Marius said nothing, but drew her out among the hills and streams to soothe and comfort her. Their way that day lay by a road they did not often take, by the ruins of the magnificent villa of Nero, below the artificial lakes, into which he had gathered the waters from the hills. The lakes were still there, crystal clear from the fountains, heavenly blue under that Italian sky, or steeped in depths of varied colour from the reflections of the craggy steeps and wooded slopes around them.
As they stood there Ethne said—
“If only we Christians had remained what the martyrdoms of Nero made us in that awful night at Rome, torches to illuminate the city and the world, how bright the city and the world would have been before this!”
“In truth,” he replied, “it is not martyrdom we have to dread, but the deadly chill in our own hearts. And that,” he added, “every day and for ever thou keepest away from me. And by and by thou shalt take me to thy country, where the Christians are still early Christians, of the stamp of Nero’s Christians; away to thy land of the fountains and the saints.”
“Beloved,” she said, smiling, “you also have your fountains; and Ireland has not all or only saints.”
Sweet human hopes came dawning on the two homes. The year of the death of Attila brought two little sons to the palace on the Aventine and the house among the Sabine hills.
The joy was very great in both homes. If Ethne had been as a fountain of youth to Marius, these babes seemed to bring back youth to Damaris. She travelled backwards and forwards in a flutter of new possession and new hope from Rome to the mountains. North and south, the new world and the old seemed visibly blended in those two precious blossoms of new human life.
“The sunset has indeed met the dawn,” she said, “and naturally the dawn has conquered, and there is a new day.”
On one of Damaris’ first visits to Ethne the mother, Ethne said—
“Mother,” calling her thus for the first time, “I have had a beautiful dream. I saw Nero’s villa, and the heathen temple, and the slave huts dissolve before my eyes. And, instead, a fair church shone on one of the mountains (Monte Cassino, I think Marius called it), the music of sweet psalms echoed among the hills, and happy peasants, instead of taking sheep and lambs garlanded for sacrifice to the pagan temples, brought home their little children from the church, in white robes of baptism. And a holy man clad in white woollen robes met them from the church on the mountain. And I thought he was a man of your old Anician house.[6] And from the church came troops of white-robed men following them; and from the lakes poured forth a great river plashing and dashing through valley and plain on to Rome, and on and on through the world, to our far West and everywhere; and everywhere it brought with it freshness and gladness and life. What can that mean? Must it not mean something very good for this darling and for the world?”