Constantine Logotheti had at least two reasons for not going out to
Versailles as soon as Mrs. Rushmore signified her desire to know him.
In the first place he was 'somebody,' and an important part of being
'somebody' is to keep the fact well before the eyes of other people. He
was altogether too great a personage to be at the beck and call of
every one who wanted to know him. Secondly, he did not wish Margaret to
think that he was running after her, for the very good reason that he
meant to do so with the least possible delay.
Lushington, who was really both sensitive and imaginative, used to tell
Margaret that he was a realist. Logotheti, who was by nature, talent
and education a thorough materialist, loved to believe that he
possessed both a rich imagination and the gift of true sentiment.
Margaret had delighted him at first sight, though he was hard to
please, and though she was not a great beauty. She appealed directly to
that love of life for its own sake which was always the strength, the
genius and the snare of the Greek people, and which is not extinct in
their modern descendants. Logotheti certainly had plenty of it, and his
first impression, when he had met Margaret Donne, was that he had met
his natural mate. There was nothing in the very least psychological
about the sensation, and yet it was not the result of a purely physical
attraction. It brought with it a satisfaction of artistic taste that
was an unmarred pleasure in itself.
True art has gone much further in deifying humanity than in humanising
divinity. The Hermes of Olympia is a man made into a god; no Christian
artist has ever done a tenth as well in presenting the image of God
made Man. When imagination soars towards an invisible world it loses
love of life as it flies higher, till it ends in glorifying death as
the only means of reaching heaven; and in doing that it has often
descended to a gross realism that would have revolted the Greeks--to
the materialism of anatomical preparations that make one think of the
dissecting-room, if one has ever been there.
Love of genuine art is the best sort of love of life, and the really
great artists have always been tremendously vital creatures. So-called
artistic people who are sickly or merely under-vitalised generally go
astray after strange gods; or, at the best, they admire works of art
for the sake of certain pleasing, or sad, or even unhealthy
associations which these call up.
Logotheti came of a race which, through being temporarily isolated from
modern progress, has not grown old with it. For it seems pretty sure
that progress means, with many other things, the survival of the unfit
and the transmission of unfitness to a generation of old babies; but
where men are not disinfected, sterilised, fed on preserved carrion and
treated with hypodermics from the cradle to the grave, the good old law
of nature holds its own and the weak ones die young, while the strong
fight for life and are very much alive while they live.
Such people, when transplanted from what we call a half-barbarous state
to live amongst us, never feel as we do, and when they are roused to
action their deeds are not of the sort which our wives, our
mothers-in-law and the clergy expect us to approve. It does not follow
that they are villains, though they may occasionally kill some one in a
fit of anger, or carry off by force the women they fall in love with;
for such doings probably seem quite natural in their own country, and
after all they cannot be expected to know more about right and wrong
than their papas and mammas taught them when they were little things.
The object of this long-winded digression is not to excite sympathy on
behalf of Logotheti, but to forestall surprise at some of the things he
did when he had convinced himself that of all the women he had ever
met, Margaret Donne was the one that suited him best, and that she must
be his at any cost and at any risk.
The conviction was almost formed at the first meeting, and took full
possession of him when he met her again, and she seemed glad to see
him. By this time she had no reason for concealing from Mrs. Rushmore
that she had seen him at Madame Bonanni's, and she held out her hand
with a frank smile. It was on a Sunday afternoon and there were a
number of lions on the lawn, and half a dozen women of the world.
Logotheti seemed to know more than half the people present, which is
rather unusual in Paris, and most of them treated him with the rather
fawning deference accorded by society to the superior claims of wealth
over good blood.
The Greek smiled pleasantly and reflected that the nobility of the
Fanar, which goes back to the Byzantine Empire, is as good as any in
France, and even less virtuous. He by no means despised his wealth, and
he continually employed his excellent faculties in multiplying it; but
in his semi-barbarous heart he was an aristocrat and was quietly amused
when people whose real names seemed to have been selected from a list
of Rhine wines took titles which emanated from the Vatican, or when
plain Monsieur Dubois turned himself into 'le comte du Bois de
Vincennes'. Yet since few people seemed to know anything about Leo the
Isaurian, under whom his direct ancestor had held office as treasurer
and had eventually had his eyes put out for his pains, Logotheti was
quite willing to be treated with deference for the sake of the more
tangible advantages of present fortune. In Mrs. Rushmore's garden of
celebrities, he at once took his place as a rare bird.
He crossed the lawn beside Margaret, indeed, with the air and assurance
of a magnificent peacock. He was perhaps a shade less over-dressed than
when she had seen him last, but there was an astonishing lustre about
everything he wore, and even his almond-shaped eyes were bright almost
to vulgarity; but though he tired the sight, as a peacock does in the
sun, it was impossible not to watch him.
'What a handsome man Logotheti is!' exclaimed a Roumanian poetess, who
was there.
'What an awful cad!' observed a fastidious young American to the
English officer who was still on his way to India, and was very
comfortable at Mrs. Rushmore's.
The Englishman looked at Logotheti attentively for nearly half a minute
before he answered.
'No,' he said quietly. 'That man is not a cad, he is simply a rich
Oriental, dressed up in European clothes. I've met that sort before,
and they are sometimes nasty customers. That fellow is as strong as a
horse and as quick as a cat.'
Meanwhile the Greek and Margaret reached a seat near the little pond
and sat down. She did not know that he had watched every one of her
movements with as much delight as if Psyche, made whole and alive, had
been walking beside him. He had not seemed to look at her at all, and
he did not begin the conversation by making her compliments.
'I should have left a card on Mrs. Rushmore the day after I met you,'
he began in a rather apologetic tone, 'but I was not quite sure that
she knew about your visit to our friend, and she might have asked who I
was and where you had met me. Besides, as she is an American, she would
have thought I was trying to scrape acquaintance.'
'Hardly that. But you did quite right,' Margaret answered. 'Thank you.'
He was tactful. She leaned back a little in the corner of the seat and
looked at him with an air of curiosity, wondering why everything he had
said and done so far had pleased her so much better than his
appearance. She was always expecting him to say something blatant or to
do something vulgar, mainly because he wore such phenomenal ties and
such gorgeous pins. To-day he displayed a ruby of astonishing size and
startling colour. She was sure that it must be real, because he was so
rich, but she had never known that rubies could be so big except in a
fairy story. The tie was knitted of the palest mauve, shot with green
and gold threads.
'I have seen Schreiermeyer,' he said. 'Is there to be any secret about
your _debut_?'
'None whatever! But I have said nothing about it, and none of the
people here seem to have found it out yet.'
'So much the better. In everything connected with the theatre I believe
it is a mistake to try and excite interest before the event. What is
said beforehand is rarely said afterwards. You can be sure that
Schreiermeyer will say nothing till the time comes, and if Madame
Bonanni talks about you to her friends in London, nobody will believe
she is in earnest.'
'But she is so outspoken,' Margaret objected.
'Yes, but no one could possibly understand that a prima donna just on
the edge of decline could possibly wish to advertise a rising light. It
is hardly human!'
'I think she is the most good-natured woman I ever knew,' said Margaret
with conviction.
'She has a heart of gold. Her only trouble in life is that she has too
much of it! There is enough for everybody. She has always had far too
much for one.'
Logotheti smiled at his own expression.
'Perhaps that is better than having no heart at all,' Margaret
answered, not quite realising how the words might have been
misunderstood.
'The heart is a convenient and elastic organ,' observed Logotheti. 'It
does almost everything. It sinks, it swells, it falls, it leaps, it
stands still, it quivers, it gets into one's throat and it breaks; but
it goes on beating all the time with more or less regularity, just as
the violin clown scrapes his fiddle while he turns somersaults, sticks
out his tongue, sits down with frightful suddenness and tumbles in and
out of his white hat.'
He talked to amuse her and occupy her while he looked at her, studying
her lines, as a yacht expert studies those of a new and beautiful
model; yet he knew so well how to glance and look away, and glance
again, that she was not at all aware of what he was really doing. She
laughed a little at what he said.
'Where did you learn to speak English so well?' she asked.
'Languages do not count nowadays,' he answered carelessly. 'Any
Levantine in Smyrna can speak a dozen, like a native. Have you never
been in the East?'
'No.'
'Should you like to go to Greece?'
'Of course I should.'
'Then come! I am going to take a party in my yacht next month. It will
give me the greatest pleasure if you and Mrs. Rushmore will come with
us.'
Margaret laughed.
'You forget that I am a real artist, with a real engagement!' she
answered.
'Yes, I forgot that. I wanted to! I can make Schreiermeyer forget it,
too, if you will come. I'll hypnotise him. Will you authorise me?'
He smiled pleasantly but his long eyes were quite grave. Margaret
supposed that it would be absurd to suspect anything but chaff in his
proposal, and yet she felt an odd conviction that he meant what he
said. Only vain women are easily mistaken about such things. Margaret
turned the point with another little laugh.
'If you put him to sleep he will hibernate, like a dormouse,' she said.
'It will take a whole year to wake him up!'
'I don't think so, but what if it did?'
'I should be a year older, and I am not too young as it is! I'm
twenty-two.'
'It's only in Constantinople that they are so particular about age,'
laughed the Greek. 'After seventeen the price goes down very fast.'
'Really?' Margaret was amused. 'What do you suppose I should be worth
in Turkey?'
Logotheti looked at her gravely and seemed to be estimating her value.
'If you were seventeen, you would be worth a good thousand pounds,' he
said presently, 'and at least three hundred more for your singing.'
'Is that all, for my voice?' She could not help laughing. 'And at
twenty-two, what should I sell for?'
'I doubt whether any one would give much more than eight hundred for
you,' answered Logotheti with perfect gravity. 'That's a big price, you
know. In Persia they give less. I knew a Persian ambassador, for
instance, who got a very handsome wife for four hundred and fifty.'
'Are you in earnest?' asked Margaret. 'Do you mean to say that you
could just go out and buy yourself a wife in the market in
Constantinople?'
'I could not, because I am a Christian. The market exists in a quiet
place where Europeans never find it. You see all the Circassians in
Turkey live by stealing horses and selling their daughters. They are a
noble race, the Circassians! The girls are brought up with the idea,
and they rarely dislike it at all.'
'I never heard of such things!'
'No. The East is very interesting. Will you come? I'll take you
wherever you like. We will leave the archaeologists in Crete and go on
to Constantinople. It will be the most beautiful season on the
Bosphorus, you know, and after that we will go along the southern shore
of the Black Sea to Samsoun, and Kerasund, and Trebizond, and round by
the Crimea. There are wonderful towns on the shores of the Black Sea
which hardly any European ever sees. I'm sure you would like them, just
as I do.'
'I am sure I should.'
'You love beautiful things, don't you?'
'Yes--though I don't pretend to be a judge.'
'I do. And when I see anything that really pleases me, I always try to
get it; and if I succeed, nothing in the world will induce me to part
with it. I'm a miser about the things I like. I keep them in safe
places, and it gives me pleasure to look at them when I'm alone.'
'That's not very generous. You might give others a little pleasure,
too, now and then.'
'So few people know what is good! Some of us Greeks have the instinct
in our blood still, and we recognise it in a few men and women we
meet--you are one, for instance. As soon as I saw you the first time, I
was quite sure that we should think alike about a great many things. Do
you mind my saying as much as that, at a second meeting?'
'Not if you think it is true,' she answered with a smile. 'Why should
I?'
'It might sound as if I were trying to make out that we have some
natural bond of sympathy,' said Logotheti. 'That's a favourite way of
opening the game, you know. "Do you like carrots? So do I"--a bond, at
once! "Do you go in, when it rains? I always do"--second bond. "We must
be sympathetic to each other! Do you smile when you are pleased? Of
course! We are exactly alike, and our hearts beat in unison!" That's
the sort of thing.'
He amused her; perhaps she was easily amused now, because she had been
feeling rather depressed all the morning. Women are subject to such
harmless self-contradictions.
'I love to be out in the rain, and I don't like carrots!' she answered.
'There are evidently things about which our hearts don't beat in unison
at all!'
'If people agreed about everything, what would become of conversation,
lawyers and standing armies? But I meant to suggest that we might
possibly like each other if we met often.'
'I daresay.'
'I have begun,' said Logotheti lightly, but again his long eyes were
grave.
'Begun what?'
'I have begun by liking you. You don't object, do you?'
'Oh no! I like to be liked--by everybody!' Margaret laughed again, and
watched him.
'It only remains for you to like everybody yourself. Will you kindly
include me?'
'Yes, in a general way, as a neighbour, in the biblical sense, you
know. Are you English enough to understand that expression?'
'I happen to have read the story of the Good Samaritan in Greek,'
Logotheti answered. 'Since you are willing that we should be
neighbours, "in the biblical sense," you cannot blame me for saying
that I love my neighbour as myself.'
Once more her instinct told her that the words were meant less
carelessly than they were spoken, though she could not possibly seem to
take them in earnest. Yet her curiosity was aroused, as he intended
that it should be.
'I remember that the Samaritan loved his neighbour, "in the biblical
sense," at first sight,' he said, with a quick glance.
'But those were biblical times, you know!'
'Men have not changed much since then. We can still love at first
sight, I assure you, even after we have seen a good deal of the world.
It depends on meeting the right woman, and on nothing else. Do you
suppose that if the Naples Psyche, or the Syracuse Venus, or the Venus
of Milo, or the Victory of Samothrace suddenly appeared in Paris or
London, all the men would not lose their heads about her--at first
sight? Of course they would!'
'If you expect to have such neighbours as those--"in the biblical
sense"----'
'I have one,' said Logotheti, 'and that's enough.'
Margaret had received many compliments of a more or less complicated
nature, but she did not remember that any one had yet compared her to
two Venuses, the Psyche and the Samothrace Nike in a single breath.
'That's nonsense!' she exclaimed, blushing a little, and not at all
indignant.
'No,' Logotheti answered, imperturbably. 'Besides, neither the Victory
nor the Venus of Syracuse has a head, so I am at liberty to suppose
yours on their shoulders. Take the Victory. You move exactly as she
seems to be moving, for she is not flying at all, you know, though she
has wings. The wings are only a symbol. The Greeks knew perfectly well
that a winged human being could not fly straight without a feathered
tail two or three yards long!'
'How absurd!'
'That you should move like the Victory? Not at all. The reason why I
love my neighbour as myself is that my neighbour is the most absolutely
satisfactory being, from an artistic point of view. I don't often make
compliments.'
'They are astonishing when you do!'
'Perhaps. But I was going on to say that what satisfies my love of the
beautiful, can only be what satisfies my love of life itself, which is
enormous.'
'In other words,' said Margaret, wondering how he would go on, 'I am
your ideal!'
'Do you know what an "ideal" is?'
'Yes--well--no!' She hesitated. 'Perhaps I could not define it
exactly.'
'A man's ideal is what he wants, and nothing else in the world.'
Margaret was not sure whether she should resent the speech a little, or
let it pass. For an instant they looked at each other in silence. Then
she made up her mind to laugh.
'Do you know that you are going ahead at a frightful pace?' she asked.
'Why should I waste time? My time is my life. It's all I have. Any fool
can make money when he has wasted it and really wants more, but no
power in heaven or earth can give me back an hour thrown away, an hour
of what might have been.'
'I'm sure you must have learnt that in an English Sunday school! It's a
highly moral and practical sentiment! But what becomes of the
imagination?'
'Oh, that's the other side,' Logotheti answered, laughing. 'Never do
to-day what you can put off till to-morrow, for if you do you'll lose
all the pleasure of anticipating it! And the anticipation is much more
delightful than the reality, so you must never realise your dream, if
you mean to be happy--and all that sort of thing! But if reality knocks
at my door while I am asleep and dreaming, and if I don't wake up to
let it in, it may never take the trouble to knock again, you know, and
I shall be left dreaming. I don't know about the Sunday school maxim
being moral in all cases, but it's certainly very practical. I wish you
would follow it and come with me to the East--you and Mrs. Rushmore.'
'You mean that if I don't, you'll never ask me again, I suppose?'
'No. That was not what I meant.' He looked steadily into her eyes till
she turned her head away. 'What I meant was that you might be induced
to give up the idea of the stage.'
'And as an inducement to throw up my engagement and sacrifice a career
that may turn out well--you have told me so!--you offer me a trip to
Constantinople!'
'You shall keep the yacht as a memento of the cruise. She's not a bad
vessel.'
'What should I do with a steam yacht?'
'Oh, you would have to take the owner with her,' Logotheti answered
airily.
'Eh?' Margaret stared at him in amazement.
'Yes. Don't be surprised. I'm quite in earnest. I never lose time, you
know.'
'I should think not! Do you know that this is only our second meeting?'
'Exactly,' replied the Greek coolly. 'Of course, I might have asked you
the first time we met, when we were standing together on the pavement
outside Madame Bonanni's door. I thought of it, but I was afraid it
might strike you as sudden.'
'A little!'
'Yes. But a second meeting is different. You must admit that I have had
plenty of time to think it over and to know my own mind.'
'In two meetings?'
'Yes. Surely you know that in France young people are often engaged to
be married when they have never seen each other at all.'
'That is arranged for them by their parents,' objected Margaret.
'Whereas we can arrange the matter for ourselves,' Logotheti said.
'It's more dignified, and far more independent. Isn't it?'
'I suppose so--I hardly know.'
'Oh yes, it is! You cannot deny it. Besides we have no parents and we
are not children. You may think me hasty, but you cannot possibly be
offended.'
'I'm not, but I think you are quite mad--unless you are joking.'
'Mad, because I love you?' asked Logotheti, lowering his voice and
looking at her.
'But how is it possible? We hardly know each other!' Margaret was
beginning to feel uncomfortable.
'Never mind; it is possible, since it is so. Of course, I cannot expect
you to feel as I do, so soon, but I want to be before any one else.'
Margaret was silent, and her expression changed as she listened to his
low and earnest tones.
'I don't want to believe there is any one else,' he went on. 'I don't
believe it, not even if you tell me there is. But you would not tell
me, I suppose.'
She turned her eyes full upon him and spoke as low as he, but a little
unsteadily.
'There is some one else,' she said slowly.
Logotheti's lips moved, but she could not hear what he said, and almost
as soon as she had spoken he looked down at the grass. There was no
visible change in his face, and though she watched him for a few
seconds, she did not think his hold tightened on his stick or that his
brows contracted. She was somewhat relieved at this, for she was
inclined to conclude that he had not been in earnest at all, and had
idly asked her to marry him just to see whether he could surprise her
into saying anything foolish. Yet this idea did not please her either.
If there is anything a woman resents, it is that a man should pretend
to be in love with her, in order to laugh at her in his sleeve.
Margaret rose during the silence that followed. Logotheti sat still for
a moment, as if he had not noticed her, and then he got up suddenly,
and glanced at her with a careless smile.
'I wish you good luck,' he said lightly.
'Thank you,' she answered. 'One can never have too much of it!'
'Never. Get a talisman, a charm, a "jadoo." You will need something of
the sort in your career. A black opal is the best, but if you choose
that you must get it yourself, you must buy it, find it, or steal it.
Otherwise it will have no effect!'
They moved away from the place where they had sat, and they joined the
others. But after they had separated Margaret looked more than once at
Logotheti, as if her eyes were drawn to him against her will, and she
was annoyed to find that he was watching her.
She had thought of Lushington often that day, and now she wished with
all her heart that he were beside her, standing between her and
something she could not define but which she dreaded just because she
could not imagine what it was, though it was certainly connected with
Logotheti and with what he had said. She changed her mind about the
Greek half-a-dozen times in an hour, but after each change the
conviction grew on her that he had meant not only what he had said, but
much more. His eyes were not like other men's eyes at all, when they
looked at her, though they were so very quiet and steady; they were the
eyes of another race which she did not know, and they saw the world as
her own people did not see it, nor as Frenchmen, nor as Italians, nor
Germans, nor as any people she had met. They had seen sights she could
never see, in countries where the law, if there was any, took it for
granted that men would risk their lives for what they wanted. She, who
was not easily frightened, suddenly felt the fear of the unknown, and
the unknown was somehow embodied in Logotheti.
She did not show what she felt when he strolled up to her to say
good-bye, but through her glove she felt that his hand was stone cold,
and as he said the half-dozen conventional words that were necessary
she was sure that he smiled strangely, even mysteriously, as if such
phrases as 'I hope to see you again before long,' and 'such a heavenly
afternoon,' would cloak the deadly purposes of a diabolical design.
Margaret was alone with Mrs. Rushmore for a few minutes before dinner.
'Well?'
Mrs. Rushmore uttered the single word in an ejaculatory and
interrogative tone, as only a certain number of old-fashioned Americans
can. Spoken in that peculiar way it can mean a good deal, for it can
convey suspicion, or approval or disapproval and any degree of
acquaintance with the circumstances concerned, from almost total
ignorance to the knowledge of everything except the result of the
latest development.
On the present occasion Mrs. Rushmore meant that she had watched
Margaret and Logotheti and had guessed approximately what had
passed--that she thought the matter decidedly interesting, and wished
to know all about it.
But Margaret was not anxious to understand, if indeed her English ear
detected all the hidden meaning of the monosyllable.
'There were a good many people, weren't there?' she observed with a
sort of query, meant to lead the conversation in that direction.
Mrs. Rushmore would not be thrown off the scent.
'My dear,' she said severely, 'he proposed to you on that bench. Don't
deny it.'
'Good gracious!' exclaimed Margaret, taken by surprise.
'Don't deny it,' repeated Mrs. Rushmore.
'I had only met him once before to-day,' said Margaret.
'It's all the same,' retorted Mrs. Rushmore with an approach to
asperity. 'He proposed to you. Don't deny it. I say, don't deny it.'
'I haven't denied it,' answered Margaret. 'I only hoped that you had
not noticed anything. He must be perfectly mad. Why in the world should
he want to marry me?'
'All Greeks,' said Mrs. Rushmore, 'are very designing.'
Margaret smiled at the expression.
'I should have said that Monsieur Logotheti was hasty,' she answered.
'My dear,' said Mrs. Rushmore with conviction, 'this man is an
adventurer. You may say what you like, he is an adventurer. I am sure
that ruby he wears is worth at least twenty thousand dollars. You may
say what you like; I am sure of it.'
'But I don't say anything,' Margaret protested. 'I daresay it is.'
'I know it is,' retorted Mrs. Rushmore with cold emphasis. 'What
business has a man to wear such jewellery? He's an adventurer, and
nothing else.'
'He's one of the richest men in Paris for all that,' observed Margaret.
'There!' exclaimed Mrs. Rushmore. 'Now you're defending him! I told you
so!'
'I don't quite see----'
'Of course not. You're much too young to understand such things. The
wretch has designs on you. I don't care what you say, my dear, he has
designs.'
In Mrs. Rushmore's estimation she could say nothing worse of any human
being than that.
'What sort of "designs"?' inquired Margaret, somewhat amused.
'In the first place, he wants to marry you. You admit that he does.
My dear Margaret, it's bad enough that you should talk in your
cold-blooded way of going on the stage, but that you should ever marry
a Greek! Good heavens, child! What do you think I am made of? And then
you ask me what designs the man has. It's not to be believed!'
'I must be very dull,' said Margaret in a patient tone, 'but I don't
understand.'
'I do,' retorted Mrs. Rushmore with severity, 'and that's enough!
Wasn't I your dear mother's best friend? Haven't I been a good friend
to you?'
'Indeed you have!' cried Margaret very gratefully.
'Well then,' explained Mrs. Rushmore, 'I don't see that there is
anything more to be said. It follows that the man is either an agent of
that wicked old Alvah Moon----'
'Why?' asked Margaret, opening her eyes.
'Or else,' continued Mrs. Rushmore with crushing logic, 'he means to
live on you when you've made your fortune by singing. It must be one or
the other, and if it isn't the one, it's certainly the other. Certainly
it is! You may say what you like. So that's settled, and I've warned
you. You can't afford to despise your old friend's warning,
Margaret--indeed you can't.'
'But I've no idea of marrying the man,' said Margaret helplessly.
'Of course not! But I should like to say, my child, that whatever you
do, I won't leave you to your fate. You may be sure of that. If nothing
else would serve I'd go on the stage myself! I owe it to your mother.'
Margaret wondered in what capacity Mrs. Rushmore would exhibit herself
to the astounded public if she carried out her threat.