"'And you haven't seen him since when?' I hazarded.
"'Oh, I met him when he came to Paris on business. You see, the company he's in now is French, and he is in a very important position out there.'
"It was clear she knew nothing. She had been brought up upon the customary vague references to 'position,' and so on, with which young people in the middle classes are inducted into the real world. One could imagine her telling her school-chums how her father had 'an important position out there,' and their subsequent awe and envy. I can remember a boy at school saying his dad was 'on the Continent,' when his fond parent had gone for a week-end at Boulogne. We were impressed. And I wondered what old Macedoine's job might happen to be. So I said that I had once been shipmates with a Captain Macedoine out in New Orleans. She exclaimed: 'Were you really! How funny!' and suddenly dropped her voice to a whisper. 'Were you friends, as you are with Captain Evans?' I said no, not exactly, and looked up at the figure of young Siddons on the bridge. He was looking at us, and paused in his walk to and fro trying to make out who I might be. I was thinking of him and wondering, when I heard her say that her father did not like America; he was never happy there. He was misunderstood. Well, many a man has been unhappy and misunderstood in America. Some men are so exacting in their ideals that no country can hope to win their approbation. Captain Macedoine was evidently still on a pilgrimage seeking a home for his wounded spirit. I asked his daughter if he were happy and understood in Ipsilon. She regarded me with attention for a moment, as though she suspected me of irony. Then she said, in the grave tones that middle-class people reserve for the vital themes of life, that he had a good position and excellent prospects. And then she left me with a murmur about 'the kid' and I began to walk to and fro. I was amused. I tried to figure out the salient features of a 'position' which would meet with the approval of a man with Macedoine's record. And the prospects! For mind you, he must have experienced a severe blow when those Federal secret service men had ferreted out his dealings in the opium traffic and his plan for establishing himself in England had gone to smash. And in what way could this young person assist him in his business? I was intrigued, as they say, but I could form no theory which would adequately account for so many disparate premises. After all, such musings are their own reward. The event robs them of their early glamour. I did not even confide in any one else on the ship. There is a pleasure in an unshared scandal which many men and all women seem to overlook. It added, I may say, to the joys of being a super in the play. And when Mr. Basil Bloom, our effulgent chief mate, informed me one evening that I seemed to be very chummy with Miss Macedoine, I only smiled and asked him if he had designs on her himself. He twisted his moustache, looked scornfully at the horizon, and was evidently perturbed. He had referred grandiloquently, during the previous voyages, to a peerless female whom he called 'the future Mrs. Bloom.' This lady lived at Greenwich, and we had reason to believe that Mr. Bloom, on the strength of his genteel manners, formidable moustache, and optimistic temperament, had been sponging on her family for some months before he joined the Manola. 'I'll tell the young lady,' I said, 'and perhaps you'll get some encouragement.' He assured me first that I needn't trouble, and then added that he knew I was the last person in the world to think less of a man if he changed his mind. This was so infernally unfair to the lady at Greenwich that I laughed in his face and walked away.
"The Second Mate took a different line. He was a quiet, inoffensive creature, and usually preoccupied with a feeble struggle which he maintained against whiskey. He had a delicately coloured, spiritual, refined face, with the salient points slightly sharpened, and he seemed to have neither thoughts, hopes, nor aspirations. However, his finely chiselled features appeared one day while we were in Alexandria with the addition of a greenish-yellow puff below the left eye, and the mess-room boy informed us that the Second Mate was having his meals in his room in future. There was a laugh from the Third Engineer, and I said nothing, for I had a notion he and the Second Mate had been ashore together. But the mess-room boy, whose slant eyes and long nose worried into all the scandal of the ship, added that young Mr. Siddons had blacked the Second Mate's eye for him, over the nurse. I told him to dry up. To tell the truth I was getting tired of the episode. I felt the whole thing was becoming tawdry and dropping to a rather low plane. I wasn't willing to admit this to myself, mind you, because it involved my old friend Jack. I mean it would be the Commander's fault if we all slumped into the mire together over this young woman. That's what commanders are for—to raise the tone. That's what a good many of them lack the character to do. Personal courage, professional skill, long experience, will carry a man through among men. When there are women in the case, a man needs something else. What? Well, it may sound strange to you, but I should call it simplicity of heart. It is almost the only thing women instinctively respect and fear. Good old Jack was simple in his way, but I doubted his ability to handle a crisis. I was thankful when we were through with Alexandria and were heading north for Ipsilon.
"For just as we were entering this sea cluttered with islands so thick you can always see four or five and sometimes a dozen at once, so we were in the midst of a score of dubious possibilities. Here was Jack avoiding me in an apologetic fashion. Here was the Chief Mate whispering to Mrs. Evans. Here was the Second Mate sitting in remote and solitary grandeur in his little cubby-hole, comforting himself with a bottle of Turkish gin. Here was young Siddons, very youthful-looking and shy, miserable because the Captain was looking black about something. Only the angel child and her mother seemed untouched by the horrible paralysis which was creeping upon us and for which they were primarily responsible. At all hours you could hear the roars of rage from the cabin when it wanted something—the roar, the squeals, the kicks, the hiccoughs, and the final sullen silence of satiety. I tell you, that woman and her baby were driving us all, including her husband, crazy, and she sat there oblivious. She wasn't even aware that Artemisia hated her.
"I don't know exactly what Jack had expected me to do to help him. No doubt if I had proposed to Artemisia during the voyage, married her in Alexandria, and left her ashore in a flat out at Mex or Gabbari he would have been satisfied. I should have got him out of a hole and got myself into one, which appeals to most of us. Or I might have acted like a man without any emotions at all, and repelled Artemisia's confidences with chilling disdain. This would have set a good example to the others, he may have thought. I have never gone in for setting a good example, however. I have found that even those who follow the example hate the man who sets it. And in addition, with the curious intuition of the illiterate, Jack suspected I had not been perfectly frank with him as to my intimacy with her. And so we were all on the watch, alert, uneasy, silent, and unhappy.
"I still went in to see Mrs. Evans of an evening. To tell the truth she fascinated me. I had always held the theory that no married woman could be an absolute fool. It had seemed to me that such contact with the realities of life as marriage involved must leave some austere mark of intelligence, some tinge of altruism, upon the most superficial. She seemed to disprove this. For her the world did not exist save for the 'angel child.' Even her husband was now only the nearly indispensable producer of income. She talked, not of him, or of her family, not of Art or Life or Death or the world to come, not even of Home or the things she had seen in Alexandria. She had seen nothing in Alexandria. She had declined to let Jack take her to Cairo 'because of the expense.' She read no books nor papers. She dressed in perfect propriety. And all the time she talked about the child, one hand near the child, her eyes fixed on the child's movements or repose. I think the voyage was a revelation to Jack. He was finding his place in the world. He was thinking in his honest, clumsy way. He never took his wife for a trip again. He loved his child as much as any man could, but this ingrowing infatuation, to the exclusion of every other desirable thing in the world, was fatiguing.
"And Artemisia! She sat in her little spare cabin opening on the saloon, and now and again she would raise her shoulders, draw a deep breath, let them drop again as though in despair, and go on with her sewing. She would laugh at me when I tried to amuse the child and distract it from some preposterous desire. It was not easy. Her tenacity of purpose was appalling. She was yelling one evening for someone to open the great medicine chest that stood by the brass fireplace. I tried the time-honoured ruses for placating the young. I said there was a lion inside who would jump out and eat Babs. I pretended to go and find the key and came back with the news that naughty Mr. Siddons had dropped it into the sea. The brat stopped to breathe for a moment and a faintly human expression came over the stupendously smug little face. I followed this up by a story of how Mr. Siddons had shown me how to make a pin float on the water. I hastily poured some water into a glass, got a piece of blotting paper, laid my pin on it, and waited for the homely trick to succeed. I had no luck somehow. The pin went to the bottom and Babs' opinion of me went with it. She suddenly remembered about the medicine chest and gave a preliminary yell. Mrs. Evans said, 'Oh, Babbsy, darling!' I got up and went out on deck. We were running among the islands. Away to the east-ward I could see the lights of the Roumania Lloyd mail-boat going south. Suddenly two hands grabbed the lappets of my patrol-coat, a dark, fluffy head leaned for a delicious moment against my chest, and Artemisia gurgled, 'Oh, Mister Chief, isn't she just a little fiend?' She had been listening to my blandishments and had witnessed the final destruction of my hopes. She put her hands behind her back, threw up her head, and regarded me with amusement. 'Why,' she whispered, 'why didn't you open the medicine chest, and give her the prussic-acid to play with?' And then, without waiting for an answer, she turned and looked across at the islands we were passing. She sighed. 'Just look at them! How do they know which is Ipsilon? Mister Chief, Mister Chief, I am afraid.'
"'What of?' I asked. She sighed again.
"'Of the future,' she said. 'This is a change for me. I don't know what's coming. I haven't had any luck yet.'