Rachel and the Seven Wonders by Netta Syrett - HTML preview

SEVENTH WONDER
 THE STATUE OF JUPITER OLYMPUS

Both the children were back again in London a few days later, sadly missing the sea and the freedom of St. Mary’s Bay, of course, but consoled by the knowledge that Mr. Sheston had also come back to town.

One afternoon, soon after their return, Rachel met Diana with a radiant face.

“Dad and Mother are coming back,” she exclaimed joyfully. “They’re on their way now. And Mother is ever so much better, Dad says. And this day week I shall see them, and go home with them. Isn’t it perfectly lovely?” But there were sudden tears in Diana’s eyes, and, in the midst of her excited talk, Rachel paused. “You’re to come and stay with me, of course,” she declared hastily. “Do you think I should be so glad if I had to say good-bye to you? Mother says she’s writing to your mother to ask her to let you stay for a month. And she will, won’t she?”

This announcement had the effect of making Diana’s face almost as joyful as Rachel’s, and during their walk that afternoon their chattering tongues never ceased. There was so much to talk about.

When Rachel had described all the delights of her country home, the farm, the garden, the river with its punt, the woods in which they could build huts of branches—the conversation turned, as usual, upon the “adventures” in which Mr. Sheston was concerned.

“There’s still another one to come, you know,” Rachel presently declared. “At least I expect so. I’ve been here six weeks now, and every seventh day it’s—happened. And there’ll be another seventh day on Wednesday.”

“I do wonder what it will be this time, don’t you?” said Diana. “It’s so exciting not knowing where it will begin. Perhaps in the British Museum again. I rather hope it will be there. It’s so jolly to go with ‘him’ just as other children go with grown-up people to the Museum, and yet to know all the time that something frightfully interesting is coming.”

“Yes, that’s just what I feel is so jolly about it,” Rachel agreed. “You go through all those rooms and you see statues and tombs and stones and things, and they all look dead, and you can’t believe the people who saw them thousands of years ago were just as much alive as we are now. Every time I go to the Museum I feel like that at first. Don’t you? And then it happens, you know. Quite suddenly. And everything that looked all dull and dead comes to be real. I hope it will begin in the Museum this time.”

It did. But before it happened, and as a last treat for her niece, Aunt Hester took both children to the circus at Olympia.

“What is Olympia?” asked Diana, suddenly, when she and Rachel, full of anticipation, were walking with Aunt Hester to the omnibus.

“It’s where the circus is held,” said Aunt Hester. “It’s a good long ride, so we must make haste.”

“But I mean what is it?” persisted Diana.

“Oh, it’s a great building. Big enough for all sorts of entertainments, as well as the circus, to go on inside it.”

“Why is it called Olympia?” asked Rachel. “It’s such a funny name for a place where there’s a circus.”

“You must ask Mr. Sheston,” returned Aunt Hester, vaguely. “He’ll tell you why, better than I can. By the way, he’s going to take you both to the Museum to-morrow. I had a note from him this morning. Come along,” she exclaimed, hurriedly, as they turned a corner, “there’s the omnibus just starting. We must run for it.”

Seated opposite to one another in the omnibus when rather breathlessly they had settled down, Rachel and Diana exchanged meaning glances.

“It is going to begin there, you see,” whispered Rachel at the earliest opportunity, and Diana agreed with a nod and smile of secret delight.

They enjoyed the circus immensely, but beautiful as the horses were, and much as they admired them, both children thought of another and still more wonderful horse than any that appeared in the ring.

“But, then, Bucephalus was the loveliest and cleverest thing in the world,” observed Diana, in a low voice, after Rachel had murmured his name. “And I’m sure he would hate to do tricks in a circus. He was a war horse.”

“And used to real battles,” agreed Rachel, in an answering whisper.

“Well,” said Mr. Sheston next day, when Miss Moore had left both the children with him at the entrance to the Museum. “Well, how did you like the circus at Olympia yesterday?”

“Oh, it was lovely!” they exclaimed together.

“Aunt Hester said we were to ask you why it’s called Olympia,” put in Rachel, as they began to walk slowly through a statue-lined room that had become familiar.

“We may find the answer this afternoon,” answered the old gentleman, turning into a room that Rachel knew already. It was the room containing the statues of the headless women clothed in beautiful drapery.

“These are Greek statues, aren’t they?” she began, pointing to the group in the middle of the room. “They were on the outside of a temple once, weren’t they? I forget what it was called.”

“The Parthenon in Athens,” Mr. Sheston told her. “There’s a model showing the temple as it stood in ancient days, over there in that glass case. We’ll go and examine it in a minute. But first look up and see those young men riding on horseback.”

He pointed to a frieze in marble which ran the length of the walls and represented a procession of youths mounted upon beautiful horses.

“Now let us have a look at this model which shows part of Athens as it appeared two thousand years or so ago,” he went on, after a moment. The children followed him to a stand upon which, modelled in plaster, was a rocky hill with various buildings like fair-sized toys scattered over its slope. The names of these buildings were written below them, on the white plaster hill, and Diana had just exclaimed, “Here’s the Parthenon!” when a young voice, which neither of the children recognised, but which sounded close at hand, said:

“Seven times with closed eyes shall you bow.”

“Diana!” cried Rachel, a few seconds later, “It’s Athens. Real Athens, you know!”

There was no doubt about its reality, for they felt the warmth of the sun, saw the overarching blue sky, and gazed with wonder and delight upon a beautiful scene.

A hill-side stretched before them, no longer of plaster, but a real hill-side, scattered over with marvellous buildings in white marble, with groves of trees, and stretches of gardens between them.

“Look! Look!” exclaimed Diana, recognising at least one of the buildings. “That’s the Parthenon. There are the great beautiful women up in that pointed place above the columns.”

“And they’re not broken!” cried Rachel, excitedly. “They’re quite perfect. Look at their faces, and their arms. They had no faces and no arms the last time we saw them.”

“And there’s the procession of boys on horseback!” cried Diana, pointing to the frieze....

“Will it please you to come with me, O maidens?” enquired a voice, so near that both the children started before they turned round.

Behind them stood a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve years old. He was dressed in a shirt or tunic of white wool, without sleeves, and over it a white purple-bordered cloak wrapped about him in such a way as to leave his right arm and shoulder free. His legs were bare, but on his feet were sandals fastened with slender cords of leather strapped about his ankles.

His head was covered only by its thick crop of red-gold hair which curled closely about his head, and was one of his many beauties. For he was an exceedingly handsome boy—slim, yet strongly built. He held his head and body well, and all his movements were quick and graceful.

“Who are you?” stammered Rachel, the first to recover from surprise.

“My name is Agis,” said the boy. “I am commanded by Sheshà, greatest of magicians, to be your guide through our city of Athens. Later, I understand, he himself will conduct you to the Olympian games.”

Again, as it had so often happened before, though the language spoken by the boy was not her own, Rachel understood him perfectly.

“I suppose it’s Greek he’s talking,” she thought hurriedly before she began to ask questions.

“That’s the Parthenon, isn’t it?” she asked, pointing to the gleaming temple. “We’ve seen those statues up there before. At least, we’ve seen——” She was going to say “bits of them,” but Diana pulled her sleeve, and she stopped just in time to remember that it was no use trying to explain to a boy who lived thousands of years ago, all about the British Museum!

“Will you tell us what god is worshipped here?” put in Diana, politely.

“No god, but a goddess, the great Pallas Athene,” returned the boy, glancing at her with his bright eyes.

“She’s the same as Minerva, you know,” whispered Diana quickly, having learnt this from her father.

“Within,” the boy went on, “stands the statue of the goddess made by Phidias, the wondrous sculptor.”

“Is he alive now?” enquired Rachel.

Agis laughed. “Nay. He has been dead two hundred years and more. You must have come from a very far country, O maidens, to be so ignorant!”

“We have,” said Rachel, smiling in her turn. If only the boy could have known. It was only two hundred years for him since the sculptor Phidias died, while for her and for Diana it was considerably more than two thousand years. “We don’t know anything about your country,” she continued, “so will you please explain everything.”

“That would take me far too long, because I must soon return to the gymnasium, whither you may accompany me. I have only brought you here for a moment that you may glance at the most famous of our temples and public buildings. The city itself lies down yonder.” He pointed to a sea of white flat-roofed houses below.

“What is that place, high up on the hill?” asked Diana.

“The citadel—our fort of defence which we call the Acropolis. Beneath it, as you see, and under its protection, as it were, are the other buildings, of which the most precious is the Parthenon.”

“Can’t we go in, and look at the statue of the goddess?” begged Rachel.

Agis shook his curly head.

“Time is lacking. But it may be that, some days hence, you will see another, and perhaps even more famous statue, carved also by Phidias. It stands in the temple of Zeus at Olympia.”

The children exchanged quick glances at the mention of the word.

“What is Olympia?” asked Diana, and as she put the question she suddenly remembered asking it before. Yesterday, was it?... It seemed ages and ages ago, or like something in a dream. She and Rachel had been then on their way to the circus at Olympia, and she had asked Aunt Hester——

Her bewildering thoughts were interrupted by a long shrill whistle from Agis. It was so like the sort of whistle her brother Jack gave when he was teasing her, that Rachel laughed. After all, Agis was very much like an ordinary schoolboy, even though he did talk in what she called “an old-fashioned long-ago” style.

“You know not Olympia, maidens? What then have you to live for, if you know not the Olympic games?”

“We really don’t know anything about them,” said Rachel, apologetically. “You see we live in a different country, and—well, in a different time.”

She couldn’t help adding this, in her desire to defend herself from the charge of ignorance, but the boy took no notice of the last remark.

“Come with me, and by degrees it may be I shall enlighten you,” he said, still in a mocking voice.

He turned quickly, and Rachel and Diana, after one backward glance at the snow-white temple adorned with its perfect sculpture, followed him meekly down the hill. In a few moments they found themselves threading their way through the narrow streets of the city of Athens. These streets were bounded on either side by blank walls, broken here and there by a door.

“But where are the houses?” enquired Diana presently.

“These doors lead to our houses,” returned the boy, tapping one of them as he passed.

“There aren’t any windows!” objected Rachel.

“Would you have windows upon the street?” said Agis. “An idea comic indeed, O maidens!”

The children were too occupied with the strangeness of everything around them to reply to this. Every now and then they emerged from narrow roads between walls into a great square, and here the surrounding buildings were magnificent. There were long colonnades where people, dressed more or less in the same fashion as Agis, lounged or walked, and often in the midst of the square they saw beautiful statues.

“Look!” said Diana presently, pointing to a garland of leaves hung upon the knocker of a door. “Why is that wreath put there?” They had turned into another narrow street by this time.

“A new-born child is in the house without doubt,” returned Agis carelessly. “A boy.”

“How do you know?” asked Rachel.

“If it had been a girl, there would be a wreath of wool, instead of olive leaves. You may see such a one over there,” replied Agis, nodding in the direction of another door further on, where a twisted loop of violet wool hung from a knocker.

The children were much interested.

“It’s awfully nice to know like that about the babies,” declared Diana.... “Where are we going, Agis? What is this place?” she added curiously, as the boy ran on in front of them up a broad flight of steps leading to an imposing building.

“This is the gymnasium, and unless we hasten, I shall be late, and my instructor will be angered.” Agis looked over his shoulder to say this. “Follow me, and pay no heed to anyone, for no one will pay heed to you. Sheshà has put you under my guidance—I know not why. But I know that, except to me, you are invisible. Go boldly into yonder courtyard and watch. I must first leave my garments in the corridor.” He ran quickly down a passage to the right, and the children, full of wonder, walked on into a sunny square, enclosed by high walls, where little boys were going through all sorts of exercises.

“Oh, don’t they look pretty without their clothes!” was Diana’s first exclamation. For all the boys were naked, and as they ran and leapt, and the sunshine fell upon their little white bodies, they did indeed look beautiful.

“He said it was a gymnasium,” said Rachel. “But there aren’t any rings and poles and things, like there are in our gymnasiums. I suppose this was the first sort of gymnasium, and ours are named after it?” she went on suddenly, as the idea struck her.

“There’s Agis!” cried Diana, as the now naked boy appeared. “Doesn’t he look like a statue come to life? Oh, look, Rachel! What is he going to do? That man—I suppose he’s the master?—is rubbing him all over with something. It’s oil, isn’t it? and those other boys are being rubbed with it too.”

“It’s to make them move their bodies easily, I expect,” said Rachel. “You know how oil makes stiff things like rusty locks quite smooth and easy. I suppose it’s the same with people’s joints.”

“Now they’re throwing sand over one another!” Diana exclaimed. “What’s that for, I wonder? Oh! they’re going to wrestle. Agis and that dark boy together. Do you see?”

“That’s why they put sand on themselves then,” suggested Rachel. “They’d be too slippery to hold one another without. Oh, do look! Isn’t it jolly to see them? Agis is winning! I’m sure he’s winning.”

With breathless interest the children watched the boys as they turned and twisted—all their movements swift and graceful as the movements of beautiful wild forest animals. After the wrestling they saw several races between companies of boys, and then looked on at exercises in throwing a round object something like a quoit made in lead.

It was all wonderful to see. To sit in the sunshine, to hear the voices and laughter of the boys, to watch their graceful movements, and yet to know that the scene before them was really far away—back two thousand years and more into the Past, indeed, was a strange-enough experience. Every now and then, when they realised this, it made both of the children very quiet, and even a little sad.

They forgot this impression however when, at last, the training over, Agis beckoned to them to follow him out of the gymnasium.

In a few moments he was dressed again, and as the children walked on either side of him, through squares and streets, they kept up a fire of eager questions.

“This is the last day of our training,” explained Agis. “To-morrow we start on our journey, and in three days begin the great games in Olympia. May the gods grant me patience to live till then!” he went on excitedly.

“But you haven’t yet told us what Olympia is,” urged Diana.

“Strange that you are ignorant of the Olympic Games which are renowned throughout the world,” sighed Agis. “Yet do I remember that Sheshà bade me have patience to tell you everything.

“Know then, as all the world but you, O maidens, are aware, that every five years, at Olympia, which is in a part of Greece called Elis, games are held at which it is the highest honour in the world to compete. For the four years between the great year of the games, all youths who are Grecian by birth are trained at schools called gymnasia—one of which you have lately beheld.

“Towards the end of the fourth year, in every part of our country, those who have best acquitted themselves in the training are chosen to go to Olympia and contend for the prizes.”

“Then you are chosen,” said Rachel joyfully.

“I to my great content am to run in the first race, and my elder brother, Phidolas, is also among the athletes. He is to compete in the horse race, for he is a skilled rider, and has the most perfect mare that was ever bred,” he added enthusiastically. “Her name is Aura, and presently, if it please you, we will see her.”

“Oh, we love horses!” exclaimed Diana. “Do tell us some more about the games. Who began them? How long have they been going on?”

“For a thousand years and more. Zeus, father of all the gods, first commanded them to take place, to celebrate his victory over the giants who, before him, ruled the world. Since then, they have been held, as I have already said, every four years, for the honour and glory of heroes.”

“Zeus is the same as Jupiter, I think,” whispered Diana to Rachel. “Yes. I remember. Father told me so.”

By this time Agis had stopped at one of the doors set in the blank wall of a narrow street, and he lifted and let fall the knocker with a resounding clang.

“This is my home. I must set some repast before you, for indeed you must need it, O strange and ignorant maidens,” he added, with his teasing schoolboy smile.

The door was opened at the moment by an old man whom the children at once guessed to be a servant.

“Or a slave, I expect,” said Rachel, as Agis hurried on in front. “They had slaves in Greece, didn’t they?”

“Now we shall see the inside of a Greek house as it was thousands of years ago,” returned Diana eagerly.... “Isn’t this a splendid adventure?”

They found themselves in a passage which led into a square courtyard roofed by the blue sky. A colonnade ran the length of the four sides of this courtyard, and from it on the side away from the open space, they saw various rooms. Agis pushed back a door, and called to the children to follow him.

“It is past noon,” he said, “and our meal is already served. Enter and eat with us.”

Full of curiosity, Rachel and Diana followed the boy into a room whose walls were covered with large black panels upon which were painted figures in brilliant colours. Surrounding each panel there was a rich border of painted flowers. In the midst of the room, placed on trestles, was a table, at which the men of the family were already seated. The father, a middle-aged man, dressed very much in the same fashion as Agis, except that he wore a saffron-coloured instead of a white cloak, looked up and smiled as the boy entered. But he took no notice of the two little girls, and they felt quite sure he neither saw nor heard them.

Seated near to him was a very handsome young man who looked about nineteen or twenty. Except that his curly hair was dark and his eyes brown, instead of grey, he was so like Agis that the children knew he must be the brother Phidolas, of whom he had spoken.

Agis swung himself into his place at the table, which was spread with dishes containing olives, figs, a sort of cream cheese, and flasks of wine, and passed some of these things to his invisible guests.

“Phidolas and I are, as a matter of course, in training for the games,” he said. “Therefore we must eat only of such diet as this. But it may be that simple food pleases you? Eat and drink, and fear no questions from my father and brother. The magic of Sheshà protects you, and they are ignorant of your presence.”

Rachel and Diana were too interested to care much for food, though the ripe figs they tasted were delicious. They cast quick glances about a room so strange to them, and noticed that it contained scarcely any furniture. Except for the simple trestle table, and the chairs round it which were of a beautiful shape and had curved arms, there were only two tripods, each holding an elegant vase, placed in corners against the walls. The door opened upon the colonnade, and beyond it they saw the courtyard with its roof of wonderful blue sky.

“To-morrow at this hour we shall be upon the journey!” exclaimed Agis, addressing his brother. “And at this hour three days hence thou wilt without doubt be in the midst of the race, Phidolas!”

“The gods grant thee victory, my sons,” said the father gravely. “I pray to them for their favour and protection.”

Before long the three were in animated talk about the games, and the children listened eagerly to discussions as to which of the candidates from Athens had the best chances of victory.

“All goes well with thy mare, I trust?” asked Agis, presently, turning to his brother.

“With Aura all is well,” returned Phidolas cheerfully. “Let us now go to her stable and see that she is fed.”

The boys rose, and at the moment two slaves entered, who, taking the dishes from the table, removed the board and the trestles, thus in less than two minutes leaving the room practically empty.

“Our dinners take much longer to clear,” murmured Rachel. She looked at Agis. “Haven’t you any mother? Or any sisters?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the boy. “My mother lives, and I have two sisters. But they are not with us, of course.”

“Why not?” demanded Diana.

Agis stared. “Always I forget you are strangers!” he declared, laughing. “They are in the women’s part of the house, where they live. They do not pass their time with us. In our country such is not the custom. Look yonder!” He took them out into the courtyard and pointed to where, through a passage, they saw another open space surrounded by a colonnade.

“That is the women’s quarter,” he explained, carelessly. “There my mother and sisters live and do their work.”

“What sort of work?” asked Rachel.

Agis shrugged his shoulders. “The usual work of women. They and the female slaves spin wool for our garments and cook our meals and prepare medicines and cordials in case of illness.... But come, follow me, and you shall behold Aura, who is well worthy of your regard.”

“I shouldn’t like to have been a Greek girl in Athens long ago, would you?” whispered Rachel to Diana. “It must have been horribly dull!”

“I wonder what Agis thinks of us,” chuckled Diana. “He’s never met girls like us before. You can see that. Sheshà seems to be able to do anything he likes in any country. No wonder everyone calls him ‘greatest of magicians.’”

They were following Agis and Phidolas all this time, and presently through a door that led from the covered colonnade came to a yard, in which stood a stable built of rough stones. Aura, the mare of which they had heard so much, was looking over its low door, and, at the sight of her, both children cried out in delight.

“She’s almost prettier than Bucephalus,” Rachel declared. “Look at her lovely brown satin coat, and her sweet beautiful eyes!”

“And doesn’t she simply love Phidolas?” exclaimed Diana. “Look at her now.” The beautiful creature was rubbing her head against the young man’s shoulder while he talked to her, as though she were a human being.

“Thou wilt win me the race, is it not so, my lovely one?” he murmured in her ear, while Agis, after patting her shining neck, went to fetch a handful of corn.

“Oh, Rachel, if only we could go to Olympia and see the games!” sighed Diana. “But you heard what Agis said. The journey will take about three days, so of course we couldn’t——”

She broke off in the midst of the sentence to rub her eyes. Rachel was rubbing hers also.

“Where are we?” she began incoherently, gazing about her.

“We were looking at Aura—and now—oh, Rachel, I do believe it’s Olympia!” the last words were uttered with a gasp of excitement.

“It is. I’m sure it is,” Rachel agreed.

“Then we must have passed over three days in just that second while we stood by the stable. How could we possibly have done that?”

“Sheshà says Time is a magic thing,” returned Rachel, dreamily. “And it isn’t, anyhow, more wonderful than all the other things that have happened.... Just see how lovely everything looks, Diana. Don’t let’s bother about how we got here.”

“The sun is just going to rise, isn’t it?” whispered Diana, still bewildered and rather awed by the suddenness of this change of scene.

They were standing on a rocky spur of mountain looking down upon a huge circular space, enclosed by tier above tier of empty seats.

On the left, through a gap in the hills, they saw the calm blue sea, stretching away to where above the horizon the sun, like a shield of fire, was just rising. In front of them, and overshadowing part of the enclosed space (which at once reminded the children of a huge circus ring) there lay a thick wood.

Everything was very still. Not a sound broke the silence, and there was something in the appearance of the vast empty ring with the empty seats about it, and the mountains and the sea as background, which for a moment was rather terrifying.

Diana drew closer to Rachel.

“I wish someone would come,” she murmured.

It was just then that a well-known voice made the children turn with joyful relief to see Sheshà. They knew him at once, though he was dressed in the Grecian costume to which they were now growing accustomed.

“Oh, we’re so glad you’ve come!” sighed Rachel. “It was getting lonely here. This is Olympia, isn’t it? But where is Agis?”

“And Phidolas?” put in Diana.

“This is Olympia, on the western shores of Greece. Here, when the sun has fully risen on this the first day of the games, will be held those contests renowned throughout the world. From every part of Greece the competitors have already arrived, Agis and Phidolas among them. The youths are lodged in yonder town; and in all the villages near, other athletes, as they are called, have found lodging. Ere long they will begin to assemble.”

“And you will tell us all about it!” exclaimed Diana. “Better than Agis, because you know who we are, and he can’t understand—lots of things. But he’s awfully nice,” she added hastily.

THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Sheshà smiled.

“Come with me, and, before the games begin, I will show you what I can. First shall you see the temple which encloses one of the Wonders of the World.”

“One of the Seven Wonders?” asked Rachel.

“One of the Seven Wonders,” repeated Sheshà.

In another second, and without knowing how they reached it, the children found themselves standing near a temple in front of which stretched the wood they had seen from the mountain side.

“This is the famous temple of Zeus or—to give him the name more familiar to your ears—of Jupiter Olympius. He it was who, according to the Greeks, first commanded these games—the Olympic Games—to be held. Later you shall behold the great statue it contains. For the moment let us wander a little through this wood, sacred to Jupiter.”