Captain Macedoine's Daughter

by William McFee

"And there was much in young Siddons which helped me to visualize the personality which had suddenly irradiated his soul. Of course he was English, with all the disabilities of his race to express emotion. But the need for sympathy triumphed over these, and he would come along to my room in the dog-watch when I learned something of the tremendous experience which had befallen him. The Second Engineer, who had apparently suffered very slightly indeed, for I saw him in Renfield Street one night with two young ladies on his way to the theatre, assumed an air of dry detachment when he noticed these visits. The Chief, I heard him growling to the Third one day when he thought I was out of earshot, was nursing the mates nowadays. I knew the Second disapproved of friendship on principle. His ideal was to be more or less at loggerheads with everybody. He would wait until you had made some ordinary human remark, when he would retire into his formidable arsenal of facts and figures, and returning with a large and hard chunk of information, throw it at you and knock you down with it. His unreasonableness lay in his failure to realize that a man cannot be your friend and your enemy at the same time, that people are never grateful for being set right. He had a dry and creaking efficiency which made him silently detested. I for one rejoiced when I heard indirectly, at a later period, that a widow of forty, with seven children, had sued him for breach-of-promise.

"Young Siddons was unaware of the Second's disapproval, and would slip down after supper, ready to go on at eight, and smoke cigarettes on my settee. You men know how, in fine weather, when you walk to and fro on the bridge, the empty, dragging hours induce the shades of the past to come up and keep you company. We in the engine-room generally have enough to do to keep away the crowds of ghosts. We had fine weather most of the time and young Siddons would come down with a fresh set of impressions which he would try to explain to me. He had been down to see his people while we were at home and I imagine the impact of cheerful, prosperous, well-bred folk had done a lot to modify his views. It was difficult, he confided one evening, to reconcile one's feelings for a girl with the grave problem of one's 'people.' Some chaps had such thundering luck. There was his brother, articled to a solicitor, who had been engaged for three years to a doctor's daughter. They were just waiting until he was admitted. Now, what luck that was! Everything in good taste. She lived in the same road. He saw her every day. Her people were well off. When the time came the brother would have the usual wedding, go to Cromer for a honeymoon, and—start life. Young Siddons was puzzled by the fact that he himself had been bowled over by a girl who, he couldn't help admitting, would not have been approved by the 'people' down in Herefordshire. He saw that! I could perceive in his air a rather amusing amazement that love was apparently the antithesis instead of the complement of happiness. Now how could that be? And yet he admitted he had never seen his brother display any rapture over his love affair with the doctor's daughter. Took it very much as a matter of course. Oh, a very nice girl, very nice. But ... he would fall silent, his chin on his hand, recalling the memory of Artemisia as she had seemed to him, an alluring and unattainable desire.

"Yes, it was interesting, and it fed my interest in her. I was too experienced, I suppose, to expect to see her again, but it amused me to brood upon her destiny. And it was a wish to learn something about that strange trio that took me up to Grünbaum's one afternoon when we arrived, and I had the privilege of an interview with the concessionaire himself. Surrounded by attentive minions, who had full 'confidence in his dispositions' he reposed, with the urbane placidity of a corpulent idol, in the curve of his great horseshoe desk. The yellow blinds were down over the tall windows against the westering sun, and the statue with the arm broken short gleamed like old ivory. It was startling to see a student's sword and long German pipe hanging crossed on the wall beside that ancient piece of statuary. Grünbaum confessed, when I spoke of them, to being 'largely cosmopolitan,' though loyal of course to the Hellenic Government and his consular obligations to Great Britain. When I made mention of Macedoine, he frowned heavily and admitted that he had 'taken the necessary steps.' The concessions in the Saloniki hinterland would be dealt with by the Paris House 'with a view to safe-guarding our interests.' No doubt the railroad to Uskub would in time render such concessions extremely valuable. M. Nikitos doubtless obtained this information surreptitiously from the official archives. But it was necessary that these financial dispositions should be in the hands of Western Europeans, since western capital was inevitably attracted to such enterprises. He himself was a man of western ideas. Educated in Berlin and Paris, he had been trained in affairs in Lombard Street. Our banking system was sound and our climate ferocious—so he summed us up more or less adequately. As regards the future of M. Macedoine he could tell me nothing. No doubt that gentleman would be fully occupied in setting his new venture on its feet. Oh, of course, these things occasionally prospered; but in the long run, stability of credit was essential. This, M. Macedoine, as far as could be ascertained, did not command.

"The harsh, guttural, cultured voice rolled on—the voice of established authority, of resistless financial power. To the simple and insular intelligences of the islanders his potency must have seemed god-like indeed. In this forgotten island of the sea he had assumed the rôle of arbiter of their humble destinies, the source of their happiness, and the omnipotent guardian of their fortunes. He was the head of what is deprecatingly called in these days a Servile State. We are warned that democracy is advancing to sweep up all such anachronisms and cast them into the fire. I am not so sure. None of us, who have seen the new liberty stalking through the old lands like a pestilence, are altogether sure. After all, there is something to be said for the theory of a Golden Age....

"The guttural voice rolled on. The business of the day was nearly over, and he spoke in general terms of the tendencies of the day. It was a mistake, he thought, to assume that all men were equal. He had not found it so. The Anglo-Saxon race had a genius for misgovernment on the democratic principle. He was not convinced that this could be applied to Southeastern Europe. Democracy was an illusion founded on a misconception. The power must be in one hand. Otherwise, chaos. Observe these works of supreme art about me—these exquisite examples of ancient craftsmanship—the products of a simple monarchic age. A man might be a slave, unlettered and unenfranchised, yet fashion works of imperishable beauty. Of course, the exponents of democracy denied this, but he himself was in a position to know. He had studied the past glories of the Cyclades. And he had failed to observe any striking improvement in human life when the fanatics of liberty assumed command. Liberty! It was a phantom, a Lorelei, singing to foolish idle men, luring them to destruction. All things, all men, are bound. This was a restless age. He regarded the future with some misgiving. We lacked men of strong character, animated by sound ideals, an aristocracy of intellect, with financial control.... These, of course, were large questions....

"That is the memory I have of him, the reactionary whom the romantic votaries of liberty set up against a wall and shot full of holes the other day. I don't offer any opinion. I am only puzzled. I recall the man as I saw him that afternoon, in the midst of his prosperity and his life's work, the embodiment of a cultured despotism.

"But of the girl he could tell me nothing, and it was of the girl I wished to hear. Grünbaum would not have noticed her. His own divagations, his emotional odyssies, his mistresses, would be dim memories now, and he would not have noticed her. And as young Siddons gradually developed an air of gentle and resigned melancholy, one of those moods which are the aromatic cerements of a dead love, I discovered in myself an increasingly active desire to know what had happened to her. Because I didn't even know for certain whether she had married M. Nikitos. And when we got home once more and young Siddons bade us farewell to go up to sit for his examination, I was disappointed that, as far as I could see, the longing I had to follow the Macedoines in their strange career was not to be gratified. But this so often happens in my life that I am grown resigned. We sailed again, for Venice this time, and I admit that among the canals and palaces, with the extraordinary moods which that fair city evokes, I found my thoughts retiring from Ipsilon. We went to Spain to load that voyage, moreover, and that brought its own sheaf of alien impressions. Loaded in Cartagena, and in due course arrived at our old berth in the Queens Dock. All that is of no moment just now. What I was going to say was that I found among my few letters on arrival an envelope, addressed in an unfamiliar hand and with the crest of a great London hotel on the back. I opened it with only mild curiosity, saw it was addressed to 'Dear Mr. Chief,' and turning the page, saw it was signed 'A. M.'

"Yes, it was from her. It was a short, hurried scrawl in a rambling yet firm style, the down strokes heavy and black, half a dozen lines to the sheet. She wanted to see me. I turned it over and saw the date on the envelope was a week old. She wanted to see me if I was able to come to London. I was to ask for Madame Kinaitsky. She would be in London for two or three weeks. She did hope I could come. She had found out from the Company that the Manola was due soon. And she was 'mine very sincerely.'

"I admit I was, as they say, intrigued. I had given up all hope of hearing any more of her. And I was astonished. She was in London! I was to ask for Madame Kinaitsky. Was she married then, after all? I told Jack I had to go to London on family business, and took train that night, wiring to her that I would see her next day. I needed a spell from the ship, anyhow.

"I did not, of course, put up at the immense and famous caravanserai from which she wrote. It was in the Strand, however, and the ancient and supposedly very inconvenient hotel which I usually patronize when in the metropolis was, as we say, just off the Strand. I took a room at Mason's Hotel, climbed up the dusky old staircase, and had a bath and a sleep after my night journey from the north. When I woke it was a sunny afternoon, in late September, the sort of day London sometimes gets after a summer of continuous cold rain and wind. I lunched and then I stepped across the Strand to call on Madame Kinaitsky. They say adventures are to the adventurous. Yet here was I, the least adventurous of mortals, travelling several hundred miles to meet an adventuress! I passed under the great arch into the courtyard where commissionaires of imperial magnificence were receiving and despatching motor cars that were like kings' palaces. One of these august beings deigned to direct me within. I sent up my name—Mr. Spenlove to see Madame Kinaitsky by appointment. I sat down, watching the staircase, wondering if she was in, if she would descend to see me, wondering what it was all about, anyhow. A page in blue and silver approached me and commanded me to follow him into the elevator. We flew to the third floor and we stepped out into a corridor with thick carpets on the floor and dim masterpieces on the walls. The page led me along and knocked at one of the many doors. I remember his small, piping voice saying 'Mr. Spenlove to see you,' and the door closing. She was before me, still holding the door-knob with both hands and looking at me over her shoulder with that bright, derisive, critical smile. An exquisite pose, girlish, fascinating, yet carrying with it an adumbration of power.