Like a roseate jewel in a circle of sapphire, with opal and mauve and purple lights struck from it by the sun’s rays, lies Tenos upon the deep and variable bosom of the Ægean waters. The Greek islands seen from the sea are untiringly, unspeakably beautiful. Shadow and shine, delicate hues and strong ones melt into an inextricable haze, as do the sensations of the spectator, incapable of analysis as he watches them. Energy oozes out through the finger-tips, the pulses quiet in lazy delight, and the eye is filled for once with seeing. But the heart is tranquil, unutterably content, and of speech there is no need. Here at last is forgetfulness of sorrow and unrest. Here is the Eastern sage’s dream realised, out of the reach of the envenomed shafts of Fate,—floating indolently on a just stirred field of liquid blue, all land and sky and water is a harmonious blending of the purest tints. An infinitude of azure melts by tranquil degrees into milk-white; a flame as bright as the heart of a pomegranate and blinding as unshaded carmine, steals insidiously into the mountains of mauve, and changes them to pink.
But it is only when your barque draws nigh the sleepy little hollow of a very sleepy little town, thatyou are shaken out of your exquisite dream of Paradise. You see the harsh subdued contrast of the white houses and their green jalousies, looking as if they had fallen asleep in the Middle Ages, and nobody had remembered to awake them since,—a break of dim barbaric life upon a background of desolate rocks and empty mountain sides. Tenos is certainly not Paradise. It has a little pier, and is a perfect maze of misshapen arches, and filthy lanes, calculated to make the least fastidious stranger shudder in mingled fear and disgust. There are unsavoury little cafés, outside which, at all hours of the day, uncouth men, in dirty costumes, sit drinking and smoking narghiles, which the café-clods carry from one to the other with the long tubes between their lips, and then pass it to the lips of their customers, who are vivaciously, and in passionate earnest, discussing the affairs of Europe, while Providence and the womenfolk are equal partners in the care of their own.
But the town, as you skirt the lanes and arches that crowd down upon the sea-line, has a charm exclusively its own. The tiny streets, when they are paved, are paved with marble; and the houses on either side have a cheerful conversational way of reaching across to shake hands and exchange other amenities. An occasional palm tree lifts itself up against the pure sky, as do the sails of wind mills, circled like monster spiders webs. There is music in the trickling descent of the mountain rills flowing over the marble and silver stones, in and out of which the lizards, quick with life and the joy of the sunshine, are ever coming and going. Then there is that singular construction, the great shrine and pilgrimage of the Virgin of the East, a marble buildingcontaining an expansive courtyard, a square of cloisters and pilgrim-houses and a curious semi-Byzantine church, full of monstrous treasures in gold and silver. Over the little town it towers in glistening splendour, on the top of an inclined street, called “Virgin Street,” enframed in silver olives and stately palms, and elegantly paved outside and inside. The sloping way that runs from it right down to the sea, might be ground of shining snow; it is moss embroidered, and lit by the double geraniums that look like roses, and shaded by the gloomy cypress.
The isle of Tenos has pretensions of its own that it were idle for us to dispute. It is divided into sixty-two villages, some of which consist of three churches and four houses, and none show less than three churches for the accommodation of every dozen inhabitants. It will be satisfactory for the law-loving reader to learn that these villages are apportioned into four mayoralties, governed by one mayor and three justices of the peace, and that,—late crown of representative existence, until M. Tricoupis cruelly brought in a bill a year or two ago, which affiliated this “tight little island” with her near neighbour Andros,—it actually sent three members to Parliament, to look after its interests in King George’s Boulé at Athens. But all glory is evanescent. It has been proved by history that it is idle to place any trust in ministers or princes. Heaven knows why Tenos was shorn of her parliamentary splendour, but alas! what is to be expected of an economic minister, who prefers to consider the debts of Hellas rather than her greatness, and who rashly decided that the work left undone by three Members of Parliament may beefficiently accomplished by one? The chief and most exasperating neglect of these late illustrious persons is the formation of roads. There is not a single road throughout the island, and only two level spots, the lovely plain of Kolymvithra, and a quarter of a mile round the great purple Castro, where once the Venetians held their seat of government, their solitary fortress towering over the ruined little town of Borgo. This oasis of pathway, in a desert of precipices and rocky altitudes, runs from the top of the episcopal village of Xinara to the Greek monastery in the village of San Francisco. It is unknown whether it is a remnant of Venetian civilisation or of Turkish barbarism. But it is quite certain that it is not the result of the crown of triple representatives Tenos until lately wore. For the rest of the time, the rider is conducted by an unmanageable mule, which indulges a lively weakness for the dizzy verge of a ravine, along which he phlegmatically picks his way. From almost perpendicular escarpments he drops into awful depths of rock and furze and nettle, to trail his anxious and unhappy burden through the musical bed of a torrent, and damage irretrievably a new pair of boots by forcing them into an inconvenient affinity with rough walls and jutting branches.
After a while, when the frame becomes physically inured to the sensational extremities of this kind of exercise, the traveller discovers that, however dreadful the eccentricities of his mule, the brute is very sure, if leisurely, and that though his position be invariably a discomposing ascent or descent, no harm to his head or his limbs will come of it. He gradually learns totake his troubles philosophically, and look about him with perfect security. If it is evening, he will note the heavenliest sky, and watch the soft mist burn out the sapphire stealingly, while the strata of gold and rose fade to pink and pearly opal. He will delight in the contrast of marble mountain and purple thyme, cyclamens waving the meadows mauve, or poppies covering them in scarlet flakes, and the tall daisies white above the green like the foam of the sea, or anemones making a delicate haze upon the landscape. There will be patches of white heath over the hill curves, and poignant scents to stir the senses. And in and out of the twilit gray of the olives, the darkening glance and sparkle of the sea that is never out of sight,—now laughing through a network of fig branches, then through the stiff spikes of the cactus, or the graceful foliage of the plane, and white villages studding the orchards and gardens like jewels. Over all hangs a strange note of happy indifference, a rude naturalness that seeks no concealment and cares not for shadow, hymns the smiles of blue water and the glory of the sky; the sharp broad beauties of seashore and mountain and valley.
The people are as simple as their landscape. Their lives are spent in Arcadian ignorance and unaccomplished simplicity, as unconscious of the evils of destitution as of the temptation of wealth. They dislike work, and manage to shirk it, for every one owns a garden, a few fruit trees, a goat, a pig, and perhaps a donkey. Dirty in their persons, their houses are invitingly clean, and stand always open.
Leaving the pleasing altitudes of a general survey, the reader is invited to fix his gaze upon the littlevillage of Xinara. Two things strike the observer on entering its single street; the quantity of pigs and unwashed children, and the signs of desolation and pre-existence upon the blackened ruins in suggestive proximity with the comparatively new houses and cottages. Near bright flowers and trellised verandahs, stand broken walls with fig branches and weeds struggling through a dismantled window, and curious Venetian symbols and legends wrought in marble, now black with age and exposure, above the doors and windows that have long since served the pigeons as convenient shelter. With the pigs and poultry peeping through the wooden chinks, you see blocks of marble crusted with gold and silver stones scintillating like flashes of light. Beside a little glaring church, jaunty in its hideousness, stand a row of houses burnt yellow and black, as if they had sustained all the sieges of the Middle Ages, and pierced with pigeon holes like a face with small-pox.
The street is divided in two by a dark stone arch. Instead of the provincial inn, there are three clubs, the blacksmith’s den, the carpenter’s rude workshop, and the single general store. This is kept by the village Lothario, Demetrius, a splendid fellow inclining to corpulency, who wears a ring, a fez, and even goes to the length of washing his hands and face and combing his hair once a day. One is not a village Lothario for nothing. He is married, and hence he adds a disappointed and hopeless air to his fascinating crimson tie whenever he serves or chats with a woman under forty. But he draws the line at forty. Kyria Demetrius has attained that respectable age.
There is a fountain close by, where the womengather with red earthen jars to draw water and indulge in cheerful social intercourse. It is enclosed in a deep, damp arch, black and lichen-grown, with heavy beams of wood supporting its roof, and higher up is the public laundry, a tank with a sloping stone under it, where the laundresses scrub their linen kneeling round, and converse in a dull undertone, varied by an occasional tendency to scream.
The houses are reached by a small flight of marble steps, and are always confined to one floor with a pretty terrace outside, and underneath is stabling for the mules and donkeys and other live stock.
Beyond the archway lies the Catholic Cathedral, with the Bishop’s Palace and Garden. The Church is of respectable size, but ugly, and the Palace a dreary yellow building enlivened by the red tiles of the pectinated roof. But the Bishop’s garden is charming. Goldfinches sing in the Persian lilacs, and the rippling rills are never silent. In the centre, there is a big stone tank and a sun-dial, and the oranges swing like gold balls against the dark cypress. The valley upon which it looks down is indeed a vale of delight. Olives paint a silver mist upon the sunny landscape, and the fig and mulberry foliage lend it colour. The girdling mountains of the neighbouring isles rise sharply against the sky, and in and out their curves, opening upon the roseate shores of Eubœa, breaks the sea like lapidescent blue, while through the moist, grassy plain of Kolymvithra twists and swirls a vein of silver water. The other side of the picture is a view of gloomy mountain, bare grey rock and broken blocks of marble, rising above the tangle of village gardens and trellisedverandahs, with their showy display of geraniums, carnations, roses and cactus drapery, from whose bed of peaked leaves gleam large magenta stars. And here and there the windmills make gigantic shadows upon the earth, flocks of pigeons shoot like spots of illuminated snow through the sunlit air, and goats browse amongst the scented furzes of the rocks, in easy companionship with mules and kine.
To reach the house of Pericles Selaka, on the other side of the village, the traveller must make his own pathway with the loose stones in the bed of a minute down-flowing stream. The water is crystal-clear, and nothing can be more engaging than its gurgle and sparkle, but damp feet are the inevitable consequence of its acquaintance. After a wet passage through the torrent-bed, more or less torn and troubled by the neighbourhood of blackberries, thorny hedgerows and tall reeds, he will have to cut his way through a stony meadow, jump the low, loose walls that separate each field, tangle his limbs in a multiplicity of straggling branches and uncultivated growths, and trample ruthlessly upon the pretty heads of the wild flowers. Every shade in foliage, and every hue and odour in flower will charm him: the delicacy of the plane sets off the polished darkness of the oleander and myrtle leaf, the moist glitter of the maidenhair enriches the ferns that spread themselves like fans upon the rocks, and along the vine-branches the shooting leaves begin to uncurl. From the hedges there will be the song of the linnets and goldfinches, and under them the musical lapping of water against stones.
Pericles Selaka’s house had originally belonged to aVenetian noble family, and still showed the coat-of-arms wrought in marble on either side of the gate, with a Latin inscription under a Venetian gondola. It stood above the village, overlooking the two lovely valleys that divide the flanks of the empty encircling hills,—hills bare of all but the glory of their own tint, and the wavering clouds that sweep, soft and shadowy, over the everlasting sunshine. Behind it the mighty Castro, proud in its purple and grey desolation, bereft of its old splendour, but still dominating the island like an acropolis, and in through the openings of its crags, cleft in nature’s fury, runs the sea as through a frame. The courtyard into which the gate opened was gemmed with flowers. In the middle there was a well, and on either side a palm tree with wooden seats under its shade.
It was winter, so the vine-roofed verandah was a flood of sunshine. A short flight of marble steps led to the terrace above, whence Syra, Delos and Naxos might be seen, as well as the sloping fields that drop into the torrent below, and Selaka’s orchard and vineyard, which, at that time, showed pale, slim lines of green just opening upon the brown earth. A watch-dog dozing in view, lazily observed the regular rise and fall of the digger’s spade, and only wakened to sharp activity whenever a venturesome sheep or goat thrust itself upon his notice. An oppressive silence lay upon the land, and there was silence in the house whence the terrace opened.
The room into which you stepped from the terrace was simplicity itself. White everywhere; white sofas, white curtains and white chair covers, with a purpletable-cloth edged with wonderful Byzantine embroidery. On a black cabinet there was a goodly display of old Greek jars and lamps; and inside, a tray of antique coins and exquisitely carved silver. These heirlooms are to be found in the poorest Teniote cottages. I have been served by a cottager with water and jam on a heavy silver tray, the water in a delicate Venetian glass with armorial bearings wrought in colours into the glass, and the jam in a costly silver chalice. In a recess there were shelves fitted with the Greek classics, from which the Latin writers were jealously excluded. Your scholarly Greek despises Latin. Sitting at a side table beside a window that looked out upon the Castro, was an old man bent over one of these classical tomes. He was reading in a leisurely, familiar way, as a connoisseur sips his port. Occasionally he lifted his eyes from his book, and removed his black cap, all the while unconsciously and swiftly rolling up cigarettes, and puffing with the same deliberate appreciation noticeable in his manner of reading. He was a keen, thoughtful-looking man, with a curious mingling of black and white in hair and beard.
His solitude was interrupted by the entrance of an old woman, dressed in a garment that may best be described as a black sack. She was a serene little woman, very tidily built, with an indefatigable and sturdy air, and in her brown face sparkled two preternaturally black eyes. She wore a Turkish kerchief of red muslin wound round her head, and outside this an enormous plait of false hair, as is the ungraceful habit of the Island women. This was Selaka’s housekeeper and servant in one. She was called Annunziata.
“This, Kyrie, has just been brought up from the town,” she said, handing him a telegram.
Pericles took the telegram, opened it in his leisurely way,—one naturally grows sleepy on a sleepy island. It was from his brother in Athens announcing Reineke’s coming. Pericles frowned, and looked more thoughtful than ever as he read the communication. As may be imagined, it was neither very delicate nor very wise. It referred to a possible desirable solution of Inarime’s future.
“Humph,” said Pericles, and crushed the missive in his hand, “my brother is sending us a visitor, Annunziata,” he explained, curtly.
“A visitor! Has your brother taken leave of his senses? Surely the visitor who proposes to come here cannot be other than a madman,” said Annunziata, who appropriated the privilege of speaking her mind to her master.
“He was always a fool,” assented Pericles; “however, it is essential that we should sustain our reputation for hospitality; so, my dear woman, you will be good enough to prepare a room for the guest.”
“And why should I prepare? Don’t you know that my rooms are always prepared?” protested Annunziata, hurt in her honour as a housekeeper.
“Yes, yes, but there will be sheets to air, and flowers and such things to put in the room. He is an invalid; and sick men are proverbially difficult to please. They require as much spoiling as a woman,” said Pericles, dismissing the subject with a majestic wave of his hand.
The subject, however, would not be dismissed from his mind, and he sat there with his open book, hiseyes persistently wandering from one window to another, looking now out on the bright terrace and then on the gloomy Castro behind. It was hardly human for a father not to speculate upon the coming of this stranger, and its possible consequences. A husband for Inarime! Nonsense! it was not to be imagined that any stray adventurer, whom his brother might choose to pick up, could possibly prove a worthy or desirable mate for that pearl among girls. Besides, he was not prepared to give her to any man who could not indisputably claim to be a Greek scholar. He knew the sort of scholars Europe habitually sends to Greece. Self-sufficient young men or tottering archæologists with a barbaric pronunciation and a superficial acquaintance with Homer and Plato. These were not the scholars he desired to know, nor the sort who, under any circumstances, could prove congenial to him. As for Inarime, she was likely to be still more fastidious. Her beauty and her great gifts entitled her to contempt for less gifted mortals. While thinking thus, a shadow crossed the light of the terrace, and a girl’s form stood framed in the doorway.
Anybody whose travels have led him to the Hellenic shores, knows too well that the old classic beauty is almost extinct. But not quite. Here and there, on the islands of the Archipelago, he may chance upon a face that looks at him out of the other centuries,—stamped with the grandeur of an unforgotten race in protest against a physical deterioration that gives it the melancholy charm of isolation. This vision is rare, but once seen it is beheld with breathless wonder. There is nothing to compare with it. Other European types of beauty sink beside it, as do Italian melodies beside a bar of Beethoven. It is as if over a gray landscape the scarlet dawn broke suddenly, showing an unhoped-for reality in glowing tints and soft lines no imagination can picture.
Lit by the strong sunshine, with the faintest grave smile round her lovely lips, as she met the puzzled glance of her father, Inarime looked as if she sprang direct from the Immortals.
Something like her face the student dreams of, when he muses over the great Dead. The small dusky head, its blue-black hair, softening to a tawny sheen at the brows; the olive cheek as smooth as satin, almost colourless except where it gathers the bloom of the tea-rose,or of a shell held to the light. The full firm curves of the mouth, rather grave than gay, but ineffably sweet, with paler lips than those of the North; the delicate nose coming down straight from the forehead: the low arch of the eyebrows, and the curves of the chin that show no weakness. These details much contributed to the charm of the whole. But its greatest beauty were the unfathomable eyes—of a deep brown with an outer ring, which in any joyous mood gave them the gleam of amber, while sorrow or deep emotion darkened them to the luster of agate. She wore a dress of dull gold, with a bronze velvet collar and cuffs. The front of the bodice was trimmed with large bronze buttons. It was not a dress which Mademoiselle Veritassi would have worn, but then, on the other hand, it was not a dress that Mademoiselle Veritassi could have worn. Dowdy it was not, but strange, and looked as if it had grown upon the young, firm, and supple form it clothed. Inarime had a pardonable weakness for this most suitable gown. She had worn it constantly since she had selected it from the merchant who brought the stuff from Syra, with other splendid materials for the women and young persons of Tenos, and the dressmaker, who had studied her art in that same elegant centre, had made it for her. Indeed, she had never a variety of gowns, nor did she seem to miss this source of happiness. Round her neck hung suspended by a thin gold chain a little Byzantine cross, a relic of her mother, and her abundant hair was gathered into a thick coil with a long golden pin. It may seem strange that I should insist upon these trivial matters, seeing it is generally considered that young girls should be thusadorned, but it is not so in Tenos, and the artistic delight Inarime could not have failed to take in her own beauty, apart from any silly vanity, and with no desire to please the eye of others, is a very singular deviation from the custom of Greek girls.
“Have you been waiting for me ever since, father?” she asked. A still more curious fact, she did not speak the insular dialect, but pure Athenian, with a faultless accent.
“Yes, my dear,” said Pericles, addressing her in the same language, though he had spoken good Teniote to Annunziata. “It is well that you have come now. I think, my dear, it will be better for you to spend a few days with your aunt at Mousoulou, and it has occurred to me that you might go there this afternoon.”
“But, why? I have no desire to go to Mousoulou,” protested Inarime.
“Well, if you would just please me in this matter, I cannot tell you how grateful I should be to you, Inarime,” said her father, who always treated her as an equal. For this young creature was to him more son than daughter, since he had brought her up in a masculine fashion, in the matter of education and training.
“It is strange, father, that you should turn capricious and mysterious, but I will obey you in this as in all else,” she said, with an exquisite gravity which likened her more than ever to a young goddess.
She was standing close to him now; and he got up, placed his hands upon her shoulders, and looked earnestly into her eyes.
“It is no more than I might expect of you, Inarime” he said.
There was a dignity, a restraint about the relations of these two that was very striking. Perhaps Pericles affected the manner and bearing of the Ancients, with whom he exclusively communed, and perhaps Inarime had ostentatiously caught this trick from him. Laughter with them was as rare as anger, and both held their pulses in complete subjection.
Something of Inarime’s life,—while that lucky young man, known in Greece as “the man of confidence,” who can be trusted to act as knight to a lady, is leading her mule to the distant village of Mousoulou, and while Gustav Reineke, on the “Iris,” is speeding towards the shores of Tenos. This life is simple enough: unemotional, unanalysable; an eager student from youngest years, the sole companion of a sage who lived in the past. But Inarime enjoyed a local reputation that carried the mind back to antique or mediæval days. The equilibrium of Europe was not likely to be disturbed by it, but the peace of the island most certainly was. All things we know are relative, and it is possible the unknown and unsought conquests of Inarime would have been far enough from causing any excitement to a London sylph. But besides Inarime’s influence and reputation, extending over four mayoralties and sixty-two villages, with a list of suitors headed by a bachelor mayor and the two unmarried deputies, and including every single man and youth of the island, the London sylph will be seen to play a small and insignificant part in her own distinguished circle. She would probably turn up her patrician nose at the addresses of a shepherd and a barbaric demarch. But then the shepherd and the demarch would care as little about her.
Despite their inherited and undisguised contempt for women, the sons of Hellas have sense and taste enough to know the value of an antique head on live young shoulders. It was now nearly two years since the mountaineers, meeting on the rocky pathways that scale the crags and precipices and fringe the torrent-beds, began to ask why Selaka delayed to choose a son-in-law. Each man regarded himself as the only proper choice. And down in thecafésthe townsfolk and fishermen wanted an answer to the same question. As a set-off against this suspense, there was the satisfactory knowledge that Selaka’s choice would find it no easy matter to bring home his bride. Indeed, a few young bloods, like Thomaso, the Mayor’s nephew, a quarrelsome fellow given to an undue consumption of raki, and Petrus Vitalis, whose father’s recent death left him the proud proprietor of three Caiques, openly spoke of abduction. Constantine Selaka was aware of all this, and was extremely anxious that Pericles should select a son-in-law from among his Athenian friends. Choice and preliminaries should, of course, be a matter of strict secrecy, as a preventive of warlike explosion, for he knew that Inarime’s suitors would prove as little amenable to reason and fair play as the graceless suitors of the unfortunate Penelope.
And if, by delay, his niece should be carried off by the desperate Thomaso or Petrus Vitalis, clack! Good-bye to the Athenian nephew-in-law.
“Idiots! how dare they aspire to her?” Pericles exclaimed, whenever such unsuitable proposal reached him.
“Well, Pericles, you must marry her to somebody,and you can’t expect a Phœbus Apollo, with the classics on the tip of his tongue. You would find him inconvenient enough,” the less exacting Constantine would explain.
“Leave Apollos, though I would have no objection if one were to be had. But do you seriously expect me to marry a girl like Inarime, as lovely as Artemis, as learned and wise as Athena, to a clown? A fellow who gets up at two of a summer morning to shoot inoffensive birds, and gets drunk upon abominable raki while prating in vile Romanic about politics and the Lord knows what, of which he understands nothing!”
“No, but there is Vitalis, the ‘member,’ who wants her.”
“May the devil sit upon his moustaches for a vulgar blustering fool!” exclaimed the old man, forgetting Olympus. “What is your Vitalis, Constantine? A boor. An uneducated lawyer, who could not tell a verse of Euripides from one of Sophocles; doesn’t, in fact, know that either existed, and never translated a sentence of Thucydides in his life. A clown is better. At least he has a dim consciousness that he is a barbarian. Whereas the other shrunken miserable being in his ill-fitting clothes and European hat, deems himself the happiest edition of a boulevardier. Boulevardier, save the mark! France has been the ruin of us!”
“Then can’t you take Dragonnis, the other member?”
“No, I cannot. I don’t want any wretched politician for Inarime. Dragonnis is as bad as his colleague—a pair of dunderheads. My daughter will not marry a Teniote, neither will she marry a chattering, gossiping Athenian.Some day I’ll take her abroad, and give her to a scholar and a gentleman, who will see in her gifts and beauty something other than the mere decorations of an upper servant and mother of a family.”
Inarime had been the subject of disputes of this sort between the brothers ever since that memorable day when the absence of shots proclaimed to the village that a little “daughter of man,” instead of the desired “son of God,” had come to bless the house. To the friends and relatives, the intrusion of the unappreciated sex was not, however, looked upon in the light of a blessing. According to custom, people came and shook the hand of the injured father, condoling loudly with the sorrowing and disgraced mother. But when Selaka’s wife died shortly afterwards, and there was no boy on whom he could hope to bestow his knowledge and learning, the father clung to Inarime. He resolved to show the world, by his untiring labour, that a girl may develop remarkable capacity and intellect. He cared little about modern acquirements, but fed her mind exclusively upon the philosophy, poetry, and history of her great ancestors. Homer and Hesiod were the fairy tales of her childhood,—Plutarch the first book she learned to read. She was familiar with all the ancient dialects and Greek literature, from the time of Hesiod to the Alexandrian Renaissance. She was taught to choose the simplest phrasing, and yet one that was severely academical, from which all foreign interpolations of modern Greek were expunged. The old calligraphy, too, was insisted upon, and she wrote papers on the Trilogy from which an infallible University Don might have learned much. Some of these papers her delighted fathercontemplated sending to one of the German Universities, where he knew that the fragrance of original thought and excellent style would be more justly appreciated than in frivolous Athens. But he feared the wrench of surrender such recognition from beyond the Ægean might bring. A girl so perilously gifted might seek to plunge into the waters alone and swim in depths beyond which his dim eyes and feeble hopes could not follow. Besides, with him she was completely happy, and publicity is a misery, a fret and a constant strain upon the nerves.
Thus she grew up unconscious of solitude or of needs other than those which her surroundings supplied. As for the accomplishments which occupy the elegant leisure of European young ladies, she was hopelessly ignorant: would have been perfectly unserviceable at a suburban tea-party or a game of tennis, and the popinjays who figure in polite society would have scorned her, had they attempted to engage her in conversation suitable to a background of moonlit balcony, or in the movement of a waltz. But if she could not dance or embroider, and sing Signor Tosti’s weeping melodies, and if her brown slender hands looked as if their acquaintance with sun and air was considerably greater than with kid or Suède, she could carry a water-jar from the village fountain in an attitude that was a picture of grace, with a light swinging step that was the music of motion—and this the London sylph could not have done. Her father was strong upon the necessity for thorough gymnastic training, and she could swim and run and ride a mile like a young athlete. Even Greek boys cannot do as much, but then they are not brought up by antiquated professors, who faithfully copy the precepts ofthe old philosophers. Selaka, for this athletic training cultivated a strip of sanded path in his farm near the sea, with the shade of plane trees for rest. Here Inarime raced and exercised, sweeping the sanded path with flying feet, and lips parted with the joy of quick movement and the flush of health crimsoning her olive cheek.
Outside her books, her racing and riding, she had another important duty—that of general letter-writer for Xinara and the adjacent village of Lutra.
It was a bright December afternoon when Reineke was left by theIrisupon the little pier at Tenos. Aristides, the “young man of confidence,” who had safely deposited Inarime at her aunt’s at Mousoulou, was sent by Selaka to meet him. Gustav inquiringly scanned his conductor’s face. He disliked its inquisitiveness and keenness, and was repelled by the familiarity with which the fellow held out his hand. But he took the hand, and coldly expressed his satisfaction with his new acquaintance, who explained to him volubly that it would be advisable to rest a little in the town before ascending to Xinara. Aristides then proceeded to guide the stranger to a littlecafé, and Reineke’s visible weakness made even a rest in such a locality grateful. He sat quietly waiting for some coffee, and looked around. Being an Eastern, he felt less shuddering repugnance to the place than an Englishman or Frenchman would have felt. Besides, there was an acute pleasure to be derived from watching the light flash upon the blue waters, and gleam upon the lifted oars until they looked like shining spears. He inferred that Aristides was the son of his host, and conjectured that he would not be likely to draw verylargely upon such resources for intellectual enjoyment. And then, personally, he disliked the Greeks, as we know. He was not restless or particularly active, so that he could comfortably get through a couple of hours in this indolent contemplation. But it was with a sense of relief that he saw Aristides approach with a mule upon which he was invited to mount, and slowly they made the difficult ascent. To a strong man such a ride would be discomposing in the extreme; to a man still in the clutch of an intermittent fever it was positive torture. It seemed to Reineke that the attitude of the beast was a constant perpendicular, now with its head for apex and now with its tail and this sort of motion continued a good hour and a half. The musical flow of the torrent beds and the echo of distant waterfalls were heard mingling with varied bird-notes. But how to take æsthetic pleasure in these sounds when one is momentarily expecting to be hurled into eternity, or, at least, in peril of leaving various limbs about the precipices and ravines; now frantically clutching forward and then almost prone backwards to preserve one’s balance!
Little by little, however, his senses began to recover, and he was able to take occasional glimpses of the strange landscape through which he was being hurled. The gathering twilight was dimming the pure air, but had not yet struck out the colours that lay upon the land. The meadows were full of wild flowers, and he noted how beautiful some of the weeds were. The bloom of the fields and the gray mist of the olives, and the purple haze that lay upon the fig branches, tracing their intricate pattern across the silent hills and making their own pathway for the shadows, charmedhim. The sparkle and murmur of water, the departing smile of sunshine from the darkening heavens, the early stir of shepherd life, an air so fine that every scent from valley and hillside was discernible from the mingled whole, filled him with a sense of exquisite content. And when he saw the beautiful valley of Kolymvithra unfolded like a panorama under the village of Xinara, and the great purple Castro lost in evening shade, he felt that his perilous ride had not been in vain.
As they rode up the little village street, Demetrius and his satellites were standing outside the blacksmith’s den. The presence of a stranger naturally diverted their thoughts from the rascalities of the Prime Minister at Athens, which they had been discussing.
“That, I suppose, is an Englishman,” said the handsome Demetrius, removing his cigarette, and staring hard at Reineke with an air of ill-concealed discontent, as he addressed himself inclusively to Michael, the contemplative carpenter, and Johannis, the blacksmith.
“He is too dark for an Englishman; it is most likely he’s an Italian,” suggested the carpenter, in a tone of apologetic protest.
“You fool! do you think that every Englishman is yellow-haired and white and red?” retorted Demetrius, snappishly. “But you are not going to deny, I hope, that the man has the conceited air of an Englishman? No other people carry themselves as if the world belonged to them, and those that are not English do not count. And what is all this pride for, pray? Ten of their heroes would not make one of ours.”
“Very true, Demetrius,” concurred Michael, conciliatorily. “If England had produced one Miltiades,we might all go hang ourselves, for no other nation would be allowed to exist. Now here are we good-natured Greeks, who count our heroes by the hundred, and know ourselves to be the point upon which the world, both occidental and oriental, turns, quietly smoking our cigarettes, and willing to allow others a part of the pathway. Whereas an Englishman, when he goes abroad, walks down other people’s streets as if he thought himself merciful in only knocking the owners into the shade instead of crushing them.”
“Well, I can’t say I am for England either,” said Johannis, diving his hands into the pockets of his blue cotton pantaloons. “I always thought she was too fond of helping herself to parts of the globe which she had no right to, and of battering others into submission. But it cannot be denied that she is very rich and sufficiently attentive to the affairs of Greece. London, I hear on first-class authority, is a wonderful place. You know Marengo, the captain of theIris, stayed there a week; but he never once ventured out of the hotel alone, so frightened was he by the noise and the people. He solemnly swears he saw fifty trains steaming in and out of the station at the same time. It sounds incredible, but Marengo is positive. He counted thirty, but his head grew dizzy, though he saw he had only got through half the number. When driving he had to keep his eyes and ears closed, expecting every minute to be killed by the thousand cabs that whizzed round him as quick as lightning. He could not understand how the people managed to cross the streets, some of them a mile in width!”
“You may believe half of what Marengo says,Johannis,” cried Demetrius, “he is an unconscionable liar. However, I have certainly been assured that London is a largest kind of town, perhaps a little more extensive than Athens, but then I never believe all I hear. I like to judge things for myself. Not that I have seen Athens either; but I believe it to be the finest city in the world. Why, was not Athens founded long before London or Paris were heard of? Do not people come every day from America to see it, and guardians have to be placed about the Acropolis to prevent strangers robbing its stones or relics? I would be glad if you could name a Greek who would go to London or America for a relic!”
Demetrius looked as if he had sufficiently clinched the matter. If travellers come to Greece for a purpose which certainly does not inspire the Greeks to go to foreign parts, it clearly proves the advantage on the side of Greece.
“True enough, Demetrius,” assented Michael, “and do we not know that Mr. Gladstone, the Prime Minister of England, is more anxious for our safety than that of his own people? And he would gladly exchange London for Athens to-morrow if he could, and mind you, he has seen both places. If we go to war this year, depend upon it, Mr. Gladstone will send us men enough to smash the Turks.”
“We will accept England’s aid when we need it,” said the village Lothario, condescendingly, with a dramatic gesture, as he threw away the end of his cigarette. “But we know very well that three hundred Greeks are more than a match for ten thousand Turks, as they were for the Persians in the olden days.”
Demetrius, you will perceive, was learned, and that was why he was president of the clubs.
“Where are you going shooting to-morrow?” asked Johannis, who knew nothing about the Persians, and resented their introduction with the unreasonable jealousy and bigotry of ignorance.
“I am going to shoot round Koumara,” said Demetrius, testily.
“It’s poor shooting you’ll get there,” remarked Johannis. “I am going to Mousoulou. I shot a lot of wild pigeons there last Sunday and bagged larks and sparrows by the dozen.”
In the meantime, through a running fire of continual comment, and under the gaze of every pair of eyes the village possessed, Reineke, conducted by the cheerful and voluble Aristides, was led down the torrent and round by the windmill upon the brow of the hill, to the little postern gate which led into Selaka’s vineyard. He was so exhausted that in dismounting he had to lean heavily upon Aristides, and slowly walked up the sloping path to the gate. It was opened by Annunziata, who flashed him a delightful smile of welcome, and at that moment Selaka himself hastened forward, and shook him cordially by the hand. But Reineke was too weak and fatigued to do more than smile faintly, and murmur some unintelligible phrase, upon which he was helped into the house, and there collapsed at once upon the sofa. Here we will leave him in the sleep of complete exhaustion, feeling shattered and bruised and as if a week’s sleep would be insufficient to recuperate him.
MUTE ELOQUENCE.
Contrary to my expectations, I awoke on the morning after my arrival at Xinara refreshed, with only that sensation of fatigue in the limbs that makes it delightful to lie perfectly still and revel in the luxury of homespun and lavender-perfumed sheets. The bed was the softest I ever slept on, the room the prettiest and freshest I ever wakened in. Such light, such a cheerful display of linen as everywhere greeted my eyes! In the garden, by the drawn blind, I could see Persian lilacs, in which the birds had evidently built their nests, and down among the trees of the orchards thousands of others seemed to have congregated. The effect of theiraubadeon this lovely winter morning was curious. It began by a soft twitter, which gradually deepened its volume, until it swelled upon mighty waves and beat frantically against the silver gates of the morning in a shower of sound. It shook the closed shutters like hail that lashes the earth outside. In the half haze of troubled sleep, I imagined, at first, that the heavens had suddenly opened in an unwonted downpour, but as soon as I was thoroughly awake, and glanced upon the dim world which slowlyunfolded beneath the light of the breaking day, I understood and recognised the cause of this patter against the panes. The increasing red of the east began to sweep across the pallid sky, washed the lingering moon white, and enriched the zenith with a dash of warm blue. I got up and opened the nearest window, and then lay back to follow the movement of that impetuous swell of music, sustained with exquisite orchestral harmony. The sound seemed to travel round and round in a circle, continuously gathering force, and then burst into a flood of song. An indistinguishable tumult of wave with ever this strange, perpetual, circuitous movement, as if all the birds of all the gardens and woods had met, and were whirling round and round this spot of earth in some mad dance of wing. I think I must have slept again, or perhaps I lay in an open-eyed dream for some time. When I looked once more out of the window, I saw the bright pleasant little woman, who had welcomed me the night before, walk sturdily down the path that leads to the village, with her red water jar placed on her shoulder, one muscular brown arm flung round her head to support it. What a pleasure it was to watch her! She looked so secure, so contented, so seriously active, and there was a light in her eye which betrayed something more than cheerfulness,—a sense of humour, and a kind of still laugh just traced the faintest sympathetic line round the mouth. I supposed her to be the mother of that intolerable youth who had led my mule last night, and who served me as guide in my most memorable ride.
My restful solitude was broken by the entrance of Annunziata, carrying a little tray with coffee, aninviting roll called Koulouria, and some cigarettes. She placed it beside me, and then touched my hand softly, and stood and smiled upon me with maternal benignity.
“You are rested, Kyrie?” she asked.
“Quite fresh, and ready for another ride,” I answered, laughing.
When I had partaken of this sober fare, she begged me to be still awhile, and held a light and a cigarette for me. I am fond enough of a recumbent attitude, and nothing loth, accepted the proffered sedative. Then she trotted off with her inimitable air of sturdy serenity, and hardly had she left me to my own contented thoughts when the door opened, and in walked Aristides. Is it not unreasonable to dislike a man, for no other reason than that his exterior and certain tricks of manner revolt you? The fellow is really a decent fellow, but he has a way of lifting the pressure of his lithe frame from one foot to another, and of running his forefinger along his shapely nose, that provokes me to the verge of exasperation. I watch for these tricks with an unaccountable impatience, and when they come, I am invariably harassed with the suppressed impetuosity of physical rage, and expect before long to fling something at him. He entered the room with an air of polished familiarity, took a chair, uninvited, as if he were a prince of the blood whose condescension singularly honoured me, and smiled in large affability and tolerance as he began to roll a cigarette. After a pause he remarked casually, with a very apparent desire to set me at ease:
“Vera nice counthry, Ingland, like vera much I do Ingleesh—large place, I hear.”
I nodded, and patiently waited to learn why I should be attacked in execrable English.
“I knew Ingleeshman in Smyrna. He vera nice man, touch vera well piano. You touch piano?”
I admitted an innocent weakness that way, and continued to smoke complacently, tickled by the humour of the situation.
“You are Ingleesh, sarr?”
“I have not that honour.”
“Ah, vous êtes Français?”
I failed to claim that great and much belauded nationality, whereupon Aristides, indefatigable in the pursuit of knowledge, and anxious to confound me with his linguistic skill, burst out radiantly:
“Sie sind Deutsch.”
“If you will condescend to speak your own language and spare me your exasperating murder of Continental tongues, it may be of some slight advantage to you and me,” I cried.
My unaccustomed violence in nowise discomposed him. He proved his philosophic superiority by blandly smiling, as if to turn aside a wrath he considered childish and inconsequent, rolled another cigarette, leant forward, lit it, and observed, with an air of casual approval, that it was a pleasing surprise to meet a foreigner who could speak Greek. He then proceeded to question me with the savage candour and curiosity of his race. He was eager to learn my income, its source, the cost of the clothes I wore, if they were purchased in Paris or in London, if I admired the Greeks and Greece, if I were married, or disposed to marry a Greek, if my parents were alive, and how many brothers and sistersI had. To those singular questions I replied curtly, contemptuously resolved to see how far he would push his indiscreet investigations. Then when I grew tired, I proceeded to obtain a little information on my own account. From the communicative Aristides I learned that the amiable doctor, who so wisely recommended me the bosom of nature and innocence, is for inscrutable reasons recognised as the King of Tenos, that he is a member of King George’s Parliament, and by claim of obstruction unillumined by a rushlight of intelligence or motive, is called the Parnell of Greece.
My host, it appears, is a more interesting character. His attitude towards the moderns is that of unsparing contempt. He lives with the ancients, and entertains a very lively horror of that superior people, the French. His daughter is reputed to be a handsome and cultivated young woman, to whose hand every unmarried male of the island aspires. She has an exquisite name, Inarime. When I got rid of Aristides, I lay back and conjectured a variety of visions of the owner of such a name. In turn I dismissed from my mind the amiable maiden, the attractive peasant girl, the chill statue and the haughty pedant, the Arab, the Turk, the Italian of the Levant. Not one of these seemed to fit in with my ideal of Inarime, and the thought that she had left Xinara before my arrival fretted me strangely with a sense of baffled desire.
“Just an old pagan philosopher,” Aristides had said, speaking of Selaka, “who keeps the handsomest girl of Tenos locked away from everyone, as if a glance were a stain. He seems to regard her as a goddess,and nobody here worthy to look upon her divinity. That is why he sent her away before you came. He distrusts you and every other Christian. Now, if you happened to be a Pagan, I have not the slightest doubt he would be willing to marry you right off to Inarime.”
Why should this impertinent suggestion of Aristides have shot the blood of anger and shame into my face? And yet it did, and the heat remained after the fellow had left me to my own reflections. I do not think that I am specially nervous or sensitive, but the shock of that idea touched me with a force that made me shrink as from a prophecy. I dreaded to meet Inarime, and almost resented her exile on my account. There may be something flattering to our masculine vanity in the fact that a beautiful girl has been sent into banishment on our account, but this balsam did not heal a certain dull ache of dismay and resentment.
In this unreasonable mood Selaka found me. He inquired after my health with measured courtliness, and suggested a variety of additions to my comfort. I was dressed now, and reclining on a sofa. Without hesitation I followed his advice to breathe the air of the terrace awhile. The broad sunshine and the open-air serenity of the scene soothed and calmed me, and I felt I could have been content to sit thus for hours watching the flapping shadows of the windmills upon the sunny hills, under the spell of the noon-day silence of nature. My host sat beside me, the inevitable cigarette between his fingers, with a sharp but kindly glance turned occasionally upon me. I imagine the question of my nationality was perplexing him, and he was,perhaps, seeking an occasion to elicit direct information from me on this point. But this did not conceal from me that the normal expression of his fine dark eyes showed the glow of an impersonal enthusiasm, doubtless lit by his long devotion to the ancients. By reason of his rough-hewn and unfinished features, he looked rather a simple good-natured peasant, removed from the sordid conflict and merely animal sensations of husbandry, than a learned pedagogue or an earth-removed philosopher; a man fond of questioning the stars and his own soul, but not indifferent to the delights of shepherd-life; capable of sparing a daisy and stepping out of the way of a burdened ant, when he walked abroad with Plato or Thucydides in his hand. It struck me that Inarime could be no vulgar glittering jewel to be thus carefully shielded from the irreverent gaze by this sage of Tenos.
“I think you cannot be French,” he said, at last.
“Reineke is a German name,” I answered, evasively, for it was not my wish to court coldness by an avowal of my nationality.
“Ah, it is well. I do not like the French.”
“And yet your countrymen adore them,” I said, and laughed.
“So they do, so they do—to their sorrow and shame.”
“How can that be? Is France not admittedly the first nation of the civilised world?” I exclaimed.
“That depends upon what is understood by civilisation. If you mean humbug, vice, vanity and bluster, infamous plays and vaudevilles, immoral literature generally, you may crown France with a triple crownof shameless glory. But if you mean truth, good manners, purity, sense and honourable restraint in all things, as the old world understood it, then France is below all other countries to-day. It is because Greece is so infatuated with France that I completely despair of her future.”
“It seems to me that you are charging an innocent country with the vices of a depraved town. France is not Paris, and Paris is the sinner.”
“Paris! France! It is one. The country looks on complacently, and approves the nameless follies of the city. It makes no effort to impede her fatal career, and is not dismayed to see her, with her band of lascivious poets and novelists, dance madly towards her doom, in the degradation of decay, with a weak and dissolute smile on her worn lips.”
“Do you condemn all her writers?”
“Upon moral and artistic grounds I condemn all unreservedly. You are one of those who, perhaps, call Victor Hugo great. I do not. ‘Words, words, words,’ as Hamlet says, and nothing to come at them. Chip away all the superfluous decorations and excrescences of ‘Notre Dame,’ and measure it by the severe restrictions of Greek Art. You have twenty pages, strengthened, purified, with only essential action and speech, instead, of two long volumes of intolerable verbiage. No, sir; France’s sentence has been pronounced. One day Germany will sweep her away, with her vices and her graces, and they, I admit, are many. She is in a debilitated and anæmic state, starting up in spasms of febrile vitality, and the sooner her destiny is accomplished, the better for us and allother such feebly imitative peoples. Have you stayed long in Athens?”
“No, in fact I have seen nothing as yet of the town.”
“Ah, then you have yet to learn why I, and every true lover of Greece, should hate the name of France. The men and women in Athens speak bad Greek, though there is no reason why their speech should not be as pure as Plutarch’s. Every one chatters in bad French, with what object it would puzzle the Lord himself to discover. The women rave about Ohnet, a vulgar writer whose style even I can know to be execrable. Like the illustrious Hugo, the men read Zola, and are thereby much improved. There are French vaudevilles andcafés-chantants; our army is superintended by Frenchmen, who draw large salaries for the privilege of laughing at us. Paris condescends to send our women its cast-off fashions at enormously disproportionate prices. Athens is, in fact, a small, dull, feeble Paris,—Paris in caricature, without the fascination of its many-sided life.”
He stopped suddenly, half-ashamed and slightly flushed after his burst of indignation. When we had smoked a cigarette apiece, I made careless mention of his brother, and asked about his family. Constantine, he told me, had long ago married a handsome Levantine who, after a few months of conjugal discord, had attempted to shoot him, and then betaken herself to Constantinople with a native of Syra. This disaster had naturally tended to convince Constantine of the nothingness of marriage, and he had since remained in single inconsolation. Pericles himself hadbeen blessed with a wife, picked up at Ischia, as lovely in soul as in body, but here again was demonstrated the singular fleetingness of wedded bliss. This pearl among wives melted away in the crucial test of childbirth—and Selaka was left, bereaved and truly forlorn, with a baby girl upon his hands.
Later on in the afternoon Selaka joined me, just as my senses were lazily shaking themselves out of the thrall of siesta. He asked me if I were interested in the study of ancient Greek, and upon my enthusiastic affirmative, his face brightened and his manner immediately assumed a cordiality and a pleasure that charmed me. He invited me to accompany him in his walk through his orchard and vineyard; and truly a delight it was to me to be brought face to face with a nature so simple and a mind so exquisitely cultivated as his. Perhaps it would be thought that such exclusive recognition of the past and such a profound and unutterable contempt for the present were narrow and pedantic. That it tended to lessen his interest in humanity cannot be denied. But how very precious, from sincerity and undecorated speech, were the thoughts to which he gave expression during our leisurely walk! Much as I delighted, however, in the ancients, and deeply interesting as was any discussion upon the old Greek writers, I could not get out of my head the one word “Inarime.” I was haunted with the wish, nay, almost the need, to hear something of her, and at last, after a pause in our conversation, I hazarded the question:
“Is your daughter married?”
Selaka fixed me with a quick, suspicious glance, and said, coldly,
“My daughter is young; it will be time enough yet to think of marrying her!”
“Then she does not live with you?” I persisted, with pardonable indelicacy.
“She is at present staying with her aunt at Mousoulou,” said Selaka.
I ought to have let the subject drop upon these strong hints, but I went on:
“I am told she is very beautiful.”
“You have been told the truth,” said Selaka.
I saw that further questioning would be indiscreet. However discursive he might be upon the subject of the ancient Greeks, his reticence upon the subject of Inarime was not to be shaken.
Thus passed my three first days in Xinara. Aristides invariably wounded and offended me by his impertinent freedom and his still more impertinent confidences. It appears Aristides is one of Inarime’s admirers, and being promoted to the rank of chief muleteer to his mistress, naturally regards himself as having scored above all his rivals. The early morning was generally spent by me in exploring the neighbouring hills alone. In the afternoon I accompanied Selaka round his small estate. A tranquil, healthy existence it was, and under its influences my late fever and languor left me. With recurrent health I gained in vitality and spirits, and had I not been pursued by an indefinable curiosity—a sense of baffled hope,—I should ere this have been measuring my forces for a return to Athens.
* * * * * * *
It was the fourth day since my arrival from Tenos,when I opened the door of the bright sitting-room with the intention of passing an hour or two among Selaka’s choice books. Looking out upon the desolate Castor,—seeming the more desolate because of the cruel joy of the sunshine that so ruthlessly exposed its empty flanks, my ear was attracted by the sound of hysterical sobbing and half-angry expostulation, that came from the courtyard through the opposite open window. I walked across the room, wondering what could have happened to disturb the active serenity of Annunziata. My eyes fell upon a village woman, whose withered, sunburnt face was lifted in tearful prayer to another, who sat with her back to me, leaning over a little table. There was something exquisitely youthful and gracious in the attitude,—of majestic youth in the line of the figure clad, as I could see, in some dark yellow stuff. But the small head was completely hidden in a muslin kerchief of spotless white, with a Turkish border of yellow and crimson.
There was a restraint and firmness—an unconscious grace in the pose, and I felt my pulses quicken with eagerness to see the face. Could this be a young judge measuring awful depths of iniquity in a criminal? A cold Diana reproving undue tenderness, a wise Athena rebuking folly? I listened. The villager’s brogue and voluble utterances were difficult to follow. But I gathered that there was question of a letter that had been written, and that the dictator’s mind had altered, and that she now wanted one written in an entirely different spirit.
“I am so sorry, Kyria. He will never come back to me if he gets that letter, and what does anythingmatter to me as long as he remains away? Tell him that I am not angry with him; that I will bear anything rather than that he should not come back to me. If he would only leave her and come away from Smyrna! Tell him anything, young lady, that will touch him,—I am so lonely, so weary of waiting for him!” I heard the woman say.
“But, my poor woman, what proof have I that, if I rewrite the letter in this new mood, you will not be sorry for the leniency in another hour, and implore me to write an angrier letter for you?” The voice was clear and soft, with a curious throat sound that somehow carried with it the idea of velvet. Something in it seemed to draw me with an ache of desire to see the speaker. I acted upon an unaccountable and irresistible impulse. It compelled me in a kind of dreamy expectation down the marble steps, and, standing with my hand upon the top of the pillar, close to her, my intense gaze was an equal compulsion to her.
She moved her head round slowly, and our eyes met. Was it the shock of recognition, the awful bliss of surprised surrender, the force of revelation, undreamed, unawaited, yet not the less complete because of its suddenness, that held our glances in a steady dismay?
I laid down my arms at once happy, contented, prone, in a sacred servitude; but she, I could divine, with the delicate instinct of maidenhood, strove to struggle and release her soul. But no effort of even her imperious will could move her eyes from mine, upon which they rested in the mute eloquence of dazzled entreaty, shining as if they were filled withlight. And then slowly their golden hue faded into a wistful brown, and slowly, grudgingly drooped their lids,—and mine, as if by instinct, dropped. It was only afterwards that I could remember the glory of her resplendent youth, and dwell upon the flash of her great beauty.
She laid her hand upon the head of the kneeling, sobbing woman, and said:
“I cannot write your letter to-day, Katinko, but come to me at Mousoulou,” and then turning, looked at me again, this time with less trouble and dismay through the unfathomable tenderness of her gaze,—looked at me steadily, commandingly, unconsciously reminding me that she was sovereign lady, and that not one inch of her sovereignty would she forego for me. I humbly accepted the dismissal of her eyes, without a word of protest or prayer, though the pulses of my body rang with frantic urgence for both. I stood to let her pass me, and was strong enough to resist the temptation to touch her hand as a suppliant might, to prostrate myself before her as a servant. But no; our attitude must be that of equals, something told me. If she be queen then must I be king; sovereign, too. Not servant, Inarime. King of you, as you, beloved, are henceforth queen of me!
I went to my room and tried to think. But thought was vain as action—I could only feel. Feel that I had seen Inarime; that my soul had touched hers; that there was henceforth no life apart for either of us. While I sat thus, dismantled of reality, and full of an overpowering joy, I heard the harsh voice of Aristides checking the impetuosity of his mule, and the words“Kyria” and “Mousoulou” caught my wandering attention.
I drew near to the window in a thrill of alarm. Inarime was seated on the mule, with no other shelter from the beating sunbeams than the white kerchief bound round her head. A strong impulse swept through me to forbid this departure, to cry out passionately against the injustice of flight and desertion. But this folly would but imperil my position. What right had I to usurp authority and claim upon the surprised declaration of her eloquent eyes? And there came upon me a sense of the perfect tact of her action, its true fitness in accord with the dignity of her sex. Pursuit was for me,—not flight, but a delicate, cold aloofness was hers by divine privilege. Not other would I have her than sensitively alive to the gracelessness of serene and easy conquest. And I was not hurt, was I, by this withdrawal from the new light of day, for her will must ever now be my own.