Domitia. Baring-Gould Sabine

sea of – ”

      “Of what?” sneered Duilia, “say it out – of nobody knows what.”

      “That which thou sayest, dearest father, will not sleep in my heart.”

      “Domitia, when we sail at sea, we direct our course by the stars. Without the stars we should not know whither to steer. And the steering of the vessel by the stars, that is seamanship. So in life. There are principles of right and wrong set in the firmament – ”

      “Where?” asked Duilia. “As the Gods love me, I never saw them.”

      “By them,” continued Corbulo, disregarding the interruption, “we must shape our course, and this true shaping of our course, and not drifting with tides, or blown hither and thither by winds – this is the seamanship of life.”

      “By the Gods!” said Duilia. “You must first find your stars. I hold what you say to be rank nonsense. Where are your stars? Principles! You keep your constellations in the hold of your vessel. My good Corbulo, our own interest, that we can always see, and by that we ought ever to steer.”

      “Father,” said the girl, “I see a centurion and a handful of soldiers coming this way – and, if I mistake not, Lamia is speeding ahead of them.”

      “Well, go then, and play with the kid. Hear how the little creature bleats after thee.”

      She obeyed, and the old soldier watched his darling, with his heart in his eyes.

      Presently, when she was beyond hearing, he said: —

      “Now about the future of Domitia. I wish her no better fortune than to become the wife of Lucius Ælius Lamia, whom I love as my son. He has been in and out among us at Antioch. He returns with me to Rome. In these evil times, for a girl there is one only chance – to be given a good husband. This I hold, that a woman is never bad unless man shows her the way. If, as you say, there be no stars in the sky – there is love in the heart. By Hercules! here comes Lamia, and something ails him.”

      Lucius was seen approaching through the garden. His face was ashen-gray, and he was evidently a prey to the liveliest distress.

      He hastened to Corbulo, but although his lips moved, he could not utter a word.

      “You would speak with me,” said the old general rising, and looking steadily in the young man’s face.

      Something he saw there made him divine his errand.

      Then Corbulo turned, kissed his wife, and said —

      “Farewell. I am rightly served.”

      He took a step from her, looked towards Domitia, who was dancing to her kid, above whose reach she held a bunch of parsley.

      He hesitated for a moment. His inclination drew him towards her; but a second thought served to make him abandon so doing, and instead, he bent back to his wife, and said to her, with suppressed emotion —

      “Bid her from me – as my last command – Follow the Light where and when she sees it.”

      CHAPTER IV.

      THERE IS NO STAR

      A quarter of an hour had elapsed since Corbulo entered the peristyle of the villa, when the young man Lamia came out.

      He was still pale as death, and his muscles twitched with strong emotion.

      He glanced about him in quest of Longa Duilia, but that lady had retired precipitately to the gynaikonitis, or Lady’s hall, where she had summoned to her a bevy of female slaves and had accumulated about her an apothecary’s shop of restoratives.

      Domitia was still in the garden, playing with the kid, and Lamia at once went to her, not speedily, but with repugnance.

      She immediately desisted from her play, and smiled at his approach. They were old acquaintances, and had seen much of each other in Syria.

      Corbulo had not been proconsul, but legate in the East, and had made Antioch his headquarters. He had been engaged against the Parthians and Armenians for eight years, but the war had been intermittent, and between the campaigns he had returned to Antioch, to the society of his wife and little daughter.

      The former, a dashing, vain and ambitious woman, had made a salon there which was frequented by the best society of the province. Corbulo, a quiet, thoughtful and modest man, shrunk from the stir and emptiness of such life, and had found rest and enjoyment in the company of his daughter.

      Lamia had served as his secretary and aide-de-camp. He was a youth of much promise, and of singular integrity of mind and purity of morals in a society that was self-seeking, voluptuous, and corrupt.

      He belonged to the Ælian gens or clan, but he had been adopted by a Lamia, a member of a family in the same clan, that claimed descent from Lamius, a son of Poseidon, or Neptune, by one of those fictions so dear to the Roman noble houses, and which caused the fabrication of mythical origins, just as the ambition of certain honorable families in England led to the falsification of the Roll of Battle Abbey.

      Pliny tells a horrible story of the first Lamia of importance, known to authentic history. He had been an adherent of Cæsar and a friend of Cicero. He was supposed to be dead in the year in which he had been elected prætor, and was placed on the funeral pyre, when consciousness returned, but too late for him to be saved. The flames rose and enveloped him, and he died shrieking and struggling to escape from the bandages that bound him to the bier on which he lay.

      Lucius Lamia had been kindly treated by Corbulo, and the young man’s heart had gone out to the venerated general, to whom he looked up as a model of all the old Roman virtues, as well as a man of commanding military genius. The simplicity of the old soldier’s manner and the freshness of his mind had acted as a healthful and bracing breeze upon the youth’s moral character.

      And now he took the young girl by the hand, and walked with her up and down the pleached avenues for some moments without speaking.

      His breast heaved. His head swam. His hand that held hers worked convulsively.

      All at once Domitia stood still.

      She had looked up wondering at his manner, into his eyes, and had seen that they were full.

      “What ails you, Lucius?”

      “Come, sit by me on the margin of the basin,” said he. “By the Gods! I conjure thee to summon all thy fortitude. I have news to communicate, and they of the saddest – ”

      “What! are we not to return to Rome? O Lamia, I was a child when I left it, but I love our house at Gabii, and the lake there, and the garden.”

      “It is worse than that, Domitia.” He seated himself on the margin of a basin, and nervously, not knowing what he did, drew his finger in the water, describing letters, and chasing the darting fish.

      “Domitia, you belong to an ancient race. You are a Roman, and have the blood of the Gods in your veins. So nerve thy heroic soul to hear the worst.”

      And still he thrust after the frightened fish with his finger, and she looked down, and saw them dart like shadows in the pool, and her own frightened thoughts darted as nimbly and as blindly about in her head.

      “Why, how now, Lamia? Thou art descended by adoption from the Earth-shakes, and tremblest as a girl! See – a tear fell into the basin. Oh, Lucius! My very kid rears in surprise.”

      “Do not mock. Prepare for the worst. Think what would be the sorest ill that could befall thee.”

      Domitia withdrew her eyes from the fish and the water surface rippled by his finger, and looked now with real terror in his face.

      “My father?”

      Then Lamia raised his dripping finger and pointed to the house.

      She looked, and saw that the gardener had torn down boughs of cypress, and therewith was decorating the doorway.

      At the same moment rose a long-drawn, desolate wail, rising, falling, ebbing, flowing – a sea of sound infinitely sad, heart-thrilling, blood-congealing.

      For