"Listen, listen, my dear boy!" cried Jucundus, hastening to explain what he considered the cause of his sudden annoyance; "listen, just one moment, Agellius, if you can. Dear, dear, how I wish I knew where to find you!
What _is_ the matter? I"m not treating her ill, I"m not indeed. I have not had any notion at all even of hinting that you should leave her, unless you both wished the bargain rescinded. No, but it is a great rise for her; you are a Roman, with property, with position in the place; she"s a stranger, and without a dower: n.o.body knows whence she came, or anything about her. She ought to have no difficulty about it, and I am confident will have none."
"O my good, dear uncle! O Jucundus, Jucundus!" cried Agellius, "is it possible? do my ears hear right? What is it you ask me to do?" and he burst into tears. "Is it conceivable," he said, with energy, "that you are in earnest in recommending me-I say in recommending me-a marriage which really would be no marriage at all?"
"Here is some very great mistake," said Jucundus, angrily; "it arises, Agellius, from your ignorance of the world. You must be thinking I recommend you mere _contubernium_, as the lawyers call it. Well, I confess I did think of that for a moment, it occurred to me; I should have liked to have mentioned it, but knowing how preposterously touchy and skittish you are on supposed points of honour, or sentiment, or romance, or of something or other indescribable, I said not one word about that. I have only wished to consult for your comfort, present and future. You don"t do me justice, Agellius. I have been attempting to smooth your way. You _must_ act according to the received usages of society! you cannot make a world for yourself. Here have I proposed three or four ways for your proceeding: you will have none of them. What _will_ you have? I thought you didn"t like ceremonies; I thought you did not like the established ways. Go, then, do it in the old fashion; kill your sheep, knead your meal, light your torches, sing your song, summon your flamen, if he"ll come. Any how, take your choice; do it either with religion or without."
"O Jucundus!" said the poor fellow, "am I then come to this?" and he could say no more.
His distress was not greater than his uncle"s disappointment, perplexity, and annoyance. The latter had been making everything easy for Agellius, and he was striking, do what he would, on hidden, inexplicable impediments, whichever way he moved. He got more and more angry the more he thought about it. An unreasonable, irrational c.o.xcomb! He had heard a great deal of the portentous stubbornness of a Christian, and now he understood what it was. It was in his blood, he saw; an offensive, sour humour, tainting him from head to foot. A very different recompense had he deserved. There had he come all the way from his home from purely disinterested feelings. He had no motive whatever, but a simple desire of his nephew"s welfare; what other motive could he have? "Let Agellius go to the crows," he thought, "if he will; what is it to me if he is seized for a Christian, hung up like a dog, or thrown like a dead rat into the _cloaca_ of the prison? What care I if he is made a hyaena"s breakfast in the amphitheatre, all Sicca looking on, or if he is nailed on a cross for the birds to peck at before my door? Ungrateful puppy! it is no earthly concern of mine what becomes of him. I shall be neither better nor worse.
No one will say a word against Jucundus; he will not lose a single customer, or be shunned by a single jolly companion, for the exposure of his nephew. But a man can"t be saved against his will. Here am I, full of expedients and resources for his good; there is he, throwing cold water on everything, and making difficulties as if he loved them. It"s his abominable pride, that"s the pith of the matter. He could not have behaved worse though I had played the bully with him, and had reproached him with his Christianity. But I have studiously avoided every subject which could put his back up. He"s a very Typhon or Enceladus for pride. Here he"d give his ears to have done with Christianity; he wants to have this Callista; he wants to buy her at the price of his religion; but he"d rather be burned than say, I"ve changed! Let him reap as he has sown; why should I coax him further to be merciful to himself? Well Agellius," he said aloud, "I"m going back."
Agellius, on the other hand, had his own thoughts; and the most urgent of them at the moment was sorrow that he had hurt his uncle. He was sincerely attached to him, in consequence of his faithful guardianship, his many acts of kindness, the reminiscences of childhood, nay, the love he bore to the good points of his character. To him he owed his education and his respectable position. He could not bear his anger, and he had a fear of his authority; but what was to be done? Jucundus, in utter insensibility to certain instincts and rules which in Christianity are first principles, had, without intending it, been greatly dishonouring Agellius, and his pa.s.sion, and the object of it. Uncle and nephew had been treading on each other"s toes, and each was wincing under the mischance. It was Agellius"s place, as the younger, to make advances, if he could, to an adjustment of the misunderstanding; and he wished to find some middle way. And, also, it is evident he had another inducement besides his tenderness to Jucundus to urge him to do so. In truth, Callista exerted a tremendous sway over him.
The conversation which had just pa.s.sed ought to have opened his eyes, and made him understand that the very first step in any negotiations between them was her _bona fide_ conversion. It was evident he could not, he literally had not the power of marrying her as a heathen. Roman might marry a Roman; but a degradation of each party in the transaction was the only way by which a Roman could make any sort of marriage with a Greek. If she were converted, they would be both of them under the rules of the Catholic Church. But what prospect was there of so happy an event? What had ever fallen from her lips which looked that way? Could not a clever girl throw herself into the part of Alcestis, or chant the majestic verses of Cleanthes, or extemporize a hymn upon the spring, or hold an argument on the _pulchrum_ and _utile_, without having any leaning towards Christianity? A calm, sweet voice, a n.o.ble air, an expressive countenance, refined and decorous manners, were these specific indications of heavenly grace? Ah, poor Agellius! a fascination is upon you; and so you are thinking of some middle term, which is to reconcile your uncle and you; and therefore you begin as follows:-
"I see by your silence, Jucundus, that you are displeased with me, you who are always so kind. Well, it comes from my ignorance of things; it does indeed. I ask your forgiveness for anything which seemed ungrateful in my behaviour, though there is not ingrat.i.tude in my heart. I am too much of a boy to see things beforehand, and to see them in all their bearings. You took me by surprise by talking on the subject which led to our misunderstanding. I will not conceal for an instant that I like Callista very much; and that the more I see her, I like her the more. It strikes me that, if you break the matter to Aristo, he and I might have some talk together, and understand each other."
Jucundus was hot-tempered, but easily pacified; and he really did wish to be on confidential terms with his nephew at the present crisis; so he caught at his apology. "Now you speak like a reasonable fellow, Agellius,"
he answered. "Certainly, I will speak to Aristo, as you wish; and on this question of _consuetudo_ or prescription. Well, don"t begin looking queer again. I mean I will speak to him on the whole question and its details.
He and I will talk together for our respective princ.i.p.als. We shall soon come to terms, I warrant you; and then _you_ shall talk with him. Come, show me round your fields," he continued, "and let me see how you will be able to present things to your bride. A very pretty property it is. I it was who was the means of your father thinking of it. You have heard me say so before now, and all the circ.u.mstances.
"He was at Carthage at this time, undecided what to do with himself. It so happened that Julia Clara"s estates were just then in the market. An enormous windfall her estates were. Old Didius was emperor just before my time; he gave all his estates to his daughter as soon as he a.s.sumed the purple. Poor lady! she did not enjoy them long; Severus confiscated the whole, not, however, for the benefit of the state, but of the _res privata_. They are so large in Africa alone, that, as you know, you are under a special procurator. Well, they did not come into the market at once; the existing farmers were retained. Marcus Juventius farmed a very considerable portion of them; they were contiguous, and dovetailed into his own lands, and accordingly, when he got into trouble, and had to sell his leases, there were certain odds and ends about Sicca which it was proposed to lease piecemeal. Your employer, Varius, would have given any money for them, but I was beforehand with him. Nothing like being on the spot; he was on business of the proconsul at Adrumetum. I sent off Hispa instantly to Strabo; not an hour"s delay after I heard of it. The sale was at Carthage; he went to his old commander, who used his influence, and the thing was done.
"I venture to say there"s not such a snug little farm in all Africa; and I am sanguine we shall get a renewal, though Varius will do his utmost to outbid us. Ah, my dear Agellius, if there is but a suspicion you are not a thorough-going Roman! Well, well,-here! ease me through this gate, Agellius; I don"t know what"s come to the gate since I was here.
Indeed!-yes! you have improved this very much. That small arbour is delicious; but you want an image, an Apollo or a Diana. Ah! do now stop for a moment; why are you going forward at such a pace? I"ll give you an image: it shall be one that you will really like. Well, you won"t have it?
I beg you ten thousand pardons. Ha, ha! I mean nothing. Ha, ha, ha! Oh, what an odd world it is! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Well, I am keeping you from your labourers. Ha, ha, ha!"
And having thus smoothed his own ruffled temper, and set things right, as he considered, with Agellius, the old pagan took his journey homewards, a.s.suring Agellius that he would make all things clear for him in a very short time, and telling him to be sure to make a call upon Aris...o...b..fore the ensuing calends.
CHAPTER X.
THE DIVINE CALLISTA.
The day came which Agellius had fixed for paying his promised visit to Aristo. It is not to be denied that, in the interval, the difficulties of the business which occasioned his visit had increased upon his apprehensions. Callista was not yet a Christian, nor was there any reason for saying that a proposal of marriage would make her one; and a strange sort of convert she would be, if it did. He would not suffer himself to dwell upon difficulties which he was determined never should be realized.
No; of course a heathen he could not marry, but a heathen Callista should not be. He did not see the process, but he was convinced she would become a Christian. Yet somehow so it was, that, if he was able to stultify his reason, he did not quite succeed to his satisfaction with his conscience.
Every morning found him less satisfied with himself, and more disposed to repent of having allowed his uncle to enter on the subject with Aristo.
But it was a thing done and over; he must either awkwardly back out, or he must go on. His middle term, as he hastily had considered it, was nothing else than siding with his uncle, and committing himself to go all lengths, unless some difficulty rose with the other party. Yet could he really wish that the step had not been taken? Was it not plain that if he was to put away Callista from his affections, he must never go near her? And was he to fall back on his drear solitude, and lose that outlet of thought and relief of mind which he had lately found in the society of his Greek friends?
We may easily believe that he was not very peaceful in heart when he set out on that morning to call upon Aristo; yet he would not allow that he was doing wrong. He recurred to the pleasant imagination that Callista would certainly become a Christian, and dwelt pertinaciously upon it. He could not tell on what it was founded; he knew enough of his religion not to mean that she was too good to be a heathen; so it is to be supposed he meant that he discerned what he hoped were traces of some supernatural influence operating upon her mind. He had a perception, which he could not justify by argument, that there was in Callista a promise of something higher than anything she yet was. He felt a strange sympathy with her, which certainly unless he utterly deceived himself, was not based on anything merely natural or human,-a sympathy the more remarkable from the contrariety which existed between them in matters of religious belief. And hope having blown this large and splendid bubble, sent it sailing away, and it rose upon the buoyant atmosphere of youth, beautiful to behold.
And yet, as Agellius ascended the long flight of marble steps which led the foot-pa.s.senger up into that fair city, while the morning sun was glancing across them, and surveyed the outline of the many sumptuous buildings which crested and encircled the hill, did he not know full well that iniquity was written on its very walls, and spoke a solemn warning to a Christian heart to go out of it, to flee it, not to take up a home in it, not to make alliance with anything in it? Did he not know from experience full well that, when he got into it, his glance could no longer be unrestrained, or his air free; but that it would be necessary for him to keep a control upon his senses, and painfully guard himself against what must either be a terror to him and an abhorrence, or a temptation?
Enter in imagination into a town like Sicca, and you will understand the great Apostle"s anguish at seeing a n.o.ble and beautiful city given up to idolatry. Enter it, and you will understand why it was that the poor priest, of whom Jucundus spoke so bitterly, hung his head, and walked with timid eyes and clouded brow through the joyous streets of Carthage.
Hitherto we have only been conducting heathens through it, boys or men, Jucundus, Arn.o.bius, and Firmian; but now a Christian enters it with a Christian"s heart and a Christian"s hope.
Well is it for us, dear reader, that we in this age do not experience-nay, a blessed thing that we cannot even frame to ourselves in imagination-the actual details of evil which hung as an atmosphere over the cities of Pagan Rome. An Apostle calls the tongue "a fire, a world of iniquity, untameable, a restless evil, a deadly poison;" and surely what he says applies to hideous thoughts represented to the eye, as well as when they are made to strike upon the ear. Unfortunate Agellius! what takes you into the city this morning? Doubtless some urgent, compulsive duty; otherwise you would not surely be threading its lanes or taking the circuit of its porticoes, amid sights which now shock and now allure; fearful sights-not here and there, but on the stateliest structures and in the meanest hovels, in public offices and private houses, in central spots and at the corners of the streets, in bazaars and shops and house-doors, in the rudest workmanship and in the highest art, in letters or in emblems or in paintings-the insignia and the pomp of Satan and of Belial, of a reign of corruption and a revel of idolatry which you can neither endure nor escape. Wherever you go it is all the same; in the police-court on the right, in the military station on the left, in the crowd around the temple, in the procession with its victims and its worshippers who walk to music, in the language of the noisy market-people; wherever you go, you are accosted, confronted, publicly, shamelessly, now as if a precept of religion, now as if a homage to nature, by all which, as a Christian, you shrink from and abjure.
It is no accident of the season or of the day; it is the continuous tradition of some thousands of years; it is the very orthodoxy of the myriads who have lived and died there. There was a region once, in an early age, lying upon the Eastern Sea, which is said at length to have vomited out its inhabitants for their frightful iniquity. They, thus cast forth, took ship, and pa.s.sed over to the southern coast; and then, gradually settling and spreading into the interior, they peopled the woody plains and fertile slopes of Africa, and filled it with their cities.
Sicca is one of these set up in sin; and at the time of which we write that sin was basking under the sun, and rioting and extending itself to its amplest dimensions, like some glittering serpent or spotted pard of the neighbourhood, without interposition from heaven or earth in correction of so awful a degradation. In such scenes of unspeakable pollution, our Christian forefathers perforce lived; through such a scene, though not taking part in it, Agellius, blessed with a country home, is unnecessarily pa.s.sing.
He has reached the house, or rather the floor, to which he has been making his way. It is at the back of the city, where the rock is steep; and it looks out upon the plain and the mountain range to the north. Its inmates, Aristo and Callista, are engaged in their ordinary work of moulding or carving, painting or gilding the various articles which the temples or the private shrines of the established religion required. Aristo has received from Jucundus the overtures which Agellius had commissioned him to make, and finds, as he antic.i.p.ated, that they are no great news to his sister.
She perfectly understands what is going on, but does not care to speak much upon it, till Agellius makes his appearance. As they sit at work, Aristo speaks:-
"Agellius will make his appearance here this morning. I say, Callista, what can he be coming for?"
"Why, if your news be true, that the Christians are coming into trouble, of course he means to purchase, as a blessing on him, some of these bits of G.o.ds."
"You are sharp enough, my little sister," answered Aristo, "to know perfectly well who is the G.o.ddess he is desirous of purchasing."
Callista laughed carelessly, but made no reply.
"Come, child," Aristo continued, "don"t be cruel to him. Wreath a garland for him by the time he comes. He"s well to do, and modest withal, and needs encouragement."
"He"s well enough," said Callista.
"I say he"s a fellow too well off to be despised as a lover," proceeded her brother, "and it would be a merit with the G.o.ds to rid him of his superst.i.tion."
"Not much of a Christian," she made answer, "if he is set upon me."
"For whose sake has he been coming here so often, mine or yours, Callista?"
"I am tired of such engagements," she replied. She went on with her painting, and several times seemed as if she would have spoken, but did not. Then, without interrupting her work, she said calmly, "Time was, it gratified my conceit and my feelings to have hangers on. Indeed, without them, how should we have had means to come here? But there"s a weariness in all things."
"A weariness! Where is this bad humour to end?" cried Aristo; "it has been a long fit; shake it off while you can, or it will be too much for you.
What can you mean? a weariness! You are over young to bid youth farewell.
Aching hearts for aching bones. So young and so perverse! We must take things as the G.o.ds give them. You will ask for them in vain when you are old. One day above, another day beneath; one while young, another while old. Enjoy life while you have it in your hand." He had said this as he worked. Then he stopped, and turned round to her, with his graving-tool in his hand. "Recollect old Lesbia, how she used to squeak out to me, with her nodding head and trembling limbs"-here he mimicked the old crone-" "My boy, take your pleasure while you can. I can"t take pleasure-my day is over; but I don"t reproach myself. I had a merry time of it while it lasted. Time stops for no one, but I did my best; I don"t reproach myself." There"s the true philosopher, though a slave; more outspoken than aesop, more practical than Epictetus."
Callista began singing to herself:-
"I wander by that river"s brink Which circles Pluto"s drear domain; I feel the chill night breeze, and think Of joys which ne"er shall be again.
"I count the weeds that fringe the sh.o.r.e, Each sluggish wave that rolls and rolls; I hear the ever-splashing oar Of Charon, ferryman of souls.
"Heigho!" she continued, "little regret, but much dread. The young have to fear more than the old have to mourn over. The future outweighs the past.
Life is not so sweet as death is bitter. It is hard to quit the light, the light of heaven."
"Callistidion!" he said, impatiently; "my girl, this is preposterous. How long is this to go on? We must take you to Carthage; there is more trade there, if we can get it; and it will be on the bright, far-resounding sea.
And I will turn rhetorician, and you shall feed my cla.s.ses."
"O beautiful, divine light," she continued, "what a loss! O, to think that one day I must lose you for ever! At home I used to lie awake at night longing for the morning, and crying out for the G.o.d of day. It was like choice wine to me, a cup of Chian, the first streaks of the Aurora, and I could hardly bear his bright coming, when he came to me like Semele, for rapture. How gloriously did he shoot over the hills! and then anon he rested awhile on the snowy summit of Olympus, as in some luminous shrine, gladdening the Phrygian plain. Fair, bright-haired G.o.d! thou art my worship, if Callista worships aught: but somehow I worship nothing now. I am weary."
"Well," said her brother in a soothing tone, "it is a change. That light, elastic air, that transparent heaven, that fresh temperate breeze, that majestic sea! Africa is not Greece; O, the difference! That"s it, Callista; it is the _nostalgia_; you are home-sick."
"It may be so," she said; "I do not well know what I would have. Yes, the poisonous dews, the heavy heat, the hideous beasts, the green fever-gendering swamps. This vast thickly-wooded plain, like some mysterious labyrinth, oppresses and disquiets me with its very richness.
The luxuriant foliage, the tall, rank plants, the deep, close lanes, I do not see my way through them, and I pant for breath. I only breathe freely on this hill. O, how unlike Greece, with the clear, soft, delicate colouring of its mountains, and the pure azure or the purple of its waters!"