Chapter 14. The Price Achilles Paid

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_ CHAPTER XIV. THE PRICE ACHILLES PAID

The little shop was closed. The fruit-trays had been carried in and the shutters put up, and from an upper window a line of light gleamed on the deserted street. Achilles glanced at it and turned into an alley at the side, groping his way toward the rear. He stopped and fumbled for a knob and rapped sharply. But a hand was already on the door, scrambling to undo it, and an eager face confronted him, flashing white teeth at him. "You come!" said the boy swiftly.

He turned and fled up the stairs and Achilles followed. A faint sense of onions was in the air. Achilles sniffed it gratefully. He remembered suddenly that he had not eaten since morning. But the boy did not pause for him--he was beckoning with mysterious hand from a doorway and Achilles followed. "Alcie--got hurt," whispered the boy. He was trembling with fear and excitement, and he pointed to the bed across the room.

Achilles stepped, with lightest tread, and looked down. A boy, half asleep, murmured and turned his head restlessly. A red-clotted blur ran along the forehead, and the face, streaked with mud, was drawn in a look of pain. As Achilles bent over him, the boy cried out and threw up a hand; then he turned his head, muttering, and dozed again.

Achilles withdrew lightly, beckoning to the boy beside him.

Yaxis followed, his eyes on the figure on the bed. "All day," he said, "he lie sick."

Achilles closed the door softly and turned to him. "Tell me, Yaxis, what happened," he said.

The boy's face opened dramatically. "I look up--I see Alcie--like that--" his gesture fitted to the room--"He stand in door--all covered mud--blood run--cart broke--no fruit--no hat." The boy's hands were everywhere, as he spoke, dispensing fruit, smashing carts and filling up the broken words with horror and a flow of blood. Achilles's face grew grave. The Greeks were not without persecution in the land of freedom, and his boy had lain all day suffering--while he had been lost in the great house by the lake.

He took off his coat and turned back his sleeves. "You bring water," he said gently. "We will see what hurts him."

But the boy had put his supper on the table and was beckoning him with swift gesture. "You eat," he said pleadingly. And Achilles ate hastily and gave directions for the basin of water and towels and a sponge, and the boy carried them into the room beyond.

Half an hour later Alcibiades lay in bed, his clothes removed and the blood washed from his face and hair. The clotted line still oozed a little on the temple and the look of pain had not gone away. Achilles watched him with anxious eyes. He bent over the bed and spoke to him soothingly, his voice gentle as a woman's in its soft Greek accents; but the look of pain in the boy's face deepened and his voice chattered shrill.

They watched the ambulance drive away from in front of the striped awning. Achilles held a card in his thin fingers--a card that would admit him to his boy. Yaxis's eyes were gloomy with dread, and his quick movements were subdued as he went about the business of the shop, carrying the trays of fruit to the stall outside and arranging the fruit under the striped awning. He was not to go out with the push-cart to-day. There was too much work to do--and Achilles could not let the boy go from him. Later, too, Achilles must go to the hospital--and to the big house on the lake, and someone must be left with the shop.

So he kept the boy beside him, looking at him, now and then, with deep, quiet eyes that seemed to see the city taking its toll of life--of children--the children at play and the children at work. This land that he had sought with his boys--where the wind of freedom blew fresh from the prairies and the sea... and even little children were not safe! He seemed to see it--through the day--this great monster that gathered them in--from all lands--and trod them beneath its great feet, crushing them, while they lifted themselves to it and threw themselves--and prayed to it for the new day--that they had come so far to seek.

But when Achilles presented his ticket for the boy, at the hospital door, it was a woman of his own race who met him, dark-eyed and strong--and smiled at him a flash of sympathy. "Yes--he is doing well. They operated at once. Come and see. But you must not speak to him." She led him cautiously down the long corridor between the beds. "See, he is asleep." She bent over him, touching the bandage. Beneath it, the dark skin was pallid, but the breath came easily from the sleeping lips.

She smiled at Achilles, guiding him from the room, ignoring the tears that looked at her. "He is doing well, you see. It was pressure that caused the fever, the bone was not injured. He will recover quickly. Yes. We are glad!"

And Achilles, out under the clear sky, raised his face and caught the sound of the city--its murmured, innumerable toil and the great clang of wheels turning. And he drew a deep, quick breath. A city of power and swift care for its own. The land of many hands reaching out to the world. And Achilles's head lifted itself under the sky; and a mighty force knit within him--a deep, quiet force out of the soul of the past--pledging itself. _

Read next: Chapter 15. The Police Move

Read previous: Chapter 13. Everyone Must Pay

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