The Unwilling Vestal Part 7

"I pa.s.sed Quartilla's travelling carriage at Varia last night. Quartilla was alive and well. I pa.s.sed Brinnarius this morning at dawn, this side of Tibur. He was alive then and puffing."

"How did you get here ahead of him?" Brinnaria interjected.

"I am light built," Calvaster explained with obvious relish, "and I rode the best horse in Italy. His mount labored heavily under his load."

"Both parents are then alive," spoke Faltonius. "I hereupon and hereby p.r.o.nounce you in all respects fit to be taken as a Vestal. Are you willing?"

"Not I!" Brinnaria fairly shouted.

"Not willing!" Faltonius cried, incredulous.

"Not a fibre of me!" she proclaimed emphatically.

"Wretched girl!" expostulated the Pontiff. "Have you no sense of patriotism? Do you not realize your duty to your country, to the Roman people, to Rome, to the Emperor, to all of us, to the commonwealth? Do you not realize Rome's need of you? Shall it be said that Rome has need of one of her daughters and that her unnatural child refuses?"

"I have not refused," said Brinnaria. "I only said I was unwilling."

"It is the same thing," declared the bewildered ecclesiastic.

"Not a bit the same thing," Brinnaria disclaimed. "I know my duty in this matter perfectly. Castor be good to me, I know it too well. I know that a refusal would avail me nothing, if I did refuse. I have not refused. I would not, even if I could escape by refusal I realize my duty. If I am taken I shall be all that a Vestal is expected to be, all that she must be to ensure the glory and prosperity and safety of the city and the Empire. I shall not fail the Emperor nor the Roman people, nor Rome. But I am unwilling, and I said so. Little good it will do me.

But I am no liar, not even in the tightest place."

"Stand up, my daughter," said Faltonius, rising himself, suddenly clothed in dignity, a really impressive figure, in spite of his globular proportions.

Brinnaria stood, her eyes on the door to the vestibule, her face very pale, trembling a little, but controlled.

The Pontifex took her hand and spoke:

"As priestess of Vesta, to perform those rites which it is fitting that a priestess of Vesta perform for the Roman People and the citizens, as a girl who has been chosen properly, so I take you, Beloved."

At the word "Beloved," which made her irretrievably a Vestal, Brinnaria could not repress a little gasp. Her eyes no longer watched the vestibule door. She looked at the Pontiff. He let go her hand.

"You will now go with your servitor to be clothed as befits your calling."

He indicated one of Causidiena's attendants, a solidly built woman, like a Tuscan villager, who carried over her arm a ma.s.s of fresh white garments and robes.

With her and Causidiena Brinnaria left the atrium; with them she presently returned, a slim white figure, her hair braided and the six braids wound round her forehead like a coronet, above them the folds of the plain square headdress of the Vestals.

"I thought," she said, "that my hair would be cut off."

"That will be after you are made at home in the Atrium of Vesta," spoke the Pontiff.

"And remember," he continued sternly, "that you are now a Vestal and that young Vestals may not speak unless spoken to."

Brinnaria bit her lip.

At that moment they heard hoofs and voices outside, the door burst open and Brinnarius entered.

"Too late, Daddy!" cried Brinnaria. "You can't help me now. I'm not your little girl any more; I don't count as your daughter; you don't count as my father; I'm daughter to the Pontifex from now on. I'm a Vestal."

She was trembling, but she kept her countenance. Brinnarius uttered no sound, the whole gathering was still and mute, the noises of the street outside were plainly audible. They heard horse-hoofs again, again the door flew open wide. In burst Almo, wide-eyed and panting.

At him Brinnaria launched a sort of shriek of expostulation.

"Why couldn't you ride! You call yourself a horseman! And you've come too late! I mustn't even kiss you good-bye. And I mustn't speak to you, I mustn't see you, I mustn't so much as think of you for thirty years, for thirty years, _for thirty years_!"

CHAPTER V - ESCAPADES

WHEN Brinnaria found herself actually domiciled in the House of the Vestals she experienced an odd mingling of awe and elation. The mere size of it was impressive, for it was nearly two hundred feet wide and almost four hundred feet long. Also it stood alone, bounded by four streets. Besides, it gained much dignity from its location, near the southeast corner of the great Forum of Rome, that most famous of all city squares, and under the very shadow of the Imperial Palace, the walls of which towered nearly three hundred feet above it, where it crouched as it were, on a site scooped out of the huge flank of the Palatine Hill.

Completely as it was dominated by the enormous bulk of the Palace it yet looked very large, having three lofty stories. Inside it was both s.p.a.cious and stately. Brinnaria was habituated to s.p.a.ce and stateliness, for her father's house had both, yet the Atrium of Vesta, as the House of the Vestals was officially denominated, impressed her as vast and splendid. That this immense and magnificent building was to be her home gave her sense of her own importance that thrilled her through and through. Its numerous retinue of deft and obsequious maid-servants added to this impression. Brinnaria's personal attendants, entirely at her beck and call and serving her alone, made up a considerable retinue by themselves. She found herself, like each of the other Vestals, served by a special waitress at table, by a waitress who had nothing to do but look after her wants. Then she had a sort of maid-of-honor, who had no duties except to act as companion, make herself agreeable, read aloud, if requested, accompany her on her outings and help to pa.s.s her leisure pleasantly. As she was a mere child in years she had a sort of governess to instruct her in all those subjects in which a Roman girl of good family was generally given lessons: correct reading; a smattering of mathematics, about equivalent to the simple arithmetic of our days; some knowledge of literature; a steady and efficient drill in reading and talking Greek; instrumental music, similar to the guitar-playing of modern times, and embroidery. She had a personal maid to bathe her, arrange her hair and otherwise make her comfortable; also a special maid to attend to her private apartment, which included what we would call a sitting-room, a tiny bedroom, and a large bath-room. The largest room was used mostly as a school-room for lessons with her instructress.

Outside the Atrium Brinnaria had her private stable, her carriages, her coachman and ostlers, and her lictor, the red-cloaked runner, who preceded her carriage, announced its coming and cleared the way for it through the crowds of foot-pa.s.sengers who thronged the streets of Rome.

Life in the Atrium was austere and formal, but in no respect ascetic.

The austerities extended only to attire and behavior. The decorations of the courtyard, of the corridors and stairs, of the two hundred rooms, were bewilderingly varied and overpoweringly gorgeous. Every appointment of the Atrium was luxurious to the last degree; the furnis.h.i.+ngs were beautiful and precious, every object a work of art; the bathrooms cunningly devised for comfort, the beds deep and soft, scarcely less so the sofas on which the Vestals reclined at their meals, the table service of exquisite gla.s.s-ware and elaborately chased silver, the food abundant and including every delicacy and rarity most appetizing and enjoyable.

Except Meffia her co-Vestals were immediately liked and speedily loved by Brinnaria. Meffia, a month older than herself and looking six years younger, was a small, awkward, ungainly girl, with pale blue eyes, pale yellow hair and babyish pink complexion. She had never had an ill hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement a.s.serted that she was tired, often that she felt weak. Brinnaria thought her merely innately lazy and a natural s.h.i.+rk. The more she saw of her the more her loathing for her and her hatred of her intensified. Quite the reverse with the others. Manlia was a large young woman of about twenty-two, a typical Roman aristocrat, her hair between dark brown and black, her complexion swarthy, her figure abundant. Gargilia was older than Manlia; a tall, slender creature with intensely black hair and piercing black eyes that looked straight at you out of a face healthfully tinted indeed, but of a whiteness which was the envy of half the beauties in Rome. Numisia Maximilla was much like an older Manlia, but sparer and of markedly haughty bearing and carriage. Causidiena, newly become Chief Vestal, was a woman of about forty-five years of age, mild, gentle, and charming, with cool gray eyes and glossy brown hair, a being who aroused affection, inspired admiration and compelled love from all her household.

She won Brinnaria's heart at once by telling her that she herself, when she had first entered the Atrium of Vesta, had found it difficult to learn the etiquette of the order, had wanted to shout and sing and laugh out loud, to run up and down stairs instead of walking, to skip and jump.

That Causidiena had triumphed over similar tendencies comforted Brinnaria and helped her to try to overcome her own. Most difficult to curb was her tendency to be rude to Meffia. This Causidiena noticed at once and set herself to obliterate. Brinnaria unbosomed herself and Causidiena listened so sympathetically that Brinnaria sat silent through the long lecture that followed and was very submissive during a searching interrogatory. She promised to comport herself as a Vestal should.

"But," she said, "I shall suffer. That girl is unpleasant in ten thousand ways, but the smell of her is the most unpleasant thing about her. She's been tubbed and scrubbed and ma.s.saged and perfumed twice a day ever since I came here and she smells worse than a polecat, anyhow, all day long, even the moment after her maid has finished her toilet. A whiff of Meffia sets me frantic. I'd be capable of any crime to get rid of her."

More lecturing followed.

"But it's true!" Brinnaria maintained. "You can't help smelling her yourself; she smells like nothing else on earth. It isn't the smell of a dirty girl or of an ill girl, nor the smell of a girl at all or of any kind of a human being. I can't describe it, but it's a thin sour smell, sharp and shrill like the note of a cricket, if a sound and a smell can be compared. It's horrible; it's not human."

More lecturing, a long session of lecturing, followed this outburst. At the end of it the victim was meek and pliable, or so professed herself.

For at least five days Brinnaria kept up her effort to be comradely with Meffia. By the sixth day she was completely exhausted and the two avoided each other as before.

Agonies indeed Brinnaria suffered in her efforts to live up to Causidiena's ideas of what she should be. On the whole she succeeded pretty well and committed few errors of deportment. Outwardly she controlled herself from the first; for, before her first cowed sensations had worn off, her adoration of Causidiena had gained full sway over her. Yet inwardly she suffered more and more acutely as time went on, partly feeling that she must burst out in spite of herself, partly dreading that she would.

At last, after many days, she perpetrated her first and most undignified prank. It was a terrific occurrence, judged by the standards of the Atrium.

The great peristyle of the House of the Vestals, including nearly three-fourths of the whole courtyard, was beautified with a splendid double colonnade, two tiers of pillars, one above the other, the lower of delicately mottled Carystian marble wavily veined with green streaks varying its whiteness, the upper of coral-red brecchia. Midway of the court was a tank lined with marbles and always filled with clear water.

One morning Meffia, walking about the court, in her irritatingly aimless fas.h.i.+on, pa.s.sed between Brinnaria and the edge of the tank. There was no earthly reason for her so doing, as Brinnaria was barely a yard from the margin of the pool, and on the other side of Brinnaria was the ample expanse of the pavement of the s.p.a.cious court.

Brinnaria was exasperated by Meffia's proximity, by her lackadaisical manner, by her shambling gait, by her sleep-walking att.i.tude, most of all by the peculiar thin, sour odor which Meffia exhaled. At the sight of Meffia's elaborately disagreeable demeanor of isolation, all Brinnaria's natural self began to boil in her; at the whiff which a.s.sailed her nostrils she boiled over, all her uncurbed instincts surging up at once. She put out one foot and gave Meffia a push.

Meffia, with a squall and a great splash, fell into the tank.

She not only fell in, but she went under the water.

She went under and did not come up.

For an instant Brinnaria thought she was shamming to scare her; but, in a twinkling she realized that Meffia had fainted.