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Title: The Dancing Floor
Author: Buchan, John (1875-1940)
Cartographer: Anonymous
Date of first publication: July 1926
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London, Edinburgh, Paris, Melbourne, Toronto,
   and New York: Thomas Nelson, 1945
Date first posted: 18 November 2012
Date last updated: 18 November 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1012

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






                         THE DANCING FLOOR

                           JOHN BUCHAN


           "Quisque suos patimur Manes"
                         VIRGIL, _neid_, vi. 743


    THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LTD

    LONDON EDINBURGH PARIS MELBOURNE
    TORONTO AND NEW YORK

    _First printed July 1926_
    _Reprinted 1926 (eleven times), 1927 (twice)_
    _Cheap edition September 1928_
    _First printed in this edition September 1928_
    _Reprinted 1935, 1938, 1945_


         TO
    HENRY NEWBOLT


    An episode in this tale is taken from a short story of mine entitled
    "Basilissa," published in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1914.

                                                            J. B.




[Illustration: THE ISLAND OF PLAKOS AS SEEN FROM THE NORTH]




THE DANCING FLOOR




PART I




CHAPTER I


_This story was told me by Leithen, as we were returning rather late in
the season from a shooting holiday in North Ontario. There were few
passengers, the weather was a succession of snow blizzards and gales,
and as we had the smoking-room for the most part to ourselves, we stoked
up the fire and fell into a mood of yarns and reminiscences. Leithen,
being a lawyer, has a liking for careful detail, and his tale took long
in the telling; indeed, snatches of it filled the whole of that rough
October passage. The version I have written out is amplified from his
narrative, but I think it is accurate, for he took the trouble to revise
it._

       *       *       *       *       *

Romance (he said) is a word I am shy of using. It has been so staled and
pawed by fools that the bloom is gone from it, and to most people it
stands for a sugary world as flat as an eighteenth-century Arcadia. But,
dry stick as I am, I hanker after my own notion of romance. I suppose it
is the lawyer in me, but I define it as something in life which happens
with an exquisite aptness and a splendid finality, as if Fate had
suddenly turned artist--something which catches the breath because it is
so wholly right. Also for me it must happen to youth. I do not complain
of growing old, but I like to keep my faith that at one stage in our
mortal existence nothing is impossible. It is part of my belief that the
universe is on the whole friendly to man, and that the ordering of the
world is in the main benevolent.... So I go about expecting things,
waiting like an old pagan for the descent of the goddess. And once--only
once--I caught the authentic shimmer of her wings.


I

My story begins in January 1913, when I took my nephew Charles to dine
with the Amysforts for a ball they were giving. Balls are not much in my
line, for when I came first to London it was the foolish fashion of
young men not to dance, but to lounge superciliously in doorways, while
their elders took the floor. I had a good deal of work on hand, and I
meant to leave immediately after dinner, but the necessity of launching
Charles made me linger through the first few dances. My nephew was a
cheerful young gentleman in his second year at Oxford, and it presently
appeared that he did not want for friends of his own age. There was a
perpetual bandying of nicknames and occult chaff with other
fresh-coloured boys.

One in particular caught my attention. He was a tall young man of about
Charles's age, who was not dancing but stood beside one of the windows
with his head silhouetted against a dark curtain. He was uncommonly
handsome after the ordinary English pattern, but our youth is mostly
good to behold, and that would not have fixed my attention. What struck
me was his pose. He was looking at the pretty spectacle with a curious
aloofness--with eyes that received much but gave out nothing. I have
never seen any one so completely detached, so clothed with his own
atmosphere, and since that is rare at the age of twenty, I asked Charles
if he knew him.

"Rather. It's old Milburne. He's up at Magdalen with me. First string
for the 'Varsity mile. Believed"--his voice became reverential--"to be
going to knock five seconds off his last year's time. Most awful good
chap. Like me to introduce you?"

The young man in response to my nephew's beckoning approached us.
"Hullo, Vernon, how's life?" said my nephew. "Want to introduce you to
my uncle--Sir Edward Leithen--big legal swell, you know--good fellow to
have behind you if you run up against the laws of England."

Charles left us to claim a partner, and I exchanged a few commonplaces
with his friend, for I too--_consule Planco_--had run the mile. Our
short talk was the merest platitudes, but my feeling about his odd
distinction was intensified. There was something old-fashioned in his
manner--wholly self-possessed yet with no touch of priggishness--a
little formal, as if he had schooled himself to be urbanely and
delicately on his guard. My guess at the time was that he had foreign
blood in him, not from any difference of colouring or feature, but from
his silken reserve. We of the North are apt to be angular in our
silences; we have not learned the art of gracious reticence.

That boy's face remained clearly fixed in my memory. It is a thing that
often happens to me, for without any reason on earth I will carry about
with me pictures of some casual witnesses or clients whom I am bound to
recognize if I ever see them again. It is as freakish a gift as that
which makes some men remember scraps of doggerel. I saw the face so
vividly in my mind that, if I had been an artist, I could have drawn it
accurately down to the finest lines of the mouth and the wary courtesy
of the eyes. I do not suppose I gave the meeting another conscious
thought, for I was desperately busy at the time, but I knew that I had
added another portrait to the lumber-room of my absurd memory.

I had meant to go to Scotland that Easter vacation to fish, but a sudden
pressure of Crown cases upset all my plans, and I had to limit my
holiday to four days. I wanted exercise, so I took it in the most
violent form, and went for a walk in the Westmorland hills. The snow lay
late that year, and I got the exercise I sought scrambling up icy
gullies and breasting north-easters on the long bleak ridges. All went
well till the last day, which I spent among the Cartmel fells intending
to catch a train at an obscure station which would enable me to join the
night mail for London at Lancaster. You know how those little hills
break down in stony shelves to the sea. Well, as luck would have it, I
stepped into a hole between two boulders masked with snow, and crawled
out with the unpleasing certainty that I had either broken or badly
wrenched my ankle. By the time I had hobbled down to the beginning of
the stone-walled pastures I knew that it was a twist and not a break,
but before I reached a road I knew also that I would never reach the
station in time for my train.

It had begun to snow again, the spring dusk was falling, and the place
was very lonely. My watch told me that even if I found a farm or inn and
hired a trap I should miss my train. The only chance was to get a
motor-car to take me to Lancaster. But there was no sign of farm or
inn--only interminable dusky snowy fields, and the road was too small
and obscure to make a friendly motor-car probable. I limped along in a
very bad temper. It was not a matter of desperate urgency that I should
be in London next morning, though delay would mean the postponement of a
piece of business I wanted to get finished. But the prospect was black
for my immediate comfort. The best I could look forward to was a bed in
a farm- or a wayside public-house, and a slow and painful journey next
day. I was angry with myself for my clumsiness. I had thought my ankles
beyond reproach, and it was ridiculous that after three days on rough
and dangerous mountains I should come to grief on a paltry hillock.

The dusk thickened, and not a soul did I meet. Presently woods began to
creep around the road, and I walked between two patches of blackness in
a thin glimmer of twilight which would soon be gone. I was cold and
hungry and rather tired, and my ankle gave me a good deal of pain. I
tried to think where I was, and could only remember that the station,
which had been my immediate objective, was still at least six miles
distant. I had out my map and wasted half a dozen matches on it, but it
was a map of the hill country and stopped short of my present
whereabouts. Very soon I had come to a determination to stop at the
first human habitation, were it a labourer's cottage, and throw myself
upon the compassion of its inmates. But not a flicker of light could I
see to mark the presence of man.

Then something white glimmered faintly on my left, and I saw that it was
a wicket gate. This must mean a house near at hand, so I hopefully
pushed it open and entered. I found myself in a narrow path running
among fir trees. It was nearly pitch-dark in that place, and I was in
fear of losing the road, which was obscured by the fallen snow, and
getting lost in a wood. Soon, however, I was clear of the firs and in
more open country among what looked like beeches. The wind, too, had
swept the path bare, and there was just enough light to make it out as
it twined up and down a little glade. I suspected that I was in a
demesne of some considerable house, and the suspicion became a certainty
when my track emerged on a broad gravel drive. After that my way was
clear. The drive took me into a park--I knew it was a park because of
the frequent swing-gates for cattle--and suddenly it bore to the right
and I saw half a dozen irregularly placed lights high up in the air
before me. This was the house, and it must be a large one, for some of
the lights were far apart.

Five minutes later I found myself ringing the bell in a massive pillared
porch, and explaining my case to a very old butler, to whom I gave my
card.

"I've had an accident on the hills," I said, "and twisted my ankle
rather badly. I wonder if I might ask for some assistance--to get to an
inn or a station. I'm afraid I don't in the least know where I am."

"This is Severns Hall, sir," said the man. "My master is Mr. Vernon
Milburne. If you will come in, sir, I will acquaint him with the
position."

"Mr. Vernon Milburne?" I cried. "I believe I have met him. I think he is
at Oxford with my nephew."

"Mr. Milburne is a member of the University of Oxford," said the ancient
man. He led me into a vast hall of the worst kind of Victorian Gothic,
in which a big bright wood fire crackled. When he saw me clearly the
butler proved a very angel of mercy. "I think, sir, you should first
have a little refreshment," he said, and brought me a whisky-and-soda.
Then, while I thawed my frozen bones before the logs, he departed to
seek his master.

I was too preoccupied with my own grievances to feel much interest in
the fact that I had stumbled upon the dwelling of the boy who had so
intrigued me at Lady Amysfort's ball. But as I warmed my hands at the
blaze it did occur to me that this was the last kind of house I would
have linked him with--this sham-medival upholstered magnificence. It
was Gothic with every merit of Gothic left out, and an air of dull
ecclesiasticism hung about it. There was even an organ at one end, ugly
and staring, as if it had come out of some _nouveau riche_ provincial
church. Every bit of woodwork was fretted and tortured into fancy
shapes.

I heard a voice at my elbow.

"I think we have met before, Sir Edward," it said. "I am so sorry for
your misfortune. Let's get the boot off and look at the ankle."

"It's only a sprain," I said. "I really don't want to bother you. If you
would be so very kind as to lend me a car to take me to Lancaster, I can
manage to travel all right. I ought to be in London to-morrow morning."

"Nonsense!" He smiled in a pleasant boyish way. "You are going to stay
here to-night, and if you're well enough I'll send you into Lancaster
to-morrow. You look simply fagged out. Let's get the boot off and see if
we need a doctor."

He summoned the butler, and the two of them soon had my foot bare, while
the boy, who seemed to know something about sprains, ran a light hand
over the ankle bone.

"Nothing very bad here," he said; "but it must have been jolly painful
to walk with. We'll bandage it and you need only limp for a day or two.
Beaton, find out if Sir Edward's room is ready. You'd better have a hot
bath and then we'll do the bandaging. After that you'll want some food.
I'll lend you a dressing-gown and dry clothes."

The next hour was spent in restoring me to some ease of body. Severns
might be an ugly house, but whoever built it had a pretty notion of
comfort in bedrooms. I had two rooms, each with a cheerful fire, and
when I had had my bath the two Samaritans bandaged my ankle as neatly as
a hospital nurse, and helped me into a suit of flannels. Then Vernon
disappeared, and when he returned he was dressed for dinner. A table had
been laid for me in the sitting-room, and Beaton was waiting to ask me
what I would drink.

"Champagne," said Vernon. "I prescribe it."

"But you're making far too much fuss about me," I protested. "I can
easily dine downstairs with you."

"I think you ought to dine here. You've put yourself in my hands and I'm
your medical adviser."

He saw me start my meal before he left me.

"Do you mind if I say good-night now?" he said. "You ought to get to bed
pretty soon, and I have some work I want to do after dinner. Sound sleep
and pleasant dreams."

I dined excellently, and after a single pipe was resolutely put to bed
by Beaton the butler. They were benevolent despots in this house who
were not to be gainsaid. I was sufficiently weary to be glad to go to
sleep, but before I dropped off I wondered just a little at the nature
of my reception. There were no other guests, Beaton had told me, and it
seemed odd that a boy of nineteen alone in this Gothic mausoleum should
show so little desire for human companionship. I should have expected,
even if I were not allowed downstairs, to have had him come and talk to
me for an hour or so before turning in. What work had he to which he was
so faithful? I remembered that Charles had mentioned that he was a bit
of a swell at his books, but, as Charles himself had been ploughed for
Pass Mods, that might mean very little. Anyhow, there was something
morbid about a conscience which at nineteen forced its possessor to work
in vacation time after dinner. He had been immensely hospitable, but
obviously he had not wanted my company. That aloofness which I had
remarked at Lady Amysfort's ball had become a heavy preoccupation. His
attitude had been courteously defensive; there had been a screen which
robbed his kindness of all geniality. I felt quite distinctly that there
was something in or about the house, something connected with himself,
from which I was being resolutely excluded.

I slept well, and was awakened by Beaton bringing my early tea. He had
undrawn the curtains and opened one of the windows, and a great flood of
sunlight and spring airs was pouring through. The storm had passed, and
April was in her most generous mood. My ankle felt lumpish and stiff,
but when Beaton examined it he pronounced that it was mending nicely.
"But you can't press on it to-day, sir," he added. "Mr. Vernon won't let
you move to-day.... Breakfast will be laid in the sitting-room, and Mr.
Vernon's compliments and he proposes to join you at nine o'clock. I will
return and bandage the ankle and assist you to rise as soon as Prayers
are over."

Presently, as I lay watching a ridge of distant hill seen through the
window and trying to decide what it could be, the sound of singing rose
from some room below me. It must be Prayers. The old-fashioned hymn tune
reminded me of my childhood, and I wondered how many young men of to-day
kept up the fashion of family worship when alone in a country house. And
then I suddenly remembered all about the Milburnes, for they had been my
mother's friends.

Humphrey Milburne had been a rich Lancashire cotton-spinner, whose
father or grandfather--I forget which--had been one of the pioneers of
the industry. I don't think he had ever concerned himself greatly with
business, for his _mtier_ had always been that of the devout layman
who is more occupied with church affairs than any bishop. He had been a
leader of the Evangelical party, a vigorous opponent of ritualist
practices, and a noted organizer of religious revivals. Vague memories
of him came back to me from my childhood, for my own family had been of
the same persuasion. I had a recollection of a tall, bearded man who, on
a visit to us, had insisted on seeing the children, and had set me on
his knee, and had asked me, a shivering, self-conscious mite,
embarrassing questions about my soul. I remembered his wife, Lady
Augusta, more clearly. She was a thin little woman who never seemed to
be separated from a large squashy Bible stuffed with leaflets and
secured by many elastic bands. She had had a knack of dropping
everything as she moved, and I had acted as page to retrieve her
belongings. She had been very kind to me, for to her grief she had then
no children.... I remembered that a son had at last been born--"a child
of many prayers," my mother had called him. And then came a vague
recollection of a tragedy. Lady Augusta had died when the boy was an
infant, and her husband had followed within the year. After that the
Milburnes passed out of my life, except that their nurse had come to us
when I was at Oxford, and had had much to say of young Master Vernon.

My vague remembrance seemed to explain my host. The child of ageing
parents and an orphan from his early years--that would account for his
lack of youthful spontaneity. I liked the notion of him I was acquiring;
there was something quaint and loyal in his keeping up the family
ritual--an evangelical athlete with the looks of Apollo. I had fancied
something foreign in his air, but that of course was nonsense. He came
of the most prosaic British stock, cotton-spinning Milburnes, and for
his mother a Douglas-Ernott, whose family was the quintessence of Whig
solidity.

I found Vernon waiting for me in the sunny sitting-room, dressed in
rough grey homespun, and with an air of being ready for a long day in
the open. There was a change in him since the night before. His eyes
were a little heavy, as if he had slept badly, but the shutters were
lifted from them. His manner was no longer constrained, and the slight
awkwardness I had felt in his presence was gone. He was now a cheerful
communicative undergraduate.

"Beaton says you had a good night, sir, but you mustn't use that foot of
yours. You can't think of London to-day, you know. I've nothing to do
except look after you, so you'd better think of me as Charles with a
nephew's privileges. It's going to be a clinking fine day, so what do
you say to running up in the car to the moors above Shap and listening
to the curlews? In the spring they're the jolliest things alive."

He was a schoolboy now, looking forward to an outing, and we might have
been breakfasting in Oxford rooms before going out with the Bicester. I
fell into his holiday mood, and forgot to tell him that I had long ago
met his parents. He lent me an ulster and helped me downstairs, where he
packed me into the front of a big Daimler and got in beside me. In the
clear spring sunshine, with the park a chessboard of green grass and
melting snow, and the rooks cawing in the beech tops, Severns looked
almost venerable, for its lines were good and the stone was weathering
well. He nodded towards the long faades. "Ugly old thing, when you
think of Levens or Sizergh, but it was my grandfather's taste, and I
mean to respect it. If we get a fine sunset you'll see it light up like
an enchanted castle. It's something to be able to see the hills from
every window, and to get a glimpse of the sea from the top floor.
Goodish sport, too, for we've several miles of salmon and sea trout, and
we get uncommon high birds in the upper coverts."

We sped up by winding hill-roads to the moors, and there were the
curlews crying over the snow-patched bent with that note which is at
once eerie, and wistful, and joyful. There were grouse, too, busy about
their nesting, and an occasional stone-chat, and dippers flashing their
white waistcoats in every beck. It was like being on the roof of the
world, with the high Lake hills a little foreshortened, like ships
coming over the horizon at sea. Lunch we had with us, and ate on a dry
bank of heather, and we had tea in a whitewashed moorland farm. I have
never taken to any one so fast as I took to that boy. He was in the
highest spirits, as if he had finished some difficult task, and in the
rebound he became extraordinarily companionable. I think he took to me
also, for he showed a shy but intense interest in my doings, the
eagerness with which an undergraduate prospects the channels of the
world's life which he is soon to navigate. I had been prepared to find a
touch of innocent priggishness, but there was nothing of the kind. He
seemed to have no dogmas of his own, only inquiries.

"I suppose a lawyer's training fits a man to examine all kinds of
problems--not only legal ones," he asked casually at luncheon. "I mean
he understands the value of any sort of evidence, for the principles of
logical truth are always the same?"

"I suppose so," I replied, "though it's only legal conundrums that come
my way. I was once asked my opinion on a scientific proof--in the higher
mathematics--but I didn't make much of it--couldn't quite catch on to
the data or understand the language."

"Yes, that might be a difficulty," he admitted. "But a thing like a
ghost story, for instance--you'd be all right at that, I suppose?"

The boy had clearly something in his head, and I wondered if the raw
magnificence of Severns harboured any spooks. Could that be the reason
of his diffidence on the previous evening?

When we got home we sat smoking by the library fire, and while I skimmed
the _Times_ Vernon dozed. He must have been short of his sleep and was
now making up for it in the way of a healthy young man. As I watched
his even breathing I decided that here there could be no abnormality of
body or mind. It was like watching a tired spaniel on the rug, too tired
even to hunt in his dreams.

As I lifted my eyes from the paper I saw that he was awake and was
looking at me intently, as if he were hesitating about asking me some
question.

"I've been asleep," he apologized. "I can drop off anywhere after a day
on the hills."

"You were rather sleepless as a child, weren't you?" I asked.

His eyes opened. "I wonder how you know that?"

"From your old nurse. I ought to have told you that in my boyhood I knew
your parents a little. They stayed with us more than once. And Mrs.
Ganthony came to my mother from you. I was at Oxford at the time, and I
remember how she used to entertain us with stories about Severns. You
must have been an infant when she left."

"I was four. What sort of things did she tell you?"

"About your bad nights, and your pluck. I fancy it was by way of censure
of our declamatory habits. Why, after all these years I remember some of
her phrases. How did the thing go? 'What fidgeted me was the way his
lordship 'eld his tongue. For usual he'd shout as lusty as a whelp, but
on these mornings I'd find him with his eyes like moons and his skin
white and shiny, and never a cheep the whole blessed night, with me
lying next door, and a light sleeper at all times, Mrs. Wace, ma'am.'
Was Mrs. Wace a sort of Mrs. Harris?"

He laughed merrily. "To think that you should have heard that! No, she
was our housekeeper, and Ganthony, who babbled like Sairey Gamp, made a
litany of her name. That's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard."

"You've outgrown that childish ailment anyhow," I said.

"Yes. I have outgrown it." My practice with witnesses made me detect
just a shade of hesitation.

At dinner he returned to the subject which seemed to interest him, the
exact nature of the legal training. I told him that I was an advocate,
not a judge, and so had no need to cultivate a judicial mind.

"But you can't do without it," he protested. "You have to advise your
client and pronounce on his case before you argue it. The bulk of your
work must be the weighing of evidence. I should have thought that that
talent could be applied to any subject in the world if the facts were
sufficiently explained. In the long run the most abstruse business will
boil down to a fairly simple deduction from certain data. Your
profession enables you to select the relevant data."

"That may be true in theory, but I wouldn't myself rate legal talent so
high. A lawyer is apt to lack imagination, you know." Then I stopped,
for I had suddenly the impression that Vernon wanted advice, help of
some kind--that behind all his ease he was profoundly anxious, and that
a plea, almost a cry, was trembling on his lips. I detest confidences
and labour to avoid them, but I could no more refuse this boy than stop
my ears against a sick child. So I added, "Of course lawyers make good
confidants. They're mostly decent fellows, and they're accustomed to
keeping their mouths shut."

He nodded, as if I had settled some private scruple, and we fell to
talking about spring salmon in the Tay.

"Take the port into the library," he told Beaton. "Sir Edward doesn't
want coffee. Oh, and see that the fire is good. We shan't need you again
to-night. I'll put Sir Edward to bed."

There was an odd air of purpose about him, as he gave me his arm to the
library and settled me with a cigar in a long chair. Then he disappeared
for a minute or two and returned with a shabby little clasped leather
book. He locked the door and put the key on the mantelpiece, and when he
caught me smiling he smiled too, a little nervously.

"Please don't think me an ass," he said. "I'm going to ask a tremendous
favour. I want you to listen to me while I tell you a story, something I
have never told to any one in my life before.... I don't think you'll
laugh at me, and I've a notion you may be able to help me. It's a
confounded liberty, I know, but may I go on?"

"Most certainly," I said. "I can't imagine myself laughing at anything
you had to tell me; and if there's anything in me that can help you it's
yours for the asking."

He drew a long breath. "You spoke of my bad nights as a child and I said
I had outgrown them. Well, it isn't true."


II

When Vernon was a very little boy he was the sleepiest and healthiest of
mortals, but every spring he had a spell of bad dreams. He slept at that
time in the big new night-nursery at the top of the west wing, which his
parents had built not long before their death. It had three windows
looking out to the moorish flats which run up to the fells, and from one
window, by craning your neck, you could catch a glimpse of the sea. It
was all hung, too, with a Chinese paper whereon pink and green parrots
squatted in wonderful blue trees, and there seemed generally to be a
wood fire burning. He described the place in detail, not as it is
to-day, but as he remembered it.

Vernon's recollection of his childish nightmares was hazy. They varied,
I gathered, but narrowed down in the end to one type. He used to find
himself in a room different from the nursery and bigger, but with the
same smell of wood smoke. People came and went, such as his nurse, the
butler, Simon the head keeper, Uncle Appleby his guardian, Cousin
Jennifer, the old woman who sold oranges in Axby, and a host of others.
Nobody hindered them from going away, and they seemed to be pleading
with him to come too. There was danger in the place; something was going
to happen in the big room, and if by that time he was not gone there
would be mischief.... But it was quite clear to him that he could not
go. He must stop there, with the wood smoke in his nostrils, and await
the advent of the something. But he was never quite sure of the nature
of the compulsion. He had a notion that if he made a rush for the door
at Uncle Appleby's heels he would be allowed to escape, but that somehow
he would be behaving badly. Anyhow, the place put him into a sweat of
fright, and Mrs. Ganthony looked darkly at him in the morning.

Those troubled springs continued--odd interludes in a life of nearly
unbroken health. Mrs. Ganthony left because she could not control her
tongue and increased the boy's terrors, and Vernon was nine--he
thought--before the dream began to take a really definite shape. The
stage was emptying. There was nobody in the room now but himself, and he
saw its details a little more clearly. It was not any apartment in
Severns. Rather it seemed like one of the big old panelled chambers
which he remembered from visits to the Midland country houses of his
mother's family, when he had arrived after dark and had been put to
sleep in a great bed in a place lit with dancing firelight. In the
morning it had looked only an ordinary big room, but at that hour of the
evening it had seemed an enchanted cave. The dream-room was not unlike
these, for there was the scent of a wood fire and there were dancing
shadows, but he could not see clearly the walls or the ceiling, and
there was no bed. In one corner was a door which led to the outer world,
and through this he knew that he might on no account pass. Another door
faced him, and he knew that he had only to turn the handle for it to
open.

But he did not want to, for he understood quite clearly what was beyond.
There was a second room just like the first one; he knew nothing about
it except that opposite the entrance another door led out of it. Beyond
was a third chamber, and so on interminably. There seemed to the boy to
be no end to this fantastic suite. He thought of it as a great snake of
masonry, winding up hill and down dale away to the fells or the sea....
Yes, but there _was_ an end. Somewhere far away in one of the rooms was
a terror waiting on him, or, as he feared, coming towards him. Even now
it might be flitting from room to room, every minute bringing its soft
tread nearer to the chamber of the wood fire.

About this time of his life the dream was an unmitigated horror. Once it
came while he was ill with a childish fever, and it sent his temperature
up to a point which brought Dr. Moreton galloping from Axby. In his
waking hours he did not, as a rule, remember it clearly; but during the
fever, asleep and awake, that sinuous building, one room thick, with
each room opening from the other, was never away from his thoughts. It
amazed him to think that outside were the cheerful moors where he hunted
for plovers' eggs, and that only a thin wall of stone kept him from
pleasant homely things. The thought used to comfort him when he was
awake, but in the dream it never came near him. Asleep, the whole world
seemed one suite of rooms, and he, a forlorn little prisoner, doomed
grimly to wait on the slow coming through the many doors of a fear which
transcended word and thought.

He became a silent, self-absorbed boy, and, though the fact of his
nightmares was patent to the little household, the details remained
locked up in his head. Not even to Uncle Appleby would he tell them,
when that gentleman, hurriedly kind, came to visit his convalescent
ward. His illness made Vernon grow, and he shot up into a lanky, leggy
boy. But the hills soon tautened his sinews, and all the time at his
preparatory school he was a healthy and active child. He told me that he
tried to exorcise the dream through his religion--to "lay his burden on
the Lord," as the old evangelical phrase has it; but he signally failed,
though he got some comfort from the attempt. It was borne in on him, he
said, that this was a burden which the Lord had laid quite definitely on
him and meant him to bear like a man.

He was fifteen and at Eton when he made the great discovery. The dream
had become almost a custom now. It came in April at Severns about
Eastertide--a night's discomfort (it was now scarcely more) in the rush
and glory of the holidays. There was a moment of the old wild
heart-fluttering; but a boy's fancy is more quickly dulled than a
child's, and the endless corridors were now more of a prison than a
witch's ante-chamber. By this time, with the help of his diary, he had
fixed the date of the dream; it came regularly on the night of the first
Monday of April. Now the year I speak of he had made a long expedition
into the hills, and had stridden home-ward at a steady four miles an
hour among the gleams and shadows of an April twilight. He was alone at
Severns, so he had had his supper in the big library, where afterwards
he sat watching the leaping flames on the open stone hearth. He was very
weary, and sleep fell upon him in his chair. He found himself in the
wood-smoke chamber, and before him the door leading to the unknown....
But it was no indefinite fear that now lay beyond. He knew
clearly--though how he knew he could not tell--that each year the
something came a room nearer, and was even now but twelve rooms off. In
twelve years his own door would open, and then----

He woke in the small hours, chilled and mazed, but with a curious new
assurance in his heart. Hitherto the nightmare had left him in gross
terror, unable to endure the prospect of its recurrence, till the kindly
forgetfulness of youth relieved him. But now, though his nerves were
fluttering, he perceived that there was a limit to the mystery. Some day
it must declare itself and fight on equal terms.

The discovery opened a new stage in his life. As he thought over the
matter in the next few days he had the sense of being forewarned and
prepared for some great test of courage. The notion exhilarated as much
as it frightened him. Late at night, or on soft dripping days, or at any
moment of lessened vitality, he would bitterly wish that he had been
born an ordinary mortal. But on a keen morning of frost, when he rubbed
himself warm after a cold tub, or at high noon of summer, the adventure
of the dream almost pleased him. Unconsciously he must have braced
himself to a harder discipline. His fitness, moral and physical, became
his chief interest for reasons that would have been unintelligible to
his friends or his masters.

He passed through school--as I knew from Charles--an aloof and rather
splendid figure, a magnificent athlete with a brain as well as a body, a
good fellow in every one's opinion, but a grave one. He could have had
no real intimates, for he never shared the secret of the spring dream.
At this period, for some reason which he could not tell, he would have
burned his hand off sooner than breathe a hint of it. Pure terror
absolves from all conventions and demands a confidant, so terror, I
think, must have largely departed from the nightmare as he grew older.
Fear, indeed, remained, and awe and disquiet, but these are human
emotions, whereas terror is of hell.

Had he told any one, he would no doubt have become self-conscious and
felt acutely his difference from other people, so it was a sound
instinct which kept him silent. As it was, he seems to have been an
ordinary schoolboy, much liked, and, except at odd moments, unaware of
any brooding destiny. As he grew older, and his ambition awoke, the
moments when he remembered the dream were apt to be disagreeable, for a
boy's ambitions are strictly conventional and his soul revolts at the
abnormal. By the time he was ready for the university he wanted above
all things to run the mile a second faster than any one else, and he had
hopes of academic distinction, for he was an excellent classic. For most
of the year he lived with these hopes and was happy; then came April,
and for a short season he was groping in dark places. Just before and
after each dream he was in the mood of exasperation; but when it
actually came he was plunged in a different atmosphere, and felt the
quiver of fear and the quick thrill of expectation.

During his first year at Oxford he had made an attempt to avoid it. He
and three others were on a walking tour in Brittany in gusty spring
weather, and came late one evening to an inn by an estuary where
sea-gulls clattered about the windows. Youth-like they made a great and
foolish feast, and sat all night round a bowl of punch, while school
songs and "John Peel" contended with the dirling of the gale. At
daylight they took the road again, without having closed an eye, and
Vernon told himself that he was rid of his incubus. He wondered at the
time why he was not more cheerful, for to his surprise he had a sense of
loss, of regret, almost of disappointment.

"That was last year," he said, and he opened the little locked diary and
showed me the entry. "Last night I went to bed not knowing what to
think, but far more nervous than I had been since I was a baby. I hope I
didn't show it, but I wasn't much in the mood for guests when you turned
up."

"What happened?" I asked eagerly. "Did the dream come back?"

He nodded and passed me the diary so that I could read that morning's
entry. The dream had not failed him. Once more he had been in the
chamber with the wood fire; once again he had peered at the door and
wondered with tremulous heart what lay beyond. For the something had
come nearer by two rooms, and was now only seven doors away. I read the
bare account in his neat, precise handwriting, and it gave me a strong
impression of being permitted to peep through a curtain at a stage
mysteriously set. I noticed that he had added some lines from Keats's
_Indian Maid's Song_:

       "I would deceive her,
        And so leave her,
    But ah! she is so constant and so kind."

There was a mark of exclamation against the "she," as if he found some
irony in it.


III

He seemed to be waiting for me to speak, waiting shyly and tensely like
a child expecting the judgment of an elder. But I found it hard to know
what to say.

"That is a very wonderful story!" I ventured at last. "I am honoured
that you should have chosen me to tell it to. Perhaps it will be a
relief to you to know that some one else understands what you are going
through.... I don't suppose you want sympathy, but I would like to
congratulate you on your fortitude."

"I don't need sympathy--or congratulation. But I want help--the help of
your brain and your experience.... You see, in seven years some
tremendous experience is coming to me, and I want--I'd like--to know
what it is."

"I wonder if a good doctor wouldn't be the best person to consult."

"No, no," he cried almost angrily. "I tell you there's nothing
pathological about it--not now that I'm a man. I don't want it exorcised
as if it were an evil spell. I think--now--that I'd break my heart if it
all vanished into moonshine.... I believe in it as I believe in God, and
I'm ready to face whatever is coming. But I want to be forewarned and
forearmed, if possible, for it's going to be a big thing. If I only
knew something about what was coming--even the smallest something!"

Those were the days before psycho-analysis had become fashionable, but
even then we had psychologists, and in my bewilderment I tried that
tack.

"Might not it all spring from some fright--some strange experience at
any rate--which you had as a baby? Such things often make an abiding
impression."

He smiled. "You're still thinking it is pathological. Fright would
account for recurring nightmares, but surely not for a thing so rational
as this--a fixed day every year, the same room, the time limit. It would
not explain the thing moving on a room last year when I had no dream."

"I suppose not," I admitted. "Have you looked up your family history? I
have heard stories of inherited obsessions and premonitions--what they
call a 'weird' in Scotland."

"I thought of that, but there's nothing--nothing. There are no Milburne
records much beyond my grandfather, and by all accounts they were the
most prosaic kind of business men. My mother's family--well, there's
plenty of records there, and I've waded through most of the muniment
room at Appleby. But there's no hint of anything mysterious in the
Douglas-Ernotts. They were a time-serving lot, who knew how the cat was
going to jump, but they kept out of crime and shunned anything
imaginative like the plague. I shouldn't think one of them had ever an
ambition which couldn't be put in terms of office or money, or a regret
except that he had missed a chance of getting at the public purse.
True-blue Whigs, all of them."

"Then I'm hanged if I know what to say. But, now you've told me, I want
you to remember that you can always count on me. I may not be able to
help, but I'm there whenever you want me. Perhaps--you never know--the
thing will reveal itself more clearly in the next seven years and come
within the scope of my help. I've taken a tremendous liking to you, my
dear chap, and we're going to be friends."

He held out his hand.

"That's kind of you.... Shall I tell you what I think myself? I was
taught to believe that everything in our lives is foreordained by God.
No caprice of our own can alter the eternal plan. Now, why shouldn't
some inkling of this plan be given us now and then--not knowledge, but
just an inkling that we may be ready? My dream may be a heavenly
warning, a divine foreshadowing--a privilege, not a cross. It is a
reminder that I must be waiting with girt loins and a lit lamp when the
call comes. That's the way I look on it, and it makes me happy."

I said nothing, for I did not share his Calvinism, but I felt that
suddenly that library had become rather a solemn place. I had listened
to the vow of the young Hannibal at the altar.




CHAPTER II


I

I have a preposterous weakness for youth, and I fancy there is something
in me which makes it accept me as a coval. It may be my profession. If
you are a busy lawyer without any outside ambitions you spend your days
using one bit of your mind, and the rest remains comparatively young and
unstaled. I had no wife and few near relations, and while I was daily
growing narrower in my outlook on the present and the future I cherished
a wealth of sentiment about the past. I welcomed anything which helped
me to recapture the freshness of boyhood, and Vernon was like a spring
wind in my arid life. Presently we forgot that I was nearly twice his
age, and slipped into the manner of contemporaries. He was far more at
his ease with me than with the men of his own year. I came to think that
I was the only person in the world who _knew_ him, for though he had an
infinity of acquaintances and a good many people who ranked as friends,
I suppose I was his only comrade. For I alone knew the story of his
dreams.

My flat in Down Street became his headquarters in London, and I never
knew when he would stick his head into my Temple chambers and insist on
our dining or lunching together. In the following winter I went to
Oxford occasionally, nominally to visit Charles; but my nephew led a
much occupied life, and it generally ended by my spending my time with
Vernon. I kept a horse with the Bicester that season and we hunted
occasionally together, and we had sometimes a walk which filled the
short winter day, and dined thereafter and talked far into the night. I
was anxious to learn how his contemporaries regarded him, and I soon
found that he had a prodigious reputation, which was by no means
explained by his athletic record. He at once impressed and puzzled his
little world. I think it was the sense of brooding power about him which
attracted people and also kept them at a respectful distance. His
ridiculous good looks and his gentle courtesy seemed to mark him out for
universal popularity, but there was too much austerity for a really
popular man. He had odd ascetic traits. He never touched wine now, he
detested loose talk, and he was a little intolerant of youthful follies.
Not that there was anything of the prig in him--only that his character
seemed curiously formed and mature. For all his urbanity he had a plain,
almost rugged, sagacity in ordinary affairs, a tough core like steel
harness under a silk coat. That, I suppose, was the Calvinism in his
blood. Had he been a less brilliant figure, he would probably have been
set down as "pi."

Charles never professed to understand him, and contented himself with
prophesying that "old Vernon would be the devil of a swell some day." On
inquiry I found that none of his friends forecast any special career for
him; it would have seemed to them almost disrespectful to condescend
upon such details. It was not what Vernon would do that fired their
sluggish imaginations, but what they dimly conceived that he already
was.

There was the same fastidiousness about all his ways. I have never known
a better brain more narrowly limited in its range. He was a first-class
"pure" scholar, and had got a Craven and been _proxime_ for the
Hertford. But he was quite incapable of spreading himself, and his
prospects looked bad for "Greats" since he seemed unable to acquire the
smattering of loose philosophy demanded by that school. He was strictly
circumscribed in his general reading; I set it down at first to
insensitiveness, but came soon to think it fastidiousness. If he could
not have exactitude and perfection in his knowledge, he preferred to
remain ignorant. I saw in him the makings of a lawyer. Law was just the
subject for a finical, exact, and scrupulous mind like his. Charles had
once in his haste said that he was not a man of the world, and Charles
had been right. He was a man of his own world, not the ordinary one. So
with his intellectual interests. He would make his own culture, quite
regardless of other people. I fancy that he felt that his overmastering
private problem made it necessary to husband the energies of his mind.

During that year I think he was quite happy and at peace about the
dream. He had now stopped hoping or fearing; the thing had simply become
part of him, like his vigorous young body, his slow kindliness, his
patient courage. He rarely wanted to talk of it, but it was so much in
my thoughts that I conducted certain researches of my own. I began by
trying the psychological line, and plagued those of my acquaintances who
had any knowledge of that dismal science. I cannot say I got much
assistance. You see I had to state a hypothetical case, and was always
met by a demand to produce the patient for cross-examination--a
reasonable enough request, which of course I could not comply with. One
man, who was full of the new Vienna doctrine, talked about "complexes"
and "repressions" and suggested that the dream came from a child having
been shut up by accident in a dark room. "If you can dig the memory of
it out of his subconsciousness, you will lay that ghost," he said. I
tried one evening to awake Vernon's earliest recollections, but nothing
emerged. The dream itself was the furthest-back point in his
recollection. In any case I didn't see how such an explanation would
account for the steady development of the thing and its periodicity. I
thought I might do better with family history, and I gave up a good deal
of my leisure to the Douglas-Ernotts. There was nothing to be made of
the Ernotts--gross utilitarian Whigs every one of them. The Douglas
strain had more mystery in it, but the records of his branch of the
great Scottish house were scanty, and sadly impersonal. Douglases many
had endured imprisonment and gone to the scaffold, but history showed
them as mere sounding names, linked to forays and battles and strange
soubriquets, but as vague as the heroes of Homer. As for the Milburnes,
I got an ancient aunt who had known Vernon's father to give me her
recollections, and a friend on the Northern Circuit collected for me the
Lancashire records. The first of them had been a small farmer somewhere
on the Ribble; the second had become a mill-owner; and the third, in the
early nineteenth century, had made a great fortune, had been a friend of
William Wilberforce and later of Richard Cobden, and had sat in the
first Reform parliament. As I looked at the portrait of that whiskered
reformer, bland and venerable in his stiff linen and broadcloth, or at
the early Millais of his son, the bearded Evangelical, I wondered what
in them had gone to the making of Vernon. It was like seeking for the
ancestry of a falcon among barnyard fowls.


II

In the spring of 1914 I badly needed a holiday, and Lamancha asked me to
go cruising in his yacht. He gave me permission to bring Vernon, whom he
knew slightly, for I wanted to be near him on the first Monday of April.
We were to join the yacht at Constantinople, and cruise through the
Northern gean to Athens, and then by way of the Corinth canal to Corfu,
where we would catch the steamer for Brindisi and so home. Vernon was at
first a little disinclined, for he had a notion that he ought to be at
Severns, but when he allowed himself to be persuaded he grew very keen
about the trip, for he had been little out of England.

He and I travelled by the Orient Express to Constantinople, and after
three days there and one day at Brousa shaped our course westward. We
landed one morning on the Gallipoli peninsula, and found birds' eggs on
Achi Baba where, in a year's time, there was to be nothing but barbed
wire and trenches. We spent a day at Lemnos, which at that time few
people had visited except the British Navy, and then turned south. On
the first Monday of April we had half a gale, an uncomfortable thing in
those shallow seas. It blew itself out in the afternoon, and after tea
we anchored for the night under the lee of a big island. There was a
little bay carved out of the side of a hill; the slopes were covered
with heath and some kind of scrub, and the young green of crops showed
in the clearings. Among the thyme of the nearest headland a flock of
goats was browsing, shepherded by a little girl in a saffron skirt, who
sang shrilly in snatches. After the yeasty gean the scene was an idyll
of pastoral peace. Vernon had all day shown signs of restlessness, and
he now proposed a walk; so, leaving the others playing bridge, we two
were put ashore in the dinghy.

We walked northward towards the other horn of the bay, past little
closes of fruit blossom, and thickets of wildwood, and stony patches of
downland bright with anemones and asphodel. It was a strange, haunted
world, bathed in a twilight of gold and amethyst, filled with a thousand
aromatic scents, and very silent except for the wash of the waves and a
far-off bleating of goats. Neither of us wanted to talk, being content
to drink in the magic of the evening. Vernon walked like a man in a
dream, stopping now and then to lift his head and stare up the long
scrubby ravines to the sharp line of the crest.

Suddenly a cuckoo's note broke into the stillness and echoed along the
hillside. When it died away it seemed to be answered by a human voice,
sweet and high and infinitely remote, a voice as fugitive as a scent or
a colour.

Vernon stopped short.

"Listen to that," he cried. "It is the Spring Song. This has probably
been going on here since the beginning of time. They say that nothing
changes in these islands--only they call Demeter the Virgin Mary and
Dionysos St. Dionysius."

He sat down on a boulder and lit his pipe. "Let's burn tobacco to the
gods," he said. "It's too enchanted to hurry through.... I suppose it's
the way I've been educated, but I could swear I've known it all before.
This is the season of the Spring Festival, and you may be sure it's the
same here to-day as it was a thousand years before Homer. The winter is
over, and the Underworld has to be appeased, and then the Goddess will
come up from the shades."

I had never heard Vernon talk like this before, and I listened with some
curiosity. I am no classical scholar, but at that moment I too felt the
spell of a very ancient and simple world.

"This was the beginning of the year for the Greeks, remember," he went
on--"for the Greeks as we know them, and for the old Mediterranean
peoples before them whose ritual they absorbed. The bones of that ritual
never altered.... You have to begin with purification--to feed the
ghosts of the dead in the pot-holes with fireless and wine-less
sacrifices and so placate them, and to purify your own souls and bodies
and the earth by which you live. You have your purgation herbs like
buckthorn and agnus castus, and you have your _pharmakos_, your
scapegoat, who carries away all impurities. And then, when that is done,
you are ready for the coming of the Maiden. It is like Easter after Good
Friday--the festival after the fast and penitence. It is always the
woman that simple folk worship--the Mother who is also the Maid. Long
ago they called her Pandora or Persephone, and now they call her the
Blessed Virgin, but the notion is the same--the sinless birth of the
divine. You may be sure it is she whom the peasants in this island
worship, as their fathers did three thousand years ago--not God the
Father.

"The Greeks had only the one goddess," he went on, "though she had many
names. Later they invented the Olympians--that noisy, middle-class
family party--and the priests made a great work with their male gods,
Apollo and the like. But the woman came first, and the woman remained.
You may call her Demeter, or Aphrodite, or Hera, but she is the same,
the Virgin and the Mother, the 'mistress of wild things,' the priestess
of the new birth in spring. Semele is more than Dionysos, and even to
sophisticated Athens the Mailed Virgin of the Acropolis was more than
all the pantheon.... Don't imagine it was only a pretty fancy. The thing
had all the beauty of nature, and all the terror too." He flung back his
head and quoted some sonorous Greek.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Euripides," he replied. "It has been well translated," and he quoted:

    "'For her breath is on all that hath life, and she floats in the air
      Bee-like, death-like, a wonder.'

"I can see it all," he cried. "The sacred basket, the honey and oil and
wine, the torches crimsoning the meadows, the hushed, quiet people
waiting on the revelation. They are never more than a day or two from
starvation all the winter, and the coming of the Maiden is a matter for
them of life and death. They wait for her as devout souls to-day wait
for the Easter Resurrection. I can hear the ritual chant and the thin,
clear music of the flutes.... Yes, but they were seeing things which are
now hid from us--Dionysos with his thyrsus, and goat-feet in the
thickets, and the shadows of dancing nymphs! If you starve for three
months and put your soul into waiting for the voice from heaven, you are
in the mood for marvels. Terror and horror, perhaps, but unspeakable
beauty, too, and a wild hope. That was the Greek religion, not the
Olympians and their burnt offerings. And it is the kind of religion that
never dies."

I thought this pretty good for the scion of an evangelical family, and I
said so.

He laughed. "It isn't my own creed, you know. I dislike all kinds of
priestcraft. But, though I'm a stout Protestant, I'm inclined to think
sometimes that it is a pity that we have departed from the practice of
all other religions and left out the Mother of God.... Let's go on--I
want to see what is on the other side of the cape."

Beyond the little headland we came suddenly on a very different scene.
Here was the harbour of the island. Beside a rude quay some fisher-boats
lay at anchor with their brown sails furled. Along the water-front ran a
paved terrace, a little dilapidated and with bushes growing in the
cracks of the stones. Above rose a great building, showing to seaward as
a blank white wall pierced with a few narrow windows. At first sight I
took it for a monastery, but a second glance convinced me that its
purpose had never been religious. It looked as if it had once been
fortified, and the causeway between it and the sea may have mounted
guns. Most of it was clearly very old, but the architecture was a
jumble, showing here the enriched Gothic of Venice, and there the
straight lines and round arches of the East. It had once, I conjectured,
been the hold of some Venetian sea-king, then the palace of a Turkish
conqueror, and was now, perhaps, the manor-house of this pleasant
domain. The owners, whoever they might be, were absent, for not a
chimney smoked.

We passed the quay and wandered along the great terrace, which was as
solidly masoned as a Roman road. For a little the house hung sheer above
us, its walls level with the rock, with in three places flights of steps
from the causeway ending in small postern doors. Obviously the main
entrance was on the other side. There were no huts to be seen, and no
sign of life except a little group of fishermen below on the shore, who
were sitting round a fire over which a pot was boiling. As we continued
along the terrace beyond the house we came to orchards and olive yards,
no doubt part of the demesne, and had a glimpse of a rugged coast
running out into the sunset.

The place impressed even my sluggish fancy. This great silent castle in
the wilds, hung between sky and earth, and all rosy in the last fires of
the sun, seemed insubstantial as a dream. I should not have been
surprised if it had vanished like a mirage and left us staring at a
bare hillside. Only the solid blocks of the causeway bound us to
reality. Here, beyond doubt, men had lived and fought far back in the
ages. The impression left on my mind was of a place inhabited for ons,
sunk for the moment in sleep, but liable to awake suddenly to a fierce
life. As for Vernon he seemed positively rapt.

"There's your castle in Spain," he cried. "Odd thing! but I seem to have
seen all this before. I knew before we turned the corner that there were
olive trees there, and that the rocks tumbled just in that way into the
cove. Listen!"

The sound of voices drifted up from the beach, and there was a snatch of
a song.

"That's Antiphilos of Byzantium--you remember in the _Anthology_--the
fisher-boys singing round the broth-pot. Lord! what a haunted spot! I'd
like to spend the night here."

I can give no reason for it, but I suddenly felt a strange uneasiness,
which made me turn back and stride at a good pace along the terrace. We
seemed to have blundered outside the ordinary natural world. I had a
feverish desire to get away from the shadow of that pile of masonry, to
get beyond the headland and in sight of the yacht. The place was
wonderful, secret, beautiful, yet somehow menacing. Vernon clearly felt
nothing of all this, for he grumbled at my haste. "Hang it, we're not
walking for a wager," he complained. "There's loads of time before
dinner.... I want to stay on here a bit. I never saw such a place."

At the beginning of the paved terrace, close to the quay, we came
suddenly upon two men, probably from the fishermen's party we had seen
on the shore. They were well-set-up fellows, with handsome, clear-cut
faces, for the true Greek strain is still found in the islands. We came
on them by surprise as we turned the corner of a rock, and they may have
thought from our direction that we were coming from the house. Anyhow
they seemed to get the fright of their lives. Both leaped aside and
looked at us with startled angry eyes. Then they flung up their right
hands; and for a moment I thought they were going to attack us.

But they contented themselves with spitting on their breasts and each
holding out a clenched fist with the little finger and the thumb
extended. I had seen this before--the ancient protection against the
evil eye. But what impressed me was the expression in their faces. It
was at Vernon that they stared, and when their stare moved from him it
took in the pile of the house above. They seemed to connect us in some
way with the house, and in their eyes there was an almost animal fear
and hate.... I looked after them when they had passed, and observed that
they were hurrying with bent heads up the path which may have led to
their village.

Vernon laughed. "Queer chaps! They looked as scared as if they had seen
Pan."

"I don't like this place," I told him when we were approaching the
dinghy. "Some of your infernal gods and goddesses have got loose in it.
I feel as if I want to run."

"Hullo!" he cried. "You're getting as impressionable as a minor poet....
Hark! There it is again! Do you hear? The Spring Song?"

But the thin notes which drifted down from the upland no longer seemed
to me innocent. There was something horrible about that music.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning, when we were steaming south in calm weather with the
island already dim behind us, I found Vernon smoking peacefully on deck
and looking at sea-birds through a glass. He nodded gaily as I sat down
beside him.

"I had the dream all right--one room nearer. But the room in which I
wait has changed. It must be due to being out here, for hitherto I've
always spent April in England. I suppose I furnished it unconsciously
with things I had seen at home--there was a big lacquer cabinet for one
thing, and something like pictures or tapestry on the walls--and there
were great silver fire-dogs. But now it's quite bare. The same room of
course--I couldn't mistake it--but scarcely any furniture in it except a
dark lump in a corner.... Only the fire-dogs are the same.... Looks as
if the decks were being cleared for action."

I had expected to find him a little heavy about the eyes, but he
appeared as fresh as if he had just come from a morning swim, and his
voice had a boyish carelessness.

"Do you know," he said, "I've lost every scrap of funk or nervousness
about the dream? It's a privilege, not an incubus. Six years to wait! I
wish I knew how I was going to put them in. It will be a dull business
waiting."


III

Fate contrived that to Vernon, as to several million others, the next
four years should scarcely deserve the name of dull. By the middle of
August I was being cursed by a Guards sergeant in Chelsea barrack yard,
and Vernon was training with his Yeomanry somewhere in Yorkshire.

My path was plain compared to that of many honest men. I was a bachelor
without ties, and though I was beyond the statutory limit for service I
was always pretty hard trained, and it was easy enough to get over the
age difficulty. I had sufficient standing in my profession to enable me
to take risks. But I am bound to say I never thought of that side. I
wanted, like everybody else, to do something for England, and I wanted
to do something violent. For me to stay at home and serve in some legal
job would have been a thousand times harder than to go into the
trenches. Like everybody else, too, I thought the war would be short,
and my chief anxiety was lest I should miss the chance of fighting. I
was to learn patience and perspective during four beastly years.

I went to France in October '14, and Vernon dined with me before I
started. He had got a curious notion into his head. He thought that the
war would last for full six years, and his reason was that he was
convinced that his dream had to do with it. The opening of the last door
would be on the battlefield--of that he was convinced. The consequence
was that he was in no hurry. My nephew Charles, who was in the same
Yeomanry, spent his days pleading to be sent abroad and trying to
exchange into any unit he thought would get away first. On the few
occasions I met him he raved like a lunatic about the imbecility of a
Government that kept him kicking his heels in England. But Vernon, the
night he dined with me, was as placid as Buddha. "I'm learning my job,"
he said, "and I've a mighty lot to learn. I ought to be a fair soldier
in six years' time--just when the crisis is due." But he was very
anxious about me, and wanted to get into the Guards to be beside me.
Only his fatalism kept him from agitating for a change, for he felt that
as he had begun in the Yeomanry, Providence most likely meant him to
continue there. He fussed a good deal about how we were to correspond,
for I seemed to have taken the place of his family. But on the whole I
was happy about him, his purpose was so clear and his mind so perfectly
balanced. I had stopped thinking seriously about the dream, for it
seemed only a whimsy in the middle of so many urgent realities.

I needn't tell you the kind of time I had in France. It was a long
dismal grind, but I had the inestimable advantage of good health, and I
was never a day off duty because of sickness. I suppose I enjoyed it in
a sense; anyhow I got tremendously keen about my new profession, and
rose in it far quicker than I deserved. I was lucky, too. As you know, I
stopped something in every big scrap--at Festubert, Loos, Ginchy, Third
Ypres, Cambrai, and Bapaume--so that I might have covered my sleeve with
wound-stripes if I had been so minded. But none of the damage was
serious, and I can hardly find the marks of it to-day. I think my worst
trial was that for more than three years I never had a sight of Vernon.

He went out in the summer of '15 to the Dardanelles and was in the
Yeomanry fight at Suvla, where a bit of shrapnel made rather a mess of
his left shoulder. After that he was employed on various staff jobs, and
during '16 was engaged in some kind of secret service in the gean and
the Levant. I heard from him regularly, but of course he never spoke of
his work. He told me he had learned modern Greek and could speak it like
a native, and I fancy he had a hand in Venizelos's revolution. Then he
went back to his regiment, and was in the "Broken Spurs" division when
the Yeomanry were dismounted. He was wounded again in Palestine in '17,
just before the taking of Jerusalem, and after that was second in
command of a battalion.

When I was on leave in February '18 Charles dined with me at the Club--a
much older and wiser Charles, with an empty sleeve pinned to his tunic,
who was now employed in home training.

"It's a bloody and disgusting war," said my nephew, "and if any fellow
says he likes it, you can tell him from me that he's a liar. There's
only one man I ever met who honestly didn't mind it, and that was old
Vernon, and everybody knows that he's cracked."

He expatiated on the exact nature of Vernon's lunacy.

"Cracked--as--cracked, and a very useful kind of insanity, too. I often
wish I had half his complaint. He simply didn't give a hang for the old
war. Wasn't interested in it, if you see what I mean. Oh, brave as
you-be-damned, of course, but plenty of other chaps were brave. His was
the most cold-blooded, unearthly kind of courage. I've seen the same
thing in men who were sick of life and wanted to be killed and knew they
were going to be killed, but Vernon wasn't that sort. He had no notion
of being killed--always planning out the future and talking of what he
was going to do after the war. As you know, he got badly mauled at
Suvla, and he nearly croaked with malaria in Crete, and he had his head
chipped at Neby Samwil, so he didn't bear what you might call a charmed
life. But some little bird had whispered in his ear that he wasn't going
to be killed, and he believed that bird. You never saw a fellow in your
life so much at his ease in a nasty place.

"It wasn't that he was a fire-eater," Charles went on. "He never went
out to look for trouble. It was simply that it made no difference to him
where he was or what he was doing--he was the same composed old fish,
smiling away, and keeping quiet and attending to business, as if he
thought the whole thing rather foolishness."

"You describe a pretty high class of soldier," I said. "I can't
understand why he hasn't gone quicker up the ladder."

"I can," said Charles emphatically. "He was a first-class battalion
officer but he wasn't a first-class soldier. The trouble with him, as I
say, is that he wasn't interested in the war. He had no initiative, you
understand--always seemed to be thinking about something else. It's like
Rugby football. A man may be a fine player according to the rules, but
unless his heart is in the business and he can think out new tactics for
himself he won't be a great player. Vernon wasn't out to do anything
more than the immediate situation required. You might say he wasn't
dead-set enough on winning the war."

I detected in Charles a new shrewdness. "How did the others get on with
him?" I asked.

"The men believed in him and would have followed him into hell, and of
course we all respected him. But I can't say he was exactly popular. Too
dashed inhuman for that. He ought to fall in love with a chorus-girl and
go a regular mucker. Oh, of course, I like him tremendously and know
what a rare good fellow he is! But the ordinary simple-minded,
deserving lad jibs at Sir Galahad crossed with the low-church parson
and the 'Varsity don."

The Broken Spurs came to France in the early summer of '18, but I had no
chance of meeting them. My life was rather feverish during the last
weeks of the campaign, for I was chief staff-officer to my division, and
we were never much out of the line. Then, as you know, I nearly came by
my end in September, when the Boche made quite a good effort in the way
of a gas attack. It was a new gas, which we didn't understand, and I
faded away like the grin of the Cheshire cat, and was pretty ill for a
time in a base hospital. Luckily it didn't do me any permanent harm, but
my complexion will be greenery-yallery till the day of my death.

I awoke to consciousness in a tidy little bed to learn that the war was
all but over and the Boche hustling to make peace. It took me some days
to get my head clear and take notice, and then, one morning, I observed
the man in the bed next to me. His head was a mass of bandages, but
there was something about the features that showed which struck me as
familiar. As luck would have it, it turned out to be Vernon. He had been
badly hit, when commanding his battalion at the crossing of the Scheldt,
and for a day or two had been in grave danger. He was recovering all
right, but for a time neither of us was permitted to talk, and we used
to lie and smile at each other and think of all the stories we would
presently tell.

It was just after we got the news of the Armistice that we were allowed
to say how d'ye do. We were as weak as kittens, but I, at any rate, felt
extraordinarily happy. We had both come through the war without serious
damage, and a new world lay before us. To have Vernon beside me put the
coping-stone on my contentment, and I could see that he felt the same. I
remember the thrill I had when we could stretch out our arms and shake
hands.

Slowly we began to build up each other's records for the four years. I
soon knew, what I had guessed before, the reason of that inhuman
composure which Charles had described. Vernon had had a complete
assurance that his day of fate was not due yet awhile, and therefore the
war had taken a second place in his thoughts. Most men who fought bore
the marks of it in harder lines about the mouth and chin and older eyes.
But Vernon had kept his youth intact. His face had always had a certain
maturity beyond his years, and his eyes had been curiously watchful.
These traits were perhaps slightly intensified, but otherwise I noticed
no difference.

"You remember what I told you when we last met in October '14?" he said.
"I was wrong and I'm rather sorry. I thought the war would last for six
years, and that the last stage of my dream would be in the field. That
would have been such a simple and right solution. As it is, I must
wait."

I asked if the dream had come regularly in the past four years.

"Quite regularly," was the answer. "The room hasn't changed either,
except that the dark shadow in the corner has moved, so I think it must
be a human figure. The place is quite bare and empty now, except for the
silver fire-dogs.... I think there is a little window in the wall,
rather high up."

"You have only two years more to wait," I said, "less--a year and a
half." It was then November '18.

"I know.... But I am impatient again. I thought the climax would come in
the war, so I stopped speculating about it.... I thought I would be
called on as a soldier to do something very difficult, and I was quite
ready.... But that has all gone, and I am back in the fog. I must think
it all out again from the beginning."




CHAPTER III


The immediate consequence of peace was to keep Vernon and myself apart.
You see, we neither of us got better very quickly. When his wounds were
healed a kind of neuritis remained; he was tortured with headaches,
didn't sleep well and couldn't recover his lost weight. He was very
patient and cheerful about it, and did obediently what he was told, for
his one object seemed to be to get fit again. We returned to England
together, but presently the doctors packed him off abroad with
instructions to bask in the sun and idle at a Riviera villa which had
been dedicated to such cases. So I spent a lonely Christmas in London.

Heaven knows I had nothing to complain of compared with most fellows,
but I count the six months after the Armistice the most beastly in my
life. I had never been seriously ill before, all the four years of war I
had been brimming over with energy, and it was a new experience for me
to feel slack and under-engined. The gas had left a sort of poison in my
blood which made every movement an effort. I was always sleepy, and yet
couldn't sleep, and to my horror I found myself getting jumpy and
neurotic. The creak of a cart in the street worried me so that I wanted
to cry; London noise was a nightmare, and when I tried the country I had
a like horror of its silence. The thing was purely physical, for I found
I could think quite clearly and sanely. I seemed to be two persons, one
self-possessed enough watching the antics of the other with disgust and
yet powerless to stop them.

Acton Croke was reassuring. "You're a sick man, and you've got to behave
as such," he told me. "No attempt to get back into harness. Behave as if
you were recovering from a severe operation--regular life, no overstrain
physical or mental, simply lie fallow and let nature do its work. You
have a superb constitution which, given a chance, will pick up its
balance. But don't forget that you're passing through a crisis. If you
play the fool you may have indifferent health for the rest of your
days."

I was determined that at all events that mustn't happen, so I was as
docile as a good child. As I say, I had mighty little to complain of,
when you consider the number of good men who, far seedier than I, came
back to struggle for their daily bread. I had made a bit of money, so I
had a solid hump to live off. There was a dearth at the time of leaders
at the Bar, and I could have stepped at once into a bigger practice than
I had ever dreamed of. Also, I had a chance, if I wished, of becoming
one of the law officers of the Crown. I was still a member of
Parliament, and at the December election, though I had never gone near
the place, my old constituency had returned me with a majority of more
than ten thousand. A pretty gilded position for a demobbed soldier! But
for the present I had to put all that aside and think only of getting
well.

There has been a good deal of nonsense talked about the horror of war
memories and the passionate desire to bury them. The vocal people were
apt to be damaged sensitives, who were scarcely typical of the average
man. There were horrors enough, God knows, but in most people's
recollections these were overlaid by the fierce interest and excitement,
even by the comedy of it. At any rate that was the case with most of my
friends, and it was certainly the case with me. I found a positive
pleasure in recalling the incidents of the past four years. The war had
made me younger. You see--apart from regular officers--I had met few of
my own year and standing. I had consorted chiefly with youth, and had
recovered the standpoint of twenty years ago. That was what made my
feeble body so offensive. I could not regard myself as a man in middle
age, but as a sick undergraduate whose malady was likely to keep him out
of the Boat or the Eleven.

You would have laughed if you could have seen the way I spent my time. I
was so angry with my ill-health that I liked to keep on reminding myself
of the days when I had been at the top of my form. I remember I made out
a complete record of my mountaineering exploits, working them out with
diagrams from maps and old diaries, and telling myself furiously that
what I had once done I could do again.... I got out my old Oxford texts
and used to construe bits of the classics, trying to recapture the mood
when those things meant a lot to me.... I read again all the books which
used to be favourites, but which I hadn't opened for a score of years. I
turned up the cram books for the Bar exams, and the notes I had taken in
my early days in chambers, and the reports of my first cases. It wasn't
sentiment, but a deliberate attempt to put back the clock, and, by
recalling the feelings of twenty-five, to convince myself that I had
once been a strong man.... I even made risky experiments. I went up to
Oxford in vacation and managed to get put up in my old diggings in the
High. That would have been intolerable if they had recalled war
tragedies, but they didn't. The men who had shared them with me were all
alive--one a Colonial bishop, one a stockbroker, another high up in the
Indian Civil Service. It did me good to see the big shabby sitting-room
where, in my day, a barrel of beer had adorned one corner. In March,
too, I spent three nights at a moorland inn on the Borders which had
once been the headquarters of a famous reading-party. That was not quite
so successful, for the weather and the food were vile, and I was driven
to reflect on the difference of outlook between twenty and forty-three.

Still my childishness did me good, and I began slowly to gain ground.
The spring helped me, which was early that year, you remember, so that
the blossom had begun on the fruit trees in the first days of April. I
found that it was the time just before the war that it comforted me most
to recall, for then I had been healthy enough and a creature more near
my present state than the undergraduate of twenty. I think, too, it was
because those years were associated with Vernon. He was never much out
of my mind, and the reports from him were cheering. The headaches had
gone, he had recovered his power of sleep, and was slowly putting on
weight. He had taken to sailing a small boat again, had bought a racing
cutter, and had come in third in one of the events at the Cannes
Regatta.

I had this last news in a letter which reached me while I was staying at
Minster Carteron, and it turned my mind back to the yachting trip I had
made with Vernon in 1914 in the gean. It revived the picture I had
almost forgotten--the green island flushed with spring, the twilight
haunted with wild music, the great white house hanging like a cliff over
the sea. I had felt the place sinister--I remembered the two men with
scared faces and their charm against the evil eye--and even after five
years a faint aura of distaste lingered about the memory. That was
sufficient to awake my interest, and one afternoon I rummaged in the
library. Plakos had been the island's name, and I searched for it in
gazetteers.

It was the day of the famous April snowstorm which wrought such havoc
among English orchards. The windows of the great room were blurred with
falling snow, and the fires on the two hearths were hissing and
spluttering while I pursued my researches. Folliot, I remember, was
dozing beside one of them in an arm-chair. You know old Folliot, with
his mild cattish ways and his neat little Louis Napoleon beard. He wants
to be the Horace Walpole of our time, and publishes every few years a
book of reminiscences, from which it would appear that he has been the
confidant of every great man in Europe for the last half-century. He has
not much of a mind, but he has a good memory, and after all there is a
faint interest about anybody who has dined out in good company for fifty
years.

I woke the old fellow when I dropped by misadventure a big atlas on the
floor, and he asked testily what I was after.

"I'm trying to find a beastly Greek islet," I said. "You haven't by any
chance in your travels visited a place called Plakos?"

The name roused him. "No," he said, "but of course I have often heard of
it. It belonged to Shelley Arabin."

"Now, who on earth was Shelley Arabin?"

"You young men!" old Folliot sighed. "Your memories are so short and
your ignorance so vast. Shelley Arabin died last year, and had half a
column in the _Times_, but he will have a chapter in my memoirs. He was
one of the most remarkable men of his day. Shelley Arabin--to think you
never heard of him! Why, I knew his father."

I drew up an arm-chair to the hearth opposite him. "It's a foul
afternoon," I said, "and there's nothing to do. I want to hear about
Shelley Arabin. I take it from his name that he was a Levantine."

Folliot was flattered by my interest. He had begun to bore people, for
the war had created a mood unfavourable to his antique gossip. He still
stayed a good deal in country houses, but spent most of his time in the
libraries and got rather snubbed when he started on his reminiscences.

"Bless you, no! A most ancient English house--the Arabins of Irtling in
Essex. Gone out for good now, I fear. As a boy I remember old Tom
Arabin--a shabby old bandit, who came to London once in five years and
insulted everybody and then went back again. He used to dine with my
family, and I remember watching him arrive, for I had a boyish romance
about the man who had been a friend of Byron. Yes, he was with Byron
when he died at Missolonghi, and he was an intimate of all the poets of
that time--Byron, Shelley--he called his son after Shelley--Keats too, I
think--there's a mention of him in the _Letters_ I'm almost sure--and he
lived with Landor in Italy till they quarrelled. A most picturesque
figure, but too _farouche_ for comfort. With him a word was a blow, you
understand. He married--now, who did he marry?--one of the Manorwaters,
I fancy. Anyhow, he led her the devil of a life. He bought or stole or
acquired somehow the island of Plakos, and used it as a base from which
to descend periodically upon the civilized world. Not a pleasant old
gentleman, but amazingly decorative. You may have seen his translation
of Pindar. I have heard Jebb say that it was a marvellous piece of
scholarship, but that his English style was the exact opposite of
everything that Pindar stood for. Dear me! How short the world's memory
is!"

"I want to hear about his son," I said.

"You shall--you shall! Poor Shelley, I fear he had not the kind of
upbringing which is commonly recommended for youth. Tom disliked his
son, and left him to the care of the family priest--they were Catholics
of course. All his boyhood he spent in that island among the peasants
and the kind of raffish company that his father invited to the house.
What kind of company? Well, I should say all the varieties of humbug
that Europe produces--soldiers of fortune, and bad poets, and the gentry
who have made their native countries too hot for them. Plakos was the
refuge of every brand of outlaw, social and political. Ultimately the
boy was packed off to Cambridge, where he arrived speaking English a
generation out of date, and with the tastes of a Turkish pasha, but with
the most beautiful manners. Tom, when he wasn't in a passion, had the
graciousness of a king, and Shelley was a young prince in air and
feature. He was terribly good-looking in a way no man has a right to
be, and that prejudiced him in the eyes of his young contemporaries.
Also there were other things against him."

"How long did Cambridge put up with him?" I asked.

"One year. There was a scandal--rather a bad one, I fancy--and he left
under the blackest kind of cloud. Tom would not have him at home, but he
gave him a good allowance, and the boy set up in London. Not in the best
society, you understand, but he had a huge success in the half-world.
Women raved about him, and even when his reputation was at its worst, he
would be seen at a few good houses.... I suppose a lawyer does not
concern himself with poetry, but I can assure you that Shelley Arabin
made quite a name for himself in the late eighties. I believe
bibliophiles still collect his first editions. There was his epic on the
Fall of Jerusalem--a very remarkable performance as a travesty of
history. And there were his love sonnets, beautiful languid things,
quite phosphorescent with decay. He carried Swinburne and Beaudelaire a
stage further. Well, that mood has gone from the world, and Shelley
Arabin's reputation with it, but at one time sober critics felt obliged
to praise him even when they detested him. He was a red-hot
revolutionary, too, and used to write pamphlets blackguarding British
policy.... I saw quite a lot of him in those days, and I confess that I
found him fascinating. Partly it was his beauty and his air, partly that
he was like nobody I had ever met. He could talk wonderfully in his
bitter, high-coloured way. But I never liked him. Oh no, I never liked
him. There was always a subtle cruelty about him. Old Tom had been a
blackguard, but he had had a heart--Shelley, behind all his brilliance,
was ice and stone. I think most people came to feel this, and he had
certainly outstayed his welcome before he left London."

"What made him leave?"

"His father's death. Tom went out suddenly from old age just before the
war between Greece and Turkey. Shelley left England with a great
gasconade of Greek patriotism--he was going to be a second Byron and
smite the infidel. By all accounts he did very little. I doubt if he had
old Tom's swashbuckling courage: indeed I have heard ugly stories of the
white feather.... Anyhow England knew him no more. He married a girl he
met in Rome--Scotch--a Miss Hamilton, I think, but I never knew of what
Hamiltons. He treated her shamefully after the Arabin tradition. She did
not live long, and there were no children, I believe, and now Shelley is
dead and the Arabins are extinct. Not a pleasant family, you will say,
and small loss to the world. But there was a certain quality, too, which
under happier circumstances might have made them great. And assuredly
they had looks. There was something almost unholy about Shelley's beauty
in his early days. It made men instinctively dislike him. If I had had a
son I should have liked him to be snub-nosed and bullet-headed, for
ugliness in the male is a security for virtue and a passport to
popularity."

This was probably a sentence from one of Folliot's silly books of
reminiscences. My curiosity about Plakos was not exhausted, and I asked
what kind of life had been lived there. "The house is a tremendous
affair," I said, "with room for a regiment."

"I know," said Folliot, "and it was often full. I had always a great
curiosity to go there, though I daresay I should have found the
atmosphere too tropical for my taste. Shelley never invited me, but if I
had arrived he could scarcely have turned me away. I entertained the
notion at one time, but I kept putting it off till my taste for that
kind of adventure declined.... No, I have never been nearer Plakos than
Athens, where I once spent a fortnight when Fanshawe was our Minister
there. I asked about Shelley, of course, and Fanshawe gave me an ugly
report. Plakos, you must know, is a remote and not over-civilized island
where the writ of the Greek Government scarcely runs, so it was very
much a patriarchal despotism. I gathered that Shelley was not a popular
landlord. There had been many complaints, and one or two really horrid
stories of his treatment of the peasantry. It seemed that he saw a good
deal of company, and had made his house a resort for the rascality of
Europe. The rascality--not merely the folly, as in his father's time.
The place fairly stank in Fanshawe's nostrils. 'The swine still calls
himself an Englishman,' he told me, 'still keeps his English domicile,
so we get the blame of his beastliness. And all the while, too, he is
sluicing out venom about England. He is clever enough to keep just
inside the tinpot Greek law. I'd give a thousand pounds to see him
clapped in gaol.'"

I had heard all I wanted to know, and picked up a book, while Folliot
busied himself with the newspaper. A little later he interrupted me.

"I have just remembered something else. You knew Wintergreen, the
archologist? He was at the British school in Athens, and then excavated
Hittite remains in Asia Minor. Poor fellow, he died of dysentery as an
intelligence officer in Mesopotamia. Well, Wintergreen once spoke to me
of Plakos. I suppose he had been there, for he had been everywhere. We
were talking, I remember, one night in the club about Gilles de
Rais--the French Bluebeard, you know, the friend of Joan of Arc--and I
asked if anything approaching that kind of miscreant still existed on
the globe. Somebody said that the type was fairly common in the East,
and mentioned some Indian potentate. Wintergreen broke in. 'You don't
need to go to the East,' he said. 'You can find it in Europe,' and he
started to speak of Shelley Arabin. I don't recollect what exactly he
said, but it was pretty bad, and of course strictly libellous. By his
account Shelley had become a connoisseur and high priest of the
uttermost evil, and the cup of his iniquities was nearly full. It seemed
that Wintergreen had been in the island excavating some ancient remains
and living among the peasants, and had heard tales that sickened him.
He thought that some day soon the great house would go flaming to
heaven, set alight by an outraged people.

"Well, it hasn't happened." Folliot returned to his _Times_. "Shelley
has died in his bed, which is perhaps more than he deserved. Not
agreeable people, I fear. It is a good thing that he left no posterity."

That evening I thought a good deal about Plakos. I was glad to have
discovered the reason for the aversion which I had felt on our visit,
and was inclined to believe that I must be a more sensitive person than
my friends would admit. After that the subject passed from my mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

By the end of April I was so much recovered that I went back to my
practice at the Bar, and was almost snowed under by the briefs which
descended on my shoulders as soon as there was a rumour of my return. It
would have been a difficult job to select, and I daresay I should have
slipped into overwork, had I not been made a Law Officer. That, so to
speak, canalized my duties, and since my task was largely novel and, at
the moment, of extraordinary interest, the change completed my
convalescence. In May I was my normal self, and when Vernon returned to
England in June he found me eating, sleeping, and working as in the old
days--a fitter man, indeed, than in 1914, for the war seemed to have
drawn off the grosser humours of middle life.

Vernon, too, was fit again. If a young man starts with a fine
constitution and a strong character, and applies all the powers of his
mind to the task of getting well, he is almost certain to succeed. He
came back to London a lean, sun-burnt creature, with an extraordinarily
_rarified_ look about him. He had lost nothing of his youth, indeed he
scarcely looked his twenty-five years; but he had been fined down and
tautened and tested, so that his face had a new spirituality in it as if
there was a light shining behind. I have noticed the same thing in other
cases of head wounds. You remember how Jim Barraclough, who used to be a
heavy red-haired fellow, came out of hospital looking like a saint in an
Italian primitive.

Vernon was changed in other ways. You see, he belonged to a generation
which was nearly cleaned out by the war, and he had scarcely a friend of
his own year left except my nephew Charles. That should not have meant
so much to him as to other people, for he had never depended greatly on
friends, but I think the thought of all the boys who had been at school
and college with him lying under the sod gave him a feeling of desperate
loneliness, and flung him back more than ever on himself. I could see
that even I meant less to him than before, though I still meant a good
deal.

I was partly to blame for that, perhaps. The war had altered everybody's
sense of values, and unconsciously I had come to take his dream less
seriously. I had got into a mood of accepting things as they came and
living with short horizons, and the long perspective which dominated his
thoughts seemed to me a little out of the picture. I was conscious of
this change in myself, and strove not to show it, but he must have felt
it, and the blinds came down ever so little between us. For it was clear
that the dream meant more than ever to him. He was in the last lap now,
had rounded the turn and was coming up the straight, and every nerve and
sinew were on the stretch. I couldn't quite live up to this ardour,
though I tried hard, and with that lightning instinct of his he was
aware of it, and was sparing of his confidences. The thing made me
miserable, for it increased his loneliness, and I longed for the next
year to be over and the apocalyptic to be driven out of his life. The
mere fact that I took for granted that nothing would happen showed that
I had lost my serious interest in his dream. Vernon had to outgrow a
childish fancy, as one outgrows a liability to chicken-pox--that was
all.

He had become harder too, as a consequence of loneliness. You remember
that curious summer of 1919 when everybody was feverishly trying to
forget the war. They were crazy days, when nobody was quite himself.
Politicians talked and writers wrote clotted nonsense, statesmen chased
their tails, the working man wanted to double his wages and halve his
working hours at a time when the world was bankrupt, youth tried to make
up for the four years of natural pleasure of which it had been cheated,
and there was a general loosening of screws and a rise in temperature.
It was what I had looked for, and I sympathized with a good deal of it,
but, Lord bless me! Vernon was like an Israelitish prophet at a feast of
Baal. I recalled what Charles had said about him in the war, and I
wondered if Charles had not been right. Vernon seemed destitute of
common humour.

I took him to dine at the Thursday Club, which had just been started.
There he behaved well enough, for he found people who could talk his own
language. But I noticed how complete was his apathy when politics were
the subject of conversation. He was as uninterested in the setting to
rights of the world as a hermit in a cell. He was oddly uncompanionable,
too. Burminster's rollicking chaff got nothing out of him but a Mona
Lisa smile. "What has happened to the boy?" that worthy asked me
afterwards. "Shell-shock or what? Has he left a bit of his mind out in
France? He's the most buttoned-up thing I ever struck."

He was worse with the ordinary young man. I gave a dinner or two for
him, and, as we had one club in common, we occasionally found ourselves
together in smoking-room gatherings. I had an immense pity for youth
struggling to adjust its poise, and often I could have found it in my
heart to be annoyed with Vernon's uncanny balance, which was not far
from egotism. These poor lads were splashing about in life, trying to
find their feet, and for their innocent efforts he had only a calm
contempt. He sat like a skeleton at the feast, when they chattered about
their sporting and amorous ventures, and discussed with abysmal
ignorance how money was to be made in a highly expensive world. I have a
vivid recollection of his courteous, insulting aloofness.

"What rot to say that the war has done any good," he remarked to me once
as we walked back to the flat. "It has killed off the men, and left only
the half-wits."

Charles, now endeavouring without much success to earn a living in the
City, was vehement on the subject, and he had a characteristic
explanation. "Vernon has become a wonderful old fossil," he said. "Not
gone to seed, like some of the rest, but a fossil--dried up--mummified.
It isn't healthy, and I'm pretty certain about the cause. He's got
something on his mind, and I shouldn't be surprised if he was preparing
to come an everlasting cropper. I think it's a girl."

It certainly was not a girl. I often wished it had been, for to a fellow
as lonely as Vernon the best cure, as I saw it, would have been to fall
in love. People had taken furiously to dancing, and that summer, though
there were no big balls, every dinner-party seemed to end in a dance,
and every restaurant was full of rag-time music and ugly transatlantic
shuffling. For youth it was a good way of working off restlessness, and
foolish middle age followed the guiding of youth. I had no fault to find
with the fashion. The poor girls, starved for four years of their
rights, came from dull war-work and shadowed schoolrooms determined to
win back something. One could forgive a good deal of shrillness and bad
form in such a case. My one regret was that they made such guys of
themselves. Well-born young women seemed to have taken for their models
the cretinous little oddities of the film world.

One night Vernon and I had been dining at the house of a cousin of mine
and had stayed long enough to see the beginning of the dance that
followed. As I looked on, I had a sharp impression of the change which
five years had brought. This was not, like a pre-war ball, part of the
ceremonial of an assured and orderly world. These people were dancing as
savages danced--to get rid of or to engender excitement. Apollo had been
ousted by Dionysos. The nigger in the band, who came forward now and
then and sang some gibberish, was the true master of ceremonies. I said
as much to Vernon, and he nodded. He was watching with a curious
intensity the faces that passed us.

"Everybody is leaner," I said, "and lighter on their feet. That's why
they want to dance. But the women have lost their looks."

"The women!" he murmured. "Look at that, I beseech you!"

It was a tall girl, who was dancing with a handsome young Jew, and
dancing, as I thought, with a notable grace. She was very slim, and
clearly very young, and I daresay would have been pretty, if she had let
herself alone. I caught a glimpse of fine eyes, and her head was set on
her neck like a flower on its stalk. But some imp had inspired her to
desecrate the gifts of the Almighty. Her hair was bobbed, she had too
much paint and powder on her face, she had some kind of barbaric jewels
in her ears which put her head out of drawing, and she wore a
preposterous white gown. Don't ask me to describe it, for I am not an
expert on dress; but it seemed to me wrong by every canon of decency and
art. It had been made, no doubt, with the intention of being
provocative, and its audacious lines certainly revealed a great deal of
its wearer's body. But the impression was rather of an outrage
perpetrated on something beautiful, a foolish ill-bred joke. There was
an absurd innocence about the raddled and half-clad girl--like a child
who for an escapade has slipped down to the drawing-room in her
nightgown.

Vernon did not feel as I felt. His eyes followed her for a little, and
then he turned to me with a face like stone.

"So much for our righteous war," he said grimly. "It's to produce _that_
that so many good fellows died."




CHAPTER IV


Early in November I went down to Wirlesdon for the first big covert
shoot. I am not a great performer with the gun, and you will not find me
often in the first flight in the hunting-field, but, busy as I was, I
made time now for an occasional day's shooting or hunting, for I had
fallen in love with the English country, and it is sport that takes you
close to the heart of it. Is there anything in the world like the corner
of a great pasture hemmed in with smoky brown woods in an autumn
twilight: or the jogging home after a good run when the moist air is
quickening to frost and the wet ruts are lemon-coloured in the sunset;
or a morning in November when, on some upland, the wind tosses the
driven partridges like leaves over tall hedges, through the gaps of
which the steel-blue horizons shine? It is the English winter that
intoxicates me more even than the English May, for the noble bones of
the land are bare, and you get the essential savour of earth and wood
and water.

It was a mild evening as we walked back from the last stand to the
house, and, though so late in the year, there was still a show in the
garden borders. I like the rather languid scent of autumn flowers when
it is chastened by a touch of wood smoke from the gardeners' bonfires;
it wakes so many memories and sets me thinking. This time my thoughts
were chiefly of Vernon, whom I had not seen for several months. We were
certainly drawing apart, and I didn't see how it could be avoided. I was
back in the ordinary world again, with a mighty zest for it, and he was
vowed and consecrated to his extraordinary obsession. I could not take
it seriously myself, but about one thing I was grave enough--its effect
on Vernon. Nothing would happen when next April came--of that I was
convinced, but if nothing happened what would Vernon do? The linch-pin
would be out of his life. At twenty-six, with a war behind him, a man
should have found his groove in life, but at twenty-six Vernon would be
derelict, like one who has trained himself laboriously for an occupation
which is gone. I put aside the notion that anything could happen, for in
my new mood I was incredulous of miracles. But my scepticism did not
dispel my anxiety.

The hall at Wirlesdon is a big, comfortable, stone-flagged Georgian
place, and before one of the fire-places, with two great Coromandel
screens for a shelter, there was the usual encampment for tea. It was a
jolly sight--the autumn dusk in the tall windows, the blazing logs, and
the group of fresh-coloured young faces. I had gone straight to the
covert-side that morning, so I had still to greet my hostess, and I was
not clear who were staying in the house. Mollie Nantley, busied in
making tea, muttered some indistinct introductions, and I bowed to
several unfamiliar young women in riding-habits who were consuming
poached eggs. I remembered that this was the Saturday country for the
Mivern, and presently one of the red backs turned towards me, and I saw
that it was Vernon.

The Mivern cut-away became him uncommonly well, and his splashed
breeches and muddy boots corrected the over-precision which was apt to
be the fault of his appearance. Once he would have made a bee-line
towards me, but now he contented himself with a smile and a wave of his
hand. We were certainly drifting apart.... He was talking to one of the
Nantley girls, a pretty shy creature, just out of the schoolroom, and
Tom Nantley, her father, made a third in the conversation. As I drank my
tea I looked round the little gathering. There were Bill Harcus and
Heneage Wotton and young Cheviot who had been of the shooting party.
Lady Altrincham was there with her wonderful pearls--she is one of those
people whose skin nourishes pearls, and she is believed to take them to
bed with her. Young Mrs. Lamington, who had been walking with the guns,
was kicking the burning logs with her mannish shoes and discussing
politics with the son of the house, Hugo Brune, who was in Parliament.
There were several girls, all with clear skins and shorn curls, and
slim, straight figures. I found myself for the first time approving the
new fashion in clothes. These children looked alert and vital like
pleasant boys, and I have always preferred Artemis to Aphrodite.

But there was one girl who caught and held my eyes. She had been
hunting, and her flat-brimmed hat was set deep on her small head and
rather tilted back, for her bobbed hair gave it no support. Her figure,
in a well-cut coat and habit, was graceful and workmanlike, and there
was a rakish elegance about her pose, as she stood with one foot on the
stone curb of the hearth, holding a tea-cup as a Wise Virgin may have
carried a lamp. But there was little of the Wise Virgin about her face.
Any colour the weather might have whipped into it had disappeared under
a recent powdering, and my impression was of very red lips against a
dead white background. She had been talking over her left shoulder to
her hostess, and now her eyes were roaming about the place, with a kind
of arrogant nonchalance. They met mine, and I saw that they were
curiously sullen and masterful. Then they passed from me, for a
middle-aged lawyer did not interest them, dwelt for a moment on Cheviot
and Wotton, who were having an argument about woodcock, and finally
rested on Vernon. She had the air of being bored with her company.

Vernon, talking idly to Tom Nantley, suddenly found himself addressed.

"Your mare wants practice in jumping stone walls," she said. "You'll cut
her knees to ribbons. Better try her in caps next time."

You can cut into a conversation gracefully, and you can cut in rudely.
This girl did it rudely. I could see Vernon's face harden as he replied
that this bit of the Mivern country was strange to him.

"It's the only decent going in the shire. I'm sick of the rotten
pastures in the vale country. What on earth does one hunt for except for
pace?"

"Some of us hunt to follow hounds," was Vernon's curt rejoinder.

She laughed--a rather ugly, hard little laugh. "Follow your grandmother!
If hounds are all you care about you may as well go beagling! Give me a
cigarette, will you?"

"Sorry. I haven't any," he replied.

Several men proffered cases. "You'll find heaps, Corrie dear," Mollie
Nantley said, "in the box behind you." The girl reached behind her for
the box and offered it to Vernon. When he declined she demanded a match,
and Vernon, with an ill grace, lit her cigarette. It was plain that he
detested her manners.

So most certainly did I. The little incident I had witnessed was oddly
ill-bred and brazen. And yet "brazen" was not quite the word, for it
implies self-consciousness. This masterful girl had no shadow of doubt
as to her behaviour. She seemed to claim the right to domineer, like a
barbaric princess accustomed to an obsequious court. Yes, "barbaric" was
the right epithet. Mollie had called her "Corrie," and the name fitted
her. No doubt she had been baptized Cora or Corisande, names which for
me recalled the spangles and sawdust of a circus.

She had decided that Vernon was the most interesting of the lot of us,
and she promptly annexed him, moving to his side and swinging on an arm
of a tapestry chair. But Vernon was a hard fellow to drive against his
will. His air was a frigid courtesy, and presently he went up to his
hostess. "We must be off, Lady Nantley," he said, "for it's getting
dark, and we are eight miles from home." He collected two of the men and
three of the hunting girls, like a chaperone at a ball, shook hands with
Mollie and Tom, nodded to me, and marched to the door.

The girl, who was apparently my fellow-guest, followed him with her
eyes, and her scarlet lips seemed to twitch in a flicker of amusement.
If she had been rude, so had been Vernon, and, had she known it, it was
something of a triumph to have cracked his adamantine good manners. When
the party had gone, she strolled to the front of the hearth, stretched
her arms above her head, and yawned.

"Lord, how stiff I am!" she proclaimed. "Heigho for a bath! I hope
you've the right kind of bath salts, Mollie, or I'll be on crutches
to-morrow. Come and talk to me, Dolly!" She picked up her crop, made a
noose with the lash around the waist of one of the daughters of the
house and drew her with her. The child, to my surprise, went smilingly.

I, too, had a bath, and read papers till it was time to dress. I felt
happier about Vernon, for the sight of his unmistakable ill-temper
seemed to bring him into the common human category. I had never seen
him show dislike so markedly to any human being as to that atrocious
girl, and I considered that it would be a good thing if his Olympian
calm could be ruffled more often in the same way. I wondered casually
who she could be, and why the Nantleys should have her to stay. Probably
she was some daughter of profiteers who had bought her way into an
unfamiliar world, though that would not explain her presence at
Wirlesdon. But an ill-bred young woman did not interest me enough for my
thoughts to dwell long on her, and my only prayer was that I might not
be placed next her at dinner.

It was a very young party which I found assembled in Mollie's
sitting-room, and a hasty glance convinced me that I would be sent in
with Mrs. Lamington. Old Folliot was there, and presently he sidled up
to me to tell me a new piece of gossip. Having been out all day in
strong air I was ravenous, and impatient for the announcement of dinner.

"Now, who are we waiting for?" Tom Nantley fussed around. "Oh, Corrie,
of course. Corrie is always late. Confound that girl, she has probably
gone to sleep in her bath. Pam, you go and dig her out.... Hullo, here
she comes at last!"

In her hunting-kit she had looked handsome in an outlandish way, but as
she swept down--without any apology--on our hungry mob there was no
question of her beauty. For one thing she walked superbly. Few women can
walk, and the trouble about the new fashion in clothes is that it
emphasizes ugly movement. She wore a gown of a shade of green which
would have ruined most people's looks, but she managed to carry it off,
and something more. For a young girl she was far too heavily made up,
but that, too, she forced one to accept. I suddenly had a new view of
her, and realized that there was quality here, a masterfulness which
might charm, an arrogance which perhaps was not _blas_ but virginal.

I realized, too, that I had seen her before. This was the girl whom
Vernon and I had watched at my cousin's dance in July. I wondered if he
had understood this in their encounter at the tea-table.

I had barely recovered from this surprise, when I had another. Folliot's
hand was on my arm and he was purring in my ear:

"We talked once of Shelley Arabin, and I told you he left no children.
My memory betrayed me, for that young lady is his daughter. She has the
true Arabin eyes and all their unfathomable conceit. She is what in my
day we would have called 'shocking bad form.' Rather common, I think."

From which I knew that she must have dealt hardly with old Folliot.

At dinner I sat between Mollie and Mrs. Lamington, and since my hostess
had the garrulous Cheviot on her right hand, I devoted myself to my
other neighbour. That charming lady, who gives to political intrigue
what time she can spare from horseflesh, had so much to tell me that I
had no need to exert myself. She was eloquent on the immense importance
of certain pending Imperial appointments, especially on the need of
selecting men with the right kind of wives, the inference being that
George Lamington's obvious deficiencies might be atoned for by the
merits of his lady. I must have assented to everything that she said,
for she told Mollie afterwards that the war had improved me enormously
and had broadened my mind. But as a matter of fact I was thinking of
Miss Arabin.

She sat nearly opposite to me, and I could watch her without staring.
Her manner seemed to alternate between an almost hoydenish vivacity and
complete abstraction. At one moment she would have her young neighbours
laughing and protesting volubly, and then she would be apparently deaf
to what they said, so that they either talked across her or turned to
their other partners.... In these latter moods her eyes seemed almost
sightless, so wholly were they lacking in focus or expression. Sometimes
they rested on the table flowers, sometimes on the wall before her,
sometimes on Mrs. Lamington and myself--but they were always unseeing.
Instead of their former sullenness, they seemed to have a brooding
innocence.... I noticed, too, the quality of her voice when she spoke.
It was singularly arresting--clear, high, and vital. She talked the
usual staccato slang, but though she rarely finished a sentence
grammatically, the cadence and intonation were always rounded off to a
satisfying close. Only her laugh was ugly, as if it were a forced
thing. Every other sound that came from her had a musical completeness.

She had the foreign trick of smoking before the close of dinner, and, as
if to preserve her beautiful fingers from contamination, before lighting
a cigarette she would draw on her right hand a silk glove of the same
colour as her gown. The Nantley's seemed to be accustomed to this habit,
but it at last withdrew Mrs. Lamington from her Imperial propaganda.

"What an extraordinary young woman!" she whispered to me. "Who is she?
Is she a little mad, or only foreign?"

I paraphrased old Folliot in my reply: "Pure English, but lives abroad."

The green glove somehow recalled that April evening at Plakos. This
outlandish creature was interesting, for God knew what strange things
were in her upbringing and her ancestry. Folliot was an old fool; she
might be odious, but she was assuredly not "common." As it chanced the
end of dinner found her in one of her fits of absent-mindedness, and she
trailed out of the room with the other women like a sleep-walker. The
two youngsters who had been her companions at table stared after her
till the door closed.

Later in the drawing-room I returned to my first impression. The girl
was detestable. I would have liked a sleepy evening of bridge, but the
young harpy turned the sober halls of Wirlesdon into a cabaret. She
behaved like a man-eating shark, and swept every male, except Tom
Nantley, Folliot, and myself, into her retinue. They danced in the
library, because of its polished empty floor, and when I looked in I saw
that the kind of dances were not what I should have chosen for youth,
and was glad that Pam and Dolly had been sent to bed. I heard a clear
voice declaring that it was "devilish slow," and I knew to whom the
voice belonged. At the door I passed old Folliot on his way to his room,
and he shook his head and murmured "Common." This time I almost agreed
with him.

In the drawing-room I found my hostess skimming the weekly press, and
drew up a chair beside her. Mollie Nantley and I count cousinship,
though the relation is slightly more remote, and she has long been my
very good friend. She laid down her paper and prepared to talk.

"I was so glad to see Colonel Milburne again. He looks so well too. But,
Ned dear, you ought to get him to go about more, for he's really a
little old-maidish. He was scared to death by Corrie Arabin."

"Well, isn't she rather--shall we say disconcerting? More by token, who
is she?"

"Poor little Corrie! She's the only child of a rather horrible man who
died last year--Shelley Arabin. Did you never hear of him? He married a
sort of cousin of mine and treated her shamefully. Corrie had the most
miserable upbringing--somewhere in Greece, you know, and in Rome and
Paris, and at the worst kind of girls' school where they teach the
children to be snobs and powder their noses and go to confession. The
school wouldn't have mattered, for the Arabins are Romans, and Corrie
couldn't be a snob if she tried, but her home life would have ruined St.
Theresa. She was in London last summer with the Ertzbergers, and I was
rather unhappy about her living among cosmopolitan Jew _rastaquoures_,
so I am trying to do what I can for her this winter. Fortunately she has
taken madly to hunting, and she goes most beautifully. She has never had
a chance, poor child. You must be kind to her, Ned."

I said that I was not in the habit of being brutal to young women, but
that she was not likely to want my kindness. "She seems to be a success
in her way. These boys follow her like sheep."

"Oh, she has had one kind of success, but not the best kind. She casts
an extraordinary spell over young men, and does not care a straw for one
of them. I might be nervous about Hugo, but I'm not in the least, for
she is utterly sexless--more like a wild boy. It is no good trying to
improve her manners, for she is quite unconscious of them. I don't think
there is an atom of harm in her, and she has delightful things about
her--she is charming to Pam and Dolly, and they adore her, and she is
simply the most honest creature ever born. She must get it from her
mother, for Shelley was an infamous liar."

Mollie's comely face, with her glorious golden-red hair slightly
greying at the temples, had a look of compassionate motherliness. With
all her vagueness, she is one of the shrewdest women of my acquaintance,
and I have a deep respect for her judgment. If she let her adored Pam
and Dolly make friends of Miss Arabin, Miss Arabin must be something
more than the cabaret girl of my first impression.

"But I'm not happy about her," Mollie went on. "I can't see her future.
She ought to marry, and the odds are terribly against her marrying the
right man. Boys flock after her, but the really nice men--like Colonel
Milburne--fly from her like the plague. They don't understand that her
bad form is not our bad form, but simply foreignness.... And she's so
terribly strong-minded. I know that she hates everything connected with
her early life, and yet she insists on going back to that Greek place.
Her father left her quite well off, I believe--Tom says so, and he has
looked into her affairs--and she ought to settle down here and
acclimatize herself. All her superficial oddities would soon drop off,
for she is so clever she could make herself whatever she wanted. It is
what she wants, too, for she loves England and English ways. But there
is a touch of 'daftness' about her, a kind of freakishness which I can
never understand! I suppose it is the Arabin blood."

Mollie sighed.

"I try to be tolerant about youth," she added, "but I sometimes long to
box its ears. Besides, there is the difficulty about the others. I am
quite sure of Corrie up to a point, but I can't be responsible for the
young men. George Cheviot shows every inclination to make a fool of
himself about her, and what am I to say to his mother? Really, having
Corrie in the house is like domesticating a destroying angel."

"You're the kindest of women," I said, "but I think you've taken on a
job too hard for you. You can't mix oil and wine. You'll never fit Miss
Arabin into your world. She belongs to a different one."

"I wonder what it is?"

"A few hours ago I should have said it was the world of cabarets and
Riviera hotels and Ertzbergers. After what you have told me I'm not so
sure. But anyhow it's not our world."

As I went to bed I heard the jigging of dance music from the library,
and even in so large a house as Wirlesdon its echoes seemed to pursue me
as I dropped into sleep. The result was that I had remarkable dreams, in
which Miss Arabin, dressed in the spangles of a circus performer and
riding a piebald horse, insisted on my piloting her with the Mivern,
while the Master and Vernon looked on in stony disapproval.

The next morning was frosty and clear, and I came down to breakfast to
find my hostess alone in the dining-room.

"Corrie behaved disgracefully last night," I was informed. "She started
some silly rag with George Cheviot, and made hay of Mr. Harcus's
bedroom. Tom had to get up and read the Riot Act in the small hours. I
have been to her room and found her asleep, but as soon as she wakes I
am going to talk to her very seriously. It is more than bad manners--it
is an offence against hospitality."

I went to church with Tom and his daughters, and when we returned we
found Miss Arabin breakfasting before the hall fire on grapes and
coffee, with the usual young men in attendance. If she had been given a
lecture by her hostess, there was no sign of it in her face. She looked
amazingly brilliant--all in brown, with a jumper of brown arabesque and
long amber ear-rings. A russet silk glove clothed the hand in which she
held her cigarette.

Vernon came over to luncheon and sat next to Mollie, while at the other
end of the table I was placed between Miss Arabin and Lady Altrincham.
The girl scarcely threw a word to me, being occupied in discussing,
quite intelligently, with Hugo Brune the international position of
Turkey. I could not avoid overhearing some of their talk, and I realized
that when she chose she could behave like a civilized being. It might be
that Mollie's morning discourse had borne fruit. Her voice was
delightful to listen to, with its full, clear tones and delicate
modulations. And then, after her habit, her attention wandered, and
Hugo's platitudes fell on unheeding ears. She was staring at a picture
of a Jacobean Nantley on the wall, and presently her eyes moved up the
table and rested on Vernon.

She spoke to me at last.

"Who is the man next to Mollie--the man who came to tea last night? You
know him, don't you?"

I told her his name.

"A soldier?" she asked.

"Has been. Does nothing at present. He has a place in Westmorland."

"You are friends?"

"The closest." There was something about the girl's brusqueness which
made me want to answer in monosyllables. Then she suddenly took my
breath away.

"He is unhappy," she said. "He looks as if he had lost his way."

She turned to Hugo and, with an urbanity which I had thought impossible,
apologized for her inattention, and took up the conversation at the
point at which she had dropped it.

Her words made me keep my eyes on Vernon. Unhappy! There was little sign
of it in his lean smiling face, with the tanned cheeks and steady eyes.
Mollie was clearly delighted with him; perhaps her maternal heart had
marked him down for Dolly. Lost his way? On the contrary he seemed at
complete ease with the world. Was this strange girl a sorceress to
discover what was hidden deep in only two men's minds? I had a sense
that Vernon and Miss Arabin, with nothing on earth in common, had yet a
certain affinity. Each had a strain of romance in them--romance and the
unpredictable.

Vernon had motored over to Wirlesdon and proposed to walk back, so I
accompanied him for part of the road. I was glad of a chance for a talk,
for I was miserably conscious that we were slipping away from each
other. I didn't see how I could help it, for I was immersed in practical
affairs, while he would persist in living for a dream. Before the war I
had been half under the spell of that dream, but four years' campaigning
had given me a distaste for the fantastic and set my feet very solidly
on the rock of facts. Our two circles of comprehension, which used to
intersect, had now become self-contained.

I asked him what he was doing with himself, and he said hunting, and
shooting, and dabbling in books. He was writing something--I think about
primitive Greek religion, in consequence of some notions he had picked
up during his service in the gean.

"Seriously, old fellow," I said, "isn't it time you settled down to
business? You are twenty-five, you have first-class brains, and you are
quite fit now. I can't have you turning into a _flneur_."

"There is no fear of that," he replied rather coldly. "I am eager for
work, but I haven't found it yet. My training isn't finished. I must
wait till after next April."

"But what is going to happen after that?"

"I don't know. I must see what happens _then_."

"Vernon," I cried, "we are old friends, and I am going to speak bluntly.
You really must face up to facts. What is going to happen next April?
What _can_ happen? Put it at its highest. You may pass through some
strange mental experience. I can't conceive what it may be, but suppose
the last door does open and you see something strange and beautiful or
even terrible--I don't know what. It will all happen inside your mind.
It will round off the recurring experiences you have had from childhood,
but it can't do anything more."

"It will do much more," he said. "It will be the crisis of my life....
Why have you become so sceptical, Ned? You used to think as I do about
it."

"It will only be a crisis if you make it so, and it's too risky.
Supposing, on the other hand, that nothing happens. You will have keyed
your whole being up to an expectation which fails. You will be derelict,
cut clean from your moorings. It's too risky, I tell you."

He shook his head. "We have fallen out of understanding each other. Your
second alternative is impossible. I know it in my bones. Something will
happen--must happen--and then I shall know what I have to do with my
life. It will be the pistol-shot for the start."

"But, my dear old man, think of the hazard. You are staking everything
on a wild chance. Heaven knows, I'm not unsympathetic. I believe in
you--I believe in a way in the reality of the dream. But life is a
prosaic thing, and if you are to have marvels in it you should take them
in your stride. I want to see you with some sort of policy for the
future, and letting the last stage of your dream drop in naturally into
a strategic plan. You can't, at twenty-six, sit waiting on a revelation.
You must shape your own course, and take the revelation when it comes.
If you don't, you'll find yourself derelict. Damn it, you're far too
good to be a waif."

He smiled a little sadly. "We're pretty far apart now, I'm afraid. Can't
you see that the thing is too big a part of me to be treated as a
side-show? It's what I've been sent into the world for. I'm waiting for
my marching orders."

"Then you're waiting for a miracle," I said testily.

"True. I am waiting for a miracle," he replied. "We needn't argue about
it, Ned, for miracles are outside argument. In less than six months I
will know. Till then I am content to live by faith."

After leaving him, I walked back to the house in an uncomfortable frame
of mind. I realized that the affection between us was as deep as ever,
but I had a guilty sense of having left him in the lurch. He was alone
now, whereas once I had been with him, and I hated to think of his
loneliness.

As I crossed the bridge between the lakes I met Miss Arabin sauntering
bareheaded in the autumn sunlight. I would have passed on, with a curt
greeting, for I was in no mood to talk trivialities to a girl I
disliked, but to my surprise she stopped and turned with me up the long
grassy aisle which led to the gardens.

"I came out to meet you," she said. "I want to talk to you."

My response cannot have been encouraging, but she took no notice of
that.

"You're a lawyer, aren't you?" she went on. "Mollie says you are very
clever. You look clever."

I daresay I grinned. I was being comprehensively patronized.

"Well, I want you to help me. I have some tiresome legal complications
to disentangle, and my solicitor is a sheep. I mean to sack him."

I explained the etiquette of my profession.

"Oh, then you can tell him what to do. You'll understand his silly talk,
which I don't. You make him obey you."

"My dear young lady," I said, "I cannot undertake private business. You
see I'm in the employ of the Government."

"Don't be afraid, I can pay you all right." The words were too nave to
be insulting.

I said nothing, and she darted before me and looked me in the face.

"You mean that you won't help me?" she asked.

"I mean that I'm not allowed," I replied.

Without another word she swung round and disappeared up a side glade. As
she vanished among the beech trees, a figure as russet as the drift of
leaves, I thought I had never seen anything more quick and slender, and
I fervently hoped that I should never see her again.




CHAPTER V


In that hope I was mistaken. A fortnight later the Treasury Solicitor
sent me the papers in one of those intricate international cases which
were the debris of the war. It was a claim by a resident abroad, who had
not lost his British nationality, for compensation for some oppressive
act of one of the transient Greek Governments. I left the thing to my
"devil," and just skimmed his note before the necessary conference with
the plaintiff's solicitors. To my surprise I saw that it had to do with
the island of Plakos and the name of Arabin.

Mr. Mower, of the reputable firm of Mower and Lidderdale, was not unlike
a sheep in appearance--a Leicester ewe for choice. He had a large pale
high-boned face, rimless spectacles, a crop of nice fleecy white hair,
and the bedside manner of the good family solicitor. My hasty study of
the papers showed me that the oppressive acts were not denied, but that
the title of the plaintiff was questioned.

"This is a matter of domestic law," I said--"the _lex loci rei sit_. If
the title to the land is disputed, it is a case for the Greek courts."

"We have reason to believe that the defence is not seriously put
forward, for the title is beyond dispute, and we are at a loss to
understand the attitude of the Greek Government. The documents are all
in our possession, and we took Mr. Blakeney's advice on them. His
opinion is among the papers left with you--and you will see that he has
no doubt on the matter."

Mr. Blakeney certainly had not, as I saw from his opinion, nor had my
"devil." The latter characterized the defence as "monstrous." It seemed
to be based on an arbitrary act of the old Greek National Assembly of
1830. My note said that the title was complete in every respect, and
that the attempt to question it seemed to be a species of insanity. A
name caught my attention.

"What is Kor?" I asked.

"It is Miss Arabin's Christian name. Greek, I presume," said Mr. Mower,
very much in the tone in which Mr. Pecksniff observed, "Pagan, I regret
to say."

I read the note again, and Blakeney's opinion. Blakeney was an authority
from whom I was not disposed to differ, and the facts seemed too patent
for argument. As I turned over the papers I saw the name of another
solicitor on them.

"You have not always acted for the Arabin family?" I asked.

"Only within the last few months. Derwents were the family solicitors,
but Miss Arabin was dissatisfied with them and withdrew her business.
Curiously enough, they advised that the claim of the Greek Government
was good, and should not be opposed."

"What!" I exclaimed. Derwents are one of the best firms in England, and
the senior partner, Sebastian Derwent, was my oldest client. He was not
only a sound lawyer, but a good scholar and a good fellow. What on earth
had induced him to give such paradoxical advice?

I told Mr. Mower that the matter seemed plain enough, but that for my
own satisfaction I proposed to give further consideration to the papers.
I took them home with me that evening, and the more I studied them the
less I could understand Derwent's action. The thing seemed a bluff so
impudent as to be beyond argument. The abstract of title was explicit
enough, and Blakeney, who had had the original documents, was emphatic
on the point. But the firm of Derwents was not in the habit of acting
without good cause.... I found myself becoming interested in the affair.
Plakos was still a disquieting memory, and the outrageous girl at
Wirlesdon was of a piece with its strangeness.

A day or two later I was dining at the Athenum before going down to the
House, and I saw Sebastian Derwent eating a solitary meal at an adjacent
table. I moved over beside him, and after some casual conversation I
ventured to sound him on the subject. With another man it might have
been a delicate task, but we were old and confidential friends.

I told him I had had the Plakos case before me. "You used to act for the
Arabins?" I said.

He nodded, and a slight embarrassment entered his manner. "My father and
grandfather, too, before me. The firm had a difficult time with old Tom
Arabin. He had a habit of coming down to the office with a horsewhip,
and on one occasion my grandfather was compelled to wrest it from him,
break it over his knee, and pitch it into the fire."

"I can imagine easier clients. But I am puzzled about that preposterous
Greek claim. I can't think how it came to be raised, for it is sheer
bluff."

He reddened a little, and crumbled his bread.

"I advised Miss Arabin not to dispute it," he said.

"I know, and I can't imagine why. You advised her to sit down under a
piece of infamous extortion."

"I advised her to settle it."

"But how can you settle a dispute when all the rights are on one side?
Do you maintain that there was any law or equity in the Greek case?"

He hesitated for a second. "No," he said, "the claim was bad in law. But
its acceptance would have had certain advantages for Miss Arabin."

I suppose I looked dumbfounded. "It's a long story," he said, "and I'm
not sure that I have the right to tell it to you."

"Let us leave it at that, then. Of course it's no business of mine." I
did not want to embarrass an old friend.

But he seemed disinclined to leave it. "You think I have acted
unprofessionally?" he ventured.

"God forbid! I know you too well, and I don't want to poke my nose into
private affairs."

"I can tell you this much. Miss Arabin is in a position of extreme
difficulty. She is alone in the world, without a near relation. She is
very young, and not quite the person to manage a troublesome estate."

"But surely that is no reason why she should surrender her patrimony to
a bogus demand?"

"It would not have been exactly surrender. I advised her not to submit
but to settle. Full compensation would have been paid if she had given
up Plakos."

"Oh, come now," I cried. "Who ever heard of voluntary compensation being
paid by a little stony-broke Government in Eastern Europe?"

"It would have been arranged," he said. "Miss Arabin had friends--a
friend--who had great influence. The compensation was privately settled,
and it was on a generous scale. Miss Arabin has fortunately other
sources of income than Plakos: indeed, I do not think she draws any
serious revenue from the island. She would have received a sum of money
in payment, the interest on which would have added substantially to her
income."

"But I still don't see the motive. If the lady is not worried about
money, why should her friends be so anxious to increase her income?"

Mr. Derwent shook his head. "Money is not the motive. The fact is that
Plakos is a troublesome property. The Arabin family have never been
popular, and the inhabitants are turbulent and barely civilized. The
thing is weighing on her mind. It is not the sort of possession for a
young girl."

"I see. In order to rid Miss Arabin of a _damnosa hreditas_ you entered
into a friendly conspiracy. I gather that she saw through it."

He nodded. "She is very quick-witted, and was furious at the questioning
of her title. That was my mistake. I underrated her intelligence. I
should have had the thing more ingeniously framed. I can assure you that
my last interview with her was very painful. I was forced to admit the
thinness of the Greek claim, and after that I had a taste of Tom
Arabin's temper. She is an extraordinary child, but there is wonderful
quality in her, wonderful courage. I confess I am thankful as a lawyer
to be rid of her affairs, but as a friend of the family I cannot help
being anxious.... She is so terribly alone in the world."

"That is a queer story," I said. "Of course you behaved as I should have
expected, but I fancy that paternal kindliness is thrown away on that
young woman. I met her a few weeks ago in a country house, and she
struck me as peculiarly able to look after herself. One last question.
Who is the friend who is so all-powerful at Athens?"

"That I fear I am not at liberty to tell you," was the answer.

This tale whetted my curiosity. From old Folliot I had learned something
of the record of the Arabins, and I had my own impression of Plakos as
clear as a cameo. Now I had further details in my picture. Kor Arabin
(odd name! I remembered from my distant schooldays that Kor was Greek
for a "maiden"--it had nothing to do with Corisande of the circus) was
the mistress of that sinister island and that brooding house of a people
who detested her race. There was danger in the place, danger so great
that some friend unknown was prepared to pay a large price to get her
out of it, and had involved in the plot the most decorous solicitor in
England. Who was this friend? I wanted to meet him and to hear more of
Plakos, for I realized that he and not Derwent was the authority.

Speculation as to his identity occupied a good deal of my leisure, till
suddenly I remembered what Lady Nantley had told me. Miss Arabin had
been living in London with the Ertzbergers before she came to Wirlesdon.
The friend could only be Theodore Ertzberger. He had endless Greek
connections, was one of the chief supporters of Venizelos, and it was
through his house that the new Greek loan was to be issued. I had met
him, of course, and my recollection was of a small bright-eyed man with
a peaked grey beard and the self-contained manner of the high financier.
I had liked him, and found nothing of the _rastaquoure_ in him to which
Mollie objected. His wife was another matter. She was a large,
flamboyant Belgian Jewess, a determined social climber, and a great
patron of art and music, who ran a salon, and whose portraits were to be
found in every exhibition of the young school of painters. It was borne
in on me that my curiosity would not be satisfied till I had had a talk
with Ertzberger.

Lady Amysfort arranged the meeting at a Sunday luncheon, when Madame
Ertzberger was mercifully stricken with influenza.

Except for the hostess, it was a man's party, and afterwards she
manoeuvred that Ertzberger and I should be left alone in a corner of the
big drawing-room.

I did not waste time beating about the bush, for I judged from his face
that this man would appreciate plain dealing. There was something simple
and fine about his small regular features and the steady regard of his
dark eyes.

"I am glad to have this chance of a talk with you," I said. "I have
lately been consulted about Plakos, and Miss Arabin's claim against the
Greek Government. Also, a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting
Miss Arabin. The whole business interests me strongly--not as a lawyer
but as a human being. You see, just before the war I happened to visit
Plakos, and I can't quite get the place out of my head. You are a friend
of hers, and I should like to know something more about the island. I
gather that it's not the most comfortable kind of estate."

He looked me straight in the face. "I think you know Mr. Sebastian
Derwent," he said.

"I do. And he gave me a hint of Miss Arabin's difficulties, and the
solution proposed. His conduct may not have been strictly professional,
but it was extraordinarily kind. But let me make it quite clear that he
never mentioned your name, or gave me any sort of clue to it. I guessed
that you were the friend, because I knew that Miss Arabin had been
staying in your house."

"You guessed rightly. It is not a thing that I naturally want made
public, but I am not in the least ashamed of the part I played. I
welcome the opportunity of discussing it with you. It is a curious
thing, but Miss Arabin has already spoken of you to me."

"She asked me to advise her, and I'm afraid was rather annoyed when I
told her that I couldn't take private practice."

"But she has not given up the notion. She never gives up any notion. She
has somehow acquired a strong belief in your wisdom."

"I am obliged to her, but I am not in a position to help."

He laid his hand on my arm. "Do not refuse her," he said earnestly.
"Believe me, no woman ever stood in more desperate need of friends."

His seriousness impressed me. "She has a loyal one in you, at any rate.
And she seems to be popular, and to have a retinue of young men."

He looked at me sharply. "You think she is a light-headed girl, devoted
to pleasure--rather second-rate pleasure--a little ill-bred perhaps. But
you are wrong, Sir Edward. Here in England she is a butterfly--dancing
till all hours, a madcap in town and in the hunting-field, a bewitcher
of foolish boys. Oh, bad form, I grant you--the worst of bad form. But
that is because she comes here for an anodyne. She is feverishly gay
because she is trying to forget--trying not to remember that there is
tragedy waiting behind her."

"Where?" I asked.

"In the island of Plakos."

Tragedy--that was the word he used. It had an incongruous sound to me,
sitting in a warm London drawing-room after an excellent luncheon, with
the sound of chatter and light laughter coming from the group around my
hostess. But he had meant it--his grave voice and burdened face showed
it--and the four walls seemed to fade into another picture--a twilight
by a spring sea, and under a shadowy house two men with up-lifted hands
and hate and fear in their eyes.

"If you will do me the honour to listen," Ertzberger was speaking, "I
should like to tell you more about Miss Arabin's case."

"Have you known her long?" I asked. A sudden disinclination had come
over me to go further in this affair. I felt dimly that if I became the
recipient of confidences I might find myself involved in some
distasteful course of action.

"Since she was a child. I had dealings with her father--business
dealings--he was no friend of mine--but there was a time when I often
visited Plakos. I can claim that I have known Miss Arabin for nearly
fifteen years."

"Her father was a bit of a blackguard?"

"None of the words we use glibly to describe evil are quite adequate to
Shelley Arabin. The man was rotten to the very core. His father--I
remember him too--was unscrupulous and violent, but he had a heart. And
he had a kind of burning courage. Shelley was as hard and cold as a
stone, and he was also a coward. But he had genius--a genius for
wickedness. He was beyond all comparison the worst man I have ever
known."

"What did he do?" I asked. "I should have thought the opportunities for
wrong-doing in a remote island were limited."

"He was a student of evil. He had excellent brains and much learning,
and he devoted it all to researches in devilry. He had his
friends--people of his own tastes, who acknowledged him as their master.
Some of the gatherings at Plakos would have made Nero vomit. Men and
women both.... The place stank of corruption. I have only heard the
orgies hinted at--heathenish remnants from the backstairs of the Middle
Ages. And on the fringes of that hell the poor child grew up."

"Unsmirched?"

"Unsmirched! I will stake my soul on that. A Muse, a Grace, a nymph
among satyrs. Her innocence kept her from understanding. And then as she
grew older and began to have an inkling of horrors, she was in flaming
revolt.... I managed to get her sent away, first to school, then to my
wife's charge. Otherwise I think there would have been a tragedy."

"But surely with her father's death the danger is gone."

He shook his head. "Plakos is a strange place, for the tides of
civilization and progress seem to have left it high and dry. It is a
relic of old days, full of wild beliefs and pagan habits. That was why
Shelley could work his will with it. He did not confine his evil-doing
to his friends and the four walls of his house. He laid a spell of
terror on the island. There are horrid tales--I won't trouble you with
them--about his dealings with the peasants, for he revelled in
corrupting youth. And terror grew soon into hate, till in his last days
the man's nerve broke. He lived his last months in gibbering fear. There
is something to be said after all for medival methods. Shelley was the
kind of scoundrel whom an outraged people should have treated with
boiling oil."

"Does the hatred pursue his daughter?" I asked.

"Most certainly. It took years for Plakos to recognize Shelley's
enormities, and now the realization has become cumulative, growing with
every month. I have had inquiries made--it is easy for me since I have
agents everywhere in the gean--and I can tell you the thing has become
a mania. The war brought the island pretty near starvation, for the
fishing was crippled and a succession of bad seasons spoiled the
wretched crops. Also there was a deadly epidemic of influenza. Well, the
unsettlement of men's minds, which is found all over the world to-day,
has become in Plakos sheer madness. Remember, the people are primitive,
and have savagery in their blood and odd faiths in their hearts. I do
not know much about these things, but scholars have told me that in the
islands the old gods are not altogether dead. The people have suffered,
and they blame their sufferings on the Arabins, till they have made a
monstrous legend of it. Shelley is in hell and beyond their reach, but
Shelley's daughter is there. She is the witch who has wronged them, and
they are the kind of folk who are capable of witch-burning."

"Good God!" I cried. "Then the girl ought never to be allowed to
return."

"So I thought, and hence my little conspiracy which failed. I may tell
you in confidence that it was I who prompted the action of the Greek
Government, and was prepared to find the compensation. But I was met by
a stone wall. She insists on holding on to the place. Worse, she insists
on going back. She went there last spring, and the spring is a perilous
time, for the people have had the winter to brood over their hatred. I
do not know whether she is fully conscious of the risk, for sometimes I
think she is still only a child. But last year she was in very real
danger, and she must have felt it. Behind all her bravado I could see
that she was afraid."

It was an odd tale to hear in a commonplace drawing-room, and it was
odder to hear it from such a narrator. There was nothing romantic about
Ertzberger. I daresay he had the imaginative quickness of his race, but
the dominant impression was of solid good sense. He looked at the thing
from a business man's point of view, and the cold facts made him
shudder.

"What on earth is her reason?" I asked. "Has she any affection for
Plakos?"

"She hates it. But there is some stubborn point of honour which forbids
her to let it go. She has her grandfather's fierce obstinacy. Fate has
dared her to defend her own, and she has accepted the challenge.... It
is not merely the sense of property. I think she feels that she has a
duty--that she cannot run away from the consequences of her father's
devilry. Her presence there at the mercy of the people is a kind of
atonement."

"Has she any friends in the island?"

"An old steward is the only man in the house. She may have her
well-wishers outside, but they cannot be many, for she has not lived
continuously there for years. Last spring I tried to have her guarded,
but she saw through my plan and forbade it. All I could do was to have
the place watched on my own account. This winter my information is that
things are worse. There is famine in the hills, and the hillmen are
looking with jealous eyes towards the house by the sea. The stories grow
wilder, too."

"What kind?"

"Oh, witchcraft. That the Arabins are sorcerers, and that she herself is
a witch. Every misfortune in the island is laid to her account. God
knows what may happen this spring, if she persists in going back! My
hope was that she might find some lover who would make her forget the
obsession, but on the contrary the obsession has made her blind to
lovers. Perhaps you have noticed it.... She seems to flirt outrageously,
but she keeps every man at a distance.... Now, do you understand Miss
Arabin a little better?"

I was beginning to. A picture was growing up in my mind of something
infinitely pathetic, and terribly alone. A child terrified by a
nightmare life which she did not understand--carried off to a new
environment from which she extracted what was most feverish and vulgar,
for she had no canons, yet keeping through it all a pitiful
innocence--returning to a half-comprehension which revolted her
soul--resolute to face the consequences of the past with an illogical
gallantry. I did not know when I had heard a tale that so moved me.

"You will not refuse her if she asks your help?" Ertzberger pleaded.

"But what can I do?" I said. "I'm a lawyer, and she doesn't want legal
advice, even if I were free to give it her."

"She has got the notion that you can help her. Don't ask me why or how.
Call it a girl's fancy and make the best of it. I cannot influence her,
Derwent couldn't, but you may, because for some reason or other she
believes that you are wise.... I think... I think that she thinks that
you can tell her what precisely she has to fear in Plakos. There is a
mass of papers, you know."

"What to fear!" I exclaimed. "Surely you have just made that plain. A
famished and half-civilized peasantry with a long record of ill
treatment. Isn't that enough?"

"There may be something more," Ertzberger said slowly. "She has an idea
that there is something more ... and she is terrified of that something.
If you can get rid of her terrors you will be doing a humane act, Sir
Edward. The trouble, as I have told you, is that she will take so few
into her confidence."

"Look here, Mr. Ertzberger," I said. "I will be quite frank with you.
Miss Arabin did not attract me--indeed I have not often been more
repelled by a young woman. But what you have said puts a new complexion
on her behaviour. Tell her I am willing to do my best for her, to advise
her, to help her in any way I can. But if she wouldn't listen to you,
you may be certain she won't listen to me."

"That's very good of you," he said, rising. "She proposes to go to
Plakos in March. Pray God we can put some sanity into her in the next
three months."




CHAPTER VI


Two days later I had to go north by an early train from Euston, and
opposite my platform a special was waiting to take a hunting party down
to somewhere in the Shires. Around the doors of the carriages stood a
number of expensive-looking young people, among whom I recognized Miss
Arabin. She wore a long fur coat, and sniffed at a bunch of violets,
while in her high, clear voice she exchanged badinage with two young
men. As she stood with one foot on the carriage step, her small head
tilted backward, her red lips parted in laughter, it was hard to connect
her with the stricken lady of Ertzberger's story. Just as the special
was leaving, I saw Vernon hurry up, also in hunting-kit. He cast one
glance at Miss Arabin, and found a seat in another carriage. I hoped the
Pytchley would have a fast day, for I did not see these two fraternizing
during waits at covert-side.

Curiously enough I saw the girl again the same week, also in a railway
train. I was returning from Liverpool, and our trains halted beside each
other at Rugby. She was alone in her carriage, the winter dusk was
falling, but the lights were not yet lit, and I saw her only faintly,
silhouetted against the farther window. She was not asleep, but her
head was sunk as if in a dream. In the few seconds during which I
watched I had a strong impression of loneliness, almost of dejection.
She was alone with her thoughts, and they were heavy.

That evening, on my return to my flat, I found a big parcel of papers.
Characteristically there was no covering letter or identification of any
sort, but a glance showed me what they were. My time after dinner that
night was at my own disposal, and I devoted it to reading them. I
believe I would have put aside work of whatever urgency for that
purpose, for Plakos had begun to dominate my thoughts.

The papers were a curious jumble--no legal documents, but a mass of
family archives and notes on the island. I observed that there was
nothing concerned with Shelley. Most of the things had to do with old
Tom Arabin--correspondence, original and copied, which had passed
between him and his friends or enemies. There were letters from Byron
and Shelley and Trelawny, one from no less a person than Sir Walter
Scott, many from John Cam Hobhouse, official dispatches from the British
Foreign Office, a formal note or two from Castlereagh, and several long
and interesting epistles from Canning, who seemed to have had some
friendship for the old fellow. There was a quantity, too, of
correspondence with Continental statesmen, and I observed several famous
names. All this I put on one side, for it did not concern my purpose.

Then there was old Tom Arabin's diary, which I skimmed. It was a very
human and explosive document, but there was little about Plakos in it.
Tom was more interested in the high politics of Europe than in the
little domain he had acquired. Next I turned up a manuscript history of
the island in French, written apparently about 1860 by a Greek of the
name of Karapanos. This was a dull work, being merely a summary of the
island's record under Venetian and Turkish rule, and the doings of its
people in the War of Liberation. Then came a bundle of early
nineteenth-century maps and charts, and some notes on olive culture.
There was a batch, too, of verses in Greek and English, probably Tom's
work and not very good. There was a pedigree of the Arabin family in the
old Irtling days, and a great deal more junk which had not even an
antiquarian interest. I shoved away the papers with a sense of failure.
There was nothing here to throw light on Plakos; if such material
existed it must have been in Shelley's papers, of which his daughter had
doubtless made a bonfire.

Then I noticed something among the notes on olive culture, and drew out
a thick, old-fashioned envelope heavily sealed with green wax, which
bore the Arabin device of a Turk's head. I opened it and extracted a
sheet of yellowish parchment, covered closely with Greek characters. I
was taught Greek at school, though I have forgotten most of it, but I
never professed to be able to read even the printed Greek of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This document seemed to be of that
date, and its insane ligatures and contractions completely defeated me.
But there might be something in these hieroglyphics, so I bundled up the
rest of the papers and locked the envelope in a dispatch box.

Next day I paid a visit to a Chancery barrister of my acquaintance whose
hobby was medival Greek, and who had written a monograph on Aldus
Manutius. He examined the thing with delight, pronounced the calligraphy
fifteenth century, and promised to write out the contents for me in
decent Greek script.

It was not till early in the New Year that I got the manuscript back
from him. The task, he said, had been very difficult, and though he was
pretty certain that he had got the transliteration correct, he did not
profess to be able to construe it. "I'm a typographer," he wrote, "not a
scholar. The thing, too, is obviously corrupt, and I should call it the
work of an uneducated man who copied what he did not understand. But it
is very curious. It seems to be an account of a place called Kyntho.
Better show it to----" and he mentioned several names.

I did not happen to know any of the people he cited, and it occurred to
me that I might consult Vernon. He was, I knew, a fine scholar, and he
had kept up his interest in Greek literature. So I sent the original and
the modern version to him, saying that the document had come into my
hands professionally and I should like to know if he could make anything
of it.

Next day I had Vernon on the telephone and he seemed to be excited.
"Where on earth did you pick up that thing?" he asked. "I suppose it
isn't a fake?"

"Genuine enough," I replied, "but I can't tell you its story yet. Can
you make sense of it?"

"I wouldn't say exactly 'sense,' but I can translate it after a fashion.
I worked at it last night till the small hours. If I knew the
_provenance_ of the manuscript, I might be able to understand it better.
Come and dine to-night, and we'll talk about it."

Vernon had taken a flat in Cleveland Row, and it was a proof of our
gradual estrangement that till that evening I had never been inside its
doors. Indeed we had not met since that Sunday at Wirlesdon.

"I saw you at Euston one morning before Christmas," I said. "Miss Arabin
was going to hunt in the same train."

"Miss Arabin?" he puzzled. "I don't think I know----"

"The queer girl who was at Wirlesdon."

"Is that her name? I didn't know it. She rides well, but her manners are
atrocious. Lord, how I dislike these _dracins_! Let's get dinner over,
for I've a lot to say to you about your jigsaw puzzle. It's extremely
interesting, you know."

Later in the evening he put before me several sheets of foolscap on
which he had written the translation in his small beautiful hand.

"The thing is headed _Ta Exotika_," he said. "That puzzled me at first,
till I remembered the phrase in Basil of Csarea. It was the word used
by the early Christians to describe the old divinities. Whoever wrote
this--I don't mean the fifteenth-century scribe, but the original
author--was no doubt a Christian, and he is describing a belief and a
rite which existed in his time at a place called Kyntho."

"Where is that?"

"I'm hanged if I know. It's a fairly common place name in Greece.
There's one in Arcadia."

I read his translation and could not make much of it. It reminded me of
a schoolboy's version of a bit of Herodotus. "In Kyntho," said the
writer, "there is a custom at the Spring Festival of welcoming the Queen
(_Despoina_ was the word) with the rites of the tympanon and the kestos,
such as they use in the Mysteries. There is a certain sacred place, a
well beside a white cypress, from which all save the purified are
excluded. In Kyntho the Queen is known as Fairborn (Kalligenia). In
winter the Queen is asleep, but she wakes in Spring, wherefore the
Spring month is called by her name...." After this came a fuller
description of the rites and a lot of talk about "mantic birds."

"There's nothing much in the first part," said Vernon. "It's the
ordinary ceremony of the rebirth of Demeter. But notice that she is
called 'Lady of the Wild Things.' There was a mighty unpleasant side to
Demeter as well as an idyllic one, and it didn't do to take liberties
with the Queen of the Shades. But read on."

The writer went on to say that in time of great distress at Kyntho
there was a different ceremony. It then became necessary to invite not
only the Mistress but the Master. For this purpose a virgin and a youth
must be chosen and set apart in a hallowed place, and fed upon sacred
food. The choosing was done by the victor in a race, who was given the
name of King. Then on the appointed day, after the purification, when
the dithyramb had been sung, Bromios would be born from Semele in the
fire, and with him would come the Mistress. After that the place would
be loved by the Gods, and corn, and oil, and wine would be multiplied.

That was the gist of the story. The manuscript must have been imperfect,
for there were gaps and some obvious nonsense, and there were fragments
of verse quoted which I took to be part of the dithyramb. One ran like
this:

    "Io, Kouros most great. I give thee hail.
     Come, O Dithyrambos, Bromios come, and bring with thee
     Holy hours of thy most holy Spring....
     Then will be flung over earth immortal a garland of flowers,
     Voices of song will rise among the pipes,
     The Dancing Floor will be loud with the calling of crowned Semele."

I laid the paper down. Vernon was watching me with bright eyes.

"Do you see what it is? Some of those lines I recognize. They come from
the Hymn of the Kouretes, which was discovered the other day in Crete,
and from the Pan to Dionysos found at Delphi, and there is a fragment
of Pindar in them too. We know Kor, the Maiden, and we know the Kouros,
who might be any male god--Dionysos or Zeus, or Apollo--but this is the
only case I ever heard of where both Kor and Kouros are found in the
same ceremony. Kyntho, wherever it was, must have fairly gone on the
bust.... It's amazingly interesting, and that's why I want to know the
story of the manuscript. I tell you it's a find of the first importance
to scholarship. Look at the other things too--the sacred race, and the
winner called the King, just like the Basileus at the Olympic games.

"And there's more," he went on. "Look at the passage about the hallowing
of the maiden and the youth. How does it go?" He picked up the paper and
read: "'Then the Consecrator shall set aside a youth and a virgin, who
shall remain consecrate in a sanctity which for all others shall be a
place unapproachable. For seven days they shall be fed with pure food,
eggs, and cheese, and barley-cakes, and dried figs, and water from the
well by the white cypress.' Do you see what that means? It was a human
sacrifice. The fellow who wrote this skates lightly over the facts--I
don't believe he was a Christian after all, or he wouldn't have taken it
so calmly. The boy and the girl had to die before the Gods could be
re-born. You see, it was a last resource--not an annual rite, but one
reserved for a desperate need. All the words are ritual words--_horkos_,
the sanctuary, and _abatos_, the tabu place, and _hosioter_, the
consecrator. If we knew exactly what _hosiotheis_ meant we should know a
good deal about Greek religion. There were ugly patches in it. People
try to gloss over the human sacrifice side, and of course civilized
Greeks, like the Athenians, soon got rid of it; but I haven't a doubt
the thing went on all through classical times in Thessaly, and Epirus,
and Arcadia, and some of the islands. Indeed, in the islands it survived
till almost the other day. There was a case not so long ago in
Santorini."

He pressed me to tell him the origin of the paper, but I felt reluctant
to mention Miss Arabin. He was so deeply prejudiced against the girl,
that it seemed unfair to reveal to him even the most trivial of her
private affairs. I put him off by saying it was the property of a
client, and that I would find out its history and tell him later.

"I have made a copy of the Greek text," he said. "May I keep it?"

I told him, certainly. And that was all that happened during the
evening. Formerly we would have sat up talking and smoking till all
hours, but now I felt that the curtain was too heavy between us to allow
of ordinary conversation. We would get at once into difficult topics.
Besides, I did not want to talk. The fact was that I was acquiring an
obsession of my own--a tragic defiant girl moving between mirthless
gaiety and menaced solitude. She might be innocent of the witchcraft in
which Plakos believed, but she had cast some outlandish spell over me.

Before the end of the week Miss Arabin rang me up.

"You're Sir Edward Leithen? I sent you some papers. Have you looked at
them?"

I told her I had.

"Then you had better come and talk to me. Come on Saturday and I'll give
you luncheon. Half-past one."

There was no word of thanks for my trouble, but I obeyed the summons as
if it had been a royal command. She had taken a flat in a block off
Berkeley Square, and I wondered what sort of environment she had made
for herself. I think I expected a slovenly place full of cushions and
French novels and hot-house flowers. Instead I found a large room wholly
without frippery--a big bare writing-table, leather arm-chairs like a
man's smoking-room, and on the walls one or two hunting prints and some
water-colour sketches of English landscape. There were few books, and
those I looked at were county history. It was a mild frosty day, and the
windows were wide open. The only decorations were some dogwood branches
and hedgerow berries--the spoil which townsfolk bring back in winter
from country week-ends.

She was in tweeds, for she was off to Wirlesdon that afternoon,
and--perhaps in my honour--she had forborne to powder her face. Once
again I was struck by the free vigour of her movements, and the quick
vitality of her eyes. The cabaret atmosphere was clearly no part of the
real woman; rather, as I now saw her, she seemed to carry with her a
breath of the fields and hills.

At luncheon we talked stiltedly of the Nantleys and hunting, but no
sooner was coffee served than she came to business.

"Theodore has told you about me? You see the kind of fence I'm up
against. What I want to know is just exactly how high and thick it is,
and that no one can tell me. I liked your looks the first time I saw
you, and every one says you are clever. Now, understand one thing about
me, I'm not going to show the white feather. Whatever it is, I'm going
to stick it out. Have you that clear in your head?"

As I looked at the firm little chin I believed her.

"Well, can you enlighten me about the fence? You've heard all that
Theodore has to say, and you know the cheerful sort of family I belong
to. Did you find anything in the papers?"

"You've read them yourself?" I asked.

"I tried to, but I'm not clever, you see. I thought my grandfather's
journal great nonsense. I had never heard of most of the names. But
you're good at these things. Did you make nothing of them?"

"Nothing." I ran over the items in the bundle, not mentioning the Greek
manuscript, which seemed to me to have nothing to do with the subject.
"But there must be other papers."

She flushed slightly. "There were many others, but I burned them.
Perhaps you can guess why."

"Miss Arabin," I said, "I want to help you, but I don't think we need
bother about the papers. Let's go back to the beginning. I suppose it's
no use my urging you to get out of Plakos, settle in England, and wipe
all the past out of your memory?"

"Not the slightest."

"I wonder why. After all, it's only common sense."

"Common cowardice," she retorted, with a toss of her head. "I have known
Theodore all my life, and I have forbidden him to raise that question. I
have known you about a month, and I forbid _you_."

There was something so flat-footed and final about her that I laughed.
She stared at me haughtily for a moment, and then laughed also.

"Go on with what you were saying," she said. "I stay at Plakos, and you
must make your book for that. Now then."

"Your family was unpopular--I understand, justly unpopular. All sorts of
wild beliefs grew up about them among the peasants, and they have been
transferred to you. The people are half savages, and half starved, and
their mood is dangerous. They are coming to see in you the cause of
their misfortunes. You go there alone and unprotected, and you have no
friends in the island. The danger is that, after a winter of brooding,
they may try in some horrible way to wreak their vengeance on you. That
is what I learned from Mr. Ertzberger."

The summary, as I made it, sounded unpleasant enough, but the girl did
not seem to feel it so. She nodded briskly. "That, at any rate, is what
Theodore says. He thinks they may make me a sacrifice. Stuff and
nonsense, _I_ say."

The word "sacrifice" disquieted me. It reminded me of the Greek which
Vernon had translated.

"Some risk there must be," I went on, "but what I cannot tell is the
exact moment of it. Even among a savage people unpopularity need not
involve tragedy. You were in Plakos last spring. Tell me what happened."

She fitted a cigarette into a long amber holder, and blew a cloud of
smoke which she watched till it disappeared.

"Nothing much. I was left entirely to myself. There was only one servant
in the house, old Mitri the steward, and I had also my maid. The whole
establishment was sent to Coventry. We had to get our food from the
mainland, for we could buy nothing, except now and then a little milk
through Mitri's married daughter. It wasn't pleasant, I can tell you.
But the worst was when I went for a walk. If I met a man he would make
the sign of the evil eye and spit. If I spoke to a child its mother
would snatch it up and race indoors with it. The girls and women all
wore blue beads as a charm against me, and carried garlic. I could
smell it wherever I went. Sometimes I wanted to cry, and sometimes I
wanted to swear, but you can do nothing with a silent boycott. I could
have shaken the fools."

"What had they against you? Did you ever find out?"

"Oh, Mitri used to tell us gossip that he had heard through his
daughter, but Mitri isn't too popular himself, and he is old and can go
about very little. It seemed they called me Basilissa. That means Queen,
and sounds friendly enough, but I think the word they really used was
_diabolissa_, which means a she-devil. The better disposed ones thought
I was a Nereid--that's what they call fairies--but some said I was a
_strigla_--that's a horrible kind of harpy, and some thought I was a
_vrykolakas_, which is a vampire. They used to light little fires in the
graveyards to keep me away. Oh, I got very sick of my reputation. It was
a hideous bore not to be able to go anywhere without seeing scared
people dodging up byways, and making the sign of the cross, and
screaming for their children--simply damnable."

"It must have been damnable. I should have thought it rather terrifying
too."

"Don't imagine that they frightened me. I was really more sorry than
angry. They were only foolish people scared half out of their minds,
and, after all, my family has done a good deal to scare them. It is
folly--nothing but folly, and the only way to beat folly is to live it
down. I don't blame the poor devils, but I'm going to bring them to a
better mind. I refuse to run away because of a pack of fairy tales."

"There were no hostile acts?" I asked.

She seemed to reflect. "No," she answered. "One morning we found a
splash of blood on the house door, which sent old Mitri to his prayers.
But that was only a silly joke."

"Mr. Ertzberger hinted that there might be trouble this year from the
people in the hills?"

Her face hardened.

"I wish to Heaven I knew that for certain. It would be the best news I
ever got. Those hillmen are not my people, and if they interfere I will
have them whipped off the place. I will not have any protection against
my own peasantry--Theodore is always pressing me, but I won't have
it--it would spoil everything--it wouldn't be the game. But if those
filthy mountaineers come within a mile of Plakos I will hire a regiment
to shoot them down. Pray God they come. We of the coast have always
hated the mountains, and I believe I could rally my people."

"But I thought you owned the whole island?"

"No one owns the hills. My grandfather obtained the seigneury of Plakos,
but he never claimed more than the good land by the sea. The hills have
always been a no-man's-land full of bandits. We paid them dues--I still
pay them--and we did not quarrel, but there was no coming and going
between us. They are a different race from our pure Greek
stock--mongrels of Slav and Turk, I believe."

The spirit of the girl comforted me. If Ertzberger's news was true, it
might save the situation, and bring the problem out of the realm of
groping mystery to a straightforward defence of property.... But, after
all, the hills were distant, and the scared tenants were at the house
door. We must face the nearer peril.

"Is there no one in the village," I said, "whom you can have it out
with? No big farmer? What about the priests?"

She shook her head. "No one. The priests do not love my family, for they
call themselves Christians, while we are Catholics."

Twenty years spent in examining witnesses has given me an acute instinct
about candour. There was that in the girl's eyes and voice as she spoke
which told me that she was keeping something back, something which made
her uneasy.

"Tell me everything," I said. "Has no priest talked to you?"

"Yes, there was one. I will tell you. He is an old man, and very timid.
He came to me at night, after swearing Mitri to tell no one. He urged me
to go away for ever."

Her eyes were troubled now, and had that abstracted look which I had
noted before.

"What was his reason?"

"Oh, care for his precious church. He was alarmed about what had
happened at Easter."

She stopped suddenly.

"Have you ever been in Greece at Easter--during the Great Week? No? Then
you cannot imagine how queer it is. The people have been starved all
Lent, living only on cuttle-fish soup and bread and water. Every one is
pale and thin and ill-tempered. It is like a nightmare."

Then in rapid staccato sentences she sketched the ritual. She described
the night of Good Friday, when the bier with the figure of the crucified
Christ on it stands below the chancel step, and the priests chant their
solemn hymn, and the women kiss the dead face, and the body is borne out
to burial. With torches and candles flickering in the night wind, it is
carried through the village streets, while dirges are sung, and the
tense crowd breaks now and then into a moan or a sigh. Next day there is
no work done, but the people wander about miserably, waiting on
something which may be either death or deliverance. That night the
church is again crowded, and at midnight the curtains which screen the
chancel are opened, and the bier is revealed--empty, but for a shroud.
"Christ is risen," the priest cries, as a second curtain is drawn back,
and in the sanctuary, in an ineffable radiance, stands the figure of the
risen Lord. The people go mad with joy, they light their tapers at the
priest's candle, and, like a procession of Bacchanals, stream out,
shouting "He is risen indeed." Then to the accompaniment of the firing
of guns and the waving of torches the famished peasants, maddened by the
miracle they have witnessed, feast till morning on wine and lamb's flesh
in the joy of their redemption.

She drew the picture for me so that I saw it as if with my own eyes, and
my imagination quickened under the spell of her emotion. For here was no
longer the cool, matter-of-fact young woman of the world, with no more
than tolerance for the folly of superstition. It was some one who could
enter into that very mood, and feel its quivering nerves and alternate
despair and exultation.

"What had the priest to complain of?" I asked.

"He said that the people were becoming careless of the Easter holiness.
He said that last year the attendance at the rite was poor. He feared
that they were beginning to think of something else."

"Something else!" Two of the most commonplace words in the language. She
spoke them in an even voice in an ordinary London dining-room, with
outside the wholesome bustle of London and the tonic freshness of an
English winter day. She was about to go off to a conventional English
week-end party at a prosaic country house. But the words affected me
strangely, for they seemed to suggest a peril far more deadly than any
turbulence of wild men from the hills--a peril, too, of which she was
aware.

For she was conscious of it--that was now perfectly clear to me--acutely
conscious. She had magnificent self-command, but fear showed out from
behind it, like light through the crack of a shutter. Her courage was
assuredly not the valour of ignorance. She was terrified, and still
resolute to go on.

It was not my business to add to that terror. Suddenly I had come to
feel an immense pity and reverence for this girl. Ertzberger was right.
Her hardness, her lack of delicacy and repose, her loud frivolity, were
only on the surface--a protective sheathing for a tormented soul. Out of
a miserable childhood and a ramshackle education she had made for
herself a code of honour as fine and as hard as steel. It was wildly
foolish, of course, but so perhaps to our dull eyes the innocent and the
heroic must always be.

Perhaps she guessed my thoughts. For when she spoke again it was gently,
almost hesitatingly.

"I scarcely hoped that you could tell me anything about Plakos. But I
rather hoped you would say I am right in what I am doing. Theodore has
been so discouraging.... I rather hoped from your face that you would
take a different view. You wouldn't advise me to run away from my
job----?"

"God forbid that I should advise you at all," I said. "I see your
argument, and, if you will let me say so, I profoundly respect it. But I
think you are trying yourself--and your friends also--too high. You must
agree to some protection."

"Only if the hill folk give trouble. Don't you see, protection would
ruin everything if I accepted it against my own people? I must trust
myself to them--and--and stick it out myself. It is a sort of
atonement."

Then she got up briskly and held out her hand. "Thank you very much,
Sir Edward. It has done me good to talk to you. I must be off now or
I'll miss my train. I'll give your love to Mollie and Tom."

"We shall meet again. When do you leave England?"

"Not till March. Of course we'll meet again. Let me know if you have any
bright idea.... lise, lise! Where's that fool woman?"

Her maid appeared.

"Get a taxi at once," she ordered. "We haven't any time to waste, for I
promised to pick up Lord Cheviot at his flat."

I asked one question as I left. "Have you ever heard of a place called
Kyntho?"

"Rather. It's the big village in Plakos close to the house."




CHAPTER VII


I once read in some book about Cleopatra that that astonishing lady owed
her charm to the fact that she was the last of an ancient and
disreputable race. The writer cited other cases--Mary of Scots, I think,
was one. It seemed, he said, that the quality of high-coloured ancestors
flowered in the ultimate child of the race into something like
witchcraft. Whether they were good or evil, they laid a spell on men's
hearts. Their position, fragile and forlorn, without the wardenship of
male kinsfolk, set them on a romantic pinnacle. They were more feminine
and capricious than other women, but they seemed, like Viola, to be all
the brothers as well as all the daughters of their father's house, for
their soft grace covered steel and fire. They were the true sorceresses
of history, said my author, and sober men, not knowing why, followed
blindly in their service.

Perhaps Kor Arabin was of this sisterhood. At any rate one sober man
was beginning to admit her compelling power. I could not get the girl
from my thoughts. For one thing I had awakened to a comprehension of her
beauty. Her face was rarely out of my mind, with its arrogant
innocence, its sudden brilliancies and its as sudden languors. Her
movements delighted me, her darting grace, the insolent assurance of her
carriage, and then, without warning, the relapse into the child or the
hoyden. Even her bad manners soon ceased to annoy me, for in my eyes
they had lost all vulgarity. They were the harshnesses of a creature
staving off tragedy. Indeed it was her very extravagances that allured,
for they made me see her as a solitary little figure set in a patch of
light on a great stage among shadows, defying of her own choice the
terrors of the unknown.

What made my capture complete was the way she treated me. She seemed to
have chosen me as her friend, and to find comfort and security in being
with me. To others she might be rude and petulant, but never to me.
Whenever she saw me she would make straight for me, like a docile child
waiting for orders. She would dance or sit out with me till her retinue
of youth was goaded to fury. She seemed to guess at the points in her
behaviour which I did not like and to strive to amend them. We had
become the closest friends, and friendship with Kor Arabin was a
dangerous pastime.

The result was that I was in a fair way of making a fool of myself.
No ... I don't think I was in love with her. I had never been in love in
my life, so I was not an expert on the subject, but I fancied that love
took people in a different way. But I was within measurable distance of
asking her to be my wife. My feeling was a mixture of affection and pity
and anxiety. She had appealed to me, and I had become her champion. I
wanted to protect her, but how was a middle-aged lawyer to protect a
determined girl from far-away perils which he did not comprehend? The
desperate expedient of marriage occurred to me, but I did not believe
she would accept me, and, if she did, would not the mating of age and
youth be an outrage and a folly? Nevertheless I was in a mood to venture
even on that.

I must have presented a strange spectacle to my friends. There were
other men of forty in London at the time who behaved as if they were
twenty-five--one buxom Cabinet Minister was to be seen at every
dance--but none, I am certain, cut an odder figure than I. The dancing
Cabinet Minister sought the ballroom for exercise, because he preferred
dancing to golf. I had no such excuse, for I danced comparatively
little; my object was patently the society of one particular lady. In
Kor's train I found myself in strange haunts. I followed her into the
Bohemian _coulisses_ to which Shelley Arabin's daughter had an
entre--queer studio parties in Chelsea where the women were shorn and
the men left shaggy: the feverish literary and artistic salons of the
emancipated and rather derelict middle-class: dances given at
extravagant restaurants by the English and foreign new-rich, where I did
not know or wish to know one single soul. Also we appeared together at
houses which I had frequented all my life, and there my friends saw me.
Of course they talked. I fancy that for about two months I was the
prime subject of London gossip. I didn't care a hang, for I was in a
queer, obstinate, excitable mood. We hunted together, too, and there is
no such nursery of scandal as the hunting-field. With a great deal of
work on hand I found this new life a considerable strain, and I was
perfectly conscious that I was playing the fool. But, though I don't
think I was in love with her, I simply could not let the girl out of my
sight.

Now and then my conscience awoke, and I realized with a shock that the
time was slipping past, and that the real problem was still unsolved. I
knew that I could not shake Kor in her resolution, and I suppose I
hoped blindly that something would occur to prevent her acting on it.
That something could only be a love affair. I was perfectly certain that
she was not in love with me, but she might accept me, and at the back of
my head I had the intention of putting it to the test. Ertzberger had
divined what was going on and seemed to approve. "A boy is no use to
her," he said more than once. "Besides, she wouldn't look at one. She
must marry a grown man." He implied that I filled the bill, and the
man's assumption gave me an absurd pleasure. If any one had told me that
I would one day go out of my way to cultivate a little Jew financier, I
would have given him the lie, yet the truth is that, when I was not with
Kor, I hungered for Ertzberger's company. He alone understood what was
in my mind, and shared my anxieties. "She must not go back," he kept
declaring; "at all costs she must be kept away from Plakos--at any rate
during this spring. I get disquieting reports. There is mischief brewing
in the hills, and the people of the coast have had a bitter winter of
famine. There has been a lot of sickness, too, and in the village at the
house gates the mortality among the children has been heavy."

"You mean Kyntho?" I asked.

"Kyntho." He looked at me curiously. "You seem to have been getting up
the subject.... Well, I don't like it. If she goes there in April there
may be a disaster. Upon my soul, we should be justified in having her
kidnapped and shut up in some safe place till the summer. So far as I
can learn, the danger is only in the spring. Once let the people see the
crops springing and the caiques bringing in fish, and they will forget
their grievances."

Early in March I was dining with the Nantleys, and after dinner Mollie
took me aside for a talk. As I have told you, she is one of my oldest
friends, for when I was a grubby little private schoolboy and she was a
girl of thirteen, we used to scamper about together. I had had her son
Hugo in my chambers, before he went into Parliament, and Wirlesdon had
always been a sort of home to me. Mollie was entitled to say anything
she liked, but when she spoke it was rather timidly.

"I hear a good deal of talk about you," she said, "and I can't help
noticing too. Do you think it is quite fair, Ned?"

"Fair to whom?" I asked.

"To Kor Arabin. You're different from the boys who run after her.
You're a distinguished man with a great reputation. Is it fair to her to
turn her head?"

"Is that very likely? What if she has turned mine?"

"Do you really mean that?" she cried. "I never thought of it in that
way. Do you honestly want to marry her?"

"I don't know ... I don't know what I want except that I must stand by
her. She's in an appallingly difficult position, and badly needs a
friend."

"Yes. But there's only one way in which a man can protect a young woman.
Do you mean to marry her?"

"She wouldn't accept me."

"But you mean to ask her?"

"It may come to that," I said.

"But, Ned dear, can't you see it wouldn't do? Kor is not the right sort
of wife for you. She's--she's too----Well, you've a career before you.
Is she the woman to share it with you?"

"It's not many months since, at Wirlesdon, you implored my charity for
Miss Arabin."

"Oh, I don't want to say a word against her, and if you were really
desperately in love I would say nothing and wish you luck. But I don't
believe you are. I believe it's what you say--charity, and that's a most
rotten foundation to build on."

Mollie, in such affairs, is an incurable romantic.

"I promise never to ask her to marry me unless I am in love," I said.

"Well, that means you are not quite in love yet. Hadn't you better draw
back before it is too late? I can't bear to see you making a bad
blunder, and Kor, dear child, would be a bad blunder for you. She's
adorably pretty, and she has wonderful qualities, but she is a little
savage, and very young, and quite unformed. Really, really it wouldn't
do."

"I admit the difficulties, my dear Mollie. But never mind me, and think
of Miss Arabin. You said yourself that she was English at heart and
would be very happy settled in England."

"But not with you."

"She wouldn't accept me, and I may never propose. But if I did, and she
accepted me, why not with me?"

"Because you're you--because you're too good for a rash experiment."

"I'm not good enough for her, for I'm too old, as you've just told me.
But anyhow your argument thinks principally of me, not of Miss Arabin.
It is she who matters."

Mollie rose with a gesture of impatience. "You are hopeless, Ned. I'm
sick of you hard, unsusceptible, ambitious people. You never fall in
love in your youth, but wait till after forty, and then make idiots of
yourselves."

I had a different kind of remonstrance from Vernon. We saw little of
each other in these days beyond a chance word in the street or a casual
wave of the hand in the club smoking-room. When I thought of him it was
with a sense of shame that I had let him slip so hopelessly out of my
life. Time had been when he was my closest friend, and when his problem
was also my problem. Now the whole story of his dream seemed a childish
fancy.

One night in March I found him waiting for me in my rooms.

"I came round to say good-bye," he said. "I shall probably leave London
very soon."

It shows how completely I had forgotten his affairs that I did not
remember that his particular crisis was drawing near, that, as he
believed, the last door of his dream-world would soon be opened.

Then, before I could ask about his plans, he suddenly broke out:

"Look here, I hope there's no truth in what people tell me."

His tone had the roughness of one very little at his ease, and it
annoyed me. I asked coldly what he meant.

"You know what I mean--that you're in love with Miss
What's-her-name--the girl I met at Wirlesdon."

"I don't know that you've any right to ask the question, and I'm
certainly not going to answer it."

"That means that you are in love," he cried. "Good God, man, don't tell
me that you want to marry that--that tawdry girl!"

I must have reddened, for he saw that he had gone too far.

"I don't mean that--I apologize. I have no reason to say anything
against her."

Then his tone changed.

"Ned, old man, we have been friends for a long time, and you must
forgive me if I take liberties. We have never had any secrets from each
other. My own affairs give me a good deal to think about just now, but I
can't go away with an easy mind till I know the truth about you. For
God's sake, old fellow, don't do anything rash. Promise me you won't
propose to her till I come back in April."

His change of manner had softened me, and as I saw the trouble in his
honest eyes I felt a return of the old affection.

"Why are you anxious on my account?"

"Because," he said solemnly, "I know that if you married that girl our
friendship would be over. I feel it in my bones. She would always come
between us."

"I can't make any promises of that kind. But one thing I can
promise--that no woman will ever break our friendship."

"You don't understand. Some women wouldn't, but that girl----! Well, I
can say no more. Good-bye, Ned. I'll hunt you up when I come back."

He left me with a feeling of mingled regret and irritation. I hated to
go against Vernon's wishes, but his manner when he had spoken of Kor,
the look in his eyes, the inflection in his voice, conveyed an utter
distaste which made me angry. I pictured him at Severns nursing his
unreasoning dislike of the poor child. Vernon, as my nephew Charles had
said, was a prig, and his narrow world had room only for blameless and
vapid virginity. The promise he had asked of me was an outrage.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet I kept a promise which I had never made. For suddenly Cinderella
disappeared from the ball. After a country-house dance I drove her back
to town in my car, and left her at the door of her flat. During the long
drive she had talked more seriously than I had ever known her to talk
before, had spoken of herself and her affairs with a kind of valiant
simplicity. The only sophisticated thing about her was her complexion.
All day afterwards my conviction was growing that she was the woman for
me, that I could make her not only secure but happy. We were by way of
dining with the Lamanchas, and I think if we had met that night I should
have asked her to marry me.... But we did not meet, for by the evening
she was gone.

I looked for her in vain in the Lamanchas' drawing-room, and my hostess
guessed what I sought. "I'm so sorry about Kor Arabin," she whispered
to me. "She was coming to-night, but she telephoned this afternoon that
she was unexpectedly called out of town." I did not enjoy my dinner, and
as soon as I could decently leave I hurried off to her flat. It was shut
up, and from the porter on the ground floor I learned that she and her
maid had left with a quantity of luggage to catch the night boat to
France. He was positive that she had gone abroad, for he had seen the
foreign labels, and Miss Arabin had told him she would not be back for
months. The keys of the flat had been sent to her solicitors.

With a very uneasy mind I drove to the Ertzbergers' house in Belgrave
Square. Ertzberger had just come in from a City dinner, and his wife
seemed to be giving some kind of musical party, for the hall was full of
coats and hats and extra footmen, and the jigging of fiddles drifted
down the staircase. He took me to his study at the back of the house,
and when he heard my news his face grew as solemn as my own. There was
nothing to be done that night, for the Continental mail had long since
gone, so I went back to my chambers with a pretty anxious mind. I felt
that I had let something rare and precious slip out of my hand, but far
more that this preciousness was in instant danger. Honestly I don't
think that I was much concerned about myself. I wanted Kor Arabin
saved--for me--for every one--for the world. If I was in love with her
it was with an affection more impersonal than usually goes by that name.
It was as if an adored child had gone amissing.

Regardless of our many engagements, Ertzberger and I appeared on the
doorstep of Messrs. Mower and Lidderdale, the solicitors, at the hour
when, according to the information given me by telephone, the senior
partner usually arrived. Mr. Mower confirmed our fears. Miss Arabin had
returned to Plakos; she had been preparing for some weeks for the
journey; he had not advised it--indeed he had not been asked his advice
nor would he have dared to volunteer it. "A very strong-minded young
lady," he repeated--"I might almost say strong-headed." She had sold the
lease of her flat, and had left no instructions about her return. Yes,
she was well supplied with money. Miss Arabin was her own mistress
absolutely, for her father had created no trust. He had nothing more to
tell us, and Ertzberger departed for the City and I for the Temple.

In the afternoon I was rung up by Ertzberger in my room in the House of
Commons. He had been making inquiries, he said--he had his own ways of
doing that sort of thing--and he had discovered that Kor had recently
sold large parcels of stocks. She had been selling out steadily
throughout the winter, and now had practically no investments left. The
proceeds had been deposited on current account in her bank. There his
information stopped, but he was profoundly disquieted. "That child has
all her fortune in cash under her hand," he said, "and God knows what
she means to do with it. Any moment she may beggar herself, and no one
can prevent her."

That night I understood that my infatuation was over, if indeed it had
ever existed. I wanted the girl safe, and I did not care who saved her,
but I wanted it so much that at the moment nothing in heaven or earth
seemed to matter in comparison.

It was now near the end of March, the Courts had just risen, and
Parliament was about to adjourn for the Easter vacation. I had a good
deal of important work on hand, but I was entitled to a holiday, and I
thought I could arrange for at any rate a fortnight's absence from town.
But whether I could arrange it or not I meant to go, for I could no more
settle to my tasks than a boy can settle to Tacitus on the day he is
playing for his school. When Ertzberger, according to our arrangement,
turned up at my chambers that night after dinner, he found me busy with
an atlas and a Continental Bradshaw.

"I am going to Plakos," I said.

"That is good. You are still a young man, and you have been a soldier.
It is very good. But if you had not gone, I had decided to go myself."

"This is Wednesday. Miss Arabin left last night. She will get
there--when?"

He made some calculations. "Not before Tuesday. You might overtake her,
but I do not think that is necessary. Easter is the danger-point, and
the Greek Easter is still a fortnight off. Besides you must stop a day
in Athens."

"I shall want help. Can you get me half a dozen handy fellows I can
trust?"

"I had thought of that. Indeed I telegraphed about it this afternoon. I
can find you the men--and money, of course, if you want it. I will find
you a lieutenant, too, and make all arrangements about transport. That
at least I can do. You realize, Sir Edward, that there is a certain
danger in this enterprise?"

"I realize that Miss Arabin in a week's time will be in deadly
danger.... I must have a day or two to wind up my work here. I think I
can leave on Saturday morning."

As a matter of fact I left London on the Friday night.




PART II




CHAPTER VIII


I came to Plakos in a blind sea-fog. After a day and a night of storm
the wind died utterly, and we made the isle on a compass course, feeling
our way in by constant soundings. A thick salt dew hung on every stay
and hawser, the deck and bulwarks swam with moisture, and our coats were
in an instant drenched as if we had been out in a hurricane. Sea and
land alike were invisible. The air was thick and oppressive to the
breath, and every muscle in the body felt weak and flaccid. Also there
was a strange quiet--only the ripple caused by our slow movement and the
creak of sodden cordage. I might have been a shade looking on an island
of the dead.

I had reached Athens in record time, but there I found a weariful delay.
In spite of Ertzberger's influence the wheels were clogged. I was met at
the Pirus by his agent, one Constantine Maris, whose instructions were
to hold himself at my disposal. I took to Maris at once--a young fellow
of thirty, who had been in the Greek regular army and had been the
right-hand man of Zimbrakis when at Salonika his troops declared for
Venizelos. He had been all through the war till it ended in Bulgaria's
submission, had been twice wounded and once in prison, and had been
chosen by Ertzberger to represent him in Athens because of his truculent
honesty and tireless energy. Both in character and appearance he was
more like a Frenchman than a Greek--a Norman, for choice, for he had
reddish-brown hair and a high-bridged northern nose. He had the
additional merit of being well educated, having put in two years at the
Sorbonne: and he talked excellent French. His family were of Athens, but
his mother, I think, was from one of the islands. He had the looks and
manners of a soldier.

But Maris had found the task set him almost impossible. Ertzberger had
bidden him get together a batch of reliable fellows who would obey
orders and ask no questions, but as we rumbled Athens-ward from the
Pirus in the little train he confessed that such men were not to be
found. In the war it was otherwise, but the best had all gone back to
the country villages. He had collected a dozen, but he was not
enthusiastic about them, except a certain Janni, who had been a corporal
in his old battalion. When he paraded them for my inspection I was
inclined to agree with him. They were an odd mixture--every kind of
clothes from the dirty blue jeans of the stoker to the black coat and
pointed yellow shoes of the clerk--ages from nineteen to sixty--physique
from prize-fighter to sneak-thief. All had served in the war, however,
and the best of them, Janni, had an empty left sleeve. After much
consultation we dismissed two and were left with ten who at any rate
looked honest. Whether they would be efficient was another matter. Maris
proposed to arm them with revolvers, but not till we got to Plakos, in
case they started shooting up the town. They were told that they were
wanted as guards for an estate which was threatened by brigands, but I
doubt if they believed it. The younger ones seemed to think that our
object was piracy.

Transport was another problem. I had hoped to be able to hire a small
steam yacht, but such a thing was not to be had, and the best we could
do was to induce a dissolute-looking little Leghorn freighter, named the
_Santa Lucia_, to go out of its way and touch at Plakos. Maris told the
captain a yarn about men being needed there for making a new sea-wall.
The boat was bound for the Dodecanese, and would pick us up on her
return a fortnight later.

Before we rounded Cape Sunium we got into foul weather, a heavy
north-easter and violent scurries of rain. Our ruffians were all
sea-sick and lay about like logs, getting well cursed by the Italian
sailors, while Maris and I, in the one frowsy little cabin, tried to
make a plan of campaign. I found out at once that Maris was well
informed about the situation in Plakos, partly from Ertzberger and
partly from his own knowledge. He knew about Shelley Arabin's career,
which seemed to be the common talk of the gean. Of Kor he had heard
nothing save from Ertzberger, but he had much to tell me of Plakos and
its people. They had a name for backwardness and turbulence, and the
Government seemed to leave them very much to themselves. There were
gendarmes, of course, in the island, but he fancied they didn't
function. But the place had sent good soldiers to Venizelos, and its
people were true Hellenes. After an interval when he expatiated on that
Hellenic empire of the islands which was the dream of good Venizelists,
he returned to their superstition. "That is the curse of my countrymen,"
he cried. "They are priest-ridden." He was himself, he told me, a
free-thinker and despised all mumbo-jumbo.

I told him that the trouble was not with the priests, but he did not
seem to understand, and I did not attempt to explain.

Our task, as we saw it, was straightforward enough--to protect the House
during the Easter season when fear of the girl as a witch and the memory
of Shelley's misdeeds might induce some act of violence. There was also
the trouble with the hill folk, and this seemed to him the greater
danger. The dwellers in the stony mountains which filled the centre and
south of the island had always been out of hand, and, since the winter
had been cruel and the war had unsettled the whole earth, he thought it
likely that they might have a try at looting the House, which they no
doubt held to be full of treasure, since the Arabins had a name for
wealth. I could see that he didn't quite believe in danger from the
coast folk, however beastly their superstitions might be. He had the
Greek respect for a mountaineer and contempt for the ordinary peasant.

We studied the map--a very good one prepared for the British Navy--and
on Maris's advice I decided to begin by dividing our forces. My first
business was to get into the House and discover how things were going.
But with danger threatening from the hills it would be unwise for all of
us to concentrate in a place from which egress might be difficult. Now
the House stood at the north-west corner of the island, and the hill
country began about ten miles to the south-east. He proposed to send
five of our men, under Corporal Janni, to a little port called Vano on
the west coast some miles south of the House. They would take supplies
with them--we were well provided with these--and reconnoitre towards the
hills, giving out that they were a Government survey party. The rest of
us would land at the House, and, after satisfying ourselves about the
position, would get in touch with Janni by the overland route. Our first
business was strictly reconnaissance; Janni could not hope to prevent
mischief from the hills if it were really on its way, but he could
satisfy himself as to its extent and character, and then join us in the
defence of the House, which was our main task. Maris was confident about
this. He did not see how a dozen armed men in a strong place could fail
to hold off a mob of undisciplined peasants.

For an extra payment the captain of the _Santa Lucia_ was induced to
carry Janni and his men to Vano. Weapons were served out to all, and I
gave Janni a map which he professed to be able to read. Then in the
shrouding fog Maris and I and our five got into the ship's one boat and
were rowed ashore. We had our supplies both of food and ammunition in
half a dozen wooden cases, and the wretched cockle was pretty low in the
water. I knew from my former visit that the landing-place was just below
the House, and the fog seemed to me a godsend, for it would enable us to
get indoors unobserved. My only doubt was the kind of reception we might
get from Kor.

As it turned out, the mist was our undoing. We were landed at a stone
jetty in a dead white blanket which made it difficult to see a yard
ahead. Our baggage was put on shore, the boat started back, and in a
moment both sound and sight of it were swallowed up. It was an eerie
business, and I felt the craziness of our errand as I stood blinking on
the wet cobbles. There was no human being about, but the dim shapes of
several caiques and some kind of lugger seemed to show below us as we
started along the jetty. Our five ruffians had recovered from their
sea-sickness, and, feeling solid ground beneath them, were inclined to
be jolly. One of them started a song, which I promptly checked. Maris
ordered them to wait behind with the boxes, and to keep dead quiet,
while he and I prospected inland.

My recollection of that visit in 1914 was hazy, for I had only seen the
landing-place from the causeway above it, and at the time I had been
too preoccupied to observe accurately. But I was pretty certain that at
the shore end of the jetty there were some rough stone steps which led
to the causeway. I groped for them in the mist but could not find them.
Instead I came on a broad track which bore the mark of wheels and which
led away to the left. I waited for the steep to begin, but found no sign
of it. The land was dead flat for a long way, and then I came on a rough
boundary wall.

It was an orchard with blossoming trees--that much I could see through
the brume--and at the end was a cottage. My first thought was to retrace
my steps and try a cast to the right, for I still believed that we had
found the proper landing-place, and had somehow missed the causeway.
But, as I hesitated, there came one of those sudden clearings in the air
which happen in the densest fogs, and I had a prospect of some hundreds
of yards around me. We were on the edge of a village, the cottage we had
reached was at the extreme seaward end, a little detached from the rest;
beyond lay what seemed to be a shallow valley with no sign of the House
and its embattled hill.

It would have been well for us if, there and then, we had turned and
gone back to the jetty, even at the risk of relinquishing our supplies
and having to scramble for miles along a difficult shore. For, of
course, we had come in that infernal fog to the wrong place. The skipper
had landed us at Kyntho instead of below the House, and though I knew
from the map that Kyntho was at the House's gates, yet it was on the
east side, distant at least two miles by coast from the spot which
Vernon and I had visited.

It was Maris who decided me. The cottage seemed a solitary place where
discreet inquiries might be made without rousing attention. He had
little stomach for wandering around Plakos in fog, and we had our five
men and the baggage to think of. I followed him into the rough
courtyard, paved with cobbles, and strewn with refuse. The low walls
were washed with red ochre and above the lintel a great black pentacle
was painted. Also over the door was hung a bunch of garlic.

There was a woman standing in the entry watching us. Maris took off his
hat with a flourish, and poured out a torrent of soft-sounding dialect.
She replied in a harsher accent, speaking with the back of her throat.
She seemed to be inviting us to enter, but her face was curiously
without expression, though her eyebrows worked nervously. She was a
middle-aged woman, terribly disfigured by smallpox; her features were
regular, and she had large, prominent, vacant black eyes. She was not in
the least repulsive, but somehow, she was not reassuring.

As we entered the cottage she called out to some one at the back. A
second later I heard footsteps as of a child running.

Maris, as I learned afterwards, told her the story we had agreed
on--that we were a Government survey party sent from Athens to make a
map of the island. Then he felt his way to more delicate subjects. This
was Kyntho, he understood? There was a large house near which belonged
to some foreigners? English, weren't they? Where, exactly, did it lie
from the village, for, if he might venture to explain what madam no
doubt knew, one must have a starting-point for a survey, and the
Government had chosen that house?

The woman's eyebrows twitched, and she crossed herself. She flung a hand
over her left shoulder. "The place is there," she said. "I know nothing
of it. I do not speak of it."

All the time she was looking at us with her staring empty eyes, and I
realized that she was in an extreme fright. There was certainly nothing
in our appearance to discompose her, and I had the uneasy feeling which
one has in the presence of a human being who is suffering from an
emotion that one cannot fathom. Maris whispered to me that he did not
like the look of things. "She has not offered us food," he said.

Her ear must have caught some sound from out of doors, for her face
suddenly showed relief. She walked to the window and cried to some one
outside. Then she turned to us. "There are men now to speak with you."
She had found her tongue, for as she hustled us out she kept muttering,
with sidelong glances at us, what seemed to be an invocation to Saint
Nicolas. Also she gripped Maris violently by the shoulder and spat words
into his ear. He told me afterwards that she was advising him not to be
a fool and to go home.

The little courtyard had filled with people, most of them men, but with
two or three old crones in the forefront. Their aspect was not
threatening, but rather puzzled and timid. The men took off their hats
in response to Maris's bow, and politely waited for him to speak. I
noticed that they were a well-made, upstanding lot, but with the same
flat expressionlessness as the woman of the cottage, and I guessed that
that was a mask to hide fear.

Maris told them the same story of our errand. He said--I repeat what he
told me later--that our men and baggage were still down by the beach,
and that he wanted to be directed to the inn. There was dead silence.
The little crowd stared at us as if their lives depended on it, but not
a syllable came in reply.

This made Maris angry. "Are you dumb mules," he asked, "not to answer a
simple question? I have heard that you of the islands boasted of your
hospitality. Is this the way to treat strangers?"

Still no answer. His taunts were as futile as his exposition. But, since
I had nothing to do but to look on, I saw something which made me
uneasy. The crowd was drawing together, and each was covertly touching
the other's sleeve. There was a purpose in this mob, a purpose of
action, and I don't like that kind of purpose when it is accompanied by
fear.

"Since you will not speak," Maris cried, "I will go to your priest.
Where is his dwelling? Or do you treat your church as you treat your
visitors?"

This time he got a reply. A dozen voices spoke, and a dozen hands
pointed towards the village.

"It seems you are not dumb after all? We will seek a lodging from the
priest, who doubtless has some regard for his country's Government. We
have baggage with us--boxes of instruments and food--and they are now at
the jetty. I want two able-bodied fellows to help carry them, and I will
pay them well. Who offers?"

But no one offered. Once again they were like gaping cattle. And then an
old beldam in the foreground, who had been crossing herself vigorously,
cried out a monosyllable, and instantly it was taken up in a shout.

Maris turned to me with an angry smile. "They are advising us to go
home. I can mention an island, my friend, in which there is going to be
trouble. Let us go back to the shore. Perhaps the sight of our
belongings will change their mind."

They did not obstruct us, but opened a lane for us to pass--opened it
with feverish haste, as if they were afraid of coming too near us. The
fog had now thinned to a light haze, through which I already felt the
glow of the sun. As we moved shorewards they trailed after us, keeping
always a respectful distance, and halted fifty yards from the jetty.

Our five fellows were sitting smoking on the boxes, and since we could
get no help from the villagers, there was nothing for it but to carry
the baggage ourselves. My first notion was to go straight to the House,
of which by this time I could judge the whereabouts, and it would have
been well for us perhaps if I had acted on that impulse. But, until I
had prepared the way, I was shy of facing Kor Arabin with a defence
force which would make her furious, and I had a notion, too, that if I
marched in broad daylight to the House gates there might be trouble with
these scared and sullen natives. So I decided to go first to the inn,
where we could leave our stuff, and then to interview the priest. After
all, I knew from Kor that the priest was alarmed about the local
situation, and from him I might get some counsel. It seemed to me a case
for wary walking.

I could have laughed at that progress village-wards, if I hadn't been so
anxious. The mob in front of us had doubled in size, and retreated
mechanically before us till we were in the village street. The sun was
now bright in the sky, and I had a view of the straggling houses,
grouped thickly in the centre where there seemed to be a kind of
_place_, and thinning out into farms and enclosures on the slopes of the
green hills. It was a wide, shallow vale bounded on the south by low
ridges; but on the west rose a higher tree-clad hill, and there were
glimpses of white masonry which I took to be the House. Once we were in
the village the crowd was enlarged by women and children. They kept a
good distance, retiring a pace for every step we took, and when we
entered the untidy square they huddled against the house doors as if
they were forming guard. They were perfectly silent, even the children.
It was an eerie business, I can assure you, promenading before that
speechless, staring gallery. They were not an ill-looking race, as I
have said, for the men were mostly well-built and upstanding, and though
the old wives looked like the Witch of Endor, the young ones were often
comely. But you could see that they were bitter poor, for their cheeks
were thin and their eyes hollow. And beyond doubt they were in the
throes of some nervous terror. I felt as if at any moment something
might snap and the air be filled with a wild screaming.

The inn was easy enough to find. A big plane tree grew before it, and in
the yard behind the low whitewashed walls grew a second, beside a stone
fountain which had not been erected within these last five hundred
years. The place was only a wine-shop, with no guest-rooms for
travellers, but there were ample outbuildings where our men could
encamp. But there was no sign of any landlord. Maris and I pushed
indoors and found no trace of life in the big drinking-room with its
sanded floor, or in the purlieus beyond. The inn folk must have gone to
swell the crowd in the street. But we found a reasonably clean barn at
the back of the yard, and there Maris bade our fellows make their
quarters, get ready their breakfast and await our return. Then the two
of us set out to find the priest.

The villagers had not pressed nearer. When we emerged into the street
they were standing as we had left them, patiently staring. Maris cried
out, asking to be shown the priest's house, and at that the spell seemed
to be broken, for there was a shout in reply. A visit to the priest
seemed to be in the popular view the right course for us to take. We
were directed to a house a hundred yards on, next door to a squat
church, and to my surprise we were not followed. Once they had seen us
enter, the crowd remained to watch the inn door.

The priest had evidently been apprised of our coming. His dwelling was
only a bigger cottage, but in the furnishing of it there were a few
signs of a class above the peasantry--a shelf of books, one or two gaudy
religious pictures, a Swiss cuckoo clock, and, incongruously enough, two
of the cheap copies of Tanagra statuettes which they sell in the Athens
shops. I daresay he imagined that they were figures of saints. He was an
old man, nearer eighty than seventy to my eye, and much bent in the
shoulders. An unkempt beard fell over his chest, and his white hair was
long and brushed back from his forehead like a recent fashion among
young men in England. The skin was waxen white, and the lines on his
face were like the grey shadows in a snowdrift. His eyes were mild,
benevolent, and fanatical. He looked stupid but kind and, like everybody
else in that mad place, horribly frightened.

With him Maris went straight to the point.

"We are a Government survey party, Pappa," he said. "But that story is
for the peasants. To you we open our hearts. This gentleman is a colonel
in the army of Britain, and likewise a member of the British Government.
He is also a friend of the lady in the House of Plakos. What gadfly has
bitten the people of this island? Come! We know much already, but we
would hear your tale."

The priest--his venerable name was Hieronymos--was ready enough to tell.
With a wealth of gesticulation remarkable in one so ancient, but always
with a lowered voice, he repeated crudely what we already knew. The
people of Plakos had suffered much and long, and were now resolved to
make an end of their incubus. The girl was a witch, and they had
determined that she must die. They were only waiting till the convenient
season. All this he said in the most matter-of-fact tone, as if it were
a natural sequence of cause and effect.

"But you would not consent to such barbarity?" Maris asked.

"My consent is not asked," he replied. "Beyond doubt the woman is evil
and comes of an evil stock. But the Scriptures teach mercy, and, though
doubtless death is deserved, I would not counsel it. For if she is evil
she is also witless. Why else did she return here, when she knew that
the whole island desired her death? Did I not go to her secretly, as
Nicodemus went to our Lord, and besought her never to return? And she
has given immense sums of money to her enemies. Me she gave gold for the
Church and that I have secure, but she has given it to others who have
bought guns. The men from the hills, who are most bitter against her,
carry rifles bought with her money."

Now I knew why the foolish child had realized her investments.

The priest was gaining confidence.

"The death of a witch may be a righteous deed," he said, "but the hearts
of this people are not righteous. They are dabbling in a blacker magic
than hers, for they are following the Outland Things. And that is heresy
and blasphemy, which in the eyes of Holy Church are sins not less mortal
than witchcraft."

Real anger, the jealous anger of a priest for his own prerogatives,
blazed in his old eyes. He used for "outland things" the word _exotika_,
the very word which had puzzled Vernon in the manuscript I gave him,
till he found help from Basil of Csarea. The word caught my ear, and I
made Maris translate for me. He had clearly no compassion for poor Kor,
but he was up in arms for his Church. Maris tried to probe the trouble,
but he got the vaguest answers. The man seemed eager to unburden his
soul, and yet terrified to speak, and his eyes were always turning to
the window and the closed street door.

Last Eastertide there had been a lamentable neglect of sacred rites.
This year the carelessness was complete. Holy Week had begun, but the
minds of the people were not on its solemnities. "They fast indeed," he
said, "but they do not pray." They had gone a-whoring after other gods,
and what those other gods were it did not become a Christian man to
consider. They meditated a sacrifice, but they had forgotten the
sacrifice on which their salvation hung. "There is a madness which
surges up at times in these islands. It happened so in my grandfather's
day in Santorini, and there is no quelling it till some black deed has
been done and the people come to their right minds in a bitter
repentance." He, their priest, had become less regarded than a cur dog.
Men stopped talking in the streets when he drew near, and would not meet
his eyes. If he spoke, they moved off. They were conscious of a guilty
purpose, and yet resolved on it, and he was powerless to check them.
"They will come back, doubtless, and bemoan their folly, but in the
meantime they are breaking the hearts of the saints and loading their
miserable souls with sin."

Then he broke off, and his face took an expression of shrewdness.

"You have brought men with you. How many?"

Maris told him ten stout fellows all armed.

"What foolishness!" he cried. "The Government should have sent a
regiment--a regiment with cannons. The madmen in Plakos are fifty times
your number, and they have the hill folk at their back, and that is a
thousand more."

"Nevertheless," said Maris, "we may be sufficient to garrison the House,
and protect the lady. I have heard that it is a strong place."

He looked at us queerly. "No garrison is sufficient against fire. They
will burn the House and all that is in it.... Listen to me, sirs. I do
not think as you think. I have no care for the woman nor for any of her
accursed race, but I have much care for the souls of this wayward
people, and would save them from mortal sin. There are no two ways about
it--the woman must burn, or she must depart. Can you carry her off?"

Maris translated to me rapidly. "Things look ugly," he said, "and I
rather think this old one talks sense. But to carry off the lady we must
have a ship, and God knows where we shall find one. At Vano perhaps?
Maybe we did wrong to separate our forces. It strikes me that the sooner
we get into touch with friend Janni the better. It is indicated that one
of us must presently make his way into the House, and that one had
better be you. Let us interrogate the old one about the topography of
this damned village."

"You must enter the House," said the priest, in reply to Maris's
question, "but it will be a task, I promise you, for Digenes the
Cyprian. The place is guarded at all hours, and no one enters or leaves
it without the knowledge of the warders. But it might be achieved by
bold men under cover of dark. The moon is nearing its full, and when it
has set in the small hours there might be a chance."

I got out the map of the island, and tried to get him to give me my
bearings. But he was hopeless with a map, and instead on the white
hearthstone he drew a plan of his own. The main road to the House from
Kyntho ran west from the village square, up a lane lined with crofts
and past a big olive grove, till it reached the wood of chestnuts which
was the beginning of the demesne. All the ground on this side rose
steeply, and there were dwellings almost to the gates, so that it would
be hard to escape detection. To the left the slopes curved in a shallow
vale, bounded on the east by the main road to the hills and to Vano, and
to south and west by a rim of upland beyond which lay the rugged
coast-line and the sea. This vale was broad and flat, and tilted up
gently towards the west, and it bore the curious name of the Dancing
Floor. In the old days, said the priest, the Panegyria were held in it,
the island festivals before poverty and madness came to Plakos. The
Dancing Floor bordered on the demesne, and he thought that a way of
entry might be found there.

I made Maris ask about the shore road, but the priest was emphatic
against it. There was no way into the House on that side except by the
staircases from the jetty, which Vernon and I had seen in 1914, and
there it was certain the watchers would be most vigilant. Besides the
staircases were disused, and he believed that the postern doors had been
walled up. The cliffs could not be climbed, and if the coast was
followed towards the south the difficulties increased. From my
recollection of the place, I thought he exaggerated, but I was not
prepared to bank on a dim memory.

"There is no time to lose," he said, with an earnestness which convinced
me that, though our motives might be different, our purposes were alike.
"In two days it will be Good Friday, and the night after comes the
solemn hour when our Lord breaks the bonds of death. I grievously fear
that that is the hour which my foolish folk have fixed for this
sacrilege. If great sin is to be averted, the woman must be gone by then
and the House given to the flames. The flames, I say, for whatever
happens, there will be no peace in Plakos till it is in ashes. But let
it be burned honestly and religiously, and not made an altar to the
outland devils whom Holy Church has long ago cast into the darkness."

The problem seemed to me to be clarifying itself. I was inclined to
think that the priest was too badly scared to take a balanced view of
things, and also too wrapped up in his religious anxieties. I agreed
that we must somehow induce Kor to come away, and that for this purpose
we must get all our ten men together and beg, borrow, or steal some kind
of boat. It was also plain that the sooner I got inside the House the
better, for Kor would need some persuading. I was not able to view the
black magic of the villagers quite seriously. It was obviously a real
peril, but it was so wholly outside the range of my mental conception
that I took it as a straightforward risk, like that from a wild animal
or a thunderstorm.

Maris and I had a short talk in French, and settled our plans. He would
go back to the inn and see our fellows fixed up for the night. Then he
would make his way on foot towards Vano and get into touch with Janni.
We fixed a point on his map, on the edge of the cliffs about two miles
south of the House, where he was to bring Janni and his posse, and where
next morning I was to take out the others to join him. There seemed no
risk in leaving the five men in the inn for the night. The villagers
would scarcely interfere with strangers who purported to be a Government
survey party and had no desire to move. Nor was it likely that any
obstacle would be set in the way of Maris's own journey. After all he
was moving towards Vano and away from the prohibited area.

My own case was more intricate. If I went back to the inn, it would be
harder to make my way from it to the Dancing Floor, for I should have
the village street to go through. We put this to the priest, and he
proved unexpectedly helpful. Why should I not stay on in his house till
the evening? The church was adjacent, and behind the church lay the
graveyard, by which a road could be found to the Dancing Floor. He would
give me food, if I cared to share his humble meal. The old fellow might
be a bigot, but he was honest and friendly and patently on our side. I
beamed on him and thanked him in dumb show, while Maris made ready to
start.

"Get into the House somehow and fix up a plan with the lady," he said.
"That is the first job. You are quite clear about the rendezvous on the
cliffs? You had better get back to the inn somehow, and to-morrow
morning bring the men to join me there. The village will think we've
started on our surveying--and a long way off the danger-point. You will
have to open the boxes and make each man carry his own supplies. You
have your gun?"

I patted my pocket. "Yes, but there isn't going to be any shooting. We
haven't a dog's chance at that game, with Miss Arabin arming the natives
with Mauser rifles."




CHAPTER IX


Many times that day I wished that my education had included modern
Greek. Through the hot afternoon and evening I remained in the little
room, bored and anxious and mystified, while the priest sat opposite me,
a storehouse of vital knowledge which I could not unlock. I raked up my
recollection of classical Greek, and tried him with a sentence or two,
but he only shook his head. Most of the time he read in a little book, a
breviary no doubt, and his lips muttered. An old woman came in and made
ready a meal. We lunched off onion soup and black bread, and I was given
a glass of some wine which smacked of turpentine. I smoked one of the
two cigarettes left in my case, and afterwards fell asleep. When I woke
the old man was sitting just as I had left him, but he had laid down his
book and seemed to be praying. There was no reserve now in the old face;
I saw the age of it, and the innocence, and also the blind fear. He
seemed to be pleading fiercely with his God, and his mouth worked like a
child's in a passion of disquiet.

Of course I might have strolled out of doors, and gone back to the inn,
where I could have seen our five men and retrieved my pipe and pouch.
It struck me that we were behaving like fools; we had come to visit the
House, and we ought to lose no time in getting there. My nap had put our
previous talk out of my head, and I found myself on my feet in a sudden
impulse. Then I remembered how Maris had enjoined the utmost caution,
and I remembered, too, the look of those queer people in the street. The
House was _tabu_, and if I was seen going towards it I should be
stopped, and I might even precipitate some wild mischief without Maris
to help me. There in the priest's homely kitchen, with a belt of golden
light on the floor and the hum of flies in the window, I had an acute
sense of being among shadows which might suddenly turn into monstrous
forms of life. The whole island seemed to me like a snake still numb
from the winter cold, but thawing fast into a malignant activity. And
meantime Kor was all alone in that ill-omened House with the circle of
hate closing around her, and I, who had come there to protect her, was
still outside the cordon. I cursed the infernal fog which had brought us
so fatally out of our course; and I resolved that no power on earth
would hinder me, when the dark came, from piercing the barrier.

The presbytery opened into a narrow lane with outbuildings in front of
it, but from the window I could see a corner of the main street. The sun
poured into the lane, and I watched the little green lizards on the wall
beyond. There was scarcely a sign of life in the segment I saw of the
main street; indeed there was a silence strange in a village, so that
every tiny natural noise--the chirping of grasshoppers, the slow flight
of a dove--came with a startling clearness. Once a woman with a shawl
over her head hurried past the opening. There should have been children
playing at the corner, but there were no children nor any sound of them.
Never a cart rumbled by, nor mule nor horse crossed my line of vision.
The village seemed to be keeping an eerie fast.

One man indeed I saw--a big fellow with a white blouse and long boots of
untanned leather. He stood staring down the alley, and I noticed that he
carried a rifle. I beckoned to the priest, and we watched him together
out of a corner of the window. The old man shook his head violently and
muttered something which ended in "bounos." Then he added between his
teeth a word which sounded like "Callicantzari." I had heard that word
from Maris as a term of abuse--he had said, I remember, that it meant
men who become beasts, like the ancient Centaurs. I guessed that this
fellow must be one of the mountain men who were now in league with their
old enemies of the coast. If they were among the besiegers, Kor could
no longer refuse our help. "I will hire a regiment to shoot them down,"
she had furiously told me. But what good was _our_ help likely to be?

The sight of that fellow put an edge to my discomfort, and before the
shadows had begun to fall I was roaming about the little room like a cat
in a cage. The priest left me, and presently I heard the ringing of a
bell. In the quiet, now deepened by the hush of twilight, the homely
sound seemed a mockery--like the striking of the bells of a naval
battery I once heard on the Yser. Then, in the midst of mud and death,
it had incongruously suggested tea on the cool deck of a liner; now this
tintinnabulation, with its call to a meek worship, had the same
grotesque note of parody. Clearly there were no worshippers. I went to
the back of the cottage, and from the window of the bare little bedroom
had a view of the church in that amethyst gloaming. It was a baroque
edifice, probably five centuries old, but renovated during the last
fifty years, and in part painted a violent red. Beside it was a tiny
bell-tower, obviously far more ancient. I could see a faint light in the
window, and beyond that a dark clump of ilex above which the evening
star was rising.

When the priest returned it was almost dark. He lit a lamp and carefully
locked the door and shuttered the window. His barren service seemed to
weigh heavily on him, for he moved wearily and did not raise his
long-lidded eyes. It was borne in on me that at any price I must find
some means of communicating with him, for my hour of action was
approaching.

I tried him in French, but he never lifted his head.

Then it occurred to me that even a priest of the Greek Church must know
a little Latin. I used the English pronunciation, and though he did not
understand me, he seemed to realize what tongue I was talking, for he
replied in a slow, broad Latin. I could not follow it, but at any rate
we had found a common speech. I tore a page from my notebook and was
about to write, when he snatched it and the pencil from my hand. There
was something he badly wanted to say to me. He hesitated a good deal,
and then in laborious capitals he wrote:

"_Si populus aliquid periculi tibi minatur, invenies refugium
in ecclesia._" Then he scored out "_refugium_" and wrote in
"_sanctuarium_."

"_Quid periculi?_" I wrote.

He looked at me helplessly, and spread out his hands. Danger, he seemed
to suggest, lay in every quarter of the compass.

We used up five pages in a conversation in the dodgiest kind of style.
My Latin was chiefly of the legal type, and I often used a word that
puzzled him, while he also set me guessing with phrases which I suppose
were ecclesiastical. But the result was that he repeated the
instructions he had given me through Maris. If I was to enter the House,
the only way was by the Dancing Floor--it took me some time to identify
"_locus saltatorum_"--and to climb the great wall which separated it
from the demesne. But it would be guarded, probably by the "_incoloe
montium_" and I must go warily, and not attempt it till the moon was
down. Also I must be back before the first light of dawn.

I showed him my pistol, but he shook his head violently and went through
a pantomime, the meaning of which was clear enough. I was not to shoot,
because, though the guards were armed, there would be no shooting. But
all the same I was in some deadly danger. He scribbled in abusive Latin
that the people I had to fear were "_pagani, nefasti, mysteriorum
abominabilium cultores_." If I were seen and pursued my only hope was to
reach the church. Not his house--that was no use--but the church. Twice
he printed in emphatic capitals: "_Pete sanctuarium ecclesi._"

Then he took me into his little bedroom, and showed me the lie of the
land. The moon was now up, the fog of the morning had gone out of the
air, and the outline of the church and the bell-tower and the ilex grove
beyond might have been cut in amber and jet. Through the trees there
appeared a faint reddish glow as if fires were burning. I asked what
this might be, and after a good deal of biting the stump of my pencil he
wrote that there lay the graveyard, and the lights were burning "_ut
vrykolakes absint_." He seemed to doubt whether I could follow his
meaning, but I did, for I knew about this from Kor--how the peasants
kept lamps at the grave-heads to ward off vampires.

He was clear that I must traverse the valley of the Dancing Floor while
the moon was up, for otherwise I should miss my way. He looked at me
appraisingly and wrote "You are a soldier," implying, as I took it, that
there was cover for a man accustomed to use cover. Then he drew a plan
on which he marked my road. If I skirted the graveyard I should find
myself on a hillside which sloped towards the Dancing Floor. I must keep
this ridge, which was the northern containing wall of the place, till I
reached the boundaries of the House. On no account must I go down into
the valley, and when I asked why, he said that it was "_nefasta_." That
could not mean merely that it was well-guarded, but that it was held in
dread by the people of Kyntho, a dread which their priest shared.

I left the house just after eleven o'clock. Our long, silent sederunt
had made the two of us good friends, for he wept at parting, and
insisted on blessing me and kissing me on the forehead. I was on his
side, on the side of his Church, a crusader going into peril in a strife
with heathenish evil.

It was a marvellous night for scent and colour, but as silent as the
deeps of the sea. I got with all speed into the shade of the ilexes, and
climbed up a rocky slope so that I looked down on the village graveyard
beyond the trees. Dozens of little lights twinkled in it like fireflies,
those undying lamps which were lit to preserve the inmates from outrage
by the terrible demons that enter into the bodies of the dead. Suddenly
I remembered with horror that it was Kor against whom these precautions
were taken--Kor, now because of her crazy gallantry alone in a doomed
House, dreaming perhaps that she was winning back the hearts of her
people, and knowing little of the dark forces massing against her out of
the ancientry of time. There was that in this mania of superstition
which both infuriated and awed me; it was a thing against which a man
could find no weapon. And I had the ironic recollection of how little
more than a week earlier, in a case before the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council, I had been defending the legalization of certain African
rites, on the ground that what to one man was superstition might to
another be an honest faith. I had struck a belief which had the
compelling power of a fanatical religion, though it was born of the
blackness of night.

The hillside was a mass of scrub and boulder, giving excellent cover,
and, since the ridge shut me off from the village, I could move with
reasonable speed and safety. My spirits were rising with the exercise,
and the depression which had overwhelmed me in the priest's house was
lifting. Then suddenly I topped a rise and found myself looking down on
the Dancing Floor.

It was not a valley so much as an upland meadow, for there was no stream
in it nor had there ever been one, and, though tilted up gently towards
the west, most of it was as flat as a cricket-field. There it lay in the
moonlight, yellow as corn in its cincture of broken ridges, a place
plainly hallowed and set apart. All my life I have cherished certain
pictures of landscape, of which I have caught glimpses in my travels, as
broken hints of a beauty of which I hoped some day to find the
archetype. One is a mountain stream running in broad shallows and coming
down through a flat stretch of heather from a confusion of blue
mountains. Another is a green meadow, cut off like a garden from
neighbouring wildernesses, secret and yet offering a wide horizon, a
place at once a sanctuary and a watch-tower. This type I have found in
the Scottish Borders, in the Cotswolds, once in New Hampshire, and
plentifully in the Piedmont country of Virginia. But in the Dancing
Floor I had stumbled upon its archetype. The moonlight made the farther
hills look low and near, and doubtless lessened the size of the level
ground, but the constriction only served to increase its preciousness.

I sat down and stared at the scene, and in that moment I underwent a
great lightening of spirit. For this meadow was a happy place, the home
of gentle and kindly and honourable things. Mildness and peace brooded
over it. The priest had said that it was "_nefasta_," but he could only
have meant that it was sacred. Sacred indeed it must be, what the Greeks
of old called a _temenos_, for the dullest could not be blind to the
divinity that dwelt here. I had a moment of wonder why the Arabins,
lords of the island, had not included a spot so gracious in their
demesne, until I saw that that could not be. The Dancing Floor must be
open to the winds and the starry influences and the spirits of earth; no
human master could own or enclose it.

You will call me fantastic, but, dull dog as I am, I felt a sort of
poet's rapture as I looked at those shining spaces, and at the sky
above, flooded with the amber moon except on the horizon's edge, where
a pale blue took the place of gold, and faint stars were pricking. The
place was quivering with magic drawn out of all the ages since the world
was made, but it was good magic. I had felt the oppression of Kyntho,
the furtive, frightened people, the fiasco of Eastertide, the
necromantic lamps beside the graves. These all smacked evilly of panic
and death. But now I was looking on the Valley of the Shadow of Life. It
was the shadow only, for it was mute and still and elusive. But the
presage of life was in it, the clean life of fruits and flocks, and
children, and happy winged things, and that spring purity of the earth
which is the purity of God.

The moon was declining, but it would be at least two hours before I
could safely approach the House. The cover was good, I was protected by
the ridge from the side of the village, and no human being was likely to
be abroad on the Dancing Floor. I decided that I must get within sight
of my destination before the light failed and spy out the land. It was
rough going among the ribs of rock and stone-falls and dense thickets of
thorn and arbutus, but sometimes I would come on a patch of turf
drenched with dew and scented with thyme. All the myrrh of Arabia was in
the place, for every foot of sward I trod on and every patch of scrub I
brushed through was aromatic, and in the open places there was the clean
savour of night and the sea. Also at my left hand and below lay the
Dancing Floor, lambent under the moon like the cool tides of a river.

By-and-by I came to the end of the ridge, and had a view of the crest
where the House stood. There was a blur of ebony which must be the wood
that surrounded it, and bounding it a ribbon of silver-grey. I puzzled
at this, till I realized that it was the wall of which the priest had
spoken--a huge thing, it seemed, of an even height, curving from the dip
where the village lay and running to what seemed to be the seaward scarp
of the island. I was now in the danger zone, and it behoved me to go
warily, so I found a shelter where the cover of the ridge ended and
studied the details of the scene. The wall could not be less that
fifteen feet in height, and it appeared to be regularly masoned and as
smooth as the side of a house. In that landscape it was a startling
intrusion of something crude and human, a defiance of nature. Shelley
Arabin had built it for the sake of his sinister privacy, but why had he
built it so high? And then I guessed the reason. He wanted to shut out
the Dancing Floor from his life. That blessed place would have been a
mute protest against his infamies.

There was a black patch in the even sheen of the wall. I wormed my way a
little nearer and saw that for perhaps a dozen yards the wall had been
broken down. I could see the ragged edges and the inky darkness of the
shrubberies beyond. This had been done recently, perhaps within the last
month. And then I saw something more. There were men--guards--stationed
at the gap. I made out their figures, and they seemed to have the baggy
white shirts of the mountaineer I had seen in the village. Also they
were armed. One stood in the gap, and the two others patrolled the
sides, and I could see that they carried rifles at the trail. It seemed
absurd that three men were needed for that tiny entrance, and I
concluded that they wanted each other's company. There must be something
in the task which put a heavy strain on their courage. I noticed, too,
that they kept their faces resolutely averted from the Dancing Floor.
When one moved he walked with his head screwed round facing the House.
The shining meadow might be _nefastus_, as the priest had said, or it
might be too sacred at this solemn hour of night for the profane gaze.

When I had watched them for a little it seemed to me that, though the
moon had not set, these fellows were too preoccupied to be dangerous,
and that I might safely continue my reconnaissance. There was not much
cover, but the declining moon made an olive shadow at the upper end of
the Dancing Floor, and I proceeded to crawl across it like a gillie
after deer. I went very cautiously, stopping every now and then to
prospect, but I found the wall now beyond my range, and I had to chance
the immobility of the sentries. My breeches were sopping with dew before
I reached the point which I judged to be out of sight of the gap. The
wall, as I had observed, curved at the sea end, and once there--unless
there were further guards--I should be at liberty to test my climbing
powers. The thing looked a most formidable barrier, but I was in hopes
that it might be turned where it abutted on the cliffs.

Before I realized it, I was looking down on the sea.

The coast bent inward in a little bight, and a hundred feet below me the
water lapped on a white beach. It was such a revelation of loveliness as
comes to a man only once or twice in his lifetime. I fancy that the
short commons on which I had subsisted all day and the sense of dwelling
among portents had keyed me up to a special receptiveness. Behind me was
the Dancing Floor, and in front a flood of translucent colour, the
shimmer of gold, the rarest tints of sapphire and amethyst, fading into
the pale infinity of the sky. I had come again into a world which spoke.
From below came the sound of dreamily moving water, of sleepy pigeons in
the rocks. Recollections of poetry fleeted through my mind:

       "where Helicon breaks down
    In cliff to the sea....

    Where the moon-silver'd inlets
    Send far their light voice----"

Yes, but something was wanting. There should have been white flocks on
the sward, something to link up nature with the homely uses of man, in
order to produce the idyllic. This place was not idyllic, it was magical
and unearthly. Above me was a walled mystery, within which evil had
once been followed and a greater evil might soon be done, and there
were men with quaking hearts bent upon ancient devilries.

I followed the edge of the scarp as it rose to the highest point where
the wall ended. There I had a sharp disappointment. The wall ran sheer
to the edge of the cliff, and a steep buttress descended to the face of
the limestone crag. The stone was as smooth as a water-worn pebble. I
have been a rock-climber since I was an undergraduate, and have faced in
my time some awkward problems, but this was starkly impossible. Even
with a companion and a rope I do not believe it could have been done,
and to attempt it alone meant the certainty of a broken neck.

I prospected eastward along the wall, and found no better hope there.
The thing was simply not to be climbed except by a lizard. If I had had
Maris with me I might have stood on his shoulders and made a jump for
the coping; as it was it might have been a hundred feet high instead of
fifteen for all the good it was to me. There were no branches about to
make a ladder, or loose stones to make a cairn--nothing but the short
downland turf.

The sight of this insuperable obstacle effectively put a stop to my
brief exhilaration of spirit. I felt small, and feeble, and futile. It
was imperative that I should get into the House without further delay
and see Kor, and yet the House was as impracticable as the moon, now
swiftly setting. The rapid darkening of the world pointed out the only
road. I must dodge the sentries and get through the breach in the wall.
It was a wild notion, but my growing ill-temper made me heedless of
risks. The men had no pistols, only rifles, and were probably not too
ready in the use of them. After all, I had played this game before with
success. In the first winter of the war, when I was a subaltern, I used
to be rather good at wriggling across No-man's-land and eavesdropping
beside the German trenches.

I didn't give my resolution time to weaken, but in the shadow of the
wall made the best pace I could towards the gap. It was now really dark,
with only a faint glow from the stars, and I moved in what seemed to my
eyes impenetrable shade after the brightness of the moon. I was wearing
rubber-soled boots and cloth gaiters, my garments were subfuse in
colour, and I have always been pretty light on my feet. I halted many
times to get my bearings, and presently I heard the sound of a man's
tread. So far as I could judge before, two of the sentries had their
patrol well away from the wall, and I might escape their notice if I
hugged the stones. But one had had his stand right in the breach, and
with him I would have difficulty. My hope was to dart through into the
shelter of the thick shrubbery. Even if they fired on me they would be
likely to miss, and I believed that they would not follow me into the
demesne.

I edged my way nearer, a foot at a time, till I guessed by the sound
that I was inside the beat of the patrols. I had no white about me, for
my shirt and collar were drab, and I kept my face to the wall. Suddenly
my hands felt the ragged edge of the gap and I almost stumbled over a
fallen stone. Here it was very dark, and I had the shadow of the trees
inside to help me. I held my breath and listened, but I could not hear
any noise from within the breach. Had the sentry there deserted his
post?

I waited for a minute or so, trying to reckon up the chances. The tread
of the man on my right was clear, and presently I could make out also
the movement of the man on my left. Where was the third? Suddenly I
heard to the right the sound of human speech. The third must be there.
There was a sparkle of fire, too. The third sentry had gone to get a
light for his cigarette.

Now was my opportunity, and I darted into the darkness of the gap. I was
brought up sharp and almost stunned by a blow on the forehead. There was
a gate in the gap, a stout thing of wattles with a pole across. I
strained at it with my hands, but it would not move.

There was nothing for it but to bolt. The sentries had been
alarmed--probably horribly alarmed--by the noise, and were drawing
together. The only safety lay in violent action, for they had a means of
getting light and would find me if I tried to lurk in the shadows. I
raised my arms in the orthodox ghostly fashion, howled like a banshee,
and broke for the open.

I was past them before they could stop me and plunging down the slope
towards the Dancing Floor. I think that for the first moments they were
too scared to shoot, for they must have believed that I had come out of
the forbidden House, and when they recovered their nerve I was beyond
their range. The upper slope was steep, and I went down it as
Pate-in-Peril in _Redgauntlet_ went down Errickstane-brae. I rolled over
and over, found my feet, lost them again, and did not come to rest till
I was in the flats of the meadow. I looked back and saw a light
twinkling at the gap. The guards there must have been amazed to find the
gate intact, and were now doubtless at their prayers.

I did not think that, even if they believed me flesh and blood, they
would dare to follow me to the Dancing Floor. So I made my way down it
at a reasonable pace, feeling rather tired, rather empty, and very
thirsty. On the road up I had decided that there was no stream in it,
but almost at once I came to a spring. It was a yard across, bubbling up
strongly, and sending forth a tiny rill which presently disappeared in
some fissure of the limestone. The water was deliciously cold, and I
drank pints of it. Then it occurred to me that I must put my best foot
forwards, for there was that trembling in the eastern sky which is the
presage of dawn. My intention was to join my fellows in the inn
courtyard, and meet Maris there in the morning. After all, the
inhabitants of Kyntho had nothing as yet against me. All they knew of
me was that I was a surveyor from the Government at Athens, whose
presence no doubt was unwelcome but who could hardly be treated as an
enemy.

I reached the eastern bounds of the Dancing Floor, and scrambled up on
the ridge above the ilexes of the graveyard. The lamps were still
twinkling like glow-worms among the graves. From there it was easy to
get into the lane where stood the priest's house, and in a few minutes I
was in the main village street. The chilly dawn was very near, and I
thought lovingly of the good food in our boxes. My first desire was a
meal which should be both supper and breakfast.

The door of the courtyard stood open, and I pushed through it to the
barn beyond. The place was empty--not a sign of men or baggage. For a
moment I thought they might have been given quarters in the inn, till I
remembered that the inn had no guest-room. I tried the other
outbuildings--a stable, a very dirty byre, a place which looked like a
granary. One and all were empty.

It was no use waking the landlord, for he probably would not answer, and
in any case I did not understand his tongue. There was nothing for it
but to go back to the priest. My temper was thoroughly embittered, and I
strode out of the courtyard as if I were at home in my own village.

But my entrance had been observed, and the street was full of people. I
doubt if Kyntho slept much these days, and now it seemed that from
every door men and women were emerging. There was something uncanny in
that violent vigilance in the cold grey light of dawn. And the crowd
was no longer inert. In a second I saw that it was actively hostile,
that it wanted to do me a mischief, or at any rate to lay hands on me.
It closed in on me from every side, and yet made no sound.

It was now that I had my first real taste of fear. Before I had been
troubled and mystified, but now I was downright afraid. Automatically I
broke into a run, for I remembered the priest's advice about the church.

My action took them by surprise. Shouts arose, meaningless shouts to me,
and I broke through the immediate circle with ease. Two fellows who
moved to intercept me I handed off in the best Rugby football style. The
street was empty before me and I sprinted up it at a pace which I doubt
if I ever equalled in my old running days.

But I had one determined pursuer. I caught a glimpse of him out of a
corner of my eye, one of the young men from the hills, a fellow with a
dark hawk-like face and a powerful raking stride. In my then form he
would have beaten me easily if the course had been longer, but it was
too short to let him develop his speed. Yet he was not a yard behind me
when I shot through the open door of the church.

I flung myself gasping on the floor behind one of the squat pillars. As
I recovered my breath I wondered why no shot had been fired. A man with
a gun could have brought me down with the utmost ease, for I had been
running straight in the open. My second thought was that the priest had
been right. The peasant had stopped in his tracks at the church door. I
had found safety for the moment--a sanctuary or, it might be, a prison.




CHAPTER X


The morning light was filtering through the windows, and since the glass
was a dirty yellow, the place seemed still to be full of moonshine. As
my eyes grew accustomed to it, I made out the features of the interior.
A heavy curtain separated the sanctuary from the chancel; the floor was
of rough stone, worn with the feet and knees of generations of
worshippers; there were none of the statues and images which one is
accustomed to in a Roman church, not even a crucifix, though there may
have been one above the hidden altar. From a pillar hung an assortment
of votive offerings, crutches, oar-blades, rudders of ships,
old-fashioned horn spectacles. The walls were studded with little ikons
of saints, each one with its guttering lamp before it. The place smelt
dank and unused and mouldy, like a kirk in winter-time in some Highland
glen. Behind me the open door showed an oval of pure pale light.

I was in a mood of profound despondency which was very near despair. The
men had gone and with them our stores of food and ammunition. God knew
where Maris was or how I should find him again. The village was
actively hostile, and I was shut up in the church as in a penitentiary.
I was no nearer Kor than when we landed--farther away indeed, for I had
taken the wrong turning, and she was shut off from me by mountainous
barriers. I could have laughed bitterly when I thought of the futility
of the help which I had been so confident of giving her. And her danger
was far more deadly than I had dreamed. She was the mark of a wild hate
which had borrowed some wilder madness out of the deeps of the past. She
had spoken of a "sacrifice." That was the naked truth of it; any moment
tragedy might be done, some hideous rite consummated, and youth and
gallantry laid on a dark altar.

The thought drove me half crazy. I fancy the lack of food and sleep had
made me rather light-headed, for I sat in a stupor which was as much
anger as pity--anger at those blinded islanders, at my own feebleness,
at Kor's obstinacy. This was succeeded by an extreme restlessness. I
could not stay still, but roamed about examining the ill-favoured ikons.
There was a little recess on the right of the chancel which was
evidently the treasury, for I found a big chest full of dusty vestments
and church plate. Sacrilege must have been an unknown crime in Kyntho,
for the thing was unlocked.

Then I noticed a strange object below the chancel step. It seemed to be
a bier with a shrouded figure laid on it. The sight gave me a shock, for
I thought it a dead body. Reluctantly I approached it and drew back the
shroud, expecting to see the corpse of a peasant.

To my amazement it was a figure of Christ--a wooden image, rudely carved
but with a strange similitude of life. It reminded me of a John the
Baptist by Donatello which I once saw in Venice. The emaciated body was
naked but for the loin cloth, the eyes were closed, the cheeks sunken.
It was garishly painted, and the stigmata were done in a crude scarlet.
But there was power in it, and dignity, and a terrible pitifulness. I
remembered Kor's story. This was the figure which on the night of Good
Friday, after the women had kissed and wailed over it, was borne in
procession among the village lanes and then restored to its sepulchre.
This was the figure which at the Easter Resurrection stood in a blaze of
candles before the altar, the Crucified and Risen Lord.

That sight worked a miracle with me. I suddenly felt that I was not
alone, but had august allies. The Faith was behind me, that faith which
was deep in the heart of Kyntho though for the moment it was overlaid.
The shabby church, the mazed and ignorant priest took on suddenly a
tremendous significance.... They were the visible sign and warrant of
that creed which we all hold dumbly, even those who call themselves
unbelievers--the belief in the ultimate omnipotence of purity and
meekness.

I reverently laid the shroud again over the figure, and must have stood
in a muse before it, till I found that the priest had joined me. He
knelt beside the bier, and said his prayers, and never have I heard such
an agony of supplication in a man's voice. I drew back a little, and
waited. When he had finished he came to me and his eyes asked a
question.

I shook my head and got out my notebook.

He asked me if I had breakfasted, and when I wrote the most emphatic
negative which my Latin could compass, he hobbled off and returned with
some food under his cassock. It was only walnuts and black bread, but I
ate it wolfishly and felt better for it. I looked on the old man now
with a sincere liking, for he was my host and my ally, and I think he
had changed his attitude towards me. Those minutes beside the bier had
established a bond between us.

In the recess I have mentioned there was a door which I had not hitherto
noticed. This opened into a kind of sacristy, where the priest kept his
odds and ends. There was a well in the floor of it, covered by an
immense oaken lid, a well of cold water of which I had a long drink. The
old man drew several buckets, and set about cleaning the chancel, and I
was glad to lend a hand. I spent the better part of the morning like a
housemaid on my knees scrubbing the floor and the chancel step, while he
was occupied inside the sanctuary. The physical exertion was an anodyne
to my thoughts, which in any case were without purpose. I could do
nothing till the night came again.

On one of my journeys to the sacristy to fetch water I saw a face at
the little window, which opened on the yard of the priest's house. To my
immense relief it was Maris, very dirty and dishevelled, but grinning
cheerfully. That window was a tight fit, but he managed to wriggle half
through, and a strong pull from me did the rest. He drank like a thirsty
dog out of my bucket, and then observed that a church had its drawbacks
as a resort, since one couldn't smoke.

"I have much to tell you, my friend," he said, "but first I must
interview his Holiness. By God, but he has the mischievous flock."

I do not know what he said to the priest, but he got answers which
seemed to give him a melancholy satisfaction. The old man spoke without
ever looking up, and his voice was flat with despair. Often he shook his
head, and sometimes he held up his hand as if to avert a blasphemy.
Maris turned to me with a shrug of the shoulders. "This madness is
beyond him, as it is beyond me. It is a general breaking down of wits.
What can you and I, soldiers though we be, do against insanity?
Presently I must sleep, and you too, my friend, to judge by your heavy
eyes. But first I make my report."

"I suppose we are safe here?" I said.

"Safe enough, but impotent. We can take our sleep confidently, but it is
hard to see that we can do much else. We are in quarantine, if you
understand. But to report----"

He had gone to the inn the night before, and found our five men supping
and playing cards like Christians. They seemed to understand what was
required of them--to wait for me and then join Janni and the others at
the rendezvous on the western cliffs. So far as he could judge they had
had no communication of any kind with the people of the village. Then he
had set out with an easy mind on the road to Vano. No one had hindered
him; the few villagers he met had stared but had not attempted even to
accost him. So over the moonlit downs he went, expecting to find Janni
and the other five in bivouac in the open country towards the skirts of
the hills.

He found Janni alone--on the roadside some miles east of Vano, squatted
imperturbably by a fire, in possession of five revolvers and ample
stores, but without a single follower. From the one-armed corporal he
heard a strange tale. The party had made Vano before midday in the
_Santa Lucia_, had landed, and marched inland from the little port,
without apparently attracting much attention. He himself had explained
to the harbour-master that they had been sent to do survey work, and the
wine shop, where they stopped for a drink, heard the same story. They
had then tramped up the road from Vano to the hills, stopping at the
little farms to pass the time of day and pick up news. They heard
nothing till nightfall, when they encamped beside a village among the
foothills. There Janni talked to sundry villagers and heard queer
stories of Kyntho. There was a witch there who by her spells had
blighted the crops and sent strange diseases among the people, and the
cup of her abominations was now full. So Dionysos had appeared to many
in a dream summoning them to Kyntho in the Great Week, and the best of
the young men had already gone thither.

That was all that Janni heard, for being the man in authority he spoke
only with the elders, and they were wary in their talk. But the others,
gossiping with the women, heard a fuller version which scared them to
the bone. Your Greek townsman is not a whit less superstitious than the
peasant, and he lacks the peasant's stolidity, and is prone to more
speedy excitement. Janni did not know exactly what the women had told
his men, except that Kyntho was the abode of vampires and harpies for
whom a surprising judgment was preparing, and that no stranger could
enter the place without dire misfortune. There might be throat-cutting,
it was hinted, on the part of the young men now engaged in a holy war,
and there would for certain be disaster at the hand of the _striglas_
and _vrykolakes_ in the House, for to them a stranger would be easy
prey.

Whatever it was, it brought the men back to Janni gibbering with terror
and determined to return forthwith to Vano. The island was accursed and
the abode of devils innumerable, and there was nothing for honest men to
do but to flee. They would go back to Vano and wait on a boat, the
_Santa Lucia_ or some other. To do the rascals justice, Janni thought
that they might have faced the throat-cutting, but the horrors of the
unseen and the occult were more than they could stomach. Janni, who was
a rigid disciplinarian, had fortunately possessed himself of their
pistols when they encamped for the night, and he was now in two minds
whether he should attempt to detain them by force. But the sight of
their scared eyes and twitching lips decided him that he could do
nothing in their present mood, and he resolved to let them go back to
Vano till he had seen Maris and received instructions. They had already
had wages in advance, and could fend for themselves till he made a plan.
So he doled out to each man a share of the supplies and watched them
scurry off in the direction of the coast, while he smoked his pipe and
considered the situation. There, about two in the morning, Maris found
him.

The defection of these five men suggested to Maris that the same kind of
trouble might be expected with the batch in Kyntho. So he and Janni
humped the stores and started off across the downs to the rendezvous on
the cliffs which he had settled with me. That occupied a couple of
hours, and there Janni was left with orders not to stir till he was
summoned. The place was a hollow on the very edge of the sea, far
removed from a road or a dwelling--a lucky choice, for it had been made
at haphazard from the map without any local knowledge. Then Maris set
off at his best pace for Kyntho, skirting the Dancing Floor on the
south, and striking the road to Vano a mile or so from the village.

There he met the rest of our posse, and a more dilapidated set of
mountebanks he declared he had never seen. So far as he could gather
from their babble, they had been visited in the small hours by a
deputation of villagers, who had peremptorily ordered them to depart.
The deputation backed its plea not by threats but by a plain statement
of facts. Kyntho was labouring under a curse which was about to be
removed. No doubt the villagers expounded the nature of the curse with
details which started goose-flesh on their hearers. What was about to be
done was Kyntho's own affair, and no stranger could meddle with it and
live. They may have enforced their argument with a sight of their
rifles, but probably they did not need any mundane arguments to barb the
terror which their tale inspired. For they succeeded in so putting a
fear of unknown horrors into these five Athens guttersnipes that they
decamped without a protest. They did not even stay to collect some
provender, but fled for their lives along the Vano road.

When Maris met them they were padding along in abject panic. One man
still carried unconsciously a tin from which he had been feeding,
another clutched a crumpled pack of cards. They had their pistols, but
they had no thought of using them. Pantingly they told their story,
irking to be gone, and when Maris seemed to be about to detain them they
splayed away from him like frightened sheep. Like Janni, he decided that
it was no good to try to stop them--indeed he was pretty clear by now
that even if they stayed they would be useless for the job we had in
hand. He cursed their female relatives for several generations and
speeded the hindmost on his way with a kick.

His next business was to find me, and he concluded that I would probably
be still in the neighbourhood of the House. So, as the moon was down, he
retraced his steps by the south side of the Dancing Floor and reached
the edge where the wall abutted on the cliffs probably an hour after I
had been there. He shared my view about the impracticality of an
entrance to the demesne at that point. As it was now almost daylight he
did not dare to follow the wall, but returned to Janni on the cliffs,
who gave him breakfast. He was getting anxious about my doings, for he
argued that if I returned to the inn to look for the men there would
probably be trouble. It seemed to him important that the village should
still believe him to have gone off, so he was determined not to show
himself. But he must get in touch with me, and for that purpose he
decided first to draw the priest's house. He had a difficult journey in
the broad daylight by way of the graveyard. It would have been
impossible, he said, if the village had been living its normal life, for
he had to pass through a maze of little fields and barns. But all farm
work seemed to have been relinquished and not a soul was to be seen at
the lower end of the Dancing Floor. Everybody, except the guards round
the House, seemed to be huddling in the village street. In the end he
got into the priest's house, found it empty and followed on to the
church.

I told him briefly my doings of the night. I could see that he was
completely in the dark as to what was happening, except that Kyntho,
under the goad of some crazy superstition, intended very resolute
mischief to the House and its chatelaine. You see he had not talked to
Kor--had indeed never seen her, nor had he read the disquieting
manuscript which Vernon had translated for me. I did not see how I could
enlighten him, for on that side he was no scholar, and was too rooted in
his brand of minor rationalism to take my tale seriously. It was
sufficient that we were both agreed that the House must be entered, and
Kor willy-nilly removed.

"But we have no ship," he cried. "The lady would be no safer in the open
than in the House, for they mean most certainly that she shall die. I
think it may come to putting our backs to the wall, and the odds are
unpleasant. We cannot telegraph for help, for the office is in the
village and it has been destroyed. I have ascertained that there is no
wire at Vano, or elsewhere in the island."

Things looked pretty ugly, as I was bound to admit. But there was one
clear and urgent duty, to get into the House and find Kor. Before we
lay down to snatch a little sleep, we made a rough plan. Maris would try
the coast to the north and see if an entrance could be effected by a
postern above the jetty where Vernon and I had first landed. He thought
that he had better undertake this job, for it meant skirting the
village, and he believed he might pass in the darkness as one of the men
from the hills. He could talk the language, you see, and, if accosted,
could put up some kind of camouflage. I was to make for Janni, and then
the two of us would try along the shore under the cliffs in the hope
that some gully might give us access to the demesne north of the point
where the wall ended. We were to rendezvous about breakfast time at
Janni's camp, and from the results of the night frame a further
programme.

I slept without a break till after eight o'clock in the evening, when
the priest woke us and gave us another ration of the eternal bread and
walnuts. I felt frowsy and dingy, and would have given much for a bath.
The priest reported that the day in the village had passed without
incident, except that there had been a great gathering in the central
square and some kind of debate. He had not been present, but the thing
seemed to have deepened his uneasiness. "There is no time to lose," he
told Maris, "for to-morrow is Good Friday, and to-morrow I fear that
unhallowed deeds may be done." Maris discussed his route with him very
carefully, and several more pages of my notebook were used up in plans.
It was going to be a ticklish business to reach the jetty--principally,
I gathered, because of the guards who watched all the sides of the
demesne which were not bounded by the cliffs or the great wall. But the
priest seemed to think it possible, and Maris's Gascon soul had
illimitable confidence.

My road was plain--up the ridge on the south side of the Dancing Floor
till it ended at the sea, a matter of not more than four miles. I
skirted as before the little graveyard with its flickering lamps, and
then made a cautious traverse of a number of small fields each with its
straw-covered barn. Presently I was out on the downs, with the yellow
levels of the Dancing Floor below me on the right. I was in a different
mood from the previous night, for I was now miserably conscious of the
shortness of our time and the bigness of our task. Anxiety was putting
me into a fever of impatience and self-contempt. Here was I, a man who
was reckoned pretty competent by the world, who had had a creditable
record in the war, who was considered an expert at getting other people
out of difficulties--and yet I was so far utterly foiled by a batch of
barbarian peasants. I simply dared not allow my mind to dwell on Kor
and her perils, for that way lay madness. I had to try to think of the
thing objectively as a problem to be solved, but flashes of acute fear
for the girl kept breaking through to set my heart beating.

I found Janni cooking supper by his little fire in a nook of the downs,
and the homely sight for the moment comforted me. The one-armed corporal
was, I daresay, by nature and upbringing as superstitious as any other
Greek peasant, but his military training had canalized his imagination,
and he would take no notice of a legend till he was ordered to by his
superior officer. It reminded me of the policeman Javert in _Les
Misrables_: his whole soul was in the ritual of his profession, and it
must have been a black day for Janni when the war stopped. Maris, whom
he worshipped blindly, had bidden him take instructions from me, and he
was ready to follow me into the sea. Mercifully his service at Salonika
had taught him a few English words and a certain amount of bad French,
so we could more or less communicate.

He had supplies with him, so I had a second supper--biscuits and
sardines and coffee, which after two days of starvation tasted like
nectar and ambrosia. Also he had a quantity of caporal cigarettes with
which I filled my pockets. Our first business was to get down to the
beach, and fortunately he had already discovered a route a few hundred
yards to the south, where a gully with a stone shoot led to the water's
edge. Presently we stood on the pebbly shore looking out to the luminous
west over a sea as calm as a mill-pond. I would have liked to bathe, but
decided that I must first get the immediate business over.

That shore was rough going, for it was a succession of limestone reefs
encumbered with great boulders which had come down from the rocks during
past winters. The strip of beach was very narrow and the overhang of the
cliffs protected us from observation from above, even had any peasant
been daring enough to patrol the Dancing Floor by night. We kept close
to the water, where the way was easiest, but even there our progress was
slow. It took us the better part of an hour to get abreast of the point
where the wall ended. There the cliffs were at least two hundred feet
high, and smooth as the side of a cut loaf. Crowning them we could see
the dark woodlands of the demesne.

My object was to find a route up them, and never in all my
mountaineering experience had I seen a more hopeless proposition. The
limestone seemed to have no fissures, and the faces had weathered
smooth. In the Dolomites you can often climb a perpendicular cliff by
the countless little cracks in the hard stone, but here there were no
cracks, only a surface glassy like marble. At one point I took off my
boots and managed to ascend about twenty yards, when I was brought up
sharp by an overhang, could find no way to traverse, and had my work cut
out getting down again. Janni was no cragsman, and in any case his one
arm made him useless.

Our outlook ahead was barred by a little cape, and I was in hopes that
on the other side of that the ground might become easier. We had a bad
time turning it, for the beach stopped and the rock fell sheer to the
water. Happily the water at the point was shallow, and partly wading and
partly scrambling, we managed to make the passage. In the moonlight
everything was clear as day, and once round we had a prospect of a
narrow bay, backed by the same high perpendicular cliffs and bounded to
the north by a still higher bluff, which ended to seaward in a sheer
precipice.

I sat down on a boulder with a sinking heart to consider the prospect.
It was more hopeless than the part we had already prospected. There was
no gully or chimney in the whole glimmering semicircle, nothing but a
rim of unscalable stone crowned with a sharp-cut fringe of trees. Beyond
the bluff lay the olive-yards which I had seen six years before when I
landed from the yacht, but I was pretty certain that we would never get
round the bluff. For the margin of shore had now disappeared, and the
cliffs dropped sheer into deep water.

Suddenly Janni by my side grunted and pointed to the middle of the
little bay. There, riding at anchor, was a boat.

At first it was not easy to distinguish it from a rock, for there was no
riding light shown. But, as I stared at it, I saw that it was indeed a
boat--a yawl-rigged craft of, I judged, about twenty tons. It lay there
motionless in the moonlight, a beautiful thing which had no part in that
setting of stone and sea--a foreign thing, an intruder. I watched it for
five minutes and nothing moved aboard.

The sight filled me with both hope and mystification. Here was the
"ship" which Maris had postulated. But who owned it, and what was it
doing in this outlandish spot, where there was no landing? It could not
belong to Kyntho, or it would have been lying at the jetty below the
House, or in the usual harbour. Indeed it could not belong to Plakos at
all, for, though I knew little about boats, I could see that the cut of
this one spoke of Western Europe. Was any one on board? It behoved me
forthwith to find that out.

I spoke to Janni, and he whistled shrilly. But there was no answer from
the sleeping bay. He tried again several times without result. If we
were to make inquiries, it could only be by swimming out. Janni, of
course, was no swimmer, and besides, the responsibility was on me. I
can't say I liked the prospect, but in three minutes I had stripped and
was striking out in the moon-silvered water.

The fresh, cold, aromatic sea gave me new vigour of body and mind. I
realized that I must proceed warily. Supposing there was some one on
board, some one hostile, I would be completely at his mercy. So I swam
very softly up to the stern and tried to read the name on it. There was
a name, but that side was in shadow and I could not make it out. I swam
to the bows, and there again saw a name of which I could make nothing,
except that the characters did not seem to me to be Greek.

I trod water and took stock of the situation. It was the kind of craft
of which you will see hundreds at Harwich and Southampton and
Plymouth--a pleasure boat, obviously meant for cruising, but with
something of the delicate lines of a racer. I was beginning to feel
chilly, and felt that I must do something more than prospect from the
water. I must get on board and chance the boat being empty or the owner
asleep.

There was a fender amidships hanging over the port side. I clutched
this, got a grip of the gunwale, and was just about to pull myself up,
when a face suddenly appeared above me, a scared, hairy face, surmounted
by a sort of blue nightcap. Its owner objected to my appearance, for he
swung a boathook and brought it down heavily on the knuckles of my left
hand. That is to say, such was his intention, but he missed his aim and
only grazed my little finger.

I dropped off and dived, for I was afraid that he might start shooting.
When I came up a dozen yards off and shook the water out of my eyes, I
saw him staring at me as if I was a merman, with the boathook still in
his hand.

"What the devil do you mean by that?" I shouted, when I had ascertained
that he had no pistol. "What boat is it? Who are you?"

My voice seemed to work some change in the situation, for he dropped the
boathook, and replied in what sounded like Greek. I caught one word
"Ingleez" several times repeated.

"I'm English," I cried, "English ... philos ... philhellene--damn it,
what's the Greek for a friend?"

"Friend," he repeated, "Ingleez," and I swam nearer.

He was a tough-looking fellow, dressed in a blue jersey and what
appeared to be old flannel bags, and he looked honest, though puzzled. I
was now just under him, and smiling for all I was worth. I put a hand on
the fender again, and repeated the word "English." I also said that my
intentions were of the best, and I only wanted to come aboard and have a
chat. If he was well disposed towards England, I thought he might
recognize the sound of the language.

Evidently he did, for he made no protest when I got both hands on the
gunwale again. He allowed me to get my knee up on it, so I took my
chance and swung myself over. He retreated a step and lifted the
boathook, but he did not attempt to hit me as I arose, like Proteus, out
of the sea and stood dripping on his deck.

I held out my hand, and with a moment's hesitation he took it.
"English ... friend," I said, grinning amicably at him, and to my relief
he grinned back.

I was aboard a small yacht, which was occidental in every line of her,
the clean decks, the general tidy, workmanlike air. A man is not at his
most confident standing stark naked at midnight in a strange boat,
confronting somebody of whose speech he comprehends not one word. But I
felt that I had stumbled upon a priceless asset if I could only use it,
and I was determined not to let the chance slip. He poured out a flow of
Greek, at which I could only shake my head and murmur "English." Then I
tried the language of signs, and went through a vigorous pantomime to
explain that, though I could not speak his tongue, I had a friend on
shore who could. The yacht had a dinghy. Would he row me ashore and meet
my friend?

It took me the devil of a time to make this clear to him, and I had to
lead him to where the dinghy lay astern, point to it, point to the
shore, point to my dumb mouth, and generally behave like a maniac. But
he got it at last. He seemed to consider, then he dived below and
returned with a thing like an iron mace which he brandished round his
head as if to give me to understand that if I misbehaved he could brain
me. I smiled and nodded and put my hand on my heart, and he smiled back.

Then his whole manner changed. He brought me a coat and an ancient felt
hat, and made signs that I should put them on. He dived below again and
brought up a bowl of hot cocoa, which did me good, for my teeth were
beginning to chatter. Finally he motioned me to get into the dinghy and
set his mace beside him, took the sculls and pulled me in the direction
I indicated.

Janni was sitting smoking on a stone, the image of innocent peace. I
cried out to him before we reached shore, and told him that this was the
skipper and that he must talk to him. The two began their conversation
before we landed, and presently it seemed that Janni had convinced my
host that we were respectable. As soon as we landed I started to put on
my clothes, but first I took the pistol from my coat pocket and
presented the butt-end to my new friend. He saw my intention, bowed
ceremoniously, and handed it back to me. He also pitched the mace back
into the dinghy, as if he regarded it as no longer necessary.

He and Janni talked volubly and with many gesticulations, and the latter
now and then broke off to translate for my benefit. I noticed that as
time went on the seaman's face, though it remained friendly, grew also
obstinate.

"He says he awaits his master here," said Janni, "but who his master is
and where he is gone he will not tell. He says also that this island is
full of devils and bad men, and that on no account will he stay on it."

I put suggestions to Janni, which he translated, but we could get
nothing out of the fellow, except the repeated opinion--with which I
agreed--that the island was full of devils, and that the only place for
an honest man was the water. About his master he remained stubbornly
silent. I wanted him to take me in his boat round the farther bluff, so
that we could land on the olive-yard slopes and possibly get in touch
with Maris, but he peremptorily refused. He would not leave the bay,
which was the only safe place. Elsewhere were the men and women of
Plakos, who were devils.

After about an hour's fruitless talk I gave it up. But one thing I
settled. I told him through Janni that there were others besides
ourselves and himself who were in danger from the devils of the island.
There was a lady--an English lady--who was even now in dire peril. If
we could bring her to the spot would he be on the watch and take her on
board?

He considered this for a little, and then agreed. He would not leave the
island without his master, but he would receive the lady if necessary,
and if the devils followed he would resist them. He was obviously a
fighting man, and I concluded he would be as good as his word. Asked if
in case of pursuit he would put to sea, he said, "No, not till his
master returned." That was the best I could make of him, but of that
precious master he refused to speak a syllable. His own name he said was
George--known at home as Black George, to distinguish him from a cousin,
George of the Hare-lip.

We parted in obscure friendliness. I presented him with my empty
cigarette-case, and he kissed me on both cheeks. As I handed him back
the garments which he had lent me to cover my nakedness, I noticed a
curious thing. The coat was an aquascutum so old that the maker's tab
had long since gone from it. But inside the disreputable felt hat I saw
the name of a well-known shop in Jermyn Street.




CHAPTER XI


Janni and I returned to the camp before dawn. For some unknown reason a
heavy weariness overcame me on the way back, and I could scarcely drag
my limbs over the last half-mile of shore and up the stone shoot to the
edge of the downs. I dropped on the ground beside the ashes of the fire,
and slept like a drugged man.

When I awoke it was high forenoon. The sun was beating full on the
little hollow, and Janni was cooking breakfast. My lethargy had gone,
and I woke to a violent, anxious energy. Where was Maris? He ought to
have rejoined us, according to plan, before sunrise. But Janni had seen
no sign of him. Had he got into the House? Well, in that case he would
find means to send us a message, and to send it soon, for this was Good
Friday, the day which the priest feared. I was in a fever of impatience,
for I had found a boat, a means of escape of which Maris did not know.
If he was in the House, I must get that knowledge to him, and he in turn
must get in touch as soon as possible with me. Our forces were divided
with no link of communication.

I did my best to possess my soul in that hot scented forenoon, but it
was a hard job, for the sense of shortening time had got on my nerves.
The place was cooled by light winds from the sea, and for Janni, who lay
on his back and consumed cigarettes, it was doubtless a pleasant
habitation. Rivers of narcissus and iris and anemone flooded over the
crest and spilled into the hollow. The ground was warm under the short
herbage, and from it came the rich clean savour of earth quickening
after its winter sleep under the spell of the sun. The pigeons were
cooing in the cliffs below me, and the air was full of the soft tideless
swaying of the sea. But for all the comfort it gave me I might have been
stretched on frozen bricks in a dungeon. I was constantly getting up and
crawling to a high point which gave me a view of the rim of the downs up
to the wall, and eastwards towards the Vano road. But there was no sign
of Maris in the wide landscape.

About one o'clock the thing became unbearable. If Maris was in the House
I must find touch with him; if he had failed, I must make the attempt
myself. It was a crazy thing to contemplate in broad daylight, but my
anxiety would not let me stay still. I bade Janni wait for me, and set
off towards the Vano road, with the intention of trying Maris's route of
the previous night and making a circuit by the east side of the village
towards the jetty.

I had the sense to keep on the south side of the ridge out of sight of
the Dancing Floor and the high ground beyond it. There was not a soul
to be seen in all that grassy place; the winding highway showed no
figure as far as the eye could reach; even the closes and barns
clustered about the foot of the Dancing Floor seemed untenanted of man
or beast. I gave the village a wide berth, and after crossing some
patches of cultivation and scrambling through several ragged thickets
found myself due east of Kyntho and some three hundred feet above it.

There I had the prospect of the church rising above a line of hovels, a
bit of the main street, the rear of the inn, and the houses which
straggled seaward toward the jetty. The place had undergone another
transformation, for it seemed to be deserted. Not one solitary figure
appeared in the blinding white street. Every one must be indoors engaged
in some solemn preparation against the coming night. That gave me a hope
that the northern approaches to the House might be unguarded. So great
was my anxiety that I set off at a run, and presently had reached the
high ground which overlooked the road from the village to the harbour.
Here I had to go circumspectly, for once I descended to the road I would
be in view of any one on the jetty, and probably, too, of the
northernmost houses in the village.

I scanned the foreground long and carefully with my glass, and decided
that no one was about, so I slipped down from the heights, crossed the
road a hundred yards above the harbour, and dived into the scrub which
bordered the beach on the farther side. Here I was completely
sheltered, and made good going till I rounded a little point and came
into a scene which was familiar. It was the place where, six years
before, Vernon and I had landed from Lamancha's yacht. There were the
closes of fruit blossom, the thickets, the long scrubby ravine where we
had listened to the Spring Song. I had a sudden sense of things being
predestined, of the ironical fore-ordination of life.

I knew what to expect. Round the horn of the little bay where I stood
lay the House with its jetty and the causeway and the steep stairs to
the postern gates. My success thus far had made me confident, and I
covered the next half-mile as if I were walking on my own estate. But I
had the wit to move cautiously before I passed the containing ridge, and
crept up to the skyline.

It was well that I did so, for this was what I saw. On the jetty there
were guards, and there were posts along the causeway. More, some change
had been wrought in the seaward wall of the House. The huge place rose,
blank and white, in its cincture of greenery, but at the points where
the steps ended in postern doors there seemed to be a great accumulation
of brushwood which was not the work of nature. My glass told me what it
was. The entrance was piled high with fagots. The place had been
transformed into a pyre.

But it was not that sight which sent my heart to my boots--I had been
prepared for that or any other devilry; it was the utter impossibility
of effecting an entrance. The fabric rose stark and silent like a
prison, and round it stood the wardens.

I didn't wait long, for the spectacle made me mad. I turned and retraced
my steps, as fast as I could drag my legs, for every ounce of vigour had
gone out of me. It was a dull, listless automaton that recrossed the
harbour road, made the long circuit east of the village, and regained
the downs beyond the Dancing Floor. When I staggered into camp, where
the placid Janni was playing dice, it was close on five o'clock.

I made myself a cup of tea and tried to piece the situation together.
Maris could not have entered the House--the thing was flatly impossible,
and what had happened to him I could only guess. Where he had failed I
certainly could not succeed, for the cliffs, the wall, and the guards
shut it off impenetrably from the world. Inside was Kor alone--I
wondered if the old servant whom she had called Mitri was with her, or
the French maid she had had in London--and that night would see the
beginning of the end. The remembrance of the fagots piled about the door
sent a horrid chill to my heart. The situation had marched clean outside
human power to control it. I thought with scorn of my self-confidence. I
had grievously muddled every detail, and was of as little value as if I
had remained in my Temple chambers. Pity and fear for the girl made me
clench my hands and gnaw my lips. I could not stay still. I decided once
more to prospect the line of the cliffs.

One-armed Janni was no use, so I left him behind. I slid down the
stone-shoot and in the first cool of evening scrambled along that
arduous shore. When I had passed the abutment of the wall I scanned with
my glass every crack in the cliffs, but in daylight they looked even
more hopeless than under the moon. At one place a shallow gully
permitted me to reach a shelf, but there I stuck fast, for the rock
above could only have been climbed by a hanging rope. The most desperate
man--and by that time I was pretty desperate--could not find a way where
the Almighty had decided that there should be none. I think that if
there had been the faintest chance I would have taken it, in spite of
the risks; I would have ventured on a course which at Chamonix or
Cortina would have been pronounced suicidal; but here there was not even
the rudiments of a course--nothing but that maddening glassy wall.

By-and-by I reached the cape beyond which lay the hidden bay and Black
George with his boat. It occurred to me that I had not prospected very
carefully the cliffs in this bay, and in any case I wanted to look again
at the boat, that single frail link we had with the outer world. But
first I stripped and had a bathe, which did something to cool the fret
of my nerves. Then I waded round the point to the place where Janni and
I had talked with the seaman.

Black George had gone. There was not a trace of him or the boat in the
shining inlet into which the westering sun was pouring its yellow light.
What on earth had happened? Had his mysterious master returned? Or had
he been driven off by the islanders? Or had he simply grown bored and
sailed away? The last solution I dismissed: Black George, I was
convinced, was no quitter.

The loss of him was the last straw to my hopelessness. I was faced with
a situation with which no ingenuity or fortitude could grapple--only
some inhuman skill in acrobatics or some Berserker physical powers which
I did not possess. I turned my glass listlessly on the cliffs which
lined the bay. There was nothing to be done there. They were as sheer as
those I had already prospected, and, although more rugged and broken, it
was by means of great noses of smooth rock on which only a fly could
move.

I was sitting on the very boulder which Janni had occupied the night
before, and I saw on the shingle one or two of his cigarette stumps. And
then I saw something else.

It was a cigarette end, but not one of Janni's caporals. Moreover it had
been dropped there during the past day. Janni's stumps, having been
exposed to the night dews, were crumpled and withered; this was intact,
the butt end of an Egyptian cigarette of a good English brand. Black
George must have been here in the course of the day. But I remembered
that Black George had smoked a peculiarly evil type of Greek tobacco.
Perhaps he had been pilfering his master's cigarettes? Or perhaps his
master had come back?

I remembered that he had refused to utter one word about that master of
his. Who could he be? was he an Englishman? He might well be, judging
from Black George's reverence for the word "English." If so, what was he
doing in Plakos, and how had he reached this spot, unless he had the
wings of a bird? If he had come along the downs and the shore Janni
would have seen him.... Anyhow, he was gone now, and our one bridge with
a sane world was broken.

I made my way back to Janni with a feeling that I had come to the edge
of things and would presently be required to go over the brink. I was
now quite alone--as much alone as Kor--and fate might soon link these
lonelinesses. I had had this feeling once or twice in the war--that I
was faced with something so insane that insanity was the only course for
me, but I had no notion what form the insanity would take, for I still
saw nothing before me but helplessness. I was determined somehow to
break the barrier, regardless of the issue. Every scrap of manhood in me
revolted against my futility. In that moment I became primitive man
again. Even if the woman were not my woman she was of my own totem, and
whatever her fate she should not meet it alone.

Janni had food ready for me, but I could not eat it. I took out my
pistol, cleaned and reloaded it, and told Janni to look to his. I am not
much of a pistol shot, but Janni, as I knew from Maris, was an expert.
There would be something astir when the moon rose, and I had an
intuition that the scene would be the Dancing Floor. The seaward end of
the House might be the vital point in the last stage of the drama, but I
was convinced that the Dancing Ground would see the first act. It was
the holy ground, and I had gathered from the priest that some dark
ritual would take the place of the Good Friday solemnity.

There was only one spot where Janni and I might safely lie hidden, and
at the same time look down on the Dancing Floor, and that was in the
shadow of the wall between the guarded breach and the cliffs. There were
large trees there, and the progress of the moon would not light it up,
whereas everywhere else would be clear as noonday. Moreover it was the
strategic point, for whatever mischief was intended against the House
would pass through the breach and therefore under our eyes. But it was
necessary to get there before the moon was fully risen, for otherwise to
men coming from the village we should be silhouetted against the cliff
edge. I cut Janni's supper short and we started out, using every crinkle
of the ground as cover, much as stalkers do when they are fetching a
circuit and know that the deer are alarmed and watchful.

We had not much more than a mile to go, and by the route we chose we
managed, as it happened, to keep wholly out of sight of the Dancing
Floor. Janni--no mountaineer--grumbled at my pace, for I had acquired an
extraordinary lightness of limb so that I felt as if I could have flown.
I was puzzled to explain this, after my listlessness of the day, but I
think it was due partly to tense nerves and partly to the magic of the
evening. The air was cool and exhilarating, and when the moon rose with
a sudden glory above the House it was as tonic as if one had plunged
into water.... Soon we were on the edge of the inky belt of shadow and
moving eastward to get nearer the breach. But now I noticed something I
had forgotten. The wall curved outward, and beyond that bulge--a couple
of hundred yards from the breach--the light flooded to the very edge of
the stone. We came to a halt at the apex of the curve, flat on our
faces, and I turned to reconnoitre the Dancing Floor.

I wish to Heaven that I had the gift of words. It is too much to ask a
man whose life has been spent in drawing pleadings and in writing dull
legal opinions to describe a scene which needs the tongue or pen of a
poet. For the Dancing Floor was transfigured. Its lonely beauty had been
decked and adorned, as an altar is draped for high festival. On both
slopes people clustered, men, women, and children, all so silent that I
thought I could hear them breathe. I thought, too, that they mostly wore
white--at any rate the moonlight gave me the impression of an immense
white multitude, all Kyntho, and doubtless half the hills. The valley
was marked out like a race-course. There seemed to be posts at regular
intervals in a broad oval, and at each post was a red flicker which
meant torches. The desert had become populous, and the solitary places
blossomed with roses of fire.

The people were clustered toward the upper end, making an amphitheatre
of which the arena was the Dancing Floor, and the entrance to the stage
the breach in the wall of the House. I saw that this entrance was
guarded, not as before by three sentries, but by a double line of men
who kept an avenue open between them. Beyond the spectators and round
the arena was the circle of posts, and between them lay the Dancing
Floor, golden in the moon, and flanked at its circumference by the angry
crimson of the torches. I noticed another thing. Not quite in the centre
but well within the arena was a solitary figure waiting. He was in
white--gleaming white, and, so far as I could judge, he was standing
beside the spring from which I had drunk the night before.

I have set out the details of what I saw, but they are only the beggarly
elements, for I cannot hope to reproduce the strangeness which caught at
the heart and laid a spell on the mind. The place was no more the Valley
of the Shadow of Life, but Life itself--a surge of dmonic energy out of
the deeps of the past. It was wild and yet ordered, savage and yet
sacramental, the home of an ancient knowledge which shattered for me the
modern world and left me gasping like a cave-man before his mysteries.
The magic smote on my brain, though I struggled against it. The
passionless moonlight and the passionate torches--that, I think, was the
final miracle--a marrying of the eternal cycle of nature with the
fantasies of man.

The effect on Janni was overwhelming. He lay and gibbered prayers with
eyes as terrified as a deer's, and I realized that I need not look for
help in that quarter. But I scarcely thought of him, for my trouble was
with myself. Most people would call me a solid fellow, with a hard head
and a close-texture mind, but if they had seen me then they would have
changed their view. I was struggling with something which I had never
known before, a mixture of fear, abasement, and a crazy desire to
worship. Yes--to worship. There was that in the scene which wakened some
ancient instinct, so that I felt it in me to join the votaries.

It took me a little time to pull myself together. I looked up at the
dome of the sky, where on the horizon pale stars were showing. The whole
world seemed hard and gem-like and unrelenting. There was no help there.
Nature approved this ritual. And then a picture flashed into my mind
which enabled me to recover my wits. It was the carven Christ lying in
its shroud in the bier in the deserted church. I am not a religious man
in the ordinary sense--only a half-believer in the creed in which I was
born. But in that moment I realized that there was that in me which was
stronger than the pagan, an instinct which had come down to me from
believing generations. I understood then what were my gods. I think I
prayed. I know that I clung to the memory of that rude image as a
Christian martyr may have clung to his crucifix. It stood for all the
broken lights which were in me as against this ancient charmed
darkness.

I was steadier now, and with returning sanity came the power of
practical thought. Something, some one, was to be brought from the
House. Was there to be a trial in that arena? Or a sacrifice? No--I was
clear that to-night was only the preparation, and that the great day was
the morrow. There was no sound from the gathering. I could not see the
faces, but I knew that every one, down to the smallest child, was awed
and rapt and expectant. No crowd, hushing its breath in the decisive
moments of a great match, was ever more rigidly on the stretch. The very
air quivered with expectation.

Then a movement began. Figures entered the arena at the end farthest
from me--men, young men, naked I thought at first, till my glass showed
me that each wore a sort of loin-cloth or it may have been short
drawers.... They aligned themselves, like runners at the start of a
race, and still there was no sound. The figure who had been standing by
the well was now beside them and seemed to be speaking softly. Each held
himself tense, with clenched hands, and his eyes on the ground. Then
came some kind of signal, and they sprang forward.

It was a race--such a race as few men can have witnessed. The slim
youths kept outside the torches, and circled the arena of the Dancing
Floor. Over the moonlit sward they flew, glimmering like ghosts--once
round, a second time round. And all the while the crowd kept utter
silence.

I ran the mile myself at school and college, and know something about
pace. I could see that it was going to be a close finish. One man I
noted, I think the very fellow who had hunted me into the church--he ran
superbly, and won a lead at the start. But the second time round I
fancied another, a taller and leaner man, who had kept well back in the
first round, and was slowly creeping ahead. I liked his style, which was
oddly like the kind of thing we cultivate at home, and he ran with
judgment too. Soon he was abreast of the first man, and then he sprinted
and took the lead. I was wondering where the finish would be, when he
snatched a torch from one of the posts, ran strongly up the centre of
the Dancing Floor, and plunged the flame in the spring.

Still there was no sound from the crowd. The winner stood with his head
bent, a noble figure of youth who might have stepped from a Parthenon
frieze. The others had gone; he stood close beside the well with the
white-clad figure who had acted as master of ceremonies--only now the
victor in the race seemed to be the true master, on whom all eyes
waited.

The sight was so strange and beautiful that I watched it half in a
trance. I seemed to have seen it all before, and to know the stages that
would follow.... Yes, I was right. There was a movement from the crowd
and a man was brought forward. I knew the man, though he wore nothing
but pants and a torn shirt. One could not mistake the trim figure of
Maris, or his alert, bird-like head.

He stood confronting the beautiful young barbarian beside the spring,
looking very much as if he would like to make a fight of it. And then
the latter seemed to speak to him, and to lay a hand on his head. Maris
submitted, and the next I saw was that the runner had drawn a jar of
water from the well and was pouring it over him. He held it high in his
arms and the water wavered and glittered in the moonshine; I could see
Maris spluttering and wringing out his wet shirt-sleeves.

With that recollection flooded in on me. This was the ceremonial of
which Vernon had read to me from Kor's manuscript. A virgin and a youth
were chosen and set apart in a hallowed place, and the chooser was he
who was victor in a race and was called the King. The victims were
hallowed with water from the well by the white cypress. I was looking at
the well, though the cypress had long since disappeared. I was looking
at the King, and at one of those dedicated to the sacrifice. The other
was the girl in the House.... Vernon had said that if we knew what the
word _hosiotheis_ meant we should know a good deal about Greek religion.
That awful knowledge was now mine.

It was as I expected. The consecrator and the consecrated were moving,
still in the same hushed silence, towards the _horkos_--the sanctuary.
The torches had been extinguished as soon as the victor plunged his in
the spring, and the pure light of the moon seemed to have waxed to an
unearthly brightness. The two men walked up the slope of the Dancing
Floor to the line of guards which led to the breach in the wall. I could
not hold my glass because of the trembling of my hands, but I could see
the figures plainly--the tall runner, his figure poised like some young
Apollo of the great age of art, his face dark with the sun but the skin
of his body curiously white. Some youth of the hills, doubtless--his
crisp hair seemed in the moonlight to be flaxen. Beside him went the
shorter Maris, flushed and truculent. He must have been captured by the
guards in his attempt on the House, and as a stranger and also a Greek
had been put forward as the male victim.

I was roused by the behaviour of Janni. He had realized that his beloved
_capitaine_ was a prisoner, towards whom some evil was doubtless
intended, and this understanding had driven out his fear and revived his
military instincts. He was cursing fiercely, and had got out his pistol.

"Sir," he whispered to me, "I can crawl within shot, for the shadow is
lengthening, and put a bullet into yon bandit. Then in the confusion my
_capitaine_ will escape and join us and break for the cliffs. These
people are sheep and may not follow."

For a second it appeared to me the only thing to do. This evil Adonis
was about to enter the House, and on the morrow Kor and Maris would
find death at his hands, for he was the sacrificer. I seemed to see in
his arrogant beauty the cruelty of an elder world. His death would at
any rate shatter the ritual.

And then I hesitated and gripped Janni firmly by his one arm. For, as
the two men passed out of my sight towards the breach in the wall, I had
caught a glimpse of Maris's face. He was speaking to his companion, and
his expression was not of despair and terror, but confident, almost
cheerful. For an instant the life of the young runner hung on a thread,
for I do not think that Janni would have missed. Then I decided against
the shot, for I felt that it was a counsel of despair. There was
something which I did not comprehend, for Maris's face had given me a
glimmer of hope.

I signed to Janni, and we started crawling back towards the cliffs. In
that hour the one thing that kept me sane was the image of the dead
Christ below the chancel step. It was my only link with the reasonable
and kindly world I had lost.




CHAPTER XII


I had only one impulse at that moment--an overwhelming desire to get
back to the church and look again at the figure on the bier. It seemed
to me the sole anchor in the confusion of uncharted tides, the solitary
hope in a desert of perplexities. I had seen ancient magic revive and
carry captive the hearts of a people. I had myself felt its compelling
power. A girl whom I loved and a man who was my companion were
imprisoned and at the mercy of a maddened populace. Maris was, like
Ulysses, an old campaigner and a fellow of many wiles, but what could
Maris do in the face of multitudes? An unhallowed epiphany was looked
for, but first must come the sacrifice. There was no help in the arm of
flesh, and the shallow sophistication of the modern world fell from me
like a useless cloak. I was back in my childhood's faith, and wanted to
be at my childhood's prayers.

As for Janni, he had a single idea in his head, to follow his captain
into the House and strike a blow for him, and as he padded along the
seaward cliffs he doubtless thought we were bent on attacking the place
from another side. We took pretty much the road I had taken in the
morning, skirting the Dancing Floor on its southern edge. One strange
thing I saw. The Dancing Floor was still thronged, though a space was
kept clear in the centre round the well. Clearly it was no longer
_tabu_, but a place of holiday. Moreover the people seemed to intend to
remain there, for they had lit fires and were squatting round them,
while some had already stretched themselves to sleep. Kyntho had moved
in a body to the scene of the sacrament.

When we reached the fringe of the village I saw that I had guessed
correctly. There was not a sign of life in the streets. We walked boldly
into the central square, and it might have been a graveyard. Moreover,
in the graveyard itself the lamps by the graves had not been lit.
Vampires were apparently no longer to be feared, and that struck me as
an ill omen. Keats's lines came into my head about the "little town by
river or sea shore" which is "emptied of its folk this pious morn."
Pious morn!

And then above us, from the squat campanile, a bell began to
toll--raggedly, feebly, like the plaint of a child. Yet to me it was
also a challenge.

The church was bright with moonshine. The curtains still shrouded the
sanctuary, and there were no candles lit, nothing but the flickering
lamps before the ikons. Below the chancel step lay the dark mass which
contained the shrouded Christ. Janni, like myself, seemed to find
comfort in being here. He knelt at a respectful distance from the bier,
and began to mutter prayers. I went forward and lifted the shroud. The
moon coming through one of the windows gave the carved wood a ghastly
semblance of real flesh, and I could not bear to look on it. I followed
Janni's example and breathed incoherent prayers. I was bred a Calvinist,
but in that moment I was not worshipping any graven image. My prayer was
to be delivered from the idolatry of the heathen.

Suddenly the priest was beside me. In one hand he held a lighted candle,
and the other carried a censer. He seemed in no way surprised to see us,
but there was that about him which made me catch my breath. The man had
suddenly become enlarged and ennobled. All the weakness had gone out of
the old face, all the languor and bewilderment out of the eyes, the
shoulders had straightened, his beard was no longer like a goat's, but
like a prophet's. He was as one possessed, a fanatic, a martyr.

He had forgotten that I knew no Greek, for he spoke rapidly words which
sounded like a command. But Janni understood, and went forward
obediently to the bier. Then I saw what he meant us to do. We were to
take the place of the absent hierophants and carry the image of the dead
Christ through the bounds of the village. The bier was light enough even
for one-armed Janni to manage his share. The shroud was removed, he took
the fore-end, and I the back, and behind the priest we marched out into
the night.

The streets were deathly still, the cool night air was unruffled by
wind, so that the candle burned steadily; the golden dome of the sky was
almost as bright as day. Along the white beaten road we went, and then
into the rough cobbles of the main street. I noticed that though the
houses were empty every house door was wide open. We passed the inn and
came into the road to the harbour and to the cottage among fruit trees
where I had first made inquiries. Then we turned up the hill where lay
the main entrance to the House, past little silent untenanted crofts and
olive-yards, which were all gleaming grey and silver. The old man moved
slowly, swinging his censer, and intoning what I took to be a dirge in a
voice no longer tremulous, but masterful and strong, and behind him
Janni and I stumbled along bearing the symbol of man's salvation.

I had never been present at a Greek Good Friday celebration, but Kor
had described it to me--the following crowds tortured with suspense, the
awed, kneeling women, the torches, the tears, the universal lamentation.
Then the people sorrowed, not without hope, for their dead Saviour. But
the ordinary ceremonial can never have been so marvellous as was our
broken ritual that night. We were celebrating, but there were no
votaries. The torches had gone to redden the Dancing Floor, sorrow had
been exchanged for a guilty ecstasy, the worshippers were seeking
another Saviour. Our rite was more than a commemoration, it was a
defiance, and I felt like a man who carries a challenge to the enemy.

The moon had set and darkness had begun before we returned to the
church. Both Janni and I were very weary before we laid down our burden
in the vault below the nave, a place hewn out of the dry limestone rock.
By the last flickering light of the candle I saw the priest standing at
the head of the bier, his hands raised in supplication, his eyes bright
and rapt and unseeing. He was repeating a litany in which a phrase
constantly recurred. I could guess its meaning. It must have been "He
will yet arise."

I slept till broad daylight in the priest's house, on the priest's bed,
while Janni snored on a pile of sheepskins. Since Kyntho was deserted,
there was no reason now for secrecy, for the whole place, and not the
church only, had become a sanctuary. The aged woman who kept house for
the priest gave us a breakfast of milk and bread, but we saw no sign of
him, and I did not wish to return to the church and disturb his
devotions. I wondered if I should ever see him again; it was a toss-up
if I should ever see anybody again after this day of destiny. We had
been partners in strange events, and I could not leave him without some
farewell, so I took the book of his which seemed to be most in use, put
two English five-pound notes inside, and did my best in laboriously
printed Latin to explain that this was a gift for the Church and to
thank him and wish him well. I did another thing, for I wrote out a
short account of the position, saying that further information might be
obtained from Ertzberger and Vernon Milburne. Anything might happen
to-day, and I wanted to leave some record for my friends. I addressed
the document under cover to the priest, and--again in Latin--begged him,
should anything happen to me, to see that it reached the British
Minister in Athens. That was about all I could do in the way of
preparation, and I had a moment of grim amusement in thinking how
strangely I, who since the war had seemed to be so secure and cosseted,
had moved back to the razor-edge of life.

I have said that there was no need for secrecy, so we walked straight
through the village towards the harbour. Janni had made a preliminary
survey beyond the graveyard in the early morning, and had reported that
the people of Kyntho were still encamped around the Dancing Floor. The
trouble would not begin till we approached the House, for it was certain
that on that day of all days the guards would be vigilant. We were both
of us wholly desperate. We simply had to get in, and to get in before
the evening; for that purpose anything, even wholesale homicide, was
legitimate. But at the same time it would do no good to get caught, even
if we succeeded in killing several of our captors.

I think I had a faint, unreasonable hope that we should find the
situation at the causeway more promising than it had appeared on the day
before. But when--after a walk where we had seen no trace of man or
beast--we came to the crest of the little cape beyond which lay the
jetty and the House, I had a sad disillusionment. The place was thick
with sentries. I saw the line of them along the causeway and at the head
of the jetty; moreover there seemed to be men working to the left of the
House where there was a cluster of outbuildings descending to the
shallow vale up which ran the road from the sea. My glass showed me what
they were doing. They were piling more straw and brushwood, so that from
the outbuildings, which were probably of wood and would burn like
tinder, the flames might have easy access to the windows of the House.
The altar was being duly prepared for the victim.

Long and carefully I prospected the ground. There was cover enough to
take us down to within a few yards of the jetty. If I tried to cross it
I should be within view of the people on the causeway, and even if I got
across unobserved there was the more or less open beach between the
causeway and the sea. It was true that directly under the wall I should
be out of sight of the causeway guards, but then again, though I could
get shelter behind some of the boulders, I could not move far without
being noticed by whoever chose to patrol the jetty. Nevertheless that
was the only road for me, for my object was to get to the far end of the
causeway, where before the cliffs began there were olive-yards and
orchards, through which some route must be possible to the House.

I considered the left side of the picture, where the valley led upwards
past the outbuildings. That way I could see no hope, for if I succeeded
in passing the fagot-stackers I would only reach the confines of the
main entrance to the demesne from Kyntho, which was certain to be the
best warded of all.

I had also to consider what to do with Janni. He would be a useful ally
if it came to a scrap, but a scrap would be futile against such numbers,
and in stalking or climbing his lack of an arm would be a serious
handicap. Besides, if our business was to escape observation, one man
would be better than two.... But it was possible that he might create a
diversion. Supposing he tried the road on the left up the valley and
made himself conspicuous, he might draw off attention while I crossed
the jetty and got under the lee of the causeway wall. That meant, of
course, that one of us would be put out of action, but unless we tried
something of the kind we should both fail.

I put the thing to him, as we lay among the scrubby arbutus, and though
he clearly did not like the proposal, since his notion was to man-handle
somebody on Maris's behalf, he was too good a soldier not to see the
sense of it. He pointed out various difficulties, and then shook his
head like a dog and said that he agreed. For his own sake I forbade any
shooting. If he were merely hunted and captured, it was unlikely that
any harm would befall him. He could explain that he was one of the
survey party who had lost the others, and at the worst he would be shut
up temporarily in some barn. He might even find the means to make
himself useful later in the day.

So it was settled that I should try to worm my way as near to the jetty
as the cover would allow. He was to watch my movements, and when he saw
my hand raised three times he was to march boldly towards the jetty. I
would not be able to see what was happening, so when he was pursued and
started up the little valley he was to shout as if in alarm. That would
be the signal to me that the sentry had left the jetty and that I might
try to cross it.

I started out at once on my first stage. As I have said, the cover was
good--boulders overgrown with heath and vines, and patches of arbutus
and a very prickly thorn. I tried to behave as if I were on a Scotch
hill stalking alone, with deer where the sentries stood. It was not a
very difficult passage, for my enemies had no eyes for the ground on my
side, their business being to prevent egress from the House. After about
half an hour's careful crawling, I found myself within six yards of the
jetty looking through the tangle to the rough masonry of it, with a
sideway view of the point where it joined the causeway. I could see none
of the guards, but I heard distinctly the sound of their speech. I had
marked the spot where I now lay before I started, and knew that it was
within sight of Janni. So I straightened myself and thrice raised my
arms above the scrub.

For a minute or two nothing happened. Janni must have started but had
not yet attracted attention. I raised my body as far as I dared, but I
could only see the shoreward end of the jetty--neither the jetty itself
nor any part of the causeway. I waited for a cry, but there was no
sound. Was Janni being suffered to make his way up the little valley
unopposed?

Then suddenly a moving object flashed into my narrow orbit of vision. It
must be one of the watchers from the causeway, and he was in a furious
hurry--I could hear the scruff of his heel-less boots on the dry stones
as he turned a corner.... He must be in pursuit of Janni.... There would
no doubt be others too at the job. Their silence might be a ritual
business. _Favete linguis_, perhaps? If Janni shouted I never heard him.

I resolved to take the chance, and bolted out of cover to the jetty. In
two bounds I was beyond it and among the gravel and weed of the farther
beach. But in that short progress I saw enough of the landscape to know
that I was undiscovered, that there was nobody on the causeway within
sight, or at the mouth of the little glen. Janni had certainly been
followed, and by this time was no doubt in the hands of the Philistines
out of my ken.

I ran close under the lee of the sea-wall, and at first I had a wild
hope of getting beyond the causeway into the region of the olive groves
before the sentries returned. But some remnant of prudence made me halt
and consider before I attempted the last open strip of beach. There I
had a view of the bit of the causeway towards the jetty, and suddenly
figures appeared on it, running figures, like men returning to duty
after a hasty interlude. If I had moved another foot I should have been
within view.

There was nothing for it but to wait where I was. I crouched in a little
nook between a fallen boulder and the wall, with the weedy rim of the
causeway six feet above me. Unless a man stood on the very edge and
peered down I was safe from observation. But that was the sum of my
blessings. I heard soft feet above me as the men returned to their
posts, and I dared not move a yard. It was now about two in the
afternoon; I had brought no food with me, though I found a couple of
dusty figs in my pocket; the sun blazed on the white wall and the gravel
of the shore till the place was like a bakehouse; I was hot and thirsty,
and I might have been in the middle of the Sahara for all the chance of
a drink. But the discomfort of my body was trivial compared with the
disquiet of my mind.

For I found myself in a perfect fever of vexation and fear. The time was
slipping past and the crisis was nigh, and yet, though this was now my
fourth day on the island, I was not an inch farther forward than the
hour I landed. My worst fears--nay, what had seemed to me mere crazy
imaginings--had been realized. I was tortured by the thought of
Kor--her innocent audacities, her great-hearted courage, her
loneliness, her wild graces. "Beauteous vain endeavour"--that was the
phrase of some poet that haunted me and made me want to howl like a
wolf. I realized now the meaning of a sacrifice and the horror of it.
The remembrance of the slim victor in the race, beautiful and pitiless,
made me half-crazy. Movement in that place was nearly impossible, but it
was utterly impossible that I should stay still. I began in short stages
to worm my way along the foot of the wall.

I do not suppose that the heat of that April afternoon was anything much
to complain of, but my fever of mind must have affected my body, for I
felt that I had never been so scorched and baked in my life. There was
not a scrap of shade, the rocks almost blistered the hand, the dust got
into my throat and nose and made me furiously thirsty, and my head ached
as if I had a sun-stroke.... The trouble was with the jetty and the
watchers on it, for I was always in view of them. Had they detected a
movement below the wall, a single glance would have revealed me. So I
had to make my stages very short, and keep a wary outlook behind....
There seemed to be much astir on the jetty. Not only the guards, but
other figures appeared on it, and I saw that they were carrying up
something from a boat at anchor. That, I think, was what saved me. Had
the sentries had nothing to do but to stare about them I must have been
discovered, but the portage business kept them distracted.

The minutes seemed hours to my distraught mind, but I did indeed take an
inconceivable time crawling along that grilling beach, with the cool
sea water lapping not a dozen yards off to give point to my discomfort.
When I reached the place where the causeway ceased, and long ribs of
rock took the place of the boulders of the shore, I found by my watch
that it was nearly six o'clock. The discovery put quicksilver into my
weary limbs. Looking back I saw that I was out of sight of the jetty,
and that a few yards would put me out of sight of the causeway. I
wriggled into the cover of a bush of broom, lay on my back for a minute
or two to rest, and then made for the shade of the olive-yards.

The place was weedy and neglected--I don't know anything about olive
culture, but I could see that much. There was a wilderness of a white
umbelliferous plant and masses of a thing like a spineless thistle. I
pushed uphill among the trees, keeping well in the shade, with the west
front of the House glimmering through the upper leaves at a much higher
elevation. Above me I saw a deeper shadow which I took to be cypresses,
and beyond them I guessed must lie the demesne. I hoped for a gate, and
in any case expected no more than a hedge and a palisade.

Instead I found a wall. There was a door to be sure, but it was no use
for me, for it was massive and locked. I might have known that Shelley
Arabin would leave no part of his cursed refuge unbarricaded. I sat and
blinked up at this new obstacle, and could have cried with exasperation.
It seemed to run direct from the House to the edge of the cliffs which
began about a quarter of a mile to my right, and was an exact replica of
the wall above the Dancing Floor.

I decided that it was no good trying it at the House end, for there I
should certainly be in view of some of the guards. The masonry was
comparatively new and very solid, and since none of the olive trees grew
within four yards of it, it was impossible to use them as a ladder.
Already I felt the approach of night, for the sun was well down in the
west, and a great tide of sunset was flooding the sky. I do not think I
have ever before felt so hopeless or so obstinate. I was determined to
pass that wall by its abutment on the cliffs or break my neck in the
effort.

My memory of the next hour is not very clear. All I know is that in the
failing daylight I came to the cliffs' edge and found an abutment
similar to the one at the Dancing Floor. Similar, but not the same. For
here some storm had torn the masonry, and it seemed to me that it might
be passed. The rock fell steep and smooth to the sea, but that part
which was the handiwork of man was ragged. I took off my boots and flung
them over the wall, by way of a gage of battle, and then I started to
make the traverse.

It was a slow and abominable business, but I do not think it would have
been very difficult had the light been good, for the stone was hard
enough and the cracks were many. But in that dim gloaming with a purple
void beneath me, with a heart which would not beat steadily and a head
which throbbed with pain, I found it very near the limit of my powers. I
had to descend before I could traverse, and the worst part was the
ascent on the far side. I knew that, when I at last got a grip of a
wind-twisted shrub and tried to draw myself over the brink, it needed
every ounce of strength left in me. I managed it, and lay gasping beside
the roots of a great pine--inside the demesne at last.

When I got my breath I found that I had a view into the narrow cove
where Janni and I had seen the boat. Black George had returned, and
returned brazenly, for he was showing a riding light. A lantern swung
from the mast, and, more, there was a glow from the cabin skylight. I
wondered what was going on in the little craft, and I think the sight
gave me a grain of comfort, till I realized that I was hopelessly cut
off from Black George. What was the good of a link with the outer world
when unscalable walls and cliffs intervened--when at any moment murder
might be the end of everything?

Murder--that was the word which filled my head as I pushed inland. I had
never thought of it in that way, but of course I was out to prevent
murder. To prevent it? More likely to share in it.... I had no plan of
any kind, only a desire to be with Kor, so that she should not be
alone. It was her loneliness that I could not bear.... And anyhow I had
a pistol, and I would not miss the runner. "The priest who slew the
slayer and shall himself be slain"--the tag came unbidden to my lips. I
think I must have been rather light-headed.

The last fires of the sunset did not penetrate far into the pine wood,
the moon had not yet risen, and as I ran I took many tosses, for the
place was very dark. There were paths, but I neglected them, making
straight for where I believed the House to lie. I was not exact in my
course, for I bore too much to the right in the direction of the breach
in the wall at the Dancing Floor. Soon I was among shrubberies in which
rides had been cut, but there were still many tall trees to make
darkness. I thought I saw to the right, beyond where the wall lay, a
reddish glow. That would be the torches on the Dancing Floor, where the
people waited for the epiphany.

Suddenly on my left front a great blaze shot up to heaven. I knew it was
the signal that the hour had come. The outbuildings had been fired, and
the House would soon be in flames. The blaze wavered and waned, and then
waxed to a mighty conflagration as the fire reached something specially
inflammable. In a minute that wood was bright as with an obscene
daylight. The tree trunks stood out black against a molten gold, which
at times crimsoned and purpled in a devilish ecstasy of destruction.

I knew now where the House lay. I clutched my pistol, and ran down a
broad path, with a horrid fear that I was too late after all. I ran
blindly, and had just time to step aside to let two figures pass.

They were two of the guards--hillmen by their dress--and even in my
absorption I wondered what had happened to them. For they were like men
demented, with white faces and open mouths. One of them stumbled and
fell, and seemed to stay on his knees for a second, praying, till his
companion lugged him forward. I might have faced them with impunity, for
their eyes were sightless. Never have I seen men suffering from an
extremer terror.

The road twisted too much for my haste, so I cut across country. The
surge and crackle of the flames filled the air, but it seemed as if I
heard another sound, the sound of running feet, of bodies, many bodies,
brushing through the thicket. I was close on the House now, and close on
the road which led to it from the broken wall and the Dancing Floor. As
I jumped a patch of scrub and the gloom lightened in the more open
avenue, I bumped into another man and saw that it was Maris.

He was waiting, pistol in hand, beside the road, and in a trice had his
gun at my head. Then he recognized me and lowered it. His face was as
crazy as the hillmen's who had passed me, and he still wore nothing but
breeches and a ragged shirt, but his wild eyes seemed to hold also a
dancing humour.

"Blessed Jesu!" he whispered, "you have come in time. The fools are
about to receive their Gods. You have your pistol? But I do not think
there will be shooting."

He choked suddenly as if he had been struck dumb, and I too choked. For
I looked with him up the avenue towards the burning House.




PART III




CHAPTER XIII


This part of the story (said Leithen) I can only give at second-hand. I
have pieced it together as well as I could from what Vernon told me, but
on many matters he was naturally not communicative, and at these I have
had to guess for myself....

       *       *       *       *       *

Vernon left England the day after the talk with me which I have already
recorded, sending his boat as deck cargo to Patras, while he followed by
way of Venice. He had a notion that the great hour which was coming had
best be met at sea, where he would be far from the distractions and
littlenesses of life. He took one man with him from Wyvenhoe, a lean
gipsy lad called Martell, but the boy fell sick at Corfu and he was
obliged to send him home. In his stead he found a Epirote with a string
of names, who was strongly recommended to him by one of his colleagues
in the old gean Secret Service. From Patras they made good sailing up
the Gulf of Corinth, and, passing through the Canal, came in the last
days of March to the Pirus. In that place of polyglot speech,
whistling engines, and the odour of gas-works, they delayed only for
water and supplies, and presently had rounded Sunium, and were beating
up the Euripus with the Attic hills rising sharp and clear in the spring
sunlight.

He had no plans. It was a joy to him to be alone with the racing seas
and the dancing winds, to scud past the little headlands, pink and white
with blossom, or to lie of a night in some hidden bay beneath the thymy
crags. He had discarded the clothes of civilization. In a blue jersey
and old corduroy trousers, bareheaded and barefooted, he steered his
craft and waited on the passing of the hours. His mood, he has told me,
was one of complete happiness, unshadowed by nervousness or doubt. The
long preparation was almost at an end. Like an acolyte before a temple
gate, he believed himself to be on the threshold of a new life. He had
that sense of unseen hands which comes to all men once or twice in their
lives, and both hope and fear were swallowed up in a calm expectancy.

Trouble began under the snows of Pelion as they turned the north end of
Euboea. On the morning of the first Monday in April the light winds died
away, and foul weather came out of the north-west. By midday it was half
a gale, and in those yeasty shallow seas, with an iron coast to port and
starboard, their position was dangerous. The nearest harbour was twenty
miles distant, and neither of the crew had ever been there before. With
the evening the gale increased, and it was decided to get out of that
maze of rocky islands to the safer deeps of the gean.

It was a hard night for the two of them, and there was no chance of
sleep. More by luck than skill they escaped the butt of Skiathos, and
the first light found them far to the south-east among the long tides of
the North gean. They ran close-reefed before the gale, and all morning
with decks awash nosed and plunged in seas which might have been the
wintry Atlantic. It was not till the afternoon that the gale seemed to
blow itself out and two soaked and chilly mortals could relax their
vigil. Soon bacon was frizzling on the cuddy-stove, and hot coffee and
dry clothes restored them to moderate comfort.

The sky cleared, and in bright sunlight, with the dregs of the gale
behind him, Vernon steered for the nearest land, an island of which he
did not trouble to read the name, but which the chart showed to possess
good anchorage. Late in the evening, when the light was growing dim,
they came into a little bay carved from the side of a hill. They also
came into fog. The wind had dropped utterly, and the land which they saw
was only an outline in the haze. When they cast anchor the fog was
rolling like a tide over the sea, and muffling their yards. They spent a
busy hour or two, repairing the damage of the storm, and then the two of
them made such a meal as befits those who have faced danger together.
Afterwards Vernon, as his custom was, sat alone in the stern, smoking
and thinking his thoughts. He wrote up his diary with a ship's lantern
beside him, while the mist hung about him low and soft as an awning.

He had leisure now for the thought which had all day been at the back of
his mind. The night--the great night--had passed and there had been no
dream. The adventure for which all his life he had been preparing
himself had vanished into the gean tides. The hour when the revelation
should have come had been spent in battling with the storm, when a man
lives in the minute at grips with too urgent realities.

His first mood was one of dismal relaxedness. He felt as useless as an
unstrung bow. I, the only man to whom he had ever confided his secret,
had been right, and the long vigil had ended in fiasco. He tried to tell
himself that it was a relief, that an old folly was over, but he knew
that deep down in his heart there was bitter disappointment. The fates
had prepared the stage, and rung up the curtain, and lo! there was no
play. He had been fooled, and somehow the zest and savour of life had
gone from him. After all, no man can be strung high and then find his
preparations idle without suffering a cruel recoil.

And then anger came to stiffen him--anger at himself. What a
God-forsaken ass he had been, frittering away his best years in
following a phantom...! In his revulsion he loathed the dream which he
had cherished so long. He began to explain it away with the common sense
which on my lips he had accounted blasphemy.... The regular seasonal
occurrence was his own doing--he had expected it and it had come--a mere
case of subjective compulsion.... The fact that each year the revelation
had moved one room nearer was also the result of his willing it to be
so, for subconsciously he must have desired to hasten the
consummation.... He went through every detail, obstinately providing
some rationalistic explanation for each. I do not think he can have
satisfied himself, but he was in the mood to deface his idols, and one
feeling surged above all others--that he was done with fancies now and
for ever. He has told me that the thing he longed for chiefly at that
moment was to have me beside him that he might make formal recantation.

By-and-by he argued himself into some philosophy. He had dallied certain
years, but he was still young, and the world was before him. He had kept
his body and mind in hard training, and that at any rate was not wasted,
though the primal purpose had gone. He was a normal man now among normal
men, and it was his business to prove himself. He thought in his
Calvinistic way that the bogus vision might have been sent to him for a
purpose--the thing might be hallucination, but the _askesis_ which it
had entailed was solid gain.... He fetched from his locker the little
book in which he had chronicled his inner life, and wrote in it "Finis."
Then he locked it and flung the key overboard. The volume would be kept
at Severns to remind him of his folly, but it would never be opened by
him.

By this time he was his own master again. He would sail for England next
morning and get hold of me and make a plan for his life.

He was now conscious for the first time of his strange environment. The
boat was in a half-moon of bay in an island of which he had omitted to
notice the name but whose latitude and longitude he roughly knew. The
night was close around him like a shell, for the fog had grown thicker,
though the moon behind it gave it an opaque sheen. It was an odd place
in which to be facing a crisis....

His thoughts ran fast ahead to the career which he must shape from the
ruins of his dream. He was too late for the Bar. Business might be the
best course--he had big interests in the north of England which would
secure him a footing, and he believed that he had the kind of mind for
administration.... Or politics? There were many chances for a young man
in the confused post-bellum world....

He was absorbed in his meditations and did not hear the sound of oars or
the grating of a boat alongside. Suddenly he found a face looking at him
in the ring of lamplight--an old bearded face curiously wrinkled. The
eyes, which were shrewd and troubled, scanned him for a second or two,
and then a voice spoke:

"Will the Signor come with me?" it said in French.

Vernon, amazed at this apparition, which had come out of the mist, could
only stare.

"Will the Signor come with me?" the voice spoke again. "We have
grievous need of a man."

Vernon unconsciously spoke not in French but in Greek.

"Who the devil are you, and where do you come from?"

"I come from the House. I saw you enter the bay before the fog fell. Had
there been no fog, they would not have let me come to you."

"Who are 'they'?" Vernon asked.

But the old man shook his head. "Come with me and I will tell you. It is
a long story."

"But what do you want me to do? Confound it, I'm not going off with a
man I never saw before who can't tell me what he wants."

The old man shrugged his shoulders despairingly. "I have no words," he
said. "But Mademoiselle lise is waiting at the jetty. Come to her at
any rate and she will reason with you."

Vernon--as you will admit, if I have made his character at all clear to
you--had no instinct for melodrama. He had nothing in him of the
knight-errant looking for adventure, and this interruption out of the
fog and the sea rather bored him than otherwise. But he was too young to
be able to refuse such an appeal. He went below and fetched his revolver
and an electric torch which he stuffed into a trouser pocket. He cried
to the Epirote to expect him when he saw him, for he was going ashore.

"All right," he said. "I'll come and see what the trouble is."

He dropped over the yacht's side into the cockle-shell of a boat, and
the old man took up the sculls. The yacht must have anchored nearer land
than he had thought, for in five minutes they had touched a shelving
rock. Somebody stood there with a lantern which made a dull glow in the
fog.

Vernon made out a middle-aged woman with the air and dress of a lady's
maid. She held the lantern close to him for a moment, and then turned
wearily to the other. "Fool, Mitri!" she cried. "You have brought a
peasant."

"Nay," said the old man, "he is no peasant. He is a Signor, I tell you."

The woman again passed the light of her lantern over Vernon's face and
figure. "His dress is a peasant's, but such clothes may be a nobleman's
whim. I have heard it of the English."

"I am English," said Vernon in French.

She turned on him with a quick movement of relief.

"You are English ... and a gentleman? But I know nothing of you ... only
that you have come out of the sea. Up in the House we women are alone,
and my mistress has death to face, or worse than death. We have no claim
on you, and if you give us your service it means danger--oh, what
danger! See, the boat is there. You can return in it and go away, and
forget that you have been near this accursed place. But oh, Monsieur, if
you hope for Heaven and have pity on a defenceless angel, you will not
leave us."

Vernon's blood was slow to stir, and as I have said, he had no instinct
for melodrama. This gesticulating French maid was like something out of
an indifferent play.

"Who is your mistress?" he asked. "Did she send you for me?"

The woman flung up her hands.

"I will speak the truth. My mistress does not know you are here. Only
Mitri and I saw you. She will not ask help, for she is foolishly
confident. She is proud and fearless, and will not believe the evidence
of her eyes. She must be saved in spite of herself. I fear for her and
also for myself, for the whole House is doomed."

"But, Mademoiselle, you cannot expect me to intrude uninvited on your
mistress. What is her name? What do you want me to do?"

She clutched his arm and spoke low and rapidly in his ear.

"She is the last of her line, you must know--a girl with a wild estate
and a father dead these many months. She is good and gracious, as I can
bear witness, but she is young and cannot govern the wolves who are the
men of these parts. They have a long hatred of her house, and now they
have it rumoured that she is a witch who blights the crops and slays the
children.... Once, twice, they have cursed our threshold and made the
blood mark on the door. We are prisoners now, you figure. They name her
Basilissa, meaning the Queen of Hell, and there is no babe but will
faint with fright if it casts eyes on her, and she as mild and innocent
as Mother Mary.... The word has gone round to burn the witch out, for
the winter has been cruel and they blame their sorrows on her. The hour
is near, and unless salvation comes she will go to God in the fire."

There was something in the hoarse, excited voice which forbade Vernon to
dismiss lightly this extraordinary tale. The woman was patently
terrified and sincere. It might be a trap, but he had his pistol, and
from an old man and a woman he had nothing to fear. On the other hand,
there might be some desperate need which he could not disregard. It
seemed to him that he was bound to inquire further.

"I am willing to go to your mistress," he said, and the woman, murmuring
"God's mercy," led the way up a steep causeway to some rocky steps cut
in a tamarisk thicket.

She stopped half-way to whisper an injunction to go quietly. "They
cannot see us in this blessed fog," she whispered, "but they may hear
us." Then to Vernon: "They watch us like wild beasts, Monsieur; their
sentries do not permit us to leave the House, but this night the kind
God has fooled them. But they cannot be far off, and they have quick
ears."

The three crept up the rock staircase made slippery by the heavy mist.
Presently a great wall of masonry rose above them, and what seemed the
aperture of a door. "Once," the woman whispered, "there were three such
posterns, but two were walled up by my lady's father--walled up within,
with the doors left standing. This our enemies do not know, and they
watch all three, but this the least, for it looks unused. Behold their
work!"

Vernon saw that tall bundles of brushwood had been laid around the door,
and that these had with difficulty been pushed back when it was opened.

"But what...?" he began.

"It means that they would burn us," she hissed. "Now, Monsieur, do you
believe my tale, and, believing, does your courage fail you?"

To Vernon, shy, placid, a devotee of all the conventions, it was
beginning to seem a monstrous thing to enter this strange house at the
bidding of two servants, primed with a crazy tale, to meet an owner who
had given no sign of desiring his presence. A woman, too--apparently a
young woman. The thing was hideously embarrassing, the more so as he
suddenly realized that he was barefooted, and clad in his old jersey and
corduroys. I think he would have drawn back except for the sight of the
fagots--that and the woman's challenge to his courage. He had been
"dared" like a schoolboy, and after twenty-four hours fighting with
storms and the shattering of the purpose of a lifetime he was in that
half-truculent, half-reckless mood which is prone to accept a challenge.
There was business afoot, it appeared, ugly business.

"Go on. I will see your mistress," he said.

With a key the old man unlocked the door. The lock must have been
recently oiled, for it moved easily. The three now climbed a staircase
which seemed to follow the wall of a round tower. Presently they came
into a stone hall with ancient hangings like the banners in a church.
From the open frame of the lantern a second was kindled, and the two
lights showed a huge desolate place with crumbling mosaics on the floor
and plaster dropping from the walls and cornices. There was no furniture
of any kind, and the place smelt damp and chilly like a vault.

"These are unused chambers," the woman said, and her voice was no longer
hushed but high-pitched with excitement. "We live only on the landward
side."

Another heavy door was unlocked, and they entered a corridor where the
air blew warmer, and there was a hint of that indescribable scent which
comes from human habitation. The woman stopped and consulted in whispers
with the old man. Now that she had got Vernon inside, her nervousness
seemed to have increased. She turned to him at last:

"I must prepare my mistress. If Monsieur will be so good he will wait
here till I fetch him."

She opened a door and almost pushed Vernon within. He found himself in
black darkness, while the flicker of the lantern vanished round a bend
in the corridor.




CHAPTER XIV


From his pocket Vernon drew his electric torch and flashed it round the
room in which he found himself. It was the extreme opposite of the empty
stone hall, for it was heavily decorated and crowded with furniture.
Clearly no one had used it lately, for dust lay on everything, and the
shutters of the windows had not been unbarred for months. It had the
air, indeed, of a lumber-room, into which furniture had been casually
shot. The pieces were, for the most part, fine and costly. There were
several Spanish cabinets, a wonderful red-lacquer couch, quantities of
Oriental rugs which looked good, and a litter of Chinese vases and
antique silver lamps.

But it was not the junk which filled it that caught Vernon's eye. It was
the walls, which had been painted and frescoed in one continuous
picture. At first he thought it was a Procession of the Hours or the
Seasons, but when he brought his torch to bear on it he saw that it was
something very different. The background was a mountain glade, and on
the lawns and beside the pools of a stream figures were engaged in wild
dances. Pan and his satyrs were there, and a bevy of nymphs, and
strange figures half animal, half human. The thing was done with immense
skill--the slanted eyes of the fauns, the leer in a contorted satyr
face, the mingled lust and terror of the nymphs, the horrid obscenity of
the movements. It was a carnival of bestiality that stared from the four
walls. The man who conceived it had worshipped darker gods even than
Priapus.

There were other things which Vernon noted in the jumble of the room. A
head of Aphrodite, for instance--Pandemos, not Urania. A broken
statuette of a boy which made him sick. A group of little figures which
were a miracle in the imaginative degradation of the human form. Not the
worst relics from the lupanars of Pompeii compared with these in sheer
subtlety of filth. And all this in a shuttered room stifling with mould
and disuse.

There was a door at the farther end which he found unlocked. The room
beyond was like a mortuary--the walls painted black and undecorated save
for one small picture. There was a crack in the shutters here, and
perhaps a broken window, for a breath of the clean sea air met him.
There was no furniture except an oblong piece of yellow marble which
seemed from the rams' heads and cornucopias to be an old altar. He
turned his torch on the solitary picture. It represented the stock scene
of Salome with the head of John the Baptist, a subject which bad artists
have made play with for the last five hundred years. But this was none
of the customary daubs, but the work of a master--a perverted, perhaps
a crazy, genius. The woman's gloating face, the passion of the hands
caressing the pale flesh, the stare of the dead eyes, were wonderful and
awful. If the first room had been the shrine of inhuman lust, this had
been the chapel of inhuman cruelty.

He opened another door and found himself in a little closet, lined to
the ceiling with books. He knew what he would find on the shelves. The
volumes were finely bound, chiefly in vellum, and among them were a
certain number of reputable classics. But most belonged to the
backstairs of literature--the obscenities of Greek and of silver Latin,
the diseased sidewalks of the Middle Ages, the aberrations of the
moderns. It was not common pornography; the collection had been made by
some one who was a scholar in vice.

Vernon went back to the first room, nauseated and angry. He must get out
of this damned place, which was, or had been, the habitation of devils.
What kind of owner could such a house possess? The woman had said that
it was a young girl, as virtuous as the Virgin. But, great God! how
could virtue dwell in such an environment?

He had opened the door to begin his retreat when a lantern appeared in
the corridor. It was the woman, and with a finger on her lips she
motioned him back into the room.

"My mistress is asleep," she said, "and it would not be well to wake
her. Monsieur will stay here to-night and speak with her in the
morning?"

"I will do nothing of the kind," said Vernon. "I am going back to my
boat."

The woman caught his involuntary glance at the wall paintings, and
clutched his arm. "But that is not her doing," she cried. "That was the
work of her father, who was beyond belief wicked. It is his sins that
the child is about to expiate. The people have condemned her, but you
surely would not join in their unjust judgment."

"I tell you I will have nothing to do with the place. Will you kindly
show me the way back?"

Her face hardened. "I cannot. Mitri has the key."

"Well, where the devil is Mitri?"

"I will not tell.... Oh, Monsieur, I beseech you, do not forsake us.
There has been evil in this House enough to sink it to hell, but my
mistress is innocent. I ask only that you speak with her. After that, if
you so decide, you can go away."

The woman was plainly honest and in earnest, and Vernon was a just man.
He suddenly felt that he was behaving badly. There could be no harm in
sleeping a night in the house, and in the morning interviewing its
owner. If it was a case of real necessity he could take her and her maid
off in his boat.... After all, there might be serious trouble afoot. The
sight of those hideous rooms had given him a sharp realization of the
ugly things in life.

He was taken to a clean, bare little attic at the top of the house which
had once no doubt been a servant's quarters. Having been up all the
previous night, his head had scarcely touched the rough pillow before he
was asleep. He slept for ten hours, till he was awakened by Mitri, who
brought him hot water and soap and a venerable razor with which he made
some attempt at a toilet. He noticed that the fog was still thick, and
from the garret window he looked into an opaque blanket.

He had wakened with a different attitude towards the adventure in which
he found himself. The sense of a wasted youth and defrauded hopes had
left him; he felt more tightly strung, more vigorous, younger; he also
felt a certain curiosity about this Greek girl who in an abominable
house was defying the lightnings.

Mitri conducted him to the first floor, where he was taken charge of by
the Frenchwoman.

"Do not be afraid of her," she whispered. "Deal with her as a man with a
woman, and make her do your bidding. She is stiff-necked towards me, but
she may listen to a young man, especially if he be English."

She ushered Vernon into a room which was very different from the hideous
chambers he had explored the night before. It was poorly and sparsely
furnished, the chairs were chiefly wicker, the walls had recently been
distempered by an amateur hand, the floor was of bare scrubbed boards.
But a bright fire burned on the hearth, there was a big bunch of
narcissus on a table set for breakfast, and flowering branches had been
stuck in the tall vases beside the chimney. Through the open window came
a drift of fog which intensified the comfort of the fire.

It was a woman's room, for on a table lay some knitting and a piece of
embroidery, and a small ivory housewife's case bearing the initials "K.
A." There were one or two books also, and Vernon looked at them
curiously. One was a book of poems which had been published in London a
month before. This Greek girl must know English; perhaps she had
recently been in England.... He took up another volume, and to his
amazement it was a reprint of Peter Beckford's _Thoughts on Hunting_. He
could not have been more surprised if he had found a copy of the _Eton
Chronicle_. What on earth was the mistress of a lonely gean island
doing with Peter Beckford?

The fire crackled cheerfully, the raw morning air flowed through the
window, and Vernon cast longing eyes on the simple preparations for
breakfast. He was ferociously hungry, and he wished he were now in the
boat, where the Epirote would be frying bacon....

There was another door besides that by which he had entered, and
curiously enough it was in the same position as the door in the room of
his dream. He angrily dismissed the memory of that preposterous
hallucination, but he kept his eye on the door. By it no doubt the
mistress of the house would enter, and he wished she would make haste.
He was beginning to be very curious about this girl.... Probably she
would be indignant and send him about his business, but she could
scarcely refuse to give him breakfast first. In any case there was the
yacht.... There was a mirror above the mantelpiece in which he caught a
glimpse of himself. The glimpse was not reassuring. His face was as dark
as an Indian's, his hair wanted cutting, and his blue jersey was
bleached and discoloured with salt water. He looked like a deck-hand on
a cargo boat. But perhaps a girl who read Beckford would not be pedantic
about appearances. He put his trust in Peter----

The door had opened. A voice, sharp-pitched and startled, was speaking,
and to his surprise it spoke in English.

"Who the devil are you?" it said.

He saw a slim girl, who stood in the entrance poised like a runner,
every line of her figure an expression of amazement. He had seen her
before, but his memory was wretched for women's faces. But the odd thing
was that, after the first second, there was recognition in her face.

"Colonel Milburne!" said the voice. "What in the name of goodness are
you doing here?"

She knew him, and he knew her, but where--when--had they met? He must
have stared blankly, for the girl laughed.

"You have forgotten," she said. "But I have seen you out with the
Mivern, and we met at luncheon at Wirlesdon in the winter."

He remembered now, and what he remembered chiefly were the last words he
had spoken to me on the subject of this girl. The adventure was
becoming farcical.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "You are Miss Arabin. I didn't
know----"

"I am Miss Arabin. But why the honour of an early morning call from
Colonel Milburne?"

"I came here last night in a yacht." Vernon was making a lame business
of his explanation, for the startled angry eyes of his hostess scattered
his wits. "I anchored below in the fog, and an old man came out in a
boat and asked me to come ashore. There was a woman on the beach--your
maid--and she implored my help--told a story I didn't quite follow----"

"The fog!" the girl repeated. "That of course explains why you were
allowed to anchor. In clear weather you would have been driven away."

She spoke in so assured a tone that Vernon was piqued.

"The seas are free," he said. "Who would have interfered with me? Your
servants?"

She laughed again, mirthlessly. "My people. Not my servants. Continue.
You came ashore and listened to lise's chatter. After that?"

"She said you were asleep and must not be wakened, but that I should
speak to you in the morning. She put me up for the night."

"Where?" she asked sharply.

"In a little room on the top floor."

"I see. 'Where you sleeps you breakfasts.' Well, we'd better have some
food."

She rang a little silver hand-bell, and the maid, who must have been
waiting close at hand, appeared with coffee and boiled eggs. She cast an
anxious glance at Vernon as if to inquire how he had fared at her
mistress's hands.

"Sit down," said the girl when lise had gone. "I can't give you much to
eat, for these days we are on short rations. I'm sorry, but there's no
sugar. I can recommend the honey. It's the only good thing in Plakos."

"Is this Plakos? I came here once before--in 1914--in a steam yacht. I
suppose I am in the big white house which looks down upon the jetty. I
could see nothing last night in the fog. I remember a long causeway and
steps cut in the rock. That must have been the road I came."

She nodded. "What kind of sailor are you to be so ignorant of your
whereabouts? Oh, I see, the storm! What's the size of your boat?"

When he told her, she exclaimed. "You must have had the devil of a time,
for it was a first-class gale. And now on your arrival in port you are
plunged into melodrama. You don't look as if you had much taste for
melodrama, Colonel Milburne."

"I haven't. But is it really melodrama? Your maid told me a rather
alarming tale."

Her eyes had the hard agate gleam which he remembered from Wirlesdon.
Then he had detested her, but now, as he looked at her, he saw that
which made him alter his judgment. The small face was very pale, and
there were dark lines under the eyes. This girl was undergoing some
heavy strain, and her casual manner was in the nature of a shield.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"So-so. In parts, no doubt. I am having trouble with my tenants, which I
am told is a thing that happens even in England. But that is my own
concern, and I don't ask for help. After breakfast I would suggest that
you go back to your yacht."

"I think you had better come with me. You and your maid. I take it that
the old man Mitri can fend for himself."

"How kind of you!" she cried in a falsetto, mimicking voice. "How
extraordinarily kind! But you see I haven't asked your help, and I don't
propose to accept it.... You're sure you won't have any more coffee? I
wonder if you could give me a cigarette? I've been out of them for three
days."

She lay back in a wicker chair, rocking herself and lazily blowing smoke
clouds. Vernon stood with his back to the fire and filled a pipe.

"I don't see how I can go away," he said, "unless I can convince myself
that you're in no danger. You're English, and a woman, and I'm bound to
help you whether you want it or not." He spoke with assurance now,
perhaps with a certain priggishness. The tone may have offended the
girl, for when she spoke it was with a touch of the insolence which he
remembered at Wirlesdon.

"I'm curious to know what lise told you last night."

"Simply that you were imprisoned here by the people of Plakos--that they
thought you a witch, and might very likely treat you in the savage way
that people used to treat witches."

She nodded. "That's about the size of it. But what if I refuse to let
any one interfere in a fight between me and my own people? Supposing
this is something which I must stick out for the sake of my own credit?
What then, Colonel Milburne? You have been a soldier. You wouldn't
advise me to run away?"

"That depends," said Vernon. "There are fights where there can be no
victory--where the right course is to run away. Your maid told me
something else. She said that the evil reputation you had among the
peasants was not your own doing--that, of course, I guessed--but a
legacy from your family, who for very good reasons were unpopular. Does
that make no difference?"

"How?"

"Why, there's surely no obligation in honour to make yourself a
vicarious sacrifice for other people's misdeeds!"

"I--don't--think I agree. One must pay for one's race as well as for
oneself."

"Oh, nonsense! Not the kind of thing your family seem to have amused
themselves with."

"What do you mean?"

"I was put into a room last night"--Vernon spoke hesitatingly--"and I
saw some books and paintings. They were horrible. I understood--well,
that the peasants might have a good deal of reason--something to say
for themselves, you know. Why should you suffer for that swinishness?"

The morning sun had broken through the fog and was shining full on the
girl's face. She sprang to her feet, and Vernon saw that she had blushed
deeply.

"You entered those rooms!" she cried. "That fool lise! I will have her
beaten. Oh, I am shamed.... Get off with you! You are only making me
wretched. Get off while there's time."

The sight of her crimson face and neck moved Vernon to a deep
compassion.

"I refuse to leave without you, Miss Arabin," he said. "I do not know
much, but I know enough to see that you are in deadly danger. I can no
more leave you here than I could leave a drowning child in the sea.
Quick! Get your maid and pack some things and we'll be gone."

She stood before him, an abashed, obstinate child.

"I won't go.... I hate you.... You have seen--oh, leave me, if you have
any pity."

"You come with me."

"I won't!" Her lips were a thin line, and the shut jaws made a square of
the resolute little face.

"Then I shall carry you off. I'm very sorry, Miss Arabin, but I'm going
to save you in spite of yourself."

Vernon had his hand stretched out to the silver hand-bell to summon
lise, when he found himself looking at a small pistol. He caught her
wrist, expecting it to go off, but nothing happened. It dropped into his
hand, and he saw that it was unloaded.

He rang the bell.

"All the more reason why you should come with me if you are so badly
armed."

The girl stood stiff and silent, her eyes and cheeks burning, as lise
entered.

"Pack for your mistress," he told the maid. "Bring as little baggage as
possible, for there isn't much room." The woman hurried off gladly to do
his bidding.

"Please don't make a scene," he said. "You will have to come in the end,
and some day you will forgive me."

"I will not come," she said, "but I will show you something."

Life seemed to have been restored to her tense body, as she hurried him
out of the room, along a corridor, and up a flight of stairs to a window
which looked seaward.

The last wreath of fog had disappeared, and the half-moon of bay lay
blue and sparkling. Down at the jetty were men and boats, but out on the
water there was no sign of the anchored yacht.

"What does that mean?" Vernon cried.

"It means that your boat has gone. When the air cleared the people saw
it, and have driven your man away.... It means that you, like me, are a
prisoner!"




CHAPTER XV


As Vernon looked at the flushed girl, whose voice as she spoke had at
least as much consternation in it as triumph, he experienced a sudden
dislocation of mind. Something fell from him--the elderliness, the
preoccupation, the stiff dogma of his recent years. He recaptured the
spirit which had open arms for novelty. He felt an eagerness to be up
and doing--what, he was not clear--but something difficult and
high-handed. The vanishing of his dream had left the chambers of his
mind swept and garnished, and youth does not tolerate empty rooms.

Also, though I do not think that he had yet begun to fall in love with
Kor, he understood the quality of one whom aforetimes he had disliked
both as individual and type. This pale girl, dressed like a young woman
in a Scotch shooting lodge, was facing terror with a stiff lip. There
was nothing raffish or second-rate about her now. She might make light
of her danger in her words, but her eyes betrayed her.

It was about this danger that he was still undecided. You see, he had
not, like me, seen the people of the island, felt the strain of their
expectancy, or looked on the secret spaces of the Dancing Floor. He had
come out of the storm to hear a tale told in the fog and darkness by an
excited woman. That was all--that and the hideous rooms at which he had
had a passing glance. The atmosphere of the place, which I had found so
unnerving, had not yet begun to affect him.

"My fellow will come back," he said, after scanning the empty seas. "He
has his faults, but he is plucky and faithful."

"You do not understand," the girl said. "He would be one against a
thousand. He may be as brave as a lion, but they won't let him anchor,
and if they did they would never let you and me join him. I have told
you we are prisoners--close prisoners."

"You must tell me a great deal more. You see, you can't refuse my help
now, for we are in the same boat. Do you mind if we go back to where we
breakfasted, for I left my pipe there."

She turned without a word and led him back to her sitting-room, passing
a woe-begone lise who, with her arms full of clothes, was told that her
services were now needless. The windows of the room looked on a garden
which had been suffered to run wild but which still showed a wealth of
spring blossom. Beyond was a shallow terrace and then the darkness of
trees. A man's head seemed to move behind a cypress hedge. The girl
nodded towards it. "One of my gaolers," she said.

She stood looking out of the window with her eyes averted from Vernon,
and seemed to be forcing herself to speak.

"You have guessed right about my family," she said. "And about this
house. I am cleaning it slowly--I must do it myself, lise and I, for I
do not want strangers to know.... This room was as bad as the other two
till I whitewashed the walls. The old furniture I am storing till I have
time to destroy it. I think I will burn it, for it has hideous
associations for me. I would have had the whole house in order this
spring if my foolish people had not lost their heads."

A "tawdry girl," that was how Vernon had spoken of her to me. He
withdrew the word now. "Tawdry" was the last adjective he would use
about this strange child, fighting alone to get rid of a burden of
ancient evil. He had thought her a modish, artificial being, a moth
hatched out of the latest freak of fashion. Now she seemed to him a
thousand years removed from the feverish world which he had thought her
natural setting. Her appeal was her extreme candour and simplicity, her
utter, savage, unconsidering courage.

"Let us take the family for granted," Vernon said gently. "I can't
expect you to talk about that. I assume that there was that in your
predecessor's doings which gave these islanders a legitimate grievance.
What I want to know is what they are up to now. Tell me very carefully
everything that has happened since you came here a week ago."

She had little to tell him. She had been allowed to enter the House by
the ordinary road from the village, and after that the gates had been
barred. When she had attempted to go for a walk she had been turned back
by men with rifles--she did not tell Vernon how the rifles had been
procured. The hillmen had joined with the people of the coast--you could
always tell a hillman by his dress--though the two used to be hereditary
enemies. That made her angry and also uneasy; so did the curious
methodical ways of the siege. They were not attempting to enter the
House--she doubted if any one of them would dare to cross the
threshold--they were only there to prevent her leaving it. She herself,
not the looting of the House, must be their object. Mitri was permitted
to go to the village, but he did not go often, for he came back
terrified and could not or would not explain his terrors. No
communication had been held with the watchers, and no message had come
from them. She had tried repeatedly to find out their intentions, but
the sentinels would not speak, and she could make nothing of Mitri. No,
she was not allowed into the demesne. There were sentries there right up
to the house wall--sentries night and day.

Vernon asked her about supplies. She had brought a store with her which
was not yet exhausted, but the people sent up food every morning. Mitri
found it laid on the threshold of the main door. Curious food--barley
cakes, and honey, and cheese, and eggs, and dried figs. She couldn't
imagine where they got it from, for the people had been starving in the
winter. Milk, too--plenty of milk, which was another unexpected thing.

Water--that was the oddest business of all. The House had a fine well in
the stableyard on the east side. This had been sealed up and its use
forbidden to Mitri. But morning and night buckets of fresh water were
brought to the door--whence, she did not know. "It rather restricts our
bathing arrangements," she said.

She told the story lightly, with a ready laugh, as if she were once more
mistress of herself. Mistress of her voice she certainly was, but she
could not command her eyes. It was these that counter-acted the debonair
tones and kept tragedy in the atmosphere.

Vernon, as I have said, had not the reason which I had for feeling the
gravity of the business. But he was a scholar, and there were details in
Kor's account which startled him.

"Tell me about the food again. Cheese and honey and barley cakes, dried
figs and eggs--nothing more?"

"Nothing more. And not a great deal of that. Not more than enough to
feed one person for twenty-four hours. We have to supplement it from the
stores we brought."

"I see.... It is meant for you personally--not for your household. And
the water? You don't know what spring it comes from?"

She shook her head. "There are many springs in Plakos. But why does our
commissariat interest you?"

"Because it reminds me of something I have read somewhere. Cheese and
honey and barley cakes--that is ritual food. Sacramental, if you like.
And the water. Probably brought from some sacred well. I don't much like
it. Tell me about the people here, Miss Arabin. Are they very backward
and superstitious?"

"I suppose you might call them that. They are a fine race to look at,
and claim to be pure Greek--at least the coast folk. The hillmen are
said to be mongrels, but they are handsome mongrels and fought bravely
in the war. But I don't know them well, for I left when I was a child,
and since my father died I have only seen the people of Kyntho."

"Kyntho?" Vernon cried out sharply, for the word was like a bell to
ring up the curtain of memory.

"Yes, Kyntho. That is the village at the gate."

Now he had the clue. Kyntho was the place mentioned in the manuscript
fragment which he had translated for me. It was at Kyntho that the
strange rite was performed of the Kor and the Kouros. The details were
engraven on his memory, for they had profoundly impressed him, and he
had turned them over repeatedly in his mind. He had thought he had
discovered the record of a new ritual form; rather it appeared that he
had stumbled upon the living rite itself.

"I begin--to understand," he said slowly. "I want you to let me speak to
Mitri. Alone, if you please. I have done this work before in the war,
and I can get more out of that kind of fellow if I am alone with him.
Then I shall prospect the land."

He found Mitri in his lair in the ancient kitchen. With the old man
there was no trouble, for when he found that his interlocutor spoke
Greek fluently he overflowed in confidences.

"They will burn this House," he said finally. "They have piled fagots on
the north and east sides where the wind blows. And the time will be
Easter eve."

"And your mistress?"

Mitri shrugged his shoulders. "There is no hope for her, I tell you. She
had a chance of flight and missed it, though I pled with her. She will
burn with the House unless----"

He looked at Vernon timidly, as if he feared to reveal something.

"Unless----?" said Vernon.

"There is a rumour in Kyntho of something else. In that accursed
village they have preserved tales of the old days, and they say that on
the night of Good Friday there will be _panegyria_ on the Dancing Floor.
There will be a race with torches, and he who wins will be called King.
To him it will fall to slay my mistress in order that the Ancient Ones
may appear and bless the people."

"I see," said Vernon. "Do you believe in that rubbish?"

Mitri crossed himself, and called the Panagia to witness that he was a
Christian and, after God and the Saints, loved his mistress.

"That is well. I trust you, Mitri; and I will show you how you can save
her. You are allowed to leave the House?"

"Every second day only. I went yesterday, and cannot go again till
to-morrow. I have a daughter married in the village, whom I am permitted
to visit."

"Very well. We are still two days from Good Friday. Go down to the
village to-morrow and find out all about the plans for Good Friday
evening. Lie as much as you like. Say you hate your mistress and will
desert her whenever you are bidden. Pretend you're on the other side.
Get their confidence.... A madness has afflicted this island, and you
are the only sane Christian left in it. If these ruffians hurt your
mistress, the Government--both in Athens and in London--will send
soldiers and hang many. After that there will be no more Kyntho. We
have got to prevent the people making fools of themselves. Your mistress
is English and I am English, and that is why I stay here. You do exactly
as I tell you and we'll win through."

It was essential to encourage Mitri, for the old man was patently torn
between superstitious fear and fidelity to Kor, and only a robust
scepticism and a lively hope would enable him to keep his tail up and do
his part. Vernon accordingly protested a confidence which he was very
far from feeling. It was arranged that Mitri should go to Kyntho next
morning after breakfast and spend the day there.

After that, guided by the old man, Vernon made a circuit of the House.
From the top windows he was able to follow the lie of the land--the
postern gates to the shore, the nest of stables and outbuildings on the
east, with access to the shallow glen running up from the jetty, the
main entrance and the drive from Kyntho, the wooded demesne ending at
the cliffs, and the orchards and olive-yards between the cliffs and the
causeway. The patrols came right up to the House wall, and on various
sides Vernon had a glimpse of them. But he failed to get what he
specially sought, a prospect of any part of the adjoining coast-line
beyond the little bay. He believed that his yacht was somewhere hidden
there, out of sight of the peasants. He was convinced that the Epirote
would obey orders and wait for him, and would not go one yard farther
away than was strictly necessary. But he was at a loss to know how to
find him, if he were penned up in this shuttered mausoleum.

He returned to find Kor sewing by the window of the breakfast room. He
entered quietly and had a momentary glimpse of her before she was
conscious of his presence. She was looking straight before her with
vacant eyes, her face in profile against the window, a figure of
infinite appeal. Vernon had a moment of acute compunction. What he had
once thought and spoken of this poor child seemed to him now to have
been senseless brutality. He had called her tawdry and vulgar and
shrill, he had thought her the ugly product of the ugly after-the-war
world. But there she sat like a muse of meditation, as fine and delicate
as a sword-blade. And she had a sword's steel, too, for had she not
faced unknown peril for a scruple?

"What does Mitri say?" she asked in a voice which had a forced briskness
in it.

"I shall know more to-morrow night, but I have learned something. You
are safe for the better part of three days--till some time on Good
Friday evening. That is one thing. The other is that your scheme of
wearing down the hostility of your people has failed. Your islanders
have gone stark mad. The business is far too solemn for me to speak
smooth things. They have resurrected an old pagan rite of sacrifice.
_Sacrifice_, do you understand? This House will be burned, and if they
have their will you will die."

"I was beginning to guess as much. I don't want to die, for it means
defeat. But I don't think I am afraid to die. You see--life is rather
difficult--and not very satisfactory. But tell me more."

Vernon gave her a sketch of the ritual of Kyntho. "It was your
mentioning the name that brought it back to me. I have always been
interested in Greek religion, and by an amazing chance I came on this
only a month or so ago. Leithen--the lawyer--you know him, I
think--gave me a bit of medival Greek manuscript to translate, and
part of it had this rite."

"Leithen!" she cried. "Sir Edward? Then he found it among the papers I
lent him. Why didn't he tell me about it?"

"I can't imagine."

"Perhaps he thought I wouldn't have believed it. I wouldn't a month ago.
Perhaps he thought he could prevent me coming here. I think he did his
best. I had to go off without saying good-bye to him, and he was my
greatest friend."

"He happens to be also my closest friend. If you had known about
this--this crazy ritual, would you have come?"

She smiled. "I don't know. I'm very obstinate, and I can't bear to be
bullied. These people are trying to bully me.... But of course I didn't
know how bad it was.... And I didn't know that I was going to land you
in this mess. That is what weighs on my mind."

"But you didn't invite me here. You told me to clear out."

"My servants invited you, and therefore I am responsible.... Oh, Colonel
Milburne, you must understand what I feel. I haven't had an easy life,
for I seem to have been always fighting, but I didn't mind it as long as
it was my own fight. I felt I had to stick it out, for it was the
penalty I paid for being an Arabin. But whatever paying was to be done I
wanted to do it myself.... Otherwise, don't you see, it makes the guilt
of my family so much heavier.... And now I have let you in for it, and
that is hell--simply hell!"

Vernon had suddenly an emotion which he had never known before--the
exhilaration with which he had for years anticipated the culmination of
his dream, but different in kind, nobler, less self-regarding. He felt
keyed up to any enterprise, and singularly confident. There was
tenderness in his mood, too, which was a thing he had rarely
felt--tenderness towards this gallant child.

"Listen to me, Miss Arabin. I have two things to say to you. One is that
I glory in being here. I wouldn't be elsewhere for the world. It is a
delight and a privilege. The other is that we are going to win out."

"But how?"

"I don't know yet. We will find a way. I am as certain of it as that I
am standing here. God doesn't mean a thing like this to be a blind
_cul-de-sac_."

"You believe in God? I wish I did. I think I only believe in the Devil."

"Then you believe in God. If evil is a living thing, good must be living
as well--more indeed, or the world would smash.... Look here, we've two
days to put in together. There is nothing we can do for the present, so
we must find some way to keep our nerves quiet. Let's pretend we're in
an ordinary English country house and kept indoors by rain."

So the two of them made plans to pass the time, while the clear spring
sunlight outside turned Vernon's pretence into foolishness. They played
piquet, and sometimes he read to her--chiefly Peter Beckford. The florid
eighteenth-century prose, the tags of Augustan poetry, the high stilts,
the gusto, carried their thoughts to the orderly world of home. I have
no wish to speculate about the secrets of a friend, but I fancy that the
slow hours spent together brought understanding. Kor must have told him
things which she had kept back from me, for the near prospect of death
breaks down many barriers. I think, too, that he may have told her the
story of his boyish dream--he must have, for it bore directly on the
case. With his sense of predestination he would draw from it a special
confidence, and she would be made to share it. He had undergone a long
preparation for something which had ended in mist, but the preparation
might point to success in a great reality....

Late the following afternoon old Mitri returned. Vernon saw him first
alone, and got from him the details of the next evening's ceremonial.
There was to be a race among the young men on the Dancing Floor as soon
as the moon rose, and the victor would be called the King. Some of the
news which Mitri had gathered was unexpected, some incomprehensible, but
in the main it agreed with his own version. The victor would choose a
victim--a male victim, clearly, for the female victim was already
chosen. The two would enter the House, and on the next night--the eve of
this grim Easter--the sacrifice would be accomplished. Beyond that
Mitri could say nothing except that the people looked for a mighty
miracle; but the manuscript had told what the miracle would be.

"Who will be the runners?" Vernon asked.

"The fleetest among the young men, both of the village and the hills."

It was characteristic of Vernon's fatalism that he had not troubled to
make even the rudiments of a plan till he had heard Mitri's tidings. Now
the thing began to unfold itself. The next step at any rate was clearly
ordained.

"Will everybody be known to each other?" he said.

"Faith, no. Kyntho till now has had few dealings with the hill folk,
and the villages in the hills are generally at strife with each other.
To-morrow night there will be many strangers, and no questions will be
asked, for all will be allies in this devilry."

"Do I speak like a Greek?"

"You speak like a Greek, but like one from another island."

"And I look like an islander?"

Mitri grinned. "There are few as well-looking. But if your face were
darkened, you would pass. There is a place, a little remote place in the
hills, Akte by name, where the folk are said to have white skins like
you, Signor."

"Well, attend, Mitri. I am a man from Akte who has been at the wars, and
has just returned. That will account for my foreign speech."

"The Signor jests. He has a stout heart that can jest----"

"I'm not jesting. I'm going to compete in the race to-morrow night. What
is more, I'm going to win. I've been a bit of a runner in my time, and
I'm in hard training."

A faint spark appeared in the old man's eye.

"The Signor will no doubt win if he runs. And if he ever reaches the
Dancing Floor he will not be troubled with questions. But how will he
reach the Dancing Floor?"

"I intend to get out of the House early to-morrow morning. There are
several things I want to do before the race. Have you any rags with
which I can imitate the dress of a hillman?"

Mitri considered. Shirt and breeches he had, but no boots. A cap might
be improvised, but boots?

"Remember I have only just returned to Akte, and have brought the
fashion of the war with me. So I can make shift with home-made puttees.
Anything else?"

"The men around the House will not let you pass."

"They'll have to. I'm one of themselves, and you've got to coach me in
local customs. You have twelve hours before you in which to turn me into
a respectable citizen of Akte. If any awkward questions are asked I
propose to be truculent. A soldier is going to stand no nonsense from
civilians, you know."

Mitri considered again. "It will be best to go by the main road to
Kyntho."

"No, I'm going by the causeway. I want to see what lies beyond it to the
west."

"The cliffs are there, and there is no road."

"I will find one."

Mitri shook his head. He had apparently little belief in the scheme, but
an hour later, after Vernon had given Kor a sketch of his intentions,
he arrived with an armful of strange garments. lise, at her mistress's
request, had collected oddments of fabrics, and brought part of the
contents of the linen-cupboard.

"We are about," Vernon told a mystified Kor, "to prepare for private
theatricals. Puttees are my most urgent need, and that thin skirt of
yours will be the very thing."

Since Kor still looked puzzled, he added: "We're cast for parts in a
rather sensational drama. I'm beginning to think that the only way to
prevent it being a tragedy is to turn it into a costume-play."




CHAPTER XVI


Very early next morning, before the blue darkness had paled into dawn,
Vernon swung his legs out of an upper window of the House, crawled along
the broad parapet, and began to descend by a water-pipe in an angle
between the main building and the eastern wing. This brought him to the
roof of one of the outbuildings, from which it was possible for an
active man to reach the road which ran upward from the jetty. He had
been carefully prepared by Mitri for his part. The loose white shirt and
the short mountain tunic were in order. Mitri's breeches had proved too
scanty, but lise had widened them, and the vacant space about his
middle was filled with a dirty red cummerbund, made of one of Mitri's
sashes, in which were stuck a long knife and his pistol. A pair of
Mitri's home-made shoes of soft untanned hide were supplemented by
home-made puttees. He had no hat; he had stained his face, hands and
arms beyond their natural brown with juice from Mitri's store of pickled
walnuts, and--under the critical eye of Kor--had rubbed dirt under his
eyes and into his finger-nails till he looked the image of a handsome,
swaggering, half-washed soldier. More important, he had been coached by
Mitri in the speech of the hills, the gossip which might have penetrated
to the remote Akte, and the mannerisms of the hillmen, which were
unpleasingly familiar to the dwellers by the sea.

All this care would have been useless had Vernon not been in the mood to
carry off any enterprise. He felt the reckless audacity of a boy, an
exhilaration which was almost intoxication, and the source of which he
did not pause to consider. Above all he felt complete confidence.
Somehow, somewhere, he would break the malign spell and set Kor beyond
the reach of her enemies.

He reached ground fifty yards south of the jetty, and turned at once in
the direction of the sea. At the beginning of the causeway he met a man.

"Whither away, brother?" came the question, accompanied by the lift of a
rifle.

Vernon gave the hillman's greeting. He loomed up tall and formidable in
the half-darkness.

"I go beyond the causeway to the olive-yards," he said carelessly, as if
he condescended in answering.

"By whose orders?"

"We of Akte do not take orders. I go at the request of the Elders."

"You are of Akte?" said the man curiously. He was very willing to talk,
being bored with his long night-watch. "There are none of Akte among us,
so far as I have seen. The men of Akte live in the moon, says the
proverb. But ..." this after peering at Vernon's garb--"these clothes
were never made in the hills."

"I am new back from the war, and have not seen Akte these three years.
But I cannot linger, friend."

"Nay, bide a little. It is not yet day. Let us talk of Akte. My father
once went there for cattle.... Or let us speak of the war. My uncle was
in the old war, and my young nephew was ... If you will not bide, give
me tobacco."

Vernon gave him a cigarette. "These are what we smoked in Smyrna," he
said. "They are noble stuff."

Half-way along the causeway a second guard proved more truculent. He
questioned the orders of the Elders, till Vernon played the man from
Akte and the old soldier, and threatened to fling him into the sea. The
last sentry was fortunately asleep. Vernon scrambled over the fence of
the olive-yards, and as the sun rose above the horizon was striding with
long steps through the weedy undergrowth.

His object was not like mine when I travelled that road--to get inside
the demesne; he wanted to keep out of it, and to explore the bit of
coast under it, since it seemed from the map to be the likeliest place
to find his boat. The Epirote, he was convinced, would obey his
instructions faithfully, and when driven away from his old anchorage
would not go a yard more than was necessary. So, after being stopped as
I had been by the wall which ran to the cliffs, he stuck to the shore.
He picked his way under the skirts of the great headland till the rock
sank sheer into deep water. There was nothing for it now but to swim,
so he made a bundle of his shirt and jacket and bound them with the
cummerbund on his shoulders, took his pistol in his teeth and slipped
into the cold green sea. Mitri's breeches were a nuisance, but he was a
strong swimmer, and in five minutes was at the point of the headland.

He found a ledge of rock which enabled him to pull up his shoulders and
reconnoitre the hidden bay. There, to his joy, was the yacht, snugly
anchored half-way across. There was no sign of life on board, for
doubtless the Epirote was below cooking his breakfast. Vernon had no
desire to make himself conspicuous by shouting, for the demesne and the
watchers were too near, so he dropped back into the water and struck out
for the boat. Ten minutes later he was standing dripping on the deck,
and the Epirote was welcoming him with maledictions on Plakos.

He stripped off his wet clothes, and put on his old aquascutum till they
should be dried. Then he breakfasted heartily, while Black George gave
an account of his stewardship. When Vernon did not return he had not
concerned himself greatly, for the affairs of his master were no
business of his. But in the morning, when the fog began to lift, men had
put off from shore in a boat and had demanded the reason of his
presence. The interview had been stormy, for he had declined to explain,
holding that if his master chose to land secretly by night, and rude
fellows appeared with the daylight, it would be wise to tell the latter
nothing. His interviewers had been more communicative. They had been
very excited and had tried to alarm him with foolish tales of witches.
But it was clear that they had meant mischief, for all were armed, and
when at the point of several rifle barrels they had ordered him to
depart, it seemed to him the part of a wise man to obey. He had feigned
fear and deep stupidity, and had upped sail and done their bidding.
Then, looking for a refuge, he had seen the great curtain of cliff and
had found this little bay. Here he hoped he was secure, for there was no
passage along the shore, and the people of Plakos did not seem during
these days to be sailing the seas. He could be observed, of course, from
the cliff tops, but these were shrouded in wood and looked unfrequented.

"Did I not well, Signor?" he asked anxiously.

"You did well. Have you seen no one?"

"No islander. Last night two men came about midnight. One was a crippled
Greek and the other man, I judge, English."

Vernon woke to the liveliest interest, but Black George told a halting
tale. "He swam out and wakened me, and at first, fearing trouble, I
would have brained him. Since he could not speak my tongue, I rowed
ashore with him and saw the Greek.... He was an Englishman, beyond
doubt, and a Signor, so I gave him food."

"What did he want with you?"

"Simply that I should stay here. He had a story of some lady to whom the
devils of this island meant mischief, and he begged me to wait in case
the lady should seek to escape."

No cross-examination of Vernon's could make Black George amplify the
tale. He had not understood clearly, he said, for the English Signor
could not speak his tongue, and the Greek who interpreted was obviously
a fool. But he had promised to remain, which was indeed his duty to his
master. No. He had spoken no single word of his master. He had not said
he was an Englishman. He had said nothing.

Vernon puzzled over the matter but could make nothing of it. He did not
credit the story of an Englishman in Plakos who knew of Kor's plight,
and came to the conclusion that Black George had misunderstood his
visitor's talk. He had the day before him, and his first act was to row
ashore to the other point of the bay--the place from which Janni and I
had first espied the yacht. There he sat for a little and smoked, and it
was one of his cigarette ends that I found the same afternoon. A
scramble round the headland showed him the strip of beach below the
Dancing Floor, but it occurred to him that there was no need to go
pioneering along the coast--that he had a yacht and could be landed
wherever he pleased. So he returned to Black George, and the two hoisted
sail and made for open sea.

The day was spent running with the light north-west wind behind them
well to the south of Plakos, and then tacking back till about sunset
they stood off the north-east shore. It was a day of brilliant sun,
tempered by cool airs, with the hills of the island rising sharp and
blue into the pale spring sky. Vernon found to his delight that he had
no trepidation about the work of the coming night. He had brought with
him the copy he had made of his translation of Kor's manuscript, and
studied it as a man studies a map, without any sense of its strangeness.
The madmen of Plakos were about to revive an ancient ritual, where the
victor in a race would be entrusted with certain barbarous duties. He
proposed to be the victor, and so to defeat the folly. The House would
be burnt, and in the confusion he would escape with Kor to the yacht,
and leave the unhallowed isle for ever. The girl's honour would be
satisfied, for she would have stuck it out to the last. Once he had
convinced himself that she would be safe, he let his mind lie fallow. He
dreamed and smoked on the hot deck in the bright weather, as much at his
ease as if the evening were to bring no more than supper and sleep.

In the early twilight the yacht's dinghy put him ashore on a lonely bit
of coast east of the village. Black George was ordered to return to his
former anchorage and wait there; if on the following night he saw a
lantern raised three times on the cliff above, he was to come round to
the olive-yards at the far end of the causeway. At this stage Vernon's
plan was for a simple escape in the confusion of the fire. He hoped that
the postern gate at the jetty would be practicable; if not he would find
some way of reaching the olive-yards from the demesne. The whole affair
was viewed by him as a straightforward enterprise--provided he could win
the confounded race.

But with his landing on Plakos in the spring gloaming his mood began to
change. I have failed in my portrayal of Vernon if I have made you think
of him as unimaginative and insensitive. He had unexpected blind patches
in his vision and odd callosities in his skin, but for all that he was
highly strung and had an immense capacity for emotion, though he chose
mostly to sit on the safety valve. Above all he was a scholar. All his
life he had been creating imaginative pictures of things, or living
among the creations of other men. He had not walked a mile in that
twilight till he felt the solemnity of it oppressing his mind.

I think it was chiefly the sight of the multitude moving towards the
Dancing Floor, all silent, so that the only sound was the tread of feet.
He had been in doubt before as to where exactly the place was, but the
road was blazed for him like the roads to Epsom on Derby Day. Men,
women, children, babes-in-arms, they were streaming past the closes at
the foot of the glade, past the graveyard, up the aisle of the Dancing
Floor. It was his first sight of it--not as I had seen it solitary under
the moon, but surging with a stream of hushed humanity. It had another
kind of magic, but one as potent as that which had laid its spell on me.
I had seen the temple in its loneliness; he saw it thronged with
worshippers.

No one greeted him or even noticed him; he would probably have passed
unregarded if he had been wearing his ordinary clothes. The heavy
preoccupation of the people made them utterly incurious. He saw men
dressed as he was, and he noted that the multitude moved to left and
right as if by instinct, leaving the central arena vacant. Dusk had
fallen, and on the crown of the ridge on his right he saw dimly what he
knew to be the trees of the demesne. He saw, too, that a cluster seemed
to be forming at the lower end of the arena, apart from the others, and
he guessed that these were the competitors in the race. He made his way
towards them, and found that he had guessed rightly. It was a knot of
young men, who were now stripping their clothes, till they stood naked
except for the sashes twisted around their middle. Most were barefoot,
but one or two had raw-hide brogues. Vernon followed their example, till
he stood up in his short linen drawers. He retained Mitri's shoes, for
he feared the flints of the hillside. There were others in the group,
older men whom he took to be the Elders of whom Mitri had spoken, and
there was one man who seemed to be in special authority and who wore a
loose white cassock.

It was now nearly dark, and suddenly, like the marks delimiting a
course, torches broke into flame. These points of angry light in the
crowded silence seemed to complete the spell. Vernon's assurance had
fled and left behind it an unwilling awe and an acute nervousness. All
his learning, all his laborious scholarship quickened from mere mental
furniture into heat and light. His imagination as well as his nerves
were on fire. I can only guess at the thoughts which must have crowded
his mind. He saw the ritual, which so far had been for him an
antiquarian remnant, leap into a living passion. He saw what he had
regarded coolly as a barbaric survival, a matter for brutish peasants,
become suddenly a vital concern of his own. Above all, he felt the
formidableness of the peril to Kor. She had dared far more than she
knew, far more than he had guessed; she was facing the heavy menace of a
thousand ages, the devils not of a few thousand peasants, but of a whole
forgotten world.... And in that moment he has told me that another thing
became clear to him--she had become for him something altogether rare
and precious.

The old man in the white ephod was speaking. It was a tale which had
obviously been told before to the same audience, for he reminded them of
former instructions. Vernon forced himself to concentrate on it an
attention which was half paralysed by that mood of novel emotion which
had come upon him. Some of it he failed to grasp, but the main points
were clear--the race twice round the arena outside the ring of torches,
the duty of the victor to take the last torch and plunge it in the
sacred spring. The man spoke as if reciting a lesson, and Vernon heard
it like a lesson once known and forgotten. Reminiscences of what he had
found in classical byways hammered on his mind, and with recollection
came a greater awe. It was only the thought of Kor that enabled him to
keep his wits. Without that, he told me, he would have sunk into the
lethargy of the worshippers, obedient, absorbed in expectancy.

Then came the start, and the race which Janni and I watched from our
hiding-place in the shadows under the wall. He got off the mark
clumsily, and at first his limbs seemed heavy as lead. But the movement
revived him and woke his old racing instinct. Though he had not run for
years, he was in hard training, and towards the close of the first round
his skill had come back to him and he was in the third place, going well
within his powers. In the second round he felt that the thing was in his
hands. He lay close to the first man, passed him before the final
straight, and then forged ahead so that in the last hundred yards he was
gaining ground with every stride. He seized the torch at the
winning-post and raced to where in the centre of the upper glade a white
figure stood alone. With the tossing of the flame into the well he
straightened his body and looked round, a man restored to his old vigour
and ready for swift action.

His account of the next stage was confused, for his mind was on Kor,
and he was going through a violent transformation of outlook. The old
man was no longer repeating a rehearsed lesson, but speaking violently
like one in a moment of crisis. He addressed Vernon as "You of the
hills," and told him that God had placed the fate of Kyntho in his
hands--which God he did not particularize. But from his excited
stammering something emerged that chilled Vernon's blood.... He was to
wait in the House till moonrise of the next night. The signal was to be
the firing of the place. With the first flames he was to perform the
deed to which he had been called. "Choose which way you please," said
the old man, "provided that they die." Then he would leave the House by
the main door and join the young men without. "They will be gathered
there till they come who will come." The door would be closed behind him
till it was opened by the fire.... "They who will come are Immortals."

The man's voice was high-pitched with passion, and his figure, solitary
in the bright moonshine in that ring of silent folk, had something in it
of the awful and the sacramental. But Vernon's thoughts were not on it,
but on the news which meant the downfall of his plans. His mind worked
now normally and sanely; he was again a man of the modern world. The
young men--of course they would be there--the Kouretes to greet the
Kouros. He might have known it, if he had only thought. But how was Kor
to escape from those frenzied guardians? He had imagined that with the
fire the vigilance of the watch would be relaxed and that it would be
easy to join Black George and the boat. But with the fire there was to
be a thronging of the hierophants towards the House, and what was inside
would be kept inside till the place was a heap of ashes.

The man was speaking again. He had made some signal, for three figures
had approached the well. "The woman is within," he said, "and it is for
you to choose the man. Your choice is free among the people of Plakos,
but we have one here, a young man, a Greek, but a stranger. He would
doubtless be acceptable."

The half-clad Maris cut an odd figure as, in the grip of two stalwart
peasants, he was led forward for inspection. His face was white and set,
and his eyes were furious. "No willing victim this," thought Vernon,
"but so much the better, for he and I are in the same boat, and I must
make him an ally." From the way he carried himself he saw that Maris had
been drilled, and he considered that a soldier might be useful. "I
choose this man," he said.

A jar was given him, and he filled it from the spring and emptied it on
Maris's head and shoulders. His own clothes were also brought, but he
contented himself with Mitri's sash, of which he made a girdle and into
which he stuck his own pistol and Mitri's knife. "I have no need of the
rest," he said, for he was beginning to enter into the spirit of the
part. Then he knelt while the old man laid a hand on his head and
pronounced some consecration. "Come," he said to Maris, and the two
moved up the slope of the Dancing Floor towards the breach in the wall.

He had almost forgotten his anxiety in the wonder of the scene. He
seemed to be set on a stage in a great golden amphitheatre, and Maris
and the guards who accompanied him were no more than stage properties.
All human life had for the moment gone, and he was faced with
primordial elements--the scented shell of earth, the immense arch of the
sky and the riding moon, and, as he climbed the slope, an infinity of
shining waters. The magic weighed on him, a new magic, for the
ruthlessness of man was submerged in the deeper ruthlessness of
nature.... And then, as he passed the fringe of the spectators and
caught a glimpse of pallid strained faces, he got his bearings again. It
was man he had to cope with, crazy, fallible, tormented man. He felt the
pity and innocence of it behind the guilt, and in an instant he regained
confidence.... Maris was stumbling along, walking painfully like one
unaccustomed to going on bare feet, casting fierce, startled glances
about him. As they approached the breach in the wall Vernon managed to
whisper to him to cheer up, for no ill would befall him. "I am your
friend," he said; "together we will make an end of this folly," and the
man's face lightened.

It was this look on Maris's face which I saw from my hiding-place and
which made me forbid Janni's pistol shot.




CHAPTER XVII


The great doors clanged behind them, and Vernon, who had been given the
key by the guards, turned it in the lock. In spite of the reassuring
word he had spoken to Maris he thought that his companion might attack
him, so he steered wide of him and in the inky darkness fell over a
basket of logs. The mishap wrung from him a very English expletive. Then
he shouted on Mitri to bring a light.

He heard Maris's excited voice. "Who are you? Who in God's name are you?
Are you English?"

"Of course I am English. Confound it, I believe I have cracked my shin.
Mitri, you idiot, where are you?"

The old man appeared from a corridor with a lantern shaking in his hand.
He had no words, but stared at the two as if he were looking on men
risen from the dead.

"Where's your mistress? In her sitting-room? For God's sake, get me some
clothes--my old ones, and bring something for this gentleman to put on.
Any old thing will do. Get us some food, too, for we're starving.
Quick, man. Leave the lantern here."

By the slender light, set on a table in the great stone hall, the two
men regarded each other.

"You want to know who I am," said Vernon. "I'm an Englishman who came
here three nights ago in a yacht. I happened to have met Miss Arabin
before. I found out what the people of Plakos were up to, and it seemed
to me that the best thing I could do was to win the race to-night. I
needn't tell you about that, for you saw it.... Now for yourself. I
gather that you also are unpopular in this island?"

Maris gave a short sketch of his career, and Vernon convinced himself by
a few questions that he spoke the truth, for the Greek had served
alongside the British at Salonika.

"I came here to protect the lady," Maris concluded.

"Who sent you?"

"Mr. Ertzberger. I had a companion, an English colonel, who is also in
your Parliament, and a great milord. Leithen is his name."

"God bless my soul! Leithen! Oh, impossible! Quick! Tell me more. Where
is he now?"

"That I do not know. Yesterday evening we separated, each seeking to
find some way of entering this House. I blundered badly, and was taken
by the guards on the seaward front. My friend must also have failed, or
he would be here, but I do not think he has been taken."

The knowledge that I was somewhere in the island gave Vernon, as he told
me, a sudden acute sense of comfort. I must have been the visitor to the
yacht. He cross-examined Maris, who knew nothing of the boat's
existence, and Maris agreed that the stranger who had gone aboard must
have been myself. "The Greek who was with him," he said, "was doubtless
my corporal, Janni, the one man in my batch of fools who kept his head."

Mitri returned with Vernon's clothes, and an ancient dressing-gown for
Maris. He also brought a bowl of milk and some cakes and cheese.
Questions trembled on his lips, but Vernon waved him off. "Go and tell
your mistress that we will come to her in a quarter of an hour. And have
a bed made ready for this gentleman."

As Vernon dressed he had a look at his companion, now grotesquely robed
in a gown too large for him, and dirty and scratched from his
adventures. It was the mercy of Providence that had given him such a
colleague, for he liked the man's bold, hard-bitten face and honest
eyes. Here was a practical fellow, and he wanted something exceedingly
prosaic and practical to counteract the awe which still hovered about
his mind. He fought to keep at a distance the memory of the silence and
the torches and the shining spaces of the Dancing Floor. This man did
not look susceptible.

"I need not tell you that we are in the devil of a tight place, Captain
Maris. Do you realize precisely the meaning of the performance we have
just witnessed?"

Maris nodded. "Since yesterday. It has been most pointedly explained to
me. I am one victim for the sacrifice, and the lady of this house is the
other, and you are the priest."

"We have the better part of twenty-four hours' grace. After that?"

"After that this House will be burned. You may go forth, if you have the
nerve to play the part. The lady and I--no. We are supposed to die when
the fire begins, but if we do not die by your hand we will die in the
flames."

"There is no way of escape?"

"None," said Maris cheerfully. "But with your help I think we will do
some mischief first. God's curse on the swine!"

"And the lady?"

Maris shrugged his shoulders.

"Till this evening," said Vernon, "I thought I had a plan. I was pretty
certain I could win the race, and I proposed to reason with the male
victim who came back with me, or club him on the head. I thought that
when the fire began there would be confusion and that the people would
keep outside the wall. My boat is lying below the cliffs, and I hoped to
carry the lady there. But now I know that that is impossible. There will
be a concourse of the young men outside the door at the moment of the
burning, and the House will be watched more closely than ever. Do you
know what the people expect?"

Maris spat contemptuously. "I heard some talk of the coming of Gods. The
devil take all priests and their lying tales."

"They await the coming of Gods. You are not a classical scholar, Captain
Maris, so you cannot realize, perhaps, just what that means. We are
dealing with stark madness. These peasants are keyed up to a tremendous
expectation. A belief has come to life, a belief far older than
Christianity. They expect salvation from the coming of two Gods, a youth
and a maiden. If their hope is disappointed, they will be worse madmen
than before. To-morrow night nothing will go out from this place, unless
it be Gods."

"That is true. The lady and I will without doubt die at the threshold,
and you also, my friend. What arms have we?"

"I have this revolver with six cartridges. The lady has a toy pistol,
but, I think, no ammunition. The men without are armed with rifles."

"Ugly odds. It is infamous that honest folk and soldiers should perish
at the hands of the half-witted."

"What about Leithen? He is outside and has come here expressly to save
the lady."

Maris shook his head. "He can do nothing. They have set up a cordon, a
barrage, which he cannot penetrate. There is no hope in the island, for
every man and woman is under the Devil's spell. Also the telegraph has
been cut these three days."

"Do you see any chance?"

Maris cogitated. "We have twenty-four hours. Some way of escape may be
found by an active man at the risk of a bullet or two. We might reach
your boat."

"But the lady?"

"Why, no. Things look dark for the poor lady. We came here to protect
her, and it seems as if we can do no more than die with her.... I would
like to speak with that old man about clothes. A soldier does not feel
at his bravest when he is barefoot and unclad save for pants and a
ragged shirt. I refuse to go to Paradise in this dressing-gown."

Maris's cheerful fortitude was balm to Vernon's mind, for it seemed to
strip the aura of mystery from the situation, and leave it a straight
gamble of life and death. If Kor was to be saved it must be through
Maris, for he himself was cast for another part.

"Come and let me present you to the lady," he said. "We must have some
plan to sleep on."

Kor was in her sitting-room, and as she rose to meet them he saw that
her face was very white.

"I heard nothing," she said hoarsely, "though Mitri says that there are
thousands in the glade beyond the wall. But I saw a red glow from the
upper windows."

"That was the torches which lined the stadium. I have been running a
race, Miss Arabin, and have been lucky enough to win. Therefore we have
still twenty-four hours of peace. May I present Captain Maris of the
Greek Army? He asks me to apologize for his clothes."

The Greek bowed gallantly and kissed her hand.

"Captain Maris came here to protect you. He came with a friend of ours,
Sir Edward Leithen."

"Sir Edward Leithen?" the girl cried. "He is here?"

"He is in the island, but he is unable to join us in the House. Captain
Maris tried, and was unfortunately captured. He was handed over to me as
the victor of the race, and that is why he is here. But Sir Edward must
be still scouting around the outposts, and it is pretty certain that he
won't find a way in. I'm afraid we must leave him out of account.... Now
I want you to listen to me very carefully, for I've a good deal to say
to you. I'm going to be perfectly candid, for you're brave enough to
hear the worst."

Vernon constructed three cigarettes out of his pipe tobacco and tissue
paper from the illustrations in Peter Beckford. Kor did not light hers,
but sat waiting with her hands on her knees.

"They think you a witch, because of the habits of your family. That you
have long known. In the past they have burned witches in these islands,
and Plakos remembers it. But it remembers another thing--the ancient
ritual I told you of, and that memory which has been sleeping for
centuries has come to violent life. Perhaps it would not have mastered
them if the mind of the people had not been full of witch-burning. That,
you see, gave them one victim already chosen, and in Captain Maris, who
is of their own race and also a stranger, they have found the other."

"I see all that," the girl said slowly. "Of course I did not know when I
left London--I couldn't have guessed--I thought it was a simple business
which only needed a bold front, and I was too vain to take advice....
Oh, forgive me. My vanity has brought two innocent people into my
miserable troubles...."

"I told you yesterday that we were going to win. You must trust me, Miss
Arabin. And for Heaven's sake, don't imagine that I blame you. I think
you are the bravest thing God ever made. I wouldn't be elsewhere for
worlds."

Her eyes searched his face closely, and then turned to Maris, who
instantly adopted an air of bold insouciance.

"You are good men.... But what can you do? They will watch us like rats
till the fire begins, and then--if we are not dead--they will kill
us.... They will let no one go from this House--except their Gods."

These were the very words Vernon had used to Maris, and since they so
wholly expressed his own belief, he had to repudiate them with a
vehement confidence.

"No," he said, "you forget that there are two things on our side. One is
that, as the winner of the race, I am one of the people of Plakos. I can
safely go out at the last moment and join their young men. I speak their
tongue, and I understand this ritual better than they do themselves.
Surely I can find some way of driving them farther from the House so
that in the confusion Maris can get you and your maid off unobserved.
Mitri too--"

"Mitri," she broke in, "has permission from our enemies to go when he
pleases. But he refuses to leave us."

"Well, Mitri also. The second thing is that I have found my boat and got
in touch with my man. He is lying in the bay below the cliffs, and I
have arranged that on a certain signal he will meet you under the
olive-yards. There is a gate in the wall there of which Mitri no doubt
has the key. Once aboard, you are as safe as in London."

"And you?"

"Oh, I will take my chance. I am a hillman from Akte and can keep up the
part till I find some way of getting off."

"Impossible!" she cried. "When they find that their Gods have failed
them they will certainly kill you. Perhaps it is because I was born
here, but though I have only heard of this ritual from you, I feel
somehow as if I had always known it. And I know that if the one
sacrifice fails, there will be another."

She rang the little silver bell for Mitri. "Show this gentleman his
room," she looked towards Maris. "You have already had food? Good-night,
Captain Maris. You must have had a wearing day, and I order you to bed."

When they were alone she turned to Vernon. "Your plan will not work. I
can make a picture of what will happen to-morrow night--I seem to see
every detail clear, as if I had been through it all before--and your
plan is hopeless. You cannot draw them away from the House. They will be
watching like demented wolves.... And if you did and we escaped, what on
earth would become of you?"

"I should be one of them--a sharer in their disappointment--probably
forgotten."

"Not you. You are their high-priest, and an angry people always turns on
their priest."

"There might be a bit of a row, but I daresay I could hold my own."

"Against thousands--mad thousands? You would be torn in pieces even
though they still believed you were a hillman from Akte."

"I'll take the risk. It is no good making difficulties, Miss Arabin. I
admit that the case is pretty desperate, but my plan has at any rate a
chance."

"The case is utterly desperate, and that is why your plan is no good.
Desperate cases need more desperate remedies."

"Well, what do you suggest?"

She smiled. "You are very tired, and so am I. We have a day and a night
left us, and we can talk in the morning.... I told you when you first
came here that I refused to run away. Well, I--don't--think--I have
changed my mind...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The difficulty of telling this part of the story (said Leithen) is that
it must be largely guess-work. The main facts I know, but the affair
had become so strange and intimate that neither Kor nor Vernon would
speak of it, while Maris was only vaguely aware of what was happening.
It must have been some time on the Friday morning that the two met
again. I can picture Vernon racking his brains to supplement his fragile
plan, turning sleeplessly in his bed, hunting out Maris in the early
morn to go wearily over the slender chances. Kor, I imagine, slept
dreamlessly. She had reached her decision, and to her strong and simple
soul to be resolved was to be at peace. Vernon was a fine fellow--I have
known few finer--but there were lumpish elements in him, while the girl
was all pure spirit.

But I can reconstruct the meeting of the two in the bare little
sitting-room--without Maris--for that much Vernon has told me. I can see
Vernon's anxious face, and the girl's eyes bright with that innocent
arrogance which once in my haste I had thought ill-breeding.

"I am not going to run away from my people," she said. "I am going to
meet them."

Vernon asked her meaning, and she replied:

"I said yesterday that no one would be permitted to leave the House,
unless in the eyes of the watchers they were Gods. Well, the Gods will
not fail them.... Listen to me. I have tried to purify this place, but
there can be only one purification, and that is by fire. It had to come,
and it seems to me right that it should come from the hands of those who
have suffered. After that I go out as a free woman--and to a free woman
nothing is impossible."

I think that for a little he may not have understood her. His mind, you
see, had been busy among small particulars, and the simplicity of her
plan would not at once be comprehended. Then there came for him that
moment of liberation, when the world clarifies and what have been
barrier mountains become only details in a wide prospect. The extreme of
boldness is seen to be the true discretion, and with that mood comes a
sharp uplift of spirit.

"You are right," he cried. "We will give them their Gods."

"Gods?" She stopped him. "But I must go alone. You have no part in this
trial. But if I win all this household will be safe. Most of these
people have never seen me, and Kyntho knows me only as a girl in old
country clothes from whom they kept their eyes averted. I can dress for
a different part, and they will see some one who will be as new to them
as if the Panagia had come down from Heaven. But you----"

"They will not be content with one divinity," he broke in. "They await a
double epiphany, remember--the Kor and the Kouros. That is the point of
the occasion. We must be faithful to the letter of the rite. After all,
they know less of me than of you. They saw me win a race, a figure very
much like the others in the moonlight.... To those who may recognize me
I am an unknown hillman of Akte. Why should not the Kouros have
revealed himself the day before, and be also the Basileus?"

She looked at him curiously as if seeing him for the first time as a
bodily presence. I can fancy that for the first time she may have
recognized his beauty and strength.

"But you are not like me," she urged. "You have not an old burden to get
rid of. I am shaking off the incubus of my youth, and going free, like
the Gods. What you call the epiphany is not only for Plakos but for
myself, and nothing matters, not even death. I can play the part, but
can you? To me it is going to be the beginning of life, but to you it
can only be an adventure. Chivalry is not enough."

"To me also it is the beginning of life," he answered. Then he returned
to the tale of his boyhood's dream. "When it vanished in the storm a few
nights ago I hated it, for I felt that it had stolen years from my life.
But now I know that nothing is wasted. The door of the last of the
dream-rooms has opened, and you have come in. And we are going to begin
life--together."

A strange pair of lovers, between whom no word of love had yet been
spoken! By very different roads both had reached a complete assurance,
and with it came exhilaration and ease of mind. Maris during the long
spring day might roam about restlessly, and Mitri and lise fall to
their several prayers, but Vernon and Kor had no doubts. While I,
outside the wall, was at the mercy of old magics, a mere piece of
driftwood tossed upon undreamed-of tides, the two in the House had
almost forgotten Plakos. It had become to them no more than a background
for their own overmastering private concerns. The only problem was for
their own hearts; for Kor to shake off for good the burden of her past
and vindicate her fiery purity, that virginity of the spirit which could
not be smirched by man or matter; for Vernon to open the door at which
he had waited all his life and redeem the long preparation of his youth.
They had followed each their own paths of destiny, and now these paths
had met and must run together. That was the kind of thing that could not
be questioned, could not even be thought about; it had to be accepted,
like the rising sun. I do not think that they appreciated their danger,
as I did, for they had not been, like me, down in the shadows. They were
happy in their half-knowledge, and in that blessed preoccupation which
casts out fear.

But some time in the afternoon he drew for the girl a picture of the
ancient rite, and he must have been inspired, for, as she once recounted
it to me, he seems to have made his book learning like the tale of an
eye-witness.

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked.

"Because if we are to play our part we must understand that there is
beauty as well as terror in this worship."

"You speak as if you were a believer."

He laughed. "There is truth in every religion that the heart of man ever
conceived. It is because of that that we shall win."

But I think his confidence was less complete than hers. I judge from
what Maris told me that, though Vernon was what the Scotch call "fey"
during those last hours, he retained something of his old careful
prevision. As the twilight fell he took Maris aside and gave him his
pistol. "Mitri has orders as soon as he gets out of the House to take a
lantern to the cliffs and make the signal for my boat. He has a key, and
will open the door in the olive-yard wall. Miss Arabin and I are staking
everything on a mighty gamble. If it succeeds, I think that the people
will be in a stupor and we shall have an opportunity to join you. But if
it fails--well, they will tear us to pieces. You must be close to us and
await events. If the worst happens, one of these bullets is for the
lady. Swear to me on your honour as a soldier."




CHAPTER XVIII


I take up the tale now (said Leithen) at the point where I fell in with
Maris in the avenue which led to the gap in the wall. As I have told
you, I had stumbled through the undergrowth with the blazing House
making the place an inferno of blood-red aisles and purple thickets.
Above the roar of the flames I heard the noise of panic-driven feet, of
men plunging in haste--two indeed I had met, who seemed to be in the
extremity of fear. For myself I was pretty nearly at the end of my
tether. I was doddering with fatigue, and desperate with anxiety, and
the only notion in my head was to use the dregs of my strength to do
something violent. I was utterly in the dark, too. I did not know but
that Kor might be already beyond my help, for that crimson grove seemed
to reek of death.

And then I blundered into Maris, saw something in his face which gave me
a surge of hope, and with his hand on my arm turned my eyes up the
avenue.

The back part of the House and the outbuildings were by this time one
roaring gust of flame, but the front was still untouched, and the fan
of fire behind it gave it the concave darkness of a shell--a purple dark
which might at any moment burst into light. The glow beyond the facade
was reflected farther down the avenue, which was as bright as day, but
the House end was shadowed, and the two figures which I saw seemed to be
emerging from a belt of blackness between two zones of raw gold. I
therefore saw them first as two dim white forms, which, as they moved,
caught tints of flame....

Put it down to fatigue, if you like, or to natural stupidity, but I did
not recognize them. Besides, you see, I knew nothing of Vernon's
presence there. My breath stopped, and I felt my heart leap to my
throat. What I saw seemed not of the earth--immortals, whether from
Heaven or Hell, coming out of the shadows and the fire in white
garments, beings that no elements could destroy. In that moment the most
panicky of the guards now fleeing from the demesne was no more abject
believer than I.

And then another fugitive barged into me, and Maris caught him by the
arm and cuffed his ears. I saw that it was Janni, but the sight meant
nothing to me. The corporal seemed to be whimpering with terror, and
Maris talked fiercely to him, but I did not listen. He quieted him, and
then he took us both by an arm and hurried us with him towards the gap.
It was what I wanted to do. I dared not look again on that burning
pageant.

The next I knew I was beyond the wall on the edge of the Dancing Floor.
I do not know how I got there, for my legs seemed to have no power in
them, and I fancy that Maris dragged us both. The scared guards must
have preceded us, for behind was emptiness, save for the presences in
the avenue. The thick trees partly blanketed the fire, but the light
from the burning roof fell beyond them and lit up redly the scarp on
which we stood. A rival light, too, was coming into being. The rising
moon had already flooded the far hills, and its calm radiance was
sweeping over the hollow packed with the waiting multitude.

At first I saw only the near fringes of the people--upturned faces in
the uncanny light of the fire. But as I looked, the unfeatured darkness
beyond changed also into faces--faces spectral in the soft moonshine. I
seemed to be standing between two worlds, one crimson with terror and
the other golden with a stranger spell, but both far removed from the
kindly works of men.

Maris had pulled us aside out of the line of the breach in the wall,
where the avenue made a path for the glow of the fire. We were in full
view of the people, but they had no eyes for us, for their gaze was
concentrated on the breach. The fugitive guards had by this time been
absorbed, and their panic had not communicated itself to the great
multitude. For a second I forgot my own fears in the amazing sight
before me.... The crowded Dancing Floor was silent; in face of that deep
stillness the crackle and roar of the fire seemed no more than the
beating of waves on a far-away coast. Though the moon made the hills
yellow as corn, it left the upturned faces pale. I was looking down on a
sea of white faces--featureless to me, masks of strained expectation. I
felt the influence from them beat upon me like a wind. The fierce
concentration of mingled hope and fear--wild hope, wilder fear--surged
up to me, and clutched at my nerves and fired my brain. For a second I
was as exalted as the craziest of them. Fragments of the dithyramb which
Vernon had translated came unbidden to my lips--"Io, Kouros most
great.... Come, O come, and bring with thee--holy hours of thy most holy
Spring."

The spell of the waiting people made me turn, as they had turned, to the
gap in the wall. Through it, to the point where the glow of the
conflagration mingled with the yellow moonlight, came the two figures.

I think I would have dropped on my knees, but that Maris fetched me a
clout on the back, and his exultant voice cried in my ear. "Bravo," he
cried. "By the Mother of God, they win! That is a great little lady!"

There was something in the familiarity, the friendly roughness of the
voice which broke the spell. I suddenly looked with seeing eyes, and I
saw Kor.

She was dressed in white, the very gown which had roused Vernon's ire at
my cousin's dance the summer before. A preposterous garment I had
thought it, the vagary of an indecent fashion. But now--ah now! It
seemed the fitting robe for youth and innocence--divine youth, heavenly
innocence--clothing but scarcely veiling the young Grace who walked like
Persephone among the spring meadows. _Vera incessu patuit Dea._ It was
not Kor I was looking at, but _the_ Kor, the immortal maiden, who
brings to the earth its annual redemption.

I was a sane man once more, and filled with another kind of exaltation.
I have never felt so sharp a sense of joy. God had not failed us. I knew
that Kor was now not only safe but triumphant.

And then I recognized Vernon.

I did not trouble to think by what mad chance he had come there. It
seemed wholly right that he should be there. He was dressed like the
runner of the day before, but at the moment I did not connect the two.
What I was looking at was an incarnation of something that mankind has
always worshipped--youth rejoicing to run its race, that youth which is
the security of this world's continuance and the earnest of Paradise.

I recognized my friends, and yet I did not recognize them, for they were
transfigured. In a flash of insight I understood that it was not the
Kor and the Vernon that I had known, but new creations. They were not
acting a part, but living it. They, too, were believers; they had found
their own epiphany, for they had found themselves and each other. Each
other! How I knew it I do not know, but I realized that it was two
lovers that stood on the brink of the Dancing Floor. And I felt a great
glow of peace and happiness.

With that I could face the multitude once more. And then I saw the
supreme miracle.

People talk about the psychology of a crowd, how it is different in kind
from the moods of the men who compose it. I daresay that is true, but if
you have each individual strained to the extreme of tension with a
single hope, the mood of the whole is the same as that of the parts,
only multiplied a thousandfold. And if the nerve of a crowd goes there
is a vast cracking, just as the rending of a tree-trunk is greater than
the breaking of a twig.

For a second--not more--the two figures stood on the edge of the Dancing
Floor in the sight of the upturned eyes. I do not think that Kor and
Vernon saw anything--they had their own inward vision. I do not know
what the people saw in the presences that moved out of the darkness
above them.

But this I saw. Over the multitude passed a tremor like a wind in a
field of wheat. Instead of a shout of triumph there was a low murmur as
of a thousand sighs. And then there came a surge, men and women
stumbling in terror. First the fringes opened and thinned, and in
another second, as it seemed to me, the whole mass was in precipitate
movement. And then it became panic--naked, veritable panic. The silence
was broken by hoarse cries of fear. I saw men running like hares on the
slopes of the Dancing Floor. I saw women dragging their children as if
fleeing from a pestilence.... In a twinkling I was looking down on an
empty glade with the Spring of the White Cypress black and solitary in
the moonlight.

I did not doubt what had happened. The people of Plakos had gone after
strange gods, but it was only for a short season that they could shake
themselves free from the bonds of a creed which they had held for a
thousand years. The resurgence of ancient faiths had obscured but had
not destroyed the religion into which they had been born. Their spells
had been too successful. They had raised the Devil and now fled from him
in the blindest terror. They had sought the outlands, had felt their
biting winds, and had a glimpse of their awful denizens, and they longed
with the passion of children for their old homely shelters. The priest
of Kyntho would presently have his fill of stricken penitents.

Maris was laughing. I daresay it was only a relief from nervous strain,
but it seemed to me an impiety. I turned on him angrily. "There's a boat
somewhere. See that everybody is aboard--the whole household. And bring
it round to the harbour where we first landed."

"Not to the olive-yards?" he asked.

"No, you fool. To the harbour. Plakos is now as safe for us as the
streets of Athens."

Kor and Vernon stood hand in hand like people in a dream. I think they
were already dimly aware of what had happened, and were slowly coming
back to the ordinary world. The virtue was going out of them, and with
the ebbing of their exaltation came an immense fatigue. I never saw
human faces so pale.

Vernon was the first to recover. He put his arm round Kor's waist, for
without it she would have fallen, but he himself was none too steady on
his feet. He recognized me.

"Ned," he said, in a stammering voice, like a sleep-walker's. "I heard
you were here. It was good of you, old man.... What do you think ...
now ... the boat ..."

"Come along," I cried, and I took an arm of each. "The sooner you are on
board the better. You want to sleep for a week." I started them off
along the edge of the Dancing Floor.

"Not that way," he gasped. "Too risky ..."

"There is no danger anywhere in this blessed island. Come along. You
want food and clothes. It's getting on for midnight, and you're both
only half-dressed."

They were like two children pulled out of bed and too drowsy to walk,
and I had my work cut out getting them along the ridge. The Dancing
Floor was empty, and when we entered the road which led from Kyntho to
the main gate of the House there was also solitude. Indeed, we had to
pass through a segment of the village itself, and the place was silent
as the grave. I knew where the people were--in and around the church,
grovelling in the dust for their sins.

Our going was so slow that by the time we looked down on the harbour the
boat was already there. I stopped for a moment and glanced back, for
far behind me I heard voices. There was a glow as from torches to the
south where the church stood, and a murmur which presently swelled into
an excited clamour. Suddenly a bell began to ring, and it seemed as if
the noise became antiphonal, voices speaking and others replying. At
that distance I could make out nothing, but I knew what the voices said.
It was "Christ is risen--He is risen indeed."

       *       *       *       *       *

The moon had set before we put to sea. My last recollection of Plakos is
looking back and seeing the House flaming like a pharos on its headland.
Then, as we beat outward with the wind, the fire became a mere point of
brightness seen at a great distance in the vault of night.

I had no wish or power to sleep. Kor and Vernon, wrapped each in a heap
of cloaks, lay in the bows. It was the quietest place, but there was no
need of precautions, for they slept like the drugged. lise, whose
nerves had broken down, was in Vernon's berth, Black George had the
helm, and old Mitri and Janni snored beside him.

I sat amidships and smoked. When the moon went down a host of stars came
out, pale and very remote as they always seem in a spring sky. The wind
was light and the water slid smoothly past; I knew roughly our bearings,
but I had a sense of being in another world, and on seas never before
sailed by man. The last week had been for me a time of acute anxiety
and violent bodily exertion, but a sponge seemed to have passed over the
memory of it. Something altogether different filled my mind. I had with
my own eyes seen Fate take a hand in the game and move the pieces on the
board. The two sleepers in the bows had trusted their destiny and had
not been betrayed.

I thought with contrition of my cynicism about Vernon's dream. No doubt
it had been a will-o'-the-wisp, but it had been true in purpose, for it
had made him wait, alert and aware, on something which had been prepared
for him, and if that something was far different from his forecast the
long expectation had made him ready to seize it. How otherwise could he,
with his decorous ancestry and his prudent soul, have become an
adventurer...? And Kor? She had stood grimly to the duty which she
conceived Fate to have laid upon her, and Fate, after piling the odds
against her, had relented. Perhaps that is the meaning of courage. It
wrestles with circumstance, like Jacob with the angel, till it compels
its antagonist to bless it.

I remembered a phrase which Vernon had once used about "the mailed
virgin." It fitted this girl, and I began to realize the meaning of
virginity. True purity, I thought, whether in woman or man, was
something far more than the narrow sex thing which was the common notion
of it. It meant keeping oneself, as the Bible says, altogether unspotted
from the world, free from all tyranny and stain, whether of flesh or
spirit, defying the universe to touch even the outworks of the sanctuary
which is one's soul. It must be defiant, not the inert fragile crystal,
but the supple shining sword. Virginity meant nothing unless it was
mailed, and I wondered whether we were not coming to a better
understanding of it. The modern girl, with all her harshness, had the
gallantry of a free woman. She was a crude Artemis, but her feet were on
the hills. Was the blushing, sheltered maid of our grandmother's day no
more than an untempted Aphrodite?

These were queer reflections, I know, for a man like me, but they gave
me contentment, as if I had somehow made my peace with life. For a long
time I listened to the ripple of the water and watched the sky lighten
to dim grey, and the east flush with sunrise. It had become very cold
and I was getting sleepy, so I hunted about for a mattress to make
myself a bed. But a thought made me pause. How would these two, who had
come together out of the night, shake down on the conventional roads of
marriage? To the end of time the desire of a woman should be to her
husband. Would Kor's eyes, accustomed to look so masterfully at life,
ever turn to Vernon in the surrender of wifely affection? As I looked at
the two in the bows I wondered.

Then something happened which reassured me. The girl stirred uneasily as
if in a bad dream, turned to where Vernon lay, and flung out her hand.
Both were sound asleep, but in some secret way the impulse must have
been communicated to Vernon, for he moved on his side, and brought an
arm, which had been lying loosely on the rug which covered him, athwart
Kor's in a gesture of protection.

After that both seemed to be at peace, while the yawl ran towards the
mainland hills, now green as a fern in the spring dawn.


THE END.


    PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
    THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS




[End of The Dancing Floor, by John Buchan]
