Mr. Spokesly, in a state of considerable astonishment, sat by a
balconied upper window and tried to get his recent experiences into some
sort of focus. That last remark of Mr. Dainopoulos, that he had married
one himself, had dislocated his guest's faculties, so that Mr. Spokesly
was unable to note clearly by what means he had arrived at his present
position, a balconied window on his right and in front of him a woman
lying on a sofa. A woman whose brown hair, extraordinarily long and
fine, was a glossy pile pressed into the pillow, and whose thin hand he
had just relinquished.
"Well," he said, as Mr. Dainopoulos came forward with a lamp, his swart
and damaged features giving him the air of a ferocious genie about to
perform some nefarious experiment. "Well, I must say, I'm surprised."
Mrs. Dainopoulos continued to gaze straight out into the darkness over
the Gulf.
"Of course," agreed her husband, seating himself and reaching for a
large briar pipe. "Of course. And I'll bet you'd be still more surprised
if you only knew--eh, Alice?" He screwed up one eye and looked
prodigiously sly at his wife with the other, his palms slowly rubbing up
some tobacco. Mrs. Dainopoulos did not remove her eyes from the darkness
beyond the shore. She only murmured in a curt voice:
"Never mind that now, Boris."
"But it ain't anything to be ashamed of, you know," he returned
earnestly, packing his pipe in a way that made Mr. Spokesly want to
snatch it from him and do it properly.
"I know, but it wouldn't interest Mr. Spokesly, I'm quite certain," she
muttered, and she suddenly looked at their visitor and smiled. It
reassured that gentleman, as it was intended to do, that he was in no
way responsible for this minute difference of viewpoint between husband
and wife. Mr. Spokesly smiled, too.
"Don't mind me," he remarked, lighting a cigarette and offering the
match to Mr. Dainopoulos. After sucking valiantly for a while and
achieving a small red glow in one corner of the bowl, the latter rose
and regarded his wife and his guest attentively for a moment.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said at length, and looked at his pipe,
which was already out. "I'll go in and see Malleotis for a while. He'll
be back by now. And you two can have a little talk before we have
supper."
"Well, don't be all night. You know, when you and Mr. Malleotis get
talking business----"
The woman on the couch paused, regarding her husband as he bent his head
over her. Mr. Dainopoulos suddenly put his pipe in his pocket and put
his hands on either side of the pillow. Mr. Spokesly could see nothing
save the man's broad, humped shoulders. There was a moment of silence.
Mr. Spokesly, very much embarrassed, looked out of the window. When he
turned his head again Mr. Dainopoulos was putting on a large tweed cap
and walking out of the door.
"I suppose," Mr. Spokesly remarked, and fixed his eyes upon the
extremely decorative Scotch travelling rug which covered the woman's
limbs, "I suppose he doesn't go off every evening and leave you here."
He spoke jocosely. Mrs. Dainopoulos looked out into the darkness. There
was a faint colour in her cheeks, as though the sudden revelation of the
passion she could evoke had filled her with exquisite shame. Or perhaps
pride. Her clear, delicate English face, the mouth barely closed, the
short straight nose slightly raised, the brown hair spread in a slight
disorder upon the pillow, were surely indicating pride. Some inkling of
this possibility came to Mr. Spokesly, and he sat regarding her, while
he waited for her to speak, and wondering how a woman like her had come
to marry one of these here dagoes. Peculiar creatures, women, Mr.
Spokesly thought; knowing nothing whatever about them, it may be
mentioned. And when Mrs. Dainopoulos turned to look at him, soon after
she began to speak, the prevailing fancy at the back of his mind was
"She thinks I don't know anything about the ladies! Fancy that!"
"His business takes him out a good deal," she said in a low voice, "but
he wouldn't go if he could help it. To-night is unusual."
"The pleasure is mine," said Mr. Spokesly.
"Not altogether," she smiled, and her speech became perceptibly more
racy and rapid. "Don't flatter yourself. Mr. Dainopoulos was thinking of
me."
"I dare say he does a good deal of that."
The woman on the sofa laced her fingers lightly and regarded her guest
afresh.
"You are saucy," she murmured with a faint smile. Mr. Spokesly smiled
more broadly. He was saucy, but he was certainly at home now with his
companion. There was in her last speech, in the accent and inflection,
something incommunicably indigenous, something no alien ever has or ever
will compass.
"No need to ask what part of England you come from," he ventured.
"No?" she queried. "There seems nothing you don't know."
"Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Dainopoulos, that ain't fair. I can't sit here and
twiddle my thumbs all the evening, can I? _That_ wouldn't be giving you
any pleasure as far as I'm aware. The boss didn't reckon I was going to
play a mandolin or sing, did he?"
"Well, since you're so clever, what's the answer?"
"Not so very many miles from Charing Cross," he hazarded.
"Wonderful!" she said, laying her head back and smiling. Mr. Spokesly
admired the pretty throat. "You ought to be in the secret service.
Perhaps you are," she added.
"Of course," he agreed. "They've sent me out to see where all the nice
London girls have got to. But am I right?"
She nodded.
"Haverstock Hill," she said quietly.
"No! Do you know Mafeking Road? When I was a kid we lived at
sixty-eight."
"Yes, I know it. Don't you live round there now?"
"No, not now. We live down Twickenham way now."
And Mr. Spokesly began to tell his own recent history, touching lightly
upon the pathos of Eastern exile, the journey home to join up, and his
conviction that after all he would be a fool to go soldiering while the
ships had to be kept running. And he added as a kind of immaterial
postscript:
"And then, o' course, while I was at home I got engaged."
Mrs. Dainopoulos stared at him and broke into a brief titter behind a
handkerchief.
"_That's_ a nice way to give out the information," she remarked.
"Anybody'd think getting engaged was like buying a railway ticket or
sending a postal order. Is she nice?"
"Well," said Mr. Spokesly, "_I_ think so."
"Very enthusiastic!" commented the lady with considerable spirit. "Dark
or fair?"
"Well," he repeated, "I should say dark myself."
"You don't intend to take any chances," Mrs. Dainopoulos retorted.
"Haven't you a photo to show me?"
Mr. Spokesly felt his pockets, took out a wallet containing a number of
unconvincing documents, some postage stamps and a five-piaster note.
"Matter of fact," he said, "I don't seem to have one with me. I got one
on the ship, though," he went on. "Bring it ashore to-morrow."
"Sure you didn't tear it up by mistake or send it away in the laundry?"
she demanded, watching him intently.
"Oh, all right, go on with the sarcasm," he protested, but enjoying it
very much none the less. "Mr. Dainopoulos, you'll be telling me, has got
your hair in a locket, I suppose."
Mr. Spokesly stopped abruptly. He saw an expression of extraordinary
radiance on the girl's face as she lay there, her thin pale fingers
holding the handkerchief by the corner. It suddenly occurred to Mr.
Spokesly that this woman was loved. For the first time in his life he
became aware of a woman's private emotional existence. He achieved a dim
comprehension of the novel fact that a woman might have her own views of
these great matters. He did not phrase it quite like this. He only sat
looking at the girl on the sofa and remarking to himself that women were
peculiar.
"Wouldn't you do that?" she demanded. The light in her eyes diminished
to a steady warm regard.
And Mr. Spokesly began to assert himself once more. Women being so
peculiar, there was no sense in being bullied into any of this here
sentiment. He was a man of the world about to make a--what was it
called? Marriage of convenience ... something like that. Not that
exactly, either. Ada was a darned fine girl. This invalid lady seemed to
think he didn't know what love was.
"Who? Me?" he ejaculated. "Can't say as I see myself, I admit. Not in my
line. Not in any Englishman's line, I don't think. And speaking for
myself, Mrs. Dainopoulos, I reckon I'm past that sort of thing, you
know. Can't teach an old dog new tricks, can you? I look at it this way:
so long as there's enough to keep the pot boiling, it's easy enough to
fall in love with anybody, you see, and when you're married ... soon get
used to it. Ada and me, we're _sensible_."
"You've got it all arranged, then," said Mrs. Dainopoulos, smiling
faintly and looking out into the darkness once more.
"What's the use o' bein' anything else?" inquired Mr. Spokesly, resuming
something of the perfect officer pose, hard-bitten, practical, and
matter-of-fact. "All that business o' dyin' o' love, you know, I
reckon's so much moon-shine. All right in a novel, o' course, but not in
real life. _You_ don't reckon there's anything in it, really, I mean?"
he asked doubtfully.
"I think everything's in it," she sighed. "I think it must be horrible,
being married, without it. Haven't you felt you couldn't do without her?
That you'd die if you didn't get her; work, and do somebody else in the
eye for her? Haven't you?"
"That lets me out," he said soberly, lighting a fresh cigarette. "I'm
not guilty."
There was a brief silence. Mr. Spokesly was puzzled. He could not fit
this experience in with one of the two cardinal points in an
Englishman's creed, the belief that no English girl can really love a
foreigner. The other, of course, is that no foreign girl is really
virtuous.
"That's a nice thing to say!" she retorted, trembling a little with her
emotions. "If that's the new way they have at home----"
"Oh, I don't know," he began and he looked at her. "I'm afraid you're
getting all upset. I'm sorry, really, I didn't think you'd have been so
serious about it. As if it mattered to you!"
"I'm thinking of _her_," she said with a little hysterical sob. "You
mustn't----"
Mr. Spokesly was in a quandary again. If he put Ada's adoration in its
true perspective, he would not think very highly of himself. He took no
real pleasure in speaking of himself as a promised man even to a married
woman. Yet how was he to get this particular married woman in delicate
health and extremely robust emotions to see him as a human being and not
a monster of cold-blooded caution? And there was another problem. What
of this new and astonishing revelation--new and astonishing to him, at
any rate--that love, to a woman, is not a mere decoction of bliss
administered by a powerful and benevolent male, but a highly complicated
universe of subjective illusions in which the lover is only dimly seen
as a necessary but disturbing phantom of gross and agonizing
ineptitudes? The wonder, however, is not that Mr. Spokesly was slow to
discover this, but that he did not live and die, as many men do, without
even suspecting it. He nodded his head slightly as he replied:
"You're right in a way," he muttered. "She thinks I'm--well, she thinks
I'm brave to go to sea in war-time!" The extreme incongruity of such an
hallucination made him giggle.
"She would! You are!" said the woman on the couch, almost irritably.
"What do you want to laugh for? Don't you see what you miss?" she added
in illogical annoyance.
"That the way you feel about Mr. Dainopoulos?" Mr. Spokesly asked. The
woman turned her face so that the lamplight illumined her coiled hair
and for a moment she did not reply. Then she said, her face still in the
shadow:
"You'd only laugh if I told you."
"No," declared Mr. Spokesly. "Honest I won't. Laugh at meself--yes. But
you--that's different."
"But you don't believe in love at first sight, I can see very well."
"I only said I hadn't anything like that happen to me," he replied
slowly, pondering. "But I s'pose it has to be something like that in a
case like yours."
"I don't understand you."
"Well, you being English, you see, and Mr. Dainopoulos a foreigner."
"As an excuse, I suppose? Father made the same remark, but I never
thanked him."
Mr. Spokesly looked at her soberly. Her eyes were bright and resolute,
and the lamplight threw into salience the curve of her jaw and chin. A
fugitive thought flitted about his mind for a moment and vanished
again--whether her father was inconsolable at his daughter's departure.
"You got married at home then?"
"Yes, after Mr. Dainopoulos saved my life."
"Did he?"
"Of course. That's how we met. Didn't you ever hear of the _Queen Mab_
accident? It was in the papers."
"Can't say as I did. I was out East so long, you see. Wait a bit,
though----" Mr. Spokesly pondered. "I fancy I remember reading something
about it in the home papers; an excursion steamer in collision with a
cargo boat, wasn't it?" The girl nodded.
"Down the river. I was in it. My sister--she was drowned. We were going
to Southend."
"I see. And Mr. Dainopoulos, he was with you and----"
"No. I'd never seen him then. You see, we were all standing by the
paddle-box when the other ship cut into us, my sister Gladys and two
boys we'd been keeping company with. It was something awful, everybody
screaming and the boat going up in the air. I mean the other end was
going down. At last we couldn't stand, so we sat on the paddle-box. Then
all of a sudden the boat slid over to one side and we went in."
Mr. Spokesly made a sound expressive of intense sympathy and interest.
"And next thing I knew was somebody was holding me up and he said,
'Don't move! Don't move!' But I couldn't! Something must have hit me
when I fell in. I didn't know where then--the water was awfully cold.
And then a boat came, and they lifted me in. And then he swam off again
to find the others. I don't faint as a rule, but I did then. There were
so many, and the screams--oh, it was shocking!
"But the worst was when we got on land again. It was near Woolwich and
they turned a chapel or something into a hospital for us. And all the
relations of the people on the _Queen Mab_ came down, and Mr.
Dainopoulos, who'd taken his landlady's daughter for the excursion, was
sitting there in a blanket when the landlady and her husband came in.
They hadn't found her. You know bodies don't come up sometimes,
especially when a ship turns over. And they caught hold of him, calling
out 'Where is our girl? What have you done with our girl?' They
_screamed_ at him!"
"Was he engaged to her?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
"Just the same as I was with Georgie Litwell who was drowned. Keeping
company."
"And what happened then?"
"Why, we fell in love. That's what I was going to tell you so long as
you promised not to laugh. He was in a wholesale tobacco merchant's in
Mark Lane then and he took lodgings near us at Haverstock Hill. Those
other people behaved as though he'd held their daughter's head under.
Really they did. How could he help it? He saved six besides me. It
wasn't his fault the boat sank."
"No, of course not. I see now."
"And then, you know, Mother made a fuss because he was foreign. Mother's
a Berkshire woman, and she said she'd never thought she'd live to see a
child of hers marry a man from goodness knows where. She didn't half go
on, I can tell you. And Father had his own way of making me perfectly
happy. He'd ask me, how many in the harem already? And I couldn't do a
thing, lying on my back helpless. And at last, with the doctor saying I
needed a sea-voyage to get my strength back, I thinks to myself, I'll
take one; and with the accident insurance I had had the sense to carry
ever since I'd started going to business, and what Boris had in the
bank, we went. Or came, rather. We've been here ever since and nobody's
heard either of us regret it, either."
And as she lay there looking out into the darkness of the Gulf with
shining resolute eyes, it was plain that this romantic destiny of hers
was a treasured possession. It dominated her life. She had found in it
the indispensable inspiration for happiness, an ethical yet potent
anodyne for the forfeiture of many homely joys. It was for her the
equivalent of a social triumph or acceptance among peeresses of the
realm. It is to be suspected that she had ever in her mind a vision of
the wonder and awe she had evoked in the souls of the suburban girls
among whom she had spent her life, and that this vision supported her
and formed the base of a magnificent edifice. And it was an integral
part of this edifice that love should be a romantical affair, a flame,
noted by all and fed by the adoration of a husband who was harsh to the
world, but to her a monster of infatuated fidelity.
Something of this impinged upon Mr. Spokesly's consciousness and he
regarded her for a moment with profound respect.
"I should say," he muttered, returning to his cigarette, "you haven't
done so badly for yourself."
She gave him an extraordinarily quick look, like a flash of sheet
lightning from a calm evening sky, which left him puzzled. He was not
aware, at that time, that no woman will ever admit she has bettered
herself by marrying a given man. She must retain for ever that shining
figure of him she might have loved, a sort of domestic knight-errant in
golden armour, who keeps occasional vigils at her side while the weary
actuality slumbers in gross oblivion. Mrs. Dainopoulos knew that Mr.
Spokesly saw nothing of this. She knew him for what he was, a being
entirely incapable of compassing the secrets of a woman's heart. She
knew he imagined that love was all, that women were at the mercy of
their love for men, and that chivalrous ideas, rusted and clumsily
manipulated, were still to be found in his mind. And she saw the
fragility and delicate thinness of his love affair with Ada Rivers.
Anything could break it, anything could destroy it, she reflected. Those
fancies ... of course he said he was engaged; but an engagement, as Mrs.
Dainopoulos knew, having lived in a London suburb, was nothing. Yes,
anything might make him forget Ada. And as she repeated the word
"anything" to herself in a kind of ecstasy, Mrs. Dainopoulos turned her
head quickly and listened. There was a sound of someone being admitted.
"So you've met your fate, anyway," she observed to Mr. Spokesly, yet
still listening to the distant sound.
"Yes," he said with a smile, "I reckon you can cross me off as caught.
What's that? Come back, I s'pose. Time for me to be off, anyway. I'm
sure...."
Mrs. Dainopoulos held up her hand. She was still listening with her head
slightly inclined, her eyes fixed upon Mr. Spokesly, as though absently
pondering the perilous chances of his emotional existence. Cross him off
as caught! She smiled again in that lambent heat-lightning way of hers.
A woman who spends her life in a reclining seclusion becomes very much
of a clairvoyant, an electric condenser of emotions. Mr. Spokesly was
agreeably flattered by the intent interest of his companion's gaze.
Quite a nice little tête-à-tête he'd had. It gave him a thrill to sit in
intimate exchange of love experiences with an attractive married woman,
even if she was an invalid. He felt a bit of a dog. He would write to
Ada and tell her. Or would he? Did he want Ada to know anything about
this visit to a mysterious house in Macedonia, a house so clandestine
and bizarre he could scarcely convince himself that it was the abode of
virtue? Did he? Ada was a long way off, in beleaguered England. He
suddenly wondered what Ada had to do with this at all. With an ease that
rather disturbed him he told himself that you could never tell what
might happen nowadays. No use worrying about the future. Why, he might
never get home. He dropped the ash from his cigarette into the tray on
the table. Someone was coming with a quick decisive step up the stairs.
He smiled at Mrs. Dainopoulos, not quite sure why she was holding up her
hand. She was thinking "cross him off as caught," and smiling, when the
someone arrived at the door and knocked.
"Why didn't you get married before you left England?" she asked quickly,
and added in louder tone, "Come in!"
In sharp contrast to the rapid movements without, the door opened with
extreme cautiousness, and at first nothing could be seen save the hand
on the knob. Mr. Spokesly had been thrown into some disorder of mind by
that last question. Why hadn't he, anyway? It was something he had never
decided. Why had they not done what thousands had done in England, which
was simply to marry on the spot and sail a week, or perhaps a few days,
later? Why had he not taken the hazards of war? He had more, far more,
than many of those girls and boys at home. It was at this point, facing
for the first time the unconscious evasions of life, that he found
himself facing something else, a girl with a startled and indignant
light in her eyes. He uncrossed his legs and began to rise as Mrs.
Dainopoulos said, "Come in, Evanthia. It is all right."
She came in, letting the door swing to as she moved with a long
rapacious stride towards the sofa. It was obvious she was preoccupied
with some affair of intense importance to herself. Once Mr. Spokesly's
presence had been indicated she became again absorbed in her errand. Her
amber-coloured eyes, under exquisitely distinct brows, were opaque with
anger, and she held one hand out with the fingers dramatically clenched,
as though about to release a thunderbolt of wrath. The gesture was as
antique as it was involuntary. One heard drums muttering and the
gathering of fierce Ægean winds as she came on, and leaning forward,
flung out both hands in a passionate revelation of sorrow. Mr. Spokesly
sat down again, embarrassed and fascinated. He could not take his eyes
from her. She was something new in his experience; a woman with passion
and the power to express it. Such women are almost non-existent in
England, where sentiment is regarded as legal tender for passion. He
regarded her with a kind of stupefaction, as though he had never set his
eyes on a woman before. One might say with approximate truth that he had
not. His ways had lain among the artificial products of his age. In
trepidation he realized, as he sat there watching the movements of this
girl, that he would not know what to do with a woman like that. He sat
there and listened.
"Gone?" repeated Mrs. Dainopoulos.
"Yes, they are all gone. The French sent soldiers. And they would not
let me go to speak to him."
"But where will they go?"
The girl, whose eyes were bent upon the carpet at her feet, shrugged her
shoulders violently.
"Who knows that? To Sofia; or to Constantinople. Oh, I would have gone,
too. These pigs, pigs, pigs of French! Not a word! And he is gone!" She
dragged a chair from the table, and sat down suddenly, thrusting her
chin over her arm and staring at the floor. There was a moment's
silence, while Mr. Spokesly sat in doubt and Mrs. Dainopoulos looked out
over the Gulf.
"Gone!" muttered the girl again sullenly.
"Don't do that, dear. It is very bad for you when you get in such
rages!" Mrs. Dainopoulos spoke in a soft cool tone, like a recumbent
sybil whose knowledge of rage and sorrow was vast. The girl's foot swung
to and fro more and more rapidly, the red Turkish slipper slapping the
floor, "You will hear from him after a little."
"Ah, if they let him write. But these French! With their beards and hats
like cooking pots! They see everything. Of course he will write, but
that is no good. He cannot send anything."
An expression of disappointment crossed the other woman's face as she
patted the girl's shoulder.
"Wait a little," she said. "You can't tell yet."
"I would have given a thousand drachma to have got to the train," said
the girl moodily. "And I would give a million to get to Constantinople.
This place stifles me. I hate it ... hate it."
She stood up suddenly, raising her hands to her magnificent coil of dark
hair, and revealing the poise and vigour of her body. "Ah!" she moaned,
bending over her friend and caressing her. "I am a bad girl, forgetting
how ill you are. Evanthia is a bad, bad girl, with her troubles--and you
have a visitor----" She turned her head for a moment and Mr. Spokesly
was caught unawares in the brilliance of a dazzling yet enigmatic glance
from the amber eyes.
"A friend of my husband's," said Mrs. Dainopoulos. "He is English, you
know, like me. From London. We have been talking of London."
"Ah, yes!" The lingering syllables were a caress, yet there was no more
comprehension in them than in the inarticulate sounds of an animal. The
girl bent her dark head over the blonde masses on the pillow. "Forgive
your bad girl, Alice."
"Oh, all right," said Mrs. Dainopoulos, emerging with an embarrassed
English smile. "Only you must be good now and go back to bed. There's
Boris coming in."
"I am going!" said the girl and started. And then she remembered Mr.
Spokesly sitting there in dumb stupefaction, his gaze following her, and
she turned to make him a bow with a strange, charming gesture of an
out-flung hand towards him. The next moment she dragged the door open
and passed out.
He looked up to see Mrs. Dainopoulos regarding him thoughtfully, and he
made a sudden step forward in life as he realized the ineffectiveness of
any words in his vocabulary to express his emotions at that moment. He
made no attempt to corrupt the moment, however, which was perhaps
another step forward. He sat silent, looking at the glowing end of his
cigarette, endeavouring to recapture the facile equilibrium of mind
which had been his as he followed Mr. Dainopoulos through the gateway an
hour or so before. But that was impossible, for it was gone, though he
did not know it, for ever. He was trying to remember the name Mrs.
Dainopoulos had called her. Evanthia! And once at the beginning, Miss
Solaris. Something like that. Evanthia Solaris. He said to himself that
it was a pretty name, and was conscious at the same time of the
inadequacy of such a word. There was something beyond prettiness in it;
something of a spring morning in the Cyclades, when the other islands
come up out of the mist like hummocks of amethyst and the cicadas shrill
in the long grass under the almond trees. There was in it an adumbration
of youth beyond his experience, a hint of the pulsing and bizarre
vitality of alien races, a vitality fretted into white wrath by her will
and her desire, as the serene breath of the morning is suddenly lashed
into a tempest by the howling fury of an Ægean white squall. She was
gone, yet the room was still charged with her magnetic presence, so that
Mr. Dainopoulos came in quietly, put down his tweed cap, and seated
himself beside his wife, and Mr. Spokesly scarcely noticed his arrival.
As he became aware of outside phenomena once more--and he was rather
frightened to discover how his thoughts had flown out into the unknown
darkness in search of the girl--he saw that Mr. Dainopoulos was
preoccupied and anxious. They were speaking in a low tone and in a
foreign tongue, Mr. Spokesly noted. He recalled a story he had read in a
magazine some little time before--a story of an Englishman who had a
most miraculous command of foreign languages, who overheard a
conversation which revealed a plot to destroy the British Army. The plot
was revealed by the simple process of torturing a beautiful girl of
neutral origin who was to be forced to marry a brutal enemy colonel. It
did not occur to Mr. Spokesly to reflect that beautiful girls are
usually eager to marry colonels of any denomination, or that colonels do
not usually blend love and espionage. But he did notice the extreme
improbability of an Englishman being a linguist. It made the tale seem
unreal and artificial. Especially when the story added that he was a
naval officer of good family who afterwards married the beautiful
neutral and settled in a castle in Dalmatia. Fanciful! Mr. Spokesly knew
enough of naval officers to doubt the _dénouement_. He himself, for that
matter, would rather live in a bungalow in Twickenham than in Dalmatia.
As for foreign girls--he rubbed his chin, puzzled over his own blurred
sensations. Mr. Dainopoulos was speaking again. The woman lay back,
looking up at the high ceiling, an expression of calm and careful
consideration on her face, which was illuminated sharply, like an
intaglio, by the lamp. And Mr. Spokesly experienced a shock to discover
that they were not speaking of the girl at all. They seemed to have
forgotten her existence. They looked at him and so brought him into the
conversation.
"I'll have to be getting back," he remarked, rising once more.
Mr. Dainopoulos went to the door and spoke in a low harsh tone into the
darkness.
"I'll get you a boat," he said. "There's no boats allowed after dark,
but I have a friend on the French Pier. He'll put you on board. Another
night, you must come and eat supper. I have had plenty business
to-night. I have to go out again later, too. You understand what I tell
my wife? Well, the consuls have had to go home. The German and Austrian
and Bulgar Consuls went away to-night. I do a good bit of business, you
understand, with all these people, and I got to go and see a friend of
mine about it. So--will you have coffee----? I'll get you a boat first,
and you can come to-morrow night, eh?"
A girl of fifteen with a downcast disdainful countenance came in with a
tray and set it on the table. One eyelash flickered towards Mr. Spokesly
as she turned and made her way out. He looked at her entranced, noting
her slovenly dress, the holes in her stocking, and the ugly slippers
that slip-slopped as she moved her small feet. He noted these uncouth
garnitures within which she moved with the restless yet indolent rhythm
of a captive queen. His mind, as he drank the strong coffee and the tiny
glass of cognac, was in a state of unusual exaltation. Never before had
he faced an immediate future so fraught with glittering yet
unrecognizable possibilities. Mr. Dainopoulos might be a rascal, yet he
possessed the power to call up familiar spirits. As he sat there leaning
towards the table, his hand abstractedly on the bottle of cognac,
thinking deeply of his multifarious concerns, his dexterous dealings in
and out among men who slew one another daily, he resembled some
saturnine yet benevolent magician about to release a formidable genie
who would fill the room with fuliginous vapour. Mr. Spokesly felt his
scalp twitching with anticipation. He stepped across to say good-bye to
Mrs. Dainopoulos.
"I never expected this," he said simply. "I've had a very pleasant
time."
"Come to supper to-morrow," she said, smiling, "Always glad to see
anybody from the Old Country."
"Sorry your lady friend couldn't stay," he muttered. "Like to see more
of her. Well ... I'll say good-night."
He smiled as he went down the staircase behind the preoccupied Mr.
Dainopoulos. He smiled because he could see, by virtue of his exalted
mood, that the smug phrases which had always been adequate for his
emotions, sounded foolish and feeble. Like to see more of her! Did he?
It made him dizzy to think of, though, for all that. It made the simple
business of returning to that house an adventure of the soul. Nor did
the phrase "lady friend" describe her. He was comfortably vague as to
the actual constituents of a lady. A lady was perhaps described as a
woman with whom it was impossible to be wholly at ease. Yes, he
whispered to himself, but for a different reason. He felt defeated in
his attempts to stabilize his impressions. He had no comparisons. It was
like comparing a bottle of wine with a bottle of milk. Even Ada.... He
moved so abruptly as he followed close on the heels of Mr. Dainopoulos
that the latter looked at him in inquiry, and thought a remark was
necessary.
"We can fix our little business any time before you go away," he
murmured.
But Mr. Spokesly was not thinking of the little business just then. He
found himself suddenly confronting the conviction in his mind that his
Ada had been little more than a shining reflector of his own image. Ada,
in beleaguered England, seemed very far away and her personality lost
whatever distinction and magnetism it may have had while he was with
her. He saw with perfect clarity a new truth beyond that first one--that
Mrs. Dainopoulos had been aware of all this while she had plied her
gentle smiling questions. Had she meant anything, then? How could one
plumb the mind of a woman? There was something almost sinister in the
notion that she had known all along how he was situated, how he felt,
and let him sit there while a girl like an indignant enchantress came in
and worked some sort of spell upon him. He began to wonder if the girl
was real; whether he had not dreamed she was there. He was aghast at the
insensibility of Mr. Dainopoulos who was leading the way across the
street, his head bent and his damaged features set in a meditative
scowl. In what way could one account for it? A woman like that! A woman
already with a power over himself that frightened him. Ada! He thought
of Ada almost as a refuge from this new emotion assaulting his heart.
There was safety with Ada. He knew, within reasonable limits, the range
of which she was capable, the tone and timbre of her soul. Here, he
comprehended with surprising readiness, he would be called on to do
something more than talk conventionally of love. It was all very well,
he could see, to jog along from year to year, having a little fun here
and there, and getting engaged and even married; but it was no more than
the normal function of a human organism. Beyond that he could see
something ruthless, powerful, and destructive. He experienced an
extraordinary feeling of elation as he walked beside Mr. Dainopoulos
towards the street car. He was perplexed because he would have liked to
tell Ada the cause of this elation. He had a fugitive but marvellously
clear view of Ada's position in the matter. She was away in the future,
in a distant and calm region to which he had not yet gained admission.
There was something he had to go through before he could get Ada. And
while they jangled slowly along the quay, and Mr. Dainopoulos mumbled in
his ear the difficulties imposed upon himself by the departure of the
consuls, Mr. Spokesly caught a glimpse of what men mean by Fate. Though
he knew it not, the departure of the consuls was an event of prime
importance to himself. It was an event destined to precipitate the grand
adventure of his life. Ada, in beleaguered England, would find her
mechanically perfect existence modified by the departure of the consuls.
Something he had to go through. He stared out at the shaded lights of
the cafés and failed to notice that he no longer desired the tarnished
joys of the seafaring boulevardier. Here was a new motive. The facile
and ephemeral affairs of his life were forgotten in their sheer
nothingness. He drew a deep breath, wondering what lay in store for him.
They left the car and passed through the gates of the dock, along
roadways almost incredibly muddy, to where transports worked in the
cautious twilight of blue electrics and picket-boats moved up and down
gently where they were made fast to the steps, their red and green
side-lights giving the quiet stealthy hustle of the quays an air of
brisk alertness. Tall negroes, in blue-gray uniforms and red fezzes,
moved in slow lines loaded with sections of narrow-gauge track and balks
of timber, or pushed trucks of covered material. At a desk in a wooden
office sat a French _ajutant_, a blinding tungsten globe illuminating
the short black hairs rucked up over his stiff braided collar and
reflecting from an ivory-bald spot on his head as he spoke into a
telephone. Mr. Dainopoulos slid sideways into the room and sat down on a
bench by the door. The officer's eye flickered towards his visitor and
he lifted a hand slightly to indicate recognition. Mr. Spokesly stepped
in and sat down. On the wall was a drawing cut from the _Vie
Parisienne_, a nude, with exaggerated limbs and an enormous picture-hat,
riding on a motorcycle. The shriek, as of a soul in torment, of a French
locomotive, brought a scowl to the officer's face as he conversed with
his friends at the Cercle Militaire. Ringing off with a fat chuckle he
demanded in rapid French how his old one was making it. The old one, who
was Mr. Dainopoulos, made no definite complaint, but commented on the
fact that a man could not sit in Floka's and take a little drink with a
friend without a certain person, with a luxuriant beard, taking especial
note of it. The _ajutant_ threw himself back in his chair, tipped it,
his heels grinding the boards, and grunted. That, he mumbled, was only
to be expected of Père Lefrote. Well, what was it now? Mr. Dainopoulos
indicated his companion, an officer from the English ship arrived
to-day, now anchored in the _rade_. "What ship?" muttered the officer,
looking Mr. Spokesly over as though he were some unsavoury mongrel. From
Alexandria, said Mr. Dainopoulos, skilfully evading such an impossible
word as _Tanganyika_. "Ah-ha!" crowed the officer, transferring his cold
regard to his old one. So the old one was on that game again. By the
sacred blue, he was a great old cock. And the officer, getting up,
expressed his conviction very fast that if the truth were only revealed,
the old one could do a neat business in _poulets de luxe_ as well. What?
The truculent officer, halting at the door, his thumb and finger busy
with his moustache, looked back over his shoulder at his old one. No,
said the latter, he merely repeated what he had said so many times. He
knew none of those creatures, though he admitted three had arrived on
the transport _Jumièges_ that morning. Was that so? Where were they,
then? At the Omphale or the Tour Blanche? Come now! Mr. Dainopoulos lit
a cigarette and as he trod carefully on the smoking match murmured his
conviction that the ladies, whom a friend of his had seen land at
Venizelos Steps, entered automobiles, and might not be found at the
Omphale for some time. The officer drummed at the door and nodded. True,
but the old one knew of some ravishing creature surely who would respond
to the delicate attentions of a lonely exile. A _marraine_, in fact. But
the old one had no such clients. He was a man of business purely. And if
it could be arranged his friend here would like to be put on board.
The officer, a frustrated and disappointed sensualist, whose imagination
was tantalized but never fed by the fact that he was in the fabled
Orient, the abode of lovely Circassians and other houris, nodded
agreement. He owed Mr. Dainopoulos a few hundred francs and would have
been at a loss even if that gentleman had suddenly produced a beautiful
and expensive woman for his amusement. He was ever dreaming of a
tremendous _affaire_, but he was too close-fisted a Norman from Darnetal
to spend much on a sweetheart.
"True," he remarked and then called out into the darkness. "Yes," he
said, turning his head into the light, "the _chaloupe_ is going off now.
Let your friend tell the patron the ship he wants." And he returned to
this desk, yawned, and took up a copy of _Excelsior_. What a life, eh,
my old one!
Mr. Spokesly pointed out the black bulk of the _Tanganyika_, and as the
launch slid along the grating, stepped up and reached his room. The
night-watchman said, "Chief steward he no back yet." Mr. Spokesly turned
in. He switched out his light and lay for a while thinking with more
precision and penetration than even the London School of Mnemonics would
have ventured to guarantee. He had some difficulty in identifying
himself with the man who had gone ashore with Archy Bates that evening.
And he slid away into the deep sleep of the healthy seafarer with a
novel notion forming at the back of his mind. Suppose he was ashore in
Saloniki, what would happen then? If by some turn of the wheel he found
himself there? He might be sick, for instance, and go to the hospital
and be left behind. There was no dream, but he saw it--a storm and great
toil and anxiety, and in the midst of it a girl awaiting the outcome of
his exertions with enigmatic amber eyes.