When Mr. Spokesly had left his friend to have one more, he experienced
that comfortable feeling of having left someone behind which is one of
the most tangible and gratifying results of getting on both in the world
and in life. The incident crystallized for him, so to speak, the gaseous
and indefinable emotions which had been passing through his mind since
he had been fished out of the water. Avoiding the callous brutality of
the expressed sentiment, he derived a silent and subtle satisfaction
from the workings of a fate which had singled him out to survive a
ship's company of men as deserving as he, but who were now none the less
out of the running. Mr. McGinnis, who had obligingly died a startling
but convenient death, had merely gone before. He would be waiting, no
doubt, on the Dark Shore, his pink jaws going continually, ready to
navigate them to their long home. Mr. Spokesly had not had a great deal
to do with death heretofore, and he was much struck with the extreme
ease with which one can grow accustomed to the horror of an elderly
shipmaster being ordered about "like a dog," as the saying is. In a way,
he could scarcely refrain from regarding his friend the lieutenant in
the same light as his late shipmates. He was clear enough on this point
now: that the way to success is not through a nursing-home for
grievances. No one who had met Captain Rannie, for example, could regard
a grievance as a worthy or valuable possession. And Mr. Spokesly, to
whom had been denied access to the great founts of wisdom, had to
progress by noting his fellowmen and their reactions upon his own
feelings. He hastened away up Venizelos Street, full of vigour and hope,
as though it lay upon him to achieve something of the work foregone by
those so suddenly finished with life, who were now moving about, a
bewildered and somewhat undisciplined little band of incongruous shades,
lost and forgotten as the colossal armies of the slain went past. And he
became aware, quite suddenly, in the midst of the bright noisy street,
of life being an instinctive, momentary, impersonal affair after all. As
he put it, like a lot of insects, and somebody steps on us, and we're
squashed, and all the others go swarming on over us. And with that
mysteriously heartening notion, Mr. Spokesly had a vividly imagined
glimpse of those same armies marching through the shadows, millions of
them, of all nations, silently moving towards an eternity of passionless
intelligence. It would make no difference then, he thought. All we got
to do, is make the best bargain we can for ourselves. Carry on! Like
insects....
They looked like that. They swarmed in the narrow street, almost
crawling over one another with brilliant and distinctive markings and in
their hard dark eyes an expression of maniacal acquisitiveness. Their
glances were almost like antennæ, waving to and fro in the bright,
stench-laden air, communicating to the alert and secular intelligences
within the warning of an approaching danger or victim. Like insects,
too, they hived in dark holes, which they called shops, in the backs of
which one could see their eyes glittering, lying in wait. And down the
steep street came other insects, warrior ants astride of horses
caparisoned in blue and silver, and green and gold, with shining
metallic wing-cases and fierce head ornaments. They, too, moved on with
the air of automata, without emotions or any consciousness of good or
evil. They came on down, as they had come along that ancient Via
Egnatia, beneath the great arch twenty centuries ago, just as hard-eyed
janizaries had come in later times, settling in their swarms upon the
city. Down the steep ancient street they came, settling heavily into
their saddles with a clash of metal and wheeze of leather as their
horses took the descent; and watching them with shining eyes from a
doorway was Evanthia Solaris, an exquisite apparition in pale saffron
with an enormous black hat. She was raised a step or two above the
sidewalk, and Mr. Spokesly could see that slender gracile figure from
the buff-coloured shoes and stockings of sheer yellow silk to the broad
brim of black straw shading the pale dark face aglow with excitement.
One would have imagined that she was watching the soldiers of her
country riding out to defend her, or riding in to rescue her. She leaned
forward a little, her lips parted in a smile, and an officer, noticing
her in her doorway, sat straighter, raised his sword and smiled in
reply. Her response was ravishing. She blew a kiss, and Mr. Spokesly
marvelled at her enthusiasm. As well he might, for Evanthia was
rehearsing a part. Patriotism to her was a fine brave gesture and she
was practising it. It appealed to her dramatic instinct. Just as she
would suddenly smother Mrs. Dainopoulos with impulsive caresses, so she
cheered a lot of stolid soldiers who were nothing to her and in whose
sentiments she had no share. Always Evanthia was certain of some sphere
in the world where people act like this, and where they luxuriate in
rare and beautiful emotions. She played at this as a western child plays
hostess to her dolls. To her, for a brief blinding moment, it was real,
and she loved the officer with the saluting sword. And Mr. Spokesly,
rather scared, if the truth be told, and acutely conscious of his
anomalous attire, slipped into a shop and dickered with a long-nosed Jew
for a pair of Turkish slippers, while over his shoulder he saw the girl,
now the soldiers were gone, step daintily into the road and go on down,
with her delicate prinking walk, an exquisite moth among hard-eyed
ferocious-looking insects.
And so he found himself at last in a small room, behind a window full of
formidable uniforms, containing a dreamy-eyed Greek tailor and an
overworked American sewing machine. A number of suits hung in rows on
one side and on the wall was a steel engraving showing Parisian Men's
Fashions of a dozen years before. As he owed for a consignment of velvet
khaki which Mr. Dainopoulos had picked up somewhere and sold him at a
noble profit, Mr. Theotokis was disposed to do his best for Mr.
Spokesly. So he took his measure and ascertained by painful
cross-examination what a chief officer's uniform was like. Yes, like
that, with one, two, three rows of lace, one quarter wide. H'm! And in
answer to the demand for a suit ready to wear, he sized Mr. Spokesly up
and nodded reflectively. He had something. He rummaged behind the
festoons of coats and drew out a fine pin-check suit such as sporting
characters affect in the country. He held it up and regarded it with
misgiving. It appeared from the book to be made to the order of one Jack
Harrowby, Transport _Tanganyika_. Mr. Spokesly started. Harrowby was one
of the wireless operators, a youth about his own build and distinctly
sporting in temperament. He remembered Harrowby, all right. Why had he
not fetched his suit? Mr. Theotokis shrugged his shoulders almost to his
ears and spread his hands. No money. Wanted to pay next trip. Another
phenomenal shrug. Mr. Theotokis was desolated to disappoint Jack
Harrowby, but no money, no suit. Mr. Spokesly recalled something Archy
Bates had said about Harrowby drawing a lot of money, having started a
tremendous love affair in town. Evidently he was going to cut a dash in
his pin-checks. Perhaps he looked forward to the races at Alexandria.
And now.... Mr. Spokesly pursed his lips firmly, took off the anomalous
coat he was wearing, and slipped his arms into Jack Harrowby's coat. It
was an extremely good fit. Jack Harrowby's trousers needed turning up
and a touch of the iron, and they would do. A tremendous love affair he
had had on, Mr. Spokesly recalled. Girl in a post-card shop, it was
said. Perhaps it was the suit which had been ordered by Jack Harrowby to
make love in. Mr. Spokesly had not been attracted by that short buxom
little creature in the post-card shop; but now he felt he would like the
sensation of going round to see her, in Jack Harrowby's suit. It was the
sort of thing that chimed in with his mood of modest satisfaction. It
would not be doing Jack Harrowby any harm. That wise youth, who had gone
ahead and made the most of his opportunities, was now done with
pin-check suits and girls in post-card shops.
A hundred francs at first, it came down to eighty on invoking the name
of Dainopoulos, so Mr. Spokesly took it with him and promised to call
next day.
There was something dashing about a finish like that, he reflected, as
he sat down on the bed in a room in the Olympos Hotel. A word to the
paymaster had secured him that privilege. He regretted he had not noted
more particularly the sporting Jack Harrowby, but it did not do to have
much traffic with those fellows, they were so cheeky. He untied his
parcel and looked again at the late Harrowby's selection in suitings. He
had bought a hat on the way down, too, a gray felt, respectably stylish.
Now he would be able to resume his place in the world. He would not feel
like a fireman out of a job when he went to see these naval gentry. As
he folded up his wrinkled and salt-stained trousers he remembered the
ring and took it out. That was a rather peculiar turn, the way he
happened to have it. Just a fluke, putting it in his pocket in his
hurry. Mr. Spokesly took his lip in his teeth as he tried to get the
hang, as he called it, of all these intricate turns in his destiny. He
recalled the unusual and puzzling exaltation he had experienced that
evening when he went ashore with Archy, and he began to wonder whether
after all it would be good for a man to know too accurately what the
future held for him. His hands, so to speak, were full now. Life was
tremendously interesting, once one got away from routine and discipline
and all these conventional ideas. He was, practically, a free agent now.
It was up to himself to go ahead carefully and make no silly mistakes.
No harm in walking round to that post-card shop near the Ottoman Bank,
however. He remembered seeing Jack Harrowby hanging over the counter
once, as he went by. A dark little piece with a powdered nose.
Mr. Spokesly could not have explained this ridiculous curiosity about a
girl he did not know, but it was a simple enough by-product of his new
state of mind. There is nothing unusual in a man, suddenly awakened to
full consciousness by some one woman, becoming interested in all women.
So far from a man being unable to love more than one woman, it may be
doubted whether at first he can do anything else. The tender solicitudes
and almost religious exclusiveness are later phases of the passion. Mr.
Spokesly even looked forward to a sentimental intimacy with Mrs.
Dainopoulos. It made him feel a bit of a dog, as did this affair of Jack
Harrowby's flame. As he went along the Front he wondered if she would go
out to lunch with him. And then he saw that the post-card shop was shut
up and a sentry stood in front with his rifle on his shoulder. Mr.
Spokesly walked on and turned up the next street. The sight of that
closed shop and the sentry gave him a chill all down his spine. What had
happened? He made his way to the establishment of Mr. Dainopoulos. That
gentleman at once exclaimed at the improved appearance of his friend,
but without quitting his accounts which littered the desk and overflowed
on to the shelves along the sides. He offered a chair and a cigarette.
Mr. Spokesly watched him with respect. He had sense enough to see that
Mr. Dainopoulos was only doing business in the old-fashioned way, as it
was done in England and in New England, too, before shipowners became
too exalted to talk to their own shipmasters or to go down to meet their
own ships. There might be something in this business for him even after
the war. If it grew there would be an overlooker needed. He let his mind
go forward. Perhaps the _Tanganyika's_ sudden eclipse was really a
blessing in disguise. An ill wind blowing prosperity in his direction.
It would be unjust to say of him that he did not regret the loss of
those lives. He did, as sincerely as anybody else. But he was alive and
they were dead, and if there is one thing men learn promptly it is the
difference between the quick and the dead. So he let his mind go
forward. And when Captain Rannie suddenly came in, Mr. Spokesly almost
failed to recognize him. Not that Captain Rannie particularly desired
recognition. He sat down and continued a monologue on the decay of
morals in the merchant service. Went back to the ship, and what did he
find? Nothing done. Mate and engineer playing cards in the cabin. Cook
drunk. And so on. From bad to worse.
"But where's the harm in a game of cards, Captain?" asked Mr. Spokesly,
slightly amused.
This question upset Captain Rannie very much. He was unused to questions
from strangers. It interrupted the flow of his thought. He looked down
at his feet and took out a cigarette.
"Ah!" he said, as though an astonishingly fresh argument was about to be
born. "Ah! That's the point, that's the point. No harm at all. It's the
principle that's at stake--I expressly stated my dislike of the cabin
being used as a gambling-den and these officers of mine expressly
disregard my repeated instructions. And it's coming to a point," he
added darkly as Mr. Dainopoulos hurried across the street to speak to an
acquaintance, "when either they get out or I do."
It was obvious that Captain Rannie lived in a world of his own, a world
in which he was the impotent, dethroned, and outraged deity. Now he was
prepared to abdicate into the bargain. He hinted at ultimatums, distinct
understanding, and other paraphernalia of sovereignty, for all the world
as though he were a European power. By all this he meant nothing more
than to impress Mr. Spokesly with the solemn responsibility of being
chief officer under him. But Mr. Spokesly was regarding him with
attention and he was not impressed. He was looking for the elusive yet
indubitable mark of character which is so necessary in a commander, a
gesture often closely imitated, which carries out to men the conviction
that he bears within himself a secret repository of confidence and
virtue, to be drawn upon in moments of conflict with the forces of
nature and the turbulent spirits of men. And he did not find it. Mr.
Spokesly had had no opportunity of discovering this repository in
himself. Indeed, many men achieve great deeds and die gloriously without
ever having been conscious of the sacred force. But he knew it and felt
it when he came near it, whatever cantankerous habits of grievance he
may have cultivated. And it was necessary for him now to judge men for
themselves. Imitations would not do. As though aware of the scrutiny and
the motive, Captain Rannie proceeded with even more eloquence, and more
like a ventriloquist's dummy than ever, to outline what in his opinion
was the whole duty of an officer. The long scrawny wrist with the
slave-bangle, the cigarette held loosely between yellow fingers, waved
as though deciding the fate of principalities. He spoke in full
resounding periods, he made dramatic pauses, and invoked the eternal
principles of justice and decency and honour. And Mr. Spokesly didn't
believe a word of it. He was anxious for the mate to lose his job
because he wanted it himself. But he was secretly in sympathy with him.
And having failed to find what he was looking for, the genius of
command, he began to wonder what there was inside this man at all. It
couldn't be simply all this tosh he was emitting. He must have some
springs of love and hate in him, some secret virtue or vice which kept
him going. Mr. Spokesly was interested. Men were not so simple, so
negative, now he himself was out on his own, to decide for himself, to
be master of his own fate.
"Are you married, Captain?" he asked, in a brief pause, with a flash of
intuition. Captain Rannie dropped the match he was holding, changed his
legs and began moving his neck violently in his collar while he
swallowed. Several times he opened his mouth to speak and nothing
happened. He looked hard at Mr. Spokesly's boots.
"I make it a rule," he said at length, "and I expect all my officers to
bear it in mind, to have no dealings in personalities. I ask no
questions about a man's private life and I expect none. I hope this is
understood from the first. There's one thing I simply will not tolerate
and that is prying into my private affairs."
"Well, hang it, I only asked a perfectly natural question. No offence,
Captain."
"Precisely. None offered, none taken. It's the principle I insist on."
"I suppose you've been out here some little time," ventured Mr.
Spokesly.
"That is a matter that concerns me and nobody else," said Captain
Rannie. "That's one thing I find very much in vogue nowadays. Ceaseless
curiosity about irrelevant matters. Do I ask you how long you've been
out here? I certainly do not. I consider it's nothing to do with me. And
yet I am considered unreasonable simply because I demand common decent
respect for my own private affairs."
"The Captain he no like to talk about his affairs," said Mr.
Dainopoulos, who was listening. "Don't you worry. You'll find him all
right, Mister. To-morrow you start on the _Kalkis_. That all right,
Captain?"
Captain Rannie seemed under the stress of some terrific emotion. He
swallowed, his foot tapped the floor, the slave-bangle shot up out of
sight; and he regarded a point about three feet up the wall with a
malignant glare.
"I'm sure I'd never dream of interfering in such a matter," he said.
"What you do I must stand by. You make the bed, I have to lie on it.
That's what a shipmaster's for. He's a doormat, for everybody to wipe
their feet on. No matter what happens, he has to take the blame. _I've_
no objection in the world. I expect nothing, and that's all I get."
Mr. Dainopoulos evidently knew his captain, for he said: "All right.
That's fixed. Now, when we've had something to eat we'll go see the
Transport Officer. He's the man."
"I hope you don't want _me_ to go with you," said Captain Rannie,
looking down at the floor as though he saw the bottomless pit just on
the point of opening under their feet. "I've only seen the man once and
then he failed to show the very slightest glimmer of comprehension of
what I had to put up with. Might as well talk to a stone wall.
Absolutely. I'm sure _I_ don't want to see your Transport Officer."
"I was going to ask you," said Mr. Spokesly, "if you don't mind, a
question. You seem to be in the know all round here."
"What is it?" said Mr. Dainopoulos, regarding Mr. Spokesly with sudden
interest. He even left his pen in the air while he listened.
Mr. Spokesly mentioned the incident of the suit of clothes left behind
by the indigent Jack Harrowby and the memories of the post-card shop
evoked by the interview with Mr. Theotokis.
Mr. Dainopoulos let his pen descend to the document he was auditing and
nodded in comprehension.
"Yes, all finished, eh? Wal, what you think?" he went on nonchalantly.
"She little damn fool. She tell plenty stories to anybody who get sweet
on her, you unnerstand? She hear _Tanganyika_ go south, time so and so.
She talk"--here Mr. Dainopoulos made a gesture with his thumb and
fingers indicating violent blabbing--"ba-ba-ba-ba! Now she's in jail.
_Tanganyika_, wal, you know all about _Tanganyika_, Mister. You
unnerstand; these peoples, French, English, they play, you know, golf
and tennees, and seem half asleep." He shook his head. "No! Not asleep.
Very bad business that. Me; I go all the time like this." And he drew a
perfectly straight line with his pen along the edge of his desk. "That
crooked business no good."
Captain Rannie was suddenly overtaken by a violent fit of coughing, and
buried his nut-cracker features in a large plum-coloured silk
handkerchief. His head was bowed, his shoulders heaved horribly, and
from him came a sound like an asthmatic horse whinnying. He might have
been laughing save that laughter was unknown to him beyond a short sharp
yawp, a "Ha!" involving a lift of the diaphragm and an intake of breath.
And since none had ever seen him laugh they would not suspect merriment
in this dreadful cacophony, this laryngeal uproar, which had so suddenly
assailed him. Mr. Dainopoulos looked at his captain very sternly and
then renewed the proposal to eat. Captain Rannie rose, joint by joint,
and stuffed his plum-coloured handkerchief into his breast pocket.
"No," he said, and Mr. Spokesly wondered if the man ever agreed to
anything except under protest. "No, I'm a two-meal-a-day man myself. I
find I am less bilious on two meals a day. And anyhow, after that, I
couldn't possibly eat anything."
And he coughed himself out of the door.
Mr. Dainopoulos stared after him, his features destitute of any emotion
at all. Captain Rannie halted, turned half round, and it almost seemed
as though for once in his life he was going to raise his eyes and look
somebody square in the face. But he paused at the second button of his
owner's waistcoat and nodded several times, his toothless mouth open, a
perfect ventriloquist's dummy.
"I'll have indigestion for a fortnight," he said. "Absolutely." And he
started off again, the plum-coloured handkerchief to his face, his
shoulders heaving, making a noise like a foundered horse.
"What's the matter with him?" Mr. Spokesly felt justified in asking.
"He's an old bum!" said Mr. Dainopoulos with a gloomy air, but made no
further allusion to the bronchial troubles of his captain. The fact was,
as Mr. Spokesly became aware in time, that Mr. Dainopoulos, in the
course of his many negotiations, was obliged to entrust some of the
business to his employees. And a stroke of business entirely correct to
him did not make that impression upon Captain Rannie, who was under the
illusion that he himself was the soul of honour. So he was, in theory.
When Captain Rannie did a mean and dishonourable action, it bore to him
the aspect of an act of singular rectitude. And he promptly forgot all
about it. He wiped it out of his mind as off a slate. It was gone; had
never existed, in fact. For the exploits of others, however, he not only
never left off thinking about them, but he could not be induced to
refrain from discussing them, for ever and ever. Anyone who had ever had
any dealings with him would find him an embarrassing witness at the Day
of Judgment, if we are correct in assuming that witnesses will be
called. Mr. Dainopoulos could not afford to quarrel with him, but he
sometimes wished he had a more amiable disposition, and could get on
better with his crew. And he felt for him also the puzzled contempt
which men of affairs feel for the sensualist. An elderly man who, as Mr.
Dainopoulos had heard, had a wife somewhere and a married daughter
somewhere else, and who was continually engaged in some shabby
unmentionable intrigue, made one feel a little uncomfortable and
slightly ashamed of one's species. Captain Rannie's view of his own
conduct was not available, for he never by any chance recognized the
existence of such affairs in his intercourse with other men. His
sentiments about women were unknown save what might be gathered from his
short sharp yawp--"Ha!"--whenever they were mentioned, the laugh of a
noble nature embittered by base ingratitude. So he visualized himself.
No one had ever betrayed the slightest gratitude for anything he had
ever done. So he would be revenged on the whole pack of them--Ha!
It was Mr. Spokesly's chance question, whether the Captain was a visitor
at the house, which let him fully into the mind and temper of his new
employer.
"He's not that sort of man," said Mr. Dainopoulos, shovelling beans into
his mouth with a knife. "My wife, she wouldn't like him, I guess. He's
got something of his own, y'unnerstand. Like your friend Mr. Bates, only
he don't drink. He take the pipe a leetle. You savvy?"
Mr. Spokesly remembered this conversation later on, when events had
suddenly carried him beyond the range of Mr. Dainopoulos and his intense
respectability. He remembered it because he realized that Mr.
Dainopoulos at that time, and behind his mask of bourgeois probity,
which had been so enigmatically received by Captain Rannie, was devising
a daring and astute stroke of business based on his exact knowledge of
the Ægean and his relations with the late consuls of enemy powers. And
Captain Rannie, of course, had been aware of this. But at the moment Mr.
Spokesly easily abandoned the morals of his new commander and listened
to what might be called the wisdom of the Near East. He thought there
was no harm in asking Mr. Dainopoulos what he thought of the emerald
ring. That gentleman evidently thought a great deal of it. He offered to
buy it, spot cash, for a thousand drachma, about one sixth of its actual
value. He merely shrugged his shoulders when he heard the tale of a
woman giving it to Archy. According to his own experience that sort of
woman did not give such things away to anybody. He thoroughly understood
precious stones, as he understood drugs, carpets, currency, bric-à-brac,
dry goods, wet goods, and the law of average. He noted a minute flaw in
the stone, and finally handed it back hurriedly, telling Mr. Spokesly to
give it away to some lady.
"Or throw it into the sea," he added, drinking a glass of wine in a
gulp.
"What for?" demanded Mr. Spokesly, mystified by this sudden fancy.
"Bad luck," said Mr. Dainopoulos laconically. "It belong to a drowned
man, you unnerstand! Better give it away."
"I'll give it to Miss Solaris."
Mr. Dainopoulos eyed Mr. Spokesly over his shoulder as he sat with his
elbows on the table holding up his glass. Mr. Spokesly put the ring in
his pocket.
"She'll take it, all right," said his friend at length, and drank.
"What makes you so sure?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
Mr. Dainopoulos was not prepared to answer that question in English. He
found that English, as he knew it, was an extraordinarily wooden and
cumbersome vehicle in which to convey those lightning flashes and glares
and sparkles of thought in which most Latin intelligences communicate
with each other. You could say very little in English, Mr. Dainopoulos
thought. He could have got off some extremely good things about Evanthia
Solaris in the original Greek, but Mr. Spokesly would not have
understood him. If he were to take a long chance, however, by saying
that the vulture up in the sky sees the dead mouse in the ravine, he was
not at all sure of the result.
"Aw," he said in apology for his difficulty, "the ladies, they like the
pretty rings."
"I can see you don't like her," said Mr. Spokesly, smiling a little.
"My friend," said Mr. Dainopoulos, and he turned his black, bloodshot
eyes, with their baggy pouches of skin forming purplish crescents below
them, on his companion. "My friend, I'm married. Women, I got no use for
them, you unnerstand? You no unnerstand. By and by, you know what I
mean. My wife, all the time she sick, all the time. She like Miss
Solaris. All right. For my wife anything in the world. But me, I got my
business. By and by, ah!"
"What about by and by?" asked Mr. Spokesly, curious in spite of himself.
He began to think Mr. Dainopoulos was a rather interesting human being,
a remarkable concession from an Englishman.
Mr. Dainopoulos did not reply immediately. He had a vision splendid in
his mind, but it was hazy and vague in details. His somewhat oriental
conception of happiness was tempered by an austere idealism inspired by
his wife. He could never have achieved his ambition, let us say, in
Haverstock Hill, London N., or Newark, N. J. He demanded a background of
natural features as a setting for his grandiose plans for the future. No
westerner could understand his dreams, for example, of a black
automobile with solid silver fittings and upholstery of orange corded
silk, in which his wife could take the air along a magnificent corniche
road flanked by lemon-coloured rocks and an azure sea. Other
refinements, such as silken window-blinds, striped green and white,
keeping the blinding sparkle of that sea from invading the cool recesses
of voluptuous chambers, came to him from time to time. But he could not
talk about it. He did not even speak to his wife of his dream. He
believed she knew without his telling her. She knew nothing about it,
imagining that he was merely concocting some little surprise such as
buying a cottage in the country down in Warwickshire, where she believed
her people came from in the days of William the Fourth. Buying cottages
was not her husband's idea of solidifying a position, however. For him,
living in a hovel while making money was justified by frugality and
convenience, but retiring to a cottage would be a confession of defeat.
So he did not enlighten Mr. Spokesly. He paused awhile and then remarked
that he hoped to get finished with business some day. No one could
possibly take exception to this.
They did not see the officer who had been so anxious for Mr. Spokesly to
visit the Persian Gulf during the coming summer. That gentleman had gone
to see a dentist, it appeared, and a young writer informed them that it
would be all right so long as the captain of the vessel was British.
"Yes, he's British all right--Captain Rannie--he's got a passport," said
Mr. Dainopoulos. And when he was asked when he would be ready to load,
he said as soon as the Captain gave him a berth.
"He put us three mile away, and it takes a tug an hour and a half to get
to the ship," he remarked, "with coal like what it is now."
"Well, of course we can't put everybody at the pier, you know," said the
young writer genially, quite forgetting that Mr. Dainopoulos had deftly
inserted an item in the _charte partie_ which gave him a generous
allowance for lighterage.
"All right," said he, as though making a decent concession. "You know
they tell me they want this stuff in a hurry, eh?"
The young writer did not know but he pretended he did, and said he would
attend to it. So they bade him good day and took their way back to the
Bureau de Change. Mr. Dainopoulos had left it in charge of a young Jew,
a youth so desperately poor and so fanatically honest that he seemed a
living caricature of all moral codes. Neither his poverty nor his
probity seemed remarkable enough to keep him in employment, doubtless
because, like millions of other people in southeastern Europe, he had
neither craft of mind nor hand. Mr. Dainopoulos got him small situations
from time to time, and in between these he hung about, running errands,
and keeping shop, a pale, dwarfed, ragged creature, with emaciated
features and brilliant pathetic eyes. He was wearing a pair of woman's
boots, much too large for him, burst at the sides and with heels
dreadfully run over, so that he kept twitching himself erect. Mr.
Dainopoulos waved a hand towards this young paragon.
"See if you can find him a job on the _Kalkis_," he said. "Very honest
young feller." They spoke rapidly to each other and Mr. Dainopoulos gave
an amused grunt.
"He say he don't want to go in a ship. Scared she go down," he remarked.
The boy looked down the street with an expression of suppressed grief on
his face. He rolled his eyes towards his benefactor, imploring mercy.
Mr. Dainopoulos spoke to him again.
"He'll go," he said to Mr. Spokesly. "Fix him to help the cook. And if
you want anybody to take a letter, he's a very honest young feller."
The very honest young feller shrank away to one side, evidently feeling
no irresistible vocation for the sea. Indeed, he resembled one condemned
to die. He and his kind swarm in the ports of the Levant, the Semitic
parasites of sea-borne commerce, yet rarely setting foot upon a ship. He
drooped, as though his limbs had liquefied and he was about to collapse.
Mr. Dainopoulos, however, to whom ethnic distinctions of such refinement
were of no interest, ignored him and permitted him to revel in his agony
at a near-by café table.
"You come to my house to-night," he said to Mr. Spokesly. "I got one or
two little things to fix."
"Me too," said his new chief officer, who suddenly felt he needed
urgently to meet his own kind again. Mr. Dainopoulos was all right of
course, but Mr. Spokesly still retained the illusion that Anglo-Saxon
superiority was accepted by the world like gravity and the other laws of
nature. It would not do to make himself too cheap, he reflected. He had
an unpleasant feeling that his late captain on the _Tanganyika_ would
have stared if he had seen his chief officer hobnobbing with a
money-changer and a Jewish youth of almost inconceivable honesty and
destitution. Mr. Spokesly's wit, however, was nimble enough now to see
that Captain Meredith himself had not always been a quiet, refined, and
competent commander; and moreover, Captain Meredith might quite
conceivably have seen and taken a chance like this himself, had he been
in the way of it. But just now what was wanted was a chat and a drink
with a friend. He would go down to the hotel and find the lieutenant.
But this was not to be. As he entered the foyer of the hotel, a major
and a round-faced person in civilian clothes regarded him with
exaggerated attention. Their protracted examination of him made him feel
somewhat self-conscious, and to ease the situation he spoke to them.
"I'm looking for a friend of mine," he said, "a lieutenant in the
Harbour Office. I don't know his name."
"Don't know his name!" said the major, boring into Mr. Spokesly with his
cold ironical stare.
"I only met him this morning," he explained. "Me coming ashore from the
_Tanganyika_, you see."
"Oh, yes." This in a more human tone.
"And him being the only man I know, pretty near, I was looking for him."
"I see. Well, old chap, he's generally about pickled this time of day,
if he's the man I think you mean. Up at the Cercle Militaire--d'you know
it?--or the White Tower Bar. Better take a look along."
"Thanks," said Mr. Spokesly with a slight smile.
"Don't mention it. By the way, are you being sent home?"
"I'm going on a local ship down to the Islands," he replied.
"Not the _Kalkis_?"
Mr. Spokesly nodded, and said he was going mate.
"Well, look here. I'm Officer of Supply, you know. You might look me
up--you know where it is--and we'll have a word about the cargo. Yes, in
the morning."
The major and his friend the censor, who was also a novelist, gazed
after Mr. Spokesly as he went out.
"I believe that fellow Dainopoulos is on the level after all," said the
major, drawing hard at his cigarette. "I know his skipper is a
Britisher, and this chap's all right, I should say. Well, he's making
enough out of it to give us a fair deal."
"Most of these local people are on our side, I think," said the other.
"If we pay them more than the other side," added the major drily. And
then they went up to get ready for their dinner.
Mr. Spokesly called a carriage and started along the _quai_. He wondered
what they wanted of him about the cargo! Was it possible Captain Rannie
was not regarded with complete confidence at headquarters? He recalled
the extraordinary reception the Captain had given to his owner when Mr.
Dainopoulos described the undeviating rectitude of his course. Mr.
Spokesly was not simple enough to suppose that the _Kalkis_ was as
innocent as she looked in the distance. He knew that the delicate and
precarious position of the Allies in Saloniki rendered it necessary to
wink at a good deal of adventurous trading in which the local Levantine
merchants were past-masters. It could not be helped. But he was puzzled
to account for Captain Rannie. How had he come to be in the employ of
Mr. Dainopoulos? And what was the lure which held him to a sort of
snarling fidelity? Perhaps he also had a tremendous love affair, like
Jack Harrowby. Mr. Dainopoulos had hinted at shabby intrigues. Even Mr.
Dainopoulos, however, was not quite on safe ground here. Captain Rannie
had his own way of enjoying himself, and an essential part of that
enjoyment was its secrecy. He couldn't bear anybody to know anything
about him. He was averse, in fact, to admitting that he ever did enjoy
himself. It was too much like letting his opponents score against him.
And so people like Mr. Dainopoulos, familiar with evil, imagined the
captain to be much more wicked than he ever ventured to be. The drug
whose aid he invoked made him look not only aged but sinful as a
compensation for the glimpses into the paradise of perpetual youth which
it afforded him while he was lying amid huge puffy pillows, in a house
near the Bazaar. It gave him genuine pleasure to escape every familiar
human eye, and arrive by devious ways at a secret door in a foul alley,
which gave on to the back of the house where a quiet, elderly woman and
her thirteen-year-old daughter received him and wafted him gently away
into elysium. He was a sensualist no doubt, yet it would puzzle a jury
of angels to find him more guilty than many men of more amiable repute.
When he sank into one of his torpors, the quiet woman holding his pulse,
he felt he was getting even with the wife and daughter who had made him
so unhappy in past days. Captain Rannie never did anything without what
he called "full warrant." He considered he had full warrant for killing
himself with drugs if he wished. He merely refrained out of
consideration for the world. Away back in the womb of Time, some
forgotten but eternal principle of justice had decreed to him the right
to do as he pleased, provided, always provided, he did his duty in his
public station. This is a common enough doctrine in Europe and a
difficult one to abrogate. Mr. Spokesly, driving along the _quai_ toward
the White Tower, would have been the last to deny what Captain Rannie
called "a common elementary right." He was invoking it himself. What he
was trying to do all this while was to achieve an outlet for his own
personality. This was really behind even his intrigue with the London
School of Mnemonics. He was convinced he had something in him which the
pressures and conventions of the world had never permitted to emerge. It
must be borne in mind that the grand ideal of sacrifice which swept over
us like a giant wave of emotion at the beginning of the war behaved like
all waves. It receded eventually, and those of us whose natures were
durable rather than soluble emerged and began to take in the situation
while we dried ourselves as quickly as possible. We wondered if there
might not be some valuable wreckage washing ashore soon. We got into the
universal life-saving uniform, of course, and assumed conventional
attitudes of looking out to sea and acting as chorus to the grand
principal performers; but the habits and instincts of generations were
too strong for us. We kept one eye on the beaches for wreckage.
Patriotism became an intricate game of bluffing ourselves. We had
returned with naïve simplicity to the habits of our Danish and Saxon and
Norman ancestors. Like the Jews in London who joined lustily in the
chorus of "Onward, Christian Soldiers," we missed the joke in our
furious eagerness to seize the opportunity. But there were many, and Mr.
Spokesly was one, whose acquisitive genius was not adequately developed
to deal with all the chances of loot that came by, and who were
preoccupied with the fascinating problem of establishing their egos on a
higher plane. Merely becoming engaged had been an advance, for Mr.
Spokesly, because men like him can move neither upward nor downward
without the aid of women. Once removed from the influence of Ada by a
series of events which he could not control, he was the predestined prey
of the next woman ahead. Those who view this career with contempt should
reflect upon the happiness and longevity of many who pursue it. Mr.
Spokesly was no sensualist in the strict meaning of the word. He simply
experienced a difficulty in having any spiritual life apart from women.
He could do with a minimum of inspiration, but such as he needed had to
come from them. All his thoughts clustered about them. Just as he
experienced a feeling of exaltation when he found himself in their
company, so he could never see another man similarly engaged without
regarding him as a being of singular fortune. Always, moreover, he
conceived the woman he did not know as a creature of extraordinary
gifts. Evanthia Solaris seemed to have eluded classification because,
without possessing any gifts at all beyond a certain magnetism
bewilderingly composed of feminine timidity and tigerish courage, she
had inspired in him a strange belief that she would bring him good
fortune. This was the kind of woman she was. She went much farther back
into the history of the world than Ada Rivers. Ada was simply a modern
authorized version of Lady Rowena or Rebecca of York. She accepted man,
though what she really wanted was a knight. Evanthia had no use for
knights, save perhaps those of Aristophanes. She, too, accepted men; but
they had to transform themselves quickly and efficiently into the
votaries of a magnetic goddess. Sighs and vows of allegiance were as
nothing at all to her. She had a divinely dynamic energy which set men
going the way she wanted. The gay young devil who had been sent packing
with the consuls and who was now sitting in his hotel in Pera was
wondering at his luck in escaping from her and scheming how to get back
to her at the same time. Yet so astute had she been that even now he did
not suspect that she was scheming, too, that she was in an agony at
times for the loss of him, and talked to Mrs. Dainopoulos of killing
herself. She was scheming as she came walking among the grass-plats at
the base of the Tower and saw Mr. Spokesly descend from a carriage and
take a seat facing the sea. She came along, as she so often did in her
later period, at a vital moment. She came, in her suit of pale saffron
with the great crown of black straw withdrawing her face into a
magically distant gloom, and holding a delicate little wrap on her arm
against the night, for the sun was going down behind the distant hills
and touching the waters of the Gulf with ruddy fire. She saw him sitting
there, and smiled. He was watching a ship going out, a ship making for
the narrow strait between the headland and the marshes of the Vardar,
and thinking of his life as it was opening before him. He took out a
cigarette and his fingers searched a vest-pocket for matches. They
closed on the emerald ring and he held the cigarette for a while unlit,
thinking of Evanthia, and wondered how he could make the gift. And as he
sat there she seemed to materialize out of the shimmering radiance of
the evening air, prinking and bending forward with an enchanting smile
to catch his eye. And before he could draw a breath, sat down beside
him.
"What you do here?" she asked in her sweet, twittering voice. "You wait
for somebody, eh?"
"Yes," he answered, rousing, "for you."
"Ah--h!" her eyes snapped under the big brim. "How do I know you only
tell me that because I am here?"
Her hand, gloved in lemon kid, was near his knee and he took it
meditatively, pulling back the wrist of it until she drew away and
removed it herself, smiling.
"Eh?" she demanded, not quite sure if he had caught her drift, so
deliberate was his mood. He took the ring out of his pocket and grasped
her hand while he slid the gem over a finger. She let it rest there for
a moment, studying the situation. No one was near them just then. And
then she looked up right into his face leaning a little towards him. Her
voice caught a little as she spoke. It was ravishing, a ring like that.
For a flicker of an eyelash she was off her guard, and he caught a
smoulder of extraordinary passion in her half-closed eyes.
"You like me," she twittered softly.
The sun had gone, the gray water was ruffled by a little wind, the wind
of evening, and as the guns boomed on the warships in the roadstead the
ensigns came down.
"You like me," she said again, bending over a little more, for his eyes
were watching the ships and she could not bear it. Suddenly he put his
arm across her shoulders and held her. And then he used a strange and
terrible expression.
"I'd go to hell for you," he said.
She leaned back with a sigh of utter content.