The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858

The fisherman, hitherto so friendly, remained silent, and words were wanting to him wherewith to instruct the stranger. When he again spoke, he said,—

"Why, old man, not having the vigor or the carelessness of youth, have you quitted your home, leading this woman into strange lands, and this child, whose eyes are tearful for the playmates she has left? I call a little maid daughter, who is like unto her, and she remains guarded at home by her mother, until we shall give her in marriage to one of her own nation and language."

"Waste no more words," answered the old man, "I will narrate my story as we row towards your harbor."

"It were better for you," said the boatman, "that they who brought you hither should take you into their ship again. Enter our town, if you will, but be not amazed at what shall befall you. It is a custom with us to make slaves of those who approach us unsolicited, in order to protect ourselves against the pirates and their spies, who have formerly lodged themselves among us in the guise of wayfaring men, and so robbed us of our possessions. Therefore it is our law, that those who land on our coast shall, during a year, serve us in bondage."

Anger flamed in the eye of the stranger.

"You do well," he cried, "to ask of me why I left the land which bore me. Never did I there learn to suspect vile and inhospitable customs. If you have pity for the aged and the unfortunate, and would not gladly see them cast into slavery, bring hither some means of life to this rock, which cowards have abandoned for me. Meanwhile, I will watch for some friendly sail, which, approaching, may bear me to any harbor, where worse reception can hardly await me.—Know that I fear not the anger of your gods; many years have I lived, and I have never yet beheld a god. My father has told me, that, in all his wanderings, among lonely hills, at the hour of dawn, or by night, or, again, in populous places, he has never seen one whom he believed to be a god. Moreover, in Athens itself are those who doubt their existence. Leave me to gather the grapes of Apollo!"

So saying, he turned away from the shore, not deigning to ask more from the stranger.

When the golden crescent moon, no sooner visible than ready to vanish in the rosy western sky, was smiling on the exiles with the old familiar look she wore above the groves of Thessaly, the sad-hearted ones were roused again by the voice of their unknown friend.

"Come down to the shore," he cried; "I have returned to you with gifts; my heart yearns to the child; she is gentle, and her eyes are like those of the stag when the hunters surround him. Take my flasks of oil and wine, and these cakes of barley and wheat. I bring you nets, and cords also, which we fishermen know how to use. May the gods, whom you despise, protect you!"

Late into the night the Greeks remained upon the border of the sea, wondering at their strange fate. To the idle the day is never sufficiently long,—the night also is wasted in words.

CHAPTER II

The days which the exiles passed in solitude were not unhappy. The child Evadne pruned the large-leaved vines, and gave the rugged cheeks of certain melons to the sun. The continual hope of departure rendered all privations supportable.

Was it hope, or was it fear, that stirred their bosoms when at last a sail appeared not distant? They hoped that its white wings might turn seaward!

"Mother," cried the shepherd, "no seaman willingly approaches this shore, for the white waves warn him how the rocks He beneath the water. Even walls and roofs of houses are seen, or guessed at, ingulfed formerly by the sea; and the tale of that disaster, as told us by the fisherman, is doubtless known to mariners, who, fearing Apollo, dare not land upon this island. While, on the other hand, we have heard how pirates, and even poor wayfaring folk, are so ill-received in the bay, that from them, though they be not far off, we yet look for no assistance. Let us, then, be content, and cease to seek after our fate, which doubtless is never at rest from seeking after us. And let us not be in haste to enter again into a ship, (so fearful and unnatural a thing for those born to walk upon the land,) nor yet to beg our way along painful and unknown roads, in search of men of a new religion and a different language from that of Greeks. Neither, dear wife, if we must suffer it, let us dread slavery too much. Life is long enough for those who die young, and too long for the aged. One year let us patiently give, more especially if it be unavoidable to give it. Vex me with no more lamentations; some unforeseen accident may relieve us from our misfortunes."

Eleusa, the good old wife, ever obedient to the husband of her youth, talked no more of departure, nor yet complained of their miserable lodgings in the ruined huts, on which her housewifely care grieved to expend itself in vain.

Evadne would not be restrained from wandering. She penetrated alone the wildest thickets; the nests of timid birds were known to her; and she traced the bee to his hidden city. Deep in the woods she discovered a wide chasm, in which the water of the sea palpitated with the beating of the great heart of Ocean from which it flowed. Trees were still erect, clasped by the salt waves, but quite dead; and all around their base were hung fringes of marine growth, touched with prismatic tints when seen through the glittering water, but brown and hideous when gathered, as the trophy remaining in the hand which has dared to seize old Proteus by the locks. All around this avenue, into which the sea sometimes rushed like an invading host of armed men, the laurels and the delicate trees that love to bend over the sources of the forest-streams hung half-uprooted and perilously a-tiptoe over the brink of shattered rocks, and withered here and there by the touch of the salt foam, towards which they seemed nevertheless fain to droop, asking tidings of the watery world beyond.

The skeleton-arms of the destroyed ones were feeble to guard the passage of the ravine. Evadne broke a way over fallen trees and stepping-stones imbedded in sea-sand, and gained the opposite bank. The solitude in which she found herself appeared deeper, more awful, than before the chasm lay between the greater island and the less. She listened motionless to the soft, but continual murmur of the wood, the music of leaves and waves and unseen wings, by which all seeming silence of Nature is made as rich to the ear as her fabrics to the eye, so that, in comparison, the garments of a king are mean, though richly dyed, embroidered on every border, and hung with jewels.

While the little wood-ranger stood and waited, as it were, for what the grove might utter, her eye fell upon the traces of a pathway, concealed, and elsewhere again disclosed, overgrown by sturdy plants, but yet threading the shady labyrinth. She followed the often reappearing line upon the hillside, and as she climbed higher, with her rose the mountains and the sea. The shore, the sands, the rocky walls, showed every hue of sunbeams fixed in stone. The leafy sides of Tenedos had caught up the clear, green-tinted blue of the sea, and wore it in a noonday dream under the slumberous light that rested on earth and sea and sky. Above the horizon, far away, the very clouds were motionless; and where the sunbeams marked a tranquil sail, it seemed, with wave and cloud, to express only Eternal Repose. But the eager child pressed onward, for the crown of the hill seemed almost reached, and she longed for a wider, wider view of the beautiful Ægean.

Suddenly she arrived where a sculptured stone lay in the pathway. Some patient and skilful hand had wrought there the emblem of a rose, and among the chiselled petals stood drops of rain, collected as in a cup. On the border a pure white bird had just alighted, and Evadne watched how it bent and rose and seemed to caress the flower of stone, while it drank of the dew around and within it. Her eyes filled with tears as she mused on the vanished hand of Art, whose work Nature now reclaimed for this humble, but grateful use. The dove took wing, and the child proceeding came to a level turf where a temple of white marble stood. Eight slender columns upheld a marble canopy, beneath which stood the image of a god. One raised hand seemed to implore silence, while the other showed clasping fingers, but they closed upon nothing. Around the statue's base lay scattered stones. Evadne gathered them, and reunited they formed the lyre of Apollo. She replaced, for an instant, in the cold and constant grasp a fragment of the ruined harp. Then the aspect of the god became regretful, sad, as of one who desires a voice from the lips of the dead. Hastily she flung the charm away, and gentle grace returned to the listening boy, from whom, sleeping, some nymph might have stolen his lyre, whose complaining chords now vibrated to his ear and called their master to the pursuit. Evadne reposed on the steps of the temple, and fixedly gazed upon the god. Her fancy endowed the firm hand with an unbent bow; then the figure seemed to pause in the chase, and listen for the baying of the hounds. Then she imaged a shepherd's staff, and the shepherd-god waited tenderly for the voice of a lost lamb.

"So stood Apollo in Thessaly," she softly said, "when he carried the shepherd's staff. Oh that I were the lost Thessalian lamb for whom he waits, that he might descend and I die for joy on his breast!"

Then, half afraid that the lips might break their marble stillness in reply, she asked the protection of the deity, whom she was fain to adore, but whom her adopted parents dared to despise.

Sole worshipper at a deserted shrine, she had no offering to place there, but of flowers. She wove a crown and laid it at his feet, and, while she bent by the pedestal, to hang a garland there, oh, terror! a voice cried, "Evadne! Evadne!" A tide of fear rushed to her heart. The god stood motionless yet. Who could have uttered her name? A falling branch, a swift zephyr, may have seemed for an instant articulate, and yet it was surely a human voice which had called her. Her reverie was broken now, like a cataract brought to its downfall. A moment since, all was peace and joyfulness; now she remembered, with alarm, how long she had left her foster-parents alone, and the way by which she had come was unknown, as if she had never traced it. She crossed the floor of the temple, and, as she turned to whisper, "Farewell! beautiful god!" the form gently inclined itself, and the uplifted hand stirred lightly. Evadne darted forward and looked no more behind. She bounded over chasms in the pathway, and broke the tender branches before her with impatient hands, so that her descent from the temple was one mad flight.

CHAPTER III

When Evadne returned to Alpheus and to her foster-mother, she was silent concerning her discovery, and it seemed the more sweet to her for being secret. Her thoughts made pilgrimages to the temple hidden by the laurels once set to adorn it, and the deserted God of Youth and Immortal Beauty drew from her an untaught and voiceless worship. How tedious now appeared the labors of their half-savage life!—for the ensnaring of fish and the gathering of fruits for the little household gave the child no leisure to climb the hill a second time, to seek the lost temple, now all her own. Two weary days had passed, and on the morning of the third Evadne performed all her labors, such as they were, of field or of the house.

Eleusa was absorbed in the art, new to her, of repairing a broken net, when the child abruptly fled away into the forest, crying out, "I go to seek wild grapes." She would not hear the voices calling her back. She gained rapidly the path, already familiar, and wherein every bough and every leaf seemed expectant of her coming footsteps.

Hamadryads veiled themselves, each in her conscious tree, eluding human approach. She steals more gently along, that she may haply surprise a vision. The little grassy plain appears beyond the wavering oak-branches. It is reached at last, and there,—surely it is no delusion,—there rests a sleeping youth! Another step, and she bent aside the boughs. He stands erect, listening.

"It is the god!" she cries; and, falling back, would have been precipitated from the rock, had not the youth rapidly bounded forward and grasped her hand.

"Little one, beautiful child," he cried, "do not fear me! I have indeed played the god formerly, to scare from my hunting-ground the poor fools who dread the anger of Apollo. Tell me, who are you, thus wandering in the awful garden of the gods? Who brought you hither, and what name has been given you?"

Trembling still, and not knowing how to relate it, Evadne stammered forth some words of her history. Her senses were bewildered by the beauty of the hunter-boy, who now appeared how different from the marble god! Bold, and as if ever victorious, with an undaunted brow, like Bacchus seen through the tears of sad Ariadne awakened. Strong and swift were his limbs, as those of a panther. His cheek was ruddy, and his half-naked form was brown, as those appear who dwell not under a roof, but in the uncertain shade of the forest. His locks were black and wildly disordered, and his eyes were most like to a dark stream lighted with golden flashes; but the laughing beauty of his lip no emblem could convey.

Soon, seated on the turf, the story of each child was related.

"I am nobly born," said the boy, "but I love the life of a hunter. My father has left me alone, and when I am a man, I, too, shall follow him to Rome. But liberty is sweeter than honor or power. I escape often from my tutor, who suspects not where I hide myself, and range all the forests. Embarking by night, in former years, I often visited this island. I know where to gather fruits and seek vineyards among the ruined huts of the village beneath us. By night I descend and gather them, for my free wanderings by day caused the fishermen to relate that a god walked upon the shore. When some, more curious or bold, turned their prows hitherward, to observe what form moved upon the hill, I rolled great rocks down, with a thundering noise, into the sea, and have terrified all men from the spot."

"We now call the vineyards and gardens ours," said Evadne, "but it appears they truly belong to you. Descend to the shore and we will share with you, not only the ripest clusters of the vines, but wine and loaves which the fisherman brings us."

"Bring me hither the wine, and I will gladly drink of it, nor waste one drop in oblation; but I must not descend to the shore, and you must be silent concerning me, for my tutor offers large rewards to any one who will disclose where I hide myself. The slaves on the coast here are ready to betray me. I have watched them sailing near the island, lured by the promise of a handful of gold, but not daring to land upon it, lest they should behold, against his will, a divine being."

"Then I will climb up hither and bring you the fruits," said Evadne.

"Nay, my bird," answered the boy, "lay them only on the altar, below, and when it is safe to descend, call me."

"If I call softly, you cannot hear me; and I cannot call loudly enough to reach you upon this hill."

"The secrets of the island are not known to you," her companion said, and arose quickly; "follow me,—I will teach you. You know not why Apollo is listening? It is for the good of the worshippers, who care not to mount the hill to adore him. Above the town stands an altar; voices uttered there are brought up hither by an echo. There the pious repaired once, and laid their gifts, and songs and the music of flutes sounded in honor of the deity, who was held too sacred to be approached. Hold me not too sacred, little one!—you shall approach without fear; but give me your voice at this altar, when your foster-father sleeps."

"But what shall I call you?" cried the laughing Evadne.

"Call Hylas. Echo has often repeated, the name, they say, in the country of Mysia, and these groves shall learn it of you! Now follow me over the floor of the temple,—but lightly! lightly! See how the god would warn us away! He nods on his pedestal; even the loud thunder may some day cause his fall; already he is half shaken down from his shrine by earthquakes."

Then, firmly, bold Hylas held trembling Evadne, who glanced for an instant down the leafy passage of echoes.

CHAPTER IV

When the day was over, Alpheus called to him his foster-child.

"You have willingly followed us into our exile," he said, "nor have you ever inquired whither we lead you. Listen to me; I shall confide to you a secret, so that, if evil befall us, you may go on and fulfil your journey.

"In Asia stands a city, called Thyatira, and there dwell men of a new religion, called Christians. Of this faith I know as yet but little. But, dear Evadne, your father is yet living, and has sent, praying me to conduct you to him, that you may be taught among Christians. I have labored to fulfil his wish, for in our youth we were dear to each other. The moon saw us nightly upon the hills, guarding our flocks, and by day we practised the labors and the sports of Greeks."

"What is the religion of my father?" asked the child.

"I cannot tell it to you; I know only that the Christians worship one god."

"Apollo, then, is my choice."

"Not so, child. The god of Christians is not known to us; but he shall overthrow the idols of the whole world. The bow of Diana, the lyre of Apollo, are already broken."

The child started. Was the temple known to Alpheus, too? Had he seen there the fragments of a shattered harp?

The old man continued his discourse, but Evadne's thoughts had flown away towards the lost temple.