Sirona was sitting at the open window of her bedroom, having her hair
arranged by a black woman that her husband had bought in Rome. She
sighed, while the slave lightly touched the shining tresses here and
there with perfumed oil which she had poured into the palm of her hand;
then she firmly grasped the long thick waving mass of golden hair and
was parting it to make a plait, when Sirona stopped her, saying, “Give
me the mirror.”
For some minutes she looked with a melancholy gaze at the image in
the polished metal, then she sighed again; she picked up the little
greyhound that lay at her feet, and placing it in her lap, showed the
animal its image in the mirror.
“There, poor Iambe,” she said, “if we two, inside these four walls, want
to see anything like a pleasing sight we must look at ourselves.”
Then she went on, turning to the slave. “How the poor little beast
trembles! I believe it longs to be back again at Arelas, and is afraid
we shall linger too long under this burning sky. Give me my sandals.”
The black woman reached her mistress two little slippers with gilt
ornaments on the slight straps, but Sirona flung her hair off her face
with the back of her hand, exclaiming, “The old ones, not these. Wooden
shoes even would do here.”
And with these words she pointed to the court-yard under the window,
which was in fact as ill contrived, as though gilt sandals had never yet
trodden it. It was surrounded by buildings; on one side was a wall
with a gateway, and on the others buildings which formed a sharply bent
horseshoe.
Opposite the wing in which Sirona and her husband had found a home stood
the much higher house of Petrus, and both had attached to them, in the
background of the court-yard, sheds constructed of rough reddish
brown stones, and covered with a thatch of palm-branches; in these the
agricultural implements were stored, and the senator’s slaves lived.
In front lay a heap of black charcoal, which was made on the spot by
burning the wood of the thorny sajala species of acacia; and there too
lay a goodly row of well smoothed mill-stones, which were shaped in the
quarry, and exported to Egypt. At this early hour the whole unlovely
domain lay in deep shadow, and was crowded with fowls and pigeons.
Sirona’s window alone was touched by the morning sun. If she could have
known what a charm the golden light shed over her figure, on her rose
and white face, and her shining hair, she would have welcomed the
day-star, instead of complaining that it had too early waked her from
sleep--her best comfort in her solitude.
Besides a few adjoining rooms she was mistress of a larger room, the
dwelling room, which look out upon the street.
She shaded her eyes with her hand, exclaiming, “Oh! the wearisome sun.
It looks at us the first thing in the morning through the window; as if
the day were not long enough. The beds must be put in the front room; I
insist upon it.”
The slave shook her head, and stammered an answer, “Phoebicius will not
have it so.”
Sirona’s eyes flashed angrily, and her voice, which was particularly
sweet, trembled slightly as she asked, “What is wrong with him again?”
“He says,” replied the slave, “that the senator’s son, Polykarp, goes
oftener past your window than altogether pleases him, and it seems to
him, that you occupy yourself more than is necessary with his little
brothers and sisters, and the other children up there.”
“Is he still in there?” asked Sirona with glowing cheeks, and she
pointed threateningly to the dwelling-room.
“The master is out,” stuttered the old woman. “He went out before
sunrise. You are not to wait for breakfast, he will not return till
late.”
The Gaulish lady made no answer, but her head fell, and the deepest
melancholy overspread her features. The greyhound seemed to feel for the
troubles of his mistress, for he fawned upon her, as if to kiss her. The
solitary woman pressed the little creature, which had come with her from
her home, closely to her bosom; for an unwonted sense of wretchedness
weighed upon her heart, and she felt as lonely, friendless, and
abandoned, as if she were driving alone--alone--over a wide and
shoreless sea. She shuddered, as if she were cold--for she thought of
her husband, the man who here in the desert should have been all in all
to her, but whose presence filled her with aversion, whose indifference
had ceased to wound her, and whose tenderness she feared far more than
his wild irritability--she had never loved him.
She had grown up free from care among a number of brothers and sisters.
Her father had been the chief accountant of the decurions’ college in
his native town, and he had lived opposite the circus, where, being of
a stern temper, he had never permitted his daughters to look on at the
games; but he could not prevent their seeing the crowd streaming into
the amphitheatre, or hearing their shouts of delight, and their eager
cries of approbation.
Sirona thus grew up in the presence of other people’s pleasure, and in
a constantly revived and never satisfied longing to share it; she had,
indeed, no time for unnecessary occupations, for her mother died before
she was fully grown up, and she was compelled to take charge of the
eight younger children. This she did in all fidelity, but in her hours
of leisure she loved to listen to the stories told her by the wives of
officials, who had seen, and could praise, the splendors of Rome the
golden.
She knew that she was fair, for she need only go outside the house to
hear it said; but though she longed to see the capital, it was not for
the sake of being admired, but because there was there so much that was
splendid to see and to admire. So, when the Centurion Phoebicius, the
commandant of the garrison of her native town, was transferred to Rome,
and when he desired to take the seventeen-years-old girl with him to the
imperial city, as his wife--she was more than forty years younger than
he--she followed him full of hope and eager anticipation.
Not long after their marriage she started for Rome by sea from Massilia,
accompanied by an old relative; and he went by land at the head of his
cohorts.
She reached their destination long before her husband, and without
waiting for him, but constantly in the society of her old duenna, she
gave herself up with the freedom and eagerness of her fresh youth to the
delights of seeing and admiring.
It did not escape her, while she did so, that she attracted all eyes
wherever she went, and however much this flattered and pleased her at
first, it spoilt many of her pleasures, when the Romans, young and old,
began to follow and court her. At last Phoebicius arrived, and when he
found his house crowded with his wife’s admirers he behaved to Sirona as
though she had long since betrayed his honor.
Nevertheless he dragged her from pleasure to pleasure, and from one
spectacle to another, for it gratified him to show himself in public
with his beautiful young wife. She certainly was not free from
frivolity, but she had learnt early from her strict father, as being the
guide of her younger sisters, to distinguish clearly right from wrong,
and the pure from the unclean; and she soon discovered that the joys
of the capital, which had seemed at first to be gay flowers with bright
colors, and redolent with intoxicating perfume, bloomed on the surface
of a foul bog.
She at first had contemplated all that was beautiful, pleasant, and
characteristic with delight; but her husband took pleasure only in
things which revolted her as being common and abominable. He watched
her every glance, and yet he pointed nothing out to her, but what was
hurtful to the feelings of a pure woman. Pleasure became her torment,
for the sweetest wine is repulsive when it has been tasted by impure
lips. After every feast and spectacle he loaded her with outrageous
reproaches, and when at last, weary of such treatment, she refused to
quit the house, he obliged her nevertheless to accompany him as often as
the Legate Quintillus desired it. The legate was his superior-officer,
and he sent her every day some present or flowers.
Up to this time she had borne with him, and had tried to excuse him,
and to think herself answerable for much of what she endured. But at
last--about ten months after her marriage--something occurred between
her and Phoebicius--something which stood like a wall of brass between
him and her; and as this something had led to his banishment to the
remote oasis, and to his degradation to the rank of captain of a
miserable maniple, instead of his obtaining his hoped for promotion, he
began to torment her systematically while she tried to protect herself
by icy coldness, so that at last it came to this, that the husband, for
whom she felt nothing but contempt, had no more influence on her life,
than some physical pain which a sick man is doomed to endure all through
his existence.
In his presence she was silent, defiant, and repellent, but as soon
as he quitted her, her innate, warm-hearted kindliness and child-like
merriment woke up to new life, and their fairest blossoms opened out
in the senator’s house among the little troop who amply repaid her love
with theirs.
Phoebicius belonged to the worshippers of Mithras, and he often fasted
in his honor to the point of exhaustion, while on the other hand he
frequently drank with his boon companions, at the feasts of the god,
till he was in a state of insensibility.
Here even, in Mount Sinai, he had prepared a grotto for the feast of
Mithras, had gathered together a few companions in his faith, and when
it happened that he remained out all day and all night, and came home
paler even than usual, she well knew where he had been. Just now she
vividly pictured to herself the person of this man with his eyes, that
now were dull with sleep and now glowed with rage, and she asked herself
whether it were indeed possible that of her own free will she had chosen
to become his wife. Her bosom heaved with quicker breathing as she
remembered the ignominy he had subjected her to in Rome, and she
clenched her small hands. At this instant the little dog sprang from her
lap and flew barking to the window-sill; she was easily startled,
and she drew on her morning-gown, which had slipped from her white
shoulders; then she fastened the straps of her sandals, and went to look
down into the court-yard.
A smile played upon her lips as she perceived young Hermas, who had
already been for some time leaning motionless against the wall of the
house opposite, and devouring with his gaze the figure of the beautiful
young woman. She had a facile and volatile nature. Like the eye which
retains no impression of the disabling darkness so soon as the rays of
light have fallen on it, no gloom of suffering touched her so deeply
that the lightest breath of a new pleasure could not blow her troubles
to the winds. Many rivers are quite different in color at their source
and at their mouth, and so it was often with her tears; she began to
weep for sorrow, and then found it difficult to dry her eyes for sheer
overflow of mirth. It would have been so easy for Phoebicius to make her
lot a fair one! for she had a most susceptible heart, and was grateful
for the smallest proofs of love, but between him and her every bond was
broken.
The form and face of Hermas took her fancy; she thought he looked of
noble birth in spite of his poor clothing, and when she observed that
his checks were glowing, and that the hand in which he held the medicine
phial trembled, she understood that he was watching her, and that the
sight of her had stirred his youthful blood. A woman--still more a woman
who is pleased to please--forgives any sin that is committed for her
beauty’s sake, and Sirona’s voice had a friendly ring in it as she bid
Hermas good-morning and asked him how his father was, and whether the
senator’s medicine had been of service. The youth’s answers were short
and confused, but his looks betrayed that he would fain have said
quite other things than those which his indocile tongue allowed him to
reiterate timidly.
“Dame Dorothea was telling me last evening,” she said kindly, “that
Petrus had every hope of your father’s recovery, but that he is still
very weak. Perhaps some good wine would be of service to him--not
to-day, but to-morrow or the day after. Only come to me if you need it;
we have some old Falerman in the loft, and white Mareotis wine, which is
particularly good and wholesome.”
Hermas thanked her, and as she still urged him to apply to her in all
confidence, he took courage and succeeded in stammering rather than
saying,--“You are as good as you are beautiful.”
The words were hardly spoken when the topmost stone of an elaborately
constructed pile near the slaves’ house fell down with a loud clatter.
Sirona started and drew back from the window, the grey-hound set up a
loud barking, and Hermas struck his forehead with his hand as if he were
roused from a dream.
In a few instants he had knocked at the senator’s door; hardly had he
entered the house when Miriam’s slight form passed across behind the
pile of stones, and vanished swiftly and silently into the slaves’
quarters. These were by this time deserted by their inhabitants, who
were busy in the field, the house, or the quarries; they consisted of a
few ill-lighted rooms with bare, unfinished walls.
The shepherdess went into the smallest, where, on a bed of palm-sticks,
lay the slave that she had wounded, and who turned over as with a hasty
hand she promptly laid a fresh, but ill-folded bandage, all askew on the
deep wound in his bend. As soon as this task was fulfilled she left the
room again, placed herself behind the half open door which led into the
court-yard, and, pressing, her brow against the stone door-post, looked
first at the senator’s house, and then at Sirona’s window, while her
breath came faster and faster.
A new and violent emotion was stirring her young soul; not many minutes
since she had squatted peacefully on the ground by the side of the
wounded man, with her head resting on her hand, and thinking of her
goats on the mountain. Then she had heard a slight sound in the court,
which any one else would not have noticed; but she not only perceived
it, but knew with perfect certainty with whom it originated. She could
never fail to recognize Hermas’ foot-step, and it had an irresistible
effect upon her. She raised her head quickly from her hand, and her
elbow from the knee on which it was resting, sprang to her feet, and
went out into the yard. She was hidden by the mill-stones, but she could
see Hermas lost in admiration. She followed the direction of his eyes
and saw the same image which had fascinated his gaze--Sirona’s lovely
form, flooded with sunlight. She looked as if formed out of snow, and
roses, and gold, like the angel at the sepulchre in the new picture in
the church. Yes, just like the angel, and the thought flew through her
mind how brown and black she was herself, and that he had called her
a she-devil. A sense of deep pain came over her, she felt as though
paralyzed in body and soul; but soon she shook off the spell, and her
heart began to beat violently; she had to bite her lip hard with her
white teeth to keep herself from crying out with rage and anguish.
How she wished that she could swing herself up to the window on which
Hermas’ gaze was fixed, and clutch Sirona’s golden hair and tear her
down to the ground, and suck the very blood from her red lips like a
vampire, till she lay at her feet as pale as the corpse of a man dead of
thirst in the desert. Then she saw the light mantle slip from Sirona’s
shoulders, and observed Hermas start and press his hand to his heart.
Then another impulse seized her. It was to call to her and warn her of
his presence; for even women who hate each other hold out the hand
of fellowship in the spirit, when the sanctity of woman’s modesty is
threatened with danger. She blushed for Sirona, and had actually opened
her lips to call, when the greyhound barked and the dialogue began. Not
a word escaped her sharp ears, and when he told Sirona that she was
as good as she was beautiful she felt seized with giddiness; then
the topmost stone, by which she had tried to steady herself, lost its
balance, its fall interrupted their conversation, and Miriam returned to
the sick man.
Now she was standing at the door, waiting for Hermas. Long, long did
she wait; at last he appeared with Dorothea, and she could see that he
glanced up again at Sirona; but a spiteful smile passed over her lips,
for the window was empty and the fair form that he had hoped to see
again had vanished.
Sirona was now sitting at her loom in the front room, whither she had
been tempted by the sound of approaching hoofs. Polykarp had ridden
by on his father’s fine horse, had greeted her as he passed, and had
dropped a rose on the roadway. Half an hour later the old black slave
came to Sirona, who was throwing the shuttle through the warp with a
skilful hand.
“Mistress,” cried the negress with a hideous grin; the lonely woman
paused in her work, and as she looked up enquiringly the old woman gave
her a rose. Sirona took the flower, blew away the road-side dust
that had clung to it, rearranged the tumbled delicate petals with her
finger-tips, and said, while she seemed to give the best part of her
attention to this occupation, “For the future let roses be when you find
them. You know Phoebicius, and if any one sees it, it will be talked
about.”
The black woman turned away, shrugging her shoulders; but Sirona
thought, “Polykarp is a handsome and charming man, and has finer and
more expressive eyes than any other here, if he were not always talking
of his plans, and drawings, and figures, and mere stupid grave things
that I do not care for!”