Command Part 38

You can tell your Madama if you like."

Mr. Spokesly, unaware of this conversation, made his way out, and was on the point of crossing the quay by the custom house when Mr. Ca.s.sar, who was drinking a gla.s.s of syrup at the cafe opposite, ran over and accosted him.

"Look here----" began Mr. Spokesly.

"I know," interrupted the engineer. "I've heard something else. Don't go over there now. I want to tell you this. Very important, Captain. Will you have a drink?"

"Coffee," said Mr. Spokesly, sitting at a table in front of a small cafe. "What is it?"

"I was working on the boat this afternoon, after you had been there,"

said Mr. Ca.s.sar, "and I got that silencer pretty good now, and some officers come up and say, this boat very good, we will want it. They make inspection of harbour, you understand. I say, all right, what time?

They say to-morrow. The General he go round and make inspection. Want all three motor boats. I say all right. But I was waiting to see you. If I miss you I was going out to find you at your house. You understand?"

Mr. Spokesly nodded. He understood perfectly well. He reflected upon the wisdom of staying away from the Consulate after saying he would go back.

He decided it would be better to return.

"You will have to get off," said Mr. Ca.s.sar in a matter-of-fact tone as he looked away towards the mountains. "Don't you think so, Captain?"

"Plenty of time," Mr. Spokesly muttered, "before daylight. Are you sure you are all right? Got everything?"

"Yes, everything," said Mr. Ca.s.sar positively.

"Right," said his commander. "Now you tell the customs guard I return to Bairakli at midnight. You go with me to bring the boat back as they want it in the morning. And if I don't come before one o'clock, you go alone.

I shall be going by road. Some of them asked me to go with them. You go alone and wait for me at the bath-house jetty. Can you remember that?"

"Easy," said Mr. Ca.s.sar. "It is ten o'clock now."

"I'll go back," said Mr. Spokesly.

The evening was just beginning along the front as he pa.s.sed once again through the great Pa.s.sage beneath the hotel. There was no young Jew watching him now. That highly strung and bewildered creature was hurrying through the lower town on his way to Bairakli, bearing authentic news for his mistress. He had an uneasy suspicion that the person described by his friend in the hotel would not prove so good a friend as Mr. Spokesly. But he hurried on past the little Turkish shops, his fez on the back of his head, the lamplight reflected on the bony ridge of the large glistening nose that rose up between his scared pale eyes and sallow cheeks. All along the lonely road beyond the railway station he tripped and stumbled, muttering to himself: "Oh, Madama, he is come, he is come! I bring great news. He is come!" Sometimes he clasped his hands in an ecstasy of emotion and would almost fall into some unnoticed slough or channel by the way. All the griefs of the poor seemed to concentrate themselves upon him as he moaned and staggered.

"Father of Israel, what shall I do if she abandon me? There is no food for a fatherless boy here. Oh, Madama!"

But when at length he scrambled up to the house on the hillside and saw his mistress and Esther Jokanian sitting in the window overlooking the sea, he took heart again. When Evanthia, leaning out in a loose robe that showed transparent against the lamp behind her, called, "Who is there?" he replied that it was her faithful servant with news. She came down like a swiftly moving phantom and unlocked the gate, pulling it wide with her characteristic energy and courage.

"Speak!" she said in a thrilling, dramatic whisper, all her soul responding to the moment. The youth held out his hand palm upward while he leaned his head against the rough wall.

"Oh, Madama, he is come," he replied in a low tone, as though he sensed the formidable importance of his words in their lives. She stood staring at him for a second and then, pulling him in, she closed the gate with a tremendous clang that jarred the very foundation of his reason. It was at times like these that this young man, born into a chaotic world of alien beings intent upon inexplicable courses of action, inspired by unknown and possibly sinister ideals, was upon the point of dashing his head with maniac energy against those heavy ancient stones which, by comparison, seemed less foreign to his distracted soul.

"Come," she said with a mysterious smile. "Your fortune is made. You must go back with a message."

"Oh, Madama!" he wailed.

She dragged him up the steps leading to the rooms above.

"Endlich!" she cried to Esther, who sat by the window, chin on hand, and muttering in her husky man's voice. "He is here. I must have been born with good fortune after all."

"You are throwing away the greatest chance in your life," growled Esther without looking at her. The young man gave a stifled yelp and choked, holding his arms out as though in supplication. They looked at him, but he could not proceed. His courage failed as his exacerbated imagination pictured the tigerish glare in Evanthia's eyes if he should tell her about the last one that was left at Kara-hissar. He put a hand to his throat and mumbled: "The message, Madama? It is late."

"You do not understand," said Evanthia crossly to her friend. "What do you think I am made of? Do you think I can go on for ever like this, pretending love? Men! I use them, my friend. The lover of my heart is here, and you ask me to go out on that cursed water to a country where it is dark wet fog all the time. What should I do there? My G.o.d, are you mad? Now I shall go to Europe, and for once I shall live. Ah! The message! Here!" She dragged a blank page from a yellow paper-covered volume lying on a cedar-wood console and hunted for a pencil. With a fragment of black crayon she began to scrawl her name in staggering capitals. "So!" she muttered. "Now I shall put the words _liebe dich_.

Sacre! When I go to Europe I will learn this writing--or have a secretary. There! It is enough for my dear lunatic. Take it!" She folded it and gave it to the youth who stood by the door dejectedly. "Ask for the Herr Leutnant Lietherthal. Go down and eat first." She gave him a pat on the shoulder that seemed to put a fresh stream of life into him, and he disappeared.

"Take care, Esther, do not tell him a word of this. Or thy husband either. He might speak in forgetfulness."

"It is nothing to me," muttered Esther. "I like him, that is all. And fidelity is best."

"Fidelity!" said Evanthia slowly. "And is not this fidelity? Have I not followed the lover of my heart across the world? If the father of thy boy came up here and knocked at the gat.... You talk! I am not a white-faced Frank girl to be a slave of an Englishman! He gives me all his money here, yes. But in his England, when I am shut up in the fog and rain, how much will I get, _hein_?" her voice rose to a shout, a brazen clangour of the throat, and her hand shot out before her, clenched, as though she were about to hurl thunderbolts.

"Very well," a.s.sented Esther in a low tone, "but you don't know if the lover of your heart wants you any more. The lovers of the heart are funny fish," she added grimly.

"Prrtt! You are right," said Evanthia in an ordinary tone. "Did I say I was going away to-night, stupid?"

"I see the light of the boat," said Esther. "Perhaps my husband is with him. I must go back to my house."

"No! Stay here a little." Evanthia laid hold of her. "To-night I must have someone with me. I am shaken in my mind. I shall want to shriek.

Stay."

"It is at the jetty," said Esther soberly. She looked out into a dense darkness, and in the lower distance she could see a tiny light where the launch had run alongside the old bath-house jetty. And then the light went out.

They waited in silence, smoking cigarettes, until their quick ears caught the sound of footsteps on the hillside. And then the grind of a key in the great lock of the gate.

As Mr. Spokesly came into the room he barely sensed the tension of the atmosphere. He broke breathlessly into his news at once.

"Quick!" he said in a low tone. "We must go to-night, dear. After to-night I may not have any boat. It is all ready. Come now. We have time to get out of sight of land before daylight."

"To-night!" exclaimed Evanthia, clutching her breast, and thinking rapidly. "Impossible."

"It will be impossible any other night," he retorted gently. "We _must_ go."

Evanthia backed away, thinking clearly, concisely, and skilfully behind her astonishment. He turned to Esther.

"You tell her," he said. "We must go. It is our last chance. It was lucky I heard about it. They are going to fortify the Gulf. Go and get ready, dear. Bring me a blanket and I'll carry it down, and some bread and meat. Enough for a day, anyhow."

"Where is my 'usband'?" demanded Esther.

"He's coming by the road. He's got some friends with him, from the hotel. You mustn't mind them being a bit elevated. Plenty of wine to-night. They will be here soon, I expect. I want to get down and away before they arrive."

Evanthia, folding a blanket in the bedroom, stood perfectly still. She could hear her own pulses thumping, and she put her hand to her throat.

She felt as though her heart would burst if she did not gain control of herself. She stood perfectly still thinking, her mind darting this way and that, as a trapped animal tests the resistance of the trap in every direction. For a moment she thought of killing him as they went down to the boat. She was strong: she felt she could do it. Under the shoulder-blades and in the throat. No, she must wait. Only as a last resource, that. She folded up the blanket and walked back into the room to give him the food.

He stood for a moment with the blanket and loaves of bread in his arms, unable to utter what he felt for her sacrifice for him. He could only say stumblingly:

"I sha'n't forget this. I know that much," and hurried away with his burden.

Esther sprang up from her seat by the window. Her misfortunes had not made her hard. She saw a light in Evanthia's amber eyes as she made her preparations, a light that frightened her.

"n.o.body will ever be able to do anything with you," she muttered. "I must go home to get supper for my husband. You got a good man, and you throw him away like so much rubbish. You got no sense."

"I go!" said Evanthia, pausing with her hands full of things she was stuffing into a bag. "Do I not go?"