The Complete Short Works of Georg Ebers Part 22

The rose-bush to which Xanthe went grew on the dike that belonged in common to her father and uncle, beside a bench of beautifully-polished white marble.

Many a winter had loosened the different blocks, and bordered them with yellow edges.

Even at a distance the girl saw that the seat was not vacant. The brook that flowed from the spring to the sea ran beneath it, and the maid-servants were in the habit of washing the household linen in its swift current.

Were they now using the bench to spread out the garments they had rinsed?

No! A man lay on the hard marble, a man who had drawn his light cloak over his face to protect himself from the rays of the sun, now rising higher and higher.

His sandaled feet and ankles, bandaged as if for journeying, appeared beneath the covering.

By these feet Xanthe quickly recognized the sleeping youth.

It was Phaon. She would have known him, even if she had seen only two of his fingers.

The sun would soon reach its meridian height, and there he lay asleep.

At first it had startled her to find him here, but she soon felt nothing but indignation, and again the image of the flute-playing women, with whom he must have revelled until thus exhausted, rose before her mind.

"Let him sleep," she murmured proudly and contemptuously; she pa.s.sed him, cut a handful of roses from the bushes covered with crimson and yellow blossoms, sat down on the vacant s.p.a.ce beside his head, watched for the ship from Messina, and, as it did not come, began to weave the garland.

She could do the work here as well as anywhere else, and told herself that it was all the same to her whether Phaon or her father's linen lay there. But her heart belied these reflections, for it throbbed so violently that it ached.

And why would not her fingers move; why could her eyes scarcely distinguish the red roses from the yellow ones?

The garden was perfectly still, the sea seemed to slumber, and, if a wave lapped the sh.o.r.e, it was with a low, almost inaudible murmur.

A b.u.t.terfly hovered like a dream over her roses, and a lizard glided noiselessly, like a sudden thought, into a c.h.i.n.k between the stones at her feet. Not a breath of air stirred, not a leaf or a twig fell from the trees.

Yonder, as if slumbering under a blue veil, lay the Calabrian coast, while nearer and more distant, but always noiselessly, ships and boats, with gently swelling sails, glided over the water. Even the cicadas seemed to sleep, and everything around was as still, as horribly still, as if the breath of the world, blooming and sparkling about her, was ready to fail.

Xanthe sat spellbound beside the sleeper, while her heart beat so rapidly and strongly that she fancied it was the only sound audible in this terrible silence.

The sunbeams poured fiercely on her head, her cheeks glowed, a painful anxiety overpowered her, and certainly not to rouse Phaon, but merely to hear some noise, she coughed twice, not without effort. When she did so the third time, the sleeper stirred, removed from his face the end of the cloak that had covered his head, slowly raised himself a little, and, without changing his rec.u.mbent posture, said simply and quietly, in an extremely musical voice:

"Is that you; Xanthe?"

The words were low, but sounded very joyous.

The girl merely cast a swift glance at the speaker, and then seemed as busily occupied with her roses as if she were sitting entirely alone.

"Well?" he asked again, fixing his large dark eyes upon her with an expression of surprise, and waiting for some greeting.

As she remained persistently silent, he exclaimed, still in the same att.i.tude:

"I wish you a joyful morning, Xanthe." The young girl, without answering this greeting, gazed upward to the sky and sun as long as she could endure the light, but her lips quivered, and she flung the rose she held in her hand among its fellows in her lap.

Phaon had followed the direction of her look, and again broke the silence, saying with a smile, no less quietly than before:

"Yes, indeed, the sun tells me I've been sleeping here a long time; it is almost noon."

The youth's composure aroused a storm of indignation in Xanthe's breast.

Her excitable blood fairly seethed, and she was obliged to put the utmost constraint upon herself not to throw her roses in his face.

But she succeeded in curbing her wrath, and displaying intense eagerness, as she shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed toward some ships that appeared in view.

"I don't know what is the matter with you," said Phaon, smoothing with his right hand the black hair that covered half his forehead. "Do you expect the ship from Messina and my father already?"

"And my cousin Leonax" replied the girl, quickly, putting a strong emphasis upon the last name.

Then she again gazed into the distance. Phaon shook his head, and both remained silent for several minutes. At last he raised himself higher, turned his full face toward the young girl, gazed at her as tenderly and earnestly as if he wished to stamp her image upon his soul for life, gently pulled the long, floating sleeve of her peplum, and said:

"I didn't think it would be necessary--but I must ask you something."

While he spoke, Xanthe rested her right elbow on her knee, drummed on her scarlet lips with her fingers, and clasped the back of the marble bench with her out-stretched left arm.

Her eyes told him that she was ready to listen, though she still uttered no word of reply.

"I have a question to ask you, Xanthe!" continued Phaon.

"You?" interrupted the girl, with visible astonishment.

"I, who else? Jason told me yesterday evening that our uncle Alciphron had wooed you for his son Leonax, and was sure of finding a favorable reception from old Semestre and your poor father. I went at once to ask you if it were true, but turned back again, for there were other things to be done, and I thought we belonged to each other, and you could not love any one so well as you loved me. I don't like useless words, and cannot tell you what is in my heart, but you knew it long ago. Now you are watching for your cousin Leonax. We have never seen him, and I should think--"

"But I know," interrupted the girl, rising so hastily that her roses fell unheeded on the ground--"but I know he is a sensible man, his father's right-hand, a man who would disdain to riot all night with flute-playing women, and to woo girls only because they are rich."

"I don't do that either," replied Phaon. "Your flowers have dropped on the ground--"

With these words the youth rose, bent over the roses, gathered them together, and offered them to Xanthe with his left hand, while trying to clasp her fingers in his right; but she drew back, saying:

"Put them on the bench, and go up to wash the sleep from your eyes."

"Do I look weary?"

"Of course, though you've lain here till noon."

"But I have scarcely slept for several days."

"And dare you boast of it?" asked Xanthe, with glowing cheeks. "I am not your mother, and you must do as you choose, but if you think I belonged to you because we played with each other as children, and I was not unwilling to give you my hand in the dance, you are mistaken. I care for, no man who turns day into night and night into day."

At the last words Xanthe's eyes filled with tears, and Phaon noticed it with astonishment.

He gazed at her sadly and beseechingly, and then fixed his eyes on the ground. At last he began to suspect the cause of her anger, and asked, smiling:

"You probably mean that I riot all night?"

"Yes!" cried Xanthe; she withdrew her hand for the second time, and half turned away.

"Oh!" he replied, in a tone of mingled surprise and sorrow, "you ought not to have believed that."