YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD.
There was little sleep for Damaris that night. The sun was just beginning
to gild the palaces on the Aventine, and the sounds of labour had
scarcely begun to stir on the busy quays of the Tiber below, when the
mother rose and went to what she had called the battle-field of Leo, the
secret place of prayer, which for her was usually the half-ruined oratory
in the palace, where once had arisen the prayers and praises of Jerome
and Marcella, and the Ecclesia Domestica.
“Thou knowest,” she prayed, “O All-seeing, how I have asked that he might
be kept from temptation, the temptations of this corrupt city. If this is
Thy way of escape, from the seductions of the city to the battle-field
of the nations, among the perils of the frontier, let him go! Better the
spears and arrows of the barbarians than the fangs of the serpents around
us here, the malaria of the seven hills, the festering cancer of this
wicked court, at the heart of the Empire, poisoning the very springs of
life! If this is Thy way of escape for him, O Father of all the fathers
and mothers of the world, not for a moment would I hold him back. Take
him for Thy hard warfare! Only show him when and how!”
As she came back through the wilderness of roses which led to the house,
there was a wonderful lightness in her step, and brightness in her eyes.
Lucia was watching her from the porch, and ran to meet her.
“Hast thou been taking counsel of the bishop already?” she said.
“No, not of Leo,” replied Damaris; “why should I trouble Leo, who has
the care on him of all the Churches? Thou rememberest the words of Leo
himself—‘The whole people of His adoption is royal and sacerdotal; we
have the ceaseless propitiation of the omnipotent and perfect Priest;
and although He has committed the care of His sheep to many pastors,
He Himself, nevertheless, has not abandoned the custody of His beloved
flock.’ So, by the counsel of our own wise shepherd, I went as one of the
countless flock to the Chief Shepherd of all.”
“The Shepherd who cares even for the little wilful kid,” whispered Lucia,
“as thou hast so often shown us in the picture in the catacombs; and He
has heard thee and made thee glad, and has given thee what thou hast
asked?”
“Heard me and made me glad indeed,” said the mother; “but scarcely given
me what I could have dared to ask or to wish, though with all my soul I
_will_ it if He wills it.”
“About our Marius, mother?”
The mother bowed in acquiescence, and said in a low voice—
“I think, dearest, we may have to let him go.”
“To the frontiers, among the barbarians, the Huns! But they say all the
other barbarians were angels compared with these, who seem half wild
beast and half witch.”
“There are no half beasts in our Christian creed,” said the mother; “only
creatures once ‘very good,’ made in the image of God, now fallen angels
and fallen men, and none fallen below the depths of the Redeeming Cross.
The roots of the Tree of Life are deeper than the roots of any poison
tree.”
“But, mother, Marius would be going not to redeem the Huns, but to hunt
and slay them; not as a shepherd or a priest, but as a soldier, would he
not?”
“That is true,” Damaris replied; “but even the shepherd has sometimes to
slay the lion and the bear.”
“But it is our own Marius,” exclaimed Lucia, passionately escaping from
allegory; “he will go to lead our Roman soldiers, some of them, father
says, so feebly armed, so effeminate, that they have thrown off the
old armour, the heavy helmets and shields, preferring to run the risk
on the battle-field rather than to bear the weight on the march, and
therefore when the battle comes, often taking refuge in cowardly flight.
And against him will be those fierce, nimble Huns, or the tall athletic
Goths, who don’t mind being killed, father says, if they can only kill
enough of the enemy first. And the enemy will be our Marius, who will
never run away, and will be among those ill-armed cowards who will take
to flight and let him stay and die!”
Damaris’ eyes flashed.
“Who knows,” she said, “but that our Marius will inspire his Romans with
the old Roman courage, so that they will stay by him, and _not_ die, but
conquer; or, if they die, die conquering at their post?”
Lucia embraced her mother amidst her tears.
“Ah, mother,” she said, “did not some of your old Greek forefathers
descend from the three hundred who died at Thermopylæ?”
“It was said so amongst us,” Damaris replied. “And certainly your
father’s house belonged to those old Romans who drove Hannibal back to
Carthage.”
“Ah, mother,” said Lucia, “perhaps after all it is best our Marius should
go to fight the Huns.”
They had reached the porch, and as Lucia spoke the last words, Marius,
who had come silently up to them and heard what she said, looked with a
radiant smile into his mother’s eyes.
“Then, mother,” he said, “I shall not have to fight for this purpose of
my life with thee? And, with thy blessing, the Huns are easy foes.”
She laid her hand on his, and the compact between them was sealed.
Lucia glided away, and left the mother and son together. There was never
need of many words between these two. Her faith in God, her unquenchable
hope for mankind through the Incarnate Lord and Son of Man, had always
been the atmosphere around his inmost life. To her, Christianity was
the revelation of beauty as well as of truth; the law of life by which
all things grow fair as well as strong; and of all beauty, beauty of
character and soul the fairest of all. And a word from her to him, her
son and heir in character and soul, was always a glimpse into the world
of light within her soul, which he knew so well. Nevertheless he knew
and she knew, that for him the disorders and miseries and sins of the
world around had sometimes eaten deep into his power of believing in
the presence of the Omnipotent Love above and beneath all. He had often
felt dimly, and now she recognized consciously for him, that to realize
the Love which conquers he needed to be in the army of the Conqueror, to
be fighting not merely with the doubts within or the countless subtle
heresies around, but with the concrete sin and misery, wrong and disorder
of this visible, tangible world. The blood of the old Roman rulers of
themselves and of the world, conquerors and law-givers, was in him, as
well as the subtle perception of the old Greeks. She felt she had to let
him go forth to the great world-battle; and knowing this, she would have
him go forth, not weakened by her tears, but crowned by her smile and her
blessing. And so he went.
There was little difficulty in finding an appointment for Marius when
his purpose was understood. The difficulty amongst the luxurious court
and intriguing officials, whose principle was to do as little and get as
much as possible, was to understand how any one who might have had an
easy, splendid life at home could wish to rush into peril and toil at the
tumultuous frontiers of the Empire. A post was therefore easily obtained
in connection with the forces of Aetius, and the day soon arrived when
Marius had to set off for Gaul. His last day at home was Sunday. They
began it in the early morning in the basilica of Saint Agnes, by the
catacombs outside the walls.
Damaris delighted on special occasions to celebrate the Passion near the
resting-places of the early martyrs. The subterraneous galleries and
chapels among the tombs were familiar to Marius and Lucia from childhood;
the frescoes of the Good Shepherd, the Orpheus building up the Holy City
by his Divine music, the inscriptions of immortal Peace and Hope were
interwoven with every sacred memory of their lives. Among the names of
the martyrs were not a few of their own kindred in the past.
The brother and sister walked home among the vineyards and gardens, and
the vividness of the sunshine struck them with a sharp contrast as they
came out from the subterranean chill and shadow. The pulses of youth beat
high in them both, and everything was intensified by the thought of the
change and parting so near.
It was one of those moments in life like those which sometimes at sunset
deepen every colour, and concentrate the broken lights and shadows into
the unity of a picture. A new meaning seemed to come into the most common
things, and a new unity and significance into their own lives.
“What an inheritance we have had!” Marius said, as they looked up to
the hills, at the temples still standing on the Capitol, at the palaces
still complete and splendid on the Palatine, at the quays still full of
busy life on the Tiber. “What it is to have the familiar pictures of our
childhood, those monuments of the greatness of old Rome, of the beauty of
Greece!”
“And _our_ Rome and _our_ Greece!” said Lucia; “to have lisped the
language the old Romans spoke, Cicero and Virgil, and the old Greeks,
Homer and Plato, in our infancy; to have two such mother-tongues! We
ought to be very wise, Marius!”
“To have listened to the very words Paul spoke, and Peter, and John the
beloved,” said Marius, “from such a mother’s lips! We ought to be very
good, Lucia!”
There was a pause. Then Lucia resumed—
“Brother, I sometimes feel such a hypocrite beside mother. She is
always trying to guard me with her dear, delicate hands from the great
wickedness of the world; she thinks I know nothing of the wickedness
of the world, of this wicked Rome. And,” she continued, hesitating,
“sometimes I feel as if she were an innocent babe beside me, whom I ought
to guard! I feel so dreadfully wise as to the wickedness of the world, so
_old_ beside mother.”
He looked down admiringly and protectively on the pure sweet face, the
downcast eyelids, the long lashes shading the round, rosy cheeks.
“You are certainly terribly experienced in the ways of the world!” he
said. “I suppose our mother will always be as young as the angels. But
I think the world itself is so very old just now, that we who belong to
this generation are born old, and the older people who belonged to nobler
and better times are young with the youth of that younger world.”
“How can we help it?” she said. “This miserable world of slaves from
every race that lives close to us, and cheats and lies and talks wicked
talk! No dull, ignorant boors, but clever, keen-witted Greeks and
Syrians! How can we help learning evil from them? what can we do to
become young again?”
“I am going among the young nations, my beloved,” he replied, “who are
pouring in on our old Rome.”
“To fight them back!” she said.
“Perhaps also to learn from them,” he replied. “When I come back, _if_ I
come back, I will tell you what I have learned. Perhaps I shall find the
Fountain of Youth, and drink of it, and come back young! And if I do, I
will be sure to bring a cup of its precious waters for thee.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]