VIIIIn the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”“Are you not well, Nico?”“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”Nico Spinotti shook his head.“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think ofanyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”“A boy stole him?”“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”But his sentence was never finished.At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun,and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”“Mine?Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was inthe shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the Piræus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.“Bravo! And did he see them?”“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”“And then?”“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”“What … all?”“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”“And what became of the man?”“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”“It was not for you that I did it,” answeredthe boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why shouldhesuffer?”“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—“You are forgiven.”“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.The banker laughed.“Do you like to sell newspapers?”“It is my work,” answered Aleko.“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmæ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”“What would you do if you were free?”“I want to learn.”“To learn what?”“To learn many things.”“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fillsthe life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmæ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing matteredany more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.
VIIIIn the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”“Are you not well, Nico?”“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”Nico Spinotti shook his head.“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think ofanyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”“A boy stole him?”“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”But his sentence was never finished.At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun,and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”“Mine?Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was inthe shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the Piræus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.“Bravo! And did he see them?”“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”“And then?”“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”“What … all?”“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”“And what became of the man?”“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”“It was not for you that I did it,” answeredthe boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why shouldhesuffer?”“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—“You are forgiven.”“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.The banker laughed.“Do you like to sell newspapers?”“It is my work,” answered Aleko.“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmæ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”“What would you do if you were free?”“I want to learn.”“To learn what?”“To learn many things.”“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fillsthe life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmæ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing matteredany more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.
VIIIIn the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”“Are you not well, Nico?”“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”Nico Spinotti shook his head.“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think ofanyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”“A boy stole him?”“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”But his sentence was never finished.At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun,and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”“Mine?Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was inthe shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the Piræus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.“Bravo! And did he see them?”“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”“And then?”“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”“What … all?”“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”“And what became of the man?”“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”“It was not for you that I did it,” answeredthe boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why shouldhesuffer?”“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—“You are forgiven.”“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.The banker laughed.“Do you like to sell newspapers?”“It is my work,” answered Aleko.“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmæ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”“What would you do if you were free?”“I want to learn.”“To learn what?”“To learn many things.”“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fillsthe life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmæ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing matteredany more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.
VIIIIn the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”“Are you not well, Nico?”“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”Nico Spinotti shook his head.“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think ofanyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”“A boy stole him?”“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”But his sentence was never finished.At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun,and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”“Mine?Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was inthe shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the Piræus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.“Bravo! And did he see them?”“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”“And then?”“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”“What … all?”“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”“And what became of the man?”“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”“It was not for you that I did it,” answeredthe boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why shouldhesuffer?”“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—“You are forgiven.”“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.The banker laughed.“Do you like to sell newspapers?”“It is my work,” answered Aleko.“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmæ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”“What would you do if you were free?”“I want to learn.”“To learn what?”“To learn many things.”“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fillsthe life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmæ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing matteredany more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.
VIII
In the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”“Are you not well, Nico?”“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”Nico Spinotti shook his head.“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think ofanyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”“A boy stole him?”“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”But his sentence was never finished.At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun,and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”“Mine?Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was inthe shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the Piræus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.“Bravo! And did he see them?”“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”“And then?”“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”“What … all?”“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”“And what became of the man?”“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”“It was not for you that I did it,” answeredthe boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why shouldhesuffer?”“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—“You are forgiven.”“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.The banker laughed.“Do you like to sell newspapers?”“It is my work,” answered Aleko.“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmæ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”“What would you do if you were free?”“I want to learn.”“To learn what?”“To learn many things.”“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fillsthe life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmæ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing matteredany more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.
In the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.
It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.
Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:—
“He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?” but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.
Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.
“Cool, cool mulberries!” cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. “Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!” Then an old voice quavered out, “Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!”
But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.
“He will not come now before the afternoon,” muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.
Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.
“Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!” It was not Aleko’s voice. It was a man’s voice; a voice he knew.
“How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment.”
The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.
“Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?”
“I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning.”
“Are you not well, Nico?”
“I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you—but to me it is a great one—I have lost my dog!”
“The little white one? The one you call ‘Solon’?”
“Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I … I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she ….”
“It is no sin,” said the old schoolmaster, “there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring …” he broke off suddenly. “But do not vex your heart! You will find him.”
Nico Spinotti shook his head.
“The ‘boya’ took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least.”
“But why are you staying here?” asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. “Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the ‘boya’ wants ….”
“My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also—if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart … I … I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think ofanyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it.”
“A boy stole him?”
“Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year’s beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!”
The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.
“You …. You … hurt the lad!” he burst out wildly. “You drove him away! You …. You ….”
But his sentence was never finished.
At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun,and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko’s arms, made a bee line for his master.
There was a bewildered cry of,—“Solon!” and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:—
“Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!”
In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.
“Kyr Themistocli,” he began, “your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon ….”
But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko’s shoulder.
“I thought I had lost you …. I thought that you would never come back! My boy!… My son!…”
The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.
“Why?” he gasped, “I never knew …. Is he yours?”
“Mine?Makari!” exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.
Now when a real Greek says “Makari,” it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, “If only it could be so!” it means, “I could wish for nothing better!” it means, “It is too good to come true!” it means, “Such a thing would be perfect happiness!” It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of “makarios,” meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said “Makari,” with all his heart.
“But then …” said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, “I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy …?”
Kyr Themistocli left his hand on Aleko’s shoulder, and drew himself up to his full height.
“Yes,” he said, “this is the boy you ill-treated, whom you called a thief; and it is he, I am sure, who has saved your dog and brought him back to you. Tell us, Aleko—what happened?”
“I saw the ‘boya,’ ” related Aleko, “pick up the dog. It was while Anneza, who never knows what is being done around her, was inthe shop; I ran after him but he drove me off with his big whip; so I took the street car to make more haste, and went down to the Central Police Station; there, a boy told me where the ‘boya’ takes all the dogs after they are counted, far down the Piræus Road, to a ‘room that kills.’ So I went there and found the place and waited for the cart. When it came I told the man that the dog was his …” pointing to Spinotti, “and that he would pay him well, but he would not listen. I asked him to bring it up himself if he did not believe me, or, to wait till noon or even for an hour … and he … he … jeered at me.”
“And did you not call some one of the police?” asked Kyr Themistocli.
“No,” said Aleko, and he laughed a little, “I remembered what the gentleman at the Parnassos told us: that if you have the science and the other has not, you need not fear one twice your size, so I gave him the straight blow from the shoulder under the chin, the one that makes you see stars.”
Nico Spinotti laughed out delightedly.
“Bravo! And did he see them?”
“Yes,” said Aleko quietly, “because afterwards, he lay in the dust and saw nothing.”
“And then?”
“Then I opened the cart and let all the dogs out.”
“What … all?”
“Of course. Since it had happened that I was there, it was for the good luck of all the poor creatures. The boys who were there helped me; we held open the door at the top of the cage; the big dogs jumped out alone, and we lifted the little ones. I took Solon, and if the ‘boya’ wants the rest again, he will have another day’s run for them!”
“And what became of the man?”
“Do I know?” said Aleko with sublime indifference.
Then the banker came a step nearer to Aleko.
“If I were to speak till to-morrow, my boy, I could not tell you how indebted I am to you; and I am terribly ashamed to think that you, whom I accused of being a thief, and ill treated only last night, should have saved my dog for me to-day.”
“It was not for you that I did it,” answeredthe boy shortly, “it was the dog for whom I was sorry.”
“I understand that. Still you knew that he was mine, and another boy might have let the dog be killed, to be revenged on me.”
“What you did,” said Aleko, averting his eyes, “was not the dog’s fault. Why shouldhesuffer?”
“You have saved me also from great suffering; greater, perhaps, than the dog’s would have been. I thank you with all my heart, also I … I ask your forgiveness.” And he held out his hand.
Aleko frowned. At that moment for some inexplicable reason, Solon sat up on his hind legs and began energetically sawing the air with his forepaws as though pleading for his master.
Aleko looked at him and his face relaxed a little. Then he wiped his hand carefully on his clothes and laid it in the banker’s, saying gravely:—
“You are forgiven.”
“And now, will you tell me what I may do for you to show my gratitude?”
“May I bring the newspapers to your house again?” asked Aleko, his eyes brightening.
The banker laughed.
“Do you like to sell newspapers?”
“It is my work,” answered Aleko.
“Is there nothing else you would prefer to do?”
“He wants to study, Nico,” cried the old man, “he wants it as none of you, my old pupils, ever wished it, and he cannot, because he must work all day to keep himself, and to help his mother and his little sisters.”
The banker gathered his eyebrows together thoughtfully.
“What are your earnings, a year, do you know?” he asked Aleko.
“The ‘big one’ sends one hundred and fifty drachmæ to my mother; he feeds me, and I give him all I earn.”
“What would you do if you were free?”
“I want to learn.”
“To learn what?”
“To learn many things.”
“And out of the many,” said the old schoolmaster, “will grow the one; the one that fillsthe life of a man. It is well. Let him learn ‘many things.’ ”
“If,” said the banker slowly, “if I were to send three hundred drachmæ every year to your family, and if you were to go to school all day and live with Kyr Themistocli here, who should have three hundred more to keep you and help you with your lessons when you returned from school in the evenings, would you be pleased for the present? Later on we shall see again.”
But it was the old man who thanked and blessed Nico Spinotti, who stretched out tremulous hands to him, while tears of joy filled his sightless eyes.
Aleko stood still with wide open eyes. His wildest day dreams were coming true, and the magnitude of the joy suddenly made him feel faint. His heart seemed to be beating up in his throat, and he felt as though the throbs would choke him. His hands grew moist, his knees trembled and speech failed him utterly.
To the hard work that lay before him, he gave never a thought; the daily discipline to which his free and untrammeled boyhood must bend seemed a necessary trifle. Nothing matteredany more! He only knew that the smiling faces of the two men beside him seemed quivering in a golden mist, he only knew that the words he had just heard were making music in his brain; for the lad in whose veins ran the blood of the old scholars of Greece, had come into his inheritance.