Читать книгу Daughters of Men - Hannah Lynch - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The illustrious Dr. Galenides had just seated himself at his desk to write a note to his no less illustrious colleague, Dr. Melanos, while his hat and gloves on the study table and his carriage outside were testimony of a contemplated professional drive. The study door was suddenly opened with what Dr. Galenides regarded as undue familiarity, and looking up sharply, prepared to administer the deserved rebuke, the learned physician recognised in the intruder an old friend and brother in profession. The new-comer, a rough, provincial-looking Hercules, was Dr. Selaka of Tenos, a member of his Majesty’s parliament, called for some unaccountable reason, “The King of Tenos.” Instead of a rebuke, Dr. Galenides administered an effusive embrace, and clasped this insular majesty to his capacious bosom.

“What a splendid surprise, my dear Constantine!” he cried, when he had kissed both Selaka’s bronzed cheeks. “When did you come to Athens?”

“Last night. I have come to oppose two new measures of the Minister. Have you read his speech on the Budget?”

“Of course. I thought it displayed great moderation and sagacity. There’s a statesman if you will, Constantine.”

“May the devil sit upon his moustache for an English humbug! England here, England there! Ouf! But wait until he has me to tackle him.”

“You’ll lead him a dance, I’ve no doubt,” laughed Galenides. “But how are all the family?”

“Very well. My niece Inarime is growing more beautiful every day. All the islanders are in love with her. A queer old dog is Pericles. He has brought that girl up in the maddest fashion. Nothing but ancient Greek and that sort of thing, and he has made up his mind she will marry a foreign archæologist, or die an old maid.”

“Yes, I always thought him unpractical and foolish, but I tremendously respect his learning. Why doesn’t he bring the girl to Athens, if he won’t marry her to a Teniote?”

“Well, he talks vaguely of some such intention. You are going out, I see.”

“Yes, and that reminds me, Selaka. I was just writing a line to Melanos, but you’ll do just as well. There is a foreigner sick in the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne who has sent for me. Could you go round and look at him? I haven’t a spare moment to-day. If I am absolutely wanted for a consultation, of course, I’ll endeavour to attend.”

Selaka consented with alacrity, and the friends parted with cordiality at the door, one to seat himself in a comfortable carriage, and be rolled swiftly to the Queen’s Hospital in the new quarter of Athens, the Teniote to walk to the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, a little above Constitution Square, overlooking the orange trees and fountains in front of the Royal Palace. He was delighted with the prospect of meeting a distinguished foreigner, distinction proclaimed in the choice of hotel, and he would profit by the occasion to discuss the politics of Bismarck with this M. Reineke.

The waiters favoured him with that insolent reception usually bestowed by waiters of distinguished hotels upon foot and provincial-looking arrivals. But the mention of the illustrious Dr. Galenides cleared the haughty brow of Demosthenes; and when Selaka furthermore stated that that great personage had sent him to feel the pulse of the sick foreigner, Demosthenes condescended to call to Socrates, a lesser luminary among the hotel officials, and signified to his satellite that Dr. Selaka might be conducted to M. Reineke’s chamber.

Selaka found his patient, a young man of about twenty-eight, lying on a sofa, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown, with an elegant travelling rug thrown across his feet. Selaka’s keen glance rested in amazement on a delicate Eastern head, long grave eyes of the unfathomable and colourless shade of water flowing over dark tones, with a very noble and intense look in them, a high smooth brow that strengthened this expression of nobility, and finely-cut lips seen through the waves of dark beard and moustache as benign as a sage’s. It was a thoughtful, spiritual face, serene in its strength, unimpassioned in its kindliness—the face of a student and a gentleman.

“I should never take you to be a German, M. Reineke,” said Selaka, after their first greeting, seating himself beside the sofa, and taking the sick man’s supple fingers into his.

“No one does,” said Reineke, in such pure French as to put to shame Selaka’s grotesque accent. His voice was musical and low, with a softness of tone in harmony with his peculiar beauty, and fever gave it a ring of weariness.

“Are you going to order me quinine, doctor?”

“Why, naturally. How else would you break a fever?”

“But I cannot take it, doctor. It disagrees with me.”

“That is a pity. Four doses taken in four hours cut the worst fever, and set a man on his feet in a day.”

“Some constitutions can bear it, I suppose. But I nearly died after quinine treatment in Egypt. My head has not ceased going round ever since.”

“Your temperature is over a hundred, and you refuse to take quinine! Then there is nothing for you but to linger on in this state. Low diet and repose—that is all I can prescribe.”

Left alone, the sick man closed his eyes wearily and turned to sleep, out of which he was shaken by a knock at the door, and the head of an Englishman thrust itself inside.

“Can I come in, Mr. Reineke?”

“Pray do, Mr. Warren,” said Reineke, smiling agreeably. “It is kind of you to find time to visit a sick wretch amid all your fêtes and sight-seeing.”

“Oh, that is a real pleasure. Only I am so sorry to see you cut up like this and losing all the fun. It was awfully jolly at the Von Hohenfels’ last week. There was an outrageous lioness there. For the life of me I could not catch her name. The governor wants to secure her for London. By Jove! what a tartar! She nearly ate the French viscount up in a bite.”

“Yes, I heard about it, but she is a very distinguished artist, I believe. You’ve been to Sunium since?”

“Came back to-day for the Jaroviskys’ ball. What a jolly people these Greeks are! The entire country seems at our disposal. Special trains, special boats and guides. Oh, we had an awfully good time, I tell you: inspected the Laurion mines, and looked awfully wise about them and everything else. But surely you’ll be able to go to the Jaroviskys’ to-morrow? What did the doctor say?”

“Nothing wise—a doctor never does.”

“Look here, old fellow, we can’t leave you here while we are dancing and flirting with the pretty Athenians.”

“If the pretty Athenians guessed my nationality, they would not be very eager to have me dance and flirt with them.”

“Then the governor was right? You are not a German?”

“No, I am a Turk. I have lived a good deal in Germany, so I adopted a Teuton name upon coming to Greece to avoid disagreeable associations for the natives. It is very comfortable. I was bored in Paris by the way people stared at me, and whispered openly about me when they heard my Turkish name, so I mean not to resume it. If I played the piano, the ladies fell into ecstatic wonder.”

“Well, we are accustomed to the old-fashioned Turk, cross-legged, on a pile of cushions, in flowing garb and turban, smoking a narghile, with a lovely Fatima or two by his side, and exclaiming frequently in sepulchral tones, ‘Allah be praised!’ It will doubtless take us some time to grow used to the newer picture presented by you.”

“Is it not aggravating to be kept here in a darkened room, while near me are ruined porticoes and columns, where once my people built their Moslem forts and turrets, and the voice of the muezzin broke the lone silence after the Pagan days? There is not even a glimpse from my window of that mass of broken pillars that stood out so plainly against the sky when we entered the Piraeus. I feel like a child waiting for the play, when suddenly comes a hitch which keeps the curtain down. I want to walk with the poets and philosophers, read Plato in the groves of the Academe, stand with Œdipus and Antigone at Colonneus, and look towards the towers and temples of Athens, walk with Pericles and Phidias through the marbles of the Acropolis, with none but the voices of glorious spirits to break the silence of the universe,—those spirits who have burned into history the clear gold of their unapproachable intellects, seeing with eyes that have served for centuries, feeling with hearts that have beaten for all time, speaking with lips upon which the noblest words are everlastingly carven.”

“Gad, I see you are an enthusiast like our friend, Miss Winters, who goes into fits when we inform her of some fresh rascality on the part of the modern Greeks,” cried young Warren, marvelling to hear a Turk talk in this fashion.

“She is a charming old lady, and you youngsters downstairs should not quiz her as you do. She engaged, if I were better, to carry me with her on Sunday to read Paul’s sermon to the men of Athens on the hill of Mars aloud. I have since been informed that it is customary for the Athenians to take their Sunday airing along the foot of the hill of Mars. Fancy the sensation we should have created, standing in a respectful attitude beside the little American lady, piously reading aloud the words of St. Paul.”

Reineke laughed softly, while young Warren exploded in a burst of loud merriment.

“Do you know, when she discovered that the ruffian of a head-waiter is called Demosthenes, she looked so horribly like embracing him, that, seriously alarmed, I exclaimed, ‘Madam, I beseech you, pause in your rash career.’ I don’t think she quite realised the extent of my service, for she very nearly quarrelled with me when I mentioned that Demosthenes is in the habit of defrauding our poor Jehus of at least half their profits.”

“Amiable enthusiast! But don’t class me with her. I have no illusions about the modern Greeks. I have seen in the East how they take advantage of our good-nature and our dislike to trade. I know them to cheat and bargain and deceive, and grow fat upon the kindness of those who trust them. But what have they in common with the ancients? They have not the intellect, the unerring taste, the exquisite restraint of language and bearing, the sunny gravity of temperament, the simplicity and keen love of the beautiful. If they were really the descendants of the old race, there would be some signs whereby we should recognise their glorious heritage.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps, if we knew the opinion held by the Persians and the barbarians of the old Hellenes—it would be probably very different from their own.”

“We don’t need any opinion with the works they have left. Such eloquence as that is incontrovertible, and in the face of it, their representatives to-day are as much out of place here as were the Franks, the Italians and the Turks. It was a desecration to have built on these immortal shores a nation sprung from slavery and the refuse of the Middle Ages—without tradition or any right to believe in its own destiny. What do they care for? Money, trade! They have no real reverence for knowledge, except that it helps in the acquirement of wealth and power. You will find no Greek ready to consecrate his days, aye, and his nights, to the disinterested dispersion of the clouds of ignorance by as much as a rushlight of knowledge, capable of the unglorified, untrumpeted, unrecognised patience and labour of the scholar. Nor would he willingly choose poverty and obscurity that he might live the life of the spirit.”

“Well, I am afraid there are not many of us who would,” said Warren, good-naturedly. “And these people have their virtues. They are sober and moral.”

“They are indeed, and they are not cruel to their children or their wives, but they make up for the omission by horrible cruelty to animals. They frequently amuse themselves by tying a barrel of petroleum to the tails of a couple of dogs, and firing it, for the delicate pleasure of gloating over the death agonies of the poor brutes.”

“Good heavens! What awful savages! But do you know, Mr. Reineke, it would be a just punishment for your ill opinion of them if you fell in love with a Greek. ’Pon my word, there are some very pretty girls here.”

“It is possible. But mere beauty has no attraction for me. I have seen lovely women in the East, indolent, unthinking beings, whom I couldn’t respect. I would sooner have a wicked woman who had elements of greatness in her than a virtuous one who had none. Aspasia I should have adored. It is because the women we mostly meet are so insipid that I have never thought to fill my life with the consuming excitement of love. I should feel ashamed and grieved to place my manhood under the feet of a mere household pet, or a drawing-room ornament, a fluttering, flounced marionette with the soul in her eyes gone astray, her lips twisted out of the lovely sensibility of womanhood by senseless chatter and laughter far sadder than tears. To see so many exquisite creatures meant to be worshipped by us, and only ridiculed, meant to guide and ennoble us, and preferring degradation; the purity of maidenly eyes lost in the vilest audacity of gaze, and the high post of spiritual guardians of the world bartered for unworthy conquests.”

“How cold-blooded to be able to furnish all these excellent reasons for not making a fool of yourself! Well, may we hope to see you at the Jaroviskys’?”

“I am afraid not. But pray, come and tell me how you have enjoyed yourself when you have a moment to spare.”

“And shall I give your love to Miss Winters?”

“Hardly that, but present her with my most distinguished compliments, if that is good English.”

Dr. Selaka that evening found Reineke more feverish, and although he was not anxious to lose sight of his patient, he seriously advised a sea voyage as the only adequate substitution for quinine.

He was greatly interested in this handsome stranger with the dark beard and romantic intensity of gaze, and speculated wildly on his nationality and circumstances as he walked from the hotel. He thought he might be a Spaniard, until, remembering the late Spanish Minister, who could not pay his passage back to Spain, and only got as far as Corfu by selling all the clothes and furniture he had never paid for, he decided that the Spaniards were a miserable race. The Italians, he thought, were not much better, and Reineke as little resembled a Frenchman as he did a German.

“You might go to Poros,” he said to Gustav. “It is a pretty place, and the trip would do you good.”

“Why not one of the Ægean Islands?” suggested Gustav.

“Certainly. There is Tenos. I live there myself, and I have a brother whom you could stay with for a day or two.”

Selaka coloured with a sudden astonishing thought. This stranger was rich, perhaps unmarried. He might fall in love with Inarime. Now he was bent on urging the trip to Tenos, before undreamed of. “I’ll telegraph to my brother, and you can travel in the Sphacteria. The captain is my godson.”

“You are very kind, doctor, and I am ashamed to accept such favours from you,” said Reineke, truthfully, in surprised assent.

“Oh, it is a pleasure. We Greeks love to see strangers.”

“Then I will go to-morrow. I want to get well as soon as possible, for I have much to do here,” said Reineke.