He drew back, step by step, still facing her, longing to rebel, yet not daring, cringing, skulking like a whipped cur. He reached the end of the path; the entrance to the garden was behind him. He raised his clenched hand to the heavens. "Ah, Melkarth!" burst from his lips, and, turning, he plunged into the house, running.
Marcia listened eagerly to the fall of his sandals. They died away, and the distant door creaked. Tears filled her eyes, and, shivering in every muscle, she sank down upon the seat and buried her face in her hands.
X.
MELKARTH.
Two moons had waxed and waned; Pacuvius Calavius had dined in his winter triclinium for the first time this year, and Marcia was rejoicing at the omen. She watched her host, as he lay back upon his couch, and noted with pity the change that had come over him. When he had greeted her coming, he had seemed not very much past middle age—a brisk man, well preserved in mind and body. Now he was old—very old—and the pallor and wrinkles were prominent through the flush of the wine and the paint with which he strove to hide them. Even his ambition was dead; he hardly sought the Senate House, but, stopping within doors, maundered querulously and unceasingly to Marcia, to his servants, to any one who would listen to him, of the blunders that were being made, and of how war and negotiations should be conducted, speaking always as a man for whom such things had no personal interest. The diadem of Italy that had once blinded his eyes to good faith and oaths of alliance, had melted away in the flames of the pyre that consumed his son. As for Marcia, she had come to regard him with something of that indulgent consideration which we feel for the aged and infirm. His former attitude toward herself, which had filled her with contempt and disgust, had vanished utterly, and, in its place, was a fatherly kindness that had now no nearer object upon which to lavish itself. As for the household, what little discipline had once pertained, was gone. The slaves were no longer punished, and, slavelike, they presumed upon their master's gentleness or indifference. They pilfered right and left; they neglected duties and orders; until, at last, a large measure of the care of her host and his house devolved upon Marcia alone; and Marcia, also, had softened and grown kindlier, and was as slow to ask for punishments as was Calavius to decree them. They seemed like two who were awaiting death, and would not add to the measure of human misery, knowing, from their own, how great this was.
"Let them enjoy a false freedom for a few days longer," said Calavius. "Soon we shall be gone, and then—who knows? I have no heirs, and the state may not deal so kindly with them." Strangely enough, he seemed always to assume Marcia's coming death along with his own; and when she gazed into her mirror, its story moulded well with that reflected in the mirror of her thoughts.
She had grown thin—very thin—and pale, and her eyes burned, large and luminous, as with the fires of fever. Her lips, too, were redder even than when the blood had tinted them with hues of more perfect vigour.
Hannibal had continued to preserve the attitude of respectful consideration which had marked his demeanour on that day of which they never spoke. He still greeted Calavius as, "father," when he came to ask about his health, and on the days when he did not come, he sent some Carthaginian of rank, generally Iddilcar, to make courteous inquiries in his stead.
Calavius, on the other hand, complained continuously of the schalischim's delay, and Hannibal listened with downcast face, frowning to himself, and made no answer except that he was the servant of the gods. Marcia's presence he entirely ignored. Still, he spent little of his time in Capua, and of this Calavius was now speaking.