Serapis Part 7

"A freeborn girl-parents Christian-comes from Antioch..." replied Irenaeus. "Sold to a heathen master-commanded to serve idols-has run away and now has doubts..."

"You have told her to which Lord her service is due?" interrupted the Bishop. Then, turning to Agne, he said: "And why did you come here instead of going to the deacon of your own church?"

"We have only been here a few days," replied the girl timidly, as she ventured to raise her eyes to the handsome face of this princely prelate, whose fine, pale features looked as if they had been carved out of marble.

"Then go to partake of the sacred Eucharist in the basilica of Mary," replied the Bishop. "It is just now the hour-but no, stop. You are a stranger here you say; you have run away from your master-and you are young, very young and very.... It is dark too. Where are you intending to sleep?"

"I do not know," said Agne, and her eyes filled with tears.

"That is what I call courage!" murmured Theophilus to the priest, and then he added to Agne: "Well, thanks to the saints, we have asylums for such as you, here in the city. That scribe will give you a doc.u.ment which will secure your admission to one. So you come from Antioch? Then there is the refuge of Seleucus of Antioch. To what parish-[Parochia in Latin]-did your parents belong?"

"To that of John the Baptist?"

"Where Damascius was the preacher?"

"Yes, holy Father. He was the shepherd of our souls."

"What! Damascius the Arian?" cried the Bishop. He drew his fine and stately figure up to its most commanding height and closed his thin lips in august contempt, while Irenaeus, clasping his hands in horror, asked her: "And you-do you, too, confess the heresy of Arius?"

"My parents were Arians," replied Agne in much surprise. "They taught me to wors.h.i.+p the G.o.dlike Saviour."

"Enough!" exclaimed the Bishop severely. "Come Irenaeus."

He nodded to the priest to follow him, opened the curtain and went in first with supreme dignity.

Agne stood as if a thunderbolt had fallen, pale, trembling and desperate. Then was she not a Christian? Was it a sin in a child to accept the creed of her parents? And were those who, after charitably extending a saving hand, had so promptly withdrawn it-were they Christians in the full meaning of the All-merciful Redeemer?

Agonizing doubts of everything that she had hitherto deemed sacred and inviolable fell upon her soul; doubts of everything in heaven and earth, and not merely of Christ and of his G.o.dlike, or divine goodness-for what difference was there to her apprehension in the meaning of the two words which set man to hunt and persecute man? In the distress and hopeless dilemma in which she found herself, she shed no tears; she simply stood rooted to the spot where she had heard the Bishop's verdict.

Presently her attention was roused by the shrill voice of an old writer who called out to one of the younger a.s.sistants.

"That girl disturbs me, Petubastis; show her out." Petubastis, a pretty Egyptian lad, was more than glad of an interruption to his work which somehow seemed endless to-day; he put aside his implements, stroked back the black hair that had fallen over his face, and removing the reed-pen from behind his ear, stuck in a sprig of dark blue larkspur. Then he tripped to the door, opened it, looked at the girl with the cool impudence of a connoisseur in beauty, bowed slightly, and pointing the way out said with airified politeness: "Allow me!"

Agne at once obeyed and with a drooping head left the room; but the young Egyptian stole out after her, and as soon as the door was shut he seized her hand and said in a whisper: "If you can wait half an hour at the bottom of the stairs, pretty one, I will take you somewhere where you will enjoy yourself."

She had stopped to listen, and looked enquiringly into his face, for she had no suspicion of his meaning; the young fellow, encouraged by this, laid his hand on her shoulder and would have drawn her towards him but that she, thrusting him from her as if he were some horrible animal, flew down the steps as fast as her feet could carry her, and through the courtyard back into the great entrance-hall.

Here all was, by this time, dark and still; only a few lamps lighted the pillared s.p.a.ce and the flare of a torch fell upon the benches placed there for the accommodation of priests, laymen and supplicants generally.

Utterly worn out-whether by terror or disappointment or by hunger and fatigue she scarcely knew-she sank on a seat and buried her face in her hands.

During her absence the wounded had been conveyed to the sick-houses; one only was left whom they had not been able to move. He was lying on a mattress between two of the columns at some little distance from Agne, and the light of a lamp, standing on a medicine-chest, fell on his handsome but bloodless features. A deaconess was kneeling at his head and gazed in silence in the face of the dead, while old Eusebius crouched prostrate by his side, resting his cheek on the breast of the man whose eyes were sealed in eternal sleep. Two sounds only broke the profound silence of the deserted hall: an occasional faint sob from the old man and the steady step of the soldiers on guard in front of the Bishop's palace. The widow, kneeling with clasped hands, never took her eyes off the face of the youth, nor moved for fear of disturbing the deacon who, as she knew, was praying-praying for the salvation of the heathen soul s.n.a.t.c.hed away before it could repent. Many minutes pa.s.sed before the old man rose, dried his moist eyes, pressed his lips to the cold hand of the dead and said sadly: "So young-so handsome-a masterpiece of the Creator's hand!... Only to-day as gay as a lark, the pride and joy of his mother-and now! How many hopes, how much triumph and happiness are extinct with that life. O Lord my Saviour, Thou hast said that not only those who call Thee Lord, Lord, shall find grace with our Father in Heaven, and that Thou hast shed Thy blood for the salvation even of the heathen-save, redeem this one! Thou that are the Good Shepherd, have mercy on this wandering sheep!"

Stirred to the bottom of his soul the old man threw up his arms and gazed upwards rapt in ecstasy. But presently, with an effort, he said to the deaconess: "You know, Sister, that this lad was the only son of Berenice, the widow of Asclepiodorus, the rich s.h.i.+powner. Poor, bereaved mother! Only yesterday he was driving his guadriga out of the gate on the road to Marea, and now-here! Go and tell her of this terrible occurrence. I would go myself but that, as I am a priest, it might be painful to her to learn of his tragic end from one of the very men against whom the poor darkened youth had drawn the sword. So do you go, Sister, and treat the poor soul very tenderly; and if you find it suitable show her very gently that there is One who has balm for every wound, and that we-we and all who believe in Him-lose what is dear to us only to find it again. Tell her of hope: Hope is everything. They say that green is the color of hope, for it is the spring-tide of the heart. There may be a Spring for her yet."

The deaconess rose, pressed a kiss on the eyes of the dead youth, promised Eusebius that she would do her best and went away. He, too, was about to leave when he heard a sound of low sobbing from one of the benches. He stood still to listen, shook his old head, and muttering to himself: "Great G.o.d-merciful and kind.... Thou alone canst know wherefore Thou hast set the rose-garland of life with so many sharp thorns," he went up to Agne who rose at his approach.

"Why, my child," he said kindly, "what are you weeping for? Have you, too, lost some dear one killed in the fray?"

"No, no," she hastily replied with a gesture of terror at the thought.

"What then do you want here at so late an hour?"

"Nothing-nothing," she said. "That is all over! Good G.o.d, how long I must have been sitting here-I-I know I must go; yes, I know it."

"And are you alone-no one with you?"

She shook her head sadly. The old man looked at her narrowly.

"Then I will take you safe home," he said. "You see I am an old man and a priest. Where do you live, my child?"

"I? I..." stammered Agne, and a torrent of scalding tears fell down her cheeks. "My G.o.d! my G.o.d! where, where am I to go?"

"You have no home, no one belonging to you?" asked the old man. "Come, child, pluck up your courage and tell me truly what it is that troubles you; perhaps I may be able to help you."

"You?" she said with bitter melancholy. "Are not you one of the Bishop's priests?"

"I am a deacon, and Theophilus is the head of my church; but for that very reason..."

"No," said Agne sharply, "I will deceive no one. My parents were Arians, and as my beliefs are the same as theirs the Bishop has driven me away as an outcast, finally and without pity."

"Indeed," said Eusebius. "Did the Bishop do that? Well, as the head of a large community of Christians he, of course, is bound to look at things in their widest aspect; small things, small people can be nothing to him. I, on the contrary, am myself but a small personage, and I care for small things. You know, child, that the Lord has said 'that in his Father's kingdom there are many mansions,' and that in which Arius dwells is not mine; but it is in the Father's kingdom nevertheless. It cannot be so much amiss after all that you should cling to the creed of your parents. What is your name?"

"Agne."

"Agne, or the lamb. A pretty, good name! It is a name I love, as I, too, am a shepherd, though but a very humble one, so trust yourself to me, little lamb. Tell me, why are you crying? And whom do you seek here? And how is it that you do not know where to find a home?"

Eusebius spoke with such homely kindness, and his voice was so full of fatherly sympathy that hope revived in Agne's breast, and she told him with frank confidence all he wanted to know.

The old man listened with many a "Hum" and "Ha"-then he bid her accompany him to his own house, where his wife would find a corner that she might fill.

She gladly agreed, and thanked him eagerly when he also told the doorkeeper to bring Papias after them if he should be found. Relieved of the worst of her griefs, Agne followed her new friend through the streets and lanes, till they paused at the gate of a small garden and he said: "Here we are. What we have we give gladly, but it is little, very little. Indeed, who can bear to live in luxury when so many are peris.h.i.+ng in want and misery?"

As they went across the plot, between the little flower-beds, the deacon pointed to a tree and said with some pride: "Last year that tree bore me three hundred and seven peaches, and it is still healthy and productive."

A hospitable light twinkled in the little house at the end of the garden, and as they entered a queer-looking dog came out to meet his master, barking his welcome. He jumped with considerable agility on his fore-legs, but his hind legs were paralyzed and his body sloped away and stuck up in the air as though it were attached to an invisible board.

"This is my good friend Lazarus," said the old man cheerfully. "I found the poor beggar in the road one day, and as he was one of G.o.d's creatures, although he is a cripple, I comfort myself with the verse from the Psalms: 'The Lord has no joy in the strength of a horse, neither taketh he pleasure in any man's legs.'"

He was so evidently content and merry that Agne could not help laughing too, and when, in a few minutes, the deacon's wife gave her a warm and motherly reception she would have been happier than she had been for a long time past, if only her little brother had not been a weight on her mind and if she had not longed so sadly to have him safe by her side. But even that anxiety presently found relief, for she was so weary and exhausted that, after eating a few mouthfuls, she was thankful to lie down in the clean bed that Elizabeth had prepared for her, and she instantly fell asleep. She was in the old deacon's bed, and he made ready to pa.s.s the night on the couch in his little sitting-room.

As soon as the old couple were alone Eusebius told his wife how and where he had met the girl and ended by saying: "It is a puzzling question as to these Arians and other Christian heretics. I cannot be hard on them so long as they cling faithfully to the One Lord who is necessary to all. If we are in the right-and I firmly believe that we are-and the Son is of one substance of the Father, he is without spot or blemish; and what can be more divine than to overlook the error of another if it concerns ourselves, or what more meanly human than to take such an error amiss and indulge in a cruel or sanguinary revenge on the erring soul? Do not misunderstand me. I, unfortunately-or rather, I say, thank G.o.d!-I have done nothing great here on earth, and have never risen to be anything more than a deacon. But if a boy comes up to me and mistakes me for an acolyte or something of that kind, is that a reason why I should flout or punish him? Not a bit of it.

"And to my belief our Saviour is too purely divine to hate those who regard Him as only 'G.o.d-like.' He is Love. And when Arius goes to Heaven and sees Jesus Christ in all His divine glory, and falls down before Him in an ecstasy of joy and repentance, the worst the Lord will do to him will be to take him by the ear and say: 'Thou fool! Now thou seest what I really am; but thine errors be forgiven!'"

Elizabeth nodded a.s.sent. "Amen," she said, "so be it.-And so, no doubt, it will be. Did the Lord cast out the woman taken in adultery? Did he not give us the parable of the Samaritan?-Poor little girl! We have often wished for a daughter and now we have found one; a pretty creature she is too. G.o.d grants us all our wishes! But you must be tired, old man; go to rest now."

"Directly, directly," said Eusebius; but then, striking his forehead with his hand, he went on in much annoyance: "And with all this tumult and worry I had quite forgotten the most important thing of all: Marcus! He is like a possessed creature, and if I do not make a successful appeal to his conscience before he sleeps this night mischief will come of it. Yes, I am very tired; but duty before rest. It is of no use to contradict me, Mother. Get me my cloak; I must go to the lad." And a few minutes later the old man was making his way to the house in the Canopic street.

CHAPTER XV.

Dread and anxiety had taken possession of the merchant's household after Constantine had left them. Messengers came hurrying in, one after another, to request the presence of Olympius. A heathen secretary of Evagrius the Governor, had revealed what was astir, and the philosopher had at once prepared to return to the Serapeum. Porphyrius himself ordered his closed harmamaxa to be brought out, and undertook to fetch weapons and standards to the temple from a storehouse where they were laid by. This building stood on a plot of ground belonging to him in Rhacotis, behind a timber-yard which was accessible from the streets in front and behind, but sheltered from the public gaze by sheds and wood-stacks.

The old aqueduct, which supplied the courts of sacrifice and the Subterranean crypts of the temple where the mysteries of Serapis were celebrated, pa.s.sed close by the back-wall of this warehouse. Since the destruction of the watercourse, under the Emperor Julian, the underground conduit had been dry and empty, and a man by slightly stooping could readily pa.s.s through it unseen into the Serapeum. This mysterious pa.s.sage had lately been secretly cleared out, and it was now to be used for the transport of the arms to the temple precincts.

Damia had been present at the brief but vehement interview between her son and Olympius, and had thrown in a word now and again: "It is serious, very serious!" or, "Fight it out-no quarter!"

The parting was evidently a very painful one to Olympius; when the merchant held out both his hands the older man clasped them in his and held them to his breast, saying: "Thanks, my friend; thanks for all you have done. We have lived-and if now we perish it is for the future happiness of our grandchildren. What would life be to you and me if it were marred by scourgings and questionings?-The omens read ill, and if I am not completely deceived we are at the beginning of the end. What lies beyond!... we as philosophers must meet it calmly. The supreme Mind that governs us has planned the universe so well, that it is not likely that those things of which we now have no knowledge should not also be ordered for the best. The pinions of my soul beat indeed more freely and lightly as I foresee the moment when it shall be released from the burden of this fles.h.!.+"

The High-Priest raised his arms as though indeed he were prepared to soar and uttered a fervent and inspired prayer in which he rehea.r.s.ed to the G.o.ds all that he and his had done in their honor and vowed to offer them fresh sacrifices. His expressions were so lofty, and his flow of language so beautiful and free, that Porphyrius did not dare to interrupt him, though this long delay on the part of the leader of the cause made him intolerably anxious. When the old man-who was as emotional as a boy-ceased speaking, his white beard was wet with tears, and seeing that even Damia's and Gorgo's eyes were moist, he was preparing to address them again; but Porphyrius interposed. He gave him time only to press his lips to Datnia's hand and to bid Gorgo farewell.

"You were born into stirring times," he said to her, "but under a good sign. Two worlds are in collision; which shall survive?-For you, my darling, I have but one wish: May you be happy!"

He left the room and the merchant paced up and down lost in gloomy thoughts. Presently, as he caught his mother's eye fixed uneasily upon him, he murmured, less to her than to himself: "If he can think thus of what the end will be, who can still dare to hope?" Damia drew herself up in her chair.

"I," she exclaimed pa.s.sionately, "I-I dare, and I do hope and trust in the future. Is everything to perish which our forefathers planned and founded? Is this dismal superst.i.tion to overwhelm and bury the world and all that is bright and beautiful, as the lava stream rolled over the cities of Vesuvius? No, a thousand times no! Our retrograde and cowardly generation, which has lost all heart to enjoy life in sheer dread of future annihilation, may perhaps be doomed by the G.o.ds, as was that of Deucalion's day. Well-if so, what must be must! But such a world as they dream of never can, never will last. Let them succeed in their monstrous scheme! if the Temple of temples, the House of Serapis, were to be in ashes and the image of the mighty G.o.d to be dashed to pieces, what then.... I say what then? Then indeed everything will be at an end-we, everybody; but they too, they, too, will perish."

She clenched her fist with hatred and revenge and went on: "I know what I know-there are legible and infallible signs, and it is given to me to interpret them, and I tell you: It is true, unerringly true, as every Alexandrian child has learnt from its nurse: When Serapis falls the earth will collapse like a dry puff-ball under a horse's hoof. A hundred oracles have announced it, it is written in the prophecies of the heavenly bodies, and in the scroll of Fate. Let them be! Let it come! The end is sweet to those who, in the hour of death, can see the enemy thrust the sword into his own breast."

The old woman sank back panting and gasping for breath, but Gorgo hastened to support her in her arms and she soon recovered. Hardly had she opened her eyes again than, seeing her son still in the room, she went on angrily: "You-here still? Do you think there is any time to spare? They will be waiting, waiting for you! You have the key and they need weapons."

"I know what I am about," replied Porphyrius calmly. "All in good time. I shall be on the spot long before the youngsters have a.s.sembled. Cyrus will bring me the pa.s.s-words and signs; I shall send off the messengers, and then I shall still be in time for action."

"Messengers! To whom?"

"To Barkas. He is at the head of more than a thousand Libyan peasants and slaves. I shall send one, too, to Pachomius to bid him win us over adherents among the Biamite fishermen and the population of the eastern Delta."

"Right, right-I know. Twenty talents-Pachomius is poor-twenty talents shall be his, out of my private coffer, if only they are here in time."

"I would give ten, thirty times as much if they were only here now!" cried the merchant, giving way for the first time to the expression of his real feelings. "When I began life my father taught me the new superst.i.tions. Its chains still hang about me; but in this fateful hour I feel more strongly than ever, and I mean to show, that I am faithful to the old G.o.ds. We will not be wanting; but alas! there is no escape for us now if the Imperial party are staunch. If they fall upon us before Barkas can join us, all is lost; if, on the contrary, Barkas comes at once and in time, there is still some hope; all may yet be well. What can a party of monks do? And as yet only our Constantine's heavy cavalry have come to the a.s.sistance of the two legions of the garrison."

"Our Constantine!" shrieked Damia. "Whose? I ask you, whose? We have nothing to do with that miserable Christian!"

But Gorgo turned upon her at once: "Indeed, grandmother," she exclaimed, quivering with rage, "but we have! He is a soldier and must do his duty; but he is fondly attached to us."

"Us, us?" retorted the old woman with a laugh. "Has he sworn love to you, let me ask? Has he? and you-do you believe him, simple fool? I know him, I know him! Why, for a sc.r.a.p of bread and a drop of wine from the hand of his priest he would see you and all of us plunged into misery! But see, here are the messengers."

Porphyrius gave his instructions to the young men who now entered the hall, hurried them off, clasped Gorgo in a tender embrace and then bent over his mother to kiss her-a thing he had not done for many a day. Old Damia laid aside her stick, and taking her son's face in both her withered hands, muttered a few words which were half a fond appeal and half a magical formula, and then the women were alone. For a long while both were silent. The old woman sat sunk in her arm-chair while Gorgo stood with her back against the pedestal of a bust of Plato, gazing meditatively at the ground. At last it was Damia who spoke, asking to be carried into the women's rooms.

Gorgo, however, stopped her with a gesture, went close to her and said: "No, wait a minute, mother; first you must hear what I have to say."

"What you have to say?" asked her grandmother, shrugging her shoulders.

"Yes. I have never deceived you; but one thing I have hitherto concealed from you because I was never till this morning sure of it myself-now I am. Now I know that I love him."

"The Christian?" said the old woman, pus.h.i.+ng aside a shade that screened her eyes.

"Yes, Constantine; I will not hear you abuse him." Damia laughed sharply, and said in a tone of supreme scorn: "You will not? Then you had better stop your ears, my dear, for as long as my tongue can wag...."

"Hush, grandmother, say no more," said the girl resolutely. "Do not provoke me with more than I can bear. Eros has pierced me later than he does most girls and has done it but once, but how deeply you can never know. If you speak ill of him you only aggravate the wound and you would not be so cruel! Do not-I entreat you; drop the subject or else..."

"Or else?"

"Or else I must die, mother-and you know you love me."

Her tone was soft but firm; her words referred to the future, but that future was as clear to Gorgo's view as if it were past. Damia gave a hasty, sidelong glance at her grandchild, and a cold chill ran through her; the-girl stood and spoke with an air of inspiration-she was full of the divinity as Damia thought, and the old woman herself felt as though she were in a temple and in the immediate presence of the Immortals.

Gorgo waited for a reply, but in vain; and as her grandmother remained silent she went back to her place by the pedestal. At last Damia raised her wrinkled face, looked straight in the girl's eyes and asked: "And what is to be the end of it?"

"Aye-what?" said Gorgo gloomily and she shook her head. "I ask myself and can find no answer, for his image is ever present to me and yet walls and mountains stand between us. That face, that image-I might perhaps force myself to shatter it; but nothing shall ever induce me to let it be defiled or disgraced! Nothing!"

The old woman sank into brooding thought once more; mechanically she repeated Gorgo's last word, and at intervals that gradually became longer she murmured, at last scarcely audibly: "Nothing-nothing!"

She had lost all sense of time and of her immediate surroundings, and long-forgotten sorrows crowded on her memory: The dreadful day when a young freedman-a gifted astronomer and philosopher who had been appointed her tutor, and whom she had loved with all the pa.s.sion of a vehement nature-had been kicked out of her father's house by slaves, for daring to aspire to her hand. She had given him up-she had been forced to do so; and after she was the wife of another and he had risen to fame, she had never given him any token that she had not forgotten him. Two thirds of a century lay between that happy and terrible time, and the present. He had been dead many a long year, and still she remembered him, and was thinking of him even now. A singular effort of fancy showed her herself, as she had then been, and Gorgo-whom she saw not with her bodily eyes, though the girl was standing in front of her-two young creatures side by side. The two were but one in her vision; the same anguish that embittered one life now threatened the other. But after all she, Damia, had dragged this grief after her through the weary decades, like the iron ball at the end of a chain which keeps the galley-slave to his place at the oar, and from which he can no more escape than from a ponderous and ever-present shadow; and Gorgo's sorrow could not at any rate be for long, since the end of all things was at hand-it was coming slowly but with inevitable certainty, nearer and nearer every hour.

When had a troop of enthusiastic students and hastily-collected peasant-soldiers ever been able to snake an effectual stand against the hosts of Rome? Damia, who only a few minutes since had spoken with such determined encouragement to her son, had terrible visions of the Imperial legions putting Olympius to rout, with the Libyans under Barkas and the Biamite rabble under Pachomius; storming the Serapeum and reducing it to ruin: Firebrands flying through its sacred halls, the roof giving way, the vaults falling in; the sublime image of the G.o.d-the magnificent work of Bryaxis-battered by a hail of stones, and sinking to mingle with the reeking dust. Then a cry rose up from all nature, as though every star in heaven, every wave of ocean, every leaf of the forest, every blade in the meadow, every rock on the sh.o.r.e and every grain of sand in the measureless desert had found a voice; and this universal wail of "Woe, woe!" was drowned by rolling thunder such as the ear of man had never heard, and no mortal creature could hear and live. The heavens opened, and out of the black gulf of death-bearing clouds poured streams of fire; consuming flames rose to meet it from the riven womb of earth, rus.h.i.+ng up to lick the sky. What had been air turned to fire and ashes, the silver and gold stars fell cras.h.i.+ng from the firmament, and the heavens themselves bowed and collapsed, burying the ruined earth. Ashes, ashes, fine grey dusty ashes pervaded s.p.a.ce, till presently a hurricane rose and swept away the chaos of gloom, and vast nothingness yawned before her: a bottomless abyss-an insatiable throat, swallowing down with greedy thirst all that was left; till where the world had been, with G.o.ds and men and all their works, there was only nothingness; hideous, inscrutable and unfathomable. And in it, above it, around it-for what are the dimensions of nothingness?-there reigned the incomprehensible Unity of the Primal One, in calm and pitiless self-concentration, beyond-the Real, nay even beyond the Conceivable-for conception implies plurality-the Supreme One of the Neo-Platonists to whose school she belonged.

The old woman's blood ran cold and hot as she pictured the scene; but she believed in it, and chose to believe in it; "Nothing, nothing..." which she had begun by muttering, insensibly changed to "Nothingness, nothingness!" and at last she spoke it aloud.

Gorgo stood spellbound as she gazed at her grandmother. What had come over her? What was the meaning of this glaring eye, this gasping breath, this awful expression in her face, this convulsive action of her hands? Was she mad? And what did she mean by "Nothingness, nothingness..." repeated in a sort of hollow cry?

Terrified beyond bearing she laid her hand on Dalnia's shoulder, saying: "Mother, mother! wake up! What do you mean by saying 'nothingness, nothingness' in that dreadful way?"

Dainia collected her scattered wits, s.h.i.+vered with cold and then said, dully at first, but with a growing cheerfulness that made Gorgo's blood run cold: "Did I say 'nothingness'? Did I speak of the great void, my child? You are quick of hearing. Nothingness-well, you have learnt to think; are you capable of defining the meaning of the word-a monster that has neither head nor tail, neither front nor back-can you, I say, define the idea of nothingness?"

"What do you mean, mother?" said Gorgo with growing alarm.

"No, she does not know, she does not understand," muttered the old woman with a dreary smile. "And yet Melampus told me, only yesterday, that you understood his lesson on conic sections better than many men. Aye, aye, child; I, too, learnt mathematics once, and I still go through various calculations every night in my observatory; but to this day I find it difficult to conceive of a mathematical point. It is nothing and yet it is something. But the great final nothingness!-And that even is nonsense, for it can be neither great nor small, and come neither sooner nor later. Is it not so, my sweet? Think of nothing-who cannot do that; but it is very hard to imagine nothingness. We can neither of us achieve that. Not even the One has a place in it. But what is the use of racking our brains? Only wait till to-morrow or the day after; something will happen then which will reduce our own precious persons and this beautiful world to that nothingness which to-day is inconceivable. It is coming; I can hear from afar the brazen tramp of the airy and incorporeal monster. A queer sort of giant-smaller than the mathematical point of which we were speaking, and yet vast beyond all measurement. Aye, aye; our intelligence, polyp-like, has long arms and can apprehend vast size and wide extent; but it can no more conceive of nothingness than it can of infinite s.p.a.ce or time.

"I was dreaming that this monstrous Nought had come to his kingdom and was opening a yawning mouth and toothless jaws to swallow its all down into the throat that it has not got-you, and me, and your young officer, with this splendid, recreant city and the sky and the earth. Wait, only wait! The glorious image of Serapis still stands radiant, but the cross casts an ominous shadow that has already darkened the light over half the earth! Our G.o.ds are an abomination to Caesar, and Cynegius only carries out his wishes..."

Here Damia was interrupted by the steward, who rushed breathless into the room, exclaiming: "Lost! All is lost! An edict of Theodosius commands that every temple of the G.o.ds shall be closed, and the heavy cavalry have dispersed our force."

"Ah ha!" croaked the old woman in shrill accents. "You see, you see! There it is: the beginning of the end! Yes-your cavalry are a powerful force. They are digging a grave-wide and deep, with room in it for many: for you, for me, and for themselves, too, and for their Prefect.-Call Argus, man, and carry me into the Gynaeconitis-[The women's apartment]-and there tell us what has happened." In the women's room the steward told all he knew, and a sad tale it was; one thing, however, gave him some comfort: Olympius was at the Serapeunt and had begun to fortify the temple, and garrison it with a strong force of adherents.

Damia had definitively given up all hope, and hardly heeded this part of his story, while on Gorgo's mind it had a startling effect. She loved Constantine with all the fervor of a first, and only, and long-suppressed pa.s.sion; she had repented long since of her little fit of suspicion, and it would have cost her no perceptible effort to humble her pride, to fly to him and pray for forgiveness. But she could not-dared not-now, when everything was at stake, renounce her fidelity to the G.o.ds for whose sake she had let him leave her in anger, and to whom she must cling, cost what it might; that would be a base desertion. If Olympius were to triumph in the struggle she might go to her lover and say: "Do you remain a Christian, and leave me the creed of my childhood, or else open my heart to yours." But, as matters now stood, her first duty was to quell her pa.s.sion and retrain faithful to the end, even though the cause were lost. She was Greek to the backbone; she knew it and felt it, and yet her eye had sparkled with pride as she heard the steward's tale, and she seemed to see Constantine at the head of his hors.e.m.e.n, rus.h.i.+ng upon the heathen and driving them to the four winds like a flock of sheep. Her heart beat high for the foe rather than for her hapless friends-these were but bruised reeds-those were the incarnation of victorious strength.

These divided feelings worried and vexed her; but her grandmother had suggested a way of reconciling them. Where he commanded victory followed, and if the Christians should succeed in destroying the image of Serapis the joints of the world would crack and the earth would crumble away. She herself was familiar with the traditions and the oracles which with one consent foretold this doom; she had learnt them as an infant from her nurse, from the slave-women at the loom, from learned men and astute philosophers-and to her the horrible prophecy meant a solution of every contradiction and the bitter-sweet hope of peris.h.i.+ng with the man she loved.