Transcriber’s Note: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores:
_italics_.
[Illustration: (colophon)]
THE
WOMAN
OF
ANDROS
BY
THORNTON WILDER
[Illustration: (picture of a woman in Greek dress sitting in a chair)]
MCMXXX--ALBERT & CHARLES BONI--NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY
ALBERT & CHARLES BONI, INC.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The first part of this novel is based upon the _Andria_, a comedy of
Terence who in turn based his work upon two Greek plays, now lost to
us, by Menander.
The earth sighed as it turned in its course; the shadow of night
crept gradually along the Mediterranean, and Asia was left in
darkness. The great cliff that was one day to be called Gibraltar
held for a long time a gleam of red and orange, while across from
it the mountains of Atlas showed deep blue pockets in their shining
sides. The caves that surround the Neapolitan gulf fell into a
profounder shade, each giving forth from the darkness its chiming or
its booming sound. Triumph had passed from Greece and wisdom from
Egypt, but with the coming on of night they seemed to regain their
lost honors, and the land that was soon to be called Holy prepared
in the dark its wonderful burden. The sea was large enough to
hold a varied weather: a storm played about Sicily and its smoking
mountains, but at the mouth of the Nile the water lay like a wet
pavement. A fair tripping breeze ruffled the Aegean and all the
islands of Greece felt a new freshness at the close of day.
The happiest, and one of the least famous of the islands, Brynos,
welcomed the breeze. The evening was long. For a time, the sound of
the waves, briskly slapping against the wall of the little harbor,
was covered by the chattering of women, by the shouts of boys, and by
the crying of lambs. As the first lights appeared, the women retired;
as the air was filled with the clangor of the shop fronts being put
into place, the boys’ voices ceased; and finally only the murmur
of the men in the wineshops, playing at games with ivory counters,
mingled with the sounds from the sea. A confused starlight, already
apprehensive of the still unrisen moon, fell upon the tiers of small
houses that covered the slope and upon the winding flights of stairs
that served as streets between them.
The wineshops stood about the roughly paved square at the water’s
edge and in one of them the five or six principal fathers of the
island sat playing. By the time the moon had risen, two of these,
Simo and Chremes, had outstayed their companions. Simo was the
owner of two warehouses; he was a trader and had three ships that
passed continually to and fro among the islands. The men had
finished playing; the counters lay on the table between them and
they sighed into their beards as they thought of the long walk
through the ghostly olive trees to their homes. Simo was more tired
than usual: whereas the law of moderation teaches us that the mind
cannot be employed for more than three hours daily over merchandise
and numerals without soilure, he had that day spent five hours in
argument and traffic.
“Simo,” said Chremes suddenly, with the air of a man bracing himself
to an unpleasant and long deferred task, “your boy is twenty-five
now--”
Simo groaned as he saw the subject arising that he was never able to
look in the face.
“It’s four years,” continued Chremes, “since you first said that a
young man mustn’t be forced into marriage by his old people. And
certainly no one has been trying to force Pamphilus. But what is
he waiting for? He helps you in the warehouse; he exercises in the
field; he dines at the Andrian’s. How many years must that kind
of life go on before you agree with me that he would be better off
married to my daughter?”
“Chremes, he must come to me of his own accord. I will not be the
first one to speak about it to the boy.”
“First! It won’t be speaking of it first, Simo. It has been
understood between our families for years that he will marry
Philumena. It’s being spoken of all the time. The young people tease
him about it from morning to night. He knows perfectly well that my
daughter is ready to marry him. It’s sheer laziness on his part.
It’s sheer unwillingness to take on the responsibilities of being
a husband and a father and the foremost young householder on the
island.”
“He’s a young man who knows what he means to do. I will not coerce
him.”
“Then it’s settled that he doesn’t want to marry my daughter. It’s
a humiliation for her to be waiting all these years for him to make
up his mind, and her mother’s been after me to close the matter for a
long time. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but you’ll be throwing away a
good thing through sheer hesitancy, both of you. Philumena is by far
the healthiest and the prettiest girl on any of these islands. And
she’s clever at everything that is expected of a woman in the home.
The uniting of our two families has advantages, Simo, that I don’t
have to point out to you. But this lapse of time has made it clear
that your son is going to wait until his fancy has been caught by
some other girl, I suppose. So be it! From this very night my wife is
going to start looking about for some other young man.”
“Chremes, Chremes, he’s only twenty-five. Let him play about a
little longer. Why must they become husbands and fathers so soon?
He’s good and he’s happy. So is your daughter. Let them be awhile.”
“Grandchildren!--that’s what I want to see. There shouldn’t be a long
step between the generations. It’s bad for customs and manners.”
“You’ll make a greater mistake by hurrying than by delaying.”
“Well,” Chremes continued, “there’s another reason why I want the
matter settled soon. And that is this: we don’t like the visits that
Pamphilus is paying to the Andrian woman. Naturally, Simo, it’s hard
for me to be severe about it, because my own son goes there too. But
it’s natural that a father should be more exacting in regard to his
son-in-law than in regard to his son.”
Simo looked more uncomfortable than ever and remained silent. Chremes
went on:
“I don’t think you like this resort to foreign women any more than
I do. Our islands have always been famous for strict and good
behavior. If the devil was in us as boys we could always follow some
shepherdess up a dark road. But this Andrian has brought the whole
air of Alexandria to town with her, perfumes and hot baths and late
hours.”
Simo stroked his cheeks a moment and then replied in a low grunting
voice: “Well, if it isn’t one thing, it’s another, I suppose. I don’t
know anything about this Andrian. The women seem to talk of nothing
else from morning to night, but one can’t believe what they say.”
Thus invited, Chremes launched into his exposition with considerable
relish, examining Simo’s face from time to time to see if the
details were arousing in him the interest they held for himself. “Her
name is Chrysis, and I don’t know what she means by calling herself
Andrian. The island of Andros was never famous for such airs and
graces as she puts on. She’s flitted from Corinth and Alexandria, you
may be sure. She should have stayed in her cities instead of burying
herself in our town and reciting poetry to our young men. Yes, yes,
she recites poetry to them like the famous ones. She has twelve or
fifteen of them to dinner every seven or eight days,--the unmarried
ones, of course. They lie about on couches and eat odd food and talk.
Presently she rises and recites; she can recite whole tragedies
without the book. She is very strict with the young men, apparently.
She makes them pronounce all the Attic accents; they eat in the
Athenian mode, drinking toasts and wearing garlands, and each in turn
is elected King of the Banquet. And at the close, hot towels are
passed around for them to wipe their hands on.”
Simo did not concede to Chremes the pleasure of his close interest;
his eyes were lowered and his face wore the same bored expression
that it brought to all island gossip. Chremes decided to be less
expansive and added with easy indignation: “As for me, Alexandria
is Alexandria and Brynos is Brynos. A few more imported notions and
our island will be spoiled forever. It will become a mass of poor
undigested imitations. All the girls will be wanting to read and
write and declaim. What becomes of home life, Simo, if women can read
and write? You and I married the finest girls of our time and we’ve
been happy. We can at least provide one more generation of good sense
and good manners on this island before the age arrives when all the
women will have the airs of dancers and all the men go about waiting
on them.”
Simo knew the answer to this, but he repressed it. Chremes, more than
any man on the island, was ruled by his wife. In fact from her loom
in the shadow, Chremes’s wife tried to rule the whole island, using
her harassed husband as her legislative and punitive arm. Simo asked:
“What happens after the banquet?”
“Each boy pays for his plate, and pays right smartly too, and from
time to time one or another is graciously permitted to stay until
morning. That’s all I know.”
“Is your son at all these dinners?”
“He was quarreling or something,--or perhaps he drank too much, I
don’t know. At all events, he was expelled for a time. Thrown right
out into the street, he was, by the other guests. But he’s made his
peace with her again.”
“Do you talk to him about this ... this Chrysis?”
“Why, no. I pretend to know nothing about it.”
“Is my son always there?”
“They say he’s practically always there.”
There was a long pause. The boy who attended in the wineshop went out
into the moonlight and started putting up the shutters. Presently he
returned and whispered to Simo that an old woman was waiting outside
to speak to him and that she had been waiting there for some time.
This was unusual on Brynos, but Simo took pride in never betraying
any surprise. He nodded slightly and continued staring before him.
“Are there any other women at the Andrian’s?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Some say there are and some say there aren’t. But
there’s a houseful of some sort. In fact it’s a kind of hospital for
the old and the lame and the ... all kind of old battered pensioners.
The house is way up at the edge of the town....”
“I know where it is.”
“... and the people, whoever they are, never come into town. They
never even go out on the road by day. Oh, you can be sure the
townspeople talk of nothing else.”
Chremes rose and put on his cloak. He saw that Simo was as far as
ever from committing himself. “Well, that’s how it stands,” he said.
“I hope that in another ten days you can give me a more definite
answer. My wife is after me a good deal, Simo, and she says that I’m
to tell you this, that unless Pamphilus stops those visits all idea
of a marriage between himself and Philumena is impossible. And that
any such marriage must be definitely settled pretty soon or you’ll
have to start finding some other girl one-tenth as good.”
For the first time Simo bestirred himself and said slowly: “You and
your wife will be throwing away a good thing too, Chremes. It’s
precisely because Pamphilus is a great deal more than an ordinary
island boy that I can’t speak to him as I could to another son. There
are more sides to Pamphilus than you imagine.”
“Yes, Simo, we know that he’s a fine young man. But we also know,
if you will forgive me, that there’s a strain in Pamphilus of the
... the undecided, the procrastinating. To do his best and to take
his place, Pamphilus must be urged on by someone, like yourself,
whom he admires. And he’s not as interested in this island and in
what it stands for as he should be. Do you know the young priest
of Æsculapius and Apollo? Well, there is something of the priest
in Pamphilus. Such people aren’t interested in putting their foot
forward. They haven’t yet come to see what life is about.”
Chremes went out and plodded home along the rocky road. Simo sat on
a minute longer. What a bad ending to a bad day, he thought. The two
men had grown up on the island together. For thirty years they had
been its leading citizens. They knew one another too well. In their
conversation they had let play the faint antagonism that always lay
between them. This boasting about their children,--how vulgar, how
un-hellene. How unphilosophic. Yet that was true: there was something
of the priest in Pamphilus.
* * * * *
Simo turned to the old woman who was hiding in the shadow by the
door. “You wanted to speak to me?” he asked roughly.
Between fright and suspense--for she had been waiting there for the
greater part of two hours--Mysis was barely able to find her voice.
“My mistress wishes to speak to you, sir,--Chrysis, the Andrian,” and
she pointed with both hands towards the waterfront.
Simo grunted. Looking up he saw the beautiful woman leaning against
the parapet at the water’s edge fifteen paces away. Her head and body
were wrapped in veils, and she waited calmly and impersonally in the
moonlight as though two hours were but a moment in her serenity.
Below her in the little protected harbor the boats knocked against
one another in friendly fashion, but all else was still under the
melancholy and peace of the moon. Simo approached her without
deference and said: “Well?”
“I am--” she began.
“I know who you are.”
She paused and began again. “I am in an extremity. I am driven to
ask a service of you.” Simo pushed his lips forward, raised his
eyebrows, and lowered his eyes wearily. She continued in an even
voice without anxiety or suppliance: “A friend of mine is very ill
on the island of Andros from which I come. Twice I have sent this
friend money by the hands of various sea-captains going between the
islands. I know now that the captains are dishonest and that my money
never reaches him. All that I ask is that you put your frank upon the
package of money and it will reach him.”
Simo did not like to see women carrying themselves, as this Andrian
did, with dignity and independence. His antagonism was increased; he
asked abruptly: “Who is this friend?”
“He was formerly a sea-captain,” she replied, still without
servility. “But now he is not only ill; he is insane. He is insane
by reason of the hardships he endured in the war. I have put him in
charge of some people, but they will only be kind to him as long as I
send them money for it. Otherwise they will put him away on a small
island nearby with the others. You know such islands ... where basins
of food are left for them every few days ... and where--”
“Well,” said Simo harshly, “since your friend has lost the use of
his reason and since he cannot realize the conditions under which he
lives, it is best that you leave him upon the island with the others.
Is that not so?”
Chrysis tightened her lips and looked far out over his head. “I have
no answer for that,” she replied. “It may be true for you, but it is
not true for me. This man was once a very famous sea-captain. You may
have known him. His name was Philocles. Now I think I am his only
friend, unless you choose to help him also.”
Simo did not acknowledge having known him, but the tone in his next
words was less vindictive. “When would you like this money to go?”
“I ... I have some money ready now, but I would prefer to send some
in ten days.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Chrysis, daughter of Arches of Andros.”
“Chrysis, I will do this for you, and I will even add to the sum. In
return you will do a favor for me. You will refuse my son entrance
into your house.”
Chrysis moved slightly to one side and stretching her arm along the
parapet looked down into the harbor. “Favors cease to be favors when
there are conditions attached to them, Simo. Magnanimity does not
bargain with its powers.” These maxims were almost murmured; then she
raised her head and said to him: “I cannot do that, unless I tell
your son that it is because you have ordered it.”
Simo’s slightly cynical superiority over the rest of the world
reposed on the fact that he had gone through life without ever having
been surprised as unjust, untruthful, or ungenerous. Angry, but with
himself, for having been caught at this disadvantage, he replied:
“That is not necessary. It would be quite simple for your servant to
tell him that you do not wish him to come into the house.”
“I could not do that. There are several young men on the island to
whom my door, for one reason or another, is closed. I cannot do
that to Pamphilus without giving him a reason. If you understood the
spirit of our group you would not wish me to do that; I think that
there we are not lacking in respect for one another. I hardly know
your son; I have scarcely exchanged twenty words with him; but I know
that he is by far the first young man among my guests.” Suddenly
the image of Pamphilus rose up before her and she was filled with
an excitement and joy in praising him, and for that very reason she
subdued herself and added in a lower voice: “He is old enough to make
decisions for himself. And if I do this, he must understand.”
Simo was aware that some strange wise praise of his son hovered
between them and his heart almost stopped beating for pleasure,
but from his lips there rushed the brutal phrase he had prepared a
moment before: “Then you must send your money to Andros some other
way.”
“Very well,” she said.
They stood looking at one another. Simo suddenly realized that he
lived among people of thin natures and that he was lonely; he was
out of practice in conversing with sovereign personalities whose
every speech arose from resources of judgment and inner poise. With
his wife, with Chremes, with the islanders one could talk with half
one’s mind and still hold one’s authority, but here in a few moments
this woman had caught him twice at a disadvantage. Chrysis saw this
and came to his aid; she broke the silence that was leaving him
obstinate, angry, and small.
“It is perhaps his younger brother whose life can be arranged for
him; your Pamphilus deserves to be better understood than that.” And
her tone implied: “You and he are of one measure and should stand on
the same side.”
Simo preferred talking about his sons to any other activity in the
world, but his emotions were very mixed as he assembled an answer to
this remark:
“Well, well ... Andrian, I will frank your money for you. I have
boats going to Andros every twelve days. One went off today.”
“I thank you.”
“Could I ask you ... euh ... not to mention this to Pamphilus?”
“I shall not.”
“Well ... well, good night.”
“Good night.”
Simo trudged home in an unaccustomed elation. It made him happy to
hear Pamphilus praised and “probably this woman was an exceptional
judge of persons.” He had made a fool of himself, but in good hands
one does not mind. “Life ... life ...,” he said to himself, hunting
for a generalization that would describe its diversity, its power of
casting up from time to time on the waves of tedious circumstance
such star-like persons. The generalization did not arrive, but he
walked on in a bright astonishment. How he would like to hear her
read a play; he used to be interested in such things and when his
journeys took him to an island that was large enough to have a
theatre he never missed an opportunity to hear a good tragedy.
As he entered the courtyard of his farm he saw Pamphilus standing
alone, looking at the moon.
“Good evening, Pamphilus,” he said.
“Good evening, father.”
Simo went to bed, deeply moved with pride, but for form’s sake he
repeated anxiously to himself: “I don’t know what I’ll do with him. I
don’t know what I’ll do with him.”
And Pamphilus stood looking at the moon and thinking about his father
and mother. He was thinking about them in the light of a story that
Chrysis had told. As the banquets drew to a close she liked to move
the conversation away from local comment and to introduce some debate
upon an abstract principle. (She cited often the saying of Plato
that the true philosophers are the young men of their age. “Not,”
she would add, “because they do it very well; but because they rush
upon ideas with their whole soul. Later one philosophizes for praise,
or for apology, or because it is a complicated intellectual game.”)
Pamphilus remembered that on one evening the conversation had turned
upon the wrong that poets do in pretending that life is heroic. And
a boy from the other end of the island had said, half-mockingly and
half-hopefully: “Well, you know, Chrysis ... you know, life in a
family is not in the same world as life in Euripides.”
Chrysis sat a moment searching for her answer, then she lifted her
hand and said: “Once upon a time--”
The table burst out laughing, but with an affectionate laugh of
mock-repudiation, because they knew that she liked to cast her
remarks into the form of fables and to begin them with this childish
formula. Pamphilus heard again her beautiful voice saying:
“Once upon a time there was a hero who had done a great service to
Zeus. When he came to die and was wandering in the gray marshes of
Hell, he called to Zeus reminding him of that service and asking a
service in return: he asked to return to earth for one day. Zeus was
greatly troubled and said that it was not in his power to grant this,
since even he could not bring above ground the dead who had descended
to his brother’s kingdom. But Zeus was so moved by the memory of
the past that he went to the palace of his brother and clasping his
knees asked him to accord him this favor. And the King of the Dead
was greatly troubled, saying that even he who was King of the Dead
could not grant this thing without involving the return to life in
some difficult and painful condition. But the hero gladly accepted
whatever difficult or painful condition was involved, and the King of
the Dead permitted him to return not only to the earth, but to the
past, and to live over again that day in all the twenty-two thousand
days of his lifetime that had been least eventful; but that it must
be with a mind divided into two persons,--the participant and the
onlooker: the participant who does the deeds and says the words of so
many years before, and the onlooker who foresees the end. So the hero
returned to the sunlight and to a certain day in his fifteenth year.
“My friends,” continued Chrysis, turning her eyes slowly from face to
face, “as he awoke in his boyhood’s room, pain filled his heart,--not
only because it had started beating again, but because he saw the
walls of his home and knew that in a moment he would see his parents
who lay long since in the earth of that country. He descended into
the courtyard. His mother lifted her eyes from the loom and greeted
him and went on with her work. His father passed through the court
unseeing, for on that day his mind had been full of care. Suddenly
the hero saw that the living too are dead and that we can only be
said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of
our treasure; for our hearts are not strong enough to love every
moment. And not an hour had gone by before the hero who was both
watching life and living it called on Zeus to release him from so
terrible a dream. The gods heard him, but before he left he fell upon
the ground and kissed the soil of the world that is too dear to be
realized.”
It was with such eyes that Pamphilus now saw his father pass into
the house and that he had seen his mother moving about, covering
the fire and going about the last tasks of the day. And it was in
the light of that story that his eyes had been opened to the secret
life of his parents’ minds. It seemed suddenly as though he saw
behind the contentment and the daily talkativeness into the life
of their hearts--empty, resigned, pathetic and enduring. It was
Chrysis’s reiterated theory of life that all human beings--save a
few mysterious exceptions who seemed to be in possession of some
secret from the gods--merely endured the slow misery of existence,
hiding as best they could their consternation that life had no
wonderful surprises after all and that its most difficult burden was
the incommunicability of love. Certainly that explained the humorous
sadness of his father and the fretful affection of his mother. And
now as his father passed him in the courtyard this interpretation
shook him more forcibly than ever. What can one do for them?
What--to be equal to them--can one do for oneself? He was twenty-five
already, that is--no longer a young man. He would soon be a husband
and a father, a condition he did not invest with any glamour. He
would soon be the head of this household and this farm. He would
soon be old. Time would have flowed by him like a sigh, with no plan
made, no rules set, no strategy devised that would have taught him
how to save these others and himself from the creeping gray, from the
too-easily accepted frustration.
“How does one live?” he asked the bright sky. “What does one do
first?”
* * * * *
Chrysis’s view of human experience expressed itself, as we have seen,
in fables, in quotations from literature, in proverbs and in mottoes.
Herself she summed up in a word: she regarded herself as having
“died.” Dead then as she was, the inconveniences of her profession,
the sneers of the villagers, the ingratitude of her dependents, no
longer had the power to disturb her. The only thing that troubled
her in her grave was the recurrence, even in her professional
associations, of a wild tenderness for this or that passerby, brief
and humiliating approaches to love. These experiences and any others
that were able to depress her, she now dismissed as weakness, as
pride, as an old, rebellious and unwhipped vanity. The morning after
the conversation with Simo at the water’s edge she awoke strangely
troubled; but she resolved not to examine the new dejection. It
floated all day above her head,--a voice repeating: “I am alone. Why
have I never seen that before? I am alone.” Indeed the profession
she followed was one of those that emphasize the dim notion that
lies at the back of many minds: the notion that we are not necessary
to anyone, that attachments weave and unweave at the mercy of
separation, satiety and experience. The loneliest associations are
those that pretend to intimacy.
But she had discovered two ways of mitigating this unresponsiveness
and instability in the world she lived in. The first was the
development she brought to the institution of the hetaira’s banquet.
She took endless pains over these reunions and to the wide-eyed
guests they seemed indeed all that one could conceive of wit and
eloquence and aristocratic ease. Great talkers are so constituted
that they do not know their own thoughts until, on the tide of their
particular gift, they hear them issuing from their mouths. Chrysis
gave herself that luxury, the luxury of talking to these young men
from her whole mind. Much of it lay beyond their reach; but her
refusal to condescend, her assumption that the analysis of ideas and
of masterpieces was their natural element, excited them. She knew
that apart from her beauty she was not particularly fitted for her
calling; she lacked the high spirits that please the customers of
middle age; but younger men, who still approach love with a touch of
awe, are not so disappointed with those common exercises when they
find them invested with melancholy, dignity and literature. Perhaps
the maturity of a civilization can be judged by this trait, by
observing whether the young men first fall in love with women older
or younger than themselves; if in their youth their imaginations pass
their time in hallowing the images of prattling unnourishing girls
their natures will be forever after the thinner. But even at their
best Chrysis’s guests seemed remote and immature to her and finally
she discovered a second way of making life more stable and her
friends more constant: she adopted stray human beings that needed her.
In the inner monologue of her thoughts Chrysis called these
dependents her “sheep.” And although they were gathered into her
shelter from places and moments of fearful extremity, they became
accustomed to their new comfort with extraordinary rapidity. In
fact their past trials began to take on a romantic color and when
anything in the present situation did not suit them they had been
known to regret the lost felicities of the slave-markets, the mills
and the massacred villages. For Chrysis human nature no longer had
many surprises and the manner in which the sheep scolded and even
condescended to their shepherd did not deject her. She loved them and
was sufficiently repaid by occasional hours of a late afternoon when
the odd group would sit in the garden, weaving in amity and humor.
Such hours almost resembled life in a home.
There was to be a banquet that evening, so shaking her head at the
shadow that hovered above her she descended into the town to do
the marketing. She was accompanied by Mysis and the porter,--Mysis
carrying a net to hold the fruit and the salad-greens, and the
porter a large jar to be filled with salt-water and then with
fish and shell-fish. Chrysis moved slowly down the long twisting
flights of stairs. She was wrapped about by a great scarf of antique
finely-wrinkled material and wore a broad-brimmed Tanagran hat of
woven straw. The one hand that appeared outside the folds of her
scarf carried a small wooden fan. It was her business to be invested
with the remoteness and glamour of a legend, for at that time Greek
taste turned upon a nostalgia for the antique; it was her business
to be as different from other women as possible and to convert that
difference into money. The shops and temporary booths were all on
the open square at the water’s edge and there in the bright sunlight
the most excitable and loquacious of races was enjoying its morning
tumult; but as this calm and day-dreaming figure appeared above
them a hush fell upon the bargainers. This was the very deportment
the Greek women lacked and sighed for. They were short and swarthy
and shrill, and their incessant conversation was accompanied by
the incessant play of their hands. The whole race was haunted by a
passionate admiration for poise and serenity and slow motion, and
now for an hour the Andrian’s every move was followed by the furtive
glances of the islanders, with mingled awe and hatred. The Brynians,
when she appeared, felt themselves to be provincial and commercial.
From time to time some of the young men who had been guests at her
house approached her and spoke to her. Then it was that the unmarried
girls and the young wives of the island gazed with consternation and
fallen jaw at the way she smiled and talked and dismissed their
brothers and their future husbands. Philumena, in the shadow of an
awning, leaned back against a wall and watched the stranger; turning
her head slightly she could see Pamphilus at the tally-desk in the
door of his father’s warehouse. Her eyes fell on her rough gown and
her red arms and a long slow blush mounted to her face. But all the
while Chrysis’s heart had been growing heavier. “I have lived alone
and I shall die alone,” it said, and groaned within her.
As she returned to her house from the market she fell into a feverish
monologue. “The fault is in me. It’s my lack of perseverance in
affection. I know that. Now, Chrysis, you must begin your life over
again; you must assemble some plan. You must devote yourself with all
your mind to your sheep. You must break down all their coldness and
wilfulness. You must make yourself love them again. You must bring
back the happiness you felt with each one of them when you first
knew them. It is routine, it is the daily contact that has spoiled
all that. It’s cowardly of me to be able to love people only when
they are new. Now, now, Chrysis!--arise!” For the hundredth time she
was visited by hope and courage. She would win in this thing. As she
approached the house she was all but stumbling in her eagerness;
she would create a home. “If I love them enough, I can understand
them,” she muttered. “One never learns how to live, or one’s lights
on living arrive too late, when one has spoiled the surrounding
situation, spoiled it beyond repair. But I am to be on the earth for
fifty years, and I must do it.”
Chrysis did not realize what took place in the house during her
absences, and that when she left it the house was empty. The
personalities of her flock were extinguished. They fretted; they
hovered about the gates peering in the direction from which she
would return, and their minds ceased to act save in terms of that
resentment which is the complement of devotion. She did not realize
that this wasting of love in fretfulness was one of the principal
activities on the planet. When she was away fear descended upon
them; their dependence upon her was so great that even her temporary
absences reminded them of the destitution from which they had
been lifted,--circumstances so fearful that their conscious minds
never revisited them, but which hovered in the distance enriching
their present ease and hardening their self-centredness. All this
antagonism therefore met her in a flood as she stumbled across the
threshhold of her home. By the middle of the afternoon she was saying
to herself, almost in a panic: “It is impossible. I can do nothing.
They even hate me. But fortunately I am dead. It is not my pride that
is hurt. I am at peace in the ground. Yet oh! if only we had some
help in these matters. If only the gods were sometimes present among
us. To have nothing to go by except this idea, this vague idea, that
there lies the principle of living!”
During the banquet she looked about her for comfort. “It is also
cowardly of me to be happy only at the banquets where I can lead the
conversation and display my thoughts and be admired.” But tonight
even that exhilaration was wanting; her guests seemed younger and
remoter than ever, and she in turn was capricious and all but
irritable. It was to be expected, therefore, that the conversation
would take turns little likely to comfort her.
Niceratus, one of the more assured of her guests, asked her what life
would be like in two thousand years.
“Why,” she said at once, “there will be no more war.”
“I should not wish to be alive in a world where there was no war,” he
replied. “That would be an age of women.”
Now Chrysis was jealous of the dignity of women and lost no occasions
to combat such hasty disparagements. She leaned forward and asked
encouragingly:
“You wish to serve the state, Niceratus?”
“I do.”
“And you admire courage?”
“I do, Chrysis.”
“Then go bear children,” she replied, turning away.
Niceratus found this remark unseemly and left the house. (He absented
himself from the two successive banquets, but later returned and
asked her pardon for making a personal grievance out of a difference
of opinion. Confessions of error always gave Chrysis great pleasure.
“Happy are the associations,” she would say, “that have grown out of
a fault and a forgiveness.”)
The conversation then turned upon the plays concerning Medea and
Phaedra which she had read to them at an earlier banquet and upon
all manifestations of extravagant passion. The young men declared
that the problem was not as complicated as it appeared to be and
that such women should have been whipped like disobedient slaves
and shut up in a room with a jar of water and a little plain food
until their pride was subdued. They then recounted to her, almost in
whispers, the story of a girl from a village on the further side of
the island whose behavior had thrown her family and her friends into
consternation. The girl had continued for a time, glorying in her
disorders, until one morning, rising early, she had climbed a high
cliff near her home and thrown herself into the sea. A silence fell
on the company as all turned inquiringly to Chrysis asking for the
explanation of such a reversal.
To herself she said: “Do not try to explain to them. Talk of other
things. Stupidity is everywhere and invincible.” But their continued
expectancy prevailed upon her. She seemed to struggle with herself
for a moment, deeply troubled, and then began in a low voice: “Once
upon a time the great army of women came together to a meeting. And
they invited to this meeting one man, a tragic poet. They told him
that they wished to send a message to the world of men and that he
was to be their advocate and mouthpiece. ‘Tell them,’ said the women
eagerly, ‘that it is only in appearance that we are unstable. Tell
them that this is because we are hard-pressed and in bitter servitude
to nature, but that at heart, only asking their patience, we are as
steadfast, as brave and as manly as they.’ The poet smiled sadly,
saying that the men who knew this already would merely be ashamed to
be told it again, and the men who did not know it would learn nothing
through the mere telling; but he consented to deliver the message.
The men at first were silent, then one by one they broke out into
laughter. And they sent the poet back to the army of women with these
words: ‘Tell them not to be anxious and not to trouble their pretty
heads with these matters. Tell them that their popularity is not
dying out, and let them not endanger it through heroics.’ When the
poet had repeated these words to the women, some blushed with shame
and some with anger; some rose with a weary sigh: ‘We should never
have spoken to them,’ they said. They went back to their mirrors and
started combing their hair and as they combed their hair they wept.”
Chrysis had barely finished this story when a young man who had
hitherto taken little part in the conversation suddenly launched
into a violent condemnation of her means of livelihood. This youth
was of that temper that seeks to mould the lives of others abruptly
to certain patterns of its own choosing. He now commanded Chrysis
to become a servant or a sempstress. The other guests began to
whisper among themselves and to avert their faces from confusion
and anger, but Chrysis sat gazing at his flashing eyes and admiring
his earnestness. There was a certain luxury in having an external
mortification added to an inner despair. She was already troubled by
her recent discomfiture of Niceratus and now chose to be magnanimous.
She arose and approached the young fanatic; taking his hand she
smiled at him with grave affection, saying to the company: “It is
true that of all forms of genius, goodness has the longest awkward
age.”
But these incidents were not of a nature to distract her mind from
the protracted oppression of the day. “Vain. Empty. Transitory,” the
voice within her repeated. But just as she was about to finish the
day with the comprehensive summary that she had nothing to lend to
life and no place to fill, her eyes fell upon Pamphilus. It was his
custom, through lack of self-confidence, to take the last seat at the
remote end of the room. The guests acknowledged his preëminence among
them, but when one evening they had wished to elect him King of the
Banquet he had furtively and savagely intimated to them his refusal
and the votes had passed to another. But Chrysis’s eyes had often, as
now, rested upon that head bent forward to receive her every word and
that received each one with so earnest a frown.
“That is something!” she said to herself suddenly and for a moment
her heart stopped beating.
She had intended to recite to them _The Clouds_ of Aristophanes that
evening, but she now changed her mind. She felt the need to nourish
her heart and those watchful eyes with something lofty and deeply
felt. Perhaps what she called the “lofty” was in this world merely a
beautiful form of falsehood, cheating the heart. But she would try
again tonight and see whether, after so dejected a day, it woke any
stir of conviction. “What shall I read?” she asked herself as the
tables were being removed. “Something from Homer?--Priam begging of
Achilles the body of Hector? No.... No.... Nor would they understand
the _Oedipus at Colonus_. The _Alcestis_? The _Alcestis_?”
One of the shyer guests, seeing her deliberating over the choice of
the evening’s declamation, timidly asked her to read the _Phaedrus_
of Plato.
“Oh, my friend,” she said, “I have not seen the book for several
years. I should be obliged to improvise long stretches in it....”
“Could you ... could you read the opening and the close?”
“I shall try it for you,” she replied and rising slowly disposed the
folds of her robe about her. The servants withdrew and silence fell
upon the company. This was the moment (on happier evenings) that she
loved; this hush, this eagerness, this faintly mocking affection.
What drives them--she would ask herself--in the next fifteen years to
become so graceless ... so pompous, or envious, or so busily cheerful?
At first all went well. The boys listened with delight to the
account of how other young men gathered in the streets and palaestra
of Athens to hear the arguments of Socrates. Listening, they agreed
that nothing in the world was more to be prized than a beautifully
ordered speech. Then followed the description of the walk that
Socrates and Phaedrus took into the country. “_This is indeed a
rare resting-place. This plane-tree is not only tall, but thick and
spreading. And this agnus castus is at the very moment of flowering
and its shade and its fragrance will render our stay the more
agreeable. These images and these votive-offerings tell us that the
place is surely sacred to some nymphs and to some river-god....
Truly, Phaedrus, you are an admirable guide._”
From there she passed to the close:
“_But let us go now, as the heat of the day is over._
“_Socrates: Would it not be well before we go to offer up a prayer to
the gods of this place?_
“_Phaedrus: It would, Socrates._
“_Socrates: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place,
grant that I may become beautiful in the inner man and may whatever I
possess without be in harmony with that which is within. May I esteem
the wise men alone to be rich. And may my store of gold be such as
none but the good may bear. Phaedrus, need we say anything more? As
for myself I have prayed enough._
“_Phaedrus: And let the same prayer serve for me, for these are the
things friends share with one another._”
All went well until this phrase. Then Chrysis, the serene, the
happily dead, seeing the tears that stood in the eyes of Pamphilus,
could go no further, and before them all she wept as one weeps who
after an absence of folly and self-will returns to a well-loved place
and an old loyalty. It was true, true beyond a doubt, tragically
true, that the world of love and virtue and wisdom was the true world
and her failure in it all the more overwhelming. But she was not
alone; he too saw the long and failing war as she did, and she loved
him as though she were loving for the first time and as one is never
able to love again. That was sealed; that was forever assigned.
After a few moments she collected herself and quieted the guests
who had risen in concern about her. “Sit down, my friends. I am
ready now,” she said smiling. “I shall read you _The Clouds_ of
Aristophanes.”
But it was some time before the laughter rose among the couches, the
laughter that was a just tribute to the divine wit of the poet of
_The Clouds_.
* * * * *
Brynos rose with the dawn, and it was not many hours later that the
morning’s work was over. Several days after the conversation recorded
above, Pamphilus, having helped his father in the warehouse and being
in no mood for exercising in the field, started out to walk to the
highest point on the island. It was early Spring. A strong wind had
blown every cloud from the sky and the sea lay covered with flying
white-tipped waves. His garments leapt and billowed about him and his
very hair tugged at his head. The gulls themselves, leaning upon the
gusts, were caught unawares from time to time and blown with ruffled
feathers and scandalized cries towards the violet-blue zenith.
Pamphilus led his life with much worry and self-examination and all
the exhilaration of wind and sun could not drive from his mind the
anxious affection with which he now turned over his thoughts of
Chrysis and Philumena and of the four members of his family. He was
straying among the rocks and the lizards and the neglected dwarfed
olive trees, when his attention was suddenly caught by an incident on
the hillside to his left. A group of boys from the town was engaged
in tormenting a young girl. She was retreating backwards up the slope
through a disused orchard, shouting haughtily back at her pursuers.
The boys’ malice had turned to anger; they were retorting hotly and
letting fly about her a few harmless stones. Pamphilus strode over
to the group and with a gesture ordered the boys down the hill. The
girl, her face still flushed and distrustful, stood with her back
against a tree and waited for him to come towards her. They looked at
one another for a moment in silence. Finally Pamphilus said:
“What is the matter?”
“They’re just country fools, that’s all. They’ve never seen anyone
before who didn’t come from their wretched Brynos.” And then
from rage and disappointment she began to cry uncontrollably and
despairingly.
Pamphilus watched her for a time and then asked her where she had
been going.
“Nowhere. I was just going for a walk and they followed me from the
town. I can’t do anything. I can’t go anywhere.... I wasn’t hurting
them. I was just going for a walk alone and they called names after
me. They followed me way up here; I called names at them and then
they started throwing things at me. That’s all.”
“I thought I knew everyone on the island,” said Pamphilus
thoughtfully, “but I have never seen you before. Have you been here
long?”
“Yes, I’ve been here almost a year,” she replied, adding
indistinctly, “... but I hardly ever go out or anything.”
“You hardly ever go out?”
“No,” and she fumbled with her dress and stared at the sea, frowning.
“You should try to know some of the other girls and go out for walks
with them.”
This time she turned and looked into his face. “I don’t know any
of the other girls. I ... I live at home and they don’t let me go
out of the house, except when I go out for walks nights with ...
well, with Mysis.” She continued to be shaken with sobs, but she was
adjusting her hair and the folds of her dress. “I don’t see why they
have to throw stones at me,” she added.
Pamphilus looked at her in silence, gravely. Presently he collected
himself and said: “There’s a big smooth stone over there. Will you go
over there and sit down?”
She followed him to the stone, still busy with her hair and drawing
her fingers across her eyes and cheeks.
“I have a sister just about your age,” said Pamphilus. “You can begin
by knowing her. You can go for walks with her and then you wouldn’t
be a stranger any more. Her name is Argo. You’d like one another,
I know. My sister is weaving a large mantle for my mother and she’d
like you to help her with it and she could help you with yours. Are
you making a mantle?”
“Yes.”
“That would be fine,” said Pamphilus, and from that moment Glycerium
loved him forever.
“I probably know your father, don’t I?” he asked.
“I have no father,” she replied, looking up at him weakly, “I am the
sister of the woman from Andros.”
“Oh ... oh...,” said Pamphilus, more astonished than he had ever been
in his life. “I know your sister well.”
“Yes,” said Glycerium. Her bright wet eyes strayed over the streaked
sea and the blown birds. “She doesn’t want anyone to know that I’m
there. All day I stay up on the top of the house or work in the
court. Only at night I’m allowed to go for a walk with Mysis. Even
now I’m supposed to be in the house, but I broke my promise. She has
gone to the market and so I broke my promise. I wanted to see what
the island and the sea look like by day. And I wanted to look across
to Andros where I come from. But the boys followed me here and threw
stones at me and I can never come again.”
Here she fell to weeping even more despairingly than before and
Pamphilus could do nothing but say “Well” several times and “Yes.” At
last he asked her what her name was.
“Glycerium. Chrysis went away from home a long time ago and I was
living with my brother and he died and I couldn’t live with him any
more. And I had nowhere to go or anything, and one day she came back
and took me to live with her. That’s all.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“Oh, no.”
“Who is Mysis?”
“Mysis isn’t Greek. She is from Alexandria. Chrysis found her. All of
them in the house,--she just found them somewhere. That’s what she
does. Mysis was a slave in the cloth mills. Sometimes she tells me
about it.”
Pamphilus still gazed at her, and bringing back her wandering evasive
glance from the sea she looked at him from her thin face and enormous
hungry eyes. Even a long glance did not now embarrass them.
“Do you want me to ask Chrysis to let you go about the island by
day?” he asked.