The Roman Traitor Volume I Part 21

"What knows he?"

"Who slew Medon-Who slew Volero-What we propose to do, ere long, in the Campus!" answered Catiline, steadily.

"By all the G.o.ds?" cried Lentulus, turning very pale, and remaining silent for some moments. After which he said, with a thoughtful manner, "it would be better to get rid of him quietly."

"That has been tried too."

"Well?"

"It failed! He is now on his guard. He is brave, strong, wary. It cannot be done, save thus."

"He will denounce us. He will declare the whole, ere we can spring the mine beneath him."

"No! he will not; he dares not. He is bound by oaths which-"

"Oaths!" interrupted Lentulus, with a sneer, and in tones of contemptuous ridicule. "What are oaths? Did they ever bind you?"

"I do not recollect," answered Catiline; "perhaps they did, when I was a boy, and believed in Lemures and Lamia. But Paullus Arvina is not Lucius Catiline, nor yet Cornelius Lentulus; and I say that his oaths shall bind him, until-"

"And I say, they shall not!" A clear high voice interrupted him, coming, apparently, through the wall of the chamber.

Lentulus started-his very lips were white, and his frame shook with agitation, if it were not with fear.

Catiline grew pale likewise; but it was rage, not terror, that blanched his swarthy brow. He dashed his hand upon the table-

"Furies of h.e.l.l!"

While the words were yet trembling on his lips, the door was thrown violently open, the curtains which concealed it torn asunder, and, with her dark eyes gleaming a strange fire, and two hard crimson spots gleaming high up on her cheek bones-the hectic of fierce pa.s.sion-her bosom throbbing, and her whole frame dilated with anger and excitement, young Lucia stood before them.

"And I say," she repeated, "that they shall not bind him! By all the G.o.ds!

I swear it! By my own love! my own dishonor! I swear that they shall not!

Fool! fool! did you think to outwit me? To blind a woman, whose every fear and pa.s.sion is an undying eye? Go to! go to! you shall not do it."

Audacious, as he was, the traitor was surprised, almost daunted; and while Lentulus, a little rea.s.sured, when he saw who was the interlocutor, gazed on him in unmitigated wonder, he faltered out, in tones strangely dissimilar to his accustomed accents of indomitable pride and decision-

"You mistake, girl; you have not heard aright, if you have heard at all; I would say, you are deceived, Lucia!"

"Then would you lie!" she answered, "for I am not deceived, though you would fain deceive me! Not heard? not heard?" she continued. "Think you the walls in the house of Catiline have no eyes nor ears?" using the very words which he had addressed to her lover; "Lucius Catiline! I know all!"

"You know all?" exclaimed Lentulus, aghast.

"And will prevent all!" replied the girl, firmly, "if you dare cross my purposes!"

"Dare! dare!" replied Catiline, who now, recovering from his momentary surprise, had regained all his natural haughtiness and vigor. "Who are you, wanton, that dare talk to us of daring?"

"Wanton!" replied the girl, turning fiery red. "Ay! But who made me the wanton that I am? Who fed my youthful pa.s.sions? Who sapped my youthful principles? Who reared me in an atmosphere, whose very breath was luxury, voluptuousness, pollution, till every drop of my wholesome blood was turned to liquid flame? till every pa.s.sion in my heart became a fettered earthquake? Fool! fool! you thought, in your impotence of crime, to make Lucia Orestilla your instrument, your slave! You have made her your mistress! You dreamed, in your insolence of fancied wisdom, that, like the hunter-cat of the Persian despots, so long as you fed the wanton's appet.i.te, and basely pandered to her pa.s.sions, she would leap hood-winked on the prey you pointed her. Thou fool! that hast not half read thy villain lesson! Thou shouldst have known that the very cat, thou thoughtest me, will turn and rend the huntsman if he dare rob her of her portion! I tell you, Lucius Catiline, you thought me a mere wanton! a mere sensual thing! a soulless animal voluptuary! Fool! I say, double fool!

Look into thine own heart; remember what blood runs in these female veins!

Man! Father! Vitiator! My spirit is not female! my blood, my pa.s.sions, my contempt of peril, my will indomitable and immutable, are, like my mortal body, your begetting! My crimes, and my corruption, are your teaching!

Beware then, as you know the heat of your own appet.i.tes, how you presume to hinder mine! Beware, as you know your own recklessness in doing and contempt in suffering, how you stir me, your child, to do and suffer likewise! Beware, as you know the extent of your own crimes, the depth of your own pollution, how you drive me, your pupil, to out-do her master!

Beware! I say! beware! This man is mine. Harm but one hair upon his head, and you shall die, like a dog, with the dogs who snarl at your bidding, and your name perish with you. I have spoken!"

There needed not one tenth part of the wisdom, which the arch-traitor really possessed, to shew him how much he had miscalculated the range of his daughter's intellect; the fierce energies of her powerful but misdirected mind.

He felt, for a moment, as the daring archimage whose spells, too potent for their master's safety, have evoked and unchained a spirit that defies their guidance. But, like that archimage, conscious that all depends on the exertion of his wonted empire, he struggled hard to regain his lost authority.

"Girl," he replied, in those firm deep tones of grave authority, which he deemed the best calculated to control her excitement, "You are mad! Mad, and ungrateful; and like a frantic dog would turn and rend the hand that feeds you, for a shadow. I never thought of making you an instrument; fool indeed had I been, to think I could hoodwink such an intellect as yours!

If I have striven to clear away the mists of prejudice from before your eyes, which, in your senseless anger, you now call corrupting you, it was because I saw in you a kindred spirit to mine own, capable to soar fearless and undazzled into the very noon of reason. If I have taught you to indulge your pa.s.sions, opened a universe of pleasures to your ken, it was that I saw in you a woman of mind so manly, that all the weaknesses, which fools call affections, would be but powerless to warp it from its purpose. I would have made you"-

"The world's scorn!" she interrupted him, bitterly; but he went on, without noticing the interruption-

"The equal of myself in intellect, in energy, and wisdom; else how had you dared to brave me thus, whom never man yet braved and lived to boast of it! And now for a mere girlish fancy, a weak feminine caprice for a man, who cares not for you; who has betrayed you; who, idiot and inconsistent that he is, fresh from your fiery kisses, was whimpering within an hour at the feet of his cold Julia; who has, I doubt not, boasted of your favors, while he deplored his own infatuation, to her, his promised wife!-For a fond frivolous liking of a moment, you would forego gratification, rank, greatness, power, and vengeance! Is this just toward me, wise toward yourself? Is this like Lucia Orestilla? You would preserve a traitor who deserts you, nay, scorns you in his easy triumph! You would destroy all those who love you; you would destroy yourself, to make the traitor and his minion happy! Awake! awake, my Lucia, from this soft foolish fancy!

Awake, and be yourself once more! Awake to wisdom, to ambition, to revenge!"

His words were spirited and fiery; but they struck on no kindred chord in the bosom of his daughter. On the contrary, the spark had faded from her eye and the flush from her cheek, and her looks were dispirited and downcast. But as he ceased, she raised her eye and met his piercing gaze firmly, and replied in a sorrowful yet resolute tone.

"Eloquent! aye! you are eloquent! Catiline, would I had never learned it to my cost; but it is too late now! it is all too late! for the rest, I am awake; and so far, at least, am wise, that I perceive the folly of the past, and decipher clearly the sophistry of your false teaching. As for the future, hope is dead, and ambition. Revenge, I seek not; if I did so, thou art there, on whom to wreak it; for saving thou, and myself only, none have wronged me. More words are needless. See that thou lay aside thy plans, and dare not to harm him, or her. He shall not betray thee or thine; for that will I be his surety and hostage! Injure them, by deed or by word, and, one and all, you peris.h.!.+ I ask no promise of you-promises bind you not!-but let fear bind you, for _I_ promise _you_, and be sure that my plight will be kept!"

"Can this be Lucia Orestilla?" exclaimed Catiline, "this puling love-sick girl, this timorous, repentant-I had nearly called thee-maiden! Why, thou fool, what would'st thou with the man farther? Dost think to be his wife?"

"Wife!" cried the wretched girl, clasping her hands together, and looking piteously in her destroyer's face. "Wife! wife! and me!-alas! alas! that holy, that dear, honored name!-Never! never for me the sweet sacred rites!

Never for me the pure chaste kiss, the seat by the happy hearth, the loving children at the knee, the proud approving smile of-Oh! ye G.o.ds! ye just G.o.ds!-a loved and loving husband!-Wife! wife!" she continued, las.h.i.+ng herself, as she proceeded, into fresh anger; "there is not in the gaols of Rome the slave so base as to call Lucia Orestilla wife! And wherefore, wherefore not?-Man! man! if that thou be a man, and not a demon, but for thee, and thy cursed teachings, I might have known all this-pure bliss, and conscious rect.i.tude, and the respect and love of men. I might have been the happy bride of an honorable suitor, the cherished matron of a respected lord, the proud glad mother of children, that should not have blushed to be sprung from the wanton Lucia! Thou! it is thou, thou only that hast done all this!-And why, I say, why should I not revenge? Beware!

tempt me no farther! Do my bidding! Thou slave, that thought'st but now to be the master, obey my bidding to the letter!" And she stamped her foot on the ground, with the imperious air of a despotic queen. And in truth, crest-fallen and heavy in spirit, were the proud men whom she so superbly threatened.

She gazed at them contemptuously for a moment, and then, shaking her fore finger menacingly, "I leave ye," she said, "I leave ye, but imagine not, that I read not your councils. Me, you cannot deceive. With yourselves only it remains to succeed or to perish. For if ye dare to disobey me, the G.o.ds themselves shall not preserve you from my vengeance!"

"I fear you not, my girl," cried Catiline, "for all that you are now mad with disappointment, and with anger. So you may go, and listen if you will," he added, pointing to the secret aperture concealed in the mouldings of the wall. "We shall not speak the less freely for your hearing us."

"There is no need to listen now," she answered, "for I know everything already."

"Every thing that we _have_ said, Lucia."

"Everything that you _will_ do, Sergius Catiline!"

"Aye?"

"Aye! and everything that I shall do, likewise!" and with the word she left the room.

"A perilous girl, by all the G.o.ds!" said Lentulus, in Greek, as she disappeared. "Will she do as she threatens?"

"Tus.h.!.+" replied Catiline in Latin, "she speaks Greek like an Athenian. I am not sure, however, that she could understand such jargon as that is.

No! she will do none of that. She is the cleverest and best girl living, only a little pa.s.sionate, for which I love her all the more dearly. No!

she will do none of that. Because she will not be alive, to do it, this time to-morrow," he added, putting his mouth within half an inch of the ear of Lentulus, and speaking in the lowest whisper.

Lentulus, bold as he was and unscrupulous, started in horror at his words, and his lips were white as he faltered-"Your own daughter, Lucius!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed the fierce conspirator, aloud; "ha! ha! yes, she is my own daughter, in everything but beauty. She is the loveliest creature in all Rome! But we must yield, I suppose, to her wishes; the women rule us, after all is said, and I suppose I was alarmed needlessly. Doubtless Arvina will be silent. Come, I will walk with you so far on your way to the Forum. What ho! Chaerea, see that Rufinus and Stolo lack nothing. I will speak with them, when I return home; and hark you in your ear. Suffer not Lucia Orestilla to leave the house a moment; use force if it be needed; but it will not. Tell her it is my orders, and watch her very closely. Come, Lentulus, it is drawing toward noon."

They left the house without more words, and walked side by side in silence for some distance, when Catiline said in a low voice, "This is unpleasant, and may be dangerous. We must, however, trust to fortune till to-morrow, when my house shall be void of this pest. Then will we proceed, as we had proposed."