Chapter 7

His friends began to urge Ovid to start. His carriage was ready, he must run no risk of not clearing Rome by daylight. Why should he go, he asked with a flicker of his old vivacity, when to go meant leaving Rome and turning toward Scythia? He called the children to him and talked low to them of their mother. Again his friends urged him. Three times he started for the door and three times he came back. At the end Fabia clung to him and beat upon his shoulders and declared she must go with him. What was Augustus's command to her? Love was her Caesar. Rufus came and drew her away. The door opened. The cold night air swept the atrium. She caught sight of Ovid's face, haggard and white against the black mass of his dishevelled hair. His shoulders sagged. He stumbled as he went out. She was conscious of falling, and knew nothing more.

III

Ovid's second birthday in exile had passed. The hope of an early release, harboured at first by his family and friends, had died away. None of them knew what the "blunder" or "crime" was which had aroused the anger of Augustus, and every effort to bring into high relief the innocence of Ovid's personal life and his loyalty to the imperial family simply made them more cognisant of a mystery they could not fathom. Access to Caesar was easy to some of them, and through Marcia, Maximus's wife, they had hoped to reach Livia. But these high personages remained inscrutable and relentless. At times it seemed as if even Tiberius, although long absent from the city, might be playing a sinister role in the drama. All that was clear was that some storm-wind from the fastnesses of the imperial will had swept through the gaiety of Rome and quenched, like a candle, the bright life of her favourite poet. It was easy to say that an astonishing amount of freedom was still Ovid's. His books had been removed from the public libraries, but the individual's liberty to own or read them was in no way diminished. Nor was the publication of new work frowned upon. In the autumn before his banishment Ovid had given out one or two preliminary copies of his _Metamorphoses_, and his friends now insisted that a work so full of charm, so characteristic of his best powers, so innocent of questionable material should be published, even if it had not undergone a final revision. The author sent back from Tomi some lines of apology and explanation which he wished prefixed. He also arranged with the Sosii for the bringing out of his work on the Roman Calendar when he should have completed it. And he was at liberty not only to keep up whatever private correspondence he chose, but to have published a new set of elegiac poems in the form of frank letters about his present life to his wife and friends. A third volume of these poems, which he called _Tristia_, had just appeared and more were likely to follow. He had an extraordinary instinct for self-revelation.

But in spite of this freedom to raise his voice in Rome, it was obvious that all that made life dear to Ovid had been taken away. The lover of sovereign Rome, of her streets and porticoes and theatres, her temples and forums and gardens, must live at the farthest limit of the Empire, in a little walled town from whose highest towers a constant watch was kept against the incursions of untamed barbarians. The poet to whom war had meant the brilliance of triumphal pageants in the Sacred Way must now see the rude farmers of a Roman colony borne off as captives or sacrificing to the enemy their oxen and carts and little rustic treasures. The man of fifty who had spent his youth in writing love poetry and who through all his life had had an eye for Venus in the temple of Mars must wear a sword and helmet, and dream at night of poisoned arrows and of fetters upon his wrists. The son of the Italian soil, bred in warmth, his eye accustomed to flowers and brooks and fertile meadows, must shiver most of the year under bitter north winds sweeping over the fields of snow which melted under neither sun nor rain; and in spring could only watch for the breaking up of the ice in the Danube, the restoration of the gloomy plains to their crop of wormwood, and the rare arrival of some brave ship from Italy or Greece. The acknowledged master of the Latin tongue, the courted talker in brilliant circles in Rome must learn to write and speak a barbarous jargon if he wished to have any intercourse with his neighbours. The husband with the heart of a child, whose little caprices and moods, whose appetite and health had been the concern of tender eyes, must learn to be sick without proper food or medicine or nursing, must before his time grow old and grey and thin and weak, dragged from the covert of a woman's love.

* * * * *

It was spring again and the late afternoon air, which came through the open window by which Fabia was sitting, was sweet with the year's new hope, even though borne over city roofs. Fabia had dwelt with sorrow day and night until there was no one of its Protean shapes which she did not intimately know. She had even attained to a certain tolerance of her own hysteria that first night when her uncle and her servants had had to care for her till morning. It was the last service she had required of others. Her daughter had hurried to her and spent weeks with her in watchful companionship. Perilla had come back in the summer and gone with her to Sulmo. But neither the love of the one child nor the grief of the other passed into the citadel where her will stood at bay before the beleaguering troops of pain. They were newer to her than they usually are to a woman of her age. The death of her child's father had brought regret rather than sorrow. Her will had been disciplined only by the habitual performance of simple duties which had given her happiness. But untaught, unaided, it slew her enemies and left her victor. Her daughters had long since given over worrying about her, had, indeed, begun to draw again upon her generous stores. Only her uncle, who knew the cost of warfare better, still silently watched her eyes. He knew that her victory had to be won afresh every night as soon as the aegis of the day was lifted. For a long time this had meant nights of dry-eyed anguish, which threatened her sanity, or nights of weakening tears. Through these months her uncle had come to see her every day. He had not doubted the strength of her will, but he had feared that the strength of her body might be sacrificed to its triumph. Her long days of self-control, however, repaired the ravages of the night hours, and little by little her strong mind, from which she had resolutely withheld all narcotics, reasserted its sway over her nerves. She recovered her power to think. To her a clear understanding of principles by which she was to decide the details of conduct had always been essential.

To-day, in this favourite hour of hers, when the mask laid by a busy day over the realities of life began to be gently withdrawn, she had set herself the task of analysing certain thoughts which had been with her hazily for over a week. On Ovid's birthday she had sent little presents to the grandchildren and written to her stepdaughter a letter which she hoped would make her feel that she was still the daughter of her father's house. In doing this she had been poignantly reminded of the birthday fete two years ago, of Perilla's sweetness to her, and of their conversation, so light-hearted at the time, about woman's place in the state. Since then she had been wondering whether she could still say that it was enough for her to be a wife. She was perfectly sure that she did not miss the outer satisfactions of being Ovid's wife. Except as they indicated his downfall, she did not regret the loss of her former place in society or the desertion of many of their so-called friends. Indeed, she had welcomed as her only comfort whatever share she could have in his losses. But was it true that her life as a whole had no meaning or value apart from his? Had the hard, solitary fight to be brave meant nothing except that she could write her husband stimulating letters and help his child to take up again the joys of youth? She had found and tested powers in herself that were not Ovid's. What meaning was there in her phrase--"The wife of a Roman citizen?" She began to think over Ovid's idea of citizenship. Suddenly she realised, in one of those flashes that illuminate a series of facts long taken for granted, that the time he had shown most emotion over being a citizen was on the night he had left home, when he had insisted that he still retained his property and his rights. Before that indeed, on the annual occasions when the Emperor reviewed the equestrian order and he rode on his beautiful horse in the procession, he had always come home in a glow of enthusiasm. But she had often felt vaguely, even then, that the citizen's pride was largely made up of the courtier's devotion to a ruler, the artist's delight in a pageant and the favourite's pleasure in applause in which he had a personal share. That he loved Rome she had never doubted. He loved the external city because it was fair to the eye. He loved Roman life because it was free from all that was rustic, because it gave the prizes to wit and imagination and refinement. The culture of Athens had at last become domiciled in the capital of a world-empire. Ovid's idea of citizenship, Fabia said to herself, was to live, amid the beauties of this capital and in the warmth of imperial and popular favour, freely, easily, joyfully.

And what was her own idea? Fabia's mind fled back to the days when she was a little girl in Falerii and her uncle used to come to the nursery after his dinner and take her on his lap and tell her stories until she was borne off to bed. The stories had always been about brave people, and her nurse used to scold, while she undressed her, about her flushed cheeks and shining eyes. The procession of these brave ones walked before her now, as a child's eyes had seen them--Horatius, Virginia, Lucretia, Decius, Regulus, Cato--men and women who had loved the honour and virtue demanded by Rome, or Rome's safety better than their lives. The best story of all had been the one about her own ancestors, the three hundred and six Fabii who, to establish their country's power, fought by the River Cremera until every man was dead.

She had grown old enough to read her own stories, to marry, and to tell stories to a child and to grandchildren, but the time had never come when her heart had not beat quicker at the thought of men sacrificing their life or their children, their will or their well-being to their country's need. She had become a widely read woman in both Latin and Greek. Her reason told her that appreciation of beauty in nature and art, grace and elegance in manners, intellectual freedom and a zest for individual development were essential factors in the progress of civilisation. She knew that if her husband had not believed in these things he could not have been the poet he was, and she knew his poetry had done something for Roman letters that Virgil's had not done. She had not only loved, with all the pure passion of her maturity, his charm and his blitheness and his gifted sensitiveness, but she had been proud of his achievements. His citizenship had satisfied her. But always, within the barriers of her own individuality, that faith which is deeper, warmer, more masterly than reason, had kept her the reverent lover of duty, the passionate guardian of character, for whose sake she would deny not only ease and joy, but, even, if the dire need came, beauty itself. Art the Romans had had to borrow. Their character they had hewn for themselves, with a chisel unknown to the Greeks, out of the brute mass of their instincts. Its constancy, its dignity, its magnanimity, probity and fidelity Cicero had described in words befitting their massive splendour. To possess this character was to be a Roman citizen, in the Forum and on the battlefield, in the study and the studio, in exile and in prison, in life and in death. Ovid's citizenship, save for the empty title, had been ended by an imperial decree. In losing Rome he had ceased to be a Roman. His voice came back only in cries in which there was no dignity and no fortitude. He was tiring out his friends. Perilla no longer let Fidus see his letters. Even in her own heart the sharpest sorrow was not his exile but his defeat. Her love had outlived her pride.

The dreaded night was coming on. Would he moan in his sleep again, without her quieting hand upon his face, or wake from dreams of her to loneliness? She rose impetuously and looked up through the narrow window. The sky was filled with the brightness of the April sunset. Of pain she was no longer afraid. But she was afraid to go on fighting with nothing to justify the cost of her successive battles or to glorify their result. Against the sunset sky rose the Capitol. Burnished gold had been laid upon its austere contours. Strength was aflame with glory. She never knew how or why, but suddenly an answering flame leaped within her. In that majestic temple dwelt the omnipotent gods of her country. Why should all her prayers be said to the Penates on her hearth? What did her country need, save, in manifold forms, which obliterated the barriers of sex, the sacrifice of self, the performance of duty, the choice of courage? The feverish talk of women about their independence had failed to hold her attention. Now a mightier voice, borne from the graves of the dead, trumpeted from the lives of the living, called to her, above the warring of her will with sorrow, to be a Roman citizen. She had neither arms nor counsels to give to her country. She could not even give sons born of her body, taught of her spirit. She was a woman alone, she was growing old, she was ungifted. She would be nothing but a private in the ranks, an obscure workman among master builders. But she could offer her victory over herself, and ask her country to take back and use a character hewn and shaped in accordance with its traditions. Her husband's citizenship had become a legal fable. She would take it and weld it with her own, and, content never to know the outcome, lay them both together upon the altar of Rome's immortal Spirit.

The new moon hung in the still radiant west. On a moonlit night she had fallen by the ashes of her hearth and prayed in futile agony to the gods of her home. Now she stood erect and looked out upon the city and with a solemn faith prayed to the greater gods. Later she slept peacefully, for the first time in fifteen months, as one whose taskmaster has turned comrade.

In the morning her uncle, who had been in Falerii for a few weeks, came to see her. He looked keenly into her eyes as she hastened across the wide room to greet him. Then his own eyes flashed and with a sudden glad movement he bent and kissed her hands. "Heart of my heart," he said, "in an exile's house I salute a Roman."

FORTUNE'S LEDGER

I

His Lady of Gifts smiled at him and held out her hand with something shut tight inside of it. The white fingers were just about to open into his palm, when he felt his mother's hand on his and heard her say: "Come, Marcus, come, the sun will get ahead of you this morning." He knew that she had kissed his eyes and hurried away again before he could open them upon the faint, grey light in his tiny room. A piercing thought put an end to sleepiness and brought him swiftly from his bed. This was the day of his Lady's festival! His mother seemed to have forgotten it, but he could say a prayer for her as well as for himself at the shrine by the Spring. He must make haste now, however, for before the June sun should fairly have come up over the tops of the hills he must get his sheep and goats to their pasture on the lower slopes.

When he had slipped into his blue cotton tunic, which reached just to his knees, leaving bare his stout brown legs, he went into his mother's room and plunged his head into a copper basin of water standing ready for his use. Shaking the drops from his black curls, he hastened on to the kitchen for his porridge. His grandfather was already there, sitting in his large chair, mumbling half-heard words to himself, while his daughter-in-law dipped out his breakfast from a pot hung over a small fire laid frugally in the middle of the wide, stone hearth. Marcus went up to him and kissed his forehead before he threw his arms around the neck of the big white sheep-dog which had leaped forward as he entered. His mother smiled out of her tired eyes as she gave him his morning portion, and then began to wrap up in a spotless napkin the dry bread and few olives which were to be his lunch in the pasture. When the last bit of hot porridge and the cup of goat's milk had been finished, he kissed her hand, gave the signal to the impatient dog, and ran across the courtyard to the fold where his meagre flock awaited their release. The sky was turning pink and gold, the sweet air of dawn filled his nostrils and, in spite of his mother's forgetfulness, he knew that on this day of all days in the year Good Fortune might be met by mortals face to face. As he and his dog marshalled the sheep and goats out of the gate, he turned happily toward the long, hard road which to him was but a pathway to his upland pasture and his Lady's shrine.

His mother came to the gate and watched the springing step with which he met the day. Her most passionate desire was that he might, throughout his life, be spared the sorrow, the disillusionment and the exhaustion which were her daily portion. But what chance was there of such a desire being fulfilled? A cry from the house, half frightened, half peevish, called her back from dreams to duties.

Marcus was the last child of a long line of independent farmers. When he was born his father was sharing with his grandfather the management of a prosperous estate. But before Marcus could talk plainly the crash had come. It seemed incredible that the Emperor in Rome should have known anything about the owners of a farm in Como. But Domitian's evil nature lay like a blight over the whole empire, and his cruelty, mean-spirited as well as irrational, was as likely to touch the low as the high. Angered by some officer's careless story of an insolent soldier's interview with Marcus's grandfather, he used a spare moment to order the confiscation of the rich acres and the slaves of the farm, and the imprisonment of their owner. The imprisonment had been short, as no one was concerned to continue it after Domitian's death. But it had been long enough to break the victim's spirit and hasten his dotage. By this time he knew almost nothing of what went on around him. He did not know that Domitian had been killed and that at last men breathed freely under the good Trajan. He was still full of old fears, pathetically unable to grasp the joy of this tranquillity, which, like recreative sunshine, penetrated to every corner of the exhausted empire. Nor, in fretting over the absence of his son, did he remember the brave fight that he had made for a livelihood as a muleteer in the Alps just above Como, nor the manner, almost heroic, of his death.

The burden fell upon Marcus's young mother. It was no wonder that her eyes were always tired, her hands rough and red, and her shoulders no longer straight. The actual farmstead had been left to them, but its former comfort now imposed only a heavy load. Once the servants had been almost as numerous as in the great villas along the lake. There had been stables for oxen and horses and sheep, lofts full of hay and corn, spacious tool-rooms, store-rooms for olive oil and fruits and wine, hen-yards and pigsties, and generous quarters for the workmen. Most of this was now falling into decay, year by year. Only a few bedrooms were used--the smallest and warmest--and the great kitchen was the only living room. It had been large enough for all the farm-servants to eat in and for the spinning and weaving of the women. Now the family of three gathered lonesomely close to the hearth when a rare fire was indulged in on stormy winter nights. The only source of income were the few sheep and goats and hens. In the old days great flocks of sheep on the farm had sent fleeces to Milan. Now there were only enough to furnish lambs on feast days and occasional fleeces to more prosperous neighbors. The few goats provided the family with milk. Far oftener than anyone knew, in the winters, they were in actual distress, lacking food and fuel.

But it was not her own hunger that burdened the nights of Marcus's mother. In letting her old father-in-law be hungry she felt that she was false to a trust. And her boy must be saved to a happier life than his father's had been. He was eleven years old and must soon, if ever, turn to something better than tending sheep in a lonely pasture from sunrise till sunset. She did not let him know it, thinking that he was too young to look beyond the passing days in which he seemed able to find happiness, but she had laid aside every year, heedless of the sacrifice, some little part of the scanty money that came from the eggs and chickens. What she could do with it she did not know. It grew so slowly. But there was always the hope that some day Marcus would find it a full-grown treasure to face the world with. When, seven years ago, the great Pliny had given to Como a fund to educate freeborn orphans, she had thought bitterly that her baby would be better off without her. Sometimes, since then, she had been mad enough to think of trying to see Pliny when he came to the villa which was nearest to her farm. He was there now. Stories of his magnificent kindnesses were rife. His tenants were the most contented in the country-side and his slaves were better treated than many Roman citizens. He had given his old nurse a little farm to live on and sent one of his freedmen to Egypt when he was threatened with consumption. But she had never found the courage--she could not find it now--to believe that he would care what happened to a child in no way connected with him. His wealth, by no means the largest known in his own circle, to her seemed appalling. The Emperor could not have been more distant from her than this magnate, who, although he had been born in Como and was said to love his Como villas better than any of his other houses, yet had about him the awful remoteness of Rome. Of course she could never be admitted to his presence. She could only store up a few more coins each year and trust to the gods.

With a start she realised that to-day was the festival of Fors Fortuna. In the hurried morning she had forgotten to remind Marcus of his prayers. In the days when the farm had been sure of the largest harvest in the neighbourhood this summer festival had been brilliantly celebrated, and as long as Marcus's father had lived the family had still cherished the quaint rites and the merrymaking of a holiday especially dear to the common people of both city and country. But in these later years there had been neither time nor money for any fetes. Piety, however, was still left, and it was characteristic of the scrupulousness persisting in Marcus's mother through all the demoralising experiences of poverty that, after she had finished the heavier tasks, she should set to work to mark the religious day by a freshly washed cloth upon the table, with a bowl of red roses picked from the bush that grew by the doorway, and a gala supper of new-laid eggs, lentil soup and goat's milk cheese.