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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




The sound of that well-remembered voice--which had ever spoken kindly
and reverently to him; which had last addressed him in tones of
despairing supplication; which he had hardly hoped to hear again on
earth--penetrated his whole being, like awakening music in the dead
silence of night. His eyes lost their vacant expression; he raised
himself suddenly on the couch; he saw that what had begun as a vision
had ended as a reality; that his dream had proved the immediate fore-
runner of its own fulfilment; that his daughter in her bodily presence
was indeed restored; and his head drooped forward, and he trembled and
wept upon her bosom, in the overpowering fulness of his gratitude and
delight.

For some moments Antonina, calming with the resolute heroism of
affection her own thronging emotions of awe and affright, endeavoured to
soothe and support her fast-failing parent. Her horror almost
overwhelmed her, as she thought that now, when, through grief and peril,
she was at last restored to him, he might expire in her arms; but even
yet her resolution did not fail her. The last hope of her brief and
bitter life was now the hope of reviving her father, and she clung to it
with the tenacity of despair.

She calmed her voice while she spoke to him; she entreated him to
remember that his daughter had returned to watch over him, to be his
obedient pupil as in days of old. Vain effort! Even while the words
passed her lips, his arms, which had been pressed over her, relaxed; his
head grew heavier on her bosom. In the despair of the moment, she tore
herself from him, and looked round to seek the help that none were near
to afford. The cup of water, the last provision of food, attracted her
eye. With quick instinct she caught them up. Hope, success, salvation,
lay in those miserable relics. She pressed the food into his mouth; she
moistened his parched lips, his dry brow, with the water. During one
moment of horrible suspense she saw him still insensible; then the vital
functions revived; his eyes opened again and fixed famine-struck on the
wretched nourishment before him. He devoured it ravenously; he drained
the cup of water to its last drop; he sank back again on the couch. But
now the torpid blood moved once more in his veins; his heart beat less
and less feebly: he was saved. She saw it as she bent over him--saved
by the lost child in the hour of her return! It was a sensation of
ecstatic triumph and gratitude which no woeful remembrances had power to
embitter in its bright, sudden birth. She knelt down by the side of the
couch, almost crushed by her own emotions. Over the grave of the young
warrior she had raised her heart to Heaven in agony and grief, and now
by her father's side she poured forth her whole soul to her Creator in
trembling ejaculations of thankfulness and hope.

Thus--the one slowly recovering whatever of life and vigour yet
continued in his weakened frame, the other still filled with her all-
absorbing emotions of gratitude--the father and daughter long remained.
And now, as morning waned towards noon, the storm began to subside.
Gradually and solemnly the vast thunder-clouds rolled asunder, and the
bright blue heaven beyond appeared through their fantastic rifts. The
lessening rain-drops fell light and silvery to the earth, and breeze and
sunshine were wafted at fitful intervals over the plague-tainted
atmosphere of Rome. As yet, subdued by the shadows of the floating
clouds, the dawning sunbeams glittered softly through the windows of
Numerian's chamber. They played, warm and reviving, over his worn
features, like messengers of resurrection and hope from their native
heaven. Life seemed to expand within him under their fresh and gentle
ministering. Once more he raised himself, and turned towards his child;
and now his heart throbbed with a healthful joy, and his arms closed
round her, not in the helplessness of infirmity, but in the welcome of
love.

His words, when he spoke to her, fell at first almost inarticulately
from his lips--they were mingled together in confused phrases of
tenderness, contrition, thanksgiving. All the native enthusiasm of his
disposition, all the latent love for his child, which had for years been
suppressed by his austerity, or diverted by his ambition, now at last
burst forth.

Trembling and silent in his arms, Antonina vainly endeavoured to return
his caresses and to answer his words of welcome. Now for the first time
she knew how deep was her father's affection for her; she felt how
foreign to his real nature had been his assumed severity in their
intercourse of former days; and in the quick flow of new feelings and
old recollections produced by the delighting surprise of the discovery,
she found herself speechless. She could only listen eagerly,
breathlessly, while he spoke. His words, faltering and confused though
they were, were words of endearment which she had never heard from him
before; they were words which no mother had ever pronounced beside her
infant bed, and they sank divinely consoling over her heart, as messages
of pardon from an angel's lips.

Gradually Numerian's voice grew calmer. He raised his daughter in his
arms, and bent wistfully on her face his attentive and pitying eyes.
'Returned, returned!' he murmured, while he gazed on her, 'never again
to depart! Returned, beautiful and patient, kinder and more tender than
ever! Love me and pardon me, Antonina. I sought for you in bitter
loneliness and despair. Think not of me as what I was, but as what I
am! There were days when you were an infant, when I had no thought but
how to cherish and delight you, and now those days have come again. You
shall read no gloomy task-books; you shall never be separated from me
more; you shall play sweet music on the lute; you shall be all garlanded
with flowers which I will provide for you! We will find friends and
glad companions; we will bring happiness with us wherever we are seen.
God's blessing goes forth from children like you--it has fallen upon
me--it has raised me from the dead! My Antonina shall teach me to
worship, as I once taught her. She shall pray for me in the morning,
and pray for me at night; and when she thinks not of it, when she
sleeps, I shall come softly to her bedside, and wait and watch over her,
so that when she opens her eyes they shall open on me--they are the eyes
of my child who has been restored to me--there is nothing on earth that
can speak to me like them of happiness and peace!'

He paused for a moment, and looked rapturously on her face as it was
turned towards him. His features partially saddened while he gazed, and
taking her long hair, still wet and dishevelled from the rain, in his
hands, he pressed it over his lips, over his face, over his neck. Then,
when he saw that she was endeavouring to speak, when he beheld the tears
that were now filling her eyes, he drew her closer to him, and hurriedly
continued in lower tones--

'Hush! hush! No more grief, no more tears! Tell me not whither you
have wandered--speak not of what you have suffered; for would not every
word be a reproach to me? And you have come to pardon and not to
reproach! Let not the recollection that it was I who cast you off be
forced on me from your lips; let us remember only that we are restored
to each other; let us think that God has accepted my penitence and
forgiven me my sin, in suffering my child to return! Or, if we must
speak of the days of separation that are past, speak to me of the days
that found you tranquil and secure; rejoice me by telling me that it was
not all danger and woe in the bitter destiny which my guilty anger
prepared for my own child! Say to me that you met protectors as well as
enemies in the hour of your flight--that all were not harsh to you as I
was--that those of whom you asked shelter and safety looked on your face
as on a petition for charity and kindness from friends whom they loved!
Tell me only of your protectors, Antonina, for in that there will be
consolation; and you have come to console!'

As he waited for her reply he felt her tremble on his bosom, he saw the
shudder that ran over her frame. The despair in her voice, thought she
only pronounced in answer to him the simple words, 'There was one'--and
then ceased, unable to proceed--penetrated coldly to his heart.

'Is he not at hand?' he hurriedly resumed. 'Why is he not here? Let us
seek him without delay. I must humble myself before him in my
gratitude. I must show him that I was worthy that my Antonina should be
restored.'


'He is dead!' she gasped, sinking down in the arms that embraced her, as
the recollections of the past night again crowded in all their horror on
her memory. 'They murdered him by my side. O father! father! he loved
me; he would have reverenced and protected you!'

'May the merciful God receive him among the blessed angels, and honour
him among the holy martyrs!' cried the father, raising his tearful eyes
in supplication. 'May his spirit, if it can still be observant of the
things of earth, know that his name shall be written on my heart with
the name of my child; that I will think on him as on a beloved
companion, and mourn for him as a son that has been taken from me!'

He ceased, and looked down on Antonina, whose features were still hidden
from him. Each felt that a new bond of mutual affection had been
created between them by what each had spoken; but both now remained
silent.

During this interval the thoughts of Numerian wandered from the
reflections which had hitherto occupied him. The few mournful words
which his daughter had spoken had been sufficient to banish its fulness
of joy from his heart, and to turn him from the happy contemplation of
the present to the dark recollections of the past. Vague doubts and
fears now mingled with his gratitude and hope, and involuntarily his
thoughts reverted to what he would fain have forgotten for ever--to the
morning when he had driven Antonina from her home.

Baseless apprehensions of the return of the treacherous Pagan and his
profligate employer, with the return of their victim--despairing
convictions of his own helplessness and infirmity rose startlingly in
his mind. His eyes wandered vacantly round the room, his hands closed
trembling over his daughter's form; then, suddenly releasing her, he
arose as one panic-stricken, and exclaiming, 'The doors must be
secured--Ulpius may be near--the senator may return!' endeavoured to
cross the room. But his strength was unequal to the effort; he leaned
back for support against the wall, and breathlessly repeating, 'Secure
the doors--Ulpius, Ulpius!' he motioned to Antonina to descend.

She trembled as she obeyed him. Remembering her passage through the
breach in the wall, and her fearful journey through the streets of Rome,
she more than shared her father's apprehensions as she descended the
stairs.

The door remained half open, as she had left it when she entered the
house. Ere she hurriedly closed and barred it, she cast a momentary
glance on the street beyond. The gaunt figures of the slaves still
moved wearily to and fro, amid the mockery of festal preparation in
Vetranio's palace; and here and there a few ghastly figures lay on the
ground contemplating them in languid amazement. Over all other parts of
the street the deadly tranquillity of plague and famine still prevailed.

Hurriedly ascending the steps, Antonina hastened to assure her father
that she had obeyed his commands, and that they were now secure from all
intrusion from without. But, during her brief absence, a new and more
ominous prospect of calamity had presented itself before the old man's
mind.

As she entered the room, she saw that he had returned to his couch, and
that he was holding before him the little wooden bowl which had
contained his last supply of food, and which was now empty. He addressed
not a word to her when he heard her enter; his features were rigid with
horror and despair as he looked down on the empty bowl; he muttered
vacantly, 'It was the last provision that remained, and it was I that
exhausted it! The beasts of the forest carry food to their young, and I
have taken the last morsel from my child!'


In an instant the utter desolateness of their situation--forgotten in
the first joy of their meeting--forced itself with appalling vividness
upon Antonina's mind. She endeavoured to speak of comfort and hope to
her father; but the fearful realities of the famine in the city now rose
palpably before her, and suspended the vain words of solace on her lips.
In the midst of still populous Rome, within sight of those surrounding
plains where the creative sun ripened hour by hour the vegetation of the
teeming earth, where field and granary displayed profusely their
abundant stores, the father and daughter now looked on each other, as
helpless to replace their exhausted provision of food as if they had
been abandoned on the raft of the shipwrecked in an unexplored sea, or
banished to a lonely island whose inland products were withered by
infected winds, and around whose arid shores ran such destroying waters
as seethe over the 'Cities of the Plain'.

The silence which had long prevailed in the room, the bitter reflections
which still held the despairing father and the patient daughter
speechless alike, were at length interrupted by a hollow and melancholy
voice from the street, pronouncing, in the form of a public notice,
these words:--

'I, Publius Dalmatius, messenger of the Roman Senate, proclaim, that in
order to clear the streets from the dead, three thousand sestertii will
be given by the Prefect for every ten bodies that are cast over the
walls. This is the true decree of the Senate.'

The voice ceased; but no sound of applause, no murmur of popular tumult
was heard in answer. Then, after an interval, it was once more faintly
audible as the messenger passed on and repeated the decree in another
street; and then the silence again sank down over all things more
awfully pervading than before.

Every word of the proclamation, when repeated in the distance as when
spoken under his window, had clearly reached Numerian's ears. His mind,
already sinking in despair, was riveted on what he had heard from the
woe-boding voice of the herald, with a fascination as absorbing as that
which rivets the eye of the traveller, already giddy on the summit of a
precipice, upon the spectacle of the yawning gulfs beneath. When all
sound of the proclamation had finally died away, the unhappy father
dropped the empty bowl which he had hitherto mechanically continued to
hold before him, and glancing affrightedly at his daughter, groaned to
himself: 'The corpses are to be cast over the walls--the dead are to be
flung forth to the winds of heaven--there is no help for us in the city.
O God, God!--she may die!--her body may be cast away like the rest, and
I may live to see it!'

He rose suddenly from the couch; his reason seemed for a moment to be
shaken as he tottered to the window, crying, 'Food! food!--I will give
my house and all it contains for a morsel of food. I have nothing to
support my own child--she will starve before me by tomorrow if I have no
food! I am a citizen of Rome--I demand help from the Senate! Food!
food!'

In tones declining lower and lower he continued to cry thus from the
window, but no voice answered him either in sympathy or derision. Of
all the people--now increased in numbers--collected in the street before
Vetranio's palace, no one turned even to look on him. For days and days
past, such fruitless appeals as his had been heard, and heard
unconcernedly, at every hour and in every street of Rome--now ringing
through the heavy air in the shrieks of delirium; now faintly audible in
the last faltering murmurs of exhaustion and despair.

Thus vainly entreating help and pity from a populace who had ceased to
give the one or to feel the other, Numerian might long have remained;
but now his daughter approached his side, and drawing him gently towards
his couch, said in tender and solemn accents: 'Remember, father, that
God sent the ravens to feed Elijah, and replenished the widow's cruse!
He will not desert us, for He has restored us to each other, and has
sent me hither not to perish in the famine, but to watch over you!'


'God has deserted the city and all that it contains!' he answered
distractedly. 'The angel of destruction has gone forth into our
streets, and death walks in his shadow! On this day, when hope and
happiness seemed opening before us both; our little household has been
doomed! The young and the old, the weary and the watchful, they strew
the streets alike--the famine has mastered them all--the famine will
master us--there is no help, no escape! I, who would have died
patiently for my daughter's safety, must now die despairing, leaving her
friendless in the wide, dreary, perilous world; in the dismal city of
anguish, of horror, of death--where the enemy threatens without, and
hunger and pestilence waste within! O Antonina! you have returned to me
but for a little time; the day of our second separation draws near!'

For a few moments his head drooped, and his sobs choked his utterance;
then he once more rose painfully to his feet. Heedless of Antonina's
entreaties, he again endeavoured to cross the room, only again to find
his feeble powers unequal to sustain him. As he fell back panting upon
a seat, his eyes assumed a wild, unnatural expression--despair of mind
and weakness of body had together partially unhinged his faculties.
When his daughter affrightedly approached to soothe and succour him, he
impatiently waved her back; and began to speak in a dull, hoarse,
monotonous voice, pressing his hand firmly over his brow, and directing
his eyes backwards and forwards incessantly, on object after object, in
every part of the room.

'Listen, child, listen!' he hastily began. 'I tell you there is no food
in the house, and no food in Rome!--we are besieged--they have taken
from us our granaries in the suburbs, and our fields on the plains--
there is a great famine in the city--those who still eat, eat strange
food which men sicken at when it is named. I would seek even this, but
I have no strength to go forth into the byways and force it from others
at the point of the sword! I am old and feeble, and heart-broken--I
shall die first, and leave fatherless my good, kind daughter, whom I
sought for so long, and whom I loved as my only child!'

He paused for an instant, not to listen to the words of encouragement
and hope which Antonina mechanically addressed to him while he spoke,
but to collect his wandering thoughts, to rally his failing strength.
His voice acquired a quicker tone, and his features presented a sudden
energy and earnestness of expression, as if some new project had flashed
across his mind, when, after an interval, he continued thus:--

'But though my child shall be bereaved of me, though I shall die in the
hour when I most longed to live for her, I must not leave her helpless;
I will send her among my congregation who have deserted me, but who will
repent when they hear that I am dead, and will receive Antonina among
them for my sake! Listen to this--listen, listen! You must tell them
to remember all that I once revealed to them of my brother, from whom I
parted in my boyhood--my brother, whom I have never seen since. He may
yet be alive, he may be found--they must search for him; for to you he
would be father to the fatherless, and guardian to the unguarded--he may
now be in Rome, he may be rich and powerful--he may have food to spare,
and shelter that is good against all enemies and strangers! Attend,
child, to my words: in these latter days I have thought of him much; I
have seen him in dreams as I saw him for the last time in my father's
house; he was happier and more beloved than I was, and in envy and
hatred I quitted my parents and parted from him. You have heard nothing
of this; but you must hear it now, that when I am dead you may know you
have a protector to seek! So I received in anger my brother's farewell,
and fled from my home--(those days were well remembered by me once, but
all things grow dull on my memory now). Long years of turmoil and
change passed on, and I never met him; and men of many nations were my
companions, but he was not among them; then much affliction fell upon
me, and I repented and learnt the fear of God, and went back to my
father's house. Since that, years have passed--I know not how many. I
could have told them when I spoke of my former life to him--to my
friend, when we stood near St. Peter's, ere the city was besieged,
looking on the sunset, and speaking of the early days of our
companionship; but now my very remembrance fails me; the famine that
threatens us with separation and death casts darkness over my thoughts;
yet hear me, hear me patiently--for your sake I must continue!'

'Not now, father--not now! At another time, on a happier day!' murmured
Antonina, in tremulous, entreating tones.


'My home, when I arrived to look on it, was gone,' pursued the old man
sadly, neither heeding nor hearing her. 'Other houses were built where
my father's house had stood; no man could tell me of my parents and my
brother; then I returned, and my former companions grew hateful in my
eyes; I left them, and they followed me with persecution and scorn.--
Listen, listen!--I set forth secretly in the night, with you, to escape
them, and to make perfect my reformation where they should not be near
to hinder it; and we travelled onward many days until we came to Rome,
and I made my abode there. But I feared that my companions whom I
abhorred might discover and persecute me again, and in the new city of
my dwelling I called myself by another name than the name that I bore;
thus I knew that all trace of me would be lost, and that I should be
kept secure from men whom I thought on only as enemies now. Go, child!
go quickly!--bring your tablets and write down the names that I shall
tell you; for so you will discover your protector when I am gone! Say
not to him that you are the child of Numerian--he knows not the name;
say that you are the daughter of Cleander, his brother, who died longing
to be restored to him. Write--write carefully, Cleander!--that was the
name my father gave to me; that was the name I bore until I fled from my
evil companions and changed it, dreading their pursuit! Cleander! write
and remember, Cleander! I have seen in visions that my brother shall be
discovered: he will not be discovered to me, but he will be discovered
to you! Your tablets--your tablets!--write his name with mine--it is--'

He stopped abruptly. His mental powers, fluctuating between torpor and
animation--shaken, but not overpowered by the trials which had assailed
them--suddenly rallied, and resuming somewhat of their accustomed
balance, became awakened to a sense of their own aberration. His vague
revelations of his past life (which the reader will recognise as
resembling his communications on the same subject to the fugitive land-
owner, previously related) now appeared before him in all their
incongruity and uselessness. His countenance fell--he sighed bitterly
to himself: 'My reason begins to desert me!--my judgment, which should
guide my child--my resolution, which should uphold her, both fail me!
How should my brother, since childhood lost to me, be found by her?
Against the famine that threatens us I offer but vain words! Already
her strength declines; her face, that I loved to look on grows wan
before my eyes! God have mercy upon us!--God have mercy upon us!'

He returned feebly to his couch; his head declined on his bosom;
sometimes a low groan burst from his lips, but he spoke no more.

Deep as was the prostration under which he had now fallen, it was yet
less painful to Antonina to behold it than to listen to the incoherent
revelations which had fallen from his lips but the moment before, and
which, in her astonishment and affright, she had dreaded might be the
awful indications of the overthrow of her father's reason. As she again
placed herself by his side, she trembled to feel that her own weariness
was fast overpowering her; but she still struggled with her rising
despair--still strove to think only of capacity for endurance and
chances of relief.

The silence in the room was deep and dismal while they now sat together.
The faint breezes, at long intervals, drowsily rose and fell as they
floated through the open window; the fitful sunbeams alternately
appeared and vanished as the clouds rolled upward in airy succession
over the face of heaven. Time moved sternly in its destined progress,
and Nature varied tranquilly through its appointed limits of change, and
still no hopes, no saving projects, nothing but dark recollections and
woeful anticipations occupied Antonina's mind; when, just as her weary
head was drooping towards the ground, just as sensation and fortitude
and grief itself seemed declining into a dreamless and deadly sleep, a
last thought, void of discernible connection or cause, rose suddenly
within her--animating, awakening, inspiring. She started up. 'The
garden, father--the garden!' she cried breathlessly. 'Remember the food
that grows in our garden below! Be comforted, we have provision left
yet--God has not deserted us!'