Chapter Six
Drogo stood in the bow watching the phosphorescence on the water as The Thistle steamed across the Black Sea.
Tonight they would be passing through the Bosporus and he wondered if he was making a mistake in not begging Captain McKay to stop at Constantinople.
He was well aware that there was a submarine cable that the British had used for some years.
It ran across Europe to Constantinople and then through Turkey to the Persian Gulf and on to India.
It had, however, never been very efficient because of the unreliability of the Turkish section.
What Drogo was afraid of was that the secret communications he would send to the Viceroy and to the Earl of Rosebery might be intercepted by the Russians.
On the other hand at Alexandria there was the new submarine cable that had been opened in 1870.
This cable ran from England via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Suez and Aden, all in British hands, to Bombay.
It was therefore safer as well as quicker to communicate with London from Alexandria than from Constantinople.
Anyway he knew it would have caused endless arguments and disagreeableness with the Captain.
He was already driving The Thistle far above its normal speed so that he would not be late in delivering his cargo.
Fortunately the weather was fine and the sea smooth and Drogo had also learnt that Captain McKay had recently installed what amounted to a new engine in The Thistle.
During the voyage he had found the Captain an interesting man.
He would have enjoyed spending more time talking to him if he had not wanted to be with Thekla.
It was only in the evening, when he sent her to bed early, that he could be alone with the Captain.
He then learnt a great deal about the cargo business in Eastern Europe and the very strange merchandise that was carried from country to country.
Usually after he had talked to the Captain for an hour or so, he would go quietly below, hoping that Thekla would be asleep.
At any rate because he had been so stern with her concerning their relationship, she pretended to be.
But, when he was lying on the floor, restless because she was near him and yet as far away as if she was in the sky, he found it impossible to sleep.
It was equally impossible to think of anything but her.
His whole body cried out for her, yet he knew that what he felt for the beautiful little Princess was something very different from the mere physical urge of a man for a woman.
Everything about her was what he had always admired in a woman and wanted to find in his wife.
He loved her courage.
The courage that had driven her to escape from the Palace on a mad escapade, but had also kept her quiet, calm and unhysterical when the revolution broke out.
She had not cried on hearing of her father’s death, although she often spoke of him affectionately and he was sure she thought of him continually.
She was also facing an unknown future in a strange land in a manner that he would have admired in any man let alone a woman.
Besides all this she had so many other qualities that he found irresistible.
She would laugh light-heartedly and naturally at anything that amused her.
She was deeply moved by beauty and a tale of suffering or unhappiness would be reflected by a mistiness in her eyes.
He thought that no man could be with her for long without falling head over heels in love.
The reason that she was so unspoilt, so innocent and pure was that no man had ever moved her emotionally until she had met him.
‘She will find another man more suitable than I am, whom she will be able to marry,’ he told himself grimly.
He knew, if he was truthful, that there was a vibration between them that joined them indivisibly and the Creator had made them for one another.
Yet he asked himself what was the point of thinking about it.
When he had taken her to England and handed her over to her relatives, there would be no point in his ever seeing her again.
He knew that he would be always thinking of her.
Just as now, when he looked at the moonlight on the sea, it made him think of the softness of her lips beneath his when he had kissed her for the first time.
Impatiently, because he was afraid of his own thoughts, he turned away to walk along the deck.
Usually he stayed longer before he returned to the cabin where his bed on the floor was waiting for him.
Thekla always arranged it for him before she climbed into bed.
In the morning she tidied away the pillow and the blanket just in case by some unfortunate chance Captain McKay became aware that he was sleeping on the floor.
He would then be suspicious that there was something wrong in their relationship.
So far they had been successful in convincing him that Thekla came from Scotland.
It was explained to him that she had lived, however, in England for so many years that she did not know as much about Scotland as did her husband.
Drogo, who had been to Scotland several times, managed to be very voluble about the sport, describing how many salmon he had caught and how many grouse he had shot.
However, because the Captain was pleased to have a fellow Scot with him, he did most of the talking.
He told them about his life as a boy, how he had run away to sea when he was only twelve.
He described the hardships he had endured before finally he owned his own ship and could travel wherever there was cargo to be found.
These conversations took place during the meals, which they ate with him alone.
There was not much room on the bridge, but Drogo learnt that, having given up his own cabin, the Captain also slept there.
They were waited on by a cook who was Chinese and, to Drogo’s surprise the food, if not exciting, was edible.
When they ran a line with bait on it behind the ship as The Thistle sailed down the Black Sea, they managed to catch three sturgeon.
These made a welcome addition to the food that had been taken aboard at Ampula.
Because he was eating at regular hours and was also resting, Drogo was not as thin as he had been when he escaped from Russia into Kozan.
The lines of tension had left his face and he was, in fact, although he did not realise it, better looking than he had been before.
He tried not to see the admiration mixed with a much deeper emotion in Thekla’s eyes.
There was no doubt that she grew lovelier every day and he was aware that the very mixed crew watched her moving about the deck.
Every one of them, from the cabin boy, who was Singhalese to the First Mate who was half-Turkish, stared at her in admiration.
To Drogo’s surprise there were no English or Scotsmen aboard.
When he asked the Captain why not, he said briefly,
“They price themselves too dear! So I employ the fall-out from other countries, who are out of work, cost little and are not too proud to take orders.”
Drogo smiled.
When he heard the Captain giving his orders, he understood.
Any man from his own country would have resented the way he bawled at them, using language that he hoped Thekla would not understand.
He kept her out of the way of the Captain and the crew as much as possible and they found a shady place on deck where they could sit and talk.
Because she was interested, he would tell her a little of his adventures since he had left India and she was also intrigued by India as a country.
After he had described the beauty of the Indian woman, the magnificence of the Princes’ Palaces, and the spiritual atmosphere of the Temples, she said with a sigh,
“I would love to go to India!”
“Then you must hope that in the future your husband can take you there in State,” Drogo suggested.
He was speaking lightly, but Thekla replied,
“I have no wish to go in State.
I have done all that sort of thing at home. I want to go with – you. To walk around the bazaars, to see the pilgrims bathing in the Ganges and the elephants working in the forests.”
Drogo knew it was something he would like too, but, because it would never happen, he said,
“Let’s talk about England. I must prepare you for what you will find when you come to live in my country.”
He tried to describe to her the sort of ancestral home where her mother had been brought up.
Although he had never seen the Duke of Dorchester’s house, he assumed that it would be something like his uncle’s.
There would be a vast estate and everyone who worked on it could look on its owner and his employer as a super-being.
“In fact,” he said aloud, “the Duke of Dorchester is King of a small Kingdom. A State within a State!”
“That is what Mama used to say,” Thelka said. “I did not pay much attention because I never thought I would go to England.”
“You are going there now.”
“Will the – Englishmen I meet look like – you and be – like you?”
There was a little tremor in her voice that told him the question was dangerous.
He replied,
“To the Chinese we all look alike, just as we find it impossible to tell them apart.”
Thekla laughed.
Then she said,
“If I saw a hundred – men who looked – exactly like you – I should still know that you were – you.”
“How?” Drogo asked.
“Because I can – feel you when you are – near me and even if I did not see – you I should – know you were there.”
That was what he felt himself, but it was a subject that he did not wish to discuss.
Instead he looked out to sea and to change the subject remarked,
“There is a ship on the horizon!”
“I expect that is what they are saying about us,” Thekla said. “Perhaps we will go on – over this horizon onto – another for ever – and never reach anywhere.”
“I am sure that after a time you would find that very dull,” Drogo said.
She parted her lips to speak and then closed them again.
He knew she was going to say,
‘Not if we were – together!’
It was exactly what he was thinking himself.
He rose from where they were sitting
“I am getting cramped,” he said. “Let’s walk round the deck.”
It was only a short walk.
But when they were standing at the stem watching the water churning up behind them, he was aware of a large dark man staring at them intently.
Because for so many months he had watched suspiciously every man who looked at him, he scrutinised the seaman without appearing to do so.
His skin was dark and so were his eyes and Drogo thought that he must have Arab blood in him.
He was particularly staring at Thekla.
Then, aware that Drogo was looking at him, he turned away to tidy a rope, the muscles in his arms revealing his strength.
Drogo took Thekla back to where they had been sitting.
It had been cooler than earlier in the day with a breeze that was welcome after the almost blazing heat.
Now, as Drogo turned to walk back to his cabin, he realised that the breeze had gone.
There was now a heaviness on the air that seemed almost stifling.
He had unbuttoned his shirt while they were standing in the stern and now he took it off.
He thought that when he reached the cabin he would have a shower in the tiny wash-room.
Every morning he filled two buckets with clean sea water, one for Thekla and one for himself. He then filled them again so that if it became too impossibly hot, they could cool themselves.
But Thekla found it difficult to tip the bucket over on the shelf above the sluice without hitting herself on the head.
“You really ought to do it for me,” she said.
She spoke so naturally that Drogo had realised she did not think of what this would have entailed.
For a moment he found himself thinking of how lovely she would look as she stood naked while he poured the water over her.
With an almost superhuman effort he forced himself to think of something else.
‘I will have a shower,’ he told himself, ‘and perhaps when I am cool I will be able to sleep.’
At the same time he was thinking almost agonisingly that, once they were through the Sea of Marmara and into the Aegean Sea, they would be sailing direct to Alexandria.
Then, after he had been to the Embassy, they would doubtless send him in a ship with separate cabins for the rest of their voyage to England.
It was then that their separation would start in earnest.
He knew that in one of the fast P. & O. vessels they would reach England in about ten days.
Those ten days would have to last him for the rest of his life.
When they were over and Thekla was with her own people, he would never see her again.
He reached the top of the companionway that led down to the cabins.
Because the Captain was in such a hurry to reach Alexandria, The Thistle was being pushed as fast as it could both by day and by night.
Half the crew were always stoking the engines and there would be no respite until they reached Port.
As he took the first step downwards, Drogo heard Thekla scream.
For one second he thought that he must be mistaken and then he heard her scream again.
He jumped the last three steps and running down the passage burst into the cabin at the end of it.
The lantern that was always left burning for his return revealed that Thekla was in bed.
But she was struggling desperately against a man who had thrown himself on top of her.
As she screamed again, Drogo sprang across the cabin.
He seized hold of the man in a vice-like grip that he had been taught by a Chinaman from whom he had learned karate.
He pulled the man off the bed, realising as he did so that it was the Arab he had seen staring at Thekla earlier in the day.
Although he was larger than he was, Drogo dragged him across the cabin and, when he reached the door, he beat his head not once but three times against the lintel.
The second time he did so the man uttered a low yell and by the third time he was almost unconscious.
It was then that Drogo threw him out into the passage so violently that he fell at the end of it against the iron steps of the companionway.
Drogo slammed the door and locked it.
He went across the cabin to Thekla.
She was sitting up, sobbing and trembling.
He could see that the Arab had torn her nightgown from her shoulder, revealing one of her small breasts.
He sat down and put his arms round her.
She clung to him frantically, still crying and gasping in terror.
“It’s all right, my darling, it’s all right!” he said. “I will never leave you again.”
He thought as he spoke that it was his fault for not having made her lock the door when she was alone and open it only to him when he returned.
Because they were so much together except when he left her to go to bed, it had never struck him that one of the crew might intrude on her.
“He – terrified – me, oh – Drogo, he – terrified me!”
Thekla was only whispering, but he could hear the fear in her voice.
“It’s all over,” he said soothingly.
Because her whole body was shaking, he pushed her back gently against the pillow.
As if she was afraid that he was going to leave her, she put her arms round his neck and pulled him down with her.
It was then he kissed her and, because he wanted to comfort and reassure her, he went on kissing her.
The rapture that had been there before seemed to rise almost like a wave of the sea within him.
; He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her little straight nose and again her lips.
Her arms held him prisoner, so that if he had wanted to he could not escape.
He knew as she ceased crying and the trembling of her body became a quiver of ecstasy that she was no longer frightened.
It was then he was aware that the nakedness of his chest was touching the softness of her breasts.
She was part of the moonlight on the waves and the stars in the sky.
“I love – you. I – love – you!”
He did not know whether she whispered the words or he heard them in his heart.
He only knew that his whole body seemed to explode with the wonder of their love.
The glory and ecstasy that came from his soul and was part of her soul was a burning flame.
She was his and he was hers and there was no dividing them.
*
A long time later Drogo, holding Thekla close in his arms, said,
“My darling, my sweet. Forgive me. I did not mean this to happen.”
“Oh, Drogo – why did no one tell me that – making love was so – wonderful?”
She spoke in a very soft voice, but it sounded like the song of the angels.
He knew that she was carried away into a mystic world where nothing was real but their love.
It was what he felt himself.
At the same time he knew that he should not have allowed it to happen. But to resist it had been impossible.
Thekla moved a little closer to him and their bodies were touching.
She was just as soft and lovely and ethereal as he had known she would be.
She kissed his shoulder, saying as she did so,
“Now I am – really your – wife!”
“It is something you should not be,” Drogo replied. “But I could no more stop myself from loving you than prevent the sea from rolling or the moon from shining.”
“Why should you want to – prevent it,” Thekla asked, “when I have been – yours from the first – moment you lifted me – down from the rope?”
Drogo smoothed her hair away from her forehead and touched her very gently.
“My darling, my sweet. My beautiful little Princess. This is madness.”
“Delicious – wonderful – glorious – madness!”
“I am afraid of the future.”
“I am happy in the – present,” Thekla answered. “Perhaps the – future will never come. The ship may – never reach – Alexandria. Perhaps we will – sink on the way and live under water – amongst the fishes.”
A Revolution Of Love Page 10
