Glaucon, the statesman and soldier, walked homeward from the Prytaneum where the city had received certain strangers of note, envoys to Athens. With him moved Theodorus the sculptor, and behind the two several attendant slaves. The air was fine, with a breeze from the sea. Theodorus made his companion remark the light that fell upon Mount Lycabettus. Glaucon looked and said that the effect was good, but said it in a tone of abstraction. His mind was yet in the Prytaneum, engaged with his speech that the occasion had prompted. Glaucon’s phrases yet echoed in Glaucon’s ears. They had been good phrases and Glaucon thought them good. He would have judged “sententious” and “strong” to be applicable words. Those, and “at times eloquence, like the light upon Mount Lycabettus.” Yet was the statesman Glaucon by no means impudent of his merit nor a common braggart. He had spoken well and for the right as he saw it, and he saw more than many. And behind what Glaucon said stood, for men to see, many known courageous acts of Glaucon.
The two lived near the Diomean Gate. Now, making way through the crowded streets, the hour being one when men were abroad, they reached a palæstra and saw about to enter several of their acquaintance—Lycias the poet, Ion, Lysander, Hippodamus, and others. These called to the two to enter also and observe Thracian wrestlers. Allwent in together and, mingled with a crowd, watched the mighty-thewed. When the match was over the group, leaving the palæstra, but still talking of the body and its powers, went along until there was reached the small temple of Hestia. Here the steps rose invitingly free of the crowd, and the space between the pillars smiled and invited. The light yet shone upon the mountains and upon the temples of the Acropolis. Lycias and Theodorus would pause and in the porch of Hestia continue the conversation while observing the beauty of the evening. Glaucon remarked that he had business at home. “Let it take its rest!” said Lycias. “You are a poet, also, Glaucon, and a painter and a maker of statues—just as I converse familiarly with envoys and undoubtedly fought at Megara, though I cannot just now recall having done so! Every man sacrifices in every temple. Stay and put up your hands to beauty, and let business go throw herself down from the wall!”
“He was only a moment ago a poet,” said Theodorus. “You should have heard him at the Prytaneum upon Justice!”
They turned into the porch of Hestia. Despite the light upon the temples, and despite the interposed action of the wrestling match, Glaucon, in an inner voice, was yet saying over this or that part of the Prytaneum speech. The difference lay in the fact that he was now saying them over to Myrina.
“An encomium?” asked Ion.
“You would have thought it a voice from the Golden Age!”
Glaucon’s ears and at last Glaucon’s mind caught the statement of Theodorus and were pleased thereby. Heturned from the praise-honey that Myrina would serve to the immediate feast.
“I love to hear,” said Hippodamus, “lovers speak of love, poets of poetry, physicians of healing, soldiers of soldiering, and legislators of the relations between states and among men.”
“Oh!” cried Lycias. “Glaucon is a lover, too.”
“Who is the youth?” asked Ion.
Laughter arose. “Ion is newly come to town—he does not know! Address your question, Ion, to Glaucon.”
“I will save him the trouble, Lycias,” said Glaucon. “Know, Ion, that I am like the barbarians and hold in hatred affection in that kind.”
“But say to Glaucon the word Myrina—”
“Who is Myrina?”
“Myrina is a woman.—Lysander the silent, have you seen the new colonnade by the temple of Æsculapius?”
“Knock! Knock!” quoth Lycias. “Doorkeeper and dog say ‘Not at home!’—Now, in the speech at the Prytaneum—Oh, here he is at home! Oh, voice from the Golden Age, discourse to us anew of Justice!”
“I said of Justice,” answered Glaucon, “what a man of knowledge should say.”
“He will not tell!—Veil your face, O Glaucon, for I am not modest for my friend!—Diocles and Timotheus overcrowed the envoys with the glories of the Athenian state. They sat with a downward look, and saw on the earth their bound hopes. Then arose Glaucon, and Apollo inspired him.”
“Fighting for the envoys and their country?”
“By Apollo!” said Glaucon, “fighting for the right of things!”
“First, good as any rhapsode, he gave five lines from Homer! Then he spoke of his own motion, or of Apollo’s motion. He would have Justice reign over the countries of men, and none take advantage of his neighbour!”
“Hmmm!”
“So sounded the Prytaneum.—I find that I cannot give all his arguments, but they were good ones. There was opposition—not from the envoys; they breathed softly and seemed to feel the warmth of the sun after winter—but Diocles and Timotheus and their following drove in in a mighty counter-current. Then might you have seen Odysseus fight the seas!”
“Justice—”
“Later he brought in friendship and alliance, and the love of a friend for the true and the beautiful in his friend, and the friend’s desire that always his friend should lift with him. So that, climbing the mountain, one should not cry down to another, ‘Lo, now the sea opens before me! lo, now I see all Hellas!’ while the other cries sorrowfully up to him, ‘Still am I in the woods and briars and among the caves!’ He made application to states.”
“By Ares!” interrupted Hippodamus, “that is not the way I look at it!”
“No, Hippodamus. But that makes appeal to Glaucon. He made application to states, and, inspired by Apollo, he laid down a principle. The true lover of man will have man free and noble wherever he be found. The true statesman wishes as much for every state.”
“Father Zeus!” cried Hippodamus, “would you have Sparta, who is already as brave, become as wise as we? This little, weak country does not matter, but Sparta—!”
“I am not speaking, Hippodamus, but Glaucon—Glaucon speaks. ‘The great friend, that is to say the great statesman, denies to none place and garlands! He says to none, “Lie forever on the mat at my door, be forever dog at my heels!”’Says Glaucon, ‘Shall a state withdraw wisdom from another state, leaving it dark of knowledge so that that state no longer knows how best to help itself? Shall a state be jealous of wisdom in a fellow state? Shall a state turn aside from its fellow the rivers of wealth? Shall it say, “Mine are all the rivers! Not for you ease of your own!” Shall a state desire to soften the body of its fellow? Shall it say, “Not for you gymnastic nor the diet of the strong! So, if we come to battle, you will not see the glint of any god’s eye, standing in your ranks! No! But you shall shamefully flee, and I will have you in laughter, and my heart will swell with pride where I stand fast.” Shall a state work that, or wish to work that, toward its fellow? Shall a state say to its fellow, “Be fair for me, send me dancers and flute-players, send me grapes from your vineyards and wine from your wine presses, be for me rich views and pleasant ports, grow wheat for me, send me marble out of which I may carve the forms of the gods, but move not of yourself nor for yourself! Be much if you will, but be not free!”—O Apollo! O Apollo! Thy arrow that is drawn against that thus-speaking state was made by Justice in her deep cave at the head of the world! Turn—turn—turn, thus-speaking state! Make libations, pray for nobility!’”
Theodorus the sculptor looked again at the light upon Mount Lycabettus. “Something like that was what Glaucon said.”
Lycias spoke. “By Pallas, a good speech!—But now propound—Does Athens take into alliance the country that sent the envoys?”
Said suddenly Lysander the silent: “I came by the cross streets from the Agora and overtook an acquaintance who had been at the Prytaneum in the train of the Archon Timotheus. He said that he would stake his fortune that Athens would do no such thing!”
“Father Zeus! I should think not!” said Hippodamus.
“Oh, then,” said Lycias, “Glaucon spoke in a dream to dream-listeners!”
Glaucon looked at the light that was now but a thin crown upon the mountains. “I think that I was dreaming,” he said. “I have strange dreams sometimes!” He gathered his mantle about him.—“Theodorus, are you for home?”
The two left the porch and, the slaves attending, went away in the purple twilight toward the Diomean Gate. Lycias and the others followed them with their eyes.
“Who is Myrina?” again asked Ion the stranger.
“How short a while have you been in Athens!—Myrina! Ask the first street urchin you meet! He will say to you: ‘O Arcadian, for sense and wit the hetæræ are among women as is Hellas among countries! As is Athens to other cities of the Hellenes so is Myrina (and one or two others) among the hetæræ. For the rest,’ continues your urchin, ‘she is now the mistress of Glaucon the statesman.’”
“Is Glaucon wived?”
“‘O thou Arcadian!’ says the street urchin, shaking his finger, ‘what of that? Know, O woodland stranger, that wives are to bear us children that we may reasonably believe to be our own, and likewise to keep in order our houses. Hetæræ are for delight. Shall not a Hellene have children, house-order, and delight?’ Then will he gather his rags together and depart, shaking his head.”
“Let us, too, depart,” said Lysander the silent. “Thelight is fading, and there is a mist gathering over the earth.”
In the mean time Glaucon and Theodorus pursued their way along a street not now so crowded. “Why do you not sup with Myrina?” asked the sculptor.
“That is for to-morrow.—To-night there is drudgery at home. I have made a trading venture to Egypt and to-night the master of the ship is to meet me and give account.”
“Cannot Cleita—?”
“Cleita!—No, she keeps household accounts, but this is man’s work.”
They came, as they spoke, to the portico of Glaucon’s house. Those that lounged there sprang up to greet the master; the doorkeeper opened both leaves of the door. The two entered, were brought water for hands and feet, had the dust brushed from their garments. A dog came and sprang upon Glaucon, giving welcome. The master enquired for supper. It was ready, and the two proceeded to the banquet-room. Presently came the master of the ship trading to Egypt. Glaucon had a couch placed for him. Moschus the shipmaster muttered something about plain men and being at a loss among gentlemen ways, then, taking the couch, reclined with an air of listening for the steersman’s call. Supper was brought, and after food wine in a great cup. The talk was of the sea-master’s adventures, for he was dead on other sides. But he could well discourse of these, and of ships and cargoes and harbour merchants, and he knew the middle sea from Tyre to the Pillars of Hercules; and had glimpsed the River-Ocean beyond. In his talk was spice of perils withstood, and of action in the breadths and narrows of the sea. Also, richterms of commerce rose like fair islets or played like dolphins.
Glaucon and Theodorus found enjoyment in the talk of Moschus, widening knowledge. “O Hermes!” cried Glaucon, “I think that I also have built a boat and adventured, and borne metals and weapons and oil and wine afar in trade! How good it is for man to widen until he brings all within his ring!”
Moschus at last produced his tablets and the talk fell to one voyage’s profit and loss. Theodorus dozed over his wine. Then Moschus and Glaucon concluded their business, and Moschus, standing up, thanked Glaucon for good entertainment, and would go to his inn until dawn light upon the road to Phalerum. Shaking off sleep, Theodorus declared he would accompany him, for he had yet to hear about mermaiden. Sculptor and shipmaster went away together. Glaucon drank wine and talked with a trusted servant, then rising from the couch left the banquet-room and went to the women’s part of the house. Here he found Cleita in tears.
He sat down beside her. “What is the matter, Cleita?”
Cleita continuing to weep, Gorgo her maid undertook to answer. “O Glaucon, my master, we do not know! I have asked her. Lycia here has asked her, Daphne has asked her. For a long time she has been pining—We would have her see the physician, but she says she has no suffering in her body—”
Cleita drew toward her a scarf of Egyptian linen and with it wiped her eyes. “I am tired of this house and these maids!”
“Do you wish to go out to the farm for a time?”
“I am tired of that house and those maids!”
“What, then, Cleita, do you wish to do?”
Cleita wept afresh. “O ye gods, I do not know!”
Glaucon drew a breath and prayed for patience. “Be a reasonable woman, Cleita! Discontent without knowing why—wanting things without knowing what—is not reason!”
Cleita raised her head. “All day you have been going up and down and to and fro! You have been entertained.”
“Entertainment is not all in life, my Cleita.”
“That, my master,” said Gorgo, “is just what we have been telling her!”
“I never said that it was;” said Cleita. She wrapped her head in the Egyptian scarf and again dropped it upon her arms.
Glaucon seriously considered her. “Have you not the children, Cleita? Have you not the management of the house?”
“That,” said Gorgo, “is unanswerable!”
Glaucon sat upon the edge of the couch. “The gods, Cleita, have parted one way of life to women and another to men. Will you deny the gods wisdom? All of us, at times, know discontent. The soldier thinks his life hard, the statesman often would lay down his cares, the mechanic grumbles, the servant repines. But the gods have willed degrees and duties. If women—if Athenian wives and mothers—went abroad from the house, if they were seen by all men everywhere, if we met them in the streets, the market-place, the theatre, the school, the palæstra, where not, there would arise in the state great confusion! In a short while we should be no better than barbarians! But the gods have set comely bounds for women, as they have given to men freedom under the sky. Strive not against thedecrees of the gods! Cease this hungering and fretting for what is not good for you. There is impiety, O my Cleita, in your discontent!”
Gorgo drew a breath of rapture. “We do not need to go to Delphi!”
“Uncover your head, Cleita,” said Glaucon. “Sit up and cease this weeping!”
Cleita lay still. Then she raised herself upon her elbow, and drew the linen a little aside. “Myrina—”
“O Eros, give me patience!” thought Glaucon. He stood up. “Myrina—?”
“Myrina lives free. The hetæræ have joy and light.”
“I am speaking,” said Glaucon, “not of hetæræ, but of Athenian wives and mothers.” Cleita again sank her head. Glaucon, regarding her, strove at once to be master and wise. “You are a child, Cleita! If you smother there, you have yourself to thank!”
Nothing further coming from beneath the linen, he turned, after waiting until he was assured that it would come not, and left the gynecæum. Going, he said to himself, “She is a child! To-morrow I will buy her some basket or fan or piece of silk.”
Once more in the banquet-room he sat down and fingered the tablets covered with the accounting of Moschus the shipmaster. At last he pushed these aside, and with his elbows upon the table brought together his hands and rested his brow upon them. “Myrina—Myrina—Myrina! Deep and flowing and ever about me like River-Ocean—”
Myrina, from her own house, bought with earned gold, watched, too, that day, the light upon Mount Lycabettus. She saw it caress the temples upon the Acropolis, and of thegreat statue of Athena make a torch, a star, blazing gold. Myrina, walking in her garden, had driven a thorn into her unsandalled foot. After three days it yet troubled her, and this day she would go to the temple of Æsculapius. She went in an adorned litter, borne by slaves, her nurse beside her, behind her more slaves. The litter’s curtains were partly drawn aside. Athens might see a beautiful woman within, and, coming closer, demanding of those who knew, learn that it was Myrina.... Respect—they gave it in seeming abundance. Here was a learned and fair and rich woman, with great men for lovers! Gradually there grew about and behind the moving litter a crowd of the well-beseen. Dion walked upon one side, Simonides upon the other. Myrina spoke of the thorn in her foot, and the temple of Æsculapius, and then of a new poet and a new song and a new statue and a new comedy. She had rich laughter; she span a ball of warmth, and far and wide made it, rose-hued, enclose herself and all that approached. When they came to the temple of Dionysus, Daphnis and Menalcas and Strephon joined the procession of the litter. When they came to the plane trees and the colonnade and the court of the temple of Æsculapius the slaves brought the litter close to the ground. Forth stepped Myrina and halted upon one foot. Arms were outstretched, Strephon’s and Daphnis’s eyes brightened, they flushed rosy-red when she rested hand upon either, used them as staves for support. Priests of Æsculapius came to meet the rich train. Here was an inner court where a fountain bubbled clearly and flowers diffused their odours, and here were seats of marble for patients of high note. Myrina sat, and her nurse, kneeling, drew off the sandal. The light struck upon and made bright copper of Myrina’s red-brown head.
The physician came, examined the foot, at last drew out the troubling thorn. “By Pallas!” said Myrina, “that goes better!—I dreamed, last night, Hippias, an old dream of mine. I fought a beast with fire in a wood. What, servant of Æsculapius, do you think that that signifies?”
“I think that it signifies, Myrina, that you dreamed that you fought a beast with fire in a wood.”
“Not so! I took the dream to a soothsayer. He asked me where I would go this day, and when I told him, he said that the wood signified the new colonnade, the beast the thorn in my foot, and the fire the art of Æsculapius. O Proteus’s daughter, by name Interpretation! What marvels dost thou work!”
Myrina stood up. “Give me the pearl, Xanthus! Now will I go to the altar and make thank-offering.”
The altar was reached and the altar was left by way of the main court with the colonnade around it, and all about, in the sun and in the shade, reclining or seated or standing, the many who would consult the servants of Æsculapius. Here were men and here were women, and the patients were attended by friends and kindred or by slaves. By all save the too much suffering the train of Myrina was watched across and across the temple court. Especially did Athenian wives and daughters watch the courtesan, watch with a keen and jealous look!
Myrina, going homeward, drew her train with her. It was then that she marked the light upon Mount Lycabettus. At her own portico she sent away the following. No, none might enter! She was not to-night for wine and song and flowers. The slaves bore her litter through the doors; the doorkeeper brought clangorously to the leaves, dropped in place the iron bars. Those who had convoyedher home fell back, turned in the narrow street, and went off with grumbling, laughter, and singing. “Nowadays, nowadays, only Glaucon lives in the world!”
In her chamber, when the lights had been brought, Myrina said to the old woman, Phrygia, her nurse: “Athenians should teach their wives better manners! I feel as if I had been bathed in vinegar!”
“They are jealous, and they would be scornful,” said Phrygia, fastening the sandal.
“Poor, dull, wing-clipped, house-kept wrens and sparrows!”
“You are proud and would be scornful!” said Phrygia.
“Is it not something to be not as they are?”
“A many women are slaves and poor,” said old Phrygia. “And another many are these wives of free Hellenes, liking not bright birds loose in the barnyard, while they have a chain at the foot! And another many are the courtesans. But these struggle among themselves, and if their beauty goes not even their wit can save them.”
“Mother Demeter! How many have beauty and wit?”
“Lo, you, now,” said old Phrygia, “how the bright bird sings! Where the dark is for so many, can you hold the light?”
“Glaucon—Glaucon!”
“You care for naught beside if only you have Glaucon!”
“Is there aught beside?”
“Were all the world afire, so that the light made your toy to shine—! So have been others before you and will be after you, mistress!”
Myrina lay down to sleep amid lambs’ wool and fine Egyptian linen. In the bright dawn she waked and layregarding from her warm bed the room that the dawn turned a pale rose. Out from the wall was placed a statue of the old-and-young god Eros, and it was a marvellous piece of work, and Myrina’s eyes caressed it. The warmth of the bed was good, the clear rose feel of the room, the just-heard, slow breathing of the two slave-girls sleeping at the door. Myrina lay still and indolent. It was good not to have to go forth and fend for food, whether for yourself or for others.... Glaucon—Glaucon!... Warmth and idleness wove ten thousand magic chains.
Yesterday he had not come because he had been at the Prytaneum. Her mind opened upon that place. The Prytaneum ... the House of the central hearth, of the sacred fire, the formal “Home” of the people. When colonies went forth the men took a brand from the hearth of the Prytaneum, kindled afar another hearth and built around it a Prytaneum. The City Hearth, Hall, Home—the Country Hearth—the Hearth and Middle Fire.... Myrina, lying in the room that was like a shell tossed upon a silver bank, filled only with the dream sound of dream tides, saw as it were the hearth afar, and the forms around it, that were all the forms of men, for men made that hearth to glow and burn.
Myrina turned upon her arm.
Later in the morning she rose and bathed, and the slave-girls put upon her a festival dress. To-day was to be held a celebration, choice and beautiful, before the Temple of Athena of the Victory. Myrina would go observe it, and perhaps afterwards for a little excursion beyond the walls, beside the shady Ilissus. Glaucon would not come till sunset—the day must somehow be passed!
Athena of the Victory and her throng helped by thelimping hours. When there was no more good to be gotten there Myrina proceeded in her litter, slave-borne, through the southern Gate, and so on to the cool, brown stream, plane- and olive-shaded. Here, descending from the litter, she sat upon a rich cloth that they spread for her beneath a tree, huge, with mossed trunk and branches where the cicadas were making music. With her were Dion and Simonides, Phrygia her nurse, and a Thessalian slave-girl. Dion had a roll overwritten with poems. He read, and they discussed the verses that were read.
Came by an unsandalled man with a grey beard, and gave them good-day beneath the tree. “Good-day, Myrina the fair woman!”
“Good-day, Myrrhus the philosopher! Will you drink with me a cup of wine?”
“That will I!” said Myrrhus, “and with thanks for the boon!”
The slaves poured the wine, and the philosopher drank. Said Myrina: “Dion and Simonides and I were disputing—Make me a gift in return, O Myrrhus, and answer three questions.”
“If I may, I will, Myrina the fair. What is the first?”
“Why, Myrrhus, when the sculptors make great forms of goddesses who are women, and why, when the poets write with so great beauty of goddesses who are women, and why when all hearts grant to these, who are surely women, power and attributes, why do the Hellenes rate women so low?”
“Those others,” said Myrrhus, “are Olympian women.”
“Am I answered?—This is the second question. Does Æschylus speak truly for Apollo when he causes him to say—
“‘The mother bears, but never truly makes the child,Only the father makes’?”
“‘The mother bears, but never truly makes the child,Only the father makes’?”
“‘The mother bears, but never truly makes the child,Only the father makes’?”
“I, O Myrina, am not a poet but a philosopher.—So Æschylus said Apollo said.—Women cry to Demeter for many things, but never, that I heard of, for vengeance upon Æschylus! So, none objecting, it must be true.”
The cicadas made music in the tree. Myrina regarded the dust at her feet. She laughed, a dry sound like the cicadas’ tune. “Low things, rated lowly, put up low claims.—Give me wine, Xanthus.”
Dion, who, and he might, would have had Glaucon’s place, whispered to her, “You are not as other women, but sit among the Olympians.”
Myrina drank wine, and drank self-praise and lover’s praise, and laughed again, this time with loosened and golden throat. “Here, O Myrrhus, is the third and easy question!—What is wisdom?”
“Wisdom is to lift ourselves from ourselves.—And now, Myrina, having given gift for gift, I go on to the feast at the house of Callicles the sophist.”
Myrina, too, looked at the sun. “It is in the Glaucon quarter!” she cried to herself. Going homeward, she seemed to listen, but was not listening to those beside her. “Glaucon—Glaucon—Glaucon—Glaucon—”
With the last light upon the mountains came Glaucon. Much Athenian business had filled his day, but now he was here, white-robed, garlanded and bright-eyed, with arms that strained, with lips that pressed. Myrina’s arms strained back, Myrina’s lips pressed his lips. “I love you!” said Myrina. “I love you!”
They sat in a flower-decked room, and though Myrina had flute-girls playing in the distance, and though slavescame and went bringing dishes and wine, they heeded these not.
“I love you!”
“I love you!”
“I love you most!”
“No, I love you most!”
There was something in the word “most” that brought them back to it. That was when they had eaten, though sparingly, when dishes had been taken away but wine left, when the flute-girls cascading endlessly sweet sound, seemed to go farther away, when the slaves had been dismissed after bringing perfumed lamps, when there was before them the round dark pearl of the richer night.
“You love me not as I love you!”
“Ah, Glaucon!—Ah, Glaucon!”
“Did you love me as I love you—You were in my mind all day—”
“And were you not in my mind?”
“I know that you went to Athena of the Victory. And then you would fare farther forth, be a nymph of Ilissus—”
“Were you not in my mind for all that?”
“No!It is not so that you would take absence, did you love me truly!”
“Did you not do many things this day? Yesterday also? Yet you swear that you love me!”
“That is a man’s work. That must go on.—But you, alas! You rove in a garden for pleasure!”
“You speak less than the truth!”
“Was not Dion beside you? By Hermes, I bear his footfall beside your litter!”
“If he was, what then? Am I not free?”
“Free? Who is free that loves? I have tied your chains about my heart. Drag free, if you can!”
“If I love you not, I am free!”
“So you love me not, but love Dion!”
“Take your hand from me!—What fiends are you men!”
“No! But you are fiends—”
“Loved—loved—”
“Loved—”
“Glaucon—Glaucon!”
“Myrina—Myrina—Myrina!”
The two embraced with a stormy passion. They held each other’s hands. The fluting, fluting of the musicians, far among the columns, hidden by flowering bushes, sounded sweet as springtime on Olympus. “I have loved you from the first!”—“And I you!”—“I will love you always!”—“And I you!”
Spring joy, fair harmony, held while the moon without mounted above the olive trees. Then, little by little, again the voices grew iron and poison came into the taste.
“But if you loved me—!”
“But if you loved me—!”
“Dion’s footfall beside your litter.... Strephon’s music in your ear! Every day, through Athens, goes your litter, and there is drawn a throng. On high days, at spectacles, you are pointed out to strangers. There is Myrina, that Glaucon the statesman thinks loves him—”
“I would not live indoors like a wife—sampling the sun only under favour!”
“I would that the law held you by the arm as it does the wife—”
“Father Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—these three have parted among them earth, sea, and sky! Beneath Olympus,they have given to men their favourites, earth and sea and sky! Now, what will men give to women? Their love!—Oh, oh, their love!”
“Woman’s love? What is that? It is craft—it is sold for ease! Love from the snake—love from the fox—”
“Maybe so, man the wolf!”
“Will you forbid Dion and these others your company? Will you stay closely in the house, go not abroad?”
“And live not till you come? And live only when you come?”
“Yes!”
“No!”
Myrina and Glaucon stood over against each other, each breathing hard. Then cried Glaucon, “You are false! I hear no music in this house to-night, smell no flowers!” He lifted his robed arm between them, burst from the room, called to his slave Milo. Myrina heard the doorkeeper opening the door at his imperious word. Glaucon was gone in black anger and jealousy.
The nurse Phrygia came into the room, and found Myrina seated, Asian fashion, upon the floor before the marble figure of Aphrodite.
“Phrygia,” said Myrina, “men and women are beings without reason.”
“Will you send for him back?”
“Will he come?”
“If you give him his way.... It is dangerous for you to quarrel with a man who is a statesman and giver of laws! In Athens the hetæræ live free and esteemed. Change may come; I would have you beware!”
“Glaucon—Glaucon—Glaucon—Glaucon!... I will not send.”
“Ah, woman, yes, you will!” said Phrygia.
Light rose, light fell, rose, fell, rose—Glaucon returned not. Myrina went abroad to temple and spectacle. The great in Athens came about her; she used beauty and wit and a kind, even, of goodness—and all the time her heart ached and ached and said, “Glaucon—Glaucon—Glaucon!”
The third day she did not go out, but sat all day upon the floor before the statue of Aphrodite.
In the evening Phrygia brought her food. “You are growing hollow-eyed. If you lose your beauty, night comes down without a star!”
“Glaucon—Glaucon!”
Phyrgia sat down the silver dish. “Listen, mistress,—send for Glaucon—promise him all he wishes—forswear for him the light of the sun and the company, were it so, of the blessed gods! What! No state of affairs lives forever! His pride is fed—mayhap next month he will leave you free again! Demeter knows we all are children! Yet we must live and keep the red in our cheeks and the light in our eyes.... Man is master, but we can manage the master.”
“All slaves alike.”
“Give in, and gain the more—”
“Wolf and snake and fox.”
“Or, if you do not love him, let him go.”
“How can I do that? I know not the trick.”
“Say one word only, and I will put myself in the way to find him.... Say naught, then! Stay only as you are.”
“For the throne of Zeus can one pay too dear?”
Old Phrygia, rising, made to steal from the place.Myrina caught at her dress. “Not yet—not ever, if I have courage!”
Light rose, light fell, came again a bright, a hot, and dusty day. Glaucon rose from no-sleep, and went forth upon Athenian business. The afternoon found him upon the Acropolis, near the precinct of Artemis. He was passing a grove of olive and myrtle—the light was sinking—when he heard his name breathed.
He gestured to those with him to go on, he himself turned under the trees. “Myrina....”
“So fearing and base a thing is woman when she is named Myrina!... Be my lover, Glaucon, and I will forswear light!”
“Did you come to me?—I would, at last, have come to you!”
“Icame.... Will you go home with me?”
“I did not wholly mean unkindness.... I am not truly man the wolf.”
“Will you come? Perhaps I am only woman the snake.”
Glaucon went with her. They went together from the Acropolis into the narrow ways.
Meranes, the turbaned satrap, had a palace that to the west sent its gardens to the sea-edge, and on the east opened sheer upon the ever-humming hive that was his satrapy’s chief town. The palace owned a great, middle body with arm-like processes, jointed tentacles that strayed afar into odorous and flower-spangled wildernesses, and all was at once fantastically and strongly built. There were gilding and mosaic and fretwork that treated stone like flax. The palace spread, many-courted, myriad-roomed, multi-coloured. On the dusky garden side it was mingled with trees and bloom and fruit: it knew deep alleys and shadowy rings, and stone water tanks where lilies were planted and fish swam. But on the town side it rose blank and clear from the hot and clanging place. Here was the official palace—the palace of the audience, of the satrap’s government, of officials, soldiers, magi, principal men and the horde that was not principal, spies, confidants, merchants of sorts, ministers and attendants of pleasure, of orders given and received, of complaint, pleading, demand, grievances and clamour, reward and punishment, strife open and concealed, jealousy, rivalry, lies, greed, fanatic hate and fanatic devotion, and always a brew of conspiracies, great and small, very many small, and on hand perpetually one or two great. Such a cloud hung always over it, hung garden side and city side, for influences were subtle and stole between. Breathing that musk and sandal,hearing always that whispering, governed Meranes, satrap of a deep province, slave only to the namer of the satraps, the eastern king who was despot of a dozen despots.
Under Meranes, the governor of the chief city was Sadyattes. The magus of most power was Artaxias.
In the middle palace, whence he might move through any arm, Meranes had his rooms for dwelling. To the right, he went to the front upon the clanging town, and the business of the satrapy. When he entered again that middle part he drew with him confidants and favourites and made for himself now counsel, now revelry and relaxation. Or, alone here, he spent much consideration upon how to keep life, honour, and satrapy, seeing that to do so he must ever please that more richly turbaned despot who herded satraps, and about whose ears ever buzzed the maligners. Or he drew to him certain of the magi and talked with them, for he was a man who trembled at times on the edge of seeing the unseen and touching the untouched, and the magi were held to be free of the king’s road to knowledge. To the left, past guarded doors, movement brought Meranes where the palace ran, many-fronded, into shadows of groves, into the realm of slippered footfall and treble voices. Here were squandered wealth, and heavy odours, and the nightingale’s song. Here the life of Meranes stayed among women. Here lay the filled seraglio, and here for soldiers stood the files of eunuchs. And for all the soldiers and the slaves, for all the blank walls and guarded doors, word-bearing winds blew through the palace from the right to the left and the left to the right. Any part of the palace might conspire with any other part against any third part.
The favourite wife of the satrap was Aryenis, with just below her, creeping at times very nigh her, a woman of Egypt named Nitetis. Each had a son.
There were many women beside.
The beaded rooms and courts of the seraglio had likewise their order of importance, raying from the highly so to the less highly so, and thence to the hardly so at all. Golden cells in the comb, stood the quarters of Aryenis. Nitetis, the swarthy Egyptian, had the silver cells. These two only counted in seraglio politics, each drawing with her her faction. Next, in fair light, were clustered other women from the east and the west, the north and the south. Around these, in paler light and paler light, were gathered others.... Chamber on chamber, the palace was as a whispering shell. Ray on ray, range of rooms on range of rooms, it stretched and tapered through degrees of favour and nearness, into the cool murk of obscurity, faint clinging for support.
Aryenis had at her hand her son Alyattes, and Nitetis had at her hand her son Smerdis. The children numbered five and six years. Aryenis being first with Meranes, the palace, the city and the province called Alyattes the satrap’s heir—called him so with emphasis since last year when Meranes, taking the lad with him into the presence of the king of the whole land who was making progress, prostrated himself with his son, and besought continuance of favour toward Alyattes after Meranes had returned to the fire whence he came. Surely Alyattes was heir! The magi, tutors of the children, taught the young Smerdis to give up to, to follow the lead of his brother. Also Aryenis taught Alyattes that he was first, as she taught Nitetis that she, Aryenis, was first. The Egyptian woman,dark-skinned, black-browed, and rose-lipped, somewhat younger than the other, drew up her shoulders, slid by....
Meranes, fatigued from hunting, came to the bath, was refreshed and clad in silk and gems. In the round room of the silver palms he sat before food, and when he had eaten, and drank somewhat sparingly of wine, he gave orders to admit to him the magus Artaxias. Waiting for him, he took in his hands a curiously shaped box filled with fine sand, in a cup beside it golden balls the size of pearls. The balls were for casting upon the smoothed sand, and the figures they made a sign-writing, vouchsafed by destiny. Meranes, seated on rich cushions, gathered the balls in his hand and cast them, then strove to read. The satrap was dark and bright of eye, well made, bearing power in his look. He cast the balls and brooded over the plain of sand. If expanded beneath his imagination into desert width.
Artaxias approached, stood in flowing robes. “Here is a strange figure,” said Meranes. “I cannot read it!”
The magus stooped beside him. “O Meranes, that is the scorpion of Egypt.—Look for trouble from Egypt!”
“As you know, that is come,” said Meranes. “They attack the southern borders. I go against them with ten thousand men.”
“I know, O Satrap! Perhaps it is all the woe.”
“Last night I watched the stars from the edge of the jungle. Sadyattes and I who had hunted together, watched them together.”
“If the lion will make Sadyattes his brother, who, O Meranes, will say the lion nay?”
“Sadyattes is faithful.”
“Says the sand so and the stars so?”
“Says my heart so.”
“Says the fact so? The truth of the fact, O Meranes, is what I seek!”
“Should I not seek it too—a man encompassed by dangers? Do I not know that this one conspires and that one conspires? But Sadyattes is my old heart’s friend whom I trust.”
“The worst betrayers call themselves hearts’ friends! Let us try the balls again.” Taking the box he smoothed the sand, shook the balls in his hand and cast them. There appeared a tracing that might be made into the figure of a child. “The genii have sent a good sign!” said Artaxias. “I read it that they have in care the young Alyattes.” He examined the field more closely. “He lies as in a peaceful sleep.”
Meranes looked at the figure of the child. With his own hand he smoothed the sand, then put the box aside. “We watched the stars, and there was a passing of beings bearing lights from one quarter of the heaven to another.” He drank wine. “I go against the host attacking the southern border. On the way thither there is a disloyal town shall be razed to the earth. In the prison here wait men who carried false tales to the king, and ere I go they die in sight of me and of the town. Artificers build me a new palace among the hills, and there comes to me from my brother Seleuces a gift of a hundred golden bowls, a hundred embroidered robes, and a hundred slaves chosen from ten thousand.... Yet, in the round room of my inward thought, these things are only winds and odours!... What is this world and what is Meranes?”
The room of the silver palms was dimmed for coolness and every casement opened to the night. Meranes, rising from the cushions, looked forth, either hand upon carvedstone. The star he thought of as peculiarly his own shone at this hour and season above a pillar set between trees. Meranes watched it, white, far, and bright. “How long has it burned, and how long will it burn? Whence came it at first and where will it go? What are its adventures, and what is their weight?”
The magus stood beside him. “Part of the star is dark and part of the star is light. The dark would grow—the light would grow—and they stand in each other’s path. And yet is there but one star! Then comes on the train of happenings, and the sound in the ears of victory and defeat.... That is the star, and you are of the star, and partly dark and partly light.” He wrote in the air with his finger. “May the light grow!”
When an hour had passed the magus went from the satrap’s company. Meranes paced the room alone, then clapped his hands. Attendants came. The master would go now to the seraglio. At his command word had been sent, when he returned from hunting, to Aryenis.
In her country’s dress, Aryenis sat by the fountain from which the palace took its name—the Palace of the Fountain. It was a great marvel, the fountain, and by ancient prescription held to belong to the chief wife, the favourite in the seraglio, the woman lifted by favour to the highest rank a woman might attain. It had been called Aryenis’s since her bringing to the seraglio.
Meranes came and Aryenis made obeisance. The satrap raised her and held her in his arms. Far off there was music playing, the fountain bubbled, tinkled, sent its spray where fell upon it coloured light. The place that was a great and richly carven room, held eunuchs, slave-women, ministers and attendants of pleasure. “Go from hearing,” said Meranes, and the lines fell back, leaving the fountain and a rich carpet spread beside it. The one man and woman sat embraced by the talking water.
“You are going against Egypt?”
“Yes.”
“Nitetis will not like that!”
“This land is Nitetis’s land.”
“True, true!—Your land, Meranes.”
“Is Alyattes sleeping?”
“Yes.... Would you look?”
Rising she led him through curtained archways to where, watched by slave-women, the child lay sleeping upon a golden bed. “Alyattes!...”
“He grows tall.... When I return he must leave the seraglio.”
A spasm crossed Aryenis’s face. “Is he so tall, lord?... Leave him a little longer!”
“He is ripe to be taken from women, placed among men. What! Do you not see him where he shall grow to be the king palm of the grove?”
“Yes, yes! I see him climbing steps of thrones.... Alyattes!”
“Come back to the fountain.... Were your heart parted, would the larger piece fall to Alyattes? I think it would—I think it would!... Meranes, the lesser man, to have the lesser gift.”
“Lord, thou art the man. Alyattes is a young child.”
“If a spirit appeared and said, ‘Choose between his life and Meranes!’”
“Meranes, I do not have to choose.”
“If—if—”
Aryenis bent her knees, touched the palms of her out-spread hands, touched her forehead between, to the pavement. “Lord and master! How could I choose the child?”
Meranes stooped to her, strained her form to his, kissed her lips and throat and bosom. “Pearl of the Deep—Pearl closed in my hand! Long have we loved!”
“Long—long.”
“Out of me were you drawn.”
“Out of you.”
“The sun and the earth—the ocean and the river—”
“The sun and the earth—the ocean and the river—”
“Aryenis—Aryenis!”
“Smite Egypt and return!—The Egyptian here! Will you visit her, Meranes, before you go—her son and her?”
She drew upon sorceress-power, and before he left the room of the fountain won from him his word that he would leave in the shadow that Egyptian.... It seemed that Nitetis had as well be returned to Egypt whence she had been bought!
But the next day a slave won way to Meranes, fell before him, then, being bidden to speak, gave a manner of sorceress-message from Nitetis. At first said the satrap, “I do not go,” then, when the eunuch was backing from the room, recalled him. “I may come, I may not come. Say only that.”... That same day, finding an hour with naught of moment set against it, he went to that part of the seraglio given to the Egyptian. He found Nitetis prone upon cushions, her body wrapped in stuff thin and dark as the air of night, her blue-black hair dishevelled. In the distance Smerdis played with a ball.
“My lord, my lord, you go to danger! I see javelins in the air, I see arrows, I see daggers, swords—”
“Do I not every day eat and drink with danger? Rulehere, fight there—everywhere alike leaps the wolf, creeps the serpent!”
“Who keeps the city? Who keeps us for my lord until he returns?”
“Sadyattes keeps the city.”
“Oh, when you are gone Aryenis will rule us heavily, us here in the Fountain Palace! Oh, when you are gone your son Smerdis must say ‘my lord’ to Alyattes! Oh, Aryenis gloats upon power, envies power. Oh, she would snatch it, if she might, even from Meranes’s hand!”
“Would you not, if you could, Egyptian, strangle Aryenis!”
“Would she not strangle me? Would she not, for her son, strangle my son and yours, Meranes? Would she not do more than that—? Oh, let me speak now, for when you are gone I shall not speak! I shall creep by the wall, I shall keep Smerdis with me in the shadow—”
“Who loves me will hurt nothing that is mine—not Smerdis, not Nitetis!”
Nitetis raised herself upon her palms, looked at him from between fine waves of blackness. “O lord, ruler and god of me! Let thy slave tell thee a fault of the lion! It is not to deign to suspect other wills and purposes moving in the plain and the jungle, for that, O my king, would hurt the pride of the lion!” With her hands she drew her hair about his feet. “But I, my lord, who am only a woman out of Egypt, can see the serpent and her rings and guile! And I who am naught can see because of utter love, utter love, utter love of Meranes!”
She put her lips against his feet. “Slay me if you will! And with my last breath I will say that only the Egyptian here, that only the Egyptian here, loved you, Meranes!”
“What is the serpent that you see?”
“Ah, I know not, though I seem to see a face!” Nitetis raised herself to her knees, lifted her head and laid it upon the satrap’s arm. “And Sadyattes keeps the city—Sadyattes who came from Aryenis’s country.”
Smerdis, playing in the middle court with Alyattes said, “My father and my mother play together.” After a while Alyattes, leaving the court and going to his mother where she lay in the room of the fountain, said, “Mother, the lady Nitetis and my father play together! Smerdis told me.”
At sunset the gardens filled with the inmates of the seraglio. Through the day they had stayed for coolness in jalousied rooms, or upon the violet side of pillared courts. Now they came out under sky, though yet, all around them, ran the wall that could not be scaled, that could not be pierced. Mist rose from the water tanks, hung between the trees; heavy white flowers opened disk and cup, heavy sweet odours drifted and clung, moths appeared, and all the life of the dusk. Women moved or sat or lay under the spice trees, the fig trees, the palms, the tamarisks and cedars. Those who were young and beautiful were richly dressed. Those who were old or ill-shaped or ill-favoured were work-slaves only and as such marked by a mean and fantastic garb. Eunuchs moved through the gardens, and they, too, were made into grotesques.
Aryenis, attended, with her Alyattes that was to be the satrap’s heir, entered a walk that was loved by Nitetis and given over to her by the etiquette of the place. Here was the Egyptian, Smerdis beside her. The two lay beside a stone basin where stood a rose-and-white flamingo, where upon a mound of earth a tortoise crawled.
Said Aryenis, “All mud of the Nile.”
Nitetis lifted herself. “Meranes, that is master, has not yet departed.—Pearl of the Deep, who, between the first and now, has known every merchant’s stall!”
Said Aryenis: “Ah, god to whom mounts the fire! Have I known many markets? Then did I learn in them more than your one land could teach!”
“Yet it gives me hold on Meranes!” Nitetis raised herself from the rock, the tortoise, the flamingo basin. She smiled. “Have you noted that Smerdis grows as tall as Alyattes?”
Aryenis drew her veil around her. Only her eyes showed.
“O her eyes glitter!” said Nitetis inwardly, and brought glitter into her own.
“Were I Alyattes, and grown, I should nightly thank the stars that I was not Smerdis!” said Aryenis. The Egyptian drew her shoulders together, made under her breath an incantation.
Meranes went with a force of horse and foot against the troubles of the southern boundaries. His lances gleamed, his pennants waved, his drums beat, the city saw him forth, the skies hung hot, blue crystal, the throng shouted, the sand whirled in the street. Sadyattes, governor of the city, armed his gates and his walls and esteemed that he had months, one, two, and three, in which to bring to fruition a long-mellowing piece of work. Three days after Meranes went forth, Sadyattes listened, in a secret place, to a foster-brother returned from an errand forth from the province, errand to the court of the king who made straps.
The foster-brother, greetings given, felt, with an expressive gesture, his head upon his shoulders. “So near death do you walk when you go to twist and to draw and to pushpower out of the road of power!—Here is the matter in small space. Were Meranes proved ambitious, that is to say, proved traitorous, then the prover, were he Sadyattes, might have the satrapy. Does Sadyattes fail in proving, let him beware, having annoyed!”
Sadyattes stretched his arms, then stroked a black beard. “I shall not fail. You shall go again to the mighty king, for now I have this and that for you to take!”
The foster-brother went, and after weeks the foster-brother returned. “There is this. Sadyattes is satrap when Meranes and his son Alyattes are out of the way. But the great king is busy, being troubled with rebellions and conspiracies like unto locusts for number! He has need at this time for all his strength at home. If he summoned Meranes he might be suspicious and not come. If he said, ‘Give over your satrapy!’ the revolt that Meranes now only meditates in his mind might rise at once like a giant in the way. Meranes has with him so many thousand soldiers who, it is said, die easily for him. Moreover, he is putting down this trouble to the south, and it must be put down, and Meranes still used to do it, for he does it. But the southern trouble over, it were well that Meranes and his son with him were taken off at once and with subtlety. If it were managed with secrecy, without revolt or trouble, then the great king sees as in a dream that the satrapy would pass to Sadyattes who is a skilful holder of strong places and a gatherer and forwarder of wealth. But the king must be saved annoyance.”
“I will spare the mighty king,” said Sadyattes.
The sky stayed hot, blue crystal, the wind lifted the dust in the streets, the wind shook the leaves of the datetrees, the fig trees, the spice trees of the gardens. Swift horsemen rode in with tidings; there was travel of messengers between the force in the south and the jewel-city of the satrapy. Riders from the south said, “Meranes is a great victor. His soldiers shout his name!” Going from the town they said, “Meranes, all is well! Sadyattes holds faithfully the city, and faithfully your Palace of the Fountain, your wives and your son Alyattes.”
Meranes fought every day, moved among his soldiers every day, received submissions every day. Meranes said to himself, “I am firmly fixed; I am like the star, around which the others go!”
A horseman brought a message to Sadyattes the governor: “Meranes to Sadyattes, greeting! I have set my heel upon rebellion. I and my army take, next week, the road to the city.”
In the garden of the Palace of the Fountain certain eunuchs answered a certain word and at night received a climber over the wall at the angle nearest the sea. When he came down among them they gave him a dress like their own, and one took colouring matter and darkened his face and changed its lines. Then he went with them, by the moonlight walks down which floated laughter and singing and the tinkling of castanets.
There stood a pavilion by a pool where lilies grew. Two slave-girls met the eunuchs here, and there followed whispering. Then the servitors of the seraglio stood aside, but the man who had climbed the wall went on. At the entrance of the pavilion he encountered a third slave-woman together with a black, as huge as Africa. These two also answered the sign he made, and quitting the doorway went and sat by the edge of the pool. Sadyattes came into thepavilion and the presence of Aryenis. She sat, veiled, in the moonlight.
“Did you bring that letter, Sadyattes, that through those in your pay, you said that you had to bring? I have here a lamp to read it by.” As she spoke she uncovered the small flame burning in a golden boat.
Sadyattes bent before her. “Pearl of the Deep! climbing the wall I came here, at the peril of my life, to show it—”
“And of mine. Well, show—”
Sadyattes put out his hand and touched her veil. “Do you remember, before you came to the Fountain Palace, to Meranes’s arms, do you remember, Aryenis, a diver whose hand might have gathered you where you lay at the bottom of the sea? But a wave turned him aside, as a wave brought you here!”
“I remember the diver, Sadyattes. But though I lay in the bottom of the sea, I was even there for none but Meranes! In water, in earth, in fire, in this time, in that time, in all times, I and Meranes have been, are, and will be for each other!”
“Nitetis—”
“Nitetis is mirage, false showing—”
“The false is best loved.”
“How will you show me that, diver?”
“Though you speak strongly, yet will you act as the jealous act,” thought Sadyattes, “and as the fearful and the proud!” Aloud he said, “You have sent messages of love by swift horsemen to Meranes. None have come back to you.”
“I might know that the governor of the city would know that. Meranes saves his love words till he comes. I shall hear them falling, falling beside the fountain!”
“Nitetis sent also. He has sent love words back to Nitetis.”
“Ah!”
“Then she sent again to him. And with her love words went words of poison.”
“Against me?”
“Against you and against Alyattes.”
Aryenis laughed. “The Nile uncleanness!—But Meranes listened not!”
“Oh, Egypt is subtle, Aryenis!”
“She is Ahriman’s slave!—What lie did she make to Meranes?”
“Powers moving about this place have used her. There is a great plot.”
“What lie?”
Sadyattes drew from his girdle a written-over paper. “This is for Nitetis, from Meranes. It was to have been taken by the hand of the magus Artaxias—my enemy, as well you know, Pearl of the Deep! I, having many ways, received the paper first. Read Aryenis.... Meranes’s hand and seal.”
Aryenis thought that it was so, for indeed the letter was finely forged. Sadyattes and that foster-brother and a ring of principal men, with many a subtle helper that was not seen to be principal, had wrought well toward making a fine, envenomed instrument for their purposes, and the letter was great aid thereto. “Read,” said Sadyattes, and Aryenis read Nitetis’s name and love terms around it, and lines that followed, and Meranes’s name, and all in the hand, so she thought, of Meranes. She read in a voice that was a gathered sheaf of myriads of voices—old and old voices.
“The pearl that is false, I will bray in a mortar. The rose that is true, I will set at the height of the garden....”
“They call her the rose.—Meranes! Meranes!”
“Read—read!” said Sadyattes.
“The rose that is true, I will set at the height of the garden. The bud that is mine and the rose’s, I will cherish, but the false son will I blind and turn into the desert!...”
“The palace is falling, there are waves that are rising.”
“Read—read!” said Sadyattes.
“The one that I left in a high place shall curse the day of his birth!”
“That is I, Sadyattes, the diver.”
“Aaah!”
“Egypt told him this: ‘Sadyattes the diver has touched the pearl that the satrap thinks gleams only for him!’ Egypt gave him names of these and these in the Palace of the Fountain who would swear to that diver’s coming near.... Many are against Aryenis and with Nitetis, meaning to climb by her. There are magi, there are captains who would see Sadyattes hurled from the tower, and Artaxias governor in his place.... Powers in the palace and the city are moving against you.”
“Give me that paper to tear and to burn!”
“No—no!—Pearl of the Deep, Meranes returns presently to the city and the Palace of the Fountain. Says Nitetis, ‘Lord, no word at the last had I from you!’ Then says the satrap, ‘This same Sadyattes, this diver, has had to do with that! There is a plot beneath my plotting. I will not wait even the day I meant to wait, but have him thrust into the dungeon below the dungeon—’”
“I will send this day a letter, indeed, to Meranes—”
“To let pass your messenger would slay me and youand Alyattes.—Mark how deeply the fountain is poisoned!”
“The horns are blowing, the drums are beating Meranes’s return.... When he comes, when he sees me, when I speak with him—”
“Are you so strong in faith? All this place whispers that for two years the Egyptian has gained!—Meranes leaves the sea for the river.”
“I will choke her mouth with sand, I will make her salt with tears, I will bear her back and shred her afar in the desert!”
“How without sight and low-minded is Meranes, lying in Nitetis’s arms, saying, ‘Smerdis, my heir—’”
“Meranes!”
“Giving Alyattes, his son, to Sadyattes the diver.”
“Alyattes! Alyattes!”
“He will put out the child’s eyes—thrust him forth to beg—send, maybe, to him the executioner—” The governor of the city clasped in his hands her veil. “Pearl of the Deep! Look upon Sadyattes the diver—upon me and you and the boy Alyattes—”
“I see Meranes in a ring of fire.”
“Protecting fire. And safe clasped with him there Nitetis and Smerdis! And you and me and Alyattes without upon the desert sand.”
“Yes, just!”
“Were there a gate to enter—”
“I would creep through and sting.”
“Nitetis alone—?”
“Smerdis, too.”
“How would you fare, then, with Meranes? And Alyattes—how would he fare? Hatred, torment, and death!”
“To sting all to sleep—all to sleep—all....”
“The three.... And there is left Alyattes, the satrap’s son, who may one day be satrap—Sadyattes aiding!... I see him riding, riding, the great satrap—shining with jewels, living long and splendidly, giving his mother honour who set him, true-born in the true-born’s place!”
“Meranes! Meranes!”
“Hopeless now to make him see or hear or know—she has been gaining so long!... Who will sit here by the fountain when you are gone, strangled and cast into the sea, fed to the fishes there? One will sit here, bred by the Nile, younger than you—Where will be Alyattes? But Smerdis will be here, to be satrap after the satrap!”
“Water for the thirsty—revenge for the smitten and scorned—”
“Here, grovelling and death—there triumph, some sweetness, some gain!”
“He has earned it.... To creep across the ring of fire, no matter though it burns, and sting and sting and sting....”
Over the walls, down in the town, came a blowing of trumpets. Aryenis’s lips parted, she raised her hands, she tore the veil from her face and bosom, she panted for air. So huge, so strong of life was the passion that she felt that it gained transforming power. She lifted herself, she stood with her body slightly swaying. Her eyes lengthened and narrowed, a strange smile came upon her lips. “Meranes will you hurt me? Then will I hurt you. Look, look where you set your foot!”—Her voice had a droning sound. With a circling motion, her body came to the ground, lay there wrapped in a wide veil of spangled gauze.
Sadyattes, crouching beside her, showed her anotherfalse writing. “See, this is the plot of Nitetis and the magus Artaxias, the eunuchs Arses and Bagios, and of my kinsman Cyaxeres who would be governor when I am thrown from the tower! There are also the magi who are tutors of Smerdis.”
“Nitetis, take Smerdis in your arms and drink both of you of what I give you!—And you drink, too, Meranes!”
Blue skies hung over the Palace of the Fountain, and sunlight searched out its ranges of rooms. Black skies, picked out with stars, hung over it; night filled its corridors. Sandal and musk breathed through it. Coloured lights flared in strangely shaped lamps, there went a whispering of leaves, of waters and of voices. Cabals, factions, conspiracies—when did the city, palace, seraglio lack in those? They never lacked, so why should they lack now? None thought that they lacked.
Did Nitetis truly conspire against Aryenis and the young Alyattes? Almost certainly she did. The air was heavy in the seraglio, with an ominous brooding, as of a long-gathering, great storm. The women from north, south, east, and west took sides; the eunuchs, the slaves took sides; the children, the merchants, the musicians that were admitted. The palace murmured, looked aslant, signed with the fingers.
Meranes, having conquered on the southern boundaries, approached the city of his satrapy.
All day was triumph, was blare of music, shouting and festival: all day and night.