Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 30

"Where?"

"Do you want me to tell you?"

"Yes."

"How comes it that you do not know this?" interrogated Cleopatra in her turn.

"I know nothing, not even what goes on at the Palace. Demetrios is the only subject of conversation I care about. I have not watched over you as I should have done, my child. All this is my fault."

"Watch me if you like. When I can no longer have my own way, I'll kill myself. Therefore, little care I, whatever happens!"

"You are free," replied Berenice, shaking her head. "At any rate, it is too late to restrain you. But, answer me, darling. You have a lover --and you manage to keep him to yourself?"

"I have my way of holding him."

"Who taught you?"

"I taught myself all alone. Such knowledge comes instinctively or never.

When I was but six years old, I knew how I meant to hold my sweetheart later on in life."

"Will you not tell me?"

"Follow me."

Berenice rose slowly, put on a tunic and a mantle, shook out her heavy tresses, adhering together by the sweat of the bed, and both the sisters left the room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cleopatra crossed a courtyard.]

First went the youngest, straight along the vestibule, back to her bed.

Under the mattress of fresh, dry byssos, she took a newly-cut key.

"Follow me. It's rather far," she said, turning to her sister.

In the middle of the pa.s.sage was a staircase which she ascended. Then she glided along a never-ending colonnade, opened several doors, walking on carpets, white marble slabs and the mosaic floors of a score of empty, silent apartments.

She descended a stone stairway, and stepped over the dark thresholds of clanging doors. Now and again, the two women came upon soldiers, resting on mats in couples, their spears close to their hands. Some long time afterwards, Cleopatra crossed a courtyard lit up by the rays of the full moon, and the shadow of a palm-tree caressed her hips. Berenice, wrapped in her blue mantle, still followed her.

At last, they reached a ma.s.sive door, clamped with iron like a warrior's breastplate. In the lock, Cleopatra slipped her key, turning it twice.

Then, pus.h.i.+ng open the portal, a man--a very giant in the darkness--rose to his full height out of the depths of his dungeon.

Berenice stirred with emotion, looked in, and with drooping head, said very softly:

"Tis you, my child, who know not how to love. At least--not yet. I was quite right when I told you that."

"Love for love, I prefer mine," said the girl. "He gives me naught but joy, at any rate."

So saying, erect on the prison threshold, and without making a step forward, she said to the man who stood in the shadow:

"Come hither, and kiss my foot, son of a cur!"

When he had done so, she pressed her mouth to his lips.

BOOK IV

I

DEMETRIOS DREAMS A DREAM

Now, with the mirror, the necklace, and the collar, Demetrios having returned home, a dream visited him in his slumber, and this was his dream:

He is going towards the quay, mingled with the crowd, on a strange moonless night, cloudless, but shedding a peculiar brilliance of its own.

Without knowing why, or what it is that draws him, he is in a hurry to arrive, to be _there_ as soon as he can, but he walks with effort, and the air opposes an inexplicable resistance to his legs, as deep water hampers footsteps.

He trembles, he thinks he will never reach the goal, that he will never know towards whom, in this bright obscurity, he is walking thus, panting and troubled.

At times, the crowd disappears entirely, whether it be that it really fades away, or that he ceases to be conscious of its presence. Then it jostles more importunately than ever, and all press, on, on, on, with a quick and sonorous step, more quickly than he . . .

Then the human ma.s.s closes in upon him; Demetrios pales; a man pushes him with his shoulder; a woman's buckle tears his tunic; a young girl is wedged against him, so tightly that he feels the pressure of her nipples against his chest, and she pushes his face away with two terrified hands.

Suddenly he is alone, the first, upon the quay. And as he turns to look behind him, he perceives in the distance the white swarm of the crowd which has all at once receded to the Agora.

And he realises that it will advance no further.

The quay lies white and straight like the first stage of an unfinished road which has undertaken to cross the sea.

He wants to go to Pharos, and he walks. His legs have suddenly become light. The wind blowing in the sandy deserts drives him headlong towards the watery solitudes into which the quay plunges venturesomely. But in proportion as he advances, Pharos retreats before him; the quay is immeasurably prolonged. Soon the high marble tower on which blazes a purple wood-pile touches the livid horizon, flickers, dies down, wanes, and sets like another moon!

Demetrios walks ever onwards.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Days and nights seem to have pa.s.sed since he left the great quay of Alexandria far behind him, and he dare not turn his head, for fear of seeing nothing but the road he has travelled along: a white line stretching to infinity and the sea.

And still he turns round.

An island is behind him, covered with great trees whence droop enormous blossoms.

Has he crossed it like a blind man, or does it spring into sight at the same instant and become mysteriously visible? He does not think of conjecturing: he accepts the impossible as a natural event . . .

A woman is in the isle. She is standing before the door of its one house, with her eyes half closed and her face bending over a monstrous iris-flower that reaches to the level of her lips. She has heavy hair, the colour of dull gold, and of a length one may surmise to be marvellous, judging by the ma.s.s of the great coil that lies on her drooping neck. A black tunic envelopes this woman, and a robe blacker still is draped upon the tunic, and the iris whose perfume she breathes with downcast eyelids is of the same hue as night.