Command

by William McFee

And so he found himself at last in a small room, behind a window full of formidable uniforms, containing a dreamy-eyed Greek tailor and an overworked American sewing machine. A number of suits hung in rows on one side and on the wall was a steel engraving showing Parisian Men's Fashions of a dozen years before. As he owed for a consignment of velvet khaki which Mr. Dainopoulos had picked up somewhere and sold him at a noble profit, Mr. Theotokis was disposed to do his best for Mr. Spokesly. So he took his measure and ascertained by painful cross-examination what a chief officer's uniform was like. Yes, like that, with one, two, three rows of lace, one quarter wide. H'm! And in answer to the demand for a suit ready to wear, he sized Mr. Spokesly up and nodded reflectively. He had something. He rummaged behind the festoons of coats and drew out a fine pin-check suit such as sporting characters affect in the country. He held it up and regarded it with misgiving. It appeared from the book to be made to the order of one Jack Harrowby, Transport Tanganyika. Mr. Spokesly started. Harrowby was one of the wireless operators, a youth about his own build and distinctly sporting in temperament. He remembered Harrowby, all right. Why had he not fetched his suit? Mr. Theotokis shrugged his shoulders almost to his ears and spread his hands. No money. Wanted to pay next trip. Another phenomenal shrug. Mr. Theotokis was desolated to disappoint Jack Harrowby, but no money, no suit. Mr. Spokesly recalled something Archy Bates had said about Harrowby drawing a lot of money, having started a tremendous love affair in town. Evidently he was going to cut a dash in his pin-checks. Perhaps he looked forward to the races at Alexandria. And now.... Mr. Spokesly pursed his lips firmly, took off the anomalous coat he was wearing, and slipped his arms into Jack Harrowby's coat. It was an extremely good fit. Jack Harrowby's trousers needed turning up and a touch of the iron, and they would do. A tremendous love affair he had had on, Mr. Spokesly recalled. Girl in a post-card shop, it was said. Perhaps it was the suit which had been ordered by Jack Harrowby to make love in. Mr. Spokesly had not been attracted by that short buxom little creature in the post-card shop; but now he felt he would like the sensation of going round to see her, in Jack Harrowby's suit. It was the sort of thing that chimed in with his mood of modest satisfaction. It would not be doing Jack Harrowby any harm. That wise youth, who had gone ahead and made the most of his opportunities, was now done with pin-check suits and girls in post-card shops.

A hundred francs at first, it came down to eighty on invoking the name of Dainopoulos, so Mr. Spokesly took it with him and promised to call next day.

There was something dashing about a finish like that, he reflected, as he sat down on the bed in a room in the Olympos Hotel. A word to the paymaster had secured him that privilege. He regretted he had not noted more particularly the sporting Jack Harrowby, but it did not do to have much traffic with those fellows, they were so cheeky. He untied his parcel and looked again at the late Harrowby's selection in suitings. He had bought a hat on the way down, too, a gray felt, respectably stylish. Now he would be able to resume his place in the world. He would not feel like a fireman out of a job when he went to see these naval gentry. As he folded up his wrinkled and salt-stained trousers he remembered the ring and took it out. That was a rather peculiar turn, the way he happened to have it. Just a fluke, putting it in his pocket in his hurry. Mr. Spokesly took his lip in his teeth as he tried to get the hang, as he called it, of all these intricate turns in his destiny. He recalled the unusual and puzzling exaltation he had experienced that evening when he went ashore with Archy, and he began to wonder whether after all it would be good for a man to know too accurately what the future held for him. His hands, so to speak, were full now. Life was tremendously interesting, once one got away from routine and discipline and all these conventional ideas. He was, practically, a free agent now. It was up to himself to go ahead carefully and make no silly mistakes. No harm in walking round to that post-card shop near the Ottoman Bank, however. He remembered seeing Jack Harrowby hanging over the counter once, as he went by. A dark little piece with a powdered nose.

Mr. Spokesly could not have explained this ridiculous curiosity about a girl he did not know, but it was a simple enough by-product of his new state of mind. There is nothing unusual in a man, suddenly awakened to full consciousness by some one woman, becoming interested in all women. So far from a man being unable to love more than one woman, it may be doubted whether at first he can do anything else. The tender solicitudes and almost religious exclusiveness are later phases of the passion. Mr. Spokesly even looked forward to a sentimental intimacy with Mrs. Dainopoulos. It made him feel a bit of a dog, as did this affair of Jack Harrowby's flame. As he went along the Front he wondered if she would go out to lunch with him. And then he saw that the post-card shop was shut up and a sentry stood in front with his rifle on his shoulder. Mr. Spokesly walked on and turned up the next street. The sight of that closed shop and the sentry gave him a chill all down his spine. What had happened? He made his way to the establishment of Mr. Dainopoulos. That gentleman at once exclaimed at the improved appearance of his friend, but without quitting his accounts which littered the desk and overflowed on to the shelves along the sides. He offered a chair and a cigarette. Mr. Spokesly watched him with respect. He had sense enough to see that Mr. Dainopoulos was only doing business in the old-fashioned way, as it was done in England and in New England, too, before shipowners became too exalted to talk to their own shipmasters or to go down to meet their own ships. There might be something in this business for him even after the war. If it grew there would be an overlooker needed. He let his mind go forward. Perhaps the Tanganyika's sudden eclipse was really a blessing in disguise. An ill wind blowing prosperity in his direction. It would be unjust to say of him that he did not regret the loss of those lives. He did, as sincerely as anybody else. But he was alive and they were dead, and if there is one thing men learn promptly it is the difference between the quick and the dead. So he let his mind go forward. And when Captain Rannie suddenly came in, Mr. Spokesly almost failed to recognize him. Not that Captain Rannie particularly desired recognition. He sat down and continued a monologue on the decay of morals in the merchant service. Went back to the ship, and what did he find? Nothing done. Mate and engineer playing cards in the cabin. Cook drunk. And so on. From bad to worse.

"But where's the harm in a game of cards, Captain?" asked Mr. Spokesly, slightly amused.

This question upset Captain Rannie very much. He was unused to questions from strangers. It interrupted the flow of his thought. He looked down at his feet and took out a cigarette.

"Ah!" he said, as though an astonishingly fresh argument was about to be born. "Ah! That's the point, that's the point. No harm at all. It's the principle that's at stake—I expressly stated my dislike of the cabin being used as a gambling-den and these officers of mine expressly disregard my repeated instructions. And it's coming to a point," he added darkly as Mr. Dainopoulos hurried across the street to speak to an acquaintance, "when either they get out or I do."

It was obvious that Captain Rannie lived in a world of his own, a world in which he was the impotent, dethroned, and outraged deity. Now he was prepared to abdicate into the bargain. He hinted at ultimatums, distinct understanding, and other paraphernalia of sovereignty, for all the world as though he were a European power. By all this he meant nothing more than to impress Mr. Spokesly with the solemn responsibility of being chief officer under him. But Mr. Spokesly was regarding him with attention and he was not impressed. He was looking for the elusive yet indubitable mark of character which is so necessary in a commander, a gesture often closely imitated, which carries out to men the conviction that he bears within himself a secret repository of confidence and virtue, to be drawn upon in moments of conflict with the forces of nature and the turbulent spirits of men. And he did not find it. Mr. Spokesly had had no opportunity of discovering this repository in himself. 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. The long scrawny wrist with the slave-bangle, the cigarette held loosely between yellow fingers, waved as though deciding the fate of principalities. He spoke in full resounding periods, he made dramatic pauses, and invoked the eternal principles of justice and decency and honour. And Mr. Spokesly didn't believe a word of it. He was anxious for the mate to lose his job because he wanted it himself. But he was secretly in sympathy with him. And having failed to find what he was looking for, the genius of command, he began to wonder what there was inside this man at all. It couldn't be simply all this tosh he was emitting. He must have some springs of love and hate in him, some secret virtue or vice which kept him going. Mr. Spokesly was interested. Men were not so simple, so negative, now he himself was out on his own, to decide for himself, to be master of his own fate.

"Are you married, Captain?" he asked, in a brief pause, with a flash of intuition. Captain Rannie dropped the match he was holding, changed his legs and began moving his neck violently in his collar while he swallowed. Several times he opened his mouth to speak and nothing happened. He looked hard at Mr. Spokesly's boots.

"I make it a rule," he said at length, "and I expect all my officers to bear it in mind, to have no dealings in personalities. I ask no questions about a man's private life and I expect none. I hope this is understood from the first. There's one thing I simply will not tolerate and that is prying into my private affairs."