by George Moore
The master and I often went to the Lelantus to lay nets for wild-fowl, and one day on hearing a girl singing in the woods he bade me beach the boat. But to hear without seeing was not enough for the master, and singing he went in search of the singer, and their blending voices coming very happily over the reeds to me, I gathered the nets into the boat, wondering if he was singing with Theano, the pretty shepherdess whose fame had reached Aulis. But Otanes knew nothing of her fame; the meeting was his luck; and we returned towards Aulis, Otanes looking like one that hath come upon a Goddess in the woods. Such was my reading of him, and whilst pulling an oar I said, speaking inwardly: He’ll never love another if he doesn’t get her. All this I can vouch for, sir, but not for the story that hath been told ever since in the town. Theano, so it is said, was waiting for him next day at the spot where he had left her, and together they went in search of Evelthon, whom she was to marry. But he wasn’t in his stead, nor on his farm. And finding her lover gone, said Kebren, she stepped into Otanes’s boat? Thou hast said it, replied Timotheus. And I have revealed no secret, sir, but have told only what everybody knows and what Otanes himself would have told thee if he were given to speaking of the dead. I have never heard him mention her name since she died. Months went by without a smile ever coming on his face, and it is of grief he would have died if she had not left him the honourable lady Biote to live for. If she were to die of the fever she caught overnight he’d take his life and we’d be sold, but who would sell us and who would buy us I know not. He might enfranchise us if he knew the time of his death, but death is often sudden. After his death who will live in this house? and what will become of the tapestries that Theano wove? Everything here is Theano’s, sir. The manuscripts thou art reading, the pavement in the courtyard, and all the vases and statues that came from Tanagra were brought here by her, and many marbles from Attica. She was the spirit, and Otanes the hand that obeyed the spirit.
If the lady Biote were to die — But there is little chance of her dying, Timotheus? To my mind none at all, the slave answered. Nobody believes that she will succumb to a touch of marsh fever, nobody but Otanes. The thought is always in his head, a buzzing thing like a bee or wasp — Or fly, Kebren interjected. He is unhappy when the wind blows from the west, Timotheus continued, and regains his humour only when it blows from the north.
Timotheus filled the lamps from his oil can, set the wicks floating, lighted them, and after loitering a while wandered out of the room, leaving Kebren to the enlightenment of his thoughts, and the day ended on a glimpse of Otanes’s scared face and the question: What will become of me if Biote should die and Otanes kill himself? Timotheus being a slave is despondent, he said to himself, and when the little man came into the library, quietly as a mouse, Kebren tempted him into talk, and learnt from him that Aglaia was disliked by slaves and servants alike. For days she would not answer a question, and on other days she would talk incessantly if she could find a listener. The cook, too, had been a great trial some years ago. A bad cook, Timotheus? A bad cook if she is ill-tempered, a good cook in her humour, but never pleased with her kitchenmaids. And he told a long story of how many had been set to other work by Otanes to satisfy the cook. The worst that can be said about the master is that he always chooses the easiest way out of every difficulty; things became worse and worse, and ended in an open revolt about three years ago. The food being served up improperly cooked time after time, Otanes asked me what was happening in the kitchen. Antibia never sent up food like this before, he said; and I had to tell him that the cook could not do her work on account of her arm having been scalded. Scalded? said the lady Biote. How did she manage that? she asked, and went away to the kitchen to find out. A kitchenmaid had thrown boiling water at the cook. Whereupon the maid was ordered to beg the cook’s pardon, and the honourable lady mentioned to me that I was to make the necessary arrangements for the whipping. After the whipping things went on pleasantly enough, the cook and the kitchenmaid living in outward peace, whatever they may have thought inwardly. Now I must leave thee, sir, to study the text of to-night’s reading. I wish thou Couldst tell me, Timotheus, which he would prefer to hear, Homer or Prometheus Bound. Thou art the better judge of what touches on learning, sir; only this can I tell thee, that the lady Biote —— — Will not be present, Kebren interjected.
In that case I will take the Prometheus from the chest. I will leave thee, sir, to thy studies. Kebren smiled and bent his head over the manuscript, but the time and attention that he gave to it availed him nothing. Otanes consented to the reading, but all the while he wore a troubled look and Kebren could see that his thoughts were elsewhere. Doubtless with Biote, he said to himself, fearful lest she might follow her mother to the grave. And to help Otanes to forget his fears, which he knew were not justified by the circumstance, Kebren seized the pretext that the play afforded to explain how it shaped out on the stage; but he only partially succeeded, and began to suspect that Otanes’s taste for poetry was but superficial.
Two evenings more passed away in anecdotage, and on the third evening Otanes came to meet him smiling so pleasantly that his face told all he had come to tell: that Biote was herself again. Already she is in Euboea in her thoughts, Otanes continued; she knows the island of yore, having gone there in her childhood to recover from the whooping-cough. Thine assurances are welcome, though not unexpected, Kebren replied. From the beginning I did not doubt that her illness was not much more than a passing indisposition. And this being so, I would crave two days of absence from thy house; I would visit Thebes. If thy visit to Thebes is connected with Pindar, said Otanes, it will be in vain. Not long since Pindar went to live in Thessaly. And I am not sure that thou wouldst find him in Thessaly, he added; I have heard that he hath followed the banished Æschylus, and that the exiles have at last found peace and content at the court of Hieron, a great patron of poets. Even if I may not see Pindar himself, Kebren answered, I would see his house and the pavilion at the end of the garden where he wrote his odes. Thou dost not answer, Otanes. If my visit to Thebes is not convenient to thee I will postpone it until the week before I leave Aulis. My daughter is going to stay with Mnasalcas and his wife Leto. The greatest sheep-farmer in Euboea is Mnasalcas. I sell his wool eastward up and down the Euxine and westward as far as Sicily. Mnasalcas and Leto are excellent people, true friends of mine, but Biote looks on them as rustics, and I am afraid she will lose her temper during the long evenings of simple talk. They will call in the shepherds, but flute-playing for a whole evening will be wearisome, and Biote would certainly like to hear thee read the great chariot race aloud. Even the shepherds would like to hear the chariot race read. A postponement of thy visit to a later date will be an advantage, for Pindar may return to Thebes. What thinkest thou, Kebren? I shall be glad indeed to visit the island of Euboea, Kebren answered; and it was in talk of an oracle of good repute among the foot-hills that Otanes and Kebren retired to their different couches.
CHAPTER IV
HE STOOD IN the stern of the boat, waiting to hand her into it. The cushions she would rest upon during the little voyage were already arranged, and as father and daughter came down the wharf he bethought himself of the differences they presented to the eye, saying: Who would guess the tall, handsome man, with a look of kindly interest in everything he sees, to be her father? Her open, smiling countenance comes to her doubtless from her mother, likewise her tip-tilted nose, her short upper lip, and the soft blonde ringlets falling like vines about her face. Said Otanes: — Do not jump rashly, Biote; beware of sending the gunwale to the edge of the water, mayhap swamping the light skiff. I shall alight in the middle of the boat, father! and she did, to Otanes’s admiration and the displeasure of Photius, the old boatman, who sat in the bow like a figure of stone, mindful only of his oars. I commit her to thy charge, Kebren. Remember that at the mouth of the Lelantus, Mnasalcas’s mule-cart will be waiting to take you to the stead. A week will restore my Biote to her usual health. I shall expect you back in a week, in
less. Say on what day, father, and at what hour of the day thou wilt expect me! Otanes and Kebren exchanged glances, and Photius plied his oars, but the boat was barely in midstream when somebody appeared running down the wharf. What can we have forgotten? Biote cried, and Kebren feared the scolding that Timotheus would receive. What have we forgotten, Timotheus? For lack of breath the slave could not get out his words, but at last they came: The cock! Take him; he is in this basket.
I should like to see him clap his wings and salute the sunrise, said Biote. Thou’lt see him clap his wings and crow when we take him to the temple, Kebren replied, and she would have asked him what day was appointed for the sacrifice if the Euripos had not claimed her attention. I have seen the strait all my life, she said, but never so beautiful as this morning, and thou who hast never seen it before, worship, and let the silver Euripos fix itself in thy memory. We have no mountain ranges in Greece as beautiful as the Eubcean hills, Biote. Whereupon she took pleasure in telling him all she knew about the plain and the hills, saying: — I am glad I am with thee when the sun shines so prettily on the Euripos, for it was on just such a day that we travelled in an ox-wagon from Mnasalcas’s stead to the chestnut-woods that gather about the foot-hills, bringing with us staves to beat the trees. As we beat and the shucks fell about us we caught sight now and then of the pines and the white cap of Dirphys; he rarely doffs his cap before the summer heats. If thine eyes follow the direction of my finger — but of what art thou thinking, Kebren? Of Cnidus and thy lectures? My thoughts were adrift in the sleeping water and in the clouds below and above it, he answered. The water needs clouds as sleep needs dreams. Day dreams or night, Kebren? Day dreams are surer, he replied. And thou, Biote, of what art thou thinking? Of the clouds above or beneath the water? Of neither, Kebren, but of an air-born spirit of such tender touch and so sweet-smelling that I have no thought for anything else. Her robe is steeped in sweetness, and her hair; she hath passed through a bower of honey-suckle; and she wooes me because she thinks that thou art belike in Cnidus. But think not of her, lest she woo thee and desert me, for thou’rt a man and she is a Goddess come out of the winter snows, returned to earth and enraptured by its beauty. Let her kiss thee; I shall not be jealous. Pretty Zephyr, go to him and kiss him, for I would have him happy to-day, and of all, breathe a forgetfulness over him of Cnidus and the Iliad. Kebren, if thou wouldst not be wooed by the zephyr, look down into the water and a nymph will rise to thy lips.
What, the water does not tempt thee? It tempts me! And Biote would have unloosed her girdle if Kebren had not put his hand on her shoulder, saying: A few days ago thou wert fever-stricken. Were a current to carry thee away, how could I return to Aulis and to thy father? Thou must return to Aulis, and many times, she answered, and when the boat entered a sunny inlet she begged him to say if it were not true that there was no country in the world like Greece. We know of none other, Biote, but in no country did a day dawn more beautiful than the one we are breathing. A fish flopped from the cool depths. To glimpse the world above the wave, said Biote; and the slim dragon-flies that flit and hover on gauzy wings, each on his business or his pleasure, enjoy the morning as we do. Didst ever catch dragon-flies, Kebren? Kebren remembered chasing dragon-flies, and giving a small to a greater for food. The great fly with the dragon-like head devoured his brother from the tail to the wings, he said. What happened afterwards he could not remember, and the memory shaming him in his own eyes, and perhaps in Biote’s, he spoke of the mule-cart that would take them to Mnasalcas’s sheep-farm and back to the mouth of the Lelantus when their visit was ended. Do not talk of returning to Aulis, Kebren, before the boat bumps ashore!
I like an old road better than a new, she said, and the road the cart bumped over was altogether to her humour, rutted and overgrown; and watching it the thought was often with her that the country on the other side of the woods might be different from the side they were leaving. But it was always the same, a hard, rocky land to which trees clung tenaciously and withered before old age was upon them. Here and there the woodmen had left an oak, twisted and deformed by sea winds, as unfitted for their purpose. I have not been here since I was a child, Kebren, and the day I was here the hills echoed with the thud of axes and the crashing of trees, long gone into the keels and the masts and the planks of galleys. My father’s fleet of merchant ships came out of these rough lands. And the mule-cart moving on through a denser skirt of forest brought them at the end of an hour’s driving to an opening where no trees grew at all, perhaps had never grown, only rocks thrown about as by an earthquake, said by Biote to be a trysting-place for witches on moonlight nights; and though Kebren affected an indifferent ear, he heard, perforce, her memories of an old woman who had told her when she was a child that witches came from Thessaly. Taking their inspiration from the moon, Kebren, they stripped themselves naked and rubbed their bodies with ointment till bristles began to grow, and very soon their arms and legs were transformed into paws; then ears and snouts appeared and long white teeth. But, said the terrified Kebren, Thessaly is more than thirty leagues from here! Thirty leagues is nothing to a wolf, she answered, a little trot. Leaping and scrambling over the rocks they gathered in circles to debate the flocks that were to be harried, the women that were to die in childbirth, the dreams that were to enter into men’s minds to drive them mad, and many divers things that are the main concern of witches. She hath not told thee yet, said the muleteer, of the bitch-wolf, the leader of the pack, in love with a young shepherd, and craving for him all the time of the journey from Thessaly, so that leaving her comrades to debate what mischief they should be busy on during the winter months (murrain and other plagues they called down from the moon, their ally always), she would seek out Pholus, the young shepherd, one of the shapeliest in these hills, a kindly youth that never spoke a word against anybody, not even against witches — I cannot listen to these stories! Kebren cried. I will leave the cart and walk beside it, Biote, whilst thou givest ear to barbarous tales. If thou hast no belief in witches, Kebren, keep thy seat, for the story the muleteer would tell is no concern of thine. Walk with me, Biote, and let the muleteer tell the story of Pholus to his mules. I would hear the story, she answered, for it is one that my nurse kept from me. I would not frighten a friend of Mnasalcas, my master, with the story of the rape of Pholus, said the muleteer, turning in his seat. Tell thy story, Kebren replied.
The lady Biote hath told thee of the magic ointment and the galloping of the wolves out of Thessaly till they came to Aulis, whence they crossed over into Euboea, and the end of the story, sir, may be more frightful in thy mind than it will be in my words. Wherefore to rid thyself of it hear how in those times the shepherds were wont to gather within barred doors, afraid to talk lest the witches should hear them, whispering faintly to each other: — Our sheep are folded, safe against wolves, but witches in the guise of wolves have power to climb the highest hurdles. So were they talking one night when one of the company remembered the witch that came down from Thessaly again and again, so great was her craving for Pholus; and remembrance falling upon Pholus, too, of the endeavours of the witch to catch him, he stopped playing his pipe. His comrades, guessing his thoughts, said to themselves: The hag is nosing him out! and the thought had barely come into their minds when a whine announced her outside the hut. Our dogs have missed her smell; she touched their noses with a feather dipped in magic as she passed, said an old man who had seen much of witches; and the shepherds waited. She is scratching at the door, said the old man, and as none answered came a howl and he said: We must put Pholus beyond the door. Let him settle with his wolf-bitch as well as he may. We must keep ourselves to ourselves and our flocks for our masters. Put me not out to her! Pholus cried, and they answered: She’ll not harm thee, whom she loves, and if thou goest not she’ll call all the pack to tear down the windows and shutters and devour us. Get thee gone! Get thee gone! And holding the door against the wolf, the shepherds thrust Pholus out and a great silence fell upon them. We did wron
g to thrust him out, said a shepherd; we should have fought the wolves. There may be fifty, said another, and we are but six here. True, true, the comrades answered; and our dogs — see how they cower and whine, nosing the witches out, though to the eye they are like other wolves. But there are young women amongst witches, said a shepherd, and so great is her craving for Pholus that she may be young and Pholus the lucky one of our company.... Be that as it may, Pholus was seen no more, the muleteer added, and rousing up his animals he persuaded them to leave off grazing and to continue the journey.
