Phroso: A Romance

‘Ah, but you’re on the same side this time,’ he answered, and stepped across the room towards the curtain.

Suddenly I became, or seemed to become, vaguely, uncomfortably, even terribly conscious of something there. Yet I could see nothing in the dark room, and I heard nothing. I can hardly think Mouraki shared my strange oppressive feeling; yet the curtain was not immediately drawn back, his figure bulked motionless just in front of me, and he repeated in tones that betrayed uneasiness:

‘I suppose I’d better draw back the curtain, hadn’t I?’

What was it? It must have been all fancy, born of the strain of excitement and the nervous tension in which I was living. I have had something[Pg 303][Pg 304] of the feeling in the dark before and since, but never so strong, distinct and almost overpowering. I knew Constantine was not there. I had no fear of him if he were. Yet my forehead grew damp with sweat.

Mouraki’s hand was on the curtain. He drew it back. The dull evening light spread sluggishly through the room. Mouraki turned and looked at me. I returned his gaze. A moment passed before either of us looked round.

‘There’s nobody behind the curtain,’ said he, with a slight sigh which seemed to express relief. ‘Do you see any one anywhere?’

Then I pulled myself together, and looked round. The chairs near me were empty, the couch had no occupant. But away in the corner of the room, in the shadow of a projecting angle of wall, I saw a figure seated in front of a table. On the table were writing-materials. The figure was a woman’s. Her arms were spread on the table, and her head lay between them. I raised my hand and pointed to her. Mouraki’s eyes obeyed my direction but came quickly back to me in question, and he arched his brows.

I stepped across the room towards where the woman sat. I heard the Pasha following with hesitating tread, and I waited till he overtook me. Then I called her name softly; yet I knew that it was no use to call her name; it was only the protest my horror made. She would hear her name no more. Again I pointed with my right hand, catching Mouraki’s arm with my left at the same moment.

‘There,’ I said, ‘there – between the shoulders! A knife!’

I felt his arm tremble. I must do him justice. I am convinced that he did not foresee or anticipate this among the results of the letting loose of Constantine Stefanopoulos. I heard him clear his throat, I saw him lick his lips; his lids settled low over his cunning eyes. I turned from him to the motionless figure in the chair.

She was dead, had been dead some little while, and must have died instantly on that foul stroke. Why had the brute dealt it? Was it mere revenge and cruelty, persistently nursed wrath at her betrayal of him on St Tryphon’s day? Or had some new cause evoked passion from him?

‘Let us lay her here on the sofa,’ I said to Mouraki; ‘and you must send some one to look after her.’

He seemed reluctant to help me. I leant forward alone, and putting my arm round her, raised her from the table, and set her upright in the chair. I rejoiced to find no trace of pain or horror on her face. As I looked at her I gave a sudden short sob. I was unstrung; the thing was so wantonly cruel and horrible.

‘He has made good use of his liberty,’ I said in a low fierce tone, turning on Mouraki in a sudden burst of anger against the hand that had set the villain free. But the Pasha’s composure wrapped him like a cloak again. He knew what I meant and read the implied taunt in my words, but he answered calmly:

‘We have no proof yet that it was her husband who killed her.’

‘Who else should?’

He shrugged his shoulders, remarking, ‘No proof, I said. Perhaps he did, perhaps not. We don’t know.’

‘Help me with her,’ said I brusquely.

Between us we lifted her and laid her on the couch, and spread over her a fur rug that draped one of the chairs. While this was done we did not exchange a word with one another. Mouraki uttered a sigh of relief when the task was finished.

‘I’ll send a couple of women up as soon as we get back. Meanwhile the place is guarded and nobody can come in. Need we delay longer? It is not a pleasant place.’

‘I should think we might as well go,’ I answered, casting my eye again round the little room to the spot where Vlacho had fallen enveloped in the curtain which he dragged down with him, and to the writing-table that had supported the dead body of Francesca. Mouraki’s hand was on the door-handle. He stood there, impatient to be out of the place, waiting for me to accompany him. But my last glance had seen something new, and with a sudden low exclamation I darted across the room to the table. I had perceived a sheet of paper lying just where Francesca’s head had rested.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mouraki.

I made him no answer. I seized the piece of paper. A pen lay between it and the inkstand. On the paper was a line or two of writing. The characters were blurred, as though the dead woman’s hair had smeared them before the ink was dry. I held it up. Mouraki stepped briskly across to me.

‘Give it to me,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘It may be something I ought to see.’

The first hint of action, of new light or a new development, restored their cool alertness to my faculties.

‘Why not something which I ought to see, my dear Pasha?’ I asked, holding the paper behind my back and facing him.

‘You forget the position I hold, Lord Wheatley. You have no such position.’

I did not argue that. I walked to the window, to get the best of the light. Mouraki followed me closely.

‘I’ll read it to you,’ said I. ‘There isn’t much of it.’

I held it to the light. The Pasha was close by my shoulder, his pale face leaning forward towards the paper. Straining my eyes on the blurred characters I read; and I read aloud, according to my promise, hearing Mouraki’s breathing which accompanied my words.

‘My lord, take care. He is free. Mouraki has set – ’

That was all: a blot followed the last word. At that word the pen must have fallen from her fingers as her husband’s dagger stole her life. We had read her last words. The writing of that line saw the moment of her death. Did it also supply the cause? If so, not the old grudge, but rage at a fresh betrayal of a fresh villainy had impelled Constantine’s arm to his foul stroke. He had caught her in the act of writing it, taken his revenge, and secured his safety.

After I had read, there was silence. The Pasha’s face was still by my shoulder. I gazed, as if fascinated, on the fatal unfinished note. At last I turned and looked him in the face. His eyes met mine in unmoved steely composure.

‘I think,’ said I, ‘that I had a right to read the note after all; for, as I guess, the writer was addressing it to me and not to you.’

For a moment Mouraki hesitated; then he shrugged his shoulders, saying:

‘My dear lord, I don’t know whom it is addressed to or what it means. Had the unfortunate lady been allowed to finish it – ’

‘We should know more than we do now,’ I interrupted.

‘I was about to say as much. I see she introduced my name; she can, however, have known nothing of any course I might be pursuing.’

‘Unless some one who knew told her.’

‘Who could?’

‘Well, her husband.’

‘Who was killing her?’ he asked, with a scornful smile.

‘He may have told her before, and she may have been trying to forward the information to me.’

‘It is all the purest conjecture,’ shrugged the Governor.

I looked him in the face, and I think my eyes told him pretty plainly my views of the meaning of the note. He answered my glance at first with a carefully inexpressive gaze; but presently a meaning came into his eyes. He seemed to confess to me and to challenge me to make what use I could of the confession. But the next instant the momentary candour of his regard passed, and blankness spread over his face again.

Desperately I struggled with myself, clinging to self-control. To this day I believe that, had my life and my life only been in question, I should then and there have compelled Mouraki to fight me, man to man, in the little gloomy room where the dead woman lay on the sofa. We should not have disturbed her; and I think also that Mouraki, who did not want for courage, would have caught at my challenge and cried content to a proposal that we should, there and then, put our quarrel to an issue, and that one only of us should go alive down the hill. I read such a mood in his eyes in the moment of their candour. I saw the courage to act on it in his resolute lips and his tense still attitude.

Well, we could neither of us afford the luxury. If I killed him, I should bring grave suspicion on Phroso. She and her islanders would be held accomplices; and, though this was a secondary matter to hot rage, I myself should stand in a position of great danger. And he could not kill me; for all his schemes against me were still controlled and limited by the necessities of his position. Had I been an islander, or even an unknown man concerning whom no questions would be asked, his work would have been simple, and, as I believed, would have been carried out before now. But it was not so. He would be held responsible for a satisfactory account of how I met my death. It would tax his invention to give it if he killed me himself, with his own hand, and in a secret encounter. In fact, the finding of the note left us where we were, so far as action was concerned, but it tore away the last shreds of the veil, the last pretences of good faith and friendliness which had been kept up between us. In that swift, full, open glance which we had exchanged, our undisguised quarrel, the great issue between us, was legibly written and plainly read. Yet not a word passed our lips concerning it. Mouraki and I began to need words no more than lovers do. For hate matches love in penetration.

I put the note in my pocket. Mouraki blinked eyes now utterly free from expression. I gave a final glance at the dead woman. I felt a touch of shame at having for a moment forgotten her fate for my quarrel.

‘Shall we go down, Pasha?’ said I.

‘As soon as you please, Lord Wheatley,’ he answered. This formal mode of address was perhaps an acknowledgment that the time for hypocrisy and the hollow show of friendship between us was over. The change was just in his way, slight, subtle, but sufficient.