The rattling of chains awoke Diana. She sprang out of bed, and as
she opened the port-hole she saw land, flat stones lapped by gentle
waves, a few bushes, the whole lit up with the first shafts of the
rising sun. On deck she found there was little more to see, save a
hillock, a sun-kissed beach, a few cottages, and a couple of dozen
fisherfolk who had never seen any other vessel than their own cobles
putting into the bay.
It was the island of Leucas that lay before them. Scherer had hunted
out this little place, for his friends and he himself wished to avoid
Corfu and considered Cephalonia too big. On this particular voyage
they none of them wished to run up against acquaintances or strangers
whom they might, as in a dream, talk with for one forenoon. Ithaca,
which had been Scherer's first choice, had been turned down by the
rest of the company. Even more than Syracuse did the place smack of
archæological research.
"Good morning! Is this wild enough for you?" called Scherer from the
other end of the deck, as Diana appeared up the companion. "The
natives here don't even ask for harbour dues!"
"And they catch fish, and milk goats, and our Father who is in heaven
provides for their needs," she called back.
"You've got out of bed in biblical vein," said Scherer as he shook
hands.
"Say rather in a pagan mood. For this place is rich and lonesome,
and within an hour the sun will be burning hot and we shall be
walking upon Greek ivy."
"It was here that Dorpfeld sought Ithaca."
"I don't want to hear about that. Ithaca is where I choose it shall
be!"
"You are talking like Franklin."
"For today, his way of speaking is the right one! Are we going
ashore?"
Diana pointed to a boat that was drawn up alongside.
"Yes. And, I say, what about going really ashore?" retorted Scherer
meaningly.
"What's your idea?" she asked.
"Well, since I've caught you alone thus early, why not go to Patras?"
They were standing near the gangway which was still shaking from the
heavy tread of the captain who had just left the yacht to go ashore.
Such a question, the proposal that they two should do something apart
from the others, had never been mooted before. Both rather dreaded
the possibility. Patras spelled Athens. Athens was full of certain
joint memories that needed careful handling.
Diana said:
"Patras is hardly worth a visit, and it's too late in the year for
Athens. Agreed? Besides one might get involved in the Balkan
imbroglio and the yacht captured as a prize! Wouldn't you prefer
sailing northward?"
"Really northward?" he asked with a smile, for he knew her weakness
for Venice.
She laughed. Then tossing her head defiantly, she said:
"One should always avoid the scenes of former happenings, you
know--especially if one holds the past in contempt."
Her words were only meant to express her vivid joy of the
moment--like a bugle summoning up the morning. But for Scherer they
seemed a disavowal of the past, knowing as he did her faith in the
mutations of the moment. He looked at her steadily, as if to fix her
words upon his retina. She returned his gaze unflinchingly,
combative and audacious, until he lowered his eyes and continued
unruffled:
"It's to be Venice, then; and after that we'll skirt the coast. Is
that your idea? The plan suits me very well, for I should dearly
like a chat with Ricci, who is doing propaganda in Italy on behalf of
our views. I may learn something useful. If only our captain
doesn't fall in love!"
"I'd willingly put temptation in his way for the sake of Venice," she
laughed. "But I'm not his type."
"Highly improbable! What you really mean is that he is not a type
that appeals to you."
"That's neither here nor there, if one has an end in view."
She spoke with the deliberate coldness she occasionally affected when
she wished to mislead even those whom she most trusted.
Scherer did not answer. He was pondering her words. "An end in
view? What would be the upshot?"
An hour later they were all being pulled ashore. The silence that
brooded over the island, the absence of any sights, the speedy growth
of the sun's power, and above all the estrangement which had arisen
between Eduard and Kyril since the events of the previous evening,
made the little company unusually taciturn. Scherer contemplated
Diana from a new angle, and was absorbed in his own thoughts; Eduard
did not wish to be with Diana while Kyril was about; Diana had no
desire to speak to any one; even Franklin seemed strangely glum since
last night.
Wilhelm, alone, was cheerful. He felt more at home on land than at
sea, especially when the country was wild and the weather hot. He
had been walking for some time at Diana's side, admiring the flowers,
the hills, and the tide. Gradually he felt that he had experienced
all this before; the landscape and, indeed, the whole excursion was
familiar. Such a feeling of reliving past events was one this dreamy
poet's nature was accustomed to, and he was never taken aback when
things or persons unexpectedly appeared as old friends or as the
realization of a dream. The party broke up into groups, rambling
whithersoever fancy led: Wilhelm's mood became more and more joyous.
He walked along at Diana's side, absorbed in his dreams, the
incarnation of youth.
"There does not seem to be any way through up there," Scherer called
after the pair.
"All the better," cried Diana, waving her hand. "We'll probably
discover a temple!"
"As you will," shouted Scherer from below. "Only I beg you to be
aboard again at one."
He invited the remainder of the little band to follow him along a
more beaten path which wound away to the right, mounting the cliff,
and overlooking the bay. Absentmindedly, the three men followed
where Scherer led, not one of them much caring whither they went.
Scherer proved right and Diana came to what she had hoped. The track
vanished amid a tangle of broom, and she felt thoroughly in her
element as she beat a passage for herself through the thicket,
Wilhelm following in her wake. Now, at last, she could throw off the
burden of thought with which she had been oppressed since her talk
with Scherer early that morning.
The broom grew to a man's height in this spot, and its yellow plumes
waved aloft in the golden light of the early day. At times the shrub
attained the proportions of a tree, and scattered blossoms with
profusion as if they were a tropical rain. It was difficult to find
a foothold among the thick growth of ivy which covered the ground, a
carpet of damp green flecked with the gold of fallen petals. Gnarled
fig trees spread their heavy leafage abroad, while myrtles in full
blossom formed cascades among the ivy-mantled crags. The prickly
fronds of the cactus stuck their grey-green fingers in the air, and
here and there one of the plants flaunted the beauty of red buds;
violet agave flowers, like thorny fountains, inhaled the light and
the warm sunshine with avidity, profiting by every instant of their
short-lived glory to nourish the fruit of their blossoming time; and
mother earth in her green gown, lying amid a welter of sword-shaped
leaves, was already parched from the boiling noonday suns. From a
medley of mosses and weeds the delicate stems of olive trees had
sprung up, but, affrighted by the rough caresses of the sea winds,
they had bowed their heads to earth again. In the general hum of
insect and animal life, sounds differentiated themselves so that one
could distinguish the rustle of lizards amid leaves, the slithery
movement of unseen snakes avoiding the tread of a human foot and yet
seemingly on the alert to follow the wayfarer; while, dominating all,
came the deep bourdon of the humble bees, and the shrill chirp of the
crickets. The hot air was heavy with the scent of honey and parched
blossoms, and it was a labour to lift the foot to a higher level on
the sweltering hill-side, where the tall, beaker-shaped ferns grew
luxuriantly and the stiff stems of the orchis thrust their purple
buds amid the green, where the cherry-laurel attained undreamed of
heights, displaying its cool leaves to the ardent sun and reflecting
the light in the thousand facets of its sombre depths.
Now the sea was again visible, spreading its calm and polished
surface beneath the radiant sky, and Diana, catching sight of it, let
herself slide to the ground amid the tangle of golden broom, and
gazed her fill, breast high among the blossoms. She leaned upon her
elbows, her chin cupped in her hands, her eyes fixed upon the distant
blue, looking for all the world like a sentry awaiting the arrival of
a ship. Thus she lay amid the yellow wilderness, a slender figure in
her simple white frock, her wide-brimmed hat flung negligently at her
side, absorbed in contemplation of the dazzling waters. Wilhelm, who
had discarded his coat and his cap, sat at a little distance from
her. He had followed her silently, using his stick and his hands to
clear a path for himself. Occasionally he had sprung forward in
advance of her, holding branches aside for her passage; then again he
would fall to the rear, seeking an easier way.
"You are a shepherdess," said he, his head cocked to one side. "When
you talk, I can hardly ever understand, since you are too clever for
me. But as you are now, I can understand you very well, just as I
used to understand my collie, who was stolen from me last autumn."
He spoke very softly, a note of supplication in his voice.
"How gentle a tone, how mute and humble his affection," thought
Diana, a smile hovering about her lips. "He hums like one of those
great hairy bees, and he, too, is wishing to find honey."
"None of the other men are near," continued Wilhelm, cuddling down
beside her, "and I feel sure you will allow me to kiss your hand--but
I want to kiss it here, quite high up."
Diana laughed.
"You are but a shepherd lad," she said, "and I'll let you kiss me
wherever you please."
Wilhelm bent forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
"Ah, Diana, you are a goddess taking your ease among the broom, and
you think the shepherd does not recognize you for what you are. But
he knows, he recognizes you," and he leaned over her as she lay.
"By what sign do you recognize me, Wilhelm?"
"By your knees," he said roguishly. "Atalanta did not wear
stockings, you know!"
She pulled her skirt down.
"Did you like Atalanta?"
"So greatly that I could only gaze and gaze at her, and forget to
fall in love with you."
"But I'm in love with you, Wilhelm!"
"Yes, I know; but I make very cautious advances as you see..."
He slipped his head on to her breast and caressed her knees.
"You are so gentle and so kindly, Wilhelm, and you taste like
strawberries."
"You are the most beautiful of women, Diana, and Wilhelm is the
happiest of mortals," and he quietly began to unfasten her dress....
They were startled from an infinitude of slumbrous joy by a sound of
crackling nearby, and sprang apart with the frightened shock of
lovers surprised by an alien third. But their alarm soon changed to
laughter, for the intruder was only a he-goat who was no less
startled at finding human stragglers in his haunts than they had been
by his intrusion.
"The very creature himself," cried Diana, trying to seize the beast
by the horns, "the Dionysian animal arousing us from a Pan-like
lethargy. It is just as well that he invaded our sanctum, for
otherwise we'd have overslept ourselves, been late for lunch, might
even have been left behind and condemned for ever to live on Leucas
isle!"
"Would that not have been paradise, indeed? What might I not achieve
on Leucas, and you?"
She laughed, glancing up at him shyly from under her lids, as she
said:
"I'd make myself a rough canoe..."
"To live in?"
She flung her arms about him and kissed him precipitately, laughing,
and looking straight into his eyes.
"No, no! To sail in, to make for Corfu, under cover of night, while
you were fast asleep in the cave of Telemachus. Once arrived at
Corfu, I'd board a Lloyd steamer and voyage to Rio or to the moon."
Lighter of step than during the upward climb, fleeing from the
heights, with the springy gait of a young shepherdess, Diana sped
down the hillside, along the path they had beaten, humming softly to
herself, until she reached the road and the shore.
The thoughts of the four men who had taken the easier way were
concentrated on the person of Diana, during the time that she herself
was living a genuine pastoral with the fifth.
As chance would have it, Eduard and Kyril walked side by side along
the narrow path. They were silent. Their discovery had aroused in
them a sense of hostility: the chance circumstances which had brought
them together, seemed to them now, since the previous evening, to
have imposed indissoluble and fateful ties; at the same time they
both felt that henceforward Diana's relationship towards them would
be a more intimate one. This conviction, for the first time,
awakened a sense of unwarranted jealousy between the two men, a
feeling which served in the case of each to accentuate their
inclination towards the lady.
Kyril, however, with his instinctive and deliberately fostered animus
against persons of high station, was inclined to rationalize his
dislike for the man as contempt for the prince; whereas the latter,
being set upon freeing himself from prejudice, did his utmost to draw
a clear distinction between Kyril the rival and Kyril the man of
ideas. It was Eduard, therefore, who broke the long silence.
"Rather an ominous field of research, astrology, don't you think,
Doctor? If one believes in it, one has misgivings, and if one does
not believe in it, one has nevertheless a feeling of resentment."
"Just as one has with human beings," responded Kyril gloomily, and
with so audible a hint that he wished for the silence to continue,
that the prince had plenty of time wherein to ruminate as to whether
his neighbour believed in Diana or mistrusted her.
Scherer and Franklin, following the two younger men, had lapsed from
the cheerful mood they had begun the day with. Now they were in a
critical vein, from which neither the sunshine nor the sea could
release them. They had lost their equanimity. Franklin, who had
neither in earlier days nor now looked upon Diana with the eyes of a
lover, had felt all along a little out of the picture as he watched
her relations with the little circle of friends; since the events of
last night, however, this vague feeling had become more tangible and
he actually fancied she regarded him with contumely. It seemed to
him that as poet and as one who prided himself on his knowledge of
women, Diana might treat him in less daughterly a fashion, though it
was, he had to admit, he himself who had encouraged this attitude in
her. Now, quite suddenly, although in his quiet way he had enjoyed
the voyage, learning and observing a new kind of life, he felt that
what remained to him of youth had forcibly been wrenched away from
him. Above all, his suspicions were aroused in regard to Scherer,
whose relationship to Diana he had never wholly understood, and whose
unwonted buoyancy this morning, in spite of the veneer of worldliness
with which the financier masked his feelings, made Franklin more
alert than usual.
For since Diana had spoken to him that morning Scherer had been the
prey of an inner turmoil; possibilities of all kinds rose in his mind
and were rejected, and it seemed to him that of all men Franklin was
the one who could inform him as to certain happenings of her youth.
Both men had feelers out; both were silent. Scherer waited till
Franklin spoke.
"Have you known the young people long?"
"Those two young men ahead of us?" returned Scherer, deliberately
misunderstanding Franklin's inquiry.
"Prince Eduard and the girl."
Franklin invariably referred to Diana thus.
"Oh," answered Scherer, "I met the prince in Turkey some time ago,
but I did not make Fräulein de Wassilko's acquaintance till
considerably later."
"Well, what about the prince? And suppose she takes up with the
other...?"
Scherer assumed an air of absolute innocence.
"She must have had nothing but a platonic friendship with him in
those days..."
"Platonic? Can she keep that up indefinitely?" exclaimed Franklin.
Scherer smiled.
"You've known her much longer than I have."
"Yes, long ago," rejoined Franklin in a tone of voice as if he were
referring to a lost paradise. "The girl was observant and wise in
those days. Now--she seems to me to be rather more a woman made for
love."
"Since she has been living and working so closely in touch with me, I
have found her far more maidenly than most people deem she could
possibly be after such an adventure."
"Outwardly, perhaps, Herr Scherer. But inwardly? The cup is filled
with blissful delight."
Franklin spoke the last words so loud, tossing them as it were into
the air in his rhapsodic way, that they floated as far as Eduard's
and Kyril's ears, whereupon the two young men simultaneously turned
right about. Scherer, secretly amused, and emboldened by the turn
the conversation had taken, wished to give the subject a more
conventional twist, so he called to the two who had taken the lead on
the path:
"You are missing the best sonnet Herr Franklin has ever composed. He
wrote it years ago, taking our huntress as subject, when she was
still a priestess."
"May one ask for it to be repeated?" asked Eduard, shaking off the
spell that had held him, and falling into line with the elder couple.
"Herr Scherer is the poet this time," protested Franklin, "not I."
"Wares acquire value through rarity," said Eduard mockingly.
"Let's reckon up which of us has burned the greater number of poems,
Prince," answered Scherer.
"I never burned any. The few I composed I made into paper boats and
set them adrift on the pond in our park at home."
They were by now in merrier mood, and gave themselves up to
good-humoured banter.
All, save the Russian, who continued on his way ahead of them, alone
and sullen, in the scorching noontide glare.
An hour later the whole party met at lunch on the yacht. The Russian
was very uneasy, and, since the prince felt himself to be in rather
less serious plight, he assumed the task of finding out how Diana had
spent the morning, a matter about which both men were extremely
inquisitive.
"I expect you have added to your academic laurels this morning by
increasing our knowledge of Homeric times--excavations I mean."
She was determined not to give herself away, so she took refuge in a
lie.
"We really did discover something, Wilhelm and I. Higher up, soon
after we had left you, a little farther inland, we came upon an olive
tree under which, covered with ivy, we saw two stones. On closer
inspection they proved to be pieces of a truncated column, late
epoch, might even be Roman. But, Wilhelm, you know about these
things better than I for you have studied the history of art."
Wilhelm was nonplussed, not so much by her powers of invention in
order to shield their secret, as by the calm way in which she
appealed to him.
"I think they are called Roman drums," he said diffidently, "but for
the moment I want to give my attention to this excellent fish."
The Russian looked inquiringly at the speaker and then turned his
eyes upon Diana, while the prince cast a meaning glance at Kyril and
Scherer. Immediately Wilhelm, who had so recently deemed himself the
favoured one in relation to this much-courted woman, assured that he
alone of all on board had enjoyed the favour of her kisses, felt
confused, and poverty stricken, and banished from her sight.
As the day was fading, Diana stood alone on the deck. The island was
left far behind, its hills rising faint and dreamlike out of the sea.
Diana gazed over the waters, absorbed in reverie. "The hand of the
past has lain heavy upon me today," she mused. "Scherer, always on
the lookout for a wife ... he's missed his chances ... Wilhelm finds
a shepherdess ... as that handsome Scottish lad did so many years
ago... And what of this taciturn, amiable prince? Is it not
dangerous for us to let the favourable moment slip through our
fingers? Why does he hesitate?"
A shadow climbed up the companion ladder. Wilhelm stood beside her.
"Diana," he whispered, a caressing note in his voice.
"Good evening," she answered in a louder key.
"Are you happy?"
"Is it not lovely?"
"What?" asked Wilhelm, at a loss to know what she was referring to.
"The sea! And that we are making for Venice!"