Part 6

The house in Solon Street was not an interesting house to live in one bit. It was tall and narrow, jammed in between another tall narrow house on one side, and a green grocer's shop on the other, and one could only see the Acropolis,[5] and Phalerum and the sea if one got up to the terrace on the roof, where they hung out the clothes to dry; and even from there it looked very far off. There was not a scrap of garden, only a small paved courtyard at the back, generally littered with empty cases which had come from abroad with new instruments and new books for the doctor. Pavlo sometimes attempted to play house or shop in the biggest of these, but Marina, the cook, used to get very cross if he brought in damp straw on his shoes over her freshly scrubbed kitchen, and the other maid, Aphrodite, would screw up her ugly brown face, and bring her thick black eyebrows together, and threaten that the next time he got another big tear in his clothes from those great long packing nails for her to mend, if she did not tell his uncle, they need never call her "Aphrodite" again! His uncle heard her once, and said laughingly that they need never have called her "Aphrodite" at all, but Pavlo got his scolding all the same, for causing unnecessary work, so that the packing cases had to be abandoned.

In winter it was better. After his preparation for next day's school was over, and before the long delayed supper, he would stay in the little dining room, and lying flat on the floor in the warmth of the big white Viennese stove, he would colour the pictures in the odd numbers of an English illustrated medical journal, which his uncle had given to be thrown away. There were very rarely what Pavlo considered real pictures in them, and he got rather tired of colouring "thoracic aortas" in bright orange, and "abdominal aortas" in pale green, and "tracheæ" in stripes of purple and yellow; but now and then he would come across some funny groups of little insects, and once there was a picture of an operation in a hospital, where there were any amount of doctors and nurses to be coloured, each one differently. That picture lasted him three whole evenings, and would have been even more successful than it was, if only the very best and softest of his chalks, the crimson one, had not somehow got broken inside the wood, so that it all came away in little pieces when he tried to sharpen it, till at last there was nothing left but a little stump of chalk without any wood, and anyone who has tried, knows how hard it is to colour a whole dress with a little bit of chalk that one cannot hold properly.

But when the days grew longer and warmer the dining room was too hot for comfort; the study, even when the doctor was out, was always kept locked, and Pavlo's own bedroom on the third floor was even hotter than the dining room. So he would end by taking his books or his chalks into the hall, where at least there was a little coolness to be had from the chink under the front door. There he would sit on the stairs, or lie flat on the floor, kicking up his heels as he read or painted, till he knew every stringy part of the long strip of gray, red-edged carpet that crossed the middle of the passage, and every place where the paint, which had peeled off the once-painted floor, had left curiously shaped patches, which only needed the touch of a pencil here and there to turn into all sorts of faces. The yellow walls, imitating veined marble, offered terrible temptation of the same kind, but it was too dangerous; pencil marks on the walls would have been seen at once. There was one spot, indeed, where the criss-cross of veins made such an exact head of Hermes,[6] winged cap and all, with only the back of the head and one ear missing, that Pavlo absolutely could not resist touching it up, one long hot afternoon. He rubbed all the pencil marks very carefully off afterwards, with his piece of india rubber, but this had got so mixed up in his pocket with odds and ends of chalk and with half a "loucoumi" that the rubbing-away marks were very red and sticky and showed worse than the pencil ones. So Pavlo had been rather frightened, till he discovered that by pushing the hat stand a little nearer the study door, the place was quite hidden. However, he dared not make any more attempts on the wall, and the afternoon dragged wearily.

Of course, no playing in the street was ever allowed, but sometimes when Marina the cook slipped out late to buy a bowl of "yaourti"[7] for supper, or some chicory for salad, she would take him with her, and he would stand about while she bargained, envying the blue-pinafored boys of the neighborhood tearing and whooping down the street or gathered together over their marbles on the edge of the pavement. Pavlo played marbles at his school near the National Library, when he managed to get there ten minutes before lessons began; but the class-bell always rang in the middle of the most interesting game, and the ten minutes between each lesson were of no good because no play was allowed then, at that school. Only the bigger classes could do as they liked, the little boys were marshaled in order of size by one of the overlookers and marched round and round the big courtyard, so that, as Pavlo heard the director explaining to his uncle one day, "the little pupils should have all the benefit of fresh air and exercise during this short interval, without any danger of their minds being distracted from the lesson they had just been taught!" But the "little pupils'" minds were as a rule more occupied with the secret exchange of pen nibs, the recognized school currency, than in pondering over the last lesson.

And then, when June had passed into July, when summer in town was at its hottest and dustiest, when the examinations were just over, and there was not even school to break the monotony of the long empty days, a wonderful change came into Pavlo's life.

It happened like this.

One afternoon he had just got up from the enforced lying down with a book, which he hated--especially as the book was not a new one, but only Louki Laras[8] which he had read already four times, so that even if one skipped the descriptions, the exciting parts were too familiar--and was wandering about the house, a piece of bread in one hand and a piece of chocolate in the other, when he came across Aphrodite packing his uncle's valise. He was going away, she told Pavlo, for some days. There was nothing extraordinary in that. People were always sending for the doctor from one part and another of the provinces, to come and cure them, and Pavlo was quite accustomed to being alone in the house with the two maids, and having his dinner and supper served on a tray at one end of the dining room table. The only advantage of this was that Marina let him choose his dinners, and that he could have pilaf or even "halva"[9] two days running, and need never touch soup or boiled meat all the time his uncle was away.

But the extraordinary thing happened a few moments later, when his uncle let himself into the house, and walked right up into the room where the packing was going on.

"Is the valise full?" he inquired.

Aphrodite straightened herself up.

"It is full, Kyrie. I have put three soft shirts at the bottom and the little black box which you gave me last night; the rest of your things are in the middle, and there are two starched shirts under the covering, and your traveling cap at the very top."

"Is it quite full?" he repeated.

"If there is any other small thing you have forgotten, I can slip it in between the clothes."

"No, ..." and his eyes wandered round the room and rested on Pavlo who was looking out of the window with great interest at two newspaper boys having a fight. "No, ... I meant if you could perhaps get a few things of the child's in with mine. I think that this time I shall take him with me."

The street fight was forgotten, and a flushed, bewildered Pavlo with wide open eyes caught hold of his uncle's hand.

"Me! Take me with you!"

"Yes. How does the idea seem to you? This time I am going to visit a sick man in Poros, the deputy of the island; and in that same island I have an old school friend who lives there all summer through with his family, and who has asked me again and again to go to see him; so, how would you like to come with me to Poros, and all day long, while I am busy, to play on the hill and in the woods behind the house with the children? There are three or four of them, I believe."

"This evening shall we go?"

"No," laughed his uncle, "early to-morrow morning."

Even Aphrodite was quite nice about it, and turned all the doctor's things into a larger valise where there would be room for Pavlo's clothes also, without any grumbling or bringing together of her thick black eyebrows as she did when she was cross; and Marina sat up quite late mixing some "kourabiedes"--cookies--for him to eat on the way. She gave them to him herself wrapped up in two papers so that his clothes should not get "all over fine sugar" when he was starting for the station in the open carriage with his uncle, at six o'clock the next morning.

II

It was a wonderful day! The drive to the station through the great empty squares and the half-awakened streets; the wait in the railway station of the Monastiraki while his uncle bought the tickets and Pavlo gazed open eyed at the little railed-in bookstall, hung round with very brightly coloured pictures of various heroes of the Revolution; the railway journey down to Piræus with all the people getting out at Phalerum, towels in hand, for sea baths; the landing stage at Piræus with the multitude of little blue and red and green boats swaying on the sunny water; the climb up the side of the white steamer; the fat kind-faced captain who greeted his uncle as an old friend and himself as a new one and gave him the freedom of his bridge; the steaming out of the harbour past the King's Summer House[10] surrounded by its great aloes and its little baby pines, past the grave of Themistocles[11] gloriously placed in eternal view of Salamis,[12] past the long breakwater and the lighthouse, and so out into the open sea; the stop at Ægina with its big-sailed boats and shouting boatmen crowding all round the steamer; the sighting opposite Methana of the "stone ship" and the breathless listening to its legend, of its captain the nereid who was turned into stone with all her ship for presumptuously attempting to surpass the moon in swiftness; the thrill of seeing a real dolphin swimming alongside the steamer, ... all these and more, made the journey a dream of delight to Pavlo, from which he was almost in fear of awaking to the ordinary every-day life of Solon Street. He forgot to be hungry. It was his uncle who after all reminded him of the packet of crushed and crumbly "kourabiedes" which he had quite forgotten on a bench beside him; and though he did eat them, they might as well have been dry bread for all the pleasure he got out of them.

In a little while after leaving Methana they passed a lighthouse on a rock, and the steamer turned round the corner of it.

"There is Poros!" said his uncle, suddenly laying his hand on Pavlo's shoulder and twisting him round; and there it was.

A little white village with red roofs, and here and there a big round pine or a tall narrow cypress all climbing up a hill to an old ruined mill at the top.

There was a glorious open bay, and red and orange-sailed fishing boats were sailing about it, and there were tall hills covered with olive trees to the right, and tall hills covered with pine trees to the left. And in the pines nestled a red house, and Pavlo's uncle pointed it out to him.

"See, there is my friend's house! There is where you will play with the children; across there! Do you see?"

Pavlo saw, and his cup of happiness was full, for he saw no trimly set-out garden with elaborate flower-beds such as he had once seen at Kiphissia, with "Do not touch" plainly written all over it, but hollows and crags where lentisk and thyme bushes grew strong and thick, and open hillside, and trees and trees and trees around and behind the house, from the top of the hill right down to the seashore, promising endless possibilities for climbing and hiding.

The steamer stopped quite close up to the village, and Pavlo and his uncle shook hands with the fat kind-faced captain and thanked him and climbed down into a little swaying boat which in three or four oar-strokes brought them to the side of the sea-wall. Doctor Zamana got out.

"Stay there, Pavlo," he said, "while I go up and keep a room at the hotel, and then we shall go on at once to the Red House; and after I leave you there, I can return and see my patient."

So Pavlo stayed, dipping his hands over the side of the boat into the sea, and watching the boy not much bigger than himself, and the brown-faced, blind, old boatman, at their oars, but feeling too shy to speak to them.

In a few minutes his uncle came out of the hotel door, crossed the sea-road and stepped down into the boat. Then the oars were dipped into the water, the shining drops ran off the long blades, and they were off again.

Pavlo, who was more accustomed to carriages than to boats, pulled timidly at his uncle's sleeve.

"Will you not tell them, my uncle, to go to the Red House?"

His uncle looked at him and laughed.

"Is not the helm in my own hand, little stupid one?"

And the old blind boatman and the boy rowed right across the shining bay, getting nearer and nearer to the Red House.

Pavlo's eyes opened wider at each plash of the oars, and he quite forgot to be shy at the thought that he was going to meet new people.

He had never seen such a pretty house before in all his life!

The villagers called it "the Red House on the hill"; but in reality it was rather a soft old Venetian pink than red, and the blending of this old pink into the masses of golden green around it, was a joy to the eyes; even to the eyes of little boys, though they did not exactly know why. The shape of the house was delightful, it was low, wide, two-storied, with jutting stone balconies on the second floor. A monster bougainvillea spread its dark leaves and regally purple flowers round the southern windows, and the eastern ones looked out on the open sea through the pretty paler green leaves of a wistaria, whose mauve bunches of flowers reached up to the round balcony. The whole house was set on a very long and very wide terrace, and at equal distances along the balustrade of short columns, were placed big stone vases of geraniums of all colours. There was a ruby one with the sunshine on it which made Pavlo think with regret of his crimson chalk, the one that had broken all to bits. A long broad flight of stone steps flanked by more geraniums, by big flowering oleanders and great gray-green aloes led down from the side of the terrace to the little landing stage. It seemed to Pavlo that a whole multitude of people was coming down these steps to meet them, and he felt very shy again; but after he had stepped out of the boat helped by various outstretched hands, the multitude resolved itself into five people and three dogs.

There was the master of the Red House, tall and broad, who looked, Pavlo thought, like an officer without his uniform, and there were four children, two little girls and two smaller boys; there was a big black poodle, a fox-terrier, and a little white dog, of no particular breed, with pointed ears. He was the special property of the eldest girl, and when Pavlo first caught sight of him, he had got hold of her skirt between his teeth and was shaking it vigorously, which he always did whenever he felt excited.

When Pavlo's uncle was also out of the boat, there was the usual exchange of useless and embarrassing remarks, which according to Pavlo's experience grown-ups always make on first meetings. Later on, when he came to compare impressions, he found that it was also the painful experience of the Four!

"Oh, is this your little nephew?"

"Are all the four yours? Fine children truly! May they live to you, my friend! Quite a Zamana, did you say? Well, yes; but is there not something of his mother in the shape of the mouth? This boy now, is you all over again, I think I see you at his age!"

"Yes, they tell me he is like me."

"The little one also, I think."

"Oh, no! Nikias has the long face of his mother's family." And Nikias, the little boy, whose legs were too thin for his socks, wriggled uncomfortably.

"The second girl is the image of your mother. What a fine woman she was! And this one, what lovely fair hair, and how long!"

And Pavlo from the bottom of his heart pitied the poor eldest girl who with a crimsoning face had to submit to be turned round and round while the fair hair was duly admired and while she was told that she was worthy of her name, which was Chryseis.

"You had a good journey?"

"Excellent. The sea was oil, not water."

"You will stay long I hope."

"It depends on my patient; I heard in the village that he was better to-day."

"This young man will stay with us, of course?"

"He will be delighted to come, as often as your children want him."

"To come! Nonsense! He must stay here entirely. I only wish I had room to keep you also, but he can sleep with the boys. What would he do at the hotel or in the village while you are absent? Of course he must stay here. There can be no question about it. What do you say, little one? Will you not stay?"

The second girl, Andromache, whose hair had been cut short after a fever, and now waved all round her head, nudged his arm.

"Say yes! Say yes! It will be splendid!"

Pavlo, wishing nothing better, nodded shyly, and was at once taken possession of by the Four, the three dogs barking and yapping at their heels, to be shown all the delights of the Red House and of its hill.

First of all he was taken into the long cool dining room to be introduced to the mother of the Four, who had been arranging fruit in glass dishes, and who hurried forward to greet his uncle. Then, with a big bunch of grapes thrust into his bewildered hands by Andromache, who declared that "Mother has plenty more in the basket," they started to see everything.

III

And what was Pavlo not shown on that first wonderful day?

Everyone knows how one's nice things feel nicer when they are shown to a stranger for the first time, and how even old things of which one has tired regain something of their first charm. The Four were very proud and very fond, each in his or her different way, of their house, and their hill and their sea; so it seemed as though they would never tire of showing little things to Pavlo.

First of all he was taken up to the big pine, the oldest tree on the hill. Under this were benches and a round table where, as they told him, they had their lessons out of doors when the governess was in a particularly good mood. For there was a temporary summer governess somewhere in the house, but as it was holiday time, she was not allowed to make herself too much of a nuisance except for an hour or so every morning. From the big pine, one could see all the hills around, and the Monastery Road, and the open sea, and the Naval School, and the Narrow Beach, on which as Pavlo was told, one could see the sailors drilling.

Behind the big pine was the wood of small pines, all over anemones in the spring and cyclamen in the autumn. It was softly and greenly dark in this little wood; the ground was strewn with pine needles, so many of them that they made a thick carpet, and there were shady corners where, as Chryseis told Pavlo, you could lie on the pine needles and read, and read, and read, for ages before you were discovered. Higher still was an open clearing and, at the end of it, the little hill-gate through which one passed from the hill of the Red House on to the other hills, and if one turned to the left, one got down to the big Beach of the little Pines.

He was raced down to the bath cabin on the shore, and shown all the extraordinary drawings which decorated the inside of it, to which all the members of the family had contributed, but more especially Chryseis and Iason the eldest boy. Pavlo, in fact, admired the funny faces drawn by the latter so whole-heartedly as to make the artist flush with pride.

"To-morrow you will bathe with us," announced Andromache. For that day the bath was already over; besides, the grown-ups had some sort of an idiotic notion that one must let a day pass after a journey, before beginning sea-baths.

Then up they raced again among the pines, scrambling through the lentisk and thyme bushes, to show Pavlo the little house which they had built themselves of stones and branches. One could really get into this if one took care to stoop properly; and it was a splendid place for the hoarding of biscuits and raisins, and for amateur cooking of all sorts. By this time, it was getting too hot even for the Four, so that they got under the wide-spreading shadow of the big pine and sat around on the benches and talked, while the warm pine smell filled their nostrils, and the tettix[13] chirped loudly on all sides. Andromache, who was of an uncanny cleverness in catching them, swarmed up a pine tree and brought one down enclosed in her two hands turned into an impromptu cage, through the fingers of which, Pavlo peeped at the whirring prisoner. The black poodle, Kerberos, threw himself panting loudly on the ground; Deko, the little dog, sat on his haunches beside Chryseis, cocked his little pointed ears and looked about him; while Philos, the fox terrier, dug vigorously at the roots of the nearest lentisk bush. He scratched his face, he stopped repeatedly to shake his head violently and to sneeze, then he would begin again, snuffing and digging as if the work were very important indeed, and there were no time to lose.

"Where do you live in Athens?" asked Iason, nursing a much scratched knee.

Pavlo told them.

"Just alone with your uncle?"

"Yes."

"And your father and mother? Do you not remember them?"

"My mother, ... no, ... I was very small. My father just a little. I remember playing with the tassel of his sword. You know that my great-grandfather...."

"Oh, stop! Stop!" cried the two boys and Andromache in chorus; "we know all that!"

Chryseis told them that they were very rude, but they went on determinedly:--

"Four times yesterday, when they knew you were coming, did we hear the story. Once father told us, once mother, once Kyria Penelope, that is the governess, you know, and once we had it for a dictation lesson out of the History of the Revolution; so we know all about what your great-grandfather did, and all Botzari said about him, and how brave you must be and everything."

Pavlo flushed a little, and felt quite grateful to Chryseis who changed the subject.

"What do you do all alone in the house?" she asked.

"Oh, just nothing; I paint sometimes, and once I went to Kiphissia, and once to a circus."

"Can you ride?"

Pavlo shook his head.

"Ride? Oh, no!"

"I can," said Iason, "and she can, too," nodding his head towards Chryseis. "Father has another horse over on the mainland, besides his own, which can be ridden; and we go with him in turns."

"Mother says," put in Andromache, "that when her ship comes in, she will buy horses for all of us, and a real motor boat, too."

"When I am big," said Chryseis, whose stories "out of her head," were generally in request, "I shall write a lot of stories in a book, and sell hundreds and thousands of it, and give all the money to mother, and then she can buy anything, and a new grand piano, too, for father!"

"You cannot write a real book, if you cannot spell properly," retorted Andromache, whose spelling was her strong point.

"Yes, I can. The printers do all that part."

"No, you cannot!"

"Yes, I can!"