Callista Part 15

But a reaction had come over the proud and sensitive mind of the Greek girl. "So after all, priest," she said, "you are but a man like others; a frail, guilty person like myself. I can find plenty of persons who do as I do; I want some one who does not; I want some one to wors.h.i.+p. I thought there was something in you special and extraordinary. There was a gentleness and tenderness mingled with your strength which was new to me.

I said, Here is at last a G.o.d. My own G.o.ds are earthly, sensual; I have no respect for them, no faith in them. But there is nothing better anywhere else.... Alas!..." She started up, and said with vehemence, "I thought you sinless; you confess to crime.... Ah! how do I know," she continued with a shudder, "that you are better than those base hypocrites, priests of Isis or Mithras, whose l.u.s.trations, initiations, new birth, white robes, and laurel crowns, are but the instrument and cloak of their intense depravity?" And she felt for the clasp upon her shoulder.

Here her speech was interrupted by a hoa.r.s.e sound, borne upon the wind as of many voices blended into one and softened by the distance, but which, under the circ.u.mstances, neither of the parties to the above conversation had any difficulty in a.s.signing to its real cause. "Dear father," she said, "the enemy is upon you."

CHAPTER XX.

HE SHALL NOT LOSE HIS REWARD.

There was no room for doubt or for delay. "What is to become of you, Callista?" he said; "they will tear you to pieces."

"Fear nothing for me, father," she answered; "I am one of them. They know me. Alas, _I_ am no Christian! _I_ have not abjured their rites! but you, lose not a moment."

"They are still at some distance," he said, "though the wind gives us merciful warning of their coming." He looked about the room, and took up the books of Holy Scripture which were on the shelf. "There is nothing else," he said, "of special value here. Agellius could not take them.

Here, my child, I am going to show you a great confidence. To few persons not Christians would I show it. Take this blessed parchment; it contains the earthly history of our Divine Master. Here you will see whom we Christians love. Read it; keep it safely; surrender it, when you have the opportunity, into Christian keeping. My mind tells me I am not wrong in lending it to you." He handed to her the Gospel of St. Luke, while he put the two other volumes into the folds of his own tunic.

"One word more," she said; "your name, should I want you."

He took up a piece of chalk from the shelf, and wrote upon the wall in distinct characters,

"Thascius Caecilius Cypria.n.u.s, Bishop of Carthage."

Hardly had she read the inscription when the voices of several men were heard in the very neighbourhood of the cottage; and hoping to effect a diversion in favour of Caecilius, and being at once unsuspicious of danger to herself, and careless of her life, she ran quickly forward to meet them. Caecilius ought to have taken to flight without a moment's delay, but a last sacred duty detained him. He knelt down and took the pyx from his bosom. He had eaten nothing that day; but even if otherwise, it was a crisis which allowed him to consume the sacred species without fasting. He hastily opened the golden case, adored the blessed sacrament, and consumed it, purifying its receptacle, and restoring it to its hiding-place. Then he rose at once and left the cottage.

He looked about; Callista was nowhere to be seen. She was gone; so much was certain, no enemy was in sight; it only remained for him to make off too. In the confusion he turned in the wrong direction; instead of making off at the back of the cottage from which the voices had scared him, he ran across the garden into the hollow way. It was all over with him in an instant; he fell at once into the hands of the vanguard of the mob.

Many mouths were opened upon him all at once. "The sorcerer!" cried one; "tear him to shreds; _we'll_ teach him to brew his spells against the city." "Give us back our grapes and corn," said a second. "Have a guard,"

said a third; "he can turn you into swine or a.s.ses while there is breath in him," "Then be the quicker with him," said a fourth, who was lifting up a crowbar to discharge upon his head. "Hold!" said a tall swarthy youth, who had already warded off several blows from him, "hold, will you? don't you see, if you kill him he can't undo the spell. Make him first reverse it all; make him take the curse off us. Bring him along; take him to Astarte, Hercules, or old Saturn. We'll broil him on a gridiron till he turns all these canes into vines, and makes olive berries of the pebbles, and turns the dust of the earth into fine flour for our eating. When he has done all this he shall dance a jig with a wild cow, and sit down to supper with an hyena."

A loud scream of exultation broke forth from the drunken and frantic mult.i.tude. "Along with him!" continued the same speaker in a jeering tone.

"Here, put him on the a.s.s and tie his hands behind his back. He shall go back in triumph to the city which he loves. Mind, and don't touch him before the time. If you kill him, you'll never get the curse off. Come here, you priests of Cybele," he added, "and be his body-guard." And he continued to keep a vigilant eye and hand over the old man, in spite of them.

The a.s.s, though naturally a good-tempered beast, had been most sadly tried through the day. He had been fed, indeed, out of mockery, as being the Christians' G.o.d; but he did not understand the shouts and caprices of the crowd, and he only waited for an opportunity to show that he by no means acquiesced in the proceedings of the day. And now the difficulty was to move at all. The people kept crowding up the hollow road, and blocked the pa.s.sage, and though the greater part of the rioters had either been left behind exhausted in Sicca itself, or had poured over the fields on each side of Agellius's cottage, or gone right over the hill down into the valley beyond, yet still it was some time before the a.s.s could move a step, and a time of nervous suspense it was both to Caecilius and the youth who befriended him. At length what remained of the procession was persuaded to turn about and make for Sicca, but in a reversed order. It could not be brought round in so confined a s.p.a.ce, so its rear went first and the a.s.s and its burden came last. As they descended the hill back again, Caecilius, who was mounted upon the linen and silk which had adorned the Dea Syra before the Tertullianist had destroyed the idol, saw before him the whole line of march. In front were flaunted the dreadful emblems of idolatry, so far as their bearers were able still to raise them.

Drunken women, ragged boys mounted on men's shoulders, ruffians and bullies, savage-looking Getulians, half-human monsters from the Atlas, monkeys and curs jabbering and howling, mummers, baccha.n.a.ls, satyrs, and gesticulators, formed the staple of the procession. Midway between the hill which he was descending and the city lay the ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain or Campus Martius, which reached round to the steep cliffs on the north. The bridle-path, along which he was moving, crossed it just where it was opening and became level, so as to present no abrupt descent and ascent at the place where the path was lowest. On the left every vestige of the ravine soon ceased, and a free pa.s.sage extended to the plain.

The youth who had placed Caecilius on the a.s.s still kept close to him and sung at the pitch of his voice, in imitation of the rest-

"Sporting and snorting in shades of the night, His ears p.r.i.c.king up, and his hoofs striking light, And his tail whisking round, in the speed of his flight."

"Old man," he continued to Caecilius in a low voice, and in Latin, "your curse has not worked on me yet."

"My son," answered the priest, "you are granted one day more for repentance."

"Lucky for you as well as for me," was the reply: and he continued his song:-

"Gurta, the witch, was out with the rest; Though as lame as a gull, by his highness possessed, She shouldered her crutch, and danced with the best.

"She stamped and she twirled in the shade of the yew, Till her gossips and chums of the city danced too; They never are slack when there's mischief to do.

"She danced and she coaxed, but he was no fool; He'd be his own master, he'd not be her tool: Not the little black moor should send him to school."

He then turned to Caecilius and whispered, "You see, old father, that others, besides Christians, can forgive and forget. Henceforth call me generous Juba." And he tossed his head.

By this time they had got to the bottom of the hill, and the deep shadows which filled the hollow showed that the sun was rapidly sinking in the west. Suddenly, as they were crossing the bottom as it opened into the plain, Juba seized and broke the thong which bound Caecilius's arms, and bestowing a tremendous cut with it upon the side of the a.s.s, sent him forward upon the plain at his greatest speed. The youth's manuvre was successful to the full. The a.s.ses of Africa can do more on an occasion of this kind than our own. Caecilius for the moment lost his seat; but, instantly recovering it, took care to keep the animal from flagging; and the cries of the mob, and the howlings of the priests of Cybele cooperated in the task. At length the gloom, increasing every minute, hid him from their view; and even in daylight his recapture would have been a difficult matter for a wearied-out, famished, and intoxicated rabble. Before Caecilius well had time to return thanks for this unexpected turn of events, he was out of pursuit, and was ambling at a pace more suitable to the habits of the beast of burden that carried him, over an expanse of plain which would have been a formidable night-march to a fasting man.

We must not conclude the day without relating what was its issue to the persecutors, as well as to their intended victim. It is almost a proverb that punishment is slow in overtaking crime; but the present instance was an exception to the rule. While the exiled Bishop of Carthage escaped, the crowd, on the other hand, were caught in the trap which had been laid for them. We have already said it was a _ruse_ on the part of the governing authorities of the place to get the rioters out of the city, that they might at once be relieved of them, and then deal with them just as they might think fit. When the mob was once outside the walls, they might be refused re-admittance, and put down with a strong hand. The Roman garrison, who, powerless to quell the tumult in the narrow and winding streets and multiplied alleys of the city, had been the authors of the manuvre, now took on themselves the stern completion of it, and determined to do so in the sternest way. Not a single head of all those who poured out in the afternoon should return at night. It was not to be supposed that the soldiers had any tenderness for the Christians, but they abominated and despised the rabble of the town. They were indignant at their rising, thought it a personal insult to themselves, and resolved they should never do so again. The gates were commonly in the custody of the city guard, but the Porta Septimiana, by which the mob pa.s.sed out, was on this occasion claimed by the Romans. It was most suitably circ.u.mstanced for the use they intended to make of it. Immediately outside of it was a large court of the same level as the ground inside, bordered on the right and left by substantial walls, which after a time were drawn to meet each other, and contracted the s.p.a.ce to the usual breadth of a road. The walls continued to run along this road for some distance, till they joined the way which led to the Campus Martius, and from this point the ground was open till it reached the head of the ravine. The soldiers drew up at the gate, and as the worn-out and disappointed, brutalized and half-idiotic mult.i.tudes returned towards it from the country, those who were behind pushed on between the border walls those who were in front, and, while they jammed together their ranks, also made escape impossible. It was now that the Roman soldiers began their barbarous, not to say cowardly, a.s.sault upon them. With heavy maces, with the pike, with iron gauntlets, with stones and bricks, with clubs, with scourge, with the sword, with the helmet, with whatever came to hand, they commenced the ma.s.sacre of that large concourse of human beings, who did not offer one blow in return.

They slaughtered them like sheep; they trampled them down; they threw the bodies of the wounded over the walls. Attempting to run back, numbers of the poor wretches came into conflict with the ranks behind them, and an additional scene of confusion and overthrow took place; many of them straggled over to the open country or woods, and perished, either from the weather, or from hunger, or even from the wild beasts. Others, weakened by excess and famine, fell a prey to the pestilence that was raging. After some days a remnant of them was allowed silently and timidly to steal back into the city as best they could. It was a long day before the Plebs Siccensis ventured to have any opinion of its own upon the subject of Christianity, or any other political, social, or ecclesiastical topic whatever.

CHAPTER XXI.

STARTLING RUMOURS.

When Jucundus rose next morning, and heard the news, he considered it to be more satisfactory than he could have supposed possible. He was a zealous imperialist, and a lover of tranquillity, a despiser of the natives and a hater of the Christians. The Christians had suffered enough to vindicate the Roman name, to deter those who were playing at Christianity, and to show that the people of Sicca had their eyes about them. And the mob had received a severe lesson too; and the cause of public order had triumphed, and civic peace was re-established. His anxiety, too, about Agellius had terminated, or was terminating. He had privately denounced him to the government, come to an understanding with the military authorities, and obtained the custody of him. He had met him at the very door to which the boy Firmian brought him, with an apparitor of the military staff (or what answered to it), and had clapped him into prison in an underground cellar in which he kept damaged images, and those which had gone out of fas.h.i.+on, and were otherwise unsaleable. He was not at all sorry, by some suffering, and by some fright, to aid the more potent incantation which Callista was singing in his ears. He did not, however, at all forget Juba's hint, and was careful not to overdo the rack-and-gridiron dodge, if we may so designate it; yet he thought just a flavour or a thought of the inconveniences which the profession of Christianity involved might be a salutary reflection in the midst of the persuasives which the voice and eyes of Callista would kindle in his heart. There was nothing glorious or heroic in being confined in a lumber cellar, no one knowing anything about it; and he did not mean to keep him there for ever.

As the next day wore on towards evening, rumour brought a piece of news which he was at first utterly unable to credit, and which for the moment seemed likely to spoil the appet.i.te which promised so well for his evening repast. He could hardly believe his ears when he was told that Callista was in arrest on a charge of Christianity, and at first it made him look as black as some of those Egyptian G.o.ds which he had on one shelf of his shop. However, he rallied, and was very much amused at the report. The imprisonment indeed was a fact, account for it as one could; but who _could_ account for it? "Varium et mutabile:" who could answer for the whims and fancies of womankind? If she had fallen in love with the owl of Minerva, or cut off her auburn tresses, or turned rope-dancer, there might have been some shrugging of shoulders, but no one would have tried to a.n.a.lyze the motive; but so much his profound sagacity enabled him to see, that, if there was one thing more than another likely to sicken Agellius of Christianity, it was to find one who was so precious to him suffering from the suspicion of it. It was bad enough to have suffered one's self in such a cause; still he could conceive, he was large-minded enough to grant, that Agellius might have some secret satisfaction in the antagonist feeling of resentment and obstinacy which that suffering might engender: but it was carrying matters too far, and no comfort in any point of view, to find Callista, his beloved, the object of a similar punishment. It was all very well to profess Christianity as a matter of sentiment, mystery, and singularity; but when it was found to compromise the life or limbs of another, and that other Callista, why it was plain that Agellius would be the very first to try and entreat the wayward girl to keep her good looks for him, and to be loyal to the G.o.ds of her country; and he chuckled over the thought, as others have done in other states of society, of a love-scene or a marriage being the termination of so much high romance and fine acting.

However, the next day Aristo came down to him himself, and gave him an account at once more authentic and more extended on the matter which interested him. Callista had been called up before the tribunal, and had not been discharged, but remanded. The meaning of it was as obscure as ever; Aristo could give no account of it; it almost led him to believe in the evil eye; some unholy practices, some spells such as only potent wizards know, some deplorable delusion or hallucination, had for the time got the mastery of his sister's mind. No one seemed quite to know how she had found her way into the hands of the officers; but there she was, and the problem was how to get her out of them.

However, whatever mystery, whatever anxiety, attached to the case, it was only still more urgent to bring the matter home to Agellius without delay.

If time went on before the parties were brought together, she might grow more obstinate, and kindle a like spirit in him. Oh that boys and girls _would_ be giving old people, who wish them well, so much trouble!

However, it was no good thinking of that just then. He considered that, at the present moment, they would not be able to bear the sight of each other in suffering and peril; that mutual tenderness would make them plead with each other in each other's behalf, and that each would be obliged to set the example to each of a concession, to which each exhorted each; and on this fine philosophical view he proceeded to act.

CHAPTER XXII.

JUCUNDUS PROPOUNDS HIS VIEW OF THE SITUATION.

For thirty-six hours Agellius had been confined in his underground receptacle, light being almost excluded, a bench and a rug being his means of repose, and a full measure of bread, wine, and olives being his dole.

The shrieks and yells of the rioters could be distinctly heard in his prison, as the day of his seizure went on, and they pa.s.sed by the temple of Astarte; but what happened at his farm, and how it fared with Caecilius, he had no means of conjecturing; nor indeed how it was to fare with himself, for on the face of the transaction, as was in form the fact, he was in the hands of the law, and only indulged with the house of a relative for his prison. On the second night he was released by his uncle's confidential slave, who brought him up to a small back closet on the ground floor, which was lighted from the roof, and next morning, being the second day after the riot, Jucundus came in to have his confidential conversation with him.