AFTER smoking a cigar or two, Armitage fell into a doze, from which he tried at first to rouse himself by spasmodic efforts, but reflecting that in any case it must be hours before they could safely approach the gipsy settlement, he allowed himself after a time to yield to the drowsiness that was overpowering him. From this he was roused at last by an anxious voice.
“Lord, where are you? Lord, lord!” and almost simultaneously some one stumbled and fell over him.
Armitage sat up. “Gently, Sotīri, gently! What’s the matter, lad?”
An embarrassed laugh answered him out of the darkness, where Sotīri was presumably picking himself up. “I don’t know, lord; I think I must have been dreaming. I woke up and was frightened to find myself in the forest in the dark, and then I went the wrong way to look for you and could not find you, and I thought you had gone away and left me——”
“To storm the gipsy caves by myself? Hardly. Stand in front of me, boy, while I see what the time is.”
Sotīri obeyed, and Armitage struck a match and looked at his watch. “A quarter past twelve. Better not start for a hour or so, for no one will be awake in the town, and we don’t want to have to wait about when once we have got the child. We will have something more to eat, Sotīri—lighten the basket a little.”
Sotīri laughed again. “I have not eaten nearly all you gave me, lord. I think I must have gone to sleep in the middle. I will go back and finish it.”
“Get another nap, and I will tell you when it is time to start,” Armitage called after him in a low voice, and then moved nearer the edge of the cleft, whence he could look down the gorge, and see the few remaining fires dying out one by one. Here, away from the shadow of the trees, he could just distinguish the time without striking a light, and he sat and shivered, restraining his impatience manfully, until two o’clock. Then he went back to the wood and called Sotīri, who appeared shamefacedly.
“I did not think I could have gone to sleep again, lord, but if it had not been for your voice I believe I should not have waked till morning. Then we may really start now? I have everything ready here.”
From the recesses of his coat he produced two parcels, at which Armitage glanced in surprise. He unfastened one.
“Honey cakes for the bear, lord. They are what he likes better than anything. Holy Nicholas! how Artemisia must have cursed when she found half her batch gone! That was really what made me late in starting—Kalliopé was getting them, you see. And this—” indicating the other parcel—“is meat for the dogs.”
“To keep them quiet, of course—I never thought of that. But then you and Kalliopé have kept me so entirely in the dark as to what we were going to do that I had not much chance. It is a pity she didn’t tell me about the dogs, for we might have sprinkled something on the meat that would send them to sleep.”
“Oh, is there something that will do that?” asked Sotīri in dismay. “I am sorry, lord; I—we did not know.”
“Well, we must hope the meat alone will be enough. Now, before we start, tell me exactly what we are going to do.”
“This is my plan, lord. I will go on first, if you please, my moccasins making little noise on the path, and give the meat to the dogs. You will follow, and when we reach the ledge of rock you will graciously take from me the gun and the coats, so as to leave me quite free. Then I will go into the bear’s den, and fetch the child out.”
“You go into the den alone? Nonsense, I won’t hear of it!”
“Lord, the bear will not mind me. I have the honey cakes for him, and I know the words the gipsies use to bid him be quiet. Kalliopé has told me them all. He may not even wake when I go in, but the noise of your boots would rouse him at once.”
“I don’t like it,” said Armitage reluctantly. “However, I shall be there with the gun, if he turns nasty. Look here, give me the things to carry now, boy; I insist upon it. You must have your hands free to cope with the dogs.”
“As you will, lord,” and they started, Armitage keeping his eyes on Sotīri’s white kilt as a guide. When they had nearly reached the ledge, they heard the uneasy bark of a dog in front, which was answered by a chorus of others, dying down gradually as no further suspicious sound was heard. The boy held up his hand, and crept on alone, Armitage following very slowly and with great caution. Looking along the ledge, he could discern Sotīri surrounded by a horde of curs, which he was feeding with discrimination on choice morsels from his pockets. When the dogs were all occupied, Armitage judged it safe to advance, and they merely favoured him with a snarl as he approached them. Sotīri had left them to their feast, and crept into the dark mouth of the nearest cave. Armitage, waiting in intensest anxiety with his gun cocked, heard a menacing growl, which made him step forward, but a peremptory low voice uttered a word of command, and the clatter of a chain followed as the bear retreated. Then Sotīri hurried out, with something in his arms, and without a word led the way along the ledge, past the other caves, Armitage following.
“You have got him all right?” he ventured to ask, when they were on the descending path once more, and he had uncocked his gun.
“Yes, lord, all right,” with something like a giggle. “I think he is asleep.”
A feeble cry from the burden contradicted this, and Sotīri clasped it closely to his breast, and crooned over it in tender accents, which drew another smile from Armitage. At the foot of the hill the boy turned to skirt the town, instead of passing through it, and Armitage in his mind applauded the wisdom of the course. If the gipsies should discover what had happened, and pursue them in force, they would certainly expect them to take a straight line for the Konak. They plodded on wearily when the expectation of immediate pursuit had passed, and in the faint lightening of the darkness which preceded dawn, Armitage received a shock.
“Sotīri!” he cried, running forward regardless of his load, and grasping the boy’s shoulder, “you have brought away the bear-cub, not the Lord Harold at all!”
Sotīri laughed—a weary little laugh, but one full of amusement. “And yet it is the Lord Harold, lord. Here is a thick bush; you can strike a match safely.”
Standing in the shelter of the thicket, Armitage obeyed. There before his horrified gaze was the furry form of the little bear. But as he looked, Sotīri tilted the upper jaw back like a cap, and exposed Harold’s dark head and blinking blue eyes.
“You don’t mean to say they had the cheek to keep him dressed up like that?” cried Armitage.
“Yes, lord; that was the secret,” said Sotīri demurely.
“Good heavens—Princess Zoe’s child! It’s too disgusting. Now mind, boy, his mother mustn’t see him like this. It would give her an awful shock. We must get hold of Linton somehow, to dress him properly.”
“Why, lord, will she care what he wears, so long as she has him back?” asked the boy. Armitage frowned.
“Of course not, really, but one has a feeling—— You don’t understand, but it’s a horrible idea.”
“Very well, lord, I do not understand. I will see whether I can find Sofia.” The boy spoke so meekly, but with such an undertone of pain, that Armitage had the unreasonable feeling that in some way he had been a brute. He said no more until they came in sight of the Konak, and then he called Sotīri back.
“See here, lad; I have been thinking it’s not necessary to bring Linton into this. Call your cousin instead. The whole credit of getting the child back is due to her, isn’t it? Very well, then; she ought to have the pleasure of giving him back to his mother, and she shall.”
“Thank you, lord,” said Sotīri joyfully. Then his face fell. “You say the whole credit is hers, lord. Don’t you think I helped at all—even when I went into the bear’s den? I was really frightened.”
“I think you are an impudent young rascal, boy,” was the reply, given with much severity. “Even if you were frightened, you ought to be swaggering about now, and pretending you weren’t. You’ll never make a man at this rate—a Greek man, anyhow. And as for trying to do your cousin out of the credit which belongs to her, I tell you it’s a shabby trick. Why, you know what trouble she is in at present, and if you and I, by sinking our share in the business, can help her to get back to her former position, doesn’t she deserve it?”
“You are right, lord. I am a beast,” was the subdued reply, and as Sotīri walked mournfully on ahead, Armitage suffered agonies from suppressed laughter. “I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels,” he said to himself.
Arrived at the gateway of the Konak, Armitage knocked authoritatively, and though the guard on duty refused vehemently at first even to entertain the idea of admitting them before sunrise, he yielded when he heard who was outside. Harold in his furry disguise was wrapped in Sotīri’s kapota, and completely hidden, which excited wild curiosity on the guard’s part as to the results of the expedition. Armitage imposed silence on him by means of a gift, and they hurried across the courtyard to the colonnade outside the unused rooms, where he had spoken to Kalliopé two nights before. Harold was suddenly thrust into his arms, as Sotīri said hastily, “One moment, lord!” then turned back to say with great emphasis, “Since we started, lord, my cousin has been hiding in one of these rooms. So anxious was she for the child’s recovery that she could not bring herself to remain among the servants, but sought refuge here, that I might bring her the news as soon as we returned.”
“Poor thing! she must indeed have been anxious,” said Armitage gravely, and the boy disappeared. When a step was next heard on the stone pavement, it was Kalliopé who approached. She lifted her eyes silently to Armitage’s face, and he saw that there were black circles of fatigue surrounding them which stood out clearly in comparison with the whiteness of her cheeks, but inconsistently enough, he found her more beautiful than even the first day he had seen her. She took his hand and kissed it, lifted Harold from his arms, and was gone. Armitage felt a sudden sense of flatness, an uncertainty as to what ought to be done next, which was disconcerting after the crowding events of the last eighteen hours. Then he surprised himself in a tremendous yawn, and very wisely found his way to his room and went to bed.
He was awakened after what seemed about a minute’s sleep by a vigorous knocking, followed by the unceremonious entrance of Wylie, who burst in, and seizing his hand, shook it with such energy that Armitage cried for mercy.
“My dear good man,” he nursed the released hand ostentatiously, “what in the world is it?”
“Oh, nonsense, don’t try to shirk! We know it’s all owing to you, old man. Kalliopé has been telling us all about it, though we can’t make head or tail of her story. Who is this cousin who went with you? We never heard of him. But what does it signify, when you’ve brought the boy back? I tell you I thought I was dreaming, when I felt a tug at my moustache—something like a tug, too—and heard a little voice saying ‘Da! da!’ but when I opened my eyes there was Zoe with the child in her arms. Old man, you can’t conceive what it is to get him back. Hurry up and dress. Zoe wants to thank you herself. She and Linton and Kalliopé are all on their knees at this moment baby-worshipping, with a shifting audience of women from other parts of the place. I’m going on now to tell Maurice. We can never thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank me at all,” said Armitage. “The whole idea was Kalliopé’s, and she provided in her cousin a highly efficient instrument for carrying it out. I only obeyed orders. By the bye, I hear she was in hiding all day yesterday. Did you find it out?”
“We thought she had slipped through our fingers, of course, and there was a good deal of mutual recrimination among the servants. Where she hid I can’t imagine, for we thought we had hunted everywhere. Well, poor girl, she has heaped coals of fire upon our heads—in a sort of way, for there are a lot of suspicious things about her still. But be quick and get dressed.”
When he was gone, Armitage obeyed, and in due course found his way to the verandah, where Harold, fresh from a most necessary bath, and dressed by the rejoicing Linton in his Sunday frock, was the centre of attraction on his mother’s knee. Zoe looked up with eyes full of tears.
“Oh, we can never, never thank you enough!” she cried. “Harold, give Uncle a kiss and say ‘Ta’ to him for bringing you back.” Harold obeyed solemnly. “I don’t think he looks any worse, except perhaps a little thinner—do you?” she went on anxiously. “Isn’t it horrid that he can never tell us how they treated him, because he will have forgotten all about it when he is able to talk? But I really believe he hasn’t had his face washed all the time he has been gone. Still, if there’s nothing worse than that, we may be most thankful. What is it, Parisi? Breakfast? How can one think of breakfast now? If you really had the fine feelings you expect me to credit you with, you would have put some food unobtrusively on the table over there, and left us to discover it when we remembered we were hungry.”
Parisi smiled respectfully. He was a highly cultured person, having once edited an Athenian newspaper, but he could never see a joke when it was against himself. Having duly acknowledged Zoe’s attempt at wit, he repeated in a soft murmur, “The gracious lady is served,” and stood aside to allow her to pass downstairs.
“Oh dear, I suppose we must go!” groaned Zoe. “But Harold must come, and sit in his high chair beside me. And Janni had better come too, poor little fellow! for he feels himself quite eclipsed. Do you know, he is really most frightfully jealous—after having Linton all to himself, of course. We must all take particular notice of him to-day——”
“If we can, in the presence of this conquering hero,” said Armitage, holding out his arms for Harold. “Let me carry my god-son downstairs, Princess. I see Prince Theophanis is coming across with Wylie to pay his respects, so this youngster is highly honoured.”
“Now do tell me,” began Zoe, when they were seated at breakfast, and Maurice had presented his own and Eirene’s most hearty congratulations, “how you managed it. Oh, and where is this wonderful boy Sotīri? He seems to have turned up just when he was wanted, and disappeared without waiting to be thanked. But I must thank him. I can’t be happy until I have done it. Surely you must know where he is?”
“I’m afraid I am partly to blame for his disappearance,” said Armitage. “It struck me that he was a little inclined to insist on his share in the exploit and belittle his cousin’s, and I let him know that I didn’t think it quite fair. I’m sorry if I hurt his feelings, though, for he did well. What do you think about your cousin, Kalliopé?” he turned to Danaë, whose face was a study as she stood behind Janni’s chair, and spoke in Greek. “Has he run off because I scolded him?”
She responded with eager haste. “Oh no, lord, it is nothing of that kind. He has done what he came for, and is gone. You will never see him again. He would wish you to forget him. To be thanked and praised is a thing he would detest.”
“Then Kalliopé must act as his representative, and take his thanks and praise as well as her own,” said Wylie.
“Yes,” said Zoe. “Kalliopé, what is there that you would really like? You understand that nothing the Lord Glafko and I could do for you would be in the slightest degree the measure of our gratitude, but we should like to give you something tangible at once, which would show the servants what we thought of you.”
The girl’s eyes glowed, then gloomed. “Something that I should really like, lady mine?” she asked breathlessly.
“Yes, whatever you like best,” Zoe assured her. “Don’t be afraid, Kalliopé. Tell me what it is, and if we have not got it here we will send for it at once.” She expected to be asked for a watch and chain, of the showy kind that Artemisia and her like loved to display upon the velvets and satins of their feast-day attire, but Danaë fell upon her knees, and breathed out the desire of her heart in scarcely audible accents.
“Lady—oh, lady mine, if I may indeed have what I should prize most in all the world, let me for this one evening wear European clothes, and eat at your table as if I were a European like yourselves!”
The grotesque nature of the request, and the passion with which it was urged, took Zoe aback. “But, Kalliopé, that is rather a foolish wish, isn’t it?” she asked kindly. “Wouldn’t you rather have something real, that you could keep and show, and take away with you, when you go?”
The girl rose to her feet, her eyes heavy with tears. “I knew it was too much. I have no other wish, lady. Give me what you will.”
“Oh, let her do it, Zoe!” cried Wylie sharply.
“I will bring Eirene to dinner to meet her,” said Maurice.
“Let her do it, Princess,” said Armitage. “She deserves it.”
“Of course you shall do it, Kalliopé, if you really wish it,” said Zoe, her momentary hesitation overborne. “I will lend you one of my gowns—you shall choose whichever you like—and I will do your hair for you myself. I won’t trust even Linton. There! will that please you?”
“Oh, lady mine, you give as a king gives—with both hands full,” cried Danaë, with a half-sob, as she knelt again and laid Zoe’s hand on her head. “Never, never will I forget your goodness to me!” and she burst into tears.
“She is tired out,” said Armitage—rather to Zoe’s surprise when she thought about it afterwards. “Better let her have a good rest, Princess. Must have been pretty wearing—hiding away all yesterday and not knowing whether we should come back successful or not,” he observed to the others, when Zoe had led the sobbing girl out of the room.
No one saw anything more of Kalliopé until the evening, when Linton, divided between gratitude for her achievement and acute disapproval of the method of its reward, woke her that she might choose her gown. To the maid’s indignation and Zoe’s amusement, she picked out unhesitatingly the most magnificent thing in the wardrobe, a Parisian creation of glittering golden tissue which Zoe had worn at the court ball that formed the culminating point of the series of splendid festivities before the departure of the allied fleets from Therma, by which Prince Romanos had signalised his own election and the wedding of his rival’s sister. Linton almost wept when she was bidden to alter the hooks a little to allow for the Greek girl’s classic development of figure, and Zoe was glad she should be spared the further pang of seeing her mistress acting hairdresser to this upstart. But when the thick blue-black locks, still disconcertingly short on one side, were ready for manipulation, Danaë turned suddenly, and took the comb out of Zoe’s hand.
“Lady, I must tell you—perhaps you will not think me worthy of all this honour when you have heard—I have no cousin. It was I who put on boy’s clothes and went with Milordo yesterday to find the Lord Harold.”
“Kalliopé!” Zoe exclaimed in dismay, but the anxiety in the girl’s eyes moved her. “It was very brave of you, and I can only thank you all the more,” she added hastily.
“Then you don’t mind, lady?” with incredulous joy.
“No-o, not for this once. Not that you are to think that I want you to go about in boy’s clothes at other times,” firmly. “You are never to do it again.”
“Not unless it is necessary. I have done it once before—in Strio,” she added quickly. “Lady, did Milordo guess?”
“I really don’t know,” said Zoe. Then, reviewing what had been said at breakfast, she decided in her own mind that he very certainly had guessed. “But if he did, you may be quite sure that no human being will ever hear a word of it from him,” she added.
“Thank you, my lady,” said Danaë soberly, and they turned again to the hairdressing. Presently Linton brought back the gown, and Zoe and she refused to let the girl see herself until the transformation was complete. Then, as Linton wheeled forward the large cheval-glass, there was a simultaneous gasp from the three women. Kalliopé in this guise was superb—there was no other word for it. The masses of dark hair, the alabaster complexion thrown up by the gold of the gown, the splendidly moulded arms and shoulders, made her a matchless picture. Danaë herself was the first to speak.
“Lady, you will let me wear that?” pointing to a great boa of fluffy white ostrich feathers. “I—I am not accustomed——” Zoe threw it round her shoulders, and sighed.
“I shall never dare to wear that gown again, now I have seen how splendid she looks in it,” she said in English, and Linton replied—
“Well, ma’am, I don’t deny I was against it, but this I will say: it would have been a sin and a shame for the girl not to be dressed properly once in her life.”
“It suits you magnificently, Kalliopé,” said Zoe in Greek, as she caught the anxious glance the girl was directing from one to the other. “Now walk about a little, while Linton dresses me, and learn to manage your train.”
“Lady—” Danaë paused to enjoy the effect of her dark head rising out of the creamy feathers—“don’t you think Milordo will want to make a picture of me now?”
“I don’t know,” said Zoe, rather taken aback. “We will ask him, if you like.”
Danaë assented joyfully, and Zoe found her eyes on her continually during the evening, which really went off very well. The difficulty Maurice had found in fulfilling his promise to bring his wife was known only to himself, but since he had argued her from her first flat refusal, through the assertion that the mere request was an insult, to the position that the whole thing was a mad joke, and never to be presumed upon afterwards, he felt he had reason to be satisfied. Having submitted, Eirene made up her mind to do so with a good grace, and if she had known Danaë to be a young princess she could not have treated her more graciously. The girl showed by her behaviour that she had used her eyes to good purpose since her arrival at Klaustra. Her mistakes were wonderfully few, and she repaired or ignored them, as seemed most advisable at the moment, with a natural dignity that left nothing to be desired. Small-talk she was not an adept in, but Armitage found her a promising pupil, and after all, it was not necessary for her to talk—merely to sit and allow herself to be looked at. Nevertheless, he was curiously disconcerted when Zoe came up to him in the drawing-room afterwards, with the stately beauty following her like a shadow.
“Lady Kalliopé wants to know whether you will paint her portrait in this dress?” she said lightly, but the girl’s eyes were tragic with entreaty. Armitage frowned.
“Certainly not. Think of the incongruity!”
“It would please her very much,” Zoe urged.
“You do not like me this evening, lord?” asked Danaë mournfully.
“I like you better in your own dress,” was the stout reply.
“Oh no, lord—not in those common clothes!”
“Just to please her—she has deserved it,” said Zoe.
“Well, look here,” said Armitage in desperation. “May I take this sheet of paper, Princess?” He went to the writing-table, and using the blotter as a sketching-block, drew rapidly for two or three minutes, with swift glances at Danaë. When he handed the paper to Zoe, there were two figures on it, each expressed with the utmost economy of strokes—Danaë in her present dress, all train and long gloves, with a coronet of hair emerging above a fluffy mass of ostrich feathers, and Danaë in her native costume, standing on a cliff looking out to sea, one hand shading her eager eyes, vitality in every line of her form. “Now which of those do you like best?” he asked triumphantly.
“Oh, this one, lord!” was the fervent reply, as Danaë laid her hand affectionately on the one representing her at the moment. Armitage laughed, but not very heartily.
“I am beaten,” he said. “Well, as the Lady Kalliopé pleases.”
“It is really a caricature,” said Zoe, in a vexed tone. “You can hardly see anything of her.”
“No. After all, it is a picture of the gown that is wanted, isn’t it? Why, think; I shall be able to paint the whole thing without the sitter’s being in the room—or even in the neighbourhood.” Armitage did not guess how prophetic the words would seem to him later.
Danaë was satisfied. When she came to Zoe’s room that night to restore her borrowed plumes, she smiled happily as she pulled off her gloves.
“Oh, if only every day were like this evening, lady mine, how good I could be!” she sighed.