A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. William Stearns Davis
Give them three skins to-night from which to drink their master's health. Drive on, Cappadox!"
And before the fettered slaves could comprehend their release from confinement, and break out into a chorus of barbarous and uncouth thanksgivings and blessings, the carriage had vanished from sight down the turn of the road.
II
Who was Quintus Livius Drusus? Doubtless he would have felt highly insulted if his family history had not been fairly well known to every respectable person around Præneste and to a very large and select circle at Rome. When a man could take Livius[13] for his gentile name, and Drusus for his cognomen, he had a right to hold his head high, and regard himself as one of the noblest and best of the imperial city. But of course the Drusian house had a number of branches, and the history of Quintus's direct family was this. He was the grandson of that Marcus Livius Drusus[14] who, though an aristocrat of the aristocrats, had dared to believe that the oligarchs were too strong, the Roman Commons without character, and that the Italian freemen were suffering from wrongs inflicted by both of the parties at the capital. For his efforts to right the abuses, he had met with a reward very common to statesmen of his day, a dagger-thrust from the hand of an undiscovered assassin. He had left a son, Sextus, a man of culture and talent, who remembered his father's fate, and walked for a time warily in politics. Sextus had married twice. Once to a very noble lady of the Fabian gens, the mother of his son Quintus. Then some years after her death he took in marriage a reigning beauty, a certain Valeria, who soon developed such extravagance and frivolity, that, soon after she bore him a daughter, he was forced "to send her a messenger"; in other words, to divorce her. The daughter had been put under the guardianship of Sextus's sister-in-law Fabia, one of the Vestal virgins at Rome. Sextus himself had accepted an appointment to a tribuneship in a legion of Cæsar in Gaul. When he departed for the wars he took with him as fellow officer a life-long friend, Caius Cornelius Lentulus; and ere leaving for the campaign the two had formed a compact quite in keeping with the stern Roman spirit that made the child the slave of the father: Young Quintus Drusus should marry Cornelia, Lentulus's only child, as soon as the two came to a proper age. And so the friends went away to win glory in Gaul; to perish side by side, when Sabinus's ill-fated legion was cut off by the Eburones.[15]
The son and the daughter remained. Quintus Drusus had had kindly guardians; he had been sent for four years to the "University" at Athens; had studied rhetoric and philosophy; and now he was back with his career before him—master of himself, of a goodly fortune, of a noble inheritance of high-born ancestry. And he was to marry Cornelia. No thought of thwarting his father's mandate crossed his mind; he was bound by the decree of the dead. He had not seen his betrothed for four years. He remembered her as a bright-eyed, merry little girl, who had an arch way of making all to mind her. But he remembered too, that her mother was a vapid lady of fashion, that her uncle and guardian was Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, Consul-elect,[16] a man of little refinement or character. And four years were long enough to mar a young girl's life. What would she be like? What had time made of her? The curiosity—we will not call it passion—was overpowering. Pure "love" was seldom recognized as such by the age. When the carriage reached a spot where two roads forked, leading to adjacent estates, Drusus alighted.
"Is her ladyship Cornelia at the villa of the Lentuli?" was his demand of a gardener who was trimming a hedge along the way.
"Ah! Master Drusus," cried the fellow, dropping his sickle in delight. "Joy to see you! Yes, she is in the grove by the villa; by the great cypress you know so well. But how you have changed, sir—"
But Drusus was off. The path was familiar. Through the trees he caught glimpses of the stately mazes of colonnades of the Lentulan villa, surrounded by its artificially arranged gardens, and its wide stretches of lawn and orchard. The grove had been his playground. Here was the oak under which Cornelia and he had gathered acorns. The remnants of the little brush house they had built still survived. His step quickened. He heard the rush of the little stream that wound through the grove. Then he saw ahead of him a fern thicket, and the brook flashing its water beyond. In his recollection a bridge had here crossed the streamlet. It had been removed. Just across, swayed the huge cypress. Drusus stepped forward. At last! He pushed carefully through the thicket, making only a little noise, and glanced across the brook.
There were ferns all around the cypress. Ivies twined about its trunk. On the bank the green turf looked dry, but cool. Just under the tree the brook broke into a miniature cascade, and went rippling down in a score of pygmy, sparkling waterfalls. On a tiny promontory a marble nymph, a fine bit of Greek sculpture, was pouring, without respite, from a water-urn into the gurgling flood. But Drusus did not gaze at the nymph. Close beside the image, half lying, half sitting, in an abandon only to be produced by a belief that she was quite alone, rested a young woman. It was Cornelia.
Drusus had made no disturbance, and the object on which he fastened his eyes had not been in the least stirred out of a rather deep reverie. He stood for a while half bashful, half contemplative. Cornelia had taken off her shoes and let her little white feet trail down into the water. She wore only her white tunic, and had pushed it back so that her arms were almost bare. At the moment she was resting lazily on one elbow, and gazing abstractedly up at the moving ocean of green overhead. She was only sixteen; but in the warm Italian clime that age had brought her to maturity. No one would have said that she was beautiful, from the point of view of mere softly sensuous Greek beauty. Rather, she was handsome, as became the daughter of Cornelii and Claudii. She was tall; her hair, which was bound in a plain knot on the back of her head, was dark—almost black; her eyes were large, grey, lustrous, and on occasion could be proud and angry. Yet with it all she was pretty—pretty, said Drusus to himself, as any girl he had seen in Athens. For there were coy dimples in her delicate little chin, her finely chiselled features were not angular, while her cheeks were aglow with a healthy colour that needed no rouge to heighten. In short, Cornelia, like Drusus, was a Roman; and Drusus saw that she was a Roman, and was glad.
Presently something broke the reverie. Cornelia's eyes dropped from the treetops, and lighted up with attention. One glance across the brook into the fern thicket; then one irrepressible feminine scream; and then:—
"Cornelia!" "Quintus!"
Drusus sprang forward, but almost fell into the brooklet. The bridge was gone. Cornelia had started up, and tried to cover her arms and shake her tunic over her feet. Her cheeks were all smiles and blushes. But Drusus's situation was both pathetic and ludicrous. He had his fiancée almost in his arms, and yet the stream stopped him. Instantly Cornelia was in laughter.
"Oh! My second Leander," she cried, "will you be brave, and swim again from Abydos to Sestos to meet your Hero?"
"Better!" replied Drusus, now nettled; "see!" And though the leap was a long one he cleared it, and landed close by the marble nymph.
Drusus had not exactly mapped out for himself the method of approaching the young woman who had been his child playmate. Cornelia, however, solved all his perplexity. Changing suddenly from laughter into what were almost tears, she flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him again and again.
"Oh, Quintus! Quintus!" she cried, nearly sobbing, "I am so glad you have come!"
"And I am glad," said the young man, perhaps with a tremor in his voice.
"I never knew how I wanted you, until you are here," she continued; "I didn't look for you to-day. I supposed you would come from Puteoli to-morrow. Oh! Quintus, you must be very kind to me. Perhaps I am very stupid. But I am tired, tired."
Drusus looked at her in a bit of astonishment.
"Tired! I can't see that you look fatigued."
"Not in body," went on Cornelia, still holding on to him. "But here, sit down on the grass. Let me hold your hands. You do not mind. I want to talk with you. No, don't interrupt. I must tell you. I have been here in Præneste only a week. I wanted to get away from Baiæ.[17] I was afraid to stay there with my mother."
"Afraid