"Well, isn't it?" demanded Mr. Spenlove. "What made this war so popular? Wasn't it simply because it supplied men who had been surfeited with love, with an almost forgotten inspiration? Hadn't we been bred for a generation on Love, beautiful Love, which laughed at locksmiths and made the world go round? And here came Hate to have a turn! I tell you, something had to happen or we should all have gone crazy. Captain Evans, with his exalted notions of domestic affection, was our ideal. We were becoming monsters of marital egotism. You remember that song on the halls:
"What more can you want when you've got your wife and kids,
And a nice little home of your own?
"That was rapidly becoming the sum total of England's morality. All men were 'men without a country' and they didn't much care even if they were citizens of a mean city, so long as their own contemptible little hutch was secure. I rather think the war has dealt that doctrine an ugly blow."
"Well, go on," said somebody.
"You must remember that Jack and his Madeline didn't simply look down on the rest of the world as sordid worms who couldn't appreciate such a holy passion. They didn't think of us at all. We didn't exist. Nothing existed—for them—outside that microscopic domestic circle. Madeline had been brought up to be refined, reserved, 'not like other girls.' She silently and unconsciously laid down a narrow-gauge line along which she and Jack were to advance through life, and Jack, who was one of those men who are very much what their wives make them, was only too glad to get his orders. And he, with the intuition of despair, knowing her to be besotted with pride in their child almost beyond endurance, gobbled hoarsely in my ear in the night watches that if one died the other would follow, and leave him desolate.
"Well, the child didn't die. I have sometimes wondered whether it was anything more than a sore throat. It doesn't matter. When we came home, Angelina was on the mend, and the cable companies must have noticed a falling off in their receipts. I was relieved. I mean in mind. Jack tore off home for a night to see for himself. He told me afterward 'he nearly cracked Madeline's ribs,' he was so glad to see her. Mind, he'd only been away six weeks! Think of it, in the light of the recent years. Not that I believed him. Women like Mrs. Evans don't get their ribs cracked. No matter. My relief was speedily changed to grave apprehension when he came back to the ship accompanied by wife, child, and a nurse, and announced that he had obtained permission to take them a voyage. It was one of the unusual points of old Gannet's employ—he allowed each skipper and chief to take their wives one voyage per year. I had been through it before, and disliked the prospect. I have sometimes wondered whether old Gannet had a secret and sinister intention, for it is a fact that you can't honestly say you know a woman until you have been to sea with her. No woman looks her best, either physically or mentally, at sea. Oh, of course if you are married to her as well, the case is different. I offer no opinion. But I know of one young man at least who broke it off after enduring a voyage with a hen-pecked captain.
"I misjudged Jack, however. Jack was his wife's slave, but he remained in command of his ship. You see he also had been at sea with skippers' wives in the past. 'One word, Madeline, and home you go,' came up the ventilator as I was sitting on the bridge after tea. I was astounded. It was a new Jack, or rather, the old fiery, original Jack. The next sentence, in reply to some inaudible remark of Madeline's, explained what I had thought was a quarrel. 'Well, we must have an understanding before we sail. I know what I'm talking about, dear. I've been Mate many a year and I never would stand the Skipper's missus interfering with the ship's discipline.'
"I was admiring Jack for this sagacious warning when there came a squawl from his bathroom, where the nurse-girl was washing Angelina. Mrs. Evans rustled across, crying out instructions concerning Babs, as they called the youngster. And then came Jack's voice exploding in amazement. 'What's that gel's name, Madeline? What'd you call her?' And a voice as clear, as soft and as pure as a silver bell answered:
"'Artemisia Macedoine, Captain. That's my name.'"