Arachne | Page 5

master. I know without your aid what I
owe him, and serve him as loyally as any one; but where he threatens to
lead to ruin the innocent daughter of the race whose blood flows in my
veins as well as yours, and in doing so perhaps finally destroy himself
too, conscience commands me to raise my voice as loud as the sentinel
crane when danger threatens the flock. Beware, girl, I repeat! Keep
your beauty, which is now to be degraded to feast the eyes of gaping
Greeks, for the worthiest husband among our people. Though Hermon
has vowed, I know not what, your love-dallying will very soon be over;
we shall leave Tennis within the next few days. When he has gone
there will be one more deceived Biamite who will call down the curse
of the gods upon the head of a Greek. You are not the only one who
will execrate the destiny that brought us here. Others have been caught
in his net too."
"Here?" asked Ledscha in a hollow tone; and the slave eagerly
answered: "Where else? And that you may know the truth--among
those who visited Hermon in his studio is your own young sister."
"Our Taus? That child?" exclaimed the girl, stretching her hands
toward the slave in horror, as if to ward off some impending disaster.
"That child, who, I think, has grown into a very charming girl--and,
before her, pretty Gula, the wife of Paseth, who, like your father, is
away on his ship."
Here, in a tone of triumphant confidence, the answer rang from the
Biamite's lips: "There the slanderer stands revealed! Now you are

detected, now I perceive the meaning of your threat. Because,
miserable slave, you cherish the mad hope of beguiling me yourself,
you do your utmost to estrange me from your master. Gula, you say,
visited Hermon in his studio, and it may be true. But though I have
been at home only a short time, Tennis is too full of the praises of the
heroic Greek who, at the risk of his own life, rescued a child from
Paseth's burning house, for the tale not to reach my ears from ten or a
dozen different quarters. Gula is the mother of the little girl whose life
was saved by Hermon's bold deed, and perhaps the young mother only
knocked at her benefactor's door to thank him; but you, base defamer--"
"I," Bias continued, maintaining his composure with difficulty, "I saw
Gula secretly glide into our rooms again and again to permit her child's
preserver to imitate in clay what he considered beautiful. To seek your
love, as you know, the slave forbade himself, although a man no more
loses tender desires with his freedom than the tree which is encircled by
a fence ceases to put forth buds and blossoms. Eros chooses the slave's
heart also as the target for his arrows; but his aim at yours was better
than at mine. Now I know how deeply he wounds, and so, as soon as
yonder ship in the harbour bears our visitor away again, I shall see you,
Schalit's daughter, Ledscha, standing before Hermon's modelling table
and behold him scan your beauty to determine what seems worth
copying."
The Biamite, panting for breath, had listened to the end. Then, raising
her little clinched hand menacingly, she muttered through her set teeth:
"Let him try even to touch my veil with his fingers! If I had not been
obliged to go away, this would not have happened to my Taus and
luckless Gula."
"Scarcely," replied Bias calmly. "If the chicken runs into the water, the
hen can not save it. For the rest--I grew up as a boy in freedom with the
husband of your sister, who summoned you to her aid. His father's
brick-kiln was next to our papyrus plantation. Then we fared like so
many others--the great devour the small, the just cause is the lost one,
and the gods are like men. My father, who drew the sword against
oppression and violence, was robbed of liberty, and your brother-in-law,

in payment for his honest courage, met an early death. Is the story
which is told of you here true? I heard that soon after the poor fellow's
burial the slaves in the brick-kiln refused to obey his widow. There
were a dozen rebellious brick-moulders, and you--one can forgive you
much for it--you, the weak girl----"
"I am not weak," interrupted Ledscha proudly. "I could have taught
three times twelve of the scoundrels who was master. Now they obey
my sister, and yet I wish I had stayed in Tennis. Our Taus," she
continued in a more gentle tone, "is still so young, and our mother died
when she was a little child; but I,