Captain Macedoine's Daughter Part 7

"'You don't think a great deal of us,' I remonstrated, taking my arm away.

"'No, I don't!' she said with sudden hard viciousness of tone. 'I've had very little reason to, so far.'

"'You are meeting trouble half way, going on like this,' I said, severely. 'Come now. I insist. Promise me you will write when you get to Saloniki. Here, I'll give you my address.' And I gave it to her. She sighed.

"'I'm not afraid of life,' she said, 'when it is fair play. But I haven't had fair play. I've been up against it every time. If I got a chance----'

"'What sort of a chance?' I asked, curiously. There was a look of savage determination on her face, and she clenched her teeth and hands on the word 'chance.'

"'Oh, I'm not done yet,' she exclaimed to the air. 'I'm in a fix, but if I ever get out of it alive, look out!'

"'What do you mean?' I asked again.

"'Nothing that you would approve of,' she answered, dropping her voice.

'Nothing any of you would approve of.'

"'That means it's something foolish,' I remarked.

"'Perhaps. We'll see,' she retorted.

"'I would like to have taken a word back to young Siddons,' I hinted.

'Just to show you cared a little.'

"'But I don't!' she burst out. 'I don't! He bothered me to let him come and see me and I said--I don't know what I said. Tell him anything you like. I don't care. I'm sick of it all there!'

"'You are making it very hard for me,' I said, gently, and she flung round suddenly and faced me, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, her lips parted in a rather mirthless smile. She was an extraordinarily beautiful creature just then. Her face, with its slightly broad, firmly modelled nostrils, the small ears set close under the cloud of soft dark hair, and the thick black eyebrows, was informed with a kind of radiance that heightened the sinister impression of her scorn. She regarded me steadfastly as though she had had her curiosity suddenly aroused.

"'You!' she said. 'Hard for you? What is there hard for you anywhere?

_You_ don't take any chances. Humph!' and she turned away again.

"'Just what does that mean?' I enquired. 'If you don't care anything about young Siddons, you're hardly likely to care much about any of the rest of us.'

"'No?' she said, tauntingly. 'No?'

"'I offered you my sympathy,' I began, and she turned on me again.

"'This?' she asked, holding up the address I had given her. 'What's the good of this, if I wanted help?'

"'But what can I do?' I insisted. 'Use me. Tell me what you want me to do!'

"'Well,' she said in a dry, hard voice and looking away out to sea. 'I suppose you know what a girl in my position usually wants of a single man, don't you?'

"'But, my child,' I said, 'this is extraordinary!'

"'Oh, don't '_my child_' me,' she retorted in a pa.s.sion. 'I thought you understood.'

"Well, I suppose I had understood in a vague sort of way, but I certainly had not credited her with any active designs of this sort. And while I sat beside her reflecting upon the precarious nature of a bachelor's existence, I found she had glanced round upon me again, her expression at once critical and derisive. She saw through my sentimental interest in her affairs. She knew that at the first signal of danger to my own peace and position I would sheer off, regretfully but swiftly. Of course she was perfectly right. The mere thought of her father and his mangy lieutenant was sufficient. She had so much against her. It was horrible. As I sat there counting up the handicaps which Fate had imposed upon her I was aware of that critical and derisive smile regarding me over her shoulder. And I felt ashamed. I had an uneasy feeling that she was thinking of my severely paternal manner when I put my arm round her and made her take my address. She thought more of young Siddons, no doubt, more even of Nikitos, who was willing to marry her without knowing her secret, than she did of me. That is one of the penalties of remaining a super in the play. The leading lady regards you with critical derision or she doesn't regard you at all.

"'Let us suppose,' I suggested after a silence, 'that I do understand.

Then why do you turn down young Siddons?'

"She made a sound and a gesture of impatience.

"'Oh, because of any amount of reasons,' she said, looking out to sea again. 'A lot I'd see of him if he knew.'

"'Doesn't he? He told me you had had a bad time.' She shrugged her shoulders.

"'I told him some sort of tale, just to pa.s.s the time. I'm not such a fool. _You_ can tell him if you like,' she laughed shortly. 'I knew a girl in the office who was engaged. She told him one day, after making him promise to be her friend, and he nearly killed her, and left her.'

"'Young Siddons wouldn't do that,' I a.s.serted.

"'No, he's a gentleman,' she sneered. 'He'd sail away. A handy profession, a sailor's!'

"I must confess that I was hypocrite enough to be shocked at this. She wasn't far wrong, though. We do sail away, most of us, whether we are gentlemen or not. I suppose we are all of us, at times, the victims of the perplexing discrepancy between romance and reality. Only I wonder why it is so many of us recover, and think of our escapades with a shamefaced grin on our damaged countenances. They say these tremendous emotional experiences tend to make us n.o.bler. Why is it, when we come to a.n.a.lyze ourselves and others in middle life, we seem to find nothing save the dried-up residues of dead pa.s.sions and the dregs of relinquished aspirations? Why is it the young can see through our tattered make-ups and judge us so unfalteringly and with such little mercy? No doubt we get our revenge, if we live long enough and are sufficiently rapacious to take it!

"Yes, I was shocked, and she regarded me with defiant derision in her bright dark eyes. She challenged me. I needn't tell you I did not then accept. Here was a woman making the supreme appeal, locked up in a castle kept by a whole regiment of ogres, and challenging me to come to her rescue. And, as she put it, I sailed away.

"'And besides,' she broke in on me with a short laugh, 'thirty s.h.i.+llings a week! You can't keep house on that anywhere, as far as I know.'

"This shocked me, too, until I reflected that this girl was not making sentimental overtures, that she was simply explaining her extremely secular reasons for rejecting a particular candidate. She was in that mood and predicament. You can call it, with a certain amount of truth, a girl's cross-roads. It certainly seems to me to be a more momentous point in a woman's life than the accepted and conventional crisis which confronts virginity. A man may successfully deceive a woman, as we phrase it (rather ineptly), and make not the smallest impression upon her personality or character. But the man who a.s.sumes the abandoned function of protector, no matter what you call him, is invested with tremendous powers. No power on earth can bring her back from the road on which he sets her feet. She's got to take her cue from him. I suppose she knows this, and when the time comes to mark down her victim she brings to the business all the resources of her feminine intuition and the remorseless judgment of a panther's spring. The ruthless reference to poor young Siddons' six pounds a month wages--thirty s.h.i.+llings a week--ill.u.s.trates the mood exactly. Mind you, it is absurd to accuse a girl of being merely callous and mercenary when she talks like that. She is really merciful to her rejections in the long run. And she is proceeding on the very rational argument that a man's value to a woman may be roughly gauged by the value the world sets on him. She is not merely a greedy little fool. Women upon whom such decisions are forced achieve extraordinary skill in estimating the characters of men. Young chaps like Siddons simply don't count--they are thrown to the discard at once. Innocence and purity of soul are not negotiable a.s.sets in this sort of thing. Even men with merely a great deal of money are not so successful as one might imagine. They fizzle out if they lack the character which the woman admires. I have seen them fizzle. A man who roves as I do, reserving for himself, as I have insisted, the part of a super in the play, naturally has many opportunities of watching the lives of these emotional adventurers and the women who const.i.tute the inspiration of the adventures. The singularity of the present instance was that, for the first time in my life, I was a.s.sisting at the inauguration of such a career. That is how I interpreted her enigmatic references to 'something I would not approve of.' And when I had got that far I could see it was useless to bring in Siddons any more. His destiny lay ahead. I have no doubt he achieved it with chivalrous rect.i.tude. We English have a way of weathering the gales of pa.s.sion.

"I was turning these things over in my mind as we sat up there on the cliff and half regretting, perhaps, my usual inability to play up to my romantic situation when she raised her hand and pointed out to sea. The surface of the ocean lay like s.h.i.+mmering satin in the hush of the afternoon, but far away a small black blot, with a motionless trail of smoke astern, moved at the apex of a diverging ripple. She pointed to it and looked at me with that hard, bright, radiant smile. It certainly was significant. This was the _Osmanli_, the little tin-kettle steamboat in which her father had invested his capital, the humble beginning of that vast enterprise, the Anglo-h.e.l.lenic Development Company. The actual presence of that forlorn little vessel made a profound difference to our words. It was impossible to deny that Captain Macedoine's dreams might come true after all. His remarkable countenance might yet feature in our magazines as one of our great captains of industry, while I, with old Jack, pursued our obscure ways, the victims of a never-ending regret.

The _Osmanli_ came on, slowly pus.h.i.+ng that immense ripple across the opaline floors. Perhaps the girl perceived the significance of this. Her hand dropped to her lap but she continued to regard me in a sort of defiant silence. There! she seemed to say, there lies our future, wide as the sea, glorious as the afternoon sun on purple isles and the fathomless blue of heavens! She was extraordinarily lovely. I found myself trying to picture the sort of man who would appear later to fas.h.i.+on her destiny--perhaps one of the capitalists who would inevitably be drawn into the great enterprise. She would develop tremendously. For a moment I felt an access of regret at my renunciation. Too late, no doubt. But I have not scrupled since to think of what might have been, had I not--well, lost my nerve, let us say, and preferred to keep in the cool, shadowy by-ways of life. That's what her bright, defiant smile really meant, I believe now. I was no use to her because I didn't dare to grab her and take the consequences. They say women nowadays are rebelling against being possessed. The trouble seems to be rather that so many men shrink from the trouble and the strain and responsibility that possession entails. Too much civilization, I suppose. We are afraid of looking foolish, afraid of taking a chance. We sail away. And when we read in the news of some intrepid soul who does take a chance, who s.n.a.t.c.hes a breathless woman off her feet and gallops thundering through all our mean and cowardly conventions and finishes up perhaps with a bullet in his brain, we shrug and mutter that he was a fool. We remain safe and die in our beds, but we have to suffer in silence that bright, critical, derisive smile which means 'Thou art afraid!'"

CHAPTER V

"Yes, afraid!" said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly, after another long pause, as though one of the silent and rec.u.mbent forms under the awning had contradicted him. "We have got so that no man dare do anything off his own bat, as we say. We hunt in packs. It makes no difference whether the individual man is a saint or a sinner.

"We pull him down. Our whole scheme of life has been designed to put a premium on the tame and well-behaved, on the careful and steady householder and his hygienic _menage_. We read with regret of disorder in various parts of the world, and we despatch our legions from our own immaculate sh.o.r.es to 'restore order.' Punitive expeditions we call them.

We have a.s.sumed the role of policeman in an ebullient world. Faith, Love, Courage, are well enough if they declare a dividend and fill up the necessary forms. We are dominated by the domestic. Women like Mrs.

Evans wield enormous power. It is not so much that they have character as characteristics. They are the priestesses of the Temples of Home. I used to watch that woman on the voyage to England. I was inspired by a new and rabid curiosity. I wanted to see her in that aspect of security which had moved the girl with such bitterness. Because Mrs. Evans hadn't struck me as very safe when I had last seen her, sending out wireless calls to me in her extremity. She had been sure I would give dear Jack the best advice. That, in her private mind, was my mission on earth--to minister to the needs of her and her angel child. But she was safe now.

She would greet me in what for her was almost a melting mood. I was the confidant of the angel child's imaginary maladies. I was permitted to be by while this precious being, sitting among blankets after her bath, was fed with a highly nitrogenous extract of something or other from a cup.

Once I made a remark to the effect that they would have to get a fresh nurse when they got home. Mrs. Evans bridled. She drew down the corners of her mouth and remarked that in future she would look after Babs herself.

"'But,' I said, 'if you could get a girl like Miss Macedoine.' Mrs.

Evans kept her gaze on Babs, who was staring at me over the rim of the cup with her bold, protuberant black eyes like those of some marine animal.

"'No,' she said, 'girls like that are too much trouble.'

"'You mean--followers?' I suggested. Mrs. Evans turned red and moved slightly.

"'She wasn't nice,' she replied, coldly, and p.r.o.nounced it 'neyce.'

"'Oh,' I said, 'I wasn't aware you knew.' She got redder.