Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy. Margaret Horton Potter
contemptuously:
"You had a dream, Charmides. You did not leave the room in which I slept last night."
Heraia raised her head in sudden hope, but here Theron broke in:
"Nay—even if it were but a dream, the gods have more than once appeared to favored mortals in sleep."
"But this, Theron, was no dream. I followed Charmides to the temple. It is true that I saw no vision, and all the music that came to my ears was made by Charmides himself, who sang an inspired hymn to the goddess. But his vow to Apollo was most certainly made. The shepherd has spoken truth."
There was another pause. Then Theron sighed heavily and spoke. "He must abide by the vow. You, O Phœnician, will you take him in the galley to your far city, on his way to the abode of the goddess?"
"That I promised him last night."
"But," interrupted Phalaris, still incredulous, "how did you both pass the guard at the gate by which you entered the acropolis?"
"He slept!" replied Charmides and Kabir, in the same breath.
Heraia let a faint sigh that was more than half sob escape her; and Charmides drew a hand across his brow. "You bid me go, father?" he said.
Theron hesitated. Finally, in a tone of grave reproval, he replied, "It is not I that can bid you go. You yourself owe obedience to your patron god and to the strange goddess that put this thing into your heart. Though I shall lose you, though the heart of your mother is faint at the thought of your departure, yet I dare not command you to break the vow. Yes, Charmides—you must go."
A momentary spasm of pain crossed Charmides' young face, and was gone as it had come. Only by his straightened mouth could one have guessed that he was not as usual. Heraia's eyes were bright with tears which she did not allow to fall; and even Phalaris, the true Spartan of the family, who was a little scornful of his brother for permitting his feelings to betray themselves even for a moment, himself felt an unlooked-for quiver at the heart when he thought of a life empty of his girlish brother's presence. Both he and his mother sat absently looking at the rhapsode, till Theron, seeing danger of weakness in the scene, abruptly rose:
"Come, Phalaris, we will go down together to the galley. I will speak with Eshmun on behalf of Charmides. Perhaps you, also, Kabir, will care to come?"
"And I. I will work now upon the ship till she sails again. Sardeis can take the flock."
"Eager to be gone, boy?" asked Theron, smiling rather sadly; but his question needed no other answer than his son's expression. So, presently, the four men left the house, and Heraia was left alone to face this all-unexpected grief that had come to her—the loss of the child that had made her life beautiful.
The next ten days flew by on wings—wings of grief and dread foreboding for those in Theron's house. Work on the galley proceeded vigorously. Down from the hills, far to the east of the city, a long, tapering cedar-tree was brought. Its branches were hewn off, its bark stripped away, and the bare trunk set up in the place of the old, broken mast. New sails were an easy matter of provision, for the Selinuntians were adepts at making them, and three days sufficed for the shaping and sewing of these. Oars took more time, for strong wood was hard to procure around Selinous, and only two or three men in the city had any idea of the manner of carving out these heavy and unshapely things. The mending of the torn bottom of the ship and the replacing of her crushed bulwarks and sides required many days of skilful carpentry; and when all this was done, the heavy-clinging barnacles were carefully scraped from their comfortable abiding-place, and the good ship set right side up once more. Finally, on the last day of April, Eshmun declared her ready for the new launching, and sent word to all his crew that in forty-eight hours more their journey would be recommenced, and that on the evening before their start prayers and a sacrifice for a safe journey would be made at an altar erected on the sands.
Charmides had worked well and steadily at the remantling of the ship; and in this way became acquainted with her captain and all the crew, who, when they learned that he was to sail with them for Tyre, took some pains to show him courtesy. During this fortnight of labor Charmides' thoughts were busier than his hands, and they moved not wholly through regretful ways. It would have been wonderful had his young imagination not been excited by the prospect before him, that of strange lands and peoples, of pleasures and dangers with which he was to become acquainted. His fancy strayed often through pleasant paths, so that sometimes half a day went by before a remembrance of the coming separation from his home and from his mother brought a shadow across his new road.
The prospect of departure was, too, far easier for Charmides to contemplate than it would have been for Phalaris, with all the athlete's affected stoicism. Up to this time Charmides had led a lonely life; no tastes that rendered him companionable towards others, or, rather, holding within himself resources that enabled him to lead a life in which the presence of others was unnecessary and undesirable. The existence that his imagination conjured up from the lands of the unreal had become dearer to him than that of actualities. He had created a world for himself, and peopled it with creatures of his fancy. With these he walked and held converse, and no one but Heraia, his mother, could have understood how completely they satisfied his every need of companionship. Thus he was able to take away with him almost all of his former life; and Charmides and Heraia both realized, in their secret hearts, that the way of another in his place would have been far harder than it promised to be for him.
During the last week before the sailing of the ship, Charmides held one or two long and serious talks with his father and brother. Theron, with grave, undemonstrative affection, gave him good counsel and excellent advice as to his dealings with men, and his behavior in various possible situations with them. Theron was not a poor man, neither was he an ungenerous one; and the bag of silver coins given the shepherd to carry away with him contained enough to transport him to the gates of the great city itself. Regarding the object of that journey, the father, after the first morning, said not one word. He felt that Charmides knew best what he intended to do; and it must be confessed that, despite his piety and his reverence for the gods of his race, the Selinuntian felt his credulity much taxed when it came to Istar, the living goddess of Babylon, of whose existence Kabir was their single witness, and at that a witness only at second hand, according to the Tyrian's own admission. Phalaris shared his father's views on this point; but, to his credit be it said, not the least suggestion of this feeling ever escaped him in his brother's presence after Charmides' decision to go had been finally and irrevocably made.
Kabir, in the mean time, found his admiration of the shepherd increasing. Charmides now held many a talk with him on practical things, and the Phœnician found his prospective companion by no means lacking in common-sense. The young Greek very soon read enough of the other's nature to realize that poetry and imagination held small places in his category of desirable characteristics; and the young man ceased to lay before the older one any pretty notions regarding sea-myths in which he was indulging himself when contemplating the long, eastward voyage. Now and then they spoke of Istar, and Tyre, and Babylon, which Kabir knew well by hearsay. But legends of mischievous Tritons and dangerous Sirens, of fair Nymphs and hideous sea-monsters, and stories of Delos and Naxos, of Crete and Halicarnassus, the rhapsode kept for himself and his lyre.
At length came the dawning of the last day of the shepherd's old life. The galley was launched and ready to sail. Food and water were stowed away on board; and the libations and sacrifices had taken place on the beach the evening before. Now, on this last afternoon, Charmides sat alone, a little way in front of the house, looking off upon the seas to which, to-morrow, he was to trust himself for safe convoy to such distant lands. It was a fair afternoon, and very warm. The rhapsode, basking in the sunlight, felt his emotions dulled under the beauty around him. His blue eyes wandered slowly over the familiar and yet ever-changing scene. His mind was almost at rest. Indeed, his eyelids had begun to droop with suspicious heaviness, when a gentle hand was laid upon his shoulder, and he turned to find his mother at his side.
"Charmides!" she said, in a strained voice. And then again: "My Charmides!"
"My mother!" And she was held close in his arms, her tears raining down upon his face, his head drawn close upon her