On the next day, the day of the elections, which was also the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Herakleion blossomed suddenly, and from the earliest hour, into a striped and fluttering gaudiness. The sun shone down upon a white town beflagged into an astonishing gaiety. Everywhere was whiteness, whiteness, and brilliantly coloured flags. White, green, and orange, dazzling in the sun, vivid in the breeze. And, keyed up to match the intensity of the colour, the band blared brassily, unremittingly, throughout the day from the centre of the platia.

A parrot-town, glaring and screeching; a monkey-town, gibbering, excited, inconsequent. All the shops, save the sweet-shops, were shut, and the inhabitants flooded into the streets. Not only had they decked their houses with flags, they had also decked themselves with ribbons, their women with white dresses, their children with bright bows, their carriages with paper streamers, their horses with sunbonnets. Bands of young men, straw-hatted, swept arm-in-arm down the pavements, adding to the din with mouth organs, mirlitons, and tin trumpets. The trams flaunted posters in the colours of the contending parties. Immense char-À-bancs, roofed over with brown holland and drawn by teams of mules, their harness hung with bells and red tassels, conveyed the voters to the polling-booths amid the cheers and imprecations of the crowd.

Herakleion abandoned itself deliriously to political carnival.

In the immense, darkened rooms of the houses on the platia, the richer Greeks idled, concealing their anxiety. It was tacitly considered beneath their dignity to show themselves in public during that day. They could but await the fruition or the failure of their activities during the preceding weeks. Heads of households were for the most part morose, absorbed in calculations and regrets. Old Christopoulos, looking more bleached than usual, wished he had been more generous. That secretaryship for Alexander.... In the great sala of his house he paced restlessly up and down, biting his finger nails, and playing on his fingers the tune of the many thousand drachmÆ he might profitably have expended. The next election would not take place for five years. At the next election he would be a great deal more lavish.

He had made the same resolution at every election during the past thirty years.

In the background, respectful of his silence, themselves dwarfed and diminutive in the immense height of the room, little knots of his relatives and friends whispered together, stirring cups of tisane. Heads were very close together, glances at old Christopoulos very frequent. Visitors, isolated or in couples, strolled in unannounced and informally, stayed for a little, strolled away again. A perpetual movement of such circulation rippled through the houses in the platia throughout the day, rumour assiduous in its wake. Fru Thyregod alone, with her fat, silly laugh, did her best wherever she went to lighten the funereal oppression of the atmosphere. The Greeks she visited were not grateful. Unlike the populace in the streets, they preferred taking their elections mournfully.

By midday the business of voting was over, and in the houses of the platia the Greeks sat round their luncheon-tables with the knowledge that the vital question was now decided, though the answer remained as yet unknown, and that in the polling-booths an army of clerks sat feverishly counting, while the crowd outside, neglectful of its meal, swarmed noisily in the hope of news. In the houses of the platia, on this one day of the year, the Greeks kept open table. Each vast dining-room, carefully darkened and indistinguishable in its family likeness from its neighbour in the house on either side, offered its hospitality under the inevitable chandelier. In each, the host greeted the new-comer with the same perfunctory smile. In each, the busy servants came and went, carrying dishes and jugs of orangeade—for Levantine hospitality, already heavily strained, boggled at wine—among the bulky and old-fashioned sideboards. All joyousness was absent from these gatherings, and the closed shutters served to exclude, not only the heat, but also the strains of the indefatigable band playing on the platia.

Out in the streets the popular excitement hourly increased, for if the morning had been devoted to politics, the afternoon and evening were to be devoted to the annual feast and holiday of the Declaration of Independence. The national colours, green and orange, seemed trebled in the town. They hung from every balcony and were reproduced in miniature in every buttonhole. Only here and there an islander in his fustanelle walked quickly with sulky and averted eyes, rebelliously innocent of the brilliant cocarde, and far out to sea the rainbow islands shimmered with never a flag to stain the distant whiteness of the houses upon Aphros.

The houses of the platia excelled all others in the lavishness of their patriotic decorations. The balconies of the club were draped in green and orange, with the arms of Herakleion arranged in the centre in electric lights for the evening illumination. The Italian Consulate drooped its complimentary flag. The house of Platon Malteios—Premier or ex-Premier? no one knew—was almost too ostentatiously patriotic. The cathedral, on the opposite side, had its steps carpeted with red and the spaciousness of its porch festooned with the colours. From the central window of the Davenant house, opposite the sea, a single listless banner hung in motionless folds.

It had, earlier in the day, occasioned a controversy.

Julian had stood in the centre of the frescoed drawing-room, flushed and constrained.

'Father, that flag on our house insults the Islands. It can be seen even from Aphros!'

'My dear boy, better that it should be seen from Aphros than that we should offend Herakleion.'

'What will the islanders think?'

'They are accustomed to seeing it there every year.'

'If I had been at home....'

'When this house is yours, Julian, you will no doubt do as you please; so long as it is mine, I beg you not to interfere.'

Mr Davenant had spoken in his curtest tones. He had added,—

'I shall go to the cathedral this afternoon.'

The service in the cathedral annually celebrated the independence of Herakleion. Julian slipped out of the house, meaning to mix with the ill-regulated crowd that began to collect on the platia to watch for the arrival of the notables, but outside the door of the club he was discovered by Alexander Christopoulos who obliged him to follow him upstairs to the Christopoulos drawing-room.

'My father is really too gloomy for me to confront alone,' Alexander said, taking Julian's arm and urging him along; 'also I have spent the morning in the club, which exasperates him. He likes me to sit at home while he stands looking at me and mournfully shaking his head.'

They came into the sala together, where old Christopoulos paced up and down in front of the shuttered windows, and a score of other people sat whispering over their cups of tisane. White dresses, dim mirrors, and the dull gilt of furniture gleamed here and there in the shadows of the vast room.

'Any news? any news?' the banker asked of the two young men.

'You know quite well, father, that no results are to be declared until seven o'clock this evening.'

Alexander opened a section of a Venetian blind, and as a shaft of sunlight fell startlingly across the floor a blare of music burst equally startlingly upon the silence.

'The platia is crowded already,' said Alexander, looking out.

The hum of the crowd became audible, mingled with the music; explosions of laughter, and some unexplained applause. The shrill cry of a seller of iced water rang immediately beneath the window. The band in the centre continued to shriek remorselessly an antiquated air of the Paris boulevards.

'At what time is the procession due?' asked Fru Thyregod over Julian's shoulder.

'At five o'clock; it should arrive at any moment,' Julian said, making room for the Danish Excellency.

'I adore processions,' cried Fru Thyregod, clapping her hands, and looking brightly from Julian to Alexander.

Alexander whispered to Julie Lafarge, who had come up,—

'I am sure Fru Thyregod has gone from house to house and from Legation to Legation, and has had a meal at each to-day.'

Somebody suggested,—

'Let us open the shutters and watch the procession from the balconies.'

'Oh, what a good idea!' cried Fru Thyregod, clapping her hands again and executing a pirouette.

Down in the platia an indefinite movement was taking place; the band stopped playing for the first time that day, and began shuffling with all its instruments to one side. Voices were then heard raised in tones of authority. A cleavage appeared in the crowd, which grew in length and width as though a wedge were being gradually driven into that reluctant confusion of humanity.

'A path for the procession,' said old Christopoulos, who, although not pleased at that frivolous flux of his family and guests on to the balconies of his house, had joined them, overcome by his natural curiosity.

The path cut in the crowd now ran obliquely across the platia from the end of the rue Royale to the steps of the cathedral opposite, and upon it the confetti with which the whole platia was no doubt strewn became visible. The police, with truncheons in their hands, were pressing the people back to widen the route still further. They wore their gala hats, three-cornered, with upright plumes of green and orange nodding as they walked.

'Look at Sterghiou,' said Alexander.

The Chief of Police rode vaingloriously down the route looking from left to right, and saluting with his free hand. The front of his uniform was crossed with broad gold hinges, and plaits of yellow braid disappeared mysteriously into various pockets. One deduced whistles; pencils; perhaps a knife. Although he did not wear feathers in his hat, one knew that only the utmost self-restraint had preserved him from them.

Here the band started again with a march, and Sterghiou's horse shied violently and nearly unseated him.

'The troops!' said old Christopoulos with emotion.

Debouching from the rue Royale, the army came marching four abreast. As it was composed of only four hundred men, and as it never appeared on any other day of the year, its general PanaÏoannou always mobilised it in its entirety on the national festival. This entailed the temporary closing of the casino in order to release the croupiers, who were nearly all in the ranks, and led to a yearly dispute between the General and the board of administration.

'There was once a croupier,' said Alexander, 'who was admitted to the favour of a certain grand-duchess until the day when, indiscreetly coming into the dressing-room where the lady was arranging and improving her appearance, he said, through sheer force of habit, "Madame, les jeux sont faits?" and was dismissed for ever by her reply, "Rien ne va plus."'

The general himself rode in the midst of his troops, in his sky-blue uniform, to which the fantasy of his Buda-Pesth costumier had added for the occasion a slung Hussar jacket of white cloth. His gray moustache was twisted fiercely upwards, and curved like a scimitar across his face. He rode with his hand on his hip, slowly scanning the windows and balconies of the platia, which by now were crowded with people, gravely saluting his friends as he passed. Around him marched his bodyguard of six, a captain and five men; the captain carried in one hand a sword, and in the other—nobody knew why—a long frond of palm.

The entire army tramped by, hot, stout, beaming, and friendly. At one moment some one threw down a handful of coins from a window, and the ranks were broken in a scramble for the coppers. Julian, who was leaning apart in a corner of his balcony, heard a laugh like a growl behind him as the enormous hand of Grbits descended on his shoulder.

'Remember the lesson, young man: if you are called upon to deal with the soldiers of Herakleion, a fistful of silver amongst them will scatter them.'

Julian thought apprehensively that they must be overheard, but Grbits continued in supreme unconsciousness,—

'Look at their army, composed of shop-assistants and croupiers. Look at their general—a general in his spare moments, but in the serious business of his life a banker and an intriguer like the rest of them. I doubt whether he has ever seen anything more dead in his life than a dead dog in a gutter. I could pick him up and squash in his head like an egg.'

Grbits extended his arm and slowly unfolded the fingers of his enormous hand. At the same time he gave his great laugh that was like the laugh of a good-humoured ogre.

'At your service, young man,' he said, displaying the full breadth of his palm to Julian, 'whenever you stand in need of it. The Stavridists will be returned to-day; lose no time; show them your intentions.'

He impelled Julian forward to the edge of the balcony and pointed across to the Davenant house.

'That flag, young man: see to it that it disappears within the hour after the results of the elections are announced.'

The army was forming itself into two phalanxes on either side of the cathedral steps. PanaÏoannou caracoled up and down shouting his orders, which were taken up and repeated by the busy officers on foot. Meanwhile the notables in black coats were arriving in a constant stream that flowed into the cathedral; old Christopoulos had already left the house to attend the religious ceremony; the foreign Ministers and Consuls attended out of compliment to Herakleion; Madame Lafarge had rolled down the route in her barouche with her bearded husband; Malteios had crossed the platia from his own house, and Stavridis came, accompanied by his wife and daughters. Still the band played on, the crowd laughed, cheered, or murmured in derision, and the strident cries of the water-sellers rose from all parts of the platia.

Suddenly the band ceased to play, and in the hush only the hum of the crowd continued audible.

The religious procession came walking very slowly from the rue Royale, headed by a banner and by a file of young girls, walking two by two, in white dresses, with wreaths of roses on their heads. As they walked they scattered sham roses out of baskets, the gesture reminiscent of the big picture in the Senate-room. It was customary for the Premier of the Republic to walk alone, following these young girls, black and grave in his frock-coat after their virginal white, but on this occasion, as no one knew who the actual Premier was, a blank space was left to represent the problematical absentee. Following the space came the Premier's habitual escort, a posse of police; it should have been a platoon of soldiers, but PanaÏoannou always refused to consent to such a diminution of his army.

'They say,' Grbits remarked to Julian in this connection, 'that the general withdraws even the sentries from the frontier to swell his ranks.'

'Herakleion is open to invasion,' said Julian, smiling.

Grbits replied sententiously, with the air of one creating a new proverb,—

'Herakleion is open to invasion, but who wants to invade Herakleion?'

The crowd watched the passage of the procession with the utmost solemnity. Not a sound was now heard but the monotonous step of feet. Religious awe had hushed political hilarity. Archbishop and bishops; archmandrites and papÁs of the country districts, passed in a mingling of scarlet, purple and black. All the pomp of Herakleion had been pressed into service—all the clamorous, pretentious pomp, shouting for recognition, beating on a hollow drum; designed to impress the crowd; and perhaps, also, to impress, beyond the crowd, the silent Islands that possessed no army, no clergy, no worldly trappings, but that suffered and struggled uselessly, pitiably, against the tinsel tyrant in vain but indestructible rebellion.

* * * * * *

As five o'clock drew near, the entire population seemed to be collected in the platia. The white streak that had marked the route of the procession had long ago disappeared, and the square was now, seen from above, only a dense and shifting mass of people. In the Christopoulos drawing-room, where Julian still lingered, talking to Grbits and listening to the alternate foolishness, fanaticism, and ferocious good-humour of the giant, the Greeks rallied in numbers with only one topic on their lips. Old Christopoulos was frankly biting his nails and glancing at the clock; Alexander but thinly concealed his anxiety under a dribble of his usual banter. The band had ceased playing, and the subtle ear could detect an inflection in the very murmur of the crowd.

'Let us go on to the balcony again,' Grbits said to Julian; 'the results will be announced from the steps of Malteios' house.'

They went out; some of the Greeks followed them, and all pressed behind, near the window openings.

'It is a more than usually decisive day for Herakleion,' said old Christopoulos, and Julian knew that the words were spoken at, although not to, him.

He felt that the Greeks looked upon him as an intruder, wishing him away so that they might express their opinions freely, but in a spirit of contrariness he remained obstinately.

A shout went up suddenly from the crowd: a little man dressed in black, with a top-hat, and a great many white papers in his hand, had appeared in the frame of Malteios' front-door. He stood on the steps, coughed nervously, and dropped his papers.

'Inefficient little rat of a secretary!' cried Alexander in a burst of fury.

'Listen!' said Grbits.

A long pause of silence from the whole platia, in which one thin voice quavered, reaching only the front row of the crowd.

'Stavridis has it,' Grbits said quietly, who had been craning over the edge of the balcony. His eyes twinkled maliciously, delightedly, at Julian across the group of mortified Greeks. 'An immense majority,' he invented, enjoying himself.

Julian was already gone. Slipping behind old Christopoulos, whose saffron face had turned a dirty plum colour, he made his way downstairs and out into the street. A species of riot, in which the police, having failed successfully to intervene, were enthusiastically joining, had broken out in the platia. Some shouted for Stavridis, some for Malteios; some railed derisively against the Islands. People threw their hats into the air, waved their arms, and kicked up their legs. Some of them were vague as to the trend of their own opinions, others extremely determined, but all were agreed about making as much noise as possible. Julian passed unchallenged to his father's house.

Inside the door he found Aristotle talking with three islanders. They laid hold of him, urgent though respectful, searching his face with eager eyes.

'It means revolt at last; you will not desert us, Kyrie?'

He replied,—

'Come with me, and you will see.'

They followed him up the stairs, pressing closely after him. On the landing he met Eve and Kato, coming out of the drawing-room. The singer was flushed, two gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair, and she had thrown open the front of her dress. Eve hung on her arm.

'Julian!' Kato exclaimed, 'you have heard, Platon has gone?'

In her excitement she inadvertently used Malteios' Christian name.

'It means,' he replied, 'that Stavridis, now in power, will lose no time in bringing against the Islands all the iniquitous reforms we know he contemplates. It means that the first step must be taken by us.'

His use of the pronoun ranged himself, Kato, Aristotle, the three islanders, and the invisible Islands into an instant confederacy. Kato responded to it,—

'Thank God for this.'

They waited in complete confidence for his next words. He had shed his aloofness, and all his efficiency of active leadership was to the fore.

'Where is my father?'

'He went to the Cathedral; he has not come home yet, Kyrie.'

Julian passed into the drawing-room, followed by Eve and Kato and the four men. Outside the open window, fastened to the balcony, flashed the green and orange flag of Herakleion. Julian took a knife from his pocket, and, cutting the cord that held it, withdrew flag and flag-staff into the room and flung it on to the ground.

'Take it away,' he said to the islanders, 'or my father will order it to be replaced. And if he orders another to be hung out in its place,' he added, looking at them with severity, 'remember there is no other flag in the house, and none to be bought in Herakleion.'

At that moment a servant from the country-house came hurriedly into the room, drew Julian unceremoniously aside, and broke into an agitated recital in a low voice. Eve heard Julian saying,—

'Nicolas sends for me? But he should have given a reason. I cannot come now, I cannot leave Herakleion.'

And the servant,—

'Kyrie, the major-domo impressed upon me that I must on no account return without you. Something has occurred, something serious. What it is I do not know. The carriage is waiting at the back entrance; we could not drive across the platia on account of the crowds.'

'I shall have to go, I suppose,' Julian said to Eve and Kato. 'I will go at once, and will return, if possible, this evening. Nicolas would not send without an excellent reason, though he need not have made this mystery. Possibly a message from Aphros.... In any case, I must go.'

'I will come with you,' Eve said unexpectedly.