"You chose him----"
"Since then he hath become a besotted despot."
"Still your Emperor--to whom you owe your dignities, your power, your rank----"
"Thou dost defend him warmly, O praefect of Rome," suddenly interposed Hortensius Martius who had followed every phase of the discussion with heated brow and eyes alert and glowing. "Thou art ready to continue this life of submission to a maniacal tyrant, to a semi-b.e.s.t.i.a.l mountebank----"
"The life which I lead is of mine own making," rejoined Taurus Antinor proudly; "the life ye lead is the one ye have chosen."
And with significant glance his dark eyes took in every detail of the disordered room--the littered table, the luxurious couches, the numberless empty dishes and broken goblets as well as the flushed faces and the trembling hands, and involuntarily, perhaps, a look of harsh contempt spread over his face.
Hortensius caught the look and winced under it; the words that had accompanied it had struck him as with a lash, and further whipped up his already violent rage.
"And," he retorted with an evil sneer, "to the Caesar thou wilt render homage even in his most degraded orgies, and wilt lick the dust from off his shoes when he hath kicked thee in the mouth."
Slowly Taurus Antinor turned to him, and Hortensius Martius appeared just then so like a naughty child, that the look of harshness died out of the praefect"s eyes, and a smile almost of amus.e.m.e.nt, certainly of indulgence, lit up for a moment the habitual sternness of his face.
"Loyalty to Caesar," he said simply, "doth not mean obsequiousness, as all Roman patricians should know, oh Hortensius!"
"Aye! but meseems," rejoined the young man, whose voice had become harsher and more loud as that of Taurus Antinor became more subdued and low, "meseems that at the cost of thy manhood thou at least art prepared to render unto Caesar----"
But even as these words escaped his lips the praefect, with a quick peremptory gesture, placed one slim, strong hand on Hortensius" wrist.
It seemed as if in a moment--and because of those words--a strange power had gone forth from the soul within right down to the tips of the slender fingers that closed on those of the younger man with a grip of steel.
He had raised himself wholly upright on the couch, his ma.s.sive figure, in the gorgeous crimson tunic, standing out clear and trenchant against the shadowy whiteness of the marble walls behind him. His head, with the ruddy ma.s.s of hair on which the flickering lamps threw brilliant, golden lights, was thrown back, and the eyes, deep, intent, and glowing with unrevealed ardour, looked straight out before him into the shadows.
"Render unto Caesar," he said slowly, "the things which are Caesar"s, and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d"s."
His voice was low and unmodulated, as of one who repeats something that he has heard before, whilst the eyes suddenly shone as if with a fleeting memory of an exquisite vision.
The action, the words, were but momentary, but for that brief moment the angry retort was checked on Hortensius" lips, even as were the sneers and the bibulous scowls on the faces of those around. Taurus Antinor, towering above them all, and imbued with a strange dignity, seemed to be gazing into a s.p.a.ce beyond the walls of the gorgeous dining-hall; into a s.p.a.ce hidden from their understanding but peopled with the sweet memory of a sacred past. And even as he gazed a strange spell fell over these voluptuaries; a spell which they were unable to withstand. Whilst it lasted every ribald word was stilled and every drunken oath lulled to silence. The very air seemed hushed and only from a bunch of dying roses the withered petals were heard to fall one by one.
Then the grasp on Hortensius" wrist relaxed, the dark head was lowered, the falling lids once more hid the mysterious radiance of the eyes. The spell was broken as Taurus Antinor resumed quietly:
"The Caesar," he said, "hath not yet abdicated; he is still our chosen ruler and Emperor. To speak of his successor now savours of treachery and----"
"And what thou sayest stinks of treachery," broke in Hortensius Martius with redoubled wrath, and shaking himself free from the brief spell of superst.i.tious awe which Antinor"s words and Antinor"s grip on his arm had momentarily cast over him. "Hast come here, O praefect, but to spy on us, to probe our souls and use them for thine own selfish ends?"
"Silence, Hortensius!" admonished Ancyrus, the elder.
"Nay, I"ll not be silent!" retorted the young man, who seemed at last to have lost all control over his jealous pa.s.sion. His eyes, in which gleamed the fire of intense hate, swept from the face of his enemy to that of his friends whom they challenged. His voice had become raucous and hoa.r.s.e and his tongue refused him service, making his words sound inarticulate.
"Do ye not see," he shouted, turning his flushed face toward the others, "do you not see how you are being fooled? The praefect stands high in the Caesar"s favour, he has the Caesar"s ear----"
"Silence!" broke in in peremptory accents the voice of Caius Nepos, the host.
"Silence!" cried some of the younger men.
"No! No! I"ll shout! I"ll shout!" persisted Hortensius with the crazy obstinacy of one whose mind is obscured with liquor and with pa.s.sion, "I"ll shout until you understand. Fools, I tell ye! Fools are ye all!
You tell this man of your schemes, of your plans! He listens blandly to you!... You fools! you fools! Not to have suspected ere this that his so-called loyalty to Caesar masks his treachery to us!"
He was kneeling now upon his couch, and with clenched hands was pounding against the cushions like an angry child. The tumult became general; everyone was shouting. Those who were nearest to this raving young maniac were trying to seize him, but he waved his arms about like the wings of a night bird, and anon he seized a goblet of heavy solid metal and struck out with it to the right and left of him, so that none dared come nigh.
But the praefect stood quietly beside him, with arms held very tightly across his mighty chest, his dark eyes fixed upon the raving figure on the couch. No one had ventured to approach him, for the feeling of superst.i.tious awe which he had aroused in them a while ago had not wholly died down, and now there was such a look of contempt and of wrath in his face that instinctively the most sober drew away from him, and those whose minds were obscured with wine looked upon him in ever growing terror.
Suddenly Hortensius, brandishing the heavy goblet, raised it high above his head, and with a drunken and desperate gesture he flung it in the direction of the praefect, but his hand had trembled and his arm was unsteady. The goblet missed the head of Taurus Antinor and fell crashing along the marble-topped table, bringing a quant.i.ty of crystal down with it in its fall.
A few drops of the wine from the goblet had fallen on Taurus Antinor"s tunic, and from the parched throat of young Hortensius there rose a hoa.r.s.e and immoderate laugh and a string of violent oaths. But even before these had fully escaped his lips he saw the praefect"s dark face quite close to his own, and felt a grip as of a double vice of steel fastening on both his shoulders.
He knew the grip and had felt it before; no claw of desert beast was firmer or more unrelenting. Young Hortensius felt his whole body give way, his very bones crack beneath that mighty grip. His head, overheated with wine, fell back against the cushions of his couch, and he felt as if the last breath in him was leaving his enfeebled body.
"Thou art a fool indeed, Hortensius," murmured a harsh voice close to his ear; "a fool to provoke a man beyond the power of his control."
Then as at a word from the host, the other men--those who were steady on their feet--tried to interpose, Taurus Antinor turned his face to them.
"Have no fear," he said quite calmly, "for this man. He shall come to no harm. Twice hath he insulted me and twice have I held his life in my hands."
Then, as Hortensius uttered an involuntary cry of rage or of pain, Taurus Antinor spoke once more to him:
"Thy life is in my hands yet will I not kill thee, even though I could do it with just the tightening of my fingers round thy throat. But provoke me not a third time, O Hortensius, for I have in my possession a heavy-thonged whip, and this would I use on thee even as I order it to be used on the miscreant thieves that are brought to my tribunal. So cross not my path again, dost understand? I am but a man and have not an inexhaustible stock of patience."
Whilst he spoke he still held young Hortensius down pinioned amongst the cushions. No one interfered, for it had dawned on every blurred mind there that here lay a deeper cause for quarrel than mere political conflict. Hortensius, though vanquished now, had been like a madman; his unprovoked insults had come from a heart overburdened with jealousy and with hate. Now when the praefect relaxed his grip upon him, he lay for a while quite still, and anon Caius Nepos beckoned to his slaves, and they it was who ministered to him, bathing his forehead with water and holding lumps of ice to the palms of his hands.
Taurus Antinor had straightened out his tall figure. For a moment he looked down with bitter scorn on the prostrate figure of his vanquished foe. The awed silence which his strange words of a while ago had imposed upon the others, still hung upon them all. They stood about in groups, whispering below their breath, and the slaves were huddled up one against the other in the distant corners of the room. An air of mystery still hung over the magnificent triclinium, its convivial board, its abandoned couches, over the vases of murra and crystal and the fast dying roses. It seemed as if some personality--great, majestic, divine--had pa.s.sed through the marble hall and that the sound of sacred feet still echoed softly along its walls.
It almost seemed as if there clung a radiance in that shadowy corner where the eyes of an enthusiast had sought and found the memory of the Divine Teacher; and that in the fume-laden air there lingered the odour of the sacrifice offered by a rough, untutored heart to the Man Who had spoken unforgettable words seven years ago in Galilee.
CHAPTER X
"That the world through Him might be saved."--ST. JOHN III. 17.
Taurus Antinor had bidden farewell to his host, and to the other guests and then departed.
Not another word had been spoken on the subject of the Caesar or of his probable successor. The conspirators, somewhat sobered, had allowed the praefect to go without attempting further effort to gain him to their cause. They had had their answer. Though many of them did not quite understand the full depth of its meaning, yet were they satisfied that it was final. They bade him farewell quietly and without enmity; somehow the thought of their murderous plan had momentarily fled from their mind, and the quarrel between Hortensius Martius and the praefect of Rome seemed to have been the most important event of the day.
Taurus Antinor emerged alone from the peristyle of Caius Nepos" house.
An army of slaves belonging to the various guests were hanging about the vestibule, talking and laughing amongst themselves and feasting on the debris from the patricians" table, brought out to them by servitors from within; some forty litters enc.u.mbered the floor, but Antinor, paying no heed to these, pa.s.sed through the crowd of jabbering men and women and made his way across to the steps which led upwards to the street.
The day was done, had been done long ago; already the canopy of the stars was stretched over the sleeping city, and far away to the east, beyond the gilded roof of Augustus" palace, the waning moon, radiant and serene, outlined the carvings on every temple with a thin band of gold and put patches of luminous sapphires and emeralds on the bronze figures that crowned the Capitol.
Taurus Antinor paused awhile, enjoying the restfulness of the night; from his broad chest came a long-drawn breath of voluptuous delight at the exquisite sweetness of the air. How far away now seemed that long, luxurious room, with its stained cloths and crumpled cushions, with the low tables groaning under the debris of past repasts and the rows of couches luring to sensuous repose. For the moment even the wranglings of Caius Nepos" guests seemed remote, their selfish aims and their lying tongues. Here, beneath the stars, there was stillness and peace.
A gentle breeze from over the distant hills blew on the dreamer"s forehead and eased the wild throbbings of his temples; from somewhere near tiny petals of heliotrope, chased by the breeze, brought sweet-scented powder to his nostrils.