Part 16 (1/2)

He looked around him, gazing with wondering eyes on the mighty city sleeping upon her seven hills, on the gorgeous palaces of Tiberius and Caligula and the squalid huts far away on the Aventine Hill, on the mighty temples with their roofs of gold and the yawning arena down below, desolate and silent now, but where on the morrow men and beasts would tear one another to pieces to make holiday for the masters of the world.

And even as his restless eyes swept over the surrounding landscape, they turned to where, in the shadow of the stately palaces of Tiberius and of Augustus, lay the house of Dea Flavia. Its gilded portals threw back with brilliant intensity the weird and elusive light of the waning moon, and high above, upon the bal.u.s.trade of the roof, gigantic bronze groups of quaint and misshapen beasts looked ghoul-like against the canopy of the sky.

All within the ma.s.sive walls was dark and still; near to the vestibule a couple of ancient cypresses made a natural arch overhead, and in the tender branches of a group of acacias close by, the evening breeze sighed with gentle, melancholy murmurings amongst the leaves.

Instinctively Taurus Antinor turned to walk a few steps toward the house, and soon reached a spot from whence his gaze could command the colonnaded vestibule, with its mosaic pavement sunk a few steps below the level of the street. Somewhere near him, though he could not see it, a bosquet of heliotrope and white lilies sent an intoxicating fragrance into the air.

From far away--where the marshes stretched their limitless expanse toward the sea--came the melancholy cry of a bittern, calling to his absent mate.

A vague longing surged in the strong man's heart; he stretched out his arms up to the dark, starlit canopy above, and a sigh, half impatient, wholly melancholy, escaped his half-closed lips.

His eyes tried to pierce the marble walls behind which there bloomed--stately and proud--a beautiful white lily.

Wholly against his will, the man's thoughts flew back to that midday hour in the Forum, when Dea Flavia had stood before him in all the exquisite glory of her youth and her loveliness, with that wilful curl round her chiselled lips and the delicate brows drawn together in a frown of child-like obstinacy. How beautiful she was and how strangely pathetic had been her isolation in the midst of so much grandeur.

Even now he thought of her--asleep possibly somewhere in this gorgeous palace--all alone, despite the thousands of slaves around her; friendless, despite the might of the House of Caesar of which she was so proud.

Through one of the tiny windows there peeped a flickering light. Taurus Antinor marvelled if that were her sleeping-room and, closing his eyes, pictured her there, resting on embroidered coverlets and cus.h.i.+ons, her fair hair falling in waves around her face at rest; and he wondered whether in sleep a dewy tear had perchance put a priceless diamond on her golden lashes.

Bitter thoughts of the men whom he had just quitted surged back in his heart; they wished to make of this young girl a tool for the fas.h.i.+oning of their own ambitious schemes.

”The Augusta shall choose one of us for mate, and him we shall ask to hold the sceptre of Caesar.”

One of them for mate! One of those sensuous self-seekers who would use her as a stepping-stone, and, having obtained supreme power through her dainty hands, would cast her aside as a useless tool and break her heart ere she realised even that she had one.

And from the thoughts of the beautiful girl his mind flew back as if instinctively to that strange phase of his life--those unforgettable days in Judaea which had seemed like unto the turning point of his whole existence. He recalled every moment of that memorable day when he had stood among a mult.i.tude on the barren wastes of Galilee and, wrapped in a dark cloak, had listened in solitary silence to words and teachings such as he had never dreamed of before.

”If only I could have understood Thee better then,” he murmured; ”if more of Thy precious words had fallen on mine ear.... I might have told her then something of what Thou didst say ... I could have found the words to make her understand.... But now I am ignorant and forlorn....

Oh, Man of Galilee! Thou didst die so soon ... and left so many of us groping in the darkness.... Thou Son of G.o.d, come back to me, if only in a dream ... show me the way, the truth, the light; show me the star which they say guided the shepherds to Thy cradle ... give me Thy cross, and let me walk once more on Golgotha to Thee.”

And even as these words of pa.s.sionate longing escaped half audibly from his lips his eyes wandered round the seven hills of Rome, and suddenly the highest peak beyond the Forum appeared to him transfigured in the night. Memory with a swift hand drew aside the veil of the present and in a vision showed him a picture of the past. The marble temples of pagan G.o.ds disappeared, the hill became bleak and precipitous and dark; great stillness reigned around, save where from afar there came at times the distant roll of thunder. The sky was overcast, great banks of cloud, the colour of lead, with blood-red lights within their ma.s.sive bosoms, swept storm-tossed across the firmament.

Then from the valley below there came, vaguely remote at first, then rising louder and louder, a sound as when a mighty torrent rushes onwards in its course; and as Taurus Antinor gazed now on that dream-hill, memory showed him, surging like a tempestuous sea, thousands upon thousands of human heads, all tending upwards to the summit of the hill.

They came--the great mult.i.tude--they came, and still they came; and like gigantic breakers on a smooth sh.o.r.e, waves of human beings scattered themselves and dispersed upon that hill.

And amongst them all, isolated, walking with bent back and thorn-crowned head well-nigh bowed to the dust, came a Man bearing a Cross.

Taurus Antinor saw Him even now as he had seen Him then, with blood and sweat dripping from His brow, the pale, patient face serene and set, the eyes half closed in agony still glowing with unutterable love and with the perfect peace of complete sacrifice.

And among the sea of faces that gazed on that solitary figure Taurus Antinor had recognised himself.

He saw himself as he was then, a rough voluptuary, a thoughtless, sentient beast who up to that time had lived a life of emptiness and of mockery, eating and drinking and sleeping and waking again day after day, year after year. And he saw himself as he was on that day, he one of thousands and thousands of lookers-on gazing on the three hours'

agony of a just Man upon the Cross.

He remembered every minute of those three hours, which the hill of imperial Rome now pictured back to him as in a dream. He had stood there a mere unit amongst the crowd, wrapped in a dark cloak, unrecognised and unknown, but with every nerve strained to catch the words that fell from those dying lips. He had heard the cry of bitterness: ”Lord! Lord! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and that of infinite love and of supreme pardon: ”Oh G.o.d, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And above and around the sky grew darker and the air more still, and round that dying figure alone there shone a radiance unseen by most; for had they seen it as Taurus Antinor saw it then, then surely would they have known, would they have understood.