It was a fac', Archy hiccoughed. Going to buy a lot of ships. So he'd heard. He paused, trying to recapture the thought. Yes, now no sooner does the Old Man order supper than the silly josser loses his head. Ring, ring, ring, the Old Man did. Now that he had recaptured it the thought seemed less important than he had imagined. Mr. Spokesly, his friend, with whom he was going to do some nice little business, didn't seem in very good spirits. Archy bent his mind to the matter. It was just as well they weren't going back to Saloniki, he remarked reflectively.
"How do you know? And why just as well?" asked Mr. Spokesly, wishing Archy would go away. He wanted to be alone.
"Didn't you know?" said Archy, wondering. "The Old Man said so. The second steward overheard something about it when he took a tray up when the N. T. O. was here this morning. We're going to Calcutta. Oh, yes. And a good job, too."
"Why?" said Mr. Spokesly.
Mr. Bates winked, and smiled his cat-grin.
"Fact is, Mister," he remarked in a low tone, "I went a little farther than I intended. Nice little widow she is, and it simply wouldn't do for me to be seen round there any more. She gave me this as a keepsake." And Archy drew a ring with an enormous emerald set in pearls from his vest-pocket. He put it on his little finger and turned it about.
"What!" ejaculated Mr. Spokesly. "Gave you that? Why, it's worth a couple of hundred pounds."
"Three hundred," corrected Archy. "Easy! Ah, my boy, you don't know what it is to have the ladies fancy you. Straight, Mister, they're a nuisance."
Mr. Spokesly looked at Archy Bates and wondered just how much of this was true. The value of the ring staggered him, as well it might, since Archy, who always pretended to be drunker than he really was, had discovered it in the upholstery of an ottoman on which he was sprawled, his left hand closing over it and moving it softly into his pocket while the right arm had encircled the waist of the widow. He assumed she was a widow, of course, since he saw nothing of her husband. And he had honestly forgotten it until after he had come aboard. He really had some difficulty in not believing himself that she had given it to him. He took it off and handed it to Mr. Spokesly, who looked puzzled.
"Keep it for me," Archy said. "I'm very careless. I might lose it. Give it to me in Alexandria."
"Oh, I'll do that, all right." Mr. Spokesly took it. "I'll put it away."
"You got it all right?" said Archy, meaning the dark brown substance concealed in among the clothes in Mr. Spokesly's drawers.
"Yes," said that gentleman shortly.
"How much...? That all? Why, I got four okes. Not coming back here, you see. I'll keep half for Calcutta. You can get a thousand rupees an ounce there. Nearly—let's see—nearly five hundred pounds an oke. Think of it!"
Mr. Spokesly thought of it and wondered what sort of fight the London School of Mnemonics would put up against that sort of thing. Archy's kind of success was very hard to dismiss as pure luck. He scored every time. He made money, he enjoyed life, and widows were "stuck on him," and gave him costly souvenirs. What efficiency could match this? After the war Archy would be in a position to do as he had occasionally mentioned—buy a nice little tavern and enjoy himself thoroughly. His wife had often wanted him to do it. He sat there on the settee, blinking and smiling in his feline way, and actually seemed to exude prosperity. It was nothing to him that Captain Meredith had no use for him. He had no use for Captain Meredith, so that cancelled out. Captain Meredith could pay him off any time he liked. Archy could write letters to the Company as well as Captain Meredith, come to that. Just for a moment Mr. Spokesly had the wild notion that Archy was beyond the reach of any one on earth, that he was too clever to be caught.
"Well," he said as the boy appeared with the bucket of hot water. "I go on at eight, Archy."
Archy got up, yawned, and stretched.
"I feel a bit tired. I believe I'll have a sleep. Rather strenuous evenin' last night, not half. You ought to have been with me, Mister. Some little piece. Wanted me to stay.... Well, I'll say good-night."
There it was again, thought Mr. Spokesly. Archy could lie on his settee all day, recovering from his cups, and now he could turn in and have a comfortable sleep. Mr. Spokesly removed his socks and lowered his feet into the generous warmth. That was better. After all, a man had to depend on himself. Schools of Mnemonics couldn't do much when there were people like Archy and Dainopoulos in the world. He remembered the ring, and took it out of the drawer to look at it. The heart of the emerald shot lambent flames at him like the cool green shadows beneath a waterfall. He saw it on the slim, supple hand of Evanthia. A gust of strange feeling shook him suddenly. He became aware, with inexplicable poignancy, of the mystical correlation between jewels and love, as though precious stones were only the petrified passions of past days. And how could one reconcile the beauty of these things, and the fact that they seemed ever to be found in the possession of ignoble men? More than a year's salary, and Archy could throw it to him to keep for him. And a woman had given it to him. Mr. Spokesly was beginning to be a little uncertain of his own knowledge of women. They seemed incalculable. It seemed impossible to chart the course of any of them for any length of time. He winced as he wondered what Ada would say if she knew what he was up to. He had no need to wonder. He knew perfectly well that she would forgive and sympathize and let it be forgotten. That was the way with English girls. He realized with a great uplifting of the heart that this was part of the Englishman's goodly heritage. He thought of himself, coming home at last to Ada, and how she would stroke his hair and murmur "silly old boy," and he would be at peace. Peace! In the meanwhile there was the war. It did not look so very good for the time being. The Germans seemed an uncommonly tough proposition. Mr. Spokesly wondered why all those military men, who wrote testimonials for the London School of Mnemonics, couldn't show their amazingly improved mentality by giving the enemy a licking. All very well to write, "Six months ago I was a sergeant: now I am a major-general, and I consider it is entirely due to your System." After all, what we needed was somebody who could keep the Fritzies away from the Channel ports. He sighed. He would have to dry his feet and go up on the bridge. As he stood up to open a drawer to find a fresh pair of socks he slipped the ring into his trousers pocket and forgot it.
As he went out into the alleyway to go forward, the last faint streaks of light were vanishing from the sullen sky over the mountains of Thessaly and a heavy blanket of clouds had come up from the eastward, so that the night was ideally dark for running through these perilous waters. Ahead of theTanganyikacould be seen a faint light, carefully screened so that only an observer high up and astern of her could see it at all. This was the pilot light on the sloop, and Captain Meredith mentioned in a low voice the necessity of keeping it in view, as otherwise they might run each other down, it was so dark. There were two other transports behind, one on each quarter, who would also need watching. They had just received a general wireless call that a submarine-course had been observed N. by N.-N.-E. from Skyros, which would bring her into their zone about one in the morning. Escort would signal change of course by a red light shown in three periods of two seconds each. And, the captain added, he himself would be lying on his settee just inside the door.
He vanished in the intense darkness and Mr. Spokesly found himself high up, alone in that darkness, and in charge of the ship. She vibrated strongly, being almost in ballast, and rolled perhaps three degrees either way in a leisurely rhythm. Along her sides he could see a sheer bottle-green glow from fore-foot to where it was lost in the white cascade churned up by the emerging propeller. Beyond this one could only catch a sort of rushing obscurity, for the sea was smooth and unbroken by the long invisible swell. The clouds now covered the whole sky so that one could see nothing on the forecastle-head.
Mr. Spokesly paced to and fro, watching the faint and occasionally vanishing light on the escort. He ran over in his mind the ship's company and ruminated on their various employments. The gunner would be asleep alongside of his gun; for of what use was it to stand by if one had no target? The crew were all asleep, save the helmsman and the two lookouts on the forecastle. The chief was no doubt seated in his cabin smoking and thinking of his wife and children in Maryport. Mr. Chippenham, who came on at midnight, was asleep. And there would be Archy, turned in without a care in the world. Mr. Spokesly's hand came in contact with the ring in his pocket. He must not forget to stow it away safely when he went below again. It would look funny if he lost it. He remembered he owed Archy a ten-pound note. Must pay that in Alexandria, too. Things might happen in Alexandria, he reflected with pleasure. There was that talk of the company getting more ships—there might be something in it. The Old Man was so infernally close-lipped about everything. Fancy the chief officer of a ship having to get that sort of news from a steward, just because the captain didn't trust anybody! He threw his arms up on the dodger and stared into the darkness. The silence was broken suddenly by the rhythmic clatter of a shovel-blade against iron—the call of the fireman to the coal-passers for more coal. They shouldn't make that noise, Mr. Spokesly thought with a frown. Though, come to that, the screw was making noise enough anyhow. Every now and again, as the vibrations of the vessel failed to synchronize, a low muttering rumble came up from the deck members culminating in hoarse rattles of pipe-guards and loose cowls, and running aft in a long booming whine. Mr. Spokesly strained his eyes to catch the pilot light again. Even with the binoculars he could not distinguish the sloop's hull. One comfort, they were not zigzagging. It would only increase the risk of collision on a night like this. Another thought occurred to Mr. Spokesly as he looked away from the glasses for a moment. He felt that if he himself were in a submarine out there he would be much more anxious to avoid a ship than to find her. The chances of being run down were too many. He did not realize that theTanganyika, seen from sea level, was a solid black bulk, jangling and booming her way through the sea and leaving an immense pathway of phosphorescence behind her. He had no time to realize it. He had no time to adjust himself to any philosophical possibilities before it came with a crashing roar that left him, for an instant, unconscious. The deck and the bulwark below him heaved up and burst into crooked screaming flames as the beams and plates were torn asunder. He stood with his hands gripping the top of the dodger, staring hard into the murk, and then he comprehended. He flinched sideways as a horrible sound smote his ears, a whine rising to a muffled shriek, as the loosened fall of the big boom tore through the blocks, and the boom itself, a fifty-foot steel girder, was coming down. As he reached the port-engine telegraph, tugging at it mechanically, the great mass struck the wheel-house with a noise of rending wood, breaking glass, and a faint cry that ceased at once.
Mr. Spokesly stood for perhaps three seconds holding the telegraph handle, and he heard a second explosion, a hollow concussion amidships that sent a great column of water into the air so that theTanganyikaseemed to have shipped a heavy sea. He could scarcely appreciate the importance of this. He turned with an effort towards the wheel-house and captain's quarters. There was a sound of steam escaping somewhere down below. The boom had crushed through the bridge rails and lay across his path as he stepped over. And there was a dreadful silence up there. Men were running and calling down below, but here was silence. The steering gear was demolished, and behind that ... He felt sick. He took a step down the ladder and looked again, and this time he fell forward on his face. The ship had gone down by the stern.
"This won't do," he muttered, scrambling up. "Who's in command?" He blew his whistle. "Hi! Tong Pee!" he called to the helmsman. Tong Pee, crushed to a pulp under the binnacle, made no reply. He had never been a communicative person, Tong Pee, and now he had no choice. The sudden complete comprehension of what had happened behind Tong Pee sent Mr. Spokesly down the ladder in a panic. "This is no good," he said anxiously to himself. "No good at all." And he blew his whistle again in a rage.
But the men on the boat-deck were in no mood to pay attention to whistles. The ship was going down. Her after deck was under water, for the second torpedo had hit the engine room and all aft was flooded. The forward hold was light and was keeping her bows up so that she was gradually assuming a vertical position. And the men on the boat-deck were crying "Wah! Wah!" and "Hoi! Hoi!" and stampeding past in a stream towards the boats. They came up staggering with piles of bedding, with corded boxes and crates full of white rats. They came up festooned with mandolins and canaries in cages, with English dictionaries and back-numbers of thePolice Gazette. They tore each other from the boats and stowed their treasures with long wailing cries of "Hoi! Hoi!" They slipped and slithered away aft in heaps and fought among each other for invisible personal effects. One of them suddenly showed a flashlight in the darkness and the others leapt upon him to take it, and it ricocheted away into the scupper and went out. If one of them by infinite toil got into the boat the others tore him away with howls of anguish. And the deck became steeper. The boats, already swung out, sagged away from the davits and fouled the falls. The sound of scuttering feet and frantic throats was lost in a number of extraordinary sounds from below, like skyscrapers collapsing into a waterfall, as the boilers carried away from their stools and crashed into the engines, which gave way also, and the whole mass, swirling in steam like the interior of a molten planet, plunged through the bulkheads into the empty holds. And then the boats began to fall clear and some of the struggling beings about them dropped away into the void. Mr. Spokesly, hanging to the rail beneath the bridge, found himself sobbing as though his chest would burst. He took off his coat and threw it at the men who were twined in a knot by the nearest davit. TheTanganyikawas now at a very steep angle. Mr. Spokesly took off his boots. It flashed through his mind that he was in command. "Oh!" he thought, "I can't leave her!" And then the thought of the others, down there, in their cabins, and the loneliness of it up here with these yellow maniacs, pierced his heart. "I must go," he sobbed. And indeed he had to, for theTanganyikawas going down. He could hardly keep his balance. Hot steam was blowing up in great gray gusts from the fiddley-grating. He was near the water now. It might be too late. He jumped.
For a moment as the chill of the water struck him, for he had been in a bath of sweat as he stood there sobbing, he thought he had been killed. He was a good swimmer, for they had made a point of it in his old training-ship. He struck out away, away from the ship as fast as he could. He realized more keenly, now, how dangerous it was to remain near. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen strokes. He turned over, treading water and shaking the moisture from his eyes. He was horrified to find how close he was. The ship's bows were towering over him and wavering to and fro. And as he turned to get farther out, he felt himself raised up on a vast billow of smooth water that was rolling in over theTanganyika. He was carried forward and whirled over and over. With something that was almost obstinacy he made up his mind to do the best for himself, kept his mouth shut for one thing, and avoided wearing himself out with useless efforts. And he suddenly brought up against something that nearly knocked the breath out of his body and scraped all the skin off his face. He spread his arms and grasped. He thought hard and quick. The bow! He held on. It was not going down, but up, he was sure. And then, to his surprise, for he really had no authentic belief that he would survive this unusual affair, he found himself out of the water hugging a long iron ridge that trembled just awash.
He began to think again. The mass of metal to which he was clinging was vibrating as though from a series of heavy submarine blows. Huge groans and sharp cracks communicated themselves to his body. He had no faith in the ship remaining long like this. In all probability the forward hatch would get stove in or the peak would fail and then, with the whole ship flooded, she would go down. Away off he heard a heavy detonation. There was a sparkle of red fire and a crack as the sloop fired a three-pounder into the darkness. He caught sight of a faint light which gave him her position. Boom! More depth-charges. Very active now, he thought with unreasoning bitterness, now it was all over. He saw the blur of the sloop moving fast towards him. He threw his leg over the stem, sat up, and putting two fingers of each hand in his mouth, blew a piercing whistle. The next moment he was almost blinded as a searchlight swept across the water and remained fixed upon him. It was appalling, that intense white glare showing up his frightful loneliness out there on the calm heedless sea. The beam wavered and vanished. And at the same moment some premonition made Mr. Spokesly prepare to move off. TheTanganyikawas going down. Deep bellowings in her interior gave warning. He decided not to wait, and slipped into the water. And before he had reached the boat whose oars he heard working rapidly just ahead of him, there was a final swirl and hiccough on the water, and theTanganyikawas gone.
When he woke it was some twenty hours later, for the surgeon had bound up his face and put stitches into a number of lacerations in his body, and had given him cocaine to make him sleep. The sloop was anchoring down by the flour mills, and looking out through his port-hole Mr. Spokesly could see the gardens of the White Tower of Saloniki.
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'tforceyou 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 theTanganyika."
"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 theTanganyikawas 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 theTanganyika? 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 theTanganyikahe 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 theKalkis. 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 verybeeg, 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 abeegship."
"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."
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, TransportTanganyika. 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 theTanganyika'ssudden 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 theKalkis. 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'veno 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 wantmeto 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 sureIdon'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.