CHAPTER VI

The sun had risen an hour since. Heron had betaken himself to his workshop, whistling as he went, and in the kitchen his old slave Argutis was standing over the hearth preparing his master’s morning meal. He dropped a pinch of dill into the barley-porridge, and shook his gray head solemnly.

His companion Dido, a Syrian, whose wavy white hair contrasted strangely with her dark skin, presently came in, and, starting up, he hastily inquired, “Not in yet?”

“No,” said the other woman, whose eyes were full of tears. “And you know what my dream was. Some evil has come to her, I am certain; and when the master hears of it—” Here she sobbed aloud; but the slave reproved her for useless weeping.

“You never carried her in your arms,” whimpered the woman.

“But often enough on my shoulder,” retorted the Gaul, for Argutis was a native of Augusta Trevirorum, on the Moselle. “Assoon as the porridge is ready you must take it in and prepare the master.”

“That his first fury may fall on me!” said the old woman, peevishly. “I little thought when I was young!”

“That is a very old story,” said Argutis, “and we both know what the master’s temper is. I should have been off long ago if only you could make his porridge to his mind. As soon as I have dished it I will go to seek Alexander—there is nothing to prevent me—for it was with him that she left the house.”

At this the old woman dried her tears, and cried “Yes, only go, and make haste. I will do everything else. Great gods, if she should be brought home dead! I know how it is; she could bear the old man’s temper and this moping life no longer, and has thrown herself into the water.

“My dream, my dream! Here—here is the dish, and now go and find the boy. Still, Philip is the elder.”

“He!” exclaimed the slave in a scornful tone. “Yes, if you want to know what the flies are talking about! Alexander for me. He has his head screwed on the right way, and he will find her if any man in Egypt can, and bring her back, alive or dead.”

“Dead!” echoed Dido, with a fresh burst of sobs, and her tears fell in the porridge, which Argutis, indeed, in his distress of mind had forgotten to salt.

While this conversation was going on the gemcutter was feeding his birds. Can this man, who stands there like any girl, tempting his favorites to feed, with fond words and whistling, and the offer of attractive dainties, be the stormy blusterer of last night? There is not a coaxing name that he does not lavish on them, while he fills their cups with fresh seed and water; and how carefully he moves his big hand as he strews the little cages with clean sand! He would not for worlds scare the poor little prisoners who cheer his lonely hours, and who have long since ceased to fear him. A turtle-dove takes peas, and a hedge-sparrow picks ants’ eggs from his lips; a white-throat perches on his left hand to snatch a caterpillar from his right. The huge man was in his garden soon after sunrise gathering the dewy leaves for his feathered pets. But he talks and plays longest with the starling which his lost wife gave him. She had bought it in secret from the Bedouin who for many years had brought shells for sale from the Red Sea, to surprise her husband with the gift. The clever bird had first learned to call her name, Olympias; and then, without any teaching, had picked up his master’s favorite lament, “My strength, my strength!”

Heron regarded this bird as a friend who understood him, and, like him, remembered the never-to-be-forsaken dead. For three years had the gem cutter been a widower, and he still thought more constantly and fondly of his lost wife than of the children she had left him. Heron scratched the bird’s knowing little head, saying in a tone which betrayed his pity both for himself and his pet “Yes, old fellow, you would rather have a soft white finger to stroke you down. I can hear her now, when she would call you ‘sweet little pet,’ or ‘dear little creature.’ We shall neither of us ever hear such gentle, loving words again. Do you remember how she would look up with her dear sweet face—and was it not a lovely face?—when you called her by her name ‘Olympias’? How many a time have her rosy lips blown up your feathers, and cried, ‘Well done, little fellow! ‘—Ay, and she would say ‘Well done’ to me too, when I had finished a piece of work well. Ah, and what an eye she had, particularly for art! But now well, the children give me a good word too, now that her lips are silent!”

“Olympias!” cried the bird loudly and articulately, and the clouds that shadowed the gem-cutter’s brow lifted a little, as with an affectionate smile he went on:

“Yes, yes; you would be glad, too, to have her back again. You call her now, as I did yesterday, standing by her grave—and she sends you her love.

“Do you hear, little one? Peck away at the old man’s finger; he knows you mean it kindly, and it does not hurt. I was all alone out there, and Selene looked down on us in silence. There was rioting and shouting all round, but I could hear the voice of our dead. She was very near me, and her sad soul showed me that she still cared for me. I had taken a jar of our best wine of Byblos under my cloak; as soon as I had poured oil on her gravestone and shed some of the noble liquor, the earth drank it up as though it were thirsty. Not a drop was left. Yes, little fellow, she accepted the gift; and when I fell on my knees to meditate on her, she vouchsafed replies to many of my questions.

“We talked together as we used—you know. And we remembered you, too; I gave you her love.

“You understand me, little fellow, don’t you? And, I tell you, better times are coming now.”

He turned from the bird with a sharp movement of annoyance, for the slave-woman came in with the bowl of barley-porridge.

“You!” exclaimed Heron, in surprise. “Where is Melissa?”

“She will come presently,” said the old woman, in a low and doubtful tone.

“Oh, thanks for the oracle!” said the artist, ironically.

“How you mock at a body!” said the old woman. “I meant—But eat first—eat. Anger and grief are ill food for an empty stomach.”

Heron sat down to the table and began to eat his porridge, but he presently tossed away the spoon, exclaiming:

“I do not fancy it, eating by myself.”

Then, with a puzzled glance at Dido, he asked in a tone of vexation:

“Well, why are you waiting here? And what is the meaning of all that nipping and tugging at your dress? Have you broken another dish? No? Then have done with that cursed head-shaking, and speak out at once!”

“Eat, eat,” repeated Dido, retreating to the door, but Heron called her back with vehement abuse; but when she began again her usual complaint, “I never thought, when I was young—” Heron recovered the good temper he had been rejoicing in so lately, and retorted: “Oh! yes, I know, I have the daughter of a great potentate to wait on me. And if it had only occurred to Caesar, when he was in Syria, to marry your sister, I should have had his sister-in-law in my service. But at any rate I forbid howling. You might have learned in the course of thirty years, that I do not eat my fellow-creatures. So, now, confess at once what is wrong in the kitchen, and then go and fetch Melissa.” The woman was, perhaps, wise to defer the evil moment as long as possible. Matters might soon change for the better, and good or evil could come only from without. So Dido clung to the literal sense of her master’s question, and something note-worthy had actually happened in the kitchen. She drew a deep breath, and told him that a subordinate of the night-watch had come in and asked whether Alexander were in the house, and where his painting-room was.

“And you gave him an exact description?” asked Heron.

But the slave shook her head; she again began to fidget with her dress, and said, timidly:

“Argutis was there, and he says no good can come of the night-watch. He told the man what he thought fit, and sent him about his business.”

At this Heron interrupted the old woman with such a mighty blow of his fist on the table that the porridge jumped in the bowl, and he exclaimed in a fury:

“That is what comes of treating slaves as our equals! They begin to think for themselves. A stupid blunder can spoil the best day! The captain of the night-watch, I would have you to know, is a very great man, and very likely a friend of Seleukus’s, whose daughter Alexander has just painted. The picture is attracting some attention.—Attention? What am I saying? Every one who has been allowed to see it is quite crazy about it. Everything else that was on show in the embalmers’ hall was mere trash by comparison. Often enough have I grumbled at the boy, who would rather be anywhere than here; but, this time, I had some ground for being proud to be his father! And now the captain of the watch sends his secretary, or something of the kind, no doubt, in order to have his portrait, or his wife’s or daughter’s—if he has one—painted by the artist who did Korinna’s; and his own father’s slave—it drives me mad to think of it—makes a face at the messenger and sends him all astray. I will give Argutis a lesson! But by this time, perhaps—Just go and fetch him in.” With these words Heron again dropped his spoon, wiped his beard, and then, seeing that Dido was still standing before him as though spellbound, twitching her slave’s gray gown, he repeated his order in such angry tones—though before he had spoken to her as gently as if she were one of his own children—that the old woman started violently and made for the door, crouching low and whimpering bitterly.

The soft-hearted tyrant was really sorry for the faithful old servant he had bought a generation since for the home to which he had brought his fair young wife, and he began to speak kindly to her, as he had previously done to the birds.

This comforted the old woman so much that again she could not help crying; but, notwithstanding the sincerity of her tears, being accustomed of old to take advantage of her master’s moods, she felt that now was the time to tell her melancholy story. First of all she would at any rate see whether Melissa had not meanwhile returned; so she humbly kissed the hem of his robe and hurried away.

“Send Argutis to me!” Heron roared after her, and he returned to his breakfast with renewed energy.

He thought, as he ate, of his son’s beautiful work, and the foolish self-importance of Argutis, so faithful, and usually, it must be owned, so shrewd. Then his eyes fell on Melissa’s vacant place opposite to him, and he suddenly pushed away his bowl and rose to seek his daughter.

At this moment the starling called, in a clear, inviting tone, “Olympias!” and this cheered him, reminding him of the happy hour he had passed at his wife’s grave and the good augury he had had there. The belief in a better time at hand, of which he had spoken to the bird, again took possession of his sanguine soul; and, fully persuaded that Melissa was detained in her own room or elsewhere by some trifling matter, he went to the window and shouted her name; for hers, too, opened on to the garden.

And it seemed as though the dear, obedient girl had come at his bidding, for, as he turned back into the room again, Melissa was standing in the open door.

After the pretty Greek greeting, “Joy be with you,” which she faintly answered, he asked her, as fractiously as though he had spent hours of anxiety, where she had been so long. But he was suddenly silent, for he was astonished to see that she had not come from her room, but, as her dress betrayed, from some long expedition. Her appearance, too, had none of the exquisite neatness which it usually displayed; and then—what a state she was in! Whence had she come so early in the day?

The girl took off the kerchief that covered her head, and with a faint groan pushed her tangled hair off her temples, and her bosom heaved as she panted out in a weary voice: “Here I am! But O, father, what a night I have spent!”

Heron could not for a minute or two find words to answer her.

What had happened to the girl? What could it be which made her seem so strange and unlike her self? He gazed at her, speechless, and alarmed by a hundred fearful suspicions. He felt as a mother might who has kissed her child’s fresh, healthy lips at night, and in the morning finds them burning with fever.

Melissa had never been ill from the day of her birth; since she had donned the dress of a full-grown maiden she had never altered; day after day and at all hours she had been the same in her quiet, useful, patient way, always thinking of her brothers, and caring for him rather than for herself.

It had never entered into his head to suppose that she could alter; and now, instead of the gentle, contented face with faintly rosy cheeks, he saw a pallid countenance and quivering lips. What mysterious fire had this night kindled in those calm eyes, which Alexander was fond of comparing to those of a gazelle? They were sunk, and the dark shadows that encircled them were a shock to his artistic eye. These were the eyes of a girl who had raved like a maenad the night through. Had she not slept in her quiet little room; had she been rushing with Alexander in the wild Bacchic rout; or had something dreadful happened to his son?

Nothing could have been so great a relief to him as to rave and rage as was his wont, and he felt strongly prompted to do so; but there was something in her which moved him to pity or shyness, he knew not which, and kept him quiet. He silently followed her with his eyes while she folded her mantle and kerchief in her orderly way, and hastily gathered together the stray, curly locks of her hair, smoothed them, and bound them round her head.

Some one, however, must break the silence, and he gave a sigh of relief when the girl came up to him and asked him, in a voice so husky as to give him a fresh shock:

“Is it true that a Scythian, one of the nightwatch, has been here already?”

Then he broke out, and it really did him good to give vent to his repressed feelings in an angry speech:

“There again—the wisdom of slaves! The so-called Scythian brought a message from his master.