And yet, had he but known it, that was very nearly what had
happened. When Mattina, worn out with crying, had sunk down on the
floor against the door, sobbing out every now and then, "My mother,
my manitsa," she suddenly heard a very low muffled knocking which
seemed to come from the other side of the room. At first she took no
heed. It was someone, she supposed, in the next house; she had often
heard people moving there. But it came again, a soft little knock
repeated twice; then her name just whispered.
"Mattina! Mattina! Are you there?"
The voice was Kyra Polyxene's, she was quite sure, but from where did
it come? She crossed the little room. The knock was quite clear now.
"Mattina!"
"But where are you, Kyra Polyxene?"
"Now you will see; can you hear what I say?"
"Yes, I hear you."
"Move your mattress!"
"What did you say?"
"I dare not speak any louder; move your mattress away from the wall!"
Mattina seized hold of the heavy straw mattress with both hands,
and dragged it aside.
"Have you done it?"
"Yes."
Then slowly, very slowly, a narrow door painted exactly the same color
as the rest of the room, with no handle, no crack even to show its
outline or to distinguish it from the surrounding wall, a door which
Mattina had certainly never seen before, was pushed open from the
other side and Kyra Polyxene's kind old face appeared in the opening.
"Not a word!" she whispered, with a finger on her lips. "Not a word
for your life! Come!"
Mattina was very bewildered.
"Where shall I come? How did you get in?"
"Hush! Lest they hear us from below. Once this was all one big house,
and when they made it two, they left this door. It was all painted
over, and no one knew; but I remembered. Wait!" and she came right
in. "Give me your coverlet! See I will hang it over the opening, so
... because now that I have opened the door, when it is light they will
see that the paint has cracked. And before that lazy mistress of yours
takes the coverlet down to shake it, many days will pass. Come! Why
are you waiting?"
"Kyra Polyxene," said Mattina, "they all tell lies! I never saw
their money!"
"And for that, will you stay here and let them take you and lock you
in prison?"
There was a loud knocking at the door below.
Mattina clung desperately to Kyra Polyxene's skirts.
"Do you hear?"
"I hear," said the old woman grimly. "Come, I tell you! Come!"
She pushed Mattina first through the half-open door and followed,
closing it softly behind her and turning a rusty key on the other
side. They were standing in a small dark room filled with cases
and lighted by one candle. Kyra Polyxene took up the candle. Then
she clasped Mattina's hand tightly in hers, and together, treading
very softly, they crossed a long narrow passage outside the room,
passed through a glass door, went down a flight of stone steps into
a cellar where piles of wood were stacked, and then went up three or
four steps again to a little back door that opened on the pavement.
The night air that blew in their faces felt fresh and cool.
"Listen, my daughter!" said the old woman. "Now you go straight
to your uncle's house! You know the way. If to-morrow dawns well,
I will come and tell you what is happening. Go! Run! And the Holy
Virgin be with you!"
At that moment loud voices came to them from the open window of the
house which they had just left. Mattina thought she caught her name,
and then she heard her master say very distinctly:--
"Go upstairs, now!..." but she did not hear the end of the sentence.
The men of the police must have come, and they were going upstairs
to look for her!
Without a word, she dragged her hand from the old woman's and ran
wildly down the dark street.
She ran on and on, panting, stumbling, falling, picking herself up
again, her plaits of hair which had come loose in the struggle with
her mistress flying behind her. When she came out to the Piræus Road,
where a few people were still about, she stopped, and leaning against
a lamp post, tried with trembling fingers to tie up her hair.
To her uncle's! No! She would not go there!
She had not had time to explain to Kyra Polyxene that her master knew
where the baker's shop was. He had asked her one day. And of course
it was there they would search for her at once. No, no! Not to her
uncle's! But where then? Where?
She tried hard to remember where Antigone had said that her brother
lived. Perhaps she would hide her; she knew how bad mistresses could
be! But try as she would, she could not remember. Athens names were
all new and strange to her.
And there was no one else.
Perhaps she could walk about all night, or sit down on a bench? But
when it dawned, what then? Suddenly she heard running steps in the
street behind her and loud voices, ... men's voices. Was the one
her master's? She looked wildly round like a trapped thing and once
more started running, as she had never run before, down the middle of
the broad road. Every moment it seemed as if a hand were grasping her
shoulder. She flew past the lighted grocer's shop where they might know
her, and her head struck against the open shutter, but she did not feel
the pain. On she ran, her breath coming in loud gasps, and great throbs
beating in her throat. She heard steps again.... Were they behind her?
Suddenly, under a lamp post, she came into violent contact with a big
man, who was walking leisurely before her, his hands crossed behind
his back, fiddling with a short string of black beads.
He caught hold of the lamp post to save himself from falling and
turned round.
"Who falls in this way on people? Have you gone mad, my girl? One
would think someone was hunting you."
It was a Poros voice, and Mattina clung desperately to the baggy blue
breeches of Thanassi Nika, as the old sea-captain bent over her.
"They are! They are!" she cried wildly, "they are hunting me! Save
me! Save me! And may all your dead become saints!"
"Why? Why? What is happening here? Are you not Aristoteli Dorri's
daughter? Who is hunting you?"
"The people of the house; the master ... the mistress ... they have
called the men of the police; they will put me in prison!"
"What have you done?" asked the old man sharply.
"I have done nothing. On the soul of my father, I have taken nothing
of theirs. But money was lost, and they say I took it. Save me! Take
me from here!"
Capetan Thanassi looked up and down the road.
Farther up towards the grocer's shop two or three men seemed hurrying
towards them, but just at that moment a bright light flashed in
their eyes, and a street car going to the square came to a stop a
few paces away.
The old man lifted Mattina bodily to the step and followed her. The
little platform was crowded, and as they stood there tightly wedged
between many people, he put his finger on his lips so that Mattina
should keep silent. Almost at once in the big lighted square they got
down again, and before Mattina had time to think where they might be
going, she had been run across the road, down a broad street, through
a crowded waiting-room, down an endless flight of stone steps, and
was seated once more in a railway carriage, which started almost as
soon as Capetan Thanassi threw himself down puffing and panting on
the seat beside her.
"Well," he said, wiping his forehead with a big red handkerchief,
"it is not a good thing to be hunted and to run; but to let these
Athenians, here, seize hold of Aristoteli Dorri's daughter, and call
her a thief! That could not be! Now, listen to me, little one! If
you have done anything crooked, that is between God and your soul,
but for me it is sufficient that I knew your father. My caique[28]
leaves to-night, now, with the turn of the wind. I shall put you in
it and take you back to your own country, and once there,... we shall
see what can be done."
Mattina had seized his hand and was kissing it.
"To my own island? To Poros? God make your years many, Capetan
Thanassi, for this that you are doing for me!"
X
The big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its
captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two
planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with
the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened
to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat,
and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She
heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose
piece of sack-cloth.
The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked
by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.
And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun
high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free,
to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the
piece of "touloumi"[29] cheese which one of the sailors had given her,
while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall
prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi's
loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.
Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see
in the distance the white houses of Poros!
It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the
boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it
was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from
the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the
Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big
house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a
boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen
were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.
"What will you do?" the old captain asked Mattina. "Before noon, when
this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?"
"I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For the good that you have done me,
may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore,
and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished
your work."
"Go then, my girl! Go!" and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill
leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take
breath until she reached the top.
There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme
was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the
lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.
She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big
bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny
leaves. "Fairy-cherries," the children of the Red House on the hill,
called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little
tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because
she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and
began the descent of the hill.
The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost
entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green near
the pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky,
blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only
far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could
distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a
man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not
she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the
dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a
flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water
showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as
though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between
the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple
trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it
was clear and beautiful, and her very own sea, and she lifted her
face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her
bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!
In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every
vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflected
line for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran
long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered
Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her,
"You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!" And she thought,
"She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!"
But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never
see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She
would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.
The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and
certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never
have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.
Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other
children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people
who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around
her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her
troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard
that her ancestors were of the race which above all other had always
worshipped beautiful things.
However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock,
and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt;
she must see the child--Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw
her! "'Attina! My 'Attina!" he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a
good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt
Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They
would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back
not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought
for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little
maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She
was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it
was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving
maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts
as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did
not even call her a servant, but a "soul-child"; one taught her, one
fed her, one dressed her, and in due time one prepared her dowry for
her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow's daughter,
as a "soul-child." No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved
a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros
had its troubles too.
She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to
pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush,
when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of
the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.
"It is many years since I did that," said a boyish voice just behind
her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing
and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one
whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was
certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like
the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than
those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was
a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brown hair and
a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.
He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go
still farther than the last.
"Did you see that one, my girl?" he said without looking at her. "I
thought I had forgotten,... but see there," as he flung a third and
began counting,... "eleven,--twelve,--thirteen,--fourteen! I wish
some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would
believe that I could make it go more than ten times."
"Throw another," said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good
flat one.
The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the
girl for the first time.
The pebble dropped to the shore between them.
"Why!" he said slowly, "Why! From where did you come? Not from the
village?"
Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the
stone, looked at him.
"No,--I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived."
"Now?"
"Yes, in Capetan Thanassi's caique."
"You are from Athens?"
"Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town."
The man put his hand under Mattina's chin, turned her face up, and
took a long look at her.
"If you are not Aristoteli's daughter, may they never call me Petro
again."
Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to
know her?
"Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri's the sponge diver's."
"God rest his soul," added the man, "and your mother's also! Little
did I think to return to the island and find them both under the
soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve
in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just
have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to
go and search for you."
"For me?"
"For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone,
and leave my brother's daughter working for strange folk in strange
houses!"
Mattina was beyond speech.
The young man put his arm round her shoulders.
"So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You
were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at
me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father--the
blessed one? All have told me so."
A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina's eyes. Of course he had
her father's face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that
laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had
never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.
Timidly she crept a little closer.
"My uncle," she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes,
"are you my 'family' now?"
"Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your
mother's cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people,
I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which
to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now, and I shall work for
you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well
to leave them!"
"I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the
island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house."
"Afraid! Why?"
Mattina flushed very red.
"They said I stole their money."
"They called you a thief! My brother's daughter! A bad year to
them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed
and told them that they lied."
"I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my
father's soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me
to prison, and I was afraid."
"It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make
you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and
if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!"
And Mattina saw that her uncle's laughing eyes could look very fierce.
"Have you the money for which you served?"
"No, they had not given it to me yet."
"We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you
for every month?"
"Eight drachmæ."
"Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they
made you work hard for it, eh?"
"There was always work, yes; but...."
"But what?"
"She said that ... that at New Year I should have a present. And now
... now...."
And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of
present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.
"Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling
your heart's content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful
present?"
Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.
"You!"
"Who else? And what shall the present be?"
The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina's dazzled eyes.
"Can I say whatever I like?"
"Surely."
"Then I want ... there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad
golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and
you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch
the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want."
"You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in
Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island."
"Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?"
"Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more
money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think
of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older,
and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to
the island. It is not good to leave one's bones in a strange land. No;
in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big
ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and
when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!"
"My uncle!"
"Yes." Then as no words came, he added, "Say what you want! You must
not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires."
"My uncle, there is Zacharia too...."
"What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella's. He is very
little." Just for a second the young man hesitated, then--
"Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days,
mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with
waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?"
"Surely," said Mattina, "I can do many things."
Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm
little chin.
"I believe you can," he said. "Come!" holding out his hand, "let us
go and find the little rascal."