CHAPTER XVII
A YOUTH UNDER THE WINDOW
One evening she had sat there until the violet twilight gathered and the stream down in the lane ran uproarious among the damp mists. Presently she heard footsteps and looking down saw emerge from the hill a youth, a beautiful lithe fellow, walking with that swift grace that youth is heir to. He looked directly to her window and threw out both arms as if in surprise and greeting.
Theria retired at once. She was quick enough for adventure, but not this sort of adventure. She had no taste for romantic secrecies. But the youth stopped under her window.
“Lady,” he called, low but intensely. “For love of the gods do not go away! I have not come to harm you.”
Something in his tone—earnestness, a tragic need—brought her back to the window. There he was standing with upturned face, beautiful in the twilight. But now having her in sight he did not speak. He only lifted up his hands toward her with an energy as though he would spring upward.
Could this be her cousin Agis or Caramanor, one of those with whom she had played as a child? Was he bringing her news of her father? He seemed to have come with purpose.
“What news have you, Cousin?” she asked anxiously.
“The news that I see your face—your face!” answered the astonishing fellow. “Oh, all my happiness harks back to you. All my freedom to be a man is of your making. Do not wonder that I thank you—that I must see you and speak my thanks to your face. Every breath waking and sleeping I thank you.”
“But who are you?” asked Theria, amazed. “Are you mad? You have nothing to thank me for.”
He was the more delighted.
“Ahai, my lady! you do not recognize me. Nay, forget the one you saw before. You with your jewels have made me a new man.”
Then Theria’s mind leaped back over the two weeks and she guessed.
“But, love of Leto, you cannot be that slave!”
“No, no; I am not he, I am free!”
“I don’t believe you are that slave. You have no look of him. You are straight. You are young.”
“I had almost forgotten I was young. I had kept that disguise so long. And how I hated it—the dirt, the miserable matted beard, the stooping. It took me days to stand straight again.”
“Was it not bad enough to be a slave without making yourself like that?” said Theria disgustedly.
“Dear maid, I had to keep so. They would certainly have sold me into Persia. There is great price in the East for beautiful men.”
He said this frankly of himself as a matter of course. Indeed there was something startling in his beauty—an ethereal quality, though he was manly too, but now so full of delight that he seemed like a child. He began hurriedly to tell her of himself.
“Dear lady, I was not born a slave. You will believe that. I was taken at sea by pirates—the whole ship seized. They put us below in the dark hold of their ship and fed us on nuts. That first night I blacked my face with the nut-hulls. I exchanged garments with the meanest man among us. I——”
“But why?” asked Theria.
“I had heard the sea-robbers upon deck above talking of me—and how they would sell me to the Persian Court.” A horror crossed the youth’s sensitive face. “Lady,” he said, “the Persians would have shamed me and made me worse than slave. I would do anything to escape that. In the morning, when the pirates came down looking for me, they thought their beautiful youth had jumped overboard. Stupid Phœnicians.”
This Odyssey was holding Theria fascinated. She forgot all the proprieties. She forgot that the youth might be love-making. Her mind had moved so many days in a doomed circle that now it spread wings of new life.
“But you got home again. How ever did you manage that?” she questioned.
“For long I was a galley slave. But one day, when the ship stopped at Corinth, I won the captain’s attention and told him of my skill in making gods of stone. Then he sold me to an image maker, and the image maker again to the owner of the pottery here. Oh, those days at the pottery! Those endless days! The dirt, the sweat, the low talk, the beatings if work was not swift enough. For I was not a swift worker. I had to make even those poor slight drawings as beautiful as I could. My only life was in them. I would dream over them. Then the overseer would beat me. But those days are over. Think of it, lady. Can you think how happy I am being away from that?”
“Great Hermes, yes! And then you went up the Precinct with my jewels?”
“Yes, blessed one. The next morning after you gave me them the good god freed me. I came down out of the Precinct gate knowing that I was free. I went straight to Argos. I think I sang all the way. Argos is my home.”
His face saddened unexpectedly. “Dear lady, I had been long away. I found that my father was dead and also my lady-mother, for grief at losing me—and—and I found something worse than that—even than that. Great Hera!” he lowered his voice. “Argos had Medized. My father’s dearest friend confessed it to me. The Argives say they are bargaining for the headship of the All-Greek army. They are really doing nothing of the kind. They have Medized. They have made a real compact with Persia—nothing less! Lady, I had lived so long in dread of Persian slavery and there at home to meet it again! But I will not meet it,” he cried with sudden energy. “I will not! So I have come back here to Delphi. But I loved Argos so dearly!”
“Of course you did. Your home! Dreadful! Argos Medized!” Theria hardly know that she spoke.
“I’ll fight the Persians here. Here in Delphi. You will surely need every man you can get. I shall become a Delphian. I have a little fortune, lady,” he added, very businesslike. “My father’s good friend saved it for me. I can buy citizenship in Delphi.”
Then suddenly the moral of the tale was out.
“And, lady, with my fortune and my citizenship, I shall ask your father for your hand in marriage. But not against your will. I will not enslave you who have made me free. Oh, dearest lady, love me, love me, love me!” he hurried on. “Cannot you see what the Cyprian has done to me toward you?”
Theria rose from the window as though the youth had struck her.
“How dare you, how dare you?” She gasped. “Words not meet for a maid to hear.”
“Lady,” he called so loud that she came back to her window for very caution. “Hush, hush,” she whispered. “Will you disgrace me?”
“No, no; lady, I pray for you, I bless you to the immortal gods.” He beat his palm against the house wall for emphasis. “Can you stop the stream of Castaly flowing down from the cliffs?” he questioned passionately. “No more can you stop the stream of my love. It will refresh and bless you whether you will or no. Ah, what I would do for you, dear child, if I only might.”
He tossed With a skilful fling a bunch of fresh ferns into her window. Then he was gone.
If the stream of Castaly had indeed fallen on Theria’s head she could hardly have been more shocked. She stood in the middle of the room angered into tears, hurt, strangely frightened. How dared the man return her kindness in this fashion? When a man wanted a friend he took a man, creature of his own mental stature, not a girl.
Well did Theria know that love-making was disgraceful and not for high-born maids. Pure girls dreamed of marriage, of course, but not of love. Theria had dreamed of neither. She picked up the scattered ferns and tossed them out of the window. Their delicate scent of the wild wood met, her as she did so. Suddenly she longed for her mother’s touch and voice, even her scolding voice. She hurried out of the room.
But as she went to sleep that night she remembered only that Argos had Medized.