"My child," the shocked Emperor exclaimed, "you really should not speak so flippantly of so dreadful an idea!"
"I"m not a particle flippant this time," Brinnaria declared. "I know I am often flippant, but not now, not a bit. I am just as serious as life and death. I have thought of nothing but suicide since Trebellius conducted me back to my seat. I can"t get the idea out of my head and that is why I have come to you."
"Tell me all about it from the beginning," the Emperor said, comfortingly. "What put the notion into your head?"
"In the beginning," said Brinnaria, "you know that I didn"t want to be a Vestal."
"Yes, I know," he a.s.sured her.
"Well," she went on, "now I am a Vestal and must serve out my thirty years, I"m really trying to do my best to be all I ought to be. I really am. I"ve tried hard to be sedate and grave and collected and reticent and slow-spoken, and all the rest of it. And I think I haven"t done badly most of the time. But after all, I"m myself and I can"t be changed. Every once in a while myself boils up in me under the sc.u.m of convention I"ve spread on top of the cauldron, so to speak. I don"t mean to let go and be natural and spontaneous. I"ve done the awful thing before I know I"m going to do it. I didn"t mean to pour the pork gravy over old Gubba"s head; but she looked so funny I just did it without knowing what I was going to do. I didn"t mean to throw Manlia"s pet monkey out of the window on to Moccilo"s head. But her shock of red curls looked to be just the place on which to drop little Dito, and I dropped Dito before I thought. It"s just the same way about all the other dreadful things I do. I don"t mean to do them, but I do do them."
"Don"t worry," the Emperor said, "you"ll outgrow all that."
"I trust I may," Brinnaria sighed, "but how about the harm I"m doing as I go along?"
"You haven"t done any harm, not any harm that matters," the Emperor soothed her.
"Are you perfectly sure of that?" she persisted. "If you could make me perfectly sure of that, I should feel a great deal better. Are you sure?"
"I can"t see any real harm in your pranks," the Emperor said. "I certainly should not encourage you to continue or repeat such conduct or to revert to it, but I see no real harm in it."
"You think I have not unfitted myself for my duties?"
The Emperor meditated.
"To a certainty," he said, "if your conduct was intentional, if you thought up these pranks of yours and perpetrated them, with deliberate consciousness of what you were about to do, I should hold you gravely unfitted for your position. But you are manifestly sincere in your efforts to be all you ought to be and are trying genuinely to overcome your tendencies and to outgrow your coltishness. I am of the opinion that, if you curb yourself from now on, you have done no harm."
"Do you think," Brinnaria insisted, "that if you called a meeting of all the colleges of pontiffs and put the question to them, that they would make the same answer you have made?"
"You amazing child!" Aurelius exclaimed. "Why should you a.s.sume the att.i.tude of advocate against yourself? Why suggest a synod to discuss your conduct and express an official opinion on it? Is not my opinion enough? Even if I saw fit to call a synod and all the members of it held the same views and expressed them never so cogently, do you not realize that, if my views were contrary to theirs, it would be my view that would prevail; that it would not only be my privilege and my right but my imperative duty to override any opposition and to enforce my decision? Are you not satisfied with the opinions of the man who is at once Emperor and Chief Pontifex of Rome?"
"But," Brinnaria persisted, "I am not at all sure that you are speaking as Emperor and Chief Pontifex. To me you seem to speak as a kindly husband and father very sympathetic towards another man"s little daughter who comes to you in deep trouble of spirit."
"You amazing child!" the Emperor repeated. "You talk as if you were forty years old. Tell me precisely what is troubling you, for I must have failed to fathom it, and be sure I shall reply officially as Emperor and Pontifex."
"What troubles me," said Brinnaria, "is the dread that my wild and tomboyish behavior may be as displeasing to the G.o.ddess as coquettishness or wantonness. I am in terror for fear my ministrations may be unpleasant to her, may be sacrilegious, may not only fail to win her blessing upon Rome but may draw down her curse upon all of us. I never thought of that until I stood there all alone out in the arena, astraddle of that beautiful boy whom I just had to save, feeling all of a sudden horribly naked in my one thin, clinging undergarment, with two hundred thousand eyes staring at me. It came over me with a rush that I was not only never going to be fit for a Vestal but that I wasn"t fit for a Vestal and I hadn"t been fit for a Vestal; that I not only was going to do harm, not only was doing harm, but had done harm. If the Parthians are devastating the frontier along the Euphrates and the Marcommani and the Quadi are storming the outposts along the Danube and the Rhine, perhaps that is because my presence in the Atrium is an offence in the eyes of Vesta, my prayers an affront to my G.o.ddess, my care of her altar-fire an insult to her. I tremble to think of it. And I cannot get it out of my head. I wake up in the dark and think of it and it keeps me awake, sometimes, longer than I ever lay awake in the dark in my life. It scares me. I am a Vestal to bring prosperity and glory to the Empire, to pray prayers that will surely be answered. Suppose the G.o.ddess is deaf to my prayers because I am unworthy to pray to her?
Suppose that my prayers infuriate her because I am vile in her sight?
Suppose I am causing disaster to the Empire? I keep thinking all that.
Do you wonder that I think of suicide, of hanging myself, like the two Oculatas?"
"My child!" Aurelius cut in. "You have not done anything that justifies your comparing yourself to the Oculata sisters."
"We"ll come back to that later," Brinnaria replied. "Just now let us stick to the point. Do you think my fears justified or not?"
"Decidedly not," the Emperor rejoined, without an instant"s hesitation, "and I speak not as a soft-hearted parent who sees the soul of his own daughter looking at him out of the eyes of every little girl whose heart troubles her, I speak as the guardian of the interests of the Empire, as the warder of the destinies of Rome.
"Your misbehavior has certainly been grave, I admit; and, if done maliciously, would entail all the harm you imagine. But the G.o.ddess can see not only your actions but your thoughts. Your scruples do you high credit. I will not say you are as pleasing to the G.o.ddess as would be a grave and sedate ministrant, but I do solemnly decide and declare that you need have no further dread of any past, present or future harm to the Empire or to Rome from your past behavior, if you honestly try to err no more. This is my official decision. Be at peace in your heart."
Brinnaria drew a deep breath.
"You certainly comfort me," she said, "but I just know I"ll boil over again and not once, but many times."
"Vesta will comprehend," he said, "if your derelictions are less and less frequent and less and less violent; if you succeed a little better from month to month and from year to year. She will not be pleased with your lapses, if you lapse again, but she will be pleased at your struggles with yourself and with your good intentions. She will smile upon your ministrations and hearken to your pet.i.tions. Be comforted."
"I am," said Brinnaria, "as far as that trifle goes, but now we come to my real and chief concern. Suppose I am as detestable in the sight of my G.o.ddess as the Oculata sisters were, and for a similar reason; suppose I ought to hang myself as dead as they hanged themselves. Oughtn"t I, then, to hang myself?"
"You incredible creature!" Aurelius cried. "I"ve met women by the thousand, by the tens of thousands, but never a girl like you. What do you mean? What can you mean? You cannot mean what you seem to mean.
Explain yourself. Be explicit. Tell me all about what is troubling you.
I"ll understand and put your mind at ease."
"I trust you may," Brinnaria sighed, "but I dread that you cannot. I mean just what I seem to mean."
"Impossible!" the Emperor cried, "a child of ten, but a few months out of her mother"s care and those few months in the care of Causidiena! And I wouldn"t believe it of you if you were twice your age."
"Oh," said Brinnaria, "I haven"t acted like Caparronia and the two Oculatas, and I shouldn"t if I were never so much left to myself.
But you said yourself that Vesta can read my thoughts and I knew that without your telling me so. Suppose that my thoughts are as abominable in the sight of my G.o.ddess as was the behavior of those three unfortunates? Oughtn"t I to hang myself and be done with myself?"
"Indubitably," said the Emperor, "if the facts were as your words imply.
But you are just frightening yourself to death with vapors like a child afraid of its own shadow. Be explicit, be definite, and I can put you at peace with yourself at once and permanently."
Brinnaria drew a deep breath.
"To begin with," she said, "you know that, before I was taken for a Vestal, I was plighted to Caius Segontius Almo."
"Certainly, I knew that," Aurelius replied. "All Rome knew of his ride from Falerii and of his arriving just too late."
"You knew I was in love with him?"
"I a.s.sumed that," the Emperor told her.
"Well," she said, a pathetic break in her voice, "I can"t make myself stop loving Almo. I always have loved him, I always shall, I love him now."
"I a.s.sumed that too," the Emperor said. "All Rome knows of his resolve to remain unmarried, to wait thirty years for you, to marry you the very day you are free. I a.s.sumed that he would not be so constant unless he believed you equally constant. No harm in that! You have a right to marry at the end of your service and a right to look forward to it."
"That is what troubles me," Brinnaria said. "I cannot feel that I have a right to look forward to it."
"Now listen to me," said the Emperor. "Few Vestals have left the Atrium at the end of their thirty years. Not every one that has left has married, the third Terentia withdrew at the end of her term and did not marry, nor did the only Licinia who ever completed her service. But Appellasia married and so did Quetonia and Seppia. Others have married after their service, though it is thought unlucky. The right to leave the order implies the right to marry after leaving. The right to leave implies the right to mean to leave, to plan to leave, to look forward to leaving and marrying. You have that right, like any other Vestal. Does that satisfy you?"
"It does not," Brinnaria a.s.serted. "I know a Vestal has a right to leave and marry and to plan to leave and marry. But, after thirty years of service, or nearly thirty years of service, to plan to leave and marry and to look forward to it for a few days or months appear to me very different from looking forward to it from the first hour of my service, and knowing not only that I mean to marry, but just the man I mean to marry, and loving him all the time, and longing for him. I can"t help it; I feel that way, and I dread that I am not an acceptable ministrant and I tremble for fear of the consequences to you and to Rome. I think I ought to hang myself and be done with it. You haven"t comforted me a bit."
The Emperor stood up.
"Sit still!" he commanded, sharply.
He paced up and down the huge audience hail; paced its full length three times each way.
Then he reseated himself.