2
To Peter and Ivan Salonika was a revelation of wonders they barely thought actual. From a little room in the street of Johann Tschimiski they saw the multicoloured tides of cosmopolitan humanity sweeping down from Egnatia Street, down Venizelos Street to the Place de la Concorde. They would walk along the quay-side past the great hotels to the Jardins de la Tour Blanche, and were sent into an ecstasy of delight by the chic little women who smiled archly at these two fair-headed lads from the up-country, who walked along hand clasped in wrist in so naïve and rustic a manner. Yet when they entered the Théatre des Variétés at the White Tower it seemed to them that the very portals of heaven had opened wide. They would return in a daze of delight to their room and recount with an almost religious fervour the beauties and enchantments of the show. Each little Spanish or French girl who came to do her song or minuet had seemed to them more enchanting than the last. Never a cloud of disagreement came between them. There was a perfect coincidence in their tastes, and never, they felt, had their love for each other been so sympathetic and complete as it was now.
The brothers had no large sum of money at their disposal. The time of their holiday was drawing to a close. One evening they turned up at the theatre for the last time, their nerves keyed up to a pitch of delighted impatience, the more tense as the brothers knew that the next day would see them on the arduous road back to their Serbian forest. Turn followed turn with alluring consequence. Then at one stage the music ceased for some moments and there was an atmosphere of expectance in the air. It was then that a simple and delightful English girl came half-shyly from the wings. There was nothing flamboyant in her appearance or her manner. Yet at once she seemed to seize the house with the graceful and reticent winsomeness of her song. So she sang her song through, a dainty little ballad of old-world gardens and fragrant flowers and love unto death. Peter felt the fingers of Ivan tighten round his wrist. He himself had been so stirred to his depths by the gentle grace of the girl that it was with a slight feeling of resentment he realised that Ivan had been experiencing once again an identical emotion. As he involuntarily moved away his arm Ivan uttered a slight cry of impatience. He turned round and looked into Peter’s eyes and found them aflame with a light deeper than mere appreciation. Peter was aware of his brother’s glance and looked at Ivan in return to find his face flushed almost as if he were half-drunk.
That night for the first time in their history there occurred a slight bickering between the two. No mention of the little English actress passed between them, but each of them determined that some day, when his brother’s interest had died away, he should broach the subject and the possibility of a rediscovery of the English actress at Salonika.
Next day they entrained for Monastir, and a few days later saw them installed once again in their father’s cottage in the wood.