Captain Macedoine's Daughter Part 14

CHAPTER VIII

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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 ma.s.sive 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 exact.i.tude in the motionless water below them. And away beyond lay the sullen and bleak ma.s.ses of the Chalcidice and the far watershed of the Vardar, leading the eye at length to the immense, snow-streaked peak of Olympos, flus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sured 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 s.h.i.+elds, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sistant 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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, hoa.r.s.ely. '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 s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sortment of esoteric comestibles which would later appear in an astonis.h.i.+ngly appetizing form at the table. She greeted me with a nave 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 impa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.n 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 att.i.tude 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 embarra.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+p 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 bra.s.s, 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 a.s.sume an heroic character. We are singularly deficient in this respect, I observe. No Englishman is a hero to himself. And a merciless a.n.a.lyst 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 ign.o.ble 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 a.s.sure 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.'