Part 31 (2/2)

Is it but a tale that is told, that soul can communicate to distant soul? That through two sundered hearts without visible communication can spring up, unforewarned, a single desire, a single purpose? Is there no magnetism subtle beyond all thought, that bounds from spirit to spirit, defying every bond, every s.p.a.ce? We may not say; but if Cornelia longed, she longed not utterly in vain. One morning, as she was dressing, Ca.s.sandra, who was moving around the room aiding her mistress, let fall a very tiny slip of papyrus into Cornelia's lap, and with it a whisper, ”Don't look; but keep it carefully.” The injunction was needed, for several other serving-women were in the room, and Cornelia more than suspected that they were ready to spy on her to prevent unauthorized correspondence with Drusus. When she was dressed, and could walk alone on the terrace overlooking the sea, she unrolled the papyrus and read:--

”Delectissima, I have come from Rome to Puteoli. I cannot live longer without seeing you. Great things are stirring, and it may well be that ere long, if your uncle and his friends have their way, I may be a proscribed fugitive from Italy, or a dead man. But I must talk with your dear self first. Agias was known by the familia, and had no difficulty in seeing you quietly; but I have no such facility. I cannot remain long. Plan how we may meet and not be interrupted. I have taken Ca.s.sandra into my pay, and believe that she can be trusted.

_Vale_.”

There was no name of the sender; but Cornelia did not need to question. Ca.s.sandra, who evidently knew that her mistress would require her services, came carelessly strolling out on to the terrace.

”Ca.s.sandra,” said Cornelia, ”the last time I saw Quintus, you betrayed us to my uncle; will you be more faithful now?”

The woman hung down her head.

”_A!_ domina, your uncle threatened me terribly. I did not intentionally betray you! Did I not receive my beating? And then Master Drusus is such a handsome and generous young gentleman.”

”I can rely on you alone,” replied Cornelia. ”You must arrange everything. If you are untrue, be sure that it is not I who will in the end punish, but Master Drusus, whose memory is long. You have more schemes than I, now that Agias is not here to devise for me. You must make up any stories that are necessary to save us from interruption, and see that no one discovers anything or grows suspicious. My hands are tied. I cannot see to plan. I will go to the library, and leave everything to you.”

And with this stoical resolve to bear with equanimity whatever the Fates flung in her way for good or ill, Cornelia tried to bury herself in her Lucretius. Vain resolution! What care for the atomic theory when in a day, an hour, a moment, she might be straining to her heart another heart that was reaching out toward hers, as hers did toward it. It was useless to read; useless to try to admire the varying shades of blue on the sea, tones of green, and tones of deep cerulean, deepening and deepening, as her eye drifted off toward the horizon, like the blendings of a chromatic series. And so Cornelia pa.s.sed the morning in a mood of joyful discontent. Lucius Ahen.o.barbus, who came to have his usual pa.s.sage of arms with her, found her so extremely affable, yet half-preoccupied, that he was puzzled, yet on the whole delighted. ”She must be yielding,” he mentally commented; and when they played at draughts, Cornelia actually allowed herself to be beaten. Ahen.o.barbus started off for Puteoli in an excellent humour.

His litter had barely swung down the road from the villa before Ca.s.sandra was knocking at her mistress's chamber door.

”_Io!_ domina,” was her joyful exclamation, ”I think I have got every eavesdropper out of the way. Ahen.o.barbus is off for Puteoli. I have cooked up a story to keep the freedmen and other busybodies off. You have a desperate headache, and cannot leave the room, nor see any one.

But remember the terrace over the water, where the colonnade shuts it in on all sides but toward the sea. This afternoon, if a boat with two strange-looking fishermen pa.s.ses under the embankment, don't be surprised.”

And having imparted this precious bit of information, the woman was off. Drusus's gold pieces had made her the most successful of schemers.

II

Cornelia feigned her headache, and succeeded in making herself so thoroughly petulant and exacting to all her maids, that when she ordered them out of the room, and told them on no account to disturb her in any respect for the rest of the day, they ”rejoiced with trembling,” and had no anxiety to thrust their attentions upon so unreasonable a mistress. And a little while later a visit of a strolling juggler--whose call had perhaps been prompted by Ca.s.sandra--made their respite from duty doubly welcome.

Cornelia was left to herself, and spent the next hour in a division of labour before her silver wall-mirror, dressing--something which was sufficiently troublesome for her, accustomed to the services of a bevy of maids--and at the window, gazing toward Puteoli for the fis.h.i.+ng-boat that seemed never in sight. At last the toilet was completed to her satisfaction. Cornelia surveyed herself in her best silken purple flounced stola, thrust the last pin into her hair, and confined it all in a net of golden thread. Roman maidens were not as a rule taught to be modest about their charms, and Cornelia, with perfect frankness, said aloud to herself, ”You are so beautiful that Drusus can't help loving you;” and with this candid confession, she was again on the terrace, straining her eyes toward Puteoli. Boats came, boats went, but there was none that approached the villa; and Cornelia began to harbour dark thoughts against Ca.s.sandra.

”If the wretched woman had played false to her mistress again--” but the threat was never formulated. There was a c.h.i.n.k and click of a pair of oars moving on their thole-pins. For an instant a skiff was visible at the foot of the embankment; two occupants were in it. The boat disappeared under the friendly cover of the protecting sea-wall of the lower terrace. There was a little landing-place here, with a few steps leading upward, where now and then a yacht was moored. The embankment shut off this tiny wharf from view on either side. Cornelia dared not leave the upper terrace. Her heart beat faster and faster. Below she heard the slap, slap, of the waves on the sea-wall, and a rattle of rings and ropes as some skiff was being made fast. An instant more and Drusus was coming, with quick, athletic bounds, up the stairway to the second terrace. It was he! she saw him! In her eyes he was everything in physique and virile beauty that a maiden of the Republic could desire! The bitterness and waiting of months were worth the blessedness of the instant. Cornelia never knew what Drusus said to her, or what she said to him. She only knew that he was holding her in his strong arms and gazing into her eyes; while the hearts of both talked to one another so fast that they had neither time nor need for words. They were happy, happy! Long it was before their utterance pa.s.sed beyond the merest words of endearment; longer still before they were composed enough for Cornelia to listen to Drusus while he gave his own account of Mamercus's heroic resistance to Dumnorix's gang at Praeneste; and told of his own visit to Ravenna, of his intense admiration for the proconsul of the two Gauls; and of how he had come to Puteoli and opened communications with Ca.s.sandra, through Cappadox, the trusty body-servant who in the guise of a fisherman was waiting in the boat below.

”And as Homer puts it, so with us,” cried Cornelia, at length: ”'And so the pair had joy in happy love, and joyed in talking too, and each relating; she, the royal lady, what she had endured at home, watching the wasteful throng of suitors; and he, high-born Odysseus, what miseries he brought on other men, and bore himself in anguish;--all he told, and she was glad to hear.'”

So laughed Cornelia when all their stories were finished, likening their reunion to that of the son of Laertes and the long-faithful Penelope.

”How long were Penelope and Odysseus asunder?” quoth Drusus.

”Twenty years.”

”_Vah!_ We have not been sundered twenty months or one-third as many.

How shall we make the time fly more rapidly?”

”I know not,” said Cornelia, for the first time looking down and sighing, ”a lifetime seems very long; but lifetimes will pa.s.s. I shall be an old woman in a few years; and my hair will be all grey, and you won't love me.”

”_Eho_,” cried Drusus, ”do you think I love you for your hair?”

<script>