The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (7 page)

That night Chrysis was awakened from a light and feverish sleep by the instinctive knowledge that someone was near her. She raised herself on one elbow and peered toward the faint glimmer of the door.

‘Who is it? Who is there?’ she said.

A figure seemed suddenly to rise from the threshold. ‘It’s I, Chrysis. It’s Glycerium.’

‘Is something the matter? Is someone ill?’

‘No . . . it’s only . . .’

‘Light a lamp, my child. What do you want?’

‘Chrysis, are you angry with me for waking you up? I couldn’t sleep, Chrysis, and I had to come into your room.’

‘But why are you crying, my dear, my dove? Come now and sit on the edge of the bed. Of course I’m not angry with you.’ Glycerium sank upon the floor beside her. ‘No, no, – the floor is cold. Come sit up here. Your hair is wet! Tell me now, what is making you unhappy?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What? Then you have something to tell me?’

‘No . . . I don’t know what . . . I just want you to talk to me.’

‘Well, I have something to tell you.’ Chrysis was stroking Glycerium’s hair, delicately following with her fingertips the strands as they passed above and behind the ear, when suddenly Glycerium threw her arms about her sister’s neck and sobbed uncontrollably. Chrysis continued gravely with her caress, thinking that she was merely dealing with one of the meaningless accesses of despair that descend upon adolescence when the slow ache of existence is first apprehended by the growing mind. ‘There!’ she murmured in a rhythmic undertone, ‘Sh . . . sh . . . sh . . . sh. . . . We love you. We all love you in this house. Our beautiful Glycerium, our gentle, our very beautiful Glycerium . . . sh . . . sh . . . there! Are you comfortable now? I have some good news for you. (No, no, there is plenty of room.) This is it: Beginning tomorrow you are going to lead an altogether different life. I am going to let you wander all over the island alone. And when Mysis and I go to market you can go with us. You may climb the hills if you like, and you may explore along the water’s edge, – I shall even show you the secret of the secrets of my heart, – a beautiful hidden shelter by the sea where one can be perfectly alone. . . . Well? are you pleased? Doesn’t this news make you happy?’

‘Yes, Chrysis.’

‘Now! I thought it would make you very happy and all you say is: Yes, Chrysis!’

‘Chrysis, tell me: what will become of me?’

Chrysis changed her position and in the dark shut her eyes a moment. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear . . . that’s what everyone asks, everyone on earth. Well, first you tell me: what do you want to become?’

‘I want to marry someone and . . . and be in his home. Chrysis, tell me: can I marry someone? Without a father and a mother and without anything, is it possible that I can marry someone?’

‘My dear, there is always . . .’

‘Chrysis, I’m grown-up now. I’m fifteen. Please tell me the truth. I must know. Don’t say something merely to quiet me. I must know the truth. Can a man ever ask me to marry him? Why are you waiting so long to answer me?’

‘I have been planning to have a long talk with you about all these things. But not now. Wait a short time; wait until you have had a week, two weeks, of this new life when you will be free to wander all over the island. Then you will be able to understand better what I have to say.’

Glycerium paused a moment. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, her face against Chrysis’s shoulder. ‘That means that no one will ever be able to marry me.’

‘No, no, I don’t say that. . . .’

Glycerium rose and stood in the middle of the room. ‘I understand,’ she said in the darkness.

Chrysis raised herself again on one elbow and said slowly: ‘We are not Greek citizens. We are not people with homes. We are considered strange, only a little above the slaves. All those others live in homes and everyone knows their fathers and their mothers; they marry one another. They think we would never fit into their life. Although all that is true, –’

‘But there are stories,’ said Glycerium, ‘of men who even married girls that had been slaves.’

‘Yes, if a young man should fall in love with you, it is possible that he would take you into his home. That is why I have tried to take such care of you and why I have kept you hidden here in the house. Through the young men who come to the banquets, the island knows that you are here and that you have been carefully protected. And now that you are to walk about the island freely you must be a hundred times more careful than other girls. You are beautiful and you are good, and before all their unfriendly eyes you must show them your modesty and your goodness. That is all there is to say and to hope, my child.’

‘Perhaps, Chrysis . . . it is best that I do not go about the island freely, after all.’

‘No, no. You will feel like going out. It will come gradually. But now you must go to bed and to sleep, my darling. All these things will solve themselves as best they can. All you can do for the present is to be yourself, your very self, my Glycerium.’

Glycerium moved unsteadily towards the bed: ‘Chrysis, I must tell you something.’

‘Yes? . . .’

‘You will be angry with me, Chrysis.’

‘Why . . .’

‘May the gods protect me, I . . . I have been talking with Mysis and now I know that I am going to be the mother of a child.’

There was silence for a moment followed by the sound of Chrysis putting her feet upon the floor. ‘Where is Mysis? Let me get up.’

‘It is true, Chrysis. I broke my promise the times when you were away. I used to go out over the hills.’

‘Oh, my child, my child!’

‘But he loves me. He will marry me. He loves me, I know.’

‘Who is it? What is his name?’

‘It is Pamphilus, son of Simo.’

Chrysis grew rigid in the darkness. Then she slowly put her feet back into the bed. Glycerium continued wildly: ‘He loves me. He will take care of me. He has told me so a hundred times. Chrysis, what shall I do? What shall I do? I am afraid.’

A low moan at the door revealed the fact that Mysis had accompanied her younger mistress to this interview and was kneeling outside the door without the courage to enter.

After a moment Chrysis said in a light impersonal voice: ‘Well, you . . . go off to bed now and go to sleep. Yes. We’ll both be catching cold here. It’s late. I think it must be almost morning.’

‘I cannot sleep.’

‘Everything will be all right, Glycerium. I can’t talk any more now. I’m not well. We’ll talk about it in the morning.’

Glycerium left the room, trembling.

In her darker hours Chrysis carried on what she called a ‘dialogue with Fate.’ And now as she turned to the wall she said: ‘I hear you. You have won again.’

Before long the pain in her side became fixed and unremitting, and Chrysis knew that her life was drawing to a close. She took to her bed and her thoughts no longer clung to the world about her. Now when her courage was being undermined by her pain she dared not ask herself if she had lived and if she were dying, unloved, in disorder, without meaning. From time to time she peered into her mind to ascertain what her beliefs were in regard to a life after death, its judgments or its felicities; but the most exhausting of all our adventures is that journey down the long corridors of the mind to the last halls where belief is enthroned. She resigned herself to the memory of certain moments when intuition had comforted her and she quieted her heart with Andrian cradle-songs and with fragments from the tragic poets. She saved her strength to fulfill a last desire, one that may perhaps seem unworthy to persons of a later age. Her mind had been moulded by formal literature, by epics and odes, by tragedies and by heroic biography, and from this reading she had been imbued with the superstition that one should die in a noble manner, and in this high decorum even the maintenance of her beauty played a part. The only terror left in the world was the fear that she might leave it with cries of pain, with a torn mind, and with discomposed features.

The news spread about the island that the Andrian was gravely ill. The young men who had been her guests were confused by the discrepancy between their mothers’ sarcasms and the respect that Chrysis had inspired in themselves, but some brought shy offerings of wine and cheese to her door. For such brief interviews she raised herself on one elbow and sought to recover her light-spoken graciousness. But most of the young men stayed away; it required a maturer mind than they could summon to hold side by side their memories of sensual pleasure and their respect due to the dying.

Pamphilus had other reasons for staying away. It seemed more and more unlikely that he would ever be permitted to marry Glycerium. But one morning he appeared at Chrysis’s house and asked to see her. He traversed the court, picking his way among her motley and dismayed pensioners, and his eyes fell upon Glycerium. She was seated beside Philocles at her sister’s door, silent and without hope. Pamphilus stopped for a moment on one knee before her and took her hands in his. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said in a low voice. ‘No harm will come to you.’ She derived no courage from his words; she lifted her eyes and scanned his face. Her mouth trembled, but no words came and her eyes returned to the ground. Pamphilus passed into the room where Chrysis lay; for a moment he could distinguish nothing in the darkness. Presently he became aware of the priest of Aesculapius and Apollo bending over a brazier in the corner, and finally he saw Chrysis smiling at him gravely from the bed. He sat down beside her in silence; each waited for the other to begin.

‘We are sorry, all of us are sorry, Chrysis,’ he said at last, ‘to hear that you have been so ill.’

‘Thank you, Pamphilus. Thank them all.’

‘There . . . there has been so much rain. When the sunlight returns you will feel better at once.’

‘Yes, it has always been the sunlight that has done me the most good. You are all well on your farm?’

‘Yes, the gods be praised.’

‘The gods be praised. I shall never forget a favour your father did for me.’

Pamphilus was struck with amazement. ‘My father?’

‘Oh, forgive me . . . I remember now I promised him not to mention it to you. Oh, my illness has made me forget that. I am ashamed, I am ashamed. But now I had better add that it was a small commission he did for me by one of his boats going to Andros. I would not have him think me unfaithful to my promise. I beg of you earnestly not to tell him that I spoke of it.’

‘Indeed, I shall not tell him, Chrysis.’

There fell another pause between them, while her strengthless hands lightly pressed upon the bed in her self-reproach.

‘Yes,’ said Pamphilus. ‘When there is more sunlight you will feel better at once. The sky has been overcast for a long time. I cannot remember when it has been overcast so long.’

To themselves they both cried: ‘How shall we ever get out of this?’

‘We have missed the banquets. I would like to tell you again, Chrysis, what great pleasure they gave me. I have been looking forward to the next one when you promised to read us I forget what play.’

‘It was to have been the
Ion
of Euripides.’

‘Yes.’

‘This,’ said Chrysis, glancing toward the priest with a smile, ‘this is my Ion.’

But perhaps the words were ill chosen. She thought she saw the priest frowning as he bent over his work. ‘Forgive me,’ she said to him abruptly, ‘if I have offended you. I did not mean it ill.’

But the tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘Life, Pamphilus,’ she said, ‘is full of mistakes, but the wrongs we do to those we love and honour are more than we can endure.’ The priest approached the further side of the bed and adjusted the pillows; he whispered a few words into her ear and went back to his brazier.

‘Am I tiring you?’ Pamphilus asked.

‘No, no. I am very happy that you have come.’ To herself she thought: ‘Time is passing, and what are we saying! Is there not something heartfelt that I can find to say to him, something to remember, for him and for me?’ But she distrusted the emotion that filled her heart. It was perhaps mere excitement and pain; or a vague and false sentiment. Probably the best thing to do was to be stoic; to be brave and inarticulate; to talk of trivial things. Or was it a greater bravery to surmount this shame and to say whatever obvious words the heart dictated? Which was right?

Pamphilus was thinking: ‘She is dying. What can I say to her? But I have never been able to place words rightly. I am dull. I am nothing to her but the man who has wronged her sister.’ Aloud he said in a low voice: ‘I shall marry Glycerium if I can, Chrysis. At all events you may be sure that no harm will come to her.’

‘Though I love her dearly,’ replied Chrysis, finding her words with great difficulty, ‘I shall not urge you. I . . . I no longer believe that what happens to us is important. You will marry Glycerium or another. The years will unfold these things. It is the life in the mind that is important.’

‘I shall do what I can for her.’

‘You have only to be yourself without fear, without doubting, Pamphilus.’

‘Chrysis, you will forgive me for having spoken to you so little at the banquets . . . and for having sat at the further end and . . . that is the way I am. It was not because I did not respect you. I cannot talk as those others can. I am only a listener. Even now I cannot say what I mean. But I followed all that you said.’

The pain in Chrysis’s side seemed to increase beyond all endurance. ‘Oh, friend,’ she said, ‘do not distrust. These things are not so unsatisfactory . . . so interrupted as they seem to be.’ The priest had been watching her; she made a slight sign to him. ‘I do not wish you to go away,’ she continued to Pamphilus, almost in a whisper, ‘but it is best that I sleep now.’ Then raising herself on one elbow she breathed in anguish: ‘Perhaps we shall meet somewhere beyond life when all these pains shall have been removed. I think the gods have some mystery still in store for us. But if we do not, let me say now . . .’ her hands opened and closed upon the cloths that covered her, ‘. . . I want to say to someone . . . that I have known the worst that the world can do to me, and that nevertheless I praise the world and all living. All that is, is well. Remember some day, remember me as one who loved all things and accepted from the gods all things, the bright and the dark. And do you likewise. Farewell.’