The Last Days of Pompeii Part 27

'My dear Nydia,' returned Glaucus, and raising her, he kissed her forehead, 'think of it no more! But why, my child, wert thou so suddenly angry? I could not divine the cause?'

'Do not ask!' said she, coloring violently. 'I am a thing full of faults and humors; you know I am but a child--you say so often: is it from a child that you can expect a reason for every folly?'

'But, prettiest, you will soon be a child no more; and if you would have us treat you as a woman, you must learn to govern these singular impulses and gales of pa.s.sion. Think not I chide: no, it is for your happiness only I speak.'

'It is true,' said Nydia, 'I must learn to govern myself I must bide, I must suppress, my heart. This is a woman's task and duty; methinks her virtue is hypocrisy.'

'Self-control is not deceit, my Nydia,' returned the Athenian; and that is the virtue necessary alike to man and to woman; it is the true senatorial toga, the badge of the dignity it covers!'

'Self-control! self-control! Well, well, what you say is right! When I listen to you, Glaucus, my wildest thoughts grow calm and sweet, and a delicious serenity falls over me. Advise, ah! guide me ever, my preserver!'

'Thy affectionate heart will be thy best guide, Nydia, when thou hast learned to regulate its feelings.'

'Ah! that will be never,' sighed Nydia, wiping away her tears.

'Say not so: the first effort is the only difficult one.'

'I have made many first efforts,' answered Nydia, innocently. 'But you, my Mentor, do you find it so easy to control yourself? Can you conceal, can you even regulate, your love for Ione?'

'Love! dear Nydia: ah! that is quite another matter,' answered the young preceptor.

'I thought so!' returned Nydia, with a melancholy smile. 'Glaucus, wilt thou take my poor flowers? Do with them as thou wilt--thou canst give them to Ione,' added she, with a little hesitation.

'Nay, Nydia,' answered Glaucus, kindly, divining something of jealousy in her language, though he imagined it only the jealousy of a vain and susceptible child; 'I will not give thy pretty flowers to any one. Sit here and weave them into a garland; I will wear it this night: it is not the first those delicate fingers have woven for me.'

The poor girl delightedly sat down beside Glaucus. She drew from her girdle a ball of the many-colored threads, or rather slender ribands, used in the weaving of garlands, and which (for it was her professional occupation) she carried constantly with her, and began quickly and gracefully to commence her task. Upon her young cheeks the tears were already dried, a faint but happy smile played round her lips--childlike, indeed, she was sensible only of the joy of the present hour: she was reconciled to Glaucus: he had forgiven her--she was beside him--he played caressingly with her silken hair--his breath fanned her cheek--Ione, the cruel Ione, was not by--none other demanded, divided, his care. Yes, she was happy and forgetful; it was one of the few moments in her brief and troubled life that it was sweet to treasure, to recall. As the b.u.t.terfly, allured by the winter sun, basks for a little in the sudden light, ere yet the wind awakes and the frost comes on, which shall blast it before the eve--she rested beneath a beam, which, by contrast with the wonted skies, was not chilling; and the instinct which should have warned her of its briefness, bade her only gladden in its smile.

'Thou hast beautiful locks,' said Glaucus. 'They were once, I ween well, a mother's delight.'

Nydia sighed; it would seem that she had not been born a slave; but she ever shunned the mention of her parentage, and, whether obscure or n.o.ble, certain it is that her birth was never known by her benefactors, nor by any one in those distant sh.o.r.es, even to the last. The child of sorrow and of mystery, she came and went as some bird that enters our chamber for a moment; we see it flutter for a while before us, we know not whence it flew or to what region it escapes.

Nydia sighed, and after a short pause, without answering the remark, said: 'But do I weave too many roses in my wreath, Glaucus? They tell me it is thy favorite flower.'

'And ever favored, my Nydia, be it by those who have the soul of poetry: it is the flower of love, of festival; it is also the flower we dedicate to silence and to death; it blooms on our brows in life, while life be worth the having; it is scattered above our sepulchre when we are no more.'

'Ah! would,' said Nydia, 'instead of this perishable wreath, that I could take thy web from the hand of the Fates, and insert the roses there!'

'Pretty one! thy wish is worthy of a voice so attuned to song; it is uttered in the spirit of song; and, whatever my doom, I thank thee.'

'Whatever thy doom! is it not already destined to all things bright and fair? My wish was vain. The Fates will be as tender to thee as I should.'

'It might not be so, Nydia, were it not for love! While youth lasts, I may forget my country for a while. But what Athenian, in his graver manhood, can think of Athens as she was, and be contented that he is happy, while she is fallen?--fallen, and for ever?'

'And why for ever?'

'As ashes cannot be rekindled--as love once dead can never revive, so freedom departed from a people is never regained. But talk we not of these matters unsuited to thee.'

'To me, oh! thou errest. I, too, have my sighs for Greece; my cradle was rocked at the foot of Olympus; the G.o.ds have left the mountain, but their traces may be seen--seen in the hearts of their wors.h.i.+ppers, seen in the beauty of their clime: they tell me it is beautiful, and I have felt its airs, to which even these are harsh--its sun, to which these skies are chill. Oh! talk to me of Greece! Poor fool that I am, I can comprehend thee! and methinks, had I yet lingered on those sh.o.r.es, had I been a Grecian maid whose happy fate it was to love and to be loved, I myself could have armed my lover for another Marathon, a new Plataea.

Yes, the hand that now weaves the roses should have woven thee the olive crown!'

'If such a day could come!' said Glaucus, catching the enthusiasm of the blind Thessalian, and half rising.--'But no! the sun has set, and the night only bids us be forgetful--and in forgetfulness be gay--weave still the roses!'

But it was with a melancholy tone of forced gaiety that the Athenian uttered the last words: and sinking into a gloomy reverie, he was only wakened from it, a few minutes afterwards, by the voice of Nydia, as she sang in a low tone the following words, which he had once taught her:--

THE APOLOGY FOR PLEASURE

I

Who will a.s.sume the bays That the hero wore?

Wreaths on the Tomb of Days Gone evermore!

Who shall disturb the brave, Or one leaf on their holy grave?

The laurel is vowed to them, Leave the bay on its sacred stem!

But this, the rose, the fading rose, Alike for slave and freeman grows.

II

If Memory sit beside the dead With tombs her only treasure; If Hope is lost and Freedom fled, The more excuse for Pleasure.

Come, weave the wreath, the roses weave, The rose at least is ours: To feeble hearts our fathers leave, In pitying scorn, the flowers!

III

On the summit, worn and h.o.a.ry, Of Phyle's solemn hill, The tramp of the brave is still!

And still in the saddening Mart, The pulse of that mighty heart, Whose very blood was glory!

Glaucopis forsakes her own, The angry G.o.ds forget us; But yet, the blue streams along, Walk the feet of the silver Song; And the night-bird wakes the moon; And the bees in the blus.h.i.+ng noon Haunt the heart of the old Hymettus.

We are fallen, but not forlorn, If something is left to cherish; As Love was the earliest born, So Love is the last to perish.

IV

Wreathe then the roses, wreathe The BEAUTIFUL still is ours, While the stream shall flow and the sky shall glow, The BEAUTIFUL still is ours!

Whatever is fair, or soft, or bright, In the lap of day or the arms of night, Whispers our soul of Greece--of Greece, And hushes our care with a voice of peace.

Wreathe then the roses, wreathe!

They tell me of earlier hours; And I hear the heart of my Country breathe From the lips of the Stranger's flowers.

Chapter V

NYDIA ENCOUNTERS JULIA. INTERVIEW OF THE HEATHEN SISTER AND CONVERTED BROTHER. AN ATHENIAN'S NOTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

'WHAT happiness to Ione! what bliss to be ever by the side of Glaucus, to hear his voice!--And she too can see him!'

Such was the soliloquy of the blind girl, as she walked alone and at twilight to the house of her new mistress, whither Glaucus had already preceded her. Suddenly she was interrupted in her fond thoughts by a female voice.

'Blind flower-girl, whither goest thou? There is no pannier under thine arm; hast thou sold all thy flowers?'

The person thus accosting Nydia was a lady of a handsome but a bold and unmaidenly countenance: it was Julia, the daughter of Diomed. Her veil was half raised as she spoke; she was accompanied by Diomed himself, and by a slave carrying a lantern before them--the merchant and his daughter were returning home from a supper at one of their neighbors'.