Had the girl possessed any real friend, had Nisos, for instance, not been so much younger, or Leipephile not so extremely simple, she might have been drawn out of this embittered isolation, for it was so long after the Trojan War that the ancient rancours in most ordinary minds were beginning to lose their edge, if not to wear out. If only Eurycleia hadn’t been so old it might have been different; but of all people an ancient family-nurse, and one who had nursed, as Eurycleia had, three generations of the same breed, would be the last to have any sensitized imagination left over for sympathetic consideration of the feelings of an alien.
It wasn’t until those heart-breakingly sweet notes — or rather the last long-drawn-out unequalled note — of Pan’s flute had died away that either Arsinöe or Okyrhöe gave a thought to the old Dryad who was the prime instigator of this disturbing event.
When they did turn to her it was simultaneously and with an equal feeling of something like real awe. “Let us help you home to your oak, Dryad,” whispered Okyrhöe; and if Nisos had heard that whisper, to which Arsinöe added a less articulate murmur, he would have had a thrill of real pride at being a native of a Grecian isle rather than of a Trojan or a Theban plain, for clearly so great is the power of a Greek Nymph even in her extreme old age that formidable foreigners are subdued before her.
As they approached the skeleton oak-tree on the bark of which flourished a special kind of rich green moss, as if the tree were already horizontal rather than perpendicular, the Dryad’s supporters both recognized that it was possible to look through the interstices of the bark into the interior wood of the tree which was split into long splintery filaments between which there were already oozing out and crumbling upon the lichen-covered ground certain thick masses of a reddish-brown substance which was the clotted heart-stuff or dust-resolved liver, or conglomerated entrail-matter, of that fast-perishing old tree.
Suddenly the Dryad stood dead-still between them, and laid one withered hand on the sleeve of Okyrhöe and one on the sleeve of Arsinöe.
“Give my farewell to Odysseus, you two. My name-mother is one of the Graces and just at this moment I felt her passing over me, warning me of my end. Zeus, it seems has got one last thunder-bolt left, a very little one, but large enough to dispose of my oak and me. Lest either of you should feel the shock of my destruction, it is important that you should hasten away. Don’t stop running till you reach the entrance to the Hall of the Pillars. There you will be safe. Fare ye well. Let my memory be forgotten!”
So intense was the tone of her words that although all was silent round them Okyrhöe snatched at Arsinöe’s hand and together they fled like a pair of panic-stricken pigeons. They did not stop running till they reached the entrance to the corridor of the Pillars; and then, when they did stop at last with their hands still clasped tight, each of them could hear clearly the beating of her own heart as well as that of her companion. In fact as they stood there in a sort of trance there arose from the pair of them a kind of mathematical and mechanical and wholly impersonal heart-beating, which went on till, in one single blinding flash of lightning, followed by a rolling clap of thunder, the Nymph and the oak-tree, and the stretch of ground where the oak-tree’s roots had been, were reduced simultaneously to black ashes.
“What I don’t understand, dear nurse,” Odysseus was saying at that moment, as together with his new friend Zeuks he watched Eurycleia’s face as he explained his ideas for the calling of the whole people together to listen to his plan for sailing across the drowned continent Atlantis. “What I don’t understand is your objection to my telling the people exactly what I intend to do. Why shouldn’t I tell them, Nurse darling? I shall say that what I want for my sailing is the most necessary thing of all — namely ‘othonia’ or sail-cloth.
“And I’ll call upon them all, upon the whole people of Ithaca to collect sail-cloth for me. What can Krateros Naubolides do to stop the people, my own people of Ithaca, that were my father’s people before me, from collecting enough ‘othonia’ or sail-cloth for my purpose? And then, you see, Nurse darling, if they begin making the excuse that it’s wrong for me, Odysseus the son of Laertes, to leave the rule of this Island to others, I’ve got this brilliant, eloquent, inspired young daughter of Teiresias to help me with them. Don’t you see, Nurse, how she’ll make all the difference at this open ‘agora’ and meeting-place of our people? I’ll call on her, as we used to call on all those prophets of old; and, girl though she is, she’ll do the trick for us, Nurse, my honey! Now do, for the sake of all the gods tell me what’s weighing on your dear mind, for I know something is! Are you afraid that secretive scoundrel Enorches has got some new trick up his sleeve, some dirty, crafty, clever trick that I’ve never thought of, that he will play on me at the last moment?”
Eurycleia gazed intently at him, frowning. Then she suddenly shifted in her seat and stared out of the window. Then she addressed herself to Zeuks. “Did you hear anything, Master?” “I certainly did!” Zeuks answered; and in his turn addressed the King.
“I expect you must have heard it too, my Lord? It didn’t sound as ordinary thunder does at this time of the year either! Something’s going on.”
The old Nurse rose, not without difficulty, and confronted the two men from her full height, one hand resting on the arm of her chair. Her stark gaunt figure towered imposingly over them in the afternoon sunlight which was now pouring into the chamber.
“I think you are right, Master Zeuks,” she said quietly. “If I’m not greatly mistaken that wasn’t ordinary lightning or ordinary thunder. That was a thunderbolt from—”
It was then that there came a hurried step outside Eurycleia’s chamber and with all her simple impulsiveness Leipephile burst in.
The tall beautiful stupid girl was panting like a hunted animal. “What on earth is it?” asked the old Nurse. “What’s happened? Was that a thunderbolt?”
“They’re in the Porch,” stammered Leipephile, recovering her breath with difficulty.
“Who are in the Porch?” cried the Nurse. “For the god’s sake tell us what’s happened, girl!”
“The strange lady in that funny cloak and Arsinöe.”
“Well — why shouldn’t they be in the Porch? Are they hurt? What’s happened?”
“They say that Zeus has thrown a thunderbolt from Mount Gargaros, where he is looking down on the Garden of the Hesperides and on Atlas holding up the sky, and on Poseidon coming up out of the Sea; and on Aidoneus coming up out of Hades. They’ve just met the old Dryad—” Here Odysseus interrupted her. “Met Kleta the Dryad, do you say, girl? What on earth was she doing all that way from her tree?”
“It is the Dryad and her tree, O king,” replied the betrothed of Nisos’ brother; and she spoke with less timidity and shyness now that she was delivering, or being delivered of, her chief news. “Yes, both the Dryad and her tree together, that the Son of Kronos has destroyed with a thunderbolt. The Dryad told them that the thunderbolt he was going to use was a little one and the last he had where he then was. But they told me to tell you that they know why the son of Kronos was angry with the Dryad.” At this point Leipephile paused in her tale and surveyed her audience with the self-satisfied expression that implies the presence of news in the wind that can’t be blurted out in a few words, and can’t possibly be divined or guessed at, even by the cleverest listener. Her three hearers, not missing this expression, patiently imitated Eurycleia who had now resumed her seat at the table.