Arachne. Georg Ebers
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face.
Impulse urged her to kiss the sufferer, but as she bent over the mourner the copper dish slipped from her knees and fell rattling on the floor.
Ledscha started up in terror, and at the same moment the Alexandrian’s packs of hounds on the shore opposite to the Owl’s Nest began to bark so loudly that the deaf old woman heard the baying as if it came from a great distance; but the girl ran out into the open air and, returning at the end of a few minutes, called joyously to the sorceress from the threshold, “They are coming!”
“They, they,” faltered Tabus, hurriedly pushing her disordered gray hair under the veil on the back of her head, while exclaiming, scarcely able to use her voice in her joyous excitement: “I knew it. He keeps his word. My Satabus is coming. The ducks, the bread, the fish, girl! Good, loyal heart.”
Then a wide, long shadow fell across the dimly lighted room, and from the darkened threshold a strangely deep, gasping peal of laughter rang from a man’s broad breast.
“Satabus! My boy!” the witch’s shriek rose above the peculiar sound.
“Mother!” answered the gray-bearded lips of the pirate.
For one short moment he remained standing at the door with outstretched arms. Then he took a step toward the beloved being from whom he had been separated more than two years, and suddenly throwing himself down before her, while his huge lower limbs covered part of the floor, he stretched his hands toward the little crooked old woman, who had not strength to rise from her crouching posture, and seizing her with loving impetuosity, lifted her as if she were a child, and placing her on his knees, drew her into a close embrace.
Tabus willingly submitted to this act of violence, and passing her thin left arm around her son’s bull neck with her free hand, patted his bearded cheeks, wrinkled brow, and bushy, almost white hair.
No intelligible words passed the lips of either the mother or the son at this meeting; nothing but a confused medley of tender and uncouth natural sounds, which no language knows.
Yet they understood each other, and Ledscha, who had moved silently aside, also comprehended that these low laughs, moans, cries, and stammers were the expressions of love of two deeply agitated hearts, and for a moment an emotion of envy seized her.
The gods had early bereft her of her mother, while this savage fighter against the might of the waves, justice, law, and their pitiless, too powerful defenders, this man, already on the verge of age, still possessed his, and sunned his rude heart in her love.
It was some time before the old pirate had satisfied his yearning for affection and placed his light burden down beside the fire.
Tabus now regained the power to utter distinct words, and, difficult as it was for her half paralyzed tongue to speak, she poured a flood of tender pet names and affectionate thanks upon the head of her rude son, the last one left, who had grown gray in bloody warfare; but with the eyes of her soul she again saw in him the little boy whom, with warm maternal love, she had once pressed to her breast and cradled in her arms.
When, in his rough fashion, he warmly returned her professions of tenderness, her eyes grew wet with tears, and at the question what he could still find in her, a withered, good-for-nothing little creature who just dragged along from one day to another, an object of pity to herself, he again burst into his mighty laugh, and his deep voice shouted: “Do you want to know that? But where would be the lime that holds us on the ships if you were no longer here? The best capture wouldn’t be worth a drachm if we could not say, ‘Hurrah! how pleased the old mother will be when she hears it!’ And when things go badly, when men have been wounded or perished in the sea, we should despair of our lives if we did not know that whatever troubles our hearts the old mother feels, too, and we shall always get from her the kind words needed to press on again. And then, when the strait is sore and life is at stake, whence would come the courage to cast the die if we did not know that you are with us day and night, and will send your spirits to help us if the need is great? Hundreds of times they rushed to our aid just at the right time, and assisted us to hew off the hand of the foe which was already choking us. But that is only something extra, which we could do without, if necessary. That you are here, that a man still has his dear mother, whose heart wishes us everything good and our foes death and destruction, whose aged eyes will weep if anything harms us, that, mother dear, that is the main thing!”
He bent his clumsy figure over her as he spoke, and cautiously, as if he were afraid of doing her some injury, kissed her head with tender care.
Then, rising, he turned to Ledscha, whom he always regarded as his dead son’s betrothed bride, and greeted her with sincere kindness.
Her great beauty strengthened his plan of uniting her to his oldest son, and when the latter entered the house he cast a searching glance at him.
The result was favourable, for a smile of satisfaction flitted over his scarred features.
The young pirate’s stately figure was not inferior in height to the old one’s, but his shoulders were narrower, his features less broad and full, and his hair and beard had the glossy raven hue of the blackbird’s plumage.
The young man paused on the threshold in embarrassment, and gazed at Ledscha with pleased surprise. When he saw her last his grandmother had not been stricken by paralysis, and the girl was the promised wife of his older brother, to whom custom forbade him to raise his eyes.
He had thought of her numberless times as the most desirable of women. Now nothing prevented his wooing her, and finding her far more beautiful than memory had showed her, strengthened his intention of winning her.
This purpose had matured in the utmost secrecy. He had concealed it even from his father and his brother Labaja, who was still keeping watch on the ships, for he had a reserved disposition, and though obliged to obey his father, wherever it was possible he pursued his own way.
Though Satabus shared Hanno’s wish, it vexed him that at this meeting, after so long a separation, his son should neglect his beloved and honoured mother for the sake of a beautiful girl. So, turning his back on Ledscha, he seized the young giant’s shoulder with a powerful grip to drag him toward the old woman; but Hanno perceived his error, and now, in brief but affectionate words, showed his grandmother that he, too, rejoiced at seeing her again.
The sorceress gazed at her grandson’s stalwart figure with a pleasant smile, and, after welcoming him, exclaimed to Ledscha: “It seems as if Abus had risen from the grave.”
The girl vouchsafed her dead lover’s brother a brief glance, and, while pouring oil upon the fish in the pan, answered carelessly: “He is a little like him.”
“Not only in person,” remarked the old pirate, with fatherly pride, and pointing to the broad scar across the young man’s forehead, visible even in the dim light, he added by way of explanation: “When we took vengeance for Abus, he bore away that decoration of honour. The blow nearly made him follow his brother, but the youth first sent the souls of half a dozen enemies to greet him in the nether world.”
Then Ledscha held out her hand to Hanno, and permitted him to detain it till an ardent glance from his black eyes met hers, and she withdrew it blushing. As she did so she said to Tabus: “You can put them on the fire, and there stands whatever else you need. I must go home now.”
In taking leave of the men she asked if she could hope to find them here again the next day. “The full moon will make it damnably light,” replied the father, “but they will scarcely venture to assail the right of asylum, and the ships anchored according to regulation at Tanis, with a cargo of wood from Sinope. Besides, for two years people have believed that we have abandoned these waters, and the guards think that if we should return, the last time to choose would be these bright nights. Still, I should not like to decide anything positively about the morrow until news came from Labaja.”
“You will find me, whatever happens,” Hanno declared after his father had ceased speaking. Old Tabus exchanged a swift glance with her son, and Satabus said: “He is his own master. If I am obliged to go—which may happen—then, my girl, you must