Antinous, searching for his master, had wandered about in the crowd.
Whenever he saw any figures of exceptional stature he followed them, but
each time only to discover that he had entered on a false track. Long
and persistent effort was not in his nature, so as soon as he began to
get tired, he gave up the search and sat down again on a stone bench in
the garden of the Paneum.
Two cynic philosophers, with unkempt hair, tangled beards, and ragged
cloaks flung over their shivering bodies, sat down by him and fell into
loud and contemptuous abuse of the deference shown, ‘in these days,’
to external things and vulgar joys, and of the wretched sensualists who
regarded pleasure and splendor, rather than virtue, as the aim and end
of existence. In order to be heard by the by-standers they spoke in
loud tones, and the elder of the two, flourished his knotted stick
as viciously, as though he had to defend himself against an attack.
Antinous felt much disgusted by the hideous appearance, the coarse
manners, and shrill voices of these persons, and when he rose--as the
cynics’ diatribe seemed especially directed against him--they scoffed at
him as he went, mocking at his costume and his oiled and perfumed hair.
The Bithynian made no reply to this abuse. It was odious to him, but he
thought it might perhaps have amused Caesar.
He wandered on without thinking; the street in which he presently found
himself must no doubt lead to the sea, and if he could once find himself
on the shore he could not fail to make his way to Lochias. By the
time it was growing dark he was once more standing outside the little
gate-house, and there he learnt from Doris that the Roman and her son
had not yet returned.
What was he to do alone in the vast empty palace? Were not the
very slaves free to-day? Why should not he too for once enjoy life
independently and in his own way? Full of the pleasant sense of being
his own master and at liberty to walk in a road of his own choosing,
he went onwards, and when he presently passed by the stall of a
flower-seller, he began once more to think eagerly of Selene and the
nosegay, which must long since have reached her hands.
He had heard from Pollux in the morning that the steward’s daughter was
being tended by Christians in a little house not far from the sea-shore;
indeed the sculptor himself had been quite excited as he told Antinous
that he himself had peeped into the lighted room and had seen her. ‘A
glorious creature’ he had called her, and had said that she had never
looked more beautiful than in a recumbent attitude on her bed.
Antinous recalled all this and determined to venture on an attempt to
see again the maiden whose image filled his heart and brain.
It was now dark and the same light which had allowed of the sculptor’s
seeing Selene’s features might this evening reveal them to him also.
Full of passion and excitement, he got into the first litter he met
with. The swarthy bearers were far too slow for his longing, and more
than once he flung to them as much money as they were wont to earn in
a week, to urge them to a brisker pace. At last he reached his
destination; but seeing that several men and women robed in white, were
going into the garden, he desired the bearers to carry him farther.
Close to a dark narrow lane which bounded the widow’s garden-plot on the
east and led directly to the sea, he desired them to stop, got out of
the litter and bid the slaves wait for him. At the garden door he still
found two men dressed in white, and one of the cynic philosophers who
had sat by him on the bench near the Paneum. He paced impatiently up
and clown, waiting till these people should have disappeared, and thus
passing again and again under the light of the torches that were stuck
up by the gate.
The dry cynic’s prominent eyes were everywhere at once, and as soon as
he perceived the peripatetic Bithynian he flung up his arm, exclaiming,
as he pointed to him with a long, lean, stiff forefinger--half to the
Christians with whom he had been talking and half to the lad himself:
“What does he want. That fop! that over-dressed minion! I know the
fellow; with his smooth face and the silver quiver on his shoulder he
believes he is Eros in person. Be off with you, you house-rat. The women
and girls in here know how to protect themselves against the sort who
parade the streets in rose-colored draperies. Take yourself off, or you
will make acquaintance with the noble Paulina’s slaves and clogs. Hi!
gate-keeper, here! keep an eye on this fellow.”
Antinous made no answer, but slowly went back to his litter.
“To-morrow perhaps, if I cannot manage it tonight,” he thought to
himself as he went; and he never thought of any other means of attaining
his end, much as he longed for it. A hindrance that came in his way
ceased to be a hindrance as soon as he had left it behind him, and after
this reflection he acted on this occasion as on many former ones. The
litter was no longer standing where he had left it; the bearers had
carried it into the lane leading to the sea, for the only little abode
which stood on the eastern side of it belonged to a fisherman whose wife
sold thin potations of Pelusium beer.
Antinous went down the green alley overarched with boughs of fig, to
call the negroes who were sitting in the dull light of a smoky oil-lamp.
Here it was dark, but at the end of the alley the sea shone and sparkled
in the moonlight; the splashing of the waves tempted him onwards and he
loitered clown to the stone-bound shore. There he spied a boat dancing
on the water between two piles and it came into his head that it might
be possible to see the house where Selene was sleeping, from the sea.
He undid the rope which secured the boat without any difficulty; he
seated himself in it, laid aside the quiver and bow, pushed off with one
of the oars that lay at the bottom of the boat and pulled with steady
strokes towards the long path of light where the moon touched the crest
of each dancing wavelet with unresting tremulous flecks of silver.
There lay the widow’s garden. In that small white house must the
fair pale Selene be sleeping, but though he rowed hither and thither,
backwards and forwards, he could not succeed in discovering the window
of which Pollux had spoken. Might it not be possible to find a spot
where he could disembark and then make his way into the garden? He could
see two little boats, but they lay in a narrow walled canal and this
was closed by an iron railing. Beyond, was a terrace projecting into the
sea, and surrounded by an elegant balustrade of little columns, but it
rose straight out of the sea on smooth high walls. But there--what was
that gleaming under the two palm-trees which, springing from the same
root, had grown together tall and slender--was not that a flight of
marble steps leading down to the sea?
Antinous dipped his right oar in the waves with a practised hand to
alter the head of the boat and was in the act of pulling his hand up
to make his stroke against the pressure of the waves--but he did not
complete the movement, nay he counteracted the stroke by a dexterous
reverse action; a strange vision arrested his attention. On the terrace,
which lay full in the bright moonlight, there appeared a white-robed
figure with long floating hair.
How strangely it moved! It went now to one side and now to the other,
then again it stood still and clasped its head in its hands. Antinous
shuddered, he could not help thinking of the Daimons of which Hadrian so
often spoke. They were said to be of half-divine and half-human nature,
and sometimes appeared in the guise of mortals.
Or was Selene dead and was the white figure her wandering shade?
Antinous clutched the handles of the oars, now merely floating on the
water, and bending forward gazed fixedly and with bated breath at the
mysterious being which had now reached the balustrade of the terrace,
now--he saw quite plainly--covered its face with both hands, leaned far
over the parapet, and now as a star falls through the sky on a clear
night, as a fruit drops from the tree in autumn, the white form of the
girl dropped from the terrace. A loud cry of anguish broke the silence
of the night which veiled the world, and almost at the same instant the
water splashed and gurgled up, and the moonbeams, cold and bright as
ever, were mirrored in the thousand drops that flew up from its surface.
Was this Antinous, the indolent dreamer, who so promptly plunged his
oars in the water, pulled a powerful stroke, and then, when in a few
seconds after her fall, the form of the drowning girl came to the
surface again quite close to the boat, flung aside the oar that was in
his way? Leaning far over the edge of the boat he seized the floating
garment of the drowning creature--it was a woman, no Daimon nor
shade--and drew her towards him. He succeeded in raising her high out of
the waves, but when he tried to pull her fairly out of her watery bed,
the weight, all on one side of the boat, was too great; it turned over
and Antinous was in the sea.
The Bithyman was a good swimmer. Before the white form could sink a
second time he had caught at it once more with his right hand and taking
care that her head should not again touch the surface of the water, he
swam with his left arm and legs towards the spot where he remembered
he had seen the flight of steps. As soon as his feet felt the ground he
lifted the girl in both arms and a groan of relief broke from his lips
as he saw the marble steps close below him. He went up them without
hesitation, and then, with a swift elastic step, carried his dripping
and senseless burden to the terrace where he had observed that there
were benches. The wide floor of the sea-terrace, paved with smooth
flags of marble, was brightly lighted by the broad moonshine, and the
whiteness of the stone reflected and seemed to increase the light. There
stood the benches which Antinous had seen from afar.
He laid his burden on the first he came to, and a thrill of thankful joy
warmed his shivering body when the rescued woman uttered a low cry of
pain which told him that he had not toiled in vain. He gently slipped
his arm between the hard elbow of the marble seat and her head, to give
it a somewhat softer resting-place. Her abundant hair fell in clammy
tresses, covering her face like a thick but fine veil; he parted it to
the right and left and then--then he sank on his knees by her side as if
a sudden bolt had fallen from the blue sky above them; for the features
were hers, Selene’s, and the pale girl before whom he was kneeling was
she herself, the woman he loved.
Almost beside himself and trembling in every limb, he drew her closer
to him and put his ear against her mouth to listen whether he had not
deceived himself, whether she had not indeed fallen a victim to the
waves or whether some warm breath were passing the portals of her lips.
Yes she breathed! she was alive! Full of thankful ecstasy he pressed his
cheek to hers. Oh! how cold she was, icy, cold as death!
The torch of life was flickering, but he would not--could not--must not
let it die out: and with all the care, rapidity and decision of the most
capable man, he once more raised her, lifted her in both arms as if she
were a child, and carried her straight to the house whose white walls he
could see gleaming among the shrubs behind the terrace. The little lamp
was still burning in dame Hannah’s room, which Selene had so lately
quitted; in front of the window through which the dim light came to
mingle with the moonbeams, lay the flowers whose perfume had so troubled
the suffering girl, and with them Hannah’s clay jar, all still strewn on
the ground.
Was this nosegay his gift? Very likely.
But the lamp-lighted room into which he now looked could be none other
than the sick-room, which he recognized from the sculptor’s account. The
housedoor was open and even that of the room in which he had seen the
bed was unfastened; he pushed it open with his foot, entered the room,
and laid Selene on the vacant couch.
There she lay as if dead; and as he looked at her immovable features,
hallowed to solemnity by sorrow and suffering, his heart was touched
with an ineffable solicitude, sympathy and pity; and, as a brother
might bend over a sleeping sister, he bent over Selene and kissed her
forehead. She moved, opened her eyes, gazed into his face--but her
glance was so full of horror, so vague, glassy and bewildered, that he
drew back with a shudder, and with hands uplifted could only stammer
out: “Oh! Selene, Selene! do you not know me?” and as he spoke he looked
anxiously in the face of the rescued girl; but she seemed not to hear
him and nothing moved but her eyes which slowly followed his every
movement.
“Selene!” he cried again, and seizing her inanimate hand which hung
down, he pressed it passionately to his lips.
Then she gave a loud cry, a violent shiver shook her in every limb, she
turned aside with sighs and groans, and at the same instant the door
was opened, the little deformed girl entered the room and gave a shrill
scream of terror as she saw Antinous standing by the side of her friend.
The lad himself started and, like a thief who has been caught in the
act, he fled out into the night, through the garden, and as far as the
gate which led into the street without being stopped by any one. Here
the gate-keeper met him, but he threw him aside with a powerful fling,
and while the old man--who had grown gray in his office--caught hold of
his wet chiton he tore the door open and ran on, dragging his pursuer
with him for some paces. Then he flew down the street with long steps as
if he were racing in the Gymnasium, and soon he felt that his pursuer,
in whose hand he had left a piece of his garment, had given up the
chase.
The gate-keeper’s outcry had mingled with the pious hymns of the
assembled Christians in Paulina’s villa, and some of them had hurried
out to help capture the disturber of the peace. But the young Bithynian
was swifter than they and might consider himself perfectly safe when
once he had succeeded in mixing with a festal procession. Half-willingly
and half-perforce, he followed the drunken throng which was making its
way from the heart of the city towards the lake, where, on a lonely spot
on the shore to the east of Nikropolis, they were to celebrate certain
nocturnal mysteries. The goal of the singing, shouting, howling mob with
whom Antinous was carried along, was between Alexandria and Canopus and
far enough from Lochias; thus it fell out that it was long past midnight
when Hadrian’s favorite, dirty, out of breath, and his clothes torn, at
last appeared in the presence of his master.