The Bayonet that came home. A vanity of modern Greece

Chapter I

The corporal was going to enjoy himself. He swore it, and the two privates laughed. The three, they were friends. The corporal had taken his orders from the lieutenant in charge of the military police at Kilitska. They were simple : he was to go to Katia with the two privates, and to come back again. It was a duty of patrol. Kilitska is the seat of the municipal government of the demarchy of the same name, and within this demarchy there are included the villages of Katia and Saritsa. From Kilitska to Katia is three hours by foot. The demarchy is a large one, and its landscape is varied. There is much forest at Katia, but none at Kilitska, where it has all been burnt down and the soil ploughed up for corn. It was a September morning. The rays of the sun were gathering strength, the fiery darts were pouring over the rounded summits of the low hills which surrounded Kilitska.

In a little while the valley would be like an oven. The three soldiers marched quickly along the narrow street of Kilitska ; they thought of the cool forests of Katia, and its murmuring springs. A parched dust rose in grey clouds to the muffled tramp of their eager feet, and from a shadow which lay blackly over one half of the uneven roadway many frightened fowls fluttered into the ribbon of harsh sunlight which lay straightly by its side. A little further, and they strode upon red rock ; their footsteps rang out clearly. It was then that a fat sow, with a broken tether trailing after her, rushed from an open cottage door, and squealing shrilly, ran into the open country which lay before them. The corporal was a little man, and his com panions were tall. " Gently, gently," said the corporal, as they picked their way over red rocks, brown sand.

It was difficult walking. Later they descended into a parched water course, clambered over its smooth boulders, warm to their touch with the sunlight that was streaming down. Afterwards they commenced to climb the grassless, treeless, waterless slope of a hill which lay before them. The blue sky rested brightly upon its summit. Their eyes ached, they longed for Katia. The corporal and one of the privates had been quartered at Kilitska for six months, but the other soldier was a comparative stranger to the district ; he had been recently drafted thither from Chalcis. " Bah ! " * said the latter, as they paused upon the summit of the hill, and he looked to his left and below, " but there is the sea." " Yes, indeed," said the corporal, " there is the sea;" and he commenced to roll himself a cigarette.

The stranger gazed widely down. It was a beautiful scene that slept silently beneath. The red rocks, the brown sand of the hillside at his feet, Bah ! " a Grecian exclamation of astonishment, not of disgust. stretched massively down and down to a yellow strand, upon which the purple sea had cast a shining drift of whitest foam ; whilst, far away, the curtain of the great blue sky above fell softly to the plain of the waters, save where it was rent by the pink mistmasks of an island here, an island there. It was the Ægean Sea, sleeping till the summons of the autumn winds should rouse it into fickle wrath. " What island is that ? " said the stranger to his corporal, and he pointed with his finger. " Skopelos," answered hastily the latter, for he had just struck fire upon his tinder. " It is not large," explained the other private, The corporal blew a thin cloud of blue tobacco smoke across the scene.

" Let us go," he said. The three soldiers proceeded along the crest of the hill in silence. The black eyes of the corporal beamed with a gay fire ; he was happy. Presently they left the crest of the hill, and descended into a valley through the long stubble of a wheat field. The pointed straw swished against their white trousers, their bayonets sagged at their rough leather belts, till the latter hung loosely over their left hips. A peasant caught a glimpse of their blue tunics as they climbed the opposite slope. " May the devil take them, those soldiers," he swore to the mule by his side. The corporal grew hot ; he pushed his kepi to the back of his head, he slung his rifle across his shoulders. But the woods of Katia were still far away, and the country was rising and falling before them with unclothed hill and valley.

He sang a tragoudi* When he had finished, "That was beautiful," said the privates. The corporal twirled his moustache ; he was pleased. The stranger began to ask questions. The corporal responded readily to his friend. " Yes," he said, " Katia is a rich village ; it is owned by an afendi who lives at Athens." " But he seldom visits it," added the other private. " Is he there now ? " asked the stranger. The corporal laughed heartily. "No," he said, " or I should not be going to Katia with this ; " and he drew from his belt a black leather whip. * Peasant song. " You see," added the other private, " the Afendi of Katia is no friend of the present Government, and at the last election he failed to return his deputy for the Vouli." * " I am a stranger," said the stranger ; " I do not understand."

" But it is simple," answered the corporal. ' ' There is an afendi at Kilitska, and an afendi at Katia. The former is a friend to Tricoupis, the latter to Delyannis. Tricoupis is in power. Well, we, who are friends of Tricoupis, can do what we like at Katia, the more especially as the demarch is also a Tricoupist." " But why ? " asked the stranger. " Because we of Kilitska have bought the ear of the Government with our votes," answered the corporal, with a grin. " It is true," said the other private ; " we can do what we like, so long as the Government remains in power. And that has made it uncomfortable for the Afendi of Katia. He has returned to Athens." It is not so in my village," said the stranger * House of Parliament. "That may be," answered the corporal. "Here it is different, and if we wanted to close the schools of Katia, why, it would be as easy as opening their letters in passage through the office at Kilitska, or refusing to despatch their telegrams."

" Yes," continued the other private, " and the steward at Katia knows it. He is careful to keep out of our way when we go to Katia." "Yes, indeed," added the corporal; "he is a clever man, that epistatis, and takes more care of his own pocket than any one else's, not excepting that of his afendi." He smiled cunningly, and showed his white teeth. The soldiers had been walking side by side, but the corporal now led the way along a narrow path, which suddenly opened before them into a low undergrowth of myrtle and heather. The privates followed him, one after the other. Gradually the stony path sank below the level of the rock, the scrub, on either side. It became a rut, a trough of mother rock, which commenced to ascend with erratic curves a rising ground, whose greatest altitude was hidden from the soldiers' eyes by a scattered growth of stone-pines.

Imperceptibly the ragged rocks that obtruded harshly through the wiry heather, gathered bulk, towered and frowned upon the path as it climbed amidst many arbutus bushes. And ever plainly, and more plainly, there eat into the riot of rock and forest, deep valleys filled with richest sunshine — valleys that gaped widely in the face of the blue heavens. The soldiers climbed upwards in silence. Their breaths came heavily, and as they carried their rifles the cool metal was pleasant to their touch. A sudden tintinnabulation of flock-bells rose up wards from a valley ; it pleased their ears, it was like the murmuring of a stream. Slowly they climbed above and away from it. To the left over red rocks, then to the right along the foot of an open quarry of magnesite, whose gleaming cliff rose fiercely white to the roots of a proud pine — a pine whose branches hung motionless over the precipice, whose lofty summit pierced rigidly into the glowing empyrean.

At length the path ran level between two walls of rock, dank with the shadows of a thicker forest. A white dove flew down its length ; it passed with ■5 swiftly striking wings from shadow into light. A moment it hovered above where path ran straightly into sky ; afterwards it sank out of sight with its glistening plumage. The corporal tramped on. Suddenly the path fell away before him in a steep descent. He paused. The stranger stepped to his side. " There ! " said the corporal, with a wave of his hand ; " there is Katia." And he blew a hot breath against his moustache. The stranger gazed over the feathery summits of a myriad stone-pines trending with the slope on which they grew to the green billows of a lower forest. He saw a distant shore of tall grey mountains, upon whose massive flanks the forest ran with noblest undulation.

" I do not see Katia," he said, and his voice it slightly rose and fell, for his gaze was returning over the green billows that surged beneath the blue sky. " Look more to the right," said the corporal. " Yes, more to the right," echoed the other private. He looked. A high mountain threw its shadow on a little hill, to which clung pink, green, white walled houses. With falling strides the soldiers commenced to descend through the forest towards Katia. They crossed many paths, some made by sheep and goats, some by men ; but the corporal knew the way, he did not hesitate. Sometimes they climbed a little hill, sometimes they clambered down a little valley, but always through a green forest. It was so, that at last they won to a broad valley, whose gentle slopes were covered with green forest, but whose dale was of a brown soil, save at its centre, where a long line of plane trees followed the rocky bed of a parched watercourse that gaped by the side of a dusty road.

At the end and to one side of this valley they could see Katia on its hill. The line of plane trees ran thither with many a bosky curve, then it passed on towards the tall, grey mountains in the distance. The corporal was coming to Katia ; his hands were restless, he was going to enjoy himself, he was very cheerful. As he passed quickly along the road with the privates by his side, his black eyes sparkled, and he looked here and there into the cool shadows that lay over the grey stones of the brook. Of a sudden he swerved from the private at his elbow. The soldiers stopped ; they looked beyond him over the watercourse, and there, at the foot of a great plane tree, they saw two peasants seated to some food amidst a flock of sleeping sheep. Then they followed the corporal as he clambered down into the dry bed of the brook.

A savage dog met him with a yelp. " Oxo " (away), said the corporal fiercely. It fell back before him, barking sharply. The flock of sheep struggled to their feet, huddled in indecision, then passed away with hastily ringing bells amongst the grey boles of the planes. The corporal gave a brisk greeting to the eldest of the two peasants, whom he addressed as " Stefanos." The latter turned a pale face towards him ; it was shrunk with fever. He responded sullenly, but his hand, which held a crust of brown bread and a morsel of white cheese, trembled. The soldiers came to the side of their corporal ; they looked carelessly at the eighteenc year-old boy who sat with his back against the plane tree, his crimson fez crumpled on one side, as a pallikar * would wear it. "I am thirsty," said the corporal.

"Give me the bottle," he added with determination, and he pointed to a wooden spirit-bottle which stood upon the ground near to the young peasant. Stefanos hesitated ; his long eyelashes fell swiftly over a sudden wrath that came into his eyes, but he prudently looked to the future. " Hand the bottle to the corporal, Antonios," he said in a weak voice to the youth who sat opposite to him. The corporal turned and faced Antonios. There was that in the brown eyes of the youth which he did not like. " Make haste ! " he shouted, and he drew his whip from his belt. The youth gazed boldly at the corporal. A brass-bound gun leant by his side against the trunk of the plane tree. A ray of sunshine passed straightly down from the green world above, and made it sparkle. * A dashing young fellow. " Make haste, my son," said Stefanos, warn ingly, for he did not wish to have trouble with the soldiers.

Antonios did not reply, but he moved his hand, then his elbow, and the brass-bound gun fell with a clatter against the wooden bottle. Im mediately a sweet odour from the spilt masticha seethed through the air. " Rascal ! " the corporal shouted passionately to the youth. " You did it with purpose." He raised his whip on high. Stefanos rose hurriedly to his feet. " Pardon, corporal," he stammered. " It was an accident. He is young, my son ; he knows no better. It was an accident." " But I will give him leather ! " shouted the corporal ; and he stooped to seize the youth by the collar of his white shirt. The corporal's hand grasped only the thin air, for the youth rolled quickly upon one side, and away from his reach. More quickly still, he sprang to his feet, grasped the flintlock, and levelled its brass-bound barrel at the corporal's heart.

" Hold, for the good God's sake, Antonios ! " shouted his father. "He has many friends, this corporal." The broad breast of the youth heaved, his nostrils dilated, his eyes flashed. He waited with the trigger of his gun. The corporal cautiously unbent his back, drew himself slowly upright. As he gazed at the threatening gun, his black eyes dulled of their fury, his shoulders shrunk inwards upon his chest, his arms slowly crossed, and stealthily sought to cover his belly. A little rattle disturbed the silence beneath the plane tree. Antonios cast a hasty glance towards the privates. One of them was unbuttoning the cartridge-pouch at his waist. " Hold," shouted violently the youth, " or I shoot the corporal — the accursed robber ! " The private dropped his hand to his side ; but Stefanos drew a heavy knife with a snick from his silachi.* " Oxo " (away), said contemptuously the youth to the corporal. * Silachi, a leather pouch attached to the waist-girdle, in which the peasant carries his knife, tobacco, etc.

" I go," said the corporal ; and he stepped back wards, his eyes upon the pointing gun. The privates followed him. The soldiers clambered down the bank of the watercourse. Stefanos and Antonios darted be hind the broad trunk of the plane tree ; they sought shelter from the rifles of the soldiers. " I will not fire, I will not kill him ; it would make trouble at Kilitska," said the corporal. " But I will remember those damned ones of Katia who stand beneath the plane tree." " Let it be so," answered one of the privates. The corporal grasped the root of a tree which protruded from the bank before him, and drew himself upon the roadway. He began to walk towards Katia in silence. He had been near to death ; his heart still beat heavily against his tunic. " Many times have I been to Katia," thought the corporal to himself, "and never before have they pointed a gun at me, though I have beaten them.

They dare not," he muttered aloud. " What did you say ? " asked one of the privates. "Tipote" (nothing), answered the corporal, for his mind was looking at the bold eyes of Antonios, as they had flashed behind the brass-bound gun. " I do not remember his face at Katia," thought the corporal. " Stefanos, I know ; I have beaten him. But this Antonios, the murderer, who is he, that he should have stood before me with a levelled gun ? " The corporal clutched his whip tightly. He continued to ruminate. " He was not afraid, that Antonios. ' Oxo,' he said to me, as if I were a dog — 'oxo!' Holy Saint Constantine ! how I hate him ; and the father, too, the tailless dog! I, the corporal, to have had a gun levelled at me by an eighteen year-old boy ! The Virgin ! But I will be his enemy and the enemy of his family."

There was a bluster in his walk, a frown across his forehead when the corporal entered the inn at Katia. Lambros, its landlord, was standing behind the bar. He saw the corporal enter with his two blue-coated ones behind. Lambros had smuggled tobacco in his cellar. It frightened him to see the corporal look so angry, and with much bustle he ran to the corporal's side. "Good morning to you," he said. "How do you do ? I am pleased to see you." The corporal answered him with polite civility. Some peasants, who were sitting at a little table, finished their wine with hasty gulps and left the room. " You will drink with me ? " said Lambros, with an affectation of light-heartedness ; and he bowed, he laid his hand upon his heart. " If you please," said the corporal, politely. " It will be " suggested Lambros.

"A raki," answered the corporal. Lambros turned sharply to the privates ; the white skirts of his foustanella swayed outwards to the eager action. " A mastic," said one ; " a wine," said the other. " Gian ! " shouted Lambros. A round-headed man with a round face put his head through an open doorway behind the bar. " A raki, a mastic, a wine — immediately," ordered Lambros. Gian stepped forth. He was fat, his face was very dark and oily, and he wore trousers. At once he rolled up his white shirt-sleeves, and clinked some bottles against little tumblers. Then he took a brown pitcher, and poured out a coolly gurgling water into other little tumblers. Finally he placed the whole of the glasses upon a brass tray, and, running quickly to the soldiers as they sat at a table, presented it to them with a delicate bow.

It was good water at Katia ; the stranger remarked so to Lambros as he sipped at one of the little tumblers in order to cleanse his palate before drinking the wine. "There is none better in Eubcea," asserted Lambros, with all the pride of a Roman.* Lambros again turned to the corporal. The latter had drunk his raki ; but there was still a frown across his forehead. Lambros grew very anxious. He spoke of this and that ; the corporal answered " Yes " and " No," but carelessly. "Gian," said the corporal, sternly, "another, if you please." Again Gian brought a brass tray. The corporal put down three dekarais^ on its polished surface, * The Greek peasants designate themselves "Romans," and are especially proud of the purity of their village wells and springs. t Pence. its pearling drops of clearest water.

It was then that Lambros drew a long breath of relief, and walked quietly behind his bar ; for he argued to himself, " He would not pay, that corporal, if he had to come to search for the tobacco." The corporal smoked a cigarette. He drank up his raki. " Let us go ; I am hungry," he said to the privates. " And I," said the private who was not a stranger to Katia ; " but to which cottage shall we go ? " The frown left the corporal's forehead ; he was going ta enjoy himself — he did not reply to the private. " Lambros," he said sharply, " which is the cottage of Stefanos Condouriotis ? " " It is near to the church," answered Lambros, and he smiled cunningly, for he knew the soldiers' ways ; " but Gian shall show you an you will." Lambros wished to stand well with the soldiers ; and the trouble of others, that would not hurt him.

The corporal reflected. " It is not necessary," he answered to Lambros. " Come," he said to the privates, and he led the way out of the inn door. The inn of Lambros stands at the bottom of the hill upon which Katia is built. A broad road runs past its door ; it is the high road from Chalcis to the North of Eubcea. It was upon this road that the soldiers stepped. A hundred paces over its white dust, and they turned to their left ; they saw before them the red rock-shelves of a precipitous street of Katia. It parched beneath a strong sunshine, and a hot quivering air rose from its rocks in oily streams. A many red-tiled houses lined raggedly its course towards a green wood above ; some were of one story, some were of two, with projecting balconies of coarsely hewn wood ; their walls were coloured pink, blue, green, or white, but all spoke harshly to the eye with crude glare.

To the right, above and parallel to this street, was unevenly spread over the hillside a bright patchwork of houses, with red rocks thrust ing forward here and there ; whilst down upon the whole, a varying green of forest swept in massive undulations from the flanks of a grey mountain, proudly peaked behind in the blue heavens. The soldiers bent forward ; the street was steep. There were but few of the men about — they were at work in the fields, in the forest — and the doors of the cottages on either hand, the wooden shutters of the windows, were partly closed to keep out the heat. They passed a boy driving two sows, an old woman on her knees before a bee-hive-shaped oven, a group of girls weaving linen at a frame placed in a shadow. Afterwards the street grew poorer in appearance, its houses were roughly thatched, their walls of wattle and clay.

In short, they came to the oldest part of Katia. The corporal led the way across the level surface of a little square, at whose side stood a white walled church. He met its priest. He gave him greeting. " Pou pas, Pappa?" (Where are you going, Pappa?) said he. " I am going to work in my vineyard," answered the holy man. Papas and soldiers, they had a little conversation. Presently, " Eis to kalon " (Good-bye), said the Papas, and passed on. Then the corporal remembered. "Papas," he shouted over his shoulder, "where is the house of Stefanos Condouriotis ? " " There," said the Papas, and he pointed to one of two stone-walled cottages, which stood side by side opposite to the church. The door was closed and fast. The corporal struck it heavily with the butt of his rifle. The wooden shutters of the window by its side opened more widely.

A woman looked out ; a boy looked over her shoulder. " Open quickly," said the corporal, sternly, "or I break in the door." " Directly," answered the woman ; and a terror came into her eyes. She drew back from the window. The door yielded slowly, unwillingly. The corporal pushed it roughly with his shoulder ; he was impatient. A sudden cry of pain came to his ears. He had pushed the bottom of the door against the white and naked foot of a woman who stood before him. Blood was trickling from her toe. He strode past her into the centre of the room. He paused opposite to a small shrine to St. George, which was let into one of the walls. He glanced at its holy picture and crossed himself. Then he turned again towards the woman. A distaff, with its bunch of white wool was pressed between her arm and side ; her hands were busily arranging a Koumi veil * across her mouth.

" What is your name ? " said the corporal. "Anneta," she answered. " The wife of Stefanos — Stefanos Condouriotis ? " hazarded the corporal. " Surely," she replied, making a half-turn so that the corpora] might see the blue sash that passed at the back of her woollen robe. " Who is that ? " asked the corporal, pointing to the sixteen-year-old boy at her side. " My youngest son, Andreas," she said, making a little movement with her hands, as if she would protect the boy. "Well, Anneta and Andreas," said the corporal, " I search for an outlaw." " He is not here, nothing of him," cried the woman. " But I will look," said sternly the corporal, and he went towards a low mud-wall which divided transversely the cottage. * A special veil made in the village of Koumi, in Eubcea. There was a gap in this wall near to the door.

The corporal passed through it. He strode to the side of a mule, and looked underneath its belly. Four fowls flew away with shrill cackles. The corporal counted them. He stepped beyond the mule to some empty bins, a wooden plough, a heap of maize. Presently he returned closely to the woman She saw a lie in his eyes. " He has been here, that outlaw," he said savagely to her. " No," said the boy, Andreas, who stood by her side. The corporal turned fiercely upon him. He grasped his whip and struck the boy with it across the face. The woman shrieked, she clung heavily to the corporal's wrist, her shift opened at her white breasts. The corporal shook her off; he spurned her towards the private, who seized her by the arms. Then he turned to the youth as he stood with a red weal upon his pallid face.

" Catch those fowls," he ordered. " Quick ! " he added ; and he struck again and again at the white kaltsais * of the youth with his hissing whip. The woman shrieked for mercy ; her shrieks rang through the open doorway, across the square to the white-walled church. But the corporal was busy ; he did not listen to them. He was wring ing the necks of the fowls as Andreas brought them to him with trembling hands. "One, two, three, four" — the corporal counted them. Then he turned to the woman as the privates held her. " Silence ! " he shouted ; and he raised his whip. She caught her breath, and let it go in gasping sobs. " Where is the bread ? " said the corporal. " We have none," quavered the woman. "It is a lie, liar," said the corporal, severely. "Where is it?" The privates let go her arms.

" It is in the oven," she whimpered ; and she drew her shift across her bosom. "Then bring it out," said the corporal; and he led the way to the door. * Woollen overalls. The woman limped aster him. Tears were running down her face. Out into the bright sunshine she passed after the corporal. She knelt down by the black dome of the clay oven. " There is only a little," she said. " Make haste," answered the corporal, gaily. She tore away a little of the clay. She handed out some newly baked and steaming loaves upon the ashes by her side. " One, two, three," counted the corporal, and he looked inside the oven ; it was empty. " Here," said the corporal to the privates ; and he handed them the loaves. They placed them in their white haversacks. Afterwards the corporal com menced to pass to them, one by one, the fowls which he was dangling in his hand.

" One, two, three," he counted. " Mercy 1 " interrupted the woman. " Spare me but one, for the times are difficult, and we have so little." The corporal looked at her. He remembered that Antonios, her son. He held out the last fowl at arm's length. The woman's eyes brightened. It was then that the corporal clutched a handful of feathers from its breast, and cast them at her feet. " My gift," he said, and passed away across the square, with the blue-coated ones behind him. D

Chapter II

" Marriage is the crown of life," had said the father of Stefanos Condouriotis. And he had anxiously looked around him, for his son was ripe for a wife. "The hands of the children whom my son will have will make him rich," thought the father. It was a wise thought, the more especially as there was much work to be done in the field and in the forest. Yet, though he was a clever man, the father of Stefanos made a mistake. He wanted a dowry with the wife — that was right ; but to take her from another village, to bring another stranger to Katia — that was wrong. For he was a man without relatives in Katia, and if he had chosen a girl of Katia, his son would have had the friend ship of her family, which would have been good, very good, in the village, in the field, and in the forest. The father of Stefanos found Anneta for his son.