Part 12

When he got back to his cellar home he folded the left-over newspapers to be returned on the morrow, and looked doubtfully at his mattress; Andoni, the other boy, was already fast asleep in the farther corner. But it was stiflingly hot in the cellar and there was bright moonlight outside, so he sauntered up the steps again and looked about him. There were few passers-by, and the shadows of the houses lay in deep blue-black patches on the moonlit street.

Farther down, outside a closed fruit shop, were some empty baskets, and on one of these he sat down, his elbows on his knees, and his face cupped in his hands. A cooling breeze came from one of the side streets leading up to the first slopes of Mount Lycabettus,[14] and though Aleko drowsed a little as he sat there, he did not feel inclined to return to his cellar.

Suddenly, behind him came a soft patter and something sniffed at his bare ankles.

He jumped up, overturning the basket.

"Solon!"

And Solon it was, not smooth and white and clean as usual, but muddy, and draggled, and gray with dust.

"You bad dog! How did you find yourself here? Do you know that your master is searching for you in all the town? Do you know that he has paid money to have it printed in the newspaper that you are lost? Are you not ashamed then? Bad dog!"

Solon did not like this tone of voice so he sat up and begged with his dusty little forepaws. All at once, Aleko saw that a broken piece of coarse string was tied round the dog's neck.

"Bah! Your master was right then that you had been stolen! Some one tried to tie you up, and you must have broken the string and run away. You are a very clever dog! Bravo, Solon!"

Solon opened his mouth very wide and curled up his tongue in a long yawn.

"Come, I will carry you home so that you may not stray again." And Aleko stooped to pick him up; but as he did so, a man who was coming along the other side of the pavement some distance off, a tall man wearing a Panama hat, called out loudly:--

"Who is there? What are you doing with that dog?" and hastened his steps. He crossed the road to Aleko's side, and stooped over him to see what he held.

Suddenly Solon gave a shrill, joyous bark and the man snatched him out of Aleko's arms, at the same time giving the boy a violent push which sent him staggering against the closed shutters of the shop.

"You young scoundrel, you! So I have caught you, have I? Do you know that this is my dog?"

Aleko looked up. It was the man he had often seen coming out of the big house in the garden; it was Solon's master.

"Yes," he said, "I know; but you need not push people in that way. I was going to bring the dog to your house. Now that you have found him, you can take him yourself."

And turning his back he was walking off. But Nico Spinotti had been searching for his dog for the whole long hot afternoon; he had walked up and down likely and unlikely streets; he had visited most of the shops at which Anneza dealt, he had been to the police station, and to three newspaper offices, and now that he thought he had found the culprit, and that this culprit was mocking him, his fury knew no bounds. He put Solon down and darting forward seized Aleko by the arm and brought down his walking stick with force across the boy's shoulders.

"You young limb!" he shouted. "You thieving little blackguard! From where did you steal that dog? Tell me! Tell me or I will pull your ears off!" and each word was accompanied by a fresh blow. The poor boy twisted and writhed, but he had no chance in those strong hands.

"Leave me!" he screamed. "Let go! Why do you strike me? Leave me, I tell you! I never stole your dog.... I found him.... He knows me.... He came to me!"

"You can tell those lies to others! They will not pass with me," cried the furious man, pushing Aleko away at last and stooping to pick up Solon. "How should my dog know a ragamuffin like you?"

Aleko, who had fallen on his knees beside the overturned basket, put up his arm to ward off further blows.

"But he does! It is I who bring the newspapers to your house, and he sees me every day. Ask Anneza if it be not true?"

"So much the worse if you know him! I suppose someone has put you up to steal the dog. Now, hark you! You are not to dare to come to my house or anywhere near it, and if ever I see your dirty face in our neighbourhood again, I shall hand you over to the police. So now you know!" and picking up the little dog under his arm he turned to go.

"The street is not yours!" burst out Aleko with sudden fury, rubbing his shoulder. "And I shall sell my newspapers there every day!"

"You will! Will you? Very well, when you want any change out of the beating you got just now, you can come to me for it! Do you hear?"

"I hear."

"Well, remember it then!" and turning on his heel he walked quickly down the street.

Aleko was sore all over, sore in body and sore in mind. Wearily he staggered back to his cellar, threw himself on his mattress, and there in the dark, dropped his head on his arms and sobbed himself to sleep.

VII

Next morning, when he got up, part of the bodily soreness had disappeared, but his indignation was, if anything, greater.

"Just let him wait and see!" he kept muttering to himself as, carrying his morning newspapers, he waited in a little grocer's shop while Kyr Themistocli's coffee was being weighed. "Just let him wait! The next time I find his dog straying--and that will be to-morrow or the day after, unless he turns Anneza away--I will take it and give it to someone else, to someone who lives very far away, where he will never find it again. May they never call me Aleko again if I do not!" As he was leaving the shop with the bag of coffee in his hand, he found outside the door an empty petroleum tin which he kicked viciously right out into the middle of the square. It fell bounding and rebounding with tremendous clatter against the curbstone, and the noise did him good.

However, he was not to wait even until to-morrow for his revenge, though it did not happen exactly as he had planned it.

Before the clang of the falling tin had ceased, he saw at the end of the square, just where the street car tracks come into it, a little flash of something white tearing along at full speed. In hot pursuit, but very far behind, came Anneza, with a packet of macaroni in one hand and two cucumbers in the other. At first Aleko could not understand why she seemed in such terrible haste, but in another second he had understood.

From behind the corner of a chemist's shop a man darted out, a man armed with an open bag of thin knotted rope mounted on a long stick, something which looked like a monstrous butterfly net; and this net came down with a dexterous swoop, born of long practice, and rose again into the air, carrying with it the little white, squealing, wriggling bundle which was Solon.

Anneza, in the distance, gave a loud shriek, and one of her cucumbers fell unheeded to the ground. On she rushed, her apron strings flying behind her; but the man was quicker.

The iron cage on wheels, with its load of barking, snarling prisoners, stood behind him; with one hand, he lifted up the little spring door at the top of it, and with a twist of the other he emptied poor Solon on top of the other dogs. Then he dropped the lid and whipped up the horse.

"Stop!" panted Anneza, waving her arms wildly, "stop I tell you!"

She was close to the cart by this time; but just at that moment, the street car which was going up towards the Maraslion met the one which was coming down, at the corner, and for a moment there was a block. Anneza, trying to squeeze herself between the two, was pushed here and there by mounting and descending passengers, and by the time she got clear the man with the iron cage was out of sight.

But Aleko had been quicker. He had wheeled round as soon as he saw the dog caught, and running down a short cut had met the cart as it came out on the street below. He stood right in its way and signaled to the man.

"The little dog you have just taken," he cried, "is not a stray dog. He belongs...."

"Stand out of my way," shouted the man savagely, "or I will bring my whip down on your head!" and he brandished a heavy whip dangerously near the boy.

Aleko jumped aside only just in time, and the cart went rattling down the steep incline with a clatter of its iron laths which drowned the barking of its occupants.

Instinctively Aleko ran back to the square.

Anneza was gone.

"Do you know," he asked of a woman who was weighing some purple figs at the door of a fruit shop, "where the serving maid has gone who was here just now?"

"Anneza, from the Spinotti's, you mean?" answered the woman. "The 'boya' took her dog away in his cart, and she has run back to the house to tell her master."

"By the time she finds him," said Aleko, "it will be too late." And he tore across the square and down the street leading to Academy Road. A street car was passing. He leaped on the platform dragging his box after him. The conductor looked at him angrily.

"Do you not know that you cannot sell your newspapers while the car is in motion?"

"I am not selling anything," answered Aleko with dignity; "I am riding." And he produced ten lepta from a pocket inside his tunic.

He got off the street car at Patissia Road and turned to his right. When he came to a large house, standing somewhat back from the road, he stopped short. An older boy, also with a shoeblack's box beside him, was leaning against the railings of the enclosure.

"Is this the Central Police Station?" inquired Aleko.

"Yes."

"Does the Chief of the Police live here?"

The older boy stared at him.

"He does not live here, he has a fine house of his own near the Palace, but he comes here every day. I know, because this is my stand, and I see him when he comes and goes."

Then Aleko asked another question.

"Does the 'boya' bring the dogs he catches here?"

"He brings them here first, to be counted, and then he takes them down there." And the strange shoeblack jerked with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Homonoia[15] Square.

"Down where?"

"Far down the Piræus Road."

"What does he do with them there?"

"Puts them into a room which kills them."

"How can it kill them--a room?"

"Do I know?"

"When does the cart come here?"

The elder boy looked up at the sun.

"Now, any minute."

"Listen," said Aleko, "the 'boya' has taken just now up at the Kolonaki a dog that is not a stray one. It is a very good dog, and it belongs to someone who counts for something. If I wait here, and show the Chief of the Police which it is, will he give it to me?"

"Are you mad?" asked the strange boy contemptuously. "Do you think the Chief himself sees the dogs, or that he will listen to you?"

"Then what shall I do?"

"If you want the dog, go down to the place in the Piræus Road, and find the 'boya' alone. Now, these hot days, they are afraid of mad dogs, and they pay him one drachma for every dog he catches: so, perhaps, if you were to give him more...."

"Where is the place?"

"I have never been there. Go down the Piræus Road and ask."

Aleko started off towards the square at a good pace. The heat of the day had begun and he had eaten nothing yet. But he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and plunged into the Piræus Road. The strange boy had told him that the place was "far down," therefore it was no good inquiring before he reached the Gas Works. It was a long way; if the "boya's" cart only stopped a few moments at the Police Station, it might almost be there before him; so he hurried on, quickening his pace, and now and then breaking into a little run.

He must get there in time! He must! Poor little Solon! Poor little warm, white creature, so full of life! "As clever as a Christian," as he had told Kyr Themistocli the other day. At this point, he looked at the paper bag of coffee still unconsciously clutched in one hand.

"The old man will eat his bread dry this morning after all; well, what is to be done? It is a small evil."

After passing the Gas Works he began to ask his way; but most of the passers-by seemed vague.

"Somewhere down there," they said. A carter told him the place was after Phalerum, but a second man contradicted him.

"What are you saying, brother? It is far closer than that!"

Aleko remembered that his father used to say:--

"By asking one can find the way to Constantinople." And as it was not to Constantinople that he wanted to go, but only to the "boya's" place, to the "room that killed" he went on asking.

At last an old woman directed him.

"Go over those fields there, where the goats are; and behind that wall you will find a small house with an iron door; that is the place."

Aleko ran across the dreary, stony fields which were neither town nor country, and climbed over the wall.

A small house stood alone on a bare plot of ground, with two closely shuttered windows, and an iron door. Aleko tried the door and found it locked. There was no sign of life anywhere about; the cart had evidently not arrived yet. He was in time!

As he stood there, on the coarse down-trodden grass, he gave a little gasp of dismay and felt in his pocket.

The boy had said, "They pay him a drachma for each dog--perhaps if you were to give him more...."

And Aleko, thinking of the dog's master who would willingly, gladly, pay so very much more, had raced off confidently, not remembering that he himself had no more than three five-lepta pieces on him at this moment.

Just then he heard the clatter of the iron cage rattling in the distance, and the deep bark of a big dog. The "boya" was coming.

Well, he must promise him the money, that was all. Surely, if he told him that the master of the dog would pay him well, the man would bring it up to the house himself, even if he did not trust Aleko to take it away.

The clatter came nearer and nearer, and now Aleko could distinguish the two-wheeled cart with its monster iron cage, between whose flat bars dogs' heads and paws of all shapes and sizes were thrust out.

Behind the cart ran the usual following of ragged urchins who always seem to spring up about the "boya's" route.

Aleko was grasping the bars of the cart before it came to a stand-still. He thought he had seen something small and white at the farthest end of the cage. And as he got round to the back there was a shrill bark which rose above the rest, and the something small and white sat up inside the cart and begged very piteously.

Aleko suddenly felt a wave of fury go over him.

He forgot all his pre-arranged plans; all the promises he was to have made.

The man had stopped the cart, and was raising his arms in a prodigious yawn. Aleko caught hold of his sleeve, and pulled him towards the rear of the cart.

"Open it!" he cried. "Open it this minute! I want that dog! That little white one there, with the black patch over the eye. You took it from the Kolonaki, and it was not a stray dog. You took it while the woman who had it was in a shop! You had no right to touch it! Give it to me! Give it to me quickly!" and the more Solon inside the cage heard the familiar voice, the more vigorously his little paws shook up and down.

The man, a short, sickly-looking man, with an evil, lowering face, dragged his sleeve away from the boy's grasp.

"Give it to you, indeed!" he shouted, "and from where have you sprung to be giving me orders? Now clear off!"

"I tell you," persisted the boy, seeing that he had angered the man, "I tell you it will benefit you to give that dog to me; it belongs to a rich man, and he is so fond of it he will pay you much money to have it returned to him; more than you can get for all your other dogs together."

"I do not listen to such lies! You cannot cheat me!"

"I am not cheating you. Give me the dog and you will see! Or if you do not believe me, bring him yourself! I will show you the house."

"And have I no other work to do than to be running to people's houses?" snarled the "boya." "Those who want their dogs safe can keep them indoors."

"I tell you," said Aleko flushing very red, "that if you do not give me that dog you will find trouble. It belongs to Kyrios Spinotti and...."

"If it belonged to the King I would not give it!" shouted the man. "What goes into the cart stops there!"

"Keep the dog somewhere safe, then," pleaded Aleko, "and I will bring his master down here to pay you!"

"No," said the man, unlocking the iron door. "The dogs are going in here; and," he added with an ugly laugh, "yours shall go in first of all!"

Aleko seized hold of his arm.

"Keep him till noon!"

"He shall go in first, I tell you. Now, leave go!"

"Keep him just one hour!"

"You, with your hours! Clear off this minute unless you want your face smashed!"

But these last words were the man's undoing. If he had not talked of smashing faces, Aleko might not have thought of it, but as he stood there, his head thrown back, his blue eyes glittering with rage, some familiar words flashed across his mind.

"Straight out from the shoulder, Aleko! Follow your blow! Come with it!"

All encumbrances were flung aside; newspapers were carried away by the breeze, a shower of coffee fell on the ground from a burst paper bag, and straight as a dart, and steady, and strong, the boy's fist flew out from his shoulder with all the weight of the sturdy little body behind it, and landed with crashing force on the man's chin.

The man staggered back, striking his head against the iron bars of the cart, and went down like a tree that is felled.

VIII

In the meanwhile Kyr Themistocli had dragged his straw chair outside his door, where, as the house faced west, there was shade for some hours in the morning, and sat waiting. In his hand, he held a piece of bread, but he was not eating it. Not because it was dry, there being no coffee to drink with it; but because for the first time Aleko had not come when he had said he would.

It was long past the hour for morning newspapers. Other boys had cried them up and down the street, but now they had ceased.

Two or three times the old man muttered to himself:--

"He is a child! May he not forget sometimes?" but in a moment he would rise from his chair, and feeling with one hand for the wall of the houses, he would advance slowly down the narrow street and listen to the noises that came from the wider one and the square beyond.

Fish was being cried, fresh from Phalerum, and summer vegetables of all kinds, greens for salad, and fruit.

"Cool, cool mulberries!" cried a man with a good tenor voice, making a song of the words. "Black are the mulberries! Sweet are the mulberries! Buy mulberries! Cool, cool mulberries!" Then an old voice quavered out, "Pitchers from Ægina! Pitchers for cold water! Big pitchers! Little pitchers!"

But no one cried newspapers. The hour for them was long past, and slowly, and stumblingly, Kyr Themistocli found his way back to his straw chair. The sun was gaining on the shade.

"He will not come now before the afternoon," muttered the old man; but still he did not go indoors.

Suddenly, a voice hailed him close at hand.

"Good day to you, Kyr Themistocli!" It was not Aleko's voice. It was a man's voice; a voice he knew.

"How is it that you are sitting outside at this hour? The sun will be on your head in a moment."

The old man stretched out a groping hand in the direction of the voice.

"Is it you, Nico? You are welcome. Yes, I will go indoors just now. But you? How come you here at this time? How is it you are not at the Bank?"

"I have no head for business this morning, Kyr Themistocli; I saw you sitting here as I passed by the end of the street and I came to wish you good morning."

"Are you not well, Nico?"

"I am well; but from early morning I cannot rest. Perhaps it will seem a small thing to you--but to me it is a great one--I have lost my dog!"

"The little white one? The one you call 'Solon'?"

"Yes. Twice this week he has been lost and found. Those who believe in such things are right it seems when they tell you to beware of the third time. I am a fool, Kyr Themistocli, about this dog. I ... I love him as I would a man. Some tell me it is a sin to care so much for an animal. But when I think how she...."

"It is no sin," said the old schoolmaster, "there are dogs that understand one better than men, and when old memories are mixed up with the caring ..." he broke off suddenly. "But do not vex your heart! You will find him."

Nico Spinotti shook his head.

"The 'boya' took him. He was out with my cook, and while she was in a shop the dog was picked up. She ran after the cart in vain; and then she returned weeping to the house to tell me. It was well she had that much sense at least."

"But why are you staying here?" asked Kyr Themistocli excitedly. "Why do you not run to the Police Station? They will give him back to you. Even should there be any difficulty, if the dog was not muzzled, as it writes in the newspapers that they must be now, you can always pay the fine, and as much more as the 'boya' wants...."

"My secretary went at once; and the man-servant also--if only they are in time! I could not go myself; I dared not! If I were to see the man who caught the dog in that net, and threw him into that vile cart ... I ... I could have killed him! I know myself; when I think of anyone ill-treating Solon or indeed any animal, I lose consciousness of what I do. Why, only last night I gave the boy who had tried to steal him such a beating that it will be days before he forgets it."

"A boy stole him?"

"Yes, a newspaper boy with fair hair; and those shoeblacks and newspaper boys are generally so honest; but this one it seems came to my house regularly with newspapers, and knew the dog; and someone, I suppose, must have paid him well to steal it. I found him just preparing to carry it off under his arm. Well, he got his year's beating from me any way, and I forbade him to show his face in this neighbourhood again. I told him I would give him to the police if he did!"

The old man had risen from his chair and his blind eyes were wide open and staring.

"You.... You ... hurt the lad!" he burst out wildly. "You drove him away! You.... You...."

But his sentence was never finished.

At that moment there was a patter of running feet at the entrance of the narrow street, a sudden flash of something white in the sun, and Solon, taking a flying leap from Aleko's arms, made a bee line for his master.

There was a bewildered cry of,--"Solon!" and then a mingling of shrill barks of joy and of broken words:--

"Why, the poor little dog! Why, Solon! My poor one!"

In the meantime Aleko went straight up to the old schoolmaster.

"Kyr Themistocli," he began, "your coffee is all spilt. It fell from my hand and the bag burst, but this afternoon...."

But the blind man did not wait to hear what was to happen that afternoon, his arms groped for the boy and finding him, clung about his neck, and the old head fell forward on Aleko's shoulder.

"I thought I had lost you.... I thought that you would never come back! My boy!... My son!..."

The banker looked from the old man to the boy, with bewildered eyes.

"Why?" he gasped, "I never knew.... Is he yours?"

"Mine? Makari!" exclaimed Kyr Themistocli.

Now when a real Greek says "Makari," it means so many things that no single word in any other language can translate it. It means, "If only it could be so!" it means, "I could wish for nothing better!" it means, "It is too good to come true!" it means, "Such a thing would be perfect happiness!" It means all this and much more. Some think the word a corruption of "makarios," meaning blessed, some believe it was taken from old Italian. It is not a dictionary word, but it expresses so much that the old schoolmaster dropped into common speech and said "Makari," with all his heart.

"But then ..." said Nico Spinotti looking from one to the other, "I do not understand. How came the dog here? Is this the boy...?"