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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




When the freedman had ceased speaking, Vetranio sat up on the couch,
called for a basin of water, dipped his fingers in the refreshing
liquid, dried them abstractedly on the long silky curls of the singing-
boy who stood beside him, gazed about him once more, repeated
interrogatively the word 'daybreak', and sunk gently back upon his
couch. We are grieved to confess it--but the author of the Nightingale
Sauce was moderately inebriated.


A short pause followed, during which the freedman and the singing-boy
stared upon each other in mutual perplexity. At length the one resumed
his address of apology, and the other resumed his efforts on the lyre.
Once more, after an interval, the eyes of Vetranio lazily unclosed, and
this time he began to speak; but his thoughts--if thoughts they could be
called--were as yet wholly occupied by the 'table-talk' at the past
night's banquet.

'The ancient Egyptians--oh, sprightly and enchanting Camilla--were a
wise nation!' murmured the senator drowsily. 'I am myself descended
from the ancient Egyptians; and, therefore, I hold in high veneration
that cat in your lap, and all cats besides. Herodotus--an historian
whose works I feel a certain gratification in publicly mentioning as
good--informs us, that when a cat died in the dwelling of an ancient
Egyptian, the owner shaved his eyebrows as a mark of grief, embalmed the
defunct animal in a consecrated house, and carried it to be interred in
a considerable city of Lower Egypt, called 'Bubastis'--an Egyptian word
which I have discovered to mean The Sepulchre of all the Cats; whence it
is scarcely erroneous to infer--'

At this point the speaker's power of recollection and articulation
suddenly failed him, and Carrio--who had listened with perfect gravity
to his master's oration upon cats--took immediate advantage of the
opportunity now afforded him to speak again.

'The equipage which my patron was pleased to command to carry him to
Aricia,' said he, with a strong emphasis on the last word, 'now stands
in readiness at the private gate of the palace gardens.'

As he heard the word 'Aricia', the senator's powers of recollection and
perception seemed suddenly to return to him. Among that high order of
drinkers who can imbibe to the point of perfect enjoyment, and stop
short scientifically before the point of perfect oblivion, Vetranio
occupied an exalted rank. The wine he had swallowed during the night
had disordered his memory and slightly troubled his self-possession, but
had not deprived him of his understanding. There was nothing plebeian
even in his debauchery; there was an art and a refinement in his very
excesses.

'Aricia--Aricia!' he repeated to himself, 'ah! the villa that Julia lent
to me at Ravenna! The pleasures of the table must have obscured for a
moment the image of my beautiful pupil of other days, which now revives
before me again as Love resumes the dominion that Bacchus usurped! My
excellent Carrio,' he continued, speaking to the freedman, 'you have
done perfectly right in awakening me; delay not a moment more in
ordering my bath to be prepared, or my man-monster Ulpius, the king of
conspirators and high priest of all that is mysterious, will wait for me
in vain! And you, Glyco,' he pursued, when Carrio had departed,
addressing the singing-boy, 'array yourself for a journey, and wait with
my equipage at the garden-gate. I shall require you to accompany me in
my expedition to Aricia. But first, oh! gifted and valued songster, let
me reward you for the harmonious symphony that has just awakened me. Of
what rank of my musicians are you at present, Glyco?'

'Of the fifth,' replied the boy.

'Were you bought, or born in my house?' asked Vetranio.

'Neither; but bequeathed to you by Geta's testament,' rejoined the
gratified Glyco.

'I advance you,' continued Vetranio, 'to the privileges and the pay of
the first rank of my musicians; and I give you, as a proof of my
continued favour, this ring. In return for these obligations, I desire
to keep secret whatever concerns my approaching expedition; to employ
your softest music in soothing the ear of a young girl who will
accompany us--in calming her terrors if she is afraid, in drying her
tears if she weeps; and finally, to exercise your voice and your lute
incessantly in uniting the name 'Antonina' to the sweetest harmonies of
sound that your imagination can suggest.'

Pronouncing these words with an easy and benevolent smile, and looking
round complacently on the display of luxurious confusion about him,
Vetranio retired to the bath that was to prepare him for his approaching
triumph.


Meanwhile a scene of a very different nature was proceeding without, at
Numerian's garden-gate. Here were no singing-boys, no freedmen, no
profusion of rich treasures--here appeared only the solitary and
deformed figure of Ulpius, half hidden among surrounding trees, while he
waited at his appointed post. As time wore on, and still Vetranio did
not appear, the Pagan's self-possession began to desert him. He moved
restlessly backwards and forwards over the soft dewy grass, sometimes in
low tones calling upon his gods to hasten the tardy footsteps of the
libertine patrician, who was to be made the instrument of restoring to
the temples the worship of other days--sometimes cursing the reckless
delay of the senator, or exulting in the treachery by which he madly
believed his ambition was at last to be fulfilled; but still, whatever
his words or thoughts, wrought up to the same pitch of fierce, fanatic
enthusiasm which had strengthened him for the defence of his idols at
Alexandria, and had nerved him against the torment and misery of years
in his slavery in the copper mines of Spain.

The precious moments were speeding irrevocably onwards. His impatience
was rapidly changing to rage and despair as he strained his eyes for the
last time in the direction of the palace gardens, and now at length
discerned a white robe among the distant trees. Vetranio was rapidly
approaching him.

Restored by his bath, no effect of the night's festivity but its
exhilaration remained in the senator's brain. But for a slight
uncertainty in his gait, and an unusual vacancy in his smile, the
elegant gastronome might now have appeared to the closest observer
guiltless of the influence of intoxicating drinks. He advanced, radiant
with exultation, prepared for conquest, to the place where Ulpius
awaited him, and was about to address the Pagan with that satirical
familiarity so fashionable among the nobles of Rome in their
communications with the people, when the object of his intended
pleasantries sternly interrupted him, saying, in tones more of command
than of advice, 'Be silent! If you would succeed in your purpose,
follow me without uttering a word!'

There was something so fierce and determined in the tones of the old
man's voice--low, tremulous, and husky though they were--as he uttered
those words, that the bold, confident senator instinctively held his
peace as he followed his stern guide into Numerian's house. Avoiding the
regular entrance, which at that early hour of the morning was
necessarily closed, Ulpius conducted the patrician through a small
wicket into the subterranean apartment, or rather outhouse, which was
his customary, though comfortless, retreat in his leisure hours, and
which was hardly ever entered by the other members of the Christian's
household.

From the low, arched brick ceiling of this place hung an earthenware
lamp, whose light, small and tremulous, left all the corners of the
apartment in perfect obscurity. The thick buttresses that projected
inwards from the walls, made visible by their prominence, displayed on
their surfaces rude representations of idols and temples drawn in chalk,
and covered with strange, mysterious hieroglyphics. On a block of stone
which served as a table lay some fragments of small statues, which
Vetranio recognised as having belonged to the old, accredited
representations of Pagan idols. Over the sides of the table itself were
scrawled in Latin characters these two words, 'Serapis', 'Macrinus'; and
about its base lay some pieces of torn, soiled linen, which still
retained enough of their former character, both in shape, size, and
colour, to convince Vetranio that they had once served as the vestments
of a Pagan priest. Further than this the senator's observation did not
carry him, for the close, almost mephitic atmosphere of the place
already began to affect him unfavourably. He felt a suffocating
sensation in his throat and a dizziness in his head. The restorative
influence of his recent bath declined rapidly. The fumes of the wine he
had drunk in the night, far from having been, as he imagined,
permanently dispersed, again mounted to his head. He was obliged to
lean against the stone table to preserved his equilibrium as he faintly
desired the Pagan to shorten their sojourn in his miserable retreat.


Without even noticing the request, Ulpius hurriedly proceeded to erase
the drawings on the buttresses and the inscriptions on the table. Then
collecting the fragments of statues and the pieces of linen, he
deposited them in a hiding-place in the corner of the apartment. This
done, he returned to the stone against which Vetranio supported himself,
and for a few minutes silently regarded the senator with a firm,
earnest, and penetrating gaze.

A dark suspicion that he had betrayed himself into the hands of a
villain, who was then plotting some atrocious project connected with his
safety or honour, began to rise on the senator's bewildered brain as he
unwillingly submitted to the penetrating examination of the Pagan's
glance. At that moment, however, the withered lips of the old man slowly
parted, and he began to speak. Whether as he looked on Vetranio's
disturbed countenance, and marked his unsteady gait, the heart of
Ulpius, for the first time since his introduction to the senator,
misgave him when he thought of their monstrous engagement; or whether
the near approach of the moment that was henceforth, as he wildly
imagined, to fix Vetranio as his assistant and ally, so powerfully
affected his mind that it instinctively sought to vent its agitation
through the natural medium of words, it is useless to inquire. Whatever
his motives for speech, the impressive earnestness of his manner gave
evidence of the depth and intensity of his emotions as he addressed the
senator thus:--

'I have submitted to servitude in a Christian's house, I have suffered
the contamination of a Christian's prayers, to gain the use of your
power and station when the time to employ them should arrive. The hour
has now come when my part of the conditions of our engagement is to be
performed; the hour will yet come when your part shall be exacted from
you in turn! Do you wonder at what I have done and what I will do? Do
you marvel that a household drudge should speak thus to a nobleman of
Rome? Are you astonished that I risk so much as to venture on enlisting
you--by the sacrifice of the girl who now slumbers above--in the cause
whose end is the restoration of our fathers' gods, and in whose service
I have suffered and grown old? Listen, and you shall hear from what I
have fallen--you shall know what I once was!' 'I adjure you by all the
gods and goddesses of our ancient worship, let me hear you where I can
breathe--in the garden, on the housetop, anywhere but in this dungeon!'
murmured the senator in entreating accents.

'My birth, my parents, my education, my ancient abode--these I will not
disclose,' interrupted the Pagan, raising one arm authoritatively, as if
to obstruct Vetranio from approaching the door. 'I have sworn by my
gods, that until the day of restitution these secrets of my past life
shall remain unrevealed to strangers' ears. Unknown I entered Rome, and
unknown I will labour in Rome until the projects I have lived for are
crowned with success! It is enough that I confess to you that with
those sacred images whose fragments you have just beheld, I was once
lodged; that those sacred vestments whose remains you discerned at your
feet, I once wore. To attain the glories of the priesthood there was
nothing that I did not resign, to preserve them there was nothing I did
not perform, to recover them there is nothing that I will not attempt!
I was once illustrious, prosperous, beloved; of my glory, my happiness,
my popularity, the Christians have robbed me, and I will yet live to
requite it heavily at their hands! I had a guardian who loved me in my
youth; the Christians murdered him! A temple was under the rule of my
manhood; the Christians destroyed it! The people of a whole nation once
listened to my voice; the Christians have dispersed them! The wise, the
great, the beautiful, the good, were once devoted to me; the Christians
have made me a stranger at their doors, and outcast of their affections
and thoughts! For all this shall I take no vengeance? Shall I not plot
to rebuild my ruined temple, and win back, in my age, the honours that
adorned me in my youth?'

'Assuredly!--at once--without delay!' stammered Vetranio, returning the
stern and inquiring gaze of the Pagan with a bewildered, uneasy stare.


'To mount over the bodies of the Christian slain,' continued the old
man, his sinister eyes dilating in anticipated triumph as he whispered
close at the senator's ear, 'to rebuild the altars that the Christians
have overthrown, is the ambition that has made light to me the
sufferings of my whole life. I have battled, and it has sustained me in
the midst of carnage; I have wandered, and it has been my home in the
desert; I have failed, and it has supported me; I have been threatened
with death, and it has preserved me from fear; I have been cast into
slavery, and it has made my fetters light. You see me now, old,
degraded, lonely--believe that I long neither for wife, children,
tranquility, nor possessions; that I desire no companion but my
cherished and exalted purpose! Remember, then, in the hour of
performance the promise you have now made to aid me in the achievement
of that purpose! Remember that you are a Pagan yourself! Feast, laugh,
carouse with your compeers; be still the airy jester, the gay companion;
but never forget the end to which you are vowed--the destiny of glory
that the restoration of our deities has in store for us both!'

He ceased. Though his voice, while he spoke, never rose beyond a
hoarse, monotonous, half-whispering tone, all the ferocity of his abused
and degraded nature was for the instant thoroughly aroused by his
recapitulation of his wrongs. Had Vetranio at this moment shown any
symptoms of indecision, or spoken any words of discouragement, he would
have murdered him on the spot where they stood. Every feature in the
Pagan's seared and livid countenance expressed the stormy emotions that
were rushing over his heart as he now confronted his bewildered yet
attentive listener. His firm, menacing position; his poor and scanty
garments; his wild, shaggy hair; his crooked, distorted form; his stern,
solemn, unwavering gaze--opposed as they were (under the fitful
illumination of the expiring lamp and the advancing daylight) to the
unsteady gait, the vacant countenance, the rich robes, the youthful
grace of form and delicacy of feature of the object of his steady
contemplation, made so wild and strange a contrast between his patrician
ally and himself that they scarcely looked like beings of the same race.
Nothing could be more immense than the difference, more wild than the
incongruity between them. It was sickness hand-in-hand with health;
pain marshalled face to face with enjoyment; darkness ranged in
monstrous discordance by the very side of light.

The next instant--just as the astonished senator was endeavouring to
frame a suitable answer to the solemn adjuration that had been addressed
to him--Ulpius seized his arm, and opening a door at the inner extremity
of the apartment, led him up some stairs that conducted to the interior
of the house.

They passed the hall, on the floor of which still lay the fragments of
the broken lute, dimly distinguishable in the soft light of daybreak;
and ascending another staircase, paused at a little door at the top,
which Ulpius cautiously opened, and in a moment afterwards Vetranio was
admitted into Antonina's bed-chamber.


The room was of no great extent; its scanty furniture was of the most
ordinary description; no ornaments glittered on its walls; no frescoes
adorned its ceiling; and yet there was a simple elegance in its
appearance, an unobtrusive propriety in its minutest details, which made
it at once interesting and attractive to the eye. From the white
curtains at the window to the vase of flowers standing by the bedside,
the same natural refinement of taste appeared in the arrangement of all
that the apartment contained. No sound broke the deep silence of the
place, save the low, soft breathing, occasionally interrupted by a long,
trembling sigh, of its sleeping occupant. The sole light in the room
consisted of a little lamp, so placed in the middle of the flowers round
the sides of the vase that no extended or steady illumination was cast
upon any object. There was something in the decent propriety of all
that was visible in the bed-chamber; in the soft obscurity of its
atmosphere; in the gentle and musical sound that alone interrupted its
magical stillness, impressive enough, it might have been imagined, to
have awakened some hesitation in the bosom of the boldest libertine ere
he deliberately proceeded to intrude on the unprotected slumbers of its
occupant. No such feeling of indecision, however, troubled the thoughts
of Vetranio as he cast a rapid glance round the apartment which he had
venture so treacherously to invade. The fumes of the wine he had
imbibed at the banquet had been so thoroughly resuscitated by the
oppressive atmosphere of the subterranean retreat he had just quitted,
as to have left him nothing of his more refined nature. All that was
honourable or intellectual in his character had now completely ceded to
all that was base and animal. He looked round, and perceiving that
Ulpius had silently quitted him, softly closed the door. Then advancing
to the bedside with the utmost caution compatible with the involuntary
unsteadiness of an intoxicated man, he took the lamp from the vase in
which it was half concealed, and earnestly surveyed by its light the
figure of the sleeping girl.

The head of Antonina was thrown back and rested rather over than on her
pillow. Her light linen dress had become so disordered during the night
that it displayed her throat and part of her bosom, in all the dawning
beauties of their youthful formation, to the gaze of the licentious
Roman. One hand half supported her head, and was almost entirely hidden
in the locks of her long black hair, which had escaped from the white
cincture intended to confine it, and now streamed over the pillow in
dazzling contrast to the light bed-furniture around it. The other hand
held tightly clasped to her bosom the precious fragment of her broken
lute. The deep repose expressed in her position had not thoroughly
communicated itself to her face. Now and then her slightly parted lips
moved and trembled, and ever and anon a change, so faint and fugitive
that it was hardly perceptible, appeared in her complexion, breathing on
the soft olive that was its natural hue, the light rosy flush which the
emotions of the past night had impressed on it ere she slept. Her
position, in its voluptuous negligence, seemed the very type of Oriental
loveliness; while her face, calm and sorrowful in its expression,
displayed the more refined and sober graces of the European model. And
thus these two characteristics of two different orders of beauty,
appearing conjointly under one form, produced a whole so various and yet
so harmonious, so impressive and yet so attractive, that the senator, as
he bent over the couch, though the warm, soft breath of the young girl
played on his cheeks and waved the tips of his perfumed locks, could
hardly imagine that the scene before him was more than a bright,
delusive dream.

While Vetranio was yet absorbed in admiration of her charms, Antonina's
form slightly moved, as if agitated by the influence of a passing dream.
The change thus accomplished in her position broke the spell that its
former stillness and beauty had unconsciously wrought to restrain the
unhallowed ardour of the profligate Roman. He now passed his arm round
her warm, slender figure, and gently raising her till her head rested on
his shoulder as he sat by the bed, imprinted kiss after kiss on the pure
lips that sleep had innocently abandoned to him.

As he had foreseen, Antonina instantly awoke, but, to his unmeasured
astonishment, neither started nor shrieked. The moment she had opened
her eyes she had recognised the person of Vetranio; and that
overwhelming terror which suspends in its victims the use of every
faculty, whether of the body or the mind, had immediately possessed
itself of her heart. Too innocent to imagine the real motive that
prompted the senator's intrusion on her slumbers, where others of her
sex would have foreboded dishonour, she feared death. All her father's
vague denunciations against the enormities of the nobles of Rome rushed
in an instant over her mind, and her childish imagination pictured
Vetranio as armed with some terrible and mysterious vengeance to be
wreaked on her for having avoided all communication with him as soon as
she had gained possession of her lute. Prostrate beneath the petrifying
influence of her fears, motionless and powerless before him as its prey
before the serpent, she made no effort to move or speak; but looked up
steadfastly into the senator's face, her large eyes fixed and dilated in
a gaze of overpowering terror.

Intoxicated though he was, the affrighted expression of the poor girl's
pale, rigid countenance did not escape Vetranio's notice; and he taxed
his bewildered brain for such soothing and reassuring expressions as
would enable him to introduce his profligate proposals with some chance
that they would be listened to and understood.


'Dearest pupil! Most beautiful of Roman maidens,' he began in the
husky, monotonous tones of inebriety, 'abandon your fears! I come
hither, wafted by the breath of love, to restore the worship of the--I
would say to bear you on my bosom to a villa--the name of which has for
the moment escaped my remembrance. You cannot have forgotten that it
was I who taught you to compose the Nightingale Sauce--or, no--let me
rather say to play upon the lute. Love, music, pleasure, all await you
in the arms of your attached Vetranio. Your eloquent silence speaks
encouragement to my heart. Beloved Anto--'

Here the senator suddenly paused; for the eyes of the girl, which had
hitherto been fixed on him with the same expression of blank dismay that
had characterised them from the first, slowly moved in the direction of
the door. The instant afterwards a slight noise caught Vetranio's ear,
and Antonina shuddered so violently as he pressed her to his side that
he felt it through his whole frame. Slowly and unwillingly he withdrew
his gaze from the pale yet lovely countenance on which it had been
fixed, and looked up.

At the open door, pale, silent, motionless, stood the master of the
house.

Incapable, from the confusion of his ideas, of any other feeling than
the animal instinct of self-defence, Vetranio no sooner beheld
Numerian's figure than he rose, and drawing a small dagger from his
bosom, attempted to advance on the intruder. He found himself, however,
restrained by Antonina, who had fallen on her knees before him, and
grasped his robe with a strength which seemed utterly incompatible with
the slenderness of her form and the feebleness of her sex and age.

The first voice that broke the silence which ensued was Numerian's. He
advanced, his face ghastly with anguish, his lip quivering with
suppressed emotions, to the senator's side, and addressed him thus:--

'Put up your weapon; I come but to ask a favour at your hands.'

Vetranio mechanically obeyed him. There was something in the stern
calmness, frightful at such a moment, of the Christian's manner that
awed him in spite of himself.

'The favour I would petition for,' continued Numerian, in low, steady,
bitter tones, 'is that you would remove your harlot there, to your own
abode. Here are no singing-boys, no banqueting-halls, no perfumed
couches. The retreat of a solitary old man is no place for such an one
as she. I beseech you, remove her to a more congenial home. She is
well fitted for her trade; her mother was a harlot before her!'

He laughed scornfully, and pointed, as he spoke, to the figure of the
unhappy girl kneeling with outstretched arms at his feet.

'Father, father!' she cried, in accents bereft of their native softness
and melody, 'have you forgotten me?'