Читать книгу A Friend of Caesar - William Stearns Davis - Страница 7

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The paternal villa of Drusus lay on the lower part of the slope of the Praeneste citadel, facing the east. It was a genuine country and farming estate—not a mere refuge from the city heat and hubbub. The Drusi had dwelt on it for generations, and Quintus had spent his boyhood upon it. The whole mass of farm land was in the very pink of cultivation. There were lines of stately old elms enclosing the estate; and within, in regular sequence, lay vineyards producing the rather poor Praeneste wine, olive orchards, groves of walnut trees, and many other fruits. Returning to the point where he had left the carriage, Drusus led Cornelia up a broad avenue flanked by noble planes and cypresses. Before them soon stood, or rather stretched, the country house. It was a large grey stone building, added to, from time to time, by successive owners. Only in front did it show signs of modern taste and elegance. Here ran a colonnade of twelve red porphyry pillars, with Corinthian capitals. The part of the house reserved for the master lay behind this entrance way. Back of it rambled the structure used by the farm steward, and the slaves and cattle. The whole house was low—in fact practically one-storied; and the effect produced was perhaps substantial, but hardly imposing.

Up the broad avenue went the two young people; too busy with their own gay chatter to notice at a distance how figures were running in and out amid the colonnade, and how the pillars were festooned with flowers. But as they drew nearer a throng was evident. The whole farm establishment—men, women, and children—had assembled, garlanded and gayly dressed, to greet the young master. Perhaps five hundred persons—nearly all slaves—had been employed on the huge estate, and they were all at hand. As Drusus came up the avenue, a general shout of welcome greeted him.

"Ave! Ave! Domine!" and there were some shouts as Cornelia was seen of, "Ave! Domina!"

"Domina[22] here very soon," said Drusus, smiling to the young lady; and disengaging himself from her, he advanced to greet personally a tall, ponderous figure, with white, flowing hair, a huge white beard, and a left arm that had been severed at the wrist, who came forward with a swinging military stride that seemed to belie his evident years.

[22] Domina, mistress.

"All hail, dearest Mamercus!" exclaimed the young man, running up to the burly object. "Here is the little boy you used to scold, fondle, and tell stories to, back safe and sound to hear the old tales and to listen to some more admonitions."

The veteran made a hurried motion with his remaining hand, as if to brush something away from his eyes, and his deep voice seemed a trifle husky when he replied, speaking slowly:—

"Mehercle![23] All the Gods be praised! The noble Sextus living again in the form of his son! Ah! This makes my old heart glad;" and he held out his hand to Drusus. But the young man dashed it away, and flinging his arms around Mamercus's neck, kissed him on both cheeks. Then when this warm greeting was over, Drusus had to salute Titus Mamercus, a solid, stocky, honest-faced country lad of eighteen, the son of the veteran; and after Titus—since the Mamerci and Drusi were remotely related and the jus oscului[24]—less legally, the "right of kissing"—existed between them, he felt called upon to press the cheek of Æmilia, Mamercus's pretty daughter, of about her brother's age. Cornelia seemed a little discomposed at this, and perhaps so gave her lover a trifling delight. But next he had to shake all the freedmen by the hand, also the older and better known slaves; and to say something in reply to their congratulations. The mass of the slaves he could not know personally; but to the assembled company he spoke a few words, with that quiet dignity which belongs to those who are the heirs of generations of lordly ancestors.

[23] By Hercules.

[24] The right of kissing kinsfolk within the sixth degree.

"This day I assume control of my estate. All past offences are forgiven. I remit any punishments, however justly imposed. To those who are my faithful servants and clients I will prove a kind and reasonable master. Let none in the future be mischievous or idle; for them I cannot spare. But since the season is hot, in honour of my home-coming, for the next ten days I order that no work, beyond that barely needed, be done in the fields. Let the familia enjoy rest, and let them receive as much wine as they may take without being unduly drunken. Geta, Antiochus, and Kebes, who have been in this house many years, shall go with me before the praetor, to be set free."

And then, while the slaves still shouted their aves and salves, Mamercus led Drusus and Cornelia through the old villa, through the atrium where the fountain tinkled, and the smoky, waxen death- masks of Quintus's noble ancestors grinned from the presses on the wall; through the handsomely furnished rooms for the master of the house; out to the barns and storehouses, that stretched away in the rear of the great farm building. Much pride had the veteran when he showed the sleek cattle, the cackling poultry- yard, and the tall stacks of hay; only he growled bitterly over what he termed the ill-timed leniency of his young patron in releasing the slaves in the chain- gang.

"Oh, such times!" he muttered in his beard; "here's this young upstart coming home, and teaches me that such dogs as I put in fetters are better set at large! There'll be a slave revolt next, and some night all our throats will be cut. But it's none of my doing."

"Well," said Drusus, smiling, "I've been interested at Athens in learning from philosophy that one owes some kindness even to a slave. But it's always your way, Mamercus, to tell how much better the old times were than the new."

"And I am right," growled the other. "Hasn't a man who fought with Marius, and helped to beat those northern giants, the Cimbri and Teutones, a right to his opinion? The times are evil—evil! No justice in the courts. No patriotism in the Senate. Rascality in every consul and praetor. And the 'Roman People' orators declaim about are only a mob! Vah! We need an end to this game of fauns and satyrs!"

"Come," said Drusus, "we are not at such a direful strait yet. There is one man at least whom I am convinced is not altogether a knave; and I have determined to throw in my lot with him. Do you guess, Mamercus?"

"Caesar?"

Drusus nodded. Mamercus broke out into a shout of approval.

"Euge! Unless my son Decimus, who is centurion with him, writes me false, he is a man!"

But Cornelia was distressed of face.

"Quintus," she said very gravely, "do you know that I have often heard that Caesar is a wicked libertine, who wishes to make himself tyrant? What have you done?"

"Nothing rashly," said Drusus, also quite grave; "but I have counted the matter on both sides—the side of Pompeius and the Senate, and the side of Caesar—and I have written to Balbus, Caesar's manager at Rome, that I shall use my tiny influence for the proconsul of the Gauls."

Cornelia seemed greatly affected; she clasped and unclasped her hands, pressed them to her brows; then when she let them fall, she was again smiling.

"Quintus," she said, putting her arm around him, "Quintus, I am only a silly little girl. I do not know anything about politics. You are wiser than I, and I can trust you. But please don't quarrel with my uncle Lentulus about your decision. He would be terribly angry."

Quintus smiled in turn, and kissing her, said: "Can you trust me? I hope so. And be assured I will do all I may, not to quarrel with your uncle. And now away with all this silly serious talk! What a pity for Mamercus to have been so gloomy as to introduce it! What a pity I must go to Rome to-morrow, and leave this dear old place! But then, I have to see my aunt Fabia, and little Livia, the sister I haven't met since she was a baby. And while I am in Rome I will do something else—can you guess?" Cornelia shook her head. "Carpenters, painters, masons! I will send them out to make this old villa fresh and pretty for some one who, I hope, will come here to live in about a month. No, don't run away," for Cornelia was trying to hide her flushed face by flight; "I have something else to get—a present for your own dear self. What shall it be? I am rich; cost does not matter."

Cornelia pursed her lips in thought.

"Well," she remarked, "if you could bring me out a pretty boy, not too old or too young, one that was honest and quick-witted, he would be very convenient to carry messages to you, and to do any little business for me."

Cornelia asked for a slave-boy just as she might have asked for a new pony, with that indifference to the question of humanity which indicated that the demarcation between a slave and an animal was very slight in her mind.

"Oh! that is nothing," said Drusus; "you shall have the handsomest and cleverest in all Rome. And if Mamercus complains that I am extravagant in remodelling the house, let him remember that his wonderful Caesar, when a young man, head over ears in debt, built an expensive villa at Aricia, and then pulled it down to the foundations and rebuilt on an improved plan. Farewell, Sir Veteran, I will take Cornelia home, and then come back for that dinner which I know the cook has made ready with his best art."

Arm in arm the young people went away down the avenue of shade trees, dim in the gathering twilight. Mamercus stood gazing after them.

"What a pity! What a pity!" he repeated to himself, "that Sextus and Caius are not alive; how they would have rejoiced in their children! Why do the fates order things as they do? Only let them be kind enough to let me live until I hold another little Drusus on my knee, and tell him of the great battles! But the Gods forbid, Lentulus should find out speedily that his lordship has gone over to Caesar; or there will be trouble enough for both his lordship and my lady. The consul-elect is a stubborn, bitter man. He would be terribly offended to give his niece in marriage to a political enemy. But it may all turn out well. Who knows?" And he went into the house.