CHAPTER XXVIII. SHOWING A LADY KNIGHT-ERRANT TO THE RESCUE OF UNHAPPY LOVERS.
Spring waned in the extinguishing heat of summer. The noonday blue of the heavens was lost in a warm grey mist. All the green was burnt off the face of the earth, and the eyes turned in pain from the burning hills and shadowless plain, from the awful glimmer of marble upon the Acropolis and the hot streets below. Shade, shade, darkened chambers and cool drinks, and the sweet siesta, curtained off from the sting of the mosquito, were all that nature called for.
The Baron and Baroness von Hohenfels had left Athens for the repose of an Austrian country house. They knew that Rudolph and Photini were wandering about the south of France with an inconvenient train of live pets, a grand piano, a violin, and discontented hearts. More than this they did not care to know, and patiently awaited the hour of reform, when the wild oats period should have exhausted itself, and the prodigal return to the comfort of more discreet irregularities, hardened, cynical, and very well disposed to settle down in marriage.
The Karapolos were looking forward with much satisfaction to the next September move, and this time were in treaty with the owners of a flat in Solon Street. Miltiades was away in Thessaly with his regiment, and was not expected back until October. Andromache went about the same as ever, and no one knew whether the wounds of her heart were permanent or not. But Agiropoulos was attentive, though far from communicative in the proper way, and Kyria Karapolos, in her state missives to the absent hero, thought it not improbable that Andromache might be induced to accept him.
Little Themistocles was less on parade in Stadion Street because of the exactions of the weather, but of an evening he cheerfully tortured his violin, and unbosomed himself to his fellow-clerks in the Corinthian bank. Things here as elsewhere went on very much as usual. The town was rapidly thinning, and lodgings and hotels at Kephissia, Phalerum, Munychia and the Piræus as rapidly filling.
Gustav Reineke had been voyaging in Asia Minor with a party of English archæologists bound upon an excavating expedition. Upon his return to Athens, he found his old friend and admirer, Miss Winters, the delightful little American, with her lovely snow-white hair and a complexion as fresh as a girl’s. Gustav was charmed, and so was Miss Winters. They struck at once into fraternity. He accompanied her everywhere, carried her photographic apparatus, adjusted it, and as soon as she disappeared under the cloth, applied himself to read aloud the classics to her. She took full command of him, ordered and piloted him in an impulse of protecting and authoritative motherhood that soothed him unspeakably. He obeyed her with pleasure, and in return imparted to her the story of his love.
“And has the young lady no idea where you are?” she asked, struggling frantically with her machine on the Acropolis.
“None. I cannot write to her,” said Reineke, dejectedly.
“What nonsense! You love her; she loves you. You have no right to lose sight of each other. Have you never tried to write?”
“No. I felt the right to do so was not conceded me.”
“Nonsense! it is no question of right or wrong; it is simply natural. Well, I see I cannot settle this to-day, so I had better go home and put my other views in order. Did you say the old man, Selaka, lives in the village of Xinara?”
“Xinara, Tenos,” nodded Gustav.
“I see. Well, carry this home for me, then go and stay quietly in your hotel,—I may have something to tell you in a few days.”
He carried his burden to her rooms, which faced the columns of Jupiter, gallantly kissed her tiny hand, and turned with a soft smile in his eyes as he walked to the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne.
“I will certainly make a journey to America to see that charming little lady,” he said to himself, and while he sat in his room waiting for the short blue twilight, he took out of his breast pocket the only remembrance of Inarime he possessed—the unfinished verses he had found some months ago at the Austrian Embassy.
Everything on the Acropolis had been photographed from every possible point of view, and nearly everything in the museums, and on the day they had arranged to start for Sunium, Miss Winters met Reineke with a portentous air.
“Mr. Reineke, I have heard from that old man, and, indeed, he is not worth much. He is just an old heathen.”
Gustav laughed, touched by the irresistible humour of hearing Miss Winters, herself more than half a pagan, abuse any one on the ground of heathenism.
“What are you laughing at, sir?” she asked, frowning.
“Oh, I was not quite prepared to hear you turn upon the heathens, I thought you were in such thorough sympathy with them.”
“With the ancient heathens, if you please,” corrected Miss Winters. “That is very different from modern heathenism. The ancients were respectable, upright and religious men, fearing the gods and respecting the laws of nature. But your Selaka! He has all the vices of the Christian, without any of the virtues of the pagan.”
“Selaka! What of him?” cried Gustav, opening his eyes.
“Did I not tell you? I have heard from him.”
“Heard from Selaka? How? When?”
“Through the post—how else? I wrote to him.”
Reineke sat dumfounded and stared at her. He believed the courage of woman in managing the affairs of stricken man went far; but this utterly surpassed the limitations he allowed it.
“You wrote to him,” he murmured.
“Certainly, it was high time some sane person undertook the task of reasoning with him, and convincing him of his folly.”
“And might I ask how you applied yourself to this task? upon what grounds you based your arguments?”
“Well, I told him you are no more a Turk than I am.”
Gustav exploded hilariously.
“Why, you know you are not. You are just as Greek as you can very well be,—far more so than he is, you bet.”
“Well?”
“He did not see it;—of course not, the old lunatic.”
“May I be permitted to look at the letter, Miss Winters?”
“There it is. It is a very instructive letter in its way, written in far better German than mine.”
Gustav took the letter, and studied it leisurely. It was dignified and courteous, spoke in high terms of himself as a man of honour and learning to whom he should, in other circumstances, have been proud to entrust his daughter’s happiness. But its tone was unmistakable, its decision unalterable. Gustav sighed heavily as he returned it to Miss Winters.
“He’s a fanatic—that’s just what he is,” she cried.
“And the worst of it is, Miss Winters, one is forced to admire such consistent and adamantine fanaticism, though its bigotry be the bar to one’s own happiness.”
“Why, of course, that’s the worst of it. If there were not such an element of nobility in it I should not want to shake him so much. It is always a satisfaction to be able to call the person who opposes or frustrates your purpose a scoundrel or a brute—but not to be able to call him anything harder than a pig-headed old pagan, and to have to smile admiration through one’s rage of disappointment, puts a point upon one’s anger. Well, never mind, Mr. Reineke. I’ll thwart him yet. I’ll write to the girl next.”
Gustav gasped and doubtless thought—as the French critic thought of Moses—“cette femme est capable de tout.”
They went together to Sunium, and photographed everything in the neighbourhood, ruins, peasants in fustanella and embroidered jackets, women in embroidered tunics and headgear of coins and muslin, and then went to Corinth and accomplished similar wonders there.
“I quite feel as if I had a son,” said Miss Winters, patting Gustav’s hand affectionately.
“What a pretty and youthful mother I have found,” laughed Reineke.
Miss Winters delayed in Corinth to write a chapter of her book on Greece, and Gustav lounged about with the piratical tendencies of an archæologist. When they reached Athens, borne down by the weight of manuscripts, vases and photographs, Miss Winters found a notification from the Corinth post-office that a letter was waiting for her “au bourreau d’ Athènes.”
“Good heavens, Mr. Reineke, can I in some inexplicable way have brought myself under the penalties of the law? Is it forbidden, under pain of death, to photograph ruins and views of Greece? What connection can I possibly have with the executioner of Athens?”
Gustav laughed and suggested “bureau,” and went off himself to the post-office, where, indeed, he found a letter addressed to Miss Winters in the beautiful calligraphy he so well knew. Then she had written to Inarime, and he held the answer in his hand! He looked at it lovingly, reverentially, and just within the arches of the post-office, glancing hastily around to ascertain that he was not observed, he raised the envelope to his lips. He gave it to Miss Winters without a word, and went away. That evening Miss Winters came to him at his hotel, silently put the letter into his hand, and closed the door of his room as she went out softly, as one closes the door of a sick chamber.
Gustav sat watching the letter timidly, afraid to learn its contents, and the desire of it burned his cheek and quickened his pulse like fever. How would the silence of months be broken? Would her message realise his high expectations? Would the world be less empty for him because of it? Would this fierce ache of the heart drop into a contented memory? He felt her arms about his neck, her lips upon his, her glance pierced his own through to his inmost soul, held her in his clasp, and lived again their short impassioned hour. How bright the rain-drops had looked upon the winter grasses and curled leaves, how clear the song of the birds in the moist air! The moments fled with the hurry of rapture, his beating pulses timed to their measureless speed.
Still Inarime’s letter lay unopened in his hand.
He saw her in the courtyard at Xinara remonstrating with the sobbing woman crouched at her feet; felt his gaze compel hers and drew in his breath with a catch of pain at the memory of the sweet surprised surrender of her eyes,—followed slowly, obediently, her vanishing form with that last long look of hers to feed his hungry soul.
And still the letter was unread.
He sat trifling with his happiness and his misery, scarcely daring to open it, shaken with the apprehensions of yearning, hardly strong enough to lash himself to courage by the past—enervated, sick with expectation, chill with fright. Slowly he took the sheet out of the envelope, and bent his eyes upon it, not noticing that a thinner sheet had fallen to the ground.
Thus it ran:
“Madame,—
“I am abashed before the thought of my deep indebtedness to you, and the knowledge that it will never be my good fortune to repay you. More to me than your kind words is the comfort of knowing that, separated from him you write of as I am, by a fatality I have neither voice nor influence to avert, your presence makes amends to him for my enforced silence. Your letter breathes of tender regard for him. Is not that a debt of some magnitude you place on me? A debt I am proud to acknowledge. Alas! Madame, it is useless to hope to combat my father’s repugnance to the marriage you appear to think so natural. I know my father. His prejudices are few, and strong indeed must be that which raises an impassable barrier to my happiness. I hold it as a religious duty to respect it, and smother the feelings of rebellion that sometimes rise and stiffen my heart against him. I have no right to rebel, for he loves me—oh, he loves me very dearly. I think he would almost give his life for mine, and most willingly would I lay down mine for his. Since I was a little child he has cared for me and cherished me. He has tried to make me the sharer of his great learning, that there might be no division between us, that I might be rather a disciple following afar than an alien to the one object of his existence. You see, it is no common bond you ask me to break. It would be something more than the flight of a daughter,—it would be the defection of a pupil—and he, the tenderest master! I could not bear, by any action of mine, to forfeit my worthiness of such exclusive devotion, and should I not do so past excuse if I were to cause him one pang of disappointment or anger?
“To follow your counsel, and take my destiny into my own hands by one wild leap into the bliss my heart calls for, would be to risk his anger without the assurance that ultimately I should be forgiven. Do not urge me to it, I beseech you. My father ill and alone! The thought would make a mockery of my happiness. It would be a pall upon my bridal robes. Forgive me, Madame. I love you for your wish to help me, though the effort be ineffectual. If I boldly seem to criticise, believe me, it is with no intention to wound. You will think me a coward, perhaps, for I know that it is different with the women of your race. They act without scruple for themselves, and their parents have no other choice than to yield to theirs. But I cannot bring myself to regard this as right. He cannot surely desire that I should come to him thus—with the stain of strife and revolt upon our love. You see I am fastidiously jealous of the future. It is so fatally easy for the young, upon the impetus of ungovernable passion, to let themselves be precipitated into rash errors: so difficult to recover forfeited ground.
“But how fervently I thank you for your sweet sympathy and your offer of a home until such time as another would be mine, I have not words to say. Your heart must be fresh to be so tenderly open to the sorrows of the young. I shall bless the day that brings us face to face. If you would visit our island! But we are so rough and backward, and the stillness, I fear, would prove oppressive to one from a country where, I am assured, movement is the extremity of haste. And yet I love the place all the more from my short absence from it. It was like heaven to see it again, to feel the untrodden ground beneath my feet, to watch the unfretted stars from a world below as uneager and as changeless. The seasons are not more regular than our habits, and excitement is undreamed of by us. The villagers come to me with their simple woes, and I comfort them and doctor them, and instil into them such wisdom as my young head has mastered. Sometimes my dear father comes to my help,—not often, for they are less afraid of me. It is, I suppose, because I am nearer to them.
“This letter shames me, it is so idle and garrulous. What have I to say but that I love you, Madame,—I love you, and beg you to accept the assurance of my heartfelt gratitude and my affectionate friendship.
“Inarime Selaka.”
This letter might seem to lack the artlessness and spontaneity of girlhood. But its very restraint held a precious eloquence for Gustav, and it was not the less dear to him because he felt the writer was completely master of her mind. It held no want for him. He read between the lines, and adored the eyes the more that he understood their tears were held in check. The lips may have trembled in the reawakened force of passion, the gaze have grown dim with longing, the pulses throbbed to ache and ebbed away upon the sickening wave of despair, but the letter only breathed of weakness conquered, the pressure of a restraint imposed by life-long habit, and could not be called artificial. He reverenced her sweet reasonableness and her grave acceptance of the inevitable. He re-read the letter carefully, and kissed the name at the end. Why had she avoided the writing of his? He began to walk about the room, picking out sentences to burn upon his memory, when his eyes detected a slip of paper upon the ground. He pounced upon it with a presentiment of what it was. Herrn Gustav Reineke was written outside, and it was delicately folded. He opened it, and his breathing could have been heard at the other end of the room.
“Dear One—my dearest! My father has at last consented to let me remain unmarried—but that is all. We may hope for nothing more. Still, our love is respected. I cannot think it is wrong of me to send you this message. At least, I hope it is not. You have my faith. O, I love you, I love you.”
Gustav sat through the night with his head bent over this message. Desires and thoughts and wild hopes wavered and shot through him like arrows, now swift and sharp, now blunt and slow, needlessly lacerating in their passage. When morning came he shook off his dream, and replied to Miss Winter’s glance of veiled interrogation by a look supplicating silence.