Chapter IV: Part 4

“Yes, sir,” said Morgan.

And, indeed, the silence was as heavy as the heavy air. Latimer had the curious feeling that he and his orderly were the only people in that country-side, and when a cough broke upon the stillness, he started.

“That’s number two group,” said he, mechanically; “Corporal Davies is in charge there, eh, Morgan?”

Some sickly lines of Edgar Allen Poe started up in his brain and began to race along it, repeating themselves again and again. Though he was a little worried by their repetition, they gave him a sense of romance, of power.

“We’ll start from the ravine and work upwards,” he said, stepping onto the duck-boards.

Though both officer and servant were well acquainted with those steep and winding trenches, they had to feel their way along, so black was the night, so ineffective the light of the glinting and eager stars. They came upon a group of men in a fire-bay; two of them, stretched on the fire-step, were asleep. The sentry on duty stood looking over the top of the trench; by his side was the N.C.O. in charge of the group.

“Everything all right, Corporal?” asked Latimer, in a low voice.

“Everything, sir,” whispered the corporal.

A few yards further on, Latimer stopped. He wanted to cry out. He longed to scream wildly and break this conspiracy of silence. Suddenly, it seemed to him as though the entire country-side were for a brief second illuminated by a magnificent burst of light: Le Grand Couronné was revealed from top to toe; in the slits crinkling the breasts and flanks of the mountain he saw dark, bearded Bulgars, bullet-headed and yellow-toothed. They were all gazing at him with cruel, malignant eyes.... The hallucination passed.

“I feel ill, Morgan,” he said.

Morgan, a man twice Latimer’s age--for Latimer was still in his teens--took from his pocket a bottle of tabloids.

“You ought to have gone sick this morning, sir,” said Morgan; “or, better still, let me take you to the telephone dug-out.... Have a drink from my water-bottle, sir.... Ask Captain Mitchell to send another officer out to relieve you.”

“Oh, no; I’ll stick it out. But let me have a drink.”

But the water had none of the virtue of water: it was tepid and sickly, and it tasted slightly of grease....

The sound of a single rifle-shot from the enemy’s lines ripped the silence. It meant nothing: it _was_ nothing. Yet Latimer cursed beneath his breath.

“Let’s get on,” he said, and proceeded to feel his way towards the ravine.

In a few minutes they reached it. Here was another sentry-group. Assuring himself that all was in order, he began to retrace his steps. He was conscious of nothing except the procession of fantasies and memories within his brain: verses he had written last year beneath the young flowering laburnum in his father’s garden; a girl’s hand in which his heart seemed to be inevitably cupped; a flannelled figure, with a rapid, crushing serve, on the other side of the tennis-net; barbaric music from “Boris Godounov,” which he had heard in that wonderful summer of 1914; a great day on the river with his friend. At first these memories came singly; then they clustered together horribly and seemed to menace him.

“Fever: just fever,” he assured himself.

“Yes--just fever,” echoed his orderly.

Latimer turned upon him with his arms outstretched.

“Did I talk aloud?” he asked, in dread.

“Why, yes, sir. Weren’t you speaking to me?”

Soon their way became very steep, for the system of trenches took the side of a hill: here and there they were compelled to climb with hands as well as feet. When near the top of the hill, Latimer took off his heavy metal helmet and wiped his wet forehead with the back of his hand.

“Only one more sentry post, thank God!” he said.

Then, suddenly, an enemy battery opened fire on that sector of which Latimer had temporary charge. Most of the shells dropped in the Little Wood down below. A machine-gun from La Tortue, on their right flank, chattered incessantly, and two trench-mortars from the same place shook the air and shattered it.

Latimer hurried down the hill with his orderly behind him. In five minutes they were in the Little Wood. All the shells were dropping short. This sort of thing was likely to continue at intervals all night: it was the enemy’s usual procedure.

In the Little Wood, which smelt so stalely, Latimer sat down and suddenly began to vomit. His orderly stood by regarding him compassionately; he took a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to his master. In a few minutes Latimer, trembling and cold, rose and started to creep down the trench to the ravine....

A few hours later dawn began to paint the sky yellow, and the mountains moved out of the dark and assumed their daily places. In half-an-hour Latimer would be relieved.

“Report yourself to Sergeant Black, Morgan: I shan’t want you any more.”

He turned for a second to give his orderly a ghost of a smile, and then, placing his arms on the parapet, watched what was happening to the mountains and the sky. His large eyes glistened.

“Oh, how beautiful! How very beautiful!” he exclaimed aloud, as he gazed at the violet mist at the feet of the Belashitza Mountains. “I do wish father was here.... I do wish father....”

“Hello, Latimer! How goes it?”

The boy turned round: his company commander was standing behind him, looking at him curiously.

“You see how it is, sir,” said Latimer, gravely, “When night goes....”

His eyes quickly became dilated, and he swayed a little.

“You’re ill, laddie. Come back to Headquarters with me.”

“Fever--just fever. People have been playing tennis in my head all night. And Morgan’s killed. I wish I was dead myself.”

His lips trembled and a dry sob shook his shoulders.

“I do wish father was here,” he said.

LOOT

To Frank Harris

In their little flat between Rue Egnatia and the northern end of Rue Venizelos, Marie and Alys Cruchot deemed themselves safe from the great fire which, no one quite knew how, broke out in Salonika that oppressive Sunday in August, 1917. Their habit of holding themselves aloof from their neighbours, of disdaining even to recognize their neighbours’ existence, had isolated them from all local news, and in the hours of excitement that filled Sunday evening they held themselves more proudly than ever. The fire was a very long way off, and even if it should spread in their direction, it must be days before it could reach them.

Marie, the elder sister, was golden-haired and slim and tall: her skin was golden, and gold-brown were her eyes. She was twenty-three. Alys had her sister’s straightness and slimness; but her hair was dark, her skin was very white, and her eyes were almost lilac-blue. Alys was nineteen.

Their father had been chaplain to the French colony in Salonika, and immediately after his death in 1914 the two girls had been compelled to rely upon their own efforts for the means of support. Refusing all offers of help from their friends, they quickly acquired a working knowledge of shorthand, and were now employed as typists in the great store in Rue Venizelos from ten till six.

None guarded their virtue so carefully as they guarded theirs: no lives were more secluded or better ordered. To those whom circumstances compelled them to know, they were very gentle; but to strangers they presented a reserved and haughty front that protected them from all whom their beauty attracted and fascinated.

“Shall we go to bed?” asked Marie, late in the evening.

“Well,” said Alys, rather gravely, “to tell you the truth, I feel too excited to sleep.”

She was standing at the window looking at a livid sky.

Marie rose from her work at the table and joined her sister.

“Look!” said Alys; “isn’t it wonderful? I think it’s going to be one of the big fires of history. Some day children will learn about this in school-books.”

Marie put her arm round her sister’s neck and patted her cheek.

“Yes, little princess, it _is_ wonderful. Look at that smoke, how it rolls and writhes!--just as though it felt angry.”

Alys nodded and nestled closer to her sister.

“Are you afraid?” asked Marie.

“Oh, no: not afraid: it is too beautiful to make me afraid. Perhaps I am what is called awe-struck.”

In the street below men and women were rushing to and fro distractedly, carrying armfuls of their household goods--blankets, mattresses, pots and pans, bird-cages, babies, carpets, cradles, chairs, etc. They dumped them in the street, the womenfolk sitting on them whilst their men went far afield seeking means of transport. Across the street, on the second storey, a wine-merchant, at his wits’ end, was hurling casks of wine onto the pavement below; each burst open with a crash, the wine rushing out and making a thick stream in the gutter. No one stopped to laugh at him.

“What cowards these natives are!” exclaimed Marie, with disgust; “they always begin to squeal before they’re hurt.”

“I should like to go out and wander about and see what everybody is doing,” said Alys.

“Better not,” counselled Marie. “There’ll be a lot of looting, I expect, and half the natives will be drunk. Look how frightfully excited they all are! But we must not get too excited or we shall never sleep. We have to work to-morrow, you know.”

Still, they stood for a long time at the window, fascinated yet contemptuous. The scene below grew wilder minute by minute. The vast white furnace half a mile away lit up the street. Confusion was everywhere. Occasionally, a woman’s shriek came up to them like a stupid bit of theatricality. Now and again a band of young men brandishing sticks marched down the street, singing and laughing.

At last, Marie drew her sister within the room.

“Thank God we are not as other people,” she said, smiling. “Let us go to bed.”

They shared the same room. Alys was afraid, but she did not dare confess her fear to her sister. Marie had always taught her that they were better than other people. No doubt they were better. Nevertheless, she trembled a little as she knelt down to pray. Her fear increased when she discovered that she was mumbling words without any thought or hope behind them.

Suddenly, she started and rose to her feet.

“What is that?” she asked, panting.

They heard the noise of heavy furniture being moved in the flat above.

“I was wondering how long they would dare to stay,” said Marie, contemptuously. “This is a city of cowards.”

Alys slipped into bed, and Marie, who slept at the other side of the room, came over and kissed her.

“Are you quite sure?” asked Alys.

“What do you mean, little dear?”

“Oh, nothing. But we really are safe, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are. Even if they don’t put the fire out, it can’t reach us for days and days. Good-night, princess. Sleep well!”

She put her arm round her sister’s neck and, for a little minute, lingered in love, blessing her. Then she rose, walked over to her own bed and, having drawn the thick curtains over the windows, blew out the solitary candle.

But Alys could not sleep. She only half-slept. Her tired little body seemed to sleep, but her mind buried itself in fancies--the sort of fancies that come to us in fever. This is what her imagination said to her:

“_If_ the fire should come up the stair, walking, running. Then Marie and I would have to jump from the window.... You can buy fire. They put fire on the end of little match-stalks and sell him. They imprison him in tiny bits of phosphorus.... Oh, yes: just rub a match between your moist palms in the dark and your hands seem to be on fire. But it isn’t fire, really--just a strange kind of light.... Imprison! But no one likes being caged up. Fire doesn’t. Sometimes he leaps out of his cage--like to-night--and just shows you.... If we were in the street, we should be trampled on. Marie has not thought of these things.... Tiny bits of phosphorus. Just matches....”

Most wildly did these fancies crowd upon her. Real sleep came at last.

Marie and Alys were the only two who slept that night in that quarter of the town.

* * * * *

Adolph’s face was thin and intellectual. He had beautiful hands, and his wrists and ankles were as thin as an athlete’s. He sat in his gaudy brothel, drinking.

“A real God-send,” he said to his partner, and as he spoke he tapped his fingers on the little table holding their drinks. “A real slap-up present from the Almighty. Delivered free of charge.”

“Oh yes, oh yes: God is good. But what are we to _do_?” asked his partner, the man whom they called Tansy.

“Well, it’s simply a matter of choice. We’ve plenty to select from. All our customers are sick of these Barcelona girls: they haven’t a bite left in them. They start in Paris. Their bloom off, they go to London. When London’s sucked them dry, they go to Marseilles and from Marseilles to Port Said and from Port Said they come here and from here they go to ... well, I suppose they go to Hell. Not a single one comes from Barcelona. Now, we could do with half-a-dozen virgins.”

“Virgins?” asked Tansy, leering filthily. “And what strange fowl may they be?”

“Well, the Cruchot girls are virgins. Marie and Alys. I’ve had them at the top of my list for three years. They’re worth six thousand drachmæ apiece. From Pedro’s report here, the fire should reach their house at a quarter to one.”

“They’ll have skedaddled by now,” said Tansy, “it’s just on midnight.”

“They were at home an hour ago!” exclaimed Adolph.

“Well, what do you say to getting these two to-night and leaving the second-rate stuff till to-morrow?”

Adolph nodded.

“We’d better take Mrs. Knumf along with us.”

He rang a bell. Presently a male servant entered.

“Tell Mrs. Knumf I want her. She must put on her outdoor things,” said Adolph.

He dismissed the man with a motion of his flawless hand.

“Another drink,” suggested Tansy.

“I’ve had enough.”

“Share a bottle of champagne with me; this is a night of nights. Besides, we want priming. Those Cruchot girls will require a hell of a lot of managing. You see! If the elder one suspects anything, she’ll fight like a demon.”

He opened a bottle of champagne and filled two glasses. They drank. Tansy sat leering and perspiring. Soon the door opened and in walked a woman of incredible and revolting respectability. She was dressed in black.

“Ah! Mrs. Knumf,” said Adolph. “Sit down. Have some wine. Now, you know the Cruchot girls, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes. At least, by sight,” said Mrs. Knumf, sipping her wine genteelly, and simpering.

“Well, Tansy and I are after them. They’re still in their flat. In half-an-hour or so the fire will be upon them. We must let them nearly get caught, and then we’ll rescue them. It should be simple enough. We will take the carriage. They will come back here with you. This is your private house: it is the headquarters of the Sisters of Mercy of the Orient: it is a branch of the Sacred Heart League: it is anything you like to call it. You understand? Well, then, come along.”

Mrs. Knumf eagerly swallowed the remainder of her champagne and rose. She composed her face and began to fiddle with a pair of black gloves. She coughed behind a delicate hand.

They passed into the street and entered a carriage. Even here, near the quay, they could hear the explosive noises that the hundred-acre furnace made. A vast belt of smoke blotted out half the stars. Millions of sparks were jerked into, and quenched by, the smoke, like water frantically forced through a hose-pipe.

They had but seven or eight hundred yards to go; the streets were crowded and they could proceed only at a snail’s pace. So intense was the light and so black the shadows that the streets and buildings looked grotesquely unreal. Almost everybody was shouting wildly. Many carried open bottles: their eyes were wide and glittering. An old man sat in the gutter laughing horribly and shouting indecencies to people as they passed. Some of the smaller shops had been broken open, and looting proceeded apace.

The fire strode about the city like a giant. It littered young pythons of fire that glided subterraneously hither and thither and set a red doom on old wooden warehouses and shops. It stretched quivering tongues of flame across the streets and knit up one quarter of the town with another. It triumphed scarletly in the night and, pushing violently against lofty walls of brick and stone, sent them rattling to the ground.

“It is a good night for everyone except the insurance companies,” said Mrs. Knumf, complacently.

But when they stepped from the carriage on to the road, a gust of hot air carried to them the brain-sickening smell of burnt flesh.

“A good many people will be missing to-morrow,” remarked Tansy.

“I suppose Hell’s a bit like this,” was all that Adolph found to say.

* * * * *

Half-an-hour later the two girls were escorted by Mrs. Knumf to the discreet, private entrance to the brothel. They had been rescued with the utmost difficulty, and both of them were now shaken and a little distraught.

“You would like to rest, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Knumf, leading the way to a double-bedded room.

“You are very kind,” said Marie, looking at her a little distrustfully. Then she turned to her sister who was seated on the edge of one of the beds, trembling a little.

“Undress yourself, dear,” she said, “we will stay here until the morning.”

“You will have some refreshment first?” asked Mrs. Knumf.

But Marie refused, and the woman, walking quickly to the door, vanished. Almost immediately, through a second door on the opposite side of the room, Adolph and Tansy entered.

“Well, ladies,” said Adolph, looking keenly at Marie, “it was a narrow escape, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered Marie, impulsively; “we owe you our lives. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

She moved over towards Alys as though to protect her.

Adolph suddenly lurched forward.

“Well, you’re pretty well beat, I should think,” he said; “what about a bottle of wine?”

“Oh, no! Indeed, no!” protested Marie, standing by Alys’ side, and placing a hand upon her shoulder. “We only want to be left in peace.”

“Oh! but you must!” said Adolph. “Mustn’t they, Tansy?”

“Of course they musht,” said Tansy, eagerly. “Ring for wine. Champagne’s the stuff: we’ve plenty of it.”

Marie suddenly made up her mind.

“My sister is ill--can’t you see she is? I beg you to leave us. You have been very good to us: we are both grateful to you: do not spoil everything by thrusting upon us further kindness that ... that is not to be endured.”

“She’s right,” said Tansy, with drunken conviction, “absholutely right. What did I say? ‘Leave ’em a bit': thash what _I_ said. Leave ’em to simmer down. Now isn’t that just what _I_ said?”

“Very well,” said Adolph. “If you want anything, just ring. Mrs. Knumf will attend to you.”

They left the room by the door through which they had entered, and Marie heard the key turn in the lock.

She turned to Alys bravely.

“Get into bed, little one,” she said, “I will sleep with you.”

Two gilt candelabra, each holding half a dozen lighted candles, illuminated the room. Marie examined the room with apprehensive eyes. There were no windows: only bare walls faced her on every side. Near the ceiling, on one side of the room, were three ventilators. She crept to the door through which Mrs. Knumf had left the room and softly turned the handle: it was locked.

Without a word and with a faint smile she approached Alys.

“Do not take your clothes off,” she said; “let us sleep as we are.”

Leaving the candles still burning, she lay down by her sister. Folded in each other’s arms, they lay for a long time without sleeping. Vague noises, whether in the house or not they could not tell, disturbed them from time to time.

“The fire’s coming nearer,” whispered Alys at length. “I _know_ it is: I _feel_ it is. Marie, let us go away from here: we shall be caught.”

She sat up in bed and looked wildly round the room.

“Lie down, little one,” said her sister, soothingly, as, rising on to her knees, she placed her arm round Alys’ waist. “We can do nothing till the morning. Lie down in my arms. You are quite safe.”

But Alys’ instinct was right. The fire was spreading with incredible rapidity, and even now was within a few yards of the brothel. The vague noises grew louder and more sinister.

Both the girls were in that condition which is neither sleep nor wakefulness when one of the doors quietly opened and Adolph and Tansy entered. The former, after rapidly glancing at both the beds, locked the door, pocketed the key, went to the nearest candelabrum and extinguished all the candles it contained.

Marie, holding her sister’s hand, slipped out of bed.

“Leave those other candles alone,” she commanded.

“We have come for our reward,” said Adolph, thickly.

Tansy seated himself on the table and made himself steady by placing his hands on the table on either side of him; even with this support he swayed a little. Alys had also risen from the bed; she now stood by her sister’s side.

“What do you want?” asked Marie.

“Well, aren’t you going to rest?” asked Adolph. “Let me help you to undress.”

But instead of approaching Marie, he lurched towards the younger sister and placed a cruel, beautiful hand upon her arm. Alys winced as though her head had been struck with a whip. For a moment, Marie hesitated: then her fist shot out and caught Adolph between the eyes. He staggered and fell, but on the instant rose to his feet.

“Come on, Tansy,” he called, mad with drink and lust; “it’s going to be a fight--it’s _got_ to be one.”

Tansy, abandoning the support of the table, rushed blindly on to the two girls, his bestial face alive with cruelty. Alys, sick and faint with horror, fell to the floor.

“She’s mine!” shouted Adolph, dropping on his knees by her side and bending over her.

“Let her alone! Let her alone!” shouted Marie, ceasing to struggle with Tansy in whose ape-like arms she was imprisoned. “Take me--both of you. Do what you like with me--only leave her untouched.”

But Adolph answered her with an insane, triumphant laugh.

“You belong to Tansy,” he said, and raising Alys from the floor, he carried her to one of the beds.

A great accession of strength seemed to flow through Marie’s body and limbs from her brain; her excitement and terror were inexhaustible sources of energy. With a superhuman effort, she released herself from Tansy’s grasp, and rushed like a flame across the room to the bed on which Alys, only half-conscious, was now stretched. Throwing herself upon Adolph from behind, she put her long fingers about his throat, and it appeared to her as though her will to destroy pumped wave after wave of power along her shoulders, down her arms, and into her fingers, and made them stronger than steel. The man, half turning, struck her several blows upon her face; but she felt nothing. Tansy, in attempting to pursue her, had stumbled over a chair, crushing his head against a corner of the table. He now lay on the floor, moaning.

It was while Marie’s fingers were still about Adolph’s throat that she became conscious of dull explosive sounds immediately outside one of the doors. At the same moment some one began to attempt to force an entrance through the other door. A voice shouted excitedly, warningly. But Marie still clung to her victim until all the strength left his limbs and he fell to the floor. A key rolled out of one of his pockets. She tried to pick it up, but a sudden faintness overcame her, and she sat on the edge of the bed unable to move, her head light and empty, her legs trembling with the utmost violence.

As one who dreams, she heard a great blow upon the door from beyond which the strange explosive noises had been coming, and with unbelieving eyes she saw the door fall inwards, torn from its hinges by a great beam that had fallen against it. An inexhaustible cloud of black smoke rushed into the room, almost suffocating her; with the smoke came a wave of heat and the noisy crackle of burning wood. The excited warning voice at the second door had ceased to shout.

All Marie’s senses were incredulous of her approaching doom. She gazed on her surroundings with the detachment of an onlooker who was not directly affected by those surroundings. She said to herself: “If Alys and I don’t escape soon--now--we shall be burned alive.” But still she did not move. She could not. She tried to lift her arm, but it remained inert on the bed. She attempted to speak to her sister, but no sound came from her lips....

The fire came roaring down the passage and entered the room. It was so hot that Marie felt her skin was being scorched. The horror of dying in flames seemed to her much less dreadful than the horror from which she had just escaped. Yet it would now be a comparatively easy matter to get away if only she could move. Her heart was beating violently, and her breath came and went most stormily. With a supreme effort she gathered all the forces of her mind together and concentrated them, willing herself to move; in response to this effort, her body rose from the bed and began to obey her wishes. Her hand picked up the key from the floor, her arms folded themselves about her sister and half-dragged, half-carried her to the second door. She fitted the key into the lock and turned it. In a second the door was open, and she and her sister were in the passage.

The door banged to after them, imprisoning the two half-conscious evil men.

With many intervals for rest, Marie carried her sister to the end of the passage and out into the open air. The brothel was almost surrounded by fire: another five minutes, and she would have been too late. As she emerged into the street and looked around her, she saw it was deserted. No one in Salonika was interested in the burning of a brothel when great hotels, huge warehouses, and fine palaces were being destroyed. And degraded women are but poor loot when compared with jewels and drink.

As for Adolph and Tansy....

HOW IT GREW

To T. Michael Pope

I suppose that, after all, I am at heart a good deal of a snob, for I remember taking enormous pleasure in being seen in Captain Porritt’s company as we sauntered by British Headquarters, and passed along by the side of the quay until we reached the Café Roma. For Porritt was most decidedly a notability in Salonika. He would have attracted attention anywhere. He was dark and sudden, like a Spaniard. He had an air of distinction, even of disdain, and though his face was peculiarly animated, it never revealed anything. He looked what he was; an eager young aristocrat, absorbed in and hugely entertained by his surroundings. Every part of him had intuition: his hands _knew_.

Now, I must explain that Porritt had been in some little trouble. A lady, I think; certainly not drink. She was somebody else’s wife, and Somebody Else happened to be a millionaire merchant. So for three weeks Salonika had been closed to Porritt, and to-day was the first day of the ban’s lifting.

“I’d better go slow the first day, Old Thing,” he said; “we’ll go to the Roma instead of the White Tower, and after lunch, if that little room’s empty, you shall play Brahms to me--especially the Little Valse.”

We mounted the stone stairway that takes you so unexpectedly to the restaurant. As soon as the manager saw Porritt he came fussing towards us.

“Ah, monsieur!” he exclaimed, delightedly; “you once more! Are you well? Yes?”

“Excessively. But how crowded you are!”

The manager gazed around at his cosmopolitan clients, and smiled reassuringly.

“There, in the corner--a table for two. True, it is engaged for somebody else, but you shall have it.”

He tangled fatly through the room, and, when at the table, turned about and smiled.

We sat down, and our guide handed a wine list to Porritt.

“It is some weeks since you were in Salonika?” he suggested, rather than asked.

“Yes; three. Very busy up-country. Very busy ... ve ... ry ... bu ... sy ...” Porritt’s eyes were among the champagnes.

“Ah: Indeed! Something important then?” (He had not heard of Somebody Else’s wife.)

Porritt looked up and winked knowingly. “Rather! You wait and see.” He lowered his voice, adding, confidentially: “There’s a move on.”

“Ah! The Big Push!”

His eyebrows shaped themselves into a question.

Porritt nodded gravely and impressively.

“The Big Push! The Big Push!” breathed the manager once more.

He murmured the words reverently and softly, and at once increased in stature a couple of inches, thus falsifying the spirit, if not the letter, of the Scriptural axiom. He was one of the Few who Knew. He was a personality.

He tangoed away for a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. Porritt grinned.

“You watch!” he said. “It’ll spread as quickly as a scandal in a cathedral city.”

And, really, the effect of this purely imaginary piece of news, deposited in the bosom of the manager, was electrical. He passed from table to table, and dropped a bomb on each. In five minutes the restaurant was seething with excitement.

“The Great Push at last!... In France as well, no doubt.... Every front.... Yes, the Great Push. I always said it would begin in May.”

At one table the manager lingered for some little time. He was talking with some animation to three journalists, correspondents of French newspapers. Two of them were busy writing in note-books. It appeared that the manager had no lack of news to impart: he spread out his plump hands, lifted his shoulders, and wrinkled his brows. And then he looked furtively towards us, and whispered something behind his hand. The journalists also looked, half rose, thought a second time, and sat down again.

“Damned funny, isn’t it?” said Porritt.

“I’m afraid you’re rather in for it,” I remarked.

“Oh, I’ll soon dispose of _them_.”

Only one table went on smoothly and systematically with its eating. Seated at it were two Fleet Street men, who had just come to Salonika to conduct _The Balkan News_. They had listened to the manager, but had remained unmoved. But, presently, one of them took a slip of paper from his pocket, wrote a few words, and sent it across to us by a waiter.

Porritt unrolled the slip. On it was written: “Is there anything in it?” He hesitated a moment, then wrote underneath: “Damfino.” “Which,” said he to me, “being interpreted, means: ‘I’m damned if I know.’” And that is all the English journalists got; as a matter of fact, it was all they wanted, and they sat back in their chairs, and watched the rumour grow.

Extraordinary our human love of the sensational! Extraordinary our inability to pass on a piece of news without adding to it! Extraordinary the credulity we give to impossible stories we desire to be true!

“Let’s have our coffee and liqueurs down at Floca’s,” suggested Porritt. “It’ll be rather jolly to see to what fantastic shapes my Yarn has grown down there.”

Floca’s, of course, is just underneath the Roma, but though only a floor and a ceiling divide them, they are as different in mental atmosphere as the gilt-mirrored lounge of the Café Royal, and the dining-room at Morley’s Hotel.

The word “seethes” is banal; nevertheless, Floca’s seethed. For the Yarn had grown. It now had many twisted forms, each fashioned according to the desires and fears of the individual gossiper. Porritt, the only begetter of this disturbance, leaned back with a gratified smile on his lips.

“One must amuse oneself,” said he.

“Ah! Porritt! Porritt! Little do you know the mischief you have done! At this moment the news is on its way to Athens, thence to London, Berlin, Vienna--everywhere. At about seven o’clock this evening, just when the night editors are beginning to think of dinner, it will reach Fleet Street, perhaps by way of Zurich or Amsterdam. Even now, as I speak, the world is beginning to wake up to this great new event. Thousands of pounds will be spent on cables. Reputations will be lost. Perhaps Roumania will be induced to come in at last. Greece will stir uneasily, the Kaiser will wire to Hindenburg, the Stock Exchange....”

“Would it were all true!” interrupted Porritt. “Do you know, Cumberland, I have never felt so important in all my life? Look over there!”

He pointed to a neighbouring table. At it were seated two men, both of whom I knew well by sight. One a fat, hairy Greek Jew with a pendulous jaw, and great bags under his eyes, was a fabulously wealthy financier; the other his confidential clerk. They had been taken unawares by the news, and forgot that a dozen eyes were upon them. The financier was white and trembling, and time after time he tried to rise from his chair, only to sink back repeatedly in a condition of distressing exhaustion. Fear, a devastating fear, dwelt in his eyes.

“What is he afraid of?” I whispered to Porritt.

“Only his clerk knows. But evidently he thinks he is ruined.”

“Tell him!” I urged; “tell him it’s not true--that it’s only your invention.”

“Why should I? If people will speculate in human lives, let them take the consequences.... And now,” added he, “I must go to the canteen to get those six cases of whiskey. I’ve a limber waiting for me just off Piccadilly Circus.”

* * * * *

It reached Fleet Street precisely at nine.

“I think we might have a leader on it--in any case, a short one,” said Hartley, Editor of the _Trumpet_, that powerful organ of democracy, to the night editor. “Tell Bisham to come along.”

Like a lizard, Bisham darted in, an unlit stump of a cigar between his thin, intelligent lips.

“Well, Bish, the Big Push is on at last. All fronts. Just through on the wire. Waiting for censor’s permish. No details. Let’s have a couple of sticks, in case. The news about Salonika; the wire itself--it comes from Zurich--will go in under any circs. And, you, Beale,” he added, turning to the night news editor, “wire Amsterdam, and do the necessary with Paris. Now, trot along both of you. I’m busy.”

KATYA’S WOOING

To Jack Kahane

It was in May, 1912, that Katya Kontorompa met cosmopolitan Guy Fallon, and decided to make him fall in love with her. She was staying at the Olympos Hotel, in Salonika, with her mother, and Fallon had a suite of rooms on the ground floor. He was tall, dark, and vivid; moreover, he was young; best of all, he was fabulously wealthy.

“A week next Thursday,” said Katya one afternoon to her mother, as they sat on the shaded balcony on the first floor, “Guy Fallon will propose to me. It will take place in the evening in one of those boats.”

She nodded towards a flotilla of little rowing-boats that stirred lazily to the rhythm of the lazy waves.

“Yes?” inquired her mother, who sat in a low chair looking benevolently at the world that God had made specially for her.

“And though I shall be a little timid at first,” continued Katya, “I shall say yes as soon as he has kissed me passionately on the mouth. But not until. I think he would kiss rather well, don’t you?”

“I think he would be thorough, dear.... But we musn’t talk like this. I never used even to _think_ like it till you came home from Brussels.”

“Would you like Guy for a son-in-law, mamma?”

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Kontorompa was fascinated by Fallon almost as much as her daughter was, and it was with a wholly sensuous feeling that she closed her lids and said:

“Yes, dear, I should--very much.”

“But the kind of kisses he would bestow upon you, mamma, would be very different from those I should get,” said Katya, mischievously.

But though Fallon saw a good deal of the two ladies during the next few days, there was something in his manner that made Mrs. Kontorompa suspect he had no intention of marrying her daughter. He was in love with her--yes; but it was not quite the kind of love that leads to marriage. Rather was it the kind of hot, uneasy passion that persecutes a man until he has gained his desire, when it shrinks and dies like an orchid in a night of frost. But Katya, of course, was extraordinarily clever: ignobly so. She was directing the affair with elaborate carefulness, confident that in the end she would trap this bright tiger of a man in her net of conspiracies.

Though living in the same hotel, Fallon wrote to her twice every day. Sitting up in bed in his yellow pyjamas each night, he wrote just before he slept, and the note was delivered by his valet to Katya’s maid at eight o’clock every morning. And just before dinner in the evening he also wrote, and this letter he himself handed to Katya as they said good night. Fallon knew how to write. He had a habit of intoxicating himself with words, and though each letter said: “I love you! I want you!” he rescued himself from monotony and her from boredom, by saying the same thing in a hundred different ways. But he was never tender, and Mrs. Kontorompa, who eagerly read the letters Katya passed on to her, was driven on one occasion to remark:

“It is not marriage-love. Your father has never loved me like that!”

“Poor mamma!” murmured Katya; “poor mamma! But don’t you wish he had?”

Fallon was with the Kontorompas almost every hour of every day. In the afternoons, when Mrs. Kontorompa slept, the two lovers played pianoforte duets in the big, deserted lounge. Fallon was a masterful pianist, and he played in a manner that suggested intense hunger of the soul. In these hours he had no courtesy, and when she bungled a passage he would scowl at her and call her a little fool. And at this she would laugh and play carelessly in order to taste his anger once again....

“To-day is Thursday,” announced Katya, one morning, as she and her mother breakfasted alone in their room.

“So it is,” agreed her mother, without conviction.

“But I mean it’s _the_ Thursday. This evening Guy will ask me to marry him. After dinner he and I will walk to the White Tower. There we shall get a boat. Guy will row. There will be a moon.”

She spoke as though she had arranged for the moon to be there.

“Do take care of yourself, dear. Mr. Fallon is so dark and so ... so impulsive. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean, mamma; but those little rowing-boats are quite safe in more senses than one.”

And because she was so anxious for the evening to come, Katya found the bright hours of the day tepid and slow. She was very quiet and subdued in the afternoon, when Fallon found her in the empty lounge.

“Come and play!” he commanded.

“I feel languid and lazy, like a cat in the sun,” she said; “besides, I’m reading.”

“Very well--we’ll play the _Petite Suite_ of Debussy’s and some other tame stuff. Let’s sentimentalize together.”

“Oh, but you’d find out too much about me. We should get too close to each other in that soft, melting music.”

“Is it possible for us to get too close to each other?” he asked, with a laugh that seemed to be half a sneer.

She rose, and together they walked to the piano.

Only those who have played in concerted music know how easy it is for two souls to mingle in sound. They enjoy an intimacy which no passionate avowals, no tender pleadings, and, indeed, no physical contact can provide. Debussy is never entirely innocent: even his gold-fishes swim wantonly in their pool: and the very tender miniatures of the _Petite Suite_ are decadent with faint exhalations of patchouli.

Fallon detested the casual promiscuities of secret lovers--the pressure of hands, the stolen kisses, the entire vocabulary of illicitness. He had the fastidiousness of the gourmet, and as yet his body had tasted nothing of Katya’s delights, save the sharp thrill that eyes can communicate, and the peculiar, ghostly, but sensuous intimacy supplied by music.

* * * * *

Katya’s moon was in its appointed place as the two lovers silently descended the quay at the White Tower and embarked in their little boat. Guy rowed out into the bay. There was no breathing in the air, no ripple on the sea. The stars made magic in the sky, and conspired with the moon to create a feeling of far-off voluptuousness.

Fallon rowed lazily until they were a mile or so from the town, which was visible as a vast congeries of lights--chains of lights, terraces of lights, huge constellations poised in the air, lonely points of flame burning in solitary places.

“Like a huge window full of jewels,” said Katya.

The tens of thousands of lights were reflected in the sea as clearly as a face is reflected in a mirror.

“Which is the more real?” asked Fallon; “the city’s illumination or the sea’s version of it?”

“The water is quite warm,” said Katya, laying a white hand on the surface of the indigo sea.

“Yes,” said Fallon. “You could, if you wished, more easily plunge your hand into my heart than into that water.”

“I know,” she said; “perhaps some day I will.”

“Perhaps some day it will be too late. I cannot go on loving you like this--desperately--for ever. Love can be broken by its own strength.”

“You must not threaten me,” she said. “Your attraction for me is your strength: strong people do not threaten. They do not even warn.”

“Then you do love me?”

“Of course. That is, if you call it love.”

“If I lean forward I can kiss your ankle.”

She laughed.

“Humour must be preserved even if propriety isn’t,” she said; “nevertheless, you may kiss it.”

She felt the long warmth of his lips through her puce-coloured silk stockings. A hot wind suddenly came from the south, stirring the sea to life.

“And now,” she said, “you’d better row back.”

“We were fools to come here,” he said.

“Yes?... Why? Tell me.”

But he sat moodily for a minute without speaking. Then he lit a cigarette, and by the light of his match Katya saw the passion in his eyes.

“You’re a bit of a tiger,” she said.

“And you’re much of an iceberg,” he retorted.

“Passionless, cold, serene,” she quoted. “I wonder if I am. I’ve never yet had the chance of finding out.”

But he made no reply. His silence, his lack of directness, the lazy contemptuous manner in which he smoked his cigarette, whipped her to anger.

“Let’s go back,” she said, abruptly.

“No,” he replied, with grimness. “I’ve got you here.”

“Very well,” she said; “then give me a cigarette.”

He threw her a case and a box of matches.

Then, suddenly, words came from him in a torrent.

“You confess you love me. Well, if you do--passion’s what I want. Affection’s nothing to me. You’ve ‘never yet had a chance of finding out.’ Do you expect me to believe that? You were made to tempt men ... and to satisfy them. Listen, Katya: I love every bit of you. You’re not cold. You could kiss, I know. Let me row you back.”

His cigarette gave a little hiss as it hit the water. He threw his arms forward, desperately.

“Yes, let me row you back,” he repeated.

“I love you,” she answered, “but I can never be your mistress. I’m not angry with you....”

“Do you think I should care if you were?” he interrupted, violently. “Do you think I care a damn for your anger?--or your love? You would like to be cruel to me: _I_ know: I know your sort. But I can wash you from my mind as easily as the sea has put out my cigarette.”

“Oh, no!” she said; “you can’t do that. You know you can’t. Something of me will be with you always.”

He took the oars and began to row. The little indigo waves passed by them; the feathered oars slid along their crests. At each pull the boat leapt; something of his strength was imparted to her body; she quivered in response.

At the quay of the White Tower he was rough and insolent.

“Get out, quick!” he commanded; “let’s finish this ridiculous business as speedily as possible.”

She turned upon him with an amused smile.

“You have the most dreadful manners of any man I have ever met,” she said, with a little laugh. “When you are in a temper, you are about twelve years old.”

He called a _gharry_, waited until she had stepped into it, and then strode away.

* * * * *

Mrs. Kontorompa was sitting up in bed, reading, when Katya opened her mother’s bedroom door. She looked at her daughter with a contented smile.

“Nothing happened,” announced Katya. “He does not want to marry me.”

“My poor child! Never mind: there were weeks and weeks when I used to think the same about your father. Men never know their own minds.”

“But Fallon shall know his,” said Katya; “I’m as clever as any man I’ve come across yet.”

“Do be careful, dear. You were careful to-night?”

“Very. He only kissed my ankle.”

“_Your ankle!_” exclaimed her mother, in amazement; “whatever for? Why should he want to kiss your ankle?”

“Well,” said Katya, laughing, “I’ve got rather a nice ankle, you know.”

Mrs. Kontorompa, who had no ankles at all, but merely calves terminating in feet, sighed anxiously.

“Your father never kissed _my_ ankles,” she said, disapprovingly.

“Ask him to!” urged Katya, mischievously; “it’s a delightful feeling.”

* * * * *

A week later Fallon, dressed in white duck, knocked early one morning at Mrs. Kontorompa’s drawing-room door. Katya and Katya’s mother were to go with him to Langaza to picnic. But at the very last moment Mrs. Kontorompa, as had been arranged between her daughter and herself, felt indisposed.

“You will come by yourself,” said Fallon.

“Of course,” answered Katya.

The chauffeur was discreet and unobservant: he was paid a very large salary for not seeing things.

Their car was fitted with a lace awning, but the air was so hot and dry, that before they were well over the deserted Lembet plain they were inordinately thirsty. So Fallon stopped the car and opened a half-bottle of champagne.

“I didn’t bring champagne just because it’s expensive,” he explained, “but because I know you like it. Look!--the ice is half melted already.”

“It will be cooler by the lake,” said Katya; “there may even be a little breeze. I never drink champagne on a hot day,” she added, “without longing to have a bath in it. It would tingle so deliciously, like electricity.”

“Sensualist! I’ve often noticed you love the sensations you’ve never experienced.”

“The worst of it is, there are so few of them left.”

But Fallon was not interested, and he threw the empty bottle on the roadside with a gesture of boredom.

“Drive on!” he ordered the chauffeur.

When a mile from Langaza Lake, the car was drawn up by the side of the deserted road, and their chauffeur spread out their lunch under the shade of a little grove of poplars.

In silence they ate and drank. The sun-baked plain sent waves of visible heat into the sky. No birds sang. The bronze sound of a sheep-bell came from afar.

“Life passes,” said Katya, at length, “and we grow older.”

“True,” answered he, mockingly. “It is only the grass that never withers. It was here ten thousand years ago, and it is here to-day.”

“But you and I!--how quickly age will come to us!” she said.

“How foolish, then, to waste our youth!” he urged. “Sometimes I feel angry at those days which slip by empty of ecstasy. Waste! It’s all waste! Waste of days, of months, of years! Just because we refuse to take what life offers us. We do not live for ever, and the things that taste sweet to-day will in a few years be but bitterness and ashes.”

He allowed his wine-glass to slip from his lax fingers on to the grass.

“Let us walk,” he said; “I’m restless.”

So they rose and walked slowly towards the lake.

“What is that parcel you are carrying?” he asked, when they were near the lake’s border.

“Oh, I thought perhaps I’d do some sketching when we got to the lake. We can sit down, and you may smoke while I work. No, thanks: I can easily carry it myself.”

They walked on in silence. Then:

“You were talking about waste,” she said.

“Was I? Yes. But it’s a dreary subject. I was lecturing you, really, you know; for you’re wasting my life as well as your own. You’re destroying these days. It’s just a week since you told me you loved me.”

“Yes, but I said ‘if you call it love.’ To you love is one thing; to me, another.”

“Why? What do you imagine _is_ my idea of love?”

“Just appetite--the satisfaction of an appetite.”

“And your idea?”

“Service.”

He laughed on a high note of contempt.

“You deceive yourself,” he said. “Do you think I don’t know you? Do you think I live with my eyes shut? If you were to confess that your idea of love is a means of obtaining security against life, I’d believe you. In other words--you like me in my brutal moods, don’t you?--if I asked you to marry me, you would serve me for what I would give you in return. Is that what you mean by service?”

“You believe, then, I would accept your invitation if you asked me to marry you?”

“Most assuredly. Let’s finish this subtle, month-old fight of ours, and speak in plain words.”

“But we understand each other so well without plain words!” she protested.

“Do we? I wonder. Tell me, then: why don’t I ask you to marry me?”

“Because you don’t love me. Your body merely aches for mine. You suffer, I know.”

“Yes, I do,” he acknowledged; “but I can endure pain. Most men can’t: that is why they are willing to incur the discomfort and long penance of marriage--anything rather than continue to suffer.”

“Then why don’t you go away? Why don’t you leave me altogether?”

But he did not answer.

“Is it,” she asked, “because you still hope to win me without marriage?”

He turned upon her savagely.

“Temptress and taunter!” he exclaimed. “I know your sort. You love to feel your hideous power. You suck delight from my misery.”

He drew nearer to her and seized one of her wrists.

“I love you,” he whispered; “isn’t that enough?”

They were in a little pathway among the rushes by the lake’s side. Suddenly, she wrested herself away from him and, raising her right arm, threw the parcel she carried into the lake. It floated on the surface, and the gentle south wind moved it slowly across the water in the direction of Langaza village, a couple of miles away.

She looked at him with a mocking smile.

“Let us go back,” she said, “for this is merely the waste of another day.”

“Why have you thrown your sketching things away?” he asked, stupidly.

“I haven’t. The things I have thrown away were once yours. Then they became mine. They will belong to the person who finds them.”

The words came hysterically, and she trembled a little.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Your letters to me. I have finished with you. This is the end.”

He began to laugh, but his laughter quickly died in his throat.

“You fool!” he exclaimed; “you spiteful little devil! My name is on each of those letters.”

He quivered with anger, and raised his fist as though to strike.

“I know,” she said. “That is one of the reasons why I threw them away. It is time your folly was known to others besides me.”

She looked upon him with malice, delighting in his anger. Then she laughed softly, taunting him.

“Can’t you swim?” she asked. “See, it isn’t very far off.”

But he strode away in the direction of the motor-car. She called after him, gently, lovingly.