"And the rest," said Mr. Spenlove in a colourless voice, "is by way of
being an epilogue of detached and vagrant memories. They come to me now
and again, a sad sequence of blurred pictures in which I can see my own
figure in unfamiliar poses. There is the night which I passed in that
house, a night of endless recapitulations and regrets. There was the
moment when I turned from the bed, where the dead girl lay, and found
the other girl, with her extraordinary vitality, close beside me,
scrutinizing me as though I were a problem she found it impossible to
solve. And when I walked through into the other room and sat down beyond
a table on which a tiny oil lamp burned, she advanced into the circle of
light, so that her shadow was gigantic on the wall and ceiling behind
her, and looked across at me. There was a subtle change in her since we
had met in the street outside. She seemed full of an insatiable
curiosity to know my thoughts. And my thoughts just then were not for
any one to know. My thoughts resembled a flock of wild birds which had
been streaming steadily in one direction when a bomb had exploded among
them and sent them swirling and careening in crazy circles. And she did
this more than once. While I sat there in the semi-darkness beyond the
circle of light she came in with some bread and a bottle of wine, and
set a plate and glass beside them on the table, and then, after watching
me for a moment, went away again. There was a faint murmur from below
where a number of women from neighbouring houses were conversing in low
tones with the old Greek woman who seemed to be the _concierge_, and
thither no doubt the girl retired. And once while I drowsed for a spell
I was aware of her as she stepped softly up to me, peered into my face,
and then, as I opened my eyes, withdrew without speaking. Yes, I drowsed
time and again; but toward dawn I grew wakeful and the necessity of
returning to the ship became urgent once more. You will understand, of
course, that it was not a fear of being killed that held me in that
room. I was in a mood up there which rendered me perfectly indifferent
to material risks of that nature. It was rather an illogical and
irresistible instinct to play up to the event. I was intensely aware
that the episode, by reason of its frustrating climax, was already
standing away from me, and I was unable to relinquish my position. I
felt that when I was gone away from that room I would be at the mercy of
a frightful and solitary future. It may sound strange to you, spoken in
cold blood, but that dead girl was nearer to me during my vigil than any
living woman had ever been! I went over everything that had happened
while I sat and watched the light of the three candles flicker over
those exquisite features. And I discovered in the confused tangle of
emotions one bright scarlet thread of gladness that no more harm could
come to her. For mind you, I was wise enough to know the perilous
problems in store for her, even if she had come home with us. I was
under no illusions about either of us. It was the tremendous risks which
had allured me. I have said I believed she would have won out, and I do.
But how? Women win out in all sorts of extraordinary ways. I am not so
sure some of them would not be better in their graves....
"But I went down at last. And the girl Pollyni met me in the corridor
below. She said: 'Are you going on board the ship?' 'Yes,' I answered,
'I am going on board the ship. What else can I do?' She shrugged her
shoulders and looked at the floor. I started to go out. I experienced a
sudden irritable anger.
"'Why do you ask?' I demanded.
"'Well,' she said in a low tone, 'you know her father is sick.'
"'Oh,' I answered, 'I will come ashore again, of course. But just now,
you understand, I must go back. I may be wanted.' And I went out quickly
into the chill air of the dawn.
"And the intense silence of that cold, closed, steep street daunted me.
I felt, as I surveyed those silent and repellent facades, with their
enigmatic shutters, a sensation of extraordinary loneliness and dreary
failure. I envisaged the _Manola_ lying snug and respectable at her
berth in the little harbour, all the dingy details of her stark utility
apparent in the transparent morning air. I saw myself ascending the
gangway, and the startled air of amused surprise on the face of the
night watchman projected abruptly from the gallery. I saw Jack, asleep
in his room, his mouth open, his limbs flung wide, his hairy chest
showing through the open pajamas, a rumbling snore filling the neat
room. And I came to the singular and illogical conviction that if I went
aboard immediately I would regret it. I should carry away with me into
the future a memory of shabby and furtive behaviour. And I did not want
that, I can assure you. I wanted this thing to remain somewhat as I had
experienced it. I felt that I must make the most of it. We grow very
humble in our emotional demands as we grow older, I observe. We who go
to sea especially. One of the inevitable products of our rolling
existence. And I stood, irresolute, in front of the open doorway leading
to the flat above, and Pollyni Sarafov stood there watching me. She came
down.
"'Let me tell you something,' she began. 'I think you ought to go and
see her father. Didn't you say you used to know him in America? Just
think! She was all he had.'
"'What am I to say to him if I go?' I demanded. 'You know very well that
he thinks she is ... eh? How shall I explain when I come in?'
"'Never mind that,' she said, shaking her head. 'You come.'
"And she became extraordinarily light-hearted when I said I would. She
ran in and got her hat and parasol. She came out prinking and clicking
her high-heeled shoes, and she placed her hand as lightly as a feather
upon my arm. Perhaps she really needed my support down that steep,
narrow street, but I read into that delicate gesture a profound moral
significance. And I can tell you another thing," added Mr. Spenlove with
some vehemence. "I found myself regarding the whole sum of human grief
with moody suspicion. I recalled a fine phrase I had once read of 'the
great stream of human tears falling always through the shadows of the
world,' and I dismissed it as fudge. I was half tempted to wonder
whether the world, which had grown out of stage coaches and sailing
ships and Italian opera, had not grown out of grief at the same time.
And by heavens, what has happened during the past two or three years has
only solidified that grisly conviction. We seem to have been born just
in time to see the end of the spiritual world, the final disintegration
of the grand passions of the human soul. Oh, we keep up a certain
pretence from force of habit, but we are being forced to realize that
the philosophers were on the right track when they foretold the
subjugation of man by the instruments of civilization. Or you can say
that the _tempo_ of our modern life is too fast to permit our accepted
notions of the elemental comedy and tragedy of existence to register
with any permanence. The newspaper scribbler talks incessantly of
Armageddon, heroism, patriotism, sacrifice, and so on, and we wait in
vain for our hearts to respond to their invocations. We discover with
surprise that we are as incapable of profound sorrow as of a high
resolve. We are swept on out of sight. We forget, or we die and are
forgotten. We are beginning to wonder now and again whether all our
boasted science and mechanical discoveries are not evil after all,
whether the old monks were such bigoted fools as we have been taught to
believe when they denounced knowledge as a danger to the soul. But we
have very little time in which to reflect. We rush on to fresh
improvements, and we find ourselves less admirable than before.
"And so, as we went down that cold, remorseless street of shuttered
houses, away from the chamber of death, we were silent, but we thought
not at all of death. Perhaps we did at the turning into the _Via
Egnatia_, for the dead soldier was still lying where he had fallen in
the shallow channel that ran just there by an orchard wall. He was lying
on his face, with his hands close to his head, and his pose gave one a
peculiar impression that he was looking with intense curiosity into some
subterranean chamber. His attitude was not at all suggestive of death.
It was quite easy, looking across at him, to imagine him suddenly
leaping to his feet, beckoning us to come and have a peep through his
newly found hole. The soldiers we encountered hurriedly descending the
street from the Citadel and running across to vanish into the White
Tower were much more like dead men, strange to say. Their faces were
pallid with lack of sleep, and they bore the hard-lipped stare of
disciplined men who have suddenly lost faith in their commanders. They
paid no more attention to us than to the stones of the roadway. They ran
past us laden with bread and vegetables, hastily corralled from
friendly houses built about the Citadel, for these were mostly families
with military traditions. One carried on his curved back a newly
slaughtered sheep, the bright red blood dribbling from the gashed
gullets, and the animal's eyes looking back at us with an expression of
intelligent comprehension, as though it were fully aware of the whole
business. In the clear light of early morning there was a good deal of
the automaton about all of us. And as we crossed the road where it
debouched upon the quays and started to walk out of the city by the
deserted barrier, a short and determined-looking person in a
tight-fitting blue tunic looked out of the door of the Tower and eyed us
critically. And I really believe the only reason why he neglected to
tell one of his men to put an experimental bullet into us was the fact
that the girl still had her hand on my arm. And she carried her parasol.
We walked on and presently we were out of sight of the sea and the
Tower. Across the blue sky large companies of billowing white clouds
were gathering from the mouth of the Gulf. Suddenly Miss Sarafov
murmured without taking her eyes from the ground.
"'Was that man dead?'
"Now," said Mr. Spenlove, "you may call me fanciful and overwrought, but
I read into that simple question a secret desire to accustom my mind to
the idea of death as a frequent and common sort of affair. I looked at
her suspiciously and she raised her eyes to mine full of a clear
feminine candour. She may have known that my morose taciturnity came
from a consciousness that she had divined the fundamental flaw in my
emotional equipment and was using it for her own purposes, but she did
not show it. And while I was debating the question with myself, I heard
her add, in a shy, delicate tone, 'There is a little garden just here,
on the water.'
"And from that moment I let her have her way and followed her lead. We
crossed the street. I heard her say it was too early to go to the _Rue
Paleologue_, which might be true, but struck me as irrelevant. And then
my attention was drawn to a high square house standing in a dusty yard
and decorated with a long board bearing the words _Ecole Universelle_.
"'I was at school there before we went to America,' Miss Saratov
remarked, poking at the place with her parasol. 'It was a good school
then, very solid instruction,' she added, 'but now it isn't any good.'
"'Is the instruction no longer sufficiently solid?' I asked.
"'The mistresses are all progressives,' she returned. 'Here is the
little garden,' and we came out upon a small place of grass and shrubs,
flanked by a pair of _kiosques_ joined by a wooden balustrade. It was
deserted, as one might expect at that hour; but Miss Sarafov remarked
that we might have coffee and rusks if I liked, and walked across the
sward to a door in a neighbouring house. I went into one of the
_kiosques_ and sat facing the calm waters of the Gulf. Facing something
else, too, which was anything but calm. For I was unable to rid myself
of a fear that when this episode was completed I should be in a very
difficult position. I should be like a man who had been struggling in
the waves, only to find himself suddenly flung up high and dry upon a
desolate and inhospitable shore, where he would in all probability
perish of privation. And then, if you like to carry the parable a little
further, this man becomes aware of a siren calling him back into the
watery tumult.... And you know, I doubted my ability to manage the
situation if I were to go back. One needs a special education, or let us
say, temperament, to deal successfully with sirens. And as Miss Sarafov
came into the _kiosque_ and sat down beside me, I felt the immediate
necessity of making my position clear. I began at once to tell her that
the events of the previous day had changed everything. I should in all
probability never come to Saloniki again. And while I felt it my duty
to see Captain Macedoine and also to return Miss Sarafov herself to her
mother, I should then go back to the ship for good.
"'And I shall never see you again,' she exclaimed, looking out across
the Gulf, in a kind of magical abstraction.
"'A small privation,' I murmured. She rose suddenly and stood by the
door of the _kiosque_, her sturdy and extraordinarily vital figure
silhouetted against the shining water.
"'Not so small,' she muttered in her hoarse contralto, 'not so small,
after what has happened.'
"'What do you want, Miss Sarafov?' I asked, sharply. 'You seem to accuse
me of a failure in friendship.'
"'What do I want?' she echoed, without turning round. 'Why do you
suppose I wanted Artemisia to send for you and go to England? Because
she was going to take me, too.'
"'Take you, too?' I said, feebly.
"'Sure!' she shrilled, turning round, 'to live with her. She hadn't a
friend in the world to turn to and she'd have gone crazy living alone in
England while you were at sea. We had it fixed up. And now it is all
over, and I have to stay here and live through--what? I don't know.'
"'But I understood Captain Macedoine to hint that you were his
favourite,' I observed.
"'That's his way of talking. Mother thinks he's wonderful. Of course, if
his investments went up, as they might if there was a revolution, he
would be pretty rich. But just now his business doesn't bring in much.
And it was Kinaitsky who started him in it. He owes Kinaitsky a lot of
money.'
"'And you think you would like to go to England?' I said. She shrugged
her shoulders, and made a movement of her hand as though casting
something away. 'No use talking about it,' she returned, gruffly. I was
silent, and after she had watched me for a moment she came over quickly
and sat down beside me again.
"'Pardon,' she whispered, 'but I had so little time. I knew you would go
away and I had to speak. I thought you might not be angry.'
"'I am not,' I said, 'only sorry. You had made a very special place for
yourself in my memory,' I went on. 'I wish you had not disillusioned me.
You were entirely charming. Why should you go and spoil it all? I would
have thought of you always as my friend's friend....'
"She sat in a tense, eager pose looking up into my face, a pose that
suddenly relaxed and she sighed. I did not see it then, in my exalted
mood of idealized emotion; but I don't suppose a woman values any
reputation less than one for altruistic charm. Probably because she is
aware of its inevitably spurious nature. Miss Sarafov sighed, and the
intense vitality of her features was obscured for an instant as by a
shadow. An idea seemed to strike her and she looked intently at me
again.
"'Women don't matter much to you,' she observed, quietly, and fell
silent again.
"And here again," said Mr. Spenlove, "was a picture which comes back to
me now--the scene in that little _kiosque_, a circular chamber crowded
with the brilliant and disturbing reflections of the sunlight on the
surface of the sea, shadow and gleam moving in complex rhythm across our
faces and figures as we sat there, two beings destined to be forever
strangers. She came into view for a little space, and vanished again, a
mysterious, alluring, and magical presence, yet conveying no hint of any
misfortune. She gave the impression of an easy and felicitous balance of
forces, a complex of resilient strength, to which we poor Anglo-Saxons
rarely attain. And sitting in the dancing reflections of the sunlights,
she seemed a veritable emanation of the spirit of enchanted desire. I
see her now, confronting the obscure motives of my behaviour in
good-humoured sadness, while an ancient person in baggy black trousers
and dingy scarlet sash tottered forward with a copper tray bearing tiny
cups and a brass pot with a long handle.
"And in direct sequence, not very clear but clear compared with the
shadowy oblivion that intervened, comes a picture of him whom I have
called more than once a master of illusion. And I suppose he has a right
to the title for he maintained the pose to the end of the chapter. I had
imagined that it would be a painful duty to break the news of his
daughter's death to him. I saw myself offering my condolences and
soothing a father's anguish. I pictured an old man bowed with grief. But
it did not happen that way at all. I forgot that masters of illusion
have no use for facts, not even for such facts as grief or death, until
they have been transmuted into some strange emotional freaks which will
inspire the spectator with awe. And Fate, who is something of an
illusionist herself, plays into the hands of such as he.
"I remember, for instance, sitting heavily in Mrs. Sarafov's front room,
and telling that handsome, self-possessed woman in a few brief words
what had happened to Captain Macedoine's daughter. How a wounded
soldier's rifle, discharged by accident in our direction, had left us
paralyzed and aghast at the inconceivable efficacy and finality of its
achievement. I remember that, and then I remember following her into
Captain Macedoine's house. About nine o'clock, I should say. And Mrs.
Sarafov must have sent a messenger in advance, for Captain Macedoine
already knew what I had to say. We stood in the vestibule near the foot
of the stairs, Mrs. Sarafov whispering that he was being treated by his
doctor with special baths. The doctor came every morning, I was informed
in a respectful tone. And while we stood there, we heard a commotion
upstairs, and a strange procession began to descend the narrow and
shallow steps. I remember turning away hurriedly from a picture on the
wall, a stark, angular composition of muscular male nudes in attitudes
registering classical grief, of the body of Hector being brought back to
the city--and finding Captain Macedoine, supported by a lean man in a
frock coat and by two women, coming down. And perhaps it was the
contemplation of that picture which called to my mind with irresistible
force another picture, seen many years before. It was a picture of vivid
colouring and violently complex action--the Emperor Vitellius coming
down a steep, narrow street with the mob and the soldiery hacking and
yelling and spitting around him, his gross corpulence rolling and
rearing and staggering, the rich robes ripping away from the creases of
sleezy tissue, the bright blood spurting from neck and arms, the eyes
rolling wide, in a naked horror of dissolution, toward the flawless
blue of a Roman sky. And the recollection was not so irrelevant as you
might imagine. Captain Macedoine wore a voluminous bath robe of dark
purple and he wore sandals on his feet. As he descended he rolled and
staggered, and his supporters rolled and staggered to maintain
themselves and him, all this commotion giving the little group the
complicated activity of a crowd of people wrestling with an old man in a
purple robe. And Mrs. Sarafov advanced to assist him, running up several
steps and raising an arm, as though to strike, but with the real
intention of support. I remember, too, the small wayward feet and the
thick, smooth, hairless calves beneath the robe, strange in one so
decrepit. I daresay, you know, he would have been something of that sort
in that part of the world twenty generations earlier. Perhaps there was
something aback of his adumbrations concerning his ancient lineage.
Perhaps he was not simply a ship chandler in a small way, but the
reincarnation of some sinister pro-consul who sat on the terrace of his
marble villa among the distant ranges, and watched with a contemptuous
and intellectual sneer the hordes of peasantry as they trudged into the
cities to sacrifice their daughters to the savage and inexorable
Cabirian deities. I had that fantastic notion as they paused at the
foot of the stair and he moved his head slowly from side to side, the
mouth pursed, the eyes set in a stony, unseeing stare, the bathrobe of
purple towelling slipping from one shoulder. And then they moved forward
again, away from me, into a room sparsely set with French furniture and
dominated by a lofty chandelier still shrouded in its summer muslin, and
the door swung to, leaving me to contemplate the picture in its
tarnished frame of the body of Hector being brought back to Troy.
"And I must have sat there, in a sort of cane lounge, for a long time,
since when we emerged from the doorway, the doctor and I, the _Rue
Paleologue_ was a shadowless glare of thin sunshine. He had come out of
that room with bent head, closing the door absently and advancing toward
the lounge where reposed his hat and stick beside me, when he took
occasion to glance at me. Immediately he became alert and active.
"'You have sustained a shock,' he murmured, counting my pulse.
"'Is that it?' I returned, and he smiled, taking a capsule of white
powder from his wallet and handing it to me. A carafe stood on a table
near by. He poured out a glass of water.
"'Looks like it,' he remarked in excellent colloquial idiom; 'put this
on your tongue and wash it down with some water. Feel better? Come out
into the fresh air. Take a drive with me if you like.'
"'I want to talk to you,' I explained, as I followed him out. He hailed
a man standing by a carriage several doors away and conversing with a
servant.
"'Very nice of you, I'm sure. Step in. Just the day for a
constitutional,' And then, as we started off and the carriage rolled
round the corner out of sight, his mood changed. 'Friend of the family?'
he asked, keenly.
"'You can call me that. Of Miss Macedoine certainly.'
"'Now there was a woman!' he ejaculated, opening an immense cigarette
case, like a bandolier, and offering it to me. 'I admire her very much,
indeed. I was called in about a year ago. But you say you are a friend
of hers. And she's dead. I suppose I shall have to go and attend to it.
Only you know what's going on. This confounded Committee of Liberty and
Progress have carried out a _coup d' etat_ and there'll be very little
liberty of movement until they're squashed. Between ourselves, that is.
Thank the Lord my practice is out here among the Europeans. And it's bad
enough here, I can tell you.'
"'You have lived in England?' I interposed.
"His lean, dark face wrinkled with humour.
"'Well, considering I was casualty surgeon at St. Barnabas Hospital for
nearly three years, I rather think I have. Yes, I took my degrees at
Guys, and I don't mind admitting I wish I was in London now. But I have
an old mother and seven sisters who have never been farther than Volo in
their lives, and so I resign myself.'
"'Greek?' I enquired. He flushed dark red.
"'Scarcely,' he said in a suppressed sort of voice. I won't bother you
with local animosities. We are Spanish Jews. Not very good ones,
perhaps, but we keep to ourselves and manage to keep the wolf from the
door. And now,' he said with a brisk yet courteous movement of his hand
to my arm, 'who the blazes are you, and what do you want to know?'
"I told him succinctly, and he nodded to each fact of importance as he
took it in.
"'Mind you,' I told him, 'I don't defend her behaviour. She shouldn't
have told her father she was married when she wasn't. He might have----'
Doctor Sadura made a gesture of flinging something away impatiently.
"'Oh, pardon me, but it wouldn't have made any difference with that old
humbug.' I looked at him in amazement.
"'I said humbug,' he insisted. 'A thorough old humbug. Do you know what
he's suffering from? Illusions of grandeur, we call it in the
profession. A form of megalomania. Oh, yes, he's got some money, no
doubt, or I shouldn't render him professional services. But he thinks he
owns the whole country clear up to Uskub. Burbles away for hours to me
about his plans for developing the territory. He's got a lot of
concessions that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. What's the
use of concessions when the government's going in and out like a wheezy
old concertina, when the agriculturalists simply wouldn't know what he
was talking about and would come out with long knives and sickles and
slash his developing parties about the legs? Rubbish! Illusions of
grandeur, I tell you. As for the girl, you know her better than I do.
The man who protected her, Kinaitsky, is a very fine chap indeed, but he
isn't the sort of person I'd introduce to my sisters, if you know what I
mean. Distinctly not.'
"'And yet I understand he married a Jewess not long ago,' I said.
"'Yes, very rich. Quite a different matter. Immense tobacco properties.
You see, although he is not an Ottoman, his family have lived under
Ottoman government so long that they are strong supporters of the old
regime. They are like us Jews. They are good business men and they lend
the old Ottoman families money in return for franchises which are very
profitable to people with affiliations in Paris and London, and so
forth. I don't say it's a perfect system,' Doctor Sadura went on, 'but
it suits the country.'
"'Then where does our friend with his illusions of grandeur come in?' I
enquired.
"'Nowhere, unless there was a revolution and a lot of these old estates
came into the market, and the new government found time to think of him.
But it is building on pretty rotten foundations, I can tell you. You
don't suppose he is the first to think of such a thing.'
"'No, there is a gentleman named Nikitos,' I remarked.
"'I dare say there is,' said the doctor, 'but I never heard of him.'
"'He aspired to the hand of Miss Macedoine,' I said, 'and he accompanied
them here from the Island of Ipsilon.'
"The doctor whistled. The carriage stopped at this moment in front of an
imposing residence with gigantic iron gates shutting off a curved drive.
The doctor alighted, turned round, and regarded me with considerable
interest.
"'Well, I'm blowed,' he observed, coolly, and at once attacked the
massive gates. I watched him moving one of them very slowly and edging
through. He was a most stimulating person to be with. Vitality radiated
from him. I have no doubt he was a very successful physician. Whom he
was attending within this opulent home I never knew--perhaps another
case of illusions of grandeur. He came down the drive again quickly,
slipped between the gates, and sprang in beside me. He gave me the
impression of playing an extremely strong game of tennis.
"'Well?' I said, as he slipped his wallet into the pocket in front of
us, and took out his formidable cigarette case. 'Is M. Nikitos suffering
from the same malady as Captain Macedoine?' The doctor made a grimace.
"'I remember that chap,' he said, 'though I don't recall hearing his
name. He acted on behalf of Captain Macedoine. An international
journalist, whatever that may be. We are rather inclined to avoid
journalists of all sorts here, you know. First I thought he had picked
these people up at the Custom House and got himself appointed dragoman.
Then I suspected when I was called in to see the girl that he and the
old man were ... you understand that we doctors get into some queer
_menages_. But aspired to the hand, you say.'
"'Yes, and makes extravagant claims to what he calls purity.'
"'Oh, that's a very common hallucination,' said the doctor. He laughed
gratingly. 'Compared with the people who employ them, you know, they
must in time get to feel they are immaculate. I don't blame them. But
it's an hallucination.'
"Do you explain everything in pathological terms?' I asked.
"'How do you mean?' demanded he.
"'You seem to imagine we are all the victims of some mental disease.'
"'No, not at all. But the higher types of intellectualism appear to me
slightly mad. The Ego,' added Doctor Sadura, 'is a very peculiar animal.
It feeds on strange things like empire-building on a Balkan dung-heap,
and purity, and--oh, all sorts of things.'
"'Go on,' I said, 'you have evidently included me in the list. How would
you describe it?'
"'Well,' he replied, rubbing his nose, 'from what you tell me, I
shouldn't pronounce you in any great danger of anything. We can say you
have been suffering from a faith in an impracticable felicity.' And he
laughed.
"'But that is a condemnation of romance!' I protested. He shrugged his
shoulders.
"'We shall never run short of romance,' he declared. 'The great thing is
to avoid getting mixed up in it or if you do, you mustn't imagine, as
you were about to do, that it can be carried about the world. Of course
I know there is a fatal fascination about the idea. I thought of
something like that myself at one time. A wonderful experience! But it
wouldn't have done.'
"'You don't believe in love then?' I asked, curious to know how the
brother of seven sisters regarded this matter.
"'Oh, love!' he echoed, shrugging again. 'Love is nothing. It happens
all the time to everybody. It Is the romantic business I thought you
were speaking of.'
"'You draw a distinction, then?'
"'Why, of course. Look here, I'll tell you. I had a wild, romantic
passion once. Think of it, a casualty surgeon in a London hospital,
carried away, positively carried away. And the subject of it was an
Irish colleen. Yes, I was infatuated simply and solely with that girl's
green cloak and hood and her green stockings and black pumps. I have
been told since by an Irishman that girls in Ireland never dream of
wearing such a rig. That doesn't matter. I had read of Irish colleens,
just as you, for example, might have read of Persian princesses or
Russian countesses, and the glamour of it carried me away. And this
colleen of mine, with her green cloak which she'd got from a theatrical
costumier, represented a romantic ideal. Very nice clever sort of girl,
a newspaper woman she was. But it wouldn't have done. Never try to make
an episode anything else. We parted and I believe she's married now.'
"'That about sums it up,' I said.
"'It does. Get a night's sleep and you'll see it in the same light. You
have had an accumulation of romantic impacts, and I expect a sea-going
life leaves one very much at the mercy of stray impressions. A ship's
surgeon once remarked to me that no human intellect could survive a
nautical training.' And he laughed again.
"That," said Mr. Spenlove, "was how he talked. A provocative, positive
sort of man. There was, if you will excuse the simile, something
antiseptic in his character. I could have driven about and talked to him
all day. He was charged with sane opinions on life. Humorous, too. When
I suggested that Captain Macedoine might not survive his daughter's
death, he made the whimsical remark that illusions of grandeur act like
an anaesthetic upon the patient's emotions. And I shall not forget the
last remark he uttered as I stood beside his carriage to say farewell.
The red roofs and domes of the city stretched away below us and I could
see the smoke coming over the warehouse from the _Manola's_ funnel. He
had promised to do certain things for me. If you climb up some day to
the Protestant cemetery you will find out what some of those things
were. And he was good enough to express a hope that I might come to
Saloniki again. I replied that I had profited immensely by his
conversation and he nodded, saying:
"'Yes, that's right. But what you really need, you know, is what
old-fashioned people in England call the consolation of religion.'
"'That is a novel prescription for a doctor,' I retorted.
"'Perhaps it is,' he admitted, holding out his hand, 'but depend upon
it, nothing else will do.'
"'You know the usual stereotyped advice is to get married?'
"'You would still need the consolation of religion,' he remarked, dryly.
'No, the fact is, real love is too uncertain, too uncommon.'
"'Surely,' I protested.
"'A fact,' he insisted, simply. 'I once picked up the works of a young
Arab poetess who afterward slew herself in her lover's arms. And the
burden of all her songs was that the only logical culmination of love,
if it be genuine, is death. I offer you that for your Western mind to
ponder. Good-bye and good luck.'
"And there I was," said Mr. Spenlove, lighting a fresh cigarette, "with
a whole brand-new set of consolatory impressions to brood upon, left to
pursue my way back to the ship and take up a safe and humdrum existence
once more. The episode was over, and it would be unwise to try and make
it anything else. And I had been presented with a novel and extremely
impracticable test of love which preoccupied by its stark beauty. I had
the sudden fancy, as I climbed the ruined wall that runs down from the
Citadel and started to thread the narrow streets toward the port, of
that Arab poetess, buried in a fragrant and silent garden among
cypresses, and her lover, whom I pictured an infidel, keeping her in
memory by a bronze statuette. I saw it on a table in his room, a tiny
thing of delicate art, the exquisite creature depicted at the supreme
moment of death and passion. For of course the lover would not adopt
that extreme view of his obligations toward love. Full of regret he
would continue a mediocre existence....
"And yet," said Mr. Spenlove, standing up and looking out from under
bent brows at the faint lifting of the darkness beyond the headland,
"and yet, my friends, as I picked my way down toward the port, it
occurred to me to wonder whether our Western views are so full of
ultimate wisdom as we imagine; whether there may not be something in
life which we miss because we are so careful of life. At this moment we
are vigorously striving to impose our Occidental conceptions of
happiness and justice and government upon a good many millions to whom
our arrogant assumptions of the Almighty's prerogatives is becoming an
incomprehensible infliction. It wouldn't do, I suppose, to suggest that
so far from being a matter of mathematical progression, life has a
secret rhythm of its own. And while I was working away at this alarming
line of thought, I was passing along narrow streets crammed with
evidences of desires other than ours. I passed women veiled save for
their sombre, enigmatic eyes. I passed the doors of temples where men
lay prostrate upon strips of carpet, the saffron-coloured soles of their
bare feet gleaming distinct in the sunlight. I was assailed by troops of
children whose tremendous vitality and unabashed enterprise made me
tremble with forebodings for the future. Was it possible, I wondered, if
our system didn't give the less admirable and the cunning among us a
long advantage? Which they were beginning to take, I added. I found
myself endeavouring to take soundings and find out, so to speak, how far
we were off shore. Mind you, it wasn't simply that as far as I could see
we were busily producing an inferior social order. I was trying to
think out what the ultimate consequences would be if we continued to
dilute and rectify and sterilize our emotions. I wanted to see beyond
that point, but I found I couldn't. I hadn't the power, and I'm afraid
that nowadays I lack the courage as well.
"And then I lost myself awhile in a bazaar where I saw sundry gentlemen
from the country hurriedly disposing of short, blunt rifles at a
reckless discount for cash, and eventually I came out into a steep
street which led down to the sea, a street full of an advancing swarm of
armed men and banners and carriages and the shrill blare of trumpets
pulsed by the thudding of drums. A squad of motley individuals in
civilian garb with red sashes across their bosoms and rifles in their
hands marched ahead of a brass band and breasted the slope. At intervals
came carriages containing the leaders of this new regime. I observed the
burly person in the fez and wearing a silver star. He sat alone in an
open landau, his frock coat gathered up so that his muscular haunches
could be seen crushing the salmon-coloured upholstery, his massive
calves almost bursting out of the cashmere trousers. He held himself
rigidly upright, his hand at the salute, his big black eyes swivelling
from side to side as the crowd surged up and applauded. He had been a
driver on the railroad, I read later on, when his photo, with the silver
star, appeared in our illustrated papers at home as one of the leaders
of the Party of Liberty and Progress. Still an engine-driver, I should
say, recalling him as he rode past that morning, not particularly
attentive to signals or pressure gauges either, if what we hear be true.
Broad-based he sat there, leaning slightly forward, the tight blue tunic
creasing across the small of his strong, curved back, his short, thick
feet encased in elastic side boots, his long nails curving over the ends
of his fingers like claws. And it occurred to me, as I stood on the
marble steps of that office building and watched him being borne upward
to the Citadel where no doubt he rendered substantial aid to the cause
of Liberty and Progress, that it is to the credit of the despots and
cut-throats of history that they were perfectly honest in their
behaviour. They sought dominion and got it. They sought gold and got it.
They sought the blood and the concubines of their enemies and got them.
And they rarely deemed it worth while to pretend that they were apostles
of liberty and progress. That is one of our modern improvements.... I
was musing thus as the platoons of ragged revolutionaries shuffled past,
when I found myself gazing at M. Nikitos, seated with crossed legs in
the corner of a shabby one-horse carriage, and raising an
unpleasant-looking silk hat. He was, I take it, one of the secretaries
of the Committee of Liberty and Progress, possibly their future
international expert. It suddenly occurred to me that there is a
gigantic brotherhood in the world, a brotherhood of those who have never
willingly done a day's work in their lives and never intend to. We have
been so mesmerized by the phrase the Idle Rich, that we have completely
forgotten that sinister and perilous pestilence, the Idle Poor. Looking
at M. Nikitos, with his hair standing straight up on the lower slopes of
his head like fir trees on the sides of a mountain and his opaque black
eyes staring with fanatical intensity at nothing in particular, one was
irresistibly reminded of a fungus. The incipient black beard, which was
making its appearance in patches on his chin and jaws, lent a certain
strength to the impression of fungoid growth, and encouraged a dreadful
sort of notion that he was beyond the normal and lovable passions of
men. He was, you will remember, a pure man. He sat there, raising that
horrible silk hat, exposing, with the mechanical regularity of an
automaton his extraordinary frontal configuration, the apotheosis of
undesirable chastity. And he had formed a resolution 'which nothing
could kill.' I don't doubt it. The resolutions of an individual like
that are as substantial and indestructible as he. They persist, in
obedience to a melancholy law of human development, from one generation
to another. They are as numerously busy just now, under the 'drums and
tramplings' of the conflict, as maggots in a cheese. They have the
elusive and impersonal mobility of a cloud of poisonous gases. They
restore one's belief in a principle of evil, and they may scare us,
ultimately, back from their wonderful Liberty and Progress, into an
authentic faith in God.
"And I also," resumed Mr. Spenlove, after a moment's silence, "formed a
resolution, to refrain from any further participation in alien affairs.
I found that I lacked courage for that enterprise, too. It is, after
all, a dangerous thing to tamper with one's fundamental prejudices. They
very often turn out to be the stark and ugly supports of our health and
sanity. I resigned, not without a faint but undeniable tremor of relief,
the part of a principal in the play. I have harped to you on this point
of my relative importance in the story because it was as a mere super
that I entered from the wings and it is as a super in the last act that
I retire. I think it was the letter and package M. Kinaitsky sent down
to the ship which scared me into obscurity. That and the news that the
four o'clock express for Constantinople in which he had been travelling
had been blown to atoms by the apostles of Liberty and Progress. You can
say it completed the cure, if you like. To read that brief note of
courteous and regretful reproach was like encountering a polite phantom.
After recording his unalterable conviction that only death or a woman
could have prevented an Englishman of honour from keeping an
appointment, he begged to trespass so far upon my generous impulses as
to send me the package, fully addressed to his brother in London. He
would esteem it a favour if I would deliver it in person. The sudden
alarming turn of events rendered it imperative to despatch these papers
by a secure and unsuspected hand. Should nothing happen, it would be a
simple matter for him to communicate with his brother when the present
troubles were over. Otherwise ... and so on. He would not do more than
allude to the question of recompense, which would be on a scale
commensurate with the magnitude of the obligation. The Captain, no
doubt, would consent to keep the package in his safe during the
voyage....
"Well, the _Manola_ had no safe, but Jack had a formidable old cash-box
in his room, and it was with the idea of carrying out the behests of one
who could no longer enforce them that I carried the big yellow envelope
to Jack and told him how I came by it. Even when it was condensed to
suit his bluff mentality, it was a long story. I was astonished at the
abstraction into which it threw him. On the road he returned to it again
and again. His imagination continually played round the history of 'that
gel' as he called her. He could not get used to the startling fact that
all this had been going on 'under his very nose, by Jingo!' and he
hadn't had the slightest suspicion. 'Forgotten all about her, very
nearly. And by the Lord, I thought you had, too, Fred.'
"And I should like," said Mr. Spenlove, "to have heard him tell Mrs.
Evans. Perhaps, though, it would not have proved so very sensational
after all. It is exceedingly difficult to shock a woman who has been
married for a number of years. They seem to undergo a process which,
without affording them any direct glimpse into the bottomless pit,
renders them cognizant of the dark ways of the human soul. Perhaps you
don't believe this. Perhaps you think I am only trying to joke at the
expense of a married woman I never liked. Well, try it. Take a benign
matron of your own family, who has endured the racking strain of years
of family life and tell her your own scandalous history, and she will
amaze you by her serene acceptance of your infamous proceedings. So
perhaps, as I say, I missed nothing very piquant after all. I had to
content myself with the eloquent silence of the respectable but single
Tonderbeg, moving about in the cabin, his blond head bent in gentle
melancholy, his features composed into an expression of respectful
forgiveness.
"'But what was your idea, Fred?' says Jack to me on the road home. He
wore habitually a mystified air when we were alone together in his
cabin. Jack had become settled in life. His movements had grown more
deliberate, and his choleric energy had mellowed into an assured
demeanour of authority. You could imagine him the father of a young
lady. He sat back in his big chair, motionless save for the cigar
turning between thumb and finger, a typical ship-master. He was
recognized by the law as competent to perform the functions of a
magistrate on the high seas. He no longer plunged like an angry bull
into rows with agents. He had arrived at that period of life when all
the half-forgotten experiences of our youth, the foolish experiments,
the humiliating reverses, come back to our chastened minds and assist us
to impose our personalities upon a world ignorant of our former
imperfections. And he sat there turning his cigar between thumb and
finger, his bright and blood-shot brown eyes fixed in a sort of
affectionate glare upon me, his old chum, who had suddenly left him
spiritually in the lurch, so to speak. 'What was your idea, Fred? Do
you mean to say you hadn't made any plans for the future at all? Just
going to let the thing slide?' And the curious thing about his state of
mind was that he was attracted by the idea without understanding it. As
he sat watching me, mumbling about the future, and the taking of risks
and what people at home would say, it was obvious that he was beginning
to see the possibilities of such an adventure. He had a vague and
nebulous glimpse of something that was neither furtive sensuality nor
smug respectability. 'Like something in one of these here novels,' as he
put it with unconscious pathos. And that, I suppose, was as near as he
ever attained to an understanding of the romantic temperament. It was
fine of him, for he got it through a very real friendship. 'I know you
wouldn't do anything in the common way, Fred,' he observed after a long
contemplation of his cigar.
"'And would you have stood for it, Jack?' I asked him, 'seeing that Mrs.
Evans would hardly have approved, I mean.' He roused up and worked his
shoulders suddenly in a curious way, as though shifting a burden.
"'Oh, as to that!' he broke out, and then after a pause he added, 'You
can't always go by that. I'd stand for a whole lot from you, Fred.'
"And with that, to the regret of Mr. Tonderbeg who was hovering about
outside in the main cabin, our conversation ended.
"We bunkered in Algiers and the newspapers gave us the news of the war.
A war so insignificant that most of you young fellows have forgotten all
about it. And the captain of a ship in the harbour, hearing we were from
Saloniki, came over and informed us that he himself had been bound for
that port, with a cargo of stores, but had received word to stop and
wait for further orders. He was very indignant, for he had expected some
pretty handsome pickings. The point of his story was that the stuff was
for Macedoine & Co. who would be able to claim a stiff sum in
compensation for non-delivery. I believe the case ran on for years in
the courts, and the lawyers did very well out of it.
"And when we reached Glasgow, I took the train to London to deliver the
package M. Kinaitsky had entrusted to me. I was curious to learn
something of that gentleman's affiliations in England, to discover, if
you like, how his rather disconcerting mentality comported itself in a
Western environment. The envelope was addressed to Rosemary Lodge,
Hampstead, and I left Mason's Hotel in the Strand, on a beautiful day in
late autumn, and took the Hamstead bus in Trafalgar Square. It was very
impressive, that ascent of the Northern Heights of London, dragging
through the submerged squalor of Camden Town, up through the dingy
penury of Haverstock Hill, to the clear and cultured prosperity of the
smuggest suburb on earth. I happened to know Hampstead since I had once
met an artist who lived there, though his studio was in Chelsea. I may
tell you about him some day. And when I had walked up the Parliament
Hill Road and started across the Heath to find Rosemary Lodge, I had a
fairly clear notion of what I should find. For of course it was only a
lodge in the peculiar modern English sense. It is part of the harmless
hypocrisy of this modern use of language, that one should live in tiny
flats in London and call them 'mansions' while a large house standing in
its own grounds is styled a lodge. M. Nicholas Kinaitsky evidently kept
up an extensive establishment. There seemed a round dozen of servants.
Two men and a boy were out in the grounds preparing the roses for the
winter. A blue spiral of smoke was blowing away from the chimney of the
hothouse against the north wall. And the house itself was one of those
spacious and perfectly decorous affairs which have become identified
with that extraordinary colony of wealthy aliens who make a specialty of
being more English than the English. There was a tennis-court on one
side of the house and a young man with a dark, clean-shaven face stood
talking to a girl, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched in
what one may call the public-school manner, the coat of arms of an
ancient Oxford college glowing on the breast of his blue blazer. And
indoors the same influence obtained. The pictures and books and
furniture presented a front of impregnable insularity. Even the piano
was English. Only a photograph in a frame of silver gilt, on a side
table, gave a hint--the portrait of a lady with hair dressed in the
style of German princesses of Queen Victoria's day, the sinuous curve of
her high, tight bodice accented by the great bustle. I noted all this,
and sat looking out of the window, which gave upon the autumn splendour
of the Heath. There was a pond close by, and an old gentleman in white
spats was stooping down to launch a large model yacht on the water. A
fairly well-to-do old gentleman, by the gold coins on his watch-chain
and the rings which sparkled on his hands. I wondered if he were a
relative of the Kinaitskys or whether he only knew them. The yacht
started off under a press of canvas, and the old gentleman set off at a
trot round the edge, to meet it. I doubt if you could have seen a sight
like that anywhere else in the world. He was perfectly unconscious of
doing anything at all out of the common. And I dare say it is essential
to the rounded completeness of English life that funny and wealthy old
gentlemen should sail toy yachts on ponds, while cultured aliens amass
fortunes on the Stock Exchange and some of us plow the ocean all our
lives.
"And then I was disturbed in my musings by a young lady entering the
room, and I rose to explain myself.
"I say she was a young lady, while you will observe I alluded only just
now to a girl talking to a young man on the tennis-court. There was that
difference. Without giving one any reason for supposing she was married,
this one conveyed a subtle impression of being the mistress of the
house. She was dark, athletic, simply dressed in black, and extremely
plain.
"'Father will be back from the city at half-past four,' she said, when I
had explained my errand. 'I am so sorry you will have to wait. You will
stay to dinner, of course.'
"I said I did not know if I should stay to dinner as a matter of course,
but I thanked her. We drifted into conversation and she gave a very
clever impression of being a thorough woman of the world. She was not,
of course. She was one of those unfortunate beings who are trained in
all the arts of life and who become adepts in all those accomplishments
which men take entirely for granted, and who are permitted to grow up
imagining men are paladins. And when they marry they experience a shock
from which they never recover. Being married is such a different affair
from looking after your father's house. When I mentioned my errand, she
said her mother and the widowed aunt were at Torquay. Her plain features
were suffused with emotion when she mentioned the death of her uncle.
She had been his favourite niece. He always paid them a brief visit when
he came to London. Very brief. He had a great many people to see in
town. Only last year he had given her a set of pearls. And Madame
Kinaitsky was so young--it was tragic. The pater had gone over and met
her in Paris and she would live with them in future. She stopped in the
middle of this and looked at me.
"'You met her, of course, out there?' she asked.
"'Oh, dear no,' I said. "I am only a very casual acquaintance, you
understand. I happened to be on the spot, and the very fact that I was
not a regular friend gave your uncle the idea that his papers, whatever
they are, would be safer with me. I was only too pleased to be of
service. You see,' I went on, 'your uncle knew a friend of mine, and
so....
"'A friend of yours?' she queried.
"'Yes, a business friend. Your uncle helped him and his daughter. It
was the daughter I knew particularly.'
"'Was she nice?' she demanded, eagerly. 'I mean, was she worthy of his
help? He was so good. He helped everybody. There is an orphanage in
Saloniki which he supported--oh, most generously. And he asked nothing
in return. Oh!' she exclaimed, 'when I think of his life, always
thinking of others and doing good, and how at last he found happiness
for himself, and then this....' and she gazed out of the window at the
old gentleman, who was in trouble with his yacht, which had capsized
just beyond walking-stick reach. 'It was like him to trust a stranger,'
she murmured.
"'He was good enough to make use of me because I was an Englishman,' I
replied.
"'And that was like him, too,' she returned, kindling again. 'It was a
great grief to him that business prevented him from living with us here
in Hampstead. He loved the English ways. He used to say in joke that he
would certainly marry an English wife if he could induce any of them to
marry him. But of course he met his fate. He wrote hoping we would love
her. We shall do that, of course, but----' she looked out again at the
old gentleman who had found a small boy volunteer to paddle out,
bare-legged, to salve the yacht.
"'But what?' I asked.
"'She will marry again,' Miss Kinaitsky remarked in a low tone. 'I am
positive. I do not see how we can blame her. She submitted to the
arrangement. But she did not love him. We feel it, because he spoke of
her in such terms ... it was almost adoration. There was never any other
woman for him....'
"A silence fell between us because, as you can easily imagine, I had
nothing to offer commensurate with the extraordinary exaltation of her
mood. It was plain enough that to a woman like her love could not
possibly be what I had conceived it. To her it was a divine flame
through which she would discern the transfigured features of her
beloved. To her it was a supreme sacrament administered in a sacred
chamber whence had been shut out all the evil which impregnates the
heart of man. And I sat there wondering. When I left that sumptuous and
smoothly running mansion and walked out across the Heath in the dusk
toward the Spaniards Inn, I was still wondering whether each of us could
be right. And I wonder still. For if it were true that love were what
she and her kind imagine it to be, then I had never seen it. To me it
had been nothing so transcendentally easy as that. To me it had been an
obscure commotion, an enigmatic storm on which the human soul, with its
drogue of inherited sorrows, was flung on its beam ends, stove in and
dismasted, while beyond, far off, there shone a faint light, the flash
of a derisive smile, flashing and then suddenly going out. And even now,
in the mists of the accumulating years, I wonder still."
For the last time Mr. Spenlove paused, and stepping out to the rail, he
stood there, with his back to the men who had listened to his story,
silhouetted against the first pale flush of the dawn, looking away to
the horizon where could be seen a tiny light, shrouded to point straight
toward them, flashing once, twice, with mysterious caution, and then
going out.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Captain Macedoine's Daughter, by William McFee