CHAPTER 16.
LOVE MEETINGS.
Who that has looked on a threatening and tempestuous sky, has not feltthe pleasure of discovering unexpectedly a small spot of serene blue,still shining among the stormy clouds? The more unwillingly the eyehas wandered over the gloomy expanse of the rest of the firmament, themore gladly does it finally rest on the little oasis of light whichmeets at length its weary gaze, and which, when it was dispersed overthe whole heaven, was perhaps only briefly regarded with a carelessglance. Contrasted with the dark and mournful hues around it, even thatsmall spot of blue gradually acquires the power of investing the widerand sadder prospect with a certain interest and animation that it didnot before possess--until the mind recognises in the surroundingatmosphere of storm an object adding variety to the view--a spectaclewhose mournfulness may interest as well as repel.
Was it with sensations resembling these (applied, however, rather tothe mind than to the eye) that the reader perused those pages devotedto Hermanric and Antonina? Does the happiness there described nowappear to him to beam through the stormy progress of the narrative asthe spot of blue beams through the gathering clouds? Did that smallprospect of brightness present itself, at the time, like a garden ofrepose amid the waste of fierce emotions which encompassed it? Did itencourage him, when contrasted with what had gone before, to enter onthe field of gloomier interest which was to follow? If, indeed, it hasthus affected him, if he can still remember the scene at the farm-housebeyond the suburbs with emotions such as these, he will not now beunwilling to turn again for a moment from the gathering clouds to thespot of blue,--he will not deny us an instant's digression from Ulpiusand the city of famine to Antonina and the lonely plains.
During the period that has elapsed since we left her, Antonina hasremained secure in her solitude, happy in her well-chosen concealment.The few straggling Goths who at rare intervals appeared in theneighbourhood of her sanctuary never intruded on its peaceful limits.The sight of the ravaged fields and emptied granaries of the desertedlittle property sufficed invariably to turn their marauding steps inother directions. Day by day ran smoothly and swiftly onwards for thegentle usurper of the abandoned farm-house. In the narrow round of itsgardens and protecting woods was comprised for her the whole circle ofthe pleasures and occupations of her new life.
The simple stores left in the house, the fruits and vegetables to begathered in the garden, sufficed amply for her support. The pastoralsolitude of the place had in it a quiet, dreamy fascination, a novelty,an unwearying charm, after the austere loneliness to which her formerexistence had been subjected in Rome. And when evening came, and thesun began to burnish the tops of the western tress, then, after thecalm emotions of the solitary day, came the hour of absorbing cares andhappy expectations--ever the same, yet ever delighting and ever new.Then the rude shutters were carefully closed; the open door was shutand barred; the small light--now invisible to the world without--wasjoyfully kindled; and then, the mistress and author of thesepreparations resigned herself to await, with pleased anxiety, theapproach of the guest for whose welcome they were designed.
And never did she expect the arrival of that treasured companion invain. Hermanric remembered his promise to repair constantly to thefarm-house, and performed it with all the constancy of love and all theenthusiasm of youth. When the sentinels under his command werearranged in their order of watching for the night, and the trustreposed in him by his superiors exempted his actions fromsuperintendence during the hours of darkness that followed, he left thecamp, passed through the desolate suburbs, and gained the dwellingwhere the young Roman awaited him--returning before daybreak to receivethe communications regularly addressed to him, at that hour, by hisinferior in the command.
Thus, false to his nation, yet true to the new Egeria of his thoughtsand actions--traitor to the requirements of vengeance and war, yetfaithful to the interests of tranquility and love--did he seek, nightafter night, Antonina's presence. His passion, though it denied him tohis warrior duties, wrought not deteriorating change in hisdisposition. All that it altered in him it altered nobly. It variedand exalted his rude emotions, for it was inspired, not alone by thebeauty and youth that he saw, but by the pure thoughts, the artlesseloquence that he heard. And she--the forsaken daughter, the sourcewhence the Northern warrior derived those new and higher sensationsthat had never animated him until now--regarded her protector, herfirst friend and companion, as her first love, with a devotion which,in its mingled and exalted nature, may be imagined by the mind, but canbe but imperfectly depicted by the pen. It was a devotion created ofinnocence and gratitude, of joy and sorrow, of apprehension and hope.It was too fresh, too unworldly to own any upbraidings of artificialshame, any self-reproaches of artificial propriety. It resembled inits essence, though not in its application, the devotion of the firstdaughters of the Fall to their brother-lords.
But it is now time that we return to the course of our narrative;although, ere we again enter on the stirring and rapid present, it willbe necessary for a moment more to look back in another direction to theeventful past.
But it is not on peace, beauty, and pleasure that our observation nowfixes itself. It is to anger, disease, and crime--to the unappeasableand unwomanly Goisvintha, that we now revert.
Since the day when the violence of her conflicting emotions haddeprived her of consciousness, at the moment of her decisive triumphover the scruples of Hermanric and the destiny of Antonina, a ragingfever had visited on her some part of those bitter sufferings that shewould fain have inflicted on others. Part of the time she lay in araving delirium; part of the time in helpless exhaustion; but she neverforgot, whatever the form assumed by her disease, the desperate purposein the pursuit of which she had first incurred it. Slowly anddoubtfully her vigour at length returned to her, and with itstrengthened and increased the fierce ambition of vengeance thatabsorbed her lightest thoughts and governed her most careless actions.
Report informed her of the new position, on the line of blockade, onwhich Hermanric was posted, and only enumerated as the companions ofhis sojourn the warriors sent thither under his command. But, thoughthus persuaded of the separation of Antonina and the Goth, herignorance of the girl's fate rankled unintermittingly in her savageheart. Doubtful whether she had permanently reclaimed Hermanric to theinterests of vengeance and bloodshed; vaguely suspecting that he mighthave informed himself in her absence of Antonina's place of refuge ordirection of flight; still resolutely bent on securing the death of hervictim, wherever she might have strayed, she awaited with tremblingeagerness that day of restoration to available activity and strengthwhich would enable her to resume her influence over the Goth, and hermachinations against the safety of the fugitive girl. The time of herfinal and long-expected recovery, was the very day preceding the stormynight we have already described, and her first employment of herrenewed energy was to send word to the young Goth of her intention ofseeking him at his encampment ere the evening closed.
It was this intimation which caused the inquietude mentioned ascharacteristic of the manner of Hermanric at the commencement of thepreceding chapter. The evening there described was the first that sawhim deprived, through the threatened visit of Goisvintha, of theanticipation of repairing to Antonina, as had been his wont, undercover of the night; for to slight his kinswoman's ominous message wasto risk the most fatal of discoveries. Trusting to the delusivesecurity of her sickness, he had hitherto banished the unwelcomeremembrance of her existence from his thoughts. But, now that she wasonce more capable of exertion and of crime, he felt that if he wouldpreserve the secret of Antonina's hiding-place and the security ofAntonina's life, he must remain to oppose force to force and stratagemto stratagem, when Goisvintha sought him at his post, even at the riskof inflicting, by his absence from the farm-house, all the pangs ofanxiety and apprehension on the lonely girl.
Absorbed in such reflections as these, longing to depart, yetdetermined to remain, he impatiently awaited Goisvintha's a
pproach,until the rising of the storm with its mysterious and all-engrossingtrain of events forced his thoughts and actions into a new channel.When, however, his interviews with the stranger and the Gothic kingwere past, and he had returned as he had been bidden to his appointedsojourn in the camp, his old anxieties, displaced but not destroyed,resumed their influence over him. He demanded eagerly of his comradesif Goisvintha had arrived in his absence, and received the same answerin the negative from each.
As he now listened to the melancholy rising of the wind and theincreasing loudness of the thunder, to the shrill cries of the distantnight-birds hurrying to shelter, emotions of mournfulness and awepossessed themselves of his heart. He now wondered that any events,however startling, however appalling, should have had the power to turnhis mind for a moment from the dreary contemplations that had engagedit at the close of day. He thought of Antonina, solitary and helpless,listening to the tempest in affright, and watching vainly for hislong-delayed approach. His fancy arrayed before him dangers, plots,and crimes, robed in all the horrible exaggerations of a dream. Eventhe quick, monotonous dripping of the rain-drops outside aroused withinhim dark and indefinable forebodings of ill. The passion that hadhitherto created for him new pleasures was now fulfilling the otherhalf of its earthly mission, and causing him new pains.
As the storm strengthened, as the darkness lowered deeper and deeper,so did his inquietude increase, until at length it mastered the lastfeeble resistance of his wavering firmness. Persuading himself that,after having delayed so long, Goisvintha would now refrain from seekinghim until the morrow, and that all communications from Alaric, had theybeen despatched, would have reached him ere this; unable any longer tocombat his anxiety for the safety of Antonina; determined to risk theworst possibilities rather than be absent at such a time of tempest andperil from the farm-house, he made a last visit to the stations of thewatchful sentinels, and quitted the camp for the night.