The Roman Traitor Volume Ii Part 18

"It is well nigh the fourth hour, Lentulus."

"What if it be, an I choose to call it midnight? and what, if I refuse to obey such unceremonious bidding?"

"In that case, Lentulus, my orders are to compel your attendance. I have two decuries of men in your Atrium. But I trust that you will drive me to no such necessity."

"Two decuries!" replied Lentulus scornfully. "I have but to lift my little finger, and my freedmen and slaves would kick your decuries, and yourself after them into the velabrum."

The blood mounted to the brow of the young soldier. "I have endured," he said, "something too much of this. Will you go with us peacefully, Lentulus, or will you force us to take you through the street like a felon?"

"Oh! peacefully, Arvina, peacefully. I did but jest with you, my hero. But I knew not that the cavalry of the seventh legion-the legion of Mars I think they call it-had become so degraded, as to do the work of thieftakers."

"Nor I, Lentulus," answered Paul. "But you should know best in this matter. If it be theft for which thou art summoned before Cicero, then are we indeed thieftakers. But if so, not only I believe should we be the first legionaries of Rome so employed, but thou the first Roman Consular so guilty."

"So proud! ha!" exclaimed the haughty conspirator, gazing at him with a curled lip and flas.h.i.+ng eye. "Well, I could quell that pride in one moment, with _one_ word."

"Even so proud, because honest" answered the young man, as haughtily as the other. "For the rest, will you clothe yourself at once?-I can wait babbling here no longer."

"I _will_ quell it. Look you, boy, you love Julia, the bright daughter of Hortensia-she is worth loving, by the way, and Catiline hath noted it. You fancy that she is safe now, at the Latin villa of her mother. She is not safe-nor at the Latin villa! I have touched you, have I not?"

Arvina started, as if a serpent had bitten him; but in a moment he recovered himself, saying calmly, "Tus.h.!.+ it is a poor deceit! you cannot alarm me."

"In truth it was a deceit, but not so very poor after all, since it succeeded. You were sorely wounded a few days since, Arvina, and wrote, I think, to Julia, requesting her to set forth at once to Rome, with Hortensia."

"Folly!" replied Arvina, "Drivelling folly! Come, hasten your dressing, Lentulus! You need not perfume your hair, and curl your beard, as if you were going to a banquet."

"I never hasten anything, my Paullus. Things done hastily, are rarely things done well. What? thou dids't not write such a letter?-I thought thou hadst-of this at least I am sure, that she received such an one; and set out for Rome, within an hour after."

"By the G.o.ds!" exclaimed Paullus, a little eagerly, for Lentulus had changed the slight bantering tone in which he had been speaking, for a quick short decided accent seeming to denote that he was in earnest.

"Where is she now. Speak, Lentulus, I adjure thee. Tell me, if thou wouldst have me serve thee!"

"I thought I could abate that pride somewhat," said Lentulus sneeringly.

"I thought so indeed. But, by all the G.o.ds! Arvina, I know not where your Julia may be _now_. I know whither they are conveying her-where she soon will be-but I fancy that the knowing it, would give you but little pleasure; unless, indeed, you could prevent it, my poor youth!"

"To know, is something at least toward preventing it. If, therefore, thou art not, as I believe indeed thou art, merely mocking me, I pray thee tell me, whither are they conveying her? Where will she soon be?"

"To the camp of Manlius, nigh Fiesole! In the arms of one Lucius Sergius Catiline-a great admirer of your auburn-haired, blue-eyed beauties, my Arvina."

The young man, with his eyes gleaming and his face crimsoning with furious rage, made two steps forward, and seizing the burly traitor by the throat, compressed his gullet, as if in an iron vice, and shook him to and fro as easily as if he had been a stripling.

"Shame on thee, filth and carrion that thou art, so to speak of a betrothed bride to her promised husband! If it were true, wretched villain! I would save the hangman his task, and break your traitor's throat with this hand-but thou liest! thou liest!" he shouted, pus.h.i.+ng him to the other end of the narrow sleeping chamber. "In poor revenge thou liest! But if you wish to live, beware how you so lie any more!"

"I do not lie indeed, my dear Arvina," replied the other in a bland fawning voice full of mock humility. "But, I prithee, boy, keep thy hands from my throat in future, unless thou wouldst desire to know how a crook-bladed sica some sixteen inches long feels in the region of thy heart. Such an one as this, Arvina," he added, showing a long keen weapon not unlike a Turkish yatagan in shape, which he drew from beneath his pillow. Then casting it aside, with a contemptuous gesture, he continued-"But this is mere child's play. Now mark me. I did not lie, nor do! Aulus Fulvius wrote the letter-Aulus Fulvius' slave carried it, yester-even-Aulus Fulvius beset the road by which they must come-Aulus Fulvius is ere this time on his road many a league conveying her to Catiline-and this," he said, putting a small slip of parchment into the hands of the astonished Paullus, "is Aulus Fulvius' handwriting. Yes!

certainly, that is his S in the word Salutem. He affects ever the Greek sigma in his writing. He is a very pretty penman, Aulus Fulvius!"

The strip of parchment bore these words:

"Whom I am you will know by the matter. The camp in Etruria will receive the dove from the Latin villa. All hath succeeded-health!"

"I found it on my desk, when I returned from supper this morning. Aulus's slave brought it hither. He is within, if thou wouldst speak him."

Arvina staggered back like a man who has received a mortal stab, as he read those fatal words; and stared about him with a wild and wandering eye.

It was a moment or two before he could find any speech, and when he did speak at length, it was in tones so altered and broken that his nearest friend would not have recognized his voice.

"Wherefore"-he gasped-"Wherefore have you done this to me."

"For vengeance!" thundered the proud conspirator, casting his crimson-bordered toga over his laticlavian tunic. "For vengeance, boy.

Lead on-lead on to your consul."

"In what have I wronged you?" cried Arvina, in a paroxysm of almost unspeakable despair. "In what, that you should take such infernal vengeance?"

"For Julia's love thou didst betray Catiline! betray _us_! In Julia's infamy thou shalt be punished!"

"Anything! anything! anything but this-strike here, strike here with that sica, thou didst unsheath but now. Slay me, by inches if thou wilt-but spare her, oh! by your mother's memory! oh! by your sister's honor! spare her, and I will-"

"Lead on! To your consul!" exclaimed Lentulus waving his hand proudly to the door. "I can but die-the G.o.ds be thanked for it! Thy life is bitterer than many deaths already! I say, coward and fool, lead on! Where is thy boasted pride? In the dust! at my feet! I trample, I spit on it! once again to your consul!"

"And thou couldst save her!"

"By a word! At a hint from me Fulvius will set her free."

"But that word? but that hint?-"

"My lips shall never utter-my hand indite; unless-"

"Unless? unless what?-speak! speak, Lentulus. By the G.o.ds! By your head!

By your life! speak."

"Place me beyond the walls of Rome, with twenty of my freedmen, armed and mounted-it can be done on the instant; they are here; they are ready!-and Julia shall be in thy bosom ere to-morrow's sun shall sink behind the hills of Latium!"

"A Traitor to my country! Lentulus, never!"

"Tus.h.!.+ boy! think upon beautiful, soft, weeping, _innocent_ Julia rescued by thee from Catiline-from pollution-think on her grat.i.tude, her love, her kiss! Think on a life, a whole long life, of rapture!-and then balance against it one small foolish word-"

"Dishonor!" Arvina interrupted him fiercely.

"Aye! to which thou consignest Julia, whom thou _lovest_! Kind Venus guard me from such lovers!"

"Dishonor never can come nigh her," replied Arvina, who had recovered his senses completely, and who, though unutterably wretched, was now as firm and as cold as marble. "Death it may be, but not dishonor!"

"Be it so," answered Lentulus. "We will leave her the option of the two, but believe me, when dishonor is pleasant, women rarely choose death in preference to it. You have had your option too, my Arvina. But I, it seems, can have none, but must wait upon your consul."

"You have the same which you give Julia!" answered Paullus, sternly.

"There is your dagger, and your heart here!" he added, laying his hand on the broad breast of the infamous Patrician.

"True! count its pulses-cooler, I think, and more regular than thine, Paullus. Tus.h.!.+ man! I know a hundred wiser things and pleasanter than dying. But once more, lead on! I will speak no word again till I speak to the consul!"

And without farther words he strode to the door, followed closely by the young soldier, resolute and determined to perform his duty, let what might come of it! He pa.s.sed through his marble peristyles, looked with a cool eye on his flowery parterres and sparkling fountains, nodded a careless adieu to his slaves and freedmen, and entered the Atrium where Arvina's troopers awaited him, wondering and impatient at the long delay.