“One sensible man talking to another! The old goat! I should have remembered the proverb — where the honey is, there’s the sting.” He was inclined to send Uncle Aemilius, the whole unspeakable family, and the Emperor Hadrian himself to Morbovia. “If he wants to march all over the world, let him! Must I do the same?”
Something of his anger showed, no doubt, in his face, for the Centurion said quietly: “It is an order.”
Attilius came abruptly to his senses. He bent his lips to the broken seal.
“It shall be obeyed.”
The Centurion saluted. The ghost of a smile flickered for a moment upon his grave face.
“I shall bear witness that it was received with gratitude.
“I thank you,” said Attilius, and the Centurion turned upon his heel and clanked away into the darkness.
Attilius remained standing, his wits all numbed, and his fingers closed about the Imperial order. There was no possible avoidance of it. The mere hint of hesitation was a sacrilege, an outburst of rage a blasphemy. Already he had reason to be grateful to the Centurion who had checked his wild words upon his lips. He must obey. Suddenly he looked down. With a curious earnestness he took note of his position, looked backwards to the door and measured the distance between the threshold and his stance. A light broke in upon him.
“It’s my fault,” he cried bitterly. He himself had brought this catastrophe upon his head. “I stepped out from the house left foot first.” But for that imprudent action there might have been no Centurion emerging from the darkness with a royal letter in his hand. “I can blame myself for all my misfortunes. This is my last night in Rome.”
His last night for how long? He reclined on his litter and was lifted onto the shoulders of his slaves.
“Go slowly,” he cried, “very slowly!”
He must make the most of this last night, suck from it its last drop of honey. He was carried through the narrow streets thronged with people of every race, loud with their clamour, bright with their torches and lighted windows. At times his bearers had to halt, but they never halted long enough for Attilius. He loved every stone of the great city. Each corner had a memory to be cherished. Tender meetings in the dusk, riotous orgies, nights which melted into day and still left pleasure unappeased. For how long was he to lose Rome? He looked up. Overhead, above the glare, the stars sailed in a cool, dark sky. He was oppressed with a conviction that ages would pass before he saw the Seven Hills again.
He was the guest of honour that night upon the Aventine. It was his business to keep the wine sweet, and he laboured at his business till something of his gaiety returned to him.
“Yes, I join the army — somewhere abroad. It will be Spain, I think. What do you all want from Spain?”
He convinced himself that he would be sent to Spain. Spain, after all, was no distance. How long had it taken Icelus to carry the news of Nero’s death to Galba? Only seven days. Undoubtedly it would be Spain.
But Attilius — for the second time be it said — was an optimist. For at that very moment old Aemilius on the Quirinal dipped his quill in his ink pot and began a letter to Sempronius Proculeius, Legate of the Sixth Legion, Victrix, Pia, Fidelis, which was then stationed at York.
“To my friend and glorious general, Sempronius Proculeius, greeting,” he wrote. “By the beneficence of the Emperor” — he did not add “and a prodigal outlay of Quintus’ sesterces”— “my nephew, Attilius Scaurus, has been gazetted Tribune to your Legion.” There followed a minute account of Attilius’ extravagances and misdeeds, including a history of his friendship with that enterprising young gladiator, Clodius Laeta.
“Make a man of him,” he implored, “in remembrance of the friendship between the two families.” He concluded with a few strong recommendations as to how Attilius Scaurus might be bludgeoned into the higher life.
IV. ATTILIUS AND THE CYNIC
IARCHUS EXPLAINED THAT his own soul had once been in the body of another man who was a King and that in that state he had performed this or that exploit.
— Life of Apollonius
Attilius touched Rhadamanthine depths of misery. No gilt yacht with crimson sails and lovely girls crowned by violets wafted him across a placid bay. In a narrow, crowded, cargo-laden ship he shared a tiny cabin under the poop with four strange commercial travellers; and he was very, very ill. On the sixth day a ghost of him landed at Marseilles. He stood on the quay with a draft of twelve men and the Centurion, the land rolling and heaving under his feet, and his head giddy as a drunkard’s.
“And there was once an army which cried joyfully: ‘The Sea! The Sea!’” he said. “It is true that they made the remark in Greek, which would have pleased my aunt Scintilla Domitilla. But, speaking for myself, Lucius Hermex, I rejoice that that army is no more.”
The Centurion, Lucius Hermex, looked at him blankly.
“We start, Sir, at daybreak tomorrow,” he said.
“Unless we die tonight,” Attilius added.
“All orders must be obeyed,” the Centurion said gravely.
“No doubt our ghosts will walk, even if our corpses refuse,” said Attilius.
“We shall not walk,” said Lucius Hermex. “We shall ride horses.”
The frail wit of Attilius groaned and swooned. Nor did it revive for many days. He had been accustomed to sitting soft. Now he sat hard, and indeed, sore. It seemed to him that every perverse, iron-mouthed old nag had its manger at one or another of the posting stations in Gaul. They set out each day before sunrise and stopped each day after dark. The inns were dirty the food unspeakable, the beds the ridges and furrows of a ploughed field after a hard frost. Attilius, hungry and aching and sore and stiff, travelled like an automaton with one human sense, the sense of pain. His mind was shut and rejected the effort of thought. Even his vision was clouded so that he saw everyone as a phantom, the unreality of a dream. The Centurion gravely drove them forward like a shepherd who knows to what market his sheep must go and is not concerned with their feelings. More than once Attilius, falling asleep upon his horse, found himself clutching desperately at its mane to save himself from falling.
Then one night he laughed. And it was not because he laughed that he came afterwards to look back upon it as a night in his life to be marked with a white stone. It was at Lyons. He dined in the inn on the great road at the ordinary. The room was full, and suddenly there was a commotion in the passage which led from the room to the kitchen. The door was flung open and a resounding smack was heard, a good hard smack of the palm of the hand upon bare flesh. Heads were raised, smiles wrinkled the most sedate faces. Somebody was getting it from an irate landlady. An insolent maid? A too adventurous young lady of the town? Neither one nor the other. Through the door was pushed a drunken greybeard in a ragged cloak, with a wreath of olives askew on his head. He was holding his hand to his cheek, and behind him was a buxom waitress, her eyes blazing with anger, her cheeks fiery, her bosom heaving.
“You keep out of the servants’ quarters in the future,” she cried, “or I’ll rub your head in the nettles.”
The old man drew himself up with drunken dignity.
“Servants’ quarters, young woman, are my spiritual home. I am the servant of man.”
“Then keep to man,” she rejoined, “and don’t try cuddling the girls when they’ve got their work to do. You’re a nasty old goat and the crows ought to have had you years ago.”
She retired into the kitchen, and the old man made an attempt to set his wreath straight. But he only pushed it over the other eye, and its new position perplexed him exceedingly. He pushed out his lower lip and blew up at it, but even so it didn’t move.
“Strange,” he said. “Strange and incommoding. But some things are as they are.”
He looked blearily about the room and saw Attilius. He withdrew his eyes and looked at him again, expecting that the vision would have faded. But Attilius was still there, and he began to sidle towards him between the tables. He had a staff in his hand
, but even so he must waver on his legs and twist like a ship with a bad helmsman. He fell on the couch at Attilius’ side.
“I shall drink with you, young Sir,” he said sonorously. “The wine is miserable, and I do not as a rule drink with army officers.
“That I can believe,” said Attilius pleasantly.
“My name is Daemonides, the old scarecrow went on.
“And I can do nothing about that,” said Attilius.
“None the less, I will drink with you,” Daemonides insisted. For we have something in common.”
“The Gods forbid,” Attilius cried fervently.
Daemonides sat up anxiously.
“Which?” he asked.
“Which of the Gods?”
“You insult me, young Sir. I am a Cynic. There is only one God. Be reasonable, if you please. I ask you to which of my propositions” — and he hiccoughed badly on the word— “do you object? That I drink with you at your expense or — ?”
Here Attilius interrupted.
“No. That we have something in common.”
Daemonides was greatly relieved. He saw his mug of wine already at his elbow. He felt it running gloriously down his throat.
“Yet we have,” he bawled with confidence.
Attilius looked round. He saw every pair of eyes in the room turned towards the couple. He waved his hand.
“I’ll leave it to the company. Let them decide. Out with it, old frighten-the-birds! What have we in common?”
Daemonides laid a dirty finger against the side of a bulbous nose.
“We were both kicked out of Rome.”
For a moment the company was taken aback. For a moment Attilius was furious. He turned upon Daemonides, but the old man was so utterly serene and so incredibly dirty that at once he was more tickled than provoked. He had never seen drunkenness so lordly nor its consequences so evident. He smiled, and the smile became a laugh, and having begun to laugh he could not stop. He had great stores of laughter which had not been used through so many painful days. Now they bubbled out of him, upheaving him, and once more he knew enjoyment. He infected all that company of strangers so that they, too, laughed, moved more by Attilius’ gay humour than by the comic side of this odd companionship.
“You’ve won, Daemonides,” Attilius cried, and he rapped upon the table. “Wine for Daemonides and his young brother.” He drew back as the old man’s arms flew out. “No, we’ll not embrace. You have forgotten, Daemonides. We never did. But drink, yes. We’ll make a night of it.” He turned to the buxom girl who had clouted Daemonides on the ear and now stood waiting for the order. “That is, if he can hold any more.”
The girl looked at Daemonides with extreme disfavour.
“That sort of old wine-skin can always stretch enough to hold an extra bottle, if someone else will pay for it,” she said. The room settled down, and when Daemonides’ cup was full Attilius asked him a question.
“My bones tell me that I have travelled fast — or rather they did tell me yesterday,” he said, and stopped, realizing with a queer wonderment that today he was not tired. Nor did he ache. He was conscious, too, that he would sleep, sleep like a log, be the bed never so hard nor spiny, when once he had laid himself down in it. Meanwhile there was this question: “I left Rome long after you, Daemonides. How then did you guess that I had been banished?”
Daemonides smiled loftily.
“In the name of Hercules, tell me!” and Daemonides opened his eyes wide. In spite of his drunkenness a light suddenly flickered in them, a spark of fanaticism.
“You swear by the right God, young gentleman,” he said, nodding profoundly.
“But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“It needs no sibyl in a bottle to answer it. I saw you here, in Hadrian’s armour. I saw you in Rome. Your debts, your follies were on all men’s lips. You were of Rome, bone and blood. You would never have left Rome but on compulsion. Are you satisfied?”
Attilius was far from satisfied. That the general public should have shared the prejudices of his own family was a new and disturbing idea. He saw himself unpleasantly in another kind of mirror than his own.
“You talk bluntly, Daemonides,” he said with annoyance. Daemonides smirked. He was one of those distressing people who, even in their cups, plume themselves upon the plainness of their speaking.
“Preaching and pretty words are a barren marriage,” he declared, and then, changing his tone to one of a deep and secret anxiety, he leaned forward. “Do you notice anything odd, Attilius, in the position of my wreath?” he asked. Attilius put his head on this side and on that to examine more judicially the tip-tilted wreath of olive leaves which slipped down the Cynic’s face.
“It suits you perfectly, Daemonides,” he said, and Daemonides said sententiously: “You strike me as a young man of sound judgment, Attilius. It seemed to me at an unaccustomed and derogatory angle, but I accept your decision.”
Attilius shrugged his shoulders.
“When I left Rome, that was the way wreaths were worn in the evening.”
The old man’s smirk returned. He swelled with vanity. “Speaking of Rome, Attilius, you have not asked me why I was kicked out of it.”
“My dear Daemonides, it seemed to me a superfluous question,” Attilius answered suavely.
But Daemonides would have none of such indifference. He said solemnly: “There is a lesson in it. An example for you. I raised a banner against authority and its trappings. I lit a torch, Sir, which will resound across the world.”
“An unusual torch,” said Attilius.
“It was. I bearded Hadrian himself. He was leaving the amphitheatre, surrounded by his dazzling minions. Did I falter? I did not. I pushed my way through and flung my epigram in his face. You shall hear it, Attilius. Listen!” He took the attitude of a prophet denouncing sin and recited:
“I ‘neath my hedgerow, Hadrian in his camp,
The wandering friar and the Imperial Tramp—”
He broke off to ask confidently: “Good?”
“Rotten,” said Attilius.
Daemonides contemplated his young companion with disfavour.
“Your judgment, Attilius, is faulty in every single particular. But you shall not escape the rest of it.”
“I had no real hope,” said Attilius, with resignation. He had, indeed, to hear not only the end of the doggerel but the beginning of it for a second time.
“I ‘neath my hedgerow, Hadrian in his camp,
The wandering friar and the Imperial Tramp,
Each must make answer to the one High God,
Which upon earth was flame and which was clod.”
Attilius sat back upon his couch.
“And how did Hadrian answer?”
There was disappointment in the voice of Daemonides as he replied: “Flippantly, young gentleman. He fell below the moment. He said, ‘He’s dirty. Most Cynics are. I like Rome clean.’ So I left Rome that night.”
For a while neither spoke. Other such charlatans had insulted other Emperors and met with no sterner punishment. Attilius neither disbelieved Daemonides attack nor was surprised at the answer he had received. But he was intrigued by the curious gross monstrosity which sat drinking with him in this inn at Lyons. Such an odd medley of buffoonery and courage and debauchery and vanity and dirt other inns, no doubt, might show. But there was something real, too — some small, bright spark which kindled and grew dim and kindled again. And whilst he thus speculated the whole creed of the man was flung at him in a torrent of words. Attilius was by now too sleepy to make very much of it. But scraps here and there and a phrase or two sank into his mind for memory, upon her proper occasions, to call to life again.
“Service! Service! Service! And to the one God.” Daemonides thumped his words with his fists into the table and made some quite unrepeatable remarks about old Charon and his boat. “No duties! No wife! No children! No home! No money! I am mother and sister and brother to all the world.”
“Qui
te so,” said Attilius. “I understand.”
“I am the spy and the herald and the messenger.”
“You have a great deal on your hands,” said Attilius.
“The whole earth,” cried Daemonides, throwing out his arms.
“So I see,” said Attilius.
Then followed a word — or rather whole paragraphs of words — about the great roads over which his mission carried him. Then there was a little about an old philosopher with whose name both had some difficulty. For Attilius, too, was by this time suffering from his duties as a host. They agreed finally to call the old gentleman Pathygoras. And from Pathygoras Daemonides moved on to the Orphic Mysteries.
“There’s the truth,” said Daemonides, wagging his head with the last smile of intoxication before complete stupor sets in. “The Soul descending through the seven planets clothes itself with passions and, once on Earth, must pass from penitential life to penitential life, until, purged of its offences, it wings its way up again to Paradise. Now, I, Attilius, am going up. In my next life I shall probably be a King. You, on the other hand, will be probably a snake.”
“In that case, O King,” said Attilius, rising to his feet, “you must take care not to meet me. For I shall bite you if you do.” And the hour being late and his senses wandering, Attilius took himself off to bed.
He never saw Daemonides again. But he remained grateful to him for a ridiculous, pleasant evening, the mere idea of which a month ago would have been insupportable. He grew even more grateful. For instance, that very morning in the cool, clear, colourless light before the sun rose, there was the white, broad road stretching straight across the vast plain of France. Attilius saw it with understanding eyes for the first time. He turned to the Centurion who was riding at his elbow: “Were you ever at Philae?”
Lucius Hermex pondered.
“Philae?”
“It is in Egypt.”
Lucius Hermex shook his head.
“I served in Dacia before I went to Britain with Hadrian. Dacia and Britain have had my twenty years of soldiering.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 615