A PUBLIC PROMISE
On the evening of the next day I was once again with my faithful
friends on board the little yacht. Furious with the trick Mouraki had
played them, they rejoiced openly at his fall and mingled their
congratulations to me with hearty denunciations of the dead man. In
sober reality we had every reason to be glad. Our new master was of a
different stamp from Mouraki. He was a proud, reserved, honest
gentleman, with no personal ends to serve. He had informed me that I
must remain on the island till he received instructions concerning me,
but he encouraged me to hope that my troubles were at last over;
indeed I gathered from a hint or two which he let fall that Mouraki’s
end was not likely to be received with great regret in exalted
circles. In truth I have never known a death greeted with more general
satisfaction. The soldiers regarded me with quiet approval. To the
people of Neopalia I became a hero: everybody seemed to have learnt
something at least of the story of my duel with the Pasha, and
everybody had been (so it now appeared) on my side. I could not walk
up the street without a shower of benedictions; the islanders
fearlessly displayed their liking for me by way of declaring their
hatred for Mouraki’s memory and their exultation in his fitting death.
In these demonstrations they were not interfered with, and the captain
went so far as to shut his eyes judiciously when, under cover of
night, they accorded Demetri the tribute of a public funeral. To this
function I did not go, although I was informed that my presence was
confidently expected; but I sought out Panayiota and told her how her
lover died. She heard the story with Spartan calm and pride;
Neopalians take deaths easily.
Yet there were shadows on our new-born prosperity. Most lenient and
gracious to me, the captain preserved a severe and rigorous attitude
towards Phroso. He sent her to her own house--or my house, as with
amiable persistence he called it--and kept her there under guard. Her
case also would be considered, he said, and he had forwarded my
exoneration of her together with the account of Mouraki’s death; but
he feared very much that she would not be allowed to remain in the
island; she would be a centre of discontent there. As for my proposal
to restore Neopalia to her, he assured me that it would not be
listened to for a moment. If I declined to keep the island,--probably
a suitable and loyal lord would be selected, and Phroso would be
deported.
‘Where to?’ I asked.
‘Really I don’t know,’ said the captain. ‘It is but a small matter, my
lord, and I have not troubled my superiors with any recommendation on
the subject.’
As he spoke he rose to go. He had been paying us a visit on the yacht,
where, in obedience to his advice, I had taken up my abode. Denny, who
was sitting near, gave a curious sort of laugh. I frowned fiercely,
the captain looked from one to the other of us in bland curiosity.
‘You take an interest in the girl?’ he said, in a tone in which
surprise struggled with civility. Again came Denny’s half-smothered
laugh.
‘An interest in her?’ said I irritably. ‘Well, I suppose I do. It
looked like it when I took her through that infernal passage, didn’t
it?’
The captain smiled apologetically and pursued his way towards the
door. ‘I will try to obtain lenient treatment for her,’ said he, and
passed out. I was left alone with Denny, who chose at this moment to
begin to whistle. I glared most ill-humouredly at him. He stopped
whistling and remarked:
‘By this time to-morrow our friends at home will be taking off their
mourning. They’ll read in the papers that Lord Wheatley is not dead of
fever at Neopalia, and they won’t read that he has fallen a victim to
the misguided patriotism of the islanders; in fact they’ll be
preparing to kill the fatted calf for him.’
It was all perfectly true, both what Denny said and what he implied
without saying. But I found no answer to make to it.
‘What a happy ending it is,’ said Denny.
‘Uncommonly,’ I growled, lighting a cigar.
After this there was a long silence: I smoked, Denny whistled. I saw
that he was determined to say nothing more explicit unless I gave him
a lead, but his whole manner exuded moral disapproval. The
consciousness of his feelings kept me obstinately dumb.
‘Going to stay here long?’ he asked at last, in a wonderfully careless
tone.
‘Well, there’s no hurry, is there?’ I retorted aggressively.
‘Oh, no; only I should have thought--oh, well, nothing.’
Again silence. Then Watkins opened the door of the cabin and announced
the return of the captain. I was surprised to see him again so soon. I
was more surprised when he came at me with outstretched hand and a
smile of mingled amusement and reproof on his face.
‘My dear lord,’ he exclaimed, seizing my defenceless hand, ‘is this
treating me quite fairly? So far as a word from you went, I was left
completely in the dark. Of course I understand now, but it was an
utter surprise to me.’ He shook his head with playful reproach.
‘If you understand now, I confess you have the advantage of me,’ I
returned, with some stiffness. ‘Pray, sir, what has occurred? No doubt
it’s something remarkable. I’ve learnt to rely on Neopalia for that.’
‘It was remarkable in my eyes, I admit, and rather startling. But of
course I acquiesced. In fact, my dear lord, it materially alters the
situation. As your wife, she will be in a very different--’
‘Hallo!’ cried Denny, leaping up from the bench where he had been
sitting.
‘In a very different position indeed,’ pursued the captain blandly.
‘We should have, if I may say so, a guarantee for her good behaviour.
We should have you to look to--a great security, as I need not tell
you.’
‘My dear sir,’ said I in exasperated pleading, ‘you don’t seem to
think you need tell me anything. Pray inform me of what has occurred,
and what this wonderful thing is that makes so much change.’
‘Indeed,’ said he, ‘if I had surprised a secret, I would apologise;
but it’s evidently known to all the islanders.’
‘Well, but I’m not an islander,’ I cried in growing fury.
The captain sat down, lit a cigarette very deliberately, and observed:
‘It was perhaps stupid of me not to have thought of it. She is, of
course, a beautiful girl, but hardly, if I may say so, your equal in
position, my lord.’
I jumped up and caught him by the shoulder. He might order me under
arrest if he liked, but he should tell me what had happened first.
‘What’s happened?’ I reiterated. ‘Since you left us--what?’
‘A deputation of the islanders, headed by their priest, came to ask my
leave for the inhabitants to go up to the house and see their Lady.’
‘Yes, yes. What for?’
‘To offer her their congratulations on her betrothal--’
‘What?’
‘And their assurances of loyalty to her and to her husband for her
sake. Oh, it simplifies the matter very much.’
‘Oh, does it? And did you tell them they might go?’
‘Was there any objection? Certainly. Certainly I told them they might
go, and I added that I heard with great gratification that a marriage
so--’
What the captain had said to the deputation I did not wait to hear. No
doubt it was something highly dignified and appropriate, for he was
evidently much pleased with himself. But before he could possibly have
finished so ornate a sentence, I was on the deck of the yacht. I heard
Denny push back his chair, whether merely in wonder or in order to
follow me I did not know. I leapt from the yacht on to the jetty and
started to run up the street nearly as quickly as I had run down it on
the day when Mouraki was kind enough to send my friends a-fishing. At
all costs I must stop the demonstration of delight which the
inconvenient innocence of these islanders was preparing.
Alas, the street was a desert! The movements of the captain were
always leisurely. The impetuous Neopalians had wasted no time: they
had got a start of me, and running up the hill after them was no joke.
Against my will I was at last obliged to drop into a walk, and thus
pursued my way doggedly, thinking in gloomy despair how everything
conspired to push me along the road which my honour and my pledged
word closed to me. Was ever man so tempted? Did ever circumstances so
conspire with his own wishes, or fate make duty seem more hard?
I turned the corner of the road which lead to the old house. It was
here I had first heard Phroso’s voice in the darkness, here where,
from the window of the hall, I had seen her lithe graceful figure when
she came in her boy’s dress to raid my cows; a little further on was
where I had said farewell to her when she went back, the grant of
Neopalia in her hand, to soften the hearts of her turbulent
countrymen; here where Mouraki had tried her with his guile and
intimidated her with his harshness; and there was the house where I
had declared to the Pasha that she should be my wife. How sweet that
saying sounded in my remembering ears! Yet I swear I did not waver.
Many have called me a fool for it since. I know nothing about that.
Times change, and people are very wise nowadays. My father was a fool,
I daresay, to give thousands to his spendthrift school-fellow, just
because he happened to have said he would.
I saw them now, the bright picturesque crowd, thronging round the door
of the house; and on the step of the threshold I saw her, standing
there, tall and slim, with one hand resting on the arm of Kortes’s
sister. A loud cry rose from the people. She did not seem to speak.
With set teeth I walked on. Now someone in the circle caught sight of
me. There was another eager cry, a stir, shouts, gestures; then they
turned and ran to me. Before I could move or speak a dozen strong
hands were about me. They swung me up on their shoulders and carried
me along; the rest waved their hands and cheered: they blessed me and
called me their lord. The women laughed and the girls shot merry shy
glances at me. Thus they bore me in triumph to Phroso’s feet. Surely I
was indeed a hero in Neopalia to-day, for they believed that through
me their Lady would be left to them, and their island escape the
punishment they feared. So they sang One-eyed Alexander’s chant no
more, but burst into a glad hymn--an epithalamium--as I knelt at
Phroso’s feet, and did not dare to lift my eyes to her fair face.
‘Here’s a mess!’ I groaned, wondering what they had said to my poor
Phroso.
Then a sudden silence fell on them. Looking up in wonder, I saw that
Phroso had raised her hand and was about to speak. She did not look at
me--nay, she did not look at them; her eyes were fixed on the sea that
she loved. Then her voice came, low but clear:
‘Friends--for all are friends here, and there are no strangers--once
before, in the face of all of you I have told my love for my lord. My
lord did not know that what I said was true, and I have not told him
that it was true till I tell him here to-day. But you talk foolishly
when you greet me as my lord’s bride; for in his country he is a great
man and owns great wealth, and Neopalia is very small and poor, and I
seem but a poor girl to him, though you call me your Lady.’
Here she paused an instant; then she went on, her voice sinking a
little lower and growing almost dreamy, as if she let herself drift
idly on the waves of fancy.
‘Is it strange to speak to you--to you, my brothers and sisters of our
island? I do not know; I love to speak to you all; for, poor as I am
and as our island is, I think sometimes that had my lord come here a
free man he would have loved me. But his heart was not his own, and
the lady he loves waits for him at home, and he will go to her. So
wish me joy no more on what cannot be.’ And then, very suddenly,
before I or any of them could move or speak, she withdrew inside the
threshold, and Kortes’s sister swiftly closed the door. I was on my
feet as it shut, and I stood facing it, my back to the islanders.
Among them at first there was an amazed silence, but soon voices
began to be heard. I turned round and met their gaze. The strong yoke
of Mouraki was off them; their fear had gone, and with it their
meekness. They were again in the fierce impetuous mood of St Tryphon’s
day: they were exasperated at their disappointment, enraged to find
the plan which left Phroso to them and relieved them of the threatened
advent of a Government nominee brought to nothing.
‘They’ll take her away,’ said one.
‘They’ll send us a rascally Turk,’ cried another.
‘He shall hear the death-chant then,’ menaced a third.
Then their anger, seeking an outlet, turned on me. I do not know that
I had the right to consider myself an entirely innocent victim.
‘He has won her love by fraud,’ muttered one to another, with
evil-disposed glances and ominous frowns.
I thought they were going to handle me roughly, and I felt for the
revolver which the captain had been kind enough to restore to me. But
a new turn was given to their thoughts by a tall fellow, with long
hair and flashing eyes, who leapt out from the middle of the throng,
crying loudly:
‘Is not Mouraki dead? Why need we fear? Shall we wait idle while our
Lady is taken from us? To the shore, islanders! Where is fear since
Mouraki is dead?’
His words lit a torch that blazed up furiously. In an instant they
were aflame with the mad notion of attacking the soldiers and the
gunboat. No voice was raised to point out the hopelessness of such an
attempt, the certain death and the heavy penalties which must wait on
it. The death-chant broke out again, mingled with exhortations to turn
and march against the soldiers, and with encouragements to the tall
fellow--Orestes they called him--to put himself at their head. He was
not loth.
‘Let us go and get our guns and our knives,’ he cried, ‘and then to
the shore!’
‘And this man?’ called half-a-dozen, pointing at me.
‘When we have driven out the soldiers we will deal with him,’ said
Master Orestes. ‘If our Lady desires him for her husband, he shall wed
her.’
A shout of approval greeted this arrangement, and they drew together
into a sort of rude column, the women making a fringe to it. But I
could not let them march on their own destruction without a word of
warning. I sprang on to the raised step where Phroso had stood, just
outside the door, and cried:
‘You fools! The guns of the ship will mow you down before you can
touch a hair of the head of a single soldier.’
A deep derisive groan met my attempt at dissuasion.
‘On, on!’ they cried.
‘It’s certain death,’ I shouted, and now I saw one or two of the women
hesitate, and look first at me and then at each other with doubt and
fear. But Orestes would not listen, and called again to them to take
the road. Thus we were when the door behind me opened, and Phroso was
again by my side. She knew how matters went. Her eyes were wild with
terror and distress.
‘Stop them, my lord, stop them,’ she implored.
For answer, I took my revolver from my pocket, saying, ‘I’ll do what I
can.’
‘No, no, not like that! That would be your death as well as theirs.’
‘Come,’ cried Orestes, in the pride of his sudden elevation to
leadership. ‘Come, follow me, I’ll lead you to victory.’
‘You fools, you fools!’ I groaned. ‘In an hour half of you will be
dead.’
No, they would not listen. Only the women now laid imploring hands on
the arms of husbands and brothers, useless loving restraints, angrily
flung off.
‘Stop them, stop them!’ prayed Phroso. ‘By any means, my lord, by any
means!’
‘There’s only one way,’ said I.
‘Whatever the way may be,’ she urged; for now the column was facing
round towards the harbour. Orestes had taken his place, swelling with
importance and eager to display his prowess. In a word, Neopalia was
in revolt again, and the death-chant threatened to swell out in all
its barbaric simple savagery at any moment.
There was nothing else for it; I must temporise; and that word is
generally, and was in this case, the equivalent of a much shorter one.
I could not leave these mad fools to rush on ruin. A plan was in my
head and I gave it play. I took a pace forward, raised my hand, and
cried:
‘Hear me before you march, Neopalians, for I am your friend.’
My voice gained me a minute’s silence; the column stood still, though
Orestes chafed impatiently at the delay.
‘You’re in haste, men of Neopalia,’ said I. ‘Indeed you’re always in
haste. You were in haste to kill me who had done you no harm. You are
in haste to kill yourselves by marching into the mouth of the great
gun of the ship. In truth I wonder that any of you are still alive.
But here, in this matter, you are most of all in haste, for having
heard what the Lady Phroso said, you have not asked nor waited to hear
what I say, but have at once gone mad, all of you, and chosen the
maddest among you and made him your leader.’
I do not think that they had expected quite this style of speech. They
had looked for passionate reproaches or prayerful entreaties; cool
scorn and chaff put them rather at a loss, and my reference to
Orestes, who looked sour enough, won me a hesitating laugh.
‘And then, all of you mad together, off you go, leaving me here, the
only sane man in the place! For am not I sane? Aye, not mad enough to
leave the fairest lady in the world when she says she loves me!’ I
took Phroso’s hand and kissed it. It lay limp and cold in mine. ‘For
my home,’ I went on, ‘is a long way off, and it is long since I have
seen the lady of whom you have heard; and a man’s heart will not be
denied.’ Again I kissed Phroso’s hand, but I dared not look her in the
face.
My meaning had dawned on them now. There was an instant’s silence, the
last relic of doubt and puzzle; then a sudden loud shout went up from
them. Orestes alone was sullen and mute, for my surrender deposed him
from his brief eminence. Again and again they shouted in joy. I knew
that their shouts must reach nearly to the harbour. Men and women
crowded round me and seized my hand; nobody seemed to make any bones
about the ‘lady who waited’ for me. They were single-hearted patriots,
these Neopalians. I had observed that virtue in them several times
before, and their behaviour now confirmed my opinion. But there was,
of course, a remarkable difference in the manifestation. Before I had
been the object, now I was the subject; for by announcing my intention
of marrying Phroso I took rank as a Neopalian. Indeed for a minute or
two I was afraid that the post of generalissimo, vacant by Orestes’s
deposition, would be forcibly thrust upon me.
Happily their enthusiasm took a course which was more harmless,
although it was hardly less embarrassing. They made a ring round
Phroso and me, and insisted on our embracing one another in the glare
of publicity. Yet somehow I forgot them all for a moment--them all,
and more than them all--while I held her in my arms.
Now it chanced that the captain, Denny and Hogvardt chose this moment
for appearing on the road, in the course of a leisurely approach to
the house; and they beheld Phroso and myself in a very sentimental
attitude on the doorstep, with the islanders standing round in high
delight. Denny’s amazed ‘Hallo!’ warned me of what had happened. The
islanders--their enmity towards the suzerain power allayed as quickly
as it had been roused--ran to the captain to impart the joyful news.
He came up to me, and bestowed his sanction by a shake of the hand.
‘But why did you behave so strangely, my lord, when I wished you joy
an hour ago on the boat?’ he asked; and it was a very natural
question.
‘Oh, the truth is,’ said I, ‘that there was a little difficulty in the
way then.’
‘Oh, a lover’s quarrel?’ he smiled.
‘Well, something like it,’ I admitted.
‘Everything is quite right now, I hope?’ he said politely.
‘Well, very nearly,’ said I. Then I met Denny’s eye.
‘Am I also to congratulate you?’ said Denny coldly.
There was no opportunity of explaining matters to him, the captain was
too near.
‘I shall be very glad if you will,’ I said, ‘and if Hogvardt will
also.’
Hogvardt shrugged his shoulders, raised his brows, smiled and
observed:
‘I trust you’re acting for the best, my lord.’
Denny made no answer at all. He kicked the ground with his foot. I
knew very well what was in Denny’s mind. Denny was of my family on his
mother’s side, and Denny’s eye asked, ‘Where is the word of a
Wheatley?’ All this I realised fully. I read his mind then more
clearly than I could read my own; for had we been alone, and had he
put to me the plain question, ‘Do you mean to make her your wife, or
are you playing another trick?’ by heaven, I should not have known
what to answer! I had begun a trick; the plan was to persuade the
islanders into dispersing peacefully by my pretence, and then to slip
away quietly by myself, trusting to their good sense--although a
broken reed, yet the only resource--to make them accept an
accomplished fact. But was that my mind now, since I had held Phroso
in my arms, and her lips had met mine in the kiss which the islanders
hailed as the pledge of our union?
I do not know. I saw Phroso turn and go into the house again. The
captain spoke to Denny; I saw him point up to the window of the room
which Mouraki had occupied. He went in. Denny motioned Hogvardt to his
side, and they two also went into the house without asking me to
accompany them. Gradually the throng of islanders dispersed. Orestes
flung off in sullen disappointment; the men, those who had knives
carefully hiding them, walked down the road like peaceful citizens;
the women strolled away, laughing, chattering, gossiping, delighted,
as women always are, with the love affair. Thus I was left alone in
front of the house. It was late afternoon, and clouds had gathered
over the sea. The air was very still; no sound struck my ear except
the wash of the waves on the shore.
There I stood fighting the battle, for how long I do not know. The
struggle within me was very sore. On either side seemed now to lie a
path that it soiled my feet to tread: on the one was a broken pledge,
on the other a piece of trickery and knavishness. The joy of a love
that could be mine only through dishonour was imperfect joy; yet, if
that love could not be mine, life seemed too empty a thing to live.
The voices of the two sounded in my ear--the light merry prattle and
the calmer sweeter voice. Ah, this island of mine, what things it put
on a man!
At last I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. I turned, and in the
quick-gathering dusk of the evening I saw Kortes’s sister; she looked
long and earnestly into my face.
‘Well?’ said I. ‘What is it now?’
‘She must see you, my lord,’ answered the woman. ‘She must see you
now, at once.’
I looked again at the harbour and the sea, trying to quell the tumult
of my thoughts and to resolve what I would do. I could find no course
and settle on no resolution.
‘Yes, she must see me,’ said I at last. I could say nothing else.
The woman moved away, a strange bewilderment shewing itself in her
kind eyes. Again I was left alone in my restless self-communings. I
heard people moving to and fro in the house. I heard the window of
Mouraki’s room, where the captain was, closed with a decisive hand;
and then I became aware of some one approaching me. I turned and saw
Phroso’s white dress gleaming through the gloom, and her face nearly
as white above it.
Yes, the time had come; but I was not ready.