Captain Macedoine's Daughter Part 2

"Ah, but you forget," retorted Mr. Spenlove, laughing softly as he gazed up at the moon now high over the cliff. He looked very like a benevolent satyr as he sat leaning forward in his chair, his chin on his hands, his trim gray beard pushed out, and his curiously slanted black eyebrows raised--"You forget that I am dealing with basic realities. You forget that ninety-nine sailor-men out of each hundred feed themselves exclusively on dreams. You are like the donkey who imagines he sees a resplendent carrot hung in front of him. It is not only that he never gets the carrot. There never was any carrot for him to get. I repeat--dear old Jack Evans was not a bit singular in his illusions, any more than Captain Macedoine was in his. They believed in them a bit longer than you young fellows do nowadays, that's all."

"Well, go on," suggested the Doctor, and moved out of the moonlight into the shadow, so that Mr. Spenlove remained alone and appeared to be talking to himself.

"Of course, so far, I hadn't seen any of the party save Jack.

I'd been ash.o.r.e when they arrived--did I say we were in Middlesborough-on-Tees?--for I had friends at Stockton. I was really concerned, for knowing what a headlong, forthright fool Jack was, I expected to do or say something that might spoil his life's happiness.

And here he was complicating matters ten-fold by bringing a nurse-girl, a 'governess.' And while I sat there pondering upon the possibilities, the Mate came up with an expression of immense cunning on his face, his hand funnelled round his mouth, and whispered 'Seen 'em, Mister?'

"I shook my head. Mr. Bloom, Basil Bloom, had been only a couple of trips with us, and I knew Jack had very little use for him. Mr. Bloom, indeed, was one of those extraordinary men who go to sea year after year, and not only do they never seem to attain to any decent mastery of their profession, but in their speech and manner and appearance they resemble piano-tuners or billiard-markers more than sailors. Bloom had a moustache like an Italian hair-dresser's, immense, fine, full, and silky, with moist red lips eternally parting and showing a set of perfect false teeth. His papers were miracles of eulogy, his discharges, save that he had been in a good many s.h.i.+ps, without blemish. And yet from the moment he had come jauntily on board the previous voyage, Jack had been straining like a terrier on the leash. Mr. Bloom seemed to do nothing right. It had been my lot to hear both sides of the question.

Jack, over a whiskey-and-soda in my room, would bewail his fate at having an agricultural labourer sent him as chief officer; and next day, Mr. Bloom, bringing me the position and distance run, would twirl his moustache and allude to the amazingly incompetent persons who secured commands nowadays. Of course I sided with Jack. Mr. Bloom was nothing to me. He was the sort of man I would much rather hit in the face than shake hands with. The man didn't _look_ like a sailor. He had no sea-going gear. Jack nearly had a seizure on my settee when he told me the new Mate was patrolling the bridge in red silk socks, patent-leather dress-pumps, and an old Norfolk jacket. When we began to roll off Ushant and s.h.i.+p a few seas, it appeared Mr. Bloom had neither oilskins nor sea-boots. To see him skipping along through green sea water in his dress-pumps, to look at the patent log, was a revelation of human improvidence. Here was a man the wrong side of forty, and he hadn't the sense to bring suitable clothing to sea with him! At the table he bewildered, angered, and contradicted poor old Jack with political argument. Once, after getting his anchors fouled, and firing his clutch-blocks, and otherwise making a mess of things on the forecastle-head, he had the temerity to tell Jack that 'every s.h.i.+p-master ought to have tariff-reform at his finger-ends.' Jack nearly had apoplexy. He managed to sputter out that 'every mate ought to have his job at his finger-ends, or else go home and buy a farm.' Mr. Bloom, holding his fine military figure erect and delicately preening his moustache, told me afterward 'That's the worst of these young s.h.i.+p-masters--they think insults are arguments.'

"Now I saw trouble ahead for Jack with Mr. Bloom on board. I don't pretend to have a very profound insight into human character, but I had an indefinable conviction that Mrs. Evans would look favourably upon Mr.

Basil Bloom. Oh, no, I don't mean that my prurient mind was gloating over the destruction of Jack's marital bliss. Not at all. I never liked Madeline, but I do her the justice of proclaiming her inviolable chast.i.ty. What I mean is, I felt that she had more in common intellectually with Mr. Bloom than with us. He had a good deal of the fussiness of middle-aged sh.o.r.e-people, clearing his throat, coughing behind his hand, saying 'excuse me,' smoothing his hair with his palm, and referring to things he had seen 'in the papers.' And in spite of his inadequate sea-going gear, he invariably appeared in a more or less clean stiff collar. A woman, I mean a genteel woman, will never utterly condemn any man so long as he wears a collar. This would not have mattered save that Jack and I invariably abandoned collars as soon as the pilot had left.

"So, when Mr. Basil Bloom, in a dirty gray lounge suit, brown Oxford shoes, a grimy collar, and a deer-stalker hat, bent over me and enquired if I had seen the arrivals, I shook my head and got up to walk away. But Mr. Bloom detained me. Had I not seen the nurse? Nice little piece of goods. And the baby was a little angel. Between me and him, he was good enough to say, we ought to have a very pleasant trip, what with ladies on board, what? And Mr. Bloom, settling his dirty collar and concealing a brilliant smile behind a hairy, ringed hand, walked off to superintend his neglected work.

"I was not such a fool as to a.s.sume that I could any longer stroll into Jack's room and have a chat. I am not afraid of women, but I regard their lairs with considerable trepidation. On board an old tramp steamer a woman is nothing less than a scourge. There is no place for her, and consequently you never know where you may find her. If you walk to and fro on the deck, you are probably keeping her awake. If you go out on deck in your s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, or come from a bath with a towel round you, you are outraging her modesty. If you use the ordinary jargon of the sea, she writes home that the engineers are awfully coa.r.s.e on her husband's s.h.i.+p. You moon about in a furtive fas.h.i.+on, closing doors and ventilators when you converse with one another, and pray for the day when she will quit the s.h.i.+p and return to the semi-detached mansion in the suburbs where she reigns as queen, Captain So-and-So's wife. I felt sadly, as I sat in my room, that my friends.h.i.+p with Jack would remain for a few weeks in a state of suspended animation. I got up several times, unconsciously, to go along, and had to sit down again. And as I sat there, the alleyway was darkened and the familiar stout figure and short red neck appeared. I had a little table in my room and as a rule sat behind it on the settee, while Jack sprawled in an old easy chair I had bought in Savannah, a chair out of an old plantation mansion. Jack sank into it and remained silent while I poured out two pegs and squirted some soda-water into them. I knew perfectly well, or thought I did, that he needed some restorative after his recent adventures. He drank it thirstily and set the gla.s.s on the table.

"'Fred,' he said, in the cautious whisper which, as I have said, becomes second nature when there is a woman on board, 'Fred, I've made an infernal fool of meself. They've let me in at the office.'

"'Why,' I said, 'I thought they did you rather well, giving you permission to take Mrs. Evans _and_ the youngster. You know how they wired Tompkins once: '_No children_'?'

"'You don't know nothing about it,' says Jack, who was invariably hard on English when he was moved. 'It's a case of wheels within wheels. They only did that to get this gel out for nothing. She's going out to her father in the Grecian Arches, and some clever fool in the office thought of sending her down to Mrs. Evans to see if she'd do to look after the kid.'

"'Well, it's only her grub for a fortnight or so,' I remarked.

"Jack looked solemnly at me and shook his head.

"'Have you seen her?'

"'No,' I said, 'Mr. Bloom told me she was a nice little piece of goods.'

Jack snorted.

"'He's down in the cabin now talking about what's on at the theatres.

Fred, I'm in for trouble, and you'll have to stand by me.'

"And he was, for you must bear in mind that there were others on board besides Mr. Bloom. There was the Second Mate, a young man whose prospects were tarnished by a weakness for secret drinking. And there was young Siddons, a stripling just out of his apprentices.h.i.+p and uncertificated, the son of a well-to-do merchant in a country town. Jack used to say there was too much of the lah-di-dah about him, and was down on him time and again. All the same he liked the boy, as I did, too, for Siddons was a gentleman--the only one on board, I used to think. He got the D. S. O. the other day for bombing something or other in Germany. He was what modern, educated smart women call 'a charming boy' or 'a pretty little boy.' Not that he was effeminate, by any means. He was simply one of those to whom virtuous sentiment is a pa.s.sionate necessity. Instead of playing in the gutters of life, as so many of us do, his young body and soul were on tip-toe for the coming of love. You can see it when they are like that. There is a thirsty look about the lips, a turn for moodiness, a sudden dilation of the pupils as they catch your glance, and a quick flush, very pretty to see. And sometimes, I am informed, they find a woman worthy of the gifts they bear....

"We had a couple of engineers, too, but they were scarcely to be cla.s.sed with young Siddons. They were like a good many of us, useful, shop-soiled articles with plenty of the meretricious conventional s.e.xuality which pa.s.ses for pa.s.sion when stimulated. But neither of them would have got a look from a modern, educated smart woman. The Third I didn't know very much about. He came and went, and the princ.i.p.al impression I have of him now is that he was married. The Second had what I should call an oppressively incondite mind. He had a cold avidity for facts. Unlike most seamen he never read fiction unless it was some book which had achieved notoriety for what is called frankness. He had a bookshelf in his cabin containing his sh.o.r.e-going boots and a derby hat, a Whittaker's Almanac, a Who's Who, several year-books, and a s.h.i.+lling encyclopedia. It was astonis.h.i.+ng, the comfort he seemed to derive from knowing the census-returns of Bolivia, or the Republican majority in Oregon, or the number of microbes in a pint of milk. But it did no one any harm. I only mention it because he, too, in his way, fell in love with Artemisia and for a time neglected his familiar preoccupations.

"For that is what it amounted to--that we all fell in love. Each of us had to measure ourselves by this standard. At certain times in our lives we all have to drop what we are doing and submit ourselves to the test.

I'm afraid most of us don't cut a very brilliant figure. It is fortunate for us that one can achieve success in a lower cla.s.s, and can pa.s.s muster as human beings because we are honest or sober or clever, and not simply because we are worthy of love. All the same, I fancy the contempt which some of us pour upon the lucky ones is born of envy. We wish to be like them in our heart of hearts. I used to have the most preposterous dreams of being the lover of some proud, beautiful girl I had read about or seen in the street.

"Artemisia was like that. She was one of those beings who inspire love, who are the living embodiments of that tender philosophy which makes every adjustment of our lives by sentiment alone, and who convince us, by a gesture, a glance, a timbre in their voices, that our lightest fancy is a grave resolution of the soul.

"It would be easy, of course, to jeer at a crowd of simple, half-educated sh.e.l.l-backs losing their hearts to a lady-pa.s.senger's maid, but that would not be a fair account of it. We were not simple in that sense. My experience is that contact with the great elemental realities does not breed simplicity so much as a sort of cunning. We live deprived of so many of the amenities of culture and wealth that we cannot credit our good fortune when anything really fine comes in our way. We are not to be had. We are cautious. These good things are for sh.o.r.e people. And we get into the habit of good-humoured humility, discounting ourselves and our s.h.i.+pmates beyond recall. We say, 'only fools and drunkards go to sea,' and that indicates pretty accurately the value we place upon our hopes and aspirations.

"And so you must not expect me to give you vivid accounts of pa.s.sionate declarations of love under the Mediterranean moon, or of desperate knife-work in the dark with Artemisia bending over the dying man and kissing his death-dewed forehead in a last farewell. The voyage went on much as usual outwardly. The days are gone, if they ever existed, when love ruled the camp or the quarter deck. Yet there was a subtle change.

Men went about their various tasks with an air of charged expectancy.

Now and again a couple could be seen talking earnestly together. The weather, until we pa.s.sed Gibraltar, was against any dramatic developments. Mrs. Evans and Angelina kept below. Only once, at dusk, while we were pa.s.sing the Burlings, off Portugal, I looked over the rail of the bridge-deck and saw young Siddons leaning on the bulwarks below, his head turned toward someone I could not see. He was laughing as happily as a child. Leaning over a little further I saw a girl's finely articulated hand and a corner of a white ap.r.o.n.

"But most of us had no chance. It sounds a strange thing to say, but it was almost as if Mrs. Evans herself regarded me as married to her. As though because I had been the means of their meeting, I was ent.i.tled to a sort of founder's share in Angelina! I was in the way to becoming an expert in infant's complaints. And Jack seemed to think that when I came into the cabin to talk, he had the right of going off duty, so to speak, and would go up to the chart room to have a smoke. No, I didn't go simply to catch a glimpse of Artemisia, though she was worth glimpsing.

I went from a sense of social duty. I felt I owed it to Jack to be sociable with his wife. And perhaps, too, there was an idea at the back of my head that contact with Mrs. Evans was a corrective to any tendency I might have to make a fool of myself over any young woman. That was Mrs. Evans' specialty, you might say. She didn't mean it, but unconsciously she shrivelled at the least breath of desire. I used to watch apprehensively for the blank look in the eyes, the tightening of the lips, the infinitesimal drawing back of the head, as of a snake about to strike. There was something sharply astringent about her then, like biting inadvertently into a green banana. And yet she had her gusts of enthusiasm over 'darling Babs.' The child was a monster of egoism, as may be imagined. She was very like her father physically--full-blooded, plump, bold-eyed, and with a perfectly devilish temper. Without warning she would explode, scream, scratch, bite, and kick, until she got what she wanted, when she would subside as suddenly into a self-centred silence broken by hiccoughs and chokes. She wanted everything--the watch and money out of your pocket and heart and liver out of your body.

'Angel child!' her mother would call her, and hang fondly over the odious little brat. For the angel child was still supposed to be 'delicate.' Mrs. Evans had a case of champagne and a stock of Bovril, and I dare say some of the displays I witnessed were due in part to intoxication. The carpenter was busy all day making gates and fences round the companion and bridge deck to prevent the delicate child from crawling out and getting slung overboard. I used to sit in the cabin with the angelic Babs on my knee, from which she was always slipping, listening to Mrs. Evans' account of the diphtheria, and watching Artemisia moving noiselessly to and fro in the bedroom or sitting just inside the spare stateroom door sewing. I never enjoyed looking at a girl so much in my life. She was not pretty in the ordinary sense of the word. Her skin was not the b.u.t.tery yellow you a.s.sociate with half-breeds. It was more the russet brown of a sunburned blonde. Her cheeks had a soft peachy glow under the brown bloom that was beautiful.

And yet she did not give one the impression of sheer innocence and youth which was implied in her unique complexion. Her eyes were perfectly steady and unabashed, her figure was more mature and matronly than Mrs. Evans', and she had a gravity of poise and deliberate movement that one a.s.sociates with the reflection born of experience. She gave me the impression, I may say, of a young person who had chanced upon some astounding revelation, and who was preoccupied with both past and future more than the immediate present. It made her more attractive than less, I think. She established a certain careless fondness for talking to Mr.

Chief, as she called me. I dare say I was in love with her even then.

She had a personality. I think Jack, who for all his crude psychology was a pretty shrewd judge of humanity, saw something beyond a mere desirable young girl in this nurse. He used to follow her round with his eyes as though he couldn't make her out. He couldn't recover from the shock of her name. He would sit in the saloon watching her with the child, and mutter 'Artemisia! Humph!' She would glance up from her occupation and regard him with steady, meditative eyes. I was fascinated by the name myself. It recalled Captain Macedoine to me. It was like him. Imagine that name reverberating down through the ages from ancient Attica to cla.s.sical France, taken out across the Western Ocean by forlorn _emigres_, who clung to their pretty trashy artificialities in spite of, or perhaps because of, the frightfulness of the wilderness, handed on by sentimental and aristocratic Creoles, filched by German Jews and prosperous mulattos, picked up right in the gutter by a supreme illusionist and given to a young person who seemed half school-girl and half adventuress.

"For it was perfectly obvious to me that whether I had diagnosed her character truly or not, she was not at all a suitable temperament to have about a child. There was, for instance, something ominous in the sudden quiet with which she would regard the angelic Babs when that odious little being began to pull her hair or jump on her feet or thump her across the back with the heavy cabin ruler. These things happened to me, too; but I could scarcely expect to escape. I was Jack's chum. I was a bachelor and therefore credited with a deep and pa.s.sionate love of children. Artemisia, however, was a stranger. When something particularly outrageous occurred, Mrs. Evans, glancing up, would murmur, 'Oh, Babs, dear!' and then, to my considerable embarra.s.sment, I would find Artemisia's eyes fixed inscrutably upon mine as she fended off the attentions of her charge. And so, when I rose one fine evening as we sailed along the Spanish coast, and she followed me up on deck, I felt that she was about to take me into her confidence. I looked round as she slammed the wicket which the carpenter had made to keep Babs from tumbling down and breaking her neck, and the girl's face was close to mine. We laughed quietly in the faint light that came up from the cabin.

After all, there was not such a frightful disparity in our ages. As we walked aft along the bridge deck, and stood between the funnel casing and the life boats--a matter of seconds--I might have given a swerve to both our destinies. There are moments, you know, when one can spring over the most frightful chasms in one's journey through life, and land with both feet on mossy banks and enamelled meads. It was possibly such a moment, only I didn't take the chance. As I said, I prefer the part of super in the play--one sees so much more than either spectator or hero.

And I think she saw, too, in the same flash of intelligence. And so, nothing happened. When she spoke she merely asked in a low tone what the punishment was for infanticide.

"'You know, Mr. Chief,' she went on, putting up her arms and swinging gently on the life-lines of the boats, 'It isn't fair. I'd never have taken it on if I'd known what I was in for. I have a devil of a temper.

I'm sure I shall do something to that child.'

"'To keep it quiet?' I suggested. She nodded rapidly.

"'For good!' she replied, and added: 'They never used to let me have anything to do with the kids at school.'

"'Because of the temper?' She nodded again.

"'I nearly killed a girl once,' she remarked, calmly.

"'Oh, tut-tut!' I said, but she insisted, and her eyes gleamed with a sudden vixenish anger. 'Yes, Mr. Chief. She was a tall, fair girl with yellow hair and a lovely complexion, like an advertis.e.m.e.nt for soap. She hated me, and told the girls I would only be a n.i.g.g.e.r where she came from. Her father was in the Civil Service somewhere. And she kept on calling me n.i.g.g.e.r, and the other girls followed her lead until I was nearly _crazy_. And one night I went into the lavatory and put a piece of caustic soda into her sponge as it lay on the rack. And the next morning when she was was.h.i.+ng there was a horrible row, and she ran up and down the bedroom screaming, and her face was all one smear of crimson and purple. She had to go to hospital and it took months to heal. The sponge was left in the water and there was nothing to show, but the girls knew I'd done it because I didn't run and see what was the matter. They didn't call me n.i.g.g.e.r any more, Mr. Chief.'

"I said I supposed not, and enquired if Mrs. Evans knew this story.

Artemisia shrugged her shoulders and showed the tip of her tongue. 'I wouldn't tell _her_ much,' she replied.

"'And you are going out to see your father?' she nodded. 'He wants me to help him in his business.'

"'He's not a captain now, I suppose?' I asked her, to see how much she knew. She was unconcerned. 'No, he retired from the sea when I was a little girl. We came home from the States. We lived near Saxhambury then. Do you know it? Father was very unfortunate. He lost on some of his investments and had to go abroad again. He was in Egypt a long while.'

"'And you haven't seen him since when?' I hazarded.

"'Oh, I met him when he came to Paris on business. You see, the company he's in now is French, and he is in a very important position out there.'

"It was clear she knew nothing. She had been brought up upon the customary vague references to 'position,' and so on, with which young people in the middle cla.s.ses are inducted into the real world. One could imagine her telling her school-chums how her father had 'an important position out there,' and their subsequent awe and envy. I can remember a boy at school saying his dad was 'on the Continent,' when his fond parent had gone for a week-end at Boulogne. We were impressed. And I wondered what old Macedoine's job might happen to be. So I said that I had once been s.h.i.+pmates with a Captain Macedoine out in New Orleans. She exclaimed: 'Were you really! How funny!' and suddenly dropped her voice to a whisper. 'Were you friends, as you are with Captain Evans?' I said no, not exactly, and looked up at the figure of young Siddons on the bridge. He was looking at us, and paused in his walk to and fro trying to make out who I might be. I was thinking of him and wondering, when I heard her say that her father did not like America; he was never happy there. He was misunderstood. Well, many a man has been unhappy and misunderstood in America. Some men are so exacting in their ideals that no country can hope to win their approbation. Captain Macedoine was evidently still on a pilgrimage seeking a home for his wounded spirit. I asked his daughter if he were happy and understood in Ipsilon. She regarded me with attention for a moment, as though she suspected me of irony. Then she said, in the grave tones that middle-cla.s.s people reserve for the vital themes of life, that he had a good position and excellent prospects. And then she left me with a murmur about 'the kid'

and I began to walk to and fro. I was amused. I tried to figure out the salient features of a 'position' which would meet with the approval of a man with Macedoine's record. And the prospects! For mind you, he must have experienced a severe blow when those Federal secret service men had ferreted out his dealings in the opium traffic and his plan for establis.h.i.+ng himself in England had gone to smash. And in what way could this young person a.s.sist him in his business? I was intrigued, as they say, but I could form no theory which would adequately account for so many disparate premises. After all, such musings are their own reward.

The event robs them of their early glamour. I did not even confide in any one else on the s.h.i.+p. There is a pleasure in an unshared scandal which many men and all women seem to overlook. It added, I may say, to the joys of being a super in the play. And when Mr. Basil Bloom, our effulgent chief mate, informed me one evening that I seemed to be very chummy with Miss Macedoine, I only smiled and asked him if he had designs on her himself. He twisted his moustache, looked scornfully at the horizon, and was evidently perturbed. He had referred grandiloquently, during the previous voyages, to a peerless female whom he called 'the future Mrs. Bloom.' This lady lived at Greenwich, and we had reason to believe that Mr. Bloom, on the strength of his genteel manners, formidable moustache, and optimistic temperament, had been sponging on her family for some months before he joined the _Manola_.

'I'll tell the young lady,' I said, 'and perhaps you'll get some encouragement.' He a.s.sured me first that I needn't trouble, and then added that he knew I was the last person in the world to think less of a man if he changed his mind. This was so infernally unfair to the lady at Greenwich that I laughed in his face and walked away.

"The Second Mate took a different line. He was a quiet, inoffensive creature, and usually preoccupied with a feeble struggle which he maintained against whiskey. He had a delicately coloured, spiritual, refined face, with the salient points slightly sharpened, and he seemed to have neither thoughts, hopes, nor aspirations. However, his finely chiselled features appeared one day while we were in Alexandria with the addition of a greenish-yellow puff below the left eye, and the mess-room boy informed us that the Second Mate was having his meals in his room in future. There was a laugh from the Third Engineer, and I said nothing, for I had a notion he and the Second Mate had been ash.o.r.e together. But the mess-room boy, whose slant eyes and long nose worried into all the scandal of the s.h.i.+p, added that young Mr. Siddons had blacked the Second Mate's eye for him, over the nurse. I told him to dry up. To tell the truth I was getting tired of the episode. I felt the whole thing was becoming tawdry and dropping to a rather low plane. I wasn't willing to admit this to myself, mind you, because it involved my old friend Jack.

I mean it would be the Commander's fault if we all slumped into the mire together over this young woman. That's what commanders are for--to raise the tone. That's what a good many of them lack the character to do.

Personal courage, professional skill, long experience, will carry a man through among men. When there are women in the case, a man needs something else. What? Well, it may sound strange to you, but I should call it simplicity of heart. It is almost the only thing women instinctively respect and fear. Good old Jack was simple in his way, but I doubted his ability to handle a crisis. I was thankful when we were through with Alexandria and were heading north for Ipsilon.

"For just as we were entering this sea cluttered with islands so thick you can always see four or five and sometimes a dozen at once, so we were in the midst of a score of dubious possibilities. Here was Jack avoiding me in an apologetic fas.h.i.+on. Here was the Chief Mate whispering to Mrs. Evans. Here was the Second Mate sitting in remote and solitary grandeur in his little cubby-hole, comforting himself with a bottle of Turkish gin. Here was young Siddons, very youthful-looking and shy, miserable because the Captain was looking black about something. Only the angel child and her mother seemed untouched by the horrible paralysis which was creeping upon us and for which they were primarily responsible. At all hours you could hear the roars of rage from the cabin when it wanted something--the roar, the squeals, the kicks, the hiccoughs, and the final sullen silence of satiety. I tell you, that woman and her baby were driving us all, including her husband, crazy, and she sat there oblivious. She wasn't even aware that Artemisia hated her.

"I don't know exactly what Jack had expected me to do to help him. No doubt if I had proposed to Artemisia during the voyage, married her in Alexandria, and left her ash.o.r.e in a flat out at Mex or Gabbari he would have been satisfied. I should have got him out of a hole and got myself into one, which appeals to most of us. Or I might have acted like a man without any emotions at all, and repelled Artemisia's confidences with chilling disdain. This would have set a good example to the others, he may have thought. I have never gone in for setting a good example, however. I have found that even those who follow the example hate the man who sets it. And in addition, with the curious intuition of the illiterate, Jack suspected I had not been perfectly frank with him as to my intimacy with her. And so we were all on the watch, alert, uneasy, silent, and unhappy.