PART I--JULIAN

+-------------------------------------------------+

|Transcriber's note: |

| |

|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |

| |

+-------------------------------------------------+

CHALLENGE

BY

V. SACKVILLE-WEST

[Illustration: Logo]

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

DEDICATION

ACABA EMBEO SIN TIRO, MEN CHUAJAÑI;

LIRENAS, BERJARAS TIRI OCHI BUSÑE,

CHANGERI, TA ARMENSALLE.

EPILOGUE

A man and a woman leaned idly over the balustrade watching the steady

stream of guests that mounted the magnificent staircase. The marble

of the balustrade was cool beneath the woman's bare arms, for it was

summer, and the man, without interrupting his murmur of comment and

anecdote, glanced admiringly at her, and thought that, in spite of

her forty years, she, with diamonds in her hair and the great ropes

of pearls over her shoulders, need not fear comparison with all the

beauty of London assembled at that ball. Her beauty and dignity

melted pleasantly, for him, into the wealth of the house, the lights,

the abundance of flowers, and the distant orchestra. Again the idea

that this woman, for the asking, would decorate his own house with

her presence, and would ornament his own distinguished name, played

flatteringly through his mind. He reflected with gratification that it

lay within his power to do her this honour. For, a vain man, he never

questioned but that the favour would lie entirely on his side.

He pointed out to her the famous general on the stairs, escorting his

daughter; the new American beauty; the young man recently succeeded to

fabulous estates; the Indian prince who had turned the heads of half

the women in London. Skilful, she paid him the compliment of interest

and amusement, letting it be understood that he was himself of far

greater interest to her than the personages who served as pegs to his

wit. As he paused once, she revived the conversation:--

'There is a man I have never seen before; that tall, dark man. And the

handsome woman with him--she must be his wife.'

'Why must she be his wife?' he asked, amused.

'Because I am sure she is the type of woman he would marry, stately and

correct; am I not right?'

'You are quite right; she is his wife. He has been and still is a

very successful man; an Under-Secretary at thirty-five, and in the

Cabinet before he was forty. Many people think that he will be the next

Viceroy.'

At that moment the man on the stairs looked up, and his eyes met those

of the woman leaning on the balustrade above.

'What a wonderful face!' she exclaimed, startled, to her companion.

'Wonderful--but he looks as though he had learnt all the sorrow of the

world.--He looks--what shall I say?--so weary.'

'Then he has no business to,' he answered with a smile. 'He has

everything man can wish for: power, wealth, and, as you can see, an

admirable wife. As usual, however, your perception is unerring: he's

the most cynical fellow I ever came across. He believes in nothing--and

is incidentally the only real philanthropist I know. His name is

perfectly familiar to you. It is Davenant.'

'Oh,' she said, carried away by her interest, 'is that Julian Davenant?

Of course every one has heard of him. Stay,' she added, searching in

her memory, 'wasn't there some extraordinary story about him as a young

man? some crazy adventure he engaged in? I don't remember exactly....'

The man at her side began to laugh.

'There was indeed,' he replied; 'do you remember an absurd tiny

republic named Herakleion, which has since been absorbed by Greece?'

'Herakleion?' she murmured. 'Why, I have been there in a yacht, I

believe; a little Greek port; but I didn't know it had ever been an

independent republic?'

'Dear me, yes,' he said, 'it was independent for about a hundred years,

and Julian Davenant as a young man was concerned in some preposterous

revolution in those parts; all his money comes, you know, from his

vine-growing estates out there. I am a little vague myself as to what

actually happened. He was very young at the time, not much more than a

boy.'

'How romantic,' said the woman absently, as she watched Julian Davenant

shaking hands with his hostess.

'Very romantic, but we all start by being romantic until we have

outgrown it, and any way, don't you think we are going, you and I,

rather too much out of our way this evening to look for romance?' said

the man, leaning confidentially a little nearer.

* * * * * *

But these two people have nothing to do with the story.

PART I--JULIAN

I

On Sunday, after the races were over, the diplomatic, indigenous, and

cosmopolitan society of Herakleion, by virtue of a custom they never

sought to dispute, streamed through the turnstiles of the race-course

to regain their carriages and to drive for an hour in the ilex avenue

consecrated to that purpose outside the suburbs of the town. Like the

angels on Jacob's ladder, the carriages went up one side and down the

other, at a slow walk, the procession invariably headed by the barouche

of the French Legation, containing M. Lafarge, chief of the mission,

his beard spread fan-like over his frock-coat, but so disposed as to

reveal the rosette in his button-hole, peeping with a coy red eye at

the passing world; Madame Lafarge, sitting erect and bowing stiffly

from her unassailable position as dictator to social Herakleion; and,

on the _strapontin_, Julie Lafarge, repressed, sallow-faced daughter

of the emissaries of France. Streaming after the barouche came mere

humanity, some in victorias, some in open cabs, all going at a walk,

and down the centre rode the young men of the place, and down the

centre Alexander Christopoulos, who dared all and to whom all was

forgiven, drove his light buggy and American trotter at a rattling pace

and in a cloud of dust.

The diplomatic carriages were distinguished by the presence of a

chasseur on the box, though none so gorgeous as the huge scarlet-coated

chasseur of the French Legation. It was commonly said that the Danish

Minister and his wife, who were poor, denied themselves food in order

to maintain their carriage for the Sunday drive. The rich Greeks, on

the other hand, from generation to generation, inherited the family

brake, which was habitually driven by the head of the clan on the box,

his wife beside him, and his sons and unmarried daughters sitting two

by two, on the six remaining seats behind. There had been a rush of

scandal when Alexander Christopoulos had appeared for the first time

alone in his buggy, his seat in the family brake conspicuously empty.

There remained, however, his four sisters, the Virgins of Herakleion,

whose ages ranged from thirty-five to forty, and whose batteries were

unfailingly directed against the latest arrival. The fifth sister had

married a banker in Frankfort, and was not often mentioned. There were,

besides the brakes of the rich Greeks, the wagonettes of the English

Davenants, who always had English coachmen, and frequently absented

themselves from the Sunday drive to remind Herakleion that, although

resident, they were neither diplomatic, indigenous, nor cosmopolitan,

but unalterably English. They were too numerous and too influential

to be disregarded, but when the name of Davenant was mentioned in

their absence, a murmur was certain to make itself heard, discreet,

unvindictive, but none the less remorseless, 'Ah yes, the English

Levantines.'

Sunshades were lowered in the ilex avenue, for the shadows of the

ancient trees fell cool and heavy across the white dust. Through the

ilexes, the sea glimmered on a lower level, washing idly on the shore;

vainly blue, for Herakleion had no eyes for the sea. The sea was always

there, always blue, just as Mount Mylassa was always there, behind the

town, monotonous and immovable. The sea was made for the transport of

merchandise and to provide man with fish. No one had ever discovered a

purpose in Mount Mylassa.

When the French barouche had reached the end of the avenue, it turned

gravely in a wide circle and took its place at the head of the

descending carriages. When it had reached its starting-point, the

entrance to the avenue, it detached itself from the procession and

continued on its way towards the town. The procession did not follow

it. Another turn up and down the avenue remained for the procession,

and the laughter became perceptibly brighter, the smiles of greeting

more cordial, with the removal of Madame Lafarge's influence. It was

known that the barouche would pass the race-course at its former

dignified walk, but that, once out of sight, Madame Lafarge would say,

'_Grigora_, Vassili!' to the chasseur, that the horses would be urged

into a shambling trot and that the ladies in the carriage would open

their sunshades to keep off the glare of the sun which beat down from

heaven and reverberated from the pavements and the white walls of the

houses as they drove through the streets of the deserted town.

Deserted, for that part of the population which was not within doors

strolled in the ilex avenue, looking at the carriages. A few lean

dogs slept on door-steps where the shadow of the portico fell sharply

dividing the step into a dark and a sunny half. The barouche rolled

along the wide quay, where here and there the parapet was broken by a

flight of steps descending to the water; passed the casino, white, with

palms and cacti growing hideously in the forecourt; rolled across the

square _platia_, where a group of men stood lounging within the cool

and cavernous passage-way of the club.

Madame Lafarge stopped the barouche.

A young man detached himself from the group with a slightly bored

and supercilious expression. He was tall beyond the ordinary run of

Frenchmen; had dark eyes under meeting eyebrows in an ivory face, and

an immensely high, flat, white brow, from which the black wavy hair

grew straight back, smoothed to the polish of a black greyhound. 'Our

Persian miniature,' the fat American wife of the Danish Minister,

called him, establishing herself as the wit of Herakleion, where any

one with sufficient presumption could establish him or herself in any

chosen rôle. The young man had accepted the title languidly, but had

taken care that it should not die forgotten.

Madame Lafarge said to him in a tone which conveyed a command rather

than proffered a favour, 'If you like, we can drive you to the

Legation.'

She spoke in a booming voice that burst surprisingly out of the

compression of a generously furnished bust. The young man, accepting

the offer, seated himself beside Julie on the _strapontin_ opposite his

chief, who sat silent and majestically bearded. The immense chasseur

stood stiffly by the side of the carriage, his eyes gazing unblinkingly

across the _platia_, and the tips of his long drooping whiskers

obscuring the braid of his scarlet collar. Madame Lafarge addressed

herself to the group of men,--

'I did not see you at the races?'

Her graciousness did not conceal the rebuke. She continued,--

'I shall hope to welcome you presently at the Legation.'

With a bow worthy of Theodora, whom she had once been told that she

resembled, she gave the order to drive on. The loaded barouche, with

the splendid red figure on the box, rolled away across the dazzling

square. The French Legation stood back behind a grille in the main

street of the town, built of white stucco like the majority of the

houses. Inside, it was cool and dark, the Venetian blinds were

drawn, and the lighted candles in the sconces on the walls reflected

pleasantly, and with a curious effect of freshening night, in the

polished floors. Gilt chairs were arranged in circles, and little

tables stood about, glitteringly laden with tall tumblers and bottles

of coloured sirops. Madame Lafarge surveyed these things as she had

surveyed them every Sunday evening since Julie could remember. The

young man danced attendance in his languid way.

'The chandeliers may be lighted,' her Excellency said to the chasseur,

who had followed.

The three stood watching while the candles sprang into little spears

of light under the touch of the taper, Madame Lafarge contrasting

displeasedly the lemon sallowness of her daughter's complexion with the

warm magnolia-like pallor of the secretary's face. The contrast caused

her to speak sharply,--

'Julie, you had better go now and take off your hat.'

When her submissive daughter had gone, she said,--

'Julie is looking ill. The summer does not suit her. But what is to be

done? I cannot leave Herakleion.'

'Obviously,' murmured the secretary, 'Herakleion would fall all to

pieces. Your Sunday evenings,' he continued, 'the races ... your

picnics....'

'Impossible,' she cried with determination. 'One owes a duty to the

country one represents, and I have always said that, whereas politics

are the affairs of men, the woman's social obligation is no less

urgent. It is a great career, Armand, and to such a career one must be

prepared to sacrifice one's personal convenience.'

'And one's health ... the health of one's children,' he added, looking

down at his almond nails.

'If need be,' she replied with a sigh, and, fanning herself, repeated,

'If need be.'

The rooms began to fill. A little middle-aged Greek, his wrinkled

saffron face curiously emphasised by the beautiful whiteness of his

hair and moustaches, took his stand near Madame Lafarge, who in

speaking to him looked down on the top of his head over the broad

plateau of her bust.

'These cool rooms of yours,' he murmured, as he kissed her hand. 'One

cannot believe in the heat of the sun outside.'

He made this remark every other Sunday.

Lafarge came up and took the little Greek banker by the arm.

'I hear,' he said, 'that there is fresh trouble in the Islands.'

'We can leave it to the Davenants,' said Christopoulos with an

unpleasant smile.

'But that is exactly what I have always urged you not to do,' said the

French Minister, drawing the little Greek into a corner. 'You know the

proverbial reputation of the English: you do not see them coming, but

they insinuate themselves until one day you open your eyes to the fact

that they are there. You will be making a very great mistake, my dear

friend, if you allow the Davenants to settle disputes in the Islands.

Have you forgotten that in the last generation a Davenant caused

himself to be elected President?'

'Considering that they are virtually kings, I do not see that the

nominal title of President can make a vast difference.'

Lafarge sent his eyes round the room and through the doorway into the

room beyond; he saw the familiar, daily faces, and returned to the

charge.

'You are pleased to be sarcastic, I know. Nevertheless allow me to

offer you my advice. It is not a question of Kingship or Presidency.

It is a question of a complete break on the part of the Islands. They

are small, but their strategic value is self-evident. Remember Italy

has her eye upon them.... The Davenants are democrats, and have always

preached liberty to the islanders. The Davenant wealth supports them.

Can you calmly contemplate the existence of an independent archipelago

a few miles from your shore?'

A dull red crept under the banker's yellow skin, giving him a suffused

appearance.

'You are very emphatic.'

'The occasion surely warrants emphasis.'

The rooms were by now quite full. Little centres of laughter had formed

themselves, and were distinguishable. Alexander Christopoulos had once

boasted that he could, merely by looking round a room and arguing

from the juxtaposition of conversationalists, give a fairly accurate

_résumé_ of what every one was saying. He also claimed to tell from the

expression of the Danish Excellency whether she was or was not arriving

primed with a new epigram. He was now at the side of the Danish

Excellency, fat, fair, and foolish, but good-natured, and having a fund

of veritable humanity which was lacking in most of her colleagues. The

careful English of Alexander reached his father's ears through the

babel,--

'The Empress Eugénie set the fashion of wearing _décolleté_ in the

shape the water in your bath makes round your shoulders....'

Lafarge went on,--

'The Davenants are sly; they keep apart; they mix with us, but they do

not mingle. They are like oil upon water. Where is William Davenant

now, do you know?'

'He is just arriving,' said Christopoulos.

Lafarge saw him then, bowing over his hostess's hand, polite, but with

absent eyes that perpetually strayed from the person he was talking to.

Behind him came a tall, loose-limbed boy, untidy, graceful; he glanced

at the various groups, and the women looked at him with interest. A

single leap might carry him at any moment out of the room in which his

presence seemed so incongruous.

The tall mirrors on the walls sent back the reflection of the many

candles, and in them the same spectral company came and went that

moved and chattered in the rooms.

'At least he is not on the Islands,' said Christopoulos.

'After all,' said Lafarge, with a sudden weariness, 'perhaps I am

inclined to exaggerate the importance of the Islands. It is difficult

to keep a true sense of proportion. Herakleion is a little place. One

forgets that one is not at the centre of the world.'

He could not have tracked his lassitude to its origin, but as his

eyes rested again on the free, generous limbs of the Davenant boy,

he felt a slight revolt against the babble, the coloured sirops, and

the artificially lighted rooms from which the sun was so carefully

excluded. The yellow skin of little Christopoulos gave him the

appearance of a plant which has been deprived of light. His snowy hair,

too, soft and billowy, looked as though it had been deliberately and

consistently bleached.

He murmured a gentle protest to the Minister's words,--

'Surely not, dear Excellency, surely you do not exaggerate the

importance of the Islands. We could not, as you say, tolerate the

existence of an independent archipelago a few miles from our shores. Do

not allow my sarcasm to lead you into the belief that I underestimate

either their importance, or the value, the compliment of your interest

in the politics of our country. The friendship of France....'

His voice died away into suave nothings. The French Minister emerged

with an effort from his mood of temporary discontent, endeavouring to

recapture the habitual serenity of his life.

'And you will remember my hint about the Davenants?'

Christopoulos looked again at William Davenant, who, perfectly

courteous but incorrigibly absent-minded, was still listening to Madame

Lafarge.

'It is a scandal,' she was saying, resuming her conversation in the

intervals of interruption occasioned by newly-arriving guests, 'a

scandal that the Museum should remain without a catalogue....'

'I will remember,' said Christopoulos. 'I will tell Alexander to

distract that youth's attention; one Davenant the less, you follow me,

to give us any trouble.'

'Pooh! a schoolboy,' interjected the Minister.

Christopoulos pursed his lips and moved his snowy head portentously up

and down.

'A schoolboy, but nevertheless he probably shares the enthusiasms

of his age. The Islands are sufficiently romantic to appeal to his

imagination. Remember, his grandfather ruled there for a year.'

'His grandfather? _un farceur!_' said Lafarge.

Christopoulos assented, and the two men, smiling tolerantly, continued

to look across at the unconscious boy though their minds were already

occupied by other things. Madame Lafarge, catching sight of them,

was annoyed by her husband's aloofness from the social aspect of her

weekly reception. It pleased her--in fact, she exacted--that a certain

political atmosphere should pervade any gathering in her drawing-rooms,

but at the same time she resented a political interview which deprived,

at once, her guests of a host and herself of a _cavalier servente_. She

accordingly stared at Christopoulos while continuing her conversation

with William Davenant, until the little Greek became aware of her gaze,

and crossed the room obediently to the unspoken summons.

William Davenant moved away in relief; he knew his duty to Madame

Lafarge, but performed it wearily and without pleasure. It was now

over for a month, he thought, deciding that he would not be expected

to attend the three succeeding Sundays. He paused beside his son, who

had been captured by two of the sisters Christopoulos and who, with

two Russian secretaries, was being forced to join in a round game.

The sisters gave little shrieks and peals of laughter; it was their

idea of merriment. They sat one on each side of Julian Davenant, on a

small gilt sofa covered with imitation tapestry. Near by, listening

to the game with a gentle and languorous smile upon his lips, stood

the Persian Minister, who understood very little French, his fine

Oriental figure buttoned into the traditional frock-coat, and a black

lamb's-wool fez upon his head. He was not very popular in Herakleion;

he did not know enough French to amuse the women, so, as at present, he

silently haunted the circles of the younger generation, with mingled

humility and dignity.

William Davenant paused there for a moment, met his son's eyes with

a gleam of sympathy, then passed on to pay his monthly duty to

influence and fashion. The Danish Excellency whispered behind her fan

to Alexander Christopoulos as he passed, and the young man screwed in

his eyeglass to examine the retreating back of the Englishman. The

red-coated chasseur came round, gravely offering sandwiches on a tray.

'Uneatable,' said Alexander Christopoulos, taking one and hiding it

beneath his chair.

The courage of the young man! the insolence!

'Julie will see you,' giggled the Danish Excellency.

'And what if she does?' he retorted.

'You have no respect, no veneration,' she chided him.

'For _maman_ Lafarge? _la bonne bourgeoise!_' he exclaimed, but not

very loudly.

'Alexander!' she said, but her tone said, 'I adore you.'

'One must be something,' the young Christopoulos had once told

himself; 'I will be insolent and contemptuous; I will impose myself

upon Herakleion; my surroundings shall accept me with admiration and

without protest.'

He consequently went to Oxford, affected to speak Greek with

difficulty, interlarded his English with American slang, instituted a

polo club, and drove an American trotter. He was entirely successful.

Unlike many a greater man, he had achieved his ambition. He knew,

moreover, that Madame Lafarge would give him her daughter for the

asking.

'Shall I make Julie sing?' he said suddenly to the Danish Excellency,

searching among the moving groups for the victim of this classic joke

of Herakleion.

'Alexander, you are too cruel,' she murmured.

He was flattered; he felt himself an irresistible autocrat and breaker

of hearts. He tolerated the Danish Excellency, as he had often said in

the club, because she had no other thought than of him. She, on the

other hand, boasted in her fat, good-humoured way to her intimates,--

'I may be a fool, but no woman is completely a fool who has realised

the depths of man's vanity.'

Julie Lafarge, who was always given to understand that one day she

would marry the insolent Alexander, was too efficiently repressed to

be jealous of the Danish Excellency. Under the mischievous influence

of her friend, Eve Davenant, she would occasionally make an attempt to

attract the young man; a pitiable, grotesque attempt, prompted by the

desire to compel his homage, to hear herself called beautiful--which

she was not. So far she did not delude herself that she had succeeded,

but she did delude herself that it gave him pleasure to hear her

sing. She stood now beside a little table, dispensing sirops in tall

tumblers, very sallow in her white muslin, with a locket on a short

gold chain hanging between the bones of her neck. Her very thin

brown arms, which were covered with small black hairs, protruded

ungracefully from the short sleeves of her dress.

Alexander presented himself before her; she had seen him coming in one

of the mirrors on the walls. Madame Lafarge cherished an affection for

these mirrors, because thanks to them her drawing-rooms always appeared

twice as crowded as they really were.

Alexander uttered his request in a tone at once beseeching and

compelling; she thought him irresistible. Nevertheless, she protested:

there were too many people present, her singing would interrupt all

conversation, her mother would be annoyed. But those standing near by

seconded Alexander, and Madame Lafarge herself bore down majestically

upon her daughter, so that all protest was at an end.

Julie stood beside the open piano with her hands loosely folded in

a rehearsed and approved attitude while the room disposed itself to

listen, and Alexander, who was to accompany her, let his fingers roam

negligently over the keyboard. Chairs were turned to face the piano,

people drifted in from the farther drawing-room, young men leaned in

the doorways and against the walls. Lafarge folded his arms across

his chest, freeing his imprisoned beard by an upward movement of his

chin, and smiled encouragingly and benignly at his daughter. Speech

dropped into whispers, whispers into silence. Alexander struck a few

preliminary chords. Julie sang; she sang, quite execrably, romantic

German music, and out of the roomful of people only three, herself, her

father, and her mother, thought that she sang well. Despite this fact

she was loudly applauded, congratulated, and pressed for more.

Julian Davenant, taking advantage of the diversion to escape from the

sisters Christopoulos, slipped away to one of the window recesses where

he could partly conceal himself behind the stiff, brocaded curtain.

Horizontal strings of sunlight barred the Venetian blind, and by

peeping between its joints he could see the tops of the palms in the

Legation forecourt, the iron grille which gave on to the main street,

and a victoria standing near the grille, in the shade, the horse

covered over with a flimsy, dust-coloured sheet, and the driver asleep

inside the carriage, a fly-whisk drooping limply in his hand. He could

hear the shrill squeaking of the tram as it came round the corner, and

the clang of its bell. He knew that the sea lay blue beyond the white

town, and that, out in the sea, lay the Islands, where the little

grapes were spread, drying into currants, in the sun. He returned to

the darkened, candle-lit room, where Julie Lafarge was singing 'Im

wunderschönen Monat Mai.'

Looking across the room to the door which opened on to the landing

at the top of the stairs, he saw a little stir of arrival, which

was suppressed in order to avoid any interruption to the music. He

distinguished the new-comer, a short, broad, middle-aged woman,

out of breath after mounting the stairs, curiously draped in soft

copper-coloured garments, with gold bangles on her bare arms, and

a wreath of gold leaves round her dark head. He knew this woman, a

singer. He neither liked nor disliked her, but had always thought of

her as possessing a strangely classical quality, all the stranger

because of her squat, almost grotesque ugliness; although not a dwarf,

her great breadth gave her the appearance of one; but at the same time

she was for him the embodiment of the wealth of the country, a kind

of Demeter of the Islands, though he thought of Demeter as having

corn-coloured hair, like the crops over which she presided, and this

woman had blue-black hair, like the purple of the grapes that grew on

the Islands. He had often heard her sing, and hoped now that she was

arriving in her professional capacity, which seemed probable, both

from her dress, and from the unlikelihood that she, a singer and a

woman of the native people, would enter Madame Lafarge's house as a

guest, renowned though she was, and fêted, in the capitals of Europe.

He saw Lafarge tiptoe out to receive her, saw Madame Lafarge follow,

and noted the faintly patronising manner of the Minister's wife in

shaking hands with the artist.

Applause broke out as Julie finished her song. The Greek singer

was brought forward into the room amid a general movement and

redistribution of groups. Alexander Christopoulos relinquished his

place at the piano, and joined the Davenant boy by the window. He

appeared bored and languid.

'It is really painful ... as well listen to a macaw singing,' he said.

'You are not musical, are you, Julian? You can scarcely imagine what I

endured. Have you heard this woman, Kato?'

Julian said that he had.

'Quite uneducated,' Christopoulos said loftily. 'Any woman in the

fields sings as well. It was new to Paris, and Paris raved. You and I,

my dear Julian, have heard the same thing a hundred times. Shall we

escape?'

'I must wait for my father,' said Julian, who detested his present

companion; 'he and I are going to dine with my uncle.'

'So am I,' Christopoulos answered, and, leaning over to the English

boy, he began to speak in a confidential voice.

'You know, my dear Julian, in this society of ours your father is not

trusted. But, after all, what is this society? _un tas de rastas._

Do you think I shall remain here long? not I. _Je me fiche des

Balcans._ And you? Are you going to bury yourself on those Islands of

yours, growing grapes, ripening olives? What? That satisfied the old

generations. What have I to do with a banking house in Herakleion, you

with a few vineyards near the coast? I shall marry, and spend the rest

of my life in Paris.'

'You're ambitious to-day,' Julian said mildly.

'Ambitious! shall I tell you why? Yesterday was my twenty-fifth

birthday. I've done with Herakleion....'

'Conquered it, you mean,' said Julian, 'squeezed it dry.'

The other glanced at him suspiciously.

'Are you laughing at me? Confound your quiet manner, Julian, I believe

my family is right to mistrust your family. Very well, then: conquered

it. Believe me, it isn't worth conquering. Don't waste your youth on

your vineyards, but come with me. Let the Islands go. They are always

in trouble, and the trouble is getting more acute. They are untidy

specks on the map. Don't you hear the call of Paris and the world?'

Julian, looking at him, and seeing the laughable intrigue, was

mercifully saved from replying, for at that moment Madame Kato began

to sing. She sang without accompaniment, songs of the people, in a

curiously guttural voice with an occasionally nasal note, songs no

different from those sung in the streets or, as Christopoulos had

said, in the fields, different only in that, to this peasant music,

half melancholy, half emotional, its cadence born of physical labour,

she brought the genius of a great artist. As she stood there, singing,

Julian reflected that her song emphasised the something classical,

something massive, something monumental, about her, which overshadowed

what might have been slightly grotesque in her appearance. She was,

indeed, a Demeter of the vineyards. She should have stood singing in

the sun, not beneath the pale mockery of the candles.

'Entirely uneducated,' Christopoulos said again, shifting his

shoulders as he leaned against the wall. 'That is why Paris liked her:

as a contrast. She was clever enough to know that. Contrasts are always

artistically effective.'

He went off, pleased, to repeat his facile epigram to the Danish

Excellency. Madame Lafarge was looking round to see whether the

audience had approved of the innovation. The audience was waiting

to hear the expression of an opinion which it might safely follow.

Presently the word, 'Uneducated' was on every lip. Julian remained at

the window, chained there by his natural reserve and shyness; he looked

up at the lighted chandeliers, and down at their reflection in the

floors; he saw the faces of people turned towards him, and the back

of their heads in the mirrors; he saw Armand, the French secretary,

with the face of a Persian prince, offering red sirop to Madame Kato.

He wished to go and speak to her, but his feet would not carry him

forward. He felt himself apart from the talk and the easy laughter.

Presently Mlle Lafarge, seeing him there alone, came to him with her

awkward and rather touching grace as a hostess.

'You know, I suppose,' she said to him, 'that Madame Kato is a friend

of Eve's? Will you not come and speak to her?'

Released, he came. The singer was drinking her red sirop by the piano.

The Persian Minister in the black fez was standing near, smiling gently

at her with his usual mournful smile.

'You will not remember me, Julian Davenant,' the boy said in a low, shy

voice. He spoke in Greek involuntarily, feeling that French would be an

outrage in the presence of this so splendidly Hellenic woman. Armand

had moved away, and they stood isolated, caressed by the vague smile of

the Persian Minister.

Kato set down her glass of red sirop on the top of the piano. She

leaned against the piano talking to the English boy, her arms akimbo,

as a peasant woman might lean in the doorway of her house gossiping in

the cool of the evening, her little eyes keen and eager. The muscles

of her arms and of her magnificent neck curved generously beneath her

copper draperies, mocking the flimsy substance, and crying out for the

labour of the vineyards. Her speech was tinged with the faint accent of

the Islands, soft and slurring. It was more familiar to Julian Davenant

than the harsher Greek of the town, for it was the speech of the women

who had brought him up as a child, women of the Islands, his nurses in

his father's big house in the _platia_ of Herakleion. It murmured to

him now in the rich voice of the singer beneath the chandelier.

'Eve; I have not seen her yet. You must tell her that I have returned

and that she must come to my concert on Wednesday. Tell her that I will

sing one song for her, but that all the other songs must be for my

audience. I have brought back a new repertoire from Munich, which will

please Herakleion better, I hope, than the common music it despises.'

She laughed a little.

'It has taken me thirty years to discover that mankind at large

despises the art of its own country. Only the exotic catches the ear of

fashion. But Eve has told me that you do not care for music?'

'I like your music,' he said.

'I will tell you why: because you are musically uneducated.'

He looked at her; she was smiling. He wondered whether she had

overheard a whisper in the humming room.

'I speak without sarcasm,' she added; 'I envy you your early ignorance.

In fact, I believe I have uttered a paradox, and that the words

education and music are incompatible. Music is the emotional art, and

where education steps in at the door emotion flies out at the window.

We should keep education for literature, painting, architecture,

and sculpture. Music is the medium to which we turn when these more

intellectual mediums fail us.'

Julian listened with only half his brain. This peasant, this artist,

spoke to him with the superficial ease of drawing-rooms; she employed

words that matched ill with her appearance and with the accent of

her speech. The native songs were right upon her lips, as the names

of architecture and sculpture were wrong. He was offended in his

sensitiveness. Demeter in analysis of the arts!

She was watching him.

'Ah, my young friend,' she said, 'you do not understand. I spoke to you

as the cousin of Eve, who is a child, but who always understands. She

is purely sentient, emotional.'

He protested,--

'I have always thought of Eve as exceptionally sophisticated.'

Kato said,--

'You are right. We are both right. Eve is childlike in many ways, but

she is also wise beyond her years. She will grow, believe me, into a

woman of exceptional attraction, and to such women existence is packed

with danger. It is one of Providence's rare pieces of justice that they

should be provided with a natural weapon of self-defence. To a lion

his claws,' she said, smiling, 'and to the womanly woman the gift of

penetration. Tell me, are you fond of Eve?'

Julian was surprised. He replied, naïf again and like a schoolboy,--

'She's my cousin. I haven't thought much about her. She's only a

child. I haven't seen her yet either. I arrived from England this

morning.'

They were more than ever isolated from the rest of the room. Madame

Lafarge, talking to Don Rodrigo Valdez, the Spanish Minister, who had

a birdlike head above his immensely high white collar, glanced now and

then resentfully at the singer, but otherwise the room was indifferent.

The sunlight between the cracks of the Venetian blinds had grown

fainter, and the many candles were coming into their own. A few people

had already taken their leave. An excited group of men had gathered

round little Christopoulos, and the words 'local politics' shrieked

from every gesture.

'I shall not be expected to sing again,' said Kato with a slight return

to her ironical manner. 'Will you not come with Eve to my concert on

Wednesday? Or, better, will you come to my house on Wednesday evening

after the concert? I shall be alone, and I should like to talk to you.'

'To me?' broke from him, independently of his will.

'Remember,' she said, 'I am from the Islands. That is my country, and

when my country is in trouble I am not indifferent. You are very young,

Mr Davenant, and you are not very often in Herakleion, but your future,

when you have done with Oxford and with England'--she made a large

gesture--'lies in the Islands. You will hear a great deal about them; a

little of this I should like you to hear from me. Will you come?'

The patriot beneath the artist! He would come, flattered, important;

courted, at his nineteen years, by a singer of European reputation.

Popularity was to him a new experience. He expanded beneath its warmth.

'I will come to the concert first with Eve.'

William Davenant, in search of his son, and light-hearted in his

relief at the end of the monthly duty, was bowing to Madame Kato, whom

he knew both as a singer and as a figure of some importance in the

troubled politics of the tiny State. They had, in their lives, spent

many an hour in confabulation, when his absent-minded manner left

the man, and her acquired polish the woman. He deferred to her as a

controlling agent in practical affairs, spoke of her to his brother

with admiration.

'A remarkable woman, Robert, a true patriot; sexless, I believe, so far

as her patriotism lies. Malteios, you say? well, I know; but, believe

me, she uses him merely as a means to her end. Not a sexless means?

Damn it, one picks up what weapons come to one's hand. She hasn't a

thought for him, only for her wretched country. She is a force, I tell

you, to be reckoned with. Forget her sex! Surely that is easy, with

a woman who looks like a toad. You make the mistake of ignoring the

people when it is with the people that you have to deal. Hear them

speak about her: she is an inspiration, a local Joan of Arc. She works

for them in Paris, in Berlin, and in London; she uses her sex, for them

and for them alone. All her life is dedicated to them. She gives them

her voice, and her genius.'

Madame Kato did not know that he said these things about her behind

her back. Had she known, she would have been surprised neither at

the opinions he expressed nor at the perception which enabled him to

express them, for she had seen in him a shrewd, deliberate intellect

that spoke little, listened gravely, and settled soberly down at length

upon a much tested and corroborated opinion. Madame Lafarge, and the

women to whom he paid his courtly, rather pompous duty in public,

thought him dull and heavy, a true Englishman. The men mistrusted him

in company with his brother Robert, silence, in the South, breeding

mistrust as does volubility in the North.

The rooms were emptier now, and the candles, burning lower, showed long

icicles of wax that overflowed on to the glass of the chandeliers. The

tall tumblers had been set down, here and there, containing the dregs

of the coloured sirops. Madame Lafarge looked hot and weary, drained

of her early Sunday energy, and listening absently to the parting

compliments of Christopoulos. From the other room, however, still came

the laughter of the Christopoulos sisters, who were winding up their

round game.

'Come, Julian,' said William Davenant, after he had spoken and made his

farewells to Madame Kato.

Together they went down the stairs and out into the forecourt, where

the hotter air of the day greeted them after the coolness of the house,

though the heat was no longer that of the sun, but the closer, less

glaring heat of the atmosphere absorbed during the grilling hours of

the afternoon. The splendid chasseur handed them their hats, and they

left the Legation and walked slowly down the crowded main street of the

town.

II

The town house of the Davenants stood in the _platia_, at right angles

to the club. On the death of old Mr Davenant--'President Davenant,' as

he was nicknamed--the town and the country properties had been divided

between the two inheriting brothers; Herakleion said that the brothers

had drawn lots for the country house, but in point of fact the matter

had been settled by amicable arrangement. William Davenant, the elder

of the brothers, widowed, with an only son away for three-quarters of

the year at school in England, was more conveniently installed in the

town, within five minutes reach of the central office, than Robert,

who, with a wife and a little girl, preferred the distance of his

country house and big garden. The two establishments, as time went on,

became practically interchangeable.

The rue Royale--Herakleion was so cosmopolitan as to give to its

principal thoroughfare a French name--was at this hour crowded with

the population that, imprisoned all day behind closed shutters, sought

in the evening what freshness it could find in the cobbled streets

between the stucco houses. The street life of the town began between

five and six, and the Davenants, father and son, were jostled as they

walked slowly along the pavements, picking their way amongst the small

green tables set outside the numerous cafés. At these tables sat the

heterogenous elements that composed the summer population of the place,

men of every nationality: old gamblers too disreputable for Monte

Carlo; young Levantines, natives, drinking absinthe; Turks in their red

fezzes; a few rakish South Americans. The trams screamed discordantly

in their iron grooves, and the bells of the cinema tinkled unceasingly.

Between the tramlines and the kerb dawdled the hired victorias, few

empty at this time of day, but crowded with families of Levantines,

the men in straw hats, the women for the most part in hot black, very

stout, and constantly fanning their heavily powdered faces. Now and

then a chasseur from some diplomatic house passed rapidly in a flaming

livery.

Mr Davenant talked to his son as they made their way along.

'How terrible those parties are. I often wish I could dissociate myself

altogether from that life, and God knows that I go merely to hear what

people are saying. They know it, and of course they will never forgive

me. Julian, in order to conciliate Herakleion, you will have to marry a

Greek.'

'Alexander Christopoulos attacked me to-day,' Julian said. 'Wanted me

to go to Paris with him and see the world.'

He did not note in his own mind that he refrained from saying that

Madame Kato had also, so to speak, attacked him on the dangerous

subject of the Islands.

They turned now, having reached the end of the rue Royale, into the

_platia_, where the cavernous archway of the club stained the white

front of the houses with a mouth of black. The houses of the _platia_

were large, the hereditary residences of the local Greek families. The

Christopoulos house stood next to the club, and next to that was the

house of the Premier, His Excellency Platon Malteios, and next to that

the Italian Consulate, with the arms of Italy on a painted hatchment

over the door. The centre of the square was empty, cobbled in an

elaborate pattern which gave the effect of a tessellated pavement; on

the fourth side of the square were no houses, for here lay the wide

quay which stretched right along above the sea from one end of the

town to the other.

The Davenant house faced the sea, and from the balcony of his bedroom

on the second floor Julian could see the Islands, yellow with little

white houses on them; in the absolute stillness and limpidity of the

air he could count the windows on Aphros, the biggest island, and the

terraces on the slope of the hills. The first time he had arrived from

school in England he had run up to his bedroom, out on to the balcony,

to look across the _platia_ with its many gaudily striped sunblinds,

at the blue sea and the little yellow stains a few miles out from the

shore.

At the door of the Davenant house stood two horses ready saddled in

the charge of the door-keeper, fat Aristotle, an islander, who wore

the short bolero and pleated fustanelle, like a kilt, of his country.

The door-keepers of the other houses had gathered round him, but as Mr

Davenant came up they separated respectfully and melted away to their

individual charges.

The way lay along the quays and down the now abandoned ilex avenue. The

horses' hoofs padded softly in the thick dust. The road gleamed palely

beneath the thick shadows of the trees, and the water, seen between

the ancient trunks, was almost purple. The sun was gone, and only the

last bars of the sunset lingered in the sky. At the tip of the pier of

Herakleion twinkled already the single light of phosphorescent green

that daily, at sunset, shone out, to reflect irregularly in the water.

They passed out of the avenue into the open country, the road still

skirting the sea on their left, while on their right lay the strip of

flat country crowded in between Mount Mylassa and the sea, carefully

cultivated by the labourers of the Davenants, where the grapes hung

on the festooned branches looped from pole to pole. William Davenant

observed them critically, thinking to himself, 'A good harvest.'

Julian Davenant, fresh from an English county, saw as with a new eye

their beauty and their luxuriance. He rode loosely in the saddle, his

long legs dangling, indisputably English, though born in one of the

big painted rooms overlooking the _platia_ of Herakleion, and reared

in the country until the age of ten. He had always heard the vintage

discussed since he could remember. He knew that his family for three

generations had been the wealthiest in the little state, wealthier

than the Greek banking-houses, and he knew that no move of the local

politics was entirely free from the influence of his relations. His

grandfather, indeed, having been refused a concession he wanted from

the government, had roused his Islands to a declaration of independence

under his own presidency--a state of affairs which, preposterous as it

was, had profoundly alarmed the motley band that made up the Cabinet in

Herakleion. What had been done once, could be repeated.... Granted his

concession, Julian's grandfather had peaceably laid down the dignity of

his new office, but who could say that his sons might not repeat the

experiment?

These things had been always in the boy's scheme of life. He had not

pondered them very deeply. He supposed that one day he would inherit

his father's share in the concern, and would become one of the heads of

the immense family which had spread like water over various districts

of the Mediterranean coasts. Besides the Davenants of Herakleion,

there were Davenants at Smyrna, Davenants at Salonica, Davenants at

Constantinople. Colonies of Davenants. It was said that the Levant

numbered about sixty families of Davenants. Julian was not acquainted

with them all. He did not even know in what degree of relationship they

stood to him.

Every time that he passed through London on his way to school, or,

now, to Oxford, he was expected to visit his great-uncle, Sir Henry,

who lived in an immense house in Belgrave Square, and had a business

room downstairs where Julian was interviewed before luncheon. In this

room hung framed plans of the various Davenant estates, and Julian, as

he stood waiting for Sir Henry, would study the plan of Herakleion,

tracing with his finger the line of the quays, the indent of the

_platia_, the green of the race-course, the square which indicated the

country house; in a corner of this plan were the Islands, drawn each in

separate detail. He became absorbed, and did not notice the entrance of

Sir Henry till the old man's hand fell on his shoulder.

'Ha! Looking at the plan, are you? Familiar to you, what? So it is

familiar to me, my boy. Never been there, you know. Yet I know it. I

know my way about. Know it as though I had seen it.'

He didn't really know it, Julian thought--he didn't feel the sun

hot on his hands, or see the dazzling, flapping sunblinds, or the

advertisements written up in Greek characters in the streets.

Sir Henry went on with his sermon.

'You don't belong there, boy; don't you ever forget that. You belong

here. You're English. Bend the riches of that country to your own

purpose, that's all right, but don't identify yourself with it. Impose

yourself. Make 'em adopt your methods. That's the strength of English

colonisation.'

The old man, who was gouty, and leaned his hands on the top of a stick,

clapped the back of one hand with the palm of the other and blew out

his lips, looking at his great-nephew.

'Yes, yes, remember that. Impose yourself. On my soul, you're a

well-grown boy. What are you? nineteen? Great overgrown colt. Get your

hair cut. Foreign ways; don't approve of that. Big hands you've got;

broad shoulders. Loosely put together. Hope you're not slack. Can you

ride?'

'I ride all day out there,' said Julian softly, a little bewildered.

'Well, well. Come to luncheon. Keep a head on your shoulders. Your

grandfather lost his once; very foolish man. Wonder he didn't lose

it altogether. President indeed! stuff and nonsense. Not practical,

sir, not practical.' Sir Henry blew very hard. 'Let's have no such

rubbish from you, boy. What'll you drink? Here, I'll give you the best:

Herakleion, 1895. Best year we ever had. Hope you appreciate good wine;

you're a wine-merchant, you know.'

He cackled loudly at his joke. Julian drank the wine that had ripened

on the slopes of Mount Mylassa, or possibly on the Islands, and wished

that the old man had not so blatantly called him a wine-merchant. He

liked Sir Henry, although after leaving him he always had the sensation

of having been buffeted by spasmodic gusts of wind.

He was thinking about Sir Henry now as he rode along, and pitying

the old man to whom those swags of fruit meant only a dusty bottle,

a red or a blue seal, and a date stamped in gold numerals on a black

label. The light was extraordinarily tender, and the air seemed almost

tangible with the heavy, honeyed warmth that hung over the road. Julian

took off his gray felt hat and hung it on the high peak of his saddle.

They passed through a little village, which was no more than a score of

tumbledown houses sown carelessly on each side of the road; here, as

in the rue Royale, the peasants sat drinking at round tables outside

the café to the harsh music of a gramophone, with applause and noisy

laughter. Near by, half a dozen men were playing at bowls. When they

saw Mr Davenant, they came forward in a body and laid eager hands on

the neck of his horse. He reined up.

Julian heard the tumult of words: some one had been arrested, it was

Vassili's brother. Vassili, he knew, was the big chasseur at the French

Legation. He heard his father soothing, promising he would look into

the matter; he would, if need be, see the Premier on the morrow. A

woman flung herself out of the café and clasped Julian by the knee.

They had taken her lover. Would he, Julian, who was young, be merciful?

Would he urge his father's interference? He promised also what was

required of him, feeling a strange thrill of emotion and excitement.

Ten days ago he had been at Oxford, and here, to-day, Kato had spoken

to him as to a grown man, and here in the dusk a sobbing woman was

clinging about his knee. This was a place in which anything, fantastic

or preposterous, might come to pass.

As they rode on, side by side, his father spoke, thinking aloud. An

absent-minded man, he gave his confidence solely in this, so to speak,

unintentional manner. Long periods, extending sometimes over months,

during which his mind lay fallow, had as their upshot an outbreak of

this audible self-communion. Julian had inherited the trait; his mind

progressed, not regularly, but by alternate stagnation and a forward

bound.

'The mistake that we have made lies in the importation of whole

families of islanders to the mainland. The Islands have always

considered themselves as a thing apart, as, indeed, historically,

they always were. A hundred years is not sufficient to make them

an intrinsic part of the State of Herakleion. I cannot wonder that

the authorities here dislike us. We have introduced a discontented

population from the Islands to spread sedition among the hitherto

contented population of the mainland. If we were wise, we should ship

the whole lot back to the Islands they came from. Now, a man is

arrested on the Islands by the authorities, and what happens? He is the

brother of Vassili, an islander living in Herakleion. Vassili spreads

the news, it flies up and down the town, and out into the country. It

has greeted us out here already. In every café of the town at this

moment the islanders are gathered together, muttering; some will get

drunk, perhaps, and the municipal police will intervene; from a drunken

row the affair will become political; some one will raise the cry of

"Liberty!", heads will be broken, and to-morrow a score of islanders

will be in jail. They will attribute their imprisonment to the general

hostility to their nationality, rather than to the insignificant brawl.

Vassili will come to me in Herakleion to-morrow. Will I exercise my

influence with Malteios to get his brother released? I shall go,

perhaps, to Malteios, who will listen to me suavely, evasively.... It

has all happened a hundred times before. I say, we ought to ship the

whole lot back to where they came from.'

'I suppose they are really treated with unfairness?' Julian said, more

speculation than interest in his tone.

'I suppose a great many people would think so. The authorities are

certainly severe, but they are constantly provoked. And, you know, your

uncle and I make it up to the islanders in a number of private ways.

Ninety per cent. of the men on the Islands are employed by us, and it

pays us to keep them devoted to us by more material bonds than mere

sentiment; also it alleviates their discontent, and so obviates much

friction with Herakleion.'

'But of course,' said Julian quickly, 'you don't allow Malteios to

suspect this?'

'My dear boy! what do you suppose? Malteios is President of Herakleion.

Of course, we don't mention such things. But he knows it all very well,

and winks at it--perforce. Our understanding with Malteios is entirely

satisfactory, entirely. He is on very wholesome terms of friendly

respect to us.'

Julian rarely pronounced himself; he did so now.

'If I were an islander--that is, one of a subject race--I don't think

I should be very well content to forgo my liberty in exchange for

underhand compensation from an employer whose tactics it suited to

conciliate my natural dissatisfaction.'

'What a ridiculous phrase. And what ridiculous sentiments you

occasionally give vent to. No, no, the present arrangement is as

satisfactory as we can hope to make it, always excepting that one flaw,

that we ought not to allow islanders in large numbers to live upon the

mainland.'

They turned in between the two white lodges of the country house,

and rode up the drive between the tall, pungent, untidy trees of

eucalyptus. The house, one-storied, low, and covered with wistaria and

bougainvillea, glimmered white in the uncertain light. The shutters

were flung back and the open windows gaped, oblong and black, at

regular intervals on the upper floor. On the ground level, a broad

veranda stretched right along the front of the house, and high French

windows, opening on to this, yellow with light, gave access to the

downstairs rooms.

'Holà!' Mr Davenant called in a loud voice.

'Malista, Kyrie,' a man's voice answered, and a servant in the white

fustanelle of the Islands, with black puttees wound round his legs, and

red shoes with turned-up toes and enormous rosettes on the tip, came

running to hold the horses.

'They have taken Vassili's brother, Kyrie,' he said as Mr Davenant gave

him the reins.

Julian was already in the drawing-room, among the chintz-covered sofas,

loaded little tables, and ubiquitous gilt chairs. Four fat columns,

painted to represent lapis-lazuli, divided the room into two halves,

and from their Corinthian capitals issued flames made of red tinsel

and painted gray smoke, which dispersed itself realistically over the

ceiling.

He stood in the window, absently looking out into the garden across the

veranda, where the dinner table was laid for six. Pots of oleander and

agapanthus stood along the edge of the veranda, between the fat white

columns, with gaps between them through which one might pass out into

the garden, and beyond them in the garden proper the fruit gleamed on

the lemon-trees, and, somewhere, the sea whispered in the dusk. The

night was calm and hot with the serenity of established summer weather,

the stars big and steady like sequins in the summer sky. The spirit

of such serenity does not brood over England, where to-day's pretence

of summer will be broken by the fresh laughter of to-morrow's shower.

The rose must fall to pieces in the height of its beauty beneath the

fingers of sudden and capricious storm. But here the lemons hung,

swollen and heavily pendulous, among the metallic green of their

leaves, awaiting the accomplished end of their existence, the deepening

of their gold, the fuller curve of their ripened luxuriance, with the

complacency of certainty; fruit, not for the whim of the elements,

but progressing throughout the year steadfastly towards the hand and

the basket of the picker. Here and there the overburdened stem would

snap, and the oblong ball of greenish-gold would fall with a soft and

melancholy thud, like a sigh of regret, upon the ground beneath the

tree; would roll a little way, and then be still. The little grove

stretched in ordered lines and spaces, from the veranda, where the

windows of the house threw rectangles of yellow light on to the ground

in the blackness, to the bottom of the garden, where the sea washed

indolently against the rocks.

Presently he would see Eve, his eyes would meet her mocking eyes, and

they would smile at one another out of the depths of their immemorial

friendship. She was familiar to him, so familiar that he could

not remember the time when, difficult, intractable, exasperating,

subtle, incomprehensible, she had not formed part of his life. She

was as familiar to him as the house in the _platia_, with its big,

empty drawing-room, the walls frescoed with swinging monkeys, broken

columns, and a romantic land and seascape; as the talk about the

vintage; as the preposterous politics, always changing, yet always,

monotonously, nauseatingly, pettishly, the same. She was not part of

his life in England, the prosaic life; she was part of his life on

the Greek seaboard, unreal and fantastic, where the most improbable

happenings came along with an air of ingenuousness, romance walking

in the garments of every day. After a week in Herakleion he could not

disentangle the real from the unreal.

It was the more baffling because those around him, older and wiser

than he, appeared to take the situation for granted and to treat it

with a seriousness that sometimes led him, when, forgetful, he was off

his guard, to believe that the country was a real country and that

its statesmen, Platon Malteios, Gregori Stavridis, and the rest, were

real statesmen working soberly towards a definite end. That its riots

were revolutions; that its factions were political parties; that its

discordant, abusive, wrangling Chamber was indeed a Senate. That its

four hundred stout soldiers, who periodically paraded the _platia_

under the command of a general in a uniform designed by a theatrical

costumier in Buda-Pesth, were indeed an army. That the _platia_ itself

was a forum. That the society was brilliant; that its liaisons had the

dignity of great passions. That his aunt, who talked weightily and

contradicted every one, including herself--the only person who ever

ventured to do such a thing--was indeed a political figure, an Egeria

among the men in whose hands lay the direction of affairs. In his more

forgetful moments, he was tempted to believe these things, when he saw

his father and his Uncle Robert, both unbending, incisive, hard-headed

business men, believing them. As a rule, preserving his nice sense of

perspective, he saw them as a setting to Eve.

He was beginning to adjust himself again to the life which faded with

so extraordinary a rapidity as the express or the steamer bore him

away, three times a year, to England. It faded always then like a

photographic proof when exposed to the light. The political jargon

was the first to go--he knew the sequence--'civil war,' 'independent

archipelago,' 'overthrow of the Cabinet,' 'a threat to the Malteios

party,' 'intrigues of the Stavridists,' the well-known phrases that,

through sheer force of reiteration, he accepted without analysis; then,

after the political jargon, the familiar figures that he saw almost

daily, Sharp, his father's chief clerk; Aristotle, the door-keeper,

his tussore fustanelle hanging magisterially from the rotundity of

his portentous figure; Madame Lafarge, erect, and upholstered like a

sofa, driving in her barouche; the young men at the club, languid and

insolent and licentious; then, after the familiar figures, the familiar

scenes; and lastly Eve herself, till he could no longer recall the

drowsy tones of her voice, or evoke her eyes, that, though alive with

malice and mockery, were yet charged with a mystery to which he could

give no name. He was sad when these things began to fade. He clung on

to them, because they were dear, but they slipped through his fingers

like running water. Their evanescence served only to convince him the

more of their unreality.

Then, England, immutable, sagacious, balanced; Oxford, venerable and

self-confident, turning the young men of the nation as by machinery out

of her mould. Law-abiding England, where men worked their way upwards,

attaining power and honour in the ripeness of years. London, where the

houses were of stone. Where was Herakleion, stucco-built and tawdry,

city of perpetually-clanging bells, revolutions, and Prime Ministers

made and unmade in a day? Herakleion of the yellow islands, washed by

too blue a sea. Where?

Eve had never been to England, nor could he see any place in England

for her. She should continue to live as she had always lived, among

the vines and the magnolias, attended by a fat old woman who, though

English, had spent so many years of her life in Herakleion that her

English speech was oddly tainted by the southern lisp of the native

Greek she had never been able to master; old Nana, who had lost the

familiarity of one tongue without acquiring that of another; the ideal

duenna for Eve.

Then with a light step across the veranda a young Greek priest came

into the room by one of the French windows, blinking and smiling in

the light, dressed in a long black soutane and black cap, his red hair

rolled up into a knob at the back of his head according to the fashion

of his church. He tripped sometimes over his soutane as he walked,

muscular and masculine inside that feminine garment, and when he did

this he would gather it up impatiently with a hand on which grew a

pelt of wiry red hairs. Father Paul had instituted himself as a kind

of private chaplain to the Davenants. Eve encouraged him because she

thought him picturesque. Mrs Robert Davenant found him invaluable as a

lieutenant in her campaign of control over the peasants and villagers,

over whom she exercised a despotic if benevolent authority. He was

therefore free to come and go as he pleased.

The population, Julian thought, was flowing back into his recovered

world.

England and Oxford were put aside; not forgotten, not indistinct, not

faded like Herakleion was wont to fade, but merely put aside, laid away

like winter garments in summer weather. He was once more in the kingdom

of stucco and adventure. Eve was coming back to him, with her strange

shadowy eyes and red mouth, and her frivolity beneath which lay some

force which was not frivolous. There were women who were primarily

pretty; women who were primarily motherly; women who, like Mrs Robert

Davenant, were primarily efficient, commanding, successful, metallic;

women who, like Kato, were consumed by a flame of purpose which broke,

hot and scorching, from their speech and burned relentlessly in their

eyes; women who were primarily vain and trifling; he found he could

crowd Eve into no such category. He recalled her, spoilt, exquisite,

witty, mettlesome, elusive, tantalising; detached from such practical

considerations as punctuality, convenience, reliability. A creature

that, from the age of three, had exacted homage and protection....

He heard her indolent voice behind him in the room, and turned

expectantly for their meeting.

III

It was, however, during his first visit to the singer's flat that

he felt himself again completely a citizen of Herakleion; that

he felt himself, in fact, closer than ever before to the beating

heart of intrigue and aspiration. Kato received him alone, and her

immediate comradely grasp of his hand dispelled the shyness which had

been induced in him by the concert; her vigorous simplicity caused

him to forget the applause and enthusiasm he had that afternoon

seen lavished on her as a public figure; he found in her an almost

masculine friendliness and keenness of intellect, which loosened his

tongue, sharpened his wits, set him on the path of discovery and

self-expression. Kato watched him with her little bright eyes, nodding

her approval with quick grunts; he paced her room, talking.

'Does one come, ever, to a clear conception of one's ultimate

ambitions? Not one's personal ambitions, of course; they don't count.'

('How young he is,' she thought.) 'But to conceive clearly, I mean,

exactly what one sets out to create, and what to destroy. If not,

one must surely spend the whole of life working in the dark? Laying

in little bits of mosaic, without once stepping back to examine the

whole scheme of the picture.... One instinctively opposes authority.

One struggles for freedom. Why? Why? What's at the bottom of that

instinct? Why are we, men, born the instinctive enemies of order and

civilisation, when order and civilisation are the weapons and the

shields we, men, have ourselves instituted for our own protection? It's

illogical.

'Why do we, every one of us, refute the experience of others,

preferring to gain our own? Why do we fight against government? why

do I want to be independent of my father? or the Islands independent

of Herakleion? or Herakleion independent of Greece? What's this

instinct of wanting to stand alone, to be oneself, isolated, free,

individual? Why does instinct push us towards individualism, when

the great wellbeing of mankind probably lies in solidarity? when the

social system in its most elementary form starts with men clubbing

together for comfort and greater safety? No sooner have we achieved our

solidarity, our hierarchy, our social system, our civilisation, than

we want to get away from it. A vicious circle; the wheel revolves, and

brings us back to the same point from which we started.'

'Yes,' said Kato, 'there is certainly an obscure sympathy with

the rebel, that lies somewhere dormant in the soul of the most

platitudinous advocate of law and order.' She was amused by his

generalisations, and was clever enough not to force him back too

abruptly to the matter she had in mind. She thought him ludicrously,

though rather touchingly, young, both in his ideas and his phraseology;

but at the same time she shrewdly discerned the force which was in him

and which she meant to use for her own ends. 'You,' she said to him,

'will argue in favour of society, yet you will spend your life, or at

any rate your youth, in revolt against it. Youth dies, you see, when

one ceases to rebel. Besides,' she added, scrutinising him, 'the time

will very soon come when you cease to argue and begin to act. Believe

me, one soon discards one's wider examinations, and learns to content

oneself with the practical business of the moment. One's own bit of the

mosaic, as you said.'

He felt wholesomely sobered, but not reproved; he liked Kato's

penetration, her vivid, intelligent sympathy, and her point of view

which was practical without being cynical.

'I have come to one real conclusion,' he said, 'which is, that pain

alone is intrinsically evil, and that in the lightening or abolition

of pain one is safe in going straight ahead; it is a bit of the mosaic

worth doing. So in the Islands....' he paused.

Kato repressed a smile; she was more and more touched and entertained

by his youthful, dogmatic statements, which were delivered with a

concentration and an ardour that utterly disarmed derision. She was

flattered, too, by his unthinking confidence in her; for she knew him

by report as morose and uncommunicative, with relapses into rough

high spirits and a schoolboy sense of farce. Eve had described him as

inaccessible....

'When you go, as you say, straight ahead,' he resumed, frowning, his

eyes absent.

Kato began to dwell, very skilfully, upon the topic of the Islands....

Certain events which Madame Kato had then predicted to Julian followed

with a suddenness, an unexpectedness, that perplexed the mind of the

inquirer seeking, not only their origin, but their chronological

sequence. They came like a summer storm sweeping briefly, boisterously

across the land after the inadequate warning of distant rumbles and the

flash of innocuous summer lightning. The thunder had rumbled so often,

it might be said that it had rumbled daily, and the lightning had

twitched so often in the sky, that men remained surprised and resentful

long after the rough little tornado had passed away. They remained

staring at one another, scratching their heads under their straw hats,

or leaning against the parapet on the quays, exploring the recesses

of their teeth with the omnipresent toothpick, and staring across the

sea to those Islands whence the storm had surely come, as though

by this intense, frowning contemplation they would finally provide

themselves with enlightenment. Groups of men sat outside the cafés,

their elbows on the tables, advancing in tones of whispered vehemence

their individual positive theories and opinions, beating time to their

own rhetoric and driving home each cherished point with the emphatic

stab of a long cigar. In the casino itself, with the broken windows

gaping jaggedly on to the forecourt, and the red curtains of the atrium

hanging in rags from those same windows, men stood pointing in little

knots. 'Here they stood still,' and 'From here he threw the bomb,' and

those who had been present on the day were listened to with a respect

they never in their lives had commanded before and never would command

again.

There was no sector of society in Herakleion that did not discuss the

matter with avidity; more, with gratitude. Brigandage was brigandage,

a picturesque but rather _opéra bouffe_ form of crime, but at the same

time an excitement was, indubitably, an excitement. The Ministers,

in their despatches to their home governments, affected to treat the

incident as the work of a fortuitous band rather than as an organised

expedition with an underlying political significance, nevertheless they

fastened upon it as a pretext for their wit in Herakleion, where no

sardonic and departmental eye would regard them with superior tolerance

much as a grown-up person regards the facile amusement of a child.

At the diplomatic dinner parties very little else was talked of. At

tea parties, women, drifting from house to house, passed on as their

own the witticisms they had most recently heard, which became common

property until reclaimed from general circulation by the indignant

perpetrators. From the drawing-rooms of the French Legation, down to

village cafés where the gramophone grated unheard and the bowls lay

neglected on the bowling alley, one topic reigned supreme. What nobody

knew, and what everybody wondered about, was the attitude adopted by

the Davenants in the privacy of their country house. What spoken or

unspoken understanding existed between the inscrutable brothers? What

veiled references, or candid judgments, escaped from William Davenant's

lips as he lay back in his chair after dinner, a glass of wine--wine of

his own growing--between his fingers? What indiscretions, that would

have fallen so delectably upon the inquisitive ears of Herakleion,

did he utter, secure in the confederacy of his efficient and vigorous

sister-in-law, of the more negligible Robert, the untidy and taciturn

Julian, the indifferent Eve?

It was as universally taken for granted that the outrage proceeded

from the islanders as it was ferociously regretted that the offenders

could not, from lack of evidence, be brought to justice. They had, at

the moment, no special grievance; only their perennial grievances, of

which everybody was tired of hearing. The brother of Vassili, a quite

unimportant labourer, had been released; M. Lafarge had interested

himself in his servant's brother, and had made representations to the

Premier, which Malteios had met with his usual urbane courtesy. An hour

later the fellow had been seen setting out in a rowing boat for Aphros.

All, therefore, was for the best. Yet within twenty-four hours of this

proof of leniency....

The élite were dining on the evening of these unexpected occurrences at

the French Legation to meet two guests of honour, one a distinguished

Albanian statesman who could speak no language but his own, and the

other an Englishman of irregular appearances and disappearances,

an enthusiast on all matters connected with the Near East. In the

countries he visited he was considered an expert who had the ear of

the English Cabinet and House of Commons, but by these institutions

he was considered merely a crank and a nuisance. His conversation was

after the style of the more economical type of telegram, with all

prepositions, most pronouns, and a good many verbs left out; it gained

thereby in mystery what it lost in intelligibility, and added greatly

to his reputation. He and the Albanian had stood apart in confabulation

before dinner, the Englishman arguing, expounding, striking his open

palm with the fingers of the other hand, shooting out his limbs in

spasmodic and ungraceful gestures, the Albanian unable to put in a

word, but appreciatively nodding his head and red fez.

Madame Lafarge sat between them both at dinner, listening to the

Englishman as though she understood what he was saying to her, which

she did not, and occasionally turning to the Albanian to whom she

smiled and nodded in a friendly and regretful way. Whenever she did

this he made her a profound bow and drank her health in the sweet

champagne. Here their intercourse perforce ended.

Half-way through dinner a note was handed to M. Lafarge. He gave

an exclamation which silenced all his end of the table, and the

Englishman's voice was alone left talking in the sudden hush.

'Turkey!' he was saying. 'Another matter! Ah, ghost of

Abdul Hamid!' and then, shaking his head mournfully,

'world-treachery--world-conspiracy....'

'Ah, yes,' said Madame Lafarge, rapt, 'how true that is, how right you

are.'

She realised that no one else was speaking, and raised her head

interrogatively.

Lafarge said,--

'Something has occurred at the casino, but there is no cause for

alarm; nobody has been hurt. I am sending a messenger for further

details. This note explicitly says'--he consulted it again--'that

no one is injured. A mere question of robbery; an impudent and

successful attempt. A bomb has been thrown,'--('_Mais ils sont donc

tous apaches?_' cried Condesa Valdez. Lafarge went on)--'but they say

the damage is all in the atrium, and is confined to broken windows,

torn hangings, and mirrors cracked from top to bottom. Glass lies

plentifully scattered about the floor. But I hope that before very long

we may be in possession of a little more news.' He sent the smile of a

host round the table, reassuring in the face of anxiety.

A little pause, punctuated by a few broken ejaculations, followed upon

his announcement.

'How characteristic of Herakleion,' cried Alexander Christopoulos, who

had been anxiously searching for something noteworthy and contemptuous

to say, 'that even with the help of a bomb we can achieve only a

disaster that tinkles.'

The Danish Excellency was heard to say tearfully,--

'A robbery! a bomb! and practically in broad daylight! What a place,

what a place!'

'Those Islands again, for certain!' Madame Delahaye exclaimed, with

entire absence of tact; her husband, the French Military Attaché,

frowned at her across the table; and the diplomatists all looked down

their noses.

Then the Englishman, seeing his opportunity, broke out,--

'Very significant! all of a piece--anarchy--intrigue--no strong

hand--free peoples. Too many, too many. Small nationalities. Chips!

Cut-throats, all. So!'--he drew his fingers with an expressive sibilant

sound across his own throat. 'Asking for trouble. Yugo-Slavs--bah!

Poles--pfui! Eastern empire, that's the thing. Turks the only

people'--the Albanian, fortunately innocent of English, was smiling

amiably as he stirred his champagne--'great people. Armenians,

wash-out. Quite right too. Herakleion, worst of all. Not even a chip.

Only the chip of a chip.'

'And the Islands,' said the Danish Excellency brightly, 'want to be the

chip of a chip of a chip.'

'Yes, yes,' said Madame Lafarge, who had been getting a little anxious,

trying to provoke a laugh, 'Fru Thyregod has hit it as usual--_elle

a trouvé le mot juste_,' she added, thinking that if she turned the

conversation back into French it might check the Englishman's truncated

eloquence.

Out in the town, the quay was the centre of interest. A large crowd had

collected there, noisy in the immense peace of the evening. Far, far

out, a speck on the opal sea, could still be distinguished the little

boat in which the three men, perpetrators of the outrage, had made good

their escape. Beyond the little boat, even less distinct, the sea was

dotted with tiny craft, the fleet of fishing-boats from the Islands.

The green light gleamed at the end of the pier. On the quay, the crowd

gesticulated, shouted, and pointed, as the water splashed under the

ineffectual bullets from the carbines of the police. The Chief of

Police was there, giving orders. The police motor-launch was to be

got out immediately. The crowd set up a cheer; they did not know who

the offenders were, but they would presently have the satisfaction of

seeing them brought back in handcuffs.

It was at this point that the entire Lafarge dinner-party debouched

upon the quay, the women wrapped in their light cloaks, tremulous and

excited, the men affecting an amused superiority. They were joined by

the Chief of Police, and by the Christopoulos, father and son. It was

generally known, though never openly referred to, that the principal

interest in the casino was held by them, a fact which explained the

saffron-faced little banker's present agitation.

'The authorities must make better dispositions,' he kept saying to

Madame Lafarge. 'With this example before them, half the blackguards of

the country-side will be making similar attempts. It is too absurdly

easy.'

He glared at the Chief of Police.

'Better dispositions,' he muttered, 'better dispositions.'