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Updated: June 20, 2025
Clarke pushed back her chair bruskly. She was now feeling really afraid. She longed to call in Sonia. She wished the other servants were in the flat instead of at Buyukderer. "You boy's dead," she said, dully, obstinately. "Jimmy has nothing to do with him never had anything to do with him. And as for me, I have never interfered between you and your child." She got up. So did he.
He walked faster. Now he saw Hadi Bey before him, self-possessed, firm, with that curiously vivid look which had attracted the many women in Court. And Jimmy believed in his mother. Perhaps, until Dion's arrival in Buyukderer, the boy had had reason in his belief perhaps not. Dion was very uncertain to-night. A sort of cold curiosity was born in him. Until now he had accepted Mrs.
Clarke stared at him with the unself-conscious directness which was characteristic of her. She saw Dion for the first time since the tragedy which had changed his life, but she had written to him more than once. Her last letter had come from Buyukderer. He had answered it, but he had not told her where he was, had not even hinted to her that he might come to Constantinople.
Clarke did not see things in white and black he had developed a peculiar persistence and determination which were very like strength. Looking back, Mrs. Clarke realized that the definite change in Dion, which marked the beginning of a new development, dated from the night in the garden at Buyukderer when Jimmy had so nearly learnt the truth.
The whole aspect of her was melancholy and determined, beautiful and yet almost tragic. He felt upon him the listless yet imperative grasp which he had first known in Mrs. Chetwinde's drawing-room, the grasp which resembled Stamboul's. "I suppose I shall go to Buyukderer," he said slowly. "But I don't know why you wish it." "I have always liked you." "Yes, I think you have."
"Now, what is it?" "I'm sure you know. It's Jimmy." She lowered her eyelids, and her pale forehead puckered. "Jimmy! What about Jimmy?" "I don't want to be at Buyukderer while he's with you." "And you have rowed all the way from Buyukderer to Constantinople, without even a brush and comb, to tell me that!" "I told you at Buyukderer."
For a long time he stayed there, and he thought, "If I remain at Buyukderer I shall often visit this place beside the stream." Once he was disturbed by the noise of a cantering horse in the lane close by, but otherwise he was fortunate that day; few people came to his retreat, and none of them were foreigners.
He closed and unclosed his fingers as he went on speaking. "What is there in such a relation as ours if it carries no rights? You have altered my whole life. Is that nothing? I live out here only because of you. I have nothing out here but you. All these months, ever since we left Buyukderer, I've lived just as you wished. I went into society at Buyukderer because you wished me to.
Immediately below, and stretching away to right and left, were the curving shores of Europe, with the villas and palaces of Buyukderer held between the blue sea and the tree-covered heights of Kabatash; the park of the Russian Palace, the summer home of Russia's representative at the Sublime Porte, gardens of many rich merchants of Constantinople and of Turkish, Greek and Armenian magnates, and the fertile and well-watered country extending to Therapia, Stania and Bebek on the one hand, and to Rumili Kavak, with the great Belgrad forest behind it, and to Rumili Fanar, where the Bosporus flows into the Black Sea, on the other.
He was considering whether he should go to the pavilion at the appointed hour or whether he should leave Buyukderer altogether and not return to it. This evening he was in the mood to be drastic.
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