Part 9

This was the first wedding in the colony, and as the preparations went forward, everybody, old and young, took a great deal of interest in it. Marcia never knew she had so many friends. Everybody seemed to wish her well and approve of the marriage. The wooden chest Marcs had made for her, and Bruno had carved and painted, began to fill with webs of linen and wool, the gifts of her mother and the other matrons, and some that had been spun and woven by Marcia herself. She could see from the door the house that was to be her home, as its fresh, new walls arose day by day. And at last the day arrived for the _confarreatio_; as it was called, the wedding ceremony, the eating of bread. Like the other ceremonies in the religion of the people, this was very old, so old that the beginning of it was not known. The reason of some of the things that were done had been forgotten. Marcia could just remember going to one wedding when she was a little girl before they left the Mountain of Fire. All the colonists who went out were already married and had children, and until now none of the children were old enough to begin a new home.

There was always a certain meaning in the eating of salt together; it is so in all the ancient races. Salt was not like food that any two men might eat together, like animals, where they found it. It was part of the household stores; it was eaten by families living in houses. In some places it was not easy to come by, and it was the one thing necessary to a really good meal, whatever else there was to eat. When a man was invited to share a meal with salt in it, it meant that he was invited to the table and was more or less an equal. People who were simply fed from the stores of the farmer prepared their own food in their own way, often without salt. It was said that the wood spirits, the gods of the wilderness, of whom nobody knew much except that they were mischievous and tricky, could always be known by the fact that salt to them was like poison; they could not eat it at all.

When a bride left her own home to go to that of her husband, it was a very solemn proceeding, because she said farewell to her own family, the spirits of her ancestors, and the gods of her father’s hearth, and became one of her husband’s family, a daughter of his father. All that was done was based more or less on this idea. A girl who ran away from home without her father’s knowledge could not expect to be blessed by her ancestors, the unseen dwellers by the fireside. A woman who came into another home without the permission of the spirits who dwelt there could not hope to be happy; bad luck would certainly follow. The wedding ceremonies were meant to make it perfectly clear that all was done in the right and proper and fortunate way.

The day was chosen by Tullius the priest, and was a bright and beautiful day, not long after the feast of Maia. The ceremonies began at dawn. Before sunrise Tullius was scanning the sky to make sure that the day would be fair and that no evil omen was in sight. Felic’la, who hovered around her sister with adoring eyes, thought she had never seen Marcia look so beautiful. She was in white, with a flame-colored veil over her head, and her hair had been, according to the old custom, parted with a spear point into six locks, arranged with ribbons tied in a certain way to keep it in place. Her tall and graceful figure was even more stately than usual in the white robe she wore, and her great dark eyes were like stars.

When the guests were all at the house, Marcus Colonus offered a sacrifice at the family altar and pronounced certain ancient words, explaining that he now gave his daughter to the young Mamurius and set her free from every obligation that kept her at home. When the sacrifice was over, the guests wished the young couple happiness, and the marriage feast began. There was no one in the whole village who did not have reason to remember the rejoicings on the day when the daughter of Colonus was married, for it was the richest feast that had ever been given in the colony. The house was decorated with wreaths and the best of the wine was served, and all the dainties the Roman women knew how to make were to be found upon the table. Marcia sat among her maidens like a young goddess among priestesses; they were all eager to show her how dear she was to them and how glad they were that she was happy. There was not a child in the village who did not think of her as a kind elder sister. Now she herself was to be served and made happy, and for that day she was the most important person in the eyes of all those who had been her playmates.

At last the rejoicings at the home of Colonus were over, and it was time for the wedding procession. Attended by the young girls near her own age, the bride was taken from her mother’s arms by the bridegroom, and the whole party moved in procession toward the new home. In advance went torch bearers, and the children scattered flowers for her feet to tread upon as she passed. Every one was singing or shouting “Talassio! Talassio!” The flute players were making music, and the bridegroom scattered handfuls of nuts for which the boys scrambled. When they reached the door of the new house Marcia poured a little oil upon the doorposts, and wound them with wool which her own hands had spun. Then Mamurius lifted her in his strong arms and carried her through the door.

Exactly why this was part of the marriage ceremony is not known. Some think it was because a bride must not be allowed to stumble on the threshold, for that would be unlucky. But it was more likely to mean that she was brought by her husband into the house to join in the worship of the spirits of the home, and so did not come in without an invitation. As she stood in the _atrium_, the middle room where the altar and the family table were, she received the fire and water of the family worship and reverently lighted the first fire ever kindled on that hearth. She and Mamurius repeated together the prayers that thousands of young couples had repeated since first their people had homes. Then they ate together a flat cake made with the corn blessed by the priest, and Marcia poured a little of the marriage wine upon the fire as a sacrifice of “libation” to the gods of her new home. This was the _confarreatio_. They felt as if the silent, burning fire that lighted the dusky little room were trying to tell them that their simple meal was shared by the gods themselves, and that the blessing of all Mamurius’ forefathers was on the bride that he had brought home to be the joy of his house.

On the next day there was another feast, to celebrate the beginning of the new home, and the wedding was over.

“I am glad,” said Marcia’s mother to her husband when they went home that night, leaving their daughter and young Mamurius standing together at their own door, “that everything went so well, without a single unlucky or unhappy thing to spoil the good fortune. Marcia well deserves to be happy,—but I shall miss her every day I live.”

She sighed, and Felic’la looked rather sober. She knew very well that they would all miss Marcia, but she determined in her careless little heart to be a better girl and do so much for her mother and brothers that when her turn came, they would all be sorry to see her go.

“I am glad,” said Colonus, “for more than one reason. I have been rather anxious for fear that in this new place our young people would not remember the old ways as they might if they had grown up in our old home. It was important to have the first wedding one that they would all remember with pleasure, and wish to follow as an example. I am very glad Marcia has so good a husband. Mamurius is a youth who will go far and be a leader among the young men. I suppose that now they will all be thinking of marriage.”

There were, in fact, several other marriages in the colony within a year or two, but nobody who was at that first wedding ever forgot it. Marcia was often called upon to tell how the garlands were made, and just how much honey they put in the cakes for the feast, and how the other little matters were arranged that all seemed to be managed exactly right. In fact, that wedding set a fashion and a standard, and as Marcia’s father was shrewd enough to see, it is a good thing in a new community to have the standards rather high. There was nothing in what Marcia and Mamurius did that other people could not follow if they chose, but the simple comfort and grace of their way of living did mean that they cared enough for their home to take it seriously. Girls who might not have thought much about cleanliness, thrift, cheerfulness and beauty began to see, when they visited Marcia, how pleasant it was to have a home like hers. She did not tell them so; she was herself, and that was enough.

XV

THE TRUMPERY MAN

One autumn day a little while after the harvest, a squat, brown man with large black eyes under great arched eyebrows set in a large head, and with unusually muscular shoulders and arms, was paddling slowly in a small boat across the yellow river. As he crossed he looked up attentively at the range of hills near the riverside, now partly covered with wooden huts. It was his experience that villages were good places to trade. They were especially so when, as now, pipes were sounding and the people were keeping holiday in honor of some god. He had gone to many places with his wares, but he had not as yet visited the town by the river. He was not even quite sure of its name. Some called it Rumon and some Roma. The people of his race were not very quick of ear, and often pronounced letters alike or confused them when they sounded alike,—as o and u, or b and p, or t and d. He himself was called Utuze, Otuz, or Odisuze, or Toto, according to the place where he happened to be. He came from Caere, the Etruscan seaport near the mouth of the river.

He had landed on this bank when he went up the river and approached the men from the settlement when they were working on their lands outside the walls, but they did not pay much attention to him. He could not tell whether they did not want his wares, or were suspicious, or simply did not understand what he was talking about. Now he was going to find out,—for he was of a persistent nature. Perhaps there would be some one at the festival who could speak both his language and theirs and tell them what he wanted to say. Then it would be easy.

On a glittering chain around his neck he carried a metal whistle, or trumpet, that could be heard a long distance and would pierce through most other noises as a needle pierces wool. On his back he carried in a sack a great variety of small things likely to please women and girls and children. He had learned a very long time ago that however shrewd a man may be, he will buy very silly things and pay any price you like for them when he is persuaded that they will please a girl. He also knew that men will buy things for their wives that no sensible woman ever buys for herself, and that if children cry for a toy long enough, they often get it. But the most important thing was, he knew, that a man who can attract attention to himself, no matter how he does it, generally sells more goods than one who depends only on the usefulness of what he has to sell. Therefore, when he set out on these trading journeys, he put on the most gorgeous and gay-colored clothes he could find, decorated with bright-colored figures, embroidered, and fringed or fastened with little glittering beads and ornaments such as he carried in his pack. Shining things were easier to sell than other things, as they were easier to look at. The peddler had given careful attention to selecting his stores, and Mastarna, the fat merchant from whom he got them, helped him. He wished to know more of these people in the town by the river.

The squealing of the peddler’s trumpet reached the ears of the soldiers, who were having a good time in their own way. They had their own games and frolics and feats of strength, and some of the young men from the town were there to look on and perhaps to join. Urso the hunter’s son, and Marcus and Bruno the sons of Colonus, and little Pollio the son of the sandal maker, were all there, and when they heard the trumpet they sprang to their feet. But Ruffo the captain of the guard laughed, and the others shouted, and Ruffo said, “By Jove, there’s Toto!”

“_Diovi_” was the general name for “the gods,” and when it is pronounced quickly it sounds like “Jove.” The father of the gods was “Diovis-Pater”—which in course of time became “Jupiter.”

The peddler had been in their camp in the days before the town by the river was thought of, and when he saw them, he came up the path grinning broadly, and they grinned back. They explained to the boys of the colony that he came from across the river and dealt in all sorts of things that were not made at all on this side, and some that were brought from the seashore. Toto spread out his gay cloth on the ground and began to lay out his wares.

Through long practice he knew just how to place them so that they would show most effectively, and many a customer wondered why the trinket did not look as well when he got it home as it had before he bought it. The colors in the painted cloth were combined in old, old patterns worked out according to laws as certain as the laws of music, and everywhere was the gilding that set off the colors and seemed to make them brighter and richer.

There were scarfs such as women wore on their heads, and fillets for the hair, and girdles and veils. There were necklaces and bracelets and rings and brooches and pins. There were boxes of sweetmeats, and metal cups and spoons, and curious little images of men and animals, and strings of beads, and charm strings, and hollow metal cases for charms, that could be hung around the neck, and pottery toys, and trinkets of all kinds. It seemed impossible that so much merchandise of so many different kinds could have been packed in that bag, or that a man could have carried it, after it was packed. If the things had been as heavy as they looked, it would have been too great a load even for Toto’s broad shoulders.

The Roman boys had never seen anything like this before, but they did not show any great curiosity. One of the things that the people of Mars taught their children, without ever saying it in so many words, was not to be in a hurry to talk too much in strange company. They were brought up to feel that they were the equals of any one they were likely to meet and need not be in haste to make new friends. This feeling gave them a certain dignity not easily upset. In fact, dignity is merely the result of respecting yourself as a person quite worthy of respect, and not feeling obliged to insist on it from other people. The colonists had it.

Pollio picked up one of the sandals and smiled.

“My father would not think this leather fit to use,” he said in a low tone to Bruno.

Marcus was looking at a pin of a rather pretty design and wondering how Flavia, his betrothed, would like it, when it bent in his fingers. That pin had not been made for the handling of young men with hands so muscular as his. Marcus paid for the pin and tossed it into the river. He had no intention of making a gift like that to any one.

When they handled the charm necklaces they saw from the lightness that what looked like gold was not gold. It was so with all the peddler’s stock. The soldiers, seeing that the boys from the colony did not think the stuff worth buying, did not buy much themselves, nor did they drink much of his wine.

Ruffo said after Toto had gone that he did not always carry such a collection of trash as he had to-day. Sometimes he sold excellent fish-hooks and small tools. Marcus said that if he bought anything, he wanted a thing that was worth buying, and they began to throw quoits at a mark.

Marcus had seen traders before and dealt with them, but for some reason this peddler’s pack set him thinking. In their way of living a farmer made most of his own tools, and wishing them to last as long as possible, he made them well. It was the same with the baskets, the linen, the wool and the leather work, and the other things made at home. It was the same with the work done in the smithy of Muraena. He wished to have a reputation among his neighbors for making fine weapons. The men always put the greater part of their time on their farms, and since they had been in this new country, their planning and contriving how to make the soil produce more and more had been far more exciting than ever before. Each year a little more of the marsh or the waste land would be drained and cleared; each year the flocks and herds would be larger and more huts would be built. They were founding a new people.

In view of these great thoughts of the future, the glittering trinkets of the man with the trumpet looked small and worthless. Marcus began to see what was meant by the elders when they spoke of “gravity” as a virtue and “levity” as a rather foolish vice. Life depended very much on the way one took things; to take important things lightly, or give valuable time and thought to worthless objects left a man with the chaff on his hands instead of the good grain.

Something his father had told him a long time ago, when he was a little boy, came into Marcus’s mind. It was when he wanted something very much, and being little, cried because he could not have it and made himself quite miserable. His father came in just then and watched him for a minute or two. Then he said,

“My son, do you wish to be a strong man, when you grow big?”

“Y-yes,” sniffed the little fellow dolefully.

“You wish to be strong of soul and heart as you are in your body, so that no one can make you do anything you are not willing to do?”

“Yes, Father,” said the boy, with his puzzled dark eyes searching his father’s face.

“Then, my son, remember this: the strong man is the man who can go without what he wants. If you cannot do without a thing you want, without being unhappy, you are like a boy who cannot walk without a crutch. If you can give up, without making a ridiculous ado about it, whatever it is not wise for you to have—if you can be happy in yourself and by yourself and stand on your own feet—then you are strong. In the end you will be strong enough to get what you really want. The gods hate a coward.”

Now in the long shadows of the fading day, as he heard the far sound of the peddler’s trumpet down the river, Marcus found a new meaning in his father’s words. He saw that those who wasted what they had earned by hard work on that rubbish would end by having nothing at all, because they were caught by the color and the shine of things made to tempt them. What was there in all that collection that was half as beautiful as a golden wheat field? What ornament that could be worn out or broken was equal to the land itself, with its treasure of fleecy flocks and sleek cattle, and roof trees under which happy children slept? The treasure of the world was theirs already, in this plain that was theirs to make fruitful and beautiful, and people with prosperous villages. That was the real estate; the other was a shadow and a sham.

XVI

THE GREAT DYKE

Although Toto did not find his first visit to the Seven Hills very profitable, he had much that was interesting to tell Mastarna when he returned. The two had a long talk in their strange rugged language with its few vowel sounds. Mastarna was most interested in the gods of these strangers. If he could find out what they did to bring good luck and ward off misfortune, he could have charms and lucky stones made to sell to them. If he knew what their gods were like, he could have images of these carved in wood or molded in clay or cast in metal. But Toto could tell him very little about these questions. The soldiers at the camp had no altars and no regular worship at all, and they moved from place to place and did not keep any place sacred. But these people on the Square Hill seemed very religious. They behaved as if they had settled down there to stay forever.

“What are they like?” asked the old man.

“They are like no other townspeople in this valley,” said Toto decidedly. “They are not like the herdsmen who wander from place to place and sleep in tents, or the hunters who live alone in huts, or the fishermen by the river or the sailors by the seashore. They are tall and straight and strong and very active, because they work all the time. They work mostly on their land. When they are not plowing, or digging, or cutting grain, or cutting wood, or making things, they are working to make themselves stronger. They run and leap and throw heavy weights; they hurl the spear and shoot arrows at a mark. They stand in rows and go through motions all together, and march to and fro, and play at ball. They do everything that is possible to make themselves good soldiers; even the boys begin when they are small to play at these games.

“And that is not all. The women work also, but not as slaves. The matrons go here and there as they choose, and see eye to eye with their husbands, and manage the household as the men manage the farm. The men sit in council, but each man speaks of his work in private to his wife, and she advises with him. They do not have slaves to wait on them; even their great men work with the others in the field. No one is ashamed to work with his hands. They build their own houses and their own walls; they breed their own cattle. If there should be a sheep gone from the flock, or a heifer strayed from the herd, they would know it and search until the thief was found.”

“Hum,” said the old man thoughtfully. He was thinking that this must be a strong and valiant people, and that if they increased in the valley of the yellow river they might become very powerful. “And what are their priests?”

“They have no priesthood dwelling in the temples,” said Toto. “Their elders are their priests and pretend to no magical powers. They are chosen for their wisdom. Their gods are invisible.”

“Hum,” said Mastarna again.

The people to whom he and Toto belonged were called at one time and another Tuscans or Etruscans by others, but they called themselves the Ras, or Rasennae. They had some towns in the mountains beyond the plain where these strangers were. They held most of the country on their side of the rivers, as far north as the river Arno, and they had always lived there, so far as they knew themselves or any one else could say. They were different in almost every way from these strangers of the hills. He wondered if his people had anything whatever that the strangers wanted.

“You say that they build walls,” he said to Toto. “Do they build good ones?”

Toto grinned. He was nothing of a builder himself, but even he could see the difference between the rude stone laying and fencing of the strangers, and the scientific, massive masonry and arched drains of his own country. “They will find out how good they are,” he said, “after twenty years of flood and drought.”