A Friend of Caesar Part 55

"Your presence, sir," she said haughtily, to the h.e.l.lene, "is needed no longer." And she pointed down the gallery.

Pratinas flushed, hesitated as if for once at a loss, and nimbly vanished. Lentulus sat in speechless astonishment "Uncle," continued Cornelia, "what may I do for you? I did not know till last evening that you were here."

But ere the other could reply the figure in the corner had sprung up, and flung itself at the lady's feet.

"Save me! save me! By all that you hold dear, save my life! I have loved you. I thought once that you loved me. Plead for me! Pray for me! Anything that I may but live!"

"_Vah_, wretch!" cried the consular; and he spurned Ahen.o.barbus with his foot. "It is indeed well that you have not married into family of mine! If you can do naught else, you can at least die with dignity as becomes a Roman patrician--and not beg intercession from this woman who has cut herself off from all her kin by disobedience."

"Uncle," cried Cornelia in distress, "must we be foes to the end? Must our last words be of bitterness?"

"Girl," thundered the unbending Lentulus, "when a Roman maiden disobeys, there is no expiation. You are no niece of mine. I care not how you came here. I accept nothing at your hands. I will not hear your story. If I must die, it is to die cursing your name. Go! I have no more words for you!"

But Ahen.o.barbus caught the skirt of Cornelia's robe, and pleaded and moaned. "Let them imprison him in the lowest dungeons, load him with the heaviest fetters; place upon him the most toilsome labour--only let him still see the light and breathe the air!"

"Uncle," said Cornelia, "I will plead for you despite your wrath---though little may my effort avail. You are my father's brother, and neither act of yours nor of mine can make you otherwise.

But as for you, Lucius Ahen.o.barbus,"--and her words came hot and thick, as she hissed out her contempt,--"though I beg for your life, know this, that if I despised you less I would not so do. I despise you too much to hate; and if I ask to have you live, it is because I know the pains of a base and ign.o.ble life are a myriad fold more than those of a swift and honourable death. Were I your judge--I would doom you; doom you _to live_ and know the sting of your ignominy!"

She left them; and hatred and pity, triumph and anguish, mingled within her. She went to the young King Ptolemaeus and besought him to spare the prisoners; the lad professed his inability to take a step without the initiative of Pothinus. She went to Pothinus; the eunuch listened to her courteously, then as courteously told her that grave reasons of state made it impossible to comply with the request--much, as he blandly added, it would delight him personally to gratify her.

Cornelia could do no more. Pratinas she would not appeal to, though he had great influence with Pothinus. She went back to her rooms to spend the day with Fabia, very heavy of heart. The world, as a whole, she beheld as a thing very evil; treachery, guile, wrath, hatred, were everywhere. The sight of Ahen.o.barbus had filled her with loathsome memories of past days. The sunlight fell in bright warm panels over the rich rugs on the floor of her room. The sea-breeze sweeping in from the north blew fresh and sweet; out against the azure light, into which she could gaze, a swarm of swallows was in silhouette--black dots crawling along across the dome of light. Out in one of the public squares of the city great crowds of people were gathering. Cornelia knew the reason of the concourse--the heads of two n.o.ble Romans, just decapitated, were being exposed to the gibes and howls of the coa.r.s.e Greek and Egyptian mob. And Cornelia wished that she were herself a swallow, and might fly up into the face of the sun, until the earth beneath her had vanished.

But while she leaned from the parapet by the window of the room, footsteps sounded on the mosaic pavement without; the drapery in the doorway was flung aside; Agias entered, and after him--another.

II

Drusus ran to Cornelia and caught her in his arms; and she--neither fainted nor turned pale, but gave a little laugh, and cried softly:--

"I always knew you were coming!"

What more followed Agias did not know; his little affair with Artemisia had taught him that his h.e.l.lenic inquisitiveness sometimes would do more harm than good.

Very different from the good-humoured, careless, half-boyish student youth who had driven down the Praeneste road two years before, was the soldierly figure that Cornelia pressed to her heart. The campaigning life had left its mark upon Drusus. Half of a little finger the stroke of a Spanish sword had cleft away at Ilerda; across his forehead was the broad scar left by the fight at Pharsalus, from a blow that he had never felt in the heat of the battle. During the forced marchings and voyages no razor had touched his cheeks, and he was thickly bearded.

But what cared Cornelia? Had not her ideal, her idol, gone forth into the great world and stood its storm and stress, and fought in its battles, and won due glory? Was he not alive, and safe, and in health of mind and body after ten thousand had fallen around him? Were not the clouds sped away, the lightnings ceased? And she? She was happy.

So Drusus told her of all that had befallen him since the day he escaped out of Lucius Ahen.o.barbus's hands at Baiae. And Cornelia told of her imprisonment at the villa, and how Demetrius had saved her, and how it came to pa.s.s that she was here at the Egyptian court. In turn Drusus related how Caesar had pursued Pompeius into Asia, and then, hearing that the Magnus had fled to Egypt, placed two legions on shipboard and sailed straight for Alexandria.

"And when he landed," continued the young officer, "the magistrates of the city came to Caesar, and gave him first Pompeius's seal-ring of a lion holding a sword in his paw, and then another black-faced and black-hearted Egyptian, without noticing the distress the Imperator was in, came up and uncovered something he had wrapped in a mantle. I was beside the general when the bundle was unwrapped. I am sickened when I speak of it. It was the head of Pompeius Magnus. The fools thought to give Caesar a great delight."

"And what did the Imperator do or say?" asked Cornelia.

"He shrank back from the horror as though the Egyptian had been a murderer, as indeed all of his race are. Caesar said nothing. Yet all saw how great was his grief and anger. Soon or late he will requite the men who slew thus foully the husband of his daughter Julia."

"You must take me away from them," said Cornelia, shuddering; "I am afraid every hour."

"And I, till you are safe among our troops at Alexandria," replied Drusus. "I doubt if they would have let me see you, but for Agias. He met us on the road from Alexandria and told me about you. I had received a special despatch from Caesar to bear with all haste to the king. So across the Delta I started, hardly waiting for the troops to disembark, for there was need for speed. Agias I took back with me, and my first demand when I came here was to see the king and deliver my letter, which was easily done an hour ago; and my next to see you.

Whereat that nasty sheep Pothinus declared that you had been sent some days before up the river on a trip to the Memphis palace to see the pyramids. But Agias was close at hand, and I gave the eunuch the lie without difficulty. The rascal blandly said, 'that he had not seen you of late; had only spoken by hearsay about you, and he might have been misinformed;' and so--What do I look like?"

"You look like Quintus Livius Drusus, the Roman soldier," said Cornelia, "and I would not have you otherwise than what you are."

"_Eho!_" replied Drusus, pa.s.sing his hand over her hair. "Do you want me to tell you something?"

"What is it?" said Cornelia, pressing closer.

"I can never write a cosmology. I shall never be able to evolve a new system of ethics. I cannot improve on Plato's ideal state. I know I am a very ignorant man, with only a few ideas worth uttering, with a hand that is very heavy, with a mind that works to little purpose save when it deals with politics and war. In short"--and Drusus's voice grew really pathetic--"all my learning carries me no farther than did the wisdom of Socrates, 'I know that I know nothing;' and I have no time to spend in advancing beyond that stage."

"But Socrates," said Cornelia, laughing, "was the wisest man in Greece, and for that very reason."

"Well," said Drusus, ignoring the compliment, as a certain type of men will when the mood is on them, "what do you wish me to make of myself?"

"I wish you to make nothing different," was her reply, "for you are precisely what I have always wanted you to be. When you have read as much as I have," this with an air of utter weariness, "you will realize the futility of philosophic study."

"_Eho!_" remarked Drusus again. "So you would have me feel that I am turning my back on nothing very great, after all?"

"And so I mean."

"Seriously?"

"I am serious, Quintus." And indeed Cornelia was. "I can read Aristotle and Plato, and Zeno and Cleanthes, and Pyrrho, and a score of others. I can spin out of my own brain a hundred theories of the universe as good as theirs, but my heart will not be the happier, if things outside make me sad. I am sick of the learning that is no learning, that answers our questions by other questions that are more riddling."

"Ah, scoffer at the wise," laughed Drusus, "what do you wish, then?"

He spoke in Greek.

"Speak in Latin, in Latin, Quintus," was her retort. "I am weary of this fine, sweet language that tinkles so delicately, every word of which hides a hundred meanings, every sentence attuned like the notes for a harp. Let us have our own language, blunt and to the point; the language, not of men who wonder what they ought to do, but who _do_.

We are Romans, not Greeks. We have to rule the world, not growl as to how Jupiter made it. When you came back from Athens I said, 'I love Quintus Drusus, but I would love him more if he were less a h.e.l.lene.'

And, now I see you wholly Roman, I love you wholly. And for myself, I wish neither to be a Sappho, nor an Aspasia, nor a Semiramis, but Cornelia the Roman matron, who obeys her husband, Quintus Drusus, who cares for his house, and whom, in turn, her household fears and obeys."

"_O tempora! O mores!_" cried the young soldier, in delight. "When had ever a woman such ambition in these degenerate days? _Eu!_ Then I will burn my books, if you can get no profit out of them."

"I do not think books are bad," said Cornelia, still soberly, "but I know that they can never make me happy."

"What can?" demanded her tormenter.

"_You!_"

So the hours of the afternoon ran on, and the lovers gave them little heed. But they were not too selfish to refuse to Fabia's sharing in their joy; and Drusus knew that he was dear no less, though differently, in the eyes of his aunt than of his betrothed. And there were duties to perform that not even the long-deferred delights of the afternoon could postpone. Chief of these were the arrangements for the immediate departure of the Roman ladies for Alexandria. Agias, who was called into the council, was invaluable in information and suggestion.

He said that Pothinus had acted at Pratinas's advice, when he took Fabia and Cornelia to the palace. The eunuch had expected to use them half as hostages, half as captives to be put to ransom. If Caesar had delayed a few days, Pothinus would not have lied when he made excuse that the ladies had been sent up the river. But now Agias believed that the regent was afraid, having overreached himself, and it was best to make a prompt demand for conveyance to Alexandria. This, indeed, proved advantageous policy. The eunuch made difficulties and suggested obstacles, but Drusus made his native Italian haughtiness stand him in good stead. It would largely depend, he said insinuatingly, on the way in which his demand was complied with, what sort of a report he made to Caesar touching the execution of Lucius Lentulus and Ahen.o.barbus. During his interview with Pothinus, the Roman came face to face with Pratinas. No words were exchanged, but Drusus noticed that the elegant h.e.l.lene flushed, and then turned pale, when he fastened upon him a gaze steady and half menacing. Pothinus ended by yielding everything--the use of the royal chariots and horses, the use of the Nile boats needed for swift transit across the Delta, and orders on the local garrisons and governors to provide entertainment and a.s.sistance.

As a result Cornelia speedily found herself again journeying, not this time in a slow barge following the main branches of the Nile, but by more rapid, if less luxurious, conveyance, now by land, now by water, hurrying westward. They pa.s.sed through Sethroe and Tanis, Mendes and Sebennytus, Xas and Sas, where were the tomb of Osiris and the great Egyptian university in this the capital of the mighty Pharaohs who had wrested the nation from the clutches of a.s.syria. Then they fared up the Nile to the old Milesian trading factory of Naucratis,--now dropping into decline beside the thriving Alexandria,--and then by boat they pressed on to the capital itself. Never more delightful journey for Cornelia or for Drusus; they saw the strange land through one another's eyes; they expressed their own thoughts through one another's lips; they were happy together, as if children at play; and Fabia was their never exacting, ever beneficent, guardian G.o.ddess.

Drusus and Cornelia were neither of them the same young persons who had met in the gardens of the villa of the Lentuli two short years before. They saw life with a soberer gaze; they had both the wisdom that experience teaches. Yet for the time not a cloud was drifting across their sky. Their pa.s.sions and hates had been too fierce, too pagan, to feel the death of even Cornelia's uncle very keenly. Lucius Ahen.o.barbus was dead--they had no more thought for him than for a dead viper. Lucius Domitius was dead. Gabinius and Dumnorix were dead.

Pompeius, the tool of guiltier men than himself, was dead. Pratinas alone of all those who had crossed their path remained; but the wily Greek was a mere creature of self-interest--what had he to gain by pressing his animosity, if he had any, against them? Caesar was triumphant. His enemies were barely lifting their heads in Africa.

Doubtless there was stern work awaiting the Imperator there, but what of it? Was he not invincible? Was he not about to commence a new order of things in the world, to tear down the old and decaying, to raise up a steadfast fabric? Therefore the little party took its pleasure, and enjoyed every ancient temple of the Amenhoteps, Thothmeses, and Ramesides that they hurriedly visited; won the favour of the wrinkled old priests by their plentiful votives of bright philippi; heard a hundred time-honoured tales that they knew not whether to believe or laugh at; speculated among themselves as to the sources of the Nile, the cause of the vocal Memnon, and fifty more darkened wonders, and resolved to solve every mystery during a second and more prolonged visit.

So they came to Alexandria, but on the way called at the Nile villa where was Artemisia, and, to the great satisfaction of that young lady and of Agias, carried her along with them to the house of Cleomenes, where that affable host and Berenice and Monime received them with open arms.