A few days after she had talked with Lady Maud, and before Mr. Van
Torp's arrival, Margaret had gone abroad, without waiting for the
promised advice in the matter of the wedding-gown. With admirable
regard for the proprieties she had quite declined to let Logotheti
cross the Channel with her, but had promised to see him at Versailles,
where she was going to stop a few days with her mother's old American
friend, the excellent Mrs. Rushmore, with whom she meant to go to
Bayreuth to hear _Parsifal_ for the first time.
Mrs. Rushmore had disapproved profoundly of Margaret's career, from
the first. After Mrs. Donne's death, she had taken the forlorn girl
under her protection, and had encouraged her to go on with what she
vaguely called her 'music lessons.' The good lady was one of those
dear, old-fashioned, kind, delicate-minded and golden-hearted American
women we may never see again, now that 'progress' has got civilisation
by the throat and is squeezing the life out of it. She called Margaret
her 'chickabiddy' and spread a motherly wing over her, without the
least idea that she was rearing a valuable lyric nightingale that
would not long be content to trill and quaver unheard.
Immense and deserved success had half reconciled the old lady to what
had happened, and after all Margaret had not married an Italian tenor,
a Russian prince, or a Parisian composer, the three shapes of man
which seemed the most dreadfully immoral to Mrs. Rushmore. She would
find it easier to put up with Logotheti than with one of those, though
it was bad enough to think of her old friend's daughter marrying a
Greek instead of a nice, clean Anglo-Saxon, like the learned Mr.
Donne, the girl's father, or the good Mr. Rushmore, her lamented
husband, who had been an upright pillar of the church in New York, and
the president of a Trust Company that could be trusted.
After all, though she thought all Greeks must be what she called
'designing,' the name of Konstantin Logotheti was associated with
everything that was most honourable in the financial world, and this
impressed Mrs. Rushmore very much. Her harmless weakness had always
been for lions, and none but the most genuine ones were allowed to
roar at her garden-parties or at her dinner table. When the Greek
financier had first got himself introduced to her more than two years
earlier, she had made the most careful inquiries about him and had
diligently searched the newspapers for every mention of him during a
whole month. The very first paragraph she had found was about a new
railway which he had taken under his protection, and the writer said
that his name was a guarantee of good faith. This impressed her
favourably, though the journalist might have had reasons for making
precisely the same statement if he had known Logotheti to be a
fraudulent promoter. One of the maxims she had learned in her youth,
which had been passed in the Golden Age of old New York, was that
'business was a test of character.' Mr. Rushmore used to say that, so
it must be true, she thought; and indeed the excellent man might have
said with equal wisdom that long-continued rain generally produces
dampness. He would have turned in his well-kept grave if he could have
heard a Wall Street cynic say that nowadays an honest man may get a
bare living, and a drunkard has been known to get rich, but that
integrity and whisky together will inevitably land anybody in the
workhouse.
Logotheti was undoubtedly considered honest, however, and Mrs.
Rushmore made quite sure of it, as well as of the fact that he had an
immense fortune. So far as the cynic's observation goes, it may not be
equally applicable everywhere, any more than it is true that all
Greeks are blacklegs, as the Parisians are fond of saying, or that all
Parisians are much worse, as their own novelists try to make out. If
anything is more worthless than most men's opinion of themselves, it
is their opinion of others, and it is unfortunately certain that the
people who understand human nature best, and lead it whither they
will, are not those that labour to save souls or to cure sickness, but
demagogues, quacks, fashionable dressmakers, and money-lenders. Mrs.
Rushmore was a judge of lions, but she knew nothing about humanity.
At Versailles, with its memories of her earlier youth, the Primadonna
wished to be Margaret Donne again, and to forget for the time that she
was the Cordova, whose name was always first on the opera posters in
New York, London, and Vienna; who covered her face with grease-paint
two or three times a week; who loved the indescribable mixed smell of
boards, glue, scenery, Manila ropes and cotton-velvet-clad chorus,
behind the scenes; who lived on applause, was made miserable now and
then by a criticism which any other singer would have thought
flattery, and who was, in fact, an extraordinary compound of genius
and simplicity, generosity and tetchiness, tremendous energy in one
direction and intellectual torpidity and total indifference in all
others. If she could have gone directly from Covent Garden to another
engagement, the other self would not have waked up just then; but she
meant to take a long holiday, and in order not to miss the stage too
much, it was indispensable to forget it for a while.
She travelled incognito. That is to say, she had sent her first maid
and theatrical dresser Alphonsine to see her relations in Nancy for a
month, and only brought the other with her; she had, moreover, caused
the stateroom on the Channel boat to be taken in the name of Miss
Donne, and she brought no more luggage to Versailles than could be
piled on an ordinary cart, whereas when she had last come from New
York her servants had seen eighty-seven pieces put on board the
steamer, and a hat-box had been missing after all.
Mrs. Rushmore came out to meet her on the steps in the hot sunshine,
portly and kind as ever, and she applied an embrace which was
affectionate, yet imposing.
'My dearest child!' she cried. 'I was sure I had not quite lost you
yet!'
'I hope you will never think you have,' Margaret answered, almost
quite in her girlish voice of old.
She was very glad to come back. As soon as they were alone in the cool
drawing-room, Mrs. Rushmore asked her about her engagement in a tone
of profound concern, as though it were a grave bodily ailment which
might turn out to be fatal.
'Don't take it so seriously,' Margaret answered with a little laugh;
'I'm not married yet!'
The elderly face brightened.
'Do you mean to say that--that there is any hope?' she asked eagerly.
Margaret laughed now, but in a gentle and affectionate sort of way.
'Perhaps, just a little! But don't ask me, please. I've come
home--this is always home for me, isn't it?--I've come home to forget
everything for a few weeks.'
'Thank heaven!' ejaculated Mrs. Rushmore in a tone of deep relief.
'Then if--if he should call this afternoon, or even to-morrow--may I
tell them to say that you are out?'
She was losing no time; and Margaret laughed again, though she put her
head a little on one side with an expression of doubt.
'I can't refuse to see him,' she said, 'though really I would much
rather be alone with you for a day or two.'
'My darling child!' cried Mrs. Rushmore, applying another embrace,
'you shall! Leave it to me!'
Mrs. Rushmore's delight was touching, for she could almost feel that
Margaret had come to see her quite for her own sake, whereas she had
pictured the 'child,' as she still called the great artist, spending
most of her time in carrying on inaudible conversations with Logotheti
under the trees in the lawn, or in the most remote corners of the
drawing-room; for that had been the accepted method of courtship in
Mrs. Rushmore's young days, and she was quite ignorant of the changes
that had taken place since then.
Half-an-hour later, Margaret was in her old room upstairs writing a
letter, and Mrs. Rushmore had given strict orders that until further
notice Miss Donne was 'not at home' for any one at all, no matter who
might call.
When the letter already covered ten pages, Margaret laid down her pen
and without the least pause or hesitation tore the sheets to tiny
bits, inking her fingers in the process because the last one was not
yet dry.
'What a wicked woman I am!' she exclaimed aloud, to the very great
surprise of Potts, her English maid, who was still unpacking in the
next room, the door being open.
'Beg pardon, ma'am?' the woman asked, putting in her head.
'I said I was a wicked woman,' Margaret answered, rising; 'and what's
more, I believe I am. But I quite forgot you were there, Potts, or I
probably should not have said it aloud.'
'Yes, ma'am,' answered Potts meekly, and she went back to her
unpacking.
Margaret had two maids, who were oddly suited to her two natures. She
had inherited Alphonsine from her friend the famous retired soprano,
Madame Bonanni, and the cadaverous, clever, ill-tempered, garrulous
dresser was as necessary to Cordova's theatrical existence as paint,
limelight, wigs, and an orchestra. The English Potts, the meek,
silent, busy, and intensely respectable maid, continually made it
clear that her mistress was Miss Donne, an English lady, and that
Madame Cordova, the celebrated singer, was what Mr. Van Torp would
have called 'only a side-show.'
Potts was quite as much surprised when she heard Miss Donne calling
herself a wicked woman as Alphonsine would have been if she had heard
Madame Cordova say that she sang completely out of tune, a statement
which would not have disturbed the English maid's equanimity in the
very least. It might have pleased her, for she always secretly hoped
that Margaret would give up the stage, marry an English gentleman with
a nice name, and live in Hans Crescent or Cadogan Gardens, or some
equally smart place, and send Alphonsine about her business for ever.
For the English maid and the French maid hated each other as
whole-heartedly as if Cressy or Agincourt had been fought yesterday.
Potts alluded to Alphonsine as 'that Frenchwoman,' and Alphonsine
spoke of Potts as 'l'Anglaise,' with a tone and look of withering
scorn, as if all English were nothing better than animals. Also she
disdained to understand a word of their 'abominable jargon'; and Potts
quietly called the French language 'frog-talk,' but spoke it quite
intelligibly, though without the least attempt at an accent.
Nevertheless, each of the two was devoted to Margaret, and they were
both such excellent servants that they never quarrelled or even
exchanged a rude word--to Margaret's knowledge. They treated each
other with almost exaggerated politeness, calling each other
respectively 'Meess' and 'Mamzell'; and if Alphonsine's black eyes
glared at Potts now and then, the English maid put on such an air of
sweetly serene unconsciousness as a woman of the world might have
envied.
The letter that had been torn up before it was finished was to have
gone to Lady Maud, but Margaret herself had been almost sure that she
would not send it, even while she was writing. She had poured out her
heart, now that she could do so with the consoling possibility of
destroying the confession before any one read it. She had made an
honest effort to get at the truth about herself by writing down all
she knew to be quite true, as if it were to go to her best friend; but
as soon as she realised that she had got to the end of her positive
knowledge and was writing fiction--which is what might be true, but is
not known to be--she had the weakness to tear up her letter, and to
call herself names for not knowing her own mind, as if every woman
did, or every man either.
She had written that she had done very wrong in engaging herself to
Logotheti; that was the 'wickedness' she accused herself of,
repeating the self-accusation to her astonished maid, because it was a
sort of relief to say the words to somebody. She had written that she
did not really care for him in that way; that when he was near she
could not resist a sort of natural attraction he had for her, but that
as soon as he was gone she felt it no longer and she wished he would
not come back; that his presence disturbed her and made her
uncomfortable, and, moreover, interfered with her art; but that she
had not the courage to tell him so, and wished that some one else
would do it for her; that he was not really the sort of man she could
ever be happy with; that her ideal of a husband was so and so, and
this and that--and here fiction had begun, and she had put a stop to
it by destroying the whole letter instead of crossing out a few
lines,--which was a pity; for if Lady Maud had received it, she would
have told Mr. Van Torp that he needed no help from her since Margaret
herself asked no better than to be freed from the engagement.
Logotheti did not come out to Versailles that afternoon, because he
was plentifully endowed with tact where women were concerned, and he
applied all the knowledge and skill he had to the single purpose of
pleasing Margaret. But before dinner he telephoned and asked to speak
with her, and this she could not possibly refuse. Besides, the day had
seemed long, and though she did not wish for his presence she wanted
something--that indescribable, mysterious something which disturbed
her and made her feel uncomfortable when she felt it, but which she
missed when she did not see him for a day or two.
'How are you?' asked his voice, and he ran on without waiting for an
answer. 'I hope you are not very tired after crossing yesterday. I
came by Boulogne--decent of me, wasn't it? You must be sick of seeing
me all the time, so I shall give you a rest for a day or two.
Telephone whenever you think you can bear the sight of me again, and
I'll be with you in thirty-five minutes. I shall not stir from home in
this baking weather. If you think I'm in mischief you're quite
mistaken, dear lady, for I'm up to my chin in work!'
'I envy you,' Margaret said, when he paused at last. 'I've nothing on
earth to do, and the piano here is out of tune. But you're quite
right, I don't want to see you a little bit, and I'm not jealous, nor
suspicious, nor anything disagreeable. So there!'
'How nice of you!'
'I'm very nice,' Margaret answered with laughing emphasis. 'I know it.
What sort of work are you doing? It's only idle curiosity, so don't
tell me if you would rather not! Have you got a new railway in Brazil,
or an overland route to the other side of beyond?'
'Nothing so easy! I'm brushing up my Tartar.'
'Brushing up what? I didn't hear.'
'Tartar--the Tartar language--T-a-r--'he began to spell the word.
'Yes, I hear now,' interrupted Margaret. 'But what in the world is
the use of knowing it? You must be awfully hard up for something to
do!'
'You can be understood from Constantinople to the Pacific Ocean if you
can speak Tartar,' Logotheti answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
'I daresay! But you're not going to travel from Constantinople to the
Pacific Ocean----'
'I might. One never can tell what one may like to do.'
'Oh, if it's because Tartar is useful "against the bites of sharks,"'
answered Margaret, quoting Alice, 'learn it by all means!'
'Besides, there are all sorts of people in Paris. I'm sure there must
be some Tartars. I might meet one, and it would be amusing to be able
to talk to him.'
'Nonsense! Why should you ever meet a Tartar? How absurd you are!'
'There's one with me now--close beside me, at my elbow.'
'Don't be silly, or I'll ring off.'
'If you don't believe me, listen!'
He said something in a language Margaret did not understand, and
another voice answered him at once in the same tongue. Margaret
started slightly and bent her brows with a puzzled and displeased
look.
'Is that your teacher?' she asked with more interest in her tone than
she had yet betrayed.
'Yes.'
'I begin to understand. Do you mind telling me how old she is?'
'It's not "she," it's a young man. I don't know how old he is. I'll
ask him if you like.'
Again she heard him speak a few incomprehensible words, which were
answered very briefly in the same tongue.
'He tells me he is twenty,' Logotheti said. 'He's a good-looking young
fellow. How is Mrs. Rushmore? I forgot to ask.'
'She's quite well, thank you. But I should like to know----'
'Will you be so very kind as to remember me to her, and to say that I
hope to find her at home the day after to-morrow?'
'Certainly. Come to-morrow if you like. But please tell me how you
happened to pick up that young Tartar. It sounds so interesting! He
has such a sweet voice.'
There was no reply to this question, and Margaret could not get
another word from Logotheti. The communication was apparently cut off.
She rang up the Central Office and asked for his number again, but the
young woman soon said that she could get no answer to the call, and
that something was probably wrong with the instrument of Number
One-hundred-and-six-thirty-seven.
Margaret was not pleased, and she was silent and absent-minded at
dinner and in the evening.
'It's the reaction after London,' she said with a smile, when Mrs.
Rushmore asked if anything was the matter. 'I find I am more tired
than I knew, now that it's all over.'
Mrs. Rushmore was quite of the same opinion, and it was still early
when she declared that she herself was sleepy and that Margaret had
much better go to bed and get a good night's rest.
But when the Primadonna was sitting before the glass and her maid was
brushing out her soft brown hair, she was not at all drowsy, and
though her eyes looked steadily at their own reflection in the mirror,
she was not aware that she saw anything.
'Potts,' she said suddenly, and stopped.
'Yes, ma'am?' answered the maid with meek interrogation, and without
checking the regular movement of the big brush.
But Margaret said no more for several moments. She enjoyed the
sensation of having her hair brushed; it made her understand exactly
how a cat feels when some one strokes its back steadily, and she could
almost have purred with pleasure as she held her handsome head back
and moved it a little in real enjoyment under each soft stroke.
'Potts,' she began again at last, 'you are not very imaginative, are
you?'
'No, ma'am,' the maid answered, because it seemed to be expected of
her, though she had never thought of the matter.
'Do you think you could possibly be mistaken about a voice, if you
didn't see the person who was speaking?'
'In what way, ma'am?'
'I mean, do you think you could take a man's voice for a woman's at a
distance?'
'Oh, I see!' Potts exclaimed. 'As it might be, at the telephone?'
'Well--at the telephone, if you like, or anywhere else. Do you think
you might?'
'It would depend on the voice, ma'am,' observed Potts, with caution.
'Of course it would,' assented Margaret rather impatiently.
'Well, ma'am, I'll say this, since you ask me. When I was last at home
I was mistaken in that way about my own brother, for I heard him
calling to me from downstairs, and I took him for my sister Milly.'
'Oh! That's interesting!' Margaret smiled. 'What sort of voice has
your brother? How old is he?'
'He's eight-and-twenty, ma'am; and as for his voice, he has a sweet
counter-tenor, and sings nicely. He's a song-man at the cathedral,
ma'am.'
'Really! How nice! Have you a voice too? Do you sing at all?'
'Oh, no, ma'am!' answered Potts in a deprecating tone. 'One in the
family is quite enough!'
Margaret vaguely wondered why, but did not inquire.
'You were quite sure that it was your brother who was speaking, I
suppose,' she said.
'Oh, yes, ma'am! I looked down over the banisters, and there he was!'
Margaret had the solid health of a great singer, and it would have
been a serious trouble indeed that could have interfered with her
unbroken and dreamless sleep during at least eight hours; but when she
closed her eyes that night she was quite sure that she could not have
slept at all but for Potts's comforting little story about the brother
with the 'counter-tenor' voice. Yet even so, at the moment before
waking in the morning, she dreamt that she was at the telephone again,
and that words in a strange language came to her along the wire in a
soft and caressing tone that could only be a woman's, and that for the
first time in all her life she knew what it was to be jealous. The
sensation was not an agreeable one.
The dream-voice was silent as soon as she opened her eyes, but she had
not been awake long without realising that she wished very much to see
Logotheti at once, and was profoundly thankful that she had torn up
her letter to Lady Maud. She was not prepared to admit, even now, that
Konstantin was the ideal she should have chosen for a husband, and
whom she had been describing from imagination when she had suddenly
stopped writing. But, on the other hand, the mere thought that he had
perhaps been amusing himself in the society of another woman all
yesterday afternoon made her so angry that she took refuge in trying
to believe that he had spoken the truth and that she had really been
mistaken about the voice.
It was all very well to talk about learning Tartar! How could she be
sure that it was not modern Greek, or Turkish? She could not have
known the difference. Was it so very unlikely that some charming
compatriot of his should have come from Constantinople to spend a few
weeks in Paris? She remembered the mysterious house in the Boulevard
Péreire where he lived, the beautiful upper hall where the statue of
Aphrodite stood, the doors that would not open like other doors, the
strangely-disturbing encaustic painting of Cleopatra in the
drawing-room--many things which she distrusted.
Besides, supposing that the language was really Tartar--were there not
Russians who spoke it? She thought there must be, because she had a
vague idea that all Russians were more or less Tartars. There was a
proverb about it. Moreover, to the English as well as to the French,
Russians represent romance and wickedness.
She would not go to the telephone herself, but she sent a message to
Logotheti, and he came out in the cool time of the afternoon. She
thought he had never looked so handsome and so little exotic since she
had known him. To please her he had altogether given up the terrific
ties, the lightning-struck waistcoats, the sunrise socks, and the
overpowering jewellery he had formerly affected, and had resigned
himself to the dictation of a London tailor, who told him what he
might, could, should, and must wear for each circumstance and hour of
daily life, in fine gradations, from deer-stalking to a royal
garden-party. The tailor, who dressed kings and made a specialty of
emperors, was a man of taste, and when he had worked on the Greek
financier for a few weeks the result was satisfactory; excepting for
his almond-shaped eyes no one could have told Logotheti from an
Englishman by his appearance, a fact which even Potts, who
disapproved of Margaret's choice, was obliged to admit.
Mrs. Rushmore was amazed and pleased.
'My dear,' she said afterwards to Margaret, 'what a perfectly
wonderful change! Think how he used to look! And now you might almost
take him for an American gentleman!'
He was received by Mrs. Rushmore and Margaret together, and he took
noticeable pains to make himself agreeable to the mistress of the
house. At first Margaret was pleased at this; but when she saw that he
was doing his best to keep Mrs. Rushmore from leaving the room, as she
probably would have done, Margaret did not like it. She was dying to
ask him questions about his lessons in Tartar, and especially about
his teacher, and she probably meant to cast her inquiries in such a
form as would make it preferable to examine him alone rather than
before Mrs. Rushmore; but he talked on and on, only pausing an instant
for the good lady's expressions of interest or approval. With
diabolical knowledge of her weakness he led the conversation to the
subject of political and diplomatic lions, and of lions of other
varieties, and made plans for bringing some noble specimens to tea
with her. She was not a snob; she distrusted foreign princes,
marquises, and counts, and could keep her head well in the presence of
an English peer; but lions were irresistible, and Logotheti offered
her a whole menagerie of them, and described their habits with
minuteness, if not with veracity.
He was telling her what a Prime Minister had told an Ambassador about
the Pope, when Margaret rose rather abruptly.
'I'm awfully sorry,' she said to Mrs. Rushmore, by way of apology,
'but I really must have a little air. I've not been out of the house
all day.'
Mrs. Rushmore understood, and was not hurt, though she was sorry not
to hear more. The 'dear child' should go out, by all means. Would
Monsieur Logotheti stay to dinner? No? She was sorry. She had
forgotten that she had a letter to write in time for the afternoon
post. So she went off and left the two together.
Margaret led the way out upon the lawn, and they sat down on garden
chairs under a big elm-tree. She said nothing while she settled
herself very deliberately, avoiding her companion's eyes till she was
quite ready, and then she suddenly looked at him with a sort of blank
stare that would have disconcerted any one less superlatively
self-possessed than he was. It was most distinctly Madame de Cordova,
the offended Primadonna, that spoke at last, and not Miss Margaret
Donne, the 'nice English girl.'
'What in the world has got into you?' she inquired in a chilly tone.
He opened his almond-shaped eyes a little wider, with an excellent
affectation of astonishment at her words and manner.
'Have I done anything you don't like?' he asked in a tone of anxiety
and concern. 'Was I rude to Mrs. Rushmore?'
Margaret looked at him a moment longer, and then turned her head away
in silence, as if scorning to answer such a silly question. The look
of surprise disappeared from his face, and he became very gloomy and
thoughtful but said nothing more. Possibly he had brought about
exactly what he wished, and was satisfied to await the inevitable
result. It came before long.
'I don't understand you at all,' Margaret said less icily, but with
the sad little air of a woman who believes herself misunderstood. 'It
was very odd yesterday, at the telephone, you know--very odd indeed. I
suppose you didn't realise it. And now, this afternoon, you have
evidently been doing your best to keep Mrs. Rushmore from leaving us
together. You would still be telling her stories about people if I
hadn't obliged you to come out!'
'Yes,' Logotheti asserted with exasperating calm and meekness, 'we
should still be there.'
'You did not want to be alone with me, I suppose. There's no other
explanation, and it's not a very flattering one, is it?'
'I never flatter you, dear lady,' said Logotheti gravely.
'But you do! How can you deny it? You often tell me that I make you
think of the Victory in the Louvre----'
'It's quite true. If the statue had a head it would be a portrait of
you.'
'Nonsense! And in your moments of enthusiasm you say that I sing
better than Madame Bonanni in her best days----'
'Yes. You know quite as much as she ever did, you are a much better
musician, and you began with a better voice. Therefore you sing
better. I maintain it.'
'You often maintain things you don't believe,' Margaret retorted,
though her manner momentarily relaxed a little.
'Only in matters of business,' answered the Greek with imperturbable
calm.
'Pray, is "learning Tartar" a matter of business?' Her eyes sparkled
angrily as she asked the question.
Logotheti smiled; she had reached the point to which he knew she must
come before long.
'Oh, yes!' he replied with alacrity. 'Of course it is.'
'That accounts for everything, since you are admitting that I need not
even try to believe it was a man whom I heard speaking.'
'To tell the truth, I have some suspicions about that myself,'
answered Logotheti.
'I have a great many.' Margaret laughed rather harshly. 'And you
behave as if you wanted me to have more. Who is this Eastern woman?
Come, be frank. She is some one from Constantinople, isn't she? A
Fanariote like yourself, I daresay--an old friend who is in Paris for
a few days, and would not pass through without seeing you. Say so, for
heaven's sake, and don't make such a mystery about it!'
'How very ingenious women are!' observed the Greek. 'If I had thought
of it I might have told you that story through the telephone
yesterday. But I didn't.'
Margaret was rapidly becoming exasperated, her eyes flashed, her firm
young cheeks reddened handsomely, and her generous lips made scornful
curves.
'Are you trying to quarrel with me?'
The words had a fierce ring; he glanced at her quickly and saw how
well her look agreed with her tone. She was very angry.
'If I were not afraid of boring you,' he said with quiet gravity, 'I
would tell you the whole story, but----' he pretended to hesitate.
He heard her harsh little laugh at once.
'Your worst enemy could not accuse you of being a bore!' she retorted.
'Oh, no! It's something quite different from boredom that I feel, I
assure you!'
'I wish I thought that you cared for me enough to be jealous,'
Logotheti said earnestly.
'Jealous!'
No one can describe the tone of indignant contempt in which a
thoroughly jealous woman disclaims the least thought of jealousy with
a single word; a man must have heard it to remember what it is like,
and most men have. Logotheti knew it well, and at the sound he put on
an expression of meek innocence which would have done credit to a cat
that had just eaten a canary.
'I'm so sorry,' he cried in a voice like a child's. 'I didn't mean to
make you angry, I was only wishing aloud. Please forgive me!'
'If your idea of caring for a woman is to make her jealous----'
This was such an obvious misinterpretation of his words that she
stopped short and bit her lip. He sighed audibly, as if he were very
sorry that he could do nothing to appease her, but this only made her
feel more injured. She made an effort to speak coldly.
'You seem to forget that so long as we are supposed to be engaged I
have some little claim to know how you spend your time!'
'I make no secret of what I do. That is why you were angry just now.
Nothing could have been easier than for me to say that I was busy with
one of the matters you suggested.'
'Oh, of course! Nothing could be easier than to tell me an untruth!'
This certainly looked like the feminine retort-triumphant, and
Margaret delivered it in a cutting tone.
'That is precisely what you seem to imply that I did,' Logotheti
objected. 'But if what I told you was untrue your argument goes to
pieces. There was no Tartar lesson, there was no Tartar teacher, and
it was all a fabrication of my own!'
'Just what I think!' returned Margaret. 'It was not Tartar you spoke,
and there was no teacher!'
'You have me there,' answered the Greek mildly, 'unless you would like
me to produce my young friend and talk to him before you in the
presence of witnesses who know his language.'
'I wish you would! I should like to see "him"! I should like to see
the colour of "his" eyes and hair!'
'Black as ink,' said Logotheti.
'And you'll tell me that "his" complexion is black too, no doubt!'
'Not at all; a sort of creamy complexion, I think, though I did not
pay much attention to his skin. He is a smallish chap, good-looking,
with hands and feet like a woman's. I noticed that. As I told you, a
doubt occurred to me at once, and I will not positively swear that it
is not a girl after all. He, or she, is really a Tartar from Central
Asia, and I know enough of the language to say what was necessary.'
'Necessary!'
'Yes. He--or she--came on a matter of business. What I said about a
teacher was mere nonsense. Now you know the whole thing.'
'Excepting what the business was,' Margaret said incredulously.
'The business was an uncut stone,' answered Logotheti with
indifference. 'He had one to sell, and I bought it. He was recommended
to me by a man in Constantinople. He came to Marseilles on a French
steamer with two Greek merchants who were coming to Paris, and they
brought him to my door. That is the whole story. And here is the ruby.
I bought it for you, because you like those things. Will you take it?'
He held out what looked like a little ball of white tissue-paper, but
Margaret turned her face from him.
'You treat me like a child!' she said.
To her own great surprise and indignation, her voice was unsteady and
she felt something burning in her eyes. She was almost frightened at
the thought that she might be going to cry, out of sheer
mortification.
Logotheti said nothing for a moment. He began to unroll the paper from
the precious stone, but changed his mind, wrapped it up again, and put
it back into his watch-pocket before he spoke.
'I did not mean it as you think,' he said softly.
She turned her eyes without moving her head, till she could just see
that he was leaning forward, resting his wrists on his knees, bending
his head, and apparently looking down at his loosely hanging hands.
His attitude expressed dejection and disappointment. She was glad of
it. He had no right to think that he could make her as angry as she
still was, angry even to tears, and then bribe her to smile again when
he was tired of teasing her. Her eyes turned away again, and she did
not answer him.
'I make mistakes sometimes,' he said, speaking still lower, 'I know I
do. When I am with you I cannot be always thinking of what I say. It's
too much to ask, when a man is as far gone as I am!'
'I should like to believe that,' Margaret said, without looking at
him.
'Is it so hard to believe?' he asked so gently that she only just
heard the words.
'You don't make it easy, you know,' said she with a little defiance,
for she felt that she was going to yield before long.
'I don't quite know how to. You're not in the least capricious--and
yet----'
'You're mistaken,' Margaret answered, turning to him suddenly. 'I'm
the most capricious woman in the world! Yesterday I wrote a long
letter to a friend, and then I suddenly tore it up--there were ever so
many pages! I daresay that if I had written just the same letter this
morning, I should have sent it. If that is not caprice, what is it?'
'It may have been wisdom to tear it up,' Logotheti suggested.
'I'm not sure. I never ask myself questions about what I do. I hate
people who are always measuring their wretched little souls and then
tinkering their consciences to make them fit! I don't believe I wish
to do anything really wrong, and so I do exactly what I like, always!'
Possibly she had forgotten that she had called herself a wicked woman
only yesterday; but that had been before the conversation at the
telephone.
'If you will only go on doing what you like,' Logotheti answered, 'it
will give me the greatest pleasure in the world to help you. I only
ask one kindness.'
'You have no right to ask me anything to-day. You've been quite the
most disagreeable person this afternoon that I ever met in my life.'
'I know I have,' Logotheti answered with admirable contrition. 'I'll
wait a day or two before I ask anything; perhaps you will have
forgiven me by that time.'
'I'm not sure. What was the thing you were going to ask?'
He was silent now that she wished to know his thought.
'Have you forgotten it already?' she inquired with a little laugh that
was encouraging rather than contemptuous, for her curiosity was
roused.
They looked at each other at last, and all at once she felt the deeply
disturbing sense of his near presence which she had missed for three
days, though she was secretly a little afraid and ashamed of it; and
to-day it had not come while her anger had lasted. But now it was
stronger than ever before, perhaps because it came so unexpectedly,
and it drew her to him, under the deep shadow of the elm-tree that
made strange reflections in their eyes--moving reflections of fire
when the lowering sun struck in between the leaves, and sudden, still
depths when the foliage stirred in the breeze and screened the
glancing ray.
He had played upon her moods for an hour, as a musician touches a
delicate and responsive instrument, and she had taken all for earnest
and had been angry and hurt, and was reconciled again at his will. Yet
he had not done it all to try his power over her, and surely not in
any careless contempt of her weaknesses. He cared for her in his way,
as he was able, and his love was great, if not of the most noble sort.
He was strong, and she waked his strength with fire; he worshipped
life, and her vital beauty thrilled the inner stronghold of his being;
when she moved, his passionate intuition felt and followed the lines
of her moving grace; if she rested, motionless and near him, his
waking dream enfolded her in a deep caress. He felt no high and mystic
emotion when he thought of her; he had never read of St. Clement's
celestial kingdom, where man and woman are to be one for ever, and
together neither woman nor man, for such a world could never seem
heavenly to him, whose love was altogether earthly. Yet it was Greek
love, not Roman; its deity was beauty, not lust; the tutelary goddess
of its temple was not Venus the deadly, the heavy-limbed, with a mouth
like a red wound and slumbrous, sombre eyes, but Cyprian Aphrodite,
immortal and golden, the very life of the sparkling sky itself sown in
the foam of the sea.
Between the two lies all the distance that separates gross idolatry
from the veneration of the symbol; the gulf that divides the animal
materialism of a twentieth-century rake from the half-divine dreams of
genius; the revolting coarseness of Catullus at his worst from himself
at his best, or from an epigram of Meleager or Antipater of Sidon; a
witty Greek comedy adapted by Plautus to the brutal humour of Rome
from Swinburne's immortal _Atalanta in Calydon_. Twenty-five centuries
of history, Hellenic, Byzantine and modern, have gone to make the
small band of cultivated Greeks of to-day what they are, two thousand
and five hundred years of astounding vicissitudes, of aristocracy,
democracy and despotism, of domination and subjection, mastery,
slavery and revolution, ending in freedom more than half regained. We
need not wonder why they are not like us, whose forefathers of a few
centuries ago were still fighting the elements for their existence,
and living and thinking like barbarians.
The eyes of the Greek and the great artist met, and they looked long
at one another in the shade of the elm-tree on the lawn, as the sun
was going down. Only a few minutes had passed since Margaret had been
very angry, and had almost believed that she was going to quarrel
finally, and break her engagement, and be free; and now she could not
even turn her face away, and when her hand felt his upon it, she let
him draw it slowly to him; and half unconsciously she followed her
hand, bending towards him sideways from her seat, nearer and nearer,
and very near.
And as she put up her lips to his, he would that she might drink his
soul from him at one deep draught--even as one of his people's poets
wished, in the world's spring-time, long ago.
It had been a strange love-making. They had been engaged during more
than two months, they were young, vital, passionate; yet they had
never kissed before that evening hour under the elm-tree at
Versailles. Perhaps it was for this that Konstantin had played, or at
least, for the certainty it meant to him, if he had doubted that she
was sincere.