“Yes, come, lord,” said the old man hastily. “Your boat will be at the quay at nine o’clock, but you will take a little supper with me first.”
“My daughter’s bridegroom will sup here,” said Prince Christodoridi, but Armitage shook his head.
“I take no food under this roof until my wedding-feast, lord,” he replied, and for once Prince Christodoridi’s fierce eyes sank abashed. His hospitality had been slighted, and he could not resent it. Armitage bade good-night to him and to his friends with marked formality, and took the arm of Kyrios Parthenios as they went out of the gate. “There are some things that are too much for flesh and blood,” he said. “The Despot has treated that poor girl and me infamously, and I won’t break bread in his house until I can do it with her.”
“You have indeed been hardly used, friend, yet for my goddaughter’s sake I could wish you had taken the cue I gave you. I would most heartily have supported you in standing out for a dowry, for when it is known that she was married without one, it will give grievous occasion to evil tongues to——”
“But it mustn’t become known!” cried Armitage. “Oh, hang it! this will never do. You must put me up to every possible mark of honour I can show her, so that no one may ever guess.”
The peacemaker’s brow cleared. “Indeed, friend Milordo, I should have known that your heart was as noble as your name. If the usual presents are given——”
“Yes, of course. There is a silk gown for the wedding, isn’t there?”
“That is very important. And if you were disposed to be munificent, I know of a piece of silk the like of which I have rarely seen in all my voyages. The man who owns it fears to offer it for sale, lest the Despot should force him to accept a price lower than what he gave for it, but I can settle the matter with him in secret.”
“Secure it for me to-night if you can. And the bride’s mother ought to have something handsome, I believe?”
“Ah, lord, Kyria Xantippe would kiss your feet if you gave her a gold watch! The young man Narkissos brought her a chain, but she has nothing to wear at the end of it.”
“She shall have the best that can be got at such short notice. And if there is anything else you think of—presents for Danaë’s nurse, or the servants, or anyone—get it, and send the bill to me. Now, in return, will you find me a chance of seeing my bride alone?”
“Before the wedding? It is impossible, lord!”
“It may be, theoretically, but I am certain that the other sister and her betrothed don’t find it so in practice.”
“Oh, one knows that the rules are not always strictly kept,” confessed Parthenios unwillingly. “But you and Lady Danaë are not even betrothed, lord! For the sake of the unfortunate girl herself, make no further attempt to see her at present. Have you not done harm enough yet—though I trust we may manage to avert a scandal?”
This appeal put things in a new light to Armitage, but it must be confessed that it did not keep him from trying to effect his object by enlisting Narkissos on his side. Influenced by fellow-feeling, Narkissos accepted the office of sounding Angeliké as to the possibility of bringing Danaë to speak to her suitor for five minutes, and did his part faithfully. Angeliké received the suggestion dubiously, but promised to lay it before her sister, and returned to announce with great severity of manner that Danaë was shocked by the request, and could not dream of acceding to it. Armitage was perplexed at first, but the scene in the dungeon had implanted a certain doubt of Angeliké in his mind, and he reflected sagely that it was quite possible his entreaty had never gone beyond her.
Great was the excitement in Strio on the wedding-day of the Despot’s two daughters. It detracted a little from the interest of the occasion that both the bridegrooms should be foreigners, for to the stern local patriotism of the islanders Tortolana seemed little nearer than England, but the alliances were so infinitely superior to any the island itself could have offered that regret was stifled. Narkissos, sniffing delicately at a bunch of basil, followed by his train of gaily dressed friends, would naturally have been the favourite, but Armitage, determined to do all possible honour to his bride, brought with him an escort of armed sailors from the yacht, whose smart appearance worked havoc with the hearts of the female population. So, too, Danaë easily carried off the honours as the better behaved of the brides. Custom demanded that she should appear absolutely miserable in the prospect of leaving her childhood’s home, and she embodied the ideal so faithfully that Armitage started when he saw her.
“At this rate I shall never need to hire a model for Tragedy,” he said dolefully to himself, having caught Princess Christodoridi’s proud whisper to a newly arrived matron that Danaë had eaten nothing either that day or the day before. Her hand was cold and listless when the rings were exchanged in the betrothal ceremony, and when she retired to put on the gown he had sent her in preparation for the actual marriage service, there was not a sign of triumph in her face, though she returned wearing a silk which turned every woman in the room pale with envy. Angeliké was wearing the coveted blue and citron stripes, but Danaë’s gown was crimson shot with gold, with fleeting glimpses of blue and straw-colour, green and purple, as she moved. It was the richest silk that had ever been seen in Strio, and Angeliké’s looked poor and colourless beside it. But Angeliké and her bridegroom took their part in the service with the utmost zest, going through the crowning and the feeding with bread dipped in wine, the running round the altar and the pelting with sweets, as if it was a highly enjoyable game, which was entirely contrary to etiquette, but awoke a sympathetic chord in the bystanders. While she and Narkissos were being kissed, generally on the artificial flowers of their wreaths, by as many friends as could get near them, and the younger members of the congregation were scrambling for the sweets, Danaë, finding herself and her bridegroom for the moment unobserved, turned to him and addressed him in a tragic whisper.
“Lord, you know I would not have married you if I could have helped it?”
“I was afraid I couldn’t flatter myself it was otherwise,” he replied drily. “I hope I don’t look as if I disliked it quite as much as you do?”
To his delight Danaë lifted her eyes from the floor for the first time, and looked up at him wonderingly. “Is it possible to appear happy when the heart is oppressed with misery, lord?”
“I can’t see myself, you know. Don’t you think I am doing it rather well? entirely for your sake, of course.”
“Will you do something else for me, lord?” She declined to respond to his opening, and he wondered uneasily whether she thought he had spoken in earnest.
“To the half of my kingdom, lady.”
“Well, then, let us leave Strio this evening, as soon as they have brought us to your ship.”
“That’s exactly what I was hoping to do, but I have not been able to get at you to find out whether you would like it or not,” he replied, rather puzzled.
“Whatever pleases you, lord, must now please me,” replied Danaë with great meekness, as Parthenios Chalkiadi came up and seized a hand of each to conduct them to the bridal feast. It was his duty also to remain and watch over them, to prevent their feeling shy, as he kindly explained to Armitage, and also to add to the hilarity of the occasion by exchanging jokes with Angeliké’s godfather, who was chaperoning her and Narkissos on the next divan. Inexorable custom demanded that the brides should eat nothing on this, the only public occasion at which they would sit at meat with their husbands instead of serving them and the men generally, and they were also forbidden to utter a word, or even to answer if they were addressed. A demeanour indicative of extreme woe, and gestures expressing crushed subservience to the dominion of man, were the correct thing. Having once transgressed, Danaë refused to do so again by paying the slightest heed to any remark of Armitage’s, but Kyrios Parthenios was happily able to act as his mouthpiece, conveying to her not only his commands, but such viands as she could decorously conceal under her veil, and eat when no one was looking.
After the feast came the procession down to the harbour, attended by music and singing, and youths and maidens waving boughs of myrtle. For the purposes of this wedding the houses of the bridegrooms, to which their brides ought to have been escorted, were represented by their respective boats. Danaë, as the elder sister, must of course start first, and Angeliké, who had eyed her sourly through her veil at the feast, embraced her affectionately in farewell.
“Your gown is lovely,” she whispered. “With a silk like that, I should think you hardly mind being married without a dowry, do you?”
Themusic and the shouting had died away, and the lights of Strio were growing dim across the water as the yacht headed for Therma. Armitage, released at last from the duty of making elaborate and grateful bows to his parents-in-law, which had claimed him as long as he was within sight of the shore, heard a meek miserable voice at his elbow.
“Lord, may I speak to you?”
“I hope you don’t think it necessary to ask me that?” he said, turning round quickly. “Let us sit down here.”
There were two chairs comfortably placed in a sheltered nook, and he pulled one forward for her, and arranged the cushions. Danaë took a precarious seat at the very edge of the chair, and evidently found it shaky.
“Do you mind if I sit on the ground, lord?” she asked, slipping easily to the deck. Armitage did mind very much, but took the cushions from the rejected chair.
“You must let me put these for you, then. I knew it!” to himself, as she settled herself at his feet, where she could see his face distinctly, while hers was in shadow. “Now what has my lady to ask of her servant?” as she clasped her hands together and hesitated.
“Your forgiveness, lord,” was the prompt and unexpected answer. “And it is not kind to jest with me. Is it not yours to command? Here I am at your feet, ready to obey, but if your goodness will permit me to speak——?”
Unreasonably irritated, as he himself felt, Armitage leaned forward and took her hands. She made an instinctive effort to withdraw them, but left them passive in his. “My dear Lady Danaë—” he knew it was absurd to address her thus, but could not for the life of him resolve to shock her by calling her by name—“please understand once for all that you have a perfect right to speak to me on any subject you choose, and that I shall be delighted to hear what you have to say, and to do what you wish if it is in my power.”
“You are very good, lord.” Danaë’s tone implied that his assurance was mere politeness, such as she would have expected from him in the circumstances. “You forgive me, then, for yielding to my father and mother? Truly, lord, I intended to refuse, knowing that you did not in truth desire to marry me, but had spoken only to shield me from my father’s wrath. But my sister said to me, ‘You are always talking about dying, and now if you don’t marry Milordo you will die, and he will die too;’ and I knew it was true, and I did not want to die. And you had said ‘Trust me,’ and I thought you had some plan——”
“So I had,” said Armitage quickly, “but I could not get hold of you to find out your wishes. I sent you a message——”
“I received none, lord.”
“So I imagined. Well, I thought if you did not desire the marriage, I would ask Kyrios Chalkiadi to bring you on board and come with us to Therma, where he could place you under your brother’s protection.”
“He would not have received me. It would have been no use,” she said, and he read in her tones that she thought the proposal scandalous. “But ah, lord, it was good of you to think of it!” and to his utter horror she kissed his hand. He snatched the hand away and rubbed it involuntarily on his coat, as though to rub the kiss off.
“Forgive me, lord. I did not mean to offend you,” she said, and he felt as though he had struck a child.
“It’s not that!” he cried incoherently. “My dear girl, you mustn’t think I don’t like it—I like it very much. But it isn’t the thing—for a woman to kiss a man’s hand, I mean. It ought to be the other way about.”
“Not among us, lord,” she replied, gently but firmly. “But I will try to learn the ways of your people. And this, my offending you when I desire so much to please you, makes it easier for me to say what I wished to ask. Since I am now your wife, and it would grieve me to disgrace you before the great ones of your land, will you grant me a time in which I may study the things of Europe, and learn to talk about them?”
“It sounds a good idea,” said Armitage, irresistibly amused by the businesslike way in which she spoke. “But what exactly would you wish to study?”
“Lord, I am very ignorant. I can spin and weave and sew and embroider, and cook—I made all the sweetmeats for the feast to-day—loukoumiand almond-milk and all——” she paused.
“And very good they were,” said the bridegroom heartily.
“But I know nothing of the things European ladies do. I cannot write, nor read—save a very little—I can speak neither French nor English. Ah, lord!” she clasped her hands entreatingly, “take me to the Lady Zoe, and let her teach me. Indeed I will do my best to learn from her, to learn to be like her. And when you come back in two or three years——”
“That is quite out of the question,” said Armitage, with great firmness. “A year at the very outside.”
“As you will, lord. I must learn all the harder. But truly you need not fear that the Lady Zoe’s kindness will be wasted, as when I was with her before.”
“That certainly makes the plan more promising,” said Armitage gravely. “Then when I come back, you promise that you will be exactly like the Lady Zoe?”
“Yes, lord, as far as I can,” very meekly.
“And you won’t then mind having married me?”
“Mind, lord!” The words and their tone stirred Armitage with a most unwonted thrill. He caught Danaë’s hand again.
“Danaë, why should we trouble the Lady Zoe? Come on a long cruise with me, and let me teach you.”
But Danaë knew her own practical mind far too well to encourage such foolishness. “How could you teach me, lord? I want to become a European lady for your sake.”
“It’s quite true that I can’t offer to set you the example of that,” he said, discomfited. “What is it exactly you want to do, then?”
Danaë bent forward, and rested her clasped hands on his knee. “Ah, lord, as soon as ever we land let me go to Klaustra! The sooner I begin, the sooner the year will be over,” she added, with an evident effort at sympathy which would have sounded coquettish in anyone more sophisticated.
But Armitage replied seriously. “I’m afraid we can’t quite manage that. We must pay our respects to your brother in passing through Therma. He would have reason to be very much displeased if we did not, and he will probably wish us to spend a few days with him.” There was another reason for delay which he did not care to mention to Danaë. Experience of the complications which had beset the wedding of Prince and Princess Theophanis long before warned him that the Greek ceremony in Strio was almost certainly insufficient to make their own marriage legal, and he was anxious to consult Prince Romanos and the British Consul-General on the subject. Prince Christodoridi, to whom he had endeavoured to broach the question, persisted in regarding his efforts as an attempt either to back out of his engagement, or to cast a slur on the ministry of the Orthodox Church, so that he had abandoned them in despair.
Danaë hung her head. “But, lord—you will pardon me if I speak of it—there are European ladies at Therma, and I have only Striote clothes.”
“And I like you best in them, as you know. But don’t be afraid. You shall get just what you like in the way of clothes. We shall find some one who will advise you.”
“Ah, lord, you are too good! Do I not know that it is shameful I should have to ask you for clothes on the very day of our wedding? But I could not bear that the European ladies should laugh at your wife, or I would have held my tongue, knowing—knowing——” her voice failed.
“Now who has been talking to you?” cried Armitage angrily. “No one was to know anything about it.”
“Lord, it is better I should know. Otherwise how could I have understood the depth of your goodness to me?”
“Now you really mustn’t,” he expostulated. “It really is not what you think. I—I am sure your father would gladly have given you a dowry. It was I who refused it.”
Danaë withdrew her hands from his knee. “I am sorry you thought I deserved this of you, lord.”
“Oh, you won’t understand!” cried Armitage desperately. “Our customs are different from yours. With us it is the highest compliment to be willing to marry a girl without a dowry.”
Danaë’s aggrieved attitude was slightly modified, though her silence showed that she considered the custom, however honourable to the lady, likely to be inconvenient in practice. But Armitage was evidently waiting anxiously for some remark. “I am glad you have told me this, lord,” she said, in a repressed voice. “But I am also glad that my sister told me the truth. I might—I might have asked you for money.”
“I hope you would not have had to do that in any case. Of course you will have your own allowance, which you will spend exactly as you like.”
She lifted brimming eyes to his face for a moment then, mindful of her lesson, raised the corner of his coat and pressed it to her lips. Armitage rose abruptly.
“My dear girl, you mustn’t make so much of the most ordinary things. I—I hope we shall be very happy together, I’m sure. But I don’t know that I shall be able to spare you a year at Klaustra; six months or—or three—is more likely. I shall come now and then to see how you are getting on, and if I find that the improvement in you justifies it, don’t you know—— Oh, hang it! why will you make me talk like a prig?—well, I shall take you away.”
“Yes, lord,” was the meek and sorrowful reply, and Armitage realised that he was in danger of presenting himself to his bride as a tyrant depriving her little by little of what she was looking forward to as the most absolutely blissful period of her life. He spoke hurriedly.
“You must be tired, I am sure. I hope you will find your cabin comfortable. If there is anything you want, send your maid to row the steward. If he doesn’t understand, be sure you call to me. Understand that everything and everyone on board is here entirely for your convenience.”
For once Danaë was speechless. She seemed to have offended him in some way, and yet he only loaded her with fresh courtesies. Her impulse was to cover his hand with kisses, and entreat his forgiveness afresh, but happily she restrained herself in time. Passing the lighted deckhouse, she saw something that distracted her attention.
“Surely that was Petros, leaning against the door and talking to your officer?” she asked, turning on her husband eyes full of dismay.
“Why, yes,” he answered, surprised by her agitation. “It was he who told Kyrios Chalkiadi where I was, and brought him up to get me out of the dungeon, you know, and it seems it has made the island too hot to hold him. So I could hardly refuse him a passage to Therma when he asked for it, and he wants me to intercede for him with your brother and get him to take him back.”
“No doubt my brother will listen to you, lord, but I think friend Petros would be wise if he remained in his own place as he was told,” said Danaë drily, and Armitage wondered what she meant, and reflected that he had almost everything to learn about her still.
Prince Romanos justified his brother-in-law’s expectations by insisting on the bridal pair’s paying him a visit of some weeks when they reached Therma. It is true that it proved necessary for them to be married over again at the British Consulate, but it was also true that they arrived just in the nick of time to afford at once a much-needed distraction for the inhabitants of Therma, and an opportunity of showing civility to the foreign representatives. The arrangements outlined at Klaustra by Professor Panagiotis for getting the Prince out of his difficulties had not met with all the success that their ingenuity deserved. Pannonia and Scythia were intensely dissatisfied with the respective shares assigned to them in the railway project, and particularly with the fact that the most important portion of the proposed line, that from Klaustra to Therma, carrying with it the control of the historic harbour, was withheld from their hands, though had it been entrusted to either, the sky would have been rent by the protests of the other. Now they presented Notes almost daily, sometimes separately and sometimes together, drawing attention to the totally inadequate fulfilment of the Prince’s promises, while at the same time the popular orators in the Assembly were thundering against the surrender of so large a share in Emathian commerce and communication to the alien and the enemy. Nor was the dynastic question so easy of settlement as it had appeared. When Prince Romanos boldly announced at one and the same time his marriage with the heiress of Maxim Psicha, and the fact that she had been foully murdered some months before, no amount of splendour lavished upon her tomb, or of ostentatious provision for Janni as heir to the throne, could check the torrent of talk and scandal that arose. The general belief was that, for purposes of his own, the Prince had had his wife put out of the way—a slander which was not discouraged by the agents of the aggrieved Powers. Moreover, at the same time that the people tolerated the marriage because it promised at some future date to include Illyria within the Emathian boundaries, the Powers demanded assurances from Prince Romanos that he had no intention of taking any steps in that direction, so that he was hard put to it to satisfy their pressing inquiries without fettering himself with pledges that might prove inconvenient. Therma itself was also in a disturbed state. A certain low quarter of the city had become notorious for a series of mysterious murders, the perpetrators of which invariably escaped. The victims were chiefly foreigners, of such a class that their respective countries might have been imagined to be well rid of them, but their fate afforded the means of planting one more thorn in the pillow of the unhappy ruler of Emathia.
Thus, though it would have been Armitage’s last thought to allow himself to be used to bolster up the tottering throne of Prince Romanos, this was the purpose that he and his wife served. Much against his will, he was obliged to allow himself to be appointed—in virtue of his yacht and his relationship to the Prince—an honorary Admiral of the Emathian fleet, which consisted of two or three steam-launches, intended to prevent smuggling, which they failed most signally to do. In return, wearing the uniform of his new dignity, he entertained severally the members of the Assembly, the Consular body, the heads of the army, and selected burghers of the city, on board the yacht, and delighted the populace with illuminations and a firework display. Meanwhile Danaë wore European clothes all day long, had Janni with her whenever she was not out of doors, and found herself and her husband the cynosure of every eye and the attraction at every social gathering they could manage to attend. Armitage’s boyish face and grey hair made such a piquant contrast with the splendid beauty of his wife that it only needed the discovery that Lady Armitage was a child of nature from the islands to send Therma wild about them. The wife of the new British Consul-General who had succeeded Sir Frank Francis was herself newly married, and had a soul attuned to romance. The bride and bridegroom awoke in her a reminiscence of the Saracen maiden and Gilbert à Becket, and this in turn stirred vague memories of Pocahontas and the London locality supposed to be named after her. “La belle sauvage—” could anything be more appropriate? Mrs Wildsmith appreciated her discovery too well to keep it a secret. One whisper to her dearest friend, the wife of the Pannonian representative, and the nickname was public property throughout the foreign colony in Therma. As “la belle sauvage” Danaë was fêted to her heart’s content, and never dreamed of the truth.
It was no wonder that her head was a little turned, and that the quiet and hard work of Klaustra began to look less attractive. Prince Romanos had sent urgent invitations to his Theophanis rivals to be present at the series of festivities which were to celebrate at once his sister’s marriage and the anniversary of his own election, and it would have been natural enough for the Armitages to return with the Wylies when they went back. But Princess Theophanis was ill, and her husband would not leave her, so that the visit was postponed for the present, and Danaë took full advantage of her respite. She learned to drive quite contentedly in a carriage, which had frightened her horribly at first, and to endure with equanimity the scandalous spectacle of men and women dancing together. She never tried to sit at her husband’s feet or kiss his hand nowadays; instead, she claimed little services from him, and treated him occasionally with a parade of indifference which seemed delightfully wicked to herself and secretly amused him. She ran riot in the matter of clothes. At first she was content to ask Mrs Wildsmith’s help in selecting the least startling of the terrible ready-made German monstrosities which filled the “European” shops of Therma, and to let Armitage design her evening gowns. But beautiful as these last might be to the artistic eye, they were not conspicuouslychicor “smart,” and these two qualities, as she was now aware, comprised the whole duty of woman with regard to dress. At last fortune placed it in her power to gratify her supremest aspirations after these elusive qualities. Just before a great ball at the British Consulate, the wife of the Pannonian Consul-General was obliged to go into slight mourning, and could not wear the gown she had ordered from Vindobona for the purpose. She showed Danaë the gown and lamented its cost, and Danaë, too unsophisticated to feel any delicacy in the matter, promptly offered to buy it. The sum asked staggered her, accustomed as she was to regard her allowance as boundless wealth, and in fact it allowed Mme. Melchthal a comfortable commission, but she paid it, and the coveted garment passed into her possession.
To say that she created a sensation when she appeared at the ball would be a mild term. The gown was of vivid emerald-green satin, with a cuirass of glittering sequins of the same colour. It had long hanging sleeves of gold gauze, and a fringed golden sash about the hips. On a plump, fair-haired woman like Mme. Melchthal it would have looked striking; on Danaë it was melodramatic, almost sinister. She saw the look of dismay in her husband’s eyes as she took off her cloak, and it spurred her to shock him still further. For the first time she tried to dance, which she did as badly as might have been expected, and having found a partner who spoke Greek, she talked and laughed—and both her voice and her laugh were louder than conventional custom prescribes. Prince Romanos, who held strongly to the opinion that a young dynasty could not be too careful of the strictness of its etiquette, watched her gloomily, and at length broke up the gathering at an unprecedentedly early hour by offering her his arm and leaving the ballroom, followed by Armitage and the suite. On the way home Danaë sulked undisguisedly. Her magnificent gown, the wonderful coiffure devised by the new Vindobonese maid who had superseded the old woman she had brought from Strio—with the strip of golden gauze twisted in and out of the blue-black locks—was all this to be wasted on a bare hour’s enjoyment? Arrived at the Palace, her brother escorted her punctiliously to the suite of rooms allotted to her and Armitage, and entered for a moment. Pure bravado impelled Danaë to throw off her cloak and display the offending gown again. To her intense astonishment, her husband quietly replaced it. Prince Romanos laughed, not pleasantly.
“You are beginning to see what comes of marrying a beauty of the harem!” he said. “Well, I did my best to warn you. But I do not propose to have my family made the laughing-stock of Europe. If you had been remaining here, Lady Danaë, I should have recommended your husband to engage for you some elderly lady who would have taught you to behave with the propriety in which you are totally deficient, but happily it is not necessary.”
“I wonder you don’t recommend him to beat me,” said Danaë insolently.
“If I thought there was the slightest likelihood of his doing it, you may be sure I would. But remember, however foolishly indulgent your husband may be, you owe a debt to me. You have yet to earn your life. I have the right to claim your services, and if you continue to repay me by such displays as this——”
“I don’t understand you, Prince,” said Armitage.
“One would think I was Petros,” said Danaë.
“After all, you are not so very different from Petros,” said Prince Romanos meaningly. “I hope your wife will be in a better mind in the morning, Lord Armitage. Good-night.”
Armitage escorted him to the door, and came back to find Danaë sitting with her arms upon the table. “What did he mean?” she asked, without looking at him.
“I don’t know. Your brother has been rather strange of late. Perhaps it is just as well that you will not have much opportunity of irritating him further at present, Danaë.”
“What have you and he been plotting together?” she asked.
He took no notice of the tone. “You will be glad to hear that Glafko and Princess Zoe will be here in a day or two. They were to leave Klaustra to-day, and Theophanis will follow them when the Princess is stronger.”
“You have asked them to come at once!” cried Danaë.
“You have no objection, have you? Purely as a matter of taste, wouldn’t you yourself rather be like Princess Zoe than Madame Melchthal?”
“You want to shut me up where I shall see nobody!”
“But surely going to Klaustra was your own idea? I wrote to Princess Zoe by your request, but if you would rather not pay the visit just at present I am sure you will be able to arrange things with her, and we will go for a cruise first.”
“But you have made this new arrangement without letting me know. You are determined to take me away from Therma and all my friends—do you think I don’t see that? Why didn’t you tell me what you meant to do? Have I ever disobeyed you?”
“I have never requested you to do anything that you have refused.” Armitage evaded the point politely. “But as to my wishes——”
“Oh, you are like all husbands!” Danaë caught a twinkle in her husband’s eye at the suggestion of her vast experience of matrimony, and qualified her words hastily. “Dearest Koralie says they are all alike—grumbling if one gets a single good gown. Now if this”—she flung out her train—“had cost only a few drachmæ, you would have been charmed with it.”
“I can’t imagine that I could have disliked it in that case more than I do now, but I assure you I should have objected to it quite as much.”
“Yes, and I know why. Husbands are all like that—sweetest Koralie says—they are angry and make a fuss at once if anyone even looks at you.”
“Then I think I have shown remarkable self-control this evening,” said Armitage imperturbably.
“I suppose you will tell me next that you don’t want to see me smart andchicand European?” There were tears in Danaë’s voice as she sprang up and displayed her stately figure in all its bravery, but her husband remained irresponsive.
“You can hardly expect me to prefer you as you are now to the girl who sat on deck with me on the night of our wedding?”
This was the climax. She could not succeed in making him angry, but such a proof of irremediable bad taste destroyed the last remnants of Danaë’s temper. She snatched up a large pair of scissors from the table—she had been cutting pictures from a Vindobona fashion-paper before going to dress for the ball—and deliberately slashed a long jagged rent in the front of the green satin skirt.
“Now I hope you are pleased!” she cried. “I can never wear it again!” and bursting into stormy sobs she rushed away and into her own room. Ordering her maid out in a voice which made the insulted menial vow mutely to give notice at the first moment when her mistress looked less capable of stabbing her on the spot, she slammed and locked the door, and throwing herself on the bed, sobbed and raged half the night.
Passingin the morning through the room which had been the scene of the quarrel of the night before, Armitage saw what looked like a heap of many-coloured silk on one of the lounges. Coming closer, he found that it was Danaë, fast asleep, and as he paused near her she woke.
“I was waiting for you, and I fell asleep,” she said, looking at him in a dazed way. Then she recollected herself, and slipped suddenly from the sofa. “Lord, grant me your forgiveness.” She was on her knees before him, trying to raise his foot and put it on her head, but he was happily able to prevent this.
“My dear girl, do get up!” he said anxiously. “I am not angry with you.”
“Then you ought to be,” replied Danaë’s muffled voice. “I shall stay here until you have forgiven me.”
“I forgive you fully and freely. Let me help you up.” But Danaë had sprung up without the help of the offered hand, and stood before him, evidently awaiting comment on her appearance. She was in her Striote dress again, the long close coat and plain skirt made of the silk he had sent her for the wedding, the gauze vest above and the embroidered apron below united by the voluminous girdle, and her hair, no longer waved and puffed, had returned to its two thick plaits, one unfortunately still a good deal shorter than the other.
“Lord,” she said softly, “it is the girl who sat at your feet that night on deck.”
“So I see, and I can’t tell you how glad I am.”
Danaë’s eyes shone. “I gave the Vindobona gown to Toni, and told her to burn it,” she said proudly.
“She will hardly do that, but I think you may be sure you will never see it again,” was the dry reply. “And now, what about breakfast? You know I like you better in that dress than anything, but shall you have time to change? As we start so early for the review——”
“I am going to wear it all day,” said Danaë decidedly.
“That’s all right for me, but will your brother like it?”
“It is no concern of his. I wear it to punish myself. Unless you would rather I cut off my hair?”
“I forbid you to lay a finger on it.” He forbore to suggest that it was not very flattering to him to wear his gift as a punishment. “Come along, then.”
Danaë tucked her arm in his—an action not at all in keeping with her dress—and they went merrily to breakfast, Armitage bemoaning his day’s fate.
“I wish I could have driven with you,” he said, “instead of making a guy of myself on horseback. I shall look a regular horse-marine—worse even than Wylie in yachting-clothes. And you will be all alone.”
“I shall take my Jannaki. Think how he will enjoy the soldiers and the horses! I meant to invite Koralie Melchthal into the carriage with me, but now I shall have no more to do with her. She gives bad advice.”
“Well, don’t drop her too suddenly, and hurt her feelings,” said Armitage, amused by the thoroughness of this reformation. “Her husband may make an international affair of it if you do.”
Breakfast had to be cut short that morning, for a servant came to say that the Prince was preparing to start. Danaë went with her husband to the portico to see him mount, and her brother smiled grimly when he perceived her costume.
“Your husband has known how to punish you after all, I see!” he said.
“Yes, it is my punishment,” said Danaë, looking at him with guileless eyes. If Armitage would not uphold his own marital dignity, his wife would do it for him. They rode away, with aides-de-camp and guards, and Danaë’s carriage, with her own particular escort, drew up. She was to be attended also by Petros, who had been allowed without much difficulty to slip back into his old post of confidential servant to Prince Romanos, and Janni and his nurse would go in the carriage with her. But here disappointment was awaiting her, for the nurse, an autocrat whom Danaë, greatly to her disgust, was forced to conciliate at every turn, sent down a message to say that Prince John had a bad cold this morning, and it would not be safe for him to drive in an open carriage. A little earlier Danaë would have gone straight to the nursery and fetched away her nephew by force, but she was beginning to understand now the relative importance of herself and the nurse in the household, and submitted to the fiat. Petros came forward to help her into the carriage, and as he did so, muttered a few words.
“There was another of those murders in the city last night, my lady.”
Danaë paused with her foot on the step. “But what has that to do with me?” she asked.
“How can I tell, lady? Only, when the news was brought to the Lord Romanos this morning, he unlocked his private desk and took out a paper, and crossed out something that was written upon it. I had seen him do the same the last time, so to-day I placed myself where I could see the paper. There were a number of short lines of writing upon it, all crossed out but two, and one of these was at the foot of the paper, away from the rest.”
“Well?” said Danaë impatiently.
“Lady mine, those who have died in this way were all members of the band whose help I hired in the matter of the death of the Lady. He who died last night was the last of them save myself.”
“I can’t imagine what you are driving at, friend Petraki!” said Danaë.
“So be it, lady. But what if the two names still on the paper are yours and mine? And why should yours be written separately from mine and placed by itself?”
“I really have not the slightest idea,” said Danaë, her patience at an end. “You were never satisfied until the Lord Romanos took you back into his service, though he warned you not to return, and now I suppose you mean that he is trying to murder you. If he intended your death, would he leave himself in your power night and day?”
Petros retired muttering, and climbed to his seat on the box of the carriage. For the moment Danaë was fully occupied with kissing her hand to the forsaken Janni at his nursery window, but when he was out of sight the hints of Petros returned to her mind with unpleasant significance, fitting in as they did with her brother’s words of the night before. Had she earned her life, or not? and if she had not, what further service might Prince Romanos demand of her as its price in the future? But her carriage and escort swept gallantly into the great parade-ground, bright with colours and uniforms, and all dark forebodings were put to flight for the moment. Her station was just behind the saluting-point, at which her husband and brother had already taken their places, and to right and left of her extended a long crescent of other carriages, containing on the one side the foreign representatives, and on the other the Emathian Government officials and their wives. Nearest of the latter was an unpretentious victoria conveying Professor and Madame Panagiotis. Though the Professor held no office in the ministry, yet his long efforts to achieve the independence of Emathia, and the varied diplomatic experience they had entailed, made him unofficial adviser-in-chief to every Emathian government, and mainstay of the throne. On the other side Koralie Melchthal’s carriage was the nearest. It was clear that she interpreted the meaning of Danaë’s costume as Prince Romanos had done, for she bent forward with her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed in an expression of intensest sympathy with a fellow-sufferer under the tyranny of unreasonable man. It afforded her ungrateful friend considerable pleasure to repay her with the coolest bow at her command.
The review was a splendid sight to Danaë, though the representatives of the great military Powers regarded it as of little more importance than a battle of toy soldiers. Emathia was in process of educating her own officers, but at present she was obliged to rely on foreigners and on Emathians who had served in other armies. A body of Wylie’s police from Klaustra were received with much approval by the experts, and Danaë gathered that their workmanlike equipment was considered better value for the money spent than the more elaborate uniforms of the regular troops. But the latter made unquestionably the more showy figure on the parade-ground, and Prince Romanos himself was a gallant sight as he took the salute. Armitage, on horseback in his admiral’s uniform, afforded an unpremeditated touch of comedy that caused the foreign representatives the keenest pleasure, and everyone was asking why he had not mounted the yacht’s crew and brought them to add to the apparent strength of the Emathian forces.
Just recently Prince Romanos had devised an improvement in artillery transport, and the new method and the old were to be shown in juxtaposition, that the connoisseurs might give their opinion. Gun-carriages, limbers and waggons were careering about the parade-ground, apparently bent upon mutual destruction and evading it only by a series of miracles, when the Prince called up Petros, who was waiting close behind him, and entrusted him with a message to an officer at the opposite side of the ground. Petros measured the distance across with his eye, and hesitated.
“What!” cried his master loudly. “Afraid of being run over, most valiant Petros? Must I seek another messenger?”
The aides-de-camp pressed forward eagerly, but Prince Romanos waited, with his eyes fixed on Petros. “I really think you had better not take it, friend Petraki,” he said, in a tone of good-humoured raillery. “You will fall through sheer fright, and blame me for your misfortunes.” Petros gave him a glance of helpless hatred, like that of a savage animal in a trap, and fairly tore the paper from his hand, then started to run across the ground. The incident had attracted attention, and all eyes were fixed upon him as he ran. He held on until he was about halfway across, and then found himself the apparent goal of four separate teams, racing for him from as many different directions. He lost his head, turned, and ran back towards his master, pursued by one of the galloping guns, and welcomed by a shout of universal laughter. The sound seemed to madden him, and as, with eyes starting from his head, he reached the saluting-point and clutched the flagstaff for support, he flung defiance at Prince Romanos.
“That was your intention, then, my Prince—to kill me as you have killed those others! I know what orders you gave the drivers. There would have been an accident, and you would be rid of me. But if I go, you go too.”
Before anyone realised what was in his mind, while all were craning forward to catch the shouted words, he loosed his hold of the flagstaff and flung himself at the Prince, his long dagger gleaming in his hand. There was a moment’s wild confusion. Danaë, standing up in her carriage and gripping the rail convulsively, heard a pistol-shot, but did not realise that Petros had fired at her, and that Armitage had thrown himself between them, until she saw her husband fall. A fusillade from the revolvers of the aides-de-camp drowned the sound of a second shot, as the madman turned his pistol upon himself.
All was tumult, as people left their carriages and crowded to the spot where the aides-de-camp were keeping a space clear round the three fallen men. Professor Panagiotis was in the midst, and Danaë, seeing his fine white head towering above the throng, fairly fought her way through to him. He was giving orders rapidly, but paused to reassure her.
“Yes, lady, yes; look after your husband while the surgeons are busy with his Highness. Milordo is not much hurt, and one of the doctors will be at your service in a moment. Yes, the miscreant is dead.”
An aide-de-camp moved aside, and Danaë was inside the ring. Two or three surgeons were kneeling round Prince Romanos, and a sailor, one of the yacht’s crew, who had evidently been among the crowd of spectators, was supporting Armitage’s head. He spoke little Greek, but Danaë gathered that he expected her to faint at the sight of blood, and was trying to assure her that her husband was not dead. But the daughter of the Christodoridi did not come of a fighting race for nothing. She examined the wound quite coolly, and to her intense relief found that though Armitage was unconscious, and had lost a good deal of blood, the bullet seemed to have grazed rather than penetrated the skull. With the sailor’s help she tied up the wound roughly, and then became aware that the crowd was growing less dense. The aides-de-camp had mounted again, and were riding among the excited people. “His Highness was not dangerously hurt, but the doctors considered it advisable that he should return to the Palace at once. To his great regret, therefore, the review must conclude at this point.” After this plain intimation the spectators could hardly refuse to disperse, the foreign representatives setting the example. One of the surgeons had been prevailed upon by this time to tear himself from the side of Prince Romanos, and Danaë was helping him to strap up her husband’s head, when she found herself addressed by the Professor.
“Lady, the doctors think it best to take his Highness to the Palace in your carriage, rather than wait while another is fetched. It shall return for you immediately.”
“But let it take Milordo as well!” she cried indignantly.
“It is impossible, lady. Two of the surgeons and I myself must accompany the Prince. My wife, with her admirable common-sense, has already driven off to see that everything is prepared for his Highness’s arrival, or I would have ventured to offer you her carriage. But you shall be sent for at once.”
The Professor seemed anxious and perturbed, though not unduly so, and Danaë could not wonder at his preoccupation when she saw her brother carried past, evidently only half conscious, his white lips murmuring something about a paper, and his hands wandering on the folds of the cloak that was thrown over him. But her present concern was entirely with Armitage, and until his wound had been properly dressed she had no thought to spare for anyone else. When it was done she looked up to find the British Consul-General standing beside her. The other foreign representatives had departed long ago, Herr Melchthal, whose wife was in violent hysterics, leading the way as senior member of the diplomatic body, but Mrs Wildsmith was still standing beside her carriage in the distance.
“My wife asks me to take the liberty of offering you our carriage, Lady Armitage,” said the Consul.
“She is very good,” said Danaë, “but mine will return in a moment.”
“Then will you permit us to remain with you till it comes?”
“But I am not frightened,” she said, astonished. “The doctor is here, and the escort.”
“Yes, the escort is here, certainly,” said Mr Wildsmith, in a voice of so much significance that Danaë looked round. Men and officers were gathered in little groups, talking eagerly, with no appearance of being on duty. “I would not trust them overmuch,” he added.
“But what has happened?” cried Danaë.
“Surely it is evident that there must have been a plot of some sort? The wretched man who attempted the Prince’s life is bound to have had accomplices——”
“Oh no, there was nothing of that kind. I knew him well. It was a private grudge. Please don’t let me keep you here. Really I would rather be left.”
“As you please. But remember that Lord Armitage and yourself, as British subjects, have a right to protection at the Consulate. If you find yourselves in danger, night or day, come or send to me at once.”
“You are very kind,” she repeated, in a bewildered voice, as he bowed and walked away. When the carriage had driven off, she became sensible of a great loneliness, for the surgeon departed also, to find a stretcher, as he said. The parade-ground seemed very large, the talking troopers incredibly distant, Armitage, still senseless at her feet, might have been in a different world. The sailor, who was still supporting him, growled something which she understood to be uncomplimentary to the escort, and the words seemed to clear her brain. Undoubtedly the cavalry were behaving scandalously, and must be recalled immediately to a sense of duty, and by her.
“Don’t leave him!” she said to the sailor, and receiving his gruff assurance, walked across the ravaged grass towards the troopers. As she neared them, she became aware that there were many more present than the twenty-five men who had accompanied her from the Palace—two hundred at least. They must have remained on the ground without orders when the review abruptly ended, and two or three officers of superior rank were haranguing group after group. It was too late to retreat now, and she marched boldly up to the nearest group.
“Have the goodness to detail four of your men to carry my husband to the Palace at once, Colonel, and a sufficient escort for his protection,” she said sharply.
The Colonel, a foreigner who in his day had served under many flags, looked at her with contemptuous amusement. “And who may the lady be who gives her orders so coolly?” he asked.
“The sister of your Prince,” she answered, the sonorous Greek flowing clearly from her lips. The soldiers were crowding round them now, and she had a feeling that events of importance depended upon the duel of words.
“A fine hostage for us, then!” He swooped from the saddle with extended arm, in the evident intention of seizing her and carrying her off. But Danaë had been watching for just such a movement, with the intuition which had descended to her from many generations born and bred in the midst of alarms. She swerved swiftly and suddenly, and he overbalanced himself and came to the ground, to the accompaniment of a chorus of smothered laughter. The sound thrilled Danaë. These men were still to be held for her brother, if she could seize the moment. Before the Colonel could pick himself up, her foot was in his stirrup, and in some miraculous way she scrambled into the saddle.
“Retire to your quarters, sir, and consider yourself under arrest!” she gasped to her discomfited antagonist.
“And to whom am I to have the honour of surrendering my sword, lady?” he asked, with a wink to a colleague.
“To me, sir. The belt as well, if you please. Be good enough to hold my horse,” to a young officer who chanced to be near her, and then and there she buckled on her foe’s sword, with the utmost deliberation. The operation finished to her satisfaction, she looked round at the ring of curious faces. “Gentlemen, your late Colonel was a traitor. I will now lead you myself.”
“Long live the lady colonel!” cried the youth who had held her horse, and who evidently found the new development interesting, and the men took up the cry with hearty amusement. The late Colonel, as was only to be expected, was less pleased.
“Oblige me by getting off my horse, lady. This farce has lasted long enough.” Danaë’s hand stole out behind her towards the helpful youth, and he grasped her meaning instinctively. The Colonel, with his hand outstretched to drag her from the saddle, recoiled from the revolver that almost touched his forehead.
“I should be sorry to end the farce for you on the spot, sir,” said his supplanter; “but if I am forced—— Dismount one of your men, and place the late Colonel under guard,” she said to her helper.
“If any man dares to lay a finger on me——!” blustered the Colonel.
“Place the late Colonel under guard,” repeated Danaë inexorably, and during the undignified rough-and-tumble struggle that ensued she thought hard, sitting motionless on her horse, like Bellona presiding over a scene of carnage. When the fight was over, and her predecessor, in a very damaged condition, was safely secured, she advanced a step.
“Are all here faithful to Prince Romanos and their military oath?” she asked loudly.
“All of us, lady!” was the cry.
“It is well, for had there been any other traitor, I would have shot him with my own hand. Lieutenant, be good enough to go to the Arsenal, and desire the Director in my name to close the gates and not open them without orders from me. Then go to your own barracks, and bring me the keys of the magazine and armoury. Do the same at the other barracks. You will find me at the Palace.”
“Am I to leave you alone, lady?” he asked in a low voice.
Danaë looked round proudly. “I have two hundred swords of my own regiment to guard me,” she said, so that all could hear, and the swords leaped from their scabbards to the salute. A grey-haired sergeant close at hand plucked off his fur cap.
“The Colonel must wear our kalpak,” he said, and Danaë put it on and fastened the chin-strap. The soldiers shouted with delight, but her messenger still lingered.
“Would not a written order be safer, my lady?”
“I have not time to write,” said Danaë hastily, unwilling to confess the deficiencies of her education. “See, take this as a token.” With a pang she took off her wedding-ring and handed it to him. It was all she had. With instinctive chivalry he kissed it.
“The regiment is at the feet of the Lady Danaë and her husband,” he said, and rode away. Danaë surveyed her troops helplessly. They were all mixed up, and she did not know how to get them straight. With a sudden inspiration, she turned to the old sergeant. “Sergeant, I must take Milordo to the Palace at once, but I want the regiment to escort me—in proper order.”
The expedient succeeded. Two or three hoarse shouts, and the mob resolved itself into ranks as if by magic. Four men dismounted, and unrolling their cloaks, made a rough-and-ready litter. Under the vigorous superintendence of the sailor, Armitage was lifted and placed on it, and the cavalcade started for the Palace. Before they could reach it, a carriage with a lady in it appeared, driving to meet them, and Danaë recognised Madame Panagiotis, who stopped the carriage and came to speak to her. The Professor’s wife was a German lady of great propriety, and even at this crisis she managed to get in a glance of disapproval at Danaë on the Colonel’s saddle before she spoke.
“Lady, you must pardon us for not sending the carriage before, but his Highness was seized with another violent effusion of blood, and all our thoughts were for him.”
“But he is not dying?” cried Danaë.
Madame Panagiotis blinked violently. “No, lady, far from it. His Highness is doing very well. He asked for his son—” why should he want Janni now? Danaë asked herself stupidly—“and inquired after your husband. Then he called for a paper from his desk, and displayed so much excitement that it was thought better to humour him. When it was brought he seemed satisfied, and consented to rest.”
Then Petros was right, and the paper contained his death-warrant—and possibly Danaë’s.
Thecold eyes fixed upon her recalled Danaë to the present. If her own brother had doomed her to death for the wrong done in her days of ignorance, this foreign woman should see no fear in her. She summoned her innate courage and her acquired politeness to her aid.
“Welcome is the messenger who bears good news!” she said. “Truly, lady, it was good of you to bring the carriage yourself for my husband. Now we can take him to the Palace in more comfort.”
She beckoned to the men who were carrying Armitage, but as they approached the carriage, before she could slip from her saddle, Madame Panagiotis stopped her.
“Lady, may I entreat you not to dismount? There is work to be done before you return to the Palace.”
“What work could prevent me from taking care of my husband?” asked Danaë in astonishment. “You can’t mean that I should keep him here?”
“My husband bade me ask you to leave Milordo to my care, lady, and save Emathia for your brother.”
Danaë stared at her. “But Emathia is in no danger!”
“We thought it lost until you brought back the cavalry to their allegiance a few minutes ago, lady. Now it is for you to finish your work, if you will.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Danaë mechanically, as she watched the soldiers making Armitage as comfortable as they could in the carriage. He was regaining a measure of consciousness, for he smiled faintly as his eyes met hers. Madame Panagiotis laid a firm hand upon the bridle.
“Lady, you must listen, and you must play the man to-day, since your husband and brother are both helpless. There is a rising in the city.”
“Against my brother? But who——?”
“Not against your brother, but a report of his death has been spread, and the forces of disorder see their opportunity. They may be led by the agents of the Theophanis family; I do not know.”
“That is absurd,” said Danaë with decision. “No one who knows them could believe it for an instant. There must be foreign treachery at work.”
“So my husband says, lady, for the danger lies in this, that any widespread rioting, involving danger to foreign property, will bring the Powers—and especially Pannonia—down on us at once. Your brother is prostrate with weakness, and the doctors dare not excite him by informing him of the rioting. Is he to rise from his sick-bed to find himself an exile, and his son without a future?”
“No!” cried Danaë. “But what is to be done? Let Professor Panagiotis come himself and take command. I know nothing of the proper measures.”
“Lady, my husband does not dare leave the Palace. Besides the doctors, he is the only person admitted to the presence of his Highness. The mob which is making a demonstration in the Place de l’Europe Unie, and threatening the government offices, must be dispersed, and the streets patrolled, and every attempt at a gathering broken up. The duty would have fallen to Milordo had he been able to undertake it, but now you are your brother’s representative.”
“And the force at my command?” asked Danaë sharply.
“This regiment, which you have saved for his Highness, as I saw by means of the Palace telescope. The Klaustra police, since you vouch for their loyalty. And as a reserve the Guard, but that must be kept to garrison the Palace unless the necessity elsewhere is overwhelming.”
“And what support is to be expected?”
“The Ministers and officials will rally round you when they learn that the news of the Prince’s death is false. At present they are afraid of becoming marked men if they take any decisive steps. My husband is preparing two documents for his Highness’s signature at the earliest possible moment, one constituting you colonel of the cavalry regiment, the other—to be used only in case of necessity—proclaiming martial law in the city.”
“It is well. Let him telephone to the various Ministries that if the mob do not scatter, they will be dispersed by cavalry,” said Danaë resolutely. Then her eyes fell on Armitage’s white face, and her courage failed. “Lord,” she said, riding close to the side of the carriage again, “you hear that they want me to fight for my brother and Janni, when I would fain be tending you? Must I go?” She spoke in a low voice.
“Yes—if it is to save Emathia,” he answered feebly.
“I hate the wife of Panagiotis!” was the inconsequent reply. “Lord, if I must go, give me your wedding-ring. I had to use mine as a token. There was nothing else.”
Armitage took off the ring, and put it upon the finger she held out. “If I could go with you I would, but I should only hamper you,” he said. “But don’t be rash, or I shall come and fetch you.”
There were tears in Danaë’s eyes, but perceiving that this was a joke, she smiled dutifully and unwillingly. Stooping from the saddle, she caught up her husband’s hand and kissed it fiercely, then commended him by a gesture to the care of Madame Panagiotis, and turned back to her soldiers. The messenger whom she had despatched was just returning.
“Lady, it is done as you commanded, and here are the keys. But there is fighting in the city, and no orders have come to the troops or the police from the Palace.”
“The police have not given way?” cried Danaë in disgust.
“No, lady, but the chief of police fears to act without orders, and is keeping his men in reserve. His Highness’s hand has always been heavy on those who acted without his leave, and now it is said that he is dead.”
“That is not true. He is alive and doing well, and has appointed me to represent him. What is the fighting about?”
“I know not, lady, and I doubt whether the mob know themselves. Some are crying one thing and some another, but those who are threatening the Police Bureau have a red flag, and are calling out for a revolution.”
“Can you get to the Police Bureau from the back?”
“Yes, my lady; through by-lanes.”
“Then go, and tell the chief of police to march his men into the thickest of the crowd when we enter from the two opposite corners of the square. That will separate them and force them down the side streets.”
She looked round, and saw that her strategy was approved. Only one of the officers seemed to have something to suggest, and she glanced towards him.
“The machine-guns, lady?” he ventured.
“To be sure. We will fetch them,” said Danaë, but her troops were evidently waiting for a word of command. In despair, she turned to the officer who had spoken, and made a shot—happily a successful one—at his rank. “Captain, I appoint you my aide-de-camp. You will ride beside me, if you please, and transmit my words, lest my voice should not reach the men.”
A smile flitted across one or two faces, but the captain thus honoured was equal to the occasion. With a perfectly grave face he gave the necessary order, and they clattered across the parade-ground in the direction of the cavalry barracks. The machine-guns were secured, and the force increased by the addition of a number of men who had not listened to the disloyal suggestions of the former colonel, and who had been informed by the messenger of the change in the condition of affairs. The smallest possible guard was left at the barracks, for Danaë did not underrate the difficulty of the task before her. Above all things she was anxious to overawe and not to infuriate the mob. A rising put down by bloodshed would be only less disastrous, as giving an opening for foreign intervention, than a rising which was successful, and this was her reason for leaving the streets at the side of the square open.
From the barracks a messenger had been despatched to the Klaustra police ordering them to join her, and they came up now, a welcome reinforcement to her own four troops. A judicious reconnaissance through the garden of a house deserted by its panic-stricken inhabitants showed her that the time was ripe for action. The splendid square was turned into a perfect pandemonium. The new Therma had contrived to attract to itself an undue proportion of the dregs of Europe and the Levant, and these seemed to have ranged themselves with one accord under the banner of revolution. Red flags dotted the seething, shouting, gesticulating mass of people, and garden-seats and railings from the trampled flower-beds had been torn up to provide weapons, though the frequent popping of revolvers and gleam of daggers showed that the demonstrators had by no means come unarmed to the place of rendezvous. The lack of unity in the would-be revolutionists was remarkable. Each flag seemed to mark the position of a separate orator with a separate panacea for the popular woes, and such fighting as had yet taken place was merely between the advocates of opposing remedies. But while Danaë waited for the Klaustra police to come up, the mob had become more homogeneous, and there was a distinct movement towards the north end of the square, where the Legislative Chamber, the Ministry of Justice, and the Police Bureau were situated. Before rejoining her troops, Danaë cast a glance to either hand. The other Ministries at the sides of the square were all barricaded and the inmates of the few private houses had either followed their example or fled. This particular house had a broad piazza in the front, and here she took her stand, with one troop and the two machine-gun detachments as a reserve in the garden below her. The Klaustra police and another troop of her own men had been sent some little distance down the broad street which left the square at the two northern corners, with orders to prevent the mob’s re-forming, and it was now time for the two remaining troops to enter at the south-east and south-west openings, and drive their respective wedges into the crowd. Just before they appeared, the two or three terrified functionaries who had been vainly endeavouring to pacify the people from the portico of the Ministry of Justice fled panic-stricken before a shower of stones, and a handkerchief waved from the roof of the Police Bureau showed Danaë that her orders had been received and understood. One change she made in her arrangements at the last moment, even while her squadrons were entering the square. The two front gates of the garden were thrown wide open, revealing a quick-firer ready for action posted in each, with a force of soldiers standing by their horses behind it.
The first effect of the entry of the cavalry upon the scene was ludicrous rather than impressive. The mob were making so much noise themselves that they never heard the approach of the soldiers till they were actually upon them, pressing steadily on, though using only the flat of their swords, towards the centre of the square. The cries of dismay from the back had no sooner penetrated to the front of the crowd than a strong body of mounted police rode out from the courtyard of the Police Bureau, and the demonstrators showed little desire to face them. The troops were not in large numbers, and there were three roads on each side of the square down which flight was possible—who knew how long it might be so? There were one or two struggles round the red flags, here and there a soldier was struck by a revolver-bullet better aimed than its fellows, and fell from his horse, but his comrades pressed on, and the mob was broken up. That portion of it which was farthest from the police, at the back of the square, did indeed, on discovering the smallness of the forces at the command of law and order, make an attempt at a rush, which would have overwhelmed the slender line of horsemen, but Danaë flung her reserve troop upon them boldly, and they also gave way. Riding into the square with the machine-guns, she accelerated their flight, and meeting the chief of police, promised him the assistance of troops in keeping the space clear. But her own duties were not yet over, for while she was considering how many men she could spare him, two messengers reached her. One, coming from the Palace by way of the rear of the Police Bureau, carried the edict proclaiming martial law, which was put aside for use if necessary, the other brought the news of a mutiny at the cadet-school. The commandant had succeeded in keeping his pupils from actually joining the rioters, but they were encouraging them from the windows and roof, and the mob dispersed from the square was re-forming before the school.
Danaë was now becoming quite expert in dealing with crowds, and leaving the square to the police for the present, she led her troops to the neighbourhood of the cadet-school. This time the mob were expecting interference. Their nerve was shaken, and the men on the outskirts were keeping an eye open for the appearance of the soldiers. When the horses’ heads emerged from the street opposite, and the troops, in three bodies radiating fanwise, began to ride through the crowd, all the cheers and reproaches of the rebellious cadets could not induce them to face the onslaught, while the discharge of the two quick-firers, though the bullets were judiciously aimed skywards, drove the young gentlemen pell-mell from their points of vantage. Once forced from them, they had to face their commandant, but the numbers within the walls were so equally divided that when Danaë demanded admittance, the gates were not opened without a considerable scuffle. The commandant appeared alone, in great disarray, and without any formal greeting entreated her Highness to retire, and honour the school with a visit on a more propitious occasion. He could deal with his rebels himself if he was only let alone. But the situation was too serious for the risk to be run of supplying the revolutionaries with trained officers, and an idea had suggested itself to Danaë, based on the discomforts of her own first voyage from Strio. Reluctantly the commandant allowed her to enter the place, and proceeded to muster the cadets at her request. The presence of the cavalry and the quick-firers stimulated obedience, even on the part of the rebels, though some of them had to be dragged to the parade by main force, and others indulged in disloyal cries and insulting remarks. Commanded, through the aide-de-camp, to separate themselves into supporters and opponents of the existingrégime, they complied with some surprise, and an appeal to the commandant disinterred from the ranks of the loyalists only one or two whose political opinions had undergone a quick change since the collapse of the demonstration. With the thirty or forty recalcitrants ranged before her, Danaë pronounced sentence. They would proceed at once upon a disciplinary cruise, under the charge of the deputy-commandant, and would be escorted on board forthwith by the Klaustra police. The first result of the announcement was that the commandant presented his resignation on the spot, indignant that affairs should be taken out of his hands, but he was induced to withdraw it on being assured that the culprits should be restored to his jurisdiction the moment the crisis was over. Then Danaë called up the sailor, who had attached himself to one of the gun-detachments, and impressed upon him, with endless repetition to make sure that he understood, a message for the captain of the yacht. He was to get up steam at once, and sail as soon as he had received his unwilling passengers on board, and was then to cruise up and down outside the mouth of the harbour, in the roughest water he could find within sight of signals from the shore. The sailor grinned broadly when he understood the significance of the message.