Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 21

I did not spend any more time than I could help between the cold pool and the tepid pool; no more at least than importunate acquaintances exacted of me.

In the tepid pool I felt, somehow, weaker and more relaxed than at any time since I had gone out the previous morning. The effect of the Emperor's favor, the effect of the cold plunge, were wearing off: mind and body were losing tone. I swam languidly, alone, on my back and so swimming found myself about one third of the way from the upper end of the pool and about midway of its width. I was staring up at the panels of the vaulting, relis.h.i.+ng the beauty of the color scheme, the gold rosettes brilliant against the deep blue of the soffits, set off by the red of the coffering.

So swimming and staring my eyes roamed downward to the great round-headed coved window above the gallery. The railing of the gallery had a sort of wicket in it, by which bathers could emerge one by one on to the bracket- like platform which overhung the pool at that end, for use as a take-off for a high dive.

Suddenly, on this diving-stand, poised for her dive, outlined against the window behind her, I recognized Vedia; Vedia, my angered sweetheart, rosy as Marcia, more lovely, and nude as Venus rising from the sea.

Seeing her thus, and seeing her thus unexpectedly, woke in me a volcanic outburst of conflicting emotions altogether too much for my weakened condition.

I fainted.

When I came to I felt weak and queer and did not at first open my eyes. I heard subdued voices all about me, as of an interested crowd; I felt all wet, I felt the cold of a wet mosaic pavement under me, but my head and shoulders were pillowed on a support wet indeed, as I was, but soft and warm.

I opened my eyes.

I realized that my head was in Vedia's lap, for I saw above me her dripping b.r.e.a.s.t.s and, higher, her anxious face looking down at mine.

I fainted again.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WATER-GARDEN

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 G.o.ds 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tution 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 antic.i.p.ate."

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 pa.s.sed 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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-a.s.sorted 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 cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.ses, 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 s.p.a.cious abodes in Rome. Her father, who had been accustomed to say that he was too great a man to have to live in a fas.h.i.+onable neighborhood, that any neighborhood in which he settled would thereby become fas.h.i.+onable, 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 preeminent. From its lofty position it had, down the slope of the hill, a wide view over the city and this view was un.o.bstructed, 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 gra.s.s-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 fas.h.i.+onable style. Below the gra.s.s- 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 gra.s.s-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.