And here so late, she met the adventure of her day.
Sounds of distress brought her quickly to her feet. She hastily wrapped herself in her himation. She peered down the slope and could see the figure of a man moving wildly about among the trees. Now he lifted convulsive hands on high, now spread both arms abroad and groaned. Greek woe never repressed itself. It rather flung out, wind-swept, fiery, real. “But,” thought Theria, “this must be some physical agony.” She remembered her remedies at home, yet what could she do for the man in this wild place?
She started down the hill. Nearer at hand she saw that the man was a slave, rough bearded and clad in an old slave cloak. Her adventure with the cruel woman of the morning came back to her. A slave might hail from any barbaric coast. Wild deeds, wild, unthinkable crimes were committed by slaves. Theria stopped in fear but at that moment the slave saw her. His arms dropped to his sides, he gazed at her wide-eyed, terrible—then suddenly pathetic.
“Forethoughtful One,” he faltered, “hast thou come to punish or to save?”
What did the man mean? The “Forethoughtful One” could be none other than Athena herself. Theria laughed outright.
“Surely you do not think I am the goddess?” she queried.
The mistake was not unnatural—Theria, slender amid the slender trees, the light behind her, and all in the Athena Precinct. However, the man looked a little ashamed.
“Forgive me, Despoina, my lady. I am beside myself, I—you startled me.” He was still wondering at her. “You are a priestess?”
“You can see I am not,” she answered, businesslike. “You are ill. I thought I might help you.”
Again he wondered at her. Then his face changed back to its misery.
“I am not ill, Despoina, not bodily ill. My courage is gone! The gods know how I shall ever pick it up again.”
“What took your courage?”
He began to pace again.
“A slave’s tale; a miserable slave’s tale. Why should you hear it? Oh, Mistress, you can do nothing, nothing.” Yet he burst out with the telling.
“My freedom money. It is gone! Gone, I tell you. My damned master knew all the while where it was hid. He let me work and hope and hoard it. And now when all but two drachmæ are there”—he held out his hand with these last coins—“he came and seized it. The beast! How can the just gods let such a man walk the earth?”
Theria came nearer, interested, absorbed.
“You mean that you earned the money to buy your freedom?”
“Yes, Despoina—to buy it from Apollo.”
He was referring to one of the noblest customs of the Oracle. Both of them knew it well. A slave might sometimes be so fortunate as to get money to buy himself from his master. But the Greek master could seize him again and once caught, the slave had no redress. But Apollo of Delphi would buy slaves. They could come to his temple and pay the money down to the god. The terms of the transaction were engraved on the stones of the temple foundation for all men to see. Then the slave went free, protected by this divine ownership. No former master would dare touch him. Wherever the former slave might go, he was under divine protection, Apollo’s ward.
“How long did it take you to earn the money?” she asked.
“Four years, Mistress. Oh, gods! four long years. I cannot do it again, and, if I did, would not my master seize it as before?”
“How did you earn it?”
“My work is in the pottery, lady—the pottery there below the hill toward Kirrha.” He showed her his hands marred with the clay. “It is I who make the best pictures on the pots.”
“I like those pictures,” spoke Theria. “They are beautiful, those gods and men that you make.”
Tears ran straight down the man’s dirty cheeks. Praise was rare for a slave.
“Do you think so?” he queried. “Do you think so, my lady?”
Theria did not answer. She was thinking.
“My father, now. If you could bring your money to my father, each drachma as you earn it.”
“Do you mean me to begin all over again, my lady? Then I will. If only my master does not take me away from the pottery. He wants me for a body servant. He is always threatening to take me for a body servant!”
“But to be a body servant is easier,” said Theria. Privately she was wondering what sort of a body servant this uncouth man would make.
“I hate to be a body servant,” he said loathingly. “Besides, I would not then know where to turn to earn extra money.”
Suddenly Theria clapped her hands with a cry of delight. “I have it! I have it!” she said. “I can help you myself.”
The man gazed at her as if his faith in her goddesshood had quite returned.
“I have jewels,” she went on, moving her hands in her excited telling. “They are ancestral jewels and were given me at my birth. I am supposed to give them to my first daughter at birth. Well, my first daughter can do without them. They are rich pearls. They are worth more than the price of a slave.”
“Lady, lady! Oh, they would free me at once!”
“Yes, free you at once. But the matter is dangerous. The priests may think you have stolen the jewels. If they do, call for Nikander’s daughter.”
“Yes, blessed one.”
“And when you go to the Precinct ask for Kobon as your priest. The Kobons are angry with us and have never been in our house. Kobon will not recognize the jewels.”
“Yes—yes,” he said as if in a dream.
“But how to get them to you. Mother will not allow me, Father will not—Baltè, no; no slave would dare to do it for me. Besides, I hate to let slaves know anything. They are so apt to tell.”
The man started out of his dream.
“I will not tell, Despoina.”
“You,” she laughed. “No, of course not, you will be hastening off as far as you can go. You will be free.” Then she added quite unintentionally, “Yes, you will be free and I will be in my room again. Shut in—always shut in!”
Of course Theria did not say this to the slave. She said it to herself, because on a sudden she felt weak and discouraged, felt her capture very near. The slave, however, took note of her saying.
“How strange,” he said. “How strange—I never thought——”
“What is strange?” she demanded.
“I never thought, Despoina, that wives and maidens cared to walk abroad. They keep the house and seem all content.”
It was the same comment that the lad Sophocles had made, the very same. It roused her sudden anger and flood of speech.
“Oh, yes. Be content, be content! Even a slave dare mock me with that. And you yourself, what do you want with your freedom? Why aren’t you happy making pots? What is the difference between making pots and spinning wool? What is the difference between obeying a master and obeying a father, brother, uncle, cousin; every man that is your kin? What have I to look forward to? What to do—to do?”
The man fairly trembled before her outburst.
“Despoina! Dear, dear lady,” he kept trying to make her listen. “I—fool that I was not to understand the beautiful one. Despoina, hear me!” Something in the man’s ardent voice frightened Theria. She stumbled to her feet. But the man came nearer.
“Despoina, ah, poor lady, you have been away from home many hours, have you not?”
“How dare you question me?” She walked away. She was dizzy, staggering. The man was following her. What would he do, seize her? Carry her to Nikander’s house for reward? Perhaps do worse than that? “Do not go,” he urged. “Mistress, you are famished. Forgive me, but we slaves know the look.” He snatched from his wallet the rough brown bread, the day’s slave ration. He pushed the bread into her hand.
“I pray you eat it. Not fit for you. Oh, I know that, but if you do not eat you will faint here in the wood.”
She turned to him. Then suddenly she laughed.
“Hungry? Why, of course, I never thought of hunger.”
She sat down, broke the tough bread, and began to eat. The man ran down the hill to the stream and returned with a little cup (one from his pottery) brimming with fresh water. As he offered it he trembled and spilled it awkwardly.
“Forgive me, lady. I am not a house slave.” How breathless he seemed from his short run. “Dear lady,” he added gently as to a child, “do not eat so fast; I will guard. I will let no one come. I have cheese, too, but I was afraid to give you that. I could not eat their cheese at first myself.”
But she took it eagerly. It was atrocious stuff, smelling horribly and perfectly green of colour.
“Isn’t it strange?” she said. “It tastes as good as the daintiest fish. I never was hungry like this before.”
“My lady was never in the forest before,” said the man. “The house breeds no appetite.”
“I have been long without food,” she confided to him now. “I ran away before dawn and I never thought to eat. I walked up into the sanctuary and saw all the gods and temples and golden tripods. Oh, if they take me home and whip me now and put me in the dark, they can never take that away from me.”
“Whip—great Zeus, who would dare do that!”
“No one, no one,” she quickly answered. “Of course, that was only jest.”
But his eyes still held the horror of it as he watched her.
“Do you know,” she said, as she finished the last morsel, “this bread has given me all the rest of my precious day. With my hunger I would have had to go home.”
“May it give you your hours,” said the slave devoutly. “You who are giving me a life of freedom.”
Something in his manner of speech caught her notice. It was well tuned and he used quaint words which she had never heard before.
“You have not always been a slave,” she concluded.
“No, Despoina, that is why it is so hard to be a slave. And when I saw the years ahead once more I cursed the gods. Then you came, and I thought you were Athena come to punish me for the cursing. Even now, dear lady, I would not be amazed if you were to grow suddenly tall and rise upward through the trees.”
He made an eloquent gesture. Then his eyes grew fixed, staring at a place up the hill.
“Who is that?” he whispered sharply. “Do you know them?”
She followed his look.
“Baltè!” she spoke almost with a sob. “And Dryas, my brother.” Then she collected her thoughts and began to talk quickly.
“The jewels! I have not told you how to get them. There is a little street beside Nikander’s house. And a window in the house that side. Come at twilight. I will throw them down to you.”
She had hardly said the last word when the slave disappeared among the bushes. Then she forgot him. Dryas was there with his scorn, Baltè with her tears. She had to face both.