The night air that blew in their faces felt fresh and cool.
"Listen, my daughter!" said the old woman. "Now you go straight
to your uncle's house! You know the way. If to-morrow dawns well,
I will come and tell you what is happening. Go! Run! And the Holy
Virgin be with you!"
At that moment loud voices came to them from the open window of the
house which they had just left. Mattina thought she caught her name,
and then she heard her master say very distinctly:--
"Go upstairs, now!..." but she did not hear the end of the sentence.
The men of the police must have come, and they were going upstairs
to look for her!
Without a word, she dragged her hand from the old woman's and ran
wildly down the dark street.
She ran on and on, panting, stumbling, falling, picking herself up
again, her plaits of hair which had come loose in the struggle with
her mistress flying behind her. When she came out to the Piræus Road,
where a few people were still about, she stopped, and leaning against
a lamp post, tried with trembling fingers to tie up her hair.
To her uncle's! No! She would not go there!
She had not had time to explain to Kyra Polyxene that her master knew
where the baker's shop was. He had asked her one day. And of course
it was there they would search for her at once. No, no! Not to her
uncle's! But where then? Where?
She tried hard to remember where Antigone had said that her brother
lived. Perhaps she would hide her; she knew how bad mistresses could
be! But try as she would, she could not remember. Athens names were
all new and strange to her.
And there was no one else.
Perhaps she could walk about all night, or sit down on a bench? But
when it dawned, what then? Suddenly she heard running steps in the
street behind her and loud voices, ... men's voices. Was the one
her master's? She looked wildly round like a trapped thing and once
more started running, as she had never run before, down the middle of
the broad road. Every moment it seemed as if a hand were grasping her
shoulder. She flew past the lighted grocer's shop where they might know
her, and her head struck against the open shutter, but she did not feel
the pain. On she ran, her breath coming in loud gasps, and great throbs
beating in her throat. She heard steps again.... Were they behind her?
Suddenly, under a lamp post, she came into violent contact with a big
man, who was walking leisurely before her, his hands crossed behind
his back, fiddling with a short string of black beads.
He caught hold of the lamp post to save himself from falling and
turned round.
"Who falls in this way on people? Have you gone mad, my girl? One
would think someone was hunting you."
It was a Poros voice, and Mattina clung desperately to the baggy blue
breeches of Thanassi Nika, as the old sea-captain bent over her.
"They are! They are!" she cried wildly, "they are hunting me! Save
me! Save me! And may all your dead become saints!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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