PHROSO
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
MR WITT’S WIDOW
SPORT ROYAL
A CHANGE OF AIR
HALF A HERO
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
FATHER STAFFORD
THE GOD IN THE CAR
COMEDIES OF COURTSHIP
THE HEART OF THE PRINCESS OSRA
[Illustration: A SHOT WHISTLED BY ME. Page 120.]
PHROSO
A ROMANCE
BY
ANTHONY HOPE
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1897
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. A LONG THING ENDING IN ‘POULOS,’ 1
II. A CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY, 20
III. THE FEVER OF NEOPALIA, 41
IV. A RAID AND A RAIDER, 60
V. THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL, 79
VI. THE POEM OF ONE-EYED ALEXANDER, 98
VII. THE SECRET OF THE STEFANOPOULOI, 118
VIII. A KNIFE AT A ROPE, 137
IX. HATS OFF TO ST TRYPHON! 155
X. THE JUSTICE OF THE ISLAND, 177
XI. THE LAST CARD, 197
XII. LAW AND ORDER, 215
XIII. THE SMILES OF MOURAKI PASHA, 235
XIV. A STROKE IN THE GAME, 257
XV. A STRANGE ESCAPE, 277
XVI. AN UNFINISHED LETTER, 298
XVII. IN THE JAWS OF THE TRAP, 319
XVIII. THE UNKNOWN FRIEND, 340
XIX. THE ARMENIAN DOG! 357
XX. A PUBLIC PROMISE, 378
XXI. A WORD OF VARIOUS MEANINGS, 398
XXII. ONE MORE RUN, 419
XXIII. THE ISLAND IN A CALM, 440
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A SHOT WHISTLED BY ME, _Frontispiece_
PAGE
‘WHO STABBED HIM?’ 44
WE TOOK SPIRO’S BODY AND FLUNG IT DOWN, 135
‘WHAT IS HIS LIFE TO YOU, LADY?’ 196
‘A THOUSAND PARDONS, MY LORD!’ 270
‘WE ARE READY FOR--ANYTHING--NOW,’ 302
‘AT LAST, MY GOD, AT LAST!’ 356
BACK TO NEOPALIA, 450
PHROSO
CHAPTER I
A LONG THING ENDING IN POULOS
‘Quot homines tot sententiæ;’ so many men, so many fancies. My fancy
was for an island. Perhaps boyhood’s glamour hung yet round sea-girt
rocks, and ‘faery lands forlorn,’ still beckoned me; perhaps I felt
that London was too full, the Highlands rather fuller, the Swiss
mountains most insufferably crowded of them all. Money can buy
company, and it can buy retirement. The latter service I asked now of
the moderate wealth with which my poor cousin Tom’s death had endowed
me. Everybody was good enough to suppose that I rejoiced at Tom’s
death, whereas I was particularly sorry for it, and was not consoled
even by the prospect of the island. My friends understood this wish
for an island as little as they appreciated my feelings about poor
Tom. Beatrice was most emphatic in declaring that ‘a horrid little
island’ had no charms for her, and that she would never set foot in
it. This declaration was rather annoying, because I had imagined
myself, spending my honeymoon with Beatrice on the island; but life is
not all honeymoon, and I decided to have the island none the less.
Besides I was not to be married for a year. Mrs Kennett Hipgrave had
insisted on this delay in order that we might be sure that we knew our
own hearts. And as I may say without unfairness that Mrs Hipgrave was
to a considerable degree responsible for the engagement--she asserted
the fact herself with much pride--I thought that she had a right to
some voice in the date of the marriage. Moreover the postponement just
gave me the time to go over and settle affairs in the island.
For I had bought it. It cost me seven thousand five hundred and fifty
pounds, rather a fancy price but I could not haggle with the old
lord--half to be paid to the lord’s bankers in London, and the second
half to him in Neopalia, when he delivered possession to me. The
Turkish Government had sanctioned the sale, and I had agreed to pay a
hundred pounds yearly as tribute. This sum I was entitled, in my turn,
to levy on the inhabitants.
‘In fact, my dear lord,’ said old Mason to me when I called on him in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, ‘the whole affair is settled. I congratulate you
on having got just what was your whim. You are over a hundred miles
from the nearest land--Rhodes, you see.’ (He laid a map before me.)
‘You are off the steamship tracks; the Austrian Lloyds to Alexandria
leave you far to the northeast. You are equally remote from any
submarine cable; here on the southwest, from Alexandria to Candia, is
the nearest. You will have to fetch your letters.’
‘I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing,’ said I indignantly.
‘Then you’ll only get them once in three months. Neopalia is extremely
rugged and picturesque. It is nine miles long and five broad. It grows
cotton, wine, oil and a little corn. The people are quite
unsophisticated, but very good-hearted.’
‘And,’ said I, ‘there are only three hundred and seventy of them, all
told. I really think I shall do very well there.’
‘I’ve no doubt you will. By the way, treat the old gentleman kindly.
He’s terribly cut up at having to sell. “My dear island,” he writes,
“is second to my dead son’s honour, and to nothing else.” His son, you
know, Lord Wheatley, was a bad lot, a very bad lot indeed.’
‘He left a heap of unpaid debts, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, gambling debts. He spent his time knocking about Paris and
London with his cousin Constantine--by no means an improving
companion, if report speaks truly. And your money is to pay the debts,
you know.’
‘Poor old chap,’ said I. I sympathised with him in the loss of his
island.
‘Here’s the house, you see,’ said Mason, turning to the map and
dismissing the sorrows of the old lord of Neopalia. ‘About the middle
of the island, nearly a thousand feet above the sea. I’m afraid it’s a
tumble-down old place, and will swallow a lot of money without looking
much better for the dose. To put it into repair for the reception of
the future Lady Wheatley would cost--’
‘The future Lady Wheatley says she won’t go there on any account,’ I
interrupted.
‘But, my very dear lord,’ cried he, aghast, ‘if she won’t--’
‘She won’t, and there’s an end of it, Mr Mason. Well, good day. I’m to
have possession in a month?’
‘In a month to the very day--on the 7th of May.’
‘All right; I shall be there to take it.’
Escaping from the legal quarter, I made my way to my sister’s house in
Cavendish Square. She had a party, and I was bound to go by brotherly
duty. As luck would have it, however, I was rewarded for my virtue
(and if that’s not luck in this huddle-muddle world I don’t know what
is); the Turkish Ambassador dropped in, and presently James came and
took me up to him. My brother-in-law, James Cardew, is always anxious
that I should know the right people. The Pasha received me with great
kindness.
‘You are the purchaser of Neopalia, aren’t you?’ he asked, after a
little conversation. ‘The matter came before me officially.’
‘I’m much obliged,’ said I, ‘for your ready consent to the transfer.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing to us. In fact our tribute, such as it is, will be
safer. Well, I’m sure I hope you’ll settle in comfortably.’
‘Oh, I shall be all right. I know the Greeks very well, you see--been
there a lot, and, of course, I talk the tongue, because I spent two
years hunting antiquities in the Morea and some of the islands.’
The Pasha stroked his beard, as he observed in a calm tone:
‘The last time a Stefanopoulos tried to sell Neopalia, the people
killed him, and turned the purchaser--he was a Frenchman, a Baron
d’Ezonville--adrift in an open boat, with nothing on but his shirt’.
‘Good heavens! Was that recently?’
‘No; two hundred years ago. But it’s a conservative part of the world,
you know.’ And his Excellency smiled.
‘They were described to me as good-hearted folk,’ said I;
‘unsophisticated, of course, but good-hearted.’
‘They think that the island is theirs, you see,’ he explained, ‘and
that the lord has no business to sell it. They may be good-hearted,
Lord Wheatley, but they are tenacious of their rights.’
‘But they can’t have any rights,’ I expostulated.
‘None at all,’ he assented. ‘But a man is never so tenacious of his
rights as when he hasn’t any. However, _autres temps autres mœurs_;
I don’t suppose you’ll have any trouble of that kind. Certainly I hope
not, my dear lord.’
‘Surely your Government will see to that?’ I suggested.
His Excellency looked at me; then, although by nature a grave man, he
gave a low humorous chuckle and regarded me with visible amusement.
‘Oh, of course, you can rely on that, Lord Wheatley,’ said he.
‘That is a diplomatic assurance, your Excellency?’ I ventured to
suggest, with a smile.
‘It is unofficial,’ said he, ‘but as binding as if it were official.
Our Governor in that district of the empire is a very active man--yes,
a decidedly active man.’
The only result of this conversation was that when I was buying my
sporting guns in St James’s Street the next day I purchased a couple
of pairs of revolvers at the same time. It is well to be on the safe
side, and, although I attached little importance to the by-gone
outrage of which the Ambassador spoke, I did not suppose that the
police service would be very efficient. In fact I thought it prudent
to be ready for any trouble that the old-world notions of the
Neopalians might occasion. But in my heart I meant to be very popular
with them. For I cherished the generous design of paying the whole
tribute out of my own pocket, and of disestablishing in Neopalia what
seems to be the only institution in no danger of such treatment
here--the tax-gatherer. If they understood that intention of mine,
they would hardly be so short short-sighted as to set me adrift in my
shirt like a second Baron d’Ezonville, or so unjust as to kill poor
old Stefanopoulos as they had killed his ancestor. Besides, as I
comforted myself by repeating, they were a good-hearted race;
unsophisticated, of course, but thoroughly good-hearted.
My cousin, young Denny Swinton, was to dine with me that evening at
the Optimum. Denny (a familiar form of Dennis) was the only member of
the family who sympathised thoroughly with me about Neopalia. He was
wild with interest in the island, and I looked forward to telling him
all I had heard about it. I knew he would listen, for he was to go
with me and help me to take possession. The boy had almost wept on my
neck when I asked him to come; he had just left Woolwich, and was not
to join his battalion for six months; he was thus, as he put it, ‘at a
loose end,’ and succeeded in persuading his parents that he ought to
learn modern Greek. General Swinton was rather cold about the project;
he said that Denny had spent ten years on ancient Greek, and knew
nothing about it, and probably would not learn much of the newer sort
in three months; but his wife thought it would be a nice trip for
Denny. Well, it turned out to be a very nice trip for Denny; but if
Mrs Swinton had known--however, if it comes to that, I might just as
well exclaim, ‘If I had known myself!’
Denny had taken a table next but one to the west end of the room, and
was drumming his fingers impatiently on the cloth when I entered. He
wanted both his dinner and the latest news about Neopalia; so I sat
down and made haste to satisfy him in both respects. Travelling with
equal steps through the two matters, we had reached the first _entrée_
and the fate of the murdered Stefanopoulos (which Denny, for some
reason, declared was ‘a lark’), when two people came in and sat down
at the table beyond ours and next to the wall, where two chairs had
been tilted up in token of pre-engagement. The man--for the pair were
man and woman--was tall and powerfully built; his complexion was dark,
and he had good regular features; he looked also as if he had a bit of
a temper somewhere about him. I was conscious of having seen him
before, and suddenly recollected that by a curious chance I had run up
against him twice in St James’s Street that very day. The lady was
handsome; she had an Italian cast of face, and moved with much grace;
her manner was rather elaborate, and, when she spoke to the waiter, I
detected a pronounced foreign accent. Taken together, they were a
remarkable couple and presented a distinguished appearance. I believe
I am not a conceited man, but I could not help wondering whether their
thoughts paid me a similar compliment. For I certainly detected both
of them casting more than one curious glance towards our table; and
when the man whispered once to a waiter, I was sure that I formed the
subject of his question; perhaps he also remembered our two
encounters.
‘I wonder if there’s any chance of a row!’ said Denny in a tone that
sounded wistful. ‘Going to take anybody with you, Charley?’
‘Only Watkins; I must have him; he always knows where everything is;
and I’ve told Hogvardt, my old dragoman, to meet us in Rhodes. He’ll
talk their own language to the beggars, you know.’
‘But he’s a German, isn’t he?’
‘He thinks so,’ I answered. ‘He’s not certain, you know. Anyhow, he
chatters Greek like a parrot. He’s a pretty good man in a row, too.
But there won’t be a row, you know.’
‘I suppose there won’t,’ admitted Denny ruefully.
‘For my own part,’ said I meekly, ‘as I’m going for the sake of quiet,
I hope there won’t.’
In the interest of conversation I had forgotten our neighbours; but
now, a lull occurring in Denny’s questions and surmises, I heard the
lady’s voice. She began a sentence--and began it in Greek! That was a
little unexpected; but it was more strange that her companion cut her
short, saying very peremptorily, ‘Don’t talk Greek: talk Italian.’
This he said in Italian, and I, though no great hand at that language,
understood so much. Now why shouldn’t the lady talk Greek, if Greek
were the language that came naturally to her tongue? It would be as
good a shield against eavesdroppers as most languages; unless indeed
I, who was known to be an amateur of Greece and Greek things, were
looked upon as a possible listener. Recollecting the glances which I
had detected, recollecting again those chance meetings, I ventured on
a covert gaze at the lady. Her handsome face expressed a mixture of
anger, alarm, and entreaty. The man was speaking to her now in low
urgent tones; he raised his hand once, and brought it down on the
table as though to emphasise some declaration--perhaps some
promise--which he was making. She regarded him with half-angry
distrustful eyes. He seemed to repeat his words and she flung at him
in a tone that grew suddenly louder, and in words that I could
translate:
‘Enough! I’ll see to that. I shall come too.’
Her heat stirred no answering fire in him. He dropped his emphatic
manner, shrugged a tolerant ‘As you will,’ with eloquent shoulders,
smiled at her, and, reaching across the table, patted her hand. She
held it up before his eyes, and with the other hand pointed at a ring
on her finger.
‘Yes, yes, my dearest,’ said he, and he was about to say more, when,
glancing round, he caught my gaze retreating in hasty confusion to my
plate. I dared not look up again, but I felt his scowl on me. I
suppose that I deserved punishment for my eavesdropping.
‘And when can we get off, Charley?’ asked Denny in his clear young
voice. My thoughts had wandered from him, and I paused for a moment as
a man does when a question takes him unawares. There was silence at
the next table also. The fancy seemed absurd, but it occurred to me
that there too my answer was being waited for. Well, they could know
if they liked; it was no secret.
‘In a fortnight,’ said I. ‘We’ll travel easily, and get there on the
7th of next month;--that’s the day on which I’m entitled to take over
my kingdom. We shall go to Rhodes. Hogvardt will have got me a little
yacht, and then--good-bye to all this!’ And a great longing for
solitude and a natural life came over me as I looked round on the
gilded cornices, the gilded mirrors, the gilded flower-vases, and the
highly-gilded company of the Optimum.
I was roused from my pleasant dreams by a high vivacious voice, which
I knew very well. Looking up, I saw Miss Hipgrave, her mother, and
young Bennett Hamlyn standing before me. I disliked young Hamlyn, but
he was always very civil to me.
‘Why, how early you two have dined!’ cried Beatrice. ‘You’re at the
savoury, aren’t you? We’ve only just come.’
‘Are you going to dine?’ I asked, rising. ‘Take this table, we’re just
off.’
‘Well, we may as well, mayn’t we?’ said my _fiancée_. ‘Sorry you’re
going, though. Oh, yes, we’re going to dine with Mr Bennett Hamlyn.
That’s what you’re for, isn’t it, Mr Hamlyn? Why, he’s not listening!’
He was not, strange to say, listening, although as a rule he listened
to Beatrice with infinite attention and the most deferential of
smiles. But just now he was engaged in returning a bow which our
neighbour at the next table had bestowed on him. The lady there had
risen already and was making for the door. The man lingered and looked
at Hamlyn, seeming inclined to back up his bow with a few words of
greeting. Hamlyn’s air was not, however, encouraging, and the stranger
contented himself with a nod and a careless ‘How are you?’ and, with
that, followed his companion. Hamlyn turned round, conscious that he
had neglected Beatrice’s remark and full of penitence for his
momentary rudeness.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said he, with an apologetic smile.
‘Oh,’ answered she, ‘I was only saying that men like you were invented
to give dinners; you’re a sort of automatic feeding-machine. You ought
to stand open all day. Really I often miss you at lunch time.’
‘My dear Beatrice!’ said Mrs Kennett Hipgrave, with that peculiar lift
of her brows which meant, ‘How naughty the dear child is--oh, but how
clever!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Hamlyn meekly. ‘I’m awfully happy to give you a
dinner anyhow, Miss Beatrice.’
Now I had nothing to say on this subject, but I thought I would just
make this remark:
‘Miss Hipgrave,’ said I, ‘is very fond of a dinner.’
Beatrice laughed. She understood my little correction.
‘He doesn’t know any better, do you?’ said she pleasantly to Hamlyn.
‘We shall civilise him in time, though; then I believe he’ll be nicer
than you, Charley, I really do. You’re--’
‘I shall be uncivilised by then,’ said I.
‘Oh, that wretched island!’ cried Beatrice. ‘You’re really going?’
‘Most undoubtedly. By the way, Hamlyn, who’s your friend?’
Surely this was an innocent enough question, but little Hamlyn went
red from the edge of his clipped whisker on the right to the edge of
his mathematically equal whisker on the left.
‘Friend!’ said he in an angry tone; ‘he’s not a friend of mine. I only
met him on the Riviera.’
‘That,’ I admitted, ‘does not, happily, in itself constitute a
friendship.’
‘And he won a hundred louis of me in the train between Cannes and
Monte Carlo.’
‘Not bad going that,’ observed Denny in an approving tone.
‘Is he then _un grec_?’ asked Mrs Hipgrave, who loves a scrap of
French.
‘In both senses, I believe,’ answered Hamlyn viciously.
‘And what’s his name?’ said I.
‘Really I don’t recollect,’ said Hamlyn rather petulantly.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ observed Beatrice, attacking her oysters which
had now made their appearance.
‘My dear Beatrice,’ I remonstrated, ‘you’re the most charming creature
in the world, but not the only one. You mean that it doesn’t matter to
you.’
‘Oh, don’t be tiresome. It doesn’t matter to you either, you know. Do
go away and leave me to dine in peace.’
‘Half a minute!’ said Hamlyn. ‘I thought I’d got it just now, but it’s
gone again. Look here, though, I believe it’s one of those long things
that end in _poulos_.’
‘Oh, it ends in _poulos_, does it?’ said I in a meditative tone.
‘My dear Charley,’ said Beatrice, ‘I shall end in Bedlam if you’re so
very tedious. What in the world I shall do when I’m married, I don’t
know.’
‘My dearest!’ said Mrs Hipgrave, and a stage direction might add,
_Business with brows as before_.
‘_Poulos_,’ I repeated thoughtfully.
‘Could it be Constantinopoulos?’ asked Hamlyn, with a nervous
deference to my Hellenic learning.
‘It might conceivably,’ I hazarded, ‘be Constantine Stefanopoulos.’
‘Then,’ said Hamlyn, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if it was. Anyhow, the less
you see of him, Wheatley, the better. Take my word for that.’
‘But,’ I objected--and I must admit that I have a habit of assuming
that everybody follows my train of thought--‘it’s such a small place,
that, if he goes, I shall be almost bound to meet him.’
‘What’s such a small place?’ cried Beatrice with emphasised despair.
‘Why, Neopalia, of course,’ said I.
‘Why should anybody, except you, be so insane as to go there?’ she
asked.
‘If he’s the man I think, he comes from there,’ I explained, as I rose
for the last time; for I had been getting up to go and sitting down
again several times.
‘Then he’ll think twice before he goes back,’ pronounced Beatrice
decisively; she was irreconcilable about my poor island.
Denny and I walked off together; as we went he observed:
‘I suppose that chap’s got no end of money?’
‘Stefan----?’ I began.
‘No, no. Hang it, you’re as bad as Miss Hipgrave says. I mean Bennett
Hamlyn.’
‘Oh, yes, absolutely no end to it, I believe.’
Denny looked sagacious.
‘He’s very free with his dinners,’ he observed.
‘Don’t let’s worry about it,’ I suggested, taking his arm. I was not
worried about it myself. Indeed for the moment my island monopolised
my mind, and my attachment to Beatrice was not of such a romantic
character as to make me ready to be jealous on slight grounds. Mrs
Hipgrave said the engagement was based on ‘general suitability.’ Now
it is difficult to be very passionate over that.
‘If you don’t mind, I don’t,’ said Denny reasonably.
‘That’s right. It’s only a little way Beatrice--’ I stopped abruptly.
We were now on the steps outside the restaurant, and I had just
perceived a scrap of paper lying on the mosaic pavement. I stooped
down and picked it up. It proved to be a fragment torn from the _menu_
card. I turned it over.
‘Hullo, what’s this?’ said I, searching for my eye-glass, which was
(as usual) somewhere in the small of my back.
Denny gave me the glass, and I read what was written on the back. It
was in Greek, and it ran thus:
‘By way of Rhodes--small yacht there--arrive seventh.’
I turned the piece of paper over in my hand. I drew a conclusion or
two; one was that my tall neighbour was named Stefanopoulos; another
that he had made good use of his ears--better than I had made of mine;
for a third, I guessed that he would go to Neopalia; for a fourth, I
fancied that Neopalia was the place to which the lady had declared she
would accompany him. Then I fell to wondering why all these things
should be so, why he wished to remember the route of my journey, the
date of my arrival, and the fact that I meant to hire a yacht.
Finally, those two chance encounters, taken with the rest, assumed a
more interesting complexion.
‘When you’ve done with that bit of paper,’ observed Denny, in a tone
expressive of exaggerated patience, ‘we might as well go on, old
fellow.’
‘All right. I’ve done with it--for the present,’ said I. But I took
the liberty of slipping Mr Constantine Stefanopoulos’s memorandum into
my pocket.
The general result of the evening was to increase most distinctly my
interest in Neopalia. I went to bed still thinking of my purchase, and
I recollect that the last thing which came into my head before I went
to sleep was, ‘What did she mean by pointing to the ring?’
Well, I found an answer to that later on.