GUESTS OF HONOUR.
The music and the shouting had died away, and the lights of Strio
were growing dim across the water as the yacht headed for Therma.
Armitage, released at last from the duty of making elaborate and
grateful bows to his parents-in-law, which had claimed him as long as
he was within sight of the shore, heard a meek miserable voice at his
elbow.
“Lord, may I speak to you?”
“I hope you don’t think it necessary to ask me that?” he said, turning
round quickly. “Let us sit down here.”
There were two chairs comfortably placed in a sheltered nook, and he
pulled one forward for her, and arranged the cushions. Danaë took a
precarious seat at the very edge of the chair, and evidently found it
shaky.
“Do you mind if I sit on the ground, lord?” she asked, slipping easily
to the deck. Armitage did mind very much, but took the cushions from
the rejected chair.
“You must let me put these for you, then. I knew it!” to himself, as
she settled herself at his feet, where she could see his face
distinctly, while hers was in shadow. “Now what has my lady to ask of
her servant?” as she clasped her hands together and hesitated.
“Your forgiveness, lord,” was the prompt and unexpected answer. “And
it is not kind to jest with me. Is it not yours to command? Here I am
at your feet, ready to obey, but if your goodness will permit me to
speak----?”
Unreasonably irritated, as he himself felt, Armitage leaned forward
and took her hands. She made an instinctive effort to withdraw them,
but left them passive in his. “My dear Lady Danaë--” he knew it was
absurd to address her thus, but could not for the life of him resolve
to shock her by calling her by name--“please understand once for all
that you have a perfect right to speak to me on any subject you
choose, and that I shall be delighted to hear what you have to say,
and to do what you wish if it is in my power.”
“You are very good, lord.” Danaë’s tone implied that his assurance
was mere politeness, such as she would have expected from him in the
circumstances. “You forgive me, then, for yielding to my father and
mother? Truly, lord, I intended to refuse, knowing that you did not in
truth desire to marry me, but had spoken only to shield me from my
father’s wrath. But my sister said to me, ‘You are always talking
about dying, and now if you don’t marry Milordo you will die, and he
will die too;’ and I knew it was true, and I did not want to die. And
you had said ‘Trust me,’ and I thought you had some plan----”
“So I had,” said Armitage quickly, “but I could not get hold of you to
find out your wishes. I sent you a message----”
“I received none, lord.”
“So I imagined. Well, I thought if you did not desire the marriage, I
would ask Kyrios Chalkiadi to bring you on board and come with us to
Therma, where he could place you under your brother’s protection.”
“He would not have received me. It would have been no use,” she said,
and he read in her tones that she thought the proposal scandalous.
“But ah, lord, it was good of you to think of it!” and to his utter
horror she kissed his hand. He snatched the hand away and rubbed it
involuntarily on his coat, as though to rub the kiss off.
“Forgive me, lord. I did not mean to offend you,” she said, and he
felt as though he had struck a child.
“It’s not that!” he cried incoherently. “My dear girl, you mustn’t
think I don’t like it--I like it very much. But it isn’t the
thing--for a woman to kiss a man’s hand, I mean. It ought to be the
other way about.”
“Not among us, lord,” she replied, gently but firmly. “But I will try
to learn the ways of your people. And this, my offending you when I
desire so much to please you, makes it easier for me to say what I
wished to ask. Since I am now your wife, and it would grieve me to
disgrace you before the great ones of your land, will you grant me a
time in which I may study the things of Europe, and learn to talk
about them?”
“It sounds a good idea,” said Armitage, irresistibly amused by the
businesslike way in which she spoke. “But what exactly would you wish
to study?”
“Lord, I am very ignorant. I can spin and weave and sew and embroider,
and cook--I made all the sweetmeats for the feast to-day--_loukoumi_
and almond-milk and all----” she paused.
“And very good they were,” said the bridegroom heartily.
“But I know nothing of the things European ladies do. I cannot write,
nor read--save a very little--I can speak neither French nor English.
Ah, lord!” she clasped her hands entreatingly, “take me to the Lady
Zoe, and let her teach me. Indeed I will do my best to learn from her,
to learn to be like her. And when you come back in two or three
years----”
“That is quite out of the question,” said Armitage, with great
firmness. “A year at the very outside.”
“As you will, lord. I must learn all the harder. But truly you need
not fear that the Lady Zoe’s kindness will be wasted, as when I was
with her before.”
“That certainly makes the plan more promising,” said Armitage gravely.
“Then when I come back, you promise that you will be exactly like the
Lady Zoe?”
“Yes, lord, as far as I can,” very meekly.
“And you won’t then mind having married me?”
“Mind, lord!” The words and their tone stirred Armitage with a most
unwonted thrill. He caught Danaë’s hand again.
“Danaë, why should we trouble the Lady Zoe? Come on a long cruise
with me, and let me teach you.”
But Danaë knew her own practical mind far too well to encourage such
foolishness. “How could you teach me, lord? I want to become a
European lady for your sake.”
“It’s quite true that I can’t offer to set you the example of that,”
he said, discomfited. “What is it exactly you want to do, then?”
Danaë bent forward, and rested her clasped hands on his knee. “Ah,
lord, as soon as ever we land let me go to Klaustra! The sooner I
begin, the sooner the year will be over,” she added, with an evident
effort at sympathy which would have sounded coquettish in anyone more
sophisticated.
But Armitage replied seriously. “I’m afraid we can’t quite manage
that. We must pay our respects to your brother in passing through
Therma. He would have reason to be very much displeased if we did not,
and he will probably wish us to spend a few days with him.” There was
another reason for delay which he did not care to mention to Danaë.
Experience of the complications which had beset the wedding of Prince
and Princess Theophanis long before warned him that the Greek ceremony
in Strio was almost certainly insufficient to make their own marriage
legal, and he was anxious to consult Prince Romanos and the British
Consul-General on the subject. Prince Christodoridi, to whom he had
endeavoured to broach the question, persisted in regarding his efforts
as an attempt either to back out of his engagement, or to cast a slur
on the ministry of the Orthodox Church, so that he had abandoned them
in despair.
Danaë hung her head. “But, lord--you will pardon me if I speak of
it--there are European ladies at Therma, and I have only Striote
clothes.”
“And I like you best in them, as you know. But don’t be afraid. You
shall get just what you like in the way of clothes. We shall find some
one who will advise you.”
“Ah, lord, you are too good! Do I not know that it is shameful I
should have to ask you for clothes on the very day of our wedding? But
I could not bear that the European ladies should laugh at your wife,
or I would have held my tongue, knowing--knowing----” her voice
failed.
“Now who has been talking to you?” cried Armitage angrily. “No one was
to know anything about it.”
“Lord, it is better I should know. Otherwise how could I have
understood the depth of your goodness to me?”
“Now you really mustn’t,” he expostulated. “It really is not what you
think. I--I am sure your father would gladly have given you a dowry.
It was I who refused it.”
Danaë withdrew her hands from his knee. “I am sorry you thought I
deserved this of you, lord.”
“Oh, you won’t understand!” cried Armitage desperately. “Our customs
are different from yours. With us it is the highest compliment to be
willing to marry a girl without a dowry.”
Danaë’s aggrieved attitude was slightly modified, though her silence
showed that she considered the custom, however honourable to the lady,
likely to be inconvenient in practice. But Armitage was evidently
waiting anxiously for some remark. “I am glad you have told me this,
lord,” she said, in a repressed voice. “But I am also glad that my
sister told me the truth. I might--I might have asked you for money.”
“I hope you would not have had to do that in any case. Of course you
will have your own allowance, which you will spend exactly as you
like.”
She lifted brimming eyes to his face for a moment then, mindful of her
lesson, raised the corner of his coat and pressed it to her lips.
Armitage rose abruptly.
“My dear girl, you mustn’t make so much of the most ordinary things.
I--I hope we shall be very happy together, I’m sure. But I don’t know
that I shall be able to spare you a year at Klaustra; six months
or--or three--is more likely. I shall come now and then to see how you
are getting on, and if I find that the improvement in you justifies
it, don’t you know---- Oh, hang it! why will you make me talk like a
prig?--well, I shall take you away.”
“Yes, lord,” was the meek and sorrowful reply, and Armitage realised
that he was in danger of presenting himself to his bride as a tyrant
depriving her little by little of what she was looking forward to as
the most absolutely blissful period of her life. He spoke hurriedly.
“You must be tired, I am sure. I hope you will find your cabin
comfortable. If there is anything you want, send your maid to row the
steward. If he doesn’t understand, be sure you call to me. Understand
that everything and everyone on board is here entirely for your
convenience.”
For once Danaë was speechless. She seemed to have offended him in
some way, and yet he only loaded her with fresh courtesies. Her
impulse was to cover his hand with kisses, and entreat his forgiveness
afresh, but happily she restrained herself in time. Passing the
lighted deckhouse, she saw something that distracted her attention.
“Surely that was Petros, leaning against the door and talking to your
officer?” she asked, turning on her husband eyes full of dismay.
“Why, yes,” he answered, surprised by her agitation. “It was he who
told Kyrios Chalkiadi where I was, and brought him up to get me out of
the dungeon, you know, and it seems it has made the island too hot to
hold him. So I could hardly refuse him a passage to Therma when he
asked for it, and he wants me to intercede for him with your brother
and get him to take him back.”
“No doubt my brother will listen to you, lord, but I think friend
Petros would be wise if he remained in his own place as he was told,”
said Danaë drily, and Armitage wondered what she meant, and reflected
that he had almost everything to learn about her still.
Prince Romanos justified his brother-in-law’s expectations by
insisting on the bridal pair’s paying him a visit of some weeks when
they reached Therma. It is true that it proved necessary for them to
be married over again at the British Consulate, but it was also true
that they arrived just in the nick of time to afford at once a
much-needed distraction for the inhabitants of Therma, and an
opportunity of showing civility to the foreign representatives. The
arrangements outlined at Klaustra by Professor Panagiotis for getting
the Prince out of his difficulties had not met with all the success
that their ingenuity deserved. Pannonia and Scythia were intensely
dissatisfied with the respective shares assigned to them in the
railway project, and particularly with the fact that the most
important portion of the proposed line, that from Klaustra to Therma,
carrying with it the control of the historic harbour, was withheld
from their hands, though had it been entrusted to either, the sky
would have been rent by the protests of the other. Now they presented
Notes almost daily, sometimes separately and sometimes together,
drawing attention to the totally inadequate fulfilment of the Prince’s
promises, while at the same time the popular orators in the Assembly
were thundering against the surrender of so large a share in Emathian
commerce and communication to the alien and the enemy. Nor was the
dynastic question so easy of settlement as it had appeared. When
Prince Romanos boldly announced at one and the same time his marriage
with the heiress of Maxim Psicha, and the fact that she had been
foully murdered some months before, no amount of splendour lavished
upon her tomb, or of ostentatious provision for Janni as heir to the
throne, could check the torrent of talk and scandal that arose. The
general belief was that, for purposes of his own, the Prince had had
his wife put out of the way--a slander which was not discouraged by
the agents of the aggrieved Powers. Moreover, at the same time that
the people tolerated the marriage because it promised at some future
date to include Illyria within the Emathian boundaries, the Powers
demanded assurances from Prince Romanos that he had no intention of
taking any steps in that direction, so that he was hard put to it to
satisfy their pressing inquiries without fettering himself with
pledges that might prove inconvenient. Therma itself was also in a
disturbed state. A certain low quarter of the city had become
notorious for a series of mysterious murders, the perpetrators of
which invariably escaped. The victims were chiefly foreigners, of such
a class that their respective countries might have been imagined to be
well rid of them, but their fate afforded the means of planting one
more thorn in the pillow of the unhappy ruler of Emathia.
Thus, though it would have been Armitage’s last thought to allow
himself to be used to bolster up the tottering throne of Prince
Romanos, this was the purpose that he and his wife served. Much
against his will, he was obliged to allow himself to be appointed--in
virtue of his yacht and his relationship to the Prince--an honorary
Admiral of the Emathian fleet, which consisted of two or three
steam-launches, intended to prevent smuggling, which they failed most
signally to do. In return, wearing the uniform of his new dignity, he
entertained severally the members of the Assembly, the Consular body,
the heads of the army, and selected burghers of the city, on board the
yacht, and delighted the populace with illuminations and a firework
display. Meanwhile Danaë wore European clothes all day long, had
Janni with her whenever she was not out of doors, and found herself
and her husband the cynosure of every eye and the attraction at every
social gathering they could manage to attend. Armitage’s boyish face
and grey hair made such a piquant contrast with the splendid beauty of
his wife that it only needed the discovery that Lady Armitage was a
child of nature from the islands to send Therma wild about them. The
wife of the new British Consul-General who had succeeded Sir Frank
Francis was herself newly married, and had a soul attuned to romance.
The bride and bridegroom awoke in her a reminiscence of the Saracen
maiden and Gilbert à Becket, and this in turn stirred vague memories
of Pocahontas and the London locality supposed to be named after her.
“_La belle sauvage_--” could anything be more appropriate? Mrs
Wildsmith appreciated her discovery too well to keep it a secret. One
whisper to her dearest friend, the wife of the Pannonian
representative, and the nickname was public property throughout the
foreign colony in Therma. As “la belle sauvage” Danaë was fêted to
her heart’s content, and never dreamed of the truth.
It was no wonder that her head was a little turned, and that the quiet
and hard work of Klaustra began to look less attractive. Prince
Romanos had sent urgent invitations to his Theophanis rivals to be
present at the series of festivities which were to celebrate at once
his sister’s marriage and the anniversary of his own election, and it
would have been natural enough for the Armitages to return with the
Wylies when they went back. But Princess Theophanis was ill, and her
husband would not leave her, so that the visit was postponed for the
present, and Danaë took full advantage of her respite. She learned to
drive quite contentedly in a carriage, which had frightened her
horribly at first, and to endure with equanimity the scandalous
spectacle of men and women dancing together. She never tried to sit at
her husband’s feet or kiss his hand nowadays; instead, she claimed
little services from him, and treated him occasionally with a parade
of indifference which seemed delightfully wicked to herself and
secretly amused him. She ran riot in the matter of clothes. At first
she was content to ask Mrs Wildsmith’s help in selecting the least
startling of the terrible ready-made German monstrosities which filled
the “European” shops of Therma, and to let Armitage design her evening
gowns. But beautiful as these last might be to the artistic eye, they
were not conspicuously _chic_ or “smart,” and these two qualities, as
she was now aware, comprised the whole duty of woman with regard to
dress. At last fortune placed it in her power to gratify her supremest
aspirations after these elusive qualities. Just before a great ball at
the British Consulate, the wife of the Pannonian Consul-General was
obliged to go into slight mourning, and could not wear the gown she
had ordered from Vindobona for the purpose. She showed Danaë the gown
and lamented its cost, and Danaë, too unsophisticated to feel any
delicacy in the matter, promptly offered to buy it. The sum asked
staggered her, accustomed as she was to regard her allowance as
boundless wealth, and in fact it allowed Mme. Melchthal a comfortable
commission, but she paid it, and the coveted garment passed into her
possession.
To say that she created a sensation when she appeared at the ball
would be a mild term. The gown was of vivid emerald-green satin, with
a cuirass of glittering sequins of the same colour. It had long
hanging sleeves of gold gauze, and a fringed golden sash about the
hips. On a plump, fair-haired woman like Mme. Melchthal it would have
looked striking; on Danaë it was melodramatic, almost sinister. She
saw the look of dismay in her husband’s eyes as she took off her
cloak, and it spurred her to shock him still further. For the first
time she tried to dance, which she did as badly as might have been
expected, and having found a partner who spoke Greek, she talked and
laughed--and both her voice and her laugh were louder than
conventional custom prescribes. Prince Romanos, who held strongly to
the opinion that a young dynasty could not be too careful of the
strictness of its etiquette, watched her gloomily, and at length broke
up the gathering at an unprecedentedly early hour by offering her his
arm and leaving the ballroom, followed by Armitage and the suite. On
the way home Danaë sulked undisguisedly. Her magnificent gown, the
wonderful coiffure devised by the new Vindobonese maid who had
superseded the old woman she had brought from Strio--with the strip of
golden gauze twisted in and out of the blue-black locks--was all this
to be wasted on a bare hour’s enjoyment? Arrived at the Palace, her
brother escorted her punctiliously to the suite of rooms allotted to
her and Armitage, and entered for a moment. Pure bravado impelled
Danaë to throw off her cloak and display the offending gown again. To
her intense astonishment, her husband quietly replaced it. Prince
Romanos laughed, not pleasantly.
“You are beginning to see what comes of marrying a beauty of the
harem!” he said. “Well, I did my best to warn you. But I do not
propose to have my family made the laughing-stock of Europe. If you
had been remaining here, Lady Danaë, I should have recommended your
husband to engage for you some elderly lady who would have taught you
to behave with the propriety in which you are totally deficient, but
happily it is not necessary.”
“I wonder you don’t recommend him to beat me,” said Danaë insolently.
“If I thought there was the slightest likelihood of his doing it, you
may be sure I would. But remember, however foolishly indulgent your
husband may be, you owe a debt to me. You have yet to earn your life.
I have the right to claim your services, and if you continue to repay
me by such displays as this----”
“I don’t understand you, Prince,” said Armitage.
“One would think I was Petros,” said Danaë.
“After all, you are not so very different from Petros,” said Prince
Romanos meaningly. “I hope your wife will be in a better mind in the
morning, Lord Armitage. Good-night.”
Armitage escorted him to the door, and came back to find Danaë
sitting with her arms upon the table. “What did he mean?” she asked,
without looking at him.
“I don’t know. Your brother has been rather strange of late. Perhaps
it is just as well that you will not have much opportunity of
irritating him further at present, Danaë.”
“What have you and he been plotting together?” she asked.
He took no notice of the tone. “You will be glad to hear that Glafko
and Princess Zoe will be here in a day or two. They were to leave
Klaustra to-day, and Theophanis will follow them when the Princess is
stronger.”
“You have asked them to come at once!” cried Danaë.
“You have no objection, have you? Purely as a matter of taste,
wouldn’t you yourself rather be like Princess Zoe than Madame
Melchthal?”
“You want to shut me up where I shall see nobody!”
“But surely going to Klaustra was your own idea? I wrote to Princess
Zoe by your request, but if you would rather not pay the visit just at
present I am sure you will be able to arrange things with her, and we
will go for a cruise first.”
“But you have made this new arrangement without letting me know. You
are determined to take me away from Therma and all my friends--do you
think I don’t see that? Why didn’t you tell me what you meant to do?
Have I ever disobeyed you?”
“I have never requested you to do anything that you have refused.”
Armitage evaded the point politely. “But as to my wishes----”
“Oh, you are like all husbands!” Danaë caught a twinkle in her
husband’s eye at the suggestion of her vast experience of matrimony,
and qualified her words hastily. “Dearest Koralie says they are all
alike--grumbling if one gets a single good gown. Now if this”--she
flung out her train--“had cost only a few drachmæ, you would have
been charmed with it.”
“I can’t imagine that I could have disliked it in that case more than
I do now, but I assure you I should have objected to it quite as
much.”
“Yes, and I know why. Husbands are all like that--sweetest Koralie
says--they are angry and make a fuss at once if anyone even looks at
you.”
“Then I think I have shown remarkable self-control this evening,” said
Armitage imperturbably.
“I suppose you will tell me next that you don’t want to see me smart
and _chic_ and European?” There were tears in Danaë’s voice as she
sprang up and displayed her stately figure in all its bravery, but her
husband remained irresponsive.
“You can hardly expect me to prefer you as you are now to the girl who
sat on deck with me on the night of our wedding?”
This was the climax. She could not succeed in making him angry, but
such a proof of irremediable bad taste destroyed the last remnants of
Danaë’s temper. She snatched up a large pair of scissors from the
table--she had been cutting pictures from a Vindobona fashion-paper
before going to dress for the ball--and deliberately slashed a long
jagged rent in the front of the green satin skirt.
“Now I hope you are pleased!” she cried. “I can never wear it again!”
and bursting into stormy sobs she rushed away and into her own room.
Ordering her maid out in a voice which made the insulted menial vow
mutely to give notice at the first moment when her mistress looked
less capable of stabbing her on the spot, she slammed and locked the
door, and throwing herself on the bed, sobbed and raged half the
night.