CHAPTER XLIII
THE BIRD IN THE CAGE
Nikander came hurrying into the house.
“Where is Theria?” he demanded.
Time was when Nikander coming in had invariably asked, “Where is Dryas?” Now it was always, “Where is Theria?” looking about restlessly as though home were not home until Theria appeared.
“Theria? She has gone to bed,” answered her mother.
“To bed! But the sun has not yet set,” said Nikander.
“Yes, but that’s where she is all the same. She said there was nothing more to do in the house so she had better sleep. Of course there is more to do,” complained Melantho. “You’d think she’d take more interest in her bridal spinning. She says there are already more linens and woollens than she can use in twenty years if she had twenty children.”
“Well, aren’t there?” laughed Nikander.
“I should think she would like some more just to put away. But she is so listless.”
Nikander smiled happily.
Listless! Ah, the dear child! She would be listless no longer now that this supreme task had been thrust into her hands. How strangely that had been done, as if the god had done it beyond all human planning. Ah, what a task! The eloquent statements of the afternoon had set the colony glowing in Nikander’s mind. That Theria his child had been chosen leader still filled him with an amazed joy. And Timon’s words! They thrilled back upon Nikander like a triumphal song. He was newly proud, newly tender toward his child who, unaided, had faced death from the god. But Timon had recognized the real power of the girl which had quite escaped the father who loved her. Nikander wondered at this so-common experience. Theria was as good as a son to him now. Had this happened to Lycophron or Dryas could he be any happier than he was at this moment?
He turned impatiently to Melantho.
“Think you she is asleep?” he asked.
“Who, Theria? No, hardly yet. Have you something for her to do?”
“By the gods, yes,” answered Nikander, and strode off like a boy to Theria’s room.
Yes, she was asleep. How strange to see her bright face so quieted. Gods! What a quantity of dark hair she had spreading out over her pillow. What a young child she was, after all.
“Theria,” he said, touching her shoulder.
Her eyes opened wide and alarmed.
“Father, what has happened?”
“Something wonderful, dear child, but you can never guess it. Are you awake enough to understand?”
Theria sat up rubbing her eyes, dizzy from the depths of sleep.
“About Eëtíon?” she murmured.
“No, not your lover. Yourself, yourself. Though, by Hermes, Eëtíon comes into it, too.” Suddenly Nikander found the matter difficult to explain. The girl there on her bed looked so tender, so young! A creature to cherish and protect. Hardly to send over seas to contend with men and fate. He sat down beside her and took her slender hand—that feminine hand so curiously like his own.
“It is a brand-new colony,” he began, “a city that is to be founded or rather refounded in Sicily.”
“Yes; what has that to do with me?” How infinitely far she was from guessing the outcome!
Nikander went back to the beginning, told of Hyllos and his difficult oracle, of the Council, of the proposal of Karamanor and Agis, of Dryas. She grew keenly interested.
“No, no, those could not be leaders, Father. I cannot think of any one who could, any one big enough. Let me see, let me see——”
She looked away, knitting her pretty brows.
“The priests are not in such doubt, Daughter,” said Nikander tenderly. “They have chosen you!”
“Me!” She turned such an amazed face that Nikander had to laugh.
“What on earth do you mean? Why are you joking, Father?”
The same question which Melas had asked.
“I am not joking, dear heart. The priests are in earnest. They chose you because you have seen Apollo. No one in our generation has done that, my child.”
“The vision! How strange. How strange. And the priests chose me, you say? The priests—me!”
Nikander went on explaining as if to dreaming ears. She seemed not to hear him.
“Would Eëtíon go?” she queried.
“Yes, he would help you, but he would not be the leader. That is for you.”
“For me! Oh, Father,” she suddenly cried out. “How could you suppose I could do it? Think of the wisdom, the strength to command men where no laws command them, to know, oh, to know everything for a city’s good. I am not great enough. I am not—not even good enough, Father.”
“But I think you are,” he told her.
She leaned toward him, her lips quivering, very woman, veritable child.
“I would have to go away from Delphi. I would never see Delphi again! I would never see you again! Dear, dear Father, that would be like death!”
He put both arms about her and was not astonished when she began to sob as if from some great shock or strain.
“You will not command me to go,” she pleaded. “Do not command me to go.”
“My dear child! Of course not against your will. But do you not see the honour, the splendour of doing this thing? Of making a city which shall be your own, upon which you can stamp what character you will?”
“I am not great enough to stamp character upon a city. Oh, no, oh, no! Think if I should make some mistake which would harm it, harm the people for perhaps a hundred years. And, oh, I could never think of any city as my city except my Delphi—my Delphi,” she repeated with all the hereditary love, the life-long worship sounding in the word.
Nikander was utterly puzzled.
“Are you only a woman, after all?” he asked.
“Why, yes, Father, what should I be?” she asked with innocent stare.
“Don’t you want your freedom?”
“Freedom! oh, Father, at the price of exile?”
“Exile it is, if you so consider it,” he said. “There, go to sleep again. I don’t believe you are half awake, anyway.”
“Oh, yes, I am, I am awake.”
So he left her. Nikander’s mind was strangely divided between relief and disappointment. Only a woman, after all. Evidently Timon’s heroics were all misplaced. She cared only for home and loved ones. What young man but would have leaped to the task, seen the honour, joyed in the responsibility? And what should he say to the priests? How they would laugh! He could hear Melas’s gibes. Timon would get the brunt of it for proposing her name. Well, after all, they both deserved it for believing such high things of a mere girl.
Yet as Nikander composed himself to sleep he was amazed at his curious sense of relief, an escape out of sorrow. How lovingly she had flung herself into his arms, and what an actual protection he had felt in that love of hers—protection from loneliness, old age ... greyness of life.
Thus strangely did Theria receive the news of her freedom. Like a bird born in a cage, she did not recognize the open door. This amazing proposal had come to Theria at the most sentimental hour of her life, when the bride leaving her old home looks with vivid tenderness upon it. These days the dear old home did not imprison Theria. And the new one! With what intense hope and wonder did that draw her on!
Perhaps she had not been fully awake talking with her father. But surely she was awake now. She began to toss and toss upon her bed. She was a little hurt that her father should so easily plan her departure from Delphi.
“I thought he knew how I loved the Oracle,” she reflected. “But he does not know. Because I am not Dryas, nor Timon—because I am not a man, Father thinks I cannot feel as he does. But I do, I do.”
She sat up in bed, gazing into the dark.
“I have helped Delphi,” she murmured, rather miserably. “At least I thought I had helped Delphi by my oracles. Shall I not love my city that I have helped?”
The miraculous saving of Delphi after days of danger, Theria’s vision on the mountain—all had intensified her already ardent love of home. Even her god Apollo was locally peculiar to his shrine. Gods were never quite the same when worshipped in distant temples. Apollo of Delphi was nearer to Theria than Apollo anywhere else. No, no, how strange of her father to propose her going away. And he wanted her to found a city! The greatness of the task appalled her. She lay back with a sigh.
Inessa! What did the city look like, lying ruined on its distant shore?—“The most beautiful shore in the world,” her father had called it. Apollo himself must love that city since he so insisted upon its rebuilding. A great mountain rose behind it, greater than Parnassos. This also her father had told her. She began again to wonder who could be selected to rebuild it. No doubt the priests had looked over the whole field and found no one. That was why they had chosen her. There could be no other reason for such choosing. Well, they would fall back upon Karamanor. Karamanor had commercial talent. Theria had always heard of that, and how from a little boy he had always got the best of it in every enterprise. Karamanor would make Inessa prosperous, send her ships over farthest waters, and make her rich as Sybaris. Oh, but that was not what the god wanted! There were plenty of rich colonies in the west. No, surely Apollo had some great entity for Inessa. An eidolon she called it, a spiritual ideal or image containing the force and character of the god himself. Beauty rising from it to meet the beauty of the divine mind. Song in abundance fostered, almost worshipped, there. Beauty of dance and of perfectly formed high-hearted youths. Justice, yes, even to the poor who expect no just dealings. And perhaps some new Philosophy which the god had stored in his heart to give to some philosopher yet unborn and who could be born only in this new place of free speech and high ideals, this place untrammelled by old-world mistakes. She thought of Pythagoras, Parmenides. Yes, it was from the west that the philosopher came and awakened the minds of men.
Oh, who could tell what the god of pure, unutterable beauty might do if only the place were prepared? Inessa was a god-appointed place, a god-appointed task. But Karamanor could not do it.
Then? What then?
It was her task. Theria’s! God-given!
She was unworthy, unable! Yes, yes, but the god would help her. Had he not always helped? Ah, out of such difficulties, such despairs, always that hand reached down, always that sudden brightness of mind which was the god’s presence.
She seemed to see Inessa on its shore forlorn, waiting for her!
She leaped from her bed and stood trembling in the darkness. What had she done? She had sent her father away; she had refused! A sentimental, maudlin refusal! Oh, if her father had only shaken her. He was too gentle these days, was Father. She must tell him quickly, quickly. She must tell him she would go.
She felt her way to the door, then hurried along the balcony to her father’s room. He was in the heavy first sleep of night, and when she spoke to him he did not arouse, but only sighed wearily. Melantho sat up. “Are you ill? Is it robbers?” she asked. And learning it was neither she rated Theria in wrathful whispers for disturbing the head of the house.
So Theria perforce went back to her room, there to toss, to plan, to wonder, until nearly dawn when she fell, as with a sudden stumble, into slumber.
When she awoke again the full sun was shining brightly into the court. Inessa, the new wonderful colony, met her awaking mind. She had been walking in its streets of dream with Eëtíon.
But she knew that Nikander always rose with the dawn. Already he might be gone from the house to tell the priests to choose another leader. In mad haste she threw on her chiton and hurried down into the aula. Paian be praised! Nikander was still there, but all dressed and sandalled going toward the door.
“Father, Father!” she cried breathlessly. “Wait a moment. Oh, I must see you alone.”
“What has happened?” he asked.
“Inessa! Oh, Father, I am going to Inessa. I must go.”
“What,” he smiled at her vehemence. “Changeable woman! Do you expect me to veer about with all your moods?”
“I didn’t listen. I was blind. I——”
“But perhaps I, too, have changed mood. I am not nearly so eager as I was last night, my daughter.”
He was not teasing. He meant it! There were longing and affection in his face before which she was utterly silent.
Then he looked into her eyes.
“Does the colony seem more possible this morning?” he asked seriously.
“Possible! Oh, the wonderful task! God-given. Are you sure, sure the priests meant it for me?”
“Quite sure. It was a long, serious discussion.”
“There is no one else,” she said humbly. “That is why they chose me. And that is why I must go. Inessa seems as if it were my own child, lonely, ruined, waiting for me.”
“Hmm—so that is your meaning this morning.”
She began to pace up and down. “Father, it is a thousand-fold task, the founding of a city.”
“I should rather think so,” he smiled.
“Would I have the choice of men who are to go? It should be but a few men at first, and the right men.”
“Yes, the choice would be yours.”
“And the present site of the city. May I choose another? If the old site be unhealthful, or melancholy, or not beautiful, or haunted by some fate?”
“Yes, with the consent of the colonists.”
“And the laws of the city. Would I select the code and even annul laws that proved unsuited in the new land? Oh, Father, you will have to teach me. I will have to work every moment to grow wiser and better.”
“I will teach you,” he responded, wondering at her.
“Think, if we could make a new city where better justice would be meted out than ever before, where even the poor man could keep up heart and courage. And where orphans would be nurtured. Oh, nobody should care for the little fatherless children but me. I would let no one else do that.”
She stopped her pacing and faced him. He was amazed at the change in her—a look of release, of purpose in her face that had never been there before. Seeing her eyes so shining, he realized that always heretofore they had held a bafflement, a look of discouragement and hunger. That look was gone. Now she was strangely creative, maternal onward-moving. The very lift of her head was free. He seemed to see a new Theria.
“Daughter,” Nikander said, “I did not, no, I did not realize it would mean all this to you.”
“Dear Father, dear Father,” she said.
Nikander at once plunged into the further details of the colony. Theria’s enthusiasm was contagious. She listened to him, absorbed. Suddenly she stopped him.
“Of course Eëtíon knows of my leadership? He approves?”
“I did not see him, Daughter. I came hot-foot to you.”
“But Eëtíon should have known it first of all.” Her eyes looked startled, then deep trouble entered into them. “Suppose he does not wish to go?”
“But he will go, Daughter. I am sure he will.”
“I am not sure, not sure,” was her troubled answer. “Eëtíon has been so beaten about the world. He is so pathetically glad to be here at home in Hellas.”
“I’ll make him go,” laughed Nikander.
“Oh, but that is not what I want. No, Eëtíon, too, must be happy. If he were saddened, all the joy would go out of the work; I would lose my luck.”
“Oh, but he’ll go for your sake.”
She seemed not to hear him.
“Father”—she turned to him with sudden pleading—“may I not see Eëtíon? I long to see him now—now. What foolishness to keep us apart. We are betrothed, Eëtíon and I.”
“But I can tell him about the colony.”
“No, no, I must tell him myself. Please, Father, please!”
He could not resist her pleading. He kissed her. “Impetuous daughter,” he called her. But he went forth to find Eëtíon.