Sydney C. Grier

“ His eyes strayed to the graceful figure of Donna Olimpia Pazzi, as she passed them on an errand for the Princess. “Why should such details as the colour of eyes and hair interfere with the course of love?”
“Why, indeed?” said Zoe. “What a poseur the man is!” she thought impatiently. “Would Emilia consider it unkind if I passed him on to some one else now?” Looking round for a way of escape, her eyes encountered the fixed gaze of Professor Panagiotis, who had been walking through the rooms with Maurice, but had stopped dead, and was staring at her companion with something like stupefaction. ”

“ He is nothing. I have taken no oath to him. Listen, Maurice. For the sake of Constantine’s rights I have opposed you—broken up our home, as you say. Do you think I would deal more kindly with that upstart Romanos? Let him look to himself. If he succeeds, as you call it, and you tamely abdicate your rights in his favour, don’t imagine that I shall also be tame, and retire meekly with you to Stone Acton. I shall intrigue, plot, inspire. I have the means, you know. I must and will see my boy either Prince or Hereditary Prince of Emathia before I die. ”

“ A RUSE DE GUERRE. When the fog cleared away that evening, a sight ominous of doom met the eyes of the blockaded inhabitants of the peninsula. Inside the line of warships lay a row of other vessels, Roumi transports packed with troops, waiting like vultures for the dying agonies of their prey. The sight seemed to infuse a desperate resolution into the luckless refugees, for that night an epidemic of desertion set in. The insurgents and their leaders made no attempt to stay it, arguing, as Zoe had done, that in the absence of the refugees the food would hold out much longer. ”

“ Zoe found her presently walking up and down the narrow inner room where her boy was still sleeping, with her hands clenched and her head thrown back.
“I might have known!” she cried. “Maurice always manages to defeat me somehow. I ought to have taken Constantine and come away by myself, without warning him,—it is the only way. He would have been so anxious about us that he would have been willing to do anything. To surrender without being forced to it! To submit our sacred rights to the choice of the people!” ”

“ She is not distracted between a husband who won’t look after his own interests, and a son whose rights must not be sacrificed. I don’t believe she cares for a single creature.”
“You forget you are talking of my sister,” said Maurice angrily. “As to her not caring for any one, that’s her business and not ours. I should have been thankful to see her happy with Wylie, but I suppose there’s no chance of that now. At any rate, she has stood by us all this time, and you would often have been lonely without her.”
“It’s only for amusement. She has no real interest,” persisted Eirene rebelliously. ”

“ There was a click on the ledge above her, where Constantine had been left. “Jammed!” said Wylie’s voice, in a tone of such angry disgust that she nearly laughed, just as Janni pulled himself over the brink with a final effort, and ran at her, brandishing the knife.
“Take my hand,” said the voice overhead, clear and hard, and turning mechanically to obey, she saw that Wylie was lying on the ledge above, stretching out his left hand to her, while his right held the rifle clubbed. She sprang at the rock, and scrambled wildly up its slippery face. ”

“ For weeks we have warned you that there was no help to be looked for from the Powers. Their great war-vessels are hemming us in for the express purpose of keeping away from us friends and supplies, and watching our dying agonies. Prince Theophanis and Colonel Wylie are not likely to obtain any sympathy from England; rather their love for Emathia has brought her displeasure upon them. We have only one friend in all Europe, and that is not one of the Great Powers. ”

“ The quiet fore-court of the monastery was filled with kicking mules, vociferating drivers, and curious sailors, while two or three agitated monks bewailed the invasion with uplifted hands. The strangers had brought women within the sacred gates, and were further polluting the precincts with the presence of schismatics and of weapons of war. The glory of Hagiamavra had departed, for the stain could never be removed. Leaving Wylie to arrange measures of defence, Maurice set himself to soothe the feelings of the distracted hosts. ”

“ Sighs and moans of sympathy broke from the watching people as the shells of the pursuer fell before, behind, beside the yacht, then on board, causing her to shrink and stagger, but she still held on.
“Good old Armitage! He’s going to run her on the rocks—thinks we can salve the stores from her then,” said Maurice, and as he spoke a great cry rose up from the multitude on the shore. The yacht had run straight upon the reef. The fishermen, led by Maurice, rushed for their boats, only to recoil in terror as a shell splashed into the water of the harbour. ”

“ Noblesse oblige, Zoe. It is part of a princess’s duty to make a political marriage. It is not as if I was asking you to give up any one on whom you had set your heart. As you say, that other episode is over—one need only look at Colonel Wylie to be sure of it. Besides, he told Lord Armitage that you had cured him, and he hadn’t the slightest thought of asking you again. So there is merely a memory to sacrifice,—a romantic idea of faithfulness,—and think what it may mean to Maurice. ”

“ For a private individual to seize upon a desirable peninsula and settle down to govern it is simply stealing, though I allow that if it had been done by a sovereign state it would merely be called annexation.”
“It is an experiment,” repeated Maurice. “If we can show that it is possible to induce Emathian Christians of different sects to live peaceably together and to serve under the same flag, surely it is an object-lesson worth trying on a larger scale? We hear a great deal of the sympathy of Europe for Emathia, and the absolute impossibility of showing that sympathy except in words. ”

“ I have no particular admiration for the Roumi in civil life, though he’s a first-class fighting man, but he is an intelligent gentleman beside these fellows, who torture and mutilate and burn each other’s women and children because one man calls himself a Patriarchist and the other an Exarchist. Have you ever considered seriously what hope there can be of ruling, except by martial law, a set of people who all profess to be Christians, and yet can’t keep their hands off each other’s throats? ”

“ Zoe was neither the one nor the other. She struggled to her feet and toiled feebly up the path, but the moment she reached the short turf at the top she sat down resolutely, excusing her disobedience by the reflection that she could not have run to save her life. She could see Wylie waiting behind the rock, but it hid from her view the assailants who, as she judged from his attitude, were crowding up the path to attack him. They were afraid to face him alone, and he preferred that they should come at him in a body, that they might not be able to use their rifles. ”

“ Wylie, I won’t insult you by asking you to forgive me for dragging you into this, but I will say that if I had guessed how the Powers would behave, and the Christians, I should have thought my own life was enough to throw away.”
“Can’t be helped,” said Wylie. “Luck’s been against us all through. Well, ‘whirligig of time,’ don’t you know? A hundred years hence they may be worshipping you and me with haloes on in every village of a free Emathia.”
“As martyrs?” said Maurice lightly as he turned away, but his mouth set firmly when he had taken the path to the monastery. ”

“ There was a distant boom, and something came singing overhead, at the sound of which the Roumis promptly flung themselves on the ground. The insurgents, conspicuous in their white kilts or grey homespun among the darker uniforms, stared at them in amazement, but were about to take full advantage of their unlooked-for cowardice when there came another boom, and something fell into the mass of men on the right of the fight and exploded. ”

“ Her sole consolation sprang from the reflection that as she was the only available unmarried woman, it was natural for Prince Romanos to fancy himself in love with her, and that as soon as he returned to the society he was so well fitted to adorn, his affections would at once be diverted to other objects. But there was more in the man than a roving fancy and a colossal self-esteem, or even than considerable poetic gifts, and this Maurice and Wylie discovered the same evening. ”

“ There was a look of awe upon the ex-brigand’s face which Wylie did not understand until he had been bidden to kneel down and look through a gap between two rocks. On the other side of the hill, literally only a few yards from them, a number of Roumi soldiers lay asleep. Whether they were an outlying picket or stragglers from the larger force,—the confused way in which they were strewn about favoured this supposition,—the fact remained that the two parties had spent the night so near one another that a cry or an altercation in one camp must have roused its neighbour. ”

“ Since we are both in reality working for the good of Emathia, don’t let the mere look of things divide us. You know as well as I do that nothing would delight Scythia and Pannonia more than to see the friends of freedom fighting among themselves, so that they might point out how impossible it was to entrust them with the government. But if by sinking our differences we can keep our followers from quarrelling, we shall have gone a long way towards proving the fitness of the Emathians for liberty. ”

“ This last valley was full of terrors for the Roumi troops. There was no more haphazard firing from the heights; each man here was a marksman, and each bullet found its billet, until no attempt was made to care for the wounded as they fell, for the common impulse to get through and get out hurried every man on. It was a demoralised and disorderly body of men, encumbered and mixed up with driverless mules and horses which had lost their riders, that approached the mouth of the valley at last. ”

“ Miserable boy, have you no pride of race? is the honour of your house nothing to you? Can’t you see that it is the one chance of these—these——” Prince Christodoridi choked back the word upon his lips, and replaced it weakly with “these impostors—to draw you into their coils, to make it appear that we—we the Christodoridis—think them fit to marry with? You, who can show an unbroken Greek and Orthodox descent from Eudoxia Theophanis, think it no shame to seek in marriage the daughter of a race of schismatics!” ”

“ The fugitives who had chosen the land route came straggling back at intervals through the day. They also had been stopped by Jalal-ud-din’s force, and told to go back and starve,—or else bring about a surrender. When they would have flung themselves down to die round about the Roumi camp, they were driven back across the isthmus at the bayonet’s point. At present the Roumis considered their hungry mouths more desirable even than their blood, for not only would they help to consume the insurgents’ stores, but their clamorous misery would weaken the hearts of the fighting men. ”

“ The Princess was encouraged by the softness of Donna Olimpia’s voice. “He means to throw himself into the midst of the Emathian insurgents, and lead them against the Roumis. That sounds a very fine thing to do,” with some irritation, as the girl’s eyes lighted up, “but you don’t seem to see that it means almost certain death to him, and in any case ruin to his hope of obtaining a throne.”
“For his possible throne I care nothing!” cried Donna Olimpia; “but his life—that is different. He shall not destroy himself!” ”

“ You can’t prejudice your cause in the eyes of the Powers, because it is already damned beyond redemption as far as three of them are concerned. You want a free and independent Emathia and they don’t. They don’t venture to deal with you themselves, because they are horribly jealous of one another, and they have a haunting fear that England might suddenly go mad and do something rash and high-sounding if they attempted anything like the partition of Poland over again too soon. ”