Читать книгу Daughters of Men - Hannah Lynch - Страница 9

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Crossing Constitution Square the king of Tenos was hilariously accosted by one of his satellites, a member of the Opposition and a lawyer of parchment exterior, whose career had been varied as it was unremunerative. Starting in life as domestic servant, he had found leisure to attend the University, and buy legal books with his perquisites. His stern profession by no means impeded the unsuccessful editorship of several newspapers—comic, political and satirical, each of which enjoyed a kind of ephemeral reputation and lasted about six months, leaving the venturous editor with a lighter pocket, and now he was Selaka’s colleague in obstruction.

“This is the best answer to my telegram, Constantine,” said Stavros. “What a day we’ll have of it in the Boulé[A]—eh?”

“Oh, ay, the Budget Speech. Leave it to me, Stavros. We’ll egg them on to an explosion. Keep to the caricatures. Collars and cuffs Minister! Ouf! Have you been pumping our friends about the Mayoralty?”

“Trust me. Our side is for you to a man. The party for Oïdas is strong, I admit, and wealth is in his favour, but I think we shall be able to pull you through.”

“If only! Listen Stavros, if I get in as Mayor, I’ll make you a present of a thousand francs, and I’ll secure your son the first vacant place in the University. I know your power,” he added, slyly.

The man of documents swelled with a sense of his own importance. Of that he had no doubt. The ministry depended on the state of his temper, which was uncertain, and the Lord be praised, what is a man if he has not his influence at the beck and call of his friends?

“Oïdas has spent a lot of money on the town,” he hinted.

“That is so. He is enormously rich, and takes care to advertise that fact,” Dr. Selaka replied.

“Well, we must spend money too,—in some cases we can only seem to spend it, and it will come to the same thing, my friend. But I’m hopeful, Constantine. You started on good lines. The swiftest path to celebrity is opposition, and you have never done anything else but oppose. It is a fine career, man, and gives you a decided superiority over the humble and compliant. The man who opposes need never trouble himself for reasons. His vote on the introduction of a measure is sufficient to insure him importance.”

“If obstruction be a merit, I have been obstructing these ten years, and the Mayoralty of Athens seems rather a modest claim upon such a display of superiority,” said Dr. Selaka, quite seriously.

The lawyer’s humour was profoundly tickled. The follies of the weak and foolish were a source of infinite amusement to him. It was he who had urged the Teniote to the coming ambitious contest, not that he in the least contemplated success, but he understood that with a wiser man to lead, his part would be a much less exciting one.

“We are the Parnellistoi of Greece, Constantine,” he said, with an air of ponderous assertion. “We may be beaten, but our hour of triumph is only retarded.”

He conscientiously consulted his watch, and then added, as an afterthought:

“You will need a larger house, Constantine.”

“I have thought of that, and have been inquiring about the expenses of building. I have a spot in view near the new Hospital. It will be a heavy item added to my election expenses, but my brother Pericles will come to my assistance, I make no doubt.”

“Why does he not come here himself, and establish his family? The man is insane to bury himself in Tenos.”

“With as handsome a daughter as ever the eyes of man fell upon,” interrupted the doctor, angrily.

“My faith! you must bring him to Athens. A handsome niece well dowered will be a feather in your cap. Play her off against Oïdas, and you’ll have the men on your side.”

“Pouf! Use a woman in politics! But if Pericles will let me look out for a son-in-law for him, something might be done in that way.”

“Why not? There are Mingros and Palle, both rich men. With either of them for a nephew you might aspire to be prime minister.”

“You don’t know Pericles. He is a confounded idiot. Nothing but learning will go down with him. Death before dishonour. Modern Athens represents dishonour to him, because it presumes to prefer other things to the very respectable ancients. If he came to Athens, like Jarovisky, he would expect Inarime to fix her eyes permanently on the Acropolis, with intervals for recognition of the Theseium and minor points of antiquity. I foresee her end. He’ll marry her to some wretched twopenny-halfpenny archæologist, who will barely be able to pay the rent of a flat in some shabby street, and the wages of a maid of all work.”

“We must avert her doom, Constantine. Have her up to town, and bring her some night to the theatre when the King is expected to attend. The young men will stare at her from the stalls, and I’ll have an elegant verse upon her in the ‘New Aristophanes.’”

This proposition brought them to the Boulé in Stadion Street. The Prime Minister’s carriage was outside, and along the railing a row of loafers reclined, discussing each member as he passed in, and the space inside the gates was strewn with soldiers and civilians of every grade. The sharp swarthy faces lit up with eager recognition when Dr. Selaka and Stavros entered the gate, and familiar and jocose greetings were flung casually at them from the crowd.

“Glad to see you have a new coat, Constantine,” one urchin roared after Selaka, and sent his admirers into fits of laughter.

With the dignity of demeanour it behoved a mayor-elect to assume, Selaka coldly ignored the jibes and jokes of the loafers, touched his hat to his acquaintances and ascended the steps of the Chamber with weighty prophecy of obstruction upon his brow. The interior of the Chamber was a sight for the gods. The floor behind the president was held by corner-boys, soldiers, peasants and beggars in common with the representatives of King George’s Parliament. Deputies in fustanella and embroidered jacket showed pictorially against the less imposing apparel of civilization, and addressed the president at their ease, frequently not condescending to stand, but lounged back in their seats, and merely arrested his attention with an authoritative hand. The proceedings could be watched upstairs from a gallery of boxes, and a very amusing and lively half-hour might thus be spent. The stage below was filled with grown-up children, who fought and wrangled, exchanged amenities and breathless personalities, and foolishly imagined they were ruling the country. It is impossible to conjecture what a parliament of women would be like, but we can safely predict that it could not well surpass the average parliament of men in the futile chatter, squabbling and display of ill-temper.

Dr. Selaka took his seat in a leisurely manner, under the minister’s eye, on the front seat, and listened, with a protruded underlip and the look of sagacity on the alert. Stavros sat back, extending his arms behind the backs of his neighbors, and wore an expression of ostentatious amusement befitting the editor of a satirical newspaper.

The unlucky minister hazarded a loose statement, which gave Dr. Selaka his opportunity. He was on his legs, with two spots of excited red staining his sallow cheeks under the eyes, and opened a vehement fire of epithet and expostulation. The minister retorted, and Stavros, seated where he was, just held out a cool protesting finger, and cried: “You lie.”

The English Cabinet Minister was sitting upstairs in the box set apart for the diplomatic corps, and on this statement being translated to him, he leant forward and focussed the lawyer with his impertinent eyeglass. This was a species of parliamentary frankness with which he was not familiar, used as he was to having his veracity challenged in a variety of forms. As a novelty it was worth observing—especially the attitude of the minister thus given “the lie direct.”

The president tapped the table and called for order, which was naturally the signal for boisterous disorder. The premier sat down amidst a torrent of words, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs rose to fight his battle as chief lieutenant. The storm raged to the pitch of universal howls, and when at last there was a momentary lull in the atmosphere, exasperated by the abuse of which he had been the free recipient, Stavros jumped up, and flashing threateningly upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs, roared out:—

“It well becomes you to abuse me. You live in a fine house now, and keep your carriage, but for all that, I can remember the time when you were glad to wear my old clothes.”

Dead silence greeted this retort, and a grim smile relaxed the grave faces of the members. No personality is too gross to tickle this most democratic race, and anything that levels the proud man delights them. The Right Honourable Samuel Warren, M. P., upstairs, decided to take the light of his illustrious presence from such a shocking scene, wavered, and remembering mythology, bethought himself of the laughter of the gods. He was abroad in the pursuit of knowledge, and this was certainly experience.

Stavros was frantically adjured to withdraw and apologise, and as frantically refused to do any such thing. His colleague and imagined leader stood up in his defence and the obstructionist became riotous to the verge of hysterics, until the Right Honourable Samuel Warren, looking down upon the spectacle from a safe distance, really believed he had been dropped into Bedlam instead of Parliament. Uproar succeeded angry protest in deafening succession; with the rapidity of thought mere speech was rejected as inadequate to the occasion. The generals, almost as numerous as soldiers, jumped upon their seats and brandished their hats terrifically. The hapless president made his escape, leaving the chair to one of the vice-presidents, and Constantine Selaka with an agile bound cleared the space intervening between the members’ seats and the tribune, installed himself therein, and shouted his intention of keeping the Chamber sitting until the demands of his party were complied with.

“And would Kyrios Selaka be good enough to state categorically the demands of his party?” the Prime Minister asked, standing to go, holding his hat in his hand, with an officially negative look.

This was a rash invitation. Selaka burst into an interminable, involved and idiotic speech, which Stavros followed from his seat with one much more involved and personal, and much less idiotic.

Evening descended, the dinner-hour passed, and still the unfortunate vice-president held the chair, and exercised his authority by a furious and inappropriate ringing of the bell, and calls for attention. Exhausted and famished deputies dropped out of representative life in search of animal food; others clamoured for cessation of the strife, and pathetically referred to the solace of the domestic circle. But Stavros and Selaka were adamant. The clamours of nature were unheeded by them; when one shouted and orated, the other sought comfort in cigarette and coffee. Night came, and found Selaka still in the tribune, gloomy, ravenous, and resolute. Meanwhile Stavros had refreshed himself with a snatch of food outside. He returned to the charge while his leader shot into the corridors, and collared excited and admiring attendants in the pursuit of food.

“We are as good as the Parnellistoi over in London,” Selaka remarked, and rubbed his hands with joy, as he and his friend walked home at the end of the protracted sitting.

“That is so, Constantine,” said Stavros, who dearly loved a row of any sort, and who since he could not fight the European powers in person, solaced himself by fighting a temporising president and a tame party. “You’ll be mayor to a certainty.”

“Mayor indeed!” ejaculated Constantine, keenly measuring his own sudden charge for notoriety. “It’s minister at least I ought to be. I have tackled them, Stavros, eh?”

His friend thought so, and went home to express his opinion in three columns of laudatory prose and twelve satirical verses describing the great Homeric fray.