+-------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber’s note: |
| |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------+
DAUGHTERS OF MEN
BY
HANNAH LYNCH
AUTHOR OF
“TROUBLED WATERS,” ETC.
NEW YORK
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY
150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY
UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY
[_All rights reserved._]
TO DEMETRIOS BIKELAS.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Of your kindly interpretation of the laughter here and there in this
volume, purporting to be a picture of modern Greek life, I have no
doubt. You at least know that I lack neither friendship nor sympathy
with your race. We like not the less those whom we laugh at, provided
our laughter is not meant to wound. For are not our own absurdities and
weaknesses mirrored in those of others?
My more serious preoccupation is the accuracy of my judgment and
observation. For any errors on this ground I claim your indulgence. The
foreign observer is proverbially impertinent and inaccurate, as we in
Ireland have sad reason to know. We do not lack our Abouts, though it
may be doubted if we accept them in a spirit so generous as you do.
In placing your name before my story, I may be said to hoist the
colours of Greece, and under them dare sail my little bark of Greek
passengers without any fear of coming to grief upon Hellenic shores,
should I have the honour to penetrate so far.
H. L.
DAUGHTERS OF MEN.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE AUSTRIAN EMBASSY.
The Austrian embassy at Athens was more largely and more brilliantly
attended than usual. At nine o’clock the Patissia Road showed a
line of carriages going backward towards the Platea Omonia from the
gaily-lighted embassy. All the foreign ministers were there, as
well as the Prime Minister of Greece, and whatever distinguished
travellers Athens had the honour of entertaining at that time,--it
being winter, there was a goodly number. A Russian Prince or two,
presented by the Russian minister; two eminent English politicians on
their way to Constantinople for a confidential exchange of views with
the Sublime Sultan, to be remembered by jewelled snuff-boxes or some
such trifles; a sprightly French mathematician straight from Paris
the Blest; a half-dozen of celebrated archæologists, furnished by
Europe and the United States, all viewing each other with more or less
malevolence and suspicion--the Frenchman noticeably not on speaking
terms with his distinguished brother from Germany; Dr. Jarovisky of
world renown, fresh from Pergamos and recent discoveries at Argos,
speaking various languages as badly as possible; a genial and witty
Irish professor rushing through Greece with the intention of writing
an exhaustive analysis of the country and the people, in that spirit
of amiable impertinence so characteristic of hasty travellers. There
was the flower of the so-called Greek aristocracy: Phanariote Princes,
Græco-Italian Counts from Zante and Corfu, and retired merchants and
speculators from Constantinople and Smyrna and London. There was
a Greek poet, hardly distinguishable in accent and manner from a
Parisian, except in a detail of appearance which gave him the head
of a convict, so hideously do the Hellenes shave their heads to look
as if they wore mouse-coloured skull caps; a prose translator of
Shakespeare, who had lately visited the Immortal’s shrine at Warwick,
and, in the interests of local colouring modelled himself since his
return as closely as possible upon the accepted type of the English man
of letters, and surveyed the frivolities under his eye with a British
impassivity and glacial neutrality of gaze. All the musical dilettanti
of the city of the Wise Maid were there, and all its presentable
women. Some of the girls were pretty, and all were thickly powdered
and richly dressed; all had large, brilliant dark eyes. And the gowns
and frocks from Paris, the jewels, lace, aigrettes, flowers, and bare
arms and shoulders made an effective and troublous contrast with the
preponderance of masculine evening attire and semi-official splendour.
This large and distinguished gathering had been convened in honour of
the return to her native city of Mademoiselle Photini Natzelhuber, a
celebrated pianiste, the rival and friend of Rubinstein, the pupil
of Liszt and not greatly inferior to her master, who, at Vienna, had
been publicly named by him Queen of Pianists to match his recognised
kingliness. All Athens was on tiptoe of expectation, eager to hear her,
and still more eager to see her. It is not known, but extravagantly
conjectured, with what sum the Baroness von Hohenfels was able to bid
over the heads of her rival salonists and procure the honour of the
Natzelhuber’s first appearance in Athens. Sane and discerning persons
were probably right in putting it down to francs represented by four
figures, for Austrian baronesses have a pretty accurate knowledge of
the value of money. But for the moment six figures were supposed to
represent the sum, and the matter was discussed with that singular
absence of reserve or delicacy with which fashionable and well-bred
society is apt to discuss the affairs of its host in the host’s own
house.
Through the confused mingling of languages French could be detected as
the most universal. A fair, pale young man, with the grave questioning
air of a stranger who is disagreeably conscious of being shy and ill at
ease, and, above all, utterly and helplessly alone, was walking about
the rooms, amazed and bewildered by this Babel of tongues and types,
and seemed to entreat by his look of gentle fear that no one should
notice him or talk to him. He stared around with unquiet, troubled
blue eyes, so very blue, so hopelessly, stupidly frank and clear, like
a child’s, that they made more noticeable the extreme youthfulness
of his face and most slender figure. A mere boy, twenty-one years of
innocence and ignorance leaving him on the brink of manhood with only
the potentialities of his sex faintly shadowed in the lightest gold
stain above the soft upper lip. He had just stepped into the glare and
turmoil of life from the protected shadow of an isolated old castle
in Rapolden Kirchen, with no more reliable and scientific guide to
the mysteries of existence than a tender and nervous mother, who,
after bringing him up like a girl, had left him for another sphere,
and no other knowledge of the passions and their complex sensations
than that to be gathered in a close and fervent study of music. It is
easy to picture him. A reserved lad of high-bred Austrian type, with
a glacially pure face, and heart fluttering with girlish timidity,
half-frightened and half-attracted by the world he interprets in the
vague light of his own pathetic ignorance, just conscious of opening
curiosities upon the eternal feminine, and ready to sink with shame the
instant a strange woman looked at him.
“Who is that charming boy?” asked a handsome old lady, whose motherly
heart was touched by the childish uneasiness and loneliness of his
attitude.
“That fair-haired young fellow near the window?” her companion
answered. “Nice looking, isn’t he? A very pretty young lady, eh?”
“Don’t be so malicious. Men are always jealous of a handsome boy. You
know how powerfully he appeals to our sympathetic sex. But who is he?”
“Rudolph Ehrenstein--a nephew of Madame von Hohenfels. He has just lost
his mother, and is travelling in search of distraction. Some of these
young ladies will doubtless take compassion on him.”
“Yes, with that pretty face and doleful forsaken air he will not have
to go far for a willing consoler.”
“It would be the very best thing for him,” said the popular poet,
joining them. “One never knows how much to believe of gossip,
especially in this centre of _canards_, but they speak of him already
as the Natzelhuber’s latest flame.”
“Good heavens! Not possible, surely!” cried the old lady, in a tremor
of delighted horror. “He has the face of an angel.”
“Angels have been known to fall, Madame,” said the poet, with his best
Parisian bow and cynical shrug, throwing a challenging glance at his
neighbour as if to defy him to prove that Théophile Gautier or Dumas
could have capped an observation more neatly; and then quoted with a
beatific consciousness of his own smartness: “L’ange n’est complet que
lorsqu’ il est déchu.”
“Talk of women’s tongues! You men have never a good word to say either
of yourselves or of us.”
“Is there not a proverb to that effect as regards the ladies?”
“Calumny, my friend, pure calumny. Men have had the monopoly of
proverbs, and, of course, they have used them as they have used
everything else, against us. It does not follow that even the clever
man believes all the smart and satirical things he says of our sex,
but an arrow shot at us looks a smarter achievement than a juster
arrow aimed at yourselves. And the smart thing goes down to a duller
posterity, and there’s your proverb. Truth is as likely to be in it as
in the bottom of the proverbial well!”
“I shall seek it henceforth in you, Madame. Can you tell me if there
is any truth in the announcement that the Natzelhuber is coming
to-night?”
“Madame von Hohenfels looks certainly anxious and doubtful. You know
Mademoiselle Natzelhuber has an alarming reputation.”
“Oh, yes, abominably eccentric--and ugly,” sighed the poet.
Rudolph Ehrenstein, modestly unconscious that the reliable voice of
Public Opinion, glancing at his wings, had been pleased to pronounce
them singed and soiled, had retreated into a deep recess and was
nearly hidden by a silk curtain and tall palm branches. He sat down
on a low chair, and rejoiced that here, at least, there were no bare
obtrusive shoulders and brilliant orbs to dazzle him, no scented skirts
to trouble him, and that the murmur of varied tongues and voices and
the whirr of fans came to him in softened sound. He was just closing
his eyes to think of the old dim castle of Rapolden Kirchen and his
beloved mother, whose subdued manner and tone seemed to him the more
exquisite to remember because of the noisy and strongly perfumed women
around him, when a man near the door caught sight of him through his
gold-rimmed eyeglass, and starting forward, burst into his retreat
with clamorous recognition and two extended hands, the offering of
demonstrative friendship.
“Delighted, charming boy, delighted to see you so soon again. Heard
from the baroness you were expected in Athens, but no idea you would be
here to-night.”
“I arrived last evening,” said Ehrenstein, standing up and grasping the
proffered hands with a look of relief, as if he found the necessary
restorative in their touch. “What a quantity of strangers there are
here! All their different languages have made my head ache.”
His companion was a rich Greek merchant from Trieste, who was arrayed
in extremely florid evening dress and wore a very large white camelia.
He glanced at the boy’s mourning studs and sighed as if recalled
suddenly to the stern sorrows of life, and then blew a little whiff
which expressed the recognised evanescence of even sorrow and
bereavement, and thrust their presence from him.
“Well, you see, we Greeks have to draw very largely upon foreign
countries for our entertainments,” he said, slipping his arm into
Ehrenstein’s and dragging him gently out of the recess. “As a Greek
from abroad, I regret to say that it would be impossible to mix with
the pure Athenians for any purposes of social pleasure. They can
neither talk, dance, nor eat like civilised beings. In fact, my dear
Ehrenstein, they are not civilised.”
“What a dreadful thing to say of the descendants of the ancient
Greeks,” laughed Rudolph.
“Oh, the ancient Greeks!” exclaimed Agiropoulos, airily. “If you are
going back to those old fossils, I will candidly admit that I am out of
my depth. There is nothing I am more heartily sick of than the ancient
Greek. There’s Jarovisky over there, a perfect lunatic on the subject.
Homer for breakfast, Homer for dinner, and Homer for supper admits of
variety with improvement. He reads Homer on the terrace by moonlight,
and falls asleep with Homer under his pillow. My opinion of the ancient
Greeks is, that they were not one whit better than their amiable
representatives of to-day. They were men of great natural eloquence
and literary gifts, and knew how to lay on their colours with an eye
to future generations. But we have only their version, and it would
require at least twenty connecting evidences to prove the word of one
Athenian. Why, to hear them talk to-day, one might imagine theirs the
chief nation of Europe, and Athens its handsomest capital--dull, ugly
little Athens!”
They were walking round the rooms, when Agiropoulos, surveying the
crowd through his aggressive eyeglass, suddenly asked his friend if he
had been introduced to any ladies.
“I have been introduced to nobody yet except the Greek Minister--oh, I
forgot, a young English attaché.”
“Ah, I see the baroness is resolved to keep you hovering yearningly
upon the skirts of paradise. Never mind, my child, I will find you
a houri. There is a very handsome brunette, the prettiest girl in
Athens. Her French is fit for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and her _dot_
acceptable should your views incline that way. My faith, I would not
object to either myself, but my time has not come for settling down.
Butterfly, you know, from sweet to sweet, and that sort of thing. Sad
dog, as those droll English say. Ah!----”
Before Rudolph could demand an explanation of this singular and
enigmatic avowal, understood by even such white innocence as his to
hint at something darkly and yet pleasantly irregular, the Baroness
von Hohenfels bore down upon the young men with a disturbed expression
of face. She tapped Agiropoulos on the shoulder with her fan, and said
hurriedly:--
“My dear M. Agiropoulos, I am greatly alarmed about the Natzelhuber.
You, I believe, are the best authority on her movements and caprices.
Do you know why she has not come?”
“I do not, indeed, Madame la Baronne,” answered Agiropoulos, bowing,
and twirling his moustache with a fatuous smile. “But it is not so very
late.”
“Don’t you know what very primitive hours we keep in Athens?” the
baroness cried testily. “Did you see her to-day, Rudolph?”
Young Ehrenstein flushed and shrank a little with a hint of anxious
pain in his blue eyes.
“No, aunt, I called, but Mademoiselle Natzelhuber was not visible,” he
said.
Agiropoulos looked at him sharply with an imperceptible frown, and
then, turning to his hostess, resumed his smile of fatuous security,
and said:
“To relieve your doubts, Madame la Baronne, I will drive at once to the
lady’s house, and carry her back with me, if even I must employ force.”
“Do so, and you will earn my lasting gratitude. We are all dying to
hear her play, and her name was the attraction to-night,” and Madame
von Hohenfels brightened. “Come with me, Rudolph. I must find you some
lively girl to chat you into good-humour. Delay as little as possible,
M. Agiropoulos.”
Agiropoulos bowed low and retired, while Rudolph silently offered his
arm to his aunt, shrinking still and wounded.
“It is a great disappointment that M. Reineke is not here to-night.
He, also, is a new lion--singularly handsome and captivating and very
clever, they say. He created quite a sensation in Paris last winter.
But he got ill coming from Egypt and I suppose he will make his first
appearance at the Jaroviskys’ ball next week.”
“Is there to be a ball next week?” Rudolph asked listlessly.
“Of course; are we not all vying to honour an English Cabinet minister?
He will probably write about us when he gets home.”
“Who are those girls laughing so loudly?” Rudolph asked, with no
particular desire for information.
“They belong to the American legation. Not exactly the choice I would
have you make in girls’ society, my dear,--intolerably loud and
vulgar,” said the Baroness, surveying them through her long-handled and
elegant _face-à-main_ which she raised to her eyes. “They represent the
United States--most deplorably. I want you to cultivate the society of
the Mowbray Thomases--English Embassy. Here is the son, Vincent, a very
nice boy who can speak intelligible French for a wonder, and will, I am
sure, be glad to teach you tennis and cricket.”
“He is quite a boy,” cried Rudolph, cheerfully. “I shall be less afraid
of him than of your lively young ladies.”
Agiropoulos had in the meantime driven to Academy Street, where
Mademoiselle Photini Natzelhuber was staying. He found the house in
complete darkness, and only when he had made a considerable noise did
a somnolent and astonished servant thrust her head out of a window and
demand his business.
“Where is your mistress, Polyxena?” cried Agiropoulos.
“In bed, sir.”
“In the name of all that is wonderful, has Photini gone clean out of
her senses? In bed, and all Athens waiting for her at the Austrian
Embassy!”
Polyxena leisurely unbolted the door, and Agiropoulos rushed past her
up the stairs, and hammered frantically outside Photini’s bedroom door.
“Photini, get up and dress this instant. I insist. I swear I will not
leave off knocking until you come out--not even at the risk of driving
all the neighbours mad!” he shouted.
“What the devil do you want at this time of night, Agiropoulos?” was
roared back to him. “I will box that girl’s ears for letting you in.
Stop that row. You must be drunk.”
“Come, no nonsense, Photini. I am serious, on my soul I am. You’ve been
expected at the Austrian Embassy for the last hour and a half. It is
just eleven, and Athenian receptions break up at midnight, you know.”
“I suppose they want me to play. I had forgotten all about it. The
mischief take the idiots! For goodness’ sake stop that noise, and I’ll
get up.”
It was a little after eleven when a murmur ran through the rooms on the
Patissia Road that Agiropoulos had returned with the missing Pleiad.
Every one pressed eagerly forward to see the great and eccentric
artist. Corns were gratuitously trodden upon and the proprietors forgot
to swear, dresses were crushed, and no lady remembered to cover a cross
expression with a mendacious smile and a feeble “It does not matter;”
all faces wore an expression of open anxiety, curiosity, and wonder.
“Quite a bear, I hear,” somebody whispered, audibly, “bites and snarls
even. Dresses abominably, and swears like a trooper.”
Mademoiselle Natzelhuber entered the room a little in advance of
Agiropoulos, whose smile was one of radiant self-approval and
triumph,--he quite enjoyed this open recognition of his _ménage
irregulier_. Photini wore a look of hardly concealed contempt and
indifference, and advanced slowly, meeting the multitudinous gaze
of curiosity with a regal calmness. Her dress was dowdy and common:
she was stout and low-sized, but she succeeded in carrying off these
details with truly majestic grace. It was impossible to titter or
sneer; despite all shocks of disappointment, it was impossible not to
meet gravely that grave indifferent glance, and recognise a strange
kind of superiority in its lambent topaz imperturbability. All eyes
were fixed upon her but two boyish blue eyes that, after one swift
and inquiring look, were averted in a poignant confusion of emotions.
Instead, they rested on Agiropoulos.
Madame von Hohenfels moved towards the artist with a gracious smile of
welcome, and expressed her pleasure in very cordial terms,--she could
afford to be exuberant now that she was relieved of the terror of this
woman’s possible defection.
“This, I believe, is your first appearance in Athens after a long
absence, Mademoiselle Natzelhuber.”
“Where is your piano, Madame? You did not invite me for the sake of my
handsome face, I suppose. Then pass compliments and come to business.”
“Qu’elle est grossière,” was the comment that ran round the room,
and the English Cabinet Minister, the Right Honourable Samuel
Warren, gazed at her through his eyeglass, and lisped, “What a very
extraordinary creature!” One does not mix in the highest diplomatic
circles for nothing, and the Baroness von Hohenfels was perfectly
competent to extricate herself and her guests from an awkward situation
with both grace and glory. She laughed musically, as if something
specially witty had been said, and led the way to the grand piano. The
seat was a high one, and Photini tranquilly kicked it down, and gazed
around her in search of a low stool. Agiropoulos rushed forward with a
chair of the required height, and the artist sat down amid universal
silence and touched the keys lightly, upon which her nose might
conveniently have played, so near were both. After a few searching
bars she burst into Liszt’s splendid orchestral arrangement of “Don
Giovanni.”
Agiropoulos cared nothing whatever about her music, and wandered round
the room till he reached the place where Ehrenstein was standing.
“That was a delicate mission, eh, Ehrenstein?” he said, with his
persistent smile. “Successfully accomplished too.”
“Its success is as apparent as its delicacy,” retorted Rudolph. He was
filled with astonishment at the wave of bitterness towards this oily
self-satisfied Greek that swelled within him.
Agiropoulos caught the unmistakable ironical tone.
“Might I request you to define your precise meaning, my young friend?”
he asked, drily.
“That is easily done. You have acted to-night as no gentleman should.”
All girlish timidity had faded out of Rudolph’s eyes, which flashed
like gem fire in the sparkle of honest indignation.
“Ho! is that where we are?” cried the Greek, with a low exasperating
laugh, as he twisted his moustache and examined the gloss of his shoes.
“And the crime?”
“In permitting my aunt to speak to you in a distinctly offensive way of
Mademoiselle Natzelhuber, and in smiling as you did when you entered
the room with her.”
“My dear fellow, what a simpleton you are to talk in this superannuated
style about the Natzelhuber.”
“Mademoiselle Natzelhuber is a woman. An honourable gentleman makes no
distinction between women as regards certain laws. The same courtesy
and consideration are due to all.”
“Don’t tilt against windmills in this extravagant way, Ehrenstein,”
said Agiropoulos, laughing good-humoredly. “Why, Photini would be the
first to laugh at us for a pair of imbeciles if she heard that we
quarrelled about her. She does not want consideration. She is rather a
fine fellow in a rough and manly way of her own--very rough, I admit.”
“Pray, make no mistake about me. I object to such vulgar classification
as you are disposed to make,” cried Rudolph, sharply.
“I’ll be as wide and as refined as you like--platonic, artistic,
spiritual--whichever suits you best. But we may not doubt the
admiration, my friend.”
“To prevent gross misinterpretation, I will give you the situation.
I hold myself willingly and proudly enslaved to such genius as hers.
I would gladly sit in silence all my life if my ear might be filled
with music such as hers. For the sake of that, I am ready to offer my
friendship, and forget the rest.”
Rudolph stood back a little with a listening rapt expression, and
Agiropoulos glanced contemptuously down at Photini. Agiropoulos was
constitutionally incapable of understanding disinterested admiration.
His sentiments were coarse and definite, and to him were unknown the
conditions of strife, probation, unrewarded and unexacting love,
self-distrust and tremulous aspiration and fear; above all, was he
free from a young man’s humble reverence of womanhood, which, in the
abstract, was to him something so greatly inferior to himself as to
be below consideration. Cheerful it must be to escape the hesitations
and exquisitely painful flutterings between doubt and hope, and the
thousand and one causes of clouded bliss, to the more fastidious and
ideal Northern nature. He looked forward to a suitable marriage when
his relations with Photini should come to an end, but was not concerned
with the question of choice. Girls are plentiful enough, and handsome
or ugly, they come to the same thing in the long run: mothers of
children of whose looks their husbands are unconscious.
In response to the loud applause which greeted her last chord,
Mademoiselle Natzelhuber rose slowly, bent her head as low as her
knees, the mossy black curls rolling over her forehead like a veil, and
her hands hanging straight down beside her. No one present had ever
seen a lady bow in this masculine fashion, and following the breathless
magnificence of her playing it so awed her spectators that some moments
of dead silence passed before they were able to break into their
many-tongued speech.
“Let me have some cognac, if you please,” she said, curtly, turning to
her delighted hostess.
What will not the mistress of a salon endure if she may furnish her
guests with a thoroughly new sensation! And certainly Mademoiselle was
a very novel sensation.
The cognac was promptly administered to the artist, and the people
began to move about and express their opinions.
“That girl is tremendously admired here,” said Agiropoulos to Rudolph,
drawing his attention to a noticeable group of young ladies. “Her name
is Mademoiselle Eméraude Veritassi. She was not christened Eméraude,
I may mention, but we are so very Parisian at Athens that we insist
on translating everything, even our own names, into French. The girl
beside her is _Miss Mary_ Perpignani, and her brother _Mr. John_
Perpignani, though neither of them knows a word of English. It is
_chic_ with us. I am Tonton. I can’t exactly say what language it may
be, but it isn’t Greek, and that you see is the main thing. My sister
Persephone calls herself Proserpine.”
“What bad taste! Persephone is surely a beautiful name.”
“Ah, but it is Greek--not fashionable, not _chic_. And if we have no
_chic_, my friend, we have no _raison d’être_.”
“Who is that going to play now?” asked Rudolph.
“Good heavens! it’s Melpomene--and after the Natzelhuber!”
No wonder there was much admiration expressed at the nerve of the
lady who bravely undertook to play such a masterpiece as Chopin’s
“Barcarolle” in the presence of a master not given to handle offenders
gently. But everyone was disposed to receive the amiable imperfection
of an amateur with indulgence, while it was impossible to conjecture
the feelings of the short-haired woman who was quietly sipping her
second glass of cognac on an ottoman and listening with a fixed neutral
stare in her yellow eyes. When the piece was over, the artist rose, and
said with awful measured politeness:
“Does Madame imagine that she has played Chopin’s ‘Barcarolle?’
Doubtless Madame has mistaken the name. I will play the ‘Barcarolle’
now.”
It is easy to understand the feelings with which Madame retired, and
the feelings aroused in the breast of Madame’s irate husband, who
glared vengeance from the other end of the room; and for one moment
every one recognised that a _star_ is not the most agreeable ornament
of society, but this idea was soon swept away upon magic sound.
Could there be anything dreamed of on earth like the beauty of the
“Barcarolle” so played? Enthusiasm reached the white-heat of passion.
Ladies tore the flowers from their bosoms, men from their button-holes
and flung them at her; faces went white and red, and eyes filled with
tears. And there stood Agiropoulos smiling blandly and taking half the
triumph as his own, while Rudolph had gone back to his recess and was
sobbing unrestrainedly in sheer ecstasy.
When the first wave of emotion had subsided, and the artist had bowed
her acknowledgment in the same curious way, too contemptuous even to
shake the flowers off her person, her host stepped forward to offer her
his arm and lead her towards the buffet in another room. Somebody else
stepped forward with gracious intent, a young self-sufficient viscount,
the nephew of the distinguished French minister. He bowed low, and
acquainted her with the agreeable fact that he had never heard anything
like her playing of the “Barcarolle,” and his regret that Chopin
himself could not hear it. Mademoiselle looked at him meditatively for
some trying seconds, then said calmly:
“Do you really believe, sir, that I require your approval? Be so good,
sir, as to confine your observations on music to your equals.”
“Truly a remarkable and slightly disconcerting person,” said the
English Cabinet Minister, arranging his eyeglass the better to observe
her. “Extraordinary, egad! I suppose artists are bound to be erratic.
But don’t you think they could play just as well with hair like
everybody else, and decent manners?”
His companion was of opinion they could, and suggested that the artist
in question would create a lively sensation in a London drawing-room.
“By Jove, yes. Suppose we strike a bargain with her, and carry her back
with us. We might label her--‘authentic specimen of a Greek barbarian,
picked up near the Acropolis; dangerous.’”
All the guests now struggled forward in search of refreshments. But
Rudolph strolled about waiting for an opportunity to see Photini
alone. His gratitude and admiration were at that exalted pitch when
an outpouring is imperative. He knew nothing of the vile report that
had been circulated concerning his own relations with her, and sought
her with the damning candour of complete innocence. He found her, and
the discovery sent a shock of horror through him that almost stopped
the beating of his heart. She was in the centre of a noisy laughing
group of men, smoking a cigarette and holding an empty liqueur glass
in her hand into which the Baron von Hohenfels was pouring some
brandy, laughing boisterously and joking hideously. Every nerve within
him thrilled in an agony of shame. This the glorious interpreter of
heavenly sound! This the artist he so passionately desired to reverence
as a woman, while worshipping her genius! He was half prompted to
go away in silence, when his eyes caught the sarcastic triumph of
Agiropoulos’ smile. With a mighty effort he gulped down the bitterness
of disappointment and shocked surprise, and bravely went forward.
“I have been looking for you, Mademoiselle,” he said coldly. “I wanted
so much to thank you for the delight you have given me to-night--this
addition to past delight,” he added, holding out his hand.
“Ah! my little Austrian page!” Photini cried, laughing into his
solemn grieved face. “I got your card to-day. You must come and see
me again. The ‘Mélodiés Hongroises’ you know. I’ve promised you that.
A pretty fellow is your nephew, Baron, and quite as charming as he is
pretty. But too grave, too grave, and too--_sans reproche_,” she added
cynically.
All the men looked at Rudolph curiously, and laughed. The boy flushed
scarlet, bowed and walked away. The rooms were rapidly thinning, and
recognising him as a member of the Hohenfels family, several guests
stopped to shake hands with him as they passed him. He received their
advances mechanically, hardly heard a word addressed to him, and was
still in a dream when his aunt and her husband returned to join him in
the empty chambers.