The Tour Part 19

CHAPTER XIX

It was very early one morning and Lucius was walking alone on the opposite bank of the river. In the tender dawn the vast grey lines of Memphis became visible in rose-red silhouette.

Lucius was wandering alone. Solitude had become dear to him, like rest after a severe illness, especially because he doubted his cure. He doubted; he doubted the certainty.

Did he know the truth? He was doubting now, after a sleepless night, and asking himself, did he know the truth? And, if he knew the truth, was he really cured, cured in his sick soul, cured of his suffering?

He did not know; he no longer knew anything. He wandered beside the Nile, alone, without knowing, without knowing. A dulness filled his brain, like a mist. Life was awaking on the farms with cheerful rural activity. The grain burst under the mill-stones; and the women on their knees rubbed with powerful palms the dough which the men beside them had already kneaded with the vigorous dance of their feet. Lucius stopped to look on; and they laughed; and he laughed back. The men danced and the women rubbed; and they laughed and were happy. A jealousy of their happiness rose hotly in the young Roman.

"Will you give me some milk?" he asked a girl who was milking a splendid, snow-white cow.

The girl handed the stranger the milk in the hollow leaf of a cyamus-plant. Lucius did not know whether to give her any money. He drank and handed back the reed goblet:

"Thank you," he said; and she laughed and went on milking.

He gave her no money and went on. How beautiful the world was and the morning! How rosy this first light over the silvering stream! How grey and colossal the past, yonder, of that dying, sinking city! How beautiful and impressive were every form and tint! How lovely was the world! Even the people down there, those labourers, those shepherdesses, those men and women baking, had a calm rustic, idyllic beauty in their simplicity and naturalness. How good the world was and how happy people could be, if the G.o.ds did not pour grief into their hearts!

Grief! Did he feel grief? Or had the mere thought that Ilia had proved unworthy of his great love already cured him of the disease that was grief? But was he cured and did he know?

He was approaching the hamlet of Troia. And he remembered reading in Thrasyllus' notes that Menelaus had come past here with his band of Trojan captives and generously permitted them to settle here. They had founded their colony. Behind Troia stood a rocky mountain-range; and behold, there was the ancient quarry from which, years ago, the blocks of stone were hewn to build the pyramids, block upon block, without cement! And Lucius' feet rattled through the curious fossils which strewed the ground like pebbles with the shapes of long lentils and pea-pods and which were thought to be the petrified remnants of the meals served to the many thousand slaves who had worked at the pyramids.

Suddenly he saw a woman. She was resting, sitting against the rocks and gazing at the rosy sky. He recognized his slave, the one with the beautiful voice, the singer, Cora.

She started when she saw him and rose and bowed low, with outstretched hands:

"Forgive me, my lord," she stammered, "for straying so far from the barge."

He rea.s.sured her: he was a master who did not grudge his slaves a liberty. And he asked her, in a kind voice:

"Why did you stray so far?"

"I strayed without intending it, my lord. My thoughts carried me along!"

"What were you thinking of?"

"I was thinking of Cos, my dear birthplace, and whether I should ever see it again."

"It is the birthplace of Apelles the painter and of Epicharmus the poet-philosopher and inventor of comedy. It is a place of beauty and art, is it not, Cora?"

"It is like a most charming garden, my lord. It contains the temples of aesculapius and Aphrodite. I was born there in the slave-school. I had a delightful childhood. There was a big garden in which I used to play.... Forgive me, my lord...."

"Go on."

"I was trained there and tended. I was bathed and carefully anointed and rubbed. This was done by the negresses. I learned to dance when I was very young. That is why I am lithe, my lord; and I hope that I dance well. But I also loved music; I sang. We had masters, who taught us to sing and play the harp, and mistresses, who taught us to dance. Dryope, who was in charge of the slave-school, was stern, but she was not unkind. My parents also were her slaves. My father was a runner and my mother was a dancer too. There were wagers when my father ran in a race; and he but seldom failed to win the prize for our mistress. She would have him flogged when he did not win the prize, but not hard, for she did not want to injure his precious body. Dryope was a good mistress to us, for my mother stopped dancing after she had once sprained her foot and Dryope nevertheless remained kind and gentle to her slave. But, when I was able to sing and dance, my lord, Dryope sold me for a big sum to a slave-dealer who was going to Rome with a number of slaves, male and female. I embraced Dryope and my parents and went with the dealer. He also was not harsh to me, because I was a valuable slave, my lord; he was not harsh to his slaves; he was careful of them as of precious merchandise. Thrasyllus bought me for you, my lord, on the slave-market in Rome; and I was proud when he paid a big sum for me after hearing my trial song and seeing my trial dance. And now ... now I am happy, my lord, to belong to a master like yourself. But still my thoughts often wander to Cos, to the slaves' quarters, to my parents, to my fellow-slaves there and to Dryope. Forgive me, my lord."

"And would you like to go back to Cos, Cora?"

"My lord, our native land remains dear to us. But I belong to you; and where you are there I will be."

"And shall you be happy there too, Cora, so far from Cos?"

"I shall be happy where you are happy, my lord, and unhappy where you are unhappy."

Lucius looked at her. He did not take her words to be more than the politeness of a courteous slave, who came from a famous slave-school and for whom he had paid a high price, because of her delicate beauty and her accomplishments. But still the sound of Cora's voice was pleasant to his ear; and he said, graciously and with a gentle smile:

"You know how to speak the word that sounds well, even as you sing true and play true."

She made no further answer and bowed her head, feeling that he did not count her words as more than a well-sounding speech:

"Have I your permission, my lord, to go back to the barge?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "go."

She made a gesture of graceful reverence and moved away. He followed her at a distance. She walked along by the tall reeds of the river. She was very pretty and dainty, like the soft-tinted statuettes that came from Tanagra. Her flowered muslin peplos hung limply pleated around her shapely body in a succession of thin folds, which blew open and shut. Her bare arms were very slender. Her blue-black hair was fine and caught golden gleams. Now, while she stopped to pluck a flowering reed, she stood among the stems like a nymph.

And Lucius smiled because she was so very pretty, so tenderly winsome, because she sang and played the harp so very beautifully and because she said such civil words and had spoken so charmingly of her native island, Cos, where she was born in Dryope's slave-school.

CHAPTER XX

Uncle Catullus lay under the awning of the thalamegus and asked Cora to come and sit by him:

"Sing and play me some cheerful songs, Cora," he said. "Be kind to me even though I be not your master. For I feel bored here, on this Nile boat, at Memphis. I have been bored ever since Lucius went to the oracle of Ammon, through the barren desert. What an idea, what a mad idea! They have been gone five days now; they will probably arrive to-morrow.... I am bored, Cora, I am horribly bored. Egypt will be the death of me! First I am saturated with new impressions, like a sponge with water, and then Lucius abandons me to unlimited boredom. He's an egoist; he never thinks of his old uncle.... Cora, be amiable to me and sing and play me some cheerful songs, won't you?"

This was the burden of Uncle Catullus' complaint. As he said, Lucius had gone through the desert to the oracle of Ammon, with Caleb, Thrasyllus and Tarrar, with guards and drivers, and Uncle Catullus had remained behind on the barge, under the care of Rufus the under-steward, with all the other slaves, male and female.

A track led from Memphis through the desert to the oasis where the oracle of Ammon resided. It ran through the sands marked with granite posts, like small obelisks, nothing more. It was a chain of sign-posts rather than a road. The summer sun beat down implacably upon the scorching sands, which lay blown against the rocky range of mountains along the south of which the road was traced.

The caravan had now been travelling five days through the sands. Lucius, on an elephant, lay in a s.p.a.cious, square litter, with blue and yellow curtains to keep out the light, and had expressed a wish that Thrasyllus should sit by his side. Caleb, swathed in white muslin, which left only his gleaming eyes and flashing teeth visible, sat upon a powerful dromedary, on leather cushions, under a great parasol fixed to his saddle-gear, and occasionally swaying gently to and fro. Elephant and dromedary were surrounded with long fly-nets, from which dangled many-coloured fringes. Tarrar, also swathed in linens of many colours, squatted like a little monkey on a camel and defied the sun of his native land, the glare of his Libyan desert. The guards and drivers rode mules; and ponies carried the travellers' luggage, their tents, their provisions and their still swollen water-bags.

For five days now they had been marching on their monotonous journey through the desert. At break of day the caravan started; at noon a halt was made under the tents; in the evening the procession moved on again, until darkness and fatigue urged the travellers to rest. It was an endless journey. It seemed as if the goal would never be reached. It was an unrelieved alternation of gold-glittering sands, under implacable, blazing skies, and fading sands, under endless skies of nocturnal blue. It was an unrelieved alternation of rosy sunrises and orange sunsets. It was an unrelieved alternation of the peeping, the radiant awakening and the duller waning of the stars. Sometimes the south wind rose and blew for hours. Silently the caravan plodded through the rising whirls of sand. Sometimes the faint track of posts seemed to have disappeared; the obelisks stood aslant, sunk into the sands. A melancholy descended over man and beast.

The midday meal, taken under a tent, Lucius shared with Thrasyllus, Caleb, and Tarrar. It consisted always of broiled mutton, dates and an unvarying ration of water, with a dash of palm-wine in it. Strange to say, Lucius was almost cheerful and declared that Uncle Catullus had done well not to accompany them to the oasis of Ammon, as such meals would certainly have been a sore trial for him. And, strange again, Caleb, usually so merry and cheerful, became despondent and sad. At least, he exclaimed, now that Lucius began to jest:

"I wonder, my lord, that you can be gay in these G.o.d-forsaken Libyan sands! They weigh upon my chest, O my lord, as though I were already sinking under them, like the obelisks and sphinxes! O my n.o.ble lord, O my princely lord, what a desperate idea of your lordship's to wish to undertake this awful journey, to wish to go to the oracle of Ammon, which is quite ruined and deserted, whither perhaps for two centuries past no n.o.ble lord like your lordship has ever travelled! O my lord, O my lord, if only this horrible journey ends well! The drivers and guards are not yet complaining; there is still water in the bags for men and beasts; we have not yet experienced any other adventure beyond the appearance of one lion, who stood proudly on the point of a rock but fled when he saw my burnous flapping in the distance, while our hunters tried to shoot him with poisoned arrows. But my lord, if more lions appear, or if robbers suddenly come in sight, or if those terrible ghosts loom up: the sphinxes with the human heads and the giants with faces of animals, which, people say, fill the desert; or if we meet the giant snake, who has a forest growing on his back and who makes his nest underground and who, when hungry, bores his terrible body right through the earth's flat disk and swallows towns and villages, O my lord, then I doubt, alas, whether my flapping burnous and the bows and arrows of our hunters and guards will save us! O my lord, O my gracious, n.o.ble lord, shall I ever see Saba again, my dear country blessed by the G.o.ds!"

Thus ran Caleb's complaint; but Lucius said:

"Tarrar is seeing his country again, aren't you, Tarrar?"