CHAPTER XVII

[pg 186]CHAPTER XVIITHE CHARMING BY ROXANAGlaucon’s longing for the old life ebbed and flowed. Sometimes the return of memory maddened him. Who had done it?—had forged that damning letter and then hid it with Seuthes? Themistocles? Impossible. Democrates?—“the friend with the understanding heart no less than a brother dear,”as Homer said? More impossible. An unknown enemy, then, had stolen the fleet order from Themistocles? But what man had hated Glaucon? One answer remained,—unwittingly the athlete had offended some god, forgotten some vow, or by sheer good fortune had awakened divine jealousy. Poseidon had been implacable toward Odysseus, Athena toward Hector, Artemis toward Niobe,—Glaucon could only pray that his present welcome amongst the Persians might not draw down another outburst of Heaven’s anger.More than all else was the keen longing for Hermione. He saw her in the night. Vainly, amidst the storms of the gathering war, he had sought a messenger to Athens. In this he dared ask no help from Mardonius. Then almost from the blue a bolt fell that made him wish to tear Hermione from his heart.A Carian slave, a trusted steward at the Athenian silver mines of Laurium, had loved his liberty and escaped to Sardis. The Persians questioned him eagerly, for he knew all the[pg 187]gossip of Athens. Glaucon met the runaway, who did not know then who he was, so many Greek refugees were always fluttering around the king’s court. The Carian told of a new honour for Democrates.“He is elected strategus for next year because of his proud patriotism. There is talk, too, of a more private bit of good fortune.”“What is it?”“That he has made successful suit to Hermippus of Eleusis for his daughter,—the widow of Glaucon, the dead outlaw. They say the marriage follows at the end of the year of mourning—Sir, you are not well!”“I was never better.”But the other had turned ashen. He quitted the Carian abruptly and shut himself in his chamber. It was good that he wore no sword. He might have slain himself.Yet, he communed in his heart, was it not best? Was he not dead to Athens? Must Hermione mourn him down to old age? And whom better could she take than Democrates, the man who had sacrificed even friendship for love of country?Artabanus, the vizier, gave a great feast that night. They drank the pledge,“Victory to the king, destruction to his enemies.”The lords all looked on Glaucon to see if he would touch the cup. He drank deeply. They applauded him. He remained long at the wine, the slaves bore him home drunken. In the morning Mardonius said Xerxes ordered him to serve in the cavalry guards, a post full of honour and chance for promotion. Glaucon did not resist. Mardonius sent him a silvered cuirass and a black horse from the steppes of Bactria,—fleet as the north wind. In his new armour he went to the chambers of Artazostra and Roxana. They had never seen him in panoply before. The[pg 188]brilliant mail became him rarely. The ladies were delighted.“You grow Persian apace, my Lord Prexaspes,”—Roxana always called him by his new name now,—“soon we shall hail you as‘your Magnificence’the satrap of Parthia or Asia or some other kingly province in the East.”“I do well to become Persian,”he answered bitterly, unmoved by the admiration,“for yesterday I heard that which makes it more than ever manifest that Glaucon the Athenian is dead. And whether he shall ever rise to live again, Zeus knoweth; but from me it is hid.”Artazostra did not approach, but Roxana came near, as if to draw the buckle of the golden girdle—the gift of Xerxes. He saw the turquoise shining on the tiara that bound her jet-black hair, the fine dark profile of her face, her delicate nostrils, the sweep of drapery that half revealed the form so full of grace. Was there more than passing friendship in the tone with which she spoke to him?“You have heard from Athens?”“Yes.”“And the tidings were evil.”“Why call them evil, princess? My friends all believe me dead. Can they mourn for me forever? They can forget me, alas! more easily than I in my lonesomeness can forget them.”“You are very lonely?”—the hand that drew the buckle worked slowly. How soft it was, how delicately the Nile sun had tinted it!“Do you say you have no friends? None? Not in Sardis? Not among the Persians?”“I said not that, dear lady,—but when can a man have more than one native country?—and mine is Attica, and Attica is far away.”[pg 189]“And you can never have another? Can new friendships never take the place of those that lie forever dead?”“I do not know.”“Ah, believe, new home, new friends, new love, are more than possible, will you but open your heart to suffer them.”The voice both thrilled and trembled now, then suddenly ceased. The colour sprang into Roxana’s forehead. Glaucon bowed and kissed her hand. It seemed to rise to his lips very willingly.“I thank you for your fair hopes. Farewell.”That was all he said, but as he went forth from Roxana’s presence, the pang of the tidings brought by the Carian seemed less keen.* * * * * * *The hosts gathered daily. Xerxes spent his time in dicing, hunting, drinking, or amusing himself with his favourite by-play, wood-carving. He held a few solemn state councils, at which he appeared to determine all things and was actually guided by Artabanus and Mardonius. Now, at last, all the colossal machinery which was to crush down Hellas was being set in motion. Glaucon learned how futile was Themistocles’s hope of succour to Athens from the Sicilian Greeks, for,—thanks to Mardonius’s indefatigable diplomacy,—it was arranged that the Phœnicians of Carthage should launch a powerful armament against the Sicilians, the same moment Xerxes descended on Sparta and Athens. With calm satisfaction Mardonius watched the completion of his efforts. All was ready,—the army of hundreds of thousands, the twelve hundred war-ships, the bridges across the Hellespont, the canal at Mt. Athos. Glaucon’s admiration for the son of Gobryas grew apace. Xerxes was the outward head of the attack on Hellas. Mardonius was the soul.[pg 190]He was the idol of the army—its best archer and rider. Unlike his peers, he maintained no huge harem of jealous concubines and conspiring eunuchs. Artazostra he worshipped. Roxana he loved. He had no time for other women. No servant of Xerxes seemed outwardly more obedient than he. Night and day he wrought for the glory of Persia. Therefore, Glaucon looked on him with dread. In him Themistocles and Leonidas would find a worthy foeman.Daily Glaucon felt the Persian influence stealing upon him. He grew even accustomed to think of himself under his new name. Greeks were about him: Demaratus, the outlawed“half-king”of Sparta, and the sons of Hippias, late tyrant of Athens. He scorned the company of these renegades. Yet sometimes he would ask himself wherein was he better than they,—had Democrates’s accusation been true, could he have asked a greater reward from the Barbarian? And what he would do on the day of battle he did not dare to ask of his own soul.* * * * * * *Xerxes left Sardis with the host amidst the same splendour with which he had entered. Glaucon rode in the Life Guard, and saw royalty frequently, for the king loved to meet handsome men. Once he held the stirrup as Xerxes dismounted—an honour which provoked much envious grumbling. Artazostra and Roxana travelled in their closed litters with the train of women and eunuchs which followed every Persian army. Thus the myriads rolled onward through Lydia and Mysia, drinking the rivers dry by their numbers; and across the immortal plains of Troy passed that army which was destined to do and suffer greater things than were wrought beside the poet-sung Simois and Scamander, till at last they came to the Hellespont, the green[pg 191]river seven furlongs wide, that sundered conquered Asia from the Europe yet to be conquered.Here were the two bridges of ships, more than three hundred in each, held by giant cables, and which upbore a firm earthen road, protected by a high bulwark, that the horses and camels might take no fright at the water. Here, also, the fleet met them,—the armaments of the East, Phœnicians, Cilicians, Egyptians, Cyprians,—more triremes and transports than had ever before ridden upon the seas. And as he saw all this power, all directed by one will, Glaucon grew even more despondent. How could puny, faction-rent Hellas bear up against this might? Only when he looked on the myriads passing, and saw how the captains swung long whips and cracked the lash across the backs of their spearmen, as over driven cattle, did a little comfort come. For he knew there was still a fire in Athens and Sparta, a fire not in Susa nor in Babylon, which kindled free souls and free hands to dare and do great things.“Whom will the high Zeus prosper when theslavesof Xerxes stand face to face withmen?”A proud thought,—but it ceased to comfort him, as all that afternoon he stood near the marble throne of the“Lord of the World,”whence Xerxes overlooked his myriads while they filed by, watched the races of swift triremes, and heard the proud assurances of his officers that“no king since the beginning of time, not Thothmes of Egypt, not Sennacherib of Assyria, not Cyrus nor Darius, had arrayed such hosts as his that day.”Then evening came. Glaucon was, after his wont, in the private pavilion of Mardonius,—itself a palace walled with crimson tapestry in lieu of marble. He sat silent and moody for long, the bright fence of the ladies or of the bow-bearer seldom moving him to answer. And at last Artazostra could endure it no more.[pg 192]“What has tied your tongue, Prexaspes? Surely my brother in one of his pleasantries has not ordered that it be cut out? Your skin is too fair to let you be enrolled amongst his Libyan mutes.”The Hellene answered with a pitiful attempt at laughter.“Silent, am I? Then silent because I am admiring your noble ladyship’s play of wit.”Artazostra shook her head.“Impossible. Your eyes were glazed like the blue of Egyptian beads. You were not listening to me. You were seeing sights and hearkening to voices far away.”“You press me hard, lady,”he confessed;“how can I answer? No man is master of his roving thoughts,—at least, not I.”“You were seeing Athens. Are you so enamoured of your stony country that you believe no other land can be so fair?”“Stony it is, lady,—you have seen it,—but there is no sun like the sun that gilds the Acropolis; no birds sing like the nightingales from the grove by the Cephissus; no trees speak with the murmur of the olives at Colonus, or on the hill slope at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. I can answer you in the words of Homer, the singer of Hellas, the words he sets on the tongue of a wanderer and outcast, even as I.‘A rugged land, yet nurse of noble men, and for myself I can see naught sweeter than a man’s own country.’”The praise of his native land had brought the colour into the cheeks of the Athenian, his voice rose to enthusiasm. He knew that Roxana was watching him intently.“Beautiful it must be, dear Hellene,”she spoke, as she sat upon the footstool below the couch of her brother,“yet you have not seen all the world. You have not seen the mystic Nile, Memphis, Thebes, and Saïs, our wondrous cities; have not seen how the sun rises over the desert, how it turns the[pg 193]sand hills to red gold, how at sunset the cliffs glow like walls of beryl and sard and golden jasper.”“Tell then of Egypt,”said Glaucon, clearly taking pleasure in the music of her voice.“Not to-night. I have praised it before. Rather I will praise also the rose valleys of Persia and Bactria, whither Mardonius took me after my dear father died.”“Are they very beautiful also?”“Beautiful as the Egyptian’s House of the Blessed, for those who have passed the dread bar of Osiris; beautiful as Airyana-Væya, the home land of the Aryans, whence Ahura-Mazda sent them forth. The winters are short, the summers bright and long. Neither too much rain nor burning heat. The Paradise by Sardis is nothing beside them. One breathes in the roses, and hearkens to the bulbuls—our Aryan nightingales—all day and all night long. The streams bubble with cool water. At Susa the palace is fairer than word may tell. Hither the court comes each summer from the tedious glories of Babylon. The columns of the palace reach up to heaven, but no walls engirdle them, only curtains green, white, and blue,—whilst the warm sweet breeze blows always thither from green prairies.”“You draw a picture fair as the plains of Elysium, dear lady,”spoke Glaucon, his own gaze following the light that burned in hers,“and yet I would not seek refuge even in the king’s court with all its beauty. There are times when I long to pray the god,‘Give to me wings, eagle wings from Zeus’s own bird, and let me go to the ends of the earth, and there in some charmed valley I may find at last the spring of Lethe water, the water of forgetfulness that gives peace.’”Roxana looked on him; pity was in her eyes, and he knew he was taking pleasure in her pitying.“The magic water you ask is not to be drunk from goblets,”[pg 194]she answered him,“but the charmed valley lies in the vales of Bactria, the‘Roof of the World,’high amid mountains crowned with immortal snows. Every good tree and flower are here, and here winds the mystic Oxus, the great river sweeping northward. And here, if anywhere, on Mazda’s wide, green earth, can the trouble-tossed have peace.”“Then it is so beautiful?”said the Athenian.“Beautiful,”answered Mardonius and Artazostra together. And Roxana, with an approving nod from her brother, arose and crossed the tent where hung a simple harp.“Will my Lord Prexaspes listen,”she asked,“if I sing him one of the homely songs of the Aryans in praise of the vales by the Oxus? My skill is small.”“It should suffice to turn the heart of Persephone, even as did Orpheus,”answered the Athenian, never taking his gaze from her.The soft light of the swinging lamps, the heavy fragrance of the frankincense which smouldered on the brazier, the dark lustre of the singer’s eyes—all held Glaucon as by a spell. Roxana struck the harp. Her voice was sweet, and more than desire to please throbbed through the strings and song.“O far away is glidingThe pleasant Oxus’s stream,I see the green glades darkling,I see the clear pools gleam.I hear the bulbuls callingFrom blooming tree to tree.Wave, bird, and tree are singing,‘Away! ah, come with me!’“By Oxus’s stream is risingGreat Cyrus’s marble halls;Like rain of purest silver,His tinkling fountain falls;[pg 195]To his cool verdant arboursWhat joy with thee to flee.I’ll join with bird and river,‘Away! rest there with me!’“Forget, forget old sorrows,Forget the dear things lost!There comes new peace, new brightness,When darksome waves are crossed;By Oxus’s streams abiding,From pang and strife set free,I’ll teach thee love and gladness,—Rest there, for aye, with me!”The light, the fragrance, the song so pregnant with meaning, all wrought upon Glaucon of Athens. He felt the warm glow in his cheeks; he felt subtle hands outstretching as if drawing forth his spirit. Roxana’s eyes were upon him as she ended. Their gaze met. She was very fair, high-born, sensitive. She was inviting him to put away Glaucon the outcast from Hellas, to become body and soul Prexaspes the Persian,“Benefactor of the King,”and sharer in all the glories of the conquering race. All the past seemed slipping away from him as unreal. Roxana stood before him in her dark Oriental beauty; Hermione was in Athens—and they were giving her in marriage to Democrates. What wonder he felt no mastery of himself, though all that day he had kept from wine?“A simple song,”spoke Mardonius, who seemed marvellously pleased at all his sister did,“yet not lacking its sweetness. We Aryans are without the elaborate music the Greeks and Babylonians affect.”“Simplicity is the highest beauty,”answered the Greek, as if still in his trance,“and when I hear Euphrosyne, fairest of the Graces, sing with the voice of Erato, the Song-Queen,[pg 196]I grow afraid. For a mortal may not hear things too divine and live.”Roxana replaced the harp and made one of her inimitable Oriental courtesies,—a token at once of gratitude and farewell for the evening. Glaucon never took his gaze from her, until with a rustle and sweep of her blue gauze she had glided out of the tent. He did not see the meaning glances exchanged by Mardonius and Artazostra before the latter left them.When the two men were alone, the bow-bearer asked a question.“Dear Prexaspes, do you not think I should bless the twelve archangels I possess so beautiful a sister?”“She is so fair, I wonder that Zeus does not haste from Olympus to enthrone her in place of Hera.”The bow-bearer laughed.“No, I crave for her only a mortal husband. Though there are few in Persia, in Media, in the wide East, to whom I dareentrusther. Perhaps,”—his laugh grew lighter,—“I would do well to turn my eyes westward.”Glaucon did not see Roxana again the next day nor for several following, but in those days he thought much less on Hermione and on Athens.[pg 197]CHAPTER XVIIIDEMOCRATES’S TROUBLES RETURNAll through that year to its close and again to the verge of springtime the sun made violet haze upon the hills and pure fire of the bay at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. Night by night the bird song would be stilled in the old olives along the dark waters. There Hermione would sit looking off into the void, as many another in like plight has sat and wearily waited, asking of the night and the sea the questions that are never answered. As the bay shimmered under the light of morning, she could gaze toward the brown crags of Salamis and the open Ægean beyond. The waves kept their abiding secret. The tall triremes, the red-sailed fishers’ boats, came and went from the havens of Athens, but Hermione never saw the ship that had borne away her all.The roar and scandal following the unmasking of Glaucon had long since abated. Hermippus—himself full five years grayer on account of the calamity—had taken his daughter again to quiet Eleusis, where there was less to remind her of that terrible night at Colonus. She spent the autumn and winter in an unbroken shadow life, with only her mother and old Cleopis for companions. Reasons not yet told to the world gave her a little hope and comfort. But in mere desire to make her dark cloud break, her parents were continually giving Hermione pain. She guessed it long before her father’s wishes passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard[pg 198]him praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus’s hidden meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.“Her Ladyship has taken on terribly, to be sure, but I told her mother‘when a fire blazes too hot, it burns out simply the faster.’Democrates is just the man to console in another year.”“Yes,”answered the other wiseacre,“she’s far too young and pretty to stay unwedded very long. Aphrodite didn’t make her to sit as an old maid carding wool and munching beans. One can see Hermippus’s and Lysistra’s purpose with half an eye.”“Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?”The young mistress’s eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold front and a ready lie:“Ei!dear little lady, don’t flash up so! I was only talking with Nania about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom.”“I heard you quite otherwise,”was the nigh tremulous answer. But Hermione was not anxious to push matters to an issue. From the moment of Glaucon’s downfall she had believed—what even her own mother had mildly derided—that Democrates had been the author of her husband’s ruin. And now that the intent of her parents ever more clearly dawned on her, she was close upon despair. Hermippus, however,—whatever his purpose,—was considerate, nay kindly. He regarded Hermione’s feelings as pardonable, if not laudable. He would wait for time to soothe her. But the consciousness that her father purposed such a fate for her, however far postponed, was enough to double all the unanswered longing, the unstilled pain.[pg 199]Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione’s sun ever rise again? Could she hope, across the end of the æons, to clasp hands even in the dim House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof, dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.“Downward, down the long dark pathway,Past Oceanus’s great streams,Past the White Rock, past the Sun’s gatesDownward to the land of Dreams:There they reach the wide dim bordersOf the fields of asphodel,Where the spectres and the spiritsOf wan, outworn mortals dwell.”But was this the home of Glaucon the Fair; should the young, the strong, the pure in heart, share one condemnation with the mean and the guilty? Homer the Wise left all hid. Yet he told of some not doomed to the common lot. Thus ran the promise to Menelaus, espoused to Helen.“Far away the gods shall bear you:To the fair Elysian plains,Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly,Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns:Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter,But clear zephyrs from the west,Singing round the streams of OceanRound the islands of the Blest.”Was the pledge for Menelaus only?The boats came, the boats went, on the blue bay. But as the spring grew warm, Hermione thought less of them, less almost of the last dread vision of Glaucon.* * * * * * *The cloud of the Persian hung ever darkening over Athens.[pg 200]Continual rumours made Xerxes’s power terrible even beyond fact. It was hard to go on eating, drinking, frequenting the jury or the gymnasium, when men knew to a certainty the coming summer would bring Athens face to face with slavery or destruction. Wise men grew silent. Fools took to carousing to banish care. But one word not the frailest uttered—“submission.”Worldly prudence forbade that. The women would have stabbed the craven to death with their bodkins. For the women were braver than the men. They knew the fate of conquered Ionia: for the men only merciful death, for the women the living death of the Persian harems and indignities words may not utter. Whether Hellas forsook her or aided, Athens had chosen her fate. Xerxes might annihilate her. Conquer her he could not.Yet the early spring came back sweetly as ever. The warm breeze blew from Egypt. Philomela sang in the olive groves. The snows on Pentelicus faded. Around the city ran bands of children singing the“swallow’s song,”and beseeching the spring donation of honey cakes:—“She is here, she is here, the swallow;Fair seasons bringing,—fair seasons to follow.”And many a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, better fate, in Orchus.Yet to one woman that spring there came consolation. On Hermippus’s door hung a glad olive wreath. Hermione had borne a son.“The fairest babe she had ever seen,”cried the midwife.“Phœnix,”the mother called him,“for in him shall Glaucon the Beautiful live again.”Democrates sent a runner every day to Eleusis to inquire for Hermione until all danger was passed. On the“name-day,”ten days[pg 201]after the birth, he was absent from the gathering of friends and kinsmen, but sent a valuable statuette to Hermione, who left it, however, to her father to thank him.The day after Phœnix was born old Conon, Glaucon’s father, died. The old man had never recovered from the blow given by the dishonourable death of the son with whom he had so lately quarrelled. He left a great landed estate at Marathon to his new-born grandson. The exact value thereof Democrates inquired into sharply, and when a distant cousin talked of contesting the will, the orator announced he would defend the infant’s rights. The would-be plaintiff withdrew at once, not anxious to cross swords with this favourite of the juries, and everybody said that Democrates was showing a most scrupulous regard for his unfortunate friend’s memory.Indeed, seemingly, Democrates ought to have been the happiest man in Athens. He had been elected“strategus,”to serve on the board of generals along with Themistocles. He had plenty of money, and gave great banquets to this or that group of prominent citizens. During the winter he had asked Hermippus for his daughter in marriage. The Eumolpid told him that since Glaucon’s fearful end, he was welcome as a son-in-law. Still he could not conceal that Hermione never spoke of him save in hate, and in view of her then delicate condition it was well not to press the matter. The orator had seemed well content.“Woman’s fantasies would wear away in time.”But the rumour of this negotiation, outrunning truth, grew into the lying report of an absolute betrothal,—the report which was to drift to Asia and turn Glaucon’s heart to stone, gossip having always wrought more harm than malignant lying.Yet flies were in Democrates’s sweet ointment. He knew Themistocles hardly trusted him as frankly as of yore.[pg 202]Little Simonides, a man of wide influence and keen insight, treated him very coldly. Cimon had cooled also. But worse than all was a haunting dread. Democrates knew, if hardly another in Hellas, that the Cyprian—in other words Mardonius—was safe in Asia, and likewise that he had fled on theSolon. Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates night and day.Still he was beginning to shake off his terrors. He believed he had washed his hands fairly clean of his treason, even if the water had cost his soul. He joined with all his energies in seconding Themistocles. His voice was loudest at the Pnyx, counselling resistance. He went on successful embassies to Sicyon and Ægina to get pledges of alliance. In the summer he did his uttermost to prepare the army which Themistocles and Evænetus the Spartan led to defend the pass of Tempē. The expedition sailed amid high hopes for a noble defence of Hellas. Democrates was proud and sanguine. Then, like a thunderbolt, there came one night a knock at his door. Bias led to his master no less a visitor than the sleek and smiling Phœnician—Hiram.The orator tried to cover his terrors by windy bluster. He broke in before the Oriental could finish his elaborate salaam.“Of all the harpies and gorgons you are the least welcome. Were you not warned when you fled Athens for Argos never to show your face in Attica again?”“Your Excellency said so,”was the bland reply.“Admirably you obey it. It remains for me to reward the obedience. Bias, go to the street; summon two Scythian watchmen.”[pg 203]The Thracian darted out. Hiram simply stood with hands folded.“It is well, Excellency, the lad is gone. I have many things to say in confidence to your Nobility. At Lacedæmon my Lord Lycon was gracious enough to give certain commands for me to transmit to you.”“Commands? To me? Earth and gods! am I to be commanded by an adder like you? You shall pay for this on the rack.”“Your slave thinks otherwise,”observed Hiram, humbly.“If your Lordship will deign to read this letter, it will save your slave many words and your Lordship many cursings.”He knelt again before he offered a papyrus. Democrates would rather have taken fire, but he could not refuse. And thus he read:—“Lycon of Lacedæmon to Democrates of Athens, greeting:—Can he who Medizes in the summer Hellenize in the spring? I know your zeal for Themistocles. Was it for this we plucked you back from exposure and ruin? Do then as Hiram bids you, or repay the money you clutched so eagerly. Fail not, or rest confident all the documents you betrayed shall go to Hypsichides the First Archon, your enemy. Use then your eloquence on Attic juries! But you will grow wise; what need of me to threaten? You will hearken to Hiram.“From Sparta, on the festival of Bellerophon, in the ephorship of Theudas.—Chaire!”Democrates folded the papyrus and stood long, biting his whitened lips in silence. Perhaps he had surmised the intent of the letter the instant Hiram extended it.“What do you desire?”he said thickly, at last.“Let my Lord then hearken—”began the Phœnician, to be interrupted by the sudden advent of Bias.“The Scythians are at the door,kyrie,”he was shouting;“shall I order them in and drag this lizard out by the tail?”[pg 204]“No, in Zeus’s name, no! Bid them keep without. And do you go also. This honest fellow is on private business which only I must hear.”Bias slammed the door. Perhaps he stood listening. Hiram, at least, glided nearer to his victim and spoke in a smooth whisper, taking no chances of an eavesdropper.“Excellency, the desire of Lycon is this. The army has been sent to Tempē. At Lacedæmon Lycon used all his power to prevent its despatch, but Leonidas is omnipotent to-day in Sparta, and besides, since Lycon’s calamity at the Isthmia, his prestige, and therefore his influence, is not a little abated. Nevertheless, the army must be recalled from Tempē.”“And the means?”“Yourself, Excellency. It is within your power to find a thousand good reasons why Themistocles and Evænetus should retreat. And you will do so at once, Excellency.”“Do not think you and your accursed masters can drive me from infamy to infamy. I can be terrible if pushed to bay.”“Your Nobility has read Lycon’s letter,”observed the Phœnician, with folded arms.There was a sword lying on the tripod by which Democrates stood; he regretted for all the rest of his life that he had not seized it and ended the snakelike Oriental then and there. The impulse came, and went. The opportunity never returned. The orator’s head dropped down upon his breast.“Go back to Sparta, go back instantly,”he spoke in a hoarse whisper.“Tell that Polyphemus you call your master there that I will do his will. And tell him, too, that if ever the day comes for vengeance on him, on the Cyprian, on you,—my vengeance will be terrible.”[pg 205]“Your slave’s ears hear the first part of your message with joy,”—Hiram’s smile never grew broader,—“the second part, which my Lord speaks in anger,—I will forget.”“Go! go!”ordered the orator, furiously. He clapped his hands. Bias reëntered.“Tell the constables I don’t need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes hither again, do you and the other slaves beat him till there is not a whole spot left on his body.”Hiram’s genuflexion was worthy of Xerxes’s court.“My Lord, as always,”was his parting compliment,“has shown himself exceeding wise.”Thus the Oriental went. In what a mood Democrates passed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing Æschylus’s song of the Furies. He could not silence it.“With scourge and with banWe prostrate the manWho with smooth-woven wileAnd a fair-facèd smileHath planted a snare for his friend!Though fleet, we shall find him;Though strong, we shall bind him,Who planted a snare for his friend!”He had intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul’s price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night scene at Colonus?The next morning he made a formal visit to the shrine of the Furies in the hill of Areopagus.“An old vow, too long deferred in payment, taken when he joined in his first con[pg 206]test on the Bema,”he explained to friends, when he visited this uncanny spot.Few were the Athenians who would pass that cleft in the Areopagus where the“Avengers”had their grim sanctuary without a quick motion of the hands to avert the evil eye. Thieves and others of evil conscience would make a wide circuit rather than pass this abode of Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone, pitiless pursuers of the guilty. The terrible sisters hounded a man through life, and after death to the judgment bar of Minos. With reason, therefore, the guilty dreaded them.Democrates had brought the proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a jagged, unhewn cranny, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright and reaching far into the sculptured rock. No image: only a few rough votive tablets set up by a grateful suppliant for some mercy from the awful goddesses.“If you would pray here,kyrie,”said the hag,“it is needful that I go forth and close the door. The holy Furies love the dark, for is not their home in Tartarus?”She went forth. As the light vanished, Democrates seemed buried in the rock. Out of the blackness spectres were springing against him. From a cleft he heard a flapping, a bat, an imprisoned bird, or Alecto’s direful wings. He held his hands downward, for he had to address infernal goddesses, and prayed in haste.“O ye sisters, terrible yet gracious, give ear. If by my[pg 207]offerings I have found favour, lift from my heart this crushing load. Deliver me from the fear of the blood guilty. Are ye not divine? Do not the immortals know all things? Ye know, then, how I was tempted, how sore was the compulsion, and how life and love were sweet. Then spare me. Give me back unhaunted slumber. Deliver me from Lycon. Give my soul peace,—and in reward, I swear it by the Styx, by Zeus’s own oath, I will build in your honour a temple by your sacred field at Colonus, where men shall gather to reverence you forever.”But here he ceased. In the darkness moved something white. Again a flapping. He was sure the white thing was Glaucon’s face. Glaucon had perished at sea. He had never been buried, so his ghost was wandering over the world, seeking vainly for rest. It all came to Democrates in an instant. His knees smote together; his teeth chattered. He sprang back upon the door and forced it open, but never saw the dove that fluttered forth with him.“A hideous place!”he cried to his waiting friends.“A man must have a stronger heart than mine to love to tarry after his prayer is finished.”Only a few days later Hellas was startled to hear that Tempē had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after the coming and going of Hiram.“There is a larger tunny in the sea than yet has entered[pg 208]the meshes,”confessed the fishmonger, sorely puzzled, after much vain talk.But Hermione was caring for none of these things. Her hands were busy with the swaddling clothes. Her thoughts only for that wicker cradle which swung betwixt the pillars, where Hermippus’s house looked toward Salamis.

Glaucon’s longing for the old life ebbed and flowed. Sometimes the return of memory maddened him. Who had done it?—had forged that damning letter and then hid it with Seuthes? Themistocles? Impossible. Democrates?—“the friend with the understanding heart no less than a brother dear,”as Homer said? More impossible. An unknown enemy, then, had stolen the fleet order from Themistocles? But what man had hated Glaucon? One answer remained,—unwittingly the athlete had offended some god, forgotten some vow, or by sheer good fortune had awakened divine jealousy. Poseidon had been implacable toward Odysseus, Athena toward Hector, Artemis toward Niobe,—Glaucon could only pray that his present welcome amongst the Persians might not draw down another outburst of Heaven’s anger.

More than all else was the keen longing for Hermione. He saw her in the night. Vainly, amidst the storms of the gathering war, he had sought a messenger to Athens. In this he dared ask no help from Mardonius. Then almost from the blue a bolt fell that made him wish to tear Hermione from his heart.

A Carian slave, a trusted steward at the Athenian silver mines of Laurium, had loved his liberty and escaped to Sardis. The Persians questioned him eagerly, for he knew all the[pg 187]gossip of Athens. Glaucon met the runaway, who did not know then who he was, so many Greek refugees were always fluttering around the king’s court. The Carian told of a new honour for Democrates.

“He is elected strategus for next year because of his proud patriotism. There is talk, too, of a more private bit of good fortune.”

“What is it?”

“That he has made successful suit to Hermippus of Eleusis for his daughter,—the widow of Glaucon, the dead outlaw. They say the marriage follows at the end of the year of mourning—Sir, you are not well!”

“I was never better.”But the other had turned ashen. He quitted the Carian abruptly and shut himself in his chamber. It was good that he wore no sword. He might have slain himself.

Yet, he communed in his heart, was it not best? Was he not dead to Athens? Must Hermione mourn him down to old age? And whom better could she take than Democrates, the man who had sacrificed even friendship for love of country?

Artabanus, the vizier, gave a great feast that night. They drank the pledge,“Victory to the king, destruction to his enemies.”The lords all looked on Glaucon to see if he would touch the cup. He drank deeply. They applauded him. He remained long at the wine, the slaves bore him home drunken. In the morning Mardonius said Xerxes ordered him to serve in the cavalry guards, a post full of honour and chance for promotion. Glaucon did not resist. Mardonius sent him a silvered cuirass and a black horse from the steppes of Bactria,—fleet as the north wind. In his new armour he went to the chambers of Artazostra and Roxana. They had never seen him in panoply before. The[pg 188]brilliant mail became him rarely. The ladies were delighted.

“You grow Persian apace, my Lord Prexaspes,”—Roxana always called him by his new name now,—“soon we shall hail you as‘your Magnificence’the satrap of Parthia or Asia or some other kingly province in the East.”

“I do well to become Persian,”he answered bitterly, unmoved by the admiration,“for yesterday I heard that which makes it more than ever manifest that Glaucon the Athenian is dead. And whether he shall ever rise to live again, Zeus knoweth; but from me it is hid.”

Artazostra did not approach, but Roxana came near, as if to draw the buckle of the golden girdle—the gift of Xerxes. He saw the turquoise shining on the tiara that bound her jet-black hair, the fine dark profile of her face, her delicate nostrils, the sweep of drapery that half revealed the form so full of grace. Was there more than passing friendship in the tone with which she spoke to him?

“You have heard from Athens?”

“Yes.”

“And the tidings were evil.”

“Why call them evil, princess? My friends all believe me dead. Can they mourn for me forever? They can forget me, alas! more easily than I in my lonesomeness can forget them.”

“You are very lonely?”—the hand that drew the buckle worked slowly. How soft it was, how delicately the Nile sun had tinted it!

“Do you say you have no friends? None? Not in Sardis? Not among the Persians?”

“I said not that, dear lady,—but when can a man have more than one native country?—and mine is Attica, and Attica is far away.”

“And you can never have another? Can new friendships never take the place of those that lie forever dead?”

“I do not know.”

“Ah, believe, new home, new friends, new love, are more than possible, will you but open your heart to suffer them.”

The voice both thrilled and trembled now, then suddenly ceased. The colour sprang into Roxana’s forehead. Glaucon bowed and kissed her hand. It seemed to rise to his lips very willingly.

“I thank you for your fair hopes. Farewell.”That was all he said, but as he went forth from Roxana’s presence, the pang of the tidings brought by the Carian seemed less keen.

* * * * * * *

The hosts gathered daily. Xerxes spent his time in dicing, hunting, drinking, or amusing himself with his favourite by-play, wood-carving. He held a few solemn state councils, at which he appeared to determine all things and was actually guided by Artabanus and Mardonius. Now, at last, all the colossal machinery which was to crush down Hellas was being set in motion. Glaucon learned how futile was Themistocles’s hope of succour to Athens from the Sicilian Greeks, for,—thanks to Mardonius’s indefatigable diplomacy,—it was arranged that the Phœnicians of Carthage should launch a powerful armament against the Sicilians, the same moment Xerxes descended on Sparta and Athens. With calm satisfaction Mardonius watched the completion of his efforts. All was ready,—the army of hundreds of thousands, the twelve hundred war-ships, the bridges across the Hellespont, the canal at Mt. Athos. Glaucon’s admiration for the son of Gobryas grew apace. Xerxes was the outward head of the attack on Hellas. Mardonius was the soul.[pg 190]He was the idol of the army—its best archer and rider. Unlike his peers, he maintained no huge harem of jealous concubines and conspiring eunuchs. Artazostra he worshipped. Roxana he loved. He had no time for other women. No servant of Xerxes seemed outwardly more obedient than he. Night and day he wrought for the glory of Persia. Therefore, Glaucon looked on him with dread. In him Themistocles and Leonidas would find a worthy foeman.

Daily Glaucon felt the Persian influence stealing upon him. He grew even accustomed to think of himself under his new name. Greeks were about him: Demaratus, the outlawed“half-king”of Sparta, and the sons of Hippias, late tyrant of Athens. He scorned the company of these renegades. Yet sometimes he would ask himself wherein was he better than they,—had Democrates’s accusation been true, could he have asked a greater reward from the Barbarian? And what he would do on the day of battle he did not dare to ask of his own soul.

* * * * * * *

Xerxes left Sardis with the host amidst the same splendour with which he had entered. Glaucon rode in the Life Guard, and saw royalty frequently, for the king loved to meet handsome men. Once he held the stirrup as Xerxes dismounted—an honour which provoked much envious grumbling. Artazostra and Roxana travelled in their closed litters with the train of women and eunuchs which followed every Persian army. Thus the myriads rolled onward through Lydia and Mysia, drinking the rivers dry by their numbers; and across the immortal plains of Troy passed that army which was destined to do and suffer greater things than were wrought beside the poet-sung Simois and Scamander, till at last they came to the Hellespont, the green[pg 191]river seven furlongs wide, that sundered conquered Asia from the Europe yet to be conquered.

Here were the two bridges of ships, more than three hundred in each, held by giant cables, and which upbore a firm earthen road, protected by a high bulwark, that the horses and camels might take no fright at the water. Here, also, the fleet met them,—the armaments of the East, Phœnicians, Cilicians, Egyptians, Cyprians,—more triremes and transports than had ever before ridden upon the seas. And as he saw all this power, all directed by one will, Glaucon grew even more despondent. How could puny, faction-rent Hellas bear up against this might? Only when he looked on the myriads passing, and saw how the captains swung long whips and cracked the lash across the backs of their spearmen, as over driven cattle, did a little comfort come. For he knew there was still a fire in Athens and Sparta, a fire not in Susa nor in Babylon, which kindled free souls and free hands to dare and do great things.“Whom will the high Zeus prosper when theslavesof Xerxes stand face to face withmen?”

A proud thought,—but it ceased to comfort him, as all that afternoon he stood near the marble throne of the“Lord of the World,”whence Xerxes overlooked his myriads while they filed by, watched the races of swift triremes, and heard the proud assurances of his officers that“no king since the beginning of time, not Thothmes of Egypt, not Sennacherib of Assyria, not Cyrus nor Darius, had arrayed such hosts as his that day.”

Then evening came. Glaucon was, after his wont, in the private pavilion of Mardonius,—itself a palace walled with crimson tapestry in lieu of marble. He sat silent and moody for long, the bright fence of the ladies or of the bow-bearer seldom moving him to answer. And at last Artazostra could endure it no more.

“What has tied your tongue, Prexaspes? Surely my brother in one of his pleasantries has not ordered that it be cut out? Your skin is too fair to let you be enrolled amongst his Libyan mutes.”

The Hellene answered with a pitiful attempt at laughter.

“Silent, am I? Then silent because I am admiring your noble ladyship’s play of wit.”

Artazostra shook her head.

“Impossible. Your eyes were glazed like the blue of Egyptian beads. You were not listening to me. You were seeing sights and hearkening to voices far away.”

“You press me hard, lady,”he confessed;“how can I answer? No man is master of his roving thoughts,—at least, not I.”

“You were seeing Athens. Are you so enamoured of your stony country that you believe no other land can be so fair?”

“Stony it is, lady,—you have seen it,—but there is no sun like the sun that gilds the Acropolis; no birds sing like the nightingales from the grove by the Cephissus; no trees speak with the murmur of the olives at Colonus, or on the hill slope at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. I can answer you in the words of Homer, the singer of Hellas, the words he sets on the tongue of a wanderer and outcast, even as I.‘A rugged land, yet nurse of noble men, and for myself I can see naught sweeter than a man’s own country.’”

The praise of his native land had brought the colour into the cheeks of the Athenian, his voice rose to enthusiasm. He knew that Roxana was watching him intently.

“Beautiful it must be, dear Hellene,”she spoke, as she sat upon the footstool below the couch of her brother,“yet you have not seen all the world. You have not seen the mystic Nile, Memphis, Thebes, and Saïs, our wondrous cities; have not seen how the sun rises over the desert, how it turns the[pg 193]sand hills to red gold, how at sunset the cliffs glow like walls of beryl and sard and golden jasper.”

“Tell then of Egypt,”said Glaucon, clearly taking pleasure in the music of her voice.

“Not to-night. I have praised it before. Rather I will praise also the rose valleys of Persia and Bactria, whither Mardonius took me after my dear father died.”

“Are they very beautiful also?”

“Beautiful as the Egyptian’s House of the Blessed, for those who have passed the dread bar of Osiris; beautiful as Airyana-Væya, the home land of the Aryans, whence Ahura-Mazda sent them forth. The winters are short, the summers bright and long. Neither too much rain nor burning heat. The Paradise by Sardis is nothing beside them. One breathes in the roses, and hearkens to the bulbuls—our Aryan nightingales—all day and all night long. The streams bubble with cool water. At Susa the palace is fairer than word may tell. Hither the court comes each summer from the tedious glories of Babylon. The columns of the palace reach up to heaven, but no walls engirdle them, only curtains green, white, and blue,—whilst the warm sweet breeze blows always thither from green prairies.”

“You draw a picture fair as the plains of Elysium, dear lady,”spoke Glaucon, his own gaze following the light that burned in hers,“and yet I would not seek refuge even in the king’s court with all its beauty. There are times when I long to pray the god,‘Give to me wings, eagle wings from Zeus’s own bird, and let me go to the ends of the earth, and there in some charmed valley I may find at last the spring of Lethe water, the water of forgetfulness that gives peace.’”

Roxana looked on him; pity was in her eyes, and he knew he was taking pleasure in her pitying.

“The magic water you ask is not to be drunk from goblets,”[pg 194]she answered him,“but the charmed valley lies in the vales of Bactria, the‘Roof of the World,’high amid mountains crowned with immortal snows. Every good tree and flower are here, and here winds the mystic Oxus, the great river sweeping northward. And here, if anywhere, on Mazda’s wide, green earth, can the trouble-tossed have peace.”

“Then it is so beautiful?”said the Athenian.

“Beautiful,”answered Mardonius and Artazostra together. And Roxana, with an approving nod from her brother, arose and crossed the tent where hung a simple harp.

“Will my Lord Prexaspes listen,”she asked,“if I sing him one of the homely songs of the Aryans in praise of the vales by the Oxus? My skill is small.”

“It should suffice to turn the heart of Persephone, even as did Orpheus,”answered the Athenian, never taking his gaze from her.

The soft light of the swinging lamps, the heavy fragrance of the frankincense which smouldered on the brazier, the dark lustre of the singer’s eyes—all held Glaucon as by a spell. Roxana struck the harp. Her voice was sweet, and more than desire to please throbbed through the strings and song.

“O far away is glidingThe pleasant Oxus’s stream,I see the green glades darkling,I see the clear pools gleam.I hear the bulbuls callingFrom blooming tree to tree.Wave, bird, and tree are singing,‘Away! ah, come with me!’

“O far away is gliding

The pleasant Oxus’s stream,

I see the green glades darkling,

I see the clear pools gleam.

I hear the bulbuls calling

From blooming tree to tree.

Wave, bird, and tree are singing,

‘Away! ah, come with me!’

“By Oxus’s stream is risingGreat Cyrus’s marble halls;Like rain of purest silver,His tinkling fountain falls;[pg 195]To his cool verdant arboursWhat joy with thee to flee.I’ll join with bird and river,‘Away! rest there with me!’

“By Oxus’s stream is rising

Great Cyrus’s marble halls;

Like rain of purest silver,

His tinkling fountain falls;

[pg 195]To his cool verdant arbours

What joy with thee to flee.

I’ll join with bird and river,

‘Away! rest there with me!’

“Forget, forget old sorrows,Forget the dear things lost!There comes new peace, new brightness,When darksome waves are crossed;By Oxus’s streams abiding,From pang and strife set free,I’ll teach thee love and gladness,—Rest there, for aye, with me!”

“Forget, forget old sorrows,

Forget the dear things lost!

There comes new peace, new brightness,

When darksome waves are crossed;

By Oxus’s streams abiding,

From pang and strife set free,

I’ll teach thee love and gladness,—

Rest there, for aye, with me!”

The light, the fragrance, the song so pregnant with meaning, all wrought upon Glaucon of Athens. He felt the warm glow in his cheeks; he felt subtle hands outstretching as if drawing forth his spirit. Roxana’s eyes were upon him as she ended. Their gaze met. She was very fair, high-born, sensitive. She was inviting him to put away Glaucon the outcast from Hellas, to become body and soul Prexaspes the Persian,“Benefactor of the King,”and sharer in all the glories of the conquering race. All the past seemed slipping away from him as unreal. Roxana stood before him in her dark Oriental beauty; Hermione was in Athens—and they were giving her in marriage to Democrates. What wonder he felt no mastery of himself, though all that day he had kept from wine?

“A simple song,”spoke Mardonius, who seemed marvellously pleased at all his sister did,“yet not lacking its sweetness. We Aryans are without the elaborate music the Greeks and Babylonians affect.”

“Simplicity is the highest beauty,”answered the Greek, as if still in his trance,“and when I hear Euphrosyne, fairest of the Graces, sing with the voice of Erato, the Song-Queen,[pg 196]I grow afraid. For a mortal may not hear things too divine and live.”

Roxana replaced the harp and made one of her inimitable Oriental courtesies,—a token at once of gratitude and farewell for the evening. Glaucon never took his gaze from her, until with a rustle and sweep of her blue gauze she had glided out of the tent. He did not see the meaning glances exchanged by Mardonius and Artazostra before the latter left them.

When the two men were alone, the bow-bearer asked a question.

“Dear Prexaspes, do you not think I should bless the twelve archangels I possess so beautiful a sister?”

“She is so fair, I wonder that Zeus does not haste from Olympus to enthrone her in place of Hera.”

The bow-bearer laughed.

“No, I crave for her only a mortal husband. Though there are few in Persia, in Media, in the wide East, to whom I dareentrusther. Perhaps,”—his laugh grew lighter,—“I would do well to turn my eyes westward.”

Glaucon did not see Roxana again the next day nor for several following, but in those days he thought much less on Hermione and on Athens.

[pg 197]CHAPTER XVIIIDEMOCRATES’S TROUBLES RETURNAll through that year to its close and again to the verge of springtime the sun made violet haze upon the hills and pure fire of the bay at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. Night by night the bird song would be stilled in the old olives along the dark waters. There Hermione would sit looking off into the void, as many another in like plight has sat and wearily waited, asking of the night and the sea the questions that are never answered. As the bay shimmered under the light of morning, she could gaze toward the brown crags of Salamis and the open Ægean beyond. The waves kept their abiding secret. The tall triremes, the red-sailed fishers’ boats, came and went from the havens of Athens, but Hermione never saw the ship that had borne away her all.The roar and scandal following the unmasking of Glaucon had long since abated. Hermippus—himself full five years grayer on account of the calamity—had taken his daughter again to quiet Eleusis, where there was less to remind her of that terrible night at Colonus. She spent the autumn and winter in an unbroken shadow life, with only her mother and old Cleopis for companions. Reasons not yet told to the world gave her a little hope and comfort. But in mere desire to make her dark cloud break, her parents were continually giving Hermione pain. She guessed it long before her father’s wishes passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard[pg 198]him praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus’s hidden meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.“Her Ladyship has taken on terribly, to be sure, but I told her mother‘when a fire blazes too hot, it burns out simply the faster.’Democrates is just the man to console in another year.”“Yes,”answered the other wiseacre,“she’s far too young and pretty to stay unwedded very long. Aphrodite didn’t make her to sit as an old maid carding wool and munching beans. One can see Hermippus’s and Lysistra’s purpose with half an eye.”“Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?”The young mistress’s eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold front and a ready lie:“Ei!dear little lady, don’t flash up so! I was only talking with Nania about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom.”“I heard you quite otherwise,”was the nigh tremulous answer. But Hermione was not anxious to push matters to an issue. From the moment of Glaucon’s downfall she had believed—what even her own mother had mildly derided—that Democrates had been the author of her husband’s ruin. And now that the intent of her parents ever more clearly dawned on her, she was close upon despair. Hermippus, however,—whatever his purpose,—was considerate, nay kindly. He regarded Hermione’s feelings as pardonable, if not laudable. He would wait for time to soothe her. But the consciousness that her father purposed such a fate for her, however far postponed, was enough to double all the unanswered longing, the unstilled pain.[pg 199]Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione’s sun ever rise again? Could she hope, across the end of the æons, to clasp hands even in the dim House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof, dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.“Downward, down the long dark pathway,Past Oceanus’s great streams,Past the White Rock, past the Sun’s gatesDownward to the land of Dreams:There they reach the wide dim bordersOf the fields of asphodel,Where the spectres and the spiritsOf wan, outworn mortals dwell.”But was this the home of Glaucon the Fair; should the young, the strong, the pure in heart, share one condemnation with the mean and the guilty? Homer the Wise left all hid. Yet he told of some not doomed to the common lot. Thus ran the promise to Menelaus, espoused to Helen.“Far away the gods shall bear you:To the fair Elysian plains,Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly,Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns:Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter,But clear zephyrs from the west,Singing round the streams of OceanRound the islands of the Blest.”Was the pledge for Menelaus only?The boats came, the boats went, on the blue bay. But as the spring grew warm, Hermione thought less of them, less almost of the last dread vision of Glaucon.* * * * * * *The cloud of the Persian hung ever darkening over Athens.[pg 200]Continual rumours made Xerxes’s power terrible even beyond fact. It was hard to go on eating, drinking, frequenting the jury or the gymnasium, when men knew to a certainty the coming summer would bring Athens face to face with slavery or destruction. Wise men grew silent. Fools took to carousing to banish care. But one word not the frailest uttered—“submission.”Worldly prudence forbade that. The women would have stabbed the craven to death with their bodkins. For the women were braver than the men. They knew the fate of conquered Ionia: for the men only merciful death, for the women the living death of the Persian harems and indignities words may not utter. Whether Hellas forsook her or aided, Athens had chosen her fate. Xerxes might annihilate her. Conquer her he could not.Yet the early spring came back sweetly as ever. The warm breeze blew from Egypt. Philomela sang in the olive groves. The snows on Pentelicus faded. Around the city ran bands of children singing the“swallow’s song,”and beseeching the spring donation of honey cakes:—“She is here, she is here, the swallow;Fair seasons bringing,—fair seasons to follow.”And many a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, better fate, in Orchus.Yet to one woman that spring there came consolation. On Hermippus’s door hung a glad olive wreath. Hermione had borne a son.“The fairest babe she had ever seen,”cried the midwife.“Phœnix,”the mother called him,“for in him shall Glaucon the Beautiful live again.”Democrates sent a runner every day to Eleusis to inquire for Hermione until all danger was passed. On the“name-day,”ten days[pg 201]after the birth, he was absent from the gathering of friends and kinsmen, but sent a valuable statuette to Hermione, who left it, however, to her father to thank him.The day after Phœnix was born old Conon, Glaucon’s father, died. The old man had never recovered from the blow given by the dishonourable death of the son with whom he had so lately quarrelled. He left a great landed estate at Marathon to his new-born grandson. The exact value thereof Democrates inquired into sharply, and when a distant cousin talked of contesting the will, the orator announced he would defend the infant’s rights. The would-be plaintiff withdrew at once, not anxious to cross swords with this favourite of the juries, and everybody said that Democrates was showing a most scrupulous regard for his unfortunate friend’s memory.Indeed, seemingly, Democrates ought to have been the happiest man in Athens. He had been elected“strategus,”to serve on the board of generals along with Themistocles. He had plenty of money, and gave great banquets to this or that group of prominent citizens. During the winter he had asked Hermippus for his daughter in marriage. The Eumolpid told him that since Glaucon’s fearful end, he was welcome as a son-in-law. Still he could not conceal that Hermione never spoke of him save in hate, and in view of her then delicate condition it was well not to press the matter. The orator had seemed well content.“Woman’s fantasies would wear away in time.”But the rumour of this negotiation, outrunning truth, grew into the lying report of an absolute betrothal,—the report which was to drift to Asia and turn Glaucon’s heart to stone, gossip having always wrought more harm than malignant lying.Yet flies were in Democrates’s sweet ointment. He knew Themistocles hardly trusted him as frankly as of yore.[pg 202]Little Simonides, a man of wide influence and keen insight, treated him very coldly. Cimon had cooled also. But worse than all was a haunting dread. Democrates knew, if hardly another in Hellas, that the Cyprian—in other words Mardonius—was safe in Asia, and likewise that he had fled on theSolon. Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates night and day.Still he was beginning to shake off his terrors. He believed he had washed his hands fairly clean of his treason, even if the water had cost his soul. He joined with all his energies in seconding Themistocles. His voice was loudest at the Pnyx, counselling resistance. He went on successful embassies to Sicyon and Ægina to get pledges of alliance. In the summer he did his uttermost to prepare the army which Themistocles and Evænetus the Spartan led to defend the pass of Tempē. The expedition sailed amid high hopes for a noble defence of Hellas. Democrates was proud and sanguine. Then, like a thunderbolt, there came one night a knock at his door. Bias led to his master no less a visitor than the sleek and smiling Phœnician—Hiram.The orator tried to cover his terrors by windy bluster. He broke in before the Oriental could finish his elaborate salaam.“Of all the harpies and gorgons you are the least welcome. Were you not warned when you fled Athens for Argos never to show your face in Attica again?”“Your Excellency said so,”was the bland reply.“Admirably you obey it. It remains for me to reward the obedience. Bias, go to the street; summon two Scythian watchmen.”[pg 203]The Thracian darted out. Hiram simply stood with hands folded.“It is well, Excellency, the lad is gone. I have many things to say in confidence to your Nobility. At Lacedæmon my Lord Lycon was gracious enough to give certain commands for me to transmit to you.”“Commands? To me? Earth and gods! am I to be commanded by an adder like you? You shall pay for this on the rack.”“Your slave thinks otherwise,”observed Hiram, humbly.“If your Lordship will deign to read this letter, it will save your slave many words and your Lordship many cursings.”He knelt again before he offered a papyrus. Democrates would rather have taken fire, but he could not refuse. And thus he read:—“Lycon of Lacedæmon to Democrates of Athens, greeting:—Can he who Medizes in the summer Hellenize in the spring? I know your zeal for Themistocles. Was it for this we plucked you back from exposure and ruin? Do then as Hiram bids you, or repay the money you clutched so eagerly. Fail not, or rest confident all the documents you betrayed shall go to Hypsichides the First Archon, your enemy. Use then your eloquence on Attic juries! But you will grow wise; what need of me to threaten? You will hearken to Hiram.“From Sparta, on the festival of Bellerophon, in the ephorship of Theudas.—Chaire!”Democrates folded the papyrus and stood long, biting his whitened lips in silence. Perhaps he had surmised the intent of the letter the instant Hiram extended it.“What do you desire?”he said thickly, at last.“Let my Lord then hearken—”began the Phœnician, to be interrupted by the sudden advent of Bias.“The Scythians are at the door,kyrie,”he was shouting;“shall I order them in and drag this lizard out by the tail?”[pg 204]“No, in Zeus’s name, no! Bid them keep without. And do you go also. This honest fellow is on private business which only I must hear.”Bias slammed the door. Perhaps he stood listening. Hiram, at least, glided nearer to his victim and spoke in a smooth whisper, taking no chances of an eavesdropper.“Excellency, the desire of Lycon is this. The army has been sent to Tempē. At Lacedæmon Lycon used all his power to prevent its despatch, but Leonidas is omnipotent to-day in Sparta, and besides, since Lycon’s calamity at the Isthmia, his prestige, and therefore his influence, is not a little abated. Nevertheless, the army must be recalled from Tempē.”“And the means?”“Yourself, Excellency. It is within your power to find a thousand good reasons why Themistocles and Evænetus should retreat. And you will do so at once, Excellency.”“Do not think you and your accursed masters can drive me from infamy to infamy. I can be terrible if pushed to bay.”“Your Nobility has read Lycon’s letter,”observed the Phœnician, with folded arms.There was a sword lying on the tripod by which Democrates stood; he regretted for all the rest of his life that he had not seized it and ended the snakelike Oriental then and there. The impulse came, and went. The opportunity never returned. The orator’s head dropped down upon his breast.“Go back to Sparta, go back instantly,”he spoke in a hoarse whisper.“Tell that Polyphemus you call your master there that I will do his will. And tell him, too, that if ever the day comes for vengeance on him, on the Cyprian, on you,—my vengeance will be terrible.”[pg 205]“Your slave’s ears hear the first part of your message with joy,”—Hiram’s smile never grew broader,—“the second part, which my Lord speaks in anger,—I will forget.”“Go! go!”ordered the orator, furiously. He clapped his hands. Bias reëntered.“Tell the constables I don’t need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes hither again, do you and the other slaves beat him till there is not a whole spot left on his body.”Hiram’s genuflexion was worthy of Xerxes’s court.“My Lord, as always,”was his parting compliment,“has shown himself exceeding wise.”Thus the Oriental went. In what a mood Democrates passed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing Æschylus’s song of the Furies. He could not silence it.“With scourge and with banWe prostrate the manWho with smooth-woven wileAnd a fair-facèd smileHath planted a snare for his friend!Though fleet, we shall find him;Though strong, we shall bind him,Who planted a snare for his friend!”He had intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul’s price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night scene at Colonus?The next morning he made a formal visit to the shrine of the Furies in the hill of Areopagus.“An old vow, too long deferred in payment, taken when he joined in his first con[pg 206]test on the Bema,”he explained to friends, when he visited this uncanny spot.Few were the Athenians who would pass that cleft in the Areopagus where the“Avengers”had their grim sanctuary without a quick motion of the hands to avert the evil eye. Thieves and others of evil conscience would make a wide circuit rather than pass this abode of Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone, pitiless pursuers of the guilty. The terrible sisters hounded a man through life, and after death to the judgment bar of Minos. With reason, therefore, the guilty dreaded them.Democrates had brought the proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a jagged, unhewn cranny, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright and reaching far into the sculptured rock. No image: only a few rough votive tablets set up by a grateful suppliant for some mercy from the awful goddesses.“If you would pray here,kyrie,”said the hag,“it is needful that I go forth and close the door. The holy Furies love the dark, for is not their home in Tartarus?”She went forth. As the light vanished, Democrates seemed buried in the rock. Out of the blackness spectres were springing against him. From a cleft he heard a flapping, a bat, an imprisoned bird, or Alecto’s direful wings. He held his hands downward, for he had to address infernal goddesses, and prayed in haste.“O ye sisters, terrible yet gracious, give ear. If by my[pg 207]offerings I have found favour, lift from my heart this crushing load. Deliver me from the fear of the blood guilty. Are ye not divine? Do not the immortals know all things? Ye know, then, how I was tempted, how sore was the compulsion, and how life and love were sweet. Then spare me. Give me back unhaunted slumber. Deliver me from Lycon. Give my soul peace,—and in reward, I swear it by the Styx, by Zeus’s own oath, I will build in your honour a temple by your sacred field at Colonus, where men shall gather to reverence you forever.”But here he ceased. In the darkness moved something white. Again a flapping. He was sure the white thing was Glaucon’s face. Glaucon had perished at sea. He had never been buried, so his ghost was wandering over the world, seeking vainly for rest. It all came to Democrates in an instant. His knees smote together; his teeth chattered. He sprang back upon the door and forced it open, but never saw the dove that fluttered forth with him.“A hideous place!”he cried to his waiting friends.“A man must have a stronger heart than mine to love to tarry after his prayer is finished.”Only a few days later Hellas was startled to hear that Tempē had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after the coming and going of Hiram.“There is a larger tunny in the sea than yet has entered[pg 208]the meshes,”confessed the fishmonger, sorely puzzled, after much vain talk.But Hermione was caring for none of these things. Her hands were busy with the swaddling clothes. Her thoughts only for that wicker cradle which swung betwixt the pillars, where Hermippus’s house looked toward Salamis.

All through that year to its close and again to the verge of springtime the sun made violet haze upon the hills and pure fire of the bay at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. Night by night the bird song would be stilled in the old olives along the dark waters. There Hermione would sit looking off into the void, as many another in like plight has sat and wearily waited, asking of the night and the sea the questions that are never answered. As the bay shimmered under the light of morning, she could gaze toward the brown crags of Salamis and the open Ægean beyond. The waves kept their abiding secret. The tall triremes, the red-sailed fishers’ boats, came and went from the havens of Athens, but Hermione never saw the ship that had borne away her all.

The roar and scandal following the unmasking of Glaucon had long since abated. Hermippus—himself full five years grayer on account of the calamity—had taken his daughter again to quiet Eleusis, where there was less to remind her of that terrible night at Colonus. She spent the autumn and winter in an unbroken shadow life, with only her mother and old Cleopis for companions. Reasons not yet told to the world gave her a little hope and comfort. But in mere desire to make her dark cloud break, her parents were continually giving Hermione pain. She guessed it long before her father’s wishes passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard[pg 198]him praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus’s hidden meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.

“Her Ladyship has taken on terribly, to be sure, but I told her mother‘when a fire blazes too hot, it burns out simply the faster.’Democrates is just the man to console in another year.”

“Yes,”answered the other wiseacre,“she’s far too young and pretty to stay unwedded very long. Aphrodite didn’t make her to sit as an old maid carding wool and munching beans. One can see Hermippus’s and Lysistra’s purpose with half an eye.”

“Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?”

The young mistress’s eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold front and a ready lie:

“Ei!dear little lady, don’t flash up so! I was only talking with Nania about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom.”

“I heard you quite otherwise,”was the nigh tremulous answer. But Hermione was not anxious to push matters to an issue. From the moment of Glaucon’s downfall she had believed—what even her own mother had mildly derided—that Democrates had been the author of her husband’s ruin. And now that the intent of her parents ever more clearly dawned on her, she was close upon despair. Hermippus, however,—whatever his purpose,—was considerate, nay kindly. He regarded Hermione’s feelings as pardonable, if not laudable. He would wait for time to soothe her. But the consciousness that her father purposed such a fate for her, however far postponed, was enough to double all the unanswered longing, the unstilled pain.

Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione’s sun ever rise again? Could she hope, across the end of the æons, to clasp hands even in the dim House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof, dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.

“Downward, down the long dark pathway,Past Oceanus’s great streams,Past the White Rock, past the Sun’s gatesDownward to the land of Dreams:There they reach the wide dim bordersOf the fields of asphodel,Where the spectres and the spiritsOf wan, outworn mortals dwell.”

“Downward, down the long dark pathway,

Past Oceanus’s great streams,

Past the White Rock, past the Sun’s gates

Downward to the land of Dreams:

There they reach the wide dim borders

Of the fields of asphodel,

Where the spectres and the spirits

Of wan, outworn mortals dwell.”

But was this the home of Glaucon the Fair; should the young, the strong, the pure in heart, share one condemnation with the mean and the guilty? Homer the Wise left all hid. Yet he told of some not doomed to the common lot. Thus ran the promise to Menelaus, espoused to Helen.

“Far away the gods shall bear you:To the fair Elysian plains,Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly,Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns:Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter,But clear zephyrs from the west,Singing round the streams of OceanRound the islands of the Blest.”

“Far away the gods shall bear you:

To the fair Elysian plains,

Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly,

Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns:

Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter,

But clear zephyrs from the west,

Singing round the streams of Ocean

Round the islands of the Blest.”

Was the pledge for Menelaus only?

The boats came, the boats went, on the blue bay. But as the spring grew warm, Hermione thought less of them, less almost of the last dread vision of Glaucon.

* * * * * * *

The cloud of the Persian hung ever darkening over Athens.[pg 200]Continual rumours made Xerxes’s power terrible even beyond fact. It was hard to go on eating, drinking, frequenting the jury or the gymnasium, when men knew to a certainty the coming summer would bring Athens face to face with slavery or destruction. Wise men grew silent. Fools took to carousing to banish care. But one word not the frailest uttered—“submission.”Worldly prudence forbade that. The women would have stabbed the craven to death with their bodkins. For the women were braver than the men. They knew the fate of conquered Ionia: for the men only merciful death, for the women the living death of the Persian harems and indignities words may not utter. Whether Hellas forsook her or aided, Athens had chosen her fate. Xerxes might annihilate her. Conquer her he could not.

Yet the early spring came back sweetly as ever. The warm breeze blew from Egypt. Philomela sang in the olive groves. The snows on Pentelicus faded. Around the city ran bands of children singing the“swallow’s song,”and beseeching the spring donation of honey cakes:—

“She is here, she is here, the swallow;Fair seasons bringing,—fair seasons to follow.”

“She is here, she is here, the swallow;

Fair seasons bringing,—fair seasons to follow.”

And many a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, better fate, in Orchus.

Yet to one woman that spring there came consolation. On Hermippus’s door hung a glad olive wreath. Hermione had borne a son.“The fairest babe she had ever seen,”cried the midwife.“Phœnix,”the mother called him,“for in him shall Glaucon the Beautiful live again.”Democrates sent a runner every day to Eleusis to inquire for Hermione until all danger was passed. On the“name-day,”ten days[pg 201]after the birth, he was absent from the gathering of friends and kinsmen, but sent a valuable statuette to Hermione, who left it, however, to her father to thank him.

The day after Phœnix was born old Conon, Glaucon’s father, died. The old man had never recovered from the blow given by the dishonourable death of the son with whom he had so lately quarrelled. He left a great landed estate at Marathon to his new-born grandson. The exact value thereof Democrates inquired into sharply, and when a distant cousin talked of contesting the will, the orator announced he would defend the infant’s rights. The would-be plaintiff withdrew at once, not anxious to cross swords with this favourite of the juries, and everybody said that Democrates was showing a most scrupulous regard for his unfortunate friend’s memory.

Indeed, seemingly, Democrates ought to have been the happiest man in Athens. He had been elected“strategus,”to serve on the board of generals along with Themistocles. He had plenty of money, and gave great banquets to this or that group of prominent citizens. During the winter he had asked Hermippus for his daughter in marriage. The Eumolpid told him that since Glaucon’s fearful end, he was welcome as a son-in-law. Still he could not conceal that Hermione never spoke of him save in hate, and in view of her then delicate condition it was well not to press the matter. The orator had seemed well content.“Woman’s fantasies would wear away in time.”But the rumour of this negotiation, outrunning truth, grew into the lying report of an absolute betrothal,—the report which was to drift to Asia and turn Glaucon’s heart to stone, gossip having always wrought more harm than malignant lying.

Yet flies were in Democrates’s sweet ointment. He knew Themistocles hardly trusted him as frankly as of yore.[pg 202]Little Simonides, a man of wide influence and keen insight, treated him very coldly. Cimon had cooled also. But worse than all was a haunting dread. Democrates knew, if hardly another in Hellas, that the Cyprian—in other words Mardonius—was safe in Asia, and likewise that he had fled on theSolon. Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates night and day.

Still he was beginning to shake off his terrors. He believed he had washed his hands fairly clean of his treason, even if the water had cost his soul. He joined with all his energies in seconding Themistocles. His voice was loudest at the Pnyx, counselling resistance. He went on successful embassies to Sicyon and Ægina to get pledges of alliance. In the summer he did his uttermost to prepare the army which Themistocles and Evænetus the Spartan led to defend the pass of Tempē. The expedition sailed amid high hopes for a noble defence of Hellas. Democrates was proud and sanguine. Then, like a thunderbolt, there came one night a knock at his door. Bias led to his master no less a visitor than the sleek and smiling Phœnician—Hiram.

The orator tried to cover his terrors by windy bluster. He broke in before the Oriental could finish his elaborate salaam.

“Of all the harpies and gorgons you are the least welcome. Were you not warned when you fled Athens for Argos never to show your face in Attica again?”

“Your Excellency said so,”was the bland reply.

“Admirably you obey it. It remains for me to reward the obedience. Bias, go to the street; summon two Scythian watchmen.”

The Thracian darted out. Hiram simply stood with hands folded.

“It is well, Excellency, the lad is gone. I have many things to say in confidence to your Nobility. At Lacedæmon my Lord Lycon was gracious enough to give certain commands for me to transmit to you.”

“Commands? To me? Earth and gods! am I to be commanded by an adder like you? You shall pay for this on the rack.”

“Your slave thinks otherwise,”observed Hiram, humbly.“If your Lordship will deign to read this letter, it will save your slave many words and your Lordship many cursings.”

He knelt again before he offered a papyrus. Democrates would rather have taken fire, but he could not refuse. And thus he read:—

“Lycon of Lacedæmon to Democrates of Athens, greeting:—Can he who Medizes in the summer Hellenize in the spring? I know your zeal for Themistocles. Was it for this we plucked you back from exposure and ruin? Do then as Hiram bids you, or repay the money you clutched so eagerly. Fail not, or rest confident all the documents you betrayed shall go to Hypsichides the First Archon, your enemy. Use then your eloquence on Attic juries! But you will grow wise; what need of me to threaten? You will hearken to Hiram.

“From Sparta, on the festival of Bellerophon, in the ephorship of Theudas.—Chaire!”

Democrates folded the papyrus and stood long, biting his whitened lips in silence. Perhaps he had surmised the intent of the letter the instant Hiram extended it.

“What do you desire?”he said thickly, at last.

“Let my Lord then hearken—”began the Phœnician, to be interrupted by the sudden advent of Bias.

“The Scythians are at the door,kyrie,”he was shouting;“shall I order them in and drag this lizard out by the tail?”

“No, in Zeus’s name, no! Bid them keep without. And do you go also. This honest fellow is on private business which only I must hear.”

Bias slammed the door. Perhaps he stood listening. Hiram, at least, glided nearer to his victim and spoke in a smooth whisper, taking no chances of an eavesdropper.

“Excellency, the desire of Lycon is this. The army has been sent to Tempē. At Lacedæmon Lycon used all his power to prevent its despatch, but Leonidas is omnipotent to-day in Sparta, and besides, since Lycon’s calamity at the Isthmia, his prestige, and therefore his influence, is not a little abated. Nevertheless, the army must be recalled from Tempē.”

“And the means?”

“Yourself, Excellency. It is within your power to find a thousand good reasons why Themistocles and Evænetus should retreat. And you will do so at once, Excellency.”

“Do not think you and your accursed masters can drive me from infamy to infamy. I can be terrible if pushed to bay.”

“Your Nobility has read Lycon’s letter,”observed the Phœnician, with folded arms.

There was a sword lying on the tripod by which Democrates stood; he regretted for all the rest of his life that he had not seized it and ended the snakelike Oriental then and there. The impulse came, and went. The opportunity never returned. The orator’s head dropped down upon his breast.

“Go back to Sparta, go back instantly,”he spoke in a hoarse whisper.“Tell that Polyphemus you call your master there that I will do his will. And tell him, too, that if ever the day comes for vengeance on him, on the Cyprian, on you,—my vengeance will be terrible.”

“Your slave’s ears hear the first part of your message with joy,”—Hiram’s smile never grew broader,—“the second part, which my Lord speaks in anger,—I will forget.”

“Go! go!”ordered the orator, furiously. He clapped his hands. Bias reëntered.

“Tell the constables I don’t need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes hither again, do you and the other slaves beat him till there is not a whole spot left on his body.”

Hiram’s genuflexion was worthy of Xerxes’s court.

“My Lord, as always,”was his parting compliment,“has shown himself exceeding wise.”

Thus the Oriental went. In what a mood Democrates passed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing Æschylus’s song of the Furies. He could not silence it.

“With scourge and with banWe prostrate the manWho with smooth-woven wileAnd a fair-facèd smileHath planted a snare for his friend!Though fleet, we shall find him;Though strong, we shall bind him,Who planted a snare for his friend!”

“With scourge and with ban

We prostrate the man

Who with smooth-woven wile

And a fair-facèd smile

Hath planted a snare for his friend!

Though fleet, we shall find him;

Though strong, we shall bind him,

Who planted a snare for his friend!”

He had intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul’s price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night scene at Colonus?

The next morning he made a formal visit to the shrine of the Furies in the hill of Areopagus.“An old vow, too long deferred in payment, taken when he joined in his first con[pg 206]test on the Bema,”he explained to friends, when he visited this uncanny spot.

Few were the Athenians who would pass that cleft in the Areopagus where the“Avengers”had their grim sanctuary without a quick motion of the hands to avert the evil eye. Thieves and others of evil conscience would make a wide circuit rather than pass this abode of Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone, pitiless pursuers of the guilty. The terrible sisters hounded a man through life, and after death to the judgment bar of Minos. With reason, therefore, the guilty dreaded them.

Democrates had brought the proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a jagged, unhewn cranny, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright and reaching far into the sculptured rock. No image: only a few rough votive tablets set up by a grateful suppliant for some mercy from the awful goddesses.

“If you would pray here,kyrie,”said the hag,“it is needful that I go forth and close the door. The holy Furies love the dark, for is not their home in Tartarus?”

She went forth. As the light vanished, Democrates seemed buried in the rock. Out of the blackness spectres were springing against him. From a cleft he heard a flapping, a bat, an imprisoned bird, or Alecto’s direful wings. He held his hands downward, for he had to address infernal goddesses, and prayed in haste.

“O ye sisters, terrible yet gracious, give ear. If by my[pg 207]offerings I have found favour, lift from my heart this crushing load. Deliver me from the fear of the blood guilty. Are ye not divine? Do not the immortals know all things? Ye know, then, how I was tempted, how sore was the compulsion, and how life and love were sweet. Then spare me. Give me back unhaunted slumber. Deliver me from Lycon. Give my soul peace,—and in reward, I swear it by the Styx, by Zeus’s own oath, I will build in your honour a temple by your sacred field at Colonus, where men shall gather to reverence you forever.”

But here he ceased. In the darkness moved something white. Again a flapping. He was sure the white thing was Glaucon’s face. Glaucon had perished at sea. He had never been buried, so his ghost was wandering over the world, seeking vainly for rest. It all came to Democrates in an instant. His knees smote together; his teeth chattered. He sprang back upon the door and forced it open, but never saw the dove that fluttered forth with him.

“A hideous place!”he cried to his waiting friends.“A man must have a stronger heart than mine to love to tarry after his prayer is finished.”

Only a few days later Hellas was startled to hear that Tempē had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after the coming and going of Hiram.

“There is a larger tunny in the sea than yet has entered[pg 208]the meshes,”confessed the fishmonger, sorely puzzled, after much vain talk.

But Hermione was caring for none of these things. Her hands were busy with the swaddling clothes. Her thoughts only for that wicker cradle which swung betwixt the pillars, where Hermippus’s house looked toward Salamis.

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