Now the crowd had melted the empty streets wore a curiously menacing air. The grim black vistas of tightly closed iron doors and shutters were more unpleasantly suggestive than the former rioting and noise. Calling on a friendly Consul and his wife was a work of some difficulty. Other unexpected sentries had to be faced. It took time before the suspicious old Turkish concierge would open the courtyard door wide enough to let us squeeze through. The family party within were quite cheerful and unconcerned, but as Monsieur remarked when we were on the point of leaving: ‘Ces émeutes arrivent souvent ici; nous avons eu trois guerres. Je trouve c’est toujours mieux de rester chez soi.’
We took his advice. As we reached home I encountered the Commander, delighted with the change. Now he could stop these wretched local steamers blowing their sirens all day long below his office windows. For there was more noise and fuss when a coasting boat left the quay-side than the whole fleet of the largest liners could possible require.
The English military band, which played to the populace every Saturday afternoon, had become quite a feature of life at Salonica; one could fancy oneself in a peaceful Anglo-Indian station watching the curious semi-Oriental throng gathered at the foot of the old White Tower—a tower built by the Venetians, formerly part of the town walls, but now left stranded like a huge rock in a child’s seashore garden.
The afternoon of the ‘émeute’ the White Tower looked strangely quiet. Gone were the gaily-coloured crowds, the family parties of Israelites and Dumés, the men in their historic furred gabardines wearing the Moslem fez, their wives in their long satin coats and brocade aprons—blue, prune, and violet, the favourite Jewish colours—with curious green, parakeet-like head-dresses, low lace bodices, and necklaces of many rows of seed pearls; the younger women copying Athens and Paris in short skirts and high-heeled yellow boots, for fashions change now the Turks have left.
No pipers played that afternoon to a delighted audience who followed their every movement up and down. The soldiers and sailors of the Allied nations, who usually collected to talk to their friends while they listened to the music, were nowhere to be seen.
The place was empty I thought as we reached it. But, no, among the beds of pansies, stocks, and daisies and the carefully watered little plots of grass, great, grey motor-lorries were drawn up. And there were the French machine-gunners perched on their guns. Very bored they looked, with a populace and soldiery which sat tight behind its iron doors and shutters and wisely refused to come out.
A forest of blue and white flags, festooned with fir branches, fluttered valiantly in the breeze. But no other sign of life and festivity could be seen down the three main roads commanded by the guns. There was nothing doing. As we passed, the soldiers in field-blue were reduced to re-reading their month-old Illustrations and Petit Journals.
Under the pine trees in the little café garden beyond, at this hour usually crammed with people, only two nursemaids gossiped together, while their accompanying children and dogs played about unrebuked in the sun.
A nervous-looking waiter brought us tea, having peeped out cautiously and spied us sitting at one of his little tin tables close to the sea-wall. The revolution was falling flat, we had given it up, and were busy discussing the various possibilities of catching a ship home—a matter of great moment to my present companion fresh from six months unrelieved front trenches.