CHAPTER XLI

ROMANCE AND PRUDENCE

The Lieutenant found no difficulty in buying another straw hat, as the booths of the town were all open again; and another shoe-string was easily obtainable by which he tethered it to his button-hole.

An enterprising Jew produced a stock of ready-made clothing from Vienna, and Curtis endeavored to persuade Lindbohm to join him in the purchase of a complete new outfit.

"The first thing is to find Panayota," said the Swede. "We must not waste a moment. Ah, my friend, you mistake that girl! She will be so glad to see you that she will not look at your clothes."

Clapping a straw hat upon the head of Curtis, he dragged him away. They found the commandant's quarters with little difficulty, as every man, woman and child in Canea was able to direct them. It was an oriental house with a garden. Two sentinels stood at the gate. Lindbohm sent in his card, and a youthful officer in fatigue uniform came out, who stared with evident surprise, and then gazed curiously at the two callers.

Lindbohm brought the heels of the yellow boots together and saluted.

"Pardon our appearance," he explained, "but the fact of the matter is we have been fighting with the insurgents for the last three months, and we have not yet had an opportunity to purchase clothing."

The Englishman laughed and held out his hand cordially.

"Come in, Lieutenant," he said, "and your friend here." They entered the court. "Take a seat here in the shade. Shall I order you some coffee, Turkish style--or perhaps you'd prefer some whisky and soda."

"I'd like a Christian drink!" cried Curtis with great animation. "Something to take the taste out of my mouth."

"O, yust bring me some whisky, thank you," said the Swede, sitting on the edge of a chair, impatient to go on with the business that had brought him there.

"My name is Jones," said the Englishman, "Lieutenant Alfred Jones, at your service."

"Let me present my friend, Mr. Curtis, Mr. John Curtis. And now, Lieutenant, we wish to inquire about a Cretan lady, Panayota Nicolaides, whom Kostakes Effendi captured and carried off from her friends. She--"

"She was the daughter of some friends of ours," broke in Curtis, volubly, as Lindbohm waved his hand toward him. "Her father, a priest, befriended us. We were shipwrecked and I stepped on some sort of a damned thing, a kind of sea-pincushion stuck full of pins, and it poisoned me. And the priest took me in and took care of me, and the Turks swooped down on the village and murdered half the inhabitants and carried the girl and her father off. Then they killed the old man. This Kostakes--"

"That must have been one of the chaps that we hanged last night," interrupted Lieutenant Jones.

"Yust so," said Lindbohm, "and now we want to know what has become of Panayota. My friend here--"

"The fact is we feel very grateful and we want to know what has become of the girl," interrupted Curtis, determined at all hazards to head off Lindbohm's explanation to this civilized Englishman, who might be inclined to smile at a tale of romance.

"The commandant is out, but I think I am the very man you want to see," said the Englishman. "This gentleman, Kostakes, it seems, had three wives, two Turkish ladies besides the Greek--"

"The Greek was not his wife!" interrupted Lindbohm, with dignity.

"Well, however that may be, they all came back to the ruins of his house--it seems his house got in the way of one of our shells and there wasn't much left of it. Well, there they all stood, the two houris, wringing their hands and howling and the Greek quiet enough, but looking sort of dazed. I was out with a squad and came across them myself. Well, to make a long story short, we're assisting all the Turks to emigrate from here that feel so disposed, and we sent off the three women this morning."

"My God--where to?" asked Lindbohm.

"Why, the Greek, it seems, had some friends in Athens. She has had enough of Mohammedanism, and wanted to be put off there. So we gave her a pass to Athens. The other two go on to Constantinople."

"When does the next boat go to Athens?" asked Curtis, looking up suddenly.

"There's an Austrian Lloyd to-morrow morning at ten which stops at Athens."

"For--?"

"Trieste."

The Englishman accompanied his two callers to the gate.

"I'd like to hear the story of your adventures with the insurgents," he said. "You must have had some lively experiences. Good day, gentlemen."

"By the way," cried Lindbohm, turning back, "lest there be any mistake, was this Greek girl very beautiful?"

"Ye-es, yes, I should call her a very fine woman."

"What was the color of her hair? Brown?"

"I don't remember exactly. I believe it was."

"Tall, slender, oval face, big, fine eyes?"

"Well, you see, I only saw her for a moment. She certainly was tall and slender, and--and--a fine, handsome woman. Held her head back and threw her chest out, and had a sort of independent air about her."

Lindbohm had no further doubts; he was not aware of Ferende's existence.

Preparations for departure on the morrow were begun at once. Curtis had no difficulty in raising some money at Cook's on his letter of credit. His passport and two or three letters from home were sufficient identification.

"How are you off for money, old man?" he asked Lindbohm. The Lieutenant drew from the recesses of the ancient, water-warped pocketbook a five pound note, badly faded and stained. It came in two at one of the creases as he held it up.

"I will paste this together," he said, "and it will be yust as good as ever. I have plenty more in Athens."

"All right, then," replied Curtis, "I'll get the tickets--"

"But I have plenty."

"We must buy some clothes. I'll get the tickets."

Lindbohm assented, so far as the tickets were concerned, but he positively refused to buy clothing till he got to Athens. He took a stroll about the town to see what military preparations were going on, while Curtis arrayed himself in a cheap, ill-fitting suit and a new pair of tan shoes, for all of which he paid a high price. He also bought a leather traveling bag, into which he put a supply of underwear and other necessities. The Cretan boots and the simitar he tied to the handle of the bag as souvenirs.

So the next morning Curtis and Lindbohm walked briskly through the kaleidoscopic square to the wharf and embarked in a rowboat for the steamer waiting out in the bay.

Curtis looked back at the town. The colored awnings were all up, the square was a moving, shifting mass of bright costumes, through which trotted, to and fro, the patient, useful and immemorial ass. The Punch and Judy booth, with its row of pantomimists, had been removed and apparently forgotten. A group of dignified old gentlemen in fezzes sat at a café, smoking narghiles. It takes an oriental town but half an hour to recover from a massacre or a bombardment. The eternal languor of the East flows over and engulfs any outburst of passion, as the sea swings to rest over a submarine eruption. A sentinel in red jacket and white helmet paced along the rampart wall. A bugle sounded faint and far and a man-o'-war's boat flew by, the petty officer in the stern bending and straightening to the rhythmical splash and rattle of the oars.

"There will be no difficulty in finding her in Athens," said Lindbohm as the two stood at last on the deck of the steamer.

"Tickets, gentlemen!"

The waiting employee glanced at the two tickets and then handed them back, one to Curtis and one to Lindbohm.

"Here," said the latter; "he made a mistake. I've got your ticket, 'John Curtis, Tri--' What does this mean? Why are you going to Trieste?"

"Lindbohm," said Curtis, laying his hand on the Swede's arm, "Panayota isn't in Athens."

"Is she in Trieste? Why are you fooling me?"

"I'm not fooling you. I couldn't tell you because I thought you'd want me to go and see her, and bid her good-bye. And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. It would be too painful for both of us, and it wouldn't do any good."

"Why shouldn't you go and see her? And why should you bid her good-bye? I don't understand."

"You will understand when I tell you. She's a leper. I saw her myself, with my own eyes, as we passed through their village. She isn't like those other horrible creatures yet, of course, but she will be in time. My God, Lindbohm, think of what an escape I've had! I was so wrapped up in the girl that I actually thought of marrying her--after a while. Suppose I had done so, and it had broken out on her afterward!"

The Lieutenant was very pale. When he spoke his voice was low and unnaturally distinct, and he divided his sentence into groups of two and three words, like a man who is making a superhuman effort to control himself.

"And what about--this young woman--who went to Athens?"

"O, she's somebody else. I couldn't be mistaken in Panayota--I tell you I saw her, man. Why, I was as close to her as from here to that mast yonder."

"But perhaps there's some mistake in the reason for her being there. Perhaps----"

"Why didn't she come out, then, when she saw me? She clapped her hands in front of her face and shrank away. My first impulse was to go in, and then it flashed over me in a minute. Besides, you heard what Hassan Bey said--that the lepers are nearly all Cretans."

"Do you mean to say you're yust going away without going back to comfort her or say a word to her?"

"But since she showed plainly that she wanted to avoid me? I tell you, old man, I'm doing the kindest thing for both of us. It's incurable, you know, and even if it wasn't, my mother and my governor would never consent. I should have had a circus with them, anyway."

Lindbohm walked to the taffrail and looked dreamily away toward Canea. There was an unexpected roar of a great whistle--a boat's whistle is always unexpected--and the anchor chain began to rattle and click.

"It takes a long time to get the anchor up, doesn't it?" asked Curtis.

Lindbohm made no reply, but when the chain finally ceased to rattle, he asked in a low tone, and without looking at his companion:

"So you give her up, eh?"

"Why, of course, old man. Seems to me I've made that plain enough!"

The ringing of a bell seemed to awaken the sleeping ship. She shuddered as the machinery started. There was a patter of hastening feet on the deck and a great churning, as the wheel made its first revolutions in the water. Shore boats were cast off, with much shouting and gesticulating of picturesque Cretans, standing erect in their tiny craft, violently rocked by the agitated sea. As the ship moved majestically away, a few boats clung to her side like whiffets to a stately stag. One by one they dropped off and drifted astern. Lindbohm turned and looked about the deck. Spying his satchel, he picked it up and walked to the ladder, at the foot of which one boat was still tied. Curtis ran to him and seized him by the shoulder.

"Where are you going, old man?"

"To Panayota."

"But this is madness. You can't do anything. I tell you the girl is a leper."

The Swede, muttering "I'll yust take my chances," continued down the steps and took his seat in the boat.

Curtis stood watching him as he was rowed away, hoping against hope that he would turn around and wave his hand or make some sign. But no, he sat up very straight, his arms hanging a little out from his body, the back of his neck looking very broad and red. The straw hat leaped from his head. He caught it in midair, jammed it back and held it in place with one big hand.

And so Peter Lindbohm went back to his love--Peter Lindbohm, true knight and noble gentleman, with the heart of a lion and the soul of a child. As friend he was stanch even to his own seeming undoing, and made no moan; as lover, he was great enough to be faithful unto more than death, and for such there is a full reward. No sacrifice awaited him, but a long lifetime of peaceful joys. If Peter Lindbohm ever goes to war again, it will be in defense of wife and children.

And John Curtis, to whose romantic and brave nature there was attached an automatic brake of New England prudence, sailed away to his own land. And the last sound that he heard from Crete was the voice of the Swede's boatman singing:

From the bones of the Greeks upspringing. Who died that we might be free, And the strength of thy strong youth bringing,-- Hail, Liberty, hail to thee!

He stood for a long time leaning over the rail, watching the receding isle.

As the land became more distant, it grew more beautiful. The purple haze of Greece settled upon the mountains. Curtis thought of Panayota as of a lovely Greek whom he had met in his dreams; he sighed and murmured:

I enter thy garden of roses, Beloved and fair Haidee!

A steward touched him on the shoulder and said in German: "Lunch is ready."

Curtis turned briskly around, and followed the man half the length of the deck, struggling to drag a sentence from the unfrequented German corner of his brain. At last it came:

"I am ready, too. This sea air makes one hungry."

He was glad to see there were genuine Frankfurters for lunch. He ordered a bottle of Rhine wine and talked German with the Captain. When he came up on deck to smoke his cigar, the ship was purring through a placid, opalescent sea, and Crete was a faint outline sketched against a gray-blue sky.

THE END.