Captain Macedoine's Daughter Part 16

There was a Russian at father's house in Pimlico once, but he was an old cuckoo from the Consulate. I didn't like him.'

"'I don't think, my dear,' I said, 'that I want to know any more about it. I believe I understand.'

"'Yes,' she answered. 'I believe you do. I believed you would understand sooner or later, when I sent for you in London. I was a beast, then, but I don't regret it after all. I feel I could be anything to you, and you'd understand. Oh!' she muttered, clinging to me for a moment and staring across to where the sun, already set beyond the purple mountains, sent up broad bars of gold and crimson, reflected in the calm waters of the Gulf. 'Oh! How I have treated you!' and she sank into a silence of pa.s.sionate regret that lasted until the darkness enfolded us and we had entered the long desolate _faubourg_."

Mr. Spenlove stopped and rose from his seat on his little camp-stool.

Walking to and fro in front of the rec.u.mbent forms of his brother officers, his hands in his pockets, his head on his breast, he seemed once again to have forgotten them. And they, perceiving by this time the impropriety of mundane interruptions at such a moment, awaited his resumption in silence.

"After all," he remarked, suddenly stopping and staring down at the deck, "I lost her. I have said to you, at the beginning, that if her story means anything it means that love was nothing, and I had this in mind, for I lost her. And of what avail, I ask you, is an emotion so independent of our individual destinies that it can culminate at the very moment of disaster? It may be, of course, that what we call love is only the bright shadow on earth of some ulterior celestial pa.s.sion; but life is too short and too unsatisfactory for one to cultivate such an exalted faith. And we crave a little logic of Fate when we suffer.

If, for example, the crazy Nikitos, true to his word, had suddenly appeared before us in that narrow street off the _Via Egnatia_, and destroyed her as many were destroyed that day, one could submit as to a sinister but tangible manifestation of human folly. But to have happened as it did ... there was no sense in it. It was as though that girl, who had been from her birth a waif, the unhappy sport of spurious emotions, had angered Fate by stumbling upon something genuine after all, and was dismissed into the darkness in a moment of irascible petulance. And I suppose that I, if a man had any inherited right to expect that the law of compensation should be put in operation in his favour, should feel a grievance. But as I have remarked more than once, my attempts to be anything more than a super in the play have not been a shining success.

So we can leave that out. There is no need to lose faith in Compensation because it is somewhat delayed....

"But even from the standpoint of a detached and isolated event, there was nothing about it that a rational being could lay hold of for comfort. It was just one blind evil chance out of a million possible ones. I did not even see it happen. I was doing something which has no connection with my past or following existence--watching an Ottoman soldier, probably an Anatolian, crumple up and expire in the gutter of the _Via Egnatia_. I was watching with the close attention one inevitably bestows upon one's first violent death--as a matter of fact, I had never seen any one die, even in bed--and remaining securely wedged in a doorway a few yards up the street. I remember him as he paused for an instant in a sort of ecstasy, his face turned up toward the harsh bright glare of a naked electric bulb that hung from a trolley pole, his body momentarily poised as though defying his destiny. And then he twisted about in an extraordinarily complicated manner and fell, all of a piece, while a number of extremely active persons tore past him without any sound save a popping noise far down the street. That would be near the market, I reflected in my doorway. And as we should have to go that way in order to reach the ship, it struck me that it would be my duty to find another route. And from that I went on to visualize the consternation of my friend Jack, when I turned up with the astonishing _entourage_ of two women and a suitcase, and informed him of my determination. I had a tremendous desire to know, beforehand, just what he would do and say. He would stand by an old friend of course. But how?

And while I reflected in my doorway and listened to the popping, which went on with varying intensity, still more figures sped past the end of my street. I recalled the perplexing fact that as we had driven into the town past the barrier, there had been no one on guard. I learned later that, with unbelievable stupidity, the authorities had sent the army out toward Monastir and had left the city with a mere handful of soldiers to deal with the revolutionaries. It was this fact, I suppose, of finding n.o.body on guard, which had frightened our driver, and no sooner had we alighted before the doorway in that steep, narrow street off the _Via Egnatia_ than he had demanded his fare and galloped away up hill and out of sight. 'You'll have to get another carriage,' Pollyni had told me in an anxious voice. 'You'll find one down near the big church.' The arrangement was that they would be ready by the time I returned.

"But I had got no further than the corner when the first shots had been fired, and while I hesitated, a couple of soldiers had hurried along, looking back at every other stride, until suddenly one of them had been hit. And I had watched him die. I could still see him, an inert heap in the gutter. And while I debated what I was to do to get out of this unforeseen difficulty, the popping became a series of sharp, definite, staccato cracks, and a squad of soldiers, armed with short, blunt rifles, shuffled sideways into view. There was a species of discipline in their movements, for they deployed out over the road and dropped on one knee, while one of them stepped briskly to the curb and spoke in a harsh, authoritative tone to some invisible laggard. He came into view very slowly, dragging one leg, and halted, in the very middle of the street, his rifle pointing up hill, his face turned toward their a.s.sailants, his hand to his breast fumbling for cartridges. Now and again he lurched as though wounded, but he never relaxed his defiant glare. His hand worked quickly over the breech and he seemed about to swing his weapon round when he must have been hit again, for he toppled over and the thing went off with a flash and roar."

Mr. Spenlove relinquished his leisurely pacing to and fro under the awning and sat down sideways on his camp-stool to roll and light a cigarette. His reflections while this was accomplished remained undisturbed, and his att.i.tude conveyed an impression that he was listening with considerable bitterness to some imaginary reproaches from which he suddenly attempted to defend himself.

"Not so easy," he muttered, flicking the match into the scupper. "Not so easy! Suppose I had suddenly broken out of that doorway and made off up the street? There is no reasonable grounds for doubt that the officer who was directing that little squad of disciplined men was the person who afterward gained the White Tower and held the city barrier and the sea-front until fresh troops arrived to overpower the apostles of liberty. Suppose, I say, I had suddenly scared him by bolting up that narrow street? No, not so easy. And yet it wasn't easy, either, to remain even as long as I did. For at a word from him the kneeling men raised their rifles and fired once, twice--a crescendo of crashes reverberating from the buildings opposite. And then they all ran diagonally across the street into the shadows, and for a s.p.a.ce there was silence.

"And even then," went on Mr. Spenlove, "I did not run. Not from courage, you understand, but fear. I tip-toed out of my doorway and walked quickly up the street without making any noise. I was preoccupied with the question of getting back to the ship. We should have to walk. I tried to lay out the city in my mind. If we walked upward say, and struck a street going westward and parallel with the _Via Egnatia_, we might eventually strike another thoroughfare running down to the port. I was thinking this out as I hurried. I considered the wisdom of remaining indoors until the morning, and I believe now that is what I would have done eventually, anyhow. I looked back several times. The electric globe, hanging high, had gone out or been put out, and there were no lights in any of the houses. I imagined the inmates sitting silently behind their shutters, listening and waiting for a renewal of the uproar. You must understand that I was experiencing nothing more than a very natural exaltation of nerves, with an undertow of anxiety for the ship. I pictured Jack in a great state, wondering where I was, a state probably complicated by the scandalized Tonderbeg's abashed revelations.

As Jack grew older, he grew fond of saying there was no fool like an old fool, forgetting that there is another kind, the middle-aged fool, who has the distinction of comprehending and enjoying his folly. Of course, Tonderbeg would get himself snubbed, and Jack would retire to his cabin to muse upon the serious news. So I reflected as I hurried up that dark street toward a faint ray of light which indicated the door of her house. I had no forebodings up to this moment; only speculations. And even when that light was darkened for an instant as someone stood in the doorway, and I heard Pollyni's voice calling hoa.r.s.ely to know who I was, I had no premonition. The next moment her high-heeled shoes clicked on the sidewalk as she ran toward me, and when she came up to me she grasped me and stared at me in a profoundly mysterious fashion. I will not say to you what I now believe lay at the back of that girl's mind.

You would say I had lost my faith in humanity, but you would be mistaken. You would be forgetting her descent from the Pandour hordes who came galloping up out of the Caucasus so many centuries ago. You would be forgetting that to those people neither 'life, liberty, nor the pursuit of happiness' are particularly sacred things, or things to be achieved in a spirit of altruistic piety. But I can tell you it was because of that enigmatic stare of hers that I have emphasized her part in this story of Captain Macedoine's daughter. You might say she had the temperament for the leading role in the play.... She said in her hoa.r.s.e musical contralto, 'We were ready and we were coming down to meet you.'

"'Well?' I said. She stood in front of me, holding my arms and impeding my advance.

"'Well!' she repeated, slowly. 'You do not know what has happened,' and again she regarded me in the way I have described.

"'No,' I said, returning her scrutiny, 'I don't understand what you mean by what has happened. I have seen a shocking thing down there. They are fighting in the _Via Egnatia_. Some are dead. We can't go that way, I'm afraid.'

"Suddenly she dropped her hands from my arms and breathed deeply.

'Come!' she said, and hurried away from me. I had spoken the truth. I did not understand her, but her demeanour alarmed me. I followed, watching the silhouette of her body sway as she took her long strides. I had a fugitive notion that this performance was symbolical of our emotional existence--our souls pursue one another through a steep darkness, the victims of unpremeditated suspicions and fears. As she reached the lighted doorway she swung round and spread out her hands with a gesture of pity and grief. 'Look!' she said. 'As we came out someone fired. She was in front. It was not my fault.... You see.'

"While she spoke I endeavoured to collect my forces. I looked down. I had a vivid impression of emerging from a place of imprisonment, a place of great noise and activity and warm, pleasant excitement, and of seeing before me a cold gray plain extending into the distance. And over this plain, I reflected, I was to travel, alone. I looked down, I say. I heard the girl beside me murmur hoa.r.s.ely into my ear, and stoop to lift the form that lay motionless at our feet.

"'No!' I said, drawing her back. 'This is for me to do. I will carry my own dead.'"

CHAPTER IX

"And the rest," said Mr. Spenlove in a colourless voice, "is by way of being an epilogue of detached and vagrant memories. They come to me now and again, a sad sequence of blurred pictures in which I can see my own figure in unfamiliar poses. There is the night which I pa.s.sed in that house, a night of endless recapitulations and regrets. There was the moment when I turned from the bed, where the dead girl lay, and found the other girl, with her extraordinary vitality, close beside me, scrutinizing me as though I were a problem she found it impossible to solve. And when I walked through into the other room and sat down beyond a table on which a tiny oil lamp burned, she advanced into the circle of light, so that her shadow was gigantic on the wall and ceiling behind her, and looked across at me. There was a subtle change in her since we had met in the street outside. She seemed full of an insatiable curiosity to know my thoughts. And my thoughts just then were not for any one to know. My thoughts resembled a flock of wild birds which had been streaming steadily in one direction when a bomb had exploded among them and sent them swirling and careening in crazy circles. And she did this more than once. While I sat there in the semi-darkness beyond the circle of light she came in with some bread and a bottle of wine, and set a plate and gla.s.s beside them on the table, and then, after watching me for a moment, went away again. There was a faint murmur from below where a number of women from neighbouring houses were conversing in low tones with the old Greek woman who seemed to be the _concierge_, and thither no doubt the girl retired. And once while I drowsed for a spell I was aware of her as she stepped softly up to me, peered into my face, and then, as I opened my eyes, withdrew without speaking. Yes, I drowsed time and again; but toward dawn I grew wakeful and the necessity of returning to the ship became urgent once more. You will understand, of course, that it was not a fear of being killed that held me in that room. I was in a mood up there which rendered me perfectly indifferent to material risks of that nature. It was rather an illogical and irresistible instinct to play up to the event. I was intensely aware that the episode, by reason of its frustrating climax, was already standing away from me, and I was unable to relinquish my position. I felt that when I was gone away from that room I would be at the mercy of a frightful and solitary future. It may sound strange to you, spoken in cold blood, but that dead girl was nearer to me during my vigil than any living woman had ever been! I went over everything that had happened while I sat and watched the light of the three candles flicker over those exquisite features. And I discovered in the confused tangle of emotions one bright scarlet thread of gladness that no more harm could come to her. For mind you, I was wise enough to know the perilous problems in store for her, even if she had come home with us. I was under no illusions about either of us. It was the tremendous risks which had allured me. I have said I believed she would have won out, and I do.

But how? Women win out in all sorts of extraordinary ways. I am not so sure some of them would not be better in their graves....

"But I went down at last. And the girl Pollyni met me in the corridor below. She said: 'Are you going on board the ship?' 'Yes,' I answered, 'I am going on board the ship. What else can I do?' She shrugged her shoulders and looked at the floor. I started to go out. I experienced a sudden irritable anger.

"'Why do you ask?' I demanded.

"'Well,' she said in a low tone, 'you know her father is sick.'

"'Oh,' I answered, 'I will come ash.o.r.e again, of course. But just now, you understand, I must go back. I may be wanted.' And I went out quickly into the chill air of the dawn.

"And the intense silence of that cold, closed, steep street daunted me.

I felt, as I surveyed those silent and repellent facades, with their enigmatic shutters, a sensation of extraordinary loneliness and dreary failure. I envisaged the _Manola_ lying snug and respectable at her berth in the little harbour, all the dingy details of her stark utility apparent in the transparent morning air. I saw myself ascending the gangway, and the startled air of amused surprise on the face of the night watchman projected abruptly from the gallery. I saw Jack, asleep in his room, his mouth open, his limbs flung wide, his hairy chest showing through the open pajamas, a rumbling snore filling the neat room. And I came to the singular and illogical conviction that if I went aboard immediately I would regret it. I should carry away with me into the future a memory of shabby and furtive behaviour. And I did not want that, I can a.s.sure you. I wanted this thing to remain somewhat as I had experienced it. I felt that I must make the most of it. We grow very humble in our emotional demands as we grow older, I observe. We who go to sea especially. One of the inevitable products of our rolling existence. And I stood, irresolute, in front of the open doorway leading to the flat above, and Pollyni Sarafov stood there watching me. She came down.

"'Let me tell you something,' she began. 'I think you ought to go and see her father. Didn't you say you used to know him in America? Just think! She was all he had.'

"'What am I to say to him if I go?' I demanded. 'You know very well that he thinks she is ... eh? How shall I explain when I come in?'

"'Never mind that,' she said, shaking her head. 'You come.'

"And she became extraordinarily light-hearted when I said I would. She ran in and got her hat and parasol. She came out prinking and clicking her high-heeled shoes, and she placed her hand as lightly as a feather upon my arm. Perhaps she really needed my support down that steep, narrow street, but I read into that delicate gesture a profound moral significance. And I can tell you another thing," added Mr. Spenlove with some vehemence. "I found myself regarding the whole sum of human grief with moody suspicion. I recalled a fine phrase I had once read of 'the great stream of human tears falling always through the shadows of the world,' and I dismissed it as fudge. I was half tempted to wonder whether the world, which had grown out of stage coaches and sailing ships and Italian opera, had not grown out of grief at the same time.

And by heavens, what has happened during the past two or three years has only solidified that grisly conviction. We seem to have been born just in time to see the end of the spiritual world, the final disintegration of the grand pa.s.sions of the human soul. Oh, we keep up a certain pretence from force of habit, but we are being forced to realize that the philosophers were on the right track when they foretold the subjugation of man by the instruments of civilization. Or you can say that the _tempo_ of our modern life is too fast to permit our accepted notions of the elemental comedy and tragedy of existence to register with any permanence. The newspaper scribbler talks incessantly of Armageddon, heroism, patriotism, sacrifice, and so on, and we wait in vain for our hearts to respond to their invocations. We discover with surprise that we are as incapable of profound sorrow as of a high resolve. We are swept on out of sight. We forget, or we die and are forgotten. We are beginning to wonder now and again whether all our boasted science and mechanical discoveries are not evil after all, whether the old monks were such bigoted fools as we have been taught to believe when they denounced knowledge as a danger to the soul. But we have very little time in which to reflect. We rush on to fresh improvements, and we find ourselves less admirable than before.

"And so, as we went down that cold, remorseless street of shuttered houses, away from the chamber of death, we were silent, but we thought not at all of death. Perhaps we did at the turning into the _Via Egnatia_, for the dead soldier was still lying where he had fallen in the shallow channel that ran just there by an orchard wall. He was lying on his face, with his hands close to his head, and his pose gave one a peculiar impression that he was looking with intense curiosity into some subterranean chamber. His att.i.tude was not at all suggestive of death.

It was quite easy, looking across at him, to imagine him suddenly leaping to his feet, beckoning us to come and have a peep through his newly found hole. The soldiers we encountered hurriedly descending the street from the Citadel and running across to vanish into the White Tower were much more like dead men, strange to say. Their faces were pallid with lack of sleep, and they bore the hard-lipped stare of disciplined men who have suddenly lost faith in their commanders. They paid no more attention to us than to the stones of the roadway. They ran past us laden with bread and vegetables, hastily corralled from friendly houses built about the Citadel, for these were mostly families with military traditions. One carried on his curved back a newly slaughtered sheep, the bright red blood dribbling from the gashed gullets, and the animal's eyes looking back at us with an expression of intelligent comprehension, as though it were fully aware of the whole business. In the clear light of early morning there was a good deal of the automaton about all of us. And as we crossed the road where it debouched upon the quays and started to walk out of the city by the deserted barrier, a short and determined-looking person in a tight-fitting blue tunic looked out of the door of the Tower and eyed us critically. And I really believe the only reason why he neglected to tell one of his men to put an experimental bullet into us was the fact that the girl still had her hand on my arm. And she carried her parasol.

We walked on and presently we were out of sight of the sea and the Tower. Across the blue sky large companies of billowing white clouds were gathering from the mouth of the Gulf. Suddenly Miss Sarafov murmured without taking her eyes from the ground.

"'Was that man dead?'

"Now," said Mr. Spenlove, "you may call me fanciful and overwrought, but I read into that simple question a secret desire to accustom my mind to the idea of death as a frequent and common sort of affair. I looked at her suspiciously and she raised her eyes to mine full of a clear feminine candour. She may have known that my morose taciturnity came from a consciousness that she had divined the fundamental flaw in my emotional equipment and was using it for her own purposes, but she did not show it. And while I was debating the question with myself, I heard her add, in a shy, delicate tone, 'There is a little garden just here, on the water.'

"And from that moment I let her have her way and followed her lead. We crossed the street. I heard her say it was too early to go to the _Rue Paleologue_, which might be true, but struck me as irrelevant. And then my attention was drawn to a high square house standing in a dusty yard and decorated with a long board bearing the words _ecole Universelle_.

"'I was at school there before we went to America,' Miss Saratov remarked, poking at the place with her parasol. 'It was a good school then, very solid instruction,' she added, 'but now it isn't any good.'

"'Is the instruction no longer sufficiently solid?' I asked.

"'The mistresses are all progressives,' she returned. 'Here is the little garden,' and we came out upon a small place of gra.s.s and shrubs, flanked by a pair of _kiosques_ joined by a wooden bal.u.s.trade. It was deserted, as one might expect at that hour; but Miss Sarafov remarked that we might have coffee and rusks if I liked, and walked across the sward to a door in a neighbouring house. I went into one of the _kiosques_ and sat facing the calm waters of the Gulf. Facing something else, too, which was anything but calm. For I was unable to rid myself of a fear that when this episode was completed I should be in a very difficult position. I should be like a man who had been struggling in the waves, only to find himself suddenly flung up high and dry upon a desolate and inhospitable sh.o.r.e, where he would in all probability perish of privation. And then, if you like to carry the parable a little further, this man becomes aware of a siren calling him back into the watery tumult.... And you know, I doubted my ability to manage the situation if I were to go back. One needs a special education, or let us say, temperament, to deal successfully with sirens. And as Miss Sarafov came into the _kiosque_ and sat down beside me, I felt the immediate necessity of making my position clear. I began at once to tell her that the events of the previous day had changed everything. I should in all probability never come to Saloniki again. And while I felt it my duty to see Captain Macedoine and also to return Miss Sarafov herself to her mother, I should then go back to the ship for good.

"'And I shall never see you again,' she exclaimed, looking out across the Gulf, in a kind of magical abstraction.

"'A small privation,' I murmured. She rose suddenly and stood by the door of the _kiosque_, her st.u.r.dy and extraordinarily vital figure silhouetted against the shining water.

"'Not so small,' she muttered in her hoa.r.s.e contralto, 'not so small, after what has happened.'

"'What do you want, Miss Sarafov?' I asked, sharply. 'You seem to accuse me of a failure in friendship.'

"'What do I want?' she echoed, without turning round. 'Why do you suppose I wanted Artemisia to send for you and go to England? Because she was going to take me, too.'

"'Take you, too?' I said, feebly.

"'Sure!' she shrilled, turning round, 'to live with her. She hadn't a friend in the world to turn to and she'd have gone crazy living alone in England while you were at sea. We had it fixed up. And now it is all over, and I have to stay here and live through--what? I don't know.'

"'But I understood Captain Macedoine to hint that you were his favourite,' I observed.