Gavin slept without dreaming, the first night he had done so since he left England. He could remember afterwards that his friend"s voice awoke him from his heavy slumber; and that, when he sat up and stared about him, Arthur Kenyon was the first person his eyes rested upon.
Instantaneously, as one sees a picture in a vision, the scene of the camp presented itself to his view--the great trunks of the oaks and beeches, the hollow, wherein the horses were tethered, the tangle of gra.s.s and undergrowth. Just as he had seen it when he fell asleep, so the reddening embers of the camp-fire showed it to him now--unchanged, and yet how different! He was, for this brief instant, as a sleeper who wakes in a familiar room and wonders why he has been awakened.
Then, just as rapidly, the scales fell from his eyes and he knew.
Arthur Kenyon stood with his back against the trunk of a beech, his revolver drawn and about him such a motley crowd that only a comic opera could have reproduced it. Gypsies chiefly, the fire-light flashed upon sallow faces which a man might see in an evil dream; upon arms that a mediaeval age should have forged; upon limbs that forest labor had trained to hardiness. Crying together in not unmusical exclamations, the raiders appeared in no way desirous of injuring their man, but only of disarming him. One of their number lay p.r.o.ne already, hugging a wounded thigh and muttering imprecations which should have brought the heavens upon his head--a second had the Englishman by the legs and would not be beaten off; while of the rest, the foremost aimed heavy blows at the extended pistol and demanded its delivery in sonorous German. Such was the scene which the picture presented to Gavin as he awoke. He was on his feet before the full meaning of it could be comprehended.
"Halt!" he cried, for lack of any other word to serve. His tone, his manner, drew all eyes toward him. "What do you want?" he continued, with the same air of authority. Twenty voices answered him, but he could make nothing of their reply. He was about to speak for the third time when rough hands pinioned his arms and feet from behind and instantly deprived him of the power to move a step from the place where he stood.
"To conduct your excellency to the Castle of Okna--we have come for that, excellency."
"You are aware that I am an Englishman?"
The gypsy pointed smilingly to his wounded friend.
"We are perfectly aware of it, excellency."
"Then you know the consequences of that which you are doing?"
"Pardon, excellency--there are no consequences in the mountains. Let your friend be wise and put up his pistol. We shall shoot him if he does not."
Gavin, doubting the nature of the situation no longer, shrugged his shoulders and invited Kenyon by a gesture to put up his pistol.
"We can do nothing, Arthur, let them have their way."
"I beg your pardon, Gavin; I could make holes in two or three of them."
"It would not help us. They are evidently only agents. Let"s hear what the princ.i.p.al has to say."
"Very well, if you think so. It"s poor fun, though--almost like shooting sheep in the Highlands. But, of course, I bow to wisdom."
He held out his hands to the gypsy who bound them immediately with a leather thong taken from the saddle-bow of the excellent pony he had ridden. Silently and methodically now, the men secured their prisoners and produced their gyves of heavy rope. To resist would have been just that madness which Gavin named it--and but for Evelyn the scene had been one to jest at.
"Do you treat all your guests at the Castle of Okna in this way?" he asked the leader of the men suddenly.
The reply was delivered with a suavity delightful to hear.
"When they come to us with soldiers and Turks, then we speak plainly to them, excellency."
"True, I had forgotten the soldiers. Where are those n.o.ble men now?"
"Half-way back to Slavitesti, excellency."
"And the muleteer?"
"Oh, my friends are warming his feet for him. We are not fond of Greeks, here in the mountains, excellency."
Gavin started as the man spoke, for a wild shriek broke upon his ears and becoming louder until it sounded like some supreme cry of human agony, ended at last in a fearful sobbing, as it were the weeping of a child in pain. When he dared to look, he saw the gypsies had dragged the wretched Greek to the camp-fire and pouring oil from a can upon his bare feet, they thrust them into the flames and held them there with that utter indifference to human suffering which, above all others, is the characteristic of the people of the Balkans. Worming in their embrace, his eyes starting from his head, his voice paralyzed by the fearful cries he raised, the wretched man suddenly fainted and lay inanimate in the flame. Then, and not until then, they drew him back and left him quivering upon the green gra.s.s.
"He was warned," the gypsy leader muttered sullenly; "he should have known better."
But Arthur, showing Gavin his bleeding wrists, said with a shrug.
"I think very little of wisdom, Gavin."
The rope had cut the flesh almost to the bone in his efforts to go to the help of the wretched Greek.
CHAPTER XXV
THE HOUSE ABOVE THE TORRENT
Some one upon the outskirts of the wood whistled softly and the gypsies stood with ears intent listening, alarmed, to the signal. When it had been twice repeated, they appeared to become more confident, and, untethering their ponies, or calling, with low, whining voices, those that grazed, they turned to their prisoners and bade them prepare to march.
"To the Castle of Okna, excellency----"
A shout of laughter greeted the saying, and Gavin, had he been credulous until this time, would have remained credulous no more. A philosopher always, he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the ropes which bound him.
"I am no acrobat," he said; "I cannot ride with a rope about my legs."
"We are about to remove it, excellency. Be careful what you do--my men are hasty. If you are wise, you will be followed by so many laughing angels. If, however, we should find you obstinate, then, excellency----"
He touched the handle of a great knife at his girdle significantly, and some of the others, as though understanding him, closed about the pony significantly while Gavin mounted. A similar attention being paid to Arthur Kenyon was not received so kindly; for no sooner did they attempt to lift him roughly to the saddle than he turned about and dealt the first of them a rousing blow which stretched the fellow full length upon the gra.s.s and left him insensible there. The act was within an ace of costing him his life. Knives sprung from sheathes, antique pistols were flourished--there were cries and counter-cries; and then, as though miraculously, a louder voice from some one hidden in the wood commanding them to silence. In that moment, the gypsy chief flung himself before Kenyon and protected him with hands uplifted and curses on his lips.
"Dogs and carrion--do you forget whom you obey?" he almost shrieked, and then to the Englishman, "You are mad, _mein herr_--be wise or I will kill you."
Kenyon, strangely nonchalant through it all, shrugged his shoulders and clambered upon the back of the pony. Gavin turned deadly pale in spite of himself, breathed a full breath again, and desired nothing more of fate than that they should quit the cursed wood without further loss of time. As though enough evil had not come to him there, he espied, as they rode from the place, the dead body of his servant, the Turk, face downwards with the knife that killed him still protruding from his shoulders. And he doubted if the wretched Greek, so brutally maimed in the fire, still lived or must be numbered a second victim of the night.
Had he been a fool to leave England upon such an errand at all, or did the circ.u.mstances of his visit justify him? Of this he did not believe that he was the best judge. That which he had done had been done for the sake of one whose sweet voice seemed to speak of courage even at such an hour--Evelyn, the woman who first had taught him what man"s love could be; whose fair image went with him as he rode, the stately figure of his dreams, the gentle Evelyn for whom the supreme adoration and pity of his life were reserved. If ignominy were his ultimate reward, he cared nothing--no danger, no peril of the way, must be set against the happiness, nay, the very soul"s salvation, of her who had said to him, "I love you!"
This had been the whole spirit of his journey, and it did not desert him now when the gypsies set out upon the mountain road and he understood that he was a helpless hostage in their hands. As for Arthur Kenyon, he, with English stolidity, still chose to regard the whole scene as a jest and to comment upon it from such a standpoint.
To him the picturesque environment of height and valley, forests of pine and sleeping pastures, were less than nothing at all. He did not care a blade of gra.s.s for the first roseate glow of dawn in the Eastern sky; for the shimmer of gold upon the majestic landscape, or the jewels sprayed by the stream below them. He had met an adventure and he gloried in it. Begging a cigarette from the nearest gypsy, he thanked the fellow for a light, and so fell to the thirty words of German bequeathed to him by that splendid foundation of one William at Winchester. There were "havenzie"s" and "Ich Wimsche"s" enough to have served a threepenny manual of traveller"s talk here. Neither understood the other and each was happy.
"The man"s a born idiot," Arthur said to Gavin at last. "I ask him where the road leads to and he says "half-an-hour.""
"Meaning we are half-an-hour from our destination."
"Then why the deuce can"t he say so in plain English?"
"He might ask you why the deuce you can"t ask him in plain Hungarian."
"That"s so--but how these fellows don"t break their jaws over this gabble, I can"t make out. Well, I suppose we shall get breakfast somewhere, Gavin."
"Are you hungry, Arthur?"
"Not much; I"m thinking of that poor devil of a Greek."
"Yes, they are brutes enough. What could we do?"