CHAPTER X.
Within a few minutes after Hermas had flung himself out of window intothe roadway, Phoebicius walked into his sleeping-room. Sirona had hadtime to throw herself on to her couch; she was terribly frightened, andhad turned her face to the wall. Did he actually know that some onehad been with her? And who could have betrayed her, and have called himhome? Or could he have come home by accident sooner than usual?
It was dark in the room, and he could not see her face, and yet she kepther eyes shut as if asleep, for every fraction of a minute in which shecould still escape seeing him in his fury seemed a reprieve; and yet herheart beat so violently that it seemed to her that he must hear it, whenhe approached the bed with a soft step that was peculiar to him.She heard him walk up and down, and at last go into the kitchen thatadjoined the sleeping-room. In a few moments she perceived through herhalf-closed eyes, that he, had brought in a light; he had lighted a lampat the hearth, and now searched both the rooms.
As yet he had not spoken to her, nor opened his lips to utter a word.
Now he was in the sitting-room, and now--involuntarily she drew herselfinto a heap, and pulled the coverlet over her head--now he laughedaloud, so loud and scornfully, that she felt her hands and feet turncold, and a rushing crimson mist floated before her eyes. Then the lightcame back into the bed-room, and came nearer and nearer. She felt herhead pushed by his hard hand, and with a feeble scream she flung off thecoverlet and sat up.
Still he did not speak a word, but what she saw was quite enough tosmother the last spark of her courage and hope, for her husband's eyesshowed only the whites, his sallow features were ashy-pale, and on hisbrow the branded mark of Mithras stood out more clearly than ever. Inhis right hand he held the lamp, in his left Hermas' sheepskin.
As his haggard eye met hers he held the anchorite's matted garment soclose to her face, that it touched her. Then he threw it violently onthe floor, and asked in a low, husky voice, "What is that?"
She was silent. He went up to the little table near her bed; on it stoodher night-draught in a pretty colored glass, that Polykarp had broughther from Alexandria as a token, and with the back of his hand he sweptit from the table, so that it fell on the dais, and flew with a crashinto a thousand fragments. She screamed, the greyhound sprang up andbarked at the Gaul. He seized the little beast's collar, and flung itso violently across the room, that it uttered a pitiful cry of pain. Thedog had belonged to Sirona since she was quite a girl, it had comewith her to Rome, and from thence to the oasis; it clung to her withaffection, and she to it, for Iambe liked no one to caress and strokeher so much as her mistress. She was so much alone, and the greyhoundwas always with her, and not only entertained her by such tricks as anyother dog might have learned, but was to her a beloved, dumb, but by nomeans deaf, companion from her early home, who would prick its ears whenshe spoke the name of her dear little sisters in distant Arelas, fromwhom she had not heard for years; or it would look sadly in her face,and kiss her white hands, when longing forced tears into her eyes.
In her solitary, idle, childless existence Iambe was much, very much,to her, and now as she saw her faithful companion and friend creepill-treated and whining up to her bed--as the supple animal triedin vain to spring up and take refuge in her lap, and held out to hismistress his trembling, perhaps broken, little paw, fear vanished fromthe miserable young woman's heart--she sprang from her couch, took thelittle dog in her arms, and exclaimed with a glance, which flashed withanything rather than fear or repentance: "You do not touch the poorlittle beast again, if you take my advice."
"I will drown it to-morrow morning," replied Phoebicius with perfectindifference, but with an evil smile on his flaccid lips. "So manytwo-legged lovers make themselves free to my house, that I do not seewhy I should share your affections with a quadruped into the bargain.How came this sheepskin here?" Sirona vouchsafed no answer to thislast question, but she exclaimed in great excitement, "By God--by yourGod--by the mighty Rock, and by all the gods! if you do the little beasta harm, it will be the last day I stop in your house."
"Hear her!" said the centurion, "and where do you propose to travel to?The desert is wide and there is room and to spare to starve in it, andfor your bones to bleach there. How grieved your lovers would be--fortheir sakes I will take care before drowning the dog to lock in itsmistress."
"Only try to touch me," screamed Sirona beside herself, and springingto the window. "If you lay a finger on me, I will call for help, andDorothea and her husband will protect me against you."
"Hardly," answered Phoebicius drily. "It would suit you no doubt to findyourself under the same roof as that great boy who brings you coloredglass, and throws roses into your window, and perhaps has strewed theroad with them by which he found his way to you to-day. But there arenevertheless laws which protect the Roman citizen from criminals andimpudent seducers. You were always a great deal too much in the houseover there, and you have exchanged your games with the little screamingbeggars for one with the grownup child, the rose-thrower-the fop, who,for your sake, and not to be recognized, covers up his purple coat witha sheepskin! Do you think, you can teach me anything about lovesicknight-wanderers and women?
"I see through it all! Not one step do you set henceforth across Petrus'threshold. There is the open window--scream--scream as loud as you will,and let all the people know of your disgrace. I have the greatest mindto carry this sheepskin to the judge, the first thing in the morning.I shall go now, and set the room behind the kitchen in order for you;there is no window there through which men in sheepskin can get in tomy house. You shall live there till you are tamed, and kiss my feet, andconfess what has been going on here to-night. I shall learn nothing fromthe senator's slaves, that I very well know; for you have turned alltheir heads too--they grin with delight when they see you. All friendsare made welcome by you, even when they wear nothing but sheepskin. Butthey may do what they please--I have the right keeper for you in myown hand. I am going at once--you may scream if you like, but I shouldmyself prefer that you should keep quiet. As to the dog, we have not yetheard the last of the matter; for the present I will keep him here. Ifyou are quiet and come to your senses, he may live for aught I care;but if you are refractory, a rope and a stone can soon be found, and thestream runs close below. You know I never jest--least of all just now."
Sirona's whole frame was in the most violent agitation. Her breath camequickly, her limbs trembled, but she could not find words to answer him.
Phoebicius saw what was passing in her mind, and he went on, "You maysnort proudly now; but an hour will come when you will crawl up to melike your lame dog, and pray for mercy. I have another idea--you willwant a couch in the dark room, and it must be soft, or I shall beblamed; I will spread out the sheepskin for you. You see I know how tovalue your adorer's offerings."
The Gaul laughed loud, seized the hermit's garment, and went withthe lamp into the dark room behind the kitchen, in which vessels andutensils of various sorts were kept. These he set on one side to turnit into a sleeping-room for his wife, of whose guilt he was fullyconvinced.
Who the man was for whose sake she had dishonored him, he knew not, forMiriam had said nothing more than, "Go home, your wife is laughing withher lover."
While her husband was still threatening and storming, Sirona had said toherself, that she would rather die than live any longer with this man.That she herself was not free from fault never occurred to her mind. Hewho is punished more severely than he deserves, easily overlooks his ownfault in his feeling of the judge's injustice.
Phoebicius was right; neither Petrus nor Dorothea had it in their powerto protect her against him, a Roman citizen. If she could not contriveto help her self she was a prisoner, and without air, light, and freedomshe could not live. During his last speech her resolution had beenquickly matured, and hardly had he turned his back and crossed thethreshold, than she hurried up to her bed, wrapped the tremblinggreyhound in the coverlet, took it in her arms like a child, and raninto the
sitting-room with her light burden; the shutters were stillopen of the window through which Hermas had fled into the open. With thehelp of a stool she took the same way, let herself slip down from thesill into the street, and hastened on without aim or goal--inspired onlyby the wish to escape durance in the dark room, and to burst every bondthat tied her to her hated mate--up the church-hill and along the roadwhich lead over the mountain to the sea.
Phoebicius gave her a long start, for after having arranged her prisonhe remained some time in the little room behind the kitchen, not inorder to give her time, collect his thoughts or to reflect on his futureaction, but simply because he felt utterly exhausted.
The centurion was nearly sixty years of age, and his frame, originally apowerful one, was now broken by every sort of dissipation, and could nolonger resist the effects of the strain and excitement of this night.
The lean, wiry, and very active man did not usually fall into thesefits of total enervation excepting in the daytime, for after sundowna wonderful change would come over the gray-headed veteran, whonevertheless still displayed much youthful energy in the exercise of hisofficial duties. At night his drooping eyelids, that almost veiled hiseyes, opened more wildly, his flaccid hanging under-lip closed firmly,his long neck and narrow elongated head were held erect, and when, at alater hour, he went out to drinking-bouts or to the service in honorof Mithras, he might often still be taken for a fine, indomitable youngman.
But when he was drunk he was no longer gay, but wild, braggart, andnoisy. It frequently happened that before he left the carouse, while hewas still in the midst of his boon-companions, the syncope would comeupon him which had so often alarmed Sirona, and from which he couldnever feel perfectly safe even when he was on duty at the head of hissoldiers.
The vehement big man in such moments offered a terrible image ofhelpless impotence; the paleness of death would overspread his features,his back was as if it were broken, and he lost his control over everylimb. His eyes only continued to move, and now and then a shudder shookhis frame. His people said that when he was in this condition, thecenturion's ghastly demon had entered into him, and he himself believedin this evil spirit, and dreaded it; nay, he had attempted to bereleased through heathen spells, and even through Christian exorcisms.Now he sat in the dark room on the sheepfell, which in scorn of his wifehe had spread on a hard wooden bench. His hands and feet turned cold,his eyes glowed, and the power to move even a finger had wholly desertedhim; only his lips twitched, and his inward eye, looking back on thepast with preternaturally sharpened vision, saw, far away and beyond,the last frightful hour.
"If," thought he, "after my mad run down to the oasis, which few youngermen could have vied with, I had given the reins to my fury instead ofrestraining it, the demon would not have mastered me so easily. How thatdevil Miriam's eyes flashed as she told me that a man was betraying me.She certainly must have seen the wearer of the sheepskin, but I lostsight of her before I reached the oasis; I fancy she turned and went upthe mountain. What indeed might not Sirona have done to her? That womansnares all hearts with her eyes as a bird-catcher snares birds with hisflute. How the fine gentlemen ran after her in Rome! Did she dishonor methere, I wonder? She dismissed the Legate Quintillus, who was soanxious to please me--I may thank that fool of a woman that he became myenemy--but he was older even than I, and she likes young men best. Sheis like all the rest of them, and I of all men might have known it. Itis the way of the world: to-day one gives a blow and to-morrow takesone."
A sad smile passed over his lips, then his features settled into a sterngravity, for various unwelcome images rose clearly before his mind, andwould not be got rid of.
His conscience stood in inverse relation to the vigor of his body. Whenhe was well, his too darkly stained past life troubled him little;but when he was unmanned by weakness, he was incapable of fighting theghastly demon that forced upon his memory in painful vividness thosevery deeds which he would most willingly have forgotten. In such hourshe must need remember his friend, his benefactor, and superior officer,the Tribune Servianus, whose fair young wife he had tempted with athousand arts to forsake her husband and child, and fly with him intothe wide world; and at this moment a bewildering illusion made him fancythat he was the Tribune Servianus, and yet at the same time himself.Every hour of pain, and the whole bitter anguish that his betrayedbenefactor had suffered through his act when he had seduced Glycera, hehimself now seemed to realize, and at the same time the enemy that hadbetrayed him, Servianus, was none other than himself, Phoebicius, theGaul. He tried to protect himself and meditated revenge against theseducer, and still he could not altogether lose the sense of his ownidentity.
This whirl of mad imagining, which he vainly endeavored to make clearto himself, threatened to distract his reason, and he groaned aloud; thesound of his own voice brought him back to actuality.
He was Phoebicius again and not another, that he knew now, and yet hecould not completely bring himself to comprehend the situation. Theimage of the lovely Glycera, who had followed him to Alexandria, andwhom he had there abandoned, when he had squandered his last piece ofmoney and her last costly jewels in the Greek city, no longer appearedto him alone, but always side by side with his wife Sirona.
Glycera had been a melancholy sweetheart, who had wept much, and laughedlittle after running away from her husband; he fancied he could hearher speaking soft words of reproach, while Sirona defied him with loudthreats, and dared to nod and signal to the senator's son Polykarp.
The weary dreamer angrily shook himself, collected his thoughts, doubledhis fist, and lifted it angrily; this movement was the first sign ofreturning physical energy; he stretched his limbs like a man awakingfrom sleep, rubbed his eyes, pressed his hands to his temples; bydegrees full consciousness returned to him, and with it the recollectionof all that had occurred in the last hour or two.
He hastily left the dark room, refreshed himself in the kitchen with agulp of wine, and went up to the open window to gaze at the stars.
It was long past midnight; he was reminded of his companions nowsacrificing on the mountain, and addressed a long prayer "to the crown,""the invincible sun-god," "the great light," "the god begotten of therock," and to many other names of Mithras; for since he had belonged tothe mystics of this divinity, he had become a zealous devotee, and couldfast too with extraordinary constancy. He had already passed throughseveral of the eighty trials, to which a man had to subject himselfbefore he could attain to the highest grades of the initiated, and theweakness which had just now overpowered him, had attacked him for thefirst time, after he had for a whole week lain for hours in the snow,besides fasting severely, in order to attain the grade of "lion."
Sirona's rigorous mind was revolted by all these practices, and thedecision with which she had always refused to take any part in them,had widened the breach which, without that, parted her from her husband.Phoebicius was, in his fashion, very much in earnest with all thesethings; for they alone saved him in some measure from himself, from darkmemories, and from the fear of meeting the reward of his evil deeds ina future life, while Sirona found her best comfort in the remembrance ofher early life, and so gathered courage to endure the miserable presentcheerfully, and to hold fast to hope for better times.
Phoebicius ended his prayer to-day--a prayer for strength to breakhis wife's strong spirit, for a successful issue to his revenge on herseducer--ended it without haste, and with careful observance of all theprescribed forms. Then he took two strong ropes from the wall, pulledhimself up, straight and proud, as if he were about to exhort hissoldiers to courage before a battle, cleared his throat like an oratorin the Forum before he begins his discourse, and entered the bedroomwith a dignified demeanor. Not the smallest suspicion of the possibilityof her escape troubled his sense of security, when, not finding Sironain the sleeping-room, he went into the sitting-room to carry out themeditated punishment. Here again--no one.
He paused in astonishment; but the thought that she could have fledap
peared to him so insane, that he immediately and decisively dismissedit. No doubt she feared his wrath, and was hidden under her bed orbehind the curtain which covered his clothes. "The dog," thought he, "isstill cowering by her--" and he began to make a noise, half whistlingand half hissing, which Iambe could not bear, and which always provokedher to bark angrily--but in vain. All was still in the vacant room,still as death. He was now seriously anxious; at first deliberately, andthen with rapid haste, he threw the light under every vessel, intoevery corner, behind every cloth, and rummaged in places that not evena child--nay hardly a frightened bird could have availed itself of forconcealment. At last his right hand fairly dropped the ropes, and hisleft, in which he held the lamp, began to tremble. He found the shuttersof the sleeping-room open; where Sirona had been sitting on the seatlooking at the moon, before Hermas had come upon the scene. "Then she isnot here!" he muttered, and setting the lamp on the little table, fromwhich he had just now flung Polykarp's glass, he tore open the door, andhurried into the courtyard. That she could have swung herself out intothe road, and have set out in the night for the open desert, had not yetentered into his mind. He shook the door that closed in the homestead,and found it locked; the watch-dogs roused themselves, and gave tongue,when Phoebicius turned to Petrus' house, and began to knock at the doorwith the brazen knocker, at first softly and then with growing anger; heconsidered it as certain that his wife had sought and found protectionunder the senator's roof. He could have shouted with rage and anguish,and yet he hardly thought of his wife and the danger of losing her,but only of Polykarp and the disgrace he had wrought upon him, and thereparation he would exact from him, and his parents, who had dared totamper with his household rights--his, the imperial centurion's.
What was Sirona to him? In the flush of an hour of excitement he hadlinked her destiny to his.
At Arelas, about two years since, one of his comrades had joined theircircle of boon-companions, and had related that he had been the witnessof a remarkable scene. A number of young fellows had surrounded a boyand had unmercifully beaten him--he himself knew not wherefore. Thelittle one had defended himself bravely, but was at last overcome bynumbers. "Then suddenly," continued the soldier, "the door of a housenear the circus opened, and a young girl with long golden hair flew out,and drove the boys to flight, and released the victim, her brother, fromhis tormentors. She looked like a lioness," cried the narrator, "Sironashe is called, and of all the pretty girls of Arelas, she is beyonda doubt the prettiest." This opinion was confirmed on all sides, andPhoebicius, who at that time had just been admitted to the grade of"lion" among the worshippers of Mithras, and liked very well to hearhimself called "the lion," exclaimed, "I have long been seeking alioness, and here it seems to me that I have found one. Phoebicius andSirona--the two names sound very finely together."
On the following day he asked Sirona of her father for his wife, andas he had to set out for Rome in a few days the wedding was promptlycelebrated. She had never before quitted Arelas, and knew not what shewas giving up, when she took leave of her father's house perhaps forever. In Rome Phoebicius and his young wife met again; there manyadmired the beautiful woman, and made every effort to obtain her favor,but to him she was only a lightly won, and therefore a lightly valued,possession; nay, ere long no more than a burden, ornamental no doubtbut troublesome to guard. When presently his handsome wife attractedthe notice of the legate, he endeavored to gain profit and advancementthrough her, but Sirona had rebuffed Quintillus with such insultingdisrespect, that his superior officer became the centurion's enemy, andcontrived to procure his removal to the oasis, which was tantamount tobanishment.
From that time he had regarded her too as his enemy, and firmly believedthat she designedly showed herself most friendly to those who seemedmost obnoxious to him, and among these he reckoned Polykarp.
Once more the knocker sounded on the senator's door; it opened, andPetrus himself stood before the raging Gaul, a lamp in his hand.