The dryad a novel
thing could not be. If her tale were true, and she were indeed one of
the old people permitted by the providence of God to dwell undying upon
earth, such grace was now given to none other in the world, so that
within a little while her lover must needs die and she be left alone.
Now the renewal of this assurance stabbed at Argathona's heart, and she
knelt at the old man's feet and besought him, asking if there were no
way by which her gift of abiding youth and enduring life could be given
to a mortal. Boniface answered her that there was no such way, though
poets had dreamed of a fountain of youth which blessed those that drank
with renewed youth and length of years. But no such fountain existed
in the world. Then Argathona began to weep, remembering her mother's
sorrow, and seeing its renewal for herself, and for the anguish in her
eyes the solitary strove to comfort her.
"I cannot give your lover endless life in this world," he said; "but I
can give you the life of a mortal, with its grace beyond the grave."
When Argathona stared at him wide-eyed in wonder, he told her that if
she would embrace the true faith and be baptized a Christian, in that
moment her birthright of immortality would depart from her and her
gift of endless youth, and she would become a mortal woman with all a
woman's cares and sorrows and a woman's certain death. He told her that
if she did this her beauty would fade from her year by year, and ugly
age would creep upon her, with many aches and pains in its company,
till her time came to pass away. Then he painted the joys of paradise,
and the fellowship of the saints and angels, and the endless pleasure
of the elect. But only by baptism and acceptation of the burden of
death could she hope to be happy with her lover, here for a little
while, and hereafter forever.
Argathona mused a little while nursing her chin in the hollow of her
hand, and after musing rose and thanked the anchorite gravely and
discreetly for what he had told her, and so bade him farewell.
"I will abide for a while in my forest," she said, "and think upon
these things that you have told me, and if it prove that my spirit
shall see with your eyes, and my heart shall speak with your voice,
then I will come to you again."
So she rose and went her way up the mountain path into the forest, and
the old pope knelt at the feet of the Crucified and prayed.
XXVII
THE DREAM OF ARGATHONA
When Argathona left the ancient and pursued her homeward path, the
fervor of the day was on the wane, and the sky flamed as with the
conflagration of a hero's funeral pyre. The west was a medley of reds
and yellows, peach color, gold color, rose color, copper color, orange
color. All the splendid metals fused in that limbec; all the luxurious
fruits and flowers wantoned in that garden. The sun had fallen behind
the dark clouds that girdled the horizon; he had vanished as a king
might vanish through dark, swiftly falling curtains, but his glittering
retinue still lingered in the Occidental antechamber, brilliant in
the liveries of their imperious king. High in heaven the moon swam in
a space of unnamable, unthinkable sweetness; it was no more than a
half moon, and showed like a shield held sideways when a knight rides
down the lists. Far away the sea slumbered, steel-blue like a knight's
sword, and its large, noiseless waves suggested the easy breathing of
some fearful force asleep, and sleeping, lovely in its peace.
Argathona paused on the crest of a ridge and gazed in adoration at
the majesty of the dusk. It seemed to her as if she could never weary
of looking on such loveliness, and her heart grew cold at the new turn
of her thoughts. Must she, indeed, set a term to her delight in life,
to the joy of the dawn and the noon and the even and the night, joys
renewable to her for ever and ever? She could not understand what
it meant to say farewell to the sunlight and the moonlight and the
stars, to be no longer a child of the bright earth, to fade away as
her mother's essence had faded away, to live and love, and then, in a
breath, to live and love no more. Faces of fear seemed to gibber at her
through the tree-trunks, the hands of anguish seemed to clasp at her
throat as if to strangle her; for the first time she felt and trembled
at the horror of the forest. With a cry of pain she turned from the
sunset and plunged into the wood, and made for her resting-place in the
heart of the groves. There she flung herself upon the turf, and above
her the sky was gray with stars, and, sobbing, she sought and found
sleep.
So Argathona lay asleep in the greenwood, and for a wonder Argathona
dreamed a dream. She knew in her sleep that she was in the spot where
she lay, in that hollow place in the heart of the old forest where
always, since her babyhood, she had loved best to linger. Here in the
summer days it was sweet to lie awake and see the sunbeams dapple the
grass with shadows, or to be lulled to slumber by the droning of the
bees. Here in the summer nights it was sweet to lie awake and peep
through the branches at the stars, or to be guided by the silence into
the region of sleep. But now, in this unwonted dream of hers, she
thought that all the winds of all the world were blowing softly through
the lanes and alleys and avenues of the wood, and she believed that
she, sleeping, stirred in her sleep to hear, and as she hearkened,
it was as if the wailings of the winds grew stronger, till they took
the tone of many differing sounds, as the beating of the wings of
monstrous birds, and the galloping of huge horses, and the straining
of great sails at sea. And as she, in her vision, lay and listened to
the cunning of the wind, she was made aware that the place where she
rested shone with a marvel of faces that she had not seen since she was
a dryad child, and she felt that her wood was peopled once again with
the presences of the gods of Greece.
She saw them all about her, between the trees and upon the grass,
moving upon her like a circle of flakes of white fire, and at first
the phantasms seemed to flicker as flame does, inclining this way and
that, waxing and waning, but ever coming closer. Suddenly they stood
very still, and it was as if she saw clearer and the flamy shapes took
substance, and she knew that she was surrounded by the company of the
Olympians, and that they showed as she had seen them long ago in her
babyhood ere they rode to the hollow land.
Now while Argathona gazed in awe at the celestials, it appeared to her
in her vision that behind these mightiest there congregated a throng
of forms filling all the spaces of the wood as far as she could see,
and she knew these to be the fellowship of the ancient faith. There
clustered the lesser gods, the domestic gods, and the sylvan gods,
the divinities of winds and clouds and waters, the beautiful sisters
of the dooms and the seasons, and the charities and the arts, and the
grim deities of the underworld, and the uncouth creatures that dwelled
beyond the realm of night, and the demi-gods, that were men and were
uplifted. Argathona beheld them all in a single glance, for all their
number, each one individual and familiar, as if no other godlike
thing waited there and watched in the moonlight, and yet they blended
together even as the moonbeams blended. And now she thought as she lay
there, sleeping yet waking, that the eyes of all the Olympians, and the
eyes of the myriads beyond, were fixed upon her with a look of entreaty
and a look of grief. And the ears of her sleep were quickened, and she
heard the eternals speak to her one after one.
The first to speak was Zeus, the all-father, launcher of the levin.
His hair was wreathed with a chaplet of oak-leaves, and his right hand
grasped a staff upon whose head an eagle perched that fluttered its
wings as if about to fly and stared around with fierce, unblinking
eyes. And Zeus, the commander of the clouds and the tyrant of the
thunder, spoke to Argathona, and said:
"Deathless daughter of a divine mother, do not desert your mother's
people and your birthright, the gift of your kin. For though we no
longer abide in Greece, you remain, and we may yet return. Wherefore be
faithful to the old faith of the fruitful earth and await the coming of
your kindred."
So Zeus, the all-father, spoke, and his face was compassionate and sad,
and the eagle craned its head towards the sleeping girl and clapped its
angry wings. The next to speak was Hera, consort of the monarch of the
gods. She wore a queenly crown, and on the ball of her sceptre a cuckoo
sat and preened its yellow plumes. And Hera spoke to Argathona, and
said:
"Daughter of the consecrated forest, do not abandon its sanctuary at
the call of a mortal for a mortal's god. That which has gone may come
again, and if the time of our triumph arrive we should weep, indeed,
were Argathona not here to welcome us."
And so she made silence, and the restless cuckoo cried its cry while
the wife of the high-minded drew her veil about her face. And the next
to speak was Poseidon, the sovereign of the sea, and Poseidon leaned
upon his trident, and his voice was as the lapping of waves in a sunny
bay.
"These plead for the fruitful earth. I plead for the fruitless
sea. Fair as a maiden in its grace, fierce as a mænad in its rage.
Unchanging, ever-changing, pitiful and pitiless, kind and cruel,
ceaselessly beautiful. Surely you will not surrender companionship
with the sight and the sound and the savor of the sea."
So Poseidon spoke, arrogant, and was silent, and it seemed to the
sleeper that from afar, from the side of the sea, there rose unearthly
music as from the breath of the sea-people blown through the curling
conch. And the next to speak was the divine one with the crested head,
she that carries a lance and bears the face of Medusa on her shield,
Pallas Athena, protector of Athens. A wise owl rode on her shoulder
and made as if it whispered in her ear. And Pallas Athena spoke to
Argathona, and said:
"It is better to be wise in the wisdom of the woodlands than wise in
the wisdom of mortals, for mortal man is born to trouble, and mortal
woman is born to travail, and the life of each is like the puff of
breath that an infant spends in a cry. The child of the wildwood lives
idly, divinely, knowing neither cark nor care, and day succeeds day,
delicious, and shall succeed till the new order changes and the gods
return again."
And so she was silent, and the owl on her shoulder ruffled its
neck-feathers and winked its eyes benignly at the sleeping child. And
the next to speak was Hermes, the subtle contriver, the crafty, with
the living wings upon his heels and the twisting snakes upon his staff,
and he spoke to Argathona, and his voice entreated wheedlingly, and it
had the persuasion of music rippling from the stringed shell of the
tortoise. And Hermes spoke to her, and said:
"My kinswoman, put no faith in the words of man, for the lips that
praised us yesterday praise another lord to-day, and who knows what
such fluctuant minds may praise to-morrow. Mortal man is guileful and
his speech is a snare, but thou, being warned, be wily and deny him and
let him die."
So he spoke and was silent, and the wings on his heels ceased to quiver
and the snakes stiffened about his rod. Then the girl-goddess Artemis
glided over the grass, short-kirtled, the comely huntress, with her bow
and arrows upon her, and some stray locks of her pale hair floating on
her neck. And Artemis spoke to Argathona as she slept, and said:
"Sweet sister, living the life I loved to live in the dear woodways
with the citizens of the wood, take heed to my speech and be cheered.