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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




As the storm strengthened, as the darkness lowered deeper and deeper, so
did his inquietude increase, until at length it mastered the last feeble
resistance of his wavering firmness. Persuading himself that, after
having delayed so long, Goisvintha would now refrain from seeking him
until the morrow, and that all communications from Alaric, had they been
despatched, would have reached him ere this; unable any longer to combat
his anxiety for the safety of Antonina; determined to risk the worst
possibilities rather than be absent at such a time of tempest and peril
from the farm-house, he made a last visit to the stations of the
watchful sentinels, and quitted the camp for the night.


CHAPTER 17. THE HUNS.

More than an hour after Hermanric had left the encampment, a man
hurriedly entered the house set apart for the young chieftain's
occupation. He made no attempt to kindle either light or fire, but sat
down in the principal apartment, occasionally whispering to himself in a
strange and barbarous tongue.


He had remained but a short time in possession of his comfortless
solitude, when he was intruded on by a camp-follower, bearing a small
lamp, and followed closely by a woman, who, as he started up and
confronted her, announced herself as Hermanric's kinswoman, and eagerly
demanded an interview with the Goth.

Haggard and ghastly though it was from recent suffering and long
agitation, the countenance of Goisvintha (for it was she) appeared
absolutely attractive as it was now opposed by the lamp-light to the
face and figure of the individual she addressed. A flat nose, a swarthy
complexion, long, coarse, tangled locks of deep black hair, a beardless,
retreating chin, and small, savage, sunken eyes, gave a character almost
bestial to this man's physiognomy. His broad, brawny shoulders overhung
a form that was as low in stature as it was athletic in build; you
looked on him and saw the sinews of a giant strung in the body of a
dwarf. And yet this deformed Hercules was no solitary error of Nature--
no extraordinary exception to his fellow-beings, but the actual type of
a whole race, stunted and repulsive as himself. He was a Hun.

This savage people, the terror even of their barbarous neighbours,
living without government, laws, or religion, possessed but one feeling
in common with the human race--the instinct of war. Their historical
career may be said to have begun with their early conquests in China,
and to have proceeded in their first victories over the Goths, who
regarded them as demons, and fled at their approach. The hostilities
thus commenced between the two nations were at length suspended by the
temporary alliance of the conquered people with the empire, and
subsequently ceased in the gradual fusion of the interests of each in
one animating spirit--detestation of Rome.

By this bond of brotherhood, the Goths and the Huns became publicly
united, though still privately at enmity--for the one nation remembered
its former defeats as vividly as the other remembered its former
victories. With various disasters, dissensions, and successes, they ran
their career of battle and rapine, sometimes separate, sometimes
together, until the period of our romance, when Alaric's besieging
forces numbered among the ranks of their barbarian auxiliaries a body of
Huns, who, unwillingly admitted to the title of Gothic allies, were
dispersed about the army in subordinate stations, and of whom the
individual above described was one of those contemptuously favoured by
promotion to an inferior command, under Hermanric, as a Gothic chief.

An expression of aversion, but not of terror, passed over Goisvintha's
worn features as she approached the barbarian, and repeated her desire
to be conducted to Hermanric's presence. For the second time, however,
the man gave her no answer. He burst into a shrill, short laugh, and
shook his huge shoulders in clumsy derision.

The woman's cheek reddened for an instant, and then turned again to
livid paleness as she thus resumed--

'I came not hither to be mocked by a barbarian, but to be welcomed by a
Goth! Again I ask you, where is my kinsman, Hermanric?'

'Gone!' cried the Hun. And his laughter grew more wild and discordant
as he spoke.

A sudden tremor ran through Goisvintha's frame as she marked the manner
of the barbarian and heard his reply. Repressing with difficulty her
anger and agitation, she continued, with apprehension in her eyes and
entreaty in her tones--

'Whither has he gone? Wherefore has he departed? I know that the hour
I appointed for our meeting here has long passed; but I have suffered a
sickness of many weeks, and when, at evening, I prepared to set forth,
my banished infirmities seemed suddenly to return to me again. I was
borne to my bed. But, though the woman who succoured me bid me remain
and repose, I found strength in the night to escape them, and through
storm and darkness to come hither alone--for I was determined, though I
should perish for it, to seek the presence of Hermanric, as I had
promised by my messengers. You, that are the companion of his watch,
must know whither he is gone. Go to him, and tell him what I have
spoken. I will await his return!'


'His business is secret,' sneered the Hun. 'He has departed, but
without telling me whither. How should I, that am a barbarian, know the
whereabouts of an illustrious Goth? It is not for me to know his
actions, but to obey his words!'

'Jeer not about your obedience,' returned Goisvintha with breathless
eagerness. 'I say to you again, you know whither he is gone, and you
must tell me for what he has departed. You obey him--there is money to
make you obey me!'

'When I said his business was secret, I lied not,' said the Hun, picking
up with avidity the coins she flung to him--'but he has not kept it
secret from me! The Huns are cunning! Aha, ugly and cunning!'

Suspicion, the only refined emotion in a criminal heart, half discovered
to Goisvintha, at this moment, the intelligence that was yet to be
communicated. No word, however, escaped her, while she signed the
barbarian to proceed.

'He has gone to a farm-house on the plains beyond the suburbs behind us.
He will not return till daybreak,' continued the Hun, tossing his money
carelessly in his great, horny hands.

'Did you see him go?' gasped the woman.

'I tracked him to the house,' returned the barbarian. 'For many nights
I watched and suspected him--to-night I saw him depart. It is but a
short time since I returned from following him. The darkness did not
delude me; the place is on the high-road from the suburbs--the first by-
path to the westward leads to its garden gate. I know it! I have
discovered his secret! I am more cunning than he!'

'For what did he seek the farm-house at night?' demanded Goisvintha
after an interval, during which she appeared to be silently fixing the
man's last speech in her memory; 'are you cunning enough to tell me
that?'

'For what do men venture their safety and their lives, their money and
their renown?' laughed the barbarian. 'They venture them for women!
There is a girl at the farm-house; I saw her at the door when the chief
went in!'

He paused; but Goisvintha made no answer. Remembering that she was
descended from a race of women who slew their wounded husbands,
brothers, and sons with their own hands when they sought them after
battle dishonoured by a defeat; remembering that the fire of the old
ferocity of such ancestors as these still burnt at her heart;
remembering all that she had hoped from Hermanric, and had plotted
against Antonina; estimating in all its importance the shock of the
intelligence she now received, we are alike unwilling and unable to
describe her emotions at this moment. For some time the stillness in
the room was interrupted by no sounds but the rolling of the thunder
without, the quick, convulsive respiration of Goisvintha, and the
clinking of the money which the Hun still continued to toss mechanically
from hand to hand.

'I shall reap good harvest of gold and silver after to-night's work,'
pursued the barbarian, suddenly breaking the silence. 'You have given
me money to speak--when the chief returns and hears that I have
discovered him, he will give me money to be silent. I shall drink to-
morrow with the best men in the army, Hun though I am!'

He returned to his seat as he ceased, and began beating in monotonous
measure, with one of his pieces of money on the blade of his sword, some
chorus of a favourite drinking song; while Goisvintha, standing pale and
breathless near the door of the chamber, looked down on him with fixed,
vacant eyes. At length a deep sigh broke from her; her hands
involuntarily clenched themselves at her side; her lips moved with a
bitter smile; then, without addressing another word to the Hun, she
turned, and softly and stealthily quitted the room.


The instant she was gone, a sudden change arose in the barbarian's
manner. He started from his seat, a scowl of savage hatred and triumph
appeared on his shaggy brows, and he paced to and fro through the
chamber like a wild beast in his cage. 'I shall tear him from the
pinnacle of his power at last!' he whispered fiercely to himself. 'For
what I have told her this night, his kinswoman will hate him--I knew it
while she spoke! For his desertion of his post, Alaric may dishonour
him, may banish him, may hang him! His fate is at my mercy; I shall rid
myself nobly of him and his command! More than all the rest of his
nation I loathe this Goth! I will be by when they drag him to the tree,
and taunt him with his shame, as he has taunted me with my deformity.'
Here he paused to laugh in complacent approval of his project,
quickening his steps and hugging himself joyfully in the barbarous
exhilaration of his triumph.

His secret meditations had thus occupied him for some time longer, when
the sound of a footstep was audible outside the door. He recognised it
instantly, and called softly to the person without to approach. At the
signal of his voice a man entered--less athletic in build, but in
deformity the very counterpart of himself. The following discourse was
then immediately held between the two Huns, the new-comer beginning it
thus:--

'Have you tracked him to the door?'

'To the very threshold.'

'Then his downfall is assured! I have seen Alaric.'

'We shall trample him under our feet!--this boy, who has been set over
us that are his elders, because he is a Goth and we are Huns! But what
of Alaric? How did you gain his ear?'

'The Goths round his tent scoffed at me as a savage, and swore that I
was begotten between a demon and a witch. But I remembered the time
when these boasters fled from their settlements; when our tribes mounted
their black steeds and hunted them like beasts! Aha, their very lips
were pale with fear in those days.'

'Speak of Alaric--our time is short,' interrupted the other fiercely.

'I answered not a word to their taunts,' resumed his companion, 'but I
called out loudly that I was a Gothic ally, that I brought messages to
Alaric, and that I had the privilege of audience like the rest. My voice
reached the ears of the king: he looked forth from his tent, and
beckoned me in. I saw his hatred of my nation lowering in his eye as we
looked on one another, but I spoke with submission and in a soft voice.
I told him how his chieftain whom he had set over us secretly deserted
his post; I told him how we had seen his favoured warrior for many
nights journeying towards the suburbs; how on this night, as on others
before, he had stolen from the encampment, and how you had gone forth to
track him to his lurking-place.'

'Was the tyrant angered?'

'His cheeks reddened, and his eyes flashed, and his fingers trembled
round the hilt of his sword while I spoke! When I ceased he answered me
that I lied. He cursed me for an infidel Hun who had slandered a
Christian chieftain. He threatened me with hanging! I cried to him to
send messengers to our quarters to prove the truth ere he slew me. He
commanded a warrior to return hither with me. When we arrived, the most
Christian chieftain was nowhere to be beheld--none knew whither he had
gone! We turned back again to the tent of the king; his warrior, whom
he honoured, spoke the same words to him as the Hun whom he despised.
Then the wrath of Alaric rose. "This very night," he cried, "did I with
my own lips direct him to await my commands with vigilance at his
appointed post! I would visit such disobedience with punishment on my
own son! Go, take with you others of your troop--your comrade who has
tracked him will guide you to his hiding-place--bring him prisoner into
my tent!" Such were his words! Our companions wait us without--lest he
should escape let us depart without delay.'


'And if he should resist us,' cried the other, leading the way eagerly
towards the door; 'what said the king if he should resist us?'

'Slay him with your own hands.'


CHAPTER 18. THE FARM-HOUSE.

As the night still advanced, so did the storm increase. On the plains
in the open country its violence was most apparent. Here no living
voices jarred with the dreary music of the elements; no flaming torches
opposed the murky darkness or imitated the glaring lightning. The
thunder pursued uninterruptedly its tempest symphony, and the fierce
wind joined it, swelling into wild harmony when it rushed through the
trees, as if in their waving branches it struck the chords of a mighty
harp.

In the small chamber of the farm-house sat together Hermanric and
Antonina, listening in speechless attention to the increasing tumult of
the storm.

The room and its occupants were imperfectly illuminated by the flame of
a smouldering wood fire. The little earthenware lamp hung from its usual
place in the ceiling, but its oil was exhausted and its light was
extinct. An alabaster vase of fruit lay broken by the side of the
table, from which it had fallen unnoticed to the floor. No other
articles of ornament appeared in the apartment. Hermanric's downcast
eyes and melancholy, unchanging expressions betrayed the gloomy
abstraction in which he was absorbed. With one hand clasped in his, and
the other resting with her head on his shoulder, Antonina listened
attentively to the alternate rising and falling of the wind. Her beauty
had grown fresher and more woman-like during her sojourn at the farm-
house. Cheerfulness and hope seemed to have gained at length all the
share in her being assigned to them by nature at her birth. Even at
this moment of tempest and darkness there was more of wonder and awe
than of agitation and affright in her expression, as she sat hearkening,
with flushed cheek and brightened eye, to the progress of the nocturnal
storm.

Thus engrossed by their thoughts, Hermanric and Antonina remained silent
in their little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly
interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the
door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated
shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer.
There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind,
and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the
open door, as it flew back violently on its frail hinges. Antonina
changed colour, and shuddered involuntarily, as Hermanric hastily rose
and closed the door again, by detaching its rude latch from the sling
which held it when not wanted for use. He looked round the room as he
did so for some substitute for the broken bar, but nothing that was fit
for the purpose immediately met his eye, and he muttered to himself as
he returned impatiently to his seat: 'While we are here to watch it the
latch is enough; it is new and strong.'

He seemed on the point of again relapsing into his former gloom, when
the voice of Antonina arrested his attention, and aroused him for the
moment from his thoughts.

'Is it in the power of the tempest to make you, a warrior of a race of
heroes, thus sorrowful and sad?' she asked, in accents of gentle
reproach. 'Even I, as I look on these walls that are so eloquent of my
happiness, and sit by you whose presence makes that happiness, can
listen to the raging storm, and feel no heaviness over my heart! What
is there to either of us in the tempest that should oppress us with
gloom? Does not the thunder come from the same heaven as the sunshine
of the summer day? You are so young, so generous, so brave,--you have
loved, and pitied, and succoured me,--why should the night language of
the sky cast such sorrow and such silence over you?'

'It is not from sorrow that I am silent,' replied Hermanric, with a
constrained smile, 'but from weariness with much toil in the camp.'


He stifled a sigh as he spoke. His head returned to its old downcast
position. The struggle between his assumed carelessness and his real
inquietude was evidently unequal. As she looked fixedly on him, with
the vigilant eye of affection, the girl's countenance saddened with his.
She nestled closer to his side and resumed the discourse in anxious and
entreating tones.

'It is haply the strife between our two nations which has separated us
already, and may separate us again, that thus oppresses you,' said she;
'but think, as I do, of the peace that must come, and not of the warfare
that now is. Think of the pleasures of our past days, and of the
happiness of our present moments,--thus united, thus living, loving,
hoping for each other; and, like me, you will doubt not of the future
that is in preparation for us both! The season of tranquillity may
return with the season of spring. The serene heaven will then be
reflected on a serene country and a happy people; and in those days of
sunshine and peace, will any hearts among all the glad population be
more joyful than ours?'

She paused a moment. Some sudden thought or recollection heightened her
colour and caused her to hesitate ere she proceeded. She was about at
length to continue, when a peal of thunder, louder than any which had
preceded it, burst threateningly over the house and drowned the first
accents of her voice. The wind moaned loudly, the rain splashed against
the door, the latch rattled long and sharply in its socket. Once more
Hermanric rose from his seat, and approaching the fire, placed a fresh
log of wood upon the dying embers. His dejection seemed now to
communicate itself to Antonina, and as he reseated himself by her side,
she did not address him again.

Thoughts, dreary and appalling beyond any that had occupied it before,
were rising in the mind of the Goth. His inquietude at the encampment
in the suburbs was tranquillity itself compared to the gloom which now
oppressed him. All the evaded dues of his nation, his family, and his
calling; all the suppressed recollections of the martial occupation he
had slighted, and the martial enmities he had disowned, now revived
avengingly in his memory. Yet, vivid as these remembrances were, they
weakened none of those feelings of passionate devotion to Antonina by
which their influence within him had hitherto been overcome. They
existed with them--the old recollections with the new emotions--the
stern rebukings of the warrior's nature with the anxious forebodings of
the lover's heart. And now, his mysterious meeting with Ulpius;
Goisvintha's unexpected return to health; the dreary rising and furious
progress of the night tempest, began to impress his superstitious mind
as a train of unwonted and meaning incidents, destined to mark the fatal
return of his kinswoman's influence over his own actions and Antonina's
fate.

One by one, his memory revived with laborious minuteness every incident
that had attended his different interviews with the Roman girl, from the
first night when she had strayed into his tent to the last happy evening
that he had spent with her at the deserted farm-house. Then tracing
further backwards the course of his existence, he figured to himself his
meeting with Goisvintha among the Italian Alps; his presence at the
death of her last child, and his solemn engagement, on hearing her
recital of the massacre at Aquileia, to avenge her on the Romans with
his own hands. Roused by these opposite pictures of the past, his
imagination peopled the future with images of Antonina again endangered,
afflicted, and forsaken; with visions of the impatient army, spurred at
length into ferocious action, making universal havoc among the people of
Rome, and forcing him back for ever into their avenging ranks. No
decision for resistance or resignation to flight presented itself to his
judgment. Doubt, despair, and apprehension held unimpeded sway over his
impressible but inactive faculties. The night itself, as he looked
forth on it, was not more dark; the wild thunder, as he listened to it,
not more gloomy; the name of Goisvintha, as he thought on it, not more
ominous of evil, than the sinister visions that now startled his
imagination and oppressed his weary mind.


There was something indescribably simple, touching, and eloquent in the
very positions of Hermanric and Antonina as they now sat together--the
only members of their respective nations who were united in affection
and peace--in the lonely farm-house. Both the girl's hands were clasped
over Hermanric's shoulder, and her head rested on them, turned from the
door towards the interior of the room, and so displaying her rich, black
hair in all its luxuriance. The head of the Goth was still sunk on his
breast, as though he were wrapped in a deep sleep, and his hands hung
listlessly side by side over the scabbard of his sheathed sword, which
lay across his knees. The fire flamed only at intervals, the fresh log
that had been placed on it not having been thoroughly kindled as yet.
Sometimes the light played on the white folds of Antonina's dress;
sometimes over the bright surface of Hermanric's cuirass, which he had
removed and laid by his side on the ground; sometimes over his sword,
and his hands, as they rested on it; but it was not sufficiently
powerful or lasting to illuminate the room, the walls and corners of
which it left in almost complete darkness.

The thunder still pealed from without, but the rain and wind had
partially lulled. The night hours had moved on more swiftly than our
narrative of the events that marked them. It was now midnight.

No sound within the room reached Antonina's ear but the quick rattling
of the door-latch, shaken in its socket by the wind. As one by one the
moments journeyed slowly onward, it made its harsh music with as
monotonous a regularity as though it were moved by their progress, and
kept pace with their eternal march. Gradually the girl found herself
listening to this sharp, discordant sound, with all the attention she
could have bestowed at other times on the ripple of a distant rivulet or
the soothing harmony of a lute, when, just as it seemed adapting itself
most easily to her senses, it suddenly ceased, and the next instant a
gust of wind, like that which had rushed through the open door on the
breaking of the rotten bar, waved her hair about her face and fluttered
the folds of her light, loose dress. She raised her head and whispered
tremulously to Hermanric--

'The door is open again--the latch has given way!'

The Goth started from his reverie and looked up hastily. At that
instant the rattling of the latch recommenced as suddenly as it had
ceased, and the air of the room recovered its former tranquillity.

'Calm yourself, beloved one,' said Hermanric gently; 'your fancy has
misled you--the door is safe.'

He parted back her dishevelled hair caressingly as he spoke. Incapable
of doubting the lightest word that fell from his lips, and hearing no
suspicious or unwonted sound in the room, she never attempted to justify
her suspicions. As she again rested her head on his shoulder, a vague
misgiving oppressed her heart, and drew from her an irrepressible sigh;
but she gave her apprehensions no expression in words. After listening
for a moment more to assure himself of the security of the latch, the
Goth resumed insensibly the contemplations from which he had been
disturbed; once more his head drooped, and again his hands returned
mechanically to their old listless position, side by side, on the
scabbard of his sword.

The faint, fickle flames still rose and fell, gleaming here and sinking
there, the latch sounded sharply in its socket, the thunder yet uttered
its surly peal, but the wind was now subsiding into fainter moans, and
the rain began to splash faintly and more faintly against the shutters
without. To the watchers in the farm-house nothing was altered to the
eye, and little to the ear. Fatal security! The last few minutes had
darkly determined their future destinies--in the loved and cherished
retreat they were now no longer alone.

They heard no stealthy footsteps pacing round their dwelling, they saw
no fierce eyes peering into the interior of the farm-house through a
chink in the shutters, they marked no dusky figure passing through the
softly and quickly opened door, and gliding into the darkest corner of
the room. Yet, now as they sat together, communing in silence with
their young, sad hearts, the threatening figure of Goisvintha stood,
shrouded in congenial darkness, under their protecting roof and in their
beloved chamber, rising still and silent almost at their very sides.