Presently tea was brought out, and with it came Barbara, a quiet laugh about her lips, and Liosha, stately and smiling. My wife to put her at her ease (though she had displayed singularly little shyness), after dealing with maid and taxi, had taken her over the house, exhibited Susan at tea in the nursery, and as much of Doria"s trousseau as was visible in the sewing-room. The approaching marriage aroused her keen interest. She said very little during the meal, but smiled embarra.s.singly on the engaged pair. Jaffery stood glumly devouring cuc.u.mber sandwiches, till Barbara took him aside.
"She"s rather a dear, in spite of everything, and I think you"re treating her abominably."
Jaffery grew scarlet beneath the brick-coloured glaze.
"I wouldn"t treat any woman abominably, if I could help it."
"Well, you can help it--" and taking pity on him, she laughed in his face. "Can"t you take her as a joke?"
He glanced quietly at the lady. "Rather a heavy one," he said.
"Anyhow come and talk to us and be civil to her. Imagine she"s the Vicar"s wife come to call."
Jaffery"s elementary sense of humour was tickled and he broke out into a loud guffaw that sent the house cat, a delicate mendicant for food, scuttling across the lawn. The sight of the terror-stricken animal aroused the rest of the party to harmless mirth.
"Tell me, Mrs. Prescott," said Adrian, "was he allowed to do that in Albania?"
"I guess there aren"t many things Jaff Chayne can"t do in Albania,"
replied Liosha. "He has the _bessas_ that carry him through and he"s as brave as a lion."
"I suppose you like brave men?" said Doria.
"A woman who married a coward would be a d.a.m.n fool--especially in Albania. I guess there aren"t many in my mountains."
"I wish you would tell us about your mountains," said Barbara pleasantly.
"And at the same time," said I, "Jaff might let us hear his story. That is to say if you have no objection, Mrs. Prescott."
"With us," said Liosha, "the guest is expected to talk about himself; for if he"s a guest he"s one of the family."
"Shall I go ahead then?" asked Jaffery, "and you chip in whenever you feel like it?"
"That would be best," replied Liosha.
And having lit a cigarette and settled herself in her deck-chair, she motioned to Jaffery to proceed. And there in the shade of the old wistaria arbour, surrounded by such dainty products of civilisation as Adrian (in speckless white flannels and violet socks) and the tea-table (in silver and egg-sh.e.l.l china) this pair of barbarians told their tale.
CHAPTER V
It is some years now since that golden August afternoon, and my memory of the details of the story of Liosha as told by Jaffery and ill.u.s.trated picturesquely by the lady herself is none of the most precise.
Incidentally I gathered, then and later in the smoking-room from Jaffery alone, a prodigious amount of information about Albania which, if I had imprisoned it in writing that same evening as the perfect diarist is supposed to do, would have been vastly useful to me at the present moment. But I am as a diarist hopelessly imperfect. I stare, now, as I write, at the bald, uninspiring page. This is my entry for Aug. 4th, 19--.
"Weighed Susan. 4 st. 3.
"Met Jaffery at station.
"Albanian widow turned up unexpectedly after lunch. Fine woman. Going to be a handful. Staying week-end. Story of meeting and Prescott marriage.
"Promised Susan a donkey ride. Where the deuce does one get donkeys warranted quiet and guaranteed to carry a lady? _Mem:_ Ask Torn Fletcher.
"_Mem:_ Write to Launebeck about cigars."
Why I didn"t write straight off to Launebeck about the cigars, instead of "mem-ing" it, may seem a mystery. It isn"t. It is a comfortable habit of mine. Once having "mem-ed" an unpleasant thing in my diary, the matter is over. I dismiss it from my mind. But to return to Liosha--I find in my entry of sixty-two words thirty-five devoted to Susan, her donkey and the cigars, and only twenty-seven to the really astonishing events of the day. Of course I am angry. Of course I consult Barbara. Of course she pats the little bald patch on the top of my head and laughs in a superior way and invents, with a paralysing air of verity, an impossible amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and, notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is provokingly un-getatable by serious persons like myself[A].
[Footnote A: Hilary is writing at the end of the late Balkan war.--W.J.L.]
So for what I learned that day I must trust to the elusive witch, Memory. I have never been to Albania. I have never wanted to go to Albania. Even now, I haven"t the remotest desire to go to Albania. I should loathe it. Wherever I go nowadays, I claim as my right bedroom and bath and viands succulent to the palate and tender to the teeth. My demands are modest. But could I get them in Albania? No. Could one travel from Scutari to Monastir in the same comfort as one travels from London to Paris or from New York to Chicago? No. Does any sensible man of domestic instincts and scholarly tastes like to find himself halfway up an inaccessible mountain, surrounded by a band of moustachioed desperadoes in fustanella petticoats engirdled with an armoury of pistols, daggers and yataghans, who if they are unkind make a surgical demonstration with these lethal implements, and if they are smitten with a mania of amiability, hand you over, for superintendence of your repose, to an army of satellites of whom you are only too glad to call the flea brother? I trow not. Personally, I dislike mountains. They were made for goats and cascades and lunatics and other irresponsible phenomena of nature. They have their uses, I admit, as windscreens and water-sheds; and beheld from the valley they can a.s.sume very pretty colours, owing to varying atmospheric conditions; and the more jagged and unenticing they are, the greater is their specious air of stupendousness... . At any rate they are hindrances to convenient travel and so I go among them as little as possible.
To judge from the fervid descriptions given us by Jaffery and Liosha, Albania must be a pestilentially uncomfortable place to live in. It is divided into three religious sects, then re-divided into heaven knows how many tribes. What it will be when it gets autonomy and a government and a parliament and picture-palaces no one yet knows. But at the time when my two friends met it was in about as chaotic a condition as a jungle. Some tribes acknowledged the rule of the Turk. Others did not.
Every mountainside had a pretty little anarchical system of its own.
Every family had a pretty little blood feud with some other family.
Accordingly every man was handy with knife and gun and it was every maiden"s dream to be sold as a wife to the most bloodthirsty scoundrel in the neighbourhood. At least that was the impression given me by Liosha.
When the tragedy occurred she herself was about to be sold to a prosperous young cutthroat of whom she had seen but little, as he lived, I gathered, a couple of mountains off. They had been betrothed years before. The price her father demanded was high. Not only did he hold a notable position on his mountain, but he had travelled to the fabulous land of America and could read and write and could speak English and could handle a knife with peculiar dexterity. Again, Liosha was no ordinary Albanian maiden. She too had seen the world and could read and write and speak English. She had a will of her own and had imbibed during her Chicago childhood curiously un-Albanian notions of feminine independence. Being beautiful as well, she ranked as a sort of prize bride worth (in her father"s eyes) her weight in gold.
It was to try to reduce this excessive valuation that the young cutthroat visited his father"s house. During the night two families, one of whom had a feud with the host and another with the guest, each attended by an army of merry brigands, fell upon the sleeping homestead, murdered everybody except Liosha, who managed to escape, plundered everything plunderable, money, valuables, household goods and live stock, and then set fire to the house and everything within sight that could burn. After which they marched away singing patriotic hymns. When they had gone Liosha crept out of the cave wherein she had hidden, and surveyed the scene of desolation.
"I tell you, I felt just mad," said Liosha at this stage of the story.
I remember Barbara and Doria staring at her open-mouthed. Instead of fainting or going into hysterics or losing her wits at the sight of the annihilation of her entire kith and kin--including her bridegroom to be--and of her whole worldly possessions, Liosha "felt just mad," which as all the world knows is the American vernacular for feeling very angry.
"It was enough to turn any woman into a raving lunatic," gasped Barbara.
"Guess it didn"t turn me," replied Liosha contemptuously.
"But what did you do?" asked Dora.
"I sat down on a stone and thought how I could get even with that crowd." She bit her lip and her soft brown eyes hardened.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Where the lonely figure in black and white sat brooding.]
"And that"s where we came in, don"t you see?" interposed Jaffery hastily.
You can imagine the scene. The two Englishmen, one gigantic, red and hairy, the other wiry and hawk-like, jogging up the mountain path on ragged ponies and suddenly emerging onto that plateau of despair where the lonely figure in black and white sat brooding.
Under such unusual conditions, it was not difficult to form acquaintance. She told her story to the two horror-stricken men. British instinct cried out for justice. They would take her straight to the Vali or whatever authority ruled in the wild land, so that punishment should be inflicted on the murderers. But she laughed at them. It would take an army to dislodge her enemies from their mountain fastnesses. And who could send an army but the Sultan, a most unlikely person to trouble his head over the ma.s.sacre of a few Christians? As for a local government, the _mallisori_, the mountain tribes, did not acknowledge any. The Englishmen swore softly. Liosha nodded her head and agreed with them.
What was to be done? The Englishmen, alter giving her food and drink which she seemed to need, offered their escort to a place where she could find relations or friends. Again she laughed scornfully.
"All my relations lie there"--she pointed to the smoking ruins. "And I have no friends. And as for your escorting me--why I guess it would be much more use my escorting you."
"And where would you escort us?"
"G.o.d knows," she said.