Margaret looked at him a moment longer, and then turned her head away in silence, as if scorning to answer such a silly question. The look of surprise disappeared from his face, and he became very gloomy and thoughtful but said nothing more. Possibly he had brought about exactly what he wished, and was satisfied to await the inevitable result. It came before long.
‘I don’t understand you at all,’ Margaret said less icily, but with the sad little air of a woman who believes herself misunderstood. ‘It was very odd yesterday, at the telephone, you know — very odd indeed. I suppose you didn’t realise it. And now, this afternoon, you have evidently been doing your best to keep Mrs. Rushmore from leaving us together. You would still be telling her stories about people if I hadn’t obliged you to come out!’
‘Yes,’ Logotheti asserted with exasperating calm and meekness, ‘we should still be there.’
‘You did not want to be alone with me, I suppose. There’s no other explanation, and it’s not a very flattering one, is it?’
‘I never flatter you, dear lady,’ said Logotheti gravely.
‘But you do! How can you deny it? You often tell me that I make you think of the Victory in the Louvre — —’
‘It’s quite true. If the statue had a head it would be a portrait of you.’
‘Nonsense! And in your moments of enthusiasm you say that I sing better than Madame Bonanni in her best days — —’
‘Yes. You know quite as much as she ever did, you are a much better musician, and you began with a better voice. Therefore you sing better. I maintain it.’
‘You often maintain things you don’t believe,’ Margaret retorted, though her manner momentarily relaxed a little.
‘Only in matters of business,’ answered the Greek with imperturbable calm.
‘Pray, is “learning Tartar” a matter of business?’ Her eyes sparkled angrily as she asked the question.
Logotheti smiled; she had reached the point to which he knew she must come before long.
‘Oh, yes!’ he replied with alacrity. ‘Of course it is.’
‘That accounts for everything, since you are admitting that I need not even try to believe it was a man whom I heard speaking.’
‘To tell the truth, I have some suspicions about that myself,’ answered Logotheti.
‘I have a great many.’ Margaret laughed rather harshly. ‘And you behave as if you wanted me to have more. Who is this Eastern woman? Come, be frank. She is some one from Constantinople, isn’t she? A Fanariote like yourself, I daresay — an old friend who is in Paris for a few days, and would not pass through without seeing you. Say so, for heaven’s sake, and don’t make such a mystery about it!’
‘How very ingenious women are!’ observed the Greek. ‘If I had thought of it I might have told you that story through the telephone yesterday. But I didn’t.’
Margaret was rapidly becoming exasperated, her eyes flashed, her firm young cheeks reddened handsomely, and her generous lips made scornful curves.
‘Are you trying to quarrel with me?’
The words had a fierce ring; he glanced at her quickly and saw how well her look agreed with her tone. She was very angry.
‘If I were not afraid of boring you,’ he said with quiet gravity, ‘I would tell you the whole story, but — —’ he pretended to hesitate.
He heard her harsh little laugh at once.
‘Your worst enemy could not accuse you of being a bore!’ she retorted. ‘Oh, no! It’s something quite different from boredom that I feel, I assure you!’
‘I wish I thought that you cared for me enough to be jealous,’ Logotheti said earnestly.
‘Jealous!’
No one can describe the tone of indignant contempt in which a thoroughly jealous woman disclaims the least thought of jealousy with a single word; a man must have heard it to remember what it is like, and most men have. Logotheti knew it well, and at the sound he put on an expression of meek innocence which would have done credit to a cat that had just eaten a canary.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he cried in a voice like a child’s. ‘I didn’t mean to make you angry, I was only wishing aloud. Please forgive me!’
‘If your idea of caring for a woman is to make her jealous — —’
This was such an obvious misinterpretation of his words that she stopped short and bit her lip. He sighed audibly, as if he were very sorry that he could do nothing to appease her, but this only made her feel more injured. She made an effort to speak coldly.
‘You seem to forget that so long as we are supposed to be engaged I have some little claim to know how you spend your time!’
‘I make no secret of what I do. That is why you were angry just now. Nothing could have been easier than for me to say that I was busy with one of the matters you suggested.’
‘Oh, of course! Nothing could be easier than to tell me an untruth!’
This certainly looked like the feminine retort-triumphant, and Margaret delivered it in a cutting tone.
‘That is precisely what you seem to imply that I did,’ Logotheti objected. ‘But if what I told you was untrue your argument goes to pieces. There was no Tartar lesson, there was no Tartar teacher, and it was all a fabrication of my own!’
‘Just what I think!’ returned Margaret. ‘It was not Tartar you spoke, and there was no teacher!’
‘You have me there,’ answered the Greek mildly, ‘unless you would like me to produce my young friend and talk to him before you in the presence of witnesses who know his language.’
‘I wish you would! I should like to see “him”! I should like to see the colour of “his” eyes and hair!’
‘Black as ink,’ said Logotheti.
‘And you’ll tell me that “his” complexion is black too, no doubt!’
‘Not at all; a sort of creamy complexion, I think, though I did not pay much attention to his skin. He is a smallish chap, good-looking, with hands and feet like a woman’s. I noticed that. As I told you, a doubt occurred to me at once, and I will not positively swear that it is not a girl after all. He, or she, is really a Tartar from Central Asia, and I know enough of the language to say what was necessary.’
‘Necessary!’
‘Yes. He — or she — came on a matter of business. What I said about a teacher was mere nonsense. Now you know the whole thing.’
‘Excepting what the business was,’ Margaret said incredulously.
‘The business was an uncut stone,’ answered Logotheti with indifference. ‘He had one to sell, and I bought it. He was recommended to me by a man in Constantinople. He came to Marseilles on a French steamer with two Greek merchants who were coming to Paris, and they brought him to my door. That is the whole story. And here is the ruby. I bought it for you, because you like those things. Will you take it?’
He held out what looked like a little ball of white tissue-paper, but Margaret turned her face from him.
‘You treat me like a child!’ she said.
To her own great surprise and indignation, her voice was unsteady and she felt something burning in her eyes. She was almost frightened at the thought that she might be going to cry, out of sheer mortification.
Logotheti said nothing for a moment. He began to unroll the paper from the precious stone, but changed his mind, wrapped it up again, and put it back into his watch-pocket before he spoke.
‘I did not mean it as you think,’ he said softly.
She turned her eyes without moving her head, till she could just see that he was leaning forward, resting his wrists on his knees, bending his head, and apparently looking down at his loosely hanging hands. His attitude expressed dejection and disappointment. She was glad of it. He had no right to think that he could make her as angry as she still was, angry even to tears, and then bribe her to smile again when he was tired of teasing her. Her eyes turned away again, and she did not answer him.
‘I make mistakes sometimes,’ he said, speaking still lower, ‘I know I do. When I am with you I cannot be always t
hinking of what I say. It’s too much to ask, when a man is as far gone as I am!’
‘I should like to believe that,’ Margaret said, without looking at him.
‘Is it so hard to believe?’ he asked so gently that she only just heard the words.
‘You don’t make it easy, you know,’ said she with a little defiance, for she felt that she was going to yield before long.
‘I don’t quite know how to. You’re not in the least capricious — and yet — —’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Margaret answered, turning to him suddenly. ‘I’m the most capricious woman in the world! Yesterday I wrote a long letter to a friend, and then I suddenly tore it up — there were ever so many pages! I daresay that if I had written just the same letter this morning, I should have sent it. If that is not caprice, what is it?’
‘It may have been wisdom to tear it up,’ Logotheti suggested.
‘I’m not sure. I never ask myself questions about what I do. I hate people who are always measuring their wretched little souls and then tinkering their consciences to make them fit! I don’t believe I wish to do anything really wrong, and so I do exactly what I like, always!’
Possibly she had forgotten that she had called herself a wicked woman only yesterday; but that had been before the conversation at the telephone.
‘If you will only go on doing what you like,’ Logotheti answered, ‘it will give me the greatest pleasure in the world to help you. I only ask one kindness.’
‘You have no right to ask me anything to-day. You’ve been quite the most disagreeable person this afternoon that I ever met in my life.’
‘I know I have,’ Logotheti answered with admirable contrition. ‘I’ll wait a day or two before I ask anything; perhaps you will have forgiven me by that time.’
‘I’m not sure. What was the thing you were going to ask?’
He was silent now that she wished to know his thought.
‘Have you forgotten it already?’ she inquired with a little laugh that was encouraging rather than contemptuous, for her curiosity was roused.
They looked at each other at last, and all at once she felt the deeply disturbing sense of his near presence which she had missed for three days, though she was secretly a little afraid and ashamed of it; and to-day it had not come while her anger had lasted. But now it was stronger than ever before, perhaps because it came so unexpectedly, and it drew her to him, under the deep shadow of the elm-tree that made strange reflections in their eyes — moving reflections of fire when the lowering sun struck in between the leaves, and sudden, still depths when the foliage stirred in the breeze and screened the glancing ray.
He had played upon her moods for an hour, as a musician touches a delicate and responsive instrument, and she had taken all for earnest and had been angry and hurt, and was reconciled again at his will. Yet he had not done it all to try his power over her, and surely not in any careless contempt of her weaknesses. He cared for her in his way, as he was able, and his love was great, if not of the most noble sort. He was strong, and she waked his strength with fire; he worshipped life, and her vital beauty thrilled the inner stronghold of his being; when she moved, his passionate intuition felt and followed the lines of her moving grace; if she rested, motionless and near him, his waking dream enfolded her in a deep caress. He felt no high and mystic emotion when he thought of her; he had never read of St. Clement’s celestial kingdom, where man and woman are to be one for ever, and together neither woman nor man, for such a world could never seem heavenly to him, whose love was altogether earthly. Yet it was Greek love, not Roman; its deity was beauty, not lust; the tutelary goddess of its temple was not Venus the deadly, the heavy-limbed, with a mouth like a red wound and slumbrous, sombre eyes, but Cyprian Aphrodite, immortal and golden, the very life of the sparkling sky itself sown in the foam of the sea.
Between the two lies all the distance that separates gross idolatry from the veneration of the symbol; the gulf that divides the animal materialism of a twentieth-century rake from the half-divine dreams of genius; the revolting coarseness of Catullus at his worst from himself at his best, or from an epigram of Meleager or Antipater of Sidon; a witty Greek comedy adapted by Plautus to the brutal humour of Rome from Swinburne’s immortal Atalanta in Calydon. Twenty-five centuries of history, Hellenic, Byzantine and modern, have gone to make the small band of cultivated Greeks of to-day what they are, two thousand and five hundred years of astounding vicissitudes, of aristocracy, democracy and despotism, of domination and subjection, mastery, slavery and revolution, ending in freedom more than half regained. We need not wonder why they are not like us, whose forefathers of a few centuries ago were still fighting the elements for their existence, and living and thinking like barbarians.
The eyes of the Greek and the great artist met, and they looked long at one another in the shade of the elm-tree on the lawn, as the sun was going down. Only a few minutes had passed since Margaret had been very angry, and had almost believed that she was going to quarrel finally, and break her engagement, and be free; and now she could not even turn her face away, and when her hand felt his upon it, she let him draw it slowly to him; and half unconsciously she followed her hand, bending towards him sideways from her seat, nearer and nearer, and very near.
And as she put up her lips to his, he would that she might drink his soul from him at one deep draught — even as one of his people’s poets wished, in the world’s spring-time, long ago.
It had been a strange love-making. They had been engaged during more than two months, they were young, vital, passionate; yet they had never kissed before that evening hour under the elm-tree at Versailles. Perhaps it was for this that Konstantin had played, or at least, for the certainty it meant to him, if he had doubted that she was sincere.
CHAPTER IV
WITHOUT OFFENDING MR. Van Torp, Lady Maud managed not to see him again for some time, and when he understood, as he soon did, that this was her wish, he made no attempt to force himself upon her. She was probably thinking over what he had said, and in the end she would exert her influence as he had begged her to do. He was thoroughly persuaded that there was nothing unfair in his proposal and that, when she was convinced that he was right, she would help him. In a chequered career that had led to vast success, he had known people who called themselves honest and respectable but who had done unpardonable things for a hundredth part of what he offered. Like all real financiers, he knew money as a force, not as a want, very much as any strong working man knows approximately how much he can lift or carry, and reckons with approximate certainty on his average strength. To speak in his own language, Mr. Van Torp knew about how many horse-power could be got out of any sum of money, from ten cents to more millions than he chose to speak of in his own case.
And once more, before I go on with this tale, let me say that his friendship for Lady Maud was so honest that he would never have asked her to do anything he thought ‘low down.’ To paraphrase a wise saying of Abraham Lincoln’s, some millionaires mean to be bad all the time, but are not, and some are bad all the time but do not mean to be, but no millionaires mean to be bad all the time and really are. Rufus Van Torp certainly did not mean to be, according to his lights, though in his life he had done several things which he did not care to remember; and the righteous had judged him with the ferocious integrity of men who never take a penny unjustly nor give one away under any circumstances.
But when he had taken the first step towards accomplishing his purpose, he was very much at a loss as to the next, and he saw that he had never undertaken anything so difficult since he had reorganised the Nickel Trust, trebled the stock, cleared a profit of thirty millions and ruined nobody but the small-fry, who of course deserved it on the principle that people who cannot keep money ought not to have any. Some unkind newspaper man had then nicknamed it the Brass Trust, and had called him Brassy Van Torp; but it is of no use to throw mud at the Golden Calf, for the dirt soon dries to dust and falls off, leaving the animal as b
eautifully shiny as ever.
Mr. Van Torp did not quite see how he could immediately apply the force of money to further his plans with effect. He knew his adversary’s financial position in Europe much too well to think of trying to attack him on that ground; and besides, in his rough code it would not be fair play to do that. It was ‘all right’ to ruin a hostile millionaire in order to get his money. That was ‘business.’ But to ruin him for the sake of a woman was ‘low down.’ It would be much more ‘all right’ to shoot him, after fair and due warning, and to carry off the lady. That was impossible in a civilised country, of course; but as it occurred to him, while he was thinking, that he might find it convenient to go somewhere in a hurry by sea, he bought a perfectly new yacht that was for sale because the owner had died of heart disease the week after she was quite ready to take him to the Mediterranean. The vessel was at least as big as one of the ocean liners of fifty years ago, and had done twenty-two and one-tenth knots on her trial. Mr. Van Torp took her over as she was, with her officers, crew, cook and stores, and rechristened her. She had been launched as the Alwayn; he called her the Lancashire Lass — a bit of sentiment on his part, for that was the name of a mare belonging to Lady Maud’s father, which he had once ridden bareback when he was in an amazing hurry.
He had one interview with the Captain.
‘See here, Captain,’ he said, ‘I may not want to take a trip this season. I’m that sort of a man. I may or I may not. But if I do want you, I’ll want you quick. See?’
With the last word, he looked up suddenly, and the Captain ‘saw,’ for he met a pair of eyes that astonished him.
‘Yes, I see,’ he answered mechanically.
‘And if you’re in one place with your boat, and I wire that I want you in another, I’d like you to get there right away,’ said Mr. Van Torp.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘They say she’ll do twenty-two and a tenth,’ continued the owner, ‘but when I wire I want you I’d like her to do as much more as she can without bursting a lung. If you don’t think you’ve got the kind of engineer who’ll keep her red-hot, tell me right off and we’ll get another. And don’t you fuss about burning coal, Captain. And see that the crew get all they can eat and not a drop of drink but tea and coffee, and if you let ’em go on shore once in a way, see that they come home right side up with care, Captain, and make each of ’em say “truly rural” and “British Constitution” before he goes to bed, and if he can’t, you just unship him, or whatever you call it on a boat. Understand, Captain?’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1233