Phroso Part 43

Up to this time the fourth soldier and Demetri had remained in the boat. They now landed and hauled their boat up on to the beach; then they turned to the smaller boat which the Pasha had provided in malicious sport for our more complete mortification. The soldier laid hold of its stern and prepared to haul it also out of the water; but Demetri said something--what I could not hear--and shrugged his shoulders. The soldier nodded in apparent a.s.sent, and they left the boat where it was, merely attaching it by a rope to the other. Then they walked to the rocks and sat down at a little distance from where I was, Demetri taking a hunch of bread and a large knife from his pocket and beginning to cut and munch. I looked at him, but he refused to meet my eye and glanced in every direction except at me.

Suddenly, while I was idly regarding Demetri, the three fellows sprang on me. One had me by each arm before I could so much as move. The third dashed his hand into the breast-pocket of my coat and seized my revolver. They leapt away again, caught up the rifles they had dropped, and held them levelled towards me. The thing was done in a moment, I sitting like a man paralysed. Then one of the ruffians cried:

'Your Excellency, the gentleman moved his hand to his pocket, to his pistol.'

'What?' asked Mouraki, turning round. 'Moved his hand to a pistol? Had he a pistol?'

My revolver was held up as d.a.m.ning evidence.

'And he tried to use it?' asked Mouraki, in mournful shocked tones.

'It looked like it,' said the fellow.

'It's a lie. I wasn't thinking of it,' said I. I was exasperated at the trick. I had made up my mind to fight it out sooner than give up the revolver.

'I'm afraid it may have been so,' said Mouraki, shaking his head.

'Give the pistol to me, my man. I'll keep it safe.' His eye shot triumph at me as he took my revolver and turned again to Phroso. I was now powerless indeed.

Demetri finished his hunch of bread, and began to clean his knife, polishing its blade leisurely and lovingly on the palm of his hand, and feeling its point with the end of his thumb. During this operation he hummed softly and contentedly to himself. I could not help smiling when I recognised the tune; it was an old friend, the chant that One-eyed Alexander wrote on the death of Stefan Stefanopoulos two hundred years ago. Demetri polished, and Demetri hummed, and Demetri looked away across the blue water with a speculative eye. I did not choose to consider what might be in the mind of Demetri as he hummed and polished and gazed over the sea that girt his native island.

Demetri's thoughts were his own. Let Mouraki look to them, if they were worth his care.

There, I have made that confession as plainly as I mean to make it. I put out of my mind what Demetri might be planning as he polished his knife and hummed One-eyed Alexander's chant.

Apparently Mouraki did not think the matter worth his care. He had approached very near to Phroso now, leaning down towards her as she sat on the rock. Suddenly I heard a low cry of terror, and 'No, no,'

in horrified accents; but Mouraki, raising his voice a little, answered, 'Yes, yes.'

I strained my ears to hear; nay, I half rose from where I sat, and sank back only under the pointed hint of a soldier's bayonet. I could not hear the words, but a soft pleading murmur came from Phroso, a short relentless laugh from Mouraki, a silence, a shrug of Mouraki's shoulders. Then he turned and came across to me.

'Stand back a little,' said he to the soldiers, 'but keep your eyes on your prisoner, and if he attempts any movement--' He did not finish the sentence, which indeed was plain enough without a formal ending.

Then he began to speak to me in French.

'A beautiful thing, my dear lord,' said he, 'is the devotion of women.

Fortunate are you who have found two ladies to love you!'

'You've been married twice yourself, I think you told me?'

'It's not exactly the same thing--not necessarily. I am very likely to be married a third time, but I fear I should flatter myself if I thought that much love would accompany the lady's hand. However it was of you that I desired to speak. This lady here, my dear lord, is so attached to you that I believe she will marry me, purely to ensure your safety. Isn't it a touching sacrifice?'

'I hope she'll do nothing of the sort,' said I.

'Well, it's little more than a polite fiction,' he conceded; 'for she'll be compelled to marry me anyhow. But it's the sort of idea that comforts a woman.'

He fixed his eyes on me as he made this remark, enjoying the study of its effect on me.

'Well,' said I, 'I never meant to marry her. I'm bound, you know. It was only another polite fiction designed to annoy you, my dear Pasha.'

'Ah, is that so? Now, really, that's amusing,' and he chuckled. He did not appear annoyed at having been deceived. I wondered a little at that--then.

'We have really,' he continued, 'been living in an atmosphere of polite fictions. For example, Lord Wheatley, there was a polite fiction that I was grieved at Constantine's escape.'

'And another that you were anxious to recapture him.'

'And a third that you were not anxious to escape from my--hospitality.'

'And a fourth that you were so solicitous for my friends' enjoyment that you exerted yourself to find them good fishing.'

'Ah, yes, yes,' he laughed. 'And there is to be one more polite fiction, my dear lord.'

'I believe I can guess it,' said I, meeting his eye.

'You are always so acute,' he observed admiringly.

'Though the precise form of it I confess I don't understand.'

'Well, our lamented Constantine, who had much experience but rather wanted imagination, was in favour of a fever. He told me that it was the usual device in Neopalia.'

'His wife died of it, I suppose?' I believe I smiled as I put the question. Great as my peril was, I still found a pleasure in fencing with the Pasha.

'Oh, no. Now that's unworthy of you. Never have a fiction when the truth will serve! Since he's dead, he murdered his wife. If he had lived, of course--'

'Ah, then it would have been fever.'

'Precisely. We must adapt ourselves to circ.u.mstances: that is the part of wise men. Now in your case--' He bent down and looked hard in my face.

'In my case,' said I, 'you can call it what you like, Pasha.'

'Don't you think that the outraged patriotism of Neopalia--?' he suggested, with a smile. 'You bought the island--you, a stranger! It was very rash. These islanders are desperate fellows.'

'That would have served with Constantine alive; but he's dead. Your patriot is gone, Pasha.'

'Alas, yes, our good Constantine is dead. But there are others.

There's a fellow whom I ought to hang.'

'Ah!' My eye wandered towards where Demetri hummed and polished.

'And who has certainly not earned his life merely by bringing me to meet you this morning, though I give him some credit for that.'

'Demetri?' I asked with a careless air.

'Well, yes, Demetri,' smiled the Pasha. 'Demetri is very open to reason.'

Across the current of our talk came Demetri's soft happy humming. The Pasha heard it.

'I hanged his brother three years ago,' he observed.

'I know you did,' said I. 'You seem to have done some characteristic things three years ago.'

'And he went to the gallows humming that tune. You know it?'