‘And give my love to your sister,’ Erif was saying, ‘and I may come and see you both one day, mayn’t I? It’s such ages since I’ve been away.’ It was a bracelet Berris had given her at New Year, his own best work. Well, never mind. At the end of the afternoon, she got a rather vague invitation from Eupolia, which she promptly turned into a definite day and hour.
After the party she went to Berris, who was cleaning his brushes. She said: ‘Philylla is still in Sparta,’ and watched him draw up and harden his mouth and rub the paint still more meticulously out of the soft brush hairs.
‘Where’s her husband then?’ said Berris.
‘Oh, in Egypt, as we heard. But her mother’s keeping her at home. Poor darling!’
Berris did not answer for a time; he seemed to be turning it over and over. At last he said, very crossly indeed: ‘So you say, Erif, but how do you think you know she wants to go?’
Erif thought with pleasure of how a few years ago she would have answered him back, but how now she felt herself merely a superior player of the not too difficult game. ‘We shall know quite soon, anyhow,’ she said, ‘because I’ve arranged for us to go and see her.’
‘Well!’ said Berris, ‘you are a bitch and no mistake!’ But his hard mouth grinned in spite of itself and he went on cleaning his brushes quicker.
Ianthemis told Philylla that they were coming, but Philylla was marsh-sunk in gloom so that she could scarcely turn her head or answer. She had been betrayed by Tiasa, and the whole household was mobilised against her. She had no money and nobody would get it for her. The stables were forbidden, though the young helot groom wept not to be able to obey her. Even her father insisted on giving her long lectures on the uselessness of going on with this: better to submit, as he had. Ianthemis had managed to send off her answering letter to Panteus, which said most solemnly that she would come out to him. Or—was it possible that her sister had betrayed her too? No, no; Ianthemis was a Spartiate where Tiasa was only a helot! She looked out of the high, square window of her room; she could see clouds like fat fishes going by, the beginning of winter. Already there would be fewer ships sailing; she would almost certainly have to wait until spring.
Thinking of that, she suddenly realised what she had been told by her sister. At least there would be Erif and Berris to make life possible during the winter! Berris. She had not seen him for a long time, not since she was a girl, before her marriage. She thought she knew now how unkind she had been. She wondered whether he had been twisted about, forced by the images in his mind into maddening, hot, aching sleeplessness, as she was now most nights, thinking of her man and his body. Sometimes towards dawn she would have been willing enough to have the body alone without the mind or heart. The body, the skin, the—No! what was the use of thinking about it till she was somewhere near getting it! Dreams do no good. She had stopped wondering about Berris. She did not even trouble to change her dress, though when she heard voices, she did come straight through the courtyard to them without needing to be fetched.
She kissed Erif and made much of her, but she was distant with Berris, deliberately putting barriers between her self of now and the self which Berris used to know. The talk was all quite formal. She sat between her father, who was delighted to see Berris again, and her mother. She noticed that one of the embroidery threads on her mother’s dress was loose, and had caught round a bronze leaf on the chair leg; when Eupolia got up it would all pull together—the little yellow wool bird on the wine-coloured stuff would wrinkle and shrivel and become shapeless as the thread of its body jerked out—the warp and weft of the groundwork would be suddenly strained on as never since its weaving, snap, snap. She made no movement to warn Eupolia.
Ianthemis sat on her mother’s other side; she had not quite dared put on her best dress, but she was in white with anemones in her hair, and she wore the bracelet Erif had given her. She was very silent, but she kept on glancing sideways without turning her head at all towards Berris. She wondered if he was looking at her with his painter’s eyes. She put her arms and her body into what felt like poses. Would mother let him paint her? Could it be done, perhaps, as a present for Chaerondas? Meanwhile Eupolia talked pleasantly to Erif, skirting round difficult subjects, but near enough for her to try and test what this woman thought and whether she would be a suitable companion for Philylla.
Erif took up the challenge and played. She had to persuade Eupolia that she was harmless and assure Philylla that she was a friend. All the time part of her was feeling over towards Philylla, trying to say: ‘We are both separated from the men we love, let us be sisters’; trying to say: ‘I will help you, even though you cannot help me.’ But the upper part of her mind was light and laughing. She told them about Hyperides and how she had sent back toys for her little son, and how she had got a letter back from the Athenian, written just before midsummer, saying how well and pretty her boy was and how hospitable every one was in Marob. She hoped to get another letter soon, sent on from Kirrha, but she and her brother had been moving about so much. Yes, they were going to stay in Sparta all winter. Where better to stay nowadays than Sparta? At this she saw Philylla sigh and shift and turn back pitiably into herself, but Eupolia smiled and was satisfied. So far, so good. She would put it right easily with Philylla.
Berris had started by being extremely uncomfortable; he had looked once at Ianthemis and seen his bracelet on her arm. Erif had told him he probably would, and he approved her action, but still he did hate seeing it there! He was seized with a sudden desire in his finger-tips to touch the thing again, and that had been made impossible for him! But he liked Themisteas; they had always got on well together. They talked about the battle of Sellasia, but technically, without any political opinions. If these seemed like appearing, Themisteas glanced aside at his wife and suppressed everything. Berris found himself half the time talking down to the older man. Now he himself was successful, with a security quite apart from birthplace or property, something in the minds of men and in his own mind. Yes, he had got almost enough praise now not to care about it! Even the Spartiates, Themisteas and Eupolia, recognised the quality in him, even though they did not care much for the external products of it. They were polite to him and a little bit frightened—and, in spite of themselves, a little bit honoured! Suddenly Berris, the successful one, had a wild impulse to stand on his head and wave his legs at them and shout!
But, feeling this impulse, he had flung his head up, and there was Philylla looking at him from under her brows, and all at once he was struck down to earth, into the net, and he was not successful any more. Oh God, what was everything if he had not got her! It was no use; he could say to himself as much as he chose that he was free of her; he could go and make love to slave-girls and models and pretend it was the same thing; he could tell a tart in a brothel at Kirrha about this calf-love of his and listen to her laugh at it and offer him better goods. All that muck had gone down to the roots of his passion, had dunged it into strength, now it had borne a blinding rose, now he was a grown man and deeply and bitterly in love with Philylla!
All the time, he went on talking to Themisteas. He told them amusing stories about his adventures, the houses he had been into, the things people had said about his pictures. He asked after the animals. Themisteas told him excitedly about the new litter of hound puppies; he gripped the arm of his chair and half raised himself, then winced and sat back and told the girls to run out and get them. Ianthemis jumped up and Philylla followed her; in a few minutes they came back with an armful each, and the great bitch sniffing and whining behind them. Ianthemis thought, thrillingly, that she was bringing an offering to a great painter, and she did hope her father would think of giving him one. She had the pick of the bunch snuggled into her right elbow; at least the grooms said it was. She ducked her head down and rubbed her cheek on it. Philylla was not thinking about dogs at all.
Themisteas took the whole lot of squirming puppies on to his own knees, and handled them, fingering round their bli
nd, sucking muzzles, their broad paws, laughing delightedly when the needle-pointed claws pricked him through his tunic as the puppies padded over him. Berris and Erif leant over and admired and shoved them back when they tried to tumble off. The bitch sat on her haunches with her head on her master’s thigh and stayed so, unmoving, gazing dumbly and darkly at her babies. Themisteas scratched her gently behind the ears and crooned to her, and wondered aloud whether he would ever see these hounds running. His leg was the devil to heal, he could still only hobble about.
Now the mistress of the house clapped her hands and a boy brought in a jug of new wine, with apples and walnuts and thin wheaten cakes. They all nibbled and drank from the pretty, eared cups of black pottery. Themisteas still kept the puppies on his knees and fed the bitch with cake.
Philylla sat down again, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and hands clasped in front on them. She would have enjoyed being alone with the puppies, or even with them and her father, or perhaps Ianthemis. But now every one was talking and laughing and interrupting the soft babiness of them and stopping her from listening to their funny, tiny squealings and growlings. Berris and Erif weren’t going to be much good to her after all. They’d gone over. She had hoped that Erif, anyhow, would remember. Berris, anyhow. Erif. Berris. She had hoped that much of friendship! She stopped listening to what they were saying; it was not interesting at all.
They put the puppies down on the floor, Ianthemis reluctant to let go of the lovely silky rolls of fat on their backs. She squatted among them, tickling and playing with them, shoving them towards their mother’s teats or pulling them off. Oh, how nice, father was offering one to Berris Der! He would have his pick. Oh, was he going to choose the right one? She held them out to him, trying without words to get him to take that one, but he didn’t seem to understand; he wasn’t as interested as he ought to have been. He chose quite a good puppy, but not her special one. It would be ready for him by the middle of winter.
Now it was time to go. Eupolia got up from her chair to say good-bye very cordially. Philylla was watching. There! the thread had caught. All in a moment the embroidered bird was twisted and tortured into shapelessness. Her ears were so keen to it that she caught the sound of the wool thread snapping. Her mother frowned a little and glanced down and appeared not to notice. A slave was sent running to fetch the guests ‘mules to the door. They went.’ I like that boy,’ Themisteas said. ‘It will be pleasant to see something of them this winter. He cheers me up. You must ask them again, my dear.’ ‘Certainly I will,’ said Eupolia.
The two mule-riders went back to Sparta. They both had stiff felt cloaks with sleeves, thick enough to keep out all but the heaviest rain. When they were half-way a shower gathered and began to fall, and the land responded immediately with a cloud of damp-stirred plant and earth smells. Berris turned up his face to catch the rain; he had not spoken much. Erif’s mind was still back with Philylla. She said firmly: ‘We’ve got to get her out of that. She’ll fret herself to death.’ But Berris did not answer, and suddenly his sister rather regretted what she had said.
Winter went on; the two were often at the house of Themisteas. It had been difficult for Erif to see Philylla alone—Philylla herself had not seemed anxious to make opportunities—but gradually she had pieced the situation together. As she did so she began to waver and be uncertain of what she ought to do. For it seemed to her by no means sure that Philylla’s ultimate happiness lay in following Panteus. Then, when at last she had persuaded Philylla, not suddenly but little by little over a long series of looks and words—snatched question and answer—and infinitely friendly kisses and touches, that she really might be trusted, she was shown the letter, and that did not help her to decide. It was Philylla at last who asked the decisive thing: would Erif lend her money, on no security beyond her word, to take her over to Alexandria, and, if so, would she help her to escape out of the house?
They were sitting close together on Philylla’s bed; there was a pretence of trying on sandals. Erif said: ‘My brother has the purse. I must ask him.’
‘But would he? I couldn’t bear—to be betrayed again.’ Philylla, suddenly almost snivelling!
‘I don’t know,’ said Erif frankly.
Philylla stopped and began to lace and unlace the new sandal. There was a charcoal fire in the room and she was naked but for a thin shift that rucked up over her thighs. Erif could see her breasts heave and harden under the tightening of shoulder and chest muscles. The unsaid thing about Berris stood like a crystal between the two women. Philylla raised herself and looked down critically at her sandalled foot. ‘If he thinks he can get me for himself this way, he’s wrong,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Erif, ‘yes. Shall I tell him that too?’
But Themisteas and Eupolia were beginning to speak to one another guardedly of possibilities. If Ianthemis were married off to Chaerondas and if Philylla—not at once, oh no, but after due formalities and presumption of death in exile—were married to this charming and certainly rich young man, who so obviously adored her and who could certainly be persuaded to take a Greek name and settle down, well—In the meantime they allowed Philylla to walk with Berris in the walled orchard, among the bare trees, half in sight, but not in hearing of the house. They did not know what Philylla was talking to him about so earnestly. She was re-telling him the stories Agiatis had told her as a young girl, at the same time soothing herself by speaking to someone of what was in her heart, saying often the name of the woman she had loved, and keeping alive in herself the flame of the revolution.
When she had told him the story of King Agis, Berris remembered the first evening when they had heard it from Sphaeros, and for a time his mind went back to Marob, and his sister, much younger, and Tarrik drinking from a skull-cup, and the paleness of Eurydice’s hands, and himself seeing it, but still in those days not able quite to put it down. Then he began to make other pictures in his mind, rather deliberately childish and unplanned: the young and innocent King, the golden hair edged with sunshine against the red door of a house in shadow. The man, at the end, coming up to Agis in pretence of friendship and betraying him to the ephors with a kiss. A good scene. The dark betrayer. Done with sharp angles and zigzags and that violetish colour you see in a sallow skin, against Agis lighted up into squares and rounds, kind simple shapes, the shapes a child thinks of, looking at a rose. And he should have a blue tunic—probably did!—with the folds quite obvious, movingly common. Or it might be done as a crowd, dozens of tiny people seen from far off, and a rather steep perspective, so that the mere crowding and repetition of them should make up the weight and pathos of the picture. Not a pattern picture, a story picture. Not for himself, but for Philylla and her people of the revolution.
During the next week he was hard at it, first with one after another squared-up sketch, small and crowded and exciting, then with the big thing, on canvas. When it was done he rolled it and disguised it with some care as a bolt of linen, and he and Erif showed it to Philylla. When she saw what it was she looked from it to him and blushed and clasped her hands in rather a delightful and childish way, and threw down barriers and said in her old voice: ‘Oh, Berris!’
She took his hand and he kissed hers. He kissed it softly up on to the wrist. At last she drew it away. He took the picture back to Sparta, and after that he made three more of the life and death of Agis, and under each, in careful lettering, he put the legend of which incident it was, exactly in Philylla’s words. One of them was Agis in the mountains, suddenly knowing what was laid on him to do, a boy in the dawn, and lambs on the hillside behind him. Another was his speech to the people of Sparta, the gentle and earnest head among all those grim, specious, bearded, crafty heads: a picture of heads—the bodies were only flat patterns of colour. In the third Agis was dead: the hanged King cut down and lain naked across his mother’s knees in the moment of her agony, before her neck too was in the noose. Berris told Philylla he was doing them, and that he would show them to her some
time. In the meanwhile they were rolled up and put away in the room where he worked. As technique they did not interest him particularly, but whenever he remembered them, he was pleased.
Erif had hesitated for some time before approaching him about the money; when she did he smiled and said he would think about it, and then he said nothing more until he had finished painting the Agis pictures. Then one day he said to his sister: ‘Do you still think I should give Philylla that money?’
Erif was planing down a wood panel for him. ‘Why not?’ she said.
‘If you really want to be told, my dear, because I’ve got a chance of her myself.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Erif.
‘What about Agis?’ said Berris, jerking his thumb back at the rolled pictures. ‘They’re for her. She’ll take them.’
‘You surely don’t think you’ve a chance of getting her for keeps? You know Sparta as well as I do.’
‘Sparta now’s not Sparta then. They’ll have me.’
‘But she won’t, and what’s the good of thinking you’ll ever want to take her by force? You’d be bad at rape, Berris.’
‘She can’t go on staying in love with a shadow. She’s always been half turned towards me; if he’d got killed decently instead of slinking off to Egypt, she’d want me now. She’s holding out for her idea still, but it’ll all crash suddenly.’
Erif saw, by his calmness, that he was really serious, and stopped planing. ‘Darling Berris,’ she said, ‘I do want you always to get what you want, but she still is in love with Panteus. That is perhaps very silly of her, but I don’t see what can be done about it yet. I’m certain she loves both you and me in a way, and you might work up a kind of glow in her with gratitude and friendliness which might do as pretence love before it was found out. I think once in a lonely winter night she might let you have her, thinking about the Agis pictures, and I don’t see that she would be hurt by that because it wouldn’t touch her marriage. But that would be all you would get and it might hurt you.’
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 56
