by George Moore
CHAPTER V
SEEING BIOTE GIRDLING before a hand-mirror when he opened his eyes, he asked her if she had slept, and she answered him: Of course; why not? Had it not been for me, Biote, thou wouldst not have slept; and he told her how he had cheated the cock, adding: He is still asleep under my rug, so well does it imitate the night. Tie thy sandals, Kebren, and I will go in search of Leto, gone to the woods to milk the she-goat.
Hast given him to drink? Mnasalcas asked her, and Leto coming at that moment from the woods, handed Biote a jug of milk, saying: Freshly drawn it is from the udder As soon as I have watered the cock we shall be ready to start, for I would not have him arrive thirsty at the altar. And taking a rough path the little party walked through the morning, hot even under the trees, laughing at Kebren, asking how it was that he had overslept himself, the slave that carried the cock being told in mockery to hand the bird over to him; but Kebren got the best of them in his telling of their sleepful gestures of body whilst the cock crowed. Nor could the yelping of the dog I beat for barking awaken ye! And they continued to mock each other till they stepped out of the forest to cross a rocky reach of desert land within view of vague ruins on the crest of a distant hillside. Ruins of a temple in which Chronos was worshipped before the Hellenes came to Greece, said Mnasalcas. At the word Chronos, Kebren became attentive and would have put many questions if Leto had not intervened, saying: Thou’lt do well, Mnasalcas, to forget Chronos, about whom we know nothing, and tell our guests of the ruined altar on which we shall sacrifice the cock. A ruined altar! cried Biote. Ruined, replied Mnasalcas, not for lack of our worship but for that its priest was caught with his hand in the money-box and killed by the villagers, which was a pity, for he was a great priest, famous for his reading of entrails and his knowledge of the motions of the divining-rod. Thou hast not told us yet, said Kebren, who laid the temple in ruins. Not the villagers, Mnasalcas answered, but the priest’s ghost, which ever since hath been a great affliction to the neighbourhood, frustrating all attempts to re-establish the oracle; for being a ghost he cannot serve, yet he will not let anybody else serve, and the shrine is now in charge of a wise woman. She hath more news of the priest’s ghost than Mnasalcas, said Leto, for she is there from early morning. Ghosts walk by night rather than by day, replied Kebren, and if she sleeps in the village she knows no more about the ghost than we do. Ask her, said Leto; part of the portico hath fallen since I last saw it, so ask her how it came to fall. By Zeus, I will ask her that! said Kebren.
The ghost of the dead priest haunts the temple, the pythoness answered, and she spoke of a certain conjunction of stars that gave more than mortal strength to ghosts, allowing them to lay pillars flat. But should the portico fall upon him when he disturbs its pillars — ? Have I not told thee, she cried, that the night-watcher is a ghost which cannot be hurt by the fall of a stone? Kebren said something about a villager in search of stones to build a garth, and she answered: How can that be, since the temple is forbidden to all after sunset? And who withholds the passer-by from it? Why, the ghost himself, with his long arm. The last villager who entered the temple after sunset was taken by the neck and thrown into the brook, or maybe he jumped into it to escape from the ghost, which cannot cross water. Now I have told you all I know of the temple and its ghost, and from the stir in that basket I guess it to contain a cock. Ready for sacrifice in honour of Æsculapius, said Mnasalcas, the finest cock that ever crowed in Aulis — Kebren will vouch for his crowing this morning! I have often heard, the pythoness replied, that a bird crows loudest on the day he is to be sacrificed, from pride mayhap, or from some other reason; we know very little of what passes in a cock’s head. We would repair the temple, she continued, as they walked towards the shrine; but were our mason to put up a stone the ghost would pull it down in the night. I will unpack the basket. Do so, said Biote, since thou art to sacrifice the bird; but lift not the lid wholly till thou hast the tether in thy hand, for were he to find himself free he would fly home. To his hens, said the pythoness, and what an outcry there would be in the yard when they espied him in the sky returning to them, and what eagerness amongst them to lie under his white plumage!
She took some crumbs from her pocket and threw them to the cock. So slim and shapely, she said, finished everywhere as by a sculptor’s hand, different indeed from the black, thickset cocks brought hither in dozens for sacrifice, black being more pleasing to the God than any other colour, so it is said, falsely or truly, I know not which. Different indeed is this tall, shapely bird in his snow-white plumage, his yellow legs, his scarlet comb and wattles. Come, my beauty, show thy long, lovely hackles and raise thine arched tail feathers proudly before nodding thy head in acknowledgment of the great fate that is about to befall thee. Sacrificed he is to be to Æsculapius, she continued, wherefore somebody hath risen from a sick-bed. I have, said Biote. Then thou must lead him to the altar. Scatter crumbs, lest he mistrust thee; these birds are very artful. He must nod his head before it is struck off; I will give him more crumbs, and whilst he swallows do thou jerk the tether, a trick that seldom fails. But still the cock strutted, head erect, and Biote missing the right moment the pythoness reproved her, adding: A little water is a great help; and returning from the brook she filled the bird’s ears, adjuring him to put his trust in Æsculapius. Be a good cock; be a good cock; nod thy head. Now jerk! she cried to Biote, and the crumbs, or mayhap the itching of the water in his ears, compelled the cock to bend his head within reach of his claw. A deft blow, and the bird was headless. He can still walk a little, said the pythoness, and picking him up by the legs, she continued: A troublesome bird, but the beautifullest I have seen this many a day. If it should fall out that the lady’s health should need the sacrifice of another cock, I hope she will come hither, this altar being well considered by Æsculapius. She held out her hand, and having received her fee instructed her customers regarding the ritual. A thigh-bone is burnt upon the altar —— Only a thigh-bone? Leto interjected. And after feeling the breast of the bird the pythoness said: You had better leave him with me for my dinner. Why not for our dinner? Leto asked. As you will, the pythoness answered, and she gave Leto a cloth in which to wrap the bleeding bird.
I think we might have given her the cock for her dinner, Biote said. Why? asked Leto, somewhat sharply. For I care but little to eat a bird that hath fed from my hands, Biote replied. Our slaves will have no such misgivings when they snuff him at dinner-time, said Mnasalcas. Whether he be eaten by us or by our slaves, he continued, makes little difference to the cock that is now with Æsculapius — to whom no prayers were offered, the wise woman having committed none to memory. Her formula was the knife, said Kebren. Leto and Biote, as well as Mnasalcas, were certain that a prayer had been omitted, and Kebren, walking a little apart from the others, retired into remembrances of Biote’s visit to him in the middle of the night. He had taken her hand and spoken kind, fraternal words, mayhap not the words she wished to hear; if that were so, she would return to him in the coming night, and perforce he would have to remind her that he was to receive at the end of the month a sum of money for his readings of Homer, and a passage to Cnidus or some other city. In every man’s life there are certain things he cannot do, and he felt that he could not take Biote in his arms, however great the temptation. But it was idle to consider what could never happen; far better that he should give his mind to thinking out words that would not wound her and might inspire her to a long friendship, for more than anything else he wished to remain friends with Otanes, and friends with Otanes he could not be if Biote were hostile to him. The only chance of maintaining that friendship was... The plan he was about to formulate passed out of his mind, and all the evening, whilst listening to flute-playing and the telling of stories, his thoughts were on Biote, and try as he would, he could not convince himself that her fear of witches was very real. It often happens, he said to himself, that those who are brave in the day are timorous by night, and it may have been so with her; even so, how was it
that she should have crept over to my bedside and not gone to Mnasalcas and Leto, in whose charge her father placed her? It was Biote’s voice that interrupted his perplexities, and her manner was so gay and artless and pleasing that he could not believe her to be engaged in any deep deception; all the same he would be glad when the coming night was over. The danger was in the first hours, and lying awake he listened to the silence and the sounds that interrupted the silence: the chirp of a sleepy bird in the branches overhead, the rustle of a hedgehog among dead leaves, the melancholy wail of a hawk far away and the bark of a fox coming nearer. The noises of the night are many, he said to himself, but there are intervals of perfect silence. He waited, and at last a low, living sound came to his ears, and knowing it to be the sweet breathing of a tired girl, he took courage, saying: The long walk through the chestnut-trees hath saved me from a scene that might have ended in a quarrel and obliged me to leave Aulis; and his mind now at ease, he folded his arms, and sleep took him and held him close till the day was young.
When his eyes opened he was alone in the grove, and whilst clipping the faint brown beard that adorned his calm handsome face he remembered that he could discover the truth about Biote in conversation, however careful she might be to disguise herself from him. If a dread begotten of a dream or a half-dream had compelled her to come to his bedside to seek protection from the witches, she would babble it all out, saying she was sorry for having waked him, and laugh at her own fear, but if her fear was make-believe, an excuse to join him in his bed, she would not speak of it at all; and to give her the needed opportunity for an avowal, he invited her to come with him for a long walk in the woods. There is guile in all men, but so little was there in Kebren that he resisted the temptation to introduce the subject of witches, and as she did not speak of them he began, on their way home, to lean towards an acquittal of her love intention. But the next day, when Biote surprised him talking with Leto, and Leto retired quickly, leaving them alone together, he asked himself if his manner towards Biote had been too familiar, and resolved to check it, adopting a formal and distant manner that attracted the attention not only of Leto but of Mnasalcas, and annoyed with himself, he regretted the earthquake that had riven Euboea from the mainland during the reign of Chronos or before it; had this great upheaval not happened he could have walked back to Athens. But Euboea was an island and would remain one. He thought no more of swimming across the strait, and when Biote asked him of what he was thinking he awoke as if from a dream. Leto wondered how Biote had come to care for a man who was always lost in himself, who never even raised his eyes to look at her during a meal, and she decided that Kebren would make a very poor husband for any girl. But Biote must be allowed to choose, and she kept her doubts to herself, till at last they forced words to her tongue and she asked Biote if Kebren was the same broody man in Aulis as he was in Eubœa. He is a little dull, I admit, Biote answered, but he’ll wake up presently. I assure thee, Leto, father thinks that nobody can talk like Kebren; he listens to him almost with reverence. I suppose Kebren doesn’t think us worth talking to, said Leto. I beg thee to believe me, Leto, when I say that his visit to Euboea is most agreeable to him. He said so to me yesterday, and was sorry we were leaving.
Two days later Kebren was down by the Lelantus wondering if his career as a rhapsodist had been filched from him, and so deep was he in despair that he did not hear the oars in the rowlocks from afar, and when they broke upon his ear he awoke, saying: Photius’s boat! I am safe!
CHAPTER VI
BUT THEY WERE barely in midstream when he began to foresee how entangled his life would be in Aulis between Otanes and Biote, questioned by Otanes in front of Biote as to his stay in Euboea. He would answer that the days had passed pleasantly, and turn the talk on to Mnasalcas, his sheep and his shepherdesses (Otanes liked a racy story). But his task would be harder when he was alone with Biote. She would soon perceive that he was choosing his words, and believing she was being thwarted would use her influence with her father against him, and he might be turned out of the house without enough money for his passage to Cnidus. But Otanes would hardly consent to such an injustice, and before Photius had rowed his boat alongside of the wharf Kebren remembered a group of actors talking together in the theatre at Athens. An actor asked: Can one amongst ye say the injury that no woman may forgive? One man said a blow, another an insult, another a money debt, another an infidelity, and the actor answered: To offer herself to a man who refuses her rankles deeper than all these, and not unnaturally, for the refusal is an insult to her womanhood. If Biote should suspect that he preferred his career as a rhapsodist to her, he would be accursed in her eyes.
So thought the young man, certain that he had got at the truth of the story at last, it never occurring to him that Biote had guessed the cause of his silence and his brooding in Euboea, and that it seemed to her natural he should hesitate between her and his career as a rhapsodist. She did not put it to herself in this way but she felt he might ask for a year or two in which to give lectures, saying that when they were over he would return to her. And she listened to his readings with this thought always in her mind, till one afternoon, whilst walking on the seashore, she said she had found a poplar among some high rocks down the coast which reminded her of one mentioned in the Iliad. The poplar by the mere, he answered, like Simôeisius before Ajax struck him in the breast by the right nipple as he was coming on among the foremost fighters. And whilst watching the tide breaking on the rocks Kebren’s words tripped up Biote’s; there was rivalry as to which should remind the other that as is the race of leaves, even such is the race of men; and the emotion of the moment being more than they could bear, a silence fell between them and they was the tide racing into waves, each wave seeming to them to represent a generation. The wave rises and then sinks back into the sea, Kebren said, and we are not even waves, but bubbles on the waves. But the bubble delights in its life on the wave and in the life of its brother bubble, Biote replied, and they walked by the curving shore through rocks and across beaches of white sand till they came to three poplars showing against a grey sky. Presaging rain, Kebren said, and he watched the poplars swaying sorrowful. I have never seen poplars so thin and tall, Biote, and now that the sky is grey and a breeze is about they sway like three sisters complaining of their fate. The gesture of the middle poplar eaves no doubt of their sadness, sadness rather than grief and they lament... For what do they lament, Kebren? I cannot tell thee, Biote. Perhaps, said Biote, because having grown as thin and tall as they are there is nothing more for them to do. Her answer pleased him, and guessing that he was pleased with her she continued to talk about trees, saying that all were sad except flowering trees: And flowering trees are happy only whilst in flower.
How sweetly the birds are singing, Kebren, come over from Africa, resting here before they start on their journey northward. Shall we go into the wood to listen to their prattle, more explicit than the poplars’? He did not answer, and they walked to the end of a piece of embaying land, to stand admiring the great blue wave that came up the strait, breaking almost at their feet in foam. Will she speak or I before the next wave? he asked himself, and whilst another down the strait gathered strength she said: Kebren, is it not strange that we should wander by this shore talking of Homer, forgetful of ourselves? Once on a time it seemed as if we had met for a purpose, and now there is neither purpose nor aim in life, none in mine at least.
Biote, I shall return in a year, and on this selfsame shore —
In a year men’s hearts change, Kebren; four times every year the world changes, and the human heart is part of the world. Which means, Biote, that when I return I shall find that another hath taken my place in thine affection? We change for better or for worse, she answered; if thou returnest it will be to a new Biote, and if I give my hand to thee then I shall give it to a stranger. Hast thou so little faith in thyself? he asked. In Aulis — Even in Aulis there is change, Kebren, and sitting before my tapestry I shall see thee in my thought
s crowned with laurel in the midst of insinuating women whom the laurel entices. Thinkest that I can bear with this for a year? And why should I bear with it? Better that we should stand free of each other, he answered. O man of infirm purpose, still dreaming between two adventures, go to thy work, which is thyself, and take thy chance of me when the work is done. In Cnidus and elsewhere, Biote, if I win a laurel wreath I shall dread the suitors about thy loom — Afraid that I shall not have the courage to unravel the tapestry? Yes, Biote; I am afraid to lose thee. And afraid to retain me, she replied, and they returned towards Aulis with the mournful gait of those who feel their lives to be broken.
The little town of wharves and warehouses came into view, and they turned down the laneway, Biote a little more hopeful than Kebren. It would break her heart to lose him, but she knew that she would not lose him; he would give way in the end. How he would give way she did not know, but she knew that he would give way. And it was in the midst of their trouble that Otanes told them he had thought to find them on the wharf. He spoke to them of a ship about to sail for Ionia laden with images of the Gods, some made of gold and marble and others of ivory and gold. The captain was averse from taking on board certain philosophers, fearing their conversation would be displeasing to the Gods, but I said to him: Thou’rt wrong to prevent philosophers going aboard thy ship, in whose company the Gods themselves delight, and this at a time when thou art trying to turn the Gods to the most advantage. And Otanes continued for some time longer, telling how he had made it plain to the captain that he himself was guilty of an impiety in carrying the statues from port to port, till the silence of the twain roused him out of the pleasure he took in hearing his own words. He stopped, and looking from one to the other he said: As neither hath anything to say for or against my discourse with the captain, it will be well for us to take refuge in Homer; and to awaken Kebren’s interest in the poet he added as they crossed the courtyard: The thundering tread of swift-footed horses strikes on my ear! Why that line more than another? Kebren asked himself, and full of misgivings he began to read in a languid, monotonous voice that satisfied Biote he was suffering on her account. All the same, when the reading was over she could not keep back the words: If Kebren brings the same animated understanding to his readings abroad as he does here, his brow will not be able to bear the weight of the laurel leaves the Cnidians will pile upon it. Otanes answered her that the book Kebren had just finished reading was an exact account of how each hero was slain at Troy: Pages of personal history that — Even Homer is dull sometimes, father. Girl, thou babblest like a child, even as thoughtlessly, and thy conduct in leaving thy seat before our guest hath finished reading is distasteful to me. To me too, father, she replied, returning to her seat. Then I understand thee not at all, Biote; I did not suspect a sneer in thy praise of Kebren’s reading.
