During the four months of Mitsos's absence the progress of the war in
the Peloponnese had been checked by a thousand petty and ill-timed
jealousies on the part of the chiefs and primates, and more than
ever it was becoming the work of the people. It had been agreed in
the preceding autumn that the Peloponnesian senate instituted at
Tripoli should be dissolved at the fall of that fortress, which took
place in October, and that a national assembly, now that the war was
a business in which the whole nation, north and south alike, had
taken up arms, should direct the supreme conduct of affairs. But
this suited very ill with the greed and selfish ambitions of many of
the military leaders and primates. Their places in the Peloponnesian
senate were assured, and having a voice in its transactions, and for
the most part a singular unanimity of purpose, their object being to
get as much plunder as possible, it was not at all their desire to be
superseded in power by deputies chosen from the whole of Greece. But
until the national assembly was formed all power was vested in them,
and with a swift insight--cunning, to use no uglier word, rather than
creditable--they passed a resolution that the deputies to the national
assembly should be elected by themselves.
Now the prince Demetrius Hypsilantes, though weak and indecisive, and
altogether incapable of initiative action, had, at any rate, in the
Peloponnesian senate that power which an honest and upright man will
always hold in an assembly where the ruling motive is personal greed.
But his curiously infirm mind clutched, like a child with a bright
toy, rather at the show of power than at power itself, and now that
the development of the war, with the demand for a more representative
assembly, threatened to deprive him of that, he threw in his lot
with the primates and captains of the Morea, preferring to retain
the presidency of the Peloponnesian senate, and to be a _roi mort_,
rather than take a subordinate part in the national assembly. For
it seemed certain that Prince Mavrogordatos, who had been appointed
governor-general in northwest Greece, would be elected President of
Greece, and this for more than one reason. In the first place, he had
not as yet shown himself too patently unfit for the office, while
Hypsilantes had; in the second place, the Peloponnesian senate was far
too heavily faction-ridden to co-elect out of their own body except on
the barest majority against other candidates singly; and, in the third,
they unanimously preferred to have as a president a man who, it was
understood, would go back to his command in north Greece, leaving them
to their own control, which was just equivalent to no control at all.
This national assembly met at Epidaurus in January; it shouted
itself hoarse over many high-sounding declarations, loud and empty
as drums; it conferred titles and honors; it devised banners and
legislative measures, all highly colored, it presented Kolocotrones,
the old chieftain and leader of an enormous and disorganized band
of brave and badly armed men, with a brass helmet and the title of
commander-in-chief in the Morea, and congratulated itself on having
put things on a firm and orderly basis. Furthermore, it resolved to
take the fortress of Nauplia without loss of time, with the effect
that in May the siege was still going on, without any prospect of a
calculable termination. Mavrogordatos, elected President of Greece
and confirmed in his command of the northwest province, went back to
his duties, and engaged on a series of futile manoeuvres which, as
he had no acquaintance of any kind with military matters, ended in a
disastrous defeat at Petta. Hypsilantes chose a new aide-de-camp in
place of Mitsos, who had departed without leave to the Gulf of Corinth
with the Capsina; and Kolocotrones put on his brass helmet and went
on small marauding expeditions, returning now and then to Nauplia
to see how the siege had got on, as a man watches a pot over a slow
fire. Such were the main results of the great council of Epidaurus,
and thus passed the days from January to May; till May the Greek
fleet was idle, though a dozen ships at double pay blockaded Nauplia
by sea in order to prevent its relief by the Turkish fleet, which
every one very well knew was still at Constantinople. On land the
lower town was in the hands of the insurgents, who, however, made no
attempt to take the fortress, but waited for nature, in the shape of
starvation, to act unaided. Petrobey, disgusted at the appointment
of Kolocotrones as commander-in-chief, retired with the growling
Mainats into his own country to wait till, as he hoped, the voice of
the people should recall him, or, if not, until some one should be
appointed commander-in-chief whom he could with honor serve under. For
Kolocotrones, so he openly said, had brought dishonor on Greece by his
disgraceful trafficking with the besieged in Tripoli, and was no more
than a brigand chief weighing the honor of the nation against piasters,
and finding the piasters the worthier.
Suleima was busy to and fro in the veranda and garden of the house, one
May afternoon, her hands full, as behooved a good housewife, with the
woman's part. The littlest one, now seven months old, was tucked away
in his cot for his mid-day sleep, under the angle of shadow cast by
the corner of the veranda, and every now and then Suleima would pause
in her work and let her eyes rest on him a moment. The child slept
soundly, one creased little hand lay on the wicker side of the cradle,
a pink little nose pointed absurdly to the roof.
"He is altogether quite adorable," said Suleima to herself, pausing to
look, and with a smile of utter happiness went back to her work.
The other corner of the veranda was covered with wooden trays, over
each of which was stretched a confining sheet of gauze. In the trays
were spread fresh shoots of mulberry-leaves, on which reposed hundreds
of silk-worm moths of the fairer and fatter sex busy laying eggs, as in
duty bound, and, it must be conceded, fulfilling their duty with the
utmost profuseness. The males, smaller and rather duller in color,
fluttered about against the gauze or walked drone-like across the
leaves, taking rude short cuts over their wives when they happened to
find those estimable women in their way. Outside the gauze on the floor
of the veranda lay another tray full of shoots of mulberry-leaves eaten
bare by the broods of young caterpillars already hatched, or still
covered with the eggs, which looked like a rash of minute gray spots.
Suleima was behindhand with her work, for the eggs should have been
transferred to the mulberry-trees before they hatched, and she moved
quickly backward and forward from the row of young trees in the garden
which spring had clothed in their new gowns of green, carrying the
egg-laden twigs in her hand. These she either tied to the living shoots
or, where the foliage was thicker and no sudden gust of wind could blow
them away, she merely put it in the middle of the growing leaves. Round
the trees, below the lowest output of branches, was painted a band of
lime to prevent the caterpillars straying. She sang gently to herself
out of a happy heart as she moved on her errands, stopping every now
and then on the step from the veranda, and looking out over the shining
shield of the bay towards Nauplia with eyes eager for the ruffling
land-breeze which should bring a ship, which she waited for, climbing
up wave after wave against it as a man climbs a ladder rung by rung.
Outside in the garden the air was still windless, and the trees stood
with leaves drooping and motionless as if in sleep. Only near the
fountain the alder, whose finer fibre perceived a moving air where
others let it pass unnoticed, whispered secretly to itself. The spring
had been late in coming, but in a day, so it seemed, the sun grew warm
and sluices of mellow air were flung open to flood the land, and from
hour to hour the anemones and little orchids had multiplied themselves
by some vast system of progression along the hill-side as the stars
grow populous in the heavens at the fall of night. Already Suleima's
red anemones, sheltered from north winds by the house, and more forward
than those fed by the thinner soil of the moorland, were over; one
blossom only still held its full-blown petals, and to Suleima it seemed
a thing of good omen that there should be just one left for Mitsos on
his return. For this morning the _Revenge_, recognizable by its area
of canvas, vaster than that of other ships, and the raking line of its
bows, and flying the Greek flag, had been sighted out in the gulf, from
the village of Tolo, heading for Nauplia. But to the sea-breeze had
succeeded a dead calm, and she was yet some three miles out, mirrored
in the sea as still as a ship in a picture till the land-breeze should
awake. Father Andréa had set off for Nauplia after the mid-day dinner
to welcome Mitsos home, and to catch a glimpse of the Capsina.
All afternoon the _Revenge_ lay dozing on an unwrinkled sea. There was
not breeze enough even to make the sails shiver and flap; you would
have said the wind was dead. To the Capsina and Mitsos it was strange
to lie idle thus, without even the occupation of considering their
plans for the morrow, and the girl at times half hoped that the wind
would soon come which would bring them to Nauplia and part her from
Mitsos, half felt that the interminable procession of days would be
only hour after impossible hour without him. The memory of that moment
when, forgetting Suleima indeed, yet not remembering her except as in
the hour of victory a comrade's heart goes out to a comrade, he had
taken her into his arms, was like some devouring thirst which made dry
her soul. She was too just to blame him for it; the fierce exultation
of that night of battle and thunder had been all that prompted him. At
such times a man would kiss a man, and so, and in no other way, had he
kissed her; he had but overlooked the fact that she was a woman, had
been ignorant she was a woman who loved him. She had returned to him a
minute afterwards to find him shy, ashamed, awkward, and knew as well
as if her thoughts were his own what was in the lad's mind. He wanted
to apologize, thinking that he might have offended her, yet hesitated,
lest he might solidify the matter for offence; perhaps he even feared
that she imagined he was thinking so light of her as to treat her to
a little love-making. Now the Capsina felt sure of the ancestry,
so to speak, of that embrace; she was not offended; she knew he was
not making love to her, and with a delicate simpleness almost too
straightforward to call tact, she had entered into conversation with
him so quickly and naturally that he was at his ease again.
But, justice of God, the difficulty and the unfairness of it all! That
wild, fierce joy which filled Mitsos at the sinking of the Turkish
ship was paid for not alone by those drowning cries, but by her also,
and heavily. She had succeeded too well, so she told herself, in her
assumption of a perfectly natural manner. Had Mitsos's sudden action
been dictated not by the excitement of that moment, but by the spasm of
heat of a man for a woman, she had shown herself too disregardent, she
had taken it too lightly; she had treated him, so he must have thought,
as a boy who had been merely rude to her, but whose rudeness she had
overlooked. And she laughed out at the thought, and Mitsos raised his
eyebrows and asked what the matter for amusement was.
They were alone, for Christos had been left with his cousins at Patras
now more than a week ago. They had passed the guns of Lepanto by night,
after hanging about ready to fight their ships if they attacked, but
out of range of the fort guns, for nearly a week. But one evening,
after the sea-breeze had failed, a sudden wind had got up after
midnight, in obedience to the Greek proverb that says, "On the first of
spring the wind alone is contrary," and they had sailed out, passing
close under the guns of the fort, reaching Patras before daybreak.
Certainly the wind had been divinely punctual, for the very next day
every sense said that winter was over. March and April had been cold
and rainy, smiling sometimes through their tears, but for the most part
scolding months, full of peevish weeping. But then, with the early days
of May, the change came. The Primavera scattered her flowers broadcast
over the land, and every land-breeze was sweet with the promise of
budding woodland things. Bees, more than once when they were farther
than a mile from land, had flown busy and drunken across the deck, and
the superstitious sailors had told the Capsina that surely some very
good thing was on its way to her.
To-day they had dined on deck, and after dinner Mitsos, in a ferment
of restlessness at the sight of home, had gone more than once to the
side of the ship, sniffing to find if he could smell the wind. But the
wind yet tarried, and now he had stretched his lazy length along the
deck, his head supported by a coil of rope, and smoked his narghile as
he talked. He had just received his share of the prize-money--more than
a hundred pounds--and this large sum was weighing on his mind when the
Capsina's laugh broke in upon his meditations, and he roused himself.
"Talking of the prize-money--" he began.
"Which we were not doing," said the Capsina.
"Then let us do so now. It is thus: I do not want it, for it was not
for that I came, and I would rather that you gave it to the war fund."
The Capsina turned a little away and played with the end of a rope
lying near her.
"Then why was it you came?" she asked, unable not to give Mitsos the
opportunity her heart knew he would not take.
He frowned.
"Why? Why?" he repeated. "Was there not reason enough, and are not the
reasons justified? Or"--and he smiled--"or shall I make pretty speeches
to you?"
"The Virgin defend me!" said the Capsina, with leaden calmness,
again shrinking from what she had encouraged. "But you are absurd,
little Mitsos. Are you to go home to--what is her name?--to Suleima
empty-handed, and have no fairing for her and the baby?"
"Oh, Suleima wants no presents," said he.
"You mean she will be so happy when she sees you that--Oh, saints in
heaven!" she broke off.
Then, as Mitsos stared at her with the quiet, habitual wonder with
which he regarded her sudden outbursts as common phenomena:
"You think she will be so pleased to see you she will have no thought
for aught else?"
Mitsos blew out a great blue cloud of smoke before he replied.
"It is thus," he said. "Had Suleima been away all this time, what,
think you, should I have cared what she brought me so long as she
brought herself? And I think--yes, I think it is not different with
her."
"Oh, you men-folk make me mad!" she cried. "Little Mitsos, you are
just exactly like my cousin Christos, and that, I may tell you, is no
compliment from my lips. He could not understand, his mind was simply
not able to appreciate how it was that I preferred the sea, and the
brig, and--and Michael, to marrying him. 'What more can the girl want,'
says he to himself, 'than to have a husband such as me?' And, indeed,
you think, like Christos, that a woman has no other wish. Is a woman
not a human thing? Because Suleima is so fortunate a girl as to have
this great, fine Mitsos for her husband, is there nothing else in the
world she can desire?"
The Capsina brought the words out like hammer-blows on an anvil. Then
she went on hurriedly, reverting to the main topic.
"About the money," she said; "if you won't take it as prize-money, take
it as wages, for, indeed, I think you are worth your pay, though lazy
and given to tobacco, and I am not dissatisfied with you. Not--not as
wages, for the Mavromichales, you say, have never accepted wages. The
more fools they. Take it as a present from me. Does that offend you? I
see it does, for you make a moon-crescent of your mouth. Then give it
to Suleima as a present from me. It offends you still, for though you
make your mouth straight, your nose is in the air. But, before God,
little Mitsos, you are the queerest and the proudest lad I have ever
seen. You should have been of the clan of Capsas."
"That you might treat me as you treated the cousin Christos, to whom
I am so like? The words are from your own mouth, Capsina, not from my
moon-crescent, as you are pleased to call that where I put my food."
The Capsina flushed ever so slightly.
"Ah, you talk nonsense," she said, quickly. "I do, too, being a woman;
I know it; but that is no excuse for you."
Mitsos took the pipe out of his mouth and made a mock bow.
"What the Capsina does is good enough for me to do," he said.
The girl smiled back at him, her heart beating a little quicker than
its wont, and sat for a moment silent, watching him as he lounged
lazily with down-dropped eyes, stirring up the live charcoal which
burned in the bowl of his narghile.
"Oh, it is a queer people the good God has made," she said. "I am
of the clan of Capsas, you of the Mainats, and never have Mainats
and Capsiots gone hunting together before. Why are we made so--you a
Mainat, I a Capsiot? For, indeed, little Mitsos, you are more like the
clan than Christos. Think if I had married Christos! I should have
been, like the others, long before this day counting the eggs the hens
have laid instead of the Turks that I have killed, and cooking the
supper, and talking like one of a company of silly sparrows in a bush.
Why is it that one thing happens to me, and not another? Why did you
meet Suleima? Why--"
And her voice was a little raised and tremulous, and she stopped
abruptly, though her silence half strangled her. She seemed unable to
exchange an ordinary word with him without letting her sex obtrude
itself. If she was never to be aught but a comrade to Mitsos, it would
be something, at any rate, to make him know how much more he was to
her. Her fierce, full-blooded nature, accustomed to impose its will on
others and to exercise no control on itself, if baffled in the first
respect might at least realize the other. She was hurt; each day of her
life hurt her; at least, she could cry aloud. But the mood passed in a
moment: Mitsos was full of the thought of Suleima, whom he would see
that evening. He would think her mad, or worse; and still, he would not
care. She would cease even to be a comrade to him.
Mitsos had not noticed the raised voice nor the abrupt breaking off. He
was dimly suspicious that the Capsina was making metaphysical remarks
to which politeness required an answer, and he frowned and shook his
head hopelessly to himself, there being no subject of which he knew
less. But the sudden introduction of Suleima into the question made
things clearer.
"Suleima?" he said. "Why did I meet her? Oh, Capsina, how could it
have been otherwise? Tell me that. For I could not be myself without
her. Oh, I cannot explain, for God, in His wisdom, made me a fool!" he
cried, and he puffed away at his pipe.
"And tobacco is always tobacco," remarked the Capsina, justly enough.
They sat in silence a while longer, and then the girl got up from
where she was sitting and strolled towards the bows of the ship, which
pointed up the gulf. She could see the ruddy-gray side of the fortress
hill Palamede which stood up five hundred feet above Nauplia, but the
town itself lay out of view behind a dark promontory which ran rockily
out. The sea was perfectly calm and of a translucent brilliance, clear
as a precious stone, but soft as the air above it. Fifteen fathoms
below lay the sandy bottom of the gulf, designed, here and there, like
a map, with brownish-purple patches of sea-weed, and between it and
the surface, poised in the water, drifted innumerable jelly-fish and
medusæ, shaped like full-blown balloons, with strange, slippery-looking
strings and ropes trailing below them. Some were pink, some of a
transparent and aqueous green, some rustily speckled like fritillary
flowers, but all, as in a stupor of content, drifted on with the
current of warm water settling into the bay. Now and then a shoal of
quick fish would cross, turning and wheeling all together like a flight
of birds, their burnished sides glittering in the sun-steeped water, or
stopping suddenly, emblazoned, as if heraldically, on the green field.
A school of gulls were fishing behind, dipping in and out of the water
for chance fragments from the ship. Mitsos, lying at ease on the deck,
with his pipe in his mouth and his cap pushed forward to shield his
eyes from the sun, seemed to excel even the jelly-fish in content, and
to the girl it appeared that she alone, of all created things, was of
an uneasy heart. That evening they would reach Nauplia. News of their
coming would before now have gone about, and she tingled at the thought
of the welcome they would get together. Not only for her would those
shouts go up, but for Mitsos with her, thus sounding with more than
double sweetness to her ear. And when the shouting and acclamation were
over she would go back to the ship, and Mitsos would go to Suleima. She
hated this girl whom she had never seen, and mixed with her hatred was
an overwhelming curiosity to see her.
Mitsos finished his pipe, got up thoughtfully foot by foot, and
strolled towards where she was standing leaning over the bulwarks.
He was getting impatient for the coming of the tardy wind, but
judged it to be on the first page of good manners that he should
keep his impatience private. Also he wanted to let this girl know in
what admired esteem and affection he held her, and his tongue was a
knot when he sought for words. Day after day they had run the same
fine risks, their hearts had beat as one in the glory of the same
adventures, they had laughed and fought and frolicked like two lads
together, welcoming all that came in their path; and yet he could not
take her arm and let his silence speak for him. Even Yanni had never
been more ready and admirable of resource, more ignorant of what fear
was, more apt and suited to him, nor more lovable, as comrades love.
She had all the live and fighting gifts of his own sex, yet in that she
was a woman he felt that they were the worthier of homage, and that he
was the more unable to pay it.
His bare-footed step was silent across the decks, and he came close to
her before she knew of his coming. And after spitting thoughtfully into
the water, leaning with both elbows, awkwardness incarnated, on the
bulwarks next her, he spoke.
"Oh, Capsina," he said, "how good a time I have had with you! And will
you make me a promise, if it so be you are one-tenth as satisfied as
I? It is this: If ever again--for now, as you know, with this siege of
Nauplia and the Turks coming south, my duty is here--if ever, at some
future time, you have need of one who hates the Turks and will act as
your lieutenant or your cabin-boy, or will, if you please, swim behind
your ship or be fired out of your guns, you will send for me. For,
indeed, you are the bravest woman God ever made, and it honors me to
serve you."
And once again, as on the night he joined the ship, he took of his cap
and bent to kiss her hand.
Mitsos blurted out the words shyly and awkwardly, in most unrhetorical
fashion, yet he did not speak amiss, for he spoke from his heart. And
the Capsina stood facing him, and, holding both his hands in hers,
spoke with a heart how near to bursting she only knew.
"I make you that promise," she said, "and I need not even thank you for
all you have done. And, oh, little Mitsos--this from me--if you should
suggest we sail the ship to hell together and fire on Satan, I would
help hoist the mainsail, for, indeed, you are the best of boys."
And she turned suddenly, with a quivering lip, and looked out to sea.
Presently after, just before sunset, the land-breeze began to blow,
and they ran a three-mile tack towards the far side of the gulf, and
from there, helped by the current that sweeps into the bay, they made
a point a short mile outside Nauplia. Then, standing out again, they
ran a short tack, and not long before the dropping of the wind cast
anchor a cable's-length from the quay. Straight in front rose the lower
town, on the side of the steep hill, pierced with rows of lights, as if
holes had been knocked in the dark. Higher up, but below the Turkish
walls, gleamed the fires of the Greeks who were besieging the place,
and supreme and separate, like a cluster of stars, hung the lights
at the top of Palamede. News of their coming had gone about, for the
blockading ships cheered them as they passed, and all the length of the
quay were torches and lanterns, hurrying to the steps where they would
land, growing and gathering till they seemed one great bouquet of red
flowers reflected in long snake-like lines on the water.
As soon as they were at anchor the Capsina and Mitsos were rowed to
shore, and as they neared the quay, seen clearly in the blaze of the
torches, the shouting broke out and swelled till the air seemed thick
and dense with sound. The Capsina was the first to step out, and the
folk crowded round her like bees round their queen. But she stood
still, looking back, and held out her hand to Mitsos, and they went up
the steps--the same steps up which he had come "from the sea and the
sun"--hand in hand. Those who had never seen her, and knew her name
only, having heard as in some old chivalrous tale of the wonderful maid
who had chased the Turkish ships like a flock of sheep, crowded round
to catch the glimpse of her, and her heart was full to brimming with
the music of their acclamation. Yet the touch of Mitsos's hand was a
thing more intimate and dearer to her.
Among the first was Father Andréa, and holding a hand of each:
"Now the Virgin be praised, you have come!" he cried. "And oh, little
Mitsos, is it well?"
"Surely there is not much amiss," said he. "And again, is it well?"
"She waits for you impatiently content," said he, "and the child waits."
The crowd broke way for them to pass on, but surged after them as they
walked in a babel of welcome and honor. Some pressed forward to touch
Sophia's hand, other old friends crowded round Mitsos, pulling him this
way and that, kissing him and almost crying over him, and the whisperer
whispered and the gossips made comments.
"Eh, but what a pair would they have made!" said one. "They could pull
the Sultan from his throne," and the speaker spat on the ground at the
accursed name.
"The little Mitsos has grown even littler," said another. "See what a
pillar of a man. And she, too; she is higher than his shoulder, which
is more than you will ever be, Anastasi, till God makes you anew, and
most different. Look at her face, too; no wonder the cousin in Hydra
was loth to lose her."
Still hand in hand the two passed on to the mariner's church on the
quay, where, as in duty bound, they offered thanks and alms to their
name-patrons for their safe coming; and having finished their prayers
they stood for a moment, silent, at the church-door.
"You will not sail to-morrow?" asked Mitsos. "You will come and see the
home? May I not come for you in the boat in the morning?"
Sophia hesitated a moment.
"No, I cannot come," she said. "I sail to Hydra to-morrow, for I,
too"--and she smiled at him naturally--"I, too, have a home. But surely
we shall be together again, if you will. If this report of the Turks
moving south is not true, we shall want you by sea, and speedily.
Kanaris--you--me! Lad, the Turks will not be very pleased to see us
again. So good-bye, little Mitsos; get you home."
And without another word she turned from him and went back to the ship.
Mitsos's way lay eastward, through the lower town, and many tried to
make him stop awhile and tell them of the big deeds.
"Yes, but to-morrow," he would cry. "Oh, dear folk, let me go," and he
had fairly to run from them.
The moon had risen, and the familiar homeward road stretched like a
white ribbon in front of him. The bay lay in shining sleep; from the
marsh came the ecstatic croaking of frogs, and the thought that they
had stayed so long in one marsh made Mitsos smile. From the white
poplars came the song of love-thrilled nightingales, and white owls
hovered and hooted and passed, and now and then a breeze would blow
softly across the vineyard, laden with the warm odors of spring and the
smell of growing things. But he went quickly, for his heart's desire
was a spur to him, and stayed not till he came to the garden-gate; and
ere yet he had lifted the latch Suleima had knowledge of his coming,
and they met, and the love which each had for the other brimmed their
very souls.