Phroso: A Romance

‘Oh, don’t you bother about that!’ said I. ‘I expect I can manage Constantine.’

‘Do you think I’m going to desert you?’ she asked in superb indignation.

‘No, no; of course not,’ I protested, rather in a fright. ‘I shouldn’t think of accusing you of such a thing.’

‘You know that’s what you meant,’ said Phroso, a world of reproach in her voice.

‘My dear lady,’ said I, ‘getting you into trouble won’t get me out of it, and getting you out may get me out. Take that paper in your hand, and go back to your people. Say nothing about Constantine just now; play with him. You know what I’ve told you, and you won’t be deluded by him. Don’t let him see that you know anything of the woman at the cottage. It won’t help you, it may hurt me, and it will certainly bring her into greater danger; for, if nothing has happened to her already, yet something may if his suspicions are aroused.’

‘I am to do all this. And what will you do, my lord?’

‘I say, don’t call me “my lord”; we say “Lord Wheatley.” What am I going to do? I’m going to make a run for it.’

‘But they’ll kill you!’

‘Then shall I stay here?’

‘Yes, stay here.’

‘But Constantine’s fellows will be here before long.’

‘You must give yourself up to them, and tell them to bring you to me. They couldn’t hurt you then.’

Well, I wasn’t sure of that, but I pretended to believe it. The truth is that I dared not tell Phroso what I had actually resolved to do. It was a risky job, but it was a chance; and it was more than a chance. It was very like an obligation that a man had no right to shrink from discharging. Here was I, planning to make Phroso comfortable; that was right enough. And here was I planning to keep my own skin whole; well, a man does no wrong in doing that. But what of that unlucky woman on the hill? I knew friend Constantine would take care that Phroso should not come within speaking distance of her. Was nobody to set her on her guard? Was I to leave her to her blind trust of the ruffian whom she was unfortunate enough to call husband, and of his tool Vlacho? Now I came to think of it, now that I was separated from my friends and had no lingering hope of being able to beat Constantine in fair fight, that seemed hardly the right thing, hardly a thing I should care to talk about or think about, if I did save my own precious skin. Would not Constantine teach his wife the secret of the Stefanopouloi? Urged by these reflections, I made up my mind to play a little trick on Phroso, and feigned to accept her suggestion that I should rely on her to save me. Evidently she had great confidence in her influence now that she held that piece of paper. I had less confidence in it, for it was clear that Constantine wielded immense power over these unruly islanders, and I thought it likely enough that they would demand from Phroso a promise to marry him as the price of obeying her; then, whether Constantine did or did not promise me my life, I felt sure that he would do his best to rob me of it.

Well, time pressed. I rose and unbolted the door of the house. Phroso sat still. I looked along the road. I saw nobody, but I heard the blast of the horn which had fallen on my ears once before and had proved the forerunner of an attack. Phroso also heard it, for she sat up, saying, ‘Hark, they are summoning all the men to the town! That means they are coming here.’

But it meant something else also to me; if the men were summoned to the town there would be fewer for me to elude in the wood.

‘Will they all go?’ I asked, as though in mere curiosity.

‘All who are not on some duty,’ she answered.

I had to hope for the best; but Phroso went on in distress:

‘It means that they are coming here – here, to take you.’

‘Then you must lose no time in going,’ said I, and I took her hand and gently raised her to her feet. She stood there for a moment, looking at me. I had let go her hand, but she took mine again now, and she said with a sudden vehemence, and a rush of rich deep red on her cheeks:

‘If they kill you, they shall kill me too.’

The words gushed impetuously from her, but at the end there was a choke in her throat.

‘No, no, nonsense,’ said I. ‘You’ve got the island now. You mustn’t talk like that.’

‘I don’t care – ’ she began; and stopped short.

‘Besides, I shall pull through,’ said I.

She dropped my hand, but she kept her eyes on mine.

‘And if you get away?’ she asked. ‘What will you do? If you get to Rhodes, what will you do?’

‘All I shall do is to lay an information against your cousin and the innkeeper. The rest are ignorant fellows, and I bear them no malice. Besides, they are your men now.’

‘And when you’ve done that?’ she asked gravely.

‘Well, that’ll be all there is to do,’ said I, with an attempt at playful gaiety. It was not a very happy attempt.

‘Then you’ll go home to your own people?’

‘I shall go home; I’ve got no people in particular.’

‘Shall you ever come to Neopalia again?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, if you invite me.’

She regarded me intently for a full minute. She seemed to have forgotten the blast of the horn that summoned the islanders. I also had forgotten it; I saw nothing but the perfect oval face, crowned with clustering hair and framing deep liquid eyes. Then she drew a ring from her finger.

‘You have fought for me,’ she said. ‘You have risked your life for me. Will you take this ring from me? Once I tried to stab you. Do you remember, my lord?’

I bowed my head, and Phroso set the ring on my finger.

‘Wear it till a woman you love gives you one to wear instead,’ said Phroso with a little smile. ‘Then go to the edge of your island – you are an islander too, are you not? so we are brethren – go to the edge of your island and throw it into the sea; and perhaps, my dear friend, the sea will bring it back, a message from you to me. For I think you will never again come to Neopalia.’

I made no answer: we walked together to the door of the house, and paused again for a moment on the threshold.

‘See the blue sea!’ said Phroso. ‘Is it not – is not your island – a beautiful island? If God brings you safe to your own land, my lord, as I will pray Him to do on my knees, think kindly of your island, and of one who dwells there.’

The blast of the horn had died away. The setting sun was turning blue to gold on the quiet water. The evening was very still, as we stood looking from the threshold of the door, under the portal of the house that had seen such strange wild doings, and had so swiftly made for itself a place for ever in my life and memory.

I glanced at Phroso’s face. Her eyes were set on the sea, her cheeks had turned pale again, and her lip was quivering. Suddenly came a loud sharp note on the horn.

‘It is the signal for the start,’ said she. ‘I must go, or they will be here in heat and anger, and I shall not be able to stop them. And they will kill my lord. No, I will say “my lord.”’

She moved to leave me. I had answered nothing to all she had said. What was there that an honourable man could say? Was there one thing? I told myself (too eager to tell myself) that I had no right to presume to say that. And anything else I would not say.

‘God bless you,’ I said, as she moved away; I caught her hand and again lightly kissed it. ‘My homage to the Lady of the Island,’ I whispered.

Her hand dwelt in mine a moment, briefer than our divisions of time can reckon, fuller than is often the longest of them. Then, with one last look, questioning, appealing, excusing, protesting, confessing, ay, and (for my sins) hoping, she left me, and stepped along the rocky road in the grace and glory of her youthful beauty. I stood watching her, forgetting the woman at the cottage, forgetting my own danger, forgetting even the peril she ran whom I watched, forgetting everything save the old that bound me and the new that called me. So I stood till she vanished from my sight; and still I stood, for she was there, though the road hid her. And I was roused at last only by a great cry of surprise, of fierce joy and triumph, that rent the still air of the evening, and echoed back in rumblings from the hill. The Neopalians were greeting their rescued Lady.

Then I turned, snatched up Hogvardt’s lance again, and fled through the house to do my errand. For I would save that woman, if I could; and my own life was not mine to lose any more than it was mine to give to whom I would. And I recollect that, as I ran through the kitchen and across the compound, making for the steps in the bank of rocks, I said, ‘God forgive me!’

CHAPTER IX

HATS OFF TO ST TRYPHON!

A man’s mind can move on more than one line; even the most engrossing selfish care may fail entirely to occupy it or to shut out intruding rivals. Not only should I have been wise, but I should have chosen, in that risky walk of mine through the wood that covered the hill-slope, to think of nothing but its risk. Yet countless other things exacted a share of my thoughts and figured amongst my brain’s images. Sometimes I was with Denny and his faithful followers, threading dark and devious ways in the bowels of the earth, avoiding deep waters on the one side, sheer falls on the other, losing the track, finding it again, deluded by deceptive glimmers of light, finding at last the true outlet; now received hospitably by the Cypriote fishermen, now fiercely assailed by them, again finding none of them; now making allies of them, now carried prisoners by them to Constantine, again scouring the sea with vain eagerness for a sight of their sails. Then I was off, far away, to England, to my friends there, to the gaiety of London now in its full rushing tide, to Mrs Hipgrave’s exclusive receptions, to Beatrice’s gay talk and pretty insolence, to Hamlyn’s gilded dulness, in rapid survey of all the panorama that I knew so well. Then I would turn back to the scene I had left, and again bid my farewell under the quiet sky, in prospect of the sea that turned to gold. So I passed back and forward till I seemed myself hardly a thinking man, but rather a piece of blank glass, across which the myriad mites of the kaleidoscope chased one another, covering it with varying colours, but none of them imparting their hue to it. Yet all this time, by the strange division of mental activity of which I have spoken, I was crawling cautiously but quickly up the mountain side, with eyes keen to pierce the dusk that now fell, with ears apt to find an enemy in every rustling leaf and a hostile step in every woodland sound. Of real foes I had as yet seen none. Ah! Hush! I dropped on my knees. Away there on the right – what was it leaning against that tree-trunk? It was a tall lean man; his arms rested on a long gun, and his face was towards the old grey house. Would he see me? I crouched lower. Would he hear me? I was as still as dead Spiro had lain in the passage. But then I felt stealthily for the butt of my revolver, and a recollection so startling came to me that I nearly betrayed myself by some sudden movement. In the distribution of burdens for our proposed journey, Denny had taken the case containing the spare cartridges which remained after we had all reloaded. Now I had one barrel only loaded, one shot only left. That one shot and Hogvardt’s lance were all my resources. I crouched yet lower. But the man was motionless, and presently I ventured to move on my hands and knees, sorely inconvenienced by the long lance, but determined not to leave it behind me. I passed another sentry a hundred yards or so away on the left; his head was sunk on his breast and he took no notice of me. I breathed a little more freely as I came within fifty feet of the cottage.