“Madame,” said Miltiades, ever the pink of courtesy, as the brave should be to the fair; after his most ceremonious military salute, he advanced a step, and said, “I have a few words to say to your nephew, Monsieur Rudolph Ehrenstein.”
“Enter, enter, I pray you, Captain Karapolos,” said the baroness in rather halting but intelligible Greek. “My nephew is ill—as you see. Perhaps you will consent to spare him the unpleasantness of a scene. He is very ill.”
“So, madame, is my sister. Dr. Galenides tells me she will hardly recover. Is this to be borne quietly—think you?”
“Kyrie Selaka, explain to him—I do not know Greek well enough. Tell him how grieved, how miserably sad the baron and I are about this business. Speak kindly for us and try to soothe him. I understand he must be in a desperate state, and heaven knows how sincerely I pity him. Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph, when will you young men learn to think of others as well as yourselves?” she cried, distractedly.
“Captain Karapolos, this proceeding of yours is surely as unseemly as it is futile,” said Selaka. “What good do you expect can come of such a step? It will not restore your sister to health and happiness, and you but needlessly inflict pain upon this lady, who is sincerely distressed for you. My dear sir, the great lesson of life is, that the inevitable must be accepted. We cannot go back on our good deeds or our ill, and it is not now in the power of this young man to repair the mischief he has done. The consequences of wrongdoing cannot be shirked by those who suffer them, or by those who have done the wrong. They baffle each step of flight and struggle, and hunt us down remorselessly.”
“My dear sir, such stuff may suit a pulpit or a university chair, but it offends the ear of a soldier. I care not a jot for the inevitable, and, as far as I am concerned, this young man will answer to me for his evil deeds—to me, sir, Miltiades Karapolos, captain of King George’s Artillery,” shouted Miltiades, slapping his chest emphatically.
Rudolph sat up in bed, and asked feebly:
“Did he say, Herr Selaka, that Andromache is very ill?”
Selaka bowed, and Miltiades glared interrogation.
“Dangerously ill?”
“It appears so.”
“Oh, good God! what a wretch I have been! Please tell him, if she gets better, and will consent to forgive me, I will gladly fulfil my engagement. Tell him it was not because Andromache ceased to be dear to me that I left her, but that, loving somebody else, Ifelt I had ceased to be worthy of her. Tell him it was not, heaven knows, for my pleasure I so acted, that it was a horrible grief to me.”
Miltiades glanced suspiciously from one to the other, and looked annihilation and contempt upon the sick youth.
“What does the fellow say?” he demanded, fiercely.
Selaka faithfully repeated Rudolph’s message. If Miltiades had been thunder before, he was lightning now added. He stalked to the bed, struck Rudolph full in the face, and without another word strode from the room.
“Good gracious!” cried the baroness, and fell limply into a chair.
“I must get well now,” muttered Rudolph, between his teeth.
Next day Agiropoulos and the popular poet called. It was known all over Athens that, as well as having been shot at by the sister, Rudolph had been struck by the brother. Agiropoulos took a fiendish delight in the situation. Personally he asked nothing better than to console the heroine as soon as she should have struggled back from the encompassing shadows of unreason. He was quite ready to place at her disposal fortune, hand, and heart, as much as he possessed of that superfluous commodity, which, it must be confessed, was little enough. He loved notoriety in any form, and was enchanted with the veil of romance that enveloped Andromache, not in the least scrupulous upon the point that the veil was smirched with powder and blood. If possible, these unusual stains but gave an added impetus to his interest.
“Well, my young friend,” he said, sitting down and elegantly crossing his legs, while, the better to survey the sorry hero of the tragedy, he adjusted his eye-glass with that peculiar grimace common to those thus decorated. “You look a little the worse for Mademoiselle Andromache’s last embrace—eh?” he queried, and turned with a smile to the popular poet.
“He has the air of Endymion after the desertion of Diana,” said the poet.
“Was Endymion deserted? Faith, that is a piece of mythological information for me. We live and learn, eh, Ehrenstein?”
“I suppose so,” said Rudolph, drearily. “The learning is not more pleasant than the living.”
“You charming boy! so delightful to know that innocence still flourishes in our midst. The century is exhausted, but a young heart is a perennial fount of misery. For, my young friend, there is no more sure prophecy of youth and innocence than utter woe and dejection. If you give him time, Michaelopoulos will put that into a neat verse for you.”
“Don’t, pray. I hate poetry,” cried Rudolph.
“It is, I believe, on record that babes have been known to hate milk,” said Agiropoulos, blandly.
“Don’t weary me with smart talk. I have other things to think of, Agiropoulos, and cannot listen to your witticisms,” protested Rudolph.
“Don’t mention it. I will be dull to please you. May a poor forsaken wretch inquire after the health of a quondam mistress?”
“Agiropoulos, if you have not got the breeding of agentleman, try to remember when you are in the presence of one,” cried Rudolph.
“Whew!” whistled Agiropoulos, with his enigmatic smile.
“I suppose, Ehrenstein, you don’t exactly want another challenge?”
“I want nothing, and I most certainly don’t want you.”
“Is this delirium, think you, Michaelopoulos?”
“Looks uncommonly like it,” the poet replied.
“Let me feel your pulse, Monsieur Endymion—what an appropriate comparison for the moment! That young gentleman was, we are given to understand, partial to the recumbent attitude. But we are rather embarrassed by our choice of Selene. Which shall it be, Ehrenstein, first, second or third?”
“Will you do me the favour of leaving my room, sir?” ordered Rudolph, frigidly. “When I have finished with Captain Miltiades Karapolos, I shall be happy to dispose of your claims, Agiropoulos, and then of your friend’s, if he thinks proper to demand the privilege.”
“And then of each of the desposyné Inarime’s suitors, comprising a list of two members of parliament, a mayor, a justice of the peace, forty or fifty bachelor islanders and a distinguished archæologist. Don’t forget the archæologist, I implore you, Rudolph. Demolish him before you touch me, or Michaelopoulos—the name is rather long, but practice will accustom your tongue to it—besides, your mellifluous German will be a substantial aid. First lay low the mighty Karapolos, and in a moment you avenge five thousand desolateTurkish hearths—have they hearths in Turkey? Then give the deathly accolade to the archæologist. After that, of course, these two humble individuals are entirely at your disposal, as the courtly Spaniards say. Do you know Spanish? Neither do I. Ta-ta, my friend. You have a heavy day’s work before you when you get well, Monsieur Endymion. To sweep off the face of the earth a Greek hero, a Greek poet, a Greek merchant, a Turkish archæologist, an insular demarch, two members of parliament, a justice of the peace, and fifty Teniotes. Lead me from the presence of this bloodthirsty youth, friend. I shudder,” cried Agiropoulos.
Mighty is the passion of anger—mightier far than that of love. Anger lifted Rudolph out of his sick bed, and placed him, one chill November morning, opposite Miltiades in a lonely field under the Shadow of Lycabettus, with Hadji Adam for his antagonist’s second and the French Viscount for his own. The duel terminated for Rudolph, as nineteenth century duels frequently do, but Miltiades was imprisoned for fourteen days in his own room in Solon Street, with a soldier mounted guard outside, for his colonel, with an unheroic disregard for the laws of honour, judged his act an infringement of military law.
While Rudolph, with bitterness in his heart and humiliation on his brow, was speeding back to Cannes and to Photini, Agiropoulos progressed favourably with his wooing. Half-dead with shame at her notoriety, poor Andromache asked nothing better than a chance of getting away for ever from Athens.
Two men coming by opposite directions down Hermes Street, with their eyes anywhere but where they ought to have been, stumbled into each other’s arms, and started back instantly, with aggressive question on their faces.
“Well, Constantine,” one cried, eyeing the other furtively and distrustfully.
“Well, Stavros,” the other responded, with a corresponding expression.
“Here’s my hand, Constantine,” Stavros said, after a reflective pause, and held out his hand with an air of strenuous cordiality. “Touch it. It’s a loyal hand, and an honest one. I was always your friend, always liked you.”
“And so did I,” assented Constantine, as he laid his upon the extended palm shamefacedly.
“What! yourself? I never doubted it, my dear fellow.”
“No, you,” Constantine muttered sulkily.
“Come, that’s like old times,” roared Stavros, putting an arm through the unreluctant Selaka’s, and wheeling him round towards Constitution Square. “It does me good to hear you after our stupid quarrel.”
“Yes, it was stupid,” Constantine admitted.
The glorious Miltiades, crossing the square, hailed them with his full-dress military salute, and hurrying up, shook them boisterously by the hand and bestowed the clap of patronage upon their backs, while a humorous twinkle in his handsome eyes betrayed remembrance of their heroic encounter.
“The reconciliation of the Inseparables! A sight for the gods. Achilles and Agamemnon, I am profoundly rejoiced at your good sense.”
“Friends can shake hands, I suppose, Captain Karapolos, without all this ado,” sneered Stavros, resentfully.
“So they can, but I could not resist the temptation to stop and offer my congratulations. Hoch! Trinken sie wein!” he shouted, proud of his German, and turned on his heel laughing heartily.
“The greatest idiot in all Athens,” exclaimed Stavros, scowling after him.
The reconciled friends seated themselves at a table, called for coffee, and began to roll up cigarettes.
“I’ll tell you a secret, Constantine,” said Stavros, as he leaned across and spoke in the subdued tone of confidence. “That Oïdas is an unconscionable blackguard. You always thought it, I know, and you were right.”
Selaka, perfectly conscious that he had never imparted any such opinion of Oïdas to Stavros, blinked uneasily, and took upon himself the air of full admission.
“You found him out?” he interrogated, cautiously.
“I should think so,” Stavros exclaimed, waving his hand comprehensively. “But there are limits to my endurance. I am going to throw him over. I havecompromised myself by being mixed up with such a fellow. He has money—and he makes no scruple of his use of it.”
“You showed a fine tolerance, too, my friend.”
It still made Constantine sore to reflect that his closest friend had been bought over by the richer man.
“No, truly. You are quite in error. It was not the money, but I thought I could do so much better for my family. You see, Constantine, a man must hold no private feelings in abeyance when the interests of the family call upon him to silence them. You cannot have imagined our quarrel was not a cause of real distress to me. But now we are good friends, eh?”
“That depends. Why do you dislike Oïdas?”
“Oh, for several reasons. He behaved like a villain all round to me, to you and to your family. I mean to expose him. He promised to make room for us at the University and to get my son that post I have so long coveted for him. He has not fulfilled a single obligation he contracted with me. I had much better have trusted to you. You are not rich, and the golden mist through which he shines dazzled me. I did not expect him to come to me direct, and to sue me with soft talk. We all do the best we can for ourselves, Constantine, and often the best is barren of result.”
“Well, I don’t want to be hard on you now that you have come to see your error. You have thrown him over then?”
“Quite so. We are quits. Some time my hour of revenge will come—it always does if patiently waited for, and if you like to join me, it will be yours too. You don’t imagine, I hope, that I had anything to dowith that wretched article about Inarime in the ‘Aristophanes’? I abused him for it horribly. He instigated it, you know.”
“Oïdas! the mighty heavens! His motive, Stavros?”
“He heard about that Turkish fellow, and Agiropoulos very maliciously assured him he had no chance. He was wild when he knew it was all round Athens that he wanted to marry a girl who didn’t want him. He took it into his head he was flouted and mocked, and he resolved to bespatter the girl with as much mud as possible.”
“The villain! the hound!” Constantine muttered, incapable of coherent speech or thought.
“She is back in Tenos, I believe?”
Constantine nodded, with blazing inward-seeing eyes.
“He is in Athens—buoyed up, I suppose, with hope.”
“He! Who?”
“Your romantic Reineke,—a handsome fellow, too?”
“Where is he staying?”
“Just opposite,—the Grande Bretagne.”
Constantine rose with an undefined purpose, and Agiropoulos, lazily sauntering across the square, nodded and placed an arresting hand on his shoulder.
“My dear fellow! How fares it with your island Majesty? Such a comfort to have a vestige of royalty,—even spurious royalty in our midst, now that the real thing has temporarily migrated to Denmark.”
“How do you do, Agiropoulos?” said Stavros, crossly.
“Ah, my excellent friend Stavros! The fiery principals! How thrilling! Zeus! that was a bloody encounter! May I implore the soothing charm of your society—with a cigarette? Athens is so dull. All the interesting personages of our drama have vanished, and there is not the ghost of a sensation to rouse us.”
“Are you not going to be married?” snarled Stavros.
“Yes, the silken chains of Hymen will shortly weave their spell around me. The individual sheds his personality upon the gamelian threshold, and the dual is evolved. Do I transgress the proprieties of speech? Alas! my poor single and consequently unhappy friends, you must forgive the metaphysical impetuosities of a contemplating bridegroom.”
He gracefully extracted a cigarette from a dainty silver case, and gazed amorously into space.
“Miss Karapolos is well?” Constantine asked.
“She is admirably well—and looks it, and your kind inquiry leaves me your debtor. The virgin blush of health and heroism mantles her brow, and she is all the better for her little misadventure and the fever, which fortunately for me, the happy successor, has entirely carried off the susceptible humours of an earlier fancy.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Constantine exclaimed, heartily. “It is very wise of her to marry at once, and shake herself free of the whole affair. It must be unpleasant for you, however.”
“Not in the least, my friend. In the interests of the dramatic I am a willing sufferer; I will go so far as to describe myself a delighted martyr. I adore thedrama, and if there is a thing that wearies me, it is the thought of monotonous and tame maidenhood. Mademoiselle Karapolos, in default of a warlike Hector, which a mind more classical might exact, will next month graciously condescend to accept my name in the genitive case. Kyria Agiropoulou (Poor girls! it is sad to think that they are not allowed the privilege of a surname in the nominative case) is a heroine with a touch of flame and fire in her veins. I have none myself, and it gratifies me to know that the destructive influence of two phlegmatic temperaments is happily avoided for my posterity.”
“Good heavens! Who is that?” cried Constantine, standing, and with his hand grasped the back of a chair, and stared amazedly at a slowly advancing carriage.
Agiropoulos turned round with more haste than his boast of a phlegmatic temperament warranted, gazed with impertinent and complacent curiosity through his eye-glass at a carriage bowling gaily down from the Boulevard d’Amélie, which contained an ostensible Indian prince, dark but not beautiful, who leaned his head indolently against the shoulder of a fashionable young Athenian lady, whose mother sat alone with her back to the horses.
“Typical of the graceful and amiable abandonment of modern life,” lisped Agiropoulos. “The prince has diamonds and rupees in abundance. A little must be conceded such a happy being. If this public concession succeed in the regular way—the mamma on the front seat and the gentleman on the back, in her place, with his head negligently pillowed on the daughter’s shoulder—think of the gain, my friends.Oh, I see it on your lips, my excellent Constantine, but spare me the Scriptures. I can stand most things but a biblical quotation. Strange, it is only then I discover I possess that distressing outcome of modern life—nerves. What does it matter—the loss of soul against the gain of the world? I know the quotation. The young lady probably has no soul—why should she? A soul is the most inconvenient thing I know of, except perhaps a conscience.”
“I call it a disgraceful sight. If the prince does not marry her?” thundered Selaka, indignantly.
“Which is very likely, my dear fellow. In that case the mamma will bring her spotted lamb to Paris, or perhaps London, or naughtier Vienna, and the stain of the royal head will be washed off her shoulder by less magnificent wedding favours.”
“You are brutally cynical, Agiropoulos. Thank God, I live on an innocent island where one never hears such thoughts expressed. Good-bye, Stavros.”
“You are indeed an enviable mortal, dropped into this mire out of that Arcadia. But go, leave the dust and depravity of this much too exciting town, and return to your shepherds and flocks and peaceful mountain altitudes. To us, alas! the glitter and distracting noises!”
“Good-bye for the present, Constantine. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be friends with you again.”
“Stay! one word, I pray your Majesty,” chimed the imperturbable Agiropoulos. Selaka flung round uneasily, and frowned on him inquiringly. “Relieve an anxious mind. Is the beautiful nymph of the hills well?”
“My niece?”
“The peerless maid of Tenos! Who else? The modern Helen! Strange that history should repeat itself. How many Iliums have since been burnt, albeit it takes by our humble calculations less than ten years nowadays. That’s the beauty of the calendar. It ties us to dates, and the newspapers do their best to tie us to hard facts.”
“They don’t always succeed,” sneered Constantine.
“There speaks the voice of wisdom—with apologies to our editor. The ‘Aristophanes’ flourishes, I hope? So Helen is well. When does she settle down to serene wifehood in the house of Menelaus?”
“Let my niece alone, sir. You are not acquainted with her. The respect of women is a commendable virtue in young men,” Constantine growled, turning on his heel.
Gustav Reineke was writing in his room when Constantine was announced. He started up, confused and wondering, keeping the hand which held his pen pressed upon the papers on the table, and looked inquiringly at Inarime’s uncle.
“Kyrie Selaka,” he said, and smiled vaguely.
“We are strangers known to one another by repute,” said Constantine, who bowed and held out his hand with the singularly gentlemanly ease of the islander.
Reineke took his hand and pressed it warmly. Read in the illumination of his ardent hopes, this visit was a gracious augury which it behoved him to receive with visible and cordial satisfaction.
“Be seated, pray,” he said, and the smile that lit up his dark serene face was as winning as a child’s.
“I suppose you are astonished to see me, sir.”
“I am deeply grateful—yes, and a little astonished. You have come, I suppose, to bring me news of her?”
“Of—notfromher,” Constantine said, prudently. “I am not deputed by any one, you understand.”
His brows shot up with secretive purpose, and his eager glance was full of a meaning it puzzled Reineke to read. He nodded affirmatively, and the light upon his face sobered to the proper tone of unexpectant resignation.
“I am grateful under any circumstances. To hearofher is second best, and it is not given to man often to get anything so good as second best,” he said, calmly.
“You are a philosopher, sir, and philosophy is beyond me. My niece is well—patient as you might apprehend. But that mad brother of mine is just an obstinate old idiot. He will hear neither of reason nor expediency. You had the misfortune to be born a Turk, and it is your fatality. He has some curious idea that man cannot enter into strife with fate. He never had much brains for aught but books, and I have observed that books have a naturally weakening effect upon the intelligence.”
Gustav laughed tolerantly, and ostentatiously trifled with his papers.
“You see I too consume paper and the midnight oil.”
“I’ve no doubt of it. You’d have shown yourself more sensible in this affair if you didn’t.”
“As—for instance?”
“You’d have carried your case high-handedly, and reduced the maniac to reason. What are lovers for but to create scenes and bear away the maiden upon the wings of melodrama?”
Gustav coloured and bent his eyes upon the table. This was hardly the sort of man with whom he cared to discuss a matter so very delicate that speech almost affected it as touch affects the bloom of a peach.
“Your brother is well?” he merely asked.
“Pericles! Far from it. He has never rightly recovered from that bad attack after—after—the time you thrashed that scoundrel Oïdas. You remember?”
Gustav reddened darkly, and then paled as suddenly. His eyes took the deadly brilliance of a panther’s, and he said under his breath:
“I remember,” closing his teeth upon the memory.
“I never had an opportunity of thanking you,” Constantine cried, jumping up and insisting on shaking Reineke’s hands as if they were pump handles. Gustav gravely endured the operation, but when the exuberant Greek, in his anxiety to discharge his conscience of arrears of gratitude, bent his head and bestowed two kisses on his cheeks, Reineke withdrew a little, and lifted his slow Oriental gaze in mild reproof.
“You owe me nothing,” he said, impassively.
“Nothing!” protested Constantine, noisily, “and the honour of our family vindicated! A miserable coward punished! By the Olympian gods! but you are a fellow! How my heart rejoiced! I could have danced!”
Gustav’s face sharpened in the shadow of lassitude. The unnecessary violence of Constantine’s mood oppressed and irritated him, but he simply gazed patientinquiry at him, and meekly awaited the promised news of Inarime.
“So you see, Herr Reineke—I suppose I may call you by that more familiar name?—(Gustav bowed) you have made me your friend in this matter, and I am resolved you shall have Inarime some day. It will be so easy, if you once forget that you are a Turk.”
“It is kind of you—most kind, but I fail to see how you will be able to accomplish it if Inarime’s father refuses his consent.”
“But, the chief bar removed, there will be no reason why he should withhold his consent. We’ll see, we’ll see,” continued the uncle. “There’s a way out of all difficulties. Pericles will come to his senses some day. But you are right to respect his prejudices, and so is she. In the abstract, that is. I would persecute him if it were my case. But lovers are ticklish creatures to advise or interfere with. In the meantime, if you will keep me informed of your whereabouts, I will let you know how matters progress, and will send for you on the slightest chance of success after acquainting him with your readiness to become one of us.”
“You will? Kyrie Selaka, I know not how to thank you. Oh, this is indeed much—it is much,” Gustav breathed fervently.
“Not at all. I like you, and I want to see you and my niece happy. Hope! it is I, Constantine Selaka, who bid you.”
Reineke paced the room awhile in silence, keenly observed by his companion, and sat down to stare idly out of the window. Phrases of Inarime’s letter to Miss Winter recurred to him like buoyant messages.
“You will be here for some time?” Constantine asked.
“As long as you like—as long as you bid me hope.”
“That is well. You are a distinguished personage, Herr Reineke, and it will not be difficult to find you.” Then in a lighter tone, dismissing the graver personal matter, he broke into town gossip.
“I have just met that impertinent young man Agiropoulos. You heard, I suppose, he is going to marry that little heroine, the Karapolos girl?”
“How should I? But it is well. A woman is all the better for being hedged round with the conventionalities of life; and in no case are they so powerfully protecting as when they chain her by marriage, when, practically speaking, she ceases to be a responsible agent,” Reineke said, and added as an afterthought, to exclude Inarime from the slightly contemptuous classification, “that is, the average woman, that unexplained engine of impulse and unreason.”
“Poor little creature! She was hard hit. I wonder what has become of her recreant lover.”
“Young Ehrenstein?”
“Yes. He levanted, you know, with that piano-playing woman, the Natzelhuber.”
“I met them in Paris a month ago.”
“You did? And they are still living together?”
“Most wretchedly. I cannot understand a man choosing degradation and misery because the particular happiness he sets his heart on is beyond his grasp. Women! Yes. If they can’t have the best, they plunge themselves into the worst. They are in extremes of goodness and badness, and scorn half-measures. I daresay poor young Ehrenstein finds a woman’s satisfaction incontrasting his present with the future that might have been.”
“Quite a boy! Miserable, you say. Did you speak to him?”
“No. He was with Mademoiselle Natzelhuber. I would have stopped, but he glowered on me so forbiddingly that perforce I had to pass on in silence and without bowing. Doubtless he read commiseration in my glance, and resented it. They had been quarrelling, and each seemed an unloved burden to the other.”
“And you heard nothing?”
“I met Mademoiselle Natzelhuber afterwards in a fashionable salon. She had been drawn out of her tub, by what means I know not, and with Diogenes’ contempt, consented to play. The soul of despair and unrest was in her fingers. It was the saddest music I ever heard. I spoke to her of Rudolph, and she implored me to take him off her hands. She said he bored her, and the sight of him filled her with inexplicable anger. I got their address, and when I called, she received me, and threatened to tear me to pieces if I sought to interfere between them. As I walked away, I glanced up at the window, and saw Ehrenstein looking down listlessly upon me. His face was the face of a lost soul.”
Gustav’s voice dropped to a whisper. Constantine sat thrumming the table with his fingers, and jerked his head up and down disconsolately.
“It is an awful story,” he said.
“It has burnt a hateful picture on my mind. I remember the day I first saw that boy on the Acropolis—a mere innocent, unhappy boy. Now he drowns hismisery in brandy and shuns his equals. I heard at a club that he plays heavily and is steeped in vice.”
“The Lord succour him! He was a child when he came to Athens. As for that wretched woman who has brought him to this——”
“She did not. We are needlessly hard on women. He walked into the pit with his eyes open, and she was simply an instrument of his own choice. If she had not been there, he would have found other means,” said Gustav.
Winter had lashed the Eastern world with sharp frenzy, and now early spring was raging over the plain of Attica, driving madly in a whirlwind of dust down from the encircling hills, with its breath of ice and its shrewish roar. And soon it would be at its verge, and stand on tiptoe with wistful glance set upon the hurrying summer that so soon would consume its flowers and grasses and chattering rills.
Still Gustav lingered at Athens studying archæology and patiently waiting for Constantine’s message of hope. Exploring expeditions helped him through the long leisure. The last proposed by Miss Winters was to Vari, to do homage to the mythical Cave of Pan, where Plato was dedicated to Apollo and the Muses.
Gustav drove round from his hotel at seven o’clock in the morning to pick up Miss Winters and her paraphernalia, at her lodgings in front of the Columns of Jupiter. Upon the mountains, hue upon hue lay intermelted in one transfused whole of indescribable loveliness. The great forked flanks of Hymettus looked so desolate against the joy of the sky, as to suggest that here had Prometheus been chained and had stamped it with the legacy of permanent sadness.Under the hills stretched on either side wide fields sheeted with blood-red poppies; the birds woke the air with song, and the air was full of the lovely scent of the pine. Gustav’s senses thrilled to the exquisite charm of the hour, and Miss Winters’ gaze was a prayer and a thanksgiving.
When they had devoutly visited the shrine, difficult of access, and had come back into the pine region, flushed and tired and heated by the blaze of sunfire, they were accommodated by a courteous villager with an empty room, into which a table newly-washed and two chairs were introduced as additional helps to lunch. The villager supplied them with boiled eggs, water and bread, which was being baked at the general oven in the middle of the place, and Gustav produced a bottle of Santorin wine, some fruit and cold chicken. For a forlorn lover he ate a very hearty meal, and took an animated pleasure in supplying the absence of attendance.
After lunch they went and sat on a little wooden seat, and while Gustav smoked, Miss Winters, to the complete astonishment of these simple folk, fed all the dogs of the place upon bread and chicken just as if they had been Christians. Greek dogs are never fed, they pick up what they can here and there, and shrink instinctively from man, whose only caress is a kick.
“That old man is very ill,” Miss Winters said at length.
“Which old man?”
“That old heathen of Tenos, of course.”
“Oh! Selaka!”
“Yes. I met his brother yesterday. He was attending somebody in the house, and I asked to see him.”
“Truly, you are a marvellous woman, and a most excellent friend,” said Gustav.
“I reckon I can seize an opportunity, and don’t fail for the want of pluck and keeping my eyes open. The brother is a doctor.”
“I know. Constantine. They call him the King of Tenos.”
“Tenos seems to be the home of idiots. Well, the pagan is very ill—heart-disease—doomed. The doctor is on your side, and says if you will go to Tenos, in about ten days he will be there to meet you, and thinks it not improbable that the old lunatic may be talked into reason before he goes to—Hades or elsewhere.”
Reineke reddened slightly and breathed hard, but he said nothing. The mere hope meant too much for speech. To touch again land so sacred as her island home, to look upon the fastnesses which enshielded her from the world—to see her, feel her, hear her, divine her nearness by every acute sense quickened to an ache. Perhaps——
Thought could go no farther. He rose and flung away his cigarette with a passionate gesture, and began to pace the dusty path while the driver got the horses ready for their return. He seemed to see Inarime’s face, not the landscape, and his heart throbbed with the wonder of it. He was silent during the drive home, and sat till far into the night on his balcony, watching the stars come out in the softblue gloom and wink and play like illuminated shuttles upon their glossy background.
Ten days later he came to say good-bye to his friend. The charming old lady stood in front of him, and peered into his face with kindly question. A soft smile stirred the grave depths of his dark intense eyes as he gave her back her look, and tenderly lifted her hand to his lips.
“No matter what happens, our friendship must be lifelong,” he said.
“Yes, I mean to fall frantically in love with your wife. You will bring her right along to Washington City to see me, and I’ll have my book on Greece ready, to present you with a copy on your marriage.” She raised herself on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
“Now go straight away to Tenos, and I guess you’ll carry the day,” she added.
It was not Aristides who met him this time upon the little quay of St. Nicholas, but insular majesty itself.
“The King of Tenos,” said Gustav, smiling as he shook hands with Constantine.
“The slave of Tenos—the devil take the lot,” cried Dr. Selaka, angrily. “I haven’t a moment to myself once I land on this wretched island. Because they make me deputy, I must look after all their ailments gratis; I must stand godfather for all their children, which means presents illimitable and care for the rest of my days; I must lend my house for marriages, and give marriage breakfasts to all the daughters—dowries sometimes, and last, but not least, I must submit to be carried about the island, up those massacring mountain paths and down destructive precipices, while the idiotsfire off pistols and guns in the exuberance of their spirits, until I am smothered with smoke and half-dead with fright.”
“I see there are drawbacks to the glory of a seat in the Boulé.”
“I rather think so. Oh! the monsters! I am compelled to sneak down all the back lanes to escape them. Come this way. Our mules are hidden under yonder filthy archway.”
How familiar the ride seemed to Gustav, although he had only twice ridden through this strange scenery. He recognised every field and hedge, each cleft in the mountains, the cave of Aiolos, and the little forsaken fountain with the figures of St. Michael, St. George and the Virgin Mary roughly carven upon a marble slab by some unknown hand in the seventeenth century. A thin vein of water flowed from the torrent above into the fountain with a tinkling sound that broke the silence very sadly. How desolate in the stillness looked the interminable lines of marble hills stained with burnt thyme and furze, the great jagged rocks tinted with gold and red and purple and grey, forked against the sapphire sky, and the dim grey glades of olives below! Desertion lay upon all, and the beauty was the beauty of neglect and barrenness. And above towered the Castro, slanting down from the upper world, greyer, sterner than ever, with the rocky desert of Bolax behind, and the villages afar, so white and tiny, tangled upon the slopes, curve flowing after curve to the horizon, the cornfields and meadows touching the scene to life, and the sea breaking into the wide green plain of Kolymvithra like a lake. Here and there a forgottenfaded lemon showed through the orchards, and the geraniums were as drops of blood upon the leaves. How dear and homelike, how personal it all appeared to him! Inarime it spoke of. No sound came to him but the clamour of the frogs among the moist reeds of the torrent-beds, or the liquid flow of bird music from the trees, broken by occasional farm cries and the bark of watch dogs.
Pericles Selaka knew that his days were numbered. He was filled with the trouble and indecision of his daughter’s future. But the thought of relenting towards Gustav—Daoud Bey, as he now bitterly called him—did not enter his mind. His anger against Gustav was the more unreasonable and fierce because of his affection and admiration for the man. What right had a scholar and a gentleman to prove nothing better than a miserable Turk? Inarime grieved for the fellow. Of course. And did he not grieve for her grief? Were there not moments of yearning to throw off this intolerable cloak of resolution, and send for Gustav to make his daughter happy? Had she not a right to happiness? She was young and beautiful. The thought of such beauty as hers dropping unwedded into the grave exasperated him. But a renegade Turk!
The day of Gustav’s arrival, Selaka was alone in the sitting-room. Inarime had gone to the fountain for Annunziata, who was busy preparing the midday breakfast. By an unaccountable impulse, Selaka’s thoughts flew back to his short married life, and, standing upon the threshold of memory, struck him with the force of reality. Tears shook upon his eyelids, and suddenly he raised his head with a listening air. A delicatebreeze seemed to sweep past him, and played about his forehead and hair like caressing fingers. Then it came back again and approached him like a soft regretful sigh. He rose, impelled by an influence which he felt it a pleasure to obey, and followed the sighing breeze. The blinds were drawn to keep out the glare of the noonday sun, and a ray from a chink broke into the twilight in a dazzling river of gold. The air just lifted the blind, and breathed again about his face, this time lingering like a kiss upon his lips; a rose-leaf kiss, that very tender lips might give. He staggered against the framework of the window, filled with a superstitious dread. Was this breath the soul of his dead wife that floated about him with speechless message? Might it not be that she was filled with concern for the coming solitude of her forsaken child? Strive as he might against the insane idea, it grew upon him, and took possession of his frighted senses. A damp perspiration broke upon his brow, the pallor of terror was on his cheek, and his heart beat against his side with suffocating blows.
Hardly knowing why, he held back the blind, and looked down into the courtyard to see if any wind stirred among the flowers. All was still. Not a leaf trembled; the flowers drooped in the drowsy heat of a sultry summer day. He opened the window, and put out his hand. The air was hot and motionless, and the watch-dog lay panting in the shade of a palmtree. He closed the window, drew down the blind, and looked through the soft gloom of the apartment. This time he shivered as the whispering breath struck him full in the face, like a wing brushing past. He stretched out his hands with a cry of protest and alarm, and fellupon the floor in a swoon, with the name of his dead wife upon his lips.
When Selaka opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the sofa, and saw the face of Gustav Reineke bent over his anxiously. He stared in awed amazement, shrank back a little, put up one hand and timidly touched the young man as if to test his reality.
“You are better, sir?” asked Reineke, taking the hand, and he held it in a warm, protective clasp.
“You! Daoud Bey,” muttered Selaka, indistinctly.
“Look on me as Gustav Reineke, I beg you, sir, and my presence will hurt you less. The past is no more for me; have I not promised?” said Gustav, gently.
“I am conquered, Gustav. I give her to you.”
Gustav gasped, and instinctively dropped on his knees beside the sofa. He hid his face on the pillow, and burst into uncontrollable tears. The sick man lay still, and watched him in a state of stupid fatigue and torpor. Somebody entered the room, and crossing, touched Gustav’s shoulder. He sprang to his feet, and met the serene brown glance of Annunziata’s eyes.
“You are welcome, sir, you are very welcome,” she said, and held out both hands, nodding with subdued approval.
Gustav took them, and shook them with a force that almost hurt. Yet he wore the look of a man in a trance.
“You are a good, kind woman. Tell me where she is.”
“She is detained in the village. Go into the garden, and I will send her uncle to fetch her.”
Gustav obeyed her, and passed out into the garden.How changed everything was since his winter visit, eighteen months before. But he hardly noted whither he went as he precipitated himself down the oleander alley. The air quivered with light. The smell of the pines and thyme floated up from the valley upon the summer wind that just stirred the laurel leaves and plumes of the reeds in the torrent below. All abroad sleepy delight, and within an immeasurable joy that touched on anguish! He stood on the gravel path edged with blue and white irises, and looked down upon the little goat road behind the zigzag of spiked cactuses. The shadow of the kids, as they played, wavered upon the silver light that sparkled and shook in liquid masses from the upper rocks.
Would she come by that path? The eternal sunshine and the aching mist of blue dazzled him as did his own overpowering happiness. The rapture of the birds was a fit interpretation of his own rapture, and the lizards, darting in and out of the rocks like shuttles quick with life, were as his beating pulses. He loved everything, the water and flowers, the quaint and tiny insects that flew around him, and the pigeons that flashed through the air with an impetuosity he longed to rival.
A step behind him drained the blood from his heart, and he turned, sick and frightened with the strength of passion.
Inarime was looking at him with equal fear and awe. Slowly and silently their glances drew one another until their hands met, but speech was beyond them. They did not speak at once nor embrace, but remained thus standing and gazing, and then a flame sprang intoGustav’s intense look, and spread like fire over his face.
“Inarime!” he murmured, and opened his arms.
She was in them enfolded, and their lips were one.
“Oh, Gustav, you have come to me,” cried Inarime.
“At last! At long last! Did it seem long to you, dearest?”
“Long! I tried so hard to do without you, but it grew harder each day. But you are with me now, dear one.”
“Not again to leave you, Inarime. My own, how best shall I serve you? How shall I treat you? It is as if a mortal were mated with a goddess.”
“You, too, O love, are to me as a god,” whispered Inarime.
“Nay, nay, beloved, you must not so exalt your worshipper,” protested Gustav, laughing, while he drew her to a stone and gently forced her to sit down, that he might kneel before her, and hold her clasped.
He looked up at her in mute adoration, and smiled. She framed his dusky, glowing face with her hands, and her own, bent over it, looked glorious in its joy.
“Dearest,” he cried, “bliss cannot madden or kill, or I should not now be kneeling here, alive and sane.”
“Oh, Gustav, life is so short. No wonder lovers must have their hereafter. We may not reach an end.”
“Nay, sweet, our life shall not be short; while others merely exist, we shall live our days to the very full. Think of it—a future with each other. Here, hereafter! It cannot be for us other than Paradise.”
“I love you, Gustav.”
“Goddess, I adore you.”
She pressed her cheek against his, and he felt her happy tears.
“My father will need me—us,” she said. “Come.”
They found Selaka waiting eagerly for them. Inarime had not seen him since his seizure, and ran to him with a cry of pain, shocked to see him look so ill.
“My son,” said Selaka, with laboured breath, “I would ask you much, since I have given you so much.”
“There is nothing, sir, you can ask that I will not gladly grant,” said Gustav, taking his hand.
“I would charge you with my dying breath not to resume your hateful name. It would sting me in the grave if my daughter bore it.”
“It shall be as you wish, sir. Inarime will be the wife of Gustav Reineke, and Daoud Bey is no more.”
The old man winced under the name, but feebly pressed Gustav’s hand. Shaken with terror and regret for her own great bliss, Inarime knelt beside the sofa, and looked beseechingly at her father.
“I have one other request to make to you, my children. You have been kept apart long enough. I do not desire that my death should impose a longer separation upon you. If you must mourn me—though I do not desire that either—let it be together. Let not the grave overshadow your wedding joys. Think of me, not as dead but as a disembodied spirit that will hover around and about you in tender concern, sharing your griefs, which it is my prayer may be few, and your delights, which I hope will be many. Weep not for me, Inarime. Death is but a quiet sleep, the grave but rest. You will have your husband. He will be all to you—more eventhan I. Promise me, my beloved child, that you will not grieve, and that there will be no delay in your marriage.”
Inarime crept closer to her father, and twined her arms round his neck.
“There, there, my girl. Gustav, you will be very tender to her.”
“Oh, sir, my life henceforth will be devotion to her.”
“Thank you, thank you. I feel it will be so. Take her now; comfort her, and dry her tears. That is well. The arms that hold her now are stronger than mine, the breast that pillows her head will henceforth be its best protection. And should a son be born to you, my children, call him Pericles after me, and bring him up to love greatly the great past of my country. Come nearer, my sight grows dim. Call Annunziata, and my brother. I would bid them farewell. You, Inarime, stay close to me. It is with your dear hand in mine that I would go hence into the unknown.”
Constantine and Annunziata were waiting outside. But when they followed Gustav into the dying man’s presence, Selaka had fallen into a doze. No word was spoken. Annunziata wept silently: Constantine’s sobs were the only sound; Inarime knelt watching her father’s face, and Gustav stood over her with his arm about her neck. Selaka’s eyes opened, and flashed with a ray of youth. He uttered his wife’s name in a loud, clear voice, and then the light of life was extinguished.
Gustav bent and kissed Inarime.
Time, summer afternoon, touching sunset, early in the month of June.—Scene, the beach of Phalerum.
The band is playing a lively selection from Lecocq, whose works are delighting the Athenians, interpreted by a third-rate French company three times a week at the Olympian Theatre of Athens, and three times nightly at the theatre of the Piræus. All the seats outside the Grand Hotel are filled, as are those edging the golden strand where the children are digging and making sand-pies—quantities of babies, dressed in French taste, in English taste, and overdressed whatever the taste, and quarrelling and making-up in a variety of tongues.
Every table shows a display of coffee cups, of liqueur glasses and of empty ice plates. The Athenian gilded youth walk up and down, twirling slim canes; with shorn heads, wide-brimmed hats, white trousers, and moustaches turned up with emphasis. Droll youths with a serious belief in their own fascinations, made up, some of them imprisoned in corsets. Such boots and trousers, such coats and moustaches! Ah! misfortune to the susceptible maidens of Athens! Their hour is surely come with these lions abroad.
And the young ladies! Such chatter and beamingsmiles, such hats, high heels, ribbons, laces, veils, powder and perfume! Such miracles of millinery produced without any regard to cost! Ah, there are two sides to the picture, my friends, and is it quite so certain that the lions facing these nymphs will have the best of the encounter? There are enough uniforms here to convince the sceptical traveller that he is in a land of heroes. Infantry officers of every rank, in light blue. Numbers of artillerymen in black with crimson velveteen collar and cuffs. Yes, there yonder is the glorious Miltiades, linked with that Phœbus Apollo, Hadji Adam. How the heart gladdens at the sight, how the nerves shake at the clanking of that terrible sabre of his, at the rattle of his glittering spurs, and with what cordial delight do we recognise his military salute and meet the condescension of his hand-clasp! One singles out the pair instinctively, amid the multiplicity of uniforms, above the rank and file of mere marine officers and saucy midshipmen. For, be it known to benighted foreigners, all male Athens dons a uniform, military or naval. Either politics or the uniform nothing else counts. Epaulettes or the Bouléorle néant.
And the band is playing—is playing with a desperate fervour, befitting noisy, volatile Athens. The waiters are rushing wildly about with trays of cognac and vermouth, of ices and coffee, the fragrance of Greek tobacco fills the air, the chatter of human voices and the shrill cry of excited children mingle with the soft murmur of the sea, that beats so gently upon the sand. A charming hour, a charming scene. The sky as blue as the lucid waters beneath; shifting hues wavering uponthe sharp mountain sides; the early lights flickering against the trees, and the sound of happy laughter and speech heard above the band!
The blessed, foolish, frivolous people, self-intoxicated, needing nothing but its daily gossip, its leaflets called newspapers, coffee and cigarettes, the excitement of the half-hourly trains to Phalerum of a summer evening, the rascalities of its politicians to denounce, along with the nameless Turk and the faithless Mr. Gladstone, to the strains of its bad, vivacious music!
With regret do I ask the reader to stand with me under the shade of the Grand Hotel, and cast a farewell glance upon the scene. By the last train from town old acquaintances arrive—a young pair on their wedding tour. Three years ago we last saw one of them facing the hero of Greece at an uncomfortable hour of the morning upon uncomfortable business. Now he is the husband—of whom? Of whom but that elegant young lady of the great world, Mademoiselle Eméraude Veritassi. They were married at Rome, where the Baron von Hohenfels is Austrian plenipotentiary, with Rudolph for one of hisattachés. The bride and bridegroom have taken Athens on their way to St. Petersburg, to which Embassy Rudolph now belongs. Ehrenstein looks what he is—an aristocrat in faultless attire, who has lived hard and enjoys the reputation of a strong attachment to brandy and music. Pale, thin, stern and fastidious, with an air of quiescent wretchedness. Poor Rudolph! Is this all that his mutable affections have brought him—indifference and hopelessness? Photini had died, and he had mournedher passionately, not her, perhaps, but his blighted youth. And when he found Mademoiselle Veritassi disposed to overlook his shady past for the sake of his expectations, his wealth, and his fair, handsome face, it did not seem to him he could do very much better than marry her.
They walked the beach once, and then returned, and seated themselves a little above the Grand Hotel, Ehrenstein gloomily facing the sea while he waited for his cognac; and his bride, in Worth’s latest splendours, looking landwards, expecting an ice.
“See, Rudolph, here is my old flame, M. Michaelopoulos, the great poet,” cried Eméraude, pleasantly excited.
“Indeed,” said Rudolph, stroking his moustache and indolently shifting his eyes.
“Good heavens! Mademoiselle Veritassi! I forgot, a thousand excuses, Madame Ehrenstein,” exclaimed the popular poet.
“My dear friend! Sit down and tell us all the news. Rudolph, order some cognac for M. Michaelopoulos. And now, do tell me everything. What was said about my marriage?”
“Athens rejoiced that Austria in you, Madame, should so wisely have chosen,” said the poet, with a magnificent bow.
“No, truly? You mock me, sir. Does Austria, I wonder, think that Greece chose as wisely?” asked the vivacious bride with an arch, half-malicious glance at her morose husband.
“Could Austria think otherwise?” the poet replied.
“If such a humble person as myself may answer forAustria, I may say that no better choice could have been made,” said Rudolph, sarcastically.
“My friend, I mean to prove the wisdom of my choice.”
Rudolph raised his eyebrows in lazy interrogation.
“At the present you are simply anattaché,” explained his wife. “With my good help you will become an ambassador. That was why I married you. I always thought the position of ambassadress would suit me admirably.”
“So! You flatter me, Madame.”
“Why not? You surely did not think I was in love with you.”
“Well, I own I had some faint hope you returned my adoration.”
Eméraude glanced quickly at her husband, and smiled, a strange, hard little smile. Lying back with half-shut eyes, she said to the poet:
“It is evident that my husband is on his wedding tour, judging by the pretty things he says.”
“I shall doubtless reach perfection in that art under your amiable tuition,” retorted the bridegroom, as he turned to inspect the crowd.
“They certainly don’t give the unblest any reason to envy their happiness,” mused the poet. “Who would have thought that such a gentle, girlish boy would turn into a bitter and cynical rake?”
Some friends of Eméraude bore down upon her, and after a torrent of congratulation, haughtily received by Rudolph, the latter rose and took the poet’s arm. They walked past the hotel, and a dark flush spread like aflame over Rudolph’s face when he recognised the gallant Captain of the Artillery.
“The sister is here, too,” said the poet, not troubled with any hesitation or sensitiveness to the delicacy of the subject.
“Indeed,” said Rudolph, very softly.
He did not resent the liberty; he felt an aching desire to hear something of her—hear that she was well and happy.
“She is married,” he said.
“Yes, and grown so stout. There’s a baby with them. There they are.”
Rudolph started, and the hand on the poet’s arm trembled violently.
Agiropoulos and Andromache were coming towards him. Agiropoulos was on the side of the sea, fat, contented, floridly attired, with a flower in his buttonhole and a gold-rimmed glass in his eye. The departing sunshine shone from the west full upon Andromache’s face. It had lost all the pretty appeal of youth. A handsome enough profile, dull, well-filled, with dark blue eyes looking out of a forest of curled fringe, upon which a much too fashionable bonnet reposed. Rudolph was startled and disappointed to find his old love the mere expression of commonplace, domestic content. Yes, she looked as if she did not greatly mourn him, and remembering his wife’s elegance and social charm, he recognised he had done better than marry Andromache. But good heavens! how pretty and sweet she had been in those old days when his heart was so fresh and his days so innocent! He saw again the little salon overlooking the Gardens of the French School, with all itstrivial details accurately fixed upon his memory, and two foolish young creatures so desperately afraid of each other, when first confronted with a love scene. What a charming idyll! and how evanescent and unseizable its fragrance floated out of the past!
Andromache was the first to see him. She did not start, but turned pale to the lips, and looked at him steadily while her fingers closed convulsively upon her red parasol. Agiropoulos brought his quick, sharp gaze to bear upon Ehrenstein, who at once lifted his hat. But his salute was not returned by husband or wife, Andromache stared straight before her, and Agiropoulos smiled insolently as he passed.
Rudolph gazed across the sea with twitching lips. The cut hurt him more than he dared allow to himself. He was gentleman enough to feel ashamed that he deserved it, but was unaccountably angry with Andromache for not having learned to forgive him.
“Let us go back to Madame,” he said, quietly.
“Have you had enough of Phalerum, Eméraude?” he asked, in reply to the silent question of his wife’s look.
“You discontented fellow! We have only just come.”
“And how long are we to remain?”
“There, I see you are upset, and, as I can’t expect to make you an ambassador if I don’t humour you a little, I’ll take you back to Athens at once,” said Eméraude, rising good-naturedly.
Rudolph flashed her a look of boyish gratitude, and pressed her hand as he helped her into the train. He was a little boisterous and intractable on his way to town,laughed and talked wildly and, when they got into a carriage at Athens to drive to the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, a reaction came, and he sat back, the picture of moody discontent. Verily, Mademoiselle Veritassi has not chosen an easy life, but we can see that she understands her task, and that, in spite of ill-tempers and storms, the whip-hand will be hers.
Turning the corner of Hermes Street, Rudolph’s unhappy glance fell upon another picture, and one that struck a heavier blow upon his bruised heart. Two persons on a balcony of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, which faces Constitution Square, opposite the Palace, were enjoying the sunset, and the soft, departing daylight. A man was leaning with his back to the railing, smoking and looking down upon a seated woman in front of him. Rudolph’s pulses stood still. It was impossible not to recognise the owner of the supple brown hand that grasped the edge of the railing, and upon a slight movement of the smoker, who seemed to be speaking with playful earnestness to his companion, Rudolph saw Reineke’s delicate, clear profile. A hungry pain sprang into Rudolph’s eyes as he sat forward, and looked back through the railings, while the carriage drove across the Square. He saw Inarime distinctly, with her eyes lifted to her husband, and a happy smile stirring her grave lips. And as he watched, Reineke went over and sat beside her.
The carriage stopped in front of the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, and Rudolph helped his wife out. Instead of following her in, he hurried down the path to stare again at the rival hotel. Inarime now was standing with her hand upon Gustav’s shoulder, and the spectator might divine that the husband was protestinglaughingly against some decision of hers. Then with her tender, grave smile she passed from him and went inside. Gustav remained seated on the balcony, smoking.
“They are not contented—they are happy,” said Rudolph, as he turned to join his wife. “Nobody is miserable but myself. Photini is dead, and I’m alive. I don’t know that it is I who have the best of it, either. She was right. She told me from the first I never should be happy. Andromache! Inarime! and poor Photini! I wonder why I have missed the gladness of life. It seems to exist, and some people catch it. I am only twenty-five. Heaven help me, what shall I be ten years hence, when I feel so bitter on my wedding tour?”
He knocked at his wife’s door, and entering, threw himself on a sofa.
“How long do you propose staying in this wretched hole?” he asked.
“A week or so,” said his wife, surprised. “Why?”
“I want to know what I am expected to do with myself.”
“Look after me, of course, and dance attendance on me,” laughed his wife.
THE END.