Damaris’ eyes flashed.
“Who knows,” she said, “but that our Marius will inspire his Romans with the old Roman courage, so that they will stay by him, and not die, but conquer; or, if they die, die conquering at their post?”
Lucia embraced her mother amidst her tears.
“Ah, mother,” she said, “did not some of your old Greek forefathers descend from the three hundred who died at Thermopylæ?”
“It was said so amongst us,” Damaris replied. “And certainly your father’s house belonged to those old Romans who drove Hannibal back to Carthage.”
“Ah, mother,” said Lucia, “perhaps after all it is best our Marius should go to fight the Huns.”
They had reached the porch, and as Lucia spoke the last words, Marius, who had come silently up to them and heard what she said, looked with a radiant smile into his mother’s eyes.
“Then, mother,” he said, “I shall not have to fight for this purpose of my life with thee? And, with thy blessing, the Huns are easy foes.”
She laid her hand on his, and the compact between them was sealed.
Lucia glided away, and left the mother and son together. There was never need of many words between these two. Her faith in God, her unquenchable hope for mankind through the Incarnate Lord and Son of Man, had always been the atmosphere around his inmost life. To her, Christianity was the revelation of beauty as well as of truth; the law of life by which all things grow fair as well as strong; and of all beauty, beauty of character and soul the fairest of all. And a word from her to him, her son and heir in character and soul, was always a glimpse into the world of light within her soul, which he knew so well. Nevertheless he knew and she knew, that for him the disorders and miseries and sins of the world around had sometimes eaten deep into his power of believing in the presence of the Omnipotent Love above and beneath all. He had often felt dimly, and now she recognized consciously for him, that to realize the Love which conquers he needed to be in the army of the Conqueror, to be fighting not merely with the doubts within or the countless subtle heresies around, but with the concrete sin and misery, wrong and disorder of this visible, tangible world. The blood of the old Roman rulers of themselves and of the world, conquerors and law-givers, was in him, as well as the subtle perception of the old Greeks. She felt she had to let him go forth to the great world-battle; and knowing this, she would have him go forth, not weakened by her tears, but crowned by her smile and her blessing. And so he went.