CHAPTER XIII.
NIGHT.
The unconscious officer's wound was hastily but skilfully bound up and the blood stanched, he was raised in a lectica or litter, and carried home with great care to his mansion. In the quietest chamber of the house, he was laid upon a costly bed, one of rare wood with feet of ivory and with purple coverlets curiously broidered with gold.
Titanus, having done his utmost, had gone away with Carnion, much cast down, the more so that he was under command by the emperor to leave Rome immediately on foreign service.
Coryna was left beside her brother, with the physician and a faithful intelligent slave. The depth of her feelings could not be sounded, yet there was staying power of a kind. Grief, admiration and anxiety surged around a will of rock. Within, a whirling storm: without, a pallid calm. She watched for the first signs of consciousness as the eagle watches for its prey.
Tharsos lay as if in death, with the soft light of serenity still on his manly face and classic brow. He moved at last and opened his eyes.
"Where is the Christian maiden?" said he in dreamy feebleness, his expression changing into a look of anxiety.
Much relieved in tension, Coryna answered softly—
"Some kind one quickly conveyed her away, my brother, but I have sent several of our slaves over the city to find out her lodging-place and to enquire after her health."
A radiant joy covered his face, and he remained silent for a little. Then he spoke with quiet earnestness:—
"My sister, thou knowest her worth. Look after her, I pray thee, for her own sake, and for the sake of Him she serves so well. But"—and here he halted, trying painfully to take a deep breath.
"Speak not, my brother," said Coryna soothingly.
Becoming calm, he resumed—"Hasten the search, Coryna; ask the maiden to come and see me before I die. Tell her that I shall regard her visit as a kindness and honour. I desire much to speak to her, my beloved sister, to place thee in her care, and then I shall die in peace." Tharsos spoke these last words very feebly, and then closing his eyes he sank bask into unconsciousness.
Coryna's heart was torn, but she would not renounce hope.
*****
It was difficult to trace where Pathema had gone, humble Christian friends having taken her to a remote, obscure, but comfortable home. One messenger, however, got word of her whereabouts late the same night, but too late to be prudent to call. When he knocked at the door next day he did not know that the object of his search was well informed through her friends concerning Tharsos' critical state, and that already there was a brief, beautiful, tablet-letter in her own handwriting, lying near his unconscious pillow.
Weakened by her cruel experience, Pathema was resting quietly upon a couch beside a small open window, her heart full of gratitude to God for deliverance and of anxiety about her human deliverer.
"Is there a maiden named Pathema lodging here?" Marcellus, the messenger, enquired.
"There is, sir," said a little Roman maid, the daughter of the hostess, much excited as she looked out into the street and saw six slaves in red livery standing beside a grand palanquin.
"My master, Tharsos, is at the point of death, but he would like to see the Christian maiden ere he die."
Pathema overheard these words, and rose up at once. Though weak in body, she was resolute in mind, and she had enjoyed a providential night's rest. There was no delay in arranging matters, and she stepped into the lectica calmly but as one about to go through a painful ordeal.
After elbowing their way through the streets, Marcellus leading, the slaves at length laid their burden down beside a statue of Caractacus in the vestibule before the door of the young nobleman's mansion.
Like the usual Roman dwelling, the exterior was not prepossessing; but when Marcellus opened the door, the prospective view was peculiarly magnificent. The doors and curtains of successive courts were drawn aside, revealing active fountains, marble pillars with splendid statuary, and a lawn and shrubbery exposed above to the blue Italian sky.
Pathema ascended the marble steps, and passing through the richly gilded door inlaid with tortoise-shell, she stood for a moment on the mosaic floor of the ostium or entrance hall. Overhead, a parrot of brilliant plumage greeted her with the salutation, "Joy be with thee." Going straight on for a few feet, she passed into the atrium, a pillared court, where Coryna, the image of Tharsos in finer mould, met her and kissed her hand in touching silence.
Leading the way, Coryna went on through the cavaedium, a larger Corinthian-columned court, in whose centre stood a splashing fountain, shooting its crystal stream towards the open sky. Passing the tablinum or room of archives, they proceeded into the peristylium, a still larger transverse court or lawn with verdant shrubbery and a chaste towering fountain.
Here there was a Roman lady, elegantly dressed and richly jewelled. Her dark-complexioned face was strikingly beautiful, yet marred by a lofty look of haughtiness. She walked around the lawn with the alert graceful movements of a panther. Evidently she was laboring under considerable excitement, and when Coryna and Pathema entered, her black eyes flashed out a deadly scorn.
Inwardly disturbed, yet meeting the lady's look with a smile, Coryna turned aside between the marble columns into one of the exedrae or rooms for conversation. Guiding Pathema to a comfortable seat, she spoke for the first time, saying,
"Welcome to our home!"
"I thank thee for the honour," answered Pathema, "and I am glad to come, yet greatly pained."
"My brother did right," was the quiet response.
"Receive, I pray thee," said Pathema in tears, "my deepest gratitude for thy brother's deed."
"Tharsos will yet receive it personally," was the happy answer.
"I rejoice to hear thy hope," replied Pathema with brightening eyes.
"I have hope, but the physicians have little or none."
After a little further conversation during which the visitor's whole heart was drawn out to the noble character before her, Coryna craved liberty for a moment to bid her friend in the peristylium farewell. As she went out, a female slave entered to wait upon Pathema and show her every necessary attention. The slave was not long in her presence when she bewailed the calamity that had come upon her beloved master. Then she mentioned that the young lady in the peristylium was much distressed.
"Emerentia," she continued, "loves him exceedingly, and he liked her in return. Her father and mother leave to-day for a distant city of the empire, and she goes with them."
Pathema was grieved, and she expressed the fervent hope that the nobleman would recover, for the distressed lady's sake, as well as his own.
"Emerentia," added the slave, "is generous and accomplished—that is why the master liked her—but her goodness is not so strong as her pride and jealousy. The lady is fierce in her feelings. She hates the Christians, and more so now than ever."
After a few minutes Coryna returned, restrained and quiet, but with the trace of a tear that had stolen down her fair face.
"My brother," said she with hesitation, "earnestly desired that thou shouldst come and stay with me for a time. Is this possible? May I hope it is."
Pathema was taken by surprise. Her home and beloved parents and the poor of Patara had been much in her heart. Her father had been more than once in Rome, trying to obtain her liberty, and he had provided long ago the temporary abode she had been carried to by Christian friends. This now swept across her vision. But it was quickly followed by another picture—the self-sacrificing act of the nobleman in whose mansion she was now a guest. And he was dying—so the physicians feared. Duty—gratitude—consolation—everything demanded her presence. Her answer was unhesitating and prompt—
"I will stay with thee."
And Coryna bent down and kissed her, with a feeling that was warmly returned.
Tharsos was beyond the stage of knowing anyone. In spite of the best medical skill, fever had quickly set in, and the battle began in earnest between life and death.
Now was the opportunity for a woman's soldiership—soldiership of the highest kind—where woman only can excel. The weapons are experience, presence of mind, patience, endurance and compassion. With all these Pathema was perfectly armed, her value was speedily recognised, and she became an unassuming soldier in the strife. There were days and nights of anxious care and watching, the utmost was performed, and nothing left undone. Yet Tharsos seemed to be marching straight without resource to the grim enemy's gloomy gate. The thought was painful beyond measure, but it seemed to Pathema that the noble-minded man must die!
While the fever lay upon him he spoke in bits of sentences about the Nazarene, mysterious, divine! and the devoted disciple Pathema. His language was now subdued and reverential, tender and touching, as if he stood in the presence of unearthly beings; then indignant, emphatic, even wild, as if he were again surrounded by the cruel and inquisitive multitude—a wildness wholly unlike that of the quiet reserved man in health. Sitting up and pointing to the walls he would cry—
"Great God! the fiends, mad, malignant, blood-thirsty, the fiends of Tartarus have entered thy fair world in the bodies of men."