Part 30 (2/2)

”Do not think you and your accursed masters can drive me from infamy to infamy. I can be terrible if pushed to bay.”

”Your n.o.bility has read Lycon's letter,” observed the Phnician, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 reentered.

”Tell the constables I don't need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes. .h.i.ther 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 pa.s.sed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing aeschylus'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-faced 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 h.e.l.las,-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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s this abode of Alecto, Megaera, 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 pet.i.tion to the mighty G.o.ddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ddesses.

”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 G.o.ddesses, 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.las was startled to hear that Tempe had been evacuated without a blow, and the pa.s.s 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.

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