TENOS.
Like a roseate jewel in a circle of sapphire, with opal and mauve and
purple lights struck from it by the sun’s rays, lies Tenos upon the
deep and variable bosom of the Ægean waters. The Greek islands seen
from the sea are untiringly, unspeakably beautiful. Shadow and shine,
delicate hues and strong ones melt into an inextricable haze, as do
the sensations of the spectator, incapable of analysis as he watches
them. Energy oozes out through the finger-tips, the pulses quiet in
lazy delight, and the eye is filled for once with seeing. But the heart
is tranquil, unutterably content, and of speech there is no need. Here
at last is forgetfulness of sorrow and unrest. Here is the Eastern
sage’s dream realised, out of the reach of the envenomed shafts of
Fate,--floating indolently on a just stirred field of liquid blue, all
land and sky and water is a harmonious blending of the purest tints.
An infinitude of azure melts by tranquil degrees into milk-white; a
flame as bright as the heart of a pomegranate and blinding as unshaded
carmine, steals insidiously into the mountains of mauve, and changes
them to pink.
But it is only when your barque draws nigh the sleepy little hollow of
a very sleepy little town, that you are shaken out of your exquisite
dream of Paradise. You see the harsh subdued contrast of the white
houses and their green jalousies, looking as if they had fallen asleep
in the Middle Ages, and nobody had remembered to awake them since,--a
break of dim barbaric life upon a background of desolate rocks and
empty mountain sides. Tenos is certainly not Paradise. It has a little
pier, and is a perfect maze of misshapen arches, and filthy lanes,
calculated to make the least fastidious stranger shudder in mingled
fear and disgust. There are unsavoury little cafés, outside which, at
all hours of the day, uncouth men, in dirty costumes, sit drinking and
smoking narghiles, which the café-clods carry from one to the other
with the long tubes between their lips, and then pass it to the lips
of their customers, who are vivaciously, and in passionate earnest,
discussing the affairs of Europe, while Providence and the womenfolk
are equal partners in the care of their own.
But the town, as you skirt the lanes and arches that crowd down upon
the sea-line, has a charm exclusively its own. The tiny streets, when
they are paved, are paved with marble; and the houses on either side
have a cheerful conversational way of reaching across to shake hands
and exchange other amenities. An occasional palm tree lifts itself
up against the pure sky, as do the sails of wind mills, circled like
monster spiders webs. There is music in the trickling descent of the
mountain rills flowing over the marble and silver stones, in and out
of which the lizards, quick with life and the joy of the sunshine,
are ever coming and going. Then there is that singular construction,
the great shrine and pilgrimage of the Virgin of the East, a marble
building containing an expansive courtyard, a square of cloisters and
pilgrim-houses and a curious semi-Byzantine church, full of monstrous
treasures in gold and silver. Over the little town it towers in
glistening splendour, on the top of an inclined street, called “Virgin
Street,” enframed in silver olives and stately palms, and elegantly
paved outside and inside. The sloping way that runs from it right down
to the sea, might be ground of shining snow; it is moss embroidered,
and lit by the double geraniums that look like roses, and shaded by the
gloomy cypress.
The isle of Tenos has pretensions of its own that it were idle for
us to dispute. It is divided into sixty-two villages, some of which
consist of three churches and four houses, and none show less than
three churches for the accommodation of every dozen inhabitants.
It will be satisfactory for the law-loving reader to learn that
these villages are apportioned into four mayoralties, governed by
one mayor and three justices of the peace, and that,--late crown of
representative existence, until M. Tricoupis cruelly brought in a bill
a year or two ago, which affiliated this “tight little island” with her
near neighbour Andros,--it actually sent three members to Parliament,
to look after its interests in King George’s Boulé at Athens. But all
glory is evanescent. It has been proved by history that it is idle to
place any trust in ministers or princes. Heaven knows why Tenos was
shorn of her parliamentary splendour, but alas! what is to be expected
of an economic minister, who prefers to consider the debts of Hellas
rather than her greatness, and who rashly decided that the work left
undone by three Members of Parliament may be efficiently accomplished
by one? The chief and most exasperating neglect of these late
illustrious persons is the formation of roads. There is not a single
road throughout the island, and only two level spots, the lovely plain
of Kolymvithra, and a quarter of a mile round the great purple Castro,
where once the Venetians held their seat of government, their solitary
fortress towering over the ruined little town of Borgo. This oasis of
pathway, in a desert of precipices and rocky altitudes, runs from the
top of the episcopal village of Xinara to the Greek monastery in the
village of San Francisco. It is unknown whether it is a remnant of
Venetian civilisation or of Turkish barbarism. But it is quite certain
that it is not the result of the crown of triple representatives Tenos
until lately wore. For the rest of the time, the rider is conducted by
an unmanageable mule, which indulges a lively weakness for the dizzy
verge of a ravine, along which he phlegmatically picks his way. From
almost perpendicular escarpments he drops into awful depths of rock and
furze and nettle, to trail his anxious and unhappy burden through the
musical bed of a torrent, and damage irretrievably a new pair of boots
by forcing them into an inconvenient affinity with rough walls and
jutting branches.
After a while, when the frame becomes physically inured to the
sensational extremities of this kind of exercise, the traveller
discovers that, however dreadful the eccentricities of his mule, the
brute is very sure, if leisurely, and that though his position be
invariably a discomposing ascent or descent, no harm to his head or
his limbs will come of it. He gradually learns to take his troubles
philosophically, and look about him with perfect security. If it is
evening, he will note the heavenliest sky, and watch the soft mist burn
out the sapphire stealingly, while the strata of gold and rose fade
to pink and pearly opal. He will delight in the contrast of marble
mountain and purple thyme, cyclamens waving the meadows mauve, or
poppies covering them in scarlet flakes, and the tall daisies white
above the green like the foam of the sea, or anemones making a delicate
haze upon the landscape. There will be patches of white heath over the
hill curves, and poignant scents to stir the senses. And in and out
of the twilit gray of the olives, the darkening glance and sparkle of
the sea that is never out of sight,--now laughing through a network
of fig branches, then through the stiff spikes of the cactus, or the
graceful foliage of the plane, and white villages studding the orchards
and gardens like jewels. Over all hangs a strange note of happy
indifference, a rude naturalness that seeks no concealment and cares
not for shadow, hymns the smiles of blue water and the glory of the
sky; the sharp broad beauties of seashore and mountain and valley.
The people are as simple as their landscape. Their lives are spent in
Arcadian ignorance and unaccomplished simplicity, as unconscious of the
evils of destitution as of the temptation of wealth. They dislike work,
and manage to shirk it, for every one owns a garden, a few fruit trees,
a goat, a pig, and perhaps a donkey. Dirty in their persons, their
houses are invitingly clean, and stand always open.
Leaving the pleasing altitudes of a general survey, the reader is
invited to fix his gaze upon the little village of Xinara. Two things
strike the observer on entering its single street; the quantity of pigs
and unwashed children, and the signs of desolation and pre-existence
upon the blackened ruins in suggestive proximity with the comparatively
new houses and cottages. Near bright flowers and trellised verandahs,
stand broken walls with fig branches and weeds struggling through a
dismantled window, and curious Venetian symbols and legends wrought in
marble, now black with age and exposure, above the doors and windows
that have long since served the pigeons as convenient shelter. With the
pigs and poultry peeping through the wooden chinks, you see blocks of
marble crusted with gold and silver stones scintillating like flashes
of light. Beside a little glaring church, jaunty in its hideousness,
stand a row of houses burnt yellow and black, as if they had sustained
all the sieges of the Middle Ages, and pierced with pigeon holes like a
face with small-pox.
The street is divided in two by a dark stone arch. Instead of the
provincial inn, there are three clubs, the blacksmith’s den, the
carpenter’s rude workshop, and the single general store. This is kept
by the village Lothario, Demetrius, a splendid fellow inclining to
corpulency, who wears a ring, a fez, and even goes to the length of
washing his hands and face and combing his hair once a day. One is not
a village Lothario for nothing. He is married, and hence he adds a
disappointed and hopeless air to his fascinating crimson tie whenever
he serves or chats with a woman under forty. But he draws the line at
forty. Kyria Demetrius has attained that respectable age.
There is a fountain close by, where the women gather with red earthen
jars to draw water and indulge in cheerful social intercourse. It is
enclosed in a deep, damp arch, black and lichen-grown, with heavy beams
of wood supporting its roof, and higher up is the public laundry, a
tank with a sloping stone under it, where the laundresses scrub their
linen kneeling round, and converse in a dull undertone, varied by an
occasional tendency to scream.
The houses are reached by a small flight of marble steps, and are
always confined to one floor with a pretty terrace outside, and
underneath is stabling for the mules and donkeys and other live stock.
Beyond the archway lies the Catholic Cathedral, with the Bishop’s
Palace and Garden. The Church is of respectable size, but ugly, and
the Palace a dreary yellow building enlivened by the red tiles of the
pectinated roof. But the Bishop’s garden is charming. Goldfinches sing
in the Persian lilacs, and the rippling rills are never silent. In the
centre, there is a big stone tank and a sun-dial, and the oranges swing
like gold balls against the dark cypress. The valley upon which it
looks down is indeed a vale of delight. Olives paint a silver mist upon
the sunny landscape, and the fig and mulberry foliage lend it colour.
The girdling mountains of the neighbouring isles rise sharply against
the sky, and in and out their curves, opening upon the roseate shores
of Eubœa, breaks the sea like lapidescent blue, while through the
moist, grassy plain of Kolymvithra twists and swirls a vein of silver
water. The other side of the picture is a view of gloomy mountain,
bare grey rock and broken blocks of marble, rising above the tangle
of village gardens and trellised verandahs, with their showy display
of geraniums, carnations, roses and cactus drapery, from whose bed
of peaked leaves gleam large magenta stars. And here and there the
windmills make gigantic shadows upon the earth, flocks of pigeons shoot
like spots of illuminated snow through the sunlit air, and goats browse
amongst the scented furzes of the rocks, in easy companionship with
mules and kine.
To reach the house of Pericles Selaka, on the other side of the
village, the traveller must make his own pathway with the loose stones
in the bed of a minute down-flowing stream. The water is crystal-clear,
and nothing can be more engaging than its gurgle and sparkle, but damp
feet are the inevitable consequence of its acquaintance. After a wet
passage through the torrent-bed, more or less torn and troubled by the
neighbourhood of blackberries, thorny hedgerows and tall reeds, he
will have to cut his way through a stony meadow, jump the low, loose
walls that separate each field, tangle his limbs in a multiplicity of
straggling branches and uncultivated growths, and trample ruthlessly
upon the pretty heads of the wild flowers. Every shade in foliage,
and every hue and odour in flower will charm him: the delicacy of the
plane sets off the polished darkness of the oleander and myrtle leaf,
the moist glitter of the maidenhair enriches the ferns that spread
themselves like fans upon the rocks, and along the vine-branches the
shooting leaves begin to uncurl. From the hedges there will be the song
of the linnets and goldfinches, and under them the musical lapping of
water against stones.
Pericles Selaka’s house had originally belonged to a Venetian noble
family, and still showed the coat-of-arms wrought in marble on either
side of the gate, with a Latin inscription under a Venetian gondola. It
stood above the village, overlooking the two lovely valleys that divide
the flanks of the empty encircling hills,--hills bare of all but the
glory of their own tint, and the wavering clouds that sweep, soft and
shadowy, over the everlasting sunshine. Behind it the mighty Castro,
proud in its purple and grey desolation, bereft of its old splendour,
but still dominating the island like an acropolis, and in through the
openings of its crags, cleft in nature’s fury, runs the sea as through
a frame. The courtyard into which the gate opened was gemmed with
flowers. In the middle there was a well, and on either side a palm tree
with wooden seats under its shade.
It was winter, so the vine-roofed verandah was a flood of sunshine. A
short flight of marble steps led to the terrace above, whence Syra,
Delos and Naxos might be seen, as well as the sloping fields that drop
into the torrent below, and Selaka’s orchard and vineyard, which, at
that time, showed pale, slim lines of green just opening upon the brown
earth. A watch-dog dozing in view, lazily observed the regular rise
and fall of the digger’s spade, and only wakened to sharp activity
whenever a venturesome sheep or goat thrust itself upon his notice.
An oppressive silence lay upon the land, and there was silence in the
house whence the terrace opened.
The room into which you stepped from the terrace was simplicity
itself. White everywhere; white sofas, white curtains and white chair
covers, with a purple table-cloth edged with wonderful Byzantine
embroidery. On a black cabinet there was a goodly display of old Greek
jars and lamps; and inside, a tray of antique coins and exquisitely
carved silver. These heirlooms are to be found in the poorest Teniote
cottages. I have been served by a cottager with water and jam on a
heavy silver tray, the water in a delicate Venetian glass with armorial
bearings wrought in colours into the glass, and the jam in a costly
silver chalice. In a recess there were shelves fitted with the Greek
classics, from which the Latin writers were jealously excluded. Your
scholarly Greek despises Latin. Sitting at a side table beside a
window that looked out upon the Castro, was an old man bent over one
of these classical tomes. He was reading in a leisurely, familiar way,
as a connoisseur sips his port. Occasionally he lifted his eyes from
his book, and removed his black cap, all the while unconsciously and
swiftly rolling up cigarettes, and puffing with the same deliberate
appreciation noticeable in his manner of reading. He was a keen,
thoughtful-looking man, with a curious mingling of black and white in
hair and beard.
His solitude was interrupted by the entrance of an old woman, dressed
in a garment that may best be described as a black sack. She was a
serene little woman, very tidily built, with an indefatigable and
sturdy air, and in her brown face sparkled two preternaturally black
eyes. She wore a Turkish kerchief of red muslin wound round her head,
and outside this an enormous plait of false hair, as is the ungraceful
habit of the Island women. This was Selaka’s housekeeper and servant in
one. She was called Annunziata.
“This, Kyrie, has just been brought up from the town,” she said,
handing him a telegram.
Pericles took the telegram, opened it in his leisurely way,--one
naturally grows sleepy on a sleepy island. It was from his brother in
Athens announcing Reineke’s coming. Pericles frowned, and looked more
thoughtful than ever as he read the communication. As may be imagined,
it was neither very delicate nor very wise. It referred to a possible
desirable solution of Inarime’s future.
“Humph,” said Pericles, and crushed the missive in his hand, “my
brother is sending us a visitor, Annunziata,” he explained, curtly.
“A visitor! Has your brother taken leave of his senses? Surely the
visitor who proposes to come here cannot be other than a madman,” said
Annunziata, who appropriated the privilege of speaking her mind to her
master.
“He was always a fool,” assented Pericles; “however, it is essential
that we should sustain our reputation for hospitality; so, my dear
woman, you will be good enough to prepare a room for the guest.”
“And why should I prepare? Don’t you know that my rooms are always
prepared?” protested Annunziata, hurt in her honour as a housekeeper.
“Yes, yes, but there will be sheets to air, and flowers and such things
to put in the room. He is an invalid; and sick men are proverbially
difficult to please. They require as much spoiling as a woman,” said
Pericles, dismissing the subject with a majestic wave of his hand.
The subject, however, would not be dismissed from his mind, and he
sat there with his open book, his eyes persistently wandering from
one window to another, looking now out on the bright terrace and
then on the gloomy Castro behind. It was hardly human for a father
not to speculate upon the coming of this stranger, and its possible
consequences. A husband for Inarime! Nonsense! it was not to be
imagined that any stray adventurer, whom his brother might choose to
pick up, could possibly prove a worthy or desirable mate for that
pearl among girls. Besides, he was not prepared to give her to any man
who could not indisputably claim to be a Greek scholar. He knew the
sort of scholars Europe habitually sends to Greece. Self-sufficient
young men or tottering archæologists with a barbaric pronunciation and
a superficial acquaintance with Homer and Plato. These were not the
scholars he desired to know, nor the sort who, under any circumstances,
could prove congenial to him. As for Inarime, she was likely to be
still more fastidious. Her beauty and her great gifts entitled her to
contempt for less gifted mortals. While thinking thus, a shadow crossed
the light of the terrace, and a girl’s form stood framed in the doorway.