The Last Days of Pompeii Part 49

IN WHICH AN ADVENTURE HAPPENS TO IONE.

WHILE some stayed behind to share with the priests the funeral banquet, Ione and her handmaids took homeward their melancholy way. And now (the last duties to her brother performed) her mind awoke from its absorption, and she thought of her allianced, and the dread charge against him. Not--as we have before said--attaching even a momentary belief to the unnatural accusation, but nursing the darkest suspicion against Arbaces, she felt that justice to her lover and to her murdered relative demanded her to seek the praetor, and communicate her impression, unsupported as it might be. Questioning her maidens, who had hitherto--kindly anxious, as I have said, to save her the additional agony--refrained from informing her of the state of Glaucus, she learned that he had been dangerously ill: that he was in custody, under the roof of Sall.u.s.t; that the day of his trial was appointed.

'Averting G.o.ds,' she exclaimed; 'and have I been so long forgetful of him? Have I seemed to shun him? O! let me hasten to do him justice--to show that I, the nearest relative of the dead, believe him innocent of the charge. Quick! quick! let us fly. Let me soothe--tend--cheer him!

and if they will not believe me; if they will not lead to my conviction; if they sentence him to exile or to death, let me share the sentence with him!'

Instinctively she hastened her pace, confused and bewildered, scarce knowing whither she went; now designing first to seek the praetor, and now to rush to the chamber of Glaucus. She hurried on--she pa.s.sed the gate of the city--she was in the long street leading up the town. The houses were opened, but none were yet astir in the streets; the life of the city was scarce awake--when lo! she came suddenly upon a small knot of men standing beside a covered litter. A tall figure stepped from the midst of them, and Ione shrieked aloud to behold Arbaces.

'Fair Ione!' said he, gently, and appearing not to heed her alarm: 'my ward, my pupil! forgive me if I disturb thy pious sorrows; but the praetor, solicitous of thy honour, and anxious that thou mayest not rashly be implicated in the coming trial; knowing the strange embarra.s.sment of thy state (seeking justice for thy brother, but dreading punishment to thy betrothed)--sympathizing, too, with thy unprotected and friendless condition, and deeming it harsh that thou shouldst be suffered to act unguided and mourn alone--hath wisely and paternally confided thee to the care of thy lawful guardian. Behold the writing which intrusts thee to my charge!'

'Dark Egyptian!' cried Ione, drawing herself proudly aside; 'begone! It is thou that hast slain my brother! Is it to thy care, thy hands yet reeking with his blood, that they will give the sister Ha! thou turnest pale! thy conscience smites thee! thou tremblest at the thunderbolt of the avenging G.o.d! Pa.s.s on, and leave me to my woe!'

'Thy sorrows unstring thy reason, Ione,' said Arbaces, attempting in vain his usual calmness of tone. 'I forgive thee. Thou wilt find me now, as ever, thy surest friend. But the public streets are not the fitting place for us to confer--for me to console thee. Approach, slaves! Come, my sweet charge, the litter awaits thee.'

The amazed and terrified attendants gathered round Ione, and clung to her knees.

'Arbaces,' said the eldest of the maidens, 'this is surely not the law!

For nine days after the funeral, is it not written that the relatives of the deceased shall not be molested in their homes, or interrupted in their solitary grief?'

'Woman!' returned Arbaces, imperiously waving his hand, 'to place a ward under the roof of her guardian is not against the funeral laws. I tell thee I have the fiat of the praetor. This delay is indecorous. Place her in the litter.'

So saying, he threw his arm firmly round the shrinking form of Ione.

She drew back, gazed earnestly in his face, and then burst into hysterical laughter:

'Ha, ha! this is well--well! Excellent guardian--paternal law! Ha, ha!' And, startled herself at the dread echo of that shrill and maddened laughter, she sunk, as it died away, lifeless upon the ground... A minute more, and Arbaces had lifted her into the litter. The bearers moved swiftly on, and the unfortunate Ione was soon borne from the sight of her weeping handmaids.

Chapter X

WHAT BECOMES OF NYDIA IN THE HOUSE OF ARBACES. THE EGYPTIAN FEELS COMPa.s.sION FOR GLAUCUS. COMPa.s.sION IS OFTEN A VERY USELESS VISITOR TO THE GUILTY.

IT will be remembered that, at the command of Arbaces, Nydia followed the Egyptian to his home, and conversing there with her, he learned from the confession of her despair and remorse, that her hand, and not Julia's, had administered to Glaucus the fatal potion. At another time the Egyptian might have conceived a philosophical interest in sounding the depths and origin of the strange and absorbing pa.s.sion which, in blindness and in slavery, this singular girl had dared to cherish; but at present he spared no thought from himself. As, after her confession, the poor Nydia threw herself on her knees before him, and besought him to restore the health and save the life of Glaucus--for in her youth and ignorance she imagined the dark magician all-powerful to effect both--Arbaces, with unheeding ears, was noting only the new expediency of detaining Nydia a prisoner until the trial and fate of Glaucus were decided. For if, when he judged her merely the accomplice of Julia in obtaining the philtre, he had felt it was dangerous to the full success of his vengeance to allow her to be at large--to appear, perhaps, as a witness--to avow the manner in which the sense of Glaucus had been darkened, and thus win indulgence to the crime of which he was accused--how much more was she likely to volunteer her testimony when she herself had administered the draught, and, inspired by love, would be only anxious, at any expense of shame, to retrieve her error and preserve her beloved? Besides, how unworthy of the rank and repute of Arbaces to be implicated in the disgrace of pandering to the pa.s.sion of Julia, and a.s.sisting in the unholy rites of the Saga of Vesuvius!

Nothing less, indeed, than his desire to induce Glaucus to own the murder of Apaecides, as a policy evidently the best both for his own permanent safety and his successful suit with Ione, could ever have led him to contemplate the confession of Julia.

As for Nydia, who was necessarily cut off by her blindness from much of the knowledge of active life, and who, a slave and a stranger, was naturally ignorant of the perils of the Roman law, she thought rather of the illness and delirium of her Athenian, than the crime of which she had vaguely heard him accused, or the chances of the impending trial.

Poor wretch that she was, whom none addressed, none cared for, what did she know of the senate and the sentence--the hazard of the law--the ferocity of the people--the arena and the lion's den? She was accustomed only to a.s.sociate with the thought of Glaucus everything that was prosperous and lofty--she could not imagine that any peril, save from the madness of her love, could menace that sacred head. He seemed to her set apart for the blessings of life. She only had disturbed the current of his felicity; she knew not, she dreamed not that the stream, once so bright, was das.h.i.+ng on to darkness and to death. It was therefore to restore the brain that she had marred, to save the life that she had endangered that she implored the a.s.sistance of the great Egyptian.

'Daughter,' said Arbaces, waking from his reverie, 'thou must rest here; it is not meet for thee to wander along the streets, and be spurned from the threshold by the rude feet of slaves. I have compa.s.sion on thy soft crime--I will do all to remedy it. Wait here patiently for some days, and Glaucus shall be restored.' So saying, and without waiting for her reply, he hastened from the room, drew the bolt across the door, and consigned the care and wants of his prisoner to the slave who had the charge of that part of the mansion.

Alone, then, and musingly, he waited the morning light, and with it repaired, as we have seen, to possess himself of the person of Ione.

His primary object, with respect to the unfortunate Neapolitan, was that which he had really stated to Clodius, viz., to prevent her interesting herself actively in the trial of Glaucus, and also to guard against her accusing him (which she would, doubtless, have done) of his former act of perfidy and violence towards her, his ward--denouncing his causes for vengeance against Glaucus--unveiling the hypocrisy of his character--and casting any doubt upon his veracity in the charge which he had made against the Athenian. Not till he had encountered her that morning--not till he had heard her loud denunciations--was he aware that he had also another danger to apprehend in her suspicion of his crime. He hugged himself now at the thought that these ends were effected: that one, at once the object of his pa.s.sion and his fear, was in his power. He believed more than ever the flattering promises of the stars; and when he sought Ione in that chamber in the inmost recesses of his mysterious mansion to which he had consigned her--when he found her overpowered by blow upon blow, and pa.s.sing from fit to fit, from violence to torpor, in all the alternations of hysterical disease--he thought more of the loveliness which no frenzy could distort than of the woe which he had brought upon her. In that sanguine vanity common to men who through life have been invariably successful, whether in fortune or love, he flattered himself that when Glaucus had perished--when his name was solemnly blackened by the award of a legal judgment, his t.i.tle to her love for ever forfeited by condemnation to death for the murder of her own brother--her affection would be changed to horror; and that his tenderness and his pa.s.sion, a.s.sisted by all the arts with which he well knew how to dazzle woman's imagination, might elect him to that throne in her heart from which his rival would be so awfully expelled. This was his hope: but should it fail, his unholy and fervid pa.s.sion whispered, 'At the worst, now she is in my power.'

Yet, withal, he felt that uneasiness and apprehension which attended upon the chance of detection, even when the criminal is insensible to the voice of conscience--that vague terror of the consequences of crime, which is often mistaken for remorse at the crime itself. The buoyant air of Campania weighed heavily upon his breast; he longed to hurry from a scene where danger might not sleep eternally with the dead; and, having Ione now in his possession, he secretly resolved, as soon as he had witnessed the last agony of his rival, to transport his wealth--and her, the costliest treasure of all, to some distant sh.o.r.e.

'Yes,' said he, striding to and fro his solitary chamber--'yes, the law that gave me the person of my ward gives me the possession of my bride.

Far across the broad main will we sweep on our search after novel luxuries and inexperienced pleasures. Cheered by my stars, supported by the omens of my soul, we will penetrate to those vast and glorious worlds which my wisdom tells me lie yet untracked in the recesses of the circling sea. There may this heart, possessed of love, grow once more alive to ambition--there, amongst nations uncrushed by the Roman yoke, and to whose ear the name of Rome has not yet been wafted, I may found an empire, and transplant my ancestral creed; renewing the ashes of the dead Theban rule; continuing in yet grander sh.o.r.es the dynasty of my crowned fathers, and waking in the n.o.ble heart of Ione the grateful consciousness that she shares the lot of one who, far from the aged rottenness of this slavish civilization, restores the primal elements of greatness, and unites in one mighty soul the attributes of the prophet and the king.' From this exultant soliloquy, Arbaces was awakened to attend the trial of the Athenian.

The worn and pallid cheek of his victim touched him less than the firmness of his nerves and the dauntlessness of his brow; for Arbaces was one who had little pity for what was unfortunate, but a strong sympathy for what was bold. The congenialities that bind us to others ever a.s.similate to the qualities of our own nature. The hero weeps less at the reverses of his enemy than at the fort.i.tude with which he bears them. All of us are human, and Arbaces, criminal as he was, had his share of our common feelings and our mother clay. Had he but obtained from Glaucus the written confession of his crime, which would, better than even the judgment of others, have lost him with Ione, and removed from Arbaces the chance of future detection, the Egyptian would have strained every nerve to save his rival. Even now his hatred was over--his desire of revenge was slaked: he crushed his prey, not in enmity, but as an obstacle in his path. Yet was he not the less resolved, the less crafty and persevering, in the course he pursued, for the destruction of one whose doom was become necessary to the attainment of his objects: and while, with apparent reluctance and compa.s.sion, he gave against Glaucus the evidence which condemned him, he secretly, and through the medium of the priesthood, fomented that popular indignation which made an effectual obstacle to the pity of the senate. He had sought Julia; he had detailed to her the confession of Nydia; he had easily, therefore, lulled any scruple of conscience which might have led her to extenuate the offence of Glaucus by avowing her share in his frenzy: and the more readily, for her vain heart had loved the fame and the prosperity of Glaucus--not Glaucus himself, she felt no affection for a disgraced man--nay, she almost rejoiced in the disgrace that humbled the hated Ione. If Glaucus could not be her slave, neither could he be the adorer of her rival. This was sufficient consolation for any regret at his fate. Volatile and fickle, she began again to be moved by the sudden and earnest suit of Clodius, and was not willing to hazard the loss of an alliance with that base but high-born n.o.ble by any public exposure of her past weakness and immodest pa.s.sion for another.

All things then smiled upon Arbaces--all things frowned upon the Athenian.

Chapter XI

NYDIA AFFECTS THE SORCERESS.

WHEN the Thessalian found that Arbaces returned to her no more--when she was left, hour after hour, to all the torture of that miserable suspense which was rendered by blindness doubly intolerable, she began, with outstretched arms, to feel around her prison for some channel of escape; and finding the only entrance secure, she called aloud, and with the vehemence of a temper naturally violent, and now sharpened by impatient agony.

'Ho, girl!' said the slave in attendance, opening the door; art thou bit by a scorpion? or thinkest thou that we are dying of silence here, and only to be preserved, like the infant Jupiter, by a hullabaloo?'

'Where is thy master? and wherefore am I caged here? I want air and liberty: let me go forth!'

'Alas! little one, hast thou not seen enough of Arbaces to know that his will is imperial! He hath ordered thee to be caged; and caged thou art, and I am thy keeper. Thou canst not have air and liberty; but thou mayst have what are much better things--food and wine.'

'Proh Jupiter!' cried the girl, wringing her hands; 'and why am I thus imprisoned? What can the great Arbaces want with so poor a thing as I am?'

'That I know not, unless it be to attend on thy new mistress, who has been brought hither this day.'

'What! Ione here?'

'Yes, poor lady; she liked it little, I fear. Yet, by the Temple of Castor! Arbaces is a gallant man to the women. Thy lady is his ward, thou knowest.'

'Wilt thou take me to her?'

'She is ill--frantic with rage and spite. Besides, I have no orders to do so; and I never think for myself. When Arbaces made me slave of these chambers, he said, "I have but one lesson to give thee--while thou servest me, thou must have neither ears, eyes, nor thought; thou must be but one quality--obedience."'

'But what harm is there in seeing Ione?'

'That I know not; but if thou wantest a companion, I am willing to talk to thee, little one, for I am solitary enough in my dull cubiculum.

And, by the way, thou art Thessalian--knowest thou not some cunning amus.e.m.e.nt of knife and shears, some pretty trick of telling fortunes, as most of thy race do, in order to pa.s.s the time.'

'Tush, slave, hold thy peace! or, if thou wilt speak, what hast thou heard of the state of Glaucus?'

'Why, my master has gone to the Athenian's trial; Glaucus will smart for it!'

'For what?'

'The murder of the priest Apaecides.'

'Ha!' said Nydia, pressing her hands to her forehead; 'something of this I have indeed heard, but understand not. Yet, who will dare to touch a hair of his head?'

'That will the lion, I fear.'

'Averting G.o.ds! what wickedness dost thou utter?'

'Why, only that, if he be found guilty, the lion, or may be the tiger, will be his executioner.'