Hannah Lynch

“ The heavy ambassador danced hourly attendance upon the young goddess, and under her glance, sparkled, astounded spectators by feats of chivalry and semi-veiled gallantry that turned the clock of time for him back by twenty years. Ah, but his enslavement was not a serious defection. There was the wretched Rudolph, held breathless by his own faithlessness and variable heart-beats. The feeling he gave Andromache was but a rushlight, compared with this blaze of fire. He slept not, nor did he eat. Life died within him out of Inarime’s presence, and was flame in his members when she was near him. ”

“ Yes, there yonder is the glorious Miltiades, linked with that Phœbus Apollo, Hadji Adam. How the heart gladdens at the sight, how the nerves shake at the clanking of that terrible sabre of his, at the rattle of his glittering spurs, and with what cordial delight do we recognise his military salute and meet the condescension of his hand-clasp! One singles out the pair instinctively, amid the multiplicity of uniforms, above the rank and file of mere marine officers and saucy midshipmen. For, be it known to benighted foreigners, all male Athens dons a uniform, military or naval. ”

“ Gustav waited not for another word, but rushed into his room, hastily gathered his things together, and reappeared in the little parlour with his portmanteau in his hand. He stood in front of Selaka, and looked at him steadily.
“Should this grief be too much for her?”
“She is strong, and she is brave,” said Selaka, “and she will overcome it.”
“Good God!” said Gustav, “have you no thought of the girl’s heart? Are there forces in nature, think you, to dispel or even dull its yearning? Is there ever a barrier to the union of two souls! ”

“ Inarime, are you not shamed? Leave that man’s embrace. What! do you not see in him the long years of servitude and degradation under which your country groaned? Are you less proud, less worthy of your glorious ancestors than the Greek woman who flung herself and her babes from a rock into the engulfing sea rather than yield to Turkish embraces? Does Hellenic blood run so sluggishly in your veins that revolt does not cry for shame? ”

“ She was a very pretty girl of somewhat exotic type: olive tints, blue-black hair, with a thin, sedately arranged row of curls upon the forehead. A face of meagre intelligence, without a shade of those subtle and tremulous surprises, that delicate eloquence of opening sensibilities and wonder, that make up so much of girlish beauty in northern races. But Andromache was very touching in that moment of perplexity and humiliation, and having looked at her once, Rudolph felt constrained to look again—which he did willingly enough, though he blushed scarlet at his own audacity. ”

“ Winter had lashed the Eastern world with sharp frenzy, and now early spring was raging over the plain of Attica, driving madly in a whirlwind of dust down from the encircling hills, with its breath of ice and its shrewish roar. And soon it would be at its verge, and stand on tiptoe with wistful glance set upon the hurrying summer that so soon would consume its flowers and grasses and chattering rills.
Still Gustav lingered at Athens studying archæology and patiently waiting for Constantine’s message of hope. Exploring expeditions helped him through the long leisure. ”

“ It struck me that Inarime could be no vulgar glittering jewel to be thus carefully shielded from the irreverent gaze by this sage of Tenos.
“I think you cannot be French,” he said, at last.
“Reineke is a German name,” I answered, evasively, for it was not my wish to court coldness by an avowal of my nationality.
“Ah, it is well. I do not like the French.”
“And yet your countrymen adore them,” I said, and laughed.
“So they do, so they do—to their sorrow and shame.”
“How can that be? Is France not admittedly the first nation of the civilised world?” I exclaimed. ”

“ Ten days back in Athens, and not one glimpse of Andromache! Very unlike a lover restored to the arms of his mistress does he look, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets and an expression of miserable perplexity on his face. An airy, wide-awake individual, with an anemone in his button-hole, and a glass in his eye, accosts him noisily, and quickly scanning him, remarks aloud upon the utter dejection of his air.
“Ah, Tonton, je suis épris—cette fois pour de bon,” cried Rudolph, desirous of horrifying somebody else as well as himself. ”

“ We live and learn, eh, Ehrenstein?”
“I suppose so,” said Rudolph, drearily. “The learning is not more pleasant than the living.”
“You charming boy! so delightful to know that innocence still flourishes in our midst. The century is exhausted, but a young heart is a perennial fount of misery. For, my young friend, there is no more sure prophecy of youth and innocence than utter woe and dejection. If you give him time, Michaelopoulos will put that into a neat verse for you.”
“Don’t, pray. I hate poetry,” cried Rudolph. ”

“ Liszt had only spoken to him of her genius with enthusiasm. Had his small circle deliberately conspired to keep him in ignorance of this cruel reality, while he was wandering and losing himself in a forest of delicate and poetic illusions?—building hope upon hope of an unanalysable nature until his whole happiness grew to bind itself round the thought of this unknown woman crowned by art with a glory greater than her womanhood? Photini Natzelhuber! His mother had often told him of the time she first came to Vienna, a slip of a girl, with a curly boyish head and the strangest topaz eyes. ”

“ Inarime suffered herself to be led across the room to the spot where the couples were noisily forming themselves. Just then she saw Rudolph Ehrenstein enter with the Baroness von Hohenfels on his arm, who surveyed the young people through her face-à-main with a complacent smile. The smile intensified when Inarime came under its rays, while Rudolph and Andromache were looking far too eloquently at each other. Inarime understood the mute avowal of momently wedded orbs, and a thrill of remembered delight and anguish swept over her like a blast. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Johannis,” cried Demetrius, “he is an unconscionable liar. However, I have certainly been assured that London is a largest kind of town, perhaps a little more extensive than Athens, but then I never believe all I hear. I like to judge things for myself. Not that I have seen Athens either; but I believe it to be the finest city in the world. Why, was not Athens founded long before London or Paris were heard of? Do not people come every day from America to see it, and guardians have to be placed about the Acropolis to prevent strangers robbing its stones or relics? ”

“ That his daughter, his treasure, whom he had believed few men worthy to possess, should have been publicly insulted by a wretch like Oïdas to avenge an ignoble vanity which conceived itself affronted—that so horrible a stroke should have been dealt him by fate, and the heavens remained unmoved and the blood of life still flow in his veins, vision not have been struck from his appalled eyes! Pride lay dead at a stroke, and the unhappy man felt that he could never again lift a front of dignity to the light of day. ”

“ Had she been playing for a lover, she could not have done better. But she was scarcely conscious of love for Rudolph. Her thirty-five years of wretched hilarity and miserable sadness had left her heart untouched until now, but she was too proud to acknowledge even to herself the steadily growing interest and yearning awakened in her by the innocent eyes of a lad, and while she played she resolutely kept her face averted from Rudolph’s. So she saw nothing of the varying emotions that swept across it as the notes at her magic touch rose and fell. ”

“ When Selaka opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the sofa, and saw the face of Gustav Reineke bent over his anxiously. He stared in awed amazement, shrank back a little, put up one hand and timidly touched the young man as if to test his reality.
“You are better, sir?” asked Reineke, taking the hand, and he held it in a warm, protective clasp.
“You! Daoud Bey,” muttered Selaka, indistinctly.
“Look on me as Gustav Reineke, I beg you, sir, and my presence will hurt you less. The past is no more for me; have I not promised?” said Gustav, gently. ”

“ The seasons are not more regular than our habits, and excitement is undreamed of by us. The villagers come to me with their simple woes, and I comfort them and doctor them, and instil into them such wisdom as my young head has mastered. Sometimes my dear father comes to my help,—not often, for they are less afraid of me. It is, I suppose, because I am nearer to them.
“This letter shames me, it is so idle and garrulous. What have I to say but that I love you, Madame,—I love you, and beg you to accept the assurance of my heartfelt gratitude and my affectionate friendship.
“Inarime Selaka.” ”

“ Could there be anything dreamed of on earth like the beauty of the “Barcarolle” so played? Enthusiasm reached the white-heat of passion. Ladies tore the flowers from their bosoms, men from their button-holes and flung them at her; faces went white and red, and eyes filled with tears. And there stood Agiropoulos smiling blandly and taking half the triumph as his own, while Rudolph had gone back to his recess and was sobbing unrestrainedly in sheer ecstasy. ”

“ Like a roseate jewel in a circle of sapphire, with opal and mauve and purple lights struck from it by the sun’s rays, lies Tenos upon the deep and variable bosom of the Ægean waters. The Greek islands seen from the sea are untiringly, unspeakably beautiful. Shadow and shine, delicate hues and strong ones melt into an inextricable haze, as do the sensations of the spectator, incapable of analysis as he watches them. Energy oozes out through the finger-tips, the pulses quiet in lazy delight, and the eye is filled for once with seeing. ”

“ Rubinstein and others had dedicated several works to her, and for ten years she traversed the musical world a splendid enigma, a blight, a shame and a sorrow. The possession of certain irregular passions might have found ample apology in her genius, but the Natzelhuber so degraded her art that it quite sank into abeyance in the presence of her iniquities. The wonder was soon, not that such an artist should be so gross, but that such a soulless creature should possess the power of thrilling her hearers with every delicate perception of sense and harmony. ”

“ Michael, St. George and the Virgin Mary roughly carven upon a marble slab by some unknown hand in the seventeenth century. A thin vein of water flowed from the torrent above into the fountain with a tinkling sound that broke the silence very sadly. How desolate in the stillness looked the interminable lines of marble hills stained with burnt thyme and furze, the great jagged rocks tinted with gold and red and purple and grey, forked against the sapphire sky, and the dim grey glades of olives below! Desertion lay upon all, and the beauty was the beauty of neglect and barrenness. ”

“ She was in the centre of a noisy laughing group of men, smoking a cigarette and holding an empty liqueur glass in her hand into which the Baron von Hohenfels was pouring some brandy, laughing boisterously and joking hideously. Every nerve within him thrilled in an agony of shame. This the glorious interpreter of heavenly sound! This the artist he so passionately desired to reverence as a woman, while worshipping her genius! He was half prompted to go away in silence, when his eyes caught the sarcastic triumph of Agiropoulos’ smile. ”

“ Agiropoulos was speeding on his way to Athens while Rudolph was sitting in the Natzelhuber’s undecorated parlor, listening to the magic “Mélodiés Hongroises,” wherein enchanting dance and melody spring exultingly out of subtle waves of variation, their impetuous joy broken suddenly by sharp notes of pathos and vague yearning. Music so gloriously rendered thrilled him into instantaneous love, and his soul was lost irretrievably in exquisite sound. ”