CHAPTER XVII.
Complete darkness enfolded the white house. Hermon saw only two windowslighted, the ones in his friend's studio, which looked out into the opensquare, while his own faced the water.
What did this mean?
It must be nearly midnight, and he could no longer expect Myrtilus to bestill at work. He had supposed that he should find him in his chamber,supported by his slaves, struggling for breath. What was the meaning ofthe light in the workrooms now?
Where was his usually efficient Bias? He never went to rest when hismaster was to return home, yet the carrier dove must have announced hiscoming!
But Hermon had also enjoined the care of Myrtilus upon the slave, and hewas undoubtedly beside the sufferer's couch, supporting him in the sameway that he had often seen his master.
He was now riding across the open space, and he heard the men whocarried the Gaul talking close behind him.
Was the wounded barbarian the sole acquisition of this journey?
The beat of his horse's hoofs and the voices of the Biamites echoeddistinctly enough amid the stillness of the night, which was interruptedonly by the roaring of the wind. And this disturbance of the deepsilence around had entered the lighted windows before him, for a figureappeared at one of them, and--could he believe his own eyes?--Myrtiluslooked down into the square, and a joyous welcome rang from his lips asloudly as in his days of health.
The darkness of the night suddenly seemed to Hermon to be illumined.A leap to the ground, two bounds up the steps leading to the house,an eager rush through the corridor that separated him from the room inwhich Myrtilus was, the bursting instead of opening of the door, and, asif frantic with happy surprise, he impetuously embraced his friend, who,burin and file in hand, was just approaching the threshold, and kissedhis brow and cheeks in the pure joy of his heart.
Then what questions, answers, tidings! In spite of the torrents of rainand the gale, the invalid's health had been excellent. The solitude haddone him good. He knew nothing about the carrier dove. The hurricane hadprobably "blown it away," as the breeders of the swift messengers said.
Question and reply now followed one another in rapid succession, andboth were soon acquainted with everything worth knowing; nay, Hermon hadeven delivered Daphne's rose to his friend, and informed him what hadbefallen the Gaul who was being brought into the house.
Bias and the other slaves had quickly appeared, and Hermon soon renderedthe wounded man the help he needed in an airy chamber in the secondstory of the house, which, owing to the heat that prevailed in summer soclose under the roof, the slaves had never occupied.
Bias assisted his master with equal readiness and skill, and at last theGaul opened his eyes and, in the language of his country, asked afew brief questions which were incomprehensible to the others. Then,groaning, he again closed his lids.
Hitherto Hermon had not even allowed himself time to look around hisfriend's studio and examine what he had created during his absence. But,after perceiving that his kind act had not been in vain, and consumingwith a vigorous appetite the food and wine which Bias set before him,he obliged Myrtilus--for another day was coming--to go to rest, that thestorm might not still prove hurtful to him.
Yet he held his friend's hand in a firm clasp for a long time, and,when the latter at last prepared to go, he pressed it so closely thatit actually hurt Myrtilus. But he understood his meaning, and, with aloving glance that sank deep into Hermon's heart, called a last goodnight.
After two sleepless nights and the fatiguing ride which he had justtaken, the sculptor felt weary enough; but when he laid his hand on theGaul's brow and breast, and felt their burning heat, he refused Bias'svoluntary offer to watch the sufferer in his place.
If to amuse or forget himself he had caroused far more nights insuccession in Alexandria, why should he not keep awake when the objectin question was to wrest a young life from the grasp of death? This manand his life were now his highest goal, and he had never yet repentedhis foolish eccentricity of imposing discomforts upon himself to helpthe suffering.
Bias, on his part, was very willing to go to rest. He had plenty ofcause for weariness; Myrtilus's unscrupulous body-servant had stolenoff with the other slaves the night before, and did not return, withstaggering gait, until the next morning, but, in order to keep hispromise to his master, he had scarcely closed his eyes, that he might beat hand if Myrtilus should need assistance.
So Bias fell asleep quickly enough in his little room in the lowerstory, while his master, by the exertion of all his strength of will,watched beside the couch of the Gaul.
Yet, after the first quarter of an hour, his head, no matter how hestruggled to prevent it, drooped again and again upon his breast. Butjust as slumber was completely overpowering him his patient made himstart up, for he had left his bed, and when Hermon, fully roused, lookedfor him, was standing in the middle of the room, gazing about him.
The artist thought that fever had driven the wounded warrior from hiscouch, as it formerly did his fellow-pupil Lycon, whom, in the deliriumof typhus, he could keep in bed only by force. So he led the Gaulcarefully back to the couch he had deserted, and, after moistening thebandage with healing balm from Myrtilus's medicine chest, ordered him tokeep quiet.
The barbarian yielded as obediently as a child, but at first remained ina sitting posture and asked, in scarcely intelligible broken Greek, howhe came to this place.
After Hermon had satisfied his curiosity, he also put a few questions,and learned that his charge not only wore a mustache, like his fellowcountrymen, but also a full beard, because the latter was the badge ofthe bridge builders, to which class he belonged. While examining the onecrossing the canal, it had fallen in upon him.
He closed his eyes as he spoke, and Hermon wondered if it was not timefor him to lie down also; but the wounded man's brow was still burning,and the Gallic words which he constantly muttered were probably aboutthe phantoms of fever, which Hermon recognised from Lycon's illness.
So he resolved to wait and continue to devote the night, which he hadalready intended to give him, to the sufferer. From the chair at thefoot of the bed he looked directly into his face. The soft light of thelamp, which with two others hung from a tall, heavy bronze stand in theshape of an anchor, which Bias had brought, shone brightly enough toallow him to perceive how powerful was the man whose life he had saved.His own face was scarcely lighter in hue than the barbarian's, and howsharp was the contrast between his long, thick black beard and his whiteface and bare arched chest!
Hermon had noticed this same contrast in his own person. Otherwise theGaul did not resemble him in a single feature, and he might even haverefused to compare his soft, wavy beard with the harsh, almost bristlyone of the barbarian. And what a defiant, almost evil expression hiscountenance wore when--perhaps because his wound ached--he closed hislips more firmly! The children who so willingly let him, Hermon, takethem in his arms would certainly have been afraid of this savage-lookingfellow.
Yet in build, and at any rate in height and breadth of shoulders, therewas some resemblance between him and the Gaul.
As a bridge builder, the injured man belonged, in a certain sense, tothe ranks of the artists, and this increased Hermon's interest in hispatient, who was now probably out of the most serious danger.
True, the Greek still cast many a searching glance at the barbarian,but his eyes closed more and more frequently, and at last the idea tookpossession of him that he himself was the wounded man on the couch, andsome one else, who again was himself, was caring for him.
He vainly strove to understand the impossibility of this division ofhis own being, but the more eagerly he did so the greater became hisbewilderment.
Suddenly the scene changed; Ledscha had appeared.
Bending over him, she lavished words of love; but when, in passionateexcitement, he sprang from the couch to draw her toward him, she changedinto the Nemesis to whose statue she had just prayed.
He stood still as if petrif
ied, and the goddess, too, did not stir. Onlythe wheel which had rested at her feet began to move, and rolled, witha thundering din, sometimes around him, sometimes around the peoplewho, as if they had sprung from the ground, formed a jeering company ofspectators, and clapped their hands, laughed, and shouted whenever itrolled toward him and he sprang back in fear.
Meanwhile the wheel constantly grew larger, and seemed to becomeheavier, for the wooden beams over which it rolled splintered, crashinglike thin laths, and the spectators' shouts of applause sounded ruderand fiercer.
Then mortal terror suddenly seized him, and while he shouted for helpto Myrtilus, Daphne, and her father Archias, his slave Bias, the oldcomrade of Alexander, Philippus, and his wife, he awoke, bathed inperspiration, and looked about him.
But he must still be under the spell of the horrible dream, for therattling and clattering around him continued, and the bed where thewounded Gaul had lain was empty.
Hermon involuntarily dipped his hand into the water which stood ready towet the bandages, and sprinkled his own face with it; but if he had everbeheld life with waking eyes, he was doing so now. Yet the barbarian hadvanished, and the noise in the house still continued.
Was it possible that rats and mice--? No! That was the shriek of aterrified human being--that a cry for help! This sound was the imperiouscommand of a rough man's voice, that--no, he was not mistaken--thatwas his own name, and it came from the lips of his Myrtilus, anxiously,urgently calling for assistance.
Then he suddenly realized that the white house had been attacked,that his friend must be rescued from robbers or the fury of a mob ofBiamites, and, like the bent wood of a projectile when released from thenoose which holds it to the ground, the virile energy that characterizedhim sprang upward with mighty power. The swift glance that swept theroom was sent to discover a weapon, and before it completed the circuitHermon had already grasped the bronze anchor with the long rod twinedwith leaves and the teeth turned downward. Only one of the three littlevessels filled with oil that hung from it was burning. Before swingingthe heavy standard aloft, he freed it from the lamps, which struck thefloor with a clanging noise.
The man to whom he dealt a blow with this ponderous implement wouldforget to rise. Then, as if running for a prize in the gymnasium, herushed through the darkness to the staircase, and with breathless hastegroped his way down the narrow, ladderlike steps. He felt himself anavenging, punishing power, like the Nemesis who had pursued him in hisdreams. He must wrest the friend who was to him the most beloved ofmortals from the rioters. To defeat them himself seemed a small matter.His shout--"I am coming, Myrtilus! Snuphis, Bias, Dorcas, Syrus! here,follow me!" was to summon the old Egyptian doorkeeper and the slaves,and inform his friend of the approach of a deliverer.
The loudest uproar echoed from his own studio. Its door stood wide open,and black smoke, mingled with the deep red and yellow flames of burningpitch, poured from it toward him.
"Myrtilus!" he shouted at the top of his voice as he leaped across thethreshold into the tumult which filled the spacious apartment, at thesame time clashing the heavy iron anchor down upon the head of thebroad-shouldered, half-naked fellow who was raising a clumsy lanceagainst him.
The pirate fell as though struck by lightning, and he again shouted"Myrtilus!" into the big room, so familiar to him, where the conflictwas raging chaotically amid a savage clamour, and the smoke did notallow him to distinguish a single individual.
For the second time he swung the terrible weapon, and it struck to thefloor the monster with a blackened face who had rushed toward him, butat the same time the anchor broke in two.
Only a short metal rod remained in his hand, and, while he raised hisarm, determined to crush the temples of the giant carrying a torch whosprang forward to meet him, it suddenly seemed as if a vulture withglowing plumage and burning beak was attacking his face, and theterrible bird of prey was striking its hard, sharp, red-hot talons moreand more furiously into his lips, cheeks, and eyes.
At first a glare as bright as sunshine had flashed before his gaze;then, where he had just seen figures and things half veiled by thesmoke, he beheld only a scarlet surface, which changed to a violet, andfinally a black spot, followed by a violet-blue one, while the vulturecontinued to rend his face with beak and talons.
Then the name "Myrtilus!" once more escaped his lips; this time,however, it did not sound like the encouraging shout of an avenginghero, but the cry for aid of one succumbing to defeat, and it was soonfollowed by a succession of frantic outbursts of suffering, terror, anddespair.
But now sharp whistles from the water shrilly pierced the air andpenetrated into the darkened room, and, while the tumult around Hermongradually died away, he strove, tortured by burning pain, to grope hisway toward the door; but here his foot struck against a human body,there against something hard, whose form he could not distinguish, andfinally a large object which felt cool, and could be nothing but hisDemeter.
But she seemed doomed to destruction, for the smoke was increasing everymoment, and constantly made his open wounds smart more fiercely.
Suddenly a cooler air fanned his burning face, and at the same time heheard hurrying steps approach and the mingled cries of human voices.
Again he began to shout the names of his friends, the slaves, and theporter; but no answer came from any of them, though hasty questions inthe Greek language fell upon his ear.
The strategist, with his officers, the nomarch of the district with hissubordinates, and many citizens of Tennis had arrived. Hermon knew mostof them by their voices, but their figures were not visible. The red,violet, and black cloud before him was all he could see.
Yet, although the pain continued to torture him, and a voice in his soultold him that he was blinded, he did not allow the government officialswho eagerly surrounded him to speak, only pointed hastily to his eyes,and then bade them enter Myrtilus's studio. The Egyptian Chello, theTennis goldsmith, who had assisted the artists in the preparation of thenoble metal, and one of the police officers who had been summoned to ridthe old house of the rats and mice which infested it, both knew the way.
They must first try to save Myrtilus's work and, when that wasaccomplished, preserve his also from destruction by the flames.
Leaning on the goldsmith's arm, Hermon went to his friend's studio; butbefore they reached it smoke and flames poured out so densely that itwas impossible even to gain the door.
"Destroyed--a prey to the flames!" he groaned. "And he--he--he--"
Then like a madman he asked if no one had seen Myrtilus, and where hewas; but in vain, always in vain.
At last the goldsmith who was leading him asked him to move aside, forall who had flocked to the white house when it was seized by the flameshad joined in the effort to save the statue of Demeter, which they hadfound unharmed in his studio.
Seventeen men, by the exertion of all their strength, were dragging theheavy statue from the house, which was almost on the point of fallingin, into the square. Several others were bearing corpses into the openair-the old porter Snuphis and Myrtilus's body servant. Some motionlessforms they were obliged to leave behind. Both the bodies had deepwounds. There was no trace of Myrtilus and Bias.
Outside the storm had subsided, and a cool breeze blew refreshingly intoHermon's face. As he walked arm in arm with the notary Melampus, who hadinvited him to his house, and heard some one at his side exclaim, "Howlavishly Eos is scattering her roses to-day!" he involuntarily liftedthe cloth with which he had covered his smarting face to enjoy thebeautiful flush of dawn, but again beheld nothing save a black andviolet-blue surface.
Then drawing his hand from his guide's arm, he pressed it upon his poor,sightless, burning eyes, and in helpless rage, like a beast of preywhich feels the teeth of the hunter's iron trap rend his flesh, groanedfiercely, "Blind! blind!" and again, and yet again, "Blind!"
While the morning star was still paling, the lad who after Hermon'slanding had raced along the shore with the burning torch glided into
thelittle pronaos of the Temple of Nemesis.
Ledscha was still standing by the doorpost of the cella with upliftedhand, so deeply absorbed in fervent prayer that she did not perceive theapproach of the messenger until he called her.
"Succeeded?" she asked in a muffled tone, interrupting his hastygreeting.
"You must give the goddess what you vowed," was the reply. "Hanno sendsyou the message. And also, 'You must come with me in the boat quickly-atonce!'"
"Where?" the girl demanded.
"Not on board the Hydra yet," replied the boy hurriedly. "First only tothe old man on the Megara. The dowry is ready for your father. But thereis not a moment to lose."
"Well, well!" she gasped hoarsely. "But, first, shall I find the manwith the black beard on board of one of the ships?"
"Certainly!" answered the lad proudly, grasping her arm to hurry her;but she shook him off violently, turned toward the cella again, and oncemore lifted her hands and eyes to the statue of Nemesis.
Then she took up the bundle she had hidden behind a pillar, drew fromit a handful of gold coins, which she flung into the box intended forofferings, and followed the boy.
"Alive?" she asked as she descended the steps; but the lad understoodthe meaning of the question, and exclaimed: "Yes, indeed! Hanno says thewounds are not at all dangerous."
"And the other?"
"Not a scratch. On the Hydra, with two severely wounded slaves. Theporter and the others were killed."
"And the statues?"
"They-such things can't be accomplished without some littleblunder-Labaja thinks so, too."
"Did they escape you?"
"Only one. I myself helped to smash the other, which stood in theworkroom that looks out upon the water. The gold and ivory are on theship. We had horrible work with the statue which stood in the room whosewindows faced the square. They dragged the great monster carefully intothe studio that fronts upon the water. But probably it is still standingthere, if the thing is not already--just see how the flames are whirlingupward!--if it is not already burned with the house."
"What a misfortune!" Ledscha reproachfully exclaimed.
"It could not be helped," the boy protested. "People from Tennissuddenly rushed in. The first--a big, furious fellow-killed our Louleand the fierce Judas. Now he has to pay for it. Little Chareb threw theblack powder into his eyes, while Hanno himself thrust the torch in hisface."
"And Bias, the blackbeard's slave?"
"I don't know. Oh, yes! Wounded, I believe, on board the ship."
Meanwhile the lad, a precocious fourteen-year-old cabin-boy from theHydra, pointed to the boat which lay ready, and took Ledscha's bundle inhis hand; but she sprang into the light skiff before him and ordered itto be rowed to the Owl's Nest, where she must bid Mother Tabus good-bye.The cabin-boy, however, declared positively that the command could notbe obeyed now, and at his signal two black sailors urged it with swiftoar strokes toward the northwest, to Satabus's ship. Hanno wished toreceive his bride as a wife from his father's hand.
Ledscha had not insisted upon the fulfilment of her desire, but as theboat passed the Pelican Island her gaze rested on the lustreless waningdisk of the moon. She thought of the torturing night, during which shehad vainly waited here for Hermon, and a triumphant smile hovered aroundher lips; but soon the heavy eyebrows of the girl who was thus leavingher home contracted in a frown--she again fancied she saw, where themoon was just fading, the body of a gigantic, hideous spider. Shebanished the illusion by speaking to the boy--spiders in the morningmean misfortune.
The early dawn, which was now crimsoning the east, reminded her of theblood which, as an avenger, she must yet shed.
BOOK 2.