CHAPTER XXV
BITTER CONSEQUENCES
Day after day Nikander came to the Pythian House to inquire after his daughter.
“She has recovered,” they told him. “She eats once more; but there is upon her the apathy that follows the utterance.”
“What does she do?”
“Gazes for hours at nothing,” was the reply. “The usual thing. Though it is not usual that the apathy come so soon. She has gone but once to the tripod. Aristonikè now, not so strong a girl was she, but she went many a time under the ecstasy before this apathy attacked her.”
Nikander went home with heavy heart. He dared not tell Melantho his anxiety. Melantho’s way was to increase trouble by bewailing it. And Theria was but one of his deep anxieties.
His two sons these days seemed to have constant business in which they gave Nikander no part. This was natural for Lycophron. He was wild and loose-living. It would be a sorry day for him if he had to tell his father all his doings. But of late he and Dryas had become very intimate. From morning to night they were together. Even when in other company, Nikander saw glances pass between them. Lycophron was the worst possible example for a soft, gentle boy like Dryas. Yet Nikander did not like to break the brotherly tie. He still loved his eldest son.
Meanwhile, of course, Theria’s ailment was far different from what Nikander supposed.
It was no exhaustion of nerves from indulging in trance and supernatural sight. It was agony of mind.
Apollo had not killed her! This was her chief grievance. The mighty Immortal had allowed her to contemn his shrine, to deceive his questioners. Yet he did nothing—and continued to do nothing. What sort of a god was he?
And the Athenians had gone joyously home with their oracle. So the old temple dame had told her. They were treasuring it as the word of the god. They were acting upon it. The whole city was moved in effort to understand and fulfil the sacred words, Theria’s words!
She laughed hysterically.
She could talk to no one of what she had done. The oracle must remain to help the Athenians as best it could.
And what of all the oracles, age long, multitudinous, the pride and wonder of her childhood? Were they all like this—fraud and deception?
This thought beat down Theria’s spirit as with strokes of a sledgehammer.
“No—no—no,” she would say aloud.
Those oracles had helped the poor—they had punished the wrong-doer, they had founded colonies and controlled states. And surely Aristonikè had genuinely felt the god-possession. Had it not wrecked her, body and mind? But the doubt remained, tormenting all the golden preciousness of all the reverences of her life.
The Precinct, the beloved Precinct itself, where men brought grateful gifts to the god. What a mockery! Were these wistful worshippers all deceived? Did Apollo sit in Olympos and laugh at them?
And Theria was wretchedly lonely. Hour-long, hour-long, with nothing to do, not even spinning. The home faces, home voices, not a thousand paces distant, were all to her as far as the pillars of Heracles. Farther—farther! for it is conceivable that loved ones might return thence, but her dear ones could not come to her.
And while she sat mid the windowless walls there happened without her knowledge the most glorious single deed of Greece.
Sparta was ever grudging. She did not much care to bar the Persians out of all Greece. She would have preferred to meet them on the borders of her own Lakonia. If all her sister states should then perish why should Sparta care?
But one Spartan cared supremely to keep them out of Greece. Her king, Leonidas. So Leonidas, with the few soldiers which the Ephors grudgingly allowed him, marched for Thermopylæ.
Nikander, Lycophron, Dryas, Eëtíon—all the men of Delphi—saw one day the file of bronze-clad soldiers coming up the Delphi road, led by the twinkling flame of their sacred fire. They came with set faces under their helmets, their new polished shields glancing in the sun.
They paused only to do honour to Apollo, then moved onward up the Parnassian road. Three hundred men and a few timid allies to meet a million Persians at the narrow pass!
Those who saw them never forgot them. Nor has the world forgot.
But Theria within her walls knew nothing of these things. Theria had come upon a new dilemma.
The day of oracle came around again. Aristonikè was too ill for the tripod. Theria must serve again.
Of course she would not deceive again. Indeed she had no knowledge with which to deceive. Besides, she had determined that she would never again speak upon the tripod. She wanted to cry out against it, to tell the world what a mummery it was. Yet in spite of all this she was compelled to undergo the preparatory rites. She had to fast, chew the laurel, pass through the smoke. When she did not go into the trance, they tried her over and over again until she was well-nigh dead.
“I knew she could not do it,” she heard old Tuchè saying in the court. “What ’mazes me is that she went under the first time. She’s not the kind for a pythoness.”
Well, then, they would cast her aside, and for Theria they could not do so too soon. Then her life would be spent in the Pythia House. She thought of her lover and of the rich life that might have been hers, even of the “glorious children” that her father had spoken of. But now she would be but a useless vessel, cast aside. Theria had no joy in her helpful Athenian oracle. Her whole world was overshadowed because her god was gone.
One evening she was sitting in her room, “gazing into space” as Tuchè had described it, when the old slave who had tried to wait on her that first day brought her her supper. Now Theria had never received this woman. Tuchè had been obliged to send her a young girl whom finally, because Theria needed such service, she accepted. Now why did the old slave come again? Doubtless Tuchè had sent her merely as an annoyance. Tuchè disliked the new Pythoness.
“How dare you come here again?” Theria said to the old slave. “I will not see you; I——” She rose to her feet.
But the old slave, trembling much, set aside the supper tray and threw off her cloak.
“Baltè!” Theria cried, and with outstretched arms ran to Baltè’s bosom.
“Be quiet! There, there, my darlin’, don’t cry so, blessèd, blessèd—my little bird!” whispered Baltè, stroking the dark hair.
And Theria gradually brought herself into control, but her heart seemed breaking with joy.
“Baltè, Baltè, I never thought I could be so glad again. I never thought——”
“And just for seein’ old Baltè’s face,” said the slave proudly. “Here, eat your supper. Ye’re that thin and white.”
They talked in whispers, or rather in low, even tones, for Baltè well knew that whispers are most conspicuous of all sounds.
“How did you get to me, Baltè; how, in Apollo’s name?” Even the divine name seemed strange to Theria now.
“Been tryin’ ever since that old Chimera took me away from you. What’s she, to be takin’ care o’ my darling?”
“Yes—go on.”
“I couldn’t get in. The slaves were that pitickilar. Then I went to Lycophron and I begged him. I says, ‘Give me money to get to my darlin’. She’s dyin’ for the sight of a home face.’
“‘How do you know that?’ says he.
“‘You know yourself,’ I says. ‘Could she feel any other way?’
“Then his eyes grew soft like and he gave me not silver, but gold.
“‘Bribe ’em, Baltè, and get in,’ says he, laughin’. You know the way he does. ‘There’s no slave in the world but will take a bribe. When that’s gone come to me for more’.”
“Good, dear Lycophron,” said Theria, loving him tenderly.
She leaned closer. Already her face was changed by this touch of home. She asked lovingly after father and mother, even each slave of the household.
“Tell me, Baltè——” she said at last, then stopped. It was the first time she had ever spoken this name to any one.
“Did he ever come again—Eëtíon who met me in the lane?”
“Shame upon you. Do you think I’d be bringin’ you love messages, you, a priestess of Apollo?”
Theria hid her face, shivering.
“No—no. Oh, Baltè, I would not want messages. How can you think that of me? And I did not mean to ask.”
Poor child, only her own sense of right would uphold her now. She had no longer any fear of the god.
When Baltè rose to go Theria threw arms about her.
“You’ll come again. Promise that you’ll come again.”
“Surely will I. Oh, there, I’m most forgettin’ the message Lycophron sent you. ‘It’s an oracle,’ says he, laughin’. ‘I can give oracles as well as any one. You tell Theria: “Keep up heart. Argos has become Delphi for her sake.”’ It’s a queer message that.”
“‘Argos has become Delphi,’” she repeated, puzzled. “Argos, Argos. Could it be the Argive?”
Theria began to laugh softly, her eyes full of tears, clinging to Baltè and kissing her.
“Darling old Baltè,” she said. “Darling, dear old Baltè.”
“He said you’d like it,” said the old slave, nodding her head.
Oh, dangerous message. Lycophron did not look ahead. He meant to be kind.