“I DO NOT KNOW.”
The day was in decline, and although the season was winter yet the air was
not cold. The mountains of Greece lay in the wake like a bank of purple
cloud tinged with gold.
On the quarter-deck reposed the corpse, with the feet turned in the
direction of the prow; the torches spluttered, and cast off sparks that
flew away with the smoke.
On each side were three slave women, detailed to wail, but Longa Duilia
had issued instructions that they were not to be noisy in their
demonstration so as to disturb or swamp conversation aft.
The undulating lament swerving through semi-tones and demi-semitones,
formed a low and sad background to the play of voices on the lower deck,
where, sheltered from the wind, the widow reclined on cushions, and her
daughter Domitia sat at her side in conversation.
A change had come over the girl, so complete, so radical, that she seemed
hardly to be the same person as before her father’s death. This was
noticeable as being in appearance and manner,—noticeable even to the
slaves, not the most observant in matters that did not particularly
concern their comfort and interests. She had been transmuted from a
playful child into a sad and serious woman.
The sparkle had left her eyes to make way for an eager, searching fire.
The color had left her cheek; and her face had assumed a gloomy
expression. The change, in fact, was much like that in a landscape when a
sunny May day makes place for one that is overcast and threatening. The
natural features are unaltered, but the aspect is wholly different in
quality and character.
A mighty sorrow contracting, bruising, oppressing the heart sometimes
melts it into a sweetness of patient endurance that inspires pity and
love. But grief seemed to have frozen Domitia and not to have dissolved
her into tears.
The philosopher approached with solemn stalk, walking on the flat of his
soles.
[Illustration: “THE PHILOSOPHER APPROACHED.” _Page 44._]
Such men were retained in noble households as family chaplains, to advise,
comfort, and exhort. And this man at intervals approached the widow, who
on such occasions assumed a woe-begone expression, beat her brow and
emitted at intervals long-drawn sighs.
At such times, the Magus, standing near, curled his lip contemptuously,
and endeavored by shrugs and sniffs to let the bystanders perceive how
little he valued the words of the stoic.
The philosopher Senecio now in formal style addressed the widow, and then
turned to harangue the daughter, on the excellence of moderation in grief
as in joy, on the beauty of self-control so as to suffer the storms of
life to roll over the head with indifference. In this consisted the
Highest Good, and to attain to such stolidity was the goal of all virtuous
endeavor.
Then he thrust his hand into the folds of his toga, and withdrew, to be at
once attacked and wrangled with by the Chaldæan.
Domitia, who had listened with indifference, turned to her mother as soon
as he was gone, and said—
“The _Summum Bonum_, the crown and glory of Philosophy is to become in
mind what the slave becomes after many bastinadoes, as callous in soul as
he is on the soles of his feet. The lesson of life is not worth the
acquisition.”
“I think he put it all very well.”
“Why are the strokes applied? Why should we bear them without crying out?
After all, what profit is there in this philosophy?”
“Really, my dear, I cannot tell. But it is the correct thing to listen to
and to talk philosophy, and good families keep their tame stoics,—even
quite new and vulgar people, wretched knights who have become rich in
trade—in a word, they all do it.”
“But, mother, what is this Highest Good?”
“You must inquire of Claudius Senecio himself. It is, I am sure something
very suitable to talk about, on such solemn occasions as this.”
“But what is it? A runner in the course knows what is the prize for which
he contends, a singer at the games sees the crown he hopes to earn—but
this Highest Good, is it nothing but not to squeal when kicked?”
“I really do not know.”
“Mother, would to the Gods I did know! My sorrow is eating out my heart. I
am miserable. I am in darkness, like Theseus in the labyrinth, but without
a clue. And the Highest Good preached by philosophy is to sit down in the
darkness and despair of the light. I want to know. Has my father’s life
gone out forever, like an extinguished torch cast into the sea? or is it a
smouldering ember that may be blown again into flame?”
“Have you not heard, Domitia, how Senecio has assured you that your father
will live.”
“Where?”
“On the page of history.”
“First assure me that the page will be written, and that impartially. What
I know of historians is that they scribble all the scurrility they can
against the great and noble, in the hope of thereby advancing the credit
of their own mean selves. Has a man no other hope of life than one built
on the complaisance of the most malignant of men?”
“My dear,—positively, I do not know. You turn my head with your questions.
Call Plancus that I may scold him, to ease my overwrought nerves. The
fellow has been stopping up his wrinkles with a composition of wax, lard
and flour, and really, at his age, and in his social position—it is
absurd.”
“But, mother, I want to know.”
“Bless me, you make me squeamish. Of course we want to know a vast number
of things; and the Highest Good, I take it, is to learn to be satisfied to
know nothing. Cats, dogs, donkeys, don’t worry themselves to know—and are
happy. They have, then, the _Summum Bonum_. If you want to know more, ask
the philosopher. He is paid for the purpose, and eats at our expense, and
ye gods! how he eats. I believe he finds the Highest Good in the platter.”
The lady made signs, and a slave, ever on the watch, hastened to learn her
desire, and at her command summoned the Stoic.
The philosopher paced the deck with his chin in the air, and came aft.
“My daughter,” said the widow, “is splitting my suffering head with
questions. Pray answer her satisfactorily. Here Felicula, Procula,
Lucilla, help me to the cabin.”
When the lady had withdrawn, the philosopher said:
“Lady, you will propound difficulties, and I shall be pleased to solve
them.”
“I ask plain answers to plain questions,” said Domitia. “At death—what
then?”
“Death, young lady, is the full stop at the end of the sentence, it is the
closing of the diptychs of life, on which its story is inscribed.”
“I asked not what death is—but to what it leads?”
“Leads!—it—leads! ahem! Death encountered with stoic equanimity is the
highest point to which—”
“I do not ask how to meet death, but what it leads to. You seem unable or
unwilling to answer a plain question. My dear father, does he live
still—as a star that for a while sets below the horizon but returns
again?”
“He lives, most assuredly. In all men’s mouths—on the snowy plains of
Germany, on the arid wastes of Syria, the fame of Cnæus Domitius
Corbulo——”
“I asked naught about his fame, but about himself. Does he still exist,
can he still think of, care for, love me—as I still think of, care for,
love him—”
Her voice quivered and broke.
“Young lady—Socrates could say no more of the future than that it is a
brilliant hope which one may run the risk of entertaining. And our own
Immortal Cicero declared that the hope of the soul living after death is a
dream, and not a doctrine. The Immortals have seen fit to cut the thread
of his life——”
“The Immortals had no scissors wherewith to do it. He fell on his own
sword. Is there a soul? And after death where does it go? Is it a mere
shadow?”
“My dear lady, philosophy teaches us to hope——”
“Natural instinct does that without the cumbrous assistance of
philosophy—but what is that hope built on?”
“I cannot tell.”
“Then of what avail is it to lead a good life?”
“On the page of history——”
“That is where the great man lives—but the poor girl or the mechanic? Of
what avail is a good life? What motive have we to induce us to lead it?”
“The approval of the conscience.”
“But why should it approve? What is good? Where is it written that this is
good and that is evil?”
“I cannot tell.”
“So,” said the girl, and she signed to Elymas to approach. He came up with
a sneer at the philosopher, who retired in discomfiture.
“You, Chaldæan, answer me that which confounds the Stoic. You have
learning in the East which we have not in the West. Tell me—what is the
human soul? and has it an existence after death?”
“Certainly, lady. The soul is a ray of Divine light, an æon out of
infinite perfection. This ray is projected into space and enters into and
is entangled in matter, and that is life, in the plant, in the fish, in
the bird, in the beast, in man.”
“And what after death?”
“Death is the disengagement of this ray from its envelope. It returns to
the source, to the _pleroma_ or fulness of being and light whence it
emanated, and loses itself in the one urn of splendor!”
“But when Pactolus and Styx run into the sea, the waters are mingled and
lost, as to their individuality.”
“And so with the spirits of men.”
“What!” exclaimed Domitia. “When I die my little ray re-enters the sun and
is lost in the general glory—and my father’s ray is also sucked in and
disappears! There is no comfort in a thought where individuality is
extinguished. But say. How know you that what you have propounded is the
truth?”
The Magus hesitated and became confused.
“It is,” said he, “a solution at which the minds of the great thinkers of
the East have arrived.”
“I see,” said Domitia, “it is no more than a guess. You and all alike are
stagnant pools, whose muddy bottoms ferment and generate and throw up
guesswork bubbles. One bubble looks more substantial than another, yet are
all only the disguise of equal emptiness.”
The Chaldæan withdrew muttering in his beard. Domitia looked after him and
noticed the physician Luke standing near, leaning over the bulwarks.
He was an elderly man, with kindly soft eyes, and a short beard in which
some strands of gray appeared. A modest man, ready when called on to
advise, but never self-assertive.
Domitia had noticed him already and had taken a liking to him, though she
had not spoken to him. An unaccountable impulse induced her to address
him.
“They are all quacks,” she said.
“They must needs be seekers, and the best they can produce, is out of
themselves, and that conjecture. From the depths of the intellect what can
be brought up than a more or less plausible guess?”
“And on these guesses we must live, like those who float across the Tigris
and Euphrates—on rafts supported by inflated bladders. There is then no
solid ground?”
“Man inflates the bladders—God lays the rocky basis.”
“What mean you?”
“No certainty can be attained, in all these things man desires to know,
the basis of hope, the foundation of morality, that cannot be brought out
of man. It can only be known by revelation of God.”
“And till he reveals we must drift on wind-bags. Good lack!”
“Do you think, Lady, that He who made man, and planted in man’s heart a
desire for a future life, and made it necessary for his welfare that he
should know to discern between good and evil, should leave him forever in
the dark—like as you said Theseus in the labyrinth, without a clue?”
“But where is the clue?”
“Or think you that He who launched the vessel of man, having carefully
laid the keel and framed the ribs, and set in her a pilot, should send her
forth into unknown seas to certain wreckage—to be wafted up and down by
every wind—to be carried along by every current—to fall on reefs, or be
engulfed by quicksands, and not to reach a port, and He not to set lights
whereby her course may be directed?”
“But where are the lights?”
At that moment, before Luke could answer, Lamia, who had been in the fore
part of the vessel, came hastily aft, and disregarding the physician,
heedless of the conversation on which he broke in, said hurriedly and in
agitated tone:—
“The Imperial galley!”