The Emperor — Complete

CHAPTER XX.

Keraunus and his daughter reached their rooms less quickly than usual, for the steward dreaded a fresh attack from the blood-hound, which, to-night however, was sharing Antinous’ room. They found the old slavewoman up, and in great excitement, for she loved Selene, she was frightened at her absence, and in the children’s sleeping-room all was not as it should be.

Arsinoe went without delay to see the little ones, but the black woman remained with her master, and told him with many tears, while he exchanged his saffron-colored pallium for an old cloak, that the joy of her heart, little blind Helios had been ill, and could not sleep, even after she had given him some of the drops which Keraunus himself was accustomed to take.

“Idiotic animal!” exclaimed Keraunus, “to give my medicine to the child,” and he kicked off his new shoes to replace them with shabbier ones. “If you were younger I would have you flogged.”

“But you did say the drops were good,” stammered the old woman.

“For me,” shouted the steward, and without fastening his shoe-straps round his ankles, so that they flapped and pattered on the ground, he hurried off into the children’s room. There sat his darling blind child, his ‘neir’ as he liked to call him, with his pretty, fair, curly head resting on Arsinoe’s breast. The child recognized his step, and began his little lament:

“Selene was away, and I was frightened, and I feel so sick, so sick.”

The steward laid his hand on the child’s forehead, and feeling how hot it was he began to walk restlessly up and down by the little bed.

“That is just how it always happens,” he said. “When one misfortune comes another always follows. Look at him Arsinoe. Do you remember how the fever took poor Berenice? Sickness, uneasiness, and a burning head.—Have you any pain in your head my boy?”

“No,” answered Helios, “but I feel so sick.”

The steward opened the child’s little shirt to see if he had any spots on his breast, but Arsinoe said, as she bent over him:

“It is nothing much, he has only overloaded his stomach. The stupid old woman gives him every thing he asks for, and she let him have half of the currant cake, which we sent her to fetch before we went out.”

“But his head is burning,” repeated Keraunus.

“He will be quite well again by to-morrow morning,” replied Arsinoe. “Our poor Selene needs us far snore than he does. Come father. The old woman can stay with him.”

“I want Selene to come,” whimpered the child. “Pray, pray, do not leave me alone again.”

“Your old father will stay with you my pet,” said Keraunus tenderly, for it cut him to the soul to see this child suffer. “You none of you know what this boy is to us all.”

“He will soon go to sleep,” Arsinoe asserted. “Do let us go, or it will be too late.”

“And leave the old woman to commit some other stupid blunder?” cried Keraunus. “It is my duty to stay with the poor little boy. You can go to your sister and take the old woman with you.”

“Very good, and to-morrow early I will come back.”

“To-morrow morning?” said Keraunus surprised. “No, no, that will not do. Doris said just now that Selene will be well nursed by the Christians. Only see how she is, give her my love, and then come back.”

“But father—”

“Besides you must remember that the prefect’s wife expects you to-morrow at noon to choose the stuff for your dress, and you must not look as if you had been sitting up all night.”

“I will rest a little while in the morning.”

“In the morning? And how about curling my hair? And your new frock? And poor little Helios?—No child, you are only just to see Selene and then come back again. Early in the morning too the holiday will have begun, and you know what goes on then; the old woman would be of no use to you in the throng. Go and see how Selene is, you are not to stay.”

“I will see—”

“Not a word about seeing—you come home again. I desire it; in two hours you are to be in bed.”

Arsinoe shrugged her shoulders, and two minutes after she was standing with the old slave-woman in front of the gate-house.

A broad beam of light still fell through the half-open door of the bowery little room, so Euphorion and Doris had not retired to rest and could at once open the palace-gate for her. The Graces set up a bark as Arsinoe crossed the threshold of her old friends’ house, but they did not leave their cushion for they soon recognized her.

It was several years since Arsinoe, in obedience to her father’s strict prohibition had set foot in the snug the house, and her heart was deeply touched as she saw again all the surroundings she had loved as a child, and had not forgotten as she grew into girlhood. There were the birds, the little dogs, and the lutes on the wall near the Apollo. On worthy dame Doris’ table there had always been something to eat, and there, now, good a lovely, golden-brown cake, by the side of the wine-jar. How often as a child had she sneaked in to beg a sweet morsel, how often to see whether tall Pollux were not there, Pollux, whose bold devices and original suggestions, gave his work and his play alike, the stamp of genius, and lent them a peculiar charm. And there sat her saucy playfellow in person, his legs stretched at full length in front of him, and talking, eagerly. Arsinoe heard him relating the end of the history of her being chosen for Roxana, and caught her own name, graced with such epithets as brought the blushes to her cheeks, and gave her double pleasure because he could not guess that she could overhear them. From a boy he had grown to a man, and a fine man, and a great artist—but he was still the old kind and audacious Pollux.

The sudden leap with which he sprang from his seat to welcome her, the frank laughter with which he several times interrupted her speech, the childlike loving way in which he held his arm round his little mother while he greeted her, and asked why she was going out so late, the winning, touching tone of his voice as he expressed his regret at Selene’s mishaps—all went home to Arsinoe as a thing known and loved, of which she had long been deprived, and she clung to the two strong hands he held out to her. If at that moment he had taken her up, and clasped her to his heart before the very eyes of Eupliorion and his mother she really would have been incapable of resisting him.

It was with a heavy heart that Arsinoe had gone into dame Doris, but in the gate-keeper’s house there reigned an atmosphere in which care and anxiety could not breathe, and the light-hearted girl’s vision of her sister as tormented with pain and threatened with danger was changed in a wonderfully short time to that of a sufferer comfortably in bed, with only a severely-injured foot. In the place of consuming anxiety she felt only hearty sympathy, and this sounded in her voice as she begged the singer Euphorion to open the gate for her, because she wanted to go out with her slave-woman to ascertain how Selene was.

Doris soothed her, repeating her assurance that the patient would be nursed with the utmost care in dame Hannah’s hands; still, she thought her wish to see her sister very justifiable, and eagerly seconded Pollux when he entreated Arsinoe to accept his escort; for the festival would be beginning soon after midnight, the streets would be full of rough and impudent people, and a bunch of feathers would be about as much use against the drunken slaves as her black scarecrow, who had been falling into decrepitude even before she had done the stupidest deed of her life and roused the steward’s anger against herself.

So they went along the dark streets which grew full of people the farther they went, side by side in silence. Presently Pollux said:

“Put your arm through mine; you ought to feel that I am protecting you, and I—I should like to feel at every step that I have found you once more, and am allowed to be near you—so sweet a creature.”

The words did not sound impertinent, on the contrary, they sounded very much in earnest, and the sculptor’s deep voice trembled with emotion as he spoke them with deep tenderness. They knocked at the door of the girl’s heart with the urgent hand of love; she unhesitatingly put her hand through his arm and answered softly:

“You will take care of me now.”

“Yes,” said he, and he took her little hand, which rested on his right arm, in his left hand. She did not draw it away, and after they had gone on thus for a few paces he sighed and said:

“Do you know how I feel?”

“Well!”

“Nay, I myself cannot put it into words. Rather as if I had triumphed in the Olympian games, or as if Caesar had invested me with the purple!—But who cares for the wealth or the purple! You are hanging on my arm, and I have hold of your hand; compared with this, all is as nought. If it were not for the people about I—I do not know what I could do.”

She looked up at him with happy content, but he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed it to them long and fervently. Then he let it go again and said, with a sigh that came up from the bottom of his heart:

“Oh Arsinoe, my sweet Arsinoe, how I love you!”

As the words came softly yet hotly from his lips the girl clasped his arm closely to her bosom, leaned her head on his shoulder, looked up at him with a wide-eyed, tender gaze, and said softly:

“Oh Pollux, I am so happy, the world is so good!”

“Nay, I could hate it!” cried the sculptor. “To hear this—and to have an old mother wide awake at home, and to be obliged to walk steadily on in a street crowded with men—it is unendurable! I shall not hold out much longer—sweetest of girls—here it is quiet and dark.”

Yes, in a little nook made by two contiguous houses, and into which Pollux drew Arsinoe, it was pitch dark, as he hastily pressed his first kiss on her innocent lips; but in their hearts it was light-radiant sunshine.

She had thrown her arms round his neck and would willingly have clung to him till day should end; but they heard the approach of a noisy procession of slaves. These unfortunate creatures began soon after midnight singing and shouting so as to avail themselves to the extremist limit of the holiday, which released them for a short time from their tasks and duties; Pollux knew well how unbounded the license of their pleasures could be, and as he walked on with Arsinoe he enjoined her to keep with him as close as possible to the houses.

“How jolly they are!” he said pointing to the merry-makers. “Their masters will wait on themselves a little to-day, and the best day in the year is just beginning for them, but for us the best day in all our lives.”

“Yes, yes,” cried Arsinoe, and she clasped his strong arm with both her hands.

Then they both laughed merrily, for Pollux had noticed that the old slave-woman had gone on past them with her head sunk on her breast, and was following another pair.

“I will call her,” Arsinoe said.

“No, no, let her be,” said the artist. “The couple in front certainly require her protection more than we do.”

“But how could she possibly mistake that little man for you?” laughed Arsinoe.

“I wish I were a little smaller,” replied Pollux with a sigh. “Only picture to yourself the vast amount of burning love and tormenting longing that can be contained in so large a body as mine!” She slapped him on the arm, and to punish her he hastily pressed his lips on her forehead.

“Don’t—think of the people,” she said reprovingly, but he gaily answered:

“It is not a misfortune to be envied.”

Here the streets came to an end, and they found themselves in front of the garden belonging to Pudeus’ widow; Pollux knew it, for Paulina who owned it was the sister of Pontius, the architect, who himself owned a magnificent house in the city. But could it be possible? Had invisible hands brought them here already? The gate of the enclosure was locked. Pollux roused a porter, told him what he wanted, and was conducted by him with Arsinoe to apart of the grounds where a bright light shone out from dame Hannah’s little abode, for he had had instructions to admit the sick girl’s friends even during the night.

A crescent moon lighted the paths, which were strewed with shells; the shrubs and trees in the garden threw sharply-defined shadows on their gleaming whiteness, the sea sparkled brightly, and as soon as the porter had left the happy young pair together, and they found themselves in a shadowy alley, Pollux said, opening his arms to the girl:

“Now—one more kiss, just for a remembrance, while I wait.”

“Not now,” begged Arsinoe.

“I am no longer happy since we came in here. I cannot help thinking of poor Selene.”

“I have not a word to say against that,” replied Pollux submissively. “Then when waiting is over may I have my reward?”

“No, no, now, at once,” cried Arsinoe throwing herself on his breast, and then she hurried towards the house.

He followed her, and when she paused in front of a brightly-lighted window on the ground floor, he stopped also. They both looked in on a lofty and spacious room, kept in the most perfect order and cleanliness; it had one door only opening on the roofless forecourt of the house; the walls of the room were plainly painted of a light green color, and the only ornament it contained was one piece of carved work over the door.

On the farther side stood the bed on which Selene was lying; a few paces from it sat the deformed girl asleep, while dame Hannah softly went up to the patient with a wet compress in her hand which she carefully laid on her head.

Pollux touched Arsinoe and whispered to her:

“Your sister lies there in her sleep like an Ariadne deserted by Dionysus. How wretched she will feel when she comes to herself.”

“She looks to me less pale than usual.”

“Look now, how she bends her arm, and what a lovely attitude as she puts her hand to her head!”

“Go—” said Arsinoe. “You ought not to be spying here.”

“Directly, directly—but if you were lying there no power should stir me from the spot. How carefully Hannah lifts the wet wrapper from her poor broken ankle. You could not touch your eye more gently than the good woman handles Selene’s foot.”

“Go back, she is looking straight this way.”

“What a wonderful face! It would do for a Penelope, but there is something singular in her eyes. Now if I had to make another star-gazing Urania, or a Sappho full of the deity, and with eyes fixed on the heavens in poetic rapture, that is what I would put into her! She is no longer young, but how pure her face is! It is like a sky when the wind has swept it clear of clouds.”

“Seriously you must go now,” said Arsinoe drawing away her hand, which he had again taken. Pollux saw that his praise of another woman’s beauty annoyed her, and he said soothingly:

“Be easy child. You have not your match here in Alexandria, no, nor so far as Greek is spoken. A perfectly clear sky is certainly not the most beautiful to my taste. Pure light, and pure blue, give no satisfaction to the artist, it is only behind a few moving clouds, lighted up by changing gleams of gold and silver, that the firmament has any true charm, and though your face too is like heaven to me it does not lack sweet movement, never twice alike. Now this matron—”

“Only look,” interrupted Arsinoe, “how tenderly dame Hannah bends over Selene, and now she is gently kissing her brow. No mother could tend her own daughter more lovingly. I have known her for a long time; she is good, very good; it is hardly credible for she is a Christian.”

“The cross up there over the door,” said Pollux “is the token by which these extraordinary people recognize each other.”

“And what is signified by the dove and fish and anchor round it?” asked Arsinoe.

“They are emblems of the mysteries of the Christians,” replied Pollux. “I do not understand them; the things are wretchedly painted; the adherents of the crucified God contemn all art, and particularly my branch of it, for they hate all images of the gods.”

“And yet among such blasphemers we find such good men; I will go in at once; Hannah is wetting another handkerchief.”

“And how unwearied and kind she looks as she does it; still there is something strange, deserted, and graceless in this large bare room. I should not like to live there.”

“Have you noticed the faint scent of lavender that comes through the window?”

“Long since—there your sister is moving and has opened her eyes—now she has shut them again.”

“Go back into the garden and wait till I come,” Arsinoe commanded him decidedly. “I will only see how Selene is going on; I will not stop long for my father wishes me to return soon, and no one can nurse her better than Hannah!”

The girl drew her hand out of her lover’s and knocked at the door of the little house; it was opened and the widow herself led Arsinoe to the bedside of her sister. Pollux at first sat a while on a bench in the garden, but soon sprang up and paced with long steps the path he had previously trodden with Arsinoe. A stone table across the path, brought him to a stand-still, and he took a fancy for leaping it. The third time he came up to it he sprang over it with a long jump. But no sooner had he done the frolicsome deed than he paused, shook his head at himself and muttered to himself: “Like a boy!”—He felt indeed like a happy child. But as he waited he became calmer and graver. He acknowledged to himself, with sincere thankfulness, that he had now found the ideal woman, of whom he had dreamed in his hours of best inspiration, and that she was his, wholly and alone. And after all, what was he? A poor rascal who had many mouths to fill, and was no more than two fingers of his master’s hand. This must be altered. He would not reduce his sister’s comforts in any way but he must break with Papias, and stand henceforth on his own feet. His courage mounted fast, and when at last, Arsinoe returned from her sister, he had resolved that he must first finish Balbilla’s bust with all diligence in his own workshop, and that then he would model his beloved; these two female heads he could not fail in. Caesar must see them, they must be exhibited, and already in his mind’s eye, he saw himself refusing order after order, and accepting only the most splendid where all were good.

Arsinoe went home comforted. Selene’s sufferings were certainly less than she had pictured them; she did not wish to be nursed by any one besides dame Hannah. She might perhaps have a little fever, but any one who was capable of discussing every little question of house-keeping, and all that related to the children could not be—as Arsinoe thought while she walked back through the garden, leaning on the artist’s arm—really and properly ill.

“It must revive and delight her to have Roxana for a sister!” cried Pollux; but his pretty companion shook her head and said: “She is always so odd; what most delights me is averse to her.”

“Well Selene is of course the moon, and you are the sun.”

“And what are you?” asked Arsinoe.

“I am tall Pollux, and to-night I feel as if I might some day be great Pollux.”

“If you succeed I shall grow with you.”

“That will be your right, since it is only through you that I can ever succeed in that which I propose to do.

“And how should a simple little thing, such as I am, be able to help an artist?”

“By living, and by loving him,” cried the sculptor, lifting her up in his arms before she could prevent him.

Outside the garden-gate the old slave-woman was sitting asleep. She had learnt from the porter that her young mistress had been admitted with her companion, but she herself had been forbidden to enter the grounds. A curbstone had served her for a seat, and as she waited her eyes had closed, in spite of the increasing noise in the street. Arsinoe did not waken her, but asked Pollux, with a roguish laugh:

“We shall find our way alone, shall we not?”

“If Eros does not lead us astray,” answered the artist. And so, as they went on their way, they jested and exchanged little tender speeches.

The nearer they got to Lochias and to the main lines of traffic which intersected at right angles the Canopic way—the widest and longest road in the city—the fuller was the stream of people that flowed onwards in the direction in which they were going; but this circumstance favored them, for those who wish to be unobserved, when they cannot be absolutely alone, have only to mix with the crowd. As they were borne towards the focus and centre of the festive doings, they clung closely together, she to him, and he to her, so that they might not be torn apart by any of the rushing and tumultuous processions of excited Thracian women who, faithful to their native usages, came storming by with a young bull, on this particular night of the year, that following the shortest day. They had hardly gone a hundred paces beyond the Moon-street when they heard proceeding from it a wild roving song of tipsy jollity, and loud above it the sound of drums and pipes, cymbals and noisy shouting, and at the same time in the King’s street, a road which crossed the Bruchiom and opened on Lochias, a merry troup came towards them.

At their head, among other acquaintances, came Teuker, the gem-cutter, the younger brother of Pollux. Crowned with ivy, and flourishing a thyrsus he came dancing on, and behind him, leaping and shouting, a train of men and women, all excited to the verge of folly, singing, hollooing, and dancing.

Garlands of vine, ivy and asphodel fluttered from a hundred heads; poplar, lotus, and laurel wreaths overhung their heated brows; panther-skins, deer and goatskins hung from their bare shoulders and waved in the wind as their bearers hurried onwards. This procession had been first formed by some artists and rich youths returning with some women from a banquet, with a band of music; every one who met this festal party had joined it or had been forced to enlist with it. Respectable citizens and their wives, laborers, maid-servants, slaves, soldiers and sailors, officers, women flute-players, artisans, ship-captains, the whole chorus of a theatre invited by a friend of art, excited women who dragged with them a goat that was to be slaughtered to Dionysus—none had been able to resist the temptation to join the procession. It turned down the Moon-street, keeping to the middle of the road which was planted with elms, and had on each side of it a raised foot-way, which at this time of night no one used. How clear was the sound of the double-pipes, how bravely the girls hit the calf-skin of the tambourines with their soft fists, how saucily the wind tossed and tangled the dishevelled hair of the riotous women and played with the smoke of the torches which were wielded in the air by audacious youths, disguised as Pan or as Satyrs, and shouting as they went.

Here a girl, holding her tambourine high in the air, rattled the little bells on its hoop, as she flew along, as violently as though she wanted to shake the hollow metal balls out of their frame, and send them whistling through the air on their own account-there, side by side with his comrades, who were excited almost to madness, a handsome lad came skipping along in elaborately graceful leaps, but carrying over his arm, with comic care, a long bull’s-tail that he had tied on, and blowing alternately up and down the short scale from the shortest to the longest of the reeds composing his panpipes. Through the noisy crowd as they rushed by, sounded, now and again, a loud roar, that might as easily have been caused by pain as joy; but it was each time hastily drowned in mad laughter, extravagant singing and jubilant music.

Old and young, great and small, all in short that came near this rabble train, were carried off with irresistible force to follow it with shouts of triumph. Even Pollux and Arsinoe had for some time ceased to walk soberly side by side, but moved their feet, laughingly in time to the merry measure.

“How nice it sounds,” cried the artist. “I could dance and be merry too Arsinoe, dance and make merry with you like a madman!”

Before she could find time to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ he shouted a loud “To, To, Dionysus,” and flung her up in the air. She too was caught by the spirit of the thing, and waving her hand above her head she joined in his shout of triumph, and let him drag her along to a corner of the Moon-street where a seller of garlands offered her wares for sale. There she let him wreathe her with ivy, she stuck a laurel wreath on his head, twisted a streamer of ivy round his neck and breast, and laughed loudly as she flung a large silver coin into the flower-woman’s lap and clung tightly to his arm. It was all done in swift haste without reflection, as if in a fit of intoxication, and with trembling hands.

The procession was drawing to an end. Six women and girls in wreaths closed it, walking arm in arm with loud singing. Pollux drew his sweetheart behind this jovial crew, threw his arm around Arsinoe once more, while she put hers round him, and then both of them stepped out in a brisk dance-step flinging their arms left free, throwing back their heads, shouting and singing loudly, and forgetting all that surrounded them; they felt as though they were bound to each other by a glory of sunbeams, while some god lifted them above the earth and bore them up through a realm of delight and joy beyond the myriad stars and through the translucent ether; thus they let themselves be led away through the Moon-street into the Canopic way and so back to the sea, and as far as the temple of Dionysus.

There they paused breathless and it suddenly struck them that he was Pollux and she Arsinoe, and that she must get back again to her father and the children.

“Come home,” she said softly, and as she spoke she dropped her arm and began to gather up her loosened hair.

“Yes, yes,” he said as if in a dream. He released her, struck his hand against his brow, and turning to the open cella of the temple he said:

“Long have I known that thou art mighty O Dionysus, and that thou O Aphrodite art lovely, and that thou art sweet O Eros! but how inestimable your gifts, that I have learnt to-day for the first time.”

“We were indeed full of the deity,” said Arsinoe. “But here comes another procession and I must go home.”

“Then let us go by the Little Harbor,” answered Pollux.

“Yes—I must pick the leaves out of my hair and no one will see us there.”

“I will help you—”

“No, you are not to touch me,” said Arsinoe decidedly. She grasped her abundant soft and shiny hair, and cleared it of the leaves that had got entangled in it, as tiny beetles do in a double flower. Finally she hid her hair under her veil, which had slipped off her head long since, but, almost by a miracle, had caught and remained hanging on the brooch of her peplum. Pollux stood looking at her, and overmastered by the passion that possessed him, he exclaimed:

“Eternal gods! how I love you! Till now my soul has been like a careless child, to-day it is grown to heroic stature.—Wait—only wait, it will soon learn to use its weapons.”

“And I will help it in the fight,” she said happily, as she put her hand through his arm again, and they hurried back to the old palace, dancing rather than walking.

The late December sun was already giving warning of his approaching rising by cold yellowish-grey streaks in the sky as Pollux and his companion entered the gate, which had long since been opened for the workmen. In the hall of the Muses they took a first farewell, in the passage leading to the steward’s room, a second—sad and yet most happy; but this was but a short one for the gleam of a lamp made them start apart, and Arsinoe instantly fled.

The disturber was Antinous who was waiting here for the Emperor who was still gazing at the stars from the watch-tower Pontius had erected for him. As she vanished he turned to Pollux and said gaily:

“I need your forgiveness for I have disturbed you in an interview with your sweetheart.”

“She will be my wife,” said the sculptor proudly.

“So much the better!” replied the favorite, and he drew a deep breath, as though the artist’s words had relieved his mind of a burden.

“Ah! so much the better. Can you tell me where to find the fair Arsinoe’s sister?”

“To be sure,” replied the artist, and he felt pleased that the young Bithynian should cling to his arm. Within the next hour, Pollux, from whose lips there flowed a stream of eager and enthusiastic words, like water from a spring, had completely won the heart of the Emperor’s favorite.

The girl found both her father and Helios, who no longer looked like a sick patient—fast asleep. The old slave-woman came in a few minutes after her, and when at last, after unbinding her hair, Arsinoe threw herself on her bed she fell asleep instantly, and in her dreams found herself once more by the side of her Pollux, while they both were flying to the sound of drums, flutes, and cymbals high above the dusty ways of earth, like leaves swept on by the wind.