Chapter 6

The speaker, a young matron, smiled into her father's eyes, which were as brilliant and tender as her own. Ovid and his daughter were singularly alike in a certain blitheness of demeanour, and in Fabia's eyes they made a charming picture now, both of them in festal white against the March green of the slender poplars. Perilla's little boy had climbed into his grandfather's lap and laid carefully upon his hair, still thick and black, a wreath of grape leaves picked from early vines in a sunny corner. Fabia and Perilla's husband, Fidus Cornelius, smiled at each other in mutual appreciation of a youth shared equally, it seemed to them, by the other three with the new-born spring.

It was Ovid's birthday and they were celebrating it in their country place at the juncture of the Flaminian and Clodian roads. The poet had a special liking for his gardens here, and he had preferred to hold his fete away from the city, in family seclusion, because Fidus was about to take Perilla off to Africa, where he was to be proconsul. The shadow of the parting had thrown into high relief the happiness of the day. Perilla had always said that it was worth while to pay attention to her father's birthday, because he could accept family incense without strutting like a god and was never so charming as when he was being spoiled. To-day they had spared no pains, and his manner in return had fused with the tenderness kept for them alone the gallantry, at once that of worldling and of poet, which made him the most popular man in Roman society. Now, as the afternoon grew older and his grandson curled comfortably into his arms, the conversation turned naturally to personal things. Perilla's jest led her father to talk of his years, and to wonder whether he was to have as long a life as his father, who had died only two or three years before at ninety.

"At least, having no sons," he went on, "I shall be spared some of his disappointments. It was cruel that my brother, who could have satisfied him by going into public life, should have died. Father had no use for literature. He used to point out to me that not even Homer made money, so what could I expect? But I believe that even he saw that my student speeches sounded like metreless verse, and later on he accepted the bad bargain with some grace. He had sniffed at what I considered my youthful successes. I was immensely proud over seeing Virgil once in the same room as myself, and when I came to know Horace and Propertius fairly intimately I felt myself quite a figure in Rome. But father had little or no respect for them--except when Horace turned preacher--and no patience at all with what I wrote. Before he died, however, when these greater men had passed off the stage and he saw young men look up to me as I had looked up to them, and found I could sell my wares, he began to grant that I had, after all, done something with my time."

"I never can realise," Perilla exclaimed, "that you are old enough to have seen Virgil! Why, I wasn't even born when he died! I suppose those times, when Augustus was young, were very fiery and inspiring, but I am so glad I live in this very year. I would rather have you the chief poet of Rome than a hundred solemn Virgils, and surely life can never have been as lovely as it is now. Isn't Rome much finer and more finished?"

Fidus smiled. "You are your father's own child," he said. "We certainly are getting the rustic accent out of our mouths and the rustic scruples out of our morals. In the meantime"--he added lightly--"some of us have to plod along with our old habits, or where would the Empire be? I don't expect to improve much on the proconsulship of my father."

Ovid's eyes rested whimsically on the young man, and after a pause he said: "Art is one thing and conduct is another. I trust Perilla to you but with no firmer assurance of her happiness than I have of Fabia's entrusted to me. Soldiering and proconsuling have their place, but so has the service of the Muses. While you are looking after taxes in Africa, we will make Rome a place to come back to from the ends of the earth. After all, to live is the object of life, and where can you live more richly, more exquisitely than here? You will find you cannot stay away long. Rome is the breath we breathe. I like to believe that will prove true of you. I cannot give up Perilla long, even with this young Roman as a hostage." The child had fallen asleep, and with a light kiss on his tousled curls the grandfather turned him over to his mother's arms. "Let us leave these connoisseurs to discuss his dimples," he said to his son-in-law, "drag our other boy out of his bee-hives and have one more game of ball before I get too old."

Perilla watched the two men as they walked off toward the apiary, and when she turned to her stepmother her eyes were wet with sudden tears. "Fidus was almost impertinent to father, wasn't he? And father was so perfect to him! That is what I tell Fidus, when he talks like grandfather and says we are all going to the dogs--I tell him that at least we are keeping our manners as we go, which is more than can be said of the reformers. I am always nervous when he and father get on to social questions, they feel so differently. Fidus was quite angry with me the other day because I said I was thankful that we had learned to have some appreciation of taste and good form and elegance and that we should never go back to being boors and prudes. He insisted that if by boors and prudes I meant men and women who cared more for courage and virtue than for 'hypocrisy' and 'license,' I should see them become the fashion again in Rome, before I knew it. Augustus was not blindfolded, if he was old. But, although Fidus doesn't understand father, he does love him. He said about coming here that he would rather spend his last day with father than with any other man in Rome. And what a happy day it has been!"

Perilla rose impulsively and, tucking her sleeping child in among the cushions of a neighbouring bench, threw herself on the grass by the older woman. Her forty-five years sat lightly upon Fabia, leaving her still lovely in the sensitive eyes of her husband and stepdaughter. A temperamental equableness and a disciplined character gave to her finely modelled face an inward tranquillity which was a refuge to their ardent natures. She only smiled now, as Perilla's lively tongue began again: "How happy you make father all the time! It keeps me from feeling too dreadfully about going off to Africa. Do you know, when you first came to us, I had an idea you wouldn't understand him! I was just old enough to realise that all your traditions were very austere ones, that your family belonged to the old order and had done wonderful things that weren't poetry and the joy of living at all. But I was far too young to understand that just because you did belong to people like that, when you married a man you would sink your life in his. That seems to me now to be the strongest thing about you. I have a feeling that inside you somewhere your character stands like a rock upon which father's ideas could beat forever without changing it. But you never let that character make you into a force separate from him. You have made his home perfect in every detail, but outside of it you are just his wife. Tell me, does that really satisfy you?"

Fabia's smile grew into a laugh. "I seem very old-fashioned to you, do I not, dear child? It is not because of my age, either, for plenty of middle-aged women agree with you. It is quite in the air, isn't it, the independence of women, their right to choose their own paths? I was invited to a reading of the _Lysistrata_ the other day, and actually one woman said afterwards that she believed Aristophanes was only foreseeing a time when women would take part in the government! She was laughed down for that, but most of the others agreed that the whole progress of society since Aristophanes's time lay in the emancipation of women from the confines of the home and from intellectual servility. I, too, believe in mental freedom, but you all insist a great deal upon the rights involved in being individuals. I have never been able to see what you gain by that. My husband is a citizen of Rome. To be called his wife is my proudest title. It makes no difference to the state what I am or do of myself. I live to the state only through him."

The younger woman had begun to speak almost before Fabia had finished, but the conversation was interrupted by the nurse coming for the child. Perilla went back to the house with them, confessing, with a laugh, that an hour with her boy at bed-time was more important than trying to change her perfect mother. It was not yet time to dress for the birthday dinner, which was to crown the day, and Fabia lingered on in the garden to watch the gathering rose in the late afternoon sky above the tree-tops. An enchanted sense of happiness came to her in the silence of the hour. She did not agree with her husband that happiness was the main object of life, but she was very grateful to the gods who had allowed her to be happy ever since she was a little girl, left to the care of a devoted uncle by parents she was too young to mourn. The latter half of her life these gods had crowned with a love which made her youth immortal. She had been married when she was a mere girl to a young soldier who had not lived long enough to obtrude upon her life more than a gentle memory of his bravery. The bearing of a child had been the vital part of that marriage, and the child had come into her new home with her, leaving it only for a happy one of her own. Her husband's child had been like a second daughter to her, and throughout the twenty years of her life with Ovid joy had consistently outweighed all difficulties. Insolent tongues had been busy with his faithlessness to her. But after the first fears she had come to understand that, although other women often touched the poet and artist in him, none save herself knew the essential fidelity and the chivalrous tenderness of the husband. She had accepted with pride his shining place in public regard. It was no wonder that he loved Rome, for Rome loved him.

A nightingale broke into song among the rose bushes. Her face was like a girl's as she thought of Ovid, with the grape leaves above his vivid face, young as the gods are young, seeking her eyes with his. A faint smell, as of homely things, rose from the familiar earth. Lights began to appear in the windows of the villa. She had come to this home when she and Ovid were married, and this morning she had again offered her tranquil prayers to the Penates so long her own. The happy years broke in upon her. Ah, yes, she and her husband had the divine essence of youth within them. But they had something finer too, something that comes only to middle age--the sense of security and peace, the assurance that, except for death, no violent changes lay ahead of them. She had only to nurture, as they faced old age together, a happiness already in full measure theirs.

As she turned toward the house she met her husband, come himself to seek her. In the recurrent springs of her after life the faint smell of the burgeoning earth filled her with an unappeasable desire.

II

The next week Fidus and Perilla started for Libya, leaving the two children with their grandfather rather than expose them to the dangers of the African climate. Ovid and Fabia spent the summer as usual in the cool Apennines at the old family homestead at Sulmo. They lingered on into the autumn for the sake of the vintage, a favourite season with them, and did not return to their beautiful town house at the foot of the Capitoline hill until late in October. While Fabia was busy with the household readjustments entailed by the presence of the children with their attendants and tutors, and before social engagements should become too numerous, Ovid spent several hours each day over his _Metamorphoses_, to which he was giving the final polish. Patient work of this kind was always distasteful to him and he welcomed any chance to escape from it. At the end of November Fabia's cousin, Fabius Maximus, went to the island of Elba to look after some family mines, and Ovid made his wife's business interests a pretext for a short trip up the Tuscan coast in his company. He was to be back for a dinner at Macer's, his fellow poet's, on the Ides of December, to meet some friends of both from Athens.

On the morning of the eighth day before the Ides a message came to Fabia from the Palace asking where Ovid was. The inquiry seemed flattering and Fabia wondered what pleasant attention was in store for her husband. As it happened, she saw no one outside of her own household either that day or the next, being kept indoors by the necessity of installing new servants sent down from the estate at Sulmo. She was, therefore, entirely unprepared for the appalling public news which her uncle, Rufus, brought to her in the early evening of the seventh day before the Ides. There was something almost terrifying in the wrenching of her mind from the placid details of linen chests and store-rooms to the disasters in Caesar's household. Augustus, without warning, at the opening of what promised to be a brilliant social season, had risen in terrible wrath; and Julia, his granddaughter, her lover, Decimus Junius Silanus, and, it was rumoured, several other prominent men had been given the choice of accepting banishment or submitting to a public prosecution. There was really no choice for them. The courts would condemn relentlessly, and the only way to save even life was to leave Rome.

"But the brutal suddenness of it!" Fabia exclaimed. "It seems more tragic, somehow, than her mother's punishment. Isn't everybody aghast? And do you think she has deserved it?" Rufus looked grave and troubled. "It is not easy to know what one does think," he said. "There has been a great deal of boasting about our prosperity, our victories abroad and our lustre at home. But some of us who have been watching closely have wondered how long this would last. The Empire has been created at a great cost and cannot be preserved at a lesser price. Insurrections have to be put down in the provinces, harmony and efficiency have to be maintained in the capital. It takes harsh courage, inflexible morals to do all that. Julia and with her Roman society have defied Caesar's desires, just as her mother and her set defied them ten years ago. Imagine the grief and despair of our old Emperor! He must do something savage, drastic, irrevocable, to save his state. My heart breaks for him, and yet I cannot help pitying our imperial lady. With her light grace, her audacious humour, among our stern old standards, she has often made me think of a Dryad moving with rosy feet and gleaming shoulders in a black forest. All our family, Fabia, have been like the trees. But perhaps Rome needs the Dryads too. What is moral truth?" Fabia smiled suddenly. "Ovid would say it is beauty," she said. "That is an old dispute between us." Her face fell again. "He will be deeply distressed by this calamity. Julia has been very gracious to him and he admires her even more than he did her mother."

"When is he coming home?" Rufus asked. "I didn't expect him until the day before the Ides," Fabia answered, "but I think now he may come earlier. Caesar sent this morning to inquire where he was, and perhaps some honour is going to be offered that will bring him back immediately--a reading at the Palace, perhaps, or--but, uncle," she exclaimed, "what is the matter? You have turned so white. You are sick." She came near him with tender, anxious hands, and he gathered them into his thin, old ones and drew her to him. "No, dear heart," he said. "I am not sick. For a moment fear outwitted me, a Fabian. You must promise me not to be afraid, whatever happens. Is it cruel to warn you of what may never come to you? But our days are troubled. Jove's thunderstorm has broken upon us. Your husband is among the lofty. It is only the obscure who are sure of escaping the lightning. Send for me, if you need me. Remember whose blood is in you. I must go--there may yet be time." He kissed her forehead hurriedly and was gone.

Fabia never knew accurately what happened before the sun rose a second time after this night. Afterwards she recognised the linked hours as the bridge upon which she passed, without return, from joy to pain, from youth to age, from ignorance to knowledge. But the manner of the crossing never became clear in her memory. Details stood out mercilessly. Their relationship, their significance were at the time as phantasmagoric as if she had been lost in the torturing unrealities of a nightmare. Just after her uncle left she was called to the room of Perilla's youngest child who had awakened with a sore throat and fever. Against the protests of the nurse, she sat up with him herself because through the shadows that darkened her mind she groped after some service to her husband. When she was an old woman she could have told what was carved on the cover of the little box from which she gave the medicine every hour until the fever broke, and the colour of the nurse's dress as she hurried in at dawn. Practical matters claimed her attention after she had bathed and dressed. The doctor was sent for to confirm her own belief that the child had nothing more than a cold. The older boy's tutor consulted her about a change in the hours of exercise. A Greek artist came to talk over new decorations for the walls of the dining room.

The forenoon passed. The cold wind, which had been blowing all night, an early herald of winter, died down. A portentous silence seemed to isolate her from the rest of the city. At noon Ovid came home. She felt no surprise. They clung to each other in silence and when he did speak he seemed to be saying what she had known already. The words made little impression. She only thought how white he was, and how old, as old as she was herself. His voice seemed to reach her ears from a great distance. He was to go away from her to the world's end, to a place called Tomi on the terrible Black Sea. The formal decree had stated as the cause the immorality of his _Art of Love_--yes, the volume had been published ten years ago and he had enjoyed the imperial favour as much since then as before. The real reason, so the confidential messenger had explained to him, was something quite different. It was not safe to tell her. Her ignorance was better for them both. He had made a terrible blunder, the Emperor called it a crime, but he was innocent of evil intent. No, there was no use in making any plea. He had talked the matter over with Maximus, although he had not told him what the "crime" was. Maximus had been sure that nothing could be done, that denial would lead only to a public trial, the verdict of which would be still more disastrous. The Emperor was clement, his anger might cool, patience for a year or two might bring a remission of the sentence. The only hope lay in obedience. Maximus had not been allowed to return with him in the hurried journey by government post. The officers had held out little hope to him. A change had come over Caesar. Banishment was banishment. "An _exile_?"--no, he was not that! He was still a citizen of Rome, he still had his property and his rights--she was no exile's wife! Yes, she must stay in Rome. It was futile for her to argue. Caesar was inexorable. She asked him when he must go. He said before another sunrise, to-morrow must not see him within the city limits. The words held no new meaning for her. What were hours and minutes to the dead? They talked in broken sentences. She promised to comfort Perilla. He was glad his father and mother were dead. He hoped her daughter could come to her at once from Verona.

They were interrupted by the stormy arrival of a few faithful friends--how few they were she did not realise until later. Rufus was the first to come and she thought it strange that he should break down and sob while Ovid's eyes were dry and hard. Knowing the servants, he undertook to tell them what had happened to their master. Their noisy grief throughout the house brought a dreary sense of disorder. Sextus Pompeius arrived and characteristically out of the chaos of grief plucked the need of practical preparation for the long journey. He brought out maps and went over each stage of the way. Only the sea journey from Brindisi to Corinth would be familiar to Ovid, but Pompeius had seen many years of military service in various northern stations, from the Hellespont to the Danube, and knew what to recommend. Although Tomi was a seaport, he advised making the last part of the journey by land through Thrace. He knew what dangers to fear from the natives, what precautions to take against sickness, and what private supplies a traveller might advantageously carry with him. They made a list of necessary things and Pompeius sent some of Ovid's servants out to procure what they could before night. The rest could be sent on to Brindisi before the ship sailed. He would see to that, Fabia need have no care. It was a great disadvantage that they could not control the choice of the travelling companions, but he would go at once and see if he could exercise any influence.

The packing consumed several hours. This unemotional activity would have strengthened Fabia, had it not had a completely unnerving effect on Ovid. The preparations for a wild and dangerous country seemed to bring him face to face with despair. He rushed to the fire and threw upon it the thick manuscript of his _Metamorphoses_. Looking sullenly at the smouldering parchment he began to talk wildly, protesting first that no one should see any of his work unfinished and then passing to a paroxysm of rage against all his poetry, to which he attributed his ruin. He began to walk up and down the room, pushed his wife aside, and declared that he was going to end his life. In the long nightmare Fabia found this hour the most terrifying. She could never express her gratitude to Celsus who had come after Pompeius left and who now alone proved able to influence Ovid. By a patient reasonableness he made headway against his hysterical mood, bringing him back, step by step, to saner thoughts.

The servants, stimulated to their duties by Rufus, brought in food. Fabia made Ovid eat some bread and fruit. The evening wore on. The December moon was mounting the sky. Voices and footsteps of passers-by were vaguely heard. In the distance a dog barked incessantly. Lights were lit, but the usual decorum of the house was broken. The fire died dully upon the hearth. The children were brought into the room, looking pale and worn with the unwonted hour. Midnight came and went. All sounds of the city died away. Even the dog ceased his howling. They were alone with disaster. Ovid went to the window and drew aside the heavy curtain. The moon rode high over the Capitol. Suddenly he stretched out his arms and they heard him praying to the great gods of his country. In this moment Fabia's self-control, like a dam too long under pressure, gave way. Except on ceremonial occasions she had never heard her husband pray. Now, he who had had the heart of a child for Rome and for her was cast out by Rome and was beyond her help. From her breast he must turn to the indifferent gods in heaven. She broke into hard, terrible sobs and threw herself down before the hearth, kissing the grey ashes. Unregardful of those about her, she prayed wildly to the lesser gods of home, her gods. From the temple on the Capitoline, from the Penates came no answer.