Under Greek Skies. Ioulia D. Dragoume
and fisher folk, and boatmen? It would say nothing to me! But each one to his taste. Why do you not go back to it and work there?”
“I cannot; each one works for himself on the island; there are no houses in which to serve, there is no money to earn.”
Antigone shrugged her shoulders.
“Truly it is much money you are earning here! Eight drachmæ a month, and your shoes,” with a contemptuous glance at Mattina’s feet, “all worn out!”
“There are only three holes,” said Mattina gravely, “and she,” with a backward jerk of her thumb, “said I should have new ones next week.”
Antigone laughed.
“You will get them on the week that has no Saturday.”
“And at New Year,” went on Mattina, “she will give me a present!”
“Give you a present! She! Your Kyria! You have many loaves to eat, my poor one, before that day dawns!”
“But she said so.”
“She said and she will unsay!”
“But my aunt heard it, too, and she told my uncle it would be a fine one.”
“Your aunt does not know her, and I have lived next door to her it is three years now, and I have known all her servants. Some people give presents, yes, they have good hearts; but your mistress would never give a thing belonging to her, no, not even her fever! Now there is the ‘Madmazella’ who lives in the ground floor room at our house. She gives lessons all day long, and she has not much money, yet she often gives me things. When she came back from her country last time, she brought me a silk blouse ready sewn with little flowers all over it, and lace at the neck. And the other day she put her two hats into one paper box, and gave me the other one to keep my hat in, because it gets crushed in my trunk. And always with a good word in her mouth! So I too when she is ill, I run for her till I fall. She is going away again to her country, in a few days now, and she says that when she comes back she will bring me a new hat.”
But Mattina’s mind was running on her present.
“I do not want a silk blouse, nor a box for a hat, because,” she added as an afterthought, “I have no hat. But I should like very much if someone would give me a picture with a broad gold frame, which I saw in the window of a shop the other day when I took the children out. It was the picture of the sea, and there was a boat on it with a white sail, and you could see the sail in the water all long and wavy, as you do really, and if you touched the water you thought your finger would be wet. That is what I wish for.”
“A picture! And where would you hang it?”
Mattina thought for a moment.
“I do not know,” she said at last, “but it would be mine, and I could look at it every day.”
“You! with your seas, and your rocks, and your island!” exclaimed the older girl as she stooped to pick up her crochet work which had fallen off her knees. “Even if it were Paris, you could not make more fuss about it.”
“What is Paris?”
“Paris is the country from where Madmazella comes. She says it is a thousand times more beautiful than Athens.”
Mattina looked about her, at the women who sat chatting before the narrow doorways behind which were occasional glimpses of crowded courtyards and linen spread out to dry, at the dirty little trickle of water along the sidewalk with its accustomed burden of rotting lettuce leaves, at the children scrambling and shouting in the thick dust of the road, and sighed. She could not have told why she sighed, nor have put into words what she found so ugly about her, so she only said:—
“Perhaps it is better there than here.”
That Athens has beauties of its own, which people travel from distant lands to see, she knew not. Its charms were not for her. When she walked out with Taki and Bebeko, the pavements hurt her badly shod feet, and the glare of the tall white houses hurt her eyes. As for the beautiful Royal Gardens with their old trees and their shady paths, their pergolas, their palms, their orange trees and their sheets of violets, as for the Zappion17 from whose raised terrace one can see the columns of the old Temple of Jupiter, the Acropolis,18 the marble Stadium,19 and Phalerum and the sea, all of which together make what is perhaps the most beautiful view in all Europe, … she had never been there! Those were walks for the rich and well-born children whom she sometimes saw wheeled about in little carriages by foreign nurses who were dressed all in white with little black bonnets tied with white strings. How could she lug two heavy children so far? No, Athens for her was made up of hot narrow streets, of much noise and hard pavements.
The very next morning while she was sweeping out the passage, she saw Antigone in her best dress and her hat with the pink flowers, beckoning to her from outside the house.
“What is it?” exclaimed Mattina, “how is it you are dressed in your fine things in the morning? What is happening?”
“It is happening that I am going! That old screaming mistress of mine has sent me off!”
“But what did you do?”
“I only told her I was not a dog to be spoken to as she speaks to me, and she told me to go now at once! Well, it matters little to me; there is no lack of houses, and better than hers a thousand times! I am a poor girl without learning, but I should be ashamed to scream as she does when anger takes her. Why, you can hear her as far off as the square! Well, if she thinks I shall regret her and her screams, she deceives herself! See, I leave you the key of my trunk. I will send my brother for it this evening, if he can come so far; he lives at the Plaka20 you know. And I will tell him to ask you for the key: I will have no pryings in my things. And Mattina. …”
“Yes?”
“Do me a favor and may you enjoy your life!”
“What shall I do?”
“Who knows when the old woman in there will get another girl to serve, and there is that poor Madmazella who is ill, and in bed again to-day, and not a soul to get her a glass of water! Go in you, once or twice, will you not? Her room is over there; it opens on the courtyard by a separate door, so you need not go near the rest of the house at all.”
“I will go,” said Mattina.
“I shall owe it you as a favor. Well, Addio—good-by—perhaps I shall see you again.”
“The good hour be with you!” said Mattina, and then ran back into the house, hearing her master calling her.
Later in the day, when her mistress had gone out for the afternoon, Mattina filled a glass with cold water and carried it carefully into the neighbouring courtyard. She found the ground floor room easily, and lifting the latch, stood hesitatingly in the doorway. Tapping at a door was unknown in Poros etiquette.
A young woman with a pale face and tumbled fair hair lay on the bed in a corner of the room.
She opened her eyes as the door creaked, and smiled at Mattina.
“What is it, little one? Whom do you want?”
“Antigone said …” and Mattina shifted from one foot to another, “that there was not a soul to get you a glass of water.”
The young woman raised herself on her elbow, and her fair hair fell about her shoulders.
“And so you came to bring me one! But what kindness! I accept with gratitude; but it is not water I want. Since the morning I have taken nothing, and I have a hollow there, which gives me still more pain in the head.”
Mattina looked puzzled; she did not know what a “hollow” was.
“Listen, little one: on the shelf of that cupboard there, there is a small box of chocolate; it is in powder all ready and my spirit lamp wants but a match to it. Bring then your glass of water; you see we do require it after all, pour it in the little pan, and the chocolate,