Part 14 (1/2)
Hardly had he spoken ere loud voices were heard calling through the grove. Torches were glaring among the trees, and the harsh tones of Lentulus burst out:--
”Take the wretched girl into the house when you find her; but as for her lover, let him not escape!”
”My uncle!” groaned Cornelia, quivering with terror; ”one of my maids has betrayed me! Flee! run! He has called out all his slaves; they will kill you!”
”Kill me?” gasped Drusus, incredulously; ”commit deliberate murder?”
”Yes,” moaned Cornelia; ”he dares anything. He is all fury and violence. Escape! Do not throw yourself away in vain!”
The lights flashed nearer; the slaves were shouting and blundering through the bushes.
”Two philippi to the man who strikes Drusus down!” bawled Lentulus.
It was no time for delay and affectionate leave-taking. The young man threw his arms around Cornelia, kissed her once, twice, and then bounded into the thicket. A moment later several of the servants came splas.h.i.+ng over the little stream, and found Cornelia alone beside the great cypress, pale and trembling and sobbing. Drusus caught one last sight of her, surrounded by the torches of the pursuers. Then he struck off into the grove, and thanks to his perfect local knowledge easily avoided meeting Lentulus or his slaves. Lentulus he would gladly have confronted alone. What would have followed, the athletic young man could only surmise grimly; but he was unarmed, and for Cornelia's sake he must take no risks.
Close to the confines of his own land he met the Mamerci, father and son, and several slaves and freedmen, all armed and anxious to know whether the din that had been raised over at the Lentulan villa betokened any danger to their young master.
Drusus satisfied them that he had suffered no injury. The personal peril through which he had pa.s.sed brought a reaction of excitement which raised his spirits, and he went to bed in a mood at least tolerably cheerful. If he could not enjoy his love, he had at least something else to live for--vengeance; and he told himself that he had a whole mature lifetime left in which to make Lentulus repent of his folly and tyrannical cruelty. He awoke late the next morn in a calm frame of mind, and was able to receive with outward equanimity the news that early in the morning Lentulus had taken his sister-in-law and niece, and a large part of his household, back to Rome. This was only to have been expected, and Drusus listened to the information without useless comment.
Chapter VI
Pompeius Magnus
If we had been painting an ideal heroine, gifted with all the virtues which Christian traditions of female perfection throw around such characters, Cornelia would have resigned herself quietly to the inevitable, and exhibited a seraphic serenity amid tribulation. But she was only a grieved, embittered, disappointed, sorely wronged, Pagan maiden, who had received few enough lessons in forbearance and meekness. And now that her natural sweetness of character had received so severe a shock, she vented too often the rage she felt against her uncle upon her helpless servants. Her maid Ca.s.sandra--who was the one that had told Lentulus of her mistress's nocturnal meeting with Drusus--soon felt the weight of Cornelia's wrath. The young lady, as soon as Lentulus was out of the way, caused the tell-tale to receive a cruel whipping, which kept the poor slave-girl groaning in her cell for ten days, and did not relieve Cornelia's own distress in the slightest degree. As a matter of fact, Cornelia was perpetually goaded into fresh outbursts of desperation by the tyrannical att.i.tude of her uncle. Lentulus boasted in her presence that he would accomplish Drusus's undoing. ”I'll imitate Sulla,” he would announce, in mean pleasure at giving his niece pain; ”I'll see how many heads I can have set up as he did at the Lacus Servilius. You can go _there_, if you wish to kiss your lover.”
But Cornelia's life at Rome was rendered unhappy by many other things besides these occasional brutal stabs from her uncle. Her mother, as has been hinted, was a woman of the world, and had an intense desire to draw her daughter into her own circle of society. Claudia cared for Cornelia in a manner, and believed it was a real kindness to tear the poor girl away from her solitary broodings and plunge her into the whirl of the world of Roman fas.h.i.+on. Claudia had become an intimate of Clodia, the widow of Quintus Metellus, a woman of remarkable gifts and a notoriously profligate character. ”The Medea of the Palatine Hill,”
Cicero had bitingly styled her. Nearly all the youth of parts and social distinction enjoyed the wild pleasures of Clodia's garden by the Tiber. Catullus the poet, Caelius the brilliant young politician, and many another had figured as lovers of this soulless and enchanting woman. And into Clodia's gilded circle Claudia tried desperately to drag her daughter. The Lentuli had a handsome palace on the Carinae, one of the most fas.h.i.+onable quarters of the capital; and here there were many gay gatherings and dinner parties. Cornelia was well born enough, by reputation wealthy enough, and in feature handsome enough, to have a goodly proportion of the young men of this coterie her devoted admirers and slaves. Claudia observed her daughter's social triumphs with glee, and did all she could to give Cornelia plenty of this kind of company. Cornelia would not have been a mortal woman if she had not taken a certain amount of pleasure in noticing and exercising her power. The first occasion when she appeared at a formal banquet in the splendid Apollo dinner hall of the Luculli, where the outlay on the feast was fixed by a regular scale at two hundred thousand sesterces, she gathered no little satisfaction by the consciousness that all the young men were admiring her, and all the women were fuming with jealousy. But this life was unspeakably wearisome, after the first novelty had worn away. Cornelia lived in an age when many of the common proprieties and decencies of our present society would have been counted prudish, but she could not close her eyes to the looseness and license that pervaded her mother's world.
Woman had become almost entirely independent of man in social and economic matters, though the law still kept its fictions of tutelage.
Honourable marriages were growing fewer and fewer. Divorces were multiplying. The morality of the time can be judged from the fact that the ”immaculate” Marcus Cato separated from his wife that a friend might marry her; and when the friend died, married her himself again.
Scandals and love intrigues were common in the highest circles; n.o.ble ladies, and not ballet-dancers[86] merely, thought it of little account to have their names besmirched. Everything in society was splendid, polished, decorous, cultivated without; but within, hollow and rotten.
[86] _Mimae_.
Cornelia grew weary and sick of the excitement, the fas.h.i.+onable chatter, the mongering of low gossips. She loathed the sight of the effeminate young fops who tried to win her smiles by presenting themselves for a polite call each morning, polished and furbelowed, and rubbed sleek and smooth with Catanian pumice. Her mother disgusted her so utterly that she began to entertain the most unfilial feeling toward the worthy woman. Cornelia would not or could not understand that in such hot weather it was proper to wear lighter rings than in winter, and that each ring must be set carefully on a different finger joint to prevent touching. Cornelia watched her servants, and reached the astonis.h.i.+ng conclusion that these humble creatures were really extracting more pleasure out of life than herself. Ca.s.sandra had recovered from her whipping, and was bustling about her tasks as if nothing had happened. Agias seemed to have a never failing fund of good spirits. He was always ready to tell the funniest stories or retail the latest news. Once or twice he brought his mistress unspeakable delight, by smuggling into the house letters from Drusus, which contained words of love and hope, if no really substantial promises for the future. But this was poor enough comfort. Drusus wrote that he could not for the time see that any good end would be served by coming to Rome, and he would remain for the present in Praeneste. He and she must try to wait in patience, until politics took such a turn as would drive Lentulus into a more tractable att.i.tude.
Cornelia found the days monotonous and dreary. Her uncle's freedman kept her under constant espionage to prevent a chance meeting with Drusus, and but for Agias she would have been little better than a prisoner, ever in charge of his keepers.
In a way, however, Cornelia found that there was enough stirring in the outside world to lend zest and often venom to the average emptiness of polite conversation. Politics were penetrating deeper and deeper into fas.h.i.+onable society. Cornelia heard how Paulus, the consul, had taken a large present from Caesar to preserve neutrality; and how Curio, the tribune, had checked Clodius Marcellus, the other consul, when he wished to take steps in the Senate against Caesar. All that Cornelia heard of that absent statesman was from hostile lips; consequently she had him painted to her as blood-thirsty, treacherous, of flagrant immorality, with his one object to gather a band of kindred spirits to his cause, and become despot. And to hear such reports and yet to keep confident that Drusus was not sacrificing both himself and her in a worse than unworthy cause--this tested her to the uttermost.
To add to her troubles, Lucius Ahen.o.barbus was ever thrusting in his attentions at every party and at the theatre; and her uncle openly favoured his suit.
”I wish you would be more friendly to him,” remarked Lentulus on one occasion. ”I should be glad to have a closer tie between his family and ours.”
”Uncle,” said Cornelia, much distressed, ”I do not think I understand what you mean.”
”Well,” chuckled Lentulus, moving away, ”think it over until you do understand.”
Cornelia had been reading in the library when this conversation took place. There was to be another party that evening at the house of Marcus Favonius, a prominent anti-Caesarian, and since it was growing late in the afternoon, it was time to dress. Cornelia went into her own room, and was summoning her maids, when a young lady of about her own age, who affected to be on terms of considerable intimacy, was announced--Herennia, a daughter of a certain rich old eques, Caius Pontius, who had kept out of politics and h.o.a.rded money, which his daughter was doing her best to spend.