IN THE BALANCE
The air was shrewd as we set out from Orgov. We took a narrow, winding
bridle-path, uncomfortably steep in places, in order to avoid the
frontier town of Boruna, wherein trouble might lurk. The stars were
out already, with Mars straight before us wonderfully large and red as
we rode due east. There was an exhilaration in the atmosphere that was
like wine in the veins; and presently we caught the tail of an icy
blast that made us glad to wrap our cloaks around us.
An impartial view of such an enterprise rendered it clear that the odds
were greatly in favour of a total failure. How could six men and a
cripple hope to penetrate into the heart of a closely guarded fortress?
And assuming that we got in, by what means did we expect to make our
way out again! In all conscience the scheme was wild enough, but this
was not the hour in which to lay stress upon that fact.
There can be no doubt that the qualities of our leader were a great aid
to his corps. Undaunted courage, invincible optimism were his in
amplest measure; and this attitude of mind could not fail to react upon
his comrades in arms. Moreover, in the most singular degree he
appeared to combine with the audacity of genius, a head for detail and
a shrewd practical wisdom, which very seldom embellish the characters
of those who depend primarily upon the faculty of inspiration.
As mile by mile we traversed these snow-laden Illyrian mountains, the
possibility of anything less than complete success found no place in
his thoughts. "Nothing is impossible" was his motto, and this he
realised with plenary conviction. His twin soul was calling him to the
Castle of Blaenau, and not for an instant did he doubt his ability to
obey the summons.
It was our plan to avoid as far as possible all centres of population.
Our guides being men of experience, familiar with all the by-paths and
bridle-roads, we were able to do this, and even to save time in the
process. But as the innkeeper had insisted, Fitz's optimism had misled
him when he expected to reach the Illyrian capital in six hours.
When we took our first bait, at an inn above the sinister waters of the
Lake of Montardo, it was nearly nine o'clock. Coffee and cakes were
very acceptable; indeed I have seldom tasted anything so delicious.
But in spite of our diligence and a fair measure of luck, we had come
rather less than twenty miles of the journey. Our horses were good for
another twelve miles through the formidable pass of Ryhgo, where in the
middle of winter the mountain streams are generally in spate.
We went on after a halt of a quarter of an hour. As yet we had seen
few signs of the revolution. But at the inn above Montardo ugly
rumours were rife. The people and the army were said to have turned
against the aristocracy; they were butchering them by the score, and
the Crown Princess was declared to be dead.
That our mission was being made in vain Fitz declined to believe. The
man's courage had never seemed so remarkable as when confronted with
this news.
"If she were already dead," he said, simply, "I should have had
information. I shall not believe it until I hold her corpse in my
arms."
Through the pass of Ryhgo, overshadowed as it is by the gaunt Illyrian
mountains, the narrow path wound along the very edge of a precipice.
Below were the waters of the Lake of Montardo, which as we rode above
it reflected a baleful grandeur to the stars. The wind was very
piercing now and drove sheer in our faces; not a little did it add to
the dangers of our progress through the pass. The horses had only to
make a false step and their riders would be hurled a thousand feet into
those terrible black waters gleaming below.
Before we had overcome this most precarious stage of our journey, the
clouds were beaten up rapidly by the wind, and to add to our peril and
discomfort it came on to snow. It was, therefore, a great relief when
at last we came to an inn at a hamlet with an unpronounceable name
which marked the end of the pass. It was then eleven o'clock and we
had come little more than half the way.
Here we found a friend awaiting us. He was an Illyrian acquaintance of
Fitz's, and he had arranged the details of our mountain journey. A
member of a noble family, he was familiar with the court life at
Blaenau, and had borne the part of a friend in the previous episode
which had culminated in the elopement of the Crown Princess.
He was an agreeable fellow, quite cosmopolitan, and had no difficulty
in making himself understood in French, in which tongue he enjoyed a
greater felicity than any of us. He answered to the name of John,
although his full title, which was very long and hard to pronounce, I
have forgotten. He, too, had heard the common report that the Princess
was dead, but chose to express no opinion in regard to the truth of it.
When Fitz outlined his project, he expressed a mild astonishment.
"But how," said he, "will you cross the Maravina?"
"You don't suppose," said Fitz, "that we have come as far as this to be
deterred by the crossing of the Maravina?"
"All the bridges are closely guarded by the Republicans. The ferries
also."
"We can swim the Maravina, at a pinch."
"You English can do most things," said John, "but don't attempt to swim
the Maravina in the middle of January is my advice."
John's view drew a growl of deep bass approval from no less a person
than the Chief Constable of Middleshire.
"We shall do what we can," said the Man of Destiny, with excellent
indifference.
"Yes, but we damn well needn't do what we can't," said the Chief
Constable _sotto voce_, yet meaning no disrespect to his native tongue.
I must confess to an involuntary shudder, as, at the instance of a
too-active imagination, the waters of the Maravina pierced a pair of
leathers "by a local artist of the name of Jobson." They seemed
miserably damp already. And if anything feels more miserable than a
pair of leathers when they are damp, I pray to be spared the knowledge.
High as our mission was, the flesh was loth to quit the warm stove at
the hostelry of "The Hanging Cross" for those terrible purlieus that
wound through the heart of the wild Illyrian mountains. But at least
we could congratulate ourselves that the pass of Ryhgo was at an end,
and that the black waters of Lake Montardo no longer lay in wait for
the hapless traveller a thousand feet below. Also the snow had ceased,
the wind had fallen, Mars and his brethren were looking again upon us,
and there was a faint suspicion of a crescent moon.
Our weary beasts had been exchanged for a fresh relay at the hostelry
of "The Hanging Cross." In addition to a reinforcement in the shape of
John, a led horse with a side saddle accompanied us for the use of the
Princess. With fairer conditions and a path less perilous to traverse,
we began to improve considerably upon our previous rate of progression.
Then the road began again to grow difficult, but happily the sky kept
clear.
During the later stages of the journey we passed through several
hamlets and small towns. To judge by the lights in the windows of the
houses and the demeanour of little groups of people in the streets, a
general spirit of uneasiness was abroad. Men clad in the picturesque
skin caps which are so typical of the country were to be seen carrying
formidable-looking guns; and although such a cavalcade excited their
curiosity they allowed it to pass.
We had no adventures worthy of the name. In one of the mountain
valleys a deep crevasse was concealed by a drift of snow, and we owed
it to the vigilance of our guides that we were not its victims. The
wind was still very piercing, but acting upon Fitz's advice before we
started, we had all taken the precaution to be well clad.
Our progress was really better than we realised. A sudden turn in the
road revealed a very broad and rapid torrent. It was the Maravina; and
there upon the farther bank was the bluff upstanding rock crowned with
the majestic Castle of Blaenau. Nestling close about it was a dark
huddle of houses and gaunt church spires of the capital city of Illyria.
"There you are," cried John, with a wave of the hand. "Now, my
friends, are you tempted to swim across?"
"I daresay we shall find a bridge," said Fitz, nonchalantly enough.
"They are all bound to be guarded by the enemy."
"May be," said the Man of Destiny imperturbably.
Away to the right, at the distance of a mile, was one of the smaller
bridges into the city. It was a rickety, wooden structure, guarded by
a gate with a turret, which had a quaintly mediaeval aspect. In front
of the gate a bright coke fire was burning in a bucket, and sprawling
around it in attitudes which suggested varying phases of somnolence
were a number of men in uniform.
A shaggy, fierce-looking, finely-grown fellow rose to his feet and
challenged us. Fitz replied promptly in his suavest and best Illyrian.
Not a word of the conversation that ensued was intelligible to me, but
it was punctuated by the approving laughter of John and the guides, and
was conducted on both sides with the highest good-humour.
Its conclusion at any rate was in keeping with this surmise. Fitz was
seen to slip a piece of gold into a furtive palm; the password was
whispered to him; and the gate was opened just far enough for each of
us to pass through one at a time.
"If there is a more corrupt rogue than an Illyrian corporal of
infantry," said John, "on the face of this fair earth, I am glad to say
I have met him not."
"Evil practices breed an evil state," said the sententious Fitz. "If
chaps have to whistle for their wages what can you expect?"
"Let us hope the custodians of the Castle will prove as susceptible," I
observed, piously.
"Ah, there you have another sort of bird!" said Fitz.
There was a second gate on the city side of the bridge. This also was
guarded by the soldiery, but the password given boldly got us through
without a question. There were tall spikes set in a row on the top of
the heavy and unwieldy gate. They were adorned with a row of human
heads.
To me, I confess, these grisly mementoes brought a shudder.
"They appear to do things pleasantly at Blaenau," said Frederick.
"They can go one better than that, my son," said Fitz, "if they get the
chance. I should advise each of you, in the case of emergency, to
leave just one cartridge in his revolver."
To a married man, a father of a family, and a county member, with his
left arm in a black silk handkerchief, who did not feel particularly
secure in the saddle as he rode knee to knee across the bridge with his
misguided friend the Chief Constable of Middleshire, the icy wind which
saluted him from the mighty torrent swirling beneath, blew distinctly
"thin." Somewhat bitterly he began to deplore that decree of fate
which had bereft him of the use of a hand.
Through narrow, close-built streets, whose odours were decidedly
unpleasant, we passed unmolested until we came into the shadow of the
Castle rock. In the faint light of the stars it towered a sheer and
beetling pile.
Dismounting, we tied the horses to a fence. Fitz took a dark lantern
from his saddle; and among a miscellaneous collection of articles with
which he had the forethought to provide himself, was a coil of rope.
This it seemed was capable of adjustment into the form of a ladder; and
our leader affirmed his intention of being the first man up the Castle
wall. He proposed to affix this contrivance to the coping at the top
in order that the others might climb up as easily and as expeditiously
as possible.
There was nothing for it save to resign myself to stay with the two
guides in the charge of the horses. It would have been a physical
impossibility for a man bereft of the use of an arm to climb that sheer
precipice.
Fitz's parting words of advice to me were characteristic.
"If," said he, "a sentry should come along, and want to know your
business--I don't suppose he will, because they don't appear to have
mounted a picket--knock out his brains at once, and make one of the
guides put on his uniform and shoulder his gun and march up and down.
So long, old son."
The Man of Destiny was gone, perhaps for ever. As each of my comrades
in arms climbed over the low fence in his wake I wished him good luck.
It seemed hardly a fighting chance that we should ever look on one
another again.
They had left their cloaks behind, and these, together with my own,
were thrown over the horses which had carried us so well. Tobacco is a
great solace in seasons of tension, but the long-drawn suspense to
which I had to submit soon became intolerable.
To a lover of the _aurea mediocritas_, a twentieth-century British
paterfamilias confirmed in the comfortable security of a civil life,
such a predicament was absurd. It was painful indeed to march hour
after hour up and down the broken ground at the foot of the Castle
rock. A pipe was in my teeth, otherwise I was signally exposed to the
rigours of a long January night in Illyria. A bloody end was my
perpetual contemplation. And I hardly dared to think what lay in store
for my comrades, the faint hope of whose return it was my bounden duty
to await.
There were moments in this season of poignant misery when I felt myself
to be growing absolutely desperate. Why be ashamed to make the
confession? The sensation of impotence was truly terrible. As the
time passed and not a sound was to be heard, God alone knew what was
being transacted in that frowning eyrie under the cover of the night.
Like most of those who have the unlucky leaven of imagination in their
clay, my instinctive optimism is often on its trial. While I marched
up and down in the darkness, trying vainly to keep warm, waiting for
that tardy dawn in which death lurked for us all, I would have laid
long odds that the doom of the Princess was sealed already and that my
comrades in arms would share it.
A man should strive in some sort to figure as a hero when he comes to
the purple patches in his own history. But if a profuse fear of the
immediate future in combination with a lively horror of the present are
compatible with that degree, so be it. Throughout those hours of
inaction I suffered the torments of the damned.
Again and again I strained nervously to catch a footfall, and each time
I did so Fitz's sinister injunction was in my ears. I recognised its
wisdom, but what a counsel for a respectable law-abiding Englishman!
Conceive the husband of Mrs. Arbuthnot, the father of Miss Lucinda, the
sensitive product of a settled state of society, lying in wait to knock
out the brains of a fellow creature on hardly any pretext at all!
Prudence is not without a tenderness for those who court her; at least
a liberal supply of tobacco was in my pouch. In a state of sheer
desperation I smoked away the intolerable hours, and even had tobacco
to share with the guides who placidly awaited the dawn in the lee of
the horses.
These were rugged, silent, contained men. I had not a word of their
language whatever it was, and I think it was a kind of Milesian
_argot_. But there was an air of torpid responsibility about them.
They were honest peasants, calm, unimaginative, faithful.
The hour of five was told from half a dozen steeples of the capital.
In less than three short hours the fate of us all would be sealed. My
mind went back to Middleshire and I could have wept for vexation.
Everything was so happy and comfortable there. If Mrs. Arbuthnot did
not see eye to eye with me in all things, an occasional discreet
diversity of opinion merely added piquancy to double harness.
Yes, life and all that pertained to it was very dear to me. It is
proper, of course, to maintain a becoming reticence about that
indissoluble core of egoism that lies at the heart of us all. But
during these unspeakable hours I could not dissemble it. Why had it
pleased fate to project this ill-starred creature, one altogether
outside the circle of my interests, one alien in birth, in race, in
fortune, into the quiet backwater of my years! Was there not a
wantonness in shattering such a comfortable hedonism in this cruel,
meaningless, irresponsible way?
What man can be a hero to his autobiographer! By all the rules of the
game I ought to have been bathed in a kind of moral limelight as I
walked my miserable beat throughout that cursed Illyrian night. It
should be the easiest thing in the world to present a picture of
stoical disdain for Dame Fortune and her fantasies.
But the blunt truth is before me, ignoble as it is. Life meant too
much. The least of my thoughts should have been dedicated to that high
and noble mission which had lured me from my happy home in an English
county. I should have had my mind wholly concentrated on the fate of
the royal lady and on that of those stout fellows who had come so far
and who had endured so much that they might serve her.
Well, I will not deny that in a measure my thoughts were for them. But
I did not dare to speculate on what had happened to them; their fate
was too big with tragic possibilities. Yet ever uppermost within me
was a sore vexation. I did not want in the least to die, and I was
determined not to do so. Unhappily Fitz had not given me the password
which in the last resort might take me across the bridge; I could not
communicate with the guides; I was a stranger in a strange land.
Six o'clock was told from the steeples of the city, but there was not a
sound from the Castle rock. Despair gripped me by the heart. The
Princess was dead and my friends had been unable to make their way out
of the fortress they had had the incredible foolhardiness to enter.
But until daylight came I must wait at my post; yea, if I could
contrive it, longer than that it behoved me to remain.
Already the sleeping city was beginning to stir uneasily. Distant
sounds proceeded from it; within ten paces of our horses a farmer's
wagon had passed along the road. Figures began to emerge from the
darkness and to re-enter it. Doubtless they were workmen going to
their toil. The icy blasts from the river congealed my blood.
Half-past six told from the steeples; housemaids in pink print dresses
were lighting the fires at Dympsfield House.
I began to scourge my brain for a plan of escape in broad daylight from
this accursed place, in case Fitz did not return. But even my mind was
numbed, and it was under the dominion of two clear facts: I did not
know a word of the Illyrian tongue, and I knew nothing of the habits
and customs of the country.
The row of heads upon the city gate occupied a chamber to themselves in
the halls of my imagination. In whatever direction I turned my
thoughts, there was that grisly frieze before my eyes. Presently I
made the discovery that I had bitten the stem of my pipe clean through.
It was now seven o'clock and I had yielded up all hope of Fitz. So
tragedy after all was to be the end of these wild oscillations which
had begun with broad farce. The unhappy "circus rider from Vienna" had
been done to death by the people for whom she had given all. Not only
had they rejected her sacrifice but they had requited it with brutal
treachery. And the noble man who had loved her, and those brave
fellows who had dared everything to serve her, regardless of lives they
valued as highly as I did my own, had perished in her cause.
Rage and horror began to rise up within me. God in heaven, was this
the end of our adventure? It was a quarter past seven; the whole city
was astir.
The dawn was coming. There were a few faint streaks of grey already
above the Castle rock. Numbed and helpless I strained my eyes upwards
to that sinister pile. Cold in body, faint in spirit, I knew not what
to do, nor which way to turn. And then, before I could realise what
had come to pass, there was a surge of dark and stealthy figures, there
was a hand on my shoulder and a low voice was in my ears.
"The horses! The horses!"