"Yes," he went on, "you lure me to this place, which might be half a mile at the most from the infernal regions, and promise me a ripping holiday. I come like a sheep to the shearing and what is my reward?
Hours of self-contemplation--long musings upon an innocent past, and the thermometer at 112 Fahrenheit in the shade. Ye G.o.ds, what a thing to be a travelling Englishman!"
They sat in the restaurant of the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest, justly famous, as the English boy had said, for its historic prices and ancient meats, long matured. Gavin Ord, grown a little older since he left Derbyshire some fifteen days ago, had a map of Roumania before him and all his intentions appeared to be concentrated upon this. The restaurant, despite the season of the year, could show a fair array of pretty women in Vienna gowns and of little gold-laced officers who chaperoned them. The heat of the night had become intense and a great block of ice upon a marble pedestal melted visibly as though despairing of the effort to exist. Energy might have been deemed a forgotten art but for the frantic exertions of a typical gypsy band which fiddled as though its very salvation depended upon the marvels of its presto.
"My dear Arthur," said Gavin at length, folding up his map and lighting a cigarette with the air of one who is thinking of anything but a smoker"s pleasure, "I am a beast, certainly. Exit, then, I am a successful beast."
"Do you mean to say that you have found him?"
"Good Master Indiscretion--I have found the house which Cook built and I am going to visit it to-morrow."
"Yes, yes, of course, that ancient and interesting Roman building ...
well, I always wanted to see Roumania, and, of course, we shall do Buda-Pesth going back. By the way, do you notice that acrobat playing the "cello over there? Don"t turn round yet. He"s been watching you ever since we sat down just as though he loved you dearly."
Gavin smoked for a little while without shifting his position in any way. Presently he said:
"I don"t know why he should. Unless they watched me from London, which is not improbable, they are hardly likely to know of my arrival yet.
When you have drunk your coffee, we"ll go and take a turn on the Corso.
The "cellist certainly likes me. I see what you mean."
Half Bukharest seemed to have flocked to the Corso, or public park, by the time they arrived there. Even the innumerable gaming tables, which are the chief fame of the pretentious city, were deserted upon such a night as this; while the open-air cafes were so many illuminated ice-houses, thronged by perspiring civilians and equally perspiring soldiers, whose talk began and ended with an anathema upon the heat.
Gavin Ord had travelled but little; his one real friend, Arthur Kenyon, had already been half across the world and back; but for both the interests of this strange scene, with its babble of excited tongues, its Hungarians, Servians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and by no means least numerous, its sallow-faced Turks, were beyond any within their experience.
"No wonder the people at the Ministry tell you to be careful," said Kenyon amiably, as he pointed to a great Bashi-Bazouk whose very mustache might have been inflammable. "I would sooner meet a Chinese mandarin than that fellow anywhere. And there are plenty more of the kind, you see. All sorts, shapes and sizes, ready to cut your throat for a golden coin any day you may be wanting the job done."
"All sham, my dear Arthur. Knives made in Birmingham and pistols in Germany! Don"t worry your head about them. We start for Okna at seven o"clock to-morrow."
"Oh, you"ve found out where it is, then?"
"I wanted to tell you before dinner, but these fellows were listening.
Cecil Chesny was at the Ministry to-day and he could not have done more for me. Okna means a stiff ride into the mountains and some hunting when we get there. If the old man, Georges Odin, is alive, he is at Okna. Our task is to persuade him that London is a healthier place----"
"And the son, this man they call the Count, what of him?"
"I can learn little. He has evidently been living on his wits for a long time. He was here a fortnight ago throwing promises to his creditors right and left. The local papers announce his engagement to Lord Melbourne"s daughter--they spell it, "Sir Lord Milbawn," and declares that he is going up to buy the old Castle at Gravitza. I don"t believe he is in Bukharest to-day--if he is, well, I must look out for myself, and you must help to look out for me. The rest depends upon his father. I could go back to England to-night and tell the Earl that Georges Odin was released four years ago from the mines at Prahova, but that would not help me. The Count would go back and blackmail them again on the score of what his friends, the gypsies, meant to do. No, I shall bring the father if he is to be brought, and carry my purchase back to England. That"s my plan, Arthur. Time will prove whether it"s clever or foolish."
Arthur Kenyon listened as one listens to the tale of an Eastern romance. Gavin had told him the whole story before they left London; but here in Bukharest it seemed so much easier to comprehend, amid a people careless of life and little unacquainted with death. All the gauds of pa.s.sion, of love, and hatred were known to this mean city.
Here, at least, it did not appear difficult to understand how Count Odin, the adventurer, having heard the history of Robert Forrester"s youth and of his present wealth, had set out for England determined to profit by his knowledge.
"We have no color in our roguery in London," Arthur said presently.
"It"s all just one drab tint--the same color as the yellow press that delights in it. Here one begins to understand why the fittest survive.
You are a pretty plucky chap, Gavin, or you would not take it so easily----"
"Not for a woman"s sake, Arthur!"
"Oh, well, I suppose if one is sufficiently in love, one would hack at Cerberus for a woman"s sake. I am less fettered. Here in Bukharest I begin to wonder whether I shall die for the charming Lucy or the equally beautiful Lucinda. You have no doubts. My dear old fellow, I"m afraid you"re in deadly earnest."
"So much in earnest, Arthur, that if I cannot go back to make Evelyn my wife, I will never go back at all."
"Eros living in a dirty Roumanian hotel on ancient meats! No, by all the G.o.ds. But, tell me, does your friend Chesny think you are unwise to go to Okna?"
"He says I am mad. I told him as much as I had the right to tell.
Odin, the son, is a swindler; but his gypsy friends are honest. They believe that an Englishman shut up one of their heroes for twenty years; and if they can find the man who did it, they will kill him.
There"s the Count"s chance. I am going one better by offering to take his father to England to meet the man who wronged him and say that the vendetta is at an end. A mad scheme! Yes. Well, possibly, mad schemes are better than the others sometimes, and this may be the particular instance. I will tell you when we get to Okna, if ever we get there."
"Then you are plainly not an optimist."
"Hush--there"s your old friend the "cellist, going home it appears. A gypsy to the finger tips, Arthur. Let us talk of the weather!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PRICE OF WISDOM
An Eastern sun, monstrous and molten and blinking tears of fire, dwelt an instant in the West ere it sank beneath the rim of the mountains, beyond which lies the river Danube. Instantly, as though by a wizard"s enchantment, the heat spell pa.s.sed from the face of the withered land and the sweetness of the night came down. All the woods were alive now, as though the voice of Even had bidden them rejoice. Birds appeared, flitting from the swaying boughs of oak and elm and sycamore.
Springs bubbled over as though rejoicing that their enemy slept. Life that had been dormant but ten minutes ago answered to the reveille of twilight and added a note musical to the song. Men breathed a full breath of the soft breezes and said that it was good to live. The very landscape, revealing new beauties in the mellow light, might have been sensible of the hour and its meaning.
It was the evening of the second day after Gavin Ord and his friend Arthur Kenyon had dined together in the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest. A railway and twelve hours" abuse of its tardiness had carried them a stage upon this journey. Willing Hungarian ponies, mules, in whose eyes the negative virtues might be read, brought them to the foot of the mountains and left them there to camp with what luxury they might.
Attended by a sleek Turk they had discovered in the Capital, their escort boasted no less than four heroes of the line--for this had been Cecil Chesny"s unalterable determination, that they should not go to the mountains alone.
"It"s a fool"s errand and may be dangerous," said he; "these soldiers are thieves, but they will see that no one else robs you. I will ask the Ministry to pick out as good specimens as he can. Don"t complain when you see them. They are much less harmless than they look."
Gavin did not like the business at all, but as Chesny"s good-will was necessary to the expedition, he put up with it, and the four shabby soldiers accompanied him from Bukharest. They were ill-mannered fellows enough, raw-boned, high-cheeked, sallow-faced ruffians, whose "paradise enow" could be found wherever good comely, plump girls and bad tobacco might be found. Their energy at meal-times became truly prodigious. They were as ravenous wolves, seeking what they might devour; and, as Arthur Kenyon remarked, they would have eaten his boots if he had taken them off.
Now, this pretty company, Englishmen, Roumanians, a Greek and a Turk, encamped in the woods together upon the evening of the second day, and found what comfort they could beneath the sheltering leaves of a s.p.a.cious beech. It had been Gavin"s intention to put up at a guest-house named by the guide-book he had purchased in Vienna; but when they came to the place where the inn should have stood, they discovered nothing but charred ruins and cinerous relics; and, "by all the G.o.ds," said Arthur Kenyon, "the red c.o.c.k has crowed here before us." A romantic ear would have listened greedily at such a time to the guide"s tales of border pleasantries--girls carried shrieking to the mountains, roofs blazing, priests burned in their holy oils, babes hoist on bayonets--for such they would have made a simple affair in which a drunken herdsman and a paraffin lamp had figured notably; but Gavin was in no mood for narratives, and he sent them to the right about, one for wood, another for water, a third to hunt a cot or homestead, if such were to be discovered.
"The Hotel of the Belle etoile after all," he said gloomily; "well, it might have been worse, Arthur."
"Just so. If I had not stocked your larder at Slavitesti, you would now be doing what the amiable Foulon advised the French people to do a hundred years ago--eating hay with relish, my dear boy. Well, there"s red wine strong enough to poison White Bull, and maize bread tough enough for a guinea set of ready-made grinders, to say nothing of cheese, sausage, and biscuits. Fall on, Macduff, and d.a.m.ned be he who eats enough!"
"I don"t care twopence about the food," said Gavin savagely; "it"s the delay I fret over. We may be within riding distance of the place for all I know. They could have told us at this inn."
"The boy on the burning deck grown eloquent. We might have put out the fire for them or comforted some of the ladies. Are you really in such a hurry, Gavin?"
"Judge for yourself. From the Castle at Okna I can write to Evelyn and tell her the truth. Until it is told, she will be the daily victim of a rogue"s plausible suggestions. Why, the man may have returned to Derbyshire by this time--all that is possible and more."
"And there was a great square moon in the sky and thereon the people read the story of the Jaberwock. Tell me frankly, would Evelyn listen to the man now?"
"Evelyn would not, but Etta Romney might. Enigmas--I shall not explain them. Let us go to supper. The day will come after the centuries."
"Gavin, my dear fellow--this is the ancient fever. I bow to it. Pa.s.s the wine and I"ll drink to your enigma. We are people of importance and our escort is a royal one. It is also musical. That song suggests Seigfried or is it the "Belle of New York"? My musical education was completed at Magdalen College within Cambridge and is incomplete."
He frivolled on as young men will, not without purpose, for Gavin"s anxiety was potent to all about him. It had seemed an easy thing in England to visit the near East and learn for himself the simple truth of Georges Odin"s fate. Here on the slopes of the mountains he began to understand his difficulties, perhaps the danger, of his pursuit.
For this, he remembered, had been the scene of Robert Forrester"s youth, this the home of Zallony, the revolutionary brigand upon whose head three countries had set a price. Time had not changed the disposition of the mountain people, nor had civilization influenced its social creeds. Beware of Zallony"s gypsies, they had said to him at Bukharest. This night had brought him within a post of his goal. It would be hard enough if any mischance should send him back to England empty-handed; to say to Evelyn, "I have failed; I can tell you nothing."
Arthur Kenyon, for his part, had begun to enjoy the whole adventure amazingly. Especially he liked the four merry soldiers who ate and drank as though they had been fasting and athirst for a week, and lay down afterwards to fall instantly to sleep. In this the Greek muleteer and the Turkish robber of all trades imitated them without loss of time; so that by nine o"clock nothing but the red glow of two English pipes and the sonorous nasal thank-offerings of the sleepers would have betrayed the camp or its occupants. Such conversation as pa.s.sed between Gavin and Arthur was in fitful whispers, the talk of men thoroughly fatigued and wistful for the day. They, too, dropped to sleep over it at last, and when they awoke it was to such a scene as neither would ever forget, however long he might live.