The Unwilling Vestal Part 19

She had a healthy love of mere enjoyment too. Except when she happened to be on duty watching the sacred fire, she never missed a theatrical performance, a gladiatorial display or an exhibition of chariot-racing in anyone of the vast race-courses flanked by tiers of stone-seats, which the Romans called circuses. At all shows, whether of scenic artists, fighting men or speeding horses, the Vestals had specified seats, as good as the best.

Besides these formal pleasures, she took great delight in mixing in society merely for society's sake. Moderns are likely to imagine that the Vestals of ancient Rome were nuns or something like nuns. They were nothing of the sort. They were maiden ladies of wealth and position whose routine duties brought them into familiar a.s.sociation with all the men important in the Roman government, hierarchy, n.o.bility and gentry and with their wives and daughters. They were women of such importance in their world that their acquaintance was sought by all who had any pretensions to being ent.i.tled to meet them and by shoals of social bounders who had none. Their influence was so powerful that they were unremittingly sought, waylaid, pursued and besieged by persons who hoped to enlist their interest in the appointment or promotion of this, that or the other connection or relative; by the same persons they were continually overwhelmed with presents of flowers, fruit, delicacies, dainties, ornaments, laces, garments, pieces of furniture, horses, slaves, and of anything and everything capable of being made a present of in the Roman world; likewise with social invitations-chiefly to dinners, banquets and feasts. Invitations to banquets and dinners Brinnaria seldom declined, unless her duties made acceptance impossible or the invitation came from people beneath her notice. As she had said to Aurelius, she had an excellent appet.i.te. She had an epicurean tendency from her early years and was fond of oysters, sweetbreads, eels, thrushes, turbot and other articles of food esteemed as delicacies by the Romans. But she was a hearty eater and consumed generous portions of roast meats, particularly of pork, which even in late imperial times was the staple of Roman diet. She never lost her childish relish for boiled pork and cabbage, for bacon, for ham, hot or cold. She was by no means a glutton, ate deliberately and daintily, and while she ate, joined in the general conversation or even led it. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue and her sallies were acclaimed. She was sought after as a guest not merely because she was a Vestal, but for herself, for her gaiety and her unexpected utterances.

On the whole she preferred informal dinners to formal banquets and liked better to dine with her friends than with the most luxurious entertainers in Roman society.

With Vocco and Flexinna she dined frequently, three times a month at least and generally oftener. Brinnaria loved children, especially babies, and there was always a baby in the Istorian household--Flexinna's babies were all healthy and grew famously. Of the six children, Brinnaria could not have told which she loved or which loved her most. Her arrivals were always heralded with shouts of glee, her romps with the children always put her in a good humor, her swim with Flexinna sharpened an appet.i.te which needed no edge, while the cosiness and informality of Flexinna's dining-room, where each of the three had undivided possession of one entire sofa, made it certain that nothing marred her enjoyment.

CHAPTER XIII - PERVERSITY

ABOUT three years after her farewell to Almo, on entering Vocco's house one afternoon, Brinnaria had a presentiment of something wrong. The children were as vociferous and as whimsical as usual, but there was a nameless difference in Flexinna's expression and bearing. As soon as they were alone in their bath, after she had had one good plunge in the pool, Brinnaria, treading water in the deepest part of the tank, shaking her head like a wet spaniel, demanded:

"What is the matter? There's something wrong. You might as well tell me."

But Flexinna put her off and laughed at her insistence.

To Brinnaria the laughter seemed forced and so did the talk at dinner.

No sooner was the dinner over and the tray of figs, almonds and pomegranates and other fruit on the table, than she whispered to Flexinna:

"Tell the servants to stay out. I want to talk." Flexinna signed to Vocco and they exchanged glances.

"Why did you keep up the farce so long?" Brinnaria sneered. "I saw through it from the first."

"We were afraid," Vocco apologized, "that what I have to tell you would spoil your appet.i.te."

"It would take something pretty bad to spoil my appet.i.te," Brinnaria reflected. "Is Almo dead?"

"Not so b-b-bad as that," spoke Flexinna.

"Tell me, Quintus," Brinnaria breathed.

Vocco fidgeted.

"It's an amazing story," he began.

"All his story, all my story, all our story," Brinnaria cut in, "is amazing. Leave out the comments and tell the story."

"While Almo was away on the expedition against the nomads of the plateau," Vocco narrated, "Pennasius fell ill, was allowed to resign his governors.h.i.+p and Grittonius took his place. On Almo's return Grittonius complimented him most highly and promised him any reward he asked for.

Almo amazed him by asking for a full and honorable discharge from the army. Grittonius expostulated with him but Almo held him to his promise.

In spite of the governor's appeals to his pride and to his patriotism he insisted, and Grittonius gave him his full official discharge. At once Almo applied for permission to sell himself as a slave. This so astounded Grittonius that he made him repeat the application before witnesses and give his reasons. Almo explained that he had always been devoted to horseracing and that he wanted formally and regularly to article himself to one of the racing companies as a charioteer; that he had always craved that life and had longed for it more and more as his career as a soldier went on. He said there was no use in his continuing a life he detested, nor missing the happiness he antic.i.p.ated as a charioteer.

"Grittonius had him examined by a committee of the most reputed physicians of the province. They reported Almo entirely sane. Grittonius wanted to hold the matter over until he had special permission from the Emperor. Almo craftily maintained that Grittonius had been made governor with the fullest powers on all lines specifically to save the Emperor from being bothered about such trifles. Grittonius yielded. The necessary papers were drawn up, all the depositions were made out in duplicate. Every formality was fulfilled and Almo was publicly sold as a slave in the market place of Hippo."

"What company did he enter?" Brinnaria queried.

"Veppius did not state," Vocco replied; "he merely said that Almo sailed the next day for Spain."

"The fool!" Brinnaria cried. "The three fools; a fool of a Veppius to write so vaguely, a fool of a governor to be persuaded so easily and Almo the biggest fool of all!

"What a fool of a lover I have! Are all men like that? I'm as much in love with him as he with me and I can behave myself decently and keep outwardly calm and observe the conventions of life. Why can't he be decent? How can it comfort a man in love to throw away a splendid career, abandon a great income and vanish from the ken of all who love him? What madness is this with which the G.o.ds afflict him? Oh, I could tear my hair with rage!"

To trace Almo everything was done that could be done. Vocco himself set out at once for Hippo. He found that Almo had been sold to a Greek slave-dealer named Olynthides, brother of the well-known dealer at Rome.

He found Olynthides a small man with a club-foot. He said he remembered the matter, that he had been employed to buy Almo and resell him for cash, especially to conceal the real purchaser.

When Vocco expressed astonishment Olynthides said:

"There is nothing to be surprised at, the thing happens every day. It is a regular feature of slave-trading. There are all sorts of reasons why a man wants a slave without any past. Such sales are customary and habitual."

When pressed further he retorted:

"Of course I did not ask the buyer's name; equally of course, I did not take any note of him, it was my business to forget him. I didn't notice him when he came into the courtyard, there are always knots of people coming in all day, looking over the slaves I offer for sale, and going out again. He came in like anybody else and looked over my stock. When he spoke to me he had a servant with him carrying a stout leather bag.

He indicated Almo and asked his price. I named it.

"'Cash sale,' says he; 'no papers except a bare sale certificate.'

"'Done,' says I.

"He counted out the cash from his servant's bag and I gave him the customary certificate, with a description of Almo and the statement:

"'Sold on this day and date for cash' and my signature and seal. That was all there was to it."

When Vocco was persistent, Olynthides averred that he had "heard" that the purchaser's name was Jegius and that he came from Cadiz. Vocco could not discover anyone in Hippo who had ever heard of a slave-dealer named Jegius.

When Vocco returned to Rome with his report Brinnaria set in motion all the forces of her world which could be utilized under the circ.u.mstances.

Aurelius was on the Rhine frontier, but Brinnaria had, by this time, a close acquaintance with all important court officers and was on terms of the utmost cordiality with the officials who governed Rome in the Emperor's absence. They sympathized with her and put at her disposal all the machinery of the government secret service. They agreed with her that the matter must be kept quiet, there must be no proclamations, posters, no rewards offered by crier or placard, no publis.h.i.+ng of descriptions. With emphatic injunctions of secrecy they sent warnings to every provincial governor, to every local magistrate, to the aldermen of every free city, to inst.i.tute un.o.btrusive investigations and to keep unostentatious watch. Brinnaria insisted that these mandates should be sent all over the Empire, pointing out that no one could conjecture what port of the Mediterranean or of the Black Sea might be the destination of any nameless trading s.h.i.+p. But, with special care, full orders were distributed throughout Spain.

Towards Spain, likewise, Brinnaria directed the energies of those organizations of the ancient world which were a.n.a.logous to our modern private detective bureaus, and upon Spain she focussed the energies of the managers of the racing companies.

These great corporations were among the most important money-making enterprises of the Roman world. They maintained luxurious headquarters in the most congested business districts of the capital. They had offices adjacent to each of the circuses, they possessed huge congeries of buildings utilized as stables for their crack racers and barracks for their charioteers, and provided with s.p.a.cious courtyards for training their teams. Outside of Rome they had similar offices and training-stables in every city and in most towns of any size or wealth.

Besides they owned countless stud-farms, estates and ranches in every province of the Empire and maintained an army of herdsmen, ostlers and drovers to convoy their horses by land and whole fleets of s.h.i.+ps to transport them by sea.

They were joint-stock companies, and while many smaller ones existed in various parts of the Empire and a few even at Rome, the small concerns were insignificant and generally ignored. When one spoke of the racing-companies one meant the six great companies whose central organizations were domiciled at Rome and whose ramifications penetrated every district of the Empire. These were known, after the racing-colors of their jockeys, as the Greens, the Blues, the Reds, the Whites, the Crimsons and the Golds. The Reds and the Whites were the oldest companies, the Crimsons and the Golds were companies established in the heyday of the Empire by coteries of millionaires, the Blues and the Greens were the largest, the wealthiest and the most popular, especially the Greens. In the Greens, somewhere, Brinnaria expected to find Almo, as he had been enthusiastic about the Greens from boyhood. He had been wearing their leek-green colors the day she had sat in his lap in her father's courtyard. He had haunted their training-stables during his brief sojourn at Rome before Aurelius sent him to Africa, he had inherited a big block of stock in the Greens. In the Greens, likewise, Brinnaria owned stock; and, having entered into inheritances from more than seventy different wealthy relatives who had died during the pestilence, she happened to own stock in every one of the six great companies. She had personal friends among the directors of each of the six. Therefore it was especially easy for her to enlist their help in her efforts to find Almo. It would have been easy, anyhow, since to be able to oblige a Vestal was a refres.h.i.+ng novelty for almost anyone at Rome and to find a Vestal seeking one's influence and one's help, equally novel and refres.h.i.+ng; generally the shoe was on the other foot--most persons in public life in Rome were used to attempting to enlist the help and the interests of the Vestals for their purposes and were generally utterly at a loss for any means of requital, if the interest of a Vestal was enlisted and her help obtained.

Consequently all that the racing-companies could do to find Almo was done as well as all that could be done by the private detective agencies and by government officials.

All that was done was utterly in vain. No trace of Almo could be discovered after he had sailed from Hippo with Jegius. No slave-dealer named Jegius could be found nor anyone who knew such a slave-dealer.

No clue, no ghost of a clue came to light. The Greens, like the other companies, could find among their charioteers, their jockeys, their free employees, their slaves, no individual in the least answering to descriptions of Almo. All governmental efforts, all professional efforts, all private efforts, all Vocco's efforts, all Brinnaria's efforts, were completely baffled.

Almo had completely vanished.

When Aurelius, pa.s.sing through Rome on his way from the Rhine frontier to Syria, was in his capital for a brief period, Brinnaria had an audience with him.

"Daughter!" he said, "it is all my fault. I should have given Grittonius explicit injunctions about the boy. But the a.s.saults of the Marcomanni were particularly furious just at that time; I was feverishly hurrying from point to point along the frontier; I accepted the resignation of Pennasius; by letter. I appointed Grittonius by letter; I a.s.sumed that Grittonius would have sense; I a.s.sumed that Pennasius would impart to him his secret instructions. I erred by inadvertence; I should have set a special watch on the boy. But I never thought of it. He was doing so well and he seemed so interested in his work. He was wonderfully fitted for frontier duty along the desert. I was watching him with keen interest; each report of him gave me greater pleasure. I do not hesitate to tell you that I had him in my mind's eye to command this very expedition which I must now command myself, as there is no other man in the Empire fit to take charge of it.

"Is it not a shame that a man whom the Empire needs, who had before him so splendid an opportunity, who was fitting himself for so brilliant a career, should throw it all away from mere perversity? Yet I am not wrathful against him; I see many reasons for sympathizing with him.

"Rigid and unflinching celibacy affects different individuals very differently. Some it does not affect at all, apparently. It does not seem to affect you. You are as plump and rosy, as healthy and alert, as happy and normal a young woman, to all appearance, as could be found among matrons of your age in all the Empire. Celibacy seems to agree with you.