On the next day, the day of the elections, which was also the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Herakleion blossomed suddenly, and from the earliest hour, into a striped and fluttering gaudiness. The sun shone down upon a white town beflagged into an astonishing gaiety. Everywhere was whiteness, whiteness, and brilliantly coloured flags. White, green, and orange, dazzling in the sun, vivid in the breeze. And, keyed up to match the intensity of the colour, the band blared brassily, unremittingly, throughout the day from the centre of theplatia.
A parrot-town, glaring and screeching; a monkey-town, gibbering, excited, inconsequent. All the shops, save the sweet-shops, were shut, and the inhabitants flooded into the streets. Not only had they decked their houses with flags, they had also decked themselves with ribbons, their women with white dresses, their children with bright bows, their carriages with paper streamers, their horses with sunbonnets. Bands of young men, straw-hatted, swept arm-in-arm down the pavements, adding to the din with mouth organs, mirlitons, and tin trumpets. The trams flaunted posters in the colours of the contending parties. Immense char-à-bancs, roofed over with brown holland and drawn by teams of mules, their harness hung with bells and red tassels, conveyed the voters to the polling-booths amid the cheers and imprecations of the crowd.
Herakleion abandoned itself deliriously to political carnival.
In the immense, darkened rooms of the houses on theplatia, the richer Greeks idled, concealing theiranxiety. It was tacitly considered beneath their dignity to show themselves in public during that day. They could but await the fruition or the failure of their activities during the preceding weeks. Heads of households were for the most part morose, absorbed in calculations and regrets. Old Christopoulos, looking more bleached than usual, wished he had been more generous. That secretaryship for Alexander.... In the great sala of his house he paced restlessly up and down, biting his finger nails, and playing on his fingers the tune of the many thousand drachmæ he might profitably have expended. The next election would not take place for five years. At the next election he would be a great deal more lavish.
He had made the same resolution at every election during the past thirty years.
In the background, respectful of his silence, themselves dwarfed and diminutive in the immense height of the room, little knots of his relatives and friends whispered together, stirring cups of tisane. Heads were very close together, glances at old Christopoulos very frequent. Visitors, isolated or in couples, strolled in unannounced and informally, stayed for a little, strolled away again. A perpetual movement of such circulation rippled through the houses in theplatiathroughout the day, rumour assiduous in its wake. Fru Thyregod alone, with her fat, silly laugh, did her best wherever she went to lighten the funereal oppression of the atmosphere. The Greeks she visited were not grateful. Unlike the populace in the streets, they preferred taking their elections mournfully.
By midday the business of voting was over, and in the houses of theplatiathe Greeks sat round their luncheon-tables with the knowledge that the vital question was now decided, though the answer remained as yet unknown, and that in the polling-booths anarmy of clerks sat feverishly counting, while the crowd outside, neglectful of its meal, swarmed noisily in the hope of news. In the houses of theplatia, on this one day of the year, the Greeks kept open table. Each vast dining-room, carefully darkened and indistinguishable in its family likeness from its neighbour in the house on either side, offered its hospitality under the inevitable chandelier. In each, the host greeted the new-comer with the same perfunctory smile. In each, the busy servants came and went, carrying dishes and jugs of orangeade—for Levantine hospitality, already heavily strained, boggled at wine—among the bulky and old-fashioned sideboards. All joyousness was absent from these gatherings, and the closed shutters served to exclude, not only the heat, but also the strains of the indefatigable band playing on theplatia.
Out in the streets the popular excitement hourly increased, for if the morning had been devoted to politics, the afternoon and evening were to be devoted to the annual feast and holiday of the Declaration of Independence. The national colours, green and orange, seemed trebled in the town. They hung from every balcony and were reproduced in miniature in every buttonhole. Only here and there an islander in his fustanelle walked quickly with sulky and averted eyes, rebelliously innocent of the brilliant cocarde, and far out to sea the rainbow islands shimmered with never a flag to stain the distant whiteness of the houses upon Aphros.
The houses of theplatiaexcelled all others in the lavishness of their patriotic decorations. The balconies of the club were draped in green and orange, with the arms of Herakleion arranged in the centre in electric lights for the evening illumination. The Italian Consulate drooped its complimentary flag. The houseof Platon Malteios—Premier or ex-Premier? no one knew—was almost too ostentatiously patriotic. The cathedral, on the opposite side, had its steps carpeted with red and the spaciousness of its porch festooned with the colours. From the central window of the Davenant house, opposite the sea, a single listless banner hung in motionless folds.
It had, earlier in the day, occasioned a controversy.
Julian had stood in the centre of the frescoed drawing-room, flushed and constrained.
'Father, that flag on our house insults the Islands. It can be seen even from Aphros!'
'My dear boy, better that it should be seen from Aphros than that we should offend Herakleion.'
'What will the islanders think?'
'They are accustomed to seeing it there every year.'
'If I had been at home....'
'When this house is yours, Julian, you will no doubt do as you please; so long as it is mine, I beg you not to interfere.'
Mr Davenant had spoken in his curtest tones. He had added,—
'I shall go to the cathedral this afternoon.'
The service in the cathedral annually celebrated the independence of Herakleion. Julian slipped out of the house, meaning to mix with the ill-regulated crowd that began to collect on theplatiato watch for the arrival of the notables, but outside the door of the club he was discovered by Alexander Christopoulos who obliged him to follow him upstairs to the Christopoulos drawing-room.
'My father is really too gloomy for me to confront alone,' Alexander said, taking Julian's arm and urging him along; 'also I have spent the morning in the club, which exasperates him. He likes me to sit at homewhile he stands looking at me and mournfully shaking his head.'
They came into the sala together, where old Christopoulos paced up and down in front of the shuttered windows, and a score of other people sat whispering over their cups of tisane. White dresses, dim mirrors, and the dull gilt of furniture gleamed here and there in the shadows of the vast room.
'Any news? any news?' the banker asked of the two young men.
'You know quite well, father, that no results are to be declared until seven o'clock this evening.'
Alexander opened a section of a Venetian blind, and as a shaft of sunlight fell startlingly across the floor a blare of music burst equally startlingly upon the silence.
'Theplatiais crowded already,' said Alexander, looking out.
The hum of the crowd became audible, mingled with the music; explosions of laughter, and some unexplained applause. The shrill cry of a seller of iced water rang immediately beneath the window. The band in the centre continued to shriek remorselessly an antiquated air of the Paris boulevards.
'At what time is the procession due?' asked Fru Thyregod over Julian's shoulder.
'At five o'clock; it should arrive at any moment,' Julian said, making room for the Danish Excellency.
'I adore processions,' cried Fru Thyregod, clapping her hands, and looking brightly from Julian to Alexander.
Alexander whispered to Julie Lafarge, who had come up,—
'I am sure Fru Thyregod has gone from house to house and from Legation to Legation, and has had a meal at each to-day.'
Somebody suggested,—
'Let us open the shutters and watch the procession from the balconies.'
'Oh, what a good idea!' cried Fru Thyregod, clapping her hands again and executing a pirouette.
Down in theplatiaan indefinite movement was taking place; the band stopped playing for the first time that day, and began shuffling with all its instruments to one side. Voices were then heard raised in tones of authority. A cleavage appeared in the crowd, which grew in length and width as though a wedge were being gradually driven into that reluctant confusion of humanity.
'A path for the procession,' said old Christopoulos, who, although not pleased at that frivolous flux of his family and guests on to the balconies of his house, had joined them, overcome by his natural curiosity.
The path cut in the crowd now ran obliquely across theplatiafrom the end of the rue Royale to the steps of the cathedral opposite, and upon it the confetti with which the wholeplatiawas no doubt strewn became visible. The police, with truncheons in their hands, were pressing the people back to widen the route still further. They wore their gala hats, three-cornered, with upright plumes of green and orange nodding as they walked.
'Look at Sterghiou,' said Alexander.
The Chief of Police rode vaingloriously down the route looking from left to right, and saluting with his free hand. The front of his uniform was crossed with broad gold hinges, and plaits of yellow braid disappeared mysteriously into various pockets. One deduced whistles; pencils; perhaps a knife. Although he did not wear feathers in his hat, one knew that only the utmost self-restraint had preserved him from them.
Here the band started again with a march, andSterghiou's horse shied violently and nearly unseated him.
'The troops!' said old Christopoulos with emotion.
Debouching from the rue Royale, the army came marching four abreast. As it was composed of only four hundred men, and as it never appeared on any other day of the year, its general Panaïoannou always mobilised it in its entirety on the national festival. This entailed the temporary closing of the casino in order to release the croupiers, who were nearly all in the ranks, and led to a yearly dispute between the General and the board of administration.
'There was once a croupier,' said Alexander, 'who was admitted to the favour of a certain grand-duchess until the day when, indiscreetly coming into the dressing-room where the lady was arranging and improving her appearance, he said, through sheer force of habit, "Madame, les jeux sont faits?" and was dismissed for ever by her reply, "Rien ne va plus."'
The general himself rode in the midst of his troops, in his sky-blue uniform, to which the fantasy of his Buda-Pesth costumier had added for the occasion a slung Hussar jacket of white cloth. His gray moustache was twisted fiercely upwards, and curved like a scimitar across his face. He rode with his hand on his hip, slowly scanning the windows and balconies of theplatia, which by now were crowded with people, gravely saluting his friends as he passed. Around him marched his bodyguard of six, a captain and five men; the captain carried in one hand a sword, and in the other—nobody knew why—a long frond of palm.
The entire army tramped by, hot, stout, beaming, and friendly. At one moment some one threw down a handful of coins from a window, and the ranks were broken in a scramble for the coppers. Julian, who was leaning apart in a corner of his balcony, heard alaugh like a growl behind him as the enormous hand of Grbits descended on his shoulder.
'Remember the lesson, young man: if you are called upon to deal with the soldiers of Herakleion, a fistful of silver amongst them will scatter them.'
Julian thought apprehensively that they must be overheard, but Grbits continued in supreme unconsciousness,—
'Look at their army, composed of shop-assistants and croupiers. Look at their general—a general in his spare moments, but in the serious business of his life a banker and an intriguer like the rest of them. I doubt whether he has ever seen anything more dead in his life than a dead dog in a gutter. I could pick him up and squash in his head like an egg.'
Grbits extended his arm and slowly unfolded the fingers of his enormous hand. At the same time he gave his great laugh that was like the laugh of a good-humoured ogre.
'At your service, young man,' he said, displaying the full breadth of his palm to Julian, 'whenever you stand in need of it. The Stavridists will be returned to-day; lose no time; show them your intentions.'
He impelled Julian forward to the edge of the balcony and pointed across to the Davenant house.
'That flag, young man: see to it that it disappears within the hour after the results of the elections are announced.'
The army was forming itself into two phalanxes on either side of the cathedral steps. Panaïoannou caracoled up and down shouting his orders, which were taken up and repeated by the busy officers on foot. Meanwhile the notables in black coats were arriving in a constant stream that flowed into the cathedral; old Christopoulos had already left the house to attend the religious ceremony; the foreign Ministers andConsuls attended out of compliment to Herakleion; Madame Lafarge had rolled down the route in her barouche with her bearded husband; Malteios had crossed theplatiafrom his own house, and Stavridis came, accompanied by his wife and daughters. Still the band played on, the crowd laughed, cheered, or murmured in derision, and the strident cries of the water-sellers rose from all parts of theplatia.
Suddenly the band ceased to play, and in the hush only the hum of the crowd continued audible.
The religious procession came walking very slowly from the rue Royale, headed by a banner and by a file of young girls, walking two by two, in white dresses, with wreaths of roses on their heads. As they walked they scattered sham roses out of baskets, the gesture reminiscent of the big picture in the Senate-room. It was customary for the Premier of the Republic to walk alone, following these young girls, black and grave in his frock-coat after their virginal white, but on this occasion, as no one knew who the actual Premier was, a blank space was left to represent the problematical absentee. Following the space came the Premier's habitual escort, a posse of police; it should have been a platoon of soldiers, but Panaïoannou always refused to consent to such a diminution of his army.
'They say,' Grbits remarked to Julian in this connection, 'that the general withdraws even the sentries from the frontier to swell his ranks.'
'Herakleion is open to invasion,' said Julian, smiling.
Grbits replied sententiously, with the air of one creating a new proverb,—
'Herakleion is open to invasion, but who wants to invade Herakleion?'
The crowd watched the passage of the procession with the utmost solemnity. Not a sound was now heard but the monotonous step of feet. Religiousawe had hushed political hilarity. Archbishop and bishops; archmandrites andpapásof the country districts, passed in a mingling of scarlet, purple and black. All the pomp of Herakleion had been pressed into service—all the clamorous, pretentious pomp, shouting for recognition, beating on a hollow drum; designed to impress the crowd; and perhaps, also, to impress, beyond the crowd, the silent Islands that possessed no army, no clergy, no worldly trappings, but that suffered and struggled uselessly, pitiably, against the tinsel tyrant in vain but indestructible rebellion.
* * * * * *
As five o'clock drew near, the entire population seemed to be collected in theplatia. The white streak that had marked the route of the procession had long ago disappeared, and the square was now, seen from above, only a dense and shifting mass of people. In the Christopoulos drawing-room, where Julian still lingered, talking to Grbits and listening to the alternate foolishness, fanaticism, and ferocious good-humour of the giant, the Greeks rallied in numbers with only one topic on their lips. Old Christopoulos was frankly biting his nails and glancing at the clock; Alexander but thinly concealed his anxiety under a dribble of his usual banter. The band had ceased playing, and the subtle ear could detect an inflection in the very murmur of the crowd.
'Let us go on to the balcony again,' Grbits said to Julian; 'the results will be announced from the steps of Malteios' house.'
They went out; some of the Greeks followed them, and all pressed behind, near the window openings.
'It is a more than usually decisive day for Herakleion,' said old Christopoulos, and Julian knew that the words were spoken at, although not to, him.
He felt that the Greeks looked upon him as anintruder, wishing him away so that they might express their opinions freely, but in a spirit of contrariness he remained obstinately.
A shout went up suddenly from the crowd: a little man dressed in black, with a top-hat, and a great many white papers in his hand, had appeared in the frame of Malteios' front-door. He stood on the steps, coughed nervously, and dropped his papers.
'Inefficient little rat of a secretary!' cried Alexander in a burst of fury.
'Listen!' said Grbits.
A long pause of silence from the wholeplatia, in which one thin voice quavered, reaching only the front row of the crowd.
'Stavridis has it,' Grbits said quietly, who had been craning over the edge of the balcony. His eyes twinkled maliciously, delightedly, at Julian across the group of mortified Greeks. 'An immense majority,' he invented, enjoying himself.
Julian was already gone. Slipping behind old Christopoulos, whose saffron face had turned a dirty plum colour, he made his way downstairs and out into the street. A species of riot, in which the police, having failed successfully to intervene, were enthusiastically joining, had broken out in theplatia. Some shouted for Stavridis, some for Malteios; some railed derisively against the Islands. People threw their hats into the air, waved their arms, and kicked up their legs. Some of them were vague as to the trend of their own opinions, others extremely determined, but all were agreed about making as much noise as possible. Julian passed unchallenged to his father's house.
Inside the door he found Aristotle talking with three islanders. They laid hold of him, urgent though respectful, searching his face with eager eyes.
'It means revolt at last; you will not desert us, Kyrie?'
He replied,—
'Come with me, and you will see.'
They followed him up the stairs, pressing closely after him. On the landing he met Eve and Kato, coming out of the drawing-room. The singer was flushed, two gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair, and she had thrown open the front of her dress. Eve hung on her arm.
'Julian!' Kato exclaimed, 'you have heard, Platon has gone?'
In her excitement she inadvertently used Malteios' Christian name.
'It means,' he replied, 'that Stavridis, now in power, will lose no time in bringing against the Islands all the iniquitous reforms we know he contemplates. It means that the first step must be taken by us.'
His use of the pronoun ranged himself, Kato, Aristotle, the three islanders, and the invisible Islands into an instant confederacy. Kato responded to it,—
'Thank God for this.'
They waited in complete confidence for his next words. He had shed his aloofness, and all his efficiency of active leadership was to the fore.
'Where is my father?'
'He went to the Cathedral; he has not come home yet, Kyrie.'
Julian passed into the drawing-room, followed by Eve and Kato and the four men. Outside the open window, fastened to the balcony, flashed the green and orange flag of Herakleion. Julian took a knife from his pocket, and, cutting the cord that held it, withdrew flag and flag-staff into the room and flung it on to the ground.
'Take it away,' he said to the islanders, 'or myfather will order it to be replaced. And if he orders another to be hung out in its place,' he added, looking at them with severity, 'remember there is no other flag in the house, and none to be bought in Herakleion.'
At that moment a servant from the country-house came hurriedly into the room, drew Julian unceremoniously aside, and broke into an agitated recital in a low voice. Eve heard Julian saying,—
'Nicolas sends for me? But he should have given a reason. I cannot come now, I cannot leave Herakleion.'
And the servant,—
'Kyrie, the major-domo impressed upon me that I must on no account return without you. Something has occurred, something serious. What it is I do not know. The carriage is waiting at the back entrance; we could not drive across theplatiaon account of the crowds.'
'I shall have to go, I suppose,' Julian said to Eve and Kato. 'I will go at once, and will return, if possible, this evening. Nicolas would not send without an excellent reason, though he need not have made this mystery. Possibly a message from Aphros.... In any case, I must go.'
'I will come with you,' Eve said unexpectedly.
In almost unbroken silence they drove out to the country-house, in a hired victoria, to the quick, soft trot of the two little lean horses, away from the heart of the noisy town; past the race-course with its empty stands; under the ilex-avenue in a tunnel of cool darkness; along the road, redolent with magnolias in the warmth of the evening; through the village, between the two white lodges; and round the bend of the drive between the bushes of eucalyptus. Eve had spoken, but he had said abruptly,—
'Don't talk; I want to think,' and she, after a little gasp of astonished indignation, had relapsed languorous into her corner, her head propped on her hand, and her profile alone visible to her cousin. He saw, in the brief glance that he vouchsafed her, that her red mouth looked more than usually sulky, in fact not unlike the mouth of a child on the point of tears, a very invitation to inquiry, but, more from indifference than deliberate wisdom, he was not disposed to take up the challenge. He too sat silent, his thoughts flying over the day, weighing the consequences of his own action, trying to forecast the future. He was far away from Eve, and she knew it. At times he enraged and exasperated her almost beyond control. His indifference was an outrage on her femininity. She knew him to be utterly beyond her influence: taciturn when he chose, ill-tempered when he chose, exuberant when he chose, rampageous, wild; insulting to her at moments; domineering whatever his mood, and regardless of her wishes; yet at the same time unconscious of all these things. Alonewith her now, he had completely forgotten her presence by his side.
Her voice broke upon his reflections,—
'Thinking of the Islands, Julian?' and her words joining like a cogwheel smoothly on to the current of his mind, he answered naturally,—
'Yes,'
'I thought as much. I have something to tell you. You may not be interested. I am no longer engaged to Miloradovitch.'
'Since when?'
'Since yesterday evening. Since you left me, and ran away into the woods. I was angry, and vented my anger on him.'
'Was that fair?'
'He has you to thank. It has happened before—with others.'
Roused for a second from his absorption, he impatiently shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back, and looked out over the sea. Eve was again silent, brooding and resentful in her corner. Presently he turned towards her, and said angrily, reverting to the Islands,—
'You are the vainest and most exorbitant woman I know. You resent one's interest in anything but yourself.'
As she did not answer, he added,—
'How sulky you look; it's very unbecoming.'
Was no sense of proportion or of responsibility ever to weigh upon her beautiful shoulders? He was irritated, yet he knew that his irritation was half-assumed, and that in his heart he was no more annoyed by her fantasy than by the fantasy of Herakleion. They matched each other; their intangibility, their instability, were enough to make a man shake his fists to Heaven, yet he was beginning to believe that theircolour and romance—for he never dissociated Eve and Herakleion in his mind—were the dearest treasures of his youth. He turned violently and amazingly upon her.
'Eve, I sometimes hate you, damn you; but you are the rainbow of my days.'
She smiled, and, enlightened, he perceived with interest, curiosity, and amused resignation, the clearer grouping of the affairs of his youthful years. Fantasy to youth! Sobriety to middle-age! Carried away, he said to her,—
'Eve! I want adventure, Eve!'
Her eyes lit up in instant response, but he could not read her inward thought, that the major part of his adventure should be, not Aphros, but herself. He noted, however, her lighted eyes, and leaned over to her.
'You are a born adventurer, Eve, also.'
She remained silent, but her eyes continued to dwell on him, and to herself she was thinking, always sardonic although the matter was of such perennial, such all-eclipsing importance to her,—
'A la bonne heure, he realises my existence.'
'What a pity you are not a boy; we could have seen the adventure of the Islands through together.'
('The Islands always!' she thought ruefully.)
'I should like to cross to Aphros to-night,' he murmured, with absent eyes....
('Gone again,' she thought. 'I held him for a moment.')
When they reached the house no servants were visible, but in reply to the bell a young servant appeared, scared, white-faced, and, as rapidly disappearing, was replaced by the old major-domo. He burst open the door into the passage, a crowd of words pressingon each other's heels in his mouth; he had expected Julian alone; when he saw Eve, who was idly turning over the letters that awaited her, he clapped his hand tightly over his lips, and stood, struggling with his speech, balancing himself in his arrested impetus on his toes.
'Well, Nicolas?' said Julian.
The major-domo exploded, removing his hand from his mouth,—
'Kyrie! a word alone....' and as abruptly replaced the constraining fingers.
Julian followed him through the swing door into the servants' quarters, where the torrent broke loose.
'Kyrie, a disaster! I have sent men with a stretcher. I remained in the house myself looking for your return. Father Paul—yes, yes, it is he—drowned—yes, drowned—at the bottom of the garden. Come, Kyrie, for the love of God. Give directions. I am too old a man. God be praised, you have come. Only hasten. The men are there already with lanterns.'
He was clinging helplessly to Julian's wrist, and kept moving his fingers up and down Julian's arm, twitching fingers that sought reassurance from firmer muscles, in a distracted way, while his eyes beseechingly explored Julian's face.
Julian, shocked, jarred, incredulous, shook off the feeble fingers in irritation. The thing was an outrage on the excitement of the day. The transition to tragedy was so violent that he wished, in revolt, to disbelieve it.
'You must be mistaken, Nicolas!'
'Kyrie, I am not mistaken. The body is lying on the shore. You can see it there. I have sent lanterns and a stretcher. I beg of you to come.'
He spoke, tugging at Julian's sleeve, and as Julian remained unaccountably immovable he sank to hisknees, clasping his hands and raising imploring eyes. His fustanelle spread its pleats in a circle on the stone floor. His story had suddenly become vivid to Julian with the words, 'The body is lying on the shore'; 'drowned,' he had said before, but that had summoned no picture. The body was lying on the shore. The body! Paul, brisk, alive, familiar, now a body, merely. The body! had a wave, washing forward, deposited it gently, and retreated without its burden? or had it floated, pale-faced under the stars, till some man, looking by chance down at the sea from the terrace at the foot of the garden, caught that pale, almost phosphorescent gleam rocking on the swell of the water?
The old major-domo followed Julian's stride between the lemon-trees, obsequious and conciliatory. The windows of the house shone behind them, the house of tragedy, where Eve remained as yet uninformed, uninvaded by the solemnity, the reality, of the present. Later, she would have to be told that a man's figure had been wrenched from their intimate and daily circle. The situation appeared grotesquely out of keeping with the foregoing day, and with the wide and gentle night.
From the paved walk under the pergola of gourds rough steps led down to the sea. Julian, pausing, perceived around the yellow squares of the lanterns the indistinct figures of men, and heard their low, disconnected talk breaking intermittently on the continuous wash of the waves. The sea that he loved filled him with a sudden revulsion for the indifference of its unceasing movement after its murder of a man. It should, in decency, have remained quiet, silent; impenetrable, unrepentant, perhaps; inscrutable, but at least silent; its murmur echoed almost as the murmur of a triumph....
He descended the steps. As he came into view, themen's fragmentary talk died away; their dim group fell apart; he passed between them, and stood beside the body of Paul.
Death. He had never seen it. As he saw it now, he thought that he had never beheld anything so incontestably real as its irrevocable stillness. Here was finality; here was defeat beyond repair. In the face of this judgment no revolt was possible. Only acceptance was possible. The last word in life's argument had been spoken by an adversary for long remote, forgotten; an adversary who had remained ironically dumb before the babble, knowing that in his own time, with one word, he could produce the irrefutable answer. There was something positively satisfying in the faultlessness of the conclusion. He had not thought that death would be like this. Not cruel, not ugly, not beautiful, not terrifying—merely unanswerable. He wondered now at the multitude of sensations that had chased successively across his mind or across his vision: the elections, Fru Thyregod, the jealousy of Eve, his incredulity and resentment at the news, his disinclination for action, his indignation against the indifference of the sea; these things were vain when here, at his feet, lay the ultimate solution.
Paul lay on his back, his arms straight down his sides, and his long, wiry body closely sheathed in the wet soutane. The square toes of his boots stuck up, close together, like the feet of a swathed mummy. His upturned face gleamed white with a tinge of green in the light of the lanterns, and appeared more luminous than they. So neat, so orderly he lay; but his hair, alone disordered, fell in wet red wisps across his neck and along the ground behind his head.
At that moment from the direction of Herakleion there came a long hiss and a rush of bright gold upinto the sky; there was a crackle of small explosions, and fountains of gold showered against the night as the first fireworks went up from the quays. Rockets soared, bursting into coloured stars among the real stars, and plumes of golden light spread themselves dazzlingly above the sea. Faint sounds of cheering were borne upon the breeze.
The men around the body of the priest waited, ignorant and bewildered, relieved that some one had come to take command. Their eyes were bent upon Julian as he stood looking down; they thought he was praying for the dead. Presently he became aware of their expectation, and pronounced with a start,—
'Bind up his hair!'
Fingers hastened clumsily to deal with the stringy red locks; the limp head was supported, and the hair knotted somehow into a semblance of its accustomed roll. The old major-domo quavered in a guilty voice, as though taking the blame for carelessness,—
'The hat is lost, Kyrie.'
Julian let his eyes travel over the little group of men, islanders all, with an expression of searching inquiry.
'Which of you made this discovery?'
It appeared that one of them, going to the edge of the sea in expectation of the fireworks, had noticed, not the darkness of the body, but the pallor of the face, in the water not far out from the rocks. He had waded in and drawn the body ashore. Dead Paul lay there deaf and indifferent to this account of his own finding.
'No one can explain....'
Ah, no! and he, who could have explained, was beyond the reach of their curiosity. Julian looked at the useless lips, unruffled even by a smile of sarcasm. He had known Paul all his life, had learnt from him, travelled with him, eaten with him, chaffed him lightly,but never, save in that one moment when he had gripped the priest by the wrist and had looked with steadying intention into his eyes, had their intimate personalities brushed in passing. Julian had no genius for friendship.... He began to see that this death had ended an existence which had run parallel with, but utterly walled off from, his own.
In shame the words tore themselves from him,—
'Had he any trouble?'
The men slowly, gravely, mournfully shook their heads. They could not tell. The priest had moved amongst them, charitable, even saintly; yes, saintly, and one did not expect confidences of a priest. A priest was a man who received the confidences of other men. Julian heard, and, possessed by a strong desire, a necessity, for self-accusation, he said to them in a tone of urgent and impersonal Justice, as one who makes a declaration, expecting neither protest nor acquiescence,—
'I should have inquired into his loneliness.'
They were slightly startled, but, in their ignorance, not over-surprised, only wondering why he delayed in giving the order to move the body on to the stretcher and carry it up to the church. Farther up the coast, the rockets continued to soar, throwing out bubbles of green and red and orange, fantastically tawdry. Julian remained staring at the unresponsive corpse, repeating sorrowfully,—
'I should have inquired—yes, I should have inquired—into his loneliness.'
He spoke with infinite regret, learning a lesson, shedding a particle of his youth. He had taken for granted that other men's lives were as promising, as full of dissimulated eagerness, as his own. He had walked for many hours up and down Paul's study, lost in an audible monologue, expounding his theories,tossing his rough head, emphasising, enlarging, making discoveries, intent on his egotism, hewing out his convictions, while the priest sat by the table, leaning his head on his hand, scarcely contributing a word, always listening. During those hours, surely, his private troubles had been forgotten? Or had they been present, gnawing, beneath the mask of sympathy? A priest was a man who received the confidences of other men!
'Carry him up,' Julian said, 'carry him up to the church.'
He walked away alone as the dark cortège set itself in movement, his mind strangely accustomed to the fact that Paul would no longer frequent their house and that the long black figure would no longer stroll, tall and lean, between the lemon-trees in the garden. The fact was more simple and more easily acceptable than he could have anticipated. It seemed already quite an old-established fact. He remembered with a shock of surprise, and a raising of his eyebrows, that he yet had to communicate it to Eve. He knew it so well himself that he thought every one else must know it too. He was immeasurably more distressed by the tardy realisation of his own egotism in regard to Paul, than by the fact of Paul's death.
He walked very slowly, delaying the moment when he must speak to Eve. He sickened at the prospect of the numerous inevitable inquiries that would be made to him by both his father and his uncle. He would never hint to them that the priest had had a private trouble. He rejoiced to remember his former loyalty, and to know that Eve remained ignorant of that extraordinary, unexplained conversation when Paul had talked about the mice. Mice in the church! He, Julian, must see to the decent covering of the body. And of the face, especially of the face.
An immense golden wheel flared out of the darkness; whirled, and died away above the sea.
In the dim church the men had set down the stretcher before the iconostase. Julian felt his way cautiously amongst the rush-bottomed chairs. The men were standing about the stretcher, their fishing caps in their hands, awed into a whispering mysticism which Julian's voice harshly interrupted,—
'Go for a cloth, one of you—the largest cloth you can find.'
He had spoken loudly in defiance of the melancholy peace of the church, that received so complacently within its ready precincts the visible remains from which the spirit, troubled and uncompanioned in life, had fled. He had always thought the church complacent, irritatingly remote from pulsating human existence, but never more so than now when it accepted the dead body as by right, firstly within its walls, and lastly within its ground, to decompose and rot, the body of its priest, among the bodies of other once vital and much-enduring men.
'Kyrie, we can find only two large cloths, one a dust-sheet, and one a linen cloth to spread over the altar. Which are we to use?'
'Which is the larger?'
'Kyrie, the dust-sheet, but the altar-cloth is of linen edged with lace.'
'Use the dust-sheet; dust to dust,' said Julian bitterly.
Shocked and uncomprehending, they obeyed. The black figure now became a white expanse, under which the limbs and features defined themselves as the folds sank into place.
'He is completely covered over?'
'Completely, Kyrie.'
'The mice cannot run over his face?'
'Kyrie, no!'
'Then no more can be done until one of you ride into Herakleion for the doctor.'
He left them, re-entering the garden by the side-gate which Paul had himself constructed with his capable, carpenter's hands. There was now no further excuse for delay; he must exchange the darkness for the unwelcome light, and must share out his private knowledge to Eve. Those men, fisher-folk, simple folk, had not counted as human spectators, but rather as part of the brotherhood of night, nature, and the stars.
He waited for Eve in the drawing-room, having assured himself that she had been told nothing, and there, presently, he saw her come in, her heavy hair dressed high, a fan and a flower drooping from her hand, and a fringed Spanish shawl hanging its straight silk folds from her escaping shoulders. Before her indolence, and her slumbrous delicacy, he hesitated. He wildly thought that he would allow the news to wait. Tragedy, reality, were at that moment so far removed from her.... She said in delight, coming up to him, and forgetful that they were in the house in obedience to a mysterious and urgent message,—
'Julian, have you seen the fireworks? Come out into the garden. We'll watch.'
He put his arm through her bare arm,—
'Eve, I must tell you something.'
'Fru Thyregod?' she cried, and the difficulty of his task became all but insurmountable.
'Something serious. Something about Father Paul.'
Her strange eyes gave him a glance of undefinable suspicion.
'What about him?'
'He has been found, in the water, at the bottom of the garden.'
'In the water?'
'In the sea. Drowned.'
He told her all the circumstances, doggedly, conscientiously, under the mockery of the tinsel flames that streamed out from the top of the columns, and of the distant lights flashing through the windows, speaking as a man who proclaims in a foreign country a great truth bought by the harsh experience of his soul, to an audience unconversant with his alien tongue. This truth that he had won, in the presence of quiet stars, quieter death, and simple men, was desecrated by its recital to a vain woman in a room where the very architecture was based on falsity. Still he persevered, believing that his own intensity of feeling must end in piercing its way to the foundations of her heart. He laid bare even his harassing conviction of his neglected responsibility,—
'I should have suspected ... I should have suspected....'
He looked at Eve; she had broken down and was sobbing, Paul's name mingled incoherently with her sobs. He did not doubt that she was profoundly shocked, but with a new-found cynicism he ascribed her tears to shock rather than to sorrow. He himself would have been incapable of shedding a single tear. He waited quietly for her to recover herself.
'Oh, Julian! Poor Paul! How terrible to die like that, alone, in the sea, at night....' For a moment her eyes were expressive of real horror, and she clasped Julian's hand, gazing at him while all the visions of her imagination were alive in her eyes. She seemed to be on the point of adding something further, but continued to cry for a few moments, and then said, greatly sobered, 'You appear to take for granted that he has killed himself?'
He considered this. Up to the present no doubtwhatever had existed in his mind. The possibility of an accident had not occurred to him. The very quality of repose and peace that he had witnessed had offered itself to him as the manifest evidence that the man had sought the only solution for a life grown unendurable. He had acknowledged the man's wisdom, bowing before his recognition of the conclusive infallibility of death as a means of escape. Cowardly? so men often said, but circumstances were conceivable—circumstances in the present case unknown, withheld, and therefore not to be violated by so much as a hazarded guess—circumstances were conceivable in which no other course was to be contemplated. He replied with gravity,—
'I do believe he put an end to his life.'
The secret reason would probably never be disclosed; even if it came within sight, Julian must now turn his eyes the other way. The secret which he might have, nay, should have, wrenched from his friend's reserve while he still lived, must remain sacred and unprofaned now that he was dead. Not only must he guard it from his own knowledge, but from the knowledge of others. With this resolution he perceived that he had already blundered.
'Eve, I have been wrong; this thing must be presented as an accident. I have no grounds for believing that he took his life. I must rely on you to support me. In fairness on poor Paul.... He told me nothing. A man has a right to his own reticence.'
He paused, startled at the truth of his discovery, and cried out, taking his head between his hands,—
'Oh God! the appalling loneliness of us all!'
He shook his head despairingly for a long moment with his hands pressed over his temples. Dropping his hands with a gesture of discouragement and lassitude, he regarded Eve.
'I've found things out to-night, I think I've aged by five years. I know that Paul suffered enough to put an end to himself. We can't tell what he suffered from. I never intended to let you think he had suffered. We must never let any one else suspect it. But imagine the stages and degrees of suffering which led him to that state of mind; imagine his hours, his days, and specially his nights. I looked on him as a village priest, limited to his village; I thought his long hair funny; God forgive me, I slightly despised him. You, Eve, you thought him ornamental, a picturesque appendage to the house. And all that while, he was moving slowly towards the determination that he must kill himself.... Perhaps, probably, he took his decision yesterday, when you and I were at the picnic. When Fru Thyregod.... For months, perhaps, or for years, he had been living with the secret that was to kill him. He knew, but no one else knew. He shared his knowledge with no one. I think I shall never look at a man again without awe, and reverence, and terror.'
He was trembling strongly, discovering his fellows, discovering himself, his glowing eyes never left Eve's face. He went on talking rapidly, as though eager to translate all there was to translate into words before the aroused energy deserted him.
'You vain, you delicate, unreal thing, do you understand at all? Have you ever seen a dead man? You don't know the meaning of pain. You inflict pain for your amusement. You thing of leisure, you toy! Your deepest emotion is your jealousy. You can be jealous even where you cannot love. You make a plaything of men's pain—you woman! You can change your personality twenty times a day. You can't understand a man's slow, coherent progression; he, always the same person, scarred with the wounds ofthe past. To wound you would be like wounding a wraith.'
Under the fury of his unexpected outburst, she protested,—
'Julian, why attack me? I've done, I've said, nothing.'
'You listened uncomprehendingly to me, thinking if you thought at all, that by to-morrow I should have forgotten my mood of to-night. You are wrong. I've gone a step forward to-day. I've learnt.... Learnt, I mean, to respect men who suffer. Learnt the continuity and the coherence of life. Days linked to days. For you, an episode is an isolated episode.'
He softened.
'No wonder you look bewildered. If you want the truth, I am angry with myself for my blindness towards Paul. Poor little Eve! I only meant half I said.'
'You meant every word; one never speaks the truth so fully as when one speaks it unintentionally.'
He smiled, but tolerantly and without malice.
'Eve betrays herself by the glibness of the axiom. You know nothing of truth. But I've seen truth to-night. All Paul's past life is mystery, shadow, enigma to me, but at the same time there is a central light—blinding, incandescent light—which is the fact that he suffered. Suffered so much that, a priest, he preferred the supreme sin to such suffering. Suffered so much that, a man, he preferred death to such suffering! All his natural desire for life was conquered. That irresistible instinct, that primal law, that persists even to the moment when darkness and unconsciousness overwhelm us—the fight for life, the battle to retain our birthright—all this was conquered. The instinct to escape from life became stronger than the instinct to preserve it! Isn't that profoundly illuminating?'
He paused.
'That fact sweeps, for me, like a great searchlightover an abyss of pain. The pain the man must have endured before he arrived at such a reversal of his religion and of his most primitive instinct! His world was, at the end, turned upside down. A terrifying nightmare. He took the only course. You cannot think how final death is—so final, so simple. So simple. There is no more to be said. I had no idea....'
He spoke himself with the simplicity he was trying to express. He said again, candidly, evenly, in a voice from which all the emotion had passed,—
'So simple.'
They were silent for a long time. He had forgotten her, and she was wondering whether she dared now recall him to the personal. She had listened, gratified when he attacked her, resentful when he forgot her, bored with his detachment, but wise enough to conceal both her resentment and her boredom. She had worshipped him in his anger, and had admired his good looks in the midst of his fire. She had been infinitely more interested in him than in Paul. Shocked for a moment by Paul's death, aware of the stirrings of pity, she had quickly neglected both for the sake of the living Julian.
She reviewed a procession of phrases with which she might recall his attention.
'You despise me, Julian.'
'No, I only dissociate you. You represent a different sphere. You belong to Herakleion. I love you—in your place.'
'You are hurting me.'
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards the fight. She let him have his way, with the disconcerting humility he had sometimes found in her. She bore his inspection mutely, her hands dropping loosely by her sides, fragile before his strength. He found that his thoughts had swept back, awayfrom death, away from Paul, to her sweetness and her worthlessness.
'Many people care for you—more fools they,' he said. 'You and I, Eve, must be allies now. You say I despise you. I shall do so less if I can enlist your loyalty in Paul's cause. He has died as the result of an accident. Are you to be trusted?'
He felt her soft shoulders move in the slightest shrug under the pressure of his hands.
'Do you think,' she asked, 'that you will be believed?'
'I shall insist upon being believed. There is no evidence—is there?—to prove me wrong.'
As she did not answer, he repeated his question, then released her in suspicion.
'What do you know? tell me!'
After a very long pause, he said quietly,—
'I understand. There are many ways of conveying information. I am very blind about some things. Heavens! if I had suspected that truth, either you would not have remained here, or Paul would not have remained here. A priest! Unheard of.... A priest to add to your collection. First Miloradovitch, now Paul. Moths pinned upon a board. He loved you? Oh,' he cried in a passion, 'I see it all: he struggled, you persisted—till you secured him. A joke to you. Not a joke now—surely not a joke, even to you—but a triumph. Am I right? A triumph! A man, dead for you. A priest. You allowed me to talk, knowing all the while.'
'I am very sorry for Paul,' she said absently.
He laughed at the pitiably inadequate word.
'Have the courage to admit that you are flattered. More flattered than grieved. Sorry for Paul—yes, toss him that conventional tribute before turning to the luxury of your gratified vanity. That such things can be! Surely men and women live in different worlds?'
'But, Julian, what could I do?'
'He told you he loved you?'
She acquiesced, and he stood frowning at her, his hands buried in his pockets and his head thrust forward, picturing the scenes, which had probably been numerous, between her and the priest, letting his imagination play over the anguish of his friend and Eve's indifference. That she had not wholly discouraged him, he was sure. She would not so easily have let him go. Julian was certain, as though he had observed their interviews from a hidden corner, that she had amusedly provoked him, watched him with half-closed, ironical eyes, dropped him a judicious word in her honeyed voice, driven him to despair by her disregard, raised him to joy by her capricious friendliness. They had had every opportunity for meeting. Eve was strangely secretive. All had been carried on unsuspected. At this point he spoke aloud, almost with admiration,—
'That you, who are so shallow, should be so deep!'
A glimpse of her life had been revealed to him, but what secrets remained yet hidden? The veils were lifting from his simplicity; he contemplated, as it were, a new world—Eve's world, ephemerally and clandestinely populated. He contemplated it in fascination, acknowledging that here was an additional, a separate art, insistent for recognition, dominating, imperative, forcing itself impudently upon mankind, exasperating to the straight-minded because it imposed itself, would not be denied, was subtle, pretended so unswervingly to dignity that dignity was accorded it by a credulous humanity—the art which Eve practised, so vain, so cruel, so unproductive, the most fantastically prosperous of impostors!
She saw the marvel in his eyes, and smiled slightly.
'Well, Julian?'
'I am wondering,' he cried, 'wondering! trying topierce to your mind, your peopled memory, your present occupation, your science. What do you know? what have you heard? What have you seen? You, so young.... Who are not young. How many secrets like the secret of Paul are buried away in your heart? That you will never betray? Do you ever look forward to the procession of your life? You, so young. I think you have some extraordinary, instinctive, inherited wisdom, some ready-made heritage, bequeathed to you by generations, that compensates for the deficiencies of your own experience. Because you are so young. And so old, that I am afraid.'
'Poor Julian,' she murmured. A gulf of years lay between them, and she spoke to him as a woman to a boy. He was profoundly shaken, while she remained quiet, gently sarcastic, pitying towards him, who, so vastly stronger than she, became a bewildered child upon her own ground. He had seen death, but she had seen, toyed with, dissected the living heart. She added, 'Don't try to understand. Forget me and be yourself. You are annoying me.'
She had spoken the last words with such impatience, that, torn from his speculations, he asked,—
'Annoying you? Why?'
After a short hesitation she gave him the truth,—
'I dislike seeing you at fault.'
He passed to a further bewilderment.
'I want you infallible.'
Rousing herself from the chair where she had been indolently lying, she said in the deepest tones of her contralto voice,—
'Julian, you think me worthless and vain; you condemn me as that without the charity of any further thought. You are right to think me heartless towards those I don't love. You believe that I spend my life in vanity. Julian, I only ask to be taken away frommy life; I have beliefs, and I have creeds, both of my own making, but I'm like a ship without a rudder. I'm wasting my life in vanity. I'm capable of other things. I'm capable of the deepest good, I know, as well as of the most shallow evil. Nobody knows, except perhaps Kato a little, how my real life is made up of dreams and illusions that I cherish. People are far more unreal to me than my own imaginings. One of my beliefs is about you. You mustn't ever destroy it. I believe you could do anything.'
'No, no,' he said, astonished.
But she insisted, lit by the flame of her conviction.
'Yes, anything. I have the profoundest contempt for the herd—to which you don't belong. I have believed in you since I was a child; believed in you, I mean, as something Olympian of which I was frightened. I have always known that you would justify my faith.'
'But I am ordinary, normal!' he said, defending himself. He mistrusted her profoundly; wondered what attack she was engineering. Experience of her had taught him to be sceptical.
'Ah, don't you see, Julian, when I am sincere?' she said, her voice breaking. 'I am telling you now one of the secrets of my heart, if you only knew it. The gentle, the amiable, the pleasant—yes, they're my toys. I'm cruel, I suppose. I'm always told so. I don't care; they're worth nothing. It does their little souls good to pass through the mill. But you, my intractable Julian....'
'Kyrie,' said Nicolas, appearing, 'Tsantilas Tsigaridis, from Aphros, asks urgently whether you will receive him?'
'Bring him in,' said Julian, conscious of relief, for Eve's words had begun to trouble him.
Outside, the fireworks continued to flash like summer lightning.
Tsigaridis came forward into the room, his fishing cap between his fingers, and his white hair standing out in bunches of wiry curls round his face. Determination was written in the set gravity of his features, even in the respectful bow with which he came to a halt before Julian. Interrupted in their conversation, Eve had fallen, back, half lying, in her arm-chair, and Julian, who had been pacing up and down, stood still with folded arms, a frown cleaving a deep valley between his brows. He spoke to Tsigaridis,—
'You asked for me, Tsantilas?'
'I am a messenger, Kyrie.'
He looked from the young man to the girl, his age haughty towards their youth, his devotion submissive towards the advantage of their birth. He said to Julian, using almost the same words as he had used once before,—
'The people of Aphros are the people of your people,' and he bowed again.
Julian had recovered his self-possession; he no longer felt dazed and bewildered as he had felt before Eve. In speaking to Tsigaridis he was speaking of things he understood. He knew very well the summons Tsigaridis was bringing him, the rude and fine old man, single-sighted as a prophet, direct and unswerving in the cause he had at heart. He imagined, with almost physical vividness, the hand of the fisherman on his shoulder, impelling him forward.
'Kyrie,' Tsigaridis continued, 'to-day the flag of Herakleion flew from the house of your honoured father until you with your own hand threw it down.I was in Herakleion, where the news was brought to me, and there is no doubt that by now it is known also on Aphros. Your action can be interpreted only in one way. I know that to-day'—he crossed himself devoutly—'Father Paul, who was our friend and yours, has met his death; I break in upon your sorrow; I dared not wait; even death must not delay me. Kyrie, I come to bring you back to Aphros.'
'I will go to-night,' said Julian without hesitation. 'My father and my uncle are in Herakleion, and I will start from here before they can stop me. Have you a boat?'
'I can procure one,' said Tsigaridis, very erect, and looking at Julian with shining eyes.
'Then I will meet you at the private jetty in two hours' time. We shall be unnoted in the darkness, and the illuminations will be over by then.'
'Assuredly,' said the fisherman.
'We go in all secrecy,' Julian added. 'Tsantilas, listen: can you distribute two orders for me by nightfall? I understand that you have organised a system of communications?'
The old man's face relaxed slowly from its stern dignity; it softened into a mixture of slyness and pride and tenderness—the tenderness of a father for his favourite child. Almost a smile struggled with his lips. A strange contortion troubled his brows. Slowly and portentously, he winked.
'Then send word to Aphros,' said Julian, 'that no boat be allowed to leave the Islands, and send word round the mainland recalling every available islander. Is it possible? I know that every islander in Herakleion to-night is sitting with boon companions in buried haunts, talking, talking, talking. Call them together, Tsantilas.'
'It will be done, Kyrie.'
'And Madame Kato—she must be informed.'
'Kyrie, she sends you a message that she leaves Herakleion by to-night's train for Athens. When her work is done in Athens, she also will return to Aphros.'
Tsigaridis took a step forward and lifted Julian's hands to his lips as was his wont. He bowed, and with his patriarchal gravity left the room.
Julian in a storm of excitement flung himself upon his knees beside Eve's chair.
'Eve!' he cried. 'Oh, the wild adventure! Do you understand? It has come at last. Paul—I had almost forgotten the Islands for him, and now I must forget him for the Islands. Too much has happened to-day. To-morrow all Herakleion will know that the Islands have broken away, and that I and every islander are upon Aphros. They will come at first with threats; they will send representatives. I shall refuse to retract our declaration. Then they will begin to carry out their threats. Panaïoannou—think of it!—will organise an attack with boats.' He became sunk in practical thought, from which emerging he said more slowly and carefully, 'They will not dare to bombard the island because they know that Italy and Greece are watching every move, and with a single man-of-war could blow the whole town of Herakleion higher than Mount Mylassa. Kato will watch over us from Athens.... They will dare to use no more than reasonable violence. And they will never gain a footing.'
Eve was leaning forward; she put both hands on his shoulders as he knelt.
'Go on talking to me,' she said, 'my darling.'
In a low, intense voice, with unseeing eyes, he released all the flood of secret thought that he had, in his life, expressed only to Paul and to Kato.
'I went once to Aphros, more than a year ago; you remember. They asked me then, through Tsigaridis,whether I would champion them if they needed championship. I said I would. Father was very angry. He is incomprehensibly cynical about the Islands, so cynical that I have been tempted to think him merely mercenary, anxious to live at peace with Herakleion for the sake of his profits. He is as cynical as Malteios, or any stay-in-power politician here. He read me a lecture and called the people a lot of rebellious good-for-nothings. Eve, what do I care? One thing is true, one thing is real: those people suffer. Everything on earth is empty, except pain. Paul suffered, so much that he preferred to die. But a whole people doesn't die. I went away to England, and I put Herakleion aside, but at the bottom of my heart I never thought of anything else; I knew I was bound to those people, and I lived, I swear to you, with the sole idea that I should come back, and that this adventure of rescue would happen some day exactly as it is happening now. I thought of Kato and of Tsigaridis as symbolical, almost mythological beings; my tutelary deities; Kato vigorous, and Tsigaridis stern. Eve, I would rather die than read disappointment in that man's eyes. I never made him many promises, but he must find me better than my word.'
He got up and walked once or twice up and down the room, beating his fist against his palm and saying,—
'Whatever good I do in my life, will be done in the Islands.'
He came back and stood by Eve.
'Eve, yesterday morning when I rode over the hills I saw the Islands lying out in the sea.... I thought of father, cynical and indifferent, and of Stavridis, a self-seeker. I wondered whether I should grow into that. I thought that in illusion lay the only loveliness.'
'Ah, how I agree!' she said fervently.
He dropped on his knees again beside her, and she put her fingers lightly on his hair.
'When Tsigaridis came, you were telling me that you believed in me—Heaven knows why. For my part, I only believe that one can accomplish when one has faith in a cause, and is blind to one's own fate. And I believe that the only cause worthy of such faith, is the redemption of souls from pain. I set aside all doubt. I will listen to no argument, and I will walk straight towards the object I have chosen. If my faith is an illusion, I will make that illusion into a reality by the sheer force of my faith.'
He looked up at Eve, whose eyes were strangely intent on him.
'You see,' he said, fingering the fringe of her Spanish shawl, 'Herakleion is my battleground, and if I am to tilt against windmills it must be in Herakleion. I have staked out Herakleion for my own, as one stakes out a claim in a gold-mining country. The Islands are the whole adventure of youth for me.'
'And what am I?' she murmured to him.
He looked at her without appearing to see her; he propped his elbow on her knee, leant his chin in his palm, and went on talking about the Islands.
'I know that I am making the thing into a religion, but then I could never live, simply drifting along. Aimless.... I don't understand existence on those terms. I am quite prepared to give everything for my idea; father can disinherit me, and I know I am very likely to be killed. I don't care. I may be mistaken; I may be making a blunder, an error of judgment. I don't care. Those people are mine. Those Islands are my faith. I am blind.'
'And you enjoy the adventure,' she said.
'Of course, I enjoy the adventure. But there ismore in it than that,' he said, shaking his head; 'there is conviction, burnt into me. Fanatical. Whoever is ready to pay the ultimate price for his belief, has a right to that belief. Heaven preserve me,' he cried, showing his fist, 'from growing like father, or Malteios, or Stavridis. Eve, you understand.'
She murmured again,—
'And what am I? What part have I got in this world of yours?'
Again he did not appear to hear her, but making an effort to get up, he said,—