Command Part 20

"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 sh.o.r.e 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 const.i.tuted 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. His _metier_, 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 the _Kalkis_. 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," a.s.sented Mr. Dainopoulos.

"I ought to tell you I tried to get a pa.s.sport 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 Piraeus?"

"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 pa.s.sport now for Mrs. Dainopoulos. No! How can I get one for a girl who n.o.body 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 d.u.c.h.esses 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 n.o.body."

"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, but _he_ ain't. He was a.s.sistant 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 anaesthetic, 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 att.i.tude 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. And _he_ had a Swedish mother! And said he envied the Englishman his colossal _ego_, 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.