CHAPTER NINE

The news from Rome was grievous and the family wondered if they should return. There were long discussions between the grandfather, the father, and the tutor, Archias.

“Why is not Marcus interested in his country in these days of crisis?” asked the grandfather.

“At present, he is dreaming,” said Tullius with apology. But he did not know of what his son was dreaming. “Let him be for a little.” He was hurt that his son had not confided in him.

Each day Marcus haunted the bridge, the banks, the forest paths where he had seen Livia. But she did not appear. With less than half an ear he heard the agitated discussions in the family circle about Rome; for once he was not eager or listening. All his mind and heart and body and soul were involved with one mysterious girl whom he had seen but for a few minutes. He began to write poetry at a tremendous rate. He was like a young tree growing and absorbed in itself at the edge of a battlefield, aware only of sun and wind and the stretching of its limbs and the thrusting of its leaves. Even Quintus, his playmate, found himself avoided. Seeing his dreaming expression, his vagueness and absent eyes, Helvia thought, with the knowledge of women, My son is in love. With a slave girl? She did not approve of a man of a family cavorting with slaves, though she understood this was done in Rome. To her it was supremely immoral and distasteful and not to be countenanced. But all her discreet watching did not bring her enlightenment. There were pretty little slave girls of ten and twelve and even Marcus’ age; he did not look at them.

The autumn was drawing to an end; only at noon was the sun warm and golden; the wind had a sharpness in its edge. Marcus began to think that he had dreamed of Livia Curius, for sometimes his dreams were very vivid and on rousing himself from them he had a momentary difficulty in separating fact from fantasy. Once, he remembered—and it was only this summer—he had been half-sleeping in the warmth, deep in the wild grass, his back against a tree, while Quintus had circled about him examining, climbing, exclaiming to himself in his usual exuberant fashion, sometimes hurling himself on the ground in somersaults, sometimes leaping up a great tree to inspect a bird’s nest, sometimes imitating the vociferous crows, sometimes just broadjumping or throwing a wooden spear.

Then it appeared to Marcus that the sun darkened and a host of men, fierce in armor and with violent faces, suddenly emerged from the forest and set upon Quintus and did him savagely to death. Marcus could not move; he heard Quintus’ cries; he heard the clash of swords and the movements of terrible enemies. He tried to rise, but iron lay over his flesh and held him down. He tried to scream, and not a sound left his lips. Then all was quiet again and Quintus was lying dead and shattered in his blood near his brother’s feet. A hideous darkness fell on Marcus’ eyes. When he could open them again he saw Quintus crouching to spring on a grass frog, and all was light and serenity once more. Marcus uttered a great cry; he struggled to his feet, dazed, his heart pounding madly, and he seized his brother to him and embraced him tightly, to Quintus’ innocent amazement. Quintus stood still and let Marcus weep over him and hold him.

“You were asleep, Marcus,” he said at last. “It must have been a fearful dream.”

Marcus let him go. Yes, it had been a most fearful dream. Marcus was not overly superstitious, though he possessed considerable mysticism. Archias, when he scoffed at omens and portents as unworthy of a civilized man, yet admitted there was a vast area beyond the sight and ear of man to which man was blind and deaf. From whence had the gods arisen? Who had set the boundaries of the world? Who had fashioned everything in its intricacy and delicate precision? Who had created Law? Man, Archias said, truly knew nothing at all.

“Superstition rises out of lack of knowledge,” Archias would say. “Nevertheless, millions of things will always be beyond man’s comprehension. The scientists say that birds hear sounds and see colors we shall never see; the dog hears what man’s dull ear will never discern. The stars are beyond us; what are they, more than what the scientists say they are, which may be their error? Man cannot comprehend God with his senses; it must come from his soul. What little comprehension man has of God comes from something intuitive in himself, more profound than instinct. It is that intuition which is the civilizing agent in man, the source of pillars and columns, painting and music, the foundation of Law. But we ponder on it—unless we are an Aristotle or a Socrates—only to our confusion and dismay.”

Where does fantasy end and reality begin? Marcus would ask himself, haunting daily the places where he had seen Livia. Now he could believe in wood nymphs and strange spirits and apparitions very easily. What of the voices of Delphi? The books of the sybils? There were intellectual and worldly men who, if they did not actually believe in these things, admitted that man knew very little and that it was arrogant of him to think that reason explained all and that ultimate knowledge will ever be the possession of mankind. Archimedes had said that with a lever of a certain length, and standing in a proper place, he could move the world. Someday man indeed, as the ancient books said, would fly the oceans and the continents like a bird of passage, and might invade the moon. But what would these things tell him of the deeps and chasms and strangenesses that lived in his soul and defied the philosophers?

All Marcus’ senses were heightened in these days. He saw lights on leaves he had never noticed before; the feeling and texture of rough bark under his hands excited him. The cry of migrating birds filled him with ecstatic loneliness. He was exalted at the sight of the last flowers. The river spoke to him in mysterious tongues. He wanted to be alone at all times, to feel the exaltation that kept sweeping over him. He longed for Livia, fantasy or no fantasy. He was like one exiled, yet rejoicing in exile, feeling a delightful melancholy. He looked at the moon, and it was no longer a mere satellite of the world, as the dull scientists said, but a huge golden secret on which golden men dwelt and uttered mystical words. It lay on branch and fading grass and on the rooftop, and on Marcus’ hands, and he trembled with joy and with sadness. He thought of God, and God seemed nearer than ever, more imminent, all pervading.

In short, he was in love. The gods stood all about him.

He had never considered Venus and her son Eros as worthy deities. Venus was a wanton. Eros was simply the Roman Cupid. Marcus had been bored earlier by love stories. Why did men let themselves be seized by folly, so that great men became fools and less than beasts? Archias had said that the most immense poetry came from the heart of love, but Marcus had been incredulous. Archias had smiled at him with amusement. “You are confusing love with lust,” he had said. “Ah, my pupil, you will learn in time.”

Now Marcus understood. It was useless for him to tell himself that it was impossible to love a girl he had seen but once, and she so peculiar and so elusive and not to be understood. But in the very moment of his rationality and his ridicule of himself, he remembered the coolness and smoothness of her hand, the blue of her eyes, the fire of her hair against the sun. A mere chit. He would die if he did not see her again. A weird and laughing and indifferent girl, content with her betrothal to a moral monster; she was not worthy of consideration. He would die if he did not see her again.

“In these days of Rome’s peril, we must return,” said the old grandfather, and spoke of Drusus who was yet but a name to Marcus. Marcus haunted the thinning forest. He did not truly expect to see Livia ever again, but he searched. What songs the rivers sang! What eternal mystery lay in a blade of grass! How tremendous was the light of the sun! What beating heart waited in the forest! How blue was the autumnal sky! What a thing it was to be a man, conscious of firm young limbs and young body and prehensile hands! Each day was a marvel. Each step was an exultation. Each vista was filled with half-seen shapes of beauty. It was glorious to draw breath. It was a rapture to be alive. Why had he never known this before? His eyes swam with dreams.

Then one day he came upon Livia again. She sat on a pile of crimson oak leaves under a thinning oak tree, singing softly to herself and running her hands through the leaves. Marcus had passed that tree scores of times. Yet, there was Livia in a white dress with a mantle of blue wool over her shoulders and a blue silk cloth rippling over her hair. But they were not so blue as her eyes, which shone and sparkled in her luminous pale face. He stopped and looked at her, and it seemed that all creation rushed to this one spot and held its breath, waiting, and never had he felt such joy and delight and fear.

“I have been here every day but you have never found me,” said Livia, gravely. “You were looking everywhere, but you have not seen; have you forgotten I lived?”

Marcus stepped slowly toward her.

“For what were you looking, as you dreamed and walked?” asked Livia.

“You,” he said.

She shook her head in wondering denial. “But I was here all the time.”

“If you saw me, why did you not speak?” asked Marcus. He sat on his heels and looked at her, afraid to breathe loudly for fear that she would disappear and she would be only a fantasy again.

“I do not speak to men who ignore me,” she said in a lofty tone.

Then she laughed, her whole face sparkling. “I was in trees and watched you from above. I was behind a trunk, and you passed within paces of me. I sat in grass and felt your footsteps. But you did not find me!”

She has a voice like summer water, thought Marcus.

She was not a girl like others he had seen, in the women’s quarters of his grandfather’s houses, or in the streets with their mothers and servants about them. She was not like the girls he had glimpsed in temples, quietly extending their offerings, and praying. He was a youth and he had been stirred by rounded limbs and rising young bosoms and smooth necks and arms. But it had been a passing emotion, which had embarrassed him later when he had looked at his mother and had wondered about her and his father in bed. In some way the very excitement in his loins had seemed shameful and disloyal to his parents.

But he looked at Livia openly, without embarrassment, and only with the most urgent longing and passionate love, this girl he had seen so briefly once, this girl who might have been a fantasy. He looked at her lips, red and indented on the lower lip. He looked into her eyes, and at the curve of her throat. He looked at her breast and the slenderness of her waist. He looked as a man looks, forgetting everything else.

“You hid from me,” he said. The thought was a delight.

She let leaves slide through her fingers, and her mood changed again and she was serious. She appeared to forget him, as she watched the leaves. The light trembled on her throat, her cheek, her hands.

“Why did you come at all?” he asked her, enchanted.

“I do not know,” she answered. “Who are you? Lucius calls you Chick-pea, or Vetch. You are not rich; you are not noble. You were not born in Rome, but in this lonely place. You are not so handsome as Lucius, who looks like a god. You are not worldly. Your clothing is not rich. You are a country youth. Your conversation was not learned when I saw you last. You will never be invited to great houses; you will never stand in the Forum before multitudes. You are, as my cousin has said, of no consequence.”

She gazed at him candidly.

“Nevertheless, what I have said is of no importance, nor what the others have said. Why have I come here today, and all the other days, to see you even if you did not see me? I do not know.”

She pushed back her masses of glowing hair with restless hands and stared into the distances. “Why did I tell you about my parents? I never speak of them to anyone. Why is the look of you pleasurable to me, and a comforting? Why do I think of you when I awake, a youth I spoke to but once?”

She looked at him and frowned, as if he had offended her.

“Tell me, Marcus Tullius Cicero.”

“I do not know, either,” he said. “But you have seen me searching for you. Why did I search?”

“We ask each other only questions,” she said. “It explains nothing.”

“Nothing can ever be explained,” said Marcus. There was no world; there was only this girl on the pile of crimson leaves, with her white wool chiton outlining her body as noble marble outlines a figure on a monument.

She considered. Then she said, “It is because you speak like me, and think like me. No matter what I say you do not smile as if at folly. When I am with you it is as wonderful as if I were alone. I am not conscious that you are another being.”

Marcus, who was never in love before, said a wise thing: “That is the essence of oneness, that one is not alienated, not aware that another is a separate being, but only one with one’s self.”

He was suddenly dazzled, for the girl’s face was radiant. “Yes, it is so,” she said. “It is what my parents must have known.”

She held out her hand frankly to him, and he fell on his knees before her and took the white and slender fingers. She made a murmurous sound of satisfaction and she smiled at him tenderly.

A ragged oak leaf, large and scarlet, drifted down from the tree and settled directly on the girl’s left breast and lay there on the whiteness of her clothing like a splash of blood. It was a little wet and it moved with her breath and she was unaware of it.

Marcus was a Roman, and Romans are superstitious, and a long stiffening ran over his body as he looked at that leaf which resembled nothing more than a bleeding wound. It was nothing to him that his logical mind cried that he was absurd and that this was only a leaf. A curious darkening seemed suddenly to invade the forests, in which the girl’s face was as white as death and her eyes too still. The evil splash on her breast appeared to expand ominously. Marcus felt all the fear and dread that he had experienced when he had dreamed of the violent death of his beloved brother, Quintus, and he shuddered.

“What is it, Marcus?” asked Livia.

He reached out and took the leaf, and she watched in wonderment, bewildered by the pallor of his cheeks and the trembling of his lips. He flung the leaf from him, and it was as if he had removed something evil and hideous. “It was only a leaf,” he said. He clasped the girl’s hand firmly; he was sweating a little even in the coolness of the forest and he could hear his heart in his ears. The girl’s eyes narrowed with curiosity and they were brilliantly blue. “Something has disturbed your mind,” she said. “Has a god whispered something to you?”

This disturbed Marcus even more. He knew of premonitions; he had had them on several occasions and Archias had scoffed at him. Only a short time ago he had dreamed that the gutters of Rome were filled with bleeding and howling men, and Archias had laughed. Yet something was now happening in Rome and in Italy, and he, heedless youth! had not been listening to the alarmed conversation of his grandfather. His thoughts had been with this girl.

She suddenly pulled her hands from his and jumped to her feet, even while he was struggling with his thoughts and trying to control them. She ran from him through the aisle of the forest, and it was some moments before he could get up and follow her. Now she was waiting, in full autumn sunshine, on the bridge, leaning over the parapet and watching the green water.

“Listen to the rivers sing,” she said as he joined her; she did not look at him. “They are singing of the mountains and the forests and the ferns, of nymphs and satyrs and Pan with his pipes, and they are singing of the winter which is coming.”

Marcus had regained some control over his emotions. He watched the green and rushing water; it was full of the voices of Echo, melancholy yet tumultuous and full of longing. The bridge appeared to move and the water to carry it along. The sun was hot on Marcus’ face but there was a cold wind about his shoulders. Livia’s white elbow was near him and he put his hand upon it with something like a fierce protection. She began to sing with the rivers, a strange and murmurous song, and she was far from the youth at her side.

“You must not marry Lucius Catilina,” he said.

She sang a little more, then turned her head idly and looked at him.

“But I have been betrothed to him since I was ten years old,” she said. “Why must I not marry him?”

“He is evil,” said Marcus.

The girl half-turned her body and gazed at him thoughtfully. “I do not find him so, Marcus. The opinions of one man are not always the opinions of others. To me, Lucius is very amusing and full of enchantment; he looks like a god. He has a great name. I am rich. It is a fair exchange.”

“Nevertheless, he is evil.”

“Because you two are enemies?” The girl’s eyes were a little mocking.

“No. It was my belief from the beginning, before we fought. He is cruel and without mercy. He strikes at the weakest and the smallest. He has the fascination and beauty of a deadly animal.” Marcus paused. “He will cause you suffering, and that I cannot bear to contemplate, Livia, because I love you.”

She shook her head in denial. “You must not say that to me, for I am betrothed. My guardians have arranged it. It is a matter of honor; one does not repudiate such. No, you must not say you love me, for that I must not hear.”

She laughed sweetly, and the blue of her eyes glittered. “You have not yet gone through the ceremonies of adolescence, but Lucius is a man, and it is to a man that I am betrothed. I am fourteen years old, and of an age to marry. Should I repudiate Lucius my own honor would be lost, and I am an obedient girl and my guardians know best. You must not speak to me of this again.”

Marcus was desperate. “But, in the forest you declared that what we felt for each other was what your parents felt for each other! Shall you deny that?”

Her face became clouded. “What has that to do with marriage? It is good and beautiful to dream, but marriage is not for dreamers. My mother was a willful girl; she was betrothed to another, and then she loved my father. Against all the wishes of her parents she married him, against the tears of her mother who had seen an omen. She offended the gods, and especially Juno, the virtuous matron. I have told you how they died, my parents. I dare not invoke the wrath of the gods against us, Marcus.”

“You will invoke calamity,” said Marcus, still gripping her elbow. The feel of her warm white flesh in his hand made him reckless.

“So you say.” The girl was curious again. “Are you a seer, Marcus?”

“I do not know! But I have strange dreams and premonitions!”

The girl made the sign against the evil eye and she was troubled. But she said, “Let us be sensible, for a moment. I am betrothed; you are not even a man. We must not speak of it again. You frighten me.”

She pulled her elbow from his hand and ran from him down the arch of the bridge to the mainland, her clothing whirling in the wind. She did not look back.

“Come tomorrow!” cried Marcus after her. But she did not answer. As quickly as she had disappeared before she disappeared now, and there was only sunshine and wind with him and he was alone on the bridge.

Desolation sickened him. He looked at his hands on the parapet and he had the sensation that they did not belong to him because they were empty and meaningless. He heard the rustling of dead leaves; a cloud of scarlet oak leaves fluttered in the air and fell on the green water and they were washed away. Somewhere a bird called. The forest lay on either side of the bridge, gold and red and dark purple, filled with hollow bluish light. But it was no longer beautiful to Marcus, overwhelmed as he was with his terrible forebodings. He believed that in some way he could and must rescue Livia from awful danger. He thought of Lucius Sergius Catilina and so intense were his emotions that he was seized with a desire to kill and destroy, a desire so alien to his nature that it appeared to him that he must be going mad. He thought of all that Lucius was, and he said aloud, beating a clenched fist on the parapet, “No. No!” He looked at Arpinum on its hill and at the silver of the olive groves about it and its cypresses, and it took on a sinister light to him in the autumn sun, as if it hid evil secrets.

Then heavily he returned to the island and walked miserably along the bank, occasionally glancing at Arpinum, which changed its aspect as he walked. Whom could he consult? What god should he invoke? To whom could he tell his desperate fears and his crushed longing? There was his mother. She knew or knew of all the great families of Rome. He experienced a sudden relief. He did not need philosophy now, from Archias, nor the latter’s poetry; he did not need the stare of his grandfather’s eyes and the mention of honor and the pledged word; he did not need his father’s faith in God and obedience. He needed the sensible advice of his mother, who had no philosophy except that concerning a woman’s household, no poetry except work, no hopeless resignation.

He came on Quintus, squatting and fishing on a steep bank. He was dropping the bait into the rustling water and swinging it about. Beside him lay a basket of reeds, and in that basket writhed a number of jeweled fish.

Marcus was always happy to see his younger brother. Quintus’ olive-tinted face, smooth and bright, was flushed with rose. His eyes were almost blue in the sunshine, for they were as changeful as his mother’s, but more lively and vigorous. His thick black curls poured over his sturdy round skull and down his nape. His shoulders were broad and muscular under his brown tunic, and his bare knees were domes of strength, his toes clutching the muddy bank.

“Why not use a net?” asked Marcus. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the bridge clearly.

“Then I should have only fish,” said Quintus, reasonably.

“Is that not the object?” said Marcus, squatting beside him and looking with distaste and pity on the dying fish in the basket.

“Not at all,” said Quintus. “A net gives fish no opportunity; they are merely dragged from the water to be eaten. But this pole makes the contest between me and them equal; it also gives me pleasure to outwit a fish and deceive him and lure him to my bait. Fish are very clever, indeed, and are not easily deceived.”

He sounded, thought Marcus, with affection, exactly like his sensible mother. At that moment Quintus gave an exultant cry, flung the pole up into the air. A fish had taken the bait, and it was a wet, gemmed flash of colors against the sky. It struggled in the air. Quintus deftly pulled in the thin flaxen rope, seized the fish and disengaged it and dropped it triumphantly into the basket. “We shall have a good dinner!” he exclaimed. The fish plopped desperately on the bodies of its mates.

“It seems cruel,” said Marcus.

“You did not say that a few days ago when they were broiled in fat and lay on your plate,” said Quintus.

“I did not know how beautiful they were,” said Marcus.

“You need not eat these,” said his brother, casting his bait again. “There will be more for me. Do you prefer to eat weeds? Like our father, who shudders at meats since he became fond of a little goat?”

Marcus did not answer. Quintus said, artfully dangling his bait, “I saw a spider a moment ago devouring a beautiful butterfly, a harmless creature all red and white. The spider was ugly. Nevertheless, it lives according to its nature. When the butterfly was only a worm it devoured fruit, and left the fruit worthless for our eating. That was its nature. The hawk takes the pretty rabbit, and the pretty rabbit destroys our mother’s garden, which she lays in the spring. The eagle takes the hawk, which eats vermin.”

“A philosopher,” said Marcus with indulgence. “Is Archias teaching you well, then?”

Quintus made a comical face. “Archias has only thoughts. I have observation. What a thing it is to be a philosopher! One’s stomach is never revolted.”

He caught another fish and Marcus averted his eyes. He saw the distant bridge. He remembered Quintus’ arch, sly glance. “Did you see me at the bridge?” he asked.

“With that girl?” said Quintus. “Yes. Who is she?”

“She is visiting in Arpinum. Her name is Livia Curius.”

“You were very interested in her,” said Quintus, preparing new bait. “I could see that she seemed pretty. Are you going to marry her?”

Marcus felt a deep convulsion in his heart. “I wish to,” he muttered.

“She ran away,” said Quintus. “Like a nymph. Girls are tiresome. And, is she not very free, to be wandering away alone from her relatives? She ran wildly, too. Did you offend her?”

“I do not know,” said Marcus.

“You have seen her before?” asked Quintus, with deep interest.

“Yes.”

“But we do not know her.”

“I do.”

“Then you must speak to Grandfather and our mother, Marcus.”

“To our mother, Quintus. I have already decided that.”

“She is wiser than Grandfather, our father, and Archias put together,” said the young boy. “There is no folly in her. If you want that girl and mother is pleased, then she will contrive that you have her.”

“It is not so easy. She is betrothed to Lucius Catilina.”

Quintus frowned. “She is content?”

“She obeys her guardians.”

Quintus shook his head. “Then you must seek another wife.”

Marcus stood up. He looked down at his brother’s head, then tugged playfully at the glossy black curls. “It is not so easy,” he repeated, and went away. He thought that Quintus immediately forgot him in his sport. But the younger boy looked after his brother and his face was disturbed. Quintus knew of the stern stubbornness of Marcus and his quiet resistance when opposed on important things. It was far less arduous to move a heavy stone than Marcus when his will was set. He had the strength of ambushed armies.

Marcus found his mother as usual among her slave girls, spinning industriously, for she was preparing the new blankets for the winter. She saw his face and dismissed the girls kindly, twisted a recalcitrant thread then remarked, “You are troubled. What is it, my son?”

He sat on a stool near her and she stopped spinning for a moment or two. “Do you know the Curius family, my mother?”

Helvia considered, then she inclined her head. “Not closely, but enough. They have fallen on degenerate days, all but one branch of the family. What have they to do with you, Marcus?”

He found, to his astonishment, that he could speak freely to his mother and tell her of Livia. The spinning wheel was humming again; Marcus could see his mother’s profile, thoughtful, full of life and youthful vitality and color. Her expression was never mobile; once she frowned slightly at the mention of Lucius Sergius Catilina. Otherwise she listened with calm passivity, sometimes smoothing a thread. Her plump feet never stopped at the wheel. The late sunshine touched her riotous black curls, as glossy as Quintus’. Then when he had finished she dropped her hands in her lap and fixed her beautiful eyes on her son and considered him.

“You will not be a man until the spring,” she said. “Yet, you are in love. I speak no ridicule. I saw your father from behind a curtain in the women’s quarters of my father’s house. He had come to visit with his father. When I saw him I fell in love at once. He seemed a young Hermes to me, and I was no older than your Livia.”

“Hermes? My father?” said Marcus, who thought the imagery very humorous. She was smiling at him, as if following his thoughts. “I, too, was young,” she said. “I told my father that night that there would be no other for me. I was not betrothed to another; no word of honor had as yet been given. My father was not agreeable, but I was his only daughter and one knows how men dote on their daughters. It was much of a surprise to your father,” Helvia added, her eyes fixed on those days. “I think it frightened him. He was hardly older than you. If he could indeed have taken flight I am certain he would have done so. But wiser heads prevailed. Including mine.”

I, too, have been wise, in consulting my mother, thought Marcus. But he could hardly believe that once springtime had run wildly in his mother’s veins.

Helvia said, “But in the case of your Livia—and how fearful it is now that young girls run about so freely and meet strangers in strange places—the honorable pledge has been given. She is betrothed. Troth is not pledged lightly, even in these days of the decline of our country. You have not said she is unwilling.”

“No,” said Marcus. “But she is young. She does not know Lucius.”

Helvia smiled. “Women know more than you know. However, I agree with you that the Catilinii, though a great patrician family, have become very wicked and decadent. Still, wicked men have been known to adore their wives. Moreover, she spoke of honorable troth, did she not?”

“Yes, it is so. But she does not know truly of Lucius’ character. She spoke of him as enchanting.”

“All the Catilinii are remarkably handsome. And remarkably vicious.” Now Helvia was no longer detached. “That girl is not for you, Marcus; I know of the tragedy of her parents. The girl spoke to you of her parents and did not reproach her father for his willing death. Nevertheless, though she spoke bravely, and with the innocent heart of a young girl, she did not truly forgive her father for deserting her, and she a child of but five years.”

She looked at her son straightly. “The girl is afraid to love. She does not love Lucius—therefore, troth or not, she prefers him to you. Love would engross her, enchain her. She would marry one who merely attracts her pleasurably with his appearance. But, if she loves you, and if she married you in two or three years, it would make her miserable. She would live in terror of your death. It is not well to have such passion, and children inherit their parents’ passion. There is violence in your Livia, a recklessness which was her father’s. No, Marcus, she is not for my son.”

Marcus was sick with wretchedness. His practical mother seemed to have become his enemy. “But I love her,” he said. “I shall die if she marries Lucius.”

“What nonsense,” said Helvia, beginning to spin again. “Let us consult together, Marcus. You are going to Greece to study; it is your father’s wish. It was his own wish, too, and his father opposed it strenuously. Your father thought that he would spend years roaming the Acropolis at Athens, and wandering through the colonnades of the Parthenon, in eternal blue sunlight, among wise men, conversing. Even when your grandfather said he would give him no money he was not disturbed. Where he would sleep, where he would be sheltered, with what he would buy bread and books, did not occur to him. He would merely gaze, as he said, ‘upon the silver city on the silver sea.’ It took a long time to convince him that silver cities on silver seas require drachmas also, and the Greeks would not feed him for nothing, nor would they shelter him without money. What dreams men weave, beyond the boundaries of commonsense and finance! He still remembers his dreams; he wishes them fulfilled in you.

“Moreover,” said Helvia, “you are not like your father. You are more like your grandfather, whom I respect for all he is a fractious old man. He is sensible. I, too, believe that you will not wander, dreaming, on the Acropolis. You will learn from the wise men. I have not underestimated you, though I worry about your health.

“You have said you will die if you do not have your Livia; men do not die for love. That is but poetry, and life is not poetry. You will go to Greece; your Livia will live in your mind as something sublime and I will not quarrel with that. In the meantime, she will become a factual matron. To you, however, in Greece, she will remain forever young, forever inaccessible, forever lost, and that will bequeath you a beautiful memory. The gods grant that you never encounter her later, surrounded by children, and gossiping merrily with her friends!

“You have work to do in the world. You are a Roman. It is the duty of a Roman not to forget his country for any girl. You must be intelligent and worthy. And you must remember that Livia is honorably bound to Lucius. Honor, above all, is the way of great men.”

Each of her sensible and forthright words was a stone falling on Marcus’ wounded heart. “I shall never forget Livia,” he said.

“Do not forget her, then. But do not forget your duty and your future, and your father’s dreams for you. And, for that matter, my dreams for you, and your grandfather’s. You owe that duty to your family. You owe it to Rome.”

“I shall never forget Livia,” Marcus repeated.

She looked at his locked, pale face, and for a moment she was afraid.

“Do not forget her,” she urged. “But never try to see her again. Let her be for you forever the silvery Artemis, the unconquered, the adorable one. It will light the dull days of your future life, and there are many dull days in living. What is a life without a dream?”

“What dreams do you have, my mother?” asked Marcus with resentment.

She smiled at him with wry wonder. “My dreams are the dreams of Cornelia, who had her jewels in her sons. What more can a mother ask, that her sons will never dishonor her, but that she may move among her friends and hear their praises? For what else do I dream?”

“You have left out love,” said Marcus, stubbornly.

“Do I not love your father and his children?” said Helvia, with a rare anger. “What would your father be without me? I have given him sons; I attend to his household and make him comfortable. I let him go his ways with his books and his esoteric conversations with that Greek poet. I conserve his substance. His life is pleasanter for me, and easy. Because I love him.”

She smiled. “I have never disturbed his dreams. I have never shattered his illusions. He should be grateful to me.”

Then she became stern again. “There is more to a man’s life than the love of women. Go to, Marcus, and become a man.”

Marcus, in his despair, thought of speaking to his father, and Helvia must have heard his thoughts. “Speak to Archias if you will, and he will write a poem for you which you may cherish all the days of your life.”

She recalled her slave girls. “In the meantime, there are blankets to make and your clothing to be finished for the great festivities. Go and lay flowers before a statue of Venus and sacrifice a pair of doves to her, and tell her of your love for Livia. On second thought, no. Venus is a dangerous divinity and brings disaster to mankind. Did she not give Helen to Paris, and in that giving did she not give death to Troy? What fearful things has she not wrought among men! I think,” said Helvia with compassion not untouched by maternal malice, “that it would be better to sacrifice to your patroness, Pallas Athene, and implore her to send you the wisdom you need.”

Marcus, dismissed, left the women’s quarters in anguish.

“I shall never forget Livia,” he vowed to himself. “Nor shall I relinquish her so lightly. Do not Romans say, ‘He is able who thinks he is able?’ Yes. I have not seen the last of Livia, my love.”

But Livia never came to the island again.

In the meantime even the miserable youth could no longer escape the news from Rome, and he listened with great and starting fear for his country. The family returned to Rome. It was no longer safe for them in Arpinum.