Mr. Spenlove, seated on the extreme edge of his little deck-stool, his
knees out, his hands lightly inserted in his trouser pockets, paused
again in his narrative and looked over his shoulder as the quartermaster
at the gangway rang four bells. The moon was gone behind the vast mass
of rock which had been used by him as a material background to the
fantastic tale he was telling in his own introspective and irritating
manner. Out beyond the sharp black silhouette of the headland the open
water was a dazzling glitter that contrasted oddly with the profound
obscurity of the tiny haven. From time to time a silent form had risen
from the chairs beneath the awning and gone forward to the navigating
bridge, returning in the same unobtrusive fashion. And as Mr. Spenlove
paused, and the clear-toned bronze bell rang four strokes that echoed
musically from the cliff, another form, moving with care, emerged from
the ward-room scuttle and set down a tray on a small table. There was a
movement among the deck chairs as feet came down softly and felt for
discarded shoes, and the surgeon, clearing his throat noisily, stood up
and yawned. One by one the officers who had thus elected to pass a night
in conversation took from the tray a cup of the British Navy's
celebrated cocoa and returned to their chairs. Mr. Spenlove, still
sitting upright and looking round as though he expected someone to
contradict him, put out his hand, and the night-steward placed in it the
remaining cup before moving off and vanishing into the shadows, shot by
gleams of brass handrails and polished oak, of the companion. Mr.
Spenlove, his head cocked slightly on one side, his dark elvish eyebrows
raised satirically, and his sharp, short beard moving slightly, stirred
his cocoa. He betrayed no concern as to the state of mind of his
audience. He was well aware that the perfect listener does not exist.
The novelist is more fortunate. For every hundred persons who deign to
take up his book and trifle with it for an hour, putting it down upon
the slightest pretext and perhaps forgetting to finish it, there will be
one enthusiast who savors every word, notes the turn of a phrase, and
enjoys the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the style. One must not expect
this when telling a tale, except perhaps when one is a boy, and the
dormitory is hushed to listen, and one goes on and on until honest
snores register satiety. Mr. Spenlove, stirring and sipping his cocoa,
stared straight across at Gruenbaum's house, which the current had now
brought before him, and composed his thoughts before going on to the
final conclusion of his story. He was moved somewhat himself because the
mere act of narration had evoked memories whose strength he had perhaps
underestimated since they had remained dormant so long, and the
immediate stress of the great conflict, in which they were all leisurely
participating, had led him to imagine that the world before the war was
dead and gone. Which it wasn't, he reflected, setting down his cup and
beginning to roll a cigarette ... not by a long shot; and remained
silent yet a little longer, marvelling at the extraordinary triviality
of such things as war, against the sombre verities of Race and Love and
Despair.
And then he suddenly became aware that the shoes had been again softly
discarded, and he heard the creak of the trestles as the navigating
officer stretched himself on his camp-bed alongside the hand-steering
gear. Rolling a cigarette Mr. Spenlove began again.
"I doubt if you can conceive now," he remarked, "how that bland
announcement of a possible war before morning startled and shocked me. I
doubt if anybody realizes how such things tore our hearts before those
autumn days in nineteen fourteen. Some of you may remember when war was
declared between England and the Boer Republics. Quite a little thrill
in London; a romantic feeling that the die was cast, and all that sort
of thing. But that was far away across the sea, a diminutive business
which it pleased us to consider one of our punitive expeditions. War,
the collision of European hosts, was a subject for literature and art.
It wouldn't ever happen again. The Turks and Italians had been at war
and it had been a decorous affair involving some nebulous actions in
Cyrenaica--a locality we had never heard of before--and a few amusing
incidents at sea. I remember we were pursued all one morning by an
indignant Italian scout-ship during that war, who wanted to know why we
hadn't stopped at her signal. I believe, as a matter of fact, the mate
on the bridge had been making himself a hammock and hadn't seen
anything. And when they did catch us up our skipper simply broke out the
Red Ensign, showed his codeflags, and went ahead. War? We hadn't any
conception of what the word meant. Our troops were always walloping some
tribe or other in India and so forth, and we lived in a peaceful,
orderly world.
"But Captain Macedoine's remark that war might break out at any time had
something, intangible if you like, to corroborate it. It was in the air.
It was very evident in that crowded cafe when the robust gentleman in
the frock coat and fez and wearing a silver star was working his hearers
up to a hoarse, guttural frenzy about something--probably our old friend
Liberty. There was a destroyer in the harbour near us--a dingy-looking
and obsolete craft with low, sullen funnels and a disagreeable array of
torpedo-tubes with the fat snouts of torpedoes lurking under the hoods.
In those days a war-ship of any sort made one think all sorts of chaotic
thoughts. And now he had mentioned it to me, a good many other things
came to mind which pointed toward some readjustment of power. Our sudden
charter for Saloniki, for example, breaking in on our pleasant, regular
jog-trot trip to keep the great mills of northern Italy going. Yes, I
believed him in spite of my prejudice, and I showed it by taking my
leave with a certain degree of haste and starting for the ship. We
always do that. It is our idea of safety--to get back to the ship. Habit
and duty constrain us. But I had to be shown the way. It was a dark,
moonless night and I had very little notion how to proceed. We bade
Captain Macedoine good-night and he immediately assumed the manner of an
aged ecclesiastic. He became much older. I don't know whether you will
get just what I mean, but the mere fact that he was holding the centre
of the stage, that we were all looking at him and listening to him and
thinking about him, had seemed to inform him with an actual access of
vitality. But when I started from my motionless pose in the background
and scraped my chair and muttered something about having to get back to
the ship, he seemed to fade. He looked at me for an instant in an
attentive and perplexed fashion, as though he could hardly account for
my presence.
"'I never cared for the sea,' he murmured. 'A preposterous life. All the
disadvantages of being in jail with--what was it? Something or other ...
I forget ... well, you must come again. Always pleased, you know....'
"And then, outside, Mrs. Sarafov insisted that I would lose my way.
Pollyni must go with me and show me a short route to a landing-stage
where I could get a boat. We stood in the clear darkness of the high,
narrow sidewalk, and I could feel the girl move closer to me as she
lifted her chin and smiled into my eyes. What? Lyrical? Well, I can tell
you that you would have been lyrical, too, doctor. I was thirty-five,
you know, and I had never been in close contact with beautiful women
before. Just as Artemisia had her own secret lure, a lure founded on her
exquisite, derisive humour and her sombre heritage, so this
extraordinarily seductive and friendly young person, an entrancing
character composed of Eastern mystery and Western frankness, appealed
irresistibly to the connoisseur in a man. She was sex, and nothing but
sex, yet she maintained without effort the role of being merely a dear
friend of Captain Macedoine's daughter.
"'You must come again,' said Mrs. Sarafov, drawing her shawl round her
fine shoulders. 'We don't often see people from the other side. In the
afternoon, eh? And Miss Macedoine, she'll come over.'
"'Then you don't think there will be any trouble?' I asked. 'Any
fighting, I mean.'
"'We never interfere in politics,' she answered, drily. 'So long as you
mind your own business and let them fight it out among 'emselves, you're
safe enough here, I should say.'
"'What is it all about?' I demanded.
"'That's more than I can tell you,' she answered with disarming candour.
'Taxes mostly, I guess. But you have to pay 'em to somebody.' And then
she added cryptically: 'I don't know as we'll be any better off if they
was to win.'
"Well, we talked a little longer and then the girl, who had run into the
house for a shawl, stepped along beside me with her long, sure-footed
stride and we started up the dark street. There were very few lights
about now and from time to time she put her hand on my arm as we came to
a gap in the sidewalk.
"'And so,' I said in a low tone, 'you are a great friend of Miss
Macedoine, I understand.'
"'Oh, yes,' she said. 'I like her very much. She tells me everything.'
"'Everything?' She nodded, leaning forward and looking up at me in a
certain demure, elvish fashion.
"'Yes!' she replied, dwelling on the word with tremendous emphasis.
'Everything. About you, when you come to see her in London, you know.
Oh, she like you. She like you very much. When she know you have come,
she'll be crazy.'
"'But you know,' I protested, 'you know I'm only a sort of friend.'
"'Oh, yes!' again with the dwelling accent. 'Of course, a friend. And
she talk and talk and tell me all about you and say to me: 'No, he'll
never come. I'll never see him again. Forget it,' and then she sits and
looks at the sea for an hour. And when I say to her: 'Why don't you
write?' she say, 'I have,' and is all sad and miserable.'
"'But she didn't tell _me_ this when she wrote.'
"'No?' said the girl with a faintly sarcastic inflection. 'Well, she
wouldn't ... I suppose.'
"'Besides which,' I went on, 'she gave me to understand she was living
with this Monsieur Kinaitsky, so....'
"'He supports her,' she said, 'she's very lucky.'
"'How?' I asked, astonished at this peculiar sentiment.
"'Because he never goes near her for, oh, since this three months. He's
married, you know. You'll pass his house in the boat, only there's a fog
on the Gulf to-night. And he supports four others. Very rich. And so
long as she stays round she can do what she likes.'
"'Would you mind telling me, my dear,' I said, 'why this gentleman
supports all these ... er ... strangers?' She shrugged her shoulders and
took my arm daintily.
"'Because he's rich, I suppose,' she remarked. 'They all do it here. In
England--no?' she added in inquiry.
"'Well, not on such a lavish scale,' I admitted. 'Then there would be no
harm in my going to see her where she lives?'
"'Oh, sure! She wants you to. I'll go to-morrow, eh? And tell her you
will come? What time?'
"'What about the afternoon?'
"'Yes. And now I'll tell you how to get there.'
"'You'd better write it down,' I said, 'when we come to a light.'
"As we approached the road running parallel to the curve of the Gulf the
air became heavy and moist. It was October, with a chill in the midnight
air. And for another thing, it was as quiet as any country road of an
autumn night at home. Our feet padded softly on the matted leaves lying
wet on the path when we turned into the main road, and through the
gardens of the villas came a faint breath of air laden with salt and the
dead odours of the river delta. We seemed to be alone in the world, we
two, as we hurried along in the darkness, and the girl pressed more
closely to me as though for protection against unseen dangers. And yet,
so crystal clear was her soul, that there lay on my mind a delicious
fancy that she was deliberately impersonating the woman who had talked
to her of me, that she was offering herself as a chaste and temporary
substitute for the being whom, so she assumed, we both loved.
"And I," said Mr. Spenlove, after some business with a reluctant match,
"was not prepared, just then, to deny it. It would be absurd and
misleading to speak of a community of interest as love, yet we are
driven to discover some reason for what we call love apart from the
appeal of sex. Otherwise a pretty promiscuous kettle of fish! Where does
it begin and out of what does it grow? I'm not asking because I imagine
I shall get any answer. I'm inclined to believe the origin of love is
as obscure as that of life itself. I put the thought into words, because
at that moment, with that girl beside me, with the whole mundane
contraption of existence obliterated by a damp, foggy darkness, with the
moisture dripping hurriedly from invisible trees, and the immediate
future rendered ominous by Captain Macedoine's remarks, I felt a
conviction that I was closer to the solution of the problem than I had
ever been before. Or since, for that matter. Closer, I say. I was aware
of it without being actually able to take hold of it. Nor did I try to
take hold of it. I was still in that condition of mucilaginous
uncertainty toward my emotions in which most of us English seem to pass
our days. Foreigners are led to imagine we really take no interest in
the subject of love, for example, we are so scared of any approach to
the flames of desire. We compromise by floating down some economic
current into the broad river of matrimony. We have a genius for
emotional relinquishment. We--you--are born compromisers. We are so sure
that we shall never know the supreme raptures of passion that most of us
never do know them. And in any case we are so rattled by the mere
proximity of love that we never seem to get any coherent conception of
its nature. And I was not much of an exception. I have no supreme
secret to impart to you. As I have said, I am _par excellence_ a super
in the play. For a few memorable moments I was entrusted with the part
of a principal. It was not my fault, after all, that nothing came of it.
I sometimes wonder what _would_ have come of it, had not her sinister
destiny intervened....
"And then suddenly our feet struck timber that rang hollow and I made
out a slender jetty running into the fog. The girl moved ahead, drawing
me after her as she scanned the water with her other hand shading her
eyes. For a moment she stood listening and then she uttered a melodious
contralto shout for someone named '_Makri!_' I can recall, as I repeat
the word, the name of that obscure and unknown boatman, the very timbre
of her voice, the poise of her form, and the firm flexure of her fingers
on mine. And for that moment, as we stood waiting and the boat came
slowly and silently toward us with the standing figure of the oarsman
lost in the higher fog, I had an extraordinary impression, clear and
diminutive as a vignette, that I loved her and that she, in some
mysterious fashion, could love me without jeopardizing her own destiny.
A folly, of course; but I insist it gave me an inkling, that brief
illumination, of the actual nature of love."
At this momentous declaration Mr. Spenlove suddenly relapsed into a
pause that became a silence, as though he were still under the
influence of that illumination of which he spoke, and were pondering it
to the extent of forgetting his audience altogether. And it was a
suspicion of this amiable idiosyncrasy which caused the surgeon to make
a remark. Mr. Spenlove gave a grunt of assent.
"Yes," he said. "You are right. But this is not a supreme secret. I can
only offer you the suggestion that what you call a love affair is really
only a sequence of innumerable small passions. Yes, for a moment, you
know, I saw them plainly enough--a procession of tiny, perfect things,
moments, gestures, glances, and silences each complete and utterly
beautiful in itself, preoccupied with its own perfection. Scientific?
Not at all. Intuition and nothing else. One did not indulge in science
with that magical girl holding one's hand. Science is only a sort of
decorous guesswork at the best, guesswork corroborated by facts. In the
presence of a woman like that, you know! At this distance of time, my
friends, I can tell you that this girl, the chance acquaintance of a
chance evening, imposed her personality upon me as the very genius of
the tender passion. Yet I had but that one rhythmical moment by which to
judge--and the boat, a long and elegantly carved affair of cedar wood
decorated with brass bulbs, slid softly alongside, a tiny lantern
glowing between the thwarts; like some perilous bark of destiny, and she
a charming, enigmatic spirit watching with gracious care my departure
for an alluring yet unknown shore.
"For that is what it was. I stepped into that long, narrow affair, with
its tall, gondola-like prow and absurd brass balls, and I left my youth
behind on the hollow-sounding boards of that jetty. No, there is nothing
to laugh at in a man of thirty-five leaving his youth behind. There are
men who have seen their own daughters married, and retain for themselves
the hearts of adventurous boys. From the formidable ramparts of half a
century they can leap down and frolic with the young fellows who for the
first time are in love, or seeing the world, or holding down a job, or
reading Balzac. I cannot compete with such men. Youth fills me with awe.
It is something I believe I had once, but I am not sure. I watch them
nowadays, with their unerring cruelty of instinct, their clear egotism,
their uncanny intuition and sophistication, and I wonder if I were ever
like that, a sort of callow and clever young god! I wonder, too, whether
a good deal of the modern misery and unhappiness isn't simply due to
women being at a loss, as it were, to know just what the new and
improved breed of young men want. All this talk of women themselves
becoming modern is so much flub-dub. Look at Mrs. Evans. She was, and
is, coeval with the Jurassic Period. And women are continually trying to
get back there. You may ask me how I know this, and I can only tell you
that I have an emotional conviction--the strongest conviction in the
world, born of the tremendous experience which was coming upon me.
"And the first thing which, you might say, certified my new status as a
grown-up human being, was my promise to go and see Captain Macedoine's
daughter. I mean I made that promise without a shadow of reservation. In
youth we hedge, we balk, we bilk, over and over again. Fidelity is
unattractive to us. We cannot see that to keep a promise made to a woman
is a species of spiritual strength. It may be a foolish promise made to
a worthless woman, but that is of no importance. In youth we go on
breaking away, breaking away, for one reason or another, until we have
not even faith in ourselves, until we lose sight of the essential nature
of true fidelity, which is a blind disregard of our own immediate well
being. And I was astonished, as I sat in that boat and floated away into
the gray void of the fog, with the girl, the shore, the sky, all gone,
that she had infected me with her romantic view of life. I had always
preserved a sort of semi-religious notion that love, for me personally
you know, was bound to be an affair of highly respectable and virtuous
character. I don't know why, I'm sure, but I had that illusion. But I
discovered in that fog-bound boat that I knew very little about myself
after all, that the future was absolutely unknown to me beyond the grand
fact that I was going to the address which the girl had repeated twice
in her musical contralto, and that I was mysteriously exalted about it.
"I was steering, you know, and had let things go a bit, I suppose, under
the stress of my thoughts, when I realized the boatman was calling to me
and waving an arm. I collected my wits and looked round. There was a
methodical sound of oars and in a moment a large boat loomed close to us
and I saw the ghostly figures of the four rowers, their bodies rising to
full height as they plunged their oars in deep and then fell slowly
backward to the thwarts. And as the boat moved forward again in one of
its long, rhythmical surges and the stern of her came into the faint
radiance of our small lantern I saw a bent figure with a fez lean
suddenly forward, grasping the gunwale with one hand and his coat collar
with the other and stare at us with a fixed, crouching intensity that
was familiar. I was perfectly certain it was M. Nikitos, and in the
mental excitement of wondering what he might be doing at that hour in a
four-oared boat, I was turning my own craft round in a half circle. I
heard voices in the fog, the voice of M. Nikitos giving strident orders
and hoarse growls of assent from the toiling boatman. The sounds died
away and I became aware of other sounds close by, the long hiss and slap
of the sea against masonry, and voices. Voices clamouring and protesting
and calling aimlessly and interjecting unheeded remarks into other
voices engaged in torrential vituperation. And then my boatman stood up
suddenly, his tall form rising and falling into the fog like some comic
contrivance as the swell tossed the boat perilously near the sea-wall,
and uttered a sharp, monosyllabic comment. The voices ceased as though
by magic, and a grave question came out of the invisible air, which my
boatman, leaning out and laying hold of the stones, answered in a quiet
and competent fashion. You must understand that I had not seen this man,
yet he had already made that impression upon me. The whole business to
me, a strange and somewhat exalted Englishman sitting in a reeling
row-boat and wondering whether he was about to be dashed to pieces
against the stones, savoured of a carefully rehearsed performance. And
when a flight of balustraded marble steps came into dim view and a tall
figure in silk pajamas, a fur overcoat, and a fez came slowly down into
the light of our lantern I gave up and just waited for things to happen.
Up above I could now descry the chorus which had been creating such an
uproar, a motley collection of male and female retainers in various
stages of undress, and holding a number of alarming looking weapons,
standing in a row looking down at us in astonishment. And I was just
feeling exasperated at being so completely in the dark because I could
not understand a word these people were saying, when the tall bizarre
person in the fur coat and pajamas leaned over and said:
"'I understand you are an Englishman from one of the ships?'
"'Yes,' I said. 'That is so. What is the matter, may I ask?'
"'An attempt,' said he, 'at robbery and perhaps upon my life. You saw a
boat?'
"'Yes,' I said, 'we saw a boat. Was that the man who has been attempting
robbery?'
"'The leader,' said he; 'we have the others,' he looked at his
retainers, who looked down at us in a most theatrical way.
"'Do you know who he was--the leader?' I asked. All this time I was
sitting in the dancing boat while the boatman fended her off with his
long arms.
"'No, I regret not.'
"'I can tell you, if you want to know,' I said. He leaned down to get a
good look at me, looked back over his shoulder, and called in a
reproving voice, upon which one of his minions flew down with a lantern,
and we viewed each other in the glare.
"'I think it will be better if you accept my hospitality,' he said,
studying me thoughtfully. 'My carriage will take you back to your ship.'
He spoke again to my man who replied with grave decorum. I saw him now,
a tall, sunburned fellow with an immense black moustache, a round flat
cap on his black head, and an embroidered coat with innumerable small
buttons and frogs. He held the boat a little nearer in shore and I
stepped on to the sea-worn marble stairway. And without a word, in
accordance with the magical nature of the affair, my romantic boatman,
who had borne me away from my youth and who had proceeded methodically
to bear me onward toward my inevitable destiny, pushed off with an oar
into the fog and was lost.
"And I assure you," insisted Mr. Spenlove in an aggrieved tone, "that I
have the same memory of the scene which followed as one has of a
complicated dream. I am not prepared, at this moment, to go into a court
of law and swear to all that passed between myself and that perturbed
gentleman in the silk pajamas and the fur overcoat. I was living very
intensely at the time, you must remember. The exact incidence of the
adventure was not clear to me until I was back on the ship. Even when
we sat in an apartment of immense size and sombre magnificence, and he
said courteously, 'Have we by any chance met before?' I did not fully
wake up. I said:
"'I believe so, but I must admit I have forgotten your name.'
"'That is easy,' he smiled. 'It is Kinaitsky. I am equally guilty--more
so, for I am not certain whether I have seen you....' he paused as he
passed me some cigarettes.
"'At the ---- Hotel in London,' I suggested. He pondered for a moment,
observing me intently.
"'It would be as well to give me the details,' he remarked. 'Since you
are about to do me a valuable service, I should know to whom I am
indebted.'
"I told him. He remained silent for quite a while and I sat enjoying a
perfect cigarette and an almost equally perfect glass of wine. At length
he said:
"'And I understand that your interest in this lady has led you here?'
"'Oh, no,' I assured him. 'People in my walk of life can't do things
like that. It just happens my ship's charter was changed, that is all.
You can call it good luck, if you like, or bad.'
"'Pardon,' he said, studying me and feeling in the pocket of his
overcoat, 'but I am not clear yet just what your intentions are.'
"'I don't know myself,' I answered, foolishly. 'I must see her first.
You understand, she wants to see me, as a friend.' He smiled and became
grave again at once.
"'I,' he remarked, stiffly, 'have not seen her since my marriage. I
allow her an income, of course. I regard that as a simple duty to those
who have been under my protection. I may tell you, Monsieur, that she is
quite free to dispose of herself.... But things are very unsettled here,
as you may know. I have large interests which involve me in political
affairs. This present affair is of that nature. And I may observe that
you were good enough to say you recognized the man who escaped in that
boat. I am at a loss to understand how this can be, but let that pass.
Who was he?'
"'I was talking to him only to-day,' I returned. 'He calls himself
Stepan Nikitos, and he told me he wrote articles on internationalism in
a paper called the _Phos_. He is the sort of man who would write
fluently no doubt on internationalism, for he seems to be an Egyptian
Greek with a strain of Armenian in him. Personally, I believed him to be
simply a runner for a ship-chandler of whom perhaps you have
heard--Captain Macedoine.'
"M. Kinaitsky sat with one arm on the little table between us and
regarded me from under sharp black brows with motionless interest. As I
mentioned the name of Captain Macedoine he stroked his moustache, and
then drew his other hand from his pocket and placed on the table a heavy
American revolver.
"'Pardon,' he said, 'but I am unable to see how you come to know this
Nikitos.... Oh, he is a ship-chandler, you say. Well, he may be that
also. But you are not conversant with affairs here or you would
appreciate the danger of being friendly with internationalists. That by
the way. Your friend,' he went on with gentle irony, 'came here to-night
with three men such as can be hired for a few _drachma_ in any of the
alleys of the _Cite Saul_, to obtain some important documents from my
safe. Unfortunately for them the safe is of the latest London pattern
with a time-lock, which I bought when in England last year. They only
succeeded in alarming my servants and we secured the three men. The
leader, this Nikitos, who is well-known as one of those who sell
information to the Hellenic Government, a spy and a harbour pimp,
escaped. A most unfortunate accident.'
"'But what harm can such a disreputable being do to a man like you?' I
enquired in astonishment. M. Kinaitsky spun the chambers of the
revolver with his finger.
"'It is impossible,' he observed, calmly, 'to conceive of a state of
things in which a disreputable being can not do harm to one who
cherishes his reputation. Consider----' he went on, his finger leaving
the weapon and levelled at me. 'He has nothing to lose. He is the dupe
of desperate and cunning persons who wish to destroy the government. He
is poor, and he probably is driven by some woman to obtain money for her
gratification at all costs.'
"'No,' I said. 'You don't know M. Nikitos. He has a very peculiar
attitude toward women. You might almost call him vociferously virtuous.
Perhaps,' I added, 'you do not know either that he was supposed to marry
Captain Macedoine's daughter? She turned him out. They were on the
Island of Ipsilon together.'
"I don't know," said Mr. Spenlove, "how I expected him to take this, but
I was surprised at his composure. I did not take into adequate
consideration the fact that women were not the same phenomena to him
that they were to me. I forgot the 'four others' who were being kept in
loose boxes, so to speak, out of a deference to that complex yet
extremely admirable reluctance of his to abandon those who had reposed
in the broad shadow of his protection and who had been honoured by his
august notice. I have never been able, by the by, to make up my mind
whether I myself admired or loathed this singular idiosyncrasy.
"'You mean,' he questioned, quietly, 'that she was his mistress on the
island?' I shook my head.
"'No,' I said, 'that's the very thing I don't mean. And as I told you,
Nikitos has not that temperament. He makes rather a hobby of his own
chastity.'
"M. Kinaitsky regarded me with interest. 'I mean,' I added, 'his
emotions are his mistresses, so to speak. There _are_ some men,' I went
on in doubtful fashion, 'to whom women make no positive appeal. But
perhaps....'
"'Oh, undoubtedly!' he startled me by agreeing with sudden emphasis.
'Undoubtedly! But if not women, what?' he demanded.
"'Well,' I said, slowly, 'he struck me as being just what you describe
him--in with some political crowd. I don't speak the language, you must
remember, and have only a hazy notion of what all this trouble is about,
but in the _Cafe Odeon_ I gathered from various obscure hints that he
was part of the show. And another thing, Monsieur, he certainly gave me
to understand that he meditated some sort of revenge upon the person who
had robbed him of this girl. That was how he put it, you know. He is
quite unable to believe that she detested him. He is ignorant of the
details of her life lately, I may say. He even suspected me of having
abducted her. Made some very violent threats, but I put that down to his
mania for long words.'
"M. Kinaitsky looked at me with grave concern.
"'This is very serious,' he remarked at length, 'very serious. It is
only a matter of days, hours, before he learns anything he wishes. The
government at Constantinople have been most negligent in their attitude
toward the revolutionary leaders here.'
"'What alarms you?' I enquired.
"'Everything!' he returned, getting up and walking to and fro on the
polished parquetry flooring, his arms folded, his head bent.
'Everything!' He halted suddenly in his advance toward the far end of
the room which opened upon a small byzantine balcony and looked at me
over his shoulder.
"'I believe,' he said, slowly, 'that you are entirely trustworthy----'
"'I feel flattered,' I murmured.
"'But for one thing,' he went on, 'I cannot account to myself for your
connection with Mademoiselle Macedoine. I ask myself--what is he doing
there? I cannot answer.'
"'Why are you so anxious about a thing like that when you have so many
cares?' I demanded.
"'Because,' said he, 'I wish to make use of you. The news you bring me
to-night is, to me personally, by reason of my position here as an
Ottoman subject, extremely important. I propose to you that you take a
package of papers to my brother in London. I shall leave for
Constantinople by the four o'clock train to-morrow. If you will call
here at three to-morrow I will have them ready for you and will see you
safe to your ship where no doubt you have a safe on board. I can assure
you that when you deliver these papers to my brother he will reimburse
you for your trouble. Or if you prefer----'
"'No,' said, 'I will do it with pleasure for nothing.'
"'Impossible,' he retorted, gravely, coming up to the table again. 'It
is a commission and will be generously rewarded.'
"'You anticipate trouble then?' I suggested.
"'Monsieur,' said he, 'I anticipate the worst kind of trouble. I have
known of it for some time, but the happenings of to-night prove that I
was mistaken as to the time.'
"'It will be better if I know nothing about it,' I said. 'I will call at
three or earlier. I have an appointment ashore to-morrow afternoon but I
can come here first.'
"'You go to Mademoiselle Macedoine, perhaps?' I nodded. 'Give her my
respects,' he murmured, regarding me steadily. 'My respects. It would be
impertinent no doubt to refer again to your own future movements?'
"And you know," said Mr. Spenlove, breaking off in his narrative
abruptly, "I had no words to reply. I was stricken with a species of
intellectual consternation at the incredible gulf which separated me
from that man emotionally. I was staggered by the vision which
persistently came before me of those four unknown women, quite possibly
beautiful young women, though of this I had no actual proof, dwelling in
discreet seclusion and serving no useful purpose in the world beyond the
gratification of a plutocrat's ego-mania. If that can be called useful.
And there was also, in addition to these, this girl whom I knew. Five of
them: and they were not even permitted to be wicked! And I had to
wrestle with this outrageous problem of our relative status as human
beings at the same time that my own attitude toward this girl was
assuming an intensely personal character. My soul, or that fugitive and
ineluctable entity which does duty for a sailorman's soul, was stamping
up and down inside of me, waving its arms, protesting with all its
suddenly released energy against this man, denying him any knowledge of
what we call love, at all. I wanted to assail him with denunciations for
the monstrous self-esteem which sentenced those delicate creatures to a
shadowy and volitionless stagnation. I accused him of the destruction of
their immortal souls, forgetting in my romantic warmth that in all
probability he didn't believe they had any. But of course, being an
Englishman, I remained perfectly quiescent and inarticulate. I believe I
reached for another cigarette before picking up my hat. And I dare say I
smiled. We have peculiar ways of defending ourselves in such crises. He
assumed a puzzled air as he held out his hand.
"'Englishmen are ice,' he remarked, 'where women are concerned. I have
frequently observed it. _Sang froid_ as we say in French. The phrase
must have been inspired by the contemplation of an Englishman....'
"'And we shook hands. I said nothing, which doubtless confirmed him in
his illusions about us. But the point is, I was equally mistaken about
him, I could not believe him capable of what we call love. I was, as I
say, mistaken. But as I followed him out to the front of his house,
where his patient minions waited with lanterns which shed flickering
rays over enormous shrubs and about the trunks of tall cypresses, and
stood at length beside a fantastic barouche, with a sleepy driver on the
box, I had a moment of illumination. I asked myself why I applied this
test of love to a man like him, a man in the midst of extraordinary
predicaments--a man who perhaps had suffered the pangs of hell for love
and had recovered, who quite possibly had run up and down the whole
gamut of human emotions while I was idiotically spending my years
tinkling on a couple of notes. The stupid injustice of my interior anger
came home to me, and I sought again for the reason why I demanded of him
my own occidental idealism. The answer struck me as unexpectedly as a
sudden blow. It was because of my own attitude toward the girl. As I
took my seat in the carriage and reached out mechanically to shake hands
once more, I saw her as clearly as though she were there before me, the
bought chattel of a cultivated polygamist, and the blood rushed to my
head in a sudden surge. I leaned back as the horses started at the crack
of the whip. I felt sick and humiliatingly impotent. I saw Love and
Romance for what they are in this iron world of ours--ragged outcasts
shivering in the streets, the abject dependents of the rich. And I saw
myself for what I was, too, for the matter of that, a reed shaken by the
winds of desire, an emotional somnambulist terrified at the apparition
of his own destiny."
* * * * *
"No," said Mr. Spenlove in reply to a murmured protest, "I am not
libelling humanity at all. We are a very fine lot of fellows, no doubt.
As I mentioned a little while ago, the new generation seem to be a
distinct advance in evolutionary types over us older and more imperfect
organisms. To watch a modern youth with a woman, to hear him recount his
extensive and peculiar experiences with women, to study his detached and
factory-built emotions toward women--the outcome of our modern craze for
quantity-production, is an instructive and somewhat alarming pastime for
one weathering middle age. An improvement, of course. All progress means
that, I am informed. But I am not telling you the adventures of a
super-man, only a super in the play. What? No, I didn't run down love,
as you call it, at all. My quarrel was not with love, or even the sexual
manifestation of it which pre-occupies you all so much. I simply doubted
your knowledge of it. I suggested that the majority of men never know
very much about it save in a scared and furtive fashion. I hinted that
you never fully realized the terrific importance of romantic ideas in
the world; that you make a joke of the whole business, filling your
rooms with pictures of well-nourished young women in amorous poses,
filling your minds with mocking travesties and sly anecdotes of those
great souls who have left us the records of their emotional storms and
ship-wrecks. I am telling you the story of Captain Macedoine's
daughter. Eh? Well, I am coming to that ... it seems we shall be here
till morning.
"It once occurred to me," he went on, meditatively, "that a good deal of
the unreality of people in books is due to the homogeneity of their
emotions. A man in love, for example, is in love right to the end, or to
the point where the mechanism of the story renders it necessary to
introduce another state of affairs. Anybody who has been in love, or
cherished a hatred, or espoused a doctrine, or done anything invoking
the deep chords, knows that this is not so. There is the reaction. When
I got aboard the _Manola_ once more and stood in the middle of my stuffy
little cabin on the port side of the engine hatch, I was a cold and
discouraged pessimist. The oil lamp on my table showed me my domain. A
cockroach was making its way methodically round and round a covered
plate of sandwiches, while its brother or possibly a distant relation
was enjoying a good tuck-in of the cocoa at the bottom of a cup. Down
below I heard the bang of a bucket, and I reflected that the donkeyman,
after cleaning his fires and sweeping his tubes, was washing himself in
the stoke-hold. The night watchman in the galley was drying heavy
flannels over the stove and the warm, offensive odour hung in the air.
On the big mirror which I have mentioned, I saw a memorandum written
with a piece of soap: 'Steering Gear.' I recalled that I must get the
Mate to take up the slack in his tiller-head in the morning. I was
overwhelmed with the hard, gritty facts of existence, an existence the
most discouraging and drab on earth I imagine, unless one has some fine
romantic ideal before one. And I stood there, irresolute, looking at my
figure in the glass, which reminded me of a badly painted ancestral
portrait, and wondered whether I was capable of a fine romantic ideal.
There lies the trouble with most of us, I fancy. We lose our youth and
we fail to lay hold of the resolution of manhood. And before we know it
we have drifted moodily into forlorn by-ways of sensuality....
"Because I knew that if I went to see that girl next day I could no
longer maintain a detached air of being a kind of benevolent and
irresponsible guardian. All the unusual and melodramatic happenings of
the evening were unable to blind me to the basic fact that our relations
had changed, and I dared not follow them, even in thought, to their
logical consequences. And yet I dared not retreat. I had that much
imaginative manhood! I could not face a future haunted by her questing,
derisive, contemptuous smile. As I lay down and watched the lamp giving
out its last spasmodic flickers before it left me in darkness, I
thought I saw her, say a year hence, in a vague yet dreadful
environment, halting her racing thoughts to remember for a moment the
man who had failed her in a time of need. I saw the shrug and the sudden
turn of the shoulders, the curl of the lip, the evanescent flash of the
eyes.... No, I couldn't do it. And I couldn't forego the exquisite
seduction of a future glowing with the iridescent colours of romantic
folly....
"And so," said Mr. Spenlove, after one of his pauses, "I went."