This is a chapter of Orpheus with His Lute by W. M. L. Hutchinson.
Orpheus, as I have said already, did not tell the nine sisters quite so much of his story as has been set down here. But he told them as much as he knew himself, and as for the rest, that is to say, the beauty of his singing and the way in which it had wrought upon the woodmen, it was as plain to them as though they had been by while he sang. And how this could be will presently appear. The last thing he told them was his rushing away —he cared not whither— from the sight of his father’s bowed head, believing that even he had turned from him and loved him no longer; and at the thought of that the child wept afresh.
Then the lady who had first spoken to him drew him closer to her and said, looking full into his eyes, “Will you trust me, my child, if I say to you that I know what grieved your father, and it was nothing you have done, nor did he turn from you wittingly, but his mind was far away when you saw his gaze fixed upon you? More I cannot tell you, for the time is not yet come when you will understand all the truth.”
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Orpheus looked earnestly into her great clear eyes, and a weight seemed lifted from his heart.
“Gracious lady,” he said, “indeed I will trust you, for something tells me you are my friend, though I have never seen you before.”
“Are you so sure of that?” said the lady smiling. “Look at me again.”
Orpheus did so, and “O!” he cried. “It was your face I saw when I drank out of this well, before I fell asleep.”
“Then you must have seen it before,” said the lady, “for this is the Well of Memory, and when anyone drinks of it, it shows him something he remembers, though he may not know he remembers it.”
“It is all so strange here,” said Orpheus slowly, “that I am hardly sure if I am awake or dreaming, but now I do feel that I have seen you — long ago when I was very little. May I not ask, lady, when it was, and who you are?”
“I am called Calliope,” she said, “and this much I will tell you, that you have no nearer or dearer friend than I am. Once, years ago, you did see me, and I have often been with you when you saw me not, and you have heard my voice in many a dream. But you are not dreaming now, little Orpheus. Come, are you not weary still, and hungry? We have better fare for you here than the wild raspberries that you found while you were wandering hither.”
So saying, she arose, stepped to the nearest tree, and from a hollow within it drew forth a piece of honeycomb, brimful of amber honey. Another of the sisters, taking up a hollow wand of fennel, sank it deep into the yielding sward, and lo, a jet of warm white milk spouted therefrom, which a third sister caught in a golden bowl. Calliope mingled honey and milk together, and cast the seeds of a certain flower into the posset, and gave it to the wondering child. He drank and was refreshed, and all weariness passed away from him.
Then these fairy ladies began to speak to him again of the desire he had to become a minstrel, and he told them sadly that he saw it could never be; he knew nothing —how should he?— of a real minstrel’s lore — tales of the mighty deeds of gods and heroes. These alone were what men cared to hear, and there was no one in the forest who could teach them to him. No, he would sing no more, except to trees and flowers, for they, perhaps, could understand his singing; but to his own kind it was plainly a foolish and a hateful thing.
“Child,” said Calliope, “what if were granted you to find teachers in secret, singers who have heard like you the music of winds and waters, but have heard also the music made in heaven by bright Apollo’s lute, and are wise with all the wisdom of that golden-haired god, who is both minstrel and seer? What if they, who know the number of the ocean sands and of the forest leaves, and all things that have been, and are, and are to come, should give you so much of their knowledge as it is lawful for a mortal to enjoy? Your look tells me that you guess of whom I speak. Yes, it is we, my sisters and I, who can do this for you, if you desire it.”
“I desire it with my whole heart,” said Orpheus, his voice trembling with awe and wonder.
“Nay,” said Calliope. “Hear me a moment yet. A choice is set before you this night, for you are come to the parting of two ways. It is in our power to blot from your remembrance all that has passed since you heard the minstrel in the village, and make others forget also that you sang to them as you did. So one way you may take is to return home and live the life of other woodmen until you grow like them, and the desire of knowledge and of song is dead in you. Ah, you shrink, Orpheus; but I promise you this: along that road lies happiness, a quiet mind, and length of days. Will you not follow it, dear child?”
“Tell me of the other road,” answered Orpheus.
“If you choose it,” went on Calliope in a sadder tone, “it will indeed lead you to your heart’s desire, but though it looks all sunshine to you now, you must pass through a dark, chill valley to your journey’s end. It is the way of knowledge, and where knowledge is there must sorrow be also. Think awhile which you will choose. You may live peaceful and contented on your own loved hillside, a simple woodman, like your father before you, until death takes you gently at last in a green old age. Or, by our aid, you may become a greater minstrel than the world has ever seen, and win yourself an unfading crown — yet it shall be bought with your tears and you shall wear it on earth but a brief while.”
“I have chosen,” cried Orpheus eagerly; “do not chide me for haste, wisest lady, for were I to think a whole year I know I should choose at any cost to be the greatest minstrel in the world. There is only one thing,” he added doubtfully, “if I choose that, may I still go home to my father? Because, if I may not, I must give it up. I could not bear to leave him all alone, grieving and thinking I have come to harm.”
“Fear not for that,” said Calliope. “You shall be with him by next noontide, only we lay this charge upon you, that you tell him neither where you have been nor with whom you have spoken. He will not question you, for a messenger has set his mind at rest about your absence.”
Then Orpheus said again that he had made his choice to become a minstrel, and at that the other sisters smiled on him more sweetly than ever; but he heard Calliope sigh.
Yet she said no word more, then or after, against his choice, for it is the way of immortals when they offer their gifts to men to warn them once, and once only, what may come of taking those gifts. So, in another moment, she too gave him a radiant smile, and it was even blithely that she spoke to one of her sisters.
“Thalia,” she said, “this is our fosterling and pupil henceforward. How shall we begin to teach him the things a minstrel must know?”
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Thalia answered only with a laugh, but she beckoned Orpheus to her side. He thought that amongst these lovely ladies she was the loveliest, with her mirthful face and black eyes, whose sidelong glance seemed half-mocking, half-caressing. She shook her head as he stood looking at her, kissed him on his curls and laughed again. “No, no,” she said, “you will not think me the fairest by and by. Calliope asks me what we shall teach you first. Now I love laughter so well that I would fain teach you to be merry and put away grave thoughts, but I read in your face that you will never be servant of mine. I think,” she added, turning to another of the nine, “that you, Melpomene, should know better than I what lessons befit this demure young scholar.”
“My lessons,” answered Melpomene in slow, deep tones, “are not for a child to learn.”
Orpheus looked at the speaker with surprise, for he saw that while all the sisters were much alike in form and countenance, she resembled Thalia so singularly that these two seemed to be twins. Only Melpomene’s face was the saddest he had ever seen, and in her eyes, black like Thalia’s, dwelt a sombre fire. He now noticed also that these two carried each a waxen mask slung by a ribbon from her girdle, not of the grotesque sort he had seen mummers wear at vintage time, but delicately moulded in the semblance of a woman’s face. You would have said that Thalia’s mask was the portrait of herself, and the other of Melpomene, if her calm visage could ever be touched with mortal anguish.
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