The woman of Andros

The earth sighed as it turned in its course; the shadow of night crept gradually along the Mediterranean, and Asia was left in darkness. The great cliff that was one day to be called Gibraltar held for a long time a gleam of red and orange, while across from it the mountains of Atlas showed deep blue pockets in their shining sides. The caves that surround the Neapolitan gulf fell into a profounder shade, each giving forth from the darkness its chiming or its booming sound. Triumph had passed from Greece and wisdom from Egypt, but with the coming on of night they seemed to regain their lost honors, and the land that was soon to be called Holy prepared in the dark its wonderful burden. The sea was large enough to hold a varied weather: a storm played about Sicily and its smoking mountains, but at the mouth of the Nile the water lay like a wet pavement. A fair tripping breeze ruffled the Aegean and all the islands of Greece felt a new freshness at the close of day.

The happiest, and one of the least famous of the islands, Brynos, welcomed the breeze. The evening was long. For a time, the sound of the waves, briskly slapping against the wall of the little harbor, was covered by the chattering of women, by the shouts of boys, and by the crying of lambs. As the first lights appeared, the women retired; as the air was filled with the clangor of the shop fronts being put into place, the boys’ voices ceased; and finally only the murmur of the men in the wineshops, playing at games with ivory counters, mingled with the sounds from the sea. A confused starlight, already apprehensive of the still unrisen moon, fell upon the tiers of small houses that covered the slope and upon the winding flights of stairs that served as streets between them.

The wineshops stood about the roughly paved square at the water’s edge and in one of them the five or six principal fathers of the island sat playing. By the time the moon had risen, two of these, Simo and Chremes, had outstayed their companions. Simo was the owner of two warehouses; he was a trader and had three ships that passed continually to and fro among the islands. The men had finished playing; the counters lay on the table between them and they sighed into their beards as they thought of the long walk through the ghostly olive trees to their homes. Simo was more tired than usual: whereas the law of moderation teaches us that the mind cannot be employed for more than three hours daily over merchandise and numerals without soilure, he had that day spent five hours in argument and traffic.

“Simo,” said Chremes suddenly, with the air of a man bracing himself to an unpleasant and long deferred task, “your boy is twenty-five now--”

Simo groaned as he saw the subject arising that he was never able to look in the face.

“It’s four years,” continued Chremes, “since you first said that a young man mustn’t be forced into marriage by his old people. And certainly no one has been trying to force Pamphilus. But what is he waiting for? He helps you in the warehouse; he exercises in the field; he dines at the Andrian’s. How many years must that kind of life go on before you agree with me that he would be better off married to my daughter?”

“Chremes, he must come to me of his own accord. I will not be the first one to speak about it to the boy.”

“First! It won’t be speaking of it first, Simo. It has been understood between our families for years that he will marry Philumena. It’s being spoken of all the time. The young people tease him about it from morning to night. He knows perfectly well that my daughter is ready to marry him. It’s sheer laziness on his part. It’s sheer unwillingness to take on the responsibilities of being a husband and a father and the foremost young householder on the island.”

“He’s a young man who knows what he means to do. I will not coerce him.”

“Then it’s settled that he doesn’t want to marry my daughter. It’s a humiliation for her to be waiting all these years for him to make up his mind, and her mother’s been after me to close the matter for a long time. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but you’ll be throwing away a good thing through sheer hesitancy, both of you. Philumena is by far the healthiest and the prettiest girl on any of these islands. And she’s clever at everything that is expected of a woman in the home. The uniting of our two families has advantages, Simo, that I don’t have to point out to you. But this lapse of time has made it clear that your son is going to wait until his fancy has been caught by some other girl, I suppose. So be it! From this very night my wife is going to start looking about for some other young man.”

“Chremes, Chremes, he’s only twenty-five. Let him play about a little longer. Why must they become husbands and fathers so soon? He’s good and he’s happy. So is your daughter. Let them be awhile.”

“Grandchildren!--that’s what I want to see. There shouldn’t be a long step between the generations. It’s bad for customs and manners.”

“You’ll make a greater mistake by hurrying than by delaying.”

“Well,” Chremes continued, “there’s another reason why I want the matter settled soon. And that is this: we don’t like the visits that Pamphilus is paying to the Andrian woman. Naturally, Simo, it’s hard for me to be severe about it, because my own son goes there too. But it’s natural that a father should be more exacting in regard to his son-in-law than in regard to his son.”

Simo looked more uncomfortable than ever and remained silent. Chremes went on:

“I don’t think you like this resort to foreign women any more than I do. Our islands have always been famous for strict and good behavior. If the devil was in us as boys we could always follow some shepherdess up a dark road. But this Andrian has brought the whole air of Alexandria to town with her, perfumes and hot baths and late hours.”

Simo stroked his cheeks a moment and then replied in a low grunting voice: “Well, if it isn’t one thing, it’s another, I suppose. I don’t know anything about this Andrian. The women seem to talk of nothing else from morning to night, but one can’t believe what they say.”

Thus invited, Chremes launched into his exposition with considerable relish, examining Simo’s face from time to time to see if the details were arousing in him the interest they held for himself. “Her name is Chrysis, and I don’t know what she means by calling herself Andrian. The island of Andros was never famous for such airs and graces as she puts on. She’s flitted from Corinth and Alexandria, you may be sure. She should have stayed in her cities instead of burying herself in our town and reciting poetry to our young men. Yes, yes, she recites poetry to them like the famous ones. She has twelve or fifteen of them to dinner every seven or eight days,--the unmarried ones, of course. They lie about on couches and eat odd food and talk. Presently she rises and recites; she can recite whole tragedies without the book. She is very strict with the young men, apparently. She makes them pronounce all the Attic accents; they eat in the Athenian mode, drinking toasts and wearing garlands, and each in turn is elected King of the Banquet. And at the close, hot towels are passed around for them to wipe their hands on.”

Simo did not concede to Chremes the pleasure of his close interest; his eyes were lowered and his face wore the same bored expression that it brought to all island gossip. Chremes decided to be less expansive and added with easy indignation: “As for me, Alexandria is Alexandria and Brynos is Brynos. A few more imported notions and our island will be spoiled forever. It will become a mass of poor undigested imitations. All the girls will be wanting to read and write and declaim. What becomes of home life, Simo, if women can read and write? You and I married the finest girls of our time and we’ve been happy. We can at least provide one more generation of good sense and good manners on this island before the age arrives when all the women will have the airs of dancers and all the men go about waiting on them.”

Simo knew the answer to this, but he repressed it. Chremes, more than any man on the island, was ruled by his wife. In fact from her loom in the shadow, Chremes’s wife tried to rule the whole island, using her harassed husband as her legislative and punitive arm. Simo asked:

“What happens after the banquet?”

“Each boy pays for his plate, and pays right smartly too, and from time to time one or another is graciously permitted to stay until morning. That’s all I know.”

“Is your son at all these dinners?”

“He was quarreling or something,--or perhaps he drank too much, I don’t know. At all events, he was expelled for a time. Thrown right out into the street, he was, by the other guests. But he’s made his peace with her again.”

“Do you talk to him about this ... this Chrysis?”

“Why, no. I pretend to know nothing about it.”

“Is my son always there?”

“They say he’s practically always there.”

There was a long pause. The boy who attended in the wineshop went out into the moonlight and started putting up the shutters. Presently he returned and whispered to Simo that an old woman was waiting outside to speak to him and that she had been waiting there for some time. This was unusual on Brynos, but Simo took pride in never betraying any surprise. He nodded slightly and continued staring before him.

“Are there any other women at the Andrian’s?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Some say there are and some say there aren’t. But there’s a houseful of some sort. In fact it’s a kind of hospital for the old and the lame and the ... all kind of old battered pensioners. The house is way up at the edge of the town....”

“I know where it is.”

“... and the people, whoever they are, never come into town. They never even go out on the road by day. Oh, you can be sure the townspeople talk of nothing else.”

Chremes rose and put on his cloak. He saw that Simo was as far as ever from committing himself. “Well, that’s how it stands,” he said. “I hope that in another ten days you can give me a more definite answer. My wife is after me a good deal, Simo, and she says that I’m to tell you this, that unless Pamphilus stops those visits all idea of a marriage between himself and Philumena is impossible. And that any such marriage must be definitely settled pretty soon or you’ll have to start finding some other girl one-tenth as good.”

For the first time Simo bestirred himself and said slowly: “You and your wife will be throwing away a good thing too, Chremes. It’s precisely because Pamphilus is a great deal more than an ordinary island boy that I can’t speak to him as I could to another son. There are more sides to Pamphilus than you imagine.”

“Yes, Simo, we know that he’s a fine young man. But we also know, if you will forgive me, that there’s a strain in Pamphilus of the ... the undecided, the procrastinating. To do his best and to take his place, Pamphilus must be urged on by someone, like yourself, whom he admires. And he’s not as interested in this island and in what it stands for as he should be. Do you know the young priest of Æsculapius and Apollo? Well, there is something of the priest in Pamphilus. Such people aren’t interested in putting their foot forward. They haven’t yet come to see what life is about.”