CHAPTER II
And though things do happen like that sometimes, as I sat in my chair, quite innocently alongside the Captain's ventilator, and sucked at my cigar, I was taken aback. It was like a voice coming up from the tomb—the tomb of a buried past. In a way it was a relief, for I was becoming so involved in Jack's domestic life that I was losing touch with the outside world altogether. The sound of that name recalled to me my old, unregenerate, wandering self. I had not forgotten him. One never forgets a master of illusion, such as he surely was. But the very existence of so imaginative a man seemed doubtful in the company of matter-of-fact, open-minded, good old honest Jack. Jack's lack of the power of dissembling and allusion was devastating. He had no more nuance, as the French say, than a fog-horn. Think of a man who could say to the wife of his bosom, the goddess before whom he worshipped with preposterous self-abasement—'One word, and home you go!' Jack would have had one word for Macedoine and one only—Faker. But I have found, in the course of my rolling existence, that fakers are often more interesting, intrinsically, than careful, honest men.
"And I had heard, in a round-about way, some years before, that Captain Macedoine had not only been an illustrious faker but a fairly competent swindler as well. We were discharging machinery and stores at Cristobal, when a young chap who'd been Junior Fourth in the old Maracaibo Line came aboard and had a chat. He was one of those who hadn't gone home. Indeed, he was able to take out his final papers—never mind how—as soon as he was paid off, and being a decent young chap, fairly clever and a good mixer, he had soon gotten a billet in the Canal Zone. For some reason or other he had liked me when we were shipmates. I remembered him as having no aptitude for the sea. He had a sweet-heart in England he was always talking about, but he married in the States, of course. Well, young Cotter, with his little waxed moustache and his superior bank clerk's manner, walked aboard, shook me warmly by the hand, and gave me an immense quantity of miscellaneous news. What with the Yucatan ships calling three or four times a week, Cotter was up to date with everything happening from Galveston to Biloxi and from Tampa to Boston. Did I remember So-and-so—chap with a squint, or a mole, or a broken finger, as the case might be. Cotter always emphasized a man's physical defects in alluding to him. And so the talk came round to 'Oh, did I remember that chap with the solemn face and the big stomach? Captain Macedoine we used to call him? Why, didn't you hear? Extradition order. Yes! The cunning old guy had a dozen opium dives off Rampart Street in full swing. Must have been coining money. No, they never got him. He had left England by that time. Nobody knows where he is now, I suppose. Smart, eh?' Such was Captain Macedoine to me as I sat listening to the good Jack sputtering in his cabin:
"'Great Christopher! And who in thunder gave you a name like that. What is it, again?' And then Mrs. Evans interposing with 'That will do, dear. She can't help her name.'
"'A h—l of a name for a servant,' muttered Jack.
"Well, poor Jack found that taking his family to sea was a more formidable affair than he had imagined. The fact was, Jack, although he had been married six years, knew no more about married life than a bachelor. He hadn't spent more than a week at one time alongside of his wife. Many sea-faring men are like this. The very routine of ordinary household existence is novel to them. They live voyage after voyage at sea, dreaming of an impossibly perfect existence ashore, and their brief holidays, in their wives' houses only confirm them in the delusion that shore life is heaven, and life on board ship hell. Whereas, you know, it is really the other way round."
"Oh, I say!" said Inness, who, in spite of Oxford, retained his illusions.
"What rot, Spenlove!" said the First Lieutenant, a gentleman still unmarried, but rigidly engaged.
"Ah, but you forget," retorted Mr. Spenlove, laughing softly as he gazed up at the moon now high over the cliff. He looked very like a benevolent satyr as he sat leaning forward in his chair, his chin on his hands, his trim gray beard pushed out, and his curiously slanted black eyebrows raised—"You forget that I am dealing with basic realities. You forget that ninety-nine sailor-men out of each hundred feed themselves exclusively on dreams. You are like the donkey who imagines he sees a resplendent carrot hung in front of him. It is not only that he never gets the carrot. There never was any carrot for him to get. I repeat—dear old Jack Evans was not a bit singular in his illusions, any more than Captain Macedoine was in his. They believed in them a bit longer than you young fellows do nowadays, that's all."
"Well, go on," suggested the Doctor, and moved out of the moonlight into the shadow, so that Mr. Spenlove remained alone and appeared to be talking to himself.