Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens Part 17

"You speak too well of me; but I hope that I am not altogether unworthy of my ancestors."

The girl paused for a while. She seemed unable to utter what she had next to say. The flush mounted again to her cheek, and she stood silent and with downcast eyes.

Meanwhile the young man stood in utter perplexity. He had heard nothing from the girl's lips but what might have made any man proud to hear. She knew, as she had said, the history of his race, and she believed him to be not unworthy of it. Yet this was not the way in which he had hoped to hear her speak. He was conscious that there was something behind that did not promise well for his hopes.

At last she went on. Her voice was low but distinct, her eyes were still bent on the ground.

"And what your fathers have been in Athens, what you hope to be yourself, you would have your son to be after you?"

"Surely," he answered without thinking of what he was admitting.

"Could it be so if I--" she altered the phrase--"if a woman not of Athenian blood were his mother?"

He was struck dumb. So this was the end she had before her when she enumerated the honors and distinctions of his race.

"Mind," she said, "I do not say that my race is unworthy of yours. I am not ashamed of my ancestors. They were chiefs; they were good men. I am proud to be their daughter. But here in Athens their goodness and their n.o.bility goes for nothing. I am Hermione, the daughter of Hippocles, the Alien. Marrying me you shut out, not perhaps yourself, but your children from the career which is their inheritance. I am too proud,"--and here the girl dropped her voice to a whisper,--"and I love you too well for that."

"What is my career to your love?" cried the young man pa.s.sionately; "I am ready to give up country and all for that."

"That," said Hermione, "is the only unworthy thing that I ever heard you say. Your better thoughts will make you withdraw it. Athens has fallen; the G.o.ds know that it has wrung my heart to see it. But she needs all the more such sons as you are. She has little now to offer. It is a thankless office, perhaps, to command her fleets and armies. All the more honor to those who cling to her still and cherish her still. You must not leave her or betray her. I should think foul shame of myself if I tempted you for a moment to waver in your loyalty to her. I may not love you--that the G.o.ds have forbidden me--but you will let me be proud of you."

The young man turned away. The final word, he knew, had been spoken.

This resolution was not to be shaken by indignant reproaches or by tender pleadings. All that remained was to forget, if that was possible.

He would not see Hippocles or his daughter again till the wound of this bitter disappointment had had time to heal. Returning to the house, which he found empty but for a single attendant, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a hasty meal, and then set out to return over-land to Athens.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] The cla.s.s name of the Athenian n.o.bility.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE END OF ALCIBIADES.

Three days after the events recorded in the last chapter--it took so much time for the young man to screw up his courage to the point--Callias made his way to the s.h.i.+p-yard of Hippocles at an hour when he knew that he would be pretty certain to find the master there.

He was not disappointed, nor could he help being touched by the warm sympathy with which he was received.

"Ah! my dear friend," cried the merchant, "this has been a great disappointment to me. I must own that I had my fears. I know something, you see, of my daughter's temper. I knew that she had always chafed under our disabilities. Things that have ceased to trouble me--and I must own that they never troubled me much--are grievous to her. You see that I have a power of my own which is quite enough to satisfy any reasonable man. I can't speak or vote in your a.s.sembly, but I have a voice, if I choose to use it, in your policy. She knows very little about this, and would not appreciate it if she did. Besides it would not avail her. No; she feels herself an inferior here, and it galls her; yet that is scarcely the way to put it, for she was thinking much more of you than of herself. I believe that she loves you--she has not confided in me, you must understand, but I guess as much--and she would sooner cut off her right hand than injure you or yours. And then her pride comes in also. 'Am I, daughter of kings as I am,' she says to herself, 'am I to be one to bring humiliation into an ancient house?' Her mother's forefathers would be called barbarians here, but they were kings and heroes for all that. And that is the bitterness of it to her: to feel herself your equal in birth, and yet to know that to marry you would be to drag you down."

"I understand," said Callias, "it is n.o.ble; but just now my heart rebels very loudly against it. Let us say no more. I have come to ask you what you would advise. For the present I cannot stay at Athens."

"That," said Hippocles, "is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about; if you had not come to-day I should have sought for you. You wish to leave Athens, you say. It is well, for it would not be safe for you to stay. We shall have a bad time in Athens for the next few months, perhaps for longer. The exiles have come back full of rage and thirsting for revenge. And then there is Theramenes; he is the man you have to fear. He has the murder of the generals on his soul. That, perhaps, would not trouble him much but he fears all who might be disposed to call him to account for it. He knows that you were the kinsman and dear friend of Diomedon, and he will take the first opportunity that may occur of doing you a mischief. And opportunities will not be wanting. I suspect that for some time to come, with the Oligarchs in power and the Lacedaemonians to back them up, laws and const.i.tutional forms will not go for much in Athens."

"And you advise me to go?" said Callias.

"Certainly there is nothing to keep you. For the present there is no career for you here. I don't despair of Athens; but for some time to come she will have a very humble part to play."

"Have you anything to suggest?"

"I have been thinking over it for two or three days. Many things have occurred to me, but nothing so good as was suggested by a letter which I received this morning. It came from a merchant in Rhodes with whom I have had dealings for some years past. My correspondent asks for a large advance in money for a commercial speculation which he says promises large profits. I have always found the man honest; in fact the outcomes of my dealings with him in the past have been quite satisfactory. But this new venture that he proposes is a very large one indeed. I like what he tells me of it. It opens up quite a new field of enterprise; and new fields, I need hardly tell you, have a great charm for a man in my position. The ordinary routine of commerce does not interest me very much; but something new is very attractive. Now I want you to go to Rhodes for me. Make all the enquiries you can about the character and standing of my correspondent, whom, curiously enough, I have never seen.

I will give you introductions to those who will put you in the way of hearing all that is to be heard. If the man's credit is shaky at all, then I shall know that this proposition of his is a desperate venture.

If all is sound, I shall feel pretty sure that he has got hold of a really good thing."

"I know very little of such matters," said the young Callias after a pause.

"I do not ask you to go that you may judge of this particular enterprise; I simply want you to find out what people are saying about Diagoras--that is my correspondent's name; you will be simply an Athenian gentleman on his travels. Keep your ears open and you will be sure to hear something."

"Well," said Callias, "I will do my best; but don't expect too much."

"Can you start to-morrow?"

"Yes, if you think it necessary."

"Well, my affair is not urgent for some days, at least. But for yourself, I fancy you cannot get out of the way too soon. I don't think that Theramenes and his friends will stick much at forms and ceremonies.

I own that I shall feel much happier when there are two or three hundred miles of sea between you and them. Be here an hour after sunset to-morrow. By that time I shall have arranged for your pa.s.sage and got ready your letters of introduction and the rest of it."

"Well," said the young man to himself as he went to make his preparations for departure, "this, it must be confessed, is a little hard on me. Hermione says, 'Stop in Athens and stick to your career'; her father says, 'If you stop in Athens you are as good as a dead man, and your career will be cut short by the hemlock cup.' I have to give up my love for my career and then give up my career for my life."

It is needless to relate the incidents of my hero's voyage to Rhodes or of his stay on that island. His special mission he was able to accomplish easily enough. Diagoras' speculation was, as he soon found out, the last resource of an embarra.s.sed man; and the loan for which he asked would be a risk too great for any prudent person to undertake. The letter in which he communicated what he had heard to Hippocles was crossed by one from Athens. From this he learned that the political antic.i.p.ations of the merchant had been more than fulfilled. The oligarchical revolution had been carried on with the most outrageous violence. On the very day on which he had left Athens, an officer of the government had come with an order for his arrest.

All this was interesting; still more so was a brief communication from Alcibiades which the merchant enclosed. It ran thus:

"Alcibiades to Callias son of Hipponicus, greeting. Great things are possible now to the bold of whom I know you to be one. More I do not say, but come to me as soon as you can. Farewell."

The merchant had added a postscript. "I leave this for your consideration. Alcibiades has a certain knack of success. But the risk will be great."

"What is risk to me?" said Callias, "I can't spend my life idling here."

The next day he left the island, taking his pa.s.sage in a merchant s.h.i.+p which, by great good luck was just starting for Smyrna. Smyrna was reached without any mishap. Four days afterwards, he started with a guide for the little village in Phrygia from which Alcibiades had dated his note. Halting at noon on the first day's journey to rest their horses, they were accosted by a miserable looking wayfarer, who begged for some sc.r.a.ps of food, declaring that he had not broken his fast for four and twenty hours. Something in the man's voice and face struck Callias as familiar, and he puzzled in vain for a solution of the mystery, while the stranger sat eagerly devouring the meal with which he had been furnished.

"Here," said Callias, when the man had finished his repast and was thanking him, "here is something to help you along till you can find friends or employment." And he gave him four or five silver pieces.

It was the first time he had spoken in the fugitive's hearing, and the man, who, now that his ravenous hunger was appeased, had leisure to notice other things, started at the sound of his voice. He, on his part, seemed to recognize something.

"Many thanks, sir," he said; "the G.o.ds pay you back ten-fold. But surely," he went on, "I have seen you before. Ah! now I remember. You are Callias the son of Hipponicus, and you were my master's guest in Thrace."

A light flashed on the young Athenian's mind. The man had been one of Alcibiades' attendants in his Thracian castle.

"Ah! I remember," he cried, "and your master was Alcibiades. But what do you here? How does he fare?"

The man burst into tears. "Ah, sir, he is dead, cruelly killed by those villains of Spartans. He was the very best of masters. I never had a rough word from him. We all loved him."

"Tell me," said Callias, "how it happened. I was on my way to him," and he read to the man the brief note that had been forwarded to him at Rhodes.

"Yes, I understand. I know when that was written. He had great hopes of being able to do something. I did not rightly understand what it was, but the common talk among us who were of his household was that he was going to the Great King to persuade him that the best thing that he could do would be to set Athens on her feet again to help him against Sparta. Oh! he was a wonderful man to persuade, was my master. n.o.body could help being taken by him."