Part 25 (1/2)
”News? What news?”
”Why, how Dumnorix's gang of gladiators attacked the villa of your distant relative, Quintus Drusus, and were beaten off, while they tried to murder him. A most daring attempt! But you will hear all about it. I have a case at the courts and cannot linger.”
And Calvus was gone, leaving Ahen.o.barbus as though he had been cudgelled into numbness. With a great effort he collected himself.
After all, Dumnorix's gladiators were nothing to him. And when later he found that neither Dumnorix, nor Gabinius, nor Phaon had been taken or slain at Praeneste, he breathed the easier. No one else except Pratinas, he was certain, knew _why_ the lanista had made his attack; and there was no danger of being charged with complicity in the conspiracy. And so he was able to bear the stroke of ill-fortune with some equanimity, and at last rejoice that his dreams would no longer be haunted by the shade of Drusus. He was in no mood to meet Pratinas, and the smooth Greek evidently did not care to meet him. He went around to visit Cornelia again--she was still quite indisposed. So he spent that morning with Servius Flaccus playing draughts, a game at which his opponent was so excessively stupid that Ahen.o.barbus won at pleasure, and consequently found himself after lunch[119] in a moderately equable humour. Then it was he was agreeably surprised to receive the following note from Cornelia.
[119] _Prandium_.
”Cornelia to her dearest Lucius, greeting.
I have been very miserable these past two days, but this afternoon will be better. Come and visit me and my uncle, for there are several things I would be glad to say before you both. Farewell.”
”I think,” remarked Lucius to himself, ”that the girl wants to have the wedding-day hastened. I know of nothing else to make her desire both Lentulus and myself at once. I want to see her alone. Well, I cannot complain. I'll have Drusus's bride, even if I can't have his money or his life.”
And so deliberating, he put on his finest saffron-tinted synthesis, his most elegant set of rings, his newest pair of black shoes,[120]
and spent half an hour with his hairdresser; and thus habited he repaired to the house of the Lentuli.
[120] Black shoes were worn as a sort of badge by _equites_.
”The Lady Cornelia is in the Corinthian hall,” announced the slave who carried in the news of his coming, ”and there she awaits you.”
Lucius, nothing loth, followed the servant. A moment and he was in the large room. It was empty. The great marble pillars rose cold and magnificent in four stately rows, on all sides of the high-vaulted apartment. On the walls Cupids and blithesome nymphs were careering in fresco. The floor was soft with carpets. A dull scent of burning incense from a little brazier, smoking before a bronze Minerva, in one corner of the room, hung heavy on the air. The sun was s.h.i.+ning warm and bright without, but the windows of the hall were small and high and the shutters also were drawn. Everything was cool, still, and dark. Only through a single aperture shot a clear ray of sunlight, and stretched in a radiant bar across the gaudy carpets.
Lucius stumbled, half groping, into a chair, and seated himself.
Cornelia had never received him thus before. What was she preparing?
Another moment and Lentulus Crus entered the darkened hall.
”_Perpol!_ Ahen.o.barbus,” he cried, as he came across his prospective nephew-in-law, ”what can Cornelia be wanting of us both? And in this place? I can't imagine. Ah! Those were strange doings yesterday up in Praeneste. I would hardly have put on mourning if Drusus had been ferried over the Styx; but it was a bold way to attack him. I don't know that he has an enemy in the world except myself, and I can bide my time and pay off old scores at leisure. Who could have been back of Dumnorix when he blundered so evidently?”
Ahen.o.barbus felt that it was hardly possible Lentulus would condemn his plot very severely; but he replied diplomatically:--
”One has always plenty of enemies.”
”_Mehercle!_ of course,” laughed the consul-elect, ”what would life be without the pleasure of revenge! But why does my niece keep us waiting? Jupiter, what can she want of us?”
”Uncle, Lucius, I am here.” And before them, standing illumined in the panel of sunlight, stood Cornelia. Ahen.o.barbus had never seen her so beautiful before. She wore a flowing violet-tinted stola, that tumbled in soft, silky flounces down to her ankles, and from beneath it peered the tint of her shapely feet bound to thin sandals by bright red ribbons. Her bare rounded arms were clasped above and below the elbow and at the wrists by circlets shaped as coiled serpents, whose eyes were gleaming rubies. At her white throat was fastened a necklace of interlinked jewel-set gold pendants that s.h.i.+mmered on her half-bare shoulders and breast. In each ear was the l.u.s.tre of a great pearl. Her thick black hair fell unconfined down her back; across her brow was a frontlet blazing with great diamonds, with one huge sapphire in their midst. As she stood in the sunlight she was as a G.o.ddess, an Aphrodite descended from Olympus, to drive men to sweet madness by the ravis.h.i.+ng puissance of her charms.
”Cornelia!” cried Lucius, with all the fierce impure admiration of his nature welling up in his black heart, ”you are an immortal! Let me throw my arms about you! Let me kiss you! Kiss your neck but once!”
And he took a step forward.
”Be quiet, Lucius,” said Cornelia, speaking slowly and with as little pa.s.sion as a sculptured marble endued with the powers of speech. ”We have other things to talk of now. That is why I have called you here; you and my uncle.”
”Cornelia!” exclaimed the young man, shrinking back as though a sight of some awful mystery had stricken him with trembling reverence, ”why do you look at me so? Why do your eyes fasten on me that way? What are you going to do?”
It was as if he had never spoken. Cornelia continued steadily, looking straight before her.
”Uncle, is it your wish that I become the wife of Lucius Ahen.o.barbus?”
”You know it is,” replied Lentulus, a little uneasily. He could not see where this bit of affection on the part of his niece would end. He had never heard her speak in such a tone before.