Captain Macedoine's Daughter Part 17

"'That's his way of talking. Mother thinks he's wonderful. Of course, if his investments went up, as they might if there was a revolution, he would be pretty rich. But just now his business doesn't bring in much.

And it was Kinaitsky who started him in it. He owes Kinaitsky a lot of money.'

"'And you think you would like to go to England?' I said. She shrugged her shoulders, and made a movement of her hand as though casting something away. 'No use talking about it,' she returned, gruffly. I was silent, and after she had watched me for a moment she came over quickly and sat down beside me again.

"'Pardon,' she whispered, 'but I had so little time. I knew you would go away and I had to speak. I thought you might not be angry.'

"'I am not,' I said, 'only sorry. You had made a very special place for yourself in my memory,' I went on. 'I wish you had not disillusioned me.

You were entirely charming. Why should you go and spoil it all? I would have thought of you always as my friend's friend....'

"She sat in a tense, eager pose looking up into my face, a pose that suddenly relaxed and she sighed. I did not see it then, in my exalted mood of idealized emotion; but I don't suppose a woman values any reputation less than one for altruistic charm. Probably because she is aware of its inevitably spurious nature. Miss Sarafov sighed, and the intense vitality of her features was obscured for an instant as by a shadow. An idea seemed to strike her and she looked intently at me again.

"'Women don't matter much to you,' she observed, quietly, and fell silent again.

"And here again," said Mr. Spenlove, "was a picture which comes back to me now--the scene in that little _kiosque_, a circular chamber crowded with the brilliant and disturbing reflections of the sunlight on the surface of the sea, shadow and gleam moving in complex rhythm across our faces and figures as we sat there, two beings destined to be forever strangers. She came into view for a little s.p.a.ce, and vanished again, a mysterious, alluring, and magical presence, yet conveying no hint of any misfortune. She gave the impression of an easy and felicitous balance of forces, a complex of resilient strength, to which we poor Anglo-Saxons rarely attain. And sitting in the dancing reflections of the sunlights, she seemed a veritable emanation of the spirit of enchanted desire. I see her now, confronting the obscure motives of my behaviour in good-humoured sadness, while an ancient person in baggy black trousers and dingy scarlet sash tottered forward with a copper tray bearing tiny cups and a bra.s.s pot with a long handle.

"And in direct sequence, not very clear but clear compared with the shadowy oblivion that intervened, comes a picture of him whom I have called more than once a master of illusion. And I suppose he has a right to the t.i.tle for he maintained the pose to the end of the chapter. I had imagined that it would be a painful duty to break the news of his daughter's death to him. I saw myself offering my condolences and soothing a father's anguish. I pictured an old man bowed with grief. But it did not happen that way at all. I forgot that masters of illusion have no use for facts, not even for such facts as grief or death, until they have been trans.m.u.ted into some strange emotional freaks which will inspire the spectator with awe. And Fate, who is something of an illusionist herself, plays into the hands of such as he.

"I remember, for instance, sitting heavily in Mrs. Sarafov's front room, and telling that handsome, self-possessed woman in a few brief words what had happened to Captain Macedoine's daughter. How a wounded soldier's rifle, discharged by accident in our direction, had left us paralyzed and aghast at the inconceivable efficacy and finality of its achievement. I remember that, and then I remember following her into Captain Macedoine's house. About nine o'clock, I should say. And Mrs.

Sarafov must have sent a messenger in advance, for Captain Macedoine already knew what I had to say. We stood in the vestibule near the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Sarafov whispering that he was being treated by his doctor with special baths. The doctor came every morning, I was informed in a respectful tone. And while we stood there, we heard a commotion upstairs, and a strange procession began to descend the narrow and shallow steps. I remember turning away hurriedly from a picture on the wall, a stark, angular composition of muscular male nudes in att.i.tudes registering cla.s.sical grief, of the body of Hector being brought back to the city--and finding Captain Macedoine, supported by a lean man in a frock coat and by two women, coming down. And perhaps it was the contemplation of that picture which called to my mind with irresistible force another picture, seen many years before. It was a picture of vivid colouring and violently complex action--the Emperor Vitellius coming down a steep, narrow street with the mob and the soldiery hacking and yelling and spitting around him, his gross corpulence rolling and rearing and staggering, the rich robes ripping away from the creases of sleezy tissue, the bright blood spurting from neck and arms, the eyes rolling wide, in a naked horror of dissolution, toward the flawless blue of a Roman sky. And the recollection was not so irrelevant as you might imagine. Captain Macedoine wore a voluminous bath robe of dark purple and he wore sandals on his feet. As he descended he rolled and staggered, and his supporters rolled and staggered to maintain themselves and him, all this commotion giving the little group the complicated activity of a crowd of people wrestling with an old man in a purple robe. And Mrs. Sarafov advanced to a.s.sist him, running up several steps and raising an arm, as though to strike, but with the real intention of support. I remember, too, the small wayward feet and the thick, smooth, hairless calves beneath the robe, strange in one so decrepit. I daresay, you know, he would have been something of that sort in that part of the world twenty generations earlier. Perhaps there was something aback of his adumbrations concerning his ancient lineage.

Perhaps he was not simply a ship chandler in a small way, but the reincarnation of some sinister pro-consul who sat on the terrace of his marble villa among the distant ranges, and watched with a contemptuous and intellectual sneer the hordes of peasantry as they trudged into the cities to sacrifice their daughters to the savage and inexorable Cabirian deities. I had that fantastic notion as they paused at the foot of the stair and he moved his head slowly from side to side, the mouth pursed, the eyes set in a stony, unseeing stare, the bathrobe of purple towelling slipping from one shoulder. And then they moved forward again, away from me, into a room spa.r.s.ely set with French furniture and dominated by a lofty chandelier still shrouded in its summer muslin, and the door swung to, leaving me to contemplate the picture in its tarnished frame of the body of Hector being brought back to Troy.

"And I must have sat there, in a sort of cane lounge, for a long time, since when we emerged from the doorway, the doctor and I, the _Rue Paleologue_ was a shadowless glare of thin sunshine. He had come out of that room with bent head, closing the door absently and advancing toward the lounge where reposed his hat and stick beside me, when he took occasion to glance at me. Immediately he became alert and active.

"'You have sustained a shock,' he murmured, counting my pulse.

"'Is that it?' I returned, and he smiled, taking a capsule of white powder from his wallet and handing it to me. A carafe stood on a table near by. He poured out a gla.s.s of water.

"'Looks like it,' he remarked in excellent colloquial idiom; 'put this on your tongue and wash it down with some water. Feel better? Come out into the fresh air. Take a drive with me if you like.'

"'I want to talk to you,' I explained, as I followed him out. He hailed a man standing by a carriage several doors away and conversing with a servant.

"'Very nice of you, I'm sure. Step in. Just the day for a const.i.tutional,' And then, as we started off and the carriage rolled round the corner out of sight, his mood changed. 'Friend of the family?'

he asked, keenly.

"'You can call me that. Of Miss Macedoine certainly.'

"'Now there was a woman!' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, opening an immense cigarette case, like a bandolier, and offering it to me. 'I admire her very much, indeed. I was called in about a year ago. But you say you are a friend of hers. And she's dead. I suppose I shall have to go and attend to it.

Only you know what's going on. This confounded Committee of Liberty and Progress have carried out a _coup d' etat_ and there'll be very little liberty of movement until they're squashed. Between ourselves, that is.

Thank the Lord my practice is out here among the Europeans. And it's bad enough here, I can tell you.'

"'You have lived in England?' I interposed.

"His lean, dark face wrinkled with humour.

"'Well, considering I was casualty surgeon at St. Barnabas Hospital for nearly three years, I rather think I have. Yes, I took my degrees at Guys, and I don't mind admitting I wish I was in London now. But I have an old mother and seven sisters who have never been farther than Volo in their lives, and so I resign myself.'

"'Greek?' I enquired. He flushed dark red.

"'Scarcely,' he said in a suppressed sort of voice. I won't bother you with local animosities. We are Spanish Jews. Not very good ones, perhaps, but we keep to ourselves and manage to keep the wolf from the door. And now,' he said with a brisk yet courteous movement of his hand to my arm, 'who the blazes are you, and what do you want to know?'

"I told him succinctly, and he nodded to each fact of importance as he took it in.

"'Mind you,' I told him, 'I don't defend her behaviour. She shouldn't have told her father she was married when she wasn't. He might have----'

Doctor Sadura made a gesture of flinging something away impatiently.

"'Oh, pardon me, but it wouldn't have made any difference with that old humbug.' I looked at him in amazement.

"'I said humbug,' he insisted. 'A thorough old humbug. Do you know what he's suffering from? Illusions of grandeur, we call it in the profession. A form of megalomania. Oh, yes, he's got some money, no doubt, or I shouldn't render him professional services. But he thinks he owns the whole country clear up to Uskub. Burbles away for hours to me about his plans for developing the territory. He's got a lot of concessions that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. What's the use of concessions when the government's going in and out like a wheezy old concertina, when the agriculturalists simply wouldn't know what he was talking about and would come out with long knives and sickles and slash his developing parties about the legs? Rubbish! Illusions of grandeur, I tell you. As for the girl, you know her better than I do.

The man who protected her, Kinaitsky, is a very fine chap indeed, but he isn't the sort of person I'd introduce to my sisters, if you know what I mean. Distinctly not.'

"'And yet I understand he married a Jewess not long ago,' I said.

"'Yes, very rich. Quite a different matter. Immense tobacco properties.

You see, although he is not an Ottoman, his family have lived under Ottoman government so long that they are strong supporters of the old regime. They are like us Jews. They are good business men and they lend the old Ottoman families money in return for franchises which are very profitable to people with affiliations in Paris and London, and so forth. I don't say it's a perfect system,' Doctor Sadura went on, 'but it suits the country.'

"'Then where does our friend with his illusions of grandeur come in?' I enquired.

"'Nowhere, unless there was a revolution and a lot of these old estates came into the market, and the new government found time to think of him.

But it is building on pretty rotten foundations, I can tell you. You don't suppose he is the first to think of such a thing.'

"'No, there is a gentleman named Nikitos,' I remarked.

"'I dare say there is,' said the doctor, 'but I never heard of him.'

"'He aspired to the hand of Miss Macedoine,' I said, 'and he accompanied them here from the Island of Ipsilon.'

"The doctor whistled. The carriage stopped at this moment in front of an imposing residence with gigantic iron gates shutting off a curved drive.

The doctor alighted, turned round, and regarded me with considerable interest.

"'Well, I'm blowed,' he observed, coolly, and at once attacked the ma.s.sive gates. I watched him moving one of them very slowly and edging through. He was a most stimulating person to be with. Vitality radiated from him. I have no doubt he was a very successful physician. Whom he was attending within this opulent home I never knew--perhaps another case of illusions of grandeur. He came down the drive again quickly, slipped between the gates, and sprang in beside me. He gave me the impression of playing an extremely strong game of tennis.

"'Well?' I said, as he slipped his wallet into the pocket in front of us, and took out his formidable cigarette case. 'Is M. Nikitos suffering from the same malady as Captain Macedoine?' The doctor made a grimace.

"'I remember that chap,' he said, 'though I don't recall hearing his name. He acted on behalf of Captain Macedoine. An international journalist, whatever that may be. We are rather inclined to avoid journalists of all sorts here, you know. First I thought he had picked these people up at the Custom House and got himself appointed dragoman.

Then I suspected when I was called in to see the girl that he and the old man were ... you understand that we doctors get into some queer _menages_. But aspired to the hand, you say.'

"'Yes, and makes extravagant claims to what he calls purity.'

"'Oh, that's a very common hallucination,' said the doctor. He laughed gratingly. 'Compared with the people who employ them, you know, they must in time get to feel they are immaculate. I don't blame them. But it's an hallucination.'

"Do you explain everything in pathological terms?' I asked.

"'How do you mean?' demanded he.

"'You seem to imagine we are all the victims of some mental disease.'

"'No, not at all. But the higher types of intellectualism appear to me slightly mad. The Ego,' added Doctor Sadura, 'is a very peculiar animal.

It feeds on strange things like empire-building on a Balkan dung-heap, and purity, and--oh, all sorts of things.'