"I must confess that I was hypocrite enough to be shocked at this. She wasn't far wrong, though. We do sail away, most of us, whether we are gentlemen or not. I suppose we are all of us, at times, the victims of the perplexing discrepancy between romance and reality. Only I wonder why it is so many of us recover, and think of our escapades with a shamefaced grin on our damaged countenances. They say these tremendous emotional experiences tend to make us nobler. Why is it, when we come to analyze ourselves and others in middle life, we seem to find nothing save the dried-up residues of dead passions and the dregs of relinquished aspirations? Why is it the young can see through our tattered make-ups and judge us so unfalteringly and with such little mercy? No doubt we get our revenge, if we live long enough and are sufficiently rapacious to take it!
"Yes, I was shocked, and she regarded me with defiant derision in her bright dark eyes. She challenged me. I needn't tell you I did not then accept. Here was a woman making the supreme appeal, locked up in a castle kept by a whole regiment of ogres, and challenging me to come to her rescue. And, as she put it, I sailed away.
"'And besides,' she broke in on me with a short laugh, 'thirty shillings a week! You can't keep house on that anywhere, as far as I know.'
"This shocked me, too, until I reflected that this girl was not making sentimental overtures, that she was simply explaining her extremely secular reasons for rejecting a particular candidate. She was in that mood and predicament. You can call it, with a certain amount of truth, a girl's cross-roads. It certainly seems to me to be a more momentous point in a woman's life than the accepted and conventional crisis which confronts virginity. A man may successfully deceive a woman, as we phrase it (rather ineptly), and make not the smallest impression upon her personality or character. But the man who assumes the abandoned function of protector, no matter what you call him, is invested with tremendous powers. No power on earth can bring her back from the road on which he sets her feet. She's got to take her cue from him. I suppose she knows this, and when the time comes to mark down her victim she brings to the business all the resources of her feminine intuition and the remorseless judgment of a panther's spring. The ruthless reference to poor young Siddons' six pounds a month wages—thirty shillings a week—illustrates the mood exactly. Mind you, it is absurd to accuse a girl of being merely callous and mercenary when she talks like that. She is really merciful to her rejections in the long run. And she is proceeding on the very rational argument that a man's value to a woman may be roughly gauged by the value the world sets on him. She is not merely a greedy little fool. Women upon whom such decisions are forced achieve extraordinary skill in estimating the characters of men. Young chaps like Siddons simply don't count—they are thrown to the discard at once. Innocence and purity of soul are not negotiable assets in this sort of thing. Even men with merely a great deal of money are not so successful as one might imagine. They fizzle out if they lack the character which the woman admires. I have seen them fizzle. A man who roves as I do, reserving for himself, as I have insisted, the part of a super in the play, naturally has many opportunities of watching the lives of these emotional adventurers and the women who constitute the inspiration of the adventures. The singularity of the present instance was that, for the first time in my life, I was assisting at the inauguration of such a career. That is how I interpreted her enigmatic references to 'something I would not approve of.' And when I had got that far I could see it was useless to bring in Siddons any more. His destiny lay ahead. I have no doubt he achieved it with chivalrous rectitude. We English have a way of weathering the gales of passion.
"I was turning these things over in my mind as we sat up there on the cliff and half regretting, perhaps, my usual inability to play up to my romantic situation when she raised her hand and pointed out to sea. The surface of the ocean lay like shimmering satin in the hush of the afternoon, but far away a small black blot, with a motionless trail of smoke astern, moved at the apex of a diverging ripple. She pointed to it and looked at me with that hard, bright, radiant smile. It certainly was significant. This was the Osmanli, the little tin-kettle steamboat in which her father had invested his capital, the humble beginning of that vast enterprise, the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. The actual presence of that forlorn little vessel made a profound difference to our words. It was impossible to deny that Captain Macedoine's dreams might come true after all. His remarkable countenance might yet feature in our magazines as one of our great captains of industry, while I, with old Jack, pursued our obscure ways, the victims of a never-ending regret. The Osmanli came on, slowly pushing that immense ripple across the opaline floors. Perhaps the girl perceived the significance of this. Her hand dropped to her lap but she continued to regard me in a sort of defiant silence. There! she seemed to say, there lies our future, wide as the sea, glorious as the afternoon sun on purple isles and the fathomless blue of heavens! She was extraordinarily lovely. I found myself trying to picture the sort of man who would appear later to fashion her destiny—perhaps one of the capitalists who would inevitably be drawn into the great enterprise. She would develop tremendously. For a moment I felt an access of regret at my renunciation. Too late, no doubt. But I have not scrupled since to think of what might have been, had I not—well, lost my nerve, let us say, and preferred to keep in the cool, shadowy by-ways of life. That's what her bright, defiant smile really meant, I believe now. I was no use to her because I didn't dare to grab her and take the consequences. They say women nowadays are rebelling against being possessed. The trouble seems to be rather that so many men shrink from the trouble and the strain and responsibility that possession entails. Too much civilization, I suppose. We are afraid of looking foolish, afraid of taking a chance. We sail away. And when we read in the news of some intrepid soul who does take a chance, who snatches a breathless woman off her feet and gallops thundering through all our mean and cowardly conventions and finishes up perhaps with a bullet in his brain, we shrug and mutter that he was a fool. We remain safe and die in our beds, but we have to suffer in silence that bright, critical, derisive smile which means 'Thou art afraid!'"
CHAPTER V
"Yes, afraid!" said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly, after another long pause, as though one of the silent and recumbent forms under the awning had contradicted him. "We have got so that no man dare do anything off his own bat, as we say. We hunt in packs. It makes no difference whether the individual man is a saint or a sinner.
"We pull him down. Our whole scheme of life has been designed to put a premium on the tame and well-behaved, on the careful and steady householder and his hygienic ménage. We read with regret of disorder in various parts of the world, and we despatch our legions from our own immaculate shores to 'restore order.' Punitive expeditions we call them. We have assumed the rôle of policeman in an ebullient world. Faith, Love, Courage, are well enough if they declare a dividend and fill up the necessary forms. We are dominated by the domestic. Women like Mrs. Evans wield enormous power. It is not so much that they have character as characteristics. They are the priestesses of the Temples of Home. I used to watch that woman on the voyage to England. I was inspired by a new and rabid curiosity. I wanted to see her in that aspect of security which had moved the girl with such bitterness. Because Mrs. Evans hadn't struck me as very safe when I had last seen her, sending out wireless calls to me in her extremity. She had been sure I would give dear Jack the best advice. That, in her private mind, was my mission on earth—to minister to the needs of her and her angel child. But she was safe now. She would greet me in what for her was almost a melting mood. I was the confidant of the angel child's imaginary maladies. I was permitted to be by while this precious being, sitting among blankets after her bath, was fed with a highly nitrogenous extract of something or other from a cup. Once I made a remark to the effect that they would have to get a fresh nurse when they got home. Mrs. Evans bridled. She drew down the corners of her mouth and remarked that in future she would look after Babs herself.
"'But,' I said, 'if you could get a girl like Miss Macedoine.' Mrs. Evans kept her gaze on Babs, who was staring at me over the rim of the cup with her bold, protuberant black eyes like those of some marine animal.