In the Cave

I

THE fountain stood quite near the sea. Behind it rose the houses almost up to the old mill on top of the hill. Two marble dolphins twisted their tails round a trident on the one side of it; on the other was an inscription, half-effaced by the waves which splashed against it in the winter, when the ponente blew. Round the fountain, on the broad stone ledge, the red earthen pitchers were waiting their turn to be filled, while the women stood below, chattering and gesticulating.

It was chilly already, though only mid-October, and their thin cotton skirts flapped in the wind. Some of the older ones had little black shawls thrown over their head and shoulders. It had rained two or three times in the last week, and was preparing to rain again; Barba Stathi, who had just passed with his donkey, going up to the hills for thyme, had looked at the clouds over the Sleeper and told them so.

There was always plenty to talk over at the fountain, but this morning the women seemed occupied with some specially engrossing subject. The heads were close together, and the piercing Poriote voices rose high and shrill, Kyra Marina’s above all the others, notwithstanding her seventy years.

‘Patience, patience!’ she repeated as they crowded round her. ‘Patience! let me tell you — let me breathe — but you are choking me, my poor ones. Yes, yes, they are here: with my own eyes I saw them, four of them, sitting just inside Sotiro’s coffee-house. Sotiro was trying to block the doorway with his fat body, but I saw the gleam of their swords between his legs. Eh, eh, I am old, but my eyes are good yet. I see most things that are to be seen.’

‘And many that are not,’ put in Kyra Sophoula quietly, as she placed her pitcher under the running water to be filled.

‘You, Kyra Sophoula,’ cried the old woman furiously, ‘measure your words better, will you? What I saw is there to be seen by all, and if any one says the contrary, I ’ll make him eat his tongue before I have done with him. Besides, who are you, pray, to set up for disbelieving me? If you do not know me yet, you had better find out. I am a housekeeping woman, I am; ask whom you will. What do you take me for? Am I a worker for strange folks? Have I ever scrubbed floors for a drachma a day and my food? Has any one ever seen me gadding about from door to door with rotten old herbs to sell?’

These biting allusions referred to various narrow straits to which Kyra Sophoula’s necessities had sometimes reduced her.

Kyra Marina would have continued long in the same strain, but she was interrupted by a wheezing cough, and when she recovered her breath the others had no mind to let her waste it in an altercation such as they might hear every day and twice a day, if they were so minded, but brought her back to the point of interest.

‘Don’t you mind her, Kyra Marina; every one knows you here,’ interposed Krinio soothingly. ‘Tell us what you heard. Is it for him the soldiers are here, think you? or for Yanni, perhaps, who stole old Ghika’s sacks of flour? He said he would get him sent to prison for it.’

‘Yanni, indeed!’ snorted Kyra Marina contemptuously. ‘Would four soldiers be coming after Yanni? Does an eagle catch flies? No, no, they are after Stamati sure enough; and if he be not on the island, well, he is not very far away from it.’

‘Why all this fuss about him, I wonder,’ asked Moska, the baker’s wife, settling her pitcher on her shoulder. ‘It is neither the first nor the last time there has been a knife-thrust or a row between the prisoners at Ægina.’

‘As you say, neighbor, neither the first nor the last, but then you see it was not another prisoner Stamati stuck his knife into this time; that would have been soon forgotten; it was the chief warder, and he never lived to say a word after it, either, poor man!’

There were voices raised and there was a general uplifting of arms, some old women adding, —

‘God rest his soul!’

‘And how could he get out of the prison, once he had done the evil ? ’ asked Krinio; ‘and how came he here?’

‘They say down on the quay,’ and Kyra Marina lowered her voice, ‘that he was brought over by night in Capetan Leftheri’s boat — he that was cousin to Stamati’s father, you know. As for getting out, well, a prison has windows, though they may be high up, and a file and a rope can be bought if they are a bit dear. Besides it was night, so I have heard, and the poor warder was fast asleep when the knife was stuck into him.’

‘Then you have heard a lie!’ cried Kyra Sophoula. ‘Stamati got into prison for stabbing a man who insulted him, and he was always wild enough, as all know; but he comes of good blood and he would never kill a sleeping man!

‘ I know what I know,’ said Kyra Marina shrilly, ‘and good blood or bad blood, he will do well to keep safe hidden now the soldiers are here, for it will go ill with him if they catch him.’

Her granddaughter Youla, who stood close to her, turned rather pale. She was a handsome black-haired girl, and sweet words had been exchanged between her and Stamati some time before his trouble, though they had ended in nothing.

‘What will they do to him if they catch him, Yiayia?’

‘They will shorten him, my lass, they will shorten him by a head, certain sure; aye, by a head they will shorten him.’ She repeated it again and again, shaking her wicked old head, and cackling with delight over her grim joke.

As they were speaking, a young woman came down one of the rocky streets that led from the village above to the fountain, with her empty pitcher in her hands. She had a sallow skin, dull brown hair parted under a white kerchief, and walked with a limp.

Moska saw her first; she gave a nudge to Krinio’s elbow, Krinio whispered to Panayota, Panayota to Kyra Marina, and all faces were turned toward her. Somehow no one had expected her at the fountain that morning.

She limped down slowly, and putting her pitcher in a line with the others, sat down on the ledge to wait her turn. Around her was dead silence. Some few shouldered their pitchers and walked away, but the greater part stood still, looking at her curiously.

Suddenly the unusual silence reached her senses. She started up and faced them.

‘Why do you look at me? and what has silenced your tongues? Are you struck dumb, all of you? You were talking fast enough as I came down the street. Of what were you talking?’

Kyra Sophoula laid a hand on her arm.

‘Nothing, Chryssi my girl, nothing; it was only that —’

But Kyra Marina interrupted her viciously.

‘If you must know, we were talking of your precious lover Stamati, whom the soldiers have come after. Eh, but he will look Fine going to Athens in the steamer with the irons on his legs!’

‘If he has fled from prison,’ said Chryssi sullenly, ‘they will take him back to it. What need of Athens?’

’He goes to be judged again,’ put in Moska; ‘it seems he has killed another man.’

A dull red flush covered the girl’s sallow cheeks.

‘Another! ’ she shouted angrily, ‘who says another? — who dares say that the man he stabbed three years ago was killed? that he has not been enjoying his life all these years, drinking and guzzling all day long, stretched at his ease on three chairs, the great fat pig, while my lad was pining in prison. And if he has killed a man now? the great affair! It must have been some one who insulted his honor and deserved his fate.’

‘Ah, but this time,’ said Kyra Marina triumphantly, ‘he has done for himself. I thank the Holy Virgin that Youla here was afraid of your curses when he turned from your yellow face to her pink one, and let him go. I thought her a white-livered fool at the time, but now I see it was God who enlightened her, God Himself who enlightened her. If Vangheli be a bit shorter and weaker than your Stamati, at any rate no one will ever see him dragged away from her in irons; and if his head be not as handsome, at least he will never get it chopped off for stabbing a defenseless Christian in his sleep.’

The girl caught up her empty pitcher and flew wildly at the old woman, and had it not been for Moska and Kyra Sophoula, who seized hold of her promptly, one on each side, it might have gone badly with Kyra Marina.

Chryssi struggled violently for freedom, and the words tumbled over one another so that her utterance was thick and indistinct.

‘You ugly fool!’ she cried out furiously, ‘you wicked old liar! May your legs shrivel and wither up; may your lying tongue choke you! My Stamati kill a sleeping man! He to touch any one who did not stand up against him with another knife in his hand! A bad year to you for such evil words, — a bad year to you! Say it again if you dare. You filthy old hag, say it again! ’

But Kyra Marina had no desire to repeat her words; she had said what she meant to say; besides which, the girl looked like one possessed of a demon, and capable of any violence; so the old woman hobbled off in a hurry, followed by Youla who kept casting frightened glances behind her.

The others dispersed in silence, and Kyra Sophoula, who stayed behind, placed Chryssi’s pitcher under the fountain and stood beside it waiting. The girl, her fury spent, sank down again on the step, her head in her hands.

The water ran into the pitcher in an ascending scale of liquid sound, filled it, gurgled, and overflowed.

‘The jar is full, my child; the water trickles over.’

‘Let it be; I want no water.’

‘Nay, come what may to us, we shall want bread and water till we close our eyes. Come, take up your jar and walk with me to my house. Maroussa has something she would show you.’

‘I thank you, but I will go to no house where that evil thing is believed of my Stamati. Kyra Sophoula, you are a good woman; it is not true, say it is not true?’

‘It is not like the lad as I knew him, but one can never tell. They meet so many bad men in those prisons and it is three years he has been there. But listen, Chryssi,’—and she lowered her voice, — ‘true or not, still the soldiers are here; that is true enough; but they are from Athens, they do not know the country, and it may be some time before they find him. Would you not wish, perhaps, to send him word, or let him know — ’

The girl started up, all the blood left her face, and she clutched hold of the old woman’s arm.

‘Then you know! you can tell me! Is it near? Good God, is it near?’

‘Sh, sh! not so loud, not so loud! Come to the house with me. Barba Stathi said a word in my ear when I brought him out a crust for his beast. He knows the hills well.’

The wind had risen, and as they trudged up the street, the lame girl hardly keeping up with the wiry little old woman, the heavy clouds were lowering and a few drops fell.

II

Chryssi stayed some time in Kyra Sophoula’s little house with the covered terrace, and about an hour after she had entered it, Maroussa, Kyra Sophoula’s pretty black-haired granddaughter, might, have been seen hurrying back to the house with one of the boys from Capetan Leftheri’s boat. It was after the big clock in the tower of the Naval School had struck two that Chryssi, holding a small bottle of yellow wine in her hand, came down the wooden stairs that led from the terrace to the little narrow courtyard full of the small orange chrysanthemums, ‘Saint Dimitri’s flowers,’ that were in full bloom just then.

She never gave them a glance though; being a Poriote woman she was fond of flowers, but she brushed past them, limped down the street, under the dark arch, and climbed up some steps cut in the rock, with a painful upheaval of one side of her body at the mounting of each step, till she reached the door of her own little blue-washed house. She stopped a moment before entering, raised her head and passed her hand over her eyes. The heavy black clouds effaced the Sleeper entirely from the horizon, and as she stood there watching, the sea turned leaden and looked almost solid. A pale metallic light was over all the bay; after a few seconds of stillness, of waiting, a cold rush of air raised whirlwinds of leaves and dust before it, and then the whole heavens seemed to open in one sheet of water.

She pushed open the door, and closing it alter her turned the big key in the lock with both her hands, for she was not very strong. There was a bare comfortless kitchen, flagged with rough gray stones. The girl closed the wooden shutters of the two windows, fastening the window-panes inside them. The rain pattered against the shutters, and the light in the room was dim. Quickly she took off her white kerchief and covered her head and shoulders with a litlle black shawl; over her cotton skirt she put on a heavier one of rough gray homespun wool, and slipped her feet into a pair of yellow leather shoes that had once been her father’s. She stole across the room and knelt down before her mother’s dower chest. It was not a highly polished one, such as most of the Poriote women possessed, but a rough wooden one painted a bright blue: they had always been poor. From under a pile of coarse towels neatly marked in red, she drew out a checked handkerchief tightly knotted up. Its contents crackled as she thrust it into the bosom of her gown.

Taking up the bottle of wine which she had left on the table, she put it with a good half of a big brownish loaf into a deep hanging pocket which she tied carefully round her waist. Then she limped to the door and listened; nothing but the steady downpour of the rain — no passing steps. She turned the key gently and looked out.

‘The waterfalls of heaven have opened,’ she muttered; ‘so much the better, so much the better; what Christian will venture up the hills on such a day?’

She stepped resolutely over the threshold. The rain poured down with tropical violence. It came in blinding sheets, poured countless streams tinged with the red earth of the hills into the bay, changing its color to a muddy brown, and turning all the island into a mist of watery gray.

Chryssi held her shawl on tightly over her bent head with both hands, and ran down, as fast as her lameness would let her, to the water’s edge.

A little boat was stationed under the low sea-wall and a lad was standing up in it, clinging to the rough stones of the wall with his hands as there were no iron rings in that part of it. Close by was a confused shape of mingled man and beast, scarcely discernible in the driving rain.

‘Barba Stathi, is it you?’

‘It is I. Come; the lad waits and the waves lift the boat; it is hard to hold.’

‘You have seen no one pass?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘Where are they now, think you?’

The old man stroked the donkey’s wet ears as he answered in a low voice, ‘At the tavern still. Nasso here heard them say they must be moving, but Sotiro was just bringing out another oke of retsinato, and it will not be just yet that they will start.’

‘Oh, my God! an oke is soon drunk, and they are four.’

‘They have to find the road, remember; and where there are four men there are four minds. Do not fear, you will be there long before them.’

‘You said the little path above the third ravine, right over the old chapel?’

‘Yes; the koumara are red on the bushes all about the path and almost close up the entrance to the cave; you will find it easily.’

‘ I thank you again, and may God rest your dead, Barba Stathi, for this that, you have done for me.’

‘It is nothing. Go; and may the Holy Virgin be with you.’

The girl wrapped the shawl more tightly round her, stepped down into the boat, and the boy rowed rapidly away towards the mainland.

III

Far up above the village of Galata, beyond the olive grove that rises behind it, the mountain is scored by longforgotten torrents into a series of deep ravines. The district is almost entirely uninhabited, and though there are no great heights to climb, there are some narrow passes and steep descents. The vegetation is richer and more varied than on the island, and myrtle, oleander, and arbutus close up the narrow goat-tracks. Clinging plants encircle the trunks of the tallest trees and hang in festoons from one to the other. Here and there, half way up the gorges, there are shallow caves, often only to be reached by steep passes, so hidden in the tangled vegetation that very few know of them. In the old days these were the hiding-places of the klephts, but now they only serve in the colder months to shelter some belated shepherd searching for a lost kid, or now and again some fugitive from justice, or a stray deserter.

Two hours after Chryssi had stepped out of the boat in the pouring rain at Galata, where no one had been out of doors or even on a terrace or at a window to inquire curiously about her errand, she was climbing down a steep goat-track leading to one of these small caves. The storm was over, though the air was still very chilly. The leaves glistened, and the trunks of the trees were darker. Far below, a thin line of smoke from the chimney of the highest inhabited hut above the village was the only sign of living humanity.

The girl moved very cautiously, holding aside the red-berried branches of the arbutus which blocked her way. She bent almost double as she advanced, so that the shrubs should hide her, and kept constantly throwing back glances along the way she had come. Her limp was painfully evident, for the way had been long and the paths stony. Suddenly the track turned abruptly to the left and faced a low dark opening in the rock, half hidden by dwarf oak trees and tall white oleanders. Chryssi dragged herself up the remaining rocks, and pushing aside the arbutus branches, bent her head and entered the cave.

Inside, it was dim and chilly. A man was lying on a heap of dry pine branches,—a man about thirty, worn and haggard-looking. He had a fine head, broad-browed and straight-featured, but three years of prison life had replaced the sunburn by a sickly pallor, and had bent the eyebrows into a continual scowl. His left arm, in a sort of extemporized sling, was fastened to his waist; his right hand, bound in blood-stained rags, lay stretched out before him. The rags were soiled and had been tied on some time, but there were fresh blood-stains among the old ones.

He was not asleep, and started up wildly as the girl darkened the light by standing before the opening.

‘You!’ he cried, ‘you! how did you come? Are you alone? Is all safe?’ Then he leaned against the rock with a suppressed groan, for he had helped himself up by his wounded hand.

‘ I am alone; have no fear.’ She came nearer, half timidly. ‘Your hand is hurt.?’

‘Yes; both of them, curse them.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘This one was scalded with boiling water when I helped to move the big washing cauldrons, there at Ægina; the other I caught between two stones of a wall.’

‘When you got away?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do they pain much?’

‘That would not matter, but the fingers are all smashed up. I cannot move them.’

He stepped past her and looked cautiously out, up and down the ravine, and above on the heights; than he came into the cave again, let himself fall on the pine branches, and looked up at her curiously.

‘How did you find me?’

‘They said you were in the hills about here, and some one who saw you told me.’

‘Who? I have seen no one.’

‘But he saw you.’

‘Barba Stathi, was it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, he must have come close to the opening then yesterday when I slept, for just as I woke I heard a donkey braying in the distance, and when I looked out there was no one in sight; but I thought it could only be Barba Stathi’s beast up here in the hills. It docs not matter much; the old man will never open his mouth to say a word to a stranger.’

‘No; there is no fear.’

Chryssi leaned against the damp wall of the cave to rest her leg, and untied the pocket from round her waist.

‘I have brought you food.’

‘Bring it here; bring it here quickly then. I made Yannako from the stani up above give me a bowl of goat’s milk yesterday, and I have had naught since.’

The girl set the bread before him on the branches, and pulled out the stopper of the bottle.

‘Well,’ he asked irritably after a moment’s pause, ‘why do you stand still and look at me? Cannot you see that I have no use of my hands? Do you expect me to browse like a goat? You were ever a slow-witted maid!’

She did not answer, but kneeling beside him, broke the bread and began to feed him with the pieces. She did it awkwardly, sometimes offering him a second before he had finished the first, and sometimes gazing abstractedly before her while he waited. Two or three times he looked towards the bottle and she lifted it for him to drink. This also she did too high or too low, and the wine trickled down his chin. At last he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pushed away the rest of the bread with his elbow.

‘Help me up if you can,’ he said.

She put her hands under his arms and helped him to stand upright. His clothes were old and torn, with stains of moist reddish earth about them. In his belt was a pistol, and his burned arm was strapped to his body just, above it.

The girl looked at him in silence for a few moments, and then, as though suddenly recognizing the danger of inaction, she started and said hurriedly,

‘Stamati, you must not stay here. The soldiers are down in the village, four of them. They were seen at Sotiro’s. When I left, they were drinking still, but they had talked of starting.’

‘Did you see them yourself, or did they tell you so? ’ he asked in a voice in which there was more curiosity than alarm.

‘ I did not see them, but I know they are there; many saw them. That old hag Kyra Marina told me of it first. She was glad, of course, because of Youla. She said, too, before all the others at the fountain, and may evil find her, she said that this man who is dead, this prison-keeper, that you killed him at night while he slept! you! you! They did not let me tear her to pieces for her lies, but I will do it yet, as sure as they call me Chryssi.’

‘You need not.’

‘Stamati,’ she cried, ‘it is not true?’

‘It is true,’ he answered sullenly.

‘No no, not that; it is not possible.’

‘It is true,’ he repeated doggedly, ‘and why not? The brute insulted the honor of my father before all the lads. I had to kill him. I could not do it the moment the evil words left his lying mouth, for the others would have fallen on me, the cowards, to curry favor, though they all hated him. Do you think, perhaps, a prison is like the village, or the hills, where you can strike when you will? At night when he slept I stuck the knife between his shoulder-blades and ran for it. Capetan Leftheri had stood treat to the sentinels and they were dead drunk.’

‘You killed him,’

‘He had insulted my father; I struck deep enough to have killed twenty men.’

‘And he never heard you? he slept?’

‘Aye, he slept well, I tell you; slept, and never woke again.’

The girl closed her teeth tightly and there was silence for a minute; then she said, ‘It is all the more need that you should go.’

‘Where can I go? ’

‘Do I know? Over the hills, perhaps, to Metochi. I can tell Capetan Leftheri, when I go back, to go there with his boat and meet you. And when you reach Katochi you can go to Yoryi the blacksmith, — Yoryi Kostopoulos, he is my mother’s cousin; a good man; he will not turn you away or betray you. Also, I have brought a little money.’ And she felt in the bosom of her gown for the knotted handkerchief.

Instead of answering, the man went to the opening and looked out.

‘Hush,’ he said. ‘I thought I heard a noise in the ravine below’; then, after a moment’s suspense, ‘No, it was nothing.’

Chryssi touched his arm. ‘You will go?’ she said.

He turned on her angrily. ‘You are mad! Will you tell me with your great wisdom and with your wonderful plans how I may get so far to-night, or tomorrow either, with my hands as you see them? If I stumble and fall on the way I shall stay there like a log till they find me.’

‘And — if they find you?’

‘They will keep me; that you may be sure of; and send me to Athens in the steamer.’

‘And — after?’

He laughed harshly. ‘After, it would be Nauplia, and the guillotine.’

She raised both her hands suddenly and put them round his neck as though to protect it.

‘Stamati,’ she whispered hurriedly, ‘listen to me; there is little time left, and I am afraid. You must leave this cave now, at once; some one may know of it. You say Yannako saw you, and I am not sure of him: he would sell his mother for money. You must hide somewhere close by, and I will stay here and deceive them if they come. I will cry and say I could not find you, and they will look elsewhere. Then as soon as the dark falls you must move on towards Metochi. As for your hands — well, God be a help!’

‘How can you stay here?’ he asked. ‘You can never deceive them. Besides, they are four men, and they have been drinking all day; if they should maltreat you?’

‘Well, and if they should — what then? You will have time lo-get away.’

He looked at her curiously.

‘You are a brave lass,’ he said, ‘and we have had some good days together. Do you remember the big walnut tree by the spring?’

A light came into her eyes.

‘Could I forget? I go there sometimes now, and ask the stones and the trees if they remember those days.’

‘ It was not written by Fate that they should last,’ he said, ‘but you were a good girl always, and a kind one.’

‘ And yet’ — her voice trembled — ‘there was a time when you would have left me for Youla.’

He laughed.

‘A man is a man; you were a good girl, as I said, but she was a handsome one, and moreover her legs were straight.’

The girl caught her lower lip between her teeth, and her arms fell from about his neck.

‘You must go,’she said again; ‘you must go now at once.’

‘It will be no use,’ he answered; ‘even if I could walk straight in the night with no hands to help, how can I lift, food to my lips? how can I drink? How can I strike out against a sheepdog if he fly at my throat ? No; let me be.’

‘But they will kill you if they take you,’ she wailed.

‘They will not kill me.’

‘But if you stay here they will take you, if not to-day then to-morrow,’ she persisted; ‘and if they take you they will surely kill you. Did not you say so yourself?’

He looked down slowly at his belt.

‘Need they take me—alive?’

‘Ah!’ with a smothered cry, ‘Christ, and Holy Virgin! not that! not that! My Stamati, for the name of God, not that! Wait, we must think of something; let me think,’ — passing her hand over her eyes, — ‘there must be something else. Let me go back to Poros — now, at once. I will bring Barba Stathi, he knows the hills well, he must guide you to Metochi. We can pay him if need be. I have still some things of my mother’s left I can sell. With him and the beast you can go far — and afterwards —

He was not listening to what she said, but to something farther away. She saw it, and stopped with dilated eyes.

He left her, and going quite outside the cave, crouched down behind a big rock and craned his neck to see better down the ravine.

She waited, shivering. After a moment he came back, his teeth tightly clenched.

‘Now listen,’ he said, ‘we must say things quickly. They are below in the ravine. In five minutes they will be here. There is one thing I ask of you — will you do it?’

She clung to him in silence.

‘ If they would take me and shoot me here at once, it would be well; but if they take me it means Nauplia, the open square, the public shame; and Niko Davelli’s son cannot die in that way. My grandfather, you know it, was one of the few who came down from Suli with Bozzaris; my father was a brave man. These things cannot be. If I could use my hands, it would be over now; but see, I cannot even lift the pistol, — how could I draw the trigger? But you! You are a brave girl, Chryssi, and if you have ever loved me you will do it.’

‘I! Oh, my God! what are you asking of me! I? I cannot, I cannot!’

‘Chryssi, my Chryssi, my Chryssoula, you will not let them bind me and slaughter me like an ox at the butcher’s? Chryssi! I hear them — Oh, Chryssi, do not fail me now! I have no one but you to do this thing for me. Take the pistol from my belt, take it. For your father’s soul, for the name of God, if you have ever loved me, Chryssi, take it!’

And as she drew it from his belt he put his lips to hers.

The three soldiers with their sergeant, and Yannako the shepherd beside them, were not ten paces from the opening of the cave, when there was a sharp report and a fall.

They started forward and came face to face with a woman, who ran out and then stood quite still and looked at them with wide-open eyes.

It was no heroic figure they saw. Just the girl with her sallow face and clumsy figure, her black shawl trailing behind her, and the smoking pistol in her hand.

‘You can search,’ she muttered indistinctly, ‘aye, you can search; you will only find a corpse for your pains.’

And as the men rushed past her, she fell in a tumbled heap among the lentisk bushes.