CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE BETTER PART OF VALOR

Aglaia stood irresolute, looking at the woman, who lay as quietly as though she were sleeping, upon the floor of hard-beaten earth. Her first impulse was to pick her up and drag her to one of the platforms at the fireplace, for her heart forgot its own bitterness for the moment, and was filled with pity for the Christian maiden who had taken refuge in her horrid home.

"No, no, I will not touch her," she murmured at last, "for so it is most frequently given and caught."

So she drew up a chair and sat watching Panayota. She did not have long to wait, for the young, vigorous constitution soon asserted itself. Panayota opened her eyes and stared straight up at the ceiling; then the light caught them and she looked at the _eikon_, murmuring, "Panayeia, save me!" She sat up and looked deep into Aglaia's large and mournful eyes. The latter said nothing, but she saw complete consciousness and recollection dawning in her guest's countenance.

"Do not be so frightened," said Aglaia. "I will not touch you nor come near you, and it is only by contact that one catches the--leprosy. The Virgin will shield you."

Panayota rose to her feet. She was a priest's daughter, and religion was her ever-present comfort. "She has saved me thus far in a wonderful manner," she replied, and, going over to the _eikon_, she prayed that the Panayeia would protect her from the horrible disease and help her to escape to the mountains and her own people. Aglaia brought bread, olives and cheese and set them upon the table.

"Na!" she said, "eat and gain strength, and we will devise some means for you to get away from here."

Panayota felt as though the very food were contaminated, but she managed to eat some of the bread, pulling morsels from the center of the loaf. Once again she heard voices from without, and started from her seat, whispering:

"The Turks are coming!"

"Fear nothing here," said Aglaia, in that calm, uncaring voice; "you are as safe here as if you were in your grave--safer, for the Turks sometimes exhume the bones of Christians, but they never disturb us. We are all dead in this village, dead to the hate of the world, to its love, to its friendship."

Panayota could make no reply. Human sympathy seemed a mockery in the face of such sorrow as this. She stepped to the door and looked out. All was silent in the narrow street. The lepers are not a gay folk, and sleep is to them God's greatest boon.

"They do not even fear the Turks!" she muttered. "My God! Suppose I should catch it! I must get away from here."

Turning, she looked keenly at Aglaia, who sat with hands clasped in her lap, rocking gently forward and back.

"But you do not seem to be sick, my sister. Why do you think you have leprosy? You look as well as I do."

Aglaia laughed bitterly. Rising, she struck her left leg with her doubled fist, and stamped upon the ground.

"Numb, numb," she said. "No feeling. I am only one-fourth dead now, but it will creep on, on, over my whole body. Come here a few years from now, when it gets into my face, and you will know whether I am a leper or not."

Panayota stood for a long time looking out into the darkness. She was weary to very faintness, but it seemed safer to stand there, turning her face to the night, breathing the cool air. Besides, she could not talk with this woman. She did not know what to say to her. At last Aglaia spoke again:

"Forgive me," she said, with a sob in her voice. "I have no one to talk to, and I sit here and brood over it. And it will be for years--for years. But you must be very tired, and you must rest so as to go on with your journey. Come and lie down on the _barangitza_. I will not come near you."

Panayota lay down upon the hard planks and made a pillow of her arm.

"I cannot offer you the bed-clothing," said Aglaia. "It might not be safe."

So weary was Panayota that she dropped off into a doze, only to be awakened after a few moments by the sound of low sobbing. Listening, she heard the words:

"O, my God, I am an outcast, a thing accursed. I am poison to the touch. Holy Virgin, save my children, save my little ones."

Panayota sat up on the bench.

"I cannot sleep, sister Aglaia," she said, "I am so sorry for you. If my father were here he would know what to say to you. He was killed by the Turks. I am an orphan."

She spoke of her own grief instinctively, feeling that the sympathy of the prosperous is not a comfort to those in sorrow.

"My father was a good man, sister Aglaia. He was a priest, and everybody loved him. My mother died when I was a little girl and left me to his care. He never said an unkind word to me in all his life. He used often to talk to me about mama, and his voice was very, very tender. And he used to put his arm around me there in the door of our little parsonage, at night, before we went to bed, and, pointing to the stars, he would say: 'When we all get together up there, you will tell mama that I was good to you, won't you, Panayota?' And I used to say to him: 'Oh, papa, I ask the Virgin every night to tell her.' But mama knows, sister Aglaia, she knows it all now."

"Oh, but your mother is dead and in heaven," replied Aglaia, "and you can cherish her memory and plant flowers upon her grave. But suppose she had been a leper, accursed of God, would you not have thought of her with--with horror? As she grew more and more repulsive, would you not have shuddered even at the thought of her?"

"No, no, indeed. I should have, thought always of her beautiful soul. Her misfortune would have made my love greater. That is the way any child would feel toward its mother."

"Do you really think so?" cried Aglaia. "O, it does me so much good to hear you, say so. I have a husband and two children--a girl and a boy. That is why you saw me praying when you came in. I pray all the time to the Virgin to save them from the curse. I never pray for myself. I am past all help. But I pray, pray night and day for my children."

"But there is another world," said Panayota, solemnly. "Do you never ask for happiness in that?"

Aglaia laughed bitterly.

"Listen," she replied. "My children never come here. I would not allow it. But sometimes I go down to the bank by the roadside, where the other lepers go to beg, and my husband brings them, and stands afar off, and I look at them and stretch my arms toward them. Is there any greater hell than that? When you're a mother you will know."

"But," interrupted Panayota, who had entirely forgotten her own troubles in the presence of such great sorrow, "are you not afraid for their safety, over there in Canea?"

"No, praise God! My husband is captain of a caique. He has gone to Athens and taken the two children with him. Before he went away he brought them down to see me. And the baby laughed and shouted, 'Na, mama; come here, mama!' My baby has red cheeks and curly hair, but Yanne doesn't know how to fix her hair."

She sat for some time in thought, and Panayota heard her mutter, "Na, mama; come here, mama." And later: "When my face changes I shan't go down to see them any more. I shall never let them see me like that."

Panayota went to the door and gazed at the sky through a mist of tears. What a dreadful place this was, where there was grief that not even the Virgin could assuage! A cool breeze from the sea was abroad over the land, and one star glittered like a drop of dew on a spray of lilac. Yonder were the hills to which she longed to flee--gray giants, moving toward her out of the darkness.

The whole earth was swallowed in silence, and the beautiful valley that spread out before her seemed wrapped in the slumber of peace. But alas! if she looked to the right, a few slender columns of smoke rising from Canea bore witness to the dark deeds of yester-eve and last night. Panayota's momentary joy at the coming of day forsook her at sight of that smoke. The light was cheering, but it did not help her to see any escape from her perilous position.

An hour passed away, and the sun rose. Aglaia made some coffee, which Panayota drank without revulsion. Everything about the little hut was spotlessly clean, and the stricken woman herself had not yet fallen into those careless ways which come to the leper when all pride is extinguished.

"How shall I be able to go on my journey?" asked Panayota.

"God will show a way. He has not deserted you as he has me."

"Perhaps He has deserted all Christians. Perhaps the whole world has turned Turk. If so, I'd rather stay here and be a leper."

"Never believe it. Yanne, my husband, who is a great traveler, says that the English will one day kill all the Turks in the world, and give Crete back to Greece. And the English are in some respects like Christians. At any rate, they do not believe in Mohammed."

The lepers began to bestir themselves. A patriarchal-looking man with a tuft of white hair above each ear, a snowy beard and a dirty mustache, shuffled by the door, carrying a water jug. Seeing the two women, he stopped and peered into the hut, saying:

"Good-morning, sister Aglaia," and "Good-morning, sister----"

"Pa--Paraskeve," stammered Panayota.

"Where are you from, sister, and how long have you been afflicted?"

Aglaia answered glibly. Her guest was from a little village far away. God only knows how she had got leprosy, and she had only come last night. The old man wore a priest's frock, shiny and ragged, and reaching to his feet. His woolen shirt was open in front, disclosing two or three tawny stains. His face was unnaturally red, far up onto his bald brow, and was streaked with angry-looking, vein-like lines. He had no eyebrows.

"Hum," he said. "Adio! Adio!" and he shuffled away, muttering:

"God have mercy! God have mercy!"

"That's Papa-Spiro," explained Aglaia. "He is a priest. They say that it is a judgment on him--that he made love to one of his congregation."

A wretched being who wore enormous blue goggles over his eyes and who directed his footsteps by tapping the ground in front of him with a long staff, held in hands curiously twisted and deformed, looked in at the door.

"What is it? What is it?" asked the blind man, with that feverish impatience which the smallest events excite in isolated communities.

"'Tis the new leper. She is very beautiful," replied voices.

"I'm not a leper," cried Panayota. "God save me and protect me, and keep the evil eye from me!"

"Hush!" whispered Aglaia. "Do not betray yourself."

"Describe her to me, my brother."

"She has beautiful hair and eyes and----"

But the remainder of the description was drowned in the many questionings of new arrivals. The gossip priest had told several acquaintances of Panayota's advent, and the news was spreading through the whole village. The group grew to a dozen--to twenty. They moved closer to the door and stood looking silently in--such as possessed eyes. Fear, horror and anger surged through Panayota's heart at the time; afterwards she could never think of those pitiable, outraged wrecks of the image of God without tears.

A burly form parted the throng and a face looked in--a face infinitely disgusting and infinitely terrible, and that somehow reminded Panayota of a lion--she could not tell why.

"Take them away! Take them away!" moaned Panayota, covering her face with her hands and retreating behind Aglaia. And suddenly her overwrought nerves found vent in tears, and she began to sob violently. Aglaia, but little better accustomed to the horrid spectacle than her guest, found her voice with difficulty.

"Go away," she said, "for your souls' sakes! Do you not see that you are frightening the poor thing to death?"

"Perhaps she doesn't think I am beautiful," said the Face, with a laugh. "I had come to ask her to marry me."

"Are you Christians or Turks?" asked Aglaia, remembering that nearly all the members of the colony were Greeks.

"Go away and come at another time. In God's name, go away!"

She could not shut the door, as two or three of the lepers had crowded into the opening.

"Doesn't like our looks, eh?" said another. "Never mind, brothers; she'll look like the rest of us soon enough--and you, too, for that matter, Madam Aglaia. There's nothing in the world like leprosy as a cure for pride."

Thanks to Panayota's sobs, she did not hear the remark, but Aglaia did, and felt all of its cruel force. She could make no reply, except:

"True, true. God have mercy!" Thus she stood, helpless, when of a sudden the hideous faces were all turned away from the door together.

"Silence!" cried one of the lepers, for a military quickstep could be heard in the distance.

"Allah be praised!" said one of the Turks. "It is the Sultan's army going forth to conquer the island."

The insistent, eager notes of martial music caught Panayota's ear. A moment she stood listening, and then turned deadly pale.

"Kostakes!" she gasped. "Kostakes and the Bashi Bazouks!" and again she caught at the door jamb to keep herself from falling.

"Hark!" cried Aglaia, "that is not Turkish music, neither is it Greek. It is foreign music. This should mean great news. You wait here a few moments and I will go find out."

Aglaia hastened down the road and Panayota stood in the door, waiting and listening. The sound of the music grew louder, came nearer. The body of troops was passing down the line of the fork that formed the opposite boundary of the lepers' village. Aglaia had been right. That was not Turkish music; the tune was foreign to Panayota, but it thrilled her somehow. She loosed her fingers from the door jamb, her hands dropped by her side and she stood erect.

As she listened thus and looked down the road, anxiously waiting the return of Aglaia, a man approached her. The first intimation that she had of his presence was the sound of crunching footfalls. Instinctively she covered her face with her hand and shrank back into the house. Mother of God! Was this person, too, about to inflict himself on her? Whoever it was, he had evidently stopped outside, before the house--was waiting there. Perhaps some face, more hideous than anything she had yet seen, would appear at the door.

"Will he never go?" she muttered, her teeth chattering. "I must get away from here--away into God's clean, free mountains. No! I believe he is going away. Praise God!" for the crunch, crunch of footsteps in the coarse gravel was renewed--grew fainter in the distance. Panayota was about to peep from the door again when she heard other footsteps, of people walking rapidly. These passed by without stopping. She heard a man call as though shouting to some one far away, and then there was silence for so long that she once more ventured to look out.

It had been Hassan Bey calling to Curtis, and begging him to walk more slowly. What trifles affect our destinies! Had Lindbohm lifted up his voice as he was on the point of doing, this story might possibly have a different ending.

Panayota saw only Aglaia coming down the road, waving her arms. She lost all fear and ran to meet her.

"It's the English," cried the woman. "They are arresting Turks right and left. They are throwing the leaders into prison and taking the guns away from the Bashi Bazouks."

"Now God be praised!" laughed Panayota.

"The Turks are hiding like hares. Not one dare show his head. Papa-Spiro says that all the principal Turks will be hanged and the rest driven into the sea."

Panayota's eyes blazed and she held her head high as she marched back to the leper's hut, unconsciously keeping step to the tune of "Tommy Atkins."