Bias changed not only his tone of voice, but his language, and, deeply offended, poured forth a torrent of wrath in the dialect of his people: “If to guard you, and my master with you, from harm, my words had the power to put between you and Hermon the distance which separates yonder rising moon from Tennis, I would make them sound as loud as the lion’s roar. Yet perhaps you would not understand them, for you go through life as though you were deaf and blind. Did you ever even ask yourself whether the Greek is not differently constituted from the sons of the Biamite sailors and fishermen, with whom you grew up, and to whom he is an abomination? Yet he is no more like them than poppy juice is like pure water. He and his companions turn life upside down. There is no more distinction between right and wrong in Alexandria than we here in the dark can make between blue and green. To me, the slave, who is already growing old, Hermon is a kind master. I know without your aid what I owe him, and serve him as loyally as any one; but where he threatens to lead to ruin the innocent daughter of the race whose blood flows in my veins as well as yours, and in doing so perhaps finally destroy himself too, conscience commands me to raise my voice as loud as the sentinel crane when danger threatens the flock. Beware, girl, I repeat! Keep your beauty, which is now to be degraded to feast the eyes of gaping Greeks, for the worthiest husband among our people. Though Hermon has vowed, I know not what, your love-dallying will very soon be over; we shall leave Tennis within the next few days. When he has gone there will be one more deceived Biamite who will call down the curse of the gods upon the head of a Greek. You are not the only one who will execrate the destiny that brought us here. Others have been caught in his net too.”
“Here?” asked Ledscha in a hollow tone; and the slave eagerly answered: “Where else? And that you may know the truth—among those who visited Hermon in his studio is your own young sister.”
“Our Taus? That child?” exclaimed the girl, stretching her hands toward the slave in horror, as if to ward off some impending disaster.
“That child, who, I think, has grown into a very charming girl—and, before her, pretty Gula, the wife of Paseth, who, like your father, is away on his ship.”
Here, in a tone of triumphant confidence, the answer rang from the Biamite’s lips: “There the slanderer stands revealed! Now you are detected, now I perceive the meaning of your threat. Because, miserable slave, you cherish the mad hope of beguiling me yourself, you do your utmost to estrange me from your master. Gula, you say, visited Hermon in his studio, and it may be true. But though I have been at home only a short time, Tennis is too full of the praises of the heroic Greek who, at the risk of his own life, rescued a child from Paseth’s burning house, for the tale not to reach my ears from ten or a dozen different quarters. Gula is the mother of the little girl whose life was saved by Hermon’s bold deed, and perhaps the young mother only knocked at her benefactor’s door to thank him; but you, base defamer—”
“I,” Bias continued, maintaining his composure with difficulty, “I saw Gula secretly glide into our rooms again and again to permit her child’s preserver to imitate in clay what he considered beautiful. To seek your love, as you know, the slave forbade himself, although a man no more loses tender desires with his freedom than the tree which is encircled by a fence ceases to put forth buds and blossoms. Eros chooses the slave’s heart also as the target for his arrows; but his aim at yours was better than at mine. Now I know how deeply he wounds, and so, as soon as yonder ship in the harbour bears our visitor away again, I shall see you, Schalit’s daughter, Ledscha, standing before Hermon’s modelling table and behold him scan your beauty to determine what seems worth copying.”
The Biamite, panting for breath, had listened to the end. Then, raising her little clinched hand menacingly, she muttered through her set teeth: “Let him try even to touch my veil with his fingers! If I had not been obliged to go away, this would not have happened to my Taus and luckless Gula.”
“Scarcely,” replied Bias calmly. “If the chicken runs into the water, the hen can not save it. For the rest—I grew up as a boy in freedom with the husband of your sister, who summoned you to her aid. His father’s brick-kiln was next to our papyrus plantation. Then we fared like so many others—the great devour the small, the just cause is the lost one, and the gods are like men. My father, who drew the sword against oppression and violence, was robbed of liberty, and your brother-in-law, in payment for his honest courage, met an early death. Is the story which is told of you here true? I heard that soon after the poor fellow’s burial the slaves in the brick-kiln refused to obey his widow. There were a dozen rebellious brick-moulders, and you—one can forgive you much for it—you, the weak girl——”
“I am not weak,” interrupted Ledscha proudly. “I could have taught three times twelve of the scoundrels who was master. Now they obey my sister, and yet I wish I had stayed in Tennis. Our Taus,” she continued in a more gentle tone, “is still so young, and our mother died when she was a little child; but I, fool, who should have warned her, left her alone, and if she yielded to Hermon’s temptations the fault is mine, wholly mine.”
During this outburst the light of the fire, which old Tabus had fed with fresh straw and dry rushes, fell upon the face of the agitated girl. It revealed her thoughts plainly enough, and, pleased with the success of his warning, Bias exclaimed: “And Ledscha, you, too, will not grant him that from which you would so gladly have withheld your sister. So I will go and tell my master that you refuse to give him another appointment.”
He had confidently expected an assent, and therefore started indignantly at her exclamation: “I intend to do just the contrary.” Yet she eagerly added, as if in explanation: “He must give me an account of himself, no matter where, and, since it can not be to-day, to-morrow at latest.”
The slave, disappointed and anxious, now tried to make her understand how foolish and hard to accomplish her wish was, but she obstinately insisted upon having her own way.
Bias angrily turned his back upon her and, in the early light of the moon, walked toward the shore, but she hastened after him, seized his arm and, with imperious firmness, commanded: “You will stay! I must first know whether Hermon really means to leave Tennis so soon.”
“That was his intention early this morning,” replied the other, releasing himself from her grasp. “What are we to do here longer, now that his work is as good as finished?”
“But when is he going?” she urged with increased eagerness.
“Day after to-morrow,” was the reply, “in five, or perhaps even in six days, just as it suits him. Usually we do not even know to-day what is to be done to-morrow. So long as the Alexandrian remains, he will scarcely leave her, or Myrtilus either. Probably she will take both hunting with her, for, though a kind, fair-minded woman, she loves the chase, and as both have finished their work, they probably will not be reluctant to go with Daphne.”
He stepped into the boat as he spoke, but Ledscha again detained him, asking impatiently: “And ‘the work,’ as you call it? It was covered with a cloth when I visited the studio, but Hermon himself termed it the statue of a goddess. Yet what it represents—Does it look like my sister Taus—enough like her, I mean, to be recognised?”
A half-compassionate, half-mocking smile flitted over the Biamite’s copper-coloured visage, and in a tone of patronizing instruction assumed by the better informed, he began: “You are thinking of the face? Why no, child! What that requires can be found in the countenance of no Biamite, hardly even in yours, the fairest of all.”
“And the goddess’s figure?” asked Ledscha eagerly.
“For that he first used as a model the fair-haired Heliodora, whom he summoned from Alexandria, and as the wild cat could endure the loneliness only a fortnight, the sisters Nico and Pagis came together. But Tennis was too quiet for them too. The rabble can only be contented among those of
