“He must have been struck by one of the pieces of stone when that bullet hit the rock, and it killed him at once. He was dead when Eirene carried him all the way to Ephestilo. She guessed, but she wouldn’t let herself believe it.”
“What awful trouble for you both! I say, I am sorry,” said Wylie, with awkward reiteration. “Poor thing! it must nearly have killed her.”
“I think she would have died if it had not been for—what happened afterwards,” said Zoe. “She sat in the corner of the Admiral’s cabin with Con in her arms, and wouldn’t give him up, saying that she knew he wasn’t dead, and he would be all right if they would only leave him to her. She wouldn’t listen to any one, and it was a whole day and night before she would even let me take him. But that was because a messenger had come off to say that Maurice was dangerously wounded—they feared mortally—and she must come at once. At first she wouldn’t go. She said she had killed Maurice’s son, and that she didn’t dare to meet him, and that her ambition had brought disaster on them both, and if she went to Maurice, he would die too. She talked of going into a convent and praying for Maurice, and never seeing him again—and all the time the boat was waiting to take her on shore. It was the Admiral who got her to see reason at last. Oh, he is a good man, and so wise! He asked her how she dared add to the sorrow she had brought on Maurice by refusing to go to him when he wanted her, and said she would show her repentance much better by nursing him than by keeping away and praying for him. Then he turned to me—so suddenly that I almost jumped—and snapped out, ‘Do you get on your things and go ashore at once. If Teffany’s wife forsakes him, at least he has a sister.’ It was most frightfully clever,—horribly incongruous, you know,—but he had read Eirene like a book. She cried out, ‘His wife has not forsaken him! How dare you say so?’ and she let me take poor Con out of her arms, and she went.”
“And you had to stay?” asked Wylie pityingly.
Zoe nodded. “I promised her that I would see to everything if she would go. I knew Maurice wanted her more than me, of course.”
“And was the little chap buried at sea?”
“No, Eirene wanted the Orthodox service. It was at Skandalo, and there were horrible difficulties about it. Perhaps the Roumis made themselves unpleasant, I don’t know—or perhaps the people only thought the Roumis wouldn’t like one of us to be buried there. We were stopped by a mob before we reached the cemetery, and the Admiral’s flag-lieutenant had to go and parley with the priests. The sailors were very angry, and wanted to burn the church down, but at last they let us through peaceably. It was in the corner farthest from the church, and I believe they had to buy the piece of ground outright. I know they have hoisted the Union Jack on it, and they keep a sentry there, so it is not Emathian ground after all.”
“Poor little Con! that he should be the one to suffer—the first, at least!” murmured Wylie. “But your brother—what had happened to him?”
“He was parleying with the Roumis—Jalal-ud-din himself came out to meet him. Maurice had both the Maxims mounted to sweep the path, and the men well posted, so we really had something to offer, for he could have killed hundreds of the Roumis before they could have reached the position. But while the parley was actually going on, the Roumis got round behind somewhere—no, I don’t think it can have been treachery, for what good could it have done any one on our side to destroy all chance of surrender?—and they fired suddenly into our men. Maurice turned round when he heard the noise, and that abominable old wretch Jalal-ud-din struck at him with his sword. He tried to stagger back to his men, but the Roumis rushed forward and began a regular butchery. In the middle of it the contingents which Admiral Essiter had sent arrived, and it was only by threatening to fire on the Roumis that they got them to stop. They had to stay up there, for all sorts of outrages were happening, and they are still holding the ridge from the monastery to Karakula. When they were moving the bodies, they found Maurice under a heap of dead, all trampled—and slashed—and—and horribly wounded. He was just alive, but they didn’t think he could live even till Eirene came. But he is alive still—just alive—and she is nursing him at Skandalo. Of course they can’t tell him about Con, and sometimes he asks for him. Eirene never leaves him. She won’t even let me take charge of him while she rests—but I don’t believe she ever does rest. Sometimes I think she is trying to atone, and sometimes that she wants to die, so as not to have to tell him. But she won’t let me stay with him.”
“And so you have time to waste on me?” Zoe started and looked at him suspiciously, but there was not in his voice the hardness she had learnt to dread. “Tell me, am I a very lamentable object? I can’t help seeing the tears in your eyes when you look at me—and I don’t like to think I am making you cry.”