The white yacht sailed
gracefully over the dark blue waters of the Mediterranean.
She seemed to be moving in response to an inner impulse.
This was the sixth day of the cruise, and that morning
she had left the harbour at Messina to sail in a southerly
course round the eastern shores of Sicily. The sea was
calm, and the bows cut so smoothly into the water, that
the dividing line between water and metal was as sharp
as if it had been ruled with a diamond point on the
surface of a mirror.
Diana stood in the bows, her head tossed back and the
breeze playing with her curls, the white linen dress
clinging to her and outlining breast and leg. From a distance,
she might have been taken for the figure of that marble
Nike which, in times of old, had been placed at the nose
of the Greek warship and had flown forward to victory.
But no one was about on this particular morning. She had
ship and sea and sunlight to herself, so far as any personal
observation was concerned, for the weatherbeaten
helmsman and the two Low German sailors keeping the watch
had no time to contemplate young ladies at so early an
hour, even though, if we except old Mary, Diana was the
only woman aboard.
And Diana knew that she was unobserved. She, like her
companions, had started off in a spirit of adventure, and
had sought nothing but enjoyment out of the voyage, the
sprightly talk, the long silences, the laughter. But, alone
of all the pleasant company, Diana knew and loved the
sea, was under the spell of the dancing waters. She had
felt this as soon as she stepped on board at Genoa, and
now she was completely won to its moods and enchantments,
in storm or calm, radiant at morn, tranquil at noon-tide,
lively at sunset, or a murmuring mystery at night.
She felt at home among the hawsers and tackle, the
life-belts and ropes and masts, the shining brasses, all the
paraphernalia of seafaring life. Untiringly she questioned
the crew as to this, that, and the other detail she did not
understand. She was learning to be an adept in reckoning
how many knots they were making, in reading the charts,
in calculating the mid pressure, and was becoming weather
wise. Yet all this seemed to her no more than a game played
upon the surface of the waters. Dark forces were at work
within the abysses of her soul. She was lured within the
magic circle of this fluid element, to plumb her own depths,
dumbly, unseeingly, and to gauge her strength in the eyes
of her friends and under the blue dome of the starry night.
When such moods of self-contemplation assailed her, she
forgot all about logarithms and maps, and allowed herself
to penetrate into the mysteries of her own nature.
Nowhere were such meditations more fruitful than when
she was surrounded by the sea.
As Diana stood in the bows this morning she seemed
to form part of the elements around her. The sunshine
sparkled from the water as from the surface of a mirror,
it was split up into a thousand facets on the ripples, as if
the mighty fist of a god had dealt a blow upon the moving
mass from which, at the moment of impact, a cascade
of light had generated. But the impression upon Diana
was different. The radiance and the sea were for her a
world divided against itself and seeking reunion through
strife; as night fell, the radiance was absorbed into the sea;
when day dawned, it arose once more from the bosom of
the waters; and this descent and resurrection was reproduced
within herself as if she too were part of the living
cosmos. The sensation of fettered freedom was strong
upon her as the yacht glided through the Mediterranean,
for here, and here alone, did night and morning become
visible phenomena, superseding the habits of a lifetime,
and giving concrete substance to the passage of the hours.
The stars, which served to guide the vessel on her course,
appeared more pregnant with mystery than those which
shone over the houses of a town or even over the trees
of a forest. At such moments, Diana became blind to
externals, for she yielded herself up entirely to a kind of
mystical contemplation. She saw neither birds nor fishes,
nor the distant mountains coming slowly into view to
starboard, nor the flattened cone shimmering white against
the blue sky. Her thoughts were turned inward, while
the breeze played fresh and cool upon her skin, the
murmur of waters caressed her ears, the brine and the
brilliance smote upon her eyes. Oblivious to all exterior
happenings, she was only aware of palpitating sensation.
It was for her one of those rare moments of inner
solitude which seem absolutely unattainable amid the
growing tumult and complication of modern life. Of one thing
alone did she become aware as the moments passed and
she stood awake while her friends lay wrapped in
slumber: that the sky was cloudless over a glittering sea.
She was roused from her
reverie by the sound of rushing water. The men were
washing down the decks, and she had to jump lightly on
to a coil of ropes in order to escape the flood. It looked
like glass as it flowed over the boards and through the
scuppers. Diana felt her whole personality invaded by a
sensation of cheerful security, of joy, at being absorbed
as it were into a moving entity. She smiled serenely, and
looked around her at these evidences of a century to which
she seemed to be returning from a flight into a primal age.
Westward, barely eight miles away, the rugged cliffs of
an island rose out of the sea, crowned with what might
be—she had no telescope—the Roman Theatre of Taormina.
Years ago she had sailed these self-same waters, but
she had never had an opportunity of visiting the island
before, or of studying its coast-line. The young sailor who
was busy swabbing down the deck had hitherto only sailed
the Atlantic to and from America. This was his first
experience of the Mediterranean, and he could give her none
of the information she so eagerly desired. Nor could she
consult the charts, for they were in the captain's cabin.
The man at the wheel was always chary of words first
thing in the morning. No one was about who could tell
her what she longed to know. But soon the sound of an
electric bell warned her that her friends were beginning to
stir below, and she forgot her preoccupation with the
landscape in order to guess who the ringer might be. Three
times the summons was repeated, short, decisive, peremptory.
It must be Scherer; he alone, as owner of the yacht,
would venture on so authoritative an expression of urgency.
The prince usually rang but once, with deliberation.
Franklin's impatience was implied by three short,
syncopated trills following close upon each other. The
Russian never rang at all, probably, thought Diana, because
it smacked too much of the master. She smiled to herself,
hoping breakfast might soon be served. Meanwhile she
watched the gulls flying overhead, and as she did so she
heard footsteps approaching. The soft, slow tread told her
that this was the fifth of her friends aboard.
When the plans for the cruise had been concluded, soon
after that evening at Scherer's, and Diana had been asked
if she knew of anyone else who would fit into the party,
her thoughts had naturally flown to Wilhelm, whose lute
playing and fanciful imagination would be greatly
appreciated during such a voyage. Indeed, Wilhelm had proved
so pleasant a companion to all concerned, that Scherer
himself was grateful for the young man's presence.
"Good morning, Wilhelm," Diana called to him as he
approached. "You are the first to put in an appearance,
and yet you come an hour too late. The best of the day
is past!"
"What? Breakfast?"
"No, the early hours!"
"But the sun's hardly risen."
"True; still, like a traveller after an hour's tramp, the
sun's beginning to feel a trifle hot and weary. The first
step into the free morning air when all the rest of the
household is asleep, the first footfall to rouse the echoes
along the slumbering street—that's over for today. And
look, there's Etna!"
"You are cold," said Wilhelm waving his hand to the
mountain. "Farewell! Farewell!—Where are we going to
land?"
"Herr Scherer said Syracuse."
"At noon?"
"No, later. Perhaps not before evening."
"And there we'll find the tyrant?"
"Say, rather, the ear of Dionysius."
He sat Turkish fashion on a coil of ropes, his eyes blinking
in the dazzle of sun and sea. His dreamy nature made
him critical of all this clarity and hardness of outline. It
seemed to him that the white apparition before him, resting
a foot lightly upon a taut bit of cordage and leaning against
the brass rail, with the background of blue, was poised in
mid air.
"You have a way of talking about the gods as if they
were relations of yours, Diana. And now you want to
know where Dionysius keeps his ears! What do they
matter? A man needs no more than mouth and nose to
appreciate Burgundy."
"This morning you have no eyes," she retorted, smiling
and poking him playfully with the point of her shoe. "If
only you had ears! Then you would have heard what Herr
Scherer had to tell us last night about this ear, seeing that
this time, may it please you, we are not making for your
tutelary deity, but for the tyrant who took the name of
the god because—well, because he may have felt a kinship
to the gods just as Diana does. And now let's have
some breakfast."
So saying she jumped off the rail, pulled Wilhelm to his
feet, linked arms with him, and sped down the deck to
the dining-room, a place of glass and steel situated on the
promenade deck. Taking the seat at the head of the table,
she said to the steward, who awaited her orders menu in
hand, "Oh, just give us anything you have a mind to, fruit,
tea, what you will!"
"Impossible," protested Wilhelm, grasping the menu and
measuring it with his fingers. "Eight inches of breakfast
can't be walked off! And the spacing between dishes is as
close as in the cheap edition of Jean Paul I have downstairs
in my cabin. So for today I decree that we choose the even
numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and tomorrow we'll eat the uneven."
Thereupon he handed back the card to the steward who
went off to get them what they had ordered. As soon as
the man was out of earshot, Wilhelm said:
"Have you noticed how the Russian eats?"
"He eats splendidly," said Diana with ostentatious
decision, smoothing her table napkin primly over her lap.
"Splendidly! Indeed?" The young man raised a hand
in protest. Then with the utmost solemnity, as if the
conventions of good manners were his main concern in life,
he continued: "Didn't you notice how, last night at
dinner, he took a quail in his fingers and bit off its head,
smartly and almost savagely, as if he were an ogre dining
off a grand duke?"
Diana laughed in spite of herself. She bit heartily into
an apple, as she retorted:
"Yes, Wilhelm, smartly and savagely," and she suited her
action to the words, biting ferociously into the fruit she
held in hand. "I'm not particularly enamoured of this
conceited young Russian, and as far as I am concerned he
might have stayed at home. But he has the finest teeth
I've ever seen biting into anything, and it's only when he
attacks his food that you can see them, for he never laughs.
Besides, as far as quails are concerned, conventional
etiquette permits one to bite their heads off, as you can read
for yourself in Brillat-Savarin, even if one be a grand
duke and one takes the quail for a roasted anarchist!"
"I'll have to ask the prince about that," said Wilhelm
huffily, helping himself to porridge. "He's nearly a grand
duke himself and must know about such things better
than any of us."
The prince appeared at that moment and stood looking
through the glass door, as he said with indulgent pity:
"Fancy eating breakfast just as we are sailing by
Fiumefreddo, Gurna, and Fondachello! A fleeting moment we
may never hope to recapture...."
"Fancy sleeping on to eight o'clock on such a morning,"
retorted Diana, "and then to try and cloak the misdemeanour
with an erudition acquired on the wing as it were—for
I am sure you've only culled those names from a map
as you were dressing!"
"Well, you can't deny that I've committed them to
memory with commendable promptitude," said the prince, as
he took his place on Diana's left, for, wishing to avoid
formal etiquette of any kind, it had been agreed that all
were to take their seats at table as chance would have
it—an arrangement which invariably entailed a general post
of table napkins as the prelude to every meal. "Fate, in
the person of Giorgino, our worthy chef's assistant, who
from a passionate desire to move in high social circles
gets up when everyone else is asleep and lays the breakfast
table, fate, I say, had decreed that the Russian should
sit here. But I am not afraid to gainsay the dame by
removing Sergievitch's napkin to a lower place at our board,"
and he suited the action to the word. "Good morning, Herr
Wilhelm!"
Wilhelm, busy ladling in his porridge, was content to
reply:
"Good morning! Do you happen ever to have killed a
quail by biting off its head?"
The prince's eyebrows went up in perplexity at the
question. Then, turning to Diana, he inquired:
"Has Herr Wilhelm had a bad dream?"
She shook her head, saying:
"Marsala, porridge, sea air, Jean Paul, and a good deal
of Stromboli...."
"Too much Stromboli," interrupted Scherer as he came
forward with the Russian. When the chorus of greetings
had subsided, he continued: "Not only that, but too much
mail as well. I was a fool to call for it in Messina
yesterday, it's given me a headache going through the pile and
has made me late for breakfast."
"Allow me," said Diana offering him the dish, and for
a good while thereafter the five of them were busy with
the details of breakfasting.
"Can I get no information for my department?" inquired
Diana, at length.
"I suggest an editorial staff on the following lines," said
the prince. "The aim of the Scherer expedition: to incite
Lord Northcliffe to suicide. The means: publication of
events just before their occurrence. Leader writer: the
Captain. Trade: Herr Scherer. Commerce: Fräulein de
Wassilko. Technical affairs: Herr Wilhelm. Advertisements:
Herr Franklin. Art: Giorgino, who lays our dining
table so well. Reminiscences of the twenty-first century:
Dr. Sergievitch."
"And what about yourself, Prince?"
"I am, of course, the Constant Reader, who for years
has sent in letters of protest, in English, in American, in
Russian, in Italian, to say: 'I earnestly request you to give
us a little less "Excelsior."'"
"Your arrangement won't do at all," interrupted Scherer,
"for, since we shall have to depend on our advertisements
for our financial security, we must have some one who can
get up early!"
Whereupon they all began to comment on Franklin's
unpunctuality as if they themselves had been up for hours.
Diana recommended Wilhelm for the post, seeing that he
had been the first of the men to put in an appearance, but,
since Franklin himself entered at that moment, all were
nonplussed for a reply.
"I'm awfully sorry," apologized Franklin, hastily slipping
into the vacant place, "but I've had a most extraordinary
dream!"
"With whom?" asked Wilhelm innocently.
"With a French colonial. He and I used constantly to be
at loggerheads...."
Whereat they all laughed, and Diana said:
"The prince told us a similar story yesterday. It seems to
me there is too much dreaming aboard the 'Excelsior.' You
ought to run more races, or swing dumbbells or something.
Have we any foils?"
"You need not have anxiety on my account," said
Scherer, "for I never dream."
He spoke so simply that no one could doubt the truth
of the statement. The prince's scepticism might have led
him to demur had not Kyril, with his usual solemnity
amid the flashes of wit and humour of his comrades,
exclaimed:
"So there really are people in the world who never dream!"
"And who are, nevertheless, musical, you'd like to add.
Eh?"
The prince had tossed the repartee to the Russian, hoping
to bring a little levity into the solemn seriousness which
the man's words had cast upon the company.
"No, what I had in mind was that there were actually
persons who never dream and are yet competent to carry
out business transactions."
Even the prince, paradoxical as were his outlooks as a
rule, was taken aback. Who could have imagined such
words in the mouth of a revolutionary? Everyone was
now alert in the discussion, while Scherer endeavoured to
exculpate himself by saying:
"And why not? So long as a man does not forget the
dream of his own practical endeavour, what matters it
if his nights are dreamless? Day cannot kill a dream which
night has not created!"
"Wilhelm," cried Diana cheerfully, "confirmed dreamer
that you are, there's hope for you yet! Even now you may
become a man of action!" Her eyes met Franklin's as she
spoke, and she realized that though he too was striving
towards practical achievements, he had no wish to be
exiled from the realm of dreams. She smiled at him across
the table.
"You're laughing at me," protested Scherer.
"I am merely laughing at the principles of those who can
tolerate fulfilment only when it is in harmony with their
own peculiar nature."
The prince, silent himself, became aware that between
Diana and the four other men, a series of epigrams was
in course of construction. He seemed to perceive the
thoughts like living sparks glowing in mid air, when the
Russian intervened:
"Fulfilment? There's no such thing so far as rationalists
are concerned, and as for us others it would only serve to
hinder our activities. Unless one can die at the very
moment of fulfilment, it were better never to have been born
at all. He who, while dreaming, acts, is even more
dangerous than he who could create in response to his dream.
In this matter, likewise, I am all in favour of a partition
of powers."
Franklin, hardly admitting even to himself how much
he disliked the Russian, followed what Sergievitch said as
in a dream, barely conscious of the meaning of the words.
Before him he saw a man, handsome and young, with hair,
complexion, and eyes so clear as to gainsay the sombre
spirit which pervaded Kyril's whole inner being. Surely,
thought Franklin, this man must be instinct with devotion,
imagination, and at the same time so completely master
of himself that he gives his fancy rein only to a circumscribed
extent, never allowing it to get out of control. He
sought to probe the young Russian's heart.
Precisely because he did not understand Kyril as well
as Franklin did, Wilhelm liked the Russian. After a while
he asked innocently:
"Do you mind telling me what partition of powers
means?"
"Alternative spells of freedom and unfreedom,"
explained Scherer.
"Not bad, so long as you don't take the words in a
political sense," commented Kyril. "All the same there's a
certain danger...."
"Everything seems to harbour dangers for you this
morning," said the prince politely. "And yet the sky is
blue and cloudless, and there is no wind to ruffle the
waters." He glanced over at Diana to see if she would not
give the signal to rise. But she remained seated.
Scherer said softly: "Give me the man who, wide-awake,
controls his deeds!"
"And I love the deed which is moulded on the anvil of
a dream," put in Franklin.
All were silent for a time. Then Diana, turning to the
prince, asked with a smile:
"What have you to say to this?"
"I? Oh, I am honestly fonder of the people themselves
than of the people's leaders or of their works, though I
would not renounce laurel or other crowns. But I know
that such thoughts are quite out of date!"
He looked squarely at Diana as he finished, thus making
it clear to her that he wished her to give the signal which
should put an end to the meal. He wanted to withdraw, to
be free, for he had revealed a tiny corner of his heart and
felt profoundly moved at what he had done. In his
embarrassment he turned away, and did not observe Kyril's
blue eyes, more pure, more innocent than ever, fixed
upon him appreciatively. The people! That word,
falling from the lips of so paradoxical a creature as the
prince, spoken so simply, nonplussed the revolutionary
and yet gave him premonitions of a future understanding.
Diana, as she rose, avoided the eyes of both men, seeking
Scherer's steady gaze. But instead, she encountered
Wilhelm's boyish eyes, puzzled, perplexed, and she heard him
mutter to himself:
"What on earth are they all talking about? I haven't
understood a word!"
And he slipped through the glass door in her wake.
The sun hung midway between
the zenith and the western horizon as the "Excelsior"
drew near the harbour of Syracuse. As they approached,
the travellers looked through the telescope at the reality
about which they had been dreaming all along. But
although the prince jested and Wilhelm gave rein to his
fancy, the one dryly sceptical, the other naïve and
ingenuous, although the whole company was eager and
expectant at the proximity of this memorial of ancient
Greece, yet their customary cheerfulness seemed a little
damped this afternoon. Diana had passed the day in
far-ranging talk with Wilhelm and Franklin; the others had
been more silent than usual. It was obvious that the
conversation was stimulated by Diana's presence, and though
not actually antagonistic, nevertheless occasionally bordered
on recrimination.
Scherer, as host and owner of the yacht, had become
accustomed to the shade of arrogance with which the
intellectuals of the party regarded him, the mere business man.
He was tolerant and indulgent towards this unconscious
assumption of superiority. But the way in which the
Russian opposed Scherer's practical outlook on life with his
own ideological conceptions, seemed to the financier on a
different plane from the oppositions he encountered among
his other guests. It made him pensive and a little uneasy
on his own and on Sergievitch's account. For he felt that
from the point of view of problems to be faced, he and the
Russian had much in common, whereas, from the outlook
of political principles, everything tended to keep them
apart. He himself could never be more than a dabbler in
socialism. He was instinctively aware that in the young
foreigner's heart there was something else besides the anarchist
autocrat. This premonition moved him profoundly, as
when a man unintentionally touching a woman or seeing
her in a new gown, is conscious of a sensual thrill at the
contact or the sight, and suddenly realizes she is quitting
the circle in which she has hitherto existed for him, and is
escaping into the distance.
The party's spirits rose as the yacht put into the harbour.
Scherer estimated the width of the entry which the
Syracusans had once closed with chains and boats against
the onslaughts of Nicias. There was talk of mines and
submarines, and of how only the means had changed, not the
theories. Once ashore, they found themselves accompanied
by a growing crowd of self-constituted guides as they
strolled about the streets of the ancient city. They chaffed
one another about their recently acquired knowledge of
the place—mostly crammed up for the occasion from guide
books. The gloom which had clung to the company all day
gradually dispelled, and even the two poets joined in the
general hilarity. A little cluster of shrubs which formed a
circle round the well in the ancient market-place attracted
Wilhelm's attention.
"The first courier from Africa," said Scherer sententiously.
"And to think that out of these amazingly bristly
stalks the Egyptians of old made their amazingly bristly
paper."
Wilhelm looked up, inquiringly, for he was puzzled.
"Scherer means papyrus," said Franklin softly. "You
could write sonnets on the stuff."
Wilhelm passed his fingers over the stalks. Nowhere
could he find a smooth surface.
"But how could one ever write on such a thing?" he
asked suspiciously.
Scherer explained the process whereby the fibres were
converted into paper, while the whole company lolled
against the shaft of the well, and a dozen or more
children and beggars took up their stand around the visitors.
Wilhelm followed Scherer's little lecture with the keen
curiosity of a boy.
"In a word," concluded the prince, who had recaptured
his customary mood of raillery, "all the misfortunes which
beset this world have their origin in this plant, which may
be looked upon as the instrument whereby light has been
brought out of the East!"
"It serves also to disseminate speeches from the throne,
Your Highness," retorted Kyril provocatively.
"Sonnets, demonstrations, newspapers," said Scherer,
still stroking the plant with his fingers, "the stuff's as
dangerous as dynamite! Don't you think so too?"
Diana, to whom the question had been addressed in
order to draw her out of her silence, answered laughingly:
"Does not one of you hear the voice of the well which
is encircled by the plant? Arethusa herself, and at this
very spot the hunted nymph must have been metamorphosed.
The water in the well is salt to the tongue, so
bitterly did the maiden weep. Diana was responsible for
the metamorphosis..."
She muttered the last words to herself and gazed into
the well's depths. There was a silence, while five men's
eyes were fixed upon the young woman who stood leaning
over the parapet, and who bore the name of a goddess.
The prince clicked his tongue. He hated to have to live
through such moments of tension while in the company of
others.
"Diana has in very truth metamorphosed all of us,"
he said at length. "How about following this gentleman
who for the last ten minutes has been trying to entice us
into his osteria?"
"Al teatro, Signori! Al teatro!" yelled a voice from the
throng, while twenty hands pointed in the same direction,
and twenty voices echoed the cry. It was agreed that they
would go, and as they went towards the building the crowd
pushed them and pulled them and gesticulated wildly.
They passed over the bridge which separated Ortygia from
the mainland, and soon came to the hill, Eduard leading
the way amid a mob of citizens, and Kyril walking on the
flank, not quite so hemmed in as the prince. Scherer, who
was following with Franklin, noticed this and observed:
"How could a stranger decide which was the prince
and which the man of the people?"
"But are they so different? Are they really so different?"
asked Franklin. "Are they not, rather, brothers? Idealists
both?"
"It often happens that those who belong to the same
intellectual category possess the fewest points of
resemblance."
"But would you suffer yourself to be kept apart from a
person you liked simply because of differences in social
status, position, rank, or what not?"
Scherer thought: "He'd love to write a sonnet on a
papyrus after all!" A smile lighted up his face at the
notion, and he said aloud: "Yes, such things can keep kindred
spirits apart. Birth, above all, is a hindrance. The papyrus,
born in Egypt, and transplanted to Syracuse, cannot be
acclimatized in Stockholm. But what I mainly had in mind
was the varying quantity of freedom these two men might
enjoy and turn to advantage."
"Is the Russian then so fettered and unfree merely
because the tsar has exiled him from the possible arena of
his activity?"
"The Russian? I would rather say the prince; it is he who
is shackled because his father is a reigning monarch! Can't
you see the counterpart?"
Franklin was silent. His mind, ever ready to absorb as
much of the world of reality as he could house in the realm
of his fancy, was open to the influence of this man of the
world. He was ever willing, despite his grey hairs, to
acquire new knowledge, and, since the beginning of the
cruise, he had kept aloof from Diana and Wilhelm whose
playful ways put him out of humour.
These two young people brought up the rear. Wilhelm
had held his peace for some time; then he said:
"Arethusa! I can fancy christening a serious little girl
by such a name, a little maid one would sit upon one's knee.
Arethusa..."
He weighed the name, dandling it, as if it were in actual
fact a child one were playing with. Then he asked
abruptly:
"Diana?"
"Yes, Wilhelm?"
"Are you really a nymph?"
"You are a fool," chanted Diana, running away from
his side and rejoining the others.
It was not until they had entered the Greek theatre that
they were able to shake off the crowd which had accompanied
them. The custodian, a man as solemn as a Saracen
and as beautiful as an Arab, uniting in his person the
attributes of the two races out of which the Sicilians have
sprung, was content to murmur a few names, and after
a while he ceased talking altogether. The travellers sat
motionless upon the topmost step, looking down on the
great tiers which had been hewn out of the rock, and which
still gave the impression of an amphitheatre. But an
earthquake had destroyed the stage and other structures, thus
freeing the view westward over the harbour, the town, and
the sea.
The flight of steps was overgrown with moss and ivy,
and the stone had been weathered by two thousand years
of wind and brine. Laurels and cherry-laurels shaded the
parapets and walls, while fresh green leaves were sprouting
from the gnarled and twisted branches of ancient fig trees.
Gloomy olive groves were burnished by the evening sun,
and, clinging to the broken pillars of what had been the
stage, the wistaria drooped under the weight of its heavy
clusters of purple blossoms. The eye travelled over the
silhouettes of towers and gables in the town, to the sea,
circumscribed by jagged cliffs and mountains capped with a
bank of cloud. The foreground of this picture was
inexpressibly sweet, wellnigh idyllic, with its scents and
delicate melancholy; but the distant view verged on the
tragical and forced the onlooker to recall how in far-off
days the great choruses of the poets had filled the air and
delighted the ears of the thousands who occupied the
serried rows of the amphitheatre.
Each member of the little company from the yacht had
sat down where chance had offered a convenient resting
place. No one spoke. All were busied with their private
meditations. Franklin, carried away by the mighty rhythm
of the view, peopled the scene with figures from his own
dramas. Kyril, nearby, envisaged vast assemblies of
workers, gathered together in this spot before they marched
upon the town, not to be hewn mercilessly down a second
time as they had been at the Winter Palace! Scherer, who
had happened to take a lower step for his resting place,
thought how splendid a thing it would be to have such an
open-air theatre up north, where, of a Sunday, popular
plays on the large scale might be played; later on one
might perform Schiller; and then, in the end, have a try at
producing Goethe's Iphigenia. But not the dramas of classical
antiquity, they might not be understood. Wilhelm was
congratulating himself that he had not brought his lute. "I
could not have refrained from playing it, and that might
not have suited the others' moods. I wonder if we are
going back to the yacht for dinner? Those wisteria
clusters look like grapes. It must be exquisite here in
autumn..."
Eduard and Diana were sitting higher than the rest, but
they were separated by the whole width of the round
tower. The prince looked at her and thought: "Are we
foredoomed to be separated? Still, we are sitting on the
same step!"
Diana leaned her arm on a broken shaft, her head was
bent back, her legs were crossed, and her eyes were fixed
upon the sea as it struggled with the forces of light and
shade. She had completely forgotten the friends around her.
"Here's a revised sketch of
the thing. Kraus has just sent it. You'll be able to judge
from a glance at it whether you are mistaken or not."
Scherer, who was pacing the deck with Diana, stopped
in his walk to extract a sheet of paper from a yellow folder.
The wind caught the sheet and wrestled for its possession,
but Scherer took refuge behind a screen where Diana
rejoined him. Each held a corner of the refractory paper
in order the better to study it.
"The red lines indicate the numbers of the first-rate
hotels throughout Germany, don't they?"
"Yes. And the blue the bigger clubs. They are used as
yet only by the editorial staffs of newspapers, by ministers
and stockbrokers, whose numbers are reckoned up in the
yellow column. But the figures are grossly exaggerated.
The small figures at the foot of the page indicate that the
cost of the news service should be reduced by from ten to
twenty per cent, if we are to get a decent dividend out of
the concern."
He pocketed the document once more, and the two resumed
their morning walk, still discussing business affairs
as was their habit at this hour of the morning.
"That's all right, I quite understand. Wouldn't it be
better to increase the rate of subscription than to lower the
cost of production?"
"There's your English training peeping out," laughed
Scherer. "A club or hotel in Germany would far rather
pay twelve hundred marks for a glass-doored cupboard
wherein it could store all the news of the world to be
gaped at by every passer-by; they would sooner expend
thousands in subscriptions to periodicals which they could
file in ancient presses as if they were some rare plants, than
subscribe liberally to such a news service as I propose,
which is a much less tangible asset."
"I've never heard any one rail against newspapers as
you do," retorted Diana merrily. "There's nothing in the
world you have your knife into so much!"
Scherer, who in this matter had very definite principles
to guide him, answered half ironically:
"The newspaper is a thing that needs to be conquered."
"Thus spake Zarathustra," came a voice from the
recesses of a deck chair. The two paused for a moment by
the owner of the voice, who was engaged in a conversation
with Kyril. Diana was used now to the prince's badinage,
and she surmised that his sudden intrusion into an
alien tête-à-tête must mean that he had come to a knotty
point in his discussion with the Russian. She was,
therefore, somewhat surprised when Kyril himself gave
sanction to the prince's interpolation by saying:
"But not until the kings have spoken, Herr Scherer!"
"Oh, they never read the papers," answered Scherer
good-humouredly, "and yet they are the very people who
need them most!"
He turned on his heel to resume his walk, and as Diana
prepared to follow, a gust of wind took her skirt and lifted
it high. As she turned on herself to bring it to reason,
Scherer noticed that the two young men, who had
obviously been having an argument over contentious points,
with equal seriousness were now regarding Diana's legs.
"They look as if they were faced with a very intricate
problem," said Diana as she rejoined the financier.
Scherer, amused by the ambiguity of the words, which
he knew to be spoken in perfect innocence, answered
nothing. She was puzzled by his silence and his obvious
amusement.
"You are smiling," she said. "Have I ... have
you...?"
"No, no! Nothing," protested Scherer kindly, and he
was delighted to see a blush mounting to her cheeks. "Their
talk may have come to a dead point just as we came up."
Diana, patting her blouse and skirt with a very feminine
gesture in case there should still be a certain disorder
in her appearance, racked her brains to discover what he
was hiding from her.
"Well now," said Scherer coming back to the point in a
businesslike manner, "a news service for Germans must be
run cheaply or not at all. Otherwise our worthy
compatriots will reproach us, saying: the Wolff Information
Bureau gave us just as good service for a quarter the
price."
"Wolff's!" cried Diana, disdainfully.
"A poor, miserable tapeworm," rejoined Scherer zealously,
"never stopping once it is set going, and provides
the reader with the pleasure of seeing world history printed
before his very eyes. A fantastical freak of a thing!"
Diana listened to his tirade with amusement. These rare
moments of enthusiasm in a man who habitually assumed
an attitude of reserve, were congenial to her. It pleased her
to see his ripe experience irradiated with youthful ardour.
"I surrender," she said merrily, bringing her hand to the
salute, and speaking with the smartness of a young
midshipman on duty. "As soon as we are back in Berlin, I'll
get to work on our budget and see whether I can't make a
reduction in its figures of at least ten per cent a year."
"Ten to twenty."
"That means fifteen."
"Which is not quite the same thing, you know!"
They discussed the issue thus raised, and while they
did so the figures they mentioned were wafted over to
Franklin as he stood gazing seaward from the bows.
Wilhelm was lounging in a deck chair by his side, blinking
his eyes in the sunlight, wrapped in reverie. Diana, as she
and Scherer turned, caught him saying:
"You are deceiving me. There aren't any dolphins in
reality. This is the tenth day of our cruise and I haven't
seen a sign of one yet!"
"They're always discussing percentage," muttered Franklin,
who had not heard what Wilhelm was saying. He was
invariably more of the poet and less of the diplomat when
he had to do with men of the world. "It's amazing the
way he parcels out the wealth of Mother Earth!"
Franklin seemed to have forgotten Wilhelm's presence,
to have forgotten the ship, and above all to have forgotten
his own position in the world, as he continued to utter
his thoughts aloud oblivious of whether he was overheard
or not.
"A woman of genius, daring to the verge of indiscretion....
A man, emerging from the mist, revealing himself
for one minute of time, and realizing that he stands
on the edge of an abyss..." He turned abruptly towards
Wilhelm, leaning over him, his hands working as if he
were moulding clay: "Can't you understand? The man of
the world's clarity of vision dimmed by sensual charms
which he, and he alone, must never, never allow himself
to enjoy unless he breaks the laws of his own being."
He pulled himself together, turned away, and once
more contemplated the expanse of waters.
Wilhelm had followed his discourse with composure.
He did not budge from his chair, but continued to lie back
among the comfortable cushions as he said:
"You've fallen into one of your mad moods again, I see.
Hardly twenty minutes have passed by since you were
informing me that there was nothing in the whole world
to equal movement, motion. You even raised your voice
to exclaim: 'Swimming, Wilhelm, swimming!' And the
sailor over there, whose name is likewise Wilhelm, was
preparing to come to our assistance with a life-belt. 'To
swim with a comrade, breasting the current together, and
to reach the goal before him. That's better by far than to
sit shivering on the bank and make sketches of the swimmers.'"
"What the devil are you talking about?" interrupted
Franklin crossly.
"I assure you," continued Wilhelm quietly, "that's
exactly what you said. It was eleven o'clock precisely when
you made your proclamation—I'd just looked at my
watch—and it is not quite half-past now."
"There'll be no such embassies in the future," Kyril was
saying at the other end of the vessel, just as Diana and
Scherer turned in their walk. "Red plush. Gobelin tapestry,
birthday celebrations, tea-parties as background to decisions
concerning foreign policy, all will come to an end;
and we'll have business conducted in offices, soberly
decorated, with grey walls and carpets and easy chairs such as
we affect in clubs and smoking rooms..."
"Are you so profoundly convinced of the ethical value
of leather?" asked the prince mockingly. But Kyril
continued unheeding:
"No conversation shall take place save in the presence
of a dictaphone, set up somewhere conspicuous so that
everyone can see it, a dictaphone which will reproduce
the talk within the walls of parliament. Everything must
be clear, unambiguous, sober. Business, not diplomacy!"
"Shall we be allowed to smoke cigarettes?"
"Each member of the community will eat and smoke
according to individual preference. But the State will no
longer foot the bill for what its representative sets before
the representative of another State and his wife in order
that through the exploitation of the indigestion of the
former or the taste for good wines of the latter, he may
elicit from his guests certain useful information."
"Rather a dreary world, Doctor. Doesn't it seem to
you that such representation abroad is very similar to the
interior functioning of a certain police-ridden State which
is far from being to your taste?"
Kyril stood motionless, pipe in hand.
"The common things of everyday life will be irradiated
with the Idea," he said at length.
"The Idea? Ah, yes, of course! But what about the
persons who carry out the Idea?"
"They will devote themselves whole-heartedly to the
carrying out of the Idea."
"And they'll all be in complete sympathy with it, eh?
As a matter of principle, there will be no such thing as
hatred in your community, I suppose? Les passions seront
tout à fait nivelées?"
"Les passions," echoed Kyril gloomily, a savage tone
coming into his voice, and Eduard, who had quite casually
lapsed into the foreign idiom, was surprised at having
inveigled the young man into speaking French, and equally
surprised at the excellent way the words were pronounced.
He also noticed that the thick, blond brows were drawn
together, the eyes, which had been shining and happy, were
clouded, and the whole man, hitherto so motionless, leaning
against the rail, was stirring, was pulling himself away
from the support, and was slowly turning round to
contemplate upon the sea the yacht's wake.
Eduard noted all these things, and held his peace. It is
always so, he mused. Whenever such ideologues leave the
party rut, they invariably lapse into being dragons from
a primitive age. Just as he begins to be interesting, he ceases
to talk—much as I do myself!
That evening the prince stood with Diana, on the bridge.
A fresh breeze had been blowing all day from the east,
and the yacht was under sail. Now the air was very still
and very warm. They were rounding Cape Matapan, and
knew that they were in for a spell of balmy weather. Diana
had thrown a white cape over her evening gown, and was
wearing it toga fashion, like an Italian officer. She stood
bare-headed just in front of Eduard, who was likewise
wrapped in a cloak, and towering head and shoulders
above her. From a distance, they might have been taken
for one person, standing alone.
The night sky, clear as crystal, brilliant as it can only
be in the south, was studded with stars. Diana did not
speak. She looked this way and that, bending over the rail,
gazing upward at the constellations which, as she picked
them out, she named quietly, for her own gratification.
Eduard pressed close against the rail so as not to hinder
her in her movements, for, though she herself had invited
him to come with her, she seemed to have forgotten his
presence, and to be averse to being reminded that he was
at her side. He was, therefore, taken unawares when she
cried:
"There it is!"
"What?"
"The Scales. Don't you see? Over there!"
"Where?"
"There, just in line with the helmsman's cap is Lyra, and
two spans away the four bright stars—over there! Do you
see them now?"
He leaned forward to follow her indications, and as he
did so, she placed her left hand on his shoulder. Eduard
saw nothing, but he kept very still. He wanted to prolong
this moment, to eke it out to the utmost. He wondered if
he had better say that he saw the constellation, but that
might put an end to her present position. Perhaps he had
better ask her once more to point it out; but that might
cause her to make some other movement. At last he felt
that he dared not allow any more time to elapse before
speaking, so he forced himself to say:
"Four stars, of course, yes, that's the Scales."
His tone affected Diana disagreeably; she made for the
ladder, and climbed down before he had collected his
wits sufficiently to give her a helping hand. But she knew
the prince too well now to feel piqued; and he, though
annoyed with himself, was determined not to spoil their
stroll together. They walked forward in silence, and after
a while he said:
"Is that your constellation?"
"A balance! Could one have a better guiding star?" She
paused in her walk and leaned against the rail.
Again the prince was silent. She had opened her cloak
in order to throw the end over her shoulder again for it
had become dislodged, and as she did so the fragrance of
her body and her gown was wafted to him on the night
air, confusing his thoughts once more. Could this woman,
speaking so calmly under the stars, be the one whose
slim, boylike legs a wanton wind had displayed this same
morning, whose sun-tanned neck had spoken to him of
youth and vigour as the company had sat over dinner, and
whose bronzed figure he had seen for one second of time
when she had posed as the goddess of the chase?
Determined to come back to the present, he said:
"Someone was talking to me only this morning about
balance in the government of a State, as if we need no
longer reckon with the human, emotional factor. At last
I asked him: 'And what about the passions?'
"La passione," Diana softly murmured, turning round
to peer into the sea.
Eduard was taken aback by her choice of such romantic
words in so romantic a tongue; he was no less struck by
the similarity between Kyril's reaction and Diana's to his
shaft. He was annoyed at finding any similarity between
two such alien natures, and said with some asperity:
"Si, signorina! Or is the constellation to become
obscured as soon as we are driven to do something
ill-balanced?"
She looked over her shoulder, and asked coldly:
"Are you afraid of ill-balanced things?"
He did not yield ground under her gaze, and retorted:
"You yourself chose the Scales as your guiding star,
not I!"
"My life," she continued in a gentler voice, "has been
one long stare at that constellation—and yet, judging by
the course my life has hitherto taken, one would think that
Mars had been my guiding star."
She raised her head as she spoke, and looked up as if
seeking the planet she had just named. He gazed at her
in speechless devotion, and when she, calmed by her own
words, rested her arms once more on the rail and cast her
eyes upon the water, he said tranquilly:
"And yet your life seems to me, as I contemplate it from
afar, to have been constructive rather than destructive."
She was wholly reconciled by his words, and said softly:
"Mars lives within me, Prince, as he lives within us all."
Eduard watched her as, her arms wrapped in her cloak,
she leaned over the yacht's side. A tiny hem of her silk
dress gleamed beneath the lower edge of her cloak. He
took in every detail, as he mused: "In an hour's time she
will be alone, looking into the small, triangular glass I
caught a glimpse of as I passed by her open door
yesterday..." At length he said, almost in a whisper:
"Mars and the Scales. Maybe they are both alternatively
the guiding stars of wanderers?"
Diana raised her eyes to his, as she said:
"And yet one of them guides the steadfast, while the
other illumines the path of the warrior. Surely of all the
company aboard the 'Excelsior,' you are the one who should
choose the Scales for your emblem."
He felt that he had been dissected, that the words were
hemming him in, and was about to answer somewhat
warmly, when the sound of a lute broke upon the stillness
of the night. Diana's harshness evaporated as the strains
were carried towards her, and she said, smiling happily:
"Listen! Wilhelm is going to sing," and she began to
hum the song.
Quant' é bella giovinezza
mà si fugge tuttavia...
With the sprightliness of a girl of seventeen, and as
unwittingly as a princess, she slipped her hand through
Eduard's arm, and rejoined the circle of her friends.
A solitary gull followed
the yacht. How had it got separated from its fellows? Had
its flight been hindered by some accident? From what
far-off island had it come, towards what shore was it now
winging its way? It hovered above the masthead. Minutes
went by. Then suddenly it swooped, making straight for the
sea. Was it pouncing upon its prey?
"A lonesome creature," mused Diana, who had spent
the whole afternoon on deck, reclining in a chair, alone,
motionless, brooding. "Freedom! There is more freedom
around that bird than there is around the leopard in the
African desert or the sable in the northern wilds. There
are sportsmen it is true—but sportsmen can do no more
than kill. They do not trap, and if they do, it is only to
capture the young and immature or those which have
allowed themselves to be hoaxed. Has a human being ever
ventured to arrogate to himself so great an abundance of
freedom as does this wild bird, winging its way through
those vast solitudes? And I, shall I not be punished because
of my bold determination to be free?
"Homeless as that bird, and to remain so, always...
She flies through the infinite shining heavens, between sky
and sea, and screams her joy towards the setting stars. Or
has she a nest on a ledge of cliff in one of the islands,
with chicks agog for her return? ... Home. Whenever
we sail away from port, these five men, my companions,
cannot tear their eyes away from the land, they gaze
yearningly back at it as if they were leaving a mother behind,
or some work they had created and loved. If I had ever
known a mother, I might have been the creator of a
work.... But it may be that, being a reincarnation of
herself, I have never thought it worth while to seek her....
Perhaps my standard of perfection is too high for me
ever to try to attain it.... And these men here, they are
always building, they are hampered by innumerable veils,
shackled by the multiplicity of the trivial happenings on
dry land. Not one of them is self-sufficient enough to love
the solitude of the sea.... Is pride taking its revenge on
you, Diana? ... I am alone...."
She closed her eyes to the long shafts of sunlight coming
from a rift in the cloud-bank that lay over the western
horizon. Her other senses were rendered more acute by
the exclusion of the sense of sight, and the hum of the
yacht's engines smote upon her ears. Her own pulse seemed
to accommodate its rhythm to that of the engines; she
became aware of the smell of brine and paint, of damp linen
and lacquer, of scrubbing soap and train oil; and now
came salt and spindrift from the waves, she tasted the
bitterness on her lips, it clung to her cheeks, and the crystals
dried upon her hair. For a while she lay, absorbing these
delights of seafaring life through her ears and nose and
tongue and skin and hair. With her eyes still closed, she
drank in the elements around her, as she had occasionally
drunk in her loves, and had she found herself in a man's
arms on opening her eyes she would have felt no surprise
whatever.
"The waters are dancing to the northward," mused
Diana; "blue and gold eddies dimple and smile round a
thousand bays because the wind is blowing softly from
the south and ruffles the sea. Yet all the while, deep down
under the surface, the great currents flow on, cold or hot,
violet or green, obeying the uncoded laws of their
existence, remote from the winds whose influence they never
feel, and whose..."
Suddenly Diana's attention was attracted by a strange
apparition just in front of the ship's nose, a dark wave as
it were of black satin, thrusting up through the pellucid
water: a dolphin! She sat upright, straining eagerly
forward, gripping the arms of her chair, her feet planted
firmly before her, her eyes, so recently closed or veiled in
dreams, alight with curiosity, lending intensity to her whole
attitude.
"How happy they are, rolling and somersaulting more
full of joy than the dumb fishes. When we were in Ischia,
Rafaello told me they responded to whistling, that they
draw near, attracted by the sound, and then compete with
each other in leaping and racing."
She sprang from her chair and, leaning over the rail,
started to whistle, shrilly and loud, like a calling bird of
prey. More and ever more shining black bodies rose to the
surface, disappeared, popped up again, looking as if their
backs were curving knives. On they went, playing in
front of the yacht as she cut her way through the waters.
"Whistle and I'll come to ye," said Eduard coming up
softly behind her. Diana barely gave him a nod, so
delighted was she in watching the antics of the dolphins.
She called out laughingly:
"Wilhelm ought to be here! He'd see Aries riding on
their backs!"
"The modern Orpheus is having his tea, and my unmusical
lips offer their services as substitute," whereupon he,
too, started to whistle.
"On my father's table there was a—— Oh look! There's
another—and another." She stretched her arms out over the
rail jubilantly.
"What was on your father's table?"
"A tiny figure of Aphrodite, and there was a dolphin at
her feet."
She spoke loudly in her excitement. Then, suddenly
modifying her voice, she added quietly:
"And when one day I asked him the reason he said:
'Well you know, Diana,' and he had a wonderful way of
giving full value to the vowels in my name, 'they both
emerged from the sea.' That's all he said—and now, there
they are!"
"Both?"
"All of them," avoiding the net of questions he was
trying to entangle her in.
The wind now took control of the evening, its deep
organ tones filling the air, scattering in one gust the play
of light and shade, the fishes, and the thoughts of Diana
and her friend. The sun, as it sank behind a menacing
bank of clouds, sent its rays up into the zenith in a final
effort to assert its power, and thereby converted the sky
into one huge opal in a twilight of milky blue.
"We are already sinking into a dead world, while up
there all is bright serenity," said Diana softly, her mood
in tune with the hour.
Again the sun's disk broke through a rift in the clouds.
"When a king lies dying, the meanest of his subjects
can gaze into his eyes," murmured Eduard misanthropically,
turning away from the west as if he wished to avoid
witnessing the end.
"But this king rises again and again," said Diana.
Giorgino came along to haul down the flag. It still
fluttered in the breeze as it ran down the yard, but on
touching the deck it suddenly lay flat and motionless. Eduard
lifted his cap abruptly, his face darkening.
"So you still pay homage to a linen rag?" a voice broke
in on the silence, and Kyril stepped out of the cabin where
he had been passing the afternoon over his books.
Eduard was the only passenger aboard who held to this
ceremony. But he felt a certain embarrassment in its
performance and usually took care to be alone. Now he stood
there, not knowing what to do, completely nonplussed, for
he dared not raise his voice in derision, and equally dared
not, in view of the freedom he encouraged among his
companions, enter a protest. Diana guessed his dilemma, and
came to his aid, saying earnestly:
"The prince is saluting a thing in the death-throes."
Eduard's heart went out to her. The moment after she
had spoken the words, he would have liked to fall at her
feet in gratitude. Of course he did no such thing, but firmly
stood his ground, and only a slight twitching at the corner
of his mouth betrayed how deeply the Russian's words had
piqued him. Kyril was not slow to perceive the effect his
remark had had. He pulled himself together and said
ambiguously, taking his pipe from between his lips and
bringing his hand to the salute:
"Yes, Your Highness, a thing in the death-throes."
Eduard turned towards the speaker, likewise saluted,
and said laconically:
"Nothing to worry about, Doctor Sergievitch. Black and
white are the colours of Prussia. Red is for the
Internationale. Maybe I was paying reverence to all three."
The "Excelsior," the graceful
vessel that had been steaming on her way, a long
streamer of smoke flying backward from the funnel like
the scarf of a woman hastening to the tryst, had suffered
a change in the course of the night, and was now a sailing
ship under full canvas before a fresh north-westerly wind.
When the company came on deck, everyone was surprised
and delighted at the transformation. Six pairs of eyes were
cast up towards the bellying sails. Questions rained upon
the crew, who were hard put to it to find satisfactory
answers; and if any of the passengers were in a mood to air
their knowledge of such matters, they very soon proved
themselves ignoramuses who had merely gleaned a little
untrustworthy information from books. Scherer, who had
made himself so expert in the running of his own machines,
and turbines, and lighting, and what not in his
industrial undertakings, that he could make a repair when
needed with his own hands, felt completely at fault where
a sailing yacht was concerned. He got the captain to take
him round, to show him this and explain him that, and his
scientifically trained mind very quickly grasped the most
intricate details of stress and strain, of cordage and canvas
and yard.
At the outset, Franklin had accompanied the two on
their round, listening to the captain's lesson in sailcraft.
But soon he ceased to hear and became absorbed in
contemplative reverie, as was his wont when his fellow mortals
were experiencing some new sensation. He loved to watch
their reactions to hitherto unknown phenomena. So now,
he soon saw nothing else but the voyager and the
ship-owner into whom Scherer for the nonce was metamorphosed;
he envisaged the two personalities as separate
entities; the former gesticulating to make himself the better
understood, the latter, hands thrust deep into his pockets,
putting his mind in motion to grasp the unknown
terminology and to memorize it methodically.
Eduard, meanwhile, found himself near the ratlines
with Wilhelm at his side. A young fellow was aloft trying
to catch a rope that had worked loose and was dangling
and swinging in the breeze. But neither from above nor
from below could the sailor reach the refractory piece of
cordage.
"Try from above," yelled the mate from the deck, "from above."
But the youngster tried in vain.
"Is that Giorgino?" asked the prince.
"How can I tell what the young idiot's name is? I'd
like to know where the devil the captain could have
found such a booby. He's hard put to it to wash the dishes
properly, and now he's suddenly expected to do the work
of a sailor!"
The prince, tickled at this summary of the lad's career,
laughed, and called up to him:
"Tira quell' altera corda!"
Thereupon Giorgino started pulling on a cord as if in
response to the order. But his action proved hopelessly
wrong, and the sail was put out of gear. The mate swore
and raged. Wilhelm roared with laughter, while the mate
glared at him ferociously. Then the young poet, having
divested himself of his jacket, began to climb the ratlines.
Eduard pulled him back, for he knew that only those with
a very steady head could venture up into those swaying,
airy altitudes.
Kyril meanwhile had joined the group. He quietly laid
aside his coat and, without awaiting the mate's orders,
called his instructions up to the boy. He spoke in Italian
and Giorgino promptly responded by clambering down to
one of the yards while the Russian mounted to replace
him. Kyril's longer arm was able to reach the offending
bit of rope. He drew it in and attached it where it
belonged, adjusted the flapping sail so that soon it was again
catching the wind, and then descended from his perch.
The mate had done nothing to hinder him in his operations,
for he realized that he had to do with a man who
knew what was amiss. He growled his satisfaction, hustled
the youngster out of his path, and, before Kyril had stepped
down on to the deck, said to the two others:
"Not so bad, not so bad! The young man must have had
some seafaring experience!"
Diana, who had just come up, overheard his words and
looked inquiringly at the prince and then at the mate.
But since neither seemed inclined to enlighten her,
Wilhelm constituted himself her informant and pointed slyly
up into the rigging. Someone was coming towards her
from aloft. It could not be a member of the crew because
the clothing was not that of a sailor. But she soon
recognized the figure as that of her Russian fellow traveller.
She followed the movement of his feet as they sought the
rungs of the swaying ladder, was tempted to help him by
calling: "to right," or "to left." Then she realized that she
was looking at a man accustomed to climbing in the rigging.
In silence, the little group followed Kyril's descent.
One final spring brought the Russian on to the deck
again. Unabashed, he put order into his clothing, smoothed
his trousers, tucked his shirt in, adjusted his belt. Diana
watched him, herself unobserved. Not one of his movements
escaped her. She had seldom been given an opportunity
of observing a man, unaware of feminine scrutiny,
attending to his physical comfort. Suddenly the vision of
other manly forms she had known rose before her eyes.
She saw them on horseback, or swimming, or rowing, or
doing gymnastics, as she had seen them in the flesh at
music halls or while engaged in sport. Simultaneously the
slender body of the major she had once known, passed by;
then that of a Pole as shapely as a young god of classical
antiquity, to whom she had given her love solely in order
to feast her eyes upon his physical beauty. And when the
young Russian, pushing the sail aside, suddenly became
aware of her observation and raised his cap from his
ruffled hair, she said judiciously to herself:
"A very good figure indeed!"
The prince, who had also come forward, said:
"Dr. Sergievitch has it in mind to charter a vessel on his
own account."
And Wilhelm, full of awed surprise, added:
"Oh, but surely you could be a captain on your own
account, couldn't you?"
"Awfully sorry to be so untidy," apologized Kyril running
his fingers through his rumpled hair and putting on
his coat which Wilhelm respectfully held out for him. "I
did not know that you... Besides, I'm all out of practice."
"How long ago?" asked Diana.
"Eighteen months."
"Regatta?"
"No, escaping."
Kyril answered these questions with a kind of ardent
coldness, the tone he invariably assumed when he was asked
for what he considered useless information. Eduard felt
somewhat abashed, and looked to Diana to help him out of
his perplexity. She did not respond at all to his appeal;
indeed, it pleased her completely to ignore his presence. The
one word "escaping" had gripped her, had touched a chord
of sympathy in her heart. And while Wilhelm continued
to stare open-mouthed at the amazing stranger, Diana
rapidly ran through her mind the possible course of Kyril's
life history, about which none of those aboard knew anything
other than that Sergievitch had been exiled to Siberia.
"Ah? Then you escaped via Vladivostok?"
"On an American sailing vessel."
"Passport under a false name?"
"Of course. No money."
"Many weeks?"
"A good many."
"As foremast hand? My word!"
Wilhelm's astonishment waxed with every answer.
Eduard had ears for Diana's questions alone, his attention
was riveted on the manner of her asking. The economy of
words between the two, the precision of question and
answer, was demonstration enough that the man and the
woman had been through experiences of a kindred nature.
He was reminded of the curt manner of speech among
apaches, artists, craftsmen; and suddenly it was borne in
upon him that these two alien beings were intimately
bound together by the ties of an adventurous life.
The breakfast gong broke up the group, Kyril walking
away with Diana, and Wilhelm with Eduard bringing
up the rear.
"Do you think he ever feels giddy?" asked Wilhelm in
an awed voice.
"He climbs with great assurance," said Eduard vaguely,
not wishing to have his thoughts disturbed.
Prince Eduard, as far as he was able, spent the rest of
the day alone. He was trying in vain to recapture the
strange and rare simplicity of that morning dialogue; and
every time he caught sight of Kyril or of Diana, they
seemed to be getting farther and farther away from the
spheres he knew.
The Russian, too, was in no mood for any company but
his own. He stood in the stern, gazing at the ship's wake,
as if he saw therein a symbol of a world that was being
left behind. He had been silently and yet mistrustfully
drawing nearer to Diana, and now of a sudden a bridge
had been thrown from either shore across the abyss which
separated them. For just as Eduard's elegance and
conversational powers were for ever rubbing him up the wrong
way, so this woman's every gesture, so captivating in
Eduard's eyes, was repellent and strange to him.
Diana spent the whole morning with Scherer; and the
rest of the day, till sunset, she passed by herself. Now she
lay in her deck chair, an unread book on her lap, dreaming,
forgetful of the flight of time. Kyril found her thus alone,
and made up his mind to have a talk with her, a thing he
had hitherto been careful to avoid.
"What are you reading?" he asked without preface, for
he was genuinely curious to know.
She roused herself at the sound of his rich baritone
voice, looked up, and saw him leaning against the rail in
the same blue suit he had been wearing in the morning.
"I'm not reading at all," she answered, closing the volume.
"It's a collection of Swinburne's poems, poems of the
sea among others. But today the sea is not as Swinburne
saw it, so I have not been reading them."
"Does Herr Scherer like such things, too?"
She smiled.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because you work with him, help him in his journalistic
work. What do you do it for, Fräulein de Wassilko?"
To Diana it was as if a sluice-gate had been opened
in her heart, and the waters were rushing down into a
huge basin, flooding over, and filling a second. Her name
falling naked and cold from these Russian lips, here, in
the midst of a southern sea, was a summons to her, warning
her to steel herself, to buckle on her armour for the
encounter. She sat up very straight as she answered:
"Because I have to earn my living, Dr. Sergievitch."
"For the sake of money?"
"Is that anything to be ashamed of?"
"A poor sort of aim in life!"
"But suppose it is only a means?"
"Then I should ask you to what end."
Diana became more reserved, and, used to make what
capital she could out of those who questioned her by
countering their questions with questions of her own, she
inquired:
"Are means and end one and the same thing to you?"
His mouth twitched. He raised his voice, saying almost
angrily:
"Always."
Then in a quieter tone he added:
"I serve an idea, and live by the party which serves the
same idea."
She was taken aback by the precision and clarity of his
words. Still, not wishing him to think she agreed with
what he said, she asked:
"Has it always been so?"
"This ten years past."
"No other thought but the revolution?"
"And its consequences. Revolution is no more than a
means."
She gazed up at him in silence. "Yes," she thought, "he
has fine features still. Soon fanaticism will set its mark
upon his face." Her fingers closed on her book and it made
her feel that it at least portrayed a better world. She rose
to her feet as she said softly:
"May you live to see your hopes fulfilled!"
"That's of no consequence," he cried, stepping up nearer
to her. "Maybe it is only our children's children who are
destined to see that future day."
The slightly ambiguous tone in which he had, all
unawares, pronounced the word "our," offended Diana anew.
She stepped back a pace and said:
"At any rate you want someone of your own blood to
see that day."
Her eyes challenged his, and suddenly he saw nothing
but the woman in her, standing as he had seen her once
before, on the night she had posed as Atalanta. Thoughts
chased one another through his brain as he asked:
"Why don't you, too, serve an idea?"
"You mean your own ideas, I suppose?"
"There does not appear to be any sense in your present
activities. You don't seem to me to wish either to seduce
or to shine or to climb or to bear children as other
beautiful women do."
He spoke so coldly that any suggestion of flattery was
excluded from his words. Her answer was as cool and
collected:
"And do you recognize no other aims in life?"
He was silent, and she turned away, leaning over the
rail and gazing down at the sea, now glowing in the evening
splendour. "And he sees nothing of all this," thought
Diana, "or, if he does, he despises it."
She straightened, and walked away towards her cabin;
as she went, the sound of flapping sail and swaying ropes
smote on her ears. Looking up into the ordered wilderness
of shroud and canvas and masts she asked irrelevantly:
"Was it a fishing boat in which you escaped?"
"An old tub of a thing."
"Carrying a lot of canvas?"
"Aye."
"Bad crossing?"
"March."
"And before that—how did you get through Siberia?"
"Reindeer sledge."
"Is it true that they can go twenty-four hours in the
traces without feeding?"
"Twenty hours, and sometimes even more. At every
halt they snuggle down close to one another and lick
snow. On arrival at a settlement, a native will lead them
to a place where Iceland moss grows. Then they'll dig
themselves in and eat their fill."
They had reached the companion ladder as he spoke. He
was about to say something more, when a tall figure
emerged from below and started to climb the steps. It
was the prince, who had already changed for the evening.
"They look like two conspirators," he thought as he
looked up and saw the pair silhouetted against the sky.
"He looks like a prince," thought Kyril, a feeling of
hostility leaping up within him as Eduard's white shirtfront
gleamed from the darkness below.
"Hello! Dressed already?" cried Diana as if suddenly
aroused from sleep.
"On board H.M.S. 'Excelsior,' supper is served at
seven—no frills."
"And we were in Siberia," laughed Diana, disappearing
into her cabin.
Expectant, filled with
that insatiable hunger which persons travelling by sea
attribute to the tonic action of the salt-laden air, Scherer,
Eduard, and Franklin were standing at the dining-room
door, discussing the weather while awaiting the arrival of
the rest of the company. Meals were served punctually
aboard the "Excelsior," and Diana, as the only lady present,
was especially careful as a rule to avoid being late. Eduard,
who alone knew why she was not ready, held his tongue,
so as not to have to tell the others that he had discovered
her at so late an hour still in conversation with the
Russian. It was difficult to decide what motive was uppermost
in the prince's thoughts as he made up his mind to keep
silence in the matter. He may have merely wished to avoid
the risk of making a mountain out of a molehill by
suggesting there was anything as yet between Kyril and
Diana. Such vague surmises were apt, within the narrow
confines of a ship at sea, to assume undue proportions. Or
could it be that he, a prince, was suddenly aware that the
revolutionist might be a rival for the lady's favour?
The conversation had petered out, and Franklin, going
over to consult the chronometer, saw that it was already
twenty minutes past the hour. Scherer pulled his gold
watch from his waistcoat pocket, slowly wound it up,
and replaced it without looking to see what time it was.
Eduard, observing the movements of the other two, shook
his shirt cuff free of his left wrist and looked down at the
dial. At that moment, Wilhelm, who had been standing
a little apart and contemplating the sea from the ship's
side, suddenly broke in upon the silence.
"It's all illuminated! The foam is all alight!"
The other three rejoined him, to watch the phosphorescent
light on the water. Each wave as it rose towards the
vessel seemed to be lit from beneath.
"Murmuring pearls," whispered Franklin.
"How wonderfully phosphorescent these tiny creatures
are, to be sure," said Scherer, thoroughly interested.
"Like the Bundesrat during the speech from the throne,"
came from the prince.
Wilhelm who had hitherto been absorbed in his
contemplation, now looked up, and asked:
"Oh, do they wear such shining robes on State occasions?"
"Dresses of State," answered the prince, and his tone
implied a strange mixture of respect and mockery. "Furbelows
from Haroun-al-Rashid's epoch, as our Russian comrade
would say."
"It reminds me of Phœnician glass," said Diana, who
had, unnoticed, joined the group. Everyone turned as she
spoke, and, since there seemed to her an element of
reproof in her friends' aspect, she added: "Perhaps you'll be
sending me back to my cabin in disgrace, for I see it has
gone the half hour and I have no excuse ready."
"I'm awfully sorry to be so late," said Kyril, dashing up
from below. But his excuses sounded dull and inadequate
after Diana's dainty little thrust.
Franklin thought: "A bassoon after the flute! How
lovely her voice is."
"You've mentioned those glasses before," said Scherer
as he made way to allow Diana to pass. "Did you not tell
me your father had unearthed them somewhere?"
"Yes, and they lighted up the whole of my childhood
with their opalescent spots, covered, as it were, by a film of
lava."
By the time she had finished speaking, she had reached
her end of the table, and, making a half turn, she stood
poised for a moment with her bare arms slightly raised.
"She is certainly very beautiful," thought the Russian.
"But she only cares for admiration and adventure; not an
idea in her head. She's a lost soul."
"I'd always have her dress stunningly in the evening,"
said Scherer to himself. "And in the daytime she should be
dressed as a girl."
"What an intricate gown," said Eduard, aloud. "It must
be the butterfly that's holding it all together."
And Wilhelm exclaimed:
"Oh, what a rare specimen! Where was it caught, and
by whom?"
He pushed back his chair, and, with the simplicity of a
child, went over to where Diana sat, in order to get a
closer view of the exquisite thing as it nestled in the soft
folds of her low-cut gown. And it was only now, at such
proximity, that he realized how low indeed the neck was
cut. His young, inexperienced eyes lingered on Diana's
bosom, his senses became confused with the delicate aroma
that rose from her person, he forgot the passage of time.
Four pairs of eyes, glaring their protest and reproof, were
fixed questioningly upon Wilhelm, each man wondering
when the indiscreet inspection would come to an end.
Diana, who had turned towards Wilhelm to show him the
ornament, did not see the men's expression, but she sensed
disapproval in the air by the silence that had fallen on the
company. She was rather amused by the little scene, and
allowed half a minute to go by before turning away and
saying:
"Your soup will be cold, Wilhelm, and it's turtle soup
today, you know, tortoise, the sort upon which an
elephant can stand, a Buddha sitting on its back."
Wilhelm took a deep breath, and, as he hastened back
to his place, he was heard murmuring: "Marvellous!" but
whether he was referring to the turtle, or to the butterfly,
or to Diana's bosom, not one of the four men could decide.
Conversation now became general. There was talk about
sacred rites among the Hindus; Scherer gave an account
of the tortoise-shell mausoleum in Kandy, and told how
he had hurriedly left the place and gone back to Colombo,
because a company of English snobs had taken possession
of the little lake, and how relieved he felt when he got
back to the vision of the infinite sea. Diana had some
interesting things to say concerning the customs in Upper
Egypt, and about camel-riding, and her first experience of
sea-sickness as she crouched between the animal's humps.
Franklin spoke of the serpentine movements of the
elephant's trunk, and went on to refer to the anomalous
aspect of this strange creature as seen amid the haunts of
men. Finally he opened a discussion on the price of ivory,
which seemed greatly to interest Scherer. "Yes," he was
saying, "I remember my awe when the first tusk was put in
my hand and how I turned to the skinny little hunter to
say that such a beautiful thing was certainly worth all the
perils of the chase. To which he answered: 'Of course you
know that out of one tusk six billiard balls can be made.''
"All my sympathies go to the elephant," exclaimed Kyril,
rousing himself from his silence. "The futile uses to
which such fine things and so much labour are put..."
"Quite right! Quite right!" exclaimed Eduard. "I'm
wholeheartedly a partisan of the pachyderms. All politicians
should belong to that race, and to that race alone!"
"It's a pity you speak ironically," retorted Kyril, "for
what you say happens to be true."
The prince's lips twitched, then he said:
"By the time the present generation of diplomats, the
spiders, have died out, I fear the elephants will have been
exterminated by the Austrian consular service under the
leadership of Dr. Franklin as head huntsman! Whom shall
we then have left to send as ambassador to St. Petersburg,
I should like to know?"
"Reynard the Fox," laughed Scherer.
"On the contrary," said Eduard, "the revolutionists here
wish it might be the lamb!"
"Neither will do," put in Kyril gravely, "but, rather,
Herr Scherer himself—on the understanding of course that
he has accepted our ideas in their entirety."
Although Scherer's acceptance of these ideas was only
partial and, even then, mainly theoretical, he felt more
flattered by the Russian's implied appreciation than he
would have been by an official summons to such a post.
Nevertheless, he did not betray his feelings, merely
answering:
"I'm no more than a business man. You'd better try to
convince the prince, so that in the future when he is
appointed to some foreign post, he may work hand in hand
with us, democratically. Advanced ideas coming from
abroad have a much better chance of acceptance at home,
you know!"
"Compromise," muttered Kyril disdainfully. "Parson
Brand says: 'All or nothing!'"
Since Scherer had spoken, the prince had kept his eyes
on the Russian, considering him attentively. Again tonight
he reacted as he had always reacted to similar talks during
the past weeks, when this slogan had been voiced, and it
seemed to him that the Russian's fanaticism was a serious
obstacle to fulfilment. He intervened by saying:
"Would you appoint Ibsen's Brand as chargé d'affaires
in Christiania?"
"He'd be a trifle old for the job, I fear," answered Kyril.
"You would, then, introduce an age-limit for diplomats?
Treat them as the Fiji Islanders treat their old folk? At
sixty lead them on to the rostrum whence, if they proved
no longer capable of maintaining their equilibrium, they
would fall to the ground!"
"The Russians are right," cried Franklin enthusiastically;
"young people are better for such posts."
"Bravo! I think so too," exclaimed Wilhelm, the youngest
of the party, who, as usual, had been silently and
reverently watching the others while they talked.
For the time being, the problem was settled in a chorus
of merry laughter, which suddenly ceased when Scherer
rose as if to deliver a formal speech.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, smiling round the circle.
"I have no intention of introducing etiquette of any sort
on board the 'Excelsior,' but, since we have been talking of
diplomats and of youth, I should like us all to give our
good wishes to one among us who, this day, has added
another year to the tale of his young decades—I drink to
the health of our friend and my guest, His Highness,
Prince Eduard!"
The men had risen. Clicking his heels together and
bowing ceremoniously, the prince touched glasses with his
host. Then he turned to Diana and found her gazing up at
him, her eyes dimmed with tears. Memories of another
dinner party crowded upon him. It had been in the Balkans;
she had had a lover at the time; he himself had been
filled with envy. Now, as he bent towards her, Eduard
became poignantly aware of the caresses the dead man must
have given to the Diana-like body before him, a body
which he had glimpsed for a fleeting moment from a
distant vantage point in a public gathering. The lure of the
woman was strong upon him.
All had by now clinked glasses and had drunk the toast.
There followed an awkward pause, so usual in the train of
such ceremonies. Then Wilhelm's voice broke in on the
silence.
"I thought something must be up directly I saw
champagne glasses on the table!"
"So we have an Almanach de Gotha on board the
man-of-war," said Eduard, turning to Scherer.
"You'll have to own up to your age now," cried Kyril
with unwonted eagerness.
Whereat Diana thought: "Does he hope to be the
younger of the two?" And, as if to shield the prince, she
said hastily to Kyril: "You, too, will have to make the
same confession."
"After His Highness!"
"Guess," said Eduard turning to Diana.
She hesitated.
"According to the Almanach, Prince Eduard is nine-and-twenty
years of age," said Scherer, meaning to help
the prince out of an embarrassing situation. "Kürschner,
in which we'd be bound to find Dr. Sergievitch's name, is
unfortunately not on board, and I'm afraid we'll have some
difficulty in finding a copy among the Ionian Islands."
"Twenty-nine, likewise," Kyril informed them simply.
Diana, who was always responsive to the mystical in
things, and endowed with a physical love of youth, felt
moved and excited as she asked:
"Which of you is the younger?"
Her eyes travelled from one to the other.
Eduard and Kyril leaned across the table; they gave
the impression of two wrestlers as each gazed in his opponent's
eyes. Their companions were silent witnesses of this
soundless duel. Kyril at this moment appeared to be
endowed with superior strength, and seemed to be hiding
something which his vis-à-vis was endeavouring to divine.
A moment or two passed. Then Wilhelm's voice again
broke the tension:
"They were born on the same day!" he cried exultantly.
"How do you know that?" retorted Kyril, his face
darkening, his manner rough and imperious.
"I—I guessed it from the way you behaved," stammered
Wilhelm, abashed.
"Is he right?" asked Diana eagerly, leaning forward in
her turn.
"Is he right?" chimed in Franklin and Scherer
simultaneously.
Kyril sat back in his chair, folded his table napkin, and
answered gruffly:
"Yes, he's right."
Diana and Eduard drew themselves up, completely taken aback.
"Then we can seize the opportunity of wishing you
many happy returns, too," said Scherer jocularly, hoping
to relieve the tension.
"Not today," protested Kyril, "our Russian seventeenth
of April does not fall due until your thirtieth."
"Still, you were born under the same star," said Diana.
"Star? A new kind of decoration," mocked Eduard,
trying to conceal his excitement. "Do you know anything
about such matters, my mystical foster-brother?"
"I don't believe in such things," answered Kyril.
Scherer laughed, and Diana, too, could not hide her
mirth as she said merrily:
"You were both born in the constellation of the Ram."
"Hence these horns," commented Eduard.
"Wool," said Kyril.
"Maybe, likewise, the power of growth, a future vita
nuova," put in Diana.
"Both of us—identical," said Kyril sullenly; like someone
who disapproved of such pleasantries and felt drawn into
retaliating in spite of his better judgment. "How will you,
then, be able to tell us apart?"
"Your horoscopes will not be identical because the actual
days of your birth differ. My father could tell you all
that with precision. I don't know much about such things
myself, or, at most, if you care to show me your
palms...?"
Both men stretched out their left hands towards Diana
who pushed her dessert plate aside. She drew the hands
towards her, placed her elbows on the table and her chin
in her hands, then looked from one palm to the other
while the company sat eagerly waiting for her to speak.
"How very different they are," she murmured after a
while, "so many lines crossing one another on your palm,
Prince. Here, in the long line of your life, a kink as it were,
cutting it short, after which the line becomes firmer. Head
line good, decidedly domineering. The line of heart seems
to peter out here, but it rises in the Jupiter mound."
"May I ask what course it follows?" queried the prince.
"It gives pride of place to love," answered Diana in a
matter-of-fact voice. "The mound of Venus is, however,
not so pronounced. The fingers are contemplative rather
than grasping. But this middle one, so square when
compared with the others, that brings us to the Scales,
equilibrium." She had not touched him while thus telling his
fortune. Now she looked him in the face as she added:
"On the whole, a lucky hand, Prince."
He turned his hand over on the table, took hers in his
and kissed it. Then:
"And now for my rival," he said.
Kyril meanwhile, had been sitting motionless, following
every word, staring enviously at Eduard's long fingers.
Before she began to speak, Diana looked up into the
Russian's face and found his eyes fixed inquiringly on her
own.
"This hand," she began even more sententiously than
heretofore, "has fewer lines. A wonderful line of fate. It
rises here, below the line of life, and runs up in two great
curves to join the lines of the head and the heart, straight
up into the mound of Jupiter: and there is a star."
"What does the star signify?" asked Kyril, dully.
"A great career," answered Diana, so frigidly that
Eduard felt uneasy at such a display of hostility. "But the
line of life is not good at this point, it divides in two, very
decidedly, and it is not long."
"How can you tell that?" queried Kyril harshly, bending
forward so eagerly that his fair hair caressed her cheek.
She did not draw back, but said calmly, pointing to the
spot again:
"By this."
"That's all right. What else do you see?"
"The head line does not join the line of life. That
betokens fanaticism. Mound of Venus, very strongly
developed; line of heart, simple. The fingers are grasping
fingers," she concluded, raising her head. "A square hand:
more will than intelligence. Please forgive me, I'm keeping
you all too long at table."
When, later, they sat in the smoking cabin over cigarettes
and coffee, their wicker chairs drawn together in
a circle, the conversation drifted from suggestion to
sleep-walking and to premonitions of death. From time to time
Wilhelm had dragged one or the other of the circle to the
railing to look at the phosphorescence in the water. These
ecstatic excursions had been interpolated into the general
talk which see-sawed between acceptance and denial of
extraordinary phenomena. Franklin could contemplate the
cosmos only from the mystical view-point. Scherer, as a
man of the world who had never wholly denied the
possibility of abnormal happenings, endeavoured always to
anchor himself on certainties, as the only safe harbourage.
But despite his best endeavours the springs of conversation
gradually dried up.
The prince and the Russian contributed nothing to the
entertainment. The strange coincidence of their birthdates,
separated merely by the vagaries of the calendar, the
variations in their fortunes as read in the lines of their hands,
the aura emanating from the clothing and the personality
of the woman in their midst: all this, and more especially
the strangely prophetic confirmation of her own
consciousness, lay heavy upon the spirits of the two men, one
of whom had been dancing attendance upon Diana for
many months in spite of prejudices of race and rank, while
the other held aloof from her, hostile and suspicious, and
yet attracted to her in his own despite.
The young woman herself was under the spell of her
own perceptions. She felt bemused. As always when things
lying without the circle of the tangible sent a ray of light
towards her like a beacon from a distant port, she seemed
to be gathered up into the mysterious in a way that
appeared to her almost offensive, so greatly did she revere her
own aptitudes and so much did she hate to tamper with
these secret forces of her being. In such moods the
incentive which her essentially productive nature was in the
habit of giving to those who came in contact with her, was
stilled; it was as if she were tossed amid dark and gloomy
waters, and thoughts knocked at her heart, thoughts which
at other times she sought to handle collectedly.
She felt the warm night wind on her throat and arms;
her hand moved slowly, as if half asleep, towards the
butterfly on her bosom which, in rhythm with the rock
crystal pendant, rose and fell with her breathing; her
imagination, more alert now than her eyes which lay deep in
the shadows, drank in the luminous movement of the
waves, sensing their luminosity rather than perceiving it.
And as she lay thus pensive and dreamy she felt acutely
how alone she was, and how impossible it was for these
friends and lovers around her to put an end to such
solitude as hers.
Was such a thing desirable she asked herself. Could
passion, once more aroused, be lovelier than the mute
sympathy of air and sea and death and night and stars? She
looked up, searching for the Scales, and became uneasy
when she could not make out the constellation amid the
clouds which delicately veiled the firmament.
Abruptly she got up, swept by the astonished Wilhelm
whose eyes followed her movements inquisitively, and
made for the bows. The waters were no longer aglow; the
sky was partially overcast. She became conscious of her
youth as the wind played around her shoulders, she saw
the rise and fall of her breast beneath the diaphanous folds
of her gown, she felt the sensual delight of the soft wrap
covering her bare arms, and the dead butterfly adorning
the low-cut neck of her dress seemed more brilliant and
more alluring than the waves.
She threw back her shawl so that she might fully enjoy
the warm caress of the wind. Was not all this the
prelude to an embrace? Was she, a young, beautiful, and
independent woman, to continue living, as she had lived
for a year and more, like a cloistered nun?—— Why
does he hesitate? Why does he not come, unannounced,
tonight, appear suddenly in my cabin, this respectable,
ardent cynic, and forget his habitual irony and decorum in
the ecstasy of an endless night? Do I frighten the men who
refrain from seizing me in the first hour of our acquaintance?
She returned to the circle of her friends, excused herself
as she lightly shook each by the hand, and withdrew to
her cabin. Hastily dismissing Mary, she took a seat in front
of her threefold mirror and hearkened to the murmur of
the waters beneath the port-hole. She pushed back the
wrap from her shoulders, and, as if her own fingers were
those of a lover beginning to unclothe his sweetheart, she
started to unhook her gown. With a slow and voluptuous
movement, she raised her arms above her head, so that the
frail bodice slipped down to the broad waistband which she
had loosened likewise. She pressed the hard crystal between
her breasts and held the dead butterfly against her bosom.
Her other arm was still upraised to frame her curly head.
For a long time she sat there, gazing at herself in the
mirror. Then she rose. With a single motion the dress and
her underwear slid to her feet; then stepping free, as from
a pupa-case, she again contemplated herself in the glass.
She found herself beautiful, and yet as she stretched out
her arms in longing, she had no desire for the man who
had been in her thoughts. What she desired now was love.
The tones of Wilhelm's lute floated down to her, yearning
and soft.
She clasped her strong hands together, and then pressed
their palms against her body. Aghast, she let them fall to
her side, her eyes darkened, for as she had watched the
movements of her own hands her thoughts had flown to
the huge fists of the Russian. She pulled on a nightgown,
and slipped into her bunk. Soon she was wrapped in a
dreamless sleep.
The rattling of chains
awoke Diana. She sprang out of bed, and as she opened
the port-hole she saw land, flat stones lapped by gentle
waves, a few bushes, the whole lit up with the first shafts
of the rising sun. On deck she found there was little more
to see, save a hillock, a sun-kissed beach, a few cottages,
and a couple of dozen fisherfolk who had never seen any
other vessel than their own cobles putting into the bay.
It was the island of Leucas that lay before them. Scherer
had hunted out this little place, for his friends and he
himself wished to avoid Corfu and considered Cephalonia
too big. On this particular voyage they none of them wished
to run up against acquaintances or strangers whom they
might, as in a dream, talk with for one forenoon. Ithaca,
which had been Scherer's first choice, had been turned
down by the rest of the company. Even more than Syracuse
did the place smack of archæological research.
"Good morning! Is this wild enough for you?" called
Scherer from the other end of the deck, as Diana appeared
up the companion. "The natives here don't even ask for
harbour dues!"
"And they catch fish, and milk goats, and our Father
who is in heaven provides for their needs," she called
back.
"You've got out of bed in biblical vein," said Scherer as
he shook hands.
"Say rather in a pagan mood. For this place is rich and
lonesome, and within an hour the sun will be burning hot
and we shall be walking upon Greek ivy."
"It was here that Dorpfeld sought Ithaca."
"I don't want to hear about that. Ithaca is where I
choose it shall be!"
"You are talking like Franklin."
"For today, his way of speaking is the right one! Are
we going ashore?"
Diana pointed to a boat that was drawn up alongside.
"Yes. And, I say, what about going really ashore?"
retorted Scherer meaningly.
"What's your idea?" she asked.
"Well, since I've caught you alone thus early, why not
go to Patras?"
They were standing near the gangway which was still
shaking from the heavy tread of the captain who had just
left the yacht to go ashore. Such a question, the proposal
that they two should do something apart from the others,
had never been mooted before. Both rather dreaded the
possibility. Patras spelled Athens. Athens was full of
certain joint memories that needed careful handling.
Diana said:
"Patras is hardly worth a visit, and it's too late in the
year for Athens. Agreed? Besides one might get involved
in the Balkan imbroglio and the yacht captured as a prize!
Wouldn't you prefer sailing northward?"
"Really northward?" he asked with a smile, for he knew
her weakness for Venice.
She laughed. Then tossing her head defiantly, she
said:
"One should always avoid the scenes of former happenings,
you know—especially if one holds the past in contempt."
Her words were only meant to express her vivid joy of
the moment—like a bugle summoning up the morning.
But for Scherer they seemed a disavowal of the past,
knowing as he did her faith in the mutations of the
moment. He looked at her steadily, as if to fix her words
upon his retina. She returned his gaze unflinchingly,
combative and audacious, until he lowered his eyes and
continued unruffled:
"It's to be Venice, then; and after that we'll skirt the
coast. Is that your idea? The plan suits me very well, for I
should dearly like a chat with Ricci, who is doing propaganda
in Italy on behalf of our views. I may learn something
useful. If only our captain doesn't fall in love!"
"I'd willingly put temptation in his way for the sake
of Venice," she laughed. "But I'm not his type."
"Highly improbable! What you really mean is that he
is not a type that appeals to you."
"That's neither here nor there, if one has an end in view."
She spoke with the deliberate coldness she occasionally
affected when she wished to mislead even those whom she
most trusted.
Scherer did not answer. He was pondering her words.
"An end in view? What would be the upshot?"
An hour later they were all being pulled ashore. The
silence that brooded over the island, the absence of any
sights, the speedy growth of the sun's power, and above all
the estrangement which had arisen between Eduard and
Kyril since the events of the previous evening, made the
little company unusually taciturn. Scherer contemplated
Diana from a new angle, and was absorbed in his own
thoughts; Eduard did not wish to be with Diana while
Kyril was about; Diana had no desire to speak to any
one; even Franklin seemed strangely glum since last
night.
Wilhelm, alone, was cheerful. He felt more at home on
land than at sea, especially when the country was wild
and the weather hot. He had been walking for some time
at Diana's side, admiring the flowers, the hills, and the tide.
Gradually he felt that he had experienced all this before;
the landscape and, indeed, the whole excursion was familiar.
Such a feeling of reliving past events was one this
dreamy poet's nature was accustomed to, and he was never
taken aback when things or persons unexpectedly appeared
as old friends or as the realization of a dream. The party
broke up into groups, rambling whithersoever fancy led:
Wilhelm's mood became more and more joyous. He
walked along at Diana's side, absorbed in his dreams, the
incarnation of youth.
"There does not seem to be any way through up there,"
Scherer called after the pair.
"All the better," cried Diana, waving her hand. "We'll
probably discover a temple!"
"As you will," shouted Scherer from below. "Only I beg
you to be aboard again at one."
He invited the remainder of the little band to follow
him along a more beaten path which wound away to the
right, mounting the cliff, and overlooking the bay.
Absentmindedly, the three men followed where Scherer led,
not one of them much caring whither they went. Scherer
proved right and Diana came to what she had hoped. The
track vanished amid a tangle of broom, and she felt
thoroughly in her element as she beat a passage for herself
through the thicket, Wilhelm following in her wake. Now,
at last, she could throw off the burden of thought with
which she had been oppressed since her talk with Scherer
early that morning.
The broom grew to a man's height in this spot, and its
yellow plumes waved aloft in the golden light of the early
day. At times the shrub attained the proportions of a tree,
and scattered blossoms with profusion as if they were a
tropical rain. It was difficult to find a foothold among the
thick growth of ivy which covered the ground, a carpet
of damp green flecked with the gold of fallen petals.
Gnarled fig trees spread their heavy leafage abroad, while
myrtles in full blossom formed cascades among the ivy-mantled
crags. The prickly fronds of the cactus stuck their
grey-green fingers in the air, and here and there one of the
plants flaunted the beauty of red buds; violet agave flowers,
like thorny fountains, inhaled the light and the warm
sunshine with avidity, profiting by every instant of their
short-lived glory to nourish the fruit of their blossoming time;
and mother earth in her green gown, lying amid a welter
of sword-shaped leaves, was already parched from the
boiling noonday suns. From a medley of mosses and weeds the
delicate stems of olive trees had sprung up, but, affrighted
by the rough caresses of the sea winds, they had bowed
their heads to earth again. In the general hum of insect and
animal life, sounds differentiated themselves so that one
could distinguish the rustle of lizards amid leaves, the
slithery movement of unseen snakes avoiding the tread of
a human foot and yet seemingly on the alert to follow
the wayfarer; while, dominating all, came the deep bourdon
of the humble bees, and the shrill chirp of the crickets.
The hot air was heavy with the scent of honey and parched
blossoms, and it was a labour to lift the foot to a higher
level on the sweltering hill-side, where the tall,
beaker-shaped ferns grew luxuriantly and the stiff stems of the
orchis thrust their purple buds amid the green, where the
cherry-laurel attained undreamed of heights, displaying its
cool leaves to the ardent sun and reflecting the light in
the thousand facets of its sombre depths.
Now the sea was again visible, spreading its calm and
polished surface beneath the radiant sky, and Diana, catching
sight of it, let herself slide to the ground amid the tangle
of golden broom, and gazed her fill, breast high among
the blossoms. She leaned upon her elbows, her chin cupped
in her hands, her eyes fixed upon the distant blue, looking
for all the world like a sentry awaiting the arrival of a
ship. Thus she lay amid the yellow wilderness, a slender
figure in her simple white frock, her wide-brimmed hat
flung negligently at her side, absorbed in contemplation of
the dazzling waters. Wilhelm, who had discarded his coat
and his cap, sat at a little distance from her. He had
followed her silently, using his stick and his hands to clear a
path for himself. Occasionally he had sprung forward in
advance of her, holding branches aside for her passage;
then again he would fall to the rear, seeking an easier way.
"You are a shepherdess," said he, his head cocked to
one side. "When you talk, I can hardly ever understand,
since you are too clever for me. But as you are now, I can
understand you very well, just as I used to understand my
collie, who was stolen from me last autumn." He spoke
very softly, a note of supplication in his voice.
"How gentle a tone, how mute and humble his affection,"
thought Diana, a smile hovering about her lips. "He
hums like one of those great hairy bees, and he, too, is
wishing to find honey."
"None of the other men are near," continued Wilhelm,
cuddling down beside her, "and I feel sure you will allow
me to kiss your hand—but I want to kiss it here, quite
high up."
Diana laughed.
"You are but a shepherd lad," she said, "and I'll let you
kiss me wherever you please."
Wilhelm bent forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
"Ah, Diana, you are a goddess taking your ease among
the broom, and you think the shepherd does not recognize
you for what you are. But he knows, he recognizes
you," and he leaned over her as she lay.
"By what sign do you recognize me, Wilhelm?"
"By your knees," he said roguishly. "Atalanta did not
wear stockings, you know!"
She pulled her skirt down.
"Did you like Atalanta?"
"So greatly that I could only gaze and gaze at her, and
forget to fall in love with you."
"But I'm in love with you, Wilhelm!"
"Yes, I know; but I make very cautious advances as
you see..."
He slipped his head on to her breast and caressed her
knees.
"You are so gentle and so kindly, Wilhelm, and you
taste like strawberries."
"You are the most beautiful of women, Diana, and
Wilhelm is the happiest of mortals," and he quietly began
to unfasten her dress....
They were startled from an infinitude of slumbrous joy
by a sound of crackling nearby, and sprang apart with the
frightened shock of lovers surprised by an alien third. But
their alarm soon changed to laughter, for the intruder was
only a he-goat who was no less startled at finding human
stragglers in his haunts than they had been by his intrusion.
"The very creature himself," cried Diana, trying to seize
the beast by the horns, "the Dionysian animal arousing us
from a Pan-like lethargy. It is just as well that he invaded
our sanctum, for otherwise we'd have overslept ourselves,
been late for lunch, might even have been left behind and
condemned for ever to live on Leucas isle!"
"Would that not have been paradise, indeed? What
might I not achieve on Leucas, and you?"
She laughed, glancing up at him shyly from under her
lids, as she said:
"I'd make myself a rough canoe..."
"To live in?"
She flung her arms about him and kissed him precipitately,
laughing, and looking straight into his eyes.
"No, no! To sail in, to make for Corfu, under cover of
night, while you were fast asleep in the cave of Telemachus.
Once arrived at Corfu, I'd board a Lloyd steamer and
voyage to Rio or to the moon."
Lighter of step than during the upward climb, fleeing
from the heights, with the springy gait of a young
shepherdess, Diana sped down the hillside, along the path they
had beaten, humming softly to herself, until she reached
the road and the shore.
The thoughts of the four men who had taken the easier
way were concentrated on the person of Diana, during the
time that she herself was living a genuine pastoral with
the fifth.
As chance would have it, Eduard and Kyril walked side
by side along the narrow path. They were silent. Their
discovery had aroused in them a sense of hostility: the chance
circumstances which had brought them together, seemed
to them now, since the previous evening, to have imposed
indissoluble and fateful ties; at the same time they both
felt that henceforward Diana's relationship towards them
would be a more intimate one. This conviction, for the
first time, awakened a sense of unwarranted jealousy
between the two men, a feeling which served in the case of
each to accentuate their inclination towards the lady.
Kyril, however, with his instinctive and deliberately
fostered animus against persons of high station, was inclined
to rationalize his dislike for the man as contempt for the
prince; whereas the latter, being set upon freeing himself
from prejudice, did his utmost to draw a clear distinction
between Kyril the rival and Kyril the man of ideas. It was
Eduard, therefore, who broke the long silence.
"Rather an ominous field of research, astrology, don't
you think, Doctor? If one believes in it, one has misgivings,
and if one does not believe in it, one has nevertheless
a feeling of resentment."
"Just as one has with human beings," responded Kyril
gloomily, and with so audible a hint that he wished for
the silence to continue, that the prince had plenty of time
wherein to ruminate as to whether his neighbour believed
in Diana or mistrusted her.
Scherer and Franklin, following the two younger men,
had lapsed from the cheerful mood they had begun the day
with. Now they were in a critical vein, from which neither
the sunshine nor the sea could release them. They had lost
their equanimity. Franklin, who had neither in earlier days
nor now looked upon Diana with the eyes of a lover, had
felt all along a little out of the picture as he watched her
relations with the little circle of friends; since the events
of last night, however, this vague feeling had become more
tangible and he actually fancied she regarded him with
contumely. It seemed to him that as poet and as one who
prided himself on his knowledge of women, Diana might
treat him in less daughterly a fashion, though it was, he
had to admit, he himself who had encouraged this attitude
in her. Now, quite suddenly, although in his quiet way he
had enjoyed the voyage, learning and observing a new
kind of life, he felt that what remained to him of youth
had forcibly been wrenched away from him. Above all,
his suspicions were aroused in regard to Scherer, whose
relationship to Diana he had never wholly understood, and
whose unwonted buoyancy this morning, in spite of the
veneer of worldliness with which the financier masked his
feelings, made Franklin more alert than usual.
For since Diana had spoken to him that morning Scherer
had been the prey of an inner turmoil; possibilities of
all kinds rose in his mind and were rejected, and it seemed
to him that of all men Franklin was the one who could
inform him as to certain happenings of her youth. Both
men had feelers out; both were silent. Scherer waited till
Franklin spoke.
"Have you known the young people long?"
"Those two young men ahead of us?" returned Scherer,
deliberately misunderstanding Franklin's inquiry.
"Prince Eduard and the girl."
Franklin invariably referred to Diana thus.
"Oh," answered Scherer, "I met the prince in Turkey
some time ago, but I did not make Fräulein de Wassilko's
acquaintance till considerably later."
"Well, what about the prince? And suppose she takes
up with the other...?"
Scherer assumed an air of absolute innocence.
"She must have had nothing but a platonic friendship
with him in those days..."
"Platonic? Can she keep that up indefinitely?" exclaimed
Franklin.
Scherer smiled.
"You've known her much longer than I have."
"Yes, long ago," rejoined Franklin in a tone of voice as
if he were referring to a lost paradise. "The girl was
observant and wise in those days. Now—she seems to me to
be rather more a woman made for love."
"Since she has been living and working so closely in
touch with me, I have found her far more maidenly than
most people deem she could possibly be after such an
adventure."
"Outwardly, perhaps, Herr Scherer. But inwardly? The
cup is filled with blissful delight."
Franklin spoke the last words so loud, tossing them as
it were into the air in his rhapsodic way, that they floated
as far as Eduard's and Kyril's ears, whereupon the two
young men simultaneously turned right about. Scherer,
secretly amused, and emboldened by the turn the
conversation had taken, wished to give the subject a more
conventional twist, so he called to the two who had taken the
lead on the path:
"You are missing the best sonnet Herr Franklin has ever
composed. He wrote it years ago, taking our huntress as
subject, when she was still a priestess."
"May one ask for it to be repeated?" asked Eduard,
shaking off the spell that had held him, and falling into
line with the elder couple.
"Herr Scherer is the poet this time," protested Franklin,
"not I."
"Wares acquire value through rarity," said Eduard
mockingly.
"Let's reckon up which of us has burned the greater
number of poems, Prince," answered Scherer.
"I never burned any. The few I composed I made into
paper boats and set them adrift on the pond in our park
at home."
They were by now in merrier mood, and gave themselves
up to good-humoured banter.
All, save the Russian, who continued on his way ahead
of them, alone and sullen, in the scorching noontide glare.
An hour later the whole party met at lunch on the yacht.
The Russian was very uneasy, and, since the prince felt
himself to be in rather less serious plight, he assumed the
task of finding out how Diana had spent the morning, a
matter about which both men were extremely inquisitive.
"I expect you have added to your academic laurels this
morning by increasing our knowledge of Homeric
times—excavations I mean."
She was determined not to give herself away, so she took
refuge in a lie.
"We really did discover something, Wilhelm and I.
Higher up, soon after we had left you, a little farther
inland, we came upon an olive tree under which, covered
with ivy, we saw two stones. On closer inspection they
proved to be pieces of a truncated column, late epoch, might
even be Roman. But, Wilhelm, you know about these
things better than I for you have studied the history of art."
Wilhelm was nonplussed, not so much by her powers
of invention in order to shield their secret, as by the calm
way in which she appealed to him.
"I think they are called Roman drums," he said diffidently,
"but for the moment I want to give my attention to
this excellent fish."
The Russian looked inquiringly at the speaker and
then turned his eyes upon Diana, while the prince cast a
meaning glance at Kyril and Scherer. Immediately
Wilhelm, who had so recently deemed himself the favoured
one in relation to this much-courted woman, assured that
he alone of all on board had enjoyed the favour of her
kisses, felt confused, and poverty stricken, and banished
from her sight.
As the day was fading, Diana stood alone on the deck.
The island was left far behind, its hills rising faint and
dreamlike out of the sea. Diana gazed over the waters,
absorbed in reverie. "The hand of the past has lain heavy
upon me today," she mused. "Scherer, always on the
lookout for a wife ... he's missed his chances ... Wilhelm
finds a shepherdess ... as that handsome Scottish lad did
so many years ago... And what of this taciturn, amiable
prince? Is it not dangerous for us to let the favourable
moment slip through our fingers? Why does he hesitate?"
A shadow climbed up the companion ladder. Wilhelm
stood beside her.
"Diana," he whispered, a caressing note in his voice.
"Good evening," she answered in a louder key.
"Are you happy?"
"Is it not lovely?"
"What?" asked Wilhelm, at a loss to know what she was
referring to.
"The sea! And that we are making for Venice!"
Eduard was sitting at
one of the little marble tables in Florian's cafe on the
Piazza. He had chosen a seat in the back row, and was
fluttering the pages of an illustrated paper. A small glass
of vermouth stood on the table beside him. He had at last
discarded his yachting jacket and white shoes, and was
now clad in a light-coloured summer suit, enjoying the
luxury of being ashore again after so many days at sea.
Here, in Venice, ran his thoughts, I hope to stay two
days; but I don't mean to spend them in hunting up art
treasures. I'm going to be an ascetic so far as such things
are concerned. I wonder why she left the yacht so early?
The time had certainly come when it was expedient to land
somewhere!
Pictures of the last few days aboard the "Excelsior"
passed before his eyes. All the cheerfulness of the first days
had vanished; monosyllabic courtesy prevailed; laughter
had become a stranger. Wilhelm spent half the day in
solitude, apart; his friends watched him sadly as he sat
crouching on a chair in the bows; he avoided Diana and the
prince, and chose only Franklin's company, conversing
with him about camels, elephant hair, and crocodile tears.
When he played the lute, he touched its strings lightly,
making music for himself alone, and he never sang now.
Of an evening, he would creep down to where Giorgino,
the ship's boy, sat on the companion steps, and Scherer as
he went by heard them practising the Venetian dialect
together.
Scherer, too, was restless, and tried every expedient to
relieve his boredom, asking the captain for information
concerning winds and tides, fogs and lighthouses. Eduard
and Kyril had long discussions about the people as against
the individual, at the end of which, they would fetch the
chess board and sit down to a game. Four or five hours
would go by, and neither would raise his eyes from the
board; and even during the meals that followed, they
would remain pensive and chary of words.
Every one on board had become suspect to Kyril, his
fundamental mistrust of Diana having now spread to her
friends; hardly had the fences which separated the two
begun to be pulled down, than he carefully set them up
again. On the whole, this state of affairs fell in with
Eduard's humour, for the prince's uneasiness concerning
Diana's little excursion with Wilhelm had assuaged his
jealousy of the Russian, and it seemed to him that the
latter's comradely attitude towards Diana was a good one
to imitate. Diana herself, since that strangely poignant
evening, had been constrained to greater precaution, seeing
that the prince held back; indeed, he seemed to be slipping
away altogether, and he for his part made no effort to
hold her. She could not guess what he had been cogitating
for months; all she was aware of was that he revered her
instead of taking possession of her; her spirit was rent by
the conflict between pride and inclination, a conflict in
which pride usually gained the upper hand, and thereby
augmented the alienation.
Eduard got up, paid his score, and was making for the
colonnade by the public library, wishing to mix with the
crowd that always promenaded there towards noon, when
he heard himself called by name. As he abruptly turned in
response, his sleeve caught the change the waiter had
deposited on the little table, and swept it to the ground.
Four hands were instantly stretched out to pick the money
from the ground, and as the prince, too, stooped in order
to help, he saw himself confronted by Kyril and another
young Russian. All three laughed as they rose and shook
hands.
"That's the first time I've ever seen you groping for
money, most honoured Samoroff," cried Eduard. "You
always allow it to roll away unheeded at Monte Carlo.
Thanks," he added as the coins were returned to his hand.
"It's only to show myself an arrant foe of capitalism in
the eyes of my old friend Kyril. We were students
together. Otherwise, quand il aura puissance dans l'Institut
Smolny, he might put me under lock and key in the
dungeons of the Peter-Paul fortress!"
The elegant young gentleman who spoke these words,
partly in broken German and partly in excellent French,
was nearly as tall as Eduard. His walking cane between his
legs, he was preparing to take a seat, when Kyril said,
addressing Eduard:
"Dimiter Alexandrovitch will excuse me, I feel sure. He'll
be happier chatting with you about the gaming table than
with me about Kropotkin whom he met in London and
whose samovar is the only thing he has been able to
understand! Good-bye, I have other matters in hand."
He then turned to his compatriot, and took leave of him
in Russian. Soon he was lost in the crowd. Eduard realized
how glad Kyril was at such an easy escape, and with what
relish the young man had foisted a compatriot of birth and
standing upon himself as one of similar lineage.
"How goes the world with you, cher Prince?" said Dimiter,
slipping his hand lightly through Eduard's arm, and
leading him towards the colonnade. He seemed a little
distrait, but his manner was more cordial towards Eduard
than the latter's towards him, for both by education and
temperament the German was more reserved than the Russian
globe-trotter. While they chatted, Dimiter sauntering
easily along, Prince Eduard walking with greater decorum,
the latter's mind was occupied with thoughts as to how he
could get rid of his fortuitous companion. He feared
Dimiter might invite him to lunch, that he, in turn, would have
to reciprocate, and he was loath to bring this idler aboard
Scherer's yacht since he, as member of the same caste,
would thus render himself more or less responsible for the
Russian. They had passed a few days together in Cannes
a couple of years ago, empty days to be sure, but since
Dimiter had just come from those parts, the conversation
naturally turned to recollections of that time, whose charm
was greatly exaggerated in retrospect by the Russian. In
Eduard's memory those same few days were far from
appearing so beautiful, and he was determined not to
contribute anything to their glamour.
"I hear you've been cruising in the Mediterranean with
a newspaper magnate," began Dimiter. But he broke off to
say: "Just look, there, the girl on the right—look at the
movement of her shoulder under her black shawl, you can
actually see it as if it were being X-rayed!" He spoke with
the utmost physical unconcern. "Superb," he continued,
"only most of them smell so strong. In winter, it's not so
bad.... Apropos, Kyril tells me you have a lady on
board. Very convenient when one's at sea, only one must
be sure the cabin doors open quietly, see that the hinges are
well-oiled, otherwise the husband—I speak from experience!
Enfin... Not going already?"
Eduard protested that he must rejoin his friends, though
in reality he was under no obligation to do so, for it had
been agreed among them that each was free to do what he
liked ashore. As the prince was about to move away, it
suddenly occurred to him that this loose-tongued gossip
might give him information about Kyril. He therefore
said somewhat irrelevantly: "You know, of course, that
Dr. Sergievitch is a great favourite on board the yacht?"
"Naturally," exclaimed Dimiter with vivacity, and he
unexpectedly sat himself down on one of the steps of the
flagstaff belonging to the church of San Marco, his cane
between his legs. "That goes without saying. When we
were students together—my father wanted me to take my
degree—I was to study law in Switzerland, at Lausanne,
for the old man had friends there, exiles from Alexander's
reign—and Kyril was to study there likewise. It was
charming, for at Ouchy, in Madame Dorée's pension,
there lived a most adorable woman, her daughter, you
know—seventeen, noli me tangere type, brunette, slim as
a boy, only up here, you know.—Eh bien, we were all
crazy about this bronze divinity. But this poor
devil—— Let's see, we must have been twenty-two at the
time—— Yes, that's right, for it was in 1906,
a year after the October
revolution—— Well, Kyril, who was not in a position to
make her a present of even so much as a bracelet, went
straight to the goal, just as if this cool and suave young
lady were a rutting bitch. Straight there, after seeing her
but twice. I bet you it was his regard demoniaque and his
magnificent teeth that did the trick." Dimiter struck
viciously at the square red slabs with his cane. "Cette
canaille!" he exclaimed. Then, unexpectedly, he sat silent,
ruminating, filled with jealousy, as if he actually saw the
couple before him in the flesh, ignoring the many years
that had elapsed and the many successful adventures that
had come his way since.
Eduard, standing in front of him, had at first listened,
his hands resting on the small of his back, as he balanced
himself on the soles of his brown shoes. But, his interest
in the story waxing, he brought his face nearer to the
speaker, placing one foot upon the step above and gripping
the flagstaff with his left hand. He noticed the Russian's
preoccupation and respected it for a while. Then, into the
silence, he flung a question, lightly, as if he attached but
little importance to the answer:
"He was very poor at the time?"
Dimiter looked up, blinking his eyes as he answered:
"Son of a cottager, Ukrainian peasant folk, adopted by
some farmer or other. Suddenly wrenched from his natural
surroundings and hurled into the vortex of revolutionary
intrigue. Then he studied, buried himself in his work.
Got subsidies, financed by the party—je ne connais pas les
details. Later, I gather, he was sent to Siberia. Escaped, as
usual.—En avant! Enough of this camelot! Come along
to Danieli's. You must consent to be my guest at lunch,
and tell me the most recent Berlin scandals."
"That would be delightful," rejoined Eduard, hoping
to hide behind a mask of levity the pensive mood these
scraps of information had induced. "Unfortunately I am a
slave aboard the galley which you can see from here
flaunting her charms in a robe of snow-white innocence.
Tomorrow I'll drop you a line at your hotel. For today, I
have no choice, I must aboard. Mille pardons!"
As soon as he had shaken the Russian off, Eduard made
his way, with greater speed than was customary to him,
through the strollers who were by now thronging the
Piazza. He hailed a gondola, and, not wishing to be the
prey of further questionings, called haphazard the first
name that occurred to him:
"All' Accademia!"
He would thus gain time to consider where he would
next order the man to go, and meanwhile he could give
himself up to meditation. Lounging on the well-worn
leather cushions, he saw nothing of the sights around him.
His mental vision was filled with Kyril's form; he saw
Kyril's eyes asparkle, Kyril's teeth gleaming; he heard
Dimiter's envious voice saying, "Straight there, after seeing
her but twice," and again Dimiter's tone as he uttered the
words "bronze divinity," words that had pierced Eduard's
heart. Then the dim interior of a peasant's hut rose before
the prince's eyes, a new-born baby was crying, the farmer
in his high boots entering and carrying the child away, the
snow, the heat, the endless steppe, a resolute lad growing
up on a farm, a propagandist on his rounds whispering the
word of promise for a brighter future and giving the boy
a book, the youngster devouring page after page, his face
aglow—now the lad is packing his few things, scraping
a handful of coins together, making for the railway station,
journeying to Moscow—public meetings, a kopeck or two
spent on food, all the rest of his scanty hoard going to
buy books, and again books—then, suddenly, reindeer
drawing a sleigh over Siberian wastes, Kyril sitting inside
it, hastening onwards, for ever hastening, that "they"
might not catch him, onward till he reaches the coast—now
the youth is aboard a sailing vessel, none of your
spick-and-span white yachts—and then the vision of the
girl of seventeen summers, a bronze divinity, spurning the
advances of the scion of a princely race in order to give
herself to the meanly born swain who possessed her then
and there as if she were "a rutting bitch." ...
"O—hé! Guarda—mi!"
The gondolier's warning cry broke in upon his reverie.
The man's voice reminded him of the voice of his first
tutor calling to him as he played in the park at home,
summoning him back to his quarters in the left wing of
the castle. But first he must bring his wooden ducks ashore,
lovely white-lacquer birds, with which he had been
playing in the marble basin where the goldfish swam; they
must not be allowed to stay out over night. "Johann!
Johann!" And the old servant would come running along
the avenue of yew trees while the youngster stamped about
in water, crying: "Johann, catch my ducks! No, not yet;
first help me on with my shoes, I've got to be quick,
Stefan is already with Herr Hollrigel, we've got to do twice
two today!"
At this very hour, Diana was sitting alone in the cool,
spacious hall of the Accademia, looking up at Titian's last
masterpiece.
"What depth, what weight," thought she. "This is surely
the climax of the century when, after so glorious a course,
after hundreds of paintings depicting sunlit nudities,
red-gold, shimmering hair, lute players twanging love-lorn
ditties beside Aphrodite; of pictures of chains and
war-harness, of boldness and of freedom—there should be
conceived this canvas, showing beneath a green-gold cupola
of transcendental loveliness, the dusky and livid body of
Our Lord being taken down from the cross before the
gloomy eyes of the watchful Magdalen.... To die young
... younger even than He ... in the dread ecstasy of
love, in the throes of a twin pulsation, naked, up on a
couch within earshot of the surges of a southern sea, under
the skies in full view of one's guiding star.... Is my
constellation really the Scales? Last night, when I heard them
lowering the anchor, and the chain rattled over the
cathead, I looked out through the port-hole, straight across to
San Giorgio's point, and there was Saturn, the girdled
god.... I must get away from this tragical picture....
It was here I saw those enigmatic angel heads of Leonardo's
that time when I came away from Rome.... They were
under glass, and some one carefully rolled back the cloth
that protected them from the light.... They must be over
there...."
Diana got up, passed through two other rooms, full of
people coming and going and chatting, to reach a little
gallery whose walls were adorned with glass cases. The
place was deserted but for one other, a glimpse of whose
back she caught in the farther corner. She started looking
at the pages which were spread out for inspection beneath
the glass. They were drawings by Leonardo himself.
She looked long and lovingly at these sweet angel faces
with their ecstatic upward gaze and their unearthly,
enigmatic smile; herein she read nothing but heavenly love,
desireless and candid; and her heart, which had been
troubled of late, gradually found ease and quietude from the
contemplation of these pure and ethereal beings; she felt
her soul flooded with the reflected laughter and devotion
of these fanciful creations. The face of the master who had
conjured them forth from the recesses of his fancy rose
before her, and as peace invaded her and wrapped her round
she felt that his spirit must be near at hand. A light
footfall to her left brought her back to reality, though for a
moment, so greatly was she under the spell of her musings,
she thought it was the tread of the great master himself.
The form she had glimpsed as she entered the gallery
had detached itself from the shadowy corner, and was now
studying the contents of the cases, just as she was, only
from the other end. He was a tall man in the middle
sixties, dressed in a suit of dark cloth, and, from the
position of his body as he bent to look at the drawings, it was
difficult to decide whether he would be equally bent when
walking or not. He wore no hat, his hair was silvery
white, and his delicate face with its long nose and thin lips
looked like an etching, especially when seen in profile and
when one could appreciate the line of his long, white
beard which fell softly over chin and throat. Indeed his
head resembled the portrait Leonardo has left us of himself.
It was thus, in profile, as he bent over the cases, that
Diana caught sight of him on raising her eyes, her pulses
still throbbing from the glory of her vision. She started, for
she recognized him at once.
"Father!" she cried, never stirring from where she stood.
He looked up, without haste, and she saw his blue eyes
turned towards her, kindly and inquiring now, whereas
once they had been like shafts of glittering steel.
"Diana! It is you, my dear daughter!"
His voice struck to her very heart, just as his eyes had
done. It had become more cordial during these three years
since she had heard it last.
"Father!"
Slowly, as if she were a little girl, she went towards him.
He raised his arms, but did not open them for an embrace,
and kissed her on the forehead. It was as though he were
giving her his blessing. They were silent for a while.
"Just before I caught sight of you," she said softly, "the
head of this magician loomed near me, and when I heard
footsteps approaching I thought it could be none other
than he."
"And it turned out to be only your old father! How
simply things explain themselves! As I look at you now
you seem to me all aglow inside."
"I come from the company of angels," said Diana,
casting another look at the drawings under the glass.
"And I am on my way to them, for at my end there were
nothing but grimacing devils. I always start down there
and make my way upward."
"Shall I have to go down among the devils?"
"Are you afraid of them?" he asked, scrutinizing her
closely.
"I fear no one," said she, tossing her head defiantly,
and thus making her curls dance around the edge of her
cap.
He stood motionless as if captivated. Then he raised his
arms once more in that peculiar gesture of his, and spoke
in a voice that sounded younger and sweeter:
"Helena! That's just the way Helena had of tossing her
head...."
The reference to her mother made Diana long to throw
herself at his feet. She stood silent, controlling the impulse,
for she knew that at any moment a stranger might appear
in the doorway. He, too, made an effort to regain composure.
"Will you stay a little while with me?" he said at last.
"I—shall come with you, Father!"
As she spoke, she remembered other claims, the yacht,
the prince, her own desires; and her father was quick to
perceive that there was an obstacle to the free disposal of
her time, an impediment imposed from without. He said:
"Not long ago I dreamed that I might meet you."
"When was that? Do you remember?"
"I remember not only the day when each of my dreams
has occurred, but almost the time as well, for I have
written them all down these twelve years past. This one
came three days ago, towards evening, when I fell asleep
in my arm-chair—a very unusual thing for me to do. It
must have been nearly seven o'clock, for when I awoke I
saw the little steamer passing by. So I could not have been
asleep long."
She nodded her head.
"And at the same hour, three days ago, I was standing
on the deck of a pleasure yacht, thinking: We are going
to Venice! It is April, perhaps Father will be there!"
"There, you see how simple it all is!" The old man
smiled genially. "And now let's go and have some lunch
and a good talk."
With the deliberate and courtly gesture appropriate to
a man of his years, he offered his daughter an arm. As she
took it, a surge of maternal solicitude flooded her heart:
she saw the soft hat he held in his hand, and looked up at
his silvery head:
"Won't you," she began, "... it is rather cold in these
rooms...."
"I cannot wear a hat in the presence of the master's
work," he said simply, as they went on their way.
As they were about to descend, she caught sight of the
prince who was in the act of landing. He, however,
changed his mind, stepping back into the gondola, hastily
pulling the curtains around the seat, and thus concealing
himself from the passers-by. Since the gondolier had
brought his fare to the place he was bidden, the man waited
patiently till it should please the gentleman to alight. But
Eduard did not stir.
Hidden by the curtains, the prince watched Diana stepping
lightly between the huge couchant lions. She looked
the embodiment of youth as she accommodated her
springy gait to that of the tall old gentleman at her side:
she was in a light-coloured coat and skirt that the wind
from the lagoon played with as she walked; he in
well-tailored black, leaning upon an ivory-handled stick.
Eduard's mind was still full of reminiscences of his
childhood days, and for him the broad steps were those of his
ancestral halls where likewise two couchant lions kept
guard, and Diana was descending them, leaning on the
arm of his own old father.
As she stepped into a gondola near by, the prince
suddenly resolved to follow her.
The "Excelsior" while at
sea had appeared to be the sanctuary of orderliness: here,
in port, she had cast her virtues to the wind. No one came
punctually to meals; the steward had gone ashore and his
substitute proved a broken reed; the captain was invisible;
the cabins were hot and stuffy, with port-holes tightly
shut; above all, everything was grimed with coal dust, for
the yacht was replenishing her bunkers, and the air was
filled with the rattle of the operation.
When Scherer arrived, half an hour late, and went to
the dining saloon, he found Wilhelm the solitary occupant,
waiting patiently before his empty plate, and whiling
away the time till his comrades should put in an appearance
by cutting initials in the skin of an orange and gently
whistling as he worked.
"You must be awfully hungry, my dear fellow," said
Scherer apologetically. "I see you are trying to make the
best of my unpunctuality by carving the emblems of love.
May I have a look?"
Wilhelm turned the fruit towards his host, so that the
letters D. W. became visible.
"Are you so very deeply in love?" Scherer asked with a
blend of gravity and amusement.
"I don't quite understand."
"Well, you've joined your initial to that of the young
lady."
"My initial? Oh no. The letters stand for Diana de
Wassilko. When I was cutting the little 'd' which marks
her rank, the knife slipped; but one can still make it out if
one looks close enough. I meant to put the orange at her
place, so that we all might know where she would sit if
she happened to turn up for lunch."
Scherer took his seat at the table, and, after a word of
excuse, buried himself in the letters he had fetched at the
post office.
"If I were to set about carving initials in real earnest,"
continued Wilhelm, when the meal was at last served, "a
number of other letters would have to be grouped round
the D."
"What other letters?" asked Scherer pleasantly.
"You are not going to lure any secrets out of me, Herr
Scherer," said Wilhelm, trying to copy his host's worldly
manner. "All I will tell you is that I'd put an E. and a
K. and also an S. under the D."
"An S. too?"
"Of course. But they'd only be there as liabilities, you
know, not as assets in relation to the D. Not that, certainly
not that."
"And which would be assets?"
"Assets? None at all. Nothing but a D. I seem to be
giving a double meaning to everything I say. Honour bright,
the D. stands alone."
Eduard and Kyril followed close on one another's heels.
The Russian was agitated, he threw his letters down
higgledy-piggledy, growling to himself in his native tongue,
and all because a packet he had been expecting had failed
to come. He asked if Scherer would not like to meet Salvatore,
the leader of the socialist press in the town. Scherer
countered by offering to introduce Kyril to Ricci. Both
men were aware that their two spheres of interest could
never be reconciled.
The prince, for his part, was pensive, taciturn, saying he
had seen nothing, and that Dimiter had bored him. Kyril
laughed, and begged the prince to forgive him his desertion.
This was the first day Eduard had seen the Russian
laugh, and the splendid teeth that were disclosed in the
act made the prince uneasy.
Finally came Franklin, making what speed he could,
his necktie askew, preoccupied and uncompanionable.
"I'm afraid I can't raise your spirits by handing you
some pleasant correspondence," said Scherer. "There were
no letters for you."
"I fetched them myself," answered Franklin
mendaciously, as he continued to eat in silence.
One of the crew stepped up to Scherer at that moment,
and handed him a letter, telling him that the messenger
was awaiting an answer. Scherer tore open the envelope,
ran his eyes over the note, and then read it aloud to the
company.
"I have met my father ashore. Till the yacht sails,
I should like to stay with him. Please ask Mary to come
to me. You, dear Herr Scherer, and your friends are
cordially invited to come and see us tomorrow.
"Yours,
"D. W."
Wilhelm was the first to break the silence which had
fallen upon the party, completely taken aback by the news.
He lifted the orange he had carved, saying:
"You see, Gentlemen, there are the letters, prophetic,
D. W., as in the note."
Scherer opened another envelope, enclosed within
Diana's, and read:
"Grigori de Wassilko
asks the pleasure of your company ... tomorrow evening
at seven o'clock. Palazzo Tiepoletto."
"There are four similar cards, one for each of you,"
continued Scherer, dealing the invitations out to his guests.
Wilhelm took his, read it, turned it over, endeavouring
to solve the mystery of a visiting card, and to infuse with
poesy the display of a name on an oblong of white
pasteboard.
"Tiepoletto," queried Scherer, "are there not three palaces
of that name?"
"This one is the last as you leave the harbour," explained
Eduard, pocketing his card.
"You know...?"
All eyes were raised from the cards and fixed on Eduard's
face.
"Elderly gentleman, white beard, carefully tended,"
explained the prince with assumed indifference. "I propose
that we, too, send an avalanche of cards!"
Scherer undertook to accept the invitation in the name
of his guests, and while he was penning his note, the others
stood about the dining saloon, chary of words, reserved,
while the coal rattled into the bunkers, a hostile symbol
as it were, racking to ears accustomed for many days to the
monotonous bourdon of seas and winds. Wilhelm, submissive
young simpleton that he was, had got over his
pastoral adventure with Diana in the best way he could,
by forcing himself to regard it in silence as a bitter-sweet
jest—for never since she had on that first evening, rejected
his advances in a friendly enough fashion, had he again
ventured to approach her as a lover. Eduard, at a loose end
like a wooer who just before declaring himself has to
leave his beloved if only for a day, was a bundle of nerves,
restlessness, and impatience. Kyril and Franklin had had
strange and disquieting news. Nothing was to be got
from the latter, but when all the others had gone ashore
he had his trunks carried down the gangway, and when
his host returned that same evening a note was all that was
left to tell of Franklin's presence.
"A letter was awaiting me here which summoned me
to Vienna, urging me to use the utmost speed as the matter
concerned my official duties. I am thus constrained to
leave the white ship earlier than we had planned, a step
I regret all the more when I remember how generously
you have played your part as host. Forgive me for departing
in this unceremonious way without a personal leave-taking,
but it is expedient that I should catch the night
train; now it is already six o'clock, and there is no sign of
your return.
"A day will come when I shall be able to thank you in
person.
"FRANKLIN."
Folded within this sheet was another, written in a more
youthful hand, the lines running in curves, rhapsodic and
divided into rhythmical versicles:
"No! There must be truth between friends. May I count
you my friend, today? There was no letter, no night train
at all. A meeting merely. Just fancy! A meeting in a
little street... Languid embraces, melancholy, staring
eyes... Forgetting culture, ambition, knowledge! You
smile? At my age one does not find that the gods often
trouble to bestow ecstatic hours. Yes, it is true, during
these last days, when it has seemed that a greater
intimacy has sprung up between me and the girl, my senses
have become confused, I have felt rejuvenated—and I am
happy to acknowledge the fact: it is the huntress who has
sent me into this Venetian beggar-woman's arms, has sent
me to this queen. Her hair is like what one sees in the
elder Palma's pictures, but her skin is like Franklin's the
younger."
After lunch, Eduard had tried to get a siesta, but he
was still agitated with his morning adventure, and presently
decided to leave the noisy, dusty ship. He was pulled
ashore in company with Kyril and Wilhelm, the two latter
having agreed to explore a distant quarter of the town
together, each wishing, though from very different motives, to
rub shoulders with the common people. The Russian spoke
very little Italian, but Wilhelm had bicycled all over Italy,
learning old songs and new, and in the process becoming
a master of the language. Now they had cajoled Giorgino
into acting as guide, for though the lad had come
originally from Vicenza, he knew Venice very well.
Eduard, though attracted by the excursion, could not
bring himself to make one of the party. It seemed to him
impossible to walk with this Russian among people whom,
no more than a couple of hours ago, he had regarded with
a blend of envy and timidity as aboriginals. When he
turned to leave his two companions, Wilhelm's faithful,
doglike glance smote him to the heart, and he asked
himself why it was that people should find it so hard to
understand one another. He went on his way aimlessly, dreading
the long afternoon that lay ahead, and suddenly realizing
that all the hours till seven the following evening
had to be spent somehow. "I ought to have joined forces
with Scherer," he thought as he strolled along streets which
at this hour were always empty.—"Women... One
could spend the time in a woman's company...
Adelheid might be better than nothing... They have a
lovely house ... and even if Umberto, the husband, does
talk exclusively of Principe Doria, she herself is a fine
figure of a woman, and invariably gracious...." Now he
found himself accosted by a flower girl whose nosegays of
narcissus suggested a lady's boudoir.... Hailing a
gondola, he asked to be taken to the palazzo....
"Eduard," cried a plump and handsome woman entering
the little salon precipitately, his card still in her hand.
"Eduard the Confessor! How nice to see you again."
"1042 to 1066, my dear Adelaide," said Eduard, allowing
himself to be embraced. "I have not come here as a
confessor this time, but as a true and faithful knight, to
lay these narcissi upon your ever youthful breast!"
She took the proffered nosegay, and, without a look at
the flowers, stuck them in her bodice. The whole thing was
done in so matter-of-fact a way, in so stereotyped a
manner, that Eduard could not help thinking how different
Diana's reaction would have been, how graciously she
would have taken a bouquet from the hands that offered
it. He could not now understand how he had managed
to be even a little in love with this woman a few years
ago, though she was amiability personified, and at that time
had been slim and graceful.
"On the contrary, I am no longer old enough to act the
mother confessor as I did when you were here before,
because your noble family has unfortunately determined to
turn so Protestant a face to the world. But, Dio mio, what
are you doing now? How's uncle Heinrich? And Elisabeth?
And Katharina? And where do you come from now?"
Eduard gave a pithy report of these family matters, and
then turned the conversation to the lady's husband and
children. The former, he learned, had gone to Rome, the
latter had gone for a day's excursion to the country. He was
shown countless photographs of the youngsters, indeed
every table was laden with these effigies, so that his cup of
steaming tea, as he pleasantly remarked, looked like an
offering of incense at the shrine of Margherita, his little
cousin. This cheerful, worldly-wise woman had a wholesome
effect upon Eduard, relieving him from his depression;
and, after half an hour in which she had made many
more references to the days of their youth, he
congratulated himself on the impulse which had made him come
to see her, and on finding her alone.
"The view from here is really too Baedekerish, Adelaide,"
he said, looking through the slats of the green Venetian
blind.
"Please use the German version of my name."
"The other is Beethoven's version," bowing profoundly
and then coming towards her again. "I recollect that when
I was still a little boy in sailor suits and Therese sang the
song I always conceived of the beloved lady as having
red-gold hair like yours."
"Caro mio, one is doomed to become grey, and that
very soon now; that much-praised landscape is not a little
to blame in the process. When I first came here, a young
and inexperienced girl, everything seemed like heaven to
me. But, dear cousin, to have nothing to look out upon
during fifteen years beyond water and black boats, with
never a motor car to relieve the monotony, not even a
motor boat allowed on the canals—it becomes melancholy
in the long run! In fact when one sees these romantic
Venetians at close quarters, it puts a gloom on one's spirits.
It's all very well to love in such melancholy surroundings,
but when it comes to marriage—I'm all for dry land, my
dear."
"Neither damp nor dry, Adelheid! Unmated one can
fly freely in the third element."
"Or one roasts in the fourth," cried she, drawing him
down to her side on the blue baroque sofa. "And now your
confession, Eduard the Confessor, just as in old times, on
this very sofa. Tell me, when is it to be, and, above all, on
whom has your choice fallen?"
"Stefan must lead the way," he said, evasively.
"Stefan is a sick man, and, though Heinrich has been
married these three years, he has no children. It's up to you,
Eduard, to make the succession safe. You surely ought to
do it for the throne's sake, even if the claims of the altar
mean nothing to you."
"My younger brothers will cater for countless heirs, it's
such a delightful society game!"
"Fi donc," she protested, laughing.
"Why? Don't you agree?"
She laughed more heartily, saying:
"No doubt you have had experiences of the sort?"
"Only theoretical knowledge."
"No young sprigs of your own?"
"I am alone; am unfortunately not in a position..."
"But there must be beautiful young women about, who
will pose with as little on as Phidias's statues—or was it
Michelangelo?"
Eduard was honestly pleased that Diana should have
been introduced into the conversation. His thoughts
lingered upon the vision of her as Atalanta, he saw her
ankles, her throat, again, and the dauntless line of her
profile. Hard upon the vision came one of her in a
close-fitting sweater, standing in the bows of a ship; then,
another, when she wore a black evening dress, low-cut; he
lost all sense of the passage of time as a hundred other
postures, talks, looks, and thoughts drifted by, till at last the
scene enacted this very morning on the flight of steps,
between the two guardian lions, rose to his mind.... He
sat brooding longer than Adelheid had expected, and it
was with instinctive delicacy that she asked very softly:
"Or am I perhaps indiscreet?"
Eduard, who had lost his mother early and had no sisters,
had from childhood been on brotherly terms of affection
with this cousin. As a lieutenant, then eighteen years of
age, he had confided his first and only love affair to
Adelheid who was ten years his senior and the mother of two
boys. The confidence had taken place on this very sofa,
as she had just reminded him. After the manner of young
men, his avowal to a woman who was still charming with
the freshness of youth and who had not yet become
resigned to her fate, moved him to a deeper sentiment
towards his confidante, so that his regard for her, hitherto
quasi-filial, became sublimer, verging on love. Yet it was
all no more than a breath, a sigh, on a September day, as
evening was drawing near.
This afternoon, in the dimly lit room, as he sat near so
good a friend, after the strange happenings of the morning,
after the cruise in which the tides of love had ebbed
and flowed along his lonely shores, the old-time trust
revived in his heart, and he said, as he leaned back among the
cushions, a cigarette between his teeth, with unwonted
gravity in his voice:
"Don't you worry on my account, dear Adelheid. But,
since rumour has travelled to your lagoon, I will make the
fatal confession that I do not like the lady spoken of
casually—at least I would prefer if you did not do so..."
"Oh," she cried softly, taken aback.
"Well, you see," he continued tranquilly, "this is a far
more serious affair than that other long ago, although at
that time we had to do with a young duchess. Meanwhile,
for these ten years, calm has prevailed, no wind has stirred
to fill the sails of my outlandish vessel. And even now—I
hardly know if I dare venture on the voyage..."
She was all ears, eager and inspired.
"Is it to be a long journey?" she inquired at length.
He stood up, saying curtly:
"It will be this journey, dear Adelheid, or not at all."
He frightened her. Eduard was looked upon by his family
as a crank and a libertarian, but one nevertheless who
would guard the old traditions from tarnish or decay. Now
it seemed all at once as if he were resolved to break with
the conventions proper to a ruling house. Confused and
perplexed, she asked:
"Does your—does anyone know?..."
"No one can know what does not yet exist—although
Papa has had his medicine to swallow already... But I
wanted you to know what a jade fate is. As for me," and
now he spoke with his customary persiflage, "usque ad
naufragium I'll sail alone—a simpler and cheaper way.
Please forgive me the melodramatic intermezzo I've been
inflicting upon you. The danger is not great.... Have
you heard from Papa? Heinrich writes me that the doctor
finds him much as usual. Don't you think I ought to go
and see him?"
"Are you then on the homeward road? You told me, did
you not, that you have been yachting, with friends....
Where have you been, and how has the cruise pleased you,
if one may ask?"
"Mediterranean, Adriatic. Exquisite aimlessness, sometimes
under sail, at others by steam. No museums; nothing
but wind and deck chairs. When we leave here, we're to
cruise down the Dalmatian coast...."
"That reminds me. Last Tuesday Countess Münsterberg
was here. You remember, the woman with the feline
movements, and the rather mad vagaries. Ah, you were the
more fortunate onlooker!"
"On her way home?"
"She wanted to take the steamer to Ragusa next day;
it's a tiresome journey via Trieste, you know. I can't
understand how any one can bear to live in so out-of-the-way
a place!"
Eduard made some quick mental calculations: If we
call on Olivia, Diana will at length find a background. A
unique opportunity to see her in such surroundings. What
for, though? Know everything beforehand. All the
same...
Then he said:
"Yes, my dear Adelheid! How can anyone bear to live
in so out-of-the-way a place?"
The morning light shone
down limpid and warm in the courtyard of the Armenian
monastery on the island in the lagoon; and as the slanting
shadows of column and arch fell athwart the cloistered
ways, the shafts and crosses and arches were figured on
the marble flooring, creating as it were a second
architectural masterpiece.
Two human shadows came to mix their contours with
those of the masonry. A tall, black-robed elderly monk was
leaning against one of the pillars, and was speaking quietly
but earnestly to an old man, likewise clad in black, who
was bending his head in order to be on a level with the
eyes of his interlocutor, and was listening attentively. Both
men had flowing white beards. In the court round which
the cloisters were built, there was a little fountain plashing
in the sunshine, and on the edge of its basin sat a young
woman lazily stroking a great cat which responded with
sensual delight to her caresses, arching its back and
raising its tail as her hand passed from its neck and down its
spine.
All four of these sentient creatures were being penetrated
with the sun's rays, and three of them appeared to
be so content as to be wholly without a desire of any sort.
Only he who had vowed to renounce the world, seemed
to be a prey to passionate impulses.
"Even a convent is unable to kill the impulsive force
of man," thought Diana, as her eyes travelled from the
calm face of her father, to the glossy coat of the animal,
now stroked into ecstatic quietude; as she considered her
own mood, and then compared these three states of beatific
tranquillity with the secret flame which consumed the
monk. "Maybe my father only attained his present condition
of meditative peace after death had deprived him of
his companion. Helena! The name rose from his very
heart when he uttered it yesterday. And she died in giving
birth to a son whom he never sees...."
The two men separated, and her father turned to seek
her out. With infinite precaution, lest she disturb the
sleeping cat, she slid down from the basin's rim and crossed
the flags to where he stood. As she went, she noticed that
the well-tended beds were planted with vegetables, and the
aroma of damp earth rose to her nostrils.
"They must have watered the young shoots before the
sun got round," she thought, vaguely.
The conversation which the meeting with the monk
had interrupted was now resumed as father and daughter
paced up and down beneath the Gothic arches.
"As I looked at you both," began Diana, "the layman
seemed to be the more spiritual of the two. What had
occurred to excite the Armenian?"
"I have known him these twenty years," said the old
man, passing his ivory-handled stick into the small of his
back and resting his two hands on it at either end. "In those
days, when I was engaged on excavation work in Anatolia,
he spoke with just the same animation. His people out
there are still being harried by the Turks, and he imagines
I can pull strings on Armenia's behalf because I occasionally
dine at the embassy in London."
"Have you ties out there?"
"I don't keep them up now. But you were in those parts
not so long ago, and at cross purposes, it seemed to me."
"Not at cross purposes, Father."
"What about the heart—did you not write to me
that...?"
She hung on his arm, saying:
"When will my heart beat a steady rhythm?"
"As soon as it beats slower, Diana," he assured her,
looking at her out of friendly eyes, while she clung to him
more resolutely than ever.
"When did your heart begin to beat slower, Father?"
"A long while ago."
"How long?"
"When my hair turned white."
"I wish mine were grey," she said, a smile on her lips.
"I have no wish that mine be brown again. I love age.
It seems to me like a statue one has dug up out of the
ground: more lovely than a new one could ever be, even
though a limb should be lacking."
He paused by a capital which had fallen from one of
the columns in the cloisters and now lay amid the grass,
surrounded by purple iris, looking for all the world as if
it had just been shovelled out of the earth and the column
to which it belonged lay still beneath the soil.
"What purpose can this old thing serve, I wonder?" He
stood contemplating it pensively.
"It will catch the dews from heaven in its convolutions
so that birds may come and slake their thirst," answered
Diana.
He looked up, and they resumed their walk.
"How charmingly you choose your words," he said after
a while. "But my birds are all flown and seek other
springs."
"Let me fly free a little longer, spreading my wings over
the endless seas that lie beyond this lagoon. Do you hear
how the gulls are calling?"
She pulled herself away from his arm as if to get nearer
to the waters which lapped round the island's sandy shores.
He stood awaiting her pleasure, a smile irradiating his
face. He watched her as she took off her wide-brimmed hat
and swung it over her arm, while shaking out her curls
as if to feel the sea-wind through her locks. Soon, she
turned to him again, took his hand in hers, and kissed it.
"Forgive me," she said. "It is barely a day since I left
the yacht, and the scream of a seagull fills me with
longing. How will the bird fare inland?"
"And what about Sidney?"
"Sidney? Would you not like to have him back with
you again?"
"He left of his own accord, two years ago. I cannot put
constraint upon grown-up children."
"Is he getting—sufficient money from you?"
"Only a little sum, hardly enough to live even modestly
upon, the same I wanted you to have when you decided to
fend for yourself. I have no more to give."
"But he needs a great deal."
"He's never written to ask for more. Is he earning
nothing? Is he not drawing?"
"He did—a little modelling recently."
"Ah? Caricatures? Animals?"
"No, a figure."
"A man's?"
"No, mine."
The father asked no further. He had an allegorical turn
of mind, and the faculty of seeing symbolical meanings in
things. He saw his two children before him in fancy, and
marvelled at the idea that one of them should serve as the
beautiful material for the art of the other. The sense of
liberation, which he was invariably aware of when
confronted by the work of a master, became associated with
this symbolical conception, so that he felt only allegory and
form, and that the two were mysteriously intertwined.
He lost himself in a series of strange conclusions, wherein
a mythical brother wedded his mythical sister; he then
returned to his own fatherhood and let his fancy roam on
the thought how the mother of these two children (who
had always seemed to him the symbol of beauty) was
reproduced in the form of Diana, while his own plastic
talents had been reincarnated in Sidney's hands. Thus
plunged in meditation, the old man strolled along at
Diana's side. After a while he seemed to arouse himself as if
from slumber, and was about to ask if the modelling had
been successful, when he became aware of a quickening in
Diana's step, a tall apparition arising in the path, and of
greetings exchanged.
Eduard, who had spoken of the San Lazzaro monastery
with Diana, and whose thoughts were wholly centred
upon her, had come over to the island this morning on the
chance of meeting her there. As the father slowly aroused
himself from his reverie and observed the cordiality of the
encounter between the two young people, it was borne in
upon him how far he was removed from the trend of his
daughter's destiny. He observed the countenance of the
man, suffused with inner happiness, and, guessing all this
signified, he turned his eyes away as the two, like a bridal
pair, came towards him. Diana introduced the prince,
whose bow was deeper than he himself was aware.
"I'm disturbing you, intruding on your morning serenity,
I fear," Eduard said hesitantly, and his tone took Diana by
surprise, for it had such a boyish ring.
"Certainly not, Your Highness," said the old gentleman.
"Diana has been telling me how well you keep the party
entertained on board. And to think that on her old father's
account she should have had to forgo those pleasures!"
"I have to thank you for your invitation, Herr von
Wassilko," and Eduard felt how much more seemly the name
sounded when addressed to this white-haired veteran than
to the young whipper-snapper in Berlin.
They continued their stroll to the accompaniment of
such civilities until they reached a stone bench at the other
end of the cloisters. The seat was bathed in sunshine, and
the three sat enjoying the warmth. The old man was
pleased with the young man's manner, though it seemed a
trifle too conventional for his taste, and he asked himself
why it was that Diana had singled out this particular
member of the yachting party for specially friendly
commendation. Diana did not join in the conversation; she
was waiting for one of those airy nothings which the prince
was wont to indulge in when he talked.
But Eduard was thoroughly enjoying these exchanges.
He wanted more of them, and he was delighted when the
old gentleman rose to his fly and began to discuss
personalities moving in the diplomatic circles of London
society. The prince was wholly indifferent to such people
as a rule, but he listened now, for the pleasant gossip gave
him a sense of security, showed him the social background
against which Diana's father moved and had his being. At
last he was getting something he had long sought for, the
confirmation of his own surmises as to Diana's status
and upbringing. Inasmuch as, under stress of the remnant
of inherited prejudices which persisted despite all his
open-mindedness, he was on the lookout for a uniform in
which he could clothe the members of this remarkable
family, thereby raising them to his own level—he showed
towards this man whose whole demeanour and aspect
betokened a rare intelligence, a suavity which his father
had never been able to make him exhibit towards his real
equals.
"Do you know San Lazzaro, Sir," asked Wassilko, rising
and pointing to the monastery buildings. "I fear I am
keeping you too long in England when you should be
enjoying a glimpse of Armenia."
"I know the place well. Here, too, there is at least one
English room."
"Ah, Lord Byron's? Is he a favourite of yours?"
"Now at last," thought Diana, "he will raise his mask."
But the prince was silent. He was asking himself whether
Diana, this child of liberty, would ever adapt herself to the
laws of his class (at least to the extent of an outward
observance of its conventions). In his perplexity, he had been
tempted, that morning, to emphasize, before her and her
father, his own rank and station. Now, when the name
of the English poet cropped up in the air radiant with
morning sunlight, he looked past the questioner and
Diana, across the glistening waters of the lagoon, and said:
"As a poet I appreciate him greatly. But as a nobleman
he seems to me to have been somewhat of a wastrel."
Hardly had he spoken, when Diana realized what was
going on within Eduard, and why he separated at this
particular moment in time the poet from the nobleman. At
the same instant she saw through the whole complicated
network of considerations and hesitations in which he had
for so long been enmeshed. Nevertheless, she was not
going to allow that there was anything amiss in the famous
adventurer's conduct; she was on the defensive in his
behalf; but her training hindered her from taking up the
cudgels by word of mouth until her father had spoken.
He, meanwhile, had been tranquilly awaiting the prince's
reply and now made ready to answer, beginning with
grave formality.
"Sir, your own birth and station would naturally
predispose you to consider the nobleman before the poet. But
we others, who have no ties either as Englishmen or as
noblemen, may be permitted to judge him by his verses,
whose beauty even you are willing to concede."
Diana, who had listened in silence while the two men
were talking, now seized her opportunity for the defence.
"I can see him as he sat at his table in a cell over there
in the east wing. He would rise from his stool after hours
of toil, for the light of day was fading and he could no
longer decipher the words in his Armenian Bible.
Approaching the window he would look out, his ear bent
towards the town over there, across the lagoon. It must
have been in June. He calls his servant, who makes ready
the gondola. Byron steps down to the water's edge,
indifferent to the little waves which wet his feet. Suddenly,
he flings his coat and boots into the boat, plunges into the
water, and swims to the town. Dripping, he steps ashore,
crosses the Piazzetta, and changes his clothes in the rooms
of one of his inamoratas, dances the night through, and
returns next morning to the holy fathers to resume his
studies and his translation of the sacred text. Yes, indeed,
Prince! In such circumstances one may well remain
unproductive as a poet—and scandalous as a nobleman!"
Eduard, forgetful of his pose, listened to Diana's tirade
with growing appreciation. Her voice, low and melodious
at first, had increased in volume as she warmed to her
subject, until, at the last, she had flung out the words
sharply, turning her shaft against him in a direct attack.
He smiled as he said:
"Mademoiselle has sacrificed the poet. Nothing can hinder
me now from sacrificing the nobleman."
"You could not venture to speak in that way in England,
Diana," commented her father, wishing to pour oil on
troubled waters, while he thought: "They must be on
very unfriendly terms, I fear."
The simple meal came to an
end quicker than any of the party expected, and Scherer
was thinking how difficult its preparation must have been,
for Herr von Wassilko lived in two rambling, scantily
furnished rooms lacking all the amenities that would have
tended to make guests comfortable. And yet, in spite of
obvious drawbacks, everything had gone off without a
hitch. The very simplicity of the entertainment was a
factor of its success. Mary had noiselessly attended to every
one's needs, and talk flowed easily around the table under
the red-shaded lamp, the only spot of light in a room where
the shadows lingered. The old gentleman and Scherer
had contributed most to the conversation, for they found
one another congenial. Diana's attention was divided, for
she had to play hostess and see that Mary provided all that
was needed for the comfort of her father's guests. Eduard
could not take his eyes off her as, sitting there in her
flowing lilac gown, she acquitted herself of her part with so
much ease and dignity. Before him arose visions of her
presiding at other tables, not at official banquets so much,
as at homely gatherings, homely both in the worldly and
in the idyllic meaning of the word. He fancied himself
unobserved, but Diana felt his eyes upon her, and she knew
(since she had so suddenly plumbed the depths of his
thoughts that morning) that this evening he would come
to certain conclusions concerning her, conclusions which
would be the result of long previous cogitation.
Kyril, taciturn by nature and only able to give vent to
his ideas in spontaneous debates, had met so many party
members since his arrival in Venice and had learned of so
many underground intrigues, that his tendency to keep
silence in the presence of others was accentuated this
evening. In addition, his host's appearance fascinated him, and
he sat observing the old gentleman attentively. Wilhelm,
alone of the company, appeared to be disappointed. He had
expected to meet an astrologer, a man who could read the
meaning of the stars, or, at least, an alchemist, some
wonder-worker whose house would be full of maps and
globes, of bottles, retorts, and measuring glasses. Yet in the
hall, as he entered this sometime wealthy palace which had
now fallen on evil days, instead of armour and chains, all
he saw was a row of pegs each bearing a hat belonging to
the master of the house. To this display, the newcomers
reacted differently. Kyril sneered inwardly at so much
needless formality; Scherer mentally appraised their cost;
and the prince noted the absence of the tall hat, which
might of course be in safe keeping in one of the old man's
boxes.
As Herr von Wassilko rose from table, he said:
"I trust you will excuse so primitive an entertainment, it
is all the impoverished descendant of an old family can
afford. But I prefer to rent a couple of rooms such as these,
rather than put up in a hotel. I cannot help envisaging the
persons who have been there before me, perhaps vacated
the premises an hour before, sat upon the same chairs,
eaten from the same spoons, and set the air tingling with
the sound of their senseless talk. I cannot help being aware
of this as I sit at table; the whole atmosphere is full of it."
They took their places in a semicircle before the open
glass doors leading to the balcony, two of the chairs being
comfortable modern ones, and the remainder stiff and austere,
recalling the furniture of an earlier period. The host,
though his guests had pressed him to take one of the easy
chairs, elected to sit in a large Gothic chair devoid of any
kind of upholstering. Eduard and Scherer, loath to make
themselves more comfortable than the old man, had
ensconced themselves in equally rigid seats, while Diana,
throwing a huge Venetian shawl about her shoulders, had
pulled a dumpty to the step leading on to the balcony and
had settled down there out of range of the lamp and of
Eduard's persistent eyes. Only from time to time was she
for a moment lit up in the flickering light of a passing
gondola.
"Thus it remains for the two young gentlemen to play the
grandfather," said the host pleasantly.
Wilhelm, who had expected as much, immediately threw
himself into the depths of one of the arm-chairs, exclaiming:
"That's just what I feel too! And we'll have to be taken
great care of for we are the hope of the nation."
"I accept the rôle with pleasure," said Kyril, suiting the
action to the word. "It seems to me the only thing I can do
under the circumstances, though I don't feel in the least
bit grandfatherly. Those other chairs take us back to earlier
centuries, reminding us of the might wielded by long
extinct courts. At best they should be in a museum, where
a protective cord would intimate to the man of the
twentieth century that he may only gaze on them from afar—if,
that is to say, he ever finds time in this age of hustle
to study such antiquities."
"You would thus appear to be the most advanced among
us, and so, I suppose, the youngest, Doctor?"
"His Highness is no older," said Kyril grumpily.
"And now you must draw their horoscopes," cried
Wilhelm eagerly. "You have all the necessary apparatus,
haven't you?" He sprang up from his chair, ready to fetch
the supposed implements, and burning with curiosity to see
them. But Scherer held him back.
"We must not trouble Herr von Wassilko today."
"Ah, my daughter has been giving me away! I gather
the young gentleman looks upon me as a second Swedenborg."
"Was Swedenborg in Venice once?" asked Diana dreamily.
She had paid no heed to the rest of the conversation,
but the seer's name had caught her attention, and she
sensed an affinity between him and her father, though the
latter had seemed inclined to repudiate anything of the
kind.
"Yes," he said, "Swedenborg was here, anno 1718. That's
nearly two hundred years ago, Diana."
Eduard pricked up his ears. The quiet way in which the
words were spoken, the mystery surrounding the Swedish
mystic, the old-fashioned use of the Latin word, the
affectionate tone in which he had pronounced Diana's beautiful
name, the resemblance of his manner of speech to hers, so
pensive and comfortable, as if the best had been left
unsaid; his movements, as he leaned forward in his
high-backed Gothic chair, to address his daughter sitting at the
open door; his flowing, white beard, lit up in the rays of
the lamp which had been brought over to where they sat;
the contrast between this venerable countenance and her
face, lifted in childlike expectancy to his, questioning and
eager, suffused with a ruddy glow from the shaded lamp—all
these things combined to fill Eduard with a sudden
rush of tender impatience, and his lonely heart longed to
be linked for ever with such fellow mortals as these,
persons who realized freedom through self-restraint. Now,
for the first time, he wished that Diana might read his
feelings clearly in his eyes. He stepped forward towards the
circle of light, intending, while turning his back upon the
others, to be visible to her alone. But he was arrested half
way by a sonorous voice inquiring:
"What, actually, did this man Swedenborg achieve?"
It was Kyril who spoke from the encompassing shadows.
Diana turned her eyes from the contemplation of
her father towards the spot whence the voice had come,
and Eduard perceived that her brows were puckered where
a moment before they had been serene. But Wassilko
answered unperturbed:
"He left us twenty volumes of natural science, dealing in
especial with mineralogy; he was a member of many
learned societies; and, on account of his achievements, his
name has been entered in the annals of science."
Kyril stirred uneasily. Imbued with a fanatical conception
of an imaginary future, ever in conflict with prejudice
and tradition, he had found no time, pressed as he was
with the tasks imposed by his own spirit and by the position
he held in the party, to bring equipoise into his nature.
Thus it was that, with all the powers of his mind, he had
resisted the daimonic forces within him, banishing them
whenever he felt that they were raising their heads, looking
upon them as some out-worn conceit that must at all cost
be overcome. And yet he was attracted by that other world,
lured by the unreasoning realm of emotion, especially by
the realm of music; the cosmos of impenetrable laws
fascinated him, drawing him away from the tangible laws of
economics, and subjecting him against his will to its
caprices. Now, when he learned for the first time that a
visionary, a man towards whom he felt a fundamental
mistrust, had likewise been an investigator in the field of
positive science, he realized (for gifted natures almost
invariably apply the lessons from the life histories of notable
personalities to themselves) that there was a possibility that
he himself might some day lapse into a similar state of
spiritual depravity. He said after a pause:
"Yet had he produced nothing more than these works
of science, he would hardly have penetrated into the ranks
of the famous and dwelt in the memories of men. I had
myself never heard of his achievements in this field, nor do
I fancy have most people."
"That's true enough," confirmed Scherer. "I remember
when Professor Somebody-or-Other was giving the memorial
lecture at the Stockholm academy, he stated that he
himself was far from knowing all the works of the master
whose memory he was honouring."
A laugh rippled round the circle, and the old gentleman
added:
"You are right, and I, too, am no wiser than that
laudator officialis."
Kyril stuck to his point.
"But what about those other works of his which dealt
with the occult? His so-called 'supernatural' ideas must be
familiar to you. Tell me whether in these there is anything
tangible, anything of lasting value."
Diana turned away and gazed down upon the canal,
thinking: "He should be climbing in the rigging, using his
splendid limbs, or biting into an apple with his dazzling
teeth. He is a fish out of water in Venice and in my
father's company."
Eduard, who had followed her movement and had dimly
caught the expression on her face as she turned away, was
thinking: "If I were sitting beside her in that gondola
now drifting by, I would try to whisper away all the things
that are causing her pain at this moment."
"Such a question is very difficult to answer," said Herr
von Wassilko, sitting upright in his high-backed chair.
"These things are impalpable, and durability is hardly one
of their characteristics. They do not seem bound by time,
but only to men (and there have been such since man first
began to think) who, following the laws of their own
nature, aspire to bring them into closer relation with their
own humanity."
"Very ably put," thought Scherer, whose habit it was to
evade such transcendental questions by similar generalizations.
He felt the old man was his equal as a man of the
world, and entirely failed to perceive that the reticence
of the reply masked a believing soul and was not the result,
as it would have been in Scherer's case, of consideration
for a cultured, though thoroughly rational, outlook which
had to be upheld from two sides at once.
Kyril was silent. He felt that he had been worsted, and
since the others felt the same, they were grateful to
Wilhelm for his intervention when he said innocently:
"If only I knew whether one could learn the art of seeing
spirits! I once asked an expert in Berlin after a séance,
and he said: 'Your friends tell me you play the lute. Well,
if one has music in one's heart one is not far from the
occult world.'"
"Where is your lute, Wilhelm?" asked Diana.
There was a general sigh of relief at this change of
subject. They spoke of musical instruments; and when
Wilhelm came back with his lute in his hand (he rarely
went out of an evening without it and Venice was the
last place in the world where he would neglect to take
it), Wassilko said:
"I'm sorry there is neither a piano nor a violin here.
But my landlord possesses a wonderful 'cello, and, since I
used to play the instrument long ago, he always leaves it
in its case in my room whenever I come to stay."
He got up, and after a short absence, returned with the
'cello. His guests hastened to relieve him of his burden, and
gathered round to examine it and pass their comments.
Wilhelm alone had not risen. He was back in the huge
arm-chair, which he had vacated for no more than a minute
to fetch the lute. Now he said very softly to Diana:
"No one is going to take this chair from me this evening,
after what he said about them—unless, of course, you
have a fancy for it, Diana."
His gentle considerateness went to her heart. She felt
sundered from Eduard, wounded by Kyril, disturbed by
the course the talk had taken; she had more and more
cut herself adrift from them all, giving herself up to her
own train of thought as she gazed into the darkness
without, and was dimly aware from time to time of the lap
of waters, the emergent lights, and the cadenced calls,
arising from the canal below. The boyish words spoken to
her by the young man lounging in the easy chair had
fallen with so friendly a lilt upon her ear that she was
grateful. Franklin's image rose before her, and she
wondered why he had stayed away, whether he dreaded being
together with her and her father; then, again, her thoughts
turned to the prince.
Meanwhile Kyril had possessed himself of the 'cello, had
sat down, tuned it, and had become wholly absorbed in the
instrument.
"Will you play something?" asked Scherer.
"Alone?"
"Wilhelm's lute will replace the piano as accompaniment."
Every one was delighted. Wilhelm, who could not read
music, playing by ear and adapting his accompaniment to
almost any song, agreed to do his best, but insisted he be
allowed to remain seated where he was in the "revolutionist's
chair" as he called it. Kyril exchanged with the prince
so as to sit more commodiously with the instrument. He
glanced with misgivings at Wilhelm and the lute; then,
without preface or explanation, started to play Bach's
suite for 'cello. Wilhelm, who knew it well, was too alarmed
to venture an accompaniment. He would not dare to make
up something out of his own head to music such as
this. So he laid his lute aside. Kyril glanced up for a
moment, looked his appreciation, and continued to play
alone. As the mellow tones fell into the quietude of this
warm spring night, Diana sat up and turned towards the
player. At first her blood surged wrathfully through her
veins, as if she had been touched with a fencing foil. Then
the music subjected her to its mighty melodies. She sat
very straight on her low stool, her black shawl slipping
unheeded from her shoulders.
The music penetrated her whole being, sapping her
combativeness, and luring her eyes to the figure of the
Russian as he played his 'cello in the ruddy glow of the lamp.
She saw his powerful right hand wielding the bow, the
fingers of his left, agile and dexterous, drawing vibrant
notes from the strings, his muscular legs pressing the
red-brown wood between his knees, and, silhouetted against
the carved back of a chair once occupied by a Venetian
nobleman, the fair head of a fanatical Russian peasant
bent over the instrument as if over a woman he held
against him while with his right hand he caressed her to
responsiveness and with his left he toyed with her
curving throat....
Eduard was all too aware of her absorption in the man
who was ravishing the company with his music, and at this
minute he would gladly have exchanged the realm of his
father and his brothers for the spiriting of his fiddle to his
side that he might pit his musicianship against this alien's.
A long silence followed upon the final notes of the
suite, broken at last by Wilhelm, who said: "I'm sorry, but
I really could not give you any assistance in that. I had
thought you were going to give us some Chopin."
They laughed at the speaker's naïve excuses, and the host
together with Scherer and Eduard, gave voice to their
appreciation. But Diana, awaking as it were from a spell,
rose and stepped out on to the balcony, shaking off the
magic which had bound her and to which she had surrendered
against her will. She leaned for a moment against
the iron balustrade, then turned, and, stretching her arms
towards the glass door (a gesture which suggested a
longing to embrace this evening so pregnant with melancholy)
picked up the wrap which had fallen from her shoulders,
saying:
"Wilhelm is right! The day itself and all the ardours of
the sun are in your playing—and yet here we are
encompassed by night."
Kyril looked at her, and in his heart he told himself
that what she said was true, for through the medium of
music every hesitancy of the spirit was revealed to him
who, in theory, denied that any such insight existed. He
began playing Chopin's nocturne in E-flat major, and
Wilhelm accompanied him throughout, while Diana stood
leaning upon the rail of the balcony gazing down on the
darkened water.
"All this is good," thought she. "So is this town, and my
father, and the prince, and Wilhelm. So, too, maybe is the
Russian at times. And even if things are to be otherwise
in the future, yet for tonight I will that they be as they
are!"
Soon after this the party broke up, for the yacht was to
put to sea at peep of day. Wassilko stopped Diana when
she reached the middle of the great room, and, taking her
face between his hands, he kissed his daughter on the top
of her head. The four men watched him in silence: Scherer
and Wilhelm as if they were assisting at a ceremony which
they would, undoubtedly, have performed better than any
of those who were present; Kyril with vague recollections
of the Russian parental blessing; Eduard once again with
the feeling that his own father was before him, his father,
kissing Diana.
Their farewells were more genial than their greetings
had been, and yet there was something aloof in the manner
of the four men as they bade their host good-night. They
divided forces as they approached the two gondolas, the
prince pairing off with Diana while Scherer and Kyril
took their places in the other boat. Wilhelm stood hesitant
on the landing-stage, pondering the alternatives: should he
please Scherer by stepping into the foremost boat and thus
preventing the prince and Diana from being alone, or
should he please Eduard by leaving the field free? Scherer,
guessing his dilemma, was determined to bring no pressure
to bear upon the young man's decision. Finally Diana
signalled to him her wish to have the prince all to herself, and
so it was that Wilhelm sprang in beside Scherer. He
instantly struck up one of those light-hearted ditties that are
the rage in Venice, and make one feel they must have been
composed in Vicenza, so gay and debonair is their lilt.
Old Mary, in company with one of the yacht's crew,
followed in a third gondola.
"Shall I tell him to stop?" asked Eduard softly.
"Oh no! It is sweet to hear his lute over the water...."
"Is Herr von Wassilko a good player?"
"His heart plays well, but his fingers are clumsy and out
of practice."
"And yet they were dextrous enough when it was a
question of bringing ancient statues out of the earth...."
"Yes, and glass-ware too; that's a far more delicate business."
"He seems more vigorous than my father, and yet is
much the same age."
"Is the prince still ailing? Have you any news of his
health?"
She was never the one to start a conversation about his
relatives, always waiting for him to begin.
"He has been in a precarious condition ever since my
mother died. I have not much confidence either in the
bulletins or in his doctor," said Eduard softly, turning
away.
"I, too, love my father," murmured Diana.
Eduard, profoundly moved by her unuttered thought,
again reminded of the scenes he had witnessed on the
steps of the museum and in the room at the moment of
farewell, seized her hand as it lay in her lap. She made no
protest, and he whispered her name: "Diana..."
He had never yet called her by name, and now, very
slowly, he bent his head and kissed her hand, pressing his
lips to it long and tenderly.
"How gentle are this young man's kisses," she mused.
"I would like to kiss him... Yet he is silent, and seems
to be enclosing me in a great circle ... slowly... Behind
us, in our wake, Wilhelm trills his song of love, as if
life were nothing but an Eden of amoretti, short-kilted in
pale blue raiment... Have I dreamed all this before?..."
And, as if the prince had drunk in her reverie through
the pores of her bronzed skin, he raised his head, still
holding her hand in his, and leaned back once more among the
black cushions, saying dreamily, as if musing on things
long past:
"One night we were in a gondola together, and, for the
first time, I called you by your name ... Diana... Do
you remember? It was the same evening that your father
had entertained us at his rooms. The Russian had tried
to draw him into a discussion on Swedenborg ... that
fair-haired Russian who was born on the same day as I
... He plays Bach as only a man can play... Is he still
alive? ... Has he been hanged? ... Scherer, too, was
one of the party, young still, and hospitable and active
... Wilhelm played and sang in a gondola that followed
us, a song about a Venetian woman and her lout of a
husband and her handsome cousin... It was amid this
queer medley of voyaging, do you recollect? ... The
'Excelsior' ... and the journey was not yet at an end..."
"And as we passed by the Piazzetta," Diana took up the
tale in the same key, as she, too, leaned back among the
cushions, "the two giants were just striking the clock
in the tower to the leftward, for it was midnight... But
the journey was not yet at an end... Do you remember,
Prince?"
They were very still, hand lay in hand, but they did not
turn to look at one another. Then, close in the rear of San
Marco, the gondola swung round a bend, and the lights
of the "Excelsior" shone through the darkness.
The prince sprang on to the gangway and helped her
up. At the top, he kissed her hand. Diana turned, and bade
good-night to the others who had followed close on her
heels.