Part 49

Benham halted beside her and stared stupidly. “It's a band,” he said. “It's--propaganda. Greeks or Turks or Bulgarians.”

“But their feet and hands are fastened! And--... WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING TO THEM?...”

“I want to kill,” cried Benham. “Oh! I want to kill people. Come on, Amanda! It blisters one's eyes. Come away. Come away! Come!”

Her face was white and her eyes terror-stricken. She obeyed him mechanically. She gave one last look at those bodies....

Down the deep-rutted soil of the village street they clattered. They came to houses that had been set on fire....

“What is that hanging from a tree?” cried Amanda. “Oh, oh!”

“Come on....”

Behind them rode the others scared and hurrying.

The sunlight had become the light of hell. There was no air but horror. Across Benham's skies these fly-blown trophies of devilry dangled mockingly in the place of God. He had no thought but to get away.

Presently they encountered a detachment of Turkish soldiers, very greasy and ragged, with worn-out boots and yellow faces, toiling up the stony road belatedly to the village. Amanda and Benham riding one behind the other in a stricken silence passed this labouring column without a gesture, but presently they heard the commander stopping and questioning Giorgio....

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.”