CHAPTER XXI

PLANNING A FUTURE

As the hours passed the hill country awoke to restless activity. On several prominent peaks the beacon fires blazed, summoning the followers of Take Larescu. From all sides they began to troop in, silent, grotesque, armed to the teeth. The glen, along the ridge of which Fenton had carried his bride earlier that night, was soon crowded with the hill men. By midnight more than a thousand had assembled, and from all directions they were still coming at the urgent summons of the flaring beacons.

Take Larescu took charge of the situation and skilfully wrought order out of chaos. He organised his followers into detachments, and to each allotted positions along the stretch of foot-hills where the Austrians would be awaited. On receiving their instructions from the gigantic master of ceremonies, the detachments moved off into the enshrouding darkness as silently as they had come. The oddly garbed figures coming and going in the flickering light of torches, the war-like gestures, made the whole proceedings seem a phantasm of the imagination, a wild, strange dream.

Fenton, wearing the military cloak of Miridoff, watched proceedings from a vantage point in the rear. He had early found that Take Larescu was master of the situation, and had discreetly withdrawn into the background. Larescu had fought through several campaigns, and had gained a reputation as the Napoleon of mountain warfare. He could be counted upon to give the Austrians a warm reception.

A light touch on the Canadian's arm caused him to turn. Olga had come quietly behind him. She was muffled snugly and warmly in a heavy cloak with a hood, so that Fenton could discern little else but a pair of glowing eyes.

"We have much to talk about, my lord," she said happily, placing an arm through his. "Could you not give me a few minutes now?"

"I am at your service for eternity," he replied. "There is nothing for me to do here in any case. Larescu has taken everything into his own hands."

The night air was cold. Fenton guided his wife up a steep and rocky path that led to the foot of the beacon light, in which the fire was now dying down. At the foot was a smooth rock of some size, and here they seated themselves. Fenton's arm found its way protectingly around the slender form of his princess-bride, and the lovely hooded head nestled back against his shoulder.

"I have won you after all!" exclaimed the Canadian exultingly. "It is hard to realise that you are really my wife--and yet I felt right from the first that nothing could keep us apart. We were intended for each other, even if half the globe did separate us."

"One can see the hand of Fate in it all," whispered Olga. "I think it must have all been planned by One Who is mightier than we are. For you see I had made up my mind to give you up. Nothing could have induced me to marry you, dear, of my own free will."

"Olga!" cried Fenton indignantly. "Then you don't love me after all? If you really loved me, nothing could have kept you from me in the end."

"Yes, dear boy, I loved you--from the first, I think," she replied, looking up.

Seating directly beneath the beacon, they were partly in the shade, and Fenton could not see her very clearly, but he discerned enough of the loving message in her eyes to bring about an extended interruption of the conversation.

"That will do, Donald," she said finally. Then she laughed--the happy, light laugh of one who loves and is loved, which begins without cause and ends as suddenly as it begins. "It is the first time I have said your funny name, husband mine. Did I say it right?"

"I hope I never hear anyone else uttering the name," said Fenton ecstatically. "After hearing it on your lips it would seem profanation from any other source."

"It is rather a nice name, although it seemed so strange at first," she said judicially, as she repeated it over several times almost in a whisper. "I used to wonder if I could ever come to call you that."

"Now you've given yourself away," cried Fenton triumphantly. "If you wondered that, you couldn't have made up your mind that you would give me up."

"I have indulged much in day dreams since I met you, dear," she said, "but--it would have made no difference. My father would never have consented to my marrying you, not even if you had saved his life many times and had been a thousand times too good for an ignorant little Ironian princess--as you are. And I would never have disobeyed him. You do not understand us, my own. We Ironians are bound by custom, by traditions of which you have no conception in your free country. It would have broken my heart, but--I would have remained Princess Olga all my life."

Fenton was silent, pondering this thought, terrifying to him even in negative perspective.

"But I am now quite free in my conscience," she went on. "I thought to save my father's life by marrying the man I feared, and the good Father of all gave me instead the man I loved. It must have been Mis will that I should come to you. And so I look forward to the future before us with no misgivings, dark though it may be at times. And I am so happy."

There was another and longer interruption. The suggestion of future troubles contained in her words was welcome to Fenton, for it promised an opportunity to protect her, to assert his right and power to shield her. His arm about her tightened almost fiercely.

"I begin to see that after all I owe a lot to Miridoff," he said.

"You will have to take me away from Ironia," said Olga, a little out of breath from the ardour of her husband's embrace. "I could never go back to court. My father will refuse to forgive me at first, and will perhaps talk of having our marriage set aside. But in time he will perhaps learn to forgive his wayward girl." She paused for a moment.

"You see what you have done," she went on with a gaiety that did not entirely mask the strain of sadness beneath. "Tell me, my lord and master, what you are going to do with me now? I begin a new life with you."

"The future will be in your hands as much as in mine," replied Fenton. "When the war is over we shall travel all over the world. Then will come the question of settling down, of building a permanent nest. I hope when the time comes you will have found no place more to your liking than my own country."

"I would go anywhere with you," she said confidently. "I have made up my mind on one thing, never to let you out of my sight. If you go where the fighting is to-night I go too."

"That you do not," said Fenton, laughing with cool masculine assumption. "Darling, I am going to take you back at once to the lodge, and you must go right to bed and to sleep. You need rest. And in the morning I shall bring you news of the repulse of the invaders."

"No," said Olga determinedly, "I could not sleep. I must go with you. There will be no danger. There are many women down there in the glen. And, see--I came prepared. I shall be quite safe with you in this costume."

She threw back her cloak and stood revealed in the dress of a woman of the hills. She made a pretty gipsy figure in her bright-coloured garb. Fenton took her face in both his hands and shook his head at her adoringly, submissively.

"You shall have your own way," he said, "in this and, I am afraid, in most things. I begin to realise how well fitted you are for the new world, where women have found the way to get everything they want."

They returned slowly to the glen below, and Larescu greeted Fenton with a roar of exultation.

"They come!" he cried. "One of my men has brought the word. The Austrians are crossing the river!"