They left Constantinople for Athens one moonlight night, three days
after the Hohenwalds had taken their departure, and as the evening and
the air were warm, they remained upon the upper deck until the boat had
entered the Dardanelles. There were few passengers, and Mrs. Downs
went below early, leaving Miss Morris and Carlton hanging over the
rail, and looking down upon a band of Hungarian gypsies, who were
playing the weird music of their country on the deck beneath them. The
low receding hills lay close on either hand, and ran back so sharply
from the narrow waterway that they seemed to shut in the boat from the
world beyond. The moonlight showed a little mud fort or a thatched
cottage on the bank fantastically, as through a mist, and from time to
time as they sped forward they saw the camp-fire of a sentry, and his
shadow as he passed between it and them, or stopped to cover it with
wood. The night was so still that they could hear the waves in the
steamer's wake washing up over the stones on either shore, and the
muffled beat of the engines echoed back from either side of the valley
through which they passed. There was a great lantern hanging midway
from the mast, and shining down upon the lower deck. It showed a group
of Greeks, Turks, and Armenians, in strange costumes, sleeping, huddled
together in picturesque confusion over the bare boards, or wide-awake
and voluble, smoking and chatting together in happy company. The music
of the tizanes rose in notes of passionate ecstasy and sharp,
unexpected bursts of melody. It ceased and began again, as though the
musicians were feeling their way, and then burst out once more into
shrill defiance. It stirred Carlton with a strange turbulent unrest.
From the banks the night wind brought soft odors of fresh earth and of
heavy foliage.
"The music of different countries," Carlton said at last, "means many
different things. But it seems to me that the music of Hungary is the
music of love."
Miss Morris crossed her arms comfortably on the rail, and he heard her
laugh softly. "Oh no, it is not," she said, undisturbed. "It is a
passionate, gusty, heady sort of love, if you like, but it's no more
like the real thing than burgundy is like clear, cold, good water.
It's not the real thing at all."
"I beg your pardon," said Carlton, meekly. "Of course I don't know
anything about it." He had been waked out of the spell which the night
and the tizanes had placed upon him as completely as though some one had
shaken him sharply by the shoulder. "I bow," he said, "to your superior
knowledge. I know nothing about it."
"No; you are quite right. I don't believe you do know anything about
it," said the girl, "or you wouldn't have made such a comparison."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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