In Nikola’s case unparalleled success attended this manœuvre, and from the furtive smiles which passed between husband and wife I realised that some mystery was attached to their unions which I forthwith made it my business, to solve.
“I always call her ‘my statue,’” said the muleteer, laughing, “‘my marble statue,’” and he slapped her on the back to show that, at any rate, she was made of pretty hard material.
“Can Pygmalion have married Galatea after all?” I remarked for the moment, forgetting the ignorance of my friends on such topics, but a Greek never admits that he does not understand, and Nikola replied, “No; her name is Kallirhoe, and she was the priest’s daughter.”
Having now broached the subject, Nikola was all anxiety to continue it; he seated himself on one chair, his wife took another, ready to prompt him if necessary, and remind him of forgotten facts. I sat on the divan; between us was the brazier; the only cause for interruption came from an exceedingly naughty child, which existed as a living testimony that this modern Galatea had recovered from her transformation into stone.
“I was a gay young fellow in those days,” began Nikola.
“Five years ago last carnival time,” put in the wife, but she subsided on a frown from her better half; for Greek husbands never meekly submit, like English ones, to the lesser portion of command, and the Greek wife is the pattern of a weaker vessel, seldom sitting down to meals, cooking, spinning, slaving,—a mere chattel, in fact.
“I was the youngest of six—two sisters and four brothers, and we four worked day after day to keep our old father’s land in order, for we were very poor, and had nothing to live upon except the produce of our land.”
Land in Sikinos is divided into tiny holdings: one man may possess half a dozen plots of land in different parts of the island, the produce of which—the grain, the grapes, the olives, the honey, etc.—he brings on mules to his store (ἀποθήκη) near the village. Each landowner has a store and a little garden around it on the hillside, just outside the village, of which the stores look like a mean extension, but on visiting them we found their use.
“We worked every day in the year except feast-days, starting early with our ploughs, our hoes, and our pruning hooks, according to the season, and returning late, driving our bullocks and our mules before us.” An islander’s tools are simple enough—his plough is so light that he can carry it over his shoulders as he drives the bullocks to their work. It merely scratches the back of the land, making no deep furrows; and when the work is far from the village the husbandman starts from home very early, and seldom returns till dusk.
“On feast-days we danced on the village square. I used to look forward to those days, for then I met Kallirhoe, the priest’s daughter, who danced the syrtos best of all the girls, tripping as softly as a Nereid,” said Nikola, looking approvingly at his wife. I had seen a syrtos at Sikinos, and I could testify to the fact that they dance it well, revolving in light wavy lines backwards, forwards, now quick, now slow, until you do not wonder that the natives imagine those mystic beings they call Nereids to be for ever dancing thus in the caves and grottoes. The syrtos is a semicircular dance of alternate young men and maidens, holding each other by handkerchiefs, not from modesty, as one might at first suppose, but so as to give more liberty of action to their limbs, and in dancing this dance it would appear Nikola and Kallirhoe first felt the tender passion of love kindled in their breasts. But between the two a great gulf was fixed, for marriages amongst a peasantry so shrewd as the Greeks are not so easily settled as they are with us. Parents have absolute authority over their daughters, and never allow them to marry without a prospect, and before providing for any son a father’s duty is to give his daughters a house and a competency, and he expects any suitor for their hand to present an equivalent in land and farm stock. The result of this is to create an overpowering stock of maiden ladies, and to drive young men from home in search of fortunes and wives elsewhere.