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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




'You cannot save her if you would! You dare not commit her to the
charge of your companions, she is too young and too fair to be abandoned
to their doubtful protection. You cannot escape with her, for you must
remain here on the watch at your post. You will not let her depart by
herself, for you know that she would perish with cold and privation
before the morning rises. When I return on the morrow I shall see her in
the tent. You cannot escape from your promise;--you cannot forget it,--
you must shed her blood!'

'The commands of the king,' said the old warrior, signing to his party
to depart with Goisvintha, who now stood with forced calmness awaiting
their guidance: 'will be communicated to the chieftain Hermanric on the
morrow. Remember,' he continued in a lower tone, pointing
contemptuously to the trembling girl; 'that the vigilance you have shown
in setting the watch before yonder gate, will not excuse any negligence
your prize there may now cause you to commit! Consult your youthful
pleasures as you please, but remember your duties! Farewell!'

Uttering these words in a stern, serious tone, the veteran departed.
Soon the last sound of the footsteps of his escort died away, and
Hermanric and the fugitive were left alone in the tent.

During the address of the old warrior to the chieftain, the girl had
silently detached herself from her protector's support, and retired
hastily to the interior of the tent. When she saw that they were left
together again, she advanced hesitatingly towards the young Goth, and
looked up with an expression of mute inquiry into his face.

'I am very miserable,' said she, after an interval of silence, in soft,
clear, melancholy accents. 'If you forsake me now, I must die--and I
have lived so short a time on the earth, I have known so little
happiness and so little love, that I am not fit to die! But you will
protect me! You are good and brave, strong with weapons in your hands,
and full of pity. You have defended me, and spoken kindly of me--I love
you for the compassion you have shown me.'


Her language and actions, simple as they were, were yet so new to
Hermanric, whose experience of her sex had been almost entirely limited
to the women of his own stern impassive nation, that he could only reply
by a brief assurance of protection, when the suppliant awaited his
answer. A new page in the history of humanity was opening before his
eyes, and he scanned it in wondering silence.


'If that woman should return,' pursued the girl, fixing her dark,
eloquent eyes intently upon the Goth's countenance, 'take me quickly
where she cannot come. My heart grows cold as I look on her! She will
kill me if she can approach me again! My father's anger is very
fearful, but hers is horrible--horrible--horrible! Hush! already I hear
her coming back--let us go--I will follow you wherever you please--but
let us not delay while there is time to depart! She will destroy me if
she sees me now, and I cannot die yet! Oh my preserver, my
compassionate defender, I cannot die yet!'

'No one shall harm you--no on shall approach you to-night--you are
secure from all dangers in this tent,' said the Goth, gazing on her with
undissembled astonishment and admiration.

'I will tell you why death is so dreadful to me,' she continued, and her
voice deepened as she spoke, to tones of mournful solemnity, strangely
impressive in a creature so young. 'I have lived much alone, and have
had no companions but my thoughts, and the sky that I could look up to,
and the things on the earth that I could watch. As I have seen the
clear heaven and the soft fields, and smelt the perfume of flowers, and
heard the voices of singing-birds afar off, I have wondered why the same
God who made all this, and made me, should have made grief and pain and
hell--the dread eternal hell that my father speaks of in his church. I
never looked at the sun-light, or woke from my sleep to look on and to
think of the distant stars, but I longed to love something that might
listen to my joy. But my father forbade me to be happy! He frowned
even when he gave me my flower-garden--though God made flowers. He
destroyed my lute--though God made music. My life has been a longing in
loneliness for the voices of friends! My heart has swelled and trembled
within my, because when I walked in the garden and looked on the plains
and woods and high, bright mountains that were round me, I knew that I
loved them alone! Do you know now why I dare not die? It is because I
must find first the happiness which I feel God has made for me. It is
because I must live to praise this wonderful, beautiful world with
others who enjoy it as I could! It is because my home has been among
those who sigh, and never among those who smile! It is for this that I
fear to die! I must find companions whose prayers are in singing and in
happiness, before I go to the terrible hereafter that all dread. I dare
not die! I dare not die!'

As she uttered these last words she began to weep bitterly. Between
amazement and compassion the young Goth was speechless. He looked down
upon the small, soft hand that she had placed on his arm while she
spoke, and saw that it trembled; he pressed it, and felt that it was
cold; and in the first impulse of pity produced by the action, he found
the readiness of speech which he had hitherto striven for in vain.

'You shiver and look pale,' said he; 'a fire shall be kindled at the
door of the tent. I will bring you garments that will warm you, and
food that will give you strength; you shall sleep, and I will watch that
no one harms you.'

The girl hastily looked up. An expression of ineffable gratitude
overspread her sorrowful countenance. She murmured in a broken voice,
'Oh, how merciful, how merciful you are!' And then, after an evident
struggle with herself, she covered her face with her hands, and again
burst into tears.

More and more embarrassed, Hermanric mechanically busied himself in
procuring from such of his attendants as the necessities of the blockade
left free, the supplies of fire, food and raiment, which he had
promised. She received the coverings, approached the blazing fuel, and
partook of the simple refreshment, which the young warrior offered her,
with eagerness. After that she sat for some time silent, absorbed in
deep meditation, and cowering over the fire, apparently unconscious of
the curiosity with which she was still regarded by the Goth. At length
she suddenly looked up, and observing his eyes fixed on her, arose and
beckoned him to the seat that she occupied.

'Did you know how utterly forsaken I am,' said she, 'you would not
wonder as you do, that I, a stranger and a Roman, have sought you thus.
I have told you how lonely was my home; but yet that home was a refuge
and a protection to me until the morning of this long day that is past,
when I was expelled from it for ever! I was suddenly awakened in my bed
by--my father entered in anger--he called me--'

She hesitated, blushed, and then paused at the very outset of her
narrative. Innocent as she was, the natural instincts of her sex spoke,
though in a mysterious yet in a warning tone, within her heart, abruptly
imposing on her motives for silence that she could neither penetrate nor
explain. She clasped her trembling hands over her bosom as if to repress
its heaving, and casting down her eyes, continued in a lower tone:--

I cannot tell you why my father drove me from his doors. He has always
been silent and sorrowful to me; setting me long tasks in mournful
books; commanding that I should not quit the precincts of his abode, and
forbidding me to speak to him when I have sometimes asked him to tell me
of my mother whom I have lost. Yet he never threatened me or drove me
from his side, until the morning of which I have told you. Then his
wrath was terrible; his eyes were fierce; his voice was threatening! He
bade me begone, and I obeyed him in affright, for I thought he would
have slain me if I stayed! I fled from the house, knowing not where I
went, and ran through yonder gate, which is hard by our abode. As I
entered the suburbs, I met great crowds, all hurrying into Rome. I was
bewildered by my fears and the confusion all around, yet I remember that
they called loudly to me to fly to the city, ere the gates were closed
against the assault of the Goths. And others jostled and scoffed at me,
as they passed by and saw me in the thin night garments in which I was
banished from my home!'

Here she paused and listened intently for a few moments. Every
accidental noise that she heard still awakened in her the apprehension
of Goisvintha's return. Reassured by Hermanric and by her own
observation of all that was passing outside the tent, she resumed her
narrative after an interval, speaking now in a steadier voice.

'I thought my heart would burst within me,' she continued, 'as I tried
to escape them. All things whirled before my eyes. I could not speak--
I could not stop--I could not weep. I fled and fled I knew not whither,
until I sank down exhausted at the door of a small house on the
outskirts of the suburbs. Then I called for aid, but no one was by to
hear me. I crept--for I could stand no longer--into the house. It was
empty. I looked from the windows: no human figure passed through the
silent streets. The roar of a mighty confusion still rose from the
walls of the city, but I was left to listen to it alone. In the house I
saw scattered on the floor some fragments of bread and an old garment.
I took them both, and then rose and departed; for the silence of the
place was horrible to me, and I remembered the fields and the plains
that I had once loved to look on, and I thought that I might find there
the refuge that had been denied to me at Rome! So I set forth once more;
and when I gained the soft grass, and sat down beside the shady trees,
and saw the sunlight brightening over the earth, my heart grew sad, and
I wept as I thought on my loneliness and remembered my father's anger.

'I had not long remained in my resting-place, when I heard a sound of
trumpets in the distance, and looking forth, I saw far off, advancing
over the plains, a mighty multitude with arms that glittered in the sun.
I strove, as I beheld them, to arise and return even to those suburbs
whose solitude had affrighted me. But my limbs failed me. I saw a
little hollow hidden among the trees around. I entered it, and there
throughout the lonely day I lay concealed. I heard the long tramp of
footsteps, as your army passed me on the roads beneath; and then, after
those hours of fear came the weary hours of solitude!


'Oh, those--lonely--lonely--lonely hours! I have lived without
companions, but those hours were more terrible to me than all the years
of my former life! I dared not venture to leave my hiding-place--I
dared not call! Alone in the world, I crouched in my refuge till the
sun went down! Then came the mist, and the darkness, and the cold. The
bitter winds of night thrilled through and through me! The lonely
obscurity around me seemed filled with phantoms whom I could not behold,
who touched me and rustled over the surface of my skin! They half
maddened me! I rose to depart; to meet my wrathful father, or the army
that had passed me, or solitude in the cold, bright meadows--I cared not
which!--when I discerned the light of your torch, the moment ere it was
extinguished. Dark though it then was, I found your tent. And now I
know that I have found yet more--a companion and a friend!'

She looked up at the young Goth as she pronounced these words with the
same grateful expression that had appeared on her countenance before;
but this time her eyes were not by tears. Already her disposition--poor
as was the prospect of happiness which now lay before it--had begun to
return, with an almost infantine facility of change, to the restoring
influences of the brighter emotions. Already the short tranquilities of
the present began to exert for her their effacing charm over the long
agitations of the past. Despair was unnumbered among the emotions that
grew round that child-like heart; shame, fear, and grief, however they
might overshadow it for a time, left no taint of their presence on its
bright, fine surface. Tender, perilously alive to sensation, strangely
retentive of kindness as she was by nature, the very solitude to which
she had been condemned had gifted her, young as she was, with a martyr's
endurance of ill, and with a stoic's patience under pain.

'Do not mourn for me now,' she pursued, gently interrupting some broken
expressions of compassion which fell from the lips of the young Goth.
'If you are merciful to me, I shall forget all that I have suffered!
Though your nation is at enmity with mine, while you remain my friend, I
fear nothing! I can look on your great stature, and heavy sword, and
bright armour now without trembling! You are not like to the soldiers
of Rome;--you are taller, stronger, more gloriously arrayed! You are
like a statue I once saw by chance of a warrior of the Greeks! You have
a look of conquest and a presence of command!'

She gazed on the manly and powerful frame of the young warrior, clothed
as it was in the accoutrements of his warlike nation, with an expression
of childish interest and astonishment, asking him the appellation and
use of each part of his equipment, as it attracted her attention, and
ending her inquiries by eagerly demanding his name.

'Hermanric,' she repeated, as he answered her, pronouncing with some
difficulty the harsh Gothic syllables--'Hermanric!--that is a stern,
solemn name--a name fit for a warrior and a man! Mine sounds worthless,
after such a name as that! It is only Antonina!'

Deeply as he was interested in every word uttered by the girl, Hermanric
could no longer fail to perceive the evident traces of exhaustion that
now appeared in the slightest of her actions. Producing some furs from
a corner of the tent, he made a sort of rude couch by the side of the
fire, heaped fresh fuel on the flames, and then gently counselled her to
recruit her wasted energies by repose. There was something so candid in
his manner, so sincere in the tones of his voice, as he made his simple
offer of hospitality to the stranger who had taken refuge with him, that
the most distrustful woman would have accepted with as little hesitation
as Antonina; who, gratefully and unhesitatingly, laid down on the bed
that he had been spreading for her at her feet.

As soon as he had carefully covered her with a cloak, and rearranged her
couch in the position best calculated to insure her all the warmth of
the burning fuel, Hermanric retired to the other side of the fire; and,
leaning on his sword, abandoned himself to the new and absorbing
reflections which the presence of the girl naturally aroused.

He thought not one the duties demanded of him by the blockade; he
remembered neither the scene of rage and ferocity that had followed his
evasion of his reckless promise; nor the fierce determination that
Goisvintha had expressed as she quitted him for the night. The cares
and toils to come with the new morning, which would oblige him to expose
the fugitive to the malignity of her revengeful enemy; the thousand
contingencies that the difference of their sexes, their nations, and
their lives, might create to oppose the continuance of the permanent
protection that he had promised to her, caused him no forebodings.
Antonina, and Antonina alone, occupied every faculty of his mind, and
every feeling of his heart. There was a softness and a melody to his
ear in her very name!


His early life had made him well acquainted with the Latin tongue, but
he had never discovered all its native smoothness of sound, and elegance
of structure, until he had heard it spoken by Antonina. Word by word,
he passed over in his mind her varied, natural, and happy turns of
expression; recalling, as he was thus employed, the eloquent looks, the
rapid gesticulations, the changing tones which had accompanied those
words, and thinking how wide was the difference between this young
daughter of Rome, and the cold and taciturn women of his own nation.
The very mystery enveloping her story, which would have excited the
suspicion or contempt of more civilised men, aroused in him no other
emotions than those of wonder and compassion. No feelings of a lower
nature than these entered his heart towards the girl. She was safe
under the protection of the enemy and the barbarian, after having been
lost through the interference of the Roman and the senator.

To the simple perceptions of the Goth, the discovery of so much
intelligence united to such extreme youth, of so much beauty doomed to
such utter loneliness, was the discovery of an apparition that dazzled,
and not of a woman who charmed him. He could not even have touched the
hand of the helpless creature, who now reposed under his tent, unless
she had extended it to him of her own accord. He could only think--with
a delight whose excess he was far from estimating himself--on this
solitary mysterious being who had come to him for shelter and for aid;
who had awakened in him already new sources of sensation; and who seemed
to his startled imagination to have suddenly twined herself for ever
about the destinies of his future life.

He was still deep in meditation, when he was startled by a hand suddenly
laid on his arm. He looked up and saw that Antonina, whom he had
imagined to be slumbering on her couch, was standing by his side.

'I cannot sleep,' said the girl in a low, awe-struck voice, 'until I
have asked you to spare my father when you enter Rome. I know that you
are here to ravage the city; and, for aught I can tell, you may assault
and destroy it to-night. Will you promise to warn me before the walls
are assailed? I will then tell you my father's name and abode, and you
will spare him as you have mercifully spared me? He has denied me his
protection, but he is my father still; and I remember that I disobeyed
him once, when I possessed myself of a lute! Will you promise me to
spare him? My mother, whom I have never seen and who must therefore be
dead, may love me in another world for pleading for my father's life!'

In a few words, Hermanric quieted her agitation by explaining to her the
nature and intention of the Gothic blockade, and she silently returned
to the couch. After a short interval, her slow, regular breathing
announced to the young warrior, as he watched by the side of the fire,
that she had at length forgotten the day's heritage of misfortune in the
welcome oblivion of sleep.


CHAPTER 9. THE TWO INTERVIEWS.

The time, is the evening of the first day of the Gothic blockade; the
place, is Vetranio's palace at Rome. In one of the private apartments
of his mansion is seated its all-accomplished owner, released at length
from the long sitting convened by the Senate on the occasion of the
unexpected siege of the city. Although the same complete discipline,
the same elegant regularity, and the same luxurious pomp, which
distinguished the senator's abode in times of security, still prevail
over it in the time of imminent danger which now threatens rich and poor
alike in Rome, Vetranio himself appears far from partaking the
tranquility of his patrician household. His manner displays an unusual
sternness, and his face an unwonted displeasure, as he sits, occupied by
his silent reflections and thoroughly unregardful of whatever occurs
around him. Two ladies who are his companions in the apartment, exert
all their blandishments to win him back to hilarity, but in vain. The
services of his expectant musicians are not put into requisition, the
delicacies on his table remain untouched, and even 'the inestimable
kitten of the breed most worshipped by the ancient Egyptians' gambols
unnoticed and unapplauded at his feet. All its wonted philosophical
equanimity has evidently departed, for the time at least, from the
senator's mind.

Silence--hitherto a stranger to the palace apartments--had reigned
uninterruptedly over them for some time, when the freedman Carrio
dissipated Vetranio's meditations, and put the ladies who were with him
to flight, by announcing in an important voice, that the Prefect
Pompeianus desired a private interview with the Senator Vetranio.

The next instant the chief magistrate of Rome entered the apartment. He
was a short, fat, undignified man. Indolence and vacillation were
legibly impressed on his appearance and expression. You saw, in a
moment, that his mind, like a shuttlecock, might be urged in any
direction by the efforts of others, but was utterly incapable of
volition by itself. But once in his life had the Prefect Pompeianus
been known to arrive unaided at a positive determination, and that was
in deciding a fierce argument between a bishop and a general, regarding
the relative merits of two rival rope-dancers of equal renown.

'I have come, my beloved friend,' said the Prefect in agitated tones,
'to ask your opinion, at this period of awful responsibility for us all,
on the plan of operations proposed by the Senate at the sitting of to-
day! But first,' he hastily continued, perceiving with the unerring
instinct of an old gastronome, that the inviting refreshments on
Vetranio's table had remained untouched, 'permit me to fortify my
exhausted energies by a visit to your ever-luxurious board. Alas, my
friend, when I consider the present fearful scarcity of our provision
stores in the city, and the length of time that this accursed blockade
may be expected to last, I am inclined to think that the gods alone know
(I mean St. Peter) how much longer we may be enabled to give occupation
to our digestions and employment to our cooks.

'I have observed,' pursued the Prefect, after an interval, speaking with
his mouth full of stewed peacock; 'I have observed, oh esteemed
colleague! the melancholy of your manner and your absolute silence
during your attendance to-day at our deliberations. Have we, in your
opinion, decided erroneously? It is not impossible! Our confusion at
this unexpected appearance of the barbarians may have blinded our usual
penetration! If by any chance you dissent from our plans, I beseech you
communicate your objections to me without reserve!'

'I dissent from nothing, because I have heard nothing,' replied Vetranio
sullenly. 'I was so occupied by a private matter of importance during
my attendance at the sitting of the Senate, that I was deaf to their
deliberations. I know that we are besieged by the Goths--why are they
not driven from before the walls?'

'Deaf to our deliberations! Drive the Goths from the walls!' repeated
the Prefect faintly. 'Can you think of any private matter at such a
moment as this? Do you know our danger? Do you know that our friends
are so astonished at this frightful calamity, that they move about like
men half awakened from a dream? Have you not seen the streets filled
with terrified and indignant crowds? Have you not mounted the ramparts
and beheld the innumerable multitudes of pitiless Goths surrounding us
on all sides, intercepting our supplies of provisions from the country,
and menacing us with a speedy famine, unless our hoped-for auxiliaries
arrive from Ravenna?'

'I have neither mounted the ramparts, nor viewed with any attention the
crowds in the streets,' replied Vetranio, carelessly.

'But if you have seen nothing yourself, you must have heard what others
saw,' persisted the Prefect; 'you must know at least that the legions we
have in the city are not sufficient to guard more than half the circuit
of the walls. Has no one informed you that if it should please the
leader of the barbarians to change his blockade into an assault, it is
more than probable that we should be unable to repulse him successfully?
Are you still deaf to our deliberations, when your palace may to-morrow
be burnt over your head, when we may be staved to death, when we may be
doomed to eternal dishonour by being driven to conclude a peace? Deaf
to our deliberations, when such an unimaginable calamity as this
invasion has fallen like a thunderbolt under our very walls! You amaze
me! You overwhelm me! You horrify me!'


And in the excess of his astonishment the bewildered Prefect actually
abandoned his stewed peacock, and advanced, wine-cup in hand, to obtain
a nearer view of the features of his imperturbable host.

'If we are not strong enough to drive the Goths out of Italy,' rejoined
Vetranio coolly, 'you and the Senate know that we are rich enough to
bribe them to depart to the remotest confines of the empire. If we have
not swords enough to fight, we have gold and silver enough to pay.'

'You are jesting! Remember our honour and the auxiliaries we still hope
for from Ravenna,' said the Prefect reprovingly.

'Honour has lost the signification now, that it had in the time of the
Caesars,' retorted the Senator. 'Our fighting days are over. We have
had heroes enough for our reputation. As for the auxiliaries you still
hope for, you will have none! While the Emperor is safe in Ravenna, he
will care nothing for the worst extremities that can be suffered by the
people of Rome.'