Part 26 (2/2)

Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or pa.s.sion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world, and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not a.s.sure him that a real deity existed. Death ended all. Was it not better to be done with the sham of life; to drink the Lethe water, and sink into eternal, dreamless slumber? He longed unspeakably to see Cornelia face to face; to kiss her; to press her in his arms; and the desire grew and grew.

She was no longer in the capital. Her uncle had sent her away--guarded by trusty freedmen--to the villa of the Lentuli at Baiae. The fas.h.i.+onable circles of the great city had made of her name a three days' scandal, of which the echo all too often came to Drusus's outraged ears. His only comfort was that Ahen.o.barbus had become the b.u.t.t and laughing-stock of every one who knew of his repulse by his last inamorata. Then at last Drusus left Praeneste for Rome.

Ahen.o.barbus and Pratinas were as well checked as it was possible they could be, and there was no real ground to dread a.s.sa.s.sination while in the city, if moderate precautions were taken. Then too the time was coming when the young man felt that he could accomplish something definite for the party for which he had already sacrificed so much.

The events cl.u.s.tering around Dumnorix's unsuccessful attack had made Drusus a sort of hero in the eyes of the Praenesteans. They had years before elected his father as their patron, their legal representative at Rome, and now they pitched upon the son, proud to have this highly honourable function continued in the same family. This election gave Drusus some little prestige at the capital, and some standing in the courts and politics. When he went to Rome it was not as a mere individual who had to carve out his own career, but as a man of honour in his own country, a representative of a considerable local interest, and the possessor of both a n.o.ble pedigree and an ample fortune.

Curio found him plenty to do; wire-pulling, speech-making, private bargaining,--all these were rife, for everybody knew that with the first of January, when Lentulus became consul, the fortunes of Caesar were to be made or marred irretrievably. There were rumours, always rumours, now of Caesar, now of Pompeius. The proconsul was going to march on Rome at once, and put all his enemies to the sword. Pompeius was to be proclaimed dictator and exterminate all who adhered to the anti-senatorial party. And into this _melee_ of factions Drusus threw himself, and found relief and inspiration in the conflict. His innate common-sense, a very considerable talent for oratory which had received a moderate training, his energy, his enthusiasm, his incorruptibility, his straightforwardness, all made him valuable to the Caesarians, and he soon found himself deep in the counsels of his party, although he was too young to be advanced as a candidate for any public office.

Agias continued with him. He had never formally deeded the boy to Cornelia, and now it was not safe for the lad to be sent to dwell at Baiae, possibly to fall into the revengeful clutches of Phaon, or Pratinas, or Ahen.o.barbus. Drusus had rewarded Agias by giving him his freedom; but the boy had nowhere to go, and did not desire to leave Quintus's service; so he continued as a general a.s.sistant and understrapper, to carry important letters and verbal messages, and to aid his patron in every case where quick wits or nimble feet were useful. He went once to Baiae, and came back with a letter from Cornelia, in which she said that she was kept actually as a prisoner in her uncle's villa, and that Lentulus still threatened to force Ahen.o.barbus upon her; but that she had prepared herself for that final emergency.

The letter came at a moment when Drusus was feeling the exhilaration of a soldier in battle, and the missive was depressing and maddening.

What did it profit if the crowd roared its plaudits, when he piled execration on the oligarchs from the Rostra, if all his eloquence could not save Cornelia one pang? Close on top of this letter came another disquieting piece of information, although it was only what he had expected. He learned that Lentulus Crus had marked him out personally for confiscation of property and death as a dangerous agitator, as soon as the Senate could decree martial law. To have even a conditional sentence of death hanging over one is hard to bear with equanimity. But it was too late for Drusus to turn back. He had chosen his path; he had determined on the sacrifice; he would follow it to the end. And from one source great comfort came to him. His aunt, Fabia, had always seen in him her hero. With no children of her own, with very little knowledge of the world, she had centred all her hopes and ambitions on her sister's son; and he was not disappointing her.

She dreamed of him as consul, triumphator, and dictator. She told him her hopes. She applauded his sacrifice. She told him of the worthies of old, of Camillus, of the Scipios, of Marcellus, the ”Sword of Rome,” of Lucius aemilius Paulus, and a host of others, good men and true, whose names were graven on the fabric of the great Republic, and bade him emulate them, and be her perfect Fabian and Livian. And from his aunt Drusus gained infinite courage. If she was not Cornelia, yet it was a boon ineffable to be able to hear a pure, loving woman tell him face to face that her heart suffered when he suffered, and that all his hopes and fears were hers.

Finally an interlude came to Quintus's political activity. Curio was becoming uneasy, lest his distant superior should fail to realize the full venom of the Senate party and the determination of his enemies to work his ruin.

”I must go to Ravenna,” said the politician to his young a.s.sociate.

”My tribunes.h.i.+p is nearly run out. Antonius and Ca.s.sius will take my place in the office. And you, who have done so much for Caesar, must go also, for he loves to meet and to know all who are his friends.”

”To Caesar I will go,” answered Drusus; and of himself he asked, ”What manner of man will this prove, whom I am serving? A selfish grasper of power? Or will he be what I seek--a man with an ideal?”

II

Night was falling on the dark ma.s.ses of the huge Praetorium, the government-house and army barracks of the provincial capital of Ravenna. Outside, sentinels were changing guard; Roman civil officials and provincials were strolling in the cool of the porticos. Laughter, the shout of loungers at play, broke the evening silence. But far in the interior, where there was a secluded suite of rooms, nothing but the tinkle of a water-duct emptying into a cistern broke the stillness, save as some soft-footed attendant stole in and out across the rich, thick carpet.

The room was small; the ceiling low; the frescos not elaborate, but of admirable simplicity and delicacy. The furniture comprised merely a few divans, chairs, and tripods, but all of the choicest wood or bra.s.s, and the most excellent upholstery. One or two carved wooden cupboards for books completed the furnis.h.i.+ngs.

There were only two persons in the room. One of them,--a handsome young h.e.l.lene, evidently a freedman, was sitting on a low chair with an open roll before him. His companion half sat and half lay on a divan near by. This second person was a man of height unusual to Italians of his day; his cheeks were pale and a little sunken; his dark eyes were warm, penetrating; his mouth and chin mobile and even affable, but not a line suggested weakness. The forehead was high, ma.s.sive, and was exaggerated by a semi-baldness which was only partially concealed by combing the dark, grey-streaked hair forward.

He was reclining; if he had arisen he would have displayed a frame at once to be called soldierly, though spare and hardly powerful. To complete the figure it should be added that on one finger he wore a large ring set with a very beautiful seal of an armed Venus; and over his loose but carefully arranged tunic was thrown a short, red mantle, caught together on the left shoulder--the paludamentum, a garment only worn by Roman military officers of the very highest rank.

The general--for so his dress proclaimed him--was playing with a stylus and a waxen tablet, while the young Greek read. Now and then he would bid the latter pause while he made a few notes. The book was Euripides's ”Troades.”

”Read those lines again,” interrupted the general. The voice was marvellously flexile, powerful, and melodious.

And the freedman repeated:--

”Sow far and wide, plague, famine, and distress; Make women widows, children fatherless; Break down the altars of the G.o.ds, and tread On quiet graves, the temples of the dead; Play to life's end this wicked witless game And you will win what knaves and fools call Fame!”[122]

[122] Translated in the collection ”Sales Attici.”

The freedman waited for his superior to ask him to continue, but the request did not come. The general seemed lost in a reverie; his expressive dark eyes were wandering off in a kind of quiet melancholy, gazing at the gla.s.s water-clock at the end of the room, but evidently not in the least seeing it.

”I have heard enough Euripides to-day,” at length he remarked. ”I must attend to more important matters. You may leave me.”

The Greek rolled up the volume, placed it in the cupboard, and left the room with noiseless step. The general had arisen, and was standing beside the open window that looked out into a quiet little court. It was dark. The lamps of the room threw the court-yard into a sombre relief. Overhead, in the dimming, violet arch of the sky, one or two faint stars were beginning to twinkle.

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