The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe HeirThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The HeirAuthor: Sydney C. GrierIllustrator: G. P. Jacomb HoodRelease date: November 16, 2021 [eBook #66751]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEIR ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The HeirAuthor: Sydney C. GrierIllustrator: G. P. Jacomb HoodRelease date: November 16, 2021 [eBook #66751]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
Title: The Heir
Author: Sydney C. GrierIllustrator: G. P. Jacomb Hood
Author: Sydney C. Grier
Illustrator: G. P. Jacomb Hood
Release date: November 16, 2021 [eBook #66751]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEIR ***
THE HEIRBYSYDNEY C. GRIERAUTHOR OF‘AN UNCROWNED KING,’ ‘THE WARDEN OF THE MARCHES,’ETC.WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE PERCY JACOMB-HOOD(First in the Balkan Series II.)WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONSEDINBURGH AND LONDONMCMVI
Maurice, his arm gripped by one of the brigands, ... trudged silently beside her horse.
Maurice, his arm gripped by one of the brigands, ... trudged silently beside her horse.
I. DE JURE
II. OF THE STOCK OF THE EMPERORS
III. THE ORIENT EXPRESS
IV. A FULL STOP
V. THE JEWEL-CASE
VI. A TRAP
VII. A NIGHT’S LODGING
VIII. THE HISTORY OF A DAY
IX. ONE TOO MANY
X. THE OTHER SIDE
XI. TOO MUCH ZEAL
XII. THE DIVINE FIGURE OF THE NORTH
XIII. THE FALLING-OUT OF FAITHFUL FRIENDS
XIV. AN EMISSARY
XV. THE GIRDLE OF ISIDORA
XVI. HAGIOS ANTONIOS
XVII. UNMASKED
XVIII. “SPLENDIDE MENDAX”
XIX. ART WITH A PURPOSE
XX. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION
XXI. “THERE’S MANY A SLIP——”
XXII. UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS
XXIII. A FUSION OF INTERESTS
XXIV. THROUGH ANOTHER MAN’S EYES
XXV. “POUR MIEUX SAUTER”
MAURICE, HIS ARM GRIPPED BY ONE OF THE BRIGANDS, ... TRUDGED SILENTLY BESIDE HER HORSE.
“THIS IS WHAT WILL INTEREST YOU MOST, I EXPECT,” SAID MAURICE, ... UNROLLING A LONG PARCHMENT SCROLL AS HE SPOKE.
“TAKE YOUR DIRTY HANDS OFF HER, YOU BRUTE!” GROWLED MAURICE.
“WELL, I SHALL SIT OUTSIDE AS LONG AS I CAN,” SAID EIRENE OBSTINATELY.
“WHY, THERE IS A LITTLE HOUSE AT THE VERY TOP! HOW DO THEY GET UP?”
TOUCHED EIRENE’S HAND WITH A HIGHLY WAXED MOUSTACHE.
“I CAN’T BEAR YOU TO GO.” “BUT I MUST,” SHE MURMURED.
“I reallyfeel quite guilty,” said the Master of St Saviour’s College to the distinguished foreigner whom he was escorting to the Senate House. “Your time in Cambridge is so short that every moment must be needed for your work.”
“Pray do not reproach yourself, sir,” replied Professor Panagiotis, with the deliberate precision of one who has learned English from books. “What greater honour could be afforded me than permission to observe the contests of your youthful heroes for the rewards of poetry and oratory?”
“You mustn’t expect too much,” said the Master, with some anxiety; “though if it had been merely the usual recitation of prize exercises, I should have left you in peace in the Library. But the subject of the English Poem has such a close connection with that of your great book—not, of course, that it was intentionally chosen; merely a coincidence,” he added conscientiously—“that I felt you ought to be present.”
“I am entirely agreed with you,” responded the author of the famous German work on the fall of the Eastern Empire, wondering why his host was so determined not to let him see a compliment where none was meant. “The subject, then, is historical?”
“The Fall of Czarigrad,” replied the Master, “and the medal has come to a St Saviour’s man, which has not happened for many years. I understand that he studied your book very carefully before writing his poem, and that is my reason for dragging you here.”
It was in the Professor’s mind to wish that his book had not been studied, as he sat in the Senate House and heard various agitated young men, their faces vying sometimes with the white of the M.A. hoods and sometimes with the Doctors’ scarlet, declaim compositions in various languages, with all the grace and dignity to be expected from extreme nervousness subject to the perpetual encouragement of well-meaning friends. Latin the Professor despised, and the Cambridge Greek, from the difference of pronunciation, he scarcely recognised as his own language, but the English Poem roused in him a certain amount of interest, though he felt a mighty longing to relieve the author of the task of reciting it. The medallist was fortunate in being pale, and not red, for Professor Panagiotis considered blushing a purely feminine exercise, but he shared with his fellows the English incapacity for letting himself go. In his most thrilling passages the note of shamed self-consciousness was clearly audible, and he endured the applause accorded him with a stolid resignation that seemed to inquire why he could not be allowed to perform a distasteful duty in peace. This was the more irritating to Professor Panagiotis because the poem, whenever he could catch the words, struck him as remarkable. The author had chosen as his theme the final day in the long struggle of the Cross against the Crescent, when the Moslem tide overflowed at last the grand bulwark of Christendom, and the Emperor John Theophanis fell fighting as a common soldier in the breach. The recital was placed in the mouth of the Emperor, and the description of the night’s vigil, the dawn of the fatal day, the fanatic fury of the assault, the desertion of the Christian cause by its allies, and the last desperate fight, into which Theophanis was to hurl himself, determined to perish, impressed the listener with a curious sense of realism. He had lived for months and years among the records of these scenes, but he could not have described them with the sure hand of this undergraduate. The tale was plain and unvarnished, the telling crude and bald, but as the fragmentary lines, unassisted by any rhetorical graces in the reciter, reached the hearer, he felt such a thrill as the unadorned narrative of an eyewitness might produce. The young man must be a poet of quite unusual power, and Professor Panagiotis forgot the manuscripts awaiting him at the Library in the determination to cultivate his acquaintance.
“But, my dear friend, you have a genius there!” he cried, when the Master rejoined him at the close of the ceremony. “Who is this poet of yours, whose name I could not hear on account of the noise of the envious relatives of his fellow-students?”
An irrepressible smile crossed the Master’s face, but he answered with all gravity. “Teffany—Maurice Teffany—a third-year man. He goes down next week, after he has taken his degree.”
“Teffany!Himmel und Erde, is it possible?” cried the Professor. “And yet I might have known. The thing is the most extraordinary coincidence! Pardon me,” as his host looked at him in surprise, “but I have associations with the name. I am all interest. He is the pride of the college, this young man?”
“Not at all,” said the Master, laughing. “In fact, it’s a curious case. Teffany has always been rather a puzzle to me. He is not what you would call a popular man, but he has exercised a good deal of influence in a quiet way. I must confess I found him a little disappointing, especially in comparison with his sister, a very clever girl. She used to attend my lectures with other Girtham students, and did extremely good work for me, showing a distinct capacity for original research. Teffany worked well, but in a plodding, uninspired sort of way. I was always irritated by the feeling that we had never yet hit on his special line.”
“But now—since this poem—you can have no doubt?” asked Professor Panagiotis quickly.
The Master shook his head. “I am still doubtful,” he said. “I asked his tutor to find out whether he had done anything else in the poetical line—one would expect reams of amateur verse, you know—but there was not a scrap. He had never written verses before, and he seems to have no wish to do it again.”
“The young man interests me,” said the Professor. “His name alone——” he stopped abruptly, as though he had changed his mind. “Quite independently of his name, I mean.”
“Ah, of course, his subject would appeal to you,” said the Master unsuspiciously. “You would like to meet him, perhaps? I will invite him to dine with us to-night. He has reflected honour on the college, and I shall be glad to mark my sense of it.”
At dinner that evening Professor Panagiotis scanned his neighbour narrowly whenever he found an opportunity. To him, as to the Master, the young man was a disappointment. He was extraordinarily ordinary. Neither tall nor short, neither dark nor fair, neither foppish nor careless, neither talkative nor silent, he seemed in no way distinguished or distinguishable. It was only on comparing him with the other guests that the Professor arrived at a conclusion which gave him something of a shock. There was a strength and decision about the jaw and chin which did not amount to obstinacy, but suggested that the owner might be difficult to turn aside, and a steady calmness about the eyes which bespoke an indisposition to be hurried.
“The worst type in the world to manage!” was the Professor’s inward groan. “I must do what I can to gain his confidence, but I foresee it will be necessary to approach him through the brilliant sister.”
Presently Maurice Teffany found himself addressed by the distinguished guest, the great Greek man of letters who had made his German university famous all over the world. His previous silence, coupled with his keen glances, had made him appear somewhat formidable, but he now talked pleasantly enough, and the young man became confidential on the subject of the prize poem, which he seemed to his questioner to regard as a huge joke.
“It’s an utter fraud, my getting the medal,” he said. “It ought to have gone to my sister—or perhaps to you, sir. My sister was awfully keen on my trying for it, because there were a lot of old books about Czarigrad which we were very fond of as children, but I hadn’t the slightest idea of it. Then this last winter I sprained my ankle badly at the very beginning of the vac.—only about six weeks before the poems had to be sent in—and couldn’t get out, and she gave me no peace. She had your book, and she translated all the most thrilling bits and read them to me, and then—well, it got hold of me somehow, and I seemed to know all about it. So I just wrote it down, and she criticised it, and copied it out for me, and it got the medal! The Master says it’s brutal and rugged and everything that a poem ought not to be, but that there’svisionin it—whatever he may mean by that.”
“And you agree with him?”
“Oh, I suppose so. Anyhow, he’s sure to know the right thing to say. You see, sir, I don’t feel that I wrote it. It just came—as if I had been there and seen it. My sister and I always call it ‘The Finest Story in the World’ between ourselves—but perhaps you don’t know Kipling?”
“I fear not, if you allude to some English writer on the subject of reincarnation. But I am going to ask you a rude question on a point of psychology. Is it possible that the poem was actually your sister’s composition, but that she impressed it upon your mind, so that you accepted and wrote it as your own?”
Young Teffany considered the matter gravely, and then laughed. “Rather not!” he said. “Zoe’s an awfully clever girl, and writes a good bit, but she has never dabbled in poetry any more than me. She was just as much surprised at the way the thing turned out as I was. And as to making her poem pass into my mind without my knowing it—why, she couldn’t do it. I’m as certain of that as I am of anything, though I think a lot of her—but of course I don’t tell her so.”
“My dear sir, you have already grasped one of the main secrets of the management of the female sex,” said the Professor sententiously. “But may I suggest a variation of your reincarnation theory? I am at present engaged in following up my larger work by tracing the dispersal of the Greeks who survived the fall of Czarigrad, and it occurs to me that your family may be descended from one of them.”
He scanned his companion’s face closely, as though to discover whether the idea was new to him, but the young man only laughed. “A case of inherited memory? I’m afraid it’s no go, sir. There’s nothing in the least Greek about us.”
“Four centuries of English marriages would go far to obliterate racial traits,” was the dry reply. “Your Christian name is Greek, at any rate.”
“All our names are. It’s a kind of tradition in the family. My father was Theodore, and his father and grandfather were both Constantine. However far back you go, it’s always Basil and Gregory and so on for the men, and Dorothea and Katharine and names of that sort for the women.”
“That is very curious,” with repressed eagerness. “And you are sure there is no tradition of a Greek ancestry?”
“None that I know of. But my sister would be a better person to ask. She’s had flu., you know, with a touch of bronchitis, or else she’d have been here to-day, and she said she was going to forget her sorrows in rummaging among the family papers. There are a few at home, and some at the lawyer’s. But really, I’m afraid there’s not much to find out. We have only been settled at our present place for sixty or seventy years—horribly new, you see.”
“Then where was your family established before that?” The Professor leaned forward anxiously.
“Oh, somewhere in the wilds of Cornwall. My grandfather could just remember the old place. My sister and I talk sometimes of making a pilgrimage down there—seeking the cradle of our race, you know—but I believe it’s only a farmhouse now.”
“The cradle of your race!” with measureless contempt. “My dear Mr Teffany”—the Professor modified the eagerness of his tone as his hearer looked at him in astonishment—“I must see those papers—any family relics you may possess. What this identification, if it is established, may mean to me—to you—I hardly dare think. I—I had traced the family of which I am in search as far as Penteffan on the Cornish coast, and there all sign of them was lost. This is like new life to me. You will not refuse your help?”
“Of course, we shall be glad to do anything we can,” was the reply, given without effusion. “Penteffan was the name of my great-grandfather’s place, certainly. We have a picture of it—‘The Seat of Constantine Teffany, Esq.’ Will you come down with me next week, and look over the papers with my sister—if you are not afraid of the flu.?”
“No, no; I have paid toll to the devil,” replied the Professor hurriedly. His hearer interpreted the somewhat startling assertion correctly as referring to the influenza-fiend, and they proceeded to discuss ways and means. It was settled at last that Maurice should go home the next week, as he had intended, and obtain the papers of which his lawyer had charge, and that the Professor, who was to receive an honorary degree from the University, should follow as soon as possible, when they would go through the documents together.
* * * * * * *
“Maurice, an awful blow!” Zoe Teffany sprang up to meet her brother as he put his head in at the door of the library where she was at work. “I believe our name is really Smith!”
“That’s cheerful. What makes you think so?”
“Why, I was tidying the top shelves of the bookcases, and I found a lot of grandpapa’s old schoolbooks, and every one of them had ‘C. Smith’ or ‘Constantine Smith’ inside. Then I remembered those old letters of great-grandmamma’s—about buying this place, you know—and when I looked at them they were all addressed to ‘Mrs Smith.’ The address was written in the middle of one side of the paper, in the old way—there were no envelopes—and I had not noticed it when I saw them before.”
“What a frightful sell for Professor Panagiotis!” chuckled Maurice. “Shall we wire, and put the old fellow out of his misery?”
“Oh no, no! Why, it mayn’t be true; we’ll hope it isn’t. I have been looking at everything else I can think of, to try and be certain one way or the other, and I can only find the name Smith just when grandpapa was a boy. His parents were Teffany before he was born, and we know he was Teffany when we knew him. What can it mean?”
“Well, since he was a small boy at school when he called himself Smith, it can hardly mean that he had done something and was in hiding. There’s one piece of comfort for you, at any rate. But I tell you what, I’ll ask old Lake, when I ride over to-morrow to get the papers. He ought to know, if any one does.”
“Oh, do; and be sure and hurry back. I shall be dying to know. I hope there’s some romantic reason, at any rate. Smith is such a terribly unromantic name. Couldn’t you go to-day?”
“Scarcely, since my appointment with Lake is for to-morrow.”
“Oh, how prosaic you are—talking of appointments, when you ought to saddle your fleetest steed and spur him headlong over hill and dale to discover the truth!”
“Ah, I’m not a budding novelist, you know.”
“No, only a full-blown tragic poet.” Zoe raised her voice as Maurice beat a hasty retreat. The varying literary fortunes of the two afforded endless opportunity for mutual chaff, but whereas Zoe gloried in her abortive efforts at fiction, on the ground that they were too good for any publisher to accept, Maurice was inclined to be ashamed of his success. The romantic was Zoe’s province, not his, and the only excitement he felt over her momentous discovery was due to the possible disappointment in store for Professor Panagiotis, for whom he had conceived a certain distrust, due to his mysterious hints and half-revelations. There was no enthusiasm, therefore, in his tone when he entered the library on the following afternoon.
“Well,” he said, “our name is Teffany all right. I have interviewed old Lake, and you may sleep in peace. There was a reason for the Smith business, and I suppose you would call it romantic. I call it cracked.”
“Oh, do tell me!” cried Zoe. “Was it a feud?”
“Nobody knows. Lake could only tell me what his father told him, and what they guessed. His father had just gone into the office when our great-grandmother and her little boy arrived in the neighbourhood about seventy years ago. She had excellent bankers’ references, and began to negotiate for the purchase of this place. She told them that she was left sole guardian of her son, and that she had been obliged to remove from her former part of the country on account of grave dangers threatening his life. For safety’s sake, they would be known for the present by the name of Smith. She was a handsome woman, and the Lakes thought there must be some revengeful discarded lover in the case. She bought this place and lived here unmolested, and when her son was twenty-one, he resumed the name of Teffany, which the lawyers heard then for the first time. At the same time, he sold Penteffan, which had been managed by a London firm. He would have liked to go back there, but his mother objected so vehemently that he humoured her, especially since the old house had been allowed to fall into decay. The Lakes could never discover anything to account for her horror of the place, except that the people remembered two foreigners coming and making inquiries about the family soon after she left. That’s absolutely all they know.”
“Oh, Maurice, how thrilling!” cried Zoe, drawing a long breath. “Do you think the house was haunted? or—no, I am sure it was smugglers. Perhaps she had betrayed them to the revenue officers, and they meant to kidnap her child in revenge. I wonder if there’s anything about it in the papers you have brought. Shall we look at them now?”
“No, nonsense! Leave them till the Professor comes. Let’s go and see how the new croquet-lawn is getting on.”
The Professor arrived the next day, casting keen, curious glances about him. The sober stateliness of the house, the old family servants, the unobtrusive perfection of every detail indoors and out, and the easy kindliness of the young master and mistress—all were, so to speak, noted in his memory and labelled for reference. He remarked also Zoe’s unconcealed eagerness for the hour when the family papers were to be examined, and the tolerant resignation with which Maurice awaited it. He would find the motive force in the sister, the staying power in the brother, he assured himself again.
“This is what will interest you most, I expect,” said Maurice, when they had retired to the library after dinner, unrolling a long parchment scroll as he spoke. “It is our family tree, properly drawn out.”
Professor Panagiotis peered at the document with a hungry look. “You are right,” he said; “it is priceless. Your family has dwindled strangely, Mr Teffany. I cannot tell you how many collateral branches I have followed up, only to find that they died out, while the direct line was in existence unknown to me.”
“Yes, my sister and I are the sole representatives of the name, as far as this pedigree shows,” said Maurice.
“Exactly—so far as this pedigree shows,” agreed the guest, comparing the document with the entries in a note-book which he had brought with him.
“Oh, Maurice, look!” cried Zoe. “Isn’t it funny? Do you see that the beginning of the parchment is sealed down? There must be some secret charge, or something of that sort, inside.”
“Lake said that our grandfather sealed it in his presence,” returned Maurice. “But it must have been sealed a good many times before, to judge by all the old seals.”
“Oh dear, I hoped it would reveal the mystery!” sighed Zoe. The Professor looked up sharply.
“My sister gave us a great fright two days ago,” explained Maurice. “It appears that my grandfather and his mother adopted the name of Smith for about fifteen years after they moved here from Penteffan.”
“This is what will interest you most, I expect,”said Maurice, ... unrolling a long parchment scroll as he spoke.
“This is what will interest you most, I expect,”said Maurice, ... unrolling a long parchment scroll as he spoke.
“Indeed?” with growing excitement. “This gives me my last link, explains the one fact for which I could not account—the sudden and absolute disappearance of the Teffanys from Penteffan seventy-two years ago. I could find no record of the death of the widow of the last proprietor and her infant son, and yet I could not succeed in tracing them.”
“Then you know who the foreigners were who made inquiries?” “Then you can explain why she called herself Smith?” burst from Maurice and Zoe simultaneously.
“I can explain it now. The foreigners were delegates from the Greek National Assembly, seeking a leader whose very name would rally round him the contentious factions that disgraced the cause of liberty, each fighting for its own hand. The widowed Mrs Teffany, herself the daughter of an Englishman who had fallen in the cause of Greece, had too little faith in that cause to devote her son to it, and removed him effectually out of sight.”
“But why should they want a little boy of five, who couldn’t even fight?” cried Zoe. “It wasn’t as if he was a king.”
“He would have been proclaimed king, doubtless. It was not the person, so much as the name, that was of importance.”
“But why the name? Is there something we don’t know? Is it here, under these seals?”
“Possibly.” The Professor cast a side glance at Maurice. “Mr Teffany desires me to continue?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Zoe, as Maurice nodded. “Tell us, quick!”
She seized the parchment, but the Professor removed it from her hands. “It is your brother’s right,” he said. “He is the head of the house. You observe that the pedigree goes back to Alexius Teffany, who settled in Cornwall in the sixteenth century. Now break the seals, sir, if you please. You observe that Alexius was the son of John, who was the son of Manuel, who was the son of Basil——”
“Who was the son of John Theophanis, Roman Emperor, who died gloriously on the walls of Czarigrad!” shrieked Zoe. “Oh, Maurice, isn’t it splendid?”
“That is not all,” said Professor Panagiotis. “You, Maurice Teffany, are at this moment the rightful Emperor of the East.”
“Oh, Maurice!” gasped Zoe, almost voiceless in her excitement.
“Well,” said Maurice, perhaps with greater carelessness than he felt, “it sounds very nice, but plenty of people are the rightful something or other, and it makes no difference to practical politics. Besides, there’s almost certain to be some flaw.”
“Flaw!” cried the Professor, “no flaw is possible. Here is the table of your descent, as kept by your family, agreeing exactly with that which I have compiled from old local histories and the registers and monuments at Penteffan. Every member of the family in direct descent is buried there, except one.”
“And there the chain breaks, I suppose?” said Maurice.
“By no means, sir. The missing Nicholas is buried in Westminster Abbey. Doubtless he died when on a visit to London.”
“Westminster Abbey!” breathed Zoe softly. “Think of having a relation buried there, and not knowing it!”
“This will interest you,” said the Professor, passing her a paper. It was the copy of a seventeenth-century entry in a marriage register, and she read the name of the bride aloud.
“‘Eugenia Theophanes, de stirpe imperatorum.’ Oh, and that——”
“That is what you are,” said the Professor, with a bow.
“Zoe Theophanes, de stirpe imperatorum,” she murmured under her breath.
“Don’t be ecstatic, Zoe,” said Maurice sharply. “What difference can it make, our knowing this? It’s quite clear that our grandfather knew it, and it made no difference to him.”
“Yes, he knew it,” agreed Professor Panagiotis, glancing from the pedigree on the table to the decorations of the room, in which the family crest, a golden eagle with its feet resting on two gates, was unobtrusively repeated again and again. Zoe had been her grandfather’s assistant in designing the frieze and the carvings of the high mantelshelf, little guessing the meaning attaching to them in the old man’s mind, or that the two gates were those of Rome and of Czarigrad.
“He spent his life quietly here, doing his duty to his tenants,” persisted Maurice, as though combating something that had been said.
“He did,” responded the Professor; “but when he reached manhood, and learned for the first time of his lofty ancestry, the present kingdom of Morea had long been established under a German prince. In the crisis of 1862, his countrymen, ignorant of his existence, made no attempt to summon him to their head, and a constitutional reticence—resembling, shall I say, that of his grandson?—withheld him from putting himself forward, so that the crown passed without opposition to the present Cimbrian ruler.”
“I presume you are not suggesting that I should deprive King William of Morea of his throne?” asked Maurice, with an angry laugh.
“No,” said the Professor emphatically. “The Morean kingdom, grievously as it has disappointed the hopes fixed upon it, may be disregarded until the day comes for it to take its place among the federal States of the revived Empire. It is Unredeemed Greece which claims your attention—the only portion of Europe still groaning under the Roumi yoke.”
“I see; you are an Emathian agitator,” was the chilling answer.
“I am and I am not,” replied the Professor. “I am an Emathian Greek, cherishing warm hopes of the deliverance of my country; but I have nothing in common with those bands of miscreants which, financed and directed by interested committees in Thracia and Dardania, have brought the name of Emathia into discredit throughout Europe by their wholesale assassinations. I hold them in the utmost detestation. Even the Roumis are less to be feared.”
“No connection with any one else in the same line of business,” murmured Maurice. “Surely,” he observed aloud, “you would do better if you could unite into one body all who had the same object in view? Then you could moderate the Balkan passion for assassination, and they would bring you a welcome accession of numbers and money.”
Professor Panagiotis laughed bitterly. “Your words prove that you share the usual English ignorance of the state of affairs in Emathia,” he said. “To the schismatic Thracians and Dardanians, an Orthodox Christian is equally hateful with a Roumi, and the same treatment is meted out to him.”
“A pleasant prospect for the future!” said Maurice. The Professor turned upon him almost savagely.
“Joke, jest, mock, Mr Teffany—anything to drive away from your mind the conviction that you are called upon to espouse the cause of your country, your subjects! This is the difference between your case and your grandfather’s—that the crisis which had not arisen in his day now confronts you. We Emathian Greeks are faced by an organised conspiracy to despoil us, slay us, make renegades of us—in fact, to wipe us out, as you would say, from our own country.”
“But how is it? who is doing it?” cried Zoe.
“The schismatics, with Scythia working behind them,” was the reply. “By immemorial right and tradition Emathia is a Greek country, but agitators are being sent among the people—ours predominantly by race, converted, shepherded, educated by us—to persuade them by bribes and threats to declare themselves Thracians, Dardanians, even Dacians—anything that may give colour to the fiction of Slav descent, and consequently alienate them from us.”
“But which are they really? Or are they so mixed that they may be anything?”
“The mixture of races and languages is extraordinary,” conceded the Professor unwillingly. “But in the incredible confusion that exists, we Greeks alone present a clear issue. Until recently, every Christian in the Roumi dominions was styled a Greek without question, and if our people are not tampered with, we can continue to supply them with education and religious ministrations, and confine their agitation for release from Roum within legal limits. But this unites against us all the aspiring nationalities—as they call themselves—that covet Emathian territory, and the result is that our churches are desecrated, and whole families massacred for the sole crime of fidelity to Orthodoxy. I dare not recount in the presence of your sister the fate that has befallen young Greek schoolmistresses, living unprotected in the villages of the parents of their pupils.”
“Why send unprotected girls to run such risks?”
“The girls accepted them of their own free will,” returned the Professor smartly. “They placed the Greek cause—the cause of their race—above life itself.”
“What do you want me to do?” demanded Maurice.
“Your countrymen in Emathia need a rallying-point, a hope. Inevitably many of them succumb, less to the temptations held out than to the reign of terror that surrounds them, and declare themselves Thracians or Dardanians. A Thracian or Dardanian priest takes charge of them, a school follows, and the next generation will actually be Thracians or Dardanians by education. But let it be whispered among them secretly that a deliverer is at hand, that the descendant of their ancient rulers is waiting to place himself at their head, and they will hold out. At the same time, the minds of the wealthy Greeks in the cities, in Czarigrad itself, will also be prepared, and when the outrages of the revolutionary committees have stirred Europe from its lethargy, we shall appeal against them. The impossibility of discovering a suitable ruler for Emathia, who would also be acceptable to its inhabitants, has been the great difficulty of the past, but when a man appears who has actually the right to rule, and yet is willing to stand as the nominee of the Powers, as Vali, Commissioner, Prince—what you will—they must accept the solution with relief, from pure weariness of the subject. It has been the case already in Minoa. Once you were established, the Roumis could not long hold Czarigrad. For four centuries they have occupied European soil, though only as birds of passage. They will leave no monuments, their very houses are temporary lodging-places. They have always kept one eye on Asia, and when the moment comes they will return thither—perhaps without striking a blow. You will have delivered Europe from its most shameful stain.”
“Oh, Maurice, you will do it?” entreated Zoe.
“You don’t understand,” said Maurice harshly. “The Professor is talking of success, but what about failure? And this is not the kind of thing that can be lightly begun, and laid down if it seems to be going to fail. If we once take it up, we can never drop it.”
Zoe would have remonstrated, but the Professor stopped her.
“Your brother is right, Miss Teffany,” he said, “and I rejoice at the spirit in which he approaches the matter. That he should perceive so clearly that the contest can end only with his life, and yet contemplate entering upon it, gives me the most vivid hope for the future. But as I have been instrumental in placing this choice before him, may I be permitted to make a suggestion? Do not decide at once, sir. Pay a visit to Emathia, and do me the honour of being my guest at my villa near Therma. My house in the city itself is untenanted during the summer, but in the hills you and your sister will find the climate pleasant and salubrious. My wife, a most estimable woman, with the heart of a cook and the form of the Niederwald Germania, will rejoice to display for your benefit the resources of her skill.”
“But if you are constantly exposed to these revolutionary raids, a country house can scarcely be safe for ladies,” said Maurice, frowning.
“There is a Roumi garrison not far off, and I am on good terms with the officers. You must understand that, before quitting my professorial chair at Benna, I had become heir to the very considerable possessions of a relative. All that I own is consecrated to the Greek cause, and a portion of it smoothes my way with the Roumi authorities, and thus enables me to maintain communication with the Greeks scattered throughout Emathia. The Committees accuse us, of course, of being traitors to the Christian faith, but can they wonder that we should prefer the Roumis to such Christians as they are? But come and visit me at Kallimeri, and you shall see the state of things for yourself. You shall meet the leaders of the Greek party, and you shall have every opportunity I can contrive to become acquainted with the methods of the Slav propagandists. You are committed to nothing unless you choose.”
“I will think about it, and give you an answer to-morrow.”
“Oh, Maurice, to-night, to-night!” entreated Zoe. “Think of the copy I could get! I shan’t sleep a wink.”
“To-morrow,” replied Maurice inexorably, and Zoe went to bed murmuring “Zoe Theophanes, de stirpe imperatorum,” with loving iteration.
“You mustn’t think that Maurice is slack or cold-hearted,” she said to the Professor, meeting him in the garden the next morning. “He won’t be hurried into anything, and he never lets any one make up his mind for him, but when once he sees that a thing is right, he holds on to it like grim death.”
“Precisely my own reading of your brother’s character,” agreed the Professor. “Shall I confess that I was at first a little disappointed at not finding in Mr Teffany that enthusiasm for our persecuted compatriots which is so manifest in his sister? But I perceived quickly the tenacity of his purpose—a quality which it is even more important to enlist on our side.”
“Yes,” said Zoe warmly, “if he once decides to join you, you will never be disappointed in him. He is so thoroughly dependable. Of course, I never let him know what I think of him,” she added inconsequently—“it wouldn’t be good for him—but he is splendid. Very few men would have gone to college, as he did, at a good deal over the usual age, after practically managing the estate for my grandfather for years. But he felt it was the right thing to do, and as soon as he was free he did it.”
“But surely you did the same?”
“Yes, I went up to Girtham at the same time. But a girl is always thankful to get an education, you know, just as a boy is always thankful to escape it. So you won’t hurry Maurice, will you, or try to influence his judgment?”
“My lips are sealed, unless Mr Teffany himself addresses me on the subject. But I am infinitely indebted to Miss Teffany for her warning.”
The Professor’s thanks gave Zoe an uncomfortable feeling of disloyalty to Maurice, and, in flat contradiction of the advice she had just given, she attacked her brother on the momentous subject when she saw him next.
“Oh, Maurice, you will do it, won’t you? It is so splendid to think of your driving the Roumis from Czarigrad, and establishing peace in Emathia.”
“The question at present before the House is that of our summer trip,” was the discouraging reply.
“But that shows you are inclined to take up the matter, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t, why hesitate about going to Therma?”
“Because I can’t bring myself to trust the Professor absolutely. I should object to be entirely in his hands.”
“I know; I saw you were not quite satisfied. But why?”
“Did you like the way he spoke of his wife? I should have thought that would have rubbed you the wrong way at once.”
“Why, Maurice, it was a whole life’s tragedy compressed into two lines! I thought how artistically he did it, revealing the state of affairs without unduly obtruding his sorrows upon us. I do adore a light touch.”
“Oh, don’t talk shop! Well, then, didn’t it strike you how determined he was that we should see everything in Emathia from one side—his side, of course? It isn’t reasonable that the Greek Emathians should possess all the virtues and the other fellows all the vices. I want to know what the Thracians and Dardanians have to say for themselves.”
“Well, perhaps you will be able to manage that.”
“Not if I am exhibited from the very beginning as the private property of Professor Panagiotis. The man may be perfectly straight, but it’s unlikely, to say the least, that he doesn’t expect to reap a full equivalent for any services he may render.”
“Oh, you think he would want to be Premier or something?”
“Something a good deal more, I should say. Keeper of my conscience, power behind the throne, and that sort of thing. And you see, he has the game in his hands. I have nothing but my name, he has the sinews of war, the local knowledge, the political organisation, and he thinks that corners me. ‘Such cunning they who dwell on high Have given unto the Greek.’ No, I haven’t decided, Zoe. I’m thinking it out, and if I can see a way of going to Therma without delivering myself over body and soul to Panagiotis, you shall have your trip. I know that ‘copy’ is more important than anything in heaven or earth.”
Somewhat abashed, Zoe retired, and if she said little, thought the more until, after dinner, Maurice again suggested a move into the library. She waited in breathless suspense.
“My sister and I have been talking over your kind invitation, sir,” he said, rather formally, “and if you can assure us on one or two points, we shall accept it with pleasure. It is understood that we come purely as your private guests, and that we are at liberty to cultivate the society of the opposite party, as well as of your own friends, as far as opportunity offers?”
“You shall enjoy every opportunity that I can give you,” returned the Professor heartily. “I will not pretend that Committee leaders are often to be found near Kallimeri, for the Roumi garrison close at hand is too strong, but their dupes, the peasants, you will be able to question. And as for your first condition, I shall surprise you by asking for a greater degree of privacy than you expect. I am going to request that you will conceal your too-significant surname under an alias.”
“I don’t see the necessity,” said Maurice stiffly.
“Without this precaution, I cannot guarantee your safety. Consider, my dear sir; the difference between Theophanis and Teffany is not so great but that their identity may occur to a watchful enemy—or to many at once. Then you and your sister are at once set up as a target for the efforts of the many whose interest it is to have you removed.”
“Then there are other claimants?” asked Maurice, conscious that Zoe had turned a little pale.
“Who is not a claimant? The King of Thracia would like to add Emathia to his dominions, but we need not fear him since he has got rid of his English Prime Minister. That firebrand, the Princess Dowager of Dardania, who filched from us the province of Rhodope a few years ago, intended to merge her son’s petty principality in a State comprising the whole of Emathia. She has now quarrelled with him, but she continues her intrigues on behalf of her younger son, an officer in the Scythian army. I need not remind you of the desires of Scythia, Pannonia, and Morea, and you have always to consider the revolutionary committees, many of whose members are fanatical republicans. No, Mr Teffany, I cannot accept the responsibility of your visit unless you will consent to pass by a less distinctive name.”
“Very well,” said Maurice reluctantly, this sudden turning of the tables upon him serving, perhaps, to stimulate his unfixed resolution.
“Then we will be Smiths, of course,” said Zoe joyfully. “We have a hereditary right to the name, and it is splendid for an alias, because no one will think it is one.”
“Moreover,” proceeded the Professor, “you must remember that you are not altogether unprovided with relations, outside the limits of that pedigree there. For instance, your ancestor Alexius Theophanis, the first of the name to settle in England, came to Cornwall from Italy, where many of the Greek families preserved their nationality and faith for more than a century. He left there a sister, Eudoxia, who married Romanos Christodorides, and became the ancestress of the powerful family of Christodoridi, Despots of the island of Strio. Her descendants would not succeed until after those of her brother, of course.”
“And they would naturally not be sorry to see the brother’s descendants wiped out, you mean?” suggested Maurice.
“Hardly that. Prince Christodoridi would probably prefer to base his claim on the invalidity of the marriage of Alexius Theophanis with a foreigner and a member of another church, contrary to the law of the Imperial house.”
“If that’s true, he holds a pretty strong card,” said Maurice.
“The law was disregarded several times,” said Zoe quickly. “Gibbon says so.”
The Professor regarded her approvingly. “Quite so. But as we do not wish to incite the Christodoridis to take action, we will not bring your existence to their ears before it is necessary. In any case, Prince Christodoridi’s claims are unimportant. The Emperor John, your heroic ancestor, left another son and two daughters besides your progenitor Basil. Anna, the eldest daughter, married Boris, Grand Prince of Scythia, and carried the blood of the Cæsars into the Scythian Imperial house. Helena, the younger, married into the Dacian family of Gratianco, from which is descended the mother of Prince Timoleon Malasorte, the Neustrian Imperial claimant. But these claims through females are merely curious. The only person whose right at all approaches yours is the descendant of Leo, second son of John Theophanis. About forty years ago the officiousness of Scythian agents ferreted out in Dacia an obscure landed proprietor directly descended from Leo. He was invited to Pavelsburg, decorated, given the title of Royal Highness, with estates and a pension to support it, and complimented with the hope of being restored to his ancestor’s throne. Of course there was no thought of fulfilling the promises made him; the only intention was to keep him under surveillance. He wore out his life in fruitless attempts to get his cause adopted, and when I managed to approach him, as I have now approached you, he had not the energy to take the steps to which my advice and the detestation he had conceived for Scythia would have urged him. He left only a daughter, and it was this disappointment which sent me to England to make one more attempt to trace the descendants of Basil. A male heir in the male line is what we want. The work before us is not for women.”
“This man was a Theophanis, then?” asked Maurice.
“Prince Nicolai Andréivitch Féofan—so they call it in Scythia. It seems that his family had preserved the memory of their Imperial descent through the centuries, though fear of the Roumis kept them from disclosing it. When he was summoned to Pavelsburg, he thought it only an ante-room to Czarigrad, and when he found himself deceived, he wished to retire to Dacia again, but this was not permitted. At his death, he was little better than a State prisoner, and he left his daughter in the same position. No doubt a marriage will be arranged for her with one of the less important Grand Dukes, that her claim also may be safely vested in the Imperial family.”
“Poor thing!” said Zoe. Now that Maurice’s claim was incontestably established to be the strongest, she felt a curious pity for the girl who must believe herself to be what Maurice actually was, the rightful inheritor of the glories of the Empire of the East.
Notmore than three weeks later, Maurice and Zoe stood on the platform of the Gare de l’Est, about to enter upon the second stage of their journey eastwards. Professor Panagiotis had urged that they should start as soon as possible, before the increasing heat should make railway travelling disagreeable, but he scouted Zoe’s suggestion that they should go when he did. Their visiting him at Kallimeri would attract quite sufficient attention, he said, and it was most important that no idea of their being connected in any way with his political schemes should get abroad. He had made the arrangements for their journey, procuring them passports as Maurice and Zoe Smith, and, at his suggestion, Maurice had requested his bankers to honour cheques bearing their signatures in these names. It was understood among their friends that Zoe had persuaded Maurice to take her to Eastern Europe that she might lay the scene of a novel there, and she gave colour to the opinion by the number of note-books of different sorts and sizes which made her luggage heavy, if not bulky. These were destined to cause endless trouble at the several frontiers, for the official mind, unable to understand why so many blank volumes should be needed, conceived the idea that they contained Anarchist literature written in invisible ink, and insisted on subjecting them to severe tests. But this was still in the future, and Zoe was rejoicing in the imminent prospect of romance, to be not only written but lived. During the few hours they spent in London, she had dragged Maurice to Westminster Abbey, that they might visit the obscure grave of “Mr Nicholas Thephany.” Maurice refused sternly to allow her to take a wreath for it, but she succeeded, behind his back, in dropping upon the stone the handful of carnations which had been tucked into her belt. Unfortunately, they were carefully gathered up and returned to her by a polite verger, which spoilt the significance of the act, and exposed her to Maurice’s sarcasms. But nothing could detract from the joy of having an ancestor buried in the Abbey, or of tracing one’s lineage back to the Cæsars.
At the Paris station Zoe’s eyes met Maurice’s, in a kind of half-ashamed smile, across the pile of luggage conspicuously labelled “Smith,” while he was directing the porter, but before she had time to make any remark a uniformed attendant approached.
“The other ladies of Monsieur’s party are here,” he said, and they followed him mechanically, too much astonished to protest. He led the way to a compartment intended for four, in which two ladies were already seated, one elderly, with an almost aggressive air of high breeding, the other a girl rather younger than Zoe, in a smart travelling-gown, which had not come from the hands of any English tailor. Zoe, surveying it from the satisfactory standpoint of her own workmanlike coat and skirt, remarked mentally that it simply shrieked “Vindobona!” The ladies’ luggage, which occupied the other two seats, was labelled “Smith.” With a wave of his hand the attendant motioned Maurice and Zoe to enter, and departed. Zoe imagined that he received an approving glance from the younger lady, who sprang up and began to move her possessions.
“Oh, we are to be fellow-passengers, then?” she cried pleasantly, speaking with a slight foreign accent. “That is excessively agreeable. Pray come in.”
“There must be some mistake——” began Maurice.
“A mistake? But let us convert it into an advantage! We shall be delighted to enjoy your society.”
“Edith! Heart’s dearest!” cried the other lady, speaking English with an obvious effort, “you outrage the proprieties, you affront Monsieur and Mademoiselle. Recall the position, I beg of you.”
“It does not seem to me that Monsieur and Mademoiselle are in the least affronted,” said the girl readily, but with a heightened colour. “Is it not natural for us to travel together—as compatriots, and doubtless distant relations?” with a little bow which had a suspicion of mockery in its politeness.
“You are very kind——” said Zoe stiffly, but the elderly lady interrupted her.
“Did I not tell you so, Emily?” Zoe intercepted an angry glance of warning from the girl. “The young lady is scandalised—shocked—at your behaviour. Pray do not persist.”
“We are very much obliged,” said Zoe firmly, “but we have chosen our seats elsewhere, and our things are waiting for us.”
“But you could have them brought here,” suggested the irrepressible Miss Smith.
“Thank you, but we are going to have dinner as soon as the train starts.”
“Ah, we have dined already, but after this evening we might share a table. Why are you so little kind?” the girl’s voice followed Zoe pleadingly as she closed the discussion by turning away. She had an odd feeling of self-reproach, though she had only acted in the most prudent and proper way, and Maurice offered her no comfort. He could not bring himself to say that the unconventional invitation ought to have been accepted, but it was evident he thought she might have managed to decline it without hurting Miss Smith’s feelings. It was not until they were half-way through dinner that the sense of constraint produced by the incident wore off, and Zoe felt inclined to talk freely.
“I feel so delightfully thrilled!” she said, leaning back luxuriously. “My heart always leaps up when I see the words ‘Orient Express’—just as the sight of a cabin-trunk with a P. & O. label makes me think of the Black Hole and the Mutiny and all sorts of interesting things—and now to be actually on board! Have you found out yet which is the compartment always reserved for an emissary of the British Government?”
“Patience, patience!” entreated Maurice. “Give a man a little time.”
“Well, I have spotted the man—the emissary I mean,” said Zoe triumphantly. “He has J. G. W. on his bag, and he is a soldier and has been in India, and he has the most startlingly blue eyes I ever saw.”
“Now, why startling?” asked Maurice tolerantly.
“Why, with that brown face and fairly dark hair you expect dark eyes, and it gives you quite a shock when he looks up and you see how blue they are.”
“I expect the startling man with the blue eyes got a shock when he looked up and found you staring at him. I know the fellow you mean, but when you managed to find out the details of his personal history beats me.”
“Purely inference, my dear boy. Any one could see he was a soldier, and he has the Indian look about the eyebrows.”
“My good girl, Sherlock Holmes was nothing to you.”
“Thanks, so much! I believe he is a King’s messenger.”
“Inference again, I suppose?”
“Well, he seems to have something on his mind. I can’t quite decide whether he’s in charge of something very precious, or whether he has lived so much among enemies that he’s got into the habit of being always on the alert for an attack.”
“It’s just as well you are a little modest, for I’m pretty certain that a King’s messenger wears a badge of some sort, and lugs a despatch-box about with him.”
“Oh, Maurice, you are dense! Of course he is on very special service, and has been warned not to exhibit anything that would reveal his identity.”
“And he is so clever in concealing it that he lets himself be spotted by the first girl he runs across who’s been reading detective stories! Tell you what, I’ll make up to him and break his self-betrayal to him gently. He really ought to know.”
“Oh no, don’t ask him outright what he is! It’s so much more interesting to think of him as a King’s messenger than as somebody’s nephew on his way to spend part of his leave at Czarigrad. He doesn’t look important enough for a military attaché.”
“Look here, Zoe, you really must curb your unbridled imagination. You’ll have the whole train peopled with mysterious personalities in no time. By the bye,” with elaborate carelessness, “what do you make of our namesakes?”
“Mrs Smith may possibly have married an Englishman,” meditatively, “but her name is the only English thing about her. As for the girl, her name is no more Smith than——”
“Ours is!” cried Maurice. “The plot thickens. Go on.”
“I believe she is a Scythian spy,” said Zoe calmly.
“Oh, draw it mild! That girl? I say, this fitting people with imaginary characters is all very well, but you have no right—— Do spies generally go about chaperoned by elderly aunts?”
“If it is her aunt. Why, Maurice, don’t you see? She has designs upon the document which the King’s messenger is in charge of, of course, and even the very youngest and greenest of King’s messengers would be suspicious of a fascinating unchaperoned young lady by this time.”
“Well, I should have said if she had designs on any one, it was on you.”
“Oh, that’s only a blind. No; I see it! She isn’t sure about the King’s messenger. He has effaced himself so carefully that she is wavering between you and him. My presence may be intended to divert suspicion from you, as the aunt’s is from her, and she will try to attack you by getting round me. Then in the night I shall catch her, with a dark lantern, ransacking my dressing-bag, because she will think I have the document concealed in it. There, Maurice!”
“If you must make up these idiotic things, you might as well try to put just a touch of probability into them.”
“Probability! Why, it’s all but certainty. Of course, she’s not a professional spy. She is some one of very high rank who has got herself into the power of the Scythian Government, either by gambling or by being mixed up in political movements. That explains why, with all her anxiety for our acquaintance, she was determined to keep me in my place. Don’t you know how gratified a City lady feels when she has been presented to Royalty at a bazaar? She tells all her friends how affable the dear Princess was, but that no one would dream of taking a liberty with her. I don’t in the least want to take liberties with Miss Edith Emily Smith, but she is afraid I might, and so she adopts this superior tone. Oh, Maurice, if she only knew! Isn’t it perfectly lovely to think of?”
“The waiter has been watching despairingly for your plate for some time,” said Maurice. “When you have quite finished, I shall be glad to go and get a smoke.”
“And you are to be sure and make friends with the King’s messenger, mind,” said Zoe, hastily finishing her dessert; but Maurice replied darkly, as he turned towards the smoking-car, that he would not promise.
Returning to her own compartment, not without a secret intention of glancing in at Mrs and Miss Smith as she passed, Zoe had a narrow escape of falling headlong over a travelling-bag which the younger lady, with reckless disregard for the safety of the public, was thrusting out into the corridor. The offender was profuse in her apologies.
“Oh, how careless I am!” she cried. “You might have hurt yourself seriously. I should never have forgiven myself if my negligence had injured you, of all people.”
“Your malignity, rather, for it’s quite clear you did it on purpose,” was Zoe’s mental comment. “Why am I so much more precious than all the other people on board?” she asked.
“Oh, because——” with arch hesitation—“because of that mistake about our names, you know, and because you and I are the only young girls in the train. Certainly we ought to help one another.”
“I should say you needed about as little help as any person I know. And you needn’t try to flirt withme!” thought the unbelieving Zoe. “How could I help you?” she inquired aloud.
“Oh, come and talk to me a little. My aunt is always sleeping. I feel idle. All the people in the train have some acquaintance, some occupation, except ourselves”—she indicated the slumbering Mrs Smith and herself. “Even you are doubtless travelling for the sake of the business of your respectable brother? Oh!” as she caught the shadow of a smile on Zoe’s face, “is that bad English? Now you see what help you can give me in teaching me to speak my own language.”
“Oh, we have no business to see to; we are only out on a spree—if you know that word?” said Zoe wickedly. “My brother has just done with college, and we felt he deserved a holiday. If we have any business, it’s mine—looking for local colour. You know what that is—the stuff which you have to put into a book if you’re writing it, but which you always skip in reading it? Everybody that knows about my writing is always saying, ‘Oh, you must travel. It will enlarge your mind so much, and think of the local colour you will gain!’ I have note-books crammed full of local colour, only waiting for the stories which are to bring it in, and the worst of it is that when I do write anything, I am always so frightfully interested in the people that the local colour gets crowded out.”
Miss Smith looked somewhat bewildered by this fragment of literary autobiography. “Then you are an author—a Bohemian?” she said, with a distinct touch of disapproval.
“An author? Well, in a sort of way—a very humble way at present. But a Bohemian—oh, no! I only wish I was! Who ever heard such a stolid, steady-going name as Smith associated with Bohemianism?—— I knew it! I knew her name wasn’t Smith!” she told herself delightedly, noticing that the other girl did not wince.
“And I have not even the excuse of looking for local colour!” remarked the self-styled Miss Smith. “I wanted to travel—to be really English—and I made my aunt come. She is a foreigner—you may have noticed?—and she has brought me up abroad with her.”
“I fancy you brought yourself up, wherever you were. I don’t think poor Mrs Smith had much voice in the matter,” thought Zoe. “Well, you ought to be satisfied now,” she said aloud.
“I know I ought, but do you know”—the girl bent towards her confidentially—“I am a little—almost frightened. We have never travelled unattended before, and my aunt is so nervous.”
“But why in the world didn’t you bring a maid or a courier, or both?” cried Zoe, astonished.
“That is what we ought to have done, of course, and at Therma I shall insist on our finding suitable attendants. But I was going to propose that we should join forces for the journey. If you and your brother will favour us with your society—especially at meals—we should have no fear of making disagreeable acquaintances.” She spoke with the utmost coolness, and without any of the blushing diffidence that might have been expected—almost as if the suggestion, which should surely in any case have come from her aunt, was an honour not to be declined.
“My good girl, whatisyour game?” thought the scandalised Zoe. “Is it Maurice?” with a sister’s instinctive vigilance. “If it is, you are the very coolest hand I ever saw. I don’t think you need be in the least frightened,” she said frigidly. “English ladies are not likely to be molested when there are so many Englishmen in the train.”
“What did I tell you, Eirene?” cried Mrs Smith, waking at an inopportune moment. “You have too little regard for the conventions. This young lady finds your freedom altogether shocking.”
“Edith—Emily—Irene! How many more names has she got?” was Zoe’s mental comment as she watched, rather mercilessly, the flush which rose into Miss Smith’s face.
“I have requested you already to leave this matter to me,” said the young lady coldly, and the aunt collapsed. “Yes, my name is Eirene,” turning to Zoe with a radiant smile. “Spelt with an E, you know,” as Zoe’s eyes wandered to the “E. E. Smith” upon a jewel-case. “We were so anxious to be English that my aunt has been trying to call me by a real English name, but it is no use. I hope you will call me Eirene in future. And you will relieve my curiosity by telling me your name? Z is such a strange initial, and I saw it upon your bag.”
“My name is Zoe,” admitted the owner of the name reluctantly as she rose to leave the compartment.
“A Greek name, surely, like my own? Perhaps we are really distant cousins after all! Then it is settled that you and your brother join us at meals?”
“I beg your pardon, we have already made our arrangements, and secured a table that only holds two,” said the exasperated Zoe, flinging this Parthian shaft as she departed with all the dignity that the motion of the train would allow.
“What is she after?” she asked herself again as she reached her own compartment, whither Maurice had not yet returned. “Can she really be a spy? If so, I suppose the best thing will be to appear quite innocent and unsuspicious. She can’t make us tell anything we don’t want to. I must give Maurice a hint not to let her worm things out of him. The funny part is that I believe she really is frightened. Her eyes were upon every one who passed. Pardon me, that seat is engaged,” as some one pressed past her. “Oh, this is really too much!” for the intruder was Miss Smith, who sat down in Maurice’s place, gripping the arms of the seat as though she feared Zoe would eject her by force.
“I wished to tell you that they will place us at the same table at breakfast,” she said hurriedly. “The man came to ask me just as a matter of course, and I—I said, ‘Mais sans doute.’ I meant to do it, and yet—it slipped out at the moment. I am come to entreat you not to countermand the order. You can’t understand what a difference it will make to me to be allowed to travel as a member of a party—of a family.”
The wildest suspicions were seething in Zoe’s brain. What was this girl—a murderess, a Nihilist, or a thief? What designs might she not have on Maurice, on his prospects? Anxiety for him made her manner glacial. “I am sorry we cannot add to our party,” she said. “We are going to stay with friends.”
“But it is only for the journey!” cried the girl eagerly. “Once at Therma, you go your way, I mine. We do not meet again, but you will hear—yes, you will certainly hear about me, and I assure you that you won’t find me ungrateful.”
“I don’t care about your gratitude,” said Zoe bluntly. “What I want to be sure of is that you are not doing anything wrong.”