While the _Lancashire Lass_ was racing down to the Straits of Messina
the _Erinna_ was heading for the same point from the opposite
direction, no longer dawdling along at half-speed, but going her full
sixteen knots, after coaling in Naples, and any navigator who knew the
positions and respective speeds of the two yachts could have
calculated with approximate precision the point at which they would
probably sight each other.
Logotheti had given up the idea of taking Baraka to Paris, if he had
ever really entertained it at all. He assured her that Naples was a
great city, too, and that there was a first-rate French dressmaking
establishment there, and that the Ville de Lyon would turn her out
almost as smartly as the Rue de la Paix itself. He took Baraka ashore
and placed her for half a day in the hands of Madame Anna, who
undertook to do all that money could do in about a fortnight. He had
the effrontery to say that Baraka was a niece of his from
Constantinople, whose mother was on board the yacht, but had
unfortunately sprained her ankle in falling down the companion during
a gale, and could therefore not accompany her daughter on shore. The
young lady, he said, spoke only Turkish. Madame Anna, grave and
magnificently calm under all circumstances, had a vague recollection
of having seen the handsome Oriental gentleman already with another
niece, who spoke only French; but that was none of her business. When
would the young lady try on the things? On any day Madame Anna chose
to name; but in the meantime her uncle would take her down to Sicily,
as the weather was so wonderfully fine and it was still so hot. Madame
Anna therefore named a day, and promised, moreover, to see the best
linen-drapers and sempstresses herself, and to provide the young lady
with as complete an outfit as if she were going to be married. She
should have all things visible and invisible in the shortest possible
time. Logotheti, who considered himself a stranger, insisted on
putting down a thousand-franc note merely as a guarantee of good
faith. The dressmaker protested almost furiously and took the money,
still protesting. So that was settled, and Baraka was to be outwardly
changed into a beautiful Feringhi lady without delay. To tell the
truth, the establishment is really a smart one, and she was favourably
impressed by the many pretty frocks and gowns that were tried on
several pretty young women in order that she might make her choice.
Baraka would have liked a blue satin skirt with a yellow train and a
bright-green silk body, but in her travels she had noticed that the
taste of Feringhi ladies was for very sober or gentle colours,
compared with the fashionable standards of Samarkand, Tiflis, and
Constantinople, and she meekly acquiesced to everything that Logotheti
and Madame Anna proposed, after putting their heads together.
Logotheti seemed to know a great deal about it.
He took Baraka for a long drive in the afternoon, out by Pozzuoli to
Baia and back. The girl loved the sea; it was the only thing in the
western world that looked big to her, and she laughed at wretched
little mountains only four or five thousand feet high, for she had
dwelt at the feet of the lofty Altai and had sojourned in Tiflis under
the mighty peak of Kasbek. But the sea was always the sea, and to her
mountain sight it was always a new wonder beyond measure, vast,
moving, alive. She gazed out with wide eyes at the purpled bay,
streaked by winding currents of silver, and crisped here and there by
the failing summer breeze. Logotheti saw her delight, and musical
lines came back to him out of his reading, how the ocean is ever the
ocean, and the things of the sea are the sea's; but he knew that he
could not turn Greek verse into Turkish, try as he might, much less
into that primeval, rough-hewn form of it which was Baraka's native
tongue.
It was nearly dark when the naphtha launch took them out to the yacht,
which lay under the mole where the big English and German passenger
steamers and the men-of-war are moored.
Logotheti had at last received Margaret's telegram asking him to meet
her at once. It had failed to reach him in Gibraltar, and had been
telegraphed on thence to Naples, and when he read it he was
considerably disturbed. He wrote a long message of explanations and
excuses, and sent it to the Primadonna at Bayreuth, tripling the
number of words she had prepaid for his answer. But no reply came, for
Margaret was herself at sea and nothing could reach her. He sent one
of his own men from the yacht to spend the day at the telegraph
office, with instructions for finding him if any message came. The man
found him three times, and brought three telegrams; and each time as
he tore open the little folded brown paper he felt more uncomfortable,
but he was relieved to find each time that the message was only a
business one from London or Paris, giving him the latest confidential
news about a Government loan in which he was largely interested. When
he reached the yacht he sent another man to wait till midnight at the
office.
The Diva was angry, he thought; that was clear, and perhaps she had
some right to be. The tone of her telegram had been peremptory in the
extreme, and now that he had answered it after a delay of several
days, she refused to take any notice of him. It was not possible that
such a personage as she was should have left Bayreuth without leaving
clear instructions for sending on any telegrams that might come after
she left. At this time of year, as he knew, she was beset with offers
of engagements to sing, and they had to be answered. From eight
o'clock in the morning to midnight there were sixteen hours, ample
time for a retransmitted message to reach her anywhere in Europe and
to be answered. Logotheti felt a sensation of deep relief when the man
came aboard at a quarter-past midnight and reported himself
empty-handed; but he resolved to wait till the following evening
before definitely leaving Naples for the ten days which must elapse
before Baraka could try on her beautiful Feringhi clothes.
He told her anything he liked, and she believed him, or was
indifferent; for the idea that she must be as well dressed as any
European woman when she met the man she was seeking had appealed
strongly to her, and the sight of the pretty things at Madame Anna's
had made her ashamed of her simple little ready-made serges and
blouses. Logotheti assured her that Kralinsky was within easy reach,
and showed no inclination to travel far. There was news of him in the
telegrams received that day, the Greek said. Spies were about him and
were watching him for her, and so far he had shown no inclination to
admire any Feringhi beauty.
Baraka accepted all these inventions without doubting their veracity.
In her eyes Logotheti was a great man, something like a king, and
vastly more than a Tartar chieftain. He could send men to the ends of
the earth if he chose. Now that he was sure of where Kralinsky was, he
could no doubt have him seized secretly and brought to her, if she
desired it earnestly of him. But she did not wish to see the man, free
or a prisoner, till she had her beautiful new clothes. Then he should
look upon her, and judge whether he had done well to despise her love,
and to leave her to be done to death by her own people and her body
left to the vulture that had waited so long on a jutting point of rock
over her head three years ago.
Meanwhile, also, there were good things in life; there were very fat
quails and marvellous muscatel grapes, and such fish as she had never
eaten in Europe during her travels, and there was the real coffee of
the Sheikhs, and an unlimited supply of rose-leaf preserve. Her friend
was a king, and she was treated like a queen on the yacht. Every day,
when Gula had rubbed her small feet quite dry after the luxurious
bath, Gula kissed them and said they were like little tame white mice.
Saving her one preoccupation, Baraka was in an Eastern paradise, where
all things were perfect, and Kêf descended upon her every day after
luncheon. Even the thought of the future was brighter now, for though
she never left her cabin without her long bodkin, she was quite sure
that she should never need it. In imagination she saw herself even
more beautifully arrayed in Feringhi clothes than the pretty ladies
with champagne hair whom she had seen driving in the Bois de Boulogne
not long ago when she walked there with Spiro. She wondered why
Logotheti and Gula were both so much opposed to her dyeing her hair or
wearing a wig. They told her that ladies with champagne hair were not
always good ladies; but what did that matter? She thought them pretty.
But she wondered gravely how Gula knew that they were not good. Gula
knew a great many things.
Besides, Baraka was 'good' herself, and was extremely well aware of
the fact, and of its intrinsic value, if not of its moral importance.
If she had crossed a quarter of the world in spite of dangers and
obstacles which no European girl could pass unharmed, if alive at all,
it was not to offer a stained flower to the man she sought when she
found him at last.
As for Logotheti, though he was not a Musulman, and not even an
Asiatic, she felt herself safe with him, and trusted him as she would
certainly not have trusted Van Torp, or any other European she had
chanced to meet in the course of selling precious stones. He was more
like one of her own people than the Greeks and Armenians of
Constantinople or even the Georgians of the Caucasus.
She was not wrong in that, either. Logotheti was beginning to wonder
what he should do with her, and was vaguely surprised to find that he
did not like the idea of parting with her at all; but beyond that he
had no more thought of harming her than if she had been confided to
his care and keeping by his own mother.
Few Latins, whether Italians, French, or Spanish, could comprehend
that, and most of them would think Logotheti a milksop and a
sentimental fool. Many northern men, on the other hand, will think he
did right, but would prefer not to be placed in such a trying
position, for their own part, because beauty is beauty and human
nature is weak, and the most exasperating difficulty in which an
honest northern man can find himself where a woman is concerned is
that dilemma of which honour and temptation are the two horns. But the
best sort of Orientals look on these things differently, even when
they are young, and their own women are safer with them than European
women generally are among European men. I think that most men who
have really known the East will agree with me in this opinion.
And besides, this is fiction, even though it be founded on facts; and
fiction is an art; and the end and aim of art is always to discover
and present some relation between the true and the beautiful--as
perhaps the aim of all religions has been to show men the possible
connexion between earth and heaven. Nothing is so easily misunderstood
and misapplied as bare truth without comment, most especially when it
is an ugly truth about the worst side of humanity. We know that all
men are not mere animals; for heaven's sake let us believe that very
few, if any, must be! Even Demopithekos, the mob-monkey, may have a
conscience, when he is not haranguing the people.
Logotheti certainly had one, of its kind, though he seemed to Margaret
Donne and Lady Maud to be behaving in such an outrageous manner as to
have forfeited all claim to the Diva's hand; and Baraka, who was a
natural young woman, though a remarkably gifted and courageous one,
felt instinctively that she was safe with him, and that she would not
need to draw out her sharp bodkin in order to make her position clear,
as she had been obliged to do at least twice already during her
travels.
Yet it was a dreamy and sense-compelling life that she led on the
yacht, surrounded with every luxury she had ever heard of, and
constantly waited on by the only clever man she had ever really talked
with, excepting the old Persian merchant in Stamboul. The vision of
the golden-bearded giant who had left her to her fate after treating
her with stony indifference was still before her, but the reality was
nearer in the shape of a visible 'great man,' who could do anything he
chose, who caused her to be treated like a queen, and who was
undeniably handsome.
She wondered whether he had a wife. Judging marriage from her point of
view, there probably had been one put away in that beautiful house in
Paris. He was an Oriental, she told herself, and he would not parade
his wife as the Feringhis did. But she was one, too, and she
considered that it would be an insult to ask him about such things.
Spiro knew, no doubt, but she could not demean herself to inquire of a
servant. Perhaps Gula had found out already, for the girl had a way of
finding out whatever she wanted to know, apparently by explaining
things to the second mate. Possibly Gula could be made to tell what
she had learned, without being directly questioned. But after all,
Baraka decided that it did not matter, since she meant to marry the
fair-beard as soon as she had her pretty clothes. Yet she became
conscious that if he had not existed, she would think it very
satisfactory to marry the great man who could do anything he liked,
though if he had a wife already, as he probably had, she would refuse
to be the second in his house. The Koran allowed a man four, it was
said, but the idea was hateful to her, and moreover the Persian
merchant's wife had told her that it was old-fashioned to have more
than one, mainly because living had grown so expensive.
Logotheti sat beside her for hours under the awnings, talking or not,
as she chose, and always reading when she was silent, though he often
looked up to see if she wanted anything. He told her when they left
Naples that he would show her beautiful islands and other sights, and
the great fire-mountains of the South, Ætna and Stromboli, which she
had heard of on her voyage to Marseilles but had not seen because the
steamer had passed them at night. The fire-mountain at Naples had been
quiet, only sending out thin wreaths of smoke, which Baraka insisted
came from fires made by shepherds.
'Moreover,' she said, as they watched Vesuvius receding when they left
Naples, 'your mountains are not mountains, but ant-hills, and I do not
care for them. But your sea has the colours of many sherbets,
rose-leaf and violet, and lemon and orange, and sometimes even of pale
yellow peach-sherbet, which is good. Let me always see the sea till
the fine dresses are ready to be tried on.'
'This sea,' answered Logotheti, 'is always most beautiful near land
and amongst islands, and the big fire-mountain of Sicily looks as tall
as Kasbek, because it rises from the water's edge to the sky.'
'Then take me to it, and I will tell you, for my eyes have looked on
the Altai, and I wish to see a real mountain again. After that we will
go back and get the fine dresses. Will Gula know how to fasten the
fine dresses at the back, do you think?'
'You shall have a woman who does, and who can talk with Gula, and the
two will fasten the fine dresses for you.' Logotheti spoke with
becoming gravity.
'Yes,' Baraka answered. 'Spend money for me, that I may be good to
see. Also, I wish to have many servants. My father has a hundred,
perhaps a thousand, but now I have only two, Gula and Spiro. The man I
seek will think I am poor, and that will be a shame. While I was
searching for him, it was different; and besides, you are teaching me
how the rich Franks live in their world. It is not like ours. You
know, for you are more like us, though you are a king here.'
She spoke slowly and lazily, pausing between her phrases, and turning
her eyes to him now and then without moving her head; and her talk
amused him much more than that of European women, though it was so
very simple, like that of a gifted child brought suddenly to a new
country, or to see a fairy pantomime.
'Tell me,' he said after a time, 'if it were the portion of Kralinsky
to be gathered to his fathers before you saw him, what would you do?'
Baraka now turned not only her eyes to him but her face.
'Why do you ask me this? Is it because he is dead, and you are afraid
to tell me?'
'He was alive this morning,' Logotheti answered, 'and he is a strong
man. But the strong die sometimes suddenly, by accident if not of a
fever.'
'It is emptiness,' said Baraka, still looking at him. 'He will not die
before I see him.'
'Allah forbid! But if such a thing happened, should you wish to go
back to your own people? Or would you learn to speak the Frank and
live in Europe?'
'If he were dead, which may Allah avert,' Baraka answered calmly, 'I
think I would ask you to find me a husband.'
'Ah!' Logotheti could not repress the little exclamation of surprise.
'Yes. It is a shame for a woman not to be married. Am I an evil sight,
or poor, that I should go down to the grave childless? Or is there any
reproach upon me? Therefore I would ask you for a husband, because I
have no other friend but only you among the Feringhis. But if you
would not, I would go to Constantinople again, and to the Persian
merchant's house, and I would say to his wife: "Get me a husband, for
I am not a cripple, nor a monster, nor is there any reproach upon me,
and why should I go childless?" Moreover, I would say to the
merchant's wife: "Behold, I have great wealth, and I will have a rich
husband, and one who is young and pleasing to me, and who will not
take another wife; and if you bring me such a man, for whatsoever his
riches may be, I will pay you five per cent."'
Having made this remarkable statement of her intentions, Baraka was
silent, expecting Logotheti to say something. What struck him was not
the concluding sentence, for Asiatic match-makers and peace-makers are
generally paid on some such basis, and the slim Tartar girl had proved
long ago that she was a woman of business. What impressed Logotheti
much more was what seemed the cool cynicism of her point of view. It
was evidently not a romantic passion for Kralinsky that had brought
her from beyond Turkestan to London and Paris; her view had been
simpler and more practical; she had seen the man who suited her, she
had told him so, and had given him the secret of great wealth, and in
return she expected him to marry her, if she found him alive. But if
not, she would immediately take steps to obtain another to fill his
place and be her husband, and she was willing to pay a high price to
any one who could find one for her.
Logotheti had half expected some such thing, but was not prepared for
her extreme directness; still less had he thought of becoming the
matrimonial agent who was to find a match worthy of her hand and
fortune. She was sitting beside him in a little ready-made French
dress, open at the throat, and only a bit of veil twisted round her
hair, as any European woman might wear it; possibly it was her dress
that made what she said sound strangely in his ears, though it would
have struck him as natural enough if she had been muffled in a yashmak
and ferajeh, on the deck of a Bosphorus ferry-boat.
He said nothing in answer, and sat thinking the matter over.
'I could not offer to pay you five per cent,' she said after a time,
'because you are a king, but I could give you one of the fine rubies I
have left, and you would look at it sometimes and rejoice because you
had found Baraka a good husband.'
Logotheti laughed low. She amused him exceedingly, and there were
moments when he felt a new charm he had never known before.
'Why do you laugh?' Baraka asked, a little disturbed. 'I would give
you a good ruby. A king may receive a good ruby as a gift, and not
despise it. Why do you laugh at me? There came two German merchants to
me in Paris to see my rubies, and when they had looked, they bought a
good one, but not better than the one I would give you, and Spiro
heard them say to each other in their own language that it was for
their King, for Spiro understands all tongues. Then do you think that
their King would not have been glad if I had given him the ruby as a
gift? You cannot mock Baraka. Baraka knows what rubies are worth, and
has some still.'
'I do not mock you,' Logotheti answered with perfect gravity. 'I
laughed at my own thoughts. I said in my heart, "If Baraka asks me for
a husband, what will she say if I answer, Behold, I am the man, if you
are satisfied!" This was my thought.'
She was appeased at once, for she saw nothing extraordinary in his
suggestion. She looked at him quietly and smiled, for she saw her
chance.
'It is emptiness,' she said. 'I will have a man who has no other
wife.'
'Precisely,' Logotheti answered, smiling. 'I never had one.'
'Now you are indeed mocking me!' she said, bending her sharp-drawn
eyebrows.
'No. Every one knows it who knows me. In Europe, men do not always
marry very young. It is not a fixed custom.'
'I have heard so,' Baraka answered, her anger subsiding, 'but it is
very strange. If it be so, and if all things should happen as we said,
which Allah avert, and if you desired me for your wife, I would marry
you without doubt. You are a great man, and rich, and you are good to
look at, as Saäd was. Also you are kind, but Saäd would probably have
beaten me, for he beat every one, every day, and I should have gone
back to my father's house. Truly,' she added, in a thoughtful tone,
'you would make a desirable husband for Baraka. But the man I seek
must marry me if I find him alive, for I gave him the riches of the
earth and he gave me nothing and departed, leaving me to die. I have
told you, and you understand. Therefore let us not jest about these
things any more. What will be, will be, and if he must die, it is his
portion, and mine also, though it is a pity.'
Thereupon the noble little features became very grave, and she leaned
back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, looking out at the
violet light on the distant volcano. After that, at dinner and in the
evening, they talked pleasantly. She told him tales of her own land,
and of her childhood, with legends of the Altai, of genii and
enchanted princesses; and he, in return, told her about the great
world in which he lived; but of the two, she talked the more, no doubt
because he was not speaking his own language. Yet there was a bond of
sympathy between them more natural and instinctive than any that had
ever drawn him and Margaret together.
When the sun was up the next morning and Logotheti came on deck to
drink his coffee alone, he saw the magic Straits not many miles ahead,
in an opalescent haze that sent up a vapour of pure gold to the pale
blue enamel of the sky. He had been just where he was now more than
once before, and few sights of nature had ever given him keener
delight. On the left, the beautiful outline of the Calabrian hills
descended softly into the still sea, on the right the mountains of
Sicily reared their lofty crests; and far above them all, twice as
high as the highest, and nobler in form than the greatest, Ætna
towered to the very sky, and a vast cloud of smoke rose from the
summit, and unfolded itself like a standard, in flowing draperies that
streamed westward as far as the eye could reach.
'Let her go half-speed, Captain,' said Logotheti, as his
sailing-master came up to bid him good-morning. 'I should like my
guest to see the Straits.'
'Very good, sir. We shall not go through very fast in any case, for
the tide is just turning against us.'
'Never mind,' Logotheti answered. 'The slower the better to-day, till
we have Ætna well astern.'
Now the tide in the Straits of Messina is as regular and easy to
calculate as the tide in the Ocean, and at full and change of the moon
the current runs six knots an hour, flowing or ebbing; it turns so
suddenly that small freight steamers sometimes get into difficulties,
and no sailing vessel I have ever seen has a chance of getting
through against it unless the wind is both fresh and free.
Furthermore, for the benefit of landsmen, it is well to explain here
that when a steamer has the current ahead, her speed is the difference
between her speed in slack water and that of the current or tide,
whereas, if the latter is with her, its speed increases her own.
Consequently, though the _Erinna_ could run sixteen knots, she would
only be able to make ten against the tide; for it chanced that it was
a spring tide, the moon being new on that very day. Similarly the
_Lancashire Lass_, running her twenty-three knots like a torpedo boat,
would only do seventeen under the same conditions.