The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

It was nearly sundown when the first boat with the news had arrived, and by now the sun had set, but the western sky still flamed with the whole gamut of color, from crimson to saffron yellow, and the sea was its flame reflected. A breeze, steady and singing, blew from the main-land, just ruffling the water, and the caique sped on by it, came black and swift over the shining plain of water, crumpling and curling the sea beneath her bows, cutting her way through the crimson and the yellow, and the shadow of deep translucent green which lay ever before her. On the quay the crowd gathered and thickened, but grew ever more silent, for none knew what friend or relative, lost for years and only a ghost to memory, the ships might bring or carry the news of. The most part of the men of Hydra were away with the fleet, and it was women chiefly, old and gray-headed folk, and children who waited there. Deep water ran close up to the quay wall, and when the ship furled all sail and swung round to come to land, it was in silence that the rope was flung from the ship and in silence that those on shore made it fast. Then the anchor plunged with a gulp and babble into the sea, and she came alongside.

Then, as those on board came ashore, tongues and tears were loosened. Among them was a girl who had been taken only two years before; in her arms was a baby, a heritage of shame. It was pitiful to see how her father started forward to meet her—then stopped, and for a moment she stood alone with down-dropped eyes, and the joy and expectation in her face struck dead. But suddenly from the women behind her mother ran out, with her love triumphing over shame, and she fell on the girl's neck with a sob and drew her tenderly away. Another was a very old man who tottered down the gangway steps; none knew his name and he knew none, but looked round puzzledly at the changed quay and the sprouted town. But there were very few to return to Hydra, for the Turks had always filled their plunderous and lustful hands from places where the men were of softer mould than these stern islanders. Tombazes, with Nikola still close to him, had pushed his way forward to the edge of the quay where the ship was disembarking; a crowd of jovial, whistling sailors poured down the plank, and still Nikola had not seen what he looked for. But at the last came a woman in Turkish dress, and at her he looked longer and more peeringly as she came down the bridge. She had removed the yashmak from her face, and her head, gray-haired, was bare. But surely to another never had the glory of woman been given in such magnificent abundance. It grew low on her forehead and was braided over her ears and done up in great coils behind her head. Her eyebrows were still black, startlingly black against that gray head and ivory-colored face, but her eyes were blacker, and like fire they smouldered, and they pierced like steel. Weary yet keen was her face; expectant and wide her eyes; and expectant her mouth, slightly open, and still young and girlish in its fine curves and tender lines. Among that crowd of merry, strong-built men she seemed of different clay; you would have said she was a china cup among crockery and earthen-ware. And Nikola looked, and his eyes were riveted to her, and they grew dim suddenly, and with a little, low cry he broke from Tombazes and forced his way through those who stood around, so that when the woman stepped ashore off the bridge he stood full in front of her, and his hands were out-stretched; you would have said he held his heart in them, offering it to her. She saw and paused, her lips parted in a sudden surprise and amaze; for a moment her eyebrows contracted as if puzzled, but before they had yet frowned, cleared again, and she took both his hands in hers and kissed him on the lips.

"Nikola," she said, and no more, and for a minute's space there was silence between them, and in that silence their souls lived back for one blessed moment to the years long past. Neither of them saw that the crowd had gone back a little, to give them room, that all were waiting in a pause of astonishment and conjecture round them, but standing off with the instinct of natural effacement, a supreme delicacy, to let these two long sundered have even in the midst of them a sort of privacy. Tombazes saw and guessed, and his honest red face suddenly puckered with an unbidden welling of tears. Nikola was waiting, as he had said, for some one; this woman was she. She was the taller of the two, and laid her hand on his shoulder.

"I have come back, Nikola," she said, and her voice was sweeter and more mellow than the harbor bell. "I have come back old. But I have come back."

Anguish more lovely than joy, joy fiercer than anguish pierced him. The bitter waters were turned suddenly sweet by some divine alchemy; his withered heart budded and blossomed.

"The rest is nothing worth, little one," he said. "You have come back. I too am old."

At that she smiled.

"Little one?" she said, and with the undying love of love which is the birthright of women. "Am I still little one?" she said, and again she kissed him on the lips.

"Let us go," he whispered. "Let us go home."

The lane of faces parted right and left, and in silence they went up across the quay through the deserted streets to his house. Not till they had passed out of the sound of hearing did the silence grow into a whisper, and the whisper into speech. They crowded round Tombazes, but he could only wipe his eyes and conjecture like the rest.