Theria’s first thought was to deal with Lycophron. That afternoon she met him in the outer aula. He questioned her first.
“Sis, did you speak with Father?”
“Yes, and oh, Lycophron, Father is right about the oracles. You haven’t quite understood. He explained——”
“Shu!” he interrupted. “I might have known it would turn out that way. You take Father for a god.”
“Don’t talk that way, Lycophron. You know yourself how wise he is. You know how the priests have always looked up to him.”
“Do they? Now? In this crisis?” he demanded.
“No, but that is the more reason we should stand by him. We should think and act with him. Lycophron”—she caught the corner of his himation, twisting it in her fingers—“you could really go into the Council yourself if you wished. You are old enough. Your vote would help his.”
“But I wouldn’t vote his way, Puss.”
“Do talk with Father,” she pleaded. “He will make you understand. He talked of it with me” (she said it proudly). “How much rather would he talk with you. He would make it all clear.”
“Now, Sis, it’s you that are butting into a wall. Father and I don’t agree in these matters. You’re a smart little girl, but don’t try to meddle in things too big for you. By the way, when are you to be betrothed?”
She paled quickly and Lycophron laughed. Theria’s reluctance to marriage was a curious streak of idiocy in this quick-witted sister of his. Lycophron thought it comic.
“Great Hermes, what a face you make!”
“Father hasn’t said anything about betrothal, has he?” she queried.
“Well, I won’t say whether he has or not,” he teased, “but I shall remind him. I met Theron the other day, ‘When am I going to get my beautiful wife?’ says he.”
“Oh, Lycophron, please, please!” she begged, all in a tremble. “Don’t remind Father, do not tell him what that man——”
“Why, Sis, you little fool, a betrothal is a fine festival. And you would be coming right down among the men. It would be the merriest time you ever had in your life—and you the centre of it all.”
“Who would want a merry time,” she retorted, “when the Persian is coming to tear us to pieces?”
“No; don’t you be scared to death like Dryas.”
“You know I am not scared!” she said so indignantly that Lycophron patted her shoulder approvingly.
“There, there, Sis, I won’t remind Father. But, honestly, I do think it is a shame that he forgets to betroth you just because he is so busy in the Council.”
“I’m glad he forgets,” she said vehemently. “I’m glad he forgets.”
After a moment she asked with anxiety:
“But is Dryas really scared?”
“He doesn’t say so, but I can tell that he is. He turns white about the lips.”
“Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry,” she answered. The break up of the family front was more serious than she had supposed. “But,” she concluded, “Dryas will stand by Father whatever happens.”
For a week Theria kept away from her storeroom and its beloved window. Cruel, that the impudent stranger should deprive her of her refuge. The storeroom was her place of intimate solitude. It was saturated with her thought, her dreams, her songs. The little window and the lonely street—all were hers.
But after a time her fears lessened. Surely the youth would not keep coming all this while, or if he did, she had only to tell her father. Nikander would punish him thoroughly. Yes, and perhaps his daughter also for being at the window at all. Oh, but the youth must have forgotten. Why need she be anxious? The evening was very hot. The air seemed to press down heavily into the amphitheatre of the mountains. One could hardly breathe.
Theria found her window. Darkness had fully come and the hoped-for breeze. She had sat there some moments before she realized that the Argive youth was in the lane below. She shrank back, but his first word startled her into speech.
“Lady Eleutheria, I have asked your father for your hand,” he said. “But oh, dear maid, he tells me that you are betrothed.”
“I am not betrothed! I am not betrothed!” she cried vehemently. “There has been no betrothal.”
“Thank the good gods for that,” was the devout answer.
Foolishly she began to argue.
“But that does you no good.”
“No, but at least it does not snatch you quite away. I have learned to hope, Eleutheria. When I was in the galley-hold all day rowing until my back cracked, then it seemed as though I could never be glad again. But I am glad; thanks to you. In the same way I shall hope that some glorious fate will bring you to me, though so far from me now. I shall make you love me.”
“But I do not love you,” said Theria desperately, “and you must not come here any more. This window is my solitude. You shall not come to it.”
“Do not say that,” he pleaded. “You cannot imagine the joy it is to come. I have worn a path on the hillside coming, coming to you. And as I come my heart lifts and lifts as with a dawning light. Ah, you do not understand it; nor did I, dear child. It is something stronger than I—than you—— Each morning,” he hurried on, fearful lest she leave him, “when I awake and remember that I am free, then your cry comes back to me that you are shut in always, always, without hope. My heart breaks. I, too, had been shut in without hope. Therefore, I long to free you.”
“You compare me to a slave,” she said sternly.
“No, no,” he cried. “If I could only take your hand and show you the beautiful temples of the gods, the cities which I know, the sea. Lady, have you ever seen the sea?”
“No,” she answered, very low.
“Once I had a friend. He was taken prisoner with me on the pirate ship. But he died of the wounds he got shielding me—and I still love him. I thought I could never love any one in all my life as I love him; but you, dear maid, you are more than that friend. It is strange to say that. But you are my friend and my life. I am no longer my own.” His voice changed with awe. “Dear lady, it is not Aphrodite’s passion that is come upon me, it is the gift of some god loftier than she—perhaps Eros the Creator. Try to understand.”
Just here the moon sailed clear of the housetops over the way and filled the narrow lane with light. She could see him standing there, his head thrown back to see her—his golden hair bound and crowned. His very standing was elastic, spurning the ground. So much had his few weeks of gymnastic restored to him of Hellenic health and attitude.
She could see the curious, searching light in his face—a light of tenderness such as she had never known but which she recognized as all maidens do. Oh, why did her heart leap? Was she, too, in the power of a god?
Now he startled her yet more.
“Dear lady, I am coming to this house to-morrow night, I am Nikander’s guest.”
Delphians, though proud as Olympians, were yet the most cosmopolitan of Greeks. They were taught by the Oracle to receive all men hospitably.
Theria’s dread increased. What would her father think? What might not this strange youth tell!
“I shall ask to hear that song,” added the youth. “The prize song which you made for Dryas, your brother.”
“I made no song,” she asserted, loyal to her house.
“Oh, yes, you did. All the Precinct whispers that. But I shall know, dear maid, whether the song be yours. If it came from your spirit, it will go to mine.”
Steps were heard in the lane. She cried out a low warning. Her anger swept back again that the youth should thus bring her into fear. But he was gone almost before her cry. He was among the hills.
Theria turned, dazed, from the window. There on the moon-lit floor lay flowers strewn, one bunch upon another—faded ferns, fresh anemones, violets half dry. Evidently a gift for every day. If the youth came in this fashion sooner or later someone would see him. They would punish her. Worse! They would laugh at her. A street song, a vulgar old catch, struck across her mind, one of the common gibes at women:
Always as of old——
They roast their barley sitting as of old
They on their heads bear burdens as of old—
They buy themselves sly dainties as of old—
They still secrete their lovers as of old.
Ahai! so she had thought herself different, better! She was like all other silly women. No wonder the men gibed. Only for a moment had she been guilty, but it was such a vivid, unforgettable moment. The moon had shone so bright upon him, the youth had looked so impossibly beautiful. Fool! The youth was plainly mad. Never would she allow herself to see him again.
Wrathfully she gathered all the flowers at one sweep and flung them far out of the window. Theria had heard of physical love. She had heard of no other kind. How was she to understand this sudden placing of her upon a pedestal? How should she guess that the youth through the suffering of slavery, through the purity of his gratitude, had stumbled upon an emotion old as creation, beautiful as dawn, strong as life, which the Greeks had utterly quenched and set aside?
Next day, sure enough, a feast was preparing in the house. Theria watched fearfully. Was the Argive really coming among the other guests? She tried to keep out of her father’s way, but she had to face him at luncheon.
Nikander, where his family was concerned, was very frank and childlike. “Well, Theria,” he said, “what do you suppose has happened? A young man comes asking for your hand.” Theria’s heart thumped so that she had to stop eating.
“His name is Eëtíon.[2] He is from Argos, one of the handsomest youths I ever saw. What do you think of that, Daughter?”
[2] Note: pronounced A-e-teé-on.
“I do not know,” she managed to falter.
“My dear, why tremble?” smiled her father. “The youth does not concern you. But the fellow is curiously headlong. Of course I did not discuss dower with him. But he offered it. He said: ‘I want no dower. I have seen your daughter in a festival procession. Her beauty is enough without dower!’ Now in what procession could he have noticed you, Theria? I do not quite like it that he should have seen you.”
“I do not know,” she said, again bowing her head. She was in mortal fear lest he see her fear. But he turned to Melantho—
“By Hermes, Melantho, I do like the youth. He quitted Argos because he is too loyal a Hellene to stay there. I like that. Timon knew the young man’s father, says the family is one of the most upright in Argos. The boy shows his race. Beautiful fellow, astonishingly beautiful.” (The Greek could not but dwell on beauty whenever he met it.) “The children of such a youth would be glorious children.”
“But, Father, must I—must I marry an Argive?”
Nikander threw back his head with laughter. It had been weeks since Theria had heard him laugh.
“No, Theria, your children would be glorious, but they would not be legitimate. Eëtíon has purchased citizenship in Delphi, but he is still metic, a foreigner. Of course, you will not marry him.”
Nikander voiced the pride that was in every Greek citizen—the pride and the isolation. No man could take full citizenship in a city not his own. No marriage with a foreigner (born say fifty miles distant) was counted legal by any government. This fact, instinctive in Theria’s mind, had steeled her heart against the Argive. Oh, what right had he to come to the house even as her father’s guest? She dared not object. She was not supposed to know of his coming.
The dinner guests assembled early. Theria and her mother had their supper upstairs. Then Theria went off to bed so as not to hear anything of the feast. But she could not sleep. She did not want the youth to hear her song. She tossed and tossed on her hot couch. What must they be doing now at the feast? Talking of the war? Ah, yes, that surely. They would not be singing songs in these war-troubled days, even at symposia. If she had only dared to ask Dryas not to sing. But was he singing? Oh, if she only knew.
Impatiently she rose and crept to her father’s room. Here came up the mingled voices and laughter from the men’s court. Oh, what was that? Why were they suddenly silent? That lyre, tuning. Then clear and fateful came the sound of Dryas’s singing,
“Fair, fair on the mountain the feet of Apollo striding.”
The thing always thrilled her; so intimately hers. “I shall know, dear maid, whether the song be yours. If it came from your heart it will go to mine.” The Argive’s saying was ringing back upon her. He was down there now, listening, close to the singer. Almost she could see the listening in his face. And oh, the song was giving him what she did not want to give—her intimate, sweetest thought. He would grasp it all. Had he not asserted that he would?
She clapped hands upon her ears and fairly ran back to her room. He had no right, that Argive foreigner, to read her soul that way. No right!
She lay in her bed trembling. It was long before she could reason with herself and believe that this was a foolish, childish fear.