Part 11

Then as Aleko ran off, the younger member turned to the older one.

"I wish a few more of the boys had his spirit."

"How fair he is! From what part does he come, I wonder?"

"Oh, they all come from Megaloupolis, but I believe that this one's father is originally from Macedonia."

"Ah, a good race," said the older man. "One of our best."

IV

The next day, early in the afternoon, Aleko duly took the Embros to the little street off the Kolonaki Square, where the old, blind schoolmaster sat waiting for him, just inside his door. The boy sat down on the doorstep and read out all the news to him. Then he told him all about his boxing lesson, and left only when it was time for the evening newspapers to come out. And after that, the afternoon readings became a regular thing. Sometimes the boy was tired after the long, hot, hard-working morning, and would have willingly thrown himself down on his mattress for an hour or two, but he never failed the old man.

Of course the readings were frequently interrupted by questions, for Aleko soon discovered that Kyr Themistocli was of those who "knew things when you asked them."

"What is an 'agonistes'?" he asked one day, after reading of the death of an old veteran.

"An 'agonistes' is one who fights; but now it has come to mean one who has fought in the Revolution of 1821. My father was one."

The newspaper fluttered down on the doorstep and Aleko was on his knees beside the old man, his eyes eagerly fixed on the sightless ones above him.

"Your father! Did he kill Turks himself? Did he blow up a Turkish ship? Did he come down from Souli[7] with Marcos Botzaris? Did he see Kanaris and Miaoulis? Did he fight at Missolonghi? Was he there when the Turks passed the stake through Diakos?"[8]

"Stop, stop, my child! you want the whole of the Revolution at once!"

However, he was very patient, the old man, and Aleko heard many of those things which never get into the history books, at least into those from which he read at school. Little incidents of the many battles and sieges, tales of the misery and the hardships, and of the braving of all the misery and the hardships, for the sake of freedom. Of the Christian children who were stolen and turned into infidels! Of the boys who were taken as babes and brought up to hate and to fight against their own people; of the girls who were made slaves in the harems; of the bloodshed, and the tortures, until at last the day came at Navarino when even strangers joined in arms against the cruel oppressors.

"I am afraid," said Kyr Themistocli, "that you cannot quite understand yet, how it all came to pass."

"There is only one thing I cannot understand," said Aleko slowly.

"What thing?"

"When they had the strangers to help them, why they did not go everywhere, and cut off all the Turks' heads so that none should be left."

The old man leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud.

"He is terrible, the little one!" and he tried to explain, but Aleko remained rather unsatisfied on this point.

"Now, will you find me some water to drink. I have talked much."

Aleko found the water, and was just putting the pitcher back in its place, when he heard a series of short sharp barks in the distance. Instead of passing out of the house door, before which the old man was sitting, he vaulted out of the low kitchen window and went tearing down the street.

"Aleko!" called Kyr Themistocli who heard the clatter. "Aleko! Where are you?" But there was only silence. He sighed and leaned back in his chair crossing his hands.

"Of course the boy cannot stay long; it is well he comes at all," and he sighed again.

Suddenly he felt something warm, and soft, and alive on his hands. He was startled.

"What is it?"

"It is only Solon," said Aleko. "Did you not hear me return? He was barking down the street and I knew he had strayed again from the cook--Anneza--and I brought him for you to see."

Kyr Themistocli always talked of "seeing" and Aleko had got into the same habit.

"Put your hands over him,--so,--Is he not soft? And clever! as clever as a Christian! Whatever I tell him he understands."

Kyr Themistocli smiled.

"He is not yours?"

"Mine! No! He belongs to the big house higher up, the one which has the garden. Do you know it? Someone lives there who is called 'Spinotti.'"

"Kyrios Spinotti, the banker; he is a very rich man."

"Is he?" said Aleko indifferently. "Well, Solon is his dog, and he is so fond of him that he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body; and he often goes into the kitchen to see what he eats, and Anneza says that if all poor people fared as well as this dog does, it would be well. So that is why he is so fat, you see! And when Anneza goes out, her master says she must take the dog with her for exercise, and if she does not ... bad luck to her! But he is always straying. She is a stupid woman and Solon will not stay with her. Some day she will lose him and never find him again, and then there will be trouble. Now I must take him back."

"His master," said the old man slowly, "is so fond of the dog because it was his wife's dog, and she is dead."

Aleko, with Solon contentedly tucked under his arm, stopped short.

"You know him then?"

"This house in which I live, is his, and because of that, I pay very little rent for it. He, Nico Spinotti, is my old pupil from Cephalonia, of whom I told you; he who took me to the oculists. Once, a long time ago, when I first came to Athens, when I could still see, I went to his house. His wife was alive then--a beautiful woman, of one of the first names of the island--and as she was talking to me and smiling, she had the little dog, who was but a puppy, in her arms. She died--God rest her soul--of typhoid fever. Since then I have not seen Nico often, but he never forgets his old master."

"Of course not," said Aleko, "why should he?"

"Many would, my boy; many would. But he is a good man; take his dog back to him that he may not be anxious."

After Aleko had left Solon at the big house, it was already dark. He hurried down the Kiphissia Road and through the Square of the Constitution, thinking he would have more chance of selling the few papers he still held, if he went to school by that way.

It was getting cooler, and the streets were filled with people pouring out of all quarters of the city to breathe the night air after the weariness of the day spent behind closed shutters.

Crowded street cars and carriages crossed and recrossed, carrying family parties down to Phalerum and the sea.

The little round tables at Yannaki's, Doree's, and Zacharato's were all occupied, in fact those of the latter had spread right out across the square. All around rose the hum of summer night noises, of music, of the cries of the café waiters, the tinkling of many glasses and spoons, and the distant whistle of the Kiphissia train.

Groups of men lounged past, talking and laughing.

A man in one of the groups beckoned to Aleko, a young man with a small dark moustache:--

"Here! Have you any newspapers left?"

Aleko looked up into the pleasant, laughing eyes of his boxing master.

"Oristé!"[9] he cried eagerly. "Certainly, all you want."

"Ah, is it you, Aleko! Good evening to you! Well, give me the Hestia, the Astrapi, the Hesperini--and the Romios, if you have it."

Then, when he had gathered them up, he asked laughingly:--

"Now, as we are old friends and I have bought so many newspapers, surely you will take off a discount for me! What shall I give you?"

Aleko, being of pure Greek blood, answered in the good old Greek fashion:--

"Whatever you please to give."

The young man laughed and held out a five lepta copper coin, the value of one newspaper alone.

"Suppose then I please to give only this."

Not a muscle moved in Aleko's face.

"You shall give it," he answered, then taking the coin he dropped it into his pocket, and was turning away, when the young man called him back.

"Here! Stop! Did you take it seriously?" and while he was searching for more coins, he asked, "Do you boys not have to account for all the papers you sell?"

"Of course; the 'big one' keeps count of everything."

"Well then, what would you have said when the 'big one' as you call him, found fifteen lepta too little?"

"He would have found his money right."

"How could he?"

"I would have put it there from my supper money."

The young man looked at Aleko rather curiously, and two of the other men who were with him laughed. The one of them, an older man, said:--

"This is an original little specimen!" and the other, an officer, asked:--

"And why should you be taking from your supper money to make this gentleman a present of three newspapers? Do you not think he is richer than you?"

"That does not matter at all," answered Aleko. "My father told me that it is a shame always to take, and never to give, however poor you are. He ..." pointing with his thumb backwards, "has given me much; may I not befriend him with three newspapers?"

"Ah, that of course alters the question," remarked the officer.

"I assure you," began the young man, "that I have never given the child a single thing!" Then turning to Aleko, "Are you thinking of the 'tsourekia'[10] and red eggs at Easter? but that was from all the members of the Parnassos, not from me alone."

"No," said Aleko, "I mean that you have taught me many things, and that is more than things which are eaten and finished."

"Oh, ho!" laughed the officer, "this is a philosopher we have here."

"No," said Aleko gravely, "I have not enough learning; perhaps if I could go to school all day, I might be one, some time."

The older man shook his head.

"That is the way of the world. My son can go to school all day, and every day, and his one object is to stay away."

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" asked the officer of Aleko.

"I do not know ... yet," he answered slowly. "I want to learn how to do many things, and then to go and do them."

"You could not wish better," said his boxing master. "I think you will be a man anyway. Here is your money, and run off to the Parnassos; I am not coming this evening; it is too hot for boxing." Then turning to the officer he quoted smilingly:--

hôs charien esth' anthrôpos hotan anthrôpos ê

Aleko heard him, though he did not understand; and as he ran down Stadium Street, he kept repeating the words to himself for fear of forgetting them, and when he sat down in his place in the class, the first thing he did was to borrow a stump of a pencil from his neighbour, and write the words on the fly leaf of his reading book. Of course they were spelled and accented all wrong, but they could be read quite plainly. The arithmetic lesson came last, and Aleko was the last pupil called up to the blackboard, so that when the boys were leaving the class he ventured to show his sentence to the schoolmaster.

"What does this mean, master?"

The schoolmaster took up the book.

"Why do you write on your school books?" he asked sharply.

"I had no paper. What does it mean?"

The master read the sentence slowly.

"This is ancient Greek," he said. "You have not done any yet: you could not understand it. Even next year in the higher class, you will only do Æsop's fables, and a little Xenophon. Better leave it," he added laughing. "Do not trouble your head! It is not for you!"

But Aleko put his book into his shoeblack box to take away with him.

V

The next day it was four o'clock before he went up to the Kolonaki and found the blind old man seated on a chair outside his door, waiting for him patiently. The daily newspaper was read, but without the usual stopping for questions. When the reading was over Aleko opened his box and pulled out his book. Then he flung himself down and resting the book on the old man's knees opened the tattered, scribbled-over blue paper cover.

"Master," he said, "these are ancient Greek words; I heard a man say them to another, and I wrote them down. What do they mean?" and he read the words aloud slowly:--

hôs charien esth' anthrôpos hotan anthrôpos ê

"Ah, my child!" and the old man's voice trembled a little, "they knew so much, those old forefathers of ours,--

hôs charien esth' anthrôpos hotan anthrôpos ê

"Yes, that is from Menander. How shall I tell you? It means so many things and so many different things at different times. Sometimes, I think, it may mean simply, that it is a duty to be a man and not a brute. Let me explain...."

"I know!" broke in Aleko, whose eyes had been fixed on the entrance of the narrow street. "You mean, to be like you and not like that fruit-seller over there who is kicking his donkey because he has laden it too heavily, and it cannot walk." Kyr Themistocli smiled.

"Well, ... yes, if you like, my boy ... yes. Sometimes it means that it is a glorious thing to be all that a man can be! to be afraid of no evil talk, to hold your head very high, to remember that we have sprung from a race which has given light to all the civilized world, to become all that an ancient Greek of the best might have been. I do not mean that there were no bad men among them! Which race has been without? There were Ephialtes[11] ... Antipater[12] ... and many others. But to approach the noblest, ... to touch the hem of their garment ... who would not be proud? Sometimes, Aleko, it means that like Socrates, one must give work, and strength, and patience, and forgiveness to others, and look for nothing in return. Sometimes it means that a man, to be a man, must give the thing that is hardest to give of all--his life even!"

"But ..." began Aleko hesitatingly.

"What, my child? Ask all that you wish."

"If a man--a great man, and a good man as you say--gives his life, then it is finished; he cannot help anyone, or be great, or strong, any more."

"Ah, no! Many people have said that, little one, but I must make you see further. There are those who will say, if this man had not done this deed of sacrifice, if he had kept his own valuable life, he might have done many more great things later on. Ah, but they forget...." and the blind man stretched out his arms as though appealing to an unseen audience. "They forget that all the useful and good things which he might still have done, are as nothing before the wonderful example he has given, before.... Oh, how shall I tell you, my child? ... before the way in which he has made thousands of men's and women's hearts beat with noble thoughts,--before the way in which he has made the little children of his land lift up their heads, and say, 'I, too, will be like him some day!' No, Aleko, no! What he has done lasts through the years; and the bravery of great men of whom you will read some day, such a deed for instance as that of Paul Melas[13] in our own time, makes all the world nobler and stronger for them, even after their names come to be forgotten!"

There was silence for some minutes, then Aleko said:--

"When I am twenty-one years old, and my time comes to serve in the army, if there be a war while I am a soldier, then I may be very brave and perhaps ..." his eyes brightened as he spoke, "they may print it in the newspaper, and someone will read it to you, and you will say, 'That is Aleko, I know him.' But if there is no war, ... then what can I do?"

"It is of your age, my child, to think that only in fighting can one be brave; but I could fill a big book with all the different kinds of courage."

"Tell me, then! How could I be brave if there were no war?"

The blind man groped for the boy's hand and held it for a moment.

"I think you are brave now."

"But that is impossible; I have done naught."

"Suppose that next year when you finish the highest class of the Parnassos, you were to get the first prize?"

"Yes," assented Aleko, "I shall get it."

"Very well; how much is it?"

"Three hundred drachmæ."

"Would that sum not be sufficient to keep you for a year at least without working, if you wished to go to a higher class in the Municipal School?"

"It would be sufficient for me alone, but who would send money to my mother and the little ones, if I did not work?"

"That is just what I meant; you go on working for them, instead of getting more learning for yourself, as you would like to do. Well, that is a brave deed!"

"But, no," said the boy, his face puckered with perplexity, "that is not brave. I do not like it at all!"

"But you do it."

Aleko got up from his knees.

"I do not do it; it does itself. How can I help it?" then, as he shouldered his box to go, he asked, "After I have read to-morrow, will you tell me about some more great men?"

"I will tell you all I know; ... only come!"

VI

And as the days became hotter and hotter, as May melted into June and June into July, Kyr Themistocli got to depend more and more on the boy's daily visits, and as he was an old man and had lost many things in his life, he would tremble sometimes at the thought of losing this new joy. For it was a joy as all creating and all planting is a joy. In all the years he had been a schoolmaster, it was the first time he had come across an intellect where all seeds once sown bore fruit; where there were no barren spots.

But Aleko never failed him; every day he would bring the newspaper and read it all through to the blind man. When the heat was intense, and the white light in the streets was blinding, they would sit indoors behind closed shutters, and when it became cooler, late in the afternoon, the old man's chair would be placed outside the house, and Aleko sat on the step below him, and asked all the questions that crowded into his mind. He had more time now, for examinations were over and school was closed until September again. One evening, when the sounds of passing guitars and men's voices singing, floated up to the narrow little street, mingled with the cries of boys racing and calling to each other, the old man asked him:--

"Do you not want to run with the other lads, Aleko?"

And Aleko answered:--

"I run all day; now it is good to sit. Tell me about some great men, Kyr Themistocli."

And the old schoolmaster, well content, tilted his chair back against the sun-baked wall of the house, and told him many things.

He told him of the old, old times even before the ancients, when men were almost like brutes, but with something manlike in them which set them apart from the wild beasts; when they made weapons of stones, and lighted fires by the rubbing of sticks; when they crossed over the barrier of water by hollowing boats out of trees. He told him of the terrible wild animals which existed in those days, so monstrous that the heads of some would reach up to the third floor windows of a house; and how they would long ago have devoured all the men if these had not used their brains to defend themselves. How men followed men through the centuries and how, little by little, their brains grew cleverer and cleverer through much using, until at last, from those wild men sprang the minds, and the hearts, and the hands, of Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle, the philosophers, and Leonidas, the warrior, and Pericles, the statesman, and Phidias and Praxiteles, the sculptors. Then, he went on to tell him of all the poor boys through many ages who had the spirit of the old cave dwellers in them--who would not stay as they had been born. He told him of Æsop, who was only a poor slave boy, so ugly and deformed that people laughed and jeered at him; and yet his fables have been translated into all languages of Europe, and even into Arabic and Chinese; of Christopher Columbus, the son of a poor comber of wool in Genoa, who discovered America; of the shepherd boy Giotto, who drew pictures on stones whilst watching the sheep, and who grew up to be a celebrated painter; of Lully, the musician, who was a cook-boy; of Metastasio the Italian poet, who as a boy recited verses in the streets of Rome; and to come to our own days, he told him all he had read before he lost his sight, of Edison, the American, who was a poor boy, and--like Aleko--had at one time sold newspapers to earn his bread, and of what wonderful things he had invented, and how there were few in the world who were not indebted to him; he told him of others--of all he could remember; then he tried to explain to him, a little, how hard all these men had worked, each in his own way, and how they had not only wished to do great things, but had willed it very hard, and had gone on willing it every moment of their lives, and how it was this great will that had made them conquer all obstacles, and all discouragement. He told him also how it was not enough to work, and to be brave, in order to grow up into a great man, or even simply into a good and just one, but how he must think as well; how he must always look for the cause, always ask himself the why and the wherefore, of everything....

"Of course," interrupted Aleko, "I know that. If you do not you are stupid. Yesterday, the drawer of a boy's box would not open; you know the drawer, where all the shoe-polishes and rags are kept; and this boy--Dino--he pulled, and he pulled, and he could not get it open, and he was very angry, because a man got tired of waiting for him to clean his boots and went to another boy's stand. Then I looked at Dino's box, and I pulled a little, and it was one side only of the drawer which stuck, so I turned it to the light, and I found that a little nail had fallen between the side of the box and the drawer, and jammed it, and when I pulled it out with a bit of wire it opened as before."

"And Dino was glad?"

"He was glad, but he did not look why the drawer had stuck, and when another nail falls in he will be stupid again; he will not know how to open it. His head is stuffed with straw!"

Then Aleko got up from the step, and gathered his remaining newspapers under his arm.

"The good hour be with you, Kyr Themistocli!"

"You are going?"

"Yes, I want to go and see if that Anneza has found the dog yet."

"What? She has lost him again?"

"Since noon to-day, and she was trembling with fear of what her master would say."

"You will remember, Aleko, to bring the coffee to-morrow afternoon."

"I will remember. Be easy! I have the money you gave me safe here." Then as he turned to go, he said, "You have sufficient for the morning?"

"No," answered the old man, "it is all finished; but for one day it does not matter if one eats one's bread dry."

"For you it matters," pronounced Aleko. "I shall bring the coffee in the morning, ready ground."

"Do not trouble, my boy; in the mornings you have no time."

"I shall have time, and I shall bring it when I come with the newspapers for the Spinotti house," and without waiting for further objections he ran down the street and up the wider one, till he came to the railings of the Spinotti garden.

Anneza, leaning out of her kitchen window, was explaining something vehemently to the next-door cook.

"Have you found the dog?" asked Aleko.

"If only I could find him, I would give twenty drachmæ out of my wages, that I would! The master was like mad when he heard I had lost him; he says the dog must have been stolen, and he has gone now to put it in the newspapers."

"Did he give it to you badly?" asked the next-door cook curiously.

Anneza became tearful.

"He scolded me," she said, "till I have been trembling ever since."

"He did well," pronounced Aleko as he turned away, "if your head were not fixed on, you would lose it every day."

"Wait a moment!" shouted Anneza. "Wait till I get the jam stick to you!" but Aleko was already out of sight.