CHAPTER IV
ELEUTHERIA LOOKS OUT OF A WINDOW
Nikander was a tall slender man, a remarkable uniting of sensitiveness and force. Twelve generations of his forbears had been priests of Delphi, statesmen of wide outlook and ministers to the souls of men. Nikander was a resultant type.
He sat down on a stone bench lifting Dryas to his knee, but Theria crept into the hollow of his arm. Her fears took flight like scattered birds. No harm could come to Dryas now that her father was there.
“And what day, think you, is this?” he asked. Birthdays were not so important in those days and the children did not know.
“It is Dryas’s birthday,” he told them.
“Then my birthday, too,” exclaimed Theria, for though she was taller and seemed older than her brother, she was his twin.
“Yes, yours, too.” Quite unconscious of his act, Nikander bent and kissed the little girl. So bending, his face was the mature model for her own.
“And because it is the seventh birthday it is to be the first day of school. Medon will take you, Dryas. He will be pedagogue. And here is your little lyre. Father bought it to-day of the old lyre maker. See what a pretty picture is here beneath the strings. And for you, my daughter, what you have wanted so long.”
He drew from behind the bench the ropes and seat of a swing. “But I wanted a lyre, too,” said Theria with wide, blank eyes.
“A lyre for a little girl! Oh, no, kitten. Besides, did you not ask for a swing?”
“But, oh, Father, it is the lyre I want.”
“Theria must not be envious,” said her father seriously. “That would be a new fault in my little girl.”
But her wide, astonished eyes disturbed him and again he kissed the child before he hurried out.
Dryas with little cluckings of delight plucked at his toy, but Theria stood very still. Since she was to have no lyre, was it also true that she was not to go to school?
She seemed in the presence of a calamity which had been approaching since all the days she had been alive, and now was come. With the vagueness of her seven years, yet very deeply, she knew that not going to school meant the parting of the ways between her and Dryas, the closing away from her of precious things. Yet, strangely enough, in her surface, childish self, she did not believe it at all.
Father had not said she could not go. Besides, she had always got what she wanted if she persisted. She knew from her big brother Lycophron what the school was like—a room or portico up near the Precinct, the master teaching Homer all the day long—wonderful stories which one could not forget, boys playing their lyres merrily then hanging them upon the wall to go out and leap and race in contest in the sunshine. Lycophron had gone to school since the beginning of the world.
Theria did not associate Baltè’s warning with this matter at all.
“I go to school to-day,” she began to say softly to herself. “Then I must hurry.”
With a certain anxiety she crossed the court to Lycophron’s room. Yes, there on the chest were his extra stylus and tablets and hanging on the wall a small lyre which in a temper he had broken.
Theria climbed the chest and got it.
And in possession of these things confidence came to her. She was perfectly sure now that she should go to school. She began to hum briskly to herself. She went back into the court to be near Dryas lest when Medon come he forget her.
Dryas was prancing about, hugging his lyre. He was not slow to taunt her.
“Ai: I’m going to school. You can’t go; you can’t go!”
“I can. Father said I could. I heard him.”
“When did he say it?”
“I don’t know when, but I heard him! ‘Daughter, you are going to school; you are seven years old! Everybody goes to school then.’”
“He didn’t give you the lyre. He gave it to me,” gloried Dryas.
“I’ve a lyre, too, foolish one.” She held it out.
“Ai, what a broken thing, and it’s Lycophron’s. It’s none of yours.”
“If I had a lyre I’d play it, not hug it,” retorted Theria.
Here Medon came into the aula with sandals on. To Theria it was a thunder-clap. She watched him steadily as he crossed to them, then with loving gesture slipped her hand into his.
“But,” said the slave, “my darling is not going to-day. It’s Dryas who must go. Poor Dryas!”
“Oh, no: you didn’t understand,” she reasoned with him. “Father wants me to go.” She pushed back her curls with a nervous little gesture and looked brightly up at him.
Medon dreaded a battle with Theria. The child had a storm-like temper. To be sure it broke seldom, but it was always on some bright day like this and nearly always had to do with going out of the house—a privilege rare for little girls. Most girls did not expect to go out. Theria always expected it, like a boy, and fought for it like a boy, too. Something told him she was going to fight now. He must do his best.
“Medon will buy you a hoop in the market—a hoop, mind you, with bells—if you will be good.”
“I don’t want that.” How tight she held his hand and how black were the childish eyes gazing up at him. “I’ll tell you, Medon, you can give the hoop to Dryas. School will be hard for Dryas. It’s going to be so easy for me.”
“But, my dear little mistress, you cannot go. There are no girls at the school.”
Medon felt the hand tighten sharply in his. The child was looking off at a distance. Then with complete change she slipped her hand out of his.
“Yes, you and Dryas go,” she said.
She ran quickly up the stair to the women’s apartments—no doubt to cry alone, and Medon, seizing his opportunity, fairly fled with his charge from the house.
Medon carried the little boy’s lyre and very peacefully they walked along the road toward the Precinct. They had gone some distance when Medon heard running steps behind him, and, turning, saw to his amazement Theria as if on wings, her black hair streaming behind, her chubby arms clasping a lyre.
“I’m going!” she cried. “I will; I will!”
And then it was that Medon had to carry back along the road a strange wild creature that fought and kicked and bit and clutched at his hair.
The neighbours hearing the cries ran out of their houses and shook their heads at Nikander’s terrible child. Poor Medon was like to drop into the earth for shame. Yet amid all the tumult he kept thinking of a mountain stream which had been dammed back but which one day broke through and rushed away—a mighty flood.
Nikander’s alarmed family—wife, slaves, and all—met them at the door.
“Now for what do the gods punish me?” cried poor Melantho, “that I should have such a child! Look at her eyes. She is beside herself. Baltè, hold her!”
But as Medon set down the little raging tumult old Baltè let her escape. Up the stairs she flew, her voice like a clarion.
“Leave her be, dear mistress,” pleaded wise old Baltè. “Remember, she is a twin child and it does grieve her sore to be separate from her twin.”
In the farthest room of the house Theria found refuge and slammed the door. Here she threw herself face downward and beat the floor with her fists; yes, and kicked, too, as her childish grief surged to and fro within her. Her strength spent itself at last and she fell to sobbing, suffering now as she had not done amid the curious enjoyment of loud woe.
Her thoughts now were not of the school nor of Dryas, but of her father, the strange horror that her father should have done this and not seem to care. Always before this had he mended hurts, not made them. Facing this mystery her dearest faith tottered. Yet after a while even this dread grew faint. Thoughts faded into fancies. Then she fell asleep.
She must have slept a long while for she awoke strangely quiet. Her refuge place was a storeroom. Chests stood about full of things used only at festivals. There were also great earthen jars of grain and wine.
The room was stone floored, stone walled, but its far end was hewn into the native rock. Nikander’s house, standing on a side hill, was two storied in front but here at the back melted to the roof in the hillside. This room had a little low window—the only other window in the house besides that in Nikander’s room.
To this window the little girl crept, and leaned her two elbows on the ledge, her chin in her hands. The window showed her only the side lane which led up between the houses to lose itself in the hill above. This lane was wider than most of the lanes in Delphi, for it had been chosen by one of the mountain streams for a bed, and now in the springtime the foaming waters dashed downward between the house walls beside the footpath.
There was no sound in the lane save the happy speaking of the waters. An amber light lay over all as if the sun were setting, and in this rich light everything stood distinct: ferns, rocks, and the tiny flowers on the mossy roof of Cousin Phaino’s house across the lane. Every little wave as it lifted in the stream turned golden and as it dived under again seemed to peep at Theria and laugh. Presently a child came down from the upper hills into the lane. What could so small a child have been doing up there alone in that wilderness of crags? But what a lovely child he was, what brave, erect little shoulders and rounded legs and what a mischievous, dream-haunted face! How fearlessly he leaped along! He was only a baby. Oh, why should he not leap? Wings were on his heels and two golden wings in his cap—Hermes, and no other!
To Theria it was not strange that Hermes should thus stroll down Nikander’s lane. Not strange, but it made her very glad. Now the dear Hermes child paused by the stream, laid his tortoise lyre to his arm, and began to play. Theria had never heard such music. It was clear like the amber light and filled her with a joy that was to glisten softly down all her years. Yet it was very faint, that music. She had to strain her ears to hear.
Presently under its rhythm the stream grew more turbulent. The waves dashed higher and turned to foaming white. And suddenly from each white wave where it tossed in swift succession there swam out into the air nymphs white as the foam, slender as flowers, immortally fair.
Theria knew it was right for them to come. Nymphs were always the nursemaids of infant gods. Little Hermes must not wander alone, god though he be. How delicately they kissed him, bending over him, then rising, circling up and away as if carried by the breeze. Hermes was safe now no matter how rough the way.
Suddenly a step sounded in the lane, “clump clump,” coming nearer.
The nymphs and Hermes stopped still, listing as hares do in the path. Then instantly, thus poised, they vanished.
“Lentils—good lentils, who’ll buy?” came the call of old Labba, the market woman, so tired with her day’s work, tramping home to her poor scraggy farm in the hills.
Theria watched her. Poor Labba! She could not see the gods. Labba climbed the hill and was lost to view. Theria looked again.
Yes—at once, as though bursting out of invisible pods, they came again, and with them the music so elfin clear. The nymphs formed a circle and danced, with feet which did not touch the rocks, around their baby god. Sometimes they circled above the stream, sometimes swept near under Theria’s very window. So they danced and danced.
Baltè, searching anxiously through the house for her nurseling, found her at length in the far shadowy room. She was sitting by the window, her head resting on the window ledge over which was strewn loose her night-dark hair.
She was sound asleep.
“An’ I only wish,” said Baltè afterward to Medon, “you could ’a’ seen the smile on her face. You wouldn’t ’a’ thought this very mornin’ she was like a whole crew o’ mænads!”