Nicanor - Teller of Tales Part 13

Livinius turned inquiring eyes upon him, but Eudemius was staring past him, thoughtfully.

"A matter which touches me nearly," he said, and all at once dropped into a more familiar mode of speech. "Thou art my oldest friend, and there is none to whom I would sooner speak in confidence. Thou knowest that I am growing old. Soon the G.o.ds of the shades will lay their hands upon mine eyes, and my daughter and my house will be left alone. And a heavy time of trial it will be for her, incompetent, with the burden of my wealth upon her. Were it not for this, I could willingly leave all this; but some one first I must find to charge himself with that burden for the recompense it may bring him. And there is but one way to do this; I must mate her to some worthy man. If he be in humble circ.u.mstances, her gold shall alter that; if he be great, it shall make him greater. To take her with it would be, after all, but a little thing, since she is too much a child to want more than is given her, and is content with little. With her unmated, as she is, fancy what would follow were she alone. No--it needs a strong hand to guard what I have guarded; but it is a task well worth the taking. And it is in my mind that I have found that strong hand I seek--if so it be that the owner thereof is willing."

He paused, to see that the sick man's eyes were on him in quickened interest.

"That man, friend," Eudemius said slowly, "is thy son. Him I would have, and none other, to reign in my stead and take the place of that son denied me, who was to rear his children in the traditions of my house and his. What say you to this, friend, if it chances that Marius himself is willing?"

For a moment there was a pause. Livinius lay back on his pillows, and his face was a battleground of contending thought. Plainly it said: "Power is great, but gold is greater, since it can purchase power; therefore gold is a good thing to have. Yet no bargain was ever offered without a 'but,' and what goes with this bargain of thine, O friend? An incubus which a man might well hesitate to let fasten upon him; a hindrance to himself and, it may be, a menace to generations yet unborn.

And yet, the prize is worth risking much for, and the temptation is great."

At this point came wavering, uncertainty, a look of greed, cautious and eager. Eudemius, watching, let the battle wage itself. When Livinius finally spoke, it was slowly, weighing his words with care.

"You have spoken with all the frankness one friend could wish from another. It is only meet that I too should be as frank. If my words offend, remember that it is I who shall grieve most. Your daughter, fair though she is, and lovely, is yet a child, despite her years,--a child who needs the care and thought which only love can give. Needing all, she could give nothing save herself to her husband; and man's needs are of the spirit as well as of the flesh. And suppose he wanted not the gift; what would there be for him? You see, I set aside all mention of her dower; for though a man may marry gold, he must marry the woman also. I have watched Marius from his cradle; I have marked when his nature followed the lines along which I strove to train it, and when it turned of itself into new channels of its own. And of these channels, some, I confess, ran widely counter to those which I had planned. No parent ever saw a child grow precisely to the measure of the ideal of which he dreamed; it may be that every father under the sun is doomed to disappointment at some trait or other in the child of his flesh."

Eudemius looked away from him, nodding soberly.

"So it hath been with me," said Livinius. "Marius has been a good son; but a good man he has not been. For a bad man may make a good son, even though a bad son never makes a good man. But I am not blind, and year by year have I watched the changes in him, some for the better, some for the worse. When he was a child I chastised; when he was a youth I counselled; when he became a man I could do no more than stand aside and watch him start upon the road he had marked out for himself. And I tell you, Eudemius,--and you may guess if the words come easily,--that were I in your place I would not give my daughter, being what she is, to such a man as he. For her sake as well as his I say this. He is my son, and my house is his home for so long as he wills it, and what I have is his.

But to your daughter, young, innocent, knowing nothing of the world, and less than nothing of men, he would bring only unhappiness and woe. She could not understand him; he would be at no pains to understand her.

Whether love might raise him to its own height, I dare not say; rather I fear that he would lower it to him. He is pa.s.sionate, yet cold; but he is strong, and to men he is loyal and a lasting friend. He is a soldier through and through; no mistress, were she never so madly loved, could come before his sword. For to him, arms mean ambition and the fame he has set himself to gain; love is a dalliance by the way, pleasant for the hour, soon forgotten. Sorry sport for a wife, you see! There you have him, as I, his father, know him. And how can I, his father, say these things of him, who should stand with him against all the world?

Because he needs not my help to win his battles; and there is one who in my mind may need it sorely."

And again there was a silence. Eudemius rose.

"Thank thee, friend," he said. "Thy words have made me to hunger all the more for that son of thine. Mine also he shall be, if I can compa.s.s it.

What need he give her but a name?--and that, in good sooth, it will not hurt him to bestow."

He turned on his heel and went away; and Livinius looked after him long and gravely.

When Marius entered, some time later, it was to find his father alone and in deep thought. Marius inquired how he had been feeling that day, and if he thought his strength returning. Livinius answered abstractedly. He was aware that Eudemius's plan was taking root in his mind; coming to weigh its pros and cons, he found that after all it might not be such a bad thing for Marius--and himself. He motioned Marius to seat himself. Marius obeyed, waiting for what his father might have to say. But Livinius kept his abstracted silence, and presently Marius himself spoke.

"Will Eudemius return with you to Rome?"

Livinius shook his head thoughtfully.

"I fear not. I have tried to persuade him, but--I think his plans lie here. For one thing, he does not like the idea of going back with that daughter of his."

Marius turned a slow glance on his father.

"It is a pity about that girl," he said indifferently. "She is very fair--as fair as any of Rome's beauties."

"And as wealthy. When her father hath undergone his fate, his estates will pa.s.s to her," said Livinius. He did not look at his son, and his voice was careless.

"It is a pity," Marius repeated, noncommittally. Livinius put his own construction upon the words.

"You mean--her misfortune? Ay, true. But many a man would overlook even that for sake of the gold she would bring him."

"And that is true also," Marius said. "And yet--it were a risky thing for a man to give his sons a mother found so wanting."

So that Livinius knew that Marius's thoughts, like his own, had strayed into those paths wherein Eudemius would lead them. He changed the subject then, speaking of the delayed transport and affairs in Gaul.

Then he became weary, being still weak, and Marius left him.

The next evening, Marius, returning from hunting to the villa just before dusk, unwontedly thoughtful over prospects which his mind was beginning to conjure up, to look at, and play with, as it were, was met by a slave who said that the Lady Varia sent word that she wished to see him on his return. Somewhat surprised at this, for he had scarcely seen her, much less spoken with her, since his arrival from Londinium, he followed the man to the door of her apartments. Here he pa.s.sed a second slave, a tall fellow with a shock of black, unkempt hair, who was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a lamp near by. This one turned his head to watch him as he entered, with fierce wolf eyes into which leaped sudden jealous distrust. But a slave was a slave to Marius; and so heedless was he of the man's presence, that later he could not have told whether or not he had been there.

Just inside the door Marius's guide crossed his arms before his face, bending low, and left him, as though at an order. Marius, again surprised at this, stood and waited. The room, lofty and warm and floored with exquisite tiling, seemed to overlook a garden, where dusk was gathering fast. It was furnished sumptuously, and was filled with flowers which stood in great jars of gorgeous Eastern coloring. Halfway down its centre ran one of the dwarf walls so common in Roman rooms, which was made to serve as the back of a low and cus.h.i.+oned couch on either side of it. A lamp of wrought bronze stood near, and by its light Marius saw that a figure was lying on the couch, with head thrown back against the cus.h.i.+ons and one white arm hanging over the side.

"Lady Varia?" Marius exclaimed. She did not answer, and he saw that she seemed asleep. He went to the couch, walking softly, with a faint wonder as to why she had sent for him. She lay with long lashes sweeping her cheeks and her warm lips parted, in the careless abandon of a child, infinitely graceful, full of allurement. The thought entered his mind that it was a pose, a piece of pretty trickery. He bent down until his lips all but touched her cheek and the perfume of her hair rose to him, so that had she been feigning she must have given sign, or else been better skilled in the gentle art of flirting than he believed. But she slept on, unconscious, with slow, regular breathing, so still that he could see the beat of her heart under the filmy stuff of her tunic.

And even as he watched her, so another, unseen, watched him,--another with gaunt, haggard face and calculating eyes that took in every move of his p.a.w.ns in the game to which he had set them. With his father's words, in which he had read the hint, clear in his mind, Marius stood looking long at the sleeping girl. Patrician she was from the crown of her dusky head to the tip of her jewelled sandal. Fair she was,--and his breath came shorter as his gaze wandered unchecked over her,--eminently desirable, and yet--He found himself confronted by the unavoidable fact of her affliction. A man might well hesitate in face of all that it could mean. One could not tell--that was the trouble. He realized, all at once, that her eyes were open, and that she was looking at him, without speech or motion. He drew back, with a certain wholly unconscious veiling of expression, and spoke.

"You sent for me, Lady Varia?"

She raised herself on an elbow, pus.h.i.+ng the hair out of her eyes to look up at him. With the motion, the jewelled fibula which held her tunic at the shoulder became unfastened, letting the drapery slip lower over snowy neck and arm. He noticed that if she saw this, she made no effort to replace it.

"Sent for you? Not I!" she said, and tapped her fingers on her lips to stifle a yawn. "Or if I did, I have forgotten. Why should I have sent for you?"

She let herself sink back in the cus.h.i.+ons, and he pulled a seat near the couch and sat down. She began to play idly with the coiled golden snake around her bare arm, looking down at it with long sleepy eyes. Again, as once before, the novelty of this lack of attention piqued him into a pa.s.sing interest.

"If I disturb you, I will go away," he offered. "You were sleeping; it were pity to disturb such sweet repose."

"You do not disturb me," she answered, with all calmness, not looking at him. "Why should you? If you like to stay, you may. I am not asleep now."

"Did you have pleasant dreams?" Marius asked, as he might have asked it of a child. She turned scornful eyes on him.

"I do not dream asleep!" she said. "Only when I wake. What are dreams but thoughts, and how can one think, asleep?"

He looked at her, surprised. She relapsed into silence, unwound the snake from her arm, at length, and took to turning it over and over in her fingers, letting the light play on its emerald eyes and the rich chasing of its scales. He continued to watch her, with greater freedom under her entire indifference. He felt that, if he should get up and leave her, she would take no notice, but lie there just the same, drowsy-eyed and indifferent, turning and turning the golden snake. This slipped from her fingers after a time and dropped to the floor at his feet. He picked it up, and as she held out her hand to receive it back, he clasped her wrist gently and began to coil the snake about her arm, above the elbow. She let him do it; emboldened, he kept her hand, when the jewel was in place, and pressed it gently. But she drew it away, not as though in rebuke, however, and examined the armlet to see that it was on properly.

"Is it not right?" Marius asked, amused. "Let me do it again; this time I will make sure."

She shook her head, with a slow smile at him. Greatly daring, he leaned nearer, and fastened the loosened pin on her shoulder. In the operation, his fingers touched her soft flesh. But she seemed not to notice him at all; so that quite suddenly he felt baffled and perplexed.

"You are a strange girl!" he said abruptly. Again she smiled.

"Why?" she asked. "Because you cannot understand me, you call me strange?"

He laughed.

"Perhaps that is it, O my Lady Wisdom. But truly I begin to think you a riddle worth the reading. It may be, that with somewhat of teaching, you might prove a pupil apt enough for any man."

She looked at him eagerly.

"Is it a game?" she asked. "You taught me one before, and I liked it.

Wilt teach me also this other game? Is it a good game?"

"Ay," said Marius, amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice. "It is a good game--the finest game in the world, for the one who wins. And, indeed, I have it in mind to teach thee, thou pretty witch, the more so since I should have the methods of no other to unteach. See, then, I'll show thee the first move. Give me thy hand--so."

Varia held out her hand, leaning back on her pillows with eager eyes of antic.i.p.ation. Marius took the hand. It was small and soft and fragrant, with rosy, polished nails.

"This, you must know, is a game at which but two can properly play," he explained, as a schoolmaster might propound theories to a cla.s.s. "Three have sometimes tried it, but the third in most cases has wished he had kept away. Most players divide it into three parts, for the sake of convenience. The first, for the woman; the second, for the man; the third, usually, for the lawyers. This latter may be played in various ways--sometimes is omitted altogether. A great advantage of this game is that so many rules govern it, that whatever one does, is in accordance with some rules, even though it may be at variance with certain others."