A Victor of Salamis Part 29

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

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

"Then it is so beautiful?" said the Athenian.

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

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

"It should suffice to turn the heart of Persephone, even as did Orpheus,"

answered the Athenian, never taking his gaze from her.

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

"O far away is gliding The pleasant Oxus's stream, I see the green glades darkling, I see the clear pools gleam.

I hear the bulbuls calling From blooming tree to tree.

Wave, bird, and tree are singing, 'Away! ah, come with me!'

"By Oxus's stream is rising Great Cyrus's marble halls; Like rain of purest silver, His tinkling fountain falls; To his cool verdant arbours What joy with thee to flee.

I'll join with bird and river, 'Away! rest there with me!'

"Forget, forget old sorrows, Forget the dear things lost!

There comes new peace, new brightness, When darksome waves are crossed; By Oxus's streams abiding, From pang and strife set free, I'll teach thee love and gladness,- Rest there, for aye, with me!"

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

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

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

Roxana replaced the harp and made one of her inimitable Oriental courtesies,-a token at once of grat.i.tude and farewell for the evening.

Glaucon never took his gaze from her, until with a rustle and sweep of her blue gauze she had glided out of the tent. He did not see the meaning glances exchanged by Mardonius and Artazostra before the latter left them.

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

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

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

The bow-bearer laughed.

"No, I crave for her only a mortal husband. Though there are few in Persia, in Media, in the wide East, to whom I dare entrust her.

Perhaps,"-his laugh grew lighter,-"I would do well to turn my eyes westward."

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

CHAPTER XVIII

DEMOCRATES'S TROUBLES RETURN

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

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

"Her Ladys.h.i.+p has taken on terribly, to be sure, but I told her mother 'when a fire blazes too hot, it burns out simply the faster.' Democrates is just the man to console in another year."

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

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

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

"_Ei!_ dear little lady, don't flash up so! I was only talking with Nania about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom."

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

Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione's sun ever rise again?

Could she hope, across the end of the aeons, to clasp hands even in the dim House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof, dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.

"Downward, down the long dark pathway, Past Ocea.n.u.s's great streams, Past the White Rock, past the Sun's gates Downward to the land of Dreams: There they reach the wide dim borders Of the fields of asphodel, Where the spectres and the spirits Of wan, outworn mortals dwell."

But was this the home of Glaucon the Fair; should the young, the strong, the pure in heart, share one condemnation with the mean and the guilty?

Homer the Wise left all hid. Yet he told of some not doomed to the common lot. Thus ran the promise to Menelaus, espoused to Helen.

"Far away the G.o.ds shall bear you: To the fair Elysian plains, Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly, Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns: Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter, But clear zephyrs from the west, Singing round the streams of Ocean Round the islands of the Blest."

Was the pledge for Menelaus only?

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

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

Xerxes might annihilate her. Conquer her he could not.

Yet the early spring came back sweetly as ever. The warm breeze blew from Egypt. Philomela sang in the olive groves. The snows on Pentelicus faded.

Around the city ran bands of children singing the "swallow's song," and beseeching the spring donation of honey cakes:-

"She is here, she is here, the swallow; Fair seasons bringing,-fair seasons to follow."

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

Yet to one woman that spring there came consolation. On Hermippus's door hung a glad olive wreath. Hermione had borne a son. "The fairest babe she had ever seen," cried the midwife. "Phnix," the mother called him, "for in him shall Glaucon the Beautiful live again." Democrates sent a runner every day to Eleusis to inquire for Hermione until all danger was pa.s.sed.

On the "name-day," ten days after the birth, he was absent from the gathering of friends and kinsmen, but sent a valuable statuette to Hermione, who left it, however, to her father to thank him.