The Last of the Wine: A Novel

18

THE SHIPS WE HAD espied making for Chios were met, defeated, and driven aground: but Alkibiades, with his friend Antiochos the pilot, took it just the same. Tales of his craft and courage came back to us every day. You could hear people saying in the Agora that we had thrown away more than we knew, when we exiled him, and that before he went to Sicily he had asked for a trial, like an innocent man. A rumour was current also that he had taken to the sea at the right time; for King Agis’ hatred was glowing red-hot, and in Sparta Alkibiades never slept without a guard.

But one day when I called on Lysis at home, he said, “Come in and see Father, Alexias, and talk to him for a while. Talk about horses, or anything but the war. Today’s news has hit him worse than I can understand myself, bad as it is.”

I had been in the City, and had met the same thing in other old men. I went in to do my best. Demokrates received me kindly; but he looked five years older, and would talk of nothing but the news. “I feel today,” he said, “as if I had seen Perseus sell Andromeda to the dragon for a bag of silver. Sparta and the Medes! That I should live to see the blood of Leonidas treat with the Great King, and sign away Ionia to him for money! Is there no honour left under the sun?”—“It’s to pay their rowers, sir,” I said, as if I were called on to defend them. “They are too few to row themselves, even if they could sink their pride to it; and they can’t trust themselves to Helots.”

“When my father was a boy,” he said, “his father took him to Thermopylae after the battle, to learn from the fallen how men should die. He often described it to me; the friends lying where the living had stood to defend the body of the slain, as they did in Homer’s day; and those who had fought till their weapons broke in their hands, locked to the dead barbarians with teeth and nails. And now it has come to this. How quietly you young men take it.”

I felt for him; but just then I was more concerned for his son. Lysis’ bones had mended well; except for the scar on his brow, the fight with Sostratos had left no mark on his body. But he had ceased to practise the pankration. For some time he kept this from me; he took enough exercise to keep in condition; but often he would tell me he was going to the palaestra, and I would find him in the colonnade; or sometimes I could not find him at all. When I saw how things were, I don’t think it came as any great surprise to me. I remembered how, when Polymedes and the rest had taken me up, he had withdrawn; he could never stoop to base antagonists. He had said nothing to me, lest he should seem to slight my crown. He was as honourable as always, but less open than he had been. He would fall into silences; and when I asked him his thoughts, he would be short with me.

We were less hard-pressed in the Guard, the war being fought so much at sea. I found a freeman who would do something on the farm for a small wage and a share of the crop; we only put in quick-growing things.

One fine summer morning in the City, I had just put the last touches on our house, which I had been fresh-whitening. I had been doing it each daybreak till people were about; for though everyone knew nowadays that his neighbour was putting his hand to slaves’ work, no one cared to have it noticed. Still, now it was done I was well pleased with it; so was my mother, especially with the courtyard, where I had painted the tops of the columns red and blue. I had had a bath, dressed my hair, and put a clean mantle on; I was carrying the walking-staff I used in the City, a good black-wood one that had been my father’s. After the dirty work, I felt the pleasure of trimness, as I paused in the porch to take a last look at my handiwork. When I turned my face to the street, I saw a stranger approaching the house.

He was a raw-boned old man, who had been tall when he was straight; he walked halting, and leaning on a stick cut from the thicket, one of his feet being hurt and wrapped in a dirty rag. His white hair was ragged, as if he had trimmed it himself with a knife, and he wore a short tunic of some drab stuff, such as poor workmen wear, or slaves. He was dirty enough for either of these, yet bore himself like neither. He was looking at our house, making straight for it; and seeing this, I felt the sinking of some unknown fear; he seemed to me like the messenger of bad news. I stepped forward from the porch, waiting for him to speak; but when he saw me, he only stared. His drawn and bony face with its month-old stubble was weathered nearly black; his eyes, being grey, showed in it piercingly. I had been about to hail him, and ask him whom he was looking for. At first I did not know what it was that kept me from asking. I only knew I must not ask.

His eyes moved past me to dwell on the courtyard. Then he looked again at me. I felt before his silent expectation a creeping in my flesh. He said, “Alexias.” Then my feet carried me down into the street; and my voice said, “Father.”

I don’t know how long we stood there; I daresay not many moments. I said, “Come in, sir,” scarcely knowing what I did; then collecting myself a little, praised the gods for his preservation. On the threshold he stumbled with his lame foot; I reached out to help him, but he righted himself quickly.

He stood in the courtyard, looking about him. I remembered Lysikles, and it seemed strange to me now that I should have taken his word without any doubts, seeing how broken the man had been and how his tale had wandered. What had put me in mind of him was the sight of my father’s hand, calloused and knotted, with dirt sealed into the cracks and scars. My mind was at a stop. I groped for words to say to him. I have felt this painful dumbness in war, at the sight of a brave enemy flung down before me in the dust; but in youth one does not recognise such thoughts, nor indeed ought one to understand them. I made again, in different words, the speech about the gods I had made before. I said we had despaired of this happiness. Then, beginning to come to myself, I said, “I will go before you, sir, and tell Mother.”

“I will tell her myself,” he said, and limped towards the door. He moved quite fast. In the doorway he turned and looked at me again. “I did not think you would grow so tall.” I made him some answer. I had grown a good deal; but it was the bowing of his back that had brought us eye to eye.

I reached the doorway behind him, and then paused. My heart was pounding, my knees felt like water and my bowels were loosened within me. I heard him go into the women’s rooms, but I could not hear anyone speak. I went away; at last, after what I thought must be a proper time, I went through to the living-room. My father was sitting in the master’s chair, with his foot in a bowl of water whose steam smelled of herbs and of a putrid wound. Before him knelt my mother, with a cloth in her hands, cleaning the place. She was weeping; the tears were running down, her hands not being free to dry them. It came into my mind for the first time that I ought to have embraced him.

The walking-stick was still in my hand. I remembered the corner where I had found it first, and put it back there.

Drawing near them, I asked him how he had come. He said from Italy, in a Phoenician ship. His foot was puffed up to twice its size, and green matter came from it. When my mother asked if the shipmaster had trusted him for the fare, he said, “They were short of a rower.”

“Alexias,” said my mother, “see if your father’s bath is ready, and that Sostias has not forgotten anything.” I was going, when I heard a sound come near, and the breath stopped in my throat; it was I who had forgotten something.

The child Charis came in, singing and chattering. She was holding a painted clay doll I had brought her from Corinth, which she was talking to; so she had come into the middle of the room before she looked up. Then she must have noticed the smell, for she stared with round eyes, like a bird. I thought, “Now he sees how pretty she is, surely he will take pleasure in what he made.” He leaned forward in his chair; my mother said, “Here is our little Charis, who has heard so many tales of you.” My father drew down his brows; but he did not seem very angry or surprised, and my breath came easier. He held out his hand and said, “Come here, Charis.” The child stood still; so I came forward, to lead her up to him. But as soon as I tried to move her, her face grew red, and her mouth turned downward; she hid herself in the skirt of my mantle, wailing with fright. When I tried to carry her to him, she clung to my neck and screamed. I dared not look at him. Then I heard my mother say the child was timid, and cried at any strange face; the first lie I had ever heard her tell.

I took my sister away, and went to look at the bathroom. Poor old Sostias, in his confusion, had made a bad job there; I found razors and comb and pumice, and carried in the clean towels and mantle my mother had laid out. She said, “I will come with you, Myron; Sostias is too clumsy for today”; but he said he would manage for himself. I had seen already that his head was lousy. He went off, using the stick I had laid by. As my mother cleared away the cloths and bowl, she talked quickly to me of how sick he was and what he should eat, and which doctor to get for his foot. I thought of the miseries he had endured, and it seemed to me that my heart must be made of stone, that I had not wept for him as she had done. I said, “At least he will let me trim his hair and beard for him. He won’t want a barber to see them as they are.”

When I entered he looked ready to order me out again; but after all he thanked me, and told me to close-crop his head, for nothing else would get it clean. Taking the razor I went behind him; then I saw his back. Eumastas the Spartan would have been humbled before it, and owned himself a beginner. I don’t know what they had used on him; it must have had lead or iron tied into it. The scars went right round his sides.

At this sight, I felt all the anger that a son ought. “Father, if you know the name of the man who did this, tell me. One day I might meet him.”—“No,” he said, “I don’t know his name.” I worked on him in silence. Presently he told me that he had been taken out of the quarries by a Syracusan overseer, to sell for himself. He had changed masters several times; “but that,” he said, “can wait.”

His head was so filthy and scabby that it made me feel sick; luckily I was out of his sight. When I had finished, I rubbed him down with some scented oil of my own. It was good stuff from Corinth, which Lysis had given me; I only used it for parties myself. He sniffed at it and said, “What’s this? I don’t want to smell like a woman.” I apologized, and put it by. When he was dressed, and one no longer saw his hollow ribs and flanks, he looked nearly presentable, and not much above sixty.

My mother bound his foot with a dry bandage and set food before him. I could tell it was hard for him not to snatch at it like a wolf; but he soon had enough. He began to question me about the farm. I had pulled things together as well as one could expect to; but I found he knew little about the state of Attica; he seemed to suppose I could have given it all my time. I was going to explain that I had other duties; when, as if answering my thought, the blast of the trumpet swelled over the City. I sighed, and got to my feet. “I’m sorry, sir; I had hoped they would leave me longer than this with you. It’s some days now since we had a raid.”

I ran out shouting to Sostias to make my horse ready; then, coming back in my riding-kilt, reached down my armour from the wall. I could see him following me with his eyes, and hoped, after what he had said about the oil, that I now looked enough like a man to please him; but at the same time my mind was running on the raid, thinking of one way or another the Spartans might be coming, and where we could head them off. My mother, who was used to these alarms, had gone, without my asking her, to get my food ready. Now she came back and, seeing me fight with a twisted shoulder-buckle, went to help me. My father said, “Where is Sostias? He ought to be here for that.”—“In the stable, sir,” I said. “We lost the groom.” It was too long a tale to begin on. Just then Sostias came to the door and said, “Your horse is ready, Master.” I nodded and turned to take leave of my father. He said, “How is Phoenix?”

Suddenly I remembered him, standing to arm himself on the spot where I stood now. It seemed like half a lifetime gone. “Overworked, sir, I’m afraid,” I said, “but I’ve kept him for you as well as I could.” I should have liked to pause and think, and to say more; but the trumpet had blown, and the troop had never yet had to wait for me. I kissed my mother; then, seeing his eyes on me and glad this time not to have forgotten my duty, I embraced him before I left. He felt strange to the touch, bony and stiff. I don’t think I had embraced him since my grandmother died, except on the dock when he went to Sicily.

We had a hard patrol, and were gone some days. It was scorching weather, the hills burned dry, flies round the camp and tormenting the horses. We saved a valley of two or three farms; but in the pursuit young Gorgion was killed. It was hard to see him, who had always been the joker of the troop, dying in pain, and in astonishment that here was something he could not laugh away. Lysis, whose lot it always was to bring such news to the dead youth’s father, seemed more than commonly oppressed by it. We could not bring back the body, because of the heat, and had to burn it on the hillside. It was so hot that one could not see any flames, only rippling air, and the body smoking and crackling. As it burned, Lysis said to me, “Had he a lover?” I said no, only a mistress, a little flute-girl. “I’ll take her some keepsake of his,” I said; “I daresay he would like it.”—“Why do that?” Lysis said. “What they had, they had.”

When we got back, he came to pay his respects to my father, and they had some talk about the war. Presently my father said, “And Alkibiades, I suppose, is still among the Spartans? Hard living must come easy to him by now.”—“No longer, sir,” Lysis said. “He sleeps on down; he’s in Persia now.” We had had this news some months, but I had not mentioned it. My father said, staring, “In Persia? How was he taken? What was he doing, to fall into the barbarians’ hands?”—“Why,” said Lysis smiling, “he fell as a cat falls in the cream-bowl. Sparta got too hot for him; King Agis got out a warrant for his death. But they say Tissaphernes the satrap thinks the world of him, and that he makes the Persian princes look drab, like cocks beside a pheasant.” My father said, “Is it so indeed?” and spoke of other things. That evening, as I passed the courtyard, he was there throwing some broken crocks into the well. Going there by chance soon after, I saw a small sherd lying beside the well-head. The painting looked so delicate that I picked it up; there was a running hare on it, and an outstretched hand. It was a piece from the bowl of Bacchios’ wine-cup.

If I had guessed that things would not be easy now at home, I had tried not to think of it, shocked at the baseness of grudging anything to one who had suffered so much. But this could not be for long. The first trouble came from little Charis. If she had been only a year or two older, one could have reasoned with her. But she had been filled with stories of her father’s fine looks and gallant deeds; I had often seen her point to some hero on vase or wall, or even to a god, and say “Dada.” Now we offered her instead this ugly and stern old man; and I don’t think her trust in people ever after was quite the same. I know that full fourteen years later, when I had arranged her betrothal to an excellent person, she listened unmoved to my accounts of him till she had seen him for herself; I was almost angry with her, till I remembered this time. My father, who seemed not to question that his letter had been lost, would I believe have accepted her with a good grace, if he had not been daily wounded by her aversion. This was bad enough; but worse was the way she had of running at these times to me. She could never be got to call him Dada: which was the more noticeable because she had called me Lala ever since learning to talk. I began at once to train her out of it, and heard my mother doing the same.

I knew myself happy, compared with her. You would have supposed that after so much want and toil, simple comforts would have been bliss to him; but he could not bear the least change from our former ways. She would explain the cause, and the reasons for the want of labour; he would assent, but still be unreconciled. She never complained to me, and only once touched on the matter at all. This was when she begged me not to say that while he was gone I had taught her to read. She had been a quick pupil; these lessons had been a happiness to me, and I think to her too. She could even read poetry now if it was easy, and I had begun teaching her to write. Now we could seldom talk together at all, for he hated to have her out of his sight, and would always call for her if she were gone for long.

I dwelt on it as little as I could; for it was pain to me, so that I was not always in command of my own thoughts. After a while I found I did not like to see her dress his foot, which she did last thing before they retired: I used to go out, and walk about the streets.

Even to Lysis I could not say much. It was not only that I felt how shabby my feelings would appear to him. There was another cause. Lately things had not been so happy with us as before. That he should have been out of spirits after the Games I could understand; but when I found him becoming jealous, I was bewildered. I was too young to have learned understanding of it; I only knew I had given him no reason, even in my lightest thought. That he should suspect such baseness in me as to be changed by his reverse, injured me to the soul; yet to tax him with it seemed baser. In past times no one had been a better loser when outmatched by a better man; I could not see why it struck him so deeply to be beaten by a worse. I felt only my own wrongs; like a silly peasant who, when the roof is shaken from the temple, complains about his broken pot.

If I had brought this trouble to Sokrates, he would have helped not only me, but have been in the way to help Lysis too. But it was all entangled in my mind with things I could bring to no one.

It was while I was away on patrol that Strymon had first called upon my father. Since I was of age he had troubled us little, so that I had not kept him in mind. It was only by degrees that the mischief he was doing appeared. First my father brought out the rolls of the farm, and had nothing but fault to find with them. It was plain where he had got his misinformation, and I soon cleared it up; yet I still felt him resentful. Again I heard that Strymon had called while I was out in the City; and just afterwards my father charged me with keeping bad company. As soon as Phaedo’s name came up, I knew whom to thank. “Sir,” I said. “Phaedo is a Melian. You know better than I what choice he had. His breeding is as good as ours, and he is living now as befits it. You surely won’t judge a prisoner by the lot that falls to him in war?” This went too near the bone. He grew angry; and, naming Sokrates, used a phrase of him which out of respect to the dead I will not set down, even after these years.

A little while after, I found my mother crying at her loom. No one was there, and I begged her to tell me her trouble. She shook her head, and made no answer. I drew near to her, till our garments touched, and I felt against my face the outermost threads of her hair. I had meant to embrace her, but confusion fell on me; I held my breath hard, and was still. She kept her head turned away, trying to hide her tears. At last I said, “Mother, what shall we do?”

She shook her head again, and turning to me a little, laid her hand on my breast. When I covered it with both of mine, I could feel through it the beating of my heart. She began to draw her hand gently away from me; suddenly, with a swift and violent force, she thrust me off. Then I too heard the sound of my father’s stick outside. I stood as one dazed; I could neither bear to stay nor fly; till I heard her voice, sending me on some errand about the house. As I went, I heard him asking her sharply what ailed her.

After this, I used to see his eyes on me, following me as I moved about the room. It seemed clear that he thought we complained together against him. There was only wretchedness at home, and I spent all my time in the City. While walking in the colonnade, I fell in with Charmides. I was now so far from the green youth he had courted, that I could take a man’s pleasure in his conversation; for his light manner hid an accomplished mind. We took two or three turns together, while he told me that Sokrates had taken him to task for wasting his wits on idle talk, when he might be applying them usefully to the City’s business. Unhappily Lysis saw us together, and took it very ill. I defended myself with indignation. Yet I did myself more than justice, and him less; for it had been plain to me that Charmides had not grown indifferent to my person, and that it was not to talk politics he had sought me out.

I had enough of them at home. My father’s foot had healed; he was beginning to get about the City again, and to pick up his old friendships, together with some new ones that dismayed me. All his moderation was gone; I heard him express himself against the democrats with such bitterness as I had scarcely heard within the walls of our house before.

I took my concern to Lysis, during a time of peace between us. He said, “Let it pass. Can you wonder only the past seems good to him? A man getting on doesn’t see that the sweet taste he remembers was the taste of his youth and strength.”—“But Lysis, he isn’t forty-five.”—“Let it pass. He can’t choose but be bitter when you think of how the Army was lost. The commons let Alkibiades charm them into a venture which only he had any chance of succeeding in. Then they let his enemies frighten them into transferring the command. I still think the answer is to teach the people better; but I’ve not paid the price that your father has.” We were happy that day, and more than commonly tender with one another, as was apt to happen now between our quarrels.

But at home, the clouds always came back after the rain. I, who had slept soundly even the night before the Games, used to lie awake, afraid of I knew not what, knowing only that things did not stand still, and were not getting better. I did not understand myself. Once, after a quarrel with Lysis, I went to a brothel, which I had never done except that once in Corinth. But it sickened me beyond reason.

One day, a little after supper-time, I heard my father shouting for Sostias, and no reply. My heart sank; I slipped off to search, knowing where to look. Sure enough, Sostias lay drunk in the wine-store. I shook and cursed him, but could not bring him to himself. Since he had got older, this happened once in every month or two. Of course I had always beaten him, but perhaps not as hard as I ought. He was willing-hearted, and fond of us. I did not know then that he had done it quite lately, while I was at war. He was frightened of my father, which had brought back his clumsiness worse than ever; I suppose he drank to pluck his spirits up. Just as I was hauling him to his feet, my father found us, and said to him, “I warned you what to expect if I found you drunk again. You have brought it on yourself.”

He thrashed Sostias with more strength than I had known was in him, and locked him in the empty store by the stable. When night came, I asked to let him out. “No,” said my father. “We should have him slipping off in the dark. I am selling him to the mines tomorrow, as I warned him last time.”

I was too much taken aback to answer. Sostias had been with us since I could remember. No one we knew had ever sold a house-slave to Laureion, except for some gross brutishness. At length I said, “He’s not young, sir. In a silver mine he won’t live long.”—“That depends on what he is made of,” my father said.

Later, in the quiet of the night, I heard my mother pleading with him. He answered her angrily, and she fell silent. The night was hot and close; I lay tossing on my bed, thinking of the old days not long gone, when our little make-shifts had been a joke in which old Sostias had shared. My childhood too I remembered, and how he had hidden me from the Rhodian woman when she wanted to beat me. At last I could bear it no longer. I got softly up, and fetched some food from the larder. As I stole up to the outhouse door, I heard a strange fumbling noise within. I opened. Moonlight shining in through a small barred window showed me Sostias turning to stare. In his hands was a rope, which he had been throwing at the beam above.

There was a short painful scene, in which we both shed tears. I am not sure what I had intended at the outset; perhaps only to give him some supper, and say farewell to him. “Sostias,” I said, “if I forget to lock up after me, you know where to go. You may meet horsemen in the hills. Hide till you hear them talk. If they speak Doric, tell them what you’re doing and they’ll let you through. You can get work in Megara, or Thebes.” He knelt, and wept upon my hands. “Master, what will he do to you for this?”—“No matter; at least he can’t sell me to Laureion. Keep off the drink, now; and good luck.”

Next morning I dressed with some care, to put a good face on it, and waited about the house. My father was out already; he came back bringing the mine agent with him, which I had not bargained for. He opened the door in the presence of this man, who, being disappointed (for the scarcity of slaves was increasing), grumbled at his vain journey, and spoke insolently to my father. He scarcely replied; it was as if he did not hear. As the man left, I felt a cold sweat break out upon my palms.

“Go in, Mother,” I said. “I must speak with Father alone.” I think she had not guessed before what I had done. “Oh, Alexias!” she said. Then the blood warmed my heart, and its courage returned. “Go in, Mother,” I said; “alone is better.” She looked once more at me, and went.

When my father came in, he hung the outhouse key on the nail again. Then, without speaking, he turned towards me. I faced him and said, “Yes, sir, I am to blame. I went last night to bid Sostias goodbye, and I was careless, it seems.” The flesh of his face seemed to grow heavy and dull, and his eyes widened. “Careless! You impudent dog, you shall pay for this.” I said, “So I intend, sir,” and laid on the table the money I had ready. “For a man of his age, whom but for me you would have found hanged this morning, I think thirty is enough.” He stared at the silver, then shouted, “Do you dare to offer me my own? You have done now with playing the master here.”—“The City gave it to me,” I said, “for running at the Isthmus. Call it a gift to the gods.” He was still for a moment, then thrust at it with his hand, so that part of it fell, ringing and rolling on the floor-tiles. We stood unheeding it, looking in each other’s eyes.

He drew in his breath; I thought from his eyes he was going to lift his hand to me, or even to curse me, for he seemed beside himself. But a stillness fell on him instead. In this pause it was as if fear put out a hand, and pulled me by the hair; yet the face of fear was hidden.

He said, “Before you came of age, your uncle Strymon offered your stepmother the protection of his house. Why did you oppose it?” He had never called her my stepmother before. I felt a chill at it, beyond all reason, so that I must have grown pale; I saw his eyes fixed on my face. Then, remembering what a homecoming I had saved him from, I grew angry, and answered, “Because I thought it too soon to presume your death.” I was about to go on; but before I could open my mouth again, he thrust forth his head at me like a madman, and spat out, “Too soon! You had done that, both of you, soon enough!”

I stared at him, his meaning knocking at the doors of my mind, while my soul tried to close them. In the pause, there was a sound under the table. My father turned quickly and stooped down. There was a loud scream, as he dragged out little Charis. She must have been playing on the floor when he came in, and crept there out of the way. He shook her, and asked her what she meant by eavesdropping, as if she could have understood a word of what had passed. Terrified out of her senses, she struggled in his hands, and seeing me shrieked, “Lala! Lala!” straining towards me. “Don’t, Father,” I said. “You frighten her, let her go.”

Of a sudden he thrust her away, so that she fell at my feet. I picked her up, trying to quiet her while she sobbed and wailed. “Take her then,” he said, “since you claim her.” The child was crying in my ear; I could not believe I had heard him rightly. He strode forward, and seized each of us by the hair, holding our faces side by side; his lips showed his closed teeth as a dog’s do. “She is small,” he said, “for a child of three.”

I have seen evil in the world, and known horror, as any man must who has lived in times like these. But none of it has been to me what that moment was. Since then, the Gorgon’s head has never been a children’s tale to me. I felt the blood sink back upon my heart, and my limbs grow cold. It seemed that a voice of madness spoke in me, saying, “Destroy him, and this will cease to be.” I cannot tell what wickedness I might have done, but for the child. Prompted by a god, she did not let me forget her, but thrust her hot wet face into my neck, and clutched my hair. I moved my hand over her body to calm her, and came partly to myself. “Sir,” I said, “you have suffered much hardship; I think you are sick. You ought to rest, so I will leave you.”

I walked out into the courtyard with my sister in my arms. There I stood still, looking before me. It seemed that if I did not move, I could remain as stone, and know nothing. But this sleep was not permitted to me. The child broke it, speaking in my ear. She was saying that she wanted her mother.

I bent and set her on her feet. Calling the maid Kydilla, who was passing through, I told her to take the child in, and find her mother for her. For she had a right to what was hers. Then I walked out into the street.

At first, if I had any clear thought, it was only to find a place to be quiet in. But as I moved on through the City, seeking it in vain, the movement itself became needful to me; I walked faster and faster; I was like a man trying to leave his shadow behind. Presently passing through the Acharnian Gate I was out of the City. Then, the need pressing me more strongly, I girded my mantle up, and began to run.

I ran through the level plain between the City and Parnes. I did not go very fast; for I knew in myself I must run far, and my training worked in me though I did not regard it. The high wall of Parnes rose before me, pale with the summer drought; bleached grass and dark scrub and grey rock, standing against a hard dark sapphire sky. I reached the footslopes and ran between the olive fields, where poppies splashed the barley-stubble with blood. At last hearing a stream below me in a gulley, I felt thirst, and climbed down the rocks to drink. It was shady after the heat of the road, the water cool and fresh; I lingered there, when I should have hastened on. By this I learned that what I had been flying from was madness; for there it overtook me.

The form of my madness was this: that the sin I had been charged with, I was guilty of, at least in my soul. As in the terror of this thought I climbed up from the stream and began to run over the mountains, all sense fled from me, and it seemed I had committed it in my body also. Sometimes my mind would partly right itself, and I would throw off this last frenzy; yet I never really came into my wit. Who can doubt it was the judgment on my impiety, in destroying my father’s letter, and disobeying his command? For I could not see, what any man in his senses must have seen, that being beside himself he had been carried to an absurdity which he must perceive already; that a dozen of our acquaintance could bear witness to the time of Charis’s birth; that Strymon himself, who though mischievous was not a villain, would have testified for me in this at least. I only felt myself accursed by heaven and among men. So I hastened on, deeper into the hills and higher, into the wild country above the farms; climbing, and running where there was any place to run. My legs were torn by the heath and scrub, my feet bruised upon the stones. Once a troop of Spartans sighted me; but they took me for a runaway slave making for Megara, and rode past.

At last I came into the high places, where nothing is to be seen but dry stony tops and deep gorges, and far-off rock-shapes shuddering in the heat. I felt no hunger. Sometimes I felt thirst, but I was loth to stay and quench it, for I knew myself pursued; so that I began to look round for what hunted me, seeking to surprise it. The sunburnt mountain was the colour of a wolf’s pelt, and once I thought I saw one move. But it was the wind playing with a bush; it was not wolves that trailed me.

The sun shone brightly; but after the noontide, the wind blew small dark clouds across the sky, whose shadows hovered, and swooped like ravens down the slopes of the mountains. At first when I saw what followed me, I seemed to see only such a cloud as this, coming up behind. I had now run far in the summer heat, and climbed high; my breath came loudly, my legs began to fail, and my tongue was as dry as a dusty shoe. I saw water before me flowing down from a spring, and flinging myself on the earth drank as a beast does. As I lay there, I felt the cold that ran before the cloud; and looking up I saw them.

They were not in the cloud, but in the shadow of the cloud, running over the brush and the little stones towards me. Their faces and their feet were blue like the night; their garments were without substance, sometimes showing their dark limbs, sometimes the ground behind them. With a shout of horror I leaped to my feet, and fled; and now I knew that what I had taken only for the noise of my labouring breath, had been the hiss of the snakes that twined and darted in their hair. As I ran I prayed; but my prayer fell back like a spent arrow; I knew I was given to them for my sin, as Orestes was given, and no god would save me. Yet I ran, like the hunted wolf, who runs not in hope nor thought but because he is made so.

I do not know how long I ran. As they gained on me I began to hear their voices, like the cry of a mixed pack, some deep, some high; and the snakes hissing, back and forth. Then as I was running downhill, I heard one shout, “Now!” and reach out towards me. I leaped forward, and missing my footing rolled down the mountain-side. I think my senses left me. But in time level ground checked my falling. I got up, wondering that I could stand, for I had thought that all my bones were broken. I stood swaying on my feet; the hillside was dark behind me, and before me was something pale, on which the late sun was shining. Those, whom it is better always to call the Honoured Ones, I could not see any more. But I felt that I was dying; so perceiving that what stood before me was the shrine of a god, I went forward till I reached the steps before the precinct. Then my eyes blackened, and I fell.

I awoke to feel water on my face, and found an old man beside me. He wore on his white hair a garland of laurel; and, my senses coming back to me, I saw he was the priest of the shrine. At first I could not speak to him; but he gave me water to drink with wine in it; in a little I could sit up, and return his greeting. I looked over my shoulder the way I had come; but the Honoured Ones had withdrawn from me.

He saw me looking, and said, “You have run far; your clothes are torn, you are bruised and bleeding and dabbled with mire. Have you shed blood, and do you come for sanctuary? If so, come into the holy place; for Apollo cannot protect you outside.” And he bent to raise me. His hands were old, but dry and warm, and there was healing in them. I said, “I have shed no blood. Better I had shed my own; for my eyes have seen my heart, and its light is turned to darkness for ever.”—“There is a labyrinth,” said he, “in the heart of every man; and to each comes the day when he must reach the centre, and meet the Minotaur. But you have not profaned anything sacred to a god, or killed under a pledge of safety, or committed incest?” I shuddered, and said, “No.”—“Come, then, poor boy,” he said, and set me on my feet.

If he had not been strong for his years, he could not have brought me the little way to his house; for my knees failed under me as we went, and but for his arms I should have fallen. His wife being an old woman appeared before me, and helped him to lay me on a bed. She gave me soup to drink, and took away my garment; they washed me, and cleaned my wounds with wine and oil, and covered me with a mantle. It was like being a child again in my grandmother’s house. Last he gave me a hot spiced posset, with poppy in it; as soon as my wounds ceased smarting from the wine, I fell asleep.

I slept through the evening and the night, and on till almost noonday. Then I put on the mantle they had laid over me, and went out. I felt tired and sore; my limbs moved heavily, but they were sound. The sanctuary stood beside a cleft in the mountains, with a steep hill above it on which pine-trees grew. One could see a great way down the gorge, to the plain and the sea. It was the kind of place Apollo loves. But the beauty of the morning was strange to me, and I saw that it was good only for other men.

The priest, seeing me up, came down from the shrine, which was a small one, made of a silver-coloured stone. He brought me back to the house, and put food before me, not questioning me at all, but telling me how the shrine had been founded, by one to whom the god had appeared in that spot. When I had eaten, he asked if I would like to see the sanctuary; “for,” he said, “the image of the god is very beautiful; though this place is hard to come at, people journey a long way to see it, having been told of it by others. It is not as old as the shrine; indeed, I was here myself at its dedication. Pheidias made it, the statuary of Athens.”

Out of civility I went with him, with my commendations ready made, because of his kindness; for I could not care for anything. But when I saw the statue, I found he had been too cold in its praise. The god was represented as in early manhood, a glorious youth, of nineteen or twenty years, his face most noble, mingled of grace and power. A blue chlamys hung on his shoulder, and his left hand held the lyre. As I looked, for a while I forgot even what brought me there.

The priest said to me, “You are admiring the image as if astonished; and indeed, it is not as well known as it ought to be. But the same thing happens to those who come full of expectation. You have been told, I daresay, that after Pheidias had brought his art to full perfection, he worked no more from the living model. He waited on the inspiration of the gods. But while he was carving this, there was a certain young knight, of a beauty, he said, almost divine, whom he would ask sometimes to come as a service to the god, and strike the pose for him. Then letting the young man go, he would meditate, and pray to Apollo, and afterwards begin to work.”

I looked again, and thought both Pheidias and the youth must have been visited by some vision; for it seemed that this and no other was the very form and face of the god. I asked if he knew who had posed for the work. “Certainly,” he said; “it is common knowledge, and though you are young you will surely have heard of the man, for it is only a few years since his name was in everyone’s mouth: Myron son of Philokles, whom they call The Beautiful.”

My mind was silent, like fallen snows in a still air. I stood, and gazed. Then, as winter’s white comes crashing down the mountainside and runs away in water, grief fell upon me for all mortal men, so great that my body would scarcely hold it. I had no care that the priest stood there beside me; but, remembering presently that I was in the presence also of the god, I lifted my arm, and covered my face with my mantle as I wept.

After a while, the priest touched my shoulder, and asked me why I was weeping. But I could find nothing to say to him. “You wept,” he said, “when I told you the name of the youth. Perhaps he has died, or fallen in battle?” I shook my head, but could not speak. He paused, and said, “My child, I am old, and time stands still for me; nor do I fear death as an evil, more than one fears sleep after a full day. Pray rightly, that at each time of your life your desires may be comformable, and do not fear; old age will come not to you, but to another whom the gods will make ready. And as for the youth you grieve over, he is fortunate, since his beauty having become the dwelling of a god lives on in this temple, as well as in his sons.”

I bowed my head, honouring his wisdom. Yet he had not reached my grief; and to this day, though I have read many books, I have found no words for it.

All that day I rested there, and the next, and the night following; for my strength was slow in returning. On the last evening, when the lamp was lit and the old woman was cooking supper, I told him what I had been accused of, and that I did not know where to go. He told me I must go home, and the god would protect my innocence. Then, seeing my eyes fall, he said, “A certain man went a long journey, leaving his money in the charge of a friend. On returning, he got back all he had left in trust, and was satisfied. If it were found that the friend, while the money was in his house, had been in want, would he be honoured less among men, or more?”—“It is not the same,” I said.—“It is the same to the gods. Believe in your own honour, and men will do so too.”

So, early next day, I set off for the City. Though a good way, it was not so far as I had come, for I had wandered to and fro on the mountains. I returned at evening, a little before the lighting of the lamps. The priest’s wife had mended the rents in my mantle, and washed it, so that I looked more like myself, though somewhat bruised from the fall. As I came into the courtyard, I saw the lamp begin to shine from indoors. I waited outside for a while; but the dogs knew me, and ran up making a noise; so then I went in.

My father was seated at the table, reading. As he raised his eyes, my stepmother came in from the kitchen. She looked at him, not at me, and waited. He said, “Come in, Alexias; supper is almost ready, but you have time for a bath first, I daresay.” Then, turning towards her, “Has he time?”—“Yes,” she said, “if he is not too long.”—“Hurry then; but as you go, bid goodnight to your sister. She has been asking for you.”

So we sat down to eat, and talked of matters in the City; and what had passed was never spoken of again. What he had said to my stepmother while I was gone, or she to him, I never knew. But as time went by, I saw there had been a change. Sometimes I would hear her say to him, “The evening will be cool; your cloak is not thick enough”; or “Don’t let them give you the spiced meat that kept you awake last time.” He would say, “What’s that?” or “Well, well!” but he would obey her. I had not perceived that he always treated her as a girl, till now when I saw him treat her as a woman.

How this had come about, I never knew; nor, I think, did I wish to know. It was enough that nothing would be again as it was before.