"It is a pity, is it not," said Cornelia, "that Juvenal could not have known men like Corellius and your uncle, Pliny, and all the rest of you? He might be less savage in his attacks on our order." "And equally a pity," Pliny gallantly responded, "that he could not modify his views on your sex by knowing such ladies as are in this room." Tacitus bowed gravely to Quadratilla as their host said this. A retort trembled on the wicked old lips, but Calpurnia, seeing it, made haste to ask if any of them had ever talked with Juvenal. "I asked Martial once," she said, "to bring him to see us, but he never came. I cannot help feeling that, if he could know us better, his arraignment would be less harsh." "Dear Lady," said Tacitus, "you forget that people like you are cut jewels, very different from the rough rock of our order as well as from the shifting sands of the populace." "Dear Cynic," laughed Calpurnia, "do we know any more about the populace than Juvenal knows about us?"
But in Tacitus's unfortunate figure Quadratilla saw her chance to annoy him by belittling the conversation. To everyone's despair, she intruded maliciously: "To my thinking, the finding of my emerald would show to advantage the cut of our aristocratic wits." Cornelia had just whispered to Rufus, "I wish we could lose her as adequately out of our setting," when Lucius came into the loggia with the sealed package for Pliny. A question from his master gave him a chance to tell Marcus's story, which lost nothing in the friendly, rustic narration. A chorus of praise for the boy rose from the eager listeners. Even Quadratilla remarked that he was a decent little clod-hopper, as she demanded a lamp by which to examine her jewel. Pliny and Calpurnia's eyes met in swift response to each other's thoughts. They examined the farmer's seal and questioned Lucius more closely. Calpurnia's eyes filled with tears at his account of the old grandfather—"ruined," she exclaimed to the others, "in the very month that Pliny's name, as we afterwards discovered, was put on the prescription list. We were so anxious at the time—that must explain our never following the family up. I will go early to-morrow," she added, turning to her husband, "and see the mother. We must make up for lost time." "Find out," said Pliny, "whether the boy wants to go to school."
A cackle of laughter came from Quadratilla's chair back of the group that had gathered around the servant. "How like my Pliny!" she remarked genially. "A dirty little rascal restores my property in the hope of picking up a reward. His heart's desire is doubtless a strip of bacon for his stomach on a holiday. And Pliny offers him an education!"
III
Marcus had been in his pasture for many an hour when Calpurnia came to the farm. His mother was on her knees washing up the stone floor of the kitchen. A sweet voice sounded in her ears, and she looked up to see a goddess—as she thought in the first blinding moment—a goddess dressed in silvery white with a gleam of gold at her throat. Neither woman ever told all that passed between them in their long talk in the sunlit courtyard, where they sought solitude, but when Marcus's mother kissed her visitor's hands at parting, Calpurnia's eyes shone with tears and her own were bright as with a vision.
When she went back into the kitchen, she found on the stone table a great hamper, from which a bottle of wine generously protruded. Her father-in-law from his chair in the window began an excited and incoherent story. She ran to him and knelt by his side and begged him to understand while she told him of a miracle. The dull old eyes looked only troubled. So she choked back her tears and stroked his hands gently and said over and over, until his face brightened, "You are never going to be cold or hungry again—never cold or hungry."
Even with her many tasks the summer day seemed unending to her. Finally, as the shadows lengthened, she could no longer endure to wait and started out to meet Marcus. Across a green meadow she saw him coming, walking soberly and wearily in front of his herded flock. As he saw her, his listlessness fell from him and he ran forward anxiously. But when he reached her and saw her eyes, his heart almost stopped beating in glad amazement. And she held out her hands, while the dog jumped up on them both in an ecstasy, and said to him, "My son, Fors Fortuna, your Lady of the Spring, has blessed us. You are to go to school."
Later in the evening, when the wonderful supper from the hamper had been eaten and cleared away, and the grandfather had fallen peacefully asleep, and the sheep and goats and hens had been tended for the night, Marcus and his mother sat in the doorway beside the red rosebush and dreamed dreams together of a time when house and courtyard, renewed, should once more exercise a happy sovereignty over fruitful acres. The world seemed Marcus's because he was to go to school, this very year, in their own Como. They had not known before that Pliny had offered to share with the citizens the expense of a school of their own, so that boys need not go as far as Milan. Marcus was awed into speechlessness when his mother told him that the great man was personally to see to his registration and fees and clothes and books. The evening wore on, and the boy's head, heavy with visions, fell sleepily against his mother's breast. As she held him to her, her thoughts wandered from him to the radiant lady who had brought such light into their darkness. Could Fors Fortuna herself, she wondered, be any happier, laden with beauty and riches and power, and making of them a saving gift for mortals?
At the villa dinner had passed off successfully, Quadratilla having been entertaining oftener than outrageous and the others having been in a compliant mood because she was to leave the next day. After dinner, in the cool atrium, Calpurnia had sung some of her husband's verses, which she had herself charmingly adapted to the lyre. Later Quadratilla challenged the younger people to the dice, while Hispulla retired to the library. Calpurnia slipped into the garden. There Pliny, never contented when she was out of his sight, found her leaning against a marble balustrade among the ghostly flowerbeds, where in the night deep pink azaleas and crimson and amber roses became one with tall white lilies. Nightingales were singing and the darkness was sparkling with fireflies. Her fragile face shone out upon him like a flower. If about Pliny the public official there was anything a little amusing, a little pompous, it was not to be found in Pliny the married lover. Immemorial tendernesses were in his voice as he spoke to his wife: "My sweet, what are you thinking of, withdrawn so far from me?" Calpurnia smiled bravely into his face, as she answered: "Of the mothers who have little sons to send to school."