The days which the exiles passed in solitude were not unhappy. The child
Evadne pruned the large-leaved vines, and gave the rugged cheeks of
certain melons to the sun. The continual hope of departure rendered all
privations supportable.
Was it hope, or was it fear, that stirred their bosoms when at last a
sail appeared not distant? They hoped that its white wings might turn
seaward!
"Mother," cried the shepherd, "no seaman willingly approaches this
shore, for the white waves warn him how the rocks He beneath the water.
Even walls and roofs of houses are seen, or guessed at, ingulfed
formerly by the sea; and the tale of that disaster, as told us by the
fisherman, is doubtless known to mariners, who, fearing Apollo, dare not
land upon this island. While, on the other hand, we have heard how
pirates, and even poor wayfaring folk, are so ill-received in the bay,
that from them, though they be not far off, we yet look for no
assistance. Let us, then, be content, and cease to seek after our fate,
which doubtless is never at rest from seeking after us. And let us not
be in haste to enter again into a ship, (so fearful and unnatural a
thing for those born to walk upon the land,) nor yet to beg our way
along painful and unknown roads, in search of men of a new religion and
a different language from that of Greeks. Neither, dear wife, if we must
suffer it, let us dread slavery too much. Life is long enough for those
who die young, and too long for the aged. One year let us patiently
give, more especially if it be unavoidable to give it. Vex me with no
more lamentations; some unforeseen accident may relieve us from our
misfortunes."
Eleusa, the good old wife, ever obedient to the husband of her youth,
talked no more of departure, nor yet complained of their miserable
lodgings in the ruined huts, on which her housewifely care grieved to
expend itself in vain.
Evadne would not be restrained from wandering. She penetrated alone the
wildest thickets; the nests of timid birds were known to her; and she
traced the bee to his hidden city. Deep in the woods she discovered a
wide chasm, in which the water of the sea palpitated with the beating of
the great heart of Ocean from which it flowed. Trees were still erect,
clasped by the salt waves, but quite dead; and all around their base
were hung fringes of marine growth, touched with prismatic tints when
seen through the glittering water, but brown and hideous when gathered,
as the trophy remaining in the hand which has dared to seize old Proteus
by the locks. All around this avenue, into which the sea sometimes
rushed like an invading host of armed men, the laurels and the delicate
trees that love to bend over the sources of the forest-streams hung
half-uprooted and perilously a-tiptoe over the brink of shattered rocks,
and withered here and there by the touch of the salt foam, towards which
they seemed nevertheless fain to droop, asking tidings of the watery
world beyond.
The skeleton-arms of the destroyed ones were feeble to guard the passage
of the ravine. Evadne broke a way over fallen trees and stepping-stones
imbedded in sea-sand, and gained the opposite bank. The solitude in
which she found herself appeared deeper, more awful, than before the
chasm lay between the greater island and the less. She listened
motionless to the soft, but continual murmur of the wood, the music of
leaves and waves and unseen wings, by which all seeming silence of
Nature is made as rich to the ear as her fabrics to the eye, so that, in
comparison, the garments of a king are mean, though richly dyed,
embroidered on every border, and hung with jewels.
While the little wood-ranger stood and waited, as it were, for what the
grove might utter, her eye fell upon the traces of a pathway, concealed,
and elsewhere again disclosed, overgrown by sturdy plants, but yet
threading the shady labyrinth. She followed the often reappearing line
upon the hillside, and as she climbed higher, with her rose the
mountains and the sea. The shore, the sands, the rocky walls, showed
every hue of sunbeams fixed in stone. The leafy sides of Tenedos had
caught up the clear, green-tinted blue of the sea, and wore it in a
noonday dream under the slumberous light that rested on earth and sea
and sky. Above the horizon, far away, the very clouds were motionless;
and where the sunbeams marked a tranquil sail, it seemed, with wave and
cloud, to express only Eternal Repose. But the eager child pressed
onward, for the crown of the hill seemed almost reached, and she longed
for a wider, wider view of the beautiful Ægean.
Suddenly she arrived where a sculptured stone lay in the pathway. Some
patient and skilful hand had wrought there the emblem of a rose, and
among the chiselled petals stood drops of rain, collected as in a cup.
On the border a pure white bird had just alighted, and Evadne watched
how it bent and rose and seemed to caress the flower of stone, while it
drank of the dew around and within it. Her eyes filled with tears as she
mused on the vanished hand of Art, whose work Nature now reclaimed for
this humble, but grateful use. The dove took wing, and the child
proceeding came to a level turf where a temple of white marble stood.
Eight slender columns upheld a marble canopy, beneath which stood the
image of a god. One raised hand seemed to implore silence, while the
other showed clasping fingers, but they closed upon nothing. Around the
statue's base lay scattered stones. Evadne gathered them, and reunited
they formed the lyre of Apollo. She replaced, for an instant, in the
cold and constant grasp a fragment of the ruined harp. Then the aspect
of the god became regretful, sad, as of one who desires a voice from
the lips of the dead. Hastily she flung the charm away, and gentle grace
returned to the listening boy, from whom, sleeping, some nymph might
have stolen his lyre, whose complaining chords now vibrated to his ear
and called their master to the pursuit. Evadne reposed on the steps of
the temple, and fixedly gazed upon the god. Her fancy endowed the firm
hand with an unbent bow; then the figure seemed to pause in the chase,
and listen for the baying of the hounds. Then she imaged a shepherd's
staff, and the shepherd-god waited tenderly for the voice of a lost
lamb.
"So stood Apollo in Thessaly," she softly said, "when he carried the
shepherd's staff. Oh that I were the lost Thessalian lamb for whom he
waits, that he might descend and I die for joy on his breast!"
Then, half afraid that the lips might break their marble stillness in
reply, she asked the protection of the deity, whom she was fain to
adore, but whom her adopted parents dared to despise.
Sole worshipper at a deserted shrine, she had no offering to place
there, but of flowers. She wove a crown and laid it at his feet, and,
while she bent by the pedestal, to hang a garland there, oh, terror! a
voice cried, "Evadne! Evadne!" A tide of fear rushed to her heart. The
god stood motionless yet. Who could have uttered her name? A falling
branch, a swift zephyr, may have seemed for an instant articulate, and
yet it was surely a human voice which had called her. Her reverie was
broken now, like a cataract brought to its downfall. A moment since, all
was peace and joyfulness; now she remembered, with alarm, how long she
had left her foster-parents alone, and the way by which she had come was
unknown, as if she had never traced it. She crossed the floor of the
temple, and, as she turned to whisper, "Farewell! beautiful god!" the
form gently inclined itself, and the uplifted hand stirred lightly.
Evadne darted forward and looked no more behind. She bounded over chasms
in the pathway, and broke the tender branches before her with impatient
hands, so that her descent from the temple was one mad flight.