Theria was gone. Yet in the room the awkward silence held. Then by some hidden sympathy Nikander’s hand beckoned to Dryas and Dryas himself started forward at the same moment.
“I wanted,” faltered Dryas, “oh, I wanted you to be proud.”
“I would have been proud anyway,” said Nikander loyally. Dryas began to sob.
“Son, why did you deceive me? There was no need. I would never have told the judges.”
“I don’t care for the judges. It was you—you!”
With sorrowful affection Nikander kissed him, then went slowly up the stair to Theria’s room.
He found her pacing up and down the narrow place. She was talking aloud.
“To take away my song! It wasn’t fair. No! To take away my song!”
Nikander spoke passionately: “Theria, this was the happiest day of my life and you have made it the most sorrowful.”
“Father!” she cried. “Father!”
She stood instantly still. Tears were running down her face. “Oh, I was sorry the minute I had done it. There was no use to tell and it only gave pain to everyone.”
Wistfully she tried to take his hand. Like most children, she had never told him how intensely she loved him.
“I cannot understand, Theria, why you would give your song to Dryas and then at a crucial moment snatch it back again. Dryas has done wrong, but your wrong is sheer cruelty.”
“But, Father——” she began. Then she stopped. She had done enough harm for one day.
She could not tell him that she had never given the song, but that Dryas had taken it against her will. Dryas had come to her one morning with a song of his own. Theria knew at once that it would never win the prize. They had talked it over, trying to mend it.
That afternoon her own song had flashed upon her. It was, as such flashes are apt to be, the culmination of long striving and dreaming. And for days afterward she had worked and perfected it. Then a week before the Pythian festival she had taken the song to Dryas and had sung it for him. Of course she was willing to give it to him. It did not occur to her but that Dryas would share with her the honour of it, at least in their own home. This Dryas had refused to do. They had quarrelled, and, at the end, Dryas had flatly told her that since she taught him the song he would take it for his own, whether she willed or no. He had thought she would never dare to tell. But now she had told, and the result was this misery.
“Theria,” said her father wearily, “how did it ever occur to you to write a song?”
“It was just as I told in the singing, Father. I was spinning alone in the spinning-room and the Muse struck across my mind. She would not let me go. The words hurried before I could catch up with them; a new chord waited for every chord I struck.”
Nikander was for a moment awed. He believed in the Muse; no mere poetic figment was she. She was an accepted goddess, and even thus was she wont to act.
“But you must have studied and worked,” he said. “You must have had help.”
“Medon has helped me a little. He taught me the scales, and I have taken your book rolls and made him show me how to read. Do not be angry with Medon. He is only a slave and I commanded him. It was really myself did it. I worked very hard.”
Suddenly it seemed to her that some invisible door, which ever for her, a girl, had always stood ajar, had quietly and irrevocably closed. She had the instinct to turn this way and that for escape. But there was no escape.
“What shall I do?” she moaned. “Oh, what shall I do?” It seemed as though her father, so intelligent, so quick to help all comers to the Oracle, surely he would know some help for her.
“My dear Theria,” said Nikander, “there is much for you to do here at home. You have everything, why are you unhappy?”
She bowed her head without answer. There was so much to say that she could say nothing at all.
“Theria,” he went on kindly, “I must tell you that only yesterday by your mother’s advice I did something for you. I see now how necessary it was.”
Her lips parted as if in fear.
“I have offered you in marriage,” said Nikander, “to Timon for his eldest son Theras. Timon has accepted. I am delighted with the alliance and I shall have the betrothal very soon.”
With a low cry the girl crouched upon the floor, clasping his knees.
“Oh, no, Father, no,” she pleaded. “You are not so angry with me as that. Don’t send me away! Don’t send me away!”
He took her hands gently and lifted her—put his arm about her pitifully trembling shoulders.
“What a strange child. What a strange, foolish child. All maidens look forward to marriage. It is their right.”
“But not I, Father, not I!”
“You must do so. Of course it will be strange at first. Brides are often timid, but you are not lacking in courage. Theria, your constant dwelling upon thoughts which are for men makes you cold toward what is your business in life—which is marriage and childbearing. You are mature in things not for you and in all the rest an undeveloped child.”
This brutal statement was a nearer reading of Theria’s character than Nikander himself guessed. An unevenness of development was hers—a kind of mental hobbledehoy which is not infrequent in high-bred youngsters. Nay, more than this: An actual shrinking purity was the concomitant of her poetic gift. Other girls of Delphi discussed the facts of marriage with primitive frankness and looked forward to marriage as the one event to break monotony. Theria never spoke of it, and thought of it almost with horror—the strange house, the strange man, the mysteries from which she hid her eyes.
Shall we add to this the terrific pride of youth—that she held it a certainty that no family equalled the Nikanders? To mate even with another Delphian was a downward step. This pride was in her stubborn answer.
“Father, I cannot—I cannot.”
“Nonsense,” smiled Nikander, “of course you will. He is a good man—Timon’s son.”
“Have I seen him?”
“Daughter! Of course you have not.”
She wrung her hands in sudden wildness.
“I won’t marry,” she cried. “I won’t go away from the house I love to one I have never known. I won’t belong to Theras whom I have never seen. I will only belong to you, you, you!”
“Theria, my dear child,” began Nikander.
But she was quite beside herself. She stamped the floor with her foot.
“I won’t marry Theras! I won’t! I won’t!” she raged.
At the end of the interview Nikander brought out a small whip which was used for child slaves. With this he whipped his daughter. Greek fathers had this right even with grown sons, but Nikander had never used it.
At last, when she stood tall and tearless and he stood trembling in spite of effort to keep steady, he said:
“Daughter, this is not for your present act alone. It is for your year-long disobedience. I believe now that you will obey.”
She stood like a straight reed, so still, so horror struck. And in that stillness her father left her.
An hour later Theria was roused from her apathy by the sound of beautiful music.
It was in the street, and she curiously stole forward to her father’s room to look out of the little window there. She was in time to see Dryas borne along the way on the shoulders of his friends.
The full moon of the festival made the street as bright as day and the torches of the procession twinkled like jewels in the white light. Pindar walked in the procession chanting a strophe in Dryas’s honour. A chorus of youths followed singing the antistrophe, and behind these a boy played the cymbals upon which the glitter of sound met the lovely glitter of the moonlight.
Leaning out of the window, Theria suddenly exulted. “It is my song Pindar is praising. All those words are for me and it is Pindar, Pindar!”
In a burst of joyous music they passed within the house door below her, and Theria heard the pleasant confusion as they took their seats at the board and the scurry of the slaves beginning to serve them.
Then after a time came a faint tuning of a lyre, a pause, and Dryas started once more to sing his song—her song. He faltered. Oh, would her rumpus of the afternoon make him fail? She was in a panic—family pride, family affection were strong in the Nikander household—but after a little flickering Dryas’s flame burned bright. He even imitated his sister’s dramatic singing of the afternoon.
Theria could not hear Pindar’s exclamation of wonder that the lad should sing the song this evening with an entirely new meaning. She heard only the hand clappings, the mingled voices, the chitter of the silver cups—cups treasured many a year by successive Nikander housewives. A wave of loneliness swept over her—a Wave of fear, remembering her father’s purpose. And shrinking back from the window she made her way through the darkness to her room and bed.