Demetrius by Henry Abbey (online e reader txt) 📖

and we closed and barred the gates;
All the women urged to battle; every man a hero then;
And the Kabyles based reliance on the friendship of the Fates.

I held that love of country was a higher love of self,
With generous ends, but selfish still, whatever might be said;
I forgot my boasted honor; I had garnered all my pelf;
I became a hissing traitor to the land I owed my bread.

All was plain; if I was faithful, then Eudocia was lost;
Recreant, and gaining victory, I could claim her as my right.
I scarcely weighed the balance, and I dared not count the cost;
I stole out from the city to the alien camp that night.

I was loyal to the purpose that within my heart was shrined;
Another might have coped with it, and triumphed o'er its fall.
So men are, they do not vary much, the level of mankind,
What one lacks the next possesses; there are faults enough in all.

Down the cliff I slipped in silence; and the troubled cypress leaves
Quivered like sweet lips in anguish, while the star eyes wept with dew;
And I sought the French commander, where, amid his musket sheaves,
He sat and planned new reaping in a field that Azrael knew.

"I have come to bring assistance, if you take my terms," I said,
"For I know the weakest portion of the city's scowling wall.
There's a maiden named Eudocia I would sell my soul to wed;
Give me the right to have her, and I freely tell you all."

Then he smiled across his table as he granted my desire--
Smile of memory begotten, some remembrance of delight--
And he heard my story quietly, but said he would require
Me to go into the city as a spy the coming night.

V.

THE MASKED SPY IN THE PALACE.

Years before, a secret entrance 'neath the wall I ordered made;
And they were dead who built it, so none knew of it but me.
When the darkness came I gained it, and softly in the shade,
Passed through lone streets of the city where the battle was to be.

A purse of gold and rubies bought the whispered countersign,
And with its aid I noted place and number of the troops.
I chalked upon a building: Lo, the doom of Constantine!
There's a traitor in the city, and the populace are dupes.

In the street I met a masker hurrying onward through the night,
And something in his bearing told of one I called a friend.
"Sir," I said, and on his shoulder I had laid my finger quite,
"Tell me why you mask your visage, and whereto your footsteps tend."

By my voice he knew me quickly, and removed his mask to say:
"My footsteps seek the palace; have you heard not of the fete?
In three days old Yorghi's daughter is to wed with Ahmed Bey;
To-night the plighting party; I must hasten; it is late."

"Hold," I said, "you care but little for the pleasure that you seek;
Give to me your mask and vesture, and so let me take your place;
I shall not hold the favor lightly, but shall pay you in a week
With a sapphire for each moment; and they will not see my face."

Then we found his wide apartments, where we changed the robes we wore.
I put on the half fantastic silken garments and the mask,
Then sallied down the stair-way till I gained the street once more;
Dreaming only of Eudocia, in whose presence I should bask.

From foundation to entablature the palace shone with light,
And I fancied it a genii with a hundred fiery eyes;
His mouth the yawning door-way, and a cloud across the night
Seemed the hair upon his forehead, blowing in the windy skies.

Quick he gorged me, for I entered, and heard at once the swell
Of the music--heard the dancing girls with bells about their feet;
The odor of a hundred blooms upon my senses fell;
The magnolia seemed the husband, and the rest his consorts sweet.

To a splendid hall a eunuch led me down a damask floor,
And the guests were all assembled in their beauty and their pride.
With standards and with banners the walls were garnished o'er.
The Bey among the maskers led the lily by his side.

Round a fountain, in the centre of the golden burnished room,
Danced the dancers, played the players, to the cadence of its fall,
While out upon the balcony, amid the vernal gloom,
A nightingale was singing, and with sadness mocked us all.

VI.

THE MEETING IN THE GARDEN, AND THE FLIGHT OF THE SPY.

When the Bey passed by me graciously, I whispered in the ear
Of the one he led beside him (should I fail to win her yet!)
"Our day is at its dawning; I, Demetrius, am here;
Meet me yonder in the garden, at the place where once we met."

There she followed very quickly, and I held her to my heart,
And kissed with fervid kisses all her lips and throat and chin.
Here she longed to dwell forever so that we might never part,
And be fed with many kisses my enfolding arms within.

There the amorous stars out-twinkled; and anear, a sordid lake,
Like a miser, hugged the silver of their glitter to its breast;
And it stayed within the closet of the trees and tangled brake,
Lest some fortunate bold robber should steal from it in its rest.

Now the years had changed Eudocia from the rosebud to the rose,
Made more perfect every feature, added many a gentle grace,
And she made my heart her garden, there to dwell and find repose:
Neither time, nor change, nor absence, could her love for me efface.

She said she too would be a lakelet, 'neath the starlight of my eyes;
And when my lips bent downward she would catch their spicy dew;
My face, low bending over, should become her tender skies,
And my arms the goodly verdure that about the margin grew.

I dared not risk to tell her of the traitor she was near;
I said the Bey would tremble when I came to claim her hand;
I said that she must wait me, and despair not; but have cheer,
For my triumph would be public in the corners of the land.

While we spoke we heard commotion in the palace down the hill;
Gay lights swung in the distance, like red fire-flies in a glen;
Call by call was heard and answered with a herd of echoes shrill,
And we saw a score of torches, and the issuing forth of men.

"Love, they seek you," cried Eudocia; "you must go or you must die."
But sad, O, sad the sundering of two hearts who long and weep;
Rent the oak's tough, knitted fibre by the lightning from on high;
But the hearts will cling the closer that apart they strive to keep.

On her lips I kissed my tears in, on her lips and on her eyes
Which she opened only languidly to show her answering tears,
And I kissed the diamond crescent that I saw sink down and rise,
While it flashed upon the torches with a hundred silver spears.

Swooning, on a seat I laid her, then sped quickly through the gloom,
While a torchman passed so near me that I fancied I was seen;
But I hid me for a moment 'neath a bush of liberal bloom,
Then fled onward to my entrance through the streets that intervene.

Above, an imminent meteor flashed westward 'gainst the night,--
A full moon with a bluer glow, and trailed with ruby shine;
It seemed a blazing torch to me, borne onward with the flight
Of a spirit, that beneath it, brought defeat to Constantine.

VII.

THE BATTLE.

To the town outspoke the cannon, ere the dawn charged on the night,
Not of peace and joy and amity, but of hatred and despair,
And a thousand blatant bugles proved it waiting for their spite;
And we heard the rasp of bullets in the dark astonished air.

When the sun rose, hot and bloody, all the fight had well begun;
The artillery were pounding at the weak place in the wall;
While the smoke, from vale and city, seemed the melancholy, dun
Robes of spirits hovering over for the fated ones to fall.

Like a strong Numidian lion, on her rock the city lay,
Nothing daunted though surrounded, and with scanty store of bread;
Her fierce eyes, two flags of crimson, stared through battle all the day,
One on Babel Wad's high key-stone, and one on Babel Djed.

Round these gates they set their sworders, hoping thence to drive us back
When we followed up their sallies, which were baits to make us come;
But in vain, our works were safer, though we longed for the attack,
And eagerly awaited for the summons of the drum.

Stone by stone a breach was opened in the thin place in the wall,
Till at last we sent a truce flag to the gate of Babel Djed,
Saying to the town, "Surrender, Constantine must surely fall;
If you fail, no soul remaining shall be left to count your dead."

Like a sword-thrust was the answer, "There is plenty in the place
Both of food and ammunition; if 'tis these the French desire,
We can furnish them abundance; but surrender means disgrace,
And our homes shall be defended while one soldier stands to fire."

Should not this town be captured, every man must bear the fault,
And many a one bethought him of his own in sunny France.
Down our line there ran the murmur, "We must take it by assault,"
And we heard the bugles playing for the stormers to advance.

Like great billows never breaking were the rocks of Constantine,
And a cargoed ship the city with its keel in every one;
She was sailing for the future with the barter of the line,
And her mast-like towers were gaudy with the pennons of the sun.

But now a storm had struck her, and a hole was in her side,
And the waters rushed in wildly while she paused upon the brink.
All in vain each brave endeavor; for all on board her tried
To close the leak with fury, that the vessel might not sink.

Our men the angry waters that could not be turned nor checked,
And they bore all straws before them in their mad impetuous way.
So the town, betrayed, was captured; so the great ship had been wrecked;
And with the troops in triumph I rode in upon that day.

VIII.

THE WEDDING AND THE FALSE FRIEND.

When the night fell, in the palace all the lights were lit again.
In the hall of silken standards and of Persia-woven mats
There were women fair as houris, there were brave and handsome men;
And the fish leaped up to see them from the fountain's silver vats.

Never yet so fair Eudocia, and she won the wisest praise
From the aliens there assembled to behold our marriage rite;
Not alone her queenly beauty; but the grace of all her ways,
Drew all hearts and eyes toward her, filled like cups with pure delight.

But while yet they said the service, and ere yet I placed the ring
On her tapering heart finger, all the crowd was parted wide,
And I saw my friend the masker his unasked-for presence bring
To the pollen of the wedding, lady-petaled on each side.

"Thus shall die the thankless traitor, whether king or beggar