AND now the
Argonauts were no longer on a ship that was being dashed on by the
sea and beaten upon by the winds. They had houses to live in; they
had honey-tasting things to eat, and when they went through the
island each man might have with him one of the maidens of Lemnos.
It was a change that was welcome to the wearied voyagers.
They helped the
women in the work of the fields; they hunted the beasts with them,
and over and over again they were surprised at how skillfully the
women had ordered all affairs. Everything in Lemnos was strange to
the Argonauts, and they stayed day after day, thinking each day a
fresh adventure.
Sometimes they
would leave the fields and the chase, and this hero or that hero,
with her who was his friend amongst the Lemnian maidens, would go
far into that strange land and look upon lakes that were all
covered with golden and silver water lilies, or would gather the
blue flowers from creepers that grew around dark trees, or would
hide themselves so that they might listen to the quick-moving birds
that sang in the thickets. Perhaps on their way homeward they would
see the Argo in the harbor, and they would
think of Heracles who was aboard, and they would call to him. But
the ship and the voyage they had been on now seemed far away to
them, and the Quest of the Golden Fleece [pg 59] seemed to them a story they had heard
and that they had thought of, but that they could never think on
again with all that fervor.
When Jason
looked on Hypsipyle he saw one who seemed to him to be only
childlike in size. Greatly was he amazed at the words that poured
forth from her as she stood at the stone throne of King Thoas—he
was amazed as one is amazed at the rush of rich notes that comes
from the throat of a little bird; all that she said was made
lightninglike by her eyes—her eyes that were not clear and quiet
like the eyes of the maidens he had seen in Iolcus, but that were
dark and burning. Her mouth was heavy and this heavy mouth gave a
shadow to her face that but for it was all bright and lovely.
Hypsipyle spoke
two languages—one, the language of the mothers of the women of
Lemnos, which was rough and harsh, a speech to be flung out to
slaves, and the other the language of Greece, which their fathers
had spoken, and which Hypsipyle spoke in a way that made it sound
like strange music. She spoke and walked and did all things in a
queenlike way, and Jason could see that, for all her youth and
childlike size, Hypsipyle was one who was a ruler.
From the moment
she took his hand it seemed that she could not bear to be away from
him. Where he walked, she walked too; where he sat she sat before
him, looking at him with her great eyes while she laughed or
sang.
Like the
perfume of strange flowers, like the savor of strange [pg 60] fruit was Hypsipyle to
Jason. Hours and hours he would spend sitting beside her or
watching her while she arrayed herself in white or in brightly
colored garments. Not to the chase and not into the fields did
Jason go, nor did he ever go with the others into the Lemnian land;
all day he sat in the palace with her, watching her, or listening
to her singing, or to the long, fierce speeches that she used to
make to her nurse or to the four maidens who attended her.
In the evening
they would gather in the hall of the palace, the Argonauts and the
Lemnian maidens who were their comrades. There were dances, and
always Jason and Hypsipyle danced together. All the Lemnian maidens
sang beautifully, but none of them had any stories to tell.
And when the
Argonauts would have stories told the Lemnian maidens would forbid
any tale that was about a god or a hero; only stories that were
about the goddesses or about some maiden would they let be
told.
Orpheus, who
knew the histories of the gods, would have told them many stories,
but the only story of his that they would come from the dance to
listen to was a story of the goddesses, of Demeter and her daughter
Persephone.
