98. A Prayer For Love

CHAPTER ONE 1880-1

CHAPTER ONE

1880Dalma arrived at the Port of Athens and saw the Steamer in which she was to travel to England at the end of one of the quays.

Holding her dog by its lead and carrying her case in the other hand, she left the hired carriage that had brought her and walked towards the ship.

The gangway was down and she walked up it to the Purser’s office.

“I am booked in,” she told him, “as the Honourable Miss Dalma Wickham.”

The Purser looked down at the long list in front of him and Dalma bent to pat her dog.

As the Purser saw him, he exclaimed,

“You can’t bring the dog, Miss Wickham!”

“I cannot do what?” she enquired.

“You can’t bring a dog with you on the voyage. No animals are allowed.”

“They did not tell me that when I booked my ticket at your Travel Agents,” she countered.

“Well, that was very remiss of them,” the Purser answered, “but I regret, miss, it’s a rule of this Line that we do not allow animals of any sort. We’ve had trouble with them in the past and we now have instructions not to take them aboard.”

“But I cannot leave my lovely dog behind,” Dalma protested vehemently.

“I’m afraid that you’ll have to or find another ship that doesn’t mind having animals on it,” he insisted.

Dalma waited a moment as if she thought he might change his mind.

Then, as the Purser turned round to speak to one of his assistants, she walked slowly back down the gangway.

Twi-Twi was a little terrier she had become very fond in the last three weeks. He had been given to her by a Professor who was a great friend of her father’s.

*

It was through Professor Angelos that she had come to Athens in the first place.

Lord Wickham was a long-serving member of the Prime Minister, Mr. Disraeli’s Cabinet, and he had thought it a good idea for his daughter, Dalma, to go to Greece and learn a little Greek.

Her mother had died after her eighteenth birthday and Dalma was therefore in deep mourning for at least six months.

“You can hardly stay in London, my dearest,” Lord Wickham sighed, “and not go to parties.”

“I don’t mind missing the parties,” Dalma said, “as long as I can be with you, Papa.”

“Regrettably, I am extremely busy at the moment,” he replied, “and now spend very little time at home. I was thinking about it last night and I thought it would interest you to go to Greece and learn a little of the language. I had a letter only the other day from Professor Angelos, who, as you know, is an old friend of mine.”

He paused before he continued,

“He said he hoped I would see him again as he is now getting very old and he wanted us to have a last laugh, as we always had together, before he died.”

Dalma was listening, but made no comment and her father went on,

“So I have written to the Professor saying that I am unable to come myself, but I thought it would be a good idea, as you have only recently lost your mother and are in mourning, if you spent a little time in Greece.”

Dalma would have disagreed, but he carried on,

“He has written back sending me the name of an excellent couple who he says will take a few distinguished pupils and he looks forward enormously to seeing you.”

“But Papa, I really don’t want to leave you,” Dalma persisted.

“You can come back here as soon as you are out of mourning and I promise that you will have a great success in London. You are very beautiful, my dearest, and I have seen that beautiful women, however old they are, always have a number of attentive dancing partners.”

“It certainly sounds very attractive,” Dalma replied. “At the same time – ”

“I am not going to argue about it,” he interrupted. “I know that I cannot entertain for you as I want to do as a debutante and I am sure you will have a much better time in Athens where no one will be worrying whether you are in mourning or not.”

Dalma realised only too well that, when her father made up his mind, it was, as her mother always said, easier to move a mountain than to oppose him.

“Very well, Papa,” she agreed. “Although I hate leaving you, especially as I have been at school for so long, I will go to Athens.”

He had duly written to the Professor and he made all the arrangements for her to stay with the couple who, as he had said in his letter, taught a few prominent pupils and between them they taught them to speak perfect Greek both Ancient and Modern.

It was not surprising, as her father’s daughter, that they found Dalma to be the best pupil they had ever had.

She felt rather lonely at first, but, as the weeks went by, she found that Athens was enchanting.

Every day she discovered new and wonderful facts about the myriad of Greek Gods and Goddesses, who had made Greece the most enchanting country in the world.

The Professor, although elderly, was a kinder man than she expected. He introduced her to a great number of his friends and many of them were, of course, old but very intelligent.

As Dalma possessed her father’s brain, she found herself drawn into intellectual discussions that might only have come from books.

Now it was more than six months since she had come to Greece and her father had written telling her it was time to come home.

He wrote,

“Parliament is rising next week and I will not be so busy as I am at the moment. Therefore, my dearest Dalma, I am longing to see you and I know you will have a great deal to tell me.”

Dalma had hurried off to the Professor and told him that she had heard from her father and would be leaving.

“I will indeed miss you, my dear,” he sighed. “But, as a matter of fact, I will not be here long to miss anyone.”

Dalma looked at him.

“Do you mean – ” she began hesitatingly.

“I am afraid that I don’t have too long to live,” he answered. “The doctors have seen me today and give me only a short time in which to say goodbye to my friends.”

“But they might be wrong,” Dalma suggested.

“I don’t mind,” the Professor replied. “I have lived a most interesting life and the only thing I worry about is who will look after my dog, Twi-Twi, after I have gone.”

“Oh, let me do it for you,” Dalma offered at once.

“That is just what I hoped you would say. Will you really take him back to England and let him scamper, as he wants to do, through the beautiful gardens you have at your house in the country?”

“He will just love it,” Dalma enthused, “and he will love the Parks in London that are full of dogs like him.”

“Then I will trust Twi-Twi to you,” the Professor said. “I would much rather you and your father had him than anyone else I know.”

“I take that as a great compliment,” Dalma smiled, “and thank you, thank you!”

Twi-Twi was a very attractive Yorkshire terrier of two years old and had been looked after by the Professor ever since he was born.

He was an intelligent little dog and very friendly and Dalma thought he would be a perfect companion when her father was busy talking to the Prime Minister.

*

Now, as she walked slowly back from the ship, she was wondering what she could do.

She could only, as the Purser had suggested, find another ship that would take him and there were not many ships in the Port at that particular moment.

She looked round thinking that the majority of them looked small and uncomfortable. Not at all ships in which she would enjoy the journey to England.

She had enjoyed sailing out on a British ship and had thought it would be the obvious way to return home.

Her luggage had already gone ahead of her early in the morning, but she did not worry about it, knowing that it would be carried to England.

When she let her father know what had happened, he would arrange for someone to collect it when it arrived, but equally she was thankful she had enough clothes in her case to wear on the voyage.

She would obviously not be as smart as she would have been if her trunks had been with her, but, as she had a very trim figure and it was summertime, she had a number of things that she would need in the case she was carrying.

She now walked round the Port looking at the ships and some were obviously rough and uncomfortable and she thought it would be embarrassing for her to mix with the crew – many were foreign with a number from Africa.

Then, at the end of the harbour, she saw a large and very magnificent yacht.

It was obviously English as she could read its name on its stern which was The Mermaid.

She wondered if it was possible for her to ask the owner of it if he would take her as a passenger.

Then she thought it was very unlikely, especially if he was an important Englishman and he would not want a strange young woman as an uninvited passenger.

Thinking back she remembered a number of people she had met with her mother and father who were rich and prestigious enough to own a yacht and, of course, to appear at Cowes when the racing took place under the eagle eye of the Prince of Wales.

At the same time there was no other ship in which she would wish to travel in the harbour.

She might have to wait for a long time until one arrived that would agree to take Twi-Twi.

‘If he says ‘no’ then he says ‘no’,’ she told herself. ‘But it will not harm me to ask. It’s a big enough yacht for him to see very little of me if I am not to his liking.’

Yet it required courage and, she felt, impertinence to go up to the owner of such a magnificent yacht and ask if he would give her a lift.

Then she told herself that, as The Mermaid was so grand, he was quite obviously an influential person and an elderly one. In which case, like the Professor, he would welcome a visitor and someone to talk to.

What she was thinking made her laugh at herself.

‘I am trying to make it sound better than it is,’ she mused. ‘And I must be very brave.’

She was just about to walk nearer to the yacht when there was the noise of a loud explosion at the far end of the quay near to the entrance.

It was either a gun or a bomb that had exploded.

The noise brought a surge of people onto the decks of the ships near it.

Then there was the sound of men shouting at each other.

While Dalma stood looking on and trying to decide what was happening, a group of young seamen ran down the gangway of The Mermaid. They hurried past her as they went to see what was going on.

One man was slower than the others and she asked him in English,

“What has happened?”

“I thinks it be the revolutionaries, miss,” he replied, “and they be out to make trouble.”

He did not wait for her to answer but hurried on, making for where the noise seemed to have become even louder.

It was at this point two other seamen came out of The Mermaid to join the others.

There was another explosion, but not as loud as the first one and then more men ran from the yacht.

Dalma thought by the way they were dressed that they had been working on the yacht’s machinery.

It was as the last man shot past her that she had an idea.

She was almost certain there could be no one left on board by the number of men who had already passed her.

The gangway was out of sight of anyone in the stern and without thinking any more about it, she walked up the gangway with Twi-Twi beside her and moved inside the yacht.

She had been right in thinking that there was no one about. She passed the open door of the Saloon and there was no one inside.

Because she had been on yachts with her father, she guessed the plan of this vessel.

So she rapidly slipped down the companionway to where the best cabins were situated with the Master cabin at the far end with three more cabins on either side of the passage.