The Princess Sophia

by E. F. Benson

‘Yes, my lady,’ replied that iron-faced functionary, and he brushed a little frill of icicles from his hair and eyebrows.

The night was windless and deadly cold, but the beauty of it was beyond compare. On all sides stretched acre on acre of frozen snow, rounded and billowy, but every outline was etched with the crispness of the frost. The sound of their ponies’ going was like a biting of toast; other noise there was none, except the crashing thunder of the broken surges on the shore. As they drew nearer, these ever became the more stupendous, till the ear was filled with their booming, as with the roar of a train in a tunnel. Soon it was possible to detect above the increasing riot the scream of the pebbly beach continually dragged down to the jaws of one wave, only to be vomited up afresh by the next, and her anxieties again began to lie heavy on Lady Blanche. Her part was done; in another hour the telegraph would twitch her message across to Corfu; but how would it be possible for any yacht to win through those mountainous billows? Down on the sea-board the snowfall had been less deep, and before eight they had entered the streets, all dumb and silent, and the telegram summoning Sophia at once had been despatched.

Early on the morning of the 30th came the Princess’s reply. ‘I am just going on board. We start at once. It will be rather rough,’ it said, and no more; and all that day Blanche watched in a fever of impatience for a sight of the newly-christened Revenge. In fair weather it was a crossing of not more than six hours, but who could say how many in such a sea? She consulted with Yanni as to the possible means of return to Amandos, for this frost would render the road impassable to carriages, however zealous had been the work of the men Lord Abbotsworthy had sent out, and he said that riding was the only mode of passage. Lady Blanche was seated at her window in the sitting-room of the Hôtel Royal while the old keeper talked to her, and looking out idly into the street, she saw two children playing together on the frozen and compacted snow. One had a board, to which he had tied a string; the other sat on it, and was easily pulled along. Suddenly she applied the suggestion, and with dismay at her own stupidity.

‘Oh, Yanni!’ she cried, ‘I am a fool, and you another! A sledge!’

But a sledge was an unknown conveyance in Rhodopé, and Blanche hired a light cart. She had the wheels taken off, and two wooden runners, shod with steel, fitted on to its springs. The superintendence of this carpentering served to fill in the hours of that awful day of waiting; but when night fell there was still no signal of a ship. The wind had again risen to hurricane force, maddening still more the maddened sea, and a threat of a further fall of snow was abroad. The stars in their courses seemed to fight against Sophia.

The meeting of the Assembly was fixed for half-past three the next afternoon. Allowing for a long speech from Prince Petros, and the possibility of opposition contrary to the Constitution of Rhodopé, by six o’clock to-morrow afternoon at latest Sophia must be at Amandos. How she would choose to act Blanche could not guess, but that she was content to leave to the Princess. Her part was to get Sophia there. Outside the note of the gale would rise and fall again octave over octave, like the hootings of some infernal siren, but as yet there was neither more snow nor thaw. But the crash of the breakers grew ever hungrier and more splitting, and still the Revenge came not.

She could not bring herself to go to bed, but sat listening in a horrible dread for she scarcely knew what. But when across the mingled bellowings of the storm she heard a gun fired out at sea, she sprang up with a palpitating heart and a gasp for breath, knowing that it was this which she had feared. Running to the window, she saw a rocket shoot up in a line of flame, like a match struck in the dark, and a minute afterwards the report of it followed. She rang the bell hastily and told Yanni to come with her along the pier out to the lighthouse at the end.

It was now only a little before midnight, and the moon plunged and sped through a rack of flying clouds, like a woman distraught, now naked, now clad in blowing vapours. The wind came straight off the sea, piercingly cold, and full of spray and blown sand, while over the frozen carpet of snow in the street wisps of brown seaweed and pebbles from the beach scudded and bowled along like little people in a panic. On the pier itself the force of the wind was more tremendous, and they had to make a slanting tack as they walked, zigzagging to and fro, and leaning against the gale as against a wall. Once and again the signal of distress came from the sea, and round the house where the lifeboat was kept they could see a throng of men growing and increasing, and the light of lanterns tossed up and down in the stinging air. Then from the sea shot up another rocket, and a cold blue light burned steadily for some seconds or so, and in that glare Blanche made out the three masts of a sailing-ship, and a flood of relief welled in her heart.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried, ‘it is not she!’ And next moment ‘Oh, poor folk! poor folk!’ she said; and Yanni crossed himself and muttered a prayer for their safety.

There was a coastguard station at the end of the pier, and she asked for the officer in command, giving her name, and saying that a steamer called the Revenge was expected, which had on board some friends of Lord Abbotsworthy. It had started from Corfu early that morning. Then, remembering that no communication with Amandos was possible, and that though the men would, in case of the necessity for rescue, do their best, though there were only a crew of the hated Turks on board—yet the knowledge that Sophia was there could not but be an incentive to heroisms—she told all.