We noticed Martialis in the last chapter issuing from the villa Jovis. The
sparkle in his eye and the half smile on his lips, as he hummed an air
during his rapid walk down to the little southern landing‐place, betokened
an errand of an agreeable nature. He rowed himself across to the mainland
in a fisherman’s skiff, and, thence, taking the road to Surrentum, was not
long ere he stood in the shop of Masthlion, with the joyful and surprised
Neæra in his arms.
‘You grow more beautiful each time I see you, Neæra,’ he said, pressing a
kiss on her lips.
‘Foolish!’ she murmured, smiling, and sinking her eyes before his fervent
gaze. ‘And you, Lucius,’ she added, laying the point of her finger on his
toga, ‘you are no Centurion to‐day—you are in plain woollen—you are not
for the road?’
‘I have reached the end of my journey,’ he replied, drawing her nearer.
‘Your breastplate and cloak become you the best, but they mean haste away.
This is the most welcome to me, for it is your own dress and——’
‘And says that, for a time at least, its wearer is his own master, to
spend his leisure as he lists,’ said Martialis, finishing her speech and
fondling the hand which rested on the bosom of his garment. ‘I have come
here, foolish or not, to pass the few hours at my command. Will you offer
me no more hospitality than this shop can give?’
‘Come,’ she said, giving him a divine smile, and holding out her hand to
lead him inside; ‘but ah, Lucius, we are so poor and simple!’
The little dwelling‐room, under the industrious and fastidious hands of
herself and her mother, was seldom far removed from a state of scrupulous
cleanliness and genial comfort. The articles of furniture which it
contained were well worn, but speckless; and a bright wood fire, burning
in a brazier, cheered and warmed the senses of an in‐comer. At the door
Neæra ran abruptly off, and her lover was left to the company of the
patient, mild‐eyed Tibia, her mother. The latter was engaged in scrubbing
a brazen pot into a sunlike lustre, and although there were grounds for
reasonable familiarity of bearing toward her visitor, yet the attempt came
awkwardly and uncomfortably enough. This wore off, however, in a measure
with the free, easy bearing of the young man, who sat and warmed himself
at the fireside. When Neæra subsequently reappeared, she shone upon him in
the best robes her slender wardrobe could furnish. They were modest and
simple indeed. A few coins were all their worth, but poor as they were,
her beauty made them seem handsome. Fresh and neat from her toilet, with
her clear delicately‐tinted skin and glossy hair, her person seemed to
diffuse a delicious sense of purity and sweetness. She smiled upon the
Centurion in the proud consciousness of her charms, and the dame Tibia,
also, could not help paying her an especial look of approval.
‘How the child is growing into a woman,’ she murmured beneath her breath.
Neæra reached forth her hand to her lover, and the drapery of her tunic,
falling back a little, displayed a rounded arm and wrist of the whiteness
of the snowdrift, to which the tinge of toil‐accustomed fingers bore a
slight contrast.
‘Come,’ she said; ‘we will go and see my father.’
Taking his hand she led him to the workshop in the rear of the house,
abutting on the patch of garden. On trying to open the door they found it
fast, but they could hear the movements of the potter within. Neæra
knocked and called upon her father loudly.
The bolt was drawn within, and they stood face to face with Masthlion, who
was surprised at seeing his daughter’s companion.
‘Welcome, Centurion,’ he said. ‘Though Neæra had little need to bring you
in here amid the clay of a potter’s shop.’
The room was of good size, and the floor consisted of hard‐trodden earth.
A window, or rather an opening which could be closed by a shutter, was on
one side, and against it stood a bench, on which was a litter of tools, as
well as one or two unfinished clay models of figures, with which Masthlion
was fond of varying his time. In the centre of the floor was the potter’s
wheel, which gave him his legitimate occupation. A large oven stood on the
other side, and close by was also a small furnace. As there were to be
seen lumps of unshaped glass lying scattered about in various parts of the
workshop, as well as relics of glass bottles and other vessels, together
with the tools by which they were produced, it was obvious, that the art
of glass‐making formed also a pursuit of the potter, either as a hobby, or
as a regular avocation. Masthlion himself was attired in his working
clothes, and was smeared with clay and grime of the furnace from head to
foot. From a habit of frequently drawing his hand across his forehead, his
ample brow was of the colour of one of the little images on the bench;
and, as this action was sometimes varied by a similar attention to other
parts of his features, his face, in complexion, was little removed from
the hue of his clothes. Neæra clasped her hands across his shoulder and
leant her face toward his, for she was as tall, if not a little above his
stature. The contrast between her lovely pure countenance and his oddly
clay‐daubed visage was so comical that Martialis smiled.
‘Come, father,’ said Neæra in his ear; ‘you have wrought enough for to‐
day. It is not often we have a visitor.’
‘Such a visitor—no!’ replied Masthlion, smiling. ‘Away! Leave me in my
den—you want my room, not my company. Send your mother in here also, and
keep the house yourselves.’
‘No, no!’
‘Stand off, girl, or farewell to your finery—think you that the soil on me
is cleaner than that on the floor?’
He pushed her gently away from him and looked her over with a fond gaze of
admiration. ‘Go, and trouble me not—you have troubled me enough already.’
‘I have come this day to relieve you of her,’ interposed Martialis.
‘Eh?’ cried Masthlion, with a mighty start at this apt and sudden speech.
His face flushed and paled under its coating of clay, and a momentary
tremor passed through him, whilst the fair skin of Neæra flooded crimson,
and her eyes fell.
‘Or, at least, to determine when your burden shall be lightened,’ added
the young soldier.
‘Come, come; no more of this, Centurion,’ returned the potter, with a
slight laugh, which had no shadow of gaiety in it, but only nervousness
and pain. But the young man shook his head.
‘Be not so hasty to bereave us of what little consolation we have of our
lives,’ added the potter.
‘The bereavement need not be so complete as you seem to think,’ said
Martialis.
‘She and you in Rome, and we in Surrentum,’ sighed Masthlion; ‘the
severance will be thoroughly done. But it must be, and must be faced.’
‘What binds you to Surrentum? Come to Rome—there will be greater scope for
your talents, and fortune will flow in upon you.’
‘Ah, yes, father!’ cried Neæra eagerly, with delight in her eyes; ‘and
then we shall be nigh—everything persuades you—you cannot say anything
against it—you know you cannot!’
She caressed him, once more, in her soft, loving manner, which never
failed to fill the heart of her lover with secret pleasure, but Masthlion
put her off as gently as before.
‘The aging tree is not removed as easily as the young sapling,’ he said.
‘No! this is not a fate which befalls thy mother and myself alone: it
follows all those who live long enough to see their bantlings grow out of
childhood—others have to bear it, so must we. Go whither your duty calls
you; your lives have to be moulded, ours are not so lightly altered. And
when your husband weds you, child, you become of his station—we know
better than to follow you, to your disparagement.’
‘You do us little honour by that speech, Masthlion,’ said Martialis; ‘had
I been of such a mean mind I would never have suggested what I have done.’
‘You are both young, and cannot see as far as we older people,’ replied
Masthlion.
‘I am glad of it, then, if it were to see such ignoble conduct. What say
you, Neæra?’
The girl’s head was hanging on her breast in painful thought. ‘Could I be
ashamed of my own parents?’ she said.
The potter’s face clouded deep and he went away to the window, where he
turned his back on the lovers, and looked into the garden in silent
reflection.
Martialis stepped to Neæra’s side, and so they remained without a word for
some time. A struggle was proceeding in Masthlion’s breast, and his lips
were moving as he communed with himself. ‘Shall she be told?’ he thought;
‘would she lose me, or still cling to me? We have reared and tended
her—new ways beget new ideas—it is idle to say we will be thus and thus
until the time try us. To go, and find ourselves despised hereafter,
perchance, would be a crueller thing than to remain here forgotten and
forsaken. Must she be told? She knows nothing, or is ever like to know—how
then can it matter to her if she be left in ignorance? But am I not
selfish? Would it be just? I am afraid—it is fear; for the knowledge would
sign her relief at once. Even if she still clung to me, how would he, a
noble‐born knight, take it? Yet, if she could disown me, after all our
life of love and companionship, what is there honest or good in the
world?’
A half‐smothered groan broke from his lips in the tension of his feelings.
He drowned it with a forced cough, and turned round. He looked upon the
lovers standing in their fond attitude. They were a handsome pair, and the
one not a whit unworthy of the other in any degree.
‘Well, Masthlion, have you decided?’ said Martialis. ‘Have you dismissed
your suspicion from your mind? You have hurt me by it, believe me!’
‘Father!’ began Neæra, leaving her lover’s arms and going to him. The
potter held up his hand before her and said, in a broken voice, scarcely
more than a hoarse whisper—
‘No—not father!’
‘What!’ cried the astonished girl.
A strange feeling rose through the mind of the Pretorian. He checked it,
and despised himself for it, but he could not help it; he would have been
other than human to have done so. He looked inquiringly for more to follow
from the lips of the potter, but the latter merely murmured—
‘Go, and leave me for a space!’ and then dropped his head, and covered his
face with his hands.
The sight of his evident agitation was too much for Neæra. She cast a look
of perplexity and concern at her lover, and then sprang to her father’s
side. As she did so there was a loud knock at the door, which opened,
simultaneously, to admit a brown broad‐faced man with a short stiff beard
and moustache, bearing a light wallet over one shoulder, and carrying a
stout walking‐stick in his hand.