The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

"You are greater than ever, little one," he said, "and I find you more beautiful than ever."

She bent down, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and sat by him, while he stretched his hand out to hers and stroked it.

"Would not the boys and girls laugh to see us?" he said. "For, indeed, though I am old, I think you still like to have the touch of me. I am absurd."

"God bless their laughter," said she, "for, indeed, no ill thing yet came from laughter." Then, after a pause, "And are we not enviable? Are we not content? Indeed I am content, Nikola, and content comes once or twice in a lifetime, and to the most of men never. It is the autumn of our age, and the days are warm and calm, and no storm vexes us."

"And I am content," said Nikola.

So during the hot procession of August days the Indian summer of love, coming late to an old man who had long been of peevish and withered heart, and to a woman gray-headed, but with something still of the divine immortality of youth within her, sped its span of days delayed, and lingered in the speeding; for them the wheel of time ran back to years long past, and the years were winged with love and the healing of bitterness. Indeed, a man must have been something more obstinately sour of soul than all that dwells on the earth if he should not have sweetened under so mellow and caressing a touch, for when a woman is woman to the core, there is no man whom she cannot make a man of. Late had come that tender tutelage, but to a pupil who had known the hand before, and answered to it.

Often on these sultry mornings, between the death of the breeze from the sea and the birth of the land-breeze, the two would walk up the beacon-hill above the town, where they found a straying air always abroad. Of the years of separation they spoke not at all; for them both they were a time to be buried and no thought given them, to be hidden out of sight. Thus their strange renewed idyl, born out of old age, ran its course.

August passed thus, and the most part of September, but one day, as they sat there looking rather than watching, two masts under sail climbed the rim of the horizon, and, while yet the hull of the ship was down, another two, and yet another. Before long some forty ships were in sight, heading it seemed for Spetzas or the channel between it and Hydra. They sent a lad who was sheep-feeding on the side of the hill to pass the word to Tombazes, and themselves remained to see if more would appear. It was a half-hour before Tombazes came, and in the interval the horizon was again pricked by another uprising company of masts. Then said Nikola:

"The time has come, little one. Those are the fleets. It is the Turks who are now coming into sight. Ah, here is Tombazes."

It was soon evident that Nikola was right, for before long, as the ships drew closer, the first fleet was clearly seen to be of the Greek ships, who had outsailed the Ottomans and were waiting for them at the entrance to the Gulf of Nauplia, like ushers to show them in. As soon as the Turks were once in the narrow sea, with the mouth closed behind them by the Greeks, they were as duellists shut in a room, and the fate of Nauplia this way or that was on the board and imminent. Nikola announced his intention of joining the fleet with one ship, leaving the other, if Tombazes thought good, to help in the defence of the harbor in case the Turks attacked Hydra. Martha sailed with him; and at that Tombazes glowed, and making his action fit his word, "I kiss the hand of a brave woman," he said.