Mr. Spokesly sat at a little distance from the large table in the
Transport Office and listened to the gentleman with four rings of gold
lace on his sleeve. It was a lofty and desolate place in the yellow
stucco building opposite the dock entrance. The transport officer was a
naval captain; with a beard, a brisk decisive manner, and a very foul
briar pipe. He was explaining that they needed a third mate for a ship
going to Basra and Mr. Spokesly would just do for the job if he would
waive his right to a passage home and go to Port Said instead. It was at
this point that Mr. Spokesly, rather shaky still from his immersion and
extensively decorated with pieces of plaster, took a hand.
"No," he said and kept his gaze on the floor.
"Why not?" demanded the captain, very much astonished.
"No reason's far as I know. But I'm not going third mate of anything,
anywhere, any more. That's that."
"Well, of course, we can't _force_ you to go, you know."
"I know you can't."
"But we shall really have to draw the attention of the owners to the
fact that you refused to go."
"That's all right. But I'm not going. I'll go home if you don't mind. Or
if I can get a job here I take it my articles finished with the
_Tanganyika_."
"No doubt, no doubt. But what could you get here?"
"I don't know what I could do. But I'd shine shoes on the steps out
there before I went third mate...."
"There's no need to go back to the question if you refuse to volunteer."
Mr. Spokesly stood up. He was in a rage. Or rather he was resuming the
rage which had assailed him when the _Tanganyika_ was going down and
which had been suspended while he made good his claim on life. The smug
way in which this bearded stranger disposed of him was intolerable. Mr.
Spokesly knew this man would never dream of sending one of his own caste
to a third mate's job on a Persian Gulf coaster with the hot season
coming on. He knew that he himself, being a merchant seaman, was
regarded by all these brass-bound people as an inferior, a shell-back, a
lob-scouser, and no dire need would ever make them accept him as one of
themselves. And he had a glimpse, in his rage, of another truth, for one
often sees these things in flashes of anger. He just caught sight of the
fact that these people, with their closely guarded privileges and
esoteric codes, were fighting much more for their class than for
England, that an England democratized and ravished of her class system
would be to them a worse place than an England defeated by a
class-conscious enemy. But the immediate grievance was personal. He
stood up.
"Volunteer," he repeated. "Excuse me, Mister, I came home from out east
and took a second mate's job, there being nothing better about. I went
mate when the other man died. I've had a master's ticket this ten years.
Now you want me to go third mate. Where shall I end up? In the
forecastle? Volunteer! I can tell you, I'm beginning to regret I ever
left Hong Kong."
"I see. Of course we can't help that, you know. You'd better go and see
the paymaster commander. Perhaps he can put you on a ship."
Mr. Spokesly took the cap, a size too large for him, which he had got on
credit at Stein's Oriental Store, and went out. He was feeling very
bitter. No man feels he is doing himself justice in clothes that are too
large for him. Mr. Spokesly wanted to go away and hide until he could
get rid of his enormous golf-cap and the coat which hung on him, as he
himself put it, like a bosun's shirt on a capstan-bar. He went
downstairs into the street. The sun had forced its way through vast
banks of blue-black and gray-white clouds and brought out unsuspected
tones in the roadway ankle-deep in bright yellow mud, in the green
uniform of a Russian soldier who was carrying a polished copper kettle,
and in the black-green waters of the Gulf crested with silver plumes.
Without analyzing the causes of the change, Mr. Spokesly felt more
cheerful. He would go to the paymaster commander, who was in the Olympos
Palace Hotel, and get the price of a drink anyway. He put his hands in
his pockets and whistled. His hand had closed over the ring. He thought
of Archy, the shiningly successful one, the paladin of pilferers, the
financial genius, down among the crawfish and awaiting those things he
saw on a stall just over there, eight-armed horrors with enormous bald
heads and bulging eyes and hooked beaks. And as he came to the corner of
the Place de la Liberté, he encountered a gentleman in the uniform of a
lieutenant of reserve. He was an elderly person, with the subdued air of
those men who have somehow attained to a command without ever making any
mistakes or achieving any remarkable successes. His uniform was badly
cut, his trousers bagged at the knees, and a large blue anchor was
tattooed on his left hand. But to Mr. Spokesly he was an angel. He was
not surprised when this person made some trivial remark to open the
conversation. And it soon appeared that he, too, was nursing a
grievance.
"What? You off the _Tanganyika_? Why, you only went out yesterday. No,
the day before. Dear, dear! And what are they going to do with you?"
"Want me to go up the Persian Gulf third watch-keeper of a
six-hundred-ton coaster," said Mr. Spokesly, feeling the ring in his
pocket and scowling.
"Ah! Just fancy that."
"And I been mate this six years, mind you."
"Just so. How about a drink? Floka's, you know, just up here. I quite
understand," this elderly angel added, raising his hand. "This is all on
me, if you don't mind."
"But I can't really, Mister. Not from a stranger," protested Mr.
Spokesly.
"Well, call it a loan, then, until you can see the paymaster. Here, take
these two notes. There now! You owe me a sovereign, eh? Here we are."
Mr. Spokesly would have had some trouble in admitting it, but the fact
remains that as they sat down at one of Floka's little tables and his
new friend asked him if he could do with a gin and bitters, he could
scarcely answer because he was on the verge of tears. After the icy
courtesy of the navy, for the officers of the sloop had not permitted
him to forget for a moment that he was only a seaman, this warm human
kindliness was almost too much. It really would have been a good thing
for him if he had been able to have what is called a good cry. But he
had been brought up to believe that such emotion was foolish, whereas it
is often the highest wisdom.
"What is your job here?" he asked after the drinks had arrived.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I'm in a state of suspended animation,"
answered the other, who had been a commander in tramp steamers for some
years. And he began to tell his story. He had joined up in the usual
way, and after knocking about in a shore job in the Bristol Channel,
some brilliant creature hit on the idea of sending him out to Saloniki
to act as harbour master. They needed one, too, he observed in
parentheses; an experienced man to straighten things out. Very good. He
arrived.
"And what do I find but I am to take my orders from a sub-lieutenant R.
N. who's about the age of my second boy who was killed at Mons, a cocky
young fellow who knows just as much about running a harbour master's
office as I do about painting pictures! Well, I went to the captain of
the Base and I told him as plain as I could, I simply didn't see my way
to do it. I couldn't, Mister! I went in to see this young lordship one
day on some business, and he kept me waiting half an hour while he was
telephoning about a girl he'd met. I told the Captain of the Base I
really would have to go home. You know the saying: Standing rigging
makes poor running gear. And now," he concluded with a quiet smile, "I
believe I've refused duty or something. I do wish I could get a ship
again. This waiting about is awful. But my owners have had so many
losses, I can't expect a command for a long time even if I could get out
of this." And he touched the lace on his sleeve. "These navy people are
all right in their own line of trade, I suppose, but they don't seem to
understand our troubles at all. They say the most curious things."
"How do you mean?"
"Why," said the old fellow in a whisper, "we had a lot of ships in dock
last week or so, so many that the anchors got fouled. One ship would
drop her anchor across another's cable, you see. Well, one captain sent
in a report he could not get his anchors up and in consequence he'd be
delayed getting out. What I wanted to do, what I was going to do, was to
move the other ships and give him room. If necessary, some of them could
go out and round the breakwater, you understand. But my young lordship,
this sub-lieutenant, says, 'Can't he slip his anchors?' in that tone of
voice that they use trying to make you feel as though you were an errand
boy. Just fancy that! 'Can't he slip his anchors?' 'I dare say he can
slip them all right,' I said, 'but wouldn't he find them useful in
Genoa?' Which was where he was going. You read a lot in the papers about
what wonderful chaps they are, but ... I don't know."
They sat there, those two, getting themselves pleasantly communicative
on gin and bitters, swapping stories of the incompetence of others and
their own obscure virtues, until Mr. Spokesly realized he would have to
see the paymaster and discover what was to happen to him.
"Well," he said, "I must go. I suppose I'll see you again."
"I'm at the Olympos. I'll show you where to go. You'd better get a room
there, too, if you can. I think I'll get along now and see what my young
lordship is up to. Slipping some more anchors, I expect. See you later."
And he moved off, in his slovenly fitting uniform and large broad-toed
shoes. Mr. Spokesly watched him. There, he thought, went a man who'd had
a command for years. And treated like a dog! He would be like that
himself in twelve or fifteen years' time. These official people only
thought of themselves. The only thing to do was to take a leaf out of
their book and look after Number One. He went into the hotel.
He came out again in about a quarter of an hour. "So that's the way
we're treated," he muttered, walking away. "Anybody would think I'd
committed a crime, not going down with everybody else." This was rather
hard on a harassed paymaster who could do nothing for Mr. Spokesly save
advance him two hundred francs, as per regulations regarding distressed
ships' officers, and promise him a compassionate passage home at some
future date, unless Mr. Spokesly's owners authorized something more
generous. With the two hundred francs in his pocket he walked away with
the general idea of getting a suit of clothes. And then--perhaps it was
the backward glance he took as he stood at the upper end of the noisy,
dirty little Place de la Liberté and saw the sunlight dancing on the
green-black water and on the polished brass funnels of the launches;
perhaps it was the glimpse he caught of the far peaks of Thessaly that
gave him an uplifting of the heart. His mood changed. He saw the thing
suddenly not as a grievance but as an adventure, in which he would have
to decide for himself. These naval people were only cogs in wheels. If
they wanted him they could come for him. He recalled again the important
fact that with the loss of the _Tanganyika_ he became exactly what he
had so greatly desired--a free agent, so long as he did not press his
claim for passage home. There was nothing in his way now except this
life-long habit of going to somebody for orders. Men had made great
fortunes, he had heard, by being cast adrift in a foreign port in some
such fashion. And others, he reflected cynically, had come down in the
world to be weak-kneed bummers and drink-cadgers. There it was again. It
rested with the man himself. What was it the little green books of the
London School of Mnemonics had said? Mr. Spokesly laughed shortly as he
thought of them lying at the bottom of the sea. A good place for them.
Lot of rubbish, if the truth were known. Fat lot of use they were now,
for instance. That chap Dainopoulos was worth a ton of scientific
flub-dub about training one's memory. Why not go and see Dainopoulos
now? See if his talk about a job would amount to anything. And Mrs.
Dainopoulos. And Evanthia Solaris. He drew a deep breath and looked out
across the dancing sea. A battalion began to march along the quay, drums
and fifes thudding and squeaking behind them, a long line of khaki
figures with overcoats curled in a thick band across their bodies, hung
all over with an extraordinary assortment of utensils. Going up to the
front, he reflected, to be shot or dismembered or racked with dysentery.
They got the glory, too. They were "the boys at the front," and they
filled the public eye. They and the navy. They had pensions provided and
so on. Mr. Spokesly was not a trustworthy authority on the business and
emoluments of soldiering. He held always the civilian's point of view.
He had been brought up among a class of people who kept silent on the
subject if a member of their family enlisted. Even the war, which
abolished the necessity for shame, did not eradicate the fundamental
animosity of these middle-class folk towards the military. Mr. Spokesly
himself had an old aunt, who lived on her husband's insurance money at
Hendon, who still alluded to "the red-coats," though scarlet had been
abolished. It was, like their terror of dear bread, in their blood. They
were individualists, these bourgeois from whom Mr. Spokesly came. They
were the folk whose relatives were established in distant colonies where
they had raised families of tall sons who had come back into the fight
so changed in character that the people of England did not know them.
They were the folk who "went out" to the East and into Africa as traders
and factors, and who carried Haverstock Hill with them up the Nile and
the Hoang Ho. Unimaginative and devoid of conscious art, they furnished,
without knowing or caring much about the matter, the raw material of
romance. They did outrageously romantic things under the pretence of
providing for their families or getting orders for their firm. And it
was this generic inherited character, working to the surface during the
reaction from his recent exertions and emotional stress, that meant more
to Mr. Spokesly than either the war or the London School of Mnemonics.
The basis of romantic adventure is character, and a man's real character
is sometimes overlaid with curious artificial ornaments. Mr. Spokesly
had been very much in error both as to his own character and his
destiny. He had no more need of memory training than Mr. Dainopoulos. In
the future his care would be to forget rather than remember. His recent
experiences had taught him much. What was to come would teach him still
more.
He found Mr. Dainopoulos in his extremely diminutive office in a
cross-street near the Post Office. Mr. Dainopoulos was ostensibly a
money-changer. In front of his premises was a glass case with an
assortment of currency. A few sovereigns in a saucer caught the eye, and
might have inspired the casual passenger with polite wonder how they had
found their way there when honest men in England had forgotten how they
looked. And at the back of his premises Mr. Dainopoulos had a safe
nearly as large as the office. Between these two emblems of financial
affairs were a table and two chairs. On the walls were musty insurance
calendars and obsolete steamship sailing lists, for Mr. Dainopoulos had
done a brisk agency in the past with emigrants, stimulating the cupidity
of Balkan peasants with lively handbills describing the streets of New
York and Chicago as being paved with gold. At the present moment, when
Mr. Spokesly came in, the other chair was occupied by a long thin person
folded loosely together and smoking a cigarette in a holder nearly a
foot long. He had one of those physiognomies that baffle analysis by the
simple expedient of never under any circumstances meeting one's eye. The
pinched cranium, the cold, pale blue eyes, the hooked nose coming down
over a toothless mouth to meet an up-turning pointed chin, might lead
one to think him old, yet he was no more than forty-five in fact. His
long sallow hands were hairless and garnished with several seal-rings,
and on one skinny wrist hung a slave bangle. He had his chair tipped
back against the wall, one leg dangling, the other hooked by the heel
into the cross-bar, while over the raised sharp knee-joint he had draped
his fore-arm. He was talking with great animation, his jaws moving
rapidly like the jaws of a ventriloquist's dummy, which he altogether
resembled, and his toothless gums gave out a hissing lisp. Mr.
Dainopoulos jumped up.
"My dear friend!" he exclaimed, with that faint Latin crow on the upper
register which is so disconcerting to the northerner. He took in the
situation rapidly. It was unusual for him to be ignorant of anything for
long. He very often knew of disasters before the Intelligence
Department, having means that they lacked for gathering news from
obscure sources. He needed no schools of mnemonics to teach him the
inevitable deductions from Mr. Spokesly's queer cap and baggy coat,
while the long strips of plaster made him utter inarticulate sounds of
sympathy.
"Let me introduce you. This is Captain Rannie. He's skipper of my little
ship the _Kalkis_. Captain, I want you to know this gentleman. His
ship's just been sunk."
Even at the moment when he offered a limp hand Captain Rannie did not
raise his eyes above Mr. Spokesly's side pockets, and he lost no time in
resuming the conversation. Mr. Spokesly found that this was one of
Captain Rannie's most notable peculiarities. He had the air of a silent,
reserved man, and he gave one a strong impression of being silent and
reserved since he never divulged anything about himself. Yet he was
always in the midst of an interminable monologue. When you met him he
was talking rapidly in a low, ill-tempered lisping voice, he continued
whether you had business with him or not, and he was still at it when
you bade him good day. He talked extremely well, with a sort of heavy
varnish of culture instead of fine polish, and he took occasional deep
breaths in order to sound his periods correctly. The subjects of his
discourse were two: his own virtues and the sins of everybody else on
earth. Perhaps this was why he was never finished, since both subjects
were inexhaustible. No one had ever given him a fair deal and he had
given up expecting it. There were many things about himself to which he
never alluded, but he gave the impression that in strict justice he
ought to allude to them and very unfavourably, since he had been so
badly treated by the other parties. He was never heard to mention the
war, for example, or his own participation in the fray. He talked,
indeed, as a very garrulous being from another planet might, after a few
intensive lessons on human frailty. At the present moment he was giving
it as his fixed opinion, and supporting it with an overwhelming mass of
fresh evidence, that everybody--the agent in Port Said, the crew
including the mate and the engineer, the warship who had peremptorily
demanded his name and port of origin, and the captain of the port who
had assigned him a bad berth nearly three miles from the dock--was in a
conspiracy to make his life a hell on earth. After he had shaken hands
with Mr. Spokesly his arm dropped slackly across his knee once more,
leaving the cigarette-stained fingers to make expressive motions
emphasizing the ghastliness of the tale he unfolded. And never once did
he raise his eyes to either of his auditors. It almost seemed as though
he could not bear to look in the faces of those beings from whom it was
impossible to obtain justice.
"I ask you, what is a man to do? What can he do, as commander of the
vessel, when his own officers decline, absolutely pointblank decline, to
give him ordinary decent respect? Let alone carrying out explicit
orders. It's enough to make a man throw up the whole thing in disgust.
If I've told my chief officer once I've told him fifty times, I will not
have a cuspidor on the bridge for the man at the wheel. My helmsman must
have the common decency to refrain from spitting while on duty. What is
the result? He laughs in my face. Simply takes not the slightest notice.
The same with everything else. Do I give orders to have the captain's
tea served at four sharp? What does he do but stops the steward on his
way down, drinks the tea, spits in the cup, and tells the man to take it
to the captain. And when I ordered him to his room he threatened me.
Actually threatened the commander of the ship. I of course logged him
for insolent, unbearable, and insubordinate behaviour, and when I read
the entry to him according to regulations, he tore the book to pieces
and not only threw them at me but offered me bodily violence. I was
attacked! And the engineer is, if anything, worse. Stood looking in the
port and laughed at the chief officer's ruffianly behaviour. Do you
suppose for a single moment I can tolerate this sort of thing?"
"Well, well, Captain, I tell you what ..." began Mr. Dainopoulos.
"And another thing," continued Captain Rannie, without looking up, "the
man's no good in a pinch. Several times on the voyage I've had literally
to tell him his work. No sense of his position. Sits on the fore hatch
and has long conversations with the crew. I make no charges, mind, none
whatever, but I am as certain that man carries my conversation forward
as I am of my own existence. When eight bells ring at my orders, he is
frequently nowhere to be seen, and if I send the man at the wheel to
find him and bring him up, as I have had to do more than once, he keeps
the man with him in his room playing cards, leaving me at the wheel.
That's gratitude. That's the sort of thing I have to put up with from
this man. Do you suppose for a moment that I can allow it to go on for
ever?"
"Well, Captain," said Mr. Dainopoulos again, "I can see we shall have
to ..."
"In Port Said," cut in Captain Rannie, "I scarcely saw the man.
Positively I might have had no chief officer! But for me the ship would
have been looted over and over again. More than once, when I was going
ashore on ship's business, I found he had sent the boat away on some
perfectly trivial errand of his own, to buy him some cigarettes or to
fetch his laundry. And when I made an absolutely justifiable protest and
issued explicit orders that the boat was not to leave the ship's side
except at the express orders of the commander, what happens? Nothing but
insults and foul innuendoes. This sort of treatment might appeal to some
ship masters. You can't tell, there's no accounting for tastes.
Personally, I simply will not have it. I have been patient long enough.
I make every allowance for defective education and ignorance of the
ordinary decencies of life. I hope I realize everybody cannot be the
same. But this is going too far."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Dainopoulos hurriedly. "I quite agree with you,
Captain. We'll make a change right away. Now if you'll ..."
"Putting aside all personal feeling," continued Captain Rannie, and
indeed he had gone right on while his employer was speaking, "putting
all that to one side, I feel it my duty as master of the vessel. The man
is not fit to be a ship's officer."
"I'll get you a seat, Mister," said Dainopoulos to Mr. Spokesly, and he
hurried out and over to a small café, returning with a chair.
"No satisfaction in going on like this, as any one can see not blinded
by prejudice. No one would believe, no one, what I have to put up with.
Not a soul on the ship who shows the faintest glimmer of gratitude." And
Captain Rannie was suddenly silent.
"That's what we'll do," said Mr. Dainopoulos in a loud, sympathetic
voice, "and I'll see if I can't get you a better anchorage. This
afternoon I expect I'll have a lighter for you. How will that do,
Captain?"
"I expect nothing, and I'll not be disappointed," replied the captain.
"My experience leads me to expect things when I get them. If anything
has happened on board since I left, don't blame me. I give you full
warning. The man is not to be trusted. I have difficulty in keeping my
hands off him. I only refrain as a matter of dignity. I would not soil
my hands with such--such riff-raff. I hope I am not misunderstood.
There's a limit to human endurance, that's all."
"I know how it is, Captain. Don't you worry. Only, you know as well as I
do he was the only man I could get at the time."
"I make no charges," said Captain Rannie, suddenly rising to some six
feet two, to Mr. Spokesly's intense astonishment. "I hope I am above
that sort of thing. But, I must really say, things could be managed
better if more attention was paid to the express wishes of the master of
the vessel." And without looking up or indicating in any way that he was
conscious of their presence, Captain Rannie walked away and disappeared
into the Place de la Liberté.
Mr. Dainopoulos looked after him for a moment with an expression of
perplexity on his marred features and then sat down.
"What's the matter with him?" inquired Mr. Spokesly, very much
interested. "Is he touched at all?"
"No, he's all right. Only he grumble grumble too much," said Mr.
Dainopoulos scratching his chin philosophically.
"I should think he does if he's always like that. What is his job
worth?"
"Seven hundred drachma a month I pay him, and he says it's not enough."
"That so? Hm!" Mr. Spokesly was thinking. "That's about thirty pound a
month. And I suppose he finds the ship." Mr. Dainopoulos nodded.
"Fifteen hundred drachma a month for that, and he says he lose money on
the job."
Mr. Spokesly was looking down at the floor, flicking the ash from a
cigarette, and he did not see the sudden wide-open stare Dainopoulos
fixed upon him, as though beholding him in a new aspect.
"Why, think of it. Here you are, without a ship!" he exclaimed.
"No doubt about that," muttered Mr. Spokesly.
"Well, why not make a trip for me? This ship she's not very _beeg_, but
she's going down to the Islands for the Government, you understand."
"For the Government? A transport?"
"One trip. After that I'll have something else much better for you. Yes,
much better."
"What, go mate with this Captain Rannie?"
"One trip," said Mr. Dainopoulos, holding up his forefinger. "I can fix
you for four hundred drachma a month."
"You said something, first time I came ashore, about a skipper's job,"
said Mr. Spokesly.
"That's just what I mean. Something better, see? This skipper," he
added, leaning forward and lowering his voice, "he no good! But he got a
paper from me, you understand, for a year, so I can't do nothin'."
"What about me?" said Mr. Spokesly, rather to his own surprise. "Do I
get a paper, too?"
"Only one trip," countered Mr. Dainopoulos. "You go one trip and I'll
fix you for a _beeg_ ship."
"Well, I can't do any better, and going home may be a wash-out," mused
Mr. Spokesly. "I'll get some clothes."
"You go to a friend o' mine and he'll get you everything. Here's the
number. Jean Tjimiski Street. You better get uniform, see, and wear all
the time. Better than plain clothes. Plenty trouble goin' aboard ship
without uniform. And then you come to my house."
"I was going to the Olympos," began Mr. Spokesly.
"Too dear! Olympos no good," hastily began Mr. Dainopoulos who was not
at all anxious to have an employee of his drawn into conversation by the
people who lived at the Olympos. "You come to my house. I will speak to
the officer who buy the stores from me and he will be glad if captain
and mate both English, you understand. That all right?" And he patted
Mr. Spokesly on the shoulder.
"You mean, come and stay with you?"
"Certainly. Why not? My wife, she likes you very much. And Miss Solaris,
eh?"
"Well, I don't notice she likes me so very much. She tolerates me. I
don't understand that girl, Mister."
Mr. Dainopoulos looked very serious at this. He shook his head. He lit a
cigarette, blew the smoke away, and put his face close to Mr.
Spokesly's.
"Never mind her, Mister. Keep away from her. She's a fine girl but she's
got funny ideas. And she's crazy about that feller what's gone away. She
thinks he's a king and she's a queen. You understand what I mean? She
ain't here at all, you see? She's got notions she's goin' to find him
and he'll take her back to Austria or somewhere. I can't tell you all
about it. I laugh when she tells us all her fool notions. She thinks you
can get her on your ship and take her back to her ... yes!" Mr.
Dainopoulos was humorously hideous as he reiterated this astounding
notion on the part of Evanthia Solaris. "And when I says to her, 'Aw,
he's gone away now; won't be back for six months, maybe,' she call me a
liar. 'He'll come back,' she say to me. I want him! Ha, ha!'"
"Well," said Mr. Spokesly, looking meditatively at the immense safe.
"She's right after all, and you're wrong. I'm here, ain't I?"
"And that's why I tell you, look out. These women, they ain't like
Englishwomen, Mister."
"How?"
But Mr. Dainopoulos couldn't explain how. It is not easy to explain how.
Perhaps, if Mr. Dainopoulos had been less absorbed in making money and
had dabbled in the fine arts, he might have hit upon some adequate
comparison. He might have said, for example, that the difference was
like the difference between the rose, with its perfume and its
comprehensible thorns, and the poppy, or the hemlock or the deadly
nightshade, blooms of fatal lure and incalculable perils. Mr.
Dainopoulos knew the difference but he did not know the English for it.
He must have sensed in some way the latent danger for a man like Mr.
Spokesly, a man with much unconscious romanticism in his nature, for he
shook his head vigorously and said several times, "You look out. She'll
fix you to do something crazy. You're engaged, or I'd say, keep away
from her. But since you're engaged, well, look out, that's all. By and
by she'll forget all her fool notions and get married."
"Well," said Mr. Spokesly. "I got to get out of these clothes before I
see anybody. I'll take a walk up to see your friend the tailor. See you
later." And he walked towards Venizelos Street.
He was profoundly disturbed at this unexpected revelation of the
attitude of Evanthia Solaris. If that girl had designed to cast a spell
upon him, she could have chosen no more potent elixir than this
sublimated essence of quixotism. She wanted him to get her back to the
gay and impudent young person who had almost tweaked the noses and
pulled the beards of the serious French officers who had seen him safely
locked in the train bound north through the lines. Without being
competent to analyze his complex emotions, Mr. Spokesly was in no doubt
of their reality. He would do it. It appealed to his particularly
English ideal of chivalry, which is embodied in the immortal phrase
"making a woman happy." He would do it. He would astonish her by his
sudden solicitude for her happiness. And it must be admitted that,
whatever else he failed to do, Mr. Spokesly succeeded in astonishing
her. Evanthia Solaris was perfectly equipped to achieve her own
happiness, equipped with the weapons and instincts of the jungle; and
the spectacle of an Englishman at his ancient and honourable pastime of
making a woman happy, while it never caused her to relax her vigilance,
certainly inspired her with novel emotions.
Mr. Spokesly was so lost in his reflections, most of them confusingly
agreeable, that he started when a familiar mellow voice asked him where
he was going. His friend the Lieutenant of Reserve was standing at the
corner of the Place. It was evident that the billet of deputy-assistant
harbour master carried no crushingly onerous duties. The old lieutenant
looked as though he had had a number of little drinks since Mr. Spokesly
had left him. He stood leaning on a cane looking on benevolently at the
busy scene.
"Floka's is right here," he said. "S'pose we have a couple? Beautiful
morning, isn't it? Well, and how did you get on?"
Mr. Spokesly had time to think. He recalled his own motto of keeping
one's eyes open and one's mouth shut. His angle of vision had changed
since the morning hour. He no longer felt sore with the navy or
miserably alone in the world. He had got a promise of a command--a
promise he had never before approached in his life. And a woman had said
she wanted him. He regarded his elderly companion with composure as they
stepped over and sat down at a little table.
"Not so bad," he said, drawing out his two hundred francs and handing
over twenty-five. "Much obliged. No, can't say when I'm goin' home.
Paymaster said he'd let me know. How's things? Any more anchors to
slip?"
The answer was a fat chuckle.
"Oh, my young lordship's not there this morning," said the lieutenant.
"Playing golf!" He drank his gin and bitters thirstily, which is a bad
sign. "Golf! I'd golf him, if I had my way. Lucky there's nothing much
doing just now. As it is I've had a heavy morning, getting things
straightened out. I think I'll have another and then we might try a bit
o' lunch. So you'll be on your own for a few days. I wish I could get
home. I'm going to see the Captain of the Base to-morrow. If that's no
good, I'll write to the Admiralty."
They had another and the lieutenant gave an outline of the letter he
proposed to write to the Admiralty. He also gave Mr. Spokesly his views
of the naval situation, attributing the nation's reverses entirely to
mismanagement of the harbours. They were not very clear views, and their
value was vitiated by a peculiarly irrelevant argument that consular
agents ought to be recruited from the ranks of retired shipmasters.
"'Tired shipmasters," he repeated, with unconscious irony, after the
tenth drink that morning. "Practical men. Size up situation. But what's
the use? Gov'ment won't lissen t'reason." He put down his glass and paid
the reckoning. Although he was not conscious of it, the lieutenant was a
happy man. He owned his own semi-detached villa over at Chingford, near
London, and the villa adjoining. His children were all grown up. Years
ago he had put his money into shipping and it had failed to pay a
dividend of more than three per cent. Now he was getting nearly thirty
per cent. His health was good, for even the interminable little drinks
at Floka's had no great effect upon him. He was doing very well out of
the war. A life of careful and cautious command was being crowned by a
season of gentle conviviality. He had achieved a position of respectable
eminence without ever having had an idea in his head. For him neither
the arts, the sciences, nor philosophy existed. His patriotism was a
rootless organism floating in a calm sea of sentiment. An intermittent
melancholy assailed him at the times when he thought of his son killed
at Mons. A wild young fellow. Got into a very expensive set in that
insurance office, where he worked. Brought up to be a gentleman, so one
couldn't very well grumble. Upset his mother something terrible. And now
he was gone and would never be any expense to anybody again. And his old
father was left to jog along as best he could. Ah, well! His other boy,
now, in an aircraft factory, was doing well. Wonderful how he'd taken to
these here motors. Probably get a very good billet after the war was
over. Saving money, too. Ah, well! It was an ill wind that blew nobody
any good. He tried to fix his attention, which had wandered a little, on
what Mr. Spokesly was saying. That gentleman was preoccupied with his
own immediate future and was trying to get away without hurting any
feelings. Keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut involved dropping all
unnecessary "top-hamper" as he himself phrased it. He rose.
"I got to go and get some clothes," he explained. "I simply can't go
round like this, you know. Suppose I look in at the hotel this evening,
eh?"
"Do!" said the lieutenant with dreamy cordiality. "Very thing. Tell the
waiter, will you? I think I'll have another before I go round to lunch."
It was just about this time that a keen-faced naval man, engaged in
mending the shaft of a groggy driver with some plasticine and a strip of
insulating tape, made a remark to a young sub-lieutenant with features
of almost girlish delicacy, who was assisting.
"One of your people," he said crisply, "is continually pestering me.
Middle-aged. Lieutenant Reserve. Smells abominably of cough-drops. Wants
to go home. Is he any use?"
"Not in the least," said the young sub-lieutenant with equal crispness.
"He might be if he didn't get half-stewed every day. The cough-drops are
to conceal...."
"Oh, obviously!" said the Captain of the Base. "I knew that, thank you.
But look here. Just give him a hint, will you, that there's too much to
do just now in my office to have him coming in two or three times a week
with a long yarn."
"What shall I do with him?" asked the sub-lieutenant deferentially.
The captain took a stance and swung the club.
"Don't care what you do with him," he said, taking a deep breath. "Lock
him up, send him out in a transport, make him run round and round the
White Tower, so long as he doesn't come to my office."
"Right-o, sir. He shall run round and round the White Tower for the
duration of the war. He'll do less harm there than anywhere else."