William McFee

“ Spokesly was not thinking of the little business just then. He found himself suddenly confronting the conviction in his mind that his Ada had been little more than a shining reflector of his own image. Ada, in beleaguered England, seemed very far away and her personality lost whatever distinction and magnetism it may have had while he was with her. He saw with perfect clarity a new truth beyond that first one—that Mrs. Dainopoulos had been aware of all this while she had plied her gentle smiling questions. Had she meant anything, then? How could one plumb the mind of a woman? ”

“ Mr. Spokesly said. "Starboard. Easy does it. That's the style. Well, do you believe what I say now, Captain?"
"I'll report you—I'll have you arrested—I'll use my power——" he stuttered, stopping short by the binnacle and bending double in the impotence of his anger. "Remember, I can tell things about you," he added, pointing his finger at the mate, as though he were actually indicating a visible mark of guilt.
"Shut up," said Mr. Spokesly, staring hard through the telescope. "Hold her on that now, Quartermaster, till I give the word. There will be enough light soon." ”

“ And then—perhaps it was the backward glance he took as he stood at the upper end of the noisy, dirty little Place de la Liberté and saw the sunlight dancing on the green-black water and on the polished brass funnels of the launches; perhaps it was the glimpse he caught of the far peaks of Thessaly that gave him an uplifting of the heart. His mood changed. He saw the thing suddenly not as a grievance but as an adventure, in which he would have to decide for himself. These naval people were only cogs in wheels. If they wanted him they could come for him. ”

“ Her amber-coloured eyes, under exquisitely distinct brows, were opaque with anger, and she held one hand out with the fingers dramatically clenched, as though about to release a thunderbolt of wrath. The gesture was as antique as it was involuntary. One heard drums muttering and the gathering of fierce Ægean winds as she came on, and leaning forward, flung out both hands in a passionate revelation of sorrow. Mr. Spokesly sat down again, embarrassed and fascinated. He could not take his eyes from her. She was something new in his experience; a woman with passion and the power to express it. ”

“ The early morning, charged with the undissipated emotions of the night, is a far more beautiful hour than the evening. To Evanthia, however, who had always dwelt amid scenes of extravagant natural beauty, this exquisite sunrise, viewed as it were in violet shadow, the invisible sun tingeing the snow of the distant peaks with delicate shell-pink and ivory-white, the vessels in the roadstead almost translucent pearl in the mist, the shore line a bar of solid black until it rose ominously in the sullen headland of Karaburun—all this was nothing. To Mr. Spokesly it was a great deal. ”

“ Spokesly, a cool and established person in authority in a far distant territory, would turn his thoughts back occasionally to the great period of his life, he would wonder how long it might have lasted had he not gone into the city that calm evening, had he never met that gay and irrepressible young man. There was no bitterness in his reflections. He saw, in that future time, how far removed from the firm shores of reality he and Evanthia were floating, his romantic exaltation supporting them both while she watched him with a suspicion of amazement in her eyes. ”

“ He loved the permanence of the type, the skins like yellow silk, the hair like polished ebony, the eyes, long and narrow, like black satin. He liked to have them on the ship, silent, incurious, efficient, devoid of ambition. He put the glasses in the little locker by the bridge-rail. There was no light to be seen.
He started towards the chart-room door and found himself confronted by his chief officer. He would have brushed past with his almost feminine petulance had not Mr. Spokesly once again seized his shoulder.
"She hasn't got steerage way," said the mate. ”

“ 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 was not aware, at that time, that no woman will ever admit she has bettered herself by marrying a given man. She must retain for ever that shining figure of him she might have loved, a sort of domestic knight-errant in golden armour, who keeps occasional vigils at her side while the weary actuality slumbers in gross oblivion. Mrs. Dainopoulos knew that Mr. Spokesly saw nothing of this. She knew him for what he was, a being entirely incapable of compassing the secrets of a woman's heart. ”

“ As far as he could see he was going back to Alexandria, back by devious ways to London, and Evanthia Solaris, with her amber eyes, her high-piled glossy black hair and swift, menacing movements, would be no more than an alluring memory. And as the anchor appeared and the windlass stopped heaving while the men hosed the mud from the flukes, Mr. Spokesly began to realize, with his new-found perception, that what he took to be confidence was only desire. He was imagining himself back there in Saloniki; a man without ties or obligations. ”

“ Spokesly knew perfectly well that these people did not consider him as one of themselves. Even amid the noise and chaffering of a Saloniki café, rubbing shoulders with the uniforms of French, Greek, Serbian, Russian, and Italian officers, these men of his own race, he knew, never forgot the abyss that separates the seafaring man from themselves, the social crevasse which even Armageddon was powerless to abolish. ”

“ A person who, strictly speaking, no longer existed. Mr. Marsh was fortunate in having his ideals and illusions preserved in the dry air of the Levant as in a hermetically sealed chamber. The type he spoke of was being very handsomely beaten in all directions and was being rescued from utter annihilation by a very different type—the mechanical engineer, who was no doubt preparing the world for a fresh advance upon its ultimate destruction. Mr. Spokesly, in a rich glow of exaltation, saw these vast and vague ideas parade in his mind as he listened abstractedly to the conversation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He felt the breast, held a shaving glass to the lips of the silent McGinnis, and realized that the Oriental who stood by the door, his dark face impassive and his gaze declined upon the floor, was perfectly right. As Mr. Spokesly raised the stiffened arms the kimono fell open, and he had another violent shock, for Mr. McGinnis had evidently been a patron of the art of tattooing in all its branches. His arms and torso formed a ghastly triptych of green and blue figures with red eyes. Contrasted with the pallor of death the dreadful designs took on the similitude of living forms. ”

“ Spokesly would sway a little as he walked forward to see how the work was going on in the fore-hold. The Tanganyika, having discharged most of her cargo, was now reloading a great deal of it in obedience to orders from certain invisible but omnipotent beings higher up. He would sway a little, and hold on to the hatch coaming, looking down upon the toilers below with an air of profound abstraction. Then he would move gently until he could raise his eyes and sweep a casual glance in the direction of the bridge. Sometimes he would see the Old Man's head as he strode to and fro. ”

“ Spokesly knew this man would never dream of sending one of his own caste to a third mate's job on a Persian Gulf coaster with the hot season coming on. He knew that he himself, being a merchant seaman, was regarded by all these brass-bound people as an inferior, a shell-back, a lob-scouser, and no dire need would ever make them accept him as one of themselves. ”

“ Spokesly had thrust a glass of wine and a tin box of biscuits upon the wash-stand and pulled the door shut. And she had got back into the bunk and lay munching, and smiling, and sometimes kissing the emerald ring on her finger, the ring which was sailing out once more into the darkness. And as the day wore on, she peeped out and saw the tug go away with its empty lighter, heard the ominous thutter and thump of a gasolene launch under her, and heard the arrival of strangers who entered the cabin overhead. ”

“ Indeed, many men achieve great deeds and die gloriously without ever having been conscious of the sacred force. But he knew it and felt it when he came near it, whatever cantankerous habits of grievance he may have cultivated. And it was necessary for him now to judge men for themselves. Imitations would not do. As though aware of the scrutiny and the motive, Captain Rannie proceeded with even more eloquence, and more like a ventriloquist's dummy than ever, to outline what in his opinion was the whole duty of an officer. ”

“ Mr. Spokesly bethought him of the gate over which he had come and he made his way back to see if it could be opened from within. It could, and he opened it. And then, just as he was preparing for a secret and stealthy departure, bracing his spirit for the adventure of an enlèvement, the door behind him opened and shut with some noise, and Evanthia Solaris, buttoning a glove, stood before him, a slender black phantom in the darkness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spokesly felt like a little social diversion.
"Busy?" he enquired, thrusting his curiously ill-balanced features into the port and smiling. Mr. Bates's smile was unfortunate. Without being in any way insincere, it gave one the illusion that it was fitted on over his real face. A long, sharp nose projecting straight out from a receding brow nestled in a pomatumed and waxed moustache, and his eyes, of an opaque hazel, became the glinting centres of scores of tiny radiating lines. ”

“ Dainopoulos who was leading the way across the street, his head bent and his damaged features set in a meditative scowl. In what way could one account for it? A woman like that! A woman already with a power over himself that frightened him. Ada! He thought of Ada almost as a refuge from this new emotion assaulting his heart. There was safety with Ada. He knew, within reasonable limits, the range of which she was capable, the tone and timbre of her soul. ”

“ Down the steep ancient street they came, settling heavily into their saddles with a clash of metal and wheeze of leather as their horses took the descent; and watching them with shining eyes from a doorway was Evanthia Solaris, an exquisite apparition in pale saffron with an enormous black hat. She was raised a step or two above the sidewalk, and Mr. Spokesly could see that slender gracile figure from the buff-coloured shoes and stockings of sheer yellow silk to the broad brim of black straw shading the pale dark face aglow with excitement. ”

“ As he put it, like a lot of insects, and somebody steps on us, and we're squashed, and all the others go swarming on over us. And with that mysteriously heartening notion, Mr. Spokesly had a vividly imagined glimpse of those same armies marching through the shadows, millions of them, of all nations, silently moving towards an eternity of passionless intelligence. It would make no difference then, he thought. All we got to do, is make the best bargain we can for ourselves. ”

“ Such a catastrophe as the departure of the consuls had enraged her for a time, and then she had subsided deep into her usual mysterious mood. So his illusions were founded on fact. She could give him everything he dreamed of, leaving him with imperishable memories, and passing on with unimpaired vitality to adventures beyond his horizon. There was nothing illogical in this. Being an adventuress is not so very different from being an adventurer. One goes into it because one has the temperament and the desire for adventure. And Evanthia was by heredity an adventuress. ”

“ Dainopoulos had called her. Evanthia! And once at the beginning, Miss Solaris. Something like that. Evanthia Solaris. He said to himself that it was a pretty name, and was conscious at the same time of the inadequacy of such a word. There was something beyond prettiness in it; something of a spring morning in the Cyclades, when the other islands come up out of the mist like hummocks of amethyst and the cicadas shrill in the long grass under the almond trees. ”

“ Spokesly uneasy. He suddenly realized the other aspect of making money in a shady fashion: that one has to do business with shady people. Mr. Dainopoulos, for example, looked extremely shady. Archy Bates, his long, sharp nose buried in a fresh whiskey and soda, his hat pushed back revealing the oiled graying hair parted in the middle and slicked back above his ears with their purple veins; Archy, picking dreamily among the pieces of fish and beetroot which had been served on little dishes with the drinks, looked extraordinarily like a rat picking at garbage. ”

“ See the game? Couldn't speak out like a man and say he'd missed a bottle or so. Justice? There is no such thing as justice when you work for an underhand, sneaking, spying....
Archy Bates had stopped short in his catalogue of the captain's deformities as though he had been suddenly throttled. A bell was buzzing in the pantry. They looked at each other. Archy put down his glass, listened for a moment, hissed venomously, "That's him!" and slipped out. Mr. Spokesly sat still while his friend was away answering the summons, and nursed the rage in his heart to a dull glow. ”

“ Dainopoulos held up her hand. She was still listening with her head slightly inclined, her eyes fixed upon Mr. Spokesly, as though absently pondering the perilous chances of his emotional existence. Cross him off as caught! She smiled again in that lambent heat-lightning way of hers. A woman who spends her life in a reclining seclusion becomes very much of a clairvoyant, an electric condenser of emotions. Mr. Spokesly was agreeably flattered by the intent interest of his companion's gaze. ”