The Unwilling Vestal

by Edward Lucas White

It also left her enormously rich, one of the wealthiest women in Rome.

Not a tenth so wealthy, but still very rich, it left Almo, Vocco and Flexinna, all of whom survived.

As the plague had been rife, worse each year, for some seasons before the year of the great pestilence, so, ebbing yearly, it continued for some years after its acme. As soon as the worst was manifestly over the life of Rome began to revive to some degree, the city dwellers plucked up heart, the refugees began to return to their town houses, hunger and terror were forgotten, industry and commerce rallied, bustle and activity increased from day to day, and, slowly indeed, but steadily, Rome returned to its normal activity and appearance. The survivors reconstructed their life on the old lines, the streets and squares were again thronged, the public baths, those vast casinos of ancient club-life, were daily crowded with idlers.

The repopulation of the city brought into it many rich families from towns all over the Roman world.

Their influx sent up the price of large residences and caused much activity in the renting and selling of properties suitable for the homes of people of ample means.

Brinnaria, without a male relation of even the remotest degree, came to lean more and more on Vocco, the husband of her chum Flexinna. He was a young man of not unpleasing appearance and of courtly manners, but very haughty, reserved and silent by nature; and exceedingly spare, lean and wiry, with black hair and brows, a complexion as if tanned and weatherbeaten and an habitual frown. He was fond of Brinnaria and unbent to her more than to most of his acquaintances. She treated him as a sort of honorary cousin and turned over to him many details of the care of her large and scattered property. He took upon himself in her interest the sale or management of her distant estates, found for them capable overseers or purchasers at advantageous prices, bought slaves where they were needed, arranged for the marketing of the more important products and accounted to her for the proceeds.

About her town properties he had more trouble and some exasperation, for he found the apparently practical and unsentimental Brinnaria oddly unwilling to disturb the contents of the palaces in which her kinsmen had lived and died. She was naturally a good business woman and all her instincts urged her to increase her capital and her income by every means within her power and at every opportunity. Yet, when Vocco came to her with offers of high prices for the various buildings which she had inherited he could induce her to arrange for the sale only of the smaller and less valuable houses, or of those tenements which had been owned merely to rent, but had never been inhabited by any members of the Brinnarian clan. At the suggestion of preparing for sale any of the palaces of her near kinsfolk she balked; from the barest hint towards moving the furniture in her father’s home she recoiled in horror.

Vocco found himself faced by invincible femininity, with the possession of which he would not have credited Brinnaria. At first he was irritated. As he missed sale after sale he became more and more aggravated. But he kept his temper, held his tongue and waited for Brinnaria’s mood to alter. Her sentimentality gradually waned as the prices offered steadily mounted. After long hesitation she gave orders to sell at auction the furniture from the house of a distant cousin, and to rent the house. That broke the spell. One by one the late abodes of the Brinnarii were cleared and sold; sold furniture and all, cleared and rented, or rented furnished.

The former dwellings of her aunts and uncles she was reluctant to disturb. She felt a sort of sacredness about these splendid houses where she had been merry as a child. When at last she made up her mind to part with one she would not give the order to sell it until she had gone over it herself and selected some pieces of furniture which she specially valued. Vocco tried to dissuade her, but she would not listen to him.

Her visit to the vast, empty palace had a most depressing effect on her. All her grief at her countless bereavements rushed back over her in a flood and overwhelmed her. She would not allow a stick of furniture to be moved and withdrew her consent to the sale.