The Only Son of His Mother

— SWINBURNE.

I

‘ DEAD ! Kyr Apostoli dead!’ Barba Manoli opened his eyes wide and pushed out his lips. ‘When — What are you telling, neighbor?’

‘It is the truth. Life to you, Barba Manoli.’

‘When did he die? Where did you hear it?’

‘Those who came in the steamer this morning from Hydra told us. He died there last Friday evening. The priest was just finishing the Salutations when they called him.’

‘It must have been a stroke,’ said Barba Manoli, gathering his brows together. ‘Kyr Apostoli was a strong man and a healthy one when I knew him, but they tell me he had grown over fat of late. It must have been a stroke surely; he was never ill a day, that I can remember.’

The men were standing in the little market-place, under the shade of an old eucalyptus tree with a deep stone trough built round it. Close by them two horses and some kids were tied to the weather-stained marble pillar, which is over the fountain. Tumbledown dark shops and sheds formed the three sides of the square, and the sea was on the fourth.

Mastro Petro, the hunchback shoemaker, sat down on an upturned pannier and stroked his thin legs contemplatively.

‘Never ill!' he repeated, ‘never ill! That is well — but his years! Do you not count them?’

‘Why,’ said Barba Manoli, ‘his brother Yoryi, who died, was younger than I am. Was Apostoli much older than Yoryi?’

‘He might have been his father,’ answered the little shoemaker. ‘When he took Yoryi’s boy Andriko away from here, to live with him in Hydra, he must have been close on seventy and that is nigh seven years ago.’

‘True, there is Andriko, his nephew. A man he must be by now. Well, he will have a good bit of money from his uncle. He had his own, had Kyr Apostoli; he had his own.’

‘They say he left Andriko nothing, Barba Manoli.’

‘Who says it? Impossible! He always said everything was to be the boy’s. Why, whatever the mother may have done, Kyr Apostoli would never have got Andriko away from her, if he had not promised to let him be as his son, and inherit all he had. Bah! do not tell me such things.’

Barba Manoli’s face grew purple with excitement, his white moustache worked nervously up and down, and his baggy blue breeches shook in all their many folds as he stamped his foot to emphasize his words.

‘Nevertheless it is as I tell you,’ persisted the hunchback. ‘He leaves the boy nothing; all the money and the house goes to some one else. A woman, I think they said it was. If you do not believe me, ask Kyra Sophoula who knows all about it. Capetan Leftheri was telling her everything this morning.’ Then in a second he added, ‘ Speak of the song and you see the bird! — there is Kyra Sophoula herself. Wait, I will call her. Kyra Sophoula!’ raising a shrill cracked voice; ‘Kyra Sophoula, come here for a minute;’ and he beckoned to a thin little old woman who, emerging from a dark arch at the back of the marketplace, was crossing the farther end, her red earthen pitcher under her arm. Then, as she approached, ‘Tell Barba Manoli here what you heard about Kyr Apostoli, Yannoula’s brother-inlaw. Is it not true that he leaves nothing to Andriko after all his promises?’

‘Not one lepton,’ answered the old woman, setting down her pitcher on the edge of the stone trough and crossing her arms; ‘not one.’

‘But how is this thing possible?’

‘They did not get on well together, the old man and the boy, for some time now,’ related Kyra Sophoula. ‘Why? God only knows; for Andriko could flatter and use sweet words enough when it suited him. At least he could when I knew him. Perhaps he got tired of waiting, for they say the old man kept him very tight. Perhaps the old man repented of his promises, once he had got what he wanted. Anyhow, Capetan Leftheri tells me that when Kyr Apostoli was near his end, they brought the holy ikon from the Monastery of St. Nicholas, that has cured so many, and when they laid it on his breast, he opened his eyes wide and made the sign of the cross, and cried out, “Bring my daughter-in-law here’; and of course she came running. It is that Panayota, you know, that creature he had never forgiven his son for marrying. Even when his son was dying, he had never gone near them; and now he told her to fetch the notary, that he would leave everything to her. She lost no time you may be sure. The old man could still put his name to the paper when the notary came, but he died an hour afterwards. She says now, this Panayota, that it was the holy ikon’s mercy and grace that made Kyr Apostoli recover his good senses at the last. Though, it does not enter my old head how even a miraculous ikon can bring back what was never there!’

‘So he leaves nothing at all to Andriko?’ said Barba Manoli. ‘Ta—ta — ta, who would ever have said it?’

‘He should not have done such a thing,’ pronounced Mastro Petro decidedly. ‘Andriko was of his own blood.’

Kyra Sophoula set her pitcher carefully under the running water before speaking.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘he was of his own blood, and perhaps he was wrong by the law. But I, for one, am glad. Serve Andriko right. Does a boy leave his poor mother who has borne him and suckled him, and toiled for him, because foolish people speak evil words of her, — and go off with the first stranger who wants to take him?’

‘A stranger!’ exclaimed the hunchback. ‘What are you saying, Kyra Sophoula? A stranger? When it was his own uncle, his father’s brother. Besides, how could the boy foresee what happens to-day? He expected without fail to have money later on; and that is a good thing always. Also many people said those were not clean doings of Yannoula’s at that time. A woman is a secret thing. Who knows the truth ? ’

‘I know it,’ cried Kyra Sophoula angrily; ‘and you,Mastro Petro, measure your words better, if you ever want to put a patch on a shoe of mine again.’

‘What will Andriko do now, I wonder,’ inquired Barba Manoli hastily. He was a quiet man and loved peace.

‘Do I know?’ said Kyra Sophoula shortly, taking up her pitcher, out of whose narrow neck the water was overflowing.

‘Perhaps,’ said Mastro Petro in an apologetic tone of voice, ‘ he may come back here to his mother now.’

‘If he thinks she has anything to give him, perhaps he may,’ snapped the old woman.

‘Why will you think evil?’ asked Barba Manoli. ‘A man’s head is not as a child’s. Things past are past. It does not seem unlikely to me that he should think of returning to live with his mother now, and of working for her.’

‘The head may change,’ said Kyra Sophoula, shouldering her pitcher, ‘the heart never. I have known Andriko from a child, and never have I seen him think of aught but what might fill his belly or tickle his fancy. He will not begin now. — Good-day to you.’

She walked off as she spoke, and left the men looking after her.

II

This lad Andriko, of whom they had spoken, and his mother Yannoula, had been familiar figures on the island some years before.

The woman had been left a widow early. When this happened she had paid all due observance to Poros etiquette, sending for the professional mourners to wail over the deceased and chant his virtues, not stirring from her house for the prescribed number of days, and covering all her furniture in thin black drapery. Still, as her husband had been distinctly a ne’er-dowell and not even a lovable one of the kind, she had been undeniably better off after his death. His elder brother Apostoli, who lived in Hydra, and was known to be well off, had come to Poros for the funeral. He was a stern, forbidding-looking man, of whom Yannoula was afraid, so that after his return to Hydra there was no further communication between them. The poor write few letters. Also, Kyr Apostoli had a son of his own, and Yannoula did not expect help of any kind from him. She was a quiet, hard-working, self-contained woman, with a low voice for a Poriote. Only this one child, Andriko, had been born to her, and all the strength of her nature was centred in him.

Certainly he was a lovely boy. He had gone back for his type to the ancient days of the land, and had the broad low brow, the straight nose, the short upper lip, the rounded chin and the closely curling hair of the Olympian Hermes. Countless foreign and barbarian invasions have blurred the purity of line of the old race. The blood has been mixed, and intermixed, till the classic type has become all too rare, especially in the towns. Yet at times, and oftenest in the islands, it is still possible to meet in the flesh the prototypes of Praxiteles, and Myron, and Polycletus.

Peasants as a rule are not lovers of beauty, but the most stolid of them would turn to look twice at Andriko. The women when he was a little fellow would, when they saw him, spit on the ground to ward off the evil eye from him; Pappa Thanassi the priest always chose him to hold the tall candle at weddings or at christenings; and even once a boy of his own age had given him a new bright red handkerchief for his own, because when he had tied it round his head, he had been ‘so good to look at.’

He was a fine lad too, broad, strong, and straight as a young cypress. He ran about bareheaded and barelegged in the sun and the wind, and in summertime was oftener to be found in the sea than on land. He throve passing well on his fare of bread and olives, with a little white cheese or a sardine sometimes thrown in when he happened to run an errand for Kyr Michali the grocer.

Yannoula toiled early and iateat any work she found to do. Nothing came amiss to her, — field work, lemon-picking, olive-gathering, picking raisins for drying; each and all in their seasons, and her hand-loom for all spare days when work was scarce.

When she had earned enough to buy a strip of land over on the mainland, with a few lemon and olive trees on it, she looked proudly at her boy as at a future landed proprietor. Being the only son of a widow, she knew also that he would be exempt from service in the Navy. He never lacked anything she could possibly get for him: Christ-bread at Christmas and New Year, and red eggs at Easter always, whether her earnings had been large or small.

They lived, the mother and son, in a little pink-washed house next to Kyra Sophoula’s, down by the dark arch, beyond the market-place. A vine grew over the rickety wooden balcony, pots of sweet basil flourished on the stone ledges of the terrace, and an ancient fig tree growing in the courtyard darkened the windows when it was in full leaf.

It was on the terrace watering her pots of sweet basil that the English strangers found her one morning. The old lady and her son, who were staying at the little hotel near the Column, and who had often employed Andriko as guide in their excursions, had come to look at the place where he lived. Mrs. Lee had been curious to see whether the boy inherited his beauty from his mother. But she was disappointed. Few would have glanced a second time at the woman who came forward to greet them, and to ask them in with the innate courtesy of the Greek peasant. Her hair was plainly parted under her widow’s kerchief, and deep-set eyes looked quietly out of the thin sunburned face.

Conversation between them presented serious difficulties. Mrs. Lee tried to tell Yannoula that she also was a widow, and had this one son only. But there the likeness between them certainly ceased. The Englishwoman was tall, with white hair, her black dress was relieved by touches of white lace and the gleam of a long golden chain, which hung to her waist. Her son, Randal, was a naval officer on sick leave. They had wintered in Athens, and when, after a long drought, the dust of the city had proved unendurable, they had come away to the sea and the hills for a few days. But the charm of Poros was upon them, the days had become weeks, the weeks were growing into months, and they were still on the island. They had become familiar figures there, the white-haired mother and the young man, clean-shaven and sunburned, always so gay and bright, laughing at everything, as the women noted with wonder — they whose boys are grave long before manhood.

Mrs. Lee did not often care to come into the village itself, finding it more picturesque and pleasant in all ways when seen at a distance. Still, even while climbing over the sun-baked rocks, or stumbling over stones and rubbish heaps in the narrow streets to find Yannoula’s house, she had constantly stopped to draw Randal’s attention to wonderful bits of Southern coloring. Sometimes it would be only the corner of a red-tiled roof jutting out against the incredible blue of the sky, or a white pigeon preening its feathers on a terrace against a background of green vines or flaming hibiscus blossoms.

Farther on there were rows of orangecolored pumpkins drying on stone ledges; and at the end of every steep incline, across every tumble-down balcony, between the last houses of every steep street, the same radiant blue sea and paler blue hills beyond.

Yannoula had listened in respectful silence, and not a little wonder, when her native island was being ecstatically praised ; but when with halting words but eloquent looks and gestures Mrs. Lee had begun to talk of Andriko, of his looks, his strength, his quickness, his daring, then she understood well, and her smiling eyes agreed to all, though her code of manners compelled her to answer, —

‘But what are you saying, lady ? You are very good, but the lad is as all the lads are.’

Mrs. Lee had been a keen lover of beauty all her life long. The day after her arrival in Poros she had singled out Andriko from among a group of boys always standing about the quay, and for very love of his perfect Greek type had forthwith instituted him their guide and carrier in all their excursions by land and by sea.

They were out every day, and nearly all day long. Randal’s sick leave was all but over; he was quite strong again now, and after a long separation in the past, and another that was looming very near in the future, the mother and son were trying to crowd into the remaining time as many open-air days and lovely memories as they could.

Andriko, nothing loath, had been with them everywhere, leading the way, swinging a provision basket on his arm, or carrying a pitcher for fresh water on his shoulder. As he bounded up the rocky paths before them and they watched the freedom of his movements and the play of his wonderfully modeled limbs, with their constant indication of the pure physical joy of existence, he seemed to them to be the very reincarnation of prehistoric, mythological Greece. ‘The god Pan in early youth ’ Mrs.Lee christened him; and when the provision basket left in his charge would be found unduly lightened of part of its contents, or the ready excuses rolled rapidly off his lips to account for some delay or neglected order, she would smile indulgently. Randal, man-like, was not so easily appeased. ‘The young cub wants a good licking,’ he would say now and then.

‘No, no, Randal,’ his mother would answer; ‘don’t be so terribly British and nineteenth-century-minded! You really must not expect ordinary everyday morality and humdrum honesty from the god Pan: it would be a terrible anachronism! ’

There were few parts of Poros and the mainland that they left unexplored. Together they climbed the hills and looked down over the sea and over valleys where the young pines grew; over groves of gray-green olives, over rich red earth crumbling between gray rocks covered with ilex and lentisk, over walled-in gardens of lemons and mandarins, over ruined chapels with their solitary lamp kept ever burning, over ravines and dry torrent-beds overgrown with myrtle and pink oleanders; and above all was the divine blue of the Grecian sky.

Sometimes, to reach the greater heights, old Barba Stathi was told to bring his donkey, and on the donkey’s back Mrs. Lee would mount to the summit of the higher hills of the mainland, from where on the other side Hydra and Spetzai gleamed white in the distance. And in the cool of the afternoon they would descend by a shorter and steeper cut, sure-footed little Kitso firmly planting his hard hoofs on the slippery carpet of pine needles, and stepping triumphantly over the most jagged of rocks.

They went to the Devil’s Bridge, returning laden with maiden-hair ferns, by Damala and the old ruined tower of Theseus.

Once, to please Yannoula, they went with her to her strip of land and admired the well-cared-for trees: the old gray olives, Athena’s own eternal trees, and the lemon trees, just then in full bloom.

‘Oh, Randal, look, look!’ cried Mrs. Lee, standing before the masses of fragrant blossom, ‘look at them; smell them! Look at that pure rich white against the dark shiny leaves.’

Yannoula stood by smiling, well content that the lady should be pleased, yet wondering a little that, the everyday sight of a lemon tree in blossom should cause such evident delight.

‘They are easily pleased, those strangers,’ she said in the evening to Kyra Sophoula; ‘do their lemon trees not blossom then, in their own country?’

For the Temple of Poseidon, up by the little spring and past the Chapel of St. Stathi, Mrs. Lee would choose the clearest days, when from the Temple they could distinguish, across the sea which lay below them, Athens and the Acropolis in the far distance.

But where they returned oftenest was to the Monastery.

There they spent long days, climbing up the broad shallow steps that lead up to it through the trees, wandering about in the vine-planted inner court, with its solitary tall palm waving its branches high above the red roof.

They would stand before the old tombs by the outer wall of the Chapel, reading with great facility the epitaph to the poor Italian girl Arcia Ceccoli, so young to die,— ‘Meno di venti anni,’ — whose artist father, ‘genitore inconsolabile,’ has immortalized her face in his picture of the Virgin Mother inside the Chapel, which, as the Greek inscription runs, he painted for the Monastery ‘ because of gratitude.' They deciphered the Greek letters on the tombs of some of the Hydriote heroes of 1821 under the arcade of the entrance to the Chapel: of Manuel Tombazis, with its epitaph in verse and its enthusiastic close, —

But, perhaps because of the racesympathy that moves us all, the mother and son would linger longest before the flat marble tomb let into the stone floor, just at the threshold of the Chapel, where in clear English letters it is set forth that ‘Under this marble lie the mortal remains’ of one Brudnell J. Bruce, an ensign in His Majesty’s Foot Guards, who, having come to Greece with his Majesty’s ambassador, ‘unhappily’ died of fever in Poros in 1828.

Inside the Chapel, she delighted in the old Byzantine and Russian ikons, wondering at the dark ascetic faces of the saints, with the heavy halos of dull silver nailed round their heads.

There was a curious ikon of the three Hierarchs, St. Gregorius, St. Basil, and St. John Chrysostom, standing upright in a row. Of the three she had a slight preference for St. Basil, but they were all terribly wooden. The Angel Gabriel painted on the side door of the Templon was also a quaint conception: an anæmic youth with flowing brown locks, one eye higher than the other, and clad in white garments whose texture, to judge by their massive folds, might have been of plaster.

Returning from the Monastery, they would time their start so as to get the best moment of the sunset just beyond the bridge, when the houses of Poros came into sight, and the narrow beach divided two golden seas by one dark strip of land.

The summer was nearly over, and Randal’s time was getting very short, but Mrs. Lee was loath to leave before the vintage. So they spent long hours in the vineyards, with the fragrance of sun-ripened grapes around them, among the great panniers of heaped-up purple and yellow bunches.

At last, most reluctantly, they were forced to fix the day of their departure.

On the previous afternoon the heat of the sun had been overpowering, and Mrs. Lee, seized rather suddenly with a violent headache, had returned very early to the little hotel.

About two in the morning Yannoula was aroused by a loud and repeated knocking at the outer door of her courtyard.

Midnight alarms were so rare in Poros that it was some time before her dazed senses awoke to the fact that the sound was a real one. When she at last opened her window on to the narrow street and looked out into the bright moonlight, she saw, to her utter astonishment, Randal Lee standing below and trying to shake open the wooden gate. He gave a gasp of relief when he saw her, and called to her to come, to come at once.

His explanation was not very clear, for his impatience made him lose the few Greek words he knew; but his gestures, his frequent repetition of the word ‘mother,’ at last made Yannoula understand that something was wrong, and that her presence was needed.

She hastily threw on a few clothes, gave one glance at the sleeping boy whom nothing had disturbed, and, hurried by Randal’s repeated calls, left the house with him, without even tying her kerchief round her head.

As they ran down the moonlit streets, across the deserted market-place, and out on to the quay, Randal, for all his anxiety, could not help noticing how much younger she looked with her hair uncovered and hanging in two loose plaits as it had been done for the night. His mother was ill, he repeated, very ill; her head, tapping his own to be sure he was using the right word, was very hot, and there was no woman in the hotel. When they arrived the doctor was already there. It was a slight sunstroke, he announced,—nothing to be seriously alarmed about, — the lady must keep quiet for a day or two, and have cold compresses applied regularly. Strangers, he added, were always careless about exposure to the sun; they forgot that it was not the sun of their own climate.

Yannoula stayed with her all that night, changing the compresses and trying to keep wet linen rags cool by wrapping them round the water-jars.

Kyr Charalambo, the hotel-keeper, and the men-servants, stared at her uncovered head, and in the morning the former offered to bring his mother to look after the lady. She was very clever in sickness, he assured Randal, and wise in medicines. But the young man shook his head. No, they knew Yannoula; if she could stay, his mother would prefer it. So she stayed all the next day, sending one of the boys from the quay to her house to bring Andriko and her black kerchief.

On the second day Mrs. Lee was much better; on the third she was entirely recovered and able to travel.

They left by the steamer for Piræus with many expressions of gratitude and delight, and many promises of returning again the next summer.

They never returned, however, nor did Yannoula ever see them again, and familiar figures though they had become in Poros, it is probable they would soon have been forgotten, had it not been for a circumstance which kept their memory fresh for many a year, and which made the poor woman often curse the day on which they had ever set foot on the island.

III

The trouble began with the generous pay that Andriko, or rather his mother for him, had received from the strangers, and the various presents which had been added as well. Among these was a wonderful English clasp-knife which Randal had given to the boy, and a black winter dress that Mrs. Lee had written for to Athens for Yannoula, of such soft woolen texture as Poros had never seen before.

Andriko naturally boasted of all he had earned, and Yannoula herself, poor creature, made no secret of her good luck, and answered all questions concerning the stranger’s generosity quite frankly. Jealousy was aroused. Comments became at first spiteful, and then openly hostile. What pay was this for doing almost nothing? If merely carrying a basket or a shawl up a hillside brought in so much, then all their boys had better stop rowing, or fishing, or digging, and run after all the town-folk who came to Poros every summer.

Yannoula, people remembered, had been a good deal with these strangers. She had taken them to her garden over on the mainland, and they had been seen at her house, too, more than once.

Who could tell, after all, how she had wormed things out of them?

A widow woman should not make so free. If it had only been the old lady, well and good. But there was the son as well. — And Yannoula was a young woman yet. He! — he! — who could tell? Women are secret things!

Generally it is impossible to trace the birth of a rumor: how the whispered hint of yesterday becomes today’s open scandal. But in this case there was no difficulty.

Suddenly, one day, virtuous matrons and maids shuddered, young men tittered and old people shook their heads over an absolutely vouched-for story of Yannoula’s having been seen in the middle of the night, half-dressed, with her hair flying behind her like a mad woman’s, tearing through the streets alone with the young officer, the stranger.

All doubters were silenced at once. An eye-witness was prepared to swear on the Cross, if need be, to what she had seen.

Old Kyra Marina had been sitting up all night with her granddaughter, whose baby had been born in the evening, and hearing a noise of running feet and strange talk in the street below, she had looked through the window and had seen this thing with her own eyes. Oh, they were good eyes yet, for all her age; and the moonlight had been as bright as day. No, no, these were not ‘clean doings’ of Yannoula’s.

In vain her neighbor Kyra Sophoula brought forward the strange lady’s sudden illness, and related all the incidents from the first hurried knocking at Yannoula’s door. She was met by open ridicule.

Sudden illness! Bah! a terrible illness truly when the lady had been able to leave the next day. The third day was it? Well, it was all one. Besides, was Yannoula a doctor that she should have been fetched at that time of night? The hotel people had all seen her, had they? Well, what of that? She may have been there, but who could tell when she had received her midnight visitor, or for how long she had entertained him before they began their mad race together down the streets? — No, no; those stories were good for little children to believe!

The gossip did not lessen as the days went by. Nay, it even spread further. Kyra Marina had not been silent, and her tale lost nothing in the frequent retelling. It was a long time since she had been able to command the undivided attention of so many listeners.

The sole witness! Would it have been in human nature to keep silent?

Many pitied Andriko. A few men defended Yannoula: a fine woman yet, they said, and left a widow so early.

There were other young widows besides her, muttered the gossips severely; but they kept their eyes lowered under their black kerchiefs as an honest widow should. Such a good name as Kyr Yoryi’s had always been, too! Eh, eh, it was a pity that the lad was not a little older. He would soon have settled such goings-on, and would never have allowed his father’s name to be shamed in this way. And voices grew shriller, while red pitchers waited their turn to be filled at the fountain.

The evil talk grew and spread — from the fountain to the market-place, and from the market-place to the quay.

Kyra Sophoula, coming out of Kyr Michali’s shop one morning, where she had been for some dried beans, came upon three men relating the story, with the addition of various vile epithets, to some sponge-divers from Hydra, with the injunction that they should repeat it to Kyr Apostoli when they got back to their own island, so that he might not remain ignorant of his sister-inlaw’s fine doings, and that he might ‘take his measures’ as head of the family.

The old woman turned on them furiously, asking them how they were not ashamed to tell such evil lies of their own countrywoman.

Poros, lounging round So tiro’s coffeehouse, smiled and said, ‘Do not listen to them, Kyra Sophoula. What do they know? You do not eat straw; no one can deceive you, that is very certain.’ And then when she had gone, it laughed out loud and added, ‘She is a good advocate, she is. Who knows what her pay may be?’

Her pay was poor Yannoula’s weeping gratitude as she sat crouching on the floor of her little house, wearied out with many tears, her head on the old woman’s knees. For Yannoula was not strong-minded. She was utterly incapable of going about as usual, of braving public opinion, of living down the scandal. Her good name was gone, she moaned; it was an evil day on which she had been born. Better, she cried, rocking herself backwards and forwards, that a vampire had sucked her blood than that she should have lived to see this hour.

Then with the first rains came the terrible news that the sponge-divers had faithfully delivered their message; that her brother-in-law, the stern old man, furious beyond words, was preparing to come to Poros to take her boy away from her, declaring that never while he was alive should his brother’s son be brought up by a shameless woman who had willfully blackened their good name.

Half-mad with fear, trembling at every passing step, she waited for Kyra Sophoula who had run to consult the schoolmaster on the subject. When the old woman returned she assured Yannoula that she might be easy, that there was no fear at all; Kyr Vangheli had said such a thing was quite impossible: that the law would never allow a child to be taken from its mother by force.

But when Kyr Apostoli arrived from Hydra and summoned his nephew to come away with him, no force was required.

Andriko’s mind had been slowly poisoned long before his uncle’s arrival. Stray words had been let drop before him. Disparaging remarks, at first timid, then bolder, had been made.

The older boys at school had repeated to him what they had heard from their elders. Yes, beyond doubt, his mother had been too often with these strangers, she had spoken too freely to them, for a decent self-respecting widow who should keep her black kerchief well over her eyes, and look down as she walked. The women even said — But the story generally stopped at what they said, for even the most hardened shrank from telling the boy all the foul rumors that had been twisted to fit into that unfortunately overseen night errand of his mother’s. However, their reticence did not avail her much. Definite accusations, which could be grappled with, might possibly have aroused some disbelief, some latent instinct in the boy to defend her, but the vague affirmation, ‘She has made your father’s good name a laughing-stock for all the island,’ stung his vanity, and excited his anger as an unpardonable offense against the dignity of his budding manhood.

His uncle’s promises of adoption, of future inheritance, were scarcely required as an inducement to go with him, although he remembered and counted on them in later years. His own sullen resentment against his mother, added to the change and novelty of the step, were all-sufficient. He was past the age when he might: have missed Yannoula’s care and tenderness. In fact, he had been getting impatient of them for some time past, as he had of any restrictions on his liberty. Work of any sort he loathed, and he foresaw that in a life spent with his mother there would be no lack of it. His uncle, for all his sternness, looked what he was, a distinctly prosperous man. So when he said to the boy, ‘Come with me to Hydra; I wall make you my son, and as for that woman who has blackened our good name, neither you nor I will look on her again,’ Andriko went willingly, with no thought save an angry one for the mother he was abandoning.

Even the neighbors who had been the most relentless softened toward the miserable woman when at last her mind grasped the terrible truth that her boy had left her of his own free will, that he had not been dragged away struggling, that he had not even left a message or a single word for her. They gathered around her with help and advice and pity.

IV

For many hours after the first shock she had lain in a sort of heavy torpor. But when speech and the power of movement returned to her, she refused to have anyone but Kyra Sophoula beside her, even for the first night. And above all would she neither then, nor ever, allow a word of blame against Andriko.

‘Who knows what that bad man made him believe?’ she said. ‘After all, he is but a child. Perhaps as soon as he feels alone he will get away, and return to me; if not, when he is a little older he will be sure to understand.’ Neither would she listen to the schoolmaster who came the next day to tell her that the law would certainly be in her favor, and who offered to help her to appeal to it. ‘We have been decent people all our lives, Kyr Vangheli,’ she answered, ‘and never had aught to do with the law. Do you think I will ask it now to drag my boy back to me like a deserter with tied hands whom the soldiers push along by his elbow? No! when he comes, he shall come free.’

For two days after this she remained silent and listless, letting Kyra Sophoula fetch water for her, sit near her, lie beside her through the long weary night, never speaking except when spoken to, and never breaking bread or putting water to her lips, except when it was placed in her very hand. Then on the third day she rose early, swept the little house, made some black coffee, and when the old woman returned from the fountain, she put her hands on the bent shoulders and looked down into the kind old wrinkled face.

‘Kyra Sophoula, you must go back now to your own house. It is time, and Maroussa is there alone. For all you have done, may God repay you a hundredfold. As for me, have no anxiety, I shall be well. Yes, yes; I shall eat and I shall drink. Since it was written in my book of Fate that I should lose these years out of my life, it is needful that I should be strong, so that when my boy comes back to me, I may have more years to live with him.’

That was the refrain which recurred at the end of almost every sentence she spoke, in the days that followed, — ‘when my boy comes back to me.’ In time she heard from stray sources of Andriko’s safe arrival in Hydra, of his having been introduced there as Kyr Apostoli’s adopted son. Once, after many months, she heard that he was ill. It was nothing, they said, just a little fever, but she ran half-distraught to Kyra Sophoula.

The old woman tried to comfort her. ‘He is a strong lad; do not eat your heart out, my poor one; God is great.’

‘Yes,’ sobbed Yannoula, ‘yes, a strong lad, but now what, may be happening there God only knows.’

When they told her he was well again, she went up to the Monastery and lighted a candle before the ikon of the Virgin, who had listened to her prayers and cured her boy.

Among her treasured possessions was a handkerchief with which Mrs. Lee had once bound up a cut on Andriko’s hand. She loved the feel of the fine cambric, sun-bleached and thymescented, as only island-washed linen can be, and would sit for hours holding it against her face.

One comfort she had, rather rare in Poros, — a picture of Andriko, — a small amateur photograph taken by a young lady, who, as Yannoula told Kyra Sophoula, had once long ago stayed for a little while with the people of the red house on the hill.

‘And how did she make the picture?’ asked Kyra Sophoula, who had often heard the story before, but who was wise and knew when to talk and when to listen.

‘She used to go about,’ Yannoula answered, ‘with a small black leather box, taking pictures of all sorts of things, just with a little click — so; you could not see the picture then at once, but after some days only, and then you could always recognize the people and the places quite well. And one day she took my Andriko. He was about nine then, and she looked at him for a long time, as all strangers did always, and spoke about him with the ladies of the red house who were with her, and then she told him to stand still, just where he was, beside an old boat, and she took the picture. I was close by, for I had just come with my pitcher from the fountain, and she asked me if he were mine. When I answered yes that he was mine, she said, “A beautiful boy truly; may he live to you.” Then she said she would make two pictures of him, one to keep, and the other she would give to me. She brought it to me herself two days later, in this little frame as you see it. God make her years many! See how like it is! Look at my boy just as he stood there with his little hand on the side of the boat and his curls showing against the sky. — My little boy! Often do I go to sleep with this picture held fast to my breast, that I may perhaps dream of him, but nearly always do I dream of other things, not of him. Only last night, if you believe me, I dreamed of those Athenians who came by that new steamer on Sunday, and who took their food in baskets up to the Monastery: of that fat woman who laughed so loud, and of the girl with the red hair. What did I need,’ she burst out with a sort of quiet rage, ‘to dream all night of strangers whom I shall never see again in all my life! ’

Kyra Sophoula spoke gently to her and soothed her, and the little photograph in its worn leather frame was hung again over the solitary bed.

V

The weeks, the months, flew by. New Year came and went. The almonds blossomed first, then the peach and the cherry trees made the gardens white with their blossoms. Then came the great heat, with the figs and the grapes and the Virgin’s Feast. Then it was autumn again, and the hills were covered with heather and cyclamen, and lastly the anemones sprang up and carpeted the land with violet and crimson and purple.

One evening in late November, Kyra Sophoula went next door to see whether Yannoula could lend her a little oil. She found her sitting on a low stool in the fast-darkening room, her head bent forward, her face hidden in her hands,

‘ What is it, my poor one?’ she asked, touching her shoulder; ‘is your heart heavy to-night?’

Yannoula lifted her face and looked at her, with trembling lips. ‘It is a year to-day.’

The old woman started. ‘A year? It is not possible. How do you know it?’

‘ He left,’ said Yannoula, in a toneless voice, ‘two days before his namesday. I had bought the sugar for the kourambiedes. To-day is Friday; on Sunday it will be the Feast of St. Andrea.’

‘You are right,’ assented Kyra Sophoula, after a pause. ‘It is a year.’

‘Kyra Sophoula, he cannot be away much longer now, can he?’

‘No, my daughter, not much longer.’

‘ He will return before another year, Kyra Sophoula?’

‘Surely he will return.’

But the next year on the same day, and the next, and for three more long years after that, the same questions were asked and answered.

‘He cannot be away much longer now, can he?’

‘Not much longer, my daughter.’

‘ He will return before another year? ’

‘Surely he will return.’

In the mean while Yannoula went about her work very quietly, growing a little thinner, a little paler, but not altering very much, listening gratefully to the smallest details that any one could give her about her boy: what he did, what he said, what he wore; constantly wondering, when alone with Kyra Sophoula, what had made him go, what made him stay, whether he often thought of her, of his ‘manitsa’ as he used to call her when he first began to talk; trying to imagine who could have poisoned his mind against her, and how he could have decided to leave her; but all this with never a trace of bitterness, only the great love that feels no need of forgiving, and the weary longing that ended always with the same question: —

‘ He will return before another year? ’

And though the years rolled on and did not bring him, still the old answer comforted her: ‘Surely he will return.’

When people heard of the old man’s death in Hydra and of his having disinherited Andriko after all his fine promises, the news, strange to say, was received on the whole with expressions of satisfaction. Whether this was due to the sort of rough justice which sooner or later governs public opinion, or whether her former judges had been unconsciously touched by the mother’s patient waiting, the fact remains that there were few who in one form or another did not repeat Kyra Sophoula’s verdict of ‘Serve him right.’

As for Yannoula herself, her first feeling was one of fierce indignation that the dead man should have dared so to deceive her boy, her next a wild joy that now at last misfortune might bring him back to her. There was no one to keep him away now. Surely, surely he would come at once.

Kyra Sophoula said little, but thought much. The feverish joy in Yannoula’s eyes almost frightened her.

‘You must have patience, my poor one. Doubtless he has much to do before he can leave; remember he is almost a man now.’

‘Almost a man,’ echoed Yannoula, ‘almost a man!’ Then, stretching out her arms to the little faded photograph, ‘Oh, my boy, who has become a man, come to me quickly! Come!’

But the days passed and he did not come.

It was Holy Week, and on the Thursday, notwithstanding Kyra Sophoula’s persuasion, Yannoula resolutely refused to go to Church for the evening service. She could not stand so many hours, she said; her knees trembled.

So Kyra Sophoula heard all the twelve Gospels without her, and saw the tall Cross brought out and fixed in the middle of the nave.

On Good Friday, however, she made Yannoula promise to meet her at Church in good time for the Epitaphios service, which in the islands does not begin until very late in the evening.

Kyra Sophoula had left the house early, having a bundle of herbs to leave at the house of a sick woman who lived up near the ruined mill. So that when she got down to the church and could not discover Yannoula anywhere in the crowd of women, she was very disappointed and even slightly anxious.

However, she lighted her little yellow taper from the one held by the woman next to her, and carefully wrapping the unlighted end in her handkerchief for fear of grease-spots on her black skirt, settled down to wait, hoping that Yannoula might come in later.

The service with its sad chanting wound out its slow length. In Athens, where the congregation is fashionable and pressed for time, the priests often think well to skip some of the verses, but in the islands, never. Every single line of the three long funeral chants, with their different intonings, is well known and expected in its turn.

Toward the end of the last chant, when the wail of the Virgin Mother by the tomb filled the church, ‘Oh light of my eyes! oh sweetest of sons! ’ Kyra Sophoula bent her head and felt almost glad that Yannoula had not come.

The procession was formed; the Epitaphios was reverently lifted, and the bearers passed slowly between the serried ranks of low-bending men and women, who afterwards closed in behind to form the rear of the procession.

Tightly wedged in the dense mass of people, Kyra Sophoula was borne slowly onward, through the clouds of incense and the suffocating smoke of multitudes of little yellow tapers, toward the central door. She had purposelyheld back as much as possible and succeeded in slipping aside the moment the crowd issued from the church in the wake of the procession.

She turned to the right and walked slowly up a steep side street, letting her little black shawl slip off her head, for it was a warm night. She could hear the tramp of many feet from the road below, the deep chant of the priests and the shrill ‘Kyrie Eleison’ of the young boys’ voices. Once through a break in the houses she saw the long flickering line of lights. The night was so still that her own taper remained lighted in her hand.

It was the first time for many years that she had not followed the Good Friday procession all round the village, along the sea, and back again into the church, and stayed there until the last Gospel, which so few stay to hear, had been read.

It was a sacrifice,—how great, only those may say who know how dull and colorless the hard-working lives of old peasant women can be; lives in which the Church ceremonies and the general religious excitement of Holy Week are often the only bright spot of the year.

But Yannoula’s absence troubled the old woman, and she toiled on to the little house down by the dark arch.

The door was open, and she passed straight into the small kitchen. It was empty and there was no answer to her knock at the inner door, so she pushed it open and entered.

Yannoula was not on the bed. The red cotton coverlet lay straight and uncreased over it.

The room was dimly lit by the tiny oil lamp hanging before the sacred ikon of the Virgin and Child, and in that trembling circle of light Kyra Sophoula could just distinguish a black crouching figure on the floor before the ikon.

She took a step forward with outstretched hands, but Yannoula’s voice, low and broken, reached her, and she stopped short. A toneless voice that had exhausted its tears: —

‘Ah, Holy Virgin! my little Virgin, have mercy upon me! Give me my boy. Let him come to me; let me put my arms round him just once, and then I can let him go again if he wishes it. Bring him to me, my little Virgin, and you shall have a white candle as thick as my arm to burn before your ikon. On foot I will bring it to you, up to the Monastery. Oh, most Holy Virgin, have pity on me! You who saw your Son on the Cross long years ago this very day. But He thought of your pain in the midst of his own; He spoke to you from there!’

Suddenly she snatched Andriko’s little faded photograph from the bosom of her dress and held it out before the ikon.

There in the dim light, with her pale face under the loosened black kerchief, the reddened eyelids, the sad lines of the mouth, she was a far better type of the Sorrowing Mother than the cheap Russian ikon before which she knelt.

‘See, Holy Virgin — here is my lad; when the Feast of St. Andrea comes again it will be seven years that I have only held him so to my breast! Oh, a great evil has found me! A great evil! ’ And then once more the weary cry, ‘Have mercy, my little Virgin —have mercy!’

Kyra Sophoula crossed the room to where the ikon hung, and, stooping, lifted up in her weak old arms the poor creature kneeling there.

‘My poor unfortunate,’ she said, settling the kerchief on the disordered hair, ‘you have prayed enough for tonight, you must rest now.’

Yannoula was not startled at finding Kyra Sophoula near her. Open doors are the rule, and privacy very much the exception, in Poros. She sank wearily upon the stool which the old woman dragged forward, and closed her eyes.

Later on she consented to lie down on her bed, but did not as usual try to persuade Kyra Sophoula to leave her. On the contrary she clung to her and talked much and feverishly, reverting constantly to Andriko’s early childhood, to the time when he used to toddle about after her, and get into a passion, stamping his little feet if his ‘manitsa’ left him even for a few moments.

Toward dawn she fell into a troubled sleep.

VI

Late in the afternoon of the next day Kyra Sophoula set out in quest of Kyr Vangheli the schoolmaster, who had promised to write a letter for her to Metro in Athens. She was also carrying six red eggs for Easter to little Tasso Kondelli, whose mother being in mourning had dyed none that year.

The weather had changed since the night before, and was damp and chilly. Heavy gray clouds lay low on the hills, and the rain was not far off. The old woman shivered and drew the black shawl closer round her shoulders.

Suddenly she saw the schoolmaster himself in the distance coming toward her. He was hurrying along awkwardly with bent head, his hands clasped behind his shabby coat.

When he caught sight of her he broke into a sort of shambling trot. He had been looking for her, he said. There was something she must know without loss of time.

When she had heard his news her brown old face turned a dull gray, for he told her that Andriko had returned to Poros that same morning without warning or announcement of any sort. That, from what he had gathered from those who had seen and spoken to the boy, or rather to the young man, nothing was further from his intentions than to seek out his mother or to have any communication with her. That, sore and furious at his disinheritance, he had agreed to join a party of emigrants leaving for San Francisco, having been persuaded that in America the maximum of wages was obtainable for the minimum of labor. He would have left direct from Hydra, but that a fellow emigrant who had advanced him the passage-money, and with whom he was to leave, had wished to spend Easter with a brother who lived in Poros. They were to start for Piræus on the Monday morning.

‘If only,’ concluded Kyr Vangheli, ‘if only it might be that the poor woman should not hear of it.’

‘Is she deaf?’ asked kyra Sophoula fiercely, ‘or do you think the Poriotes have no tongues?’

‘I know, I know,’ stammered the schoolmaster. ‘I know it is very difficult; but then—what? It will kill her to hear this thing.’

‘And,’ added the old woman, ‘if at least it killed her on the spot — but it will not.’

There was silence for a few seconds, then, ‘Someone must find Andriko,’ she continued at last, ‘find him and speak to him. He will not want to listen, but one must make him.’

‘Will you?' asked Kyr Vangheli.

he would send me to the devil straight off. I have told him too many truths in my time.’

Kyr Vangheli frowned thoughtfully. ‘Shall I get the priest to see him?’

‘Pappa Thanassi? Ah, bah! That would be worse still; Andriko would run at the very sight of his black robe. No, Kyr Vangheli, it is you who must find him, and speak to him.’

‘I? Will it do any good?’

‘Perhaps not, but at least you may make him listen. There is no one else.’

‘What shall I tell him about his mother? You knew him better than I did.’

‘Tell him,’ said the old woman grimly, ‘that if he goes away without seeing her, she will die of her grief, and that if she dies thus, her spirit will surely haunt him afterwards. He was ever a coward, perhaps that may frighten him.’ Then, as she saw the schoolmaster hesitating, she added, ‘Let us find him first, and the moment will bring the right words. He will be at Sotiro’s most likely, or if not they will have seen him there.’

‘Come with me,’ said Kyr Vangheli with sudden resolution; ‘perhaps if we find him in the presence of others he may be ashamed to refuse.’

Kyra Sophoula shook her head doubtfully.

‘Perhaps so, master—perhaps so.’

They walked on toward the quay. The rain had begun now and was falling softly, but neither of them noticed it. Through the mist, the joy bells were ringing for the coming Resurrection Service, and the first gunshots were heard in the distance.

As they neared Sotiro’s coffee-house they saw a crowd collected outside. A crowd which pushed and whispered and whose attention seemed centred on something in its midst. Then some one ran towards them: a woman with wide-open eyes and trembling lips.

‘Kyr Vangheli,’ she cried, ‘come, come quickly. Andriko, Yannoula’s Andriko, who came to-day, has been shot!’

The schoolmaster turned very white. ‘Shot! How? By whom?’

‘By mistake; some one who was firing for Easter; they do not know who it was. He is not dead yet, but the doctor says he is not for long.’

Kyra Sophoula ran forward, parting those in her way with both hands. ‘Christ, and Holy Virgin! What is this?’

Three men were holding the tall limp figure, the arms trailed on each side, the head with its wonderful lines drooped on to the left shoulder.

They laid him down gently on the ground not far from the sea. Barba Manoli held him up in his arms and all pressed forward. The rain was falling fast.

‘Courage, lad, it will be nothing.’ His eyes were closed and one or two women even crossed themselves, saying, ‘He is gone; it is finished.’ But Kyra Sophoula, who had got close at last, knew Andriko was alive when she saw his face, though it was gray and smeared with wet earth; but she had seen many wounded men in her time, and she knew he would not be alive long. She turned wildly to the doctor, a short dark man who had placed his fingers on Andriko’s pulse.

‘Can you not keep him alive for half an hour yet? So young as he is, so strong as he must be!’

The ball had lodged in the bowels, the doctor said. There was internal hemorrhage. He might last ten minutes yet, perhaps; not longer.

Kyra Sophoula whispered a word in the ear of one of the men who had carried Andriko. He nodded and started at a rapid run toward the marketplace. Just then, suddenly, Andriko opened his eyes and looked up at Barba Manoli who was supporting him; but the lids fell again.

‘Courage, lad,’repeated the old man, raising him with an effort a little higher in his arms.

Andriko’s eyes opened and closed once or twice and he tried to lift his hand.

‘Run for the priest,’ cried a voice; and another added, ‘Fetch his mother quickly.’

Then Andriko spoke; the voice was faint but audible.

‘Let me—die in peace,’ he said. ‘ Let Pappa Thanassi keep his chanting for when you bury me.’

‘But your mother, Andriko, your mother! You must have your mother’s blessing, my son,’ put in Barba Manoli.

‘I tell you to let me alone. Let my mother keep her blessing and her tears for those who want them! I will not have her near me. She blackened our good name.’

‘Andriko! ’

The name was cried out loudly by Kyra Sophoula, so that all turned to look at her. ‘Andriko, will you die with such evil words on your lips? Do you not know it is a sin? Let all these lies be. Remember the years when you could not do for an hour without your manitsa; leave a good word for her.’

Suddenly the wounded man, with a violent upheaval, threw his whole body forward and turned fast glazing eyes to the old woman.

‘I leave her my curse!’ he cried. ’I was a young fool at that time. — I — was — a fool — ’

Then his head fell forward, and the whole body suddenly bent at the middle.

The doctor who was still holding the pulse motioned to the old man to lay him down.

No one spoke, a woman only stooped and mechanically wiped away the rain which was falling fast on the upturned face and trickling down into the short curls.

Then someone on the edge of the crowd called out, ‘She is coming!’ and all heads were turned to the figure which was running toward them, looking gray and blurred through the driving rain.

‘Holy Virgin, have mercy upon her!’ cried Kyra Sophoula, putting out her hands as though to ward her off.

But Yannoula came straight on with open arms.

‘Andriko!’ she said softly, ‘Andriko, have you come back?’

Kyr Vangheli came quickly forward and stood between her and her son.

‘Let me pass,’ she said, ‘let me pass — they have told me all. — I know there is but little time left.’

Then, as the schoolmaster still stood there, she shivered once, and asked very quietly, —

‘Is he dead—my boy? Let me pass, please.’

Kyr Vangheli stepped aside then, and Yannoula fell on her knees and gathered up her child into her arms.

VII

It was a long time before Yannoula looked up, and then it seemed as if she saw none of all the pitying faces around her. There was a far-away look in her eyes — almost a look of peace.

She held her boy again and rocked him to and fro — a sleeping child once more, as in days long past when she used to lay him down so gently, to let the little dark head touch the pillow, and to unclasp the little clinging arms; but they are little no longer and they trail limply on the wet ground.

‘Andriko, my little child! my little child!’

‘ Kyra Yannoula!’

It was the schoolmaster speaking, but she took no heed.

‘ Kyra Yannoula! ’ his voice was firm, almost commanding. ‘ Listen to me for a moment, I must speak to you.’

Obediently she lifted her eyes to his.

‘You have heard that your son arrived from Hydra to-day?’ he asked.

She bent her head silently.

‘You have heard that his uncle, after all that he had promised, took back his word, and died leaving Andriko without anything in the world, without even having taught him a trade to live by?’

Yannoula bent lower till her lips rested on the dead boy’s forehead.

‘I have heard.’

‘But,’ resumed the schoolmaster, ‘what you have not heard — ’

Kyra Sophoula seized hold of his hand, but he dragged it away and continued in a clear firm voice, —

‘What you have not heard is that when this thing happened Andriko’s first thought was to return here, and that he said to those he knew in Hydra, “I shall go back to my poor mother, she will never turn me away from her.” He had understood at last, that all the evil things he had been told about you when he was but a child without judgment, were lies.’

In the deep silence which followed his words, Yannoula gave one little gasp and a strange light came into her eyes.

Kyr Vangheli took a step forward and laid his hand on her shoulder as she knelt there before him.

‘You have lost your son, Kyra Yannoula, but the great comfort remains that he was returning to you. When you grieve for him you must always remember that he was returning to you perfectly sure of your love and forgiveness; and that however he was misled formerly, he recognized his folly at the end. The last words he spoke here before he died were: “I was a fool, a fool! ” ’ He looked around him. ‘ You, all who heard him — is it not so?’

‘Yes,— yes, surely those were his last words,’ came in broken confirmation from all sides.

‘ My boy — my boy! ’

His head was on her arm again, and her lips pressed to his face. After so many years of weary waiting and heartsickness, her boy had come back to her.

‘Not a fool,’ she murmured, ‘never a fool — only my little child, whom they deceived, but who was coming back to me.’ Then, raising her eyes, ‘God give you long years, you who stood around him and kept his last words for me.’

Later on, when the tears had come at last, and Kyra Sophoula had taken her home, Kyr Vangheli spoke once more to the bystanders.

‘Remember all of you,’ he said, ‘remember as you would remember the last command of your dying father, — never let one word of the truth escape you, — never, not even to the priest. I will bear the sin.’

Poros is about as fond of gossip as any other island of its size, and the Poriotes are not famed for their silence, but they kept this secret well.