Chapter XXV: “pour Mieux Sauter.”

Maurice and Eirene were married. In the little church of Hagios Gerasimos, Maurice the servant of God had been crowned for Eirene the handmaid of God, and Eirene the handmaid of God for Maurice the servant of God. They had drunk of the Common Cup, walked in procession round the church with the crowns held over their heads by the groomsmen, exchanged wedding-rings, to Maurice’s surprise and gratification, and they had been dismissed with the blessing of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. Sir Frank Francis was duly present to register the marriage. Wylie had again displayed his diplomatic powers by laying siege first to Lady Francis, whose fertile imagination, defying probabilities and dates, swept her, as soon as she heard his story, to the wild conclusion that he had been wooing Eirene for his friend during those trying weeks when he had maintained so assiduous a watch on the Scythian Consulate. Even when approached through the person who might be presumed to know his weak points best, Sir Frank was not easy to persuade. His promise of secrecy prevented his revealing everything at once to M. Ladoguin, but he declared long and loudly that he would have nothing to do with any clandestine, hole-and-corner business. It was by working on his feelings of sympathy for Eirene that his wife at length extorted his consent. The poor girl would be indubitably married; was it to be thought of that her bridegroom should be bound only by honour? Once away from Therma, he might or might not repeat the ceremony before a British Consul, and was it just to subject the bride to such a risk? Maurice would certainly not have recognised his own character had he heard Lady Francis expatiating on the danger of Eirene’s too probably finding herself a deserted wife, and Wylie was filled with grim amusement when the injustice of it occurred to him; but the natural desire of an honest man to see that a young fellow did honestly by the girl who trusted him carried the day over Sir Frank’s sense of his duty to his colleague. Two stipulations he made, which were promptly accepted, namely, that he should see Eirene alone before the ceremony, in order to ascertain her true wishes and make sure that she was not breaking any former contract of betrothal, and that on the day after the wedding he should be allowed to make a clean breast of the matter to M. Ladoguin.

The arrangements of the wedding-day were curious, for though the wedding itself was obliged to take place in the morning to allow Wylie to be present, the ship in which the bridal pair and Zoe had taken their passage for England did not sail till the evening. Accordingly, after the ceremony Armitage escorted Wylie to his steamer, and the rest of the party returned to Kallimeri, Eirene wearing Greek peasant costume and passing as the maid of Madame Panagiotis, for there was to be no relaxation of vigilance until they were safely at sea. Zoe was in specially high spirits, accusing the bride and bridegroom of sharing the sense of depression which is usually believed to settle down upon a wedding-party after the departure on their honeymoon of the chief actors.

“Stuff!” said Maurice. “Why, my wedding-ring alone would keep me from being depressed,” regarding his hand proudly. “It’s really awfully swagger. Makes a man feel so undeniably married, don’t you know?”

“Oh, that’s all very well,” said Zoe. “It’s no use trying to wear a mask before me. You forget that I have an advantage which no other living bridesmaid possesses. I am like the Infant Phenomenon, going away with Mr and Mrs Lillyvick on their wedding tour. Have you read ‘Nicholas Nickleby,’ Eirene? Not? What a lot of things we have to teach her, haven’t we, Maurice?”

“There’s one thing I should like to teach you, and that is to know a good man when you see one,” growled Maurice.

Zoe turned upon him. “If you think you are doing Captain Wylie any good by the way you have behaved to me all this week, you are very much mistaken,” she said. “Any one would think I was a child who didn’t know her own mind, instead of a reasonable being, acting deliberately. I told him exactly how I felt, and he understands. He doesn’t wish to marry me while I feel as I do; he said so. And now I hope you will leave off treating me in this absurd way, as if I was in disgrace, and allow me the liberty I allow you.”

“Oh, Zoe, Maurice didn’t mean that!” cried Eirene anxiously. “He was only so sorry for Captain Wylie.”

“I hope, Maurice,” said Zoe, unappeased, “that you realise how detestably you have behaved, when you see that it’s necessary for Eirene to interpret your intentions to me.”

She left the verandah with great dignity, but found herself confronted by Armitage on the steps.

“Oh, are you back already?” she cried. “Well, did you see him off?”

“Yes, the steamer was actually punctual; we had barely time, in fact. He begged me to give his farewells and good wishes all over again. I only stayed to watch him out of the harbour, and hurried back here, because I thought Mrs Teffany might let me make a sketch of her in that Greek dress. It’s awfully fetching, and I shan’t have another chance.”

Armitage was to wait until the next steamer, so as to cover the retreat of the rest, or rather, to find out if any measures were likely to be taken against them. What his paper thought of his long delay at Therma he did not inquire, trusting to be able to placate it with a terrific double-page drawing of the city on the night of the dynamite outrages, as seen from Kallimeri, as well as by a whole supplement illustrating the adventures of his friends, whose capture by the brigands had first brought him south.

“If you would stand just as you are now, leaning against that pillar, Mrs Teffany,” he continued persuasively. “You see, I have your husband in Greek dress already, and I could work up the two sketches into a tremendously telling portrait.”

“I bag it, then,” said Maurice. “All right, Eirene, let him do it if he’s taken that way. It’s only like being photographed at an ordinary wedding.”

“It ought to have been a group,” objected Zoe, whose anger had evaporated before the duty of arranging Eirene so that her costume showed to the best advantage. With skilful fingers she pulled out here and patted down there, until Armitage begged her not to make the effect too studied.

“Talking about groups, we really ought to have had one taken before Wylie left,” said Maurice. “Just the four of us who were captured together. He always seems rather left out, and yet he worked so tremendously for us.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Armitage. “I can’t help thinking”--he went on, with some embarrassment--“at least, I know I should like to be reminded if it was my case. It doesn’t seem quite fair to Wylie---- You know he paid your ransom?”

“No!” cried Maurice. “I thought my bankers did it. Why, this explains the apologetic, self-congratulatory letter they wrote to me this week. I was too busy to bother about it, but I was going to ask for an explanation when I got home. Wylie paid, you say?”

“I believe the Professor raised some of it. But I know Wylie scraped together fifteen thousand, by selling out every shilling of his investments, and mortgaging the little place he has in the north. You see, your bankers had refused to advance the money, and the brigands had sworn to kill you if it wasn’t forthcoming.”

“But why in the world has he said nothing about it? What a set of ungrateful brutes he must think us! Oh, I say, this is the rankest thing I ever heard!” cried Maurice, tramping about the verandah in his perturbation.

“Why, you see, the money didn’t actually ransom you. The brigands bagged it all right, but Scythia had been beforehand with us, and we might as well have chucked it into the sea. I only found out Wylie’s feeling about it just now. He forbade me to say a word to you--said his pay gave him enough for his wants, and his place would do as well with a mortgage on it as without--but I thought you ought to know.”

“I’m jolly glad you did!” cried Maurice. “I feel a perfect hound. After all Wylie has done for us--and everything----”

Zoe had risen suddenly and gone down the steps, her face resolutely turned from the rest, her hands clenched until the nails made deep marks in the palms. A rush of overwhelming shame, unavailing regret, had swept over her. Stiffly she walked along the garden paths, guiding herself instinctively, her head held rigidly, her eyes seeing nothing. Presently, in the shelter of a clump of bushes, out of sight of the verandah, Eirene caught her up.

“Oh, Zoe, don’t look so dreadful!” she entreated. “He must know you didn’t know.”

“‘There are strange punishments for such,’” came harshly from Zoe’s lips. “It’s only what I deserve.”

“But,” suggested Eirene timidly, “Maurice will pay him back. He won’t really suffer.”

“It’s not that. It is that he could do it, and say nothing, even when---- Oh, Eirene, you don’t understand, you can’t understand. Be thankful you can’t. You didn’t shut your heart against love; you took it and were thankful. I chose to live my own life, and I have got it.”

“But if he really cares----” ventured Eirene, with increasing nervousness. “Oh, Zoe, I don’t like to say it, but if I could do anything----?” An angry flush rose to Zoe’s face, but faded quickly.

“No, you can’t. He knows me now as I am, you see, and it would be no use. You understand, Eirene, there is nothing to be done--nothing whatever. Swear that you won’t try anything.” Eirene promised hastily. “Just let me alone for a little. I should like to go out somewhere and howl, but that would attract attention. Leave me alone here and go back to the others. I shall be all right presently.”

Eirene obeyed, the more readily that the sight of Zoe in this mood frightened her horribly. A sense of duty had made her follow her, but she ran back gladly to the verandah and Maurice. He met her below the steps, and she nestled close to him.

“Oh, Maurice, I am so glad I have you!” she whispered. “It is horrible to be a woman alone, even if you can’t help it.”

Into the meaning of this cryptic utterance Maurice did not inquire, but it was some little time before he rearranged the floating odds and ends of the Greek dress, and led her up the steps into the field of view of the patient Armitage, demanding sternly what she meant by running away when she was sitting for her portrait. She was posed afresh against the pillar, and Armitage went on with his sketch, but it seemed that fate was warring against its completion. Only a few strokes had been added when Professor Panagiotis appeared on the verandah and invited Maurice’s attention.

“It is rather a serious matter, though the cause is a trifling one,” he said. “Perhaps you would prefer to discuss it privately?”

“I knew we were not married enough!” groaned Maurice. “Wylie always said we ought to have four weddings at least, and we have only had two and a half--counting Sir Frank’s presence as the half. Well, Eirene, you’re just as much concerned as I am, so you had better come. Put in some background or something, can’t you, Armitage, while we’re gone?”

The Professor ushered them into his private room with some ceremony, as though to remind them of the position they held in his plans for the future. On the table lay a document written on parchment in Greek characters.

“It was about this that the slight difficulty arose,” said the Professor. “I thought it well to draw up a brief statement of the circumstances of your marriage, with the signatures of the witnesses, in view of possible developments. One copy you would take to England and place among your family papers, the other I would either entrust to the custody of the Œcumenical Patriarch or put in a safe place of my own, as you prefer. In these days of dynamite, one can never be sure that some night the British and Dacian Consulates will not be blown up simultaneously, and both the original registers destroyed. I have the signatures of the Consuls, you see, but unfortunately Papa Sotirios, the old priest whom we chose to perform the ceremony on account of the simplicity of his character and his detachment from politics, makes a difficulty. You noticed, of course”--turning suddenly to Maurice--“that you were described in the service as ‘the Orthodox Prince Maurice, son of Theodore,’ just as your bride was termed ‘the Orthodox Princess Eirene, daughter of Nicholas’?”

“Not I,” said Maurice. “I knew it was Greek he was reading, and of course I grasped the general drift, but I couldn’t follow his pronunciation a bit.” Eirene’s eyes were anxious.

“Well, it is really very troublesome and absurd,” said the Professor, in hearty, paternal tones, “but it seems Papa Sotirios observed that you did not venerate the ikons on leaving the church, and when I saw him afterwards, he insisted on knowing whether you were truly Orthodox. It sounds ridiculous, but actually, in the hurry of arranging for the wedding, and the difficulty of doing so without arousing notice, I never thought of mentioning that you had not yet joined the Greek Church. Your name disarmed suspicion, and the Patriarch sent his blessing, as Papa Sotirios performed his office, in ignorance of your schismatical standpoint.”

“But does that vitiate the marriage?” cried Maurice. “Nonsense! of course it can’t. The civil ceremony in the presence of the two Consuls can never be upset.”

“Oh no, quite so,” said the Professor hurriedly. “Nothing can touch the validity of the marriage. But in the eyes of the people, you see--well, any informality about the religious ceremony----”

“Would the marriage not have been allowed to take place if it had been known that I was not a Greek?” demanded Maurice.

“Well, it is true that, strictly speaking, mixed marriages are forbidden. Of course, the prohibition often yields to special circumstances. And as the marriage has taken place, I don’t see that its religious validity could be questioned. It is merely that we ought to avoid the slightest suspicion of any informality in your case. You must remember that Prince Christodoridi will be on the watch for any flaw in your title from the moment you come into the public eye.”

“But according to him, my title is nothing but a series of flaws, by what you told me at first. You said he would declare every foreign and non-Orthodox marriage in my family a bar to my succeeding.”

“Exactly, but--there is a further consideration. From that point of view, the Princess, your wife, has now contracted a heterodox marriage, and therefore loses her right of succession, the only one incontestably superior to Prince Christodoridi’s.”

“Well, but what’s to be done?” cried Maurice, after a pause of dismay. “We must be married over again, I suppose. But no, that would be no good, and you say they wouldn’t allow the wedding to take place. I have always known that my rights were not worth much if the bigots got the upper hand, but I can’t let my wife lose her rights through me. I suppose you have something to suggest?”

“A very simple and practicable expedient, happily. You have only to announce your adhesion to the Orthodox Church at once. A brief renunciation of the errors of your former schismatical creed, and a profession of faith--equally short--uttered in the presence of Papa Sotirios and other accredited witnesses, will put everything right.”

“But how? I don’t see----” began Maurice.

“The conversion and the marriage will have taken place on the same day,” said the Professor, patiently and impressively, “and it will naturally be accepted that the conversion came first. The priest will be glad to fall in with the wishes of so distinguished a convert, the Consuls can say nothing either way, as the subject was not broached in their presence, my silence may be relied on. The Princess’s claims are safe, while yours are infinitely strengthened.”

“But I have no intention----”

“It will merely be anticipating a step which you must have taken eventually, and which will come from you now with a much better grace. No one not belonging to the Orthodox Church could be considered as a serious candidate for the heritage of John Theophanis.”

“And yet you have invited me to consider myself a serious candidate without saying a word about this?”

“The thing was so obvious that no mention was needed. It was certain that the necessity would force itself upon you as soon as you considered the question at your leisure.” The Professor’s tone was bold, but his eyes were shifty.

“Well, it hasn’t. What’s more, the exact opposite has. If I had felt any drawing towards the Greek Church before I came to Emathia, what I have seen would have altered my views. My object is to unite the Emathian Christians, not to accentuate their divisions. To throw myself on the side of the Patriarchists would make every Slav in Emathia my bitter enemy. Why, I would almost rather turn Exarchist, as my wife is already enlisted on the Greek side.”

“A heterodox Emperor is no Emperor,” said the Professor, with deadly meaning.

“A good many of my ancestors were not particularly Orthodox,” said Maurice drily.

“All the Christians in Emathia--Greeks and Slavs alike--would unite against the heretic who dared to aspire to----”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” Maurice broke in. “First time in their history they ever united for or against anything. I should have achieved a triumph. But I don’t believe they would. If they have never united against the Moslem they would scarcely do it against me.”

“Are you so false to your race that you could bring yourself to adopt a neutral, even a hostile, attitude towards it?” cried the Professor. “Are our sufferings, our sacrifices, our efforts towards emancipation, clogged by the dead weight of the sullen indifference of the Slavs, nothing to you?”

“I think the Greeks are getting hard measure at present, undoubtedly, but it’s only what they have given in the past. Your ignorant, avaricious priests and self-seeking Bishops and Patriarchs have much to answer for in alienating the people upon whom they were forced. Your men of letters have stifled all culture but their own, and they have their reward in a population bitterly hostile to Greek and ignorant of everything else.”

“Mr Teffany,” said the Professor angrily, “this is very fine, but it is not business. It is absurd to think that the party I represent will consent to throw its influence on the side of a candidate who derides its most cherished institutions and ideals. I ask you plainly, are you prepared to join the Orthodox Church and accept whole-heartedly the Hellenising programme of the Greek party in Emathia, as the price--if you choose to call it so--of its support of your claims?”

“And I answer you plainly--I am not.”

“Don’t decide hastily,” urged the Professor. “You may not be aware that since your rescue I have made some progress in sounding the representatives of the Powers on the subject of your claims. Sick of the clamour for reform, and the slight success of the steps already achieved, they did not turn an unfriendly ear. A Christian Governor-General, with the support of the most influential section of the population assured to him, ought to succeed, and the neutral Powers seemed to think so. There remain Scythia and Pannonia. Scythia never fights against the inevitable; you are far more likely to suffer from her patronage than her hostility. Pannonia cannot afford to be outdone in unselfish magnanimity by Scythia. In fact, the signs are so favourable that we cannot pause. If you desert us, we must press the claims of Prince Christodoridi, whose way will be cleared by your destruction of the claims of the Princess, your wife.”

“Eirene,” said Maurice, “do you want me to secure your rights at the Professor’s price?” His tone was harsh, and Eirene knew the reason. He could not be sure which side she would take. She responded to the unuttered appeal.

“Not at the price of your conscience. Do what you feel is right. Our claims remain as just as they ever were.”

Maurice’s hand sought hers in the joyful assurance of confidence not misplaced. “My wife and I are agreed,” he said. “We maintain our independence.”

“I am sorry to hear it, but there is no more to be said. You have chosen your own course, and you know the consequences----” The sentences shot out venomously.

“Most certainly, but we hold ourselves at liberty to take any steps that may commend themselves to us in support of our rights. We are still the heirs of John Theophanis, and both the common law of Europe and actual Byzantine usage are on our side. Come, Eirene.”

They left the Professor moodily gnawing the end of a penholder at his table, and once outside the room, Maurice put his arm round his wife. “You know I would rather have cut off my right hand than married you if I had known what you would lose by it,” he said.

“Maurice,” she said quickly, “you know I don’t mind. If you had yielded to him, it would have destroyed all my faith in you. I was afraid--oh, dreadfully afraid for a moment, that you would do it for my sake, but something seemed to keep me from saying a word. And now I am glad. But you don’t see”--she broke into something very like hysterics--“that even what he wanted you to do would not have put things right. It would only have been a trick, a dishonest compact between you and him and the priest. I should have married a schismatic after all!”

“By Jove, so you would!” cried Maurice. “The Professor’s too deep for me. Why, he would have had us completely under his thumb. If we had kicked, he would only have had to hint that the priest’s conscience was becoming uneasy about his share in the business, or that he himself could give Prince Christodoridi an important piece of information if he liked, and we should have had to cave in. Little girl, we have not only told the truth, but shamed the--tempter!”

* * * * * * * *

“‘My native land--good night’!” said Maurice impressively, looking back from the deck of the steamer at the semicircle of twinkling lights which represented Therma.

“‘A long, a last adieu’!” said Zoe, not without regret.

“Not a bit of it!” said Maurice. “We’re only going to recruit our strength for further efforts.”

“My dear boy,” said Zoe solemnly, “Cambridge ought to reject you with ignominy, and Oxford gather you to her bosom with tears of joy. You are a lost cause in yourself.”

“I’m a made man,” declared Maurice, feeling Eirene’s hand creep sympathetically into his. “I came out with an open mind and a sense of duty. Now I have a wife whom I have robbed of her rights. Clearly I am bound in honour to recover them for her.”

“Men always say that it’s women who lose sight of a cause in an individual,” said Zoe sententiously.

“I don’t quite follow you, Zoe. I am the cause--the lost cause--you said so just this minute; and Eirene is the individual. Oh, I see--and we are one. That’s all right.”

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Sydney C. Grier was the pseudonym of Hilda Caroline Gregg.

This book is part of the author’s “Balkan Series II.” The series, in order, being: _The Heir_, _The Heritage_, and _The Prize_.

The second image was missing from the PDF I used to prepare this book, so I had to use a secondary source of inferior quality. A quality copy will be substituted if it ever becomes available. If you can provide a better copy of this image please contact Project Gutenberg support.

Alterations to the text:

Punctuation corrections: quotation mark pairing.

[Title Page]

Add illustrator’s credit and brief note indicating this novel’s position in the series. See above.

[Images]

Images that divided a paragraph were moved to either the beginning or end of said paragraph.

[Chapter II]

Change “Don’t be _estatic_, Zoe” to _ecstatic_.

[Chapter VII]

“said Zoe _thoughfully_” to _thoughtfully_.

[End of Text]