Command

by William McFee

"He? Not even a little one! Ha—ha!" she chuckled again. "The dear fool! But hear me. He may be with the general. He may be what they call an aide. He may...." She broke off, staring hard at the youth, suddenly remembering that he might not come at all. "Go!" she ordered absently, "find him and thy fortune is made."

But the idea of a letter was attractively novel to her, and she immediately saw herself inspiring the dear fool with some of her own grandiose ideas. She even thought of sounding Esther upon the likelihood of her husband writing a letter. She stood by the window looking down into the garden where Mr. Spokesly sat smoking and gazing at the blue bowl of the gulf and the distant gray-green olive groves beyond the city. She was deliberating upon the significance of her courier's latest breathless news from the kitchen of the Hotel Kraemer. The general was arriving from the south. He and his staff had been as far as Jerusalem after the great victory over the British and were due to-morrow in the city on their way back to Constantinople. Evanthia's courage had suffered from the contradictory nature of her earlier news. It was part of her life to sift and analyze the words that ran through city and country from mouth to mouth. She had never had any real confidence in any other form of information. If she hired any one to write a letter, her words vanished into incomprehensible hieroglyphics and she had no guarantee the man did not lie. And when Amos had told her on the ship what he had heard in the Rue Voulgaróktono that they had reached Aidin, she had jumped to the conclusion that Lietherthal was with a party on their way from Constantinople to Smyrna. And now her quick brain saw the reason why they had not arrived before. He had joined the staff of the general and had gone away south, through Kara-hissar, to Adana and Aleppo to Damascus. And now they were on their way back. She looked down into the garden, where Mr. Spokesly, quietly smoking, was reflecting upon the mystery of a woman's desires. Here, after all, she had forgotten all about that other fellow, who was probably having a good time in Athens and who had no doubt forgotten about her. And she was alone here, utterly dependent upon him, who had made his plans for taking her away to a civilized country, where he could make her happy. He smiled with profound satisfaction as he thought of himself with her beside him, in London. How her beauty would flash like a barbaric jewel in that gray old city! He remembered the money she had stowed away, ready for the great adventure. He called it that in romantic moments, yet what was more easy than running out after dark, with nothing fast enough to catch him? Especially as he heard that there would be a review in a day or so when everyone would be on their toes to see the general. He thought of the money because even in his romantic moments there was enough to live on for a year "while he looked round." No more second-mate's jobs, he muttered. He would pick and choose. He rose and stretched luxuriously, noting the calm glitter of the city's lights like a necklace on the bosom of the mountain. He would have to spend an evening with that chap Marsh. Very decent fellow. Had pressed him more than once to join them at Costi's in the Rue Parallel. He was satisfied apparently, married to his Armenian wife and teaching music and languages to earn a living for a large family. Mr. Spokesly recalled a remark made by Mr. Marsh one day at the Sports Club: "Oh! Don't misunderstand me! For myself, as regards the war, you know, I am a philosopher. What can we do? Ask any fair-minded person at home, what could they do, in our position? There's only one answer—make the best of it. Don't misunderstand us."

And he had ventured a remark that possibly they, and the fair-minded person at home, might misunderstand him, coming into an enemy port like that.

"Oh, no!" Mr. Marsh was untroubled by that. "You were like us, as far as I can make out. Had to make the best of it. Now your captain...."

There was a fascination about the captain for Mr. Marsh. For twenty years he had lived in a sort of middle-class and inconspicuous exile, and destined, as far as he could discover, to remain for ever in the dry and unromantic regions of a middle-class existence. Nothing, he was often fond of saying to his friends, ever happened to him. The things one reads of in books! he would exclaim, with a short grunting laugh of humorous regret. Stories of fair Circassians, Balkan countesses, Turkish beauties, Armenian damsels...! Where were they? He had married and settled down here, and remained twenty years in all, and yet nothing had happened. Yes, on the alert for twenty years to detect romantic developments—he had a daughter sixteen years old—and until that ship came in, not a chance! So he described it to his friends at Costi's and at the Austrian Consulate, an immense villa in a charming garden farther along in the Rue Parallel.

For somehow the arrival of that ship was a significant event in more than the accepted sense. It was reserved for Mr. Marsh to perceive the full romantic aspect of the adventure. For others it was a nine-day wonder, an official nuisance or blessing, as suited the official temperament to regard it. To Mr. Spokesly it was an exciting but secondary factor leading up to the greater adventure of departure. It was over-shadowed by the more perplexing problem of explaining himself in a masterless vessel.

But Mr. Marsh, after twenty years, during which he had failed to detect anything resembling romance in his life, when he was called out of his bed at dawn that morning to go off as interpreter, saw the matter in a very different light. Indeed he saw it in the light of romance. His first comment when he found time to review his experiences was: "By Jove, you can't beat that type! We shall always rule, always!" and his bosom swelled at the thought of England. But it was his discovery of Captain Rannie which remained with him as the great scene in the play. He could not get it out of his mind. He told everybody about it. He revealed a doubt whether other people fully appreciated the extraordinary experience which had been his when he went down that dark curving stairway, "not having the faintest notion, you know, whether I wouldn't get knocked on the head or perhaps blown to bits," and found the door resisting his efforts. An active intelligent resistance! he declared, precisely as though the man were trying to keep him out. And as time passed and the story developed in his own mind by the simple process of continually repeating and brooding upon it, as an actor's part becomes clearer to him by rendition, Mr. Marsh developed the theory that when he first went down those stairs and tried to get in, the resistance was in truth intelligent and alive.

He was explaining this new and intriguing "theory," as he called it, on the following evening when Mr. Spokesly accompanied by the husband of Esther, who was "in the Public Debt," entered the great room on the second floor of the Consulate, a magnificent chamber whose windows opened upon balconies and revealed, above the opposite roofs, rectangles of luminous twilight. Some half-dozen gentlemen were seated on chairs in the dusk about one of the balconies. As the newcomers arrived by a side door a servant came in through the enormous curtains at the far end bearing a couple of many-branched candlesticks and advanced towards a table, thus revealing in some degree the elaborate design and shabby neglect of the place. Huge divans in scarlet satin were ripped and battered, the gilding of the sconces was tarnished and blackened, and the parquetry flooring, of intricate design, was warped and loose under the advancing foot. And above their heads, like shadowy wraiths, hung immense candelabra whose lustres glittered mysteriously in the candlelight under their coverings of dusty muslin.

Mr. Marsh was leaning his elbows on the balcony railing and facing his audience as he explained his conviction that the captain had intended to keep him out.

"I assure you," he was saying, and apparently he was directing his remarks at someone who now heard the tale for the first time; "I assure you, when I pushed the door and saw the man's shoulder, it moved. I mean it actually quivered, apart from my movement of the door. It gave me a very peculiar sensation, because when I spoke, there was no answer. Only a quiver. And another thing. When I finally did shove the door open and so shoved the captain over, the noise was not the noise of a dead inert body, if you understand me. Not at all. It sounded as though he had broken his fall somewhat! I can assure you——"