CHAPTER 21.
FATHER AND CHILD.
Forsaken as it appears on an outward view, during the morning of whichwe now write, the house of Numerian is yet not tenantless. In one ofthe sleeping apartments, stretched on his couch, with none to watch byits side, lies the master of the little dwelling. We last beheld himon the scene mingled with the famishing congregation in the Basilica ofSt. John Lateran, still searching for his child amid the confusion ofthe public distribution of food during the earlier stages of themisfortunes of besieged Rome. Since that time he has toiled andsuffered much; and now the day of exhaustion, long deferred, the hoursof helpless solitude, constantly dreaded, have at length arrived.
From the first periods of the siege, while all around him in the citymoved gloomily onward through darker and darker changes, while faminerapidly merged into pestilence and death, while human hopes andpurposes gradually diminished and declined with each succeeding day, healone remained ever devoted to the same labour, ever animated by thesame object--the only one among all his fellow-citizens whom no outwardevent could influence for good or evil, for hope or fear.
In every street of Rome, at all hours, among all ranks of people, hewas still to be seen constantly pursuing the same hopeless search.When the mob burst furiously into the public granaries to seize thelast supplies of corn hoarded for the rich, he was ready at the doorswatching them as they came out. When rows of houses were deserted byall but the dead, he was beheld within, passing from window to window,as he sought through each room for the treasure that he had lost. Whensome few among the populace, in the first days of the pestilence,united in the vain attempt to cast over the lofty walls the corpsesthat strewed the street, he mingled with them to look on the rigidfaces of the dead. In solitary places, where the parent, not yet lostto affection, strove to carry his dying child from the desert roadwayto the shelter of a roof; where the wife, still faithful to her duties,received her husband's last breath in silent despair--he was seengliding by their sides, and for one brief instant looking on them withattentive and mournful eyes. Wherever he went, whatever he beheld, heasked no sympathy and sought no aid. He went his way, a pilgrim on asolitary path, an unregarded expectant for a boon that no others wouldcare to partake.
When the famine first began to be felt in the city, he seemedunconscious of its approach--he made no effort to procure beforehandthe provision of a few days' sustenance; if he attended the firstpublic distributions of food, it was only to prosecute his search forhis child amid the throng around him. He must have perished with thefirst feeble victims of starvation, had he not been met, during hissolitary wanderings, by some of the members of the congregation whomhis piety and eloquence had collected in former days.
By these persons, who entreaties that he would suspend his hopelesssearch he always answered with the same firm and patient denial, hiscourse was carefully watched and his wants anxiously provided for. Outof every supply of food which they were enabled to collect, his sharewas invariably carried to his abode. They remembered their teacher inthe hour of his dejection, as they had formerly reverenced him in theday of his vigour; they toiled to preserve his life as anxiously asthey had laboured to profit by his instructions; they listened as hisdisciples once, they served him as his children now.
But over these, as over all other offices of human kindness, the faminewas destined gradually and surely to prevail. The provision of foodgarnered up by the congregation ominously lessened with each succeedingday. When the pestilence began darkly to appear, the numbers of thosewho sought their afflicted teacher at his abode, or followed himthrough the dreary streets, fatally decreased.
Then, as the nourishment which had supported, and the vigilance whichhad watched him, thus diminished, so did the hard-tasked energies ofthe unhappy father fail him faster and faster. Each morning as hearose, his steps were more feeble, his heart grew heavier within him,his wanderings through the city were less and less resolute andprolonged. At length his powers totally deserted him; the last-leftmembers of his congregation, as they approached his abode with thelast-left provision of food which they possessed, found him prostratewith exhaustion at his garden gate. They bore him to his couch, placedtheir charitable offering by his side, and leaving one of their numberto protect him from the robber and the assassin, they quitted the housein despair.
For some days the guardian remained faithful to his post, until hissufferings from lack of food overpowered his vigilance. Dreading that,in his extremity, he might be tempted to take from the old man's smallstore of provision what little remained, he fled from the house, toseek sustenance, however loathsome, in the public streets; andthenceforth Numerian was left defenceless in his solitary abode.
He was first beheld on the scenes which these pages present, a man ofaustere purpose, of unwearied energy; a valiant reformer, who defiedall difficulties that beset him in his progress; a triumphant teacher,leading at his will whoever listened to his words; a father, proudlycontemplating the future position which he destined for his child. Fardifferent did he now appear. Lost to his ambition, broken in spirit,helpless in body, separated from his daughter by his own act, he lay onhis untended couch in a death-like lethargy. The cold wind blowingthrough his opened window awakened no sensations in his torpid frame;the cup of water and the small relics of coarse food stood near hishand, but he had no vigilance to discern them. His open eyes lookedsteadfastly upward, and yet he reposed as one in a deep sleep, or asone already devoted to the tomb; save when, at intervals, his lipsmoved slowly with a long and painfully drawn breath, or a fever flushtinged his hollow cheek with changing and momentary hues.
While thus in outward aspect appearing to linger between life anddeath, his faculties yet remained feebly vital within him. Aroused byno external influence, and governed by no mental restraint, they nowcreated before him a strange waking vision, palpable as an actual event.
It seemed to him that he was reposing, not in his own chamber, but insome mysterious world, filled with a twilight atmosphere, inexpressiblysoothing and gentle to his aching sight. Through this mild radiance hecould trace, at long intervals, shadowy representations of the scenesthrough which he had passed in search of his lost child. The gloomystreets, the lonely houses abandoned to the unburied dead, which he hadexplored, alternately appeared and vanished before him in solemnsuccession; and ever and anon, as one vision disappeared ere anotherrose, he heard afar off a sound as of gentle, womanly voices, murmuringin solemn accents, 'The search has been made in penitence, in patience,in prayer, and has not been pursued in vain. The lost shallreturn--the beloved shall yet be restored!'
Thus, as it had begun, the vision long continued. Now the scenesthrough which he had wandered passed slowly before his eyes, now thesoft voices murmured pityingly in his ear. At length the firstdisappeared, and the last became silent; then ensued a long vacantinterval, and then the grey, tranquil light brightened slowly at onespot, out of which he beheld advancing towards him the form of his lostchild.
She came to his side, she bent lovingly over him; he saw her eyes, withtheir old patient, childlike expression, looking sorrowfully down uponhim. His heart revived to a sense of unspeakable awe and contrition,to emotions of yearning love and mournful hope; his speech returned; hewhispered tremulously, 'Child! child! I repented in bitter woe thewrong that I did to thee; I sought thee, in my loneliness on earth,through the long day and the gloomy night! And now the merciful Godhas sent thee to pardon me! I loved thee; I wept for thee.'
His voice died within him, for now his outward sensations quickened.He felt warm tears falling on his cheeks; he felt embracing armsclasped round him; he heard tenderly repeated, 'Father! speak to me asyou were wont; love me, father, and forgive me, as you loved andforgave me when I was a little child!'
The sound of that well-remembered voice--which had ever spoken kindlyand reverently to him; which had last addressed him in tones ofdespairing supplication; which he had hardly hoped to hear again onearth--penetrated his
whole being, like awakening music in the deadsilence of night. His eyes lost their vacant expression; he raisedhimself suddenly on the couch; he saw that what had begun as a visionhad ended as a reality; that his dream had proved the immediatefore-runner of its own fulfilment; that his daughter in her bodilypresence was indeed restored; and his head drooped forward, and hetrembled and wept upon her bosom, in the overpowering fulness of hisgratitude and delight.
For some moments Antonina, calming with the resolute heroism ofaffection her own thronging emotions of awe and affright, endeavouredto soothe and support her fast-failing parent. Her horror almostoverwhelmed her, as she thought that now, when, through grief andperil, she was at last restored to him, he might expire in her arms;but even yet her resolution did not fail her. The last hope of herbrief and bitter life was now the hope of reviving her father, and sheclung to it with the tenacity of despair.
She calmed her voice while she spoke to him; she entreated him toremember that his daughter had returned to watch over him, to be hisobedient pupil as in days of old. Vain effort! Even while the wordspassed her lips, his arms, which had been pressed over her, relaxed;his head grew heavier on her bosom. In the despair of the moment, shetore herself from him, and looked round to seek the help that none werenear to afford. The cup of water, the last provision of food,attracted her eye. With quick instinct she caught them up. Hope,success, salvation, lay in those miserable relics. She pressed thefood into his mouth; she moistened his parched lips, his dry brow, withthe water. During one moment of horrible suspense she saw him stillinsensible; then the vital functions revived; his eyes opened again andfixed famine-struck on the wretched nourishment before him. Hedevoured it ravenously; he drained the cup of water to its last drop;he sank back again on the couch. But now the torpid blood moved oncemore in his veins; his heart beat less and less feebly: he was saved.She saw it as she bent over him--saved by the lost child in the hour ofher return! It was a sensation of ecstatic triumph and gratitude whichno woeful remembrances had power to embitter in its bright, suddenbirth. She knelt down by the side of the couch, almost crushed by herown emotions. Over the grave of the young warrior she had raised herheart to Heaven in agony and grief, and now by her father's side shepoured forth her whole soul to her Creator in trembling ejaculations ofthankfulness and hope.
Thus--the one slowly recovering whatever of life and vigour yetcontinued in his weakened frame, the other still filled with herall-absorbing emotions of gratitude--the father and daughter longremained. And now, as morning waned towards noon, the storm began tosubside. Gradually and solemnly the vast thunder-clouds rolled asunder,and the bright blue heaven beyond appeared through their fantasticrifts. The lessening rain-drops fell light and silvery to the earth,and breeze and sunshine were wafted at fitful intervals over theplague-tainted atmosphere of Rome. As yet, subdued by the shadows ofthe floating clouds, the dawning sunbeams glittered softly through thewindows of Numerian's chamber. They played, warm and reviving, overhis worn features, like messengers of resurrection and hope from theirnative heaven. Life seemed to expand within him under their fresh andgentle ministering. Once more he raised himself, and turned towardshis child; and now his heart throbbed with a healthful joy, and hisarms closed round her, not in the helplessness of infirmity, but in thewelcome of love.
His words, when he spoke to her, fell at first almost inarticulatelyfrom his lips--they were mingled together in confused phrases oftenderness, contrition, thanksgiving. All the native enthusiasm of hisdisposition, all the latent love for his child, which had for yearsbeen suppressed by his austerity, or diverted by his ambition, now atlast burst forth.
Trembling and silent in his arms, Antonina vainly endeavoured to returnhis caresses and to answer his words of welcome. Now for the firsttime she knew how deep was her father's affection for her; she felt howforeign to his real nature had been his assumed severity in theirintercourse of former days; and in the quick flow of new feelings andold recollections produced by the delighting surprise of the discovery,she found herself speechless. She could only listen eagerly,breathlessly, while he spoke. His words, faltering and confused thoughthey were, were words of endearment which she had never heard from himbefore; they were words which no mother had ever pronounced beside herinfant bed, and they sank divinely consoling over her heart, asmessages of pardon from an angel's lips.
Gradually Numerian's voice grew calmer. He raised his daughter in hisarms, and bent wistfully on her face his attentive and pitying eyes.'Returned, returned!' he murmured, while he gazed on her, 'never againto depart! Returned, beautiful and patient, kinder and more tenderthan ever! Love me and pardon me, Antonina. I sought for you inbitter loneliness and despair. Think not of me as what I was, but aswhat I am! There were days when you were an infant, when I had nothought but how to cherish and delight you, and now those days havecome again. You shall read no gloomy task-books; you shall never beseparated from me more; you shall play sweet music on the lute; youshall be all garlanded with flowers which I will provide for you! Wewill find friends and glad companions; we will bring happiness with uswherever we are seen. God's blessing goes forth from children likeyou--it has fallen upon me--it has raised me from the dead! MyAntonina shall teach me to worship, as I once taught her. She shallpray for me in the morning, and pray for me at night; and when shethinks not of it, when she sleeps, I shall come softly to her bedside,and wait and watch over her, so that when she opens her eyes they shallopen on me--they are the eyes of my child who has been restored tome--there is nothing on earth that can speak to me like them ofhappiness and peace!'
He paused for a moment, and looked rapturously on her face as it wasturned towards him. His features partially saddened while he gazed,and taking her long hair, still wet and dishevelled from the rain, inhis hands, he pressed it over his lips, over his face, over his neck.Then, when he saw that she was endeavouring to speak, when he beheldthe tears that were now filling her eyes, he drew her closer to him,and hurriedly continued in lower tones--
'Hush! hush! No more grief, no more tears! Tell me not whither youhave wandered--speak not of what you have suffered; for would not everyword be a reproach to me? And you have come to pardon and not toreproach! Let not the recollection that it was I who cast you off beforced on me from your lips; let us remember only that we are restoredto each other; let us think that God has accepted my penitence andforgiven me my sin, in suffering my child to return! Or, if we mustspeak of the days of separation that are past, speak to me of the daysthat found you tranquil and secure; rejoice me by telling me that itwas not all danger and woe in the bitter destiny which my guilty angerprepared for my own child! Say to me that you met protectors as wellas enemies in the hour of your flight--that all were not harsh to youas I was--that those of whom you asked shelter and safety looked onyour face as on a petition for charity and kindness from friends whomthey loved! Tell me only of your protectors, Antonina, for in thatthere will be consolation; and you have come to console!'
As he waited for her reply he felt her tremble on his bosom, he saw theshudder that ran over her frame. The despair in her voice, though sheonly pronounced in answer to him the simple words, 'There was one'--andthen ceased, unable to proceed--penetrated coldly to his heart.
'Is he not at hand?' he hurriedly resumed. 'Why is he not here? Letus seek him without delay. I must humble myself before him in mygratitude. I must show him that I was worthy that my Antonina shouldbe restored.'
'He is dead!' she gasped, sinking down in the arms that embraced her,as the recollections of the past night again crowded in all theirhorror on her memory. 'They murdered him by my side. O father!father! he loved me; he would have reverenced and protected you!'
'May the merciful God receive him among the blessed angels, and honourhim among the holy martyrs!' cried the father, raising his tearful eyesin supplication. 'May his spirit, if it can still be observant of thethings of earth, know that his name shall be written on my heart withthe name of m
y child; that I will think on him as on a belovedcompanion, and mourn for him as a son that has been taken from me!'
He ceased, and looked down on Antonina, whose features were stillhidden from him. Each felt that a new bond of mutual affection hadbeen created between them by what each had spoken; but both nowremained silent.
During this interval the thoughts of Numerian wandered from thereflections which had hitherto occupied him. The few mournful wordswhich his daughter had spoken had been sufficient to banish its fulnessof joy from his heart, and to turn him from the happy contemplation ofthe present to the dark recollections of the past. Vague doubts andfears now mingled with his gratitude and hope, and involuntarily histhoughts reverted to what he would fain have forgotten for ever--to themorning when he had driven Antonina from her home.
Baseless apprehensions of the return of the treacherous Pagan and hisprofligate employer, with the return of their victim--despairingconvictions of his own helplessness and infirmity rose startlingly inhis mind. His eyes wandered vacantly round the room, his hands closedtrembling over his daughter's form; then, suddenly releasing her, hearose as one panic-stricken, and exclaiming, 'The doors must besecured--Ulpius may be near--the senator may return!' endeavoured tocross the room. But his strength was unequal to the effort; he leanedback for support against the wall, and breathlessly repeating, 'Securethe doors--Ulpius, Ulpius!' he motioned to Antonina to descend.
She trembled as she obeyed him. Remembering her passage through thebreach in the wall, and her fearful journey through the streets ofRome, she more than shared her father's apprehensions as she descendedthe stairs.
The door remained half open, as she had left it when she entered thehouse. Ere she hurriedly closed and barred it, she cast a momentaryglance on the street beyond. The gaunt figures of the slaves stillmoved wearily to and fro, amid the mockery of festal preparation inVetranio's palace; and here and there a few ghastly figures lay on theground contemplating them in languid amazement. Over all other parts ofthe street the deadly tranquillity of plague and famine still prevailed.
Hurriedly ascending the steps, Antonina hastened to assure her fatherthat she had obeyed his commands, and that they were now secure fromall intrusion from without. But, during her brief absence, a new andmore ominous prospect of calamity had presented itself before the oldman's mind.
As she entered the room, she saw that he had returned to his couch, andthat he was holding before him the little wooden bowl which hadcontained his last supply of food, and which was now empty. Headdressed not a word to her when he heard her enter; his features wererigid with horror and despair as he looked down on the empty bowl; hemuttered vacantly, 'It was the last provision that remained, and it wasI that exhausted it! The beasts of the forest carry food to theiryoung, and I have taken the last morsel from my child!'
In an instant the utter desolateness of their situation--forgotten inthe first joy of their meeting--forced itself with appalling vividnessupon Antonina's mind. She endeavoured to speak of comfort and hope toher father; but the fearful realities of the famine in the city nowrose palpably before her, and suspended the vain words of solace on herlips. In the midst of still populous Rome, within sight of thosesurrounding plains where the creative sun ripened hour by hour thevegetation of the teeming earth, where field and granary displayedprofusely their abundant stores, the father and daughter now looked oneach other, as helpless to replace their exhausted provision of food asif they had been abandoned on the raft of the shipwrecked in anunexplored sea, or banished to a lonely island whose inland productswere withered by infected winds, and around whose arid shores ran suchdestroying waters as seethe over the 'Cities of the Plain'.
The silence which had long prevailed in the room, the bitterreflections which still held the despairing father and the patientdaughter speechless alike, were at length interrupted by a hollow andmelancholy voice from the street, pronouncing, in the form of a publicnotice, these words:--
'I, Publius Dalmatius, messenger of the Roman Senate, proclaim, that inorder to clear the streets from the dead, three thousand sestertii willbe given by the Prefect for every ten bodies that are cast over thewalls. This is the true decree of the Senate.'
The voice ceased; but no sound of applause, no murmur of popular tumultwas heard in answer. Then, after an interval, it was once more faintlyaudible as the messenger passed on and repeated the decree in anotherstreet; and then the silence again sank down over all things moreawfully pervading than before.
Every word of the proclamation, when repeated in the distance as whenspoken under his window, had clearly reached Numerian's ears. Hismind, already sinking in despair, was riveted on what he had heard fromthe woe-boding voice of the herald, with a fascination as absorbing asthat which rivets the eye of the traveller, already giddy on the summitof a precipice, upon the spectacle of the yawning gulfs beneath. Whenall sound of the proclamation had finally died away, the unhappy fatherdropped the empty bowl which he had hitherto mechanically continued tohold before him, and glancing affrightedly at his daughter, groaned tohimself: 'The corpses are to be cast over the walls--the dead are tobe flung forth to the winds of heaven--there is no help for us in thecity. O God, God!--she may die!--her body may be cast away like therest, and I may live to see it!'
He rose suddenly from the couch; his reason seemed for a moment to beshaken as he tottered to the window, crying, 'Food! food!--I will givemy house and all it contains for a morsel of food. I have nothing tosupport my own child--she will starve before me by tomorrow if I haveno food! I am a citizen of Rome--I demand help from the Senate! Food!food!'
In tones declining lower and lower he continued to cry thus from thewindow, but no voice answered him either in sympathy or derision. Ofall the people--now increased in numbers--collected in the streetbefore Vetranio's palace, no one turned even to look on him. For daysand days past, such fruitless appeals as his had been heard, and heardunconcernedly, at every hour and in every street of Rome--now ringingthrough the heavy air in the shrieks of delirium; now faintly audiblein the last faltering murmurs of exhaustion and despair.
Thus vainly entreating help and pity from a populace who had ceased togive the one or to feel the other, Numerian might long have remained;but now his daughter approached his side, and drawing him gentlytowards his couch, said in tender and solemn accents: 'Remember,father, that God sent the ravens to feed Elijah, and replenished thewidow's cruse! He will not desert us, for He has restored us to eachother, and has sent me hither not to perish in the famine, but to watchover you!'
'God has deserted the city and all that it contains!' he answereddistractedly. 'The angel of destruction has gone forth into ourstreets, and death walks in his shadow! On this day, when hope andhappiness seemed opening before us both; our little household has beendoomed! The young and the old, the weary and the watchful, they strewthe streets alike--the famine has mastered them all--the famine willmaster us--there is no help, no escape! I, who would have diedpatiently for my daughter's safety, must now die despairing, leavingher friendless in the wide, dreary, perilous world; in the dismal cityof anguish, of horror, of death--where the enemy threatens without, andhunger and pestilence waste within! O Antonina! you have returned tome but for a little time; the day of our second separation draws near!'
For a few moments his head drooped, and his sobs choked his utterance;then he once more rose painfully to his feet. Heedless of Antonina'sentreaties, he again endeavoured to cross the room, only again to findhis feeble powers unequal to sustain him. As he fell back panting upona seat, his eyes assumed a wild, unnatural expression--despair of mindand weakness of body had together partially unhinged his faculties.When his daughter affrightedly approached to soothe and succour him, heimpatiently waved her back; and began to speak in a dull, hoarse,monotonous voice, pressing his hand firmly over his brow, and directinghis eyes backwards and forwards incessantly, on object after object, inevery part of the room.
'Listen, child, listen!' he hasti
ly began. 'I tell you there is nofood in the house, and no food in Rome!--we are besieged--they havetaken from us our granaries in the suburbs, and our fields on theplains--there is a great famine in the city--those who still eat, eatstrange food which men sicken at when it is named. I would seek eventhis, but I have no strength to go forth into the byways and force itfrom others at the point of the sword! I am old and feeble, andheart-broken--I shall die first, and leave fatherless my good, kinddaughter, whom I sought for so long, and whom I loved as my only child!'
He paused for an instant, not to listen to the words of encouragementand hope which Antonina mechanically addressed to him while he spoke,but to collect his wandering thoughts, to rally his failing strength.His voice acquired a quicker tone, and his features presented a suddenenergy and earnestness of expression, as if some new project hadflashed across his mind, when, after an interval, he continued thus:--
'But though my child shall be bereaved of me, though I shall die in thehour when I most longed to live for her, I must not leave her helpless;I will send her among my congregation who have deserted me, but whowill repent when they hear that I am dead, and will receive Antoninaamong them for my sake! Listen to this--listen, listen! You must tellthem to remember all that I once revealed to them of my brother, fromwhom I parted in my boyhood--my brother, whom I have never seen since.He may yet be alive, he may be found--they must search for him; for toyou he would be father to the fatherless, and guardian to theunguarded--he may now be in Rome, he may be rich and powerful--he mayhave food to spare, and shelter that is good against all enemies andstrangers! Attend, child, to my words: in these latter days I havethought of him much; I have seen him in dreams as I saw him for thelast time in my father's house; he was happier and more beloved than Iwas, and in envy and hatred I quitted my parents and parted from him.You have heard nothing of this; but you must hear it now, that when Iam dead you may know you have a protector to seek! So I received inanger my brother's farewell, and fled from my home--(those days werewell remembered by me once, but all things grow dull on my memory now).Long years of turmoil and change passed on, and I never met him; andmen of many nations were my companions, but he was not among them; thenmuch affliction fell upon me, and I repented and learnt the fear ofGod, and went back to my father's house. Since that, years havepassed--I know not how many. I could have told them when I spoke of myformer life to him--to my friend, when we stood near St. Peter's, erethe city was besieged, looking on the sunset, and speaking of the earlydays of our companionship; but now my very remembrance fails me; thefamine that threatens us with separation and death casts darkness overmy thoughts; yet hear me, hear me patiently--for your sake I mustcontinue!'
'Not now, father--not now! At another time, on a happier day!'murmured Antonina, in tremulous, entreating tones.
'My home, when I arrived to look on it, was gone,' pursued the old mansadly, neither heeding nor hearing her. 'Other houses were built wheremy father's house had stood; no man could tell me of my parents and mybrother; then I returned, and my former companions grew hateful in myeyes; I left them, and they followed me with persecution andscorn.--Listen, listen!--I set forth secretly in the night, with you,to escape them, and to make perfect my reformation where they shouldnot be near to hinder it; and we travelled onward many days until wecame to Rome, and I made my abode there. But I feared that mycompanions whom I abhorred might discover and persecute me again, andin the new city of my dwelling I called myself by another name than thename that I bore; thus I knew that all trace of me would be lost, andthat I should be kept secure from men whom I thought on only as enemiesnow. Go, child! go quickly!--bring your tablets and write down thenames that I shall tell you; for so you will discover your protectorwhen I am gone! Say not to him that you are the child of Numerian--heknows not the name; say that you are the daughter of Cleander, hisbrother, who died longing to be restored to him. Write--writecarefully, Cleander!--that was the name my father gave to me; that wasthe name I bore until I fled from my evil companions and changed it,dreading their pursuit! Cleander! write and remember, Cleander! Ihave seen in visions that my brother shall be discovered: he will notbe discovered to me, but he will be discovered to you! Yourtablets--your tablets!--write his name with mine--it is--'
He stopped abruptly. His mental powers, fluctuating between torpor andanimation--shaken, but not overpowered by the trials which had assailedthem--suddenly rallied, and resuming somewhat of their accustomedbalance, became awakened to a sense of their own aberration. His vaguerevelations of his past life (which the reader will recognise asresembling his communications on the same subject to the fugitiveland-owner, previously related) now appeared before him in all theirincongruity and uselessness. His countenance fell--he sighed bitterlyto himself: 'My reason begins to desert me!--my judgment, which shouldguide my child--my resolution, which should uphold her, both fail me!How should my brother, since childhood lost to me, be found by her?Against the famine that threatens us I offer but vain words! Alreadyher strength declines; her face, that I loved to look on grows wanbefore my eyes! God have mercy upon us!--God have mercy upon us!'
He returned feebly to his couch; his head declined on his bosom;sometimes a low groan burst from his lips, but he spoke no more.
Deep as was the prostration under which he had now fallen, it was yetless painful to Antonina to behold it than to listen to the incoherentrevelations which had fallen from his lips but the moment before, andwhich, in her astonishment and affright, she had dreaded might be theawful indications of the overthrow of her father's reason. As sheagain placed herself by his side, she trembled to feel that her ownweariness was fast overpowering her; but she still struggled with herrising despair--still strove to think only of capacity for enduranceand chances of relief.
The silence in the room was deep and dismal while they now sattogether. The faint breezes, at long intervals, drowsily rose and fellas they floated through the open window; the fitful sunbeamsalternately appeared and vanished as the clouds rolled upward in airysuccession over the face of heaven. Time moved sternly in its destinedprogress, and Nature varied tranquilly through its appointed limits ofchange, and still no hopes, no saving projects, nothing but darkrecollections and woeful anticipations occupied Antonina's mind; when,just as her weary head was drooping towards the ground, just assensation and fortitude and grief itself seemed declining into adreamless and deadly sleep, a last thought, void of discernibleconnection or cause, rose suddenly within her--animating, awakening,inspiring. She started up. 'The garden, father--the garden!' shecried breathlessly. 'Remember the food that grows in our garden below!Be comforted, we have provision left yet--God has not deserted us!'
He raised his face while she spoke; his features assumed a deepermournfulness and hopelessness of expression; he looked upon her inominous silence, and laid his trembling fingers on her arm to detainher, when she hurriedly attempted to quit the room.
'Do not forbid me to depart,' she anxiously pleaded. 'To me everycorner in the garden is known; for it was my possession in our happierdays--our last hopes rest in the garden, and I must search through itwithout delay! Bear with me,' she added, in low and melancholytones--'bear with me, dear father, in all that I would now do! I havesuffered, since we parted, a bitter affliction, which clings dark andheavy to all my thoughts--there is no consolation for me but theprivilege of caring for your welfare--my only hope of comfort is in theemployment of aiding you!'
The old man's hand had pressed heavier on her arm while she addressedhim; but when she ceased it dropped from her, and he bent his head inspeechless submission to her entreaty.
For one moment she lingered, looking on him silent as himself; thenext, she left the apartment with hasty and uncertain steps.
On reaching the garden, she unconsciously took the path leading to thebank where she had once loved to play secretly upon her lute and tolook on the distant mountains reposing in the warm atmosphere whichsummer evenings shed over their blue expanse. How eloqu
ent was thislittle plot of ground of the quiet events now for ever gone by!--of thejoys, the hopes, the happy occupations, which rise with the day thatchronicles them, and pass like that day, never to return thesame!--which the memory alone can preserve as they were, and the heartcan never resume but in a changed form, divested of the presence of thecompanion of the incident of the departed moment, which formed thecharm of the past and makes the imperfection of the present.
Tender and thronging were the remembrances which the surroundingprospect called up, as the sad mistress of the garden looked again onher little domain! She saw the bank where she could never more sit tosing with a renewal of the same feelings which had once inspired hermusic; she saw the drooping flowers that she could never restore withthe same childlike enjoyment of the task which had animated her informer hours! Young though she still was, the emotions of the youthfuldays that were gone could never be revived as they had once existed!As waters they had welled up, and as waters they had flowed forth,never to return to their source! Thoughts of these former years--ofthe young warrior who lay cold beneath the heavy earth--of thedesponding father who mourned hopeless in the room above--gatheredthick at her heart as she turned from her flower-beds--not, as in otherdays, to pour forth her happiness to the music of her lute, but tosearch laboriously for the sustenance of life.
At first, as she stooped over those places in the garden where she knewthat fruits and vegetables had been planted by her own hand, her tearsblinded her. She hastily dashed them away, and looked eagerly around.
Alas! others had reaped the field from which she had hoped abundance!In the early days of the famine Numerian's congregation had entered thegarden, and gathered for him whatever it contained; its choicest andits homeliest products were alike exhausted; withered leaves lay on thebarren earth, and naked branches waved over them in the air. Shewandered from path to path, searching amid the briars and thistles,which already cast an aspect of ruin over the deserted place; sheexplored its most hidden corners with the painful perseverance ofdespair; but the same barrenness spread around her wherever she turned.On this once fertile spot, which she had entered with such joyful faithin its resources, there remained but a few poor decayed roots, droppedand forgotten amid tangled weeds and faded flowers.
She saw that they were barely sufficient for one scanty meal as shecollected them and returned slowly to the house. No words escaped her,no tears flowed over her cheeks when she reascended the steps--hope,fear, thought, sensation itself had been stunned within her from thefirst moment when she had discovered that, in the garden as in thehouse, the inexorable famine had anticipated the last chances of relief.
She entered the room, and, still holding the withered roots, advancedmechanically to her father's side. During her absence his mental andbodily faculties had both yielded to wearied nature--he lay in a deep,heavy sleep.
Her mind experienced a faint relief when she saw that the fatalnecessity of confessing the futility of the hopes she had herselfawakened was spared her for a while. She knelt down by Numerian, andgently smoothed the hair over his brow; then she drew the curtainacross the window, for she feared even that the breeze blowing throughit might arouse him.
A strange, secret satisfaction at the idea of devoting to her fatherevery moment of the time and every particle of the strength that mightyet be reserved for her; a ready resignation to death in dying forhim--overspread her heart, and took the place of all other aspirationsand all other thoughts.
She now moved to and fro through the room with a cautious tranquillitywhich nothing could startle; she prepared her decayed roots for foodwith a patient attention which nothing could divert. Lost, through theaggravated miseries of her position, to recent grief and presentapprehension, she could still instinctively perform the simple officesof the woman and the daughter, as she might have performed them amid apeaceful nation and a prosperous home. Thus do the first-bornaffections outlast the exhaustion of all the stormy emotions, all theaspiring thoughts of after years, which may occupy, but which cannotabsorb, the spirit within us; thus does their friendly and familiarvoice, when the clamour of contending passions has died away in its ownfury, speak again, serene and sustaining as in the early time, when themind moved secure within the limits of its native simplicity, and theheart yet lay happy in the pure tranquillity of its first repose!
The last scanty measure of food was soon prepared; it was bitter andunpalatable when she tasted it--life could barely be preserved, even inthe most vigorous, by provision so wretched; but she set it aside ascarefully as if it had been the most precious luxury of the mostabundant feast.
Nothing had changed during the interval of her solitary employment--herfather yet slept; the gloomy silence yet prevailed in the street. Sheplaced herself at the window, and partially drew aside the curtain tolet the warm breezes from without blow over her cold brow. The sameineffable resignation, the same unnatural quietude, which had sunk downover her faculties since she had entered the room, overspread themstill. Surrounding objects failed to impress her attention;recollections and forebodings stagnated in her mind. A marblecomposure prevailed over her features. Sometimes her eyes wanderedmechanically from the morsels of food by her side to her sleepingfather, as her one vacant idea of watching for his service, till thefeeble pulses of life had throbbed their last, alternately revived anddeclined; but no other evidences of bodily existence or mental activityappeared in her. As she now sat in the half-darkened room, by thecouch on which her father reposed--her features pale, calm, and rigid,her form enveloped in cold white drapery--there were moments when shelooked like one of the penitential devotees of the primitive Church,appointed to watch in the house of mourning, and surprised in hersaintly vigil by the advent of Death.
Time flowed on--the monotonous hours of the day waned again towardsnight; and plague and famine told their lapse in the fated highways ofRome. For father and child the sand in the glass was fast running out,and neither marked it as it diminished. The sleeper still reposed, andthe guardian by his side still watched; but now her weary gaze wasdirected on the street, unconsciously attracted by the sound of voiceswhich at length rose from it at intervals, and by the light of thetorches and lamps which appeared in the great palace of the senatorVetranio, as the sun gradually declined in the horizon, and the fieryclouds around were quenched in the vapours of the advancing night.Steadily she looked upon the sight beneath and before her; but even yether limbs never moved; no expression relieved the blank, solemnpeacefulness of her features.
Meanwhile, the soft, brief twilight glimmered over the earth, andshowed the cold moon, poised solitary in the starless heaven; then, thestealthy darkness arose at her pale signal, and closed slowly round theCity of Death!