CHAPTER XXII
A night and a day had slipped away since the death of the Bithynian.Ships and boats from every part of the province had collected beforeBesa to seek for the body of the drowned youth, the shores swarmed withmen, and cressets and torches had dimmed the moonlight on river andshore all through the night; but they had not yet succeeded in findingthe body of the beautiful youth.
Hadrian had heard in what way Antinous had perished. He had requiredMastor to repeat to him more than once the last words of his faithfulcompanion and neither to add nor to omit a single syllable. Hadrian'saccurate memory cherished them all and now he had sat till dawn and fromdawn till the sun had reached the meridian, repeating them again andagain to him self. He sat gloomily brooding and would neither eat nordrink. The misfortune which had threatened him had fallen--and what agrief was this! If indeed Fate would accept the anguish he now felt inthe place of all other suffering it might have had in store for him hemight look forward to years free from care, but he felt as though hewould rather have spent the remainder of his existence in sorrow andmisery with his Antinous by his side than enjoy, without him, all thatmen call happiness, peace and prosperity.
Sabina and her escort had arrived-a host of men; but he had strictlyordered that no one, not even his wife, was to be admitted to hispresence. The comfort of tears was denied him, but his grief grippedhim at the heart, clouded his brain and made hint so irritably sensitivethat an unfamiliar voice, though even at a distance, disturbed him andmade him angry.
The party who had arrived by water were not allowed to occupy the tentswhich had been pitched for them not far from his, because he desired tobe alone, quite alone, with his anguish of spirit. Mastor, whom he hadhitherto regarded rather a useful chattel than as a human creature, nowgrew nearer to him--had he not been the one witness of his darling'sstrange disappearance. Towards the close of this, the most miserablenight he had ever known, the slave asked him whether he should not fetchthe physician from the ships, he looked so pale; but Hadrian forbade it.
"If I could only cry like a woman," he said, "or like other fatherswhose sons are snatched away by death, that would be the best remedy.You poor souls will have a bad time now, for the sun of my life has lostits light and the trees by the way-side have lost their verdure."
When he was alone once more he sat staring into vacancy and muttered tohimself:
"All mankind should mourn with me for if I had been asked yesterday howperfect a beauty might be bestowed on one of their race I could havepointed proudly to you, my faithful boy and have said, 'Beauty like thatof the gods.' Now the crown is cut off from the trunk of the palmand the maimed thing can only be ashamed of its deformity; and if allhumanity were but one man it would look like one who has had his righteye torn out. I will not look on the monsters, lean and fat, thatthey may not spoil my taste for the true type! Oh faithful, lovable,beautiful boy! What a blind, mad fool have you been! And yet I cannotblame your madness. You have pierced my soul with the deepest thrustof all and yet I cannot even be angry with you. Superhuman! godlike wasyour faithful devotion. Aye, indeed, it was!" As he thus spoke he rosefrom his seat and went on resolutely and decidedly:
"Here I stretch out this my right hand-hear me, ye Immortals! Every cityin the Empire shall raise an altar to Antinous, and the friend of whomyou have robbed me I will make your equal and companion. Receive himtenderly, oh, ye undying rulers of the world! Which among you can boastof beauty greater than his? and which of you ever displayed so muchgoodness and faithfulness as your new associate?"
This vow seemed to have given Hadrian some comfort. For above halfan hour he paced his tent with a firmer tread, then he desired thatHeliodorus his secretary might be called.
The Greek wrote what his sovereign dictated. This was nothing less thanthat henceforth the world should worship a new divinity in the person ofAntinous.
At noonday a messenger in breathless haste came to say that the body ofthe Bithynian had been found. Thousands flocked to see the corpse, andamong them Balbilla, who had behaved like a distracted creature when sheheard to what an end her idol had come. She had rushed up and down theriver-bank, among the citizens and fishermen, dressed in black mourningrobes and with her hair flying about her. The Egyptians had compared herto the mourning Isis seeking the body of her beloved husband, Osiris.She was beside herself with grief, and her companion implored her invain to calm herself and remember her rank and her dignity as a woman.But Balbilla pushed her vehemently aside, and when the news was broughtthat Nile had yielded up his prey she rushed on foot to see the body,with the rest of the crowd.
Her name was in every mouth, everyone knew that she was the Empress'friend, and so she was willingly and promptly obeyed when she commandedthe bearers who carried the bier on which the recovered body lay to setit down and to lift up the sheet which shrouded it. Pale and trembling,she went up to it and gazed down at the drowned man; but only for amoment could she endure the sight. She turned away with a shudder,and desired the bearers to go on. When the funeral procession haddisappeared and she could no longer hear the shrill wailing of theEgyptian women, and no longer see them streaking their breast, head, andhair with damp earth and flinging up their arms wildly in the air, sheturned to her companion and said calmly: "Now, Claudia, let us go home."
In the evening at supper she appeared dressed in black, like Sabina andall the rest of the suite, but she was calm and ready with an answer toevery observation.
Pontius had travelled with them from Thebes to Besa, and she hadspared him nothing that could punish him for his long absence, and hadmercilessly compelled him to listen to all her verses on Antinous.
He meanwhile had been perfectly cool about it, and had criticised herpoems exactly as if they had referred not to a man of flesh and bloodbut to some statue or god. This epigram he would praise, the next hewould disparage, a third condemn. Her confession that she had been inthe habit of complimenting Antinous with flowers and fruit he heard witha shrug of the shoulders, saying pleasantly: "Give him as many presentsas you will; I know that you expect no gifts from your divinity inreturn for your sacrifices."
His words had surprised and delighted her. Pontius always understoodher, and did not deserve that she should wound him. So she let him gazeinto her soul, and told him how much she loved Antinous so long ashe was absent. Then she laughed and confessed that she was perfectlyindifferent to him as soon as they were together.
When, after the Bithynian's death, she lost all self-control he simplylet her alone, and begged Claudia to do the same.
The same day that the body was found it was burnt on a pile of preciouswood. Hadrian had refused to see it when he learnt that the death bydrowning had terribly distorted the lad's features.
A few hours after the ashes of the Bithynian had been collected andbrought in a golden vase to Hadrian, the Nile fleet was once more undersail, this time with the Emperor on board one of the boats, to proceedwithout farther halt to Alexandria.
Hadrian remained alone with only his slave and his secretary on the boatthat conveyed him; but he several times sent to Pontius to desire himto come from the ship on which he was and visit him on his. He liked tohear the architect's deep voice, and discussed with him the plans whichPontius had sketched for his mausoleum in Rome and the monument to hislost favorite which he proposed to have erected from designs of hisown in the large city which he intended should stand on the site of thelittle town of Besa, and which he had already named Antinoe. Butthese discussions only took up a limited number of hours, and then thearchitect was at liberty to return to Sabina's boat, on which Balbillaalso lived.
A few days after they had quitted Besa he was sitting alone with thepoetess on the deck of the Nile boat which, borne by the current andpropelled by a hundred oars, was rapidly and steadily nearing itsdestination. Ever since the death of the hapless favorite Pontius hadavoided mentioning him to her. She had now become as observant and astalkative as before, and in her eyes there even shone at times a rayof the old
sunny gayety of her nature. The architect thought hecomprehended the characteristic change in her sentiments, and would notallude to the cause of the violent but transient fever under which shehad suffered. "What did you discuss with Caesar to-day?" asked Balbillaof her friend. Pontius looked down at the ground and considered whetherhe could venture to utter the name of Antinous before the poetess.Balbilla observed his hesitation and said:
"Speak on; I can hear anything. That folly is past and over."
"Caesar is at work at the plans for a new town to be built and calledAntinoe, and a sketch for a monument to his ill-fated favorite," saidPontius. "He will not accept any help, but I have to teach him todiscriminate what is possible from what is impossible."
"Ah! he is always gazing at the stars and you look steadily at the roadon which you are walking."
"An architect can make no use of anything that is unsteady or that hasno firm foundation."
"That is a hard saying, Pontius. It is true that during the last fewweeks I have behaved like a fool."
"I only wish that every tottering structure could recover its balance asquickly and as certainly as you! Antinous was a demigod for beauty, anda good faithful fellow besides."
"Do not speak of him any more," exclaimed Balbilla shuddering. "Helooked dreadful. Can you forgive me for my conduct?"
"I never was angry with you."
"But I lost your esteem."
"No, Balbilla. Beauty, which is dear to us all, and which the Muse haskissed, attracted your easily moved poet's soul and it fluttered off atrandom. Let it fly! My friend's true womanly nature was never carriedaway by it. She stands on a rock, that I am sure of."
"How good and kind in you to say so--too good, too kind! for I am afeeble creature, turned by every breeze that blows, a vain little foolwho does not know one hour what she may do the next, a spoilt child thatlikes best to do the thing it ought to leave undone, a weak girl whofinds a pleasure in doing battle with men. For all in all--"
"For all in all a darling of the gods who to-day can climb the rockswith a firm step and to-morrow lies dreaming in the sunshine amongflowers--for all in all a nature that has no equal and which lacksnothing, nothing whatever that constitutes a true woman excepting--"
"I know what I lack," cried Balbilla. "A strong man on whom I candepend, whose warnings I can respect. You, you are that man; you andnone other, for as soon as I feel you by my side I find it difficult todo what I know to be wrong. Here I am, Pontius! Will you have me withall my moods, with all my faults and weaknesses?"
"Balbilla!" cried the architect, beside himself with heartfelt agitationand surprise, and he pressed her hand long and fervently to-his lips.
"You will? You will take me? You will never leave me, you will warn,support me and protect me?"
"Till my last day, till death, as my child, as the apple of my eye,as--dare I say it and believe it?--as my love, my second self, my wife."
"Oh! Pontius, Pontius," she exclaimed, grasping his broad, right hand inboth her own. "This hour restores to the orphaned Balbilla, father andmother and gives her besides the husband that she loves."
"Mine, mine!" cried the architect. "Immortal gods! During half alifetime I have never found time, in the midst of labor and fatigue,to indulge in the joys of love and now you give me with interest andcompound interest the treasure you have so long withheld."
"How can you, a reasonable man, so over-estimate the value of yourpossession? But you shall find some good in it. Life can no longer beconceived of as worth having without the possessor."
"And to me it has so long seemed empty and cold without you, youstrange, unique, incomparable creature."
"But why did you not come sooner, and so give me no time to behave likea fool?"
"Because, because," said Pontius, gravely, "such a flight towards thesun seemed to me too bold; because I remember that my father's father--"
"He was the noblest man that the ancestor of my house attracted to itsgreatness."
"He was--consider it duly at this moment--he was your grandfather'sslave."
"I know it, but I also know, that there is not a man on earth who isworthier of freedom than you are, or whom I could ask as humbly as I askyou: Take me, poor, foolish Balbilla, to be your wife, guide me and makeof me whatever you can, for your own honor and mine."
The brief Nile voyage brought days and hours of the highest happiness toBalbilla and her lover. Before the fleet sailed into the Mareotic harborof Alexandria, Pontius revealed his happy secret to the Emperor. Hadriansmiled for the first time since the death of his favorite, and desiredthe architect to bring Balbilla to him.
"I was wrong in my interpretation of the Pythian oracle," said he, as helaid the poetess's hand in that of Pontius. "Would you like to know howit runs Pontius--do not prompt me, my child. Anything that I have readthrough once or twice I never forget. Pythia said:
'That which thou boldest most precious and dear shall be torn from thy keeping, And from the heights of Olympus, down shalt thou fall in the dust; Still the contemplative eye discerns under mutable sand-drifts Stable foundations of stone, marble and natural rock.'
"You have chosen well girl. The oracle guaranteed you a safe road totread through life. As to the dust of which it speaks, it exists nodoubt in a certain sense, but this hand wields the broom that will sweepit away. Solemnize your marriage in Alexandria as soon as you will, butthen come to Rome, that is the only condition I impose. A thing I alwayshave at heart is the introduction of new and worthy members into theclass of Knights, for it is in that way alone that its fallen dignitycan be restored. This ring, my Pontius, gives you the rank of eques, andsuch a man as you are, the husband of Balbilla and the friend of Caesarmay no doubt by-and-bye find a seat in the Senate. What this generationcan produce in stone and marble, my mausoleum shall bear witness to.Have you altered the plan of the bridge?"