He stooped hurriedly and pressed his lips to her hair. In another instant he was outside, tearing madly down the rough streets, splashing his boots and clothes in the little streams, jumping over groups of astonished babies, and racing, as if pursued by furies, past the Platea Omonia and up the Patissia Road.
There was a carriage outside the Austrian Embassy, and just as he got inside, a group of riders bore down towards it.
“Monsieur Rudolph will be down presently,” the major-domo explained, in answer to the irritable inquiries of the baron.
When Rudolph descended to the hall in his charming riding attire, the baron surveyed him with a curious and amused smile, and nodded approvingly.
“There are some young ladies for you to look after. Spare them, I entreat you,” and, in reply to Rudolph’s questioning look, added, “Young ladies, you know, are weak and susceptible, and you wear an abominably victimising air.”
Rudolph jumped into the saddle with a very apparent want of alacrity. Mademoiselle Veritassi smiled him welcome, and unconsciously he took his place beside her. Three carriages carried the elders, and the party of youthful riders nearly made the dozen. The air was blithe, the sun shone gloriously and struck the landscape lucid green. The young blood of the impressible Rudolph mounted to his head. The laughter of his companions imparted its contagion to his bereaved heart; on he rode with spring running music through his pulses, and caught by the mirth of the landscape.
The young people showed no destructive tendency to break into couples, but kept one gay and impregnable party, laughing, joking, careering in hearty rivalry to see who should out-distance the sedate carriage-folk, chattering nonsense and enjoying the hour with the frenzied intensity of unperturbed youth. Mademoiselle Veritassi made a delightful companion, with the charm of a well-bred boy, courteously brusque and quizzically candid.
Under the fire of her imperious glance the sundered, dolorous air dropped from Rudolph, the wine of life coursed vigorously through his veins, and he shouted laughter with the rest. They skirted the stations of upper and lower Patissia under the blue shadows of the Parnes mountains. The marble of Pentelicus, struck by the quivering sunbeams, broke the delicate mist afar. On either side, the long waste of olive plantations toned the joy of the scene by their sad colour, and brought out the contrast of the emerald grasses of the underwoods, and the variously-tinted reeds that edge the torrent of the river Cephissus. The little German village of Heraclion showed white and yellow, with solemn spaces of cypress, upon the sky of clear, unshadowed blue. Flocks of white and black sheep were like moving mounds upon the fields, and over all hung Pentelicus, a haze of grey heather and dismantled branches where its marbles were not a dazzle of whiteness. Rudolph was enchanted with everything—with the blurred hillsides and the murmuring streams that curled in soft swirls along by the hedges, with the goatherds following their capricious charges,—the villagers, burnt brown, in the glory of fustanella, scarlet fez and smart jackets, their long sleeves hanging back like idle wings,—with the boys and their donkeys, and the women in embroidered coats and muslin head-dresses.
At Kephissia it was obligatory to dismount and hunt for the grotto of nymphs, and then talk nonsense beneath its dripping rocks and curtains of maidenhair. It was even compulsory to taste of its water, and the French viscount made a gallant allusion, and quoted the inevitable line from Homer. Then on up the straight road to Tatoi, the arbutus in full fruit, and on either side exquisite varieties of shrub and leaf and winter flowers. The young ladies were eager to feed on the arbutus, and sent their escorts to gather this ethereal nourishment. And when they were replenished, and satisfied with the smirched and bramble-torn condition of the cavaliers, they decorated their bosoms with the berries, which showed like balls of blood upon their sombre habits. All this necessarily involved much explosive mirth and many inarticulate cries. And men and maidens rode on, convinced there is no delight to match a ride through winter Athenian landscape, when the heart is fresh, the eyes are clear, and the senses near the surface; when, above all, there is plenty of arbutus-fruit for the gathering, cavaliers to tear their gloves in its search through the bushes and brambles, and attractive maidens to wear and eat it.
What more potent than youth’s wild spirits? At dinner it was impossible to say whether the young people or the old, to whom they had communicated their irrepressible gaiety, were the more intoxicated. What amazing tact and calculation were displayed by the Baron and Baroness von Hohenfels! Well they understood the impressionable and susceptible temperament they had to deal with when they gathered together these gems of their society. Such brilliant eyes and laughing teeth gleaming above the flowers, such whiz of airy and unseizable nothings shot high on the wings of badinage, with the same intangible flavour as the foam of champagne which plentifully drowned them. All seemed specially conspiring to captivate the poor bereaved lover. And so well did they succeed, that he quite forgot Andromache. It was only after dinner, when Mademoiselle Veritassi was invited to sing, and selected something weakly sentimental in French, all about hearts and sighs and tears and parting, that the new-born babe, the infant Cupid, began to clamour and blubber within him. Then he turned aside to think of Andromache. He pressed his head against the window, and stared blankly out upon the hotel gardens drenched with moonlight, the flowers washed of all colour in their bath of silver.