A Victor of Salamis 19Book II · Democrates’s Troubles Return
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 19
Book II · Democrates’s Troubles Return
DavisEnglish
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 shimmered under the light of morning, she could gaze toward the brown crags of Salamis and the open Ægean 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 ship 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 passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard him praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus’s hidden meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.
“Her Ladyship 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 æons, 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 Oceanus’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 gods 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 Hellas 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. “Phœnix,” 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 passed. 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.
The day after Phœnix was born old Conon, Glaucon’s father, died. The old man had never recovered from the blow given by the dishonourable death of the son with whom he had so lately quarrelled. He left a great landed estate at Marathon to his new-born grandson. The exact value thereof Democrates inquired into sharply, and when a distant cousin talked of contesting the will, the orator announced he would defend the infant’s rights. The would-be plaintiff withdrew at once, not anxious to cross swords with this favourite of the juries, and everybody said that Democrates was showing a most scrupulous regard for his unfortunate friend’s memory.
Indeed, seemingly, Democrates ought to have been the happiest man in Athens. He had been elected “strategus,” to serve on the board of generals along with Themistocles. He had plenty of money, and gave great banquets to this or that group of prominent citizens. During the winter he had asked Hermippus for his daughter in marriage. The Eumolpid told him that since Glaucon’s fearful end, he was welcome as a son-in-law. Still he could not conceal that Hermione never spoke of him save in hate, and in view of her then delicate condition it was well not to press the matter. The orator had seemed well content. “Woman’s fantasies would wear away in time.” But the rumour of this negotiation, outrunning truth, grew into the lying report of an absolute betrothal,—the report which was to drift to Asia and turn Glaucon’s heart to stone, gossip having always wrought more harm than malignant lying.
Yet flies were in Democrates’s sweet ointment. He knew Themistocles hardly trusted him as frankly as of yore. Little Simonides, a man of wide influence and keen insight, treated him very coldly. Cimon had cooled also. But worse than all was a haunting dread. Democrates knew, if hardly another in Hellas, that the Cyprian—in other words Mardonius—was safe in Asia, and likewise that he had fled on the Solon. Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates night and day.
Still he was beginning to shake off his terrors. He believed he had washed his hands fairly clean of his treason, even if the water had cost his soul. He joined with all his energies in seconding Themistocles. His voice was loudest at the Pnyx, counselling resistance. He went on successful embassies to Sicyon and Ægina to get pledges of alliance. In the summer he did his uttermost to prepare the army which Themistocles and Evænetus the Spartan led to defend the pass of Tempē. The expedition sailed amid high hopes for a noble defence of Hellas. Democrates was proud and sanguine. Then, like a thunderbolt, there came one night a knock at his door. Bias led to his master no less a visitor than the sleek and smiling Phœnician—Hiram.
The orator tried to cover his terrors by windy bluster. He broke in before the Oriental could finish his elaborate salaam.
“Of all the harpies and gorgons you are the least welcome. Were you not warned when you fled Athens for Argos never to show your face in Attica again?”
“Your Excellency said so,” was the bland reply.
“Admirably you obey it. It remains for me to reward the obedience. Bias, go to the street; summon two Scythian watchmen.”
The Thracian darted out. Hiram simply stood with hands folded.
“It is well, Excellency, the lad is gone. I have many things to say in confidence to your Nobility. At Lacedæmon my Lord Lycon was gracious enough to give certain commands for me to transmit to you.”
“Commands? To me? Earth and gods! am I to be commanded by an adder like you? You shall pay for this on the rack.”
“Your slave thinks otherwise,” observed Hiram, humbly. “If your Lordship will deign to read this letter, it will save your slave many words and your Lordship many cursings.”
He knelt again before he offered a papyrus. Democrates would rather have taken fire, but he could not refuse. And thus he read:—
“Lycon of Lacedæmon to Democrates of Athens, greeting:—Can he who Medizes in the summer Hellenize in the spring? I know your zeal for Themistocles. Was it for this we plucked you back from exposure and ruin? Do then as Hiram bids you, or repay the money you clutched so eagerly. Fail not, or rest confident all the documents you betrayed shall go to Hypsichides the First Archon, your enemy. Use then your eloquence on Attic juries! But you will grow wise; what need of me to threaten? You will hearken to Hiram.
“From Sparta, on the festival of Bellerophon, in the ephorship of Theudas.—Chaire!”
Democrates folded the papyrus and stood long, biting his whitened lips in silence. Perhaps he had surmised the intent of the letter the instant Hiram extended it.
“What do you desire?” he said thickly, at last.
“Let my Lord then hearken—” began the Phœnician, to be interrupted by the sudden advent of Bias.
“The Scythians are at the door, kyrie,” he was shouting; “shall I order them in and drag this lizard out by the tail?”
“No, in Zeus’s name, no! Bid them keep without. And do you go also. This honest fellow is on private business which only I must hear.”
Bias slammed the door. Perhaps he stood listening. Hiram, at least, glided nearer to his victim and spoke in a smooth whisper, taking no chances of an eavesdropper.
“Excellency, the desire of Lycon is this. The army has been sent to Tempē. At Lacedæmon Lycon used all his power to prevent its despatch, but Leonidas is omnipotent to-day in Sparta, and besides, since Lycon’s calamity at the Isthmia, his prestige, and therefore his influence, is not a little abated. Nevertheless, the army must be recalled from Tempē.”
“And the means?”
“Yourself, Excellency. It is within your power to find a thousand good reasons why Themistocles and Evænetus should retreat. And you will do so at once, Excellency.”
“Do not think you and your accursed masters can drive me from infamy to infamy. I can be terrible if pushed to bay.”
“Your Nobility has read Lycon’s letter,” observed the Phœnician, with folded arms.
There was a sword lying on the tripod by which Democrates stood; he regretted for all the rest of his life that he had not seized it and ended the snakelike Oriental then and there. The impulse came, and went. The opportunity never returned. The orator’s head dropped down upon his breast.
“Go back to Sparta, go back instantly,” he spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Tell that Polyphemus you call your master there that I will do his will. And tell him, too, that if ever the day comes for vengeance on him, on the Cyprian, on you,—my vengeance will be terrible.”
“Your slave’s ears hear the first part of your message with joy,”—Hiram’s smile never grew broader,—“the second part, which my Lord speaks in anger,—I will forget.”
“Go! go!” ordered the orator, furiously. He clapped his hands. Bias reëntered.
“Tell the constables I don’t need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes hither again, do you and the other slaves beat him till there is not a whole spot left on his body.”
Hiram’s genuflexion was worthy of Xerxes’s court.
“My Lord, as always,” was his parting compliment, “has shown himself exceeding wise.”
Thus the Oriental went. In what a mood Democrates passed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing Æschylus’s song of the Furies. He could not silence it.
“With scourge and with ban
We prostrate the man
Who with smooth-woven wile
And a fair-facèd smile
Hath planted a snare for his friend!
Though fleet, we shall find him;
Though strong, we shall bind him,
Who planted a snare for his friend!”
He had intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul’s price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night scene at Colonus?
The next morning he made a formal visit to the shrine of the Furies in the hill of Areopagus. “An old vow, too long deferred in payment, taken when he joined in his first contest on the Bema,” he explained to friends, when he visited this uncanny spot.
Few were the Athenians who would pass that cleft in the Areopagus where the “Avengers” had their grim sanctuary without a quick motion of the hands to avert the evil eye. Thieves and others of evil conscience would make a wide circuit rather than pass this abode of Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone, pitiless pursuers of the guilty. The terrible sisters hounded a man through life, and after death to the judgment bar of Minos. With reason, therefore, the guilty dreaded them.
Democrates had brought the proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a jagged, unhewn cranny, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright and reaching far into the sculptured rock. No image: only a few rough votive tablets set up by a grateful suppliant for some mercy from the awful goddesses.
“If you would pray here, kyrie,” said the hag, “it is needful that I go forth and close the door. The holy Furies love the dark, for is not their home in Tartarus?”
She went forth. As the light vanished, Democrates seemed buried in the rock. Out of the blackness spectres were springing against him. From a cleft he heard a flapping, a bat, an imprisoned bird, or Alecto’s direful wings. He held his hands downward, for he had to address infernal goddesses, and prayed in haste.
“O ye sisters, terrible yet gracious, give ear. If by my offerings I have found favour, lift from my heart this crushing load. Deliver me from the fear of the blood guilty. Are ye not divine? Do not the immortals know all things? Ye know, then, how I was tempted, how sore was the compulsion, and how life and love were sweet. Then spare me. Give me back unhaunted slumber. Deliver me from Lycon. Give my soul peace,—and in reward, I swear it by the Styx, by Zeus’s own oath, I will build in your honour a temple by your sacred field at Colonus, where men shall gather to reverence you forever.”
But here he ceased. In the darkness moved something white. Again a flapping. He was sure the white thing was Glaucon’s face. Glaucon had perished at sea. He had never been buried, so his ghost was wandering over the world, seeking vainly for rest. It all came to Democrates in an instant. His knees smote together; his teeth chattered. He sprang back upon the door and forced it open, but never saw the dove that fluttered forth with him.
“A hideous place!” he cried to his waiting friends. “A man must have a stronger heart than mine to love to tarry after his prayer is finished.”
Only a few days later Hellas was startled to hear that Tempē had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after the coming and going of Hiram.
“There is a larger tunny in the sea than yet has entered the meshes,” confessed the fishmonger, sorely puzzled, after much vain talk.
But Hermione was caring for none of these things. Her hands were busy with the swaddling clothes. Her thoughts only for that wicker cradle which swung betwixt the pillars, where Hermippus’s house looked toward Salamis.
