PART III--APHROS

I

In the large class-room of the school-house the dejected group of

Greek officials sat among the hideous yellow desks and benches of

the school-children of Aphros. Passion and indignation had spent

themselves fruitlessly during the preceding evening and night. To do

the islanders justice, the Greeks had not been treated with incivility.

But all demands for an interview with the highest authority were met

not only with a polite reply that the highest authority had not yet

arrived upon the island, but also a refusal to disclose his name. The

Greek officials, having been brought from their respective lodgings

to the central meeting-point of the school, had been given the run of

two class-rooms, one for the men, of whom there were, in all, twenty,

and one for the women, of whom there were only six. They were told

that they might communicate, but that armed guards would be placed in

both rooms. They found most comfort in gathering, the six-and-twenty

of them, in the larger class-room, while the guards, in their kilted

dresses, sat on chairs, two at each entrance, with suspiciously modern

and efficient-looking rifles laid across their knees.

A large proportion of the officials were, naturally, those connected

with the school. They observed morosely that all notices in the

pure Greek of Herakleion had already been removed, also the large

lithographs of Malteios and other former Presidents, so that the walls

of pitch pine--the school buildings were modern, and of wood--were now

ornamented only with maps, anatomical diagrams, and some large coloured

plates published by some English manufacturing firm for advertisement;

there were three children riding a gray donkey, and another child

trying on a sun-bonnet before a mirror; but any indication of the

relationship of Aphros to Herakleion there was none.

'It is revolution,' the postmaster said gloomily.

The guards would not speak. Their natural loquacity was in

abeyance before the first fire of their revolutionary ardour. From

vine-cultivators they had become soldiers, and the unfamiliarity of the

trade filled them with self-awe and importance. Outside, the village

was surprisingly quiet; there was no shouting, no excitement; footsteps

passed rapidly to and fro, but they seemed to be the footsteps of men

bent on ordered business; the Greeks could not but be impressed and

disquieted by the sense of organisation.

'Shall we be allowed to go free?' they asked the guards.

'You will know when he comes,' was all the guards would reply.

'Who is he?'

'You will know presently.'

'Has he still not arrived?'

'He has arrived.'

'We heard nothing; he must have arrived during the night.'

To this they received no answer, nor any to their next remark,--

'Why so much mystery? It is, of course, the scatterbrained young

Englishman.'

The guards silently shrugged their shoulders, as much as to say, that

any one, even a prisoner, had a right to his own opinion.

The school clock pointed to nine when the first noise of agitation

began in the street. It soon became clear that a large concourse of

people was assembling in the neighbourhood of the school; a slight

excitement betrayed itself by some shouting and laughter, but a voice

cried 'Silence!' and silence was immediately produced. Those within the

school heard only the whisperings and rustlings of a crowd. They were

not extravagantly surprised, knowing the islanders to be an orderly,

restrained, and frugal race, their emotions trained into the sole

channel of patriotism, which here was making its supreme demand upon

their self-devotion. The Greeks threw wondering glances at the rifles

of the guards. Ostensibly school-teachers, post and telegraph clerks,

and custom-house officers, they were, of course, in reality the spies

of the government of Herakleion, and as such should have had knowledge

of the presence of such weapons on the island. They reflected that,

undesirable as was a prolonged imprisonment in the school-house, at the

mercy of a newly-liberated and probably rancorous population, a return

to Herakleion might prove a no less undesirable fate at the present

juncture.

Outside, some sharp words of command were followed by the click of

weapons on the cobblestones; the postmaster looked at the chief

customs-house clerk, raised his eyebrows, jerked his head, and made

a little noise: 'Tcha!' against his teeth, as much as to say, 'The

deceitful villains! under our noses!' but at the back of his mind

was, 'No further employment, no pension, for any of us.' A burst of

cheering followed in the street. The voice cried 'Silence!' again, but

this time was disregarded. The cheering continued for some minutes,

the women's note joining in with the men's deep voices, and isolated

words were shouted, all with the maximum of emotion. The Greeks tried

to look out of the windows, but were prevented by the guards. Some

one in the street began to speak, when the cheering had died away,

but through the closed windows it was impossible to distinguish the

words. A moment's hush followed this speaking, and then another voice

began, reading impressively--it was obvious, from the unhesitating

and measured scansion, that he was reading. Sections of his address,

or proclamation, whichever it was, were received with deep growls of

satisfaction from the crowd. At one moment he was wholly interrupted

by repeated shouts of 'Viva! viva! viva!' and when he had made an end

thunderous shouts of approval shook the wooden building. The Greeks

were by now very pale; they could not tell whether this proclamation

did not contain some reference, some decision, concerning themselves.

After the proclamation, another voice spoke, interrupted at every

moment by various cries of joy and delight, especially from the women;

the crowd seemed alternately rocked with enthusiasm, confidence, fire,

and laughter. The laughter was not the laughter of amusement so much

as the grim laughter of resolution and fraternity; an extraordinarily

fraternal and unanimous spirit seemed to prevail. Then silence again,

broken by voices in brief confabulation, and then the shifting of the

crowd which, to judge from the noise, was pressing back against the

school-buildings in order to allow somebody a passage down the street.

The door opened, and Zapantiotis, appearing, announced,--

'Prisoners, the President.'

The word created a sensation among the little herd of hostages, who,

for comfort and protection, had instinctively crowded together. They

believed themselves miraculously rescued, at least from the spite and

vengeance of the islanders, and expected to see either Malteios or

Stavridis, frock-coated and top-hatted, in the doorway. Instead, they

saw Julian Davenant, flushed, untidy, bareheaded, and accompanied by

two immense islanders carrying rifles.

He paused and surveyed the little speechless group, and a faint smile

ran over his lips at the sight of the confused faces of his prisoners.

They stared at him, readjusting their ideas: in the first instance they

had certainly expected Julian, then for one flashing moment they had

expected the President of Herakleion, then they were confronted with

Julian. A question left the lips of the postmaster,--

'President of what?'

Perhaps he was tempted madly to think that neither Malteios, nor

Stavridis, but Julian, had been on the foregoing day elected President

of Herakleion.

Zapantiotis answered gravely,--

'Of the Archipelago of San Zacharie.'

'Are we all crazy?' cried the postmaster.

'You see, gentlemen,' said Julian, speaking for the first time, 'that

the folly of my grandfather's day has been revived.'

He came forward and seated himself at the schoolmaster's desk, his

bodyguard standing a little behind him, one to each side.

'I have come here,' he said, 'to choose amongst you one representative

who can carry to Herakleion the terms of the proclamation which

has just been read in the market-place outside. These terms must

be communicated to the present government. Zapantiotis, hand the

proclamation to these gentlemen.'

The outraged Greeks came closer together to read the proclamation over

each other's shoulder; it set forth that the islands constituting

the Archipelago of San Zacharie, and including the important island

of Aphros, by the present proclamation, and after long years of

oppression, declared themselves a free and independent republic under

the presidency of Julian Henry Davenant, pending the formation of a

provisional government; that if unmolested they were prepared to live

in all peace and neighbourly good-fellowship with the republic of

Herakleion, but that if molested in any way they were equally prepared

to defend their shores and their liberty to the last drop of blood in

the last man upon the Islands.

There was a certain nobleness in the resolute gravity of the wording.

Julian wore a cryptic smile as he watched the Greeks working their

way through this document, which was in the Italianate Greek of the

Islands. Their fingers pointed certain paragraphs out to one another,

and little repressed snorts came from them, snorts of scorn and of

indignation, and glances were flung at Julian lounging indifferently

in the schoolmaster's chair. The doors had been closed to exclude the

crowd, and of the islanders, only Zapantiotis and the guards remained

in the room. Although it was early, the heat was beginning to make

itself felt, and the flies were buzzing over the window-panes.

'If you have finished reading, gentlemen,' said Julian presently, 'I

shall be glad if you will decide upon a representative, as I have much

to attend to; a boat is waiting to take him and these ladies to the

shore.'

Immense relief was manifested by the ladies.

'This thing,' said the head of the school, hitting the proclamation

with his closed fingers, 'is madness; I beg you, young man--I know you

quite well--to withdraw before it is too late.'

'I can have no argument; I give you five minutes to decide,' Julian

replied, laying his watch on the desk.

His followers had no longer cause to fret against his indecision.

Seeing him determined, the Greeks excitedly conferred; amongst them

the idea of self-preservation, rather than of self-immolation,

was obviously dominant. Herakleion, for all the displeasure of the

authorities, was, when it came to the point, preferable to Aphros

in the hands of the islanders and their eccentric, if not actually

bloodthirsty, young leader. The postmaster presented himself as senior

member of the group; the schoolmaster as the most erudite, therefore

the most fitted to represent his colleagues before the Senate; the head

clerk of the customs-house urged his claim as having the longest term

of official service. The conference degenerated into a wrangle.

'I see, gentlemen, that I must take the decision out of your hands,'

Julian said at length, breaking in upon them, and appointed the

customs-house clerk.

But in the market-place, whither the Greek representative and the women

of the party were instantly hurried, the silent throng of population

waited in packed and coloured ranks. The men stood apart, arms folded,

handkerchiefs bound about their heads under their wide straw hats--they

waited, patient, confident, unassuming. None of them was armed with

rifles, although many carried a pistol or a long knife slung at his

belt; the customs-house clerk, through all his confusion of mingled

terror and relief, noted the fact; if he delivered it at a propitious

moment, it might placate an irate Senate. No rifles, or, at most, eight

in the hands of the guards! Order would very shortly be restored in

Aphros.

Nevertheless, that sense of organisation, of discipline, of which the

Greeks had been conscious while listening to the assembling of the

crowd through the boards of the school-house, was even more apparent

here upon the market-place. These islanders knew their business. A

small file of men detached itself as an escort for the representative

and the women. Julian came from the school at the same moment with

his two guards, grim and attentive, behind him. A movement of

respect produced itself in the crowd. The customs-house clerk and his

companions were not allowed to linger, but were marched away to the

steps which led down to the jetty. They carried away with them as their

final impression of Aphros the memory of the coloured throng and of

Julian, a few paces in advance, watching their departure.

The proclamation, the scene in the school-house, remained as the

prelude to the many pictures which populated Julian's memory,

interchangeably, of that day. He saw himself, speaking rarely, but,

as he knew, to much purpose, seated at the head of a table in the

village assembly-room, and, down each side of the table, the principal

men of the Islands, Tsigaridis and Zapantiotis on his either hand,

grave counsellors; he heard their speech, unreproducibly magnificent,

because a bodyguard of facts supported every phrase; because, in the

background, thronged the years of endurance and the patient, steadfast

hope. He heard the terms of the new constitution, and the oath of

resolution to which every man subscribed. With a swimming brain, and

his eyes fixed upon the hastily-restored portrait of his grandfather,

he heard the references to himself as head of the state--a state in

which the citizens numbered perhaps five thousand. He heard his own

voice, issuing orders whose wisdom was never questioned: no boat to

leave the Islands, no boats to be admitted to the port, without his

express permission, a system of sentries to be instantly instituted and

maintained, day and night. As he delivered these orders, men rose in

their places, assuming the responsibility, and left the room to execute

them without delay.

He saw himself later, still accompanied by Tsigaridis and Zapantiotis,

but having rid himself of his two guards, in the interior of the

island, on the slopes where the little rough stone walls retained the

terraces, and where between the trunks of the olive-trees the sea

moved, blue and glittering, below. Here the island was dry and stony;

mule-paths, rising in wide, low steps, wandered up the slopes and lost

themselves over the crest of the hill. A few goats moved restlessly

among cactus and bramble-bushes, cropping at the prickly stuff, and

now and then raising their heads to bleat for the kids that, more

light-hearted because not under the obligation of searching for food

amongst the vegetation, leapt after one another, up and down, in a

happy chain on their little stiff certain legs from terrace to terrace.

An occasional cypress rose in a dark spire against the sky. Across the

sea, the town of Herakleion lay, white, curved, and narrow, with its

coloured sunblinds no bigger than butterflies, along the strip of coast

that Mount Mylassa so grudgingly allowed it.

The stepped paths being impassable for carts, Tsigaridis had collected

ten mules with panniers, that followed in a string. Julian rode ahead

upon another mule; Zapantiotis walked, his tall staff in his hand,

and his dog at his heels. Julian remembered idly admiring the health

which enabled this man of sixty-five to climb a constantly-ascending

path under a burning sun without showing any signs of exhaustion. As

they went, the boy in charge of the mules droned out a mournful native

song which Julian recognised as having heard upon the lips of Kato.

The crickets chirped unceasingly, and overhead the seagulls circled

uttering their peculiar cry.

They had climbed higher, finally leaving behind them the olive-terraces

and coming to a stretch of vines, the autumn vine-leaves ranging

through every shade of yellow, red, and orange; here, away from the

shade of the olives, the sun burned down almost unbearably, and the

stones of the rough walls were too hot for the naked hand to touch.

Here it was that the grapes were spread out, drying into currants--a

whole terrace heaped with grapes, over which a party of young men,

who sat playing at dice beneath a rough shelter made out of reeds and

matting, were mounting guard.

Julian, knowing nothing of this business, and present only out

of interested curiosity, left the command to Zapantiotis. A few

stone-pines grew at the edge of the terrace; he moved his mule into

their shade while he watched. They had reached the summit of the

island--no doubt, if he searched far enough, he would come across the

ruins of last night's beacon, but he preferred to remember it as a

living thing rather than to stumble with his foot against ashes, gray

and dead; he shivered a little, in spite of the heat, at the thought

of that flame already extinguished--and from the summit he could look

down upon both slopes, seeing the island actually as an island, with

the sea below upon every side, and he could see the other islands of

the group, speckled around, some of them too tiny to be inhabited,

but all deserted now, when in the common cause every soul had been

summoned by the beacon, the preconcerted signal, to Aphros. He imagined

the little isolated boats travelling across the moonlit waters during

the night, as he himself had travelled; little boats, each under its

triangular sail, bearing the owner, his women, his children, and such

poor belongings as he could carry, making for the port or the creeks

of Aphros, relying for shelter upon the fraternal hospitality of the

inhabitants. No doubt they, like himself, had travelled with their eyes

upon the beacon....

The young men, grinning broadly and displaying a zest they would not

have contributed towards the mere routine of their lives, had left

their skeleton shelter and had fallen to work upon the heaps of drying

grapes with their large, purple-stained, wooden shovels. Zapantiotis

leant upon his staff beside Julian's mule.

'See, Kyrie!' he had said. 'It was a crafty thought, was it not? Ah,

women! only a woman could have thought of such a thing.'

'A woman?'

'Anastasia Kato,' the overseer had replied, reverent towards the brain

that had contrived thus craftily for the cause, but familiar towards

the great singer--of whom distinguished European audiences spoke with

distant respect--as towards a woman of his own people. He probably,

Julian had reflected, did not know of her as a singer at all.

Beneath the grapes rifles were concealed, preserved from the fruit by

careful sheets of coarse linen; rifles, gleaming, modern rifles, laid

out in rows; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; Julian had no means

of estimating.

He had dismounted and walked over to them; the young men were still

shovelling back the fruit, reckless of its plenty, bringing more

weapons and still more to light. He had bent down to examine more

closely.

'Italian,' he had said then, briefly, and had met Tsigaridis' eye, had

seen the slow, contented smile which spread on the old man's face, and

which he had discreetly turned aside to conceal.

Then Julian, with a glimpse of all those months of preparation, had

ridden down from the hills, the string of mules following his mule in

single file, the shining barrels bristling out of the panniers, and in

the market-place he had assisted, from the height of his saddle, at

the distribution of the arms. Two hundred and fifty, and five hundred

rounds of ammunition to each.... He thought of the nights of smuggling

represented there, of the catch of fish--the 'quick, shining harvest

of the sea'--beneath which lay the deadlier catch that evaded the eyes

of the customs-house clerks. He remembered the robbery at the casino,

and was illuminated. Money had not been lacking.

These were not the only pictures he retained of that day; the affairs

to which he was expected to attend seemed to be innumerable; he had

sat for hours in the village assembly-room, while the islanders came

and went, surprisingly capable, but at the same time utterly reliant

upon him. Throughout the day no sign came from Herakleion. Julian grew

weary, and could barely restrain his thoughts from wandering to Eve. He

would have gone to her room before leaving the house in the morning,

but she had refused to see him. Consequently the thought of her had

haunted him all day. One of the messages which reached him as he sat in

the assembly-room had been from her: Would he send a boat to Herakleion

for Nana?

He had smiled, and had complied, very much doubting whether the boat

would ever be allowed to return. The message had brought him, as

it were, a touch from her, a breath of her personality which clung

about the room long after. She was near at hand, waiting for him, so

familiar, yet so unfamiliar, so undiscovered. He felt that after a

year with her much would still remain to be discovered; that there

was, in fact, no end to her interest and her mystery. She was of no

ordinary calibre, she who could be, turn by turn, a delicious or

plaintive child, a woman of ripe seduction, and--in fits and starts--a

poet in whose turbulent and undeveloped talent he divined startling

possibilities! When she wrote poetry she smothered herself in ink,

as he knew; so mingled in her were the fallible and the infallible.

He refused to analyse his present relation to her; a sense, not of

hypocrisy, but of decency, held him back; he remembered all too

vividly the day he had carried her in his arms; his brotherliness had

been shocked, offended, but since then the remembrance had persisted

and had grown, and now he found himself, with all that brotherliness of

years still ingrained in him, full of thoughts and on the brink of an

adventure far from brotherly. He tried not to think these thoughts. He

honestly considered them degrading, incestuous. But his mood was ripe

for adventure; the air was full of adventure; the circumstances were

unparalleled; his excitement glowed--he left the assembly-room, walked

rapidly up the street, and entered the Davenant house, shutting the

door behind him.

The sounds of the street were shut out, and the water plashed coolly

in the open courtyard; two pigeons walked prinking round the flat edge

of the marble basin, the male cooing and bowing absurdly, throwing out

his white chest, ruffling his tail, and putting down his spindly feet

with fussy precision. When Julian appeared, they fluttered away to the

other side of the court to resume their convention of love-making.

Evening was falling, warm and suave, and overhead in the still blue sky

floated tiny rosy clouds. In the cloisters round the court the frescoes

of the life of Saint Benedict looked palely at Julian, they so faded,

so washed-out, he so young and so full of strength. Their pallor taught

him that he had never before felt so young, so reckless, or so vigorous.

He was astonished to find Eve with the son of Zapantiotis, learning

from him to play the flute in the long, low room which once had been

the refectory and which ran the full length of the cloisters. Deeply

recessed windows, with heavy iron gratings, looked down over the roofs

of the village to the sea. In one of these windows Eve leaned against

the wall holding the flute to her lips, and young Zapantiotis, eager,

handsome, showed her how to place her fingers upon the holes. She

looked defiantly at Julian.

'Nico has rescued me,' she said; 'but for him I should have been alone

all day. I have taught him to dance.' She pointed to a gramophone upon

a table.

'Where did that come from?' Julian said, determined not to show his

anger before the islander.

'From the café,' she replied.

'Then Nico had better take it back; they will need it.' Julian said,

threats in his voice, 'and he had better see whether his father cannot

find him employment; we have not too many men.'

'You left me the whole day,' she said when Nico had gone; 'I am sorry I

came with you, Julian; I would rather go back to Herakleion; even Nana

has not come. I did not think you would desert me.'

He looked at her, his anger vanished, and she was surprised when he

answered her gently, even amusedly,--

'You are always delightfully unexpected and yet characteristic of

yourself: I come back, thinking I shall find you alone, perhaps glad

to see me, having spent an unoccupied day, but no, I find you with the

best-looking scamp of the village, having learnt from him to play the

flute, taught him to dance, and borrowed a gramophone from the local

café!'

He put his hands heavily upon her shoulders with a gesture she knew of

old.

'I suppose I love you,' he said roughly, and then seemed indisposed to

talk of her any more, but told her his plans and arrangements, to which

she did not listen.

They remained standing in the narrow window-recess, leaning, opposite

to one another, against the thick stone walls of the old Genoese

building. Through the grating they could see the sea, and, in the

distance, Herakleion.

'It is sufficiently extraordinary,' he remarked, gazing across the bay,

'that Herakleion has made no sign. I can only suppose that they will

try force as soon as Panaïoannou can collect his army, which, as it was

fully mobilised no later than yesterday, ought not to take very long.'

'Will there be fighting?' she asked, with a first show of interest.

'I hope so,' he replied.

'I should like you to fight,' she said.

Swaying as he invariably did between his contradictory opinions of her,

he found himself inwardly approving her standpoint, that man, in order

to be worthy of woman, must fight, or be prepared to fight, and to

enjoy the fighting. From one so self-indulgent, so pleasure-loving, so

reluctant to face any unpleasantness of life, he might pardonably have

expected the less heroic attitude. If she resented his absence all day

on the business of preparations for strife, might she not equally have

resented the strife that called him from her side? He respected her

appreciation of physical courage, and remodelled his estimate to her

advantage.

To his surprise, the boat he had sent for Nana returned from

Herakleion. It came, indeed, without Nana, but bearing in her place a

letter from his father:--

'DEAR JULIAN,--By the courtesy of M. Stavridis--by whose orders

this house is closely guarded, and for which I have to thank your

folly--I am enabled to send you this letter, conditional on M.

Stavridis's personal censorship. Your messenger has come with

your astonishing request that your cousin's nurse may be allowed

to return with the boat to Aphros. I should have returned with

it myself in the place of the nurse, but for M. Stavridis's very

natural objection to my rejoining you or leaving Herakleion.

'I am at present too outraged to make any comment upon your

behaviour. I try to convince myself that you must be completely

insane. M. Stavridis, however, will shortly take drastic steps

to restore you to sanity. I trust only that no harm will befall

you--for I remember still that you are my son--in the process.

In the meantime, I demand of you most urgently, in my own name

and that of your uncle and aunt, that you will send back your

cousin without delay to Herakleion. M. Stavridis has had the great

kindness to give his consent to this. A little consideration will

surely prove to you that in taking her with you to Aphros you

have been guilty of a crowning piece of folly from every point of

view. I know you to be headstrong and unreflecting. Try to redeem

yourself in this one respect before it is too late.

'I fear that I should merely be wasting my time by attempting to

dissuade you from the course you have chosen with regard to the

Islands. My poor misguided boy, do you not realise that your effort

is _bound_ to end in disaster, and will serve but to injure those

you most desire to help?

'I warn you, too, most gravely and solemnly, that your obstinacy

will entail _very serious consequences_ for yourself. I shall

regret the steps I contemplate taking, but I have the interest of

our family to consider, and I have your uncle's entire approval.

'I am very deeply indebted to M. Stavridis, who, while unable to

neglect his duty as the first citizen of Herakleion, has given me

every proof of his personal friendship and confidence.

W. DAVENANT.'

Julian showed this letter to Eve.

'What answer shall you send?'

'This,' he replied, tearing it into pieces.

'You are angry. Oh, Julian, I love you for being reckless.'

'I see red. He threatens me with disinheriting me. He takes good care

to remain in Stavridis' good books himself. Do you want to go back?'

'No, Julian.'

'Of course, father is quite right: I am insane, and so are you. But,

after all, you will run no danger, and as far compromising you, that

is absurd: we have often been alone together before now. Besides,' he

added brutally, 'you said yourself you belonged to the Islands no less

than I; you can suffer for them a little if necessary.'

'I make no complaint,' she said with an enigmatic smile.

They dined together near the fountain in the courtyard, and overhead

the sky grew dark, and the servant brought lighted candles for the

table. Julian spoke very little; he allowed himself the supreme luxury

of being spoilt by a woman who made it her business to please him;

observing her critically, appreciatively; acknowledging her art; noting

with admiration how the instinct of the born courtesan filled in the

gaps in the experience of the child. He was, as yet, more mystified by

her than he cared to admit.

But he yielded himself to her charm. The intimacy of this meal, their

first alone together, enveloped him more and more with the gradual

sinking of night, and his observant silence, which had originated

with the deliberate desire to test her skill and also to indulge his

own masculine enjoyment, insensibly altered into a shield against the

emotion which was gaining him. The servant had left them. The water

still plashed into the marble basin. The candles on the table burned

steadily in the unruffled evening, and under their light gleamed

the wine--rough, native wine, red and golden--in the long-necked,

transparent bottles, and the bowl of fruit: grapes, a cut melon, and

bursting figs, heaped with the lavishness of plenty. The table was a

pool of light, but around it the court and cloisters were full of dim,

mysterious shadows.

Opposite Julian, Eve leaned forward, propping her bare elbows on the

table, disdainfully picking at the fruit, and talking. He looked at

her smooth, beautiful arms, and little white hands that he had always

loved. He knew that he preferred her company to any in the world. Her

humour, her audacity, the width of her range, the picturesqueness of

her phraseology, her endless inventiveness, her subtle undercurrent

of the personal, though 'you' or 'I' might be entirely absent from

her lips all seemed to him wholly enchanting. She was a sybarite of

life, an artist; but the glow and recklessness of her saved her from

all taint of intellectual sterility. He knew that his life had been

enriched and coloured by her presence in it; that it would, at any

moment, have become a poorer, a grayer, a less magical thing through

the loss of her. He shut his eyes for a second as he realised that

she could be, if he chose, his own possession, she the elusive and

unattainable; he might claim the redemption of all her infinite

promise; might discover her in the rôle for which she was so obviously

created; might violate the sanctuary and tear the veils from the wealth

of treasure hitherto denied to all; might exact for himself the first

secrets of her unplundered passion. He knew her already as the perfect

companion, he divined her as the perfect mistress; he reeled and shrank

before the unadmitted thought, then looked across at her where she sat

with an open fig half-way to her lips, and knew fantastically that they

were alone upon an island of which he was all but king.

'A deserted city,' she was saying, 'a city of Portuguese settlers; pink

marble palaces upon the edge of the water; almost crowded into the

water by the encroaching jungle; monkeys peering through their ruined

windows; on the sand, great sleepy tortoises; and, twining in and out

of the broken doorways of the palaces, orchids and hibiscus--that

is Trincomali! Would you like the tropics, I wonder, Julian? their

exuberance, their vulgarity?... One buys little sacks full of precious

stones; one puts in one's hand, and lets the sapphires and the rubies

and the emeralds run through one's fingers.'

Their eyes met; and her slight, infrequent confusion overcame her....

'You aren't listening,' she murmured.

'You were only fifteen when you went to Ceylon,' he said, gazing at the

blue smoke of his cigarette. 'You used to write to me from there. You

had scarlet writing-paper. You were a deplorably affected child.'

'Yes,' she said, 'the only natural thing about me was my affectation.'

They laughed, closely, intimately.

'It began when you were three,' he said, 'and insisted upon always

wearing brown kid gloves; your voice was even deeper then than it is

now, and you always called your father Robert.'

'You were five; you used to push me into the prickly pear.'

'And you tried to kill me with a dagger; do you remember?'

'Oh, yes,' she said quite gravely, 'there was a period when I always

carried a dagger.'

'When you came back from Ceylon you had a tiger's claw.'

'With which I once cut my initials on your arm.'

'You were very theatrical.'

'You were very stoical.'

Again they laughed.

'When you went to Ceylon,' he said, 'one of the ship's officers fell in

love with you; you were very much amused.'

'The only occasion, I think, Julian, when I ever boasted to

you of such a thing? You must forgive me--il ne faut pas m'en

vouloir--remember I was only fifteen.'

'Such things amuse you still,' he said jealously.

'C'est possible,' she replied.

He insisted,--

'When did you really become aware of your own heartlessness?'

She sparkled with laughter.

'I think it began life as a sense of humour,' she said, 'and

degenerated gradually into its present state of spasmodic infamy.'

He had smiled, but she saw his face suddenly darken, and he got up

abruptly, and stood by the fountain, turning his back on her.

'My God,' she thought to herself in terror, 'he has remembered Paul.'

She rose also, and went close to him, slipping her hand through his

arm, endeavouring to use, perhaps unconsciously, the powerful weapon of

her physical nearness. He did not shake away her hand, but he remained

unresponsive, lost in contemplation of the water. She hesitated as to

whether she should boldly attack the subject--she knew her danger; he

would be difficult to acquire, easy to lose, no more tractable than a

young colt--then in the stillness of the night she faintly heard the

music of the gramophone playing in the village café.

'Come into the drawing-room and listen to the music, Julian,' she said,

pulling at his arm.

He came morosely; they exchanged the court with its pool of light

for the darkness of the drawing-room; she felt her way, holding his

hand, towards a window seat; sat down, and pulled him down beside her;

through the rusty iron grating they saw the sea, lit up by the rising

moon.

'We can just hear the music,' she whispered.

Her heart was beating hard and fast: they had been as under a spell,

so close were they to one another, but now she was bitterly conscious

of having lost him. She knew that he had slipped from the fairyland of

Aphros back to the world of principles, of morals both conventional and

essential. In fairyland, whither she had enticed him, all things were

feasible, permissible, even imperative. He had accompanied her, she

thought, very willingly, and they had strayed together down enchanted

paths, abstaining, it is true, from adventuring into the perilous

woods that surrounded them, but hand in hand, nevertheless, their

departure from the path potential at any rate, if not imminent. They

had been alone; she had been so happy, so triumphant. Now he had fled

her, back to another world inhabited by all the enemies she would have

had him forget: her cruelties, her vanities--her vanities! he could

never reconcile her vanities and her splendour; he was incapable of

seeing them both at the same time; the one excluded the other, turn

and turn about, in his young eyes; her deceptions, her evasions of

the truth, the men she had misled, the man, above all, that she had

killed and whose death she had accepted with comparative indifference.

These things rose in a bristling phalanx against her, and she faced

them, small, afraid, and at a loss. For she was bound to admit their

existence, and the very vivid, the very crushing, reality of their

existence, all-important to her, in Julian's eyes; although she

herself might be too completely devoid of moral sense, in the ordinary

acceptance of the word, to admit any justification for his indignation.

She knew with sorrow that they would remain for ever as a threat in

the background, and that she would be fortunate indeed if in that

background she could succeed in keeping them more or less permanently.

Her imagination sighed for a potion of forgetfulness. Failing that,

never for an instant must she neglect her rôle of Calypso. She knew

that on the slightest impulse to anger on Julian's part--and his

impulses to anger were, alas, both violent and frequent--all those

enemies in their phalanx would instantly rise and range themselves on

his side against her. Coaxed into abeyance, they would revive with

fatal ease.

She knew him well in his present mood of gloom. She was afraid, and a

desperate anxiety to regain him possessed her. Argument, she divined,

would be futile. She whispered his name.

He turned on her a face of granite.

'Why have you changed?' she said helplessly. 'I was so happy, and you

are making me so miserable.'

'I have no pity for you,' he said, 'you are too pitiless yourself to

deserve any.'

'You break my heart when you speak to me like that.'

'I should like to break it,' he replied, unmoved.

She did not answer, but presently he heard her sobbing. Full of

suspicion, he put out his hand and felt the tears running between her

fingers.

'I have made you cry,' he said.

'Not for the first time,' she answered.

She knew that he was disconcerted, shaken in his harshness, and added,--

'I know what you think of me sometimes, Julian. I have nothing to say

in my own defence. Perhaps there is only one good thing in me, but that

you must promise me never to attack.'

'What is it?'

'You sound very sceptical,' she answered wistfully. 'My love for you;

let us leave it at that.'

'I wonder!' he said; and again, 'I wonder!...'

She moved a little closer to him, and leaned against him, so that her

hair brushed his cheek. Awkwardly and absent-mindedly, he put his arms

round her; he could feel her heart beating through her thin muslin

shirt, and lifting her bare arm in his hand he weighed it pensively;

she lay against him, allowing him to do as he pleased; physically he

held her nearer, but morally he was far away. Humiliating herself, she

lay silent, willing to sacrifice the pride of her body if therewith

she might purchase his return. But he, awaking with a start from

his brooding grievances, put her away from him. If temptation was

to overcome him, it must rush him by assault; not thus, sordid and

unlit.... He rose, saying,--

'It is very late; you must go to bed; good-night.'

II

Panaïoannou attempted a landing before sunrise on the following day.

A few stars were still visible, but the moon was paling, low in the

heavens, and along the eastern horizon the sky was turning rosy and

yellow above the sea. Earth, air, and water were alike bathed in purity

and loveliness. Julian, hastily aroused, remembered the Islands as he

had seen them from the mainland on the day of Madame Lafarge's picnic.

In such beauty they were lying now, dependent on his defence....

Excited beyond measure, he dressed rapidly, and as he dressed he heard

the loud clanging of the school bell summoning the men to arms; he

heard the village waking, the clatter of banging doors, of wooden soles

upon the cobbles, and excited voices. He rushed from his room into the

passage, where he met Eve.

She was very pale, and her hair was streaming round her shoulders. She

clung to him.

'Oh, Julian, what is it? why are they ringing the bells? why are you

dressed? where are you going?'

He explained, holding her, stroking her hair.

'Boats have been sighted, setting out from Herakleion; I suppose they

think they will take us by surprise. You know, I have told off two men

to look after you; you are to go into the little hut which is prepared

for you in the very centre of the island. They will never land, and you

will be perfectly safe there. I will let you know directly they are

driven off. You must let me go, darling.'

'Oh, but you? but you?' she cried desperately.

'They won't come near me,' he replied laughing.

'Julian, Julian,' she said, holding on to his coat as he tried to

loosen her fingers, 'Julian, I want you to know: you're all my life, I

give you myself, on whatever terms you like, for ever if you like, for

a week if you like; you can do with me whatever you choose; throw me

away when you've done with me; you think me worthless; I care only for

you in the world.'

He was astonished at the starkness and violence of the passion in her

eyes and voice.

'But I am not going into any danger,' he said, trying to soothe her.

'For God's sake, kiss me,' she said, distraught, and seeing that he was

impatient to go.

'I'll kiss you to-night,' he answered tempestuously, with a ring of

triumph as one who takes a decision.

'No, no: now.'

He kissed her hair, burying his face in its thickness.

'This attack is a comedy, not a tragedy,' he called back to her as he

ran down the stairs.

The sentry who had first sighted the fleet of boats was still standing

upon his headland, leaning on his rifle, and straining his eyes over

the sea. Julian saw him thus silhouetted against the morning sky. Day

was breaking as Julian came up the mule-path, a score of islanders

behind him, walking with the soft, characteristic swishing of their

white woollen skirts, and the slight rattle of slung rifles. All paused

at the headland, which was above a little rocky creek; the green and

white water foamed gently below. Out to sea the boats were distinctly

visible, dotted about the sea, carrying each a load of men; there might

be twenty or thirty, with ten or fifteen men in each.

'They must be out of their senses,' Tsigaridis growled; 'their only

hope would have lain in a surprise attack at night--which by the

present moonlight would indeed have proved equally idle--but at present

they but expose themselves to our butchery.'

'The men are all at their posts?' Julian asked.

'Malista, Kyrie, malista.' They remained for a little watching the

boats as the daylight grew. The colours of the dawn were shifting,

stretching, widening, and the water, turning from iron-gray to violet,

began along the horizon to reflect the transparency of the sky. The

long, low, gray clouds caught upon their edges an orange flush; a

sudden bar of gold fell along the line where sky and water met; a

drift of tiny clouds turned red like a flight of flamingoes; and the

blue began insensibly to spread, pale at first, then deepening as the

sun rose out of the melting clouds and flooded over the full expanse

of sea. To the left, the coast of the mainland, with Mount Mylassa

soaring, and Herakleion at its base, broke the curve until it turned

at an angle to run northward. Smoke began to rise in steady threads of

blue from the houses of Herakleion. The red light died away at the tip

of the pier. The gulls circled screaming, flashes of white and gray,

marbled birds; and beyond the thin line of foam breaking against the

island the water was green in the shallows.

All round Aphros the islanders were lying in pickets behind defences,

the naturally rocky and shelving coast affording them the command

of every approach. The port, which was the only really suitable

landing-place, was secure, dominated as it was by the village; no boat

could hope to live for five minutes under concentrated rifle fire from

the windows of the houses. The other possible landing-places--the

creeks and little beaches--could be held with equal ease by half a

dozen men with rifles lying under shelter upon the headlands or on

the ledges of the rocks. Julian was full of confidence. The danger

of shelling he discounted, firstly because Herakleion possessed no

man-of-war, or, indeed, any craft more formidable than the police

motor-launch, and secondly because the authorities in Herakleion

knew well enough that Italy, for reasons of her own, neither wholly

idealistic nor disinterested, would never tolerate the complete

destruction of Aphros. Moreover, it would be hopeless to attempt to

starve out an island whose population lived almost entirely upon the

fish caught round their own shores, the vegetables and fruit grown upon

their own hillsides, the milk and cheeses from their own rough-feeding

goats, and the occasional but sufficient meat from their own sheep and

bullocks.

'Kyrie,' said Tsigaridis, 'should we not move into shelter?'

Julian abandoned the headland regretfully. For his own post he

had chosen the Davenant house in the village. He calculated that

Panaïoannou, unaware of the existence of a number of rifles on the

island, would make his first and principal attempt upon the port,

expecting there to encounter a hand to hand fight with a crowd

diversely armed with knives, stones, pitchforks, and a few revolvers--a

brief, bloody, desperate resistance, whose term could be but a matter

of time, after which the village would fall into the hands of the

invaders and the rebellion would be at an end. At most, Panaïoannou

would argue, the fighting would be continued up into the main street of

the village, the horizontal street that was its backbone, terminating

at one end by the market-place above the port, and at the other by the

Davenants' house; and ramifications of fighting--a couple of soldiers

here and there pursuing a fleeing islander--up the sloping, narrow,

stepped streets running between the houses, at right angles from the

main street, up the hill. Julian sat with his rifle cocked across his

knees in one of the window recesses of his own house, and grinned as

he anticipated Panaïoannou's surprise. He did not want a massacre of

the fat, well-meaning soldiers of Herakleion--the casino, he reflected,

must be closed to-day, much to the annoyance of the gambling dagos;

however, they would have excitement enough, of another kind, to console

them--he did not want a massacre of the benevolent croupier-soldiers he

had seen parading the _platia_ only two days before, but he wanted them

taught that Aphros was a hornets' nest out of which they had better

keep their fingers. He thought it extremely probable that after a first

repulse they would refuse to renew the attack. They liked well enough

defiling across the _platia_ on Independence Day, and recognising their

friends amongst the admiring crowd, but he doubted whether they would

appreciate being shot down in open boats by an enemy they could not

even see.

In the distance, from the windows of his own house, he heard firing,

and from the advancing boats he could see spurts of smoke. He discerned

a commotion in one boat; men got up and changed places, and the

boat turned round and began to row in the opposite direction. Young

Zapantiotis called to him from another window,--

'You see them, Kyrie? Some one has been hit.'

Julian laughed exultantly. On a table near him lay a crumpled

handkerchief of Eve's, and a gardenia; he put the flower into his

buttonhole. Behind all his practical plans and his excitement lay the

memory of his few words with her in the passage; under the stress of

her emotion she had revealed a depth and vehemence of truth that he

hitherto scarcely dared to imagine. To-day would be given to him surely

more than his fair share for any mortal man: a fight, and the most

desirable of women! He rejoiced in his youth and his leaping blood. Yet

he continued sorry for the kindly croupier-soldiers.

The boats came on, encouraged by the comparative silence on the

island. Julian was glad it was not the fashion among the young men of

Herakleion, his friends, to belong to the army. He wondered what Grbits

was thinking of him. He was probably on the quay, watching through a

telescope. Or had the expedition been kept a secret from the still

sleeping Herakleion? Surely! for he could distinguish no crowd upon the

distant quays across the bay.

A shot rang out close at hand, from some window of the village, and in

one of the foremost boats he saw a man throw up his hands and fall over

backwards.

He sickened slightly. This was inevitable, he knew, but he had no lust

for killing in this cold-blooded fashion. Kneeling on the window-seat

he took aim between the bars of the grating, and fired a quantity of

shots all round the boat; they splashed harmlessly into the water, but

had the effect he desired; the boat turned round in retreat.

Firing crackled now from all parts of the island. The casualties in

the boats increased. In rage and panic the soldiers fired wildly back

at the island, especially at the village; bullets ping-ed through the

air and rattled on the roofs; occasionally there came a crash of broken

glass. Once Julian heard a cry, and, craning his head to look down the

street, he saw an islander lying on his face on the ground between

the houses with his arms outstretched, blood running freely from his

shoulder and staining his white clothes.

'My people!' Julian cried in a passion, and shot deliberately into a

boat-load of men.

'God!' he said to himself a moment later, 'I've killed him.'

He laid down his rifle with a gesture of horror, and went out into

the courtyard where the fountain still played and the pigeons prinked

and preened. He opened the door into the street, went down the steps

and along the street to where the islander lay groaning, lifted him

carefully, and dragged him into the shelter of the house. Zapantiotis

met him in the court.

'Kyrie,' he said, scared and reproachful, 'you should have sent me.'

Julian left him to look after the wounded man, and returned to

the window; the firing had slackened, for the boats were now

widely dispersed over the sea, offering only isolated targets at a

considerable distance. Time had passed rapidly, and the sun had climbed

high overhead. He looked at the little dotted boats, bearing their

burden of astonishment, death, and pain. Was it possible that the

attack had finally drawn away?

At that thought, he regretted that the fighting had not given an

opportunity of a closer, a more personal struggle.

An hour passed. He went out into the village, where life was beginning

to flow once more into the street and market-place; the villagers came

out to look at their broken windows, and their chipped houses; they

were all laughing and in high good-humour, pointing proudly to the

damage, and laughing like children to see that in the school-house,

which faced the sea and in which the remaining Greek officials were

still imprisoned, nearly all the windows were broken. Julian, shaking

off the people, men and women, who were trying to kiss his hands or his

clothes, appeared briefly in the class-room to reassure the occupants.

They were all huddled into a corner, behind a barricade of desks and

benches. The one guard who had been left with them had spent his time

inventing terrible stories for their distress. The wooden wall opposite

the windows was pocked in two or three places by bullets.

As Julian came out again into the market-place he saw old Tsigaridis

riding down on his great white mule from the direction of the hills,

accompanied by two runners on foot. He waited while the mule picked its

way carefully and delicately down the stepped path that led from the

other side of the market-place up into the interior of the island.

'They are beaten off, Tsantilas.'

'No imprudences,' said the grave old man, and recommended to the

people, who came crowding round his mule, to keep within the shelter of

their houses.

'But, Tsantilas, we have the boats within our sight; they cannot return

without our knowledge in ample time to seek shelter.'

'There is one boat for which we cannot account--the motor-boat--it

is swift and may yet take us by surprise,' Tsigaridis replied

pessimistically.

He dismounted from his mule, and walked up the street with Julian

by his side, while the people, crestfallen, dispersed with lagging

footsteps to their respective doorways. The motor-launch, it would

appear, had been heard in the far distance, 'over there,' said

Tsigaridis, extending his left arm; the pickets upon the eastern coasts

of the island had distinctly heard the echo of its engines--it was,

fortunately, old and noisy--but early in the morning the sound had

ceased, and since then had not once been renewed. Tsigaridis inferred

that the launch was lying somewhere in concealment amongst the tiny

islands, from where it would emerge, unexpectedly and in an unexpected

place, to attack.

'It must carry at least fifty men,' he added.

Julian revelled in the news. A motor-launch with such a crew would

provide worthier game than little cockleshell rowing-boats. Panaïoannou

himself might be of the party. Julian saw the general already as his

prisoner.

He remembered Eve. So long as the launch lay in hiding he could not

allow her to return to the village. It was even possible that they

might have a small gun on board. He wanted to see her, he ached with

the desire to see her, but, an instinctive Epicurean, he welcomed the

circumstances that forced him to defer their meeting until nightfall....

He wrote her a note on a leaf of his pocket-book, and despatched it to

her by one of Tsigaridis' runners.

The hours of waiting fretted him, and to ease his impatience he started

on a tour of the island with Tsigaridis. They rode on mules, nose to

tail along the winding paths, not climbing up into the interior, but

keeping to the lower track that ran above the sea, upon the first flat

ledge of the rock, all around the island. In some places the path

was so narrow and so close to the edge that Julian could, by leaning

sideways in his saddle, look straight down the cliff into the water

swirling and foaming below. He was familiar with almost every creek, so

often had he bathed there as a boy. Looking at the foam, he murmured to

himself,--

'Aphros....'

There were no houses here among the rocks, and no trees, save for an

occasional group of pines, whose little cones clustered among the

silvery branches, quite black against the sky. Here and there, above

creeks or the little sandy beaches where a landing for a small boat

would have been possible, the picket of islanders had come out from

their shelter behind the boulders, and were sitting talking on the

rocks, holding their rifles upright between their knees, while a

solitary sentinel kept watch at the extremity of the point, his kilted

figure white as the circling seagulls or as the foam. A sense of lull

and of siesta lay over the afternoon. At every picket Julian asked the

same question, and at every picket the same answer was returned,--

'We have heard no engines since earliest morning, Kyrie.'

Round the curve of the island, the first tiny, uninhabited islands

came into view. Some of them were mere rocks sticking up out of the

sea; others, a little larger, grew a few trees, and a boat could have

hidden, invisible from Aphros, on their farther side. Julian looked

longingly at the narrow stretches of water which separated them. He

even suggested starting to look for the launch.

'It would be madness, Kyrie.'

Above a little bay, where the ground sloped down less abruptly, and

where the sand ran gently down under the thin wavelets, they halted

with the picket of that particular spot. Their mules were led away

by a runner. Julian enjoyed sitting amongst these men, hearing them

talk, and watching them roll cigarette after cigarette with the

practised skill of their knotty fingers. Through the sharp lines of

their professional talk, and the dignity of their pleasant trades--for

they were all fishermen, vintagers, or sheep and goat-herds--he smiled

to the hidden secret of Eve, and fancied that the soft muslin of her

garments brushed, as at the passage of a ghost, against the rude

woollen garments of the men; that her hands, little and white and idle,

fluttered over their hardened hands; that he alone could see her pass

amongst their group, smile to him, and vanish down the path. He was

drowsy in the drowsy afternoon; he felt that he had fought and had

earned his rest, and, moreover, was prepared to rise from his sleep

with new strength to fight again. Rest between a battle and a battle.

Strife, sleep, and love; love, sleep, and strife; a worthy plan of life!

He slept.

When he woke the men still sat around him, talking still of their

perennial trades, and without opening his eyes he lay listening to

them, and thought that in such a simple world the coming and going of

generations was indeed of slight moment, since in the talk of crops

and harvests, of the waxing and waning of moons, of the treachery of

the sea or the fidelity of the land, the words of the ancestor might

slip unchanged as an inheritance to grandson and great-grandson. Of

such kindred were they with nature, that he in his half-wakefulness

barely distinguished the voices of the men from the wash of waves on

the shore. He opened his eyes. The sun, which he had seen rising out

of the sea in the dawn, after sweeping in its great flaming arc across

the sky, had sunk again under the horizon. Heavy purple clouds like

outpoured wine stained the orange of the west. The colour of the sea

was like the flesh of a fig.

Unmistakably, the throb of an engine woke the echoes between the

islands.

All eyes met, all voices hushed; tense, they listened. The sound grew;

from a continuous purr it changed into separate beats. By mutual

consent, and acting under no word of command, the men sought the cover

of their boulders, clambering over the rocks, carrying their rifles

with them, white, noiseless, and swift. Julian found himself with three

others in a species of little cave the opening of which commanded the

beach; the cave was low, and they were obliged to crouch; one man knelt

down at the mouth with his rifle ready to put to his shoulder. Julian

could smell, in that restricted place, the rough smell of their woollen

clothes, and the tang of the goat which clung about one man, who must

be a goat-herd.

Then before their crouching position could begin to weary them, the

beat of the engines became insistent, imminent; and the launch shot

round the curve, loaded with standing men, and heading directly for

the beach. A volley of fire greeted them, but the soldiers were

already overboard, waist-deep in water, plunging towards the shore with

their rifles held high over their heads, while the crew of the launch

violently reversed the engines and drove themselves off the sand by

means of long poles, to save the launch from an irrevocable grounding.

The attack was well planned, and executed by men who knew intimately

the lie of the coast. With loud shouts, they emerged dripping from the

water on to the beach.

They were at least forty strong; the island picket numbered only a

score, but they had the advantage of concealment. A few of the soldiers

dropped while yet in the water; others fell forward on to their faces

with their legs in the water and their heads and shoulders on dry land;

many gained a footing but were shot down a few yards from the edge of

the sea; the survivors flung themselves flat behind hummocks of rock

and fired in the direction of the defending fire. Everything seemed to

have taken place within the compass of two or three minutes. Julian had

himself picked off three of the invaders; his blood was up, and he had

lost all the sickening sense of massacre he had felt during the early

part of the day.

He never knew how the hand to hand fight actually began; he only knew

that suddenly he was out of the cave, in the open, without a rifle,

but with his revolver in his grasp, backed and surrounded by his own

shouting men, and confronted by the soldiers of Herakleion, heavily

impeded by their wet trousers, but fighting sheerly for their lives,

striving to get at him, losing their heads and aiming wildly, throwing

aside their rifles and grappling at last bodily with their enemies,

struggling not to be driven back into the sea, cursing the islanders,

and calling to one another to rally, stumbling over the dead and the

wounded. Julian scarcely recognised his own voice in the shout of,

'Aphros!' He was full of the lust of fighting; he had seen men roll

over before the shot of his revolver, and had driven them down before

the weight of his fist. He was fighting joyously, striking among the

waves of his enemies as a swimmer striking out against a current. All

his thought was to kill, and to rid his island of these invaders;

already the tide had turned, and that subtle sense of defeat and

victory that comes upon the crest of battle was infusing respectively

despair and triumph. There was now no doubt in the minds of either the

attackers or the defenders in whose favour the attack would end. There

remained but three alternatives: surrender, death, or the sea.

Already many were choosing the first, and those that turned in the

hope of regaining the launch were shot down or captured before they

reached the water. The prisoners, disarmed, stood aside in a little

sulky group under the guard of one islander, watching, resignedly, and

with a certain indifference born of their own secession from activity,

the swaying clump of men, shouting, swearing, and stumbling, and the

feeble efforts of the wounded to drag themselves out of the way of the

trampling feet. The sand of the beach was in some places, where blood

had been spilt, stamped into a dark mud. A wounded soldier, lying half

in and half out of the water, cried out pitiably as the salt water

lapped over his wounds.

The decision was hastened by the crew of the launch, who, seeing a bare

dozen of their companions rapidly overpowered by a superior number of

islanders, and having themselves no fancy to be picked off at leisure

from the shore, started their engines and made off to sea. At that

a cry of dismay went up; retreat, as an alternative, was entirely

withdrawn; death an empty and unnecessary display of heroism; surrender

remained; they chose it thankfully.

III

Julian never knew, nor did he stop to inquire, why Eve had returned to

the village without his sanction. He only knew that as he came up the

street, escorted by all the population, singing, pressing around him,

taking his hands, throwing flowers and even fruit in his path, holding

up their children for him to touch, he saw her standing in the doorway

of their house, the lighted courtyard yellow behind her. She stood

there on the highest of the three steps, her hands held out towards

him. He knew, too, although no word was spoken, that the village

recognised them as lovers. He felt again the triumphant completeness of

life; a fulfilment, beyond the possibility of that staid world that,

somewhere, moved upon its confused, mercenary, mistaken, and restricted

way. Here, the indignities of hypocrisy were indeed remote. There,

men shorn of candour entangled the original impulse of their motives

until in a sea of perplexity they abandoned even to the ultimate grace

of self-honesty; here, in an island of enchantment, he had fought for

his dearest and most constituent beliefs--O honourable privilege!

unhindered and rare avowal!--fought, not with secret weapons, but with

the manhood of his body; and here, under the eyes of fellow-creatures,

their presence no more obtrusive than the presence of the sea or the

evening breeze, under their unquestioning eyes he claimed the just

reward, the consummation, the right of youth, which in that pharisaical

world would have been denied him.

Eve herself was familiar with his mood. Whereas he had noted,

marvelled, and rejoiced at the simplicity with which they came

together, before that friendly concourse of people, she had stretched

out her hands to him with an unthinking gesture of possession. She had

kept her counsel during the unpropitious years, with a secrecy beyond

the determination of a child; but here, having gained him for her own;

having enticed him into the magical country where the standards drew

near to her own standards; where she, on the one hand, no less than he

upon the other, might fight with the naked weapons of nature for her

desires and beliefs--here she walked at home and without surprise in

the perfect liberty; that liberty which he accepted with gratitude, but

she as a right out of which man elsewhere was cheated. He had always

been surprised, on the rare occasions when a hint of her philosophy, a

fragment of her creed, had dropped from her lips unawares. From these

fragments he had been incapable of reconstructing the whole. He had

judged her harshly, too young and too ignorant to query whether the

falseness of convention cannot drive those, temperamentally direct and

uncontrolled, into the self-defence of a superlative falseness.... He

had seen her vanity; he had not seen what he was now, because himself

in sympathy, beginning to apprehend, her whole-heartedness that was,

in its way, so magnificent. Very, very dimly he apprehended; his

apprehension, indeed, limited chiefly to the recognition of a certain

correlation in her to the vibrant demands alive in him: he asked from

her, weakness to fling his strength into relief; submission to entice

his tyranny; yet at the same time, passion to match his passion, and

mettle to exalt his conquest in his own eyes; she must be nothing less

than the whole grace and rarity of life for his pleasure; flattery, in

short, at once subtle and blatant, supreme and meticulous, was what he

demanded, and what she was, he knew, so instinctively ready to accord.

As she put her hand into his, he felt the current of her pride as

definitely as though he had seen a glance of understanding pass between

her and the women of the village. He looked up at her, smiling. She had

contrived for herself a garment out of some strip of dark red silk,

which she had wound round her body after the fashion of an Indian sari;

in the opening of that sombre colour her throat gleamed more than

usually white, and above her swathed slenderness her lips were red in

the pallor of her face, and her waving hair held glints of burnish as

the leaves of autumn. She was not inadequate in her anticipation of his

unspoken demands: the exploitation of her sensuous delicacy was all for

him--for him!

He had expected, perhaps, that after her proud, frank welcome before

the people, she would turn to him when they were alone; but he

found her manner full of a deliberate indifference. She abstained

even from any allusion to her day's anxiety. He was reminded of all

their meetings when, after months, she betrayed no pleasure at his

return, but rather avoided him, and coldly disregarded his unthinking

friendliness. Many a time, as a boy, he had been hurt and puzzled by

this caprice, which, ever meeting him unprepared, was ever renewed

by her. To-night he was neither hurt nor puzzled, but with a grim

amusement accepted the pattern she set; he could allow her the

luxury of a superficial control. With the harmony between them, they

could play the game of pretence. He delighted in her unexpectedness.

Her reticence stirred him, in its disconcerting contrast with his

recollection of her as he had left her that morning. She moved from

the court into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room back into

the court, and he followed her, impersonal as she herself, battening

down all outward sign of his triumph, granting her the grace of that

Epicurean and ironic chivalry. He knew their quietness was ominous.

They moved and spoke like people in the near, unescapable neighbourhood

of a wild beast, whose attention they must on no account arouse, whose

presence they must not mention, while each intensely aware of the

peril, and each alive to the other's knowledge of it. She spoke and

laughed, and he, in response to her laughter, smiled gravely; silence

fell, and she broke it; she thought that he took pleasure in testing

her power of reviving their protective talk; the effort increased in

difficulty; he seemed to her strangely and paralysingly sinister.

Harmony between them! if such harmony existed, it was surely the

harmony of hostility. They were enemies that evening, not friends.

If an understanding existed, it was, on her part, the understanding

that he was mocking her; on his part, the understanding that she,

in her fear, must preserve the veneer of self-assurance, and that

some fundamental convention--if the term was not too inherently

contradictory--demanded his co-operation. He granted it. On other

occasions his manner towards her might be rough, violent, uncontrolled;

this evening it was of an irreproachable civility. For the first time

in her life she felt herself at a disadvantage. She invented pretext

after feverish pretext for prolonging their evening. She knew that if

she could once bring a forgetful laugh to Julian's lips, she would fear

him less; but he continued to smile gravely at her sallies, and to

watch her with that same unbending intent. In the midst of her phrase

she would look up, meet his eyes bent upon her, and forget her words in

confusion. Once he rose, and stretched his limbs luxuriously against

the background of the open roof and the stars; she thought he would

speak, but to her relief he sat down again in his place, removed his

eyes from her, and fell to the dissection, grain by grain, of a bunch

of grapes.

She continued to speak; she talked of Kato, even of Alexander

Christopoulos; she scarcely knew he was not listening to her until

he broke with her name into the heart of her sentence, unaware that

he interrupted. He stood up, came round to her chair, and put his

hand upon her shoulder; she could not control her trembling. He said

briefly, but with all the repressed triumph ringing in his voice, 'Eve,

come'; and without a word she obeyed, her eyes fastened to his, her

breath shortened, deceit fallen from her, nothing but naked honesty

remaining. She had lost even her fear of him. In their stark desire for

each other they were equals. He put out his hand and extinguished the

candles; dimness fell over the court.

'Eve,' he said, still in that contained voice, 'you know we are alone

in this house.'

She acquiesced, 'I know,' not meaning to speak in a whisper, but

involuntarily letting the words glide out with her breath.

As he paused, she felt his hand convulsive upon her shoulder; her

lids lay shut upon her eyes like heavy petals. Presently he said

wonderingly,--

'I have not kissed you.'

'No,' she replied, faint, yet marvellously strong.

He put his arm round her, and half carried her towards the stairs.

'Let me go,' she whispered, for the sake of his contradiction.

'No,' he answered, holding her more closely to him.

'Where are you taking me, Julian?'

He did not reply, but together they began to mount the stairs, she

failing and drooping against his arm, her eyes still closed and her

lips apart. They reached her room, bare, full of shadows, whitewashed,

with the windows open upon the black moonlit sea.

'Eve!' he murmured exultantly. 'Aphros!...'

IV

The lyric of their early days of love piped clear and sweet upon the

terraces of Aphros.

Their surroundings entered into a joyous conspiracy with their youth.

Between halcyon sky and sea the island lay radiantly; as it were

suspended, unattached, coloured like a rainbow, and magic with the

enchantment of its isolation. The very foam which broke around its

rocks served to define, by its lacy fringe of white, the compass of

the magic circle. To them were granted solitude and beauty beyond all

dreams of lovers. They dwelt in the certainty that no intruder could

disturb them--save those intruders to be beaten off in frank fight--no

visitor from the outside world but those that came on wings, swooping

down out of the sky, poising for an instant upon the island, that

halting place in the heart of the sea, and flying again with restless

cries, sea-birds, the only disturbers of their peace. From the shadow

of the olives, or of the stunted pines whose little cones hung like

black velvet balls in the transparent tracery of the branches against

the sky, they lay idly watching the gulls, and the tiny white clouds

by which the blue was almost always flaked. The population of the

island melted into a harmony with nature like the trees, the rocks and

boulders, or the roving flocks of sheep and herds of goats. Eve and

Julian met with neither curiosity nor surprise; only with acquiescence.

Daily as they passed down the village street, to wander up the

mule-tracks into the interior of Aphros, they were greeted by smiles

and devotion that were as unquestioning and comfortable as the shade

of the trees or the cool splash of the water; and nightly as they

remained alone together in their house, dark, roofed over with stars,

and silent but for the ripple of the fountain, they could believe that

they had been tended by invisible hands in the island over which they

reigned in isolated sovereignty.

They abandoned themselves to the unbelievable romance. He, indeed, had

striven half-heartedly; but she, with all the strength of her nature,

had run gratefully, nay, clamantly, forward, exacting the reward of

her patience, demanding her due. She rejoiced in the casting aside of

shackles which, although she had resolutely ignored them in so far

as was possible, had always irked her by their latent presence. At

last she might gratify to the full her creed of living for and by the

beloved, in a world of beauty where the material was denied admittance.

In such a dream, such an ecstasy of solitude, they gained marvellously

in one another's eyes. She revealed to Julian the full extent of her

difference and singularity. For all their nearness in the human sense,

he received sometimes with a joyful terror the impression that he

was living in the companionship of a changeling, a being strayed by

accident from another plane. The small moralities and tendernesses

of mankind contained no meaning for her. They were burnt away by the

devastating flame of her own ideals. He knew now, irrefutably, that she

had lived her life withdrawn from all but external contact with her

surroundings.

Her sensuality, which betrayed itself even in the selection of the arts

she loved, had marked her out for human passion. He had observed her

instinct to deck herself for his pleasure; he had learnt the fastidious

refinement with which she surrounded her body. He had marked her

further instinct to turn the conduct of their love into a fine art.

She had taught him the value of her reserve, her evasions, and of her

sudden recklessness. He never discovered, and, no less epicurean than

she, never sought to discover, how far her principles were innate,

unconscious, or how far deliberate. They both tacitly esteemed the veil

of some slight mystery to soften the harshness of their self-revelation.

He dared not invoke the aid of unshrinking honesty to apportion the

values between their physical and their mental affinity.

What was it, this bond of flesh? so material, yet so imperative, so

compelling, as to become almost a spiritual, not a bodily, necessity?

so transitory, yet so recurrent? dying down like a flame, to revive

again? so unimportant, so grossly commonplace, yet creating so close

and tremulous an intimacy? this magic that drew together their hands

like fluttering butterflies in the hours of sunlight, and linked them

in the abandonment of mastery and surrender in the hours of night? that

swept aside the careful training, individual and hereditary, replacing

pride by another pride? this unique and mutual secret? this fallacious

yet fundamental and dominating bond? this force, hurling them together

with such cosmic power that within the circle of frail human entity

rushed furiously the tempest of an inexorable law of nature?

They had no tenderness for one another. Such tenderness as might have

crept into the relationship they collaborated in destroying, choosing

to dwell in the strong clean air of mountain-tops, shunning the

ease of the valleys. Violence was never very far out of sight. They

loved proudly, with a flame that purged all from their love but the

essential, the ideal passion.

'I live with a Mænad,' he said, putting out his hand and bathing his

fingers in her loosened hair.

From the rough shelter of reeds and matting where they idled then among

the terraced vineyards, the festoons of the vines and the bright reds

and yellows of the splay leaves, brilliant against the sun, framed her

consonant grace. The beautiful shadows of lacing vines dappled the

ground, and the quick lizards darted upon the rough terrace walls.

He said, pursuing his thought,--

'You have never the wish of other women--permanency? a house with me?

never the inkling of such a wish?'

'Trammels!' she replied, 'I've always hated possessions.'

He considered her at great length, playing with her hair, fitting his

fingers into its waving thicknesses, putting his cheek against the

softness of her cheek, and laughing.

'My changeling. My nymph,' he said.

She lay silent, her arms folded behind her head, and her eyes on him as

he continued to utter his disconnected sentences.

'Where is the Eve of Herakleion? The mask you wore! I dwelt only upon

your insignificant vanity, and in your pride you made no defence. Most

secret pride! Incredible chastity of mind! Inviolate of soul, to all

alike. Inviolate. Most rare restraint! The expansive vulgarity of the

crowd! My Eve....'

He began again,--

'So rarely, so stainlessly mine. Beyond mortal hopes. You allowed all

to misjudge you, myself included. You smiled, not even wistfully,

lest that betray you, and said nothing. You held yourself withdrawn.

You perfected your superficial life. That profound humour.... I could

not think you shallow--not all your pretence could disguise your

mystery--but, may I be forgiven, I have thought you shallow in all

but mischief. I prophesied for you'--he laughed--'a great career as a

destroyer of men. A great courtesan. But instead I find you a great

lover. _Une grande amoureuse._'

'If that is mischievous,' she said, 'my love for you goes beyond

mischief; it would stop short of no crime.'

He put his face between his hands for a second.

'I believe you; I know it.'

'I understand love in no other way,' she said, sitting up and shaking

her hair out of her eyes; 'I am single-hearted. It is selfish love: I

would die for you, gladly, without a thought, but I would sacrifice my

claim on you to no one and to nothing. It is all-exorbitant. I make

enormous demands. I must have you exclusively for myself.'

He teased her,--

'You refuse to marry me.'

She was serious.

'Freedom, Julian! romance! The world before us, to roam at will; fairs

to dance at; strange people to consort with, to see the smile in their

eyes, and the tolerant "Lovers!" forming on their lips. To tweak

the nose of Propriety, to snatch away the chair on which she would

sit down! Who in their senses would harness the divine courser to a

mail-cart?'

She seemed to him lit by an inner radiance, that shone through her eyes

and glowed richly in her smile.

'Vagabond!' he said. 'Is life to be one long carnival?'

'And one long honesty. I'll own you before the world--and court its

disapproval. I'll release you--no, I'll leave you--when you tire of

me. I wouldn't clip love's golden wings. I wouldn't irk you with

promises, blackmail you into perjury, wring from you an oath we both

should know was made only to be broken. We'll leave that to middle-age.

Middle-age--I have been told there is such a thing? Sometimes it is

fat, sometimes it is wan, surely it is always dreary! It may be wise

and successful and contented. Sometimes, I'm told, it even loves. We

are young. Youth!' she said, sinking her voice, 'the winged and the

divine.'

When he talked to her about the Islands, she did not listen, although

she dared not check him. He talked, striving to interest her, to fire

her enthusiasm. He talked, with his eyes always upon the sea, since

some obscure instinct warned him not to keep them bent upon her face;

sometimes they were amongst the vines, which in the glow of their

September bronze and amber resembled the wine flowing from their

fruits, and from here the sea shimmered, crudely and cruelly blue

between those flaming leaves, undulating into smooth, nacreous folds;

sometimes they were amongst the rocks on the lower levels, on a windier

day, when white crests spurted from the waves, and the foam broke with

a lacy violence against the island at the edge of the green shallows;

and sometimes, after dusk, they climbed to the olive terraces beneath

the moon that rose through the trees in a world strangely gray and

silver, strangely and contrastingly deprived of colour. He talked,

lying on the ground, with his hands pressed close against the soil

of Aphros. Its contact gave him the courage he needed.... He talked

doggedly; in the first week with the fire of inspiration, after that

with the perseverance of loyalty. These monologues ended always in the

same way. He would bring his glance from the sea to her face, would

break off his phrase in the middle, and, coming suddenly to her, would

cover her hair, her throat, her mouth, with kisses. Then she would turn

gladly and luxuriously towards him, curving in his arms, and presently

the grace of her murmured speech would again bewitch him, until upon

her lips he forgot the plea of Aphros.

There were times when he struggled to escape her, his physical and

mental activity rebelling against the subjection in which she held

him. He protested that the affairs of the Islands claimed him; that

Herakleion had granted but a month for negotiations; precautions must

be taken, and the scheme of government amplified and consolidated.

Then the angry look came over her face, and all the bitterness of her

resentment broke loose. Having captured him, much of her precocious

wisdom seemed to have abandoned her.

'I have waited for you ten years, yet you want to leave me. Do I mean

less to you than the Islands? I wish the Islands were at the bottom of

the sea instead of on the top of it.'

'Be careful, Eve.'

'I resent everything which takes you from me,' she said recklessly.

Another time she cried, murky with passion,--

'Always these councils with Tsigaridis and the rest! always these

secret messages passing between you and Kato! Give me that letter.'

He refused, shredding Kato's letter and scattering the pieces into the

sea.

'What secrets have you with Kato, that you must keep from me?'

'They would have no interest for you,' he replied, remembering that she

was untrustworthy--that canker in his confidence.

The breeze fanned slightly up the creek where they were lying on the

sand under the shadow of a pine, and out in the dazzling sea a porpoise

leapt, turning its slow black curve in the water. The heat simmered

over the rocks.

'We share our love,' he said morosely, 'but no other aspect of life.

The Islands are nothing to you. An obstacle, not a link.' It was a

truth that he rarely confronted.

'You are wrong: a background, a setting for you, which I appreciate.'

'You appreciate the picturesque. I know. You are an artist in

appreciation of the suitable stage-setting. But as for the rest....' he

made a gesture full of sarcasm and renunciation.

'Give me up, Julian, and all my shortcomings. I have always told you I

had but one virtue. I am the first to admit the insufficiency of its

claim. Give yourself wholly to your Islands. Let me go.' She spoke

sadly, as though conscious of her own irremediable difference and

perversity.

'Yet you yourself--what were your words?--said you believed in me; you

even wrote to me, I remember still, "conquer, shatter, demolish!" But I

must always struggle against you, against your obstructions. What is it

you want? Liberty and irresponsibility, to an insatiable degree!'

'Because I love you insatiably.'

'You are too unreasonable sometimes' ('Reason!' she interrupted with

scorn, 'what has reason got to do with love?') 'you are unreasonable to

grudge me every moment I spend away from you. Won't you realise that I

am responsible for five thousand lives? You must let me go now; only

for an hour. I promise to come back to you in an hour.'

'Are you tired of me already?'

'Eve....'

'When we were in Herakleion, you were always saying you must go to

Kato; now you are always going to some council; am I never to have you

to myself?'

'I will go only for an hour. I _must_ go, Eve, my darling.'

'Stay with me, Julian. I'll kiss you. I'll tell you a story.' She

stretched out her hands. He shook his head, laughing, and ran off in

the direction of the village.

When he returned, she refused to speak to him.

But at other times they grew marvellously close, passing hours and

days in unbroken union, until the very fact of their two separate

personalities became an exasperation. Then, silent as two souls

tortured, before a furnace, they struggled for the expression that ever

eludes; the complete, the satisfying expression that shall lay bare one

soul to another soul, but that, ever failing, mockingly preserves the

unwanted boon of essential mystery.