“Now what of Remus Scaurus? Twins have affinities. They plough the same furrow. Rumour says that Remus Scaurus is dipped as deep as Romulus Laeta. Will he seek the same laurels?”
“Yes, will he, Probus?” Aemilius exclaimed. “You shall tell us so that we may get our mourning ready in good time.”
Probus contrived a smile, the faded image of a smile, and tucked away Mr Gossip behind the cushion at his back.
“Calm yourself, Aemilius. At your age such anger is unwholesome. Have no fear! You will not see my ward in the arena for a very long time.”
No answer could have been more inept or more infuriating. The old man mopped his head and called on all the Gods his stuttering tongue could muster to rescue him from the company of such fools. Then he bent himself to a mock humility,
“I beg your pardon. I keep my temper as a rule. No one better, I am told,” and his eyes roamed round the room offensively, seeking for some honest man with the pluck to contradict him. “But in soft flesh worms are born, eh? Make the conditions and expect the result. No, Probus. I shall not see Attilius butchered to amuse the scum of Rome. Not for a very long time. How right you are, Probus! Probus Honorius, I agree with you. That’s not the pretty boy’s way No.” He sniffed the air with a grimace.
“Why, I can smell him through the closed door. The house stinks like a scent shop. The Sacred Way itself has climbed the Quirinal. I bow to your wisdom, Probus Honorius. Blood and perfumes don’t go together. No, I shall never admire His Daintiness in the arena. But” — and he shook a forefinger at his cousin— “shan’t I on the stage, Probus? Answer me that, admirable guardian! Shan’t I see him dancing like a girl to pay off his debts and smirking when the riffraff bawls ‘Encore!’? A Scaurus, a capering miserable mime!”
Passion broke again through Aemilius’ elaborations of irony. He stood erect, proud and dominant.
“Clodius, the amphitheatre — Attilius, the boards. Well, both have an Emperor to absolve them. But, of the two, I give my vote for Clodius Laeta. That’s my last word.
He flung himself back upon his cushions and gathered his cloak close about him. For his strength was exhausted, and his old bones felt a chill even upon that bright day of opening summer. A long silence followed. No one argued, for no one wanted another avalanche of words. Suddenly, in the silence, one round little paunchy man with a baby face giggled. The sound was startling. A wave of consternation passed from face to face. The family turned as one person nervously towards Aemilius — or rather all of the family except the little round paunchy man, who was not at all disturbed. He giggled again, engagingly.
“It’s not at all your last word, Aemilius,” he said, and Aemilius shot a quick glance at him. “You’re a crafty old fellow. You’re in a great passion — no doubt of that — but you’re using it to impress us. You’ve got a plan in your head.”
Aemilius had, but it was a costly plan and he was not yet sure that he had his audience in a mood to contribute. He devised a cunning little trick.
“Perhaps I have,” he began, and he stopped abruptly. He flung up his hand in a gesture of warning. He listened, his body bent towards the door, apprehension in every line of it. And into the minds of all the recollection of the old man’s wild talk about the Emperor flashed back. Certainly no one had left the room to carry the tale. There would not have been time, in any case, for the tale to have been carried. But here was a rich, great family assembled behind closed doors. Nero, Caligula, Domitian would have asked for no more solid proof of treachery. The horrors of those reigns were past but the scars were still fresh. Even in these serener days the terror had not entirely lifted. Attilius was forgotten. Each one strained his eyes towards the doors, bethinking him of this or that careless phrase spoken or — just as dangerous — listened to. Was it an officer of the Praetorian Guard whose footsteps Aemilius had heard on the marbles of his court? Was it an obsequious slave with an invitation which smelt of death? Aemilius stepped with all the pantomime of caution to the double doors, opened them slightly and turned back again.
“No one,” he said. “I was mistaken.” And all the anxious faces were smoothed out. Lines vanished, lips smiled. Attilius was remembered — but with a difference. The vision of Hadrian’s lictor at the door had made that difference. Attilius could be put on his legs again. The honour of the Scaurus family could be saved, if they made a sacrifice. And a sacrifice meant suddenly a small thing to them all — for they themselves, their lives, were reprieved. Old Aemilius had them in the mood he wanted.
“Our old families, as far as power and position go,” he began, “are worth just three bites of a Caunian fig. But we are not poor. We have our broad-stripe incomes and Quintus Pomponius over there wasn’t Quaestor in Syria for nothing.”
The little round man folded his hands on his little fat stomach and smiled. During his years of office he had squeezed the last farthing out of landowner and peasant and left a generation of paupers behind him. But he had the most engaging good humour and the treble voice of a child.
“I was expecting that question, Aemilius,” he said, comfortably. “Yes, I brought a handful of sesterces home. They were mine. For the honour of the family they are yours.
“The Gods of the House will bless you,” cried Aemilius. “The point is—” and he was on the point of unfolding the little of his plan that he wished to be known when a high-pitched feminine voice broke in brightly. It was accompanied with a rattle of bracelets like the clacking of castanets.
“Darlings all, I have an idea.”
It was to the credit of the Scaurus family that no one swore — not even Aemilius. Scintilla Domitilla was a fool — everybody knew that. She had the brain of a wren and the tongue of a magpie and a perfectly hopeless smattering of the pseudo-philosophies of the day. Also she was a widow, a more or less young widow, and only a member of the family by marriage. And everybody present knew that. But tradition outweighed all with the Scauri and by tradition women came with high authority to family debates. Aemilius threw himself back in his chair.
“Yes, speak your mind, Domitilla,” said the melancholy brother. “Women wear the big boots, nowadays.”
“Oh, dear one, I hope not,” said Domitilla, showing a coquettish white slipper embroidered with pearls.
“And speak in Latin, mind,” Aemilius growled. “I warn you, if you talk Greek I’ll vomit.”
Scintilla Domitilla merely smiled at these ill humours.
“Darling Aemilius, I wouldn’t think of it. Greek is for the cultured. It has exquisite subtleties which need exquisite natures to understand them. For you, dear things, the vernacular.”
The poor old Scauri! The devout life and the big stick — there was their creed. To Scintilla Domitilla they were the unburied dead, and good manners made one gentle with the unburied dead, didn’t they? She gave a pat to her high- piled curls, flourished her tinted fingernails, plucked daintily at her long earrings, and announced: “Since there seems to be money in the family, I move that we send Attilius to Athens for two years.”
“And what in the world will he do at Athens that he doesn’t do at Rome?” Aemilius asked brutally.
Scintilla Domitilla leaned back and looked ineffable things.
“Minerva speak for me!” she said despairingly. “He will lave his hands in the cool gloom of Attic memories. He will hear the wings of the great masters beating in the void. He will be ennobled, etherealized—” and this was just as much of it as Aemilius could stand.
“What Attilius wants is the old, sound Roman discipline and lots of it,” he blurted out.
“To be sure, darling Aemilius, the big stick.” Domitilla smiled languidly and waved her hands and blinked at them with her blackened eyelashes, and gave them up. I have done.
“The Gods be praised.”
Aemilius told them hardly the outline of his plan, knowing well that, if he told more, the barbers in the Street of Pomegranates and the booksellers on the Esquiline would have it before nightfall.
> “I promise you that Attilius shall leave Rome without disgrace. I promise you that, with your help, every debt he has shall be paid the day he goes. For the rest I will only say that I shall dip still deeper into your purses. For Hadrian’s freedmen are greedy souls and demand much for a slight service.”
The family was content to leave the destiny of Attilius in the old man’s hands; all the more content because the hour of the midday meal had come. How should any one of them guess that the first link was forged that morning of a chain which would be extended through the centuries?
III. THE LAST NIGHT IN ROME
Therefore prepare thyself;
The bark is ready and the wind at help;
The associates tend and everything is bent
For England.
— Shakespeare
“What a morning for an invalid!” said Aemilius. “You may thank your stars, my boy, that you’ve never had to preside over a family council. Though, to be sure, your time’ll come. Try the turbot, Attilius. It comes from Ravenna. And give it something to swim in. The Falernian there, at your elbow. It has been just the right ten years in cask.”
He had kept Attilius to lunch with him alone, and now was at pains to put the lad at his ease. A hint of his plans and no one could foretell what desperate mad alternative Clodius Laeta’s bosom friend might resort to. So he staged his little scene with care. An excellent luncheon for the two of them in one of the smaller rooms. Two sensible men of the world, one with more experience than fire, the other with more fire than experience, solving between them an awkward social problem.
“By Mercury, how they talked! Parrots, my boy! Imagine a cage full of chattering parrots and you’ll have an idea what my room of the Archives was like.”
He laughed heartily, this genial old man. But he caught a suspicious glance shot at him by Attilius. Yes, after all, those doors were not sound-proof. Attilius in the garden court might have an accurate notion of who had done most of the talking.
“Of course I had to storm them all down in the end,” he said quickly, and he grinned. “No doubt you heard me at it. If I hadn’t we should be there still. Scintilla Domitilla was the worst. What a figure of fun, eh? Did you see her? Her eyes were so made up with soot and her face so rouged that I hardly knew whether she was a charcoal burner or the setting sun.”
He rode off from the danger point upon a mimicry of Scintilla Domitilla’s affectations.
“I got them to leave the matter in your hands and mine,” he resumed. “Of course it took a little diplomacy, for which you should thank me.”
“I do indeed,” said Attilius gratefully.
“They were thoroughly shaken, of course, by this miserable affair of Clodius Laeta. He was your close friend. Everybody knows it. And the foolish ones — I am being frank with you — are hinting that you might do something equally disastrous. Absurd, of course, but we have to take public opinion into account. So I think, don’t you, Attilius, that a disappearance from Rome would be rather in order?”
He saw a sullen look creep over the boy’s face.
“Temporary, of course. At this time of the year the country’s wonderful. You’ll come back here with the greater zest when you do come.”
In spite of himself some note of irony crept into Aemilius’ voice, perhaps of more than irony. To Attilius’ ears the words had a definitely sinister ring. He lifted his eyes and looked steadily at his uncle.
“When I do come,” he repeated.
The old man was quite unabashed.
“Yes,” he returned easily. “You have an estate in the country. It would he all the better for its owner’s presence for a time. You’d be within reach of Rimini if you went.”
All quite true, and yet every word was a lie in its intention. Attilius, however, overlooked the duplicity of that “if.”
“My estate,” he said ruefully. “I doubt if there’s a chicken on the farm or a stick of furniture in the house. It’s mortgaged to the last penny besides.”
Aemilius swallowed his anger as best he could. In his heart he was crying, “Give me a few days, Jupiter! I’ll draw the magic circle round this young rascal’s feet so that he can’t step out of it. But I must have a few days.” Aloud he said amiably: “But the family’s coming to the rescue. Yes, that was decided. On the condition, to be sure, that you trust yourself to me.”
He waited for a word of compliance but did not get it. Entrusting himself to Aemilius. There was a phrase which stuck in the boy’s throat, a vague phrase, an abominable phrase. It meant the complete surrender of his independence at the best.
“After all, I’m of age,” he objected.
“And a pretty mess you have made of your majority,” Aemilius was tempted to retort. But outwardly he was altogether sympathetic.
“So I urged,” he said. “But little Quintus Pomponius” — he flung up his hands. “No more sensibility than a block of marble. He had an old proverb to fling at us. In soft flesh worms are born. He learnt how to drive a bargain in Syria. He’ll do the proper pious thing. But he wants a guarantee that his sesterces won’t be wasted.”
Attilius nodded his head, and a faint smile curved his lips.
“Well, I can’t blame him.”
“And when all’s said, what does your independence amount to, Attilius?”
“A word,” Attilius agreed. “Just a word.”
He could not borrow another farthing from the money-lenders. His rich friends had begun to look down their noses when they caught sight of him. His creditors were on his heels like a pack of hunting dogs from Britain. Even his gold hair net was unpaid for.
“Yes, I have been a fool,” he added remorsefully.
“Well, young blood’s hot and old age is censorious. Smile, Attilius, and make the wine sweet.” He filled up the boy’s cup. “We’ll pay your debts and clear off your mortgages and these difficult days will be forgotten.”
Attilius was really moved by the old man’s kindliness. The promise that his debts could be paid lifted a load from his mind. Only now was he aware of the tension which had harried him from extravagance to extravagance during the last few months. And he acquired in this moment of submission a simple and rather touching dignity for which Aemilius was quite unprepared.
“I’ve lost a dearly loved friend today. This morning my own distress hid my loss from me. But every moment now I am becoming more and more aware of it.” He broke off to cry passionately, “If only Clodius had died! But what he is enduring now, what he must endure till the last flashing moment comes in the arena — I don’t dare to think of it! Therefore I thank you all, and above all you, my dear uncle, for holding out your hands to me. For the Gods only know whether I should ever have had the courage to take the hideous road which Clodius took.”
For a moment old Aemilius was disconcerted. He watched the boy walk away, a gay and flaunting figure. But he had a curious impression that he was watching someone doomed to a great loneliness and doomed by his hand. Not a loneliness of a day or even of a few years but one prolonged desolately into a time of mists and clouds.
Aemilius, however, was not of a melting disposition. He very soon shook the illusion off and got to work. During the next few days messengers went discreetly to and fro between the house on the Quirinal and Hadrian’s vast new treasure palace at Tibur. To that palace a handsome quantity of the sesterces which little round Quintus had wrung from the distressful Syrians went also. Meanwhile Attilius’ bills were collected, and they made the remaining locks left upon Probus Honorius’ head stand up like limp little snakes.
“By Mercury,” he said, as he went through them with Aemilius, swearing naïvely by the God of thieves and bandits. “By Mercury, Attilius measures money by the bushel.
“There never was such a scapegrace,” Aemilius agreed.
“Look! He takes a lodging at Baiae for the whole of the bathing season and spends a fortnight there.”
“Just as well,” returned Aemilius. “For he did nothing during the f
ortnight but float about the bay in a gilt ship with red sails, attended by a chorus of pretty ladies.”
Probus Honorius flung himself back on his cushions. “But that’s a trifle. Here’s his steward’s accounts. Listen, Aemilius. He gives a dinner party. He must have barbel at a thousand sesterces the pound. His pâté de foie gras comes from geese fed on dates and figs and he follows it with a dish of flamingo tongues. Huh!” Probus Honorius clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Flamingo tongues! He might have invited me.”
Aemilius looked at him sourly.
“Besides being an inefficient guardian, you’re a glutton, Probus Honorius. Numa Pompilius never ate flamingo tongues.”
“Numa Pompilius had never heard of them,” Probus Honorius retorted. “I have.”
Within a fortnight the bills were paid and Hadrian’s freedmen satisfied. Aemilius made a special sacrifice to the Gods of his hearth. And that same evening Attilius, in a splendid cloak twice dyed in Tyrian purple, stepped across the threshold of his lodging to attend a farewell supper offered to him by a friend upon the Aventine. His litter was at the door; his two runners stood with their torches by the side of it; and out from the darkness with a clank of his armour strode a Centurion of the Praetorian Guard. He halted in front of Attilius and saluted. He handed to him reverently a letter. By the light of the torches Attilius saw that the letter was sealed with the Emperor’s signet, and his heart stood still. The Emperors kept the Army and its appointments under their own hands. Other commands laid upon him would have carried the seals of Departments. This letter which he held meant service in the Line. Attilius broke the seal and read. He was bidden to travel to the docks at Ostia the next morning and report, on his arrival, to the Captain of the Port. Service abroad, then — years of it, very likely, for him who had contemplated just a few idle, pleasant months in his country seat amongst the Apennines. Hot words rose to his tongue. His old uncle had cajoled him.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 614