"She must be fourteen, Kyria."
"Fourteen! Vegetable marrows! She is not even twelve! From where
is she?"
"From Poros."
"Poros! I have had many serving-maids from Andros, and some from Tenos,
and one came from Crete, but from Poros ... h'm...."
"It is a beautiful island!" returned Mattina, flushing angrily that
anyone should "H'm" at her island. "It has hills and trees down to
the sea, and lemon woods, and big fig trees, and the Sleeper, such
a high mountain as you never saw, and the sea all round everywhere."
"How should the sea not be round everywhere on an island? Is the girl
an idiot?" and the woman looked at Kyra Demetroula.
"She has but just come from there," ventured the latter. "Have sympathy
with her; she has not yet learned town speech."
The woman sniffed.
"Well, what can you do?"
"I can do much."
"What?"
"I can scrub boards till they are quite white, I can wash clothes,
I can knead three okes[13] of dough at a time, I can weave yarn at the
loom and I can row in a big boat with both oars together."
The woman laughed.
"Truly, that will be very useful here! You can row the master to the
shop, every morning."
Mattina looked at her pityingly; she had never before heard people
say things that meant something else.
"That is foolish talk, ..." she began, but her aunt pushed her aside
hurriedly:--
"She is very strong, Kyria; when her poor mother, God rest her soul,
lay for three months on her mattress, Mattina here kept all the
house clean and looked after her little brother as well. Take her,
and you will never repent it."
Just at that moment a hand organ stopped outside in the street, and
began to play the valse from the Dollar Princess. Mattina, with never
a look at the two women, who went on talking, ran out of the passage
to the open street door. All the music she had ever heard in her life
had been the harsh tuneless tunes which men sang sometimes in Poros
at the tavern after they had been drinking, or at best the little folk
songs which the officers of the Naval School sang to the accompaniment
of a guitar on moonlight nights. This beautiful swinging tune coming
out of the tall box when the man turned a handle, was quite new,
and she stood there listening with wide open eyes, her arms hanging
loosely on either side of her, and her lips apart. So intent was she
that at first she did not hear her aunt calling her.
"Mattina! Mattina! Where has the child gone? Mattina! Mattina, I tell
you! Do you not hear?"
"I hear," she answered at last, retracing her steps reluctantly.
"Come, my child; all is arranged. This good Kyria says she will take
you and teach you many things. She gives only eight drachmæ a month
now, because she wanted a bigger girl. I do not know, that is to say,
whether your uncle will like you to come for so little, but...."
"Of course," put in the fat woman, "she will have her shoes, a woolen
dress in the winter, two print ones in summer, and her present at
New Year."
As she walked back to the baker's shop with her aunt, Mattina was busy
thinking. The dresses did not interest her very much, though she hoped
that one of them might be a pink one, but the present at New Year,
that was another thing! She knew all about presents, though she had
never received one herself. When Panouria, old Lenio's Panouria,
had been married to Theophani the shoemaker, did not her father
make her a present of a big mirror with a broad gold frame all round
it? This mirror had been brought from Piræus, and Mattina had seen
the men taking it carefully out of its wooden case, and had heard the
neighbours who were standing around, saying that it was a present to
Panouria from her father. Did not Stavro, the son of Pappa Thanassi,
send a present to his mother from America, a big rocking chair all
covered with red velvet? Did not the little ladies from the Red House
on the hill once give a present to Antigone, who lived in the small
house near their gate, when she was so ill, a wonderful doll with
yellow hair, that opened and shut its eyes like a real Christian? Yes,
she knew all about presents! They were beautiful things which were
not really necessary to every-day life, but which people who had
much money gave you to make your heart joyful. Later on, when her
aunt related to her uncle all that the new Kyria had said, adding:--
"I could not get more from her than eight drachmæ for the child;
she looks of the kind that counts every lepton,"[14] Mattina had
said:--
"But there will also be a present at New Year!"
And her aunt had replied in a funny voice,--"Oh, yes! And a fine
present that will be I am sure!"
Then Mattina's joy was complete. Not only was she to have a present,
but her aunt had said she was sure it would be a fine one; and surely
she knew all about town ways, and the kind of presents that are given
there. Mattina, you see, was not used to people who said one thing,
in fun, and meant another. She often thought of that present, and of
what she would like it to be, if she might choose. And certainly the
poor maid required the comfort of this thought in the long dreary
days which followed the one when she had been left with her bundle
at the house where she was to serve.
It was not the hard work she minded. She had had plenty of that in
Poros; scrubbing, weaving, bread-making which makes the arms so tired,
carrying heavy burdens till one's back feels as if it would break in
two; all this she knew, but it had been at home in her own island in
Poros, surrounded by people who knew her and had known her father
and mother, and who had a good word for her now and then. And when
work was over, she had been free to run wild among the pines and on
the sea-shore. But work in town never seemed to be over.
Her mother and Kyra Sophoula had often called her a good little worker,
and strong and quick, but in Athens her mistress was always telling
her she had never seen such a clumsy child in her life. Perhaps she
may have been awkward at first, and did break a plate or two, when
it came to washing up basins full of greasy pans, and platters, and
plates, and knives, and forks all muddled up together. But necessity
compelling,--and the difficulty of dodging a blow on the head, when
one's arms are dipped in soap-suds, and one is standing on a shaky
stool,--made her learn pretty fast how to be careful. Also, at home,
Zacharia had long ago pattered after her on his little bare feet, but
here in Athens, "Bebeko" the smaller of her mistress's two boys who
was nearly a year older, always cried to be carried when she took them
out, and Mattina found that to carry a fat, squirming, cross boy of
three, and have another of five hanging heavily on her arm or skirts,
was far worse than the heaviest load of sticks she had ever borne.
May melted into June, and June into July, and the days grew hotter
and hotter, and longer and longer, and the longer they grew the more
time there was for work, and the less for sleep. Mattina's mattress
was in a little dark room half way up the stairs, and as soon as
it was light in the mornings, her mistress would pound on the floor
above, with a walking stick which she kept beside her bed, for the
little maid to get up, sweep the rooms, brush the master's clothes,
and prepare his coffee for him before he went to his shop; and in
June and July it is light very early indeed.
Later on in the morning, Mattina used to bring out a big table cover
to shake outside the front door, and her gesture as she shook it,
had anyone cared to watch her, was strong, decided and thorough. One
could see that she would grow into a strong capable woman; that she
would know how to lift things, how to handle them, how to fold them;
that whatever she touched would be the better for her touching. And
as she shook the dust out, while the hot sun beat down upon her head,
she would close her eyes and try to fancy that the whistle of the
distant Kiphissia[15] train was the whistle of the morning steamer
coming into the bay of Poros and that she need only open her eyes to
see the glittering blue water before her, and the fishing boats with
the white and red sails gliding across it; but when she opened them
she only saw potato peels and pieces of old lettuce floating forlornly
on the dirty stream of water beside the sidewalk. This stream was
here because there was a public tap round the corner of the street,
and the slatternly women who went there for water, the heels of their
loose down-trodden slippers tap-tapping on the pavement as they walked,
generally neglected to close it.
One evening, when the food for supper was not enough, Mattina's
mistress sent her out to the grocer's in the Piræus Road to buy some
sardines; and while she was waiting to be served, she noticed four
men sitting outside the shop around a little table. One of the men
was strumming a guitar, and suddenly very softly they began to sing
all together. They sang the "tsopanoulo," that song of the "shepherd
boy" which Mattina had so often heard the young officers singing as
they rowed themselves about the bay on moonlit nights "at home."
She leaned against the door of the shop and closed her eyes very tight.
"I will not look," she thought, "I will only listen, and it will be
for a little as if I were back in my island."
And because there is nothing like music to remind one of places, unless
it be scent, a picture arose behind her closed eyelids, of the quiet
dark water, of the broad golden path of the moon, and of the little
boat that glided through the gold; and as she watched the picture, two
tears trickled from the eyes that were shut, and ran down her cheeks.
"Now, my girl," said a voice beside her suddenly, "here are your
sardines!" and a greasy paper was thrust into her hand.
Oh, how it hurt, to have to open her eyes, to take what was given to
her, to pay her lepta, and to stumble out half dazed into the street.
Once there, she thought for a moment that she was still dreaming,
for on the side walk, talking to a man in a straw hat, was an old
sea captain in the cross-over vest and the baggy blue breeches such
as she had seen hundreds of times on the quay at home.
"The wind has turned a little chilly," the man in the straw hat was
saying, "and there are many clouds in the sky. It will rain I think
before night."
Mattina instinctively raised her eyes to the west, and half
unconsciously repeated what she had so often heard her father say:--
"If but the Western sky be clear,
Though East be black, you need not fear."
then pointing with her finger where the sky was still of a dusky pink,
she said, "There are no clouds there."
The captain turned suddenly, and looked at the odd little figure in
her white festooned apron that hung far below her frock, with her
short black plaits tied round her head.
"That is what we say in my country." Then stooping a little. "From
where are you? Are you from Poros, perhaps?"
Mattina gulped down a lump in her throat.
"Yes, I am from Poros."
"Whose are you?"
"Aristoteli Dorri's, the sponge diver's."
"Ah, yes! The poor one! I heard that he had died. And did your mother
send you here?"
"My mother wept much after my father died, and then she coughed more
than she did before, and then she got worse, and then she died." And
Mattina turned her back on the men, and twisted and untwisted the
end of the paper in which the sardines were wrapped.
"Now, lately?" asked the captain.
"It was on the Thursday of the Great Week."
"Well! Well! Life to you! It is a dirty world! With whom do you
live now?"
"I serve at a house."
"You have no one in Athens?"
"I have my uncle Anastasi the baker, and my Aunt Demetroula, but they
live far from here near the Kolonaki."[16]
"Ah, Anastasi Mazelli, your mother's brother; I know him. A good
man! When you see him give him my salutations. Say they are from
Capetan Thanassi Nika of Poros, and he will know."
"I will say it to him," answered Mattina.
"Well, the good hour be with you, little compatriot!"
Mattina walked back to the house very slowly, with her eyes fixed on
the pavement. The talk about her people, the sound of a Poros voice,
had brought back so much to her! She thought of the good times when her
"babba," as she called her father, came home from a long absence with
the sponge-divers--filling the room with his laugh, the little bare
clean room with the big pot of sweet basil on the window seat--telling
all that had happened: how this one had not been able to stay so long
under water, and that one, the lazy dog, had pretended to be ill,
and how the captain had called on him again and again--"Come then,
you, Aristoteli! I would rather work with you alone than with ten
others; you are always ready to get your head into the helmet." And
Mattina, seated on his knees, would clap her hands with pride, crying,
"My Babba is always ready!" and her mother cooking a hot dinner in
honor of the return, would shake her head and mutter, "Too ready;
too ready," but would smile at them the next moment, as she emptied
the stew from the pan to the dish and told them to get their plates
ready. After her father had died, the house was never so bright again;
there was no laughing in it. Still, she had had her mother then, and it
was she whom Mattina missed most, for she had never been away from her.