Thera

“ The inscription is of the second century b. c. and it seems likely that Anthister-Anthisteria, with their clear derivation from ἀνθίζειν, are corruptions of the earlier and difficult forms Ἀνθέστηρ-Ἀνθεστήρια. It is noteworthy that Thera, an island lying rather outside the main channels of civilization, kept up throughout its history a tendency to treat the 'epithet' as a full person. Hikesios and Koures come very early; also Polieus and Stoichaios without the name Zeus; Delphinios, Karneios, Aiglatas, and Aguieus without Apollo. ”

“ This Theras was of the lineage of Cadmus and an uncle on the mother’s side of Aristodemus’ sons Eurysthenes and Procles; and while these boys were yet children he held the royal power of Sparta as regent; but when his nephews grew up and became kings, then Theras could not brook to be a subject when he had had a taste of supreme power, and said he would abide no longer in Lacedaemon but sail away to his kinsfolk. There were in the island now called Thera, but then Calliste, descendants of Membliarus the son of Poeciles, a Phoenician ”

“ Save thyself, care not for me," and she arose and prostrated herself before the shrine. "O Mother," she cried piteously, "I will not leave thee again. Death or life, what matters it to me? let it be as thou wilt. I have promised not to leave thee, and I am here waiting." Then rising, she seated herself as she was used to do before the shrine, and spoke no more.
"I can at least die with thee, Tara; I will not leave thee," said Gunga. "Whatever comes, let it come to us both; I am as ready to die as thou art—I will not go." ”

“ Is that the truth or not?”
“The truth is always relative, Mr. Ware,” replied the priest, turning away, and closing the door of the parlor behind him with a decisive sound.
Left alone, Theron started to make his way downstairs. He found his legs wavering under him and making zigzag movements of their own in a bewildering fashion. He referred this at first, in an outburst of fresh despair, to the effects of his great grief. Then, as he held tight to the banister and governed his descent step by step, it occurred to him that it must be the wine he had had for breakfast. ”

“ To be sure, I am neither a Brahmun nor a widow to be nice as thou art; yet I bid thee go, and let me have my turn: thou hast had more than thy share of money already to-day."
"It is all in the shrine before the Mother," said Tara, shrinking from the bold glances and excited manner of the girl. "I have taken none of it: I need it not."
"That does not matter," said Gunga; "I will have my turn now. Go away; thou art not wanted. Those that will not dance before the Mother are not worthy to serve her. Go, else some of us will push thee out." ”

“ Never shall I forget it—all about Hellas and the Persians and the war that is coming. I hope it won’t come too soon before I can fight.”
“Pindar is ours,” said Theria with Delphic pride. “There is a chair set in the temple just for him. He sits there and the god gives him song. Tell me: did you hear him sing?”
“Often and often,” boasted the boy. “When we would stop by the road to sup and pour wine to the blessed gods, then a slave would bring Pindar’s lyre. A fine old one it is, always fresh stringed. He would sweep it with his hand and the thing would tremble as if alive. ”

“ Celia laughed—a gentle, amused little laugh, in which Theron's ears traced elements of tenderness. “You must regulate that imagination of yours,” she said playfully. “It conceives the thing that is not. Pray, when”—and here, turning her head, she bent down upon his face a gaze of arch mock-seriousness—“pray, when did I describe myself in these terms? When did I say that I should never know what love meant?”
For answer Theron laid his head down upon his arm, and closed his eyes, and held his face against the draperies encircling her. “I cannot think!” ”

“ If she be, she shall have her desire; thou shalt have thine; and I—ah, yes! I will have more gold. Yes," she cried, clapping her hands again, "more gold! I will have gold anklets, like Tara's. Why should she wear gold anklets and mine be only silver? Wilt thou give them?—all I can hope, now she hath taken thy love from me——"
"When my sister is Vyas Shastree's wife thou mayst have what thou wilt, Gunga. I swear it to thee on thy neck and feet. Art thou content? Yes, thou shalt see her now. Manage the matter as ye will, women's wits are sharper than mine. ”

“ If thou art my sister, thy heart is far away among the blue mountains and their deep forests, and with our Prince. If it be not so, the witchcraft of that house hath compassed thee with a spell, as it has me."
"Witchcraft, brother? they do no witchcraft," she replied simply.
"By the Mother, they do," he cried; "feel my hands, feel my head, they are burning, and Tara has set me on fire."
"Moro, thou art ill; this is fever," returned his sister anxiously. "I was like this yesterday, and Anunda gave me some medicine, and I slept, and it passed away. Let me fetch some, or send the woman for it." ”

“ Thus Eros brushed his wings across Theria’s fancy and flew away. No business of his was this. But youth was here—fearful impressibility: A breath, and youth is changed.
Who shall say that when in after years this boy sang of a woman and gave her a new type of nobleness the image of this proud sweet maid of Delphi did not float before him and make his creation real?
And as for Theria, the encounter was a peep outward into the world. From this time she became more aware of the hurry of development outside in the awakening land of Greece. ”

“ But we have made a long digression.
"Come, daughter," said Anunda, "cast that sheet about thy head. It strikes me that men look at thee too earnestly now as we pass the bazaar, and the morning air is chill from the night rain."
"Nay, dear mother, not so. Am I a Toorki woman to veil my face?" said Tara, quickly. "Am I ashamed of it? Art thou, mother?"
"If thou wert not so beautiful, Tara. I dread men's evil eyes on thee, my child, and I dread men's tongues more." ”

“ It requires a braver heart than a girl's to face the mountain-paths alone at night among the bears and the panthers, sister, and nought but a bird could escape down the precipices. Why these unjust suspicions? Art thou ready, Tara? If so, follow me, and thou too, Shastree; we will settle this matter at once. There is no one now in the Rajah's temple. He has already paid his devotions, and is preparing to meet the Khan. Come, the ordinary priests are there, and there is no fear of her. Come, Tara, fear not. If thou art true, the Mother will defend thee. Dost thou trust her, girl? ”

“ Theron stared at them with the erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and felt that he possessed a new and disturbing conception of what female emancipation meant in these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance rested again upon the largest of the Virgin pictures—a full-length figure in sweeping draperies, its radiant, aureoled head upturned in rapt adoration, its feet resting on a crescent moon which shone forth in bluish silver through festooned clouds of cherubs. ”

“ Ah," she continued, "because we are poor, and not as you are, Tara, do not look coldly upon us; have we not one common Mother, and are we not sisters in her? So think of us, and we will be your slaves and fellow-servants; for she has loved you more than us, and sent you pure among us. We know, too, you are already changed to us, for we have received the daily offerings as you have kindly directed."
Poor Tara, there was no guile in her loving heart which bred or fostered suspicion. ”

“ Unless you mean that my being a Catholic makes a difference. I had supposed you were quite free from that kind of prejudice.”
“So I am! Believe me, I am!” urged Theron. “When I'm with you, it seems impossible to realize that there are people so narrow and contracted in their natures as to take account of such things. It is another atmosphere that I breathe near you. How could you imagine that such a thought—about our difference of creed—would enter my head? In fact,” he concluded with a nervous half-laugh, “there isn't any such difference. Whatever your religion is, it's mine too. ”

“ They should be wet and pure."
"It is too cold for thee, my child," replied Anunda. "Come, Tara, come on; the hymn will be finished ere we can join—come."
"No, mother, I am hot—burning; something urges me to the well, and I cannot resist it. Mother, I must be pure before the shrine. May I go?"
"The spirit of the goddess is with her, truly," thought her mother. "Go, Tara, it may refresh thee," she said; "and there are dry clothes in the temple. ”

“ O the misery of that mother's face! who, after trying to articulate "Tara," which her lips formed, as though she spoke the word, fell forward clasping the knees and feet of her old friend, and groaning in her despair.
"The gods have given thee one precious object, sister, and taken the other," she said. "Be thankful for what is spared thee."
Then Anunda thought Tara was dead, and so did Radha; but the woman resumed—
"And yet, why should I say so, Anunda? We know not; she has not been heard of. Let us wait. Hundreds of our friends fled from the temple and from the town. ”

“ Teresa alone ruled by a look, a word, a gesture, this impetuous character, which yielded beneath the hand of a woman, and which beneath the hand of a man might have broken, but could never have been bended. Teresa was lively and gay, but coquettish to excess. The two piastres that Luigi received every month from the Count of San-Felice's steward, and the price of all the little carvings in wood he sold at Rome, were expended in ear-rings, necklaces, and gold hairpins. So that, thanks to her friend's generosity, Teresa was the most beautiful and the best-attired peasant near Rome. ”

“ Perhaps we, who belong to another creed and faith, can hardly estimate it. And yet the springs and motives of human action have parallels so close everywhere, that we can at least follow the events which had to be endured, alike without aid, and without sympathy.
Poor Tara! could she deny herself the secret contemplation of the noble youth who, she knew, was her lover? Could she forget the sweet companionship of Zyna, the rough but loving caresses of the Khan's wife, and the hearty greeting of the Khan himself? ”

“ IN WHICH TERESA MAKES A JOURNEY
“Help me to remember that it is for Greece—and for himself most of all!” That was Teresa’s cry through those dreary weeks alone. The chill instinct that had seized her as Gordon held her in that last clasp had never left her. She struggled always with a grim sense of the inevitable. At times she fought the desire to follow, even to Greece, to fold him in her arms, to entreat: “Give up the cause! Come back to me—to love!” ”

“ The folk of Tara said to him: "It seems to us that our bull-feast and our spell of truth are a failure, if it be only a young, beardless lad that we have visioned therein."
"That is of no moment," quoth he. "For a young, generous king like me to be in the kingship is no disgrace, since the binding of Tara's pledges is mine by right of father and grandsire." ”

“ It doesn't make it any the less hateful to call it science. I am afraid, though,” he went on hesitatingly, “that there are difficulties in the way of my helping, as you call it. You see, the very fact of my being a Methodist minister, and his being a Catholic priest, rather puts my interference out of the question.”
“No; that doesn't matter a button,” said Celia, lightly. “None of us think of that at all.”
“There is the other embarrassment, then,” pursued Theron, diffidently, “that Father Forbes is a vastly broader and deeper scholar—in all these matters—than I am. ”

“ What should she know of love? She was, indeed, an utter stranger to it, and yet she wrote of love, and called her hero "Terah."
But the time had come when the Countess thought her daughter ought to begin to realise that the great world was not an ideal one like that of her dreams.
"Mercy," she said, "why do you always write of 'Terah' [Pg 146] as you call him? He seems to be the hero of all your stories, and he is quite impossible. You must not imagine that people in the great world are as lovely in their lives as your flowers are. 'Terah' is an ideal." ”

“ The sense of the reality of divine and unseen things in Teresa’s life of prayer is simply miraculous in a woman still living among things seen and temporal. Her faith is truly the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Our Lord was as real, as present, as near, as visible, and as affable to this extraordinary saint as ever He was to Martha, or Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or the woman of Samaria, or the mother of Zebedee’s children. ”

“ But speak, daughter,—thy name?"
"Tara."
"Tara: well, fear not. Amba Bye is strict, but kind. Speak truly, we listen."
And Tara told her little story: how she had become a priestess when the goddess called her; what she knew of holy books; how she had been carried off from the temple by Moro Trimmul, and how he had persecuted her before. How she was taken by Fazil Khan, and had been saved by him from the King's harem at Beejapoor. Finally, how they had treated her with honour and respect, and were taking her to her only refuge at Wye. ”

“ The new Therma, rebuilt on European methods after its bombardment by the Powers, was a city of enchantment to the little barbarian from Strio, but she durst not let her eyes wander to the tall white houses or the astonishing shops. The swarming crowd of all nationalities that jostled her as she stumbled along, ill and miserable, in the wake of Petros, was simply a collection of moving obstacles, blocking the way to the attainment of her aim, the deliverance of the brother who represented all the romance that had ever touched her life from the spells of the witch-woman. ”