The Unwilling Vestal Part 38

From her muse she was roused by the halting of the carriage.

Amazed, she looked up.

Still more amazed, she recognized, standing near the head of the off-horse, the state-executioner.

This repulsive public character, tolerated but despised and loathed, was the last living creature in or about Rome who would dare to approach a Vestal.

At sight of him she was inundated with a hot flood of wrath. She was about to call to her lictor, to demand why the carriage had stopped and rebuke him for being so negligent as to allow so unsavory a being to come so near her.

Then she saw between her and the executioner, just in front of that official, a kneeling figure.

She recognized Calvaster.

Also she saw the guards and executioner's a.s.sistants grouped about the two.

It came over her that she had encountered, wholly by accident, this gloomy convoy, and that before her, beseeching her for a reprieve, begging for a mere day and night more of life, knelt her inveterate, furtive enemy.

She raised her hand and looked the executioner full in the eyes.

"Send him back," she commanded. "He is reprieved until this hour to-morrow." The guards dragged off Calvaster, babbling his pitiful grat.i.tude.

"Drive home," said Brinnaria to her coachman.

CHAPTER XXIII - SALVAGE

THE exauguration of a Vestal, by which canonical ritual she was formally released from her obligations of chast.i.ty and service and became free to go where she liked and to marry or to remain unmarried as she preferred, was a brief and simple ceremony. But it required the presence of all the Vestals, of the major Flamens, of many Pontiffs, of the entire College of Augurs and of the Emperor himself as Pontifex Maximus. Commodus, who was impatient of anything which curtailed the time he might lavish on athletic amus.e.m.e.nts, arrived precisely at noon, at the very last minute.

The moment he had entered the Atrium he hurried the ceremony. It was soon over and Brinnaria no longer a Vestal, but a free woman.

It had been arranged that immediately after her exauguration her successor should be taken as a Vestal there in the Atrium by Commodus himself as Chief Pontiff. Little difficulty had been encountered as to selecting a candidate, since a most suitable child had been offered by her parents, people of xcellent family and of unblemished reputation.

Her name was Campia Severina, and she was a small girl, just seven years old, plump, with a round full-moon of a face, a leaden-pasty complexion, and a most un-Roman nose, flat, broad and snub.

Commodus, prompted by Lutorius, droned through the required questions and showed manifest relief when he p.r.o.nounced the word "Beloved" and the second ceremony was over.

He was, however, not wholly a loutish and unmannerly Emperor, but could be tactful and gracious when his interest was aroused. He took time to speak to each of the Vestals; complimented Terentia on her music and spoke of the Empress's admiration of her organ-playing, had a brief but kindly commendation for Manlia and Gargilia; praised Numisia highly for her efficient discharge of the duties devolving on her, and condoled with Causidiena on her blindness and feebleness, wording what he said so dexterously that she could not but feel cheered and comforted.

Then, aside from the a.s.semblage of Pontiffs, Augurs, Flamens and the rest, he spoke privately with Brinnaria:

"I'm sorry to lose you," he said; "I felt comfortable about the Palladium as long as you were a Vestal. Numisia is a woman to be relied on too, and Gargilia and Manlia are capable creatures, but not one of the three is your equal in any respect and they are but three; the others are a corpse, a doll and an infant.

"Understand I'm not growling at your departure, I am trying to convey to you how highly I esteem you. I'll advertise it to all the world by having you and your husband, the moment you are married, put on the official roster of my personal friends who have the right of access to me at all times and can go in and out of the Palace at their pleasure.

"As to your wedding, I'm sorry I gave you my promise to stay away from it. I think that this recent notion of yours that the marriage of an ex-Vestal is an ill-omened occasion, like a funeral, is morbid and baseless. Every Vestal has a right to leave the order at the end of her term of service and to marry if she pleases. The right is indubitable.

Nothing that is right is ill-omened. I think that an ex-Vestal's wedding ought to be regarded precisely as the wedding of anybody else. The most I'll concede is, that it might be likened to the wedding of a widow, considering her service as a sort of first marriage. That is my judgment, not merely as a man but as Chief Pontiff.

"My impulse is to revoke my pledge and to do all I can to make your wedding a grand affair. But I'm too good a betting man to break a promise. Besides, though I impugn your arguments as an ex-Vestal, I respect your personal preference for a quiet wedding. I'll not insist on being invited to the banquet, and, so far from taking part in the procession, I'll not even peep at it down a side street. I'll keep inside the Palace.

"But I want you to release me from my promise in one small detail.

I want to be present at Vocco's to see you two break and eat the old-fas.h.i.+oned cake, and I want to be first to sign your marriage register. I promise to leave as soon as I have signed the register."

Brinnaria, of course, could not but acquiesce.

"Good for you!" said the Emperor, "and thank you too. I'll keep away from the procession, but that won't make any difference in the throngs you'll find along your route. They'll jam the streets and you'll have to plough your way through. No Emperor could ever call out more sight-seers than will the wedding of Brinnaria the water-carrier." He then went out into the street which his escort blocked, and departed, accompanied by his coterie of boxers, wrestlers, swordsmen, jockeys and such-like, convoyed by a large and gorgeous retinue of pages, runners, guards nd lictors.

Immediately after his departure Brinnaria said her farewells and set out for Nemestronia's.

Next morning, as she descended from her litter at Vocco's door, a Vestal's carriage drove up and Gargilia got out.

"You're surprised to see me at this hour," she said, "and I don't wonder." When they were indoors and seated with Flexinna she explained:

"We have been having a terrible night at the Atrium and the worst sort of luck this morning. That little fool of a Campia is the most complete cry-baby and the most homesick little wretch I ever saw or heard of.

She has sobbed herself ill and screamed us all out of a night's sleep.

Terentia and Manlia were up half the night with her and she waked me and Causidiena.

"The result is that Causidiena has had one of her semi-fainting spells and is in her arm-chair for the day, poor Manlia has one of her splitting headaches and Terentia is almost as bad. I never saw the Atrium in such a state. Campia goes to sleep off and on from exhaustion, but she wakes up howling and keeps blubbering and whining and sniveling.

I left both Terentia and Manlia in tears. They are so vexed to think that to-morrow they will be entirely well, but for to-day there is absolutely nothing for it but they must both keep abed and in the dark.

"Numisia sent me to tell you that she will be at your wedding, will walk in the procession and will be at the banquet, but that I must be on duty in the Temple. So we'll just have to have our chat now and when I leave we shall not see each other again for the present."

As she climbed into her carriage she said:

"I'm sorry you haven't a bright wedding day."

"So am I," said Brinnaria, glancing up at the gray canopy of rainless cloud which hid the sky; "any day is a good day to be married on, but I hoped for suns.h.i.+ne."

Commodus, faithful to the spirit of his promise, came to Vocco's house with the smallest possible official retinue. He was in the best humor, affable and genial, and cast no chill of formality over the ceremony. He was the first to set his signature to the marriage register, signing in his sprawling school-boy hand. Then he stood aside and looked on while Flexinna, as matron of honor, led Brinnaria to Almo and joined their right hands, while they seated themselves side by side on the traditional cus.h.i.+oned stools, while the Flamen of Jupiter offered on the house-altar the old-fas.h.i.+oned contract-cake, and said the formal prayers for the happiness of the bride and groom; while the Flamen's a.s.sistant, one of Flexinna's older boys, carried the cake to Almo and Brinnaria and each broke off a piece and ate it, she uttering the old-time formula:

"Where you are Caius I am Caia."

Above the voices of the guests Commodus' could be distinguished shouting with them:

"Good luck! Good luck!"

In the silence that followed he warned:

"Now, no rising, no bowing. I'm not here to spoil this wedding, I came to enjoy it. No bowing, I tell you, no rising. Let me get out like an ordinary man."

Into the gathering dusk he vanished with his retinue.

As soon as he was gone the arrangement for the procession began, the slaves lit their torches and grouped themselves outside the house-door, the flute players struck up a tune, Flexinna's thirteen-year-old boy lit his white-thorn torch at the altar-fire, her eleven-year-old and nine-year-old, as pages of honor, caught Brinnaria by the hands and led her out at the door. So led by the two little boys, their brother with the white-thorn torch walking before her, she pa.s.sed through the streets to Almo's house, Nemestronia and Flexinna on either side of Almo, close behind her, Vocco and the other guests following.

The people made good the Emperor's prophecy.

From house-door to house-door the streets were packed with crowds eager to see her pa.s.s and loud to acclaim her. Through cheers, good wishes, loud jokes, merry longs and cries of "Tala.s.sio! Tala.s.sio!" she pa.s.sed along the upper part of the f.a.gutal, and past the flank of the Baths of t.i.tus to the Carinae.

Her bridal dress of pearl-gray, with the flame-colored bridal veil, reminded her more than a little of that costume of Flexinna's which she had worn to Aricia and back, only that was mostly pink, this mostly gray.