Command Part 21

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! You _are_ a 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 c.o.c.k 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 c.h.i.n.k wife and practically lived like a c.h.i.n.k 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 sh.e.l.l-rim gla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.s 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-gla.s.ses, 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 l.u.s.tre 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 painted _gamine_ to a.s.sume 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 pa.s.s 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 gla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.ses 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 ash.o.r.e."

"Tell him to double up then."

Captain Rannie was standing on the grating at the head of the gangway, charged with a well-rehea.r.s.ed 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."

CHAPTER XII