Callista Part 11

May it be this evening?"

"It will be well," answered Caecilius; "how long I shall still be here, I cannot tell. I am expecting my trusty messenger with despatches. It is now three days since he was here. However, this I say without misgiving, we do not part for long. What do you here longer? you must come to me. I must prepare you, and send you back to Sicca, to collect and restore this scattered flock."

Agellius turned, and leaned against the priest's shoulder, and laughed. "I am laughing," he said, "not from lightness of mind, but from the depth of surprise and of joy that you should so think of me. It was a dream which once I had; but impossible! you do not think that I, weak I, shall ever be able to do more than save my own soul?"

"You will save your own soul by saving the souls of others," said Caecilius; "my child, I could tell you more things if I thought it good for you."

"But, my father, I have so weak, so soft a heart," cried Agellius; "what am I to do with myself? I am not of the temper of which heroes are made."

" 'Virtus in infirmitate perficitur,' " said the priest. "What! are you to do _any_ thing of yourself? or are you to be simply the instrument of Another? We shall have the same termination, you and myself, but you long after me."

"Ah, father, because _you_ will burn out so much more quickly!" said Agellius.

"I think," said Caecilius, "I see my messenger; there is some one who has made his way by stealth into the garden, or at least not by the beaten way."

There _was_ a visitor, as Caecilius had said; however, it was not his messenger, but Juba, who approached, looking with great curiosity at Caecilius, and absorbed in the sight. Caecilius in turn regarded him steadfastly, and then said to Agellius, "It is your brother."

"What brings you here, Juba?" said the latter.

"I have been away on a distant errand," said Juba; "and find you have been ill. Is this your nurse?" he eyed him almost sternly, and added, "'Tis a Christian priest."

"Has Agellius no acquaintance but Christians?" asked Caecilius.

"Acquaintance! O surely!" answered Juba; "agreeable, innocent, sweet acquaintance of another sort; myself to begin with. My lad," he continued, "you did not rise to their price, but you did your best."

"Juba," said his brother, "if you have any business here, say it, and have done. I am not strong enough to hold any altercation with you."

"Business!" said Juba, "I can find quite business enough here, if I choose. This is a priest of the Christians. I am sure of it."

Caecilius looked at him with such calmness and benevolence, that at length Juba turned away his eyes with something of irritation. He said, "If I _am_ a priest, I am here to claim you as one of my children."

Juba winced, but said scornfully, "You are mistaken there, father; speak to those who own you. I am a free man."

"My son," Caecilius answered, "you have been under instruction; it is your duty to go forward, not back."

"What do you know about me?" said Juba; "he has been telling."

"Your face, your manner, your voice, tells a tale; I need no information from others. I have heard of you years ago; now I see you."

"What do you see in me?" said Juba.

"I see pride in bodily shape, treading down faith and conviction," said Caecilius.

Juba neighed rather than laughed, so fierce and scornful was its expression. "What you slaves call pride," he said, "I call dignity."

"You believe in a G.o.d, Creator of heaven and earth, as certainly as I do,"

said the priest, "but you deliberately set yourself against Him."

Juba smiled. "I am as free," he said, "in _my_ place, as He in His."

"You mean," answered Caecilius, "free to do wrong, and free to suffer for it."

"You may call it wrong, and call it suffering," replied Juba; "but for me, _I_ do not call wrong what He calls wrong; and if He puts me to pain, it is because He is the stronger."

The priest stopped awhile; there was no emotion on either side. It was strange to see them so pa.s.sionless, so antagonistic, like St. Michael and his adversary.

"There is that within you," said Caecilius, "which speaks as I speak. That inward voice takes the part of the Creator, and condemns you."

"_He_ put it there," said Juba; "and _I_ will take care to put it out."

"Then He will have justice as well as power on His side," said the priest.

"I will never fawn or crouch," said Juba; "I will be lord and master in my own soul. Every faculty shall be mine; there shall be no divided allegiance."

Caecilius paused again; he said at length, "My son, my soul tells me, or rather my Maker tells me, and your Maker, that some heavy judgment is impending over you. Do penance while you may."

"Tell your forebodings to women and children," said Juba; "I am prepared for anything. I will not be crushed."

Agellius was not strong enough to bear a part in such a scene. "Father,"

he said, "it is his way, but don't believe him. He has better thoughts.

Away with you, Juba, you are not wanted here."

"Agellius," said the priest, "such words are not strange to me. I am not young, and have seen much of the world; and my very office and position elicits blasphemies from others from time to time. I knew a man who carried out his bad thoughts and words into act. Abjuring his Maker, he abandoned himself to the service of the evil one. He betrayed his brethren to death. He lived on year after year, and became old. He was smitten with illness; then I first saw him. I made him contemplate a picture; it was the picture of the Good Shepherd. I dwelt on the vain efforts of the poor sheep to get out of the fold; its irrational aversion to its home, and its desperate resolution to force a way through the p.r.i.c.kly fence. It was pierced and torn with the sharp aloe; at last it lay imprisoned in its stern embrace, motionless and bleeding. Then the Shepherd, though He had to wound His own hands in the work, disengaged it, and brought it back.

G.o.d has His own times; His power went along with the picture, and the man was moved. I said, '_This_ is His return for your enmity: He is determined to have you, cost Him what it will.' I need not go through the many things that followed, but the issue may be told in few words. He came back; he lived a life of penance at the Church's door; he received the peace of the Church in immediate prospect of the persecution, and has within the last ten days died a martyr's death."

Juba had listened as if he was constrained against his will. When the priest stopped he started, and began to speak impetuously, and unlike his ordinary tone. He placed his hands violently against his ears. "Stop!" he said, "no more. _I_ will not betray them; no: I _need_ not betray them;"

he laughed; "the black moor does the work himself. Look," he cried, seizing the priest's arm, and pointing to a part of the forest, which happened to be to windward. "You are in their number, priest, who can foretell the destinies of others, and are blind to their own. Read there, the task is not hard, your coming fortunes."

His finger was directed to a spot where, amid the thick foliage, the gleam of a pool or of a marsh was visible. The various waters round about issuing from the gravel, or drained from the nightly damps, had run into a hollow, filled with the decaying vegetation of former years, and were languidly filtered out into a brook, more healthy than the vast reservoir itself. Its banks were bordered with a deep, broad layer of mud, a transition substance between the rich vegetable matter which it once had been, and the mult.i.tudinous world of insect life which it was becoming. A cloud or mist at this time was hanging over it, high in air. A harsh and shrill sound, a whizzing or a chirping, proceeded from that cloud to the ear of the attentive listener. What these indications portended was plain.

"There," said Juba, "is what will tell more against you than imperial edict, informer, or proconsular apparitor; and no work of mine."

He turned down the bank and disappeared. Agellius and his guest looked at each other in dismay. "It is the locusts," they whispered to each other, as they went back into the cottage.

CHAPTER XV.

A VISITATION.

The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which the countries included in the Roman empire were exposed, extended from the Atlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Red Sea to Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in history of clouds of the devastating insect crossing the Black Sea to Poland, and the Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its species as it is wide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood, with a sort of family likeness, yet with distinct attributes, as we read in the prophets of the Old Testament, from whom Bochart tells us it is possible to enumerate as many as ten kinds. It wakens into existence and activity as early as the month of March; but instances are not wanting, as in our present history, of its appearance as late as June. Even one flight comprises myriads upon myriads pa.s.sing imagination, to which the drops of rain or the sands of the sea are the only fit comparison; and hence it is almost a proverbial mode of expression in the East (as may be ill.u.s.trated by the sacred pages to which we just now referred), by way of describing a vast invading army, to liken it to the locusts. So dense are they, when upon the wing, that it is no exaggeration to say that they hide the sun, from which circ.u.mstance indeed their name in Arabic is derived. And so ubiquitous are they when they have alighted on the earth, that they simply cover or clothe its surface.

This last characteristic is stated in the sacred account of the plagues of Egypt, where their faculty of devastation is also mentioned. The corrupting fly and the bruising and prostrating hail had preceded them in that series of visitations, but _they_ came to do the work of ruin more thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch with a miserable slime, which has the effect of a virus in corroding, or, as some say, in scorching and burning it. And then, as if all this were little, when they can do nothing else, they die;-as if out of sheer malevolence to man, for the poisonous elements of their nature are then let loose, and dispersed abroad, and create a pestilence; and they manage to destroy many more by their death than in their life.

Such are the locusts,-whose existence the ancient heretics brought forward as their palmary proof that there was an evil creator, and of whom an Arabian writer shows his national horror, when he says that they have the head of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a stag, the breast of a lion, the belly of a scorpion, the wings of an eagle, the legs of a camel, the feet of an ostrich, and the tail of a serpent.