Domitia

“Then, dear mistress, do not require of me to make answer.”

“Answer truly. Tell me no lie. What is it?”

He hesitated. Then Domitia said: —

“Look at my hand, it is firm, it does not tremble. Nothing that I hear can be worse than what I have seen.”

“Lady – your strength has already failed.”

“And now I have gathered my resolution together, and can bear anything. I adjure you, by your duty to me – answer me, what is taking place in the comitium, what is it that causes the streets leading thereto to be impassable.”

“If I must reply – ”

“If you do not, I will have you scourged.”

“Nay, lady, that is not like thee. It is not fear that will make me speak, but because I know that if I do not, the information can be got from another.”

“Well – what is it?”

“The knight Celer, on the same charge as that which lost the Great Mother Cornelia, is being whipped to death with the scorpion.”[15 - A scourge of leather thongs and nails knotted in them.]

“By the same orders? To my mother’s in the Carinæ.”

Hastily Domitia drew the curtains of her litter, and was seen no more, spoke no more till she reached the door of Longa Duilia.

Here she descended and entered the house.

“My dear Domitia! my august daughter! What a pleasure! What an honor!”

The lady Duilia started up to embrace the Empress.

Domitia received the kiss coldly, and sank silent on a stool.

Her mother looked at her with surprise. Domitia was waxen white, her eyes with dark rings about them, and unnaturally large and bright. The color had left her lips and these were leaden in hue.

Domitia did not speak, did not move. She remained for some moments like a statue.

“As the Gods love me!” exclaimed her mother after a long pause, “you are not going to be ill, surely – nothing dangerous, nothing likely to end unhappily. Ye Gods! and I have so much I want you to do for me. Tell me, I entreat you. Hide nothing from me. You are suffering. Where is it? What is it? Shall I send for a doctor?”

“Mother, no doctor can cure me. It is here,” Domitia pressed her hands to her heart – “and here,” to her temples. “I am the most miserable, the most unfortunate of women.”

“Ye Gods! He has divorced you?”

“No, mother. I would that he had.”

“Then what is the matter? Have you eaten what disagrees with you? As the Gods love me! you should not come out such a figure. Who was your face-dresser to-day? she ought to be crucified! Not a particle of paint – white as ivory. Intolerable – and it has given me such a turn.”

Domitia made no reply.

“But what is it? What has made you look like Parian marble?”

“The Great Mother Cornelia – ” Domitia could say no more, a lump rose in her throat and choked her. Then all at once she began to shiver as though frost-stricken and her teeth chattered.

“I have an essence – you must take that,” said the lady Duilia. “My dear, I know all about that. An estimable lady. I mean she was so till the Augustus decreed otherwise. I am sorry, and all that – but you know – well, these things do happen and must, and I dare be bound that some are glad, as it makes an opening for another needy girl, of good family of course. What is one person’s loss is another’s gain. The world is so and we can’t alter it, and a good thing, I say, that it is so.”

“Mother – she was innocent.”

“Well, well, we know all about that. Of course it was all nonsense what was charged against her, that we quite understand. It would never have done for the real truth to have been advertised.”

“And what was the truth?”

“My dear Domitia! How can you ask such a silly, infantile question? It was your doing, you must understand that. You threw yourself on her protection, embraced the altar of Vesta, and Cornelia with the assistance of Celer did what she could to further your object in leaving Rome. If people will do donkey-like things they must get a stick across their backs. It is so, and always will be so in this world, and we cannot make it otherwise.”

“I thought so. I was sure it was so,” said Domitia gravely. There was an infinity of sadness, of despair in her tone. “Mother, I bring misfortune upon all with whom I have to do.”

“Ye Gods! not on me! I hope to be preserved from that! Do not speak such unlucky words – they are of bad omen.”

“I cannot help it, mother, it is true. I am the most unfortunate of women myself – ”

“You speak rank folly. Ye Gods forgive me! saying such a thing to one who is herself divine. But, it is so – you are positively the most fortunate of women. What more do you desire? You are the Augusta, the people swear by your genius and fortune.”

“By my fortune! Alack poor souls!”

“And is it not a piece of good fortune to be raised so high that there is none above you?”

“My fortune! The Gods know – if they know anything – that I would gladly exchange my lot with that of a poor woman in a cottage who spins and sings, or of a girl among the mountains who keeps goats and is defended by a boisterous dog. Mother, listen to me. I have brought misfortune on Lucius Lamia, I have caused the death of that harmless actor Paris, I have been the occasion of Cornelia being – buried alive – watching the expiring of the one lamp. Ye Gods! Ye Gods! I shall go mad – and of Celer also. – He – ”

She held her face, rocked herself on the seat and sobbed as if her heart would break.

“Yes,” said the old lady, roused to anger at her daughter’s lack of appreciation of the splendor of her position. “Yes, child, and mischief you will work on every one, if you continue in the same course. Do men say that the Augustus is morose? Who made him so? – you by your behavior. Do they say that he is severe in his judgments? Who has hardened him and made him cruel? – You – who have dried up all the springs of tenderness in his breast. He was not so at first. If he be what men think – it is your work. You with your stinging words goaded him to madness and as he cannot or will not beat you, as you deserve, he deals the blows on some one else. Of course he cuts away such as you regard and love – because they obtain that to which he has a right, but which you deny him.”

“He – he – a right!”

Domitia started up, anger, resentment, hatred flared in her eyes, stiffened the muscles of her whole face, made her hair bristle above her brow.

“He a right, mother! he who tore me away from my dear Lamia, to whom I had given my whole heart, to whom I had been united by your sanction and our union blessed by the Gods! He who violated hospitality, the most sacred rights that belong to a house, who repaid your kindness in saving his life – when he was hunted like a wolf, by breaking and destroying, by trampling under his accursed heel, the brittle, innocent heart of the daughter of her who had protected him! No, mother, I owed him no love. I have never given him any, because he never had a right to any. Mother – this must have an end.”

She sank into silence that continued for some while.

Duilia did not speak. She did not desire another such explosion, lest the slaves should hear and betray what had been said. Presently, however, she whispered coaxingly: —

“My dear Domitia, you are overwrought. You have eaten something that has affected your temper. I find gherkins always disagree with me. There, go and take a little ginger in white wine, and sleep it off.”

Domitia rose, stiffly, as though all her joints were wooden.

“Yes, mother, I will go. But there is one thing I desire of thee. I have long coveted it, as a remembrancer of my father – may I take it?”

“Anything – anything you like.”