CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PRICE OF WISDOM
An Eastern sun, monstrous and molten and blinking tears of fire, dwelt an instant in the West ere it sank beneath the rim of the mountains, beyond which lies the river Danube. Instantly, as though by a wizard's enchantment, the heat spell passed from the face of the withered land and the sweetness of the night came down. All the woods were alive now, as though the voice of Even had bidden them rejoice. Birds appeared, flitting from the swaying boughs of oak and elm and sycamore. Springs bubbled over as though rejoicing that their enemy slept. Life that had been dormant but ten minutes ago answered to the reveille of twilight and added a note musical to the song. Men breathed a full breath of the soft breezes and said that it was good to live. The very landscape, revealing new beauties in the mellow light, might have been sensible of the hour and its meaning.
It was the evening of the second day after Gavin Ord and his friend Arthur Kenyon had dined together in the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest. A railway and twelve hours' abuse of its tardiness had carried them a stage upon this journey. Willing Hungarian ponies, mules, in whose eyes the negative virtues might be read, brought them to the foot of the mountains and left them there to camp with what luxury they might. Attended by a sleek Turk they had discovered in the Capital, their escort boasted no less than four heroes of the line—for this had been Cecil Chesny's unalterable determination, that they should not go to the mountains alone.
"It's a fool's errand and may be dangerous," said he; "these soldiers are thieves, but they will see that no one else robs you. I will ask the Ministry to pick out as good specimens as he can. Don't complain when you see them. They are much less harmless than they look."
Gavin did not like the business at all, but as Chesny's good-will was necessary to the expedition, he put up with it, and the four shabby soldiers accompanied him from Bukharest. They were ill-mannered fellows enough, raw-boned, high-cheeked, sallow-faced ruffians, whose "paradise enow" could be found wherever good comely, plump girls and bad tobacco might be found. Their energy at meal-times became truly prodigious. They were as ravenous wolves, seeking what they might devour; and, as Arthur Kenyon remarked, they would have eaten his boots if he had taken them off.
Now, this pretty company, Englishmen, Roumanians, a Greek and a Turk, encamped in the woods together upon the evening of the second day, and found what comfort they could beneath the sheltering leaves of a spacious beech. It had been Gavin's intention to put up at a guest-house named by the guide-book he had purchased in Vienna; but when they came to the place where the inn should have stood, they discovered nothing but charred ruins and cinerous relics; and, "by all the gods," said Arthur Kenyon, "the red cock has crowed here before us." A romantic ear would have listened greedily at such a time to the guide's tales of border pleasantries—girls carried shrieking to the mountains, roofs blazing, priests burned in their holy oils, babes hoist on bayonets—for such they would have made a simple affair in which a drunken herdsman and a paraffin lamp had figured notably; but Gavin was in no mood for narratives, and he sent them to the right about, one for wood, another for water, a third to hunt a cot or homestead, if such were to be discovered.
"The Hotel of the Belle Étoile after all," he said gloomily; "well, it might have been worse, Arthur."
"Just so. If I had not stocked your larder at Slavitesti, you would now be doing what the amiable Foulon advised the French people to do a hundred years ago—eating hay with relish, my dear boy. Well, there's red wine strong enough to poison White Bull, and maize bread tough enough for a guinea set of ready-made grinders, to say nothing of cheese, sausage, and biscuits. Fall on, Macduff, and damned be he who eats enough!"
"I don't care twopence about the food," said Gavin savagely; "it's the delay I fret over. We may be within riding distance of the place for all I know. They could have told us at this inn."
"The boy on the burning deck grown eloquent. We might have put out the fire for them or comforted some of the ladies. Are you really in such a hurry, Gavin?"
"Judge for yourself. From the Castle at Okna I can write to Evelyn and tell her the truth. Until it is told, she will be the daily victim of a rogue's plausible suggestions. Why, the man may have returned to Derbyshire by this time—all that is possible and more."
"And there was a great square moon in the sky and thereon the people read the story of the Jaberwock. Tell me frankly, would Evelyn listen to the man now?"
"Evelyn would not, but Etta Romney might. Enigmas—I shall not explain them. Let us go to supper. The day will come after the centuries."
"Gavin, my dear fellow—this is the ancient fever. I bow to it. Pass the wine and I'll drink to your enigma. We are people of importance and our escort is a royal one. It is also musical. That song suggests Seigfried or is it the 'Belle of New York'? My musical education was completed at Magdalen College within Cambridge and is incomplete."
He frivolled on as young men will, not without purpose, for Gavin's anxiety was potent to all about him. It had seemed an easy thing in England to visit the near East and learn for himself the simple truth of Georges Odin's fate. Here on the slopes of the mountains he began to understand his difficulties, perhaps the danger, of his pursuit. For this, he remembered, had been the scene of Robert Forrester's youth, this the home of Zallony, the revolutionary brigand upon whose head three countries had set a price. Time had not changed the disposition of the mountain people, nor had civilization influenced its social creeds. Beware of Zallony's gypsies, they had said to him at Bukharest. This night had brought him within a post of his goal. It would be hard enough if any mischance should send him back to England empty-handed; to say to Evelyn, "I have failed; I can tell you nothing."
Arthur Kenyon, for his part, had begun to enjoy the whole adventure amazingly. Especially he liked the four merry soldiers who ate and drank as though they had been fasting and athirst for a week, and lay down afterwards to fall instantly to sleep. In this the Greek muleteer and the Turkish robber of all trades imitated them without loss of time; so that by nine o'clock nothing but the red glow of two English pipes and the sonorous nasal thank-offerings of the sleepers would have betrayed the camp or its occupants. Such conversation as passed between Gavin and Arthur was in fitful whispers, the talk of men thoroughly fatigued and wistful for the day. They, too, dropped to sleep over it at last, and when they awoke it was to such a scene as neither would ever forget, however long he might live.
Gavin slept without dreaming, the first night he had done so since he left England. He could remember afterwards that his friend's voice awoke him from his heavy slumber; and that, when he sat up and stared about him, Arthur Kenyon was the first person his eyes rested upon. Instantaneously, as one sees a picture in a vision, the scene of the camp presented itself to his view—the great trunks of the oaks and beeches, the hollow, wherein the horses were tethered, the tangle of grass and undergrowth. Just as he had seen it when he fell asleep, so the reddening embers of the camp-fire showed it to him now—unchanged, and yet how different! He was, for this brief instant, as a sleeper who wakes in a familiar room and wonders why he has been awakened. Then, just as rapidly, the scales fell from his eyes and he knew.
Arthur Kenyon stood with his back against the trunk of a beech, his revolver drawn and about him such a motley crowd that only a comic opera could have reproduced it. Gypsies chiefly, the fire-light flashed upon sallow faces which a man might see in an evil dream; upon arms that a mediæval age should have forged; upon limbs that forest labor had trained to hardiness. Crying together in not unmusical exclamations, the raiders appeared in no way desirous of injuring their man, but only of disarming him. One of their number lay prone already, hugging a wounded thigh and muttering imprecations which should have brought the heavens upon his head—a second had the Englishman by the legs and would not be beaten off; while of the rest, the foremost aimed heavy blows at the extended pistol and demanded its delivery in sonorous German. Such was the scene which the picture presented to Gavin as he awoke. He was on his feet before the full meaning of it could be comprehended.
"Halt!" he cried, for lack of any other word to serve. His tone, his manner, drew all eyes toward him. "What do you want?" he continued, with the same air of authority. Twenty voices answered him, but he could make nothing of their reply. He was about to speak for the third time when rough hands pinioned his arms and feet from behind and instantly deprived him of the power to move a step from the place where he stood.
"To conduct your excellency to the Castle of Okna—we have come for that, excellency."
"You are aware that I am an Englishman?"
The gypsy pointed smilingly to his wounded friend.
"We are perfectly aware of it, excellency."
"Then you know the consequences of that which you are doing?"
"Pardon, excellency—there are no consequences in the mountains. Let your friend be wise and put up his pistol. We shall shoot him if he does not."
Gavin, doubting the nature of the situation no longer, shrugged his shoulders and invited Kenyon by a gesture to put up his pistol.
"We can do nothing, Arthur, let them have their way."
"I beg your pardon, Gavin; I could make holes in two or three of them."
"It would not help us. They are evidently only agents. Let's hear what the principal has to say."
"Very well, if you think so. It's poor fun, though—almost like shooting sheep in the Highlands. But, of course, I bow to wisdom."
He held out his hands to the gypsy who bound them immediately with a leather thong taken from the saddle-bow of the excellent pony he had ridden. Silently and methodically now, the men secured their prisoners and produced their gyves of heavy rope. To resist would have been just that madness which Gavin named it—and but for Evelyn the scene had been one to jest at.
"Do you treat all your guests at the Castle of Okna in this way?" he asked the leader of the men suddenly.
The reply was delivered with a suavity delightful to hear.
"When they come to us with soldiers and Turks, then we speak plainly to them, excellency."
"True, I had forgotten the soldiers. Where are those noble men now?"
"Half-way back to Slavitesti, excellency."
"And the muleteer?"
"Oh, my friends are warming his feet for him. We are not fond of Greeks, here in the mountains, excellency."
Gavin started as the man spoke, for a wild shriek broke upon his ears and becoming louder until it sounded like some supreme cry of human agony, ended at last in a fearful sobbing, as it were the weeping of a child in pain. When he dared to look, he saw the gypsies had dragged the wretched Greek to the camp-fire and pouring oil from a can upon his bare feet, they thrust them into the flames and held them there with that utter indifference to human suffering which, above all others, is the characteristic of the people of the Balkans. Worming in their embrace, his eyes starting from his head, his voice paralyzed by the fearful cries he raised, the wretched man suddenly fainted and lay inanimate in the flame. Then, and not until then, they drew him back and left him quivering upon the green grass.
"He was warned," the gypsy leader muttered sullenly; "he should have known better."
But Arthur, showing Gavin his bleeding wrists, said with a shrug.
"I think very little of wisdom, Gavin."
The rope had cut the flesh almost to the bone in his efforts to go to the help of the wretched Greek.