CHAPTER XVI.

ONWARD AND UPWARD.

When Claudius turned away from the Vestals’ home on the day of Hyacintha’s death, there was in his noble heart only one longing--to follow her whither she was gone.

Casca and little Cynthia were his guests, with the faithful Anna; and when Casca spoke of returning to Alexandria, Claudius begged him to delay. It seemed to Claudius like a second parting from the love of his whole life to lose the child who bore her name, and who returned the devotion of the old soldier with a childish affection which was inexpressibly sweet to him.

But Casca was anxious to return to Alexandria, where now he had made his home. Rome had lost its charm for him; there were few left to sympathise with him in his learned researches, and the great Museum of Alexandria, with its inexhaustible treasury of literature and art, had no rival in Rome.

To linger about the place where Hyacintha had lived, to recall her in all the long years of faithful and pure devotion which he had lavished upon her--this was the comfort of Claudius’s heart, but, naturally, with Casca it was wholly different.

He had loved her as a brother, and had retained his affection for her in the long years of separation, thinking tenderly of her as his little sister in the old home at Verulam, when she cheered him in the struggles which his early boyhood had known, in the consciousness of physical weakness, and the inward conviction that he had the mental power which, if it were but allowed scope, would stand him in far better stead than the sword and the battle-axe.

But he had made new ties, and gathered round him the joys of home. While his young wife lived he had been happy in the present; and the past, which was all to his friend Claudius, was to him like a pleasant but fading dream.

Then, when his wife was taken from him, his pride and joy centred in his child, who seemed, even at this early age, to inherit the beauty and graces of her aunt in no scant measure.

It is always hard to those who are growing old to feel that while others of their friends and contemporaries have gathered round them interests and the sweet ties of home-life, they are standing, like the last of some old forest trees, companionless and alone.

Claudius had been a brave soldier, and was considered a distinguished officer, who had earned his laurels on many a bloodstained field. But his brethren in arms, who gave themselves up, on their retirement from active service, to all the luxuries and often license of Roman society, found him but a dull and speechless companion.

Gradually Claudius withdrew more and more from public life; and now what had been the one great interest of his daily routine at Rome was over!

To watch the Vestal Maxima at a distance, to divine her every look and gesture, to be present at all public ceremonials where she was to be seen, to be the presiding genius of her life, though never to approach her or give her cause for uneasiness--this had been Claudius’s mission. He had heard of the evil rumours which Cœlia had tried to sow broadcast; he had watched the once stately step growing more feeble, the deep earnest eyes lose their intense glow, the beautifully-chiselled features grow more pinched and wan, and his heart had sunk within him.

He had held much counsel with the good Father Eusebius, and knew that the Christian faith which he held dear had taken deep root in Hyacintha’s heart. And this had been at once the consolation and the fear of his life of late. Consolation, for he knew well what was the support of the Faith of Christ; fear, lest the sharp eyes which were directed towards the Vestal Maxima should scent out the truth, and that she should be given up by her accusers to disgrace.

This had been assisted by Hyacintha’s resignation at the time when such resignation was allowed, and the love which she had awakened in the hearts of the many had triumphed over the maliciousness of the few.

Anna was old now, and her strength did not hold out for the long walks in which little Cynthia at six years old delighted. So it fell to Claudius to drive her in his chariot, or take her hand in his and lead her along the Appian Way, telling her stories of the old heroes, as Clœlia had told them to Hyacintha and Casca long ago. But their favourite walk was to the Cælian Hill, and there sometimes they would meet Hermione on her way to the spring, when, dismissing the attendants who followed the Roman soldier and the fair child at a distance, they would sit and speak of the Vestal Maxima, and Hermione would fondle the little Cynthia, and say to Claudius “that she, too, might have been a Vestal, so beautiful she was, and so full of wit and cleverness.”

“Ah, no! the child has another and a higher mission than that of the Vestal virgin. She will be the joy and glory of some good man’s home, so I pray the good Father of us all, who loves the little children.”

“Who loves the little children,” Cynthia repeated, as she leaned against Claudius’s knee, her hands full of violets and anemones which empurpled the hill’s side. “When I am a woman I shall tell every one about the Lord, who was a little child Himself on earth, and loved the children who came near Him, just as I come near you, Claudius. Hermione, don’t you love Him?”

Poor Hermione’s eyes filled with tears. She had not the courage to confess the Faith openly, which would needs draw upon her instant dismissal from her office, and end in imprisonment, and perhaps death. She was suspected, and jealously watched, by the Vestal Maxima; and nothing but the noble family from which she came, and the rich gifts which they constantly showered upon the temple of the goddess, could have saved her.

“Don’t you love Him, Hermione? My aunt loved Him. Anna loves Him, and so does good Claudius. Father adores Him; he does not say he loves Him.”

Hermione turned away her face. She was like thousands in those days of persecution, struggling out of the shadows into the light; scarcely prepared to give up all for Christ, and yet yearning after Him with that tender yearning which is the aspiration of the soul for One who, though unseen, it loves.

Shall we not think of such in every age with sympathy and pity? Shall we not leave them in the loving hands of Him who knoweth our infirmities, and remembers that we are but dust?

Hermione quickly rallied herself, and said, “My time of leave is over. I must be hastening home, or the lictors at the gate will be impatient. When do you depart for Alexandria, good Claudius?”

“Nay, I know not whether I depart at all; but Casca and the child, and their attendants, are sailing from the Portus Augusti next week.”

Hermione took Cynthia from Claudius for a moment, and said, “Listen, Cynthia; you must not forget me, for I loved your aunt, and she loved me. You will write to me as soon as you are able to wield the pen, and you will tell me of all you learn, and all you do in Alexandria. And do not forget poor Hermione.”

Cynthia clasped the Vestal round the neck, and said, “Come with us to our pretty home in Alexandria. Why cannot you come?”

“I am tied and fettered here,” said poor Hermione; “and here I must live till death comes to me and frees me from bondage.”

“Ah!” said the child, “I am glad I am not to be a Vestal, but that I belong to the Lord Jesus--so glad!”

Hermione kissed the child fervently, and then turned away, waving her hands in token of farewell, saying, “Remember your promise, little Cynthia.”

“What has she asked of thee, little one?” Claudius said, when the child had returned to him.

“She bade me write to her, and never forget her,” Cynthia said. “I shall make haste to learn to write; and father says already I am a little scholar. You will help me to write, good Claudius.”

“Nay, then, little one, this hand of mine is not skilled in using the pen or scribbling in parchment; but there are many others who will teach thee.”

“You are going to Alexandria with us? You will not leave us, good Claudius?”

“Nay, we will not speak of parting yet--not yet.”

“_Never!_” exclaimed Cynthia, emphatically; “never!” And Claudius evaded a direct answer, but promised that he would at least take care of her on the coming return voyage, for the season was late, and they would probably meet with storms in the inland sea through which they must sail to the fair city of Alexandria.

Claudius found the attractions at Alexandria, where he shared the home of Casca and his little daughter, too great to be withstood. He vibrated, it is true, between the two cities for a year or two, but as age sapped his strength, and brought low the once athletic and vigorous frame, he became less inclined for action, and was content to live the quiet life in which his friend Casca delighted, and to enjoy with him the society of the little daughter who, as she grew in years, grew in all the graces and attractions which had distinguished the aunt whose name she bore, and whom she so strongly resembled.

“Good Claudius,” the commander of many brave troops of soldiers, the noble, valiant, and courageous warrior, became in his old age gentle and subdued; but his deeds of valour had not died out of the remembrance of some who had shared in them; and in his retirement at Alexandria he was sometimes visited by those who had some connection with him as a leader or companion in arms.

One day, when Cynthia was about fifteen, eight or nine years after the voyage to Rome and the death of the Vestal Maxima, Claudius was walking slowly and feebly along the smooth walks of the Museum gardens, waiting for Cynthia to return from one of the academies, where, attended by one of her maids, she studied with several young maidens, under a lady who lectured upon the Greek poets and the Greek authors of a bygone time.

Casca’s anxious desire that his only child should be distinguished for accomplishments of every kind, and have her mental gifts cultivated to the utmost, was not likely to be disappointed.

Cynthia was already known as one of the most promising of Zoe’s pupils, and she seemed to have no difficulty in acquiring and retaining knowledge.

On this lovely spring morning, Claudius, being a little weary, seating himself on a bench near one of the principal fountains, which made a soft musical murmur as the waters fell into a deep marble basin, turned suddenly as he heard his name.

A man about his own age, leaning on the arm of a youth of eighteen or twenty, advanced towards him.

“Sure,” he said, “I see before me Claudius, who commanded the fourth legion under Constantius?”

The two old men stood facing each other silently for a few moments, and then grasped each other’s hands.

“I never expected to meet you, brave Claudius, again, least of all at Alexandria.”

“And I, my noble friend and old ally, Varrus, never expected to grasp your hand in mine again. Methought you lived at Marseilles?”

“Ay, and I have left it only for a short space, to bring hither to this seat of learning my only son, Heraclitus, who craved for the schools of wisdom here, and desires to add the learning of the scholar to the courage of the soldier. And here, my son,” he continued, “is as brave a soldier as ever wielded a sword, the good and valiant Claudius.”

“It seems that I see your father again in you,” Claudius said. “Varrus, you live again in your boy.”

“Ah! and I have two fair daughters, whom I have left with their mother at Marseilles; and here, if I mistake not, comes one of yours.”

For at that moment, speeding towards the place where Claudius sat, came the graceful figure of a young girl, dressed in pure white silk, her over-mantle of pale greenish-blue, and a handkerchief embroidered with gold, in the familiar pattern we call the “key pattern,” thrown over her sunny head.

“Nay, I have no ties of home, Varrus; I never married. She who is coming towards us is as dear as any daughter. Why does she tarry?”

For Cynthia had suddenly stopped, and, throwing her large crimson satchel to her maid, she skirted the marble basin of the fountain with swift steps.

“I see! I see!” exclaimed the young man; “a little child is dangerously near the brink of the fountain--and----”

He said no more, but sprang across the emerald turf to the edge of the deep marble basin, where the clear waters were gently rocking on their breast the broad leaves of the water-lily, already showing their snowy heads from the thick green calyx.

But the waters suddenly became disturbed by something more than the gentle fall of the jets of the fountain. They were swollen into little wavelets, and as the two elder men reached the spot they heard a cry, and saw Heraclitus plunge into the basin, which was some six feet in depth, and some two hundred feet in circumference.

“My mistress plunged in to save a child who had fallen into the water,” exclaimed Cynthia’s attendant. “Ah me! Ah me! Will she be drowned?”

Then the girl, after the fashion of such maidens in every time, uttered a long and piercing shriek, which brought to the spot a good many of those who were wandering about in the Museum gardens on this early spring morning.

Claudius’s face was blanched with horror, and he clutched the arm of his friend Varrus for support.

“Be of good courage,” Varrus said; “my son has rescued both the child and the maiden. See! they are already safe!”

“Yes, dear Claudius,” Cynthia struggled to say, as, breathlessly, and her clothes heavy with water, Claudius bent anxiously over her.

“Yes, safe; and the little child--is he safe?”

“Thanks to your noble efforts, fair lady,” Heraclitus said, “no harm is done. Hearken!” And a loud scream from the little boy, as his mother, who carelessly allowed him to stray too near the edge of the fountain, clasped him frantically to her breast, testified to the truth of the young man’s words.

“It is all well, then. Nay, good Claudius, do not be frightened. I will go home now, and change my wet garments. Ah! look at my poor handkerchief; see, the gold border is spoiled.”

She said this with childlike earnestness, and then, helped to her feet by Varrus, she said--

“Who is my father, Casca, to thank for coming to my rescue? You, too, brave sir, will need change of garments. Claudius, do bid my deliverer to come to our house.”

Cynthia was fighting against a feeling of faintness and exhaustion which the sudden plunge into the water had caused; and Heraclitus was quite forgetting his own share in the rescue of the child, in the admiration he felt for the beautiful maiden who had so promptly gone to save the child’s life.

“Come home with us,” Claudius said, in a tremulous voice; “come home, and let my friend Casca and me show our gratitude. Our greatest treasure has been in peril, and we owe her preservation to you.”

The mother of the little boy, less grateful than she might have been, hastened away with her struggling, screaming son, and very soon the voice of the fountain, which had for the time been lost in the tumult, was again heard, and the gentle motion of the clear waters rocked the budding lilies on its breast undisturbed, as before.

* * * * *

Some months later a letter from Cynthia to Hermione, written with a finely-pointed quill on smooth parchment, was delivered by a messenger at the House of the Vestals at Rome--for Cynthia had never forgotten her promise, and her letters, at first mere scrawled hieroglyphics, had been the greatest events in her sad life; for Hermione lived in the shadow, tolerated simply because of her rank and wealth, but looked upon, as I have said, with suspicion and dislike by the proud Vestal Maxima, Cœlia Concordia; and all those who wished to win favour with her kept aloof from Hermione.

How many sad and disappointed lives, bound by the fetters of an enforced vow, have been hidden alike in the House of the Vestals, and later in the monasteries of mediæval times!

Of all pathetic cries which ascend to the Throne of the Father of us all is the cry of the woman who, mistaking her true vocation as a helper and consoler, has chafed like a bird against its prison bars, to obtain the liberty which alone gives the zest to service. Hermione had, indeed, ceased to struggle against her fate, and a cold and numb despair had destroyed her beauty, and made her a prematurely old woman. Her eyes were too dim to read Cynthia’s letter in the shadows of the atrium, and she hid it in her robe, and took it with her to the familiar spot on the Cælian Hill, where she had so often come as a young maiden with Hyacintha Severa, and had watched over the lovely child who had inherited her grace and wonderful gifts of mind and person.

“From the Museum Street of the city Alexandria, Cynthia, the daughter of Casca Severus, greets with affection Hermione, a Vestal virgin, in the House of the Vestals at Rome.

“When I wrote to you last, dear friend, I was but a child; and now, though but eighteen months have passed away, I am no longer ‘little Cynthia,’ but a woman. Ah! dear Hermione, it is a beautiful gift of God--our God--this heritage of woman. I am as one who has been toying with flowers in the valley, contented with the flowers, and thinking of nothing above them, and then suddenly lifted on a mountain top, whence there lies stretched out a lovely landscape, and a voice tells me it is mine, that I reign over it, and that the blue arch of heaven above me encircles me with love. Yes, Hermione, as by a miracle your little Cynthia has forgotten her childish days, and has come into possession of her inheritance as a woman.

“But I would fain tell you of all that has happened since eighteen months ago, when I last wrote to you. It has been a long, long pause, but I will make up for it now. I will take time, and write fully the story of this wondrous change.

“It was a bright spring morning, and I was returning from the lecture room at the Museum, through the gardens, when, just as I was hastening to join good old Claudius on a bench where he rested, I saw a little child balancing himself on the slippery edge of the wide basin of the central fountain.

“In another instant he was in the water; and what could I do, as no one else was near, but plunge in and seize the boy by his little toga.

“As I had neared good Claudius I had noticed he was not alone, but that two men were apparently talking to him. It was one of these, Heraclitus, who sprang forward, and had soon brought from under the crystal water myself and the child.

“Ah, Hermione! as that noble face bent over me, and I gazed up at it, I felt at once that thrill which is half-awe, half-joy, like that foreshadowing of the break of day, which makes the little bird stir in its nest--for though as yet nothing is clear, and nothing defined, the _day is near_.

“The day was dawning at that moment; the day of love which has been so beautiful and fair ever since. Nor can night cast any shadow over that day of love, with its dark mantle, for my love stretches forward to that city fairer than Alexandria, fairer than Rome, where there is _no night_ and no darkness at all, for God is the Light.

“I must, however, go on with my narrative of events. The youth who snatched me from the water, and laid me on the turf with the child, is named Heraclitus. His father was a friend and companion in arms of dear Claudius, and he had come from Marseilles to seek education and advantages here in Alexandria for his only son.

“You may be sure, Hermione, that my father, Casca, bade both father and son a warm welcome, and from the first there seemed a bond between us all. When the father of Heraclitus returned to Marseilles, Heraclitus was left with my father and good Claudius.

“Heraclitus showed from the first the greatest powers of mind and body, and from the very first he seemed to account it his greatest happiness to be with us. Ah, Hermione! with _me_.

“Soon that gentle thrill of awakening in my heart grew stronger. Soon I knew that I was loved as my father Casca had loved my fair mother, Ianthe, as Claudius had loved my beautiful aunt Hyacintha.

“The cup of bliss seemed full to overflowing, when there came a drop of exceeding bitterness to spoil the sweetness. Good old Claudius, in passing down the long flight of steps from the Museum, fell heavily, and it was with difficulty that Heraclitus brought him home.

“For many weeks he lay helpless and uncomplaining. Sometimes he would say, ‘It was a strange end for a soldier, to lie on soft cushions, and be tended by women’s hands.’

“We did tend him carefully, and cheered his last days with the warmth of a love we might well bear one who had been so closely bound up in life with my father Casca and my aunt the Vestal Maxima.

“Claudius spoke much of the past, but little of the present. The farther off the scene, the clearer the vision. My father, always absorbed in his manuscript, would sometimes raise his head and smile, as Claudius spoke of Verulam, and the small upper chamber there and little Hyacintha and her hair shining under the light of the silver lamp which hung from the roof. Then of Ebba and her conversion to the faith of the Christian; his own vehement and angry persecution of the Christians, and of the dark dungeon into which he entered, bearing the dead Jewish girl in his arms.

“All this was clear before him, but of the later days at Rome he said little, and that little was confused. He loved to hear me read the Gospels, and the vision of the great Apostle of Love at Patmos, I would repeat again and again. He spoke to me of Heraclitus, and said he was worthy of my love, if my father consented, but father, dear father, held back a little. He seemed unable to give me up, even to Heraclitus.

“It was almost the last words that passed dear Claudius’s lips--‘Give Hyacintha to the young Heraclitus’--for when he lay dying, Claudius ever called me by my full name. He would gaze at me with dreamy eyes, and said, though I was so high above him he loved me still.

“He was thinking of the other Hyacintha, no doubt.

“He departed in peace; and then, within a month, dear Anna followed him. Ah, Hermione! she died in the Faith, and she has left behind her the memory of true service, which will never pass away.

“My father said no word on the subject nearest my heart. And Heraclitus, brave and true, and noble, said he would not press an old man unduly, for there was time before us; we were both so young.

“But it happened one day that another suitor came to my father, and asked his leave to marry me. I hated this man, though he is one of the richest in all Alexandria. My father put him off with the excuse that he could not spare me, and that I was very young, but he did not acknowledge what was indeed the truth, that in my secret heart I was bound to Heraclitus.

“My father, ever quiet, and gentle, and courteous, can scarcely think of others as less so than himself, and he was perhaps not sufficiently firm in his refusal. Be that as it may, I was walking with my attendant, Portia, in the Museum gardens one evening, with a book in my hand, when this hateful man accosted me. He said at first all manner of smooth and flattering things, and then when I turned away, he grew angry, and seized my arm. I was frightened, and struggling to get away, called for help. Help was near. With one blow Heraclitus had felled the man to the ground, and, leaving him there, bore me in his arms to my father.

“‘Give her to me,’ he exclaimed. ‘Give me the right to protect her from all insult henceforth.’ And so it was settled. And my dear father made preparations for our marriage, and we live with him in such happiness as I can never tell.

“It cannot but happen that living as I do with such scholars as my father and my husband, I should become well versed in the literature of the schools. I love to hear those who are so full of learning discourse. We have a large house now, and many frequent it. I am the mistress of it, and I have to fulfil its duties. Ah, Hermione! why am I so blessed by God? What have I done to merit His goodness, thus shown to me? It makes me sad at times, to think of you, in your dark, dim, shadowy life, in the old Vestals’ House. That is not real life, Hermione, cut off from all the sweet home ties which bind a happy wife with silken fetters.

“I pray you to send me a letter, and tell me if _she_ is less arrogant and hard to you, and if the faith of our Lord, yet unconfessed, is growing clearer to you. I crave to hear it is so. And now, fare you well. I would fain greet you with a kiss. Think of me as your friend, the happy wife of Heraclitus, and daughter of Casca Severus.”