HOW GUSTAV REINEKE MISSED MADAME JAROVISKY’S BALL.
The illustrious Dr. Galenides had just seated himself at his desk to
write a note to his no less illustrious colleague, Dr. Melanos, while
his hat and gloves on the study table and his carriage outside were
testimony of a contemplated professional drive. The study door was
suddenly opened with what Dr. Galenides regarded as undue familiarity,
and looking up sharply, prepared to administer the deserved rebuke, the
learned physician recognised in the intruder an old friend and brother
in profession. The new-comer, a rough, provincial-looking Hercules, was
Dr. Selaka of Tenos, a member of his Majesty’s parliament, called for
some unaccountable reason, “The King of Tenos.” Instead of a rebuke,
Dr. Galenides administered an effusive embrace, and clasped this
insular majesty to his capacious bosom.
“What a splendid surprise, my dear Constantine!” he cried, when he had
kissed both Selaka’s bronzed cheeks. “When did you come to Athens?”
“Last night. I have come to oppose two new measures of the Minister.
Have you read his speech on the Budget?”
“Of course. I thought it displayed great moderation and sagacity.
There’s a statesman if you will, Constantine.”
“May the devil sit upon his moustache for an English humbug! England
here, England there! Ouf! But wait until he has me to tackle him.”
“You’ll lead him a dance, I’ve no doubt,” laughed Galenides. “But how
are all the family?”
“Very well. My niece Inarime is growing more beautiful every day. All
the islanders are in love with her. A queer old dog is Pericles. He has
brought that girl up in the maddest fashion. Nothing but ancient Greek
and that sort of thing, and he has made up his mind she will marry a
foreign archæologist, or die an old maid.”
“Yes, I always thought him unpractical and foolish, but I tremendously
respect his learning. Why doesn’t he bring the girl to Athens, if he
won’t marry her to a Teniote?”
“Well, he talks vaguely of some such intention. You are going out, I
see.”
“Yes, and that reminds me, Selaka. I was just writing a line to
Melanos, but you’ll do just as well. There is a foreigner sick in the
Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne who has sent for me. Could you go round and
look at him? I haven’t a spare moment to-day. If I am absolutely wanted
for a consultation, of course, I’ll endeavour to attend.”
Selaka consented with alacrity, and the friends parted with cordiality
at the door, one to seat himself in a comfortable carriage, and be
rolled swiftly to the Queen’s Hospital in the new quarter of Athens,
the Teniote to walk to the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, a little
above Constitution Square, overlooking the orange trees and fountains
in front of the Royal Palace. He was delighted with the prospect of
meeting a distinguished foreigner, distinction proclaimed in the choice
of hotel, and he would profit by the occasion to discuss the politics
of Bismarck with this M. Reineke.
The waiters favoured him with that insolent reception usually bestowed
by waiters of distinguished hotels upon foot and provincial-looking
arrivals. But the mention of the illustrious Dr. Galenides cleared
the haughty brow of Demosthenes; and when Selaka furthermore stated
that that great personage had sent him to feel the pulse of the sick
foreigner, Demosthenes condescended to call to Socrates, a lesser
luminary among the hotel officials, and signified to his satellite that
Dr. Selaka might be conducted to M. Reineke’s chamber.
Selaka found his patient, a young man of about twenty-eight, lying on
a sofa, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown, with an elegant travelling
rug thrown across his feet. Selaka’s keen glance rested in amazement
on a delicate Eastern head, long grave eyes of the unfathomable and
colourless shade of water flowing over dark tones, with a very noble
and intense look in them, a high smooth brow that strengthened this
expression of nobility, and finely-cut lips seen through the waves of
dark beard and moustache as benign as a sage’s. It was a thoughtful,
spiritual face, serene in its strength, unimpassioned in its
kindliness--the face of a student and a gentleman.
“I should never take you to be a German, M. Reineke,” said Selaka,
after their first greeting, seating himself beside the sofa, and
taking the sick man’s supple fingers into his.
“No one does,” said Reineke, in such pure French as to put to shame
Selaka’s grotesque accent. His voice was musical and low, with a
softness of tone in harmony with his peculiar beauty, and fever gave it
a ring of weariness.
“Are you going to order me quinine, doctor?”
“Why, naturally. How else would you break a fever?”
“But I cannot take it, doctor. It disagrees with me.”
“That is a pity. Four doses taken in four hours cut the worst fever,
and set a man on his feet in a day.”
“Some constitutions can bear it, I suppose. But I nearly died after
quinine treatment in Egypt. My head has not ceased going round ever
since.”
“Your temperature is over a hundred, and you refuse to take quinine!
Then there is nothing for you but to linger on in this state. Low diet
and repose--that is all I can prescribe.”
Left alone, the sick man closed his eyes wearily and turned to sleep,
out of which he was shaken by a knock at the door, and the head of an
Englishman thrust itself inside.
“Can I come in, Mr. Reineke?”
“Pray do, Mr. Warren,” said Reineke, smiling agreeably. “It is kind
of you to find time to visit a sick wretch amid all your _fêtes_ and
sight-seeing.”
“Oh, that is a real pleasure. Only I am so sorry to see you cut up like
this and losing all the fun. It was awfully jolly at the Von Hohenfels’
last week. There was an outrageous lioness there. For the life of me I
could not catch her name. The governor wants to secure her for London.
By Jove! what a tartar! She nearly ate the French viscount up in a
bite.”
“Yes, I heard about it, but she is a very distinguished artist, I
believe. You’ve been to Sunium since?”
“Came back to-day for the Jaroviskys’ ball. What a jolly people these
Greeks are! The entire country seems at our disposal. Special trains,
special boats and guides. Oh, we had an awfully good time, I tell you:
inspected the Laurion mines, and looked awfully wise about them and
everything else. But surely you’ll be able to go to the Jaroviskys’
to-morrow? What did the doctor say?”
“Nothing wise--a doctor never does.”
“Look here, old fellow, we can’t leave you here while we are dancing
and flirting with the pretty Athenians.”
“If the pretty Athenians guessed my nationality, they would not be very
eager to have me dance and flirt with them.”
“Then the governor was right? You are not a German?”
“No, I am a Turk. I have lived a good deal in Germany, so I adopted a
Teuton name upon coming to Greece to avoid disagreeable associations
for the natives. It is very comfortable. I was bored in Paris by the
way people stared at me, and whispered openly about me when they heard
my Turkish name, so I mean not to resume it. If I played the piano, the
ladies fell into ecstatic wonder.”
“Well, we are accustomed to the old-fashioned Turk, cross-legged, on
a pile of cushions, in flowing garb and turban, smoking a narghile,
with a lovely Fatima or two by his side, and exclaiming frequently in
sepulchral tones, ‘Allah be praised!’ It will doubtless take us some
time to grow used to the newer picture presented by you.”
“Is it not aggravating to be kept here in a darkened room, while near
me are ruined porticoes and columns, where once my people built their
Moslem forts and turrets, and the voice of the muezzin broke the
lone silence after the Pagan days? There is not even a glimpse from
my window of that mass of broken pillars that stood out so plainly
against the sky when we entered the Piraeus. I feel like a child
waiting for the play, when suddenly comes a hitch which keeps the
curtain down. I want to walk with the poets and philosophers, read
Plato in the groves of the Academe, stand with Œdipus and Antigone at
Colonneus, and look towards the towers and temples of Athens, walk
with Pericles and Phidias through the marbles of the Acropolis, with
none but the voices of glorious spirits to break the silence of the
universe,--those spirits who have burned into history the clear gold of
their unapproachable intellects, seeing with eyes that have served for
centuries, feeling with hearts that have beaten for all time, speaking
with lips upon which the noblest words are everlastingly carven.”
“Gad, I see you are an enthusiast like our friend, Miss Winters, who
goes into fits when we inform her of some fresh rascality on the part
of the modern Greeks,” cried young Warren, marvelling to hear a Turk
talk in this fashion.
“She is a charming old lady, and you youngsters downstairs should not
quiz her as you do. She engaged, if I were better, to carry me with
her on Sunday to read Paul’s sermon to the men of Athens on the hill
of Mars aloud. I have since been informed that it is customary for
the Athenians to take their Sunday airing along the foot of the hill
of Mars. Fancy the sensation we should have created, standing in a
respectful attitude beside the little American lady, piously reading
aloud the words of St. Paul.”
Reineke laughed softly, while young Warren exploded in a burst of loud
merriment.
“Do you know, when she discovered that the ruffian of a head-waiter
is called Demosthenes, she looked so horribly like embracing him,
that, seriously alarmed, I exclaimed, ‘Madam, I beseech you, pause in
your rash career.’ I don’t think she quite realised the extent of my
service, for she very nearly quarrelled with me when I mentioned that
Demosthenes is in the habit of defrauding our poor Jehus of at least
half their profits.”
“Amiable enthusiast! But don’t class me with her. I have no illusions
about the modern Greeks. I have seen in the East how they take
advantage of our good-nature and our dislike to trade. I know them to
cheat and bargain and deceive, and grow fat upon the kindness of those
who trust them. But what have they in common with the ancients? They
have not the intellect, the unerring taste, the exquisite restraint of
language and bearing, the sunny gravity of temperament, the simplicity
and keen love of the beautiful. If they were really the descendants of
the old race, there would be some signs whereby we should recognise
their glorious heritage.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps, if we knew the opinion held by the Persians and
the barbarians of the old Hellenes--it would be probably very different
from their own.”
“We don’t need any opinion with the works they have left. Such
eloquence as that is incontrovertible, and in the face of it, their
representatives to-day are as much out of place here as were the
Franks, the Italians and the Turks. It was a desecration to have built
on these immortal shores a nation sprung from slavery and the refuse
of the Middle Ages--without tradition or any right to believe in its
own destiny. What do they care for? Money, trade! They have no real
reverence for knowledge, except that it helps in the acquirement of
wealth and power. You will find no Greek ready to consecrate his days,
aye, and his nights, to the disinterested dispersion of the clouds
of ignorance by as much as a rushlight of knowledge, capable of the
unglorified, untrumpeted, unrecognised patience and labour of the
scholar. Nor would he willingly choose poverty and obscurity that he
might live the life of the spirit.”
“Well, I am afraid there are not many of us who would,” said Warren,
good-naturedly. “And these people have their virtues. They are sober
and moral.”
“They are indeed, and they are not cruel to their children or their
wives, but they make up for the omission by horrible cruelty to
animals. They frequently amuse themselves by tying a barrel of
petroleum to the tails of a couple of dogs, and firing it, for the
delicate pleasure of gloating over the death agonies of the poor
brutes.”
“Good heavens! What awful savages! But do you know, Mr. Reineke, it
would be a just punishment for your ill opinion of them if you fell in
love with a Greek. ’Pon my word, there are some very pretty girls here.”
“It is possible. But mere beauty has no attraction for me. I have
seen lovely women in the East, indolent, unthinking beings, whom I
couldn’t respect. I would sooner have a wicked woman who had elements
of greatness in her than a virtuous one who had none. Aspasia I should
have adored. It is because the women we mostly meet are so insipid that
I have never thought to fill my life with the consuming excitement of
love. I should feel ashamed and grieved to place my manhood under the
feet of a mere household pet, or a drawing-room ornament, a fluttering,
flounced marionette with the soul in her eyes gone astray, her lips
twisted out of the lovely sensibility of womanhood by senseless chatter
and laughter far sadder than tears. To see so many exquisite creatures
meant to be worshipped by us, and only ridiculed, meant to guide and
ennoble us, and preferring degradation; the purity of maidenly eyes
lost in the vilest audacity of gaze, and the high post of spiritual
guardians of the world bartered for unworthy conquests.”
“How cold-blooded to be able to furnish all these excellent reasons
for not making a fool of yourself! Well, may we hope to see you at the
Jaroviskys’?”
“I am afraid not. But pray, come and tell me how you have enjoyed
yourself when you have a moment to spare.”
“And shall I give your love to Miss Winters?”
“Hardly that, but present her with my most distinguished compliments,
if that is good English.”
Dr. Selaka that evening found Reineke more feverish, and although he
was not anxious to lose sight of his patient, he seriously advised a
sea voyage as the only adequate substitution for quinine.
He was greatly interested in this handsome stranger with the dark
beard and romantic intensity of gaze, and speculated wildly on his
nationality and circumstances as he walked from the hotel. He thought
he might be a Spaniard, until, remembering the late Spanish Minister,
who could not pay his passage back to Spain, and only got as far as
Corfu by selling all the clothes and furniture he had never paid for,
he decided that the Spaniards were a miserable race. The Italians,
he thought, were not much better, and Reineke as little resembled a
Frenchman as he did a German.
“You might go to Poros,” he said to Gustav. “It is a pretty place, and
the trip would do you good.”
“Why not one of the Ægean Islands?” suggested Gustav.
“Certainly. There is Tenos. I live there myself, and I have a brother
whom you could stay with for a day or two.”
Selaka coloured with a sudden astonishing thought. This stranger was
rich, perhaps unmarried. He might fall in love with Inarime. Now he was
bent on urging the trip to Tenos, before undreamed of. “I’ll telegraph
to my brother, and you can travel in the _Sphacteria_. The captain is
my godson.”
“You are very kind, doctor, and I am ashamed to accept such favours
from you,” said Reineke, truthfully, in surprised assent.
“Oh, it is a pleasure. We Greeks love to see strangers.”
“Then I will go to-morrow. I want to get well as soon as possible, for
I have much to do here,” said Reineke.