Fair Margaret Part 16

'Where did you learn to speak English so well?' she asked.

'Languages do not count nowadays,' he answered carelessly. 'Any Levantine in Smyrna can speak a dozen, like a native. Have you never been in the East?'

'No.'

'Should you like to go to Greece?'

'Of course I should.'

'Then come! I am going to take a party in my yacht next month. It will give me the greatest pleasure if you and Mrs. Rushmore will come with us.'

Margaret laughed.

'You forget that I am a real artist, with a real engagement!' she answered.

'Yes, I forgot that. I wanted to! I can make Schreiermeyer forget it, too, if you will come. I'll hypnotise him. Will you authorise me?'

He smiled pleasantly but his long eyes were quite grave. Margaret supposed that it would be absurd to suspect anything but chaff in his proposal, and yet she felt an odd conviction that he meant what he said. Only vain women are easily mistaken about such things. Margaret turned the point with another little laugh.

'If you put him to sleep he will hibernate, like a dormouse,' she said.

'It will take a whole year to wake him up!'

'I don't think so, but what if it did?'

'I should be a year older, and I am not too young as it is! I'm twenty-two.'

'It's only in Constantinople that they are so particular about age,'

laughed the Greek. 'After seventeen the price goes down very fast.'

'Really?' Margaret was amused. 'What do you suppose I should be worth in Turkey?'

Logotheti looked at her gravely and seemed to be estimating her value.

'If you were seventeen, you would be worth a good thousand pounds,' he said presently, 'and at least three hundred more for your singing.'

'Is that all, for my voice?' She could not help laughing. 'And at twenty-two, what should I sell for?'

'I doubt whether any one would give much more than eight hundred for you,' answered Logotheti with perfect gravity. 'That's a big price, you know. In Persia they give less. I knew a Persian amba.s.sador, for instance, who got a very handsome wife for four hundred and fifty.'

'Are you in earnest?' asked Margaret. 'Do you mean to say that you could just go out and buy yourself a wife in the market in Constantinople?'

'I could not, because I am a Christian. The market exists in a quiet place where Europeans never find it. You see all the Circa.s.sians in Turkey live by stealing horses and selling their daughters. They are a n.o.ble race, the Circa.s.sians! The girls are brought up with the idea, and they rarely dislike it at all.'

'I never heard of such things!'

'No. The East is very interesting. Will you come? I'll take you wherever you like. We will leave the archaeologists in Crete and go on to Constantinople. It will be the most beautiful season on the Bosphorus, you know, and after that we will go along the southern sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea to Samsoun, and Kerasund, and Trebizond, and round by the Crimea. There are wonderful towns on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea which hardly any European ever sees. I'm sure you would like them, just as I do.'

'I am sure I should.'

'You love beautiful things, don't you?'

'Yes--though I don't pretend to be a judge.'

'I do. And when I see anything that really pleases me, I always try to get it; and if I succeed, nothing in the world will induce me to part with it. I'm a miser about the things I like. I keep them in safe places, and it gives me pleasure to look at them when I'm alone.'

'That's not very generous. You might give others a little pleasure, too, now and then.'

'So few people know what is good! Some of us Greeks have the instinct in our blood still, and we recognise it in a few men and women we meet--you are one, for instance. As soon as I saw you the first time, I was quite sure that we should think alike about a great many things. Do you mind my saying as much as that, at a second meeting?'

'Not if you think it is true,' she answered with a smile. 'Why should I?'

'It might sound as if I were trying to make out that we have some natural bond of sympathy,' said Logotheti. 'That's a favourite way of opening the game, you know. "Do you like carrots? So do I"--a bond, at once! "Do you go in, when it rains? I always do"--second bond. "We must be sympathetic to each other! Do you smile when you are pleased? Of course! We are exactly alike, and our hearts beat in unison!" That's the sort of thing.'

He amused her; perhaps she was easily amused now, because she had been feeling rather depressed all the morning. Women are subject to such harmless self-contradictions.

'I love to be out in the rain, and I don't like carrots!' she answered.

'There are evidently things about which our hearts don't beat in unison at all!'

'If people agreed about everything, what would become of conversation, lawyers and standing armies? But I meant to suggest that we might possibly like each other if we met often.'

'I daresay.'

'I have begun,' said Logotheti lightly, but again his long eyes were grave.

'Begun what?'

'I have begun by liking you. You don't object, do you?'

'Oh no! I like to be liked--by everybody!' Margaret laughed again, and watched him.

'It only remains for you to like everybody yourself. Will you kindly include me?'

'Yes, in a general way, as a neighbour, in the biblical sense, you know. Are you English enough to understand that expression?'

'I happen to have read the story of the Good Samaritan in Greek,'

Logotheti answered. 'Since you are willing that we should be neighbours, "in the biblical sense," you cannot blame me for saying that I love my neighbour as myself.'

Once more her instinct told her that the words were meant less carelessly than they were spoken, though she could not possibly seem to take them in earnest. Yet her curiosity was aroused, as he intended that it should be.

'I remember that the Samaritan loved his neighbour, "in the biblical sense," at first sight,' he said, with a quick glance.

'But those were biblical times, you know!'

'Men have not changed much since then. We can still love at first sight, I a.s.sure you, even after we have seen a good deal of the world.

It depends on meeting the right woman, and on nothing else. Do you suppose that if the Naples Psyche, or the Syracuse Venus, or the Venus of Milo, or the Victory of Samothrace suddenly appeared in Paris or London, all the men would not lose their heads about her--at first sight? Of course they would!'

'If you expect to have such neighbours as those--"in the biblical sense"----'

'I have one,' said Logotheti, 'and that's enough.'