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The darkness had completely fallen while he spoke, and overhead, through the sombre smoke of the torches, the stars peered out of an infinite depth of blue. In front of Germanos rose the mould of freshly raised earth, for they had filled up the grave before he began speaking, and the wooden cross from the mosque had been fetched out and planted on the top of it. Round in dense ranks stood the Mainats, the flickering glare of the torches striking strong light and shadows on their brown faces. But by degrees the torches planted on long stakes round the grave began to burn low; now and then one would shoot up with a sudden flare and die out again, and in a few minutes more they had all burned down, and only smouldering red cores of glowing ash remained. From the darkness Germanos's voice came slow and solemn at first, but as he went on he gained force and vigor.
"The birthday of the people – think of this day thus, and then of him whom you loved – the victory of the people. This is no time for lamentations nor weeping, for how did he take leave of you? Not with a wail, nor with any regret, but with a shout. Think of him, then, as he took farewell; happier, as he said to one of you, than the kings of the earth; mourn if you will for those who mourn, but rejoice with those who rejoice. And he went from us strong and with but one thought, which overmastered all. Thus it is no night nor valley of death he has gone into – or so it appeared not to him – but the dawning of the fresh day. Then, turning his brave eyes forward from dawn to dawn, what eyes should meet his, or what name should be on his lips? You heard it yourselves. And is there any cause for sorrow there? Do we weep and wail when the bridegroom meets the bride, or when after some long journey a faithful man goes home to her he loves? Ours is but a selfish grief if we look at it rightly. Let, then, this thought make you strong, and because you loved him turn from yourselves, who, God knows, have cause enough for grief, and think of him and the shout and rapture of his passing. Out of the day he has passed to the day, out of life into life, a faithful man made perfect. Call to him, then, once more, let him hear the shout which he led; let him hear again, for so we believe, the voices he knew, the shout of the men he loved and loves. The freedom of Greece, and Nicholas – the victory of the people!"
From the darkness the shout was taken up and repeated till it seemed to shake and split the darkness. As from one throat, it burst up thrice repeated, and then together they called Nicholas's name aloud, and went in silence back to their quarters. Mitsos returned with Petrobey, feeling somehow strangely strengthened. All he had been trying to feel all day had been said for him, and all that was brave within him – and of that there was much – rose and caught at it triumphantly, and he clung to it with conviction and courage in his heart.
The Mainats were to leave next morning, but Mitsos dreaded any hour spent in inaction, and he decided to go himself at once and again travel through the night. To stop here was only to talk of Nicholas, or to grow feverish again with the hopeless, impossible hope that Suleima was still somewhere in the town. With a good horse he could reach Nauplia next day soon after dawn, and he longed with the longing of a child in some distant land for the familiar places. Here all that spoke to him of Suleima spoke in words of blood and cruelty, which stabbed and stung him into a sense of maddened rage and regret. There, perhaps, with the thrill of home about him, his anguish would change to something less terrible, and not so discordant to the image his heart held of her. Even now, when so few hours had passed, he seemed to have lived with the sorrow for a lifetime, and realized that it was for a lifetime it would abide with him. The place where he had lost all he loved had a brooding horror over it; he could not think of her as he wished to think; but by the cool bay, the dark headlands, and that beach, with its whispering reeds, surely he would find an aspect of sorrow different to this, instinct with the bitterness of something which had once been infinitely sweet, instead of with the bitterness of horror and hatred. Above all, he dreaded the moment of waking next morning, and though many morrows stretched away before him, each with its cup of remembrance coming with the light at the end of sleep, yet it would be something over to get rid of this one, to have another four-and-twenty hours with his sorrow, which perhaps might help to prepare him for the pangs of that first moment of the waking to consciousness again, and the dead weight of grief which would have to be taken up anew. Then his father was there, and oh, how Mitsos longed for that quiet, protective presence. Here, it is true, were the dear clan; but the clan, though the best of companions, gave not the fellowship he wanted now. He wanted to be alone, and yet to have some one who loved him present with silent sympathy that needed no words. Even the companionship of Yanni, who followed him with the eyes of some dumb creature that knows its master is suffering, yet cannot console him, was irksome. None understood this better than poor Yanni himself; and though he tried to keep away he could not, and followed Mitsos, unable to say a word to him, and yet unable to leave him.
Mitsos rose from where he had been sitting in Petrobey's room and walked across to him.
"I think I shall go home at once," he said. "It will be better that I should be there."
"But not to-night, dear lad," said Petrobey, "and not alone. We are all coming to set you on your way to-morrow."
Poor Mitsos nearly broke down again at this. Somehow, a kindness reached the seat of tears, while his sorrow passed it by.
"No, I will go alone and now," he cried. "Oh, I cannot say what I think. You are all so good to me; but I want to be alone. Say good-bye to them all for me; I should not be able to tell them myself – and good-bye. Before long, I doubt not, we shall meet again; for I promised him always to be ready, and I shall always be ready."
Petrobey kissed the boy.
"Little Mitsos," he said, "we are not men of many words; but you know, you know. God keep you."
Yanni was watching Mitsos with hungry eyes, and he turned from Petrobey and went to him.
"Come out with me, Yanni," said Mitsos, "while I get my horse. Come as far as the gate, if you will."
Mitsos' horse was stabled below, and in silence the two went out together. Then, as they turned to walk down the deserted street to the gate, Mitsos passed one arm through the bridle and put the other round Yanni's neck.
"Yanni," he said, "you do not think me unkind? But it is this way with me: that somehow or other I must get used to these awful things, and I am best alone. We have had merry times together, have we not? and, please God! we shall be together many times yet; and, though I see not how, perhaps merry times will come again. I want to be alone with myself to-night and then alone with my father, for with him it is different. But of all others in the world – why need I tell you? – it is you I would choose to be with. You understand, do you not?"
"Yes, dear Mitsos," said Yanni, rather chokedly, "and if ever you want me, either come, or I will come to you. For, oh, Mitsos, I'm so sorry for you that I don't know what to do or say; and I owe all to you, and yet I can do nothing."
And with that he fairly burst out crying.
They walked on in silence to the Argive gate, and then Mitsos stopped.
"So let us do as Nicholas would have us do," said he, smiling at the other, "and think only of this wonderful birthday of the people, as Germanos said. And now I am going. So good-bye, Yanni, dear Yanni!"
"Oh, Mitsos, let me come!" cried Yanni. "No, no; I did not mean that. Good-bye and God speed!"
And he turned quickly and walked back into the town without another word or look.
CHAPTER XIV
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.
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.
