‘Isn’t it?’
‘Yes. I’m beginning to be curious!’
‘I thought you would be before long,’ Logotheti answered coolly, but suddenly speaking French. ‘One of the most delightful things in life is to have one’s curiosity roused and then satisfied by very slow degrees!’
‘Not too slow, please. The interest might not last to the end.’
‘Oh yes, it will, for Mr. Feist plays a part in your life.’
‘About as distant as Voltaire’s Chinese Mandarin, I fancy,’ Margaret suggested.
‘Nearer than that, though I did not guess it when I went to see him. In the first place, it was owing to you that I went to see him the first time.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Not at all. Everything that happens to me is connected with you in some way. I came to see you late in the afternoon, on one of your off-days not long ago, hoping that you would ask me to dine, but you were across the river at Lord Creedmore’s. I met old Griggs at your door, and as we walked away he told me that Mr. Feist had fallen down in a fit at a club, the night before, and had been sent home in a cab to the Carlton. As I had nothing to do, worth doing, I went to see him. If you had been at home, I should never have gone. That is what I mean when I say that you were the cause of my going to see him.’
‘In the same way, if you had been killed by a motor-car as you went away from my door, I should have been the cause of your death!’
‘You will be in any case,’ laughed Logotheti, ‘but that’s a detail! I found Mr. Feist in a very bad way.’
‘What was the matter with him?’ asked Margaret.
‘He was committing suicide,’ answered the Greek with the utmost calm. ‘If I were in Constantinople I should tell you that this turbot is extremely good, but as we are in London I suppose it would be very bad manners to say so, wouldn’t it? So I am thinking it.’
‘Take the fish for granted, and tell me more about Mr. Feist!’
‘I found him standing before the glass with a razor in his hand and quite near his throat. When he saw me he tried to laugh and said he was just going to shave; I asked him if he generally shaved without soap and water, and he burst into tears.’
‘That’s rather dreadful,’ observed Margaret. ‘What did you do?’
‘I saved his life, but I don’t think he’s very grateful yet. Perhaps he may be by and by. When he stopped sobbing he tried to kill me for hindering his destruction, but I had got the razor in my pocket, and his revolver missed fire. That was lucky, for he managed to stick the muzzle against my chest and pull the trigger just as I got him down. I wished I had brought old Griggs with me, for they say he can bend a good horse-shoe double, even now, and the fellow had the strength of a lunatic in him. It was rather lively for a few seconds, and then he broke down again, and was as limp as a rag, and trembled with fright, as if he saw queer things in the room.’
‘You sent for a doctor then?’
‘My own, and we took care of him together that night. You may laugh at the idea of my having a doctor, as I never was ill in my life. I have him to dine with me now and then, because he is such good company, and is the best judge of a statue or a picture I know. The habit of taking the human body to pieces teaches you a great deal about the shape of it, you see. In the morning we moved Mr. Feist from the hotel to a small private hospital where cases of that sort are treated. Of course he was perfectly helpless, so we packed his belongings and papers.’
‘It was really very kind of you to act the Good Samaritan to a stranger,’ Margaret said, but her tone showed that she was disappointed at the tame ending of the story.
‘No,’ Logotheti answered. ‘I was never consciously kind, as you call it. It’s not a Greek characteristic to love one’s neighbour as one’s self. Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Latins, and, most of all, Asiatics, are charitable, but the old Greeks were not. I don’t believe you’ll find an instance of a charitable act in all Greek history, drama, and biography! If you did find one I should only say that the exception proves the rule. Charity was left out of us at the beginning, and we never could understand it, except as a foreign sentiment imported with Christianity from Asia. We have had every other virtue, including hospitality. In the Iliad a man declines to kill his enemy on the ground that their people had dined together, which is going rather far, but it is not recorded that any ancient Greek, even Socrates himself, ever felt pity or did an act of spontaneous kindness! I don’t believe any one has said that, but it’s perfectly true.’
‘Then why did you take all that trouble for Mr. Feist?’
‘I don’t know. People who always know why they do things are great bores. It was probably a caprice that took me to see him, and then it did not occur to me to let him cut his throat, so I took away his razor; and, finally, I telephoned for my doctor, because my misspent life has brought me into contact with Western civilisation. But when we began to pack Mr. Feist’s papers I became interested in him.’
‘Do you mean to say that you read his letters?’ Margaret inquired.
‘Why not? If I had let him kill himself, somebody would have read them, as he had not taken the trouble to destroy them!’
‘That’s a singular point of view.’
‘So was Mr. Feist’s, as it turned out. I found enough to convince me that he is the writer of all those articles about Van Torp, including the ones in which you are mentioned. The odd thing about it is that I found a very friendly invitation from Van Torp himself, begging Mr. Feist to go down to Derbyshire and stop a week with him.’
Margaret leaned back in her chair and looked at her guest in quiet surprise.
‘What does that mean?’ she asked. ‘Is it possible that Mr. Van Torp has got up this campaign against himself in order to play some trick on the Stock Exchange?’
Logotheti smiled and shook his head.
‘That’s not the way such things are usually managed,’ he answered. ‘A hundred years ago a publisher paid a critic to attack a book in order to make it succeed, but in finance abuse doesn’t contribute to our success, which is always a question of credit. All these scurrilous articles have set the public very much against Van Torp, from Paris to San Francisco, and this man Feist is responsible for them. He is either insane, or he has some grudge against Van Torp, or else he has been somebody’s instrument, which looks the most probable.’
‘What did you find amongst his papers?’ Margaret asked, quite forgetting her vicarious scruples about reading a sick man’s letters.
‘A complete set of the articles that have appeared, all neatly filed, and a great many notes for more, besides a lot of stuff written in cypher. It must be a diary, for the days are written out in full and give the days of the week.’
‘I wonder whether there was anything about the explosion,’ said Margaret thoughtfully. ‘He said he was there, did he not?’
‘Yes. Do you remember the day?’
‘It was a Wednesday, I’m sure, and it was after the middle of March. My maid can tell us, for she writes down the date and the opera in a little book each time I sing. It’s sometimes very convenient. But it’s too late now, of course, and, besides, you could not have read the cypher.’
‘That’s an easy matter,’ Logotheti answered. ‘All cyphers can be read by experts, if there is no hurry, except the mechanical ones that are written through holes in a square plate which you turn round till the sheet is full. Hardly any one uses those now, because when the square is raised the letters don’t form words, and the cable companies will only transmit real words in some known language, or groups of figures. The diary is written hastily, too, not at all as if it were copied from the sheet on which the perforated plate would have had to be used, and besides, the plate itself would be amongst his things, for he could not read his own notes without it.’
‘All that doesn’t help us, as you have not the diary, but I should really be curious to know what he had to say about the accident, since some of the articles hint that Mr. Van Torp made it happen.’
‘My doctor and I took the liberty of confiscating the papers, and we set a very good man to work on the cypher at once. So your curiosity shall be satisfied. I said it should, didn’t I? And you are not so dreadfully bored after all, are you? Do say that I’m very nice!’
‘I won’t!’ Margaret answered with a little laugh. ‘I’ll only admit that I’m not bored! But wasn’t it rather a high-handed proceeding to carry off Mr. Feist like that, and to seize his papers?’
‘Do you call it high-handed to keep a man from cutting his throat?’
‘But the letters — ?’
‘I really don’t know. I had not time to ask a lawyer’s opinion, and so I had to be satisfied with my doctor’s.’
‘Are you going to tell Mr. Van Torp what you’ve done?’
‘I don’t know. Why should I? You may if you like.’
Logotheti was eating a very large and excellent truffle, and after each short sentence he cut off a tiny slice and put it into his mouth. The Primadonna had already finished hers, and watched him thoughtfully.
‘I’m not likely to see him,’ she said. ‘At least, I hope not!’
‘My interest in Mr. Feist,’ answered Logotheti, ‘begins and ends with what concerns you. Beyond that I don’t care a straw what happens to Mr. Van Torp, or to any one else. To all intents and purposes I have got the author of the stories locked up, for a man who has consented to undergo treatment for dipsomania in a private hospital, by the advice of his friends and under the care of a doctor with a great reputation, is as really in prison as if he were in gaol. Legally, he can get out, but in real fact nobody will lift a hand to release him, because he is shut up for his own good and for the good of the public, just as much as if he were a criminal. Feist may have friends or relations in America, and they may come and claim him; but as there seems to be nobody in London who cares what becomes of him, it pleases me to keep him in confinement, because I mean to prevent any further mention of your name in connection with the Van Torp scandals.’
His eyes rested on Margaret as he spoke, and lingered afterwards, with a look that did not escape her. She had seen him swayed by passion, more than once, and almost mad for her, and she had been frightened though she had dominated him. What she saw in his face now was not that; it was more like affection, faithful and lasting, and it touched her English nature much more than any show of passion could.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
They did not talk much more while they finished the short dinner, but when they were going back to the drawing-room Margaret took his arm, in foreign fashion, which she had never done before when they were alone. Then he stood before the mantelpiece and watched her in silence as she moved about the room; for she was one of those women who always find half a dozen little things to do as soon as they get back from dinner, and go from place to place, moving a reading lamp half an inch farther from the edge of a table, shutting a book that has been left open on another, tearing up a letter that lies on the writing-desk, and slightly changing the angle at which a chair stands. It is an odd little mania, and the more people there are in the room the less the mistress of the house yields to it, and the more uncomfortable she feels at being hindered from ‘tidying up the room,’ as she probably calls it.
Logotheti watched Margaret with keen pleasure, as every step and little movement showed her figure in a slightly different attitude and light, indiscreetly moulded in the perfection of her matchless gown. In less than two minutes she had finished her trip round the room and was standing beside him, her elbows resting on the mantelpiece, while she moved a beautiful Tanagra a little to one side and then to the other, trying for the twentieth time how it looked the best.
‘There is no denying it,’ Logotheti said at last, with profound conviction. ‘I do not care a straw what becomes of any living creature but you.’
She did not turn her head, and her fingers still touched the Tanagra, but he saw the rare blush spread up the cheek that was turned to him; and because she stopped moving the statuette about, and looked at it intently, he guessed that she was not colouring from annoyance at what he had said. She blushed so very seldom now, that it might mean much more than in the old days at Versailles.
‘I did not think it would last so long,’ she said gently, after a little while.
‘What faith can one expect of a Greek!’
He laughed, too wise in woman’s ways to be serious too long just then. But she shook her head and turned to him with the smile he loved.
‘I thought it was something different,’ she said. ‘I was mistaken. I believed you had only lost your head for a while, and would soon run after some one else. That’s all.’
‘And the loss is permanent. That’s all!’ He laughed again as he repeated her words. ‘You thought it was “something different” — do you know that you are two people in one?’
She looked a little surprised.
‘Indeed I do!’ she answered rather sadly. ‘Have you found it out?’
‘Yes. You are Margaret Donne and you are Cordova. I admire Cordova immensely, I am extremely fond of Margaret, and I’m in love with both. Oh yes! I’m quite frank about it, and it’s very unlucky, for whichever one of your two selves I meet I’m just as much in love as ever! Absurd, isn’t it?’
‘It’s flattering, at all events.’
‘If you ever took it into your handsome head to marry me — please, I’m only saying “if” — the absurdity would be rather reassuring, wouldn’t it? When a man is in love with two women at the same time, it really is a little unlikely that he should fall in love with a third!’
‘Mr. Griggs says that marriage is a drama which only succeeds if people preserve the unities!’
‘Griggs is always trying to coax the Djin back into the bottle, like the fisherman in the Arabian Nights,’ answered Logotheti. ‘He has read Kant till he believes that the greatest things in the world can be squeezed into a formula of ten words, or nailed up amongst the Categories like a dead owl over a stable door. My intelligence, such as it is, abhors definitions!’
‘So do I. I never understand them.’
‘Besides, you can only define what you know from past experience and can reflect upon coolly, and that is not my position, nor yours either.’
Margaret nodded, but said nothing and sat down.
‘Do you want to smoke?’ she asked. ‘You may, if you like. I don’t mind a cigarette.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘But I assure you I don’t mind it in the least. It never hurts my throat.’
‘Thanks, but I really don’t want to.’
‘I’m sure you do. Please—’
‘Why do you insist? You know I never smoke when you are in the room.’
‘I don’t like to be the object of little sacrifices that make people uncomfortable.’
‘I’m not uncomfortable, but if you have any big sacrifice to suggest, I promise to offer it at once.’
‘Unconditionally?’ Margaret smiled. ‘Anything I ask?’
‘Yes. Do you want my statue?’
‘The Aphrodite? Would you give her to me?’
‘Yes. May I telegraph to have her packed and brought here from Paris?’
He was already at the writing-table looking for a telegraph form. Margaret watched his face, for she knew that he valued the wonderful statue far beyond all his treasures, both for its own sake and because he had nearly lost his life in carrying it off from Samos, as has been told elsewhere.
As Margaret said nothing, he began to write the message. She really had not had any idea of testing his willingness to part with the thing he valued most, at her slightest word, and was taken by surprise; but it was impossible not to be pleased when she saw that he was in earnest. In her present mood, too, it restored her sense of power, which had been rudely shaken by the attitude of the public on the previous evening.
It took some minutes to compose the message.
‘It’s only to save time by having the b
ox ready,’ he said, as he rose with the bit of paper in his hand. ‘Of course I shall see the statue packed myself and come over with it.’
She saw his face clearly in the light as he came towards her, and there was no mistaking the unaffected satisfaction it expressed. He held out the telegram for her to read, but she would not take it, and she looked up quietly and earnestly as he stood beside her.
‘Do you remember Delorges?’ she asked. ‘How the lady tossed her glove amongst the lions and bade him fetch it, if he loved her, and how he went in and got it — and then threw it in her face? I feel like her.’
Logotheti looked at her blankly.
‘Do you mean to say you won’t take the statue?’ he asked in a disappointed tone.
‘No, indeed! I was taken by surprise when you went to the writing-table.’
‘You did not believe I was in earnest? Don’t you see that I’m disappointed now?’ His voice changed a little. ‘Don’t you understand that if the world were mine I should want to give it all to you?’
‘And don’t you understand that the wish may be quite as much to me as the deed? That sounds commonplace, I know. I would say it better if I could.’
She folded her hands on her knee, and looked at them thoughtfully while he sat down beside her.
‘You say it well enough,’ he answered after a little pause. ‘The trouble lies there. The wish is all you will ever take. I have submitted to that; but if you ever change your mind, please remember that I have not changed mine. For two years I’ve done everything I can to make you marry me whether you would or not, and you’ve forgiven me for trying to carry you off against your will, and for several other things, but you are no nearer to caring for me ever so little than you were the first day we met. You “like” me! That’s the worst of it!’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Margaret answered, raising her eyes for a moment and then looking at her hands again.
He turned his head slowly, but there was a startled look in his eyes.
‘Do you feel as if you could hate me a little, for a change?’ he asked.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1218