VALERIAN AND VALERIA
The emperor, acting in his capacity as Pontifex Maximus, had confirmed
as virgin priestess of Vesta, Flavia, a child of ten, daughter of
Valerian and Valeria. To celebrate the event Valerian gave the people
games. Held in the new Amphitheatre, the spectacle drew all Rome. The
emperor honoured the donor by his presence. Gladiators contended, after
strange fashions, with beasts of the wood and the plain and with one
another. Valerian, a successful general, lately returned from the west,
had brought prisoners, great flaxen-headed men, who now fought, divided
into two bands, kin against kin, with freedom the prize for the
surviving.
The Amphitheatre was huge, one oval, hollow wave of men and women. The
people came early, struggling for good seats, desirous of being on hand
for every important entrance,--the emperor, the senators, the prefect of
the city, the vestals, the donors of the games, the famed, the rich, the
knowing. Down streamed the sun, hot and bare upon the arena, broken
elsewhere by awnings of rose and blue. Flowers withered in garlands,
perfumes were burning in silver braziers. A sea of sound steadfastly
beat against the ear, a vast blend of voices, male and female, of every
quality. _Vigiles_ kept order. In the arena, in the sloping passways
between the divisions of the benches, jugglers and buffoons and
pantomimists kept the many amused until there should arrive the
glittering few. Fruit and a kind of comfit were carried about and
distributed. The people acclaimed Valerian the Generous.
The freedwoman Lais picked a great bunch of grapes for herself, and
another for her daughter Iras, a child a year or so older than the
little new vestal. “Valeria has a marble chair while I have a stone
bench,” quoth Lais. “But she can eat no better grapes than these!
Moreover, she has kissed her girl for the last time to-day, while I can
kiss mine any day! Still the gods keep planting thistles with roses!”
“Mother, mother!” whispered Iras. “Is it over there that father will
sit?”
“Hush, and eat your grapes!” answered Lais.
The oceanic voice of the place deepened to a roar. The great were
coming. The buffoons, jugglers, pantomimists, passers to and fro stood
still. Up and down the dizzy slopes the mass scrambled to its feet.
“Hail, Cæsar! Hail, Cæsar!”
With pomp came the emperor, prætorians, and civic officers; with pomp
came the six vestals, the _virgo vestalis maxima_ and her five sister
priestesses, splendidly attended. The six were robed in white, stola and
pallium, their hair bound with ribands of white wool. They took the
seats of the vestals, over against the emperor. With them, to-day, came
the newly chosen young vestal, the child of ten, daughter of Valerian
and Valeria. She was dressed like the older priestesses, but her hair
had been cut upon her taking the vows. She had an especial place; she
sat stiffly, in view of all, a little figure all in white, with folded
hands. Her vows were for thirty years. For ten of these she would be
trained in the service of Vesta, for ten she would watch the sacred
fire, bring the sacred water, offer the sacrifices of salt cakes, the
libations of wine and oil, pray for the Roman State, guard the
Palladium; for ten she would teach the youthful vestals. She would have
enormous honour, great privileges.
The freedwoman and her daughter, leaning forward in their places,
whispering each to the other, watched the child in white. “See the
people look at her! Are the games for Flavia?” asked the child Iras, and
she spoke with a child’s jealousy.
“Eat thy grapes, my poor babe! Thou wilt not have a great house and
riches and honour like the vestals!” Lais gave her rich, chuckling
laugh. “Neither, if thou lettest the fire go out at home, shalt thou be
cruelly scourged! Nor, when thou art older, if thou slippest once--just
once--just one little time--shalt thou be buried alive!”
The little, new vestal sat still, with her hands crossed before her. Her
eyes filled with tears, they rolled down her cheeks. The attendants
having her in charge whispered to her hastily. She must not weep! “Then
turn me so that I cannot see my mother.”
Valerian with Valeria his wife had bowed before the emperor. Now they
sat quietly, with a studied lack of state, as was fitting, about them
friends of the soberer sort. Valerian talked with the Stoic Paulinus.
Valeria sat still as a figure of ivory and gold, her long-fingered hands
clasped in her lap, her eyes upon the garlanded place of the vestals,
upon the little figure sitting so stiffly.... Down in the arena they
were making ready, and in the meantime five hundred dancing fauns and
nymphs gave entertainment.
Not till there began the struggle between man and beast and man and man
would tense interest stop the voice of the host. Up and down the sound
was as of the sea, or of a high wind in those endless barbarian forests
on the edge of empire where Valerian had been. Behind the freedwoman and
her child crowded market men and women, provincials of low estate, half
a dozen soldiers. Of these last it appeared that Valerian had been
general. Their general figured in their talk, and they did not scant
their praise. They called him brave and wary, good father to his
cohorts. A provincial asked about the children of his body. Lais turned
a little toward the speakers.--“All but this one died. He adopted a son
so that his name should last--see, the young man standing up! But he has
no own children save the little vestal.”
Lais, with a jerk of her head, went back to eating grapes and
contemplating the fauns and nymphs.
“No lawful children, you mean?” said the provincial.
“Of course,” answered the soldier: “owned children. There are owned
children and there are unowned children.--Ha! Watch them leap and
dance!”
Lais ate the purple grapes, spitting out the seeds. Iras, leaning
forward, watched the wreathing fauns and nymphs. “Mother, mother! When I
am grown I will be a dancer!”
“Who is the old man talking to the general?”
“Paulinus the Stoic.--Once Valerian thought no more of his soul than
another--”
“Ha! We begin!”
The five hundred dancing nymphs and fauns swirled from the arena like
wind-blown coloured leaves and petals. A grating slid back, there came
forth a hollow roar. Forth upon the sand walked a lion from Africa, a
king among lions. Another gate opened; there stepped forth, naked, a
yellow-headed giant. The games began.... Presently there were many
beasts and many men.
Valeria sat with her hands in her lap, and for a long time had no
thought save for the child that was going from her. Her will had bowed
to that going. It was a great and honourable destiny, and many competed
for the nomination for their daughters. Flavia did not pass from life.
She, Valeria, would hear of her, see her, might visit her in the great,
rich House of the Vestals. But the mother grieved that she would not see
her every day, would no more lie beside her nor bear her in her arms.
She was so sunken in the thought of the little one that she gave scant
attention to the place in which she was, to the sloping wilderness where
men and women took the place of trees, and down below, as in a vast pit,
men fought with and like the beasts of the wood. Upon the slopes held
breathlessness, a leaning forward and down as though bent by a wind.
Down in the arena held heavy breathing, straining, bestial sounds of
struggle, shouts, groans, cries of triumph and despair.... Flavia
stepped aside in her mind. Out of mind went the other vestals, the
emperor, all the great, and the massed people; aside stepped also
Valerian. She had been to the games before, but she had not before felt
woe and sadness like this. Her soul plunged into black depths, then
rose. For the first time she hated the games; she found them smeared
with guilt. It seemed to her that veils parted; she caught wider
glimpses of life and its ways. How long she had lived, and how bent and
crooked, here starved and here swollen, was living! These hateful
games--Cæsar’s empurpled face--the multitude craving and lusting for the
red, the loud, the suffering of another.... She felt for all a sick
distaste. She wished to rise and go away, Flavia in her arms and beside
her Valerian.... She went farther. Faint as first dawn in an old deep
forest she experienced a sense of oneness with all within the range of
perception, with the breathless tiers, with the panting, the groaning
arena. Very faintly, she would have had all rise and go away, very
faintly the whole rose and moved with her. But it was only like a breath
of dawn; in a moment she thought again only of Flavia and Valerian. But
it had been, and might be again. Down in the pit a man, struggling with
a brute, gave a short cry of agony. A man and a woman, near her, leaning
from marble seats, showed gloating faces, drew in their breath with a
sound of delight. She felt again the wave of pain, resistance, the
effort to lift and remove, the straining as against grave-clothes.
The day, short to the most but long and long to many, drew to an end.
The huge spectacle given by Valerian closed with a final clanging feat,
red colour and uproar. Forth went the emperor, forth the vestals, forth
the prefect, senators, knights, the prætorians, the huge people. The
Amphitheatre emptied by many ways, but without, in the columned space
that fronted it, all orders blended. Patrician and plebeian pressed each
against the other. In the seething colour and sound, Valerian and
Valeria, with them many friends, came against a great knot and concourse
of market-people. At cross-directions there occurred a momentary
halting. The folk, recognizing Valerian, shouted his name. He, as donor
of the show, must continue to exhibit good-will. What he showed he felt.
He had been long in savage forests; returning, he felt Rome and the
Romans warm about his heart. He greeted the folk as they greeted him,
laughter and good words passed between them. Then Lais, the freedwoman,
the flower-seller, pushed herself, or was pushed, toward the front. She
had in her hand Iras her daughter. Together they came as fully as might
be before Valerian and Valeria. Now Iras was a beautiful child. Valerian
looked on Lais whom he remembered, but Valeria looked at Iras. “Hail,
General!” chanted the flower-seller, and with deliberation pushed before
her the child. “Hail, General! Did you see any fairer, out there among
barbarians?”
If Valerian had or had not did not appear, for now others came between.
In especial young men came, roisterers from the Palatine. These pushed
against the market-folk, and one, curled and garlanded, threw his arms
around Lais, who yet possessed beauty. When she released herself,
Valerian and Valeria and their following had passed by.
That night was feasting in Valerian’s house in Rome. The next day was
business in Cæsar’s house and elsewhere. The third day he went with
Valeria to his country house in the Alban Hills.
At sunset the two paced the terrace, all the air sweet with flowers,
spread beneath them the wide, darkling plain. They had not been alone
together since the day of the games. Now they walked up and down in
silence, husband and wife, in much understanding each the other, yet in
much each to the other barbarian, loving much, yet at not a few points
drawn widely apart. Outwardly, they were at rich, first prime, and both
of them fair to the eye.
The west was crimson, their vineyards and olive trees caught the last
bright light, white doves fluttered about a dovecote and walked the
terrace with them.
Valerian drew deep breath. “How sweet it is to be at home!... Who first
thought of home deserves well!”
“It is sweet.... Valerian, the captives, the miserable in the arena the
other day! A kind of captivity and misery to be the watchers....”
“Have you felt that? I have felt it too. But not one man nor many men
can change the world.... A man would be torn to pieces who said to the
people, ‘The games are done with, things of the past!’”
“Yes.... Ill customs perhaps ignorantly begun, and we go on because we
have gone on so long.... Yet are we never to end ill, begin better?”
“In the long, long run, perhaps, yes.... I suppose we all sleep, or are
poisoned.... However, I said to myself, there in the Amphitheatre, ‘When
needs must, I will go to these games, but not for pleasure. But not
again, though I become thrice as rich as I am, shall I furnish them!’”
“I am glad of that.--See Flavia’s grey dove in the almond tree!”
They watched the dove. It rose, showed dark against the carmine sky,
then passed into the black depths of a cypress.
“Cease now to mourn for Flavia,” said Valerian. “She will be happy.”
“Perhaps.... Men love children, I know, but hardly as women love them.”
“Nature allows that. But a man may do wisely by his children.”
“Oh, ofttimes!--and ofttimes unwisely! But whatever and however he does
they lie in his hand. Utterly, utterly they lie in his hand! He makes
all the laws for them. He puts them to death when he wills. O earth! The
mother is in his hand and the child is in his hand, and we bow our heads
and worship where he bids!”
“What ails thee, Valeria? Do not I, Valerian, love thee and love
Flavia?”
“Yes, Valerian, yes!”
“Then--”
“There is much cause for wonder in this world.... How did it ever come
that men made men fight with beasts upon the sands of an arena for show?
How did it ever come that men have over women the whole power of law and
the state? Oh, I answer myself! It came in many ways, here a little and
there a little--”
“Nature and the gods--”
“Valerian, do you believe that?”
“Yes, I believe it.”
“It flatters your pride to believe it, and so you believe!... But I say,
too, that women must have erred and erred.... Both you and I stray in a
vast wood!”
“Rome and the parting with the child have fevered you.... But you were
always subtle and thinking, thinking--”
“Look how the light sprinkles the plain!--Here is Faustus.”
A grey-headed man leaning upon a staff came to meet them. It was Faustus
the philosopher to whom Valerian gave house-room.
“Hail, Valerian and Valeria! Good is the city, but good indeed is the
country! How beautiful are the olive trees and the sea of gold!”
They paced the terrace up and down, by the marble statues and the
flowering trees. “Faustus, I have read that Zeno said, ‘All men are by
nature equal. In degree of virtue alone are they different.’”
“He said so, Valeria. And so do all Stoics, his followers.”
“And slaves and captives and strangers--”
“They also. Underneath and above they are one with the master and the
victor and the Roman.”
“And women--and women, Faustus?”
Faustus leaned upon his staff. “They also, Valeria.”
Valerian made a movement of impatience. “O Faustus, where is that last
said?”
“It follows, Valerian.”
“It is theory! It has never been, nor will it ever be. As we cannot free
the slaves, so women cannot walk equal with men. But goodness to slaves,
goodness and love to women I grant!”
Faustus was silent.
Said Valeria, “That is much to grant, but not enough.”
They were standing beneath a high-raised marble figure of Ceres.
Valerian struck with his hand the base of the statue. His brow darkened.
“O, Valeria, you and I have struggled together before now--struggled
long, struggled hard! Now we are at peace. I value peace. Let us stay
there!”
“You make a slavery and call it peace!”
He stamped with his foot. “Let it be! Let it be!”
The wife raised her arms to the skies, then let them drop. She could
sing most sweetly. Now, suddenly, she broke into song, a wild folk-carol
of sun and earth and gods and dæmons. She sang a charmed silence upon
the terrace and the garden below. Tree, vine, and flower, bird upon the
bough, light in the west, seemed to dream, listening. Faustus sat upon a
bench, his hands crossed over his staff, his eyes upon the brightening
evening star. Valerian sighed. He leaned against the wall and shadowed
his face with his hand, and the inward light beat against the inward
eye, but the eye was not yet strengthened enough to receive it strongly.
The woman ceased to sing, the dusk thickened, the dank and chill of the
evening were felt, they went into the house.
Later, in the great chamber, the house master and mistress being alone
for the night, Valeria standing trimming the lamp that burned, fed by
perfumed oil, before the little figures of the household deities, said
suddenly, “She was your child--that lovely brown-haired one a woman
thrust before us, leaving the Amphitheatre. She was so like you!--more
like than is Flavia.”
Valerian came and stood beside her. “The woman was Lais the Greek. Five
years since I freed her, and bought for her a flower shop. Then we
became as strangers. Thou knowest that illness I had, five years ago,
and how, recovering, I changed much in my life.... The freedwoman has
her shop of flowers, and if I remember her aright will be ever warm and
kind to the child.”
“What is her name--the child’s?”
“Her name?... I cannot,” said Valerian, “remember it.”
* * * * *
From the Rhine, from post to post, along the Roman roads, came with
swiftness tidings that again the Marcomanni had risen in revolt. Back to
his legion, encamped upon that river, hastened Valerian. Arrived, he
made junction with an endangered legion stationed inland, and drove with
twin eagles against the Marcomanni. These broke, these fled; a host was
slain, a host taken. The brand of revolt, dashed against earth, had its
fire put out. The auxiliaries who brought to Rome, over hundreds of
leagues, over Roman roads, to slavery, to the games of the
Amphitheatre, the huge many of prisoners, brought also praise of
Valerian. The victory praised him, the safety of the legions praised
him. The emperor nodded, looked aslant, made the sign that kept away
evil. Said one under his breath to another in the house of Cæsar, “Do
not win too much nor be liked too well, for that is the road to the
Mamertine!”
Valerian, far from Rome and that savour of incense and look of danger,
obeyed soldierly duty and something higher. Revolt subdued, he
conciliated, organized, administered, and all was done well. It took
time. Months rolled away in the northern forests, by the northern
streams. The months became a year, the year two years, the two three.
Valerian wrote to Rome, asking permission to return for a while to
family and estate. Permission was denied. He had thought that it would
be so, for letters told him that ever more and more Cæsar hated other
men’s successes, and that, besides, certain foes of his worked against
him in Rome. Upon the heels of that denial came an order to proceed to
the command of a legion in Britain. That was to leave a famous legion
for one not so famed. That was to leave captain and soldiers who engaged
for victory wheresoever he led for others who knew him not. It was to
leave a region that he knew for obscure struggles with the Caledonians
at the edge of the world. Valerian sat with his chin in his hand, and
pondered his own revolt--his own and the famed legion, drawing with it
other legions. He shook his head; he consulted loyalty and the public
good. Obeying the imperial word, he set his face to the west, he
travelled long and far, and crossed the narrow sea and came to Britain
and travelled the Roman road to the legion in the north. Here he stayed
two years and did well, so well that at the end of that time he was sent
to command not a legion, but auxiliary troops in a poor and drowsy
corner of the empire where Opportunity might be expected never to show
her face. Expectation was disappointed; in the third year Opportunity
appeared with suddenness. Valerian took her by both hands. His name once
more became sonorous. When he had been almost ten years from Rome he was
summoned home. He was sure that it was to ruin.
There were lines in his forehead, a little silver in his hair and short
beard. The rime, the breath of the fir wood clung about him. In
Valeria’s hair there was silver. She met him alone, beneath the old
olive tree, upon the slope before the villa in the Alban Hills. He had
sent those with him another way; he came to her alone with, in his step,
the eagerness of youth. She stood robed in white; she had for him who,
in the wilderness, had increased in inward stature, a new beauty and
majesty.
“Hail, Valerian!”
“Hail, Valeria!” Each held the other, embraced. “Long--long--long has it
been!”
They climbed the hillside. “Are you safe, Valerian,--are you safe, here
at Rome, where you should be so safe--”
“Not I! To-morrow, Cæsar may send to tell me, ‘Open your veins. Die, and
ease me of a jealousy!’--Well, what odds? It comes one day. What matter
which day?”
The old household slaves came about them. It was springtime and evening
and loveliness. As they reclined at supper, as afterwards they walked
the terrace, and at last in their chamber he watched Valeria. Love
rekindled in him, but a graver love, a love that was beginning to
think.
“We have changed,” he said.
“Yes. There is a worker, a sculptor, a musician dealing with us.”
“Life?”
“Life also is under its hand.... In these years that I have dwelled
here, lonely but for it, I have felt it working. It works from a place
that our places hide.”
“I learned something of that in those dark, northern woods, by those
cold and deathly waters. There is something more than we know or feel.”
“There is a sky above the sky. But that is all I know. I do not yet
breathe under it.”
Days and nights passed. Valerian rested with Valeria in the villa among
the hills, unbidden to Rome, possibly unthought of, perhaps
unthreatened. He began to feel in the peace about him that he had
dreamed that there was lightning in the clouds and an ambush in the way.
And then he was bidden, he with his wife, to a feast in Cæsar’s
house.... When he came there, he saw that all the time the sky had been
truly overcast.
Cæsar made a feast of phantasy and extravagance. The colours seemed all
gold, or else the hue of wine. The emperor reclined, garlanded, and all
the guests were garlanded, and beautiful slaves served the tables with
drink and viands fantastically choice, and flower petals were shred upon
them from above. Voluptuous music mixed with the silver fall of
fountains. At intervals dwarfs or jugglers or gladiators made
entertainment, or dancers came like snow or fire into the huge pillared
room. There flowed talk and talk and laughter. Valerian and Valeria had
their places where Cæsar might observe that general, too liked by
soldiers and provincials! To an outcast looking in great and fine might
have seemed the feast, to an angel looking down it might have glittered
evil, shouted evil.
There were many women. Valeria made to greet those with whom she had
acquaintance--no great number, so shut away for so long had she lived.
But they greeted back with the lips only, and very coldly. It was
evident that none here wished to be called the friend of the wife of
Valerian. She felt for Valerian a passion of sympathy. She sat, watching
carefully her own words and smiles lest anywhere they might not serve
his fortunes. She thought that now she could know no hurt save where he
knew hurt.
For the most part the women here were patrician women whose minds lay
rank earth for the growing of ill weeds. For the most part the men of
the feast mated them well. Virtue there was in the empire, virtue even
here, but here, in proportion, little virtue.... Valeria, regarding the
women, saw Livia and Porcia and Lucilla, and others like the three.
They had riches, the energetic men of their houses gaining, long since,
lands and honours and wealth. Slaves there were by the score and the
hundred to take from them effort in behalf even of their own persons.
They might make it if they chose, putting aside the offices of slaves.
But it took virtue and hardness to make that effort, and from childhood
they had had no training. One in blood and bone and force with their
men, they might not be soldier, nor administrator, nor statesman, nor
public official, nor trader, nor teacher, nor physician, nor orator, nor
athlete, nor student in the schools. Where there were children there
were slave nurses, slave tutors. The huge household, the “familia,” was
largely managed by skilled slaves. Everywhere initiative, restless
energy, came hard against the inner wall of law and the outer wall of
custom, and they were walls to keep in prisoners! High and thick though
they were, this age saw some breaking through toward freedom from that
grasp of law, that backward clutch from equal standing in human rights.
But the breaking through seemed futile because it went not all the way,
went but the smallest portion of the way, and so could come into but
weak relations with the whole.
But there was one road upon which initiative was not blocked. The
patrician woman with youth, with fair youth, with beauty, with some
beauty, with wit to make store gain more store, and sensual to match
sensual men, might have power, power, power--illegitimate, indirect,
useless and selfish power! The time was one of libertinism, and there
were libertines, men and women, and they seemed to sit in the chairs of
the Fates and to spin and cut the threads of destiny.
Valeria saw that Livia looked at her full, then with a laugh looked
away. The man that was Livia’s lover was that one who desired Valerian’s
command. And now Livia was placed near to Cæsar and had snared him with
her thick eyelashes and the ivory tower of her throat. She saw Lucilla
speaking to the man beside her, and he was that senator who most coveted
Valerian’s land. She saw how many of Valerian’s foes were here, and that
Cæsar looked blackly upon him. She thought that he had been commanded
here in order that there might be snatched and perverted some word that
he might drop.... She felt a depth of anger and despair.
Guests were yet entering. Now a movement showed beyond Cæsar a
white-robed, honour-heaped figure--the figure of a priestess of Vesta,
bidden to this feast....
Valeria felt a shock of delight, a glow from head to foot. Her hand
touched Valerian’s. “Look! It is Flavia!”
“I see.... Show no love for anything here to-night save for Cæsar and
those whom he loves.”
As best she might she obeyed. Every down-drifting rose-leaf, every throb
of music touched her senses like a cry of danger. She had seen in a
forest doe or hare quiver when twig rubbed against twig.... But the
vestal her daughter, seeing her, gave an exclamation. “My mother and
father--I did not know that they would be here!” She smiled upon them,
down the long board--several noted it.... Flavia was brightly fair, and
she loved lights and music and flowers and all these people. Cæsar sent
her wine from his own flagon.
On, with a kind of ordered tumult, went the feast. To Valerian, aware of
Damocles’ sword above him, to Valeria sharing that awareness, it was
long--long!
Then came in a dancer. The clearing of a space for her alone, the
fanfare of trumpets that brought her in, seemed to betoken her famed in
her art. She came, beautiful, with brown, waving locks, half nude,
dancing wonderfully. She was Iras the Greek, daughter of Lais the
flower-seller.
Cæsar’s guests applauded her dancing. She came on twinkling feet to one
and to the other. She carried a thyrsus tipped with a pine cone, wound
with leaves and blossoms. This she dipped into fountain spray as she
passed, then shook it above this one and that one, showering him with
diamonds. This man and that man, drunken, turning, strove to clasp her
by arm or waist, but she danced away from him, shaking the thyrsus,
shaking her brown locks. She spoke familiarly to any she chose, moving
from point to point as lightly as thistledown.
When she came to the vestal Flavia she touched her robe with the pine
cone. “Hail, priestess! In what world might thou and I be sisters?”
Flavia answered, touching with her fingers the diamonds that the thyrsus
showered, “In the grave, Iras the dancer!” and laughed herself because
she had answered apropos.
The dancer, flashing on, came at last to Valerian. She lifted her
thyrsus. “Who is it? Who is it? I have seen him before, but not at
banquets--”
“The general Valerian,” said one behind her.
“Valerian!” Iras the dancer stood still, seemed with some kind of shock
to receive the name, then with a laugh she raised the thyrsus and
holding it in both hands, crosswise above her head, danced away on yet
swifter feet. But she had stood beside Valerian, and that one who had
spoken had looked from face to face. And Valerian, by one of his most
few friends, had been warned against that man that he was of the host of
delators, a spy and informer.
After the dancer came in gladiators. The feasting men and women sank
lower. The room seemed unsteadily lit, smelled of wine and blood. The
flowers withered, speech became confused, meaningless, save that always
it menaced good. Cæsar sent wine to Valerian, more wine and more. He
must drink, though he saw that they would have him drunken and his
tongue loosened. Three came about him and drove the talk to the legions
and what, given word, a mind-endowed general might do. Cæsar’s
cup-bearer brought him more wine. He strove to be wary in talk, but at
last came a mist and he saw only that he was talking.... Came the last
viand, the last red and golden wine, outside rose the dawn. And then
without, in the misty garden of the Cæsars, the guests yet strayed, and
yet there was revelling. But at last, with the rising sun, all might go
home.
Two days and Valerian received an order to return to his country-house
and there hold himself captive, while before the Senate was sifted a
charge of betraying the Commonwealth. Valerian went and with him
Valeria. It was the late summer, and the air was sultry and there were
many thunder-storms with in between a sense of burdened waiting. Morn
and eve, the two paced the terrace and looked to Rome afar in the plain.
They had their slaves, but freedmen, clients of Valerian, came no more
as they had done, obsequious, many as bees to a garden. And old friends
did not come, and kindred did not come. Only two or three came privily,
speaking not of their coming either before the visit or afterwards.
Faustus the philosopher, now an old man, came more than once. And all
who came and all who stayed away knew that bolts were being forged with
which to slay Valerian. And they trembled for themselves who were his
kin or acquaintance.
Valeria would have caught the bolts in her hands, directed them if she
might to her bosom only, but there was no way. But all that knew knew
that she, too, would be struck, blackened, and consumed. Always, Cæsar
finally to ruin one ruined many.... When they had been at the
country-house a month those who still had come came no more. They heard
that kindred and friends were being thrown into prison. Faustus brought
that news, and smiling said that hardly might he come again.
“Faustus, this world!”
“There are many things to be straightened. When we have straightened
one, then must we straighten another.... If with all our will we could
reach the centre we might straighten much at once. But that is Wisdom
and few are wise!”
He spent a day and night at the villa, looked cheerfully upon them, and
went back to Rome where he had work to do. He came no more, and their
hearts told them that he had been taken in the net.
A slave, the woman who had nursed her, brought the dire news of Flavia,
Flavia in the House of the Vestals! The two were in the garden, seated
upon a marble bench, gazing idly at the fish in the sunken marble basin.
Came the slave and threw herself at Valeria’s feet, clasping her knees.
“Mistress! Mistress!”
“Ina! Ina! What is it?”
“I went to the foot of the vineyard. One I knew passed from the city. It
is talking--it is talking--”
“Of what, Ina? Of what?”
“Oh, Flavia, mistress!--Flavia! Flavia!”
“_Flavia!_”
“Rome talks. It says that she, a vestal, has been unchaste! The proof
has been gathered, even to-day she is judged and condemned!” Ina’s voice
rose to a shriek. “It says that the earth will be opened and Flavia be
buried living!”
Valerian beat his head against the marble, but Valeria sat like the
marble’s self. When at last she spoke, moved her limbs, rose and went
about through the place and the time and the small, slow events of
existence, it was like a being drugged. In her eyes might be seen one
bound down.... There was no help--what help was there in all Rome and
the world?
It might be that the vestal was innocent, or it might be that youth and
fire in the blood and some untoward nearness and temptation had dragged
her into that pit. Either way, she was to perish, seeing that certainly
the people had been made to believe her guilty. Believing her so, there
was no force to hold them from throwing her to the law which of old the
Roman men had made. As though the two heard it with their ears, they
heard the outcry of the thousands against sacrilege and broken law! They
heard the outcry for Flavia’s death by the old, terrible way!
In the night-time, life came back to Valeria’s veins. The broken will
rose and mended itself. Reason said no doing now would help, but
something beyond reason yet resisted, because resistance must not be
lost. She rose, she left Valerian sleeping, heavy with sorrow; she woke
Ina and took from her a coarse dark mantle; she clad and sandalled
herself, and silently passed from the house, and crossing the terrace,
went down through the almond trees and the vineyard to the road. She had
put a brown stain upon her face; stooping, in the slave’s mantle, she
seemed an old woman. What throbbed in her brain was the intent to reach
Cæsar, at least to cry to him of the wrath of the gods.
In an hour there overtook her a cart from the hills, bearing grapes and
melons to market. She begged a lift, and the boy driving let her seat
herself upon the cart floor among the baskets. When he asked she told
him that she was a fortune-teller, come out to the hills to search for a
certain herb.--No, she had not found it. Perhaps it did not grow
anywhere any longer.--“What is its name?”--“Justice.”
She passed with the boy through the gates at dawn. Leaving him and his
cart she stole afoot through the grey streets to the Palatine. There she
found the stairway, cut in the rock, leading to the summit and the
palace where dwelt Cæsar, and here at the foot in a broad space where
were always beggars and petitioners she sat down, drew her mantle yet
farther over her brow, and extended her hand as if for begging. When the
day was here, surely at some hour, Cæsar would come by!
Much after sunrise, a portly, good-natured-looking personage approached,
passed, and passing tossed her a small coin. She put out her hand and
clasped his mantle and asked if Cæsar would that day leave the palace,
come this way. “It is probable--it is probable!” said the good-natured
personage and went on to climb the hill.
Noon came and afternoon. A stream went up the stair, a stream came down
the stair, but never Cæsar.
When the sun was westering fast Valeria crossed to a legless man under
an ilex tree. “Is Cæsar never coming down to throw us money?”
“Have you feet,” said the legless man, “and see not all that happens in
the world?--Cæsar is not in the palace. He is at his villa on the Appian
Way. He went there yesterday and with him a troop of those of the wilder
sort--not sober children like you and me!”
It was twilight when she went by the House of the Vestals, and going,
raised her arms to the darkening sky. Flavia was not in that house. She
was away from the mercies of Vesta. She was in prison, and out by the
gate of the Sabine road they opened the earth....
Valeria’s senses swam. To give her strength she bought bread with the
coin yet in her hand, and ate it as she walked. It was now night, and
the ways no longer crowded. She was moving toward the Appian Gate. Carts
rumbled by, then passed horse-litters or palanquins borne by slaves;
there were people afoot, revellers and tavern-haunters, Romans on graver
business, freedmen, slaves, beggars, men and old women, women of the
streets and those who accompanied them. Dogs prowled, there came strains
of music, flashes from swinging lanterns, stretches of vacancy and
darkness. She passed a shop with a painted rose for sign and entered one
of those spaces of what seemed dark emptiness. Seemed, for presently she
heard before her stumbling feet and sobbing breath, and overtook a
woman, going also toward the Appian Gate.
There appeared to be no one abroad here in the night-time who concerned
them or gave them notice.... They came together to the gate, not closed
yet for the night. A press of folk of the poorer sort were going and
coming. A keeper stopped the two, demanding their business. “I sell
flowers,” said the woman, “and an order has gone wrong! I must out to my
patron’s to see about it. Why, you know me--Lais the Greek!”
It seemed that that was true. The man struck her upon the shoulder, took
a kiss and let her by. He thought that the other woman, who seemed old
and bent, was of her company. The two passed to Rome without the walls.
The night was powdered with stars. Before them stretched the Appian Way
with the great tombs upon it, and backward upon either hand, rich
gardens and villas. There was far to go to Cæsar’s house upon this road.
Lais the Greek sobbed again. “What doubt that I too die, and my shop?
And what care I now if we do?”
Valeria walked in silence. She looked before her, but truly she was
seeing the waste field outside the Sabine Gate.
But it seemed that the other woman had passed one silence and not come
to another. “Men--men! Dæmons are their gods and dæmons are
themselves!... It is true what the Christians say.... So many years ago,
Valerian, but all things find us out!”
“_Valerian_,” said Valeria. “_Lais the flower-seller...._ Where are you
going, Lais?”
“To Cæsar’s villa. You do not look old any longer. I have seen you
before. Who are you?”
“Valeria is my name.... Why are you going to Cæsar?”
“_Valeria! Valeria!_ I might have guessed that! You are going, too, to
beg, beg, beg with your face against Cæsar’s feet!--Oh, your daughter,
too! Oh, that vestal for whom they dig a chamber under ground--”
“Where is your daughter, the dancer?”
“Valerian’s daughter? In danger. Are not all things that are Valerian’s
in danger? I, a poor freedwoman, I too shall perish, as will you,
Valeria.... But it is these daughters. Ai! Ai! The daughters of women!”
They made on. In the dimness the flower-seller, coming against some
obstruction, stumbled and was brought to the ground. Valeria stooping
helped her rise. The touch drew each to each. They stood for a moment
under the stars, clinging close, each to each.
“How,” asked Valeria, “is thy daughter in danger?”
“Was spawned an intelligencer, a spy! He swelled and lives to hunt out
all who have blood the colour of Valerian’s! Some neighbour told him....
Went a word to the wolf-dogs, ‘Iras the dancer has blood the very
colour! Perhaps in secret Valerian cherishes her, and will be hurt by
her hurt, as by the vestal’s--’”
“Oh-hh!”
“What does woman’s moaning do?... They took my girl, saying that she was
to dance at Cæsar’s feast.--O Hecate, hear me! We thought it only a
palace feast with men and women and toying and dallying! I kissed her
and laughed when she went. That was yesterday. No, it was the day before
yesterday. Yesterday it was that I heard through Priscus of ruin and
death, blooming for all that ever were called Valerian’s--blooming so
for the dancer Iras!”
“O Flavia, thy woe!--O the flowers of this garden!”
“Then I went with Priscus whom I had nursed of a fever and who is a
Christian and has a brother who serves a knight that is of Cæsar’s band.
So by littles we learned--but that brought it to this very sunset.... So
I heard that she was taken to that villa where devil’s ill is done.
Cæsar is there, and men of Cæsar’s bosom!”
They had come to cypress trees by a huge and marble tomb. Lais’s limbs
failed her, she sank upon the earth and stretched her arms along it.
Valeria, standing, regarded the huge shadow of the night. Her lips
moved. “Women against men--crowned men.... Helpless--helpless! Where
they will ravin, they will ravin. Where are our arms, where are our
minds, where are our souls?... And some they make courtesans, and some
they make vestals. And the one they feed upon, and they cry for more
women for food. And the other must be pure, and if she breaks their
law--once, once--they slay her, making for her a terrible death! And
each way they themselves are lawless and cruel. And where is any
advocate, and any god?”
Lais rose from the earth--they went on together--they had miles to go.
Hurrying all they might, lurking in shadows of tombs while other
night-farers went by, the night was late when they came to the grove
that was Cæsar’s, and the wall that enclosed a vast garden, and the long
gleam, far from the road, showing that country-house, lighted still,
revelling still!
They would not go to the gate and the lodge with the prætorians
there--that would be almost certainly never to pass! They sought where
they might climb the garden wall. A stream went by, close below the
walls, flowing to Tiber. Turning from the road, they went along this
water, moving out of the moonlight, under the shadow of the wall,
seeking some stout twist of the over-covering ivy. What they should do
when they reached the garden, when they reached the house where spread
before every door would be guards and slaves, they did not know. They
knew that what they did must be called hopeless. Yet was there a
wildness of hope. They did not think at all of themselves. One saw only
Flavia, the other Iras. They themselves were already dead, and Valerian
was dead, but there were the daughters....
They came, still seeking through the ivy, to a door in the wall, clamped
with iron. They tried it, but it was fast, resisting all their strength.
Lais leaned against it. “I tremble, I tremble!... O Iras! thou wast
truly my all!”
They went a little farther, still creeping by the wall. The bank here
was steep, the stream turbid and swollen from a recent storm among the
mountains. It went by them with a hollow sound, and the moon whitened
the wave. Something lay beside the bank, caught and uplifted by a great
stone, half in, half out of the water. When they came to it they saw
that it was the naked body of a woman.... Lais put her arms beneath and
raised it wholly upon the bank. There was no life, and there had been
many a wrong inflicted before life went. Lais began to laugh. “Iras! Get
up and dance, Iras! Dance for Cæsar, and every man his friend!”
When Valeria saw that there was no moving her, nor making her attend,
nor drawing her farther, nor winning her to go back, nor help for her,
nor any sense that might be appealed to, she left the flower-seller
there, the dead girl in her arms. She herself went on, feeling among the
ivy for that twisted stem to climb by. She found such an one, put hand
and foot to it and mounted to the top of the wall, crept over it and
dropped into the garden beneath. She was in a laurel grove with a white
statue rising from the middle, then in a long alley of like trees. The
branches arched into a low roof, the moon was shut out, she had a sense
of suffocation, she felt the chamber underground by the Sabine Gate. Her
hands, locked before her, beat the dark. The alley widened, she came out
into the light and saw and heard Cæsar’s house, flaming with lamps,
yelling with drunken mirth.
Slaves stopped her ere she reached the door. Her will, one-pointed,
strove to bear all through. “I have a message for Cæsar! Woe is, if he
does not hear it!”
“Who let her pass? She came on a wind from the mountains.--She is a
sibyl!--Cæsar may flay us if we do not let her in.--Call the Captain of
the Guard!”
He came--a man who had been bred upon the hills in sight of Rome.
“I have a message for Cæsar. It imports him to hear!”
“Take the mantle from her.--Valeria, wife of Valerian, I guess that
message!”
Yet she saw Cæsar, and flung herself at his feet. He was drunken and
sated. “Take her away! Send her to Rome. Let her see the vestal
punished who defiled the House of Vesta!”
“Cæsar! My message--”
The emperor’s eyes closed. “There was left an order to bring that same
Valerian to the Mamertine. When she has seen the vestal buried, fling
her with Valerian there!”
Dark was that chamber of the Mamertine where at the last she came to
Valerian. She came with white hair though she was not old. They sat side
by side, all things being now so equal, and feared not the coming death.
When finally daggers and ropes were brought them they took the keen
blades in their hands with a smile.
“How much have we been through together!” said Valerian. “This little,
low door also!”
“We are greater than we know, and have been longer together than we
remember. Farewell, Valerian, until I see thee again, and may it not be
long!”
Each marked and drove the dagger into the vital place. The blood gushed,
their hands clasped, their eyes darkened.