Command Part 19

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 ash.o.r.e." Brief, curt, attentive. That, he held, was the thing. To dwell apart, within a s.h.i.+ning envelope of secular discipline, unquestioned, unhampered, and unloved--that in Captain Rannie's mind was the priceless privilege of command.

CHAPTER XI

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 G.o.ds, 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. n.o.body 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 ch.o.r.es 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 the _Kalkis_ swinging 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt said, made you forget; and she never took any notice at all of the advertis.e.m.e.nt, 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 Cite 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 appet.i.te 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 the _Kalkis_ before she sailed, on some pretense, and she was going to the Piraeus in her, whence she could get to Athens in a brisk walk if necessary, and when she got there G.o.d 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 the _Kalkis_ going to Piraeus. It was conjecture, but Evanthia wanted to believe it. She had never been in a s.h.i.+p, and she could have no conception of the myriad changes of fortune which might befall a s.h.i.+p in a few weeks. She might lie for months in Phyros. With Evanthia, however, this carried no weight. G.o.d would take care of her. It was rather disconcerting to reflect that G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 glorified _Jardin de la Tour Blanche_, where money grew upon trees or flowered on boudoir-mantels, and where superb troops in s.h.i.+ning helmets and cuira.s.ses 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 cras.h.i.+ng southward into Saloniki in the war of 1912 and later fought among themselves and came cras.h.i.+ng back again, pa.s.sing 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 and _bijouterie_. 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 h.e.l.l for her, had plenty of money, although not long before he had had to jump into the water and swim to the sh.o.r.e with only his s.h.i.+rt 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 the _Kalkis_ with 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 a.s.sumed that she was a _demi-mondaine_ and 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 ma.s.ses of troops marched by and presented arms. It was fascinating but perplexing, this tumultuous, s.h.i.+ning, 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.

_Demokracy_ made 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 a.s.sailed her as she lay on the rug stroking her friend's hand.

"This Englishman, is he faithful, _honnete_?"

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 pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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, _fiance_, 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, "_you_ can't go to Athens just now, can you?"

"The Englishman will get me a pa.s.sport," 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 bra.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 pa.s.sport.

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 pa.s.sport. To her a pa.s.sport 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 pa.s.sport? 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 the _Kalkis_ s.h.i.+p-shape and Bristol fas.h.i.+on he sometimes wondered whether she had not taken him literally when he had said he would go to h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sport. 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 s.h.i.+p to the Government, and so did not want to embarra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p go away?" she asked hurriedly.

"To-morrow," he muttered, remembering Jack Harrowby's indiscretion.

"To-morrow, but you mustn't tell anybody."