An Old Greek Idyll
After the picnic at Bradstone, Carmel, possibly from something she heard
the girls say about her, seemed to make a supreme effort to overcome her
homesickness, and to settle down as an ordinary and rational member of
the school. She was undoubtedly a favorite. Even Lilias admitted her
charm, though she had not fallen under her spell so completely as
Dulcie. At the bottom of her heart, Lilias could not quite forgive
Carmel for supplanting her brother at the Chase. From the night he had
said good-by and motored to Balderton, not a word had been heard of
Everard. He had not returned to school, neither had he visited any
relations or friends, and indeed since he stepped out of the car at the
railway station all trace of him seemed to have vanished. Mr. Bowden did
not take the matter too seriously. He considered Everard was more of a
man now than a schoolboy, and that, if he had fulfilled his threat of
running away to sea, the brief experience of a voyage before the mast
would do him no harm, and that when the vessel returned to port he
would probably be only too glad to come back and claim his share of the
inheritance.
This easy view annoyed Lilias. She had a share of the Ingleton pride,
and she would have liked his absence treated with more concern. She
thought Mr. Bowden ought to advertise in the Agony Column of _The
Times_, beseeching Everard to return home, but their guardian only
laughed when she suggested such a course, and assured her that her
brother would turn up in time when he was tired of managing for himself.
"I've been in the law for thirty years, my dear, and I know human nature
better than you do," he declared indulgently.
"But you don't know Everard as I do!" protested Lilias.
She could not take Mr. Bowden's view of the case. Everard had left the
Chase in such deep anger and resentment that the chances of a speedy
change in his outlook seemed remote. Lilias longed to write to him, but
knew of no address to which it was possible to post a letter. She
worried often over his mysterious absence, and was quite angry with
Dulcie for not taking the matter more keenly to heart.
"But Mr. Bowden and Cousin Clare think he's all right!" protested that
easy going young damsel.
"How do they know? I think you might show a little more interest in your
own brother, who, after all, has been treated extremely badly. It seems
to me hardly decent to circle round Carmel as you do!"
Dulcie opened her blue eyes wide.
"Do I circle round Carmel? Well, really, and why shouldn't I like her?
She's my cousin, and a jolly good sort too! I believe she'll give us all
a far better time at the Chase than Everard would have done. He always
wanted everything just his own way. None of us ever had an innings when
he was at home. I never could see why the eldest of a family should lord
it so over the others."
"You never had any proper sense of propriety!" retorted Lilias
indignantly. "_I_ believe in keeping up the traditions of the Ingletons,
and the estate has always descended strictly in the male line. It's only
right it should have been left to Everard instead of to a girl, and I'll
always say so. There!"
Dulcie shrugged her shoulders.
"Say what you like, Sister o' Mine! The twentieth century is different
from the Middle Ages, and people don't bother so much nowadays as they
did about descent and all that. The owner of an estate hasn't to fight
for it. Oh yes, of course I'm glad I'm an Ingleton, but Carmel's an
Ingleton too, as much as we are, and if the Chase is hers we can't help
it, and we may just as well make the best of it!"
With which piece of philosophy, Dulcie turned away, leaving Lilias to
shake her head over the decay of family feeling, and the degeneracy of
younger sisters.
It was perhaps Carmel's rendering of the Pastorale dance that suggested
to Miss Walters a scheme of entertainment for the garden fête which the
girls were to give in aid of the "Homes for Waifs and Strays." She
decided that the garden of Chilcombe Hall would make an excellent
background for some classic representations, and that nothing could be
prettier than old Greek costumes. By a stroke of great good luck she
managed to engage Miss Adams, a former pupil who had been studying
classic dancing in Paris, to come for a few weeks and train the
performers. Miss Adams was a tremendous enthusiast, and arrived full of
ideas which she was burning to teach to the school. The girls were
delighted with her methods. It was quite a new phase of dancing to trip
barefooted on the lawn, holding up garlands of flowers. They liked the
exercises which she gave them for the cultivation of grace, and
practised classic attitudes on all occasions, with more or less success.
"You go about the school so exactly like Minerva!" complained Noreen to
Phillida, rather dismayed by the sudden change in her lively friend from
bounding spirits to a statuesque pose. "Need you always walk as if you
were thinking of the shape of your ankles?"
Phillida shook her head carefully, so as not to disarrange the Greek
fillet she was wearing.
"It's been too hot lately to tear round and play tennis. I think, too,
that what Miss Adams says is quite right. English girls _are_ lacking in
grace and dignity. Just look at the way Ida and Joyce are flopping about
now. An artist would have fits to see them!"
"Well, of course they're not sitting for their portraits. Oh yes! I love
dancing, but I don't want to worry about being graceful all day long!"
"That's just the point, though," persisted Phillida, who was a zealous
convert. "The dances are to make you graceful _always_. You so get into
the poetry of motion that it's quite impossible for you ever to flop
again!"
"Is it? Oh, Kafoozalum!" burbled Noreen, exploding into a series of
chuckles. "'She never flopped again!' We ought to make a parody on that
from the poem of 'The White Ship.'
"Miss Adams to the school came down,
The classic wave rolled on:
And what was cricket's latest score
To those who danced alone?
"From dawn they practised attitudes
Until the sun did wane;
And fast confirmed in Grecian pose,
They never flopped again!"
"You may mock as much as you please!" retorted Phillida, "but it's sheer
envy because you know you won't be chosen as a wood nymph. Play cricket
and tennis if you wish, by all means! But _I_ think when we're having a
performance we may just as well give our minds to it, and do it
properly, especially when Miss Adams is here to teach us."
"Right you are! Float on, O goddess! You're getting too ethereal for the
school. I shall be glad when the entertainment's over, and we can have a
cricket match again. It's decidedly more in my line!"
Miss Adams, with all the enthusiasm of youth and a new vocation, was
determined to make the entertainment a success. She spared no trouble
over constant rehearsals, and having weeded out those girls who could
not adapt themselves to her methods, she kept the rest well at work in
any time that was available. She determined not only to have dances, but
to give in addition a short Greek play, and selected for that purpose
the famous fifteenth idyll of Theocritus.
"But we're not to act it in Greek, surely!" objected Edith in alarm.
"It's bad enough to have to learn French plays! We'd never be able to
tackle Greek!" urged Dulcie, absolutely aghast.
"Don't look so scared!" laughed Miss Adams. "I'm not going to ask you to
give it in Greek. Probably few people would understand it if you did! I
have a delightful translation here. It ought to take very well indeed
with the audience. Come and squat on the grass, and I'll read it aloud
to you first, and then I'll allot parts."
"Is it _very_ stiff and educational?" groaned Dulcie, obeying
unwillingly.
"Wait and see! Come under the shade of the lilac bush, it's so hot to
sit in the sun."
The girls composed themselves into attitudes of more or less classic
elegance, and Miss Adams, book in hand, began to read.
"IDYLL XV
"_Gorgo._ Is Praxinoë at home?
"_Praxinoë._ Dear Gorgo, how long it is since you have been here! She
_is_ at home. The wonder is that you have got here at last. Eunoë,
see that she has a chair. Throw a cushion on it, too.
"_Gorgo._ It does most charmingly as it is.
"_Praxinoë._ Do sit down.
"_Gorgo._ Oh, what a thing spirit is! I have scarcely got to you
alive, Praxinoë! What a huge crowd! What hosts of four-in-hands!
Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform. And the road
is endless: yes, you really live _too_ far away!
"_Praxinoë._ It is all the fault of that madman of mine! Here he came
to the ends of the earth, and took--a hole, not a house, and all
that we might not be neighbors. The jealous wretch, always the
same, ever for spite!
"_Gorgo._ Don't talk of Dinon, your husband, like that, my dear girl,
before the little boy. Look how he is staring at you! Never mind,
Zopyrion, sweet child, she is not speaking about papa.
"_Praxinoë._ Our Lady Persephone! The child takes notice!
"_Gorgo._ Nice papa!
"_Praxinoë._ That papa of his the other day--we call every day 'the
other day'--went to get soap and rouge at the shop, and back he
came to me with salt--the great, big endless fellow!"
"But, Miss Adams," interrupted Dulcie, "surely this isn't an old Greek
play? It sounds absolutely and entirely modern!"
"As a matter of fact, it was written by Theocritus about the year 266 B.
C. It describes the visit paid by two Syracusan ladies residing in
Alexandria to the festival of Adonis. Their manners and talk then must
have been very similar to ours of to-day. Listen to the part where they
are getting ready to start.
"_Gorgo._ It seems nearly time to go.
"_Praxinoë._ Idlers have always holidays. Eunoë, bring the water, and
put it down in the middle of the room, lazy creature that you are!
Cats always like to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bring the
water--quicker! I want water first, and how she carries it! Give it
me all the same: don't pour out so much, you extravagant thing!
Stupid girl! Why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have
washed my hands, as heaven would have it! Where is the key of the
big chest? Bring it here.
"_Gorgo._ Praxinoë, that full body becomes you wonderfully. Tell me,
how much did the stuff cost you just off the loom?
"_Praxinoë._ Don't speak of it, Gorgo! More than eight pounds in good
silver money--and the work on it! I nearly slaved my soul out over
it.
"_Gorgo._ Well, it is _most_ successful: all you could wish.
"_Praxinoë._ Thanks for the pretty speech. Eunoë, bring my shawl, and
set my hat on my head, the fashionable way. No, Zopyrion, I don't
mean to take _you_! Boo! Bogies! There's a horse that bites! Cry as
much as you please, but I cannot have you lamed. Let us be moving.
Phrygia, take the child, and keep him amused, call in the dog, and
shut the street door!"
"It's exactly like anybody going out to-day!" commented Carmel, as Miss
Adams came to a pause.
"Why does it seem so modern?" asked Dulcie.
"Because it was written during the zenith of Greece's history, and one
great civilization always resembles another. England of to-day is far
more in touch with the times of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome,
than with the Middle Ages. Read Chaucer, and you find his mental outlook
is that of a child of seven. In the days of the Plantagenets grown men
and women enjoyed stories of a crude simplicity that now only appeals
to children. The human race is always progressing in great successive
waves of civilization; after each wave breaks, a time of barbarism
prevails, till man is again educated to a higher growth. We're living at
the top of a wave at present!"
"I remember," said Carmel, "when Mother and Daddy took me to Rome, we
saw the busts of the Emperors, and of all sorts of clever people, who'd
lived in about the first century, and we all said: 'Oh, aren't their
faces just like people of to-day?' We amused ourselves with saying one
was a lawyer, and another a doctor, and calling some of them after our
friends. Then we went afterwards to an exhibition of sixteenth-century
portraits; perhaps the artists hadn't learnt to paint well, but at any
rate the faces were utterly different from people of to-day. They seemed
quite another type altogether--not so intelligent or so interesting. We
were tremendously struck with the difference."
"It marks my point," said Miss Adams.
"What else do Gorgo and Praxinoë do?" asked Edith.
"They go into Alexandria for the festival, and find the streets so
crowded that they are almost frightened to death, and have hard work not
to lose Eunoë, the slave girl, whom they have taken with them; she
nearly gets squeezed as they pass in at the door. They go into raptures
over an exhibition of embroideries. 'Lady Athene,' says Praxinoë, 'what
spinning-women wrought them? What painters designed their drawings, so
true they are?' I haven't time to read it all to you now, but I must
just give you the little bit where they quarrel with a stranger. It's
too absolutely priceless.
"_A Stranger._ You weariful women, do cease your endless cooing talk!
You bore one to death with your eternal broad vowels!
"_Gorgo._ Indeed! And where may this person come from? What is it to
you if we _are_ chatterboxes? Give orders to your own servants,
sir. Do you pretend to command ladies of Syracuse? If you must
know, we are Corinthians by descent, like Bellerophon himself, and
we speak Peloponnesian. Dorian women may lawfully speak Doric, I
presume?"
"Oh, _do_ let me be Gorgo!" begged Dulcie. "I love her; she's so smart
and sarcastic. Isn't it exactly like somebody talking during a concert,
and a person in the row in front objecting, and a friend butting in with
rude remarks? That's what generally happens."
"Did people's accent matter in Greek as much as it does in English?"
asked Prissie.
"Evidently. The Alexandrian gentleman--who sounds a decided fop--did not
approve of a Doric pronunciation. No doubt broad vowels were out of
fashion. I believe I shall give his part to Edith. It's a small one,
but it has scope for a good deal of acting."
"And who is to be Praxinoë, please?"
"I think I must choose Carmel. She ought to act in an idyll by
Theocritus, as he was a Sicilian like herself. Would he find Sicily much
altered, Carmel, if he came back? Or is it the same after two thousand
years?"
"There are still goatherds on the mountains, though we don't see wood
nymphs now!"
"No, the wood nymphs have all trotted over to England, and are going to
give a performance in aid of the 'Waifs and Strays!'" said Dulcie. "I
hope Apollo will remember them, and send them a fine day, if he's
anything to do with the weather over here. Perhaps his sun chariot only
runs on the Mediterranean route."
"Surely he's got an aeroplane by now!" laughed Edith. "We'll send him a
wireless message to remind him of his duty. 'Nymphs dancing Thursday
week at 2.30 P. M. Kindly cable special supply of sunshine.'"
"Now, girls, you're getting silly!" said Miss Adams, shutting her book
and rising. "If we want to make a success of our classic afternoon,
we've plenty of hard work before us. I'm going on with costumes at
present, and anybody who cares to volunteer can fetch her thimble and a
needle and cotton, and hem a chiton."