Anthony Hope - Phroso - A Romance

‘It is five o’clock.’

‘Then we have only an hour to live,’ said I, smiling, ‘if we don’t make for the yacht.’

‘You’re not going back to the yacht, my lord?’

‘I’m puzzled,’ I admitted. ‘If we go this ruffian will escape. And if we don’t go – ’

‘Why, we,’ Hogvardt ended for me, ‘may not escape.’

I saw that Hogvardt’s sense of responsibility was heavy; he always regarded himself as the shepherd, his employers as the sheep. I believe this attitude of his confirmed my obstinacy, for I said, without further hesitation:

‘Oh, we’ll chance that. When they know what a villain the fellow is, they’ll turn against him. Besides, we said we’d wait here.’

Denny seized on my last words with alacrity. When you are determined to do a rash thing, there is a great comfort in feeling that you are already committed to it by some previous act or promise.

‘So we did,’ he cried. ‘Then that settles it, Hogvardt’

‘His lordship certainly expressed that intention,’ observed Watkins, appearing at this moment with a big loaf of bread and a great pitcher of milk. I eyed these viands.

‘I bought the house and its contents,’ said I; ‘come along.’

Watkins’ further researches produced a large lump of native cheese; when he had set this down he remarked:

‘In a pen behind the house, close to the kitchen windows, there are two goats; and your lordship sees there, on the right of the front door, two cows tethered.’

I began to laugh, Watkins was so wise and solemn.

‘We can stand a siege, you mean?’ I asked. ‘Well, I hope it won’t come to that.’

Hogvardt rose and began to move round the hall, examining the weapons that decorated the walls. From time to time he grunted disapprovingly; the guns were useless, rusted, out of date; and there was no ammunition for them. But when he had almost completed his circuit, he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and came to me holding an excellent modern rifle and a large cartridge-case.

‘See!’ he grunted in huge delight. ‘“C. S.” on the stock. I expect you can guess whose it is, my lord.’

‘This is very thoughtful of Constantine,’ observed Denny, who was employing himself in cutting imaginary lemons in two with a fine damascened scimitar that he had taken from the wall.

‘As for the cows,’ said I, ‘perhaps they will carry them off.’

‘I think not,’ said Hogvardt, taking an aim with the rifle through the window.

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes past six.

‘Well, we can’t go now,’ said I. ‘It’s settled. What a comfort!’ I wonder whether I had ever in my heart meant to go!

The next hour passed very quietly. We sat smoking pipes or cigars and talking in subdued tones. The recollection of the dead man in the adjoining room sobered the excitement to which our position might otherwise have given occasion. Indeed I suppose that I at least, who through my whim had led the rest into this quandary, should have been utterly overwhelmed by the burden on me. But I was not. Perhaps Hogvardt’s assumption of responsibility relieved me; perhaps I was too full of anger against Constantine to think of the risks we ourselves ran; and I was more than half-persuaded that the revelation of what he had done would rob him of his power to hurt us. Moreover, if I might judge from the words I heard on the road, we had on our side an ally of uncertain, but probably considerable, power in the sweet-voiced girl whom the old woman called the Lady Euphrosyne; she would not support her uncle’s murderer, even though he were her cousin.

Presently Watkins carried me off to view his pen of goats, and having passed through the lofty flagged kitchen, I found myself in a sort of compound formed by the rocks. The ground had been levelled for a few yards, and the rocks rose straight to the height of ten or twelve feet; from the top of this artificial bank they ran again in wooded slopes towards the peak of the mountain. I followed their course with my eye, and three hundred or more feet above us, just beneath the summit, I perceived a little wooden châlet or bungalow. Blue smoke issued from the chimneys; and, even while we looked, a figure came out of the door and stood still in front of it, apparently gazing down towards the house.

‘It’s a woman,’ I pronounced.

‘Yes, my lord. A peasant’s wife, I suppose.’

‘I daresay,’ said I. But I soon doubted Watkins’ opinion; in the first place, because the woman’s dress did not look like that of a peasant woman; and secondly, because she went into the house, appeared again, and levelled at us what was, if I mistook not, a large pair of binocular glasses. Now such things were not likely to be in the possession of the peasants of Neopalia. Then she suddenly retreated, and through the silence of those still slopes we heard the door of the cottage closed with violence.

‘She doesn’t seem to like the looks of us,’ said I.

‘Possibly,’ suggested Watkins with deference, ‘she did not expect to see your lordship here.’

‘I should think that’s very likely, Watkins,’ said I.

I was recalled from the survey of my new domains – my satisfaction in the thought that they were mine survived all the disturbing features of the situation – by a call from Denny. In response to it I hurried back to the hall and found him at the window, with Constantine’s rifle rested on the sill.

‘I could pick him off pat,’ said Denny laughingly, and he pointed to a figure which was approaching the house. It was a man riding a stout pony; when he came within about two hundred yards of the house, he stopped, took a leisurely look, and then waved a white handkerchief.

‘The laws of war must be observed,’ said I, smiling. ‘This is a flag of truce.’ I opened the door, stepped out, and waved my handkerchief in return. The man, reassured, began to mop his brow with the flag of truce, and put his pony to a trot. I now perceived him to be the innkeeper Vlacho, and a moment later he reined up beside me, giving an angry jerk at his pony’s bridle.

‘I have searched the island for you,’ he cried. ‘I am weary and hot! How came you here?’

I explained to him briefly how I had chanced to take possession of my house, and added significantly:

‘But has no message come to you from me?’

He smiled with equal meaning, as he answered:

‘No; an old woman came to speak to a gentleman who is in the village – ’

‘Yes, to Constantine Stefanopoulos,’ said I with a nod.

‘Well then, if you will, to the Lord Constantine,’ he admitted with a careless shrug, ‘but her message was for his ear only; he took her aside and they talked alone.’

‘You know what she said, though?’

‘That is between my Lord Constantine and me.’

‘And the young lady knows it, I hope – the Lady Euphrosyne?’

Vlacho smiled broadly.

‘We could not distress her with such a silly tale,’ he answered; and he leant down towards me. ‘Nobody has heard the message but the Lord Constantine and one man he told it to. And nobody will. If that old woman spoke, she – well, she knows and will not speak.’

‘And you back up this murderer?’ I cried.

‘Murderer?’ he repeated questioningly. ‘Indeed, sir, it was an accident done in hot blood. It was the old man’s fault, because he tried to sell the island.’

‘He did sell the island,’ I corrected; ‘and a good many other people will hear of what happened to him.’

He looked at me again, smiling.

‘If you shouted it in the hearing of every man in Neopalia, what would they do?’ he asked scornfully.

‘Well, I should hope,’ I returned, ‘that they’d hang Constantine to the tallest tree you’ve got here.’