[CHAPTER XIV]
A STROKE IN THE GAME
I was glad. As soon as I was alone and had time to think over Mouraki’s coup I was glad. He had ended a false position into which my weakness had led me; he had rendered it possible for me to serve Phroso in friendship pure and simple; he had decided a struggle which I had failed to decide for myself. It would be easy now (so I told myself) for both of us to repose on that fiction of a good-natured device and leave our innermost feelings in decent obscurity while we counter-mined the scheme which the Pasha had in hand. This scheme he proceeded to forward with all the patience and ability of which he was master. For the next week or so matters seemed to stand still, but to a closer study they revealed slow, yet uninterrupted, movement. I was left almost entirely alone at the house; but I could not bring myself to abandon my position and seek the society of my friends on the yacht. Though reduced to idleness and robbed of any part in the drama, I would not forsake the stage, but lagged a superfluous spectator of an unpleasing piece. Mouraki was at work. He saw Phroso every day, and for long interviews. I hardly set my eyes on her. The affairs of the island afforded him a constant pretext for conferring with, or dictating to, its Lady; I had no excuse for forcing an intercourse which Phroso evidently was at pains to avoid. I could imagine the Pasha’s progress, not in favour or willing acceptance, for I knew her fear and hatred of him, but in beating down her courage and creating a despair which would serve him as well as love. Beyond doubt he was serious in his design; his cool patience spoke settled purpose, his obvious satisfaction declared a conviction of success. He acquiesced in Phroso’s seclusion, save when he sent for her; he triumphed in watching me spend weary hours in solitary pacing up and down before the house; he would look at me with a covert exultation and amuse himself by a renewal of sympathetic congratulations on my engagement. I do not think that he wished me away. I was the sauce to his dish, the garlic in the salad, the spice in the sweetmeat over which he licked appreciative lips. Thus passed eight or ten days, and I grew more out of temper, more sour, and more determined with every setting sun. Denny ceased to pray my company; I was not to be moved from the neighbourhood of the house. I waited, the Pasha waited; he paved his way, I lay in ambush by it; he was bent on conquering Phroso, I had no design, only a passionate resolve that he should try a fall with me first.
There came a dark stormy evening, when the clouds sent down a thick close rain and the wind blew in mournful gusts. Having escaped from Mouraki’s talk, I had watched him go upstairs, and myself had come out to pace again my useless beat. I strayed a few hundred yards from the house, and turned to look at the light in the Governor’s window. It shone bright and steady, seeming to typify his relentless unvarying purpose. A sudden oath escaped from the weary sickness of my heart; there came an unlooked-for answer at my elbow.
‘He acts, you talk, my lord. He works, you are content to curse him. Which will win?’ said a grave voice; and Kortes’s handsome figure was dimly visible in the darkness. ‘He works, she weeps, you curse. Who will win?’ he asked again, folding his arms.
‘Your question carries its own answer, doesn’t it?’ I retorted angrily.
‘Yes, if I have put it right,’ said he; there was a touch of scorn in his voice that I did not care to hear. ‘Yes, it carries its own answer, if you are content to leave it as I stated it.’
‘Content! Good God!’
He drew nearer to me and whispered: