THE END OF OLIVE ISLAND
THE great sea-dragon of the changing colours that wriggles round the
world like a chameleon, was pale green as it washed on Pebblewick, but
strong blue where it broke on the Ionian Isles. One of the innumerable
islets, hardly more than a flat white rock in the azure expanse, was
celebrated as the Isle of Olives; not because it was rich in such
vegetation, but because, by some freak of soil or climate, two or three
little olives grew there to an unparalleled height. Even in the full
heat of the South it is very unusual for an olive tree to grow any
taller than a small pear tree; but the three olives that stood up as
signals on this sterile place might well be mistaken, except for the
shape, for moderate sized pines or larches of the north. It was also
connected with some ancient Greek legend about Pallas the patroness of
the olive; for all that sea was alive with the first fairyland of
Hellas; and from the platform of marble under the olive trees could be
seen the grey outline of Ithaca.
On the island and under the trees was a table set in the open air and
covered with papers and inkstands. At the table were sitting four men,
two in uniform and two in plain black clothes. Aides-de-camps, equerries
and such persons stood in a group in the background; and behind them a
string of two or three silent battle-ships lay along the sea. For peace
was being given to Europe.
There had just come to an end the long agony of one of the many
unsuccessful efforts to break the strength of Turkey and save the small
Christian tribes. There had been many other such meetings in the later
phases of the matter as, one after another, the smaller nations gave up
the struggle, or the greater nations came in to coerce them. But the
interested parties had now dwindled to these four. For the Powers of
Europe being entirely agreed on the necessity for peace on a Turkish
basis, were content to leave the last negotiations to England and
Germany, who could be trusted to enforce it; there was a representative
of the Sultan, of course; and there was a representative of the only
enemy of the Sultan who had not hitherto come to terms.
For one tiny power had alone carried on the war month after month, and
with a tenacity and temporary success that was a new nine-days marvel
every morning. An obscure and scarcely recognized prince calling himself
the King of Ithaca had filled the Eastern Mediterranean with exploits
that were not unworthy of the audacious parallel that the name of his
island suggested. Poets could not help asking if it were Odysseus come
again; patriotic Greeks, even if they themselves had been forced to lay
down their arms, could not help feeling curious as to what Greek race or
name was boasted by the new and heroic royal house. It was, therefore,
with some amusement that the world at last discovered that the
descendant of Ulysses was a cheeky Irish adventurer named Patrick
Dalroy; who had once been in the English Navy, had got into a quarrel
through his Fenian sympathies and resigned his commission. Since then he
had seen many adventures in many uniforms; and always got himself or
some one else into hot water with an extraordinary mixture of cynicism
and quixotry. In his fantastic little kingdom, of course, he had been
his own General, his own Admiral, his own Foreign Secretary and his own
Ambassador; but he was always careful to follow the wishes of his people
in the essentials of peace and war; and it was at their direction that
he had come to lay down his sword at last. Besides his professional
skill, he was chiefly famous for his enormous bodily strength and
stature. It is the custom in newspapers nowadays to say that mere
barbaric muscular power is valueless in modern military actions, but
this view may be as much exaggerated as its opposite. In such wars as
these of the Near East, where whole populations are slightly armed and
personal assault is common, a leader who can defend his head often has a
real advantage; and it is not true, even in a general way, that strength
is of no use. This was admitted by Lord Ivywood, the English Minister,
who was pointing out in detail to King Patrick the hopeless superiority
of the light pattern of Turkish field gun; and the King of Ithaca,
remarking that he was quite convinced, said he would take it with him,
and ran away with it under his arm. It would be conceded by the greatest
of the Turkish warriors, the terrifying Oman Pasha, equally famous for
his courage in war and his cruelty in peace; but who carried on his brow
a scar from Patrick’s sword, taken after three hours’ mortal combat—and
taken without spite or shame, be it said, for the Turk is always at his
best in that game. Nor would the quality be doubted by Mr. Hart, a
financial friend of the German Minister, whom Patrick Dalroy, after
asking him which of his front windows he would prefer to be thrown into,
threw into his bedroom window on the first floor with so considerate an
exactitude that he alighted on the bed, where he was in a position to
receive any medical attention. But, when all is said, one muscular Irish
gentleman on an island cannot fight all Europe for ever, and he came,
with a kind of gloomy good humour, to offer the terms now dictated to
him by his adopted country. He could not even knock all the diplomatists
down (for which he possessed both the power and the inclination), for he
realised, with the juster part of his mind, that they were only obeying
orders, as he was. So he sat heavily and sleepily at the little table,
in the green and white uniform of the Navy of Ithaca (invented by
himself); a big bull of a man, monstrously young for his size, with a
bull neck and two blue bull’s eyes for eyes, and red hair rising so
steadily off his scalp that it looked as if his head had caught fire: as
some said it had.
The most dominant person present was the great Oman Pasha himself, with
his strong face starved by the asceticism of war, his hair and mustache
seeming rather blasted with lightning than blanched with age; a red fez
on his head, and between the red fez and mustache, a scar at which the
King of Ithaca did not look. His eyes had an awful lack of expression.
Lord Ivywood, the English Minister, was probably the handsomest man in
England, save that he was almost colourless both in hair and complexion.
Against that blue marble sea he might almost have been one of its old
marble statues that are faultless in line but show nothing but shades of
grey or white. It seemed a mere matter of the luck of lighting whether
his hair looked dull silver or pale brown; and his splendid mask never
changed in colour or expression. He was one of the last of the old
Parliamentary orators; and yet he was probably a comparatively young
man; he could make anything he had to mention blossom into verbal
beauty; yet his face remained dead while his lips were alive. He had
little old-fashioned ways, as out of old Parliaments; for instance, he
would always stand up, as in a senate, to speak to those three other
men, alone on a rock in the ocean.
In all this he perhaps appeared more personal in contrast to the man
sitting next to him, who never spoke at all but whose face seemed to
speak for him. He was Dr. Gluck, the German Minister, whose face had
nothing German about it; neither the German vision nor the German sleep.
His face was as vivid as a highly coloured photograph and altered like a
cinema: but his scarlet lips never moved in speech. His almond eyes
seemed to shine with all the shifting fires of the opal; his small,
curled black mustache seemed sometimes almost to hoist itself afresh,
like a live, black snake; but there came from him no sound. He put a
paper in front of Lord Ivywood. Lord Ivywood took a pair of eyeglasses
to read it, and looked ten years older by the act.
It was merely a statement of agenda; of the few last things to be
settled at this last conference. The first item ran:
“The Ithacan Ambassador asks that the girls taken to harems after the
capture of Pylos be restored to their families. This cannot be granted.”
Lord Ivywood rose. The mere beauty of his voice startled everyone who
had not heard it before.
“Your Excellencies and gentlemen,” he said, “a statement to whose policy
I by no means assent, but to whose historic status I could not
conceivably aspire, has familiarised you with a phrase about peace with
honour. But when we have to celebrate a peace between such historic
soldiers as Oman Pasha and His Majesty the King of Ithaca, I think we
may say that it is peace with glory.”
He paused for half an instant; yet even the silence of sea and rock
seemed full of multitudinous applause, so perfectly had the words been
spoken.
“I think there is but one thought among us, whatever our many just
objections through these long and harassing months of negotiations—I
think there is but one thought now. That the peace may be as full as the
war—that the peace may be as fearless as the war.”
Once more he paused an instant; and felt a phantom clapping, as it were,
not from the hands but the heads of the men. He went on.
“If we are to leave off fighting, we may surely leave off haggling. A
statute of limitations or, if you will, an amnesty, is surely proper
when so sublime a peace seals so sublime a struggle. And if there be
anything in which an old diplomatist may advise you, I would most
strongly say this: that there should be no new disturbance of whatever
amicable or domestic ties have been formed during this disturbed time. I
will admit I am sufficiently old-fashioned to think any interference
with the interior life of the family a precedent of no little peril. Nor
will I be so illiberal as not to extend to the ancient customs of Islam
what I would extend to the ancient customs of Christianity. A suggestion
has been brought before us that we should enter into a renewed war of
recrimination as to whether certain women have left their homes with or
without their own consent. I can conceive no controversy more perilous
to begin or more impossible to conclude. I will venture to say that I
express all your thoughts, when I say that, whatever wrongs may have
been wrought on either side, the homes, the marriages, the family
arrangements of this great Ottoman Empire, shall remain as they are
today.”
No one moved except Patrick Dalroy, who put his hand on his sword-hilt
for a moment and looked at them all with bursting eyes; then his hand
fell and he laughed out loud and sudden.
Lord Ivywood took no notice, but picked up the agenda paper again, and
again fitted on the glasses that made him look older. He read the second
item—needless to say, not aloud. The German Minister with the far from
German face, had written this note for him:
“Both Coote and the Bernsteins insist there must be Chinese for the
marble. Greeks cannot be trusted in the quarries just now.”
“But while,” continued Lord Ivywood, “we desire these fundamental
institutions, such as the Moslem family, to remain as they are even at
this moment, we do not assent to social stagnation. Nor do we say for
one moment that the great tradition of Islam is capable alone of
sustaining the necessities of the Near East. But I would seriously ask
your Excellencies, why should we be so vain as to suppose that the only
cure for the Near East is of necessity the Near West? If new ideas are
needed, if new blood is needed, would it not be more natural to appeal
to those most living, those most laborious civilisations which form the
vast reserve of the Orient? Asia in Europe, if my friend Oman Pasha will
allow me the criticism, has hitherto been Asia in arms. May we not yet
see Asia in Europe and yet Asia in peace? These at least are the reasons
which lead me to consent to a scheme of colonisation.”
Patrick Dalroy sprang erect, pulling himself out of his seat by
clutching at an olive-branch above his head. He steadied himself by
putting one hand on the trunk of the tree, and simply stared at them
all. There fell on him the huge helplessness of mere physical power. He
could throw them into the sea; but what good would that do? More men on
the wrong side would be accredited to the diplomatic campaign; and the
only man on the right side would be discredited for anything. He shook
the branching olive tree above him in his fury. But he did not for one
moment disturb Lord Ivywood, who had just read the third item on his
private agenda (“Oman Pasha insists on the destruction of the
vineyards”) and was by this time engaged in a peroration which
afterwards became famous and may be found in many rhetorical text books
and primers. He was well into the middle of it before Dalroy’s rage and
wonder allowed him to follow the words.
“... do we indeed owe nothing,” the diplomatist was saying “to that
gesture of high refusal in which so many centuries ago the great Arabian
mystic put the wine-cup from his lips? Do we owe nothing to the long
vigil of a valiant race, the long fast by which they have testified
against the venomous beauty of the Vine? Ours is an age when men come
more and more to see that the creeds hold treasures for each other, that
each religion has a secret for its neighbour, that faith unto faith
uttereth speech, and church unto church showeth knowledge. If it be
true, and I claim again the indulgence of Oman Pasha when I say I think
it is true, that we of the West have brought some light to Islam in the
matter of the preciousness of peace and of civil order, may we not say
that Islam in answer shall give us peace in a thousand homes, and
encourage us to cut down that curse that has done so much to thwart and
madden the virtues of Western Christendom. Already in my own country the
orgies that made horrible the nights of the noblest families are no
more. Already the legislature takes more and more sweeping action to
deliver the populace from the bondage of the all-destroying drug. Surely
the prophet of Mecca is reaping his harvest; the cession of the disputed
vineyards to the greatest of his champions is of all acts the most
appropriate to this day; to this happy day that may yet deliver the East
from the curse of war and the West from the curse of wine. The gallant
prince who meets us here at last, to offer an olive branch even more
glorious than his sword, may well have our sympathy if he himself views
the cession with some sentimental regret; but I have little doubt that
he also will live to rejoice in it at last. And I would remind you that
it is not the vine alone that has been the sign of the glory of the
South. There is another sacred tree unstained by loose and violent
memories, guiltless of the blood of Pentheus or of Orpheus and the
broken lyre. We shall pass from this place in a little while as all
things pass and perish:
Far called, our navies melt away.
On dune and headland sinks the fire,
And all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.
But so long as sun can shine and soil can nourish, happier men and women
after us shall look on this lovely islet and it shall tell its own
story; for they shall see these three holy olive trees lifted in
everlasting benediction, over the humble spot out of which came the
peace of the world.”
The other two men were staring at Patrick Dalroy; his hand had tightened
on the tree, and a giant billow of effort went over his broad breast. A
small stone jerked itself out of the ground at the foot of the tree as
if it were a grasshopper jumping; and then the coiled roots of the olive
tree rose very slowly out of the earth like the limbs of a dragon
lifting itself from sleep.
“I offer an olive branch,” said the King of Ithaca, totteringly leaning
the loose tree so that its vast shadow, much larger than itself, fell
across the whole council. “An olive branch,” he gasped, “more glorious
than my sword. Also heavier.”
Then he made another effort and tossed it into the sea below.
The German, who was no German, had put up his arm in apprehension when
the shadow fell across him. Now he got up and edged away from the table;
seeing that the wild Irishman was tearing up the second tree. This one
came out more easily; and before he flung it after the first, he stood
with it a moment; looking like a man juggling with a tower.
Lord Ivywood showed more firmness; but he rose in tremendous
remonstrance. Only the Turkish Pasha still sat with blank eyes,
immovable. Dalroy rent out the last tree and hurled it, leaving the
island bare.
“There!” said Dalroy, when the third and last olive had splashed in the
tide. “Now I will go. I have seen something today that is worse than
death: and the name of it is Peace.”
Oman Pasha rose and held out his hand.
“You are right,” he said in French, “and I hope we meet again in the
only life that is a good life. Where are you going now?”
“I am going,” said Dalroy, dreamily, “to ‘The Old Ship.’”
“Do you mean?” asked the Turk, “that you are going back to the warships
of the English King?”
“No,” answered the other, “I am going back to ‘The Old Ship’ that is
behind the apple trees by Pebblewick; where the Ule flows among the
trees. I fear I shall never see you there.”
After an instant’s hesitation he wrung the red hand of the great tyrant
and walked to his boat without a glance at the diplomatists.
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