The Heritage
BY
SYDNEY C. GRIER
AUTHOR OF ‘THE HEIR,’ ‘AN UNCROWNED KING,’
‘THE WARDEN OF THE MARCHES,’ ETC.
(_Second in the Balkan Series II._)
FOURTH EDITION
William Blackwood & Sons
Edinburg and London
1908
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE.
I. PRACTICAL POLITICS.
II. REVOLUTION AND ROSE-WATER.
III. THE RIVAL HEIR.
IV. THE STERN PARENT.
V. TWO DIPLOMATISTS.
VI. THE RED GODS CALL.
VII. THE ENEMY IN THE WAY.
VIII. A PORT OF REFUGE.
IX. ARTS OF PEACE.
X. THE INTERVENTION OF THE ADMIRAL.
XI. THE SYMPATHY OF EUROPE.
XII. A BAPTISM OF FIRE.
XIII. KNIGHTLY EMULATION.
XIV. _IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO._
XV. THE TOWER OF SEGRETI.
XVI. THE CONSULS TO THE RESCUE.
XVII. THE HOPE THAT FAILED.
XVIII. A _RUSE DE GUERRE._
XIX. THE BITTER END.
XX. FUGITIVES.
XXI. THE BRITISH FLAG.
XXII. CHANGES AND CHANCES.
XXIII. AN UNHOLY COMPACT.
XXIV. THE WAGES OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.
XXV. A CONTESTED ELECTION.
XXVI. PAYING THE BILL.
THE HERITAGE.
PROLOGUE.
Night was falling in the leafless beech forest which covered a spur
of the Balkans. There was a thin sprinkling of snow on the rocky
ground, but it was frozen hard, and showed no trace of the leather
moccasins of the two men who were climbing the slope. Both wore
unobtrusive uniforms of dull grey, almost concealed by huge brown
greatcoats with hoods, and carried rifles slung across their backs;
but while one was a stolid peasant, the other had a keen intellectual
face, not devoid of a certain tincture of what may without offence be
termed “slimness.” It was a face familiar to many Emathian
mountaineers, and to a few startled Roumis, as that of Lazar
Nilischeff, a prominent leader of revolt. As he and his follower
mounted the path, two men, somewhat similar to them in aspect, but
with a slight difference in their equipment, came out from among the
trees to meet them, and one of them greeted Nilischeff with the formal
politeness natural between those who are pursuing the same end with
distinct purposes in view. Both were Thracian by race, and had
received their university training at the city of Bellaviste; but
while Nilischeff was a Thracian subject, and had crossed the frontier
in the hope of adding a freed Emathia to his sovereign’s dominions, Dr
Afanasi Terminoff was Emathian-born, and scouted any prospect other
than that of actual independence for his unrestful country.
“You sent an urgent message for me?” said Nilischeff, as the two
leaders went on together up the hill, leaving their subordinates to
guard the path.
“The rich Englishman is dying,” said Terminoff gloomily, “and he
begged me to find him a lawyer.”
“No doubt he wishes to make his will.” The only available lawyer tried
hard not to exhibit indecent exultation. “He will leave his money to
the Organisation, you think?”
“He has not told me,” was the curt answer, and the two men continued
their climb in silence, the minds of both running riot over the
possibilities of unlimited action called forth by the suggestion. The
rich Englishman’s money had already provided a pleasurable earnest in
the shape of rifles, ammunition, dynamite, and other materials of the
revolutionary craft, but its owner had exercised a control over their
employment which the recipients found somewhat galling.
“Why are you in these parts?” was the next question, for this
particular spur of the mountains was situated in the region sacred to
Nilischeff’s band.
“We were betrayed to the Roumis--by a Greek,” replied Terminoff. “Our
scouts had only just time to warn us.”
“Did the Greek get away?”
“For the moment; but we fastened up his wife and daughters in their
house, and set light to it. Then we ambushed the Roumis in the
river-gorge, and scattered them and caught him. So there was an end of
the lot.”
“If we are not to be left in peace in the winter, things are coming to
a pretty pass,” said Nilischeff sympathetically. “You are in the cave,
I suppose?”
The question was asked with renewed sharpness, for it was not
etiquette for any other band to imperil one of Nilischeff’s villages
by seeking shelter in it, but Terminoff was able to give a
satisfactory answer. The cave was common property, and there were few
nights in the year when a sufficiently energetic force of Roumis might
not have made a valuable capture by visiting it, but the forests and
defiles through which it was approached were a country notoriously
ill-suited to Roumis who had any care for their health. Every now and
then a murmured greeting to Terminoff showed the presence of a scout
in ambush, and when the forest was left behind, the rest of the ascent
was commanded, every foot of it, by the rough breastwork at the cave’s
mouth. The two leaders climbed the almost invisible path, and wriggled
into the cave between the great stones heaped before it. A fire was
burning behind a sheltering rock, casting a fitful glimmer into the
dark recesses at the back, where the only other light came from a
candle flickering before a sacred picture fixed crookedly on the wall.
On a couch of rugs and greatcoats, spread upon a foundation of dead
beech leaves brought from the forest below, lay a very tall man with
strongly marked features and a pointed white beard. He held out his
hand feebly to Nilischeff.
“They’ve got me at last, you see, though not by a bullet,” he said,
speaking with difficulty. “A lifetime spent in the West Indies is a
bad preparation for the Balkans in mid-winter, and it’s rough on a
sick man to have to turn out of bed and tramp all night through the
snow. But now about that little bit of business I want you to do for
me. You have brought writing materials, of course?”
He lay back and gasped while Nilischeff brought out a fountain-pen and
a writing-pad, but there was a cynical smile on his drawn face.
“It’s not my will,” he murmured, with obvious enjoyment of the two
men’s discomfiture. “That was made and left in safe keeping before I
started. This is merely a codicil that I wish to add.”
The words came slowly and painfully from him in French, and as he
spoke his thumb moved rapidly backwards and forwards over his
forefinger, in the familiar Eastern gesture denoting the telling of
money. They watched him as if fascinated.
“I have never concealed from you my object in taking part in your
operations,” he went on. “You, gentlemen, are solely actuated, as I
know, by the high and noble desire of freeing Emathia from the Roumi
yoke. I confess without shame that my aim is the grovelling one of
restoring my family to its ancient position. My fortune is left in
trust for my cousin Maurice Teffany, head of the house of Theophanis,
his wife Eirene, representative of the younger line of the Imperial
house, and their children, to be used in regaining for them the throne
of the Eastern Empire, and maintaining the dignity when they achieve
it.” He watched narrowly with his sunken eyes the gloomy looks of
Terminoff, and the protesting face of Nilischeff, and spoke with
hoarse passion,--“But in acting for the good of my family, I am doing
the best thing for you, and you know it. I am giving you a head, a
master, who will weld you into a nation with or without your consent.
Why, if the Roumis left Emathia to-morrow, you and the Greeks would be
at each other’s throats before night, with Thracia and Mœsia, and
perhaps Dardania and Dacia, mobilising in feverish haste to seize
whatever they could, until Scythia and Pannonia stepped in and divided
the country between them! This is your one chance.”
“As well hand ourselves over to Panagiotis and his Greeks at once,”
muttered Nilischeff. “The old time-server will come over to your
cousin’s side again as soon as he hears of your legacy. They say that
Prince Christodoridi refuses to contribute one single drachma towards
the Greek propaganda, though it is to put himself on the throne.”
“Then he is penny wise and pound foolish,” said the sick man; “and you
are worse, if you don’t welcome Panagiotis and the Greeks, whatever
brings them over to your side. Europe will never see Emathia annexed
to Thracia, but she will allow you to build up an autonomous state if
you can only keep your hands off your knives. And meanwhile, you shall
each have a thousand pounds, which will provide your bands with
cartridges and dynamite until Maurice Theophanis is ready to move. So
call two of your men as witnesses.”
Two members of the band who were not on guard were summoned, and
Nilischeff prepared to write. The cynical smile was again on the
invalid’s face.
“My cousin is too fond of waiting to be called upon,” he said. “I wish
to make him act of his own accord.”
“A bomb, sir?” suggested one of the witnesses, an eager-faced student
who had run away from a theological seminary to join the band. “Only a
small one, of course--merely to frighten, not to hurt any one.”
“You might blow up all England before you would frighten Maurice
Teffany back to Emathia. No, what I mean to use is a domestic
bombshell. Write down that while the principal of the trust-money can
only be touched by husband and wife acting together, the interest may
be used, for the purposes of the trust, by the Princess Eirene at her
own discretion. I think my friend Maurice will find himself in Emathia
sooner than he expects. You will write out the codicil twice, if you
please,” he added to Nilischeff, “and I will sign both copies, so that
you and our friend Terminoff may each keep one.” The smile expressed
what he did not add, that the mutual jealousy of the two men would
ensure the due production of the document.
“Maurice Teffany?” said the second witness, when the matter had been
explained to him. “Why, that was one of the European travellers we
captured four years ago, when I was in Stoyan’s band. He called
himself Ismit (Smith), but we heard afterwards that he was a Greek
prince, and we ought to have killed him. ‘If I were your leader----!’
he said one day, and we laughed, not knowing. And will the other man
come with him, the Capitan with the blue eyes? If he does, I tell you
there is no one left of Stoyan’s band that will not rather fight with
him than against him!”
With some difficulty the garrulous ex-brigand was silenced, and
induced to affix his mark to the two papers. When this had been done,
and the sick man was resting, Dr Terminoff escorted Nilischeff down
the hill again and past his outposts. The lawyer’s brain was working
busily.
“I see a way of turning this to account,” he said. “I am sending off
despatches to-morrow, and I will mention the sad death of the
noble-hearted British philanthropist, Teffany-Wise. It will appear in
all the English papers how he gave his declining years to the service
of freedom, visiting Emathia with relief for the oppressed, and was
pursued from place to place by the Roumis thirsting for his blood.
Imagine it--he dies in a cave, deprived of every comfort, but with his
last breath bequeathing to the cause all he has to leave. A fine moral
effect, is it not?”
CHAPTER I.
PRACTICAL POLITICS.
“It is Colonel Wylie, isn’t it? I say, I beg your pardon if I’ve
made a mistake.” The speaker’s boyish tones grew doubtful as he looked
at the grey hair and hollow cheeks of the fellow-passenger to whom he
spoke, but the sunken eyes, peculiarly blue in contrast with the
leaden complexion, reassured him. “It is you, Wylie, after all. But
what have you been doing to yourself?”
“Spending five years in the Nile swamps. I don’t wonder you didn’t
know me. I came face to face with myself in a big mirror on the hotel
stairs at Cairo, and got a shock--wondered who the poor devil was with
the cadaverous countenance.”
“Miss Teffany knew you at once.”
“Now that’s what I call really flattering. I can’t be so absolutely
unrecognisable if she knew me.”
“Did you guess she was on board?”
“Saw her come on deck before you did.”
“But you haven’t spoken to her.” There was wonder in the younger man’s
voice.
“How was I to know that she would recognise me? And when you found her
out, I hadn’t the heart to disturb you.”
“She sent me to fetch you to her now, though.”
Wylie laughed at the faint sigh that accompanied the words. “Rough on
you,” he said. “Well, you’re not changed at any rate--not a day older.
Come, don’t let us keep her waiting.”
They crossed the deck towards a lady in a noticeably well-cut tweed
travelling-coat and hat, who sat alone, protected by the presence at a
little distance of an elderly maid of the most rigid type of
respectability. She looked up eagerly, almost anxiously, as Wylie
approached, but the blue eyes met hers with curiosity rather than
interest. The seven years since their last meeting had worked no such
doleful change in Zoe Teffany as in the man who had once loved her;
she had worn well, as women say of one another. She was a woman not to
be passed over, alert, keenly interested in life, though an occasional
fugitive look of wistfulness betrayed that life had not brought her
all she had once confidently expected from it. She shook hands
heartily with Wylie.
“Now I really believe in this adventure,” she said. “With you our old
party is complete.”
“Your brother and his wife are here?” asked Wylie.
“No, I am to meet them when I land. But have they told you nothing of
their plans?”
“Nothing. I was lounging about on the Riviera, desperately dull, when
your brother’s letter reached me. He merely said that things were
moving in Emathia, and reminded me of my old promise to back him up.
It was only a joke at the time, but as I am forbidden the tropics, and
can’t face an English spring, it seemed good enough now, so here I
am.”
His glance forbade her to pity him, and Zoe looked hastily away. “Then
you have a great deal to learn,” she said, making room for him beside
her. “Lord Armitage, if you will bring that deck-chair closer, we can
talk without being overheard.”
“_Lord_ Armitage?” asked Wylie.
“Oh, you didn’t know?” groaned the bearer of the title. “Second cousin
three times removed dies to bother me, and leaves me the family
honours--me, if you please. I have to chuck my work, and buy pictures
instead of making them, and if I go into a studio, there’s no hope of
getting the old chaff, for the fellows hang on my words with bated
breath, because I’m a patron of art! So that’s why I’m here.”
“You will be the Byron of Emathian independence,” said Zoe
encouragingly. “Think of the halo of respectability that the presence
of an English nobleman and his yacht will throw over our proceedings!”
Something in Armitage’s face warned Wylie that aspirations less
abstract than a yearning for Emathian independence had drawn him into
the adventure, and he smiled grimly to himself. Zoe looked a little
hurt.
“You are laughing at our having to begin again from the very
beginning,” she said. “Seven years does seem a long time to waste, I
suppose--especially as when we saw you last we were full of golden
anticipations, thinking that in a few months Maurice and Eirene would
at any rate be on their way to a throne. The blow fell the very same
day, you know.”
“You think your brother should have decided differently?”
“Never for one moment. But I am not sure that Eirene
doesn’t--sometimes. It was really very galling to see Professor
Panagiotis fling himself heart and soul into the cause of the rival
claimant, the instant Maurice had refused his terms.”
“It doesn’t seem to have done the rival claimant much good, so far.”
“Ah, but that’s because they had a violent quarrel just two years ago.
Prince Christodoridi swore that the Professor was only working for his
own advantage all along, and the Professor declares that the Prince
has shown the blackest ingratitude.”
“And the thieves having fallen out, the honest man comes by his own?
Or is it a case of everything coming to him who knows how to wait?”
“Both, I think,” said Zoe, laughing. “Eirene would certainly tell you
that Maurice knows how to wait only too well. Of course, it was hard
on her--the way their marriage fell flat, I mean. The Scythian Court
simply ignored the whole thing, and all her other royal acquaintances
followed their example. She just dropped out, and it was as if she
didn’t exist. Well, you know, she had begun at Stone Acton by being
very much on her dignity--expecting royal honours, in fact. The people
round were tremendously interested at first, but they very soon began
to ask what sort of a Princess this could be, who was never noticed by
any of our own royalties. They bored her, too,--I don’t wonder at
that; they have often bored me,--and she snubbed them, and gave a
great deal of offence. And then there came the Romance of the
Long-Lost Uncle.”
“This is thrilling,” said Wylie. “Princess Eirene’s uncle?”
“No, ours--our cousin, at least; a very very distant cousin. His name
was Teffany-Wise, and he was descended from the daughter of Prosper
Teffany, a younger son who emigrated from Penteffan to the West Indies
about the end of the seventeenth century. I met him in Jamaica when I
went round the world, and I wrote home that he looked ineffably old,
and capable of any wickedness. He had a sort of inscrutable
parchment-like face, you know. I always thought he made his money by
slave-trading, but Maurice says its palmy days were over long before
his time, unless he was as old as the Wandering Jew, and that he was
probably only a speculator in Chicago slum tenements. At any rate,
there he was, immensely rich, without a relation nearer than
ourselves, and frightfully excited over the newspaper accounts of our
Emathian adventures. You see, if the royalties ignored Maurice, the
journalists didn’t, and he let himself be interviewed pretty often,
because he thought it was only due to Eirene to make her position
perfectly clear. It seemed that Mr Teffany-Wise had always had an
ambition to use his money in restoring the fortunes of the family, but
until he heard about us he didn’t know who there was left. So he
talked to me, and then suddenly sailed for home, and descended on
Stone Acton in a shower of gold, and supplied Eirene with the object
in life she wanted.”
“And that was----?”
“To hustle Maurice into putting himself forward publicly as a
candidate for the throne of Emathia. He was determined not to move
until he received an invitation, and she was determined he should. She
has made a sort of religion of the Theophanis claims since the
Long-Lost Uncle appeared. Why, she has turned the library at Stone
Acton into a regular throne-room, with crimson hangings--imperial
purple, you know--and two gilded chairs on a daïs under a canopy. Oh,
it mayn’t seem very dreadful to you, but you don’t know Stone Acton.
It was always such a _sensible_ house! And she has been having the
most extraordinary people there--refugees and conspirators and so
on--till the neighbourhood was scandalised. That was Mr Teffany-Wise’s
doing. He saw that there was no hope of Professor Panagiotis and the
Emathian Greeks for the present, so he turned boldly to the Slav
party--the Thracian Committees and their followers--and bid for their
support.”
“Backing his offer with hard cash, I presume?” said Wylie. “That
explains the increased activity and boldness of the Emathian
insurgents this last year or two. But the Roumis mean business now. I
suppose your long-lost relative has no objection to being morally
guilty of a massacre or two?”
“He thought they were unavoidable but disagreeable incidents--useful,
too, since they would stir the indignation of Europe.”
“Well, so far as I can see, he is likely to be gratified. And has his
game been worth the candle?”
“I believe he thought so. At any rate, the national sentiment is much
more strongly developed than when we were in Emathia. Then the
reformers talked of uniting with Thracia or Mœsia or Morea, according
to their tastes, but now they are all inclining to the thought of an
Emathian nation. Most of them would like a republic, of course, but
they know the Powers would never hear of that, and Maurice’s refusal
to bind himself body and soul to the Greeks pleased them. So before Mr
Teffany-Wise died, he had practically got things settled.”
“Oh, he is dead, then?”
“Yes; he insisted on interviewing the Committees and leaders of bands
for himself, and inspecting their work, and they passed him on from
one to another all through the disturbed districts. It was winter, and
he was chased by the Roumis, and the hardships were too much for him.
Of course you think I’m a brute to talk like this, but I can’t forgive
that man. He has spoilt Maurice’s life.”
“If your brother is what I remember him, it would be difficult for any
one to do that,” said Wylie.
“No one could, except through Eirene. But you must expect to see
Maurice a good deal changed. It isn’t either comfortable or dignified
for a man to have to go through life as a drag on his wife’s wheel.”
“Then I gather that your sister-in-law has not changed?”
“No, Eirene is Eirene still--only more so. She would not have been
quite so bad but for the Uncle. He left his property in trust, to be
used for restoring the family to the Imperial throne. That was natural
enough, but he gave Eirene power to use the interest as she thought
best, though she can’t touch the capital without Maurice’s consent.”
“Injudicious,” said Wylie.
“Injudicious? It was mad! And Eirene is so unfair. She has no sense of
what can be done and what can’t. Little Constantine--their boy--was
born just after the news of the will came, and she was very ill. Their
two first babies died--really and truly I believe it was because she
always worried and excited herself so much--and she knew how anxious
Maurice was. Well, she sent for him and made him promise that he would
open communications with the Slav leaders, instead of waiting for them
to approach him. She got better, and little Con is all right, and of
course Maurice had to keep his promise. So he wrote to say that if he
received a definite invitation from them, he would place himself at
their head, and negotiations have been going on ever since. Then
Professor Panagiotis threw himself into the fray, and now there is
really some prospect of Maurice’s being accepted as candidate both by
the Greek and Slav parties.”
“Well, surely that was worth waiting for?”
“Oh, I suppose so, but I hate its having come about in this way! The
massacres, you know--the Committees are really provoking them, so as
to force the hand of Europe, and things may be much worse yet.”
“Probably; but I see their drift now--to get to work while Scythia and
Pannonia are both too busy with their own internal concerns to
interfere. But why are we starting from this side?”
“Oh, we have to settle the preliminaries first,--‘a conference of the
powers,’ you know,--and it is to be done under cover of this great
Pan-Balkanic Athletic Festival that the Prince of Dardania is
holding.”
“Armitage representing the athletic capabilities of the party, I
suppose?” said Wylie, with a humorous shrug. “I’m afraid you can’t
depend on me much.”
“No, we go as spectators. The Princess of Dardania is a lady of
literary tastes, and was kind enough to want to see _me_,” said Zoe,
with a side glance at him as she rose. “It is getting a little cold
here, I think. I will write one or two letters in the cabin.”
There was nothing to show whether Wylie had detected any special
meaning in her tone as he escorted her across the deck, and when he
returned to Armitage it was to smoke in silence, as if all his
interest was concentrated on the rocky coast they were passing. The
younger man lost patience.
“Well?” he said, with repressed excitement.
“Well?” returned Wylie.
“Do you find her altered, or not?”
“Much as she was, only more so,” cruelly adapting Zoe’s own
description of her sister-in-law.
Armitage was obviously disappointed. “You have kept up with her
doings, perhaps? I suppose even your exile was lightened by a Society
paper now and then?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t read them if it was.”
“Then you have heard people talk of her? Of course she’s an awfully
well-known woman. When she is in town, one meets her everywhere. Her
travels, you see--and her personality--and her books----”
“Ah, I thought I was intended to understand that she had succeeded in
perpetrating something in that line.”
“Rather!” said Armitage vivaciously, encouraged by the faint hint of
interrogation in the tone. “She’s a success, you know. Not a popular
success--five hundred thousand copies and all that--but with the right
people. All the clever women swear by her. They say she voices the
unrest of the modern woman better than anybody else.”
“Oh yes--misunderstood by her family, unappreciated by her husband,
too lofty to be happy, and too self-contained to be wicked--the usual
jargon,” muttered Wylie impatiently.
“More head than heart,” pursued Armitage, then broke off quickly. “I
say, I believe you’ve been reading them. She calls herself Zeto.”
“What, her books? No, thank you.”
Again a dead stop. But Armitage was not to be baulked.
“I don’t know why you shouldn’t. It would be only natural, surely? You
seemed pretty hard hit when you went.”
“You seem to forget that when I went to the Soudan I put her out of my
head.”
“But could you manage it?”
“Generally, I’m thankful to say.”
“Ah, but not always? Don’t think I’m trying to pry into your affairs,”
burst out Armitage in his boyish way, “but it means a lot to me. I’ll
stand aside without a word if you’re going to ask her again, but if
not---- Well, I might have some little chance.”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I told her I should never ask her again, and I
haven’t the slightest wish to do it. If my swamps and slave-raiders
have done nothing else for me, they have cured me of all that sort of
thing. I’m not bragging--or whatever you might call it--but telling
you a simple fact. Women don’t interest me now, and other things do. I
used to imagine I could combine the two, but now I know better. If my
blessing is all you want to make you happy, go in and win. But if this
business comes to anything, she will be for neither of us. You see
that?”
And while Armitage acquiesced, with a rueful face, Zoe was saying to
herself, as she adjusted her hat in the cabin mirror, “Of course I
never expected him to forgive me the moment he saw me again. It would
have been nice if he had, but it wouldn’t have been a bit like him.”
During the remainder of the voyage down the coast the adventurers made
no further attempt to discuss their prospects. They excited
considerable interest on board the Ungaro-Croata steamer, where the
mutual relations of the handsome lady who had the history and
archæology of the region at her fingers’ ends, the sick officer, and
the “Milordo” with the artistic neckties, who from force of habit was
constantly pulling out a sketch-book and jotting down the bold
outlines of a headland or the handsome face of a fisher-lad, were
freely canvassed, but even the urbane and polyglot captain confessed
himself at a loss. The sick officer knew something of a good many
languages, and asked very telling questions, and both the lady and the
“Milordo” had visited these parts before; but they all talked so
freely that there was no chance of finding out anything more about
them, averred the worthy sailor. He and a few of his passengers
enjoyed a mild sensation when the steamer reached the little
red-roofed town, whose white houses seemed to rise sheer from the blue
water, where the three English were to land. Here an elderly man,
whose spectacled eyes gave the impression of an incongruous contrast
with his aquiline profile, came on board to meet them, and bowed over
Zoe’s hand with a respect that was almost reverential; but the
spectators could hear nothing of the colloquy that ensued while the
luggage was being got on shore.
“I come as the messenger of your august brother, madame,” he said. “He
thought it well you should know that he enters on this campaign not as
Mr Teffany, but as Prince Maurice Theophanis.”
“Which means that I am to call myself Princess Zoe, I suppose? This is
the Princess’s doing, of course?”
“Her advice, and mine also, went farther, madame, but the Prince
declines to style himself Imperial Highness--far less Emperor--until
his claims are recognised. He has taken the present step almost
entirely with the view of preventing embarrassment to the Prince of
Dardania.”
“Surely it will rather cause him embarrassment?” began Zoe
hesitatingly, and Wylie broke in.
“Have you made sure of your ground, Professor? An ambiguous position
is awkward enough, but the Prince of Dardania may not relish finding
himself committed to support the Theophanis claims, and it would be
more awkward if he repudiated his invitation.”
The Professor scarcely vouchsafed him a glance. “Madame,” he said to
Zoe, “your brother’s friends have not been idle in anticipation of his
arrival. The Prince of Dardania is already committed in private to our
cause, which will assure him, if it succeeds, the possession of
Illyria. In this his brother-in-law, the King of Magnagrecia, is
equally interested, so that we have already attached one of the great
Powers to our side. It is to the three Liberal Powers, England,
Neustria, and Magnagrecia, that we look for support in our effort to
rescue Emathia from the Roumi yoke, and in bringing forward as our
proposed High Commissioner--for we go no further as yet--a man not
only chosen by the Emathian leaders themselves, but distinguished by
European approval, we offer them a means of intervention such as they
have never yet enjoyed.”
“Oh, Professor Panagiotis has thought it all out!” laughed Armitage.
“Wylie, you and I must take a back seat. You are aide-de-camp, I
suppose--or equerry, which is it?--and I am--what am I? Oh,
lord-in-waiting, of course.”
“You are both Maurice’s good friends, who have come to help him, not
to be his servants,” said Zoe quickly.
“Pardon me, Princess,” said Wylie, very distinctly. “We are your
brother’s servants. We have come here for nothing but to put ourselves
under his orders--to help him to his rights if we can, but not to
claim any share in his confidence.”
He fell behind with Armitage, perhaps not caring to face the blankness
of Zoe’s look as she accepted mechanically the Professor’s assistance
across the rough stones of the jetty. The younger man seemed hardly
satisfied, and Wylie answered his unspoken question.
“Must show at once that we see how the land lies. I know these
fellows’ jealousy of any influence but their own. If they are not to
bring Teffany’s future to smash by working against us, we must be
content to remain in the background. I suppose he’s not much better
fitted to cope with them than he used to be--not a full-blown
statesman yet, or even a diplomat?”
“Thank goodness, no! Absolutely straight, good man of business, steady
as Old Time, happiest when he’s playing the country squire. But the
Princess--she’s a diplomatist, or anything you like. You’ll understand
what an imperial bearing means when you see her, if you don’t now.”