“Well,” said Lysis, “now you see him. Here he is. But you must talk to me now, or we shall be falling out.” She turned round, not a moment too soon. It was lucky we had the canopy; hardly anyone had seen. “Oh, no! You must never quarrel with Alexias, after so long.”
We went jolting on through the wheel-ploughed slush, while in the glow of the torches the snow floated like great flakes of fire. People in the street bawled out the age-old jokes about the month of long nights and so forth; and from time to time I stood up in the car and shouted back the age-old answers. When we got near the house he leaned over, and whispered to her not to be afraid. She nodded, and whispered back, “Melitta said I must scream.” Then she added firmly, “But I told her no.”—“I should say not indeed. What a vulgar notion.”—“And besides, I said to her, I am a soldier’s daughter.”—“And a soldier’s wife.”—“Oh, yes, Lysis. Yes, I know.”
When the time came, and he picked her up at the end of the bride-song, she put up her arms smiling, and caught him round the neck. As I ran after to keep the door for them, I heard a couple of old hens by the wall clicking their tongues, and censuring her shamelessness.
Next day I called to see him. There seemed no reason why I should wait till the late hour custom prescribes, so I got there quite early, before market-time, to be ahead of the rest. After some delay he came in, half-awake, the perfect picture of a bridegroom next morning. When I apologised for disturbing him, he said, “Oh, it’s time I was up. But I was talking to Thalia till all hours. I had no notion, Alexias, how much sense she has, and grace of mind. She’ll make a woman in ten thousand. Don’t speak too loud, she’s still asleep.”
“Shouldn’t she be about her work,” I said, “at this hour?” Seeing me look at him, he laughed a little shamefacedly. “Well, she was awake fairly late. She looked such a child, I sat down by her to talk her to sleep, thinking she might be scared alone; but I must have dropped off first in the end, for when I woke, I found she had got a new blanket out of her bridal chest, and laid it over me.”
I said nothing, since it was no business of mine. He said smiling, “Oh, yes, I can hold my horses till starting-time. With me it takes two to celebrate the rite of Aphrodite; I’d as soon lie with Athene of the Vanguard, shield and all, as a woman I don’t please. I know what the child needs of me just now, better than she knows herself. I daresay it won’t be for long.”
Certainly as time passed he looked well and happy; and one day later in the year, when he had asked me to sup, as I stood in the little porch I heard from within the sound of a young voice singing in time to some work or other, like water tinkling in the shade. Lysis said, “You must forgive the child. I know a modest woman shouldn’t tell her whereabouts to the guests; but when I see her happy, I can’t bear to trouble her with such things. She had enough of that from her brother’s wife; I gave her a good present, the bitch, and forbade her the house. There’s plenty of time. Her modesty is in her soul. We’ll attend to the outside later.”
It was a beautiful golden evening. The small supper-room just held four couches, but looked better with two. There were garlands laid out, of vine-shoots and roses. “Thalia made them,” he said. “She sulks if I buy made-up stuff in the market.” It was dressed sword-fish for supper. I was not very hungry, but I did my best because I could see he was proud of it. We talked about the war, which was largely at a standstill. The Spartans had given Lysander another year in command, against their custom, and he was getting money from Cyrus again.
“Don’t you care for the fish?” he asked. “She said I must ask you if the sauce was sharp enough.”—“I never tasted better. I heard some news on the way that spoiled my hunger. Those two triremes the Samian fleet took the other day; do you know what became of the rowers? They pitched them off a cliff into the sea. That will teach them to work for a side that can afford to pay them.”
He stared at me silent; then said, “Zeus! And when one thinks what was said at the start of the war, when the Spartans did it … I suppose you don’t remember. We’re improving daily; the last proposal was that enemy rowers we caught should have their right hands cut off, or was it both thumbs? I got some black looks in Assembly for voting against it. I’m glad we’re out of the Navy, Alexias. Everything one hears from Samos sounds bad.”
The fleet had done nothing for months. The generals did not trust each other, and the men did not trust the generals; rumours were always drifting home that one or other was taking bribes, the kind of talk that had made trouble among the Spartans at Miletos. There was poison in the mere knowledge that the gold was there. “Konon is sound,” I said.—“One man in a dozen. I wonder what Alkibiades thinks in that hill-fort of his. They say it looks over half the Hellespont. He must laugh sometimes from the top of his walls.”
“It’s Salamis Day,” I said. “Seventy-five years today since the battle. Don’t you remember how he used to give out a wine-issue? It was on Salamis Day he told that story about the Persian eunuch.” We laughed, and then fell silent together. In the pause I heard again the singing in the house, but softly now; she must have remembered there was company.
“You’re not drinking,” he said. The slave-boy had cleared the tables, and gone.—“No more for a while, Lysis. I’m as merry now as wine will make me.” I found him looking at me. “It’s a deep sadness,” he said, “that goes in fear of wine.”—“Are you coming to the race tomorrow? Kallias says the bay will win.”—“It’s the way of the world, it seems. If there’s a man one would sooner do a good turn to than any other, that’s the man one will see eating his heart out for what one can’t give.”—“Have you known long?” I asked.—“No matter. No one else knows. Can’t you find a woman again, like the one you had in Samos?”—“I’ll look one day soon. Don’t think of it, Lysis. It’s a madness. It will pass.”—“You should marry, Alexias. Yes, I know advice is cheap, but don’t be angry with me. If a man …” His voice ceased. We both put our wine-cups down, and got up from our couches, and ran to the door. The street was empty. But the noise drew nearer, streaming like smoke, blowing in great gusts upon the wind.
It was not a wail, nor was it a groan, nor the keening women make for the dead. Yet all these had part in it. Zeus gives good and evil things to men, but mostly evil; and the sound of sorrow is nothing new. But this was not the grief of one or two, or of a household. It was the voice of the City, crying despair.
We looked at each other. Lysis said, “I must speak to the child. Ask someone what it is.” I stood in the porch, but no one passed. Inside the house he was talking quietly. As he left I heard him say, “Finish your supper, keep busy, and wait for me.” She answered steadily, “Yes, Lysis. I’ll wait.”
A man shouted something far up the street. I said to Lysis, “I couldn’t make sense of it. ‘Everything lost,’ he said; and something about Goat’s Creek.”—“Goat’s Creek? We beached there once, when we sprang a plank. Half-way up the Hellespont, just north of Sestos. A village of clay huts, and a sandy shore. Goat’s Creek? You must have heard wrong. There’s nothing there.”
In the streets we saw no one, except a woman sometimes, peering from a door. One, forgetting her decency in her fear, called out to us, “What is it, oh, what is it?” We shook our heads and went on. The noise was from the Agora, like an army in rout. An echo seemed to go on beyond, into the distance. It was the sound of crying upon the Long Walls, throbbing between the City and Piraeus like pain along a limb.