The Vintage/Part 2/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE VISION AT BASSAE
From the village of Leondari, held in a half-cirele of the foothills of Helmos, where was to be the second link in the chain of beacens, it was impossible to see Andritsaena; but the mass of Mount Lycaon stood up fine and clear behind where Andritsaena was, and a series of smaller peaks a little to the west would prove, so Mitsos hoped, to be the hills above the temple. He and his host climbed the beacon-hill and took very sedulous note of these, and next morning the lad set off at daybreak to Andritsaena, which he reached in a day and a half. The country through which he travelled, an unkind and naked tract, was not suspected by the Turks to be tinged with any disaffection to their benignant rule, and his going was made without difficulty or accident. He fonnd welcome at the house of the priest to whom Germanos had given him a letter, and after dinner the two rode off, on a fair, cloudless afternoon, to the hills above the temple, to verify its visibility from Taygetus on the south and the crag of Helmos on the north. An Englishman, whom the priest described as a "tall man covered with straps and machines," had been there a year or two before making wonderful drawings of the place, and had told them it was a temple to Apollo, and that the ancient Greek name for it was Bassae. "Yet I like not the place," said Father Zervas.
An hour or so after their departure, fleecy clouds began to spin themselves in the sky, and as they went higher they found themselves involved in the folds of a white fabric of mist, which lay as thick as a blanket over the hill-side, and through which the sun seemed to hang white and unluminons, like a china plate. This promised but ill for the profit of their ride, but Zervas said it was worth while to push on; those mists would be scattered in a moment if the wind got up; he had seen them roll away as the housewife rolls up the bed-linen. But as they got higher the mist seemed to thicken, and the sun was expunged, and when, by the priest's computation, they must be near the temple, they could scarcely see ten yards before them, and the gaunt, contorted oak-trees marched swiftly into their narrow field of vision, and out again, like ghosts in torment. Shoulder after shoulder of gray hill-side sank beneath them, dripping with the cold, thick mist, and unutterably waste, when, after moving ten minutes or more across a featureless flank of hill, gigantic shadows peered at them from in front, a great range of columns faced them, and they were there.
Mitsos' pony, tired with the four days' journey, was lagging behind, and Mitsos had got off to relieve it on the steeper part of the ascent, when suddenly there came from out of the chill, blank fog a scream like that of a lost soul. For one moment a superstitious fear clutched at the boy, and his pony, startled, went off at a nimbler pace to join the other, and Mistos had to break into a run to keep up. Then suddenly the sun stared whitely through the mists, and in five seconds more the wind, which had screamed so shrilly, was upon them. In a moment the hill-side was covered with flying wreaths of vapor, which the wind tore smaller and smaller till there was nothing left of them; it ripped off ribbons from the skirts of the larger clouds, which it drove like herded sheep down the valleys, and as Mitsos gained the ridge where the temple stood, a brilliant sun sat in cloudless blue, looking down upon the great gray columns. At their feet in every direction new valleys, a moment before muffled in mist, were being carved out among the hill-sides, and already far to the south the plain of Kalamata, rimmed with a dim, dark sea, sparkled green through thirty miles of crisp air. Down in the valley through which they had come some conflicting current of air tilted the mist up in at all column of whirling vapor, as if from some great stewing-pot below, and as it streamed up into the higher air it melted and dissolved away, and in five minutes the whole land—north, south, east, and west—was naked to the incomparable blue.
Mitsos gazed in wonder at the gray columns, which seemed more to have grown out of the hill than to have been built by the hands of men; but the priest hurried him on.
"It is as I hoped," said he; "the wind has driven the clouds off; but they may come back. We must go quickly to the top of the hill."
The lad left his pony grazing by the columns and ran up the brow of the hill some two hundred feet above the end of the temple. Northward Helmos lifted a snowy finger into the sky, and clean as a cameo on its southeastern face stood the cone above Leondari, as if when the hills were set upon the earth by the stir of the forces of its morning it had been placed there for their purpose. Then looking southward they saw Taygetus rise shoulder above shoulder into the blue, offering a dozen vantage points. But Father Zervas was a cautious man.
"It seems clear enough, Mitsos," he said; "but Taygetus is a big place. This will I do for greater safety. You go straight south, you say, and will be at Kulamata two evenings from now, and on the third night you will sleep at some village on the pass crossing Taygetus over to Sparta. On that night directly after sundown I will kindle a beacon here, and keep it kindled for two hours, and in that time you will be able to choose a well-seen place for the blaze on Taygetus. Look, it is even as I said, the mists gather again; but the winds of God have favored us, and our work is done."
Even as he spoke a long tongue of mist shot up frem the valley below, and came licking up the hill like the spent water of a wave on a level beach, and Mitsos ran down quickly in order to find his pony in case it had strayed even thirty or forfy yards, before the clouds swallowed them up again. But he found it where he had left it, browsing contontedly on the spicy tufts of thyme and sweet mountain grass, and for a couple of minutes more, before the earth und sky were blotted ont, he stared amazedly at the tall gray ruins which stood there crowning the silence and strength of the hills, still unknown to all but a few travellers and to the shepherds that fed their flocks in summer on the hilltops—a memorial of the life and death of the worship of beauty, and the god of sunlight and health and imperishable youth.
He waited there till the priest joined him, and was surprised to see him cross himself as he passed by the door into the temple, and asked why he did so.
"It is a story of a devil," he said, "which folks tell about here. Whether I believe it or no, I know not, and so I am careful. We will make haste down this valley, for it is not good to be here after night."
The mists had risen again over the whole hill-side, but not thickly, and as they turned to go Mitsos looking back saw a strange shaft of light streaming directly out of the ruined door of the temple—the effect, no doubt, of the sun, which was near its setting, striking through some thin layer of cloud.
"Look," he said to the priest, "one might almost think the temple was lit from within."
Father Zervas looked round, and when he saw it dropped lamentably off his horse and onto his knees on the ground, and began muttering prayers, crossing himself the while.
Mitsos looked at him in surprise, and saw that his face was deadly pale, and a strangling anguish gripped at the muscles of his throat. The light cast through the temple door meantime had been choked by the gathering mists, and when Father Zervas looked up from his prayers it was gone.
"Quick, quick!" he cried to Mitsos; "it is not good to be here," and mounting on his pony he fairly clattered down the hill-side, and did not draw bridle till they had reached the main road from Andritsaena.
Mitsos followed, half amused, but conscious of a lurking fear in his mind, a fear bred by the memory of the winter evenings of his childhood when he used to hear strange stories of shapes larger than humans, which had been seen floating like leaves in the wind round the old temples on the Acropolis, and cries that came from the hills of Ægina, where stood the house of the god, but no human habitation, at the sound of which the villagers in the hamlets below would bolt their doors and crouch fearfully round the fire, "making the house good," as they said, by the reiterated sign of the cross. Then as he grew older his familiarity with morning and evening and night in lonely places had caused these stories to be half forgotten, or remembered only as he remembered the other terrors and pains of childhood—the general distrust of the dark, and the storms that came swooping down from the gaunt hills above Nauplia. But now when he saw the flying skirts of Father Zervas waving dimly from the mist in front, and heard the hurried clatter of his pony's feet, he followed at a good speed, and in some confusion of mind. Zervas had stopped on reaching the high-road, and here Mitsos caught him up.
"Ah, ah!" he gasped, "but it is a sore trial the Lord has sent me, for I am no braver than a hare when it comes to dealings with that which is no human thing, It is even as Demetri said, for the evil one is there, the one whom he saw under the form of a young man, very fair to look upon, but evil altogether, a son of the devil."
And he wiped a dew of horror from his brow.
Mitsos must have felt disposed to laugh had not the man's terror been so real.
"But what did you see, father?" he asked. "For me I saw naught but a light shining through the door."
"That was it, that was it," said Zervas, "and I—I have promised Germanos to see to the beacon business, and on that hill shall I have to watch while perhaps the young man, evil and fair, watches for me below. I cannot pass this way, for my heart is cold water at the thought. I shall have to climb up from the other valley, so that I pass not the place; and then, perhaps, with the holy cross on my breast and the image of the Crucified in my hand, I shall go unhurt."
"But what was it Demetri saw?" asked Mitsos.
"It was this way," said Father Zervas, who was growing a little more collected as they attained a greater distance from the temple. "One evening, a spring evening, as it might be to-day, Demetri, of our village, whom I know, was driving his sheep down from the hill above the temple, where the beacon will be; and, being later than he knew, the sun had set ere he came down to where the temple stands; therefore, as he could not herd the sheep in the dark down the glen, he bethought himself to encamp there, for the night was warm and he had food enough with him and wine for two men. Inside, the temple is of two rooms, and into the hindermost of these he penned the sheep, and in the other he lit a sparkle of fire and sat himself down to eat his supper. And having finished his supper he lay down to sleep, but no wink of sleep came near him, and feeling restless, he sat up and smoked awhile. But his unrest gained on him, twitching at his limbs and bidding him go; so out he fared on the hill-side to see if he could find sleep there—or, at any rate, get air—for it seemed to him that the temple had grown unseasonably warm, and that it was filled with some sweet and subtle perfume. Outside it was cooler, and so, laying himeelf in a hollow of the hill opposite the temple gate, he nestled down among the grasses and again tried to sleep.
"But it seemed to him that from below there came dim songs such as men sing on feast-days, and looking down to see whence such voices came, he saw, even as you saw and I, astrong great light shining out of the temple door, and next moment came a clattering and pattering of feet, and out through the door rushed his sheep, which must have leaped the barrier of boughs he had put up, and ran, scattering, dumb, and frightened, in all directions. He got up and hurried down to stop any that were left, for as for herding those that were gone he might as well have tried to herd the moon-beams, for the night was dark but for the space illuminated by that great light that shone out from the temple. So down he _p249.jpg)
"IN THE CENTRE OF THE GREAT CHAMBER STOOD ONE WHOM IT DAZZLED HIS EYES
ran, but at the temple door he stopped, for in the centre of the great chamber stood one whom it dazzled his eyes to look upon. Fair was he and young, and lithe as a deer on the mountains, and from his face there shone a beauty and a glory which belong not to mortal man; and the lines of his body were soft with the graciousness of youth, but firm with the strength of a man. Over one shoulder was slung a quiver of gold, and his left hand held a golden bow; golden sandals were on his feet, and on his head a wreath of wild laurel, For the rest, he was as naked as the night of full moon in May, and as glorious. Two fingers of the hand which held the bow were rested on the head of one of Demetri's rams, the father of the flock, and the beast stood there quiet and not afraid. No other light was there in the temple, but all the splendor which turned the place to a summer noonday sprang from him. Only in front of the youth still smouldered the fire by which Demetri had eaten his supper, and that seemed in the blaze that filled the temple to have burned low and dim, like a candle in the sunlight, and a little blue smoke from it came towards him, full of some wonderful sweet perfume. The sheep, frightened, had collected again round him, and in that light he could see to right and left score upon score of their white heads and twitching ears; they stood close to him and huddled, yet all looked at that immortal thing within the temple. And as he stood there, stricken to stone, marvelling at the beauty of the youth, and forgetting in his wonder to be afraid, the god—yet no god was he, but only evil," suid Zervas, hastily, again crossing himself—"raised his eyes to him and said:
"'Thou that makest a sheep-pen of my sanctuary, art thou not afraid to do this thing?'
"But he spoke, so said Demetri, not harshly, and in the lustre of his eyes there was something so matchless and beyond compare that he knelt down and said:
"'Forgive me, Lord, for I knew not that it was thine,'
"Then said the other:
"'For penalty and yet for thine honor this ram is mine,' and he struck the beast lightly on the head, at which it sank down and moved no more. Then said the god again:
"'It is long since I have looked on your race; not so fair are they now as they were in the olden days'—and in truth Demetri is an ugly loon—'but this shalt thou learn of me, how joy is better than self-sacrifice, and beauty than wisdom or the fear of God. Look at me only, the proof is here.'
"And at this he held out his hand to him, but Demetri was suddenly smitten by the knowledge that this beautiful youth was more evil than the beasts of the field, and in wild despair he bethought himself of his only safety, and made in the air, though feebly, for his heart was nigh surrendered, the sign of the cross. With that a shuddering blackness came over his spirit and his eyes, and when he came to himself he was lying on the dew-drenched pavement of the temple, and close to him the ram, dead, but with no violent mark upon him; and looking in at the temple door, but coming not in, the rest of the flock, of which none was missing; and morning was red in the east. That is ten years ago, but Demetri will scarce speak of it even to-day, and I had half thought before that it was an idle tale; but when I saw the light shining out through the temple door an hour ago, it was freshly borne to me that it was true, albeit one of the dark things of the world at which we cannot even guess, Yet, as Christ protected Demetri, He will surely protect me when I go on the beacon work, for it is His work; but lest I tempt God, I will climb up that hill on the other side and keep my eyes away from the temple, and plant the holy cross between me and it."
Mitsos knew not what to make of all this. The fact that Demetri had, in Zervas's phrase, wine for two men with him might have explained the significance of what he had seen; but, being a Greek, his mind was fruitful soil for all things ghostly and superstitious.
"It is very strange," he said; "yet, father, you will not go back from the work?"
"I will do it faithfully," said Zervas, "for thus I shall be in the hands of the Lord."