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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




At this moment one of the bands of marauders--the desperate criminals of
famine and plague--who still prowled through the city, appeared in the
street. Their trembling hands sought their weapons, and their haggard
faces brightened, when they first discerned the Pagan and the girl; but
as they approached nearer they saw enough in the figures of the two, at
a glance, to destroy their hopes of seizing on them either plunder or
food. For an instant they stood by their intended victims, as if
debating whether to murder them only for murder's sake, when the
appearance of two women, stealthily quitting a house farther on in the
street, carrying a basket covered by some tattered garments, attracted
their attention. They turned instantly to follow the bearers of the
basket, and again Ulpius and Antonina were left alone on the river's
bank.

The appearance of the assassins had been powerless, as every other sight
or event in the city, in arousing the faculties of Ulpius. He had
neither looked on them nor fled from them when they surrounded him; but
now when they were gone he slowly turned his head in the direction by
which they had departed. His gaze wandered over the wet flagstones of
the street, over two corpses stretched on them at a little distance,
over the figure of a female slave who lay forsaken near the wall of one
of the houses, exerting her last energies to drink from the turbid rain-
water which ran down the kennel by her side; and still his eyes remained
unregardful of all that they encountered. The next object which by
chance attracted his vacant attention was a deserted temple. This
solitary building fixed him immediately in contemplation--it was
destined to open a new and a warning scene in the dark tragedy of his
closing life.

In his course through the city he had passed unheeded many temples far
more prominent in situation, far more imposing in structure, than this.
It was a building of no remarkable extent or extraordinary beauty. Its
narrow porticoes and dark doorway were more fitted to repel than to
invite the eye; but it had one attraction, powerful above all glories of
architecture and all grandeur of situation to arrest in him those
wandering faculties whose sterner and loftier aims were now suspended
for ever; it was dedicated to Serapis--to the idol which had been the
deity of his first worship, and the inspiration of his last struggled
for the restoration of his faith. The image of the god, with the three-
headed monster encircled by a serpent, obedient beneath his hand, was
carved over the portico.


What flood of emotions rushed into the vacant mind of Ulpius at the
instant when he discerned the long-loved, well-known image of the
Egyptian god, there was nothing for some moments outwardly visible in
him to betray. His moral insensibility appeared but to be deepened as
his gaze was now fixed with rigid intensity on the temple portico. Thus
he continued to remain motionless, as if what he saw had petrified him
where he stood, when the clouds, which had been closing in deeper and
deeper blackness as the morning advanced, and which, still charged with
electricity, were gathering to revive the storm of the past night, burst
abruptly into a loud peal of thunder over his head.

At that warning sound, as if it had been the supernatural signal awaited
to arouse him, as if in one brief moment it awakened every recollection
of all that he had resolutely attempted during the night of thunder that
was past, he started into instant animation. His countenance
brightened, his form expanded, he dropped the hand of Antonina, raised
his arm aloft towards the wrathful heaven in frantic triumph, then
staggering forwards, fell on his knees at the base of the temple steps.

Whatever the remembrances of his passage through the wall at the Pincian
Hill, and of the toil and peril succeeding it, which had revived when
the thunder first sounded in his ear, they now vanished as rapidly as
they had arisen, and left his wandering memory free to revert to the
scenes which the image of Serapis was most fitted to recall.
Recollections of his boyish enjoyments in the temple at Alexandria, of
his youth's enthusiasm, of the triumphs of his early manhood--all
disjointed and wayward, yet all bright, glorious, intoxicating--flashed
before his shattered mind. Tears, the first that he had shed since his
happy youth, flowed quickly down his withered cheeks. He pressed his
hot forehead, he beat his parched hand in ecstasy on the cold, wet steps
beneath him. He muttered breathless ejaculations, he breathed strange
murmurs of endearment, he humbled himself in his rapturous delight
beneath the walls of the temple like a dog that has discovered his lost
master and fawns affectionately at his feet. Criminal as he was, his
joy in his abasement, his glory in his miserable isolation from
humanity, was a doom of degradation pitiable to behold.

After an interval his mood changed. He rose to his feet, his trembling
limbs strengthened with a youthful vigour as he ascended the temple
steps and gained its doorway. He turned for a moment, and looked forth
over the street, ere he entered the hallowed domain of his distempered
imagination. To him the cloudy sky above was now shining with the
radiance of the sun-bright East. The death-laden highways of Rome, as
they stretched before him, were beautiful with lofty trees, and populous
with happy figures; and along the dark flagstones beneath, where still
lay the corpses which he had no eye to see, he beheld already the
priests of Serapis with his revered guardian, his beloved Macrinus of
former days, at their head, advancing to meet and welcome him in the
hall of the Egyptian god. Visions such as these passed gloriously
before the Pagan's eyes as he stood triumphant on the steps of the
temple, and brightened to him with a noonday light its dusky recesses
when, after his brief delay, he turned from the street and disappeared
through the doorway of the sacred place.

The rain poured down more thickly than before; the thunder, once
aroused, now sounded in deep and frequent peals as Antonina raised
herself from the ground and looked around her, in momentary expectation
that the dreaded form of Ulpius must meet her eyes. No living creature
was visible in the street. The forsaken slave still reclined near the
wall of the house where she had first appeared when the Pagan gained the
approaches to the temple; but she now lay there dead. No fresh bands of
robbers appeared in sight. An uninterrupted solitude prevailed in all
directions as far as the eye could reach.

At the moment when Ulpius had relinquished his grasp of her hand,
Antonina had sunk to the ground, helpless and resigned, but not
exhausted beyond all power of sensation or all capacity for thought.
While she lay on the cold pavement of the street, her mind still pursued
its visions of a speedy death, and a tranquil life-in-death to succeed
it in a future state. But, as minute after minute elapsed, and no harsh
voice sounded in her ear, no pitiless hand dragged her from the ground,
no ominous footsteps were audible around her, a change passed gradually
over her thoughts; the instinct of self-preservation slowly revived
within her, and, as she raised herself to look forth on the gloomy
prospect, the chances of uninterrupted flight and present safety
presented by the solitude of the street, aroused her like a voice of
encouragement, like an unexpected promise of help.


Her perception of outer influences returned; she felt the rain that
drenched her garments; she shuddered at the thunder sounding over her
head; she marked with horror the dead bodies lying before her on the
stones. An overpowering desire animated her to fly from the place, to
escape from the desolate scene around, even though she should sink
exhausted by the effort in the next street. Slowly she arose--her limbs
trembled with a premature infirmity; but she gained her feet. She
tottered onward, turning her back on the river, passed bewildered
between long rows of deserted houses, and arrived opposite a public
garden surrounding a little summer-house, whose deserted portico offered
both concealment and shelter. Here, therefore, she took refuge,
crouching in the darkest corner of the building, and hiding her face in
her hands, as if to shut out all view of the dreary though altered
scenes which spread before her eyes.

Woeful thoughts and recollections now moved within her in bewildering
confusion. All that she had suffered since Ulpius had dragged her from
the farm-house in the suburbs--the night pilgrimage over the plain--the
fearful passage through the wall--revived in her memory, mingled with
vague ideas, now for the first time aroused, of the plague and famine
that were desolating the city; and, with sudden apprehensions that
Goisvintha might still be following her, knife in hand, through the
lonely streets; while passively prominent over all these varying sources
of anguish and dread, the scene of the young chieftain's death lay like
a cold weight on her heavy heart. The damp turf of his grave seemed
still to press against her breast; his last kiss yet trembled on her
lips; she knew, though she dared not look down on them, that the spots
of his blood yet stained her garments.

Whether she strove to rise and continue her flight; whether she crouched
down again under the portico, resigned for one bitter moment to perish
by the knife of Goisvintha--if Goisvintha were near; to fall once more
into the hands of Ulpius--if Ulpius were tracking her to her retreat,--
the crushing sense that she was utterly bereaved of her beloved
protector--that the friend of her brief days of happiness was lost to
her for ever--that Hermanric, who had preserved her from death, had been
murdered in his youth and his strength by her side, never deserted her.
Since the assassination in the farm-house, she was now for the first
time alone; and now for the first time she felt the full severity of her
affliction, and knew how dark was the blank which was spread before
every aspiration of her future life.

Enduring, almost eternal, as the burden of her desolation seemed now to
have become, it was yet to be removed, ere long, by feelings of a
tenderer mournfulness and a more resigned woe. The innate and innocent
fortitude of disposition, which had made her patient under the rigour of
her youthful education, and hopeful under the trials that assailed her
on her banishment from her father's house; which had never deserted her
until the awful scenes of the past night of assassination and death rose
in triumphant horror before her eyes; and which, even then, had been
suspended but not destroyed--was now destined to regain its healing
influence over her heart. As she still cowered in her lonely refuge,
the final hope, the yearning dependence on a restoration to her father's
presence and her father's love, that had moved her over the young
chieftain's grave, and had prompted her last effort for freedom when
Ulpius had dragged her through the passage in the rifted wall, suddenly
revived.


Once more she arose, and looked forth on the desolate city and the
stormy sky, but now with mild and unshrinking eyes. Her recollections
of the past grew tender in their youthful grief; her thoughts for the
future became patient, solemn, and serene. Images of her first and her
last-left protector, of her old familiar home, of her garden solitude on
the Pincian Mount, spread beautiful before her imagination as resting-
places to her weary heart. She descended the steps of the summer-house
with no apprehension of her enemies, no doubt of her resolution; for she
knew the beacon that was now to direct her onward course. The tears
gathered full in her eyes as she passed into the garden; but her step
never faltered, her features never lost their combined expression of
tranquil sorrow and subdued hope. So she once more entered the perilous
streets, and murmuring to herself, 'My father! my father!' as if in
those simple words lay the hand that was to guide, and the providence
that was to preserved her, she began to trace her solitary way in the
direction of the Pincian Mount.

It was a spectacle--touching, beautiful, even sublime--to see this young
girl, but a few hours freed, by perilous paths and by criminal hands,
from scenes which had begun in treachery, only to end in death, now
passing, resolute and alone, through the streets of a mighty city,
overwhelmed by all that is poignant in human anguish and hideous in
human crime. It was a noble evidence of the strong power over the world
and the world's perils, with which the simplest affection may arm the
frailest being--to behold her thus pursuing her way, superior to every
horror of desolation and death that clogged her path, unconsciously
discovering in the softly murmured name of 'father', which still fell at
intervals from her lips, the pure purpose that sustained her--the steady
heroism that ever held her in her doubtful course. The storms of heaven
poured over her head--the crimes and sufferings of Rome darkened the
paths of her pilgrimage; but she passed firmly onward through all, like
a ministering spirit, journeying along earthly shores in the bright
inviolability of its merciful mission and its holy thoughts--like a ray
of light living in the strength of its own beauty, amid the tempest and
obscurity of a stranger sphere.

Once more she entered the Campus Martius. Again she passed the public
fountains, still unnaturally devoted to serve as beds for the dying and
as sepulchres for the dead; again she trod the dreary highways, where
the stronger among the famished populace yet paced hither and thither in
ferocious silence and unsocial separation. No word was addressed,
hardly a look was directed to her, as she pursued her solitary course.
She was desolate among the desolate; forsaken among others abandoned
like herself.

The robber, when he passed her by, saw that she was worthless for the
interests of plunder as the poorest of the dying citizens around him.
The patrician, loitering feebly onward to the shelter of his palace
halls, avoided her as a new suppliant among the people for the charity
which he had not to bestow, and quickened his pace as she approached him
in the street. Unprotected, yet unmolested, hurrying from her
loneliness and her bitter recollections to the refuge of her father's
love, as she would have hurried when a child from her first apprehension
of ill to the refuge of her father's arms, she gained at length the foot
of the Pincian Hill--at length ascended the streets so often trodden in
the tranquil days of old!

The portals and outer buildings of Vetranio's palace, as she passed
them, presented a striking and ominous spectacle. Within the lofty
steel railings, which protected the building, the famine-wasted slaves
of the senator appeared reeling and tottering beneath full vases of wine
which they were feebly endeavouring to carry into the interior
apartments. Gaudy hangings drooped from the balconies, garlands of ivy
were wreathed round the statues of the marble front. In the midst of
the besieged city, and in impious mockery of the famine and pestilence
which were wasting it, hut and palace, to its remotest confines, were
proceeding in this devoted dwelling the preparations for a triumphant
feast!

Unheedful of the startling prospect presented by Vetranio's abode, her
eyes bent but in one absorbing direction, her steps hurrying faster and
faster with each succeeding instant, Antonina approached the home from
which she had been exiled in fear, and to which she was returning in
woe. Yet a moment more of strong exertion, of overpowering
anticipation, and she reached the garden gate!

She dashed back the heavy hair matted over her brows by the rain; she
glanced rapidly around her; she beheld the window of her bed-chamber
with the old simple curtain still hanging at its accustomed place; she
saw the well-remembered trees, the carefully tended flower-beds, now
drooping mournfully beneath the gloomy sky. Her heart swelled within
her, her breath seemed suddenly arrested in her bosom, as she trod the
garden path and ascended the steps beyond. The door at the top was
ajar. With a last effort she thrust it open, and stood once more--
unaided and unwelcomed, yet hopeful of consolation, of pardon, of love--
within her first and last sanctuary, the walls of her home!


CHAPTER 21. FATHER AND CHILD.

Forsaken as it appears on an outward view, during the morning of which
we now write, the house of Numerian is yet not tenantless. In one of
the sleeping apartments, stretched on his couch, with none to watch by
its side, lies the master of the little dwelling. We last beheld him on
the scene mingled with the famishing congregation in the Basilica of St.
John Lateran, still searching for his child amid the confusion of the
public distribution of food during the earlier stages of the misfortunes
of besieged Rome. Since that time he has toiled and suffered much; and
now the day of exhaustion, long deferred, the hours of helpless
solitude, constantly dreaded, have at length arrived.

From the first periods of the siege, while all around him in the city
moved gloomily onward through darker and darker changes, while famine
rapidly merged into pestilence and death, while human hopes and purposes
gradually diminished and declined with each succeeding day, he alone
remained ever devoted to the same labour, ever animated by the same
object--the only one among all his fellow-citizens whom no outward event
could influence for good or evil, for hope or fear.

In every street of Rome, at all hours, among all ranks of people, he was
still to be seen constantly pursuing the same hopeless search. When the
mob burst furiously into the public granaries to seize the last supplies
of corn hoarded for the rich, he was ready at the doors watching them as
they came out. When rows of houses were deserted by all but the dead,
he was beheld within, passing from window to window, as he sought
through each room for the treasure that he had lost. When some few
among the populace, in the first days of the pestilence, united in the
vain attempt to cast over the lofty walls the corpses that strewed the
street, he mingled with them to look on the rigid faces of the dead. In
solitary places, where the parent, not yet lost to affection, strove to
carry his dying child from the desert roadway to the shelter of a roof;
where the wife, still faithful to her duties, received her husband's
last breath in silent despair--he was seen gliding by their sides, and
for one brief instant looking on them with attentive and mournful eyes.
Wherever he went, whatever he beheld, he asked no sympathy and sought no
aid. He went his way, a pilgrim on a solitary path, an unregarded
expectant for a boon that no others would care to partake.

When the famine first began to be felt in the city, he seemed
unconscious of its approach--he made no effort to procure beforehand the
provision of a few days' sustenance; if he attended the first public
distributions of food, it was only to prosecute his search for his child
amid the throng around him. He must have perished with the first feeble
victims of starvation, had he not been met, during his solitary
wanderings, by some of the members of the congregation whom his piety
and eloquence had collected in former days.

By these persons, who entreaties that he would suspend his hopeless
search he always answered with the same firm and patient denial, his
course was carefully watched and his wants anxiously provided for. Out
of every supply of food which they were enabled to collect, his share
was invariably carried to his abode. They remembered their teacher in
the hour of his dejection, as they had formerly reverenced him in the
day of his vigour; they toiled to preserve his life as anxiously as they
had laboured to profit by his instructions; they listened as his
disciples once, they served him as his children now.

But over these, as over all other offices of human kindness, the famine
was destined gradually and surely to prevail. The provision of food
garnered up by the congregation ominously lessened with each succeeding
day. When the pestilence began darkly to appear, the numbers of those
who sought their afflicted teacher at his abode, or followed him through
the dreary streets, fatally decreased.


Then, as the nourishment which had supported, and the vigilance which
had watched him, thus diminished, so did the hard-tasked energies of the
unhappy father fail him faster and faster. Each morning as he arose,
his steps were more feeble, his heart grew heavier within him, his
wanderings through the city were less and less resolute and prolonged.
At length his powers totally deserted him; the last-left members of his
congregation, as they approached his abode with the last-left provision
of food which they possessed, found him prostrate with exhaustion at his
garden gate. They bore him to his couch, placed their charitable
offering by his side, and leaving one of their number to protect him
from the robber and the assassin, they quitted the house in despair.

For some days the guardian remained faithful to his post, until his
sufferings from lack of food overpowered his vigilance. Dreading that,
in his extremity, he might be tempted to take from the old man's small
store of provision what little remained, he fled from the house, to seek
sustenance, however loathsome, in the public streets; and thenceforth
Numerian was left defenceless in his solitary abode.

He was first beheld on the scenes which these pages present, a man of
austere purpose, of unwearied energy; a valiant reformer, who defied all
difficulties that beset him in his progress; a triumphant teacher,
leading at his will whoever listened to his words; a father, proudly
contemplating the future position which he destined for his child. Far
different did he now appear. Lost to his ambition, broken in spirit,
helpless in body, separated from his daughter by his own act, he lay on
his untended couch in a death-like lethargy. The cold wind blowing
through his opened window awakened no sensations in his torpid frame;
the cup of water and the small relics of coarse food stood near his
hand, but he had no vigilance to discern them. His open eyes looked
steadfastly upward, and yet he reposed as one in a deep sleep, or as one
already devoted to the tomb; save when, at intervals, his lips moved
slowly with a long and painfully drawn breath, or a fever flush tinged
his hollow cheek with changing and momentary hues.

While thus in outward aspect appearing to linger between life and death,
his faculties yet remained feebly vital within him. Aroused by no
external influence, and governed by no mental restraint, they now
created before him a strange waking vision, palpable as an actual event.

It seemed to him that he was reposing, not in his own chamber, but in
some mysterious world, filled with a twilight atmosphere, inexpressibly
soothing and gentle to his aching sight. Through this mild radiance he
could trace, at long intervals, shadowy representations of the scenes
through which he had passed in search of his lost child. The gloomy
streets, the lonely houses abandoned to the unburied dead, which he had
explored, alternately appeared and vanished before him in solemn
succession; and ever and anon, as one vision disappeared ere another
rose, he heard afar off a sound as of gentle, womanly voices, murmuring
in solemn accents, 'The search has been made in penitence, in patience,
in prayer, and has not been pursued in vain. The lost shall return--the
beloved shall yet be restored!'

Thus, as it had begun, the vision long continued. Now the scenes
through which he had wandered passed slowly before his eyes, now the
soft voices murmured pityingly in his ear. At length the first
disappeared, and the last became silent; then ensued a long vacant
interval, and then the grey, tranquil light brightened slowly at one
spot, out of which he beheld advancing towards him the form of his lost
child.

She came to his side, she bent lovingly over him; he saw her eyes, with
their old patient, childlike expression, looking sorrowfully down upon
him. His heart revived to a sense of unspeakable awe and contrition, to
emotions of yearning love and mournful hope; his speech returned; he
whispered tremulously, 'Child! child! I repented in bitter woe the wrong
that I did to thee; I sought thee, in my loneliness on earth, through
the long day and the gloomy night! And now the merciful God has sent
thee to pardon me! I loved thee; I wept for thee.'


His voice died within him, for now his outward sensations quickened. He
felt warm tears falling on his cheeks; he felt embracing arms clasped
round him; he heard tenderly repeated, 'Father! speak to me as you were
wont; love me, father, and forgive me, as you loved and forgave me when
I was a little child!'