Hortensius Martius, convinced that her eyes had rested on him while she spoke, made an effort to disguise the look of triumph that shone from out his glance. But young Escanes, in whom all hope had not yet died, was under the same impression, as also was my lord Philippus Decius; for, in truth, Dea Flavia had looked round on them all marvelling how any of them could compare with the man who already, in her heart, was the chosen lord of Rome.
"And now, my lords," she said, paying no further heed to the sighs of restless desires that rose up round her as she spoke, "I pray you ask no more of me. I must think and I must pray. I entreat you not to urge a decision on me until I have thought and prayed."
"Time is precious, Augusta," urged Caius Nepos feebly, "and the people will not wait."
"The people have fled from before the storm," she rejoined, "and their will, remember, my lords, may not be in accordance with yours."
"They call for the praefect of Rome and the praefect is dead. We must be ready to acclaim a Caesar who will be equally to their choice."
"Then," she said, "when to-morrow the third hour of the day is called, I pray you, my lords, come back to me for mine answer. But I must have until to-morrow to ponder and to pray. An you must press me now," she added decisively, seeing that protestations were again hanging on their lips, "then must my answer be "No!" to all your demands."
Though in her heart she had already weighed all that she meant to do, yet she would not give her decision without speaking first to the man who already was the elect of her choice. He was sick now, lying in the arms of sleep. In a few hours probably he would be refreshed, and it would indeed be a mighty Caesar whom she would proclaim on the morrow before the people of Rome.
"The people will not wait till to-morrow, Augusta," urged Ancyrus, the elder, "canst tell a raging tempest to pause or a thunderstorm to bide thy time? They are quiet for the nonce but in an hour they will again invade the imperial hill. Thy house will not be safe."
"Then must ye put a check upon the people as best ye can, my lords; I cannot make my choice at this hour," she said determinedly, "if ye cannot wait and if ye fear the people, then must you make your plans without my help."
They consulted with one another in whispers. The Augusta was obdurate and without her they did not care to act. Her personality was alone powerful enough at this crisis to satisfy the people, and she alone could stand for the success of their intrigues against the people"s loud demands for the praefect of Rome.
Betwixt two dangers the plotters chose the lesser one. If the populace got once more out of hand they would, whilst invading the palaces, find the Caesar and no doubt murder him. That act of vengeance once accomplished they would probably calm down for a while. They would expend their strength in clamouring for the praefect of Rome, but the praefect of Rome was certainly dead, else he would have appeared ere this. The darkness of the night would perforce put a stop to all street-rioting; under its cover the praetorian praefect could easily rejoin the guard, and by the third hour of to-morrow, everything would be prepared for the proclamation of the newly chosen Caesar.
Not one of these conspirators had any doubt as to who that Caesar would be. Chosen from among their ranks, he would be compelled to reward richly those who had placed him on the throne.
Dea Flavia waited quietly while these hurried consultations were going on. Now that she saw that her wishes had prevailed, she once more became gracious and kind.
With a sign of the head and a smile that contained a promise she intimated to them that they were dismissed.
"I beg of you, my lords," she said, "to look upon my house as your own until the morrow. My slaves will offer you food and drink, and prepare you baths to refresh you, and sleeping-chambers for the night. To-morrow you will have mine answer. May the G.o.ds protect ye until then, my lords."
She touched a small gong summoning Dion and Nolus back into her presence. To them she entrusted the task of seeing to the needs of these great lords and of watching over their comforts.
It would have been churlish and inexpedient after this to insist on further conversation. Moreover the presence of the slaves put a check on privacy. It was better on the whole to obey. These sybarites too were not averse to the thought of a rich table and of merry-making in the Augusta"s house until the morrow. Her cooks were noted for their skill and hers were the richest cellars in Rome.
Caius Nepos, Ancyrus, the elder, and the others all walked out of Dea Flavia"s presence backwards and with spine bent at an obsequious angle.
Hortensius Martius was the last to leave. He knelt on the floor, and taking the edge of her tunic between his fingers he touched it reverently with his lips. She looked down on him, not unkindly. Had he but known that his greatest claim on her graciousness was that his life had been saved by another, he would not have worn that look of triumph as he finally followed the others out of the room.
"She hath made her choice, my lord," said Caius Nepos amiably, taking the younger man by the arm, "a woman was not like to reject such brilliant proposals."
"I will ask for the praefecture of Rome," murmured Ancyrus, the elder, complacently.
My lord Hortensius Martius said nothing, but he disengaged his arm from his too familiar friend and walked ahead of all the others, squaring his shoulders and holding his head erect, as one already marked out to rule over the rest of mankind.
CHAPTER x.x.x
"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way...."--ST. MATTHEW VII. 14.
In the studio, upon the throne-like chair of carved citrus wood and heavy crimson silk, Dea Flavia sat silent and alone.
The footsteps of the men quickly died away on the marble floors of the atrium, their harsh voices and loud laughter only reached this secluded spot as a faint, intangible echo.
The patter of the rain from above into the impluvium was soothing in its insistent monotony, only from time to time Jove, still angered, sent his thunders rolling through the heavy clouds and his lightnings rending the lurid sky.
The people of Rome, wrathful against the Caesar, vaguely demanding vengeance for wrongs unstated, had not gone to rest. Like the gale a while ago they had merely drawn back in their fury, quiescent for a while, but losing neither strength nor temerity. Dull cries still resounded from afar. "Death to the Caesar!" was still the rallying cry, though it came now subdued by distance, and the majestic screens of stately temples interposed between it and the towering heights of imperial Palatine.
Dea Flavia at first--her musings one wild tangle of hopes, fears and joys--did only vaguely listen for each recurrent cry as it came; and thus, listening and watching, her ears became doubly sensitive and acute, and caught the words more distinctly as they rolled on the currents of the wind that blew them upwards from the arcades of the Forum.
"Death to the Caesar!" That cry was always clear, and with it came, like a complement or a corollary, the name of the praefect of Rome.
"Hail Taurus Antinor Caesar! Hail!"
The cry filled Dea Flavia"s veins as with living fire. She longed to run out into the streets now, at this moment, with the rain beating about her and the storm raging overhead, and to call to the people to come into her house, in their thousands and tens of thousands, and here to fall down and worship the mighty hero who would rule over them all.
The people clamoured for him, and because of these clamours an almighty love for the people of Rome filled the heart of the Augusta. She saw now just what the imperium should be, just how supreme power should sit upon a man. And she loved the people because the people saw it too. They clamoured for the one man who would fulfil every ideal of Caesarship and of might.
Valour yesterday, the sublimity of self-sacrifice, had appealed to them with irresistible force, even though they did not understand the force that had set these great virtues in motion. The hero of yesterday should be the chosen of to-day, the G.o.d of to-morrow; let the brutish Caesar be swept from before his path.
The people clamoured, and did they see the praefect of Rome standing virile and powerful before them, they would fall on their knees and acclaim him princeps, imperator, greater than great Augustus himself.
And in this very house, but a few steps from where Dea sat musing, were the men, the patricians who were ready to accept the decision of the people, who were all-powerful to make the legions acknowledge the new Caesar, and ready to set the seal of official acceptance to the wild desires of the plebs.
The patriciate of Rome had combined with the people to place its destinies in Dea Flavia"s hands. The Caesar"s insane p.r.o.nouncement in the Circus yesterday had confirmed the wishes of the conspirators. All envies and jealousies would best be set at rest if the kinswoman of great Augustus chose the future Caesar, and secured the inheritance of the great Emperor for his descendants later on.
And now there was but her choice to be made, and the imperium would descend on the n.o.blest head that had ever worn a crown. Dea Flavia felt the hot blood rush to her cheeks at thought that the choice did rest with her, that the man who was so proud, so self-absorbed, so self-willed but a few days ago in the Forum, would receive supreme gifts through her; that he would be the recipient and she, like the G.o.ddess holding riches, power, honour in her hands; that she would shower them on him while he knelt--a suppliant first, then a grateful worshipper--at her feet.
Ambitious? He must be ambitious! Ambition was the supreme virtue of the Roman patrician! And she had it in her power to satisfy the wildest cravings of ambition in the one man above all men whom she felt was worthy of the gifts.
Those were the first thoughts that merged themselves into a coherent whole in Dea Flavia"s head after Caius Nepos and the others had bowed themselves from out her presence, and there was her sense of the power of giving, that sense so dear to a woman"s heart. As to the thought of love--of the marriage which this same choice of hers would entail--of that greatest gift of all--herself--which by her choice she would promise him--that thought did not even begin to enter her head. She was so much a girl still--hardly yet a woman--she had thought so little hitherto, felt so little, lived so little; a semi-deified Augusta, surrounded by obsequious slaves and sycophantic hangers-on, she had existed in her proud way, aloof from the bent backs that surrounded her--loyal to the Caesar, loyal to herself and to her House--but she had not lived.
There had never been a desire within her that had not been gratified or that had grown delicious and intense through being thwarted; she had never suffered, never hoped, never feared. The world was there as a plaything; she had seen masks but never faces, she had never looked into a human heart or witnessed human sorrow or joy.
Looking back upon her life, Dea Flavia saw how senseless, how soulless it had been. Her soul awakened that day in the Forum when first a real, living man was revealed to her; not a puppet, not a mealy-mouthed sycophant, not a tortuous self-seeker, just a man with a heart, a will, a temperament and strange memories of things seen of which he had told her, though he saw that he angered her.
Since then she had begun to live, to realise that men lived, thought and felt, that they had other desires but those of pleasing the Caesar or winning his good graces. She had seen a man offering his life to save another"s, she had seen him clinging to a strange symbol which seemed to bring peace to his heart.
That man she honoured and on him would rest her choice, and he would be exalted above everyone on earth because she believed him to be loyal and just, and knew him to be brave. Her own heart--still in its infancy--had not realised that her choice would rest on that man, not because of his virtues, not because of his courage and his power, but for the simple, sublime, womanly reason that he was the man whom she loved.
And as she sat there, musing and still, with her eyes almost involuntarily drawn toward the oaken door of the inner room, she saw it slowly swinging out upon its hinges, she heard the swishing of the heavy curtain behind it, and the next moment she saw the praefect of Rome standing on the threshold.
He looked sick and wan, but strangely tall and splendid in the barbaric pomp of the gorgeous robe which he had worn yesterday. Dion had cleaned it of blood and dust, and it still looked crumpled and stained, but as he came forward the purple and gold gleamed against the stuccoed walls of the studio, and his tawny hair and sun-tanned face looked dark in the subdued light.
She could see plainly through the robe the line of bandages which bound his lacerated shoulders, and her heart was filled with pity for all that he had suffered, and with pride at thought of all the joys that would come to him through her.
As he came nearer to her, he bent the knee.