CHAPTER XXIX. HOW A MAID OF ATHENS AVENGED HERSELF.
One day late in October the news somehow or other reached Rudolph, when at Cannes, that Selaka and his daughter were back in Athens. Without a word of explanation to Photini, who was engaged upon a public concert, he started off, and arrived in Athens late at night. The Baron and Baroness von Hohenfels were startled at their midday breakfast, next morning, by the entrance of the prodigal.
“Rudolph, good heavens!” cried the baron, and shook him gladly by the hand, but Rudolph was cold almost to rudeness. He suffered himself to be embraced by his aunt, and then went and stood against the mantelpiece. It was impossible not to note and deplore the change in him: from an engaging and innocent boy he had turned, in less than a year, into a hard and reckless-looking young-old man. His air was aristocratic but strangely unattractive, and his fair face was lined as no face should be lined at twenty-two. The blue eyes that used to be so soft in their clearness, so like his mother’s, as the Baroness thought, were now keen and glittering and held a dull fire within them. He stood thus looking moodily down, and then said curtly:
“You are surprised to see me, I suppose?”
“Well, I will admit,” the baron answered, “something in the nature of an announcement might have been expected, as a reasonable concession to the laws of courtesy. But since you are here, you had better sit down and take some breakfast with us.”
Rudolph laughed, and took a chair at the table. Before eating he poured himself out a generous tumbler of wine, and drank it almost at a draught. The baron stared a little, looked across at his wife, and lifted his brows meaningly. The talk at first was light. Rudolph touched upon the places he had seen, and made himself exceedingly witty and merry at the expense of the distinguished personages he had met in the course of his travels. He asked how matters stood at Athens; inquired after Agiropoulos and Mademoiselle Veritassi, the Mowbray-Thomases, and his friend the young Viscount, but never a word was said about Andromache. Then lying back in his chair, and lighting a cigar, the baron asked, with a mocking smile.
“And, my amiable nephew, how fares it with the fascinating Natzelhuber?”
Rudolph drew in his brows with a frown, and looking hastily at his aunt, said:
“We will not discuss her, sir, if you please.”
“Oh,” assented the baron, interjectionally, and busied himself with his cigar; “may one, without indiscretion, be permitted to inquire into your plans for the future?”
“I have no plans,” said Rudolph, taking up a cigar.
“At least I see,” laughed the baron, “you have succumbed to the beneficial influence of tobacco.”
“Yes, I smoke now; I do most things now that other men do.”
“So I perceive,” said the baron, drily, “you even look as if you did a little more,” he added, noting that Rudolph had helped himself to a second glass of brandy.
When Rudolph stood up, the baroness stopped him with a demand to know if they might expect the pleasure of his presence at dinner that night.
The young man nodded and left the room.
“A singularly altered young man,” said the baron, across to his wife, “it seems to me that the Natzelhuber has imparted some of her natural courtesy to him, and given his manners the piquant flavour of originality!”
“Oh, he is frightfully changed,” said the baroness; “and did you remark his deplorable weakness for wine?”
“Well, yes, it struck me, I confess, that he rather copiously washed down the small allowance of food he indulged in.”
“Poor boy, we must only try and keep him here now that we have him, and get up a few lively entertainments for him. That he is wretched it is easy to see. I think his recklessness comes from despair.”
The baron shrugged his shoulders. “That is always the way with well-brought-up youths,—the slightest folly plays the very mischief with their temperaments, and they are ever in extremes, whether on the path of virtue or on the more fascinating road to the dogs!”
While the easy-going ambassador was thus moralising, Rudolph was scouring Athens in search of tidings of the Selakas. Having ascertained at the Hôtel des Étrangers that they had gone out for a drive, he returned to the Embassy, borrowed one of his uncle’s horses, and was soon out upon the open road, sweeping the plain of Attica with eager glances strained in every direction for the carriage in which the father and daughter might be found.
Upon the skirt of the olive-misted plain he dismounted, and entered the leafy shade of a little café garden, lost in a glade of scented pines and oleanders. Here he called for cognac, and sat moodily smoking until the sun went down.
Let us glance at the house of Karapolos now, situated in Solon Street. Miltiades is back from Thessaly, more glorious and more ferocious than ever. He learnt that morning of Rudolph’s reappearance in Athens, and communicated that fact to his family at dinner. That evening, as he returned from duty, he missed a dainty silver pistol his friend Hadji Adam had given him. With a brow of thunder and voice of menace he sallied forth and had his servant Theodore arrested for the robbery. While Theodore was being carried off, shrieking and protesting, and calling upon all the saints and the Virgin and the soul of his dead mother to witness that he was being falsely accused, Andromache, for some unaccountable reason was wandering about the steep solitudes of Lycabettus in company with the faithful Maria. She had been allowed to go forth in pursuit of veils and gloves in the frequented street of Hermes. Now, what, one asks, could take a young lady towards sunset up a lonely and rugged slope of Lycabettus, when her ostensible journey lay in the region of shops? This was a secret known only to Andromache and to the faithful Maria.
On the following afternoon, Andromache begged her mother to take her to hear the band play upon Constitution Square. The square was thronged, the ladies, as is customary in Athens, walking together, and the men in similar fraternity, Captain Miltiades was with these, and so were Agiropoulos and the popular poet.
A close observer might have noticed that Andromache’s pretty dark blue eyes glistened with a curious light; that the blood had left her face and lips, and that she walked like one in a state of nervous excitement. Poor, betrayed, little Andromache! if only she had confided her frantic purpose to somebody, and had not all these months repressed her sorrow, and striven to show a brave front to the curious world! Many horrors are spared the loquacious, and the worst follies are those committed by silent sufferers. Andromache kept looking fixedly round in evident watch for some one. If you want to meet any one in Athens, you are sure to do so between Stadion Street and Constitution Square. The person Andromache was looking for soon made his appearance, walking casually along, not caring greatly to examine the people that were hustling against him. He sat down at a café table, and called for coffee, and while waiting for it began to roll up a cigarette, and unconsciously hummed the melody of Waldteufel’s “Souvenir,” which the band was playing. Andromache made a step forward from her mother’s side to the table at which Rudolph was seated; and in a second she whipped out of her breast the little silver pistol, for the loss of which Theodore was in prison, and fired straight at the shoulder of her recreant lover. Imagine the commotion, the whirr of speech and explanation, the jostling to look at the injured maid and the wounded man. The band stopped playing in the middle of Waldteufel’s charming waltz, band-master and band attracted to the spot. Strange as it may appear, all Hellenic sympathies were upon the side of Andromache: not a single voice of censure was raised against her, but everybody seemed to think that she had performed a feat of courage. Here her courage ended; the pistol fell from her hand, and she dropped rigid into her mother’s arms. She was carried home, and soon passed into the unconsciousness of brain fever. Rudolph was not seriously injured, but faint enough to need the help of a carriage to take him back to the Austrian Embassy, with the prospect of confinement to his room for a few days.
The Baron von Hohenfels in his official position was greatly perturbed by this scandal, and made immediate application for a change of post. He was too angry to visit his luckless nephew’s room until the baroness’ prayers melted him. When Dr. Galenides had seen the patient, and pronounced him in a favourable condition for recovery, the baron suffered himself to be led to the bedside.
Rudolph looked very piteous upon his pillow, with the flush of fever on his white cheeks and a harassed, humble expression in his eyes. The much aggrieved baron relented, hummed and hawed a little as a kind of impatient protest, stroked his beard, and finally began, in a softened voice:
“My dear boy, are you quite satisfied now that you have made Athens too hot for an Austrian Ambassador?”
“I am very sorry, uncle,” said Rudolph, and he looked it.
“Well, yes, I can quite believe that you are not exactly jubilant.”
“As soon as I am well enough to move, I’ll leave Greece, and wild horses will never drag me here again.”
“On the whole, I think you have done fairly well upon the classic shores of Hellas, and it would be as well to confine yourself to the rest of Europe during the remainder of your mortal career. But it is a little hard on me that my family should reflect discredit upon my country. Zounds! Could you not have understood that the Greeks are a most susceptible and clannish race? There is one thing they will not forgive, and that is an affront done a compatriot by a stranger. And we Austrians, you must know, are not more adored here than the English. In fact, we are hated. If the French Viscount had jilted Mademoiselle Andromache Karapolos, and had been shot at by her, public indignation would have taken a considerably modified tone.”
“What can I do, uncle?” asked Rudolph, penitently.
“Get well as soon as possible, and give Athens a wide berth. I cannot advise you to fling yourself at the feet of the fair Andromache, for I don’t believe that young lady could very well persuade herself to forgive you after this public scandal. It is a stupid affair altogether. I thought you were flirting, but an engagement! Good heavens! What do you imagine to be the value of a gentleman’s word? A promise of marriage is not a thing that can be lightly made, because it is not a thing that can ever be lightly broken. The man is called a cad, and the woman a jilt; and both are greatly the worse for such a reputation.”
Rudolph said nothing, but his way of turning on his pillow was a direct appeal for mercy. The baron felt it to be so, and got up, believing that the heavy responsibilities of uncle were accomplished with grace and dignity.
When the illustrious Dr. Galenides called next day, he found his patient so far recovered that he felt disposed to sit at his bedside, and chat with him in a friendly way.
“My dear young friend,” he said, cheerfully, “it is the fault of youth, and perhaps, in a measure, its virtue, to be too precipitate. If intelligent young people could only be induced to take for their motto that wise and ancient precept, ‘Μησἑν ἁγαν’—which I believe the French translate as ‘le juste milieu,’—there would be no such thing as maidens forced to avenge themselves by means of a pistol, nor young men deserving such treatment.”
Rudolph shrank a little, and said, with assumed coldness:
“Pray, doctor, do not think hardly of her. I behaved badly to her, and only cowardice kept me from going to her and asking her to forgive me.”
Dr. Galenides smiled and bowed.
“She is regarded as a heroine now.”
“And I, my uncle tells me, as a cad,” cried Rudolph, bitterly.
“Well, not exactly as a hero, I have to admit.”
“Have you heard how she is, doctor?”
“Very ill indeed—brain fever,—but she is young and strong.”
“Doctor, if you see her, will you take her a message? I dare not write. Tell her my sufferings have been greater than hers, and tell her I shall always remember her as a sweet and charming girl far too good for me. I hope she will be happy. As for me, doctor, my life is wrecked upon the threshold.”
“One always thinks so at twenty-two. At thirty-two one understands that it is rather difficult to wreck a man’s life. Get well, my dear Monsieur Ehrenstein. Life is a very pleasant thing, I assure you, full of kindly surprise and interest. And remember the wise motto of my old friends—‘Μησἑν ἁγαν’—neither extreme, the just middle,” ended the physician, balancing by way of illustration a paper knife upon his finger.
While Dr. Galenides was putting on his gloves, the baroness entered the room, accompanied by Pericles Selaka. Rudolph’s face went bright scarlet, and then turned white, with a pinched, and anxious expression.
“You, Pericles!” cried Dr. Galenides, with something like alarm in his voice. “I was on my way to you.”
“Oh, I am much better to-day, and wanted very much to see how this other patient of yours is getting on,” said Selaka, approaching.
“Are you ill, too?” asked Rudolph, excitedly.
“A little unwell, but it is nothing,” answered Selaka, with a smile, as he took Rudolph’s hand and held it.
Dr. Galenides glanced significantly at the baroness, and went away.
Selaka leant across the side of the bed, and looked steadily at Rudolph, over whom the baroness was hovering with maternal attentions. The sick man reached out his hand to take his aunt’s, and held it an instant to his lips.
“Poor fellow! you will be excited in a minute,” said the baroness.
“It is kind of you, Herr Selaka, to come to me,” Rudolph said, in German.
“I am sorry for what has happened,” returned Selaka. “I know nothing more regrettable than the frantic precipitancy and anger of youth. I cannot understand why you should have made a promise you did not consider binding, or why, having made it, you should have broken it. It would not be my place to speak upon a matter so delicate and so private, did I not feel, through a member of my family, partly responsible for your misbehaviour.”
“I doubt the utility or kindness of scolding the wrong-doer when the mischief is done,” interrupted the good-natured baroness.
“Scold! I trust I do not seem to scold, madame,” said Selaka, opening his eyes, and thrusting out his hand with an air of stately reproach. “Not even you can be more sorry for this young man’s misfortune. He is much censured at present. But my voice is not amongst those that censure him. I simply do not understand how he can have behaved so unwisely. But my heart is filled with pity for him. I am sure he never wished to wrong or pain any one, and I deeply feel that one of my name should unconsciously have been the means of bringing this grief upon him, and upon others. Had he trusted me when he first found his faith wavering where he had hoped it anchored, I should have taken measures to protect him from his own uncertain heart. Believe me, it would have been best so, and you, my poor young friend, would have been the happier.”
“Perhaps you are right, sir,” said Rudolph, wearily. “I am sure I do not know. But tell me—tell me something about her—about your daughter. Does she despise me?”
“She grieves for you, and deplores her own disastrous influence upon you.”
“She need not. I do not desire that she should grieve for me,” cried Rudolph. “You all speak of me as if I had committed some frightful crime—a murder, a forgery, a felony—as if I had incurred indelible shame. Granted I have misbehaved myself—we will even grant that I have not acted as a gentleman—am I the first to find he had given his promise to the wrong person?”
“Rudolph Ehrenstein, you well know you have done worse than this,—you affronted your deserted bride by linking your life in the face of the world with that of a woman who had already incurred public odium. This is what grieves me most, and it is this step I feel that drove that unhappy girl to her mad act.”
“We will not speak of her, if you please, Herr Selaka,” said Rudolph, with a proud look. “As for Mademoiselle Natzelhuber, it wounds me that she should be so cruelly misjudged. Believe me, under more fortunate circumstances, she would have been a good woman. She is full of kindness and sympathy for every phase of misery. She gives away the money she earns more freely than many rich people spend that which they inherit. She is an unhappy woman, sir; there is nothing base or shabby in her, and I am not so sure that there is not a good deal that is noble.”
“I can well believe you, Herr Rudolph. I have not the honour of knowing Mademoiselle Natzelhuber, and the public voice rather loves to spread abroad the fame of glaring vices than that of private virtues. The lady, I believe, has made a point of shocking every accepted canon of taste, and, of course, society revenges itself by painting her as black as possible. But we Greeks, despite our French tastes, are a very sober and a very moral people, and a step like yours takes away our breath. This sounds like preaching, does it not? But I am grieved, distressed. I would have given you Inarime,—once, I almost wished it. However, it was useless to hope for that. My daughter’s heart is given elsewhere, and it is well now that it is so. Still, had you told me of this entanglement, had you left it in my power to aid you! Young men, I know, sometimes shrink from opening their hearts to their parents and relatives. But me you would have found indulgent and perhaps helpful.”
Rudolph stretched out his hand and Selaka clasped it warmly.
“Thank you, sir! It would have made all the difference if Inarime thought as you do. Do you know why I came back to Athens?”
“I think I can guess,” said Selaka, smiling.
“Oh, I loved her so! and, Heaven help me, I cannot choose but love her still. May I hope to see her, sir?” he asked, humbly.
“No, Herr Rudolph,” said Selaka, shaking his head. “That I cannot permit, nor would she consent. In the years to come, when I shall be no more, it will be for her to choose her friends, but as long as I stand between her and the world those friends shall be spotless, or at least their names shall be untainted by the breath of public scandal.”
“The lives of young men would be very different if all parents were as particular and severe as you, Herr Selaka,” observed the baroness, turning round from the window.
Rudolph moved upon his pillow, and covered his eyes with his arm.
“You are right, sir, I am not worthy to look upon her,” he said.
Suddenly there was heard from the hall an ominous sound, the louder because of the stillness of the house. The baroness ran to the door and held it open, listening anxiously. Could that voice, pitched in a key of lofty indignation, be mistaken for other than the voice of an angry hero? Ah, who but Miltiades, the glory of modern Athens, could stride in that magnificent fashion through a hall, clatter and clang his spurs along the tessellated pavement, rattle and shake the stairs, the balustrade, with as much noise as all the heroes of Homer sacking Ilion; nodding fearful menace in his crimson plumes and sending potent lightning flames with his violet glances?
The baroness looked question and alarm at Selaka, and poor Rudolph, cowed by weakness and fright, shuddered among his pillows, whiter far than the linen that framed his face.
“Do not seek to bar my passage, menial,” Miltiades was roaring, as the clatter and clang of sword and spurs approached the sick chamber. “It is Monsieur Rudolph Ehrenstein I desire to see.”
Even Rudolph could not resist a ghastly smile at hearing his name so curiously pronounced by the warrior. Miltiades stood upon the threshold, and the baroness could not have looked more petrified if she had found herself confronted by an open cannon.
“Madame,” said Miltiades, ever the pink of courtesy, as the brave should be to the fair; after his most ceremonious military salute, he advanced a step, and said, “I have a few words to say to your nephew, Monsieur Rudolph Ehrenstein.”
“Enter, enter, I pray you, Captain Karapolos,” said the baroness in rather halting but intelligible Greek. “My nephew is ill—as you see. Perhaps you will consent to spare him the unpleasantness of a scene. He is very ill.”
“So, madame, is my sister. Dr. Galenides tells me she will hardly recover. Is this to be borne quietly—think you?”
“Kyrie Selaka, explain to him—I do not know Greek well enough. Tell him how grieved, how miserably sad the baron and I are about this business. Speak kindly for us and try to soothe him. I understand he must be in a desperate state, and heaven knows how sincerely I pity him. Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph, when will you young men learn to think of others as well as yourselves?” she cried, distractedly.
“Captain Karapolos, this proceeding of yours is surely as unseemly as it is futile,” said Selaka. “What good do you expect can come of such a step? It will not restore your sister to health and happiness, and you but needlessly inflict pain upon this lady, who is sincerely distressed for you. My dear sir, the great lesson of life is, that the inevitable must be accepted. We cannot go back on our good deeds or our ill, and it is not now in the power of this young man to repair the mischief he has done. The consequences of wrongdoing cannot be shirked by those who suffer them, or by those who have done the wrong. They baffle each step of flight and struggle, and hunt us down remorselessly.”
“My dear sir, such stuff may suit a pulpit or a university chair, but it offends the ear of a soldier. I care not a jot for the inevitable, and, as far as I am concerned, this young man will answer to me for his evil deeds—to me, sir, Miltiades Karapolos, captain of King George’s Artillery,” shouted Miltiades, slapping his chest emphatically.
Rudolph sat up in bed, and asked feebly:
“Did he say, Herr Selaka, that Andromache is very ill?”
Selaka bowed, and Miltiades glared interrogation.
“Dangerously ill?”
“It appears so.”
“Oh, good God! what a wretch I have been! Please tell him, if she gets better, and will consent to forgive me, I will gladly fulfil my engagement. Tell him it was not because Andromache ceased to be dear to me that I left her, but that, loving somebody else, I felt I had ceased to be worthy of her. Tell him it was not, heaven knows, for my pleasure I so acted, that it was a horrible grief to me.”
Miltiades glanced suspiciously from one to the other, and looked annihilation and contempt upon the sick youth.
“What does the fellow say?” he demanded, fiercely.
Selaka faithfully repeated Rudolph’s message. If Miltiades had been thunder before, he was lightning now added. He stalked to the bed, struck Rudolph full in the face, and without another word strode from the room.
“Good gracious!” cried the baroness, and fell limply into a chair.
“I must get well now,” muttered Rudolph, between his teeth.
Next day Agiropoulos and the popular poet called. It was known all over Athens that, as well as having been shot at by the sister, Rudolph had been struck by the brother. Agiropoulos took a fiendish delight in the situation. Personally he asked nothing better than to console the heroine as soon as she should have struggled back from the encompassing shadows of unreason. He was quite ready to place at her disposal fortune, hand, and heart, as much as he possessed of that superfluous commodity, which, it must be confessed, was little enough. He loved notoriety in any form, and was enchanted with the veil of romance that enveloped Andromache, not in the least scrupulous upon the point that the veil was smirched with powder and blood. If possible, these unusual stains but gave an added impetus to his interest.
“Well, my young friend,” he said, sitting down and elegantly crossing his legs, while, the better to survey the sorry hero of the tragedy, he adjusted his eye-glass with that peculiar grimace common to those thus decorated. “You look a little the worse for Mademoiselle Andromache’s last embrace—eh?” he queried, and turned with a smile to the popular poet.
“He has the air of Endymion after the desertion of Diana,” said the poet.
“Was Endymion deserted? Faith, that is a piece of mythological information for me. We live and learn, eh, Ehrenstein?”
“I suppose so,” said Rudolph, drearily. “The learning is not more pleasant than the living.”
“You charming boy! so delightful to know that innocence still flourishes in our midst. The century is exhausted, but a young heart is a perennial fount of misery. For, my young friend, there is no more sure prophecy of youth and innocence than utter woe and dejection. If you give him time, Michaelopoulos will put that into a neat verse for you.”
“Don’t, pray. I hate poetry,” cried Rudolph.
“It is, I believe, on record that babes have been known to hate milk,” said Agiropoulos, blandly.
“Don’t weary me with smart talk. I have other things to think of, Agiropoulos, and cannot listen to your witticisms,” protested Rudolph.
“Don’t mention it. I will be dull to please you. May a poor forsaken wretch inquire after the health of a quondam mistress?”
“Agiropoulos, if you have not got the breeding of a gentleman, try to remember when you are in the presence of one,” cried Rudolph.
“Whew!” whistled Agiropoulos, with his enigmatic smile.
“I suppose, Ehrenstein, you don’t exactly want another challenge?”
“I want nothing, and I most certainly don’t want you.”
“Is this delirium, think you, Michaelopoulos?”
“Looks uncommonly like it,” the poet replied.
“Let me feel your pulse, Monsieur Endymion—what an appropriate comparison for the moment! That young gentleman was, we are given to understand, partial to the recumbent attitude. But we are rather embarrassed by our choice of Selene. Which shall it be, Ehrenstein, first, second or third?”
“Will you do me the favour of leaving my room, sir?” ordered Rudolph, frigidly. “When I have finished with Captain Miltiades Karapolos, I shall be happy to dispose of your claims, Agiropoulos, and then of your friend’s, if he thinks proper to demand the privilege.”
“And then of each of the desposyné Inarime’s suitors, comprising a list of two members of parliament, a mayor, a justice of the peace, forty or fifty bachelor islanders and a distinguished archæologist. Don’t forget the archæologist, I implore you, Rudolph. Demolish him before you touch me, or Michaelopoulos—the name is rather long, but practice will accustom your tongue to it—besides, your mellifluous German will be a substantial aid. First lay low the mighty Karapolos, and in a moment you avenge five thousand desolate Turkish hearths—have they hearths in Turkey? Then give the deathly accolade to the archæologist. After that, of course, these two humble individuals are entirely at your disposal, as the courtly Spaniards say. Do you know Spanish? Neither do I. Ta-ta, my friend. You have a heavy day’s work before you when you get well, Monsieur Endymion. To sweep off the face of the earth a Greek hero, a Greek poet, a Greek merchant, a Turkish archæologist, an insular demarch, two members of parliament, a justice of the peace, and fifty Teniotes. Lead me from the presence of this bloodthirsty youth, friend. I shudder,” cried Agiropoulos.
Mighty is the passion of anger—mightier far than that of love. Anger lifted Rudolph out of his sick bed, and placed him, one chill November morning, opposite Miltiades in a lonely field under the Shadow of Lycabettus, with Hadji Adam for his antagonist’s second and the French Viscount for his own. The duel terminated for Rudolph, as nineteenth century duels frequently do, but Miltiades was imprisoned for fourteen days in his own room in Solon Street, with a soldier mounted guard outside, for his colonel, with an unheroic disregard for the laws of honour, judged his act an infringement of military law.
While Rudolph, with bitterness in his heart and humiliation on his brow, was speeding back to Cannes and to Photini, Agiropoulos progressed favourably with his wooing. Half-dead with shame at her notoriety, poor Andromache asked nothing better than a chance of getting away for ever from Athens.