Part 4

"I have no rag for a sail," said Mattina. "Bebeko must ask his Mamma for some when the boat is ready."

When both children were dressed, there was a search for the Kyria's parasol which was nowhere to be found. At first she accused Mattina of having broken it and hidden the pieces, and at last remembered that she had left it at her sister's house. Then her keys were mislaid, looked for in all sorts of places, and discovered at last under her pillow. Lastly she searched angrily for a twenty-five drachmæ note, which she declared she had folded up and placed under her gloves in the early morning.

"I put it there on purpose to change it when I went out, and buy 'pastas'[23] for dinner to-day. It was here, I tell you, just under these gloves; or stay, perhaps I pinned it on the pincushion."

But neither under the gloves nor on the pincushion was the note to be found.

"Well," said the Kyria at last, "your master must have taken it for something, and have forgotten to tell me. I shall meet him at the square. Come, let us go!"

"Kyria," and Mattina stood in her way.

"What do you want? It is late."

"Kyria, my uncle has sent me word that they have not seen me for many days, and that I must go there this afternoon, and also if you make difficulties, and keep me closed up, I am to tell you that he, my uncle, will come and take me away and find another house for me."

All this was repeated very quickly, and as though Mattina had just learned it by heart.

Her mistress stared at her.

"Another house, indeed! And what house will take a lazy one like you? Do you think there are many mistresses who have as good a heart as I have, and will keep you only because they are sorry for you being an orphan? Besides, who says I keep you closed up? Do you not go for a walk nearly every day with the children? Also I was just going to tell you that as I have my sisters here this afternoon, who will help me with the children, you could go out. Of course I mean after you have washed up your plates, and put all in their places. And you are not to be late, mind!" she added as an afterthought. "Do you hear?"

"I hear," said Mattina.

After the street door had banged to, she finished cutting up the aubergines, lined the baking dish thickly with the slices, added a layer of mince-meat, another of aubergines, broke two eggs over them, bread-crumbed them and carried them off to the oven in the next street, so quickly and so deftly that even her mistress, had she been there to watch her, could not have called her "lazy one." After that she carved Bebeko's promised boat from a large aubergine which she had kept back, and sharpened a bit of firewood for the mast.

VI

It was nearly four that afternoon before she got up to the baker's shop, and her uncle had already gone round to the coffee-house. Her aunt was in the courtyard, sorting out wood for the night's baking, from a load which had been brought down from the hills the day before. Mattina set to work to help her, and her aunt told her that her uncle had said he was to be sent for as soon as she arrived, because he meant to take them both out to see something, ... "something," she added mysteriously, "that your eyes have never seen!" And then she went off to send the boy to call her husband.

When Kyra Demetroula returned after a few minutes' absence, it was to find Mattina, who had come across a little sprig of thyme among the firewood, holding it tightly between her hands, close to her face, and smelling it with long indrawn breaths, the tears trickling down her cheeks.

Her aunt stared at her dumfounded. She had always been of the town.

"Are you mad, my child?" she exclaimed, throwing up her arms. "To be spoiling your heart over a bit of old herb! Give it to me! Let me throw it into the oven! What will your uncle say when he comes? He will think I have been giving you stick! Look at your eyes!"

"Never mind! Let me keep it! Oh, let me keep it! I beg of you to let me keep it, my aunt! Oh, it is so beautiful! It ... it ... brings back Poros to me," and Mattina gulped down her sobs and dried her eyes on the back of her sleeve.

"Hush, now, I hear your uncle."

He came in laughing, dressed in his Sunday best.

"Health to you, Mattina! You have been forgetting us for so long! And if you only knew where we are going! If you only but knew!"

And it is true they went to a wonderful place.

In a broad street, up and down which the crowded street cars were constantly running, they stopped at an entrance where a man sat behind a tiny little window, and Mastro Anastasi paid some money to him. Then they passed into a great big dimly lighted room, with many seats all in a row placed from one end to another; and a great many people and children were sitting in them. Mattina sat between her aunt and her uncle, and waited.

"Why do we sit here?" she asked at last, "and why is it dark?"

Suddenly a little bell tinkled, and at one end of the hall it became light; and then all sorts of extraordinary things passed before Mattina's eyes.

She saw a motor car such as those which she had seen outside in the streets, but this one climbed up the walls of houses. She saw a funny short man running away, and a great number of people chasing him, and he upset a woman carrying a bottle of wine, and the wine was all spilt; and the woman was very angry, and got up, and followed after him with the rest; and he upset two men on a ladder who were painting a house, and all the paint ran over him, and they also chased him; and he upset a cart laden with eggs, and all the eggs broke, and the carter also ran after him, brandishing his whip; and he upset a whole shop front of plates and dishes, and they all broke, too, and came tumbling all over everyone; and when the people who were chasing had nearly caught him, the man ran upon some railway lines, and a railway train ran over him, and made him quite flat, but he sprang up quite well again; and he came to a bridge, and he jumped right into the water, and swam across to the other side, and all the other people jumped in after him, but they could not swim and they made a great splash in the water, and suddenly all the picture went out and Mattina did not know what happened afterwards.

But she saw many other things.

She saw a little girl in a lovely frock of lace playing with a big dog in a garden, and some men came and stole her and hid her in a dark cellar, and a lady and a gentleman who came into the garden wept and tore their hair, but the big dog sniffed the ground, and ran and ran, and sniffed again, and jumped over walls and found the child, and dragged her by her frock and brought her back to her father and mother; and the last Mattina saw of them, they were all sitting in the garden and patting and stroking the big dog.

Then she saw a seashore and rocks, in a place that her uncle told them was called Spain, which was so like the second little bay on the Monastery Road that she felt like crying again, but that picture went out at once; and when she saw a man putting a lighted candle in his mouth and swallowing it, she forgot to feel sad.

When at last they left the wonderful place, her uncle gave her a ten "lepta" copper coin, and stopped a street car that was passing. He told her to be sure to get out when she saw the grocer's shop in the Piræus Road at the corner of the street where her master lived, and Mattina climbed into the car with a big sigh.

VII

It was still light when she got down off the car step and turned into the narrow street, still sniffing at the dry sprig of thyme which she had kept tightly clasped in her hand all the time.

Out of the gathering dusk, an old woman came running towards her.

"It is you, Mattina! It is you! And they said you would never come back."

Mattina looked around her anxiously.

"Why did they say that, Kyra Polyxene? Is it so late?"

"No, it is not late. But you will find trouble for you at the house. Your mistress has lost money ... much money ... a twenty-five drachmæ note, and she says that only you can have taken it."

Mattina fell back a step and stared up at the old woman.

"I?"

"Yes, and your mistress got your bundle and took out all your things and threw them here and there; but she found naught, and she is spoiling the world with her screams."

"Come!" said Mattina, "let me go and tell her she does not know what she says."

But the old woman pulled her back.

"Listen, my girl! You are but a little one, without a whole shoe to your foot, and these people count every mouthful of bread you put into your mouth.... If it was in an evil moment?... Give it to me! and if it be not changed, I will put it where they may find it and the noise will be over."

"You, also, do not know what you say," and Mattina dragged her arm away and ran into the house.

The door of the living-room was open, and from it came the sound of angry voices and loud cries.

Mattina walked right in.

"I am here," she announced, "and neither have I seen your...."

But she could not finish her sentence; a furiously angry woman rushed at her, caught her by the shoulder, and shook her viciously.

"You thief!" she screamed. "You little thief! This is how you repay me for taking you in! And you have the face to speak also!"

If Mattina had been a poor little servant all her life, and if her parents had been servants before her, she would perhaps have insisted on her innocence more respectfully, but until lately she had always lived with her equals, and also she was the child of free islanders, who had never called any one their master.

With both hands she pushed her mistress away from her as hard as she could push.

"Leave me! Leave me I tell you! I a thief! I! It is you are a liar for saying so!"

But two heavy blows sent her staggering against the table.

Then it seemed as though all the people in the room were about to fall upon her, and she crouched there with uplifted arm to protect her head.

The master pushed aside his wife.

"Wait a moment!" he said. "Let me speak to her!" then to Mattina:--

"Tell me now what you have done with the money?"

"I never saw it, I tell you."

"That does not pass with me; you have hidden it somewhere, or given it to someone."

"Since I tell you I never saw it!"

"There is no one else in the house to take it. If you did not see it, where is it?"

"Do I know?" said Mattina, sullenly. "Is she not always losing her things?" and she pointed to her mistress.

Now because the woman was really constantly mislaying her belongings, this made her still more furious. She darted at Mattina.

"Wait till I show her!" and she struck her so hard a blow on the mouth, that Mattina screamed and covered her face with both arms.

Her mistress raised her hand again but one of her sisters pulled her back.

"Find the money first," she said. "What do you gain by beating her?"

"You are right. If she has it on her, I will find it."

And the woman went down on her knees and felt over Mattina, pulling her frock roughly about. In a moment she found the pins that closed the opening of the pocket, and dragged them out, thrusting her hand inside.

"Here it is!" she screamed triumphantly. "See! I have it!" and she waved the folded note which she pulled out of the pocket. But as soon as she looked at it, her tone changed to one of bitter disappointment.

"She has changed it, the shameless one, and this is all that remains!"

Mattina tried to snatch it from her.

"That is mine! That is mine! That is not yours! It is five drachmæ. Give it to me! It is mine I tell you."

Her mistress laughed aloud.

"She told Taki here that she had not a 'lepton' of her own."

"That was before," cried Mattina, wildly, beginning to sob. "That was before I had this. This is mine! It is mine! On my father's soul, I tell you it is mine!"

"If it be yours," asked one of the sisters, "where did you find it?"

"She gave it to me."

"She! What she?"

"She, the Madmazella from the next house."

"She tells lies!" broke in her mistress. "A governess, who works one day that she may eat the next! Has she money to give?"

"When did she give it to you?" asked the master.

"When she went away in the carriage to go to her country."

Then they all laughed.

"Ah, of course, you thought of someone who has gone away and whom we cannot ask! You are very clever, my girl, but your cleverness will not pass with us!"

"Now, enough words," said her mistress. "I shall lock her up in her room and send for the police inspector. Perhaps in prison they may get the truth out of her."

Mattina turned as pale as wax.

She knew what prison was. Even in Poros she had seen men with their arms tied back with ropes, taken to Nauplia[24] to the big prison of the "Palamidi";[25] and she had heard tales of those who had returned from there!

"To prison!" she gasped. "To prison! I?"

"Of course," said her mistress, enjoying her terror. "Did you think that you could steal and then stay in honest houses? Now you will see what will happen to you, you little thief!"

Mattina stumbled back against the wall. The sweat sprang out on her face, she kept wetting her lips, and her hands groped before her as though she were in the dark.

Her mistress seized hold of her arm and pulled her towards the open door of the room. For the first moments she struggled wildly, and then feeling how useless it was, she let herself be dragged out of the door and up the few steps to her little dark room. Her mistress pushed open the door with her foot and thrust Mattina in so violently that she fell upon the mattress in the further corner. Then the key was pulled out of the keyhole, and the door locked and double-locked on the outside; then Mattina heard her mistress's heavy tread descending to the room below.

It was quite dark already. Mattina was never allowed a candle in her room, nor even a floating wick in a tumbler of oil. "As though," her mistress had said, "it were necessary to burn good oil for a serving maid to pull off her clothes and tumble on to her mattress." As a rule she was so tired and sleepy, she did not mind; but now she was very frightened indeed, and fear is always worse in the dark.

She lay there, where she had been flung, huddled up against the wall, her eyes hidden in the bend of her arm.

Prison! They would send her to prison! She had heard of a man in Poros, Andoni, the joiner, who had broken open the money box of Sotiro, the coffee-house keeper, in the night, and he had been kept ten years in prison! She did not know how much money he had taken; she had never heard. How long would they keep her in prison if they thought she had stolen twenty-five drachmæ; it was a great deal of money! And what would they do to her in prison? Was it a dark place under the ground? Oh, why was her father, her own "babba," not alive to beat off the men of the police who would soon be coming to fetch her?

For a long time she cried and sobbed on the mattress without moving. When she opened her eyes she could distinguish nothing in the room, the darkness was like a thick black veil covering everything. There were voices, but they seemed distant; the house seemed still, with the stillness that brings terror with it.

Suddenly the dark seemed full of big hands with hooked fingers stretching out to clutch at her.

She ran wildly to the door and shook it, screaming aloud.

"Oh, my mother! My mother! Manitsa![26] Where are you?"

VIII

In the meanwhile, her mistress, downstairs, was urging her husband to go to the police station.

"Just think of the little thief," she was saying. "And I who kept her out of charity, though she broke a fortune in plates, because I thought that at least she had 'clean hands.'"

"I wonder," said an elderly man who had not yet spoken, and who was Taki's godfather, "where the girl can have found this twenty-five drachmæ note?"

"I put it myself on my chest of drawers under my pincushion this morning," explained Mattina's mistress. "When I came to go out with the children it was missing; and she, the little hypocrite, helped me to look for it everywhere."

"Had the girl been alone in your room, since you had put the money there?" inquired the elderly man.

"Do I know? But she was there a long time messing about with the children and pretending to help to dress them. A note is easily slipped up a sleeve. Is it such a big thing? Well, when I could not find it I said to myself that doubtless Theophani must have taken it, and forgotten to tell me before he went out. You know how absent-minded he is. And when I met him in the square, I forgot to ask him, and never remembered till late this afternoon; and when he said he had never touched it, of course I knew at once it could only have been Mattina who had stolen it. Who else? And I, the stupid one, who have such confidence in people and never lock things up! Who knows how much more money she has taken at times?"

"Have you missed any, besides this?" asked the elderly man.

"I would have you know, my friend, that money is not so scarce in this house that we have to count exactly how many drachmæ we leave about!" Then turning to her sisters: "Someone is knocking outside," she said, "I must go and see who it is. You just take those children and put them to bed. They are fighting the whole time."

It is true, there was a great noise and much whimpering when Bebeko was dragged out by one of his aunts from under the table, holding to a purple limp-looking object which was the half of his boat.

"Taki," he sobbed, had "boken" his boat.

"He is a stupid one," announced Taki. "What is it but a piece of aubergine, his boat?"

"Never mind, my little bird!" said the aunt, picking Bebeko up, "to-morrow I will buy you a new one; a real boat of wood!"

But to-morrow was far away for Bebeko. He kept tight hold of his half boat.

"The mast!" he cried as his aunt was carrying him off, "the mast, and my sail! They are under the table! They fell off! Taki made them fall!"

The aunt, who was a kind young woman, put down the child and stooped to look for "the mast and the sail," creeping under the long table-cover to do so. When she found them, she stopped for a moment, looking at them, and then called to her sister who came back into the room with a newspaper in her hand.

"Angeliki! Look at this! Do you see with what the child has been playing?"

And she held out a piece of paper with two small holes pierced in it, through which was passed a sharpened stick.

And the piece of paper was a twenty-five drachmæ note.

Bebeko's mother snatched the note from her sister's hand, and seized the child roughly.

"From where did you get this, you bad child? Who gave it to you? Was it Mattina?"

The child began to cry loudly.

"I want my sail! I want my sail! It is mine! It is not Mattina's; it is mine!"

"From where did you get it? Tell me at once, or you will eat stick."

"Do not frighten the child," said the father, and he picked up Bebeko and set him on the table.

"Now tell me like a golden little boy that you are, where did you find this paper? Tell me, and Babba will give you a 'loukoumi.'"[27]

The child gulped down a big sob.

"Mattina had no rag to make a sail; she said to ask Mamma...."

"And then?"

"I asked Mamma, and she said, 'I have no rag, go away,' and then I put the paper in my own self. It is mine."

"Where did you find the paper?"

"On the floor."

"But where on the floor."

"Down on the floor."

Then the youngest aunt said:--

"Come and show me where, Bebeko, and Babba will get the 'loukoumi.'"

Bebeko scrambled down and took hold of her hand, and led her, all the others following, into his parents' bedroom. Then, pointing to a spot at the foot of the chest of drawers, he said triumphantly:--

"There."

His mother looked very vexed.

"Those children!" she cried. "Whatever they see, they take. All this fuss we have had for nothing!"

"Go upstairs, now," said her husband, "and tell that poor girl that you have found the money. She was half mad with fright when you told her you would send her to prison."

"It does not do her any harm," said Mattina's mistress, "if she did not do it this time, it will be a lesson for her if she ever feels inclined to steal in the future. However, she may as well come down and take the children to bed," and she took a lighted candle, and went upstairs to unlock the door.

In a moment the others heard an astounded voice exclaiming:--

"Bah! She is not here!"

"Not there! Nonsense!" cried her husband; and they all ran up and peered into the little dark room.

But it was quite true, Mattina was not there.

They looked all round, but there was only the tumbled mattress on the floor, a red cotton coverlet hanging on a nail in the wall over it, a straw chair, a pitcher of water in a tin basin, and not a single cupboard, nook, or corner in which anyone could hide.

"The girl must have crept down quietly while we were talking, and run away to her uncle's," said the master.

"But the door was locked," objected his wife.

"Impossible."

"But it was, I tell you."

"You meant to lock it but you did not."

"I locked it and double locked it."

"You were in a passion at the moment, and you did not know what you were doing."

"Since I tell you I turned the key twice with my hand," screamed his wife, getting very red. "Do I eat straw? I locked it and I locked it well. Do you not understand Greek? Shall I say it in Chinese?"

Her husband strode into the little room and, taking the lighted candle, lifted it high above his head.

"You women have no logic! Look!" turning to the others, "can the girl have climbed through the window?"

It was a tiny barred window over their heads, looking out upon a courtyard far below.

They all laughed.

"No, certainly!"

"Well, then, she must have got through the door! Come downstairs now, there is no use in staying up here. In the morning I will go to her uncle's."

Then as they left the room he turned to his wife who was still protesting violently that she had locked the door; she would lay her head that she had.

"Now enough words, wife! Perhaps you think the girl passed through the wall?"

IX

And yet, had he but known it, that was very nearly what had happened. When Mattina, worn out with crying, had sunk down on the floor against the door, sobbing out every now and then, "My mother, my manitsa," she suddenly heard a very low muffled knocking which seemed to come from the other side of the room. At first she took no heed. It was someone, she supposed, in the next house; she had often heard people moving there. But it came again, a soft little knock repeated twice; then her name just whispered.

"Mattina! Mattina! Are you there?"

The voice was Kyra Polyxene's, she was quite sure, but from where did it come? She crossed the little room. The knock was quite clear now.

"Mattina!"

"But where are you, Kyra Polyxene?"

"Now you will see; can you hear what I say?"

"Yes, I hear you."

"Move your mattress!"

"What did you say?"

"I dare not speak any louder; move your mattress away from the wall!"

Mattina seized hold of the heavy straw mattress with both hands, and dragged it aside.

"Have you done it?"

"Yes."

Then slowly, very slowly, a narrow door painted exactly the same color as the rest of the room, with no handle, no crack even to show its outline or to distinguish it from the surrounding wall, a door which Mattina had certainly never seen before, was pushed open from the other side and Kyra Polyxene's kind old face appeared in the opening.

"Not a word!" she whispered, with a finger on her lips. "Not a word for your life! Come!"

Mattina was very bewildered.

"Where shall I come? How did you get in?"