No morning brightened Hermon’s night of darkness.
When the returned slave had finished his report, the sun was already
shining into his master’s room.
Without lying down again, the latter went at once to the Tennis notary,
who had moved to Alexandria two months before, and with his assistance
raised the money which his friend needed.
Worthy Melampus had received the news that Myrtilus was still alive in a
very singular manner. Even now he could grasp only one thing at a time,
and he loved Hermon with sincere devotion. Therefore the lawyer who
had so zealously striven to expedite the blind man’s entering into
possession of his friend’s inheritance would very willingly have
permitted Myrtilus--doubtless an invalid--to continue to rest quietly
among the dead. Yet his kind heart rejoiced at the deliverance of the
famous young artist, and so during Hermon’s story he had passed from
sincere regret to loud expressions of joyous sympathy.
Lastly, he had placed his whole property at the disposal of Hermon, who
had paid him liberally for his work, to provide for the blind sculptor’s
future. This generous offer had been declined; but he now assisted
Hermon to prepare the emancipation papers for his faithful Bias, and
found a ship that was bound to Tanis. Toward evening he accompanied
Hermon to the harbour and, after a cordial farewell from his helpful
friend, the artist, with the new “freedman” Bias and the slave clerk
Patran, went on board the vessel, now ready to sail.
The voyage was one of the speediest, yet the end came too soon for both
master and servant--Hermon had not yet heard enough of the friend beyond
his reach, and Bias was far from having related everything he desired
to tell about Myrtilus and Ledscha; yet he was now permitted to express
every opinion that entered his mind, and this had occupied a great deal
of time.
Bias also sought to know much more about Hermon’s past and future than
he had yet learned, not merely from curiosity, but because he foresaw
that Myrtilus would not cease to question him about his blind friend.
The misfortune must have produced a deep and lasting effect upon the
artist’s joyous nature, for his whole bearing was pervaded by such
earnestness and dignity that years, instead of months, seemed to have
elapsed since their separation.
It was characteristic of Daphne that her lover’s blindness did not
alienate her from him; yet why had not the girl, who still desired to
become his wife, been able to wed the helpless man who had lost his
sight? If the father did not wish to be separated from his daughter,
surely he could live with the young couple. A home was quickly made
everywhere for the rich, and, if Archias was tired of his house in
Alexandria, as Hermon had intimated, there was room enough in the world
for a new one.
But that was the way with things here below! Man was the cause of man’s
misfortune! Daphne and Hermon remained the same; but Archias from an
affectionate father had become transformed into an entirely different
person. If the former had been allowed to follow their inclinations,
they would now be united and happy, while, because a third person so
willed, they must go their way solitary and wretched.
He expressed this view to his master, and insisted upon his opinion
until Hermon confided to him what had driven Archias from Alexandria.
Patran, Bias’s successor, was by no means satisfactory to him. Had
Hermon retained his sight, he certainly would not have purchased him, in
spite of his skill as a scribe, for the Egyptian had a “bad face.”
Oh, if only he could have been permitted to stay with his benefactor
instead of this sullen man! How carefully he would have removed the
stones from his darkened pathway!
During the voyage he was obliged to undergo severe struggles to keep the
oath of secrecy imposed upon him; but perjury threatened him with the
most horrible tortures, not to mention the sorceress Tabus, whom he was
to meet.
So Myrtilus’s abode remained unknown to Hermon.
Bias approved his master’s intention of going into the desert. He had
often seen the oracle of Amon tested, and he himself had experienced the
healthfulness of the desert air. Besides, it made him proud to see that
Hermon was disposed to follow his suggestion of pitching his tent in a
spot which he designated. This was at the end of the arm of the sea at
Clysma. Several trees grew there beside small springs, and a peaceful
family of Amalekites raised vegetables in their little garden, situated
on higher ground, watered by the desert wells.
When a boy, before the doom of slavery had been pronounced upon him
and his father, his mother, by the priest’s advice, took him there to
recover from the severe attack of fever which he could not shake off
amid the damp papyrus plantations surrounding his parents’ house. In
the dry, pure air of the desert he recovered, and he would guide Hermon
there before returning to Myrtilus.
From Tanis they reached Tennis in a few hours, and found shelter in the
home of the superintendent of Archias’s weaving establishments, whose
hospitality Myrtilus and Hermon had enjoyed before their installation
in the white house, now burned to the ground. The Alexandrian bills of
exchange were paid in gold by the lessee of the royal bank, who was a
good friend of Hermon. Toward evening, both rowed to the Owl’s Nest,
taking the five talents with which the runaway wife intended to purchase
freedom from her husband.
As the men approached the central door of the pirates’ house, a
middy-aged Biamite woman appeared and rudely ordered them to leave
the island. Tabus was weak, and refused to see visitors. But she was
mistaken; for when Bias, in the dialect of his tribe, shouted loudly
that messengers from the wife of her grandson Hanno had arrived, there
was a movement at the back of the room, and broken sentences, gasped
with difficulty, expressed the old dame’s wish to receive the strangers.
On a sheep’s-wool couch, over which was spread a wolfskin, the last
gift of her son Satabus, lay the sorceress, who raised herself as Hermon
passed through the door.
After his greeting, she pointed to her deaf ear and begged him to
speak louder. At the same time she gazed into his eyes with a keen,
penetrating glance, and interrupted him by the question: “The Greek
sculptor whose studio was burned over his head? And blind? Blind still?”
“In both eyes,” Bias answered for his master.
“And you, fellow?” the old dame asked; then, recollecting herself,
stopped the reply on the servant’s lips with the hasty remark: “You
are the blackbeard’s slave--a Biamite? Oh, I remember perfectly! You
disappeared with the burning house.”
Then she gazed intently and thoughtfully from one to the other, and
at last, pointing to Bias, muttered in a whisper: “You alone come from
Hanno and Ledscha, and were with them on the Hydra? Very well. What news
have you for the old woman from the young couple?”
The freedman began to relate what brought him to the Owl’s Nest, and
the gray-haired crone listened eagerly until he said that Ledscha lived
unhappily with her husband, and therefore had left him. She sent back
to her, as the head of Hanno’s family, the bridal dowry with which Hanno
had bought her from her father as his wife.
Then Tabus struggled into a little more erect posture, and asked: “What
does this mean? Five talents--and gold, not silver talents? And she
sends the money to me? To me? And she ran away from her husband? But
no--no! Once more--you are a Biamite--repeat it in our own language--and
loudly. This ear is the better one.”
Bias obeyed, and the old dame listened to the end without interrupting
him: then raising her brown right hand, covered with a network of
blue-black veins, she clinched it into a fist, which she shook far more
violently than Bias would have believed possible in her weak condition.
At the same time she pressed her lips so tightly together that her
toothless mouth deepened into a hole, and her dim eyes shone with a
keen, menacing light. For some time she found no reply, though strange,
rattling, gasping sounds escaped her heaving breast.
At last she succeeded in uttering words, and shrieked shrilly:
“This--this--away with the golden trash! With the bridal dowry of the
family rejected, and once more free, the base fool thinks she would be
like the captive fox that gnawed the rope! Oh, this age, these people!
And this, this is the haughty, strong Ledscha, the daughter of the
Biamites, who--there stands the blind girl--deceiver!--who so admirably
avenged herself?”
Here her voice failed, and Hermon began to speak to assure her that she
understood Ledscha’s wish aright. Then he asked her for a token by which
she acknowledged the receipt of the gold, which he handed her in a stout
linen bag.
But his purpose was not fulfilled, for suddenly, flaming with passionate
wrath, she thrust the purse aside, groaning: “Not an obol of the
accursed destruction of souls shall come back to Hanno, nor even into
the family store. Until his heart and hers stop beating, the most
indissoluble bond will unite both. She desires to ransom herself from
a lawful marriage concluded by her father, as if she were a captive of
war; perhaps she even wants to follow another. Hanno, brave lad, was
ready to go to death for her sake, and she rewards him by bringing
shame on his head and disgrace on us all. Oh, these times, this world!
Everything that is inviolable and holy trampled in the dust! But they
are not all so! In spite of Grecian infidelity, marriage is still
honoured among our people. But she who mocks what is sacred, and
tramples holy customs under foot, shall be accursed, execrated, given
over to want, hunger, disease, death!”
With rattling breath and closed eyes she leaned farther back against the
cushions that supported her; but Bias, in their common language, tried
to soothe her, and informed her that, though Ledscha had probably run
away from her husband, she had by no means renounced her vengeance. He
was bringing two talents with him to place in the Temple of Nemesis.
“Of Nemesis?” repeated the old dame. Then she tried to raise herself
and, as she constantly sank back again, Bias aided her. But she had
scarcely recovered her sitting posture when she gasped to the freedman:
“Nemesis, who helped, and is to continue to help her to destroy her foe?
Well, well! Five talents--a great sum, a great sum! But the more the
better! To Nemesis with them, to Ate and the Erinyes! The talons of the
avenging goddess shall tear the beautiful face, the heart, and the liver
of the accursed one! A twofold malediction on her who has wronged the
son of my Satabus!”
While speaking, her head nodded swiftly up and down, and when at last
she bowed it wearily, her visitors heard her murmur the names of Satabus
and Hanno, sometimes tenderly, sometimes mournfully.
Finally she asked whether any one else was concerned in Ledscha’s
flight; and when she learned that a Gallic bridge-builder accompanied
the fugitive wife, she again started up as if frantic, exclaiming: “Yes,
to Nemesis with the gold! We neither need nor want it, and Satabus, my
son, he will bless me for renunciation--”
Here exhaustion again silenced her. She gazed mutely and thoughtfully
into vacancy, until at last, turning to Bias, she began more calmly:
“You will see her again, man, and must tell her what the clan of Tabus
bought with her talents. Take her my curse, and let her know that
her friends would be my foes, and her foes should find in Tabus a
benefactress!”
Then, deeply buried in thought, she again fixed her eyes on the floor;
but at last she called to Hermon, saying: “You, blind Greek--am I not
right?--the torch was thrust into your face, and you lost the sight of
both eyes?”
The artist assented to this question; but she bade him sit down before
her, and when he bent his face near her she raised one lid after the
other with trembling fingers, yet lightly and skilfully, gazed long
and intently into his eyes, and murmured: “Like black Psoti and lawless
Simeon, and they are both cured.”
“Can you restore me?” Hermon now asked in great excitement. “Answer
me honestly, you experienced woman! Give me back my sight, and demand
whatever gold and valuables I still possess--”
“Keep them,” Tabus contemptuously interrupted. “Not for gold or goods
will I restore you the best gift man can lose. I will cure you because
you are the person to whom the infamous wretch most ardently wished the
sorest trouble. When she hoped to destroy you, she perceived in this
deed the happiness which had been promised to her on a night when
the full moon was shining. To-day--this very night--the disk
between Astarte’s horns rounds again, and presently--wait a little
while!--presently you shall have what the light restores you--” Then she
called the Biamite woman, ordered her to bring the medicine chest, and
took from it one vessel after another. The box she was seeking was
among the last and, while handing it to Bias, she muttered: “Oh, yes,
certainly--it does one good to destroy a foe, but no less to make her
foe happy!”
Turning to the freedman, she went on in a louder tone: “You, slave,
shall inform Hanno’s wife that old Tabus gave the sculptor, whose
blindness she caused, the remedy which restored the sight of black
Psoti, whom she knew.” Here she paused, gazed upward, and murmured
almost unintelligibly: “Satabus, Hanno! If this is the last act of the
old mother, it will give ye pleasure.”
Then she told Hermon to kneel again, and ordered the slave to hold the
lamp which her nurse Tasia had just lighted at the hearth fire.
“The last,” she said, looking into the box, “but it will be enough. The
odour of the herb in the salve is as strong as if it had been prepared
yesterday.”
She laid the first bandage on Hermon’s eyes with her own weak fingers,
at the same time muttering an incantation; but it did not seem to
satisfy her. Great excitement had taken possession of her, and as the
silver light of the full moon shone into her room she waved her hands
before the artist’s eyes and fixed her gaze upon the threshold illumined
by the moonbeams, ejaculating sentences incomprehensible to the blind
man. Bias supported her, for she had risen to her full height, and he
felt how she tottered and trembled.
Yet her strength held out to whisper to Hermon: “Nearer, still nearer!
By the light of the august one whose rays greet us, let it be said: You
will see again. Await your recovery patiently in a quiet place in the
pure air, not in the city. Refrain from everything with which the Greeks
intoxicate themselves. Shun wine, and whatever heats the blood. Recovery
is coming; I see it drawing near. You will see again as surely as I now
curse the woman who abandoned the husband to whom she vowed fidelity.
She rejoiced over your blindness, and she will gnash her teeth with rage
and grief when she hears that it was Tabus who brought light into the
darkness that surrounds you.”
With these words she pushed off the freedman’s supporting arms and sank
back upon the couch.
Again Hermon tried to thank her; but she would not permit it, and said
in an almost inaudible tone: “I really did not give the salve to do you
good--the last act of all--”
Finally she murmured a few words of direction for its use, and added
that he must keep the sunlight from his blind eyes by bandages and
shades, as if it were a cruel foe.
When she paused, and Bias asked her another question, she pointed to the
door, exclaiming as loudly as her weakness permitted, “Go, I tell you,
go!”
Hermon obeyed and left her, accompanied by the freedman, who carried the
box of salve so full of precious promise.
The next morning Bias delivered to the astonished priest of Nemesis the
large gifts intended for the avenging goddess.
Before Hermon entered the boat with him and his Egyptian slave, the
freedman told his master that Gula was again living in perfect harmony
with the husband who had cast her off, and Taus, Ledscha’s younger
sister, was the wife of the young Biamite who, she had feared, would
give up his wooing on account of her visit to Hermon’s studio.
After a long voyage through the canal which had been dug a short time
before, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, the three men
reached Clysma. Opposite to it, on the eastern shore of the narrow
northern point of the Erythraean sea--[Red Sea]--lay the goal of their
journey, and thither Bias led his blind master, followed by the slave,
on shore.