Part 7 (2/2)
She turned her blue eyes upon him. His voice had roused her from her meditations and recalled her to that sense of proud dignity with which she loved to surround herself as with invisible walls. She must have seen the pity in his eyes for he did not try to hide it, but it seemed to anger her as coming from this man who--to her mind--was the primary cause of her present trouble. She looked for a moment or two on him as if trying to recollect his very existence, and no importunate slave could ever encounter such complete disdain as fell on the praefect at this moment from Dea Flavia's glance.
”I will return to my palace at the hour which pleaseth me most, O praefectus,” she said coldly, ”and when the child Nola, being more composed, is ready to accompany me.”
”Nay!” he rejoined in his accustomed rough way, ”the slave Nola is naught to thee now. She will be looked after as the State directs.”
”The slave is mine,” she retorted curtly. ”She shall come with me.”
And even as she spoke she drew herself up to her full height, more like, he thought, than ever to a stately lily now. The crown of gold upon her head caught a glint from the noonday sun, and the folds of her white tunic fell straight and rigid from her shoulders down to her feet.
It seemed strange to him that one so young, so exquisitely pure, should thus be left all alone to face the hard moments of life; her very disdain for him, her wilfulness, seemed to him pathetic, for they showed her simple ignorance of the many cruelties which life must of necessity have in store for her.
As for yielding to her present mood, he had no thought of it. It was caprice originally which had caused her to defy his will and to break old Menecreta's heart. She had invoked strict adherence to the law for the sole purpose of indulging this caprice. Now he was tempted also to stand upon the law and to defy her tyrannical will, even at the cost of his own inclinations in the matter.
He would not trust her with the child Nola now. He had other plans for the orphan girl, rendered lonely and desolate through a great lady's whim, and he would have felt degradation in the thought that Dea Flavia should impose her will on him in this.
He knew her power of course. She was a near kinswoman of the Emperor, and the child of his adoption; she was all-powerful with the Caesar as with all men through the might of his personality as much as through that of her wealth.
But he had no thought of yielding nor any thought of fear. It seemed as if in the heat-laden atmosphere two mighty wills had suddenly clashed one against the other, brandis.h.i.+ng ghostly steels. His will against hers! The might of manhood and of strength against the word of a beautiful woman. Nor was the contest unequal. If he could crush her with a touch of his hand, she could destroy him with one word in the Caesar's ear. She had as her ally the full unbridled might of the House of Caesar, while against her there was only this stranger, a descendant of a freedwoman from a strange land. For the nonce his influence was great over the mind of the quasi-madman who sat on the Empire's throne, but any moment, any event, the whisper of an enemy, the word of a woman, might put an end to his power.
All this Dea Flavia knew, and knowing it found pleasure in toying with his wrath. Armed with the triple weapon of her beauty, her purity and her power, she taunted him with his impotence and smiled with scornful pity upon the weakness of his manhood.
Even now she turned to Nola and said with gentle firmness:
”Get up, girl, and come with me.”
But at her words the last vestige of deference fled from the praefect's manner; pity now would have been weak folly. Had he yielded he would have despised himself even as this proud girl now affected to scorn him.
He interposed his ma.s.sive figure between Dea Flavia and the slave and said loudly:
”By thy leave, Nola, the daughter of Menecreta, is the property of the State and 'tis I will decide whither she goeth now.”
”Until to-morrow only, Taurus Antinor,” she rejoined coldly, ”for to-morrow she must be in the slave market again, when my agents will bid for and buy her according to my will.”
”Nay! she shall not be put up for sale to-morrow.”
”By whose authority, O praefectus?”
”By mine. The State hath given me leave to purchase privately a number of slaves from the late censor's household. 'Tis my intention to purchase Nola thus.”
”Thou hast no right,” she said, still speaking with outward calm, though her whole soul rebelled against the arrogance of this man who dared to thwart her will, to gainsay her word, and set up his dictates against hers, ”thou hast no right thus to take the law in thine own hands.”
”Nay! as to that,” he replied with equal calm, ”I'll answer for mine own actions. But the slave Nola shall not pa.s.s into thy hands, Augusta! Thou hast wrought quite enough mischief as it is; be content and go thy way.
Leave the child in peace.”
In these days of unbridled pa.s.sions and unfettered tyranny, a man who spoke thus to a daughter of the Caesars spoke at peril of his life. Both Dea Flavia and Taurus Antinor knew this when they faced one another eye to eye, their very souls in rebellion one against the other--his own turbulent and fierce, with the hot blood from a remote land coursing in his veins, blinding him to his own advantage, to his own future, to everything save to his feeling of independence at all cost from the oppression of this family of tyrants; her own almost serene in its consciousness of limitless power.
For the moment her sense of dignity prevailed. Whatever she might do in the future, she was comparatively helpless now. The praefect in the discharge of his functions--second only to the Caesar--was all-powerful where he stood.
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