forehead gleaming in the lamplight, the
gyrations of his chin as he turned every moment or so and looked up
sideways at the other. Gruenbaum flourished papers, reaching out and
rearranging them, throwing himself back in his chair and beating the
table with a folded document to emphasize his words. And every now and
again the whole scene grew dim as though it were a phantasmagoria, and
about to dissolve, when the smoke from Gruenbaum's cigar floated and hung
in the still air.
"And I discovered, too, that I had no words in which to formulate the
peculiar impressions this scene made upon me. I could find no adequate
remark! The girl at my side, reaching out absently for the glasses,
made no sign that this scene going on half a mile away was at all
strange to her. For all one could gather, Captain Macedoine's daughter
was accustomed to see her father submitting passively to the onslaughts
of foreign concessionaires every day in the week. I gazed at her as she
stood there by the awning-stanchion looking at her magnificent parent,
and it was suddenly borne in upon me that it is a miracle we ever learn
anything about each other at all in this world. There is nothing so
inscrutable as an ordinary human being, I am convinced, and I have been
watching them for thirty years. What we know and can tell, even the
acutest of us, is no more than the postmark on a letter. What's
inside--ah, if we only knew. What? Absurd? By no means. I believe
married people do occasionally accomplish it in a small way. I mean I
believe they attain to a fairly complete comprehension of each other's
souls. But as to whether the game is worth the candle they never
divulge....
"Certainly Artemisia did not at that moment. She left me, as every woman
I have ever met has left me, groping. She sighed softly and returned the
glasses, remarking again, 'Yes, there's Father,' and bade me good-night
without a word of explanation. Mind, I don't say I had any right to such
a word. I don't even feel sure she understood anything at all about her
father's position on that island. The bare fact remains that I expected
some explanation simply because I credited her with a character light
yet strong, and capable of supporting the weight of her father's
confidence.
"For observe; if this girl was ignorant of everything, if she came out
here a mere child agape with curiosity, then Macedoine must have been
that extremely rare phenomenon, a completely lonely man. And I was not
prepared to admit the possibility of such an existence for him. He was
one of those men who can live, no doubt, without friendship, but who
must have their audience. So much at least I knew of him in the old days
in the Maracaibo Line, when he would sit near us in Fabacher's on Royal
Street, ostentatiously reading a month-old copy of the London _Financial
News_. It was this incessant urge to inspire wonder which led him to
hint, indirectly, that he had been at school at the Charterhouse. Risky?
Of course it was risky; and I should never have plumbed the mystery but
for a most unimpressionable London purser who informed me there was a
ragged school for slum children in the Charterhouse district in the
city. Not that it mattered. We were not Macedoine's game. It was the
bishops and colonels and eminent surgeons who made the round trip of the
West Indies with us whom he wished to impress. Whether he was a fraud
or not, he certainly had acquired a way of ignoring common people such
as we who go to sea. I knew he would regard good old Jack from such a
lofty pinnacle that Jack would appear to him no more than one of the
Greek labourers who shoved the little wooden cars along and tumbled
their contents into the ship with a terrific clang of ironstone on iron,
and clouds of red dust. I followed up this digression in my mind and
arrived at the fascinating conclusion that if my recollection served me
sufficiently well, he would not recognize me. He never had recognized
me. I once had the pleasure of telling him that if his men didn't keep
my room clean and tidy I would knock his head off. He never looked up
from his desk until my grip on his collar tightened and his body began
to rock to and fro. He complained to the Commander, who had been told of
the incident by the Chief. 'Is this the engineer who assaulted you, Mr.
Macedoine?' says the Captain. Macedoine examined me with a distant,
preoccupied air, pressing his lips together and his eyebrows raised. He
shrugged his shoulders, opened his lips with a slight smacking noise,
and after quite a pause, a most imposing pause, he said he 'really
couldn't say; these workmen were all so much alike when they were
dirty....' Old Pomeroy--he was the first decent skipper the Maracaibo
Line ever had--swung round on his chief steward and retorted: 'Then
what the devil are you wasting all our time for?' He swung back to
his desk again, muttering and slapping papers here and there.
'Preposterous--doesn't know who assaulted him.... Never heard....' I was
standing as stiff as a stanchion waiting for the Old Man to say I could
go, when he saw Macedoine pussy-footing it to the door. 'Oh, and
Macedoine,' called the Old Man. Macedoine stopped but did not look
round. 'I expect the engineers on my ship to be referred to as
engineers, not 'workmen.'' Silence, Macedoine looking at the back of his
hand and smiling with the corner of his mouth pulled down.
'_Understand!_' thundered the Old Man, rising from his chair but holding
it by the arms. It was so sudden I nearly collapsed. I thought he was
going to throw Macedoine through the door. That lofty personage was
startled, too. He replied hastily: 'Oh, quite so, Captain, er....' when
old Pomeroy sat down and dipping his pen in the ink, shut him up with
'Then don't forget it, and don't wait.'
"I mention this highly unusual episode for a special reason. It happened
to provide one specific proof of my theory that Macedoine was an artist
in his method of building up that grotesque effigy which he presented
to the world as himself. He was like that eccentric rich person who once
built a most astonishing house in Chelsea many years ago. You remember?
It was called So-and-So's Folly. It stood on a valuable site, and each
story was decorated in a different style. The basement was Ph[oe]nician
and the roof was pure Berlin. But the horrible thing about that house
was, not its bizarre commingling of periods, its terra-cotta tigers and
cast-iron chrysanthemums, but the fact that inside it was a hollow,
spider-haunted shell. There was not even a back to it. There were no
floors laid on the joists, weathered planks blocked up the back, and a
few forlorn green statues stood amid a dank jungle of creepers and grass
and rubbish. Now that was how Macedoine impressed me, and what I was
going to say was that by accident I obtained later a peep into his
studio, so to speak, and saw his method of putting up that marvellous
front, behind which, as you have already learned, there was nothing save
the dreamy dirtiness of avarice and ego-mania. No, the solitary and
grandiose idea in his mind precluded all recollection of individual
humanity. It was not that he forgot us who had been his shipmates. He
had never known us. We had not the wit to be knaves, or the credulity to
accept him at his own colossal valuation. We ignored his enigmatic claim
to greatness, while he passed sublimely along, disdainful of our
obvious virtues. For it is presumable that we _had_ virtues, since the
world--anxious for the replenishing of its larders--hails us nowadays as
heroes because we prefer the dangers of sea-life to the tedious boredom
of a shore-going existence....
"Yes, I saw into his studio, watched the artist at work at first hand. I
might claim the honour, indeed, of being one of the lumps of clay upon
which he sought to model his design. Surely an authentic witness this;
and I dare say the normal artist's material--since we are fond of saying
he blows the breath of life into it--might not join in the universal
praise bestowed upon its creator, but might indulge in ironic
contemplation of its own birth-pangs and the strange fortunes of its
pre-natal existence!
"He did not appear, however, as my stimulated imagination had pictured
him appearing, to dominate the situation on the _Manola_ and preoccupy
us all with his personality and hypothetical power. Like a higher power,
he remained invisible, and Captain Evans, going ashore in a boat with
Artemisia and her belongings around him, was the first to encounter him
in Gruenbaum's office. Encountered him, and came back bursting with the
most astonishing tidings. I was sitting in my room that evening after
tea, having a quiet pipe and a book, when Jack came down.
"'Come along to my room, Fred,' he said, blowing clouds from his cigar.
'I want to talk to you.'
"'Why not here?' I suggested.
"'No, I want the wife to hear it, too. The gel's gone and the kid's
asleep. Come along.'
"And highly mystified, I went along. It seemed like scandal, and I am
not above such things once in a way, as you know. I went along, and
found Mrs. Evans in her husband's cabin sewing. Nothing would do but I
must have a cigar, and the angel child having been dosed with what her
mother called 'chempeen', I had to have a glass of that, too. Jack was
flushed and excited, and sat down beside me on the red plush settee.
"'What do you say,' he began, in a low, husky tone, 'to a job ashore,
Fred?'
"So that was it. The age-old chimera of a 'job ashore.' I looked at Mrs.
Evans. Her lips were shut to a thin line. I could see protest and
dissent in every line of her body.
"'For you or for me?' I enquired, softly.
"'For me, and p'raps for you, too, if you play your cards. It's like
this': and he began a long and complicated explanation. The gel's
father, as he called Macedoine, had got the job of secretary to the
company and somehow didn't hit it off with old Gruenbaum, who was
resident concessionaire. Of course I knew Gruenbaum's father, who had
been the original prospector when the island was Turkish, sold most of
his holdings to the French company, but kept a tenth which descended to
his son who had succeeded him in the concession. Well, Gruenbaum wouldn't
hear of a lot of improvements which Macedoine wanted to introduce. The
gel's father was full of modern ideas. Wanted to put in electric
traction for the mines, with electric elevators and tips, and so on. He
also wanted to develop the place, and had a plan for irrigation to
attract settlers. Gruenbaum wouldn't hear of it. Very conservative
Gruenbaum was. Got his tenth of the three francs per ton on the ore, and
a thousand a year as manager, and was satisfied. Didn't want settlers.
He was king of the island and he and Macedoine had had a row. Macedoine
was sick of it. All this had been explained to Jack by a young Greek, a
clerk in the office, who was sick of it, too, and was 'going in' with
Macedoine in his new venture. And what was that? Well, it was this way:
Macedoine, who had knocked about a bit, had taken an option on some
sites in Saloniki, he had bought a sixty-fourth share in the Turkish
steamboat which carried the mails to the islands, and he was going into
the development of Saloniki. Had formed a small preliminary company,
registered in Athens, to take up the options, and he wanted directors.
This young Greek, Nikitos, was to be secretary, knowing the languages,
you see. He wanted directors, practical men to superintend the actual
business while he, Macedoine, you understand, would be free to control
the financial side of the affair. Oh, it was a big thing. There was to
be a big hotel, a big brewery, a big shipping business, a big real
estate development in Macedonia, a big railroad system, and a big fleet
of ships to carry away the freight which comes from all this. Everything
was to be big, big! Jack blew clouds of smoke, big clouds, and
flourished his fat hands in the air. 'What did I think? Wasn't it worth
jumping at? Five founder's shares of a thousand drachmas each in the
preliminary company, convertible into preferred stock in the big concern
and ten thousand drachmas a year salary. Eh? What did I think? Wasn't it
a sound investment? What about it?' And Jack bored into my ribs with his
powerful finger.
"I looked at Mrs. Evans. It was evident she had already heard something
of this magnificent scheme for making us all millionaires, and her
verdict was evident enough also. She never raised her eyes from her
sewing where she sat in a cane chair, her hair smooth and shining, her
dress smooth and shining, too, the embodiment of prim respectability and
prudence. She had often inspired me with a crazy ambition to see her
being chased by a lunatic with a razor in his hand, or pursued by a
hungry Bengal tiger--to see her in some predicament which would crack
the shell of middle-class reserve in which she was secreted and show me
the live, scampering human being within: but just now I was appalled by
the formidable aspect of her disapproval. Even Jack was aware of it, for
he watched me to see what I would say. And what could I say? What could
any sane human being, with a knowledge of the world, say? I didn't say
anything. I scratched my chin and pretended to be thinking deeply.
"For without claiming any especial perspicuity, I must confess that I
have never been the raw material out of which 'suckers' are
manufactured. It has always seemed to me pertinent to enquire, when
Golcondas and Eldorados are offered for a song, why the vendor should be
so anxious to hypothecate his priceless privileges. I suppose I am a
skeptic. Business, after all, is very much like Religion: it is founded
on Faith. And men like my friend Jack, for instance, have great faith in
the written word, much more in the beautifully engraved word. For them
all the elaborate bunkum by which the financial spell-binder conceals
his sinister intentions is of no avail; the jargon of the prospectus,
the glittering generalties, the superb optimism, the assumption of
austere rectitude, the galaxy of distinguished patrons who for a
consideration lend their names to the venture. For it is a venture, and
men have always a pathetic hope that it may become an adventure as well,
and that their ship will come labouring home, loaded with gold.
"Women, especially married women, are not at all like that, but they are
not so much skeptics as infidels. They start up at the first distant
approach of the financier, every plume and pin-feather quivering. They
don't believe a word of it. They go down on their knees to their
husbands and beg and beseech and supplicate them to have nothing to do
with it. They shed tears over their children. They write long letters of
distracted eloquence to their mothers. The very extremity of their
impotence lends a certain tragic dignity to their tantrums. Of course if
the cruel domestic tyrant persists in casting his bread upon the waters
and speculation turns out to be a huge success, these Cassandras spend
the dividends with a sort of stern joy, as though the money were tainted
and they must exchange it for something useless and inconvenient as soon
as possible. They know, by instinct, I suppose, that a chiffonier or a
Chippendale bedroom suite is not legal tender for stock. They feel
they've _got_ something. It is a truism, I suppose, to say that women
are implacable realists.
"Mrs. Evans was. And she knew, too, that I was of her opinion in this
matter. She never raised her eyes to look at me; but she knew. Her lips
never relaxed from the rigid line they had assumed when I came down, as
though she was still waiting, in severe patience, for me to do my
obvious duty, and corroborate her opinion.
"'What is he putting into it?' I asked, casually.
"'He's the vendor,' retorted Jack, who had picked up the vernacular
pretty quickly. 'He turns over his options and his share in this
mail-boat for ten founder's shares and a seat on the board, see? Then,
when the big company's formed, he takes up shares in that, and is voted
a salary of twenty thousand drachmas a year as financial adviser. That's
how Nikitos put it to me. Nikitos knows the country and he says there's
any amount of capital available once the thing gets started. These
tobacco growers don't know what to do with their money--keep it in those
big Turkish trousers, most of it, he reckons. The great thing is to get
in at the beginning. What do you say? He wants a ship-master and he
wants a man with engineering experience to overlook the shipping
business. I told Nikitos I'd talk it over with you. He says the skipper
of that Swedish ship that's on the same charter as us is putting three
hundred into it--seven thousand five hundred drachmas.'
"'But what did Macedoine say?' I persisted.
"Oh, I didn't see _him_,' admitted Jack, looking at the floor between
his fat knees. 'Nikitos promised to arrange an interview if we decided
to come in.'
"There it was, you see, the touch of the Master. I could not help a
silent tribute of admiration to Captain Macedoine for this remarkable
reserve, this exquisite demonstration of psychological insight. A man of
great affairs! A financial magnate, graciously extending to us the
privilege of participating in his immense schemes. 'An interview could
be arranged!' It was superb, this method of mesmerizing all the
simple-minded skippers and chiefs who came in the iron-ore ships to
Ipsilon. I had a brief but vivid vision of us all ashore in Saloniki
squabbling and bluffing each other, while Macedoine sat enthroned,
apart, the financial adviser, dwelling in oriental magnificence upon our
contributions.
"'What do you think, Mrs. Evans?' I asked, taking the bull by the horns.
'Shall we gamble a hundred or so and get rich quick?'
"'You're not married,' she replied, without looking up. 'You can spare
it I dare say. It is different for Jack. He hasn't any money to throw
away.'
"'Well,' I said, 'I haven't any to throw away, either, I can assure you.
I wouldn't go to sea if I had. But Jack thinks this is a great
opportunity to invest his money where he can look after it. You see,
he'll be drawing a salary as well when he's ashore in Saloniki.'
"Still she didn't look up. She had not budged an inch from her
conviction that I agreed with her.
"'I couldn't think of living abroad,' she said, severely. 'I have Babs
to consider.'
"I'm afraid Jack hadn't thought of that. He hadn't visualized his wife
and baby dwelling in a Turkish town, cut off by thousands of miles of
ocean from home. He had been so preoccupied with the divine prospect of
'a job ashore' that he had forgotten the environment. And we had been to
Saloniki with coal, time and again. I can't say I blamed her. Residence
in southeastern Europe has its drawbacks for a housewife. And quite
apart from a natural repugnance to dirt, Mrs. Evans had an unnatural
repugnance to anything foreign. She never really left England. She took
it with her. She carried with her into her husband's cabin, and along
the wild oriental foliage and architecture of Alexandrian streets, the
prim and narrow ideals of her native valley. It never occurred to her
that those people in turbans and fezzes were human. It never occurred to
her when a French or Italian girl passed, dressed with the dainty and
charming smartness of her race, that she might possibly be virtuous as
well. She shrivelled at their very proximity, drawing the angelic Babs
from their contamination. She was uneasy, and would continue to be
uneasy, until she was safe at home once more in Threxford, England. That
was the burden of her unuttered longing: to get home, to get home, back
to the little semi-detached red-brick villa on the Portsmouth Road,
which her father had given her for a wedding present and which fifty
Macedoines would never induce her to sell.
"For that is what it would mean if Jack invested even two hundred pounds
in this wonderful enterprise to develop Macedonia. He had spent several
hundred in furnishing the house, and since then most of his two hundred
a year had gone in expenses, for he was no niggard either with himself
or those he loved. Neither wife nor chick of his should ever lack for
anything, he had told me proudly. If a neighbour's child got some
expensive and useless contraption to pull about, Babs had one, too, the
very next week. If a neighbour's wife got a fur coat, Mrs. Evans had
orders to go and do likewise, a more expensive one if possible. What
little he had was on deposit in the bank in his wife's name, so that she
could draw on it while he was away.
"And so I came round to the unpleasant conviction that while Mrs. Evans
was silently awaiting my repudiation of the whole thing, her husband was
expecting me to use my eloquence to persuade his wife to let him invest.
They say a bachelor has no worries of his own. Which is as well, when
his married friends endeavour to make him responsible for their own
follies, and use him as a cushion to soften the family collisions. I was
an old hand and slipped out. And I really was not thinking so much of my
own two hundred pounds salted down in Home Rails, as of Jack's home,
when I said, cheerfully:
"'Well, this Captain Macedoine can't object to giving us a little more
information. And he can't expect us to have the cash with us. We shall
have to go home and sell something and--er--draw the money, eh?'
"'It is quite out of the question,' said Mrs. Evans, biting her thread
as though she was severing the spinal chord of the whole proposition.
"'So what I suggest is, Jack will see Captain Macedoine and we'll take
the voyage home to think about it.' And I looked at Mrs. Evans to
approve my machiavellian astuteness.
"'Oh, it's quite impossible, quite. I couldn't think of leaving England.
And we couldn't spare the money.'
"'We shouldn't need the house if we came out here,' said Jack, looking
solemnly at his wife. She stiffened.
"'We _can't_ sell the house,' she muttered through her teeth. 'Where
should we live? I've told you. Jack, it's quite impossible.'
"'The house 'ud fetch three hundred and fifty,' said Jack, looking at me
with round solemn eyes, 'and the furniture 'ud fetch two hundred more.
And there's--how much is there in the bank, Madeline? Say sixty odd. Six
hundred pounds. You can live cheap in a place like Saloniki.'
"I could see Mrs. Evans was going to pieces. She went dull red and then
dull white, dropped a stitch or so, moved her feet, took a deep breath
through her nostrils. I was seeing the human being at last. The lunatic
with the razor was after her. The Bengal tiger was growling near by.
"'Don't be in such a hurry,' I said, sharply, and for the first time
that woman gave me a glance that might be tortured into a faint
semblance of gratitude. 'I am not going into a thing until I've studied
it, and nobody but a madman would commit himself on anybody's mere
say-so. You see Macedoine, Jack, when you go ashore.'
"'You'd better come, too,' he said, rather glumly. 'Old Gruenbaum wants
some coal if you can spare it. Forty ton, he said. It'll be a fiver for
you. Can you let him have it and get to Algiers?'
"'I'll see,' I said. 'I'll go through the bunkers in the morning.' And
we left the dangerous subject for the time being. It was positively
refreshing to get out of the heavy atmosphere charged with Macedoine's
grandiose schemes and Mrs. Evans' premonitions of disaster and beggary
for herself and Babs. That angel child slept through it all on the far
end of the big plush settee, fenced in with a teak bunk-board, one
predatory hand clutching the throat of an enormous teddy bear whose eyes
stared upward with the protruding fixity of strangulation, as though
even in sleep she found it necessary to cause someone or something acute
discomfort. Yes, it was refreshing, for I don't mind admitting that the
petty graft of a five-pound note that I was to get from Gruenbaum for
selling him forty tons of coal was more to me than all the cloudy
millions of Macedoine's imagination. I am as anxious as any one to get
something for nothing, but this Anglo-Hellenic Development Company, in
which I was to get four hundred a year for living in Saloniki, didn't
appeal. In the regions of fancy Macedoine was an incomparable
inspiration; in business I preferred the unimaginative concessionaire.
As I rose to go up on deck, I felt that whether Mrs. Evans was
grateful or not I had earned her approbation. Perhaps she, with her
feminine intuition--or possibly it was only the instinct of
self-preservation--saw the necessity of flattering a poor silly single
man, for she remarked, with her head bent over the child's to touch the
tumbled locks:
"'I'm sure Mr. Spenlove will give you the _best_ advice, dear.'
"And I felt my bosom swell with pride. Oh, women are wonderful! Even an
inferior woman, as Mrs. Evans was, with a soul like a parched pea, and a
heart so narrow that there was scarcely room in it for husband and child
at the same time, a woman of meagre physique and frumpish in dress--even
she could do a little in the animal-taming way--could crack a whip and
make the lords of the jungle jump through paper hoops, and eat out of
her hand. Oh, yes! Even she could harness us and drive us tandem through
the narrow gate of her desire. She was sure I would give dear Jack the
_best_ advice. And in the glow of this benediction I departed.
"Mr. Bloom was on deck, moving softly to and fro, smoking an immense
meerschaum carved to the likeness of a skull. It was a warm evening and
he had discarded coat and vest, displaying a soiled starched shirt and
black suspenders inadequately furnished with buttons. The doorway was in
shadow and for a moment I watched him, promenading in the moonlight. He
had the air, as he stepped back and forth, of sharing his vigil with
some invisible companion. At times he nodded, and waving his pipe toward
the rail, might have been holding forth in unspoken words. Getting the
best of the argument, of course, I reflected bitterly, and startled him
by stepping out in front of him.
"'Good evening, Chief. Fine night for courtin', eh? A night like this
reminds me o' the time when I was master. The moonlight, and the cliff,
like the Morro. I was under the Cuban flag then you know, Chief. This
brings it all back.' He waved his grisly meerschaum and added: 'Lovely
place, Havana.'
"'Where's the Third Mate?' said Captain Evans, suddenly emerging from
the dark doorway. 'He isn't in his cabin.'
"'He went ashore with the pilot in the cutter, Sir,' said Mr. Bloom. 'I
did think of blowin' the whistle, only it occurred to me it might
disturb the baby.'
"To this piece of extreme consideration Jack offered no reply. He walked
along as far as the engine-hatch and then, putting his fingers in his
mouth, blew a shrill blast that echoed and reechoed between the cliffs.
Men began to move about the ship, and a sailor appeared with a
hurricane-lamp. A faint cry came out of the intense shadow of the
western shore and Jack answered it with a stentorian 'Cutter ahoy!' that
boomed and reverberated over our heads and trailed away into a wild
racket of distant laughter.
"'Don't shout so loud, man,' I suggested, when a cry once more came out
of the shadow and we could see a faint glow as of a lantern in a boat
moving toward us.
"'Just been havin' a little look round, I dessay,' remarked Mr. Bloom
with a bland tolerance of youthful folly which I remember irritated me
intolerably. Jack kept his gaze fixed on the slowly moving glow.
"'There's something wrong,' he remarked, soberly, ignoring Mr. Bloom at
his elbow.
"'Oh, I don't think so, Captain. Only a ...'
"'I tell you there's something wrong!' snarled Jack, turning on him
suddenly. 'Stand by at the ladder there,' and the man with the
hurricane-lamp said, quietly, 'Right, Sir.' Jack returned his gaze to
the boat, which was approaching the edge of the shadow. How he knew, I
don't pretend to explain. I take it he had a _flair_, as the French say,
the sort of _flair_ most of us acquire in our own profession and take
for granted, but which always appears uncanny in another. And it was
remarkable how the conviction that there _was_ something wrong seized
upon the ship and materialized in a line of shadowy figures leaning on
the bulwarks and projecting grotesquely illuminated faces into the light
of the lamp on the gangway.
"'Mr. Siddons there?' called Jack, quietly, as the boat came into view
in the moonlight. The man at the tiller sang out 'No, Sir,' as he put
the rudder over and added, 'way 'nuff. Catch hold there!' and another
figure stood up in the bows and laid hold of the grating.
"'Stand by,' said Jack coming down to the after deck. 'Come up here,
you,' he added, addressing the man who had spoken. The man, one of the
sailors, came up.
"'We were waitin' for Mr. Siddons, Sir, when you hailed.'
"'What orders did he leave?'
"'Said he was going up the beach a little way, Sir. Told us he wouldn't
be long.'
"'Where did you land the pilot?'
"'At Mr. Gruenbaum's jetty, Sir. It's the best for a big boat.'
"'Then where is he now?'
"'I couldn't say, Sir,' said the man. 'He went up the path with the
pilot; that's all we know.'
"Jack took a turn along the deck.
"'P'raps I'd better go and 'unt him up,' suggested Mr. Bloom, stroking
his moustache.
"'And leave me here with one mate and no pilot?' said Jack. 'Fred, you
go.' He followed me into my room where I had a pocket-torch, and
whispered, 'Go up yourself, Jack. See what I mean? He's a decent young
feller, even if I do find fault. Don't let the men see anything.'
"'You don't think he's gone on the booze?' I said, incredulously.
"'I don't know what to think,' he retorted, irritably. 'I always thought
he had plenty o' principle. You can't tell nowadays. But we don't want
him to spoil himself at the beginning of his career. Understand what I
mean?'
"As I sat in the stern of the cutter while the men pulled back into the
shadow which was about to engulf the ship (for the moon was setting) I
felt I liked Jack the better for that kindly whisper out of earshot of
the estimable Mr. Bloom. It was like him. Now and again you could look
into the depths of his character, where dwelt the old immemorial virtues
of truth and charity and loyalty to his cloth. I even twisted round on
the gunwale as I steered and looked back affectionately at his short,
corpulent figure walking to and fro on the bridge deck, worrying himself
about the 'young feller,' the embodiment of a rough yet exquisite
altruism. It seemed to me a manifestation of love at least as worthy of
admiration as was his domestic fidelity. Oh, yes! You fellows call me a
cynic, but I believe in love, nevertheless. It is only your intense
preoccupation with one particular sort of love which evokes the cynicism
and which inspires the monstrous egotism of women like Mrs. Evans.
"'Hard over, Sir,' said the leading seaman. 'Way 'nuff, boys!' I flashed
my torch upon the tiny jetty which Gruenbaum had made near his house, for
he often went on fishing expeditions round the island, I had heard.
Steps had been cut down from a path in the face of the cliff which led
away up to some workings facing the sea, but which are out of sight.
When I had climbed up the jetty I said:
"'Now you wait here while I go along to the house, and make enquiries. I
don't suppose he's very far off.'
"I made my own way up the rough stones to the path, midway between the
soft whisper of the waves and the frightful edge above my head and I
felt a momentary vertigo. I was suspended in the depths of an
impenetrable darkness. All things--the jetty, the boat, the path, were
swallowed up. Even the ship was indicated only by the faint
hurricane-lamp at the gangway and the reflection of the galley-fire
against a bulkhead. Stone for building and for buttressing the
mine-galleries had been quarried out below, and the path was under-cut
and littered about with the debris of an old ore-tip. I moved slowly
toward Gruenbaum's house, and as my eyes became accustomed to the
darkness I saw another path, a more slanting stairway, on the face of
the cliff. I paused. It was some hundred yards or so to where Gruenbaum's
house stood, as you see, at the foot of the slope. In the darkness
Jack's words seemed to me to shed light. There was something wrong. But
if something was wrong, if young Siddons had come to some harm, how had
it happened? He must have had some motive in leaving a cutter with six
men to wait for him. As for my idiotic suggestion that he might have
gone on the booze, there wasn't a cafe within three miles that young
Siddons would enter. He must have had some plan. Of course we are told,
with wearisome insistence, to look for the woman; but we don't in real
life. We look for all sorts of motives before we look for the woman. And
even if I did in this instance suppose for a moment that Siddons had
gone off on some mysterious adventure involving say, Captain Macedoine's
daughter, I was no further advanced. He could hardly have told the
sailors to wait. It was against all traditions of the service. And as I
was deciding that he must have come to harm, and wondering how the deuce
I was to discover him, a light shone out for a moment above me, I saw a
figure silhouetted in a doorway and then vanish. Someone had gone in. I
started up the steep by-path to make enquiries. I knew the pilot, a
predatory person from Samos, had a hutch on the mountain somewhere, and
it occurred to me that he had negotiated the sale of a flask or two of
the sweetish wine of the island, and young Siddons had seized the
opportunity to get it aboard without the old man knowing it. Quite a
rational theory, I thought, as I toiled up the path getting short of
breath. And suddenly I came upon the door which had opened and closed, a
door in a house like a square white flat-topped box, with a window in
one side shedding a faint glow upon a garden of shrubs.
"And now I was in a quandary. I sat down on a bowlder to take a breath.
Supposing I knocked at the door and asked if any one had seen the Third
Mate, and the inhabitants had not seen him and couldn't understand me, I
should have done no good. And supposing they had seen him, or that he
was inside, I should have some difficulty in explaining my interest in
his private affairs. For I liked him, and we are always afraid of those
whom we like. It is not only that we fear to tarnish our own reputation
in their eyes, but we suffer a mingled terror and pleasure lest we
discover them to be unworthy of their exalted position in our
affections. So I got up and instead of knocking at the door I stepped
among the shrubs and came to the window. And sitting close against the
wall, with a small table in front of him and his head on his hand, sat
Captain Macedoine.
"He was old. He showed, as we say, the ravages of time. And not of time
only. Time alone could not furrow a human face into so many distorting
folds and wrinkles. As I recalled the sleek, full-fed condition of his
big smooth-shaven face when I had known him in the old days, I was
revolted at the change. It was as though an evil spirit had been
striving for years to leave him, and had failed. The cheeks were sunk
into furrows of gray stubble and had sagged into sardonic ridges round
the thin, wavering line of the mouth. The red eyelids blinked and
twitched among the innumerable seams that ran back to the sparse,
iron-gray hair. The nose, quite a noble and aquiline affair once, was
red at the end, and querulous, like the long lean chin and reedy neck.
Only the brow gave any hint that he might not be a casual loafer at a
railroad station willing to carry your grip for a few pennies. High,
narrow, and revealed remorselessly by the passing of the years, it was
the brow of the supreme illusionist, the victim of an implacable and
sinister spiritual destiny. I have said that when I saw him the
previous evening he had the look of a man trying to win back into the
world. Now that I saw him more clearly, he looked as though he had come
back, at some frightful cost, and regretted it.
"He was listening to someone I could not see at the moment, and raising
his eyes with a regularly recurring movement that was almost mechanical.
I shifted a little to take in another view of the small, shabbily
furnished room. Standing by the end of a sofa, on which I could see a
girl's feet and skirt, was a dark young man brushing his frock coat and
talking with what struck me as absurd eloquence. He had never shaved;
his face was obscured in a sort of brown fungus and was blotchy about
the forehead and chin. His black eyes rolled as he talked and flourished
the brush. He seemed to be describing something highly creditable to
himself. This, I may tell you, was Monsieur Nikitos, visible in business
hours as a clerk at Gruenbaum's elbow, or in a bare barn of an outer
office. He came over to the table, and sitting down near Captain
Macedoine, opened an account book. This was evidently a _seance_ of the
Anglo-Hellenic Development Company, I thought, and I moved back to the
path. I had no desire to spy upon any of these people, you understand. I
had to find Siddons, and even the intriguing amusement of watching a
great illusionist had to recede before that urgent need. I regained the
path below and thinking I would go down to the boat in case he had
returned I started back. The torch showed me a steep descent of rubble
where a cave-in had occurred, a gash in the edge of the path, I thought
at first it was the way down to the jetty and I flashed the lamp
steadily upon the bottom. There was someone lying down there. It was not
long before I was kneeling over young Siddons.
"At first, you know, I really thought he was dead. He was lying face
upward and his forehead had been gouged open above the left eye with
some jagged edge and was bleeding in thick, slow runnels that
disappeared into his curly hair. He lay perfectly motionless, but as I
bent over him and searched the soft, delicate face in the first horror
of grief, the eyes opened wide and blinked in a gaze of unconscious
enquiry.
"'What is it, my boy?' I asked and after seeming to collect himself he
asked, in perfect calmness:
"'Who is that?'
"'The Chief,' I answered. 'Did you fall?' He closed his eyes and made an
effort to move. I put my arm around him. He said:
"'Chief, is the boat still there?' I told him it was.
"'Help me up. Be careful. I think my collar-bone is broken again. Oh,
Lord! Does--does the Old Man know?'
"'It was he sent me,' I said. 'He was afraid you had had an accident.
Does that hurt?'
"'No--but catch hold of me lower down, will you?'
"'How did it happen? Did you slip?'
"'Oh, Lord! Yes--slipped, you know--look out!'
"'I thought you were dead,' I said jocularly, as we reached the path.
"And under his breath he made a remark that Captain Macedoine's daughter
had made to me not so many hours before.
"He said he wished he was."