There was a long pause in our talk, I looking at Edmund, thinking of him as he should have been, rising from step to step in the Navy, carrying on the old family tradition of service and duty.
I could not help noticing a restraint in his manner, as though he were making careful selection of the parts of his story he chose to tell me. And there was that look on his face, the look of surrender, a subtle weakening about the mouth and chin; and in his eyes, I fancied, the mere shrewdness of the merchant elbowing out the look of command that had been natural to him.
“Tell me about the Astarte and the trade,” I said.
“Ah, the little Astarte is the best part of the story,” said Edmund with a return of enthusiasm. “We got her for an old song and we’ve made a dandy ship of her. She’s a Levantine schooner, Greek really, about 150 tons. Wood, of course, but we have a good new copper bottom on her. She’s a bit slow, but stiff as a poker in a breeze, and comfortable as a country pub! And she’ll point as near the wind as anything I ever sailed. Rum-looking though, when you’re not used to the type. Any amount of free-board sloping up to long high bows and an enormous jib-boom. She carries a flight of head-sails like a skein of geese. She has two big leg-o’-mutton sails, and we can shove a couple of square sails on the foremast when we want to. Oh, she’s pretty, I can tell you, and head-room enough for a giraffe in the saloon. You must come for a cruise in her.”
“I’d love to. Where is she now?”
“She’s in Tilbury at present. Old Welfare’s there with her on some business. He looks after the trade mostly. I do the yachting. I tell you, it’s just owning a yacht that keeps herself and her owners too!”
“And how do you make all the money?”
“Well—mostly fruit. Welfare’s great idea was trading direct with the Arabs on the Egypt and Palestine coast. In the season we load up their dates and figs and melons, and take them and sell almost direct to the consumers. So we are our own middle-men and collar all the profits. Then there are lots of odds and ends in the East. Curios and cheap fabrics, brass ware, Gaza pottery, jewellery. No end of things that would sell like hot cakes in this country. We have collected stacks of things. In fact that’s partly what brought us home. And what I’m afraid you won’t like is that, following up our direct trading principles, we’re going to run a shop of our own. Like those places in Port Said, you know. If you saw the prices those fellows get!”
“But why on earth shouldn’t I like it? Especially if it brings you home oftener. Why, my dear fellow, shop-keeping is rapidly passing into the hands of the aristocracy while the bourgeoisie buy up the old estates!”
I was greatly relieved, thinking this was the secret of his slight embarrassment and the look that had puzzled me.