"But what has all this to do with Captain Macedoine and this Island of Ipsilon?" enquired the small, precise voice of the Paymaster.
For a moment there was no reply. It was very dark under the awning now, for the moon was still behind the cliffs. Four bells rang at the gangway. Mr. Spenlove lit a cigarette and continued.
"Have you ever seen a sea-captain in the throes of adoration? It is an astonishing sight. Jack was what he himself called 'open as the day.' Mind you, I had no ulterior motive in taking my old friend down home with me. I had no plain sisters or cousins to get settled in life. Both plain and pretty in our family were married and gone when we arrived. We lived, you know, just outside Threxford, a small town six miles from a railway, tucked away in the valley of the Threxe, about ten miles from where that small stream falls into the Channel. It was a lovely spot, but so dreadfully quiet I could never live there very long. Over the town hung a high hill crowned by the workhouse. You see, it was the workhouse master's daughter Jack had fallen in love with."
"Captain Macedoine's daughter?" suggested the Paymaster.
"No, a very different person, I assure you. Madeline Hanson had been brought up in a very secluded way. It couldn't have been otherwise. Old Hanson occupied a somewhat dubious position in the social life of England. A workhouse master is not the sort of man either rich or poor want to have much to do with. He is like the hangman or jailer or rag-and-bone man; a necessary evil. But he may be, as Hanson was, a most respectable person. And Madeline, his only child, was brought up in almost solitary confinement until she was twenty. I believe she went to an aunt in Portsmouth occasionally. Anyhow it suited her. She was a puny, flat-chested little girl, very prim and precise, and would bridle at once when any one laughed or made a joke. I never discovered exactly how Jack got acquainted with her. At church most likely, for he was in full cry after respectability and went to church regularly with my old people. I know we used to go fishing together at first, and later I found myself going alone, for Jack was meeting his inamorata, and going for walks. Oh, quite above board. Jack was 'open as the day.' He lost no time in marching up the hill to the workhouse (not the first time he'd been inside one, he assured me grimly) and informing Mr. Hanson that Captain Evans wished to pay attention to Miss Hanson. Whether old Hanson was a man of the world or not, I cannot say, but he certainly knew his daughter might go a long way farther and fare worse. Jack's affair prospered. I have often been curious to know just what they said to each other as they prowled about the lanes in the dark. I suppose it was a case of the attraction of opposites. For once, anyhow, in spite of novelists, the course of true love ran smooth.
"Of course Jack had his fits of jealousy. You see, he couldn't understand how in the world he had managed to pick such a prize without having to shoot up the whole town. He even suspected me of having designs on his happiness, and I suddenly realized the tremendous difficulty of reassuring him. You know, it's a delicate business, disclaiming all desire for a woman. If you overdo it, you rouse suspicion at once. When I said, 'Oh, no, I don't want to....' Jack was up and prancing about the room. 'Why, do you know anything?' he demanded. I soothed him, telling him he knew I wasn't a marrying man. 'That be d—d for a tale. I wasn't either till I met Madeline.' I had a stormy time. The contrast between Jack's volcanic temperament and the calm, meticulous flow of his courtship was comic. I was thankful when he was finally married and gone to Ilfrocombe for his highly respectable honeymoon. And then, a fortnight later, I got a telegram ordering me to join his ship, the Manola, at Newcastle, as chief. We were shipmates once more.
"There now began for me an existence which is rather difficult to describe. In cargo-boats, as no doubt you know, the skipper and chief can easily be thrown together a good deal. Jack and I of course were. But Jack was under the impression that I existed for the sole purpose of listening to his rapturous idolizing of his darling wife. He wrote to her every day, and read the letter to me afterward. She wrote to him every day, and when we reached port and the mail came aboard, Jack would read the gist of it to me. It was like being married oneself. He would lie back in his deck chair on the bridge on fine evenings in the Mediterranean and suck at his cigar, sunk in thought. And then suddenly he would bring out some profoundly novel and original remark about Madeline. I had Madeline for breakfast, dinner, supper, and between meals. It was trying, but it was nothing compared with the frightful time I put in with him the voyage the baby was born. We were in Genoa, and he wired home every day. I would march him up town in the evening and stand him drinks, which he swallowed without looking at them. And it never entered his head that it was possibly less important to me than to him. When a telegram came, 'Daughter, both doing well,' he ordered grog for all hands, took me up town, and stood champagne to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the Verdi Bar. I got him down to the harbour in a carriage and he wanted to fight me because I laughed when he told the driver that he was going to call the baby Angelina Madeline Evans.
"He did, too. Life for me became impregnated with Madeline and Angelina as with a domestic odour. That marvellous child haunted my hours of leisure long before I had ever seen her. As the months and years passed, and Jack and I fared up and down the world together, I sometimes wondered whether we hadn't both married Madeline. Jack was a model husband. The notion that any other woman existed, or that any other man could love a woman as he loved Madeline, never entered his head. He was perfectly satisfied as long as one sat and listened to him talking about Madeline. I believe he would have urged me to go and do likewise, if he hadn't been convinced that no more Madelines were available. I believe, too, he thought me a bit of an ass to take him down and introduce him instead of marrying her myself. But as you will see, she and I were not affinities.
"So life went on, and now I am coming to the time when Captain Macedoine's daughter comes into the thing. Oh, no, I haven't forgotten what I was talking about. Time passed, and one voyage we left home with Jack in an anxious frame of mind. The child was about five years old then and she was sick. Something the matter with her throat. Jack was like a caged bear when we got to sea. There was no wireless then, you know. You would have thought there had never been a sick child on earth before. 'Fred,' he would say, 'I left orders—get the best advice, best of everything. I don't give a damn what it costs,' And he'd prance to and fro. He never looked at the ship. If we dropped a knot below our customary two hundred a day, he'd be in my room growling, 'Aren't we ever goin' to get to Alexandria, Fred?' When we did get there he fled up to the post office to get his mail—forgot all about ours of course. 'Not yet out of danger—diphtheria,' so ran the telegram in reply to his own frantic message. I never had such a time in my life. He was like a man demented. He would catch me by the shoulder and coat-collar and glare at me out of his bulging, blood-shot brown eyes, his fat cheeks all drawn into pouches, and stutter, 'Fred, this is the end o' me. If I lose one I lose both. My God, I've a good mind to go home. I tell you I'm going off my head. If I lose one I lose both. Madeline'll never live through the loss o' the child. What shall I do, oh, what shall I do?' I believe he used to go into his cabin, shut the door, and pester the Almighty with his petitions. You know, they say domestic ties strengthen a man's personality, stimulate him to ambition. I have not noticed it. On the contrary, it has often seemed to me that married men adopt the ethics of the jungle. Life for them is a case of the man and his mate against the world. The jungle reverberates with their cries of rage, jealousy, and amorous delight. What are literature and drama but the coördination of these elevated cat-calls?"
"Oh, come!" murmured the Surgeon.