She has not spoken. She has not released me of my oath.
Because her mouth is gagged. As the Gods love me, they say that the god Caius (Caligula) named his horse Consul. Rome may have a monkey as her prince and Augustus for aught I care, were it not that by such a chance the handle is offered for you to upset him and seat yourself and me at the head of the universe.
No more of this, said the general. A good soldier obeys his commander. And I have an imperator, he touched his breast; a good conscience, and I go nowhere, undertake nothing which is not ordered by my master there.
Then I wash my hands of the result.
Come hither! Corbulo called, and signed to his daughter who, with a flush of pleasure, left her kid and ran to him.
He took both her hands by the wrists, and holding her before him, panting from play, and with light dancing in her blue eyes, he said, Domitia, I have not said one grave word to thee since we have been together. Yet now will I do this. None can tell what may be the next turn up of the die. And this that I am about to say comes warm and salt from my heart, like the spring hard by, at the Bath of Helene.
And strong, father, said the girl, with flashes in her speaking eyes. So strong is the spring that at once it turns a mill, ere rushing down to find its rest in the sea.
Well, and so may what I say so turn and make thee active, dear child, active for good, though homely the work may be as that of grinding flour. When you have done a good work, and not wasted the volume of life in froth and cascade, then find rest in the wide sea of
Of what? sneered Duilia, say it out of nobody knows what.
That which thou sayest, dearest father, will not sleep in my heart.
Domitia, when we sail at sea, we direct our course by the stars. Without the stars we should not know whither to steer. And the steering of the vessel by the stars, that is seamanship. So in life. There are principles of right and wrong set in the firmament
Where? asked Duilia. As the Gods love me, I never saw them.
By them, continued Corbulo, disregarding the interruption, we must shape our course, and this true shaping of our course, and not drifting with tides, or blown hither and thither by winds this is the seamanship of life.
By the Gods! said Duilia. You must first find your stars. I hold what you say to be rank nonsense. Where are your stars? Principles! You keep your constellations in the hold of your vessel. My good Corbulo, our own interest, that we can always see, and by that we ought ever to steer.
Father, said the girl, I see a centurion and a handful of soldiers coming this way and, if I mistake not, Lamia is speeding ahead of them.
Well, go then, and play with the kid. Hear how the little creature bleats after thee.
She obeyed, and the old soldier watched his darling, with his heart in his eyes.
Presently, when she was beyond hearing, he said:
Now about the future of Domitia. I wish her no better fortune than to become the wife of Lucius Ælius Lamia, whom I love as my son. He has been in and out among us at Antioch. He returns with me to Rome. In these evil times, for a girl there is one only chance to be given a good husband. This I hold, that a woman is never bad unless man shows her the way. If, as you say, there be no stars in the sky there is love in the heart. By Hercules! here comes Lamia, and something ails him.
Lucius was seen approaching through the garden. His face was ashen-gray, and he was evidently a prey to the liveliest distress.
He hastened to Corbulo, but although his lips moved, he could not utter a word.
You would speak with me, said the old general rising, and looking steadily in the young mans face.
Something he saw there made him divine his errand.
Then Corbulo turned, kissed his wife, and said
Farewell. I am rightly served.
He took a step from her, looked towards Domitia, who was dancing to her kid, above whose reach she held a bunch of parsley.
He hesitated for a moment. His inclination drew him towards her; but a second thought served to make him abandon so doing, and instead, he bent back to his wife, and said to her, with suppressed emotion
Bid her from me as my last command Follow the Light where and when she sees it.
CHAPTER IV.
THERE IS NO STAR
A quarter of an hour had elapsed since Corbulo entered the peristyle of the villa, when the young man Lamia came out.
He was still pale as death, and his muscles twitched with strong emotion.
He glanced about him in quest of Longa Duilia, but that lady had retired precipitately to the gynaikonitis, or Ladys hall, where she had summoned to her a bevy of female slaves and had accumulated about her an apothecarys shop of restoratives.
Domitia was still in the garden, playing with the kid, and Lamia at once went to her, not speedily, but with repugnance.
She immediately desisted from her play, and smiled at his approach. They were old acquaintances, and had seen much of each other in Syria.
Corbulo had not been proconsul, but legate in the East, and had made Antioch his headquarters. He had been engaged against the Parthians and Armenians for eight years, but the war had been intermittent, and between the campaigns he had returned to Antioch, to the society of his wife and little daughter.
The former, a dashing, vain and ambitious woman, had made a salon there which was frequented by the best society of the province. Corbulo, a quiet, thoughtful and modest man, shrunk from the stir and emptiness of such life, and had found rest and enjoyment in the company of his daughter.
Lamia had served as his secretary and aide-de-camp. He was a youth of much promise, and of singular integrity of mind and purity of morals in a society that was self-seeking, voluptuous, and corrupt.
He belonged to the Ælian gens or clan, but he had been adopted by a Lamia, a member of a family in the same clan, that claimed descent from Lamius, a son of Poseidon, or Neptune, by one of those fictions so dear to the Roman noble houses, and which caused the fabrication of mythical origins, just as the ambition of certain honorable families in England led to the falsification of the Roll of Battle Abbey.
Pliny tells a horrible story of the first Lamia of importance, known to authentic history. He had been an adherent of Cæsar and a friend of Cicero. He was supposed to be dead in the year in which he had been elected prætor, and was placed on the funeral pyre, when consciousness returned, but too late for him to be saved. The flames rose and enveloped him, and he died shrieking and struggling to escape from the bandages that bound him to the bier on which he lay.
Lucius Lamia had been kindly treated by Corbulo, and the young mans heart had gone out to the venerated general, to whom he looked up as a model of all the old Roman virtues, as well as a man of commanding military genius. The simplicity of the old soldiers manner and the freshness of his mind had acted as a healthful and bracing breeze upon the youths moral character.
And now he took the young girl by the hand, and walked with her up and down the pleached avenues for some moments without speaking.
His breast heaved. His head swam. His hand that held hers worked convulsively.
All at once Domitia stood still.
She had looked up wondering at his manner, into his eyes, and had seen that they were full.
What ails you, Lucius?
What ails you, Lucius?
Come, sit by me on the margin of the basin, said he. By the Gods! I conjure thee to summon all thy fortitude. I have news to communicate, and they of the saddest
What! are we not to return to Rome? O Lamia, I was a child when I left it, but I love our house at Gabii, and the lake there, and the garden.
It is worse than that, Domitia. He seated himself on the margin of a basin, and nervously, not knowing what he did, drew his finger in the water, describing letters, and chasing the darting fish.
Domitia, you belong to an ancient race. You are a Roman, and have the blood of the Gods in your veins. So nerve thy heroic soul to hear the worst.
And still he thrust after the frightened fish with his finger, and she looked down, and saw them dart like shadows in the pool, and her own frightened thoughts darted as nimbly and as blindly about in her head.
Why, how now, Lamia? Thou art descended by adoption from the Earth-shakes, and tremblest as a girl! See a tear fell into the basin. Oh, Lucius! My very kid rears in surprise.
Do not mock. Prepare for the worst. Think what would be the sorest ill that could befall thee.
Domitia withdrew her eyes from the fish and the water surface rippled by his finger, and looked now with real terror in his face.
My father?
Then Lamia raised his dripping finger and pointed to the house.
She looked, and saw that the gardener had torn down boughs of cypress, and therewith was decorating the doorway.
At the same moment rose a long-drawn, desolate wail, rising, falling, ebbing, flowing a sea of sound infinitely sad, heart-thrilling, blood-congealing.
For one awful moment, one of those moments that seems an eternity, Domitia remained motionless.
She could hear articulate words, voices now.
Come back! O Cnæus! Come, thou mighty warrior! Come, thou pillar of thy race! Come back, thou shadow! Return, O fleeted soul! See, see! thy tabernacle is still warm. Return, O soul! return!
She knew it the conclamatio; that cry uttered about the dead in the hopes of bringing back the spirit that has fled.
Then, before Lamia could stop her, Domitia started from the margin of the pool, startling the fish again and sending them flying as rays from where she had been seated, and ran to the house.
The gardener, with the timidity of a slave, did not venture to forbid passage.
A soldier who was withdrawing extended his arm to bar the doorway. Quick as thought she dived below this barrier, and next moment with a cry that cut through the wail of the mourners, she cast herself on the body of her father, that lay extended on the mosaic floor, with a blood-stained sword at his side, and a dark rill running from his breast over the enamelled pavement.
Next moment Lamia entered.
Around the hall were mourners, slaves of the house, as also some of those of Longa Duilia, raising their arms and lowering them, uttering their cries of lamentation and invocations to the departed soul, some rending their garments, others making believe to tear their hair and scratch their faces.
In the midst lay the dead general, and his child clung to him, kissed him, chafed his hands, endeavored to stanch his wound, and addressed him with endearments.
But all was in vain. The spirit was beyond recall, and were it to return would again be expelled. Corbulo was dead.
The poor child clasped him, convulsed with tears; her copious chestnut hair had become unbound, and was strewed about her, and even dipped in her fathers blood. She was as though frantic with despair; her gestures, her cry very different from the formal expressions and utterances of the servile mourners.
But Lamia at length touched her, and said
Come away, Domitia. You cannot prevent Fate.
Suddenly she reared herself on her knees, and put back the burnished rain of hair that shrouded her face, and said in harsh tones:
Who slew him?
He fell on his own sword.
Why! He was happy?
Before an answer was given, she reeled and fell unconscious across her fathers body.
Then Lamia stooped, gathered her up tenderly, pitifully, in his arms, and bore her forth into the garden to the fountain, where he could bathe her face, and where the cool air might revive her.
Why was Corbulo dead? and why had he died by his own hand?
The Emperor Nero was, as Duilia had told her husband, at this very time in Greece, and further, hard by at Corinth, where he was engaged in superintending the cutting of a canal, that was to remove the difficulty of a passage from the Saronic to the Corinthian Gulf.
Nero had come to Greece attended by his Augustal band of five thousand youths with flowing locks, and gold bangles on their wrists, divided into three companies, whose duty it was to applaud the imperial mountebank, and rouse or lead enthusiasm, the Hummers by buzzing approval, the Clappers by beating their hands together, and the Clashers by kicking pots about so as to produce a contagious uproar.
Nero was possessed with the delusion that he had a fine voice, and that he was an incomparable actor. Yet his range was so small, that when striving to sink to a bass note, his voice became a gurgle, and when he attempted to soar to a high note, he raised himself on his toes, became purple in face, and emitted a screech like a peacock.
Not satisfied with the obsequious applause of the Roman and Neapolitan citizens who crowded the theatre to hear the imperial buffoon twitter, he resolved to contest for prizes in the games of Greece.
A fleet attended him, crowded with actors, singers, dancers, heaped up with theatrical properties, masks, costumes, wigs, and fiddles.
He would show the Greeks that he could drive a chariot, sing and strut the stage now in male and then in female costume, and adapt his voice to the sex he personated, now grumbling in masculine tones, then squeaking in falsetto, and incomparable in each.
But with the cunning of a madman, he took with him, as his court, the wealthiest nobles of Rome, whom he had marked out for death, either because he coveted their fortunes or suspected their loyalty.
Wherever he went, into whatsoever city he entered, his artistic eye noted the finest statues and paintings, and he carried them off, from temple as from marketplace, to decorate Rome or enrich his Golden House, the palace he had erected for himself.
Tortured by envy of every one who made himself conspicuous; hating, fearing such as were in all mens mouths, through their achievements, or notable for virtue, his suspicion had for some time rested on Domitius Corbulo, who had won laurels first in Germany and afterwards in Syria.
He had summoned him to Rome, with the promise of preferments, his purpose being to withdraw him from the army that adored him, and to destroy him.
No sooner did the tidings reach the tyrant at Corinth, that the veteran hero was arrived at Cenchræa, than he sent him a message to commit suicide. A gracious condescension that, for the property of the man who was executed was forfeit and his wife and children reduced to beggary, whereas the will of the testator who destroyed himself was allowed to remain in force.
Lamia washed the stains from the hands and locks of the girl, and bathed her face with water till she came round.
Then, when he saw that she had recovered full consciousness, he asked to be allowed to hasten for assistance. She bowed her head, as she could not speak, and he entered the womens portion of the villa to summon some of the female slaves. These were, however, in no condition to answer his call and be of use. Duilia had monopolized the attentions of almost all such as had not been commissioned to raise the funeral wail. Some, indeed, there were, scattered in all directions, running against each other, doing nothing save add to the general confusion, but precisely these were useless for Lamias purpose.