CHAPTER XXIII. A MEETING ON THE ACROPOLIS.
March came and went in a whirlwind of storm and rain that lasted a fortnight. Every one susceptible to atmospheric influences was ill and unhappy, and the wind sobbed and shrieked like the ghosts of centuries crying to be laid. And now, on this first evening, the storm went down, with a little sigh running through the quieted air, like a child’s remembered sob in dreaming. The orange and lemon trees were in full blossom, and the Palace gardens wore “the glory and the freshness of a dream.”
Gustav Reineke stood between the pillars of the Parthenon and watched the sky after sunset. The zenith was clear purple upon which light clouds traced along milky way with edges torn into threadlets of white that curled and lost themselves, shading off to rose upon the eastern horizon. He watched cream deepen into orange, and spread a mist upon the blue, and the azure faint into pearly grey, while the cirrhus arch shifted itself slowly, and dropped behind the hills. The west was a lake of unsullied gold, so pure that the eye could follow the birth of cloud-stains upon it and the flames of crimson and orange striking fire from its heart. Over Lycabettus shone a tremulous radiance, half pink, half opal, and above the blue was shot with silver and green. Upon the hills the shadows were sharply defined by broken lines of light, and the sea under Salamis was a waveless blue gloom.
Gustav had done brave battle with woe, and wore his sorrow nobly. There was nothing of the crushed air of the love-sick swain about him. He stood up straight, and faced the light of day with mournful calm eyes and strong lips, patiently awaiting the revocation of his sentence or its confirmation, and for the moment gave himself entirely up to the study of archæology. He had come that morning to Athens upon invitation, to attend the meeting of the German School of Archæology.
While Gustav is sky-gazing with an open volume of Pausanias in his hand, another young friend of ours is crossing Constitution Square with the intention of strolling towards the Acropolis. Ten days back in Athens, and not one glimpse of Andromache! Very unlike a lover restored to the arms of his mistress does he look, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets and an expression of miserable perplexity on his face. An airy, wide-awake individual, with an anemone in his button-hole, and a glass in his eye, accosts him noisily, and quickly scanning him, remarks aloud upon the utter dejection of his air.
“Ah, Tonton, je suis épris—cette fois pour de bon,” cried Rudolph, desirous of horrifying somebody else as well as himself.
“Encore? Est-ce possible? Vrai?” ejaculated Agiropoulos.
“C’est très vrai.”
“Allons donc, mon cher! Faut-il te féliciter? Epris pour la troisième fois dans autant de mois! Mais c’est effrayant!”
Rudolph’s eyes swept the landscape in dreary assent. He thought it very frightful indeed.
“Pauvre Photini! Pauvre Andromaque,” cried Agiropoulos, taking off his hat and running his plump hand over his well-shorn head, “et pauvre—la dernière. Elle sera toujours à plaindre, celle-là.”
“Dis plutôt, pauvre Rudolph!” said Ehrenstein, ruefully.
“Eh, je le dis, mon cher, de bon cœur,” said Agiropoulos, with a reassuring nod and an enigmatic smile, as he turned on his heel, and stopped to discuss Ehrenstein’s lamentable susceptibility with his next acquaintance.
Can this really be our fastidious Rudolph, who has held the above indelicate dialogue with a man he hitherto professed to despise? Has he grown in a few months both cynical and hardened? But the cynicism was only surface deep. This search for an anchor to his affections and the discovery he had made that his emotions and his judgment were unreliable, his heart as unstable as water, wrecked all self-esteem, and left him in a battered condition of mind. He felt as if he had been morally whipped by scorpions, and every nerve within him was bruised.
First Photini, then Andromache, dear, sweet Andromache! how his heart bled for her! that he should be so unworthy of her! And She? the other She! the final, unattainable She, whose looks ran fire through his veins and held him in humble unexacting servitude?
He came out to walk and meditate. Could he have chosen a more favourable road for meditation than the wide avenue of pepper-trees, that leads by a gentle upward slope to the cactus-bordered hill, upon which the glorious Parthenon rests? Of the nature of his reflections, as he strolled along that famous route, I cannot say much. I imagine they were hazy, like the inarticulate speech of an infant. He wanted something, but for the life of him he could not have put that something into shape or definite speech. Like Hercules, his way was barred by two female forms—only one of whom, however, offered him a direct invitation. And Photini?
And thus these two met, and falling into accidental conversation, which resulted in an exchange of cards, Rudolph learnt that this was Herr Reineke, the distinguished Greek scholar, whose card his aunt had found awaiting her on her return from a drive that morning. Anything was better to Rudolph than that meditation in pursuit of which he had come out expressly, so he warmly pressed Reineke to come back to the Embassy with him. Reineke took a fancy to the frank and high-bred lad, and gladly consented to do so.
On their way he learnt some very original and curious views upon the Ancient Greeks, and his national vanity was flattered by hearing this discontented youth describe the Modern Greeks as worse than the Jews, and express his entire sympathy with the Turks—a thorough gentlemanly race in his opinion. Gustav assented, but claimed an exception for one or two of the modern Greeks, and at this point they reached the Embassy.
The young man found everybody out, so Rudolph carried off Reineke to a little salon only used in private life. Here the baroness wrote her letters, and here Inarime had sat that morning with a book and a pencil in her hand. Rudolph ordered coffee and cigars, and selected for himself Inarime’s seat. He took up her book, and remembered enough of his Greek to know that it was a volume of the Sicilian Idyllists. He recognised the names Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, but the rest was a blank to him. In turning over the leaves, a sheet of paper dropped out, and this contained writing. He examined it carefully, and was struck with its exquisite caligraphy.
“Can you read Greek—modern?” he asked of Gustav, who was looking idly out of the window.
“Yes,” he answered, turning his face round.
“Please translate that for me,” cried Rudolph excitedly. Gustav extended his hand for the paper, glanced at it carelessly, and read half-finished verses in classical Greek, which baldly translated read something like this:—
“O let me not in this grief fail.
Dear Gods, upon me glance!
For hearts with troubles slowly veil
Hope in remembrance.
“I would not that thy life were sad
Because of our drear fate,
Nor would I have thee wholly glad
While I am forced to wait.”
The lines ended here, and Gustav read them over again, a dim presentiment quickening his pulses. Selaka had shown him Inarime’s writing, beautiful, finished, like those delicate manuscripts which we have inherited from the old days of cloistered leisure. Surely this was the work of the same hand, and the quiet sadness of the verses swept him like a message from the dead.
“Do you know who wrote this?” he asked slowly.
“Yes,” Rudolph answered, indisposed to be communicative.
“A lady?”
“You think the handwriting a lady’s?”
“I do. I fancy I have seen it before.”
“Let me see. Were you not staying for a short time on one of the Greek islands?”
“Yes; Tenos.”
“Then you perhaps met her. Oh, I am sure of it now,” cried Rudolph, springing up and glaring into Reineke’s face.
Reineke said nothing, but bent his eyes reverently upon the sheet of paper. Might he steal it? If he had been alone he would have kissed it.
“Why don’t you answer me, Herr Reineke?” Rudolph persisted.
“Answer you? What?”
“There is somebody else, I know. I learnt it the other night. Tell me. Is it you?” he demanded.
“Herr Ehrenstein, is it too much to beg an explanation of these somewhat enigmatic questions?” retorted Gustav.
But Ehrenstein eagerly noted that his eyes never once left the piece of paper in his hand.
“It is unworthy to trifle with me in this way. I see that you know her, and that you understand too well the meaning of those lines. They are perhaps addressed to you.”
“And if it were so?” said Gustav, coldly.
“It would be better to know it at once. Anything would be better than this suspense. Listen, I will tell you something I overheard one night in a conversation between my uncle and her father.”
“Her father? Is Selaka here?” cried Gustav.
“He is. And so is she.”
“She! here? In this house? Now?” exclaimed Gustav, jumping up.
“She is out now with my aunt. They will be back soon.”
“Good God!” muttered Reineke, sitting down, and holding his head in his hands. “Should I go—or shall I stay?”
“Then you are the man. Listen to what I heard last night. My uncle told Selaka that he would be glad to see his daughter my wife—oh, don’t fly into a rage, we are not engaged, and I see by your angry smile you don’t think it likely to come to pass. Well, Selaka said he liked me, and in his estimation, my birth and social position were a set-off against my deficiencies in classical lore. But there is an impediment. His daughter has recently made the heaviest sacrifice a woman can make for her father, and he could not pain her by asking her to choose a successor to the lover she gave up for him. You are the lover, I know. Why did she give you up?”
“Because I am a Turk.”
“A Turk! You!”
Rudolph burst into a harsh laugh, and stopped suddenly when his ear caught the sound of a carriage drawn up outside. He glanced quickly out of the window.
“She has come, Monsieur le Sultan,” he announced, sarcastically.
Both men stood still, and rapid steps approached. Through the half-open door the flutter of silken raiment was heard brushing the floor, and the baroness stood before them, looking courteous interrogation.
“This is Herr Reineke,” said Rudolph, in German.
“Oh, M. Reineke,” the baroness exclaimed, in French. “This is indeed a pleasure. You will stay and dine with us in a friendly way. No ceremony. The baron will keep you company in morning attire. It will be delightful, as the unexpected always is.”
Gustav declined politely, and glanced beyond her. There stood Inarime with a look of unmistakable rapture and alarm upon her face.
The baroness introduced them; they bowed, but did not dare trust themselves to speech or hand-clasp.
“Must you go at once, Herr Reineke?” asked the baroness, remarking the glory on his face.
“Madame, I must,” he said, and Rudolph saw that Inarime started violently, as if the sound of his voice thrilled her like pain.
Reineke shook hands with the baroness, not conscious that he was making all sorts of impossible promises, and then turned silently to the mute, harrowing eloquence of Inarime’s gaze, with one as unbearable in its piercing tenderness. Rudolph accompanied him downstairs and said nothing until Reineke held out his hand at the door.
“No, I cannot touch your hand, Herr Reineke. We must not meet again,” he said, grimly.
“As you wish, Herr Ehrenstein. I am sorry for you, but, as you see, I have not much cause for self-congratulation for myself.”
Rudolph said nothing, and flung away from him.
In the little salon he found Inarime alone, with her head bent down upon the table over her folded arms.
“You love that man, Fraulein?” he asked in German, which she spoke more fluently than French.
“I do,” she said, simply, hardly troubled by the impertinence of the question.
“And there is no chance—none—for me?”
“I do not understand you, Herr Ehrenstein.”
Did she even hear him, as she stared out with that intense look strained beyond her prison through the bright streets traversed by Gustav?
“I, too, love you, Fraulein. I would die for you. You have taken from me my rest, my happiness, my self-respect. Everything I yield to you—honour, manhood, independence. Gladly will I accept slavery at your bidding. I care for nothing but you. Is there no hope for me? Your father will approve my suit.—He is banished.”
Inarime gazed scorn and loathing upon him. There were hardly words strong enough with which to reject such an offer, so made and at such a time.
“Leave me, Herr Ehrenstein. You force me abruptly to terminate my stay under your uncle’s roof.”
She turned her back upon him, and when he broke out into fierce and incoherent apologies, she swept past him out of the room.