CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF A BRIGAND
The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blewfreshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They wouldhave to make two long tacks to get home--the first, right across to theisland in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head ofit; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos wentto the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas.
"It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said.
"Yes, we will have the stories now."
Nicholas paused a moment.
"Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life ofwhich I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have onlytold you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you astory for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty yearsago, when I was a brigand."
Mitsos stared.
"A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?"
"Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with aprice set on his head--it is there now for you to take if you like--aman without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than livein the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying onemight be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk.The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told youbefore; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand,that will be new to you--a story, as I have said, not for a boy, butfor a man.
"I used to live then at Dimitzana, in Arcadia, and I became a brigandon the night that my wife died. Why and how that happened comes later.Well, there I was living in the mountains round Arcadia, sheltering andhiding for the most part of the day in the woods, but keeping near somemountain path, so that if a Turk or two or three came by I could--howshall I say it?--do business with them. For a month or two I wasa-hunting alone, and then I was joined by other men from Dimitzana, whoalso had become outlaws. With them I went hunting on rather a largerscale--we used to take Turks and get ransoms for them. But never did wetake or molest a Greek or lay hands on any woman, Greek or Turk. Forthe most part we were very fortunate, and all the time we lost but fewmen, and of those the heads of none fell into the hands of the Turks,for if one was wounded beyond healing we all went and kissed him andsaid good-bye; and then one cut his head off and buried it, so that theTurks should not dishonor him."
Nicholas paused a moment, and then laughed gently to himself.
"Never in my life shall I forget when we took Mohammed Bey--a fat-bellyman, Mitsos, and a devil, with a paunch for two men and a woman's skin.To see him tied on his mule, crying out to Allah and Mohammed to rescuehim and his dinner from the infidels, as if Mohammed had nothing betterto do than look after such swine! I told him that he would only spenda day or two with us in the mountains until his friends ransomed him,adding that we would do our best to make him comfortable. But he wepttears of pure oil and said that Mohammed would avenge him, which, asyet, the Prophet has omitted to do. But there is one drawback to thatsort of life, little Mitsos--one cannot keep clean. Sometimes, if oneis travelling or being pursued, one has to go a whole day, or more,without water to drink, much less to wash in. Once, I remember, we hadbeen all day without water, and could not find any when we stopped forthe night; but there was a heavy dew, and, though it was a cold night,we all sat without our shirts for an hour, laying them on the grounduntil they were wet with dew, and then wrung them out into our mouths.Ah, horrible! horrible!"
Nicholas spat over the side of the boat at the thought, and then wenton.
"For the most part we lived up in the mountains to the north ofArcadia, but somehow or other when summer came we all began to headsouthward again. We never spoke to each other of where we were going,for we all knew. And one evening, just before sunset, we were on thebrow of a big wooded hill above Dimitzana and looked at our homesagain. Homesickness and want of water--these were the two things whichmade me suffer, and I would drink the wringings of a shirt sooner thanbe sick for home.
"All next day we stopped there, sitting on that spur of wooded hilllooking at home as if our eyes would start from our heads. Now one ofus and then another would roll over, burying his face in his hands, andthe rest of us would pretend not to notice. I cannot say for certainwhat the others did when they buried their faces like that; for myselfI can only say that I sobbed--for some had wives there, and somechildren. And it hurts a man to sob unless he is a Turk, for Turks sobif the coffee is not to their taste.
"That evening I could not bear it any longer, and I said to the others,'I must go down and see my house again.' They tried to stop me, for itis a foolish thing for an outlaw to go home when there is a price onhis head; but I would not listen to them.
"And I went down to the village and walked up the street, past thefountain and past the church. I met many Greeks whom I knew, but Imade signs to them that they should not recognize me. Luckily for methe garrison of Turks had been changed, and though I passed severalsoldiers in the street, they stared at me, being a stranger, but didnot know who I was.
"Then I went up past the big plane-tree and saw my house. The windowswere all broken and the door was down, for that, too, had the Turksdone in their malicious anger at not finding me there. And on thedoor-step my father was sitting. He was very old, eighty or near it,and he was playing with a doll that had belonged to my daughter."
Nicholas paused a moment.
"Mitsos," he went on, "you do not know what it is to feel keen,passionate joy and sorrow mixed together like that, ludicrously. Itis not right that a man should have to bear such a thing, for whenI saw my father sitting there nursing the doll I could not havecontained myself, not if ten companies of angels had been withstandingme or twenty of devils; and I ran up to him and sat down by him, andkissed him, and said, 'Father, don't you know me?' But he did not sayanything. He only looked at me in a puzzled sort of way, and went onnursing his doll.
"It is odd that one remembers these little things, but the stupid faceof the doll, somehow, I remember better than I remember the face of myfather.
"I stopped in the village for an hour, perhaps more, and I swore anoath which I have never yet forgotten and which I will never forget.In the church we have a shrine to the blessed Jesus and another to Hismother, and one to St. George, and to each of them I lit tapers andprayed to them that they would help me to accomplish my oath. They havehelped me and they will help me, and you, Mitsos, can help me, too."
The boy looked up.
"What was your oath, Uncle Nicholas," he said, "and how can I help you?"
He laid his hand on Nicholas's knee, and Nicholas felt it trembling.The story was going home.
"I will tell you," he said; "but, first, I must tell you how it was Ibecame an outlaw. This was the way of it:
"You never knew my wife: she died before you were born. She wasthe most beautiful and the best-loved of women. That you will notunderstand. You do not know yet what a woman is to a man, and yourcousin Helen, to whom the doll belonged, would have been as beautifulas her mother. A fortnight before I became an outlaw there came a newofficer to command the garrison at Dimitzana. He was a pleasant-seemingman, and to me, being the mayor of the village, he paid much attention.He would sit with us all in the garden after dinner. Sometimes I askedhim to take his dinner with us; sometimes he asked me to dine with him.But Catharine always disliked him; often she was barely civil to him.He had been in the place nearly a fortnight when I had to go away fora night, or perhaps two, to Andritsaena for the election of the mayor,for I had some little property there, and therefore a vote in thematter. I left about midday, but I had not gone more than four hoursfrom the town when I met a man from Andritsaena, who told me that theelection would be an affair of form only, as one of the two candidateshad resigned. So I turned my horse round and went home.
"It was dark before I got to the village, and I noticed that there wasno light in my house. However, I supposed that Catharine was spendingthe evening with some friend, and I suspecte
d nothing. But it got laterand ever later and she did not come, so at last I went out and calledat all the houses where she was likely to be. She was not at any ofthem, and no one had seen her. Then unwillingly, and with a heart grownsomehow suddenly cold, I determined to go to the officer's quarters andask if he had seen her. There was a light burning in one of the upperwindows, but the door was locked.
"It was when I found that the door was locked that I drew my pistolfrom my belt and loaded it, and then I waited a moment. In that momentI heard the sound of a woman sobbing and crying from inside the house,and the next minute I had burst the door open. The room inside wasdark, but a staircase led up from it through the floor of the roomabove, and I made two jumps of it. Helen--she was only seven yearsold--ran across the room, perhaps knowing my step, crying 'Father,father!' and as my head appeared the officer fired. He missed me, andshot Helen dead.
"Before he could fire again I fired at him. He fell with a rattling,broken sound across the floor, and never spoke nor moved. Catharine wasthere, and she came slowly across the room to me.
"'Ah, you have come,' she said; 'you are too late.'
"I sat down on the bed, and my throat was as dry as a sirocco wind, andlaid the double-barrelled pistol, still smoking, by me. Neither of us,I am sure, gave one thought to the man who was lying there, perhapshardly to Helen, for dishonor is worse than death; and for me I couldsay no word, but sat there like a thing broken.
"'You are too late,' she repeated; 'and for me this is the only way.'
"And before I could stop her she had taken up the pistol and shotherself through the head.
"The shots had aroused the soldiers, and two or three burst in up thestairs. With the officer's pistol, for I had no time to reload mine, Ikilled the first, and he went bumping down the stairs, knocking one manover. Then I opened the window and dropped. It was not more than tenfeet from the ground, and I had only a few feet to fall."
He paused a moment and stood up, letting go of the rudder and raisinghis hands.
"God, to whom vengeance belongs," he cried, "and blessed Mother ofJesus, and holy Nicholas, my patron, help me to keep my vow."
He stood there for a moment in silence.
"And my vow--" he said to Mitsos.
"Your vow--your vow!" cried Mitsos. "The foul devils--your vow is toroot out the Turk, and to-morrow I, too, will light tapers to the holysaints and make the vow you made. Christ Jesus, the devils! And youmust show me how to keep it."
"Amen to that," said Nicholas. "Enough for to-night, we will speak ofit no more."
He sat down again and took the rudder, and for five minutes or so therewas silence, broken only by the steady hiss of the water round theboat, and then Mitsos, still in silence and trembling with a strangeexcitement, put about on the second tack. Nicholas did not speak, butsat with wide eyes staring into the darkness, seemingly unconscious ofthe boy.
This second tack brought them up close under the sea-wall of AbdulAchmet, and the white house gleamed brightly in the moonlight. Then, asMitsos was putting about again on the tack which would take them home,Nicholas looked up at it and spoke for the first time.
"That is a new house, is it not?" he said.
"Yes, it is the house of that pig Achmet," said Mitsos.
"Why is he a pig above all other Turks?"
"Because he took our vineyard away and said he would pay a fair pricefor it. Not a piastre has he paid. Look, there are a couple of women onthe terrace."
Two women of the house were leaning over the wall. Just as they wentabout Nicholas saw a man, probably one of the eunuchs, come up out ofthe shadow, and as he got up to them he struck the nearer one on theface. The woman cried out and said to him, "What is that for?"
Nicholas started and looked eagerly towards them. "Did you hear,Mitsos?" he said, "she spoke in Greek."
"One of those women?" said Mitsos. "And why not?"
"How do you suppose she knows Greek?"
"Yes, it is strange. We shall not get home in this tack."