Saul Of Tarsus Part 49

CHAPTER XXV

THE SPEAKING OF EUTYCHUS

The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now animate. Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated incessantly. Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with suffusions of heat. Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way, Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death; but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein was immortal.

It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into decay. Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so ancient and utter a ruin. Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress and penned it into its dilapidated sh.e.l.l. It was a habit Caesar's mind had of blocking people, things and himself. A creature of contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly, immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others, stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced the throne of the Caesars. Moody, taciturn, perverse, superst.i.tious, unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor in every phase of his many-sided nature. It is not recorded that any ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to respect him.

He was finis.h.i.+ng his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of late, Macro's capacities as praetorian prefect had been enlarged to those of vice-regent, and Caesar returned from Capri, his retreat from the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.

Beside him walked eight praetorian guards, picked, not for appearance but for age and integrity. There walked Gallus who had followed Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army--and lived to refuse to be knighted. If Caesar spoke to one, the answer came in monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet. Flattery never pa.s.sed their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not have improved. And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses, walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of dependable ruggedness.

After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths. Within lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the Lady Junia.

They had pa.s.sed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached from an intersecting avenue and was set down.

A woman stepped out. White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts. The rheumy emperor saw her imperfectly.

"Stop!" he ordered his bearers.

The woman approached and made obeisance.

"Humph! Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment. But he drew his old frame together and inclined his head respectfully.

"Greeting, sister," he said. "The G.o.ds attend thee."

"Thou art good, Augustus. Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied.

She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips. The old man gazed at her with a wavering eye.

"Come closer. Art so gray?" he asked.

"White, Caesar."

He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her hair. There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very strongly in contrast. But her eyes were still full and bright, even tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth. Age had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out hand of seventy years.

She was the n.o.blest woman of her age, _univira_,--the widow of one husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,--in all things, the ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable in the vicious age of the Caesars.

"Eh! White, wholly white," he a.s.sented, running his fingers through her locks with a movement that was almost tender. "And I am thine elder. Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am not a dead man, Antonia!"

"Nay, who says it, Caesar? And it is not age that hath blanched me. I was gray at forty--much more gray than thou art now."

"No, no! Not age! Truly a woman's protest. But then, perchance not.

Thy husband's death undid thee. How thou didst love him! Save for thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!"

After a little he muttered to himself:

"Alas! What a name to conjure death! My son Drusus, thy spouse Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus. Dead! All! and in their youth. The very name hath a sinister look."

The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek. The widow's saddened face wore also some surprise.

"Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked. "Not in these many years have I heard thee name him."

"No!" he answered shortly. "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I mean to have the soothsayers interpret."

"Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.

"There is one, and it comes nightly. It is a Shade from Thanatos, which approacheth. I put the aegis into its dead hands, crown its death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again into the Shades--and after it pa.s.ses all Rome, and the Empire of the Caesars."

The widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by tears. The unanointed Caesars that had pa.s.sed into the Shades had gathered unto their number no n.o.bler one than the gallant young Germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of Rome had pa.s.sed with him. But she put off the encroaching lapse into retrospection.

"One of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir,"

she suggested.

The old emperor nodded eagerly. "It may be, it may be," he a.s.sented.

"I have been pondering long upon the matter."

A silence fell and the two gazed absently across the s.h.i.+mmering vision of Rome, below them, three leagues to the west. About them were spread the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen and questioned after things unknown. In their philosophy, life was all. After it was Shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just and the unjust were immersed eternally. But no youth, looking forward to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that these expended on the time after things were expected to end. The awe of the unexplored Hereafter--what a waste of universal, earth-old, intuitive awe, if there be no Hereafter!

Tiberius muttered, as if to himself:

"There is another--yet another dream. I cast dice with Three; three grisly hags, and I lose, though the tesserae were cogged. But let be, let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!"

He sat up.

"Came you of a purpose to speak with me, Antonia?" he asked.

"I did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious."

"Any hour is propitious for thee, Antonia."

"Thou art a kind man, Caesar. I came to speak of Agrippa."

"Agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in his voice and manner.

The woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without advancing. She made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk between the widow and the emperor.

Antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when, after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should return to his old manner. She felt her way.

"Agrippa ceases not to be interesting. Thou and I remember him as the faithfulest friend thy son Drusus had; to this day of all who knew Drusus it is only Agrippa who still hath tears for his name."

The emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without telling expression.

"He hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued. "He hath walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick of it. Now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him again. The inventions of an enemy have risen against him in Rome; even hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and Agrippa, conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive. He wants to be examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly established."

"Well, well!" Tiberius said.