A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. by - (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

of a chromatic series. And so Cornelia passed the morning in a mood of joyful discontent. Lucius Ahenobarbus, who came to have his usual passage of arms with her, found her so extremely affable, yet half-preoccupied, that he was puzzled, yet on the whole delighted. "She must be yielding," he mentally commented; and when they played at draughts, Cornelia actually allowed herself to be beaten. Ahenobarbus started off for Puteoli in an excellent humour. His litter had barely swung down the road from the villa before Cassandra was knocking at her mistress's chamber door.

"Io! domina," was her joyful exclamation, "I think I have got every eavesdropper out of the way. Ahenobarbus is off for Puteoli. I have cooked up a story to keep the freedmen and other busybodies off. You have a desperate headache, and cannot leave the room, nor see any one. But remember the terrace over the water, where the colonnade shuts it in on all sides but toward the sea. This afternoon, if a boat with two strange-looking fishermen passes under the embankment, don't be surprised."

And having imparted this precious bit of information, the woman was off. Drusus's gold pieces had made her the most successful of schemers.

II

Cornelia feigned her headache, and succeeded in making herself so thoroughly petulant and exacting to all her maids, that when she ordered them out of the room, and told them on no account to disturb her in any respect for the rest of the day, they "rejoiced with trembling," and had no anxiety to thrust their attentions upon so unreasonable a mistress. And a little while later a visit of a strolling juggler—whose call had perhaps been prompted by Cassandra—made their respite from duty doubly welcome.

Cornelia was left to herself, and spent the next hour in a division of labour before her silver wall-mirror, dressing—something which was sufficiently troublesome for her, accustomed to the services of a bevy of maids—and at the window, gazing toward Puteoli for the fishing-boat that seemed never in sight. At last the toilet was completed to her satisfaction. Cornelia surveyed herself in her best silken purple flounced stola, thrust the last pin into her hair, and confined it all in a net of golden thread. Roman maidens were not as a rule taught to be modest about their charms, and Cornelia, with perfect frankness, said aloud to herself, "You are so beautiful that Drusus can't help loving you;" and with this candid confession, she was again on the terrace, straining her eyes toward Puteoli. Boats came, boats went, but there was none that approached the villa; and Cornelia began to harbour dark thoughts against Cassandra.

"If the wretched woman had played false to her mistress again—" but the threat was never formulated. There was a chink and click of a pair of oars moving on their thole-pins. For an instant a skiff was visible at the foot of the embankment; two occupants were in it. The boat disappeared under the friendly cover of the protecting sea-wall of the lower terrace. There was a little landing-place here, with a few steps leading upward, where now and then a yacht was moored. The embankment shut off this tiny wharf from view on either side. Cornelia dared not leave the upper terrace. Her heart beat faster and faster. Below she heard the slap, slap, of the waves on the sea-wall, and a rattle of rings and ropes as some skiff was being made fast. An instant more and Drusus was coming, with quick, athletic bounds, up the stairway to the second terrace. It was he! she saw him! In her eyes he was everything in physique and virile beauty that a maiden of the Republic could desire! The bitterness and waiting of months were worth the blessedness of the instant. Cornelia never knew what Drusus said to her, or what she said to him. She only knew that he was holding her in his strong arms and gazing into her eyes; while the hearts of both talked to one another so fast that they had neither time nor need for words. They were happy, happy! Long it was before their utterance passed beyond the merest words of endearment; longer still before they were composed enough for Cornelia to listen to Drusus while he gave his own account of Mamercus's heroic resistance to Dumnorix's gang at Præneste; and told of his own visit to Ravenna, of his intense admiration for the proconsul of the two Gauls; and of how he had come to Puteoli and opened communications with Cassandra, through Cappadox, the trusty body-servant who in the guise of a fisherman was waiting in the boat below.

"And as Homer puts it, so with us," cried Cornelia, at length: "'And so the pair had joy in happy love, and joyed in talking too, and each relating; she, the royal lady, what she had endured at home, watching the wasteful throng of suitors; and he, high-born Odysseus, what miseries he brought on other men, and bore himself in anguish;—all he told, and she was glad to hear.'"

So laughed Cornelia when all their stories were finished, likening their reunion to that of the son of Laërtes and the long-faithful Penelope.

"How long were Penelope and Odysseus asunder?" quoth Drusus.

"Twenty years."

"Vah! We have not been sundered twenty months or one-third as many. How shall we make the time fly more rapidly?"

"I know not," said Cornelia, for the first time looking down and sighing, "a lifetime seems very long; but lifetimes will pass. I shall be an old woman in a few years; and my hair will be all grey, and you won't love me."

"Eho," cried Drusus, "do you think I love you for your hair?"

"I don't know," replied Cornelia, shaking her head, "I am afraid so. What is there in me more than any other woman that you should love; except—" and here she raised her face half-seriously, half in play—"I am very beautiful? Ah! if I were a man, I would have something else to be loved for; I would have eloquence, or strength, or power of command, or wisdom in philosophy. But no, I can be loved for only two things; an ignoble or a poor man would take me if I were hideous as Atropos, for I am noble, and, if my uncle were an honest guardian, rich. But you need not regard these at all, so—" and she brushed her face across Drusus's cheek, touching it with her hair.

"O Cornelia," cried the young man, out of the fulness of his heart, "we must not waste this precious time asking why we love each other. Love each other we do as long as we view the sun. O carissima! we cannot trust ourselves to look too deeply into the whys and wherefores of things. We men and women are so ignorant! We know nothing. What is all our philosophy—words! What is all our state religion—empty form! What is all our life—a dream, mostly evil, that comes out of the eternal unconscious sleep and into that unconscious sleep will return! And yet not all a dream; for when I feel your hands in mine I know that I am not dreaming—for dreamers feel nothing so delicious as this! Not long ago I recalled what old Artabanus said to King Xerxes when the millions of Persia passed in review before their lord at Abydos, 'Short as our time is, death, through the wretchedness of our life, is the most sweet refuge of our race; and God, who gives us tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in His very gift, to be envious.' And I thought, 'How wise was the Persian!' And then I thought, 'No, though to live were to drag one's days in torture and in woe, if only love come once into life, an eternity of misery is endurable; yes, to be chained forever, as Prometheus, on drearest mountain crag, if only the fire which is stolen be that which kindles soul by soul.'"

"Ah!" cried Cornelia, "if only these were to be real souls! But what can we say? See my Lucretius here; read: 'I have shown the soul to be formed fine and to be of minute bodies and made up of much smaller first-beginnings than the liquid air, or mist, or smoke. As you see water, when the vessels are shattered, flow away on every side, and as mist and smoke vanish away into the air, believe that the soul, too, is shed abroad, and perishes much more quickly and dissolves sooner into its first bodies, when once it has been taken out of the limbs of a man and has withdrawn.' O Quintus, is the thing within me that loves you lighter, more fragile, than smoke? Shall I blow away, and vanish into nothingness? It is that which affrights me!"

And Drusus tried as best he might to comfort her, telling her there was no danger that she or he would be dissipated speedily, and that she must not fret her dear head with things that set the sagest greybeards a-wrangling. Then he told her about the political world, and how in a month at most either every cloud would have cleared away, and Lentulus be in no position to resist the legal claims which Drusus had on the hand of his niece; or, if war came, if fortune but favoured Cæsar, Cornelia's waiting for deliverance would not be for long. Drusus did not dwell on the alternative presented if civic strife came to arms; he only knew that, come what might, Cornelia could never be driven to become the bride of Lucius Ahenobarbus; and he had no need to exact a new pledge of her faithful devotion.

So at last, like everything terrestrial that is sweet and lovely, the slowly advancing afternoon warned Drusus that for this day, at least, they must separate.

"I will come again to-morrow, or the next day, if Cassandra can so arrange," said he, tearing himself away. "But part to-night we must, nor will it make amends to imitate Carbo, who, when he was being led to execution, was suddenly seized with a pain in the stomach, and begged not to be beheaded until he should feel a little better."

He kissed her, strained her to his breast, and stepped toward the landing-place. Cappadox had taken the boat out from the moorings to minimize a chance of discovery by some one in the house. Drusus was just turning for a last embrace, when many voices and the plash of oars sounded below. Cornelia staggered with dread.

"It's Ahenobarbus," she gasped, in a deathly whisper; "he sometimes comes back from Puteoli by boat. He will murder you when he finds you here!"

"Can't I escape through the house?"

The words, however, were no sooner out of Drusus's mouth, than Lucius Ahenobarbus, dressed in the most fashionably cut scarlet lacerna, perfumed and coiffured to a nicety, appeared on the terrace. Some evil genius had led him straight up without the least delay.

It was the first time that the two enemies had met face to face since Drusus had declined the invitation to Marcus Læca's supper. Be it said to Lucius's credit that he sensed the situation with only the minimum of confusion, and instantly realized all of Cornelia's worst fears. Drusus had drawn back from the steps to the lower terrace, and stood with stern brow and knotted fist, trapped by a blunder that could hardly have been guarded against, no submissive victim to what fate had in store. Cornelia, for once quite distraught with terror, cowered on a bench, unable to scream through sheer fright.

"Salve! amice," was the satirical salutation of Ahenobarbus. "How excellently well met. Heus! Phaon, bring your boatmen, quick! Not an instant to lose!"

"Pity! mercy!" gasped Cornelia, "I will do anything for you, but spare him;" and she made as if to fall on her knees before Ahenobarbus.

"Girl!" Drusus had never spoken in that way to her before; his tones were cold as ice. "Go into the house! Your place is not here. If Lucius Ahenobarbus intends to murder me—"

The boatmen and two or three other slaves that were always at Ahenobarbus's heels were crowding up on to the terrace ready to do their master's bidding.

"Throw me that fellow over the balcony," ordered Lucius, his sense of triumph and opportunity mastering every fear that Flaccus would execute his threat of prosecution. "See that he does not float!"

Cornelia found her voice. She screamed, screamed shrilly, and ran into the house. Already the familia was alarmed. Two or three freedmen of Lentulus were rushing toward the terrace. They were murdering Quintus! He was resisting, resisting with all the powers of a wild animal driven to its last lair. Outside, on the terrace, where but an instant before she and her lover were cooing in delicious ecstasy, there were oaths, blows, and the sharp pants and howls of mortal struggle. And she could do nothing—nothing! And it was through his love for her that Drusus was to go down to his untimely grave! The seconds of struggle and anguish moved on leaden feet. Every breath was agony, every sound maddening. And she could do nothing—nothing. Still