CHAPTER XX. AT THE THEATRE.
Pericles carried his wounded brother to Phalerum for the period of convalescence, which an incessantly choleric spleen indefinitely prolonged. They stayed at the Grand Hotel looking upon the sanded beach, made cheerful by the café-tables and the proximity of the railway station, by which hosts of voluble Athenians were ever passing and repassing. In the afternoon they lounged amid the olive trees by the side of the hotel, athwart which the blue of sky and sea showed sharply, and drank their coffee while Constantine eagerly devoured “The Hora” and the “The Palingenesia,” ready to pounce like a hawk on its prey upon the first chance acquaintance Providence, in the shape of the half-hourly train, should send him from Athens.
Pericles sat reading one of his favourite volumes, now and then pausing to look watchfully at his daughter, and thankful in his heart to see how well she bore her sorrow. Inarime was for a time laid prostrate by Gustav’s banishment. And then youth’s elasticity rebounded with unconquered force. Like a drenched bird, she shook out her wet plumes, returned to her books, and saw that the sun was shining and that the flowers were blooming—noted it unwearily and without dismay. To recognise this much in the time of passionate absorption in self is a rapid stride towards recovery, and at such a moment new scenes and excitements of any sort work most potently.
February had set in sharp and chill when they returned to Athens, Constantine cured and spared the humiliation of seeing the town illuminated in honour of the new Mayor, Oïdas. He insisted on bringing Inarime to the ruinously expensive dressmaker, Madame Antoinette, and there she was supplied with every imaginable detail of fashionable toilet, crowned with a gorgeous red silk parasol and long embroidered Suède gloves.
Inarime, thus apparelled, stood before a cheval mirror, and placidly gazed astonishment at herself. It was impossible to deny that dress added glory to her beauty. Picturesque she had been before with a fitting background of valley and desolate mountain. Now she was a nymph of Paris in walnut-coloured silk, and a little coquettish hat tipped with feathers.
“Now you are fit to be seen in the streets of a capital, Inarime,” said Constantine, surveying her proudly. “Take her with you to Madame Jarovisky’s, Pericles.”
Pericles took her, to Madame Jarovisky’s lasting gratitude. The girl was a positive sensation. Several men stopped to congratulate her uncle next day.
“We must take her to the theatre. There is Faust on to-night. Every one likes Faust, and it will delight Inarime, while she is delighting others,” he said.
“I see no objection to the theatre, but mind, Constantine, I will not have the girl talked of. Remember what my great namesake says of women. Their glory is the silence men observe upon them.” Here he quoted the famous Oration.
“Stuff and nonsense! Your mind is addled with that folly of the Ancients. Who the deuce cares nowadays about silent virtue or the violet blushing unseen? This is the age of advertisement. Get yourself talked of, yourself, your house, your women—if not well, then by all means ill. Only get the talk. Do you imagine I have not gone about everywhere spreading the report of your learning? That is why you receive so many cards of invitation. I extolled you to the director of the German School of Archæology, and he was so impressed that he sends you a request to attend their meeting next month.”
Shame and disappointment struck scarlet Pericles’ sallow face. He thought the letter the natural result of his own recognised and merited reputation, mainly built upon a correspondence with one of the Greek professors of the University of Bonn.
“Brother,” he reproved, sternly, “it would afford me much satisfaction if you would be good enough to discontinue mentioning abroad my name and my daughter’s.”
“Then I am curious to know how you intend to dispose of that girl of yours.”
Pericles sat still, and played musingly with his finger-tips.
“I must marry her?” he interrogated, softly.
“Marry her! What in the name of all the heathen gods else would you do with her? Stick a professor’s cap on her head, and send her out to lecture to a band of curious rascals like that rash and self-opinionated young woman, Hypatia? You’d make a respectable Theon.”
“His was the easier part. But Inarime would not be unworthy, though it is the last career I should choose for her,” said Pericles, with a quaint smile.
“Exactly. You apprehend inflammable youth.”
“I desire but to see my daughter live securely in the shade of protection. There are times when I feel overwhelmed with a strange sensation—half-illness, half the simple withdrawal of vitality. Then it is that apprehensions and terror of a solitary future for that dear girl assail and completely master me. I would have her married, and yet it seems so improbable that I shall find a suitable partner, one to whom her cultured intellect would be a noble possession, to whom her beauty would be a thing of worship. There was one—alas! alas!”
“Well, that’s settled. You sent him about his business. It was a foolish thing to do. Helene thinks so, too. A Turk! Well, we don’t choose our nationality. Probably he would just as soon have been born a Greek or a German. Let that pass. Turn the lock upon your desire for culture and learning. They won’t put bread and olives into Inarime’s mouth. Money, Pericles, money is what we must look to.”
When consulted about the theatre, Inarime showed sufficient pleasure in the prospect to quiet the doubts of her anxious father.
“Come down to Antoinette, and get something pretty—very pretty,” Constantine ordered. “You are not a fool, I suppose, and can take some natural interest in your beauty.”
“I am glad that I am beautiful,” she said, gravely.
“Very well. Put on your hat, and we’ll drive at once to Antoinette,” her uncle laughed hilariously. “Oh, women!”
Conceive the efficiency of a Parisian dressmaker instructed to enhance beauty. Bedeck Inarime then according to fancy, so that the costume be both scientific and suitable.
Constantine was master upon the occasion, ordered the carriage, secured the box, and fussily did the honours to the bewildered islanders when they arrived in the little back street in which the old theatre was located. It was a most grotesque and shabby paper edifice, ugly, dirty, unstable. But it was worth the tenth-rate Italian companies who hired it, and usually left Athens, after the season, bankrupt. The men, untroubled by feminine charges, sat in the parterre, King George’s officers, of whom there are many, enjoyed the spectacle on half fees, chattering, laughing, and ostentatiously clanking their spurs and swords against the floor as they walked about between the acts. Here and there an aspiring civilian made believe to come fresh from Paris by appearing en frac, and impertinently focussed the constellation of beauty in the box lined with cheap and ragged paper, and in the last stage of dilapidation.
They were playing the waltz when the Selakas entered their box. In spite of excruciating fiddles, and tuneless and vulgar singers, it was possible to detect its intoxicating charm, and Inarime sat and listened with a pleased, abstracted expression, her elbow resting on the front of the box and her chin against her cream-gloved hand. Constantine took the seat beside her, in front, and audibly hummed the air while his quick glance roved over the house. He saw Oïdas, the Mayor, opposite in a box with his sister and his little motherless girl. They exchanged an uncordial nod, and the Mayor raised his opera-glass to inspect Inarime. He passed it to his sister, and they nodded and whispered together. The young bloods below were soon enough conscious that there was somebody in the boxes worth looking at. Many an eye was turned from the middle-aged Marguerite, whose flaxen wig inartistically exposed the black hair underneath and who wore a soiled white wrapper of uncertain length, with grass-green bows down the front.
With naïve earnestness Inarime followed the actors, listened to the melodies, and frequently turned to bespeak her father’s attention. She was acquainted with Goethe, and knew the story of Marguerite in its classic form. But this sweet and voluptuous music was quite unfamiliar to her. Of music, good or bad, she knew nothing, and had only occasionally heard a village piper piping for the Arcadians to dance. She could see that the dresses were dirty and tawdry, but the novelty of beholding a tender love-scene for the first time acted even by a stagy foolish Faust singing false, and by a cracked-voiced Marguerite in a slovenly wrapper, with wig awry, to the accompaniment of squeaking fiddles and hoarse ’cellos, brought tears of sympathy to her eyes. Her emotions were too keenly touched to allow of her remembering the necessity of wiping away her tears, and when the curtain went down, the tell-tale drops had fallen on her cheek.
“What a lovely young woman,” Agiropoulos exclaimed, as he stood with his back to the stage, and leisurely surveyed the occupants of the boxes.
“Where?” asked Rudolph, tolerantly.
“Beside the Royal Box. She is with the gallant and fiery member for Tenos.” Agiropoulos broke into laughter, and began to quote Constantine at the Odeon. “‘I’ll mangle him, murder him, riddle him with shots,’ and when it came to the point he had as much courage as a draggled hen.”
Rudolph smiled faintly. He had heard the story before, and Agiropoulos’s excessive spirits bored him. He turned round and looked straight up at the Selaka group. He saw Inarime at once, wearing an intense, almost tragic expression, as if the curtain had just gone down upon her own first love-scene; some moments elapsed before he removed his eyes from her.
Constantine went away in search of an ice for his niece, and a little distraction for himself in shape of gossip and a cigarette. He knocked against Oïdas, and the rival politicians stopped to shake hands.
“Is that your niece you have with you?” the Mayor asked.
“Yes. She and Pericles are staying in town now.”
“A very fine girl—I may say, a very beautiful one. Has your brother any views with regard to her?”
“Matrimonial?” queried Constantine, laughing.
“Those, I think, are the only views fathers are supposed to entertain about their daughters,” retorted Oïdas, with awkward, averted glance.
“Oh, of course. He naturally cherishes the hope to dispose of her some day with entire satisfaction to her and to himself.”
“Anybody in question?”
Constantine faced his interrogator boldly, narrowed his eyelids to a sly, meditative slit, and answered:—
“You think of offering yourself, perhaps.”
“I should certainly have no objection to a beautiful young wife. She has a dowry, I presume.”
“I presume so,” said Selaka, shutting up his lips in a portentous way. “But there is something else to be considered besides your willingness.”
“Undoubtedly. Still, it is a sufficiently important point. That is why I mention it.”
Constantine understood perfectly well that such wealth as Oïdas’ entitled its owner to his confident air. No sane father would be likely to reject or hesitate before such an offer as this, and the girl would, of course, be guided by her father.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” conceded the wily Constantine.
“Begin by introducing me at once,” suggested the Mayor.
The aspiring Mayor was carried triumphantly to the Selakas’ box. The introduction enabled Oïdas to relieve Inarime of her saucer, which he did with ponderous civility. She was hot and wretched in spite of the eaten ice. Of the Mayor’s presence she took no note; in spirit she gazed gloomily back upon the departed vision of Gustav so harrowingly evoked by the music. Oïdas devoted himself to Selaka with an occasional inclusive droop towards Inarime, whom he furtively and appraisingly observed. Into his box opposite Stavros entered, circumspect, thoroughly unobstructive, having joined the Government and resigned the editorship of the “New Aristophanes.” He looked casually at Constantine, and bit his underlip, it might be to restrain a blush or a smile. In the next box, just before the curtain went up on the second act, Miltiades rose like an evening sun upon the amazed scene, in grande tenue, cheerfully attended by his mother and Andromache.
“Your twin-soul,” whispered Agiropoulos. “Hector is called.”
Rudolph turned round quickly, beheld Andromache with soft invitation in her glance, jumped up, and in passing down the house, his eyes rested for one moment on Inarime’s face. He withdrew them angrily, in the delicate belief that even a dim consciousness of any other woman’s beauty but his own particular lady’s was almost a deliberate disloyalty.
“Oh, Rudolph, have you not seen her? Is she not beautiful?” Andromache enthusiastically asked, as she turned round her affectionate and glowing face to his when greetings were over, and he had taken his recognised place behind her chair.
“Who?” Rudolph whispered; rapture demanding that their lightest words should be folded in mystery.
Andromache pointed to the Selaka box. The young man looked steadily across over Andromache’s shoulder, frowned a little, and admitted grudgingly:
“She is handsome, but not soft and sweet like my Andromache.”
“Oh, Rudolph!” Andromache flashed on him delightedly.
He had only the day before come back from the Peloponnesus, and in a week he hoped to have summoned up courage to declare his honourable bondage to the baron, and start for Austria to conclude pre-nuptial arrangements.