CHAPTER X
"That the world through Him might be saved."--ST. JOHN III. 17.
Taurus Antinor had bidden farewell to his host, and to the other guestsand then departed.
Not another word had been spoken on the subject of the Caesar or of hisprobable successor. The conspirators, somewhat sobered, had allowed thepraefect to go without attempting further effort to gain him to theircause. They had had their answer. Though many of them did not quiteunderstand the full depth of its meaning, yet were they satisfied thatit was final. They bade him farewell quietly and without enmity; somehowthe thought of their murderous plan had momentarily fled from theirmind, and the quarrel between Hortensius Martius and the praefect ofRome seemed to have been the most important event of the day.
Taurus Antinor emerged alone from the peristyle of Caius Nepos' house.An army of slaves belonging to the various guests were hanging about thevestibule, talking and laughing amongst themselves and feasting on thedebris from the patricians' table, brought out to them by servitors fromwithin; some forty litters encumbered the floor, but Antinor, paying noheed to these, passed through the crowd of jabbering men and women andmade his way across to the steps which led upwards to the street.
The day was done, had been done long ago; already the canopy of thestars was stretched over the sleeping city, and far away to the east,beyond the gilded roof of Augustus' palace, the waning moon, radiant andserene, outlined the carvings on every temple with a thin band of goldand put patches of luminous sapphires and emeralds on the bronze figuresthat crowned the Capitol.
Taurus Antinor paused awhile, enjoying the restfulness of the night;from his broad chest came a long-drawn breath of voluptuous delight atthe exquisite sweetness of the air. How far away now seemed that long,luxurious room, with its stained cloths and crumpled cushions, with thelow tables groaning under the debris of past repasts and the rows ofcouches luring to sensuous repose. For the moment even the wranglings ofCaius Nepos' guests seemed remote, their selfish aims and their lyingtongues. Here, beneath the stars, there was stillness and peace.
A gentle breeze from over the distant hills blew on the dreamer'sforehead and eased the wild throbbings of his temples; from somewherenear tiny petals of heliotrope, chased by the breeze, broughtsweet-scented powder to his nostrils.
He looked around him, gazing with wondering eyes on the mighty citysleeping upon her seven hills, on the gorgeous palaces of Tiberius andCaligula and the squalid huts far away on the Aventine Hill, on themighty temples with their roofs of gold and the yawning arena downbelow, desolate and silent now, but where on the morrow men and beastswould tear one another to pieces to make holiday for the masters of theworld.
And even as his restless eyes swept over the surrounding landscape, theyturned to where, in the shadow of the stately palaces of Tiberius and ofAugustus, lay the house of Dea Flavia. Its gilded portals threw backwith brilliant intensity the weird and elusive light of the waningmoon, and high above, upon the balustrade of the roof, gigantic bronzegroups of quaint and misshapen beasts looked ghoul-like against thecanopy of the sky.
All within the massive walls was dark and still; near to the vestibule acouple of ancient cypresses made a natural arch overhead, and in thetender branches of a group of acacias close by, the evening breezesighed with gentle, melancholy murmurings amongst the leaves.
Instinctively Taurus Antinor turned to walk a few steps toward thehouse, and soon reached a spot from whence his gaze could command thecolonnaded vestibule, with its mosaic pavement sunk a few steps belowthe level of the street. Somewhere near him, though he could not see it,a bosquet of heliotrope and white lilies sent an intoxicating fragranceinto the air.
From far away--where the marshes stretched their limitless expansetoward the sea--came the melancholy cry of a bittern, calling to hisabsent mate.
A vague longing surged in the strong man's heart; he stretched out hisarms up to the dark, starlit canopy above, and a sigh, half impatient,wholly melancholy, escaped his half-closed lips.
His eyes tried to pierce the marble walls behind which therebloomed--stately and proud--a beautiful white lily.
Wholly against his will, the man's thoughts flew back to that middayhour in the Forum, when Dea Flavia had stood before him in all theexquisite glory of her youth and her loveliness, with that wilful curlround her chiselled lips and the delicate brows drawn together in afrown of child-like obstinacy. How beautiful she was and how strangelypathetic had been her isolation in the midst of so much grandeur.
Even now he thought of her--asleep possibly somewhere in this gorgeouspalace--all alone, despite the thousands of slaves around her;friendless, despite the might of the House of Caesar of which she was soproud.
Through one of the tiny windows there peeped a flickering light. TaurusAntinor marvelled if that were her sleeping-room and, closing his eyes,pictured her there, resting on embroidered coverlets and cushions, herfair hair falling in waves around her face at rest; and he wonderedwhether in sleep a dewy tear had perchance put a priceless diamond onher golden lashes.
Bitter thoughts of the men whom he had just quitted surged back in hisheart; they wished to make of this young girl a tool for the fashioningof their own ambitious schemes.
"The Augusta shall choose one of us for mate, and him we shall ask tohold the sceptre of Caesar."
One of them for mate! One of those sensuous self-seekers who would useher as a stepping-stone, and, having obtained supreme power through herdainty hands, would cast her aside as a useless tool and break her heartere she realised even that she had one.
And from the thoughts of the beautiful girl his mind flew back as ifinstinctively to that strange phase of his life--those unforgettabledays in Judaea which had seemed like unto the turning point of his wholeexistence. He recalled every moment of that memorable day when he hadstood among a multitude on the barren wastes of Galilee and, wrapped ina dark cloak, had listened in solitary silence to words and teachingssuch as he had never dreamed of before.
"If only I could have understood Thee better then," he murmured; "ifmore of Thy precious words had fallen on mine ear.... I might have toldher then something of what Thou didst say ... I could have found thewords to make her understand.... But now I am ignorant and forlorn....Oh, Man of Galilee! Thou didst die so soon ... and left so many of usgroping in the darkness.... Thou Son of God, come back to me, if only ina dream ... show me the way, the truth, the light; show me the starwhich they say guided the shepherds to Thy cradle ... give me Thy cross,and let me walk once more on Golgotha to Thee."
And even as these words of passionate longing escaped half audibly fromhis lips his eyes wandered round the seven hills of Rome, and suddenlythe highest peak beyond the Forum appeared to him transfigured in thenight. Memory with a swift hand drew aside the veil of the present andin a vision showed him a picture of the past. The marble temples ofpagan gods disappeared, the hill became bleak and precipitous and dark;great stillness reigned around, save where from afar there came at timesthe distant roll of thunder. The sky was overcast, great banks of cloud,the colour of lead, with blood-red lights within their massive bosoms,swept storm-tossed across the firmament.
Then from the valley below there came, vaguely remote at first, thenrising louder and louder, a sound as when a mighty torrent rushesonwards in its course; and as Taurus Antinor gazed now on thatdream-hill, memory showed him, surging like a tempestuous sea, thousandsupon thousands of human heads, all tending upwards to the summit of thehill.
They came--the great multitude--they came, and still they came; and likegigantic breakers on a smooth shore, waves of human beings scatteredthemselves and dispersed upon that hill.
And amongst them all, isolated, walking with bent back and thorn-crownedhead well-nigh bowed to the dust, came a Man bearing a Cross.
Taurus Antinor saw Him even now as he had seen Him then, with blood andsweat dripping from His brow, the pale, patient face serene and set, theeyes half closed in agony still glowing with unutterable l
ove and withthe perfect peace of complete sacrifice.
And among the sea of faces that gazed on that solitary figure TaurusAntinor had recognised himself.
He saw himself as he was then, a rough voluptuary, a thoughtless,sentient beast who up to that time had lived a life of emptiness and ofmockery, eating and drinking and sleeping and waking again day afterday, year after year. And he saw himself as he was on that day, he oneof thousands and thousands of lookers-on gazing on the three hours'agony of a just Man upon the Cross.
He remembered every minute of those three hours, which the hill ofimperial Rome now pictured back to him as in a dream. He had stood therea mere unit amongst the crowd, wrapped in a dark cloak, unrecognised andunknown, but with every nerve strained to catch the words that fell fromthose dying lips. He had heard the cry of bitterness: "Lord! Lord! whyhast Thou forsaken Me?" and that of infinite love and of supreme pardon:"Oh God, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
And above and around the sky grew darker and the air more still, andround that dying figure alone there shone a radiance unseen by most; forhad they seen it as Taurus Antinor saw it then, then surely would theyhave known, would they have understood.
And at the foot of that Cross women and men stood weeping, andthoughtless soldiers hurled insults on their dying Lord. The lips thathad only uttered words of perfect charity thirsted for a drop of water,and a sponge filled with gall was pressed mockingly to them.
But the arms were still extended wider and wider, so it seemed, as if intheir almighty love they would embrace all that surging humanity; allthose that suffered, those that hoped as well as those that doubted,those who mocked Him and those who adored.
Taurus Antinor's very manhood had cried out to him then to fight themultitude single-handed, to shake the power of Rome and defy the will ofthe people, and to rush up to that one Cross, towering above the others,to pick out with firm fingers every cruel nail, to wrap the sacred bodyin soft, soothing cloths, and to kiss every wound until it closed inhealth.
Even now, after all these years, the rough soldier's cheeks were burningwith the shame of impotence.
To look on that sacrifice and be unable to stop it. To look on such adeath and to continue to live on, still blind, still ununderstanding,even though the Teacher Who had come to explain had sighed ere he died:"It is finished!" And yet Taurus Antinor, now looking back upon his ownpast self, knew that at the time, despite the horror, the pity and thesorrow, there was also in his heart a sense of happiness and even avague feeling of triumph.
What he saw there--with eyes that comprehended not--_that_ he knew _was_because _it must be_; because it had been preordained and done by OneWhose will was mightier than death. Though with aching heart and searedeyes he had watched every minute of the supreme agony, yet somethingwithin him, even then, had told him that every minute of that agony wasa sacrifice that would not be in vain. And whilst in weakness he groanedwith the pathos of it all, yet did his heart thrill with strangeexultation, and from that Cross--even when all was silent--there rang inhis ear the last words of perfect fulfilment of a perfect sacrifice:
"It is finished!"
And even as the words rang once again in Taurus Antinor's ears, theawful darkness of that momentous hour fell upon the dream-hill far away.Golgotha, with its three towering crosses vanished from before thevisionary's gaze. Once more there rose before him the marble temples ofpagan Rome that crowned the Capitol--the gorgeous idols covered in gold,these gods of mockery before whom the mightiest Empire in the world wassatisfied to bow the knee.
And that same sweet, sad longing rose in the dreamer's heart.
"Could I but have heard Thee speak more often!... Could I but havetouched Thy hands, methinks that I would have understood.... But now ...now all is still dark before me ... and the way is so difficult."
And even as the sigh died upon his lips there came from behind him thesound of prolonged and hoarse laughter, followed by snatches of adrinking song and loud calls for slaves and litters.
Caius Nepos' guests were leaving the hospitable house at last. Drunkwith wine, smothered in flowers, replete with every epicurean delightthey were going home now, having, mayhap, forgotten that they hadplotted to murder Caesar and to raise themselves to power at all costs,even if that cost was to be a sea of blood or the ruins of Rome.
The song and laughter soon died away in the distance. Taurus Antinor haddistinguished the voice of Hortensius Martius and that of Ancyrus, theelder. The sigh of sadness turned to one of bitterness, his arms droppedby his side, and a cry of harsh contempt escaped his parched? throat.
"Oh, Man of Galilee," he murmured, "didst die for such as these?"