Chapter XIII: Knightly Emulation

“I--I can’t go any farther,” panted Zoe at last, as Wylie half-dragged, half-carried her up the cliff.

“You must. But only a little way. As far as that rock.”

He pointed to the projection she had noticed as affording a possible shelter if she could reach it, and she let him drag her on. Almost unconscious, with failing eyes and swimming brain, she found herself seated on the grass on the farther side of the rock, and realised that he was speaking to her.

“You may rest here for two minutes exactly.”

He turned his back and stood looking down the cliff, and she strove painfully to collect her thoughts and to recover her breath.

“Time’s up,” he said, turning half round. “Go on, and don’t stop till you get to the top. Then run.”

“But you?” she murmured faintly.

“I stay here until you are at the top, of course. The quicker you are, the better for me.”

“I won’t go and leave you.”

“Do what you are told.” He flung the words at her with a rasp which would have at once awed the boldest and stirred to revolt the meekest of women. Zoe was neither the one nor the other. She struggled to her feet and toiled feebly up the path, but the moment she reached the short turf at the top she sat down resolutely, excusing her disobedience by the reflection that she could not have run to save her life. She could see Wylie waiting behind the rock, but it hid from her view the assailants who, as she judged from his attitude, were crowding up the path to attack him. They were afraid to face him alone, and he preferred that they should come at him in a body, that they might not be able to use their rifles. Ah, there they were! Zoe hid her face as the first man appeared, to fall under the butt-end of the Mauser. Others followed, as she could tell by the sounds, and she judged that Wylie was maintaining his position, with his back against the rock. But it could only be a question of time. If they once got near enough to use their knives----! She shuddered and grew sick, then opened her eyes with a vague feeling that the solid earth was failing beneath her feet. Yes, the ground was moving. Craning her neck round as she lay at the edge of the cliff, she could see a sort of crack in the turf behind her, slowly widening. Roots of grass, a thin layer of soil, yellowish marl, the white rock--why, the cliff was falling, and she was falling with it.

“Colonel Wylie, the cliff! the cliff!” she shrieked, as she turned round, and threw herself desperately forward, across the crack. Her sudden movement accelerated the pace of the falling mass, and it went crashing down as she dropped helpless on the turf, her feet hanging over the edge. She must have fainted in the horror of the moment, for she knew nothing more until she heard Wylie’s voice speaking to her, and started up wildly, to find him kneeling beside her with blood flowing down his face.

“Sorry to trouble you,” he said apologetically, “but would you mind tying this handkerchief round my head?”

Her whole being rose up in revolt against him as she folded the handkerchief mechanically. To have gone through such a scene with him, and to be expected to ignore it! Then she realised what his request meant. He had no idea that he had betrayed himself. The mask was on again, and the blue eyes which had looked love into hers for one moment had been forbidden to endanger his secret any further. But she knew! He might do what he liked, say what he liked, leave undone and unsaid what he liked, but nothing could shake the evidence of that moment of anxiety intense enough to break down the guard which he had fixed between his heart and hers. She smiled triumphantly as she fastened the bandage.

“I can only do it roughly now,” she said. “When we get back to the monastery I will bandage it properly, as I did Maurice’s in the brigands’ camp long ago--do you remember?”

“Thanks. You are awfully good,” he replied without effusion; and she knew as well as if he had put it into words that she would have no chance of doing anything more for him. But what good were his precautions now?

“Please help me up,” she said, looking up at him with the merest hint of reproach. “I feel so shaky.”

He muttered an apology as he complied, and was sufficiently moved by compunction to offer her his arm. “We ought to be getting back,” he said. “Prince and Princess Theophanis will be anxious about you.”

“Oh, but what happened?” cried Zoe, all the terrors of the past hour returning upon her with a rush.

“Why, Con burst upon me, like the little brick he is, scarcely able to speak for running, and I sent off a boat round the headland, and snatched a rifle from one of my men and came here myself. The rest you know.”

“No, I don’t. About the landslip, I mean.”

“Your scream made me look up, and I jumped back and flattened myself against the cliff almost unconsciously. The Roumis were outside, and besides, they didn’t understand what you meant, of course. Some of them were carried down by the fall of cliff, and the rest made for their ladder with all possible speed. If they ever get to their boat, ours is waiting to intercept them.”

“Then they were Roumis?”

“Undoubtedly. I always suspected Janni, but there was no reason for arresting him, and he didn’t seem to have any means of doing actual harm. Of course the idea was that these fellows should hide in his house till nightfall, and then co-operate in some way with an attack on Ephestilo from the outside, probably setting the village and the boats on fire and creating a panic, under cover of which a landing might be effected.”

“It was very dreadful, I know, but--they took their lives in their hands, and--don’t you think that some of those who were buried under the fall of cliff may not be dead?” asked Zoe incoherently.

“If you remember, I suggested just now that we should hurry back to the monastery,” he replied with admirable politeness. “As soon as I have placed you in safety, I shall return and see what can be done.”

“Oh, but let us turn back and do it now. Let me help.”

“Certainly not,” in a tone of such finality that Zoe did not venture even to protest. Once again she smiled involuntarily, and when Wylie looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and injury, was driven to attempt an explanation.

“I can’t help feeling rather proud that it was through me this plot was foiled,” she said meekly. “Yesterday you were so convinced that Eirene and I were nothing but a care and an anxiety, you know.”

“I’m afraid I still consider your services overbalanced by your presence here,” was the ungallant reply.

“I am so sorry,” in a voice as though tears were not far off. “What can we do to make ourselves more worth having? Do you want us to fight?”

“Fight? No! There are two women in men’s clothes among my fellows, who give me more trouble than all the rest put together.”

“How horrid!” said Zoe.

“Oh, the men are awfully good to them, and consider them a sort of saints. But they don’t drill--of course I haven’t given them the chance--and they won’t see the necessity of it for others. What they want is blood, like the old lady in Dickens, and they are always haranguing the men and stirring them up to bother me to lead them to the slaughter of the Roumis. They have wrongs to avenge, no doubt; but it’s furies like that who make the men lose their heads and lead to regrettable incidents when there comes a fight.”

“Princess!” They had reached the crest of a rise, and Prince Romanos, flushed and disturbed, met them with a rush. “What is this that I hear? You have been in danger--proper care was not taken for your safety? Allow me to relieve you, Colonel. You will doubtless be glad to return to your duties.”

“Colonel Wylie’s duty at the present moment is to see me to the monastery,” said Zoe, angry for Wylie’s sake rather than her own. “He has said so twice.”

But Wylie failed in the basest manner to second her. “If the Prince will allow me to surrender the charge to him, I will venture to leave you, ma’am,” and he removed her hand resolutely from his arm. Zoe could have wept.

“If I didn’t care for you so much, I should hate you!” she said to him in her thoughts. “But after all, it is not your fault, but the fault of your pride. That is fighting hard, but you yourself are on my side. And how sorry you will be some day for all the horrid things you have said!”

The thought assisted her to parry good-humouredly the anxious inquiries of Prince Romanos, who could not understand how she could be at all calm, far less cheerful, after what she had gone through; and since he did not know of the cordial received as Wylie drew her up on the ledge, she might well seem to him a remarkably equable person. The Greek, who had been silent and thoughtful since his visit to the _Magniloquent_, took her friendliness as a good omen, and was encouraged by it to talk about himself, a subject on which he was still brimful of recondite information. Negativing Zoe’s suggestion that they should go down into Ephestilo to fetch Constantine, with the assurance that he had met him joyously riding towards the monastery on the shoulder of a stalwart Emathian, the poet claimed the attention of his auditor with a deep sigh.

“I am afraid you are sorry I was rescued,” said Zoe, for the sake of saying something.

“Not sorry you were rescued, Princess, but sorry--yes, desolated--that Colonel Wylie enjoyed the honour of rescuing you. Why, why was it not to the wretched Apolis that thus supreme distinction came?”

“Because he didn’t happen to be in the neighbourhood, I suppose,” said Zoe prosaically.

“Ah, Princess, do you imply that you blame this neglect of his? Not more than he does, I assure you. But from henceforth Apolis shall be the shadow of Zeto. Never shall she look round without beholding him!”

“Dear me, I hope not!” cried Zoe in alarm. “Think, Prince, your duty is at the front, not with the non-combatants. You came here to fight.”

“And does Zeto bid me fight? Then shall the sword of Apolis be doubly winged with victory! What trophies will he lay at her feet! in what imperishable poems shall be celebrated the fame of her who called upon a _flâneur_ and sent a hero to the fight!”

“It’s very satisfactory to know from your own lips that you are a hero--or is it that you are going to be one?” said Zoe, much amused. “But you mustn’t ascribe the glory to me. We are on opposite sides, you know.”

“Ah, no, not on opposite sides. Apolis can be opposed to no family that numbers Zeto among its members. But there are possible arrangements---- Only yesterday I received encouragement--an actual promise of support--from the most unexpected quarter. Your brother is above all things a reasonable man; I have his pledge to allow matters to take their course.” Zoe was looking at him in utter bewilderment, but he did not see it. “In the fairy tales it is always the Prince who wins the Princess, is it not so?”

“Not a bit of it!” declared Zoe vigorously. “It is just as often the poor and nameless knight,” with a tender intonation the significance of which was lost upon Prince Romanos. “And really,” sudden indignation getting the better of her, “have you forgotten all that happened at Bashi Konak? I am not going to treat it as a dream, if you are.”

“Princess!” reproachfully, “do you forget that I am a basely deceived, an injured man?--that the woman to whom I gave my heart’s allegiance proved herself the tool of my enemies?”

“Of what enemies, pray? I remember you accused me before of having employed some one to keep you from following us. Who was it? I want this cleared up. Was it Donna Olimpia Pazzi?”

Prince Romanos shuddered pitifully. “It is hard for the man who has loved and been deceived to hear without a pang the name of the forsworn one,” he said. “It was that miserable woman, whom I would have trusted with my life, and who tried to rob me of my honour.”

“But what did she do?”

“I received a message entreating me to bid her farewell. We met--at our usual rendezvous. I was surprised to find the time so much earlier than I thought. We sat hand in hand, plunged in the ‘sweet sorrow’ of which your Shakespeare speaks. It was indeed an hour of blissful woe. Suddenly my eye falls upon a small travelling-clock on a bracket. It indicates a time at least three-quarters of an hour later than the large clock on the side-table, and I had already thought that I was prolonging my stay to its utmost limits. I spring to my feet, I proclaim my immediate departure. But she--that faithless one--endeavours to hinder me. She throws herself before me, she holds me with her white hands. Finding me resolute, she locks the door, and before my face hides the key in her dress, daring me to take it. I wrench it from her, in spite of her entreaties, her struggles----”

“I suppose you think that was a heroic thing to do?” cried Zoe in disgust.

“Princess, she had set herself to ruin my career. I paused before unlocking the door, and loaded her with reproaches, as she knelt, sobbing, where I had left her. I refused to hear her. ‘You have endeavoured to betray me,’ I told her. ‘Were I only a Christodoridi, I should repay your treachery with death. But I am also Apolis, and therefore I grant you the boon of life, in which to realise the value of the love which I now tear from my heart. Live, and hate yourself!’”

“Truly dramatic!” said Zoe. “Well, if that is the way in which you treat a poor girl whose only fault is that she loved you better than your career----”

“Ah, if I could only believe that!” he interrupted, his face visibly brightening. “But no, she set herself to betray me. She played the game of my enemies. From whom could she have learnt of my departure but from them?”

“What enemies?” demanded Zoe again. “Do you still insinuate that we had anything to do with it?”

“You had excellent reasons, I admit it. My opposition to your brother, my--equivocal conduct to yourself----”

“Oh!” she cried in despair, “will you never believe that when you turned your attention to Donna Olimpia, it simply relieved me of a standing worry?”

He looked at her with deep admiration. “Princess, you are more than woman. I confess that I have not discovered in your brother the capacity--the faculty, I should say--for such a plot, and if you assure me that you cherished no grudge against me, I rejoice to proclaim my conviction of your ignorance of it.”

“So far was I from cherishing a grudge, that when once you left off following me about, your affairs did not even interest me,” said Zoe, rather hastily.

“Ah, there spoke the woman, after all! That blessed little touch of pique! But have no fear of me, Princess. You shall not be ‘worried’ by your patient Apolis. You impose a probation, a test? So be it, then. You shall see me emerge from it with credit, or die in the attempt.”

“I don’t impose anything of the kind!” in alarm. Evidently nothing but the plain declaration that she cared for some one else would pierce the armour of this man’s self-conceit, and she had far too little confidence in his discretion to make it. “I hope you will emerge with credit, of course, but it has nothing to do with me.”

“Ah, cruel! But since you will it----” with a deep sigh. “Henceforth Apolis is silent, until his moment of triumph. Then---- But it is forbidden. I understand. I am discreet as the tomb.”

“A remarkably indiscreet tomb, then!” said Zoe in indignation, as they reached the welcome refuge of the monastery gates. Eirene was waiting for her in the gallery, full of excitement and anxiety, after receiving her little son’s fragmentary and incoherent account of the morning’s doings. The effect of Zoe’s narrative was to confirm her sister-in-law in her fixed determination never to let Constantine out of her sight again, his peril looming much larger in her eyes than that to which the whole peninsula had been exposed. When Zoe dragged herself away to rest at last, it was with the exasperated conviction that her lot was cast among the most irritating set of human beings that was ever assembled on one spot. Her sole consolation sprang from the reflection that as she was the only available unmarried woman, it was natural for Prince Romanos to fancy himself in love with her, and that as soon as he returned to the society he was so well fitted to adorn, his affections would at once be diverted to other objects. But there was more in the man than a roving fancy and a colossal self-esteem, or even than considerable poetic gifts, and this Maurice and Wylie discovered the same evening.

They were sitting in the gallery, discussing rather anxiously how soon Armitage might be expected to reappear, and what means could be devised of communicating with the yacht, in view of the close blockade which had been proclaimed that morning, and which had already been enforced in the case of several small vessels approaching from the mainland, which had been ruthlessly turned back by boats from the fleet. Prince Romanos was accustomed to spend this time in entertaining the ladies, and incidentally the guards and a few bold monks, with song and recitation, but this evening he joined the two men, with a modesty of manner which was almost an apology in itself.

“I am going to ask you to allow me a definite part in the defence,” he said to Maurice. “I fear you have thought me a sad idler hitherto, but I had my reasons. I observed that when I mentioned I had fought with the Foreign Legion in the Roumi-Morean War, Colonel Wylie appeared to think it but a poor recommendation--and I confess that I know little about drill. But it is different in the case of ships, of the water. There, Prince, I am at home. The instinct of sea-fighting is in my blood, as your Admiral observed only yesterday, and it is in this direction I ask you to find me employment. Colonel Wylie, whose preparations are so complete, so far-reaching, has organised the fishermen of the peninsula for land defence, but I believe he has made no use of their boats?”

“No, except as scouts,” said Wylie, interested in spite of himself. The Greek’s sallow face was flushed, and his eyes bright.

“Then commit this portion of our forces to my care,” he entreated. “No, I am not mad. I have no intention of provoking a conflict with the armed boats of the warships, far less of attempting to attack those vessels themselves, but there are humbler ways in which I might be useful. Even the blockade will hardly prevent our fishermen from exercising their calling in their own waters. Why, then, should we not make use of them occasionally to penetrate farther, and bring us provision and news, perhaps reinforcements and warlike stores? But for such work they must be trained and directed. Then we must--oh, pardon me; I speak too boldly in my enthusiasm for my own element--should we not possess our own counter-blockade? A service of fishing-boats constantly patrolling our coasts to guard against a landing--if this had been in existence to-day, there would have been no fear of the raid which endangered not only our whole enterprise, but the life of the peerless lady who calls you brother, Prince.”

“We seem to have been horribly remiss, Wylie,” said Maurice; “and yet we thought we were pretty far-seeing.”

“Sea-fighting in fishing-boats is not in my line, I’m afraid,” muttered Wylie. “But I’m open to learn from my betters in that way,” he added quickly.

“This very evening,” went on Prince Romanos, much encouraged, “I fear an opportunity has been lost. I understand that the one Roumi who survived to be captured by your men, Colonel, has confessed that a fire on the headland above Ephestilo, simultaneously with one in the village itself, was to be the signal for the Roumi troops waiting outside in boats to enter the bay and effect a landing. A fictitious conflagration could easily be arranged, and the boats lured in--to discover, not the panic-stricken inhabitants they anticipated, but a disciplined force holding them in a trap. Could?--nay, it can be done even now. Will you permit it? I go to arrange details, to invite volunteers. Follow me in half an hour, then I can tell you whether it may be attempted. I have my plans--it is allowed?”

Barely waiting for the answer, he sprang down the steps.

“What’s come over the fellow?” demanded Maurice.

“Can’t say,” growled Wylie. “He’s got something in his head, that’s clear, and I doubt very much whether it’ll be healthy for you and your claims.”

“You old croaker!” said Maurice. “You’ve never trusted him.”