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CHAPTER LX
TRIED AS BY FIRE
The night was still, the air sopped with recent rain, the sky piled with
sluggish cloud-strata through whose rifts the half-moon glimpsed
obliquely, making the sea-beach that curved above Missolonghi an
eerie checker of shine and shade.
Between hill and shore a lean path, from whose edges the cochineal
cactus swung its quivers of prickly arrows, shambled across a great
flat ledge that jutted from the hill’s heel to break abruptly above a
deep pool gouged by hungry tempests. On the reed-clustered sand
beyond the rock-shelf were disposed a body of men splendidly
uniformed, in kirtle and capote, standing by their hobbled horses. On
the rocky ledge, in the flickering light of a torch thrust into a cleft,
were seated their two leaders conversing.
They had ridden far. The object of their coming was the safe delivery
of a letter to the one man to whom all Greece looked now. The
message was momentous and secret, the errand swift and silent. In
Missolonghi, whose lights glowed a mile away, clanging night and
day with hurried preparation, none knew of the presence of that
company on the deserted shore, save one of its own number who
had ridden, under cover of the dark, into the town’s defenses.
“This is a journey that pleases me well, Lambro,” averred one of the
primates on the rock. “I wish we were well on our way back to the
Congress at Salona, and the English lordos leading us. What an
entry that will be! But what if he doubts your messenger—suspects
some trickery of Ulysses? Suppose he will not come out to us?”
“Then the letter must go to him in Missolonghi,” said the other,
“Mavrocordato or no Mavrocordato. He will come properly guarded,”
he added, “but he will come.”
“Why are you so certain?”
“Because the man I sent to him an hour since is one he must trust. It
was his sister the Excellency saved in his youth from the sack. Their
father was then a merchant of the bazaar in this same town. Do you
not know the tale?” And thereupon he recited the story as he had
heard it years before, little dreaming they sat upon the very spot
where, on that long-ago dawn, the Turkish wands had halted that
grim procession. “I would the brother,” he closed, “might sometime
find the cowardly dog who abandoned her!”
They rose to their feet, for dim forms were coming along the path
from the town—a single horseman and a body-guard afoot. “It is the
archistrategos,” both exclaimed.
The younger hastily withdrew; the other advanced a step to meet the
man who dismounted and came forward.
Gordon’s face in the torch-light was worn and haggard, for the
inward fever had never left him since that fierce convulsion—nature’s
protest against unbearable conditions. Day by day, with the same
unyielding will he had fought his weakness, pushing forward the
plans for the assault on Lepanto, slaving with the gunners, drilling
musket-men, much of the day in the saddle, and filching from the
hours of his rest, time for his committee correspondence, bearing
always that burning coal of anxiety—the English loan which did not
come.
The primate saw this look, touched with surprise as Gordon caught
the stir of horses and men from the further gloom. He bowed
profoundly as he drew forth a letter.
“I regret to have brought Your Illustrious Excellency from your
quarters,” he said in Romaic, “but my orders were specific.”
Gordon stepped close to the torch and opened the letter. The
primate drew back and left him on the rock, a solitary figure in the
yellow glare, watched from one side by two score of horsemen, richly
accoutred, standing silent—on the other by a rough body-guard of
fifty, in ragged garments, worn foot-wear, but fully armed.
Once—twice—three times Gordon read, slowly, strangely deliberate.
A shiver ran over him, and he felt the torch-light on his face like a
sudden hot wave. The letter was a summons to Salona, where
assembled in Congress the chiefs and primates of the whole Morea
—but it was far more than this; in its significant circumlocution, its
meaning diplomatic phrases, lay couched a clear invitation that
seemed to transform his blood to a volatile ichor.
Gordon’s eyes turned to the shadow whence came the shifting and
stamping of horses—then to the lights of the fortifications he had left.
He could send back these silent horsemen, refuse to go with them,
return to Missolonghi, to his desperate waiting for the English loan,
to the hazardous attack on Lepanto, keeping faith with the cause,
falling with it, if needs be; or—he could wear the crown of Greece!
The outlines of the situation had flashed upon him as clearly as a
landscape seen by lightning. The letter in his hand was signed by a
name powerful in three chanceleries. The courts of Europe, aroused
by the experiment of the American colonies, wished no good of
republicanism. Names had been buzzing in State closets: Jerome
Bonaparte, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. But Greece had gone too far
for that; if a foreign ruler be given her, he must be one acceptable to
the popular mind. Governmental eyes turned now to him! He, the
despised of England, a king! The founder of a fresh dynasty, the first
emperor of New Greece!
Standing there, feeling his heart beat to his temples, a weird
sensation came to him. There had been a time in his youth when he
had camped upon that shore, when on that very rock he had struck
an individual blow against Turkish barbarity. Now the hum of the
voices beyond turned into a wild Suliote stave roared about a fire
and he felt again the same chill, prescient instinct that had
possessed him when he said: “It is as though this spot—that town
yonder—were tangled in my destiny!” Was this not the fulfilment, that
on the spot where he had penned his first immortal lines for Greece,
should be offered him her throne?
A mental barb stung him. It was for Greek freedom he had sung then
—the ancient freedom tyranny had defiled. And would this mean true
liberty? The Moslem would be cast out, but for what? A coup d’état!
A military dictatorship, bolstered by suzerain arms! The legislative
government, with the hopes of Mavrocordato, of all the western
country, fallen into the dust! Greece a puppet kingdom, paying
compensation in self-respect to self-aggrandizing cabinets.
But a Greece with himself upon the throne!
Far-off siren voices seemed to call to him from the darkness. What
would be his? World-fame—not the bays he despised, but the laurel.
A seat above even social convention, unprecedented, secure. A
power nationally supreme, in State certainly, in Church perhaps—
power to override old conditions, to re-create his own future. To
sever old bonds with the sword of royal prerogative. Eventually, to
choose his queen!
A fit of trembling seized him. He felt Teresa’s arms about him—
warm, human, loving arms—her lips on his, sweet as honeysuckle
after rain. For a moment temptation flung itself out of the night upon
him. Not such as he had grappled with when she had come to him
on the square in Venice. Not such as he had felt when Dallas told
him of the portrait hidden from Ada’s eyes. It was a temptation a
thousandfold stronger and more insidious. It shook to its depths the
mystic peace that had come to him on the deck of the Hercules after
that last parting. It was as though all the old craving, the bitterness,
the cruciate longing of his love rose at once to a combat under which
the whole mind of the man bent and writhed in anguish.
Gordon’s face, as it stared out from the torch-flare across the gloomy
gulf, showed to the man who waited near-by no sign of the struggle
that wrung his soul, and that, passing at length, left him blanched
and exhausted like one from whose veins a burning fever has ebbed
suddenly.
The primate came eagerly from the shadow as Gordon turned and
spoke:
“Say to those who sent you that what they propose is impossible—”
“Illustrious Excellency!”
“—that I came hither for Greek independence, and if this cause shall
fall, I choose to bury myself in its ruins.”
The other was dumb from sheer astonishment. He knew the
proposal the letter contained. Had not he, Lambro, primate of Argos,
nurtured the plan among the chiefs? Had not the representative of a
great power confided in his discretion when he sent him with that
letter? And now when the whole Morea was ready—when prime
ministers agreed—the one man to whom it might be offered, refused
the crown! He swallowed hard, looking at the letter which had been
handed back to him.
Before he recovered his wits, Gordon had walked uncertainly to his
horse, mounted, and was riding toward the town, his body-guard
streaming out behind him, running afoot.
As his fellow officer approached him, Lambro swore an oath:
“By the Virgin! You shall return to Salona without me. I stay here and
fight with the English lordos!”
He rode into Missolonghi that night, and with him were twenty of his
men.
CHAPTER LXI
THE RENUNCIATION
The pen fell from his fingers. A sudden icy breath seemed to congeal
from the air. He rose—tried to walk, but felt his limbs failing him. He
fixed his eyes upon a bright spot on the wall, fighting desperately
against the appalling faintness that was enshrouding him. It gyrated
and swam before his vision—a burnished helmet. Should the battle
after all evade him? Was it denied him even to fall upon the field? A
roaring rose in his ears.
He steadied himself against the table and shut his teeth. The quiver
of convulsion was upon him again—and the movement against
Lepanto began to-morrow! It must not come—not yet, not yet! The
very life of the cause was wound in his. He would not yield!
The shepherd-dog had risen whining from the hearth; Gordon felt the
rough tongue licking his hand—felt but could not see. He staggered
toward the couch. Darkness had engulfed him, a black giddiness
from whose depths he heard faintly a frantic barking and hurried
footsteps on the stair.
CHAPTER LXII
GORDON GOES UPON A PILGRIMAGE
Easter afternoon and all Missolonghi was on the streets. But there
were no festivities, no firing of guns nor decorations. A pall had
settled on the town, a pall reflected in a sky dun-colored and
brooding storm.
To-day had been fixed upon for the march against Lepanto, but now
war was forgotten. The wheels of movement had stopped like those
of some huge machine whose spring of action has lost its function.
Silent soldiers patrolled the empty bazaar and the deserted docks.
The crowds that thronged the pavements—Suliotes, their wild faces
softened by grief unconcealed, gloomy officers of infantry and
artillery, weeping women, and grave priests of the Greek church—
conversed in low tones. Even the arrival of a new vessel in the
harbor had gone unnoticed. Observation centered on the stone
building fronting the shallows, from whose guarded precincts from
time to time an aide issued with news which spread speedily through
the desponding populace—the military headquarters where the
foreign archistrategos lay sick unto death.
Through the crowds, from the wharf, three figures passed in haste.
One was a gigantic Venetian servant, staggering beneath the burden
of an iron-bound chest. Small wonder its weight taxed even his
herculean strength, for besides bills of exchange for the sum nine
times over, it contained ten thousand pounds in English sovereigns.
His huge form made a way for the two who followed him: a
venerable Armenian friar, bareheaded and sandalled, and a woman
heavily veiled, whose every nerve was strung with voiceless
suffering.
Mercifully a portion of the truth had come to Teresa at Zante, and in
the few intervening hours, an eternity of suspense, she had gained
an unnatural self-control. Up to the last moment of possibility she
had fought the dread sense of the inevitable that was rising to shut
out her whole horizon of future; but before the ominous hush of the
multitudes, hope had died within her. She seemed to hear Mary
Shelley crying through the voice of that Pisan storm: “O, I am afraid
—afraid—afraid!”
Yet, even in her despair, as she threaded the press with the friar, she
felt an anguished pride and thankfulness. The man on whose life
these awe-struck thousands trembled—the all that he had been to
her! And she had not come too late.