Lords of the World Part 28

After this came a stave of Alcaeus, and after this again a piece of melodious tenderness from Sappho.

As he turned to retrace his steps to the house, for he had risen early, and the keen morning air made him feel that he had fasted long, he was startled to hear his name called from behind him, not the name by which he was known to the world, but the pet family name, which he had not heard since the home of his childhood had vanished in fire and blood.

"Cle," said the voice, and its tones seemed to be strangely familiar. He turned; no one was within sight but the gardener. The man had dropped the shears, and stood with his hands stretched out in a supplicating gesture.

"What is it?" he cried; "what or whom do you want?" He took two or three steps forward, and as he approached there seemed to be something strangely familiar in the figure before him.

"Yes, it is--" and the speaker swayed to and fro for a moment, and then fell unconscious to the ground. The wide-brimmed hat, which had been drawn down low over the face, to conceal, as it seemed, the features, was displaced by the fall, and revealed the graceful contour of the forehead, and the shapely head covered with short curls of sunny gold.

"Great Zeus!" cried Cleanor, as he lifted the prostrate figure from the ground. "Great Zeus! if I am not mad or dreaming, this is Cleone come to life again."

Close by a tiny spring trickled down from a rock. Cleanor held his cap beneath it till it was half full, and dashed the water in his sister's face. She drew two or three deep breaths, and then opened her eyes.

Vacant at first, for she could not remember where she was or what had happened, they soon became radiant with happy light.

"Dearest brother," she murmured, "have I found you again? But come to my little hut--it is close by. There you shall hear my story, and we will consider what is to be done."

Briefly put, for in the actual telling it was interrupted, as may be supposed, with numberless exclamations and questions, Cleone's story was this:--

"I remember nothing after I was struck down by a blow from a soldier's sword in the market-place of Chelys, till I found myself in the hold of a ship at sea."

"Then you were not killed?" cried Cleanor.

"It seems not," said the girl with a merry laugh, "for even were I an Eurydice there was no Orpheus to bring me back from the house of Hades."

"Ah!" said the young man, "now I begin to understand what old Judas meant. He said, you must know, that they bribed the soldiers not to kill the prisoners, but to stun them."

"Well, as I was saying, I found myself in the hold of a ship which was evidently making very bad weather. I was lying with my head close to the deck, and I could hear two men talking just over me. There was such a roaring of the wind, and such a creaking of timbers, that I lost a good deal of what they said. Still I could make out something. Someone--I supposed it was the captain--was cursing his ill-luck. 'Here,' he said, 'is a bit of cursed spite--as good a speculation as ever I made in my life all comes to nothing. There are fifty as likely young fellows as I have had the handling of since I went into the business five-and-twenty years ago down there, and what is going to become of them? They are worth two hundred thousand sesterces if they are worth one, and now the whole lot is going to the bottom.' 'What is the odds?' growled the other, whom I took to be the steersman. 'What is the odds if you are going too?' 'I tell you what,' said the other again after a pause, 'you should give the fellows a chance. Open the hatches, and let them get to land if they can.' 'What is the good?' answered the captain sulkily; 'they may drown for all I care.' 'Nay, but you talk like a fool. If they live, they are still yours, and you may get hold of them, or, at least, of some of them again.' 'True,' said the owner, 'that is so. They shall have a chance.' A minute or two afterwards the hatches were opened, and the fellow cried, 'Up with you as quick as you can! The ship hasn't many minutes to float, and if you don't want to go to the bottom with her, now is your time.' About two score out of the fifty clambered upon deck.

Some had never recovered from the blow which had stunned them--it can't be an easy thing to give just the right sort of stroke--and some, I take it, were so far gone with sea-sickness that they did not care to move.

As for me, I felt a little dazed; sea-sickness never troubles me, as you know. We got up on deck only just in time, the ship was already close upon the rocks. The next minute she struck. What happened to the crew and to my companions is more than I can say; all I know is that I have never seen one of them since, except, indeed, some dead bodies that I found on the sh.o.r.e next morning. I had a desperate struggle to get to land, and, indeed, I never should have done it, though, as you know, I am no bad swimmer, but that an extra big wave threw me up almost high and dry, and I had just strength enough to crawl away out of reach of the sea. The rest of the night--it was about the middle of the third watch, as near as I could guess, when this happened--I pa.s.sed in a thicket in a bed of dry leaves, where I slept as soundly as ever I did in my life. The next day I rigged myself out with clothes that I took from the dead men on the sh.o.r.e--it was no robbery, I thought, poor fellows! I found some money, too, in their pockets. Following a road which led inland, I came to a village where there was a tavern. Here I got some bread and a draught of sour wine. I thought it safest, I should tell you, to pretend to be deaf and dumb, and made them to understand by signs that I wanted something to eat and drink. I paid for what I had, but was careful to let the people know that I had very little, for I made up the few coppers that were wanted from one place and another.

Then I got them to understand that I wanted to work for my living. First I made as if I were digging, then as if I were sawing wood. They happened to want someone, for it was a busy time of the year, and they saw that they could get the work done very cheaply, for they gave me no pay besides my food and lodging in an outhouse, which, happily, I had to myself. Here I stopped for about a month. Then I overheard some people talking of a great lady who lived in the neighbourhood. She was a widow, they said, and managed everything--house and garden and farm--all by herself. That, I thought to myself, is the place for me. Perhaps some day I shall be able to tell her my story. However, the day has never come. I got employment just in the same way as I did at the tavern, and I have the little hut to myself, where I look after some fowls and pigeons. But, somehow, I could never summon up courage to speak.

However, I always went on hoping and hoping, and now, dearest Cleanor, that you are come, all will be right."

"Yes," said the young man, "and the first thing, my dear Cleone, will be to get you some proper clothes."

The girl blushed.

"By Castor!" she said, "I had almost forgotten that I was dressed as a man. But how will you manage it?"

"Easily enough," replied her brother. "The lady Cornelia has an excellent housekeeper with whom I am in high favour; I don't doubt that she will let me have everything I want. But I must go; the sooner we manage this the better."

Poor Cleone, woman-like, felt the courage which had never failed before desert her when she had to part even for half an hour with her long-lost brother. She clung to him, and wept piteously. "Don't leave me," she sobbed.

The young man, to whom this sort of thing was quite a new experience, looked at her with astonishment. "What, Cleone, is the meaning of this after all you have gone through?"

"Yes," she said, smiling through her tears, "I am a fool. And besides,"

she went on, looking at her dirty and ragged garments, "I do want some decent clothes."

The good Pollia, who acted as wardrobe-keeper, mother-of-the-maids, and housekeeper in general to Cornelia, was not a little astonished when Cleanor asked her to supply him with the various articles of a young lady's toilet, not so numerous in those days, it should be mentioned, as they are now. He was a great favourite, however, and she asked no questions, probably thinking that some joke was being meditated. She searched accordingly among the treasures in her charge, and had no difficulty in finding all that was wanted.

Fashions did not change in those days as they change under the vagaries of modern taste. Women were careful, indeed perhaps more careful than they are now, to suit their dress to their age. But what the mother had worn at twenty, the daughter, reaching the same years, might wear without even the suspicion of oddity, and the garments might be handed down, if they were of the quality that was suited to so long a life, to yet another generation.

Cleanor was soon making his way with an armful of suitable apparel to the gardener's hut. Cleone, who seemed to be bent on making up as quickly as possible for her enforced separation from all feminine vanities, received the precious burden with a shriek of delight. When she emerged, half an hour afterwards, from her hut it would have pa.s.sed all human skill to recognize in the brilliant young beauty who held Cleanor's hand the shabby deaf-mute who for many months past had plied his solitary task in Cornelia's gardens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HALF AN HOUR AFTERWARDS CLEONe EMERGED AS A BRILLIANT YOUNG BEAUTY."]

All these confidences and preparations had taken time, and the house party had just a.s.sembled for the mid-day meal when the pair walked into the dining-room. Never since Misenum got its name had the place seen a more startling sight. At first it seemed as if Cleanor had found his double, for brother and sister were curiously alike. But the time that had pa.s.sed since they were so tragically parted had changed them not a little. The young man had grown in height, and his frame, knit by the continual activities of an adventurous life, had developed the ampler proportions that became his s.e.x. The girl was his very image, but now on a somewhat smaller scale. A fairer couple had never been seen in Italy.

"Cleanor has turned into Apollo," cried the little Caius, "and he has brought Diana with him."

As for the rest of the company, they gazed with an astonishment that was almost stupefaction on the scene. Cornelia was the first to recover herself. She advanced to greet the new-comer. "You are welcome," she said, "for your brothers sake--for Cleanor must surely be your brother--and, I am sure, for your own." Then Theoxena threw herself at the girl's feet and clasped her knees. "It is Cleone," she cried. "The G.o.ds have nothing more to give me." Little Cephalus kissed her hand, and Daphne, somewhat shy at first of the splendid stranger, was not long behind with an affectionate greeting.

"Not a word," said Cornelia, "till you have eaten and drunk. For the present," she said, smiling at the little Caius, "they will have to be content without ambrosia and nectar."

The meal ended, Cornelia heard the whole story. Her mind, always eminently practical, discerned at once the first thing that had to be done.

"We must a.s.sure without delay," she said, "this young lady's civil _status_. At present it would be very perplexing to say who or what she is."

A message was immediately despatched to the nearest town with a letter requiring the immediate presence of the resident notary. He arrived before sunset, and by a formal act of emanc.i.p.ation Cleone, slave of Cornelia, was made free.

"Pardon me, my daughter," she said, "if I speak of you as my slave. And indeed my t.i.tle is a very weak one; no one, however, is likely to make out a better. Meanwhile, as far as I can secure your freedom, you are free."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE WORLD WELL LOST.

Cleanor had been back in Rome some four months, and had nearly completed his work with the committee of translation, when he received a visit from the young Scipio. The latter had not been one of the party at Misenum during the holidays of Saturn, having been summoned to Sicily to fill a casual vacancy on the staff of the quaestor in that province.

"Well," said Cleanor, after an affectionate exchange of greetings, "and how did you like your quaestor's work in Sicily?"

"I found it most interesting," replied the young man, "and, I must say, most agreeable. My name made me most welcome everywhere. You can hardly imagine what an impression my uncle's action in giving back the statues to the cities has made on the whole island. The simple fact that I was his nephew was enough to make them almost worship me. I happened to be at Agrigentum when the famous Bull was solemnly put back into its place.

If I had been the founder of the city come to life again I could not have been treated with more respect. I should be quite ashamed to describe all the oratings and crownings and embracings that I went through. In fact, if I had any complaint to make, it would be that to a modest young man like myself the honours were just a little overpowering."

"And what," asked Cleanor, "are you going to do now?"

"That," replied the young Roman, "is just what I want to talk to you about. Lentulus, who is proconsul of Sicily, as I dare say you know, has expressed himself very handsomely about my services, and, what is more, has offered to propose me as one of the regular quaestors for next year.

This is all the more satisfactory because he is no kinsman of mine, and in fact is not on the same side in politics as my uncle. If my uncle were to nominate me, I should probably get my election, but this will make it quite certain."

"Well," said Cleanor, "of course you won't hesitate to accept. I give you my congratulations in advance. It will be the first step in the ladder, and we shall see you climb, as your forbears have climbed before you, to be aedile, praetor, consul."

"Yes, yes," said the young man, "that is so. It is the first step, and I could not take it under better auspices, but--" and he paused, looking like anything but the ambitious young man before whom the greatest career in the world was opening.

"What is the hindrance, then?" asked the young Greek.

Scipio's embarra.s.sment seemed to increase. "I have been to my aunt Cornelia's at Misenum," he added after a long pause.