Part 32 (1/2)
She was not changed since I had seen her last, except that she now looked quietly at me and offered her hand. Her fine features were perhaps a little less pale, her dark eyes were a little less cold, and her small traveling-bonnet concealed most of her thick gray hair. She was dressed in a simple costume of some neutral tint which I cannot remember, and she wore those long loose gauntlets commonly known as Biarritz gloves. I thought her less tall and less imposing than when I had seen her in the black velvet which it was her caprice to wear during the period of her insanity; but she looked more natural, too, and at first sight one would have merely said that she was a woman of sixty, who had once been beautiful, and who had not lost the youthful proportions of her figure. As I observed her more closely in the broad daylight, on the deck of the steamer, however, I began to see that her face was marked by innumerable small lines, which followed the shape of her features like the carefully traced shadows of an engraving; they crossed her forehead, they made labyrinths of infinitesimal wrinkles about her eyes, they curved along the high cheek-bones and the somewhat sunken cheeks, and they surrounded the mouth and made shadings on her chin. They were not like ordinary wrinkles. They looked as though they had been drawn with infinite precision and care by the hand of a cunning workman. To me they betrayed an abnormally nervous temperament, such as I had not suspected that Madame Patoff possessed, when in the yellow lamp-light of her apartment her white skin had seemed so smooth and even. But she was evidently in her right mind, and very quiet, as she gave me her hand, with the conventional smile which we use to convey the idea of an equally conventional satisfaction when a stranger is introduced to us.
John was delighted to see me, and was more like his old self than when I had last seen him. Mrs. Carvel's gentle temper was not ruffled by the confusion of landing, and she greeted me as ever, with her sweet smile and air of sympathetic inquiry. Chrysophrasia held out her hand, a very forlorn hope of anatomy cased in flabby kid. She also smiled, as one may fancy that a mosquito smiles in the dark when it settles upon the nose of some happy sleeper. I am sure that mosquitoes have green eyes, exactly of the hue of Chrysophrasia's.
”So deliciously barbarous, is it not, Mr. Griggs?” she murmured, subduing the creaking of her thin voice.
”Dear Mr. Griggs, I am so awfully glad to see you again,” said Hermione with genuine pleasure, as she laid her little hand in mine.
It seemed to me that Hermione was taller and thinner than she had been in the winter. But there was something womanly in her lovely face, as she looked at me, which I had not seen before. Her soft blue eyes were more shaded,--not more sad, but less carelessly happy than they used to be,--and the delicate color was fainter in her transparent skin. There was an indescribable look of gravity about her, something which made me think that she was very much in earnest with her life.
”Paul is at the hotel,” I said, rather loudly, when the first meeting was over. ”He has made everything comfortable for you up there. The kava.s.s will see to your things. Let us go ash.o.r.e at once, out of all this din.”
We left the steamer, and landed where the carriages were waiting. John talked all the time, recounting the incidents of the journey, the annoyance they had had in crossing the Danube at Rustchuk, the rough night in the Black Sea, the delight of watching the sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus in the morning. When we landed, Chrysophrasia turned suddenly round and surveyed the scene.
”We are not in Constantinople at all,” she said, in a tone of bitter disappointment.
”No,” said Macaulay; ”n.o.body lives in Stamboul. This is Galata, and we are going up to Pera, which is the European town, formerly occupied by the Genoese, who built that remarkable tower you may have observed from the harbor. The place was formerly fortified, and the tower has now been applied to the use of the fire brigade. Much interest is attached”----
How long Macaulay would have continued his lecture on Galata Tower is uncertain. Chrysophrasia interrupted him in disgust.
”A fire brigade!” she exclaimed. ”We might as well be in America at once. Really, John, this is a terrible disappointment. A fire brigade!
Do not tell me that the people here understand the steam-engine,--pray do not! All the delicacy of my illusions is vanis.h.i.+ng like a dream!”
Chrysophrasia sometimes reminds me of a certain imperial sportsman who once shot an eagle in the Tyrol.
”An eagle!” he cried contemptuously, when told what it was. ”Gentlemen, do not trifle with me,--an eagle always has two heads. This must be some other bird.”
In due time we reached the hotel. Paul was standing in the doorway, and came forward to help the ladies as they descended from the carriage, greeting them one by one. When his mother got out, he respectfully kissed her hand. To the surprise of most of us, Madame Patoff threw her arms round his neck, and embraced him with considerable emotion.
”Dear, dear Paul,--my dear son!” she cried. ”What a happy meeting!”
Paul was evidently very much astonished, but I will do him the credit to say that he seemed moved as he kissed his mother on both cheeks, for his face was pale and he appeared to tremble a little.
The travelers were conducted to their rooms by Macaulay, and I saw no more of them. But John insisted that I should dine with them in the evening. In the mean while I went home, and found Gregorios reading, as usual when he was not on duty at Yildiz-Kioshk,--the ”Star-Palace,”
where the Sultan resides.
”Have you deposited your friends in a place of safety?” he asked, looking up from his book. ”Have they all come,--even the old maid with the green eyes, and the mad lady whom Patoff is so unfortunate as to call his mother?”
”All,” I answered. ”They are real English people, and my old friend John Carvel is the patriarch of the establishment. There are maid-servants and men-servants, and more boxes than any house in Pera will hold. The old lady seems perfectly sane again.”
”Then she will probably die,” said Gregorios, rea.s.suringly. ”Crazy people almost always have a lucid interval before death.”
”You take a cheerful view,” I observed.
”Fate would confer a great benefit on Patoff by removing his mother from this valley of tears,” returned my friend. ”Besides, as our proverb says, mad people are the only happy people. Madame Patoff, in pa.s.sing from insanity to sanity, has therefore fallen from happiness to unhappiness.”
”If all your proverbs were true, the world would be a strange place.”
”I will not discuss the inexhaustible subject of the truth of proverbs,”
answered Balsamides. ”I only doubt whether Madame Patoff will be happy now that she is sane, and whether the uncertainty of the issue of our search may not drive her mad again. She will probably spoil everything by chattering at all the emba.s.sies. By the by, since we are on the subject of death, lunacy, and other similar annoyances, I may as well tell you that Laleli is very ill, and it is not expected that she can live. I heard it this morning on very good authority.”