AT THE SIGN OF THE BELLE HELENE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2554, 10 October 1910, Page 2

AT THE SIGN OF THE BELLE HELENE.

_ •»-*<-«• — (By Katherine Hoffman.) Three or four times as we followed the trail through the forsaken lulls we came upon him, a gaunt, shaggy giant of a man who slunk to one side of the road for our passing, and from whose sunken eyes some desperate, swift appeal seemed to Hash before he averted them with resigned humility. The gay, unintelligible chatter of our muleteers was stilled at sight of him, and even Spires, most loquacious ol guides, grew silent, vouchsafing only to our inquiries the words, "Demetrius, the Accursed." Once we marked him ahead ol us at the edge of a hill-village at dusk. He loitered, hesitated, and then, seeming to square his shoulders to some deed of valiance, strode forward. But bv the time our cumbrous caravan had come to the centre of the town., we met him, head bent, shoulders purposelessly relaxed again, shuffling rapidly back. A band of children ran at his heels, harrying him with small missiles. The watchful Spiros, though ho drove the children back with fluent scolding, gave no glance or word to the man, and interposed himself and half our mules between us and the fugitive. Immediately after lie offered us such wealth of picturesque information on all subjects unconnected with Demetrius, the Accursed, that we half forgot the forlorn figure, or recalled him vaguely as a mere unfortunate of the countryside, barbarously harassed for his simplicity. A day or two later, coining out at noon upon the ruins of a .small temple, its pillars gleaming through the thickgrown grass of centuries, we saw tho man again, lie sat in the midst of desolation, solitary and awful, his eyes raised to the translucent sky. it was as though he appealed to the old gods of Greece for an understanding or a pity which the new denied him. Mi' bore then no look of the village simpleton we had half believed him. As we advanced we saw a woman creep with stealthy manner and furtive glanced from behind a pillar. She slid through the grass and, in sight of the wanderer, laid a howl upon the vine-wrapped, mutilated head < I some benignant deity of die ancient faith. As he ate from tin- dish. Demetrius, the Accursed, looked long in the direction whither she had vanished. Finally our guide's silence was broken." We had left the mountain trail, crossed the narrow plain of silvery green young wheat, and come into the huddled village on the coast where we were to spend our last night in 1 pper Idalis. We had exclaimed over the grim stone gaol that crowned an island lying a little strait's breadth from the hamlet. We had watched Spiros, at sight of the prison, touch tho tiny icon he wore tied to his coat, and had heard him murmur an invocation against evil. Then he had sighed and had said: "Ah. the wretched Demetrius!"—no longer the "accursed Demetrius." And we had demanded from him tin 1 story of the man who wandered, shunned like Judas, up and down the hills and valleys of Idalis. It was evening when he told it. Ho and Agamemnon, the cook alas for the glory that was Greece!—had cleared the dinner from the table, and there remained only the coffee-cups and candles, accessories of civilisation without which Spiros' patrons never took the trail 11. "On the island that you saw there," he began, "for twenty years Demetrius was in prison. Four men he killed in out' night. There were—sueculently he rolled forth the list—"the two gendarmes, the brother, ami the jealous husband of Helena. "Demetrius loved Helena, wife of the old Alexander who kepi this very inn and coffee-shop which you now honor with your visit. She was very beautiful, Helena, and the old Alexander had made a new sign for his inn when they were married. Before, it had been the Hotel of the Grecian Heroes. Now he made it the Hotel do la Belle lleleuc. There was a Helen once in Greece—but all know that ancient tale. Ah, he was very proud >f her. was Alexander. Hut, alas! lie was old and a miser. And Helena had love ! Demetrius before he left the village to he a soldier. He was one of the king's own guards, and the king had no better —so straight, so tail, so broad was ho. "He came back from Athens on a leave, very fine in his new uniform of the guards. You have soon it, madam aed young ladies, with the linen skirts whiter than the snows upon Parnassus, and the embroideries stiller than the priest's before the altar, and the colors more bright than the sky at daybreak, the sea at sunrise? Anil Helena bad loved him before, remember. How, then, should she harden her heart to him now? "Ah, it was very sad, very wrong, madam, and you and the young ladies are .shocked! But I pray you to remember that this is a poor, wild pla :e. not like your glorious America. In France, where I was courier once —out that has nothing to do with Demetrius. "Well, when Demetrius found his well-beloved one married he but desired her the more, for it is in man to long for that which is denied him. And when he found that her heart was still his, he vowed that he would not g> again to Athens to wear the king's beautiful uniform, leaving her to o'd Alexander. He made himself what \'Ui call a deserter. And when they canid to seek him, the soldiery, that they might court-martial him for his desertion, they did not find him. "You remember, messieurs, the mountains we rode down to-day? What chance was there, 1 ask you, that men of the cities, knowing onlj bazaars and coffee-shops should find one hidden there, and that one a man who had known the hills from boyhood? So, by and bye, they went away, and tin p was a paper stuck on a post in <;d Alexander's shop, promising a reward in money to the one who should capture the deserter from the king's guard. "You see it all now, I perceive, madam; how old Alexander grew suspicious—do not ask me how, but there were maidens who watched Helena with angry eyes; how they planned, the two, some escape to your own land of freedom —elopement, you call it.

"You perceive, too, how Alexander wanted all things—to keep his wife and torture her that so he mfght torture Demetrius, too, to have revenge upon j Demetrius, and above all else, 1 do believe, to win the reward of money. So he bided his time, working slowly and ; patiently like the spider that he was. j "Then one night, when he had ! planned all well, he led the two officers and the brother to Helena, to whom ' he had told of the sister's wrong-doing, ! to the hollow in the rocks where De- ! metritis lay hid. But all four of them | he slew, that shaggy mountain lion, Do- ! metritis. Then daring all things, he I rushed down the mountainside, nimble, ! sure, like the goat of the lulls; he j i crossed the plain; he ran through the town, and came before the dawn 1o ! Alexander's house. ! "You see how it was with him; he I must know if they had taken any venI geauce on Helena before they sought : him out. But no; she waked from sleep I at his call beside the door, she came i forth and heard. And while she wept I with grief and shrank from him because ihe had slain her brother whom she loved, and while she held him to her j breast because her heart was his and he was in great danger, even then two I other gendarmes crept upon them. For I old Alexander, guileful fox, had pro- ! vided against failure in the hills, with I sines set near the inn. I "When they had bound Demetrius i and were dragging him away, she broke ' from those who held her and threw herself before him, accusing herself that She had brought him to this pass, then I the men raised her harshly and DemeI trius passed on, and her cry that she : would love him for ever followed him. "So far, you see, madam and the ! young ladies", it is a common enough story' of such rough places as this. It is but love and intrigue, hatred, jealousy, and murder. What would your Here is but a narrow strip between the i untracked mountains and the untravelled sea. Here, all things arc wild and the heart of man also is tierce and unbowed. It is not as if great engines 'labored up our peaks bearing civihsai tion, or steamboats belched black smoke 1 and bitter wisdom upon our blue sea, as ; in your own thrice-blessed land. But ! 1 talk too much, delaying myself upon ■ the path of my .story, it is only that ; 1 desire your pity tor Demetrius and I the fair Helena. 1 "They took from him all with which I he might harm himself. They tried bun i for the murders and the desertions. I They convicted him—no, madam, not i here; tiiis hamlet is no place for lordly justice to be done. No, in the city , yonder that wo left two days since. I And the hour of the execution was set. "Then it befell that the public exeeii- ' tioner of Upper Idalis—he was no native hen —sickened and died, and no ' one could be found to take his place. : No bribe and no command would in- ] duce an Idalian to be olticial killer. ' They are primitive people, the ldalians' ' —the sonorous voice of Spiros took on tho light inflections of a citizen of the world—"and they see no reason for the law and its penalties. If they have ! been robbed o! goods or of wife, or it their brothers have been slam, then it is their custom to exact repayment themselves for their wrongs, i "Ah, but they know how, here in Idalis! So no Idalian was found who would kill Demetrius. Then one of the wily ones that sit in offices and spin ! webs for free men's feet bethought him i ot' a plan. Demetrius was made to choose between death—for the cxecu- , tioner of Athens, even, might be sum- ! moiled to the work—and becoming himself tiie public executioner of Idalis : during twenty years' imprisonment. ; Then he might go out, a free man, and no more the executioner. "At first, of course, he refused. But 'Helena heard of it, Helena, who burned with anguish and love, ami who was, I besides, a woman-, not knowing the ; honor and the shame of men. She 1 readied him with a prayer-the wilj : one in the office arranged that, too, ' one perceives. And Demetrius harkenj cd and became the public executioner I of Idalis. "For twenty years when there was 'killing to be done in the Stale's name. lie came with his guard out from that ! prison on the island and went to the public square ol death in tho city yonder. For twenty years, the killing : done, he came guarded back to his stone cell. For twenty years Helena, j whom the women scorned, dwelt alone, wailing and counting the years, tiie months, and the days, eating her beauty up with impatience, burning her youth ; away with misery. Ami tiie day, the i very day, madam, that was to set him I free, they found her lying dead in her j hut on the edge of the village. In New York, win u 1 was in the coffeeshop there, they called such a thing ;as that .she died of heart-failure. Bui jour women called it the judgment ol : ( ; "d\ "So Dene, trius come out and there \ was none to speak to him, nut one. 'They showed him the dead Helena ami ho turned unbelieving away, remembering her as she looked that lest dawn when she had fallen before him and had cried that she would love him forever. "And no one will speak to Demetrius, the public killer, who, had the Stale willed it, must have murdered hit neighbor, his friend, his brotln r- nay. Helena herself; Demetrius, whose hands are red with the blood that is not his enemy's. Therefore up and down Idalis Demetrius goes, as you have seen, lie has not, like the money-recompensed .executioner, gold to carry him hence. And perhaps he loves idalis —who can say?—where he was young and a 'soldier and the chosen of Helena. "But all men shun him and the chilj dren spit upon him. Sometimes, as you : have seen, tiie women, remembering Helena and their own youth, shove him bread or water, or motion him to a mown field where he may he at night. But no voice is ever raised in greeting to him as he goes up and down. So it is that ldalians treat the hired henehj man of Death." I 111. He ceased, and we sat silent in the dingy little room, with the candle-light throwing distorted shadows on the walls. Only the sea, beating at the foot of the narrow street, made any sound. Then suddenly the tense, sad stillness was broken by a shrill scream. Shouts and moans and the hurrying offeet along the road followed. Spiros dashed from the room aiid joined the crowd running in tho moonlight. By and by he came in again. His j face' was palo beneath its olive, and his pleasant, shallow eyes held the look of : one who has faced mysteries. He shut j the door softly. "It was Demetrius," he said. "Under cover of night he came. He found ' the hut where Helena used to wait for j him. Through tho door some ono saw ! him, and ran for others to drive him j hence. But when they came, there was ~0 need. He had driven a knife into his heart." He paused, oblivious of our horrified murmurs. "So it will ever be," he declared. "Never a nod or a word or a smile the eyes for the man who has been executioner. And without these how shall one bear life—here, I mean, where the folk are ignorant and have not wisdom to weigh the love of men a trifle?"