The Capsina. An Historical Novel
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"Heavy? And do you never carry the little one because he is too heavy?"
And she got up quickly and moved towards the door. There Suleima paused a moment.
"Shall we not say a word for those whom you have killed?" she said. "It is kinder, and they will offend us no more. So send peace to their souls, thrice holy Mother of God!"
She crossed herself thrice, and followed the Capsina out. The moon had already risen high towards the zenith, and shone with a very pure, clear light. Like a caressing and loving hand, it touched the sun-dried and bowlder-sown ground between them and the road; it was poured out like a healing lotion over its roughness, and lay on it with a cooling touch. The noises of the night joined in chorus to make up the one great silence of the night. A bird fluted at intervals from the trees, frogs croaked in the marshes below, an owl swept by with a whisper of white wings and a long-drawn hoot. Below lay the bay, an unemblazoned shield of silver, and on the left hand the fires of the Greeks round Nauplia pierced red holes in the dark promontory. A falling star, ever a good omen to the peasants, shot and faded in the western sky, and the stream that ran through the vineyards towards the marsh spoke quietly to itself, like one talking in sleep. And something of the spirit of the stillness touched the Capsina's soul. The great impossible thing was not less impossible nor less to be desired, but she had not known till now how aggravating and chafing a thing it had been to feel this wild, vague hatred against Suleima. That had gone. She could no more hate this brave, beautiful girl, who had treated her with so large and frank a courtesy, with such true and stingless sympathy, than she could have hated Mitsos himself. Only an hour ago it would have seemed to her that pity or sympathy from Suleima would be the crown of her rank offence; now it was a thing that soothed and strengthened. Her pride did not disdain it; it was too gracious and large-hearted to be disdained. And the baby slept against her heart, that baby with its three words – father, mother, Capsina.
The two passed through the garden and into the veranda. The house-door was open, as Suleima had left it in her flight, and on the threshold she paused for the Capsina to enter first.
"You are welcome," she said; and then, in the courteous phrase she had heard in Abdul's house; "The house is yours."
Suleima would have made a bed for the Capsina in Father Andréa's room, who was away in Nauplia, but the girl asked if she might sleep with her, and instead they went together to Suleima's room. A big double mattress on a wooden frame was the bed; a little cot for the baby stood at the foot of it. Mitsos's great plank washtub stood in a corner, and there was a press for clothes. The moon shone full in at the window, making a great splash like a spill of milk on the floor, and there was no need for other light.
Suleima was tired and soon fell asleep, but the Capsina lay long with eyes closed, but intensely awake. A mill-race of turbulent, unasked-for thoughts whirled and dashed down the channels of her brain; she clinched her hands and bit her lips to keep them away – to keep her even from crying aloud. The blood and flesh of her, young, tingling, and alert, was up in revolt, lashing itself against the hard, cruel bars of circumstance. She ought never to have come here to sleep where he had slept; she had done a stupid and sweet thing, and she was paying for it heavily. At last she could stand it no longer, and rising very quietly for fear of disturbing Suleima, she dressed again and let herself out of the house.
The hour of her weakness was upon her, and she lived back into the years of childhood, when one thing will make the world complete and its absence is an inconsolable ache. Like a child, too, she abandoned herself to the imperativeness of her need; nothing else would satisfy; nothing else was ever so faintly desirable. Yet she could only stretch out her hands to the night, every fibre of her tingling, and the silent cry, "I want, I want!" went up beseechingly, hopelessly, into the indifferent moonlight, a dumb, dry litany of supplication, not only to Heaven, but to all the cool sleeping earth; to tree, bush, stream – all that knew him. But after a while she saw and scorned herself. Where were all the great schemes and deeds in which she shared? Was their magnificence a whit impaired because she, an incomparably small atom, was in want of one thing? And by degrees made sane, and weary with struggle, she came to herself, and going back into the house, lay down again by Suleima; and when morning came Suleima was loath to wake her, for she slept so sound and peacefully, so evenly her bosom marked her quiet breathing.
Waking brought an hour of sweet and bitter things to the girl; washing and dressing the boy was almost wholly sweet, and never before had that sunny child of love been so laughed over and kissed. The Capsina showed what was to the experienced mother the strangest ignorance of the infant toilet, and even the adorable creases in his own pink skin and the ever-new wonder of his ten divisible and individual toes palled in grave interest to the owner before these new and original methods. Sweeter even than that was the unprompted staccato, "Cap-sin-a, Cap-sin-a," "like a silly parrot," so said Suleima. Indeed, the girl was truly a woman, though the profound judge, Mitsos, had given her a sex all to herself, and the little household duties so lovingly done by Suleima were a keen pleasure to her to watch and assist in. And after they had breakfasted she still lingered.
"Let me wait a little longer," she said to Suleima; "but I will not wait unless you promise to do all you would do if I was not here."
So Suleima, to whom the mending and patching of Mitsos's clothes was a Danaid labor, went into the house, and came out again on to the veranda with an armful of his invalid linen. There were holes to be patched in trousers, tears to be sewn in shirts, and places worn thin to be pieced.
"This is what I do when I have nought else to do," she said. "Yet if I had twenty hands, and no work for any of them, I believe I should never get to the end. The great loon seems never to sit down except as on a nail. Last month only he put his pipe, all alight, into his coat-pocket. Right through the lining went the burn, and right through his shirt, and he never knew it until the fire nipped him."
The Capsina laughed.
"How like him! Oh, how very like him!" she said. "May I help you? Yet, indeed, I think I have forgotten how to sew."
Suleima gave her a shirt to mend, off the arm of which Mitsos had torn a great piece – "as like as not to light the pipe that burned him," said his wife – and a very poor job she made of it. She held it up to Suleima in deprecating dismay when she had finished it, and Suleima laughed to choking.
"No, you shall not better it," she said, as the Capsina prepared to rip off the piece again. "Indeed, it shall stop as it is, and Mitsos shall wear it like that. He shall know who did it, and then perhaps he will think the higher of my fingers."
And she snatched it out of the Capsina's hands and ran with it into the house, where she put it among the finished linen, where he should find it, and stare in wonder at this preposterous housewifery.
The Capsina had not tried her hand at any further job when she returned, and presently after she rose.
"I must get back," she said, "for at ten we must be on the road to Nauplia. Oh, Suleima!" She paused, and the unshed tears stood in her black eyes. "I have not skill at speaking," she said, "and when the heart is full the words choke each other. But it is this: you have made me different; you have made me better."
Suleima stood a moment with that brilliant, happy smile in her eyes, her mouth serious and sweet. Then she threw her arms round the girl's neck and kissed her.
"You will be happy," she said, with her face close to hers and looking in her eyes. "Promise me you will be happy, for indeed that is among the first things I desire."
The Capsina shook her head.
"I cannot promise that," she said, "and I do not know if it matters much. But I will be brave, or try to be, and I will try to be good. Luckily I have much to do."
"You will take Mitsos again?" asked Suleima.
"If he will come – if you will let him come."
"I let him come?" and she laughed. "I think I have not made myself plain."
They stood there a moment longer, cheek to cheek, and then the Capsina gently drew away.
"Good-bye," she said. "But I will come again before I leave Nauplia."
And she went quickly down the garden path, paused a moment at the gate, looking back, then stepped out along the white sun-stricken road.
CHAPTER XIII
Kolocotrones and his followers had had no hand in the destruction of Dramali's army – indeed, the only share he had taken in that great and bloody deed was to let the Albanian guard pass on their way unmolested; but whether on the grounds of that merciful act, or because he had been appointed generalissimo of the Greek forces, he claimed, and in fact secured, a very considerable share of what Niketas had taken. Nor had he been idle during the amnesty at Nauplia, having supplied immense amounts of grain and other supplies to the beleaguered garrison at starvation rates. Ali of Argos, who was in command of the Turks, had seen that something had miscarried in the conduct of the fleet, and was provident enough to purchase very considerable provisions, almost satisfying the greed of Kolocotrones. And now that the Turks were in no danger of being starved out, the generalissimo absented himself from the besieging force, and executed several very neat and profitable raids along the shores of the Corinthian gulf. Certainly for a month or two the town was amply provided, while the Greek fleet cruising in the mouth of the gulf of Spetzas would prevent any immediate relief being brought by the Turkish ships. When the provisions were exhausted, Kolocotrones intended to try and do a little more provision dealing, and if, as seemed possible, the temper of the army would no longer countenance this marketing, he would certainly be on the spot when the Turks surrendered, to take possession of the town in the name of the republic, and of as much treasure as he could lay hands on in his own.
During his absence, however, certain changes took place in the conduct of the siege. The other leaders, tired, perhaps, and a little ashamed of all this juggling with treaties that they never meant to abide by, and of this haggling over prices with their enemies, or else knowing that if Kolocotrones was there he would take the lion's share of the spoils, made a spirited though ineffectual attempt, since Ali had broken off negotiations, to bring the siege to a conclusion in his absence. During the spring many volunteers from England and France had offered their services to the revolutionists; there had even been formed a corps of Philhellenes, and several of these, notably Colonel Jourdain, a French artilleryman, and two Englishmen, Hastings and Hane, had put themselves at the disposal of the Greek troops in Nauplia. Jourdain, an ingenious but impractical young man, had urged the Greeks to try firing combustible shot at the town. He held out good hope that they would set the town on fire – with luck they might even demolish the enemy's powder-magazine and burn their provision houses, full of the provisions which had just been sold to them. And the captains, jingling with the gold of the payment, found this plan humorous.
The fort standing on the island in the bay had been put into the hands of the Greeks at the first pseudo-surrender of the town, and though Ali declared that the treaty which gave it them being null and void, as they had not done their part in providing transport-vessels, it should be returned to the Turks, the answer that the Greeks gave was, "Come and take it." And as the Turks were not in a position to come and take it, it was obviously misplaced Quixotism to let it stand empty. From there the ingenious Jourdain suggested that the combustible shot should be fired, but his ingenuity further served him to relieve himself of the responsibility of the attempt, and Hastings and Hane, though without much faith in the method, obtained leave of the Greek captains to do it themselves.
Accordingly, Hastings was made captain of the fort garrison, which consisted of twenty boatmen from Kranidi, who knew about as much of artillery as of astronomy, and he surveyed his men with some amusement, and spoke pithily:
"We are to make Nauplia as full of holes as a net and as hot as hell," he said. "Train the guns, if you know what that means. You do not? I will teach you."
There were half a dozen 32-pounders and three 68-pounders of seven-inch bore. The fort was an old Venetian work, tottery and unstable as Reuben, commanded by the guns of Nauplia; and Hastings, surveying it, turned to Hane.
"From the town I could engage to knock this place into biscuits in ten minutes by a stop-watch," he said.
Hane laughed.
"We shall knock it to bits ourselves in not much longer with the concussion of our own guns if the Turks don't hit us," he said. "I would as soon sail across the Bay of Biscay in a paper boat."
Jourdain's combustible balls were made to be fired from the smaller guns, and the two spent a sulphurous morning. They made good shooting with them, and it is true that they discharged immense volumes of smoke when they struck, but there seemed no truth in the proverb that where there is smoke there is also fire. Jourdain had manufactured some twenty of them, and in an hour they had used them all up. The breeze was blowing from the town, and volumes of vile-smelling vapor were wafted on it. Hane was a man of few and pointed words.
"So here is the last of the Froggy's stink-pots," was all his comment when the last of the shells was fired.
But the Greeks were in raptures of delight. It seemed impossible that so magnificent a firework should be ineffective, and they strongly recommended a repetition of the display; but Hastings meant business, and, after some parley, was allowed to make another attempt, not with the "stink-pots," but with ordinary shot from the 68-pounders; for the 32-pounders were, so he believed, of too light a calibre to be effective at the distance.
Next day the heavier cannonade went on. The Turks returned the fire with vigor, but without much success, and, as Hastings had anticipated, the chief risk was from the concussion of their own artillery, which dangerously shook the faulty and ill-built walls. After the first day it was found impossible to fire the bigger guns, and the 32-pounders, with their light shells, were soon seen to be useless; Hastings, however, kept up the cannonade for two days more, partly to give practice to the untrained gunners, partly because he was of a nature that groans to be doing nothing.
At the end of the third day the Turkish fire ceased altogether, for the flight and destruction of Dramali's army had become known, and it was no longer possible to hope that by a show of resistance and brisk firing, they might encourage the timid Serashier to march from Argos and attempt to raise the siege. Had he known it, the town was now so well supplied with provisions that, even if they had to evacuate it, they could have joined forces with him and marched to Corinth. But now, as throughout the war, what seemed blind chance, but what was really the legitimate result of cowardly and hesitating policy, once more combined to fight against them.
So the Turkish fire ceased, and as it was proved to satiety that the smaller guns of the island fort were no more than a summer rain to the fortification of the town, Hastings ceased his fire too, and with Hane made a detailed examination of the fort, with a view to strengthening the walls, and enabling them to stand the concussion from the heavier guns. With a little pulling down, a little patching, and a rubble buttress or two, it seemed easily possible to strengthen one bastion which held two of the 68-pounders, so that they might fire without the risk of bringing down the walls on their own heads. But that afternoon a message arrived from the captain, Poniropoulos: their firing had ceased, the guns produced no impression on the fortifications. The Greeks were infinitely obliged to them, but they must not hope to share in the plunder from Nauplia, nor would rations be any longer supplied to them. For the present it was not the intention of the commanders to continue this gun practice. Dramali's army had gone; the fleet had not come; they would sit down and wait the inevitable end.
Hastings chucked this note into the sea.
"There is no answer," he said to the boatman who had brought it.
He turned to Hane.
"It is no use waiting here if we are not to use the guns," he said. "They say we need not expect plunder from Nauplia. Do they think we are all like the old man in the brass helmet?"
CHAPTER XIV
Mitsos returned home after the destruction of Dramali's army, arriving there the day after the Capsina had left. Suleima met him at the gate.
"Oh, welcome, Mitsos!" she cried, in a hurry. "And I, too, have seen her. She has been here."
"I seem of little account," said Mitsos; "but who may 'she' be?"
"When you talk of 'she,' do I not know whom you mean? You are less wise than I. And she saved my life and that of the littlest."
"The Capsina?" cried Mitsos.
"Yes, slow one."
And Suleima told him how she had fled to Tiryns, and how the Capsina had concealed her and the little one till the Turks had been routed; only she did not tell that which it was not for Mitsos to know.
"So come in now, Mitsos, and you shall eat and wash – and indeed you are as dusty as a hen – and in the evening you shall go to Nauplia, and thank her, if so be you are pleased at what she did."
Suleima went to the bedroom and laid out for him a clean fustanella and shirt, the one on which the Capsina had used her unaccustomed needle, and went out smiling to herself. In a little while came Mitsos's voice, calling her, and back she went very grave.
He held out a ragged sleeve, with stitches loose and large.
"I have a fine housewife," said he, very sarcastically.
Suleima examined the shirt.
"Indeed, it was torn much," she said; "but it does not seem to me badly mended."
Mitsos shrugged his shoulders hugely.
"It is as I have always said," he remarked; "a woman cannot even mend a shirt."
"Who mends your things when you are cruising, Mitsos?" she asked.
"I don't know. They are always well done. The Capsina is excepted; she can do everything."
Suleima could not keep the corners of her mouth from breaking down, and next moment she burst out laughing.
"It was she did who it," she said; "I swear to you it was she."
Mitsos had half slipped off the shirt, but on it went again in a twinkling.
"It is not badly mended," said Suleima, still laughing, "but I could do it better. Take another one, Mitsos. I will mend this again. Ah, it is less good than I thought. See how big and bad are those stitches. Oh, it is shocking! Off with it! I will not have for a husband one they would think was a beggar."
Mitsos looked at her darkly and sideways.
"This, no doubt, is the best way to mend a shirt, though I know nought of shirt-mending," he said. "Do not be too proud to take example, Suleima. See how fine and big are the stitches. Why, she would mend ten shirts while you mended one."
"Even so," said Suleima; "indeed, if she mended a dozen while I did one, it would not surprise me, or more than that even. And see how convenient on a hot day like this; the wind will blow coolly on your arm through the stitches."
Mitsos broke out laughing.
"She shall see me in it," he cried. "And, oh little wife, I am pleased to be home again. Dust and hot wind were the drink in the Larissa, so see that there is wine to fill even me. Oh, I love wine!" he cried.
"Ah, it is for the wine alone you would be home again," said Suleima, with the light of love returned in her eyes.
Mitsos bent down from his great height, and put his face to hers.
"Yes, for the wine alone," he said, softly, "the wine of many things. And are you not wine to my soul, my own dear one?"
Soon after they had dinner, and, dinner finished, Mitsos set off into Nauplia. The Revenge was fretting at her anchor in the land-breeze as a horse, eager to be off, plays with its bridle, but close under the fort where Hastings and Hane had fired the incombustible balls he saw the Capsina's boat, a light caique, in which she sailed on her hurricane errands when in port, which would go like a fish if there was wind, and could be pulled by one man. Even Mitsos, used as he was to over-canvassed boats, used to feel certain qualms when the little cockleshell, with its tower of sail, was scudding through a broken sea. But the Capsina, knowing this, used to watch his face for any sign of apprehension, till he, seeing her, would exclaim:
"It is as a bird with wings and no body, and that is not the safer sort of bird; and oh, Capsina, drowning is a cold manner of death. Oh yes, hoist more sail, by all means, and I shall pray the while."
It was the day after Poniropoulos had told Hastings that his services were no longer required, and both Poniropoulos and the gunners under Hastings were feeling a thought disconcerted. The Capsina had approved very warmly of that silent and iron man, and when, on going that morning to the fort, she had found Hastings gone she sailed across with dipping gunwale to Poniropoulos and demanded where and why he had disappeared.
Thus Poniropoulos learned her true opinion of him, and she went back to the island where Mitsos found her.
"Ignorant folk," she had been saying, "always think that no one is so wise as they. When you came here you knew nothing. You have been taught to fire off a gun without getting in front of it, and you think you know all. Why did you let Hastings go? What did he care about the plunder of Nauplia? If you had asked him to stop, he would have stopped. You know that as well as I. He saw that if you continued to fire the big guns the fort would tumble about your long ears. So what have you done since? Eaten garlic and talked about piasters! Oh, I will teach you!"
To her, shaking her fist, Mitsos appeared in the doorway. She looked up once, dropped her eyes, and looked up again. Then she turned to the gunners.
"Go away, pigs, all of you!" she cried. "He and I will talk things over, and there will soon be orders. The place must be repaired at once."
And she stood there, looking out of the window, till the men had filed out.
Then Mitsos approached.
"Capsina," he said, "I have seen Suleima. She has told me – "
He did not pause in his speech, but as he said those words, the color was already struck from the girl's face, leaving it as white as a lamp-globe when the light is extinguished, for, for the moment, she thought Suleima had told him all. She turned a little more away from him.
"She has told me what you have done for me and mine," he went on, "how you saved her; how you put yourself between her and death. And I – God made me so stupid that I cannot even find words to thank you."
It was a glorified face that turned to him one smile.
"Oh, little Mitsos!" she said. "Surely we do not need words for such things. When you saved my life at Porto Germano, did I thank you for it? I think I only said, 'How slow you are,' when you picked up my knife for me. So that is finished. We had a long talk, we washed and dressed the littlest one, and he said 'Capsina.' That pleased me in an extraordinary manner, but you remember that I like children. And Suleima is a fine woman, a woman, yet not foolish, the sort of woman that does not make one wish to be a man, and those are rare. So I approve, but I doubt whether she is severe enough to you. A wife should not be too full of care for the husband."
"Indeed, I have been speaking to her to-day," said Mitsos, "saying she is not careful enough of me. A wife should be able to sew and mend, should she not? And see what a shirt she has given me."
And Mitsos pulled his shirt-sleeve round till the patch was shown, and made a marvellously poor attempt to look grave; and, each seeing that the other knew, they burst out laughing, and the Capsina gave Mitsos a great slap on the shoulder.