Command. William McFee

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СКАЧАТЬ that "unless the man made an ass of himself" he would not stand in his way.

      The sun, concealed behind a distant range, threw up a ruddy and vigorous glow as from an open cupola, but the roadstead lay in a profound shadow whose edge began to sparkle with coloured lights of a singular distinctness and individuality. It was like watching from the depths of space a congregation of blessed yet still intensely personal spirits on the heavenly shores. They stood in clusters or apart, in long lines or zigzags far up the mountain side. At times they were obliterated by trolley cars—gently moving glares which bore on their foreheads flashing blue-white gems. At other times a fountain of sparks indicated an otherwise invisible puff of smoke from a locomotive, and whole galaxies of shining points would vanish while an ammunition train moved laboriously across the city. But no knowledge of the actual causes could destroy the illusion that the lights were informed with an intelligent vitality. They winked and quivered with mysterious emotions. They went on journeys among other fixed stars of greater magnitude. They came out in boats over the dark water as though possessed with a passion for exploring, and then, losing heart, would go back in a hurry, or else expire. They raced along country roads and vanished in folds of the hills. They danced and were smitten with idiotic immobility. They were born, and they died sudden and inexplicable deaths. They were shocked, or were filled with calm content. Low down on the edge of the shore, where an open-air cinema was working convulsively, the lights had collected in some excitement around the screen. Captain Meredith, raising his night glasses to inspect this novel portent, imagined himself watching a square hole in a dark spangled curtain, through which a drama of inconceivable brightness and rapidity could be observed. It was, the captain imagined whimsically, like watching a huge brain at work, if such a thing were possible. He occasionally took refuge from himself in such reflections. Without any pretence to originality, he occasionally found himself in possession of thoughts for which custom had provided no suitable phrase. With the humility common to those of gentle birth who have followed the sea, he kept the results to himself. Even in letters to his wife, he adhered to the conventional insipidity that makes an Englishman's letters home one of the wonders of the world. He had become somewhat fearful of originality, even in others, during his honeymoon, when he had tried timidly to interest his wife in a novel he was reading. It was a novel about sailors and the sea, of all things in the world, and Captain Meredith had been so intrigued with the notion of a story written about sailors without distorting them out of all recognition that he couldn't keep it to himself. And he had been completely nonplussed when his gentle, blonde, and slightly angular young wife had displayed not merely a tepid lack of interest but downright dislike. "I don't like it," she had said acidly, and returned to her own book, an interminable tale of gipsies and highwaymen in masks, and a "reigning toast" with forty thousand pounds. They had been married some time before he realized just what it was she didn't like in the story. And when he realized it, he put the thought from him in trepidation, for he was prepared to sacrifice everything for her sake. She embodied for him all that he craved of England. She was typical, as she bent over their one child, a flaxen-haired little girl with incredibly thin limbs. And he was typical, too—as he thought of them and their setting at Ealing—the modern Englishman who has given intellectual hostages to fortune.

CHAPTER IV

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      Mr. Spokesly once said in so many words that he disbelieved utterly in premonition. There was, he said, nothing in it. If there were, he remarked, we should be different. When pressed, he admitted freely that if we could read the signs we might get adequate warning of impending events; but by the time we have gotten the experience we are too old to bother about the future at all. This, of course, was when the war was finished and Mr. Spokesly, with the rest of the Merchant Service, had slipped back into that obscure neglect from which they had temporarily emerged. The gist of his remarks, therefore, seems to bear out the view that he had not the faintest notion, when he went ashore that evening in Saloniki with the gifted and amusing Mr. Bates, that he was on the brink of a fundamental change in his life. Looking back, he was almost induced to imagine that it was someone else who came ashore with Mr. Bates, a sort of distant relation, say, who had borrowed his body for the evening. And he was inclined to admit that, assuming what the philosophers say is true—that the only use of knowledge is for the purpose of action—it would preserve our idealism if our subconscious adumbrations could only be induced to function in a more emphatic manner.

      The reason for interjecting this sample of Mr. Spokesly's later mentality is to be rid of any possible ambiguity. If Mr. Spokesly had been nothing more than Mr. Bates's boon companion his story would not be worth telling, there being obviously so many other more interesting people in the world. We have seen that Mr. Spokesly himself was aware of his real value, and had appealed to the London School of Mnemonics to elucidate his latent self from the commonplace shell in which he strove. The London School of Mnemonics responded nobly according to its doctrines. It supplied him with an astonishing quantity of intellectual fuel, so to say, but omitted to indicate how it was to be ignited. Indeed, it is very singular how public and commercial organizations continually lose sight of the fact that in the spiritual world spontaneous combustion does not exist. And it is also true that the stark and secular desires of a man's soul, however powerful they may be to achieve a multiplicity of base ends, can do nothing for the man himself unless they are illuminated and shot through by some grand passion, whether of friendship, religion, or love. Which of these, depends upon the man. Some fortunate beings are the exponents of all three. Most of us, and Mr. Spokesly was one, are destined to know very little of either friendship or religion. So much might have been postulated. He was under no illusions as to his emotional resources. His remark that he could fall in love with almost any girl, so long as she had a bit o' money, was really a very fine declaration of extreme modesty. The virtuous are less humble. They lay extravagant claims to the privilege of having an ideal. Mr. Spokesly, as he sat beside Mr. Bates, who was smiling to himself in the darkness, watched the flashing lights of the Place de la Liberté grow larger and larger; and, as the din of the traffic reached his ears, experienced that feeling of pleasant and passive receptivity which he learned in time to know as the inevitable precursor of some momentous change.

      Not so Mr. Bates, who smiled in the darkness. Mr. Bates was one of those human beings who manifest the shadowless and unwinking intelligence of the lower animals. The past, to Mr. Bates, was a period in which he had done well. The future was a period in which he would do well. Between these two delectable countries Mr. Bates moved gently along, a slightly intoxicated optimist. The perils of the sea and of war, the hatred of man or the wrath of God made no conscious impression upon Mr. Bates at all. Any of them might crush him at any moment, but he proceeded steadily upon his predatory way very much as a spider crossing a path proceeds until some careless but omnipotent passer crushes it beneath his heel. His attitude towards the gigantic engines of human destiny, which preoccupy most of us so much, was expressed in the pussy-cat smile in the darkness—a smile unseen and undesired.

      "We'll go into Floka's first," he remarked, as the boat bumped the marble steps between the kiosks of the Place. He stood up, and his smile was illuminated by the sizzling glare of the arc lights along the quay, a smile that was, as we have said, fitted on over his face, and which bobbed up and down in obedience to the rhythmic undulations of the boat in the water. They waited for a moment until the Greek had made fast, and then stepped ashore.

      "Why, is that a good place?" enquired Mr. Spokesly.

      "Oh, yes. The best place. My friend, he goes there often. By and by, of course, we'll go along and see the talent. I'll show you, my boy. Believe me. … " They crossed the car lines and walked towards the café which Mr. Bates's friend honoured. Floka's was full. The little tables outside were thickly populated with gentlemen engaged in the national pastime of cigarette-smoking and coffee-drinking, and the grandiose interior, as severe and lofty and dirty as a Balkan politician, was thick with smoke and murmurous with conversation and the consumption of food. Mr. Bates led the way to a far corner where a long thin man, his frock coat falling away open from a heavily brocaded vest with СКАЧАТЬ