Command Part 40

For Mr. Spokesly had been sick. Looking back at it from this seat in St.

James's Park, with his demobilization completed, he saw well enough that the culmination of the spiritual stresses under which he had been existing had been suddenly trans.m.u.ted into a bodily collapse. As the sun rose over the aegean, he had given the tiller to Mr. Ca.s.sar and lain down without a word. He had not cared whether he ever got up or not. He lay staring up at the extraordinary brilliance of the sky, his throat very sore, his eyes tired and smarting, a feverish tremor in his limbs, refusing food, and even when the engine stopped, giving no sign that he was aware of any change in their fortunes. It had only been when Mr.

Ca.s.sar informed him of the sloop bearing down upon them that he rose on an elbow and croaked hoa.r.s.ely:

"Show a white flag; handkerchief or something," and fell back, drawing the blanket over himself. He had been very sick. The surgeon, without waiting for a temperature reading, had carried him away into an extremely hygienic sick-bay, where between a boy with tonsillitis and a stoker with a burnt arm, he had lain all the way to Malta. And after that, during weeks of dreary waiting, he had looked out of the high windows of the Bighi Hospital across the Harbour to Valletta, watching the s.h.i.+ps go in and out, and seeing the great flame of the sunset show up the battlements of the Lower Barracca and die in purple glory behind the domes and turrets of the city.

For it seemed to him, in his intervals of lucid reflection, that the taste of life had gone, not to return. It had gone, and in place of it was an exceedingly bitter flavour of humiliation and frustrated dreams.

It was almost too sudden a revelation of his own emotional folly for any feeling save a numb wonder to remain. He had told Esther that he felt as though he had had a long dream and was suddenly woke up. And while this was true enough of his mind, which maintained a dreary alertness during his sickness, his heart on the other hand was in a condition of stupor and oblivious repose. Even when sufficiently recovered to walk abroad and sit at the little tables in the arcades by the Libreria, or to journey across the Marsamuscetto to Sliema and follow the long smooth white beach, he moved slowly because he had no accurate means of gauging his intensity of existence. He would mutter to himself in a sort of depressed whisper: "What's the matter with me, I wonder?"

The surgeons had called it something ending in osis and prescribed finally "light duty." He remembered that light duty now well enough; a commission as lieutenant and the visiting of many offices in the formidable buildings which const.i.tuted the dockyard. And gradually, as the scope and meaning of this work became apparent, he found a certain interest returning, an antic.i.p.ation of the next week and perhaps month.

But of the years he did not dare to think just yet.

Because, once established there, he had sought, as a homing pigeon its cotes, to find Ada. He had written, full of weariness and a sort of gentle contrition, and implored her to write. He had missed all the mails since the _Tanganyika_ had gone--she must make allowances for the hazards of the sea, and try again. He had put a shy, boyish postscript to it, a genuine afterthought--"I want so much to see you again," and mailed it on the Ma.r.s.eilles boat.

To that there had come nothing in reply save a letter from her married sister, who evaded the subject for three pages and finally explained that her own husband was missing and Ada was married. The paper had distinctly said all were lost on the _Tanganyika_. Ada's husband was a manufacturer of munitions in the Midlands, making a colossal income, she believed. They lived in a magnificent old mansion in the West Riding.

The writer of the letter was going up to spend a week with them and would be sure to mention him. She had already sent on his letter and Ada had asked her to write.

There it was, then. Both ends of the cord on which he had been precariously balanced had been cut down, and he had had no interior buoyancy which could have kept him from hitting the earth with conclusive violence. And near the earth for a long time he had remained, very much in doubt whether he would ever go about again with the old confidence. Possibly he would never have done so, had not an accident sent him out to sea on patrol service. Here came relief in the shape of that active enemy he had preferred to his bureaucratic and scornful government. Here was an invisible and tireless adversary, waiting days, weeks, and possibly months for his chance, and smas.h.i.+ng home at last with horrible thoroughness. This, in Mr. Spokesly's present condition, was a tonic. He got finally into a strange, shuttle-like contraption with twin gasolene-engines, a pop-gun, and a crew of six. They went out in this water-roach and performed a number of deeds which were eventually incorporated in official reports and extracted by inaccurate special correspondents whose duty it was to explain naval occasions to beleaguered England, an England whose neglect of seamen was almost sublime until the food-s.h.i.+ps were threatened.

So he had found a niche again in life, and very slowly the dead flat look in his face gave way to one of sharp scrutiny. When he came ash.o.r.e from his c.o.c.k-boat he would go to a hotel in a street like a scene from the _Tales of Hoffmann_, and he would sleep in a great bed in a mighty room where papal legates had snored in preceding centuries, and the rulers of commanderies had dictated letters to the grand masters of their order. But even there, in that seclusion and fine repository of faith and peace, he dared not recall that last adventure at Bairakli, that catastrophe of his soul. Even the banjo of the occupant of the next room, a nice-looking boy with many medals and a staff appointment, did not mean much to him. He listened apathetically to the nice young voice singing a Kipling ballad:

"_Funny an' yellow an' faithful-- Doll in a tea-cup she were, But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair, An' I learned about women from 'er!_"

But the nice boy had never lived and never would live with anybody on such terms, and his clear young voice lacked the plangent irony of the battered idealist. It was perfectly obvious that he was entirely ignorant of the formidable distortion of character which living with people brought about. He evidently imagined marriage was a good joke and living with girls a bad joke. Mr. Spokesly would lie on his huge bed and try to get his bearings while his neighbour gave his version of "Keep the Home Fires Burning" and "I'd Wait Till the End of the World for You." He was visible sometimes, on his balcony overlooking the steep Via Sant' Lucia raising his eyes with a charming and entirely idiotic diffidence to other balconies where leaned dark-browed damsels, and dreaming the bright and honourable dreams of the well-brought-up young Englishman. Mr. Spokesly got no a.s.sistance from such as he. Even in his most fatuous moments he had known that for them the war was only an unusually gigantic and b.l.o.o.d.y football match, for which they claimed the right to establish the rules. When it was over we would all go back to our places in the world and touch our hats to them, the landed gentry of mankind.

Sitting on his park-seat, under the shadow of Victoria's triumphal arch, Mr. Spokesly saw this would not be the case. Behind his own particular problem, which was to regain, somehow or other, the taste of life, he saw something else looming. How were these very charming and delightful beings, the survivors of an age of gentles and simples, of squires and serfs, to be aroused to the fact that they were no longer accepted as the heirs of all the ages? How to make them see the millions of people of alien races moving slowly, like huge ma.s.ses of rotting putrescence, to a new life? Indeed, they were very fond of using those words "rotten"

and "putrid" for alien things they did not like. He felt sure they would apply both to Mr. Dainopoulos, for example, and those men he met at the Consulate. And with a twinge he reflected they might say the same thing about Evanthia, if they knew it all. Yet they must be made to know, those of them who were left, that the game was up for the cheerful schoolboy with no ascertainable ideas. The very vitality of these alien races was enough to sound a warning. "After all," Mr. Marsh had said in his throaty way, "you can't beat that type, you know." And the question looming up in the back of Mr. Spokesly's mind, as he sat on that seat in St. James's Park, was: "Couldn't you?"

He discovered with a shock that his friend the elderly lieutenant, who had been visiting the Admiralty that morning and so had met Mr.

Spokesly, was explaining something:

"I told him that taking everything into consideration, I really couldn't see my way. Not now. You see, we aren't getting any younger, and my wife is so attached to Chingford she won't hear of leaving. And of course I couldn't go out _there_ alone now."

"Where did you say it was?" Mr. Spokesly asked. He had not heard.

"West Indies. It's a new oiling station and they want an experienced harbour-master. You see, I knew about it, oh, years ago, when the place was first projected, and I put in for it. And now he's offered it to me, I can't go. I don't have to, you see. And yet I would like to put someone in the way of it for the old chap's sake. So I say, why don't you go round and see him? Three hundred a year and quarters. It isn't so dusty, I can a.s.sure you. If I hadn't been rather lucky in my investments I would be very glad to go, I can tell you that."

And the odd thing, to Mr. Spokesly's mind, was that he did not envy his elderly friend's happy position as to his investments. Here again luck masqueraded as a slippery word. Was he so lucky? From where he sat now, beneath the Arch of the great queen of the money-making, steam-engine era--the era, that is, when the steam-engines made the money and the old order fattened upon rents and royalties--Mr. Spokesly was able to see that money was no longer an adequate gauge of a man's calibre. One had to grow, and that was another name for suffering. In his hand was a newspaper, and as he turned it idly, his eye caught an urgent message in heavy type. The London School of Mnemonics pleaded with him to join up in the armies of Efficiency. They urged him to get out of the rut and fit himself for executive positions with high salaries attached. His eye wandered from the paper to the vista of the Mall, where the metallic products of efficiency were ranged in quadruple lines of ugliness, the stark witnesses of human inept.i.tude. He saw the children playing about those extraordinarily unlovely enemy guns, their muzzles split and dribbling with rust, their wheels splayed outwards like mechanical paralytics, and he fell to wondering if he could not find his way out of his spiritual difficulties sooner if he did what his friend suggested.

He would have to do something. A few hundred pounds was all he had. And the chances of a sea job were not immediately promising. He recalled his visit the other day to the office of the owners of the _Tanganyika_, and the impression he had gained that their enthusiasm had cooled. They had done a big business with Bremen before the war, and they would be doing a big business again soon. Their att.i.tude had contrasted oddly with the roll-of-honour tablet in the office where, printed in gold, he had seen the names of the officers of the _Tanganyika_ "murdered by the enemy."

All save his own. Somehow that word "murdered," to him who had been there, did not ring true. It was like the nice schoolboy's "rotten" and "putrid"; it signified a mood, now gone no one knew where. It was like Lietherthal's "_Die Freiheit bricht die Ketten_," a gesture which meant nothing to the millions of Hindoos, Mongolians, Arabs, Africans, and Latins in the world. "A family squabble," that sharp young man had called it, a mere curtain-raiser to a gigantic struggle for existence between the races....

He rose and turned to his friend.

"It's the very thing for me," he said. "I don't feel any particular fancy for staying on in England."

"As soon as I saw you waiting in that corridor," said his friend, "I thought of it. Now you go and see him. You know the Colonial Office.

He's a fine old boy and a thorough gentleman. There are prospects, too, I may tell you. It's a sugar-cane country, and I believe you'll have some very nice company in the plantations all round. And I believe there's a pension after twenty years. Well ... not that you'll need to bother about it by that time.... As I say, it's a jumping-off place.

Fine country, you know. But what about a little drink? I know a place in Chandos Street--they know me there. And now about coming down to Chingford...."

Mr. Spokesly accompanied his friend through the great Arch of Victoria into the Square and as they made their way round by the National Gallery he reached a decision. He would go. His elderly friend, toddling beside him, added details which only confirmed the decision. That gentleman knew a good thing. He himself, however, having more by luck than judgment held on to his s.h.i.+pping shares, was now in a position of comfortable independence. He had served his country and sacrificed his sons and now he was going to enjoy himself for the rest of his life.

After drawing enormous interest and bonuses he had sold at the top of the market and was buying bonds "which would go up" a stockbroking friend had told him. "A safe six hundred a year--what do I want with more?" he wheezed as they entered the place in Chandos Street. "My dear wife, she's so nervous of these s.h.i.+pping shares; and there's no doubt they _are_ a risk. Mine's a large port-wine, please."

Yes, he would go, and it interested Mr. Spokesly to see how little his tender and beautiful picture of two old people "going down the hill together" appealed to him. With a sudden cleavage in the dull mistiness which had possessed his heart for so long, he saw that there was something in life which they had missed. He saw that if a man sets so low a mark, and attains it by the aid of a craven rect.i.tude and animal cunning, he will miss the real glory and crown of life, which by no means implies victory. He was prepared to admit he had not done a great deal with his own life so far. But he was laying a new course. The night he received his instructions to depart he walked down to the river and along the embankment to his hotel with a novel exaltation of spirit. The taste of life was coming back. He saw, in imagination, that new place to which he was bound, a tiny settlement concealed within the secure recesses of a huge tropical harbour. He saw the jetty, with its two red lights by the pipe-line and the verandahed houses behind the groves of Indian laurel. He saw the mountains beyond the clear water purple and black against the sunset or floating above the mist in the crystal atmosphere of the dawn. He saw the wide clean s.p.a.ce of matted floors and the hammock where he would lie and watch the incandescent insects moving through the night air. He saw himself there, an integral part of an orderly and reasonable existence. He had no intention of wasting his life, but he saw that he must have time and quiet to find his bearings and make those necessary affiliations with society without which a man is rootless driftage. He saw that the lines which had hitherto held him to the sh.o.r.e had been spurious and rotten and had parted at the first tension.

There was time yet. What was it the elderly lieutenant had called her?

"A mill-stone round your neck all your life." No, he could not take that view. He did not regret that supreme experience of his life. He recalled the swift derisive gesture she had once flung at him as she spurned his reiterated fidelity: "You learn from me, to go back to an Englishwoman."

Even now he delighted in the splendid memory of her charm, her delicious languors and moments of melting tenderness, her anger and sometimes smouldering rage. No, he did not regret. It was something achieved, something that would be part of him for ever. He could go forward now into the future, armed with knowledge and the austere prudence that is the heritage of an emotional defeat. He looked out across the river and saw the quick glow of an opened cupola in a foundry on the Surrey Side.

There was a faint smile on his face, an expression of resolution, as though in imagination he were already in his island home, watching the glow of a cane-fire in a distant valley.

And eastward, some five thousand miles, in the costly Villa Dainopoulos on the sh.o.r.es of an ancient sea, Evanthia Solaris pursued the mysterious yet indomitable course of her destiny. She had arrived back from "Europe," as has been hinted earlier, in some disarray, alighting from a crowded train of frowsty refugees, silent, enraged yet reflective after her odyssey. At her feet followed the young Jew, who incontinently dropped upon his knees in the road and pressed his lips, in agonized thankfulness, to his native earth. "_Je deteste les hommes!_" was all she had said, and Mr. Dainopoulos had spared a moment in the midst of his many affairs to utter a hoa.r.s.e croak of laughter. Her story of Captain Rannie's sudden escape from the problems of living struck him for a moment, for he had of course utilized his commander's record and peculiarities in explaining the disappearance of the _Kalkis_. But the event itself seemed to perplex him not at all. He said, briefly, to his wife in adequate idiom: "He got a scare. He was afraid of himself. In wars plenty of men do that. He think and think, and there is nothing.

And that scare a man stiff, when there is nothing." Crude psychology no doubt, yet adequate to explain Captain Rannie's unsuccessful skirmish with life.

But Mrs. Dainopoulos was not so callous. She suspected, under Evanthia's hard exterior, a heart lacerated by the bitterness of disillusion. Who would have believed, either, that Mr. Spokesly, an Englishman, would have deserted her like that? Mrs. Dainopoulos was gently annoyed with Mr. Spokesly. He had not behaved as she had arranged it in her story-book fas.h.i.+on. Evanthia must stay with them, she said, stroking the girl's dark head.

As she did. Seemingly she forgot both the base Englishman and the Alleman Giaour who had so infatuated her. She remained always with the invalid lady, looking out at the Gulf, watching the transports come and go. And when at last it came to Mr. Dainopoulos to journey south, when the sea-lines were once again open and a hundred and one guns announced the end, she went with them to the fairy villa out at San Stefano that you reach by the Boulevard Ramleh in Alexandria. It was there that Mr.

Dainopoulos emerged in a new role, of the man whose dreams come true.

His rich and sumptuous oriental mind expanded in grandiose visions of splendour for the being he adored. He built pleasaunces of fine marbles set in green shrubberies and laved by the blue sea, for her diversion.

He had automobiles, as he had resolved, of matchless black and cream-coloured coachwork, with scarlet wheels and orange silk upholstery. He imported a yacht that floated in the harbour like a great moth with folded wings. Far out on the breakwater he had an enormous bungalow built of hard woods upon a square lighter, with chambers for music and slumber in the cool Mediterranean breeze, while the thud and wash of the waves against the outer wall lulled the sleeper to antique dreams. He did all this, and sat each day in the portico of the great marble Bourse, planning fresh acquisitions of money. His wife lay in her chair in her rose-tinted chamber at San Stefano, looking out upon the blue sea beyond the orange trees and palms, smiling and sometimes immobile, as though stunned by this overwhelming onslaught of wealth pressed from the blood and bones of the youth of the world. She smiled and lay thinking of her imaginary people, who lived exemplary and unimportant lives in an England which no longer existed. And near her, hovering, s.h.i.+ning like a creature from another world, clad miraculously in robes of extraordinary brilliance, could be seen Evanthia Solaris, the companion of her hours. Often it was she who shot away along the great corniche road in those cars of speed and beauty, their silver fittings and glossy panels humming past like some vast and costly insect. She it was who lay in a silken hammock in the great houseboat by the breakwater, and listened to the sweet strains from the disc concealed in a cabinet shaped like a huge bronze sh.e.l.l. "_Je deteste les hommes_," she murmured to herself as she wandered through the orange groves to the curved marble seats on the sh.o.r.e.

Hearing these words as she pa.s.sed, the young Jew, working among the roses, would tremble and recall with an expression of horror their experiences in Europe. Often, when in their dest.i.tution she had taken him by the hair and hissed them in his affrighted ear, and he would utter an almost inaudible moan of "Oh, Madama!" For he loved her. He was the victim of a pa.s.sion like a thin, pure, agitated flame burning amid conflagrations. He would have expired in ecstasy beneath her hand, for it would have needed more courage to speak than to die. And now he was in paradise tending the roses and suffering exquisite agonies as she pa.s.sed, her beautiful lips muttering, "_Je deteste les hommes!_" As perhaps she did; yet she would sometimes look suddenly out across the waves with smouldering amber eyes and parted lips, as though she expected to behold once more the figure of a man coming up out of the sea, to offer again the unregarded sacrifices of fidelity and love.

THE END