“Kyrios Oïdas?”
“I am compromised—pledged.”
She bent her head, and at that moment the bell announced the arrival of her friends.
The Baroness von Hohenfels, hearing of Selaka’s intended departure and a meditated return for the meeting of the German School, called and warmly pressed Inarime to stay with her during M. Selaka’s absence. She would not hear of refusal. There was a room at the Embassy at Mademoiselle Selaka’s disposal; her friends would be desolated to lose her so soon—in fact, she must come.
“You will not have time to miss me, Inarime,” Pericles sang out cheerily from the doorstep, as she drove away in the Baroness’s carriage, her engagement still hanging in the balance of indecision. She had some faint hope of consulting the baroness, and seeking strength and resolution in her judgment.
Inarime took the Austrian Embassy by storm. That evening Rudolph returned from a short absence at Vienna, where he had been bound on pre-nuptial affairs, intending to startle his family by the announcement of his engagement to Andromache and his determination to marry immediately. Tongues were already set wagging, and vague and disconcerting reports had reached the baron and baroness. But their faith was built on the genius of Mademoiselle Veritassi. Rudolph might waver and glory in other chains of captivity, but he would end by sullenly admitting the superlative charm and conquering force of the girl of fashion.
He came back, saw Inarime, fell prostrate in newadoration, tugged with feeble heart-strings by the soft glimmer of the March violets he remorsefully shrank from seeking.
The diplomatic baron, too, stumbled into captivity, assisted in his fall by the baroness, herself under the spell of Inarime’s beauty. Indeed, not one of the three had shown a spark of resistance.
The heavy ambassador danced hourly attendance upon the young goddess, and under her glance, sparkled, astounded spectators by feats of chivalry and semi-veiled gallantry that turned the clock of time for him back by twenty years. Ah, but his enslavement was not a serious defection. There was the wretched Rudolph, held breathless by his own faithlessness and variable heart-beats. The feeling he gave Andromache was but a rushlight, compared with this blaze of fire. He slept not, nor did he eat. Life died within him out of Inarime’s presence, and was flame in his members when she was near him. The old fancy dropped from him like a toy; this was a consuming need, a poignant hunger with his uprising, and a hunger with added thirst upon his lying down.
To Inarime he was merely a dull and pretty boy to whom it behoved her to show some kindness and forbearance. His gloomy blue eyes fixed silently upon her, vaguely irritated her, and she put command into hers to check their persistent following. Still she preferred him to his uncle, whose gallant attentions and man-of-the-world deference vexed and fretted her. His was a novel language to her, and she hesitated to read it lest there might be studied insult beneath it. From the baroness she heard of Rudolph’s unfortunateentanglement with Andromache, and upon pressure of confidence, admitted her father’s desire to see her married to Oïdas, whom she did not like or even moderately esteem. She imagined Rudolph forcibly separated from Andromache, and read in that fact his evident unhappiness, which appealed to her for sympathy and touched her with the wand of brotherhood.
Photini was invited to play for her pleasure, and this introduction to the highest music was astonishment to her. Her fine nature recognised mastery, though the riddle was unexplained to her senses. She could not at a leap mount such heights of sound, where the melodies seemed to disport in waves and thunder, with sprays of foam and the facets of jewels. She approached Photini for help.
Photini measured her mercilessly with her formidable gaze,—dwelt on her physical exquisiteness, and smiled sardonically.
“You have beauty, mademoiselle. Be thankful for that, and leave art to those who have souls to comprehend it.”
“Finger-tips as well, and perseverance,” said Inarime, archly.
“Oh, I see. You are not a doll. Well, come to see me any morning, and I’ll play till your ears ache.”
Photini turned on her heel, and beckoned to Rudolph, who gloomily trotted after her into the conservatory.
Selaka returned to Athens for the meeting of German archæologists, and was cordially invited to stay for a few days at the Austrian Embassy.
March came and went in a whirlwind of storm and rain that lasted a fortnight. Every one susceptible to atmospheric influences was ill and unhappy, and the wind sobbed and shrieked like the ghosts of centuries crying to be laid. And now, on this first evening, the storm went down, with a little sigh running through the quieted air, like a child’s remembered sob in dreaming. The orange and lemon trees were in full blossom, and the Palace gardens wore “the glory and the freshness of a dream.”
Gustav Reineke stood between the pillars of the Parthenon and watched the sky after sunset. The zenith was clear purple upon which light clouds traced along milky way with edges torn into threadlets of white that curled and lost themselves, shading off to rose upon the eastern horizon. He watched cream deepen into orange, and spread a mist upon the blue, and the azure faint into pearly grey, while the cirrhus arch shifted itself slowly, and dropped behind the hills. The west was a lake of unsullied gold, so pure that the eye could follow the birth of cloud-stains upon it and the flames of crimson and orange striking fire from its heart. Over Lycabettus shone a tremulous radiance, half pink, half opal, and above the blue was shot with silver andgreen. Upon the hills the shadows were sharply defined by broken lines of light, and the sea under Salamis was a waveless blue gloom.
Gustav had done brave battle with woe, and wore his sorrow nobly. There was nothing of the crushed air of the love-sick swain about him. He stood up straight, and faced the light of day with mournful calm eyes and strong lips, patiently awaiting the revocation of his sentence or its confirmation, and for the moment gave himself entirely up to the study of archæology. He had come that morning to Athens upon invitation, to attend the meeting of the German School of Archæology.
While Gustav is sky-gazing with an open volume of Pausanias in his hand, another young friend of ours is crossing Constitution Square with the intention of strolling towards the Acropolis. Ten days back in Athens, and not one glimpse of Andromache! Very unlike a lover restored to the arms of his mistress does he look, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets and an expression of miserable perplexity on his face. An airy, wide-awake individual, with an anemone in his button-hole, and a glass in his eye, accosts him noisily, and quickly scanning him, remarks aloud upon the utter dejection of his air.
“Ah, Tonton, je suis épris—cette fois pour de bon,” cried Rudolph, desirous of horrifying somebody else as well as himself.
“Encore? Est-ce possible? Vrai?” ejaculated Agiropoulos.
“C’est très vrai.”
“Allons donc, mon cher! Faut-il te féliciter? Eprispour la troisième fois dans autant de mois! Mais c’est effrayant!”
Rudolph’s eyes swept the landscape in dreary assent. He thought it very frightful indeed.
“Pauvre Photini! Pauvre Andromaque,” cried Agiropoulos, taking off his hat and running his plump hand over his well-shorn head, “et pauvre—la dernière. Elle sera toujours à plaindre, celle-là.”
“Dis plutôt, pauvre Rudolph!” said Ehrenstein, ruefully.
“Eh, je le dis, mon cher, de bon cœur,” said Agiropoulos, with a reassuring nod and an enigmatic smile, as he turned on his heel, and stopped to discuss Ehrenstein’s lamentable susceptibility with his next acquaintance.
Can this really be our fastidious Rudolph, who has held the above indelicate dialogue with a man he hitherto professed to despise? Has he grown in a few months both cynical and hardened? But the cynicism was only surface deep. This search for an anchor to his affections and the discovery he had made that his emotions and his judgment were unreliable, his heart as unstable as water, wrecked all self-esteem, and left him in a battered condition of mind. He felt as if he had been morally whipped by scorpions, and every nerve within him was bruised.
First Photini, then Andromache, dear, sweet Andromache! how his heart bled for her! that he should be so unworthy of her! And She? the other She! the final, unattainable She, whose looks ran fire through his veins and held him in humble unexacting servitude?
He came out to walk and meditate. Could he havechosen a more favourable road for meditation than the wide avenue of pepper-trees, that leads by a gentle upward slope to the cactus-bordered hill, upon which the glorious Parthenon rests? Of the nature of his reflections, as he strolled along that famous route, I cannot say much. I imagine they were hazy, like the inarticulate speech of an infant. He wanted something, but for the life of him he could not have put that something into shape or definite speech. Like Hercules, his way was barred by two female forms—only one of whom, however, offered him a direct invitation. And Photini?
And thus these two met, and falling into accidental conversation, which resulted in an exchange of cards, Rudolph learnt that this was Herr Reineke, the distinguished Greek scholar, whose card his aunt had found awaiting her on her return from a drive that morning. Anything was better to Rudolph than that meditation in pursuit of which he had come out expressly, so he warmly pressed Reineke to come back to the Embassy with him. Reineke took a fancy to the frank and high-bred lad, and gladly consented to do so.
On their way he learnt some very original and curious views upon the Ancient Greeks, and his national vanity was flattered by hearing this discontented youth describe the Modern Greeks as worse than the Jews, and express his entire sympathy with the Turks—a thorough gentlemanly race in his opinion. Gustav assented, but claimed an exception for one or two of the modern Greeks, and at this point they reached the Embassy.
The young man found everybody out, so Rudolphcarried off Reineke to a little salon only used in private life. Here the baroness wrote her letters, and here Inarime had sat that morning with a book and a pencil in her hand. Rudolph ordered coffee and cigars, and selected for himself Inarime’s seat. He took up her book, and remembered enough of his Greek to know that it was a volume of the Sicilian Idyllists. He recognised the names Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, but the rest was a blank to him. In turning over the leaves, a sheet of paper dropped out, and this contained writing. He examined it carefully, and was struck with its exquisite caligraphy.
“Can you read Greek—modern?” he asked of Gustav, who was looking idly out of the window.
“Yes,” he answered, turning his face round.
“Please translate that for me,” cried Rudolph excitedly. Gustav extended his hand for the paper, glanced at it carelessly, and read half-finished verses in classical Greek, which baldly translated read something like this:—
“O let me not in this grief fail.Dear Gods, upon me glance!For hearts with troubles slowly veilHope in remembrance.“I would not that thy life were sadBecause of our drear fate,Nor would I have thee wholly gladWhile I am forced to wait.”
“O let me not in this grief fail.Dear Gods, upon me glance!For hearts with troubles slowly veilHope in remembrance.“I would not that thy life were sadBecause of our drear fate,Nor would I have thee wholly gladWhile I am forced to wait.”
“O let me not in this grief fail.Dear Gods, upon me glance!For hearts with troubles slowly veilHope in remembrance.
“O let me not in this grief fail.
Dear Gods, upon me glance!
For hearts with troubles slowly veil
Hope in remembrance.
“I would not that thy life were sadBecause of our drear fate,Nor would I have thee wholly gladWhile I am forced to wait.”
“I would not that thy life were sad
Because of our drear fate,
Nor would I have thee wholly glad
While I am forced to wait.”
The lines ended here, and Gustav read them over again, a dim presentiment quickening his pulses. Selaka had shown him Inarime’s writing, beautiful,finished, like those delicate manuscripts which we have inherited from the old days of cloistered leisure. Surely this was the work of the same hand, and the quiet sadness of the verses swept him like a message from the dead.
“Do you know who wrote this?” he asked slowly.
“Yes,” Rudolph answered, indisposed to be communicative.
“A lady?”
“You think the handwriting a lady’s?”
“I do. I fancy I have seen it before.”
“Let me see. Were you not staying for a short time on one of the Greek islands?”
“Yes; Tenos.”
“Then you perhaps met her. Oh, I am sure of it now,” cried Rudolph, springing up and glaring into Reineke’s face.
Reineke said nothing, but bent his eyes reverently upon the sheet of paper. Might he steal it? If he had been alone he would have kissed it.
“Why don’t you answer me, Herr Reineke?” Rudolph persisted.
“Answer you? What?”
“There is somebody else, I know. I learnt it the other night. Tell me. Is it you?” he demanded.
“Herr Ehrenstein, is it too much to beg an explanation of these somewhat enigmatic questions?” retorted Gustav.
But Ehrenstein eagerly noted that his eyes never once left the piece of paper in his hand.
“It is unworthy to trifle with me in this way. I see that you know her, and that you understand too wellthe meaning of those lines. They are perhaps addressed to you.”
“And if it were so?” said Gustav, coldly.
“It would be better to know it at once. Anything would be better than this suspense. Listen, I will tell you something I overheard one night in a conversation between my uncle and her father.”
“Her father? Is Selaka here?” cried Gustav.
“He is. And so is she.”
“She! here? In this house? Now?” exclaimed Gustav, jumping up.
“She is out now with my aunt. They will be back soon.”
“Good God!” muttered Reineke, sitting down, and holding his head in his hands. “Should I go—or shall I stay?”
“Then you are the man. Listen to what I heard last night. My uncle told Selaka that he would be glad to see his daughter my wife—oh, don’t fly into a rage, we are not engaged, and I see by your angry smile you don’t think it likely to come to pass. Well, Selaka said he liked me, and in his estimation, my birth and social position were a set-off against my deficiencies in classical lore. But there is an impediment. His daughter has recently made the heaviest sacrifice a woman can make for her father, and he could not pain her by asking her to choose a successor to the lover she gave up for him. You are the lover, I know. Why did she give you up?”
“Because I am a Turk.”
“A Turk! You!”
Rudolph burst into a harsh laugh, and stoppedsuddenly when his ear caught the sound of a carriage drawn up outside. He glanced quickly out of the window.
“She has come, Monsieur le Sultan,” he announced, sarcastically.
Both men stood still, and rapid steps approached. Through the half-open door the flutter of silken raiment was heard brushing the floor, and the baroness stood before them, looking courteous interrogation.
“This is Herr Reineke,” said Rudolph, in German.
“Oh, M. Reineke,” the baroness exclaimed, in French. “This is indeed a pleasure. You will stay and dine with us in a friendly way. No ceremony. The baron will keep you company in morning attire. It will be delightful, as the unexpected always is.”
Gustav declined politely, and glanced beyond her. There stood Inarime with a look of unmistakable rapture and alarm upon her face.
The baroness introduced them; they bowed, but did not dare trust themselves to speech or hand-clasp.
“Must you go at once, Herr Reineke?” asked the baroness, remarking the glory on his face.
“Madame, I must,” he said, and Rudolph saw that Inarime started violently, as if the sound of his voice thrilled her like pain.
Reineke shook hands with the baroness, not conscious that he was making all sorts of impossible promises, and then turned silently to the mute, harrowing eloquence of Inarime’s gaze, with one as unbearable in its piercing tenderness. Rudolph accompanied him downstairs and said nothing until Reineke held out his hand at the door.
“No, I cannot touch your hand, Herr Reineke. We must not meet again,” he said, grimly.
“As you wish, Herr Ehrenstein. I am sorry for you, but, as you see, I have not much cause for self-congratulation for myself.”
Rudolph said nothing, and flung away from him.
In the little salon he found Inarime alone, with her head bent down upon the table over her folded arms.
“You love that man, Fraulein?” he asked in German, which she spoke more fluently than French.
“I do,” she said, simply, hardly troubled by the impertinence of the question.
“And there is no chance—none—for me?”
“I do not understand you, Herr Ehrenstein.”
Did she even hear him, as she stared out with that intense look strained beyond her prison through the bright streets traversed by Gustav?
“I, too, love you, Fraulein. I would die for you. You have taken from me my rest, my happiness, my self-respect. Everything I yield to you—honour, manhood, independence. Gladly will I accept slavery at your bidding. I care for nothing but you. Is there no hope for me? Your father will approve my suit.—Heis banished.”
Inarime gazed scorn and loathing upon him. There were hardly words strong enough with which to reject such an offer, so made and at such a time.
“Leave me, Herr Ehrenstein. You force me abruptly to terminate my stay under your uncle’s roof.”
She turned her back upon him, and when he broke out into fierce and incoherent apologies, she swept past him out of the room.
There was no hope for it. Harmony fled the Austrian Embassy. It had already been bruited that young Ehrenstein was inconveniently demanded by a bloodthirsty warrior, whose sister he had jilted in a scandalous way. The report reached Selaka’s ear, and he looked askance upon the perfidious youth. At first the baron dismissed the affair with a laugh, then, upon scandal mounting higher, and taking a shriller tone, he questioned Rudolph, and being a gentleman, expressed himself in very strong terms upon the young reprobate’s conduct.
Rudolph had sulked and fretted and made everybody around him only a degree less uncomfortable than himself. Twice he had started to go to Andromache and confess the full extent of his iniquity, but he had not had the courage to face the ordeal. If she should cry, or reproach him, or meet him with sad silence! it would be equally unbearable, and there would be nothing left for him but to go away and cut his throat. What was the good of anything? Life was a blunder, a fret, a torment. Without any evil in him, kindly, pure, sweet natured, here was he involved in a mesh of inextricable troubles, behaving to a dear and innocent child like anarrant villain. And all the while his heart bled for her, and in any moment left him by the haunting thought of Inarime, he was pursued by the soft pain of Andromache’s pretty eyes.
But every one blamed him, and all Athens spoke of him as a heartless scoundrel. The baroness, who was coldly condemnatory, suggested a return to Austria. The baron, sarcastic, plagued him in the “I warned you” tone.
“You are much too sentimental and susceptible, Rudolph, for a life of idleness. You have yet to learn the art of trifling gracefully and uncompromisingly. Remember, a man has not to choose between being a victim or a brute. You have proved yourself both to that little Athenian—first the victim and then the brute. Now, my advice to you is, go back to Rapoldenkirchen. Meditate instructively upon the excellent advantages you have had here, and resolve to continue your education in matters feminine with the married ladies. Avoid girls as you would avoid poison, until you are ready to fix yourself in reasonable harness with one particular girl, whom I advise you to choose as little as possible like yourself. Vienna or Paris will be of infinite service to you just now, and if you like, I could use my influence to obtain you a diplomatic post. As long as you remain in this state of lamentable idleness, so long will your life be precarious.”
But this excellent counsel had fallen on dull ears. An hour after Inarime’s rejection, Rudolph started to go to Andromache, and instead of cutting through Academy Street, as he should have done, he turned up towards the barrack, and before even he was aware of thepropelling instinct that pushed him, he was knocking at Photini’s door.
“Is Mademoiselle Natzelhuber visible?” he asked of Polyxena, with an indifference of look and tone not at all assumed.
“She is upstairs, if that is what you mean,” cried Polyxena, and left him to shut the door behind him.
He walked up the steep stone stairs without a sign of hurry or purpose, and rapped listlessly at Photini’s door. In response to a loud “Come in,” he entered, and found Photini in the midst of her cats and dogs, reading the “Palingenesia.” She threw away the shabby little newspaper, and made room for him on the sofa beside her, eyeing him with a look of sharp scrutiny.
“Well?” she said.
“I am most abjectly miserable, Photini,” he said, and sat down beside her, staring at the floor.
“You look it, my friend.”
“I suppose so. Photini, I want you to let me stay with you.”
“Stay with me! What the deuce do you mean?”
“Just what I say. There are no words to describe my wretchedness. I am sick of everything and everybody. You, at least, won’t criticise or blame. Your own life has not been so successful that you need censure very harshly the blunders of mine.”
He looked at her drearily, unnotingly, and yet he felt drawn to her by an immense personal sympathy and a kind of remembered affection that nothing could ever quite obliterate.
“Oh, for that, I am not disposed to censure any one but the smug hypocrites, who talk religion and virtueuntil one longs to fling something in their faces. For the idiots I have a tremendous weakness, I confess.”
“You care a little for me, don’t you, Photini?” Rudolph cried, like a forsaken child.
Photini moved towards him, and gathered him into her arms.
“I love you furiously, you wretched boy,” she exclaimed, and held him to her. “But just because you are an idiot, you are not to pay any heed to it.”
Rudolph for answer flung his arms round her, laid his head upon her bosom, and burst into wild hysteric sobs.
“Oh, you baby!” shouted Photini, trying to shake him off, but he only clung to her the more convulsively, and tightened his clasp of her until she could hardly breathe.
“Finish! this is absurd. What has happened to you, child?”
“Everybody is against me,” he said, striving hard to choke back his tears. “I hate myself. I have made a mess of everything, and I wish I were dead.”
“That is why you have come to me, I suppose. If you are destined to be damned in the next world, you are willing to begin the operation in this,” said Photini, drily.
“I want to stay with you. If you repulse me, Photini, I swear I’ll go straightway and blow my brains out.”
“It would not be much worse.”
“Than staying with you?”
“Yes, than staying with me. The one would be followed by an inquest and a funeral—and behold a swiftand respectable end. The other—my friend, have you measured its consequences?”
“Yes; we should have a great deal of music all to ourselves. We might go away to France or Algiers, and I should forget Athens.”
“No, you would not. There is no such thing as forgetfulness until you take to drink, and then you only forget when you are drunk. The instant you become sober, memory probes your empty heart more strongly than ever.”
“Then we will drink together, Photini,” cried Rudolph, recklessly. “Give me some brandy.”
“I will not. I insist on your going back to that silly chit you’ve treated so badly. Dry her eyes—they are very pretty eyes, my friend Rudolph, and a man might be less agreeably employed. She’ll soon forgive you if you manage to look penitent enough. I boxed her ears once, and I like her all the better for it. Tell her an old woman who loves you sent you back to her.”
“Photini, you are not old,” protested Rudolph, disinclined to speak of Andromache to her. “Come back to the point. Will you have me? You say you love me.”
“Rudolph, you are an ass. Don’t you see that I am trying to save you? What does it matter for myself? You, Agiropoulos, another,—it is all the same. My life is blotted, ruined, disfigured past redemption. Oneliaisonmore or less cannot practically affect me. But with you it is different. You are a delicately-trained boy, of fastidious tastes. You are unfit to battle with the coarser elements of life. A robustermoraleand aless dainty nature than yours can buffet and wrestle with brutal conditions, and be none the worse for a hundred false steps, but you will sink irretrievably upon the first. Vice sits indifferently well on some of us, and on others most deplorably. That is why women sink so much more rapidly than men. Despair and self-contempt are stones that hang fatally round their necks, and this,” she said, pointing to a flask of brandy, “helps them to carry the weight until they are crushed by it.”
“It will help me, too, I’ve no doubt,” said Rudolph.
“It is from that I would save you, and from the rest. It is not my habit to express my opinions. I despise people too much to talk seriously to them, but I am not only a musical machine in the lucid pauses of a toper. I have thought a little, too, and I know what I have lost.”
She was walking up and down the room with her hands joined behind her, and there was a glow upon her strange face that made it almost noble. When she had finished, she stood in front of Rudolph, scanned him closely, and asked:
“Are you going? I have had quite enough of this sort of thing.”
“I am not going, Photini. My mind is made up. I will stay with you. Be kind to me. Say you want me.”
“I must not, for then I could not bring myself to give you up. Go away, and think over it. Mind, I would far rather you did not come back, and I think I should be able to kiss with gratitude a note from you telling me you had gone back to that girl.”
“You will get no such note from me, for I am going to stay now,” Rudolph exclaimed, impetuously.
“You are a fool. There, I would have saved you—now, it is as heaven wills it. But please remember this. When you come to repent this step, as you will surely in a week, a month, or a year, have the goodness not to bluster and expend your rage on me, or lay your folly to my account.”
Rudolph laughed bitterly.
“I think, mademoiselle, you would very soon make short work of me and my bluster and rage,” he said.
“Well, yes, I believe I should be able for that emergency.”
“Photini, will you play me the ‘Barcarolle’?” Rudolph asked, as he rubbed his cheek caressingly against her arm.
She stooped over him, kissed his hair and forehead, and their lips met in a burning kiss—Rudolph’s first.
We can imagine how the fabric, sedulously raised by Constantine’s pursuit of his family’s fortune and advancement, tottered, shook, and fell utterly to pieces upon that one exchanged look between Inarime and Gustav. He in the world, and she the wife of another man! She loathed herself that such should have been deemed possible of her. She acknowledged her father’s right to her obedience, and it was difficult for her to imagine her will in disjunction from his. But surely there are limits to a daughter’s obligations—most wise limits set by nature, whose laws are still more imperative than man’s. We may defy the laws of man, and sometimes their defiance is proof of nobler instinct. But the laws of nature—these are inexorable, and her punishments are fatally swift. Body and mind were set in revolution against this cold commercial alliance. Her soul in arms told her that it would be a bodily degradation under which her mind would inevitably sink.
She had been trained to reason and to think, to hold her words in subjection to her reason, and restrain the impulsiveness of her sex. Expediency, she had been taught, may be a qualified virtue, though founded on the meanest basis, and she had been recommended toweigh its component parts in particular cases, before pronouncing judgment. Hitherto she had been wise to detect the logical issues of any situation presented to her for the reading, and thus had gained, in the mind of the villagers, the reputation of a wise young counsellor, whose head was filled with all the natural precepts of sagacity. But that swift, immediate contact with flame and fire, the frantic surrender to an untried glance, threw her back upon herself, with shaken faith, in the grasp of wavering moods of stupefaction and self-contempt lit by the lamp of burning bliss.
She saw her folly but did not repudiate it—the goddesses of old had yielded to the sovereign passion upon as little pressure. One of the features of Immortality is its royal dispensation with the tedious form of wooing invented by the weak mortals. Nineteen years of a purity as glacial as Artemis’ before she had given that one kiss to the sleeping boy, were as an unremembered dream, blotted from her mind without regret or shame, upon meeting of eyes that held her own in glad subjection. The thrill of captured maidenhood was still upon her, and O, faithlessness most grievous to the noble captor! she had half pledged herself to take a husband.
“I cannot!” she cried aloud, stung keenly by the horror and the gracelessness of such submission.
And then, to accentuate her anguish, the figure of Oïdas for the first time rose sharp and distinct upon her vision, to fix her in the travail of repugnance. Until now he had passed before her, a scarce-recognised nonentity, wafted past her upon sugary strains of Verdi and Bellini, through the odours of manyflowers. Now he stood out in cruel relief against the background of a holy memory. She saw his high shoulders, with a slight outward droop curving suddenly inward, and making a grotesque narrowness of chest, like a bird of prey curved in upon its wings, and she caught herself smiling at the picture. She detected the material contentions of the oily simper and too affable expression in the small black eyes, noted ruthlessly the uncertainty of the spindle shanks that did lean duty for legs, and the ungraceful flow of the long loose frock coat.
It was borne in then upon her that she unconquerably disliked Oïdas, and that pressure would change that dislike to positive and passionate aversion. Does not youth demand youth for its mate? strength and beauty their like? Was she to stand tamely by, and let her youth and strength and beauty be given away to mean and dwindling age such as his? He had not even the godlike attribute of power upon which she could let herself be whirled into possession, shutting her eyes in the make-believe of fatality. Theseus may carry off an unloving Helen, but at least he is a hero. Helen may repine and revolt, but she feels that the arms that imprison her are strong and conquering arms. She may hate, but she will not despise,—and contempt is the one thing women will not endure. Let the ravisher but possess superb qualities, and pardon may eventually be his. Pride, sitting apart, is nourished on their contemplation though the heart be starving, and it is a fine thing to be able to sustain alien pride in a woman. But a man like Oïdas, the epitome of male commonplace, heldout no future hope of an honourable compromise between pride and the heart’s exactions. Tied to him, she would pass through life a mean and pitiable figure, read in the light of her ignoble choice. It is not given to many women to wed romance, and the curious want of fastidiousness with which the sex may be charged, its readiness to take shabby and uninteresting mates, is one of the best proofs that any man can get a wife. But if a woman once let her glance dwell upon a live figure of a romance, it is astonishing how complete will be her discovery of the general ill looks and unattractiveness of men. Until Inarime had seen Gustav, she had not remarked whether nature favoured men physically or not. But now it was the appearance of Oïdas that told most emphatically against him. Nature had shown her what she could do for a man when she chose to be in a poetic mood, and she was not disposed to accept the exchange of a monkey shivering in a frock-coat.
The warm blood running fire through her now petulant veins taught her how mad was her former belief that she could meet the sacrifice her father proposed with resigned endurance. The revolt of her body was as fierce as that of her soul. Marriage was not like a commercial partnership in which each party lives on certain ground a life apart. It was the complete enslavement of an existence, the surrendering of private thought, of the sanctuaries of mind and person. No escape. Concealment would be subterfuge, the man’s dishonour the wife’s. Habit would be tyranny, the faintest demonstration of an unshared affection an oppression. She rose up at this thought with cheeks dyedscarlet, so acute was her apprehension of its meaning, and then dropped among her pillows, and hurried to hide from the shame of it under the protecting sheets.
No, she could not! Less cruel far was the old sacrifice at Aulis. Iphigenia might well bow to her father’s awful decision while her soul was unscourged by the scorpion whips of such degradation. The fire in her brain and the burn of hot dry eyelids kept her awake all night, pursued by terrible images of an unholy future, and her first thought, when the dawn touched light upon the window-panes, was to seek her father and intercept him before he left the Embassy. She knew he purposed going out early, intending to add to his notes at the University library, for the German meeting.
“Father,” she cried, in a voice of resolution he was quick to feel there was no shaking, “I must leave this house at once. You will go and make my excuses to the baron, while I will knock at the baroness’ door.”
“What has happened, child? You look disturbed and ill,” Selaka exclaimed, in wonderment.
“I will tell you when we are gone,” she said, growing whiter at the prospect of giving voice to the night’s sufferings. “Go now, dear father, and wait for me in the courtyard.”
“I did believe my daughter was not capricious.”
“Papa,” she pleaded, childishly, “love me a little, be kind to me. Do what I ask.”
Selaka mused half-angrily, as he went in search of the baron, so thoroughly mystified that he almost apprehended being unfitted for learned society that morning:
“Ah, why are these explosive engines, known asdaughters, born to poor harassed man? We idly propagate them as candles to attract the moths around us; to dismay us with their flutter and impertinent importunities;—magnets to attract violent impulses, and run them cantering in rivalry.”
Wrapped up in his own vexed thoughts, he had long been perceived by Reineke at the German school before he recognised the fatal Turk. He bowed coldly, flushed perceptibly under the eyes. The fellow was a man to be proud of, he felt, a man in a million, an ideal son-in-law, and hotly rebuked himself for thinking it. He moved as far away from Reineke as possible, and fell into eager conversation with a Russian professor.
The Russian informed him that the French school had curtly declined to attend, with the added discourtesy of offering no excuse whatsoever.
“Ye gods! Is not the ground of archæology even to be neutral?” thundered Selaka. “Must politics here be thrust upon us, and have us by the ears in a fret of jarring and wrangling? It is not a question of marriage. If civility did not suggest it, policy ought to teach them to take what Germany, with her science and perseverance has to offer them, and be thankful for the gift. Let them sulk, and it will do nobody any harm but themselves.”
“The French minister’s nephew, a very charming young fellow, has sent an unofficial letter of apology on his own behalf. He was invited because of a couple of interesting and graceful articles he wrote for theRevue des deux Mondes. It is known that he received orders to stay away.”
It was an imposing assembly. The nations of thecivilised world were represented by their Embassies and schools, all except sulking France. The blooming half of humanity was present in a dozen or so of choice souls, to deck the scene with their flowery robes and bright hues. The loud murmur of mingled tongues was stopped by Herr Julius Dünckler stepping forward to open the proceedings formally by a neat little speech announcing that the paper of the day would be read by his very youthful but learned colleague, Herr Gustav Reineke. The theme was the everlasting Theatre, a theme happily not exhausted, and matter still for research. Herr Reineke had visited every spot of ground that could be of use to him in the patient analysis of his subject, and his views were so forcibly put forward, his erudition was so minute and vast at the same time, that it seemed to him, the director of the German School of Archæology, that it would be a pleasure and a gain for other workers like himself in that wide field, to assemble and amicably discuss Herr Reineke’s paper. The paper, he stated, was translated into English and French for those present who could not understand German.
Upon invitation, Gustav took his place upon the platform and the ladies at least were unanimous in their admiration of his handsome and distinguished presence.
“He looks a scholar and a gentleman to boot,” murmured Mrs. Mowbray-Thomas.
His voice was grave and musically measured, with an Oriental soft sonorousness which captivated his hearers. His face was impassive in its noble earnestness, its strength toned by delicate beauty, lit with the fine glow of intellect. When he came to the end of hisreading, he bowed in acknowledgment of the applause that greeted it, and, stepping backward, his eyes sought Selaka through the crowd. He was quick to detect the flame of affectionate pride that involuntarily leaped into the old man’s answering look, and a chill from excessive hope ran through his members in a visible shudder.
He beat his way through congratulating strangers till he stood beside Selaka’s chair.
“Your hand?” he said, under his breath, extending his own tentatively, and, seeing it grasped, added, with an ingratiating smile: “It is not withheld.”
“And wherefore? I am proud of you, proud for you, honoured by the distinction,” Selaka answered, huskily, while he followed the crowd towards the door.
“Ah, sir, it is a barren pride for you and me,” said Gustav, keeping close to his side.
Gustav understood that he was dismissed, but with pardonable pertinacity resolved to force Selaka to speak to him of Inarime, and walked beside him.
“She is well?” he almost entreated.
“Very well,” Selaka admitted slowly, not trusting himself to recognise the hungry question in the other’s eyes.
“Her beauty has made some stir here,” he added in a naïve exposure of paternal vanity. “You have heard?”
“No, I arrived yesterday. The town’s gossip has not reached me.”
A thrill of insufferable horror shot through him at the hideous picture of Inarime’s beauty the theme of men’s discourse and the object of their ugly scrutiny. The Turk was thus far strong within him, that if possiblehe would have had her shielded from alien homage, guarded the bloom and perfume of her beauty for his own exclusive possession.
After a pause, filled in with conjecture and flashes of memory, he turned again to Selaka.
“Am I still an outcast, sir?”
“Outcast! You know that I esteem you—truly, cordially.”
“For yourself. But for her—in that sense I mean it.”
“I cannot alter the sentence pronounced.”
“Ah!” Gustav interjected, drawing in his breath sharply. “It is so hard on me. I hope, I believe, it is hard on her, too.”
“She is sensible. She will resign herself to marry the man I have chosen for her.”
“Young Ehrenstein!” Gustav almost shouted, with a start.
“Can you ask? He is a fool and a villain. A fellow who does not know his own mind, is betrothed to one woman, loves another, and levants with a third.”
“Such a choice would indeed be tragic for her,” Gustav said, sardonically. “Has she consented?”
“Partly.”
“It is incredible to me, sir. You shock me. You unnerve me. I desire to remain cool, but the picture you force upon me is unbearable, vile, discordant. Inarime wedded—and not to me! Impossible! I will not accept it.”
“Hush! You have no choice. I do not offer an alternative,” interposed Selaka, judicially.
“But, sir, you have a tender love for her. Think of the cruelty, the shame and agony for her! She is alldelicacy and sensitiveness. To have given herself to me, and now to be asked to accept another! It is the most abominable desecration of maidenhood! She cannot, she will not! Be reasonable. Think of her, sir.”
“Of whom else do you suppose I think, Herr ——” but Selaka could not bring himself to pronounce the false name, and his tongue shrank with violent repugnance from the other.
“Drop the name,” Gustav implored, seeing his hesitation.
“I do not doubt your tender regard for her, but I do most emphatically deny that it is possible for you to see the position with the eyes of youth. Oh, I understand. You deem me jealous. If that were all. Nay, then it would be worse, for I should doubt her. And I do not. I could answer for her with my life. You are driving her to an ignoble compliance. You wish her to be safe from me.”
“You have guessed rightly. I shall not feel secure until she has passed into other hands—hands that will bind her and you with stronger fetters than mine.”
“Oh, how wrong you are! How you misjudge me! Have I tried to write to her, to see her? Yesterday we met,—we did not even touch hands, we said no word.”
It was Selaka’s turn to start.
“She did not tell me,” he muttered. “To-day she met me with a troubled aspect, and prayed to be taken away.”
“Poor child! Why will you make it harder for her? Have you the heart to grieve her so? Why, oh, why put this heavy burden on the young shoulders youshould cherish? I will not harass you. I will not thwart your plans.”
“You are talking complete nonsense,” Selaka responded, testily. “A father must marry his daughter, if only to feel she will be protected after his death.”
“Protected! Inarime unprotected! You madden me. But for myself I do not complain;—nay, I do most bitterly. Kyrie Selaka, is this your last word?”
“It is.”
“Will nothing—nothing I can say shake you?”
“Nothing.”
“You are a second Agamemnon,” Gustav cried, and turned away with weary, angry eyes and white lips.
Pericles opened his mouth to call him back, shut it, drove down the unsaid words with a heavy sigh, and walked slowly towards his brother’s house.
Constantine greeted him in the hall with an emphatic look, pointed to the inner room and shrugged his shoulders.
“She is in there, pacing for all the world like a ravenous tiger. Women are cats. They spring and tread delicately, with glittering, rageful eyes, and make you listen, in spite of yourself, for the ominous hiss and spit, or the soft caressing purr. I would not marry that young woman for her weight in gold. That reminds me. Oïdas is bothering me about the engagement. He complains that it is indefinite, that Inarime has stayed too long at that confounded Embassy, and that you keep him on tenter-hooks. It is all over Athens about young Ehrenstein. The senseless whelp! Oïdas is frantic, insists he has been injuriously trifled with; in short, nothing but an immediate marriage will satisfyhim. He is the snarling dog that shows his teeth upon provocation, and is perhaps more dangerous, if not more discomposing, than the spitting cat.”
“It is all right, Constantine. Oïdas is correct in his statement that he has been somewhat unfairly dealt with, in so far as his answer has been unduly delayed. This accident of Ehrenstein’s—the Fates confound him and the Furies overtake him!—teaches me that the conclusion of the bargain must be speedily arrived at. I cannot have my daughter’s name dubiously upon the lips of chattering fools. Oïdas will be apprised this afternoon of my decision.”
He swung into the other room, and a face of piercing eagerness and demand met his!
“Inarime, you must be ready to marry Kyrios Oïdas at once,” he began, without any thoughtful preliminaries.
“It is of that I wished to speak to you, father,” she said, in a dreary quiescence that filled him with hope.
“Come, this promises well. My dear girl is reasonable.”
“He sent me those,” she said, pointing to a small stack of roses, jonquils and heliotrope, that lay a neglected litter, upon the table, and appealed to her senses in revolt with a nauseating sweetness. “And this letter. He is giving a fancy ball, and wishes me to attend publicly as his bride.”
“The wish does him honour, and is but natural and manly. You must get over this fancied repugnance, my girl. You will have to marry him. It is my resolution.”
He spoke with a harshness quite foreign to him, butits adoption nerved him to show her a front of adamant.
“Father, I will not,” she cried—screamed nearly.
“Will not?” he asked, his brows shooting into a significant arch, and his eyes, for the first time in the interview, holding hers in question.
“Cannot,” she breathed, in a lower tone, with an air of weakness that touched him horribly.
“You see your position. It is for you to obey.”
She caught her breath in a sound held between a sob and a hiss, rebellion gathering ominously about the dark brows.
“You are within your rights, I know. But, oh! father, how can you stand out for paternal authority in the face of my most utter misery?”
“But, Inarime, this is what I cannot understand,” he protested, returning to their old footing of equality. “Why should the thought of this marriage—a wholly respectable alliance—irritate you and make you miserable?”
“It is nothe!” she whispered, breathlessly.
“Fudge!”
“Father, will you at least try to face the situation with a woman’s mind and instinct. Believe me, it is no contemptible mind or instinct that makes us shrink from an abhorrent marriage. We may not have heads clear as yours, but our instincts are as finely responsive to the promptings of nature as a watch is delicately accurate in its measurements of time. Your brains may err and falsely interpret. Our hearts cannot, unless art interferes. I speak now of uneducated woman pitted against educated man. In these things he will havemuch to learn from her. We are limited in our nature, father, and that which you ask of me is impossible.”
“I will not hear it. Nothing is impossible when it simply depends on the good-will and common-sense of the person. It is my punishment for having brought you up as a boy. All my love and thought and care were for you, and this is my reward. You seek to disturb and thwart me on the very first occasion that brings our wills into collision. A growing child is like a peach, soft and bloomy to the touch, sweet to the taste, until you come to the heart, where you find bitterness and hardness. What can it matter whom you marry, when you cannot marryhim?”
“Oh, it is easy enough for you to speak as a spectator. You will not be marrying the man, and it makes all the difference. The servitude, the loathing, the degradation will be mine to bear, and only a girl can feel that.”
“A girl! a woman! Will you not taunt me with your boast of nicer feeling. This Oïdas, on your own admission, was not specially distasteful to you.”
“That was when you had not proposed him for a husband.”
“Ouf! One notes the unreasonable sex in that retort. What has my simple proposal to do with the man. If he were a detestable fellow you would have hated him from the beginning. Nothing but the unconquerable passion for worrying and grieving and turning everybody topsy-turvy, that is born in every woman, would make my desire to marry you to him paint him to you in blacker colours.”
“It would be the same with any man you mightthink fit to propose. If it is the fault of my sex, I cannot in reason be held responsible for it. It is not my fault that I am not born an exception. And I will admit, father, in this case I would infinitely prefer to follow the general rule,” she added, bitterly.
“There, there, my girl, don’t fret me with unkind speech. I have yielded to temper, I know, and am sorry for it. You have ever been a solace and a joy to me, and if I have set my heart on this matter, it is entirely for your good. You must marry some one.”
She allowed him passively to fondle her hand, but her face was still troubled and cold. Why was it so difficult for him, if he loved her, to understand and appreciate the nature of her repugnance? Are a girl’s objections never to count when others have her welfare in view?
“One would think I were disgraced, and marriage necessary at once as a shield for my reputation,” she retorted, crimsoning hotly, held by a sense of audacity and shame, as the full meaning of her words rushed upon her.
“Those are words it requires all my tenderness to forgive, Inarime,” said Pericles, gravely. “You wonder at my anxiety to marry you. Is it not simply a father’s duty? It is, moreover, a duty women, good women, owe to the State.”
“The State!” Inarime exclaimed, with a look of surprised indignation. “What do good women, as you say, owe the State more than others?”
Selaka stared at her incredulously. Could this be his child? This young woman, lashed by angry passions, and stinging him in turn by sharp, impertinent speech!
“They owe it the duty to marry and bring up their children befittingly and intelligently.”
“You accept too readily that every good woman is capable of this. It requires, I imagine, special gifts, a special capacity, to bring up children befittingly and intelligently. It is wiser to count on the stupidity and capacity of the average.”
“Granted. O, I grant you that with full conviction. Still, we cannot let the race die out because, unfortunately, parents are for the most part idiots and criminals. The State is wiser to assume they are the reverse.”
“Then means should be taken by the State to see that the young are fitted for their future responsibilities. I have met some very charming young ladies here at Athens—charming, until you have had time to discover that they are for the most part insipid, uneducated and silly. I have nothing to say against them. They were prettily apparelled and amused me. They chatter engagingly—about nothing. They tell me they have been for years studying the piano, with no result, and that they have learned at least four foreign tongues for purposes of social intercourse—not study. I am curious to know how it could enter the brains of any one to suspect these pretty toys of a capacity for bringing up their children intelligently. And yet they will marry, and will doubtless be considered to have accomplished their duty to the uncritical State.”
“Well, well, that is not our concern, happily. You, at least, are not similarly situated. The hours spent by you on study have been spent to some purpose. The only objection I see to Kyrios Oïdas is, that he is somewhat old. I would very willingly have changed himfor young Herr Rudolph because of his youth and social position. He loves you, Inarime, he avowed it frantically to me. But just as I had made up my mind to effect the alteration of bridegrooms, Θις μαυ he explodes in a flame of ugly scandal, leaving the full theatrical smell of fire and brimstone behind him. Faust carried off by a female Mephistopheles! Ouf! This world!”
Inarime walked across the room, pressed her forehead against the window, and stood gazing into the street in disconsolate perplexity. Selaka joined her, and placed his hand affectionately on her shoulders.
“We have been equally in the wrong towards one another, my dear one,” he said. “We have forgotten the seemly restraints of speech, and in our smarting anger and disappointment, have drawn largely upon the copper of language, as if our minds had never fed upon its gold. I am ashamed and grieved. Antigone would not have spoken to Œdipus as you, my child, have to-day spoken to me; and Œdipus would not so completely have forfeited the respect that was due to him. To get back into the old groove, we will separate and meditate a while apart. In the light of reflection, you will see that what I ask is for your sole good. If this story of young Ehrenstein gets abroad, you will be unpleasantly mixed up with it, and marriage will be your best, and, in fact, your only shield from evil surmise. You do not doubt my great love, child?”
Still hurt and dismayed, Inarime withheld the be-sought-for look of reconciliation. Her shoulders moved with an uncontrollable sob; this marriage revolted her, and held her silent.
“My daughter! my dearest! Look at me, your father, Inarime.”
She turned her head slowly, stretched out her arms, and was enfolded in his. Their embrace was broken by a loud and frantic entrance. Constantine rushed in, holding a newspaper in his hand, followed close by Oïdas, whose face wore an expression of vindictive spite.
“Pericles,” roared poor Constantine, shaken out of his wits, “look at this! The wretches! the liars! Read it.”
He thrust the paper into his brother’s hands, and began violently to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. Pericles had just time for a hurried glance at the garbled and extremely malicious version of the Ehrenstein romance in the “Aristophanes,” in which Inarime’s name was printed in full, with a minute description of her person, when Oïdas broke out:
“I am mentioned, too, as betrothed to your daughter. I do not know who has authorised this impertinence. How can you expect a man in my position to marry a girl thus advertised!”
“Is that so? You are not perhaps aware,” shrieked Constantine, “that my niece has emphatically refused to marry you. She hates you.”
Oïdas smiled sarcastically. That was chaff unlikely to catch him. Pericles shook himself with a supreme effort out of his state of sickly stupefaction.
“Kyrie Oïdas, it is as my brother says,” he managed to utter, in a vague, chill tone. “My daughter has to-day communicated to me her unconquerable repugnance to the alliance you did us the honour to propose. Youwill now do us the still greater honour of relieving us of your presence.”
Oïdas strutted out of the room with lips drawn into an incredulous grin, and when the door slammed behind him, Pericles stretched out his hands helplessly. His face was white and his lips blue. Inarime rushed to him.
“My father!” she murmured, softly. “Uncle, help me.”
Pericles had fallen back in a dead faint.
Oïdas went about the town, distracted, and resolved to spread his evil tale. He did not want for willing ears and believers. Many discredited his story, and reverted to his former unconcealed anxiety to get the girl, and her evident holding back. In the next day’s papers a formal announcement appeared stating the Mayor of Athens wished it to be known that he entertained no intention of marrying the desposyné Inarime Selaka, and had officially rescinded his proposals.
Vague references further appeared to a Turkish lover, a mysterious Bey, roving incognito over Greece—learned, fascinating and romantic. This paragraph and the short letter of Oïdas fell under the amazed eyes of Gustav Reineke, while he sat at breakfast in his hotel. His face flamed furious. Giddy emotions momentarily held him prostrate and insane. Then he rose, clenched his teeth, furnished himself with a heavy riding-whip, and sallied forth towards the newspaper office. He met the editor in the hall, unprotected and unsuspecting. With a growl of Homeric satisfaction, he pounced on that unhappy man, and, passion lending him strength, suitably reduced him to a pulp. Inspirited by this diversion, he soughtthe mayor, was courteously admitted, not being known to be on an avenging mission; he then proceeded, without preliminary, to do the work of an infuriated hero upon the rickety body of that civic luminary. Oïdas’ howls were fearful to hear, but the door was locked, and only opened to emit in a flash the lithe frame of Gustav,—his face blanched, his eyes blazing, and his lips triumphant.