Read Online Apartment in Athens by Glenway Wescott - Free Book Online Page B

evidently he fancied that they had not understood him. He repeated the friendly inquiry in his difficult Greek, and still they did not succeed in speaking up.
    It must have appeared to him that they were afraid. A curious mixed expression, somewhat smug, somewhat sentimental, passed over his hard face; and to relieve their embarrassment he rose and brusquely announced that he had another hour’s work to do at his headquarters, and left them.
    Then it dawned on them that he was a different man, a changed character. It was not only poor health, loss of weight, loss of appetite. Some part of the change evidently was between him and them, a merely human matter, an attitude of mind, a change of heart. For the first time in a year he had spoken civilly to them. It was a small matter but a miracle.
    In the night they blamed themselves for not being pleasanter about it, more responsive, more forthcoming, upon this great occasion. They were afraid he might have resented their bad manners, tied tongues, startled glances. It could not be helped, he had surprised them too much. They were half in dread of their next encounter with him, next day, lest the civil inquiry turn out to have been a mere slip of his tongue, or their own ears deluding them. They tried to recall the exact German wording, syntax and inflection, and argued it back and forth until they could agree about it.
    Next morning Mrs. Helianos, finding some pretext, insisted on accompanying Helianos with the breakfast tray; and then promptly enough, the anxious or uncertain look still in the major’s eyes, the respectful way he said good morning, and his subsequent remarks, reassured them. It was not a delusion, it had happened.
    Tranquilly he inquired what brought Mrs. Helianos to his bedroom so early in the morning; and once more they were tongue-tied. But as it seemed, he seriously intended to be friendly with them, he would not be put off.
    â€œWelcome, welcome, in any case,” he said, “for after all, you are the housewife, aren’t you? Worrying about something, somewhere in the house, from morning to night!”
    Mrs. Helianos stood blushing as if it were over-whelming praise.
    After that there was some slight amazement for them every day; and day and night a continuous gossip and analysis of things he said and did. Whatever it meant, whatever had changed him, it had begun the very day he returned from Germany, when they had noticed nothing but his thinness, weariness, biliousness, without understanding. So now they went back over every slight evidence and minute incident; but still they did not understand, nor did they entirely agree.
    Helianos wanted to accept everything as it appeared on the surface; at least to interpret everything as favorably as he could, as mere kindliness, a wonderful improvement and a great blessing. Mrs. Helianos, poor bereaved creature, was never sure. Instinctively she stood on guard against the mystery of the German. It was her nature to be mistrustful.
    He was a naturally pacific, sociable man; he liked to think well of his fellow men, even an occupying German officer. It was his life-long habit to make the best of everything from day to day. Now she did not trust his judgment. She lived in dread of their making some mistake or falling into some trap. Every now and then, in the closeness of their hearts, he felt twinges of her emotion. She kept him in uncertainty about everything.
    The day of Major Kalter’s return, for example, that Monday evening: he sank on the edge of his bed, sighing, gritting his teeth with weariness, although he had worked only half the day. Helianos knelt as usual to remove his boots; he would not allow it. “It is a ridiculous thing for one man to have to do for another,” he said, in his altered tone of voice, “a humiliating thing!”
    After that there was no more boot-removing, and very little valeting or intimate waiting-on of any kind. Helianos would begin something of