IT was a very woe-begone and dishevelled Danaë, not at all like an inspired deliverer, who stumbled ashore on the quay at Therma at the rough bidding of Petros. The passage had been a stormy one, and the island girl, who could have faced a gale without serious discomfort in a fishing-boat, had succumbed hopelessly to the vile odours and eccentric motion of the wretched little steamer that carried her from the neighbouring island of Tortolana, Strio’s nearest link with civilisation, to the capital of her brother’s principality. Either his qualms of conscience, or the possession of uncontrolled authority, had transformed the stolid Petros into a very truculent ruffian—or perhaps it was merely that he had determined to subject his “niece” to a severe test at the outset of their relationship. However this might be, he reviled her with much choice of language whenever he came across her prostrate and suffering form, threatening her with his stick when she roused herself to protest, and when they entered the harbour, locked her up for some hours in an empty cabin while he went on shore to arrange for getting her to “the Lady’s” house. Returning, he summoned her forth with curses—which she divined were drawn from him by some fresh proof of confidence from the master he was plotting to betray—and she followed him meekly through the streets, carrying her modest bundle, while he swaggered ahead, never deigning to cast a glance at her. The new Therma, rebuilt on European methods after its bombardment by the Powers, was a city of enchantment to the little barbarian from Strio, but she durst not let her eyes wander to the tall white houses or the astonishing shops. The swarming crowd of all nationalities that jostled her as she stumbled along, ill and miserable, in the wake of Petros, was simply a collection of moving obstacles, blocking the way to the attainment of her aim, the deliverance of the brother who represented all the romance that had ever touched her life from the spells of the witch-woman. Danaë knew very little about the Powers of Europe, but she was a great authority on witches, like all the women of her island.
Her weary feet had carried her through many wide streets, past the ruined fortifications, now fast becoming overgrown with bushes, and out into a region of villas, set in lofty gardens, all enclosed with high walls, when the sudden apparition of a soldier on guard reminded her of what she had heard on the rampart. The sentry winked at Petros as he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at a gateway in the wall.
“He’s there,” he said. “Told me you’d be coming.”
Petros grunted, and went on to the door, which opened as if by magic. Danaë followed him in, and the door was closed instantly by an old woman behind it. Inside was one of Petros’s fellow-guardsmen, in full Greek costume, in charge of three horses, and Petros joined him immediately, after a perfunctory gesture, suggestive of washing his hands of Danaë, in the direction of the old woman, who sniffed significantly.
“Well, I can’t say very much for your island girls,” she observed, eying the newcomer. “I expected a fine strapping lass who would be some good at work. But it’s not your fault, child,” she added more kindly, “and I daresay you won’t look so bad when you have some decent clothes on. Come and have something to eat before you go before the Lady.”
“Couldn’t I see the Lady first?” asked Danaë meekly, anxious to get the first interview over.
“Certainly not,” was the decisive reply. “Come this way, and do as you’re told.” Danaë was whirled along a path between the bushes, and into a large disorderly kitchen, where another old woman was arranging afternoon tea on a tray with the utmost nicety, in the midst of onions, wine-jars, oil-flasks, raw meat and other unusual accompaniments. “This young person thinks she can give orders here, Despina,” remarked the guide.
Despina looked up from her tray. “Then the sooner she learns to the contrary the better,” she observed succinctly, carrying it off.
“Yes, indeed,” said the other old woman, setting food before Danaë. “Everyone that comes inside these walls may as well know that whatever the Lady says, that has to be done, whether it’s having English tea in the middle of the afternoon, or dressing the blessed child like a grown-up person, without any swathings. They may call her Princess outside or not, as they like, but she is Princess here.”
“But why should she be called Princess?” ventured Danaë, looking up from her bread and cheese.
“What else should the Prince’s wife be called, girl?”
“Petros—my uncle—always calls her the Lady.”
“And so she is the Lady, but she’s the Princess too. Didn’t I myself see her married to him at Bashi Konak, with the Princesses of Dardania looking on?”
“But I thought she was a Latin?” said Danaë, aghast.
“So she is, I suppose, and that’s why the wedding was kept private. But Latin or not, a marriage is a marriage, and when it’s acknowledged, the Princess will remember those who have been faithful to her. Not that I would tell you all this if there was any chance of your going and talking about it outside, girl,” she added hastily, as Despina returned, “but there isn’t. Once you’re here, you stay here.”
“But will the marriage always be kept private?”
“Of course not,” said Despina, with considerable irritation. “How could it, with the young Prince growing up, and all? And the sooner his Highness acknowledges it the better, say I.”
“And so anyone would say,” agreed the other old woman. “But how it’s to be done now, Despina, is more than you or I can tell, wise as you may think yourself. It seems to me that the Lady has missed her chance.”
“Missed her chance?” cried Despina angrily. “She’s missed three chances, and you know it as well as I do, Mariora. She missed one when she let him marry her privately, instead of standing out for her rights, and she missed the second that night she came to me all trembling to say he swore he could not live without her, and would she not come to Therma secretly until he could safely acknowledge the marriage? That was her worst mistake, but she might have redeemed it when the child was born, and she refused, even when I begged of her to do it. ‘I will not stoop to extort recognition from my husband, if my entreaties cannot avail, my Despina,’ she said, and stuck to it. And entreaties! you can see she tries them every time he comes, and what’s the good? She’s tiring him out, she is.”
Danaë’s eyes were aflame with indignation, not against her brother, but the Lady. The enchantress was not satisfied with ensnaring her victim, then; she wished to keep him for ever, to ruin his future without hope of remedy. It never occurred to Danaë for a moment to regard the marriage at Bashi Konak as binding—she was far too strongly Orthodox to admit that a Greek could marry a Latin by Latin rites—but she feared that Prince Romanos might be induced to go through a second ceremony, prior to which the bride would renounce her schismatic creed. Then woe to all hopes of an alliance with Scythian royalty, to the great aggrandisement of the Christodoridi. Danaë’s courage rose again, and she felt that the trials of her journey were well worth enduring if they enabled her to defeat the Lady’s plans.
“If you have finished, my girl, you can go to the Lady now,” said Mariora. “The Prince will be with her, but you need not be afraid of him. He comes from the islands himself, though I’m glad to say he doesn’t talk the island talk.”
This slur on the purity of her Greek sent Danaë haughtily out of the kitchen, and guided by the loud directions of the two old women, she passed through a stone-paved hall, and across a wide shady verandah. Under a tree on the sloping lawn in front a lady and gentleman were at tea. Danaë advanced boldly, with no fear of being recognised, since her half-brother and she had never met. The lady heard the sound of her slippers on the gravel and looked round, then turned back to the gentleman and spoke rapidly in French.
“Such a tiresome thing!” she said. “It seems that foolish Despina asked Petros to find me a nurse-girl in the islands, and he has brought back some niece of his own. And I dislike Petros so much that I don’t want any of his family here.”
“Put the blame on me,” said Prince Romanos softly. “I was glad to think that my son would know the lullabies his father used to hear as a child.”
“Poet!” said the lady, half fondly, half in scorn.
“But if the idea displeases you, by all means send the girl back at once, my beloved. What are my fancies compared with your wishes?”
“We will see what she is like. Come here, child.”
Danaë approached, continuing to scan the pair with sharp suspicious glances. Even her prejudiced mind could not deny that the Lady was very beautiful, and she fastened greedily on a slight droop at the corners of the finely formed mouth, a lift of the delicate eyebrows, as signs of ill-temper counterbalancing good looks. But the discontented expression was far more evident in her companion. He was a handsome man, a good deal older than his wife, and his sallow face bore abundant marks of anxiety and worry. These Danaë set down promptly to the Lady’s account. She was worse than a witch, she was a vampire, drawing forth the Prince’s vitality and feeding upon it for the enhancement of her own youth and beauty.
“Such a terribly rough-looking girl! so uncouth!” said the Lady in dismay. The tone was intelligible, if not the words.
“Not so bad for Strio, where we think more of strength than refinement. I suppose my sisters must be somewhere about her age now.”
“I hope they are differently dressed, then. With those looped-up trousers and bare legs she might be a boy.”
“This is a fisher-girl,” said Prince Romanos, with some coldness. “They always have their clothes short for scrambling over the rocks. My sisters wear the proper national dress, of course.”
“Well, there is no fishing for her to do here,” said the Lady sharply. “Tell Despina to see that you are properly dressed before you come into my presence again, child,” she added in Greek, spoken with a foreign accent.
“At your pleasure, my Lady,” muttered Danaë, with a wrathful glance which the Prince took for one of reproach.
“Fear not, little one,” he said pleasantly. “The Lady is not angry with thee, but she does not know the island of the blue sea and the white rock and the grey olive as thou and I do. What do they call thee?”
“Eurynomé of the Andropouloi, lord.”
“The Andropouloi! Is the island as full of them as ever? Why, thou art surely the daughter of Petros’s sister Theano? I remember she was to marry an Andropoulos soon after I left Strio.”
“Stephanos is her husband’s name, lord—sword-bearer to the Despot.”
“Why doesn’t she call you Despoti mou, instead of Kyrie?” asked the Lady sharply.
“Probably because to her there is only one Despot in the world. Tell the Lady whom you mean when you speak of the Despot, child.”
“He of Strio, lord,” with evident surprise.
“Just so. But here there are two other Despots, he of Therma, which is myself, and he of Klaustra, who is——”
“My dear Romanos! She will think you are in earnest.”
“And am I not, my most beautiful? But come, child, tell me whether the girls run about over the roofs in the spring evenings in Strio as they used to do?”
Danaë was horrified. “But no one knows about it, lord—especially no man.”
“Not even the lad who hides in a doorway to get speech with one particular girl? If not, how do I know?”
The memory of certain experiences of Angeliké’s made Danaë hesitate to repeat her negative. She hung her head miserably, and the Prince laughed.
“Aha, little one! There was a certain pretty Praxinoë twenty years ago——” The Lady withdrew herself slightly, with a little motion of disgust, and his laugh became embarrassed. “Well, she drove me from Strio and cost me my father’s favour, so perhaps the less said about her the better. Go back to the old women, little one, but grow not into a Fate or a Grey Sister like them, and take good care of the little lord. Sing him the island songs, that he may grow up with the sound of the sea in his ears.”
“Your foot is on my head, lord,” responded Danaë, in a choking voice, as she turned away. Her whole heart went out to this handsome, tired-looking brother of hers, who had loved the stones of Strio throughout twenty years of exile. How gladly would she have fought and died to win him his principality, and how willingly now would she submit to contumely and harshness to save him from the clutches of the beautiful, cold-hearted, discontented woman at his side, who was living on his very life-blood!
“That girl won’t be bad-looking, when you have brushed her up a little, Olimpia,” said the Prince, in French again, when she was gone. The same little shudder of repulsion as before answered him, and he turned round quickly. “Alas, my beautiful one! you should not have married Apolis the poet if you did not expect him to discern beauty wherever it was to be found.”
“You are right. I should never have married Apolis the poet—nor Romanos the Prince either,” she answered, in a strangled voice. “Nor would I have done it if I had dreamt how it was to turn out.”
“I thought, we had agreed it was useless to enter upon this subject again for the present,” said the Prince, with polite weariness.
She fired up at once. “Agreed? I never agreed. You said it was useless, but how can it do any good to leave things as they are? The longer you delay to acknowledge me publicly as your wife, the more difficult it will be. Even now, how will you account for the two years that I have lived concealed here?”
“It is more than difficult. It is impossible,” he said through his teeth.
She glanced at him with mingled terror and indignation in her eyes, and he raised his hand soothingly.
“Do not mistake me, my most beautiful. It is quite possible for you to leave this house, force your way into the Palace—the guards shall have orders not to stop you—and lay the proofs of our marriage before the Council, calling in those good, kind-hearted meddlers”—the sneer was terrific—“Princess Emilia and her mother-in-law, to vouch to your words. The result is simple. Exit Romanos, Prince of Emathia, and enter the Englishman, Prince Maurice Theophanis, with his wife and his sister and his sister’s husband, to succeed to all the honours your husband lays down.”
“You know I don’t want you to lose your kingdom. For what other reason have I submitted to this two years’ concealment? But how can things ever be better? What hope is there that you will ever find it safe to acknowledge me as your wife?”
“Ah, now my beloved is becoming more reasonable! Listen, then, my little dove. I have a hope—a great hope—that I may be able to accomplish your wish—and my own—very shortly. This railway imbroglio must be settled first. At present Scythia and Pannonia are bidding against one another for the privilege of traversing your husband’s state, while he merely intimates that the price offered is not high enough. They are raising their offers. I have already had a shadowy hint of the bare possibility that my position may be made permanent instead of merely renewable after five years—even that it may become hereditary.”
“Who offers that?” she asked, with a gasp.
“Ah, that I can hardly tell you at present. But you see, my Olimpia, the frightful delicacy of the situation. The merest breath of suspicion would blast irretrievably this charming prospect—and incidentally your husband’s whole career. Wait until the proposal is made definitely, until the bargain is completed, and instead of the mere temporary nominee of Europe, Romanos the First is acknowledged ruler of Emathia in his own right. Then is the moment for him proudly to present his Princess to an admiring world, and to announce that the succession is already secured in the person of a remarkably vigorous infant heir.”
The Lady’s troubled features relaxed into an involuntary smile. “Ah, that would be magnificent!” she said. “You swear it, Romanos? that there shall be no more delay, no more of this vain entreaty on my part, but that the moment your position is assured you will justify me to the world?”
“I swear it! by all the natural objects to which poets have ever appealed to ratify their vows.”
His lightness jarred upon her. “Do you think it is any pleasure to me to lower myself by these continual appeals to you?” she demanded.
“I hope so, my soul, for you can hardly imagine it is any pleasure to me. Ah, beautiful one, not more tragedy, I beseech you! Smile and look lovingly upon your poet. The Prince has enough of seriousness outside.”
She repressed with an effort the words thronging to her lips. “Very well, I will say no more. But I must tell you this, that my father is more than ever dissatisfied with my position here. He writes that he proposes to visit Therma, and hopes to induce you to acknowledge me publicly. If you refuse, I know he will wish to take me away with him.”
“He may wish, but you will not go. When you vowed yourself to me, Olimpia, you put it out of the power of your father or mine to part us.”
“But, dearest, his patience is sorely tried. You know he only consented to keep the secret of our marriage on condition that it was announced as soon as you were established in power, and the announcement has been put off so long and so often. His honour is his dearest possession, and he fears a stain upon it.”
“Then let him remain at home until he is summoned to his daughter’s entry into Therma as Princess. No, Olimpia, I am not joking. Make your father understand that if he even shows himself in Emathia while this negociation is proceeding, he will set tongues wagging, and the mischief will be done. He must not come.”
“He hints that he has something to communicate which would make it easier for you to acknowledge the marriage,” she faltered, cowed by his tone. “He meant to tell us about it after the acknowledgment, but now——”
“Holy Spiridion! let him write it, then. Anything to make the announcement easier will be welcome enough to me, the saints know. But no visit at present. I see what it is, Kyria Olimpia, you are dull! Shall I bring Theophanis and his brother-in-law here to tea when they come?”
“And their wives?” she asked pointedly.
He flushed with annoyance. “The ladies, with unusual discretion, have not proposed to accompany their husbands on this visit. It is purely on business—this railway business. Nothing less would drag our two virtuous Englishmen from their herculean labours at Klaustra to this frivolous place.”
“You may bring them to call on me if they know the truth—not otherwise.”
Prince Romanos swore under his breath. “Some demon of obstinacy seems to possess you to-day, Olimpia. I thought you were satisfied.”
“Forgive me, my husband. Surely it seems a good thought, to bring the Englishmen here and tell them the truth under a promise of secrecy? They are honourable men, and would watch over Janni’s rights if anything happens to you and me.”
“You are incorrigible, Olimpia. Don’t you see that those two men are the very last to whom the secret must be revealed? Theophanis is my rival, and bound for his own sake to take advantage of any slip on my part.”
“But he is so honourable, Romanos—punctiliously, quixotically honourable, as you have often said yourself.”
He moved restlessly. “That’s all very well, but he may be secretly plotting against me all the time. And to give him a hold upon me now—it would be sheer insanity. I told you it was the railway business they were coming to discuss. Doesn’t it occur to you that these good simple fools would never willingly consent to allow either Scythia or Pannonia to gain the power over us that the concession would give them?”
“But what do they propose you should do?”
“They have some idea of an international guarantee, which would merely mean that we should have ten nations claiming control over our affairs instead of one. No, if they like to construct the line entirely from their own resources, and so keep it all in the family, as one may say, I am quite willing. It will leave Emathia independent, and keep them from intriguing against me by using up their money. But they won’t. So they are coming to argue about it, and I shall have to ply them with fair words and try to hustle them back to Klaustra before the negociations come to a head.”
“But do you think it safe to give Scythia or Pannonia the control of the line?”
“I should not, if they had not something supremely desirable to offer in exchange. You know what that is, and you should be the last person to have scruples about it.”
“Yes, let me see,” she said meditatively. “You are confirmed in the absolute possession of Emathia, and it is secured to your heirs. “And—” she paused—“you marry the third cousin twice removed of the Emperor of Scythia. You intend to murder me, I suppose? For I warn you, Prince Romanos Christodoridi, that I will not accept a divorce, nor will I go tamely away disgraced. I am your wife,” her voice broke, “and for my child’s sake, I mean to be acknowledged as your Princess.” She burst away from him in a passion of tears, and ran into the house.
“Now how in the world did she manage to hear of that little point?” demanded Prince Romanos of himself, as he rose reluctantly to follow her. “The most delicate matter of all—to reap the benefit without paying the price. She will ruin everything in this mood. Olimpia! Olimpia!” he raised his voice, “you are cruelly unjust to me. I insist upon your hearing what I have to say.”