The Perilous Seat

by Caroline Dale Snedeker

The consequence? Never once did she think of consequence. She was simply doing what she did as if a god had pushed her to it, feeling vaguely that she was in the hands of her god. She sprang from bed and threw about her bare lovely body her chiton, pinning it at the shoulders. How her fingers trembled! Then around her supple waist went her zone, drawn tight; then came cloak and sandals.

The key to the front door was in her father’s room. Nikander slept soundly, but Melantho slept, like puss by the fire, with one eye open. “If they see me they will whip me again,” she thought. “Well, what of that?”

Noiselessly she stepped out upon the court gallery. Everything in the court stood strangely distinct in the dawn. Would she ever see again the little altar, the swing that hung motionless in its place? No one could tell what might ensue if she went out. Theria stole forward to her parents’ room.

Yes, they were asleep. The key was kept in the chest among the book-scrolls. With an instinctive prayer, she opened the chest and put her hand deftly among the metal cylinders. But one of them settled noisily into a new position. It clattered like a chariot in her ears, and she crouched terror-struck. Her father moved, sighed. The key was not there. In desperation she arose and pushed her hands behind some clothes on a peg. There, O Kairos! it hung. And grasping it in her hand, Theria disappeared like a shadow, and so descended the stair.

The porter would be near the door; but at this hour surely in his lodge asleep. And Medon was growing very deaf these days. He was hardly a fit porter, but Nikander would not grieve the old man by taking away his office. Theria had grace enough to feel a passing regret that Medon through this escapade of hers might lose his beloved duty.

Now she was at the door, fitting the great key into its hole. Careful Medon was asleep but lying almost across his door. Oh, if she could be quicker! If she would not so lose breath! But slowly the door opened. It did not creak—not very much.

She slipped through the crack.

Then, O Hermes, O gods of all open spaces and swift feet! She was out of doors. She was under the sky. So high that sky that she was dizzy looking up at it. Not the accustomed low ceiling of the room or the narrow opening above the court. It was the lofty treading place of the Immortals. All the air in the world met her first deep-taken breath—fragrance a thousand fold—the uprising spirit of the morn meeting her spirit.

She ran like a deer along the road in the grey silver light. A marvellous place in which to be set free. A vast amphitheatre of hills, spaceful and she in the midst of the space. On every side in a far-flung circle rose dim mountain forms to the silvery sky. On a nearer hillside, aslant like a picture, lay the precious sanctuary, framed four square within its clear-seen walls. But within all was dim and confused, for the cliffs which towered above it still had it in their shadow.