LAW AND ORDER
At last the whirligig seemed to have taken a turn in my favour, the
revolutions of the wheel at last to have brought my fortune uppermost.
For the sight of Francesca in Panayiota’s arms came pat in
confirmation of the story wrung from Demetri by the power of his oath,
and his ‘Behold!’ was not needed to ensure acceptance for his
testimony. From women rose compassionate murmurs, from men angry
growlings which expressed, while they strove to hide, the shamefaced
emotions that the helpless woman’s narrow escape created. Her
salvation must bring mine with it; for it was the ruin of her husband
and my enemy.
Kortes and another dragged Constantine Stefanopoulos forward till he
stood within two or three yards of his wife. None interposed on his
behalf or resented the rough pressure of Kortes’s compelling hand. And
even as he was set there, opposite the women, they, roused by the
subdued stir of the excited throng, awoke. First into one another’s
eyes, then round upon us, came their startled glances; then Francesca
leapt with a cry to her feet, ran to me, and threw herself on her
knees before me, crying, ‘You’ll save me, my lord, you’ll save me?’
Demetri hung his head in sullen half-contrition mingled with an
unmistakable satisfaction in his religious piety; Constantine bit and
licked his thin lips, his fists tight clenched, his eyes darting
furtively about in search of friends or in terror of avengers. And
Phroso said in her soft clear tones:
‘There is no more need of fear, for the truth is known.’
Her eyes, though they would not meet mine, rested long in tender
sympathy on the woman who still knelt at my feet. Here indeed she
remained till Phroso came forward and raised her, while the old priest
lifted his voice in brief thanks to heaven for the revelation wrought
under the sanction of the Holy Saint. For myself, I gave a long sigh
of relief; the strain had been on me now for many hours, and it tires
a man to be knocking all day long at the door of death. Yet almost in
the instant that the concern for my own life left me (that is a thing
terribly apt to fill a man’s mind) my thoughts turned to other
troubles: to my friends, who were--I knew not where; to Phroso, who
had said--I scarcely knew what.
Suddenly, striking firm and loud across the murmurs and the threats
that echoed round the ring in half-hushed voices, came Kortes’s tones.
‘And this man? What of him?’ he asked, his hand on Constantine’s
shaking shoulder. ‘For he has done all that the stranger declared of
him: he has deceived our Lady Euphrosyne, he has sought to kill this
lady here, we have it from his own mouth that he slew the old lord,
though he knew well that the old lord had yielded.’
Constantine’s wife turned swiftly to the speaker.
‘Did he kill the old lord?’ she asked. ‘He told me that it was Spiro
who struck him in the heat of the brawl.’
‘Ay, Spiro or Vlacho, or whom you will,’ said Kortes with a shrug.
‘There was no poverty of lies in his mouth.’
But the old feeling was not dead, and one or two again murmured:
‘The old lord sold the island.’
‘Did he die for that?’ cried Francesca scornfully; ‘or was it not in
truth I who brought him to death?’
There was a movement of surprised interest, and all bent their eyes on
her.
‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘I think I doomed him to that death when I went
and told him my story, seeking his protection. Constantine found me
with him, and heard him greet me as his nephew’s wife, on the
afternoon of the day that the deed was done. Can this man here deny
it? Can he deny that the old lord was awaiting the return of the Lady
Euphrosyne to tell her of the thing, when his mouth was shut for ever
by the stroke?’
This disclosure, showing a new and vile motive for what Constantine
had tried to play off as a pardonable excess of patriotism, robbed him
of his last defenders. He seemed to recognise his plight; his eyes
ceased to canvass possible favour, and dropped to the ground in dull
despair. There was not a man now to raise a voice or a hand for him;
their anger at having been made his dupes and his tools sharpened the
edge of their hatred. To me his wife’s words caused no wonder, for I
had from the first believed that some secret motive had nerved
Constantine’s arm, and that he had taken advantage of the islanders’
mad folly for his own purposes. What that motive was stood out now
clear and obvious. It explained his act, and abundantly justified the
distrust and fear of him which I had perceived in his wife’s mind when
first I talked with her on the hill. But she, having launched her
fatal bolt, turned her eyes away again, and laying her hand in
Phroso’s stood silent.
Kortes, appearing to take the lead now by general consent--for Phroso
made no sign--looked round on his fellow-countrymen, seeking to gather
their decision from their faces. He found the guidance and agreement
that he sought.
‘We may not put any man to death on St Tryphon’s day,’ said he.
The sentence was easy to read, for all its indirectness. The islanders
understood it, and approved in a deep stern murmur; the women followed
it, and their faces grew pale and solemn. The criminal missed nothing
of its implied doom and tottered under the strong hands that now
rather supported than imprisoned him. ‘Not on this day, but to-morrow
at break of day.’ The voice of the people had spoken by the mouth of
Kortes, and none pleaded for mercy or delay.
‘I will take him to the guardhouse and keep him,’ said Kortes; and the
old priest murmured low, ‘God have mercy on him!’ Then, with a swift
dart, Phroso sprang towards Kortes; her hands were clasped, her eyes
prayed him to seek some ground of mercy, some pretext for a lighter
sentence. She said not a word, but everyone of us read her eloquent
prayer. Kortes looked round again; the faces about him were touched
with a tenderness that they had not worn before; but the tenderness
was for the advocate, no part of it reached the criminal. Kortes shook
his head gravely. Phroso turned to the woman who had comforted her
before, and hid her face. Constantine, seeing the last hope gone,
swayed and fell into the arms of the man who, with Kortes, held him,
uttering a long low moan of fear and despair, terrible to listen to,
even from lips guilty as his. Thus was Constantine Stefanopoulos tried
for his life in the yard of Vlacho’s inn in Neopalia. The trial ended,
he was carried out into the street on his way to the prison, and we,
one and all, in dead silence, followed. The yard was emptied, and the
narrow street choked with the crowd which attended Kortes and his
prisoner till the doors of the guardhouse closed on them.
Then, for the first time that day, Phroso’s eyes sought mine in a
rapid glance, in which I read joy for my safety; but the glance fell
as I answered it, and she turned away in confusion. Her avowal,
forgotten for an instant in gladness, recurred to her mind and dyed
her cheeks red. Averting my eyes from her, I looked down the slope of
the street towards the sea. The thought of her and of nothing else was
in my mind.
Ah, my island! My sweet capricious island!
A sudden uncontrollable exclamation burst from my lips and, raising my
hand, I pointed to the harbour and the blue water beyond. Every head
followed the direction of my outstretched finger; every pair of eyes
was focussed on the object that held mine. A short breathless
silence--a momentary wonder--then, shrill or deep, low in fear or loud
in excitement, broke forth the cry:
‘The Governor! The Governor!’
For a gunboat was steaming slowly into the harbour of Neopalia, and
the Turkish flag flew over her.
The sight wrought transformation. In a moment, as it seemed to me, the
throng round me melted away. The street grew desolate, the houses on
either side swallowed their eager occupants; Kortes alone, with his
prisoner, knew nothing of the fresh event, only Phroso and Francesca
stood their ground. Demetri was slinking hastily away. The old priest
was making for his home. The shutters of dead Vlacho’s inn came down,
and girls bustled to and fro, preparing food. I stood unwatched,
unheeded, apparently forgotten; festival, tumult, trial, condemnation
seemed passed like visions; the flag that flew from the gunboat
brought back modern days, the prose of life, and ended the wild
poetic drama that we had played and a second One-eyed Alexander might
worthily have sung. How had the Governor come before his time, and
why?
‘Denny!’ I cried aloud in inspiration and hope, and I ran as though
the foul fiends whom Demetri had heard were behind me. Down the steep
street and on to the jetty I ran. As I arrived there the gunboat also
reached it, and, a moment later, Denny was shaking my hand till it
felt like falling off, while from the deck of the boat Hogvardt and
Watkins were waving wild congratulations.
Denny had jumped straight from deck to jetty; but now a gangway was
thrust out, and I passed with him on to the deck, and presented
myself, with a low bow, to a gentleman who stood there. He was a tall
full-bodied man, apparently somewhat under fifty years old; his face
was heavy and broad, in complexion dark and sallow; he wore a short
black beard; his lips were full, his eyes acute and small. I did not
like the look of him much; but he meant law and order and civilisation
and an end to the wild ways of Neopalia. For this, as Denny whispered
to me, was no less a man than the Governor himself, Mouraki Pasha. I
bowed again yet lower; for I stood before a man of whom report had
much to tell--something good, much bad, all interesting.
He spoke to me in low, slow, suave tones, employing the Greek
language, which he spoke fluently, although as a foreigner. For
Mouraki was by birth an Armenian.
‘You must have much to tell me, Lord Wheatley,’ he said with a smile.
‘But first I must assure you with what pleasure I find you alive and
unhurt. Be confident that you shall not want redress for the wrongs
which these turbulent rascals have inflicted on you. I know these men
of Neopalia: they are hard men; but they also know me, and that I, in
my turn, can be a hard man if need be.’ His looks did not belie his
words, as his sharp eye travelled with an ominous glance over the
little town by the harbour. ‘But you will wish to speak with your
friends first,’ he went on courteously. ‘May I ask your attention in
half-an-hour’s time from now?’
I bowed obedience. The great man turned away, and Denny caught me by
the arm, crying, ‘Now, old man, tell us all about it.’
‘Wait a bit,’ said I rather indignantly. ‘Just you tell me all about
it.’
But Denny was firmer than I, and my adventures came before his. I told
them all faithfully, save one incident; it may perhaps be guessed
which. Denny and the other two listened with frequent exclamations of
surprise, and danced with exultation at the final worsting of
Constantine Stefanopoulos.
‘It’s all right,’ said Denny reassuringly. ‘Old Mouraki will hang him
just the same.’
‘Now it’s your turn,’ said I.
‘Oh, our story’s nothing. We just got through that old drain, and came
out by the sea, and all the fishermen had gone off to the
fishing-grounds, except one old chap they left behind to look after
their victuals. Well, we didn’t know how to get back to you, and the
old chap told us that the whole place was alive with armed ruffians,
so--’
‘Just tell the story properly, will you?’ said I sternly.
At last, by pressing and much questioning, I got the story from them,
and here it is; for it was by no means so ordinary a matter as Denny’s
modesty would have had me think. When the consternation caused by the
cutting of our rope had passed away, a hurried council decided them to
press on with all speed, and they took their way along a narrow, damp
and slippery ledge of rock which encircled the basin. So perilous did
the track seem that Hogvardt insisted on their being roped as though
for a mountaineering ascent, and thus they continued the journey. The
first opening from the basin they found without much difficulty. Now
the rope proved useful, for Denny, passing through first, fell
headlong into space and most certainly would have perished but for the
support his companions gave him. The track turned at right angles to
the left, and Denny had walked straight over the edge of the rock.
Sobered by this accident and awake to their peril (it must be
remembered that they had no lantern), they groped their way slowly and
cautiously, up and down, in and out. Hours passed. Watkins, less
accustomed than the others to a physical strain, could hardly lift his
feet. All this while the dim glimmer which Denny had seen retreated
before them, appearing to grow no nearer for all their efforts. They
walked, as they found afterwards--or walked, crawled, scrambled and
jumped--for eleven hours, their haste and anxiety allowed no pause for
rest. Then they seemed to see the end, for the winding tortuous track
appeared at last to make up its mind. It took a straight downward
line, and Denny’s hard-learned caution vanishing, he started along it
at a trot and with a hearty hurrah. He tempted fate. The slope became
suddenly a drop. This time all three fell with a splash and a thud
into a deep pool, one on the top of the other. Here they scrambled for
some minutes, Watkins coming very near to finding an end of the
troubles of his eventful service. But Denny and Hogvardt managed to
get him out. The path began again. Content with its last freak, it
pursued now a business-like way, the glimmer grew to a gleam, the gleam
spread into a glad blaze. ‘The sea, the sea!’ cried Denny. A last
spurt landed them in a cave that bordered on the blue waters. What
they did on that I could by no means persuade them to tell; but had I
been there I should have thanked God and shaken hands; and thus, I
dare say, did they. And besides that, they lay there, dog-tired and
beaten, for an hour or more, in one of those despondent fits that
assail even brave men, making sure that I was dead or taken, and that
their own chances of escape were small, and, since I was dead or
taken, hardly worth the seeking.
They were roused by an old man, who suddenly entered the cave, bearing
a bundle of sticks in his arms. At sight of them he dropped his load
and turned to fly; but they were on him in an instant, seizing him and
crying to know who he was. He had as many questions for them; and when
he learned who they were and how they had come, he raised his hands in
wonder, and told Hogvardt, who alone could make him understand, that
their fears were well grounded. He had met a Neopalian but an hour
since, and the talk in all the island was of how the stranger had
killed Vlacho and been taken by Kortes, and would die on the next
day; for this was the early morning of the feast-day. Denny was for a
dash; but a dash meant certain death. Watkins was ready for the
venture, though the poor fellow could hardly crawl. Hogvardt held firm
to the chance that more cautious measures gave. The old man’s comrades
were away at their fishing-grounds, ten miles out at sea; but he had a
boat down on the beach. Thither they went, and set out under the
fisherman’s guidance, pulling in desperate perseverance, with numb
weary limbs, under the increasing heat of the sun. But their wills
asked too much of their bodies. Watkins dropped his oar with a groan;
Denny’s moved weakly and uselessly through the water that hardly
stirred under its blade; Hogvardt at last flung himself into the stern
with one groan of despair. The old fisherman cast resigned eyes up to
heaven, and the boat tossed motionlessly on the water. Thus they lay
while I fought my duel with Constantine Stefanopoulos on the other
side of Neopalia.
Then, while they were still four miles from the fishing-fleet, where
lay their only known chance of succour for me or for themselves, there
came suddenly to their incredulous eyes a shape on the sea and a
column of smoke. Denny’s spring forward went near to capsizing the
boat. Oars were seized again, weariness fled before hope, the gunboat
came in view, growing clear and definite. She moved quickly towards
them, they slowly, yet eagerly, to her; the interval grew less and
less. They shouted before they could be heard, and shouted still in
needless caution long after they had been heard. A boat put out to
them: they were taken on board, their story heard with shrugs of
wonder. Mouraki could not be seen. ‘I’ll see him!’ cried Denny, and
Hogvardt plied the recalcitrant officer with smooth entreaties. The
life of a man was at stake! But he could not be seen. The life of an
Englishman! His Excellency slept through the heat of the day. The life
of an English lord! His Excellency would be angry, but--! The contents
of Denny’s pocket, wild boasts of my power and position (I was a
favourite at Court, and so forth), at last clinched the matter. His
Excellency should be roused; heaven knew what he would say, but he
should be roused. He went to Neopalia next week; now he was sailing
past it, to inspect another island; perhaps he would alter the order
of his voyage. He was fond of Englishmen. It was a great lord, was it
not? So, at last, when Hogvardt was at his tongue’s end, and Denny
almost mad with rage, Mouraki was roused. He heard their story, and
pondered on it, with leisurely strokings of his beard and keen long
glances of his sharp eyes. At last came the word, ‘To the island
then!’ and a cheer from the three, which Mouraki suffered with patient
uplifted brows. Thus came Mouraki to Neopalia; thus came, as I hoped,
an end to our troubles.
More than the half-hour which the Governor had given me passed swiftly
in the narrative; then came Mouraki’s summons and my story to him,
heard with courteous impassivity, received at its end with plentiful
assurances of redress for me and punishment for the islanders.
‘The island shall be restored to you,’ said he. ‘You shall have every
compensation, Lord Wheatley. These Neopalians shall learn their
lesson.’
‘I want nothing but justice on Constantine,’ said I. ‘The island I
have given back.’
‘That goes for nothing,’ said he. ‘It was under compulsion: we shall
not acknowledge it. The island is certainly yours. Your title has been
recognised: you could not transfer it without the consent of my
Government.’
I did not pursue the argument. If Mouraki chose to hand the island
back to me, I supposed that I could, after such more or less tedious
forms as were necessary, restore it to Phroso. For the present the
matter was of small moment; for Mouraki was there with his men, and
the power of the Lord--or Lady--of Neopalia in abeyance. The island
was at the feet of the Governor.
Indeed such was its attitude, and great was the change in the
islanders when, in the cool of the evening, I walked up the street by
Mouraki’s side escorted by soldiers and protected by the great gun of
the gunboat commanding the town. There were many women to watch us,
few men, and these unarmed, with downcast eyes and studious meekness
of bearing. Mouraki seemed to detect my surprise.
‘They made a disturbance here three years ago,’ said he, ‘and I came.
They have not forgotten.’
‘What did you do to them?’ I made bold to ask.
‘What was necessary,’ he said; and--‘They are not Armenians,’ added
the Armenian Governor with a smile which meant much; among other
things, as I took it, that no tiresome English demanded fair trial for
riotous Neopalians.
‘And Constantine?’ said I. I hope that I was not too vindictive.
‘It is the feast of St Tryphon,’ said his Excellency, with another
smile.
We were passing the guardhouse now. An officer and five men fell out
from the ranks of our escort and took their stand by its doors. We
passed on, leaving Constantine in this safe keeping; and Mouraki,
turning to me, said, ‘I must ask you for hospitality. As Lord of the
island, you enjoy the right of entertaining me.’
I bowed. We turned into the road that led to the old grey house; when
we were a couple of hundred yards from it, I saw Phroso coming out of
the door. She walked rapidly towards us, and paused a few paces from
the Governor, making a deep obeisance to him and bidding him welcome
to her poor house in stately phrases of deference and loyalty. Mouraki
was silent, surveying her with a slight smile. She grew confused under
his wordless smiling; her greetings died away. At last he spoke, in
slow deliberate tones:
‘Is this the lady,’ said he, ‘who raises a tumult and resists my
master’s will, and seeks to kill a lord who comes peaceably and by
lawful right to take what is his?’
I believe I made a motion as though to spring forward. Mouraki’s
expressive face displayed a marvelling question; did I mean such
insolence as lay in interrupting him? I fell back; a public
remonstrance could earn only a public rebuff.
‘Strange are the ways of Neopalia,’ said he, his gaze again on
Phroso.
‘I am at your mercy, my lord,’ she murmured.
‘And what is this talk of your house? What house have you? I see here
the house of this English lord, where he will receive me courteously.
Where is your house?’
‘The house belongs to whom you will, my lord,’ she said. ‘Yet I have
dared to busy myself in making it ready for you.’
By this time I was nearly at boiling point, but still I controlled
myself. I rejoiced that Denny was not there, he and the others having
resumed possession of the yacht, and arranged to sleep there, in order
to leave more room for Mouraki’s accommodation. Phroso stood in
patient submission; Mouraki’s eyes travelled over her from head to
foot.
‘The other woman?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Your cousin’s wife--where is
she?’
‘She is at the cottage on the hill, my lord, with a woman to attend on
her.’
After another pause he motioned with his hand to Phroso to take her
place by him, and thus we three walked up to the house. It was alive
now with women and men, and there was a bustle of preparation for the
great man.
Mouraki sat down in the armchair which I had been accustomed to use,
and, addressing an officer who seemed to be his _aide-de-camp_,
issued quick orders for his own comfort and entertainment; then he
turned to me and said civilly enough:
‘Since you seem reluctant to act as host, you shall be my guest while
I am here.’
I murmured thanks. He glanced at Phroso and waved his hand in
dismissal. She drew back, curtseying, and I saw her mount the stairs
to her room. Mouraki bade me sit down, and his orderly brought him
cigarettes. He gave me one and we began to smoke, Mouraki watching the
coiling rings, I furtively studying his face. I was in a rage at his
treatment of Phroso. But the man interested me. I thought that he was
now considering great matters: the life of Constantine, perhaps, or
the penalties that he should lay on the people of Neopalia. Yet even
these would seem hardly great to him, who had moved in the world of
truly great affairs, and was in his present post rather by a temporary
loss of favour than because it was adequate to his known abilities.
With such thoughts I studied him as he sat smoking silently.
Well, man is very human, and great men are often even more human than
other men. For when Mouraki saw that we were alone, when he had
finished his cigarette, flung it away and taken another, he observed
to me, obviously summarising the result of those meditations to which
my fancy had imparted such loftiness:
‘Yes, I don’t know that I ever saw a handsomer girl.’
There was nothing to say but one thing, and I said it.
‘No more did I, your Excellency,’ said I.
But I was not pleased with the expression of Mouraki’s eye; the
contentment induced in me by the safety of my friends, by my own
escape, and by the end of Constantine’s ill-used power, was suddenly
clouded as I sat and looked at the baffling face and subtle smile of
the Governor. What was it to him whether Phroso were a handsome girl
or not?
And I suppose I might just as well have added--What was it to me?