CHAPTER III.
THE LITTLE LORD.
Even when the first strangeness had worn off, Danaë remained an incongruous element in the Lady’s secluded household. As a Striote, speaking the island patois, she was a predestined adherent of the Prince in the eyes of the two old women, and therefore an enemy of their mistress, and to make things worse, she was ignorant of the standard of “European” culture to which they had painfully attained. Life within the bounds of the garden, mitigated only by a saint’s-day visit to the nearest church, was miserably confined after the active existence to which Danaë had been accustomed, and she scandalised her custodians by her exploits in climbing trees and scrambling up walls. Old Despina went out every day to do the household shopping, in the course of which she managed to pick up and bring home to her mistress an extraordinary variety of gossip reflecting on the Prince, but she would never take the girl with her. Danaë’s longings to make closer acquaintance with the crowded streets and the enticing shops were in no way satisfied by the short walks to church in the company of Mariora, both of them so closely swathed in their shawls that nothing of their faces could be seen. But Despina assured her mistress that the girl was such a savage that if she was allowed into the town she was sure to make a scene of some kind, or at least to attract attention by her staring and her uncouth remarks, and as the Lady was above all things desirous to escape notice until the moment of her vindication arrived, Danaë was sentenced to remain within the grounds.
Even the thought of the punishment in store for the Lady would not have enabled the girl to endure the confinement but for the society of the baby. He was a notably joyous child, the brooding sorrow of his unhappy mother leaving him untouched. Danaë and he took to one another at first sight, and she became his devoted slave. With sublime inconsistency, she saw in him the heir of the Christodoridi. He was named Joannes, after the patriot Emperor who had fallen on the walls of Czarigrad in the vain attempt to repel the final onslaught of the conquering Roumis, and from whom the Christodoridi were descended in the female line, and Danaë told herself proudly that he should yet sit upon his ancestor’s throne. His preparation for this exalted future should be her task, and hers alone. Released from the baleful influence of the Lady, Prince Romanos might be trusted to make his Imperial marriage and safeguard his own career, but Danaë would carry off Janni to Strio, and bring him up a fearless climber and a daring seaman, as became a son of the sea. Whether the Prince allowed her quietly to take possession of his son, or whether she was obliged to act without consulting him, she hugged herself daily in the thought that the Lady would have no voice in the matter. Nay, from her prison the unfortunate mother should be permitted to see her child in the distance, growing up without knowledge of her and happy in his ignorance.
It was impossible for the Lady to be unaware of the feelings with which Danaë regarded her, though she found the girl’s island Greek almost unintelligible. Sullen looks, deepening into positive hostility when Janni was taken to his mother, could not be mistaken, but the Lady set them down to an excessive loyalty to the house of Christodoridi, and jealousy of the foreigner who had married into it. Eurynomé suffered from home-sickness, no doubt, and that was why she was always so cross. Kindness was wasted on her, since one could not import her native rock bodily into Therma harbour, and after one or two careless attempts to break down the nurse-girl’s enmity, her mistress shrugged her shoulders and left her to herself, secure in her devotion to Janni. Danaë breathed more freely when the Lady ceased her efforts, for was she not a witch? and kindness from her could only be looked upon with suspicion. But it was possible that her indifference was merely a ruse, and therefore Danaë exhausted all her store of charms to protect herself and the baby. Mariora caught her one day stealing into the kitchen to rub her finger on the sooty side of a saucepan, for did not everyone—save foreigners and atheists—know that a dab of soot behind a child’s ear was the surest means of averting the evil eye? But Despina and Mariora laid aside their differences to drag the culprit into their mistress’s presence, and accuse her with one voice of laying spells on the illustrious little lord—a charge which Danaë found particularly galling from those who ought to have shared her Orthodox beliefs had they not been corrupted by European incredulity. The Lady would have been merely amused, had not the remedy been such a dirty one, but as it was, Danaë received so severe a scolding that Despina ventured hopefully to ask leave to give her a good beating. The Lady looked annoyed.
“No,” she said; “if Eurynomé cannot do what she is told, she must go back to her island. I am not going to take the responsibility of teaching her common sense. Her uncle is the person to do that. You may go, Eurynomé.”
“Alas, Lady mine!” lamented Despina, “you have lost a chance. There is great evil in this wicked girl’s heart towards you, and I would have beaten it out before it grows into deeds.”
“My good Despina, what harm can a wretched nurse-girl, who could not even make herself understood outside, do to me? It is the Prince’s fancy that she should attend on the little lord, and I should be sorry if he thought I had a prejudice against her. If he sees for himself that she is troublesome, he will tell Petros to take her away.”
Danaë, lingering shamelessly to listen at the door, stamped her foot as she hurried away, boiling over with rage.
“So be it, Lady! so be it!” she muttered. “I can do you no harm, can I? And I can’t talk your mincing foreign Greek? You will find before very long that I can! I make my bow to you, my Lady. You will know me better when I bring my Jannaki to the window of your dungeon, and teach him to spit upon you!”
Danaë could not have explained why her mistress’s indifference wounded her more than active dislike would have done, but so it was. The company of the two old women, with their taunts and nods of triumph, was equally intolerable, and she never rested until she had found a hiding-place for herself and Janni where they could be by themselves. It was close to the house, so that she could hear at once if she was called, in the grove of ilex-trees which masked the approach to the kitchen premises. The branches of one of the trees grew close to the ground, and to Danaë it was child’s play to clamber into them with Janni girt closely to her with a shawl. Once well above the ground, she climbed higher and higher until they were quite concealed by the foliage from anyone below, reaching a convenient forked branch where she could sit in comfort, and where she broke away the twigs cautiously to give herself a view over the garden. In spite of all her care, it was not long before her two enemies divined that she had some hidden refuge, and began to hunt for it. Shaking with laughter, and holding up a warning finger in front of Janni’s rosy face, she would hear them shuffling among the stiff dead leaves below her, peering round the tree-trunks and scanning the lower branches keenly. They knew that she must be in the wood, unfortunately, for the first time that she took Janni up the tree the climb made him fractious, and she was obliged to sing to quiet him, so that it was no use denying the fact when Mariora demanded where she had been, making that noise so close to the house, but when they required further particulars, she assumed an expression of idiocy that was absolutely impenetrable. The old women were equal to her, however, and one unfortunate day, descending her tree hastily in answer to Mariora’s loud summons from the kitchen door, Danaë almost fell into the arms of Despina, crouching among the dead leaves. Then indeed there was a moment of triumph for the Lady’s two faithful attendants. Gleefully they haled Danaë by main force before their mistress, and charged her with endangering the little lord’s life and limbs by taking him to the top of the tallest tree in the gardens. She was voluble in her denials, but the tell-tale leaves and pieces of bark, traces of her hurried descent, which decorated her hair and clothes and the shawl in which Janni was wrapped, belied her words, and her mistress was the more disturbed because of her former confidence.