(_From Reineke’s Note Book._)
A SILENT BETROTHAL.
When I joined Selaka in his afternoon stroll, he appeared to notice
something different in my step and in my eyes. I felt myself as if I
sprang rather than walked, and my glance saw nothing distinctly that
it rested upon: it was impeded and clouded by the intense illumination
from within. Yet never before did the bare, sunny hills look to me more
lovely; never did the Greek isles, rising above their happy waters like
rose and mauve clouds upon a blue sky, seem more dreamily enchanting.
I remember nothing of our conversation. I walked beside the old man,
drunk with my own speechless bliss, and answered his questions at
random. And all the while my soul sang aloud its pæan, and the whole
earth seemed to smile upon me out of one girl’s grave luminous gaze.
Inarime! It seemed to me that the sweet air trembled with the shaking
impulses of my intemperate gladness.
Two days passed thus. Blind and absent as I was, I could remark the
sullen suspicion of Aristides’ manner, no longer vexing with its
impertinent familiarity, but repulsing me with insolent sullenness. I
paid no heed to this childishness. But I was struck with the fellow’s
extraordinary penetration. Whence could he have divined there was
aught in me to fear or distrust? There was something of the extreme
fineness and subtlety of the animal instinct in his intuition, which
completely eluded my observation. But Annunziata simply attributed
my restored strength and serene joy to the notoriously beneficial
influences of mountain air. She always greeted me with her cordial
smile, and sometimes ventured to pat my hand in a motherly way. I
delighted in her noiseless activity, and in her sturdy self-reliance.
Tears for self I should imagine had never dimmed her bright black eyes,
and the lines time had traced upon her brown forehead were not lines of
pain and mental travail, but the marks of healthy, contented labour.
It was a lesson to watch her carry her water jar from the village
fountain, or lay the table, without hurry or anxiety, with the perfect
ease of punctuality and order. Selaka, I felt, was studying me, half in
perplexity, half in alarm, yet with increasing approval. He liked me,
and with the days grew his cautious esteem into precipitate affection.
On the third day from my meeting with Inarime, he joined me in the
early morning, as I sat upon the terrace, smoking and revelling in the
lovely air. My heart could no longer bear this silence and separation,
and my tongue at last resolved to give utterance to its urgent claim.
“Will your daughter remain much longer at Mousoulou?” I asked,
conscious that my voice was unsteady from eagerness.
“I have not yet decided,” said Selaka quietly.
“Kyrie Selaka, I have a favor to ask you--the very greatest one man can
ask another.”
I looked round into his face as I spoke, and knew I was pale to the
lips.
“You wish to see my daughter,” said Selaka gravely.
“Nay, I have seen her. I want you to take me to her.”
The old man sat for awhile motionless as a statue, then he rose, and
paced the terrace in severe and anxious reflection.
After a pause, that seemed to me interminable, he stopped in front of
me, and looked in silence into my eyes. He shook back his head, as if
he had come to a supreme decision, placed one hand on my shoulder, and
held his beard with the other.
“Why not?” he asked, and then sat down beside me.
“That is not worthily said, Kyrie Selaka,” I could not help exclaiming,
reproachfully.
“I see. You think I should ask ‘why’ rather than ‘why not,’” said
Selaka, smiling softly. “And you are right; it is ‘why?’”
“Why?” I cried, impetuously, “because I love her, because I am hers,
and she, I know, is mine.”
“Gently, my son, gently,” he interposed, laying his hand soothingly
upon mine. “It seems to me that for a German you possess a pretty
lively and reckless temperament. That having looked upon my daughter,
her beauty should fire your young blood with romantic aspirations, is
but natural. That you should ardently wish to see her again, is as it
should be. But that you should hurl yourself with desperate passion
into this rash and unconsidered decision that you are hers and Inarime
is yours--my son, my son, it is not thus that I desire Inarime should
be loved. From stormy scenes and the tempestuous fluctuations of
passion would I jealously guard her, as from other noxious influences.
The state of romantic love I regard, in common with all serious
thinkers, as the very worst and most degraded state of bondage into
which man can fall. It is equally unreasonable in its sickening
depressions and in its passionate anticipations. I can see that it is
only fruitful in cruelty, in folly, in stupidity, in crime and reckless
blunders. Its miseries are immeasurable, and grievously restricted is
its circle of joys.”
“But surely, sir, it was with this kind of romantic love that you loved
your wife, Inarime’s mother,” I retorted.
“It was not so, my son. I loved her with the priceless affection
that is based upon tranquil knowledge, upon spiritual affinity and
inalterable esteem. Had the Gods left her to me, very jealously would
I have sought to preserve her from the wintry winds of sorrow and
poverty, and harsh experiences. Dear to me was she, as a complete
blessing, and profound was my grief when she was taken from me. But I
did not pursue her with the unthinking ardour of a burning desire, nor
was my soul consumed in its fires. I saw that she was good and serene,
and her beauty was an added charm. I sought her in the noontide of
life, as one seeks shade in the noontide of day.”
“But, sir, I beseech you, do not judge us all by this high and inhuman
ideal. We cannot all be sages. The passions will speak with terrible
insistence in youth, however heavy a chain of habit and restraint
may encompass them, and I cannot think there is aught unworthy or
degrading in their petulant voice. We love not the less nobly and
purely because passion is the font from which our love springs. If
it prompts imperious exactions, may it not be that it urges sublime
devotions? Man has nobly died for the sake of that romantic love you
condemn, and what sacrifice can be finer than a woman’s surrender to
it?”
“There should be neither sacrifice nor death. Reasonable beings should
strive to meet and fulfil the decrees of destiny, in measure and calm
acceptance of the laws of nature; not upon any violent urgence of the
emotions, allow themselves to be swept away and precipitated into
depths like powerless leaves whipped by the blast.”
“But if I recognise the decree of destiny that commands me to love
Inarime, must I not obey it?”
“Be temperate; that is all I ask of you. Be just, too, and as little
foolish and indiscreet as it is possible for a young man so blinded as
you are,” said Selaka, and I thought he did not look extremely offended
or discomposed by my impulsiveness.
“And when will you consent to put my discretion and my wisdom to the
proof?” I persisted.
“To-morrow morning we will go to Mousoulou.”
To-morrow, Inarime, to-morrow! That was all I could think of as I sat
and counted the hours, and my heart now sank within me in the complete
prostration of yearning, and then rose to intoxicating heights upon
the splendid wings of promise. I walked up and down the terrace all
night, and watched the stars, as glorious and varied as the hopes that
sprang and wavered and clamoured around me. Oh, the stillness, the
soft yet sharp enchantment of a night-watch upon an Ægean island! The
distant murmur of the restless sea breaks the silence of the land, and
the shadowy hills fall into the dense veil of the valleys. The charm
enters the soul like a pang, and it works upon the quickened senses
with the subtle mingling of exasperation, of poignant and tranquil
feelings. I felt chill as the twilight crept slowly over the night,
and the stars began to pale and drop, one by one, out of the dim sky,
like extinguished lamps, tracing a faint milky-way where their blue
and golden illumination had been. Then quickly shot into the eastern
horizon an arch of blood-red cloud, and showed the sea silver beneath
it, and over this scarlet bridge appeared the sun, like a ball of
living light ready to explode upon the pallid scene. And then the birds
of the orchard began their piercing harmonies, and the wide spears of
the grasses glistened with their crystal gathering of the night-dews.
Day had come; my day, Inarime, and yours.
Contact with cold water did duty for sleep. I felt quite refreshed when
I entered the little sitting-room where the coffee and Koulouria were
served.
“You are early,” said Selaka, greeting me with an intangible smile,
“and yet I am not wrong in believing you were walking on the terrace
long after every one had gone to bed.”
I nodded, and drank my coffee as if it were nectar. I almost choked
myself in my eagerness to dispatch my Koulouria, and hugely pleased
Annunziata by begging another cup of her excellent coffee. One has not
just recovered from a fever and held a tryst with the stars without
serious result to one’s appetite.
After breakfast, under a delicately-clouded sky, we rode through
the episcopal village of Xinara, this time, to my satisfaction,
unaccompanied by Aristides. The narrowness of the passage compelled
us to ride in single file until we had passed the bishop’s palace and
all the gardens and pigeon-holed hamlets with their bright terraces
and flowers. We turned up off the path round the great Castro, which,
near, looks even more impressive than afar, burnt red and brown with
the sun and rain, the wild thyme making a purple and scented haze upon
its enormous flanks. Skirting the ruins of Borgo, all the valleys and
vine plantations and orchards, girdled with hill beyond hill, burst
upon our view in a magnificent panorama. Everywhere the sharp contrast
of silver, olive and blue sea, and beneath us a vein of humid light
flashed and twisted itself like quicksilver through the plain, until a
bar of rocks broke it into an impetuous descent of foam. Silence lay
upon the land, and alternately soft and glowing colours were swept
across the empty hills by the wind-pursued clouds and the variations
of sun-fire. Here and there little petulant torrents dashed noisily
down the precipices, to twine themselves in the valleys and resume
their wild course, wherever the rocks rose and shot them into frothy
music. As we rode through each village, the curs came out, and stood
near a group of pigs to examine us with a depressed and listless air,
or bark at us from the ledge of a rock in a half-hearted way. Children
with matted hair and glances of dull curiosity, surveyed us gravely,
and whispered their opinions, and the villagers stared at us with
inconvenient candour and solemnity. As we neared Mousoulou, a fine
mist began to fall from the upper peaks, like a thin veil gradually
thickening until it enveloped the landscape in a grey pall. I enjoyed
the prospects of damp mountain scenery, but I could see that Selaka,
like all Greeks, was made unhappy and nervous by it.
We reached Mousoulou drenched. A lover may be permitted to shrink
from presenting the front of a water-dog to his mistress, and I was
keenly relieved to learn that Inarime and her aunt were out when we
arrived. An old woman welcomed us, and offered Selaka one sofa of
honour and me another. We were administered a glass of cognac, then
Selaka left me to listen to the wind howling furiously against the
windows, bending the heads of the flowers on the terrace, and freezing
my feet as it blew in under the chinks of the five doors that opened
off the room. Undeterred by the rain, the villagers came in batches
to inspect the stranger--men, women and children. It was a kind of
theatrical entertainment for them, with the agreeable merit of being
free of charge, and they availed themselves of the occasion with great
good-will. The delighted old woman stayed and did the honours of the
spectacle, explained me and appraised me with refreshing candour, and
after a burst of exclamations, they all stood round perfectly calm, a
row of offensive statues.
Can any reader, not experienced, possibly conjecture the nameless
irritation of thus being silently, mercilessly stared at, and what
black thoughts of murder may rush through the excited brain under it?
I think not. When at last I had reached the white-heat of exasperation
under this awful Greek gaze, I rose and turned my back on my
tormentors.
The landscape was now folded in a grey mist, broken by the lines of the
walls, the spires and perforated belfries. Out of this grey picture
showed patches of brown earth and dark rock below the draped head of
Mount Elias, and the trees looked like ghosts. The sky was a field
of colourless cloud, and the flower-heads on the terrace pierced the
opaline vapour with eyes of brilliant reproach. On a distant hill-curve
a group of animals were shivering, and near by the raindrops made big
pools upon the marble pavement. And soon the grey grew to opaque white,
and rushed from the brow of Mount Elias like a swift cloud blotting out
the meadows and valleys. Where was the glory of the morning? And where
was the warmth of my heart?
“Do you know, sir, that I am inclined to think that I have been quite
long enough on view?” I cried, when Selaka returned.
Selaka smiled, and I burst into an irritable laugh, which seemed to
impress the audience in the light of a new act. They pressed nearer,
and broke into inarticulate sounds of wonder and grave approval.
I thought they meditated a general embrace, but they contented
themselves with keeping the air from me, poisoning the atmosphere, and
expectorating profusely.
“Don’t you think, sir, that it would be possible to hint politely that
the entertainment is over?” I piteously implored.
Upon a word and gesture of authority, the audience straggled out,
and doubtless held a parliament elsewhere to discuss the remarkable
phenomenon.
“Surely your daughter is not out in this rain?” I asked, as soon as we
were left to ourselves.
“No, she is sheltering in Steni. She accompanied her aunt on a visit to
a sick woman.”
I looked round the large nude room, so chill and cheerless after
Selaka’s pretty sitting-room. The floor was marked with the wet clogs
of the recent explorers, and small rivers traversed it, flowing from
our umbrellas. The beams of the ceiling were supported by white arches,
and vulgar Italian pictures hung upon the whitewashed walls. It was the
dreariest place possible in which to await one’s beloved, and then the
sense of dampness, the deafening patter of rain against the windows,
the wind roaring and rising in frantic gusts, and earth and sky one
inextricable sea of grey! Most utterly wretched did I feel. I had much
to do to keep the tears of acute disappointment from my eyes, and
depression settled upon me as heavy as the impenetrable vapours outside.
The noonday dinner was served, and like a philosopher Selaka enjoyed
the vermicelli soup, the pilau, and dish of larks stewed in tomatoes.
I ate, too, mechanically, with my glance and ear strained in feverish
intensity for the slightest premonition of Inarime’s return. And as we
sat drinking our coffee I could see with rapture that the colourless
mist was rolling rapidly off the earth, and above, delicately-tinted
clouds were beginning to show themselves upon the slate ground. The
sun peeped out through a blurred and ragged veil, and looked as if he
intended to dry the deluged world, and pale gold streaked the jagged
banks of red and yellow haze. Down the village street came the sound
of hoofed feet, and Selaka rushed forward.
I went and stood at a window, and made a screen of the curtain. Selaka
had promised, upon my insistent prayer, to leave me but one moment
alone with Inarime before introducing me to her aunt. I saw a tall
massive woman, wrapped in a blue cloak, enter, and deposit her wet
umbrella in an opposite corner with maddening slowness. I glanced
behind her, and here stood Inarime enveloped in some brown garment with
a knot of red ribbon at her throat. She wore a red hood, and the moist
air and quick ride had left the glow of a pomegranate flower upon her
cheek. She stood in the middle of the room, and looked grave inquiry at
her father. He nodded reassuringly, told her to wait for him there, and
took his sister’s arm to lead her into the inner room.
I came out of my hiding-place. There was something so solemn, so
ineffable in the moment, that I rejected all speech as inadequate. I
simply stood there looking at Inarime as I have never yet looked at any
woman, and then I said:--“Inarime!”
I held out both hands. She turned, and without making any movement
towards me looked at me. Again her eyes gave me the impression of
eyes that are dazzled with light. They were clear as amber, crystal
as her soul, and held mine in willing bondage. Before then my pulses
had throbbed with expectation and hope; now they were quieted, numbed
almost by sheer intensity of feeling in the trace of gazing silence.
“Inarime!” I said again, and this time my voice dropped to a whisper.
Unconsciously she seemed drawn to me, and while our hands met and
clasped, our eyes dwelt on each other in grave delight.
“You have not spoken to me, Inarime,” I said.
“Who are you?” she asked, as a wondering child might.
“Has your heart not told you, Inarime?”
Something like fear and humble pleading strove with the mastery of her
proud restrained expression. It was so new and perilous to her, that
she hardly knew to what she might not have silently pledged herself.
She hastily withdrew her hands, but still her eyes rested on mine and
sought solution in their depths.
“Oh, I am afraid,” she murmured, and a wave of intangible pain swept
over her strong face.
“Not of me, Inarime; not of me,” I entreated, and drew near to gather
her hands again.
Before either of us could realise or stay the volcanic influences that
impelled us in an irresistible shock, my arms were round her and our
lips were one.
* * * * * * *
Here Reineke’s note book, of which I was glad to avail myself, grows
too incoherent and impassioned for further use. The author will try to
tell the rest of his story.