The Lion\'s Brood

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VIII.

DISGRACE.

While these things were happening, for the most part in the sight of
all, Sergius had been able to gain a moment's speech with the dictator.
Forcing his way through the crowd of tribunes and officers who thronged
the praetorium, he had found Fabius seated before his tent, and had
told his story in the fewest words possible.

Naked but for his torn tunic and his cothurni, covered from head to
foot with blood and mire, his left arm hanging useless, and his face
like the face of a dead man, neither his miserable plight nor his story
brought softness to the stern lips and brow of the general.

"You have come to tell me this?" he said, when the other had finished
speaking. "Do I not know it _now_?" and he pointed to the heights.
Then he turned away and spoke with some one at his side, while Sergius
stood, with downcast eyes, swaying and scarcely able to keep his feet.

Among those around him his fate seemed hardly a matter of conjecture,
but a thrill went through the company when Minucius, who had been
vainly urging the dictator to support the guards of the passes, now
turned away in disgust, and, noting the disgraced officer, as if for
the first time, cried out in a loud voice:--

"What, my friend! have not the lictors attended to you, yet, for
venturing to play the man?"

Sergius felt the added danger to which the master-of-the-horse had
exposed him by using his insubordination to point such a moral to his
commander; but the face of the dictator gave no sign that he had even
heard the taunting challenge. Calmly he gave his orders for cautious
scouting, for breaking camp, and for the army to resume its patient
march of observation, along the flank of the retiring foe. Then, when
one after another had retired to fulfil his commands, he turned again
to the waiting tribune.

"I have been considering your fault," he said slowly, "and I had marked
you out as a much needed victim for the rods and axe. Go to my
master-of-the-horse and thank him for your life. His taunt was
doubtless meant to destroy you, in order that he might play the
demagogue over your fate. I accept it as a challenge to my
self-control. It is more necessary that I should show myself wise and
forbearing than that one fool should perish for his folly. Go back to
Rome, and tell them that I have many soldiers who can fight, and that I
want only those who can obey."

Utterly exhausted, Sergius struggled vainly to withstand this last,
crushing blow. His composure was unequal to the task, and, sinking
upon his knees, as the dictator turned toward the tent, he could only
stretch out one hand and murmur:--

"The axe, my master; I pray you, the axe."

Fabius paused a moment and eyed him grimly. Then his rugged, weary
face softened slightly.

"I trusted you," he said. "Could you not trust me for a little while?
But go to Rome, as I bade you--only there shall others go with you, and
you shall bear for your message, instead of that one, this: that there
is no room for wounded men in my camp."

"But I shall be well in two days--in one--I am well now if you say it."

Fabius shook his head slowly.

"Aesculapius has not been unhonoured by me," he said, "and he has told
me that you will be but a burden for many days. For this reason go to
Rome, and for two others that you shall not tell of: one, for
punishment because you could not obey, and one, because the time will
come soon when Rome shall need even the men who can only fight."

Sergius saw the hopelessness of struggling against his softened fate,
bitter though it was. Open disgrace, indeed, had been turned aside;
but, on the other hand, he was doomed to inaction during times when all
Rome longed only to strike, and he could not but feel that he had
fallen far in the estimation of his general.

IX.

HOME.

The Appian Way was still safe, even from the chance of Numidian foray,
and it was along its lava-paved level that the long convoy of sick and
wounded writhed slowly northward that afternoon.

Half reclining in the rude chariot, each jolt of which brought agony to
his injured shoulder, Sergius watched, with far deeper pain than that
of body, the last troop of allied horse winding up the pass toward
Allifae: the rear-guard of Rome's line of march. Then he fell to
brooding upon his fate, while the night followed the day and the day
the night, and still the dreary, groaning caravan dragged on, resting
only during the heated hours.

On, over the Liris at Minturnae, upward, over the mountains behind
Tarracina and descending again into the Pontine plain; through the
shady groves of Arician ilex that crown the Alban Hills, down to
Bovillae, and then away across the Campagna to Rome--a marvel of deep
cuttings through the hills,--a marvel of giant superstructures over
valleys,--the Appian, the Queen of Ways.

There were long, green ridges now, swelling from the plain and breaking
away into little rocky cliffs tufted with wild fig trees: sluggish
streams wound down from the east where, far away, loomed the
snow-tipped summits of Apennine, while toward the west the sky
reflected a brighter light from the sea that glittered beneath it.

At last the eyes of the vanguard of weary wayfarers could descry,
through the morning mists, the crowned cluster of hills that was to be
a crown to all the world. Nearer they came and yet nearer, through the
vineyards and cornfields of the Campagna--the southern Campagna teeming
with its herds of mouse-coloured cattle, whose great, stupid eyes were
only less stupidly beautiful than those of the rustics that watched
over their grazings.

And now wounds and sickness were, for the moment, forgotten, as man
pointed out to man this and that landmark of home: temples on this hill
and on that; Diana on the Aventine, the hill of the people; Jupiter
Stator on the Palatine; the grim mass of the citadel above the rock of
Tarpeia; the great quadriga that surmounted the greatest fane of
all--the house of Capitoline Jove. To the right of these were the
clustered oaks of the Caelian Mount, while, farthest away, but highest
of all, the white banner fluttering from the heights of Janiculum told
them that the city was still safe, still unassailed. They were passing
where the road was bordered by its houses of the dead; tombs of the
great families, above which the funereal cypresses bent their heads and
shed peace and shade alike over the dead and the living. The hum of
the city came to their ears, and, as the convoy drew nearer to the
Capenian Gate, the throng, pouring out to meet them, grew thicker and
more dense, blocking the way until the cavalry of the escort cleared it
with their spear-butts. Then the press divided, running along on both
sides of the carriages, in two fast-filling streams whose murmurs
swelled into a very torrent's roar of questions and prayers for news of
the general and the army.

"Was Hannibal beaten? Had he been slain, or was he waiting in chains
to grace the Fabian triumph? Was it true that he measured twice the
height of common men, and that a single eye blazed cyclops-like in the
middle of his forehead? How many elephants would be seen in the
triumph?"

Such and a hundred queries, equally wild, assailed the escort and the
occupants of the wagons; for this was the rabble: poor citizens,
freedmen, slaves, for whom no story of Hannibal and Carthage was too
improbable. Nevertheless Sergius imagined he could discern a spirit of
irony underlying much that he heard.

When they had reached the low eminence that, crowned by the Temple of
Mars, faced the city gate, he bade the attendants help him descend from
the army carriage, that he might wait the coming of his slaves with a
litter. A messenger was soon found, and hurried off, charged with
necessary directions.

The crowd had rolled on through the gate, together with the convoy, and
the sick man was left alone save for the attendants of the temple in
whose care he had placed himself. Day by day, as he had jolted along
his journey, he had felt the fever coming on--fever born of his injury
and the terrible strain to which he had been subjected: now it was only
necessary to reach his home and rest. Last of his race but for two
older sisters who had married several years since, the spacious mansion
of the family of Fidenas was his alone, with its slaves and its
ancestral masks and its cool courts and its outlook over the seething
Forum up to the opposite heights of the Capitol. There he would find
care and comfort for the body if not for the soul.

And now the patter of running feet sounded from the pavement below.
They were come, at last, with the litter, and Sergius, entering it, was
borne swiftly through the gate, on, between the tall houses that backed
up against the hills, turning soon to the left into the New Way; on,
past the altar of Hercules in the cattle market, past the Temple of
Vesta, along the Comitia, and into the Sacred Way by the front of the
Curia. Thence they swung westward to the Roman Gate, the gate in the
ancient Wall of the City of Romulus that fenced the Palatine alone,--a
stately entrance, now, to the residence portion of the city most
favoured by the great families. Near by stood the house that marked
the ending of the journey, bustling with its slaves and bright with a
hundred lamps; while the physician, an old freedman of the tribune's
father, stood upon the threshold to greet and care for his late
master's son.

Gravely shaking his head at the discouraging aspect of the invalid and
muttering to himself in Greek, for he was born in Rhodes, he led the
way back to the great hall between the peristyle and the garden.

"Here, master," he said, "I have caused your couch to be laid, at the
moment I learned of your arrival and condition. You observe, the air
and light will be better than in your apartment, and the space better
calculated for those whose duty it shall be to minister to you, until
the divine Aesculapius and Apollo's self unite to grant success to my
efforts."

"It is well, Agathocles," said Sergius, wearily, "and I thank you."

His voice seemed to die away with the last words, and a sort of stupor
fell over him. Agathocles watched him closely, as he lay upon the
couch, noted the heavy breathing, and drew his brows together with a
deep frown. Behind him a group of the household slaves whispered
together and cast frightened glances, now at their master, now at the
disciple of the healing art; for Sergius had been brought up among
them, and the terms of their service were neither heavy nor harsh.
Then the surgeon set to work examining the shoulder, nodding his head
to observe that the bone had been replaced in its socket, but waxing
troubled again over the inflammation and swelling that told the story
of torn tendons and blood-vessels too long neglected, and of the
hardships of the journey. Slaves were sent scurrying, in this
direction and that, to compound lotions and spread poultices, while
Agathocles himself proceeded to the ostentatious mixing of some cooling
draught calculated to ward off, if possible, the fever that was already
claiming its sway.

X.

CONVALESCENCE.

The many weeks of hovering between life and death that followed these
days were a dense blank to Sergius. First, there was his injury, more
serious than he had imagined, and the fever that had followed it,
complicated again by the malaria of the marshes through which he had
journeyed in so vulnerable a plight. Then came other weeks of such
lassitude that he had neither power nor desire to learn of the world to
which he felt himself slowly returning, as did Aeneas from the realms
of Pluto. There were times when he had been vaguely conscious of
whisperings around his couch upon subjects that should have interested
him and did not. Was it his fault? or had everything become
commonplace and of no account?

At last there came a time of convalescence. His haggard face
frightened him when he looked at it in the bronze mirror; but the air
of the winter was fresh and keen, bringing health and life to the mind,
if not entirely to the body. So, lying one day in the entrance hall
and gazing out over the Forum below, he turned to Agathocles, who sat
close by.

"And now you shall tell me," he began, "of the things that have
happened while I have lain here, helpless as a bag of corn in the
granary, and of even less importance."

"You mistake, my master," replied the physician, quickly. "Surely you
must know that your condition has been a matter of deep anxiety to
many, both within and without your walls."

"Within, perhaps, yes," said Sergius, slowly. "I treat them well, and
such of them as do not get freedom by my will would doubtless find
harder masters in Sabinus and Camerinus. My sisters' husbands are
patricians of the old school. As for without,--am I not a man useless
in times of action?--well-nigh disgraced?--"

Agathocles hastened to interrupt:--

"Ah! my master, you do not know. Could you but see the crowd of
clients who have gathered at your door each morning, waiting for it to
creak upon the pivots, and, later in the day, such of your friends as
were not away with the army--ay," he continued, with a sharp glance at
the invalid, "and a pretty female slave who has come at each nightfall
and has questioned the doorkeeper."

The strong desire to hear of two things had come into Sergius' mind
while the physician was speaking. He must learn about this female
slave who had inquired so assiduously, and he must hear of the army,
the war, the Republic; for these last three were really but one. After
something of an effort, and not without a certain sentiment of
self-approval, he said:--

"Let me hear of friends later, my Agathocles. Tell me now of the war."

There was a troubled expression in the physician's eyes, but he
answered volubly:--

"It progresses famously, in Spain, my master. Oh!--ay--famously.
Their fleet has been swept from the seas, and Scipio slays and drives
them as he wills. Doubtless by now they are all back in Africa--"

"Not of Spain," interrupted Sergius, as the narrator caught his breath.
"Tell me of Italy, of Hannibal and Fabius. Have the standards opposed
each other?"

"They say Hannibal is in winter quarters at Geronium, and the consuls
watch him," began Agathocles, in more subdued tones.

"Tell me of Fabius. Tell me of what has happened--all, do you hear?"
cried Sergius, raising himself impatiently on one elbow. "If your
story seems to lack coherence and truth, I swear to you that I will go
down into the Forum at once and learn what I wish."

Thus adjured, the physician answered, but with evident reluctance:--

"Truly, my master, all things have not been as we might wish, and yet
they could easily have run worse. When your dictator let the invaders
out of Campania, there was much complaint among the people that he was
protracting the war for his own advantage; but when he came to Rome for
the sacrifices and left Minucius in command, with orders not to engage,
and when the master-of-the-horse, as some say, evading the orders,
fought and gained an advantage, then, you may believe me, the city was
in a turmoil; nor were there wanting friends of Minucius and emissaries
from his camp to sound his praises as a general and decry the dictator
and his policy, not to say his courage and his honesty."

"I warrant," said Sergius, gloomily, "that every pot-house politician
from the Etruscan Street was declaiming on how much better _he_ could
command than could Quintus Fabius."

"Until at last," went on Agathocles, "Marcus Metilius--"

"The tribune?--a corrupt knave!" broke in Sergius.

"Surely; yes. Well, this Marcus Metilius made a speech--"

"Full of rank demagoguery, I warrant."

"Surely, and saying that it was intolerable for Minucius, who was the
only man who could fight, to be put under guard lest he beat the enemy;
intolerable that the territory of the allies should have been given up
to ravage, while the dictator protected his own farm with the legions
of the Republic; and, finally, proposing, as a most moderate measure,
that Minucius, the victor, should be given equal command over the army
with Fabius the laggard."

"Unprecedented impudence!" murmured Sergius, "and what said the
dictator?"

"He did not trouble to go near the Comitia, and even in the Senate they
did not like to hear his praises of Hannibal and his troops, or listen
favourably when he spoke doubtfully concerning the magnitude of
Minucius' victory and claimed that, even were it all true, the
master-of-the-horse should be called to account for his
insubordination. So, after he had lauded prudence and supported his
own policy, and after Marcus Atilius Regulus was elected consul, the
dictator departed for the army, in the night, and left them to do as
they pleased."

"They passed the law?" asked Sergius, bitterly.

"It hung in doubt for some time," went on Agathocles; "for, though many
favoured, few were disposed to advance such a measure, until Caius
Terentius Varro, who was praetor last year--"

"The butcher's son," commented Sergius. "You know, my Agathocles, how
demagogues and tyrants crushed out the life of your Hellas. We have
yet to see the same ruin fall upon Rome, and from the same cause:
first, an ungovernable rabble, stirred up by the ignorant and vicious,
and then a king, and then a foreign conqueror. Flaminius lost one
army, Minucius will doubtless lose another, while Metilius and Varro
are well able to lose whatever may remain. Pah! Why did you not let
me finish my journey to Acheron? This is no city for men whose fathers
were able to teach them about war and honour. He whose tongue is most
ready to lie about the noble and the rich is counted on to wield the
sword best against an enemy. Well,--speak on; and what happened next?"

"As you say," continued the physician, "the measure was passed; but
when Minucius desired that he and the dictator should command on
alternate days, Fabius would only consent to a division of the army."

"Gods!" exclaimed Sergius. "Two legions apiece! That must have been
rare sport for Hannibal."

"Truly, yes; but it resulted well, for, to shorten the tale, the
Carthaginian trapped Minucius through his rashness, and was about to
cut him to pieces, when the dictator, who had foreseen all this, came
up and saved what was left; whereupon the master-of-the-horse marched
to the general's camp, and, saluting him as 'father' and 'saviour,'
surrendered his equal command, after having directed his soldiers,
also, to greet the others as patrons--"

"That, at least, was well done," said Sergius, nodding; "worthy of a
man better born than Minucius. I do him honour for learning from
experience. Metilius or Varro could not have done it."

"And, now," continued Agathocles, "both the dictator and the
master-of-the-horse have given up their commands, the time of their
appointments expiring, and the army is in winter quarters under the
consuls."

"Servilius and Atilius?"

"Truly."

"And the elections?"

"Are falling due."

"Who sue for the consulship?"

Agathocles hesitated and placed his fingers upon the patient's pulse.

"I have told you enough for the day--"

"Who are candidates?" reiterated Sergius, leaning forward impatiently.

"They say that Varro--" began Agathocles.

But the tribune had sprung to his feet. Then, as he swayed a moment
from weakness, leaning back against the couch, he raised both hands and
cried out:--

"Have they gone mad? The butcher's son!--the bearer of his father's
wares, to command against Hannibal! Do you think the Carthaginian a
bullock to stand still and stupid, while this soldier of the shambles
swings the axe? Gods! They will learn their error--only _we_ must pay
the price, together with the rabble that owe it. Gods! Was not the
lesson of Flaminius enough for these drinkers of vinegar-water? This
will be great news for them on the Megalia."

Then, seeming to gain strength from his excitement, he strode up and
down the atrium, while the physician watched him anxiously but without
venturing to interfere.

It was the doorkeeper's attendant that broke in upon the scene, pausing
a moment in doubt, as his eyes followed his master's rapid strides.
Finally, approaching Agathocles, he plucked him by the sleeve and
whispered:--

"The woman desires to know of the health of my lord."

Before the physician could answer, Sergius had caught the words, and,
wheeling about, faced the boy.

"What woman and where?" he asked.

"The gray stole; the slave woman who inquires for you. She waits her
answer at the door," said the boy, his tongue loosened by the question.

"Let her come to me," commanded Sergius, and he threw himself down upon
the deeply cushioned seat of a marble chair. Agathocles stood at his
elbow, with an expression of anxiety on his face, and, in a moment
more, the girl entered.

Muffled almost to the eyes, she glided forward, and the voice that
addressed him was soft and musical.

"May the gods favour you, my lord! even as they have favoured me in
permitting a sight of your improved health."

"You have been here often," began Sergius, "and I wished to see you and
bid you bear my thanks to her who sent you."

Slowly the stole dropped from the eyes--very pretty eyes, that, joined
with an equally pretty mouth, took on an expression of hurt
astonishment.

"That _sent_ me?" she murmured, half sadly. "Ah, well; doubtless it is
a matter of insolence for a poor slave girl to wish and ask concerning
the health of the noble Sergius."

The tribune watched her closely and with mingled feelings. He had
settled in his mind, from the moment of Agathocles' mention of the
fact, that the slave woman who called must be sent by Marcia, and it
was not without a pang of very poignant regret that he relinquished the
idea. That he could not place this girl--one of a class so far beneath
the notice of a Roman of rank--was not strange, and yet the face seemed
vaguely familiar to him, and--it was certainly little short of
beautiful. A man flouted, or, still worse, ignored by a mistress at
whose shrine he has worshipped, might well be pardoned a feeling of
satisfaction that his well-being was a matter of interest to at least
one pretty woman.

Meanwhile the girl stood before him, her arms hanging by her sides, her
eyes modestly cast down, and her whole attitude indicative of detected
audacity and submissive despair. Agathocles had transferred his
attention from his patient to the visitor, and his scrutiny seemed to
trouble her.

"So it was yourself alone who desired to learn of my welfare," said
Sergius, with a faint smile. "Believe me, my girl, no Roman is too
noble to value the interest of beauty like yours."

There was just the suspicion of a laugh in the downcast eyes, but it
sped away as swiftly as it came, and she made haste to answer:--

"Truly, my lord does not measure his own worth. There are many, as
much above me in beauty as they are in rank; many who cannot venture to
show the concern they doubtless feel. What has a poor slave girl to do
with maidenly modesty--the plaything of any master who chooses to smile
upon her for a moment?"

She spoke bitterly, and Sergius, half frowning, half smiling, reached
out his hand. The contrast between this girl's frankly spoken interest
and the courted Marcia's trivial indifference came to him more
powerfully. What a fool a man was to waste himself on some haughty
mistress who exacted all things and gave nothing! She had taken the
hand he held out, and now, suddenly, he drew her to him, and kissed her.

Then he found new occasion to marvel over the strange ways of women.
As if awakened from a dream or a part in a comedy, to some instant and
frightful peril, she wrenched herself from him and, wrapping her cloak
around her face, turned and ran like a deer through the hallway and out
into the street.

Sergius was dazed for a moment by the suddenness of it all; then he
rose.

"Quick, Smyrnus!" he called to the boy who attended on the porter.
"Follow, and bring me word where she goes."

The delay had been short, and Smyrnus was swift of foot, but when he
reached the street it was empty as far as he could see, and a dash to
each corner of the house gave no better results. Inquiries, likewise,
were unavailing, and he returned slowly and with shoulders that already
seemed to tingle under the expected rods.

Meanwhile, Agathocles had essayed to exert his authority over the
invalid, and was protesting volubly against the latter's imprudence.
Sergius was in excellent humour, despite the escape of his conquest.

"Nonsense, my Agathocles," he began, half guiltily at first, but
gaining confidence as he pursued his justification. "Do you not see,
all this has done me more good than a score of days spent in dull
reclining, with only nauseous draughts to mark the hours by? I have
learned that I am a man again, with an interest in the Republic and
myself. Surely such knowledge is worth a little risk. To-morrow, mark
you, if the gods favour me, I shall descend into the Forum and see if
nothing is to be effected against this rabble in the matter of the
elections. Had she not magnificent eyes, my Agathocles? not those of
the dull ox, as your Homer puts it, but rather of the startled fawn?"

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