For he was a man who was at war with the world. He was so preoccupied with this tremendous conflict that the disturbance in Europe scarcely sounded in his ears. He was a man without faith and without desire of hope. In the years behind him lay the wreckage of honour, when he had gone out east to the China Coast and never gone back. Revenge, he had called it, and called it still, for unascertained and undefined injuries. Since then he had had freedom. He had hugged the thought of the woman, who had imagined herself so clever at blinding him, working in poverty to keep herself and her brat. Her brat, ha—ha! Away out there in China, a thousand miles up an immense river, in the home river-port of his country ship, he said ha—ha! and fell to improving himself. Driven to devise a mode of existence both unsocial and unintellectual, he had stumbled upon strange things in human life. He accumulated vast stocks of scandal about humanity, and delved into repositories of knowledge which most men avoid and forget. Those and the pipe, which led him into another life altogether, the life of irresponsible dreams, wherein a man's mind, released from the body yet retaining the desires of the body, ranges forth into twilights of oblivion, clutching here and there at strange seductive shapes and thrilling to voices not heard before. Captain Rannie, out there, was much happier than many men who hold their souls in leash and render their accounts exactly. He sailed up and down his great river, a mystery to the Chinamen of the crew, a joke among the Europeans. It did not become apparent to him or anybody else that anything was happening to him. Nothing was happening to him save that the lacquer and varnish and ornament of his conventional upbringing in England were nearly all gone, and underneath there was nothing save himself, a timid, sensitive, sensual, quarrelsome creature with a disposition that seemed to rational people to have gone rancid with the heat. They bore with him because he was used to the work, and he was a warm man in silver dollars, too, they said. But the country-ships began to go home. The colossal freights out of England could not be resisted. Captain Rannie was ordered to take his ship home. Home! He funked horribly but he funked losing his job still more, and he took her home as far as Port Said, with a cargo of tobacco from Sumatra. But farther he would not go. He made himself ill, an easy trick with a well-stocked medicine chest, and no one suspected a man would be striving to avoid reaching England. It was generally just the other way round. He went to the hospital until the ship was gone and then became convalescent, moping about Port Said in his yellow pongee suits and enormous panama hat, smoking innumerable cigarettes and discovering among other things a new world of gigantic phantoms.
It was not difficult, he found, to discover the dealers in drugs and he set out, as a buyer of tobacco. But although his first trip to Saloniki and back to Alexandria was successful and enormously profitable, he became aware that he was being uncomfortably shadowed, and he left again in an Italian steamer. It was here he encountered Mr. Dainopoulos, bound home from a business trip to Egypt; where he had been buying up cheap the stocks of ship-chandlers who had been caught by the sudden withdrawal of troops from the Dardanelles for service in the north. Mr. Dainopoulos had bought a small ship and now needed a commander.
So far, one might say, Captain Rannie had simply lived the life of many of his condition, Englishmen who had grown soft and flaccid during their long exiles and who now crept furtively along in the shadow of war, neither very honest nor very crooked, ignoble and negligible. But as he sat there now behind his locked door and heavy curtain, shading his eyes with his hand, he faced the immediate future with dread. The sight of Mr. Spokesly, bandaged and plastered, hurrying out to get on with the work, made him see with painful clearness where he himself had fallen and how problematic was the task ahead. He would not tackle a job like this again, he told himself. Never again. He would get away out East again with what he had already made and resume the old, safe, easy river-life, receiving his stacks of "reading matter" from London, reading until his brain was soft and soggy with foolish dreams. It was the best life he knew and he longed to get back to it. After this voyage. How he hated all this! When he came back into the world of urgent men after one of his long periods of stupor, he was horrified at the necessity of living at all, and sometimes contemplated suicide. Now he was afraid, not so much of any punishment which might befall him as of the destruction of his way of life, the harsh secular interferences, the spying out of his useless secrets and his long-hid dishonour. It was his very life now, this carefully contrived oblivion in which he lay like an insect in a cocoon. It was beyond his power to desire a return to England. The very thought made him tremble. One of the secrets he guarded with such hysterical care was his loathing of women. Men thought him a rake,a viveur—ha-ha! That was what he wanted them to think. He could not bear any intimacy at all. This new chief officer—that was the disturbing element in his reverie—must be given to understand there could be no intimacy, none whatever.
He listened to the sounds of scrubbing outside, vigorous thumps and kicks as the mops went to and fro. There were voices, too, the ingenuous bawlings of that bosun, offensively active. An unwarrantable intrusion! Quite unnecessary, all this waste of soap and soda. Captain Rannie began to revive: the white tabloid he had swallowed as the door closed behind Mr. Spokesly was getting its work in. He felt better. He would go ashore and explain to Mr. Dainopoulos that this sort of thing could not go on. He examined himself in the glass with stern attention. His gray hair, parted just off the middle, was touched with a brush. Good. He was ready. He lit a cigarette. He unlocked the door and went out.
Up on deck Captain Rannie was immediately aware of a novel state of affairs. It was so long since he had experienced the sensation he could scarcely identify it. There was someone in charge. The old accommodation-ladder, untouched since the time of Spiteri's advent, was down and the teak steps hastily scrubbed. Made fast to the grating was his boat, washed and with a red and yellow flag on the stern-seat. Mr. Spokesly in a pair of the bosun's rubber boots and with his coat off, came up, blowing a whistle. A young Norwegian came clattering up the ladder from the fore-deck.
"Go and wash your face," said Mr. Spokesly. "And take the cap'en ashore."
Captain Rannie, as he sat with the tiller in his hand and watched the young Norwegian pulling with all his might, felt extraordinarily proud. That was the way to handle these people. He had been right after all. Be firm. New blood, a tight hand. Some respect now for the master of the vessel. And no intimacy. "Take the captain ashore." Brief, curt, attentive. That, he held, was the thing. To dwell apart, within a shining envelope of secular discipline, unquestioned, unhampered, and unloved—that in Captain Rannie's mind was the priceless privilege of command.
Mrs. Dainopoulos, who was born Alice Thompson, lay on her Tottenham Court Road sofa with a Scotch plaid rug over her, looking out across the sunlit Gulf whenever she raised her eyes from her book. It is not extraordinary that she should have been fond of reading. Suffering actual pain only occasionally, she would have found time hang most heavily but for this divine opiate, whereby the gentle and gracious figures of sentimental fiction were gathered about her and lived out their brief lives in that deserted theatre of the ancient gods, between the silent ravines of the Chalcidice and the distant summits of Thessaly.
For without having in any degree an original imagination she had a very lively one. The people in books were quite as real to her as the people around her. Just as she followed the characters in a book while reading, so she only knew actual human beings while they were in the room with her. As she read her books, so she read people, with intense interest as how it would end and always longing for sequels. There was no doubt in her mind, of course, that you could not have a story without love, and this reacted naturally enough upon her judgments of people. She herself, she firmly believed, could not exist without love. Nobody could. It was a world of delicate and impalpable happiness where people always understood each other without speech, responding to a touch of a hand, a note of music, the sunlight on the snow-capped mountains, or the song of a bird. Released from the indurating business of daily chores and the calculations of house-keeping, and placidly secure in a miser's infatuation, she lived an almost effortless emotional existence. She had gone through many stages, of course, like most exiles, from petulance to indifference; but by this time, as she looked up from her book and watched theKalkisswinging in the current and disappearing from time to time in billows of white steam from her winches, Mrs. Dainopoulos was almost fiercely sentimental. Beneath a manner compounded of suburban vulgarity and English reserve, she concealed an ardent and romantic temperament. People, in her imagination, behaved exactly as did the characters in the books she had been reading. She was the author, as it were, of innumerable unwritten romances, enthusiastic imitations of those Mr. Dainopoulos obediently ordered in boxes from London. She adored those books which, the publisher's advertisement said, made you forget; and she never took any notice at all of the advertisement, often on the opposing page, of the London School of Mnemonics which sought to sell books that made you remember. Yet forget-me-nots were her favourite flowers. To her, as to Goethe, art is called art because it is not nature. The phantasmagoria of Balkan life, the tides of that extraordinary and sinister sea which beat almost up against her windows, left her untroubled. For her there was no romance without love, and of course marriage. For Evanthia she cherished a clear, boyish admiration blended with a rather terrified interest in her volcanic emotional outbreaks. The difference between the two women can be compared to the written story and the ferocious transformation of that story known as a film-version. Mrs. Dainopoulos quite comprehended that Evanthia could do things impossible for an English girl. Even in her seclusion Mrs. Dainopoulos had learned that the Cité Saul was not Haverstock Hill. But she saw no reason why Evanthia should not "find happiness," as she phrased it, fading out with a baby in her arms, so to speak. She did not realize that girls like Evanthia never fade out. They are not that kind. They progress as Evanthia progressed, borne on the crests of aboriginal impulses, riding easily amid storms and currents which would wreck the tidy coasting craft of domestic life. They are in short destined to command, and nothing can sate their appetite for spiritual conflict.
But Mrs. Dainopoulos did not know this. She lay there looking out at the ineffable beauty of the Gulf, a novel of Harold Bell Wright open on her lap, dreaming of Evanthia and Mr. Spokesly. How nice if they really and truly liked each other! And perhaps, when the war was over, they could all go to England together and see the Tower and Westminster Abbey! This was the way her thoughts ran. She never spoke this way, however. Her speech was curt and matter-of-fact, for she was very shy of revealing herself even to her husband. Her sharp, small intelligence never led her into the mistake of interfering with other people. Instead she imagined them as characters in a story and thought how nice it would be if they only would behave that way.
And then suddenly in upon this idyllic scene burst Evanthia, excited and breathless.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "What shall I do?"
"Why, whatever is the matter, Evanthia? Your eyes shine like stars. Do tell me."
Evanthia came striding in like an angry prima-donna, her hand stretched in front of her as though about to loose a thunderbolt or a stiletto. She flung herself down—a trick of hers, for she never seemed to hurt herself—on the rug beside the bed and leaned her head against her friend's hand. It was another trick of hers to exclaim: "What shall I do?Mon Dieu! que ferai-je?" when she was in no doubt about what she was going to do. She was going after her lover. She was going on board theKalkisbefore she sailed, on some pretense, and she was going to the Piræus in her, whence she could get to Athens in a brisk walk if necessary, and when she got there God would look after her. She had convinced herself, by stray hints picked up from the domestics of the departed consuls, that her lover would go to Athens. There was as much truth in this as in the possibility of theKalkisgoing to Piræus. It was conjecture, but Evanthia wanted to believe it. She had never been in a ship, and she could have no conception of the myriad changes of fortune which might befall a ship in a few weeks. She might lie for months in Phyros. With Evanthia, however, this carried no weight. God would take care of her. It was rather disconcerting to reflect that God did. Evanthia, all her life, never thought of anybody but herself, and all things worked together to bring her happiness and to cast her lines in pleasant places. Just at this time she was concentrating upon an adventure of which the chief act was getting on board that little ship out there. Everything, even to the clothes she was to wear, was prepared. She had gone about it with a leisurely, silent, implacable efficiency. And now she relieved her feelings in a burst of hysterical affection for her dear friend who had been so kind to her and whom she must leave. She could do this because of the extreme simplicity of her personality. She was afflicted with none of the complex psychology which makes the Western woman's life a farrago of intricate inhibitions. Love was an evanescent glamour which came and passed like a cigarette, a strain of music, a wave of furious anger. Evanthia remembered the hours, forgetting the persons. But for that gay and spirited young man with the little blond moustache and laughing blue eyes, whom she believed was now in Athens flirting with the girls, her feeling was different. He had won from her a sort of allegiance. She thought him the maddest, wittiest, and most splendid youth in the world. She did not despise Mr. Spokesly because he was not at all like Fridthiof. She could not conceive in that stark and simple imagination of hers two youths like Fridthiof. His very name was a bizarre caress to her Southern ears. How gay he was! How clever, how vital, how amusingly irreligious, how careless whether he hurt her or not. It was a fantastic feature of her attitude towards him that she liked to think of herself as possessed by him yet at liberty to go where she wished. She was experimenting crudely with emotions, trying them and flinging them away. She had at the back of her mind the vague notion that if she could only get back to Fridthiof he would take her away into Central Europe, to Prague and Vienna and Munich, dream cities where she could savour the life she saw in the moving pictures—great houses, huge motor-cars, gems, and gallimaufry. She dreamed of the silken sheets and the milk-baths of sultanas, servants in dazzling liveries, and courtyards with fountains and string music in the shadows behind the palms. Perhaps. Without history or geography to guide her, she imagined Central Europe as a sort of glorifiedJardin de la Tour Blanche, where money grew upon trees or flowered on boudoir-mantels, and where superb troops in shining helmets and cuirasses marched down interminable avenues of handsome buildings. There was no continuity in her mind between money and labour. Men always gave her money. Even Mr. Dainopoulos gave her money, a little at a time. The poor worked and had no money. There would always be money for the asking. When the war moved up into the mountains again, as it always did after a while (for she remembered dimly how the armies went crashing southward into Saloniki in the war of 1912 and later fought among themselves and came crashing back again, passing through the valley like a herd of mastodons), there would be more money than ever, and the rich merchants would send away again to France and Italy for silks and velvets andbijouterie. Ever since she could remember money had been growing more and more plentiful. The Englishman who had given her that splendid emerald ring and who had said he would go to hell for her, had plenty of money, although not long before he had had to jump into the water and swim to the shore with only his shirt and trousers. She might have to swim herself. Well, what of that? More than once she had done the distance from the bathing house to the Allatini jetty and back. Looking through lazy, slitted eyelids she knew she could swim to theKalkiswith ease. Such matters gave her no anxiety. Evanthia's problems were those of an explorer. She was making her way cautiously into a new world, a world beyond those French bayonets. She hated the French because they invariably assumed that she was ademi-mondaineand treated her as bearded family men treat daughters of joy. Perhaps she hated them also because Fridthiof had exhausted his amusing sarcasm upon them as his hereditary enemies; but this is not certain because the Balkan people do not conceive nationality save as a tribal clannishness. Evanthia's notions of patriotism were gathered from films shown in Constantinople of imperial-looking persons sitting on horses while immense masses of troops marched by and presented arms. It was fascinating but perplexing, this tumultuous, shining, wealthy outside world, and Evanthia was ready to abandon everything she knew, including Mrs. Dainopoulos, for a look at it. Blood did not matter out there, Fridthiof had told her.Demokracymade it possible for any woman to become a princess. So she gathered from his highly satirical and misleading accounts of European customs beyond French bayonets. A suspicion suddenly assailed her as she lay on the rug stroking her friend's hand.
"This Englishman, is he faithful,honnête?"
Mrs. Dainopoulos allowed the leaves of her book to slip slowly from her fingers. She smiled.
"Englishmen are always faithful," she said, with a little thrill of pride. Evanthia let this pass without comment. Fridthiof had once told her the English had sold every friend they ever had and betrayed every small nation in the world, with the result that they now sat on top of the world. He also expressed admiration for their inconceivable national duplicity in fooling the world. And Evanthia, if she reflected at all, imagined Mrs. Dainopoulos was of the same opinion since she had married a Levantine. Mr. Spokesly, however, had said he would go to hell for her, which was no doubt an example of the national duplicity.
"Humph!" she said at length and sat there looking at the sky over the trees.
"He's engaged,fiancé, you know, to a girl in England, but I don't think he loves her very much. I think he is beginning to like a friend of mine, Evanthia. Did you go to the cinema last night?"
"Oh, yes, yes. It was beautiful. I love the American pictures, cowboys. They shot the police dead. And in the end the girl had a baby."
"But wasn't she married first, dear?" asked the sick lady, laughing.
"Oh, yes. It was beautiful," answered Evanthia dreamily. "Very, very beautiful. They ride and shoot all the time, in America."
"And have babies," added Mrs. Dainopoulos.
"No!" said Evanthia with startling lucidity. "Fridthiof has been there."
"I thought you had forgotten him, dear. You know I think he was not a good influence for you."
Evanthia murmured, "Ah, yes," and smiled.
"I don't think he always told you the truth. I am afraid he made things up to tell you."
"I think he is gone to Athens."
"Why?"
"I speak to the old Anna Karoglou who sweep in the Consulate. She hear the Consul's wife say she has a sister in Athens."
Mrs. Dainopoulos was not prepared to accept this as conclusive evidence, though she knew these illiterate people had their own mysterious news agencies.
"Well," she said, "youcan't go to Athens just now, can you?"
"The Englishman will get me a passport," answered Evanthia. "He said he would get one."
"Did he though? That's very kind of him."
"Yes, he will do anything for me, anything."
"Have you sent word to your mother? I feel responsible for you, Evanthia dear."
"Oh, I come back," said the girl airily, "I come back."
"I don't believe you will," said Mrs. Dainopoulos gravely. "I don't believe you will."
"Yes, yes. Come back to my dear friend."
She did too, later on, very much damaged. She arrived in a crowded train of horse-cars, her clothes in a crushed old basket and a refugee ticket fastened to her blouse with a huge brass safety pin. She did not dwell on her adventures. So many women were going through very much the same thing. And Mr. Dainopoulos by that time was too rich and too busy getting richer to bother about a stray like her, and he did not ask. To the end it remained an impalpable grievance with her that she made no impression upon her dear friend's husband.
She jumped up now, and, kissing Mrs. Dainopoulos, hastened away to see to the evening meal. Downstairs, standing in the doorway of the dining room, she caught the young girl putting some candied plums in her mouth and broke into a swirl of vituperation. Mr. Spokesly, coming in behind his employer at that moment, thought it was remarkably like a cat spitting. The servant suddenly slipped past Evanthia, eyes downcast and smouldering, and scampered out of sight. Mr. Spokesly looked after the lithe little form with the slender cotton stockings and little cup-like breasts under the one-piece cotton dress. He had an idea that that girl would like to knife both Evanthia and himself.
He followed Evanthia out into the garden.
"It's all right," he said. "I got everything on board. But no passport. Nothing doing."
"No?"
He shook his head in confirmation. Most emphatically there had been nothing doing. They were all in a decidedly ugly mood, with that darned girl of Jack Harrowby's in gaol for telling about the times of sailing. They knew well enough the girl had been a fool, an innocent go-between; but they weren't having any more of it. The young lady with friends in Athens would have to exist without them until the war was over. Let her apply to the Provisional Government and then, if all was satisfactory, they would forward the application to the War Office, who would look into it. Sometime next year would be a good date to expect a reply—probably in the negative. That was all he could get out of them. He looked glumly at Evanthia, who stared back at him thinking rapidly. She had not expected a passport. To her a passport was an infernal contrivance for landing you in prison unless you paid and paid and paid an interminable succession of officials. When she had exclaimed to Mrs. Dainopoulos, "Oh, what shall I do?Que ferai-je?" she had been really thinking aloud. What should she do if the Englishman failed to get a passport? Even that was a pose because she had decided what to do. She drew Mr. Spokesly farther away from the house and turned to him with an expression of smiling composure on her face. He stared as though fascinated. She was going to spring something on him, he was sure. In the intervals between sleep and his herculean labours to get theKalkisship-shape and Bristol fashion he sometimes wondered whether she had not taken him literally when he had said he would go to hell for her. Another thing: it appeared he had to do this for nothing. He was to get her back to her lover and receive a purely nominal reward. He took hold of her shoulders and kissed her hair. He was certainly taking a chance in trying to get her a passport. He had had to be truculent. He was only trying to do a decent turn to a neutral. Mr. Dainopoulos would have applied himself only he felt he was in a delicate position, having chartered his ship to the Government, and so did not want to embarrass them. And so on. A new Mr. Spokesly. Perhaps his visit to the Post Office for letters had something to do both with his truculence and his present air of fascinated interest in Evanthia's face. For there had been no letters. There you were, you see. Out of sight, out of mind. The new Mr. Spokesly was a shade more rugged than the other, a shade harder in the line from ear to chin, a shade more solid on his pins. Evanthia pulled his head over to her ear.
"What time ship go away?" she asked hurriedly.
"To-morrow," he muttered, remembering Jack Harrowby's indiscretion. "To-morrow, but you mustn't tell anybody."
"Pst! Who should I tell, stupidity! To-night you go on the ship, eh?"
"They won't let a lady go through...." he began and she pulled his ear.
"Tck! You go on the ship. By and by, late, late, I come, too."
"No. Look here, dear, the picket launches'll see a boat as soon...."
She held up her finger warningly.
"I wait. You come. Watch! In the window a little light. Pprrp!"
She flicked her fingers at him and ran away.
Mr. Spokesly looked after her and sighed with relief and anxiety at the same time. He knew it was a ticklish game to play. If she started coming out in a boat from the shore here, as sure as death those naval pickets who were for ever rushing about would dart up and want to know all about it. And get both him and his employer into trouble. It was up to her now. He had bought an officer's tin trunk and it had been three parts full of her clothes when he went aboard with it. He doubted if she could make it. Well, he had arranged to spend the night on board because Captain Rannie was off on some peculiar jamboree of his own, and he would keep a look-out for the little light. And then Mr. Spokesly saw a light in his mind. He smiled. His imagination was not a facile piece of machinery. He saw things steadily and sometimes saw them whole, but he did not see them at all if they were any distance ahead. He had now caught sight of what lay ahead. He smiled again, and went in to supper.
Mr. Dainopoulos, who was always well aware of things very far away ahead, was much occupied in his mind, but he kept up a good flow of conversation to cover his anxiety. He had been approached that day by the authorities with a proposal. The new Provisional Government was like most governments of the kind, frock-coated, silk-hatted, kid-gloved politicians with extensive vocabularies and limited business experience. The agriculturists of the hinterland were in dire need of implements, machinery, and fertilizers. What was needed was a responsible person or syndicate who would act as purchasing agent, financing the operation against the harvest. The Government proposed to authorize an issue of half a million drachma to a duly constituted syndicate. It was an alluring prospect. His friend Malleotis was in it, too, and thought it a good thing. Mr. Dainopoulos, while he talked to Mr. Spokesly, was developing the plan of campaign in his head. He was, so to speak, flexing his mental sinews. His extremely financial brain was working, and the more he considered it the more lucrative the thing appeared to be. Malleotis had insisted on a two-year agreement as there might be losses on the coming harvest. Long-headed man, Malleotis. Yes, yes, hm....
Here is presented in moderate contrast the divergent temperaments of Boris Dainopoulos, a man of business, and Mr. Reginald Spokesly, a man of a type much more common than many people imagine. Mr. Spokesly had no business ability whatever. It simply was not in him. Hismétier, when he was fully awake, was simply watch-keeping, which is a blend of vigilance, intelligence, and a flair for being about at the critical moment. Out of this is born the faculty and the knack of commanding men, which is a very different thing from bossing men in business. And so, while his employer was already immersed in a new and fascinating deal which might make him much richer than he had ever hoped in so short a time, Mr. Spokesly had forgotten that money existed save as change for the pocket, and was devoting the whole spiritual energy to the contemplation of an affair of the heart. And this is a problem in which ethics plays no part at all. The moralist has ever a tendency to applaud the man diligent in business. But the business man is dependent upon the emotionalist and the sensualist, too, for the success of his designs. As has been pointed out by an authority the world is a stage and the men and women players. Had he lived in later times he might have remarked that the world is not quite so simple as that. There are business men and ticket-speculators nowadays, for example.
Another thing which preoccupied Mr. Dainopoulos was his responsibility towards Mr. Spokesly. He didn't want anything to happen to him. His wife was always talking about him. Of course that baggage Evanthia was after him, but Mr. Dainopoulos was not worrying about her. He was anxious that Mr. Spokesly should not get into trouble over this trip. There might be something about the latter part of the voyage that the chief mate wouldn't like at all. If anything miscarried he might not be able to prove he did not know what was going on. Mr. Dainopoulos mentioned it in the garden afterwards.
"Don't you interfere with the captain, Mister," he remarked, over a cigarette.
"Eh!" said Mr. Spokesly, wondering very much. "How can I interfere with a man like him? He sets the course, and I run it off. No business o' mine what he's doing."
This was so exactly in accordance with Mr. Dainopoulos's views and so exactly what Mr. Spokesly ought to say supposing he knew everything, that the former looked hard at the mate and uttered a cackling snarl of astonished satisfaction.
"Why, that's just it. You let him settle everything."
"Except the work about the deck."
"Ah-h!" Mr. Dainopoulos was not lying awake at night worrying about the condition of the deck of theKalkis. But he said nothing more than his guttural "Ah!"
"And the accommodation has got to be kept clean while I'm there," babbled Mr. Spokesly.
"Why, certainly, certainly," assented Mr. Dainopoulos.
"I ought to tell you I tried to get a passport for Miss Solaris," said Mr. Spokesly in a low tone. "They wouldn't hear of it."
"I told her three or four times it was no good," said Mr. Dainopoulos irritably. "What does she think she is?"
"Well, she's got the idea she wants to go to Athens and...."
"She won't go to Athens."
"You mean the ship don't go to Piræus?"
"I mean she won't go to Athens."
"Well, I done the best I could for her. She could have my cabin, and I'd sleep in the chart-room."
"How can she get on board?" asked Mr. Dainopoulos. "Does she think I'm goin' to get myself into a lotta trouble for her? Why, let me say to you, Mister, I do plenty business with these peoples, but I could not get a passport now for Mrs. Dainopoulos. No! How can I get one for a girl who nobody knows nothing about? Such foolishness!"
"Just what I told her and she laughed at me and told me she'd manage it."
"She may do that. She can get one of these officers to fix it, very likely. You know how they are, these French officers. Anything for a pretty young lady."
"She wouldn't do that," said Mr. Spokesly with a troubled air. "She's a friend of Mrs. Dainopoulos, remember."
"I remember all right. But plenty of women do that sort of business all the time in war. Every war the same. Something, I dunno what you call it, gets 'em. They go crazy, a little. They like the uniforms and the tom-te-tom-tom-tom of the music. You know what I mean. I tell her she oughta get a job in Stein's. But she don't like anybody to tell her anything. She ain't nothin' to me. Her mother...! Humph!" And Mr. Dainopoulos flicked his thumbs outward.
"What I told her was, if she did get aboard, she'd have a trip down to the Islands and back. But she don't understand."
"She don't understand nothin' only buyin' clothes an' thinkin' she's one of these here grand duchesses in Russia," snapped Mr. Dainopoulos. "Don't you take any notice of her nonsense stuff."
"Well, I'm supposed to be disinterested in this," said Mr. Spokesly with a slight smile. "I mean, I will say she's been straight about it."
"About what?" said Mr. Dainopoulos, somewhat mystified.
"That sweetheart she had, who went away."
"Oh, him! He's gone."
"She reckons he's in Athens."
"She reckons anything she hears and she can believe anything she wants. It don't hurt nobody."
"That's right, but what do you think?"
"Nothin'. What's it got to do with me? I'd be a fine sorta fool to mix up with her business, me doing business with the English Army, eh? Whatta you think I am?"
"She's neutral, I suppose."
"Yes, butheain't. He was assistant vice-consul and he used to go aboard the ships and talk his English. He was in London years. Talks English better than you do. And he was sendin' reports all the time in the Consul's bag." Mr. Dainopoulos gave a curt chuckle. "Nothin' to do with me. They thought he was a Y. M. C. A. feller. Made them laugh. And they used to tell him where they been and where they was goin'.... Yes, he was all over the place. She's crazy about him, I know. But he's forgot all about her long ago. You no need to worry about him."
Mr. Spokesly was not worrying about him. One does not worry about rivals who are in all probability three or four hundred miles beyond the battle line. But he was pained at Mr. Dainopoulos's estimate of Evanthia. He felt sorry for a man who was unable to appreciate the flavour, the bouquet, so to speak, of so delicious a personality. When Mr. Dainopoulos said warningly, over his shoulder, his scarred and unlovely features slewed into a grin, "You watch. She'll fool you," he did not deny it. What he wondered at was the failure of his employer to appreciate the extreme pleasure of being fooled by a woman like Evanthia. For Mr. Spokesly had of late discovered that a man can, in some curious subconscious way, keep his head in a swoon. Like the person under an anæsthetic, who is aware of his own pulsing, swaying descent into a hurried yet timeless oblivion, whose brain keeps an amused record of the absurd efforts of alien intelligences to communicate with him as he drops past the spinning worlds into darkness, and who is aware, too, of his own entire helplessness, a man can with advantage sometimes let himself be fooled. For Mr. Spokesly, who had always prided himself on his wide-awake attitude towards women, it was a bracing and novel experience to let Evanthia fool him. It was really a form of making a woman happy since some women are incapable of happiness unless they are fooling men. But he was unable to get Mr. Dainopoulos to see this aspect of the affair. Mr. Dainopoulos was not the man to let anybody fool him unless it might be his wife. It may be doubted that even she managed it. He was very largely what we call Latin, and the Latins are strangely devoid of illusions about women. She mystified him at times, as when she checked him in his desire to tell people that away back he had an English relative. He was very proud of it and he could not understand his wife's reluctance to hear him mention it. It certainly gave him no clue to their characters; but like many men of diversified descent he had occasional fits of wanting to be thought English. He had been very indignant with that fresh young Fridthiof Lietherthal, who had laughed at his deep-toned statement, "I have British blood in my veins," and remarked airily, "Well, try to live it down, old man, that's all." Very indignant. Thought he was everybody, that young feller. Andhehad a Swedish mother! And said he envied the Englishman his colossalego, whatever that might be. A smart-aleck, they would call him in America.
He walked down the road with Mr. Spokesly, who was going to take the car along and then go aboard. He said:
"I'll be on board the ship to-morrow morning early. Anything you want, let me know and I'll have it sent over in the afternoon before you sail. This will be a good trip for you, and when you come back, by that time I'll have a good job for you."
Mr. Spokesly decided to take a carriage. As he bowled along he turned over in his mind the chances of seeing Evanthia Solaris again. He had no faith in her ability to make an effectual departure from Saloniki. Yet he would not have taken a heavy wager against it. She had an air of having something in reserve. He smiled as he thought what an education such a woman was. How she kept one continually on the stretch matching her moods, her whims, her sudden flashes of savage anger and glowing softness. And he thought of the immediate future, moving through dangerous seas with her depending upon him. If only she could do it! This was a dream, surely. He laughed. The least introspective of men, he sometimes held inarticulate conversations. He had often imagined himself the arbiter of some beautiful woman's fate, some fine piece of goods. There was nothing wicked in this, simply a desire for romance. He was a twentieth-century Englishman in the grand transition period between Victorianism and Victory, when we still held the conventional notions of chivalry and its rewards. It should not be forgotten that when a knight actually did win a fair lady he had some voice in her disposal; and it was a vestige of this instinct which appeared in Mr. Spokesly as speculations concerning Evanthia's future.
He decided to go in and look up his elderly friend in the Olympos. He found him standing in the entrance, holding a black, silver-headed cane to his mouth and whistling very softly.
"Why, here you are! Youarea stranger! What do you say if we have a couple? Not here. I know a place a little way along. How have you been doing now?"
Mr. Spokesly said he had been busy on a new job and hadn't had much time for going out.
"On that little Greek boat, isn't it? I must say you've got a great old cock for a commander."
"What do you know about him?"
"Oh, I just happen to know the story and it may not be true after all. But they do say he had a Chink wife and practically lived like a Chink up-river. And you know what that means for an Englishman. However, that's neither here nor there. This is the place."
He pushed open a couple of swing doors and they entered a large, barn-like room filled with tables and chairs. At the back a small stage was erected and beside it stood a piano. The flags of the Allies, wrongly drawn, and a portrait of Venizelos looking like a Presbyterian minister in shell-rim glasses, were the only decorations of the dirty walls. A number of men in uniform were lounging about, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The elderly lieutenant led the way to a table near the piano. Immediately a waiter, who looked like a New York gun-man, signalled to two women who were seated in different parts of the room, and went forward to take the order. This was for beer, and while they drank, one of the women, a fat middle-aged person without neck or ankles, after the manner of middle-aged Greek women, clambered on to the stage. The other, a girl with black spiral curls on each side of her face, curls like the springs on screen doors, and with a short skirt that showed quite abnormally thin legs, sat down at the piano and drove with an incredible lack of skill through the accompaniment of a song. It seemed to be a race between the two of them. The fat woman was already stepping down from the stage as she gabbled the final bars of her supposedly risky French song. An intoxicated ambulance driver hammered on the table with his glass and then roared with laughter. The two women came swiftly to the table and sat down by the lieutenant and Mr. Spokesly.
"This is my little friend," said the lieutenant, chucking the fat middle-aged creature under a number of chins. The sinister waiter appeared, swept away the beer-glasses, and stood poised for instant flight. The fat woman muttered something in reply to the lieutenant's request to name her poison and the waiter almost instantly produced two bottles of Greek champagne, a notable blend of bad cider and worse ginger-ale.
"Let me pay," suggested Mr. Spokesly, but his friend put up his hand, smiling.
"I always treat my little friend," he said, and patted her short, pointed fingers.
"Feefty francs," said the waiter, and his eyes glared into the lieutenant's wallet with almost insane ferocity.
Mr. Spokesly was glad he had not been permitted to pay for the two bottles with their shoddy tinfoil and lying labels. The eyes of the women never left the polished pigskin note-case while it was in sight. It was almost provocative of physical pain, the dreadful look on their faces in the presence of money. Their features were contorted to a set, silent snarl and their eyes had the black globular lustre of a rat's. The girl with the ringlets snuggled near Mr. Spokesly and began to project one of those appalling intimacies which are based on the insignificance of personality. To him, at that moment almost entirely dominated by a vivid and delicious character, the bizarre efforts of this unwashed paintedgamineto assume the pose of sweetheart was almost terrifying, and he avoided her rolling eyes and predatory claws with a sense of profound shame. His elderly friend, however, was thoroughly enjoying himself. He had reached that period of life, perhaps the best of all for a seafaring man, when he is happily married and comfortably situated, and he can now give his mind to those sentimental fancies which he had to pass up earlier in life owing to economic stress. A seaman's mind is an involved affair in which thoughts and emotions and desires are stowed entirely without reference to academic order. So the old lieutenant, who had had a son killed at Mons and who truly loved his wife, and who was looking forward to loving his grandchildren, was now having a little time off from his elderly duties, and enjoying the unaccustomed pleasure of being a bit of a dog. This was his little friend, this oleaginous vampire who received a percentage of the price of the drinks ordered and all she could wheedle out of drunken customers. There is nothing incomprehensible in this. One is permitted to marvel at these modern Circes, however, who turn men into swine by transforming themselves.
"If you don't mind," said Mr. Spokesly after trying the champagne, "I think I'll have some more beer."
His friend smiled happily and pinched the cheek of his little friend who was now on his knee with a fat arm over his shoulder.
"This is something like, eh!" A young man was playing the piano noisily.
"How's things at the office?" said Mr. Spokesly.
The old fellow chuckled.
"Oh, what do you think is the latest? My young lordship told me in future I was to run round and round the White Tower from nine to five. For the duration of the war, he says. What do you think of that? That's what we get for joining up. Serving our country. Why, it's a joke. What is it, dear?" He listened attentively to his little friend's whisper. "She wants to know if you are going to stand treat to your little friend," he said to Mr. Spokesly.
Mr. Spokesly's little friend, with her emaciated limbs, lemon-coloured French boots, and infuriating ringlets, was smiling in what was supposed to be irresistible coyness. The waiter was already sweeping away the bottle and glasses, which were full and which would be carefully decanted, re-bottled and served up to the old lieutenant the following evening.
"Oh, all right. But I can't stay long. I have to get aboard, you know."
"He can't go till you get there," argued his friend.
"Ah, but I've a special reason for wanting to be on board to-night."
"Well, here's luck to the voyage."
"Good luck," said the women, touching the edge of the glasses with their lips and setting them down again.
"Feefty francs," said the waiter, glaring over a black moustache at the fistful of money Mr. Spokesly drew from a trouser pocket.
The pianist crashed out some tremendous chords. The old lieutenant's little friend whispered in his ear.
"What's that, dear? Oh! She wants to know if you'll stand the musician something, seeing you haven't been here before. It's usual."
Mr. Spokesly, without changing his expression, put down a ten-franc note extra.
"You give me a leetle tip?" said the waiter, watching the money going back into his victim's pocket. But he had postponed his own private piracy too long.
"I'll give you a bunt on the nose if you don't get away," muttered Mr. Spokesly. And he added to his friend: "I must go. May not see you again, eh?"
"Very likely not, very likely not. You see, I may be transferred to the Red Sea Patrol."
"Well, so long. Good luck."
He breathed more freely when he got outside. Sixty francs for a quart of carbonated bilge and a racket like nothing on earth.
He was mortified at seeing an Englishman posing as a fool like that, but he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had been that Englishman over and over again.
"Why do we do it?" he wondered as he was borne swiftly over the water by the launch. And the married men, he reflected, were always the worst.
"Where's your ship?" growled the petty officer, sidling along the engine house and taking one of Mr. Spokesly's cigarettes.
"Kalkis, little Greek boat just ahead," said Mr. Spokesly, slipping a couple of shillings into a waiting palm. "And look here, can you wait a second when I get aboard? My skipper wants to go ashore."
"Tell him to double up then."
Captain Rannie was standing on the grating at the head of the gangway, charged with a well-rehearsed monologue on the extreme lack of consideration experienced by some shipmasters. Mr. Spokesly ran up and cut him short.
"Hurry up, sir. Boat's waiting," and before he was aware of it Captain Rannie, with one of his shins barked in getting aboard, was halfway across the gulf.
"Now," said Mr. Spokesly to himself, looking towards the houses. "I wonder what's going to happen."
At first it seemed as if nothing would ever happen again. There were no electric lights on theKalkis, although she had a very fine dynamo in her engine-room, because one of her engineers in time past had cut away all the wiring and sold it. The donkey-boiler fire was banked and the donkey man gone ashore. She swung at anchor in absolute silence. The launch was half a mile away. Over the Vardar valley was a glare as of distant conflagrations, and along the front shore the sparkling entrances of the palaces of pleasure from which Mr. Spokesly had just come.
He went down and unlocked the door of his cabin. It was much cleaner than it had been for years, but smelled of new paint. He opened the scuttles, hooked back the door, and lit the brass gimbal-lamp. His tin trunk was stowed under the bed-place. Clean fresh canvas was on the floor and a rag mat by the bunk. A piece of lilac-tinted toilet soap, which is almost indispensable in an English guest room. A clean towel, which he had bought himself at Stein's. The next room was a bathroom, but it was not yet in an entirely satisfactory condition. It had been used to keep chickens in at some time and had also served as a store for the steward. And fresh water had to be carried from the pump, as all the plumbing had been cut away and sold.
Well, it would do. Mr. Spokesly opened the trunk and began to lay the contents in different drawers. He did it clumsily, as a matter of course, so that things of silk and cotton were crumpled and twisted, and he regarded his results dubiously. He decided he would be a failure as a lady's maid, and lighting a cigarette ascended to the deck. A fine thing, he reflected, if she never came and he had all those fal-lals and frills to carry about the ocean!
There seemed to be no one on board. And it suddenly occurred to him that this might be an actual fact. He looked into the galley and found no one there. He walked forward to the bridge-deck rail and blew his whistle. Presently up from below, and framed in the doorway of the scuttle, appeared an alarming phenomenon. Its hair stood in conflicting directions, a large moustache cut across between two round black eyes and a red mouth full of yellow teeth, one cheek was covered thickly with lather, and the other, already shaved, was smeared with blood.
"What's the matter?" said the bosun.
"Where's the watchman?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
"He's down here talking to me."
"What are you doing, shaving?"
"Of course I am. What did you think I was doing? Cutting my throat?"
"Looks damn like it," muttered Mr. Spokesly, and sauntered away aft to look at the shore. The indignant apparition in the forecastle scuttle gradually sank from view like the phantoms in old-fashioned grand opera, and was replaced by a lumbering creature in a blue jersey, with curling blond hair, and carrying a bucket of soap-suds. Mr. Spokesly heard him, presently, banging about in the galley.
There was a seat aft near the hand-steering gear, one of those old-fashioned affairs with curiously moulded cast-iron ends and elaborate teak slats, and he sat down there with the telescope to his eye watching the dark mass of trees and roofs where Mr. Dainopoulos lived. Except for a street lamp shining among the trees and an occasional blue spit from a trolley-car, he could discern nothing. Even the room where Mrs. Dainopoulos usually lay was not lighted. It was just about this time that Mr. Spokesly reached the lowest point of his confidence. The magnetism of Evanthia's personality, a magnetism which made him feel, in her presence, that she was capable of achieving anything she desired, and which is sometimes confused with the faculty of command, was wearing away in the chill, dark emptiness of the night. There was a quality of sharp and impersonal skepticism in the air and in those glittering shore-lights beyond the black and polished surface of the Gulf. There was now no wind; the evening current and breeze had faded away, and both the water and the air were hanging motionless until the early morning, when they would set eastward again, to bring the ships' bows pointing towards the shore. And it was slack water in the minds of men floating on that dark and sinister harbour. There were other men sitting and looking towards the shore, men whose nerves had been worn raw by the sheer immensity of the mechanism in which they were entangled. They were the last unconsidered acolytes in a hierarchy of hopeless men. They had no news to cheer them, for the ships sank a thousand miles away. They endured because they were men, and the noisy lies that came to them over the aërials only made them look sour. Great journalists in London, their eyes almost popping from their heads at the state of things on the sea and at the Front, thumped the merchant mariner on the back in bluff and hearty editorials, calling him a glorious shell-back and earning his silent contempt. The stark emphasis placed upon his illiteracy and uncouthness did more harm than good. The great journalists accepted the Navy and the Army on equal footing, but they felt it necessary to placate the seaman with patronage. They were too indolent to find out what manner of men they were who were going to sea. And while the politicians fumbled, and the Navy and Army squabbled with each other and with their allies, and the organized sentiment of the world grew hysterical about Tommy and Jack, the seaman went on being blown up at sea or rotting at anchor. And of the two the former was invariably preferred. Mr. Spokesly, setting down the telescope to light another cigarette, was following this train of thought, and he was surprised to come on the conviction that an active enemy who tries to kill you can be more welcome and estimable than a government without either heart or brains who leaves you to sink in despair. Indeed, he began to carry on a little train of thought of his own, this habit having had more chance to grow since the London School of Mnemonics had gone to the bottom with theTanganyikaand a good many other things. He said to himself: that's it. It isn't the work or the danger, it's the monotony and feeling nobody gives a damn. Look at me. Now I'm on my own, so to speak, gone out and started something myself, I feel twice as chipper as I did when I was on that darnedTanganyikaand they didn't seem to know where to send her or what to do with her when she got there. I wonder how many ships we got, sailing about like her, and gettin' sunk, and nobody any better off. They say there's ships carryin' sand to Egypt and lumber to Russia. That's where it is. You trust a man to boss the job and he can make a million for himself if he likes; you don't mind. But if he muffs it, you want to kill him even if he is a lord or a politician. I must say we got a bunch of beauties on the job now. Good Lord!
It might be imagined that having found so fertile and refreshing a theme, Mr. Spokesly would have abandoned everything else to pursue it to the exceedingly bitter end. But he no longer felt that cankering animosity towards authority. He saw that authority can be made exceedingly profitable to those who display dexterity and resilience in dealing with it. Mr. Spokesly had associated long enough with Mr. Dainopoulos, for example, to conceive a genuine admiration for that gentleman's astute use of his position in the midst of diverse and conflicting authorities. Mr. Dainopoulos might be said to be loaning the Government the tackle to pull down the branches laden with fruit, and then charging a high price for the privilege of putting that fruit into his own pocket. Even the shipowners of England could teach him nothing about profits. Indeed, later on, when the war was over, and he himself was expeditiously disposing of his interests in ships, for he had known wars before and the slumps that followed them, it was to those same shipowners that he sold some of his most deplorable wrecks at the top of the market, rather mystified at their blind eagerness to close with him at any price. He was heard to say, on the Bourse at Alexandria, on that always cool loggia where so many deals are consummated over coffee andgranita, "This will not last. You take my advice. Sell that ship of yours to the English." And his dark-skinned companion, who had been doing very well in the tobacco trade from the Piræus and Saloniki, would very likely sell, at a price that made him wonder if the English had discovered a river of money somewhere. And both of them would continue to sit there, fezzed and frock-coated, playing with their rosaries, and discussing cautiously the outlook for Nilotic securities in the event of the English withdrawing....
But that came later. Mr. Spokesly would have been even more impressed if he had been aware of the ultimate destination of the freight he had been stowing so industriously into theKalkis, or of the total emoluments accruing to Mr. Dainopoulos from that freight from first to last. The old adage about turning your money over was not often so admirably illustrated. Archy's absurd speculations and traffic in villainous drugs seemed microscopic compared with the profits to be made by a good business man. Which is perhaps one of the most embarrassing criticisms of war in the modern sense, that it places a formidable premium upon the sutlers and usurers, so that they now sit in high places, while the youths of invincible courage are either rotting under wooden crosses in France or looking for shabby situations across the sea. But Mr. Spokesly, sitting there with his telescope, which revealed nothing, was not criticizing the business men. He was admiring them, and wishing the military and political and naval men could be half as clever at their game as the business man was at his. It was a confusing and kaleidoscopic problem, this of money. As soon as you got a lot of it, he reflected, the value of it went down until you had only a little and then the value of it went a little lower. And then, when you were occupied in some way which prevented your making very much, the value crept slowly up again. That is, unless you were a business man, when of course you turned your money over and scored both ways.
Keeping company with these general fancies in Mr. Spokesly's mind was a speculation concerning his own part in Evanthia's adventure. He looked at his watch. Ten o'clock. By looking hard through the telescope he could make out a faint radiance from the upper window of the Dainopoulos house. No doubt it was closed and they were sitting there as usual with one of the Malleotis family to keep them company. Then what was he supposed to do? In the novels he had read, the hero with projecting jaw and remarkable accuracy with firearms was never in any doubt about what he was to do.
It was at this moment that he thought of the bosun.
He liked that person more than he would have admitted. Invariably toiling at something in his immense canvas apron, the bosun's globular eyes were charged with an expression of patient amazement at a troublesome world. If Diogenes, who lived in these parts, had revisited his ancient haunts and encountered Joseph Plouff, he would have made the acquaintance of a peculiar type of honest man. The bosun was honest, but he had been born without the divine gift of a bushel to conceal the blaze of his probity. But in spite of his virtue Mr. Spokesly found him congenial. In the midst of the little community of seamen, he was the only one who spoke even passable English. He was the man-of-all-work, bosun, carpenter, lamp-trimmer, winchman, storekeeper, and sometimes acting second mate. For the engineer, with his Egyptian donkeyman and two Maltee firemen, Plouff and his Scandinavian sailors had a fierce contempt. For "the captinne," Plouff entertained an amusing reverence, as though Captain Rannie's mastery of monologue appealed to the voluble creature. In his own heart, however, there was neither bitterness nor that despair of perfection which made Captain Rannie so uncomfortable a neighbour. In his own view Plouff was an ideal bosun who was continually retrieving his employers from disaster, but he attributed this to the fortunate fact that "he had his eyes about him at the time" rather than to the hopeless incompetence of the rest of the world. And it was characteristic of the captain that he should regard Plouff with intense dislike. Plouff therefore had avoided him adroitly and sought comfort from the mate. Spiteri was not able to appreciate the bosun. When Plouff explained how he had found several bolts of canvas secreted in the chain locker, Spiteri was not impressed because he had put them there himself, intending later to take them ashore and sell them. Also Plouff was eternally wanting to chip something, which did not suit Spiteri at all. If you once began chipping the rust and scale on theKalkis, you might carry something away and what good would that do you? And Plouff, in his big apron, would be told to go to Halifax, which infuriated him, for he thought Halifax, Nova Scotia, was meant, and he had some mysterious feud with Nova-Scotiamen generally.
So Mr. Spokesly found him congenial, a garrulous monster of unintelligent probity, and it occurred to him suddenly to enlist the bosun in this enterprise. Apparently he was going ashore. Mr. Spokesly wondered how he was going to manage it. He blew his whistle, and the bosun, who had his head in the galley door talking to the watchman, withdrew it and called out:
"What's the matter?"
"Come here, Bos', I want you."
Plouff knew by the sound of the word "Bos'" that a friendly conversation was contemplated and he went aft stroking his pomatumed moustache and licking his chops in anticipation, for he loved to talk to his superiors.
"How are you going ashore?"
"Me?" said the bosun, amazed. "In a boat, of course. How'd you think I was goin'? In a flyin' machine?"
"Well, where's the boat?"
"Why, down there. Here's the painter," said Plouff, laying his hand on it, very much bewildered.
"But I thought they didn't let you use the ship's boats after sundown."
"Yes, they got all them rules, but there's always easy ways," said Plouff with gentle scorn.
"Where do you land?"
"Why, right here," and Plouff pointed to where Mr. Spokesly had been looking with the telescope.
"Is that so? But I've seen no jetty."
"No, there's no jetty. It runs alongside of the garden, you see, and there's big doors where the old feller used to keep his boat."
"What old feller?"
"Why, do you mean to say you don't know? I thought everybody knew that place."
"Well, go on. Spit it out.Idon't know all the joints in this town."
"Neither do I, but I know a good many of 'em. Well, you see that house with the corner like a turnip, Turkey style? That's the house. It used to belong to an old guy who lives way over there," and Joseph Plouff waved his arm eastward towards Chalcidice. "Big farm for tobacco he got. Old Turk he is, I s'pose. Well, he has this house here and he had it built with a boat-house so the boat can go right in and out o' sight. And there wasn't any other way in. He comes down the mountain, gets into his boat, and sails over to his house when he wants to have good time. And when the house was lit up all the gels in the town gets into their glad rags an' goes off in boats to have some fun. They rows up to the house, and the old feller sittin' on his balcony gives 'em a look-over and then he gives the word to let 'em in. Well, he must ha' made a mistake, same as we all do at times, for one night he had a row with one o' these gels an' she went for him. I reckon he was tryin' to get her to go home quietly and she thought he was tryin' to push her into the water instead of into her boat. So what does she do but poke his eyes out. You have to watch that with the gels here," said Plouff sagely, looking at Mr. Spokesly. "It's easy to do and they got the way of it. You push hard here," and he put his forefinger against the outer side of his eye-ball, "and the eye pops out like a cork out of a bottle. That was a fine mix-up, I guess. They tied her head to her feet and shoved her into the water, and then they had to get the old feller back to his farm over there. Fine mix-up there, too, I expect, what with his wives fightin' to get at him and him not bein' able to see which way to run. Now he lives out there, blind and rollin' in money since the war, and his wives keep him at home all the time. And the house was sold. You can get a drink there now. I was there last night. American bar with Greek drinks."
"And are you goin' there to-night?"
"Sure I am. What did you think I was shavin' for?"
"Well, listen to me, Bos'. I wish I'd known it was as easy as that. You see I've got a friend who wants to make the trip with us, but we can't get a passport."
"Why can't he come back with me?"
"It's a young lady, Bos'."
The bosun started back as though in horror at these words.
"Is that the way the wind blows?" said he. "Well, this is what you'd better do...."
"Can we get a boat at that place?"
"We might, easy enough. She can come in by the garden and there's a boat in the old boat-house, if she had any help. Where's she goin' to sleep?"
"In my cabin."
"And all that work I done down there for a stranger?"
"No, you done it for me. And I done it for this lady friend o' mine. She's goin' to meet her sweetheart in Athens, you understand."
The bosun, whose eyes had gradually assumed an expression of having been poked out by the method he had spoken of, and replaced by an unskilful oculist, now gave an enormous smirk and drew himself into an attitude of extreme propriety.
"Oh-ho! But the captinne...."
"Never mind him just now. I have a reason for thinking he won't mind. In fact, I believe he knows all about it but pretends he don't, to save himself trouble. Skippers do that, you know, Bos'."
"You bet they do!" said Joseph Plouff with immense conviction. "And then come back at you if things go wrong. I been with hundreds o' skippers and they was all the same."
This of course was a preposterous misstatement and of no significance whatever, a common characteristic of people who are both voluble and irresponsible. Mr. Spokesly let it pass. The riding-light threw the bosun's features into strange contortions as he stood with his round muscular limbs wide apart and his arms, tattooed like the legs of a Polynesian queen, crossed on the bosom of his blue-and-white check shirt.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" asked the chief officer calmly. "You talk a hell of a lot, Bos', but you haven't said much yet."
"Because you ain't give me a chance. You ask me all about that American bar where there ain't any American drinks and I had to tell you, didn't I? And I was goin' to sugges' something, only you wouldn't listen."
"What?"
"Go yourself. Come with me. You can get out into the street by the garden. It used to be a movin' picture place, but they stopped it because of the lights. And it's mostly French sailors go there. American bar, see? What thematelotscallhig' lif'. I speak French, so I go there. Now you come along and see what we can do."
"And leave the ship?"
"The ship won't run away, I can promise you that. And the watchman's there in the galley, ain't he? I'll get my coat."
"And how do I know when she'll come, supposing she does come to this place you're talking about?"
"You want me to tell you that!" said the bosun in a faint voice, lifting his broad features to the heavens in protest. "I thought you knew," he added, looking down again at Mr. Spokesly.
"Sometime before daylight," muttered that gentleman, getting up. "I'll go with you, but mind, you got to stand by to row me back whenever I want you. Understand? No going off with yourmatelots. Nice thing, if anything should happen and me out o' the ship."
"All right, all right. You don't need to get sore with your own bosun," said Plouff. "I can tell you, you might have a worse one. Here's me, sits all the evening, playin' rummy and one eye on the ship from that American bar, and all you can do's get sore. What do you think I am, a bum? If it hadn't been for me havin' my eyes about me in Port Said, them A-rabs would ha' stove her in against the next ship twenty time. Me sittin' up half the night makin' fenders. Oh, yes!"
"Come on then. You're as bad as the Old Man when it comes to chewing the rag. Can you talk French like that?"
"As good as English. Faster. More of it. I know more French words than English."
"Lord help us." Mr. Spokesly poked the tiller-bar into the rudder and hung the latter over the stern of the boat, which Plouff had been hauling along to the gangway. "Now then. Got a lantern? Don't light it. Bear away."
Instructed by Plouff, Mr. Spokesly steered due east away from the ship and concealed by it from the eyes on watch on the warships. Then after half a mile he turned sharply about and Plouff slowed down until the boat just moved through the water and they were quite lost in the intense darkness. Plouff said:
"Now we got nothing to be scared of except searchlights. But it's only Wednesday night they work 'em."
"Why do you get only Frenchmen at this place?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
"Because it's near their hospital and rest-camp. The English are all down by the Bersina Gardens. So the Frenchies go to talk to the poilus. French sailors don't have much truck with English sailors, you can bet."
"Well, you wouldn't if you couldn't talk to them either," retorted Mr. Spokesly. "Now where do we go in?"
"Ship the rudder," said the bosun. "I'll fetch round myself."
They were now in the profound shadows of a short back-water formed by the corner of the oldcafé-chantantand cinema garden which had been fashioned out of the romantic dwelling whose earlier history Plouff had recounted with such relish. The big doors of the water entrance had been removed and the shed itself partly boarded over. There was no one in sight, and only a small tin lamp on the wall, but there was an air of recent occupancy, of human proximity, of frequent appearances, about the place. A boat was thrust half under the planks, and the door at the back had a black patch where many hands had polished it in passing through. Beneath the door shone a crack of bright light. Plouff, shipping his oars, brought up softly alongside the other boat, and stepped ashore across the thwarts with the painter in his hand.
"Here we are," he chuckled. "Snug as a bug in a rug. Bring her in under. Make fast."
The door was opened about six inches and a face with an exceedingly drooping moustache peered out from beneath the slovenly looking cap of a French petty officer of marine.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" he demanded.
"Comment ça va, mon vieux!" retorted Plouff, advancing.
"Mon lieutenant—bon garçon. Oh-h, mon vieux, il faut que je vous dis que nous avons une grande affaire. Où est la belle Antigone?"
"Chez elle," muttered the other. "Entrez. Bon soir, Monsieur Lieutenant."
Mr. Spokesly walked through into a lofty hallway. A door on the left led into the darkness of the garden, another on the right opened upon a large chamber, dimly lighted and bounded by a lattice-work terrace, and in front ascended one of those imposing staircases which the Latin inserts into the most insignificant edifices. The room on the right was simply a rough-and-ready café, with a small bar in the corner set up in an unfurnished residence. Upstairs was a select gambling hall for officers only. And practically French officers only. There was only one reason why English officers, for example, did not visit this place. They did not know of its existence. It was a club. Madame Antigone was the caretaker who also managed the canteen on the ground floor, and encouraged, by her formidable discretion, the maintenance of a small corner of France in an alien land. Not the France of popular fancy withcocottesandcancandancing and much foolishabandon, but the France of the Cercle and the Casino, sober-minded devotees of roulette and connoisseurs of sound liquor.
Some of the latter was immediately forthcoming. Even Mr. Spokesly, whose conception of a drink was that of most English and Americans—a decoction of no ascertainable flavour and with the kick of a vicious horse—even he appreciated to a small degree the body and generous vintage of the wine brought to their table by a soldier in hospital dress. He looked round as he drank. There were men of all ranks of the land and sea forces, clean-shaven and boyish, ferociously moustached and obscured by short, truculent beards. They played dominoes or cards, smoked and sipped, or conversed with the grave gestures which are the heritage of a thousand emotional years. They were not demonstrative. Indeed, the French Navy is so undemonstrative one might imagine it recruited entirely from the Englishmen of modern fiction. There is no doubt that the nature of their profession has left its mark upon them. For them is no vision of conquest or gigantic death-grapple with a modern foe, but rather the careful guarding of a remote and insalubrious colonial empire. It has made them attentive to fussy details, faithful to fantastic conceptions of honour, partial to pensioned ease and married life if one escapes the fevers of Cochin China and Algeria. Among them Plouff was accepted as a weird variant of undeniable home stock, a creature who led a double life as Englishman and Frenchman,un monstre, a grotesque emblem of the greatEntente. They stood about him as he sat, his head far back on his shoulders, his large red mouth open beneath the great moustache, telling them the story of his lieutenant's incredible gallantry. They listened in silence, glancing deferentially towards Mr. Spokesly from time to time, as though he were acquiring a singular and heroic virtue in their estimation for his audacity in fumbling with a woman's destiny. But Mr. Spokesly himself felt neither heroic nor audacious. He was uneasy. He interrupted the eloquence of his bosun as soon as he had finished his drink. He had a picture in his mind of Evanthia waiting somewhere, waiting for him with her amber eyes smouldering and ready to break out into a torrent of reproaches for his sluggish obedience. She had achieved that ascendancy over him. He was conscious of a species of mingled terror and delight in her personality. He rose.