The Unwilling Vestal Part 14

All cla.s.ses of the people suffered, but most of all the rich, the well-to-do, the educated and the cultured cla.s.ses of the towns and cities. And the main point of difference between the great pestilence and the others which had preceded it was the universality of its incidence. For two thousand years pestilence had occurred at intervals, but previously not everywhere at once.

If one country suffered others did not; if half the Mediterranean world, even, was devastated, the other half escaped. From the immune regions competence and capacity had flowed into the ruined areas and civilization had gone on. But the great pestilence left no district unharmed. In six months it killed off all the brains and skill, all the culture and ingenuity in the Empire. There were so few capable men left in any line of activity that the next generation grew up practically untaught. The tradition of two thousand years was broken. In all the Mediterranean world, until centuries later, descendants of the savage invaders developed their new civilization on the ruins of the old; no man ever again made a great speech, wrote a great book or play or poem, painted a good picture, carved a good statue, or contrived a good campaign or battle. The brains of the Roman world died that year, the originality of the whole nation was killed at once, the tradition broke off.

Of course, the survivors did not realize the finality of the disaster, but they did realize its magnitude. In Italy, fed almost wholly by imported food, the famine was most severe. In Italy the pestilence was most virulent. Men disputed as to whether the great army of Lucius Verus, returned home from its splendid victories in Parthia, had brought with it a form of pestilence worse than that of the five previous years, or whether the returned soldiers had merely been a specially easy prey to the pestilence already abroad in Rome. Whichever was true, the veterans died like flies. So did the residents of Rome. Whole blocks of tenements were emptied of their last occupier and stood wholly vacant; many palaces of the wealthy were left without so much as a guardian, the last inmate dead; the splendid furnis.h.i.+ngs, even the silver plate, untouched in every room; for the plague had so ravaged Rome that there were not even robbers and thieves left to steal To the survivors, since genuine piety as they knew it was all but universal among the Romans, it was some small comfort, a faint ray of hope, a sign that the G.o.ds were not inexorably wrathful, that, after Rabulla's death, there was no case of pestilence in the Atrium, not even among the servitors, that no Vestal so much as sickened. Through it all the six remained hale and sound.

But when the plague abated, only Manlia had any living relations left her. The other five had lost every kinsman and kinswoman, to the ninth and tenth degree.

Brinnaria's parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins were all among the victims. This left her grave and sobered with grief, with no trace of her girlish wildness apparent.

It also left her enormously rich, one of the wealthiest women in Rome.

Not a tenth so wealthy, but still very rich, it left Almo, Vocco and Flexinna, all of whom survived.

As the plague had been rife, worse each year, for some seasons before the year of the great pestilence, so, ebbing yearly, it continued for some years after its acme. As soon as the worst was manifestly over the life of Rome began to revive to some degree, the city dwellers plucked up heart, the refugees began to return to their town houses, hunger and terror were forgotten, industry and commerce rallied, bustle and activity increased from day to day, and, slowly indeed, but steadily, Rome returned to its normal activity and appearance. The survivors reconstructed their life on the old lines, the streets and squares were again thronged, the public baths, those vast casinos of ancient club-life, were daily crowded with idlers.

The repopulation of the city brought into it many rich families from towns all over the Roman world.

Their influx sent up the price of large residences and caused much activity in the renting and selling of properties suitable for the homes of people of ample means.

Brinnaria, without a male relation of even the remotest degree, came to lean more and more on Vocco, the husband of her chum Flexinna. He was a young man of not unpleasing appearance and of courtly manners, but very haughty, reserved and silent by nature; and exceedingly spare, lean and wiry, with black hair and brows, a complexion as if tanned and weatherbeaten and an habitual frown. He was fond of Brinnaria and unbent to her more than to most of his acquaintances. She treated him as a sort of honorary cousin and turned over to him many details of the care of her large and scattered property. He took upon himself in her interest the sale or management of her distant estates, found for them capable overseers or purchasers at advantageous prices, bought slaves where they were needed, arranged for the marketing of the more important products and accounted to her for the proceeds.

About her town properties he had more trouble and some exasperation, for he found the apparently practical and unsentimental Brinnaria oddly unwilling to disturb the contents of the palaces in which her kinsmen had lived and died. She was naturally a good business woman and all her instincts urged her to increase her capital and her income by every means within her power and at every opportunity. Yet, when Vocco came to her with offers of high prices for the various buildings which she had inherited he could induce her to arrange for the sale only of the smaller and less valuable houses, or of those tenements which had been owned merely to rent, but had never been inhabited by any members of the Brinnarian clan. At the suggestion of preparing for sale any of the palaces of her near kinsfolk she balked; from the barest hint towards moving the furniture in her father's home she recoiled in horror.

Vocco found himself faced by invincible femininity, with the possession of which he would not have credited Brinnaria. At first he was irritated. As he missed sale after sale he became more and more aggravated. But he kept his temper, held his tongue and waited for Brinnaria's mood to alter. Her sentimentality gradually waned as the prices offered steadily mounted. After long hesitation she gave orders to sell at auction the furniture from the house of a distant cousin, and to rent the house. That broke the spell. One by one the late abodes of the Brinnarii were cleared and sold; sold furniture and all, cleared and rented, or rented furnished.

The former dwellings of her aunts and uncles she was reluctant to disturb. She felt a sort of sacredness about these splendid houses where she had been merry as a child. When at last she made up her mind to part with one she would not give the order to sell it until she had gone over it herself and selected some pieces of furniture which she specially valued. Vocco tried to dissuade her, but she would not listen to him.

Her visit to the vast, empty palace had a most depressing effect on her.

All her grief at her countless bereavements rushed back over her in a flood and overwhelmed her. She would not allow a stick of furniture to be moved and withdrew her consent to the sale.

Vocco was patient and silent.

After a time this mood, too, wore off.

She had that particular dwelling emptied and sold and, once that first step taken, under the pressure of hugely profitable offers, sold all the other properties.

In each case she insisted on inspecting the houses room by room before anything was moved. After the first she had no hysterical qualms, did not show any outward emotion, selected what she meant to keep for herself, ordered the sale of the rest, remained calm through it all.

Finally Vocco came to her with a most tempting offer for her childhood home. Brinnaria took a night to think it over.

She had not entered the place since her father's funeral. He had been the last of the family to die, three months after his wife, and some days after his last surviving son. During the lengthy interval the palace had stood shut fast, cared for only by a few slaves, and those not lifelong family servants, but recent purchases; for the pestilence had carried off with their masters nearly all the home-bred house slaves.

At the thought of going through the deserted halls and silent rooms Brinnaria winced. But she nerved herself up to it. She named a day on which she meant to face the ordeal, asked Vocco to order the palace swept and dusted, and announced to Guntello, almost the sole survivor of her father's personal servitors, that he was to accompany her.

When the day came she set out, not in her carriage, but in her litter with eight Cilician bearers, her lictor running ahead and Guntello and Utta walking behind.

She began her survey accompanied by Guntello and Utta. But when she came to the nursery and schoolroom she sent the two away, told them to wait for her in the peristyle, shut herself in and had a long, hard cry; precisely as if she had been, as of old, a little girl hurt or angry or vexed. After she had wept till no more tears flowed she felt relieved and comforted.

She called Utta, had her bring water, bathed her face and sent the maid away again.

Then she resolutely examined room after room. The second floor took a long while, for there were many doors to open and close for the last time.

There was a third floor, a feature possessed by few dwellings in Rome in ancient times. The Imperial Palace, which later towered to even seven stories, was unique in Brinnaria's time, in the possession of five superposed floors. The great palace of Sall.u.s.t, near the Salarian Gate, had but three.

To the third floor she mounted. Before she had investigated half the rooms she found a door fast. What was more, as she tried it, she thought she heard a sound, as of human movement, inside that room.

Brinnaria was no weakling. Methodically she tried that door with her full, young strength, tried it all along its edge opposite its hinges, tried it at the middle, at the top, at the bottom. She made sure the door was not stuck or jammed; she was convinced that it was bolted within the room.

She leaned over the railing of the gallery and called Guntello.

The odd note in her voice brought that faithful giant up the stairs, two steps at a time; the beams of the house, even the marble steps of the stair, seemed to quiver under his tread.

She had him try the door. He agreed that it was bolted.

"Can you break it in?" she queried.

Guntello laughed. "Without half trying, little Mistress," he replied.

Brinnaria's voice came hard and sharp.

"You in that room!" she called, "unbolt that door and come out, or it will be the worse for you. I'll count ten and then order the door burst open." She began to count.

She heard the bolt shot back.

She nodded to Guntello.

He gave the door a push.

Before them stood Calvaster, his att.i.tude and countenance expressing cringing cowardice, cloaked by ill-a.s.sumed effrontery. He did not speak, trying to appear unconcerned.

"What are you doing in my house?" Brinnaria demanded.

"I do not wonder that you are astonished to see me here and angry as well," Calvaster replied, "but the explanation is simple. I learned that you were proposing to sell the property. I had a curiosity to see it as it is. I found means to slip in and go over the building. I counted on leaving before you arrived. I miscalculated, that is all. Awkward for both of us, but unintentional on my part."

"I don't believe half of that rigmarole," snapped Brinnaria.

"It is all true, nevertheless," Calvaster a.s.serted with an air of injured innocence.

"One thing is plain, anyhow," Brinnaria declared. "You bribed one of my slaves. Which one did you bribe?"

Calvaster kept his lips pressed tight together.

"March him downstairs, Guntello," Brinnaria commanded.

Calvaster winced and made as if to dodge. Big as he was Guntello was wonderfully quick. In a flash he had the intruder by the neck. Utterly helpless Calvaster was marched down the stairs.

In the courtyard Brinnaria had brought before her the half dozen slaves who had charge of the empty house. They stood in a row fidgeting and glancing at each other.