bellowed, and were gone down a lonely road, narrow, slippery, black
with oil, the “Crossover,” which the crowds had avoided because of the
marshy land on each side. Half a mile away the road lay over a swamp,
and the ditch was deep. Not a soul was there.
As the cars rushed toward it, Giron almost imperceptibly lowered his
speed just enough for the “Ninety” to come up before the swamp was
crossed. Listening carefully, his ears attuned by long practice, he
read the thunder of the “Ninety’s” engine, calculated to a foot how
much nearer Stevenson was being borne with each detonation. Louder and
louder grew the clamor, the harsh shrieking and rasping of machinery,
the booming of the exhausts, until it deafened him. Then Giron acted.
Bracing his feet, he sank lower in the seat, gripped the wheel, and
made as though to turn out, to obey the law of the race. Up crept the
“Ninety” closer and closer, until with a snarl Giron threw over the
wheel suddenly, tugged sharply, and, shooting his own car back across
the road, blocked the way.
But, hours before that, Fate had made a workman blunder. The workman
had put on more oil than safety allowed. The oil had made the surface
slippery and dangerous at just this place. No driver had noticed it
because none had tried to turn in it. But now, catching the big Saturn
veering suddenly under high speed, the treacherous mixture of dirt
and oil slid away from under the front wheels. With all the power of
inanimate things breaking loose, the huge red car careened across the
road. As though possessed, it ran to destruction, dug its flat snout
into the embankment, lifted slowly end on end, swayed a moment, and, as
the “Ninety” shot by, lurched forward, somersaulting down into the
swamp.
[Illustration: Drawn by William H. Foster. Half-tone plate engraved by
R. Varley
“WITH ALL THE POWER OF INANIMATE THINGS BREAKING LOOSE, THE HUGE RED
CAR CAREENED ACROSS THE ROAD”]
No sooner had Stevenson crossed the finish-line than the Mercury
Motor-Car Company’s representatives telephoned Garden City and arranged
for a banquet. But banquets were not for Stevenson that night. The fate
of Giron lay heavy upon him. It had shadowed his joy in winning. The
strain of the race over, he had broken down; and in breaking down it
seemed to him that he had rushed to success over another man’s body.
At the hospital, where he had gone to inquire as soon as he could tear
himself away from the swarms at the finish-line, the day nurse had told
him that Giron would be a cripple for life. She had added that, oddly
enough, a crippled little Frenchman had been there an hour ago, and
that he, too, had been anxious to know about Giron.
“Good old Lescault!” thought Stevenson as he drove back to Krugs.
“Always the first to think of a man in danger.”
Then he found himself wishing that Lescault were at his side. Now more
than ever before he felt the need of the strange little Frenchman,
the man who had made him, the man to whom he could now turn in this
time of depression, of worried conscience, and even of half-guilt, he
thought with a start. Had not Giron gone into the ditch to avoid a
collision, to save him? He wasn’t the hero, he thought bitterly. It was
Giron--poor Giron!
Stevenson found Lescault in his room. The little fellow had his chair
drawn up close to the old-fashioned fireplace, in which wood was
burning. He was smoking a cigarette, and if he heard Stevenson enter,
he gave no sign. Instead, he gazed steadily at some charred bits of
cardboard strewn about the edges of the fire--thick cardboard, and one
piece only partly burned appeared to be a photograph.
The red glow of the fire shone on the little man’s face as Stevenson
drew a chair beside him. In the flickering light the boy thought he saw
him grin; but it might have been only the play of the shadows.
“It’s terrible about Giron, isn’t it, Jean?” he said abruptly, unable
to endure the silence. “Think of it--that man at the height of his
power suddenly crippled, never able to drive again, a great career
ended so terribly!”
The little man at his side looked up.
“No, he’ll never drive again,” said Lescault.
Stevenson wondered at his tone, the look that had come into his face,
the queer burning of his eyes, eery, unholy.
“Léon Giron will never drive again,” Lescault repeated. “It’s sure?
You’re certain of it?” he asked suddenly, clutching Stevenson’s sleeve.
“It’s sure, isn’t it?” he begged.
Bewildered, Stevenson said that it was so. Then he felt his flesh
creep, for the little Frenchman had begun to smile, a horrible smile,
with a hideous face, changing expression in the fire’s glow; began to
rub his one hand over his knee, to slide it up and down creepily and
unpleasantly, like a snake at play; to leer, and gloat over disaster
not like a man, but a beast.
Horrified, unable to understand, Stevenson slid silently from his chair
and backed slowly from the room. At the door he stopped, hesitated,
and, as though unwilling to believe, looked again at the hunched little
figure in the chair. There came to him faintly the sound of a voice
chuckling!
OFF CAPRI
BY SARA TEASDALE
When beauty grows too great to bear,
How shall I ease me of its ache?
For beauty, more than bitterness,
Makes the heart break.
O sunlight on the dreaming sea,
With isles like flowers against her breast!
Is there a voice in all the world
To give me rest?
SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA
FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE
FOURTH PAPER: DELPHI AND OLYMPIA
BY ROBERT HICHENS
Author of “The Spell of Egypt,” “The Holy Land,” “The Garden of Allah,”
etc.
WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN (SEE FRONTISPIECE) AND PHOTOGRAPHS
There are two ways of going from Athens to Delphi: by sea from the
Piræus to Itea and thence by carriage or by motor. Despite the rough
surfaces of the roads and the terrors of dust, I chose the latter; and
I was well rewarded. For the drive is a glorious one, though very long
and fatiguing, and it enabled me to see a grand monument which many
travelers miss--the Lion of Chæronea, which gazes across a vast plain
in a solitary place between Thebes and Delphi.
Leaving Athens early one morning, I followed the Via Sacra, left
Eleusis behind me, traversed the Thriasian plain, the heights of Mount
Geraneia, and the rich cultivated plain of Bœotia, passed through
the village of Kriekouki, and arrived at Thebes. There I halted for
an hour. After leaving Thebes, the journey became continually more
and more interesting as I drew near to Parnassus: over the plain of
Livadia, through the village and khan of Gravia, where one hundred
and eighty Greeks fought heroically against three thousand Turks in
1821, over the magnificent Pass of Amblema, across the delightful
olive-covered plain of Krissa, and up the mountain to Delphi.
Throughout this wonderful journey, during which I saw country
alternately intimate and wild, genial and majestic, and at one point
almost savage, I had only one deception: that was on the Pass of
Amblema, which rises to more than eight thousand feet above the level
of the sea. Delphi, I felt, ought to be there. Delphi, I believed,
must be there, hidden somewhere among the rocks and the fir-woods,
where wolves lurk, and where the eagle circles and swoops above peaks
which are cold and austere. Only when we began to descend in serpentine
curves, when I saw far below me great masses of olive-trees, and,
beyond, the shining of the sea, did I realize that I was mistaken, and
that Delphi lay far beyond, in a region less tragically wild, more
rustic, even more tender.
During this journey of, I believe, about three hundred kilometers or
more, I realized fully the loneliness that happily shadows a great
part of Greece. We seemed to be almost perpetually in the midst of a
delightful desolation, gloriously alone with nature, now far up on
bare flanks of the hills, now traveling through deserted pine-woods
or olive-groves, now upon plains which extended to shadowy ranges
of mountains, and which here and there reminded me of the plains of
Palestine. Strange it seemed to come upon an occasional village of
Greeks or Albanians, strayed, surely, and lost and forgotten in the
wilderness; stranger still to see now and then some tiny Byzantine
church, perhaps with a few cypresses about it, perched on a mountain
height that looked as if it never had been trodden by foot of man. The
breezes that met us were alive with a tingling purity of hilltop and
sea, or sweet and wholesome with the resinous odor of pine. And the
light that lay over the face of the land made nearly all things magical.
[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood
VIEW OF MOUNT PARNASSUS]
Again we met Turkish Gipsies. In Greece they have made the wild life
their own. No longer one hears of brigands, though only a few years
ago these highways were dangerous, and men traversed them armed and at
their own peril. Now the Gipsies are in happy possession, and travel
from place to place in small caravans, with their mules, donkeys, and
dogs, and their tiny peaked tents, telling the _bonne aventure_ to the
superstitious, and, so the Greeks declare, stealing whatever they can
lay their dark hands on. They look wild and smiling, crafty rather than
ferocious; and they greet you with loud cries in an unknown tongue,
and with gestures expressive of the perpetual desire to receive which
seems inherent in all true vagabonds. They pitch their tents usually
on the outskirts of the villages, staying for days or weeks, as the
luck serves them. And, so far as I could judge, people receive them
with good nature, perhaps grateful for the excitement they bring into
lives that know little variation as season follows season and year
glides into year. Just outside Thebes I found eleven of their tents set
upon some rough ground, the beasts tethered, the dogs on guard, the
babies toddling and sprawling, while their mothers were cooking some
mysterious compound, and the men were away perhaps on some nefarious
errand among the excited Thebans. For that day Greek officers were
visiting the town, and in front of the café, among the trees, and above
the waterside, where we stopped to lunch, there was a parade of horses,
mules, and donkeys from all the neighborhood. War was taking its toll
of the live-stock, and the whole population was abroad to see the fun.
[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI]
As soon as I had descended from the car and begun to unpack my
provisions, an elderly man came up, asked whether we were from Athens,
and then put the question that is forever on the lips of the Greek,
“What is the news?” Every Greek has a passion for the latest news.
Often, when I was traveling through the country, people I passed on
the way called out to me, “What is the news?” or, “Can you give us a
newspaper?”
Thebes, where, according to legend, Hercules was born; where the
stones gathered themselves together when Amphion struck his lyre;
where blind Tiresias prophesied; and, seated upon a block of stone,
the Sphinx asked her riddle of the passers-by and slew them; where
Œdipus ruled and suffered his hideous fate; where the Epigoni took
their vengeance; and Epaminondas showed how one man can lift a city
and set it on a throne above all the cities of its fatherland--Thebes,
where letters were first brought into use among the Greeks, and where
weak-voiced Demosthenes by his eloquence persuaded the people to march
to their glorious death against Philip of Macedon, is now just a busy
village on the flank of a hill. Frequently devastated by earthquakes,
which are the scourge of this region, it looks newly built, fairly
clean and neat. It dominates the plain in which Plutarch was born, and
the murmur of its waters is pleasant to the ear in a dry and thirsty
land. But though Thebes is not specially interesting, below it, in
that plain once celebrated for its flowers,--iris and lily, narcissus
and rose,--beyond all sound of the voices of chattering peasants or
determined soldiers, solitary in its noble rage and grief, is that most
moving of monuments, the Lion of Chæronea.
I came upon it unexpectedly. If I had not happened to be looking
toward the left my chauffeur would have driven me on without pause
to Parnassus, the mighty flanks of which were already visible in the
distance. When he pulled up we were already almost out of sight of the
lion. And I was glad as I walked back alone, still more glad when I
stood before it in solitude, surrounded by the great silence of the
plain.
There where the lion sits, raised now on a high pedestal and with
cypresses planted about him, was fought the great battle of Chæronea
between the Greeks and Philip of Macedon; and there the Greeks lost
much, but not their honor. Had it been otherwise, would the lion be
there now after so many centuries, testifying to the grief of men
long since dead, to their anger, even to their despair, but not to
their cowardice or shame? I have heard people say that the face of
the lion does express shame. It seems to me nobly passionate, loftily
angry and sad, but not ashamed. The Thebans raised it to commemorate
those of their comrades in arms who died on the battle-field. What
shame can attach to such men? For long years the lion lay broken in
pieces and buried in the earth. Only in 1902 were the fragments fitted
together, though long before that they had lain above ground, where
many noted travelers had seen them. The restoration has been splendidly
successful, and has given to Greece one of the most memorable
manifestations in marble of a state of soul that exists not merely in
Greece, but in the world. Lion-hearted men are superbly commemorated by
this lion.
The height of the statue from the top of the pedestal is about twenty
feet. The material of which it is made, marble of Bœotia, was once,
I believe, blue-gray. It is now gray and yellow. The lion is sitting,
but in an attitude that suggests fierce vitality. Both the huge front
paws seem to grasp the pedestal almost as if the claws were extended in
an impulse of irresistible anger. The head is raised. The expression
on the face is wonderful. There is in it a savage intensity of feeling
that is rarely to be found in anything Greek. But the savagery is
ennobled in some mysterious way by the sublime art of the sculptor, is
lifted up and made ideal, eternal. It is as if the splendid rage in
the souls of all men who ever have died fighting on a losing side had
been gathered up by the soul of the sculptor, and conveyed by him whole
into his work. The mysterious human spirit, breathed upon from eternal
regions, glows in this divine lion of Greece.
Various writers on the scenery of Greece have described it as “alpine”
in character. One has even used the word in connection with some
of the mountain-ranges that may be seen from the plain of Attica.
Such distracting visions of Switzerland did not beset my spirit as
I traveled through a more beautiful and far more romantic land,
absolutely different from the contented little republic which has
been chosen by Europe as its playground. But there were moments, as
we slowly ascended the Pass of Amblema, when I thought of the North.
For the delicate and romantic serenity of the Greek landscape did here
give way to something that was almost savage, almost spectacular. The
climbing forests of dark and hardy firs made me think of snow, which
lies among them deep in winter. The naked peaks, the severe uplands,
the precipices, the dim ravines, bred gloom in the soul. There was
sadness combined with wildness in the scene, which a premature darkness
was seizing, and the cold wind seemed to go shivering among the rocks.
It was then that I thought of Delphi, and believed that we must be
nearing the home of the oracle. As we climbed and climbed, and the cold
increased, and the world seemed closing brutally about us, I felt no
longer in doubt. We must be close to Delphi, old region of mysteries
and terror, where the god of the dead was thought to be hidden, where
Apollo fought with Python, where men came with fear in their hearts to
search out the future.
But presently we began to descend, and I learned that we were still
a long way from Delphi. The sun set, and evening was falling when
we were once more down on the sea-level, traversing one of the most
delightful and fertile regions of Greece, the lovely plain of Krissa,
which extends to the sea. The great olive-gardens stretch away for
miles on every hand, interspersed here and there with plane-trees,
mulberry-trees, medlars, cypresses, and the wild oleander. Many
battles have been fought in that sylvan paradise, which now looks the
home of peace, a veritable Garden of Eden lying between mountains and
sea. Pilgrims traveling to Delphi were forced to pay toll there, and
eventually the extortion became so intolerable that it led to war. That
evening, as we drove along a road cut straight through the heart of the
olive-woods, the whole region seemed sunk in a dream. We met no one;
we heard no traffic, no voices, no barking of dogs. The thousands of
splendid trees, planted symmetrically, were moved by no breeze. Warmth
and an odorous calm pervaded the shadowy alleys between them. Here and
there a soft beam of light shone among the trees from the window of a
guardian’s dwelling. And once we stopped to take Turkish coffee under
a vine-trimmed arbor, solitary and lost in the sweet silence, in the
silver dusk of the forest. A lodge in the wilderness! As I looked at
the dark, bright-eyed man who served us, I, perhaps foolishly, envied
him his life, his strange little home, remote, protected by his only
companions, the trees.
In this plain camels are used for transport, and, I believe, for
plowing and other work. They are to be found nowhere else in Greece.
I saw none that night; but one morning, after leaving Delphi, I met
a train of them pacing softly and disdainfully along the dusty road,
laden with bales and with mysterious bundles wrapped round with sacking.
In the dark we began to climb up once more. At last we were actually
on Parnassus, were approaching the “navel of the earth.” But I was not
aware of any wildness, such as that of Amblema, about us. The little
I could see of the landscape did not look savage. I heard goat-bells
tinkling now and then not far off. Presently some lights beamed out
above us, as if in welcome. We passed through a friendly village
street, came out on the mountain-side, and drew up before a long house,
which stood facing what was evidently a wide view, now almost entirely
hidden, though a little horned moon hung in the sky, attended by the
evening star. The village was Kastri; the long house was the “Hôtel
d’Apollon Pythien.”
Delphi is memorable, but not because of wildness or terror. In
retrospect it rises in my mind as a lonely place of light, gleaming
on volcanic rocks and on higher rocks that are gray; of a few mighty
plane-trees, pouring a libation of green toward olive-trees on the
slopes beneath them; of a perpetual sweet sound of water. And beside
the water travelers from the plain of Krissa, and travelers from
Arachova, that wonderfully placed Parnassian village, renowned for its
beautiful women, are pausing. They get down from their horses and mules
to lave their hands and to drink. They cross themselves before the
little Christian shrine under the trees by the roadside. They sit down
in the shadows to rest.
It is very sweet to rest for long hours by the Castalian fountain of
Delphi, remote from all habitations upon the great southern slope of
Parnassus, under the tree of Agamemnon; to listen to the voice of the
lustral wave. There, in the dead years, the pilgrims piously sprinkled
themselves before consulting the oracle; there, now, the brown women of
the mountains chatter gaily as they wash their clothes. The mountain
is bare behind the shrine, where perhaps is a figure of Mary with
Christ in her arms, or some saint with outspread wings. Its great
precipices of rock are tawny. They bloom with strong reds and yellows,
they shine with scars of gold. Among the rocks the stream is only a
thread of silver, though under the bridge it flows down through the
olive-gardens, a broad band of singing happiness.
[Illustration: THE HERMES OF PRAXITELES (FOUND AT OLYMPIA AND NOW IN
THE MUSEUM THERE)]
Delphi has a mountain charm of remoteness, of lofty silence; it has
also a seduction of pastoral warmth and gentleness and peace. Far up on
the slope of gigantic Parnassus, it faces a narrow valley, or ravine,
and a bare, calm mountain, scarred by zigzag paths, which look almost
like lines sharply cut in the volcanic soil with an instrument. In the
distance, away to the right, the defile opens out into the plain of
Krissa, at the edge of which lies a section of sea, like a huge uncut
turquoise lying in a cup of the land. Beyond are ranges of beautiful,
delicate mountains.
The ruins of Delphi lie above the highroad to the left of it, between
Kastri and the Castalian fountain, unshaded, in a naked confusion, but
free from modern houses and in a fine loneliness. At one time, and not
very long ago, the village of Kastri stood close to the ruins, and
some of it actually above them. But when excavations were undertaken
seriously, all the houses were pulled down, and set up again where
they stand to-day. Like the ruins at Eleusis and Olympia, the remains
at Delphi are fragmentary. The ancient Hellenes believed that the
center of the earth was at a certain spot within the Temple of Apollo
at Delphi, where the eagles of Zeus, flying from the two ends of the
earth, had met. The foundations, and some portions of the walls of
this celebrated shrine, in which two golden eagles stood, may be
visited, but very little of it remains. On the foundation has been set
up a large Roman column, upon which once stood a statue. The fallen
blocks of Doric columns are gigantic, and from them it is possible to
gain some faint idea of the temple’s immense size and massiveness.
In the midst of a pit of stone, not far from the columns, I found a
solitary fig-tree growing. It is interesting to notice that the huge
outer wall of the temple was constructed of quantities of blocks, each
one differing in shape from its neighbors. These were ingeniously
fitted close together without the aid of any joining material. Although
it is impossible not to wonder at and admire the cleverness shown in
this wall, it produced on my mind an impression of confusion that was
almost painful. The multitudes of irregular lines distressed my eyes.
There is little repose in a puzzle, and this wall is like a mighty
puzzle in stone.
Among the masses of broken fragments which cover much of the hillside
stands out a small, solid building of Parian marble, very pure, very
clean, almost shining under the rays of the sun. It resembles a great
marble casket in which something very precious might be placed and
sealed up. This is the treasury of the Athenians, which has been
reconstructed since Kastri was moved from the fragments of the original
temple. It is, in fact, a tiny Doric temple. The marble, of a beautiful
yellow-white color, is mingled here and there with limestone. This
little temple stands on a platform, with the clearly defined Sacred
Way winding up the hill beside it. The front of it is approached by
two steps, and it has two Doric columns, containing, however, only two
blocks of the original marble, brown, with touches of old gold. The
remaining blocks of these columns are of white Poros marble, brought
from a distance, and they look rough and almost glaring. Poros marble
may always be recognized by the minute shining grains, like specks of
gold, that are scattered through it. Although a fine substance, it
looks vulgar when placed beside Parian marble.
The semicircular places in which the priests of Delphi used to sit may
still be seen, facing a fine view. The sea is hidden by a shoulder
of the mountain, but the rolling slopes beyond the road are covered
thickly with olive-trees, among which the goat-bells chime almost
perpetually; and on the far side of the narrow valley the bare slopes,
with their tiny, red paths, lead calmly toward rocky summits. To the
left the highroad turns sharply round a rock in the direction of the
Castalian fountain.