And for those who make a hobby of the irony of fate, I remember that but
for the innocent and haphazard intervention of a perfectly irrelevant
individual, I shouldn't have been able to get ashore at all. I woke
early. For some mysterious reason connected with tonnage, the old
_Manola_ had a small bathroom at the after end of the bridge deck, a
most unusual appurtenance in a tramp steamer of her day, as some of you
fellows know well enough. I had fixed up a contraption by which I could
pump sea water through a home-made shower. I was in this place having a
wash down and towelling vigorously when I heard the steward talking to
the cook outside the porthole. He was saying that he was going ashore to
the market to get some fresh green stuff and the cook was to tell the
old man that he would be back by eight o'clock. The steward, an
extremely quiet and modest creature with the ferocious name of
Tonderbeg, was standing close by, and the blue wreathes from his
cigarette curled into the port. He looked up and saw me, making a
slight bow and smile, and raising his hand in an automatic way to the
salute.
"'Goot morning, Mister Chief,' he said. 'A fine morning, Sir.' I
conceded this and asked him if it was far to the market.
"'Not far. Just a nice walk for a morning like dis, Sir. A very
interesting place, the market. In the Old Town.'
"'Well', I said, 'if you'll wait a few minutes, I'll take a walk up
there with you.'
"His good-looking blond features became suffused with a warm
gratification and his Teutonic voice went back into his throat, as it
were.
"'W'y,' he announced, impressively, 'it would be a pleasure, Mister
Chief. I'll chust get de sailor wid de bag.' And he disappeared.
"And I was mysteriously elated. It is useless to attempt any analysis of
those fugitive gleams of the future which occasionally distract our
minds. Nevertheless I recall it now with irresistible conviction--I was
mysteriously elated. I filled my case with cigarettes, took my cap and
stick, went back for a handkerchief, and slipped a couple of sovereigns
into my pocket with the idea, I suppose, of purchasing fruit. I found my
friend Tonderbeg standing by the gangway talking to the Captain. Jack
had come up in his pajamas, a remarkable suit of broad purple and
saffron stripes, and he stood there yawning and rubbing his massive
hairy bosom.
"'Why, where you been, Fred?' he demanded, slyly, 'I'm surprised at you.
I thought you was a respectable man.'
"'Well, Jack,' I said, 'as far as I know, I am.' He looked at me for a
moment, his head thrown back, his powerful hands flat on his breast, and
his big blood-shot brown eyes twinkled.
"'You know what I mean, Fred,' he muttered. 'I'm only jokin'. When are
you comin' back? I'm goin' up to the agent's at ten.'
"'Oh, we'll be back to breakfast. It isn't six yet.'
"As we walked along the quays, I looked out beyond the tiny harbour in
which the _Manola_ was berthed. The waters of the Gulf lay like a sheet
of planished steel beneath a canopy of lead-coloured clouds. A couple of
steamers at anchor, their bows pointing toward us, were reflected with
uncanny exactitude in the motionless water below them. And away beyond
lay the sullen and bleak masses of the Chalcidice and the far watershed
of the Vardar, leading the eye at length to the immense, snow-streaked
peak of Olympos, flushing as some majestic woman might flush, in the
first rays of the sun, hidden as yet behind the symmetrical cone of
Mount Athos. I discovered that I had stopped to look at all this and I
realized with a slight shock that Mr. Tonderbeg was expressing his
approval. He said it was very fine.
"'You admire scenery?' I asked him as we walked on.
"'Very much,' he assured me. 'But by scenery I mean mountains. They are
very elevating, in my opinion, Mister Chief. Where I come from,
Schleswig, you know, we have very fine mountains.' And he coughed
deferentially behind his hand.
"'What's your notion of being elevated?' I enquired.
"'Well, Mister Chief,' he said in a deep tone, 'it is only natural for a
respectable man to improve himself, and to cultivate his mind, if you
know what I mean. And I find good scenery very improving. It gives me
good ideas. When I come to all dese different places I write home to a
little friend o' mine and tell all about it.'
"'What does your friend think about it?' He smiled.
"'Well, Mister Chief, when I say a little friend o' mine, I mean my gel
in North Shields, you understand. She's a school teacher, very well
educated. Yes, I should say she's had a splendid education. She writes
me very fine letters. A fine thing, education, Mister Chief. For shore
people, of course. People like you an' me, goin' to sea, don't get it.
But I think a man ought to improve himself and cultivate his mind. This
way up to the market.'
"I regarded Mr. Tonderbeg with a perfectly sincere respect. On board
ship his efficiency had been of that extreme kind which causes one to
lose sight altogether of the individual responsible for it. He had so
merged himself into the routine of the day that one had difficulty in
realizing his existence. And in the mood I was in that morning, a mood
of reckless emotional adventure, I found a certain wicked pleasure in
teasing him into a foolish loquacity. He was evidently very anxious to
talk to someone about his little friend. She corrected his mistakes in
English grammar, I learned, for he mournfully confessed to many errors
in writing. But what impressed me about him was the astounding
familiarity he seemed to have with his destiny. He knew that an old
friend, a retired sea-captain, would give him a job as assistant steward
in a certain 'home' for the indigent mariner. He knew that in time he
would become steward, which would provide a job for his wife. He saw
right on into his middle age. For all I know he knew just about when he
would die and where he would go afterward. And he was a good ten years
younger than I was! All mapped out! There seemed to be as much adventure
in the future for him as for a young and exemplary vegetable. He would
grow old, and the young person who had been afflicted with a splendid
education would grow old with him, immured in the discreet official
quarters of the home for indigent seamen. As if a seaman were ever
anything else but indigent! And when I suggested that a trifle more pay
for the seaman would render the home unnecessary he put his head on one
side and explained tolerantly that they 'would only spend it on booze.'
"'And better do that and die dead drunk than end up in a home,' I
muttered. He didn't hear me, I am glad to think now. I should have
regretted the slightest scratching of the immaculate surface of his
respectable equanimity. He was certainly thrown off his balance a few
moments later, and it is quite possible that had he heard my subversive
remark he might have abandoned me as hopeless. He maintained on the
voyage home the attitude of a deeply religious parent mourning for a
reprobate son, but not without hopes for his ultimate reclamation.
"I think our conversation ended there. I remember we were passing up a
rather narrow and smelly street where donkeys, with immense panniers of
vegetables, were continually fouling each other, and then pausing with
infuriating composure while their fezzed proprietors wrenched them
apart. And I remember Mr. Tonderbeg insinuating himself past them in a
manner perfectly decorous and suitable in a foreigner among natives, yet
accompanied by an expression on his blond features which seemed to
betray a regretfully low estimate of a population deficient in the
ability to improve themselves and cultivate fine ideas. I say I remember
this because the next time I looked at him his expression had changed.
He had flushed to a dark terra-cotta, his eyes were cast down, and his
mouth was curled into an extraordinary and complex sneer and grin. 'Des
women!' he said, hoarsely. 'They won't let you alone. Impudent pieces!'
And he stopped at a fish stall. I was going to ask him what he was
talking about when I saw what had outraged his modesty. It was Pollyni
Sarafov, a big basket in her hand, standing in front of a booth on the
further side of the market and waving to attract my attention. I gave
Mr. Tonderbeg a glance as I left him, abandoned him. He did not see me.
He was still standing at the fish stall examining a number of loathsome
cuttle fish who were regarding him with a fixed and terrible stare from
among their many arms. I went straight over to the girl.
"Mind, I don't blame Mr. Tonderbeg very much. There was something about
that girl which would give a man like him all sorts of alarming
thoughts. She would not elevate him. She was the negation of
respectability. Her shining bronze hair was tied up in a scarf of blue
silk, her cotton dress was shockingly short, and her feet were shod with
a pair of old Turkish slippers. And her basket contained a miscellaneous
assortment of esoteric comestibles which would later appear in an
astonishingly appetizing form at the table. She greeted me with a naive
delight, a tacit confidence that I shared her view of the situation, and
had managed to meet her by some tremendous _tour-de-force_ of romantic
intuition.
"'And who's that man?' she demanded, nodding toward the respectable
Tonderbeg. I looked at him. He was sidling along the booths, followed by
an impassive seaman with a neatly rolled sack under his arm, and he was
glancing stealthily in our direction, his features almost dark with
shame.
"'That's our steward,' I told her. 'He doesn't think much of you. He
thought you were giving him the glad eye, I'm afraid.'
"'Him!' she queried, and regarded him for a moment. And then she changed
the subject. She wished to know if I was going up to see Artemisia. And
when I hinted at the early hour, she declared that it was a good time.
She would be so glad, she thought. And when she said she was ready,
having bought all she needed, and that a carriage was waiting for her
up the hill near the _Via Egnatia_, I took her basket and we moved on.
And we left Mr. Tonderbeg behind, left him full of the inward rage which
boils up when envy and decorum are run together in our hearts. There was
nothing the matter with him, understand. I mean, there was nothing one
could do for him. He was one of those bland human organisms who simply
fly right off the handle when they encounter a foreign morality. It's an
ethnical problem, I suppose. Why do I tell you of this Tonderbeg?
Irrelevant? Well, but he wouldn't have been, if I had carried out the
momentous scheme I had in mind. I thought you would have grasped that.
And I sometimes wonder whether his respectable mind had not elucidated
some inkling of this from a word perhaps overheard as he passed the
captain's door, on the voyage home, and nursed a grievance against fate
for depriving him of that piquant experience which I had had in store
for him!
"And when we had climbed into the grubby little hired hack, a very
different vehicle from Mr. Kinaitsky's patrician affair, and the die
seemed definitely cast, I found myself recalling again and again a
remark which old Jack Evans had made his own. 'A man's a damn fool to
bother with a gel at all, unless he's going to marry her!' The ripe
fruit of his experience in the world! I had agreed with him, too. I
recalled his short, stout, unromantic figure standing in an
authoritative attitude with his hand on the rail, looking across the
blue glitter of the Mediterranean, seeing nothing of it, dreaming of
that semi-detached affair in Threxford which contained the angel child
and her desiccated mother. It is easy enough and indicative of wisdom to
agree in such cases. But I would remind you that I had no such dream of
the future in _my_ head as I sat beside this foreign girl and drove
along the _Via Egnatia_ to meet Captain Macedoine's daughter once more.
With more experience of the world of sentiment I might possibly have
gone so far as to envisage the probable outcome of the adventure. But
the point is that for all my thirty-five years, I had no such experience
at all. And women are quick as lightning to perceive this. You can bring
them nothing which they prize with such tender solicitude as a mature
and inexperienced heart. Neither callow adolescence nor a smart worldly
knowledge of their own weaknesses is any match for it. And why? Well, I
imagine it is because they feel safe without losing any of the perilous
glamour of love. It gives the fundamental maternal instinct in their
bosoms full scope without embarrassing them with either a puling infant
or a doddery prodigal. It may even play up to a rudimentary desire to be
not merely the agent of an instinct but the inspiration of an
individual. Cleverness in a woman is very often only the objective
aspect of fidelity to an ideal.
"You may imagine I said nothing of this to the girl beside me. Instead I
asked her when she was going to get married, and she said 'By and by.'
When he came, not before. It was obvious that she awaited her destiny
without misgiving and that she was at that stage when women really love
vicariously or not at all. For she suddenly demanded if I was going to
take Artemisia away to England when my ship sailed. We had turned out of
the noisy _Via Egnatia_ and were climbing a steep, narrow street leading
toward the citadel, a street of an extraordinary variety of
architecture, whose houses lunged out over the roadway in coloured
balconies and bellying iron grilles. And the whole barbaric vista led
the eye inexorably upward till it caught the culminating point of a
lofty and slender minaret springing from a clump of cypresses and
glittering white in the morning sun. The street itself was still in cool
shadow, and at the doors, kneeling upon the fantastic little _paves_ of
mosaic, or rubbing pieces of polished brass, were bare-footed women with
picturesque dresses and formidable ankles.
"Yes, she wanted to know, but I discovered just then that a man may
work himself up to a certain high resolution without feeling either
proud or happy. One seems to go into great affairs in a kind of
preoccupied daze. It is possible the Latin, the Celt, and the Slav have
the power to visualize themselves objectively when they assume an heroic
character. We are singularly deficient in this respect, I observe. No
Englishman is a hero to himself. And a merciless analyst might go so far
as to say that my entire behaviour was no more estimable than M.
Kinaitsky's, that I had but one selfish motive, which was to protect
myself from a woman's contempt. Viewed at a distance, I believe there
was more in me than that. There is a radiant glow about it all, for me,
which convinces that for once I had laid hold of the real thing. A
magnificent memory! It is something, I submit, to cherish in one's heart
even a solitary episode untarnished by any ignoble shame.
"'You shall see, my dear,' I said, enigmatically, and then the carriage
stopped with a jerk and she appeared in a suddenly opened doorway,
bursting out, as it were, holding herself back with her hands on the
posts and devouring me with a look of extraordinary questing delight. It
was as though she wished to divine the very roots of my emotions. I sat
there, a tongue-tied fool, until Pollyni pushed me gently. Why didn't I
get out? So I got out and stood before her.
"She was changed. I suppose I ought to have had the wit to expect that,
but the fact remains that my first feeling was astonishment. She stood a
foot or so above me on the doorstep, and this vantage, together with a
species of gravity in her demeanour, conveyed an impression of tall
aloofness. As she stood there, composed and curious, in a loose blue
gown and her hair spread around her shoulders, the fine pale olive of
her forearms emerging and her fingers lightly laced, one thought of
vestal virgins, priestesses of obscure cults, and of the women who
figure in the fantastic stories of the Middle Ages. She was changed, and
the difficult element in the case was that she seemed to have changed
for the better. And suddenly the old familiar derisive smile broke, the
white teeth drew in the red lower lip, and she put her hand on my
shoulder. 'Come in,' she said in a low voice. 'I never really believed
you would come at all! And, Polly dear,' she added to the girl in the
carriage, 'won't you come up later and we'll go out--you know----' and
she waved her hand upward.
"'I'll come,' said Miss Sarafov with decision, and spoke rapidly to the
driver, who turned his horses round and began the descent to the _Via
Egnatia_.
"'So you have come at last,' said Captain Macedoine's daughter, as we
reached a small room opening on a balcony above. There was another small
room behind and this seemed to be the extent of her domain.
"'Yes,' I said, 'and now I am here, tell me what you think of it all.'
"'Think of what?' she demanded, sitting down near me.
"'Well,' I replied, 'of our relations chiefly. What am I supposed to be?
What do you want of me? You see,' I went on, slowly, 'I have thought a
great deal about you ever since you called me to London. A great deal, I
assure you. But I am not a very courageous person, my dear, and I am
afraid of my thoughts running away from me. I should not like you to
think me a fool, you know.'
"'I should never do that,' she remarked in a low murmur. 'You are my
true friend, I know.'
"'And what is a true friend to do for a girl in your position?' I asked,
bluntly, looking round the tiny chamber with its red and white tiled
floor and octagonal tables. She looked at me for a moment and then out
of the window, and sighed.
"'Aren't you happy here?' I asked. She continued to look out of the
window while she answered me.
"'Do you want me to be quite plain?' she enquired. 'Well, then, I will
tell you that except this,' and she made a gesture indicating her
surroundings, 'there is nothing for me to do. If I leave here where
shall I go? This is a funny place, I can tell you. And this won't last
forever, either, even if I wanted it to.'
"'But why can't you go and look after your father?' I asked, helplessly.
"'Because I told him a lot of lies about being married,' she said,
sharply, 'and I would rather die than tell him I'm somebody's keep.'
"'You needn't have said that,' I said, unsteadily, 'and you needn't tell
him anything of the sort. Tell him just whatever you please and I will
back you up and make it the truth.'
"'What makes you say I needn't have said it?' she asked, looking full at
me. 'You asked, didn't you?'
"'Well, it hurt me for one thing,' I told her, 'and for another, being
bitter won't help matters. Do you suppose I haven't a pretty good idea
of your situation here? And if I hadn't had any intention of helping
you, why should I have come? I promised you I would always be your
friend, because I had never met any one so forlorn. And I will keep that
promise to the limit. And now,' I added, 'suppose I told you what
happened last night.'
"She sat perfectly still, watching me while I recounted my singular
adventure with M. Kinaitsky. It was only when I mentioned what he had
said of her being quite free to dispose of herself that she gave a
quick, sarcastic shrug.
"'I know,' she said. 'So he told me when he got married. But this is a
funny place, I can tell you. You think I can walk out of this house and
do what I like, get a job, rent a house? I can't. He knows well enough
I'm stuck here unless I go to the _Omphale_ or the _Ottoman House_, or
one of those horrible places. And then,' she added, 'it wouldn't be long
before I'd be sitting in the _Odeon_ half the night and wishing I was
dead.'
"'You know,' I said, severely, 'that if you had the slightest intention
of doing anything of the sort you wouldn't breathe a word of it to me of
all people.'
"For a moment she held out, smirking a little.
"'You fancy yourself,' she said, quoting a by-gone London phrase.
"'To that extent,' I insisted. 'What do you suppose I came up here for?
Why did I wander all over Saloniki last night trying to find you? To
hear you say things like that? What do you suppose I am made of?
Listen!'
"I don't suppose men often tell a woman the things I told her then, but
it was imperative that I should clear away the difficulties between us.
I had to convince her that I was not to be humbugged by her fatal
inherited proclivity for a grandiose emotional role, a proclivity for
playing up to some mysterious imaginary being which she labelled herself
and strove to erect in the mind of her protagonist. It wouldn't do.
There was something numbing in the spectacle of her attempt to present
herself as already a painted shadow in the purlieus of a Levantine city.
In the long blue dressing gown, against a lemon-tinted stone wall, the
morning sun irradiating the exquisite, exotic face, she had an adult
air, so to speak, an air of lovely maturity and grave virtue. I would
say she looked much more like a saint than a sinner, if I could reach
any satisfactory conclusions as to the nature of a saint. I talked, as
they say, straight, and the culmination of my invective was a blunt
statement about her intelligence.
"'You aren't clever enough to be as bad as you try to make out,' I said,
and she looked down at her hands.
"'All the same,' she remarked almost to herself, 'you are taking an
awful risk in talking to me like this. How do you know I shouldn't
go--go to pot altogether, later on? I'm thinking of you, you know,' she
added.
"'There you go again!' I exclaimed. She put up her hand as a token of
surrender, and there came into her voice that unforgettably alluring
timbre which, as I told you before, evoked mysterious memories and
invested her with an extraordinary quality which one might almost
describe as spiritual iridescence, a glamour of sybillant charm and
delicious abandon."
* * * * *
"And there, you know," said Mr. Spenlove in a low tone, "the story ought
to finish. That's where, when I recall the whole history of Captain
Macedoine's daughter, I should like it to finish--on a final note of a
supreme memory of that day. I would have had it forever wrapped in the
gracious radiance of romance. Which, I suppose, is more than is granted
to any of us. So, though it would not do for me to break the silence in
which one buries the fragrant bodies of dead moments, there is something
more to tell. Of M. Nikitos, for example, and the reproaches,
courteously worded, of M. Kinaitsky....
"We went for what in England we would call a picnic. Pollyni came back
about ten, in a fresh carriage whose driver had celebrated a day's
contract by coloured ribbons on the horses' head-stalls and a dark red
rose thrust over one of his own ears, in bizarre contrast to the almost
incredible dilapidation of his clothes. An old woman, whose features
were shrivelled to the colour and consistency of a peeled walnut,
placed between our feet a basket out of which stuck the necks of wine
bottles. I didn't ask where we were going, for I didn't care. I
remember, however, demanding an explanation of the heavy explosions
which had begun somewhere in the neighbourhood, and their telling me it
was a blasting party in a quarry just behind the houses and outside the
city wall. And I recall another incident, when we reached the barrier at
the Great Tower, where a squad of fezzed and moustached guards debated
among themselves the wisdom of permitting us to pass out. Very serious,
not to say uneasy, they seemed, the heavy explosions causing them to
look over their shoulders apprehensively even while they held their
bayonets, long, sharp, unpleasant affairs, across the breasts of the
horses. But finally they let us go, and after a half hour or so of the
boulevards we came to a road leading across the plain to a town a few
miles away. That is a memory, too--the wide plain of pale saffron earth,
the dancing blue sea, the turquoise sky piled here and there with
immense snowy billowings of autumn clouds, the girdle of grim and
inaccessible peaks, and the compact little town of white houses buried
in a circular plaque of foliage in the middle distance. And then at the
roadside, squatting on their haunches with their rifles between their
knees, very dusty and enigmatic, lines of soldiers on the march. I
remember it as one remembers an unusual dream, a vague blur behind the
sharper memories that intervene.
"And out of the mists of impressions came the fact that we were going to
this toy town in the middle distance to visit Pollyni's uncle, a
gentleman who had been to America also, and having dug trenches for
drains and conduits in New York City for a year or two, had returned and
bought the principal cafe in the village. There was a moment when the
place lost the qualities of a water-colour painting and began to assume
the aspects of reality, when the homogeneous colouring of the land
became broken up into tobacco fields and vineyards and vegetable
patches, with an occasional pony walking round a mediaeval contraption
which brought minute buckets of water up from a well and trickled them
into a wooden sluice. And these in turn gave place to a sketchy and
winding earthen road which twisted among shabby houses with forlorn
sheds in which tobacco leaves hung drying on poles, and fowls pecked in
a disillusioned fashion while they meditated upon the formidable problem
of existence. And then we passed houses standing aloof and forbidding,
shut up, apparently uninhabited, houses which had quite simply tumbled
down for lack of support, houses with the front door upstairs, and
houses without any doors at all as far as one could see. We passed them
and our driver cracked his whip with great energy, the horses stumbled
against big stones or into rain gullies, an occasional human stared
woodenly at us; and suddenly we came round an intricate curve of the
street and we were in the little square of the village, a square
canopied by an immense tree and overhanging eaves. In the centre stood a
worn old well-curb where bare-legged girls fished up dripping petroleum
cans and staggered across to open doors, most of the water running
unregarded through a hole in the bottom. If you could call it a square,
when it had six or seven irregular sides, with the streets running into
it in a furtively tangential fashion and the corners of it cool and dark
even at noon-tide under that patriarchal tree which had been planted by
a patriarch, no doubt, while he was digging the well. This was the end
of our journey, where we got out, and the carriage rumbled away into the
green gloom beyond to some convenient stable, while we were welcomed by
a gentleman with a soft voice and very loud western clothing like that
affected by race-track folk, who stood in front of an extremely vacant
looking cafe. He had a watch-chain with massive gold links and an
enormous obsolete gold coin depending from his coat lapel. His boots
were shiny and globular of toe, and I gathered, as the day wore on, that
he represented Occidental Prosperity in that simple community and was
charitably excused from such glaring solecisms on that ground. They
found no fault with him for having an adventurous spirit which had
carried him to the Country of the Mad beyond the sea, for he had shown
his ultimate wisdom by coming back to live in a civilized part of the
world. In fact, by the way they drifted in during the afternoon and sat
at adjacent tables while he held forth bilingually upon his experiences
in a Hoboken sewer, it was evident that in addition to being a stout
burgess of the township, he was a species of Sinbad to them, with
preposterous but intriguing stories of subterranean cities where vast
and brilliant chariots roared through interminable passages; of
heaven-scaling towers where myriads fought for silks and jewels, for
gold and silver, for purple and fine linen; of streets above which
insane railway trains hurtled and shrieked and groaned as they carried
the demented inhabitants on endless journeys to nowhere in particular
for no ascertainable reasons. For mind you, they displayed no desire
whatever to emulate the daring feats of those who had gone to America.
They sat there for a time, smoking _narghilehs_ or cigarettes, looking
thoughtfully at the floor between their outlandish shoes, and then
drifted away to attend, it is to be presumed, to various affairs. I
doubt whether my confirmation of these improbabilities was of much avail
in convincing them that he was not simply exercising the ancient rights
of the teller of tales, and striving to terrify them with stories of
genii in bottles and carpets that flew through the air. And he certainly
had no intention of going back. He had 'enough mon' now,' he remarked,
'and who but a lunatic would ever venture into such a pandemonium save
for the purpose of getting 'mon'.' The bare idea of living permanently
in that country and exposing one's soul to the destructive action of
their peculiar political ideas had never entered his head. They had
called him 'a crazy mutt' because, forsooth, he had quit when his belt
was sufficiently loaded with 'mon'. Now why should they do that? Why
should he go on living in hell when he had the price of paradise
strapped about his middle? It was a baffling problem. Yet they did it.
Even now, as he spoke, out there across the world, millions of people on
an island the size of Ipsilon or even smaller than Naxos, were rushing
to and fro like maniacs. For of course he was under the impression that
Manhattan, with the adjacent coast beyond the river, was all there was
of America. For all he knew the subway ran to San Francisco and New
Orleans was a mile or two below Staten Island. Listening to him, it was
perfectly easy to visualize the growth of ancient tales of foreign
parts. When I think of him nowadays, and observe the noise and
chaffering of political people who are vociferously claiming for such as
he what they call self-determination or what in those illiterate days
was known as autonomy, I am constrained to a great amazement. We shall
see some strange signs and portents later, if I am not in error.
"For if there is one thing more than another which one gets from this
old land, it is the conviction that it will not cease to be old because
a few zealots march round it blowing the trumpets of a new and
incomprehensible thing called Liberty. It is an amiable but disastrous
illusion on the part of the western nations that they have created a
monopoly in freedom and truth and the right conduct of life. As I have
adumbrated to you more than once, I am not so sure of all this. The
hoarse, guttural voice of Gruenbaum, whom the high priests of Liberty set
against a wall the other day and shot dead, comes back to me across the
years. 'An illusion, founded on a misconception.' Well, I wouldn't call
that an entirely true definition of democracy as we in the west
understand it. But if you took this late resident of Hoboken, now safely
restored to his traditional environment, I should certainly say that
your wonderful democracy was of no more use to him than some fabulously
expensive and delicate scientific instrument, or the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, or the Elgin marbles would be. The trouble is, you see, that so
many of us in the world, inarticulate for the most part, don't want your
progress, your tremendous journeys through the air, your new religions,
or your improved breakfast foods. And we could endure even such a war as
is going on now, if we only had peace in our hearts. For peace is not a
merely negative thing, the absence of strife. It is something in itself,
something you could definitely discern in the atmosphere of that
forgotten village of the plain, under that patriarchal tree, audible in
the clucking of the fowls under one's feet, and in the gurgle of the
water the girls hauled up from the dank darkness of the old well. I
recall one moment, after our meal in the late afternoon, as we sat on
the little balcony above the cafe, smoking cigarettes and drinking
coffee and mastic. A drowsy stillness had come over the place, as though
it had been secretly enchanted. Over the way an old gentleman reposed in
a chair outside his shop, asleep, a yellow cat in his arms. On the curb
of the well a young girl sat swinging one leg as she peered down
thoughtfully into the water. A pigeon cooed in the cot under the eaves
near by. There was a low murmur of conversation from a neighbouring room
where Pollyni was talking to her aunt, a large shy person, preoccupied
with household cares. And gradually I seemed to lose my grip of reality
altogether and passed into a kind of passionless ecstasy of existence,
where everything which puzzles us in ordinary life presented a perfectly
simple and amiable solution. One of the commonplaces of enchantment, I
suppose. I became aware of Artemisia saying dreamily: 'That was a loud
one. I shouldn't have thought we could hear them over here.' And I
nodded, remembering a distant and heavy detonation. It was slowly
dawning on my mind as I sat and smoked and murmured, that it was really
quite impossible for the quarry-charges to be heard so far. 'But what
could it be?' she asked, rousing. 'A gun perhaps. Sometimes ships come
from the Bosphorus and fired shots in the Gulf. A long way off, of
course. Perhaps a ship had come.' I told her what her father had said
the night before, that a war might come soon. She nodded and was silent
a moment before saying: 'I've heard that. Mrs. Sarafov said it might and
she was sorry because nobody was ever any better off. They fight because
the taxes are so heavy, and after the war the taxes are worse than ever,
to pay for the war. She told me how the soldiers came home to Sofia
after winning a war with the next country--I forget which--and there was
a grand triumphal march through the streets, and then the soldiers
discovered there was nothing for them to eat and they broke loose.
Everybody locked themselves up in their houses while the shooting went
on in the streets.'
"'I believe,' I said, 'your father stands to make a lot of money out of
this trouble when it comes.'
"She turned quickly toward me but without taking her arms from the ledge
of the balcony, pressing her adorable chin against her arm.
"'I know this,' she said steadily, 'to-day has made it impossible to go
back to my father. I don't mean for the reason that I mentioned this
morning. Another reason.' And she sighed.
"'What is that reason?' I asked gently.
"'I'm a very unfortunate girl,' she muttered in a hoarse whisper, still
looking steadily at me over her arm. 'I want to tell you so many things,
and I can't, I can't.'
"'But tell me the reason,' I persisted.
"'Oh you must know ... I must get clear of the past--and the present. I
must not tell you the things I know. Let me alone ... and perhaps in
England I shall forget.'
"And after that, of course, nothing could befall us save a silence, in
which we endeavoured to adjust ourselves to the new emotion. For, mind
you, I believe sometimes it would have worked out. She was a woman, and
I believe that she would have conquered her destiny if she had gotten
her chance.... No matter--a bald statement of belief gets us nowhere. So
I shall remember her looking at me in her enchanting fashion over her
arm, a light in her eyes like a light in the darkness at sea, flashing,
and flashing and going out....
"And it was after this silence had endured for a while that our
attention was drawn from our own thoughts by a strange commotion. A
number of the villagers suddenly appeared from round the corner of the
street where we had come, preceding a carriage which moved slowly, being
hampered by the people who pressed close to it all round. As if by magic
the people of the houses opening upon the little square appeared at the
doors and joined the crowd. And then, as the carriage arrived beneath
us, it halted, and the horses looked round toward the well, and we saw
on the seat of the carriage a man in some military uniform, a captain I
imagine, lying diagonally across the vehicle, a handkerchief soaked in
blood about his throat, a gash near one eye, and evidently a wound of
some sort in the arm, for his hand, which pressed against the cushion,
seemed to have adhered to it with the blood running down the sleeve.
The man's dark features had grown livid and his head lolled back with
closed eyes and sagging mouth. And then Pollyni came in quickly to fetch
us down, and we went.
"Our host, who stood by the carriage bareheaded and looking about him
first toward one speaker and then another, gathering the scattered
details of the story, had already sent a man away with a message, and he
turned and came into the cafe, scratching his head and looking extremely
serious. He said the officer was the son of his landlord, who lived on
an estate at the far end of the town on the Seres Road. There had been a
riot in the Israelite Quarter, the revolutionists had attacked a squad
of soldiers going up to the garrison to change guard, and the military
in clearing the streets had suffered some losses. The wounded man had
been dragged from his horse and nearly killed before his men could
rescue him. It was terrible for the old people. He had sent a messenger
to prepare them. They would send for a doctor. Everything in Saloniki
was in a bad way. Just as the carriage was well out of the city they
heard a terrific explosion near the port, where the railway station was.
Troops were already leaving for Monastir. And in reply to the question
as to what we had better do, he eyed us reflectively and said perhaps
we'd better beat it back as quick as we could. He'd send for our
carriage at once, if we liked. It was obvious that while he figured on
handling the situation with credit and possibly profit, he had no desire
to be hampered by our presence. And it was certainly my own idea, too,
to get back. That 'explosion near the port' worried me a good deal. If
the _Manola_ were affected it would be necessary for me to be on hand.
"'This settles it,' I said in a low tone as we waited for the carriage.
'You must come with me. On the _Manola_ you will be safe.' In those
days, of course, even the shabby old Red Ensign was an inviolable
sanctuary. She nodded without speaking. Indeed she did not speak for
some time after we had quitted the tortuous streets of the village and
were entering upon the open plain, merely regarding me in an earnest
abstracted fashion, so that I was moved to ask the reason. For she had
the air of one pondering upon a course of action already decided, trying
to see where it would lead.
"'I was thinking,' she said, 'that it is funny you should be here, after
all this time, and free to do--what you are doing. Most men, you
know....' and she stopped.
"'Most men what?' I demanded.
"'Oh, there's generally someone they like at home, even if they aren't
married. You aren't, are you?'
"It wasn't a rude or a cruel question as she put it to me. It was, on
the other hand, shockingly pathetic, and humble. It registered the
frightful defencelessness of her position at last. It went to my heart.
It moved me so profoundly that I could think of nothing adequate to
reply, and she stared into my eyes in the gathering evening twilight,
her own eyes extremely bright and feverish, like distant storm signals.
"'Why torture yourself like this?' I asked at length. 'I happen to be
that very common person, a man without ties.'
"'I'm not sure that that would be a recommendation to most girls,' she
reflected, audibly, 'because they think people without ties aren't
likely to contract any. But that isn't what I meant. When I was on the
_Manola_, coming out to Ipsilon, I got it fixed in my head you were a
widower. You know,' she went on, 'you never did talk about yourself,
always about me; and I wondered and wondered and finally decided that
you'd had a loss and didn't want to talk about it. And that made me
sorry for you. And then you remember, up on the cliff you made me
promise to let you help me, and you seemed so _experienced_ ... well,
when I was at that school you know, and we used to talk in the
dormitory about the sort of men we wanted to marry, I used to say--'a
widower, because.' And once a big lump of a girl who was always passing
exams said: 'you mean because he has lived with a woman before,' and I
said, 'a man didn't have to be married for that.' It got to the
mistresses' ears and I was nearly expelled.'
"She stopped, and I said 'Go on!'
"'Oh, I'll go on,' she said with a laugh, looking up at Pollyni, who was
sitting beside the driver and explaining something involving a great
deal of gesture. 'I can't say I was ever happy at school, but at any
rate I must have done pretty well, because I was always sorry to go
away.'
"'And where did you go?' I enquired.
"'Sometimes my father had a house at the seaside, sometimes in the
country. He would have a yacht, with a party of people who were all
paying guests, of course. Or he would take a moor and have people down.
And again he would have a place in London.'
"'But do you mean to say your father fetched you home to spend your
holidays among strangers?' I asked. 'I don't quite understand your
father's attitude toward you.'
"'I wish I knew myself,' she muttered, looking at her foot. 'You know,'
she went on, 'we have always kept up a sort of arrangement in which he
can't live without me and I am a passionately devoted daughter. I
wouldn't tell any one else this,' she interpolated hurriedly in a
whisper, 'but the fact is, I am not a passionately devoted daughter. I
used to think I was. All the girls at school used to rave about their
parents, so I raved about mine. Girls are fools,' she remarked,
abruptly.
"'In what way--raving?' I asked.
"'Well,' she said, 'they go on and on, meaning no harm, I suppose. You
know we used to tell each other we had the most wonderful sweethearts.
One girl had a boy in New Zealand. Another was secretly engaged to a man
who was in China. All very far away! So I wasn't to be done, and I
bragged about a lover in Siberia. When they wanted to know about him I
made up a long story. I said he was a Russian and I had met him in
London and he'd gone back to Russia and got arrested and sent to
Siberia. It was as true as their yarns, I dare say. And it's a fact I
used to imagine myself in love with a tall fair man with a yellow beard.
There was a Russian at father's house in Pimlico once, but he was an old
cuckoo from the Consulate. I didn't like him.'
"'I don't think, my dear,' I said, 'that I want to know any more about
it. I believe I understand.'
"'Yes,' she answered. 'I believe you do. I believed you would understand
sooner or later, when I sent for you in London. I was a beast, then, but
I don't regret it after all. I feel I could be anything to you, and
you'd understand. Oh!' she muttered, clinging to me for a moment and
staring across to where the sun, already set beyond the purple
mountains, sent up broad bars of gold and crimson, reflected in the calm
waters of the Gulf. 'Oh! How I have treated you!' and she sank into a
silence of passionate regret that lasted until the darkness enfolded us
and we had entered the long desolate _faubourg_."
Mr. Spenlove stopped and rose from his seat on his little camp-stool.
Walking to and fro in front of the recumbent forms of his brother
officers, his hands in his pockets, his head on his breast, he seemed
once again to have forgotten them. And they, perceiving by this time the
impropriety of mundane interruptions at such a moment, awaited his
resumption in silence.
"After all," he remarked, suddenly stopping and staring down at the
deck, "I lost her. I have said to you, at the beginning, that if her
story means anything it means that love was nothing, and I had this in
mind, for I lost her. And of what avail, I ask you, is an emotion so
independent of our individual destinies that it can culminate at the
very moment of disaster? It may be, of course, that what we call love
is only the bright shadow on earth of some ulterior celestial passion;
but life is too short and too unsatisfactory for one to cultivate such
an exalted faith. And we crave a little logic of Fate when we suffer.
If, for example, the crazy Nikitos, true to his word, had suddenly
appeared before us in that narrow street off the _Via Egnatia_, and
destroyed her as many were destroyed that day, one could submit as to a
sinister but tangible manifestation of human folly. But to have happened
as it did ... there was no sense in it. It was as though that girl, who
had been from her birth a waif, the unhappy sport of spurious emotions,
had angered Fate by stumbling upon something genuine after all, and was
dismissed into the darkness in a moment of irascible petulance. And I
suppose that I, if a man had any inherited right to expect that the law
of compensation should be put in operation in his favour, should feel a
grievance. But as I have remarked more than once, my attempts to be
anything more than a super in the play have not been a shining success.
So we can leave that out. There is no need to lose faith in Compensation
because it is somewhat delayed....
"But even from the standpoint of a detached and isolated event, there
was nothing about it that a rational being could lay hold of for
comfort. It was just one blind evil chance out of a million possible
ones. I did not even see it happen. I was doing something which has no
connection with my past or following existence--watching an Ottoman
soldier, probably an Anatolian, crumple up and expire in the gutter of
the _Via Egnatia_. I was watching with the close attention one
inevitably bestows upon one's first violent death--as a matter of fact,
I had never seen any one die, even in bed--and remaining securely wedged
in a doorway a few yards up the street. I remember him as he paused for
an instant in a sort of ecstasy, his face turned up toward the harsh
bright glare of a naked electric bulb that hung from a trolley pole, his
body momentarily poised as though defying his destiny. And then he
twisted about in an extraordinarily complicated manner and fell, all of
a piece, while a number of extremely active persons tore past him
without any sound save a popping noise far down the street. That would
be near the market, I reflected in my doorway. And as we should have to
go that way in order to reach the ship, it struck me that it would be my
duty to find another route. And from that I went on to visualize the
consternation of my friend Jack, when I turned up with the astonishing
_entourage_ of two women and a suitcase, and informed him of my
determination. I had a tremendous desire to know, beforehand, just what
he would do and say. He would stand by an old friend of course. But how?
And while I reflected in my doorway and listened to the popping, which
went on with varying intensity, still more figures sped past the end of
my street. I recalled the perplexing fact that as we had driven into the
town past the barrier, there had been no one on guard. I learned later
that, with unbelievable stupidity, the authorities had sent the army out
toward Monastir and had left the city with a mere handful of soldiers to
deal with the revolutionaries. It was this fact, I suppose, of finding
nobody on guard, which had frightened our driver, and no sooner had we
alighted before the doorway in that steep, narrow street off the _Via
Egnatia_ than he had demanded his fare and galloped away up hill and out
of sight. 'You'll have to get another carriage,' Pollyni had told me in
an anxious voice. 'You'll find one down near the big church.' The
arrangement was that they would be ready by the time I returned.
"But I had got no further than the corner when the first shots had been
fired, and while I hesitated, a couple of soldiers had hurried along,
looking back at every other stride, until suddenly one of them had been
hit. And I had watched him die. I could still see him, an inert heap in
the gutter. And while I debated what I was to do to get out of this
unforeseen difficulty, the popping became a series of sharp, definite,
staccato cracks, and a squad of soldiers, armed with short, blunt
rifles, shuffled sideways into view. There was a species of discipline
in their movements, for they deployed out over the road and dropped on
one knee, while one of them stepped briskly to the curb and spoke in a
harsh, authoritative tone to some invisible laggard. He came into view
very slowly, dragging one leg, and halted, in the very middle of the
street, his rifle pointing up hill, his face turned toward their
assailants, his hand to his breast fumbling for cartridges. Now and
again he lurched as though wounded, but he never relaxed his defiant
glare. His hand worked quickly over the breech and he seemed about to
swing his weapon round when he must have been hit again, for he toppled
over and the thing went off with a flash and roar."
Mr. Spenlove relinquished his leisurely pacing to and fro under the
awning and sat down sideways on his camp-stool to roll and light a
cigarette. His reflections while this was accomplished remained
undisturbed, and his attitude conveyed an impression that he was
listening with considerable bitterness to some imaginary reproaches from
which he suddenly attempted to defend himself.
"Not so easy," he muttered, flicking the match into the scupper. "Not so
easy! Suppose I had suddenly broken out of that doorway and made off up
the street? There is no reasonable grounds for doubt that the officer
who was directing that little squad of disciplined men was the person
who afterward gained the White Tower and held the city barrier and the
sea-front until fresh troops arrived to overpower the apostles of
liberty. Suppose, I say, I had suddenly scared him by bolting up that
narrow street? No, not so easy. And yet it wasn't easy, either, to
remain even as long as I did. For at a word from him the kneeling men
raised their rifles and fired once, twice--a crescendo of crashes
reverberating from the buildings opposite. And then they all ran
diagonally across the street into the shadows, and for a space there was
silence.
"And even then," went on Mr. Spenlove, "I did not run. Not from courage,
you understand, but fear. I tip-toed out of my doorway and walked
quickly up the street without making any noise. I was preoccupied with
the question of getting back to the ship. We should have to walk. I
tried to lay out the city in my mind. If we walked upward say, and
struck a street going westward and parallel with the _Via Egnatia_, we
might eventually strike another thoroughfare running down to the port. I
was thinking this out as I hurried. I considered the wisdom of remaining
indoors until the morning, and I believe now that is what I would have
done eventually, anyhow. I looked back several times. The electric
globe, hanging high, had gone out or been put out, and there were no
lights in any of the houses. I imagined the inmates sitting silently
behind their shutters, listening and waiting for a renewal of the
uproar. You must understand that I was experiencing nothing more than a
very natural exaltation of nerves, with an undertow of anxiety for the
ship. I pictured Jack in a great state, wondering where I was, a state
probably complicated by the scandalized Tonderbeg's abashed revelations.
As Jack grew older, he grew fond of saying there was no fool like an old
fool, forgetting that there is another kind, the middle-aged fool, who
has the distinction of comprehending and enjoying his folly. Of course,
Tonderbeg would get himself snubbed, and Jack would retire to his cabin
to muse upon the serious news. So I reflected as I hurried up that dark
street toward a faint ray of light which indicated the door of her
house. I had no forebodings up to this moment; only speculations. And
even when that light was darkened for an instant as someone stood in the
doorway, and I heard Pollyni's voice calling hoarsely to know who I was,
I had no premonition. The next moment her high-heeled shoes clicked on
the sidewalk as she ran toward me, and when she came up to me she
grasped me and stared at me in a profoundly mysterious fashion. I will
not say to you what I now believe lay at the back of that girl's mind.
You would say I had lost my faith in humanity, but you would be
mistaken. You would be forgetting her descent from the Pandour hordes
who came galloping up out of the Caucasus so many centuries ago. You
would be forgetting that to those people neither 'life, liberty, nor the
pursuit of happiness' are particularly sacred things, or things to be
achieved in a spirit of altruistic piety. But I can tell you it was
because of that enigmatic stare of hers that I have emphasized her part
in this story of Captain Macedoine's daughter. You might say she had the
temperament for the leading role in the play.... She said in her hoarse
musical contralto, 'We were ready and we were coming down to meet you.'
"'Well?' I said. She stood in front of me, holding my arms and impeding
my advance.
"'Well!' she repeated, slowly. 'You do not know what has happened,' and
again she regarded me in the way I have described.
"'No,' I said, returning her scrutiny, 'I don't understand what you mean
by what has happened. I have seen a shocking thing down there. They are
fighting in the _Via Egnatia_. Some are dead. We can't go that way, I'm
afraid.'
"Suddenly she dropped her hands from my arms and breathed deeply.
'Come!' she said, and hurried away from me. I had spoken the truth. I
did not understand her, but her demeanour alarmed me. I followed,
watching the silhouette of her body sway as she took her long strides. I
had a fugitive notion that this performance was symbolical of our
emotional existence--our souls pursue one another through a steep
darkness, the victims of unpremeditated suspicions and fears. As she
reached the lighted doorway she swung round and spread out her hands
with a gesture of pity and grief. 'Look!' she said. 'As we came out
someone fired. She was in front. It was not my fault.... You see.'
"While she spoke I endeavoured to collect my forces. I looked down. I
had a vivid impression of emerging from a place of imprisonment, a place
of great noise and activity and warm, pleasant excitement, and of seeing
before me a cold gray plain extending into the distance. And over this
plain, I reflected, I was to travel, alone. I looked down, I say. I
heard the girl beside me murmur hoarsely into my ear, and stoop to lift
the form that lay motionless at our feet.
"'No!' I said, drawing her back. 'This is for me to do. I will carry my
own dead.'"