“Well, then, let us leave Strio this evening, as soon as they have brought us to your ship.”
“That’s exactly what I was hoping to do, but I have not been able to get at you to find out whether you would like it or not,” he replied, rather puzzled.
“Whatever pleases you, lord, must now please me,” replied Danaë with great meekness, as Parthenios Chalkiadi came up and seized a hand of each to conduct them to the bridal feast. It was his duty also to remain and watch over them, to prevent their feeling shy, as he kindly explained to Armitage, and also to add to the hilarity of the occasion by exchanging jokes with Angeliké’s godfather, who was chaperoning her and Narkissos on the next divan. Inexorable custom demanded that the brides should eat nothing on this, the only public occasion at which they would sit at meat with their husbands instead of serving them and the men generally, and they were also forbidden to utter a word, or even to answer if they were addressed. A demeanour indicative of extreme woe, and gestures expressing crushed subservience to the dominion of man, were the correct thing. Having once transgressed, Danaë refused to do so again by paying the slightest heed to any remark of Armitage’s, but Kyrios Parthenios was happily able to act as his mouthpiece, conveying to her not only his commands, but such viands as she could decorously conceal under her veil, and eat when no one was looking.
After the feast came the procession down to the harbour, attended by music and singing, and youths and maidens waving boughs of myrtle. For the purposes of this wedding the houses of the bridegrooms, to which their brides ought to have been escorted, were represented by their respective boats. Danaë, as the elder sister, must of course start first, and Angeliké, who had eyed her sourly through her veil at the feast, embraced her affectionately in farewell.
“Your gown is lovely,” she whispered. “With a silk like that, I should think you hardly mind being married without a dowry, do you?”
CHAPTER XXIII.
GUESTS OF HONOUR.
The music and the shouting had died away, and the lights of Strio were growing dim across the water as the yacht headed for Therma. Armitage, released at last from the duty of making elaborate and grateful bows to his parents-in-law, which had claimed him as long as he was within sight of the shore, heard a meek miserable voice at his elbow.
“Lord, may I speak to you?”
“I hope you don’t think it necessary to ask me that?” he said, turning round quickly. “Let us sit down here.”
There were two chairs comfortably placed in a sheltered nook, and he pulled one forward for her, and arranged the cushions. Danaë took a precarious seat at the very edge of the chair, and evidently found it shaky.