Phroso: A Romance

She stood shivering and trembling in the centre of the throng. The surprise of my sudden action held them all silent and motionless.

‘Did he not say “Constantine! You, Constantine”?’ I asked, ‘just before he died?’

The old woman’s lips moved, but no sound came; she was half dead with fear and fastened fascinated eyes on Constantine. He surveyed her with a rigid smile on his pale face.

‘Speak the truth, woman,’ I cried. ‘Speak the truth.’

‘Yes, speak the truth,’ said Constantine, his eyes gleaming in triumph as he turned a glance of hatred on me. ‘Tell us truly who killed my uncle.’

My witness failed me. The terror of Constantine, which had locked her tongue when I questioned her at the house, lay on her still: the single word that came from her trembling lips was ‘Vlacho.’ Constantine gave a cry of triumph, Demetri a wild shout; the islanders drew together. My chance looked black. Even St Tryphon would hardly save me from immediate death. But I made another effort.

‘Swear her on the sacred picture,’ I cried. ‘Swear her on the picture. If she swears by the picture, and then says it was Vlacho, I am content to die as a false accuser, and to die here and now.’

My bold challenge won me a respite: it appealed to their rude sense of justice and their strong leaven of superstition.

‘Yes, let her swear on the sacred picture,’ cried several. ‘Then we shall know.’

The priest brought the picture to her and swore her on it with great solemnity. She shook her head feebly and fell to choked weeping. But the men round her were resolute, one of them menacing even Constantine himself when he began to ask whether her first testimony were not enough.

‘Now you are sworn, speak,’ said the priest solemnly.

A hush fell on us all. If she answered ‘Constantine,’ my life still hung by a thread; but by saying ‘Vlacho’ she would cut the thread. She looked at me, at Constantine, then up to the sky, while her lips moved in rapid whispered prayers.

‘Speak,’ said the priest to her gently.

Then she spoke in low fearful tones.

‘Vlacho was there, and his knife was ready. But my lord yielded, and cried that he would not sell the island. When they heard that they drew back, Vlacho with the rest. But my Lord Constantine struck; and when my lord lay dying it was the name of Constantine that he uttered in reproach.’ And the old woman reeled and would have fallen, and then flung herself on the ground at Constantine’s feet, crying, ‘Pardon, my lord, pardon! I could not swear falsely on the picture. Ah, my lord, mercy, mercy!’

But Constantine, though he had, as I do not doubt, a good memory for offences, could not afford to think of the old woman now. One instant he sat still, then he sprang to his feet, crying:

‘Let my friends come round me! Yes, if you will, I killed the old man. Was not the deed done? Was not the island sold? Was he not bound to this man here? The half of the money had been paid! If he had lived, and if this man had lived, they would have brought soldiers and constrained us. So I slew him, and therefore I have sought to kill the stranger also. Who blames me? If there be any, let him stand now by the stranger, and let my friends stand by me. Have we not had enough talk? Is it not time to act? Who loves Neopalia? Who loves me?’

While he spoke many had been gathering round him. With every fresh appeal more flocked to him. There were but three or four left now, wavering between him and me, and Kortes alone stood by my side.

‘Are you children, that you shrink from me because I struck a blow for our country? Was the old man to escape and live to help this man to take our island? Yes, I, Constantine Stefanopoulos, though I was blood of his blood – I killed him. Who blames me? Shall we not finish the work? There the stranger stands! Men of the island, shall we not finish the work?’

‘Well, it’s come at last,’ thought I to myself. St. Tryphon would not stop it now. ‘It’s no use,’ I said to Kortes. ‘Don’t get yourself into trouble!’ Then I folded my arms and waited. But I do not mean to say that I did not turn a little pale. Perhaps I did. At any rate I contrived to show no fear except in that.

The islanders looked at one another and then at Constantine. Friend Constantine had been ready with his stirring words, but he did not rush first to the attack. Besides myself there was Kortes, who had not left his place by me, in spite of my invitation to him. And Kortes looked as though he could give an account of one or two. But the hesitation among Constantine’s followers did not last long. Demetri was no coward at all events, although he was as big a scoundrel as I have known. He carried a great sword which he must have got from the collection on the walls of the hall; he brandished it now over his head and rushed straight at me. It seemed to be all over, and I thought that the best I could do was to take it quietly; so I stood still. But on a sudden I was pulled back by a powerful arm. Kortes flung me behind him and stood between me and Demetri’s rush. An instant later ten or more of them were round Kortes. He struck at them, but they dodged him. One cried, ‘Don’t hurt Kortes,’ and another, running agilely round, caught his arms from behind, and, all gathering about him, they wrested his weapons from him. My last champion was disarmed; he had but protracted the bitterness of death for me by his gallant attempt. I fixed my eyes steadily on the horizon and waited. The time of my waiting must have been infinitesimal, yet I seemed to wait some little while. Then Demetri’s great sword flashed suddenly between me and the sky. But it did not fall. Another flash came – the flash of white, darting across between me and the grim figure of my assailant – and Phroso, pale, breathless, trembling in every limb, yet holding her head bravely, and with anger gleaming in her dark eyes, cried:

‘If you kill him you must kill me; I will not live if he dies.’

Even Demetri paused; the rest gave back. I saw Constantine’s hatchet-face peering in gloomy wrath and trembling excitement from behind the protecting backs of his stout adherents. But Demetri, holding his sword poised for the stroke, growled angrily:

‘What is his life to you, Lady?’

Phroso drew herself up. Her face was away from me, but as she spoke I saw a sudden rush of red spread over her neck; yet she spoke steadily and boldly in a voice that all could hear:

‘His life is my life; for I love him as I love my life – ah, and God knows, more, more, more!’

CHAPTER XI

THE LAST CARD

In most families – at least among those that have any recorded history to boast of or to deplore – there is a point of family pride: with one it is grace of manner; with another, courage; with a third, statecraft; with a fourth, chivalrous loyalty to a lost cause or a fallen prince. Tradition adds new sanction to the cherished excellence; it becomes the heirloom of the house, the mark of the race – in the end, perhaps, a superstition before which greater things go down. If the men cling to it they are compensated by licence in other matters; the women are held in honour if they bear sons who do not fail in it. It becomes a new god, with its worship and its altar; and often the altar is laden with costly sacrifices. Wisdom has little part in the cult, and the virtues that are not hallowed by hereditary recognition are apt to go unhonoured and unpractised. I have heard it said, and seen it written, that we Wheatleys have, as a stock, few merits and many faults. I do not expect my career – if, indeed, I had such an ambitious thing as a career in my life’s wallet – to reverse that verdict. But no man has said or written of us that we do not keep faith. Here is our pride and palladium. Promises we neither break nor ask back. We make them sometimes lightly; it is no matter: substance, happiness, life itself must be spent in keeping them. I had learnt this at my mother’s knee. I myself had seen thousands and thousands poured forth to a rascally friend on the strength of a schoolboy pledge which my father made. ‘Folly, folly!’ cried the world. Whether it were right or not, who knows? We wrapped ourselves in the scanty mantle of our one virtue and went our way. We always – but a man grows tedious when he talks of his ancestors; he is like a doting old fellow, garrulous about his lusty youth. Enough of it. Yet not more than enough, for I carried this religion of mine to Neopalia, and built there an altar to it, and prepared for my altar the rarest sacrifice. Was I wrong? I do not care to ask.

‘His life is my life. For I love him as my life.’ The words rang in my ears, seeming to echo again through the silence that followed them: they were answered in my heart by beats of living blood. ‘Was it true?’ flashed through my brain. Was it truth or stratagem, a noble falsehood or a more splendid boldness? I did not know. The words were strange, yet to me they were not incredible. Had we not lived through ages together in those brief full hours in the old grey house? And the parting in the quiet evening had united while it feigned to sever. I believe I shut my eyes, not to see the slender stately form that stood between death and me. When I looked again, Demetri and his angry comrades had fallen back and stood staring in awkward bewilderment, but the women had crowded in upon us with eager excited faces; one broad-browed kindly creature had run to Phroso and caught her round the waist, and was looking in her eyes, and stroking her hand, and murmuring soft woman’s comforting. Demetri took a step forward.

‘Come, if you dare!’ cried the woman, bold as a legion of men. ‘Is a dog like you to come near my Lady Euphrosyne?’ And Phroso turned her face away from the men and hid it in the woman’s bosom.

Then came a cold rasping voice, charged with a bitter anger that masqueraded as amusement.

‘What is this comedy, cousin?’ asked Constantine. ‘You love this man? You, the Lady of the island – you who have pledged your troth to me?’ He turned to the people, spreading out his hands.

‘You all know,’ said he – ‘you all know that we are plighted to one another.’

A murmuring assent greeted his words. ‘Yes, they are betrothed,’ I heard half-a-dozen mutter, as they directed curious glances at Phroso. ‘Yes, while the old lord lived they were betrothed.’

Then I thought it time for me to take a hand in the game; so I stepped forward, in spite of Kortes’s restraining arm.

‘Be careful,’ he whispered. ‘Be careful.’

I looked at him. His face was drawn and pale, like the face of a man in pain, but he smiled still in his friendly open fashion.

‘I must speak,’ I said. I walked up to within two yards of Constantine, the islanders giving way before me, and I said loudly and distinctly:

‘Was that same betrothal before you married your wife or afterwards?’

He sprang half-way up from his seat, as if to leap upon me, but he sank back again, his face convulsed with passion and his fingers picking furiously at the turf by his side. ‘His wife!’ went round the ring in amazed whisperings.

‘Yes, his wife,’ said I. ‘The wife who was with him when I saw him in my country; the wife who came with him here, who was in the cottage on the hill, whom Vlacho would have dragged by force to her death, who lay last night yonder in the guardhouse. Where is she, Constantine Stefanopoulos? Or is she dead now, and you free to wed the Lady Euphrosyne? Is she alive, or has she by now learnt the secret of the Stefanopouloi?’

I do not know which made more stir among the people, my talk of his wife or my hint about the secret. They crowded round me, hemming me in. I saw Phroso no more; but Kortes pushed his way to my side. Then the eyes of all turned on Constantine, where he sat with face working and nails fiercely plucking the turf.

‘What is this lie?’ he cried. ‘I know nothing of a wife. True, there was a woman in the cottage.’

‘Ay, there was a woman in the cottage,’ said Kortes. ‘And she was in the guardhouse; but I did not know who she was, and I had no commands concerning her; and this morning she was gone.’

‘That woman is his wife,’ said I; ‘but he and Vlacho had planned to kill her, in order that he might marry your Lady and have your island for himself.’

Demetri suddenly cried, with a great appearance of horror and disgust:

‘Shall he live to speak such a slander against my lord?’

But Demetri gained no attention. I had made too much impression.

‘Who was the woman, then,’ said I, ‘and where is she?’