The Luck of Thirteen Part 9

"By the bye," he said, "I forgot to introduce you. This is Prince Peter, commander of the forces on the Adriatic coast." The young man arose and clicked his heels. We too got up. He shook hands with us solemnly, and Jo, unused to addressing Royalty, said, "Dobra Dan" (Good day).

Then we all sat down again, a further rendezvous was arranged for the evening, and we left, carrying away the impression that the War Minister and we had bowed thirty times to each other before we got out of the door.

Out in the streets, as we were sketching, we saw a large smile under a Staff officer's cap bearing down upon us. It was the Sirdar, quite rested and looking twenty years younger. He was going to the War Minister's, and promised to arrange at once for our visit to Scutari. He looked at our cryptic drawings of road scavengers, threw up his hands and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. "Kako"--strode out of our lives.

Tea in the little house with the discreet white pole was a great pleasure. Such tea we had not drunk since leaving England--b.u.t.ter, jam made by the old housekeeper, who pointed this out to us when she brought in a relay of hot water.

She was the daughter of a man who had been exiled from his village because he had taken a prominent part in a blood feud, and the old Gospodar had told him he would be healthier elsewhere. So they had emigrated as far as Serbia, where she had learnt to read and write.

A lady of good family but bad character suddenly decided to leave Montenegro, and fled to the sh.o.r.es of Cattaro, carrying with her a large number of State secrets. The Court was aghast. What was to be done?

A villain was needed. The father was decided upon, and with the help of the lady's brothers she was kidnapped, carried back to Montenegro, and disappeared for ever. For which n.o.ble work he was permitted to return to his village.

The old lady had a supreme contempt for the Montenegrins who had not "travelled," but she looked upon the growing pomp of the Court with suspicion.

"Ah," she said, "those were fine days when the king was only the Gospodar, and there were none of these gold embroidered uniforms about, and the Queen and I used to slide down the Palace banisters together."

In those days the Royal family inhabited the top story only, while the ground floor was filled with wood for the winter. Just round the corner was the old pink palace, now used as a riding school. It had been the first place in Montenegro to possess a billiard-table. So, billiard-tables being rarer and more curious than kings--the palace had been called the BILLIADO.

The Queen, whatever agility she may have possessed once when navigating banisters, is now a sedate and domestic person, and doesn't hold with bluestockings, notwithstanding the "Higher Education" of some of her daughters.

The story goes that once when the King was away she inaugurated one of those thorough-paced spring cleanings dear to most women's hearts; ordered the dining-room furniture into the street, and superintended the beating of it. Women hold a poor position in Montenegro, but one of character can carry all before her. A well-known English nurse was managing a hospital in Cettinje during the first Balkan War. One of her patients, though well connected as peasants often are in Montenegro, was a drunken old reprobate, and she told the authorities he must go. They demurred--his relations must not be offended. She insisted. They did nothing. One morning they found him, bed and all, in the middle of the street opposite the King's palace.

The authorities swallowed their lesson.

In the evening we walked over the stony hills with our host, and first had a glimpse of the real character of the country which had for so long kept the Turks at bay. One realized how much the people owed to the land for their boasted independence. Barren rock and scrub oak, no army could live here in sufficient numbers to subdue even a semi-warlike nation.

Cettinje has been burned many a time by the Moslem, but starvation eventually drove him back to the fatter plains of the Sanjak, leaving a profitless victory behind him. Napoleon and Moscow over again.

More miners from America pa.s.sed with their showy machine-woven clothes, accompanied by their wives, who had evidently stayed behind in the old country. Otherwise they would have picked up new-fangled ideas about the rights of women, and would certainly have refused to shoulder the enormous American suit cases while their men ambled carelessly in front.

The next day we had a further interview with the War Minister, who introduced to us a man in corduroys, the only really round-faced person we had met in Montenegro. Part of his name was "Ob," so as we forgot the rest of it we called him Dr. Ob. He was the minister of drains, and such things. As nothing had been previously explained to him about us, he covered his mystification by hailing us jovially, after which he misconstrued everything we said.

He became very excited when we said we had brought 14,000 kilos of stores into Montenegro.

"But we have not got it yet," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. We explained that it was for the English hospital, and he subsided, very disappointed.

Scutari was talked over again, and Dr. Ob promised to come and tell us that evening if Cettinje could supply a motor for the next morning.

More bows and smiles, and we left wondering. Montenegrins always promise even when they have no intention of performance--something like the stage Irishman,--and we were surprised when Dr. Ob met us in the evening and said that the motor was arranged for next morning at eight.

We tea'd with the count once more. In the next house lived a gorgeous old gentleman, and we heard that he had been War Minister for forty odd years. After thirty years or so of office it was considered that he could better uphold the dignity of his position were he able to sign his name. So he had to learn.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER VIII

THE LAKE OF SCUTARI

Dr. Ob, dressed in thick corduroys and an enormous pith helmet, arrived punctually with the motor, a Montenegrin Government motor. He had two companions, a girl simply dressed with coat and skirt which did not match, and cotton gloves whose burst finger ends were not darned, a Miss Petrovitch, and an officer. The coachwork--if one may dignify it by such a phrase--which was made from packing cases, had a thousand creaks and one abominable squeak, which made conversation impossible. The scenery was all grey rock and little scrubby trees; the road was magnificent and wound and twisted about the mountain side like a whip lash. Driving down these curves was no amateur's game, and we saw immediately that our chauffeur knew his job. We came over a ridge, and in the far distance, gleaming like the sun itself, a corner of the Lake of Scutari showed between two hill crests.

We ran into a fertile valley, pa.s.sed through Rieka--where was the first Slavonic printing-press--and up into the barren mountains once more.

The peasants seem very industrious, every little pocket of earth is here carefully cultivated and banked almost in Arab fashion. The houses, too, were better, and rather Italian with painted balconies, but are built of porous stone and are damp in winter. The Rieka river ran along the road for some way, very green and covered with water-lily pods.

We pa.s.sed a standing carriage, in which was a large man in Montenegrin clothes, and a little further on pa.s.sed a man in a grey suit walking.

Dr. Ob gesticulated wildly, and pulled up the motor to gather in a Frenchman--somebody in the French legation who was going to Scutari for a week end. He turned suddenly to Jan.

"Ce n'est pas une vie, monsieur," were the first words he uttered. He admired Miss Petrovitch very much, and told us in an undertone that she was a daughter of the governor of Scutari, niece of the King of Montenegro, and one of "les familles le plus chic."

We descended steeply to the Port, ten variously coloured houses and twenty-five variously clothed people. Miss Petrovitch, to our amazement, embraced a rather dirty old peasant, the doctor disappeared to find us luncheon, the Frenchman to wash, and we strolled about.

A voice hailed us, and turning round, we found our mackintoshed American of Pod. We took him to the inn and stood him a drink. Dr. Ob came in and we introduced; but Dr. Ob was snifty and the American shy. His home was near by and he wished us to visit him, but there was no time.

We lunched in a bedroom plastered with pictures. Montenegrins seem to be ashamed of walls, and they adore royalty. In every room one finds portraits of the King of Montenegro, the queen, the princes, the King of Italy, his queen, the Tzar of Russia, the grand dukes and d.u.c.h.esses, the King of Serbia and his princes, and to cap all a sort of comprehensive tableau of all the male crowned heads of Europe--including Turkey--balanced by another commemorating all the queens of Europe--excluding Turkey--the s.p.a.ces left between these august people are filled with family portraits, framed samplers, picture postcards or a German print showing the seven ages of man over a sort of step-ladder.

After lunch, loaded with grapes which Miss Petrovitch's peasant friend brought us, we trooped down to the steamer, which had been an old Turkish gun monitor and had been captured when the Montenegrins took Scutari.

The boat was crowded, and the Frenchman took refuge in the captain's cabin, which was crammed with red pepper pods, and went to sleep. Jo began sketching at once. There were two full-blooded n.i.g.g.e.rs aboard with us: they were descendants of the Ethiopian slaves of the harems; but the race is dying out, for the climate does not suit them. We steamed out into the lake, down the "kingly" ca.n.a.l, a shallow ditch in the mud.

Magnificent mountains rush down on every side to the water, in which stunted willow trees with myriad roots--like mangroves--find an amphibious existence. We pa.s.sed through their groves, hooting as though we were leaving Liverpool, and out into the eau-de-nil waters of the open lake.

In three hours we reached Plavnitza, a quay on the mud, where more pa.s.sengers were waiting for our already crowded craft. There were officers, peasants, Turks, and soldiers clad in French firemen's uniforms. These uniforms, by the way, caused a lot of ill-feeling in Montenegro. The French sent them out in a spirit of pure economical charity, and had the Frenchmen not been, on the average, small, and the Montenegrin, contrariwise, large, perhaps the gift would have been received with a better grace; but the sight of these enormous men bursting in all places from their all too tight regimentals, was ludicrous, and the soldiers felt it keenly.

Two women came aboard, attached to officers, and wearing long light blue coats, the ceremonious dress of all cla.s.ses; one carried a wooden cradle strapped on her back, the woman with no cradle had in her arms a baby of some ten or eleven months, which she fed alternately on grapes and pomegranate seeds. With each was a large family including a beastly little boy who spat all over the decks, and one of the fathers, a stern gold-laced officer, carried a dogwhip with which to rule his offspring.

After a while we caught sight of Tarabosch, the famous mountain, and then the silhouette of the old Venetian fortress. From the water projected the funnels of yet another Turkish ship which had been sunk in the Balkan war, and we steamed into the amphibious trees on the mudflats of Scutari.

A boat with chairs in it came for us and we disembarked. The boat was rather like one of those that children make from paper, called c.o.c.ked hats, only rather elongated, and the rowers pushed at the oars which hung from twisted osier loops. Governor Petrovitch met us on the quay.

He was a fine-featured old man dressed in all the barbaric splendour of a full national costume, pale green long-skirted coat, red gold embroidered waistcoat, and baggy dark blue knee breeches with a huge amount of waste material in the seat. He kissed his daughter and greeted us genially. We clambered into the usual dilapidated cab with the usual dilapidated horses, and off to the hotel.

The women on the roadside were clad in picturesque ever-varying costumes. There were narrow carts with high Indian-like wheels studded with large nails; there were Albanians in costumes of black and white, everything we had hoped or expected.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX

SCUTARI

After a wash we went into the streets. It was the Orient, just as Eastern as Colombo or Port Said. The little fruit and jewellers' shops with square lanterns, the tailors sitting cross-legged in their windows, the strange medley of costumes--even the long lean dogs looked as if they had been kicked from the doors of a thousand mosques.

We left the shops for further explorations. Scutari has always been described as such a beautiful town. The adjective does not seem picturesque: yes, quaint, strange decidedly. One's second impression after the shops is this:--