CHAPTER XII. INARIME.
Anybody whose travels have led him to the Hellenic shores, knows too well that the old classic beauty is almost extinct. But not quite. Here and there, on the islands of the Archipelago, he may chance upon a face that looks at him out of the other centuries,—stamped with the grandeur of an unforgotten race in protest against a physical deterioration that gives it the melancholy charm of isolation. This vision is rare, but once seen it is beheld with breathless wonder. There is nothing to compare with it. Other European types of beauty sink beside it, as do Italian melodies beside a bar of Beethoven. It is as if over a gray landscape the scarlet dawn broke suddenly, showing an unhoped-for reality in glowing tints and soft lines no imagination can picture.
Lit by the strong sunshine, with the faintest grave smile round her lovely lips, as she met the puzzled glance of her father, Inarime looked as if she sprang direct from the Immortals.
Something like her face the student dreams of, when he muses over the great Dead. The small dusky head, its blue-black hair, softening to a tawny sheen at the brows; the olive cheek as smooth as satin, almost colourless except where it gathers the bloom of the tea-rose, or of a shell held to the light. The full firm curves of the mouth, rather grave than gay, but ineffably sweet, with paler lips than those of the North; the delicate nose coming down straight from the forehead: the low arch of the eyebrows, and the curves of the chin that show no weakness. These details much contributed to the charm of the whole. But its greatest beauty were the unfathomable eyes—of a deep brown with an outer ring, which in any joyous mood gave them the gleam of amber, while sorrow or deep emotion darkened them to the luster of agate. She wore a dress of dull gold, with a bronze velvet collar and cuffs. The front of the bodice was trimmed with large bronze buttons. It was not a dress which Mademoiselle Veritassi would have worn, but then, on the other hand, it was not a dress that Mademoiselle Veritassi could have worn. Dowdy it was not, but strange, and looked as if it had grown upon the young, firm, and supple form it clothed. Inarime had a pardonable weakness for this most suitable gown. She had worn it constantly since she had selected it from the merchant who brought the stuff from Syra, with other splendid materials for the women and young persons of Tenos, and the dressmaker, who had studied her art in that same elegant centre, had made it for her. Indeed, she had never a variety of gowns, nor did she seem to miss this source of happiness. Round her neck hung suspended by a thin gold chain a little Byzantine cross, a relic of her mother, and her abundant hair was gathered into a thick coil with a long golden pin. It may seem strange that I should insist upon these trivial matters, seeing it is generally considered that young girls should be thus adorned, but it is not so in Tenos, and the artistic delight Inarime could not have failed to take in her own beauty, apart from any silly vanity, and with no desire to please the eye of others, is a very singular deviation from the custom of Greek girls.
“Have you been waiting for me ever since, father?” she asked. A still more curious fact, she did not speak the insular dialect, but pure Athenian, with a faultless accent.
“Yes, my dear,” said Pericles, addressing her in the same language, though he had spoken good Teniote to Annunziata. “It is well that you have come now. I think, my dear, it will be better for you to spend a few days with your aunt at Mousoulou, and it has occurred to me that you might go there this afternoon.”
“But, why? I have no desire to go to Mousoulou,” protested Inarime.
“Well, if you would just please me in this matter, I cannot tell you how grateful I should be to you, Inarime,” said her father, who always treated her as an equal. For this young creature was to him more son than daughter, since he had brought her up in a masculine fashion, in the matter of education and training.
“It is strange, father, that you should turn capricious and mysterious, but I will obey you in this as in all else,” she said, with an exquisite gravity which likened her more than ever to a young goddess.
She was standing close to him now; and he got up, placed his hands upon her shoulders, and looked earnestly into her eyes.
“It is no more than I might expect of you, Inarime” he said.
There was a dignity, a restraint about the relations of these two that was very striking. Perhaps Pericles affected the manner and bearing of the Ancients, with whom he exclusively communed, and perhaps Inarime had ostentatiously caught this trick from him. Laughter with them was as rare as anger, and both held their pulses in complete subjection.
Something of Inarime’s life,—while that lucky young man, known in Greece as “the man of confidence,” who can be trusted to act as knight to a lady, is leading her mule to the distant village of Mousoulou, and while Gustav Reineke, on the “Iris,” is speeding towards the shores of Tenos. This life is simple enough: unemotional, unanalysable; an eager student from youngest years, the sole companion of a sage who lived in the past. But Inarime enjoyed a local reputation that carried the mind back to antique or mediæval days. The equilibrium of Europe was not likely to be disturbed by it, but the peace of the island most certainly was. All things we know are relative, and it is possible the unknown and unsought conquests of Inarime would have been far enough from causing any excitement to a London sylph. But besides Inarime’s influence and reputation, extending over four mayoralties and sixty-two villages, with a list of suitors headed by a bachelor mayor and the two unmarried deputies, and including every single man and youth of the island, the London sylph will be seen to play a small and insignificant part in her own distinguished circle. She would probably turn up her patrician nose at the addresses of a shepherd and a barbaric demarch. But then the shepherd and the demarch would care as little about her.
Despite their inherited and undisguised contempt for women, the sons of Hellas have sense and taste enough to know the value of an antique head on live young shoulders. It was now nearly two years since the mountaineers, meeting on the rocky pathways that scale the crags and precipices and fringe the torrent-beds, began to ask why Selaka delayed to choose a son-in-law. Each man regarded himself as the only proper choice. And down in the cafés the townsfolk and fishermen wanted an answer to the same question. As a set-off against this suspense, there was the satisfactory knowledge that Selaka’s choice would find it no easy matter to bring home his bride. Indeed, a few young bloods, like Thomaso, the Mayor’s nephew, a quarrelsome fellow given to an undue consumption of raki, and Petrus Vitalis, whose father’s recent death left him the proud proprietor of three Caiques, openly spoke of abduction. Constantine Selaka was aware of all this, and was extremely anxious that Pericles should select a son-in-law from among his Athenian friends. Choice and preliminaries should, of course, be a matter of strict secrecy, as a preventive of warlike explosion, for he knew that Inarime’s suitors would prove as little amenable to reason and fair play as the graceless suitors of the unfortunate Penelope.
And if, by delay, his niece should be carried off by the desperate Thomaso or Petrus Vitalis, clack! Good-bye to the Athenian nephew-in-law.
“Idiots! how dare they aspire to her?” Pericles exclaimed, whenever such unsuitable proposal reached him.
“Well, Pericles, you must marry her to somebody, and you can’t expect a Phœbus Apollo, with the classics on the tip of his tongue. You would find him inconvenient enough,” the less exacting Constantine would explain.
“Leave Apollos, though I would have no objection if one were to be had. But do you seriously expect me to marry a girl like Inarime, as lovely as Artemis, as learned and wise as Athena, to a clown? A fellow who gets up at two of a summer morning to shoot inoffensive birds, and gets drunk upon abominable raki while prating in vile Romanic about politics and the Lord knows what, of which he understands nothing!”
“No, but there is Vitalis, the ‘member,’ who wants her.”
“May the devil sit upon his moustaches for a vulgar blustering fool!” exclaimed the old man, forgetting Olympus. “What is your Vitalis, Constantine? A boor. An uneducated lawyer, who could not tell a verse of Euripides from one of Sophocles; doesn’t, in fact, know that either existed, and never translated a sentence of Thucydides in his life. A clown is better. At least he has a dim consciousness that he is a barbarian. Whereas the other shrunken miserable being in his ill-fitting clothes and European hat, deems himself the happiest edition of a boulevardier. Boulevardier, save the mark! France has been the ruin of us!”
“Then can’t you take Dragonnis, the other member?”
“No, I cannot. I don’t want any wretched politician for Inarime. Dragonnis is as bad as his colleague—a pair of dunderheads. My daughter will not marry a Teniote, neither will she marry a chattering, gossiping Athenian. Some day I’ll take her abroad, and give her to a scholar and a gentleman, who will see in her gifts and beauty something other than the mere decorations of an upper servant and mother of a family.”
Inarime had been the subject of disputes of this sort between the brothers ever since that memorable day when the absence of shots proclaimed to the village that a little “daughter of man,” instead of the desired “son of God,” had come to bless the house. To the friends and relatives, the intrusion of the unappreciated sex was not, however, looked upon in the light of a blessing. According to custom, people came and shook the hand of the injured father, condoling loudly with the sorrowing and disgraced mother. But when Selaka’s wife died shortly afterwards, and there was no boy on whom he could hope to bestow his knowledge and learning, the father clung to Inarime. He resolved to show the world, by his untiring labour, that a girl may develop remarkable capacity and intellect. He cared little about modern acquirements, but fed her mind exclusively upon the philosophy, poetry, and history of her great ancestors. Homer and Hesiod were the fairy tales of her childhood,—Plutarch the first book she learned to read. She was familiar with all the ancient dialects and Greek literature, from the time of Hesiod to the Alexandrian Renaissance. She was taught to choose the simplest phrasing, and yet one that was severely academical, from which all foreign interpolations of modern Greek were expunged. The old calligraphy, too, was insisted upon, and she wrote papers on the Trilogy from which an infallible University Don might have learned much. Some of these papers her delighted father contemplated sending to one of the German Universities, where he knew that the fragrance of original thought and excellent style would be more justly appreciated than in frivolous Athens. But he feared the wrench of surrender such recognition from beyond the Ægean might bring. A girl so perilously gifted might seek to plunge into the waters alone and swim in depths beyond which his dim eyes and feeble hopes could not follow. Besides, with him she was completely happy, and publicity is a misery, a fret and a constant strain upon the nerves.
Thus she grew up unconscious of solitude or of needs other than those which her surroundings supplied. As for the accomplishments which occupy the elegant leisure of European young ladies, she was hopelessly ignorant: would have been perfectly unserviceable at a suburban tea-party or a game of tennis, and the popinjays who figure in polite society would have scorned her, had they attempted to engage her in conversation suitable to a background of moonlit balcony, or in the movement of a waltz. But if she could not dance or embroider, and sing Signor Tosti’s weeping melodies, and if her brown slender hands looked as if their acquaintance with sun and air was considerably greater than with kid or Suède, she could carry a water-jar from the village fountain in an attitude that was a picture of grace, with a light swinging step that was the music of motion—and this the London sylph could not have done. Her father was strong upon the necessity for thorough gymnastic training, and she could swim and run and ride a mile like a young athlete. Even Greek boys cannot do as much, but then they are not brought up by antiquated professors, who faithfully copy the precepts of the old philosophers. Selaka, for this athletic training cultivated a strip of sanded path in his farm near the sea, with the shade of plane trees for rest. Here Inarime raced and exercised, sweeping the sanded path with flying feet, and lips parted with the joy of quick movement and the flush of health crimsoning her olive cheek.
Outside her books, her racing and riding, she had another important duty—that of general letter-writer for Xinara and the adjacent village of Lutra.