The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

Suleima nestled a little closer to him. "Yes, I like it," she said, "but we must not go too often. But if you care to, you can come to the wall in fine weather always, and I will tell you whether it is possible. And, Mitsos, next time we go out bring your spear and resin, and let me see you fish. I should like to see you do that. Do you catch many?"

"The devil fly away with the fish!" said Mitsos. "I would sooner talk to you."

"How funny! I would sooner you fished; and, you see, we can talk, too. Will you let me help?"

Mitsos took up one of her hands again.

"It would be a heavy net you could draw in!" he said. "You have never felt the tug of a shoal."

"A whole shoal?" asked Suleima. "How many fish go to the shoal?"

Mitsos laughed. "Fifty for each of your fingers," he said, "and a hundred to spare. Sometimes they all swim together against the net, and though they are very little, many of them are strong, and pull like a horse. I cut my finger to the bone once against the net-rope. Look, here is the mark."

He held up his great brown hand, and Suleima traced with her little finger a white scar running up to the second joint of his forefinger.

"How horrid!" she said, concernedly, still drawing her finger up and down his. "Did it bleed much?"

"Half a bucketful. I must put the boat on the other tack. Take care; the sail will come across again."

The air struck cold as they went more into the wind, and Suleima wrapped her black bernouse more closely round her and nestled under shelter of the lad.

"You are cold?" he asked, suddenly.

"No, Mitsos, not if you sit like that. But isn't it ice to you? Have another piece of Rahat-la-koom?"

Mitsos grinned, showing his white teeth. "That will keep out the cold finely," he said. "Give it me yourself!"

They were rapidly approaching the wall, and in ten minutes more Mitsos stood up and took in the sail. The speed slackened, and, standing at the bows, he leaned forward, and, thrusting out with the pole, he brought the boat alongside. Then, springing up again, with the rope in his hand, he told Suleima to throw him up the end of the ladder. This he held down with his foot on the far side of the wall while she climbed up, pleasantly feeling the muscles of his leg strain as she stepped onto the rope.

The ground on the inside was a foot or two below the top of the wall, and, standing on the top a moment before stepping down, she suddenly bent her head down to him, and, brushing back his curls with her hand, kissed him lightly on the forehead.

"Good-night, little Mitsos," she whispered.

Then all in a flash her face flushed. "Mitsos," she said, quickly, and with a curious shyness, "promise me you will never kiss Zuleika; she is an old witch!" and without waiting for his reply she ran across to the dark house.

Mitsos sat perfectly still, tingling and alert, and he felt the blood throb and beat in his temples. He half started from his place to run after her, and half raised his voice to call, but remembered in time that he was close to the Turk's house. Something which let the two sit together like children was dead, but something had taken its place, and his heart sang to him.

He dropped down again into the boat, and for half an hour more he sat there without stirring, hearing the ripples tap against the side, and seeing them break in dim phosphorescent gleams of light. Then, with wonder on his lips and a smile in his eyes, he went silently home through the still night.

It was the night of the 1st of January, 1821, and Mitsos and Suleima were again sailing across the bay; this time, however, not out to sea, but to the shelving bays underneath the Tripoli hills, the scene of the fishing with Nicholas. It was the first time the two had been able to go out together since the night last recorded, for on that occasion Suleima had been caught by the eunuch coming in from the garden. Luckily for them both, Mitsos had not been seen, and her excuse was that she had a headache and could not sleep, so had sat in the garden for a while. Nothing more could be got out of her, and Zuleika, for one reason or another, had been loyal enough to preserve silence. But Suleima got beaten, and she judged it more prudent not to have any more headaches for a time. But as the fate that watches over wooings would have it, one night a fortnight afterwards the eunuch was found drunk, a particularly heinous crime, and, to one of his religion, blasphemous; and he was, therefore, dismissed. Suleima was sedulous to note the habits of his successor, and observed with much approval that he went to bed early and slept soundly, and at length she ventured to resume her excursions. She had more leisure than usual after her detection, for she was solitary behind lock and key; she had no sweets to eat, and her thoughts were ever with Mitsos. She, who had hardly seen a man, and had certainly never in the last ten years spoken to one except to the black, thick-lipped eunuch and Abdul Achmet, whose small, sensual eyes looked at her like a mole's about his fat, pendulous cheeks, could hardly believe that they and Mitsos, with his sun-browned, boyish face and fit, slender limbs, were creatures of the same race. From the first time that she had seen him only dimly as he sat in his boat, swaying regularly and gracefully to its motion, and heard him singing the old song which she remembered from her childhood, she had thought how charming it would be to live on his pattern, as free as the spring swallows, wholesomely and cleanly in the open air. Surely he had caught something, indefinable perhaps, but none the less certain, from wind and sun – a something which reminded her of a clear, light summer morning, when it was so pleasant to come out of the close, perfumed house, to have a breath of a more airy fragrance thrown at her by the sea-breeze, and feel with a cool shock a few dew-drops from the great climbing rose about the door shaken onto the bare flesh by the wind; for, unlike the Turks, she came of an outdoor race, and the inherited instinct had not been altogether eradicated by her hot-house, enclosed life.

Then by degrees this feeling had grown less general, but more personal. It was doubly delightful to be able to talk confidentially and naturally, as one child talks to another, to some one of her own age. She liked talking to Zuleika, but she preferred talking to Mitsos; it was a pleasure to make him laugh and show the milkiness of his white teeth, and she could always make him laugh. Zuleika had hideous teeth; one was all black and discolored, and for whole days together she would sit, a sloppy, dishevelled object, by the fire, saying it ached. She felt quite sure that Mitsos' teeth never ached, and for herself she did not know what aching meant. Again, when Abdul Achmet laughed, his cheeks wrinkled up till his eyes were nearly closed, and two queerest little dimples were dug one on each side of his mouth. What would happen, she had thought once, if she made him laugh and then held his eyes open so that they could not shut? She would have liked to try.

Then Mitsos – she felt it in her bones – evidently liked her very much, in quite a different way from which any one had liked her before. Zuleika liked her in a tepid, intermittent manner; but when her tooth ached she ignored her altogether, and had once slapped her in the face for a too obtrusive sympathy. And when Abdul came and took her chin between his fingers and turned up her face to his, and told her that she was getting very pretty, she turned cold all over. It reminded her of the way he had pointed at one of the turkeys in the yard and said it was becoming beautifully fat. Again, it had been quite unaccountably delightful to sit close to Mitsos and shelter under him from the wind, to be close to him and know him near. Finally, when they parted that night, and she had brushed back the curls from his forehead and kissed him, her feeling had been more unaccountable still. She had done it unthinkingly, but the moment it was done a whole mill-race of thoughts went bubbling unbidden through her head. She wanted to do it again, she wanted him to take her in his arms and press her close to him – she would not mind if it hurt. She hated Zuleika. She understood in a moment why, if Mitsos knew the least part of what she felt, he should have been angry when she told him what Zuleika said, and the next words had come out of her mouth outstripping, so it seemed, her thought. Then she had felt suddenly shy and frightened; she longed to stop where she was, for surely Mitsos understood what was so intimate to her. And so, being a woman, she instantly ran away, and never looked behind.

To-night she had sat by the wall for half an hour before he came, and the thought that perhaps he would not come had brought into her eyes silent, childish tears. He must come; she could not do without him. For herself she would have sat on the wall every night for months to go out with him; surely he could not be tired in a week or two of coming and not finding her there. But with the rising of the moon she had seen a sail far away that got nearer, and at last the boat grated gently against the wall.

"Is it you, Mitsos?" she whispered, and for answer the rope was flung up to her, and her young, black-eyed lover sprang to her side. She descended the ladder silently and stood in the stern; while he joined her, and with a vigorous push they were floating again alone in the centre of the vast, dim immensity. He set the sail and came and stood in front of her.

"Suleima," he whispered, "last time you kissed me. Will you let me kiss you?"

"Yes, Mitsos," she said, with a great, shy, bold joy in her heart, and put her face up, and he would have kissed her lightly on the forehead as she had kissed him. But suddenly that was impossible; they were no longer children, but lovers, and the next moment his arms were flung round her neck, her mouth pressed close to his, and each kiss left them hungrier for the next.

The wind was straight behind them, and they sat where they had sat before, and talked in low voices as if in fear of the jealousy of the stars and the night. Mitsos had got his fishing-spear and bag of resin on board, and after a while, at Suleima's suggestion, they went straight before the wind to the bay, where Mitsos said he could catch fish if she cared to see him. Half an hour's sail brought them across, and, grounding the boat by a bush of blackthorn that grew thick on the top of the rocks on the edge of the tideless sea, he took Suleima in his arms and waded through the shallow water to the head of the bay where he would fish, to save her the tramp through the undergrowth, which was thick and soaked with the night dews. She was but a feather's weight in his strong arms, her head lay on his shoulder, and she threw one arm round his neck for greater security. He made her a nest under a clump of rushes that grew on the edge of the dry sand, and then went back for his fishing things. To carry Suleima to land, he had only the shallowest water at the edge of the sea to walk through, and he had just turned up the bottom of his trousers; but where he was going to fish it would be deeper, and, as usual, he slipped them off, buckling his shirt, which reached to his knees, round his waist. He then lit his flare, and, stepping off into the deeper water, which was half-thigh deep, he went slowly along, peering cautiously at the bright circle of light cast by the resin.

Fish were plentiful, and Suleima, from her nest near, clapped her hands and laughed delightedly when Mitsos speared one larger than usual, and held it up flapping and wriggling to show her. She got so excited in his proceedings that she left her seat, and walked along the edge of the sand parallel with him, observing with the keenest interest what he did. Then, when she got tired of watching, Mitsos declared he was tired of fishing, and waded to shore with a creel full of fish.

Suleima had brought with her some Turkish tobacco, which she had taken from the house, and gave it to Mitsos to smoke. The other women of the harem all smoked, she said; for herself she had tried it once, but thought it horrid to the taste. But Mitsos might smoke it – yes, she would even light his pipe for him; and with a little pout of disgust she lit it at the flare and handed it to him, and he smoked it while they looked the fish over.

It was a night for the great lovers of romance to be abroad in; the air was of a wonderful briskness, making the pulse go quick, yet gentle and soft; the moon had set behind the hills to the west, and they sat close together beneath the wonderful twilight of stars, in a little sheltered nook beneath a great clump of tall, singing rushes. On the ground, in front, lay the resin flare, already burning low; but as Mitsos would fish no more that night he did not replenish it. Lower and lower it burned, but now and then it would shoot up with a sudden leap of flame, revealing each to the other, and Suleima would smile at Mitsos; but before she could see his mouth smile in answer, the flame would die down again into a flickering spot on the glowing, bubbling ash. But in the darkness she knew he smiled back at her; a whispered word would pass from one to the other, and the last flicker of flame showed a lover to the sight of each. Then drawing closer in the darkness, as if by some law which was moving each equally, their lips met again in the kiss that seemed to have never ceased between them. And the wind sang gently in the rushes, while before them spread the broad waters of the bay, just curdled over by the breeze; above, the austere stars burned down on them; behind, rose the empty-wooded hills, where once the soft armies of Dionysus revelled in love and wine, rising into the peaks above Tripoli.

The wind dropped for a moment, the rushes were silent, and in the lull Mitsos heard a mule bell behind them no great way off. He sat up and peered across the vine-grown strip of plain which lay between them and the mountain, but the skeins of night mist hung opaque and pearly gray above it.

In a few minutes, however, the sound got sensibly nearer, and the two rose and moved a score of yards farther down the beach, for a footpath round the head of the bay to Nauplia led across the top of it. Then across the sound of the bell they could hear the pattering footsteps of the mule, and in a few minutes more it and its rider emerged from the path which lay through the vineyards onto the open ground at the head of the beach. Just then the rider checked his beast, dismounted, and tied some grass round the tongue of the bell in order to muffle it, and struck a light with a flint and steel which he caught in tinder, and blew it gently till it sufficed to light his short chibouk. His face was towards them, and in the glow of the kindled tobacco it stood out vividly from the dark. It was Nicholas.

He mounted again and rode on, but Mitsos sat still, breathing hard and vacantly, and seeing only Nicholas's face standing out like a ghost in the darkness. Suleima touched him gently on the arm.

"Who was it?" she said. "He did not see us."

"It was my uncle," said Mitsos, in a dry voice. "No, he did not see us."

Then his self-control gave way, and he flung himself back on the ground.

"I am afraid," he said – "I do not know what is going to happen. He has come for me. I know it."

"For you?" asked Suleima. "What do you mean?"

"I shall have to go," said Mitsos. "Holy Virgin, but I cannot. I know nothing about what he wants me to do. I only know that I may – that I shall have to go away; that I shall have to leave you and perhaps never see you again. Oh," he cried, "I cannot, I cannot!"

Suleima was frightened.

"Mitsos, do not talk like that," she said, half sobbing; "do not be so unkind."

Mitsos recovered himself and felt ashamed.

"Oh, dearest of all and littlest," he said, soothingly, "I am a stupid brute to frighten you. Everything will be all right – I will come back – it is sure that I will come back. Only I promised him to do what he told me, and help him in something – it does not matter what – and I expect he has come to tell me he wants my help."

"Will not you tell me what it is?" asked Suleima, willing to be comforted.

"No, I promised I would keep it secret. But this I may tell you. You know they say – never repeat this – that the Greeks are going to rise against the Turks and turn them out. There may be fighting and bloodshed. But you hate the Turks as much as I do, darling, so you will be as glad as I if this comes true. Perhaps it might even happen that Abdul's house may be attacked, but you are quite safe if you will only do one thing. If ever it is attacked do not be afraid, but call out in Greek that you are a Greek and no Turk. And, oh, Suleima, pray to the Virgin and the Blessed Child that that day may come soon, for it will be thus and then that we shall be able to go together always."

"Is it about that you are going away?" said Suleima, with a sudden intuition.

Mitsos longed to tell her, but his promise to Nicholas kept him dumb. Then, as he had to answer, he lied boldly and unreservedly.

"It has nothing whatever to do with it," he said. "But oh, Suleima, forgive me for so frightening you – I did not mean what I said. And will you come to the wall again as often as you can? I may have to go away – indeed, I am afraid that is sure, but I do not know for how long. The first night I am back I shall come again to the wall, the dear white wall where we first met."

Suleima felt quite comforted. She was sure that nothing could go really wrong as long as Mitsos drew breath, and she bent down his head and kissed him.