A Thorny Path — Complete by Georg Ebers (howl and other poems txt) 📖

I am having a statue erected to Mesomedes, the great zithern-player—you perhaps know his songs. This evening, when the feast and the press of work are over, I will hear how you play. I will also playa few airs to you.”

Melissa then plucked up courage and said, decidedly: “No, my lord; I am about to bid you farewell for to-day.”

“That sounds very determined,” he answered, half surprised and half amused. “But may I be allowed to know what has made you decide on this step?”

“There is a great deal of work waiting for you,” she replied, quietly.

“That is my affair, not yours,” was the crushing answer.

“It is also mine,” she said, endeavoring to keep calm; “for you have not yet completely recovered, and, should you require my help again this evening, I could not attend to your call.”

“No?” he asked, wrathfully, and his eyelids began to twitch.

“No, my lord; for it would not be seemly in a maiden to visit you by night, unless you were ill and needed nursing. As it is, I shall meet your friends—my heart stands still only to think of it—”

“I will teach them what is due to you!” Caracalla bellowed out, and his brow was knit once more.

“But you can not compel me,” she replied, firmly, “to change my mind as to what is seemly,” and the courage which failed her if she met a spider, but which stood by her in serious danger as a faithful ally, made her perfectly steadfast as she eagerly added: “Not an hour since you promised me that so long as I remained with you I should need no other protector, and might count on your gratitude. But those were mere words, for, when I besought you to grant me some repose, you scorned my very reasonable request, and roughly ordered me to remain and attend on you.”

At this Caesar laughed aloud.

“Just so! You are a woman, and like all the rest. You are sweet and gentle only so long as you have your own way.”

“No, indeed,” cried Melissa, and her eyes filled with tears. “I only look further than from one hour to the next. If I should sacrifice what I think right, merely to come and go at my own will, I should soon be not only miserable myself, but the object of your contempt.”

Overcome by irresistible distress, she broke into loud sobs; but Caracalla, with a furious stamp of his foot, exclaimed:

“No tears! I can not, I will not see you weep. Can any harm come to you? Nothing but good; nothing but the best of happiness do I propose for you. By Apollo and Zeus, that is the truth! Till now you have been unlike other women, but when you behave like them, you shall—I swear it—you shall feel which of us two is the stronger!”

He roughly snatched her hand away from her face and thereby achieved his end, for her indignation at being thus touched by a man’s brutal hand gave Melissa strength to suppress her sobs. Only her wet cheeks showed what a flood of tears she had shed, as, almost beside herself with anger, she exclaimed:

“Let my hand go! Shame on the man who insults a defenseless girl! You swear! Then I, too, may take an oath, and, by the head of my mother, you shall never see me again excepting as a corpse, if you ever attempt violence! You are Caesar—you are the stronger. Who ever doubted it? But you will never compel me to a vile action, not if you could inflict a thousand deaths on me instead of one!”

Caracalla, without a word, had released her hand and was staring at her in amazement.

A woman, and so gentle a woman, defying him as no man would have dared to do!

She stood before him, her hand raised, her bosom heaving; a flame of anger sparkled in her eyes through their tears, and he had never before thought her so fair. What majesty there was in this girl, whose simple grace had made him more than once address her as “child”! She was like a queen, an empress; perhaps she might become one. The idea struck him for the first time. And that little hand which now fell—what soothing power it had, how much he owed to it! How fervently he had wished but just now to be understood by her, and to be thought better of by her than by the rest! And this wish still possessed him. Nay, he was more strongly attracted than ever to this creature, worthy as she was of the highest in the land, and made doubly bewitching by her proud willfulness. That he should see her for the last time seemed to him as impossible as that he should never again see daylight; and yet her whole aspect announced that her threat was serious.

His aggrieved pride and offended sense of absolute power struggled with his love, repentance, and fear of losing her healing presence; but the struggle was brief, especially as a mass of business to be attended to lay before him like a steep hill to climb, and haste was imperative.

He went up to her, shaking his head, and said in the superior tone of a sage rebuking thoughtlessness:

“Like all the rest of them—I repeat it. My demands had no object in view but to make you happy and derive comfort from you. How hot must the blood be which boils and foams at the contact of a spark! Only too like my own; and, since I understand you, I find it easy to forgive you. Indeed, I must finally express myself grateful; for I was in danger of neglecting my duties as a sovereign for the sake of pleasing my heart. Go, then, and rest, while I devote myself to business.”

At this, Melissa forced herself to smile, and said, still somewhat tearfully: “How grateful I am! And you will not again require me to remain, will you, when I assure you that it is not fitting?”

“Unluckily, I am not in the habit of yielding to a girl’s whims.”

“I have no whims,” she eagerly declared. “But you will keep your word now, and allow me to withdraw? I implore you to let me go!”

With a deep sigh and an amount of self-control of which he would yesterday have thought himself incapable, he let go her hand, and she with a shudder thought that she had found the answer to the question he had asked her. His eyes, not his words, had betrayed it; for a woman can see in a suitor’s look what color his wishes take, while a woman’s eyes only tell her lover whether or no she reciprocates his feelings.

“I am going,” she said, but he remarked the deadly paleness which overspread her features, and her colorless cheeks encouraged him in the belief that, after a sleepless night and the agitations of the last few hours, it was only physical exhaustion which made Melissa so suddenly anxious to escape from him. So, saying kindly:

“‘Till to-morrow, then,” he dismissed her.

But when she had almost left the room, he added: “One thing more! To-morrow we will try our zitherns together. After my bath is the time I like