THE ACME.
After smoking a cigar or two, Armitage fell into a doze, from which
he tried at first to rouse himself by spasmodic efforts, but
reflecting that in any case it must be hours before they could safely
approach the gipsy settlement, he allowed himself after a time to
yield to the drowsiness that was overpowering him. From this he was
roused at last by an anxious voice.
“Lord, where are you? Lord, lord!” and almost simultaneously some one
stumbled and fell over him.
Armitage sat up. “Gently, Sotīri, gently! What’s the matter, lad?”
An embarrassed laugh answered him out of the darkness, where Sotīri
was presumably picking himself up. “I don’t know, lord; I think I must
have been dreaming. I woke up and was frightened to find myself in the
forest in the dark, and then I went the wrong way to look for you and
could not find you, and I thought you had gone away and left me----”
“To storm the gipsy caves by myself? Hardly. Stand in front of me,
boy, while I see what the time is.”
Sotīri obeyed, and Armitage struck a match and looked at his watch.
“A quarter past twelve. Better not start for a hour or so, for no one
will be awake in the town, and we don’t want to have to wait about
when once we have got the child. We will have something more to eat,
Sotīri--lighten the basket a little.”
Sotīri laughed again. “I have not eaten nearly all you gave me, lord.
I think I must have gone to sleep in the middle. I will go back and
finish it.”
“Get another nap, and I will tell you when it is time to start,”
Armitage called after him in a low voice, and then moved nearer the
edge of the cleft, whence he could look down the gorge, and see the
few remaining fires dying out one by one. Here, away from the shadow
of the trees, he could just distinguish the time without striking a
light, and he sat and shivered, restraining his impatience manfully,
until two o’clock. Then he went back to the wood and called Sotīri,
who appeared shamefacedly.
“I did not think I could have gone to sleep again, lord, but if it had
not been for your voice I believe I should not have waked till
morning. Then we may really start now? I have everything ready here.”
From the recesses of his coat he produced two parcels, at which
Armitage glanced in surprise. He unfastened one.
“Honey cakes for the bear, lord. They are what he likes better than
anything. Holy Nicholas! how Artemisia must have cursed when she found
half her batch gone! That was really what made me late in
starting--Kalliopé was getting them, you see. And this--” indicating
the other parcel--“is meat for the dogs.”
“To keep them quiet, of course--I never thought of that. But then you
and Kalliopé have kept me so entirely in the dark as to what we were
going to do that I had not much chance. It is a pity she didn’t tell
me about the dogs, for we might have sprinkled something on the meat
that would send them to sleep.”
“Oh, is there something that will do that?” asked Sotīri in dismay.
“I am sorry, lord; I--we did not know.”
“Well, we must hope the meat alone will be enough. Now, before we
start, tell me exactly what we are going to do.”
“This is my plan, lord. I will go on first, if you please, my
moccasins making little noise on the path, and give the meat to the
dogs. You will follow, and when we reach the ledge of rock you will
graciously take from me the gun and the coats, so as to leave me quite
free. Then I will go into the bear’s den, and fetch the child out.”
“You go into the den alone? Nonsense, I won’t hear of it!”
“Lord, the bear will not mind me. I have the honey cakes for him, and
I know the words the gipsies use to bid him be quiet. Kalliopé has
told me them all. He may not even wake when I go in, but the noise of
your boots would rouse him at once.”
“I don’t like it,” said Armitage reluctantly. “However, I shall be
there with the gun, if he turns nasty. Look here, give me the things
to carry now, boy; I insist upon it. You must have your hands free to
cope with the dogs.”
“As you will, lord,” and they started, Armitage keeping his eyes on
Sotīri’s white kilt as a guide. When they had nearly reached the
ledge, they heard the uneasy bark of a dog in front, which was
answered by a chorus of others, dying down gradually as no further
suspicious sound was heard. The boy held up his hand, and crept on
alone, Armitage following very slowly and with great caution. Looking
along the ledge, he could discern Sotīri surrounded by a horde of
curs, which he was feeding with discrimination on choice morsels from
his pockets. When the dogs were all occupied, Armitage judged it safe
to advance, and they merely favoured him with a snarl as he approached
them. Sotīri had left them to their feast, and crept into the dark
mouth of the nearest cave. Armitage, waiting in intensest anxiety with
his gun cocked, heard a menacing growl, which made him step forward,
but a peremptory low voice uttered a word of command, and the clatter
of a chain followed as the bear retreated. Then Sotīri hurried out,
with something in his arms, and without a word led the way along the
ledge, past the other caves, Armitage following.
“You have got him all right?” he ventured to ask, when they were on
the descending path once more, and he had uncocked his gun.
“Yes, lord, all right,” with something like a giggle. “I think he is
asleep.”
A feeble cry from the burden contradicted this, and Sotīri clasped it
closely to his breast, and crooned over it in tender accents, which
drew another smile from Armitage. At the foot of the hill the boy
turned to skirt the town, instead of passing through it, and Armitage
in his mind applauded the wisdom of the course. If the gipsies should
discover what had happened, and pursue them in force, they would
certainly expect them to take a straight line for the Konak. They
plodded on wearily when the expectation of immediate pursuit had
passed, and in the faint lightening of the darkness which preceded
dawn, Armitage received a shock.
“Sotīri!” he cried, running forward regardless of his load, and
grasping the boy’s shoulder, “you have brought away the bear-cub, not
the Lord Harold at all!”
Sotīri laughed--a weary little laugh, but one full of amusement. “And
yet it is the Lord Harold, lord. Here is a thick bush; you can strike
a match safely.”
Standing in the shelter of the thicket, Armitage obeyed. There before
his horrified gaze was the furry form of the little bear. But as he
looked, Sotīri tilted the upper jaw back like a cap, and exposed
Harold’s dark head and blinking blue eyes.
“You don’t mean to say they had the cheek to keep him dressed up like
that?” cried Armitage.
“Yes, lord; that was the secret,” said Sotīri demurely.
“Good heavens--Princess Zoe’s child! It’s too disgusting. Now mind,
boy, his mother mustn’t see him like this. It would give her an awful
shock. We must get hold of Linton somehow, to dress him properly.”
“Why, lord, will she care what he wears, so long as she has him back?”
asked the boy. Armitage frowned.
“Of course not, really, but one has a feeling---- You don’t
understand, but it’s a horrible idea.”
“Very well, lord, I do not understand. I will see whether I can find
Sofia.” The boy spoke so meekly, but with such an undertone of pain,
that Armitage had the unreasonable feeling that in some way he had
been a brute. He said no more until they came in sight of the Konak,
and then he called Sotīri back.
“See here, lad; I have been thinking it’s not necessary to bring
Linton into this. Call your cousin instead. The whole credit of
getting the child back is due to her, isn’t it? Very well, then; she
ought to have the pleasure of giving him back to his mother, and she
shall.”
“Thank you, lord,” said Sotīri joyfully. Then his face fell. “You say
the whole credit is hers, lord. Don’t you think I helped at all--even
when I went into the bear’s den? I was really frightened.”
“I think you are an impudent young rascal, boy,” was the reply, given
with much severity. “Even if you were frightened, you ought to be
swaggering about now, and pretending you weren’t. You’ll never make a
man at this rate--a Greek man, anyhow. And as for trying to do your
cousin out of the credit which belongs to her, I tell you it’s a
shabby trick. Why, you know what trouble she is in at present, and if
you and I, by sinking our share in the business, can help her to get
back to her former position, doesn’t she deserve it?”
“You are right, lord. I am a beast,” was the subdued reply, and as
Sotīri walked mournfully on ahead, Armitage suffered agonies from
suppressed laughter. “I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or
my heels,” he said to himself.
Arrived at the gateway of the Konak, Armitage knocked authoritatively,
and though the guard on duty refused vehemently at first even to
entertain the idea of admitting them before sunrise, he yielded when
he heard who was outside. Harold in his furry disguise was wrapped in
Sotīri’s _kapota_, and completely hidden, which excited wild
curiosity on the guard’s part as to the results of the expedition.
Armitage imposed silence on him by means of a gift, and they hurried
across the courtyard to the colonnade outside the unused rooms, where
he had spoken to Kalliopé two nights before. Harold was suddenly
thrust into his arms, as Sotīri said hastily, “One moment, lord!”
then turned back to say with great emphasis, “Since we started, lord,
my cousin has been hiding in one of these rooms. So anxious was she
for the child’s recovery that she could not bring herself to remain
among the servants, but sought refuge here, that I might bring her the
news as soon as we returned.”
“Poor thing! she must indeed have been anxious,” said Armitage
gravely, and the boy disappeared. When a step was next heard on the
stone pavement, it was Kalliopé who approached. She lifted her eyes
silently to Armitage’s face, and he saw that there were black circles
of fatigue surrounding them which stood out clearly in comparison with
the whiteness of her cheeks, but inconsistently enough, he found her
more beautiful than even the first day he had seen her. She took his
hand and kissed it, lifted Harold from his arms, and was gone.
Armitage felt a sudden sense of flatness, an uncertainty as to what
ought to be done next, which was disconcerting after the crowding
events of the last eighteen hours. Then he surprised himself in a
tremendous yawn, and very wisely found his way to his room and went to
bed.
He was awakened after what seemed about a minute’s sleep by a vigorous
knocking, followed by the unceremonious entrance of Wylie, who burst
in, and seizing his hand, shook it with such energy that Armitage
cried for mercy.
“My dear good man,” he nursed the released hand ostentatiously, “what
in the world is it?”
“Oh, nonsense, don’t try to shirk! We know it’s all owing to you, old
man. Kalliopé has been telling us all about it, though we can’t make
head or tail of her story. Who is this cousin who went with you? We
never heard of him. But what does it signify, when you’ve brought the
boy back? I tell you I thought I was dreaming, when I felt a tug at my
moustache--something like a tug, too--and heard a little voice saying
‘Da! da!’ but when I opened my eyes there was Zoe with the child in
her arms. Old man, you can’t conceive what it is to get him back.
Hurry up and dress. Zoe wants to thank you herself. She and Linton and
Kalliopé are all on their knees at this moment baby-worshipping, with
a shifting audience of women from other parts of the place. I’m going
on now to tell Maurice. We can never thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank me at all,” said Armitage. “The whole idea was
Kalliopé’s, and she provided in her cousin a highly efficient
instrument for carrying it out. I only obeyed orders. By the bye, I
hear she was in hiding all day yesterday. Did you find it out?”
“We thought she had slipped through our fingers, of course, and there
was a good deal of mutual recrimination among the servants. Where she
hid I can’t imagine, for we thought we had hunted everywhere. Well,
poor girl, she has heaped coals of fire upon our heads--in a sort of
way, for there are a lot of suspicious things about her still. But be
quick and get dressed.”
When he was gone, Armitage obeyed, and in due course found his way to
the verandah, where Harold, fresh from a most necessary bath, and
dressed by the rejoicing Linton in his Sunday frock, was the centre of
attraction on his mother’s knee. Zoe looked up with eyes full of
tears.
“Oh, we can never, never thank you enough!” she cried. “Harold, give
Uncle a kiss and say ‘Ta’ to him for bringing you back.” Harold obeyed
solemnly. “I don’t think he looks any worse, except perhaps a little
thinner--do you?” she went on anxiously. “Isn’t it horrid that he can
never tell us how they treated him, because he will have forgotten all
about it when he is able to talk? But I really believe he hasn’t had
his face washed all the time he has been gone. Still, if there’s
nothing worse than that, we may be most thankful. What is it, Parisi?
Breakfast? How can one think of breakfast now? If you really had the
fine feelings you expect me to credit you with, you would have put
some food unobtrusively on the table over there, and left us to
discover it when we remembered we were hungry.”
Parisi smiled respectfully. He was a highly cultured person, having
once edited an Athenian newspaper, but he could never see a joke when
it was against himself. Having duly acknowledged Zoe’s attempt at wit,
he repeated in a soft murmur, “The gracious lady is served,” and stood
aside to allow her to pass downstairs.
“Oh dear, I suppose we must go!” groaned Zoe. “But Harold must come,
and sit in his high chair beside me. And Janni had better come too,
poor little fellow! for he feels himself quite eclipsed. Do you know,
he is really most frightfully jealous--after having Linton all to
himself, of course. We must all take particular notice of him
to-day----”
“If we can, in the presence of this conquering hero,” said Armitage,
holding out his arms for Harold. “Let me carry my god-son downstairs,
Princess. I see Prince Theophanis is coming across with Wylie to pay
his respects, so this youngster is highly honoured.”
“Now do tell me,” began Zoe, when they were seated at breakfast, and
Maurice had presented his own and Eirene’s most hearty
congratulations, “how you managed it. Oh, and where is this wonderful
boy Sotīri? He seems to have turned up just when he was wanted, and
disappeared without waiting to be thanked. But I must thank him. I
can’t be happy until I have done it. Surely you must know where he
is?”
“I’m afraid I am partly to blame for his disappearance,” said
Armitage. “It struck me that he was a little inclined to insist on his
share in the exploit and belittle his cousin’s, and I let him know
that I didn’t think it quite fair. I’m sorry if I hurt his feelings,
though, for he did well. What do you think about your cousin,
Kalliopé?” he turned to Danaë, whose face was a study as she stood
behind Janni’s chair, and spoke in Greek. “Has he run off because I
scolded him?”
She responded with eager haste. “Oh no, lord, it is nothing of that
kind. He has done what he came for, and is gone. You will never see
him again. He would wish you to forget him. To be thanked and praised
is a thing he would detest.”
“Then Kalliopé must act as his representative, and take his thanks
and praise as well as her own,” said Wylie.
“Yes,” said Zoe. “Kalliopé, what is there that you would really like?
You understand that nothing the Lord Glafko and I could do for you
would be in the slightest degree the measure of our gratitude, but we
should like to give you something tangible at once, which would show
the servants what we thought of you.”
The girl’s eyes glowed, then gloomed. “Something that I should really
like, lady mine?” she asked breathlessly.
“Yes, whatever you like best,” Zoe assured her. “Don’t be afraid,
Kalliopé. Tell me what it is, and if we have not got it here we will
send for it at once.” She expected to be asked for a watch and chain,
of the showy kind that Artemisia and her like loved to display upon
the velvets and satins of their feast-day attire, but Danaë fell upon
her knees, and breathed out the desire of her heart in scarcely
audible accents.
“Lady--oh, lady mine, if I may indeed have what I should prize most in
all the world, let me for this one evening wear European clothes, and
eat at your table as if I were a European like yourselves!”
The grotesque nature of the request, and the passion with which it was
urged, took Zoe aback. “But, Kalliopé, that is rather a foolish wish,
isn’t it?” she asked kindly. “Wouldn’t you rather have something real,
that you could keep and show, and take away with you, when you go?”
The girl rose to her feet, her eyes heavy with tears. “I knew it was
too much. I have no other wish, lady. Give me what you will.”
“Oh, let her do it, Zoe!” cried Wylie sharply.
“I will bring Eirene to dinner to meet her,” said Maurice.
“Let her do it, Princess,” said Armitage. “She deserves it.”
“Of course you shall do it, Kalliopé, if you really wish it,” said
Zoe, her momentary hesitation overborne. “I will lend you one of my
gowns--you shall choose whichever you like--and I will do your hair
for you myself. I won’t trust even Linton. There! will that please
you?”
“Oh, lady mine, you give as a king gives--with both hands full,” cried
Danaë, with a half-sob, as she knelt again and laid Zoe’s hand on her
head. “Never, never will I forget your goodness to me!” and she burst
into tears.
“She is tired out,” said Armitage--rather to Zoe’s surprise when she
thought about it afterwards. “Better let her have a good rest,
Princess. Must have been pretty wearing--hiding away all yesterday and
not knowing whether we should come back successful or not,” he
observed to the others, when Zoe had led the sobbing girl out of the
room.
No one saw anything more of Kalliopé until the evening, when Linton,
divided between gratitude for her achievement and acute disapproval of
the method of its reward, woke her that she might choose her gown. To
the maid’s indignation and Zoe’s amusement, she picked out
unhesitatingly the most magnificent thing in the wardrobe, a Parisian
creation of glittering golden tissue which Zoe had worn at the court
ball that formed the culminating point of the series of splendid
festivities before the departure of the allied fleets from Therma, by
which Prince Romanos had signalised his own election and the wedding
of his rival’s sister. Linton almost wept when she was bidden to alter
the hooks a little to allow for the Greek girl’s classic development
of figure, and Zoe was glad she should be spared the further pang of
seeing her mistress acting hairdresser to this upstart. But when the
thick blue-black locks, still disconcertingly short on one side, were
ready for manipulation, Danaë turned suddenly, and took the comb out
of Zoe’s hand.
“Lady, I must tell you--perhaps you will not think me worthy of all
this honour when you have heard--I have no cousin. It was I who put on
boy’s clothes and went with Milordo yesterday to find the Lord
Harold.”
“Kalliopé!” Zoe exclaimed in dismay, but the anxiety in the girl’s
eyes moved her. “It was very brave of you, and I can only thank you
all the more,” she added hastily.
“Then you don’t mind, lady?” with incredulous joy.
“No-o, not for this once. Not that you are to think that I want you to
go about in boy’s clothes at other times,” firmly. “You are never to
do it again.”
“Not unless it is necessary. I have done it once before--in Strio,”
she added quickly. “Lady, did Milordo guess?”
“I really don’t know,” said Zoe. Then, reviewing what had been said at
breakfast, she decided in her own mind that he very certainly had
guessed. “But if he did, you may be quite sure that no human being
will ever hear a word of it from him,” she added.
“Thank you, my lady,” said Danaë soberly, and they turned again to
the hairdressing. Presently Linton brought back the gown, and Zoe and
she refused to let the girl see herself until the transformation was
complete. Then, as Linton wheeled forward the large cheval-glass,
there was a simultaneous gasp from the three women. Kalliopé in this
guise was superb--there was no other word for it. The masses of dark
hair, the alabaster complexion thrown up by the gold of the gown, the
splendidly moulded arms and shoulders, made her a matchless picture.
Danaë herself was the first to speak.
“Lady, you will let me wear that?” pointing to a great boa of fluffy
white ostrich feathers. “I--I am not accustomed----” Zoe threw it
round her shoulders, and sighed.
“I shall never dare to wear that gown again, now I have seen how
splendid she looks in it,” she said in English, and Linton replied--
“Well, ma’am, I don’t deny I was against it, but this I will say: it
would have been a sin and a shame for the girl not to be dressed
properly once in her life.”
“It suits you magnificently, Kalliopé,” said Zoe in Greek, as she
caught the anxious glance the girl was directing from one to the
other. “Now walk about a little, while Linton dresses me, and learn to
manage your train.”
“Lady--” Danaë paused to enjoy the effect of her dark head rising out
of the creamy feathers--“don’t you think Milordo will want to make a
picture of me now?”
“I don’t know,” said Zoe, rather taken aback. “We will ask him, if you
like.”
Danaë assented joyfully, and Zoe found her eyes on her continually
during the evening, which really went off very well. The difficulty
Maurice had found in fulfilling his promise to bring his wife was
known only to himself, but since he had argued her from her first flat
refusal, through the assertion that the mere request was an insult, to
the position that the whole thing was a mad joke, and never to be
presumed upon afterwards, he felt he had reason to be satisfied.
Having submitted, Eirene made up her mind to do so with a good grace,
and if she had known Danaë to be a young princess she could not have
treated her more graciously. The girl showed by her behaviour that she
had used her eyes to good purpose since her arrival at Klaustra. Her
mistakes were wonderfully few, and she repaired or ignored them, as
seemed most advisable at the moment, with a natural dignity that left
nothing to be desired. Small-talk she was not an adept in, but
Armitage found her a promising pupil, and after all, it was not
necessary for her to talk--merely to sit and allow herself to be
looked at. Nevertheless, he was curiously disconcerted when Zoe came
up to him in the drawing-room afterwards, with the stately beauty
following her like a shadow.
“Lady Kalliopé wants to know whether you will paint her portrait in
this dress?” she said lightly, but the girl’s eyes were tragic with
entreaty. Armitage frowned.
“Certainly not. Think of the incongruity!”
“It would please her very much,” Zoe urged.
“You do not like me this evening, lord?” asked Danaë mournfully.
“I like you better in your own dress,” was the stout reply.
“Oh no, lord--not in those common clothes!”
“Just to please her--she has deserved it,” said Zoe.
“Well, look here,” said Armitage in desperation. “May I take this
sheet of paper, Princess?” He went to the writing-table, and using the
blotter as a sketching-block, drew rapidly for two or three minutes,
with swift glances at Danaë. When he handed the paper to Zoe, there
were two figures on it, each expressed with the utmost economy of
strokes--Danaë in her present dress, all train and long gloves, with
a coronet of hair emerging above a fluffy mass of ostrich feathers,
and Danaë in her native costume, standing on a cliff looking out to
sea, one hand shading her eager eyes, vitality in every line of her
form. “Now which of those do you like best?” he asked triumphantly.
“Oh, this one, lord!” was the fervent reply, as Danaë laid her hand
affectionately on the one representing her at the moment. Armitage
laughed, but not very heartily.
“I am beaten,” he said. “Well, as the Lady Kalliopé pleases.”
“It is really a caricature,” said Zoe, in a vexed tone. “You can
hardly see anything of her.”
“No. After all, it is a picture of the gown that is wanted, isn’t it?
Why, think; I shall be able to paint the whole thing without the
sitter’s being in the room--or even in the neighbourhood.” Armitage
did not guess how prophetic the words would seem to him later.
Danaë was satisfied. When she came to Zoe’s room that night to
restore her borrowed plumes, she smiled happily as she pulled off her
gloves.
“Oh, if only every day were like this evening, lady mine, how good I
could be!” she sighed.