Phroso Part 57

'Well, yes. In fact, an aunt of our common friend.'

'Ah, an aunt of our common friend,' and I smiled. Mrs Hipgrave struggled n.o.bly, but in the end she smiled also. After a little pause I remarked:

'I'm going to be married myself, Mrs Hipgrave.'

Mrs Hipgrave grew rather grave again, and she observed:

'I did hear something about a--a lady, Lord Wheatley.'

'If you had heard it all, you'd have heard a great deal about her.'

A certain appearance of embarra.s.sment spread over Mrs Hipgrave's face.

'We're old friends, Lord Wheatley,' she said at last. I bowed in grateful recognition. 'I'm sure you won't mind if I speak plainly to you. Now is she the sort of person whom you would be really wise to marry? Remember, your wife will be Lady Wheatley.'

'I had not forgotten that that would happen,' I said.

'I'm told,' pursued Mrs Hipgrave in a somewhat scornful tone, 'that she is very pretty.'

'But, then, that's not really of importance, is it?' I murmured.

Mrs Hipgrave looked at me with just a touch of suspicion; but she went on bravely:

'And one or two very curious things have been said.'

'Not to me,' I observed with infinite amiability.

'Her family now--'

'Her family was certainly a drawback; but there are no more of them, Mrs Hipgrave.'

'Then somebody told me that she was in the habit of wearing--'

'Dear me, Mrs Hipgrave, in these days everybody does that--more or less, you know.'

Mrs Hipgrave sighed pathetically, and added, with a slight shudder:

'They say she carried a dagger.'

'They'll say anything,' I reminded her.

'At any rate,' said Mrs Hipgrave, 'she will be quite unused to the ways of society.'

'Oh, we shall teach her, we shall teach her,' said I cheerfully.

'After all, it's only a difference of method. When people in Neopalia are annoyed, they put a knife into you--'

'Good gracious, Lord Wheatley!'

'Here,' I pursued, 'they congratulate you; but it's the same principle. Won't you wish me joy, Mrs Hipgrave?'

'If you're really bent upon it, I suppose I must.'

'And you'll tell the dear children?' I asked anxiously.

'The dear children?' she echoed; she certainly suspected me by now.

'Why, yes. Your daughter and Bennett Hamlyn, you know.'

Mrs Hipgrave surveyed me from top to toe. Her aspect was very severe; then she delivered herself of the following remark:

'I can never be sufficiently thankful,' she said, with eyes upturned towards the sky, 'that my poor dear girl found out her mistake in time.'

'I have the utmost regard for Miss Beatrice,' I rejoined, 'but I will not differ from you, Mrs Hipgrave.'

I must s.h.i.+ft the scene again back to the island that I loved. For his Majesty's clemency justified the Amba.s.sador's belief in it, and Neopalia was restored to Phroso and to me. Thither we went in the spring of the next year, leaving Denny inconsolable behind, but accompanied by old Hogvardt and by Watkins. This time we went straight out by sea from England, and the new crew of my yacht was more trustworthy than when Spiro and Demetri (ah, I had nearly written 'poor Demetri,' when the fellow was a murderer!) were sent by the cunning of Constantine Stefanopoulos to compose it. We landed this time to meet no threatening looks. The death-chant that One-eyed Alexander wrote was not raised when we entered the old grey house on the hill, looking over the blue waters. Ulysses is fabled by the poet to have--well, to put it plainly--to have grown bored with peaceful Ithaca. I do not know whether I shall prove an Ulysses in that and live to regret the new-born tranquillity of Neopalia. In candour, the early stormy days have a great attraction, and I love to look back to them in memory. So strong was this feeling upon me that it led me to refuse a request of my wife's--the only one of hers which I have yet met in that fas.h.i.+on; for when we had been two or three days in the island--I spent one, by the way, in visiting the graves of my dead friends and enemies, a most suggestive and soothing occupation--I saw, as I walked with her through the hall of our house, mason's tools and mortar lying near where the staircase led up, hard by the secret door; and Phroso said to me:

[Ill.u.s.tration: BACK TO NEOPALIA.]

'I'm sure you'd like to have that horrible secret pa.s.sage blocked up, Charley. It's full of terrible memories.'

'My dear Phroso, wall up the pa.s.sage?'

'We shan't want it now,' said she, with a laugh--and something else.

'It's true,' I admitted, 'that I intend, as far as possible, to rule by const.i.tutional means in Neopalia. Still one never knows. My dearest, have you no romance?'

'No,' said Phroso shamelessly. 'I've had enough romance. I want to live quietly; and I don't want to push anyone over into that awful pool where poor Kortes fell.'

I stood looking at the boards under the staircase. Presently I knelt down and touched the spring. The boards rolled away, the pa.s.sage gaped before us, and I put my arm round Phroso as I said:

'Now heaven forbid that I should lay a modern sacrilegious hand on the secret of the Stefanopouloi! For the world makes many circles, Phroso--forward sometimes, sometimes back--and it is something to know that here, in Neopalia, we are ready, and that if any man attacks our sovereignty, why, let him look out for the secret of the Stefanopouloi! In certain moods, Phroso, I should be capable of coming back from the chasm--alone!'

So Phroso, on my entreaty, spared the pa.s.sage; and even now, when the shades of middle age (a plague on 'em) are deepening, and the wild doings of the purchaser of Neopalia grow golden in distant memory, I like to walk to the end of the chasm and recall all that it has seen: the contests, the dark tricks, the sudden deaths, aye, to travel back from the fearful struggle of Kortes and Constantine on the flying bridge to that long-ago time when the Baron d'Ezonville was so lucky as to be set adrift in his s.h.i.+rt, while Stefan Stefanopoulos's headless trunk was dashed into the dim water and One-eyed Alexander the Bard wrote the Chant of Death. Ah me, that was two hundred years ago!