Max Pemberton

THE BURNING OF RANOVICA

There were two beds in the room, and one was occupied already by Louis de Paleologue, who lay in a heavy stupor, but was not properly asleep. Faber had slept in such rooms before—in the old wild days when he had travelled in Western America to sell revolvers to a Christian people, who were set upon shooting other Christians. This room impressed chiefly by its omnipresent suggestions of profound filthiness. He feared to touch anything in it—the chairs, the walls, the very coverlet on the bed. His own rugs were his armament. He wrapped himself in them from head to foot, and fell asleep at last, still wondering in his dreams why, in God's name, he had come to Ranovica.

When he awoke, it was at a touch of the hand of his valet Frank. He felt heavy and drowsy, and knew that he had missed a good night's rest—indispensable to men whose brains are dominant. It was already light, and the curtains were drawn back from the window. He sat up to listen and became aware of a strange hubbub in the street without.

"Why, what are you saying, Frank; what's that you're telling me?"

The valet was ghastly pale; he walked upon tip-toe as though afraid of being heard; his voice was hardly more than the whisper of polite servitude.

"The soldiers are in, sir—it's all up with Ranovica."

"You don't say so! When did they come in?"

"Five minutes ago, sir. Don't you hear that—my God, don't you hear it, sir?"

There is no mistaking the cry of a man who is being butchered by knives, and Faber could not mistake it then. He sprang out of bed at a bound and ran to the window. The street below was full of Turks—the red fez, the baggy blue breeches were everywhere. Leaning out to get a better view, he saw a huge Albanian held down by four assassins who had the faces of the devils in the pictures. Another, like to them, had a broad butcher's knife in his hand, and was deliberately hacking the prone man's head from his shoulders. It was clumsily done and the wretch shrieked horribly at every cut upon the bare flesh. His blood already ran in the gutters, where it mingled with the blood of fifty others.

A sense of utter helplessness—of a sickness and horror he had not yet experienced, held Faber to the window for some minutes. He could look at nothing else but the outstretched figure and the clumsy knife. When head and body at length were torn apart, and the former held up on the end of a scimitar, a loud shout of fury escaped him, and he ran across the room for his revolver. The uproar had awakened Paleologue, who sat bolt upright watching his friend. When he perceived the revolver in his hand, he sprang out of bed and caught him in powerful arms.

"What are you doing, boss—what d——d nonsense is this?"

"I tell you they're hacking men to pieces in the street out yonder. Let me go—by God, I can't stand it."

"Say, don't be a fool. Do you think you can shoot a regiment? Keep that pistol out of sight, and hold your tongue. We'll have them up here if you butt in like that! Don't you understand it isn't our business? Why, you're more d——d nuisance than any woman—and you talk as much. Now, be quiet, and hear me out. You've got to sit this through and say nothing. I'll do the talking for myself and the girl. You look on and remember why you're here. Haven't you sense enough at your age?"

The irony of it stung Faber, and he put the pistol down. The frightened valet still looked out of the window and howled at intervals, as though he himself were already in the hands of the Turks. They could hear rifle shots, sometimes a volley, then a few straggling reports, which spoke of fugitives, who were making a dash for the mountains. In the street itself, it seemed that men scurried hither and thither as rats from their holes. Shouts of triumph were followed by sharp cries of pain, often by groans and the shrill screams of women. The air came pungent with the odour of gunpowder. In the room itself there was now silence save for the servant's bellowing. Paleologue dressed himself without any fuss whatever, and he did not utter a single word. When he was quite ready, he went out into the street immediately—Faber at his heels. No one had asked for Maryska.

Paleologue was wearing a ridiculous suit of yellow tweed at this time, and a green Homburg hat with a feather in it. He carried no other weapons than a cigarette case and a box of matches. The Turks round about eyed him with amazement not untempered by curiosity; but before any of them could make a movement he shouted out in their own tongue that he was an English newspaper correspondent, and their rifles were lowered. Doffing his cap to a man upon a little grey horse, who appeared to be their officer, the artist crossed the street and offered him a cigarette, speaking rapidly in the careless way he could command, whatever the language. Faber listened open mouthed. He thought that he was as near to death as ever he had been in his nine and thirty years, and he made no poor guess.

"What does he say, Frank?" the question was hurled up at the window where the valet's white face could be seen. He might as well have asked the fellow a question in Chinese.

"I don't know, sir. I think he is mad."

"I guess we were all mad to come here. My God! what a slaughter-house!"

No truer description of the scene could have been uttered by any man. The streets of Ravonica had become a shambles. Turks ran in and out of the distant houses like dogs at a warren. There were twenty headless bodies within ten yards of the captain in command. From the door of the inn or guest-house a broad eddy of blood was oozing away to the gutter; they could hear the troops within looting and ravaging at their pleasure, while the wretched organ still played some trumpery waltz in irony most wonderful. So dreadful it was that Faber, who believed that he knew the whole story of war, staggered back in a revolt of nausea and would have re-entered the priest's house but for Paleologue's imperative summons. The artist had never been more at home. He wore his hat jauntily and smoked with gusto while he talked to the captain.

"Say, boss, come and report yourself. This is Alussein Pasha. He has had word of you from headquarters; just shake and look as pleased as you can."

Faber shook hands with the man, while Louis offered him a cigarette and struck matches for them all. The concomitants of the ghastly scene were wholly out of place and singularly at variance with the truth. These three men might have met by accident in this outlandish village and have been discussing the best road back to civilization. The bloody struggle, still proceeding in the miserable hovels round about, moved Alussein Pasha no more than did the howling of dogs in an Eastern street. And Paleologue was just as indifferent until some of the ruffians fetched out "old Pop" by the hair of his head and held a scimitar at his throat. Then, to be fair to him, he woke up to the truth and began to argue excitedly with the Pasha—at which moment also Maryska appeared at a window above and spoke to her father in Italian. He answered with a wave of his hand, bidding her disappear; but not before a Turkish subaltern had seen her and thrown her a kiss in the Western fashion. This was too much for Louis, who knocked him down out of hand.

Undoubtedly it was a mad act, and went near to costing the lives of the party. Alussein Pasha uttered a roar like a stricken bull when his officer was floored; the Turks about him drew their knives and pressed upon Faber with fierce shouts. He had as good as given it up, and thought that this was the end of the business, when a young man at the Pasha's side said something to his chief in an earnest note and appeared to bring that savage worthy to his senses. He roared an order to the hawking pack, and they fell back from the prey they had marked down. An excited exchange of doubtful compliments between Louis and the grand Turk was followed by a compromise, Alussein stipulating for an immediate return to the shelter of the priest's house until the affair was over. So, in they went, the soldiers half pushing them with the butts of their rifles and barring the door behind them. "Old Pop" was the only prisoner now. They had forgotten him in the excitement of that very critical moment through which they had passed.

"Have a drink?" said Louis, throwing himself into a chair by the window and his hat into another; he seemed quite unconcerned, even unaware that there had been an instant of peril. John Faber, on the other hand, was talking to himself in decided terms. "John, my boy, you're a d——d fool to be here," he was saying—and that was very true. When he had drunk a tumbler of white wine and mineral water he found the sweat running off him like rain.

"Hot weather for the time of year. Where's your girl, Louis?"

"Oh! I guess she's all right—better where she is. Will you pass over that drawing pad? I can see a picture here."

Faber passed him the pad, and he settled deep in the arm-chair and began to make a rapid sketch of the crowded street. At the same moment Maryska entered the room and closed the door firmly behind her.

II

"Where is the priest?" she asked them in a strange tone. The men looked at her together, then at each other.

"Why, isn't he in the house?"

"They are killing him," she said. And then, "What are you doing here?"

Louis put down his pencil, and leaning out of the window, which was on a level with the street, he watched the scene a little while in silence.

"By God!" he cried at last; "they're singeing the old man's beard. Listen to that."

They listened and heard a harrowing sound, neither cry nor scream, but the wail as of a cat mewing. Twenty Turks had "Old Pop" in their midst; they had torn his clothes from his back and cut off his nose. Now some of them brought naphtha and poured it on his head, and instantly he became a vomit of flame. [1] Every feature of the wretched man could be seen with horrid distinctness, clarified by the fire. The flesh withered up before their eyes. He stood for a long minute plucking at his own flesh with hands of which but the bones were left. Then, all his cries ceased, and he fell forward in a ghastly heap, while the Turks howled derisively and thrust scimitars into the fire. They had burned many a priest these latter days, but this fellow was famous, and had fought many a good fight for Ranovica. His death stimulated a frenzy of lust and madness, and they rushed away to enter the houses and drive out the women. All the make-believe of a military occupation had been put aside by this time. Alussein had led them across the mountains to teach these Christians a lesson, and they were good masters.

[1] The incident here described is taken almost unchanged from the recent story of Macedonia.

Maryska heard the priest's cries, but she did not see the manner of his death. Had it not happened so swiftly and with such dramatic finality, the men would have made some stir to save him; but, as though guessing their intention, a group of soldiers with rifles across their arms pressed about the window, and made it very clear that they would shoot upon next to no provocation at all. Alussein Pasha had ridden on at this time to the lower road overlooking Scutari, and would return when the good work was done. He would declare that the villagers had brought it all on themselves, and his report would be a model of tearful orthodoxy. Meanwhile, there were very few of the male inhabitants to bring anything upon anybody; the women alone remained, and they were dragged from their houses, some by the hair of their heads, some forced by thrust of swords, a few going without protest, as though they dreamed. Of the latter were the younger girls, mere children of fourteen or fifteen years, who stood in a little group before the priest's house, and looked at the soldiers, uncertain—nay, ignorant—of their meaning. Maryska saw these anon; and Louis also. He had been chewing his cigarette very busily since the priest died, and there were few lines upon the paper. As for Faber, he merely stood motionless by the window. The scene held him spellbound with an influence he knew to be evil.

"What have they done with the priest? Why do you not answer me, Mr. Faber?"

She touched him upon the arm, and he looked down upon a child's face from which a woman's eyes stared up at him wonderingly. What answer could he make to her?

"You must just run away and think nothing about it, Maryska," he said quietly. "We can none of us do anything. I wish to God we could."

"Are you not going to speak for the children, then?"

"The children! Oh, they're all right; they won't hurt the children."

"That is not true," she said, for the instinct of the woman guided her surely. "Someone must speak for the children. Will not you, father?"

The appeal touched Paleologue, and he threw away the stump of his cigarette and leaned out of the window. They heard him talking rapidly with the Turks upon the side-walk, and presently shouting something to an officer before the guest-house opposite. Whatever he said moved the soldiers to derision and the children themselves to hope. They knew that he was their friend, and their round eyes watched his every gesture.

"What's the man saying?" Faber asked. Louis hardly seemed to know.

"I guess it's a bad business, boss, a d——d bad business."

"You don't mean to say——"

"I do every word of it."

"We must see this thing through, Paleologue. I'm going out."

"You can't go out. What's the good of doing stunts? They'll shoot, sure."

He tried to hold back the impetuous man, appealing and swearing in a breath. From below, the children watched the scene with a look of bewilderment and despair. The unknown strangers were quarrelling, then! What hope of mercy had they if this went on? This must have been in their minds when Maryska, climbing nimbly as a cat, slipped by her father and leaped down among the Turks. She was kissing and hugging some of the children and telling them in a tongue they understood that all would be well with them; doing this, and defying the snarling troopers before a man could have counted ten. Then the men at the window lost sight of her, the throng closing about her as water filling the vortex of a falling stone.

"Good God, man, aren't you going now?"

Paleologue licked his lips, a little astonished, perhaps, not to find a cigarette between them. He caught up a great planter's hat and clapped it on the side of his head; then, without a word, he clambered over the casement and pushed his way among the soldiers. Of course, Faber was upon his heels, treading so close on his tracks that they stumbled into the press together and were instantly swallowed up by it. Instructed to deal patiently with the strangers, none of the sentries fired upon them, but all swarmed about them and tried to pull them back. The village itself had by this time become a Golgotha, from whose wretched houses came the groans of butchered men and the screams of women in an agony of fear and shame. Their terrible cries were echoed up and down the streets from many a group which stooped about an infamy; while at the far end near the church, flames spurted from an isolated house, and the wood burned with a detonation heard closely upon the still air. The outposts of the legions of hell had begun their work; they would do it thoroughly enough before their chief returned to call them off.

"Where's my daughter? What have you done with her?" Paleologue's voice rose to a shrill pitch as he pushed and fought his way into the crowd and was thrust forward and still forward by the wiry American at his heels. Faber had never imagined such a scene as this, nor could he have believed it possible. The heat and clamour of the street, the sweat of the fighting men; here and there a girl caught in a man's arms and held firmly as a wild beast holds its prey; smoke of the burning house coming down upon the wind—the crazy organ still rolling out its dirge-like waltzes. All this and the fierce oaths of the maladroitly butchered—the horrid, gashed corpses in the gutters—the rearing, terrified horses of Alussein's lieutenants; and, above it all, the serene sky and the desolate mountains lifting their scarred summits in savage menace. What an inferno, what a hell of human creation! And into this the girl Maryska had plunged, headlong as a bold swimmer into a raging sea which has engulfed a child.

He found himself imitating Paleologue by and by, and calling her name aloud. The attempts of the sentries to get the pair of them back to the house were met by thrust upon thrust; a good square push from the shoulder here and a dive into an opening there. Gradually they won their way up the street, but could not find her; and upon that a sense of desperation drove them to some imprudence, and they began to deal in blows. Such madness might have brought a swift penalty but for the fire which the priest's death had kindled. The God of Ranovica, designing that these people should perish to bear witness to their faith, willed also that Ranovica should fall with them, and that the priest should be the instrument. From his body the flames had run to the crazy house; from the house to the church, and thence to the narrow street, which instantly became aglow. Faber found himself pressing forward amid showers of sparks, and still crying "Maryska—Maryska!" as though the child's voice could be heard amid the din. Turks pressed about him shielding their faces with sun-browned arms and cursing the "spawn of dogs" by which the visitation had come upon them. He was driven in and out of courtyards, tossed hither and thither by the human wave, whose crest was the whirling scimitars of the destroyers. In the end he found himself out upon the hillside, flaming Ravonica below him, and the still air alive with the cries of its people. Paleologue had disappeared; there was no trace of Maryska, and he himself had hardly a rag upon his back.

He sat down upon a great boulder, and presently heard a familiar voice. It was that of his valet, Frank.

"Mr. Faber, is that you, sir?"

"I guess it is, Frank."

"Thank God for that, sir! Our baggage is done for, sure and certain. The house is afire from top to bottom, sir."

"Never mind the baggage, Frank. Have you seen Mr. Paleologue?"

"He was down among the soldiers five minutes ago, sir."

"And the young lady?"

Frank could not answer.

"She went away with some of the young women—I think toward the church, sir."

"Was that long ago?"

"About five minutes before they fired it; I'm sure it wasn't more."

"Well, look at the church now, anyway. This is an awful business, Frank."

"I suppose in their way it's what they call war, sir. But it's a terrible business."

"Ah!" said Faber. "I suppose it would be. You don't happen to have a cigar on you, Frank?"

"I've got a few cigarettes, sir."

"Then pass one up. We'll go and look for Mr. Paleologue presently; I guess he's taken the lower road. We should find both of them there."

"I hope we shall do so, sir."

He passed the cigarettes and the matches, and his master lighted one and sat and smoked in silence. It may be that he asked himself what he, John Faber, was doing out there upon this bleak hillside when he might have been on board his yacht in the harbour of Antivari. Such reflections had occurred to him on several occasions when some absurd venture had brought him very near to that haven where millions are the poorest credentials; but they were unduly ironical to-day, and not a little persistent. Why had he come to Ranovica? Because that little wide-eyed woman, who made such a curious appeal to him, had insisted upon his coming. It was very true, and he would not fence with it. He might lose his life for Maryska even yet; and that would be a grotesque finale enough. Meanwhile, a certain doubt about her remained and troubled him with a graver thought. Why had he not discovered her in the village? No man could venture into that inferno now, for the whole place was just a flame upon the hillside; but he had been up and down the street with Paleologue, and they had seen nothing of her. He thought it curious if nothing more. They should have discovered her immediately when the fire broke out.

Alussein Pasha rode up presently and his little staff with him. He had treated Faber with some deference from the beginning, and now that the fury of the sack was over he became almost grotesquely polite, gabbling in appalling German and expressing as well as he could his regret for the state in which he discovered the stranger. In return, Faber asked him of his friend—gesture serving where names failed—and the matter being understood, the Pasha told off a lieutenant and two men who invited the "infidel" to follow them. Ranovica had burned itself to a cinder by this time, and if it was not possible to pass down the narrow street, at least the precincts of the houses might be searched. Faber trudged after the men and came to the ruined church, now but a shell and a few blackened beams. A young Turkish soldier walked to and fro here; but the gulley of the road before the church was blocked by corpses, and near by them lay the figure of Louis de Paleologue. He had been shot through the head just as he reached the porch, and he lay face downwards, an unlighted cigarette between his lips and his kindly eyes wide open.

Faber knelt and turned the dead man over. He felt his pulse, and even laid his head upon his chest to listen for the beating of his heart. There had been horrors enough in Ranovica this day; but they had to do with a strange and savage people, of whom he knew nothing. He remembered that this man had taken his mother to America when she had no other friend in the world. Had he not come to Europe to reward him for what he had done as few have been rewarded, whatever the service? And this was the end of it—this prone figure, still and fearful—this, and the Turks who looked down upon the scene with Oriental indifference—this, and the sentry who leered behind their backs and made no attempt to hide his satisfaction. Faber caught the fellow grinning, and recognized him for one of the men who had turned on him earlier in the day when Paleologue floored the officer. The rifle in his hand had come from the arsenal at Charleston. Surely destiny spoke loudly enough here.

He borrowed a burned and tattered cloak from one of the dead in the gutter, and covered his friend's face reverently. Where to go, what to do next, he knew not; nor in what manner he should seek Maryska. The truth had gripped him with fingers of iron.

This was war—and of war was he not the disciple?

III

The Turks left the village about three in the after-noon. It was understood that they had other work of the kind, but more to the northward, and removed from the observant eye of their neighbours, the Montenegrins, who would surely avenge this day. Before they left, they were able to restore to Faber the mules which had brought his party to Ranovica. The beasts had been taken up the hillside during the conflagration, and would have been led much further afield but for the Pasha's desire to curry favour with the American. He knew that this was the man who made the rifles with which the infidel dogs must be destroyed; urgent messages from Constantinople had warned him to show deference to so useful an ally, and he obeyed his instructions with a display of manners quite pleasing. It was otherwise when the dead artist and his daughter were mentioned. Constantinople had said nothing about them, and it really seemed to Faber that the flat-faced, good-humoured Alussein could be a genius of understanding or the dullest blockhead at his pleasure.

So away the Turk went, just when the sun was beginning to dip down over the Adriatic and all the wilderness to glow beneath the shimmer of its deepening rays. A hillside, normally grey and cold, shone rose-pink and purple in the waxing splendour of the hour. The burned village became but the blacker for the gift, a charred log lying in a cup of the burnished rocks. Out of it, when every ruin had been twice searched, every heap of ashes turned for possible plunder, out of it went the baggy breeches and the little white horses and the fierce and bristling men, as cool and laconic as though this were but an episode and to-morrow would furnish another. Romancers' tales of troops drunk with lust and slaughter could not be told of them. All that passed, women's fearful struggles to escape their embraces, the shrieks of men whose hearts were being torn out, the gasps of the dying and the livid faces of the dead—all this was already forgotten, and would hardly be remembered when a week had gone. Had not the Prophet commanded them so to do, and was not he a discerning person withal?

Faber had taken a meal with Alussein upon the hillside about midday, and after that he had patrolled the village with Frank at his side, waiting and hoping for the coming of Maryska. To return to Ragusa without her would have been an infamy he could not contemplate; and yet he feared to meet her or to tell her the truth which must be told. When at last he did discover her, some hours had passed, and it was quite dark. The hillside with its savage boulders had given up the most part of the refugees then, and they had come down to the village to wander amid the ruins of their poor homes and to fill the street with their wailing. It was at this time also that another band of Albanians came up the valley to their comrades' rescue; alas, so many hours too late, but yet in time to help the desperate refugees and to bring them food and succour. Fires were now lighted by the valley road, and the women and children grouped about them. The most timid crept down from the rocks above; girls dishevelled and weeping, men who had fled with gashed limbs to the harbourage of caves, children whose parents lay dead beneath the ashes—all came at the summons of the shrill goat's horn. Meanwhile, none thought of burying the dead—none except Faber, who would not leave the body of Louis de Paleologue where it was, and returned with two lusty Albanians at his heels to do what could be done in the matter.

It was then that he found Maryska.

One of the Albanians carried a lantern, and the rays of it discovered her, kneeling against the broken railings of the church porch, but with face averted from the dead. She did not appear to have been weeping. Her eyes were big and round; her head bare, her hair dishevelled. What she had suffered at the soldiers' hands might not be imagined; but its memories had been obliterated by this sudden realization of the greater loss. All that humanity had been to her lay still and ghastly in that fearsome gutter. Father, brother, friend—he who had gone hand in hand with her through the wild wilderness of the world, he would lead her no more. The night had dropped a black curtain between her and the eternal hope of youth. Womanhood had revealed itself, its secrets thrust upon her by the bloody hands of monsters; but the drugged soul of the child could find no place in her mind for that. He was dead. Why, then, did she live?

She shrank from the light, but did not cover her eyes. Discerning Faber, she leaped toward him as an animal unchained, and bared her breast with frenzied fingers. "Shoot me, stranger—shoot me through the heart!" she cried. He caught her outstretched hand, and she fell almost lifeless into his arms. Oblivion, the greater mercy, saved her reason in the critical hour. She was in a delirium when they made a rude palanquin and carried her down to Antivari. She awoke therefrom upon the afternoon of the second day after in a cabin upon Faber's yacht; and then, for the first time, they believed that she would live.