"'Yes!' I said, putting my arm round her. 'Tell me whatever you like. I'll always believe you,' She came close to me, and looking down she whispered in that sweet, resonant voice that made one think of distant chimes, 'For that I shall always love you.'"
CHAPTER VI
"Soft!" ejaculated Mr. Spenlove, looking round into the darkness and feeling for a fresh cigarette. "You have said it. I was soft. But when you come to think of it, what else could I have been? I am confessing myself before you. What did you want me to do? Invent a tale? In which I play a noble and manly part? A red-blooded story, as they say? A story in which I rescue a virtuous maiden from a gross plutocrat and marry her, the light dying away on a close-up picture of me bending over her while she holds up a replica of Jack's angel child? Why, even Jack would not endorse a yarn like that. I have a very clear memory of him suddenly spoiling the idyllic peace of a summer afternoon in the Mediterranean by dashing his magazine down on the deck and uttering a profane objurgation against what he called 'muck.' We were sliding blissfully along a cobalt-blue floor, a floor without a ripple as far as the eye could see. And there wasn't a woman or a baby, that we were aware of, within three or four hundred miles. Peace, perfect peace. And Jack, instead of realizing the extreme felicity of the actual moment, had been devouring a red-blooded story in which one of these dashing, daring, clean-cut merchant-captains had saved a beautiful virgin from a rascally foreigner. There was a picture of her being saved. Splendid! Specially written for people who love the sea!
"No, I am confessing myself before you. Truth can be served in many ways, and this is mine. The fortunate being whose characters consist of homogeneous heroism and are compact of courage seem to elude my scrutiny. And even when I meet a clever and sensible genius like Florian Kelly, I cannot honestly say I admire him unreservedly. He gets on. He succeeds. He arrives. But people who arrive with the convenient punctuality of a railway timetable do not interest me. They lack the weaknesses which make men fascinating to my amateur fancy.
"And so I am prepared to admit that she did what, in a previous moment of softness, I had asked her to do. She used me. She used me to feed her craving for influence over men, her inherited and insatiable desire for building up romantic and glamorous memories. Florian Kelly regarded her efforts with admiring exasperation, regretting their interference with his own designs upon our susceptibilities. Mrs. Evans had made a commotion like a bird defending her nest. Young Siddons had been bowled over, as he phrased it, and offered her something of no real value to an artist—a tender and inexperienced loyalty. Such women are episodic. Their lives are a string of jewels of varying value connected by a thread of no value at all. And I confess that to me the shame of being used by her was not apparent. She, the leading lady, selected me for a slightly higher rôle than that of a super in the play, and I found the position singularly agreeable. I was afflicted at the time with no rash desire to supplant the principal protagonists. It was a piquant and persuasive proof of the infinite variety of human relationships that she could bring me to meet the wealthy and powerful individual over whom she had cast the spell of her radiant personality. I mean the gross and licentious plutocrat of the red-blooded story. He came in as I was standing, hat in hand, ready to go, and he heard me described as 'an old friend, who knew her father years ago.' Which was true, though I was not sure Captain Macedoine would have endorsed the statement. Mr. Kinaitsky came forward with his hat on, removed it and one of his gloves, and shook hands with a courtly gesture. He looked older than his photograph. The fine gray hair fluffed out over the ears, the bushy brows shading voluptuous eyes, the swarthy cheeks and flexible lips gave him the air of a prosperous impresario. He brought in with him, however, an atmosphere of affairs. He nodded politely to the girl's explanation, patted her gently on the shoulder, and passed on to his room. Returning for a cigarette, and offering me the box, he remarked that he hoped I would excuse him as he was dining out and had to dress at once. He had had a fatiguing day in the city. Did I know London? A fine day. Would I excuse him once more? Turning to the girl, who was sitting on the arm of a chair, he took her chin in his hand and favoured her with a swift, masculine, appraising glance. She gave him one of her delicious, derisive smiles and whispered something, her eyes flickering toward me for an instant. He patted her cheek and turned away, remarking, 'Of course if she wished.' He would not be in till late. 'Amuse yourself, ma chere,' he added, and bowing slightly to me, went away to his bath.
"There was something odd to me in this, but I found it was a characteristic of his infatuation to see as little of her as possible. He never took her anywhere and he never brought any of his friends to the hotels where they stayed. She had absolute freedom. He gave her whatever she demanded. But she must not bother him. And while she was absent getting a cloak, I looked around the room turning this unusual idiosyncrasy over in my mind. There was a smoking table in one corner and I observed a tarbush on the lower shelf. Of course we ourselves often wear a fez while smoking; but the sight of it gave me a cue. For you must understand that, the normal Anglo-Saxon temperament, there is necessarily something disturbing about such an attitude toward a woman. Assuming the infatuation. And it occurred to me that herein lay the source of an unidentified impression which he had made upon me as he stood regarding the girl. And I saw as well the reason why she had harped so on needing 'a friend.' I looked at the tarbush, glowing bright red among the cedar-wood caskets and—yes, a narghileh stood in the corner behind, the amber mouth-piece thrust into the coils of its own barbarically decorated tube. This man, for all his suave courtesy and western polish, would be the inheritor of oriental ideas. His attitude would be the attitude of the pasha on his divan. He would not understand my sentimental affection for Artemisia, or Florian Kelly's panic-stricken rush from blind passion to a callous, worldly caution. In short, he was equipped precisely as Florian Kelly said we ought to be equipped before we embark upon an episode with such a woman. He had wealth and he had wisdom, not only the wisdom of the world, but the inherited sagacity of orientalized ancestors, the bearded owners of extensive domestic establishments.
"Yes, he gave her absolute freedom, and demanded only absolute obedience. I could not help wondering how Mrs. Evans would have regarded such a proposition, and this led me to reflect that Jack's equipment was too primitive, too simple. We Westerners do not seem to prosper in such enterprises. We are hampered by our excessive idealism. Our training does not fit us for the rôle of pasha. We are unable to compass the art of intelligent infatuation. And I confess that at this close view of the understructure of a polygamous career, I was weak enough to feel scandalized. When she told me casually, as we sat at dinner, that Mr. Kinaitsky had a fiancée, a rich young Jewess in Saloniki, my appetite was affected. I felt that he was, well, a little beyond my range. Any faint notions I may have had of experimenting in that direction myself faded from view. Even the position of friend, of being a sort of deputy amant-de-coeur, was fraught with grave danger to my emotional stability. Very curious, I can assure you, to be suddenly apprised of the extreme fragility of one's moral fibre!
"And the trouble with us is that we are usually unable to make out a very strong case for our side of the question. We point with a fine gesture toward the severely beautiful figure of Virtue, and the woman, following our instructions, looks and sees Mrs. Evans and the angel child. We point ecstatically to Love, and she shrugs her shoulders as the figure of young Siddons emerges, with his boyish mind choked with racial and social prejudices, his muzzy, impossible idealism, and his empty purse.
"And mind you, she was naïve enough or clever enough to play up to the highest possible estimate of such a situation. When I asked her how long this was going to last, she was charmingly vague and pensive. It was part of the bargain, I suppose, to furnish the necessary sentiment. And when I persisted, and wished to know what she would do then, she sighed and hoped I would always be her friend. Well, she was right about that. I was her friend until the time came, not so long after, when her need of friends ceased, when her homeless and undisciplined spirit was transported to a sphere uncomplicated, let us hope, by our terrestrial deficiencies. And I like to think that this friendship of ours, unsullied by conventional gallantry, was for her a source of comfort, and sustained her at times when the flames of exaltation burned low, and she was oppressed by the shadow of her destiny. But of course, this may be only one of my occidental illusions.