Part 15 (2/2)
”No! No! I'll shout! I'll shout!” persisted Hortensius with the crazy obstinacy of one whose mind is obscured with liquor and with pa.s.sion, ”I'll shout until you understand. Fools, I tell ye! Fools are ye all!
You tell this man of your schemes, of your plans! He listens blandly to you!... You fools! you fools! Not to have suspected ere this that his so-called loyalty to Caesar masks his treachery to us!”
He was kneeling now upon his couch, and with clenched hands was pounding against the cus.h.i.+ons like an angry child. The tumult became general; everyone was shouting. Those who were nearest to this raving young maniac were trying to seize him, but he waved his arms about like the wings of a night bird, and anon he seized a goblet of heavy solid metal and struck out with it to the right and left of him, so that none dared come nigh.
But the praefect stood quietly beside him, with arms held very tightly across his mighty chest, his dark eyes fixed upon the raving figure on the couch. No one had ventured to approach him, for the feeling of superst.i.tious awe which he had aroused in them a while ago had not wholly died down, and now there was such a look of contempt and of wrath in his face that instinctively the most sober drew away from him, and those whose minds were obscured with wine looked upon him in ever growing terror.
Suddenly Hortensius, brandis.h.i.+ng the heavy goblet, raised it high above his head, and with a drunken and desperate gesture he flung it in the direction of the praefect, but his hand had trembled and his arm was unsteady. The goblet missed the head of Taurus Antinor and fell cras.h.i.+ng along the marble-topped table, bringing a quant.i.ty of crystal down with it in its fall.
A few drops of the wine from the goblet had fallen on Taurus Antinor's tunic, and from the parched throat of young Hortensius there rose a hoa.r.s.e and immoderate laugh and a string of violent oaths. But even before these had fully escaped his lips he saw the praefect's dark face quite close to his own, and felt a grip as of a double vice of steel fastening on both his shoulders.
He knew the grip and had felt it before; no claw of desert beast was firmer or more unrelenting. Young Hortensius felt his whole body give way, his very bones crack beneath that mighty grip. His head, overheated with wine, fell back against the cus.h.i.+ons of his couch, and he felt as if the last breath in him was leaving his enfeebled body.
”Thou art a fool indeed, Hortensius,” murmured a harsh voice close to his ear; ”a fool to provoke a man beyond the power of his control.”
Then as at a word from the host, the other men--those who were steady on their feet--tried to interpose, Taurus Antinor turned his face to them.
”Have no fear,” he said quite calmly, ”for this man. He shall come to no harm. Twice hath he insulted me and twice have I held his life in my hands.”
Then, as Hortensius uttered an involuntary cry of rage or of pain, Taurus Antinor spoke once more to him:
”Thy life is in my hands yet will I not kill thee, even though I could do it with just the tightening of my fingers round thy throat. But provoke me not a third time, O Hortensius, for I have in my possession a heavy-thonged whip, and this would I use on thee even as I order it to be used on the miscreant thieves that are brought to my tribunal. So cross not my path again, dost understand? I am but a man and have not an inexhaustible stock of patience.”
Whilst he spoke he still held young Hortensius down pinioned amongst the cus.h.i.+ons. No one interfered, for it had dawned on every blurred mind there that here lay a deeper cause for quarrel than mere political conflict. Hortensius, though vanquished now, had been like a madman; his unprovoked insults had come from a heart overburdened with jealousy and with hate. Now when the praefect relaxed his grip upon him, he lay for a while quite still, and anon Caius Nepos beckoned to his slaves, and they it was who ministered to him, bathing his forehead with water and holding lumps of ice to the palms of his hands.
Taurus Antinor had straightened out his tall figure. For a moment he looked down with bitter scorn on the prostrate figure of his vanquished foe. The awed silence which his strange words of a while ago had imposed upon the others, still hung upon them all. They stood about in groups, whispering below their breath, and the slaves were huddled up one against the other in the distant corners of the room. An air of mystery still hung over the magnificent triclinium, its convivial board, its abandoned couches, over the vases of murra and crystal and the fast dying roses. It seemed as if some personality--great, majestic, divine--had pa.s.sed through the marble hall and that the sound of sacred feet still echoed softly along its walls.
It almost seemed as if there clung a radiance in that shadowy corner where the eyes of an enthusiast had sought and found the memory of the Divine Teacher; and that in the fume-laden air there lingered the odour of the sacrifice offered by a rough, untutored heart to the Man Who had spoken unforgettable words seven years ago in Galilee.
CHAPTER X
”That the world through Him might be saved.”--ST. JOHN III. 17.
Taurus Antinor had bidden farewell to his host, and to the other guests and then departed.
Not another word had been spoken on the subject of the Caesar or of his probable successor. The conspirators, somewhat sobered, had allowed the praefect to go without attempting further effort to gain him to their cause. They had had their answer. Though many of them did not quite understand the full depth of its meaning, yet were they satisfied that it was final. They bade him farewell quietly and without enmity; somehow the thought of their murderous plan had momentarily fled from their mind, and the quarrel between Hortensius Martius and the praefect of Rome seemed to have been the most important event of the day.
Taurus Antinor emerged alone from the peristyle of Caius Nepos' house.
An army of slaves belonging to the various guests were hanging about the vestibule, talking and laughing amongst themselves and feasting on the debris from the patricians' table, brought out to them by servitors from within; some forty litters enc.u.mbered the floor, but Antinor, paying no heed to these, pa.s.sed through the crowd of jabbering men and women and made his way across to the steps which led upwards to the street.
The day was done, had been done long ago; already the canopy of the stars was stretched over the sleeping city, and far away to the east, beyond the gilded roof of Augustus' palace, the waning moon, radiant and serene, outlined the carvings on every temple with a thin band of gold and put patches of luminous sapphires and emeralds on the bronze figures that crowned the Capitol.
Taurus Antinor paused awhile, enjoying the restfulness of the night; from his broad chest came a long-drawn breath of voluptuous delight at the exquisite sweetness of the air. How far away now seemed that long, luxurious room, with its stained cloths and crumpled cus.h.i.+ons, with the low tables groaning under the debris of past repasts and the rows of couches luring to sensuous repose. For the moment even the wranglings of Caius Nepos' guests seemed remote, their selfish aims and their lying tongues. Here, beneath the stars, there was stillness and peace.
A gentle breeze from over the distant hills blew on the dreamer's forehead and eased the wild throbbings of his temples; from somewhere near tiny petals of heliotrope, chased by the breeze, brought sweet-scented powder to his nostrils.
<script>