The Lion's Brood, Duffield Osborne [i love reading txt] 📗

can listen all day to your gabbling?" cried the soldier, furious with impatience.

A faint laugh seemed to come from somewhere beyond the hallway.

"I was about to say, most noble lord," pursued the porter, hardly ruffled by the outburst; "and I trust you will pardon me if I dallied over-much; but—"

Sergius raised his hand. Then, thinking better of the blow, he seized the man by the throat.

"Perhaps I can shake the words out like dice from a box. Now for the Venus cast!" he cried, suiting the action to the speech.

"Are you making trial of your strength that you may break more readily into Carthaginian houses? Remember it is soldiers with whom you are to contend."

Sergius turned quickly, to see Marcia herself standing at the entrance to the hall. In her eyes, on her lips, was malicious laughter; but a little red spot on either cheek seemed to tell of some stronger feeling behind. He had released the porter so quickly that the latter staggered back almost into the fountain, and Marcia smiled.

"I think I have been taking a great deal of trouble for the sake of a very discourteous person," she said. "I sent Minutia to tell a certain soldier that I am willing to bid him farewell, despite his unworthiness, and he comes and nearly strangles poor old Rhetus for trying to say that I was awaiting him in the peristyle."

"Rhetus' attempt was not very successful, and my time was short," said Sergius, growing alternately red and pale.

"And so you thought to hasten his speech by closing his throat? Oh! you are a wise man—a very logical man. They should have made you dictator, so that you could save Italy by surrendering Rome."

"Is it to say such things that you sent for me?" asked Sergius, after a pause during which he struggled against embarrassment and wrath.

"Surely not, for how could I know that you were going to behave so outrageously? If you will follow me, we will go into the peristyle."

She turned back through the passage, and Sergius followed, issuing a moment later into a large, cloister-like court, open in the middle, and decorated with flowers and shrubs. Four rows of columns, half plain, half fluted, supported the shed roof that protected the frescoes. These covered three of the walls. On the back was a garden scene so painted as to seem like a continuation of the court itself into the far distance; on the right was the combat between Aeneas and Turnus, and on the left a representation of the first Torquatus despoiling the slain Gaul of the trophy from which the family took its name.

"And now I will tell you why I sent."

She had seated herself in a marble chair with wolf heads carved on the arms, and her face had grown grave and thoughtful.

"It was to tell you a dream—a dream of you that I had last night."

Her cheek flushed, and Sergius' eyes sparkled.

"You dreamt of me?" he said in a low voice. He half raised his arms and came nearer; but she held up one hand in the old imperious manner.

"If you please, I have not sent for you that you should grow presumptuous, because I was unmaidenly enough to dream of so badly behaved a person as yourself. It—it was because it—I thought you should know, so that the omen might be expiated."

Sergius had halted and was standing still. His lip curled slightly.

"I dreamt," she went on, after a short pause, "that there was a wide plain with mountains about it and a river running through; and it was all heaped up with dead men—thousands upon thousands—stripped of arms and clothing, and the air was gray with vultures, and the wolves and foxes were calling to each other back among the hills. And I was very sad and walked daintily so that my sandals and gown might not be splashed with the blood that curdled in pools all about. Suddenly I came to a heap of slain whereon you were lying, with a long javelin through your body. So I screamed and awoke—"

"Surely, then, you felt sorrow," cried Sergius, who had followed the narrative with deep interest, but who seemed to consider nothing of it save the concern she had shown at his death.

"I—I," she began; and then, as if angry with herself at the betrayal of feeling and of her embarrassment, she burst out; "I did not send, foolish one, that you should consider me. Look rather to yourself."

But Sergius was full of the joy of his own thoughts.

"That I shall do, my Marcia, by setting my mind upon things that are better than myself—the Republic—you—"

"Ah, but the omen?"

"I shall put it aside together with the other: that you have called me back from the march; and I shall consider both well expiated by the knowledge that I am not as nothing to you."

Her face grew pale, and she half rose from the chair.

"Truly, I did not think about calling you back. It is terrible—all this—and it is my doing—"

"Then, if you wish, I shall lay it up against you," cried he, gayly, "unless you promise to be Caia in my house—"

"You are unfair to press me now and by such means."

"But it must be now," exclaimed the young man, springing forward and trying to catch her in his arms. "Do you not see I must leave you at once? Shall it be without a promise?"

The blush had turned again to little anger spots, as she evaded him.

"Very well," she said slowly. "I will be Caia where thou art Caius—"

Sergius' face shone with exultation, and his lips parted.

"I will be Caia," she resumed, "upon the day when Orcus sends back the dead from Acheron."

His expression of joy faded, and indignation took its place. Surely this was carrying light speech too far—and at such a time. Suddenly he realized that the dictator might already have ridden on, and disgrace have fallen upon a Sergius at the very beginning of the campaign.

"So be it! I accept that omen—with the others," he cried sternly, and, turning, strode out through the atrium, bounded upon his horse, and dashed headlong down the street, before Marcia was fairly aware that he had gone from her presence.

IV. FABIUS.

Sergius rode back to his men, deeply wounded in love and pride. He tried to excuse Marcia for her treatment of him, on the score of her youth and of youth's thoughtlessness; he blamed himself for his abruptness and his lack of knowledge of women—failings that had perhaps turned an impending victory into the defeat that now oppressed him. Worst of all, there was no hope to remedy his or her fault. A dangerous campaign lay before him, and the omens—but pshaw! he was not one of the rabble, to tremble at a flight of birds from the west or an ox with a bad liver. He had always admired the spirit of that old sceptic, Claudius, who had drowned the chickens off Drepana, though he admitted the faulty judgment in failing to realize the effect of such a defiance upon ignorant seamen and marines: the hierarchy was necessary for the State; if only to keep fools in order, but for a man of family and education—well, he smiled. It provoked him, amid all his disbelief, that he could not help preferring that those same omens had been more favourable. Pride, pride was his last and truest safeguard. He, a descendant of the companion of Aeneas, to fear the Carthaginian sword! he, a Roman noble, about to face death for his country, to waste his thoughts upon a silly girl who chose to flout him!

Then the long clarions of the cavalry rang out, and the horsemen ran to their steeds. Down the slope of the Viminal rode the dictator: before him went the twenty-four axes, each in its bundle of staves, their bearers robed in military cloaks of purple cloth; behind came a small troop of illustrious Romans—his legati, his staff, nominated by him and sanctioned by the Senate for their fame and skill in war; also such senators as had elected, by way of personal compliment, to ride with the general and to partake as volunteers in whatever share of the war he might set for them.

Quintus Fabius Maximus seemed a man just passing the prime of life. His figure, as he sat his horse, was squat rather than tall, though this appearance might be due, in a measure, to the great breadth of his shoulders; altogether his frame seemed one better adapted to feats of strength and endurance than for those of agility. The face, with its grizzled hair and beard, both cut short, suited well the figure that bore it. Dignity, firmness, and kindliness were in its strong and rugged outlines, with less, perhaps, of the pride of race and rank than might have been looked for in the head of the great family whose name he bore—he who was now twice dictator of the destinies of Rome. For dress, his purple cloak, similar to those of his lictors, hung loosely from his shoulders to below his knees, and, opening in front, disclosed a corselet of leather overlaid with metal across chest and abdomen, and embossed with bronze designs of ancient pattern and workmanship. The hem of the white tunic showed below the leathern pendants that hung a foot down from his girdle; the greaves were ornamented at the knees with lions' heads; an armour-bearer carried his master's bronze helmet with its crest of divergent red plumes.

Such was the man upon whom Rome now depended for her saving—"for victory," dreamed such of the unthinking as had recovered from their terror; "for time, time, time," reasoned the man with the deep-set, gray eyes upon whom they had pinned their faith.

Hardly a stride behind him rode Marcus Minucius Rufus, tall and well-built, with bold, coarse features and fierce, roving eyes. His red hair bristled from his brow, and he seemed to restrain with difficulty either his steed or himself from darting forward into the lead.

"Yonder is the sword of the Republic," said one of Sergius' men, as the master-of-the-horse rode by the escort; but the man to whom he said it—an old soldier of the Spanish wars—only shrugged his shoulders. A moment later he grunted in reply:—

"Like enough; but it is a shield that the Republic needs most of all."

Then the clarion summoned them to fall in behind the dictator's company, and the troop rode out from the gate—out into the broad plain—away from the protecting walls fluctuant with waving stoles, and from which tear-dimmed eyes strove to follow them among the villas, farms, and orchards of the country-side—away from the Forum, from the sacred fig tree and the black stone of Romulus—away from the divine triad that kept guard over the Capitol. Beyond lay the Alban Mountains, and, beyond these,—no one knew where,—the strange dangers that awaited them: fierce Spaniards with slender blades as red as the crimson borders of their white coats; wild Numidian riders that always fell upon the rear of Rome's battle; serried phalanges of Africans, veterans of fifty wars; naked Gauls with swords that lopped off a limb at every stroke; Balearic slingers whose bullets spattered one's brains over the ground; Cretans whose arrows could dent an aes at a hundred yards; and above all, over all, the great mind, the unswerving, unrelenting purpose that had blended all these elements into one terrible engine of destruction to move and smite and burn and ravage at the touch of a man's will.

The cavalry rode two and two, thinking of such things; picked men, equipped in the new Greek fashion with breastplate, stout buckler, and strong spear pointed at both ends. What thoughts held the mind of the general, none could fathom. With head slightly inclined he seemed to study, now the ribbons woven in his horse's mane, now the small, sensitive ears that pricked backward and forward, as the Tiburtine Way flowed sluggishly beneath. As for Minucius, he alone seemed hopeful and unimpressed by the dangers that menaced. He glided here and there, reining his horse beside this senator or that lieutenant to utter a word of the safety assured to Rome and of the ruin that hung over the invader, or even calling back to the foremost of the escort some rough badinage upon their gloomy looks; for Minucius was a man of the people, scorning patrician pride of race, and wishing it known that, however high his rank, he held himself no whit better than any potter of the Aventine or weaver of the Suburra.

So,