The Lion's Brood by Duffield Osborne (novels to improve english TXT) 📗

last words and the vehemence of his tone brought her to an intuitive realization that this man was indeed prepared to give up god, country, general, friends,—all, so only that he might gratify his overmastering passion. The gods were indeed with her, after all,—were guiding her aright; and the knowledge steadied her self-control and strengthened her resolve. What omen of favour could be more potent than this snatching of victory out of the very hands of ruin—this moulding of ruin into a source of victory?

So she spoke, calmly and evenly:—

"Perhaps you tell the truth, perhaps folly. How shall I know, any more than I know of this power to command commanders, of which you make such silly boast?"

"Not I—-not I, lady," he protested eagerly. "Listen! It is the lord Melkarth that has always loved the colonies of Phoenicia, first among which is Carthage. It is he that has guided and guarded us through the perils of the deep and of the desert, of the skies and of the earth, of hunger and thirst, of beasts and men. What god equals him in our city! What god receives such gifts, such incense, such sacrifices! What though we fear Baal Moloch! Is it not the lord Melkarth whom we love? It is he who goes before our armies, that he may tell them when to attack, when to await the foe. I am his priest. Do you understand? I have spoken his words many times. Now he shall speak mine."

Marcia could hardly fail to understand the nature of the power which this man now proposed to lay at her feet; yet it all seemed horribly impossible that he, a priest, could dare such sacrilege for such end. Had she been Fabius, Paullus, or even Sergius,—men who were already groping amid the Greek schools of doubt, and were coming to regard the religion of the state more as an invaluable means of curbing the vices of the low and ignorant than as a divine light for the learned,—had she been such as these, this proposal of Iddilcar would have seemed incredible only on account of its treason to his country. And yet, in one sense, she was better fitted than they to understand the Carthaginian. True scepticism had found little room under the mantle of the gloomy, the terrible cult that swayed the destinies of the Chanaanitish races. Even the priests, while they were ready enough to use the people's faith to minister to their own ends, trembled before their savage gods. Low, brutish, full of inconsistent wiles their faith might be, but such faith it was as an educated Roman could with difficulty comprehend. On the other hand, the minds of the women of Rome had not as yet swerved from unquestioning belief in the gods consulting and the gods apart, and the Torquati were most conservative among all the great houses. From childhood up—and in years she was scarcely more than a child—all these had been very real to her. Pomona wandered through every orchard beside her beloved Vertumnus; Pan and his sylvan brood sported behind the foliage of every copse. She would as soon have thought of questioning their presence as of doubting her own being. Marcia believed; the average Roman patrician affected to believe and indulged in his polite, Hellenic doubts; the Carthaginian priest, while he believed, with all Marcia's fervour, in a theology to which Marcia's was tender as the divine fellowship of the Phaeacians, yet conceived that it was entirely legitimate to play tricks upon his fiend-gods—to pit his cunning against theirs. If they caught him, perhaps they would laugh, perhaps consume him in the flames of their wrath. It depended on their mood—whether they had dined well, perhaps; and he would take his chances. He stood, now, toward his deities, just where the heroes of Homer had stood centuries before. He was a living evidence of the Asiatic birth of Greek theology—only, in the Asian races, religious feeling was not religious thought, did not arise from the mind or change, like the cults of Europe, as the mind that evolved or adopted them developed and outgrew its offspring.

So it was that, while Marcia, but for her instinctive realization of the truth, might have been utterly unable to credit the sincerity of such prodigious wickedness, yet, armed with this intuition as a starting-point, she sought for and found reasons to support it. The purity of her own faith came to her aid. Perhaps the Punic gods were mere demons, as they seemed to be, and Iddilcar knew it and relied for protection upon the mightier gods of Rome. In a sense, she reasoned on false premises, but her conclusion was, none the less, more accurate than would have been that of either Paullus or Sergius. For the time, at least, Iddilcar was entirely sincere. To be sure, if he could gain his end by mere promises, he preferred to deceive Marcia rather than Melkarth, but his plotting had not gotten so far as that yet. Now, his fierce, Oriental nature was consuming with that passion which, in it, took the place of all love. This Roman woman had aroused desires that he had never known in the gardens of Ashera; her face was to the faces of the courtesans who thronged the sacred woods on feast days, as the glory of the crescent moon was to the sputter of the rancid oil in the lamp that illumined the cell of Fancula Cluvia. Cunning beyond his race, learned in the strange learning of the East that had come to a few in Egypt and to fewer yet in Phoenicia, Iddilcar read the struggle that was taking place in the girl's mind.

"What do I care for Hannibal!" he cried; "for the Great Council! for Carthage! I would give them all to you for one kiss. To him who has learned all secret knowledge, the mind alone is God and city and home and friends,—everything, everything save love," and his voice, harsh, and strident, sank to a whisper in which was compassed all the fierceness of ungoverned and ungovernable desire.

Marcia knew, now, that he was speaking the truth; that he would indeed stop at nothing; and, with the certainty, there came to her a strange mingling of exultation, terror, and calm. She saw this man, powerful with the power of the conqueror, learned with the learning of the student and of the ascetic, grovelling here at her feet—slave to a force against which no power, no philosophy could avail. She saw him crawl to her and press her robe to his lips; she heard him mumbling and whining like some animal, and she despised him and grew stronger in the light of her growing self-esteem. At last she spoke.

"It is well. I have listened and determined. Yes, you are right. I have wished that the army should not march north; I have wished that it should winter in Campania. I am a Roman; why should I not wish it? You say you can accomplish this. Do so, and you shall have your reward."

Iddilcar sprang to his feet and threw out his arms to draw her to him; the breath came from his chest in short gasps; his eyes were suffused with tears through which he saw something glitter; and his hands, clutching and unclutching, caught only air. Then his arms fell to his sides; he paused and looked stupidly at her. She had sprung back and was facing him defiantly with a short dagger raised to strike.

"Not so soon, slave," she said, and her voice rang in his ears like steel. "He who would reap must first sow."

"You do not love me," he said sheepishly, gnashing his teeth because he knew the foolishness of his words, and yet could say no others.

She laughed; then her face grew sober.

"No," she said; "I do not love you. Why should I? We love those who serve us well—"

"Ah! but I have promised," he broke in. "I am giving you everything."

"I want but one thing," she said, while the lines of her mouth hardened; "and, for that, I take no promise."

He lowered his head to avoid the straight flash of her eyes.

"It is I, then, who must trust—always I," he muttered. "How do I know you will give yourself when I earn you?—how do I know you will not kill yourself with that dagger? for you hate me," and then, with sudden fierceness; "why should I not take my own? What hinders me?"

"This," said Marcia, touching the point with her finger.

Iddilcar shuddered.

"Listen now," she began, "and be reasonable. I have named my price, and you have said it is not too much. Why speak of love or hate? Earn me and take me."

"Yes," he echoed; for he was braver when his eyes studied the pavement; "why speak of love or hate? It is you I want—your kisses, your embraces. Who shall say that hatred may not flavour them better even than love?" and he sneered. "Ah! but how shall I know?"

"I am a Roman, and I have promised. Fulfil your Punic word as well, and I swear you shall have your pay, so surely,"—and then the memory of another day, happier, but oh! so bitterly regretted, came to her mind,—"so surely as Orcus sends not the dead back from Acheron. Now go."

He drew back, step by step, still facing her, longing to rebel, yet not daring, cringing, skulking like a whipped cur. He reached the end of the path; the entrance to the garden was behind him. He raised his clenched hand to the heavens. "Ah, Melkarth!" burst from his lips, and, turning, he plunged into the house, running.

Marcia listened eagerly to the fall of his sandals. They died away, and the distant door creaked. Tears filled her eyes, and, shivering in every muscle, she sank down upon the seat and buried her face in her hands.

X. MELKARTH.

Two moons had waxed and waned; Pacuvius Calavius had dined in his winter triclinium for the first time this year, and Marcia was rejoicing at the omen. She watched her host, as he lay back upon his couch, and noted with pity the change that had come over him. When he had greeted her coming, he had seemed not very much past middle age—a brisk man, well preserved in mind and body. Now he was old—very old—and the pallor and wrinkles were prominent through the flush of the wine and the paint with which he strove to hide them. Even his ambition was dead; he hardly sought the Senate House, but, stopping within doors, maundered querulously and unceasingly to Marcia, to his servants, to any one who would listen to him, of the blunders that were being made, and of how war and negotiations should be conducted, speaking always as a man for whom such things had no personal interest. The diadem of Italy that had once blinded his eyes to good faith and oaths of alliance, had melted away in the flames of the pyre that consumed his son. As for Marcia, she had come to regard him with something of that indulgent consideration which we feel for the aged and infirm. His former attitude toward herself, which had filled her with contempt and disgust, had vanished utterly, and, in its place, was a fatherly kindness that had now no nearer object upon which to lavish itself. As for the household, what little discipline had once pertained, was gone. The slaves were no longer punished, and, slavelike, they presumed upon their master's gentleness or indifference. They pilfered right and left; they neglected duties and orders; until, at last, a large measure of the care of her host and his house devolved upon Marcia alone; and Marcia, also, had softened and grown kindlier, and was as slow to ask for punishments as was Calavius to decree them. They seemed like two who were awaiting death, and would not add to the measure of human misery, knowing, from their own, how great this was.

"Let them enjoy a false freedom for a few days longer," said Calavius. "Soon we shall be gone, and then—who knows? I have no heirs, and the state may not deal so kindly with them." Strangely enough, he seemed always to assume Marcia's coming death along with his own; and when she gazed into her mirror, its story moulded well with that reflected in the mirror of her thoughts.

She had grown thin—very thin—and pale, and