Phroso: A Romance

But I had not come to hear a Turk discourse on Armenians, and I broke in, with an impatience that I could not altogether conceal:

‘I beg your pardon; but is that all you wanted to say to me?’

‘I should have thought that it was of some importance to you,’ he observed.

‘Certainly,’ said I, regaining my composure a little; ‘but your courtesy and kindness had already reassured me.’

He bowed his acknowledgments, and proceeded in a most leisurely tone, sorting the papers and documents before him into orderly heaps.

‘On the death of the Pasha, the government of the island having devolved temporarily on me, I thought it my duty to examine his Excellency’s – curse the dog! – his Excellency’s despatch-box, with the result that I have discovered very remarkable evidences of the schemes which he dared to entertain. With this, however, perhaps I need not trouble you.’

‘I wouldn’t intrude into it for the world,’ I said.

‘I discovered also,’ he pursued, in undisturbed leisure and placidity, ‘among the Pasha’s papers a letter addressed to – ’

‘Me?’ and I sprang forward.

‘No, to your cousin, to this gentleman. Pursuing what I conceived to be my duty – and I must trust to Mr Swinton to forgive me – ’ Here the exasperating fellow paused, looked at Denny, waited for a bow from Denny, duly received it, duly and with ceremony returned it, sighed as though he were much relieved at Denny’s complaisance, cleared his throat, arranged a little heap of papers on his left hand, and at last – oh, at last! – went on.

‘This letter, I say, in pursuance of what I conceived to be my duty – ’

‘Yes, yes, your duty, of course. Clearly your duty. Yes?’

‘I read. It appeared, however, to contain nothing of importance.’

‘Then, why the deuce – I mean – I beg your pardon.’

‘But merely matters of private concern. But I am not warranted in letting it out of my hands. It will have to be delivered to the Government with the rest of the Pasha’s papers. I have, however, allowed Mr Swinton to read it. He says that it concerns you, Lord Wheatley, more than himself. I therefore propose to ask him to read it to you (I can decipher English, but not speak it with facility) in my presence.’ With this he handed an envelope to Denny. We had got to it at last.

‘For heaven’s sake be quick about it, my dear boy!’ I cried, and I seated myself on the table, swinging my leg to and fro in a fury of restless impatience. The captain eyed my agitated body with profound disapproval.

Denny took the letter from its envelope and read: ‘London, May 21st;’ then he paused and remarked, ‘We got here on the seventh, you know.’ I nodded hastily, and he went on, ‘My dear Denny – Oh, how awful this is! I can hardly bear to think of it! Poor, poor fellow! Mamma is terribly grieved, and I, of course, even more. Both mamma and I feel that it makes it so much worse, somehow, that this news should come only three days after he must have got mamma’s letter. Mamma says that it doesn’t really make any difference, and that if her letter was wise, then this terrible news can’t alter that. I suppose it doesn’t really, but it seems to, doesn’t it? Oh, do write directly and tell me that he wasn’t very unhappy about it when he had that horrible fever. There’s a big blot – because I’m crying! I know you thought I didn’t care about him, but I did – though not (as mamma says) in one way, really. Do you think he forgave me? It would kill me if I thought he didn’t. Do write soon. I suppose you will bring poor dear Charley home? Please tell me he didn’t think very badly of me. Mamma joins with me in sincerest sympathy. – Yours most sincerely, Beatrice Kennett Hipgrave. P.S.– Mr Bennett Hamlyn has just called. He is awfully grieved about poor dear Charley. I always think of him as Charley still, you know. Do write.’

There was a long pause, then Denny observed in a satirical tone:

‘To be thought of still as “Charley” is after all something.’

‘But what the devil does it mean?’ I cried, leaping from the table.

‘“I suppose you will bring poor dear Charley home,’” repeated Denny, in a meditative tone. ‘Well, it looks rather more like it than it did a few days ago, I must admit.’

‘Denny, Denny, if you love me, what’s it all about? I haven’t had any letter from – ’

‘Mamma? No, we’ve had no letter from mamma. But then we haven’t had any letters from anybody.’

‘Then I’m hanged if I – ’ I began in bewildered despondency.

‘But, Charley,’ interrupted Denny, ‘perhaps mamma sent a letter to – Mouraki Pasha!’

‘To Mouraki?’

‘This letter of mine found its way to Mouraki.’

‘All letters,’ observed the captain, who was leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling, ‘would pass through his hands, if he chose to make them.’

‘Good heavens!’ I cried, springing forward. The hint was enough. In an instant my busy, nervous, shaking hands were ruining the neat piles of documents which the captain had reared so carefully in front and on either side of him. I dived, tossed, fumbled, rummaged, scattered, strewed, tore. The captain, incapable of resisting my excited energy, groaned in helpless despair at the destruction of his evening’s work. Denny, having watched me for a few minutes, suddenly broke out into a peal of laughter. I stopped for an instant to glare reproof of his ill-timed mirth, and turned to my wild search again.

The search seemed useless. Either Mouraki had not received a letter from Mrs Bennett Hipgrave, or he had done what I myself always did with the good lady’s communications – thrown it away immediately after reading it. I examined every scrap of paper, official documents, private notes (the captain was very nervous when I insisted on looking through these for a trace of Mrs Hipgrave’s name), lists of stores; in a word, the whole contents of Mouraki’s despatch-boxes.

‘It’s a blank!’ I cried, stepping back at last in disappointment.

‘Yes, it’s gone; but depend upon it, he had it,’ said Denny.

A sudden recollection flashed across me, the remembrance of the subtle amused smile with which Mouraki had spoken of the lady who was most anxious about me and my future wife. He must have known then; he must even then have had Mrs Hipgrave’s letter in his possession. He had played a deliberate trick on me by suppressing the letter; hence his fury when I announced my intention of disregarding the ties that bound me – a fury which had, for the moment, conquered his cool cunning and led him into violent threats. At that moment, when I realised the man’s audacious knavery, when I thought of the struggle he had caused to me and the pain to Phroso, well, just then I came near to canonising Demetri, and nearer still to grudging him his exploit.

‘What was in the letter, then?’ I cried to Denny.

‘Read mine again,’ said he, and he threw it across to me.

I read it again. I was cooler now, and the meaning of it stood out plain and not to be doubted. Mrs Bennett Hipgrave’s letter, her wise letter, had broken off my engagement to her daughter. The fact was plain; all that was missing, destroyed by the caution or the carelessness of Mouraki Pasha, was the reason; and the reason I could supply for myself. I reached my conclusion, and looked again at Denny.

‘Allow me to congratulate you,’ said Denny ironically.

Man is a curious creature. I (and other people) may have made that reflection before. I offer no apology for it. The more I see of myself and my friends the more convinced I grow of its truth. Here was the thing for which I had been hoping and praying, the one great gift that I asked of fate, the single boon which fortune enviously withheld. Here was freedom – divine freedom! Yet what I actually said to Denny, in reply to his felicitations, was:

‘Hang the girl! She’s jilted me!’ And I said it with considerable annoyance.

The captain, who studied English in his spare moments, here interposed, asking suavely:

‘Pray, my dear Lord Wheatley, what is the meaning of that word – “jilted”?’

‘The meaning of “jilted”?’ said Denny. ‘He wants to know the meaning of “jilted,” Charley.’

I looked from one to the other of them; then I said:

‘I think I’ll go and ask,’ and I started for the door. The captain’s expression accused me of rudeness. Denny caught me by the arm.

‘It’s not decent yet,’ said he, with a twinkle in his eye.

‘It happened nearly a month ago,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ve had time to get over it, Denny; a man can’t wear the willow all his life.’

‘You old humbug!’ said Denny, but let me go.

I was not long in going. I darted down the stairs. I suppose a man tricks his conscience and will find excuses for himself where others can find only matter for laughter, but I remember congratulating myself on not having spoken the decisive words to Phroso before Denny interrupted us. Well, I would speak them now. I was free to speak them now. Suddenly, in this thought, the vexation at being jilted vanished.

‘It amounts,’ said I to myself, as I reached the hall, ‘to no more than a fortunate coincidence of opinion.’ And I passed through the door and turned sharp round to the left.

She was there waiting for me, and waiting eagerly, it seemed, for, before I could speak, she ran to me, holding out her hands, and she cried in a low urgent whisper, full of entreaty:

‘My lord, I have thought. I have thought while you were in the house. You must not do this, my lord. Yes, I know – now I know – that you love me, but you mustn’t do this. My lord’s honour shan’t be stained for my sake.’

I could not resist it, and I cannot justify it. I assumed a terribly sad expression.

‘You’ve really come to that conclusion, Phroso?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Ah, how difficult it is! But my lord’s honour – ah, don’t tempt me! You will take me to Athens, won’t you? And then – ’

‘And then,’ said I, ‘you’ll leave me?’

‘Yes,’ said Phroso, with a little catch in her voice.

‘And what shall I do, left alone?’

‘Go back,’ murmured Phroso almost inaudibly.

‘Go back – thinking of those wonderful eyes?’

‘No, no. Thinking of – ’

‘The lady who waits for me over the sea?’

‘Yes. And oh, my lord, I pray that you will find happiness!’

There was a moment’s silence. Phroso did not look at me; but then I did look at Phroso.

‘Then you refuse, Phroso, to have anything to say to me?’

No answer at all reached me; I came nearer, being afraid that I might not have heard her reply.

‘What am I to do for a wife, Phroso?’ I asked forlornly. ‘Because, Phroso – ’

‘Ah, my lord, why do you take my hand again?’

‘Did I, Phroso? Because, Phroso, the lady who waits over the sea – it’s a charmingly poetic phrase, upon my word!’

‘You laugh!’ murmured Phroso, in aggrieved protest and wonder.

‘Did I really laugh, Phroso? Well, I’m happy, so I may laugh.’

‘Happy?’ she whispered; then at last her eyes were drawn to mine in mingled hope and anguish of questioning.

‘The lady who waited over the sea,’ said I, ‘waits no longer, Phroso.’

The wonderful eyes grew more wonderful in their amazed widening; and Phroso, laying a hand gently on my arm, said:

‘She waits no longer? My lord, she is dead?’

This confident inference was extremely flattering. There was evidently but one thing which could end the patient waiting of the lady who waited.

‘On the contrary she thinks that I am. Constantine spread news of my death.’

‘Ah, yes!’

‘He said that I died of fever.’

‘And she believes it?’

‘She does, Phroso; and she appears to be really very sorry.’

‘Ah, but what joy will be hers when she learns – ’

‘But, Phroso, before she thought I was dead, she had made up her mind to wait no longer.’

‘To wait no longer? What do you mean? Ah, my lord, tell me what you mean!’

‘What has happened to me, here in Neopalia, Phroso?’

‘Many strange things, my lord – some most terrible.’

‘And some most – most what, Phroso? One thing that has happened to me has, I think, happened also to the lady who waited.’

Phroso’s hand – the one I had not taken – was suddenly stretched out, and she spoke in a voice that sounded half-stifled:

‘Tell me, my lord, tell me. I can’t endure it longer.’

Then I grew grave and said:

‘I am free. She has given me my freedom.’

‘She has set you free?’

‘She loves me no longer, I suppose, if she ever did.’

‘Oh, but, my lord, it is impossible.’

‘Should you think it so? Phroso, it is true – true that I can come to you now.’

She understood at last. For a moment she was silent, and I, silent also, pierced through the darkness to her wondering face. Once she stretched out her arms; then there came a little, long, low laugh, and she put her hands together, and thrust them, thus clasped, between mine that closed on them.

‘My lord, my lord, my lord!’ said Phroso.

Suddenly I heard a low mournful chant coming up from the harbour, the moan of mourning voices. The sound struck across the stillness which had followed her last words.

‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘What are they doing down there?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ The bodies of my cousin and of Kortes came forth at sunset from the secret pool into which they fell: and they bring them now to bury them by the church. They mourn Kortes because they loved him; and Constantine also they feign to mourn, because he was of the house of the Stefanopouloi.’

We stood for some minutes listening to the chant that rose and fell and echoed among the hills. Its sad cadences, mingled here and there with the note of sustained hope, seemed a fitting end to the story, to the stormy days that were rounded off at last by peace and joy to us who lived, and by the embraces of the all-hiding all-pardoning earth for those who had fallen. I put my arm round Phroso, and, thus at last together, we listened till the sounds died away in low echoes, and silence fell again on the island.

‘Ah, the dear island!’ said Phroso softly. ‘You won’t take me away from it for ever? It is my lord’s island now, and it will be faithful to him, even as I myself; for God has been very good, and my lord is very good.’

I looked at her. Her cheeks were again wet with tears. As I watched a drop fell from her eyes. I said to her softly:

‘That shall be the last, Phroso, till we part again.’

A loud cough from the front of the house interrupted us. I advanced, beckoning to Phroso to follow, and wearing, I am afraid, the apologetic look usual under such circumstances. And I found Denny and the captain.

‘Are you coming down to the yacht, Charley?’ asked Denny.

’Er – in a few minutes, Denny.’

‘Shall I wait for you?’

‘Oh, I think I can find my way.’

Denny laughed and caught me by the hand; then he passed on to Phroso. I do not, however, know what he said to her, for at this moment the captain touched my shoulder and demanded my attention.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said he, ‘but you never told me the meaning of that word.’

‘What word, my dear captain?’

‘Why, the word you used of the lady’s letter – of what she had done.’

‘Oh, you mean “jilted”?’

‘Yes; that’s it.’

‘It is,’ said I, after a moment’s reflection, ‘a word of very various meanings.’

‘Ah,’ said the captain, with a comprehending nod.

‘Yes, very various. In one sense it means to make a man miserable.’

‘Yes, I see; to make him unhappy.’

‘And in another to make him – to make him, captain, the luckiest beggar alive.’

‘It’s a strange word,’ observed the captain meditatively.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said I. ‘Good-night.’