Phroso Part 25

In most families--at least among those that have any recorded history to boast of or to deplore--there is a point of family pride: with one it is grace of manner; with another, courage; with a third, statecraft; with a fourth, chivalrous loyalty to a lost cause or a fallen prince. Tradition adds new sanction to the cherished excellence; it becomes the heirloom of the house, the mark of the race--in the end, perhaps, a superst.i.tion before which greater things go down. If the men cling to it they are compensated by licence in other matters; the women are held in honour if they bear sons who do not fail in it. It becomes a new G.o.d, with its worship and its altar; and often the altar is laden with costly sacrifices. Wisdom has little part in the cult, and the virtues that are not hallowed by hereditary recognition are apt to go unhonoured and unpractised. I have heard it said, and seen it written, that we Wheatleys have, as a stock, few merits and many faults. I do not expect my career--if, indeed, I had such an ambitious thing as a career in my life's wallet--to reverse that verdict. But no man has said or written of us that we do not keep faith. Here is our pride and palladium. Promises we neither break nor ask back. We make them sometimes lightly; it is no matter: substance, happiness, life itself must be spent in keeping them. I had learnt this at my mother's knee. I myself had seen thousands and thousands poured forth to a rascally friend on the strength of a schoolboy pledge which my father made. 'Folly, folly!' cried the world. Whether it were right or not, who knows? We wrapped ourselves in the scanty mantle of our one virtue and went our way. We always--but a man grows tedious when he talks of his ancestors; he is like a doting old fellow, garrulous about his l.u.s.ty youth. Enough of it. Yet not more than enough, for I carried this religion of mine to Neopalia, and built there an altar to it, and prepared for my altar the rarest sacrifice. Was I wrong? I do not care to ask.

'His life is my life. For I love him as my life.' The words rang in my ears, seeming to echo again through the silence that followed them: they were answered in my heart by beats of living blood. 'Was it true?' flashed through my brain. Was it truth or stratagem, a n.o.ble falsehood or a more splendid boldness? I did not know. The words were strange, yet to me they were not incredible. Had we not lived through ages together in those brief full hours in the old grey house? And the parting in the quiet evening had united while it feigned to sever. I believe I shut my eyes, not to see the slender stately form that stood between death and me. When I looked again, Demetri and his angry comrades had fallen back and stood staring in awkward bewilderment, but the women had crowded in upon us with eager excited faces; one broad-browed kindly creature had run to Phroso and caught her round the waist, and was looking in her eyes, and stroking her hand, and murmuring soft woman's comforting. Demetri took a step forward.

'Come, if you dare!' cried the woman, bold as a legion of men. 'Is a dog like you to come near my Lady Euphrosyne?' And Phroso turned her face away from the men and hid it in the woman's bosom.

Then came a cold rasping voice, charged with a bitter anger that masqueraded as amus.e.m.e.nt.

'What is this comedy, cousin?' asked Constantine. 'You love this man?

You, the Lady of the island--you who have pledged your troth to me?'

He turned to the people, spreading out his hands.

'You all know,' said he--'you all know that we are plighted to one another.'

A murmuring a.s.sent greeted his words. 'Yes, they are betrothed,' I heard half-a-dozen mutter, as they directed curious glances at Phroso.

'Yes, while the old lord lived they were betrothed.'

Then I thought it time for me to take a hand in the game; so I stepped forward, in spite of Kortes's restraining arm.

'Be careful,' he whispered. 'Be careful.'

I looked at him. His face was drawn and pale, like the face of a man in pain, but he smiled still in his friendly open fashion.

'I must speak,' I said. I walked up to within two yards of Constantine, the islanders giving way before me, and I said loudly and distinctly:

'Was that same betrothal before you married your wife or afterwards?'

He sprang half-way up from his seat, as if to leap upon me, but he sank back again, his face convulsed with pa.s.sion and his fingers picking furiously at the turf by his side. 'His wife!' went round the ring in amazed whisperings.

'Yes, his wife,' said I. 'The wife who was with him when I saw him in my country; the wife who came with him here, who was in the cottage on the hill, whom Vlacho would have dragged by force to her death, who lay last night yonder in the guardhouse. Where is she, Constantine Stefanopoulos? Or is she dead now, and you free to wed the Lady Euphrosyne? Is she alive, or has she by now learnt the secret of the Stefanopouloi?'

I do not know which made more stir among the people, my talk of his wife or my hint about the secret. They crowded round me, hemming me in. I saw Phroso no more; but Kortes pushed his way to my side. Then the eyes of all turned on Constantine, where he sat with face working and nails fiercely plucking the turf.

'What is this lie?' he cried. 'I know nothing of a wife. True, there was a woman in the cottage.'

'Ay, there was a woman in the cottage,' said Kortes. 'And she was in the guardhouse; but I did not know who she was, and I had no commands concerning her; and this morning she was gone.'

'That woman is his wife,' said I; 'but he and Vlacho had planned to kill her, in order that he might marry your Lady and have your island for himself.'

Demetri suddenly cried, with a great appearance of horror and disgust:

'Shall he live to speak such a slander against my lord?'

But Demetri gained no attention. I had made too much impression.

'Who was the woman, then,' said I, 'and where is she?'

Constantine, tricky and resourceful, looked again on the dead Vlacho.

'I may not tell my friend's secrets,' said he, with an admirable a.s.sumption of honour. 'And a foul blow has sealed Vlacho's lips.'

'Yes,' cried I. 'Vlacho killed the old lord, and Vlacho brought the woman! Indeed Vlacho serves my lord as well dead as when he lived! For now his lips are sealed. Come, then--Vlacho bought the island, and Vlacho slew Spiro, and now Vlacho has slain himself! Neither Constantine nor I have done anything; but it is all Vlacho--the useful Vlacho--Vlacho--Vlacho!'

Constantine's face was a sight to see, and he looked no pleasanter when my irony wrung smiles from some of the men round him, while others bit their lips to stop smiles that sought to come.

'Oh faithful servant!' I cried, apostrophising Vlacho, 'heavy are thy sins! May'st thou find mercy for them!'

I did not know what cards Constantine held. If he had succeeded in spiriting away his wife, by fair means or foul, he had the better chance; but if she were still free, alive and free, then he played a perilous hand and was liable to be utterly confounded. Yet he was forced to action; I had so moved the people that they looked for more than mere protests from him.

'The stranger who came to steal our island,' said he, skilfully prejudicing me by this description, 'asks me where the woman is. But I ask it of him--where is she? For it stands with him to put her before you that she may tell you whether I, Constantine Stefanopoulos, am lying to you. Yet how long is it since you doubted the words of the Stefanopouloi and believed strangers rather than them?'

His appeal won on them. They met it with murmured applause.

'You know me, you know my family,' he cried. 'Yet you hearken to the desperate words of a man who fights for his life with lies! How shall I satisfy you? For I have not the woman in my keeping. But have you not heard me when I swore my love for my cousin before you and the old lord who is dead? Am I a man to be forsworn? Shall I swear to you now?'

The current began to run strongly with him. He had called to his aid patriotism, and the old clan-loyalty which bound the Neopalians to his house, and they did not fail him. The islanders were ready to trust him if he would pledge himself to them.

'Swear then!' they cried. 'Swear to us on the sacred picture that what the stranger says is a lie.'

'On the sacred picture?' said he. 'Is it not too great and holy an oath for such a matter? Is not my word enough for you?'

But the old priest stepped forward.

'It is a great matter,' said he, 'for it touches closely the honour of your house, my lord, and on it hangs a man's life. Is any oath too great when honour and life lie in the balance? Let your life stand against his, for he who swears thus and falsely has no long life in Neopalia. Here we guard the honour of St Tryphon.'

'Yes, swear on the picture,' cried the people. 'It is enough if you swear on the picture!'

I could see that Constantine was not in love with the suggestion, but he accepted it with tolerable grace, acquiescing in the old priest's argument with a half-disdainful shrug. The people greeted his consent with obvious pleasure, save only Demetri, who regarded him with a doubtful expression. Demetri knew the truth, and, though he would cut a throat with a light heart, he would shrink from a denial of the deed when sworn on the holy picture. Truly conscience works sometimes in strange ways, making the lesser sin the greater, and dwarfing vile crimes to magnify their venial brethren. No, Demetri would not have sworn on the picture; and when he saw it brought to Constantine he shrank away from his leader, and I saw him privily and furtively cross himself. But Constantine, freed by the scepticism he had learnt in the West to practise the crimes the East had taught him, made little trouble about it. When the ceremonies that had attended the old woman's oath earlier in the day had been minutely, solemnly, and tediously repeated, he swore before them as bravely as you please and thereby bid fair to write my death-warrant in his lying words. For when the oath was done, the most awful names in heaven standing sanction to his perjury, and he ceased, saying, 'I have sworn,' the eyes of the men round him turned on me again and seemed to ask me silently what plea for mercy I could now advance. But I caught at my chance.

'Let Demetri swear,' said I coolly, 'that, so far as his knowledge goes, the truth is no other than what the Lord Constantine has sworn.'

'A subterfuge!' cried Constantine impatiently. 'What should Demetri know of it?'

'If he knows nothing it is easy for him to swear,' said I. 'Men of the island, a man should have every chance for his life. I have given you back your island. Do this for me. Make Demetri swear. Ah, look at the man! See, he shakes, his face goes pale, there is a sweat on his brow.

Why, why? Make him swear!'

I should not have prevailed without the a.s.sisting evidence of the rascal's face. It was as I said: he grew pale and sweated on the forehead; he cleared his throat hoa.r.s.ely, but did not speak.

Constantine's eyes said, 'Swear, fool, swear!'

'Let Demetri also swear,' cried some. 'Yes, it is easy, if he knows nothing.'

Suddenly Phroso sprang forward.

'Yes, let him swear,' she cried. 'Who is Chief here? Have I no power?

Let him swear!' And she signed imperiously to the priest.

They brought the picture to Demetri. He shrank from it as though its touch would kill him.