AWAITING THE SIGNAL
Curtis was left alone in the priest's house. Papa-Maleko had gone up
the ravine.
"If one of my boys were wounded," he said, "and I were not there to
comfort him, God might forgive me, but I should never forgive myself."
The day passed very peacefully. Curtis sat in the door of the
parsonage, with his bandaged foot upon a stool. The children, usually
so noisy in the streets, were quiet, and the gossips were either gone
or were talking in whispers. A woman sat in a doorway opposite holding
her babe, that squealed and shouted with delight at the familiarity of
a pet kid. The mother smiled sadly, and then clasped the child to her
bosom, smothering it with affection. The sudden purple twilight of the
orient fell, and a light breeze flew up from the sea, beating the
blossoms from the cherry and pear trees and scattering their faint,
delicious perfume. The purple changed to black and the nightingales
began to sing. The flocks had gone to sleep. The antiphonous bleating
and the jangle of the bells were swallowed up in the darkness that was
silence, save where now and then a little lamb cried softly to its
mother across the meadows of dreamland or a bell tinkled musically.
There was a purring of many waters.
"By Jove, war's a queer thing," mused Curtis. "It's hate and lust and
bigotry. It's a big fiendish lie, and all the time a thousand voices
are preaching truth and love. Here am I, sitting among the
nightingales, the cherry blossoms and the dreaming sheep, and a mile
from here all the men of the vicinity are trying to cut one another's
throats. And I suppose I'd be with 'em if it wasn't for this blamed
foot. These Cretans are plucky fellows. By George, I glory in their
sand! Had they been a lot of cowards they would have given up the
girl--but they wouldn't have got her while I could hold a gun! Why,
she's a natural queen! She'd grace any man's fireside, she would.
What beautiful eyes she has! what a mouth! what a carriage, and spirit,
too! Talk about your ancient epics and your ancient heroines! Why,
here's the Trojan war right over again, or the spirit of it. We aren't
shy on men and women these days; we're shy on Homers. And that girl,
that Panayota, she's as pure as snow. She'd knife herself in a minute
before she'd allow herself to fall into the hands of the Turks.
Whatever else the boys do, I hope they'll pink that Kostakes chap. I'd
like to pot him myself."
As the time wore on, Curtis found himself leaning forward in the
darkness, listening for the sound of distant shots. He wondered if the
Turks would attack that night and if he could hear the shots if they
did.
He went to the door and called to an old man who was talking in a low
tone, but excitedly, to the woman across the way. The babe had been
put to bed. They both came running, and he asked them, framing his
sentence with much care:
"Has the fighting begun? Can the guns be heard from here?"
They replied in concert, volubly and at great length. Then they held a
conference and withdrew.
"That's the trouble with a foreign tongue," mused Curtis. "You can
talk to them all right, but they talk so fast that you can't understand
what they say to you. Now, I said it correctly," and he repeated the
sentence.
After about half an hour the old man returned, bringing some bread,
cheese, _halva_ and a glass of dark wine. Curtis repeated the Greek
word for "thank you" half a dozen times, and then fell upon the food
voraciously. "The more I see of these people, the better I like them,"
he muttered. "Now, I call that thoughtful of the old man."
After he had finished eating he tried his foot, bearing his weight on
it until he could endure the pain no longer.
"I believe it's better," he soliloquized, and then cried
inconsequentially:
"By Jove! I wonder if that old blockhead thought I was asking for
something to eat? Panayota would have understood me in a minute. Why,
she and I get along all right together in Greek. But then, I mustn't
judge the rest of these people by her."
He wound up his watch at ten o'clock, and lay down upon the divan.
"There's going to be no fight to-night," he muttered. "And, at any
rate, it wouldn't be my fight if there was."
He fell asleep, and dreamed of Panayota, gigantic in size, standing on
a cliff by a wan, heaving sea. She was hurling jagged pieces of rock
down at a line of ant-like Turks, crawling far below. The wind was
blowing her hair straight out from her forehead, and he could only see
her mouth and chin, but he knew it was Panayota. He ran to help her,
when the demarch seized him to hold him back. He awoke, and found that
an old man was shaking his arm and crying excitedly in Greek, "Fire!
fire!"
Curtis' first thought was that the house was burning. He put his hand
on the old man's shoulder and jumped over to the door. Half a dozen
people were standing in the moonlight, pointing toward the hills. Two
women, one holding a very young babe in her arms, were crossing
themselves hysterically and calling on the name of the Virgin. An old
man of eighty, whom Curtis had frequently seen bent nearly double and
walking with a cane, now stood erect, fingering the trigger of a rifle.
A stripling of twelve was shaking his fist toward a red eye of flame
that glowed among the rocks, high up and far away.