The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence by E. F. Benson
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOUSE ON THE ROAD TO NAUPLIA
The horse Mitsos rode had been stabled all day, and coming out freshinto the cool night air kept him busy for a time snuffing uneasilyat the wafts of foul air that blew from the town, and shying rightand left at shapes that lay on the road-side. Once a dead body wasstretched straight across the path, and the brute wheeled round,nearly unseating Mitsos, and tried to bolt back to Tripoli again. Butby-and-by, as it got used to the night, and the steadiness of the lad'shand gave it confidence, it went more soberly, and settled down into agentle trot up the road leading from the plain over the mountain. Asthey left the town behind the air grew fresher, and soon came pure andcool from the north. The night was clear, but for a few wisps of cloudthat drifted southward in wavering lines of delicate pearly gray, sothin that the starlight suffused them and turned them into a luminoushaze. The path lay low between bold rocks that climbed up on each side,and to the right, among oleanders, a stream talked idly, as in sleep.Above, the stars burned bright and close, set in the blue velvet of thesky; and to the east the blue was tinged with dove color, showing thatthe moon was nigh to its rising. From some shepherd's hut on the hillscame the sharp bark of a dog, sounding faint yet curiously distinct inthe alert air, as in the north sounds come sharp-cut and ringing on afrosty night. As he went higher the dry smell of the summer-scorchedvegetation was changed for something fresher, coming from the uplandpastures, and while his horse, now requiring no attention, went withstraining shoulders and drooped head up from slope to slope, Mitsosknew that he had been right to come alone. Since those nights he hadspent with Suleima between sea and sky, the loneliness and quietude ofnight, and the setting of the secret hours he had spent with her, hadalways woke in him an undefined, incommunicable thrill, a calling upof those dear ghosts of the past. To be alone at night was nearest tobeing with her, and often in these last weeks he had stolen out of hishut when the camp was still and night at its midmost to conjure up thatsame feeling, which the sight of objects associated with some one lovedbrings with it. Infinitely dear as she had been to him, there lingeredround the remembrance of her a something dim, something in common withstarlight, and great vague stretches of silent sea, and the pearlinessof the sky before the imminent moonrise. It was that complexion of hissorrow he wished to recapture. Tripoli was like dreaming of her throughthe horrible distortion of a nightmare; this the serener bitternessof a quieter vision. Round his thoughts of Nicholas there hovered asplendid halo; the glory of his life and the triumph of his death madethe heart bow down in a kind of thankful wonder, drowning regret. Forif he, as Germanos had said, had gone like the bridegroom to the bride,should those who loved him mourn? Strangely mixed had come the boon forwhich Nicholas, for which Suleima, had died, and at present he was toostunned to be able to picture it, or the price paid, with clearness offocus, for this limited mind within us is soon drowned by shocks likethese coming in spate together, and we do not realize them till thefirst turbid flood has passed.
"'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"]
The moon had risen before he reached the top of the pass, and,following a strange but overwhelming desire, he pushed on quickly,for he longed to look on the bay again by night. Another hour's quickriding brought him to the head of a ravine which ran straight down tothe sea, and at the bottom, lying like the clipping from a silver nail,was the farther edge of the bay, ashine with the risen moon; and whenMitsos saw it his heart was all athirst for home. Gradually, as he wentdown, the lower hills marched like shadows to the right and left, andbetween moonsetting and sunrise he stood on the edge of the shelvingcove again, where he had brought the fish to land one night, and onceagain all was still but for a whisper in the dry-tongued reeds andthe lisp of sand-quenched ripples. But never again would he and onebeside him sit there filled through and through with love, and neveragain would the man he had loved pass by like the shadow of a hawk onone of those swift, secret errands. Yet, as he had hoped, there stilllingered round the place a sweetness of sorrow. Horror had come nothere, nor any bloodshed, nor crash of war, and none knew the messagethe spot held for him, its garnered store on which his heart had fed.Then leaving it, still rounded by the infinite night, he passed on bythe white house at the head of the bay, whose sea-wall had been to himthe gates of love flung open, and just after sunrise he struck theroad on the other side of the water, and three hundred yards off werethe whistling poplars by the fountain, and his father's house and thegarden-gate, and the grave and memory of his boyhood. The risen sunspun mists out of the night dews and webs of sweet smell from the dampearth. It struck a galaxy of stars from the burnished surface of thebay, and from the heart of some bush-bowered bird it drew forth aninimitable song.
So he was come to the gate, where he tied up his horse while he shouldgo inside, yearning to see his father; but as he walked up the path,raising his eyes he saw him already out and working in the vineyardbeyond, and he would have passed by and gone to him there when, of asudden, he stopped, and his heart stopped too.
For the house door was open, and from inside--it seemed at first onlyhis own thoughts made audible--came a voice singing, and it sang:
"Dig we deep among the vines, Give the sweet spring showers a home."
Then came a little feeble cry as from some young thing, and the singingstopped, and a mother's voice, so it seemed, cooed soothing to herbaby; and with that Mitsos passed not on to the vineyard, but went in.
Suleima, busied with the child--the "littlest Mitsos," so she toldherself--heard not his step till he was in the doorway, but then lookedup, thinking it was her father, though earlier than his wont. And witha choking cry, hands outstretched, and a voice from a bursting heart:
"Suleima!" cried Mitsos.
THE END