""What do you think, Mrs. Evans?" I asked, taking the bull by the horns.
"Shall we gamble a hundred or so and get rich quick?"
""You"re not married," she replied, without looking up. "You can spare it I dare say. It is different for Jack. He hasn"t any money to throw away."
""Well," I said, "I haven"t any to throw away, either, I can a.s.sure you.
I wouldn"t go to sea if I had. But Jack thinks this is a great opportunity to invest his money where he can look after it. You see, he"ll be drawing a salary as well when he"s ash.o.r.e in Saloniki."
"Still she didn"t look up. She had not budged an inch from her conviction that I agreed with her.
""I couldn"t think of living abroad," she said, severely. "I have Babs to consider."
"I"m afraid Jack hadn"t thought of that. He hadn"t visualized his wife and baby dwelling in a Turkish town, cut off by thousands of miles of ocean from home. He had been so preoccupied with the divine prospect of "a job ash.o.r.e" that he had forgotten the environment. And we had been to Saloniki with coal, time and again. I can"t say I blamed her. Residence in southeastern Europe has its drawbacks for a housewife. And quite apart from a natural repugnance to dirt, Mrs. Evans had an unnatural repugnance to anything foreign. She never really left England. She took it with her. She carried with her into her husband"s cabin, and along the wild oriental foliage and architecture of Alexandrian streets, the prim and narrow ideals of her native valley. It never occurred to her that those people in turbans and fezzes were human. It never occurred to her when a French or Italian girl pa.s.sed, dressed with the dainty and charming smartness of her race, that she might possibly be virtuous as well. She shrivelled at their very proximity, drawing the angelic Babs from their contamination. She was uneasy, and would continue to be uneasy, until she was safe at home once more in Threxford, England. That was the burden of her unuttered longing: to get home, to get home, back to the little semi-detached red-brick villa on the Portsmouth Road, which her father had given her for a wedding present and which fifty Macedoines would never induce her to sell.
"For that is what it would mean if Jack invested even two hundred pounds in this wonderful enterprise to develop Macedonia. He had spent several hundred in furnishing the house, and since then most of his two hundred a year had gone in expenses, for he was no n.i.g.g.ard either with himself or those he loved. Neither wife nor chick of his should ever lack for anything, he had told me proudly. If a neighbour"s child got some expensive and useless contraption to pull about, Babs had one, too, the very next week. If a neighbour"s wife got a fur coat, Mrs. Evans had orders to go and do likewise, a more expensive one if possible. What little he had was on deposit in the bank in his wife"s name, so that she could draw on it while he was away.
"And so I came round to the unpleasant conviction that while Mrs. Evans was silently awaiting my repudiation of the whole thing, her husband was expecting me to use my eloquence to persuade his wife to let him invest.
They say a bachelor has no worries of his own. Which is as well, when his married friends endeavour to make him responsible for their own follies, and use him as a cushion to soften the family collisions. I was an old hand and slipped out. And I really was not thinking so much of my own two hundred pounds salted down in Home Rails, as of Jack"s home, when I said, cheerfully:
""Well, this Captain Macedoine can"t object to giving us a little more information. And he can"t expect us to have the cash with us. We shall have to go home and sell something and--er--draw the money, eh?"
""It is quite out of the question," said Mrs. Evans, biting her thread as though she was severing the spinal chord of the whole proposition.
""So what I suggest is, Jack will see Captain Macedoine and we"ll take the voyage home to think about it." And I looked at Mrs. Evans to approve my machiavellian astuteness.
""Oh, it"s quite impossible, quite. I couldn"t think of leaving England.
And we couldn"t spare the money."
""We shouldn"t need the house if we came out here," said Jack, looking solemnly at his wife. She stiffened.
""We _can"t_ sell the house," she muttered through her teeth. "Where should we live? I"ve told you. Jack, it"s quite impossible."
""The house "ud fetch three hundred and fifty," said Jack, looking at me with round solemn eyes, "and the furniture "ud fetch two hundred more.
And there"s--how much is there in the bank, Madeline? Say sixty odd. Six hundred pounds. You can live cheap in a place like Saloniki."
"I could see Mrs. Evans was going to pieces. She went dull red and then dull white, dropped a st.i.tch or so, moved her feet, took a deep breath through her nostrils. I was seeing the human being at last. The lunatic with the razor was after her. The Bengal tiger was growling near by.
""Don"t be in such a hurry," I said, sharply, and for the first time that woman gave me a glance that might be tortured into a faint semblance of grat.i.tude. "I am not going into a thing until I"ve studied it, and n.o.body but a madman would commit himself on anybody"s mere say-so. You see Macedoine, Jack, when you go ash.o.r.e."
""You"d better come, too," he said, rather glumly. "Old Grunbaum wants some coal if you can spare it. Forty ton, he said. It"ll be a fiver for you. Can you let him have it and get to Algiers?"
""I"ll see," I said. "I"ll go through the bunkers in the morning." And we left the dangerous subject for the time being. It was positively refreshing to get out of the heavy atmosphere charged with Macedoine"s grandiose schemes and Mrs. Evans" premonitions of disaster and beggary for herself and Babs. That angel child slept through it all on the far end of the big plush settee, fenced in with a teak bunk-board, one predatory hand clutching the throat of an enormous teddy bear whose eyes stared upward with the protruding fixity of strangulation, as though even in sleep she found it necessary to cause someone or something acute discomfort. Yes, it was refreshing, for I don"t mind admitting that the petty graft of a five-pound note that I was to get from Grunbaum for selling him forty tons of coal was more to me than all the cloudy millions of Macedoine"s imagination. I am as anxious as any one to get something for nothing, but this Anglo-h.e.l.lenic Development Company, in which I was to get four hundred a year for living in Saloniki, didn"t appeal. In the regions of fancy Macedoine was an incomparable inspiration; in business I preferred the unimaginative concessionaire.
As I rose to go up on deck, I felt that whether Mrs. Evans was grateful or not I had earned her approbation. Perhaps she, with her feminine intuition--or possibly it was only the instinct of self-preservation--saw the necessity of flattering a poor silly single man, for she remarked, with her head bent over the child"s to touch the tumbled locks:
""I"m sure Mr. Spenlove will give you the _best_ advice, dear."
"And I felt my bosom swell with pride. Oh, women are wonderful! Even an inferior woman, as Mrs. Evans was, with a soul like a parched pea, and a heart so narrow that there was scarcely room in it for husband and child at the same time, a woman of meagre physique and frumpish in dress--even she could do a little in the animal-taming way--could crack a whip and make the lords of the jungle jump through paper hoops, and eat out of her hand. Oh, yes! Even she could harness us and drive us tandem through the narrow gate of her desire. She was sure I would give dear Jack the _best_ advice. And in the glow of this benediction I departed.
"Mr. Bloom was on deck, moving softly to and fro, smoking an immense meerschaum carved to the likeness of a skull. It was a warm evening and he had discarded coat and vest, displaying a soiled starched shirt and black suspenders inadequately furnished with b.u.t.tons. The doorway was in shadow and for a moment I watched him, promenading in the moonlight. He had the air, as he stepped back and forth, of sharing his vigil with some invisible companion. At times he nodded, and waving his pipe toward the rail, might have been holding forth in unspoken words. Getting the best of the argument, of course, I reflected bitterly, and startled him by stepping out in front of him.
""Good evening, Chief. Fine night for courtin", eh? A night like this reminds me o" the time when I was master. The moonlight, and the cliff, like the Morro. I was under the Cuban flag then you know, Chief. This brings it all back." He waved his grisly meerschaum and added: "Lovely place, Havana."
""Where"s the Third Mate?" said Captain Evans, suddenly emerging from the dark doorway. "He isn"t in his cabin."
""He went ash.o.r.e with the pilot in the cutter, Sir," said Mr. Bloom. "I did think of blowin" the whistle, only it occurred to me it might disturb the baby."
"To this piece of extreme consideration Jack offered no reply. He walked along as far as the engine-hatch and then, putting his fingers in his mouth, blew a shrill blast that echoed and reechoed between the cliffs.
Men began to move about the ship, and a sailor appeared with a hurricane-lamp. A faint cry came out of the intense shadow of the western sh.o.r.e and Jack answered it with a stentorian "Cutter ahoy!" that boomed and reverberated over our heads and trailed away into a wild racket of distant laughter.
""Don"t shout so loud, man," I suggested, when a cry once more came out of the shadow and we could see a faint glow as of a lantern in a boat moving toward us.
""Just been havin" a little look round, I dessay," remarked Mr. Bloom with a bland tolerance of youthful folly which I remember irritated me intolerably. Jack kept his gaze fixed on the slowly moving glow.
""There"s something wrong," he remarked, soberly, ignoring Mr. Bloom at his elbow.
""Oh, I don"t think so, Captain. Only a ..."
""I tell you there"s something wrong!" snarled Jack, turning on him suddenly. "Stand by at the ladder there," and the man with the hurricane-lamp said, quietly, "Right, Sir." Jack returned his gaze to the boat, which was approaching the edge of the shadow. How he knew, I don"t pretend to explain. I take it he had a _flair_, as the French say, the sort of _flair_ most of us acquire in our own profession and take for granted, but which always appears uncanny in another. And it was remarkable how the conviction that there _was_ something wrong seized upon the ship and materialized in a line of shadowy figures leaning on the bulwarks and projecting grotesquely illuminated faces into the light of the lamp on the gangway.
""Mr. Siddons there?" called Jack, quietly, as the boat came into view in the moonlight. The man at the tiller sang out "No, Sir," as he put the rudder over and added, "way "nuff. Catch hold there!" and another figure stood up in the bows and laid hold of the grating.
""Stand by," said Jack coming down to the after deck. "Come up here, you," he added, addressing the man who had spoken. The man, one of the sailors, came up.
""We were waitin" for Mr. Siddons, Sir, when you hailed."
""What orders did he leave?"
""Said he was going up the beach a little way, Sir. Told us he wouldn"t be long."
""Where did you land the pilot?"
""At Mr. Grunbaum"s jetty, Sir. It"s the best for a big boat."
""Then where is he now?"
""I couldn"t say, Sir," said the man. "He went up the path with the pilot; that"s all we know."
"Jack took a turn along the deck.
""P"raps I"d better go and "unt him up," suggested Mr. Bloom, stroking his moustache.
""And leave me here with one mate and no pilot?" said Jack. "Fred, you go." He followed me into my room where I had a pocket-torch, and whispered, "Go up yourself, Jack. See what I mean? He"s a decent young feller, even if I do find fault. Don"t let the men see anything."
""You don"t think he"s gone on the booze?" I said, incredulously.
""I don"t know what to think," he retorted, irritably. "I always thought he had plenty o" principle. You can"t tell nowadays. But we don"t want him to spoil himself at the beginning of his career. Understand what I mean?"
"As I sat in the stern of the cutter while the men pulled back into the shadow which was about to engulf the ship (for the moon was setting) I felt I liked Jack the better for that kindly whisper out of earshot of the estimable Mr. Bloom. It was like him. Now and again you could look into the depths of his character, where dwelt the old immemorial virtues of truth and charity and loyalty to his cloth. I even twisted round on the gunwale as I steered and looked back affectionately at his short, corpulent figure walking to and fro on the bridge deck, worrying himself about the "young feller," the embodiment of a rough yet exquisite altruism. It seemed to me a manifestation of love at least as worthy of admiration as was his domestic fidelity. Oh, yes! You fellows call me a cynic, but I believe in love, nevertheless. It is only your intense preoccupation with one particular sort of love which evokes the cynicism and which inspires the monstrous egotism of women like Mrs. Evans.