Phroso: A Romance

‘Though the precise form of it I confess I don’t understand.’

‘Well, our lamented Constantine, who had much experience but rather wanted imagination, was in favour of a fever. He told me that it was the usual device in Neopalia.’

‘His wife died of it, I suppose?’ I believe I smiled as I put the question. Great as my peril was, I still found a pleasure in fencing with the Pasha.

‘Oh, no. Now that’s unworthy of you. Never have a fiction when the truth will serve! Since he’s dead, he murdered his wife. If he had lived, of course – ’

‘Ah, then it would have been fever.’

‘Precisely. We must adapt ourselves to circumstances: that is the part of wise men. Now in your case – ’ He bent down and looked hard in my face.

‘In my case,’ said I, ‘you can call it what you like, Pasha.’

‘Don’t you think that the outraged patriotism of Neopalia – ?’ he suggested, with a smile. ‘You bought the island – you, a stranger! It was very rash. These islanders are desperate fellows.’

‘That would have served with Constantine alive; but he’s dead. Your patriot is gone, Pasha.’

‘Alas, yes, our good Constantine is dead. But there are others. There’s a fellow whom I ought to hang.’

‘Ah!’ My eye wandered towards where Demetri hummed and polished.

‘And who has certainly not earned his life merely by bringing me to meet you this morning, though I give him some credit for that.’

‘Demetri?’ I asked with a careless air.

‘Well, yes, Demetri,’ smiled the Pasha. ‘Demetri is very open to reason.’

Across the current of our talk came Demetri’s soft happy humming. The Pasha heard it.

‘I hanged his brother three years ago,’ he observed.

‘I know you did,’ said I. ‘You seem to have done some characteristic things three years ago.’

‘And he went to the gallows humming that tune. You know it?’

‘Very well indeed, Pasha. It was one of the first things I heard in Neopalia; it’s going to be one of the last, perhaps.’

‘That tune lends a great plausibility to my little fiction,’ said Mouraki.

‘It will no doubt be a very valuable confirmation of it,’ I rejoined.

The Pasha made no further remark for a moment. I looked past him and past the four soldiers – for the last had now joined his comrades – to Phroso. She was leaning against the cliff side; her head was thrown back and her face upturned, but her eyes were closed. I think she had swooned, or at least sunk into a half-unconscious state. Mouraki detected my glance.

‘Look at her well, use your time,’ he said in a savage tone. You’ve not long to enjoy the sight of her.’

‘I have as long as it may happen to please God,’ said I. ‘Neither you nor I know how long.’

‘I can make a guess,’ observed Mouraki, a quiet smile succeeding his frown.

‘Yes, you can make a guess.’

He stood looking at me a moment longer; then he turned away. As he passed the soldiers he spoke to them. I saw them smile. No doubt he had picked his men for this job and could rely on them.

The little bay in which we were was surrounded by steep and precipitous cliffs except in one place. Here there was a narrow cleft; the rocks did not rise abruptly; the ground sloped gradually upwards as it receded from the beach. Just on this spot of gently-rising ground Demetri sat, and the Pasha, having amused himself with me for as long as it pleased him, walked up to Demetri. The fellow sprang to his feet and saluted Mouraki with great respect. Mouraki beckoned to him to come nearer, and began to speak to him.

I sat still where I was, under the bayonets of the soldiers, who faced me and had their backs to their commander. My eyes were fixed steadily on the pair who stood conferring on the slope; and my mind was in a ferment. Scruples troubled me no more; Mouraki himself had made them absurd. I read my only chance of life in the choice or caprice of the wild passionate barbarian – he was little else – who stood with head meekly bowed and knife carelessly dangled in his hand. This man was he of whom Panayiota had spoken so mysteriously; he was the friend whom I had ‘more than I knew of.’ In his blood feud with the Pasha, in his revengeful wrath, lay my chance. It was only a chance, indeed, for the soldiers might kill me; but it was a chance, and there was no other; for if Mouraki won him over by promises or bribes, or intimidated him into doing his will, then Demetri would take the easier task, that which carried no risk and did not involve his own death, as an attack on the Pasha almost certainly would. Would he be prudent and turn his hand against the single helpless man? Or would his long-nursed rage stifle all care for himself and drive him against Mouraki? If so, if he chose that way, there was a glimmer of hope. I glanced at Phroso’s motionless figure and pallid face; I glanced at the little boat that floated on the water (why had Demetri not beached it?); I glanced at the rope which bound it to the other boat; I measured the distance between the boats and myself; I thrust my hand into the pocket of my coat and contrived to open the blade of my clasp-knife, which was now the only weapon left to me.

Mouraki spoke and smiled. He made no gesture but there was just a movement of his eyes towards me. Demetri’s eyes followed his for an instant, but would not dwell on my face. The Pasha spoke again. Demetri shook his head, and Mouraki’s face assumed a persuasive good-humoured expression. Demetri glanced round apprehensively. The Pasha took him by the arm, and they went a few paces further up the slope, so as to be more private in their talk – but was that the object with both of them? Still Demetri shook his head. The Pasha’s smile vanished, his mouth grew stern, his eyes cold, and he frowned. He spoke in short sharp sentences, the snap of his lips showing when his mind was spoken. Demetri seemed to plead. He looked uneasy, he shifted from foot to foot, he drew back from the imperious man, as though he shunned him and would fain escape from him. Mouraki would not let him go, but followed him in his retreat, step for step. Thus another ten yards were put between them and me. Anger and contempt blazed now on Mouraki’s face. He raised his hand and brought it down clenched on the palm of the other. Demetri held out his hand as though in protest or supplication. The Pasha stamped with his foot. There were no signs of relenting in his manner.

My eyes grew weary with intent watching. I felt like a man who has been staring at a bright white light, too fascinated by its intensity to blink or turn away, even though it pains him to look longer. The figures of the two seemed to become indistinct and blurred. I rubbed my knuckles into my eyes to clear my vision, and looked again. Yes; they were a little further off, even still a little further off than when I had looked before. It could not be by chance and unwittingly that Demetri always and always and always gave back a pace, luring the Pasha to follow him. No, there was a plan in his head; and in my heart suddenly came a great beat of savage joy – of joy at the chance Heaven gave, yes, and of lust for the blood of the man against whom I had so mighty a debt of wrong. And, as I gazed now, for an instant – a single, barely perceptible instant – came the swiftest message from Demetri’s eyes. I read it. I knew its meaning. I sat where I was, but every muscle of my body was tense and strung in readiness for that desperate leap, and every nerve of me quivered with a repressed excitement that seemed almost to kill. Now, now! Was it now? I was within an ace of crying ‘Strike!’ but I held the word in and still gazed. And the soldiers leant easily on their bayonets, exchanging a word or two now and again, yawning sometimes, weary of a dull job, wondering when his Excellency would let them get home again; of what was going on behind their backs, there on the slope of the cliff, they took no heed.

Ah, there was a change now! Demetri had ceased to protest, to deprecate and to retreat. Mouraki’s frowns had vanished, he smiled again in satisfaction and approval. Demetri threw a glance at me. Mouraki spoke. Demetri answered. For an instant I looked at the soldiers: they were more weary and inattentive than ever. Back went my eyes. Now Mouraki, with suave graciousness, in condescending recognition of a good servant, stepped right close up to Demetri and, raising his hand, reached round the fellow’s shoulder and patted him approvingly on the back.

‘It will be now!’ I thought; nay, I believe I whispered, and I drew my legs up under me and grasped the hidden knife in my pocket. ‘Yes, it must be now.’

Mouraki patted, laughed, evidently praised. Demetri bowed his head. But his long, lithe, bare, brown right arm that had hung so weary a time in idle waiting by his side – the arm whose hand held the great bright blade so lovingly polished, so carefully tested – the arm began slowly and cautiously to crawl up his side. It bent at the elbow, it rested a moment after its stealthy secret climb; then, quick as lightning, it flew above Demetri’s head, the blade sparkled in the sun, the hand swooped down, and the gleams of the sunlit steel were quenched in the body of Mouraki. With a sudden cry of amazement, of horror and of agony, the Pasha staggered and fell prone on the rocky ground; and Demetri cried, ‘At last, my God, at last!’ and laughed aloud.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ARMENIAN DOG!

The death-cry that Mouraki Pasha uttered under Demetri’s avenging knife seemed to touch a spring and set us all a-moving. The sound of it turned the soldiers’ idle lassitude into an amazed wonder, which again passed in an instant to fierce excitement. Phroso leapt, with a shriek, to her feet. I hurled myself across the space between me and the rope, knife in hand. The soldiers, neglecting their unarmed prisoner, turned with a shout of rage, and rushed wildly up the slope to where Demetri stood, holding his blade towards heaven. The rope parted under my impetuous assault. Phroso was by my side, in an instant we were in the boat; I pushed off. I seized the sculls; but then I hesitated. Was this man my friend, my ally, my accomplice, what you will? I looked up the slope. Demetri stood by the body of Mouraki. The four soldiers rushed towards him. I could not approve his deed; but I had suffered it to be done. I must not run away now. I pushed the sculls into Phroso’s hands. But she had caught my purpose, and threw herself upon me, twining her arms about me and crying, ‘No, no, my lord! My lord, no, no!’ Her love gave her strength; for a moment I could not disengage myself, but stood fast bound in her embrace.

The moment was enough. It was the end, the end of that brief fierce drama on the rocky slope, the end of any power I might have had to aid Demetri; for he did not try to defend himself. He stood still as a statue where he was, holding the knife up to heaven, the smile which his loud laugh left still on his lips. Phroso’s head sank on my shoulder. She would not look; but the sight drew my eyes with an irresistible attraction. The bayonets flashed in the air and buried themselves in Demetri’s body. He sank with a groan. Again the blades, drawn back, were driven into him, and again and again. He was a mangled corpse, but in hot revenge for their leader they thrust and thrust. It turned me sick to look; yet I looked till at last they ceased, and stood for an instant over the two bodies, regarding them. Then I loosed Phroso’s arms off me; she sank back in the stern. Again I took the sculls and laid to with a will. Where we were to go, or what help we could look for, I did not know; but a fever to be away from the place had come on me, and I pulled, thinking less of life and safety than of putting distance between me and that hideous scene.

‘They don’t move,’ whispered Phroso, whose eyes were now turned away from me and fixed on the beach. ‘They stand still. Row, my lord, row!’

A moment passed. I pulled with all my strength. She was between me and the land; I could see nothing. Her voice came again, low but urgent:

‘Now they move, they’re coming down to the shore. Ah, my lord, they’re taking aim!’

‘God help us!’ said I between my teeth. ‘Crouch in the boat. Low down, get right down. Lower down, Phroso, lower down!’

‘Ah, one has knocked up the barrels! They’re talking again. Why don’t they fire?’

‘Do they look like hesitating?’

‘Yes. No, they’re aiming again. No, they’ve stopped. Row, my lord, row!’

I was pulling as I had not pulled since I rowed in my college boat at Oxford nine years before. I thought of the race at that moment with a sort of amusement. But all the while Phroso kept watch for me; by design or chance she did not move from between me and the shore.

‘They’re running to the boat now. They’re getting in. Are they coming after us, my lord?’

‘Heaven knows! I suppose so.’

I was wondering why they had not used their rifles; they had evidently thought of firing at first, but something had held their hands. Perhaps they, mere humble soldiers, shrank from the responsibility. Their leader, whose protection would have held them harmless and whose favour rewarded them, lay dead. They might well hesitate to fire on a man whom they knew to be a person of some position and who had taken no part in Mouraki’s death.

‘They’re launching the boat. They’re in now,’ came in Phroso’s breathless whisper.