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Ebook has 1933 lines and 97031 words, and 39 pages

DAUGHTERS OF MEN

HANNAH LYNCH

NEW YORK

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY

TO DEMETRIOS BIKELAS.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Of your kindly interpretation of the laughter here and there in this volume, purporting to be a picture of modern Greek life, I have no doubt. You at least know that I lack neither friendship nor sympathy with your race. We like not the less those whom we laugh at, provided our laughter is not meant to wound. For are not our own absurdities and weaknesses mirrored in those of others?

My more serious preoccupation is the accuracy of my judgment and observation. For any errors on this ground I claim your indulgence. The foreign observer is proverbially impertinent and inaccurate, as we in Ireland have sad reason to know. We do not lack our Abouts, though it may be doubted if we accept them in a spirit so generous as you do.

In placing your name before my story, I may be said to hoist the colours of Greece, and under them dare sail my little bark of Greek passengers without any fear of coming to grief upon Hellenic shores, should I have the honour to penetrate so far.

H. L.

DAUGHTERS OF MEN.

AT THE AUSTRIAN EMBASSY.

The Austrian embassy at Athens was more largely and more brilliantly attended than usual. At nine o'clock the Patissia Road showed a line of carriages going backward towards the Platea Omonia from the gaily-lighted embassy. All the foreign ministers were there, as well as the Prime Minister of Greece, and whatever distinguished travellers Athens had the honour of entertaining at that time,--it being winter, there was a goodly number. A Russian Prince or two, presented by the Russian minister; two eminent English politicians on their way to Constantinople for a confidential exchange of views with the Sublime Sultan, to be remembered by jewelled snuff-boxes or some such trifles; a sprightly French mathematician straight from Paris the Blest; a half-dozen of celebrated archaeologists, furnished by Europe and the United States, all viewing each other with more or less malevolence and suspicion--the Frenchman noticeably not on speaking terms with his distinguished brother from Germany; Dr. Jarovisky of world renown, fresh from Pergamos and recent discoveries at Argos, speaking various languages as badly as possible; a genial and witty Irish professor rushing through Greece with the intention of writing an exhaustive analysis of the country and the people, in that spirit of amiable impertinence so characteristic of hasty travellers. There was the flower of the so-called Greek aristocracy: Phanariote Princes, Graeco-Italian Counts from Zante and Corfu, and retired merchants and speculators from Constantinople and Smyrna and London. There was a Greek poet, hardly distinguishable in accent and manner from a Parisian, except in a detail of appearance which gave him the head of a convict, so hideously do the Hellenes shave their heads to look as if they wore mouse-coloured skull caps; a prose translator of Shakespeare, who had lately visited the Immortal's shrine at Warwick, and, in the interests of local colouring modelled himself since his return as closely as possible upon the accepted type of the English man of letters, and surveyed the frivolities under his eye with a British impassivity and glacial neutrality of gaze. All the musical dilettanti of the city of the Wise Maid were there, and all its presentable women. Some of the girls were pretty, and all were thickly powdered and richly dressed; all had large, brilliant dark eyes. And the gowns and frocks from Paris, the jewels, lace, aigrettes, flowers, and bare arms and shoulders made an effective and troublous contrast with the preponderance of masculine evening attire and semi-official splendour.

This large and distinguished gathering had been convened in honour of the return to her native city of Mademoiselle Photini Natzelhuber, a celebrated pianiste, the rival and friend of Rubinstein, the pupil of Liszt and not greatly inferior to her master, who, at Vienna, had been publicly named by him Queen of Pianists to match his recognised kingliness. All Athens was on tiptoe of expectation, eager to hear her, and still more eager to see her. It is not known, but extravagantly conjectured, with what sum the Baroness von Hohenfels was able to bid over the heads of her rival salonists and procure the honour of the Natzelhuber's first appearance in Athens. Sane and discerning persons were probably right in putting it down to francs represented by four figures, for Austrian baronesses have a pretty accurate knowledge of the value of money. But for the moment six figures were supposed to represent the sum, and the matter was discussed with that singular absence of reserve or delicacy with which fashionable and well-bred society is apt to discuss the affairs of its host in the host's own house.

Through the confused mingling of languages French could be detected as the most universal. A fair, pale young man, with the grave questioning air of a stranger who is disagreeably conscious of being shy and ill at ease, and, above all, utterly and helplessly alone, was walking about the rooms, amazed and bewildered by this Babel of tongues and types, and seemed to entreat by his look of gentle fear that no one should notice him or talk to him. He stared around with unquiet, troubled blue eyes, so very blue, so hopelessly, stupidly frank and clear, like a child's, that they made more noticeable the extreme youthfulness of his face and most slender figure. A mere boy, twenty-one years of innocence and ignorance leaving him on the brink of manhood with only the potentialities of his sex faintly shadowed in the lightest gold stain above the soft upper lip. He had just stepped into the glare and turmoil of life from the protected shadow of an isolated old castle in Rapolden Kirchen, with no more reliable and scientific guide to the mysteries of existence than a tender and nervous mother, who, after bringing him up like a girl, had left him for another sphere, and no other knowledge of the passions and their complex sensations than that to be gathered in a close and fervent study of music. It is easy to picture him. A reserved lad of high-bred Austrian type, with a glacially pure face, and heart fluttering with girlish timidity, half-frightened and half-attracted by the world he interprets in the vague light of his own pathetic ignorance, just conscious of opening curiosities upon the eternal feminine, and ready to sink with shame the instant a strange woman looked at him.

"Who is that charming boy?" asked a handsome old lady, whose motherly heart was touched by the childish uneasiness and loneliness of his attitude.

"That fair-haired young fellow near the window?" her companion answered. "Nice looking, isn't he? A very pretty young lady, eh?"

"Don't be so malicious. Men are always jealous of a handsome boy. You know how powerfully he appeals to our sympathetic sex. But who is he?"

"Rudolph Ehrenstein--a nephew of Madame von Hohenfels. He has just lost his mother, and is travelling in search of distraction. Some of these young ladies will doubtless take compassion on him."

"Yes, with that pretty face and doleful forsaken air he will not have to go far for a willing consoler."

"Good heavens! Not possible, surely!" cried the old lady, in a tremor of delighted horror. "He has the face of an angel."

"Angels have been known to fall, Madame," said the poet, with his best Parisian bow and cynical shrug, throwing a challenging glance at his neighbour as if to defy him to prove that Th?ophile Gautier or Dumas could have capped an observation more neatly; and then quoted with a beatific consciousness of his own smartness: "L'ange n'est complet que lorsqu' il est d?chu."

"Talk of women's tongues! You men have never a good word to say either of yourselves or of us."

"Is there not a proverb to that effect as regards the ladies?"

"Calumny, my friend, pure calumny. Men have had the monopoly of proverbs, and, of course, they have used them as they have used everything else, against us. It does not follow that even the clever man believes all the smart and satirical things he says of our sex, but an arrow shot at us looks a smarter achievement than a juster arrow aimed at yourselves. And the smart thing goes down to a duller posterity, and there's your proverb. Truth is as likely to be in it as in the bottom of the proverbial well!"

"I shall seek it henceforth in you, Madame. Can you tell me if there is any truth in the announcement that the Natzelhuber is coming to-night?"

"Madame von Hohenfels looks certainly anxious and doubtful. You know Mademoiselle Natzelhuber has an alarming reputation."

"Oh, yes, abominably eccentric--and ugly," sighed the poet.

Rudolph Ehrenstein, modestly unconscious that the reliable voice of Public Opinion, glancing at his wings, had been pleased to pronounce them singed and soiled, had retreated into a deep recess and was nearly hidden by a silk curtain and tall palm branches. He sat down on a low chair, and rejoiced that here, at least, there were no bare obtrusive shoulders and brilliant orbs to dazzle him, no scented skirts to trouble him, and that the murmur of varied tongues and voices and the whirr of fans came to him in softened sound. He was just closing his eyes to think of the old dim castle of Rapolden Kirchen and his beloved mother, whose subdued manner and tone seemed to him the more exquisite to remember because of the noisy and strongly perfumed women around him, when a man near the door caught sight of him through his gold-rimmed eyeglass, and starting forward, burst into his retreat with clamorous recognition and two extended hands, the offering of demonstrative friendship.

"Delighted, charming boy, delighted to see you so soon again. Heard from the baroness you were expected in Athens, but no idea you would be here to-night."

"I arrived last evening," said Ehrenstein, standing up and grasping the proffered hands with a look of relief, as if he found the necessary restorative in their touch. "What a quantity of strangers there are here! All their different languages have made my head ache."

His companion was a rich Greek merchant from Trieste, who was arrayed in extremely florid evening dress and wore a very large white camelia. He glanced at the boy's mourning studs and sighed as if recalled suddenly to the stern sorrows of life, and then blew a little whiff which expressed the recognised evanescence of even sorrow and bereavement, and thrust their presence from him.

"Well, you see, we Greeks have to draw very largely upon foreign countries for our entertainments," he said, slipping his arm into Ehrenstein's and dragging him gently out of the recess. "As a Greek from abroad, I regret to say that it would be impossible to mix with the pure Athenians for any purposes of social pleasure. They can neither talk, dance, nor eat like civilised beings. In fact, my dear Ehrenstein, they are not civilised."

"What a dreadful thing to say of the descendants of the ancient Greeks," laughed Rudolph.

"Oh, the ancient Greeks!" exclaimed Agiropoulos, airily. "If you are going back to those old fossils, I will candidly admit that I am out of my depth. There is nothing I am more heartily sick of than the ancient Greek. There's Jarovisky over there, a perfect lunatic on the subject. Homer for breakfast, Homer for dinner, and Homer for supper admits of variety with improvement. He reads Homer on the terrace by moonlight, and falls asleep with Homer under his pillow. My opinion of the ancient Greeks is, that they were not one whit better than their amiable representatives of to-day. They were men of great natural eloquence and literary gifts, and knew how to lay on their colours with an eye to future generations. But we have only their version, and it would require at least twenty connecting evidences to prove the word of one Athenian. Why, to hear them talk to-day, one might imagine theirs the chief nation of Europe, and Athens its handsomest capital--dull, ugly little Athens!"

They were walking round the rooms, when Agiropoulos, surveying the crowd through his aggressive eyeglass, suddenly asked his friend if he had been introduced to any ladies.

"I have been introduced to nobody yet except the Greek Minister--oh, I forgot, a young English attach?."

Before Rudolph could demand an explanation of this singular and enigmatic avowal, understood by even such white innocence as his to hint at something darkly and yet pleasantly irregular, the Baroness von Hohenfels bore down upon the young men with a disturbed expression of face. She tapped Agiropoulos on the shoulder with her fan, and said hurriedly:--

"My dear M. Agiropoulos, I am greatly alarmed about the Natzelhuber. You, I believe, are the best authority on her movements and caprices. Do you know why she has not come?"

"I do not, indeed, Madame la Baronne," answered Agiropoulos, bowing, and twirling his moustache with a fatuous smile. "But it is not so very late."

"Don't you know what very primitive hours we keep in Athens?" the baroness cried testily. "Did you see her to-day, Rudolph?"

Young Ehrenstein flushed and shrank a little with a hint of anxious pain in his blue eyes.

"No, aunt, I called, but Mademoiselle Natzelhuber was not visible," he said.

Agiropoulos looked at him sharply with an imperceptible frown, and then, turning to his hostess, resumed his smile of fatuous security, and said:

"To relieve your doubts, Madame la Baronne, I will drive at once to the lady's house, and carry her back with me, if even I must employ force."

"Do so, and you will earn my lasting gratitude. We are all dying to hear her play, and her name was the attraction to-night," and Madame von Hohenfels brightened. "Come with me, Rudolph. I must find you some lively girl to chat you into good-humour. Delay as little as possible, M. Agiropoulos."

Agiropoulos bowed low and retired, while Rudolph silently offered his arm to his aunt, shrinking still and wounded.

"It is a great disappointment that M. Reineke is not here to-night. He, also, is a new lion--singularly handsome and captivating and very clever, they say. He created quite a sensation in Paris last winter. But he got ill coming from Egypt and I suppose he will make his first appearance at the Jaroviskys' ball next week."

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