From his conspicuous post on the forecastle Mr. Spokesly watched the
elderly lieutenant--his old friend whom he had met at Floka's--descend
the ladder into his launch. The ship was already moving, the anchor was
awash, and the elderly lieutenant wavered somewhat as he put out his
hands to grasp the rail running along the cabin of his launch. It was
evening, and he was, Mr. Spokesly could see, adequately full. Indeed, he
had been reinforced by more than one whiskey and soda before he had
arrived with the captain's sailing orders. And Captain Rannie, who was
watching him as though hoping he might by some fortunate turn of fate
slip into the water and vanish for ever, had placed a bottle of whiskey
and a syphon at his elbow in the cabin and permitted him to help
himself. The old fellow had been very full of a triumph he had achieved
over the authorities. He had been transferred to the Transport Office,
where it was evident they needed an experienced ship's officer to keep a
general eye upon things. All very well, these naval people, in their
way--here he filled his glass again--but what did they know about _our_
work? Nothing! The soda shot into the glass, cascading all over the
table. He drank. Incredible, absolutely incredible what queer things
these people thought up. Told him to run round and round the White Tower
for the duration of the war! Him! An experienced officer! Nice thing
that, now! He drank again and refilled his glass. But he had been
transferred....
Captain Rannie sat out this sort of thing for over half an hour and then
went up on the bridge and pulled the whistle lanyard. The _Kalkis_
uttered a yelp, followed by a gargling cry ending in a portentous
hiccough. Mr. Spokesly remarked:
"They are signalling to heave up, sir."
"Then heave up," Captain Rannie had snapped, and had run down again. He
found the elderly lieutenant smiling and refilling his glass. He did not
see the expression of impatience on the captain's features as he
entered.
"Anchor's coming up," the captain said in a distinct tone. "Steward,
take the glasses." He gathered up the papers, muttering, and went down
to his room. This sudden cessation of hospitality penetrated the old
lieutenant's consciousness. He rose up and went out to the gangway, and
it was there Mr. Spokesly saw him. It could not have been better, the
chief officer remarked to himself. The old souse had turned up most
providentially. The long-nosed quarrelsome creature who usually came out
to the transports, and who always found out everything that was going
on, was sick in the hospital out on the Monastir Road. The vessel
gathered speed. They were away.
And Captain Rannie, who now appeared on the little bridge in company
with a yellow-haired man at the wheel, was in a mood in which a much
larger bridge would have been a comfort to him. The binnacle interrupted
his headlong march from side to side, his head down, his hands in his
trouser pockets. He would swing round suddenly and plunge across as
though he had a broad thoroughfare ahead of him. At the binnacle he had
to turn a little and edge past it before he could take three more
strides and bring up against the end. Mr. Spokesly, who was finishing up
on the forecastle, noted his Commander's movements and asked himself the
cause of the agitation.
For Captain Rannie was agitated beyond his customary disapproval of
mankind. He had had a long conference with his employer that morning
before coming on board. They might not see each other again for some
time, it was understood. The interview had taken place in the little
office in the Rue Voulgaróktono, off the Place de la Liberté, and the
usual crowds had thronged the street while they talked. Mr. Dainopoulos
had gone on with his business, rising continually to change money, and
once he went away for half an hour to look at some rugs. Captain Rannie
had remained coiled up on his chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette,
listening to his owner's remarks, his eyes wandering as though in search
of some clue.
"You understand," Mr. Dainopoulos had said in the course of this
conversation, "I'm doing this for my wife. My wife likes this young lady
very much. Another thing, the young lady's mother, she's married again.
Man with plenty of money. I do his business for him here."
Captain Rannie looked hard at a crack in the linoleum near his foot.
"I'm sure it doesn't make the slightest difference to me. I know nothing
about it, nothing at all. My chief officer was going to say something to
me this morning and I shut him up at once. I knew perfectly well from
the very first there was something like this in the wind and I made up
my mind to have nothing at all to do with it. As master of the vessel
it's impossible ... you can quite understand ... eh?"
"That's all right," replied Mr. Dainopoulos, looking at his open palm.
"No passport. Once you get outside, no matter. The young lady, she give
me a paper. She loves my wife. She gives everything she may have to my
wife."
"Which isn't much, according to what you told me before. You grumbled to
me, and said in so many words she cost you a lot of money to keep for a
companion to your wife."
Mr. Dainopoulos stared hard at his captain's sneering face.
"That was before her mother got married again. Miss Solaris, she tell me
her mother want somebody to look after the farms, by and by."
"I don't want to hear anything about it," burst out Captain Rannie,
turning round in his chair so that he could hear better.
"And she say, she say," went on Mr. Dainopoulos steadily, "her mother
perhaps, you understand, some women have one, two, three, four husband,
you see? Well, her mother want a good man of business. So Miss Solaris
she sign a paper for me. She give everything to my wife."
"Everything! Which is nothing, I've no doubt."
"Ah-h! Not nothing. I sell his tobacco now, and it's not nothing, I can
tell you. No! By and by, Miss Solaris, now her mother marry again, will
be rich. But she's crazy about that feller I told you she had here."
"I don't remember anything about it. I make it a rule to have nothing to
do with passengers. I expect no less," announced Captain Rannie, alert
to hear every word.
"Well, if a woman wants a man, she gets him," observed Mr. Dainopoulos
gravely.
"That's true, I admit," was the unexpected reply.
"And you know well enough she'll find young Lietherthal easy if she
wants him. Me, I think she'll stay round with _him_." And Mr.
Dainopoulos jerked his finger in the direction of the _Kalkis_.
Captain Rannie suddenly reversed himself on his chair and changed legs,
uttering a sound like a snort.
"Yes," said Mr. Dainopoulos. "My wife she thinks maybe he marry her."
Captain Rannie moved his foot up and down and smiled unpleasantly.
"No hope of that," he muttered.
"Yes!" repeated Mr. Dainopoulos, jumping up to change a five-pound note
into excellent Greek drachmas. "Yes! If she wants him to do it, it will
be easy enough. You don't know her."
Captain Rannie was heard to say in a low, hurried tone that he didn't
want to.
Mr. Dainopoulos grinned, which did not improve his appearance. He waved
his fingers at his captain with a gesture indicating his jocular
conviction that he did not believe it.
"If I was single ..." he began, and ended with a loud "H--m!" and smiled
again.
Captain Rannie flushed dark red with annoyance. It was one of the
scourges of his existence that he had to let men imagine he was a
terrible fellow with women. _He!_ And he loathed them. He would strangle
every one of them if he had the power. Blood-sucking harpies! As he
walked the bridge now, keeping a sharp eye upon the buoys of the nets
which were coming into view, he recalled the shameful way his generosity
had been played upon by those women of his own family. Daughters leagued
with mother and aunt against him! But he had paid them out, hadn't he?
Ha-ha! He savoured again, but with a faint flavour of decay, that
often-imagined scene when they realized at last that he was gone and
gone for good. That was the way to treat them. No nonsense. As for this
passenger in the chief officer's cabin, he hadn't seen her, and he hoped
she'd fall overboard in the night, and a good riddance. Good heavens!
Hadn't the master of a ship enough responsibility on a trip like this
without loading him down with a creature like that? In any case, she
must remain in her cabin. Under no circumstances could he permit her on
deck. To be meeting her on the stairs or promenading--the very thought
made him feel faint.
Another thing Mr. Dainopoulos had said:
"A very good thing for him, too. He would make a lot of money--here."
Captain Rannie didn't believe it. He had arrived at a complete and
horrifying conviction that Europe was collapsing of its own weight, that
the only hope for anybody was to do as he himself was doing--sending all
his money to the Anglo Celestial Bank in Hong-Kong to be exchanged for
silver dollars. That was the place--China. Down the far reaches of
memory he saw the great River, smooth and shining, stretching away from
the long quays of the port. No storms, no pitching or rolling, no rocks,
no finding of one's position. And when he stepped ashore in spotless
yellow pongee silk suit and great sun-helmet, he was somebody. Here, in
Europe, he was nobody. Out there once more, with plenty of hashish, he
could face the future.
He had said:
"She must land on arrival."
"You tell her," said Mr. Dainopoulos, "when you arrive. Put her ashore.
He'll take her. You will find plenty of friends, on arrival."
Captain Rannie received this information without ecstasy. He did not go
sailing about the world in search of friends. He was very worried. Mr.
Dainopoulos favoured him with another grin.
"Why not take her ashore yourself?"
Captain Rannie shrank as if from a blow.
"You're the captain," added Mr. Dainopoulos.
Captain Rannie turned on his chair, his shoulder hunched, as though to
ward off an impending calamity.
"Why, I thought you liked a little fun," said Mr. Dainopoulos,
surprised.
"Don't speak of it," said Captain Rannie in a stifled voice. "I make a
point of never interfering. Never allude.... Purely personal...."
"Well," said his owner, in some perplexity, "please yourself. I daresay
you understand what I mean. You'll have a good bit of time, you know, on
arrival. You won't have coal, you know, to go very far...."
He had made no reply to this, remaining hunched up on his chair, staring
fixedly at the floor. Mr. Dainopoulos had stood up, looking at him for a
while.
"You can do it?" he had asked softly. "Remember, the papers you carry
will mean big money if you get through."
Still no answer.
"It is easy," went on Mr. Dainopoulos. "You do not change your course,
that is all. Keep on. East-southeast."
Captain Rannie was perfectly well aware of all this, but he lacked the
superficial fortitude to discuss it. He kept his head averted while his
employer was speaking, his long wrist with the slave-bangle hanging over
his knee. Change his course! That phrase had two meanings, by Jove! And
his course was east to China, as soon as he could collect. He could do
it. Talking about it to a man who was making fifty times, a hundred
times, more than himself, was horrible to him.
He had got up suddenly and put on his hat, harassed lest this sort of
thing should bring bad luck, for he was superstitious. At the back of
his mind lay an uneasy fear lest that girl business should spoil
everything. Who could foresee the dangers of having a woman on the ship?
His ship! He, who could not bear to go near them at all, who treated
even elderly creatures with brusque discourtesy! It would bring bad
luck.
And now at last he was slipping through the nets, bound out upon a
voyage of almost dismaying possibilities. It was a voyage of no more
than thirty-six hours. Captain Rannie shivered and stood suddenly stock
still by the binnacle as he thought of what was to transpire in those
thirty-six hours. Could he do it? He was beginning to doubt if he could.
He said to the helmsman:
"Keep her south and three points east," and went into the little chart
room.
The Ægean Sea is a sea only in name. It could be more accurately
described as a land-locked archipelago. Emerging from any of the gulfs
of the mainland, gulfs which are nearly always narrow and reëntrant
angles with walls of barren and desolate promontories, one can proceed
no more than a few hours' steaming on any course without raising yet
more promontories and the hulls of innumerable islands. Closed to the
southward by the long bulk of Crete lying squarely east and west like a
breakwater, it presents its own individual problems to the navigator,
the politician, and the naval commander. The last named, indeed, was
finding it anything but a joke. The very configuration of the coastline,
which rendered a sally from the Dardanelles a feat of extraordinary
folly and temerity, made it a unique hiding place for the small craft
who slipped out of Volo and emerged from the Trikari Channel after dark.
Submarines, coming round from Pola, could run into rocky inlets in the
evening and would find immense stocks of oil, in cans, cached under
savage rocks up the ravines of almost uninhabited islets of ravishing
beauty. Gentlemen in Athens, in a hurry to reach Constantinople, took
aëroplanes; but there was another way, across the Ægean Sea, in small
sailing ships which were frequently blown out of their course at night
and would take refuge in Kaloni, whence it was easy to reach the
mainland of Asia Minor. And this business--for it was a business--was so
profitable, and the ships of war so few in proportion to the area, that
it went on gaily enough "under our noses" as one person said in disgust.
Not quite that; but the problem did not grow any simpler when there was
yet another neutral government--with ships--at Saloniki, a government
that might be almost hysterically sympathetic to the cause of freedom
and justice but which might also be imposed upon by conscienceless and
unscrupulous merchants already in collusion with other unscrupulous
people in Constantinople. This was the situation when the _Kalkis_
turned the great headland of Karaburun and headed south-southeast on the
journey from which she never returned. Captain Rannie, staring at the
chart on which he had pencilled the greater part of her course,
southeast from Cape Kassandra, bearing away from the great three-pronged
extremity of the Chalcidice peninsula, was aware that she would not
return, but he found himself flinching from the inevitable moment,
drawing nearer and nearer when he must face success or failure. When he
asked himself, echoing Mr. Dainopoulos, could he do it? He was not sure
that he could.
From this reverie he was roused by Mr. Spokesly appearing on the bridge.
For a moment he was almost betrayed into a feeling of relief at the
approach of a companion. He opened his mouth to speak and Mr. Spokesly,
standing by the door, stopped to listen. But nothing came. Captain
Rannie knew the secret power of always letting the other man do the
talking on a ship. He said nothing. He crushed down the sudden craving
to confide in Mr. Spokesly. He wanted--just for a moment--to call him
in, shut the door, and whisper, with his hand on Mr. Spokesly's
shoulder, "My boy, we are not going to Phyros at all. We are going
to...."
No, he stopped in time. Why, he might stop the engines, blow the
whistle, run the ship ashore! He stepped out beside Mr. Spokesly who was
looking down at the compass, and wrote some figures on the slate that
hung in view of the helmsman.
"That's the course."
"All right, sir."
"Call me at midnight if necessary. I'll relieve you at two o'clock. Time
enough to change the course then."
"All right, sir."
Captain Rannie gave a rapid glance round at the diverging shores as they
opened out into the Gulf, and turned away abruptly. Mr. Spokesly heard
him descending, heard him unlock his door with a series of complicated
clicks and rattles, heard him slam and relock it, and finally the
vigorous jingle of curtain rings as he drew the curtain across.
Mr. Spokesly struck a match and lit the binnacle lamp, a tiny affair
which shone inward upon the vibrating surface of the card. He did not
attempt to walk up and down. His moods never demanded that of him.
Perhaps it would be better to say his nature did not demand it. He was
feeling much better than he had been all day. He had been nervous about
Evanthia's safety in that room. Had had to make some bullying remarks to
the steward about trying to get in where he had no business. To the
puzzled creature's stammering explanations he had replied with more
bullying: "Keep out. Don't come down here at all until I say you can."
The steward had come to the conclusion that in addition to a crazy
skipper whose room smelt of hashish and florida water, they now had a
crazy mate who had something in his room he was ashamed of.
And yet Mr. Spokesly need have had no fear. Evanthia lay in her bunk all
day. She knew perfectly well that she must remain within that room as
one dead until the ship got outside. So she lay there, her eyes half
closed, listening to the sounds of men and machinery, the sunlight
screened by the yellow curtain tacked over the little round window, hour
after hour all day, with a stoicism that had in it something oriental.
It was about an hour past noon when there had come a smart thump on the
door. She had got out and listened and the sharp whisper outside had
reassured her. And when she had slipped the bolt and opened the door a
few inches, Mr. Spokesly had thrust a glass of wine and a tin box of
biscuits upon the wash-stand and pulled the door shut. And she had got
back into the bunk and lay munching, and smiling, and sometimes kissing
the emerald ring on her finger, the ring which was sailing out once more
into the darkness. And as the day wore on, she peeped out and saw the
tug go away with its empty lighter, heard the ominous thutter and thump
of a gasolene launch under her, and heard the arrival of strangers who
entered the cabin overhead. And then the clink of a glass.
Her reflections, as she lay in that bunk, her eyes half closed, were of
that primitive yet sagacious order which it seems impossible to transfer
to any authentic record. Her contact with reality was so immediate and
instinctive that to a modern and sophisticated masculine intellect like
Mr. Spokesly, or Mr. Dainopoulos even, she appeared crafty and deep. As
when she locked the door. She had not imagined Mr. Spokesly returning.
The whole complex network of emotions which he had predicated in her,
modesty, fear, panic, and coquetry, had not even entered her head. She
had formidable weapons, and behind these she remained busy with her own
affairs. So, too, when she had given everything she might possibly
inherit to her benefactress, she saw instantly the immediate and future
advantages of such a course. She could always come back, when the
detestable French had gone away home, and live with her friend again.
She knew that old Boris better than he knew himself. She knew that he
would do anything for his wife. Also she knew him for one of those men
who stood highest in her own esteem--men who made money. For men who did
not make money, who were preoccupied mainly with women, or books, or
even politics, she had no use. She did not like Mr. Dainopoulos
personally because he saw through her chief weakness, which was a
species of theatricality. She had a trick of imagining herself one of
the heroines of the cinemas she had seen; and this, since she could not
read and was unable to correct her sharp visual impressions by the great
traditions of art, appeared to be no more than a feminine whim. It was
more than that. It was herself she was expressing at these moments of
mummery. She had those emotions which are most easily depicted by
grandiose gestures and sudden animal movements. It was her language, the
language in which she could think with ease and celerity, compared with
which the coördinated sounds which were called words were no more to her
than the metal tokens called money. So there was nothing extraordinary
in her quick grasp of the situation which demanded a mouse-like
seclusion for a while. She lay still, even when footsteps clattering
down the ladder were obliterated by the spluttering whoop of the
whistle. And then came a novel and all-embracing sense of change, a
mysterious and minute vibration which becomes apparent to a person
situated well forward in a vessel beginning to move under her own power.
Ah! the _machine à vapeur_, the _vapore_, the fire, the agitation
behind. For perhaps a single second her quick flame-like mind played
about the incomprehensible enigmas of mechanism. She, for whom unknown
men in distant countries were to scheme and toil, that they might send
her yachts and automobiles, music-machines and costly fabrics, jewels
and intricate contrivances for her comfort and pleasure, had the
conceptions of a domestic animal concerning the origins of their
virtues. For her the effortless flight of a high-powered car ascending a
mountain road was as natural and spontaneous as the vulture hanging
motionless above her or the leaf flying before her in an autumn wind.
Her gracile mentality made no distinction in these things, and the
problems of cost never tarnished the shining mirror of her content. Upon
her had never intruded those mean and unlovely preoccupations which
distract the victim of western civilization from the elementary joys and
sorrows. She had always been fed and cared for and she had no shadow of
doubt upon her mind that nourishment and care would ever cease. Her
notion of evil was clear and sharp. It implied, not vague economic
forces, but individual personalities whom she called enemies. Any one
announcing himself as an enemy would be met in a primitive way. She
would back into a corner, spitting and biting. If she had a weapon, and
she always had, she would use it with cool precision. She lay in her
bunk now without a care in the world because she possessed the power of
animating men to bear those cares for her. She could inspire passion and
she could evoke admiration and remorse.
She saw the sun going down, saw him disappear as into a glowing brazier
among the mountains, and the coming of darkness. Evanthia hated
darkness. One of the whims she indulged in later days was the craving
for a shadowless blaze of light. She moved in her bed place and turning
on her elbow stared at the door, listening. Someone came down the
stairs. A door was unlocked, slammed, and locked again. She became
rigid. Her eyes glowed. Who was that? She got up and sought for matches
to light the lamp. But she had left it burning the night before and the
oil was exhausted. And her watch had stopped. She put on her black dress
and did her hair as well as she could before the dark reflection in the
mirror. She had very little of that self-consciousness which reveals
itself in a fanatical absorption in minute attentions to one's
appearance. She was, so to speak, always cleared for action, for love or
war. She twisted her dark tresses in a knot, thrust a great
tortoise-shell comb into them, unlocked the door and went out.
It was thus she came up the stairs into the lighted saloon and
encountered the steward, who was laying the table for supper. He was
leaning over the table setting out knives and forks. He looked over his
shoulder and saw a face of extraordinary loveliness and pallor, with
dark purple rings under the amber eyes, coming up out of the gloom of
the stairway. He dropped the things in his hands with a clatter and
whirled round upon her, his jaw hanging, his hands clutching the table.
"Sh-h!" she said, coming up into the room and advancing upon him with
her finger to her lips. "Who are you?" she added in Greek.
He was about to answer that he was the steward, in spite of the obvious
injustice of such a query, when the outer door leading to the deck was
opened and the young man named Amos appeared with a tray of dishes. He
stepped into the little pantry to set down his burden and then made a
profound obeisance.
"Tch!" said the lady, "Who is this?"
"The pantryman, Madama."
"Tell him to fill my lamp with oil."
"Your lamp, Madama?" quavered the steward. "Is Madama in the Captain's
room? I have not been told."
Evanthia beckoned Amos and pointed down the stairs. "The room on the
right," she said. "Fill the lamp with oil and light it. Make the bed.
Go!"
She watched him descend.
"Now," she said to the steward, "is this the way you attend to
passengers? Bring me some meat. I am starving."
"Yes, yes! In a moment, Madama." He hurried to and fro, twisting the end
seat for her to take it, dashing into his pantry and bringing out
dishes, a cruet, a napkin. Evanthia seated herself and began to devour a
piece of bread. She watched the steward as he moved to and fro.
"Where is the captain?" she asked.
"In his room, Madama. He has eaten and now he sleeps till midnight."
"And the officer?"
"He is on the bridge, Madama."
"Who eats here?"
"The officer and the engineer."
"Is the Engineer English?"
"Maltese, Madama."
The man spoke in low, respectful tones, his eyes flickering up and down
as he sought to scan her features. This was most marvellous, he was
thinking. The new chief officer brings a woman, a ravishing creature, on
board in secret. This explains the abuse of the morning. What would the
captain say? He must tell Plouff. He had mentioned to Plouff the
singular behaviour of the chief officer when he, the steward, had
attempted to enter that gentleman's cabin. Plouff had laughed and pushed
him out of the road. It was time to call Plouff to relieve the chief
officer. He hurried to the galley to fetch the stew. He lifted the
canvas flap which screened the lights from a seaward view and found
Plouff seated in a corner talking to the cook.
"Hi, Jo," he whispered, "Madama on sheep! Madama on sheep! Yes."
"What's the matter with you?" demanded Plouff disdainfully. "What are
you makin' that funny face for?"
"She come oop," went on the steward with much dramatic illustration. "I
look, see Madama. You savvy? Very nice. Very beautiful."
"Has she come out?" asked Plouff with interest.
"Yaas. She come oop."
"I'll go up and tell the mate," said Plouff. "You savvy, Nicholas,
plenty mon' if you look after her. Fix her up. The mate, you savvy?" and
Mr. Plouff rubbed the sides of his two forefingers together, to indicate
the tender relations existing between Mr. Spokesly and the lady.
"Oh, yaas, I savvy all right, Jo." The steward writhed in his impotence
to express the completeness of his comprehension, and hurried away.
Mr. Spokesly listened in silence to the news.
"I'll go down," he said. "If you see a light of any sort, stamp on the
deck."
"Well, I should think so. I ain't likely to stand on my head, am I?"
said Plouff, peeping at the compass.
Mr. Spokesly went down without replying to this brilliant sally. He
stood for a moment looking over the rail at the sullen end of the
sunset, a smudge of dusky orange smeared with bands of black and bronze,
and wondered what the night would bring for them all. The little ship
was moving slowly through a calm sea that shone like polished black
marble in the sombre light from the west. Ahead, the sky and sea merged
indistinguishably in the darkness. No light showed on the ship. She
moved, a shadow among shadows, with no more than a faint hissing rumble
from her engines. Mr. Spokesly moved aft, inspired by a wish to see for
himself if all the scuttles were screened. He found the engineer smoking
near the engine hatch.
"All dark?" he said, pausing.
"Everything's all right here, Mister Mate," said the man, a quiet
creature with an unexpected desire to give every satisfaction. Mr.
Spokesly was puzzled to account for the captain's dislike of Mr. Cassar.
"Why don't you go and eat?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
"The steward, he tell me there's a lady in the cabin, Mister Mate, so I
t'ink I'll wait till she feenish."
"You don't need to," was the steady answer.
"Yes, I wait till she feenish, all the same."
"Very well. Mind they keep the canvas over the hatch. It shows a long
way across a smooth sea, you know."
"I watch 'em, Mister Mate."
And Mr. Spokesly went forward again. In spite of the gravity of their
position, without guns or escort, he felt satisfied with himself. He
passed once more by the rail before going in. In his present mood, he
was mildly concerned that Evanthia should have found it necessary to
"turn the key in his face." He didn't intend to do things that way. It
would be pretty cheap taking an advantage like that. Was it likely he
would run all this risk for her, if that was all he thought of her? He
was painfully correct and logical in his thoughts. Well, she would learn
he was not like that. He would treat her decently, and when they reached
Piræus, he would carry out her wishes to the letter. He could not help
worrying about the day or two they would remain in Phyros. She would
have to keep out of sight.... He opened the cabin door and went in. He
had a strange sensation of walking into some place and giving himself
up, only to find that he had forgotten what he had done. A strange
notion!
She looked up and regarded him with critical approval. She had finished
eating and sat with her chin in her hands. The swinging lamp shed a
flood of mellow light upon her, and her arms, bare to the elbow, gleamed
like new ivory below the shadowy pallor of her face. And as he sat down
at the other end of the table, facing her, he had another strange
notion, or rather a fresh unfolding of the same, that at last they met
on equal ground, face to face, measured in a mysterious and mystical
antagonism. She lifted her chin, a movement of symbolical significance,
and met his gaze with wide-open challenging amber eyes.
And when he went up on the bridge half an hour later, she expressed a
charming and sudden desire to see the things he did there, and the
mystery of the night.
"You'll be cold," he muttered, thinking of the night air. He led her
carefully up the little ladder, and she shivered.
"Bos'," said Mr. Spokesly in a low tone. "Have you got an overcoat?"
"Of course I have. What do you think I am?" demanded the rather tired
Plouff.
"You wouldn't if you had had to jump into the water as I did," said Mr.
Spokesly patiently. "I want you to bring it up here for this lady."
"Of course I will. Why didn't you say so?"
"You can sit here," said the chief officer. There was a seat at each end
of the bridge screened by a small teak house with glass windows, and he
pushed Evanthia gently into the starboard one. "And now put this on," he
added when Plouff appeared holding out an enormous mass of heavy blue
cloth.
And into that dark corner she vanished, so obliterated by the coat that
only by leaning close to her could Mr. Spokesly discern the gleam of her
forehead and eyes. But when he had seen that she was comfortable, he
took himself to the centre of the bridge and stood there looking out
over the dodger and thinking of the question she had put to him in the
cabin. By and by, she had retorted upon his avowal of independence, he
would go back to his sweetheart, his fiancée, in England, and what would
Evanthia do then? That was the question. He stared into the darkness and
sought some kind of an answer to it. It cut to the very quick of his
emotion for her--that extraordinary sentiment which can exist in a man's
heart without impairing in any way his authentic fidelities. He wanted
to make her see this, and he could not find words adequate to express
the subtle perversity of the thought. He had a sudden fancy she was
laughing at him and his clumsy attempts to justify his devotion. He
turned and walked over to her and bent down. He could see the bright
eyes over the immense collar of the coat.
"England is a long way away," he whispered. "I mean, very distant.
Perhaps I shall never get back. And nobody writes to me. No letters. So,
while I am here, you understand?"
He remained bent over her, his head lost in the darkness of the little
recess, waiting for a reply which did not come. And he thought, going
away to the binnacle again:
"She is right. Nobody can excuse themselves in a case like this. The
only way is to say nothing at all."
He did not go near her for a long while. Then an idea came to him, so
simple he wondered he had not thought of it before. He was not making
the most of the situation. He glanced back at the helmsman. He was far
back, behind the steering wheel, and the faint glow of the binnacle lamp
was screened by a canvas hood. Mr. Spokesly bent over the girl again.
"You do not believe me?" he muttered. "You think I am not sincere? You
think I would leave you?"
He leaned closer, watching her bright deriding eyes, and she nodded.
"Ah yes," she sighed. "By and by you would go."
"You think because other men do that ... you think...?"
She nodded emphatically.
"... all men alike?" he finished lamely.
"They are!" she said quickly and laid her head against his shoulder for
a moment with a faint chuckle of laughter.
"All right," he whispered gravely, "they are, as you say. But when we
get ashore in Athens, we will get married. Now then...."
His tone was low but triumphant. She could have no reply to that. It
swept away all doubts in his own mind: and he thought her mind was like
his own, a lumber room of old-fashioned, very dusty conventions and
ideals. If he married her she must be convinced of his sincerity. It did
not occur to him that women are not interested very much in the
sincerity of a man, that he can be as unfaithful as he likes if he
fulfills her conception of beauty and power and genius, that a woman
like Evanthia might have a different notion of marriage from his own.
And she did not reply. He moved away from her, up-lifted by the mood of
the moment. There could be no reply to that save surrender, he thought
proudly.
And Evanthia was astonished. She sat there in the darkness, bound upon a
journey which would bring her, she believed, to the amiable and
faithless creature who had touched her imagination and who embodied for
her all the gaiety and elegance of Europe. And this other man, a man of
a distant, truculent, and predatory race, a race engaged in the
destruction of European civilization as a sacrifice to their own little
tribal god (which was the way Lietherthal had explained it to her) was
proposing to marry her. It bereft her of speech because she was busy
coördinating in her swift, shrewd mind all the advantages of such a
scheme. There was an allurement in it, too. Her imagination was caught
by the sudden vision of herself as the chatelaine of a villa. Yes! Her
eyes sparkled as she figured it. He came towards her again and, leaning
over, buried his face in the clean fresh fragrance of her hair. She
remembered that magical moment by the White Tower when he had
transcended his destiny and muttered hoarsely that he would go to hell
for her. She put the question to herself with terrible directness--could
she hold him? Could she exercise the mysterious power of her sex upon
him as upon men of her own race? She closed her eyes and sought blindly
for an accession of strength in this crisis of her life. She put her
arms up and felt his hand on her face. And then, giving way to an
obscure and primitive impulse, she buried her teeth in his wrist. And
for a long while they remained there, two undisciplined hearts, voyaging
through a perilous darkness together.