Chapter IX

How Gabinius Met with a Rebuff

I

Publius Gabinius, the boon comrade of Lucius Ahenobarbus, differed little from many another man of his age in mode of life, or variety of aspirations. He had run through all the fashionable excitements of the day; was tired of horse-racing, peacock dinners, Oriental sweethearts; tired even of dice. And of late he had begun to grow morose, and his friends commenced to think him rather dull company.

But for some days he had found a new object of interest. With Lucius Ahenobarbus he had been at the Circus Flaminius, waiting for the races to begin, when he startled his friend by a clutch on the arm.

"Look!" was Gabinius's exclamation. "Is she not beautiful?"

He pointed to where Fabia, the Vestal, was taking her seat upon a cushion placed for her by a maid, and all the people around were standing, very respectfully, until she was seated The priestess was clothed in perfect white,--dress, ribbons, fillet--a notable contrast to the brave show of purple, and scarlet, and blue mantles all about her.

"Beautiful? Yes," repeated Lucius, rather carelessly. "But such birds are not for our net."

"Are not?" repeated Gabinius, a little sharply. "What makes you so sure of that?"

"I hardly think that you will find my dear friend Quintus Drusus's aunt, for so I understand she is," said Ahenobarbus, "very likely to reciprocate your devotion."

"And why not?" reiterated Gabinius, in a vexed tone.

"My dear fellow," answered Lucius, "I won't argue with you. There are plenty of women in Rome quite as handsome as Fabia, and much younger, who will smile on you. Don't meddle in a business that is too dangerous to be profitable."

But Gabinius had been wrought up to a pitch of amorous excitement, from which Ahenobarbus was the last one to move him. For days he had haunted the footsteps of the Vestal; had contrived to thrust himself as near to her in the theatre and circus as possible; had bribed one of the Temple servants to steal for him a small panel painting of Fabia; had, in fact, poured over his last romance all the ardour and passion of an intense, violent, uncontrolled nature. Gabinius was not the kind of a man either to analyze his motives, or express himself in the sobbing lyrics of a Catullus. He was thrilled with a fierce passion, and knew it, and it only. Therefore he merely replied to Lucius Ahenobarbus:--

"I can't help myself. What does Terence say about a like case? 'This indeed can, to some degree, be endured; night, passion, liquor, young blood, urged him on; it's only human nature.'"[106]

[106] Terence, "Adelphoe," 467 and 471.

And all the afternoon, while the chariots ran, and wager on wager marked the excitement of the cloud of spectators, Gabinius had only eyes for one object, Fabia, who, perfectly unconscious of his state of fascination, sat with flushed cheeks and bright, eager eyes, watching the fortunes of the races, or turned now and then to speak a few words to little Livia, who was at her side. When the games were over, Gabinius struggled through the crowd after the Vestal, and kept near to her until she had reached her litter and the eight red-liveried Cappadocian porters bore her away. Gabinius continued to gaze after her until Fabia drew the leather curtains of her conveyance and was hid from sight.

"_Perpol!"_ reflected Gabinius. "How utterly enslaved I am!"

* * * * *

The following morning Fabia received a letter in a strange hand, asking her to come to a villa outside the Porta Capena, and receive a will from one Titus Denter, who lay dying. The receiving and safe-keeping of wills was a regular duty of Vestals, and Fabia at once summoned her litter, and started out of the city, along the Via Appia, until, far out in the suburbs where the houses were wide apart, she was set down before the country-house indicated. A stupid-appearing slave-boy received her at the gateway. The villa was old, small, and in very indifferent repair. The slave could not seem to explain whether it had been occupied of late, but hastened to declare that his master lay nigh to death. There was no porter in the outer vestibule.[107] The heavy inner door turned slowly on its pivot, by some inside force, and disclosed a small, darkened atrium, only lighted by a clear sunbeam from the opening above, that passed through and illumined a playing fountain. A single attendant stood in the doorway. He was a tall, gaunt man in servile dress, with a rather sickly smile on his sharp yellow face. Fabia alighted from her litter. There was a certain secluded uncanniness about the house, which made her dislike for an instant to enter. The slave in the door silently beckoned for her to come in. The Vestal informed her bearers that she was likely to be absent some little time, and they must wait quietly without, and not annoy a dying man with unseemly laughter or loud conversation. Then, without hesitancy, Fabia gathered her priestess's cloak about her, and boldly entered the strange atrium. As she did so, the attendant noiselessly closed the door, and what was further, shot home a bolt.

[107] _Ostium_.

"There is no need for that," remarked the Vestal, who never before in her life had experienced such an unaccountable sense of disquietude.

"It is my habit always to push the bolt," said the slave, bowing, and leading the way toward the peristylium.

"You are Titus Denter's slave?" asked Fabia. The other nodded. "And your master is a very sick man?"

"Your most noble ladyship shall judge for herself."

"Take me to him at once, if he can see me."

"He is waiting."

The two went through the narrow passageway which led from the outer court of the atrium into the inner court of the peristylium. Fabia was surprised to see that here all the marble work had been carefully washed clean, the little enclosed garden was in beautiful order, and in various corners and behind some of the pillars were bronze and sculptured statues of really choice art. The slave stopped and pointed to a couch upholstered in crimson, beside the fish tank, where tame lampreys were rising for a bit of food.

"Take me to your master!" repeated Fabia, puzzled by the gesture. "I am not weary. You say he waits me?"

"He will be here," replied the servant, with another bow.

"Here?" exclaimed the Vestal, now really alarmed. "Here? He, a man sick unto death?"

"Certainly; here!" broke in a strange voice; and forth from behind a pillar stepped Publius Gabinius, all pomaded and rouged, dressed only in a gauzy, many-folded scarlet _synthesis_.[108]

[108] The "dinner coat" of the Romans.

Fabia gave a scream and sprang back in instinctive alarm. In the twinkling of an eye it flashed over her that for some purpose or other she had been trapped. Gabinius she knew barely by sight; but his reputation had come to her ears, and fame spoke nothing good of him. Yet even at the moment when she felt herself in the most imminent personal peril, the inbred dignity and composed hauteur of the Vestal did not desert her. At the selfsame instant that she said to herself, "Can I escape through the atrium before they can stop me?" recovering from her first surprise, and with never a quiver of eyelash or a paling of cheek, she was saying aloud, in a tone cold as ice, "And indeed, most excellent Gabinius, you must pardon me for being startled; for all that I know of you tells me that you are likely to find a sombre Vestal sorry enough company."

Gabinius had been counting coolly on a very noisy scene, one of a kind he was fairly familiar with--an abundance of screaming, expostulation, tearing of hair, and other manifestations of feminine agony--to be followed, of course, by ultimate submission to the will of all-dominant man. He was not accustomed to have a woman look him fairly in the eye and speak in tones, not of bootless fury, but of superior scorn. And his answer was painfully lacking in the ascendant volubility which would have befitted the occasion.

"Forgive me; pardon; it was of course necessary to resort to some subterfuge in order--in order to prevent your attendants from becoming suspicious."

Fabia cast a glance behind her, and saw that before the two doors leading to the atrium her conductor and another tall slave had placed themselves; but she replied in a tone a little more lofty, if possible, than before:--

"I cannot well, sir, understand you. Are you a friend of Titus Denter, who is sick? I do not see that any subterfuge is necessary when I am to receive the deposit of a will from a dying man. It is a recognized duty of my office."

Gabinius was still more at a loss.

"You should certainly understand, lady," he began, cursing himself for having to resort to circumlocutions, "that this is my own villa, and I have not the pleasure of knowing Titus Denter. I sent the letter because--"

"Because, my worthy sir," interrupted Fabia, not however raising her voice in the least, "you are weary of Greek flute-players for sweethearts or such Roman young ladies as admire either the ointments or the pimples of your face, and consequently seek a little diversion by laying snares for a sacred Vestal."

Gabinius at last found free use for his tongue.

"Oh, lady; Lady Fabia," he cried, stretching out his arms and taking a step nearer, "don't misjudge me so cruelly! I will forsake anything, everything, for you! I have nothing to dream of day or night but your face. You have served your thirty years in the Temple, and can quit its service. Why entertain any superstitious scruple against doing what the law allows? Come with me to Egypt; to Spain; to Parthia; anywhere! Only do not reject me and my entreaties! I will do anything for your sake!"

Critical as was her situation, Fabia could not refrain from a sense of humour, when she saw and heard this creature--the last intimate she would select in the world--pressing his suit with such genuine passion. When she answered, an exasperating smile was on her lips.

"By Castor!" she replied, "the noble Gabinius is not a bad tragedian. If he has nothing further to inform me than that I am favoured by his good graces, I can only decline his proposals with humble firmness, and depart."

"By the immortal gods!" cried Gabinius, feeling that he and not his would-be victim were like to go into a frenzy, "you shan't go! I have you here. And here you shall remain until I have your word that you will quit the Temple service and fly with me to Egypt. If you won't have me as your slave, I'll have you as your master!" And again he advanced.

"What restrains me here?" queried Fabia, sternly, the blood sinking from her cheeks, but by step or by glance quailing not in the least. "Who dare restrain or offer harm to a Vestal of the Roman Republic?"

"I!" shouted Gabinius in mad defiance, with a menacing gesture.

Fabia took a step toward him, and instinctively he fell back.

"You?" she repeated, her black eyes, ablaze with the fire of a holy indignation, searching Gabinius's impure heart through and through. "You, little man? Are you fond of death, and yet lack courage to drink the poison yourself?"

"I dare anything!" cried Gabinius, getting more and more uncontrolled. "This is my house. These are my slaves. The high walls will cut off any screams you may utter in this court. I have you in my power. You have placed yourself in my hands by coming here. Refuse to do as I say, and a charge will be laid against you before the _pontifices_,[109] that you have broken the vow which binds every Vestal. All the appearances will be against you, and you know what will follow then!"

[109] College of chief priests.

Fabia grew a shade paler, if it were possible, than before.

"I know," she replied, still very gently, "that an unfaithful Vestal is buried alive in the Campus Sceleratus; but I know, too, that her seducer is beaten to death with rods. Accuse me, or attack me, and whatever be _my_ fate, I can say that which will send your black soul down to Tartarus with guilt enough for Minos to punish. Your delicately anointed skin would be sadly bruised by the stripes falling upon it. And now, if these creatures will stand one side, I will leave you."

And Fabia drew her mantle about her, and walked straight past the awestruck slaves into the atrium, where she unbolted the door and passed out. Gabinius stood gazing after her, half-fascinated, half-dazed. Only when the door closed did he burst out to one of the slaves:--

"Timid dog, why did you let her escape?"

"Dominus," whimpered the menial, "why did _you_ let her escape?"

"Insolence!" cried Gabinius, seizing a staff, and beating first one, then the other, of his servants indiscriminately; and so he continued to vent his vexation, until Fabia's litter was well inside the Porta Capena.

II

Fabia had thus escaped from the clutches of Gabinius, and the latter was sullen and foiled. But none the less the Vestal was in a tremor of fear for the consequences of her meeting with the libertine. She knew that Gabinius was determined, dexterous, and indefatigable; that he was baffled, but not necessarily driven to throw over his illicit quest. And Fabia realized keenly that going as she had unattended into a strange house, and remaining there some time with no friendly eye to bear witness to her actions, would count terribly against her, if Gabinius was driven to bay. She dared not, as she would gladly have done, appear before the pontifices and demand of them that they mete out due punishment on Gabinius for grossly insulting the sanctity of a Vestal. Her hope was that Gabinius would realize that he could not incriminate her without ruining himself, and that he had been so thoroughly terrified on reflection as to what might be the consequences to himself, if he tried to follow the intrigue, that he would prudently drop it. These considerations hardly served to lighten the gloom which had fallen across Fabia's life. It was not so much the personal peril that saddened her. All her life she had heard the ugly din of the world's wickedness pass harmlessly over her head, like a storm dashing at the doors of some secluded dwelling that shielded its inhabitants from the tempest. But now she had come personally face to face with the demon of impurity; she had felt the fetid touch almost upon herself; and it hurt, it sickened her. Therefore it was that the other Vestals marvelled, asking what change had come over their companion, to quench the mild sunshine of her life; and Fabia held little Livia very long and very closely in her arms, as if it were a solace to feel near her an innocent little thing "unspotted of the world."

All this had happened a very few days before the breathless Agias came to inform Fabia of the plot against her nephew. Perhaps, as with Cornelia, the fact that one near and dear was in peril aided to make the consciousness of her own unhappiness less keen. None could question Fabia's resolute energy. She sent Agias on his way, then hurried off in her litter in quest of Caius Marcellus, the consul. AEmilius Paulus, the other consul, was a nonentity, not worth appealing to, since he had virtually abdicated office upon selling his neutrality to Caesar. But Marcellus gave her little comfort. She broke in upon the noble lord, while he was participating in a drunken garden-party in the Gardens of Lucullus. The consul--hardly sober enough to talk coherently--had declared that it was impossible to start any troops that day to Praeneste. "To-morrow, when he had time, he would consider the matter." And Fabia realized that the engine of government would be very slow to set in motion in favour of a marked Caesarian.

But she had another recourse, and hastened her litter down one of the quieter streets of the Subura, where was the modest house occupied by Julius Caesar before he became Pontifex Maximus. This building was now used by the Caesarian leaders as a sort of party headquarters. Fabia boldly ordered the porter to summon before her Curio--whom she was sure was in the house. Much marvelling at the visit of a Vestal, the slave obeyed, and in a few moments that tribune was in her presence.

Caius Scribonius Curio was probably a very typical man of his age. He was personally of voluptuous habits, fearfully extravagant, endowed with very few scruples and a very weak sense of right and wrong. But he was clear-headed, energetic, a good orator, a clever reasoner, an astute handler of men, courageous, versatile, full of recourse, and on the whole above the commission of any really glaring moral infraction. He was now in his early prime, and he came before Fabia as a man tall, athletic, deep-chested, deep-voiced, with a regular profile, a clear, dark complexion, curly hair carefully dressed, freshly shaven, and in perfect toilet. It was a pleasure, in short, to come in contact with such a vigorous, aggressive personality, be the dark corners of his life what they might.

Curio yielded to no man in his love of Lucrine oysters and good Caecuban wine. But he had been spending little time on the dining couch that evening. In fact he had at that moment in his hand a set of tablets on which he had been writing.

"_Salve! Domina!_" was his greeting, "what unusual honour is this which brings the most noble Vestal to the trysting spot of us poor Populares."

And, with the courtesy of a gentleman of the world, he offered Fabia an armchair.

"Caius Curio," said the Vestal, wasting very few words, "do you know my nephew, Quintus Drusus of Praeneste?"

"It is an honour to acknowledge friendship with such an excellent young man," said Curio, bowing.

"I am glad to hear so. I understand that he has already suffered no slight calamity for adhering to your party."

"_Vah!_" and the tribune shrugged his shoulders. "Doubtless he has had a disagreeable time with the consul-elect, but from all that I can hear, the girl he lost was hardly one to make his life a happy one. It's notorious the way she has displayed her passion for young Lucius Ahenobarbus, and we all know what kind of a man _he_ is. But I may presume to remark that your ladyship would hardly come here simply to remind me of this."

"No," replied Fabia, directly, "I have come here to appeal to you to do something for me which Marcellus the consul was too drunk to try to accomplish if he would."

Fabia had struck the right note. Only a few days before Appius Claudius, the censor, had tried to strike Curio's name from the rolls of the Senate. Piso, the other censor, had resisted. There had been an angry debate in the Senate, and Marcellus had inveighed against the Caesarian tribune, and had joined in a furious war of words. The Senate had voted to allow Curio to keep his seat; and the anti-Caesarians had paraded in mourning as if the vote were a great calamity.

Curio's eyes lit up with an angry fire.

"Lump of filth! Who was he, to disoblige you!"

"You will understand," said Fabia, still quietly; and then briefly she told of the conspiracy against the life of Drusus, so far as she had gathered it.

"Where did you learn all this," queried Curio, "if I may venture to ask?"

"From Agias, the slave of Cornelia, niece of Lentulus."

"But what is Drusus to her?" demanded the marvelling tribune.

"He is everything to her. She has been trying to win her way into Ahenobarbus's confidence, and learn all of the plot."

A sudden light seemed to break over the face of the politician. He actually smiled with relieved pleasure, and cried, "_Papae!_ Wonderful! I may be the farthest of all the world from Diogenes the Cynic; but a man cannot go through life, unless he has his eyes shut, and not know that there are different kinds of women. I was sorry enough to have to feel that a girl like Cornelia was becoming one of Clodia's coterie. After all, the world isn't so bad as we make it out to be, if it is Curio the profligate who says it."

"But Drusus, my nephew?" exclaimed Fabia. "He is in frightful danger. You know Dumnorix will have a great band of gladiators, and there is no force in Praeneste that can be counted on to restrain him."

"My dear lady," said Curio, laughing, "I am praising the happy Genius that brought you here. We Caesarians are taught by our leaders never to desert a friend in need; and Drusus has been a very good friend to us, especially by using all his influence, very successfully, for our cause among the Praenestians and the people of those parts. When did you say that Dumnorix would pass through the town?"

"Early to-morrow, possibly," replied the Vestal.

"_Phui!_ Dismiss all care. I'll find out at once how many gladiators he took with him to Anagnia. Some of his gang will be killed in the games there, and more will be wounded and weak or disabled. I am tribune, and I imagine I ought not to be out of the city over night,[110] but before daybreak to-morrow I will take Antonius and Sallustius and Quintus Cassius; and perhaps I can get Balbus and our other associates to go. We will arm a few slaves and freedmen; and it will be strange indeed if we cannot scatter to the four winds Dumnorix's gladiators, before they have accomplished any mischief."

[110] This was the law, that the tribunes might always be ready to render help (_auxilium_) to the distressed.

"The gods reward you!" said Fabia, simply. "I will go back to the Temple, and pray that my nephew be kept from harm; and you also, and your friends who will defend him."

Curio stood in the atrium a long time after the Vestal had left.

"The gods reward you!" he repeated. "So _she_ believes in the gods, that there are gods, and that they care for us struggling men. Ah! Caius, Caius Curio; if the mob had murdered you that day you protected Caesar after he spoke in the Senate in favour of the Catilinarians, where would you be to-day? Whence have you come? Whither do you go? What assurance have you that you can depend on anything, but your own hand and keen wits? What is to become of you, if you are knocked on the head in that adventure to-morrow? And yet that woman believes there are gods! What educated man is there that does? Perhaps we would, if we led the simple lives our fathers did, and that woman lives. Enough of this! I must be over letters to Caesar at Ravenna till midnight: and then at morn off to gallop till our horses are foundered."