Part 17 (1/2)
”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?”