The Song of the Sirens and Other Stories/The Right Man
THE RIGHT MAN
THE RIGHT MAN
THE fifth ephor, as least aged, was consulted last.
"To sum up the discussion," he said, "we need an unusually capable and very desperate individual for this undertaking. After canvassing every man we can think of we decide that all those sufficiently able are insufficiently desperate and all those sufficiently desperate are insufficiently able. Confessing that we need expert outside advice as to the fitness and recklessness of men of whom we might have thought we confront the dilemma that, including the two kings, no man enough versed in these matters is to be trusted with the secrets of our policy and no trustworthy man seems likely to be able to give any valuable suggestion. Added to which last consideration it is pointed out that any man we openly call in will be besieged with every sort of device to worm from him what he has learned from us. I conclude, to secure an adventurer not yet hit upon, we must consult some man not yet named and consult him secretly."
"Here," said the second ephor sourly, "are many long words, worthy of an Athenian. A Spartan should have put that more briefly."
"We need," said the third ephor severely, "not flouts at each other nor floods of long-winded epigrammatic antitheses. We need a shining light on the situation."
"If you want to see a shining light," broke in the fourth ephor, "look at that ugly mug across the square. I have heard of Clearchos that in a fight his men called his sour phiz a shining light against the enemy. A shining light it is now surely."
"This is an undignified and frivolous interruption," exclaimed the second ephor.
"Have we discussed Clearchos?" cut in the first ephor softly, with the ghost of a smile.
"An able man enough," said the second ephor, "but too glad of the peace and of his return home."
"I should have said that he longs for more fighting," said the third ephor. "He was venturesome enough all through the war. If ever a man sought danger, he did. He throve on perils and uniformly came off safe with glory. He seemed to love risk, yet husbanded his men, laid plans with foresight and disposed his attacks with cool judgment. He often flew in the face of death."
"Yes," said the fourth ephor, "that was while Kunobates was alive."
"Gorgo's husband?" asked the fifth ephor. "Gorgo's," replied the fourth, "while she was a wife Clearchos never smiled except at imminent annihilation. Now she is eleven months a widow and peace declared, look at him. He is no beauty, but what a grin of satisfaction, what an air of self-confidence, what a stride. He's not for war, he's all for love. No adventures for him."
"Have we discussed Clearchos as an adviser?" queried the first ephor.
"Knows all our fighters," said the second ephor.
"Totally patriotic," said the third.
"Silent as a tombstone," said the fourth.
"Never dabbles in intrigues or politics," said the fifth. "Has nothing to do with any cabal, faction or party, favors neither of the kings."
"We seem to see a light," chirped the first ephor.
Sparta was never a handsome town. Most of its houses were one-story structures of unburnt brick, white-washed, flat-roofed and, as all openings, save one door, faced the courtyards, presenting blank walls toward the narrow streets. The main square of the town was surrounded by public buildings of limestone painted white. Of these the largest and finest was the town hall. Its lower floor was occupied by the great dining- room where the officials of the nation messed, and by its kitchen and other service quarters. Round it were the colonnaded porticoes which served as clubrooms to the elders of the outdoor-loving aristocracy. Facing the square it had a second story and in the largest room of this the ephors, for the sake of privacy, held their meetings. From the window all five gazed across the market-place at the tall, dark, angular man who strode slowly past group after group, his bronzed, ruddy face lit up by a frigid smile, his look far off, acknowledging each greeting by a stiff nod.
"Send for him," said the second ephor.
The fifth ephor unbarred the door, stepped out and called:
"Send up my boy."
A slave came in, an impudent faced middle-aged Asiatic clad only in a loin cloth and a patch-work cloak most of which dangled behind him.
"Now look me square in the eyes," said the fifth ephor, "and be ready to repeat all I say. Go back where you were before and sit down again. Stay there till no one is watching you; then stroll about until you find a slave idling. Instruct him to find Clearchos of Amyclae and to tell him to enter the kitchen and ask for the third cook. Watch the cook and when Clearchos comes in follow him and bring him up the rear staircase without attracting attention. Now repeat all that."
The Lydian went over what had been said, was dismissed, saluted and went out.
For perhaps half an hour the ephors dealt with other matters, then Clearchos was ushered in. After the usher left the door was rebarred. Clearchos gravely saluted, without speaking any word, was offered a stool by a gesture of the first ephor, and seated himself in silence. He wore a black-felt traveling hat whose hemispherical crown fitted close to his head like a cap and whose broad brim shaded his dark face. He kept it on, as it was no part of Greek manners to remove one's hat. A voluminous red cloak, with a broad wall-of-Troy border done in black, wrapped him from his neck to his ankles. His military boots were of red leather, gilded along the edges of the soles after the fashion of Lydian and other Asiatic bootmakers. Seated he regarded steadfastly this autocratic committee, the five irresponsible senilities who created, guided and drove the entire foreign policy of Lacedaemon. As ostentatious models of austerity they were all barefooted and clad in scanty cloaks of the roughest woolen cloth, woven of coarse undyed wool of black sheep. Their proud, stern, crafty faces suited perfectly with their garb.
The first ephor spoke:
"It will be necessary for you to make formal oath of secrecy as to all that passes here," he said. "We desire to consult you on matters of high policy."
Clearchos stood up, lifted both hands palm up and out, after the manner of the Greeks in supplication, and with raised face solemnly invoked upon himself the perpetual wrath of Zeus the Savior and Herakles of Guidance if he betrayed by word, silence, motion or look anything he learned while before the council.
"Will that suffice?" he asked. The ephors nodded and he reseated himself, facing the five silent elders. They remained silent for some time, then the eldest ephor spoke.
"The late Shah of Persia has left several sons."
"You need not say another word," said Clearchos, "I know just what you want."
"Tell us then," said the second ephor.
"Most friendly to Sparta of the present Shah's brothers," said Clearchos, "is the satrap of Lydia, who has supplied us with money to retrieve our repeated disasters and by whose aid we have finally defeated the Athenians. He poured gold into our often-emptied treasury partly because of his family's hereditary grudge against the Athenians, but also because of his ulterior motives. Not without agreements on our part of furtherance for his schemes has he parted with so much treasure. In our last and bitterest need he probably exacted explicit contracts before he aided us. Now that we have succeeded fully, he perhaps demands requital. He aims to oust his brother from the throne and to be Shah in his stead. He knows the excellence of our men, drill and tactics. He considers that a compact body of our infantry, well led, would give him the best prospect of victory in his con- templated dash for the tiara. He has perhaps insisted that you fulfil specific treaties to which you are bound by oath."
"Go on," said the first ephor.
"If you help him and he fails, Artaxerxes will be bitterly hostile to Sparta and Persia can still do us much harm. If you refuse aid and Cyrus succeeds, his wrath will be a far more serious danger, for he is a prompt and resourceful man and might even yet revive the power of Athens against us with a league greater than ever. You are in a quandary."
"And we ask your advice," said the first ephor.
"My business is fighting, not diplomacy," said Clearchos. "I am no originator of schemes. Tell me what you want done and I can accept or refuse. Give me an outline of two or more plans and I can reject all or choose the best."
The ephors glanced at each other.
"Tell him," said the fourth ephor, "he can be trusted."
The first ephor spoke:
"Our plan is to find a man able to attract a large force of volunteers, able to head it intelligently in camp or campaign, able to deal with foreigners, especially Asiatics, able to seem to know nothing, willing to risk his citizenship and life. He must apply openly for permission to raise a force on his own responsibility for operations of his own devising in Thrace: say about Perinthus. We must appear to weigh the matter and to keep him waiting. He must go through the motions of bringing to bear on us all the influence he can command from his family, his connection and his friends. We must appear to consent reluctantly, as if overpersuaded. He must raise a force of five thousand men or more, all from the Peloponnesus. He should muster it at Corinth. Then we shall appear to change our minds. We shall summon him to return to Sparta. He must ignore the summons and press his preparations for departure. We shall summon him a second time, threatening him with disgrace, loss of rights and even sentence of banishment or death unless he obeys. This must be done publicly. He must refuse to obey. We shall order the harmost at Corinth to request the ctiy to arrest him. He must escape by some trick. Then we shall publicly condemn him to death as recalcitrant. He must carry on his contemplated operations in Thrace until Cyrus needs him."
"And then," said Clearchos as the speaker paused, "if the expedition fails you can disclaim any responsibility and can say to the Shah that you had no hand in it, its leader was a disgraced exile, condemned and banished long before the rebellion. If the attempt fails the man will lose his life or, if he escapes, will remain an exile. If the attempt succeeds you might rescind the sentence against him and pardon his disobedience. I see."
"Can you find us the right man?" asked the first ephor.
"I need some days to think," said Clearchos, "I do not think promptly. I must make no recommendations that you will reject."
The buildings of a Spartan farm were customarily set round a courtyard upon which they all faced. They were usually of unburnt brick, much like the adobe of Spanish America. The farmhouse was generally a modest cottage, very simple and plain, floored with beaten clay, and roofed with sod or, at more prosperous farms, thatched with straw. Rough, unbarked trunks of young trees, cut with a fork at the top, supporting low shed-like roofs, the prototype of those stone-pillared porticoes which adorned Greek cities, formed a primitive colonnade round the courtyard. In these earth-floored verandas or in front of them most of the household and farm work was done, for the Greeks loved the open air.
The morning of the next day was warm and still, overhead the sky was deep blue and across it marched slowly isolated clouds dazzling white and so clear of outline that they had a convincing look of solidity. Their dun-brown shadows slid serially down the immense slope of Taygetus and swept across the valley of the Eurotas with an alternate impression of ease and effort as their speed increased in diving into each hollow and diminished in trailing up each ridge. An hour or two before noon Clearchos stopped in the gateway and surveyed such a farmyard. In it were a woman, two children and several dogs. The dogs were no common curs to bark and run and snarl at a stranger. Big Molossians they, short-haired, fawn-colored, suggesting lionesses in their build and pose, the fine flower of the dog-breeding of classic time. A man might trade a saddle-horse for two brace of them and know that he had made a good bargain, for they were not only strong and fierce but were dependable, canny brutes, quick to fall upon an intruder once they had concluded he was dangerous, murderous to strange Helots, but warily polite to men in gentlemen's garb. Not one of them so much as growled. Two sat up, but the rest merely cocked one ear, and lay as they were, one eye fixed on the stranger, unhurriedly taking his measure. The children were at play. The girl, a milk-skinned black-haired child of about twelve, bareheaded, barefoot and clad only in a short blue tunic, held a bow and, when Clearchos first saw her, was nocking an arrow. Without moving from her archer's posture, feet wide apart and every muscle braced, she turned her head for one swift glance as the dogs sat up; then she resumed her deliberate aim. The soldier noted that the bow was too heavy for her and that, strain as she would, she could not pull her arrow to the head. She was aiming at an old shield set against the wall of one of the granaries. She hit it fair, a trifle low and to the left. The boy, smaller and younger than his sister, sat on a stool, his tunic was blue also and like her he was hatless and barefoot. His legs were skinny and shriveled. He kept glancing at his sister, now and again, but he was, yes he was, (Clearchos looked twice), spinning, really spinning. He was left-handed, held the distaff in his right and twirled the spindle with his left. It reached the ground just as the visitor caught sight of him and he wound up the thread deftly, like one used to it, not at all like a boy playing girl for the moment. He paid no heed to the stranger, who took in all else in the courtyard with a glance or two, and whose eyes thereafter dwelt upon its mistress.
Under one of the rustic porticoes, in a big, solidly-timbered, carved chair, she sat; wearing a soft, pale gray robe. She was spinning, spinning steadily and evenly with a very graceful motion. She was tall, like all Spartan women, with that magnificent poise of the maidens and matrons of Caryae, which has perpetuated its name in our architecture. Fair-skinned, brown-haired and blue-eyed, her bearing interpreted a proud dignity, veiled by gentleness and good will. At sight of the stranger her face set. She gazed at him stonily without interrupting her task. They exchanged no greetings.
"And what brings you here?" she demanded harshly.
"You," answered the man of few words.
"If I brought you here," she said, "I send you away again."
"I shall not go without what I came for," he replied.
"And what may that be?" she queried.
"You," again said the man of few words.
"You will never have me, Clearchos," she said, calmly and seriously. "After all these years you are unchanged. No thought of anything except your purpose and no comprehension of how to attain it. But one instinct, to force compliance. Your brow-beating would turn even a willing woman against you. And I am not willing."
He stood silent and she went on.
"I should have given you a welcome. Be seated."
He sat upon a stool some yards from her, his eyes upon her face. She went on spinning, upon her distaff a large ball of wool, four times as much as a woman would usually take up, but which she held as easily as if the distaff were empty. She did not look at her visitor, but at her task or her children. They kept on with their play, the girl shooting her quiver empty and then going to the shield and plucking out of it the blunt target-arrows, the boy spinning. Clearchos followed her eyes toward the boy. At the moment a cloud shadow covered the yard and made even more pitiful the child's gray, leaden complexion, pimply face and deformed legs. As mother and guest shifted their glance their eyes met.
"I had been hoping that you remembered me," he said.
"I am not likely to forget you," she answered.
"I hoped you might remember our childhood, our youth, our love," he groaned.
"I have not forgotten," she said, "not a day, not an hour," she said solemnly.
"And does not your heart soften?" he asked.
"My mother's blood was that of a race of kings," she replied. "We do not transgress our vows. I warned you once, I warned you twice and when finally I swore that everything was at an end between us it was not without days of misery and nights of tears."
"But," he said, "all that is so long ago. I have suffered so long. Can you not relent?"
"My mother," she said, "was Gorgo before me and her mother was Gorgo and hers also and hers. No Gorgo ever relented. Nor I."
"I have been punished enough," he said. "More than enough. And all for a dog and a horse and a slave."
"Clearchos," she said, "you force me to talk. I do not want to talk. You are the only man I ever loved or ever will love. I adored you when I was a toddling child, and you carried me on your back. I loved you all my childish girlhood. Then I worshiped your masterfulness, your sternness, your terrible directness. But when I was a girl grown, almost a woman, it dawned upon me that your savagery was too fierce, too cold, too indomitable. It grew horrible to me. I still trusted you, for I believed you would never be savage to me. But I came to realize that if I stood in your way in one of your rages I should be nothing to you and your rage everything. Then I warned you."
"All vapors," said Clearchos, "evil misconceptions. You keep a grudge too long. And all for a dog a horse and a slave."
"I was angered," she said wearily, "but not so much angered as hurt. I did not care for the dog or the horse or the Helot. I must have held to my vow, but it was not that. I loathed your cruelty or hated your frosty implacability. I loved you, but I came to dread you. And I gave you three warnings."
"All for two beasts and a chattel," he reiterated.
"If you had done it in wrath," she went on, "I might have forgiven it, might not have noticed it, might never have applied it to myself and dreaded you. But you were not excited, you were not wrathful. You were only resolved. You must need teach that dog what you were determined upon. You might have killed the dog at once. I should not have cared. But you must break its spirit and bend it to your will. You told me that no woman could understand dog-breaking. Perhaps I did not, perhaps I do not, though I have seen hundreds of dogs trained, none in that way, but I understand you."
"You did not," said Clearchos, "and you never will. It is a matter of principle with me. There is no use in a disobedient dog, or horse, or slave or army."
"But you were so vindictive to the poor brute," she said, "you felt yourself thwarted unless you wrested its nature to your purposes. You could not kill it and have done. You could not let it be itself. You must torture it toward habits it could not attain."
"Two lives ruined," sneered Clearchos, "all for a dog dead twenty years ago."
"It was not only the dog," she said. "I forgave you that and warned you again. It was the same with the horse. He must be forced to your purpose. You would not trade him or sell him. You could easily have gotten another. But you must needs make him over. And the poor brute tried so and you were so harsh."
"You unhappy, I unhappy," he growled, "all for a horse."
"The second time I forgave you and warned you," she said, "and it was the same with the Helot. You might have led him, or wheedled him or coaxed, you might simply have let him be a while and tried again. But there was no trace in you of trying to learn his nature and make his ways of thought, such as they were, serve you to bring him to what you wanted. No diplomacy for you. It must be coercion, immediate, uncompromising, unrelenting coercion. If you could not succeed by that and at once you felt defeated."
"I have learnt much diplomacy since," put in Clearchos.
"Have you truly?" she asked with an almost startled interest.
"If I have time to think," he replied almost sheepishly. "If an unexpected situation arises I am swept away by my instincts still, and find myself trying to force compliance before I know what I am doing. But give me time and I can temporize and suggest and wheedle with the best of them."
"Well for you, Clearchos," she said, "but of no avail for us. My vow relaxed no more than did your mood. If you had brained the Helot I should not have cared. But he must live and do your will, else you felt thwarted. I saw it would come to the like between you and me, that your inward demon would lash you on to coerce me into alien ways impossible for me. After the second warning I hoped, I prayed that you would not transgress again. But the slave was too much like me for me to be blind any longer. I foresaw years of stubborn tension between you and me, foresaw myself worn out with resistance, foresaw all the more suffering for each of us since we loved each other. It could not be, not for a Gorgo."
"Were you happy with Kunobates?" he asked.
"Happy!" she exclaimed. "All my sons died save that poor child. He was the goodliest of them all and now he is a cripple. There is a Gorgo, there is always a Gorgo. But I have no warrior son."
"I do not mean grief or trouble," said Clearchos, "were you happy with him?"
"No woman," said Gorgo slowly, "is ever happy save with the one man in the world. I was content with Kunobates. He was always kind."
"I had hoped that you might marry again," he said.
"I shall marry Anaxibius," she replied.
"Do you love him?" Clearchos asked fiercely.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "will nothing make you merciful! I love you, I always shall. My vow is between us. This is our last interview. You are tormenting me needlessly. Go. Go."
Clearchos rose, bade her a formal farewell and strode off through the gate.
Two days afterwards he stood before the ephors.
"Have you found your man?" asked the first ephor.
"I trust so."
"Is he able?"
"That is for you to decide."
"Is he desperate?"
"No man alive more so."
"Name him."
"I am the man."