ROMANCE AND PRUDENCE
The Lieutenant found no difficulty in buying another straw hat, as the
booths of the town were all open again; and another shoe-string was
easily obtainable by which he tethered it to his button-hole.
An enterprising Jew produced a stock of ready-made clothing from
Vienna, and Curtis endeavored to persuade Lindbohm to join him in the
purchase of a complete new outfit.
"The first thing is to find Panayota," said the Swede. "We must not
waste a moment. Ah, my friend, you mistake that girl! She will be so
glad to see you that she will not look at your clothes."
Clapping a straw hat upon the head of Curtis, he dragged him away.
They found the commandant's quarters with little difficulty, as every
man, woman and child in Canea was able to direct them. It was an
oriental house with a garden. Two sentinels stood at the gate.
Lindbohm sent in his card, and a youthful officer in fatigue uniform
came out, who stared with evident surprise, and then gazed curiously at
the two callers.
Lindbohm brought the heels of the yellow boots together and saluted.
"Pardon our appearance," he explained, "but the fact of the matter is
we have been fighting with the insurgents for the last three months,
and we have not yet had an opportunity to purchase clothing."
The Englishman laughed and held out his hand cordially.
"Come in, Lieutenant," he said, "and your friend here." They entered
the court. "Take a seat here in the shade. Shall I order you some
coffee, Turkish style--or perhaps you'd prefer some whisky and soda."
"I'd like a Christian drink!" cried Curtis with great animation.
"Something to take the taste out of my mouth."
"O, yust bring me some whisky, thank you," said the Swede, sitting on
the edge of a chair, impatient to go on with the business that had
brought him there.
"My name is Jones," said the Englishman, "Lieutenant Alfred Jones, at
your service."
"Let me present my friend, Mr. Curtis, Mr. John Curtis. And now,
Lieutenant, we wish to inquire about a Cretan lady, Panayota
Nicolaides, whom Kostakes Effendi captured and carried off from her
friends. She--"
"She was the daughter of some friends of ours," broke in Curtis,
volubly, as Lindbohm waved his hand toward him. "Her father, a priest,
befriended us. We were shipwrecked and I stepped on some sort of a
damned thing, a kind of sea-pincushion stuck full of pins, and it
poisoned me. And the priest took me in and took care of me, and the
Turks swooped down on the village and murdered half the inhabitants and
carried the girl and her father off. Then they killed the old man.
This Kostakes--"
"That must have been one of the chaps that we hanged last night,"
interrupted Lieutenant Jones.
"Yust so," said Lindbohm, "and now we want to know what has become of
Panayota. My friend here--"
"The fact is we feel very grateful and we want to know what has become
of the girl," interrupted Curtis, determined at all hazards to head off
Lindbohm's explanation to this civilized Englishman, who might be
inclined to smile at a tale of romance.
"The commandant is out, but I think I am the very man you want to see,"
said the Englishman. "This gentleman, Kostakes, it seems, had three
wives, two Turkish ladies besides the Greek--"
"The Greek was not his wife!" interrupted Lindbohm, with dignity.
"Well, however that may be, they all came back to the ruins of his
house--it seems his house got in the way of one of our shells and there
wasn't much left of it. Well, there they all stood, the two houris,
wringing their hands and howling and the Greek quiet enough, but
looking sort of dazed. I was out with a squad and came across them
myself. Well, to make a long story short, we're assisting all the
Turks to emigrate from here that feel so disposed, and we sent off the
three women this morning."
"My God--where to?" asked Lindbohm.
"Why, the Greek, it seems, had some friends in Athens. She has had
enough of Mohammedanism, and wanted to be put off there. So we gave
her a pass to Athens. The other two go on to Constantinople."
"When does the next boat go to Athens?" asked Curtis, looking up
suddenly.
"There's an Austrian Lloyd to-morrow morning at ten which stops at
Athens."
"For--?"
"Trieste."
The Englishman accompanied his two callers to the gate.
"I'd like to hear the story of your adventures with the insurgents," he
said. "You must have had some lively experiences. Good day,
gentlemen."
"By the way," cried Lindbohm, turning back, "lest there be any mistake,
was this Greek girl very beautiful?"
"Ye-es, yes, I should call her a very fine woman."
"What was the color of her hair? Brown?"
"I don't remember exactly. I believe it was."
"Tall, slender, oval face, big, fine eyes?"
"Well, you see, I only saw her for a moment. She certainly was tall
and slender, and--and--a fine, handsome woman. Held her head back and
threw her chest out, and had a sort of independent air about her."
Lindbohm had no further doubts; he was not aware of Ferende's existence.
Preparations for departure on the morrow were begun at once. Curtis
had no difficulty in raising some money at Cook's on his letter of
credit. His passport and two or three letters from home were
sufficient identification.
"How are you off for money, old man?" he asked Lindbohm. The
Lieutenant drew from the recesses of the ancient, water-warped
pocketbook a five pound note, badly faded and stained. It came in two
at one of the creases as he held it up.
"I will paste this together," he said, "and it will be yust as good as
ever. I have plenty more in Athens."
"All right, then," replied Curtis, "I'll get the tickets--"
"But I have plenty."
"We must buy some clothes. I'll get the tickets."
Lindbohm assented, so far as the tickets were concerned, but he
positively refused to buy clothing till he got to Athens. He took a
stroll about the town to see what military preparations were going on,
while Curtis arrayed himself in a cheap, ill-fitting suit and a new
pair of tan shoes, for all of which he paid a high price. He also
bought a leather traveling bag, into which he put a supply of underwear
and other necessities. The Cretan boots and the simitar he tied to the
handle of the bag as souvenirs.
So the next morning Curtis and Lindbohm walked briskly through the
kaleidoscopic square to the wharf and embarked in a rowboat for the
steamer waiting out in the bay.
Curtis looked back at the town. The colored awnings were all up, the
square was a moving, shifting mass of bright costumes, through which
trotted, to and fro, the patient, useful and immemorial ass. The Punch
and Judy booth, with its row of pantomimists, had been removed and
apparently forgotten. A group of dignified old gentlemen in fezzes sat
at a café, smoking narghiles. It takes an oriental town but half an
hour to recover from a massacre or a bombardment. The eternal languor
of the East flows over and engulfs any outburst of passion, as the sea
swings to rest over a submarine eruption. A sentinel in red jacket and
white helmet paced along the rampart wall. A bugle sounded faint and
far and a man-o'-war's boat flew by, the petty officer in the stern
bending and straightening to the rhythmical splash and rattle of the
oars.
"There will be no difficulty in finding her in Athens," said Lindbohm
as the two stood at last on the deck of the steamer.
"Tickets, gentlemen!"
The waiting employee glanced at the two tickets and then handed them
back, one to Curtis and one to Lindbohm.
"Here," said the latter; "he made a mistake. I've got your ticket,
'John Curtis, Tri--' What does this mean? Why are you going to
Trieste?"
"Lindbohm," said Curtis, laying his hand on the Swede's arm, "Panayota
isn't in Athens."
"Is she in Trieste? Why are you fooling me?"
"I'm not fooling you. I couldn't tell you because I thought you'd want
me to go and see her, and bid her good-bye. And I couldn't do it. I
just couldn't. It would be too painful for both of us, and it wouldn't
do any good."
"Why shouldn't you go and see her? And why should you bid her
good-bye? I don't understand."
"You will understand when I tell you. She's a leper. I saw her
myself, with my own eyes, as we passed through their village. She
isn't like those other horrible creatures yet, of course, but she will
be in time. My God, Lindbohm, think of what an escape I've had! I was
so wrapped up in the girl that I actually thought of marrying
her--after a while. Suppose I had done so, and it had broken out on
her afterward!"
The Lieutenant was very pale. When he spoke his voice was low and
unnaturally distinct, and he divided his sentence into groups of two
and three words, like a man who is making a superhuman effort to
control himself.
"And what about--this young woman--who went to Athens?"
"O, she's somebody else. I couldn't be mistaken in Panayota--I tell
you I saw her, man. Why, I was as close to her as from here to that
mast yonder."
"But perhaps there's some mistake in the reason for her being there.
Perhaps----"
"Why didn't she come out, then, when she saw me? She clapped her hands
in front of her face and shrank away. My first impulse was to go in,
and then it flashed over me in a minute. Besides, you heard what
Hassan Bey said--that the lepers are nearly all Cretans."
"Do you mean to say you're yust going away without going back to
comfort her or say a word to her?"
"But since she showed plainly that she wanted to avoid me? I tell you,
old man, I'm doing the kindest thing for both of us. It's incurable,
you know, and even if it wasn't, my mother and my governor would never
consent. I should have had a circus with them, anyway."
Lindbohm walked to the taffrail and looked dreamily away toward Canea.
There was an unexpected roar of a great whistle--a boat's whistle is
always unexpected--and the anchor chain began to rattle and click.
"It takes a long time to get the anchor up, doesn't it?" asked Curtis.
Lindbohm made no reply, but when the chain finally ceased to rattle, he
asked in a low tone, and without looking at his companion:
"So you give her up, eh?"
"Why, of course, old man. Seems to me I've made that plain enough!"
The ringing of a bell seemed to awaken the sleeping ship. She
shuddered as the machinery started. There was a patter of hastening
feet on the deck and a great churning, as the wheel made its first
revolutions in the water. Shore boats were cast off, with much
shouting and gesticulating of picturesque Cretans, standing erect in
their tiny craft, violently rocked by the agitated sea. As the ship
moved majestically away, a few boats clung to her side like whiffets to
a stately stag. One by one they dropped off and drifted astern.
Lindbohm turned and looked about the deck. Spying his satchel, he
picked it up and walked to the ladder, at the foot of which one boat
was still tied. Curtis ran to him and seized him by the shoulder.
"Where are you going, old man?"
"To Panayota."
"But this is madness. You can't do anything. I tell you the girl is a
leper."
The Swede, muttering "I'll yust take my chances," continued down the
steps and took his seat in the boat.
Curtis stood watching him as he was rowed away, hoping against hope
that he would turn around and wave his hand or make some sign. But no,
he sat up very straight, his arms hanging a little out from his body,
the back of his neck looking very broad and red. The straw hat leaped
from his head. He caught it in midair, jammed it back and held it in
place with one big hand.
And so Peter Lindbohm went back to his love--Peter Lindbohm, true
knight and noble gentleman, with the heart of a lion and the soul of a
child. As friend he was stanch even to his own seeming undoing, and
made no moan; as lover, he was great enough to be faithful unto more
than death, and for such there is a full reward. No sacrifice awaited
him, but a long lifetime of peaceful joys. If Peter Lindbohm ever goes
to war again, it will be in defense of wife and children.
And John Curtis, to whose romantic and brave nature there was attached
an automatic brake of New England prudence, sailed away to his own
land. And the last sound that he heard from Crete was the voice of the
Swede's boatman singing:
From the bones of the Greeks upspringing.
Who died that we might be free,
And the strength of thy strong youth bringing,--
Hail, Liberty, hail to thee!
He stood for a long time leaning over the rail, watching the receding
isle.
As the land became more distant, it grew more beautiful. The purple
haze of Greece settled upon the mountains. Curtis thought of Panayota
as of a lovely Greek whom he had met in his dreams; he sighed and
murmured:
I enter thy garden of roses,
Beloved and fair Haidee!
A steward touched him on the shoulder and said in German: "Lunch is
ready."
Curtis turned briskly around, and followed the man half the length of
the deck, struggling to drag a sentence from the unfrequented German
corner of his brain. At last it came:
"I am ready, too. This sea air makes one hungry."
He was glad to see there were genuine Frankfurters for lunch. He
ordered a bottle of Rhine wine and talked German with the Captain.
When he came up on deck to smoke his cigar, the ship was purring
through a placid, opalescent sea, and Crete was a faint outline
sketched against a gray-blue sky.
THE END.