第68章 CHAPTER THE FOURTH(13)

Then Giorgio and the others came clattering to overtake them.

Giorgio was too full to wait for questions.He talked eagerly to Benham's silence.

It must have happened yesterday, he explained.They were Bulgarians--traitors.They had been converted to the Patriarchists by the Greeks--by a Greek band, that is to say.They had betrayed one of their own people.Now a Bulgarian band had descended upon them.Bulgarian bands it seemed were always particularly rough on Bulgarian-speaking Patriarchists....

That night they slept in a dirty little room in a peasant's house in Resnia, and in the middle of the night Amanda woke up with a start and heard Benham talking.He seemed to be sitting up as he talked.

But he was not talking to her and his voice sounded strange.

"Flies," he said, "in the sunlight!"

He was silent for a time and then he repeated the same words.

Then suddenly he began to declaim."Oh! Brutes together.Apes.

Apes with knives.Have they no lord, no master, to save them from such things? This is the life of men when no man rules....When no man rules....Not even himself....It is because we are idle, because we keep our wits slack and our wills weak that these poor devils live in hell.These things happen here and everywhere when the hand that rules grows weak.Away in China now they are happening.Persia.Africa....Russia staggers.And I who should serve the law, I who should keep order, wander and make love....My God! may I never forget! May I never forget!

Flies in the sunlight! That man's face.And those six men!

"Grip the savage by the throat.

"The weak savage in the foreign office, the weak savage at the party headquarters, feud and indolence and folly.It is all one world.

This and that are all one thing.The spites of London and the mutilations of Macedonia.The maggots that eat men's faces and the maggots that rot their minds.Rot their minds.Rot their minds.

Rot their minds...."

To Amanda it sounded like delirium.

"CHEETAH!" she said suddenly between remonstrance and a cry of terror.

The darkness suddenly became quite still.He did not move.

She was afraid."Cheetah!" she said again.

"What is it, Amanda?"

"I thought--.Are you all right?"

"Quite."

"But do you feel well?"

"I've got this cold I caught in Ochrida.I suppose I'm feverish.

But--yes, I'm well."

"You were talking."

Silence for a time.

"I was thinking," he said.

"You talked."

"I'm sorry," he said after another long pause.

The next morning Benham had a pink spot on either cheek, his eyes were feverishly bright, he would touch no food and instead of coffee he wanted water."In Monastir there will be a doctor," he said.

"Monastir is a big place.In Monastir I will see a doctor.I want a doctor."They rode out of the village in the freshness before sunrise and up long hills, and sometimes they went in the shade of woods and sometimes in a flooding sunshine.Benham now rode in front, preoccupied, intent, regardless of Amanda, a stranger, and she rode close behind him wondering.

"When you get to Monastir, young man," she told him, inaudibly, "you will go straight to bed and we'll see what has to be done with you.""AMMALATO," said Giorgio confidentially, coming abreast of her.

"MEDICO IN MONASTIR," said Amanda.

"SI,--MOLTI MEDICI, MONASTIR," Giorgio agreed.

Then came the inevitable dogs, big white brutes, three in full cry charging hard at Benham and a younger less enterprising beast running along the high bank above yapping and making feints to descend.

The goatherd, reclining under the shadow of a rock, awaited Benham's embarrassment with an indolent malice.

"You UNCIVILIZED Beasts!" cried Benham, and before Amanda could realize what he was up to, she heard the crack of his revolver and saw a puff of blue smoke drift away above his right shoulder.The foremost beast rolled over and the goatherd had sprung to his feet.

He shouted with something between anger and dismay as Benham, regardless of the fact that the other dogs had turned and were running back, let fly a second time.Then the goatherd had clutched at the gun that lay on the grass near at hand, Giorgio was bawling in noisy remonstrance and also getting ready to shoot, and the horse-owner and his boy were clattering back to a position of neutrality up the stony road."BANG!" came a flight of lead within a yard of Benham, and then the goatherd was in retreat behind a rock and Giorgio was shouting "AVANTI, AVANTI!" to Amanda.