TRIED AS BY FIRE
The night was still, the air sopped with recent rain, the sky piled
with sluggish cloud-strata through whose rifts the half-moon glimpsed
obliquely, making the sea-beach that curved above Missolonghi an eerie
checker of shine and shade.
Between hill and shore a lean path, from whose edges the cochineal
cactus swung its quivers of prickly arrows, shambled across a great
flat ledge that jutted from the hill’s heel to break abruptly above a
deep pool gouged by hungry tempests. On the reed-clustered sand beyond
the rock-shelf were disposed a body of men splendidly uniformed, in
kirtle and _capote_, standing by their hobbled horses. On the rocky
ledge, in the flickering light of a torch thrust into a cleft, were
seated their two leaders conversing.
They had ridden far. The object of their coming was the safe delivery
of a letter to the one man to whom all Greece looked now. The message
was momentous and secret, the errand swift and silent. In Missolonghi,
whose lights glowed a mile away, clanging night and day with hurried
preparation, none knew of the presence of that company on the deserted
shore, save one of its own number who had ridden, under cover of the
dark, into the town’s defenses.
“This is a journey that pleases me well, Lambro,” averred one of the
primates on the rock. “I wish we were well on our way back to the
Congress at Salona, and the English _lordos_ leading us. What an entry
that will be! But what if he doubts your messenger--suspects some
trickery of Ulysses? Suppose he will not come out to us?”
“Then the letter must go to him in Missolonghi,” said the other,
“Mavrocordato or no Mavrocordato. He will come properly guarded,” he
added, “but he will come.”
“Why are you so certain?”
“Because the man I sent to him an hour since is one he must trust. It
was his sister the Excellency saved in his youth from the sack. Their
father was then a merchant of the bazaar in this same town. Do you not
know the tale?” And thereupon he recited the story as he had heard it
years before, little dreaming they sat upon the very spot where, on
that long-ago dawn, the Turkish wands had halted that grim procession.
“I would the brother,” he closed, “might sometime find the cowardly dog
who abandoned her!”
They rose to their feet, for dim forms were coming along the path
from the town--a single horseman and a body-guard afoot. “It is the
_archistrategos_,” both exclaimed.
The younger hastily withdrew; the other advanced a step to meet the man
who dismounted and came forward.
Gordon’s face in the torch-light was worn and haggard, for the inward
fever had never left him since that fierce convulsion--nature’s protest
against unbearable conditions. Day by day, with the same unyielding
will he had fought his weakness, pushing forward the plans for the
assault on Lepanto, slaving with the gunners, drilling musket-men, much
of the day in the saddle, and filching from the hours of his rest, time
for his committee correspondence, bearing always that burning coal of
anxiety--the English loan which did not come.
The primate saw this look, touched with surprise as Gordon caught the
stir of horses and men from the further gloom. He bowed profoundly as
he drew forth a letter.
“I regret to have brought Your Illustrious Excellency from your
quarters,” he said in Romaic, “but my orders were specific.”
Gordon stepped close to the torch and opened the letter. The primate
drew back and left him on the rock, a solitary figure in the yellow
glare, watched from one side by two score of horsemen, richly
accoutred, standing silent--on the other by a rough body-guard of
fifty, in ragged garments, worn foot-wear, but fully armed.
Once--twice--three times Gordon read, slowly, strangely deliberate.
A shiver ran over him, and he felt the torch-light on his face like a
sudden hot wave. The letter was a summons to Salona, where assembled
in Congress the chiefs and primates of the whole Morea--but it was
far more than this; in its significant circumlocution, its meaning
diplomatic phrases, lay couched a clear invitation that seemed to
transform his blood to a volatile ichor.
Gordon’s eyes turned to the shadow whence came the shifting and
stamping of horses--then to the lights of the fortifications he had
left. He could send back these silent horsemen, refuse to go with them,
return to Missolonghi, to his desperate waiting for the English loan,
to the hazardous attack on Lepanto, keeping faith with the cause,
falling with it, if needs be; or--_he could wear the crown of Greece!_
The outlines of the situation had flashed upon him as clearly as
a landscape seen by lightning. The letter in his hand was signed
by a name powerful in three chanceleries. The courts of Europe,
aroused by the experiment of the American colonies, wished no good
of republicanism. Names had been buzzing in State closets: Jerome
Bonaparte, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. But Greece had gone too far for
that; if a foreign ruler be given her, he must be one acceptable to the
popular mind. Governmental eyes turned now to _him_! He, the despised
of England, a king! The founder of a fresh dynasty, the first emperor
of New Greece!
Standing there, feeling his heart beat to his temples, a weird
sensation came to him. There had been a time in his youth when he
had camped upon that shore, when on that very rock he had struck an
individual blow against Turkish barbarity. Now the hum of the voices
beyond turned into a wild Suliote stave roared about a fire and he felt
again the same chill, prescient instinct that had possessed him when he
said: “It is as though this spot--that town yonder--were tangled in my
destiny!” Was this not the fulfilment, that on the spot where he had
penned his first immortal lines for Greece, should be offered him her
throne?
A mental barb stung him. It was for Greek freedom he had sung then--the
ancient freedom tyranny had defiled. And would this mean true liberty?
The Moslem would be cast out, but for what? A _coup d’état_! A military
dictatorship, bolstered by suzerain arms! The legislative government,
with the hopes of Mavrocordato, of all the western country, fallen into
the dust! Greece a puppet kingdom, paying compensation in self-respect
to self-aggrandizing cabinets.
But a Greece with himself upon the throne!
Far-off siren voices seemed to call to him from the darkness. What
would be his? World-fame--not the bays he despised, but the laurel.
A seat above even social convention, unprecedented, secure. A power
nationally supreme, in State certainly, in Church perhaps--power to
override old conditions, to re-create his own future. To sever old
bonds with the sword of royal prerogative. Eventually, _to choose his
queen_!
A fit of trembling seized him. He felt Teresa’s arms about him--warm,
human, loving arms--her lips on his, sweet as honeysuckle after rain.
For a moment temptation flung itself out of the night upon him. Not
such as he had grappled with when she had come to him on the square in
Venice. Not such as he had felt when Dallas told him of the portrait
hidden from Ada’s eyes. It was a temptation a thousandfold stronger and
more insidious. It shook to its depths the mystic peace that had come
to him on the deck of the _Hercules_ after that last parting. It was
as though all the old craving, the bitterness, the cruciate longing of
his love rose at once to a combat under which the whole mind of the man
bent and writhed in anguish.
Gordon’s face, as it stared out from the torch-flare across the gloomy
gulf, showed to the man who waited near-by no sign of the struggle that
wrung his soul, and that, passing at length, left him blanched and
exhausted like one from whose veins a burning fever has ebbed suddenly.
The primate came eagerly from the shadow as Gordon turned and spoke:
“Say to those who sent you that what they propose is impossible--”
“Illustrious Excellency!”
“--that I came hither for Greek independence, and if this cause shall
fall, I choose to bury myself in its ruins.”
The other was dumb from sheer astonishment. He knew the proposal the
letter contained. Had not he, Lambro, primate of Argos, nurtured the
plan among the chiefs? Had not the representative of a great power
confided in his discretion when he sent him with that letter? And now
when the whole Morea was ready--when prime ministers agreed--the one
man to whom it might be offered, refused the crown! He swallowed hard,
looking at the letter which had been handed back to him.
Before he recovered his wits, Gordon had walked uncertainly to his
horse, mounted, and was riding toward the town, his body-guard
streaming out behind him, running afoot.
As his fellow officer approached him, Lambro swore an oath:
“By the Virgin! You shall return to Salona without me. I stay here and
fight with the English _lordos_!”
He rode into Missolonghi that night, and with him were twenty of his
men.