INARIME.
Anybody whose travels have led him to the Hellenic shores, knows too
well that the old classic beauty is almost extinct. But not quite.
Here and there, on the islands of the Archipelago, he may chance upon
a face that looks at him out of the other centuries,--stamped with
the grandeur of an unforgotten race in protest against a physical
deterioration that gives it the melancholy charm of isolation. This
vision is rare, but once seen it is beheld with breathless wonder.
There is nothing to compare with it. Other European types of beauty
sink beside it, as do Italian melodies beside a bar of Beethoven. It is
as if over a gray landscape the scarlet dawn broke suddenly, showing an
unhoped-for reality in glowing tints and soft lines no imagination can
picture.
Lit by the strong sunshine, with the faintest grave smile round her
lovely lips, as she met the puzzled glance of her father, Inarime
looked as if she sprang direct from the Immortals.
Something like her face the student dreams of, when he muses over the
great Dead. The small dusky head, its blue-black hair, softening to a
tawny sheen at the brows; the olive cheek as smooth as satin, almost
colourless except where it gathers the bloom of the tea-rose, or of
a shell held to the light. The full firm curves of the mouth, rather
grave than gay, but ineffably sweet, with paler lips than those of
the North; the delicate nose coming down straight from the forehead:
the low arch of the eyebrows, and the curves of the chin that show no
weakness. These details much contributed to the charm of the whole. But
its greatest beauty were the unfathomable eyes--of a deep brown with
an outer ring, which in any joyous mood gave them the gleam of amber,
while sorrow or deep emotion darkened them to the luster of agate. She
wore a dress of dull gold, with a bronze velvet collar and cuffs. The
front of the bodice was trimmed with large bronze buttons. It was not
a dress which Mademoiselle Veritassi would have worn, but then, on the
other hand, it was not a dress that Mademoiselle Veritassi could have
worn. Dowdy it was not, but strange, and looked as if it had grown upon
the young, firm, and supple form it clothed. Inarime had a pardonable
weakness for this most suitable gown. She had worn it constantly since
she had selected it from the merchant who brought the stuff from Syra,
with other splendid materials for the women and young persons of Tenos,
and the dressmaker, who had studied her art in that same elegant
centre, had made it for her. Indeed, she had never a variety of gowns,
nor did she seem to miss this source of happiness. Round her neck hung
suspended by a thin gold chain a little Byzantine cross, a relic of
her mother, and her abundant hair was gathered into a thick coil with
a long golden pin. It may seem strange that I should insist upon these
trivial matters, seeing it is generally considered that young girls
should be thus adorned, but it is not so in Tenos, and the artistic
delight Inarime could not have failed to take in her own beauty, apart
from any silly vanity, and with no desire to please the eye of others,
is a very singular deviation from the custom of Greek girls.
“Have you been waiting for me ever since, father?” she asked. A still
more curious fact, she did not speak the insular dialect, but pure
Athenian, with a faultless accent.
“Yes, my dear,” said Pericles, addressing her in the same language,
though he had spoken good Teniote to Annunziata. “It is well that you
have come now. I think, my dear, it will be better for you to spend a
few days with your aunt at Mousoulou, and it has occurred to me that
you might go there this afternoon.”
“But, why? I have no desire to go to Mousoulou,” protested Inarime.
“Well, if you would just please me in this matter, I cannot tell you
how grateful I should be to you, Inarime,” said her father, who always
treated her as an equal. For this young creature was to him more son
than daughter, since he had brought her up in a masculine fashion, in
the matter of education and training.
“It is strange, father, that you should turn capricious and mysterious,
but I will obey you in this as in all else,” she said, with an
exquisite gravity which likened her more than ever to a young goddess.
She was standing close to him now; and he got up, placed his hands upon
her shoulders, and looked earnestly into her eyes.
“It is no more than I might expect of you, Inarime” he said.
There was a dignity, a restraint about the relations of these two that
was very striking. Perhaps Pericles affected the manner and bearing of
the Ancients, with whom he exclusively communed, and perhaps Inarime
had ostentatiously caught this trick from him. Laughter with them was
as rare as anger, and both held their pulses in complete subjection.
Something of Inarime’s life,--while that lucky young man, known in
Greece as “the man of confidence,” who can be trusted to act as knight
to a lady, is leading her mule to the distant village of Mousoulou, and
while Gustav Reineke, on the “Iris,” is speeding towards the shores
of Tenos. This life is simple enough: unemotional, unanalysable; an
eager student from youngest years, the sole companion of a sage who
lived in the past. But Inarime enjoyed a local reputation that carried
the mind back to antique or mediæval days. The equilibrium of Europe
was not likely to be disturbed by it, but the peace of the island most
certainly was. All things we know are relative, and it is possible the
unknown and unsought conquests of Inarime would have been far enough
from causing any excitement to a London sylph. But besides Inarime’s
influence and reputation, extending over four mayoralties and sixty-two
villages, with a list of suitors headed by a bachelor mayor and the two
unmarried deputies, and including every single man and youth of the
island, the London sylph will be seen to play a small and insignificant
part in her own distinguished circle. She would probably turn up her
patrician nose at the addresses of a shepherd and a barbaric demarch.
But then the shepherd and the demarch would care as little about her.
Despite their inherited and undisguised contempt for women, the sons
of Hellas have sense and taste enough to know the value of an antique
head on live young shoulders. It was now nearly two years since the
mountaineers, meeting on the rocky pathways that scale the crags and
precipices and fringe the torrent-beds, began to ask why Selaka delayed
to choose a son-in-law. Each man regarded himself as the only proper
choice. And down in the _cafés_ the townsfolk and fishermen wanted
an answer to the same question. As a set-off against this suspense,
there was the satisfactory knowledge that Selaka’s choice would
find it no easy matter to bring home his bride. Indeed, a few young
bloods, like Thomaso, the Mayor’s nephew, a quarrelsome fellow given
to an undue consumption of raki, and Petrus Vitalis, whose father’s
recent death left him the proud proprietor of three Caiques, openly
spoke of abduction. Constantine Selaka was aware of all this, and was
extremely anxious that Pericles should select a son-in-law from among
his Athenian friends. Choice and preliminaries should, of course, be a
matter of strict secrecy, as a preventive of warlike explosion, for he
knew that Inarime’s suitors would prove as little amenable to reason
and fair play as the graceless suitors of the unfortunate Penelope.
And if, by delay, his niece should be carried off by the desperate
Thomaso or Petrus Vitalis, clack! Good-bye to the Athenian
nephew-in-law.
“Idiots! how dare they aspire to her?” Pericles exclaimed, whenever
such unsuitable proposal reached him.
“Well, Pericles, you must marry her to somebody, and you can’t expect
a Phœbus Apollo, with the classics on the tip of his tongue. You would
find him inconvenient enough,” the less exacting Constantine would
explain.
“Leave Apollos, though I would have no objection if one were to be had.
But do you seriously expect me to marry a girl like Inarime, as lovely
as Artemis, as learned and wise as Athena, to a clown? A fellow who
gets up at two of a summer morning to shoot inoffensive birds, and gets
drunk upon abominable raki while prating in vile Romanic about politics
and the Lord knows what, of which he understands nothing!”
“No, but there is Vitalis, the ‘member,’ who wants her.”
“May the devil sit upon his moustaches for a vulgar blustering fool!”
exclaimed the old man, forgetting Olympus. “What is your Vitalis,
Constantine? A boor. An uneducated lawyer, who could not tell a
verse of Euripides from one of Sophocles; doesn’t, in fact, know
that either existed, and never translated a sentence of Thucydides
in his life. A clown is better. At least he has a dim consciousness
that he is a barbarian. Whereas the other shrunken miserable being in
his ill-fitting clothes and European hat, deems himself the happiest
edition of a boulevardier. Boulevardier, save the mark! France has been
the ruin of us!”
“Then can’t you take Dragonnis, the other member?”
“No, I cannot. I don’t want any wretched politician for Inarime.
Dragonnis is as bad as his colleague--a pair of dunderheads. My
daughter will not marry a Teniote, neither will she marry a chattering,
gossiping Athenian. Some day I’ll take her abroad, and give her to a
scholar and a gentleman, who will see in her gifts and beauty something
other than the mere decorations of an upper servant and mother of a
family.”
Inarime had been the subject of disputes of this sort between the
brothers ever since that memorable day when the absence of shots
proclaimed to the village that a little “daughter of man,” instead
of the desired “son of God,” had come to bless the house. To the
friends and relatives, the intrusion of the unappreciated sex was
not, however, looked upon in the light of a blessing. According to
custom, people came and shook the hand of the injured father, condoling
loudly with the sorrowing and disgraced mother. But when Selaka’s wife
died shortly afterwards, and there was no boy on whom he could hope
to bestow his knowledge and learning, the father clung to Inarime.
He resolved to show the world, by his untiring labour, that a girl
may develop remarkable capacity and intellect. He cared little about
modern acquirements, but fed her mind exclusively upon the philosophy,
poetry, and history of her great ancestors. Homer and Hesiod were the
fairy tales of her childhood,--Plutarch the first book she learned
to read. She was familiar with all the ancient dialects and Greek
literature, from the time of Hesiod to the Alexandrian Renaissance.
She was taught to choose the simplest phrasing, and yet one that was
severely academical, from which all foreign interpolations of modern
Greek were expunged. The old calligraphy, too, was insisted upon, and
she wrote papers on the Trilogy from which an infallible University
Don might have learned much. Some of these papers her delighted father
contemplated sending to one of the German Universities, where he knew
that the fragrance of original thought and excellent style would be
more justly appreciated than in frivolous Athens. But he feared the
wrench of surrender such recognition from beyond the Ægean might bring.
A girl so perilously gifted might seek to plunge into the waters alone
and swim in depths beyond which his dim eyes and feeble hopes could not
follow. Besides, with him she was completely happy, and publicity is a
misery, a fret and a constant strain upon the nerves.
Thus she grew up unconscious of solitude or of needs other than those
which her surroundings supplied. As for the accomplishments which
occupy the elegant leisure of European young ladies, she was hopelessly
ignorant: would have been perfectly unserviceable at a suburban
tea-party or a game of tennis, and the popinjays who figure in polite
society would have scorned her, had they attempted to engage her in
conversation suitable to a background of moonlit balcony, or in the
movement of a waltz. But if she could not dance or embroider, and
sing Signor Tosti’s weeping melodies, and if her brown slender hands
looked as if their acquaintance with sun and air was considerably
greater than with kid or Suède, she could carry a water-jar from the
village fountain in an attitude that was a picture of grace, with a
light swinging step that was the music of motion--and this the London
sylph could not have done. Her father was strong upon the necessity for
thorough gymnastic training, and she could swim and run and ride a mile
like a young athlete. Even Greek boys cannot do as much, but then they
are not brought up by antiquated professors, who faithfully copy the
precepts of the old philosophers. Selaka, for this athletic training
cultivated a strip of sanded path in his farm near the sea, with the
shade of plane trees for rest. Here Inarime raced and exercised,
sweeping the sanded path with flying feet, and lips parted with the joy
of quick movement and the flush of health crimsoning her olive cheek.
Outside her books, her racing and riding, she had another important
duty--that of general letter-writer for Xinara and the adjacent village
of Lutra.