Captain Macedoine's Daughter Part 3

"I still went in to see Mrs. Evans of an evening. To tell the truth she fascinated me. I had always held the theory that no married woman could be an absolute fool. It had seemed to me that such contact with the realities of life as marriage involved must leave some austere mark of intelligence, some tinge of altruism, upon the most superficial. She seemed to disprove this. For her the world did not exist save for the 'angel child.' Even her husband was now only the nearly indispensable producer of income. She talked, not of him, or of her family, not of Art or Life or Death or the world to come, not even of Home or the things she had seen in Alexandria. She had seen nothing in Alexandria. She had declined to let Jack take her to Cairo 'because of the expense.' She read no books nor papers. She dressed in perfect propriety. And all the time she talked about the child, one hand near the child, her eyes fixed on the child's movements or repose. I think the voyage was a revelation to Jack. He was finding his place in the world. He was thinking in his honest, clumsy way. He never took his wife for a trip again. He loved his child as much as any man could, but this ingrowing infatuation, to the exclusion of every other desirable thing in the world, was fatiguing.

"And Artemisia! She sat in her little spare cabin opening on the saloon, and now and again she would raise her shoulders, draw a deep breath, let them drop again as though in despair, and go on with her sewing. She would laugh at me when I tried to amuse the child and distract it from some preposterous desire. It was not easy. Her tenacity of purpose was appalling. She was yelling one evening for someone to open the great medicine chest that stood by the bra.s.s fireplace. I tried the time-honoured ruses for placating the young. I said there was a lion inside who would jump out and eat Babs. I pretended to go and find the key and came back with the news that naughty Mr. Siddons had dropped it into the sea. The brat stopped to breathe for a moment and a faintly human expression came over the stupendously smug little face. I followed this up by a story of how Mr. Siddons had shown me how to make a pin float on the water. I hastily poured some water into a gla.s.s, got a piece of blotting paper, laid my pin on it, and waited for the homely trick to succeed. I had no luck somehow. The pin went to the bottom and Babs' opinion of me went with it. She suddenly remembered about the medicine chest and gave a preliminary yell. Mrs. Evans said, 'Oh, Babbsy, darling!' I got up and went out on deck. We were running among the islands. Away to the east-ward I could see the lights of the Roumania Lloyd mail-boat going south. Suddenly two hands grabbed the lappets of my patrol-coat, a dark, fluffy head leaned for a delicious moment against my chest, and Artemisia gurgled, 'Oh, Mister Chief, isn't she just a little fiend?' She had been listening to my blandishments and had witnessed the final destruction of my hopes. She put her hands behind her back, threw up her head, and regarded me with amus.e.m.e.nt.

'Why,' she whispered, 'why didn't you open the medicine chest, and give her the prussic-acid to play with?' And then, without waiting for an answer, she turned and looked across at the islands we were pa.s.sing. She sighed. 'Just look at them! How do they know which is Ipsilon? Mister Chief, Mister Chief, I am afraid.'

"'What of?' I asked. She sighed again.

"'Of the future,' she said. 'This is a change for me. I don't know what's coming. I haven't had any luck yet.'

"I asked her in what way.

"'You know, Mister Chief, I have been in several situations. I was a typist....' she shrugged her shoulders.

"'Your father will be here,' I suggested, but she paid no attention, merely looking at the dark blots on the sea that were islands. And then she remarked in a perfectly level and unconcerned voice that sometimes she wished she was dead. I patted her on the shoulder.

"'Go to bed, my child,' I remarked, coldly, 'you'll feel better in the morning. You won't wish you were dead when Captain Macedoine comes aboard to fetch you.'

"She walked away in silence and went down to the cabin. I have often wondered if she had not intended to make some sort of confession.

Perhaps it was a moment in her life when she became suddenly aware of her insecurity, of her lack of the kindly props and supports which hold most of us up and give us a good opinion of ourselves. For really she lacked everything. As I found out later, as she stood talking to me that evening and trying to find some easy yet adequate method of taking me into her confidence without losing my esteem, she lacked everything that most girls have. She was one of those tragic figures who even lack innocence without having gained any corresponding experience. And perhaps she felt for a moment the shadow of her destiny upon her, and seeing the dark path among the islands she was to tread, shrank back, doubtful even of the power of her father to carry her through."

CHAPTER III

Mr. Spenlove, sitting forward in his deck chair, felt in his pocket for his cigarette-case and looked round satirically into the profound shadow of the awning. He still preserved the appearance of a man talking to himself, but the fancy crossed his mind, as he glanced at the long horizontal forms in the deck chairs, that he was addressing a company of laid-out corpses. The air was very still, but a light breeze on the open water beyond the nets, and the full splendour of a circular moon, reminded him of an immense sheet of hammered silver. But Mr. Spenlove did not look long at the aegean. He swivelled round a little and pointed with the burnt-out match at the large plain building he had indicated at the beginning of his story. It was not a beautiful building. It had the rectangular austerity of a continental customs house or English provincial "Athenaeum." It was built close to the cliff and the outer wall was provided with a flight of stairs which ascended, in a mysterious and disconcerting manner, to the second floor. All this was clearly visible in the brilliant moonlight, and even the long valley behind, with its dim vineyards and clumps of almond, olive, and fig trees half concealing the square white houses that dotted the perspective, were subtly indicated against the enormous background of the tunnelled uplands and bare limestone peaks. Mr. Spenlove held the match out for a moment and then flicked it away.

"Romantic, isn't it? This was how it looked the night we anch.o.r.ed, and Artemisia came up to me as I stood by the engine-room skylights with my binoculars. It was she who pointed out to me how romantic it was. I asked her why. I said: 'This place is simply an iron mine. To-morrow they'll put us under those tips you see sticking out of the cliff there and a lot of frowsy Greeks will run little wooden trucks full of red dust and boulders and empty them with a crash into the s.h.i.+p. And there'll be red dust in the tea and the soup and in your hair and eyes and nose and mouth. And there'll be nothing but trouble all the time.

Very romantic!' So I sneered, but she wasn't taken in by it a bit. She looked through the gla.s.ses, and laughed. 'Oh, it's beautiful!' she murmured, 'beautiful, beautiful.'

"I said, 'How do beautiful things make you feel?' and she turned on me for a moment. 'You know,' she said, and was silent. And I did know. It was the bond between us. We had become aware of it unconsciously. It had nothing to do with our age or our s.e.x or our position in life. It was the common ground of our intense anger with the other people on the s.h.i.+p. Do you know, I have often thought that Circe has been misjudged.

Men become swinish before women who are unconscious of their unlovely transformation. Circe should be painted with her eyes fixed in severe meditation, oblivious of the grunting, squeaking beasts around her.

Artemisia was like that. She really cared nothing for the ridiculous performances of the various animals on the s.h.i.+p. Nothing for the magniloquent Mr. Basil Bloom, clearing his throat behind his dirty hand; nothing for the Second Mate, with his perpetual expression of knowing something about her and being mightily amused by it. Nothing even for poor young Siddons, badly hit, moping out of sight, heaving prodigious sighs and getting wiggings for being absent-minded. As for the Second and Third, my particular henchmen, she didn't know they existed.

Honourable! Why of course, they were all honourable in their intentions.

Didn't Mr. Bloom express his willingness to throw over the young lady at Greenwich, although he owed her father fifty pounds? Didn't the Second Engineer drop a note down her ventilator saying he had a hundred in the Savings Bank and she had only to say the word? (And didn't Mrs. Evans pick it up and take it, speechless with annoyance, to Jack, who roared with laughter?) Honourable? Of course they all wanted to marry her.

Swine are domestic animals."

The Surgeon, who had caused this digression, made a vague murmur of protest. Mr. Spenlove drummed on the chair between his legs and shrugged his shoulders, but he didn't turn round.

"I didn't offer to tell you a love-story. Captain Macedoine's daughter, if she means anything, means just this: that love means nothing. She pa.s.sed through all the dirty little gum-shoe emotions which she inspired on the _Manola_ like a moonbeam through a foul alley. For it is foul, this eternal preoccupation with s.e.x, like a lot of flies over a stagnant, fecundating pool. Beauty! You all talk largely of appreciating beauty, and you don't know, the most educated and cultured of you, the first thing about it. Your idea of beauty is a healthy young female without too many clothes. I tell you, I have seen s.h.i.+ps so perfect and just in modelling that I have marvelled at the handiwork of my fellowmen. I have seen cities at sunrise so beautiful I have gone down to my room and shed tears of ridiculous sorrow. And I have seen the patrons of female beauty, too, coming back from the cities to the s.h.i.+ps with dry palates, and their neckties under their ears....

"Well! We stood there, and to ease the pressure of the moment she put up the binoculars and swept the little beach, finally coming to rest at the big house--Grunbaum's house. While we had been talking a light had come out on the balcony, and figures began to move about with the precise and enigmatic motions of marionettes. Without gla.s.ses I could see Grunbaum seated at a table with a big lamp over his head. Another figure moved to the open side and stood still. I was wondering what this portended when Grunbaum half rose and waved his arms, and the other figure turned and dwindled rapidly into obscurity, suddenly coming into the light again at the other side of the table. And Artemisia said quietly, 'There's father!' and handed me the binoculars.

"To say that I was interested would not put the matter in its true light. I was more than that. There was a fantastic quality in the whole business which was almost supernatural. It is strange enough to meet a person after many years; stranger still to meet one who has made a powerful yet unsympathetic impression upon you--to meet him with all your old dislikes and prejudices washed to a clear and colourless curiosity. But to see such a man as I saw Captain Macedoine, afar off, through an atmosphere charged with the electric blue radiance of moonlight, moving in an alien orbit, animated by unknown emotions--why, it was like seeing a man who was dead and gone to another world! I raised the gla.s.ses and focussed them. Captain Macedoine stood leaning heavily on his hands as they grasped the edge of the table, and he was staring straight out at me. Of course he could see nothing beyond the balcony, but the impression was exactly that of a man striving to win back across the gulf to his former existence. And his strained immobility was accentuated by the figure of Grunbaum with his jerkily moving arms, his polished forehead gleaming in the lamplight, the gyrations of his chin as he turned every moment or so and looked up sideways at the other. Grunbaum flourished papers, reaching out and rearranging them, throwing himself back in his chair and beating the table with a folded doc.u.ment to emphasize his words. And every now and again the whole scene grew dim as though it were a phantasmagoria, and about to dissolve, when the smoke from Grunbaum's cigar floated and hung in the still air.

"And I discovered, too, that I had no words in which to formulate the peculiar impressions this scene made upon me. I could find no adequate remark! The girl at my side, reaching out absently for the gla.s.ses, made no sign that this scene going on half a mile away was at all strange to her. For all one could gather, Captain Macedoine's daughter was accustomed to see her father submitting pa.s.sively to the onslaughts of foreign concessionaires every day in the week. I gazed at her as she stood there by the awning-stanchion looking at her magnificent parent, and it was suddenly borne in upon me that it is a miracle we ever learn anything about each other at all in this world. There is nothing so inscrutable as an ordinary human being, I am convinced, and I have been watching them for thirty years. What we know and can tell, even the acutest of us, is no more than the postmark on a letter. What's inside--ah, if we only knew. What? Absurd? By no means. I believe married people do occasionally accomplish it in a small way. I mean I believe they attain to a fairly complete comprehension of each other's souls. But as to whether the game is worth the candle they never divulge....

"Certainly Artemisia did not at that moment. She left me, as every woman I have ever met has left me, groping. She sighed softly and returned the gla.s.ses, remarking again, 'Yes, there's Father,' and bade me good-night without a word of explanation. Mind, I don't say I had any right to such a word. I don't even feel sure she understood anything at all about her father's position on that island. The bare fact remains that I expected some explanation simply because I credited her with a character light yet strong, and capable of supporting the weight of her father's confidence.

"For observe; if this girl was ignorant of everything, if she came out here a mere child agape with curiosity, then Macedoine must have been that extremely rare phenomenon, a completely lonely man. And I was not prepared to admit the possibility of such an existence for him. He was one of those men who can live, no doubt, without friends.h.i.+p, but who must have their audience. So much at least I knew of him in the old days in the Maracaibo Line, when he would sit near us in Fabacher's on Royal Street, ostentatiously reading a month-old copy of the London _Financial News_. It was this incessant urge to inspire wonder which led him to hint, indirectly, that he had been at school at the Charterhouse. Risky?

Of course it was risky; and I should never have plumbed the mystery but for a most unimpressionable London purser who informed me there was a ragged school for slum children in the Charterhouse district in the city. Not that it mattered. We were not Macedoine's game. It was the bishops and colonels and eminent surgeons who made the round trip of the West Indies with us whom he wished to impress. Whether he was a fraud or not, he certainly had acquired a way of ignoring common people such as we who go to sea. I knew he would regard good old Jack from such a lofty pinnacle that Jack would appear to him no more than one of the Greek labourers who shoved the little wooden cars along and tumbled their contents into the s.h.i.+p with a terrific clang of ironstone on iron, and clouds of red dust. I followed up this digression in my mind and arrived at the fascinating conclusion that if my recollection served me sufficiently well, he would not recognize me. He never had recognized me. I once had the pleasure of telling him that if his men didn't keep my room clean and tidy I would knock his head off. He never looked up from his desk until my grip on his collar tightened and his body began to rock to and fro. He complained to the Commander, who had been told of the incident by the Chief. 'Is this the engineer who a.s.saulted you, Mr.

Macedoine?' says the Captain. Macedoine examined me with a distant, preoccupied air, pressing his lips together and his eyebrows raised. He shrugged his shoulders, opened his lips with a slight smacking noise, and after quite a pause, a most imposing pause, he said he 'really couldn't say; these workmen were all so much alike when they were dirty....' Old Pomeroy--he was the first decent skipper the Maracaibo Line ever had--swung round on his chief steward and retorted: 'Then what the devil are you wasting all our time for?' He swung back to his desk again, muttering and slapping papers here and there.

'Preposterous--doesn't know who a.s.saulted him.... Never heard....' I was standing as stiff as a stanchion waiting for the Old Man to say I could go, when he saw Macedoine p.u.s.s.y-footing it to the door. 'Oh, and Macedoine,' called the Old Man. Macedoine stopped but did not look round. 'I expect the engineers on my s.h.i.+p to be referred to as engineers, not 'workmen.'' Silence, Macedoine looking at the back of his hand and smiling with the corner of his mouth pulled down.

'_Understand!_' thundered the Old Man, rising from his chair but holding it by the arms. It was so sudden I nearly collapsed. I thought he was going to throw Macedoine through the door. That lofty personage was startled, too. He replied hastily: 'Oh, quite so, Captain, er....' when old Pomeroy sat down and dipping his pen in the ink, shut him up with 'Then don't forget it, and don't wait.'

"I mention this highly unusual episode for a special reason. It happened to provide one specific proof of my theory that Macedoine was an artist in his method of building up that grotesque effigy which he presented to the world as himself. He was like that eccentric rich person who once built a most astonis.h.i.+ng house in Chelsea many years ago. You remember?

It was called So-and-So's Folly. It stood on a valuable site, and each story was decorated in a different style. The bas.e.m.e.nt was Ph[oe]nician and the roof was pure Berlin. But the horrible thing about that house was, not its bizarre commingling of periods, its terra-cotta tigers and cast-iron chrysanthemums, but the fact that inside it was a hollow, spider-haunted sh.e.l.l. There was not even a back to it. There were no floors laid on the joists, weathered planks blocked up the back, and a few forlorn green statues stood amid a dank jungle of creepers and gra.s.s and rubbish. Now that was how Macedoine impressed me, and what I was going to say was that by accident I obtained later a peep into his studio, so to speak, and saw his method of putting up that marvellous front, behind which, as you have already learned, there was nothing save the dreamy dirtiness of avarice and ego-mania. No, the solitary and grandiose idea in his mind precluded all recollection of individual humanity. It was not that he forgot us who had been his s.h.i.+pmates. He had never known us. We had not the wit to be knaves, or the credulity to accept him at his own colossal valuation. We ignored his enigmatic claim to greatness, while he pa.s.sed sublimely along, disdainful of our obvious virtues. For it is presumable that we _had_ virtues, since the world--anxious for the replenis.h.i.+ng of its larders--hails us nowadays as heroes because we prefer the dangers of sea-life to the tedious boredom of a sh.o.r.e-going existence....

"Yes, I saw into his studio, watched the artist at work at first hand. I might claim the honour, indeed, of being one of the lumps of clay upon which he sought to model his design. Surely an authentic witness this; and I dare say the normal artist's material--since we are fond of saying he blows the breath of life into it--might not join in the universal praise bestowed upon its creator, but might indulge in ironic contemplation of its own birth-pangs and the strange fortunes of its pre-natal existence!

"He did not appear, however, as my stimulated imagination had pictured him appearing, to dominate the situation on the _Manola_ and preoccupy us all with his personality and hypothetical power. Like a higher power, he remained invisible, and Captain Evans, going ash.o.r.e in a boat with Artemisia and her belongings around him, was the first to encounter him in Grunbaum's office. Encountered him, and came back bursting with the most astonis.h.i.+ng tidings. I was sitting in my room that evening after tea, having a quiet pipe and a book, when Jack came down.

"'Come along to my room, Fred,' he said, blowing clouds from his cigar.

'I want to talk to you.'

"'Why not here?' I suggested.

"'No, I want the wife to hear it, too. The gel's gone and the kid's asleep. Come along.'

"And highly mystified, I went along. It seemed like scandal, and I am not above such things once in a way, as you know. I went along, and found Mrs. Evans in her husband's cabin sewing. Nothing would do but I must have a cigar, and the angel child having been dosed with what her mother called 'chempeen', I had to have a gla.s.s of that, too. Jack was flushed and excited, and sat down beside me on the red plush settee.

"'What do you say,' he began, in a low, husky tone, 'to a job ash.o.r.e, Fred?'

"So that was it. The age-old chimera of a 'job ash.o.r.e.' I looked at Mrs.

Evans. Her lips were shut to a thin line. I could see protest and dissent in every line of her body.

"'For you or for me?' I enquired, softly.

"'For me, and p'raps for you, too, if you play your cards. It's like this': and he began a long and complicated explanation. The gel's father, as he called Macedoine, had got the job of secretary to the company and somehow didn't hit it off with old Grunbaum, who was resident concessionaire. Of course I knew Grunbaum's father, who had been the original prospector when the island was Turkish, sold most of his holdings to the French company, but kept a tenth which descended to his son who had succeeded him in the concession. Well, Grunbaum wouldn't hear of a lot of improvements which Macedoine wanted to introduce. The gel's father was full of modern ideas. Wanted to put in electric traction for the mines, with electric elevators and tips, and so on. He also wanted to develop the place, and had a plan for irrigation to attract settlers. Grunbaum wouldn't hear of it. Very conservative Grunbaum was. Got his tenth of the three francs per ton on the ore, and a thousand a year as manager, and was satisfied. Didn't want settlers.

He was king of the island and he and Macedoine had had a row. Macedoine was sick of it. All this had been explained to Jack by a young Greek, a clerk in the office, who was sick of it, too, and was 'going in' with Macedoine in his new venture. And what was that? Well, it was this way: Macedoine, who had knocked about a bit, had taken an option on some sites in Saloniki, he had bought a sixty-fourth share in the Turkish steamboat which carried the mails to the islands, and he was going into the development of Saloniki. Had formed a small preliminary company, registered in Athens, to take up the options, and he wanted directors.

This young Greek, Nikitos, was to be secretary, knowing the languages, you see. He wanted directors, practical men to superintend the actual business while he, Macedoine, you understand, would be free to control the financial side of the affair. Oh, it was a big thing. There was to be a big hotel, a big brewery, a big s.h.i.+pping business, a big real estate development in Macedonia, a big railroad system, and a big fleet of s.h.i.+ps to carry away the freight which comes from all this. Everything was to be big, big! Jack blew clouds of smoke, big clouds, and flourished his fat hands in the air. 'What did I think? Wasn't it worth jumping at? Five founder's shares of a thousand drachmas each in the preliminary company, convertible into preferred stock in the big concern and ten thousand drachmas a year salary. Eh? What did I think? Wasn't it a sound investment? What about it?' And Jack bored into my ribs with his powerful finger.

"I looked at Mrs. Evans. It was evident she had already heard something of this magnificent scheme for making us all millionaires, and her verdict was evident enough also. She never raised her eyes from her sewing where she sat in a cane chair, her hair smooth and s.h.i.+ning, her dress smooth and s.h.i.+ning, too, the embodiment of prim respectability and prudence. She had often inspired me with a crazy ambition to see her being chased by a lunatic with a razor in his hand, or pursued by a hungry Bengal tiger--to see her in some predicament which would crack the sh.e.l.l of middle-cla.s.s reserve in which she was secreted and show me the live, scampering human being within: but just now I was appalled by the formidable aspect of her disapproval. Even Jack was aware of it, for he watched me to see what I would say. And what could I say? What could any sane human being, with a knowledge of the world, say? I didn't say anything. I scratched my chin and pretended to be thinking deeply.

"For without claiming any especial perspicuity, I must confess that I have never been the raw material out of which 'suckers' are manufactured. It has always seemed to me pertinent to enquire, when Golcondas and Eldorados are offered for a song, why the vendor should be so anxious to hypothecate his priceless privileges. I suppose I am a skeptic. Business, after all, is very much like Religion: it is founded on Faith. And men like my friend Jack, for instance, have great faith in the written word, much more in the beautifully engraved word. For them all the elaborate bunk.u.m by which the financial spell-binder conceals his sinister intentions is of no avail; the jargon of the prospectus, the glittering generalties, the superb optimism, the a.s.sumption of austere rect.i.tude, the galaxy of distinguished patrons who for a consideration lend their names to the venture. For it is a venture, and men have always a pathetic hope that it may become an adventure as well, and that their s.h.i.+p will come labouring home, loaded with gold.

"Women, especially married women, are not at all like that, but they are not so much skeptics as infidels. They start up at the first distant approach of the financier, every plume and pin-feather quivering. They don't believe a word of it. They go down on their knees to their husbands and beg and beseech and supplicate them to have nothing to do with it. They shed tears over their children. They write long letters of distracted eloquence to their mothers. The very extremity of their impotence lends a certain tragic dignity to their tantrums. Of course if the cruel domestic tyrant persists in casting his bread upon the waters and speculation turns out to be a huge success, these Ca.s.sandras spend the dividends with a sort of stern joy, as though the money were tainted and they must exchange it for something useless and inconvenient as soon as possible. They know, by instinct, I suppose, that a chiffonier or a Chippendale bedroom suite is not legal tender for stock. They feel they've _got_ something. It is a truism, I suppose, to say that women are implacable realists.

"Mrs. Evans was. And she knew, too, that I was of her opinion in this matter. She never raised her eyes to look at me; but she knew. Her lips never relaxed from the rigid line they had a.s.sumed when I came down, as though she was still waiting, in severe patience, for me to do my obvious duty, and corroborate her opinion.

"'What is he putting into it?' I asked, casually.

"'He's the vendor,' retorted Jack, who had picked up the vernacular pretty quickly. 'He turns over his options and his share in this mail-boat for ten founder's shares and a seat on the board, see? Then, when the big company's formed, he takes up shares in that, and is voted a salary of twenty thousand drachmas a year as financial adviser. That's how Nikitos put it to me. Nikitos knows the country and he says there's any amount of capital available once the thing gets started. These tobacco growers don't know what to do with their money--keep it in those big Turkish trousers, most of it, he reckons. The great thing is to get in at the beginning. What do you say? He wants a s.h.i.+p-master and he wants a man with engineering experience to overlook the s.h.i.+pping business. I told Nikitos I'd talk it over with you. He says the skipper of that Swedish s.h.i.+p that's on the same charter as us is putting three hundred into it--seven thousand five hundred drachmas.'

"'But what did Macedoine say?' I persisted.

"Oh, I didn't see _him_,' admitted Jack, looking at the floor between his fat knees. 'Nikitos promised to arrange an interview if we decided to come in.'

"There it was, you see, the touch of the Master. I could not help a silent tribute of admiration to Captain Macedoine for this remarkable reserve, this exquisite demonstration of psychological insight. A man of great affairs! A financial magnate, graciously extending to us the privilege of partic.i.p.ating in his immense schemes. 'An interview could be arranged!' It was superb, this method of mesmerizing all the simple-minded skippers and chiefs who came in the iron-ore s.h.i.+ps to Ipsilon. I had a brief but vivid vision of us all ash.o.r.e in Saloniki squabbling and bluffing each other, while Macedoine sat enthroned, apart, the financial adviser, dwelling in oriental magnificence upon our contributions.