CHAPTER XXI
A PROCESSION OF SACRIFICE
Next morning it was Nikander himself who came to awaken his daughter. The house was full of the bustle and awe of the departure. The dawn was yet grey. Melantho brought a white festal robe and for one long hour she and Baltè dressed the young candidate, pinning the robe at the shoulders, clasping the girdle, drawing the soft fabric up through it, full over the breast, then adjusting the long straight folds to the sandalled feet.
Melantho brought the casket of jewels.
“Where are the pearls?” she complained. “You should have the pearls to-day.”
Theria put her deft fingers among the jewels, stirring their glitter.
“Please leave me without jewels, Mother,” she said quietly. Then she added, “Oh, Mother, let me give them to the god. Apollo loves gifts. He says if one gives one’s all it is as great as the bowl of Crœsos. These are my all. Perhaps they will help.”
So they crowned her with red roses and hung a great garland of roses about her neck. Baltè thought she had never seen any one so beautiful as her dark-eyed darling.
But Nikander, coming to look at her, was touched with anxiety.
“Daughter,” he questioned, “your hope is yet strong in you? Do you feel that you can reach the god?”
“Yes, Father, I was never so sure as to-day,” she answered him.
He took Baltè aside.
“What is it? Her eyes?” he asked anxiously. “It is almost a fatal look. Is she well?”
“Yes, Master,” said Baltè. “But Master must remember that she is leaving her home. That is awesome for a maid.”
“No doubt; yes, indeed,” he agreed.
He went to his own room and brought forth a cup of his most delicate wine.
“I want roses in your cheeks this morning, Theria,” he said as he gave it to her. But the roses came before she drank.
For as she took the cup she noted its picture—the same that was on the cup that she had broken—Athena bestowing upon a worshipper—the same delicate sureness of drawing—unmistakable!
“My dear, you are spilling the wine,” admonished Nikander, steadying her trembling hand.
Slowly she sipped it, bringing herself to speech.
“Father, give me this cup to take with me.”
“You strange child. It is a common thing from the pottery under the hill.”
“It will be from home,” she faltered.
Nikander went off for reassurance to his Wife. “Will she be homesick, think you?” he asked.
Left alone, Theria stole away to look at the places that she must see no more—her father’s room, the aula, the balcony. She had to walk slowly, stately, in her robe. Already she seemed far away from the free, swift-moving Theria she had been. Last of all she came to the dusky old storeroom. Here, strangely enough, it was not its recent memories that came to her, but the memory of that far-off day when she had wept there as a child and had seen the nymphs and baby Hermes in the stream.
Then suddenly the sharp scent of violets met her—sweet, dewy, fresh, new. With a low cry she gathered the flowers from the floor; then, stumbling over her long robe, she hurried from the room.
The Nikander family left the house in silent procession. They were all crowned with laurel and carried with them the necessary things of sacrifice—the flat baskets with grain of barley, the torch lighted from their own dear hearth. Lycophron led the victim, a white goat whose gilded horns were crowned with flowers.
It was a solemn going. Theria had never thought that she could walk toward her beloved Precinct with so heavy a heart. A breeze, rare in summer, caught her festal skirts and fluttered them about her. Across the sky raced splendid clouds whose huge silver bulks but made loftier the blue sky-spaces between them. Midsummer had laid its silence on the morning birds but doves on her cousin Clitè’s roof cooed and strutted in the sunshine.
And now they had reached the Precinct. How easily the great gates opened to her this time. Did the keeper remember that other morning, she wondered? When he had refused to let her in?
“Father, who are those splendid-looking men?” she asked. “They seem waiting for us.”
“They are waiting, indeed. They are the Athenians.”
Theria’s heart rose at the sight of them. At sight of their anxious faces her personal sorrow retired before their larger sorrow. She wanted to call out to them, to tell them how sure was her hope. But of course she could do no such thing. The Athenians greeted her father solemnly from a distance.
Now the priests gave into all their hands great boughs of trees.
“Do not speak again, Daughter,” said Nikander. “We are suppliants now.”
And bearing their solemn boughs with which to constrain the god and with their baskets, their torch, and their slow-moving victim, they went up the Sacred Way. The Athenians went with them. Kindly the little temples watched them go, kindly the gods and heroes beside the way.
Before the great altar in front of Apollo’s temple they stopped. The altar was alight, smoking in the sunshine. The flute player began a slow Dorian melody. The priest brought a great silver bowl of water and, lighting a new torch at the altar flame, plunged it hissing into the bowl. With the water thus sanctified, he sprinkled the worshippers. Then lifting the bowl high with the swift gesture of long custom, he dashed the water full upon the goat. It shivered in all its limbs!
Good omens, good omens all. Theria’s confidence soared upward with her simple faith.
When the goat was sacrificed, Theria was sure that its outgoing life was mounting invisibly to please the Son of Leto. In her enthusiasm, she kissed her hands to the god and stood so with her arms uplifted. Nikander, gazing upon her, felt more hopeful than for many weeks.
When the ritual was done, they laid the supplicant boughs upon the altar. Her brother and her mother kissed Theria good-bye, a sorrowful parting but quiet as befitted the temple place. Then Nikander took Theria’s hand and, Baltè following, led her around the back of the Great Temple to the Pythia House.