Roads from Rome

by Anne C. E. Allinson

With a start she realised that to-day was the festival of Fors Fortuna. In the hurried morning she had forgotten to remind Marcus of his prayers. In the days when the farm had been sure of the largest harvest in the neighbourhood this summer festival had been brilliantly celebrated, and as long as Marcus's father had lived the family had still cherished the quaint rites and the merrymaking of a holiday especially dear to the common people of both city and country. But in these later years there had been neither time nor money for any fêtes. Piety, however, was still left, and it was characteristic of the scrupulousness persisting in Marcus's mother through all the demoralising experiences of poverty that, after she had finished the heavier tasks, she should set to work to mark the religious day by a freshly washed cloth upon the table, with a bowl of red roses picked from the bush that grew by the doorway, and a gala supper of new-laid eggs, lentil soup and goat's milk cheese.

In the meantime Marcus had been having adventures. His pasture was on a grassy plateau of a mountain slope, edged by heavy green cypresses and dotted with holm-oaks. In the woods above him chestnut and walnut trees showed vividly against the silver olives. Below stretched the shining waters of the Larian Lake. Here, while the sheep browsed happily, he was wont to feed his little soul on dreams. Sitting to-day where he could look out to a distant horizon, his blue tunic seeming to insert into the varied greens about him a bit of colour from sky or lake, he dug his toes into the soft grass and for the hundredth time tried to think out how he could attain his heart's desire. He knew exactly what that was. He wanted to go to school! If anyone had tried to find out why, he would have discovered in the boy's mind a tangled mass of hopes—hopes of helping his mother and owning once more their big fields and vineyards, of going to Rome and coming home again, rich and famous. But to any glorious future school was the portal, of that he was sure. The nearest boys' school was in Milan, and to Milan he must go. The golden fleece on the borders of strange seas, the golden apples in unknown gardens, never seemed to lords of high adventure more remote or more desirable than a provincial school-room thirty miles away seemed to this little shepherd. He dreamed of it by day and by night. Last night, when the Lady of the Spring held out her hand to him he had been sure that what it held would help him to go to Milan. He knew he must have money, and that was why he had never told his mother what he wanted. She would be unhappy, he knew, that she could not give it to him. He wanted her to think that he asked for nothing better than to mind the sheep all day. Sometimes his heart would be so hot with desire that only tears could cool it, and all alone in the pasture he would bury his face in the grass and sob until his dog came and licked his neck. At other times it was his pan's-pipe that brought ease. His father had taught him to play on it when he was a mere baby, and sometimes he would forget his burden in making high, clear notes come out of the slender reeds. To-day, especially, tears seemed far away, and he piped and piped until his heart was at rest, and the sun, now nearly in mid-heaven, made him warm and drowsy.

An hour later he woke with a start into a strange noonday silence. Every blade, and twig, and flower, was hushed. A soft white light dimmed the brilliant colours of the day. No sound was heard from bird or insect, and the only movement was among his white sheep, which noiselessly, like a distant stream of foamy water, seemed to flow down a winding path. The goats were standing quite still. Suddenly they flung up their heads, as if at an imperious call, and in wild abandon rushed toward the shadowy woods above. The dog, as if roused from a trance, gave chase, shattering the silence with yelping barks. The boy, his heart beating violently, followed. It took all the afternoon to collect and quiet the flock, and when Marcus started home he had himself not lost the awed sense of a Presence in his pasture. The nearness seemed less familiar than that of his Lady of Gifts, and yet she must have been concerned in it, for the thrill that remained with him was a happy one.

It was late, but to-day more than ever he must stop at her shrine. Near his regular path, below a narrow gorge, there was a marvellous spring. It rose in the mountains, ran down among the rocks, and was received in an artificial chamber. After a short halt there, it fell into the lake below. The extraordinary thing about it was that three times in each day it increased and decreased with regular rise and fall. One could lie beside it and watch its measured movements. Everybody from far and near came to see it, even the grand people from the villas. But Marcus, coming in the early morning or evening, had almost never met anyone there and had grown to feel that the spot was his own. In the dusk or at dawn it often seemed to him as if a lovely lady, with eyes such as his mother might have had, came up out of the spring and laid smooth, cool hands on his face. Because the Goddess of Gifts had become associated in his mind with the first day he could remember in his early childhood—a radiant and merry day—he had come to identify with her this Lady of the Spring, who alone gave romance to the harsher, soberer years that followed his father's death. To-day Marcus could have sworn she smiled at him before she disappeared, as the water receded after the gushing flow which he had come just in time to watch. He was rising from his knees when his eye fell upon a strange, green gleam upon the wet rock. For a moment he thought it was the gleam of a lizard's back, but as he took the little object into his hand he realised that it was hard, and inert, and transparent. Even in the dusk he could see the light in it. It almost burned in his hand. He felt sure that it was a gift from his Lady, but he did not stop to think what he could do with it. He was filled with happiness just in looking at it. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he could take it to his mother and it would make her smile. Full of joy, he hurried homeward. Even on ordinary occasions he loved the end of summer days. His grandfather would go to sleep and cease saying strange things, and, after he and his mother had finished the evening tasks in house and court-yard and sheepfold, they would sit for a while together in the warm doorway, and she would tell him stories of his father and of many other people and things. Sometimes when he leaned against her and her voice grew sweet and low he forgot he was a man and a shepherd.

To-night this did not happen, although the air was sweet with roses, and the stars were large and bright. Marcus had shown his mother the green marvel and told her how the Lady of the Spring had brought it out to him from her secret recesses. She had caught her breath and turned it over and over, and then she had put her arms close round him and explained to him that this beautiful thing was a jewel, an emerald, and must have belonged in a great lady's ring. Her father had been a goldsmith and she had often seen such jewels in their setting. They were bought with great sums of money, and to lose one was like losing money. And that was true, too, of finding one. Money must be returned and so must this.

Money—money—his head swam. Could he have bought his heart's desire with the little green gleam? He put his head on his mother's knee and, for all his efforts, a sob sounded in his throat. She lifted him up against her warm, soft breast, and her hands were smoother and cooler than his Lady's, and he told her all that was in his heart, and she told him all that was in hers, for him.

Later they talked like comrades and partners about the emerald, and decided that it must belong to someone in Pliny's villa, either to Calpurnia herself or to one of her guests. They agreed that they could not sleep until it was returned. The mother had to stay near the sleeping old man, but the villa was only two miles away, the neighbourhood was safe, with a dog as companion, and Marcus was a fast walker on his strong bare feet. At the villa he could ask for Lucius, who came to the farm twice a week for eggs and chickens. "He is an old servant," she said, "loyal to his master and friendly toward us. He is sure to be kind to you. I will do the jewel up in a little package and put father's seal on it, and you can trust it to him. Be sure to give it to no one else."

So Marcus, with his dog, long past his usual bed-time, trudged forth into the night whose cavernous shadows deepened the shadows in his little heart. The worst of the adventure was walking up through the grounds of the villa and facing the porter at the servants' door and asking for Lucius. When he came, the boy thrust the package into his hand, stammered out an explanation, and ran away before the bewildered old man knew what had happened. On the way home the dog seemed to share his master's discouragement and left unchallenged the evening music of the bull-frogs. When Marcus stretched his tired legs out in bed he thought of to-morrow with the sheep again, and wondered dully why his Lady and her mysterious comrade in the pasture had cheated him. His mother, going into the kitchen to see that the wood was ready for the morning, snatched the red roses from the table spread for Fors Fortuna and threw them fiercely on the ashes.

II

The day at the villa had been the most trying one of a trying week for Pliny and Calpurnia. A restful house-party of their dearest friends had been spoiled by the arrival of Quadratilla, heralded by one of her incredible letters dated at Baiæ: