THE HOUSE ON THE ROAD TO NAUPLIA
The horse Mitsos rode had been stabled all day, and coming out fresh
into the cool night air kept him busy for a time snuffing uneasily
at the wafts of foul air that blew from the town, and shying right
and left at shapes that lay on the road-side. Once a dead body was
stretched straight across the path, and the brute wheeled round,
nearly unseating Mitsos, and tried to bolt back to Tripoli again. But
by-and-by, as it got used to the night, and the steadiness of the lad's
hand gave it confidence, it went more soberly, and settled down into a
gentle trot up the road leading from the plain over the mountain. As
they left the town behind the air grew fresher, and soon came pure and
cool from the north. The night was clear, but for a few wisps of cloud
that drifted southward in wavering lines of delicate pearly gray, so
thin that the starlight suffused them and turned them into a luminous
haze. The path lay low between bold rocks that climbed up on each side,
and to the right, among oleanders, a stream talked idly, as in sleep.
Above, the stars burned bright and close, set in the blue velvet of the
sky; and to the east the blue was tinged with dove color, showing that
the moon was nigh to its rising. From some shepherd's hut on the hills
came the sharp bark of a dog, sounding faint yet curiously distinct in
the alert air, as in the north sounds come sharp-cut and ringing on a
frosty night. As he went higher the dry smell of the summer-scorched
vegetation was changed for something fresher, coming from the upland
pastures, and while his horse, now requiring no attention, went with
straining shoulders and drooped head up from slope to slope, Mitsos
knew that he had been right to come alone. Since those nights he had
spent with Suleima between sea and sky, the loneliness and quietude of
night, and the setting of the secret hours he had spent with her, had
always woke in him an undefined, incommunicable thrill, a calling up
of those dear ghosts of the past. To be alone at night was nearest to
being with her, and often in these last weeks he had stolen out of his
hut when the camp was still and night at its midmost to conjure up that
same feeling, which the sight of objects associated with some one loved
brings with it. Infinitely dear as she had been to him, there lingered
round the remembrance of her a something dim, something in common with
starlight, and great vague stretches of silent sea, and the pearliness
of the sky before the imminent moonrise. It was that complexion of his
sorrow he wished to recapture. Tripoli was like dreaming of her through
the horrible distortion of a nightmare; this the serener bitterness
of a quieter vision. Round his thoughts of Nicholas there hovered a
splendid halo; the glory of his life and the triumph of his death made
the heart bow down in a kind of thankful wonder, drowning regret. For
if he, as Germanos had said, had gone like the bridegroom to the bride,
should those who loved him mourn? Strangely mixed had come the boon for
which Nicholas, for which Suleima, had died, and at present he was too
stunned to be able to picture it, or the price paid, with clearness of
focus, for this limited mind within us is soon drowned by shocks like
these coming in spate together, and we do not realize them till the
first turbid flood has passed.
[Illustration: "'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"]
The moon had risen before he reached the top of the pass, and,
following a strange but overwhelming desire, he pushed on quickly,
for he longed to look on the bay again by night. Another hour's quick
riding brought him to the head of a ravine which ran straight down to
the sea, and at the bottom, lying like the clipping from a silver nail,
was the farther edge of the bay, ashine with the risen moon; and when
Mitsos saw it his heart was all athirst for home. Gradually, as he went
down, the lower hills marched like shadows to the right and left, and
between moonsetting and sunrise he stood on the edge of the shelving
cove again, where he had brought the fish to land one night, and once
again all was still but for a whisper in the dry-tongued reeds and
the lisp of sand-quenched ripples. But never again would he and one
beside him sit there filled through and through with love, and never
again would the man he had loved pass by like the shadow of a hawk on
one of those swift, secret errands. Yet, as he had hoped, there still
lingered round the place a sweetness of sorrow. Horror had come not
here, nor any bloodshed, nor crash of war, and none knew the message
the spot held for him, its garnered store on which his heart had fed.
Then leaving it, still rounded by the infinite night, he passed on by
the white house at the head of the bay, whose sea-wall had been to him
the gates of love flung open, and just after sunrise he struck the
road on the other side of the water, and three hundred yards off were
the whistling poplars by the fountain, and his father's house and the
garden-gate, and the grave and memory of his boyhood. The risen sun
spun mists out of the night dews and webs of sweet smell from the damp
earth. It struck a galaxy of stars from the burnished surface of the
bay, and from the heart of some bush-bowered bird it drew forth an
inimitable song.
So he was come to the gate, where he tied up his horse while he should
go inside, yearning to see his father; but as he walked up the path,
raising his eyes he saw him already out and working in the vineyard
beyond, and he would have passed by and gone to him there when, of a
sudden, he stopped, and his heart stopped too.
For the house door was open, and from inside--it seemed at first only
his own thoughts made audible--came a voice singing, and it sang:
"Dig we deep among the vines,
Give the sweet spring showers a home."
Then came a little feeble cry as from some young thing, and the singing
stopped, and a mother's voice, so it seemed, cooed soothing to her
baby; and with that Mitsos passed not on to the vineyard, but went in.
Suleima, busied with the child--the "littlest Mitsos," so she told
herself--heard not his step till he was in the doorway, but then looked
up, thinking it was her father, though earlier than his wont. And with
a choking cry, hands outstretched, and a voice from a bursting heart:
"Suleima!" cried Mitsos.
THE END