CHAPTER XLVI
THE DOOR OF ESCAPE
Then followed a busy, happy winter. All the months must be passed in making ready the colony which was to start with the early navigation of the spring. Eëtíon journeyed to his old home in Argos, and found there, as he had expected, certain citizens who were faithful to Hellas and secretly grieving over Argos’s faithless stand in the war.
Xerxes, the Persian king, was gone from Greece. But a formidable army of Persians yet lingered in Greece. Before these were vanquished fighting was yet to be—and these few Argive men were horrified at the prospect of fighting against their own. They returned with Eëtíon to Delphi. Theria tested these men, shrewdly asking them questions, watching their faces. Eëtíon, spite of experience, was a less keen judge than she. From wrong premises she was continually drawing right conclusions. After trying to help her Eëtíon gave up, laughing. The feminine way was new.
In Delphi itself, Karamanor and Agis and a number of other kinsmen were glad to go. Those who were not married took brides forthwith. The new generation in the colony would have a strong Delphic stamp. Here was more business for the œkist, for not a bride among them wanted to go. Theria visited from one to the other, picturing the new life, persuading them.
“No one in the colony shall be homesick if I can help it,” she told them. And remembering her own first reluctance to go, she could not be hard upon their timidity. Theria had never known girl-friends, but in these earnest conferences she acquired them. One little wife in particular—a girl of fourteen years, delicate, pale, whose father had been very severe and whose husband was now taking his turn at severity—Theria took to her heart with great tenderness. She was herself astonished at the way the little creature bloomed and grew strong under the new encouragement.
And now Theria must receive the grain to be laden in the ships, grain both for food and for planting. Theria tended the tiny grape-vines and treasured the seeds of useful herbs and vegetables to be carried over seas. No seeds of flowers, for the Greeks did not plant them. Besides, were not the slopes and capes of Sicily one far-flung flowerland?
As for Nikander, the days were not long enough for him to teach his daughter all she now must know: the Delphic laws, the modes of city government, precautions for city health, religious customs in which she must be vigilant and exacting. Her hungry learning brought tears to Nikander’s eyes. But often these were tears of pride for the quickness of her mind, her strong opinion so intimately his own, her quick refusal of wrong methods or shallow reasoning.
But it was perhaps Melantho who in these days noted the greatest change in Theria. Theria had always been haughty toward her mother, disobedient, and sharp of answer.
Melantho’s commonplaceness, her willingness for the jog-trot woman’s life exasperated her daughter; and when Melantho had tried to make the daughter keep to the same dull pace there had arisen quarrels and bitterness.
But in these days of free outlet Theria grew gentle toward her mother. Affectionate, though a little condescending withal as daughters are apt to be. Then while Theria was yet unaware the affection grew into respect for the stubby little figure that went pottering around the house making content out of such meagre materials. Homespuns, tapestries, embroidered things—these were Melantho’s joy. These like the gay patch-work quilts of a later day were the spirit-outlets for a housed woman.
One day timidly she brought forth to her daughter a balcony hanging—a gorgeous thing. The little human figures wrought upon it told an ancient legend lost save that this ancient woven design preserved it to memory and men’s eyes. The little men and women were archaic, almost grotesque, but perfect in decorative value. For in Hellas even such delicate, perishable things took on the inevitable beauty which flowed from Greek souls through their fingers.
Melantho spread it before Theria on a table.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“It is beautiful—beautiful,” said Theria, passing a caressing hand over the deep reds and gorgeous peacock-blues. “Do you know, Mother, whenever this was hung from the balcony when I was a little child I used to shout and prance with joy. Many a time you punished me and did not know why I was noisy.”
Melantho looked down.
“How strange,” she said. “It always makes me feel that way, too.”
“You, Mother! You!”
“Of course,” corrected Melantho, “I never did it. I never pranced.”
Theria laughed a thrill of affectionate laughter. “I wish you had,” she declared.
“I was wondering,” said Melantho, hesitating, “if you would not take this with you to your new home.”
“I wouldn’t think of taking it,” said Theria. “It is too precious. And it belongs here in the dear old home where it has always been.”
“Yes,” said Melantho. “The ship will be crowded with useful things which you really need.”
Something in Melantho’s face, as she gathered the folds together, caught Theria.
“Mother! Do you really want me to take it? You are willing to part with it?” she exclaimed.
Melantho paused in her timid way.
“You dear Mother,” said Theria, shaking her mother’s shoulders in affectionate protest. “Don’t you suppose I’d rather have it than a hundred merely useful things? I hated to be selfish.”
Melantho’s face shone. “I have so many more.”
“But none so glorious as this one, Mother. Oh, at first, when I have only a little hut, and hang this in it, it will be home. And, Mother, I’ll feel, when my babies are born and see this, that they will be seeing something that is really Delphi!—Delphi!”
“Perhaps other children,” ventured Melantho, “other children of the colony will see it, too. The town will be so poor and bare at first. Nothing beautiful, nothing——” Melantho was quite unresigned to Theria’s going, could see no possible reason for it.
“Yes,” Theria conceded. “It will be all of that, huts and mere shelters at first. But it will never look like that to me.”
“Yes, but the children who are too little to remember Delphi,” objected Melantho. “How will it look to them?”
“I will bring them to see this. Yes, I will. Until our temples are built and my dear Eëtíon makes statues of gods and men. Only think, Mother, it will be your gift—the gift of your fingers—which will keep alive our heritage of beauty, until the town brings it to life again in itself.”
Many a long hour did Nikander, Eëtíon, and Theria together study the maps of the western colonies.
“You see,” said Nikander one day, “by this map how near Inessa lies to her unkind neighbour, Catana. That is a problem for you, Theria, for you also, Eëtíon.”
But Eëtíon was studying the map with knitted brows.
“I wish it showed whether marble is found there,” he said. “Do you suppose Syracuse would furnish bronze?”
Nikander clapped him on the shoulder, laughing.
“Oh, incorrigible sculptor, what did you promise me?” he asked.
Eëtíon blushed like a boy. “In the new city,” he pleaded, “surely my fault will be overlooked.”
“As leader in the new city,” responded Nikander, “you should set an example to all.”
“Isn’t that rather an undertaking, Nikander?” sighed the rueful artist.
But Theria took Eëtíon’s brown, skilful hand in hers.
“Nay, Father,” she said defensively. “Deny him not. He is a born sculptor, his gift is from the gods. We cannot stop it. As for me, I have been inquiring among the colonists. I have found several bronze workers, and workers of marble. These shall be Eëtíon’s helpers.”