Command. William McFee
Queen Mab came down, and Mr. Dainopoulos, who'd taken his landlady's daughter for the excursion, was sitting there in a blanket when the landlady and her husband came in. They hadn't found her. You know bodies don't come up sometimes, especially when a ship turns over. And they caught hold of him, calling out 'Where is our girl? What have you done with our girl?' They screamed at him!"
"Was he engaged to her?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
"Just the same as I was with Georgie Litwell who was drowned. Keeping company."
"And what happened then?"
"Why, we fell in love. That's what I was going to tell you so long as you promised not to laugh. He was in a wholesale tobacco merchant's in Mark Lane then and he took lodgings near us at Haverstock Hill. Those other people behaved as though he'd held their daughter's head under. Really they did. How could he help it? He saved six besides me. It wasn't his fault the boat sank."
"No, of course not. I see now."
"And then, you know, Mother made a fuss because he was foreign. Mother's a Berkshire woman, and she said she'd never thought she'd live to see a child of hers marry a man from goodness knows where. She didn't half go on, I can tell you. And Father had his own way of making me perfectly happy. He'd ask me, how many in the harem already? And I couldn't do a thing, lying on my back helpless. And at last, with the doctor saying I needed a sea-voyage to get my strength back, I thinks to myself, I'll take one; and with the accident insurance I had had the sense to carry ever since I'd started going to business, and what Boris had in the bank, we went. Or came, rather. We've been here ever since and nobody's heard either of us regret it, either."
And as she lay there looking out into the darkness of the Gulf with shining resolute eyes, it was plain that this romantic destiny of hers was a treasured possession. It dominated her life. She had found in it the indispensable inspiration for happiness, an ethical yet potent anodyne for the forfeiture of many homely joys. It was for her the equivalent of a social triumph or acceptance among peeresses of the realm. It is to be suspected that she had ever in her mind a vision of the wonder and awe she had evoked in the souls of the suburban girls among whom she had spent her life, and that this vision supported her and formed the base of a magnificent edifice. And it was an integral part of this edifice that love should be a romantical affair, a flame, noted by all and fed by the adoration of a husband who was harsh to the world, but to her a monster of infatuated fidelity.
Something of this impinged upon Mr. Spokesly's consciousness and he regarded her for a moment with profound respect.
"I should say," he muttered, returning to his cigarette, "you haven't done so badly for yourself."
She gave him an extraordinarily quick look, like a flash of sheet lightning from a calm evening sky, which left him puzzled. 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. She knew he imagined that love was all, that women were at the mercy of their love for men, and that chivalrous ideas, rusted and clumsily manipulated, were still to be found in his mind. And she saw the fragility and delicate thinness of his love affair with Ada Rivers. Anything could break it, anything could destroy it, she reflected. Those fancies … of course he said he was engaged; but an engagement, as Mrs. Dainopoulos knew, having lived in a London suburb, was nothing. Yes, anything might make him forget Ada. And as she repeated the word "anything" to herself in a kind of ecstasy, Mrs. Dainopoulos turned her head quickly and listened. There was a sound of someone being admitted.
"So you've met your fate, anyway," she observed to Mr. Spokesly, yet still listening to the distant sound.
"Yes," he said with a smile, "I reckon you can cross me off as caught. What's that? Come back, I s'pose. Time for me to be off, anyway. I'm sure. … "
Mrs. 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. Quite a nice little tête-à-tête he'd had. It gave him a thrill to sit in intimate exchange of love experiences with an attractive married woman, even if she was an invalid. He felt a bit of a dog. He would write to Ada and tell her. Or would he? Did he want Ada to know anything about this visit to a mysterious house in Macedonia, a house so clandestine and bizarre he could scarcely convince himself that it was the abode of virtue? Did he? Ada was a long way off, in beleaguered England. He suddenly wondered what Ada had to do with this at all. With an ease that rather disturbed him he told himself that you could never tell what might happen nowadays. No use worrying about the future. Why, he might never get home. He dropped the ash from his cigarette into the tray on the table. Someone was coming with a quick decisive step up the stairs. He smiled at Mrs. Dainopoulos, not quite sure why she was holding up her hand. She was thinking "cross him off as caught," and smiling, when the someone arrived at the door and knocked.
"Why didn't you get married before you left England?" she asked quickly, and added in louder tone, "Come in!"
In sharp contrast to the rapid movements without, the door opened with extreme cautiousness, and at first nothing could be seen save the hand on the knob. Mr. Spokesly had been thrown into some disorder of mind by that last question. Why hadn't he, anyway? It was something he had never decided. Why had they not done what thousands had done in England, which was simply to marry on the spot and sail a week, or perhaps a few days, later? Why had he not taken the hazards of war? He had more, far more, than many of those girls and boys at home. It was at this point, facing for the first time the unconscious evasions of life, that he found himself facing something else, a girl with a startled and indignant light in her eyes. He uncrossed his legs and began to rise as Mrs. Dainopoulos said, "Come in, Evanthia. It is all right."
She came in, letting the door swing to as she moved with a long rapacious stride towards the sofa. It was obvious she was preoccupied with some affair of intense importance to herself. Once Mr. Spokesly's presence had been indicated she became again absorbed in her errand. 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. Such women are almost non-existent in England, where sentiment is regarded as legal tender for passion. He regarded her with a kind of stupefaction, as though he had never set his eyes on a woman before. One might say with approximate truth that he had not. His ways had lain among the artificial products of his age. In trepidation he realized, as he sat there watching the movements of this girl, that he would not know what to do with a woman like that. He sat there and listened.
"Gone?" repeated Mrs. Dainopoulos.
"Yes, they are all gone. The French sent soldiers. And they would not let me go to speak to him."
"But where will they go?"
The girl, whose eyes were bent upon the carpet at her feet, shrugged her shoulders violently.
"Who knows that? To Sofia; or to Constantinople. Oh, I would have gone, too. These pigs, pigs, pigs of French! Not a word! And he is gone!" She dragged a chair from the table, and sat down suddenly, thrusting her chin over her arm and staring at the floor. There was a moment's silence, while Mr. Spokesly sat in doubt and Mrs. Dainopoulos looked out over the Gulf.
"Gone!" muttered the girl again sullenly.
"Don't