Marcus had been in his pasture for many an hour when Calpurnia came
to the farm. His mother was on her knees washing up the stone floor
of the kitchen. A sweet voice sounded in her ears, and she looked
up to see a goddess--as she thought in the first blinding moment--a
goddess dressed in silvery white with a gleam of gold at her throat.
Neither woman ever told all that passed between them in their long
talk in the sunlit courtyard, where they sought solitude, but when
Marcus's mother kissed her visitor's hands at parting, Calpurnia's
eyes shone with tears and her own were bright as with a vision.
When she went back into the kitchen, she found on the stone table
a great hamper, from which a bottle of wine generously protruded.
Her father-in-law from his chair in the window began an excited and
incoherent story. She ran to him and knelt by his side and begged
him to understand while she told him of a miracle. The dull old eyes
looked only troubled. So she choked back her tears and stroked his
hands gently and said over and over, until his face brightened, "You
are never going to be cold or hungry again--never cold or hungry."
Even with her many tasks the summer day seemed unending to her.
Finally, as the shadows lengthened, she could no longer endure to
wait and started out to meet Marcus. Across a green meadow she saw
him coming, walking soberly and wearily in front of his herded flock.
As he saw her, his listlessness fell from him and he ran forward
anxiously. But when he reached her and saw her eyes, his heart almost
stopped beating in glad amazement. And she held out her hands, while
the dog jumped up on them both in an ecstasy, and said to him, "My
son, Fors Fortuna, your Lady of the Spring, has blessed us. You are
to go to school."
Later in the evening, when the wonderful supper from the hamper had
been eaten and cleared away, and the grandfather had fallen
peacefully asleep, and the sheep and goats and hens had been tended
for the night, Marcus and his mother sat in the doorway beside the
red rosebush and dreamed dreams together of a time when house and
courtyard, renewed, should once more exercise a happy sovereignty
over fruitful acres. The world seemed Marcus's because he was to go
to school, this very year, in their own Como. They had not known
before that Pliny had offered to share with the citizens the expense
of a school of their own, so that boys need not go as far as Milan.
Marcus was awed into speechlessness when his mother told him that
the great man was personally to see to his registration and fees and
clothes and books. The evening wore on, and the boy's head, heavy
with visions, fell sleepily against his mother's breast. As she held
him to her, her thoughts wandered from him to the radiant lady who
had brought such light into their darkness. Could Fors Fortuna
herself, she wondered, be any happier, laden with beauty and riches
and power, and making of them a saving gift for mortals?
At the villa dinner had passed off successfully, Quadratilla having
been entertaining oftener than outrageous and the others having been
in a compliant mood because she was to leave the next day. After
dinner, in the cool atrium, Calpurnia had sung some of her husband's
verses, which she had herself charmingly adapted to the lyre. Later
Quadratilla challenged the younger people to the dice, while
Hispulla retired to the library. Calpurnia slipped into the garden.
There Pliny, never contented when she was out of his sight, found
her leaning against a marble balustrade among the ghostly flowerbeds,
where in the night deep pink azaleas and crimson and amber roses
became one with tall white lilies. Nightingales were singing and the
darkness was sparkling with fireflies. Her fragile face shone out
upon him like a flower. If about Pliny the public official there was
anything a little amusing, a little pompous, it was not to be found
in Pliny the married lover. Immemorial tendernesses were in his voice
as he spoke to his wife: "My sweet, what are you thinking of,
withdrawn so far from me?" Calpurnia smiled bravely into his face,
as she answered: "Of the mothers who have little sons to send to
school."