THE magnificent villa of Marcus Pomponius stood on a southern slope of the Sabines in the midst of a great estate. Vanished members of this patrician family had added to and adorned the mansion for several generations, and it was now become one of the most famous in the neighbourhood of Rome. The gardens were noted for their superb fountains, but many a mile of the domain still lay in the lap of nature, and it was a tradition in the Pomponian race that this must so remain, at the wish of Cybele expressed to the founder of the clan in the Augustan age.
Marcus Pomponius was a mild and intelligent Roman of no distinction whatever. He inclined to art and literature — was indeed himself said to be writing a book, which he found a very present help in time of trouble; and, for the rest, lived as quietly as circumstance allowed and mingled but little in the social festivities or civic life of the capital. He gave a dozen banquets of state during the year, and had once entertained Julian himself.
After the sad affair with the mother of the twins, he married, that the Pomponian name might be carried forward; but children did not bless the alliance, and as a result Placidia, his wife, fell back whole-heartedly upon religion. She was a Christian, and in those days a cool logic, won from Greece, made it possible for husband and wife to worship different deities without grief or pain to either. Thus Marcus spent much time in the noble temple to Rhea-Cybele that adorned his chestnut wood, while Placidia prayed elsewhere with the early Christians and drove once a month to Rome, that she might worship with her coreligionists at this or that basilica. Latona, the mother of Marcus, shared his opinions and prayed to his goddess.
Mother and wife adored the undistinguished man; both loved every hair on his head; and both, out of their deep but unimaginative affection, had already turned every hair grey. Between them Marcus found life to be difficult, and he was often needlessly let and hindered. When friends desired him to travel and set forth on adventures, he would say that he had enough of adventure at home. Both ladies knew that he was delicate and needed care; but they differed radically as to treatment. His mother coddled him in her old-fashioned way; his wife was always urging him to take more fresh air, more exercise and less stimulant. He liked them both, and admired their high Roman qualities, their dignity and their sense of what became them and himself; but he had long ceased to love either of them, save academically. They did not understand him, or the slight beauty of mind that belonged to him. Instead, his mother urged him to set a higher standard of form and ceremony and take himself and his exalted position more seriously; while his wife was ambitious and constantly urged him to abandon his secluded habits and seek place and power, as befitted his high rank, great riches and famous ancestry. He fell back on his health, which in reality began to be far more precarious than anybody imagined. His temperament was lymphatic and his vitality low; whereas his mother enjoyed a fulness of life much greater than her age of five-and-sixty years, and his spouse, Placidia, had been wrongly named, for a more energetic, bustling, tireless woman never lived. She was thin and wiry; her beauty faded quicklier than she imagined, and her rather stern, amber-coloured eyes seemed too large for her face. She wore her wonderful fair hair in a fillet, above which it towered to a top-knot. It was of a hard brilliance, and looked more like metal than hair. Her voice was also metallic. She suggested a brilliant but songless bird.
Latona presented an extreme contrast to her daughter-in-law. Her proportions were most generous, her gestures sculpturesque, her movements slow and dignified. She dyed her hair, and time had not abated the deep and gonglike throb of her majestic voice. She spoke slowly, as a big bell rings slowly. Her carriage was exceedingly august, and she lacked humour or any interest in anything small.
Marcus Pomponius was too thin and always felt chilly in consequence. He suffered from indigestion and often endured a twinge of gout, which made him testy for the time; but when it was past, he begged everybody, down to the least slave, for forgiveness. He would chat familiarly with the domestics, which caused his mother discomfort, and she regarded with increasing uneasiness a democratic taint that appeared in the mind of Marcus as he grew older.
Now he walked his magnificent atrium among bronze and marble statues of great ancestors, and wondered whether a sense of tightness about the midriff was an incipient cold, or merely the result of too much tunny with his morning repast.
“I have observed before that tunny goes ill with white wine, and I ought to have remembered it,” he said to himself. “Now I shall not enjoy my prandium.”1
Then came old Brutus, his factotum, and saluted the master.
“There is a ragged herd-boy at the outer gate, who begs for speech with you, Marcus Pomponius,” said the ancient man.
“A herd-boy — speech with me — how strange!” answered Marcus mildly.
“He appears to be well favoured and civil spoken; he declares that you would not willingly turn him away.”
“Life is full of puzzles, Brutus. Here am I reflecting on deep matters and the fate of our Emperor in the Assyrian plains, and you fall bluntly, brutally upon my reverie with the fantastic news that a herd-boy would have audience.”
“I’ll send him packing, Marcus Pomponius.”
“Nay, bid him enter. I will see him. Important things often have their beginnings in this unpretentious way. Doubtless he is the messenger of a greater than himself.”
“Shall I bid him to the bath before he approaches?”
“No, let him come as he is; and talking of baths, I fear I dallied in mine too long, Brutus. My heart is tired this morning.”
“You will take it too hot, Marcus Pomponius.”
The retainer withdrew and in two minutes Arcadius stood before his father.
He had slept at a stony cave in the woods after his journey from Rome and washed his face and hair in a rivulet before approaching the mansion. He was looking exceedingly beautiful and radiant, but ragged.
“What would you with me, boy?” asked Marcus kindly. Then his eyes fell on the countenance of Arcadius and he gave a gentle start.
“You remind me of somebody,” he said. “I have an amazing memory for faces, though often fail to put a name to them. Be silent and let me reflect.”
The lad stood still awhile; then Marcus scanned his features and shook his head.
“I cannot bring you to my mind,” he declared. Whereupon Arcadius told his tale and the other remembered.
“By Jupiter! This is no lie — you are like her — it was she — my tender treasure — my Aurelia. There can be no doubt whatever that you are her son!”
Marcus was much moved.
He sat down at the base of the statue of Titus Atticus Pomponius, his great-grandfather, who had done important things in Africa, and shed a few tears.
“God Pan sent me,” said his child.
“Praise be to him then. This is undoubtedly the most important thing which has happened in my family for many years. This day of July is sacred for evermore. But you had a brother? What of him?”
“He is a Christian, and Pan says that we shall some day meet again,” answered the lad.
“Henceforth, Arcadius, regard this as your home,” began the elder. “I am determined on it. Nothing shall shake me. One must have one’s own way sometimes. I seldom insist; but this is a case when my will must become law. Let me look into your eyes. Dear gods! Your mother lives again in them. Have you eaten any breakfast?”
“No, Master.”
“You have my permission to address me as ‘Father,’” said Marcus Pomponius, and the word moved him again. Then he lifted his voice and summoned Brutus.
“Take this lad and feed him of the best,” he said, “then despatch Porphyrio for the tailor, and see that the sleeping apartment next my own is prepared. Brutus, old friend, this is my own boy, the child of — you understand.”
Nothing ever surprised Brutus; but Placidia was more easily astonished, and when presently she hastened through the atrium on her way to the store-house and heard this amazing news, she showed an inclination to disbelieve it.
“Moonshine,” said Placidia, “some rustic plot against us.”
“It is true, great lady,” answered the boy, “and to show you that I tell truth, God Pan has divulged to me a sad secret not yet known in Rome.”
“Pan! You are a pagan, then?”
“He was in the Campagna the night before last; he healed my bruises and sent me to my father.”
Placidia showed impatience.
“What next?” she asked her husband.
“There can be no doubt,” he answered firmly. “His mother — you recollect — I have an unfaltering memory for faces.”
Placidia cast a look of something akin to annoyance at the handsome lad.
“Julian is dead,” declared Arcadius. “The Emperor has fallen beyond the Tigris. Pan knew it and told me.”
“If that, indeed, be true, I can forgive a great deal,” answered Placidia. “If that be true, let the idolaters look to themselves!”
She lifted a triumphant glance upward and went her way, while the eyes and thoughts of Marcus were cast down.
“Sorry news for Cybele,” he murmured.
“It is true, most noble father.”
“I believe you, my son. Did Pan name the Emperor to be?”
“He did not.”
• • •
Latona, when introduced to her grandchild, regarded him with mingled feelings. He was concealed from her until clad in rich garments, anointed with perfumes and polished up generally. She could not fail to admire his extraordinary beauty, and she perceived a likeness to her own husband, the grandfather of Arcadius, which was hidden from the eyes of her son. Decorum and propriety suggested indifference; but everything that was precious to Marcus interested his mother, even though she might not understand it, and at sight of his joy and excitement over this remarkable adventure, Latona had not the heart to say much.
“He must be apprenticed to one of the guilds,” she suggested. But then Marcus struck, with all the obstinacy of a gentle nature, and both his parent and his wife perceived that, for once, without any question whatever, he was going to be master in his own house.
From the first he developed the quintessence of fatherly devotion. A nature naturally affectionate, which of late years had found little on which to lavish its rich emotional, not to say sentimental, quality, promptly bubbled over for Arcadius. Masters were engaged to instruct him in elocution, rhetoric, deportment and all the arts and sciences. He was received into the family as a member thereof; and it said a great deal for the lad’s native charm, good sense and good nature that a position which promised to be exceedingly complicated brought no real discomfort for anybody concerned.
Placidia perceived that Arcadius was a youth of agreeable presence and high principle; Latona observed that the boy did his father much practical good — took Marcus out of himself, gave him something to think about, added to his joy of life and made him far less self-centred and solitary. Placidia, much heartened in secret by learning the new Emperor, Jovian, was a Christian, endured the addition to the family circle, and privately designed to win Arcadius to the true faith; Latona, discovering that the boy spoke with Pan and was, indeed, to keep an appointment with the god in six months, regarded him as an object of some reverence. With her son she shared the utmost uneasiness as to the future of religion; and the fact that Pan had expressed gloomy forebodings on the same subject, as Arcadius related, much troubled both Marcus and the Roman matron.
Patrician tact and courtesy should have prompted Placidia to conceal her own religious gratification. But she openly hoped the Emperor might take a high hand in this matter, and she was disappointed when the worldly wisdom of Jovian prompted him to a moderate course. Affairs were doubtful and dangerous when Julian passed, and the new Emperor found his hands too full to raise for himself any needless difficulty.
To Antioch came the opposing champions of the new faith in myriads; but they found a war-weary ruler who, declining to take either side, urged concord and charity on all. Himself he professed and declared devotion to the Nicene creed, and bid Athanasius reappear from the fastnesses whither he had withdrawn for safety under Julian’s brief rule.
The saint assured his monarch that a long and peaceful reign would reward such piety; but alas! within a year the jovial Jovian ate a doubtful mushroom and slept with his fathers.
What says Neander upon the situation that he had created? He quotes with the approval of all just persons the golden words of that moderate Pagan, Themistius, and we venture to set them here before leaving so serious a subject. Thus he spoke to his sovereign; and the echo of his wisdom reverberated a little while before it was silenced.
“The laws of emperors run scarcely longer than their lives,” declared Themistius, “but the law of God remains for ever unchangeable — that every man shall be free in reference to his own mode of worship. This law, no pillage of goods, no death on the cross, or at the stake, can extinguish. You may kill the body, but though the tongue shall be silenced, the soul rises to carry with it its own unconquerable will.”
Such sentiments and such freedom, forgotten for near two thousand years, are beginning again to be remembered.
• • •
Arcadius kept punctual appointment with his god, and Pan smiled upon him and observed that he had grown. He promised indeed to make a splendid man; but there was already in his expression that cast of thought too apt to develop, where there is a brain, and ruin the human animal prematurely.
“Are you as happy as when I healed your stripes, my son?” asked the deity, and Arcadius answered in words that already revealed a metaphysical nature.
“Happiness is never quite pure, Mighty Father,” he answered. “When you healed me, the happiness of being healed was most perfect and complete; but it wore off.”
“Custom is fatal to happiness,” said Pan.
“You can never be happy twice in exactly the same manner.”
“Happiness perhaps exhausts itself,” suggested Arcadius. “Then it is pain. I should be happy — I am happy now — happy in learning — happy in bathing, in eating, in wandering through my father’s woods. Above all, I am happy in my father himself; and yet from my dear father himself comes unhappiness.”
“Happiness is a butterfly that never settles,” answered Pan. “You have won great joy for your father, and yet, out of him and by virtue of your sonship with him, has come a new unhappiness.”
“I am unhappy because he is unhappy,” explained Arcadius. “He does not say so, yet I am quick to see that from the great love they feel for him, his wife and my grandmother cause him to be a good deal distracted. They love him very much indeed, but they love him differently, and each thinks that the other loves him in a mistaken manner. Thus they argue over him and often make a good deal of noise. Then each comes to seek his support against the other. But he is a man of peace, and finds himself very often called to rush away to Rhea-Cybele in his garden and kneel to the goddess, having first locked the door of her temple. All this is sad.”
“I know,” answered the god. “Thus, out of your great and glorious translation has come suffering, which as a fatherless slave you had escaped. This is the very principle and heart of all happiness: it is a bud which ever carries within its scented petals a little worm. All happiness, save one happiness, is constituted thus.”
“Indeed no, dear God!” cried Arcadius. “I can think of many happinesses that would breed no worm to tatter them. When I am wise I shall learn how to reach perfect happiness. But even in learning what is happiness, there is sorrow too.”
“How so?” inquired Pan.
“When I was all fool,” answered his little one, “then I escaped the sad knowledge of my folly; now that I am beginning to be taught wisdom, I shed tears to think what a fool I am. It is a strange and sad fact about learning that the more I glean, the vaster remains the store yet to be gleaned.”
“Even so,” admitted Pan. “Learning is a hoard from which the greater your filchings the mightier appears to be the mass. But let this not make you unhappy. You have some talent and a cheerful disposition. Learning, rightly digested, will make of you an optimist; if it curdle in the stomach, as so often happens, then you will be a pessimist and a sterile thing. Therefore do not sigh, as the avenues and defiles of your ignorance yawn wider and wider before you, but go forward in patience, remembering that to know yourself for a fool is the first step to wisdom. Lighten your father’s heart, do his will and please the ladies with your singing and good cheer. To be young is a great accomplishment in itself, and the boy who can help his elders to feel young again is doing well and justifying his existence. Most boys only succeed in making their elders feel still more old. Avoid this. And remember that for you are open channels into wisdom denied your fellow-boys. That was my gift: that you should gather from the bird and beast a measure of understanding they have won in a harder school than yours and from stricter taskmasters than rap your knuckles with their rulers.”
“I do talk to the things,” said Arcadius. “But they are so simple. I asked a nightingale why it sang yesternight, and all it answered was, ‘Because I’m a nightingale.’ ”
“The deepest knowledge is the simplest,” declared Pan. “Know you how some men learned the use of the wheel and so promoted their powers of locomotion a thousandfold? In the beginning of days a savage with genius perceived the wind blowing an empty shell over the sand, and he observed that the shell sped faster than all other things driven by the gale. By a miracle of intuition he perceived that this gift lay not in the shell but its quality of roundness. Hence a discovery as great as any recorded. Another savage in another land perceived that the sun and moon made wondrous haste through heaven, and judged that in their rotundity lay the secret of their speed. He fashioned a moon of wood therefore and marked how it flew over the green grass. Then, fitting two moons to his sledge, he astounded his kinsfolk and immediately became a god. Many gods have done far less for man than that.”
Thus Pan beguiled a twilight hour, and then Arcadius knelt and kissed his hoof, promised to visit him again when he should receive a direction to do so, and went home.
1 Prandium, luncheon.