A TROUBLED MIND
"Pity! Pity!" whined the lepers, exposing their hideousness with all
the skill of subtle and experienced merchants. They were all there by
the roadside leading into Canea, and had commenced business for the
day. Curtis stared at them, unable to remove his eyes from the
dreadful spectacle.
Lindbohm, fumbling nervously in his pockets, with averted face, and
producing two or three coppers, tossed them to the afflicted group.
"Come, away," he said, pulling Curtis along. "I cannot bear to look at
them."
The Turk had been telling them of the leper colony, and they were not
totally unprepared for this sight; yet the reality far exceeded the
description.
"But you should see those who are not able to come down here and beg,"
exclaimed the Major; "these are comparatively well yet, you know."
"I hope I may never see them," said Lindbohm. "I hope I may never see
these again."
The Swede bore the Turk no ill-will for the enforced detainment. It
had not lasted for long, and the Major had shown his guests every
attention, and had explained again and again that he had carried
Lindbohm off to save his life.
"But those who are no longer able to beg," asked the Lieutenant, "do
they starve?"
"O no, indeed! They are living monuments to the tender-heartedness of
my august master, the Sultan. Each of the lepers is furnished one loaf
of bread a day."
"O, I see," said Lindbohm.
Curtis took no part in the conversation. He did not even hear what the
others were saying, but walked on beside them with his eyes fixed upon
the ground, like a man in a trance. Every now and then he ejaculated
"Good God!" with the accent on the "good."
At last he stopped so abruptly that the Turk, who was directly behind,
nearly knocked him over.
"I say!" said Curtis, whirling around and choking a stream of fluent
apologies with a vehement question:
"Do people who are not lepers ever go into that village? To see their
friends, you know, or to stop over night, or anything of that sort?"
"Impossible. You have seen the disease. Do you think any one would
run the risk of catching it?"
Curtis strode on and became again immersed in thought, vaguely hearing
the Major's explanation of the fact that nearly all the lepers of Crete
were Greeks.
At each side of the gate of Canea stood an English marine, in red
jacket and cork helmet. A business-like "Halt!" woke Curtis from his
abstraction.
"I am Peter Lindbohm, Lieutenant of cavalry in the Swedish army," said
Lindbohm in English, pulling an immense portfolio from the breast
pocket of the Prince Albert. "Here is my card."
One of the marines took the proffered pasteboard, glanced at it
solemnly, and saluted.
"And here's mine," said Curtis. "I'm an American. And this gentleman
is a Turkish officer. We were coming across the country on foot, and
he said we were in danger of being massacred, so he took us to his
house and kept us there till the English landed, and here--here's my
passport, too, if you can manage to read it. It's been in the water."
"What do you want to do now, sir?"
"We have friends inside," replied Lindbohm, "and we wish to find out
whether they are safe or not. We wish to go in."
"Very sorry, gentlemen, but we 'ave strict horders to admit no one for
the present."
"But we two are not Turks--nor Cretans. I am a Swede, and my friend
here is an American."
"Very sorry, gentlemen----"
"But this may be a matter of life and death! A Christian lady, the
betrothed of this young gentleman, is in the hands of the Turks----"
"Very sorry, gentlemen. Move away from the gate, please."
Lindbohm was too good a soldier not to know what that meant. So they
went to a house near by, belonging to a friend of the Major, and waited
two whole days, during the most of which time the Swede and the
American had the place to themselves, for the Major and his friend were
arrested and carried off before the end of the first day. They went
repeatedly to the gate, demanding admittance, and were refused as often
by the sentinels, until the third morning, when they were greeted with
a smile and a "Hit's hall right now, gentlemen; you may henter--'im
givin' hup 'is sword, which will be restored to 'im at 'eadquarters."
Lindbohm raised his hand in military salute to his red bandanna and
passed under the ancient archway. Curtis handed over the simitar and
followed.
"D'yever see two such guys?" asked one red jacket of the other.
"Never'n me loife. But the tall one's a soldier, all right. D'ye see
'im s'loot?"
[Illustration: ... had they entered any other town in the world, their
grotesque appearance would have excited attention]
Now, had two men attired as were Curtis and Lindbohm at that moment
entered any other town in the world, their grotesque appearance would
have excited attention, not to say jeers, and a crowd of small boys
would have been following at their heels. The gray Prince Albert was
wrinkled and faded, and so badly shrunken that it caused Lindbohm's
arms to fall a trifle akimbo. Altogether, it was a garment very
inharmonious with the tall yellow boots into which his trousers were
tucked, and the gaudy handkerchief which, twisted about his brow, did
service for a hat. He had picked up a slender stick, which took the
place of the bamboo cane, and with which he occasionally warded off an
imaginary thrust, as he strode up the street, looking eagerly about
him. Curtis' once natty business suit had been torn in several places.
He also wore Cretan boots, and his costume was completed by a Turkish
fez provided by the hospitable Major, who had managed, in addition, to
afford his two guests a bath, and an opportunity to shave.
Lindbohm was quite voluble.
"Bear up, my friend," he said; "we shall surely find her. Remember
that she was in a Turkish house, the very safest place she could be in."
Curtis continued to be silent and preoccupied, a condition which the
Swede attributed to the fear that something had happened to Panayota,
and that their long search would be rendered vain at the very end. Yet
he could not understand the American's seeming listlessness, mingled
with absorption and perplexity.
"He acts like a man who has been hit on the head with a musket butt,"
thought the Swede, glancing shrewdly at his companion. "Great heavens,
can it be that he has a presentiment of evil?"
Then aloud:
"We must go straight to the military authorities--to the English. We
will tell them all about Panayota, and if Kostakes has her yet they
will yust make him give her right up--eh, my friend?"
"Ye-es," replied Curtis. "Yes, O yes; certainly."
The Turks whom they met looked sullen. The foreign troops were
everywhere, marching in small bodies through the streets. If two or
three Mohammedans stopped to talk together an English redcoat was sure
to step up to them with:
"G'an now, move on!" Not much damage had been done to the part of the
town through which they were now passing. There was a sprightly
gossiping of bugles, hailing and replying from distant points, and the
frequent clatter of shod hoofs as some orderly galloped across an
intersecting street. And all the noise and bustle was threaded by a
continual tune, not sung loudly, but insistently, like the motif of an
opera.
The Cretans whom they met, whether jubilant or sad of face, seemed to
be humming it--some joyously, others revengefully.
"Do you hear that?" cried Lindbohm, "Panayota will be singing the hymn
of liberty herself to-day. We must make her sing it all through for
us. I wish I could understand the words."
And he beat time with his cane as a tall Cretan strode by, humming very
distinctly:
"We can tell you by the lightning
Of your terrible swift brand,
And we know you by the brightening
When your proud eyes sweep the land!"
"Panayota will be singing that at this very moment, eh?" cried
Lindbohm, laying his hand upon Curtis' shoulder; but the latter made no
reply.
From the narrow street they passed into a place of smoldering ruins and
roofless, ragged walls. Here a party of marines were at work, assisted
by townspeople, throwing water on fires that were still burning, or in
digging bodies out of the debris. A cart stood near, and an awestruck,
silent throng lingered by, ready to identify the remains of possible
relatives or friends. The air was full of powdered lime and smoke, and
had a queer, pungent smell.
"Come on," said Lindbohm, "before they find a body. I don't like to
see such things, and don't let this affect you, my friend. Panayota,
you know, is in the Turkish quarter."
Lindbohm urged this cheering assurance with the insistent frequency of
a man who is trying to water his own hopes.
On the edge of the ruined quarter was a pile of rubbish which had once
been a cottage. Three of the walls had fallen down, but the one facing
the street was still standing. A young and beautiful Cretan woman
looked in through one of the holes where the windows had been, watching
a man who was clearing away debris with a shovel and lifting blocks of
stone to one side. The woman's face was drawn with agony, and she
stared at the man, great eyed and silent, like a tortured dumb
creature. Every time that he lifted a rock, she gave some sign of a
fiercer wrench of pain, as when the executioner gives another twist to
the rack; sometimes she thrust one hand against the window sill and
swung part way around, as though about to fall; sometimes she clasped
her hands to her heart and gasped for breath. Once she covered her
eyes for a long time as though fearful of seeing the very thing she was
waiting for. And when at last the man lifted a little charred body
from the crumbled lime, she broke into a series of dreadful screams,
shrieking "No! No! No!" until her voice died into a hoarse whisper.
The husband tore off his jacket, wrapped it around the tiny body and
came into the street, his own grief eclipsed by the greater solicitude
for the young wife. And when the woman took the pitiful burden,
rocking it on her heart and talking baby talk to it, he walked by her
side, patted her disheveled hair, and tried to call her back from the
brink of insanity with endearing terms. As they passed through the
throng of waiting Cretans, every man removed his head-covering, hat,
fez or handkerchief, and made the sign of the cross.
"Come away," said Lindbohm, choking, "the poor little baby."
"I want to get out of this damned place," shouted Curtis with sudden
vehemence, shaking his fist. "It's a hell of horrors and I'm sick of
it!"
"Courage, courage," said Lindbohm, "the more horrible it is the more
haste we must make to find Panayota. Poor Panayota! She is no horror,
eh, my friend?"
They came into the public square, where the shells from the "Hazard"
had fallen thickest, for here the Bashi Bazouks had fired on the
British soldiers, and yonder, rising precipitously to a height of
thirty feet, was the fortified stronghold from which the Turkish guard
had poured a rain of bullets upon the town. English sentries were now
pacing to and fro up there. But the chief attraction was a sort of
booth in the center of the square, for all the world like a Punch and
Judy booth, and in it were hanging by the neck seven figures with black
caps over their heads, with their hands bound behind them and their
feet tied together.
"By George, they've been hanging the ringleaders, hanging them higher
than Haman!" cried Lindbohm.
Curtis could not realize that those were the bodies of human beings,
there was something so theatrical about their appearance; they hung so
neatly in a row, and the heads all lolled one way, like heads of
Brownies in an advertisement.
"Maybe they have hanged them in effigy," he suggested.
Lindbohm laughed.
"Might as well be now," he replied. "But let us ask the guard where we
will find the commandant. Then we shall learn something about Kostakes
and Panayota."
"You go," said Curtis; "I'll wait for you here." He shrank from the
ingenuous explanation that Panayota was his betrothed. The very
thought made him shudder.
"I can't tell him," he muttered, as he watched Lindbohm forcing his way
through the throng. "I must get away from him some way. By Jove, I'll
run off and leave him, if I can't do any better. Good God, what an
escape I've had!"
"Hi!" shouted Lindbohm, so that every soul in the square turned and
looked at him. He was standing on tiptoe and Curtis could see the
ruddy face with its red bandanna halo floating on a sea of heads.
"Hi!" called the Swede again, waving his stick in air. "Come here,
quick! I've found Kostakes."
"Now, what the devil do I want of Kostakes?" muttered Curtis, plunging
reluctantly into the press. When he had reached Lindbohm's side, the
Swede gripped him by the arm and pointed a long finger at one of the
pantomimists in the Punch and Judy booth.
A board hung, suspended from the neck of each, with a name and crime
inscribed thereon in Turkish and English. Curtis read:
KOSTAKES EFFENDI.
Captain of Bashi Bazouks,
Murder and Arson.
"It is hard for a soldier to die thus," said the Swede sadly. "But a
soldier who disgraces his calling, deserves such a death. Well, my
friend," turning to Curtis, "half our work has been done for us, eh?
Now the rest will be easy. Is it not so?"
Curtis could not take his eyes from the hooded form before him, nor
move from the spot where he stood. As long as he stared at the head,
covered with its black cloth, he was impressed with a sense of
unreality; so might a row of wax inquisitors be shown in the Eden Musee
at New York. And that pitiful, limp tilting of the head was not at all
suggestive of Kostakes, who was ever wont to hold his neck stiff and
stand upright with a certain jaunty insolence. But when Curtis' eyes
traveled downward, the unreality vanished. The long row of buttons,
the dark blue trousers tucked into the tops of the highly polished
boots, the spurs, the backward bulging of the thick calf of the
leg--all these things brought back to him a flood of reminiscences. He
remembered the fight at Ambellaki, and the long ride across country.
He could see those very legs clasping the side of a horse, and he
wondered once more how their owner managed to keep the boots so
spotless. Then he saw Panayota again, the most splendid creature he
had ever seen, denouncing the Turk for the murder of her father, and he
felt once more the old thrill of admiration and chivalrous purpose.
Ah! She had touched the Turk, she had made him wince, brave girl,
despite those insolent eyes, and that square, protruding under jaw.
Any one could see that by the way in which he stopped twirling the end
of the little black mustache and began nibbling it. The long chase
after Kostakes, with those turbulent Cretans, the night in the square
when Curtis had fired point blank at him and missed him--all these
things passed through his mind like scenes on a moving panorama, as he
gaped at those dark blue breeches and the well-polished boots with
their long spurs; but when he raised his eyes again to the black-hooded
head, tipped to one side like a man with a stiff neck, the whole
incident seemed ended; this life in Crete, became a fantastic dream and
took on the unreality of those faceless puppets, hanging all in a row,
gently oscillating in the breeze.
"Move on!" said a stern voice, sharply.
"They mean us," said Lindbohm, pulling Curtis away, "it seems they
allow no loitering here. Well, the next thing is to see the commandant
and make some inquiries about Panayota, eh?"
"Lindbohm!" cried Curtis, pettishly, "I don't want to go to the
commandant. See here, old man, there's something I want to tell you.
Something I must tell you. I can't stand this any longer."
They had passed the crowd and were alone now. The Swede stopped and
looked steadily at his companion. Curtis glanced up furtively. There
was nothing but inquiry in those brave, honest blue eyes.
"I say, old man," he stammered, "don't you think we ought to go and get
some hats and things before we go to the commandant? I don't want to
offend you, but you--but we look like the very devil!"