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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina





'Hear me,' pursued Vetranio, in low, gloomy tones. 'I stood alone in my
doomed palace; the friends whom I had tempted to their destruction lay
lifeless around me; the torch was in my hand that was to light our
funeral pile, to set us free from the loathsome world! I approached
triumphantly to kindle the annihilating flames, when she stood before
me--she, whom I had sought as lost and mourned as dead! A strong hand
seemed to wrench the torch from me; it dropped to the ground! She
departed again; but I was powerless to take it up; her look was still
before me; her face, her figure, she herself, appeared ever watching
between the torch and me!'

'Lower!--speak lower!' interrupted the physician, looking on the
senator's agitated features with unconcealed astonishment and pity.
'You retard your own recovery,--you disturb the girl's repose by
discourse such as this.'

'The officers of the senate,' continued Vetranio, sadly resuming his
gentler tones, 'when they entered the palace, found me still standing on
the place where we had met! Days passed on again; I stood looking out
upon the street, and thought of my companions whom I had lured to their
death, and of my oath to partake their fate, which I had never
fulfilled. I would have driven my dagger to my heart; but her face was
yet before me, my hands were bound! In that hour I saw her for the
second time; saw her carried past me--wounded, assassinated! She had
saved me once; she had saved me twice! I knew that now the chance was
offered me, after having wrought her ill, to work her good; after
failing to discover her when she was lost, to succeed in saving her when
she was dying; after having survived the deaths of my friends at my own
table, to survive to see life restored under my influence, as well as
destroyed! These were my thoughts; these are my thoughts still--
thoughts felt only since I saw her! Do you know now why I believe that
her soul contains the fate of mine? Do you see me, weakened, shattered,
old before my time; my friends lost, my fresh feelings of youth gone for
ever; and can you not now comprehend that her life is my life?--that if
she dies, the one good purpose of my existence is blighted?--that I lose
all I have henceforth to live for?--all, all!'

As he pronounced the concluding words, the girl's eyes half unclosed,
and turned languidly towards her father. She made an effort to lift her
hand caressingly from his knee to his neck; but her strength was unequal
even to this slight action. The hand was raised only a few inches ere
it sank back again to its old position; a tear rolled slowly over her
cheek as she closed her eyes again, but she never spoke.

'See,' said the physician, pointing to her, 'the current of life is at
its lowest ebb! If it flows again, it must flow to-night.'

Vetranio made no answer; he dropped down on the seat near him, and
covered his face with his robe.

The physician, beholding the senator's situation, and reflecting on the
strange hurriedly-uttered confession which had just been addressed to
him, began to doubt whether the scenes through which his patron had
lately passed had not affected his brain. Philosopher though he was,
the man of science had never observed the outward symptoms of the first
working of good and pure influences in elevating a degraded mind; he had
never watched the denoting signs of speech and action which mark the
progress of mental revolution while the old nature is changing for the
new; such objects of contemplation existed not for him. He gently
touched Vetranio on the shoulder. 'Rise,' said he, 'and let us depart.
Those are around her who can watch her best. Nothing remains for us but
to wait and hope. With the earliest morning we will return.'

He delivered a few farewell directions to one of the women in
attendance, and then, accompanied by the senator, who, without speaking
again, mechanically rose to follow him, quitted the room. After this,
the silence was only interrupted by the sound of an occasional whisper,
and of quick, light footsteps passing backwards and forwards. Then the
cooling, reviving draughts which had been prepared for the night were
poured ready into the cups; and the women approached Numerian, as if to
address him, but he waved his hand impatiently when he saw them; and
then they too, in their turn, departed, to wait in an adjoining
apartment until they should be summoned again.


Nothing changed in the manner of the father when he was left alone in
the chamber of sickness, which the lapse of a few hours might convert
into the chamber of death. He sat watching Antonina, and touching the
outspread locks of her hair from time to time, as had been his wont. It
was a fair, starry night; the fresh air of the soft winter climate of
the South blew gently over the earth, the great city was sinking fast
into tranquillity, calling voices were sometimes heard faintly from the
principal streets, and the distant noises of martial music sounded
cheerily from the Gothic camp as the sentinels were posted along the
line of watch; but soon these noises ceased, and the stillness of Rome
was as the stillness round the couch of the wounded girl.

Day after day, and night after night, since the assassination in the
temple, Numerian had kept the same place by his daughter's side. Each
hour as it passed found him still absorbed in his long vigil of hope;
his life seemed suspended in its onward course by the one influence that
now enthralled it. At the brief intervals when his bodily weariness
overpowered him on his melancholy watch, it was observed by those around
him that, even in his short dreaming clumbers, his face remained ever
turned in the same direction, towards the head of the couch, as if drawn
thither by some irresistible attraction, by some powerful ascendancy,
felt even amid the deepest repose of sensation, the heaviest fatigue of
the overlaboured mind, and worn, sinking heart. He held no
communication, save by signs, with the friends about him; he seemed
neither to hope, to doubt, nor to despair with them; all his faculties
were strung up to vibrate at one point only, and were dull and
unimpressible in every other direction.

But twice had he been heard to speak more than the fewest, simplest
words. The first time, when Antonina uttered the name of Goisvintha, on
the recovery of her senses after her wound, he answered eagerly by
reiterated declarations that there was nothing henceforth to fear; for
he had seen the assassin dead under the Pagan's foot on leaving the
temple. The second time, when mention was incautiously made before him
of rumours circulated through Rome of the burning of an unknown Pagan
priest, hidden in the temple of Serapis, with vast treasures around him,
the old man was seen to start and shudder, and heard to pray for the
soul that was now waiting before the dread judgment-seat; to murmur
about a vain restoration and a discovery made too late; to mourn over
horror that thickened round him, over hope fruitlessly awakened, and
bereavement more terrible than mortal had ever suffered before; to
entreat that the child, the last left of all, might be spared--with many
words more, which ran on themes like these, and which were counted by
all who listened to them but as the wanderings of a mind whose higher
powers were fatally prostrated by feebleness and grief.

One long hour of the night had already passed away since parent and
child had been left together, and neither word nor movement had been
audible in the melancholy room. But, as the second hour began, the
girl's eyes unclosed again, and she moved painfully on the couch.
Accustomed to interpret the significance of her slightest actions,
Numerian rose and brought her one of the reviving draughts that had been
left ready for use. After she had drunk, when her eyes met her father's
fixed on her in mute and mournful inquiry, her lips closed, and formed
themselves into an expression which he remembered they had always
assumed when, as a little child, she used silently to hold up her face
to him to be kissed. The miserable contrast between what she was now
and what she had been them, was beyond the passive endurance, the
patient resignation of the spirit-broken old man; the empty cup dropped
from his hands, he knelt down by the side of the couch and groaned
aloud.

'O father! father!' cried the weak, plaintive voice above him. 'I am
dying! Let us remember that our time to be together here grows shorter
and shorter, and let us pass it as happily as we can!'

He raised his head, and looked up at her, vacant and wistful, forlorn
already, as if the death-parting was over.


'I have tried to live humbly and gratefully,' she sighed faintly. 'I
have longed to do more good on the earth than I have done! Yet you will
forgive me now, father, as you have always forgiven me! You have been
patient with me all my life; more patient than I have ever deserved!
But I had no mother to teach me to love you as I ought, to teach me what
I know now, when my death is near, and time and opportunity are mine no
longer!'

'Hush! hush!' whispered the old man affrightedly; 'you will live! God
is good, and knows that we have suffered enough. The curse of the last
separation is not pronounced against us! Live, live!'

'Father,' said the girl tenderly, 'we have that within us which not
death itself can separate. In another world I shall still think of you
when you think of me! I shall see you even when I am no more here, when
you long to see me! When you got out alone, and sit under the trees on
the garden bank where I used to sit; when you look forth on the far
plains and mountains that I used to look on; when you read at night in
the Bible that we have read in together, and remember Antonina as you
lie down sorrowful to rest; then I shall see you! then you will feel
that I am looking on you! You will be calm and consoled, even by the
side of my grave; for you will think, not of the body that is beneath,
but of the spirit that is waiting for you, as I have often waited for
you here when you were away, and I knew that the approach of the evening
would bring you home again!'

'Hush! you will live!--you will live!' repeated Numerian in the same
low, vacant tones. The strength that still upheld him was in those few
simple words; they were the food of a hope that was born in agony and
cradled in despair.

'Oh, if I might live!' said the girl softly, 'if I might live but for a
few days yet, how much I have to live for!' She endeavoured to bend her
head towards her father as she spoke; for the words were beginning to
fall faintly and more faintly from her lips--exhaustion was mastering
her once again. She dwelt for a moment now on the name of Hermanric, on
the grave in the farm-house garden; then reverted again to her father.
The last feeble sounds she uttered were addressed to him; and their
burden was still of consolation and of love.

Soon the old man, as he stooped over her, saw her eyes close again--
those innocent, gentle eyes which even yet preserved their old
expression while the face grew wan and pale around them--and darkness
and night sank down over his soul while he looked. 'She sleeps,' he
murmured in a voice of awe, as he resumed his watching position by the
side of the couch. 'They call death a sleep; but on her face there is
no death!'

The night grew on. The women who were in attendance entered the room
about midnight, wondering that their assistance had not yet been
required. They beheld the solemn, unruffled composure on the girl's
wasted face; the rapt attention of Numerian, as he ever preserved the
same attitude by her side; and went out again softly without uttering a
word, even in a whisper. There was something dread and impressive in
the very appearance of this room, where Death, that destroys, was in
mortal conflict with Youth and Beauty, that adorn, while the eyes of one
old man watched in loneliness the awful progress of the strife.

Morning came, and still there was no change. Once, when the lamp that
lit the room was fading out as the dawn appeared, Numerian had risen and
looked close on his daughter's face--he thought at that moment that her
features moved; but he saw that the flickering of the dying light on
them had deceived him; the same stillness was over her. He placed his
ear close to her lips for an instant, and then resumed his place, not
stirring from it again. The slow current of his blood seemed to have
come to a pause--he was waiting as a man waits with his head on the
block ere the axe descends--as a mother waits to hear that the breath of
life has entered her new-born child.


The sun rose bright in a cloudless sky. As the fresh, sharp air of the
early dawn warmed under its spreading rays, the women entered the
apartment again, and partly drew aside the curtain and shutter from the
window. The beams of the new light fell fair and glorifying on the
girl's face; the faint, calm breezed ruffled the lighter locks of her
hair. Once this would have awakened her; but it did not disturb her
now.

Soon after the voice of the child who sojourned with the women in the
house was heard beneath, in the hall, through the half-opened door of
the room. The little creature was slowly ascending the stairs, singing
her faltering morning song to herself. She was preceded on her approach
by a tame dove, bought at the provision market outside the walls, but
preserved for the child as a pet and plaything by its mother. The bird
fluttered, cooing, into the room, perched upon the head of the couch,
and began dressing its feathers there. The women had caught the
infection of the old man's enthralling suspense; and moved not to bid
the child retire, or to take away the dove from its place--they watched
like him. But the soft, lulling notes of the bird were powerless over
the girl's ear, as the light sunbeam over her face--still she never
woke.

The child entered, and pausing in her song, climbed on to the side of
the couch. She held out one little hand for the dove to perch upon,
placed the other lightly on Antonina's shoulder, and pressed her fresh,
rosy lips to girl's faded cheek. 'I and my bird have come to make
Antonina well this morning,' she said gravely.

The still, heavily-closed eyelids moved!--they quivered, opened, closed,
then opened again. The eyes had a faint, dreaming, unconscious look;
but Antonina lived! Antonina was awakened at last to another day on
earth!

Her father's rigid, straining gaze still remained fixed upon her as at
first, but on his countenance there was a blank, an absence of all
appearance of sensation and life. The women, as they looked on Antonina
and looked on him, began to weep; the child resumed very softly its
morning song, now addressing it to the wounded girl and now to the dove.

At this moment Vetranio and the physician appeared on the scene. The
latter advanced to the couch, removed the child from it, and examined
Antonina intently. At length, partly addressing Numerian, partly
speaking to himself, he said: 'She has slept long, deeply, without
moving, almost without breathing--a sleep like death to all who looked
on it.'

The old man spoke not in reply, but the women answered eagerly in the
affirmative.

'She is saved,' pursued the physician, leisurely quitting the side of
the couch and smiling on Vetranio; 'be careful of her for days and days
to come.'

'Saved! saved!' echoed the child joyfully, setting the dove free in the
room, and running to Numerian to climb on his knees. The father glanced
down when the clear young voice sounded in his ear. The springs of joy,
so long dried up in his heart, welled forth again as he saw the little
hands raised towards him entreatingly; his grey head drooped--he wept.

At a sign from the physician the child was led from the room. The
silence of deep and solemn emotion was preserved by all who remained;
nothing was heard but the suppressed sobs of the old man, and the faint,
retiring notes of the infant voice still singing its morning song. And
now one word, joyfully reiterated again and again, made all the burden
of the music--

'SAVED! SAVED!'


THE CONCLUSION. 'UBI THESAURUS IBI COR.'


Shortly after the opening of the provision markets outside the gates of
Rome, the Goths broke up their camp before the city and retired to
winter quarters in Tuscany. The negotiations which ensued between
Alaric and the Court and Government at Ravenna, were conducted with
cunning moderation by the conqueror, and with infatuated audacity by the
conquered, and ultimately terminated in a resumption of hostilities.
Rome was besiege and second and a third time by 'the barbarians'. On
the latter occasion the city was sacked, its palaces were burnt, its
treasures were seized; the monuments of the Christian religion were
alone respected.

But it is no longer with the Goths that our narrative is concerned; the
connection with them which it has hitherto maintained closes with the
end of the first siege of Rome. We can claim the reader's attention for
historical events no more--the march of our little pageant, arrayed for
his pleasure, is over. If, however, he has felt, and still retains,
some interest in Antonina, he will not refuse to follow us, and look on
her again ere we part.

More than a month had passed since the besieging army had retired to
their winter quarters, when several of the citizens of Rome assembled
themselves on the plains beyond the walls, to enjoy one of those rustic
festivals of ancient times, which are still celebrated, under different
usages, but with the same spirit, by the Italians of modern days.

The place was a level plot of ground beyond the Pincian Gate, backed by
a thick grove of pine trees, and looking towards the north over the
smooth extent of the country round Rome. The persons congregated were
mostly of the lower class. Their amusements were dancing, music, games
of strength and games of chance; and, above all, to people who had
lately suffered the extremities of famine, abundant eating and
drinking--long, serious, ecstatic enjoyment of the powers of mastication
and the faculties of taste.

Among the assembly were some individuals whose dress and manner raised
them, outwardly at least, above the general mass. These persons walked
backwards and forwards together on different parts of the ground as
observers, not as partakers in the sports. One of their number,
however, in whatever direction he turned, preserved an isolated
position. He held an open letter in his hand, which he looked at from
time to time, and appeared to be wholly absorbed in his own thoughts.
This man we may advantageously particularise on his own account, as well
as on account of the peculiarity of his accidental situation; for he was
the favoured minister of Vetranio's former pleasures--'the industrious
Carrio'.

The freedman (who was last introduced to the reader in Chapter XIV., as
exhibiting to Vetranio the store of offal which he had collected during
the famine for the consumption of the palace) had contrived of late
greatly to increase his master's confidence in him. On the organisation
of the Banquet of Famine, he had discreetly refrained from testifying
the smallest desire to save himself from the catastrophe in which the
senator and his friends had determined to involve themselves. Securing
himself in a place of safety, he awaited the end of the orgie; and when
he found that its unexpected termination left his master still living to
employ him, appeared again as a faithful servant, ready to resume his
customary occupation with undiminished zeal.

After the dispersion of his household during the famine, and amid the
general confusion of the social system in Rome, on the raising of the
blockade, Vetranio found no one near him that he could trust but
Carrio--and he trusted him. Nor was the confidence misplaced: the man
was selfish and sordid enough; but these very qualities ensured his
fidelity to his master as long as that master retained the power to
punish and the capacity to reward.


The letter which Carrio held in his hand was addressed to him at a
villa--from which he had just returned--belonging to Vetranio, on the
shores of the Bay of Naples, and was written by the senator from Rome.
The introductory portions of this communication seemed to interest the
freedman but little: they contained praised of his diligence in
preparing the country-house for the immediate habitation of its owner,
and expressed his master's anxiety to quit Rome as speedily as possible,
for the sake of living in perfect tranquillity, and breathing the
reviving air of the sea, as the physicians had counselled. It was the
latter part of the letter that Carrio perused and re-perused, and then
meditated over with unwonted attention and labour of mind. It ran
thus:--

'I have now to repose in you a trust, which you will execute with
perfect fidelity as you value my favour or respect the wealth from which
you may obtain your reward. When you left Rome you left the daughter of
Numerian lying in danger of death: she has since revived. Questions
that I have addressed to her during her recovery have informed me of
much in her history that I knew not before; and have induced me to
purchase, for reasons of my own, a farm-house and its lands, beyond the
suburbs. (The extent of the place and its situation are written on the
vellum that is within this.) The husbandman who cultivated the property
had survived the famine, and will continue to cultivate it for me. But
it is my desire that the garden, and all that it contains, shall remain
entirely at the disposal of Numerian and his daughter, who may often
repair to it; and who must henceforth be regarded there as occupying my
place and having my authority. You will divide your time between
overlooking the few slaves whom I leave at the palace in my absence, and
the husbandman and his labourers whom I have installed at the farm; and
you will answer to me for the due performance of your own duties and the
duties of those under you--being assured that by well filling this
office you will serve your own interests in these, and in all things
besides.'

The letter concluded by directing the freedman to return to Rome on a
certain day, and to go to the farm-house at an appointed hour, there to
meet his master, who had further directions to give him, and who would
visit the newly acquired property before he proceeded on his journey to
Naples.

Nothing could exceed the perplexity of Carrio as he read the passage in
his patron's letter which we have quoted above. Remembering the
incidents attending Vetranio's early connection with Antonina and her
father, the mere circumstances of a farm having been purchased to
flatter what was doubtless some accidental caprice on the part of the
girl, would have little perplexed him. But that this act should be
followed by the senator's immediate separation of himself from the
society of Numerian's daughter; that she was to gain nothing after all
from these lands which had evidently been bought at her instigation, but
the authority over a little strip of garden; and yet, the inviolability
of this valueless privilege should be insisted on in such serious terms,
and with such an imperative tone of command as the senator had never
been known to use before--these were inconsistencies which all Carrio's
ingenuity failed to reconcile. The man had been born and reared in
vice; vice had fed him, clothed him, freed him, given him character,
reputation, power in his own small way--he lived in it as in the
atmosphere that he breathed; to show him an action, referable only to a
principle of pure integrity, was to set him a problem which it was
hopeless to solve. And yet it is impossible, in one point of view, to
pronounce him utterly worthless. Ignorant of all distinctions between
good and bad, he thought wrong from sheer inability to see right.

However his instructions might perplex him, he followed them now--and
continued in after days to follow them--to the letter. If to serve
one's own interests be an art, of that art Carrio deserved to be head
professor. He arrived at the farm-house, not only punctually, but
before the appointed time, and calling the honest husbandman and the
labourers about him, explained to them every particular of the authority
that his patron had vested in him, with a flowing and peremptory
solemnity of speech which equally puzzled and impressed his simple
audience. He found Numerian and Antonina in the garden when he entered
it. The girl had been carried there daily in a litter since her
recovery, and her father had followed. They were never separated now;
the old man, when his first absorbing anxiety for her was calmed,
remembered again more distinctly the terrible disclosure in the temple,
and the yet more terrible catastrophe that followed it, and he sought
constant refuge from the horror of the recollection in the presence of
his child.