Part 3 (1/2)
”Yes,” I said, ”I shall never get out of my bewilderment unless I talk to some one who can understand my point of view.”
”And you will probably find Chairo there,” she added, with a provoking smile. ”He was to arrive to-day.”
Ariston p.r.i.c.ked his ear:
”Ah!” he said. ”You will enjoy meeting Chairo; he is the leader of our Radical party; he is in favor of all sorts of Radical measures--such as the destruction of the Cult--” the women looked at one another--”the respect of private property----”
”What! Do you call the respect of private property Radical?” asked I.
”It was the s.h.i.+bboleth of the Conservatives in my time; they called it the 'sacredness of private property.'”
”Just as the Demetrians speak of the 'sacredness' of the Cult to-day,”
said Ariston.
”Whenever Hypocrisy wants to preserve an abuse she calls it Sacred,”
said a strong voice at my elbow. I turned and saw that a new companion had been added to us, and I guessed at once that it was Chairo.
He was a splendid man; nothing was wanting to him--stature, nor beauty, nor strength. He was remarkable, too, by the fact that his face was clean shaved, whereas all the other men I had met wore beards; but his face bore a likeness so striking to that of Augustus that to have hidden it by a beard would have been a desecration. And he was strong enough in mind as well as in muscle to bear being exceptional. It would have been impossible for him to be other than exceptional.
Lydia blushed as she recognized him, and the blush suggested what I most feared to know. Chairo went to her and without a shadow of affectation took her hand, knelt on one knee, and kissed it. There could have been no clearer confession of his love. I could not help contrasting the frankness of this act and the superb humility of it with the reticence, hypocrisy, and pride that characterized our twentieth-century love-making.
Lydia with her disengaged hand made a sign of the cross over his head; not the rapid, timid, fugitive conventional sign that Catholics made in our day, but with her whole arm, a large sign, swinging from above her head to his as it bowed over her hand, with a large sweep afterward across; and as she did so I saw her eyes widen and her glance stretch forward across the heavenly distance.
For the first time I felt the narrowness of my life and my own insignificance. And I--_I_--had dared to think I could make love to this woman! For a moment it occurred to me that Lydia had encouraged me; but so mean an apprehension of her could not live in her presence. As she stood there making the sign of the cross over the bowed head of her beloved, I knew that Love was something more in this civilization than the satisfaction of a caprice or the banter of good-humored gallantry; that it was possible to make of Love a religion, without for that reason sacrificing the charm of life, and the particular charm that makes the companions.h.i.+p of a woman something different from the companions.h.i.+p of a man.
And yet I was puzzled; was Lydia not a Demetrian? Cleon had told me she had not yet made up her mind; but was there not in this greeting with Chairo a practical admission of a betrothal? And what was the meaning of the sign of the cross? Was Christianity still alive, then? And if so, how reconcile Christ and Demeter? And there swung through my mind the terrible invocation of the poet: ”Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean!
The world has grown gray from thy breath.”
When the cult of Demeter had first been hinted to me I had a.s.sumed that the reign of the Galilean was over, and that the old G.o.ds had resumed their sway. The possibility of this had admitted a note of latent triumph in the hymn to Proserpine.
Will thou yet take all, Galilean? Yet these things thou shalt not take: The laurel, the palm and the paean; the breast of the nymph in the brake.
Could it be that we could keep these things and yet remain loyal to the religion of sacrifice? Could we wors.h.i.+p as well at the voluptuous altar of Cytherea and at the mystic shrine of the Holy Grail?
My mind was in a tumult of inquiry as Chairo arose from his knee and engaged in conversation with the group; and though they did not point or look at me I knew that it was of me they were talking. Presently, Chairo came to me and held out his hand:
”You are a traveller from the Past, I hear! Dropped down among us in some unaccountable way.” He looked me squarely in the eye as he held my hand a moment, with a frank scrutiny that I had already noticed in Lydia. Then he added:
”You were returning to the Hall; if you don't mind, I shall accompany you; it is too late for me to begin work before lunch; besides, there is no scythe for me.” And waving his hand to Lydia and the others, he walked away with me toward the Hall.
CHAPTER III
THE CULT OF DEMETER
For some distance we walked in silence. At last I said: ”You will not be surprised to hear that I am bewildered; everything is in some respects so much the same and in others so different.”
”I am curious to know what bewilders you most.”