Phroso: A Romance

I followed Mouraki out of the house. He walked in his usual slow deliberate manner. He beckoned to the sentry as we passed him, told him that two women, who would shortly come up, were to be admitted, but nobody else, until an officer came bearing further orders. Having made these arrangements, he resumed his way down, taking his place in front of me and maintaining absolute silence. I did not care to talk. I had enough to think about. But already, now I was out in the fresh air, the feeling of sick horror with which the little room had affected me began to pass away. I felt braced up again. I was better prepared for the great effort which loomed before me now as a present and urgent necessity. Mouraki had found an instrument. He had set Constantine free, that Constantine might do against me what Mouraki himself could not do openly. My friends were away. The hour of the stroke must even now be upon me. Well, the hour of my counter-stroke was come also, the counter-stroke for which my interview with Phroso and Mouraki’s absence opened the way. For he thought the passage no more than a mediæval curiosity.

We reached the house and entered the hall together. As we passed through the compound I had seen an alert sentinel. Looking out from the front door, I perceived two men on guard. A party of ten or a dozen more was drawn up, an officer at its head; these were the men who waited to attend Mouraki on his evening expedition. The Pasha seated himself and wrote a note. He looked up as he finished it, saying:

‘I am informing the Lady Euphrosyne that you will await her here in half-an-hour’s time, and that she is at liberty to spend what time she pleases with you. Is that what you wish?’

‘Precisely, your Excellency. I am much obliged to you.’

His only answer was a dignified bow; but he turned to a sub-officer who stood by him at attention and said, ‘On no account allow Lord Wheatley to be interrupted this evening. You will, of course, keep the sentries on guard behind and in front of the house, but do not let them intrude here.’

After giving his orders, the Pasha sat silent for some minutes. He had lighted his cigarette, and smoked it slowly. Then he let it out – a thing I had never seen him do before – lit another, and resumed his slow inhalings. I knew that he would speak before long, and after a few more moments he gave me the result of his meditations. We were now alone together.

‘It would have been much better,’ said he, ‘if that poor woman – whose fate I sincerely regret – had been let alone and this girl had died instead of her,’ and he nodded at me with convinced emphasis.

‘If Phroso had died!’ leapt from my lips in astonishment.

‘Yes, if Phroso had died. We would have hanged Constantine together, wept together over her grave, and each of us gone home with a sweet memory – you to your fiancée, I to my work. And we should have forgiven one another any little causes of reproach.’

To this speculation in might-have-beens I made no answer. The feelings with which I received it shewed me, had I still needed shewing, what Phroso was to me. I had been shocked and grieved at Francesca’s fate; but rather that a thousand times than the thing on which Mouraki coolly mused!

‘It would have been much better, so much better,’ he repeated, with a curiously regretful intonation.

‘The only thing that would be better, to my thinking,’ I said, ‘is that you should behave as an honourable man and leave this lady free to do as she wishes.’

‘And another thing, surely?’ he asked, smiling now. ‘That you should behave as an honourable man and go back to Miss Hipgrave?’ A low laugh marked the point he had scored. Then he added, with his usual shrug, ‘We are slaves, we men, slaves all.’

He rose from his chair and completed his preparations for going out, flinging a long military cloak over his shoulders. His momentary irresolution, or remorse, or what you will, had passed. His speech became terse and resolute again.

‘We shall meet early to-morrow, I expect,’ he said, ‘and then we must settle this matter. Do I understand that you are resolved not to yield.’

‘I am absolutely resolved,’ said I, and at the sight of his calm sneering face my temper suddenly got the better of me. ‘Yes, I’m resolved. You can do what you like. You can bribe ruffians to assassinate me, as I believe you’ve bribed Constantine.’

He started at that, as a man will at plain speech, even though the plain speech tells him nothing that he did not know of the speaker’s mind.

‘The blood of that unhappy woman is on your head,’ I cried vehemently. ‘Through your act she lies dead. If a like fate befalls me, the blame of that will be on your head also. It is you, and not your tool, who will be responsible.’

‘Responsible!’ he echoed. His voice was mocking and easy, though his face was paler even than it was wont to be. ‘Responsible! What does that mean? Responsible to whom?’

‘To God,’ said I.

He laughed a low derisive laugh.

‘Come, that’s better,’ he said. ‘I expected you to say public opinion. Your sentiment is more respectable than that clap-trap of public opinion. So be it. I shall be responsible. Where will you be?’ He paused, smiling, and ended, ‘And where Phroso?’

My self-restraint was exhausted. I sprang up. In another moment my hands would have been on his throat; the next, I suppose, I should have been a prisoner in the hands of his guard. But that was not his wish. He had shewn me too much now to be content with less than my life, and he was not to be turned from his scheme either by his own temper or by mine. He had moved towards the door while he had been speaking to me; as I sprang at him, a quick dexterous movement of his hand opened it, a rapid twist of his body removed him from my reach. He eluded me. The door was shut in my face. The Pasha’s low laugh reached me as I sank back again in my chair, still raging that I had not got him by the throat, but in an instant glad also that my rashness had been foiled.

I heard the tramp of his party on their orderly march along the road from the house. Their steps died away, and all was very still. I looked round the hall; there was nobody but myself. I rose and looked into the kitchen; it was empty. Mouraki had kept his word: we were alone. In front there were sentries, behind there were sentries, but the house was mine. Hope rose again, strong and urgent, in my heart, as my eyes fell on the spot under the staircase, where lay the entrance to the secret passage. I looked at my watch; it was eleven o’clock. The wind blew softly, the night was fine, a crescent moon was just visible through the narrow windows. The time was come, the time left free by Mouraki’s strange oversight.

It was then, and then only, that a sudden gleam of enlightenment, a sudden chilling suspicion, fell upon me, transforming my hope to fear, my triumph to doubt and misgiving. Was Mouraki Pasha the man to be guilty of an oversight, of so plain an oversight? When an enemy leaves open an obvious retreat, is it always by oversight? When he seems to indicate a way of safety, is the way safe? These disturbing thoughts crowded on me as I sat, and I looked now at the entrance to the secret passage with new eyes.

The sentries were behind the house, the sentries were in front of the house; in neither direction was there any chance of escape. One way was open – the passage – and that one way only. And I asked the question of myself, framing the words in an inarticulate low whisper, ‘Is this way a trap?’

‘You fool – you fool – you fool!’ I cried, beating my fist on the wooden table.

For if that way were a trap, then there was no way of safety, and the last hope was gone. Had Mouraki indeed thought of the passage only as a mediæval curiosity? Well, were not oubliettes, down which a man went and was seen no more, also a mediæval curiosity?

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE JAWS OF THE TRAP

I sat for some moments in stupefied despair. The fall from hope was so great and sudden, the revelation of my blind folly so cruel. But this mood did not last long. Soon I was busy thinking again. Alas, the matter gave little scope for thought! It was sadly simple. Before the yacht came back, Mouraki would have it settled once for all, if the settling of it were left to him. Therefore I could not wait. The passage might be a trap. True; but the house was a prison, and a prison whose gate I could not open. I had rather meet my fate in the struggle of hot effort than wait for it tamely here in my chair. And I did not think of myself alone; Phroso’s interests also pointed to action. I could trust Mouraki to allow no harm to come to her. He prized her life no less than I did. To her, then, the passage threatened no new danger, while it offered a possible slender chance. Would she come with me? If she would, it might be that Kortes and I, or Kortes or I, might by some kind caprice of fortune bring her safe out of Mouraki’s hands. On the top of these calculations came a calm, restrained, but intense anger, urging me on to try the issue, hand to hand and man to man, whispering to me that nothing was impossible, and that Mouraki bore no charmed life. For by now I was ready, aye, more than ready, to kill him, if only I could come at him, and I made nothing of the consequences of his death being laid at my door. So is prudence burnt up in the bright flame of a man’s rage.

I knew where to find Kortes. He would be keeping his faithful watch outside his Lady’s room. Mouraki had never raised any objection to this attendance; to forbid it would have been to throw off the mask before the moment came, and Mouraki would not be guilty of such premature disclosure. Moreover the Pasha held the men of Neopalia in no great respect, and certainly did not think that a single islander could offer any resistance to his schemes. I went to the foot of the stairs and called softly to our trusty adherent. He came down to me at once, and I asked him about Phroso.

‘She is alone in her room, my lord,’ he answered. ‘The Governor has sent my sister away.’

‘Sent her away! Where to?’

‘To the cottage on the hill,’ said he. ‘I don’t know why; the Governor spoke to her apart.’

‘I know why,’ said I, and I told him briefly of the crime which had been done.

‘That man should not live,’ said Kortes. ‘I had no doubt that his escape was allowed in order that he might be dangerous to you.’

‘Well, he hasn’t done much yet.’

‘No, not yet,’ said Kortes gravely. I am bound to add that he took the news of Francesca’s death with remarkable coolness. In spite of his good qualities, Kortes was a thorough Neopalian; it needed much to perturb him. Besides he was thinking of Phroso only, and the affairs of everybody else passed unheeded by him. This was very evident when I asked his opinion as to waiting where we were, or essaying the way that Mouraki’s suspicious carelessness seemed to leave open to us.

‘Oh, the passage, my lord! Let it be the passage. For you and me the passage is very dangerous, yet hardly more than here, and the Lady Phroso has her only chance of escape through the passage.’

‘You think it very dangerous for us?’

‘Possibly one of us will come through,’ he said.

‘And at the other end?’

‘There may be a boat. If there is none, she must try (and we with her, if we are alive) to steal round to the town, and hide in one of the houses till a boat can be found,’

‘Mouraki would scour the island.’

‘Yes, but a clear hour or two would be enough if we could get her into a boat.’

‘But he’d send the gunboat after her.’

‘Yes; but, my lord, am I saying that escape is likely? It is possible only; and possibly the boat might evade pursuit.’

I had the highest regard for Kortes, but he was not a very cheering companion for an adventure. Given the same desperate circumstances, Denny would have been serenely confident of success and valiantly scornful of our opponent. I heaved a regretful sigh for him, and said to Kortes, with a little irritation:

‘Hang it, we’ve come out right side up before now, and we may again. Hadn’t we better rouse her?’