Phroso: A Romance

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.

CHAPTER XXI

A WORD OF VARIOUS MEANINGS

She came up to me swiftly and without hesitation. I had looked for some embarrassment, but there was none in her face. She met my eyes full and square, and began to speak to me at once.

‘My lord,’ she said, ‘I must ask one thing of you. I must lay one more burden on you. After to-day I dare not be here when my countrymen learn how they are deluded. I should be ashamed to face them, and I dare not trust myself to the Turks, for I don’t know what they would do with me. Will you take me with you to Athens, or to some other port from which I can reach Athens? I can elude the guards here. I shall be no trouble: you need only tell me when your boat will start, and give me a corner to live in on board. Indeed I grieve to ask more of you, for you have done so much for me; but my trouble is great and – What is it, my lord?’

I had moved my hand to stop her. She had acted in the one way in which, had it been to save my life, I could not have. She put what had passed utterly out of the way, treating it as the merest trick. My part in it was to her the merest trick; of hers she said nothing. Had hers then been a trick also? My blood grew hot at the thought. I could not endure it.

‘When your countrymen learn how they are deluded?’ said I, repeating her words. ‘Deluded in what?’

‘In the trick we played on them, my lord, to – to persuade them to disperse.’

I took a step towards her, and my voice shook as I said:

‘Was it all a trick, Phroso?’ For at this moment I set above everything else in the world a fresh assurance of her love. I would force it from her sooner than not have it.

She answered me with questioning eyes and a sad little smile.

‘Are we then betrothed?’ she said, in mournful mockery.

I was close by her now. I did not touch her, but I bent a little, and my face was near hers.

‘Was it a trick to-day, and a trick on St Tryphon’s day also?’ I asked.

She gave one startled glance at my face, and then her eyes dropped to the ground. She made no answer to my question.

‘Was it all a trick, Phroso?’ I asked in entreaty, in urgency, in the wild longing to hear her love declared once, here, to me alone, where nobody could hear, nobody impair its sweet secrecy.

Phroso’s answer came now, set to the accompaniment of the saddest, softest, murmuring laugh.

‘Ah, my lord, must you hear it again? Am I not twice shamed already?’

‘Be shamed yet once again,’ I whispered; then I saw the light of gladness master the misty sorrow in her eyes as I had seen once before; and I greeted it, whispering:

‘Yes, a thousand times, a thousand times!’

‘My dear lord!’ she said; but then she sprang back, and the brightness was clouded again as she stood aloof, regarding me in speechless, distressed puzzle.

‘But, my lord!’ she murmured, so low that I scarcely heard. Then she took refuge in a return to her request. ‘You won’t leave me here, will you? You’ll take me somewhere where I can be safe. I – I’m afraid of these men, even though the Pasha is dead.’

I took no notice of the request she repeated. I seemed unable to speak or to do anything else but look into her eyes; and I said, a touch of awe in my voice:

‘You have the most wonderful eyes in all the world, Phroso.’

‘My lord!’ murmured Phroso, dropping envious lids. But I knew she would open them soon again, and so she did.

‘Yes, in all the wide world,’ said I. ‘And I want to hear it again.’

As we talked we had moved little by little; now we were at the side of the house, in the deep dull shadow of it. Yet the eyes I praised pierced the gloom and shone in the darkness; and suddenly I felt arms about my neck, clasping me tightly; her breath was on my cheek, coming quick and uneven, and she whispered:

‘Yes, you shall hear it again and again and again, for I am not ashamed now; for I know, yes, I know. I love you, I love you – ah, how I love you!’ Her whispers found answer in mine. I held her as though against all the world: all the world was in that moment, and there was nothing else than that moment in all the world. Had a man told me then that I had felt love before, I would have laughed in his face – the fool!

But then Phroso drew back again; the brief rapture, free from all past or future, all thought or doubt, left her, and, in leaving her, forsook me also. She stood over against me murmuring:

‘But, my lord – !’

I knew well what she would say, and for an instant I stood silent. The world hung for us on the cast of my next words.

‘But, my lord, the lady who waits for you over the sea?’ There sounded a note of fear in the softly breathed whisper that the night carried to my ear. In an instant, before I could answer, Phroso came near to me and laid one hand on my arm, speaking gently and quickly. ‘Yes, I know, I see, I understand,’ she said, ‘and I thank you, my lord, and I thank God, my dear lord, that you told me and did not leave me without shewing me your love; for though I must be very unhappy, yet I shall be proud; and in the long nights I shall think of this dear island and of you, though you will both be far away. Yes, I thank heaven you told me, my dear lord.’ She bent her head, that should have bent to no man, and kissed my hand.

But I snatched my hand hastily away, and I sprang to her and caught her again in my arms, and again kissed her lips; for my resolve was made. I would not let her go. Those who would might ask the rights of it; I could not let her go. Yet I spoke no word, and she did not understand, but thought that I kissed her in farewell; for the tears were on her face and wetted my lips, and she clung to me as though something were tearing her from me and must soon sunder us apart, so greedy was her grasp on me. But then I opened my mouth to whisper in her ear the words which would bid defiance to the thing that was rending her away and rivet her life to mine.

But hark! There was a cry, a startled exclamation, and the sound of footsteps. My name was shouted loud and eagerly. I knew Denny’s voice. Phroso slid from my relaxed arms, and drew back into the deepest shadow.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ I whispered, and with a last pressure of her hand, which was warm now and answered to my grasp, I stepped out of the shelter of the wall and stood in front of the house.

Denny was on the doorstep. The door was open. The light from the lamp in the hall flooded the night and fell full on my face as I walked up to him. On sight of me he seemed to forget his own errand and his own eagerness, for he caught me by the shoulder, and stared at me, crying:

‘Heavens, man, you’re as white as a sheet! Have you seen a ghost? Does Constantine walk – or Mouraki?’

‘Fifty ghosts would be a joke to what I’ve been through. My God, I never had such a time! What do you want? What did you call me for? I can’t stay. She’s waiting.’ For now I did not care; Denny and all Neopalia might know now.

‘Yes, but she must wait a little,’ he said. ‘You must come into the house and come upstairs.’

‘I can’t,’ I said obstinately. ‘I – I – I can’t, Denny.’

‘You must. Don’t be a fool, Charley. It’s important: the captain is waiting for you.’

His face seemed big with news. What it might be I could not tell, but the hint of it was enough to make me catch hold of him, crying, ‘What is it? I’ll come.’

‘That’s right. Come along.’ He turned and ran rapidly through the old hall and up the stairs. I followed him, my mind whirling through a cloud of possibilities.

The quiet business-like aspect of the room into which Denny led the way did something to sober me. I pulled myself together, seeking to hide my feelings under a mask of carelessness. The captain sat at the table with a mass of papers surrounding him. He appeared to be examining them, and, as he read, his lips curved in surprise or contempt.

‘This Mouraki was a cunning fellow,’ said he; ‘but if anyone had chanced to get hold of this box of his while he was alive he would not have enjoyed even so poor a post as he thought his governorship. Indeed, Lord Wheatley, had you been actually a party to his death, I think you need have feared nothing when some of these papers had found their way to the eyes of the Government. We’re well rid of him, indeed! But then, as I always say, these Armenians, though they’re clever dogs – ’