He lay very still for a while, his eyes closed, hearing the murmuring voices of the prince and Gamba as they stood with the physicians, feeling on the mattress a shaking hand that he knew was Fletcher’s.
A harrowing fear was upon him. The mutiny that had been imminent this hour he had vanquished; he might not succeed again. With resources all might be possible, but his own funds were stretched to the last para. And the English loan still hung fire. If he but had the proceeds of a single property—of Rochdale, which he had turned over to the committee in London—he could await the aid which must eventually come. Lacking both, he faced inaction, failure; and now to cap all, illness threatened him. He almost groaned aloud. Greece must not fail!
There was but one way—to fight and fight soon. Instead of waiting till famine made ally with the enemy, to attack first. To throw his forces, though undisciplined, upon the Turks. Victory would inspirit the friends of the revolution. It would knit closer every segment. It would hasten the loan in England. Might the assault be repelled? No worse, even so, than a defeat without a blow—the shame of a cowardly disintegration!
“Prince—” Gordon summoned all his strength and sat up. “May I ask you to notify my staff-officers to meet me here in an hour? We shall discuss a plan of immediate attack upon Lepanto.”
CHAPTER LIX
IN WHICH TERESA MAKES A JOURNEY
“Help me to remember that it is for Greece—and for himself most of all!” That was Teresa’s cry through those dreary weeks alone. The chill instinct that had seized her as Gordon held her in that last clasp had never left her. She struggled always with a grim sense of the inevitable. At times she fought the desire to follow, even to Greece, to fold him in her arms, to entreat: “Give up the cause! Come back to me—to love!” Her sending of Pietro had given her comfort. She subsisted upon his frequent letters, upon the rarer, dearer ones of Gordon, and upon the remembrance of the great issue to which she had resigned him.
One day a message came from a great Venetian banking-house. It told of a sum of money held for her whose size startled her. She, who had possessed but a slender marriage-portion, was more than rich in her own right. An accompanying letter from Dallas told her the gift was Gordon’s. A wild rush of tears blurred the page as she read.
That night she dreamed a strange dream; yet it was not a dream wholly, for she lay with open eyes staring at the crucifix that hung starkly, a murky outline, against the wall. Suddenly she started up in the bed. Where the ivory image had glimmered against the ebony was another face, colorless, sharp-etched, a wavering light playing upon it. It was Gordon’s, deep-lined, haggard, as though in mute extremity. His eyes looked at her steadily, appealingly.
She held out her arms with a moan. Then the light faded, the phantom merged again into the shadow, and in the darkness she hid her eyes and swayed and wept. She slept no more. A blind terror held her till dawn.
At noon Tita brought her a Pisan paper, with a column of Greek news. It stated that the English loan, on which depended the hopes of the revolutionists, was still unsubscribed in London. The measure would doubtless be too late to stay the descent of Yussuff Pasha’s armies. Dissensions were rife at Missolonghi. At Constantinople the sultan, in full divan, had proclaimed George Gordon an enemy to the Porte and offered a pashawlik and the three-horse-tailed lance for his head.