CHAPTER III

ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS

“Where he fell there he lay down and died.”

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK tells a story—and this story teaches an obvious

lesson—of certain red warrior ants, who capture black fellow pismires,

and hold them as slaves; an outrage which must certainly shock all true

pismitarian ants. The captors become in time so dependent upon their

negro servants that, when deprived of their attendants, they are unable

to feed or clean themselves, and lie helplessly upon their backs, feebly

waving their paws in the air!...

Peripatetica, having but recently suffered the loss of a maiden slave of

a dozen years’ standing, had suffered a like moral disintegration, and

she violently lost her taste for travel whenever it became necessary to

move from one place to another, attempting to deal with her packing by a

mere series of helpless paw-wavings, most picturesque to observe, but

which for all practical purposes were highly inefficient. So when she

and Jane dropped down and down the zigzags to Giardini—each of those

famous views self-consciously presenting itself in turn for the last

time—the light figure which hurled itself boldly down the steeps by a

short cut, springing along the daring descent with the sure-footed

confidence of a goat, proved to be not a wing-heeled Mercury conveying

an affectionate message from the gods, but merely a boy from the villa

fetching Peripatetica’s left-behind nail brush, hot-water bottle, and

umbrella....

From Giardini a spacious plain curves all the way to Syracuse. This

broken level is built upon a foundation of inky lava cast out from

Hephæstos’ forge in Ætna, in whose wrinkled crevices of black and broken

stone has been caught and held all the stored richness of the denuded

mountains so long ago stripped of trees; and in this plain grain and

flowers and trees innumerable find food and footing. Peripatetica, bred

in deep-soiled, fertile fields with wide horizons, drew, as they passed

into the open vistas, deep breaths of refreshment and joy. The fierce,

soaring aridity of Taormina had oppressed her with a restless sense of

imprisonment. Her elbows were as passionate lovers of liberty as the

Spartans, and she demanded proper space in which to move them. What she

called a view was a _view_, not merely more mountains climbing, blind

and obstinate, between the eye and the landscape. Being, too, of a race

always worshippers of Demeter—a race which had spent generations in her

service, which considered the cultivation of the soil the only possible

occupation of a gentleman, and all other businesses the mere wretched

astonishing fate of the unfortunate—she rejoiced loudly and fatiguingly

over the blessedness of a return to a sweet land of farms.

“I don’t call that Taormina window-box-gardening on tiny stone ledges a

thousand feet up in the air _farming_,” she scoffed.

“If your tongue was a spade what crops you would raise!” sniffed Jane.

“Well, I raise big harvests of diversion in my own spirit,” retorted the

unsuppressed chatterer. “Besides, it’s now my turn to talk. You have

done a lot of elaborate speechifying about Taormina. I made you a

present of the whole jaggèd, attitudinizing old place, and for the

moment I mean to flow unchecked! You needn’t listen if you don’t like. I

enjoy hearing myself speak, whether anyone pays the smallest attention

or not.”

Which was why, while Jane settled down comfortably to a copy of

Theocritus, Peripatetica continued to entertain her own soul with spoken

and unspoken comments as to a certain restful letting down of tension

which resulted from sliding away from the dazzling, lofty Olympianism of

Taormina into a region Cyclopean, perhaps, but with a dawning suggestion

of coming humanity. For here, in this plain, succeeding those bright

presences that were the elementary forces of nature—forces of the earth

and sea and sun, of fire and dew, of thunder, wind, and rain, of the

shining day, and the night with its changing moon—first came the

primitive earth-spirits, rude and rugged, or delicate and vapourous.

Creatures not gods—no longer immutable and immortal, but stronger,

older, greater than man, who was yet to come. Creatures partaking

somewhat of the nature of both gods and men, but subject to

transformation into stream and fountain, into tree and flower; very near

to the earth, yet swayed by human passions, by human sorrows and joys.

This plain was the home of nymph and oread, of dryad and faun. Here had

the Cyclops and the Titans wrought—first of the great race of Armourers

and Smiths—under the tutelage of Vulcan, shaping the beams of the

heavens, and the ribs of the earth; arming the gods and forging the

lightning.

Ulysses, the earliest of impassioned tourists, had had dealings on this

very spot with the last of the Cyclops. A degenerate scion of the great

old race, as the last of a great race is apt to be, Polyphemus had sunk

to the mere keeping of sheep, and according to Ulysses’ own story he got

the better of Polyphemus, and related, upon returning home, the triumph

of his superior cunning, with the same naïve relish with which the

modern Cookie retails his supposed outwitting of the native curio

dealer. Very near to the train, as it ran by the sea’s edge, lay the

huge fragments of lava which the blinded Cyclop had cast in futile rage

after the escaping Greeks. He was a great stone-thrower, was Polyphemus,

for further along the coast lay the boulders he had flung at Acis, the

beautiful young shepherd. Polyphemus having still an eye in those days,

his aim was truer, and the shepherd was killed, but who may baffle true

love? The dead boy melted away beneath the stones and was transformed to

the bright and racing river Acis (which they crossed just then), and the

river, flowing round the stones, runs still across the plain to fling

itself into the arms of the sea-nymph Galatea. So the two still meet as

of old, and play laughingly together in and out among the huge rocks,

which certainly might have been flung there by Ætna in one of her

volcanic furies, but which, if one may believe the Greek story, were

really the gigantic weapons of a cruel jealousy.

Jane and Peripatetica could put their heads out of the windows and study

history and legend at their ease, the train ambling amiably and not too

rapidly through the lovely land, where the near return of Persephone was

foreshadowed in the delicate rosy clouds of the Judas trees drifting

across the black green of dense carobs. It was foretold, too, by the

broad yellow mustard fields blooming under the shadow of silver-grey

olive orchards; Fields-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold they were, about which

Spring was pitching white tents of plum flowers in which to sign royal

alliance with Summer. They saw old Sicilian farm-steadings here and

there crowning the rising ground on either hand, freaked and lichened

with years, and showing among their spiring cypresses the square towers

to which the inhabitants had fled for safety in the old days of

Levantine piracy. Many of these houses were very old, six or eight

hundred years old, it was said. Orange and lemon groves on either side

the way still hung heavy with fruit, plainly feeling it a duty laid upon

them to look like the trees in Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes; like the

trees of all the Old Masters’ backgrounds. Invariably being round, close

clumps of green set thick with golden balls, quite unlike the orange

trees in America, which have never had proper decorative and artistic

models set for their copying, and therefore grow carelessly and less

beautifully.

As far as the eye could reach the whole land was furred with the tender

green of sprouting corn. For this was once Europe’s granary, and the

place of Rome’s bread; here Demeter first taught man to sow and reap,

and despite Ætna’s fires, despite the destruction and ravaging of a

thousand wars, and thousands of years of careless unrestorative use of

the soil, corn still grows on this plain, so hard, so perfect, and so

nourishing of grain that no Sicilian can afford to eat it, selling his

own crop to macaroni manufacturers, and contenting himself with a poorer

imported wheat for his dark daily bread.

In these rich meadows, too, replacing the frigid little

Evangelical-looking goat of Taormina, browsed fat flocks in snowy silken

fleeces, and with long wavy horns. Flocks that were tended by shepherds

draped in faded blue or brown hooded cloaks, wearing sheep’s wool bound

about their cross-gartered legs, their feet shod with hairy goat-skin

shoes. They leaned in contemplative attitudes on long staves—as every

right-minded shepherd should—so old a picture, so unchanged from

far-off, pastoral days! Just so had they shown themselves to Theocritus,

when that sweet young singer of the early time had wandered here among

the herdsmen, the fishers, and the delvers in the good brown earth, in

the days when the Greeks still lived and ruled here, so long and long

ago.

“I wish they would pipe,” said Peripatetica. “It only needs to complete

the picture that innocent sweet trilling of the shepherd’s reed that is

like the voices of the birds and of the cicalas.”

“Oh, they daren’t do it here in high noon,” remonstrated Jane. “For fear

of Pan, you know.” And she turned back the pages of her little book to

read aloud the sweetest and perfectest of the Idyls....

THYRSIS. Sweet, meseems, is the whispering sound of yonder pine tree,

goatherd, that murmureth by the wells of water; and sweet are thy

pipings. After Pan the second prize shalt thou bear away, and if he take

the horned goat, the she-goat shalt thou win; but if he choose the

she-goat for his meed, the kid falls to thee, and dainty is the flesh of

kids ere the age when thou milkest them.

THE GOATHERD. Sweeter, O shepherd, is thy song than the music of yonder

water that is poured from the high face of the rock! Yea, if the Muses

take the young ewe for their gift, a stall-fed lamb shalt thou receive

for thy meed; but if it please them to take the lamb, thou shalt lead

away the ewe for the second prize.

THYRSIS. Wilt thou, goatherd, in the nymphs’ name, wilt thou sit thee

down here, among the tamarisks, on this sloping knoll, and pipe while in

this place I watch thy flocks?

[Illustration: “PAN’S GOAT HERD”]

GOATHERD. Nay, shepherd, it may not be; we may not pipe in the noontide.

’Tis Pan we dread, who truly at this hour rests weary from the chase;

and bitter of mood is he, the keen wrath sitting ever at his nostrils.

But, Thyrsis, for that thou surely wert wont to sing _The Affliction of

Daphnis_, and hast most deeply meditated the pastoral muse, come hither,

and beneath yonder elm let us sit down, in face of Priapus and the

fountain fairies, where is that resting-place of the shepherds, and

where the oak trees are. Ah! if thou wilt but sing as on that day thou

sangest in thy match with Chromis out of Libya, I will let thee milk,

ay, three times, a goat that is the mother of twins, and even when she

has suckled her kids her milk doth fill two pails. A deep bowl of

ivy-wood, too, I will give thee, rubbed with sweet bees’-wax, a

two-eared bowl newly wrought, smacking still of the knife of the graver.

Round its upper edges goes the ivy winding, ivy besprent with golden

flowers; and about it is a tendril twisted that joys in its saffron

fruit. Within is designed a maiden, as fair a thing as the gods could

fashion, arrayed in a sweeping robe, and a snood on her head. Beside her

two youths with fair love-locks are contending from either side, with

alternate speech, but her heart thereby is all untouched. And now on one

she glances, smiling, and anon she lightly flings the other a thought,

while by reason of the long vigils of love their eyes are heavy, but

their labour is all in vain.

Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are fashioned, a rugged

rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags a great net for his

cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldst say that he is fishing

with all the might of his limbs, so big the sinews swell all about his

neck, grey-haired though he be, but his strength is as the strength of

youth. Now divided but a little space from the sea-worn old man is a

vineyard laden well with fire-red clusters, and on the rough wall a

little lad watches the vineyard, sitting there. Round him two she-foxes

are skulking, and one goes along the vine-rows to devour the ripe

grapes, and the other brings all her cunning to bear against the scrip,

and vows she will never leave the lad, till she strand him bare and

breakfastless. But the boy is plaiting a pretty locust-cage with stalks

of asphodel, and fitting it with reeds, and less care of his scrip has

he, and of the vines, than delight in his plaiting.

All about the cup is spread the soft acanthus, a miracle of varied work,

a thing for thee to marvel on. For this bowl I paid to a Calydonian

ferryman a goat and a great white cream cheese. Never has its lip

touched mine, but it still lies maiden for me. Gladly with this cup

would I gain thee to my desire, if thou, my friend, wilt sing me that

delightful song. Nay, I grudge it thee not at all. Begin, my friend, for

be sure thou canst in no wise carry thy song with thee to Hades, that

puts all things out of mind!

_The Song of Thyrsis._

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ Thyrsis of Ætna am I,

and this is the voice of Thyrsis. Where, ah! where were ye when Daphnis

was languishing; ye Nymphs, where were ye? By Peneus’ beautiful dells,

or by dells of Pindus? for surely ye dwelt not by the great stream of

the river Anapus, nor on the watch-tower of Ætna, nor by the sacred

water of Acis.

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

For him the jackals, for him the wolves did cry; for him did even the

lion out of the forest lament. Kine and bulls by his feet right many,

and heifers plenty, with the young calves bewailed him.

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

Came Hermes first from the hill, and said, “Daphnis, who is it that

torments thee; child, whom dost thou love with so great desire?” The

neatherds came, and the shepherds; the goatherds came; all they asked

what ailed him. Came also Priapus,—

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

And said: “Unhappy Daphnis, wherefore dost thou languish, while for thee

the maiden by all the fountains, through all the glades is fleeting, in

search of thee? Ah! thou art too laggard a lover, and thou nothing

availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now thou art like the

goatherd.”

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

“For the goatherd, when he marks the young goats at their pastime, looks

on with yearning eyes, and fain would be even as they; and thou, when

thou beholdest the laughter of maidens, dost gaze with yearning eyes,

for that thou dost not join their dances.”

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

Yet these the herdsman answered not again, but he bare his bitter love

to the end, yea, to the fated end he bare it.

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

Ay, but she too came, the sweetly smiling Cypris, craftily smiling she

came, yet keeping her heavy anger; and she spake, saying: “Daphnis,

methinks thou didst boast that thou wouldst throw Love a fall, nay, is

it not thyself that hast been thrown by grievous Love?”

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

But to her Daphnis answered again: “Implacable Cypris, Cypris terrible,

Cypris of mortals detested, already dost thou deem that my latest sun

has set; nay, Daphnis even in Hades shall prove great sorrow to Love.

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

“Get thee to Ida, get thee to Anchises! There are oak trees—here only

galingale blows, here sweetly hum the bees about the hives!

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

“Thine Adonis, too, is in his bloom, for he heards the sheep and slays

the hares, and he chases all the wild beasts. Nay, go and confront

Diomedes again, and say, ‘The herdsman Daphnis I conquered, do thou join

battle with me.’”

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

“Ye wolves, ye jackals, and ye bears in the mountain caves, farewell!

The herdsman Daphnis ye never shall see again, no more in the dells, no

more in the groves, no more in the woodlands. Farewell Arethusa, ye

rivers good-night, that pour down Thymbris your beautiful waters.

_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_

“That Daphnis am I who here do herd the kine, Daphnis who water here the

bulls and calves.

“O Pan, Pan! whether thou art on the high hills of Lycæus, or rangest

mighty Mænalus, haste hither to the Sicilian isle! Leave the tomb of

Helice, leave that high cairn of the son of Lycæon, which seems wondrous

fair, even in the eyes of the blessed.

_Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_

“Come hither, my prince, and take this fair pipe, honey-breathed with

wax-stopped joints; and well it fits thy lip; for verily I, even I, by

Love am now haled to Hades.

_Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_

“Now violets bear, ye brambles, ye thorns bear violets and let fair

narcissus bloom on the boughs of juniper! Let all things with all be

confounded—from pines let men gather pears, for Daphnis is dying! Let

the stag drag down the hounds, let owls from the hills contend in song

with the nightingales.”

_Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_

So Daphnis spake, and ended; but fain would Aphrodite have given him

back to life. Nay, spun was all the thread that the Fates assigned, and

Daphnis went down the stream. The whirling wave closed over the man the

Muses loved, the man not hated of the nymphs.

_Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_

And thou, give me the bowl, and the she-goat, that I may milk her and

pour forth a libation to the Muses. Farewell, oh, farewells manifold, ye

Muses, and I, some future day, will sing you yet a sweeter song.

_The Goatherd._ Filled may thy fair mouth be with honey, Thyrsis, and

filled with the honeycomb; and the sweet dried fig mayest thou eat of

Ægilus, for thou vanquishest the cicala in song! Lo, here is thy cup,

see, my friend, of how pleasant a savour! Thou wilt think it has been

dipped in the well-spring of the Hours. Hither, hither, Cissætha: do

thou milk her, Thyrsis. And you young she-goats, wanton not so wildly

lest you bring up the he-goat against you.

* * * * *

“What a crowded place Sicily is!” cried Jane, heaving an oppressed

breath.

“Isn’t it?” sympathized Peripatetica. “Here we are on our way to the

very fountain, as it seems, of history—Syracuse, where nearly everything

happened that ever did happen, and yet one has to mentally push one’s

way through a swarming crowd of events to get there, because almost

everything that didn’t happen in Syracuse occurred in these Sicilian

plains. When you think of the layer on layer of human life, like

geologic strata, that lies all over this place, you realize that it

would take half a lifetime to come to some understanding of the

significance of it all, and that it’s foolish to go on until one can get

some hold upon the meaning of what lies right here.”

This “simple but first-class conversation” took place in the

eating-station at Catania which the two had all to themselves, most of

the Tedeschi tourists frugally remaining in the train and staying their

pangs from bottles, and with odds and ends out of paper parcels, from

which feasts they emerged later replete but crumby.

Poor Catania! sunk to a mere feeding-trough for passing tourists. She,

the great city sitting blandly among her temples and towers, wooed for

her money bags by all the warlike neighbours. For whenever her

neighbours squabbled with one another, which was pretty nearly all the

time—or whenever an outsider intervened—each strove to engage the aid of

this rich landholder, sending embassies and emissaries to bully or

cajole Catania. As rich folk will, she always tried to protect herself

by taking neither side completely, speaking fair to each, and, like all

Laodiceans, she made thereby two enemies instead of one, and was

considered fair prey by both.

That splendid, dangerous dandy, Alcibiades, was one of these

ambassadors. Almost under the feet of Jane and Peripatetica, as they sat

with their mouths full of crisp delectable little tarts, had the wily

Athenian spoken in the Catanian theatre. The older men enjoyed his

eloquent, graceful Greek, but they were quite determined not to be

persuaded by it to let his fleet enter their harbour, his army enter

their city, or to be used as a base from which to strike the

Syracusians. The Catanians didn’t like Syracuse, but they didn’t mean to

embroil themselves with her. They secretly hoped the Athenians would

reduce that dangerous neighbour to despair, but if either destroyed the

other—why, then it would be well to be able to show the victor their

clean hands.

Alcibiades was quite aware he was not convincing them, but he enjoyed

turning brilliant periods in public, and was meanwhile pleasantly

conscious of the young men in the audience admiring the chasing of his

buckles, the artful folds of his gold-embroidered chalmyde, the

exquisite angle at which he knotted his fillet, privately resolving to

readjust their own provincial toilets by the model of this famous glass

of fashion. And when they all poured out of the theatre after his

brilliantly preferred request had been politely refused, he could afford

to smile calmly, for, behold! there was the Athenian fleet in the

harbour, the Athenian army in the city. He had not been using those

well-turned phrases for mere idleness. They had availed to keep the

authorities occupied while his subordinates had executed his commands.

And their caution was of no avail whatever, for in due time, when

Alcibiades was in exile and the Athenians rotting in the Latomiæ,

Syracuse duly turned and “took it out of” Catania. Took it out good and

hard too.

There was no use stopping over a train to see the old theatre and

realize for themselves this curious bit of history; it only meant

crawling through black passages by the light of a smoky candle, for Ætna

in 1669—in a fit of ennui with poor Catania—had pitched down thousands

of tons of lava upon her and hid all the rich city’s ancient glories

from the sun.

It was from Catania that another interesting Greek had set out upon his

last journey. A journey to the crest of that volcano which has been

constantly taking a hand in the destinies of Sicily, with what—in its

careless malice, its malignant furies—seems almost like the personal

wickedness of some demon; that incalculable mountain whose soaring

outlines had been coming out at Jane and Peripatetica all day whenever

the train turned a corner, as if to reassure them that they couldn’t

lose her if they tried. Ætna was from the very beginning the pre-eminent

fact in this part of Sicily.

First Zeus—who always had a cheerful disregard of any rules of chivalry

in dealing with his enemies—tied down the unlucky Titan Enceladus upon

this very spot, and, gathering up enough of Sicily to make a mountain

the size of Ætna, heaped it on top of him, probably congratulating

himself the while that he had put a complete end to that particular

annoyance. But quite a number of rulers since Zeus have discovered that

in a rebellious temperament there reside resources of annoyingness which

even a god cannot entirely foresee or provide against, and the Titan

still heaves restlessly at his load from time to time, rocking the whole

island with his struggles, toppling towers, engulfing cities, tearing

the earth apart in his furies.

Some of the myths accuse Demeter herself of having set Ætna alight in

her frenzy, that all Sicily might thus be illumined to aid her in the

search for Persephone, and that never since that reckless day has she

been able to extinguish it, but must fight, with rain and dews and snows

to save her people’s bread from the flames forever threatening to

destroy it. The fire pours forth from time to time, spreading cruel

ruin, but ever, aided by her, man creeps up and up once more. Up to

Randazzo; up to Brontë, the “thunder town,” given to Lord Nelson by

Marie Antoinette’s sister, then Queen of the Two Sicilies, where the

Dukes of Brontë, Nelson’s descendants, still live part of each year in

their wild eyrie.

The vine and the olive climb and climb after each catastrophe. They

cover the old scars of the eruptions, perch in crevices where a goat can

scarce stand, and wring from the rich crumbs of soil “wine that maketh

glad the heart of man, and oil that causeth his countenance to shine.”

Up to the top of this Ætna—ten thousand feet up—on the last journey from

Catania climbed Empedocles, that strange figure who passes with ringing

brazen sandals through the history of Sicily. Empedocles, clothed in

purple, crowned with a wreath of golden leaves, followed by thousands to

whom he taught some strange, half Pythagorean worship, the form and

meaning of which have vanished with time, save for some hints of a sort

of mental healing practised upon his followers. Empedocles, composing

vast poems of thousands of lines, and vaunting himself as a Super-man,

saying:

“An immortal god, and no longer a mortal man, I wander among you;

honoured by all, adorned with priestly diadems and blooming wreaths.

Into whatever illustrious towns I enter men and women pay me reverence,

and I am accompanied by thousands who thirst for their advantage; some

being desirous to know the future, and others, tormented by long and

terrible disease, waiting to hear the spells that soothe suffering.”

Whether his following fell away; whether he became the victim of some

wild melancholy, some corroding _welt-schmerz_—unable to cure the ills

of his own soul with his own doctrines—no one knows, but the dramatic

manner of his exit printed his name indelibly upon the memory of the

world from which he fled.

Deserting late at night a feast in Catania, he mounted a mule, climbed

the rough steeps, threaded the dusky oak woods, dismissed his last

follower, and—after lingering a moment to listen to the boy-harper

Callicles singing in the dawn at the edge of the forest—he passed on

upward through the snows, and was seen no more by human eye. Only the

brazen sandal was found beside the crater, into whose unutterable

furnace—urged by some divine despair—he had flung himself: all that had

been that aspiring, passionate life vanishing in an instant in a hiss of

steam, a puff of gas, upon the most stupendous funeral pyre ever chosen

by man.

* * * * *

There was endless history waiting to be looked into at Catania;

frightful passagings and scufflings, massacres and exilings, murders,

conspiracies and poisonings, and every other uncomfortable exhibition of

“man’s inhumanity to man”—accompanied, of course, by heroisms, patriotic

self-sacrifice, and a thousand humble, unremembered kindnesses and

virtues, such as forever form warp and woof of the web of life and time.

But railway schedules, even in Sicily, are almost heartlessly

indifferent to tradition, and when the last tartlet was consumed the two

seekers for Persephone were dragged Syracuse-ward, along with the crumby

Tedeschi, divided during the long afternoon between increasing

drowsiness and reproachful Baedekers. At last came sea marshes, where

salt-pans evaporated in the sun, and toward sunset the train dumped them

all promiscuously into station omnibuses at the capital of history; too

grubby and fatigued to care whether the first class in historical

research was called or not.

The Tedeschi, after their frugal fashion, went in search of cheap

pensions in the city, and only Jane and Peripatetica entered the wheeled

tender of the Villa Politi, along with a young Italian pair, obviously

engaged upon a honeymoon. A pair who never ceased to look unutterable

things at each other out of fine eyes bistred with railway grime, nor

ceased to murmur soft nothings from lips surrounded with the shadows of

railway soot, undaunted by the frank interest of the hotel portier

hanging on to the step, nor by the joltings of the dusty white road that

led, through the noisy building of many ugly new villas, up to bare,

wind-swept heights.

Strong in the possession of a note from the proprietor promising

accommodation, with which, this time, the wayfarers had had the prudence

to arm themselves, Jane and Peripatetica swept languidly up the steps,

ordering that their luggage be placed in their rooms and tea served

immediately upon the terrace.

But there were no rooms. No rooms of any kind, single or double!

The note was produced. There it was, down in black and white!

The young Signor Antonio drew a similar weapon—more black and white

promises!

The Padrone raised eyes and hands in a gesture almost consoling in its

histrionic effectiveness.

Could he _make_ guests depart at the time they said they would depart?

Could he cast them out neck and crop when they found Syracuse so

attractive that they changed their minds about going away and vacating

rooms promised to others?

He left it to Jane. He left it to Peripatetica. He left it to Signor

Antonio. He left it to Signor Antonio’s beautiful bride, his “bellissima

sposa.” _Could_ he? He asked that!...

The two seekers were sternly sarcastic. Signor Antonio imitated the

histrionic attitude. The Bellissima Sposa simply smiled fatuously.

Beloved Antonio now held her destinies in his strong hand. Was it a

royal suite? Well and good. Was it a corner of a stone wall under an

umbrella? It was still well and good, for would she not still be with

her Antonio?

The honeyed submissiveness of this was too much for even the wicked

obduracy of the Padrone.

There _was_ a billiard room—for the night. To-morrow some one must keep

his promise and go. They could choose among themselves.

The bride was led away to the billiard room, still gazing upon her

Antonio with intoxicated content, and two cross females, shaking the

dust of the Villa Politi’s glowing garden and vine-wreathed terraces

from their feet, jolted back again indignantly along the bare, windy

heights fretted by the clamour of a sirocco-tortured sea. Past the

gritty precincts of the ugly building villas, to the gaunt precincts of

an hotel within the shrunken town. There to climb early into beds of the

sloping pitch and rugged surface of a couple of tiled roofs; to lay

their heads upon pillows undoubtedly stuffed with the obdurate skulls of

all Syracuse’s myriad dead, and to listen in the wakefulness thereby

induced to the dull sickening thuds about the floor which they knew, for

good and sufficient reasons, to be the nocturnal hopping of the mighty

Syracusan flea....

“Fancy anyone being tempted to remain over _here_!” sneered

Peripatetica.

This was in the morning. They had compared the bleatings of the goats;

the raucous early cries of the population; the effects of sirocco; the

devices by which, clinging with teeth and nails, they had succeeded in

maintaining their perch on the tile roofs; had boasted of their shikarry

among the hopping, devouring monsters of the dark.

“Talk of history!” mourned Jane. “Who could be the adequate Herodotus of

last night?”

They were on their way to the Temple of Minerva. The route led by a wide

sea-street, half of whose length gave upon that famous Inner Harbour so

often filled with hostile fleets, so often barred by great chains, so

often echoing with clanging battles, with the bubbling shrieks of the

drowning. Now the sparkling waters rolled untinged with blood, the clean

salt air swept unhindered across their path, for half of the huge

sea-wall had been recently demolished to let in wind and sun, though

part still towered grimly, darkening the way, shutting out the light

from the opposite dwellings.

The path turned at right angles and wound through narrow foot-pathless

cracks, between houses; cracks that served the older Syracuse in lieu of

streets, where swarmed in the dingy narrownesses the everlasting goat,

the ever pervasive child. Very different children these from those

cherub heads, with busy little legs growing out of them, who formed the

rising population of Taormina. Taormina, who has solved that whole

question of educating children; a question which still so puzzles the

unintelligent rest of mankind. For weeks they had walked the ancient

ways of that high-perched town, picking careful steps amid its infant

hordes, and never once had they heard a cry, or seen a discontented

child.

“Occupation was the secret of all that cherubic goodness, I think,” said

Peripatetica reflectively. “Don’t you remember that every single one of

them had a job?”

“Of course, I remember,” said Jane crossly. “You needn’t remind _me_. It

was only twenty-four hours ago we were there—though it seems ages since

we fell out of the tender protecting care of dear ‘Questo-qui.’ You can

put it all in the book if you feel you must talk about it.”

“Jane, your usually charming temper has been spoiled by a night on a

roof. It has made a cat of you,” persisted Peripatetica as she calmly

circled round a goat. When the fount of her eloquence was unsealed it

was not to be choked by the mere casting of a stony snub into it.

“I devoted some of the dark hours on my tiles to profound philosophic

reflection upon the Taorminian methods with children,” she continued. “I

have often thought the ennui suffered by children and pet animals was

the cause of much of their restless fretfulness. Even the most

undeveloped nature feels the difference between a real occupation and an

imitation one; feels the importance of being an economic factor. Now

those Taormina children from the age of two years are made to feel they

are really important and necessary members of the family. They knit as

soon as they can walk; they sew, they do drawn-work, at five. They sit

in the streets at little tables and help cobble shoes or mend

teakettles. They shop for busy parents; they fetch and carry. They pull

out of the gardens and orchards weeds as tall as themselves, and

everywhere are calm and self-respecting, and receive from their parents

and their grown-up neighbours that serious courtesy and consideration

due to useful and well-behaved citizens. One does not slap or jerk or

scold valuable and important members of the community, and no youthful

Taorminian would permit such an unjustifiable liberty from a parent.”

Borne on this flood of words they suddenly flowed out into a big

irregular square where stood one of the most curious buildings in the

world; the great temple of Pallas of the Syracusans. The enormous fluted

Doric columns were sunk into the walls of a Cathedral, for Zosimus,

bishop of Syracuse in the Seventh Century, had seized the columned frame

and had plastered his church upon it—but so great was the diameter of

the pillars that their sides and capitals protruded through the walls

inside and out like the prodigious stone ribs of some huge skeleton. The

Saracens had come later, and, after slaughtering the priests and women

who clung shrieking to the altars, had added battlements to the roof,

and the Eighteenth Century, being unable, of course, to keep its finger

out of even the most reverend pie, had gummed upon the portal a flaring

baroque façade of yellow stone. But through all disfigurements and

defacements the temple still showed its soaring majesty, and

Peripatetica, at sight of it, cried:

“One dead in the fields!”...

For suddenly was revealed to the two the meaning of what they had been

journeying to see—it was the dead body of a great civilization.

Here, nearly three thousand years since, had come Archias, the rich

Heraclid of Corinth. He had gathered sullenly into little ships his

wealth, his family, and his servants, and had fled far down the horizon,

an execrated fugitive because of the slaying of beautiful Actæon. And,

finding on the coast of the distant God’s-land a reproduction of the

bays and straits of the Corinth which had cast him out, he founded there

a city. A city that was to have a life like the life of some gifted,

powerful man, growing from timid infancy to a lusty youth full of dreams

and passions and vague towering ambitions; struggling with and

conquering his fellows; grasping at power and glory, heaping up riches

unbelievable, decking himself in purple and gold, living long and

gloriously and tumultuously; and who was to know rise and fall, defeats

and triumphs, and finally was to die on the battlefield, and be left

there by the victor to rot. So that all the flesh would drop from the

long frame, the muscles dry and fall apart, the eyes be sightless, and

the brain dark; and the little busy insects of the earth would carry

away the fragments bit by bit, and on the field where he lay would be

found at last only the hollow skull once so full of proud purpose; only

the slack white bones of the arm that had wielded the strong sword, the

vast arch of the gaunt ribs that once had sheltered the brave heart of

Syracuse. And among these dry bones little curious creatures would come

to peep and peer and build their homes; spiders spinning webs over the

empty eye sockets, mice weaving their nests among the wide-flung

knuckles....

One little spider, about ten minutes old, lay in wait for these two

tourist flies at the side door of the Cathedral with an offer to guide

them, and though they sternly endeavoured to brush the insect aside,

doubting his infantile capacity to direct their older intelligences, the

Spider was not of the to-be-brushed-aside variety and knew better than

they what they really needed. While they wandered through the vulgar

uglinesses of Zosimus’ shrine, trying to recall Cicero’s glowing picture

of the temple in its glory, he never took his claws off of them. While

they talked of the great doors inlaid with gold and ivory, of the brazen

spears, of the cella walls frescoed with the portraits and the battles

of the Sikel Kings, of the pedestals between each column bearing images

of the gods in ivory, silver, and bronze, the Spider was patient and

merely murmured “Greco” or “molto antico” by way of encouraging chorus.

He let them babble unchecked of the tall image of armed Pallas standing

behind the altar, with plumed helmet and robe of Tyrian purple, grasping

her great spear in her right hand and resting the left hand upon the

golden shield that bore a sculptured Medusa head. Upon her pedestal was

carved the cock, the dragon, and the serpent, and the altar before her

was heaped with fresh olive boughs about the smouldering spices sending

up wavering clouds of scented smoke that coiled among the ceiling’s

gilded plates. Without, upon the roof, stood another great shield of

gilded bronze, a beacon for sailors who, setting out upon long voyages,

carried a cup of burning ashes from her altar to sprinkle on the waves

as the glittering landmark faded down the sky.

But when these reminiscences of the “molto antico” finally exhausted

themselves, the Spider rose to his occasion. He was vague about Minerva,

but Santa Lucia was his trump card. He was eminently capable of guiding

any number of travellers to the chapel of that big swarthy idol adorned

with wire-and-cotton wreaths, and hung about with votive silver hands

and hearts, arms and legs, in grateful testimony of the limbs and organs

cured by her mercy and power. He could pour out in burning Sicilian,

illustrated by superb spidery gestures, a thrilling description of the

yearly _villegiatura_ of Syracuse’s patron saint. How twice in a

twelvemonth she feels the need of change of air, and all the town

attends her visit of a few days to the church beyond the bridge, she

being escorted by priests and censors, and blaring bands, and wearing

her finest jewels and toilet, as befits a lady on ceremonial travels. It

is a festa for all Syracuse, Spider explains, with much good eating and

“molto buono vino.”

Jane, always a molten mass of useful information, interjects sotto voce

into the flood of his narrative that precisely the same ceremony was

used for the image of Diana when she was the patron goddess of the

Syracusans, and the very same molto buono vino so overcame the populace

at one of Diana’s festas that Marcellus, the Roman, after a siege of

three years, captured the long and fiercely defended city that very

night.

The Spider took them later to see the handful of fragments alone

remaining of Diana’s fane—broken columns sunk in a fosse between two

houses—though once a temple as splendid as Minerva’s. A temple served by

many priestesses, and surrounded by a great grove sloping down to the

fountain of Arethusa. Among these trees the Oceanides herded the

sacrificial deer, and troops of just such silken-coated, wavy-horned

goats as feed to-day upon the Catanian plain. And to this grove came

young girls, offering up, to please the great Huntress, their abandoned

childish toys of baked clay. For oddly enough the wild, arrowy goddess

who loved to shed the blood of beasts, adored children, and was a

special patron of theirs, and would even listen favourably to the

petitions of barren wives.

There seemed some strange vagueness, some shadowy inexplicableness in

the worship of Diana. All the other gods typified some force of nature,

some resultant struggle and passion of man caught in nature’s web, but

of the moon they knew only that it influenced tides and the growing of

plants. What is one to make then of this fierce ivory-skinned Maid who

sweeps, crescent-crowned, through the moonlit glades of the deep

primitive forests, with bayings of lean questing hounds and echoing call

of silver horns, hard on the track of crashing boar, of leaping deer?

There is something as glimmeringly elusive, as magically haunting in the

personality and the worship of Diana as in the moon itself.

They offered the web of this conundrum to the Spider, but he wisely

refused to allow himself to be entangled in it. This, however, is

anticipating the real course of events.

Already, before leaving the Cathedral, another conundrum had been asked

and not answered.

High on opposite sides of the walls of the nave Jane and Peripatetica

had observed two ornate glass and gilt coffins. The one on the left

contained the half-mummy, half-skeleton of a man. A young, beardless

face it was, the still fair skin drawn tight over the features; the

still blond hair clustering about it in curls of dusty gold. The

fleshless visage was handsome, and though strange and ghostly, not

repulsive. The skeleton body was clothed in velvet and gold, and the

bony, gloved fingers clasped a splendid silver-scabbarded sword; an

empty dagger case was hanging from an embroidered baldrick across the

dead man’s breast. He lay on his side in an uneasy attitude, looking

through the transparent pane of his last home toward the opposite

crystal sarcophagus. This opposite coffin contained a half-mummied,

half-skeleton woman—a woman also young and fair-haired; artfully

coiffed, her tresses wrapped with pearls. Neither was _her_ face

repulsive; some strange process had preserved a dry whiteness in the

skin stretched smooth and unwrinkled upon the bones and integuments,

though all the flesh was gone. She too was clothed in gold and silk in a

fashion centuries old. Through the lace of the sleeves showed the white

polished bones of what must once have been warm rounded arms. She too

was gloved; she too crouched upon her side uneasily, but she did not

face her companion. Her head was thrown back as if in pain; and plunged

through the pointed silk corselet—just where there must once have beat a

young heart—was the gold-handled dagger from the empty dagger case hung

to the embroidered baldrick.

Who were they?

What tragedy was this? why did they lie here in their crystal

sepulchres—was it the record of some strange crime, preserved with

meticulous care for all the world to see?

The Spider could not tell. They had always been there. He did not know

their names or their story. He could not refer to anyone who did.

Baedeker was equally indifferent and uncommunicative; he made no mention

of them. Hare was silent. Sladen ignored them. No questioning of

guide-books or guides ever unravelled that mystery.

* * * * *

From the temple of Diana the Spider led Jane and Peripatetica through

more narrow, crooked streets thronged with rough, fierce Syracusan

children, to see the Sixteenth Century palace of the Montaltos, now

fallen on grimy days. The windows with their ogives and delicate twisted

columns were crumbling, and the noble court—through which silken guests

and mailed retainers had passed to mount the great stairs and throng the

long balconies—was now full of squalid, squalling populace, and flocks

of evil-savoured brown goats being milked for the evening meal.

For some unexplained reason the mere presence of the Spider was an

offence to the lowering boys who laired in this court. His grown-up air

of being capably in charge of two female forestieri stank in their

resentful nostrils, but Spider was an insect of his hands, landing those

hands resoundingly upon the cheeks of his buffeters and hustlers until

an enraged mother took the part of one of her discomfited offspring, and

under her fierce cuffings the Spider melted into outraged tears.

Peripatetica had already discovered that angry English had a

demoralizing effect upon the natives. Its crisp consonants seemed as

daunting as blows to the vowelled Sicilian; armed with which, and a

parasol, the Spider was rescued and borne half way to the fountain of

Arethusa before he could control his sniffles and his protesting

fingers, upon which he offered passionate illustration that even

Hercules could not overcome the odds of ten to one, and that tears under

the circumstances left no smirch upon nascent manhood.

Jane, with her usual large grasp of financial questions, applied a lire

to the wounded heart with the happiest results, and it was a once more

united and cheerful trio which leaned over Arethusa’s inadequate little

fount with its green scum and its frowzy papyrus plants. Poor Nymph! She

of the rainbow, and the “couch of snows”—she whose “footsteps were paved

with green.” Flying from the gross wooing of Alpheus she comes all the

way from Elis under the sea to take refuge with moon-crowned

Artemis—Artemis “the protectress”—and for safety is turned into a

sparkling pool which feeds all Syracuse with its sweet waters. Now

Artemis is dead. Her cool groves have given way to acres of arid stone

convents; earthquakes have cracked Arethusa’s basin, letting the sea in

and the sweet water out; modern bad taste has walled her vulgarly about,

and the poor old nymph can only gurgle reiterantly, “I was once a

beauty; long ago, long ago!” with not the smallest hope that any tourist

will believe it.

* * * * *

The Spider has retired to his web. _Pranzo_ has been discussed, and Jane

and Peripatetica, refreshed, are taking another nibble at the vast

mouthful of Syracuse’s past.

It was a thrilling _pranzo_. Not because of the food, nor of its

partakers. The food was the same old stereotyped menu. Gnocchi with

cheese. Vegetables, divorced from the meats—they cannot apparently

occupy the same course in any part of Italy. More cheese—a _jardinière_

of pomegranates, oranges, dates, and almonds. Wine under a new name, but

with the same delicate perfumed savour of all the other wines they have

drunk.

No more did the guests offer any startling variety. The same tall

condescending English woman; elderly, manacled with bracelets, clanking

with chains; domineering a plain, red cheek-boned, flat-chested daughter

obviously needing a lot of marrying off on Mamma’s part; dominating also

a nervous, impetuous husband—the travelling Englishman being much given

to nervous impetuosity. A few fat, greasy Italians with napkin corners

planted deeply into their collars, and scintillating the gross joys of

gluttony. Two dark-faced melancholy-eyed _foreigners_, not easily placed

as to nationality. All types of feminine Americans. If it were possible

to see only their eyes they would be recognizable as Americans from

their glance of bold, alert self-confidence and cheerfulness, very

noticeable by contrast with the European eye. Also if one could see only

that inevitable ready-made silk bodice the wearers would be recognizable

as fellow countrywomen. The man who manufactures that type of bodice at

home must be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

No; the thrill of the _pranzo_ was due to invisible causes.

Behind the door from which the hopelessly estranged meat and vegetables

emerged there arose a clash and murmur as of some domestic storm, and

the waiters passed the spinach course with an air so tense and distrait

that the crunching horde felt their forks strain with curiosity in their

hands. Even the fat Italians paused in their gorging to stare. Even the

foreigners’ melancholy dark eyes grew interested.

After the spinach course ensued a long interval; the waiters lingering

about with empty platters and furtive pretences of occupation, plainly

not daring to enter that door, behind which ever waxed the loud rumour

of domestic war.

The interval increased in length. The clamour rose and rose, and someone

went in search of the Padrone.

Ours was a splendid Padrone; clothed upon with a _redingote_ and an

historic and romantic dignity. For had not Guy de Maupassant mentioned

him with respectful affection in “La Vie Errante”? The memory of which

artistic appreciation still surrounded him with an aura. The Padrone

entered that fateful door with calm, stern purpose, while the guests

crumbled their bread in patient hope.

The domestic storm drew breath for one terrible moment, then suddenly

rose to the fury of a cyclone, and the Padrone was shot convulsively

forth into our midst, the romantic aura hanging in tragic tatters about

him. Holding to the wall he swallowed hard several times, seeking

composure, then passed, with knees wabbling nervously beneath the

stately redingote, to the office, where could be witnessed his

passionately protesting gestures and whispers poured into the

sympathetic bosom of the concierge.

The cyclone had expended itself; the courses resumed their course, but

what had taken place behind that closed door was never known. It

remained another Syracusan mystery.

* * * * *

The Museo at Syracuse, though small, is the best in Europe, for here, as

on an open page, is written the whole history of the island of

Sicily—not a gap or a break in the story of more than three thousand

years; of perhaps five thousand years, for it antedates all the certain

dates of history. Here are cases full of the stone and obsidian tools

and weapons of the autochthonous Sikels; their crude pottery, their

rough burial urns, their bone ornaments, and feathery wisps of their

woven stuffs. These are all curiously like the relics of the

Mound-builders of America, now in the Smithsonian Institution.

Apparently the Stone Age was as deadeningly similar everywhere as is our

own Age of Steel.

Follows the rude metal working of the Siculians, who, having some

knowledge of the use of iron, can build boats, and come across the

narrow strait at Messina and drive out the Sikels. So long ago as that

the old process of “assimilation” begins. The Siculians begin to work in

colour, to ornament their pottery, to dye their stuffs, to mark their

silver and iron with rough chisel patterns—patterns and colours again

astonishingly like those of our own Pueblo Indians.

There are fragments of Phœnician work here and there—the traders from

Tyre and Sidon are beginning to cruise along the coast and barter their

superior wares with the inhabitants.

All at once the arts make a great spring upward. The Greeks have

appeared. Rude, archaic, Dorian, these arts at first, but strong, and

showing a new spirit. The potteries have a glaze, the patterns grow more

intricate, the reliefs show a plastic striving for grace and life, the

ornaments are of gold as well as silver and bronze, and steel has

appeared. Follows a splendid flowering; an apogee of beauty is reached.

Vases of exquisite contours covered with spirited paintings, pictures of

life and death, of war and love. Coins that are unrivaled in numismatic

beauty; struck frequently with the quadriga to celebrate the winning of

the chariot race at the Olympic games; a triumph valued as greatly by

the Greeks of Sicily as is the winning of the Derby by English horsemen.

Tools, jewels, arms, all adorned with infinite taste and skill. Statues

of such subtle grace and loveliness as this famous “Nymph,” the

long-buried marble now grown to tints of blond pearl. Figurines of baked

clay, reproducing the costumes, the ornaments, the physiology of the

passing generations—faces arch, lovely, full of gay humour. Splendid

sarcophagi, and burial urns still holding ashes and calcined bones, and

tiny clay reproductions of the death masks of the departed, full of

tender human individuality, or else heads of the gods, such as that

enchanting tinted and crowned Artemis, that still lies in one of the

great sarcophagi amid a handful of burned bones.

Punic and Roman remains begin to show themselves, recording that

tremendous struggle between Europe and Africa for dominion in the

midland sea, under the impact of which the Greek civilization is to be

crushed. Byzantine ornament appears. Africa makes another struggle and

is for a while triumphant, leaving record of the Moorish domination in

damascened arms, in deep-tinted tiles.

The Goths and Normans fuse with the Saracen arts at first, but soon

dominate the Eastern influence and shake it off, developing an art

inferior only to the Greek. The Spanish follow, baroque, sumptuous,

pseudo-classical. All the story of all the conquerors is here.

“Oh!” sighs Peripatetica. “What an illustrated history; I could go on

turning its pages for days.”

“Well, you’ll turn them alone!” snapped Jane, clutching frantically at

her side, and adding in a dreadful whisper: “There are _fleas_ hopping

all over these historical pages. Come away this instant.”

But they linger a moment on the way out to look again at the famous

headless Venus Landolina.

“There is only one real Venus,” commented Peripatetica contemptuously.

“The Melian. All the rest are only plump ladies about to step into their

baths. I detest these fat women with insufficient clothing who sprawl

all over Europe calling themselves the goddesses of love. Goddesses

indeed! They look more like soft white chestnut worms. That great

dominating, irresistible lady of the Louvre is a deity, if you like—Our

Lady of Beauty—besides, this little person’s calf is flat on the inner

side.”

“Iss it not righd dat her calve should be vlat on de inside?” queried an

elderly Swiss, also looking, and showing all her handsome porcelain

teeth in a smile of anxious uncertainty. “I dink dat must be righd,

because Baedeker marks her wid a ztar.”

“Don’t allow your opinions to be unsettled by this lady’s,” consoled

Jane sweetly. “She isn’t really an authority. It would be wiser perhaps

and more comfortable to be guided by Baedeker.”

“Bud she has no head,” grieved the Swiss. “How can Baedeker mark her wid

a ztar w’en she has no head?”

How indeed? But then, there is such a lot of body!...

It is some days later. They have “done” the river Amapus; have been

rowed among the towering feathery papyrus plants, the original roots of

which were sent to Heiro I. by Ptolemy, and which still flourish in

Sicily though all the parent plants have vanished out of Egypt.

They have looked down into the clear depths of La Pisma’s spring. Jane

says it is less beautiful than the Silver Spring in Florida out which

the Ocklawaha river rises, but that fountain of a tropical

forest—transparent as air, and held in a great argent bowl—has no

history, while La Pisma was the playmate of fair Persephone, and on

seeing her ravished away by fiery Pluto melted quite away into a flood

of bright tears. And it was she who, having caught up Persephone’s

dropped veil, floated it to the feet of Demeter, and told her where to

look for the lost daughter. La Pisma and Anapus her lover were, too, the

real guardians of Syracuse, for as one after another of the armies of

invading enemies camped on their oozy plain they sapped the invaders’

strength, and blighted their courage with fevers from the miasmatic

breaths exhaled upon the foes as they slept.

Jane and Peripatetica have found another mystery. Syracuse, it appears,

is full of mysteries. This last is known as the Castle of Euryalus, and

they must take horse and drive to it, six miles from the hotel, though

still within the walls of the original city, once twenty-two miles

about; shrunk in these later days to less than three. This six miles of

pilgrimage gives ample time to search the guide-books for information as

to this thing they have come out for to see. But the guide-books palter,

and shuffle and evade, as they are prone to do about anything really

interesting. Euryalus, solid enough to their eyes and to their sense of

touch, seems as illusive in history as the cloudy towers of the Fata

Morgana—now you see it, and now you don’t. It seems to come from

nowhere. No one can tell when or by whom it was built, but it always

turns up in the history of Syracuse in moments of stress—much like those

Christian patron-saints who used suddenly to descend in shining armour

to turn the tide of battle. One hears of Dionysius strengthening it when

news comes that the dread Himilcon is on his way from Carthage with two

hundred triremes accompanied by rafts, galleys, and transports

innumerable. Dionysius makes Euryalus the key of a surprise he prepares

for the Carthagenians, for when the latter come sailing into the

harbour—“A forest of black masts and dark sails, with transports filled

with elephants trumpeting at the smell of land,” and from the West

“comes trampling across the plain by the Helorian road and the banks of

the Anapus, the Punic army 300,000 strong, with 3,000 horse led by

Himilcon in person,”—there stands waiting for them one of the most

amazing works ever wrought by the will of a single man.

Dionysius in twenty days has built a wall three miles long barring

Himilcon’s ingress at the only weak point. Seventy thousand of the

inhabitants of Syracuse had worked at this building. Forty thousand

slaves had been in the Latomiæ cutting the blocks of easily hewn

sandstone, which six thousand oxen carried to the wall, while other

armies of men had been upon the slopes of Ætna ravaging the oak woods

for huge beams. When Himilcon comes the wall is complete.

Then there are more appearings and disappearings through the years, and

suddenly Euryalus fills the foreground again. Archimedes is helping

Hieronymus to fortify it against Marcellus—is designing veiled sally

ports, and oblique apertures from which his “scorpions” and other

curious war engines may hurl stones, is placing there the burning

glasses with which he will set the Roman galleys on fire by means of the

sun’s heat. But though the Carthagenians were terrible the Roman is more

terrible still, and in spite of Archimedes they get into Syracuse after

a three years’ siege. While the furies of final capture are raging

Archimedes sits calmly drawing figures upon the sand. A Roman soldier

rushing by carelessly smears them with his foot. Archimedes is angry,

and “uses language.” The soldier, angry in his turn—no doubt “language”

in Greek sounded especially insulting—shortens his sword and stabs “the

greatest man then living in the world.”

Marcellus sheds tears when he hears it, and buries the father of

mathematics with splendid honours, marking the tombstone—as Archimedes

had wished—with no name, with only a sphere and a cylinder. He spared

Syracuse too; left her temples and splendours intact, and forbid the

usual plundering and massacres. Marcellus was, it seems, in every way a

very decent person, and Peripatetica grieved that those frigid Romans

wouldn’t let him have a triumph when he went home, and Jane breathed a

hope that he used more language to that murderous soldier....

Later comes Cicero to Syracuse, hunting evidence against Verres, who

had, as pro-consul, robbed the city of all the treasures Marcellus had

spared, and the great lawyer takes time from his examination of

witnesses to look out Archimedes’ resting place. He finds it overgrown

with thistles and brambles, but recognizes it by the sphere and

cylinder, and sets it once more in order.

“So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of time,

On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime,

Where at his feet in honoured dust disclosed

The immortal Sage of Syracuse reposed.”

“You cribbed that from one of the guide-books,” jeered Jane.

“Of course I did,” admitted Peripatetica with calm unblushingness. “Do

you imagine I go around with samples of formal Eighteenth Century

Pope-ry concealed about my person?”

* * * * *

They are on their way to the theatre, passing by the ancient site of the

Forum, which site is now a mere dusty, down-at-heels field where goats

browse and donkeys graze, and where squads of awkward recruits are being

trained to take cover behind a couple of grass blades, to fire their

empty rifles with some pretence at unanimity.

The road winds between walled orange and lemon groves, in which

contadini are drying and packing miles of pungent golden peel for

transportation to French and English confectioners. The air is redolent

with it.

Themistocles—Jane doubts his sponsors in baptism having had any hand in

this, but the grubby card he presented with so pleasant a glance, so

fine a gesture at the time of striking a bargain for the day, bore it

printed as plain as plain—Themistocles, then, dismounts before a small

drinking shop lying at the foot of an elevation. With one broad sweep of

his hand he signifies that he is making them free of history, and yields

them to the care of a nobleman in gold and blue; a nobleman possessing a

pleasing manner and one of those plangent, golden-strung voices which

the lucky possessors always so enjoy using.

The two demand the Latomia Paradiso; the name having seduced their

sentimental imaginations. The peer intimates that the name is

misleading, but with gentle firmness they drop down the path which

descends into the quarries from which Dionysius hurriedly snatched the

material for his wall; material (almost as easy to cut as cheese, but

hardening in the air) which has been dug, scooped, and riven away as

fantastically as if sculptured by the capricious flow of water, leaving

caverns, towers, massy columns, arches, a thousand freaked shapes. Now

all this is draped with swaying curtains of ivy, with climbing roses

heavy with unblown buds, with trailing geraniums hanging from crannies,

with wild flowers innumerable. Lemon and fig trees grow upon the

quarries’ floor, mosses and ferns carpet the shady places, black-green

caroba trees huddle in neglected corners.

The nobleman, however, is impatient to show other wonders. He leads the

way into caverns through whose openings shafts of sunlight steal,

turning the dusk within to a blond gloom, caverns where rope-makers walk

to and fro twisting long strands, twirling wheels, with a cheerful

chatter that booms hollowly back to them from the vaulted darkness over

their heads; where the birds who flit in and out hear their twitterings

reflected enormously, with a curious effect; where even the sound of

dripping moisture is magnified into a large solemnity.

He has saved the best for the last. Here an arch soars a hundred feet,

giving entrance to a lofty narrow cave. Where the sides of the arch meet

is a small channel of chiselled smoothness, ending in an orifice through

which a glimpse of the sky shows like a tiny blue gem. It is the Ear of

Dionysius. In this cave, so the story runs, the Tyrant confined

suspected conspirators, for this is a natural whispering gallery, and

the lowest of confidential talk within it would mount the walls, each

lightest word would run along that smooth channel, as through the tube

of an ear, and reach the listener at the orifice. For the uneasy

Dictator knows that his turbulent Greek subjects, who cannot rule

themselves, are equally unable to bear placidly the rule of another, and

it would have been interesting, and at times exciting, to have been

permitted to watch that stern, bent face as the rebellious protests

climbed in whispers to the greedy ear a hundred feet above.

A wonderful echo lives in this cave. Now it is plain why the guide has

such large and vibrant tones—he was chosen because of that natural gift.

“Addio!” he cries gaily. “_Addio_,” calls the darkness, a little sadly

and wistfully. The guide sings a stave, and all the dusk is full of

melodious chorus. He intones a sonorous verse, and golden words roll

down to them through the gloom.

“Speak! speak!” the nobleman urges, and Jane and Peripatetica meekly

breathe a few banalities in level American tones. Not a sound returns;

their syllables are swallowed by the silence.

“Staccato! staccato!” remonstrates the guide, and when they comply,

light laughing voices vouchsafe answers.

“I think,” says Peripatetica reflectively, as they leave the Latomia,

“that one has to address life like that if one is to get a clear

reply—to address it crisply, definitely, with quick inflections. Level,

flat indefiniteness will awake no echoes.”

“‘How true’! as the ladies write on the margins of circulating library

books,” comments Jane with unveiled sarcasm.

The guide has lots more up his gold-braided sleeve. He opens a gate and

displays to them with a flourish the largest altar in the world. Six

hundred feet one way, sixty feet the other; cut partly from solid rock,

made in part of masonry. Hiero II. thought he knew a trick of governing

worth any amount of listening at doors. Those who are fed and amused are

slack conspirators. So this huge altar to Zeus is built, and here every

year he sacrifices 450 oxen to the ruler of heaven.

“It must have rather run into money for him,” says Jane thoughtfully,

“but he probably considered it cheaper to sacrifice oxen than be

sacrificed himself.”

“Yes,” says Peripatetica, who has just been consulting the guide-book.

“It must have been rather like the barbecues the American politicians

used to give to their constituents half a century ago, for only the

choicest bits were burnt before the gods, sprinkled with oil and wine

and sweet-smelling spices, and the populace, I suppose, carried home the

rest. No doubt Hiero found it a paying investment.”

The theatre, when reached, is found, of course, to have a beautiful

situation. All Greek theatres have. They were a people who liked to open

all the doors of enjoyment at once, and when they filled this enormous

semicircle (24,000 could sit there) cut from the living rock upon the

hillside, they could not only listen to the rolling, organ-like Greek of

the great poets, and have their souls shaken with the “pity and terror”

of tragedy, or laugh at the gay mockery of comedy, but by merely lifting

their eyes they could look out upon the blue Ionian sea, the smiling

flowered land, and in the distance the purple hills dappled with flying

shadows. In their time all the surrounding eminences were crowned with

great temples, and behind them—this was a contrast very Greek—lay the

Street of Tombs. For they had not a shuddering horror of death,

hastening their departed into remote isolation from their own daily

life. They liked to pass to their occupations and amusements among the

beautiful receptacles made for the ashes of those they had loved.

In this theatre Syracuse saw not only the great dramas, but the great

dramatists and poets. Æschylus, sitting beside Hiero I., saw all his

plays produced here; “The Ætnaiai” and “The Persians” were written for

this stage. Pindar was often here; so were Bacchylides and Simonides,

and a host of lesser playwrights. Indeed, no theatre has ever known such

famous auditors. Theocritus, Pythagoras, Sappho, Empedocles, Archimedes,

Plato, Cicero, have all sat here.

Plato was long in Syracuse; called by Dionysius to train his son Dion,

he labours with such poor success that Dion is driven from the power

inherited from his father, by the citizens outraged at the grossness of

his vices. Before this fall Plato has left him in disgust, Dion

remarking with careless insolence:

“I fear you will not speak kindly of me in Athens.”

To which the philosopher, with still more insolent sarcasm, replies:

“We are little likely to be so in want of a topic in Athens as to speak

of you at all.”

Yet it would seem as if no good effort was ever wholly lost, for when

Dion, earning his bread in exile as an obscure schoolmaster, is

sneeringly asked what he ever learned from Plato, his dignified answer

is, “He taught me to bear misfortune with resignation.”

* * * * *

Themistocles has conducted them, with much cracking of his whip, much

irrelevant conversation, quite to the other side of what once was

Syracuse, and has deposited them before a little low gate that pierces a

high wall. Inside this gate is a tiny garden cultivated by two monks who

do the work by means of short-handled double-ended hoes; a

laborious-looking Sicilian implement. The garden is full of pansies

growing between low hedges of sweet-smelling thyme and rosemary. At the

same moment there debarks a carriage load of touring Germans. Typical

touring Germans; solid, rosy, set four-square to the winds; all clinging

to Baedekers encased in covers of red and yellow cross stitch of Berlin

wool, all breathing a fixed intention of seeing everything worth seeing

in the thorough-going German fashion. The monks openly squabble as to

the division of the parties who have come to see the church and the

catacombs, and eventually the big, shaggy, red-haired one, who might be

some ancient savage Gaul come to life, sullenly carries off the Teutons.

It is somewhat of a shock to Jane and Peripatetica when their slim,

supple, handsome Sicilian explains to them that this contest has its

reason not in their personal charm, but is owing to a reluctance to

guide the hated Tedeschi.

There is something inexplicable in this universal unpopularity of the

Teuton in Italy. Germany has been dotingly sentimental about Italy for

generations.

“Kennst du das Land”

has hovered immanent on every lip from beyond the Rhine ever since the

days of Goethe. They passionately study her language, her literature,

her monuments, and her history. They make pilgrimages to worship at all

her shrines, pouring in reverent Pan-Germanic hordes across the Alps to

do it, and despite their extreme and skilful frugality they must

necessarily leave in the Peninsula hundreds of thousands of their

hard-earned, laboriously hoarded marks, which they have not grudged to

spend in the service of beauty. Yet Italy seems possessed of a sullen

repugnance to the entire race.

“Tedeschi!” hisses the monk. “Tutto ‘_Ja! Ja! Wunderschön!_’” with a

deliriously funny imitation of their accent and gestures, as he steers

swiftly around a corner to prevent the two parties fusing into one.

The church of San Giovanni is, of course, founded upon a Greek

temple—most Sicilian churches are, and—of all places!—this one stands

upon a ruin of a temple of Bacchus—the fragments of which poke up all

through the tiny garden. The church, equally, of course, has been

Eighteenth Centuried, but happily not wholly; remaining a great wheel

window, and beautiful bits here and there of Twelfth Century Gothic in

the outer walls, though the interior is in the usual dusty and neglected

gaunt desuetude. The whole place is in decay, even the attendant

monastery is crumbling, the number of monks shrunk to a mere handful,

despite the fact that this is a spot of special sanctity, for when they

descend into the massive chapel of the crypt there is pointed out to

them the little altar before which Saint Paul preached when he was in

Syracuse.

“Of course, St. Paul was here,” said Jane. “Everybody who was anybody

came to Syracuse sooner or later—including ourselves.”

The guide is firm as to the altar having stood in this very chapel when

that remarkable Hebrew poured out to the Syracusans his strange new

message of democracy, but this is clearly the usual fine monkish

superiority to cramping probabilities, for such rib-vaultings as these

were as yet undreamed of by the architects of Paul’s day.

The altar is Greek, and no doubt was standing in the fane of Bacchus

when the Jew spoke by it. The Greeks were interested and tolerant about

new religions, and the life and death which Paul described would hardly

have seemed strange to them, spoken in that place. That birth and death,

the blood turned to wine, the sacred flesh eaten in hope of

regeneration, having so many and such curious resemblances to the

legends, and to the worship of the Vine God celebrated on that very

spot. “At Thebes alone,” had said Sophocles, speaking of the birth of

Bacchus, “mortal women bear immortal gods.” The violent death, the

descent into hell, the resurrection, were all familiar to them, and what

a natural echo would be found in their hearts to the saying, “I am the

true Vine.”...

The monk only smiles bitterly when it is demanded of him to explain why

a spot of so reverent an association should be abandoned to dust and

decay, and to the interest of curious tourists, when the mere apocryphal

vision of an hysterical peasant girl should draw hordes of

miracle-seeking pilgrims to Lourdes.

Perhaps there was something typical in that anguished Christ painted

upon the great flat wooden crucifix that hung over the altar in the

crypt; a Christ fading slowly into a mere grey shadow; the dim, hardly

visible ghost of a once living agony....

The monk goes before, the flickering candle which he shades with his

fingers throwing a fan of yellow rays around his tonsured head. These

are the Catacombs of Syracuse.

“On every hand the roads begin.”

Roads underground, these, leading away endlessly into darkness. At long

intervals they widen into lofty domed chapels rudely hewn, as is all

this place, directly from the rock. Here and there a narrow shaft is cut

upward through the earth, letting in faint gleams of sunshine through a

fringe of grass and ferns, showing sometimes an oxalis drooping its pale

little golden face to peer over the shaft’s edge into the gloom below.

And in all these roads—miles and miles of roads, extending as far as

Catania it is said; roads under roads three tiers deep—and in all these

roads and chapels are only open graves. Graves in the floor beneath

one’s feet; graves in every inch of the walls; graves over graves,

graves behind graves. Great family graves cut ten feet back into the

rock, containing narrow niches for half a dozen bodies—graves where four

generations have slept side by side. Graves that are mere shallow

scoopings hardly more than three spans in length, where newborn babies

must have slept alone. Tombs innumerable beyond reckoning, all hewn from

the solid rock, and each and all vacant. An incredibly vast city of the

dead from which all the dead inhabitants have departed.

This is the crowning mystery of mysterious Syracuse. Who were this vast

army of the buried? And where have their dead bodies gone?...

Christians, everyone says.

“But why,” clamours Peripatetica, “should Christians have had these

peculiar mole-like habits?”

The monk merely shrugs.

“Oh, I know,” she goes on quickly before Jane can get her mouth open.

“Persecution is the explanation always given, but will you tell me how

you can successfully persecute a population of this size? There must be

half a million of graves, at least, in this place, and there would have

to be a good many living to bury the dead, and Syracuse in its best days

hadn’t a million inhabitants. Now, you can’t successfully martyrize

nine-tenths of the population, even if it is as meek and sheep-like as

the early Christians pretended to be.”

“They didn’t all die at once,” suggests Jane helpfully. “This took

years.”

“I should think it did! Years? It took generations, or else the

Christians died like flies, and proved that piety was dreadfully

undermining to the health. No wonder the pagans wouldn’t accept anything

so fatal. But populations as large as this one must have been to furnish

so many dead, don’t go on burrowing underground for generations. They

come out and impose their beliefs upon the rest. And, besides, how can

the stories of their worshipping and burying in secret be true when the

mass of material taken out of these excavations would have to be put

somewhere? And how could the presence or the removal of all that refuse

stone escape attention? The persecuted Christian theory doesn’t explain

the mystery.”

Even Peripatetica had to pause sometimes for breath, and then Jane got

her innings.

“Equally mysterious, in my opinion,” she said, “is the rifling of all

these graves. The monk tells me ‘the Saracens did it,’ but the Saracens

were in Syracuse less than two hundred years, and of all these myriad

graves only two or three have been found intact, and these two or three

were graves beneath graves. Every other one for sixty miles, from the

largest to the smallest, has been opened and entirely emptied. The

Saracen population in Syracuse was never very large. It consisted in

greater part of the ruling classes. The bulk of the people were natives

and Christians, who would regard this grave-rifling as the horridest

sacrilege, and if the Saracens undertook alone this enormous task they

would have had, even in two hundred years, time for nothing else. The

opening of the graves is as strange a puzzle as the making of them.”

“Perhaps some last trump was blown over Syracuse alone,” hazarded

Peripatetica, “and all the dead here rose and left their graves behind

them empty.”

“Come up into the air and sunlight,” said Jane. “Your mind shows the

need of it.”

At the little gate sat one of the monastery dependents, whose perquisite

was a permission to sell post-cards, and such coins and bits of pottery

as he could retrieve by grubbing in the rubbish of the empty graves. He

had a few tiny earthenware lamps, marked with a cross and still

smoke-blackened, some so-called tear jugs, and one or two small clay

masks which, from the closed eyelids and smooth sunken contours, must

have been modelled in miniature from real death masks. Among these they

found Arsinoë—or so they named her—whose face was touched with that

strange, secret archness, that sweet smiling scorn so often seen on

faces one day dead. The broad brow with its drooping hair, the full

tender lips so instinct with vivid personality, went with them, and

became to them like the record of some one seen long ago and dimly

remembered, though the lovely benignant original must have been mere

dust of dust for more than a thousand years.

* * * * *

A nun in a faded blue gown has been showing them the relics of Santa

Lucia. She has also been telling them how the Saint, when a young man

admired her eyes, snatched them out of her head with her own hands and

handed them to the young man on a plate.

“What a very rude and unpleasant thing to do!” comments Jane in English.

“But invariably saints seem so lamentably deficient in amiability and

social charm.”

The nun unlocks the gate of the Cappucini Latomia, and Jane and

Peripatetica descend the long stair cut in the rocks. They are seeking

the place where the remnant of that army Alcibiades so skilfully

introduced into Catania, finally perished.

They have been reading tales of the Athenians’ long siege of Syracuse,

of their final frightful despairing struggle, so full of anguish,

terror, and fierce courage—“when Greek met Greek”—and they have come to

look at the spot where those seven thousand unhappy prisoners finally

found an end. When they were driven into this quarry they were all that

remained of the tremendous expedition which Athens had drained her best

blood to send. Alcibiades had fled long ago, and was in exile. Nicias

and Demosthenes, who had surrendered them, were now dead; fallen on

their own swords. The harbour of Syracuse was strewn with the charred

wrecks of their fleet. The marshes of Anapus were rotting with their

comrades, the fountain of Cyane choked with them. They themselves were

wounded to a man, shuddering with fevers, starving, demoralised with

long fighting and the horrible final _débâcle_ when they were thrust all

together into this Latomia; not as now a glorious garden with thyme and

mint and rosemary beneath their feet, ivy-hung, full of groves and

orchards, but raw, glaring, shaled with chipped stone, the staring

yellow sides towering smoothly up for a hundred feet to the burning blue

of the Sicilian sky. There in that waterless furnace for seventy days

they died and died. Died of wounds, of thirst, of starvation; died of

the poisonings of those already dead.

And the populace of Syracuse came day by day, holding lemons to their

noses, to look down at them curiously, until there was not one movement,

not one sound from any one of the seven thousand.

There is but one human gleam in the whole demoniacal story—a touch

characteristically Greek. Some of the prisoners had beguiled the tedium

of dying by chanting the noble choruses of Euripides’ newest play, which

Syracuse had not yet heard, and these had been at once drawn up from

among their fellows and treated with every kindness. They were entreated

to repeat as much as they could remember of the poet’s lines again and

again, and were finally sent back to Athens with presents and much

honour.

Not a trace of the tragedy remains. The only record of death now in

those lovely wild, deep-sunken gardens is a banal monument to Mazzini,

and a tomb hollowed out of the wall in one of the caves. A tomb closed

with a marble slab, upon which was cut an epitaph telling, in the

pompous formal language of that day, of the young American naval

lieutenant who died here suddenly on his ship in the first decade of the

Nineteenth Century, and because he was a Protestant, and therefore could

not occupy any Catholic graveyard, was laid to rest alone in this place

of hideous memories.

Poor lad! Sleeping so far from his own people, and thrust away here by

himself, since he must, of course, not expect to lie near those who had

been baptised with a different motion of the fingers. Seeing which

isolation Peripatetica quoted that amused saying of an ironic old Pagan

world, “Behold, how these Christians love one another!”

* * * * *

It is the terrace of the Villa Politi. They have finally forgiven the

villa, and have climbed up here from the Latomia to sit on its lovely

terrace, to drink tea and eat the honey of Hybla, to look down on one

side into the blossom-hung depths of the Athenians’ prison, on the other

out to the mauve and silver of the twilight sea.

“Peripatetica,” says Jane with great firmness, “I am suffering from an

indigestion of history. I am going away somewhere. All these spirits of

the past block up the place so that I’ve no freedom of movement. It’s an

oppression to feel that every time one puts a foot down it’s in the

track of thousands and thousands of dead feet, and that one’s stirring

up the dust of bones with every step we take. Everything we look at is

covered so thick with layer on layer of passion and pain that I’ve got

an historic heartache. _I_ leave to-morrow.”

Peripatetica didn’t answer at first. She was looking out over the dusky

sea, from which breathed a soft slow wind.

The change had come while they were in the Latomia; had come suddenly.

That bleak unkindness in the atmosphere—of which they were always

conscious even in the sun—had all at once disappeared. Even though the

sun was gone a mild sweetness seemed to exhale from the earth, as from a

heart at last content.

“Jane,” said Peripatetica, turning shining eyes upon her, “Persephone

has returned. Let us go to Enna and meet her!”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: Decoration]