by John Buchan
“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 Koré 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.”
Koré 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. Koré 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? Goodnight, 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 Koré 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. Koré, 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 Kynætho 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 Koré 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 onl
y 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 Élise fall to their several prayers, but Vernon and Koré 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 Koré 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.”
