our new pupil, the little Achilles, that Chiron had been fetched away
by two other centaurs, and expected to be absent all night, perhaps
longer. We prepared and ate our supper of chestnuts boiled and then
mashed in milk, and were shortly rolled in separate bears' skins to
sleep. Achilles, who was but just turned six, was soon off, but I
lay hour after hour forecasting coming events with eyes wide open.
I cannot now revive those dreamy adventures, and only recollect that
Thamyris figured in no few, and how fevered I was by the thought that,
being mysteriously like him, much sadness and disappointment lay in
wait for me. At last moonlight began to edge into the cave; travelling
along the wall it soon lit up a trophy, the skull and huge hooped
horns of an ibex; and next the rug made of four chamois hides that
Chiron hangs over his flanks and crupper in winter, when round his
bust he wraps thick folds of brown knitted wool; not long after it
was bathing the ebony lyre inlaid with polished iridescent sea-shell
that has both its fluted pillars and their screw-heads enamelled with
lines of scarlet. This wonder Jason had brought back from Colchis and
sent up by an embassy to Chiron. I rose and, stealing softly to it,
looked up, not at the well-loved colours of the lyre, but towards the
tranquil effulgence that had woken them out of the darkness, and was
surprised to see that there were many swift-travelling clouds in the
sky, for while I lay in the shelter the night had seemed quite still.
At that moment the moon was covered, and the cave became so dark that
I stepped outside and saw the moonlight fast growing again on the
lawn lower down, where we throw the spear and wrestling matches take
place. I hurried to meet it and, once there, the terror and attraction
of the hills at night shook me; for was I not brought forth by the
regent of a bosky grove? Though its sacred safety rustled leagues from
where I stood, might I not brave these mountain forests, being able
so to account for my hardihood? I was carried away, neither walking
nor running, but at a sort of shaken trot that seemed dictated by the
thudding of my heart. The almost level path wound along our valley high
above the torrent, which it would meet and cross some two miles deeper
in this fold under Pelion. My limbs moved as it were unbidden; once or
twice I stopped and said, "This is a dream," till the indescribable
reality of everything drove me on. My teeth were frequently jolted,
yet the cold did not seem intense enough to chatter them, and surely
I was not abjectly frightened? This notion roused my self-control and
calmed me till I slipped along like a peaceful thought, unchallenged
yet alert. The stream was crossed by the fallen fir-trunk, and the
path returned eastward on the opposite side of the valley till the
distant mouth of the cave was passed and the forefront of this new
ridge won. Here the view was immense, embracing islands in the sea
and snowy Olympus and the unnumbered chains of the mountainous coast.
Here I squatted on the short fine turf and folded both arms across my
knees as a cushion for my chin. Perhaps I dozed, for my head was heavy
when I lifted it to make sure of a sound--the trampling of centaurs a
great way off. "They are returning," I said to myself, and laid an ear
against the earth, and then peered into the darkness, for the moon lit
nothing now except one band of sea far out behind the islands. All but
certain by which track they were coming, I plunged headlong downward
through the brushwood as though it had been broad day, intending to cut
their road on the moor above the cliffs. How many times I floundered
into bushes or barked a shin against bough or boulder, those who have
done such things may imagine. I at last stumbled out on the heather
hundreds of feet beneath, limping but consoled to fancy my troubles
ended. Before I had cleared a thousand yards I fell, ricking my ankle,
and rose with difficulty, for an agony like death whenever my foot
pressed the ground routed the very notion of an inexhaustible endurance
latent within me. I fell again on to the thick springy couch of scented
ling and soon felt deliciously relieved. Violent activity had chased
the last vestige of night-terror, and the wind moaning round me made
even that barren place homelike as with the movements of a familiar
presence. The slightest jerk to my right foot and immediately my brow
was beaded with sweat, for pain like a savage dog held my ankle in its
jaws, and would grind them anew if I stirred. Hooves thundered nearer
and nearer; the noise so invaded my consciousness that to cry for
help seemed as useless as to halloo against tempestuous breakers on a
rocky shore, yet simultaneously there returned on me all that Chiron
had taught of the diverse tribes of sound--how some are irreconcilable
while others easily agree, how the loudest of one family may fail to
drown small ones of distinct origin, and in a continuous and familiar
uproar their different calibre may startle even as in silence. Fed
by these memories hope grew strong, and I cried out, "Father Chiron,
Father Chiron, I am here, and must die if you do not come." Then I
listened: all was still. At first I feared they had reached the hills
and entered the valley so that the sound of their trampling was walled
off. Just then it began again more slowly and unexpectedly near, so
I shouted, "Father Chiron, do not leave me to the wolves!" Then his
voice answered, and tears streamed over my face and sobs so shook me
that I could not make out his words, yet between the spasms I gasped,
"This way, this way!" And he came and knelt beside me, first on his
fore-knees, then settling down on his haunches gradually so as not to
scare me by the blundering of his fetlocks. His large gentle hand felt
my moist burning brow while I pointed at my helpless ankle; then he
lifted it between thumb and finger, and with the index of the other
hand began to stroke the swelling thoughtfully. Then lifting his head
he shouted, "Rhoetus, find me some sorrel or lettuce, and if you see
any straight wands cut me one or two. Catch! Here is my knife!" and he
slipped the thong by which it hung over his head. Now I must tell you
it was a delicately smithied blade with both edges sharp, and lived,
point foremost, in a snug trough cut along the yellow boxwood handle
over which a lid of box was spliced, the open end being secured by a
wedge of ebony attached by a thong. For use, the blade was first shaken
out on the palm, then its heft-end replaced and secured by tapping the
wedge with a stone. It was our great pleasure to borrow this knife
and scratch lions or eagles upon a horn, or out of soft pine carve
straight-robed Athena with casque and spear. I know every cut that
defines her attitude, but can never give her features, either terrible
or beautiful. But Chiron was repeating to me, "Did not Achilles tell
you that I could not be back before morning?" for my mind had suddenly
wandered to my foster-mother's farm kitchen in the lowlands forty miles
away. "Yes, he told me, but I could not sleep, and at last I wanted to
explore the woods by moonlight; after I heard you coming, in running
I caught my foot in the twisted trunks of this heather," With a low
husky chuckle he said, "Though I am supposed to be really wise, the
simplicity of your explanation has surprised me harbouring sinister
forebodings." I had no inkling then how he dreaded lest the violence
of centaur-herds and the knavery of townsmen, like clashing flints,
should cause a conflagration. For ever more pressingly he forebodes
the violation of his cavern's peace, the only spot left where men and
centaurs foregather kindly. At that time I attributed his words to the
ocean of his wisdom, which, like a shore-bred child, I was accustomed
to hear murmur, content if now and again the beauty of a thought meant
for me stranded like a dainty shell at my feet. Hitherto I had lain
like one bed-rid, haunted by the seriousness of that pain, but now,
sitting up and taking advantage of the licence accorded to sufferers, I
dared to show a curiosity which every endeavour would have suppressed
had my right ankle been as sound as the left, and asked, "Where have
you been, Father Chiron?" His husky laugh allowed the indulgence I had
claimed, and his voice grew strained as he answered, "I was called to
the death-bed of my best-beloved son Thamyris." "Is he very sick?" I
asked. "Not now, for he moaned me his last epode and ended like the
swan." At that I lay back once more and looked across the heather at
the moon, unwilling to embarrass his sorrow by staring at it. And after
a pause Chiron in a very low voice began to croon:
Falcon daughters of Apollo,
Ye spur on a man to sing,
Rend with pangs sharp as a sword:
Then for his best award
Faint praise and a broken wing.
Is it for larks to follow
The snow-feathered cloud?
They are dusky and hot and fragile
And scarcely contain a proud
Insanely throbbing heart:
Ye are amber-eyed, sleek and agile,
Taloned and savagely smart.
When the fierce blood bursts our pulses,
Darkened like Hades at noon,
There falls from the towering ether
A mangled mass of feather.
An end to the pain that convulses
Life with ambition is boon
Enough for a soul uplifted,
And by each of you severally gifted.
When silence had nursed the memory of this for a space I glanced at
Chiron; his wet eyes stared steadily at the moon. He roused himself
and began to shout to hasten Rhoetus, and the young centaur soon
approached, bounding wildly, a mat of tresses flapping like a black
flag about his head. Chiron took the knife, the leaves and the two
sallows, and measuring these last against my leg cut two wands from
their stouter ends, split them and placed their flat sides against
the leaves in which he packed my tender joint. He next cut strands
from under his white beard as long as his arm; with one he bound the
splints lightly round my calf and with the other secured them beneath
my foot. Rising, he helped me up, and warned me not to put any weight
on the cage, which lengthened and imprisoned my leg. He then signed
to Rhoetus to lift me on to his back, and side by side the two began
walking across the heath; the sky was once more almost clear and the
moon was setting. The sea, though it could be heard, was hidden by
the heathery hillocks which thatched its cliffs, as Olympus and the
great ranges were behind hills tawny and russet with beech and alder
but hooded in evergreen firs that towered dead black in the moonlight.
A whistle sounded, and there was Caudon waiting three hundred paces
off. Rhoetus advanced, crying to him, "It is my turn to carry the body
now," but his piebald fellow immediately heaved something on to his
shoulder and set off at a gallop. "What is it?" I said to Chiron, round
whose vast waist my arms clung. "They shame our breed," he replied.
"Ghosts of the dead never haunt centaurs, so for them the lifeless
body is no more than an empty smock. Men are born with older fears and
cradled in whispering awe. Reverence is thus taught them, first by
terror, and then by esteem, if they consort with finely-tempered minds.
But these rough colts, deprived of the first, scarce heed the second
lesson yet. Poor Thamyris, the fair course of thy days was driven
about till, willy-nilly, it clashed with the coarse-grained crowd;
and must thy body be tossed, fought for, and whirled away in the fury
of this boisterous rivalry?" They were fetching wide curves across
the heath; sometimes even Caudon's piebald flanks were lost in the
darkness, and they became a mere chivy of distancing sounds; then again
both toiled on the skyline above the cliffs, like shadows on a wall.
Their shouts had at first betokened no more than horse-play, but took
now an angrier accent. Chiron smartened his pace, and I felt that his
spirit was chafing, and when they next drew within earshot he shouted
commands to arrest them of such sternness as they were not sufficiently
enslaved by passion to disregard, and they came severally, muttering,
heated, and resentful towards us. The old centaur reproached them for
thus jolting the body of his friend. "But he feels nothing," argued
Caudon. "Well, well, had he been a skin of choice wine, you should have
carried him with more care." "Wine can be spoilt with shaking--but a
corpse!" grumbled Rhoetus. "Still for all he once was ..." "Why, he
was so mad as to put out his own eyes!" grunted Caudon, and Rhoetus
continued, "They say he died because he refused to eat in a rage that
outlasted his life." "Yet I, who am old enough to be your sire's
grandsire, have often wished the hour stayed when his fingers wandered
the strings." "Years ago!" they interjected. "Last evening he kissed
my hands and taught me words that fly straight to the heart." Neither
colt retorted, and the silence seemed so consecrated to the gravity of
the wise Chiron's sorrow that I feared to break it, though devoured
with curiosity about this unaccountable madness, blindness, and death.
We had entered the valley and were climbing at a foot-pace among the
trees. Though the moon had set, the sky had not darkened but greyed
with the dawn. As the light increased the body absorbed my attention;
it hung wrapped in a coarse and torn cloak over Rhoetus's shoulder; for
Caudon had ceded it to him soon after they left arguing with Chiron.
The arms dangled along his muscular back and the dead hands flopped and
turned upon the glossy black hide to which his brown skin gave place
below the loins. They went a little in advance of us, and at times I
could divine just how the head hung, by some yellow hair that appeared
and disappeared behind a rent in the cloak which, swaying, opened and
closed like the ill-hinged door of a granary loft that, swinging in the
wind, shows the gleam of golden grain to a mid-winter day. My head had
dropped in a doze before we reached the place where a path branches
down to the bathing pool, and Chiron bade Rhoetus and Caudon carry the
body up to the cave, build a fire, and seethe meat, for all would be
more than common hungry. But me he carried down to the large pool that
spreads out from the foot of a fall in the torrent; and at the outer
brim of this basin, where the clear water becomes shallow and escapes
in many minor cascades downwards, he chose a bank of sward and laid
me gently down where the water would flow over my damaged foot. While
I lounged at ease he himself gravely walked down under the pool; the
water rose above the horse and only the man remained; still he trod
carefully deeper, the white stones being often slippery with green
weed; and now his beard and hair were floating like foam about his
shoulders, as though a smaller column of invisible water were drilling
the quivering surface right out in front of the torrent that thundered
into boiling suds at the foot of the dripping rocks. Still his hooves
felt their way down, till the billowy outward curves were sweeping
right over his head. The white limestone lit up the depths and rendered
his figure clearly visible, though it seemed strangely stunted; his
chestnut crupper, silvered as it was with age, became violet by
contrast with the icy blue water. All around thinned boughs hung out
long yellow leaves, and the reflections of some of them flickered like
fish about him. Time seemed to have ceased and all hostile conditions
to have been suspended in favour of this magnificently weathered
creature, that he might become divinely amphibious and death stand
disarmed before him. Far above, a level shaft of sunlight from over the
mountain shoulder suddenly caught the tree-tops. A naked scaffold of
dark trunk, bough and intricately forking branch sustained each thin
tower-like tent of brilliant leaves. Thus, their grand swelling shapes
hollow instead of dense with foliage, tanned or yellow instead of
green, these chestnuts whose flaunting camps reach far up the valleys
made a last stand against the disenchanting season of storms. The
banks beneath were thick with fallen leaves interspersed with clusters
of nuts like hedgehogs. The whole vividly coloured scene swam in the
limpid transparent slumber which tuned my breathing, though it had not
closed my eyes. I thought, "He will stay under too long and I shall
never hear how poor Thamyris went mad," yet it seemed acceptable or
at least necessary that I should never hear and that he should remain
immersed for ever. No, he lifted his head and parted his hair and
rubbed his eyes, and came up as slowly and solemnly out of the pool as
he had descended into it. Streaming and refreshed, he cantered round
its shallow brim, splashing with his hooves; he shook and wrung from
hair and beard streamers of diamond drops, quivering the while the
glossy coat of his nether body to free its shaggy skirts, and whisking
his tail against his hocks. Pausing beside me, he smiled into my sleepy
eyes and said, "How goes the ankle?" I murmured that it was so cold as
to have stopped aching, and I could not now feel whether it were there
or not. He drew me a little higher up till my bandaged foot was out of
the numbing flow. Roused by this I could no longer refrain from asking
what had driven poor Thamyris mad; and the answer came, soothing the
terror that it stirred in my soul by the grave compassion with which it
was pronounced. "He could not endure to watch those whose attention he
had in vain tried to capture, grouped about some common rhapsodist who,
with shouts, recounted how one man killed another in some freebooting
foray. He must have wandered unwanted and uninspired for months before
at last he stood near the ships where fishermen had been chipping holes
in large flints in order to thread them along the bottom of their
great sweep-net. These had often split before they were pierced, and
fragments with knife-like edges lay all about. Suddenly dashing down
his lyre, he stooped and seized two sharp pieces, and sobbing out that
his eyes should never again watch a crowd like that gaping upon the
wharf at this bawler, he jabbed at his eyes. Others told me how they
heard him, and turned to see blood streaming from his face and beard
and from the two red hands that he waved as he staggered, unaccustomed
to darkness. They thought some goddess in the shape of a sea-hawk must
have struck him with her beak, and vanished as swiftly as she had
come through the twilight. Afterward, when his broken lyre was found,
they concluded that the Muses had sent her because he, though a mere
mortal, sang such songs as might in the halls of Olympus be preferred
to their own, for only among the gods, as those fishermen fancied,
could he have found suitable audience. They led him to the temple of
Apollo; there the priest killed a snake and bound its body across his
bleeding orbits, and the wounds healed, but sight did not return. Later
on, when he felt how he never knew where he was or who was near--when
no one could lead him far towards the stony peaks he loved, for dread
always overtook them at the danger of steep places for a blind man
whose daimon left him totally unwarned--he refused food and sat all
day on the temple steps, and never begged an alms or stooped to gather
what was thrown him. At night the hierodules had sometimes heard him
mutter as though he prayed for vengeance. They even believed that he
had challenged the nine Muses to a trial of skill, offering to yield
body and mind to their displeasure if he failed, but should he outsing
them, then each of them was to submit her body to bear him a child.
For servile minds, Agenor, ascribe the motives familiar to themselves
to those whose outstanding actions they must perforce canvass. Thus
he endured not only perpetual darkness, but companionless solitude
where streams of men were constantly passing; hearing voices but not
one conversable. Then when death first warned him, he sent a message
to me; this was delivered to Rhoetus and Caudon, who bore it on up
the shoulders of Pelion." And gazing round, he continued, "In this
spot shall he rest, screened by these chestnuts from the cruel moons
of summer; here shall a grave be dug. The distance from the cave is
convenient, and bathers may often consent to remain while I rechant
one of his lays, till, departing, they breathe a pious wish for the
peace of him whose life was full of strife and storms, though he never
joined in battle, or trod the planks of a ship. When I stood by his
side he said, 'O god-like beast, no other ears ever listened to me with
pleasure as thine did. Thou hast been rewarded with extended life, for
thy actions and customs are swayed neither by fear nor by greed, but in
the eyes of the young and in quiet haunts thou hast sought the wisdom
most easily wed to divine melodies. Thou wilt understand and perhaps
pity these strophes born of my anguish.' His fevered reveries would
seem so to have exalted me that he used an address such as gods expect,
and with the same trance-like utterance feebly and slowly delivered the
hymn I repeated to you on the heath, but then the end came. Now you had
better lie here for to-day lest you should jar that ankle, and I will
send Achilles to you with some meat." I wondered over all I had heard,
not without dread of a similar fate, till Achilles came and wanted to
know what I had seen in the night, whether nymphs or daimons or Artemis
herself. As I ate the warm meat or broke the brown crusts between
sips of wine, I told him. Then with all the roguish effrontery of his
beauty, shaking his long yellow curls, he laughed, "I should have done
as you did for all the rest, Agenor, but I should not have sprained my
ankle," and he danced off singing, "No, indeed, indeed no!" while I,
dropping the drained horn into the empty maple bowl, rolled over and
slept.
* * * * *
When I woke the sun had passed the meridian, and the sound of a spade
and the thud of falling clods could be heard, and looking across I saw
Caudon working in a grave on a crest of the opposite bank; soon the
blade rang on the rock and his action became that of shovelling out
the loam. Next, Chiron and Rhoetus arrived, carrying the body between
them wound in a long and splendid pall. This had been sent by Thetis
as a present with Achilles when he joined us in July. It measured six
yards by four, and might have served for a temple curtain or to drape
a royal bed. The goddess herself had worked it far out under the sea,
aided by the silver-shoed daughters of Doris. Flying over a ground of
deep blue were seen harpies with black wings spread and every feather
tipped with white, their brown bodies shaped like large eggs; they
wore coral necklaces, and had the heads of women with singing mouths
and long streaming raven curls. Yet they were armless and had the legs
and talons of a bird. Each of the score was exactly like every other,
and side by side and one after another they flew across the deep noon
sky. So they sweep by close above some ship, with sweet voices advising
mariners of a greater glory amid ocean than where sails are often met
around the coast. Though well they know that from the vacant unislanded
main the venturer has rarely returned. Chiron had no use in his cavern
for a cloth so splendid, and he had determined to devote this to the
honour of Thamyris. They laid his body, wholly enveloped in it, along
the turf beside the grave, while they spread in it the autumn-tinted
bracken that Achilles had been cutting with a sickle, and, armful after
armful, had made a mountainous heap of. Next they lowered him in the
great blue cloth on to that sun-saturated couch. Then Chiron took his
lyre and sang:
A gentle spring was that long past
Which brought thee to my cave;
For thought yet more than action brave,
O daring spirit, now thou hast
Gleaned all that feeble mortals give
To those in whom intenser joy has sought to live
Here woodland peace broods ever, here
Shall water alway carol in thine ear.