XI.
A few days later Polycles and Myrtale visited Simonides’ country-house to look after a vineyard whose fruit, in Polycles’ opinion, was the best in Thessaly. When they returned home, accompanied by a male and female slave, evening was approaching. The sun was sinking behind some hills, and the atmosphere glowed with orange and crimson hues. The road they were following was only marked by a few deep wheel tracks in the grass; on the right was a clump of gnarled olive trees, whose foliage as usual reflected the color of the sky, so that now in the sunset radiance they seemed covered with a golden veil; on the left a brook flowed between hedges of flowering laurel. A light mist was rising from the meadows, and the whole air was filled with the spicy odor of blossoms. Ever and anon a faint twitter echoed from the bushes; sometimes a bee, apparently bewildered and drowsy, buzzed upward from the grass at their feet, and through the profound stillness of the country a dog’s bark was heard in the distance.
There was something in the peacefulness of the evening which invited familiar conversation. Polycles took Myrtale’s hand.
“Dear child,” he said. “It is time to think of your affairs.”
“What do you mean, Polycles?”
“I am wondering whether among the youths of the city, whom you must have seen on festival days, there is not one you would like for a husband.”
Myrtale blushed faintly, but shook her head.
“There is Theagenes, the son of Straton, the dyer. True, he is rather stout for a young man, but he is clever, talks well, and has a fortune at least as large as your own.”
Myrtale made no reply; but struck, with the tassel on the corner of her upper robe, the head of a dandelion growing by the roadside, so that its white down flew in every direction.
Polycles understood that the proposed suitor was excluded from the list.
“There is Eumolpus, son of Socles the rope-maker!” he continued. “He is slender, well-formed, and handsome. True, he is on intimate terms with a hetaira, but after marriage....”
Myrtale made no answer in words; but the tassel was put in motion with the same result as before.
“There is also,” added Polycles, “young Nicias, your neighbor’s son. I don’t deny that since his visit to Athens he has become a dandy; but....”
This was too much for Myrtale; she forgot the reserve required of a young girl and wrathfully exclaimed:
“The coxcomb!”
“But is there no one?”
Myrtale silently lowered her eyes; then, to change the conversation, said:
“How is the house in the Street of the Bakers? Has it been much damaged by the flood and the earthquake?”
“Only one of the pillars in the peristyle was twisted awry; but the damage has been repaired and, so far as your home is concerned, you can have the wedding there any day.”
As they approached the city Myrtale became more and more thoughtful. Suddenly she sighed, drew her hand from her companion’s clasp, and remarked:
“It’s a pity that Lycon is a slave!” Then, as if fearing she had said too much, she hastened to add: “Don’t you think so, too?”
Polycles looked keenly at her and, in spite of the dusk of evening, he noticed that her cheeks were flushed.
“You are mistaken, child,” he replied. “Lycon is no slave. Your father freed him on the day of his death.”
“And I knew nothing about it?”
“You were standing at the hearth, preparing the decoction the physician had ordered.”
“My dear father!” exclaimed Myrtale, deeply moved, kissing her fingers as if she had seen the dead man alive before her.
“But that doesn’t settle everything,” said Polycles gravely. “In Athens Lycon is a spurious citizen and subject to the penalty of the law. He would be made a slave there.”
Myrtale started.
“Do what you can for him,” she said hurriedly, clasping Polycles’ hand in both her own.
“That is no easy matter,” replied Polycles, who found a secret satisfaction in being entreated to do what he himself intended. “It’s no easy matter, I tell you.”
“You can free him, if you wish. Remember what he has done for the city. Besides, did he not save my father’s life and mine?”
“I’ll think of it,” said Polycles.
“No, no, you must promise me!” exclaimed Myrtale. “Save him from the punishment of the law, and I will be a daughter to you!” And raising herself on tiptoe, she flung her arms around Polycles’ neck and kissed him on the cheek.
Polycles felt the soft pressure of Myrtale’s youthful figure and, when he had taken leave of her at the door of the women’s apartment in his house, he stood still, absorbed in thought.
“By Aphrodite!” he cried, “the girl is bewitching, and I am not so old....”
But at the same instant he beheld, as he had done in his dream, the oil-jar suspended by a blue ribbon over the door of his house. He pressed his hands upon his eyes and, when he entered his lonely sleeping-room, he said, sighing:
“Polycles, you are a greater simpleton than I had supposed.”