[pg 331]BOOK IIITHE PASSING OF THE PERSIAN[pg 332][pg 333]CHAPTER XXXIDEMOCRATES SURRENDERSHellas was saved. But whether forever or only for a year the gods kept hid. Panic-stricken, the“Lord of the World”had fled to Asia after the great disaster. The eunuchs, the harem women, the soft-handed pages, had escaped with their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the Ægean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army. Hellas was not yet safe.Democrates had prospered. He had been reëlected strategus. If Themistocles no longer trusted him quite so freely as once, Aristeides, restored now to much of his former power, gave him full confidence. Democrates found constant and honourable employment through the winter in the endless negotiations at Sparta, at Corinth, and elsewhere, while the jealous Greek states wrangled and intrigued, more to humiliate some rival than to advance the safety of Hellas. But amongst all the patriot chiefs none seemed more devoted to the common weal of Hellas than the Athenian orator.Hermippus at least was convinced of this. The Eleusinian had settled at Trœzene on the Argive coast, a hospitable city that received many an outcast Athenian. He found his[pg 334]daughter’s resistance to another marriage increasingly unreasonable. Was not Glaucon dead for more than a year? Ought not any woman to bless Hera who gave her so noble, so eloquent, a husband as Democrates—pious, rich, trusted by the greatest, and with the best of worldly prospects?“If you truly desire any other worthy man,makaira,”said Hermippus, once,“you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your highest happiness.”“He ruined Glaucon,”said Hermione, tearfully.“At least,”returned Lysistra, who like many good women could say exceeding cruel things,“hehas never been a traitor to his country.”Hermione’s answer was to fly to her chamber, and to weep—as many a time before—over Phœnix in the cradle. Here old Cleopis found her, took her in her arms, and sang her the old song about Alphæus chasing Arethusa—a song more fit for Phœnix than his mother, but most comforting. So the contest for the moment passed, but after a conference with Hermippus, Democrates went away on public business to Corinth unusually well pleased with the world and himself.It was a tedious, jangling conference held at the Isthmus city. Mardonius had tempted the Athenians sorely. In the spring had come his envoys proffering reparation for all injuries in the wars, enlarged territory, and not slavery, but free alliance with the Great King, if they would but join against their fellow-Hellenes. The Athenians had met the tempter as became Athenians. Aristeides had given the envoys the answer of the whole people.“We know your power. Yet tell it to Mardonius, that so long as Helios moves in the heavens we will not make[pg 335]alliance with Xerxes, but rather trust to the gods whose temples he has burned.”Bravely said, but when the Athenians looked to Sparta for the great army to hasten north and give Mardonius his death-stroke, it was the old wearisome tale of excuses and delay. At the conference in Corinth Aristeides and Democrates had passed from arguments to all but threats, even such as Themistocles had used at Salamis. It was after one of these fruitless debates that Democrates passed out of the gathering at the Corinthian prytaneum, with his colleagues all breathing forth their wrath against Dorian stupidity and evasiveness.Democrates himself crossed the city Agora, seeking the house of the friendly merchant where he was to sup. He walked briskly, his thoughts more perhaps on the waiting betrothal feast at Trœzene, than on the discussion behind him. The Agora scene had little to interest, the same buyers, booths, and babel as in Athens, only the citadel above was the mount of Acro-Corinthus, not the tawny rock of Athena. And in late months he had begun to find his old fears and terrors flee away. Every day he was growing more certain that his former“missteps”—that was his own name for certain occurrences—could have no malign influence.“After all,”he was reflecting,“Nemesis is a very capricious goddess. Often she forgets for a lifetime, and after death—who knows what is beyond the Styx?”He was on such noble terms with all about him that he could even give ear to the whine of a beggar. The man was sitting on the steps between the pillars of a colonnade, with a tame crow perched upon his fist, and as Democrates passed he began his doggerel prayer:—“Good master, a handful of barley bestowOn the child of Apollo, the sage, sable crow.”[pg 336]The Athenian began to fumble in his belt for an obol, when he was rudely distracted by a twitch upon his chiton. Turning, he was little pleased to come face to face with no less a giant than Lycon.“There was an hour,philotate,”spoke the Spartan, with ill-concealed sneer,“when you did not have so much silver to scatter out to beggars.”Time had not mended Lycon’s aspect, nor taken from his eye that sinister twinkle which was so marked a foil to his brutishness.“I did not invite you, dear fellow,”rejoined the Athenian,“to remind me of the fact.”“Yet you should have gratitude, and you have lacked that virtue of late. It was a sorry plight Mardonius’s money saved you from two years since, and nobly have you remembered his good service.”“Worthy Lacedæmonian,”said Democrates, with what patience he could command,“if you desire to go over all that little business which concerned us then, at least I would suggest not in the open Agora.”He started to walk swiftly away. The Spartan’s ponderous strides easily kept beside him. Democrates looked vainly for an associate whom he could approach and on some pretext could accompany. None in sight. Lycon kept fast hold of his cloak. For practical purposes Democrates was prisoner.“Why in Corinth?”he threw out sullenly.“For three reasons,philotate,”Lycon grinned over his shoulder,“first, the women at the Grove of Aphrodite here are handsome; second, I am weary of Sparta and its black broth and iron money; third, and here is the rose for my garland, I had need to confer with your noble self.”“Would not Hiram be your dutiful messenger again?”queried the other, vainly watching for escape.[pg 337]“Hiram is worth twenty talents as a helper;”—Lycon gave a hound-like chuckle,—“still he is not Apollo, and there are too many strings on this lyre for him to play them all. Besides, he failed at Salamis.”“He did! Zeus blast his importunity and yours likewise. Where are you taking me? I warn you in advance, you are‘shearing an ass,’—attempting the impossible,—if you deceive yourself as to my power. I can do nothing more to prevent the war from being pressed against Mardonius. It is only your Laconian ephors that are hindering.”“We shall see,philotate, we shall see,”grunted the Spartan, exasperatingly cool.“Here is Poseidon’s Temple. Let us sit in the shaded portico.”Democrates resigned himself to be led to a stone seat against the wall. The gray old“dog-watcher”by the gate glanced up to see that no dogs were straying into the holy house, noted only two gentlemen come for a chat, and resumed his siesta. Lycon took a long time in opening his business.“The world has used you well of late, dear fellow.”“Passing well, by Athena’s favour.”“You should say by Hermes’s favour, but I would trust you Athenians to grow fat on successful villany and then bless the righteous gods.”“I hope you haven’t left Sparta just to revile me!”cried Democrates, leaping up, to be thrust back by Lycon’s giant paw.“Ai!mix a little honey with your speech, it costs nothing. Well, the length and breadth of my errand is this, Mardonius must fight soon, and must be victorious.”“That is for your brave ephors to say,”darted Democrates.“According to their valiant proposals they desire this war to imitate that with Troy,—to last ten years.”[pg 338]“Indeed—but I always held my people surpassed in procrastination, as yours in deceiving. However, their minds will change.”“Aristeides and Themistocles will bless you for that.”Lycon shrugged his great shoulders.“Then I’ll surpass the gods, who can seldom please all men. Still it is quite true.”“I’m glad to hear it.”“Dear Democrates, you know what’s befallen in Sparta. Since Leonidas died, his rivals from my own side of the royal house have gathered a great deal more of power. My uncle Nicander is at present head of the board of ephors, and gladly takes my advice.”“Ha!”Democrates began to divine the drift.“It seemed best to me after the affair at Salamis to give the lie to my calumniators, who hinted that I desired to‘Medize,’and that it was by my intriguing that the late king took so small a force to Thermopylæ.”“All Hellas knowsyourpatriotism!”cried Democrates, satirically.“Even so. I have silenced my fiercest abusers. If I have not yet urged in our assembly that we should fight Mardonius, it is merely because—it is not yet prudent.”“Excellent scoundrel,”declared the other, writhing on his seat,“you are no Spartan, but long-winded as a Sicilian.”“Patience,philotate, a Spartan must either speak in apothegms or take all day. I have not advised a battle yet because I was not certain of your aid.”“Ay, by Zeus,”broke out Democrates,“that ointment I sniffed a long way off. I can give you quick answer. Fly back to Sparta, swift as Boreas; plot, conspire, earn Tartarus, to your heart’s content—you’ll get no more help from me.”[pg 339]“I expected that speech.”Lycon’s coolness drove his victim almost frantic.“In the affair of Tempē I bent to you for the last time,”Democrates charged desperately.“I have counted the cost. Perhaps you can use against me certain documents, but I am on a surer footing than once. In the last year I have done such service to Hellas I can even hope to be forgiven, should these old mistakes be proved. And if you drive me to bay, be sure of this, I will see to it that all the dealings betwixt the Barbarian and your noble self are expounded to your admiring countrymen.”“You show truly excellent courage, dear Democrates,”cried Lycon, in pseudo-admiration.“That speech was quite worthy of a tragic actor.”“If we’re in the theatre, let the chorus sing its last strophe and have done. You disgust me.”“Peace, peace,”ordered Lycon, his hand still on the Athenian’s shoulder,“I will make all the haste I can, but obstinacy is disagreeable. I repeat, you are needed, sorely needed, by Mardonius to enable him to complete the conquest of Hellas. You shall not call the Persians ungrateful—the tyranny of Athens under the easy suzerainty of the king, is that no dish to whet your appetite?”“I knew of the offer before.”“A great pity you are not more eager. Hermes seldom sends such chances twice. I hoped to have you for‘my royal brother’when they gave me the like lordship of Lacedæmon. However, the matter does not end with your refusal.”“I have said,‘Do your worst.’”“And my worst is—Agis.”For an instant Lycon was dismayed. He thought he had slain his victim with one word. Democrates dropped from his clutch and upon the pavement as though stricken through[pg 340]the heart by an arrow. He was pallid as a corpse, at first he only groaned.“Eu! eu!good comrade,”cried the Spartan, dragging him up, half triumphant, half sympathetic,“I did not know I was throwing Zeus’s thunderbolts.”The Athenian sat with his head on his hands. In all his dealings with the Spartan he had believed he had covered the details of the fate of Glaucon. Lycon could surmise what he liked, but the proof to make the damning charges good Democrates believed he had safe in his own keeping. Only one man could have unlocked the casket of infamy—Agis—and the mention of his name was as a bolt from the blue.“Where is he? I heard he was killed at Artemisium.”Lycon hardly understood his victim’s thick whispers.“Wounded indeed,philotate, taken prisoner, and sent to Thebes. There friends of mine found he had a story to tell—greatly to my advantage. It is only a little time since he came to Sparta.”“What lies has he told?”“Several, dear fellow, although if they are lies, then Aletheia, Lady Truth, must almost own them for her children. At least they are interesting lies; as, for example, how you advised the Cyprian to escape from Athens, how you gave Agis a letter to hide in the boots of Glaucon’s messenger, of your interviews with Lampaxo and Archias, of the charming art you possess of imitating handwritings and seals.”“Base-born swine! who will believe him?”“Base born, Democrates, but hardly swinish. He can tell a very clear story. Likewise, Lampaxo and Archias must testify at the trial, also your slave Bias can tell many interesting things.”“Only if I consent to produce him.”“When did a master ever refuse to let his slave testify,[pg 341]if demanded, unless he wished to blast his own cause with the jury? No,makaire, you will not enjoy the day when Themistocles arrays the testimony against you.”Democrates shivered. The late spring sun was warm. He felt no heat. A mere charge of treason he was almost prepared now to endure. If Mistress Fortune helped him, he might refute it, but to be branded before Hellas as the destroyer of his bosom friend, and that by guile the like whereof Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion conjoined had never wrought—what wonder his knees smote together? Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon’s hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst of all, worse than the howls of the people who would tear his body asunder like dogs, not waiting the work of the hemlock, was the thought of Hermione. She hated him now. How she would love him, though he sat on Xerxes’s throne, if once her suspicion rose to certainty! He saw himself ruined in life and in love, and blazoned as infamous forever.Lycon was wise enough to sit some moments, letting his utterance do its work. He was confident, and rightly. Democrates looked on him at last. The workings of the Athenian’s face were terrible.“I am your slave, Spartan. Had you bought me for ten minæ and held the bill of sale, I were not yours more utterly. Your wish?”Lycon chose his words and answered slowly.“You must serve Persia. Not for a moment, but for all time. You must place that dreadful gift of yours at our disposal. And in return take what is promised,—the lordship of Athens.”“No word of that,”groaned the wretched man,“what will you do?”[pg 342]“Aristeides is soon going to Sparta to press home his demands that the Lacedæmonians march in full force against Mardonius. I can see to it that his mission succeeds. A great battle will be fought in Bœotia.Wecan see to it that Mardonius is so victorious that all further resistance becomes a dream.”“And my part in this monster’s work?”The demands and propositions with which Lycon answered this despairing question will unfold themselves in due place and time. Suffice it here, that when he let the Athenian go his way Lycon was convinced that Democrates had bound himself heart and soul to forward his enterprise. The orator was no merry guest for his Corinthian hosts that night. He returned to his old manner of drinking unmixed wine.“Thirsty as a Macedonian!”cried his companions, in vain endeavour to drive him into a laugh. They did not know that once more the chorus of the Furies was singing about his ears, and he could not still it by the deepest wine-cup. They did not know that every time he closed his eyes he was seeing the face of Glaucon. That morning he had mocked at Nemesis. That night he heard the beating of her brazen wings.[pg 343]CHAPTER XXXIITHE STRANGER IN TRŒZENEDespite exile, life had moved pleasantly for Hermippus’s household that spring. The Trœzenians had surpassed all duties to Zeus Xenios—the stranger’s god—in entertaining the outcast Athenians. The fugitives had received two obols per day to keep them in figs and porridge. Their children had been suffered to roam and plunder the orchards. But Hermippus had not needed such generosity. He had placed several talents at interest in Corinth; likewise bonds of“guest-friendship”with prominent Trœzenians made his residence very agreeable. He had hired a comfortable house, and could enjoy even luxury with his wife, daughter, young sons, and score of slaves.Little Phœnix grew marvellously day by day, as if obeying his mother’s command to wax strong and avenge his father. Old Cleopis vowed he was the healthiest, least tearful babe, as well as the handsomest, she had ever known,—and she spoke from wide experience. When he was one year old, he was so active they had to tie him in the cradle. When the golden spring days came, he would ride forth upon his nurse’s back, surveying the Hellas he was born to inherit, and seeming to find it exceeding good.But as spring verged on summer, Hermione demanded so much of Cleopis’s care that even Phœnix ceased to be the focus of attention. The lordly Alcmæonid fell into the cus[pg 344]tody of one Niobe, a dark-haired lass of the islands, who treated him well, but cared too much for certain young“serving-gentlemen”to waste on her charge any unreciprocated adoration. So on one day, just as the dying grass told the full reign of the Sun King, she went forth with her precious bundle wriggling in her arms, but her thoughts hardly on Master Phœnix. Procles the steward had been cold of late, he had even cast sly glances at Jocasta, Lysistra’s tiring-woman. Mistress Niobe was ready—since fair means of recalling the fickle Apollo failed—to resort to foul. Instead, therefore, of going to the promenade over the sea, she went—burden and all—to the Agora, where she was sure old Dion, who kept a soothsayer’s shop, would give due assistance in return for half a drachma.The market was just thinning. Niobe picked her way amongst the vegetable women, fought off a boy who thrust on her a pair of geese, and found in a quiet corner by a temple porch the booth of Dion, who grinned with his toothless gums in way of greeting. He listened with paternal interest to her story, soothed her when she sniffled at Procles’s name, and made her show her silver, then began pulling over his bags and vials of strange powders and liquids.“Ah, kind Master Dion,”began Niobe, for the sixth time,“if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!”“Eu! eu!”muttered the old sinner,“it’s hard to say what’s best,—powder of toad’s bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder’s fat. The safest thing is to consult the god—”“What do you mean?”“Why, my holy cock here, hatched at Delphi with Apollo’s blessings on him.”Dion pointed with his thumb to the small coop at his feet.“The oracle is simple. You cast[pg 345]before him two piles of corn; if he picks at the one to right we take toad’s bone, to left the adder’s fat. Heaven will speak to us.”“Excellent,”cried Niobe, brightening.“But, of course, we must use only consecrated corn, that’s two obols more.”Niobe’s face fell.“I’ve only this half-drachma.”“Then,philotata,”said Dion, kindly but firmly,“we had better wait a little longer.”Niobe wept.“Ai!woe.‘A little longer’and Jocasta has Procles. I can’t ask Hermione again for money.Ai! ai!”Two round tears did not move Dion in the slightest. Niobe was sobbing, at her small wits’ end, when a voice sounded behind her.“What’s there wrong, lass? By Zeus, but you carry a handsome child!”Niobe glanced, and instantly stopped weeping. A young man dressed roughly as a sailor, and with long black hair and beard, had approached her, but despite dress and beard she was quite aware he was far handsomer than even Procles.“I beg pardon,kyrie,”—she said“kyrie”by instinct,—“I’m only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate.”She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only the babe, not herself.“Ah! Gods and goddesses, what a beautiful child! A girl?”“A boy,”answered Niobe, almost sullenly.“Blessed the house in Trœzene then that can boast of such a son.”“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from[pg 346]Athens,”volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres.“An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”“The brat will never boast of his father,”quoth Dion, rolling his eyes.“He left the world in a way, I wager five minæ, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe’s of right good stock, an Alcmæonid, and the grandfather is that Hermippus—”“Hermippus?”The stranger seemed to catch the word out of Dion’s mouth. A donkey had broken loose at the upper end of the Agora; he turned and stared at it and its pursuers intently.“If you’re Athenian,”went on the soothsayer,“the story’s an old one—of Glaucon the Traitor.”The stranger turned back again. For a moment Dion saw he was blinking, but no doubt it was dust. Then he suddenly began to fumble in his girdle.“What do you want, girl?”he demanded of Niobe, nigh fiercely.“Two obols.”“Take two drachmæ. I was once a friend to that Glaucon, and traitor though he has been blazed, his child is yet dear to me. Let me take him.”Without waiting her answer he thrust the coin into her hands, and caught the child out of them. Phœnix looked up into the strange, bearded face, and deliberated an instant whether to crow or to weep. Then some friendly god decided him. He laughed as sweetly, as musically, as ever one can at his most august age. With both chubby hands he plucked at the black beard and held tight. The strange sailor answered laugh with laugh, and released himself right gayly. Then whilst Niobe and Dion watched and[pg 347]wondered they saw the sailor kiss the child full fifty times, all the time whispering soft words in his ear, at which Phœnix crowed and laughed yet more.“An old family servant,”threw out Dion, in a whisper.“Sheep!”retorted the nurse,“do you call yourself wise? Do you think a man with that face and those long hands ever felt the stocks or the whip? He’s gentleman born, by Demeter!”“War makes many changes,”rejoined Dion.“Ai!is he beside himself or a kidnapper? He is walking off with the babe.”The stranger indeed had seemed to forget them all and was going with swift strides up the Agora, but just before Niobe could begin her outcry he wheeled, and brought his merry burden back to the nurse’s arms.“You ought to be exceeding proud, my girl,”he remarked almost severely,“to have such a precious babe in charge. I trust you are dutiful.”“So I strive,kyrie, but he grows very strong. One cannot keep the swaddling clothes on him now. They say he will be a mighty athlete like his father.”“Ah, yes—his father—”The sailor looked down.“You knew Master Glaucon well?”pressed Dion, itching for a new bit of gossip.“Well,”answered the sailor, standing gazing on the child as though something held him fascinated, then shot another question.“And does the babe’s lady-mother prosper?”“She is passing well in body,kyrie, but grievously ill in mind. Hera give her a release from all her sorrow!”“Sorrow?”The man’s eyes were opening wider, wider.“What mean you?”“Why, all Trœzene knows it, I’m sure.”[pg 348]“I’m not from Trœzene. My ship made port from Naxos this morning. Speak, girl!”He seized Niobe’s wrist in a grip which she thought would crush the bone.“Ai!Let go, sir, you hurt. Don’t stare so. I’m frightened. I’ll tell as fast as I can. Master Democrates has come back from Corinth. Hermippus is resolved to make thekyriawed him, however bitterly she resists. It’s taken a long time for her father to determine to break her will, but now his mind’s made up. The betrothal is in three days, the wedding ten days thereafter.”The sailor had dropped her hand. She shrank at the pallor of his face. He seemed struggling for words; when they came she made nothing of them.“Themistocles, Themistocles—your promise!”Then by some giant exercise of will he steadied. His speech grew more coherent.“Give me the child,”he commanded, and Niobe mutely obeyed. He kissed Phœnix on both cheeks, mouth, forehead. They saw that tears were running down his bronzed face. He handed back the babe and again held out money,—a coin for both the slave girl and the soothsayer,—gold half-darics, that they gaped at wonderingly.“Say nothing!”ordered the sailor,“nothing of what I have said or done, or as Helios shines this noon, I will kill you both.”Not waiting reply, he went down the Agora at a run, and never looked back. It took some moments for Dion and Niobe to recover their equanimity; they would have believed it all a dream, but lo! in their hands gleamed the money.“There are times,”remarked the soothsayer, dubiously at last,“when I begin to think the gods again walk the earth and work wonders. This is a very high matter. Even I[pg 349]with my art dare not meddle with it. It is best to heed the injunction to silence. Wagging tongues always have troubles as their children. Now let us proceed with my sacred cock and his divination.”Niobe got her philtre,—though whether it reconquered Procles is not contained in this history. Likewise, she heeded Dion’s injunction. There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis.* * * * * * *Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty“distance-runner”to Sparta.“Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you. Rejoice therefore; you are my only hope. I am with you whether your path leads to Olympus or to Hades. Tartarus is opened at my feet. You must save me. My words are confused, do you think? Then hear this, and ask if I have not cause for turning mad.“Yesterday, even as Hermippus hung garlands on his house, and summoned the guests to witness the betrothal contract, Themistocles returned suddenly from Eubœa. He called Hermippus and myself aside.‘Glaucon lives,’he said,‘and with the god’s help we’ll prove his innocence.’Hermippus at once broke off the betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details.‘Glaucon lives,’—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory of Mardonius!Chaire.”“Glaucon lives.”Democrates had only written one least part of his terrors. Two words—but enough to make the orator the most miserable man in Hellas, the most supple of Xerxes’s hundred million slaves.[pg 350]CHAPTER XXXIIIWHAT BEFELL ON THE HILLSIDEOnce more the Persians pressed into Attica, once more the Athenians,—or such few of them as had ventured home in the winter,—fled with their movables to Salamis or Peloponnesus, and an embassy, headed by Aristeides, hastened to Sparta to demand for the last time that the tardy ephors make good their promise in sending forth their infantry to hurl back the invader. If not, Aristeides spoke plainly, his people must perforce close alliance with Mardonius.Almost to the amazement of the Athenian chiefs, so accustomed were they to Dorian doltishness and immobility, after a ten days’ delay and excuses that“they must celebrate their festival the Hyacinthia,”the ephors called forth their whole levy. Ten thousand heavy infantrymen with a host of lightly armed“helots”11were started northward under the able lead of Pausanias, the regent for Leonidas’s young son. Likewise all the allies of Lacedæmon—Corinthians, Sicyonians, Elians, Arcadians—began to hurry toward the Isthmus. Therefore men who had loved Hellas and had almost despaired for her took courage.“At last we will have a great land battle, and an end to the Barbarian.”All was excitement in the Athenian colony at Trœzene. The board of strategi met and voted that now was the time[pg 351]for a crowning effort. Five thousand men-at-arms should march under Aristeides to join against Mardonius in Bœotia. By sea Themistocles should go with every available ship to Delos, meet the allied squadrons there, and use his infallible art in persuading the sluggish Spartan high admiral to conduct a raid across the Ægean at Xerxes’s own doors. Of the ten strategi Democrates had called loudest for instant action, so loudly indeed that Themistocles had cautioned him against rashness. Hermippus was old, but experienced men trusted him, therefore he was appointed to command the contingent of his tribe. Democrates was to accompany Aristeides as general adjutant; his diplomatic training would be invaluable in ending the frictions sure to arise amongst the allies. Cimon would go with Themistocles, and so every other man was sent to his place. In the general preparation private problems seemed forgotten. Hermippus and Democrates both announced that the betrothal of Hermione had been postponed, pending the public crisis. The old Eleusinian had not told his daughter, or even his wife, why he had seemed to relax his announced purpose of forcing Hermione to an unwelcome marriage. The young widow knew she had respite—for how long nothing told her, but for every day her agony was postponed she blessed kind Hera. Then came the morning when her father must go forth with his men. She still loved him, despite the grief he was giving her. She did him justice to believe he acted in affection. The gay ribbons that laced his cuirass, the red and blue embroidery that edged his“taxiarch’s”cloak, were from the needle of his daughter. Hermione kissed him as she stood with her mother in the aula. He coughed gruffly when he answered their“farewell.”The house door closed behind him, and Hermione and Lysistra ran into one another’s arms. They had given to Hellas their best, and now must look to Athena.[pg 352]Hermippus and Aristeides were gone, Democrates remained in Trœzene. His business, he said, was more diplomatic than military, and he was expecting advices from the islands which he must take to Pausanias in person. He had a number of interviews with Themistocles, when it was observed that every time he came away with clouded brow and gruff answers to all who accosted. It began to be hinted that all was not as well as formerly between the admiral and the orator, that Democrates had chosen to tie too closely to Aristeides for the son of Neocles’s liking, and that as soon as the campaign was decided, a bitter feud would break out betwixt them. But this was merest gossip. Outwardly Democrates and Themistocles continued friends, dined together, exchanged civilities. On the day when Themistocles was to sail for Delos he walked arm in arm with Democrates to the quay. The hundreds of onlookers saw him embrace the young strategus in a manner belying any rumour of estrangement, whilst Democrates stood on the sand waving his good wishes until the admiral climbed the ladder of theNausicaä.It was another day and landscape which the stranger in Hellas would have remembered long. The haven of Trœzene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder Ægina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole.“Euopis,”“The Fair-Faced,”the beauty-loving dwellers of the country called it, and they named aright.Something of the beauty touched even Hermione as she[pg 353]stood on the hill slope, gazing across the sea. Only Cleopis was with her. The young widow had less trembling when she looked on theNausicaäthan when one year before the stately trireme had sailed for Artemisium. If ill news must come, it would be from the plains of Bœotia. Most of Themistocles’s fleet was already at Delos. He led only a dozen sail. When his squadron glided on into the blue deep, the haven seemed deserted save for the Carthaginian trader that swung at her cables close upon the land. As Hermione looked and saw the climbing sun change the tintings of the waters, here spreading a line of green gold amidst the blue, here flashing the waves with dark violet, something of the peace and majesty of the scene entered into her own breast. The waves at the foot of the slope beat in monotonous music. She did not wonder that Thetis, Galatea, and all the hundred Nereids loved their home. Somewhere, far off on that shimmering plain, Glaucon the Beautiful had fallen asleep; whether he waked in the land of Rhadamanthus, whether he had been stolen away by Leucothea and the other nymphs to be their playfellow, she did not know. She was not sad, even to think of him crowned with green seaweed, and sitting under the sea-floor with fish-tailed Tritons at their tables of pearl, while the finny shoals like birds flitted above their heads. Thales the Sage made all life proceed out of the sea. Perchance all life should return to it. Then she would find her husband again, not beyond, but within the realms of great Oceanus. With such beauty spreading out before her eyes the phantasy was almost welcome.The people had wandered homeward. Cleopis set the parasol on the dry grass where it would shade her mistress and betook herself to the shelter of a rock. If Hermione was pleased to meditate so long, she would not deny her slave a siesta. So the Athenian sat and mused, now sadly, now[pg 354]with a gleam of brightness, for she was too young to have her sun clouded always.A speaker near by her called her out of her reverie.“You sit long,kyria, and gaze forth as if you were Zeus in Olympus and could look on all the world.”Hermione had not exchanged a word with Democrates since that day she cast scorn on him on that other hill slope at Munychia, but this did not make his intrusion more welcome. With mortification she realized that she had forgotten herself. That she lay on the sunny bank with her feet outstretched and her hair shaken loose on her shoulders. Her feet she instantly covered with her long himation. Her hands flew instantly to her hair. Then she uprose, flushing haughtily.“It has pleased my father, sir,”she spoke with frigid dignity,“to tell me that you are some day perchance to be my husband. The fulfilment lies with the gods. But to-day the strategus Democrates knows our customs too well to thrust himself upon an Attic gentlewoman who finds herself alone save for one servant.”“Ah,kyria; pardon the word, it’s overcold;makaira, I’d say more gladly,”Democrates was marvellously at his ease despite her frowns,“your noble father will take nothing amiss if I ask you to sit again that we may talk together.”“I do not think so.”Hermione drew herself up at full height. But Democrates deliberately placed himself in the path up the hillside. To have run toward the water seemed folly. She could expect no help from Cleopis, who would hardly oppose a man soon probably to be her master. As the less of evils, Hermione did not indeed sit as desired, but stood facing her unloved lover and hearkening.“How long I’ve desired this instant!”Democrates looked as if he might seize her hands to kiss them, but she thrust[pg 355]them behind her.“I know you hate me bitterly because, touching your late husband, I did my duty.”“Your duty?”Nestor’s eloquence was in her incredulous echo.“If I have pained you beyond telling, do you think my act was a pleasant one for me? A bosom friend to ruin, the most sacred bonds to sever, last and not least, to give infinite sorrow to her I love?”“I hardly understand.”Democrates drew a step nearer.“Ah! Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite the Golden—by what name shall I call my goddess?”Hermione drew back a step. There was danger in his eyes.“I have loved you, loved you long. Before Glaucon took you in marriage I loved you. But Eros and Hymen hearkened to his prayers, not mine. You became his bride. I wore a bright face at your wedding. You remember I was Glaucon’s groomsman, and rode beside you in the bridal car. You loved him, he seemed worthy of you. Therefore I trod my own grief down into my heart, and rejoiced with my friends. But to cease loving you I could not. Truly they say Eros is the strongest god, and pitiless—do not the poets say bloody Ares begat him—”“Spare me mythologies,”interposed Hermione, with another step back.“As you will, but you shall hearken. I have desired this moment for two years. Not as the weak girl given by her father, but as the fair goddess who comes to me gladly, I do desire you. And I know you will smile on me when you have heard me through.”“Keep back your eloquence. You have destroyed Glaucon. That is enough.”“Hear me.”Democrates cried desperately now. Her[pg 356]mione feared even to retreat farther, lest he pass to violence. She summoned courage and looked him in the eye.“Say on, then. But remember I am a woman and alone save for Cleopis. If you profess to love me, you will not forget that.”But Democrates was passing almost beyond the limits of coherent speech.“Oh, when you come to me, you will not know what a price I have paid for you. In Homer’s day men wooed their wives with costly gifts, but I—have I not paid for you with my soul? My soul, I say—honour, friendship, country, what has weighed against Himeros,‘Master Desire,’—the desire ever for you!”She hardly understood him, his speech flowed so thick. She knew he was on the edge of reason, and feared to answer lest she drive beyond it.“Do you hear the price I have paid? Do you still look on in cold hate, lady? Ah, by Zeus, even in your coldest, most forbidding mood you are fair as the Paphian when she sprang above the sea! And I will win you, lady, I will win your heart, for they shall do you homage, even all Athens, and I will make you a queen. Yes! the house of Athena on the Acropolis shall be your palace if you will, and they will cry in the Agora,‘Way, way for Hermione, glorious consort of Democrates our king!’”“Sir,”spoke Hermione, while her hands grew chill, for now she was sure he raved,“I have not the joy to comprehend. There is no king in Athens, please Athena, there never will be. Treason and blasphemy you speak all in one.”She sought vainly with her eyes for refuge. None in sight. The hill slope seemed empty save for the scattered brown boulders. Far away a goat was wandering. She motioned to Cleopis. The old woman was staring now, and doubtless[pg 357]thought Democrates was carrying his familiarities too far, but she was a weak creature, and at best could only scream.“Treason and blasphemy,”cried Democrates, dropping on his knees, his frame shaking with dishonest passion,“yes! call them so now. They will be blessed truth for me in a month, for me, for you. Hermes the Trickster is a mighty god. He has befriended Eros. I shall possess Athens and possess you. I shall be the most fortunate mortal upon earth as now I am most miserable. Ah! but I have waited so long.”He sprang to his feet.“Tarry,makaira, tarry! A kiss!”Hermione screamed at last shrilly and turned to fly. Instantly Democrates was upon her. In that fluttering white dress escape was hopeless.“Apollo pursuing Daphne!”—his crazed shout as his arms closed around her,—“but Daphne becomes no laurel this time. Her race is lost. She shall pay the forfeit.”She felt him seize her girdle. He swung her face to face. She saw his wide eyes, his mad smile. His hot breath smote her cheek. Cleopis at last was screaming.“Mine,”he triumphed, while he forced her resisting head to his own,“there is none to hinder!”But even while the woman’s flesh crept back at his impure kiss, a giant power came rending the twain apart. A man had sundered them, sprung from the ground or from heaven belike, or from behind a boulder? He tore Democrates’s hands away as a lion tears a lamb. He dashed the mad orator prone upon the sod, and kicked him twice, as of mingled hatred and contempt. All this Hermione only knew in half, while her senses swam. Then she came to herself enough to see that the stranger was a young man in a sailor’s loose dress, his features almost hidden under the dishevelled hair and beard. All this time he uttered no word, but having smitten[pg 358]Democrates down, leaped back, rubbing his hands upon his thigh, as if despising to touch so foul an object. The orator groaned, staggered upward. He wore a sword. It flew from its scabbard as he leaped on the sailor. The stranger put forth his hand, snatched his opponent’s wrist, and with lightning dexterity sent the blade spinning back upon the grass. Then he threw Democrates a second time, and the latter did not rise again hastily, but lay cursing. The fall had not been gentle.But all this while Cleopis was screaming. People were hastening up the hill,—fishermen from a skiff upon the beach, slaves who had been carrying bales to the haven. In a moment they would be surrounded by a dozen. The strange sailor turned as if to fly. He had not spoken one word. Hermione herself at last called to him.“My preserver! Your name! Blessed be you forever!”The fisherfolk were very close. Cleopis was still screaming. The sailor looked once into the lady’s eyes.“I am nameless! You owe me nothing!”And with that he was gone up the hill slopes, springing with long bounds that would have mocked pursuing, had any attempted. But Cleopis quenched her outcry instantly; her screams had been drowned by a louder scream from Hermione, who fell upon the greensward, no marble whiter than her face. The nurse ran to her mistress. Democrates staggered to his feet. Whatever else the chastisement had given him, it had restored his balance of mind. He told the fisherfolk a glib story that a sailor wandering along the strand had accosted Hermione, that he himself had chased the villain off, but had tripped whilst trying to follow. If the tale was not of perfect workmanship at all points, there was no one with interest to gainsay it. A few ran up the hill slope, but the sailor was nowhere in sight. Hermione was still speechless.[pg 359]They made a litter of oars and sail-cloth and carried her to her mother. Democrates oiled Cleopis’s palm well, that she should tell nothing amiss to Lysistra. It was a long time before Hermione opened her eyes in her chamber. Her first words were:—“Glaucon! I have seen Glaucon!”“You have had a strange dream,philotata,”soothed Lysistra, shifting the pillows,“lie still and rest.”But Hermione shook her shining brown head and repeated, many times:—“No dream! No dream! I have seen Glaucon face to face. In that instant he spoke and looked on me I knew him. He lives. He saved me. Ah! why does he stay away?”Lysistra, whose husband had not deemed it prudent to inform her of Themistocles’s revelations, was infinitely distressed. She sent for the best physicians of the city, and despatched a slave to the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus—not distant—to sacrifice two cocks for her daughter’s recovery. The doctors looked wise and recommended heavy doses of spiced wine, and if those did not suffice, said that the patient might spend a night in the temple of the Healer, who would no doubt explain the true remedy in a dream. A“wise woman”who had great following among the slaves advised that a young puppy be tied upon Hermione’s temples to absorb the disaffection of her brain. Lysistra was barely persuaded not to follow her admonitions. After a few days the patient grew better, recovered strength, took an interest in her child. Yet ever and anon she would repeat over Phœnix’s cradle:—“Your father lives! I have seen him! I have seen him!”What, however, puzzled Lysistra most, was the fact that Cleopis did not contradict her young mistress in the least, but maintained a mysterious silence about the whole adventure.
[pg 331]BOOK IIITHE PASSING OF THE PERSIAN[pg 332][pg 333]CHAPTER XXXIDEMOCRATES SURRENDERSHellas was saved. But whether forever or only for a year the gods kept hid. Panic-stricken, the“Lord of the World”had fled to Asia after the great disaster. The eunuchs, the harem women, the soft-handed pages, had escaped with their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the Ægean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army. Hellas was not yet safe.Democrates had prospered. He had been reëlected strategus. If Themistocles no longer trusted him quite so freely as once, Aristeides, restored now to much of his former power, gave him full confidence. Democrates found constant and honourable employment through the winter in the endless negotiations at Sparta, at Corinth, and elsewhere, while the jealous Greek states wrangled and intrigued, more to humiliate some rival than to advance the safety of Hellas. But amongst all the patriot chiefs none seemed more devoted to the common weal of Hellas than the Athenian orator.Hermippus at least was convinced of this. The Eleusinian had settled at Trœzene on the Argive coast, a hospitable city that received many an outcast Athenian. He found his[pg 334]daughter’s resistance to another marriage increasingly unreasonable. Was not Glaucon dead for more than a year? Ought not any woman to bless Hera who gave her so noble, so eloquent, a husband as Democrates—pious, rich, trusted by the greatest, and with the best of worldly prospects?“If you truly desire any other worthy man,makaira,”said Hermippus, once,“you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your highest happiness.”“He ruined Glaucon,”said Hermione, tearfully.“At least,”returned Lysistra, who like many good women could say exceeding cruel things,“hehas never been a traitor to his country.”Hermione’s answer was to fly to her chamber, and to weep—as many a time before—over Phœnix in the cradle. Here old Cleopis found her, took her in her arms, and sang her the old song about Alphæus chasing Arethusa—a song more fit for Phœnix than his mother, but most comforting. So the contest for the moment passed, but after a conference with Hermippus, Democrates went away on public business to Corinth unusually well pleased with the world and himself.It was a tedious, jangling conference held at the Isthmus city. Mardonius had tempted the Athenians sorely. In the spring had come his envoys proffering reparation for all injuries in the wars, enlarged territory, and not slavery, but free alliance with the Great King, if they would but join against their fellow-Hellenes. The Athenians had met the tempter as became Athenians. Aristeides had given the envoys the answer of the whole people.“We know your power. Yet tell it to Mardonius, that so long as Helios moves in the heavens we will not make[pg 335]alliance with Xerxes, but rather trust to the gods whose temples he has burned.”Bravely said, but when the Athenians looked to Sparta for the great army to hasten north and give Mardonius his death-stroke, it was the old wearisome tale of excuses and delay. At the conference in Corinth Aristeides and Democrates had passed from arguments to all but threats, even such as Themistocles had used at Salamis. It was after one of these fruitless debates that Democrates passed out of the gathering at the Corinthian prytaneum, with his colleagues all breathing forth their wrath against Dorian stupidity and evasiveness.Democrates himself crossed the city Agora, seeking the house of the friendly merchant where he was to sup. He walked briskly, his thoughts more perhaps on the waiting betrothal feast at Trœzene, than on the discussion behind him. The Agora scene had little to interest, the same buyers, booths, and babel as in Athens, only the citadel above was the mount of Acro-Corinthus, not the tawny rock of Athena. And in late months he had begun to find his old fears and terrors flee away. Every day he was growing more certain that his former“missteps”—that was his own name for certain occurrences—could have no malign influence.“After all,”he was reflecting,“Nemesis is a very capricious goddess. Often she forgets for a lifetime, and after death—who knows what is beyond the Styx?”He was on such noble terms with all about him that he could even give ear to the whine of a beggar. The man was sitting on the steps between the pillars of a colonnade, with a tame crow perched upon his fist, and as Democrates passed he began his doggerel prayer:—“Good master, a handful of barley bestowOn the child of Apollo, the sage, sable crow.”[pg 336]The Athenian began to fumble in his belt for an obol, when he was rudely distracted by a twitch upon his chiton. Turning, he was little pleased to come face to face with no less a giant than Lycon.“There was an hour,philotate,”spoke the Spartan, with ill-concealed sneer,“when you did not have so much silver to scatter out to beggars.”Time had not mended Lycon’s aspect, nor taken from his eye that sinister twinkle which was so marked a foil to his brutishness.“I did not invite you, dear fellow,”rejoined the Athenian,“to remind me of the fact.”“Yet you should have gratitude, and you have lacked that virtue of late. It was a sorry plight Mardonius’s money saved you from two years since, and nobly have you remembered his good service.”“Worthy Lacedæmonian,”said Democrates, with what patience he could command,“if you desire to go over all that little business which concerned us then, at least I would suggest not in the open Agora.”He started to walk swiftly away. The Spartan’s ponderous strides easily kept beside him. Democrates looked vainly for an associate whom he could approach and on some pretext could accompany. None in sight. Lycon kept fast hold of his cloak. For practical purposes Democrates was prisoner.“Why in Corinth?”he threw out sullenly.“For three reasons,philotate,”Lycon grinned over his shoulder,“first, the women at the Grove of Aphrodite here are handsome; second, I am weary of Sparta and its black broth and iron money; third, and here is the rose for my garland, I had need to confer with your noble self.”“Would not Hiram be your dutiful messenger again?”queried the other, vainly watching for escape.[pg 337]“Hiram is worth twenty talents as a helper;”—Lycon gave a hound-like chuckle,—“still he is not Apollo, and there are too many strings on this lyre for him to play them all. Besides, he failed at Salamis.”“He did! Zeus blast his importunity and yours likewise. Where are you taking me? I warn you in advance, you are‘shearing an ass,’—attempting the impossible,—if you deceive yourself as to my power. I can do nothing more to prevent the war from being pressed against Mardonius. It is only your Laconian ephors that are hindering.”“We shall see,philotate, we shall see,”grunted the Spartan, exasperatingly cool.“Here is Poseidon’s Temple. Let us sit in the shaded portico.”Democrates resigned himself to be led to a stone seat against the wall. The gray old“dog-watcher”by the gate glanced up to see that no dogs were straying into the holy house, noted only two gentlemen come for a chat, and resumed his siesta. Lycon took a long time in opening his business.“The world has used you well of late, dear fellow.”“Passing well, by Athena’s favour.”“You should say by Hermes’s favour, but I would trust you Athenians to grow fat on successful villany and then bless the righteous gods.”“I hope you haven’t left Sparta just to revile me!”cried Democrates, leaping up, to be thrust back by Lycon’s giant paw.“Ai!mix a little honey with your speech, it costs nothing. Well, the length and breadth of my errand is this, Mardonius must fight soon, and must be victorious.”“That is for your brave ephors to say,”darted Democrates.“According to their valiant proposals they desire this war to imitate that with Troy,—to last ten years.”[pg 338]“Indeed—but I always held my people surpassed in procrastination, as yours in deceiving. However, their minds will change.”“Aristeides and Themistocles will bless you for that.”Lycon shrugged his great shoulders.“Then I’ll surpass the gods, who can seldom please all men. Still it is quite true.”“I’m glad to hear it.”“Dear Democrates, you know what’s befallen in Sparta. Since Leonidas died, his rivals from my own side of the royal house have gathered a great deal more of power. My uncle Nicander is at present head of the board of ephors, and gladly takes my advice.”“Ha!”Democrates began to divine the drift.“It seemed best to me after the affair at Salamis to give the lie to my calumniators, who hinted that I desired to‘Medize,’and that it was by my intriguing that the late king took so small a force to Thermopylæ.”“All Hellas knowsyourpatriotism!”cried Democrates, satirically.“Even so. I have silenced my fiercest abusers. If I have not yet urged in our assembly that we should fight Mardonius, it is merely because—it is not yet prudent.”“Excellent scoundrel,”declared the other, writhing on his seat,“you are no Spartan, but long-winded as a Sicilian.”“Patience,philotate, a Spartan must either speak in apothegms or take all day. I have not advised a battle yet because I was not certain of your aid.”“Ay, by Zeus,”broke out Democrates,“that ointment I sniffed a long way off. I can give you quick answer. Fly back to Sparta, swift as Boreas; plot, conspire, earn Tartarus, to your heart’s content—you’ll get no more help from me.”[pg 339]“I expected that speech.”Lycon’s coolness drove his victim almost frantic.“In the affair of Tempē I bent to you for the last time,”Democrates charged desperately.“I have counted the cost. Perhaps you can use against me certain documents, but I am on a surer footing than once. In the last year I have done such service to Hellas I can even hope to be forgiven, should these old mistakes be proved. And if you drive me to bay, be sure of this, I will see to it that all the dealings betwixt the Barbarian and your noble self are expounded to your admiring countrymen.”“You show truly excellent courage, dear Democrates,”cried Lycon, in pseudo-admiration.“That speech was quite worthy of a tragic actor.”“If we’re in the theatre, let the chorus sing its last strophe and have done. You disgust me.”“Peace, peace,”ordered Lycon, his hand still on the Athenian’s shoulder,“I will make all the haste I can, but obstinacy is disagreeable. I repeat, you are needed, sorely needed, by Mardonius to enable him to complete the conquest of Hellas. You shall not call the Persians ungrateful—the tyranny of Athens under the easy suzerainty of the king, is that no dish to whet your appetite?”“I knew of the offer before.”“A great pity you are not more eager. Hermes seldom sends such chances twice. I hoped to have you for‘my royal brother’when they gave me the like lordship of Lacedæmon. However, the matter does not end with your refusal.”“I have said,‘Do your worst.’”“And my worst is—Agis.”For an instant Lycon was dismayed. He thought he had slain his victim with one word. Democrates dropped from his clutch and upon the pavement as though stricken through[pg 340]the heart by an arrow. He was pallid as a corpse, at first he only groaned.“Eu! eu!good comrade,”cried the Spartan, dragging him up, half triumphant, half sympathetic,“I did not know I was throwing Zeus’s thunderbolts.”The Athenian sat with his head on his hands. In all his dealings with the Spartan he had believed he had covered the details of the fate of Glaucon. Lycon could surmise what he liked, but the proof to make the damning charges good Democrates believed he had safe in his own keeping. Only one man could have unlocked the casket of infamy—Agis—and the mention of his name was as a bolt from the blue.“Where is he? I heard he was killed at Artemisium.”Lycon hardly understood his victim’s thick whispers.“Wounded indeed,philotate, taken prisoner, and sent to Thebes. There friends of mine found he had a story to tell—greatly to my advantage. It is only a little time since he came to Sparta.”“What lies has he told?”“Several, dear fellow, although if they are lies, then Aletheia, Lady Truth, must almost own them for her children. At least they are interesting lies; as, for example, how you advised the Cyprian to escape from Athens, how you gave Agis a letter to hide in the boots of Glaucon’s messenger, of your interviews with Lampaxo and Archias, of the charming art you possess of imitating handwritings and seals.”“Base-born swine! who will believe him?”“Base born, Democrates, but hardly swinish. He can tell a very clear story. Likewise, Lampaxo and Archias must testify at the trial, also your slave Bias can tell many interesting things.”“Only if I consent to produce him.”“When did a master ever refuse to let his slave testify,[pg 341]if demanded, unless he wished to blast his own cause with the jury? No,makaire, you will not enjoy the day when Themistocles arrays the testimony against you.”Democrates shivered. The late spring sun was warm. He felt no heat. A mere charge of treason he was almost prepared now to endure. If Mistress Fortune helped him, he might refute it, but to be branded before Hellas as the destroyer of his bosom friend, and that by guile the like whereof Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion conjoined had never wrought—what wonder his knees smote together? Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon’s hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst of all, worse than the howls of the people who would tear his body asunder like dogs, not waiting the work of the hemlock, was the thought of Hermione. She hated him now. How she would love him, though he sat on Xerxes’s throne, if once her suspicion rose to certainty! He saw himself ruined in life and in love, and blazoned as infamous forever.Lycon was wise enough to sit some moments, letting his utterance do its work. He was confident, and rightly. Democrates looked on him at last. The workings of the Athenian’s face were terrible.“I am your slave, Spartan. Had you bought me for ten minæ and held the bill of sale, I were not yours more utterly. Your wish?”Lycon chose his words and answered slowly.“You must serve Persia. Not for a moment, but for all time. You must place that dreadful gift of yours at our disposal. And in return take what is promised,—the lordship of Athens.”“No word of that,”groaned the wretched man,“what will you do?”[pg 342]“Aristeides is soon going to Sparta to press home his demands that the Lacedæmonians march in full force against Mardonius. I can see to it that his mission succeeds. A great battle will be fought in Bœotia.Wecan see to it that Mardonius is so victorious that all further resistance becomes a dream.”“And my part in this monster’s work?”The demands and propositions with which Lycon answered this despairing question will unfold themselves in due place and time. Suffice it here, that when he let the Athenian go his way Lycon was convinced that Democrates had bound himself heart and soul to forward his enterprise. The orator was no merry guest for his Corinthian hosts that night. He returned to his old manner of drinking unmixed wine.“Thirsty as a Macedonian!”cried his companions, in vain endeavour to drive him into a laugh. They did not know that once more the chorus of the Furies was singing about his ears, and he could not still it by the deepest wine-cup. They did not know that every time he closed his eyes he was seeing the face of Glaucon. That morning he had mocked at Nemesis. That night he heard the beating of her brazen wings.[pg 343]CHAPTER XXXIITHE STRANGER IN TRŒZENEDespite exile, life had moved pleasantly for Hermippus’s household that spring. The Trœzenians had surpassed all duties to Zeus Xenios—the stranger’s god—in entertaining the outcast Athenians. The fugitives had received two obols per day to keep them in figs and porridge. Their children had been suffered to roam and plunder the orchards. But Hermippus had not needed such generosity. He had placed several talents at interest in Corinth; likewise bonds of“guest-friendship”with prominent Trœzenians made his residence very agreeable. He had hired a comfortable house, and could enjoy even luxury with his wife, daughter, young sons, and score of slaves.Little Phœnix grew marvellously day by day, as if obeying his mother’s command to wax strong and avenge his father. Old Cleopis vowed he was the healthiest, least tearful babe, as well as the handsomest, she had ever known,—and she spoke from wide experience. When he was one year old, he was so active they had to tie him in the cradle. When the golden spring days came, he would ride forth upon his nurse’s back, surveying the Hellas he was born to inherit, and seeming to find it exceeding good.But as spring verged on summer, Hermione demanded so much of Cleopis’s care that even Phœnix ceased to be the focus of attention. The lordly Alcmæonid fell into the cus[pg 344]tody of one Niobe, a dark-haired lass of the islands, who treated him well, but cared too much for certain young“serving-gentlemen”to waste on her charge any unreciprocated adoration. So on one day, just as the dying grass told the full reign of the Sun King, she went forth with her precious bundle wriggling in her arms, but her thoughts hardly on Master Phœnix. Procles the steward had been cold of late, he had even cast sly glances at Jocasta, Lysistra’s tiring-woman. Mistress Niobe was ready—since fair means of recalling the fickle Apollo failed—to resort to foul. Instead, therefore, of going to the promenade over the sea, she went—burden and all—to the Agora, where she was sure old Dion, who kept a soothsayer’s shop, would give due assistance in return for half a drachma.The market was just thinning. Niobe picked her way amongst the vegetable women, fought off a boy who thrust on her a pair of geese, and found in a quiet corner by a temple porch the booth of Dion, who grinned with his toothless gums in way of greeting. He listened with paternal interest to her story, soothed her when she sniffled at Procles’s name, and made her show her silver, then began pulling over his bags and vials of strange powders and liquids.“Ah, kind Master Dion,”began Niobe, for the sixth time,“if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!”“Eu! eu!”muttered the old sinner,“it’s hard to say what’s best,—powder of toad’s bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder’s fat. The safest thing is to consult the god—”“What do you mean?”“Why, my holy cock here, hatched at Delphi with Apollo’s blessings on him.”Dion pointed with his thumb to the small coop at his feet.“The oracle is simple. You cast[pg 345]before him two piles of corn; if he picks at the one to right we take toad’s bone, to left the adder’s fat. Heaven will speak to us.”“Excellent,”cried Niobe, brightening.“But, of course, we must use only consecrated corn, that’s two obols more.”Niobe’s face fell.“I’ve only this half-drachma.”“Then,philotata,”said Dion, kindly but firmly,“we had better wait a little longer.”Niobe wept.“Ai!woe.‘A little longer’and Jocasta has Procles. I can’t ask Hermione again for money.Ai! ai!”Two round tears did not move Dion in the slightest. Niobe was sobbing, at her small wits’ end, when a voice sounded behind her.“What’s there wrong, lass? By Zeus, but you carry a handsome child!”Niobe glanced, and instantly stopped weeping. A young man dressed roughly as a sailor, and with long black hair and beard, had approached her, but despite dress and beard she was quite aware he was far handsomer than even Procles.“I beg pardon,kyrie,”—she said“kyrie”by instinct,—“I’m only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate.”She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only the babe, not herself.“Ah! Gods and goddesses, what a beautiful child! A girl?”“A boy,”answered Niobe, almost sullenly.“Blessed the house in Trœzene then that can boast of such a son.”“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from[pg 346]Athens,”volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres.“An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”“The brat will never boast of his father,”quoth Dion, rolling his eyes.“He left the world in a way, I wager five minæ, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe’s of right good stock, an Alcmæonid, and the grandfather is that Hermippus—”“Hermippus?”The stranger seemed to catch the word out of Dion’s mouth. A donkey had broken loose at the upper end of the Agora; he turned and stared at it and its pursuers intently.“If you’re Athenian,”went on the soothsayer,“the story’s an old one—of Glaucon the Traitor.”The stranger turned back again. For a moment Dion saw he was blinking, but no doubt it was dust. Then he suddenly began to fumble in his girdle.“What do you want, girl?”he demanded of Niobe, nigh fiercely.“Two obols.”“Take two drachmæ. I was once a friend to that Glaucon, and traitor though he has been blazed, his child is yet dear to me. Let me take him.”Without waiting her answer he thrust the coin into her hands, and caught the child out of them. Phœnix looked up into the strange, bearded face, and deliberated an instant whether to crow or to weep. Then some friendly god decided him. He laughed as sweetly, as musically, as ever one can at his most august age. With both chubby hands he plucked at the black beard and held tight. The strange sailor answered laugh with laugh, and released himself right gayly. Then whilst Niobe and Dion watched and[pg 347]wondered they saw the sailor kiss the child full fifty times, all the time whispering soft words in his ear, at which Phœnix crowed and laughed yet more.“An old family servant,”threw out Dion, in a whisper.“Sheep!”retorted the nurse,“do you call yourself wise? Do you think a man with that face and those long hands ever felt the stocks or the whip? He’s gentleman born, by Demeter!”“War makes many changes,”rejoined Dion.“Ai!is he beside himself or a kidnapper? He is walking off with the babe.”The stranger indeed had seemed to forget them all and was going with swift strides up the Agora, but just before Niobe could begin her outcry he wheeled, and brought his merry burden back to the nurse’s arms.“You ought to be exceeding proud, my girl,”he remarked almost severely,“to have such a precious babe in charge. I trust you are dutiful.”“So I strive,kyrie, but he grows very strong. One cannot keep the swaddling clothes on him now. They say he will be a mighty athlete like his father.”“Ah, yes—his father—”The sailor looked down.“You knew Master Glaucon well?”pressed Dion, itching for a new bit of gossip.“Well,”answered the sailor, standing gazing on the child as though something held him fascinated, then shot another question.“And does the babe’s lady-mother prosper?”“She is passing well in body,kyrie, but grievously ill in mind. Hera give her a release from all her sorrow!”“Sorrow?”The man’s eyes were opening wider, wider.“What mean you?”“Why, all Trœzene knows it, I’m sure.”[pg 348]“I’m not from Trœzene. My ship made port from Naxos this morning. Speak, girl!”He seized Niobe’s wrist in a grip which she thought would crush the bone.“Ai!Let go, sir, you hurt. Don’t stare so. I’m frightened. I’ll tell as fast as I can. Master Democrates has come back from Corinth. Hermippus is resolved to make thekyriawed him, however bitterly she resists. It’s taken a long time for her father to determine to break her will, but now his mind’s made up. The betrothal is in three days, the wedding ten days thereafter.”The sailor had dropped her hand. She shrank at the pallor of his face. He seemed struggling for words; when they came she made nothing of them.“Themistocles, Themistocles—your promise!”Then by some giant exercise of will he steadied. His speech grew more coherent.“Give me the child,”he commanded, and Niobe mutely obeyed. He kissed Phœnix on both cheeks, mouth, forehead. They saw that tears were running down his bronzed face. He handed back the babe and again held out money,—a coin for both the slave girl and the soothsayer,—gold half-darics, that they gaped at wonderingly.“Say nothing!”ordered the sailor,“nothing of what I have said or done, or as Helios shines this noon, I will kill you both.”Not waiting reply, he went down the Agora at a run, and never looked back. It took some moments for Dion and Niobe to recover their equanimity; they would have believed it all a dream, but lo! in their hands gleamed the money.“There are times,”remarked the soothsayer, dubiously at last,“when I begin to think the gods again walk the earth and work wonders. This is a very high matter. Even I[pg 349]with my art dare not meddle with it. It is best to heed the injunction to silence. Wagging tongues always have troubles as their children. Now let us proceed with my sacred cock and his divination.”Niobe got her philtre,—though whether it reconquered Procles is not contained in this history. Likewise, she heeded Dion’s injunction. There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis.* * * * * * *Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty“distance-runner”to Sparta.“Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you. Rejoice therefore; you are my only hope. I am with you whether your path leads to Olympus or to Hades. Tartarus is opened at my feet. You must save me. My words are confused, do you think? Then hear this, and ask if I have not cause for turning mad.“Yesterday, even as Hermippus hung garlands on his house, and summoned the guests to witness the betrothal contract, Themistocles returned suddenly from Eubœa. He called Hermippus and myself aside.‘Glaucon lives,’he said,‘and with the god’s help we’ll prove his innocence.’Hermippus at once broke off the betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details.‘Glaucon lives,’—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory of Mardonius!Chaire.”“Glaucon lives.”Democrates had only written one least part of his terrors. Two words—but enough to make the orator the most miserable man in Hellas, the most supple of Xerxes’s hundred million slaves.[pg 350]CHAPTER XXXIIIWHAT BEFELL ON THE HILLSIDEOnce more the Persians pressed into Attica, once more the Athenians,—or such few of them as had ventured home in the winter,—fled with their movables to Salamis or Peloponnesus, and an embassy, headed by Aristeides, hastened to Sparta to demand for the last time that the tardy ephors make good their promise in sending forth their infantry to hurl back the invader. If not, Aristeides spoke plainly, his people must perforce close alliance with Mardonius.Almost to the amazement of the Athenian chiefs, so accustomed were they to Dorian doltishness and immobility, after a ten days’ delay and excuses that“they must celebrate their festival the Hyacinthia,”the ephors called forth their whole levy. Ten thousand heavy infantrymen with a host of lightly armed“helots”11were started northward under the able lead of Pausanias, the regent for Leonidas’s young son. Likewise all the allies of Lacedæmon—Corinthians, Sicyonians, Elians, Arcadians—began to hurry toward the Isthmus. Therefore men who had loved Hellas and had almost despaired for her took courage.“At last we will have a great land battle, and an end to the Barbarian.”All was excitement in the Athenian colony at Trœzene. The board of strategi met and voted that now was the time[pg 351]for a crowning effort. Five thousand men-at-arms should march under Aristeides to join against Mardonius in Bœotia. By sea Themistocles should go with every available ship to Delos, meet the allied squadrons there, and use his infallible art in persuading the sluggish Spartan high admiral to conduct a raid across the Ægean at Xerxes’s own doors. Of the ten strategi Democrates had called loudest for instant action, so loudly indeed that Themistocles had cautioned him against rashness. Hermippus was old, but experienced men trusted him, therefore he was appointed to command the contingent of his tribe. Democrates was to accompany Aristeides as general adjutant; his diplomatic training would be invaluable in ending the frictions sure to arise amongst the allies. Cimon would go with Themistocles, and so every other man was sent to his place. In the general preparation private problems seemed forgotten. Hermippus and Democrates both announced that the betrothal of Hermione had been postponed, pending the public crisis. The old Eleusinian had not told his daughter, or even his wife, why he had seemed to relax his announced purpose of forcing Hermione to an unwelcome marriage. The young widow knew she had respite—for how long nothing told her, but for every day her agony was postponed she blessed kind Hera. Then came the morning when her father must go forth with his men. She still loved him, despite the grief he was giving her. She did him justice to believe he acted in affection. The gay ribbons that laced his cuirass, the red and blue embroidery that edged his“taxiarch’s”cloak, were from the needle of his daughter. Hermione kissed him as she stood with her mother in the aula. He coughed gruffly when he answered their“farewell.”The house door closed behind him, and Hermione and Lysistra ran into one another’s arms. They had given to Hellas their best, and now must look to Athena.[pg 352]Hermippus and Aristeides were gone, Democrates remained in Trœzene. His business, he said, was more diplomatic than military, and he was expecting advices from the islands which he must take to Pausanias in person. He had a number of interviews with Themistocles, when it was observed that every time he came away with clouded brow and gruff answers to all who accosted. It began to be hinted that all was not as well as formerly between the admiral and the orator, that Democrates had chosen to tie too closely to Aristeides for the son of Neocles’s liking, and that as soon as the campaign was decided, a bitter feud would break out betwixt them. But this was merest gossip. Outwardly Democrates and Themistocles continued friends, dined together, exchanged civilities. On the day when Themistocles was to sail for Delos he walked arm in arm with Democrates to the quay. The hundreds of onlookers saw him embrace the young strategus in a manner belying any rumour of estrangement, whilst Democrates stood on the sand waving his good wishes until the admiral climbed the ladder of theNausicaä.It was another day and landscape which the stranger in Hellas would have remembered long. The haven of Trœzene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder Ægina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole.“Euopis,”“The Fair-Faced,”the beauty-loving dwellers of the country called it, and they named aright.Something of the beauty touched even Hermione as she[pg 353]stood on the hill slope, gazing across the sea. Only Cleopis was with her. The young widow had less trembling when she looked on theNausicaäthan when one year before the stately trireme had sailed for Artemisium. If ill news must come, it would be from the plains of Bœotia. Most of Themistocles’s fleet was already at Delos. He led only a dozen sail. When his squadron glided on into the blue deep, the haven seemed deserted save for the Carthaginian trader that swung at her cables close upon the land. As Hermione looked and saw the climbing sun change the tintings of the waters, here spreading a line of green gold amidst the blue, here flashing the waves with dark violet, something of the peace and majesty of the scene entered into her own breast. The waves at the foot of the slope beat in monotonous music. She did not wonder that Thetis, Galatea, and all the hundred Nereids loved their home. Somewhere, far off on that shimmering plain, Glaucon the Beautiful had fallen asleep; whether he waked in the land of Rhadamanthus, whether he had been stolen away by Leucothea and the other nymphs to be their playfellow, she did not know. She was not sad, even to think of him crowned with green seaweed, and sitting under the sea-floor with fish-tailed Tritons at their tables of pearl, while the finny shoals like birds flitted above their heads. Thales the Sage made all life proceed out of the sea. Perchance all life should return to it. Then she would find her husband again, not beyond, but within the realms of great Oceanus. With such beauty spreading out before her eyes the phantasy was almost welcome.The people had wandered homeward. Cleopis set the parasol on the dry grass where it would shade her mistress and betook herself to the shelter of a rock. If Hermione was pleased to meditate so long, she would not deny her slave a siesta. So the Athenian sat and mused, now sadly, now[pg 354]with a gleam of brightness, for she was too young to have her sun clouded always.A speaker near by her called her out of her reverie.“You sit long,kyria, and gaze forth as if you were Zeus in Olympus and could look on all the world.”Hermione had not exchanged a word with Democrates since that day she cast scorn on him on that other hill slope at Munychia, but this did not make his intrusion more welcome. With mortification she realized that she had forgotten herself. That she lay on the sunny bank with her feet outstretched and her hair shaken loose on her shoulders. Her feet she instantly covered with her long himation. Her hands flew instantly to her hair. Then she uprose, flushing haughtily.“It has pleased my father, sir,”she spoke with frigid dignity,“to tell me that you are some day perchance to be my husband. The fulfilment lies with the gods. But to-day the strategus Democrates knows our customs too well to thrust himself upon an Attic gentlewoman who finds herself alone save for one servant.”“Ah,kyria; pardon the word, it’s overcold;makaira, I’d say more gladly,”Democrates was marvellously at his ease despite her frowns,“your noble father will take nothing amiss if I ask you to sit again that we may talk together.”“I do not think so.”Hermione drew herself up at full height. But Democrates deliberately placed himself in the path up the hillside. To have run toward the water seemed folly. She could expect no help from Cleopis, who would hardly oppose a man soon probably to be her master. As the less of evils, Hermione did not indeed sit as desired, but stood facing her unloved lover and hearkening.“How long I’ve desired this instant!”Democrates looked as if he might seize her hands to kiss them, but she thrust[pg 355]them behind her.“I know you hate me bitterly because, touching your late husband, I did my duty.”“Your duty?”Nestor’s eloquence was in her incredulous echo.“If I have pained you beyond telling, do you think my act was a pleasant one for me? A bosom friend to ruin, the most sacred bonds to sever, last and not least, to give infinite sorrow to her I love?”“I hardly understand.”Democrates drew a step nearer.“Ah! Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite the Golden—by what name shall I call my goddess?”Hermione drew back a step. There was danger in his eyes.“I have loved you, loved you long. Before Glaucon took you in marriage I loved you. But Eros and Hymen hearkened to his prayers, not mine. You became his bride. I wore a bright face at your wedding. You remember I was Glaucon’s groomsman, and rode beside you in the bridal car. You loved him, he seemed worthy of you. Therefore I trod my own grief down into my heart, and rejoiced with my friends. But to cease loving you I could not. Truly they say Eros is the strongest god, and pitiless—do not the poets say bloody Ares begat him—”“Spare me mythologies,”interposed Hermione, with another step back.“As you will, but you shall hearken. I have desired this moment for two years. Not as the weak girl given by her father, but as the fair goddess who comes to me gladly, I do desire you. And I know you will smile on me when you have heard me through.”“Keep back your eloquence. You have destroyed Glaucon. That is enough.”“Hear me.”Democrates cried desperately now. Her[pg 356]mione feared even to retreat farther, lest he pass to violence. She summoned courage and looked him in the eye.“Say on, then. But remember I am a woman and alone save for Cleopis. If you profess to love me, you will not forget that.”But Democrates was passing almost beyond the limits of coherent speech.“Oh, when you come to me, you will not know what a price I have paid for you. In Homer’s day men wooed their wives with costly gifts, but I—have I not paid for you with my soul? My soul, I say—honour, friendship, country, what has weighed against Himeros,‘Master Desire,’—the desire ever for you!”She hardly understood him, his speech flowed so thick. She knew he was on the edge of reason, and feared to answer lest she drive beyond it.“Do you hear the price I have paid? Do you still look on in cold hate, lady? Ah, by Zeus, even in your coldest, most forbidding mood you are fair as the Paphian when she sprang above the sea! And I will win you, lady, I will win your heart, for they shall do you homage, even all Athens, and I will make you a queen. Yes! the house of Athena on the Acropolis shall be your palace if you will, and they will cry in the Agora,‘Way, way for Hermione, glorious consort of Democrates our king!’”“Sir,”spoke Hermione, while her hands grew chill, for now she was sure he raved,“I have not the joy to comprehend. There is no king in Athens, please Athena, there never will be. Treason and blasphemy you speak all in one.”She sought vainly with her eyes for refuge. None in sight. The hill slope seemed empty save for the scattered brown boulders. Far away a goat was wandering. She motioned to Cleopis. The old woman was staring now, and doubtless[pg 357]thought Democrates was carrying his familiarities too far, but she was a weak creature, and at best could only scream.“Treason and blasphemy,”cried Democrates, dropping on his knees, his frame shaking with dishonest passion,“yes! call them so now. They will be blessed truth for me in a month, for me, for you. Hermes the Trickster is a mighty god. He has befriended Eros. I shall possess Athens and possess you. I shall be the most fortunate mortal upon earth as now I am most miserable. Ah! but I have waited so long.”He sprang to his feet.“Tarry,makaira, tarry! A kiss!”Hermione screamed at last shrilly and turned to fly. Instantly Democrates was upon her. In that fluttering white dress escape was hopeless.“Apollo pursuing Daphne!”—his crazed shout as his arms closed around her,—“but Daphne becomes no laurel this time. Her race is lost. She shall pay the forfeit.”She felt him seize her girdle. He swung her face to face. She saw his wide eyes, his mad smile. His hot breath smote her cheek. Cleopis at last was screaming.“Mine,”he triumphed, while he forced her resisting head to his own,“there is none to hinder!”But even while the woman’s flesh crept back at his impure kiss, a giant power came rending the twain apart. A man had sundered them, sprung from the ground or from heaven belike, or from behind a boulder? He tore Democrates’s hands away as a lion tears a lamb. He dashed the mad orator prone upon the sod, and kicked him twice, as of mingled hatred and contempt. All this Hermione only knew in half, while her senses swam. Then she came to herself enough to see that the stranger was a young man in a sailor’s loose dress, his features almost hidden under the dishevelled hair and beard. All this time he uttered no word, but having smitten[pg 358]Democrates down, leaped back, rubbing his hands upon his thigh, as if despising to touch so foul an object. The orator groaned, staggered upward. He wore a sword. It flew from its scabbard as he leaped on the sailor. The stranger put forth his hand, snatched his opponent’s wrist, and with lightning dexterity sent the blade spinning back upon the grass. Then he threw Democrates a second time, and the latter did not rise again hastily, but lay cursing. The fall had not been gentle.But all this while Cleopis was screaming. People were hastening up the hill,—fishermen from a skiff upon the beach, slaves who had been carrying bales to the haven. In a moment they would be surrounded by a dozen. The strange sailor turned as if to fly. He had not spoken one word. Hermione herself at last called to him.“My preserver! Your name! Blessed be you forever!”The fisherfolk were very close. Cleopis was still screaming. The sailor looked once into the lady’s eyes.“I am nameless! You owe me nothing!”And with that he was gone up the hill slopes, springing with long bounds that would have mocked pursuing, had any attempted. But Cleopis quenched her outcry instantly; her screams had been drowned by a louder scream from Hermione, who fell upon the greensward, no marble whiter than her face. The nurse ran to her mistress. Democrates staggered to his feet. Whatever else the chastisement had given him, it had restored his balance of mind. He told the fisherfolk a glib story that a sailor wandering along the strand had accosted Hermione, that he himself had chased the villain off, but had tripped whilst trying to follow. If the tale was not of perfect workmanship at all points, there was no one with interest to gainsay it. A few ran up the hill slope, but the sailor was nowhere in sight. Hermione was still speechless.[pg 359]They made a litter of oars and sail-cloth and carried her to her mother. Democrates oiled Cleopis’s palm well, that she should tell nothing amiss to Lysistra. It was a long time before Hermione opened her eyes in her chamber. Her first words were:—“Glaucon! I have seen Glaucon!”“You have had a strange dream,philotata,”soothed Lysistra, shifting the pillows,“lie still and rest.”But Hermione shook her shining brown head and repeated, many times:—“No dream! No dream! I have seen Glaucon face to face. In that instant he spoke and looked on me I knew him. He lives. He saved me. Ah! why does he stay away?”Lysistra, whose husband had not deemed it prudent to inform her of Themistocles’s revelations, was infinitely distressed. She sent for the best physicians of the city, and despatched a slave to the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus—not distant—to sacrifice two cocks for her daughter’s recovery. The doctors looked wise and recommended heavy doses of spiced wine, and if those did not suffice, said that the patient might spend a night in the temple of the Healer, who would no doubt explain the true remedy in a dream. A“wise woman”who had great following among the slaves advised that a young puppy be tied upon Hermione’s temples to absorb the disaffection of her brain. Lysistra was barely persuaded not to follow her admonitions. After a few days the patient grew better, recovered strength, took an interest in her child. Yet ever and anon she would repeat over Phœnix’s cradle:—“Your father lives! I have seen him! I have seen him!”What, however, puzzled Lysistra most, was the fact that Cleopis did not contradict her young mistress in the least, but maintained a mysterious silence about the whole adventure.
[pg 331]BOOK IIITHE PASSING OF THE PERSIAN[pg 332][pg 333]CHAPTER XXXIDEMOCRATES SURRENDERSHellas was saved. But whether forever or only for a year the gods kept hid. Panic-stricken, the“Lord of the World”had fled to Asia after the great disaster. The eunuchs, the harem women, the soft-handed pages, had escaped with their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the Ægean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army. Hellas was not yet safe.Democrates had prospered. He had been reëlected strategus. If Themistocles no longer trusted him quite so freely as once, Aristeides, restored now to much of his former power, gave him full confidence. Democrates found constant and honourable employment through the winter in the endless negotiations at Sparta, at Corinth, and elsewhere, while the jealous Greek states wrangled and intrigued, more to humiliate some rival than to advance the safety of Hellas. But amongst all the patriot chiefs none seemed more devoted to the common weal of Hellas than the Athenian orator.Hermippus at least was convinced of this. The Eleusinian had settled at Trœzene on the Argive coast, a hospitable city that received many an outcast Athenian. He found his[pg 334]daughter’s resistance to another marriage increasingly unreasonable. Was not Glaucon dead for more than a year? Ought not any woman to bless Hera who gave her so noble, so eloquent, a husband as Democrates—pious, rich, trusted by the greatest, and with the best of worldly prospects?“If you truly desire any other worthy man,makaira,”said Hermippus, once,“you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your highest happiness.”“He ruined Glaucon,”said Hermione, tearfully.“At least,”returned Lysistra, who like many good women could say exceeding cruel things,“hehas never been a traitor to his country.”Hermione’s answer was to fly to her chamber, and to weep—as many a time before—over Phœnix in the cradle. Here old Cleopis found her, took her in her arms, and sang her the old song about Alphæus chasing Arethusa—a song more fit for Phœnix than his mother, but most comforting. So the contest for the moment passed, but after a conference with Hermippus, Democrates went away on public business to Corinth unusually well pleased with the world and himself.It was a tedious, jangling conference held at the Isthmus city. Mardonius had tempted the Athenians sorely. In the spring had come his envoys proffering reparation for all injuries in the wars, enlarged territory, and not slavery, but free alliance with the Great King, if they would but join against their fellow-Hellenes. The Athenians had met the tempter as became Athenians. Aristeides had given the envoys the answer of the whole people.“We know your power. Yet tell it to Mardonius, that so long as Helios moves in the heavens we will not make[pg 335]alliance with Xerxes, but rather trust to the gods whose temples he has burned.”Bravely said, but when the Athenians looked to Sparta for the great army to hasten north and give Mardonius his death-stroke, it was the old wearisome tale of excuses and delay. At the conference in Corinth Aristeides and Democrates had passed from arguments to all but threats, even such as Themistocles had used at Salamis. It was after one of these fruitless debates that Democrates passed out of the gathering at the Corinthian prytaneum, with his colleagues all breathing forth their wrath against Dorian stupidity and evasiveness.Democrates himself crossed the city Agora, seeking the house of the friendly merchant where he was to sup. He walked briskly, his thoughts more perhaps on the waiting betrothal feast at Trœzene, than on the discussion behind him. The Agora scene had little to interest, the same buyers, booths, and babel as in Athens, only the citadel above was the mount of Acro-Corinthus, not the tawny rock of Athena. And in late months he had begun to find his old fears and terrors flee away. Every day he was growing more certain that his former“missteps”—that was his own name for certain occurrences—could have no malign influence.“After all,”he was reflecting,“Nemesis is a very capricious goddess. Often she forgets for a lifetime, and after death—who knows what is beyond the Styx?”He was on such noble terms with all about him that he could even give ear to the whine of a beggar. The man was sitting on the steps between the pillars of a colonnade, with a tame crow perched upon his fist, and as Democrates passed he began his doggerel prayer:—“Good master, a handful of barley bestowOn the child of Apollo, the sage, sable crow.”[pg 336]The Athenian began to fumble in his belt for an obol, when he was rudely distracted by a twitch upon his chiton. Turning, he was little pleased to come face to face with no less a giant than Lycon.“There was an hour,philotate,”spoke the Spartan, with ill-concealed sneer,“when you did not have so much silver to scatter out to beggars.”Time had not mended Lycon’s aspect, nor taken from his eye that sinister twinkle which was so marked a foil to his brutishness.“I did not invite you, dear fellow,”rejoined the Athenian,“to remind me of the fact.”“Yet you should have gratitude, and you have lacked that virtue of late. It was a sorry plight Mardonius’s money saved you from two years since, and nobly have you remembered his good service.”“Worthy Lacedæmonian,”said Democrates, with what patience he could command,“if you desire to go over all that little business which concerned us then, at least I would suggest not in the open Agora.”He started to walk swiftly away. The Spartan’s ponderous strides easily kept beside him. Democrates looked vainly for an associate whom he could approach and on some pretext could accompany. None in sight. Lycon kept fast hold of his cloak. For practical purposes Democrates was prisoner.“Why in Corinth?”he threw out sullenly.“For three reasons,philotate,”Lycon grinned over his shoulder,“first, the women at the Grove of Aphrodite here are handsome; second, I am weary of Sparta and its black broth and iron money; third, and here is the rose for my garland, I had need to confer with your noble self.”“Would not Hiram be your dutiful messenger again?”queried the other, vainly watching for escape.[pg 337]“Hiram is worth twenty talents as a helper;”—Lycon gave a hound-like chuckle,—“still he is not Apollo, and there are too many strings on this lyre for him to play them all. Besides, he failed at Salamis.”“He did! Zeus blast his importunity and yours likewise. Where are you taking me? I warn you in advance, you are‘shearing an ass,’—attempting the impossible,—if you deceive yourself as to my power. I can do nothing more to prevent the war from being pressed against Mardonius. It is only your Laconian ephors that are hindering.”“We shall see,philotate, we shall see,”grunted the Spartan, exasperatingly cool.“Here is Poseidon’s Temple. Let us sit in the shaded portico.”Democrates resigned himself to be led to a stone seat against the wall. The gray old“dog-watcher”by the gate glanced up to see that no dogs were straying into the holy house, noted only two gentlemen come for a chat, and resumed his siesta. Lycon took a long time in opening his business.“The world has used you well of late, dear fellow.”“Passing well, by Athena’s favour.”“You should say by Hermes’s favour, but I would trust you Athenians to grow fat on successful villany and then bless the righteous gods.”“I hope you haven’t left Sparta just to revile me!”cried Democrates, leaping up, to be thrust back by Lycon’s giant paw.“Ai!mix a little honey with your speech, it costs nothing. Well, the length and breadth of my errand is this, Mardonius must fight soon, and must be victorious.”“That is for your brave ephors to say,”darted Democrates.“According to their valiant proposals they desire this war to imitate that with Troy,—to last ten years.”[pg 338]“Indeed—but I always held my people surpassed in procrastination, as yours in deceiving. However, their minds will change.”“Aristeides and Themistocles will bless you for that.”Lycon shrugged his great shoulders.“Then I’ll surpass the gods, who can seldom please all men. Still it is quite true.”“I’m glad to hear it.”“Dear Democrates, you know what’s befallen in Sparta. Since Leonidas died, his rivals from my own side of the royal house have gathered a great deal more of power. My uncle Nicander is at present head of the board of ephors, and gladly takes my advice.”“Ha!”Democrates began to divine the drift.“It seemed best to me after the affair at Salamis to give the lie to my calumniators, who hinted that I desired to‘Medize,’and that it was by my intriguing that the late king took so small a force to Thermopylæ.”“All Hellas knowsyourpatriotism!”cried Democrates, satirically.“Even so. I have silenced my fiercest abusers. If I have not yet urged in our assembly that we should fight Mardonius, it is merely because—it is not yet prudent.”“Excellent scoundrel,”declared the other, writhing on his seat,“you are no Spartan, but long-winded as a Sicilian.”“Patience,philotate, a Spartan must either speak in apothegms or take all day. I have not advised a battle yet because I was not certain of your aid.”“Ay, by Zeus,”broke out Democrates,“that ointment I sniffed a long way off. I can give you quick answer. Fly back to Sparta, swift as Boreas; plot, conspire, earn Tartarus, to your heart’s content—you’ll get no more help from me.”[pg 339]“I expected that speech.”Lycon’s coolness drove his victim almost frantic.“In the affair of Tempē I bent to you for the last time,”Democrates charged desperately.“I have counted the cost. Perhaps you can use against me certain documents, but I am on a surer footing than once. In the last year I have done such service to Hellas I can even hope to be forgiven, should these old mistakes be proved. And if you drive me to bay, be sure of this, I will see to it that all the dealings betwixt the Barbarian and your noble self are expounded to your admiring countrymen.”“You show truly excellent courage, dear Democrates,”cried Lycon, in pseudo-admiration.“That speech was quite worthy of a tragic actor.”“If we’re in the theatre, let the chorus sing its last strophe and have done. You disgust me.”“Peace, peace,”ordered Lycon, his hand still on the Athenian’s shoulder,“I will make all the haste I can, but obstinacy is disagreeable. I repeat, you are needed, sorely needed, by Mardonius to enable him to complete the conquest of Hellas. You shall not call the Persians ungrateful—the tyranny of Athens under the easy suzerainty of the king, is that no dish to whet your appetite?”“I knew of the offer before.”“A great pity you are not more eager. Hermes seldom sends such chances twice. I hoped to have you for‘my royal brother’when they gave me the like lordship of Lacedæmon. However, the matter does not end with your refusal.”“I have said,‘Do your worst.’”“And my worst is—Agis.”For an instant Lycon was dismayed. He thought he had slain his victim with one word. Democrates dropped from his clutch and upon the pavement as though stricken through[pg 340]the heart by an arrow. He was pallid as a corpse, at first he only groaned.“Eu! eu!good comrade,”cried the Spartan, dragging him up, half triumphant, half sympathetic,“I did not know I was throwing Zeus’s thunderbolts.”The Athenian sat with his head on his hands. In all his dealings with the Spartan he had believed he had covered the details of the fate of Glaucon. Lycon could surmise what he liked, but the proof to make the damning charges good Democrates believed he had safe in his own keeping. Only one man could have unlocked the casket of infamy—Agis—and the mention of his name was as a bolt from the blue.“Where is he? I heard he was killed at Artemisium.”Lycon hardly understood his victim’s thick whispers.“Wounded indeed,philotate, taken prisoner, and sent to Thebes. There friends of mine found he had a story to tell—greatly to my advantage. It is only a little time since he came to Sparta.”“What lies has he told?”“Several, dear fellow, although if they are lies, then Aletheia, Lady Truth, must almost own them for her children. At least they are interesting lies; as, for example, how you advised the Cyprian to escape from Athens, how you gave Agis a letter to hide in the boots of Glaucon’s messenger, of your interviews with Lampaxo and Archias, of the charming art you possess of imitating handwritings and seals.”“Base-born swine! who will believe him?”“Base born, Democrates, but hardly swinish. He can tell a very clear story. Likewise, Lampaxo and Archias must testify at the trial, also your slave Bias can tell many interesting things.”“Only if I consent to produce him.”“When did a master ever refuse to let his slave testify,[pg 341]if demanded, unless he wished to blast his own cause with the jury? No,makaire, you will not enjoy the day when Themistocles arrays the testimony against you.”Democrates shivered. The late spring sun was warm. He felt no heat. A mere charge of treason he was almost prepared now to endure. If Mistress Fortune helped him, he might refute it, but to be branded before Hellas as the destroyer of his bosom friend, and that by guile the like whereof Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion conjoined had never wrought—what wonder his knees smote together? Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon’s hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst of all, worse than the howls of the people who would tear his body asunder like dogs, not waiting the work of the hemlock, was the thought of Hermione. She hated him now. How she would love him, though he sat on Xerxes’s throne, if once her suspicion rose to certainty! He saw himself ruined in life and in love, and blazoned as infamous forever.Lycon was wise enough to sit some moments, letting his utterance do its work. He was confident, and rightly. Democrates looked on him at last. The workings of the Athenian’s face were terrible.“I am your slave, Spartan. Had you bought me for ten minæ and held the bill of sale, I were not yours more utterly. Your wish?”Lycon chose his words and answered slowly.“You must serve Persia. Not for a moment, but for all time. You must place that dreadful gift of yours at our disposal. And in return take what is promised,—the lordship of Athens.”“No word of that,”groaned the wretched man,“what will you do?”[pg 342]“Aristeides is soon going to Sparta to press home his demands that the Lacedæmonians march in full force against Mardonius. I can see to it that his mission succeeds. A great battle will be fought in Bœotia.Wecan see to it that Mardonius is so victorious that all further resistance becomes a dream.”“And my part in this monster’s work?”The demands and propositions with which Lycon answered this despairing question will unfold themselves in due place and time. Suffice it here, that when he let the Athenian go his way Lycon was convinced that Democrates had bound himself heart and soul to forward his enterprise. The orator was no merry guest for his Corinthian hosts that night. He returned to his old manner of drinking unmixed wine.“Thirsty as a Macedonian!”cried his companions, in vain endeavour to drive him into a laugh. They did not know that once more the chorus of the Furies was singing about his ears, and he could not still it by the deepest wine-cup. They did not know that every time he closed his eyes he was seeing the face of Glaucon. That morning he had mocked at Nemesis. That night he heard the beating of her brazen wings.[pg 343]CHAPTER XXXIITHE STRANGER IN TRŒZENEDespite exile, life had moved pleasantly for Hermippus’s household that spring. The Trœzenians had surpassed all duties to Zeus Xenios—the stranger’s god—in entertaining the outcast Athenians. The fugitives had received two obols per day to keep them in figs and porridge. Their children had been suffered to roam and plunder the orchards. But Hermippus had not needed such generosity. He had placed several talents at interest in Corinth; likewise bonds of“guest-friendship”with prominent Trœzenians made his residence very agreeable. He had hired a comfortable house, and could enjoy even luxury with his wife, daughter, young sons, and score of slaves.Little Phœnix grew marvellously day by day, as if obeying his mother’s command to wax strong and avenge his father. Old Cleopis vowed he was the healthiest, least tearful babe, as well as the handsomest, she had ever known,—and she spoke from wide experience. When he was one year old, he was so active they had to tie him in the cradle. When the golden spring days came, he would ride forth upon his nurse’s back, surveying the Hellas he was born to inherit, and seeming to find it exceeding good.But as spring verged on summer, Hermione demanded so much of Cleopis’s care that even Phœnix ceased to be the focus of attention. The lordly Alcmæonid fell into the cus[pg 344]tody of one Niobe, a dark-haired lass of the islands, who treated him well, but cared too much for certain young“serving-gentlemen”to waste on her charge any unreciprocated adoration. So on one day, just as the dying grass told the full reign of the Sun King, she went forth with her precious bundle wriggling in her arms, but her thoughts hardly on Master Phœnix. Procles the steward had been cold of late, he had even cast sly glances at Jocasta, Lysistra’s tiring-woman. Mistress Niobe was ready—since fair means of recalling the fickle Apollo failed—to resort to foul. Instead, therefore, of going to the promenade over the sea, she went—burden and all—to the Agora, where she was sure old Dion, who kept a soothsayer’s shop, would give due assistance in return for half a drachma.The market was just thinning. Niobe picked her way amongst the vegetable women, fought off a boy who thrust on her a pair of geese, and found in a quiet corner by a temple porch the booth of Dion, who grinned with his toothless gums in way of greeting. He listened with paternal interest to her story, soothed her when she sniffled at Procles’s name, and made her show her silver, then began pulling over his bags and vials of strange powders and liquids.“Ah, kind Master Dion,”began Niobe, for the sixth time,“if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!”“Eu! eu!”muttered the old sinner,“it’s hard to say what’s best,—powder of toad’s bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder’s fat. The safest thing is to consult the god—”“What do you mean?”“Why, my holy cock here, hatched at Delphi with Apollo’s blessings on him.”Dion pointed with his thumb to the small coop at his feet.“The oracle is simple. You cast[pg 345]before him two piles of corn; if he picks at the one to right we take toad’s bone, to left the adder’s fat. Heaven will speak to us.”“Excellent,”cried Niobe, brightening.“But, of course, we must use only consecrated corn, that’s two obols more.”Niobe’s face fell.“I’ve only this half-drachma.”“Then,philotata,”said Dion, kindly but firmly,“we had better wait a little longer.”Niobe wept.“Ai!woe.‘A little longer’and Jocasta has Procles. I can’t ask Hermione again for money.Ai! ai!”Two round tears did not move Dion in the slightest. Niobe was sobbing, at her small wits’ end, when a voice sounded behind her.“What’s there wrong, lass? By Zeus, but you carry a handsome child!”Niobe glanced, and instantly stopped weeping. A young man dressed roughly as a sailor, and with long black hair and beard, had approached her, but despite dress and beard she was quite aware he was far handsomer than even Procles.“I beg pardon,kyrie,”—she said“kyrie”by instinct,—“I’m only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate.”She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only the babe, not herself.“Ah! Gods and goddesses, what a beautiful child! A girl?”“A boy,”answered Niobe, almost sullenly.“Blessed the house in Trœzene then that can boast of such a son.”“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from[pg 346]Athens,”volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres.“An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”“The brat will never boast of his father,”quoth Dion, rolling his eyes.“He left the world in a way, I wager five minæ, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe’s of right good stock, an Alcmæonid, and the grandfather is that Hermippus—”“Hermippus?”The stranger seemed to catch the word out of Dion’s mouth. A donkey had broken loose at the upper end of the Agora; he turned and stared at it and its pursuers intently.“If you’re Athenian,”went on the soothsayer,“the story’s an old one—of Glaucon the Traitor.”The stranger turned back again. For a moment Dion saw he was blinking, but no doubt it was dust. Then he suddenly began to fumble in his girdle.“What do you want, girl?”he demanded of Niobe, nigh fiercely.“Two obols.”“Take two drachmæ. I was once a friend to that Glaucon, and traitor though he has been blazed, his child is yet dear to me. Let me take him.”Without waiting her answer he thrust the coin into her hands, and caught the child out of them. Phœnix looked up into the strange, bearded face, and deliberated an instant whether to crow or to weep. Then some friendly god decided him. He laughed as sweetly, as musically, as ever one can at his most august age. With both chubby hands he plucked at the black beard and held tight. The strange sailor answered laugh with laugh, and released himself right gayly. Then whilst Niobe and Dion watched and[pg 347]wondered they saw the sailor kiss the child full fifty times, all the time whispering soft words in his ear, at which Phœnix crowed and laughed yet more.“An old family servant,”threw out Dion, in a whisper.“Sheep!”retorted the nurse,“do you call yourself wise? Do you think a man with that face and those long hands ever felt the stocks or the whip? He’s gentleman born, by Demeter!”“War makes many changes,”rejoined Dion.“Ai!is he beside himself or a kidnapper? He is walking off with the babe.”The stranger indeed had seemed to forget them all and was going with swift strides up the Agora, but just before Niobe could begin her outcry he wheeled, and brought his merry burden back to the nurse’s arms.“You ought to be exceeding proud, my girl,”he remarked almost severely,“to have such a precious babe in charge. I trust you are dutiful.”“So I strive,kyrie, but he grows very strong. One cannot keep the swaddling clothes on him now. They say he will be a mighty athlete like his father.”“Ah, yes—his father—”The sailor looked down.“You knew Master Glaucon well?”pressed Dion, itching for a new bit of gossip.“Well,”answered the sailor, standing gazing on the child as though something held him fascinated, then shot another question.“And does the babe’s lady-mother prosper?”“She is passing well in body,kyrie, but grievously ill in mind. Hera give her a release from all her sorrow!”“Sorrow?”The man’s eyes were opening wider, wider.“What mean you?”“Why, all Trœzene knows it, I’m sure.”[pg 348]“I’m not from Trœzene. My ship made port from Naxos this morning. Speak, girl!”He seized Niobe’s wrist in a grip which she thought would crush the bone.“Ai!Let go, sir, you hurt. Don’t stare so. I’m frightened. I’ll tell as fast as I can. Master Democrates has come back from Corinth. Hermippus is resolved to make thekyriawed him, however bitterly she resists. It’s taken a long time for her father to determine to break her will, but now his mind’s made up. The betrothal is in three days, the wedding ten days thereafter.”The sailor had dropped her hand. She shrank at the pallor of his face. He seemed struggling for words; when they came she made nothing of them.“Themistocles, Themistocles—your promise!”Then by some giant exercise of will he steadied. His speech grew more coherent.“Give me the child,”he commanded, and Niobe mutely obeyed. He kissed Phœnix on both cheeks, mouth, forehead. They saw that tears were running down his bronzed face. He handed back the babe and again held out money,—a coin for both the slave girl and the soothsayer,—gold half-darics, that they gaped at wonderingly.“Say nothing!”ordered the sailor,“nothing of what I have said or done, or as Helios shines this noon, I will kill you both.”Not waiting reply, he went down the Agora at a run, and never looked back. It took some moments for Dion and Niobe to recover their equanimity; they would have believed it all a dream, but lo! in their hands gleamed the money.“There are times,”remarked the soothsayer, dubiously at last,“when I begin to think the gods again walk the earth and work wonders. This is a very high matter. Even I[pg 349]with my art dare not meddle with it. It is best to heed the injunction to silence. Wagging tongues always have troubles as their children. Now let us proceed with my sacred cock and his divination.”Niobe got her philtre,—though whether it reconquered Procles is not contained in this history. Likewise, she heeded Dion’s injunction. There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis.* * * * * * *Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty“distance-runner”to Sparta.“Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you. Rejoice therefore; you are my only hope. I am with you whether your path leads to Olympus or to Hades. Tartarus is opened at my feet. You must save me. My words are confused, do you think? Then hear this, and ask if I have not cause for turning mad.“Yesterday, even as Hermippus hung garlands on his house, and summoned the guests to witness the betrothal contract, Themistocles returned suddenly from Eubœa. He called Hermippus and myself aside.‘Glaucon lives,’he said,‘and with the god’s help we’ll prove his innocence.’Hermippus at once broke off the betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details.‘Glaucon lives,’—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory of Mardonius!Chaire.”“Glaucon lives.”Democrates had only written one least part of his terrors. Two words—but enough to make the orator the most miserable man in Hellas, the most supple of Xerxes’s hundred million slaves.[pg 350]CHAPTER XXXIIIWHAT BEFELL ON THE HILLSIDEOnce more the Persians pressed into Attica, once more the Athenians,—or such few of them as had ventured home in the winter,—fled with their movables to Salamis or Peloponnesus, and an embassy, headed by Aristeides, hastened to Sparta to demand for the last time that the tardy ephors make good their promise in sending forth their infantry to hurl back the invader. If not, Aristeides spoke plainly, his people must perforce close alliance with Mardonius.Almost to the amazement of the Athenian chiefs, so accustomed were they to Dorian doltishness and immobility, after a ten days’ delay and excuses that“they must celebrate their festival the Hyacinthia,”the ephors called forth their whole levy. Ten thousand heavy infantrymen with a host of lightly armed“helots”11were started northward under the able lead of Pausanias, the regent for Leonidas’s young son. Likewise all the allies of Lacedæmon—Corinthians, Sicyonians, Elians, Arcadians—began to hurry toward the Isthmus. Therefore men who had loved Hellas and had almost despaired for her took courage.“At last we will have a great land battle, and an end to the Barbarian.”All was excitement in the Athenian colony at Trœzene. The board of strategi met and voted that now was the time[pg 351]for a crowning effort. Five thousand men-at-arms should march under Aristeides to join against Mardonius in Bœotia. By sea Themistocles should go with every available ship to Delos, meet the allied squadrons there, and use his infallible art in persuading the sluggish Spartan high admiral to conduct a raid across the Ægean at Xerxes’s own doors. Of the ten strategi Democrates had called loudest for instant action, so loudly indeed that Themistocles had cautioned him against rashness. Hermippus was old, but experienced men trusted him, therefore he was appointed to command the contingent of his tribe. Democrates was to accompany Aristeides as general adjutant; his diplomatic training would be invaluable in ending the frictions sure to arise amongst the allies. Cimon would go with Themistocles, and so every other man was sent to his place. In the general preparation private problems seemed forgotten. Hermippus and Democrates both announced that the betrothal of Hermione had been postponed, pending the public crisis. The old Eleusinian had not told his daughter, or even his wife, why he had seemed to relax his announced purpose of forcing Hermione to an unwelcome marriage. The young widow knew she had respite—for how long nothing told her, but for every day her agony was postponed she blessed kind Hera. Then came the morning when her father must go forth with his men. She still loved him, despite the grief he was giving her. She did him justice to believe he acted in affection. The gay ribbons that laced his cuirass, the red and blue embroidery that edged his“taxiarch’s”cloak, were from the needle of his daughter. Hermione kissed him as she stood with her mother in the aula. He coughed gruffly when he answered their“farewell.”The house door closed behind him, and Hermione and Lysistra ran into one another’s arms. They had given to Hellas their best, and now must look to Athena.[pg 352]Hermippus and Aristeides were gone, Democrates remained in Trœzene. His business, he said, was more diplomatic than military, and he was expecting advices from the islands which he must take to Pausanias in person. He had a number of interviews with Themistocles, when it was observed that every time he came away with clouded brow and gruff answers to all who accosted. It began to be hinted that all was not as well as formerly between the admiral and the orator, that Democrates had chosen to tie too closely to Aristeides for the son of Neocles’s liking, and that as soon as the campaign was decided, a bitter feud would break out betwixt them. But this was merest gossip. Outwardly Democrates and Themistocles continued friends, dined together, exchanged civilities. On the day when Themistocles was to sail for Delos he walked arm in arm with Democrates to the quay. The hundreds of onlookers saw him embrace the young strategus in a manner belying any rumour of estrangement, whilst Democrates stood on the sand waving his good wishes until the admiral climbed the ladder of theNausicaä.It was another day and landscape which the stranger in Hellas would have remembered long. The haven of Trœzene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder Ægina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole.“Euopis,”“The Fair-Faced,”the beauty-loving dwellers of the country called it, and they named aright.Something of the beauty touched even Hermione as she[pg 353]stood on the hill slope, gazing across the sea. Only Cleopis was with her. The young widow had less trembling when she looked on theNausicaäthan when one year before the stately trireme had sailed for Artemisium. If ill news must come, it would be from the plains of Bœotia. Most of Themistocles’s fleet was already at Delos. He led only a dozen sail. When his squadron glided on into the blue deep, the haven seemed deserted save for the Carthaginian trader that swung at her cables close upon the land. As Hermione looked and saw the climbing sun change the tintings of the waters, here spreading a line of green gold amidst the blue, here flashing the waves with dark violet, something of the peace and majesty of the scene entered into her own breast. The waves at the foot of the slope beat in monotonous music. She did not wonder that Thetis, Galatea, and all the hundred Nereids loved their home. Somewhere, far off on that shimmering plain, Glaucon the Beautiful had fallen asleep; whether he waked in the land of Rhadamanthus, whether he had been stolen away by Leucothea and the other nymphs to be their playfellow, she did not know. She was not sad, even to think of him crowned with green seaweed, and sitting under the sea-floor with fish-tailed Tritons at their tables of pearl, while the finny shoals like birds flitted above their heads. Thales the Sage made all life proceed out of the sea. Perchance all life should return to it. Then she would find her husband again, not beyond, but within the realms of great Oceanus. With such beauty spreading out before her eyes the phantasy was almost welcome.The people had wandered homeward. Cleopis set the parasol on the dry grass where it would shade her mistress and betook herself to the shelter of a rock. If Hermione was pleased to meditate so long, she would not deny her slave a siesta. So the Athenian sat and mused, now sadly, now[pg 354]with a gleam of brightness, for she was too young to have her sun clouded always.A speaker near by her called her out of her reverie.“You sit long,kyria, and gaze forth as if you were Zeus in Olympus and could look on all the world.”Hermione had not exchanged a word with Democrates since that day she cast scorn on him on that other hill slope at Munychia, but this did not make his intrusion more welcome. With mortification she realized that she had forgotten herself. That she lay on the sunny bank with her feet outstretched and her hair shaken loose on her shoulders. Her feet she instantly covered with her long himation. Her hands flew instantly to her hair. Then she uprose, flushing haughtily.“It has pleased my father, sir,”she spoke with frigid dignity,“to tell me that you are some day perchance to be my husband. The fulfilment lies with the gods. But to-day the strategus Democrates knows our customs too well to thrust himself upon an Attic gentlewoman who finds herself alone save for one servant.”“Ah,kyria; pardon the word, it’s overcold;makaira, I’d say more gladly,”Democrates was marvellously at his ease despite her frowns,“your noble father will take nothing amiss if I ask you to sit again that we may talk together.”“I do not think so.”Hermione drew herself up at full height. But Democrates deliberately placed himself in the path up the hillside. To have run toward the water seemed folly. She could expect no help from Cleopis, who would hardly oppose a man soon probably to be her master. As the less of evils, Hermione did not indeed sit as desired, but stood facing her unloved lover and hearkening.“How long I’ve desired this instant!”Democrates looked as if he might seize her hands to kiss them, but she thrust[pg 355]them behind her.“I know you hate me bitterly because, touching your late husband, I did my duty.”“Your duty?”Nestor’s eloquence was in her incredulous echo.“If I have pained you beyond telling, do you think my act was a pleasant one for me? A bosom friend to ruin, the most sacred bonds to sever, last and not least, to give infinite sorrow to her I love?”“I hardly understand.”Democrates drew a step nearer.“Ah! Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite the Golden—by what name shall I call my goddess?”Hermione drew back a step. There was danger in his eyes.“I have loved you, loved you long. Before Glaucon took you in marriage I loved you. But Eros and Hymen hearkened to his prayers, not mine. You became his bride. I wore a bright face at your wedding. You remember I was Glaucon’s groomsman, and rode beside you in the bridal car. You loved him, he seemed worthy of you. Therefore I trod my own grief down into my heart, and rejoiced with my friends. But to cease loving you I could not. Truly they say Eros is the strongest god, and pitiless—do not the poets say bloody Ares begat him—”“Spare me mythologies,”interposed Hermione, with another step back.“As you will, but you shall hearken. I have desired this moment for two years. Not as the weak girl given by her father, but as the fair goddess who comes to me gladly, I do desire you. And I know you will smile on me when you have heard me through.”“Keep back your eloquence. You have destroyed Glaucon. That is enough.”“Hear me.”Democrates cried desperately now. Her[pg 356]mione feared even to retreat farther, lest he pass to violence. She summoned courage and looked him in the eye.“Say on, then. But remember I am a woman and alone save for Cleopis. If you profess to love me, you will not forget that.”But Democrates was passing almost beyond the limits of coherent speech.“Oh, when you come to me, you will not know what a price I have paid for you. In Homer’s day men wooed their wives with costly gifts, but I—have I not paid for you with my soul? My soul, I say—honour, friendship, country, what has weighed against Himeros,‘Master Desire,’—the desire ever for you!”She hardly understood him, his speech flowed so thick. She knew he was on the edge of reason, and feared to answer lest she drive beyond it.“Do you hear the price I have paid? Do you still look on in cold hate, lady? Ah, by Zeus, even in your coldest, most forbidding mood you are fair as the Paphian when she sprang above the sea! And I will win you, lady, I will win your heart, for they shall do you homage, even all Athens, and I will make you a queen. Yes! the house of Athena on the Acropolis shall be your palace if you will, and they will cry in the Agora,‘Way, way for Hermione, glorious consort of Democrates our king!’”“Sir,”spoke Hermione, while her hands grew chill, for now she was sure he raved,“I have not the joy to comprehend. There is no king in Athens, please Athena, there never will be. Treason and blasphemy you speak all in one.”She sought vainly with her eyes for refuge. None in sight. The hill slope seemed empty save for the scattered brown boulders. Far away a goat was wandering. She motioned to Cleopis. The old woman was staring now, and doubtless[pg 357]thought Democrates was carrying his familiarities too far, but she was a weak creature, and at best could only scream.“Treason and blasphemy,”cried Democrates, dropping on his knees, his frame shaking with dishonest passion,“yes! call them so now. They will be blessed truth for me in a month, for me, for you. Hermes the Trickster is a mighty god. He has befriended Eros. I shall possess Athens and possess you. I shall be the most fortunate mortal upon earth as now I am most miserable. Ah! but I have waited so long.”He sprang to his feet.“Tarry,makaira, tarry! A kiss!”Hermione screamed at last shrilly and turned to fly. Instantly Democrates was upon her. In that fluttering white dress escape was hopeless.“Apollo pursuing Daphne!”—his crazed shout as his arms closed around her,—“but Daphne becomes no laurel this time. Her race is lost. She shall pay the forfeit.”She felt him seize her girdle. He swung her face to face. She saw his wide eyes, his mad smile. His hot breath smote her cheek. Cleopis at last was screaming.“Mine,”he triumphed, while he forced her resisting head to his own,“there is none to hinder!”But even while the woman’s flesh crept back at his impure kiss, a giant power came rending the twain apart. A man had sundered them, sprung from the ground or from heaven belike, or from behind a boulder? He tore Democrates’s hands away as a lion tears a lamb. He dashed the mad orator prone upon the sod, and kicked him twice, as of mingled hatred and contempt. All this Hermione only knew in half, while her senses swam. Then she came to herself enough to see that the stranger was a young man in a sailor’s loose dress, his features almost hidden under the dishevelled hair and beard. All this time he uttered no word, but having smitten[pg 358]Democrates down, leaped back, rubbing his hands upon his thigh, as if despising to touch so foul an object. The orator groaned, staggered upward. He wore a sword. It flew from its scabbard as he leaped on the sailor. The stranger put forth his hand, snatched his opponent’s wrist, and with lightning dexterity sent the blade spinning back upon the grass. Then he threw Democrates a second time, and the latter did not rise again hastily, but lay cursing. The fall had not been gentle.But all this while Cleopis was screaming. People were hastening up the hill,—fishermen from a skiff upon the beach, slaves who had been carrying bales to the haven. In a moment they would be surrounded by a dozen. The strange sailor turned as if to fly. He had not spoken one word. Hermione herself at last called to him.“My preserver! Your name! Blessed be you forever!”The fisherfolk were very close. Cleopis was still screaming. The sailor looked once into the lady’s eyes.“I am nameless! You owe me nothing!”And with that he was gone up the hill slopes, springing with long bounds that would have mocked pursuing, had any attempted. But Cleopis quenched her outcry instantly; her screams had been drowned by a louder scream from Hermione, who fell upon the greensward, no marble whiter than her face. The nurse ran to her mistress. Democrates staggered to his feet. Whatever else the chastisement had given him, it had restored his balance of mind. He told the fisherfolk a glib story that a sailor wandering along the strand had accosted Hermione, that he himself had chased the villain off, but had tripped whilst trying to follow. If the tale was not of perfect workmanship at all points, there was no one with interest to gainsay it. A few ran up the hill slope, but the sailor was nowhere in sight. Hermione was still speechless.[pg 359]They made a litter of oars and sail-cloth and carried her to her mother. Democrates oiled Cleopis’s palm well, that she should tell nothing amiss to Lysistra. It was a long time before Hermione opened her eyes in her chamber. Her first words were:—“Glaucon! I have seen Glaucon!”“You have had a strange dream,philotata,”soothed Lysistra, shifting the pillows,“lie still and rest.”But Hermione shook her shining brown head and repeated, many times:—“No dream! No dream! I have seen Glaucon face to face. In that instant he spoke and looked on me I knew him. He lives. He saved me. Ah! why does he stay away?”Lysistra, whose husband had not deemed it prudent to inform her of Themistocles’s revelations, was infinitely distressed. She sent for the best physicians of the city, and despatched a slave to the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus—not distant—to sacrifice two cocks for her daughter’s recovery. The doctors looked wise and recommended heavy doses of spiced wine, and if those did not suffice, said that the patient might spend a night in the temple of the Healer, who would no doubt explain the true remedy in a dream. A“wise woman”who had great following among the slaves advised that a young puppy be tied upon Hermione’s temples to absorb the disaffection of her brain. Lysistra was barely persuaded not to follow her admonitions. After a few days the patient grew better, recovered strength, took an interest in her child. Yet ever and anon she would repeat over Phœnix’s cradle:—“Your father lives! I have seen him! I have seen him!”What, however, puzzled Lysistra most, was the fact that Cleopis did not contradict her young mistress in the least, but maintained a mysterious silence about the whole adventure.
[pg 333]CHAPTER XXXIDEMOCRATES SURRENDERSHellas was saved. But whether forever or only for a year the gods kept hid. Panic-stricken, the“Lord of the World”had fled to Asia after the great disaster. The eunuchs, the harem women, the soft-handed pages, had escaped with their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the Ægean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army. Hellas was not yet safe.Democrates had prospered. He had been reëlected strategus. If Themistocles no longer trusted him quite so freely as once, Aristeides, restored now to much of his former power, gave him full confidence. Democrates found constant and honourable employment through the winter in the endless negotiations at Sparta, at Corinth, and elsewhere, while the jealous Greek states wrangled and intrigued, more to humiliate some rival than to advance the safety of Hellas. But amongst all the patriot chiefs none seemed more devoted to the common weal of Hellas than the Athenian orator.Hermippus at least was convinced of this. The Eleusinian had settled at Trœzene on the Argive coast, a hospitable city that received many an outcast Athenian. He found his[pg 334]daughter’s resistance to another marriage increasingly unreasonable. Was not Glaucon dead for more than a year? Ought not any woman to bless Hera who gave her so noble, so eloquent, a husband as Democrates—pious, rich, trusted by the greatest, and with the best of worldly prospects?“If you truly desire any other worthy man,makaira,”said Hermippus, once,“you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your highest happiness.”“He ruined Glaucon,”said Hermione, tearfully.“At least,”returned Lysistra, who like many good women could say exceeding cruel things,“hehas never been a traitor to his country.”Hermione’s answer was to fly to her chamber, and to weep—as many a time before—over Phœnix in the cradle. Here old Cleopis found her, took her in her arms, and sang her the old song about Alphæus chasing Arethusa—a song more fit for Phœnix than his mother, but most comforting. So the contest for the moment passed, but after a conference with Hermippus, Democrates went away on public business to Corinth unusually well pleased with the world and himself.It was a tedious, jangling conference held at the Isthmus city. Mardonius had tempted the Athenians sorely. In the spring had come his envoys proffering reparation for all injuries in the wars, enlarged territory, and not slavery, but free alliance with the Great King, if they would but join against their fellow-Hellenes. The Athenians had met the tempter as became Athenians. Aristeides had given the envoys the answer of the whole people.“We know your power. Yet tell it to Mardonius, that so long as Helios moves in the heavens we will not make[pg 335]alliance with Xerxes, but rather trust to the gods whose temples he has burned.”Bravely said, but when the Athenians looked to Sparta for the great army to hasten north and give Mardonius his death-stroke, it was the old wearisome tale of excuses and delay. At the conference in Corinth Aristeides and Democrates had passed from arguments to all but threats, even such as Themistocles had used at Salamis. It was after one of these fruitless debates that Democrates passed out of the gathering at the Corinthian prytaneum, with his colleagues all breathing forth their wrath against Dorian stupidity and evasiveness.Democrates himself crossed the city Agora, seeking the house of the friendly merchant where he was to sup. He walked briskly, his thoughts more perhaps on the waiting betrothal feast at Trœzene, than on the discussion behind him. The Agora scene had little to interest, the same buyers, booths, and babel as in Athens, only the citadel above was the mount of Acro-Corinthus, not the tawny rock of Athena. And in late months he had begun to find his old fears and terrors flee away. Every day he was growing more certain that his former“missteps”—that was his own name for certain occurrences—could have no malign influence.“After all,”he was reflecting,“Nemesis is a very capricious goddess. Often she forgets for a lifetime, and after death—who knows what is beyond the Styx?”He was on such noble terms with all about him that he could even give ear to the whine of a beggar. The man was sitting on the steps between the pillars of a colonnade, with a tame crow perched upon his fist, and as Democrates passed he began his doggerel prayer:—“Good master, a handful of barley bestowOn the child of Apollo, the sage, sable crow.”[pg 336]The Athenian began to fumble in his belt for an obol, when he was rudely distracted by a twitch upon his chiton. Turning, he was little pleased to come face to face with no less a giant than Lycon.“There was an hour,philotate,”spoke the Spartan, with ill-concealed sneer,“when you did not have so much silver to scatter out to beggars.”Time had not mended Lycon’s aspect, nor taken from his eye that sinister twinkle which was so marked a foil to his brutishness.“I did not invite you, dear fellow,”rejoined the Athenian,“to remind me of the fact.”“Yet you should have gratitude, and you have lacked that virtue of late. It was a sorry plight Mardonius’s money saved you from two years since, and nobly have you remembered his good service.”“Worthy Lacedæmonian,”said Democrates, with what patience he could command,“if you desire to go over all that little business which concerned us then, at least I would suggest not in the open Agora.”He started to walk swiftly away. The Spartan’s ponderous strides easily kept beside him. Democrates looked vainly for an associate whom he could approach and on some pretext could accompany. None in sight. Lycon kept fast hold of his cloak. For practical purposes Democrates was prisoner.“Why in Corinth?”he threw out sullenly.“For three reasons,philotate,”Lycon grinned over his shoulder,“first, the women at the Grove of Aphrodite here are handsome; second, I am weary of Sparta and its black broth and iron money; third, and here is the rose for my garland, I had need to confer with your noble self.”“Would not Hiram be your dutiful messenger again?”queried the other, vainly watching for escape.[pg 337]“Hiram is worth twenty talents as a helper;”—Lycon gave a hound-like chuckle,—“still he is not Apollo, and there are too many strings on this lyre for him to play them all. Besides, he failed at Salamis.”“He did! Zeus blast his importunity and yours likewise. Where are you taking me? I warn you in advance, you are‘shearing an ass,’—attempting the impossible,—if you deceive yourself as to my power. I can do nothing more to prevent the war from being pressed against Mardonius. It is only your Laconian ephors that are hindering.”“We shall see,philotate, we shall see,”grunted the Spartan, exasperatingly cool.“Here is Poseidon’s Temple. Let us sit in the shaded portico.”Democrates resigned himself to be led to a stone seat against the wall. The gray old“dog-watcher”by the gate glanced up to see that no dogs were straying into the holy house, noted only two gentlemen come for a chat, and resumed his siesta. Lycon took a long time in opening his business.“The world has used you well of late, dear fellow.”“Passing well, by Athena’s favour.”“You should say by Hermes’s favour, but I would trust you Athenians to grow fat on successful villany and then bless the righteous gods.”“I hope you haven’t left Sparta just to revile me!”cried Democrates, leaping up, to be thrust back by Lycon’s giant paw.“Ai!mix a little honey with your speech, it costs nothing. Well, the length and breadth of my errand is this, Mardonius must fight soon, and must be victorious.”“That is for your brave ephors to say,”darted Democrates.“According to their valiant proposals they desire this war to imitate that with Troy,—to last ten years.”[pg 338]“Indeed—but I always held my people surpassed in procrastination, as yours in deceiving. However, their minds will change.”“Aristeides and Themistocles will bless you for that.”Lycon shrugged his great shoulders.“Then I’ll surpass the gods, who can seldom please all men. Still it is quite true.”“I’m glad to hear it.”“Dear Democrates, you know what’s befallen in Sparta. Since Leonidas died, his rivals from my own side of the royal house have gathered a great deal more of power. My uncle Nicander is at present head of the board of ephors, and gladly takes my advice.”“Ha!”Democrates began to divine the drift.“It seemed best to me after the affair at Salamis to give the lie to my calumniators, who hinted that I desired to‘Medize,’and that it was by my intriguing that the late king took so small a force to Thermopylæ.”“All Hellas knowsyourpatriotism!”cried Democrates, satirically.“Even so. I have silenced my fiercest abusers. If I have not yet urged in our assembly that we should fight Mardonius, it is merely because—it is not yet prudent.”“Excellent scoundrel,”declared the other, writhing on his seat,“you are no Spartan, but long-winded as a Sicilian.”“Patience,philotate, a Spartan must either speak in apothegms or take all day. I have not advised a battle yet because I was not certain of your aid.”“Ay, by Zeus,”broke out Democrates,“that ointment I sniffed a long way off. I can give you quick answer. Fly back to Sparta, swift as Boreas; plot, conspire, earn Tartarus, to your heart’s content—you’ll get no more help from me.”[pg 339]“I expected that speech.”Lycon’s coolness drove his victim almost frantic.“In the affair of Tempē I bent to you for the last time,”Democrates charged desperately.“I have counted the cost. Perhaps you can use against me certain documents, but I am on a surer footing than once. In the last year I have done such service to Hellas I can even hope to be forgiven, should these old mistakes be proved. And if you drive me to bay, be sure of this, I will see to it that all the dealings betwixt the Barbarian and your noble self are expounded to your admiring countrymen.”“You show truly excellent courage, dear Democrates,”cried Lycon, in pseudo-admiration.“That speech was quite worthy of a tragic actor.”“If we’re in the theatre, let the chorus sing its last strophe and have done. You disgust me.”“Peace, peace,”ordered Lycon, his hand still on the Athenian’s shoulder,“I will make all the haste I can, but obstinacy is disagreeable. I repeat, you are needed, sorely needed, by Mardonius to enable him to complete the conquest of Hellas. You shall not call the Persians ungrateful—the tyranny of Athens under the easy suzerainty of the king, is that no dish to whet your appetite?”“I knew of the offer before.”“A great pity you are not more eager. Hermes seldom sends such chances twice. I hoped to have you for‘my royal brother’when they gave me the like lordship of Lacedæmon. However, the matter does not end with your refusal.”“I have said,‘Do your worst.’”“And my worst is—Agis.”For an instant Lycon was dismayed. He thought he had slain his victim with one word. Democrates dropped from his clutch and upon the pavement as though stricken through[pg 340]the heart by an arrow. He was pallid as a corpse, at first he only groaned.“Eu! eu!good comrade,”cried the Spartan, dragging him up, half triumphant, half sympathetic,“I did not know I was throwing Zeus’s thunderbolts.”The Athenian sat with his head on his hands. In all his dealings with the Spartan he had believed he had covered the details of the fate of Glaucon. Lycon could surmise what he liked, but the proof to make the damning charges good Democrates believed he had safe in his own keeping. Only one man could have unlocked the casket of infamy—Agis—and the mention of his name was as a bolt from the blue.“Where is he? I heard he was killed at Artemisium.”Lycon hardly understood his victim’s thick whispers.“Wounded indeed,philotate, taken prisoner, and sent to Thebes. There friends of mine found he had a story to tell—greatly to my advantage. It is only a little time since he came to Sparta.”“What lies has he told?”“Several, dear fellow, although if they are lies, then Aletheia, Lady Truth, must almost own them for her children. At least they are interesting lies; as, for example, how you advised the Cyprian to escape from Athens, how you gave Agis a letter to hide in the boots of Glaucon’s messenger, of your interviews with Lampaxo and Archias, of the charming art you possess of imitating handwritings and seals.”“Base-born swine! who will believe him?”“Base born, Democrates, but hardly swinish. He can tell a very clear story. Likewise, Lampaxo and Archias must testify at the trial, also your slave Bias can tell many interesting things.”“Only if I consent to produce him.”“When did a master ever refuse to let his slave testify,[pg 341]if demanded, unless he wished to blast his own cause with the jury? No,makaire, you will not enjoy the day when Themistocles arrays the testimony against you.”Democrates shivered. The late spring sun was warm. He felt no heat. A mere charge of treason he was almost prepared now to endure. If Mistress Fortune helped him, he might refute it, but to be branded before Hellas as the destroyer of his bosom friend, and that by guile the like whereof Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion conjoined had never wrought—what wonder his knees smote together? Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon’s hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst of all, worse than the howls of the people who would tear his body asunder like dogs, not waiting the work of the hemlock, was the thought of Hermione. She hated him now. How she would love him, though he sat on Xerxes’s throne, if once her suspicion rose to certainty! He saw himself ruined in life and in love, and blazoned as infamous forever.Lycon was wise enough to sit some moments, letting his utterance do its work. He was confident, and rightly. Democrates looked on him at last. The workings of the Athenian’s face were terrible.“I am your slave, Spartan. Had you bought me for ten minæ and held the bill of sale, I were not yours more utterly. Your wish?”Lycon chose his words and answered slowly.“You must serve Persia. Not for a moment, but for all time. You must place that dreadful gift of yours at our disposal. And in return take what is promised,—the lordship of Athens.”“No word of that,”groaned the wretched man,“what will you do?”[pg 342]“Aristeides is soon going to Sparta to press home his demands that the Lacedæmonians march in full force against Mardonius. I can see to it that his mission succeeds. A great battle will be fought in Bœotia.Wecan see to it that Mardonius is so victorious that all further resistance becomes a dream.”“And my part in this monster’s work?”The demands and propositions with which Lycon answered this despairing question will unfold themselves in due place and time. Suffice it here, that when he let the Athenian go his way Lycon was convinced that Democrates had bound himself heart and soul to forward his enterprise. The orator was no merry guest for his Corinthian hosts that night. He returned to his old manner of drinking unmixed wine.“Thirsty as a Macedonian!”cried his companions, in vain endeavour to drive him into a laugh. They did not know that once more the chorus of the Furies was singing about his ears, and he could not still it by the deepest wine-cup. They did not know that every time he closed his eyes he was seeing the face of Glaucon. That morning he had mocked at Nemesis. That night he heard the beating of her brazen wings.
Hellas was saved. But whether forever or only for a year the gods kept hid. Panic-stricken, the“Lord of the World”had fled to Asia after the great disaster. The eunuchs, the harem women, the soft-handed pages, had escaped with their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the Ægean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army. Hellas was not yet safe.
Democrates had prospered. He had been reëlected strategus. If Themistocles no longer trusted him quite so freely as once, Aristeides, restored now to much of his former power, gave him full confidence. Democrates found constant and honourable employment through the winter in the endless negotiations at Sparta, at Corinth, and elsewhere, while the jealous Greek states wrangled and intrigued, more to humiliate some rival than to advance the safety of Hellas. But amongst all the patriot chiefs none seemed more devoted to the common weal of Hellas than the Athenian orator.
Hermippus at least was convinced of this. The Eleusinian had settled at Trœzene on the Argive coast, a hospitable city that received many an outcast Athenian. He found his[pg 334]daughter’s resistance to another marriage increasingly unreasonable. Was not Glaucon dead for more than a year? Ought not any woman to bless Hera who gave her so noble, so eloquent, a husband as Democrates—pious, rich, trusted by the greatest, and with the best of worldly prospects?
“If you truly desire any other worthy man,makaira,”said Hermippus, once,“you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your highest happiness.”
“He ruined Glaucon,”said Hermione, tearfully.
“At least,”returned Lysistra, who like many good women could say exceeding cruel things,“hehas never been a traitor to his country.”
Hermione’s answer was to fly to her chamber, and to weep—as many a time before—over Phœnix in the cradle. Here old Cleopis found her, took her in her arms, and sang her the old song about Alphæus chasing Arethusa—a song more fit for Phœnix than his mother, but most comforting. So the contest for the moment passed, but after a conference with Hermippus, Democrates went away on public business to Corinth unusually well pleased with the world and himself.
It was a tedious, jangling conference held at the Isthmus city. Mardonius had tempted the Athenians sorely. In the spring had come his envoys proffering reparation for all injuries in the wars, enlarged territory, and not slavery, but free alliance with the Great King, if they would but join against their fellow-Hellenes. The Athenians had met the tempter as became Athenians. Aristeides had given the envoys the answer of the whole people.
“We know your power. Yet tell it to Mardonius, that so long as Helios moves in the heavens we will not make[pg 335]alliance with Xerxes, but rather trust to the gods whose temples he has burned.”
Bravely said, but when the Athenians looked to Sparta for the great army to hasten north and give Mardonius his death-stroke, it was the old wearisome tale of excuses and delay. At the conference in Corinth Aristeides and Democrates had passed from arguments to all but threats, even such as Themistocles had used at Salamis. It was after one of these fruitless debates that Democrates passed out of the gathering at the Corinthian prytaneum, with his colleagues all breathing forth their wrath against Dorian stupidity and evasiveness.
Democrates himself crossed the city Agora, seeking the house of the friendly merchant where he was to sup. He walked briskly, his thoughts more perhaps on the waiting betrothal feast at Trœzene, than on the discussion behind him. The Agora scene had little to interest, the same buyers, booths, and babel as in Athens, only the citadel above was the mount of Acro-Corinthus, not the tawny rock of Athena. And in late months he had begun to find his old fears and terrors flee away. Every day he was growing more certain that his former“missteps”—that was his own name for certain occurrences—could have no malign influence.“After all,”he was reflecting,“Nemesis is a very capricious goddess. Often she forgets for a lifetime, and after death—who knows what is beyond the Styx?”
He was on such noble terms with all about him that he could even give ear to the whine of a beggar. The man was sitting on the steps between the pillars of a colonnade, with a tame crow perched upon his fist, and as Democrates passed he began his doggerel prayer:—
“Good master, a handful of barley bestowOn the child of Apollo, the sage, sable crow.”
“Good master, a handful of barley bestow
On the child of Apollo, the sage, sable crow.”
The Athenian began to fumble in his belt for an obol, when he was rudely distracted by a twitch upon his chiton. Turning, he was little pleased to come face to face with no less a giant than Lycon.
“There was an hour,philotate,”spoke the Spartan, with ill-concealed sneer,“when you did not have so much silver to scatter out to beggars.”
Time had not mended Lycon’s aspect, nor taken from his eye that sinister twinkle which was so marked a foil to his brutishness.
“I did not invite you, dear fellow,”rejoined the Athenian,“to remind me of the fact.”
“Yet you should have gratitude, and you have lacked that virtue of late. It was a sorry plight Mardonius’s money saved you from two years since, and nobly have you remembered his good service.”
“Worthy Lacedæmonian,”said Democrates, with what patience he could command,“if you desire to go over all that little business which concerned us then, at least I would suggest not in the open Agora.”He started to walk swiftly away. The Spartan’s ponderous strides easily kept beside him. Democrates looked vainly for an associate whom he could approach and on some pretext could accompany. None in sight. Lycon kept fast hold of his cloak. For practical purposes Democrates was prisoner.
“Why in Corinth?”he threw out sullenly.
“For three reasons,philotate,”Lycon grinned over his shoulder,“first, the women at the Grove of Aphrodite here are handsome; second, I am weary of Sparta and its black broth and iron money; third, and here is the rose for my garland, I had need to confer with your noble self.”
“Would not Hiram be your dutiful messenger again?”queried the other, vainly watching for escape.
“Hiram is worth twenty talents as a helper;”—Lycon gave a hound-like chuckle,—“still he is not Apollo, and there are too many strings on this lyre for him to play them all. Besides, he failed at Salamis.”
“He did! Zeus blast his importunity and yours likewise. Where are you taking me? I warn you in advance, you are‘shearing an ass,’—attempting the impossible,—if you deceive yourself as to my power. I can do nothing more to prevent the war from being pressed against Mardonius. It is only your Laconian ephors that are hindering.”
“We shall see,philotate, we shall see,”grunted the Spartan, exasperatingly cool.“Here is Poseidon’s Temple. Let us sit in the shaded portico.”
Democrates resigned himself to be led to a stone seat against the wall. The gray old“dog-watcher”by the gate glanced up to see that no dogs were straying into the holy house, noted only two gentlemen come for a chat, and resumed his siesta. Lycon took a long time in opening his business.
“The world has used you well of late, dear fellow.”
“Passing well, by Athena’s favour.”
“You should say by Hermes’s favour, but I would trust you Athenians to grow fat on successful villany and then bless the righteous gods.”
“I hope you haven’t left Sparta just to revile me!”cried Democrates, leaping up, to be thrust back by Lycon’s giant paw.
“Ai!mix a little honey with your speech, it costs nothing. Well, the length and breadth of my errand is this, Mardonius must fight soon, and must be victorious.”
“That is for your brave ephors to say,”darted Democrates.“According to their valiant proposals they desire this war to imitate that with Troy,—to last ten years.”
“Indeed—but I always held my people surpassed in procrastination, as yours in deceiving. However, their minds will change.”
“Aristeides and Themistocles will bless you for that.”
Lycon shrugged his great shoulders.
“Then I’ll surpass the gods, who can seldom please all men. Still it is quite true.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Dear Democrates, you know what’s befallen in Sparta. Since Leonidas died, his rivals from my own side of the royal house have gathered a great deal more of power. My uncle Nicander is at present head of the board of ephors, and gladly takes my advice.”
“Ha!”Democrates began to divine the drift.
“It seemed best to me after the affair at Salamis to give the lie to my calumniators, who hinted that I desired to‘Medize,’and that it was by my intriguing that the late king took so small a force to Thermopylæ.”
“All Hellas knowsyourpatriotism!”cried Democrates, satirically.
“Even so. I have silenced my fiercest abusers. If I have not yet urged in our assembly that we should fight Mardonius, it is merely because—it is not yet prudent.”
“Excellent scoundrel,”declared the other, writhing on his seat,“you are no Spartan, but long-winded as a Sicilian.”
“Patience,philotate, a Spartan must either speak in apothegms or take all day. I have not advised a battle yet because I was not certain of your aid.”
“Ay, by Zeus,”broke out Democrates,“that ointment I sniffed a long way off. I can give you quick answer. Fly back to Sparta, swift as Boreas; plot, conspire, earn Tartarus, to your heart’s content—you’ll get no more help from me.”
“I expected that speech.”Lycon’s coolness drove his victim almost frantic.
“In the affair of Tempē I bent to you for the last time,”Democrates charged desperately.“I have counted the cost. Perhaps you can use against me certain documents, but I am on a surer footing than once. In the last year I have done such service to Hellas I can even hope to be forgiven, should these old mistakes be proved. And if you drive me to bay, be sure of this, I will see to it that all the dealings betwixt the Barbarian and your noble self are expounded to your admiring countrymen.”
“You show truly excellent courage, dear Democrates,”cried Lycon, in pseudo-admiration.“That speech was quite worthy of a tragic actor.”
“If we’re in the theatre, let the chorus sing its last strophe and have done. You disgust me.”
“Peace, peace,”ordered Lycon, his hand still on the Athenian’s shoulder,“I will make all the haste I can, but obstinacy is disagreeable. I repeat, you are needed, sorely needed, by Mardonius to enable him to complete the conquest of Hellas. You shall not call the Persians ungrateful—the tyranny of Athens under the easy suzerainty of the king, is that no dish to whet your appetite?”
“I knew of the offer before.”
“A great pity you are not more eager. Hermes seldom sends such chances twice. I hoped to have you for‘my royal brother’when they gave me the like lordship of Lacedæmon. However, the matter does not end with your refusal.”
“I have said,‘Do your worst.’”
“And my worst is—Agis.”
For an instant Lycon was dismayed. He thought he had slain his victim with one word. Democrates dropped from his clutch and upon the pavement as though stricken through[pg 340]the heart by an arrow. He was pallid as a corpse, at first he only groaned.
“Eu! eu!good comrade,”cried the Spartan, dragging him up, half triumphant, half sympathetic,“I did not know I was throwing Zeus’s thunderbolts.”
The Athenian sat with his head on his hands. In all his dealings with the Spartan he had believed he had covered the details of the fate of Glaucon. Lycon could surmise what he liked, but the proof to make the damning charges good Democrates believed he had safe in his own keeping. Only one man could have unlocked the casket of infamy—Agis—and the mention of his name was as a bolt from the blue.
“Where is he? I heard he was killed at Artemisium.”Lycon hardly understood his victim’s thick whispers.
“Wounded indeed,philotate, taken prisoner, and sent to Thebes. There friends of mine found he had a story to tell—greatly to my advantage. It is only a little time since he came to Sparta.”
“What lies has he told?”
“Several, dear fellow, although if they are lies, then Aletheia, Lady Truth, must almost own them for her children. At least they are interesting lies; as, for example, how you advised the Cyprian to escape from Athens, how you gave Agis a letter to hide in the boots of Glaucon’s messenger, of your interviews with Lampaxo and Archias, of the charming art you possess of imitating handwritings and seals.”
“Base-born swine! who will believe him?”
“Base born, Democrates, but hardly swinish. He can tell a very clear story. Likewise, Lampaxo and Archias must testify at the trial, also your slave Bias can tell many interesting things.”
“Only if I consent to produce him.”
“When did a master ever refuse to let his slave testify,[pg 341]if demanded, unless he wished to blast his own cause with the jury? No,makaire, you will not enjoy the day when Themistocles arrays the testimony against you.”
Democrates shivered. The late spring sun was warm. He felt no heat. A mere charge of treason he was almost prepared now to endure. If Mistress Fortune helped him, he might refute it, but to be branded before Hellas as the destroyer of his bosom friend, and that by guile the like whereof Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion conjoined had never wrought—what wonder his knees smote together? Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon’s hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst of all, worse than the howls of the people who would tear his body asunder like dogs, not waiting the work of the hemlock, was the thought of Hermione. She hated him now. How she would love him, though he sat on Xerxes’s throne, if once her suspicion rose to certainty! He saw himself ruined in life and in love, and blazoned as infamous forever.
Lycon was wise enough to sit some moments, letting his utterance do its work. He was confident, and rightly. Democrates looked on him at last. The workings of the Athenian’s face were terrible.
“I am your slave, Spartan. Had you bought me for ten minæ and held the bill of sale, I were not yours more utterly. Your wish?”
Lycon chose his words and answered slowly.
“You must serve Persia. Not for a moment, but for all time. You must place that dreadful gift of yours at our disposal. And in return take what is promised,—the lordship of Athens.”
“No word of that,”groaned the wretched man,“what will you do?”
“Aristeides is soon going to Sparta to press home his demands that the Lacedæmonians march in full force against Mardonius. I can see to it that his mission succeeds. A great battle will be fought in Bœotia.Wecan see to it that Mardonius is so victorious that all further resistance becomes a dream.”
“And my part in this monster’s work?”
The demands and propositions with which Lycon answered this despairing question will unfold themselves in due place and time. Suffice it here, that when he let the Athenian go his way Lycon was convinced that Democrates had bound himself heart and soul to forward his enterprise. The orator was no merry guest for his Corinthian hosts that night. He returned to his old manner of drinking unmixed wine.“Thirsty as a Macedonian!”cried his companions, in vain endeavour to drive him into a laugh. They did not know that once more the chorus of the Furies was singing about his ears, and he could not still it by the deepest wine-cup. They did not know that every time he closed his eyes he was seeing the face of Glaucon. That morning he had mocked at Nemesis. That night he heard the beating of her brazen wings.
[pg 343]CHAPTER XXXIITHE STRANGER IN TRŒZENEDespite exile, life had moved pleasantly for Hermippus’s household that spring. The Trœzenians had surpassed all duties to Zeus Xenios—the stranger’s god—in entertaining the outcast Athenians. The fugitives had received two obols per day to keep them in figs and porridge. Their children had been suffered to roam and plunder the orchards. But Hermippus had not needed such generosity. He had placed several talents at interest in Corinth; likewise bonds of“guest-friendship”with prominent Trœzenians made his residence very agreeable. He had hired a comfortable house, and could enjoy even luxury with his wife, daughter, young sons, and score of slaves.Little Phœnix grew marvellously day by day, as if obeying his mother’s command to wax strong and avenge his father. Old Cleopis vowed he was the healthiest, least tearful babe, as well as the handsomest, she had ever known,—and she spoke from wide experience. When he was one year old, he was so active they had to tie him in the cradle. When the golden spring days came, he would ride forth upon his nurse’s back, surveying the Hellas he was born to inherit, and seeming to find it exceeding good.But as spring verged on summer, Hermione demanded so much of Cleopis’s care that even Phœnix ceased to be the focus of attention. The lordly Alcmæonid fell into the cus[pg 344]tody of one Niobe, a dark-haired lass of the islands, who treated him well, but cared too much for certain young“serving-gentlemen”to waste on her charge any unreciprocated adoration. So on one day, just as the dying grass told the full reign of the Sun King, she went forth with her precious bundle wriggling in her arms, but her thoughts hardly on Master Phœnix. Procles the steward had been cold of late, he had even cast sly glances at Jocasta, Lysistra’s tiring-woman. Mistress Niobe was ready—since fair means of recalling the fickle Apollo failed—to resort to foul. Instead, therefore, of going to the promenade over the sea, she went—burden and all—to the Agora, where she was sure old Dion, who kept a soothsayer’s shop, would give due assistance in return for half a drachma.The market was just thinning. Niobe picked her way amongst the vegetable women, fought off a boy who thrust on her a pair of geese, and found in a quiet corner by a temple porch the booth of Dion, who grinned with his toothless gums in way of greeting. He listened with paternal interest to her story, soothed her when she sniffled at Procles’s name, and made her show her silver, then began pulling over his bags and vials of strange powders and liquids.“Ah, kind Master Dion,”began Niobe, for the sixth time,“if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!”“Eu! eu!”muttered the old sinner,“it’s hard to say what’s best,—powder of toad’s bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder’s fat. The safest thing is to consult the god—”“What do you mean?”“Why, my holy cock here, hatched at Delphi with Apollo’s blessings on him.”Dion pointed with his thumb to the small coop at his feet.“The oracle is simple. You cast[pg 345]before him two piles of corn; if he picks at the one to right we take toad’s bone, to left the adder’s fat. Heaven will speak to us.”“Excellent,”cried Niobe, brightening.“But, of course, we must use only consecrated corn, that’s two obols more.”Niobe’s face fell.“I’ve only this half-drachma.”“Then,philotata,”said Dion, kindly but firmly,“we had better wait a little longer.”Niobe wept.“Ai!woe.‘A little longer’and Jocasta has Procles. I can’t ask Hermione again for money.Ai! ai!”Two round tears did not move Dion in the slightest. Niobe was sobbing, at her small wits’ end, when a voice sounded behind her.“What’s there wrong, lass? By Zeus, but you carry a handsome child!”Niobe glanced, and instantly stopped weeping. A young man dressed roughly as a sailor, and with long black hair and beard, had approached her, but despite dress and beard she was quite aware he was far handsomer than even Procles.“I beg pardon,kyrie,”—she said“kyrie”by instinct,—“I’m only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate.”She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only the babe, not herself.“Ah! Gods and goddesses, what a beautiful child! A girl?”“A boy,”answered Niobe, almost sullenly.“Blessed the house in Trœzene then that can boast of such a son.”“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from[pg 346]Athens,”volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres.“An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”“The brat will never boast of his father,”quoth Dion, rolling his eyes.“He left the world in a way, I wager five minæ, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe’s of right good stock, an Alcmæonid, and the grandfather is that Hermippus—”“Hermippus?”The stranger seemed to catch the word out of Dion’s mouth. A donkey had broken loose at the upper end of the Agora; he turned and stared at it and its pursuers intently.“If you’re Athenian,”went on the soothsayer,“the story’s an old one—of Glaucon the Traitor.”The stranger turned back again. For a moment Dion saw he was blinking, but no doubt it was dust. Then he suddenly began to fumble in his girdle.“What do you want, girl?”he demanded of Niobe, nigh fiercely.“Two obols.”“Take two drachmæ. I was once a friend to that Glaucon, and traitor though he has been blazed, his child is yet dear to me. Let me take him.”Without waiting her answer he thrust the coin into her hands, and caught the child out of them. Phœnix looked up into the strange, bearded face, and deliberated an instant whether to crow or to weep. Then some friendly god decided him. He laughed as sweetly, as musically, as ever one can at his most august age. With both chubby hands he plucked at the black beard and held tight. The strange sailor answered laugh with laugh, and released himself right gayly. Then whilst Niobe and Dion watched and[pg 347]wondered they saw the sailor kiss the child full fifty times, all the time whispering soft words in his ear, at which Phœnix crowed and laughed yet more.“An old family servant,”threw out Dion, in a whisper.“Sheep!”retorted the nurse,“do you call yourself wise? Do you think a man with that face and those long hands ever felt the stocks or the whip? He’s gentleman born, by Demeter!”“War makes many changes,”rejoined Dion.“Ai!is he beside himself or a kidnapper? He is walking off with the babe.”The stranger indeed had seemed to forget them all and was going with swift strides up the Agora, but just before Niobe could begin her outcry he wheeled, and brought his merry burden back to the nurse’s arms.“You ought to be exceeding proud, my girl,”he remarked almost severely,“to have such a precious babe in charge. I trust you are dutiful.”“So I strive,kyrie, but he grows very strong. One cannot keep the swaddling clothes on him now. They say he will be a mighty athlete like his father.”“Ah, yes—his father—”The sailor looked down.“You knew Master Glaucon well?”pressed Dion, itching for a new bit of gossip.“Well,”answered the sailor, standing gazing on the child as though something held him fascinated, then shot another question.“And does the babe’s lady-mother prosper?”“She is passing well in body,kyrie, but grievously ill in mind. Hera give her a release from all her sorrow!”“Sorrow?”The man’s eyes were opening wider, wider.“What mean you?”“Why, all Trœzene knows it, I’m sure.”[pg 348]“I’m not from Trœzene. My ship made port from Naxos this morning. Speak, girl!”He seized Niobe’s wrist in a grip which she thought would crush the bone.“Ai!Let go, sir, you hurt. Don’t stare so. I’m frightened. I’ll tell as fast as I can. Master Democrates has come back from Corinth. Hermippus is resolved to make thekyriawed him, however bitterly she resists. It’s taken a long time for her father to determine to break her will, but now his mind’s made up. The betrothal is in three days, the wedding ten days thereafter.”The sailor had dropped her hand. She shrank at the pallor of his face. He seemed struggling for words; when they came she made nothing of them.“Themistocles, Themistocles—your promise!”Then by some giant exercise of will he steadied. His speech grew more coherent.“Give me the child,”he commanded, and Niobe mutely obeyed. He kissed Phœnix on both cheeks, mouth, forehead. They saw that tears were running down his bronzed face. He handed back the babe and again held out money,—a coin for both the slave girl and the soothsayer,—gold half-darics, that they gaped at wonderingly.“Say nothing!”ordered the sailor,“nothing of what I have said or done, or as Helios shines this noon, I will kill you both.”Not waiting reply, he went down the Agora at a run, and never looked back. It took some moments for Dion and Niobe to recover their equanimity; they would have believed it all a dream, but lo! in their hands gleamed the money.“There are times,”remarked the soothsayer, dubiously at last,“when I begin to think the gods again walk the earth and work wonders. This is a very high matter. Even I[pg 349]with my art dare not meddle with it. It is best to heed the injunction to silence. Wagging tongues always have troubles as their children. Now let us proceed with my sacred cock and his divination.”Niobe got her philtre,—though whether it reconquered Procles is not contained in this history. Likewise, she heeded Dion’s injunction. There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis.* * * * * * *Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty“distance-runner”to Sparta.“Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you. Rejoice therefore; you are my only hope. I am with you whether your path leads to Olympus or to Hades. Tartarus is opened at my feet. You must save me. My words are confused, do you think? Then hear this, and ask if I have not cause for turning mad.“Yesterday, even as Hermippus hung garlands on his house, and summoned the guests to witness the betrothal contract, Themistocles returned suddenly from Eubœa. He called Hermippus and myself aside.‘Glaucon lives,’he said,‘and with the god’s help we’ll prove his innocence.’Hermippus at once broke off the betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details.‘Glaucon lives,’—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory of Mardonius!Chaire.”“Glaucon lives.”Democrates had only written one least part of his terrors. Two words—but enough to make the orator the most miserable man in Hellas, the most supple of Xerxes’s hundred million slaves.
Despite exile, life had moved pleasantly for Hermippus’s household that spring. The Trœzenians had surpassed all duties to Zeus Xenios—the stranger’s god—in entertaining the outcast Athenians. The fugitives had received two obols per day to keep them in figs and porridge. Their children had been suffered to roam and plunder the orchards. But Hermippus had not needed such generosity. He had placed several talents at interest in Corinth; likewise bonds of“guest-friendship”with prominent Trœzenians made his residence very agreeable. He had hired a comfortable house, and could enjoy even luxury with his wife, daughter, young sons, and score of slaves.
Little Phœnix grew marvellously day by day, as if obeying his mother’s command to wax strong and avenge his father. Old Cleopis vowed he was the healthiest, least tearful babe, as well as the handsomest, she had ever known,—and she spoke from wide experience. When he was one year old, he was so active they had to tie him in the cradle. When the golden spring days came, he would ride forth upon his nurse’s back, surveying the Hellas he was born to inherit, and seeming to find it exceeding good.
But as spring verged on summer, Hermione demanded so much of Cleopis’s care that even Phœnix ceased to be the focus of attention. The lordly Alcmæonid fell into the cus[pg 344]tody of one Niobe, a dark-haired lass of the islands, who treated him well, but cared too much for certain young“serving-gentlemen”to waste on her charge any unreciprocated adoration. So on one day, just as the dying grass told the full reign of the Sun King, she went forth with her precious bundle wriggling in her arms, but her thoughts hardly on Master Phœnix. Procles the steward had been cold of late, he had even cast sly glances at Jocasta, Lysistra’s tiring-woman. Mistress Niobe was ready—since fair means of recalling the fickle Apollo failed—to resort to foul. Instead, therefore, of going to the promenade over the sea, she went—burden and all—to the Agora, where she was sure old Dion, who kept a soothsayer’s shop, would give due assistance in return for half a drachma.
The market was just thinning. Niobe picked her way amongst the vegetable women, fought off a boy who thrust on her a pair of geese, and found in a quiet corner by a temple porch the booth of Dion, who grinned with his toothless gums in way of greeting. He listened with paternal interest to her story, soothed her when she sniffled at Procles’s name, and made her show her silver, then began pulling over his bags and vials of strange powders and liquids.
“Ah, kind Master Dion,”began Niobe, for the sixth time,“if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!”
“Eu! eu!”muttered the old sinner,“it’s hard to say what’s best,—powder of toad’s bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder’s fat. The safest thing is to consult the god—”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, my holy cock here, hatched at Delphi with Apollo’s blessings on him.”Dion pointed with his thumb to the small coop at his feet.“The oracle is simple. You cast[pg 345]before him two piles of corn; if he picks at the one to right we take toad’s bone, to left the adder’s fat. Heaven will speak to us.”
“Excellent,”cried Niobe, brightening.
“But, of course, we must use only consecrated corn, that’s two obols more.”
Niobe’s face fell.“I’ve only this half-drachma.”
“Then,philotata,”said Dion, kindly but firmly,“we had better wait a little longer.”
Niobe wept.“Ai!woe.‘A little longer’and Jocasta has Procles. I can’t ask Hermione again for money.Ai! ai!”
Two round tears did not move Dion in the slightest. Niobe was sobbing, at her small wits’ end, when a voice sounded behind her.
“What’s there wrong, lass? By Zeus, but you carry a handsome child!”
Niobe glanced, and instantly stopped weeping. A young man dressed roughly as a sailor, and with long black hair and beard, had approached her, but despite dress and beard she was quite aware he was far handsomer than even Procles.
“I beg pardon,kyrie,”—she said“kyrie”by instinct,—“I’m only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate.”She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only the babe, not herself.
“Ah! Gods and goddesses, what a beautiful child! A girl?”
“A boy,”answered Niobe, almost sullenly.
“Blessed the house in Trœzene then that can boast of such a son.”
“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from[pg 346]Athens,”volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres.
“An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”
“The brat will never boast of his father,”quoth Dion, rolling his eyes.“He left the world in a way, I wager five minæ, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe’s of right good stock, an Alcmæonid, and the grandfather is that Hermippus—”
“Hermippus?”The stranger seemed to catch the word out of Dion’s mouth. A donkey had broken loose at the upper end of the Agora; he turned and stared at it and its pursuers intently.
“If you’re Athenian,”went on the soothsayer,“the story’s an old one—of Glaucon the Traitor.”
The stranger turned back again. For a moment Dion saw he was blinking, but no doubt it was dust. Then he suddenly began to fumble in his girdle.
“What do you want, girl?”he demanded of Niobe, nigh fiercely.
“Two obols.”
“Take two drachmæ. I was once a friend to that Glaucon, and traitor though he has been blazed, his child is yet dear to me. Let me take him.”
Without waiting her answer he thrust the coin into her hands, and caught the child out of them. Phœnix looked up into the strange, bearded face, and deliberated an instant whether to crow or to weep. Then some friendly god decided him. He laughed as sweetly, as musically, as ever one can at his most august age. With both chubby hands he plucked at the black beard and held tight. The strange sailor answered laugh with laugh, and released himself right gayly. Then whilst Niobe and Dion watched and[pg 347]wondered they saw the sailor kiss the child full fifty times, all the time whispering soft words in his ear, at which Phœnix crowed and laughed yet more.
“An old family servant,”threw out Dion, in a whisper.
“Sheep!”retorted the nurse,“do you call yourself wise? Do you think a man with that face and those long hands ever felt the stocks or the whip? He’s gentleman born, by Demeter!”
“War makes many changes,”rejoined Dion.“Ai!is he beside himself or a kidnapper? He is walking off with the babe.”
The stranger indeed had seemed to forget them all and was going with swift strides up the Agora, but just before Niobe could begin her outcry he wheeled, and brought his merry burden back to the nurse’s arms.
“You ought to be exceeding proud, my girl,”he remarked almost severely,“to have such a precious babe in charge. I trust you are dutiful.”
“So I strive,kyrie, but he grows very strong. One cannot keep the swaddling clothes on him now. They say he will be a mighty athlete like his father.”
“Ah, yes—his father—”The sailor looked down.
“You knew Master Glaucon well?”pressed Dion, itching for a new bit of gossip.
“Well,”answered the sailor, standing gazing on the child as though something held him fascinated, then shot another question.“And does the babe’s lady-mother prosper?”
“She is passing well in body,kyrie, but grievously ill in mind. Hera give her a release from all her sorrow!”
“Sorrow?”The man’s eyes were opening wider, wider.“What mean you?”
“Why, all Trœzene knows it, I’m sure.”
“I’m not from Trœzene. My ship made port from Naxos this morning. Speak, girl!”
He seized Niobe’s wrist in a grip which she thought would crush the bone.
“Ai!Let go, sir, you hurt. Don’t stare so. I’m frightened. I’ll tell as fast as I can. Master Democrates has come back from Corinth. Hermippus is resolved to make thekyriawed him, however bitterly she resists. It’s taken a long time for her father to determine to break her will, but now his mind’s made up. The betrothal is in three days, the wedding ten days thereafter.”
The sailor had dropped her hand. She shrank at the pallor of his face. He seemed struggling for words; when they came she made nothing of them.
“Themistocles, Themistocles—your promise!”
Then by some giant exercise of will he steadied. His speech grew more coherent.
“Give me the child,”he commanded, and Niobe mutely obeyed. He kissed Phœnix on both cheeks, mouth, forehead. They saw that tears were running down his bronzed face. He handed back the babe and again held out money,—a coin for both the slave girl and the soothsayer,—gold half-darics, that they gaped at wonderingly.
“Say nothing!”ordered the sailor,“nothing of what I have said or done, or as Helios shines this noon, I will kill you both.”
Not waiting reply, he went down the Agora at a run, and never looked back. It took some moments for Dion and Niobe to recover their equanimity; they would have believed it all a dream, but lo! in their hands gleamed the money.
“There are times,”remarked the soothsayer, dubiously at last,“when I begin to think the gods again walk the earth and work wonders. This is a very high matter. Even I[pg 349]with my art dare not meddle with it. It is best to heed the injunction to silence. Wagging tongues always have troubles as their children. Now let us proceed with my sacred cock and his divination.”
Niobe got her philtre,—though whether it reconquered Procles is not contained in this history. Likewise, she heeded Dion’s injunction. There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis.
* * * * * * *
Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty“distance-runner”to Sparta.
“Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you. Rejoice therefore; you are my only hope. I am with you whether your path leads to Olympus or to Hades. Tartarus is opened at my feet. You must save me. My words are confused, do you think? Then hear this, and ask if I have not cause for turning mad.
“Yesterday, even as Hermippus hung garlands on his house, and summoned the guests to witness the betrothal contract, Themistocles returned suddenly from Eubœa. He called Hermippus and myself aside.‘Glaucon lives,’he said,‘and with the god’s help we’ll prove his innocence.’Hermippus at once broke off the betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details.‘Glaucon lives,’—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory of Mardonius!Chaire.”
“Glaucon lives.”Democrates had only written one least part of his terrors. Two words—but enough to make the orator the most miserable man in Hellas, the most supple of Xerxes’s hundred million slaves.
[pg 350]CHAPTER XXXIIIWHAT BEFELL ON THE HILLSIDEOnce more the Persians pressed into Attica, once more the Athenians,—or such few of them as had ventured home in the winter,—fled with their movables to Salamis or Peloponnesus, and an embassy, headed by Aristeides, hastened to Sparta to demand for the last time that the tardy ephors make good their promise in sending forth their infantry to hurl back the invader. If not, Aristeides spoke plainly, his people must perforce close alliance with Mardonius.Almost to the amazement of the Athenian chiefs, so accustomed were they to Dorian doltishness and immobility, after a ten days’ delay and excuses that“they must celebrate their festival the Hyacinthia,”the ephors called forth their whole levy. Ten thousand heavy infantrymen with a host of lightly armed“helots”11were started northward under the able lead of Pausanias, the regent for Leonidas’s young son. Likewise all the allies of Lacedæmon—Corinthians, Sicyonians, Elians, Arcadians—began to hurry toward the Isthmus. Therefore men who had loved Hellas and had almost despaired for her took courage.“At last we will have a great land battle, and an end to the Barbarian.”All was excitement in the Athenian colony at Trœzene. The board of strategi met and voted that now was the time[pg 351]for a crowning effort. Five thousand men-at-arms should march under Aristeides to join against Mardonius in Bœotia. By sea Themistocles should go with every available ship to Delos, meet the allied squadrons there, and use his infallible art in persuading the sluggish Spartan high admiral to conduct a raid across the Ægean at Xerxes’s own doors. Of the ten strategi Democrates had called loudest for instant action, so loudly indeed that Themistocles had cautioned him against rashness. Hermippus was old, but experienced men trusted him, therefore he was appointed to command the contingent of his tribe. Democrates was to accompany Aristeides as general adjutant; his diplomatic training would be invaluable in ending the frictions sure to arise amongst the allies. Cimon would go with Themistocles, and so every other man was sent to his place. In the general preparation private problems seemed forgotten. Hermippus and Democrates both announced that the betrothal of Hermione had been postponed, pending the public crisis. The old Eleusinian had not told his daughter, or even his wife, why he had seemed to relax his announced purpose of forcing Hermione to an unwelcome marriage. The young widow knew she had respite—for how long nothing told her, but for every day her agony was postponed she blessed kind Hera. Then came the morning when her father must go forth with his men. She still loved him, despite the grief he was giving her. She did him justice to believe he acted in affection. The gay ribbons that laced his cuirass, the red and blue embroidery that edged his“taxiarch’s”cloak, were from the needle of his daughter. Hermione kissed him as she stood with her mother in the aula. He coughed gruffly when he answered their“farewell.”The house door closed behind him, and Hermione and Lysistra ran into one another’s arms. They had given to Hellas their best, and now must look to Athena.[pg 352]Hermippus and Aristeides were gone, Democrates remained in Trœzene. His business, he said, was more diplomatic than military, and he was expecting advices from the islands which he must take to Pausanias in person. He had a number of interviews with Themistocles, when it was observed that every time he came away with clouded brow and gruff answers to all who accosted. It began to be hinted that all was not as well as formerly between the admiral and the orator, that Democrates had chosen to tie too closely to Aristeides for the son of Neocles’s liking, and that as soon as the campaign was decided, a bitter feud would break out betwixt them. But this was merest gossip. Outwardly Democrates and Themistocles continued friends, dined together, exchanged civilities. On the day when Themistocles was to sail for Delos he walked arm in arm with Democrates to the quay. The hundreds of onlookers saw him embrace the young strategus in a manner belying any rumour of estrangement, whilst Democrates stood on the sand waving his good wishes until the admiral climbed the ladder of theNausicaä.It was another day and landscape which the stranger in Hellas would have remembered long. The haven of Trœzene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder Ægina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole.“Euopis,”“The Fair-Faced,”the beauty-loving dwellers of the country called it, and they named aright.Something of the beauty touched even Hermione as she[pg 353]stood on the hill slope, gazing across the sea. Only Cleopis was with her. The young widow had less trembling when she looked on theNausicaäthan when one year before the stately trireme had sailed for Artemisium. If ill news must come, it would be from the plains of Bœotia. Most of Themistocles’s fleet was already at Delos. He led only a dozen sail. When his squadron glided on into the blue deep, the haven seemed deserted save for the Carthaginian trader that swung at her cables close upon the land. As Hermione looked and saw the climbing sun change the tintings of the waters, here spreading a line of green gold amidst the blue, here flashing the waves with dark violet, something of the peace and majesty of the scene entered into her own breast. The waves at the foot of the slope beat in monotonous music. She did not wonder that Thetis, Galatea, and all the hundred Nereids loved their home. Somewhere, far off on that shimmering plain, Glaucon the Beautiful had fallen asleep; whether he waked in the land of Rhadamanthus, whether he had been stolen away by Leucothea and the other nymphs to be their playfellow, she did not know. She was not sad, even to think of him crowned with green seaweed, and sitting under the sea-floor with fish-tailed Tritons at their tables of pearl, while the finny shoals like birds flitted above their heads. Thales the Sage made all life proceed out of the sea. Perchance all life should return to it. Then she would find her husband again, not beyond, but within the realms of great Oceanus. With such beauty spreading out before her eyes the phantasy was almost welcome.The people had wandered homeward. Cleopis set the parasol on the dry grass where it would shade her mistress and betook herself to the shelter of a rock. If Hermione was pleased to meditate so long, she would not deny her slave a siesta. So the Athenian sat and mused, now sadly, now[pg 354]with a gleam of brightness, for she was too young to have her sun clouded always.A speaker near by her called her out of her reverie.“You sit long,kyria, and gaze forth as if you were Zeus in Olympus and could look on all the world.”Hermione had not exchanged a word with Democrates since that day she cast scorn on him on that other hill slope at Munychia, but this did not make his intrusion more welcome. With mortification she realized that she had forgotten herself. That she lay on the sunny bank with her feet outstretched and her hair shaken loose on her shoulders. Her feet she instantly covered with her long himation. Her hands flew instantly to her hair. Then she uprose, flushing haughtily.“It has pleased my father, sir,”she spoke with frigid dignity,“to tell me that you are some day perchance to be my husband. The fulfilment lies with the gods. But to-day the strategus Democrates knows our customs too well to thrust himself upon an Attic gentlewoman who finds herself alone save for one servant.”“Ah,kyria; pardon the word, it’s overcold;makaira, I’d say more gladly,”Democrates was marvellously at his ease despite her frowns,“your noble father will take nothing amiss if I ask you to sit again that we may talk together.”“I do not think so.”Hermione drew herself up at full height. But Democrates deliberately placed himself in the path up the hillside. To have run toward the water seemed folly. She could expect no help from Cleopis, who would hardly oppose a man soon probably to be her master. As the less of evils, Hermione did not indeed sit as desired, but stood facing her unloved lover and hearkening.“How long I’ve desired this instant!”Democrates looked as if he might seize her hands to kiss them, but she thrust[pg 355]them behind her.“I know you hate me bitterly because, touching your late husband, I did my duty.”“Your duty?”Nestor’s eloquence was in her incredulous echo.“If I have pained you beyond telling, do you think my act was a pleasant one for me? A bosom friend to ruin, the most sacred bonds to sever, last and not least, to give infinite sorrow to her I love?”“I hardly understand.”Democrates drew a step nearer.“Ah! Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite the Golden—by what name shall I call my goddess?”Hermione drew back a step. There was danger in his eyes.“I have loved you, loved you long. Before Glaucon took you in marriage I loved you. But Eros and Hymen hearkened to his prayers, not mine. You became his bride. I wore a bright face at your wedding. You remember I was Glaucon’s groomsman, and rode beside you in the bridal car. You loved him, he seemed worthy of you. Therefore I trod my own grief down into my heart, and rejoiced with my friends. But to cease loving you I could not. Truly they say Eros is the strongest god, and pitiless—do not the poets say bloody Ares begat him—”“Spare me mythologies,”interposed Hermione, with another step back.“As you will, but you shall hearken. I have desired this moment for two years. Not as the weak girl given by her father, but as the fair goddess who comes to me gladly, I do desire you. And I know you will smile on me when you have heard me through.”“Keep back your eloquence. You have destroyed Glaucon. That is enough.”“Hear me.”Democrates cried desperately now. Her[pg 356]mione feared even to retreat farther, lest he pass to violence. She summoned courage and looked him in the eye.“Say on, then. But remember I am a woman and alone save for Cleopis. If you profess to love me, you will not forget that.”But Democrates was passing almost beyond the limits of coherent speech.“Oh, when you come to me, you will not know what a price I have paid for you. In Homer’s day men wooed their wives with costly gifts, but I—have I not paid for you with my soul? My soul, I say—honour, friendship, country, what has weighed against Himeros,‘Master Desire,’—the desire ever for you!”She hardly understood him, his speech flowed so thick. She knew he was on the edge of reason, and feared to answer lest she drive beyond it.“Do you hear the price I have paid? Do you still look on in cold hate, lady? Ah, by Zeus, even in your coldest, most forbidding mood you are fair as the Paphian when she sprang above the sea! And I will win you, lady, I will win your heart, for they shall do you homage, even all Athens, and I will make you a queen. Yes! the house of Athena on the Acropolis shall be your palace if you will, and they will cry in the Agora,‘Way, way for Hermione, glorious consort of Democrates our king!’”“Sir,”spoke Hermione, while her hands grew chill, for now she was sure he raved,“I have not the joy to comprehend. There is no king in Athens, please Athena, there never will be. Treason and blasphemy you speak all in one.”She sought vainly with her eyes for refuge. None in sight. The hill slope seemed empty save for the scattered brown boulders. Far away a goat was wandering. She motioned to Cleopis. The old woman was staring now, and doubtless[pg 357]thought Democrates was carrying his familiarities too far, but she was a weak creature, and at best could only scream.“Treason and blasphemy,”cried Democrates, dropping on his knees, his frame shaking with dishonest passion,“yes! call them so now. They will be blessed truth for me in a month, for me, for you. Hermes the Trickster is a mighty god. He has befriended Eros. I shall possess Athens and possess you. I shall be the most fortunate mortal upon earth as now I am most miserable. Ah! but I have waited so long.”He sprang to his feet.“Tarry,makaira, tarry! A kiss!”Hermione screamed at last shrilly and turned to fly. Instantly Democrates was upon her. In that fluttering white dress escape was hopeless.“Apollo pursuing Daphne!”—his crazed shout as his arms closed around her,—“but Daphne becomes no laurel this time. Her race is lost. She shall pay the forfeit.”She felt him seize her girdle. He swung her face to face. She saw his wide eyes, his mad smile. His hot breath smote her cheek. Cleopis at last was screaming.“Mine,”he triumphed, while he forced her resisting head to his own,“there is none to hinder!”But even while the woman’s flesh crept back at his impure kiss, a giant power came rending the twain apart. A man had sundered them, sprung from the ground or from heaven belike, or from behind a boulder? He tore Democrates’s hands away as a lion tears a lamb. He dashed the mad orator prone upon the sod, and kicked him twice, as of mingled hatred and contempt. All this Hermione only knew in half, while her senses swam. Then she came to herself enough to see that the stranger was a young man in a sailor’s loose dress, his features almost hidden under the dishevelled hair and beard. All this time he uttered no word, but having smitten[pg 358]Democrates down, leaped back, rubbing his hands upon his thigh, as if despising to touch so foul an object. The orator groaned, staggered upward. He wore a sword. It flew from its scabbard as he leaped on the sailor. The stranger put forth his hand, snatched his opponent’s wrist, and with lightning dexterity sent the blade spinning back upon the grass. Then he threw Democrates a second time, and the latter did not rise again hastily, but lay cursing. The fall had not been gentle.But all this while Cleopis was screaming. People were hastening up the hill,—fishermen from a skiff upon the beach, slaves who had been carrying bales to the haven. In a moment they would be surrounded by a dozen. The strange sailor turned as if to fly. He had not spoken one word. Hermione herself at last called to him.“My preserver! Your name! Blessed be you forever!”The fisherfolk were very close. Cleopis was still screaming. The sailor looked once into the lady’s eyes.“I am nameless! You owe me nothing!”And with that he was gone up the hill slopes, springing with long bounds that would have mocked pursuing, had any attempted. But Cleopis quenched her outcry instantly; her screams had been drowned by a louder scream from Hermione, who fell upon the greensward, no marble whiter than her face. The nurse ran to her mistress. Democrates staggered to his feet. Whatever else the chastisement had given him, it had restored his balance of mind. He told the fisherfolk a glib story that a sailor wandering along the strand had accosted Hermione, that he himself had chased the villain off, but had tripped whilst trying to follow. If the tale was not of perfect workmanship at all points, there was no one with interest to gainsay it. A few ran up the hill slope, but the sailor was nowhere in sight. Hermione was still speechless.[pg 359]They made a litter of oars and sail-cloth and carried her to her mother. Democrates oiled Cleopis’s palm well, that she should tell nothing amiss to Lysistra. It was a long time before Hermione opened her eyes in her chamber. Her first words were:—“Glaucon! I have seen Glaucon!”“You have had a strange dream,philotata,”soothed Lysistra, shifting the pillows,“lie still and rest.”But Hermione shook her shining brown head and repeated, many times:—“No dream! No dream! I have seen Glaucon face to face. In that instant he spoke and looked on me I knew him. He lives. He saved me. Ah! why does he stay away?”Lysistra, whose husband had not deemed it prudent to inform her of Themistocles’s revelations, was infinitely distressed. She sent for the best physicians of the city, and despatched a slave to the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus—not distant—to sacrifice two cocks for her daughter’s recovery. The doctors looked wise and recommended heavy doses of spiced wine, and if those did not suffice, said that the patient might spend a night in the temple of the Healer, who would no doubt explain the true remedy in a dream. A“wise woman”who had great following among the slaves advised that a young puppy be tied upon Hermione’s temples to absorb the disaffection of her brain. Lysistra was barely persuaded not to follow her admonitions. After a few days the patient grew better, recovered strength, took an interest in her child. Yet ever and anon she would repeat over Phœnix’s cradle:—“Your father lives! I have seen him! I have seen him!”What, however, puzzled Lysistra most, was the fact that Cleopis did not contradict her young mistress in the least, but maintained a mysterious silence about the whole adventure.
Once more the Persians pressed into Attica, once more the Athenians,—or such few of them as had ventured home in the winter,—fled with their movables to Salamis or Peloponnesus, and an embassy, headed by Aristeides, hastened to Sparta to demand for the last time that the tardy ephors make good their promise in sending forth their infantry to hurl back the invader. If not, Aristeides spoke plainly, his people must perforce close alliance with Mardonius.
Almost to the amazement of the Athenian chiefs, so accustomed were they to Dorian doltishness and immobility, after a ten days’ delay and excuses that“they must celebrate their festival the Hyacinthia,”the ephors called forth their whole levy. Ten thousand heavy infantrymen with a host of lightly armed“helots”11were started northward under the able lead of Pausanias, the regent for Leonidas’s young son. Likewise all the allies of Lacedæmon—Corinthians, Sicyonians, Elians, Arcadians—began to hurry toward the Isthmus. Therefore men who had loved Hellas and had almost despaired for her took courage.“At last we will have a great land battle, and an end to the Barbarian.”
All was excitement in the Athenian colony at Trœzene. The board of strategi met and voted that now was the time[pg 351]for a crowning effort. Five thousand men-at-arms should march under Aristeides to join against Mardonius in Bœotia. By sea Themistocles should go with every available ship to Delos, meet the allied squadrons there, and use his infallible art in persuading the sluggish Spartan high admiral to conduct a raid across the Ægean at Xerxes’s own doors. Of the ten strategi Democrates had called loudest for instant action, so loudly indeed that Themistocles had cautioned him against rashness. Hermippus was old, but experienced men trusted him, therefore he was appointed to command the contingent of his tribe. Democrates was to accompany Aristeides as general adjutant; his diplomatic training would be invaluable in ending the frictions sure to arise amongst the allies. Cimon would go with Themistocles, and so every other man was sent to his place. In the general preparation private problems seemed forgotten. Hermippus and Democrates both announced that the betrothal of Hermione had been postponed, pending the public crisis. The old Eleusinian had not told his daughter, or even his wife, why he had seemed to relax his announced purpose of forcing Hermione to an unwelcome marriage. The young widow knew she had respite—for how long nothing told her, but for every day her agony was postponed she blessed kind Hera. Then came the morning when her father must go forth with his men. She still loved him, despite the grief he was giving her. She did him justice to believe he acted in affection. The gay ribbons that laced his cuirass, the red and blue embroidery that edged his“taxiarch’s”cloak, were from the needle of his daughter. Hermione kissed him as she stood with her mother in the aula. He coughed gruffly when he answered their“farewell.”The house door closed behind him, and Hermione and Lysistra ran into one another’s arms. They had given to Hellas their best, and now must look to Athena.
Hermippus and Aristeides were gone, Democrates remained in Trœzene. His business, he said, was more diplomatic than military, and he was expecting advices from the islands which he must take to Pausanias in person. He had a number of interviews with Themistocles, when it was observed that every time he came away with clouded brow and gruff answers to all who accosted. It began to be hinted that all was not as well as formerly between the admiral and the orator, that Democrates had chosen to tie too closely to Aristeides for the son of Neocles’s liking, and that as soon as the campaign was decided, a bitter feud would break out betwixt them. But this was merest gossip. Outwardly Democrates and Themistocles continued friends, dined together, exchanged civilities. On the day when Themistocles was to sail for Delos he walked arm in arm with Democrates to the quay. The hundreds of onlookers saw him embrace the young strategus in a manner belying any rumour of estrangement, whilst Democrates stood on the sand waving his good wishes until the admiral climbed the ladder of theNausicaä.
It was another day and landscape which the stranger in Hellas would have remembered long. The haven of Trœzene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder Ægina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole.“Euopis,”“The Fair-Faced,”the beauty-loving dwellers of the country called it, and they named aright.
Something of the beauty touched even Hermione as she[pg 353]stood on the hill slope, gazing across the sea. Only Cleopis was with her. The young widow had less trembling when she looked on theNausicaäthan when one year before the stately trireme had sailed for Artemisium. If ill news must come, it would be from the plains of Bœotia. Most of Themistocles’s fleet was already at Delos. He led only a dozen sail. When his squadron glided on into the blue deep, the haven seemed deserted save for the Carthaginian trader that swung at her cables close upon the land. As Hermione looked and saw the climbing sun change the tintings of the waters, here spreading a line of green gold amidst the blue, here flashing the waves with dark violet, something of the peace and majesty of the scene entered into her own breast. The waves at the foot of the slope beat in monotonous music. She did not wonder that Thetis, Galatea, and all the hundred Nereids loved their home. Somewhere, far off on that shimmering plain, Glaucon the Beautiful had fallen asleep; whether he waked in the land of Rhadamanthus, whether he had been stolen away by Leucothea and the other nymphs to be their playfellow, she did not know. She was not sad, even to think of him crowned with green seaweed, and sitting under the sea-floor with fish-tailed Tritons at their tables of pearl, while the finny shoals like birds flitted above their heads. Thales the Sage made all life proceed out of the sea. Perchance all life should return to it. Then she would find her husband again, not beyond, but within the realms of great Oceanus. With such beauty spreading out before her eyes the phantasy was almost welcome.
The people had wandered homeward. Cleopis set the parasol on the dry grass where it would shade her mistress and betook herself to the shelter of a rock. If Hermione was pleased to meditate so long, she would not deny her slave a siesta. So the Athenian sat and mused, now sadly, now[pg 354]with a gleam of brightness, for she was too young to have her sun clouded always.
A speaker near by her called her out of her reverie.
“You sit long,kyria, and gaze forth as if you were Zeus in Olympus and could look on all the world.”
Hermione had not exchanged a word with Democrates since that day she cast scorn on him on that other hill slope at Munychia, but this did not make his intrusion more welcome. With mortification she realized that she had forgotten herself. That she lay on the sunny bank with her feet outstretched and her hair shaken loose on her shoulders. Her feet she instantly covered with her long himation. Her hands flew instantly to her hair. Then she uprose, flushing haughtily.
“It has pleased my father, sir,”she spoke with frigid dignity,“to tell me that you are some day perchance to be my husband. The fulfilment lies with the gods. But to-day the strategus Democrates knows our customs too well to thrust himself upon an Attic gentlewoman who finds herself alone save for one servant.”
“Ah,kyria; pardon the word, it’s overcold;makaira, I’d say more gladly,”Democrates was marvellously at his ease despite her frowns,“your noble father will take nothing amiss if I ask you to sit again that we may talk together.”
“I do not think so.”Hermione drew herself up at full height. But Democrates deliberately placed himself in the path up the hillside. To have run toward the water seemed folly. She could expect no help from Cleopis, who would hardly oppose a man soon probably to be her master. As the less of evils, Hermione did not indeed sit as desired, but stood facing her unloved lover and hearkening.
“How long I’ve desired this instant!”Democrates looked as if he might seize her hands to kiss them, but she thrust[pg 355]them behind her.“I know you hate me bitterly because, touching your late husband, I did my duty.”
“Your duty?”Nestor’s eloquence was in her incredulous echo.
“If I have pained you beyond telling, do you think my act was a pleasant one for me? A bosom friend to ruin, the most sacred bonds to sever, last and not least, to give infinite sorrow to her I love?”
“I hardly understand.”
Democrates drew a step nearer.
“Ah! Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite the Golden—by what name shall I call my goddess?”Hermione drew back a step. There was danger in his eyes.“I have loved you, loved you long. Before Glaucon took you in marriage I loved you. But Eros and Hymen hearkened to his prayers, not mine. You became his bride. I wore a bright face at your wedding. You remember I was Glaucon’s groomsman, and rode beside you in the bridal car. You loved him, he seemed worthy of you. Therefore I trod my own grief down into my heart, and rejoiced with my friends. But to cease loving you I could not. Truly they say Eros is the strongest god, and pitiless—do not the poets say bloody Ares begat him—”
“Spare me mythologies,”interposed Hermione, with another step back.
“As you will, but you shall hearken. I have desired this moment for two years. Not as the weak girl given by her father, but as the fair goddess who comes to me gladly, I do desire you. And I know you will smile on me when you have heard me through.”
“Keep back your eloquence. You have destroyed Glaucon. That is enough.”
“Hear me.”Democrates cried desperately now. Her[pg 356]mione feared even to retreat farther, lest he pass to violence. She summoned courage and looked him in the eye.
“Say on, then. But remember I am a woman and alone save for Cleopis. If you profess to love me, you will not forget that.”
But Democrates was passing almost beyond the limits of coherent speech.
“Oh, when you come to me, you will not know what a price I have paid for you. In Homer’s day men wooed their wives with costly gifts, but I—have I not paid for you with my soul? My soul, I say—honour, friendship, country, what has weighed against Himeros,‘Master Desire,’—the desire ever for you!”
She hardly understood him, his speech flowed so thick. She knew he was on the edge of reason, and feared to answer lest she drive beyond it.
“Do you hear the price I have paid? Do you still look on in cold hate, lady? Ah, by Zeus, even in your coldest, most forbidding mood you are fair as the Paphian when she sprang above the sea! And I will win you, lady, I will win your heart, for they shall do you homage, even all Athens, and I will make you a queen. Yes! the house of Athena on the Acropolis shall be your palace if you will, and they will cry in the Agora,‘Way, way for Hermione, glorious consort of Democrates our king!’”
“Sir,”spoke Hermione, while her hands grew chill, for now she was sure he raved,“I have not the joy to comprehend. There is no king in Athens, please Athena, there never will be. Treason and blasphemy you speak all in one.”She sought vainly with her eyes for refuge. None in sight. The hill slope seemed empty save for the scattered brown boulders. Far away a goat was wandering. She motioned to Cleopis. The old woman was staring now, and doubtless[pg 357]thought Democrates was carrying his familiarities too far, but she was a weak creature, and at best could only scream.
“Treason and blasphemy,”cried Democrates, dropping on his knees, his frame shaking with dishonest passion,“yes! call them so now. They will be blessed truth for me in a month, for me, for you. Hermes the Trickster is a mighty god. He has befriended Eros. I shall possess Athens and possess you. I shall be the most fortunate mortal upon earth as now I am most miserable. Ah! but I have waited so long.”He sprang to his feet.“Tarry,makaira, tarry! A kiss!”
Hermione screamed at last shrilly and turned to fly. Instantly Democrates was upon her. In that fluttering white dress escape was hopeless.
“Apollo pursuing Daphne!”—his crazed shout as his arms closed around her,—“but Daphne becomes no laurel this time. Her race is lost. She shall pay the forfeit.”
She felt him seize her girdle. He swung her face to face. She saw his wide eyes, his mad smile. His hot breath smote her cheek. Cleopis at last was screaming.
“Mine,”he triumphed, while he forced her resisting head to his own,“there is none to hinder!”
But even while the woman’s flesh crept back at his impure kiss, a giant power came rending the twain apart. A man had sundered them, sprung from the ground or from heaven belike, or from behind a boulder? He tore Democrates’s hands away as a lion tears a lamb. He dashed the mad orator prone upon the sod, and kicked him twice, as of mingled hatred and contempt. All this Hermione only knew in half, while her senses swam. Then she came to herself enough to see that the stranger was a young man in a sailor’s loose dress, his features almost hidden under the dishevelled hair and beard. All this time he uttered no word, but having smitten[pg 358]Democrates down, leaped back, rubbing his hands upon his thigh, as if despising to touch so foul an object. The orator groaned, staggered upward. He wore a sword. It flew from its scabbard as he leaped on the sailor. The stranger put forth his hand, snatched his opponent’s wrist, and with lightning dexterity sent the blade spinning back upon the grass. Then he threw Democrates a second time, and the latter did not rise again hastily, but lay cursing. The fall had not been gentle.
But all this while Cleopis was screaming. People were hastening up the hill,—fishermen from a skiff upon the beach, slaves who had been carrying bales to the haven. In a moment they would be surrounded by a dozen. The strange sailor turned as if to fly. He had not spoken one word. Hermione herself at last called to him.
“My preserver! Your name! Blessed be you forever!”
The fisherfolk were very close. Cleopis was still screaming. The sailor looked once into the lady’s eyes.
“I am nameless! You owe me nothing!”And with that he was gone up the hill slopes, springing with long bounds that would have mocked pursuing, had any attempted. But Cleopis quenched her outcry instantly; her screams had been drowned by a louder scream from Hermione, who fell upon the greensward, no marble whiter than her face. The nurse ran to her mistress. Democrates staggered to his feet. Whatever else the chastisement had given him, it had restored his balance of mind. He told the fisherfolk a glib story that a sailor wandering along the strand had accosted Hermione, that he himself had chased the villain off, but had tripped whilst trying to follow. If the tale was not of perfect workmanship at all points, there was no one with interest to gainsay it. A few ran up the hill slope, but the sailor was nowhere in sight. Hermione was still speechless.[pg 359]They made a litter of oars and sail-cloth and carried her to her mother. Democrates oiled Cleopis’s palm well, that she should tell nothing amiss to Lysistra. It was a long time before Hermione opened her eyes in her chamber. Her first words were:—
“Glaucon! I have seen Glaucon!”
“You have had a strange dream,philotata,”soothed Lysistra, shifting the pillows,“lie still and rest.”
But Hermione shook her shining brown head and repeated, many times:—
“No dream! No dream! I have seen Glaucon face to face. In that instant he spoke and looked on me I knew him. He lives. He saved me. Ah! why does he stay away?”
Lysistra, whose husband had not deemed it prudent to inform her of Themistocles’s revelations, was infinitely distressed. She sent for the best physicians of the city, and despatched a slave to the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus—not distant—to sacrifice two cocks for her daughter’s recovery. The doctors looked wise and recommended heavy doses of spiced wine, and if those did not suffice, said that the patient might spend a night in the temple of the Healer, who would no doubt explain the true remedy in a dream. A“wise woman”who had great following among the slaves advised that a young puppy be tied upon Hermione’s temples to absorb the disaffection of her brain. Lysistra was barely persuaded not to follow her admonitions. After a few days the patient grew better, recovered strength, took an interest in her child. Yet ever and anon she would repeat over Phœnix’s cradle:—
“Your father lives! I have seen him! I have seen him!”
What, however, puzzled Lysistra most, was the fact that Cleopis did not contradict her young mistress in the least, but maintained a mysterious silence about the whole adventure.