"Soft!" ejaculated Mr. Spenlove, looking round into the darkness and
feeling for a fresh cigarette. "You have said it. I was soft. But when
you come to think of it, what else could I have been? I am confessing
myself before you. What did you want me to do? Invent a tale? In which I
play a noble and manly part? A red-blooded story, as they say? A story
in which I rescue a virtuous maiden from a gross plutocrat and marry
her, the light dying away on a close-up picture of me bending over her
while she holds up a replica of Jack's angel child? Why, even Jack would
not endorse a yarn like that. I have a very clear memory of him suddenly
spoiling the idyllic peace of a summer afternoon in the Mediterranean by
dashing his magazine down on the deck and uttering a profane objurgation
against what he called 'muck.' We were sliding blissfully along a
cobalt-blue floor, a floor without a ripple as far as the eye could see.
And there wasn't a woman or a baby, that we were aware of, within three
or four hundred miles. Peace, perfect peace. And Jack, instead of
realizing the extreme felicity of the actual moment, had been devouring
a red-blooded story in which one of these dashing, daring, clean-cut
merchant-captains had saved a beautiful virgin from a rascally
foreigner. There was a picture of her being saved. Splendid! Specially
written for people who love the sea!
"No, I am confessing myself before you. Truth can be served in many
ways, and this is mine. The fortunate being whose characters consist of
homogeneous heroism and are compact of courage seem to elude my
scrutiny. And even when I meet a clever and sensible genius like Florian
Kelly, I cannot honestly say I admire him unreservedly. He gets on. He
succeeds. He arrives. But people who arrive with the convenient
punctuality of a railway timetable do not interest me. They lack the
weaknesses which make men fascinating to my amateur fancy.
"And so I am prepared to admit that she did what, in a previous moment
of softness, I had asked her to do. She used me. She used me to feed her
craving for influence over men, her inherited and insatiable desire for
building up romantic and glamorous memories. Florian Kelly regarded her
efforts with admiring exasperation, regretting their interference with
his own designs upon our susceptibilities. Mrs. Evans had made a
commotion like a bird defending her nest. Young Siddons had been bowled
over, as he phrased it, and offered her something of no real value to an
artist--a tender and inexperienced loyalty. Such women are episodic.
Their lives are a string of jewels of varying value connected by a
thread of no value at all. And I confess that to me the shame of being
used by her was not apparent. She, the leading lady, selected me for a
slightly higher role than that of a super in the play, and I found the
position singularly agreeable. I was afflicted at the time with no rash
desire to supplant the principal protagonists. It was a piquant and
persuasive proof of the infinite variety of human relationships that she
could bring me to meet the wealthy and powerful individual over whom she
had cast the spell of her radiant personality. I mean the gross and
licentious plutocrat of the red-blooded story. He came in as I was
standing, hat in hand, ready to go, and he heard me described as 'an old
friend, who knew her father years ago.' Which was true, though I was not
sure Captain Macedoine would have endorsed the statement. Mr. Kinaitsky
came forward with his hat on, removed it and one of his gloves, and
shook hands with a courtly gesture. He looked older than his photograph.
The fine gray hair fluffed out over the ears, the bushy brows shading
voluptuous eyes, the swarthy cheeks and flexible lips gave him the air
of a prosperous impresario. He brought in with him, however, an
atmosphere of affairs. He nodded politely to the girl's explanation,
patted her gently on the shoulder, and passed on to his room. Returning
for a cigarette, and offering me the box, he remarked that he hoped I
would excuse him as he was dining out and had to dress at once. He had
had a fatiguing day in the city. Did I know London? A fine day. Would I
excuse him once more? Turning to the girl, who was sitting on the arm of
a chair, he took her chin in his hand and favoured her with a swift,
masculine, appraising glance. She gave him one of her delicious,
derisive smiles and whispered something, her eyes flickering toward me
for an instant. He patted her cheek and turned away, remarking, 'Of
course if she wished.' He would not be in till late. 'Amuse yourself,
_ma chere_,' he added, and bowing slightly to me, went away to his bath.
"There was something odd to me in this, but I found it was a
characteristic of his infatuation to see as little of her as possible.
He never took her anywhere and he never brought any of his friends to
the hotels where they stayed. She had absolute freedom. He gave her
whatever she demanded. But she must not bother him. And while she was
absent getting a cloak, I looked around the room turning this unusual
idiosyncrasy over in my mind. There was a smoking table in one corner
and I observed a _tarbush_ on the lower shelf. Of course we ourselves
often wear a fez while smoking; but the sight of it gave me a cue. For
you must understand that, the normal Anglo-Saxon temperament, there is
necessarily something disturbing about such an attitude toward a woman.
Assuming the infatuation. And it occurred to me that herein lay the
source of an unidentified impression which he had made upon me as he
stood regarding the girl. And I saw as well the reason why she had
harped so on needing 'a friend.' I looked at the _tarbush_, glowing
bright red among the cedar-wood caskets and--yes, a _narghileh_ stood in
the corner behind, the amber mouth-piece thrust into the coils of its
own barbarically decorated tube. This man, for all his suave courtesy
and western polish, would be the inheritor of oriental ideas. His
attitude would be the attitude of the _pasha_ on his divan. He would not
understand my sentimental affection for Artemisia, or Florian Kelly's
panic-stricken rush from blind passion to a callous, worldly caution. In
short, he was equipped precisely as Florian Kelly said we ought to be
equipped before we embark upon an episode with such a woman. He had
wealth and he had wisdom, not only the wisdom of the world, but the
inherited sagacity of orientalized ancestors, the bearded owners of
extensive domestic establishments.
"Yes, he gave her absolute freedom, and demanded only absolute
obedience. I could not help wondering how Mrs. Evans would have regarded
such a proposition, and this led me to reflect that Jack's equipment was
too primitive, too simple. We Westerners do not seem to prosper in such
enterprises. We are hampered by our excessive idealism. Our training
does not fit us for the role of pasha. We are unable to compass the art
of intelligent infatuation. And I confess that at this close view of the
understructure of a polygamous career, I was weak enough to feel
scandalized. When she told me casually, as we sat at dinner, that Mr.
Kinaitsky had a fiancee, a rich young Jewess in Saloniki, my appetite
was affected. I felt that he was, well, a little beyond my range. Any
faint notions I may have had of experimenting in that direction myself
faded from view. Even the position of friend, of being a sort of deputy
_amant-de-coeur_, was fraught with grave danger to my emotional
stability. Very curious, I can assure you, to be suddenly apprised of
the extreme fragility of one's moral fibre!
"And the trouble with us is that we are usually unable to make out a
very strong case for our side of the question. We point with a fine
gesture toward the severely beautiful figure of Virtue, and the woman,
following our instructions, looks and sees Mrs. Evans and the angel
child. We point ecstatically to Love, and she shrugs her shoulders as
the figure of young Siddons emerges, with his boyish mind choked with
racial and social prejudices, his muzzy, impossible idealism, and his
empty purse.
"And mind you, she was naive enough or clever enough to play up to the
highest possible estimate of such a situation. When I asked her how long
this was going to last, she was charmingly vague and pensive. It was
part of the bargain, I suppose, to furnish the necessary sentiment. And
when I persisted, and wished to know what she would do then, she sighed
and hoped I would always be her friend. Well, she was right about that.
I was her friend until the time came, not so long after, when her need
of friends ceased, when her homeless and undisciplined spirit was
transported to a sphere uncomplicated, let us hope, by our terrestrial
deficiencies. And I like to think that this friendship of ours,
unsullied by conventional gallantry, was for her a source of comfort,
and sustained her at times when the flames of exaltation burned low, and
she was oppressed by the shadow of her destiny. But of course, this may
be only one of my occidental illusions.
"At the time, however, it seemed as though for me the adventure was
already nothing more than an intriguing memory. From time to time I
received postcards written from Paris, Munich, Vienna, Buda-Pesth,
Prague, and Constantinople. And then, after a long silence, a brief
letter telling me that she was living in an apartment, near the _Esky
Djouma_, turning up out of the _Rue Eqnatia_, but that I was to write to
the _Rue Paleologue_, and she would be sure to get it. Her father was
much preoccupied with financial affairs. She wanted to know if I were
coming to Saloniki. I was to be sure and let her know.
"Well, there was nothing inherently impossible in my appearing in
Saloniki. I had been there in the _Manola_ more than once with coal. At
that time, however, we were busily shipping our mineral wealth, at
cut-rate prices, to Italy, and the voyages alternated between Genoa and
Ancona, calling at Tunis for iron ore to keep Krupp's gun-shops at Essen
working full time. All three places were too far away for week-ending at
Saloniki, and the charter was for a year. I wrote to her more than once.
But I am no correspondent. I am unable to maintain the, to-me,
unnatural mental contortions of translating a mood into a literary form.
I can tell you--yes; but I regard with envy those fortunate souls who
'pour themselves out' as we say, upon paper. Somehow or other, I am not
to be poured out. And so our correspondence did not flourish with that
tropical luxuriance which is so much appreciated by the world when we
are dead and unable to protect ourselves. But I did not forget. I shall
never forget that romantic encounter, the sweet, resonant voice coming
across the rose-shaded supper-table, the exquisite face with the radiant
and questing, derisive smile.
"And then, with the matter-of-fact abruptness of sea-faring, I was
informed that we were to proceed to the Bristol Channel and load steam
coal for Saloniki. Jack was concerned at this, for it meant a longer
voyage, and Mrs. Evans was in an interesting condition, as he put it.
Jack had settled down. He was worried, of course, but his period of
eccentric uxoriousness was over. He sighed occasionally for a 'shore
job,' but he acknowledged the sense of my argument that he would be a
fool to quit. He was already looking forward to the distant day when he
could retire. Had saved a couple of hundred pounds and put it into oil
shares, which were going up. His conversation contained less of Madeline
and more of possible profits. In fact, Madeline disappeared, and was
supplanted by a sober institution known as 'the Missus.' He had
forgotten 'the gel,' I imagined, but it transpired that even upon him
she had left her mark. On the voyage out, during a conversation about
our probable port of loading, he suddenly expressed a curiosity as to
what became o' that gel? What did I suppose? For I had not scrupled to
keep my relations with Captain Macedoine's daughter to myself. I said I
couldn't imagine. Probably married by this time. Ah! said Jack. Best
thing, too. What was her name now? He'd forgotten. Ah! Fancy givin' a
child a name like that! And another thing. We'd be able to have a look
at the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. See what we'd missed, eh?
Jack gave a fat chuckle. Oil for him! Something that was quoted on the
Stock Exchange. Six per cent. and safe as houses. Safer! Tenants were so
destructive nowadays, his father-in-law told him. For the workhouse
master was an owner of small houses in a quiet way. A warm man. Had five
hundred in these here oil shares. And so on.
"No, I kept my romantic behaviour to myself. Jack would not understand
my interest in 'that gel.' Before we left Cardiff I had written to the
_Rue Paleologue_ to say that we were on our way, and gave the probable
date of our arrival. And while we were on our way I turned over in my
mind my reasons for writing to the _Rue Paleologue_. Middle age demands
reasons. Well, I was hungry for sensations. In my youth I had a great
ambition to seek adventure. Fate took me into a world of machine-belts,
harsh language, and industrial dullness. I escaped from that into
sea-life believing that I should find adventure. The greatest mistake
imaginable! But I realized that it was not adventure I really craved
after all--only sensations. A difficult case to prescribe for, I admit.
One has to train oneself to perceive, to become aware of their
proximity. I suppose this really is what used to pass as culture--the
adventures of one's soul among the doubtful masterpieces which throng
the dusty junk-shop we call the World. I played with the notion that in
the _Rue Paleologue_ I might come upon an authentic piece.
"I confess, though, that I had a certain diffidence about going ashore
and calling, as we say, in a perfectly normal manner, upon Captain
Macedoine. I really felt I had not sufficient excuse. And when we were
able to go ashore, and I stepped across what is now satirically known as
the _Place de la Liberte_, I compromised. I went into the _Odeon_, a
lofty cafe on the corner, to have a drink and come to a decision. It was
full. At the far end a big burly individual in a frock coat and a fez,
with a silver star on his breast, was standing on a chair and delivering
a harangue. A patriot. Waiters rushed to and fro bearing trays loaded
with glasses. The murmur of conversation rose and fell around me. Here
and there among the excited proletariat sat dignified old gentlemen with
drooping moustaches sipping mastic, munching caviar sandwiches, and
reading newspapers. And while I was rolling a cigarette I caught sight,
at a corner table, of a familiar figure, a figure in a short shabby
overcoat with a fur collar and a fur cap on his head, writing rapidly on
a large sheet of the cafe paper. It was M. Nikitos, the lieutenant of
the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. I had forgotten him, to tell the
truth. Artemisia gave me the impression that he had dropped out of
consideration. I was mistaken, it appears. He had not forgotten me,
however. In due course he looked in my direction, looked again with
attention, and I saw recognition come into his unprepossessing features.
He rose up, gathered together his writing materials, and came over to my
table. We shook hands. I invited him to have a drink, which he accepted
with alacrity. He still had the air of a dirty virtuoso. He was good
enough to say he remembered me perfectly in Ipsilon, of the _Manola_,
ah, yes. Well, he was doing extremely well, having taken up
international journalism. Was employed on the _Phos_, of which I might
have heard. He didn't look as though international journalism had done
much for him. His long French boots were burst at the sides and his
linen was far from fresh. To my enquiry as to the prosperity of the
great enterprise he raised his eyebrows and shoulders and exhibited a
pair of unwashed palms, his forearms resting on the marble table. In
time, in time, they would achieve success. But the conditions were
highly unfavourable to financial operations. There was great political
unrest. Revolution was in the air. Eventually Liberty would be
triumphant, which was glorious, but in the meanwhile, finance
languished. At present even a very sound scheme for building a dock was
hung up for lack of adequate support from responsible capitalists.
"'And Captain Macedoine--is he still in business?' I asked, casually. He
opened his eyes and drew down the corners of his lips. Very sad.
Confined to his apartment. He, M. Nikitos, the only friend faithful to
him. Deserted by his daughter even. But still planning for the
development of Macedonia. Colossal brain still working. Adverse
circumstances, aided by Gruenbaum's company, preventing success.
"This was surprising. Deserted by his daughter? I suggested to M.
Nikitos that he must be under a misapprehension. He looked at me
gloomily and shook his head. She had gone off, deluding her father with
a story of marriage. He himself knew how much there was in that.
Certainly she had got money from someone--but whom? Sooner or later he
would discover. He had his own interest in that affair. After he had
done everything for them when they first came to Saloniki, to show him
the door.... When he did discover her and her lover, we would see.
Straitened circumstances had prevented him from doing anything so far.
But wait.
"'Why, what would you do?' I asked, idly. The notion of this penurious
little humbug getting in the way of a serene and powerful polygamist
like Kinaitsky was entertaining. He looked down between his knees,
presenting the crown of his greasy _tarbush_ at my breast as though he
were about to butt me. He mumbled something. It was so preposterous I
pretended I had misunderstood him.
"'Oh, come!' I said. 'You must be joking. You can't interfere with
anybody like that. She has a right to do as she pleases. Why bother
about her? I happen to know she is very happy.'
"He looked up at me sharply, and pulled his mouth to one side as though
he were making a face at me.
"'Happy?' he echoed. '_You_ know? Then it is with you.... It explains
all those English clothes she had when I saw her at the White Tower. She
was in a box with the family who live next door. Madame Sarafov....' He
stared at me with his mouth fallen open, his whole body motionless. He
gave me the impression of a man perched upon a perilous precipice,
uncertain whether the next movement would plunge him to destruction.
"'No,' I said, shaking my head, 'you are making a mistake. But I know.'
He moved slightly, leaning forward.
"'You know where she lives?' he muttered. 'This place where she is very
happy?'
"'No, I can't say I do,' I replied. 'You can hardly expect me to tell
you, either, even if I knew, after what you said just now. Of course,' I
went on, 'you spoke in hyperbole, but it would be scarcely the act of a
gentleman to distress a woman by forcing yourself upon her.'
"'Hyperbole?' he repeated, staring at me as though fascinated.
'Gentleman ... distress?... she gave the Sarafov girl some English
clothes. I never imagined for a moment.... Incredible _denouement_.' He
looked suddenly discouraged. 'Then you have her in England.' A gleam of
understanding came into his eyes. 'You have brought her back here?
Well, do you know what she will do, now you have finished with her? She
will----'
"He stopped as I put up my hand. I said 'She is not my mistress, I tell
you.' He brought his hand down with a crash on the table, so that the
glasses jumped and the ink-bottle slipped off and emptied itself on the
floor. One or two people looked at him, but most of the excitement
centred round the robust person with the silver star, whose speech was
being applauded with a tremendous amount of guttural approval. Nikitos
stood up, towering over me in a threatening manner.
"'Then who took her from me?' he snarled, 'who gave her the English
clothes? You....' He sat down again and held up a menacing finger. 'You
think, you imagine, that the destruction of my hopes is to be accepted
with what you call philosophy? Well, yes.... I am philosophical----' he
stooped without taking his eyes from mine and replaced the ink-bottle on
the table. 'Listen, Monsieur. I am a pure man. In my travels, in Egypt,
in Turkey, and in Europe, I keep myself--you understand--immaculate.
Because I have here'--he tapped his dark forehead where the large flat
black eyebrows were like symmetrical charcoal smudges--'I have here an
undoubted ambition. In Egypt I was poor--very poor--very, very poor.
Captain Macedoine, whom I met in my business, extends to me his
generosity. To me, a poor interpreter in a firm of exporters, he offers
his friendship. I confide to him my ambition, my dreams. My _metier_, I
tell him, is politics; but of what use without the financial power? You
comprehend, Monsieur? For me it was impossible to associate with a
_demi-vierge_. I express myself to Captain Macedoine with great
strength, for it is my business in Alexandria to introduce these ladies
to the captains and the passengers. Captain Macedoine gives me his
entire confidence. He tells me he has a daughter. When he is appointed
to a position in Ipsilon he is good enough to obtain for me also a
subordinate appointment. He brings his daughter from England. We are
affianced. We come to Saloniki. I secure for them a good house, most
suitable, in the _Rue Paleologue_. What then? Mademoiselle is
_distrait_. She desires me to wait, a month, two, three. I do not
understand, but it is as Mademoiselle wishes. And then Captain Macedoine
becomes very ill. A terrible misfortune! I work. I think. I sacrifice
myself. Mademoiselle is suddenly no longer _distrait_. She commands me
to leave the house--I, Stepan Nikitos! You understand, Monsieur, that I
have had much to bear. The _Osmanli_, our vessel, entering the harbour,
is struck by another vessel, and sinks. Only her mast remains to see
above the water. I have to go to Constantinople to get the insurance.
Our concessions in Macedonia are no longer secure. And Captain Macedoine
too ill to be informed! I struggle against those misfortunes. I am
compelled to accept a position on the _Phos_ to earn the rent of my poor
room and a little food. I go to Mademoiselle and I find she is gone. Her
father receives me as always, with affection; but he grieves to tell me
his daughter is married. Well, Monsieur, I have told you that, in
Alexandria, I was of necessity a friend of the _demi-vierge_, and I am
familiar with the significant change in the tone of these women when
they have secured a wealthy lover. When Mademoiselle commanded me to
leave the house I was not deceived. It was for me the destruction of my
hopes and the birth of a resolution.'
"He held his finger horizontal, pointing at my breast, as though his
resolution was to take careful aim and shoot. 'Which nothing can kill,'
he added, with calmness, and folded his arms on the table.
"Now what struck me about these revelations of M. Nikitos, made across
the sloppy marble-topped table of the _Odeon_, was what I may call their
preoccupied sincerity. He conveyed the impression of being perfectly
sincere and yet thinking of something else at the same time. And there
was another peculiar thing about it. Although he addressed himself to me
with exaggerated directness, I could not rid myself of the conviction
that I knew no more of what he was really up to than if I were in a
theatre watching him on the stage. For, remember, all the sounds, the
cries of the fanatics, the guttural ebullience of the burly person with
the silver star, the article for the _Phos_, half written in a spidery
Greek script, the whole of the jangling uproar of the city, was within
this man's cognizance, while to me it was a mere senseless cacophony.
His assumption of lonely despair was not borne out by the subtle air he
had of being in with all these people who were chaffering among
themselves and applauding the rhetorician with his silver star. And the
upshot was that I grew very much afraid of this sinister, shrunken
figure whose hopes had been destroyed, and who was nursing with extreme
care a new-born resolution 'which nothing could kill.' His singular
claim to purity only added to this alarm. One is scarcely reassured by
hearing that a man is not only desperate but immaculate. And I did what
most of us would do under the circumstances. I got up to go. M. Nikitos
gathered his manuscript together, stuffed it into his breast pocket and
prepared to accompany me. As we came out upon the quay I turned to him.
"'Are you coming down to the ship?' The question seemed to bring his
thoughts to a standstill.
"'The ship?' he repeated. 'Oh, no, Monsieur. Why should I go down to the
ship? I will see you when you return.'
"'Now see here,' I said, touching him on the shoulder, 'you must get all
that nonsense out of your head about Miss Macedoine. If she has treated
you badly the decent thing to do is to forget it. You may not be the
only one, you know.'
"'Forget it?' he asked, like an intelligent child, 'how can one forget
it, Monsieur?'
"'What I mean is, you must not annoy her if you ever meet her.'
"'Annoy her?' he repeated in the same tone. 'I should not annoy. Our
interview,' he added, reflectively, looking at his disintegrating boots,
'would not take up more than a few moments. Very short. To the point, as
you say.' And he regarded me with amusement.
"I left him with a sudden gesture of impatience and he went off toward
the offices of the _Phos_. Words broke out upon him like a rash: it was
impossible to preserve one's credulity in the face of his enigmatic
fluency. Impossible to maintain a grasp upon common facts and homely
eventualities. I walked on past the dock-buildings and came to the
station. And I wondered where the _Rue Paleologue_ might be. A
cab-driver raised his whip as I halted, and moved slowly over to where I
stood. He did not seem to have any clear ideas, but signified by a
wealth of gesture that if I would get in he would find out. It was just
dusk and I got in. We galloped away with a great deal of whip-cracking
and noise of iron tires on the granite sets, past the _Odeon_ again, and
onward along the quays. I reflected upon the attitude Nikitos had taken
up toward Artemisia, but I could arrive at no opinion. One has very
little data for gauging the mentality of a highly sophisticated but
immaculate being. And I still retained the impression that she, under
the powerful protection of Kinaitsky, would stand in very little danger
from the annoyance of a journalist on the _Phos_. Nevertheless,
idealists who take pride in their purity are dangerous, because they are
incalculable. It is the only hold we have on most people in these days
of extreme personal liberty--the sad but inexorable fact that they are
not immaculate. It captured my imagination in spite of my distaste for
the man, this conception he had evoked of himself pursuing his way
through the unnameable wickedness of Levantine cities, yet bearing
within an inviolable chastity. One felt there was something formidable
in its mere existence, like vitriol, something not quite human, and
therefore to be feared. It was like beholding a white-robed virgin with
severe features bearing a palm amidst the groups of courtesans who were
strolling along the quays, arm in arm, taking the air before engaging in
the business of the evening.
"There was a new twist given to my thoughts when the carriage pulled up
and the driver spoke to a couple of these girls who were walking
mincingly along in their high-heeled shoes. Evidently inquiring the way.
They regarded me with friendly approval, but they shook their heads over
the _Rue Paleologue_. We were about to drive on when one of them put her
hand to her head with a gesture of recollection. She spoke to the
driver--a musical and resonant torrent of words. We drove on, past the
great bulk of the Tour Blanche, on into the darkness.
"For the road here left the quay and began to wind between large houses
embowered in trees. Those on the right faced the Gulf. No doubt in one
of them Mr. Kinaitsky dwelt with his wealthy Hebrew bride. To the left
could be seen avenues turning off. There was a great glare for a moment
as we passed a building with tall windows--a factory of some sort. And
then, after following this road for some time, we turned up one of the
avenues into deeper darkness and a silence broken only by the clink of
the harness and the soft sound of hoof and tire on loam and leaves. At
the head of this road the carriage stopped, and the driver pointed with
his whip, repeating the word _Paleologue_ to intimate that we were
there.
"I paid him and moved across the road in the direction indicated, and
found my foot striking a hard sidewalk beneath trees. It was very dark.
Here and there a grid of light was thrown on the road from a partly
shuttered window, or a pale glow would silhouette a woman sitting in a
doorway. There were many houses and I did not know the number I wanted.
I moved slowly along, hesitating to ask. You see, I was not sure. And
the language difficulty troubled me. These people spoke no intelligible
word as far as I was concerned. But I was constrained to pause at
length, and seeing some seated forms, outside a doorway in the darkness,
I began by asking if this were really the _Rue Paleologue_. A tall woman
rose from her chair and said 'Oui, Monsieur,' and I found myself in the
dim light from a spacious tiled vestibule, floundering in the middle of
whispered explanations. Their eyes seemed very large in the darkness,
and their forms tall and ghostly. Suddenly one of the girls stepped into
the light and I saw the broad, flat beauty of the Southern Slav. She
stood there regarding me, her hands behind her, her chin raised. And
then she remarked in a hoarse and musical tone, 'You English?' I said in
some surprise that I was and asked if they spoke it. She said 'Why,
sure,' and we all laughed.
"Surprising? Well, yes, it was. Because the intonation was not English
at all, but American. It was like reading a book in French and Italian
and coming suddenly upon a sentence written in italics, in one's own
tongue. The very isolation of it, adrift in a waste of partially
intelligible expressions, doubles the luminous emphasis of it. I looked
at them in astonishment, and they looked at each other and laughed
again. And then they led the way into the house.
"They were very much alike. That is to say, they resembled the portraits
of the same handsome woman at the ages of thirteen, eighteen, and
thirty-five. They were mother and daughters. And when I said I was
looking for a Miss Macedoine, they uttered exclamations.
"'Her father--he lives in the next house,' they said.
"'I have heard,' I remarked, 'of a family named--what was it?--Sarafov.'
And they nodded with animation. 'You got it,' said the elder girl. 'This
is mother, Mrs. Sarafov. I'm Pollyni, and my sister here is Olga. Did
Miss Macedoine tell you about it?'
"'No,' I said, 'I heard in a round-about way. But tell me, where is
she?'
"They looked at each other. Mrs. Sarafov spoke.
"'Are you the gentleman on the ship...?' I nodded. 'Well, I guess we can
tell you. I suppose you know how she's fixed.' I nodded again. 'Well,
she's got an apartment in the town. If you like we'll send a message to
her, but she wouldn't be able to get here much before twelve o'clock.
Perhaps you'd better call to-morrow. Afternoons she's free, you
understand.'
"But of course what I was thinking about at that particular moment was
the problem of the Sarafovs themselves. It was simple enough. They had
emigrated to New York some years before, Sarafov taking his wife and two
young children to make his fortune in the Golden Country beyond the sea.
Not much, according to our standards, no doubt, but a comfortable
competence in Turkey where living was so cheap. So they had come back
and settled in their native town, in the Frank Quarter, while Sarafov
_pere_ continued for a year or so longer his accumulation of dollars.
'Yes,' said Mrs. Sarafov. 'We liked America all right, after we got used
to their ways, but this country's pretty good, too. And it's freer
here,' she added, reflectively. This was so astonishing that I felt
bound to demand some explanation. It was the first time I had heard of
any one fleeing from America to seek liberty in the Sultan's dominions.
'Why,' said Mrs. Sarafov, 'you can't do a thing in America without you
get soaked for it, some way. And the prices! A dollar don't go any
distance at all. My husband, he says, 'Yes, but you are handling the
money, though.' That's like a man!'
"They were astonishing. They sat there, those three extremely handsome
females, easy and uncorseted, their white teeth gleaming, their perfect
complexions glowing, their dark eyes and hair shining in the lamplight,
and contradicted all the conventional notions I had ever held about
American emigrants. They had no animus against America, you must
remember, but they possessed something for which even the western
republic cannot supply a substitute--a traditional love of the land of
their ancestors. They had a perfectly steady and unsentimental grip upon
realities. Liberty for them was not a frothy gabble of insincere
verbiage, but a clear and concrete condition of body and soul. I suppose
the perfectly healthy have no dreams. Their vitality, like the vitality
of so many of the people in these regions, was extraordinary. It was
like a radiance around them. They seemed independent of everything
peculiar to our boasted western civilization. Neither patent medicines
nor cosmetics nor municipal enterprise came into their lives at all.
There were no books in the house. They produced figs in syrup, and
sherbet and cognac, and a smooth red wine that was a most generous
cordial. They gave me bread and raisins. They had all the things we read
of, and strive to imitate, and which we imagine we buy in cans. They had
no manners, for they ate with their fingers and licked them vigorously
afterward; yet they conveyed the impression that their civilization was
older than the ruined turrets above the city. They sat and moved with
the poised rhythm and dignity of the larger carnivora. The girls
reclined with an easy and assured relaxing of the limbs upon a settee of
violet plush, and their grouping made me think instantly of ancient
sculptural forms. They were without that _nuance_ and stealthy deception
which gives us such a feeling of manly superiority over our own women,
and without which masculine humour would die out. Perhaps it was
because, not only did they dispense with what are called breakfast
foods, but with breakfast itself, that they could sit there in the
merciless glare of an unshaded kerosene lamp and defy one with their
flawless and amiable personalities. And while I sat there and talked to
them and ate their bizarre and appetizing provender, I became aware of
something even more astonishing than their failure to use the
immeasurable advantages of existence in a Brooklyn apartment, where the
breath of life, warmed beyond endurance, came up out of mysterious grids
in the walls and dried all the vitality out of them. It wasn't only
that, it transpired. These women, with their quality of hard, practical
devotion to a concrete bodily well-being, conveyed something beyond all
that. For when I suggested that Artemisia's way of life must place her
beyond their sympathies, they registered emphatic dissent. For why? They
were unable to understand. They looked at each other.
"'That's American,' said Mrs. Sarafov, distinctly.
"'Not entirely,' I protested. 'It has a certain vogue in England also, I
assure you. And personally,' I added, 'I am bound to say it makes a
difference. I regret it.'
"'But,' said Mrs. Sarafov, and she turned her eyes upon her younger
daughter, who was going out with some dishes, 'But she must have a man
to look after her.' She regarded me attentively. 'I suppose you know
that she is very fond of you. She is always talking about how kind you
were to her on the ship. And in London. She says you liked her at
first. And I can't see,' she went on, 'why, if you regret it, as you
say, you didn't look after her yourself. She would have gone.'
"'And you think that would have made any difference?' I demanded. I was
very much disturbed at this sudden turn of things. I seemed to be
getting away from my cherished position as a super in the play. And it
was the emotion educed from this conversation that revealed to me how
these women had abandoned their life in America without regret. I had a
vision of it suddenly as I looked at the other daughter's face. She was
regarding me with a sort of raptness. The exquisite features glowed and
the bright, bronze-coloured eyes burned above purple shadows like lamps
above dark pools. Yes, I had a vision of it suddenly, and it was what we
call, lightly, cynically, disapprovingly, Romance. It was simply
this--that to them, what we deem a dangerous and useless appendage of
our spiritual life is a tremendous and vital need. So tremendous and so
vital that the external moral aspect of it was a matter of little
importance. To put the case in point, they were interested in me not
because I was a moral Englishman but because Artemisia was fond of me.
It was for them as simple as breathing to go with the being one loved.
And back of that there was another thing, which scared the modern and
moral being within me still more. It followed, from their perfectly
naive and innocent faith in Romance, that a woman was not a political
equal of man, a strenuous co-educated, enfranchised voter, but a
possession. The crown of her achievement was to be possessed by the man
she loved. He might kill her or enslave her, but without men she was of
no importance whatever. And I suspected that my own attitude which, mind
you, is the attitude of most of us, to draw away at the approach of a
compromising emotion, was difficult to comprehend. Especially when, in
response to the inevitable question, I said I wasn't married or
promised. They harped on it, those two, while the younger girl was in
the kitchen. It was evident Artemisia had confided a great deal to them
and they had talked and talked, turning this peculiar problem over in
their minds, the problem of a man who persisted in remaining a super in
the play. Barbarous of them? Well, let us say mediaeval. They lived in a
world of harsh limitations and extraordinary latitudes. They were
forbidden divorce and were accustomed to neighbours with a plurality of
wives. They seemed to know nothing of the refinements of modern passion.
For them it was a question of sex, without any admixture of social or
racial distinctions. That Artemisia had had a lover in England was not a
matter of amazement to them at all. What they couldn't understand was
the reason why everything had to be driven underground. And the
extremely _bourgeois_ conception of love culminating in a colourless
civil contract between a good provider and a capable housekeeper, which
was all they could see in American institutions--a civil contract which
could apparently be shot to pieces upon any frivolous pretext, struck
their mediaeval minds as profoundly irreligious and unpleasant.
"And then," said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly turning and savagely addressing
the silent and recumbent forms in the darkness of the awning, "I made
another astonishing discovery. They respected Captain Macedoine. A nice
old gentleman! They thought he was fine! I give you my word, when they
told me that, and proposed that we go right in and see him, I obtained a
glimmer of what Nietzsche must have meant when he spoke of the
transvaluation of all values. I was startled by the sudden realization
of how tenaciously I had been holding to my belief in that man's
essential unworthiness. You regard a man for years as despicable and
rotten, judging him as though you were God, and then you meet a woman
who worships the very ground he treads on, or a child to whom he is a
fanatically fond parent. Of course, the enthusiasm of Monsieur Nikitos
for his patron was discounted for by my low estimate of Nikitos
himself. Possibly, I mused in a startled way, as we entered the dark
ante-room of Captain Macedoine's abode, M. Nikitos was regarded by a
septuagenarian mother as an angel of light. The possibility remains in
suspense, for of that gentleman's antecedents I don't recall any
particulars. I saw him again, as you shall hear, but he failed to
prepossess me in his favour. He departed from my view, a perplexing and
polysyllabic problem, claiming for himself a useless and preposterous
purity. But perhaps it was not so useless from his point of view.
Perhaps he owed his brief political omnipotence, when the whole country
flamed into battle, murder, and sudden death, to his peculiar mania for
a spectacular chastity. They say men fear such freaks, and deem them
endowed with sinister supernatural powers. Possibly. There are strange
things embedded in that fierce lava-flow of the Balkan volcanoes,
congealed agonies and solidified monstrosities of soul.
"At first I could see nothing save that the chamber was large and lofty.
Even at the moment it struck me--a sort of last attempt at superiority,
you know--that it would be just like Captain Macedoine to live in a
large and lofty chamber without much light. And then, as I saw him,
propped up among cushions on an immense bed, with a table close at hand
on which reposed writing materials, books, a photograph, and a small
shaded lamp, I wondered why the characteristics which in him had created
such animosity should take the form of an alluring hypnotism in his
daughter. Such thoughts make one uneasy and anxious for one's position
as a super in the play. For that was the upshot of it, that I was
shakily anxious to see her again, to see Captain Macedoine because he
was her father, to drift, I knew not where. I was a pretty spectacle to
myself, I can assure you!
"His illness had emaciated him, and the crimson bedspread, together with
the long, drooping folds of the looped-up mosquito-bar, like the
curtains of a catafalque, and a round cap he wore to cover his bald
spot, gave him the air of some old pope holding an audience. He raised
his eyes without lifting his head, and smiled as Madame Sarafov and her
daughter, with measured strides that reminded one again of the larger
carnivora, moved forward to the bedside. And he lifted his hand in a
decidedly pontifical fashion, as though to bless them. I remained for a
moment in the shadow before they turned and explained who I was; and the
pale blue eyes, without any recognition, beamed upon me as upon a new
and promising adherent to the faith. He was immensely improved, though
very much nearer the grave than when I had seen him for that dubious
moment through the window of his house in Ipsilon. The harsh ravages of
a life of distorted ideals had been softened by illness to an ascetic
benignity. And he talked. I was obliged to admit to myself that so far I
had never seen him in private life. He talked and he was full of
reminiscence. He had a musical tenor voice, and he spoke rapidly and
with an unconcerned change from subject to subject which might be set
down to garrulity. He gazed into the shadows as he talked and I
listened, very much astonished. For it was not the talk of a wicked man
or an unhappy man or even an unsuccessful man. It was rather the talk of
an intelligent humbug, such as one might expect from the super-annuated
and senile secretary of some rich and fantastic scientific society. He
gave one that impression, that his whole life had been one of gentle
dilletantism under the protecting shadow of giant vested interests. It
was an astonishingly picturesque scene, the sort of _genre_ picture the
Victorians did so well and for which we moderns have so profound a
contempt. It might have been called 'The Old Professor Tells His Story.'
It flowed from him. He had a fund of phrases, quite common no doubt, but
which he used as though he had invented them himself. His long,
rose-tinted, transparent nostrils moved at times. His hands lay on the
bedspread, singularly small and chunky for so large a being, and he
often withdrew his gaze suddenly from the shadows of the past and
examined his knuckles with a sharp scrutiny that, I suppose, was merely
a habit born of an unconscious reflex action, but gave one a notion that
at times he began to doubt his own reality.
"And then," said Mr. Spenlove after a pause, "I discovered that Captain
Macedoine belonged to that class of raconteurs who do not believe in
reticence on personal matters. I have very little of that sort of
squeamishness myself, but he was much more confidential. If confidential
is the word. Because there was no atmosphere of confession about his
story. He frequently interjected the words, 'you know,' and it really
seemed as if he assumed that we did know, and was just amusing himself.
Or perhaps he was rehearsing for the day of judgment. No matter. He ran
on. And we listened. We were interrupted once, when an elderly person,
'My housekeepah,' as he called her, 'Madame Petronita,' came in with
some sustaining liquid in a basin. And if you ask me what he talked
about, I should say that he furnished us with a large number of details
of his private life which the majority of us never mention even though
we may not be ashamed of them. At this distance of time it presents to
me the sort of memory which one retains of an interesting book read
long ago. I remember him, you see, because of what happened afterward,
because he was the father of this girl of whom I am telling you, and I
recall the picture of him dispensing those amiable garrulities because
it was as we sat there that the notion first came to me that he was
really an original artist working upon himself and concealing himself
behind the grandiose presentment of an impossibly superior and effulgent
human being. All I had known of him or heard of him in the old days
corroborated this notion of mine. 'We are a very old family, you know--I
was a younger son, you know--I was at Charterhouse School, you know--we
were very poor--a scholarship boy, you know.' This was addressed to a
certain extent to me, as an Englishman, of course, but the glamour of
his rich intonation enveloped those two beautiful women, mother and
daughter, sitting there with their perfect parted lips and their
extraordinarily seductive Slavonic eyes. It would be interesting, no
doubt, to know just what they imagined lay in the portentous statement
that Captain Macedoine had been sent as a poor boy--a day boy, he
informed us meticulously--to that ancient foundation known as the
Charterhouse--they with their oriental antecedents, their untrammelled
comprehension of the romantic value of life, and their initiation into
western ways in a Brooklyn apartment. Yet I'm not sure that deep did
not call into deep, that they did not succeed in getting hold of his
real meaning after all. As Mrs. Sarafov said to me afterward in the
intense darkness of the street, 'Captain Macedoine, he goes 'way back, I
guess'; and there was a peculiar inflection in her tone which brought to
mind echoing corridors in the house of life.
"Yes, he was a younger son and he went out into an unsympathetic world
as a 'secretary'. Became a land-steward on great estates, secretary to a
London club, which fell on evil days, and was--in short--shut up.
Travelled for a while. I like that. It gave the obliging human
imagination such scope in which to devise a romantic and Byronic
pilgrimage for him. Accepted a post as purser on a grand duke's yacht.
He began to move in exalted circles. Grand duchesses, princesses of
principalities, eccentric millionaires, oriental potentates, and English
nobles with Mediterranean villas came upon the stage and performed
various evolutions which brought them into touch with the Grand Duke's
purser. He was thanked for his services on one occasion by a fat,
pop-eyed voluptuary who has become famous in history for scientific and
cold-blooded political murders. Was offered a cigarette from the
Imperial case which he accepted of course, but did not venture to
smoke. Indeed, murmured Captain Macedoine with a faint smile, he had it
still. 'My dear,' he addressed the girl Pollyni, 'if you will bring me
the bag in the top drawer over there....' She came back into the circle
of light bearing a small black bag of formidably heavy leather, the
handle-straps sewn right round the body of it and the bronze hasp fitted
with a massive brass padlock. It was a bag to inspire awe; and yet it
made me smile. On one side the thick leather had been carefully pared
away in three places. You see, I recognized that bag at once as one of
the specie carriers of the Maracaibo Steamship Company, whose initials
M. S. C. had been removed. It reminded me that after all I had known
this personality, in the making, when he had not yet realized all his
magnificent possibilities. In those days the furtive theft of a leather
bag was all in the day's work. But when I looked at him again I was
almost afraid to believe my own memories and conclusions. He held the
bag before him, his small chunky hands gathered together on the handles,
and gazed into the shadows with an expression of gentle and refined
melancholy upon his face, as though he knew there might be nothing in
the bag after all.
"But there was. There were things in that bag I couldn't have believed
existed out of a museum or a grand-opera property-room. There were his
epaulettes and other insignia as a grand duke's purser, thick slices of
gold and silver lace, buttons as large as medallions, and a badge like
some ancient coat of arms done in glittering enamel. There were
russia-leather boxes whose frayed edges still bore traces of exquisite
gold-tooling and which, on being opened, bore within, delicately printed
on their satin lining, the strange names of oriental and Levantine
jewellers. And in one of these boxes, an oblong affair like the case of
a cigar-holder, we were permitted to behold the cigarette which the
great potentate had deigned to offer the Grand Duke's purser. A fat oval
thing bearing an imperial monogram in gold. Captain Macedoine regarded
it reverently as it lay on his palm. From His Majesty's own case, he
observed in a deep abstraction. Part of the Old Order. Soon to go.... He
spread out his bizarre possessions on the coverlet and showed us each in
turn. There was a slip-ring for a cravat, of gold so heavy it could
never be used, and with an incongruous emerald like a lump of bottle
glass clamped to the centre of it. There was a stick-pin with a perfect
knob of silly-looking rubies. There were cuff-buttons like Brazil nuts
and about as beautiful, with diamonds in an eruption around the edges.
There was a gold stop watch in a hunter case, with a chime and a
coat-of-arms. And there was a gold cigarette case like a polished slab,
almost insolent in its sheer, naked pricelessness. These, it appeared,
were tokens of recognition from various wealthy personages who had been
guests on the Grand Duke's yacht. It was customary, you know. There had
been many others, which he did not regard with any particular sentiment,
and had sold or exchanged for feminine trinkets for his dear Euphrosyne.
There was a movement on the part of the two women as he pronounced this
name and I looked at the girl. She met my gaze with a radiant smile and
a little nod that seemed to mean 'Now we are coming to it.' As we were.
For Captain Macedoine went on to inform us that one of the penalties of
his wanderings among princes and plutocrats was an almost monastic habit
of life. It would not have done, you know. He was the repository of
discreet confidences, the inarticulate witness of august privacies. He
occupied a position, so he seemed to imply, similar to that of the
eunuchs of oriental empires, in so far as he was supposed to have no
ascertainable human attributes beyond cupidity and intelligence. A
seneschal! So it fell out that the Grand Duke, whose photograph showed a
much be-whiskered person with very long thin legs and a huge nose, found
himself without a purser one day. Captain Macedoine resigned. Under
ordinary circumstances he would have returned to England and settled on
a small estate in the country. But the circumstances were not ordinary.
He had become the last of his line. The Macedoines had been dwindling
for centuries. Did I believe in hereditary destinies? Families do die
out, you know. So instead of taking the P. L. M. express from Cannes to
Paris and so on to London, he took a passage to New York. First class,
you know. As we reached this particular stage in Captain Macedoine's
reminiscences, a brief and extraordinarily concentrated expression came
into the pale blue eyes fixed on the shadows beyond the bed, his hands
and nostrils remained momentarily rigid, as though a sharp memory had
gone right through him and bereft him of all volition. And his eyes,
closing, seemed to take his life with them and he became a corpse
enjoying, let us say, a siesta. And this paroxysm, which gave me an
uncomfortable feeling that Captain Macedoine was omitting the really
interesting details of his departure from the Grand Duke's yacht, was
construed by the Sarafov women as a symptom of mental anguish; and the
girl, with a gesture almost divine in its exquisite and restrained
impulsiveness, touched his arm. A smile suffused the man's features
before he opened his eyes and turned them upon her with sacerdotal
graciousness. The thing was so unreal that I was lost in a turmoil of
effort to retain my hold upon actuality. The histrionic instinct gives
one strange jolts when viewed close up. And through that turmoil I heard
him telling them, as he had done before often enough no doubt, the story
of how he met his dear Euphrosyne in the old French Quarter. And as he
often said, you know, his dear Artemisia was the living image, you know,
of her dear mother. His hand moved absently and the girl, anticipating
his desire as though they had rehearsed the performance many times,
leaned forward, took a photograph from the table, and handed it to me.
His dear Euphrosyne!
"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-spaced _faubourgs_ a 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!'"