CHAPTER VI
DEAD LEAVES
The stars shone brilliantly down on the roofs of the great city—roofs that covered in how various a multitude of hopes, fears, wishes, crimes, joys, study, debaucheries, toil, and repose. What enormities were veiled by a tile some half an inch thick! What contrasts separated by a partition of a deal plank, and a crevice stopped with mortar! Here, a poor worn son of toil, working with bleared eyes and hollow cheeks to complete the pittance that a whole day’s labour was insufficient to attain; there, a sleek pampered slave, snoring greasily on his pallet, drenched with pilfered wine, and gorged with the fat leavings of his master’s meal. On this side the street, a whole family penned helplessly together in a stifling garret; on that, a spacious palace, with marble floors, and airy halls, and lofty corridors, devoted to the occasional convenience and the shameful pleasures of one man—a patrician in rank, a senator in office; yet, notwithstanding, a profligate, a coward, a traitor, and a debauchee. Could those roofs have been taken off; could those chambers have been bared to the million eyes of night that seemed to be watching her so intently, what a mass of corruption would Imperial Rome have laid bare! There were plague-spots under her purple, festering and spreading and eating into the very marrow of the mistress of the world. Up six storeys, under the slanting roof, in a miserable garret, a scene was being enacted, bad as it was, far below the nightly average of vice and treachery in Rome.
Dismissed from their patron’s house when he had no further need of their attendance, and, so to speak, off duty for the day, Damasippus and Oarses had betaken themselves to their home in order to prepare for the exploits of the night. That home was of the cheapest and most wretched among the many cheap and wretched lodgings to be found in the overgrown yet crowded city. Four bare walls bulging and [pg 201]blistered with the heat, supported the naked rafters on which rested the tiles, yet glowing from an afternoon sun. A wooden bedstead, rickety and creaking, with a coarse pallet, through the rents of which the straw peeped and rustled, occupied one corner, and a broken jar of common earthenware, but of a sightly design copied from the Greek, half-full of tepid water, stood in another. These constituted the only furniture of the apartment, except a few irregular shelves filled with unguents, cosmetics, and the inevitable pumice-stone, by which the fashionable Roman studied to eradicate every superfluous hair from his unmanly cheek and limbs. A broken Chiron, in common plaster, yet showing marks of undoubted genius where the shoulders and hoofs of the Centaur had escaped mutilation, kept guard over these treasures, and filled a place that in the pious days of the old Republic, however humble the dwelling, would have been occupied by the Lares and Penates of the hearth. A mouldy crust of bread, slipped from the lid of an open trunk full of clothing, lay on the floor, and a wine-jar emptied to the dregs stood by its side. The two inhabitants, however, of this squalid apartment betrayed in their persons none of the misery in keeping with their dwelling-place. They were tolerably well fed, because their meals were usually furnished at their patron’s expense; they contrived to be well dressed, because a decent and even wealthy appearance was creditable to their patron’s generosity, and indispensable to many of the duties he called upon them to perform—dirty work indeed, but only to be done, nevertheless, with clean clothes and an assured countenance; so that the exterior both of Damasippus and Oarses would have offered no discredit to the ante-room of Cæsar himself. But they were men of pleasure as the word is understood in great cities—men who lived solely for the sensual indulgences of the body; and it was their nature to spend their gains, chiefly ill-gotten, in those debasing luxuries which an insatiable demand enabled Rome to supply to her public at the lowest possible cost, to sun themselves, as it were, in the glare of that gaudy vice which walks abroad in the streets, and then creep back into their loathsome hole, like reptiles as they were.
Damasippus, whose plump well-rounded form and clear colour afforded a remarkable contrast to the lithe shape and sallow tint of Oarses, was the first to speak. He had been watching the Egyptian intently, while the latter went through the painful and elaborate ceremonies of a protracted toilet, rasping his chin with pumice-stone, smoothing and greasing [pg 202]his dark locks with a preparation of lard and perfumed oil, and finally drawing a needle charged with lampblack carefully and painfully through his closed eyelids, in order to lengthen the line of the eye, and give it that soft languishing expression so prized by Orientals of either sex. Damasippus, waxing impatient, then, at the evident satisfaction with which his friend pursued the task of adornment, broke out irritably—
“And of course it is to be the old story again! As usual, mine the trouble, and, by Hercules! no small share of the danger, now that the town is swarming with soldiers, all discontented and ill-paid. While yours, the credit, and very likely the reward, and nothing to do but to whine out a few coaxing syllables, and make yourself as like an old woman as you can. No difficult task either,” he added, with a half-sarcastic, half-good-humoured laugh.
The other lingered before a few inches of cracked mirror, which seemed to rivet his attention, and put the finishing touches to either eyelid with infinite care, ere he replied—
“Every tool to its own work; and every man to his special trade. The wooden-headed mallet to drive home the sharp wedge. The brute force of Damasippus to support the fine skill of Oarses.”
“And the sword of a Roman,” retorted the other, who, like many untried men, was somewhat boastful of his mettle, “to hew a path for the needlework of an Egyptian. Well, at least the needle is in appropriate hands. By all the fountains of Caria thou hast the true feminine leer in thine eye, the very swing of thy draperies seems to say, ‘Follow me, but not too near.’ The clasp of Salmacis herself could not have effected a more perfect transformation. Oarses, thou lookest an ugly old woman to the life!”
In truth the Egyptian’s disguise was now nearly complete. The dark locks, smoothed and flattened, were laid in modest bands about his head; the matronly stole, or gown, gathered at the breast by a broad girdle, and fastened with a handsome clasp high on the shoulder, descended in long sweeping lines to his feet, where it was ornamented by a broad and elaborate flounce of embroidery. Over the whole was disposed in graceful folds a large square shawl of the finest texture, dark-coloured but woven through with glistening golden threads, and further set off by a wide golden fringe. It formed a veil and cloak in one, and might easily be arranged to conceal the figure as well as the face of the wearer. Oarses was not a little proud of the dainty feminine grace with which he wore the head-gear, and as he tripped to and fro across the narrow [pg 203]floor of his garret, it would have taken a sharper eye than that of keen Damasippus himself to detect the disguise of his wily confederate.
“A woman, my friend,” he replied, somewhat testily, “but not such an ugly one, after all; as thou wilt find to thy cost when we betake ourselves to the streets. I look to thee, my Damasippus,” he added maliciously, “to protect thy fair companion from annoyance and insult.”
Damasippus was a coward, and he knew it, so he answered stoutly—
“Let them come, let them come! a dozen at a time if they will. What! a good blade and a light helmet is enough for me, though you put me at half-sword with a whole maniple of gladiators! The patron knows what manhood is, none better. Why should he have selected Damasippus for this enterprise, but that he judges my arm is iron, and my heart is oak?”
“And thy forehead brass,” added the Egyptian, scarcely concealing a contemptuous smile.
“And my forehead brass,” repeated the other, obviously gratified by the compliment. “Nay, friend, the shrinking heart, and the failing arm, and the womanly bearing, are no disgrace, perhaps, to a man born by the tepid Nile; but we who drink from the Tiber here (and very foul it is)—we of the blood of Romulus, the she-wolf’s litter, and the war-god’s line—are never so happy as when our feet are reeling in the press of battle, our hearts leaping to the clash of shields, and our ears deafened by the shout of victory. Hark! what is that?”
The boaster’s face turned very pale, and he hastily unbuckled the sword he had been girding on while he spoke; for a wild, ominous cry came sweeping over the roofs of the adjoining houses, rising and falling, as it seemed, with the sway of deadly strife, and boding, in its fierce fluctuations, to some a cruel triumph, to others a merciless defeat.
Oarses heard it too. His dark face scarce looked like a woman’s now, with its gleam of malicious glee and exulting cunning.
“The old Prætorians are up,” said he quietly. “I have been expecting this for a week. Brave soldier, there will be a fill of fighting for thee this night in the streets; and goodly spoils, too, for the ready hand, and love and wine, and all the rest of it, without the outlay of a farthing.”
“But it will not be safe to be seen in arms now,” gasped Damasippus, sitting down on the tester-bed, with a white [pg 204]flabby face, and a general appearance of being totally unstrung. “Besides,” he added, with a ludicrous attempt at reasserting his dignity, “a brave Roman should not engage in civil war.”
Oarses reflected for a moment, undisturbed by a second shout, that made his frightened companion tremble in every limb; then he smoothed his brows, and spoke in soothing and persuasive tones.
“Dost thou not see, my friend, how all is in favour of our undertaking? Had the city been quiet, we might have aroused attention, and a dozen chance passengers half as brave as thyself might have foiled us at the very moment of success. Now, the streets will be clear of small parties, and it is easy for us to avoid a large body before it approaches. One act of violence amongst the hundreds sure to be committed to-night, will never again be heard of. The three or four resolute slaves under thine orders, will be taken to belong to one or other of the fighting factions, and thus even the patron’s spotless character will escape without a blemish. Besides, in such a turmoil as we are like to have by sundown, a woman might scream her heart out, and nobody would think of noticing her. On with that sword again, my hero, and let us go softly down into the street.”
“But if the old Prætorians succeed,” urged the other, evincing a great disinclination for the adventure, “what will become of Cæsar? and with Cæsar’s fall down goes the patron too, and then who is to bear us harmless from the effects of our expedition to-night?”
“Oh! thick-witted Ajax!” answered the Egyptian, laughing; “bold and strong in action as the lion; but in council innocent as the lamb. Knowest thou the tribune so little as to think he will be on the losing side? If there is tumult in Rome, and revolt, and the city boils and seethes like a huge flesh-pot casting up its choicest morsels to the surface, dost thou suppose that Placidus is not stirring the fire underneath? I tell thee that, come what may of Cæsar to-night, to-morrow will behold the tribune more popular and more powerful than ever; and I for one will beware of disobeying his behests.”
The last argument was not without its effect. Damasippus, though much against the grain, was persuaded that of two perils he had better choose the lesser; and it speaks well for the ascendency gained by Placidus over his followers, that the cleverer and more daring knave should have obeyed him unhesitatingly from self-interest, the ruffian and the coward [pg 205]from fear. Damasippus, then, girding on his sword once more, and assuming as warlike a port as was compatible with his sinking heart, marched down into the street to accompany his disguised companion on their nefarious undertaking, with many personal fears and misgivings for the result.
How different, save in its disquietude, was the noble nature at the same moment seeking repose and finding none, within half a bow-shot of the garret in which these two knaves were plotting. Despite his blameless life, despite his distinguished career, Caius L. Licinius sat and brooded, lonely and sorrowful, in his stately home. In that noble palace, long ranges of galleries and chambers were filled with objects of art and taste, beautiful, and costly, and refined. If a yard of the wall had looked bare, it would have been adorned forthwith by some trophy of barbaric arms taken in warfare. If a corner had seemed empty, it would have been at once filled with an exquisite group of marble, wrought into still life by some Greek artist’s chisel. Not a recess in that pile of building, but spoke of comfort, complete in every respect, and the only empty chamber in the whole was its owner’s heart. Nay, more than empty, for it was haunted by the ghost of a beloved memory, and the happiness that was never to come again.
Cold and dreary is the air of that mysterious tenement where we buried our treasures long ago. Cold and dreary, like the atmosphere of the tomb, but a perfume hangs about it still, because love, being divine, is therefore eternal; and though the turf be laid damp and heavy over the beloved head, our tears fall like the blessed rain from heaven, and water the very barrenness of the grave, till at length, through weary patience and humble resignation, the flowers of hope begin to spring, and faith tells us they shall bloom hereafter, in another and a better world.
Licinius was very lonely, and at a time of life when, perhaps, loneliness is most oppressive to the mind. Youth has so much to anticipate, is so full of hope, is so sanguine, so daring, that its own dreams are sufficient for its sustenance; but in middle age, men have already found out that the mirage is but sand and sunshine after all; they look forward, indeed, still, yet only from habit, and because the excitement that was once such intoxicating rapture, is now but a necessary stimulant. If they have no ties of family, no affections to take them out of themselves, they become pompous triflers, or despondent recluses, according as their temperaments lead them to inordinate self-importance or excessive humility. [pg 206]Not so when the quiver is full, and the hearth is merry with the patter of little feet, and the ring of childish laughter. There is a charm to dispel all the evil, and call up all the good, even of the worst man’s nature, in the soft white brow, pure from the stamp of sin and care, in the bold bright eyes that look up so trustingly to his own. There is a sense of protection and responsibility, that few natures are so depraved as to repudiate, in the household relationship which acknowledges and obeys the father as its head; and there is no man so callous or so reckless, but he would wish to appear nobler and better than he is in the eyes of his child. Licinius had none of these incentives to virtue; but the lofty nature and the loving heart that could worship a memory, and feel that it was a reality still, had kept him pure from vice. He had never of late attached himself much to anything, till Esca became an inmate of his household; but since he had been in habits of daily intercourse with the Briton, a feeling of content and well-being, he would have found it difficult to analyse, had gradually crept over him. Perhaps he would have remained unconscious of his slave’s influence, had it not been for the blank occasioned by his departure. He missed him sadly now, and wondered why, at every moment of the day, he found himself thinking of the pleasant familiar face and frank cordial smile.
So much alone, he had acquired grave habits of reflection, even of that self-examination which is so beneficial an exercise when impartially performed, but which men so rarely practise without a self-deception that obviates all its good effects. This evening he was in a more thoughtful mood than common; this evening, more than ever, it seemed to him that his was an aimless, fruitless life; that he had let the material pleasures of existence slip through his fingers, and taken nothing in exchange. Of what availed his toils, his enterprise, his love of country, his self-denial, his endurance of hardship and privation? What was he the better now, that he had marched, and watched, and bled, and preserved whole colonies for the empire; and sat glorious, crowned with laurels in the triumphal car? He looked round on his stately walls, and the trophies that adorned them, thinking the while that even such a home as this might be purchased too dear at the expense of a lifetime. Gold and marble, corridors and columns, ivory couches and Tyrian carpets, were these equivalents for youth’s toil and manhood’s care, and at last a desolate old age? What was this ambition that led men so irresistibly up the steepest paths, by the brink of such fatal precipices? [pg 207]Had he ever experienced its temptations? He scarcely knew; he could not realise them now. Had Guenebra lived, indeed, and had she been his own, he might have prized honour and renown, and a name that was on all men’s lips, for her dear sake. To see the kind eyes brighten; to call up a smile into the beloved face, that would surely have been reward enough, and that would never be. Then he fell to thinking of the bright days when they were all in all to each other, when the very sky seemed fairer, while he watched for her white dress under the oak-tree. Was he not perfectly happy then? Would he not at least have been perfectly happy could he have called her, as he hoped to do, his own? Honesty answered, No. At the very best there was a vague longing, a something wanting, a sense of insufficiency, of insecurity, and even discontent. If it was so then, how had it been since? Passing over the sharp sudden stroke, so numbing his senses at the time that a long interval had to elapse ere he awoke to its full agony—passing over the subsequent days of yearning, and nights of vain regret, the desolation that laid waste a heart which would bear fruit no more, he reviewed the long years in which he had striven to make duty and the love of country fill the void, and was forced to confess that here, too, all was barren. There was a something ever wanting, even to complete the dull torpor of that resignation which philosophy inculcated, and common sense enjoined. What was it? Licinius could not answer his own question, though he felt that it must have some solution, at which man’s destiny intended him to arrive.
All the Roman knew, all he could realise, was that the spring was gone long ago, with her buds of promise, and her laughing morning skies; that the glory of summer had passed away, with its lustrous beauty and its burnished plains, and its deep dark foliage quivering in the heat; that the blast of autumn had strewn the cold earth now with faded flowers and withered leaves, and all the wreck of all the hopes that blossomed so tenderly, and bloomed so bright and fair. The heaven was cold and grey, and between him and heaven the bare branches waved and nodded, mocking, pointing with spectral fingers to the dull cheerless sky. Could he but have believed, could he but have vaguely imaged to himself that there would come another spring; that belief, that vague imagining, had been to Licinius the one inestimable treasure for which he would have bartered all else in the world.
In vain he sought, and looked about him for something [pg 208]on which to lean; for something out of, and superior to himself, inspiring him with that sense of being protected, for which humanity feels so keen, yet so indefinite, a desire. What is the bravest and wisest of mankind, but a child in the dark, groping for the parental hand that shall guide its uncertain steps? Where was he to find the ideal that he could honestly worship, on the superiority of which he could heartily depend? The mythology of Rome, degraded as it had become, was not yet stripped of all the graceful attributes it owed to its Hellenic origin. That which was Greek, might indeed be evil, yet it could scarce fail to be fair; but what rational man could ground his faith on the theocracy of Olympus, or contemplate with any feeling save disgust that material Pantheism, in which the lowest even of human vices was exalted into a divinity? As well become a worshipper of Isis at once, and prostitute, to the utter degradation of the body, all the noblest and fairest imagery of the mind. No, the deities that Homer sang were fit subjects for the march of those Greek hexameters, sonorous and majestic as the roll of the Ægean sea; fit types of sensuous perfection, to be wrought by the Greek chisel, from out the veined blocks of smooth, white Parian stone; but for man, intellectual man, to bow down before the crafty Hermes, or the thick-witted god of forges, or the ambrosial front of father Jove himself, the least ideal of all, was a simple absurdity, that could scarce impose upon a woman or a child.
Licinius had served in the East, and he bethought him now of a nation against whom he had stood in arms, brave fierce soldiers, men instinct with public virtue and patriotism; whose rites, different from those of all other races, were observed with scrupulous fidelity and self-denial. This people, he had heard, worshipped a God of whom there was no material type, whose being was omnipresent and spiritual, on whom they implicitly depended when all else failed, and trusting in whom they never feared to die. But they admitted none to partake with them in their advantages, and their faith seemed to inculcate hatred of the stranger no less than dissensions and strife amongst themselves.
“Is there nothing, alas! but duty, stern cold duty, to fill this void?” thought Licinius. “Be it so, then; my sword shall be once more at the service of my country, and I will die in my harness like a Roman and a soldier at the last!”
CHAPTER VII
“HABET!”
Hippias, the fencing-master, had completed his preparations for the night. With a certain military instinct, as necessary to his profession as to that of the legitimate soldier, he could rely upon his own dispositions, when they were once made, with perfect confidence, and a total absence of anxiety for the result. Like all men habituated to constant strife, he was never so completely in his element as when surrounded by perils, only to be warded off by cool, vigilant courage; and though he may have had moments in which he longed for the softer joys of affection and repose, it needed but the clang of a buckler, or the gleam of a sword, to rouse him into his fiercer self once more.
It had been his habit to attend Valeria, for the purpose of instructing her in swordsmanship, by an hour’s practice on certain appointed days. Everything connected with the amphitheatre possessed at this period such a morbid fascination for all classes of the Roman people, that even ladies of rank esteemed it a desirable accomplishment to understand the use of the sword; and it is said that on more than one occasion women of noble birth had been known to take part in the deadly games themselves. These, however, were rare instances of such complete defiance of all modesty and even natural feeling; but to thrust, and shout, and stamp, in the conflict of mimic warfare, was simply esteemed the regular exercise and the healthy excitement of every patrician dame who aspired to a fashionable reputation. Such sudorifics, accompanied by excessive use of the bath and a free indulgence in slaking the thirst, arising from so severe a course of treatment, must have been highly detrimental to female beauty; but even this consideration was postponed to the absorbing claims of fashion, and then, as now, a woman was content and pleased to disfigure herself by any process, however painful and inconvenient, providing other women did the same.
[pg 210]It is possible, too, that the manly symmetry of form, the tough thews and sinews of their instructors, were not without effect on pupils, whose hearts softened in proportion as their muscles became hard, and whose whole habits and education tended to interest them in the person and profession of the gladiator. Be this as it may, the fencing-masters of Rome had but little time left on their hands, and, of these, Hippias was doubtless the most sought after by the fair. It was his custom to neglect nothing, however trifling, connected with his calling. No details were too small to be attended to by one whose daily profession taught him that life and victory might depend on the mere quiver of an eyelid, the accidental slip of a buckle; and, besides, he took a strange pride in his deadly trade, and especially in the methodical regularity with which he carried it out. Though bound to-night for the desperate enterprise which should make or mar him; though confident that, in either event, he would to-morrow be far beyond the necessities of a gladiator, it was part of his character to play out his part thoroughly to-day. Valeria would expect him, as usual, before the bathing-hour on the following morning. It was but decent he should leave a message at her house that he might be detained. The very wording of his excuse brought to his mind the possibilities of the next few hours—the many chances of failure in the enterprise, failure which, to him at least, the leader of desperate men, was synonymous with certain death.
To-day, for the first time, as he turned his steps towards her mansion, a soft, half-sorrowful, yet not unpleasing sensation stole into his heart as the image of its mistress rose before him in all the pride of her stately beauty. He had often admired the regularity of her haughty features—had scanned, in his own critical way, with unqualified approval the lines of her noble figure, and the symmetry of her firm, well-turned limbs; had even longed to touch that wealth of silken hair when it shook loose in her exertions, and yet—a strange sensation for such a man—had flinched and felt oppressed when, placing her once in a position of defence, a tress of it had fallen across his hand. Now, it seemed to him that he would give much to live those few moments over again; that he would like to see her once more, if, indeed, as was probable, it would be for the last time; that there was no other woman to be compared with her in Rome; and that, with all her glowing beauty and all her physical attractions, her pride was her greatest charm.
He was a desperate man, about to play a desperate [pg 211]game for life. Such thoughts in such a heart and at such a time quicken with fearful rapidity into evil. Admiration, untempered by the holier leavening of that affection which can only exist in the breast that has kept itself pure, soon grows to cruelty and selfishness. The love of beauty, poisoned by the love of strife, seethes into a fierce passionate longing, less that of the lover for his mistress than of the tiger for its prey. Valeria was a proud woman, the proudest and the fairest in Rome. He drew his breath hard as he thought what a wild triumph it would be to bend that stately neck, and humble that pride to his very feet. Methodical and soldierlike, he had seen to everything with his own eyes. The plot was laid, the conspirators were armed and instructed, there was yet an hour or two to spare before the appointed gathering at the tribune’s house, and that time he resolved should be devoted to Valeria; at least, he would feast his eyes once more on that glorious beauty, of which he now seemed to acknowledge the full power. He would see her, would bid her farewell. She had always welcomed him cordially and kindly; perhaps she would be sorry to lose him altogether. He smiled a very evil smile, though his heart beat faster than it had done since he was a boy, as he halted under the statue of Hermes in her porch.
And Valeria was sitting in her chamber, with her head buried in her hands, and her long brown hair sweeping like a mantle to her feet. All the feelings that could most goad and madden a woman were tearing at her heart. She dared not—for the sake of tottering reason she dared not—think of the tribune’s white face and dropping jaw, and limbs strewed helpless on the couch. She suffered the vision, indeed, to weigh upon her like some oppressive nightmare; but she abstained, with an effort of which she was yet fully conscious, from analysing its meaning or recalling its details, above all, from considering its origin and its effect. No! the image of Esca still filled her brain and her heart. Esca in the amphitheatre; Esca chained and sleeping on the hard hot pavement; Esca walking by her side through the shady streets; and Esca turning away with his noble figure and his manly step, exulting in the liberty that set him free from her!
Then came a rush of those softer feelings, that were required to render her torture unbearable: the sting of what might have been; the picture of herself (she could see herself in her mind’s eye—beautiful and fascinating, in all the advantages of dress and jewels) leaning on that strong [pg 212]arm, and the kind brave face looking down into hers with the protective air that became it so well. To give him all; to tell him all she had risked, all she had done for his sake, and to hear his loving accents in reply! She almost fancied in her dream that this had actually come to pass, so vividly did her heart imagine to itself its dearest longings. Then she saw another figure in the place that ought to be her own—another face into which he was looking as he had never looked in hers. It was the dark-eyed girl’s! The dark-eyed girl, who had been her rival throughout! Would she have done as much for him with her pale face and her frightened, shrinking ways? And now, ere this, he had reached her home, was whispering in her ear, with his arm round her waist. Perhaps he was boasting of the conquest he had made over the haughty Roman lady, and telling her that he had scorned Valeria for her dear sake. Then all that was evil in her nature gained the ascendant, and with the bitter recklessness that has ruined so many an undisciplined heart, she said to herself—“There is no reality but evil. Life is an illusion, and hope a lie. It matters little what becomes of me now!”
When Myrrhina entered she found her lady busied in rearranging the folds of her robe and her disordered tresses. It was no part of Valeria’s character to show by her outward bearing what was passing in her mind, and least of all would she have permitted her attendant to guess at the humiliation she had undergone. The waiting-maid, indeed, was a little puzzled; but she had gained so much knowledge, both by observation and experience, of the strange effects produced by over-excitement on her sex, that she never suffered herself to be surprised at a feminine vagary of any description. Now, though she wondered why Esca was gone, and why her mistress was so reserved and haughty, she refrained discreetly from question or remark, contenting herself with a silent offer of her services, and arranging the brown hair into a plaited coronet on Valeria’s brows, without betraying by her manner that she was conscious anything unusual had taken place.
After a few moments’ silence, her mistress’s voice was sufficiently steadied for her to speak.
“I did not send for you,” said she. “What do you want here?”
Myrrhina’s hands were busied with the long silken tresses, and she held a comb between her teeth. Nevertheless, she answered volubly.
[pg 213]“I would not have disturbed you, madam, this warm, sultry evening—and I rebuked the porter soundly for letting him in; only as he said, to be sure, he never was denied before, and I thought, perhaps, you would not be displeased to see him, if it was only for a few minutes, and he seemed so anxious and hurried—and, indeed, he never has much time to spare, so I bade him wait in the inner hall while I came to let you know.”
Hoping even against hope! She knew it was impossible, yet her heart leapt as she thought—“Oh! if it were only Esca who had turned back!”
“I will see him,” said she quietly, prolonging the illusion by purposely avoiding to ask who this untimely visitor might be.
In another minute Hippias stood before her—Hippias, the fencing-master, a man in whose dangerous career she had always taken a vague interest; whose personal prowess she admired, and whose reputation, such as it was, possessed for her a wild fascination of its own. He was reckless, too, from the very nature of his profession; and she, in her present mood, more reckless, more desperate than any gladiator of them all. It would have done her good to stand, with naked steel, against some fierce wild beast or deadly foe. There was nothing, she felt, that she could not dare to-day. Nerve and brain wound up to the highest pitch of excitement—heart and feelings crushed, and wounded, and sore. When the reaction came, it would necessarily be fatal; when the tide ebbed, it would leave a wearied, helpless sufferer on the shore.
Such was the frame of mind in which Valeria received the gladiator; outwardly impassive—for her colour did not even deepen, nor her breath come quicker at his unexpected appearance—inwardly vexed by a conflict of tumultuous feelings, and longing for any change—any anodyne that could deaden or alleviate her pain. How could she but respond to his manly, respectful farewell? How could she but listen to the few burning words in which he spoke of long-suppressed and hopeless adoration, or pretend not to be interested in the desperate enterprise which he hinted might prevent his ever looking on her fair face again. He soothed her self-love; he roused her curiosity; he set her pride on its broken pedestal again, and propped it with a strong, yet gentle hand; and so the two thunder-clouds drew nearer still and nearer, ere they met, to be destroyed and riven by the lightning their own contact had engendered.
CHAPTER VIII
TOO LATE!
Esca, treading on air, hastened from Valeria’s house with the common selfishness of love, ignoring all the pain and disappointment he had left behind him. The young blood coursed merrily through his veins, and, in spite of his anxiety, he exulted in the sense of being at liberty once more. He was alive, doubtless, to the generosity and devotion of the woman who had set him free, nor was he so blind as to be unaware of the affection that had driven her to such desperate measures for his sake; and in the first glow of a gratitude, that had in it no vestige of tenderer feelings, he had resolved, when his mission was accomplished and Mariamne placed in safety, he would return and throw himself at the Roman lady’s feet once more. But the farther he left her stately porch behind, the weaker became this generous resolution, and ere long he had little difficulty in persuading himself that his first duty was to the Jewess, and that in his future actions he must be guided by circumstances, or, in other words, follow the bent of his own inclinations. Meanwhile, in spite of his wounded foot, he sped on towards the Tiber as fast as, in years gone by, he had followed the lean wolf, or the foam-flecked boar, over the green hills of Britain. The sun had not been down an hour when he entered the well-known street that was now enchanted ground; yet, while he looked up into the darkening sky, his heart turned sick within him at the thought that he might be too late, after all.
The garden-door was open, as she must have left it. She was not, therefore, in the house. He might find her at the riverside, and have the happiness of a few minutes alone with her, ere he brought her back and placed her, for the second time, in safety within her father’s walls. The more prudent course, he confessed to himself at the time, would have been to alarm Eleazar, and put him on the defensive at once; but he had been so long without seeing Mariamne, the peril in which she was placed had so endeared her to him, [pg 215]and his own near approach to death had stamped her image so vividly on his heart, that he could not resist the temptation of seeking her at the water-side, and telling her, unwatched by other ears or eyes, all he had felt and endured since they last parted, and how, for both their sakes, they must never part again.
Full of such thoughts, he ran down to the water’s edge, and sought the broken column where she was accustomed to descend and fill her pitcher from the stream. In vain his eager eye watched for the dark-clad figure and the dear pale face. Once in the deepening twilight his heart leapt as he thought he saw her crouching low beneath the bank, and sank again to find he had been deceived by a fallen slab of stone. Then he turned for one more searching look ere he departed, and his glance rested on a pitcher, broken into a dozen fragments, at his feet. He did not know that it was Mariamne’s. How should he, when a thousand pitchers carried by a thousand women to the Tiber every evening were precisely alike? Yet his blood ran cold through his veins and his fears hurried him back, almost insensibly, to Eleazar’s door, which he burst open without going through the ceremony of knocking.
Her father and his brother were in the house. The former leapt to his feet and snatched a javelin from the wall ere he recognised his visitor. The latter, less prone to do battle at a moment’s notice, laid his hand on Eleazar’s arm, and calmly said—
“It is the friend who is always welcome, and whom we have expected day by day in vain.”
Everything looked so much as usual that for a moment Esca felt almost reassured. It was possible Mariamne might be even now busied with household affairs, safe in the inner chamber. A lover’s bashfulness brought the blood to his cheeks, as he reflected if it were so it would be difficult to account for his unceremonious entrance; but the recollection of her danger soon stifled all such trivial considerations, and he confronted her father impetuously, and asked him, almost in a threatening tone—
“Where is Mariamne?”
Eleazar looked first simply astonished, then somewhat offended. He answered, however, with more command of temper than was his wont.
“My daughter has but now left the house with her pitcher. She will be home again almost immediately; but what is this to thee?”
[pg 216]“What is it to me?” repeated Esca in a voice of thunder, catching hold of his questioner’s arm at the same time with an iron grasp for which the fierce old Jew liked him none the worse—“What is it to thee, to him, to all of us? I tell thee, old man, whilst we are drivelling here, they are bearing her off into captivity ten thousand times worse than death! I heard the plot—I heard it with my own ears, lying chained like a dog on the hard stones. The wicked tribune was to make her his own this very night, and though he has met his reward, the villains that do his bidding have got her in their power ere this. The pure—the loved—the beautiful—Mariamne—Mariamne!”
He hid his face in his hands, and his strong frame shook with agony from head to heel.
It was the turn of Calchas now to start to his feet, and look about him as if in search of a weapon. His first impulse was resistance to oppression, even by the strong hand. With Eleazar, on the contrary, the instincts of the soldier predominated, and the very magnitude of the emergency seemed to endow him with preternatural coolness and composure. He knit his thick brows indeed, and there was a smothered glare in his eye that boded no good to an enemy when the time for an outbreak should arrive, but his voice was low and distinct, as in a few sharp eager questions he gathered the outline of the plot that was to rob him of his daughter. Then he thought for a few seconds ere he spoke.
“The men that were to take her? What were they like? I would fain know them if I came across them.”
His white teeth gleamed like a wild beast’s with a smile ominous of his intentions on their behalf.
“Damasippus and Oarses,” replied the Briton. “The former stout, sleek, heavy, and beetle-browed. The latter pale, dark, and thin. An Egyptian with an Egyptian’s false face, and more than an Egyptian’s cruelty and cunning.”
“Where live they?” asked the Jew, buckling at the same time a formidable two-edged sword to his side.
“In the Flaminian Way,” replied the other. “High up in some garret where we should never find them. But they will not take her there. She is by this time at the other end of the city in the tribune’s house.” And again he groaned in anguish of spirit at the thought.
“And that house?” asked Eleazar, still busied with his warlike preparations. “How is it defended? I know its outside well, and an easy entrance from the wall to the [pg 217]inner court; but what resistance shall we encounter within? what force can the tribune’s people raise at a moment’s outcry?”
“Alas!” answered Esca. “To-night of all nights, the house of Placidus is garrisoned like a fortress. A chosen band of gladiators are to sup with the tribune, and afterwards to take possession of the palace and drag Cæsar from the throne. When they find the banquet prepared for them, I know them too well to think they will separate without partaking of it, even though their host be lying dead on the festal couch. She will become the prey of men like Hippias, Lutorius, and Euchenor. But if we cannot rescue her, at least we may die in the attempt.”
Even in his anxiety for his daughter, such news as this could not but startle the emissary of the Jewish nation. In an instant’s time he had run over its importance, as it regarded his own mission and the probable influence on the destinies of his country. Should the conspiracy succeed, Vitellius might already be numbered with the dead, and instead of that easy self-indulgent glutton, over whom he had already obtained considerable influence, he would have to do with the bold, sagacious, far-seeing general, the remorseless enemy of his nation, whom neither he nor any of his countrymen had ever succeeded in deceiving by stratagem or worsting by force of arms. When the purple descended on Vespasian the doom of Jerusalem was sealed. Nevertheless, Eleazar concentrated his mind on the present emergency. In a few words he laid out his plan for the rescue of his daughter.
“The freedmen’s garret must be our first point of attack,” said he. “The tribune would scarce have ordered them to bring their prize to his house to-night, where there would be so many to dispute it with him, and where dissension would be fatal to his great enterprise. Calchas and I will proceed immediately to the dwelling of this Damasippus and his fellow-villain. Your directions will enable us to find it. You, Esca, speed off at once to the tribune’s house. You will soon learn whether she has been brought there. If so, come to us without delay in the Flaminian Way. I am not entirely without friends even here, and I will call on two or three of my people to help as I go along. Young man, you are bold and true. We will have her out of the tribune’s house if we pull the walls down with our naked hands; and let me but come within reach of the villains who take shelter there”—here his face darkened and his frame quivered in a [pg 218]paroxysm of suppressed fury—“may my father’s tomb be dishonoured, and the name of my mother defiled, if I dip not my hands to the very elbows in their hearts’ blood!”
To be told he was brave and true by her father added fuel to Esca’s enthusiasm. It was indeed much for Eleazar to confess on behalf of a stranger and a heathen, but the fierce old warrior’s heart warmed to a kindred nature that seemed incapable of selfish fear, and he approved hugely, moreover, of the implicit attention with which the Briton listened to his directions, and his readiness for instantaneous action, however desperate. Calchas, too, clasped the young man warmly by the hand.
“We are but three,” said he, “three against a host. Yet I have no fear. I trust in One who never failed His servants yet. One to whom emperors and legions are as a handful of dust before the wind, or a few dried thorns on the beacon-fire. And so do you, my son, so do you, though you know it not. But the time shall come when His very benefits shall compel you to confess your Master, and when in sheer gratitude you shall enrol yourself amongst those who serve Him faithfully even unto death.”
Many a time during that eventful and anxious night had Esca occasion to remember the old man’s solemn words. Its horrors, its catastrophes, its alternations of hope and fear, might have driven one mad, who had nothing to depend upon but his own unaided strength and resolution. Few great actions have been performed, few tasks exacting the noble heroism of endurance fulfilled successfully, without extraneous aid, without the help of some leading principle out of, and superior to, the man. Honour, patriotism, love, loyalty, all have supported their votaries through superhuman exertions and difficulties that seemed insurmountable, teaching them to despise dangers and hardships with a courage sterner than mortals are expected to possess; but none of these can impart that confidence which is born of faith in the believer’s breast;—that confidence which enables him to take good and evil with an equal mind, to look back on the past without a sigh, forward on the future without a fear; and though the present may be all a turmoil of peril, uncertainty, and confusion, to stand calmly in the midst, doing the best he can with a stout heart and an unruffled brow, while he leaves the result fearlessly and trustfully in the hand of God.
Eleazar and Calchas were already equipped for the pursuit. The one armed to the teeth, and looking indeed a formidable enemy; the other mild and hopeful as usual, [pg 219]venerable with his white hair and beard, and carrying but a simple staff for his weapon. In grave silence, but with a grasp of the hand more emphatic than any spoken words, the three parted on their search; Esca threading his way at once through the narrow and devious streets that led towards the tribune’s house—that house which he had left so gladly but a few short hours ago when, rescued by Valeria, he bade her farewell, exulting in the liberty that enabled him to seek Mariamne’s side once more. He soon reached the hated dwelling. All there seemed quiet as the grave. From other quarters of the city indeed there came, now and again, the roar of distant voices which rose and fell at intervals as the tide of tumult ebbed and flowed, but, preoccupied as he was, Esca took little heed of these ominous sounds, for they bore him no intelligence of Mariamne. All was silent in the porch, all was silent in the vestibule and outer hall, but as he ventured across its marble pavement, he heard the bustle of preparation, and the din of flagons within.
It was at the risk of liberty and life, that he crept noiselessly forward, and peeped into the banqueting-hall, which was already partially lighted up for the feast. Shrinking behind a column, he observed the slaves, many of whom he knew well by sight, laying covers, burnishing vases, and otherwise making ready for a sumptuous entertainment. He listened for a few moments, hoping to gather from their conversation some news of the Jewess and her captors. All at once he started and trembled violently. Bold as he was, in common with his northern countrymen a vein of superstition ran through his nature, and though he feared nothing tangible or corporeal, he held in considerable dread all that touched upon the confines of the spiritual and the unknown. There within ten paces of him, ghastly pale, with dark circles round his eyes, and clad in white, stood the figure of the tribune, pointing, as it seemed to him, with shadowy hand at the different couches, and giving directions in a low sepulchral voice for the order of the banquet.
“Not yet!” he heard the apparition exclaim in tones of languid, fretful impatience. “Not come yet! the idle loiterers! Well, she must preside there at the supper-table and take her place at once as mistress here. Ho! slaves! bring more flowers! Fill the tall golden cup with Falernian and set it next to mine!”
Well did Esca know to whom these directions must refer. Though his blood had been chilled for an instant by this reappearance, as he believed it, of his enemy from the grave, [pg 220]he soon collected his scattered energies and summoned his courage back, with the hateful conviction that, alive or dead, the tribune was resolved to possess himself of Mariamne. And this he vowed to prevent, ay, though he should slay his dark-eyed love with his own hand.
It was obvious now that Damasippus and Oarses would bring the captive straight to their patron’s house, that Eleazar and Calchas had gone upon a fool’s errand to the freedmen’s garret in the Flaminian Way. What would he have given to be cheered by the wise counsels of the one, and backed by the strong arm of the other! Would there be time for him to slip from here unobserved, and to summon them to his aid? Three desperate men might cut their way through all the slaves that Placidus could muster, and if they had any chance of success at all it must be before the arrival of the gladiators. But then she was obviously expected every minute. She might arrive—horrible thought!—while he was gone for help, and once in the tribune’s power it would be too late. In his despair the words of Calchas recurred forcibly to his mind. “We are but three,” said the old man, “three against a host, yet I have no fear.” And Esca resolved that though he was but one, he too would have no fear, but would trust implicitly in the award of eternal justice, which would surely interfere to prevent this unholy sacrifice.
Feeling that his sword was loose in its sheath and ready to his hand, holding his breath, and nerving himself for the desperate effort he might be called upon at any moment to make, the Briton stole softly back through the vestibule, and concealed himself behind a marble group in the darkest corner of the porch. Here, with the dogged courage of his race, he made up his mind that he would await the arrival of Mariamne, and rescue her at all hazards, against any odds, or die with her in the attempt.