Читать книгу Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire - Edward Lucas White - Страница 25

Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know. For after I began to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew longer, I was too weak to move a muscle or to utter a syllable. I lay, flaccid, in my big, deep, soft bed, very dimly aware of Occo or of Agathemer hovering about me, generally recalled to consciousness by an eggspoonful of hot spiced wine being forced through my slow-opening lips and teeth.

How many times I was sufficiently conscious to know that I was being fed, but too ill for any thoughts whatever, I cannot conjecture. When I began to have mental feelings the first was one of dazed confusion of mind, of groping to recollect where I was and why and what had last happened to me.

When I recalled my last waking experience I lay bathed in sleepy contentment. I could think connectedly enough to reason out, or my unthinking intuitions presented to me without my thinking, the conviction that, if Vedia could recognize me in a big pool among scores of swimmers, if her perceptions in regard to me were acute enough and quick enough for her and her alone to notice that I had fainted in the water, if she cared enough for me and was sufficiently indifferent to what society might say of her, for her to rescue me and sit down on the pavement of the tepidarium and pillow my wet head on her wet thighs till I showed signs of life, I need not worry about whether Vedia cared for me or not. I was permeated with the conviction that, however difficult it might be to get her to acknowledge it, however great or many might be the obstacles in the way of my marrying her, Vedia loved me almost as consumedly as I loved her.

In this frame of mind I convalesced steadily, if slowly, incurious of the flight of time, of news, of anything; content to get well whenever it should please the gods and confident that happiness, even if long deferred, was certain to follow my recovery.

After I could talk to Occo and Agathemer and seemed to want to ask questions, which both of them discouraged, one morning, on wakening for the second time, after a minute allowance of nourishment and a refreshing nap, I found Galen by my bedside.

He looked me over and asked questions, as physicians invariably do, concerning my bodily sensations. After he seemed satisfied he asked:

"My son, were you ever ill before you were hit on the head in your recent affrays?"

"Never that I remember," I answered.

"I judge so," he said. "If you had not been blessed with the very best physique and constitution you would have died in your friend's litter on the Salarian Highway. Thanks to your general strength and healthiness, and thanks, to some extent, to my care and that of my colleagues, you are alive and on the way to complete, permanent recovery and to long life with good health. But you very nearly committed suicide when you went out and about contrary to my orders. I say all this solemnly, for I want you to remember it. If you disobey again, you will, most likely, be soon buried. If you obey you have every chance of getting so well that you can safely forget that you ever were ill.

"But, until I tell you that you are well, do not forget that you are ill."

"I shall remember," I said, "and I shall be scrupulously obedient."

"Good !" he ejaculated. "I infer that you find life worth living."

"Very well worth living," I rejoined devoutly.

"Then listen to me," he said. "You must remain abed until I tell you to get up; when you first get up, it must be for only an hour or so. You must not attempt to go out until I give you permission. You must not risk eating such meals as you are used to. You must take small amounts of specified foods at stated intervals. Agathemer will see to all that, with Occo to help him. Do you promise to acquiesce?"

"I promise," I said.

"Remember," he cautioned me, "that the number, variety and severity of the blows rained on you in your two fights were so great that you were almost beaten to death. You had no bones broken, but the injury to your muscles and ligaments was sufficient to kill a man only ordinarily strong, while the blows affecting your kidneys, liver and other internal organs were in themselves, without the bruising of all your surface, enough to cause death. I had you convalescing promptly and rapidly; you went out and overstrained all your vitalities. Your recklessness almost ended you. You were far nearer death in your relapse than at first, and that is saying a great deal. If you obey me you will certainly recover. If you disobey you will probably kill yourself."

"I shall take all that to heart," I said. "I have promised to be docile:

I'll keep my word and obey my slaves as if every day were the Saturnalia."

"Good!" he exclaimed. "You are getting better."

He looked me over again and asked:

"Is there anything you want?"

"I want to see Tanno," I said.

"You shall the day after tomorrow," he promised, "or perhaps tomorrow, if

I find you improving faster than I anticipate."

Actually, after a brief visit from him the next day, Tanno was ushered into my sick-room.

My first question was about my tenants. Not one such tenant-farmer in a million would ever have a chance of being personally presented to Caesar. They had been awestruck when I told them of their amazing good fortune. They had said almost nothing. But I knew that they were, all nine of them, as nearly rapt into ecstasy as Sabine farmers could be at the prospect of personally saluting Caesar in his Palace, in his Audience Hall on his throne. I had been too inert to worry about anything, but I almost worried at the thought of their disappointment, through my relapse.

Tanno told me that he, knowing the Emperor's character pretty well, had taken it upon himself to have them passed in with him as the Emperor had ordered, and had himself asked permission to present them and had presented them. The next day, he said, everyone of them had returned home.

I heaved a deep sigh of relief: my tenants and my Sabine Estate were off my mind; I might be entirely easy about all things in Sabinum.

He then told me what a brilliant success Marcia was among the pleasure- loving, novelty-loving, luxurious high-living set in our city society.

"Since the enforcement of the old-fashioned laws relaxed and became a dead letter and some were even repealed," he said, "not a few men of equestrian rank have married freed-women and such occurrences no longer cause any scandal or much remark. But the results are not generally productive of any social success for the ill-assorted pair.

"I have known a few freedwomen married to men of wealth, and equestrian rank, who gained some vague approximation of social standing among the wives of their husbands' friends. But Marcia is the first freedwoman I ever knew or heard of to be treated, by everybody and at once, as if she had been freeborn and since birth in her husband's class. Martius has not brought this about, or aided much; he is a good enough fellow, but he has no social qualities; for all the power he has of attracting friends he might as well be an archaic statue. Marcia has done it all. She's a wonder."

Then he told me of Murmex: how he was already rated Rome's champion swordsman; how the Palace Palaestra was jammed with notables eager to see him fence, how magnates competed for invitations to such exhibitions, how Murmex was overwhelmed with attentions of all kinds from all sorts of people, had had a furnished apartment put at his disposal by one admirer, a litter and bearers presented him by another, already saw his domicile crowded with presents of statuary, paintings, furniture, flowers and all possible gifts, how he was an immediate and brilliant success with all classes, even the populace talking of him, crowding behind his litter, and demanding him for the next public exhibition of gladiators.

That such luck had befallen a man whom I had presented to Court augured well for me, indubitably.

After I had been out of bed an hour or more for several consecutive days

Galen said to me:

"You are almost well enough to be about, but not quite. If you go back to your habitual hours of sleep you will fret and fidget indoors, and you are not yet sufficiently recovered to resume your normal life. You need fresh air. I have considered what is best and what is possible. I have talked with your friend Opsitius. Through him I have arranged for you to have short outings in this manner. On fair days if you feel like going out you may call for your litter. In it you must keep the panels closed and the curtains drawn. Agathemer will give your bearers directions. Nemestronia has offered you the use of her lower garden. You are to have it all to yourself, whenever you want it, as long as my directions to Agathemer permit you to remain in it; and you need not remain a moment unless you enjoy being there."

I understood without asking any questions. Nemestronia's palace was one of the most desirable, magnificent and spacious abodes in Rome. Her father, who had been accustomed to say that he was too great a man to have to live in a fashionable neighborhood, that any neighborhood in which he settled would thereby become fashionable, had bought a very generous plot of land nearly on the crest of the Viminal Hill and had there built himself a dwelling which was at once noted among the dozen finest private dwellings in the Eternal City. In one respect it was preëminent. From its lofty position it had, down the slope of the hill, a wide view over the city and this view was unobstructed, for below his palace Nemestronius had had laid out six separate gardens, two large and four small. Next the house the ground fell away so sharply that he had been able to create a terraced garden, the only private terraced garden in Rome, extending across the entire rear of his palace and with three terraces, from the uppermost of which the view was almost as good as from the upper windows of the mansion. Below this, each extending along but half the length of the terraces, was a grass-garden, where it was possible to play ball-games, it being a mere expanse of sward shut in by high walls covered with flowering vines; and a formal garden, in the fashionable style. Below the grass- garden was one of similar size, all flower-beds, to supply roses, lilies, violets and other staple blossoms for his banqueting-hall, below the formal garden was one called the wild-garden or shrubbery-garden, like the grass-garden in being covered with sward almost from wall to wall, but unlike it, in that it had four shade trees, no two alike, and many flowering shrubs of all kinds and sizes. Lastly below these two was the water-garden, the same size as the terraced garden, taken up with fountains and pools, and all gay in season, with the flowers which thrive in or beside ponds and pools. It had also eight beautiful lotus trees.

High walls, through which one might pass from one to the other only by gates generally shut fast, separated and enclosed these gardens, for their creator's intention was to enjoy the peculiar charm of each undistracted by the contrasting charms of the others. From the upper gardens it was possible to see, to some extent, into those lower down the hill; but, from the lower, one could see nothing of those above.

One side of the property was flanked by a street, a mere narrow, walled lane on which no dwelling opened. Along this were posterns in the wall, giving access to or exit from the terrace-garden, the formal-garden, the wild-garden and the water-garden.

I understood at once what I later heard from Agathemer. The water-garden was to be mine for my airings. I was to leave my litter at its postern in the unfrequented lane and reenter my litter there.

There I went next day and revelled in the beauty of the garden, in the sunshine, in the breeze and in the sensations of returning health and strength which inundated me. There I went for some days in succession similarly.

On the eighth day before the Kalends of August Galen came to see me, not early in the morning, but about the bath-hour of the afternoon. He seemed well pleased with his inspection of me and with my answers to his questions.

"You are practically well," he said, "and much sooner than I anticipated. I am tempted to tell you to return to your normal routine of meals, eating what you please; and to give you permission to resume your usual social activities But I think it better, in a case like yours, to wait a month too long rather than to be a day too soon. So I shall enjoin an adherence to your diet and a continuance of your long rest hours and brief outings for some days yet."

He had me summon Agathemer and repeated to him much of what he had said to me.

"He might go out at once," he said, "but we had best be cautious. Limit him to morning outings in Nemestronia's gardens. He may, however, see friends, one at a time, according to his wishes and your directions. And be particular as to his diet. Give him more of each viand at each feeding. Feed him as soon as he wakes. Then time the feedings two hours apart. Are your clepsydras [Footnote: water-clocks] good?"

"Of the best," I interjected. "My uncle was a fancier of time-keepers and had one in every room, and no two alike in ornamentation, all beautifully decorated."

"The ornamentation doesn't matter," said Galen, impatiently. "Do they keep time with anything approaching accuracy?"

"As near accuracy," I said, "as any clepsydras ever made."

"Well," he said, "clepsydras always work better when nearly full than when nearly empty. When you feed him have a full clepsydra handy and start it when he begins to eat. Then by it feed him again after two hours. Keep to that interval and to the diet I have enjoined."

Next day I spent over three hours in Nemestronia's water-garden, Tanno with me for most of the time. Twice, during the chat, Agathemer brought me a tray with the drink and food enjoined for that hour of the day. Each time I left not a drop or crumb: I was ravenous.

The following morning Agathemer let in to me, in that same garden, Murmex Lucro, who thanked me for my good offices with Commodus and narrated his triumphal progress of professional and social success ever since I had seen him fence with the Emperor.

Agathemer did not permit Murmex to linger long, saying that it was against Galen's orders. After I was alone and had eaten what he brought I basked and idled happily, thinking of Vedia, entirely unruffled by the fact that I had had no missive or message from her, considering her silence merely discreet and judicious after her spectacular rescue of me in the Tepidarium, and confident of seeing her as soon as I was entirely well.

While I was in this mood my hostess came to chat with me. Nemestronia, at eighty-odd, was as dainty and charming an old lady as the sun ever shone on. And as lovable as any woman alive. I loved her dearly, as all Rome loved her dearly, and I ranked myself high among her countless honorary grandsons, for her motherly ways made her seem an honorary grandmother to all young noblemen whom she favored.

After a heart-warming chat she said:

"I must go now, by Galen's orders. Before I go I want to ask you whether you are coming here tomorrow?"

"Certainly!" I cried, looking about me with delight. "Could there, can there, be in Rome a more Elysian spot in which to feel health being restored to one?"

She beamed at me.

"Be sure to be here," she said. "You will not regret coming."

Between naps that afternoon and before I slept that night I soothed myself with the hope that I was, by Nemestronia's influence, to have an interview with Vedia.

Next morning the weather was beautiful, the sky clear, the air neither too cool nor too warm, the breeze soft and steady. Nemestronia's water-garden appeared to me even more delightful than the day before. I admired the lotus trees, the water-lily pads in the pools, the jets of the fountains, the bright strips of flowers along the pools, particularly some water- flags or some flowers resembling water-flags.

I was idling in the sun on a cushion which Agathemer had arranged for me on a marble seat against the upper wall, nearly midway of the garden, but in sight of the postern gate by which I had entered. So idling and dreaming day dreams I let my eyes rove languidly about the scene before me. While meditating and staring at the pavement at my feet I heard footsteps on the walk and looked up.

To my amazement I saw Egnatius Capito approaching.

No wonder I was amazed. I knew him but slightly. I should never have thought of asking to see him, as I had asked to be allowed to see several of my semi-intimates. Agathemer had insisted that I postpone seeing them, because an interview with any of them was likely to overtire me. I knew that no one could have entered that garden without Agathemer's knowledge. I could not conceive how Capito came to be there.

He greeted me formally and asked permission to seat himself beside me. I gave it rather grudgingly.

He asked after my health and I answered only less grudgingly.

"I conjecture," he said, "that you are surprised to see me here?"

"I am surprised," I said shortly.

"Will you permit me to explain?" he asked courteously.

I could not be less courteous than he and signified my assent.

"Your secretary," he said, "is of the opinion that your illness, while caused by your injuries in the affrays into which you were entrapped, was greatly intensified by your chagrin at finding yourself embroiled with both the Vedian and Satronian clans, and he also thinks that brooding over the condition of affairs has delayed your recovery."

"I assumed all that," I interrupted, "but I cannot conceive why he has talked to you about it."

Capito was always ingratiating. He gazed at me reproachfully, gently, winningly.

"If I have your permission," he said, "I shall explain."

"Explain!" I cried impatiently.

"Agathemer," he went on, "has left no stone unturned to find some means for placating both clans and for reconciling you with both. In pursuit of this aim he has been cautious, discreet, tactful and secret. He has covertly tried many plans of approach. It was intimated to him, truly, that I had on foot a scheme which promised to succeed in reconciling both clans with each other and he rightly inferred that I might be able to arrange for reconciling both with you at the same time. I am confident that I can, as I told him when he tentatively approached me and unostentatiously sounded me on this matter. I told him that it was only necessary that I have an interview with you as soon as might be. Believing that an early dissipation of your embroilment would conduce to your quick and complete recovery he arranged for me to meet you as I have."

While he was saying this my eyes roved about the garden. To my astonishment I saw a man standing against the shut postern door, intently regarding us as we sat on the marble seat conferring. In my half convalescent state I had become used to acquiescence in anything and everything, I was inert mentally and physically and my perceptive faculties dulled and slow as were my intellectual processes. While hearkening to Capito I gazed at the man uncomprehendingly, only half conscious. I thought him a queer-looking fellow to be in Capito's retinue; he did not look like a slave, but like a free man of the lowest class. I did not recognize him, yet it seemed to me that I should; I did not like the way he looked at us, yet I said nothing. He seemed to see me looking at him, opened the postern, stepped through it and shut it after him. As he went I was shot through with the conviction that I had seen him somewhere before.

"If you have in you," I said to Capito, "any such supernatural powers as you would need for success in what you aim at, if you have any reasons for anticipating success, Agathemer was fully justified in what he has done. If you can really accomplish what you seem to believe you can accomplish, I shall be grateful to you to the last breath I draw. But I am skeptical. Speak on. Convince me."

"I must first," he said, "have your pledge of secrecy for what I am about to say."

"What sort of secrecy?" I queried, repelled and suspicious.

"If I am to disclose what I wish to disclose," he said, "you must give me your word not to reveal by word, look, act or silence anything I may make known to you, from your pledge until the termination of our interview."