Scenes and Portraits

by Frederic Manning

Præripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent."

It seemed to me that the peace and tranquillity of my home, the sole aim of my life, having been shrivelled up like unsubstantial things, vanished like dreams, life had thrown me, too, aside and left me stranded, a piece of wreckage, upon this alien shore. For many days I sat alone in my sumptuous house, and the statues of the gods, blithe Greek things, which I had bought to furnish it, and for transhipment to the new home which I had meant to make at Rome, smiled at my unavailing tears. Then one morning my slaves admitted a young boy to my presence.

"Caius bids me tell you that Paul is in Corinth," he said.

"I shall go," I answered.

After he had left me, I repented. Why should I choose to frequent the Jews and miracle-mongers of Corinth, who swarmed there on the way to Rome from every part of the East, astrologers, and sellers of love-potions, poisoners, and go-betweens? But the words rose up in my mind: "God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise:" and I wished to be ashamed. In my weakness and grief my hands went forth and groped in the darkness, seeking the hands of those who had also suffered, seeking for the little familiar, common-place things, that twine themselves round our being and are the mainstays of life. My abandonment of life in my grief had been so complete, that but for the message which came to me from Caius, I might have drifted towards self-destruction, merely because of the sullen inertia, which followed after the force of the blow had been spent. Philosophy, religion, discipline, every vain convention which we imagine may buttress our will in moments of great spiritual weakness, fell away from me like garments, and the only thing remaining was a sense of human sympathy, a craving for human consolation.

Our master, Epicurus, was a lover of children; he knew, no one better, their delicate and insinuating ways, the strange unreal world in which they play, their unconsciousness of time; and he seems to have taken them as patterns and exemplars of the life of pleasure, unsuspicious of the future, and forgetful of the past, but living always with a vivid intensity, in that little, shut-in pleasure-house of the senses, the moment. As I thought of my child, I remembered all his caresses, the soft touch of his flower-like hands upon my face, and the grave eyes that seemed to keep a wisdom older than the world; and beside that image in my dreams stooped another, Drusilla, her hands guiding him to me, she whose whole life was like some attenuated fragrance, difficult of apprehension, but inexpressibly sweet, her quiet brows with neat bands of hair smoothed against the cool flesh; and the love that grew between us, first for what she revealed to me, and then for what she hid. When I thought of these two brief, beautiful creatures, I seemed to see in them the true fragility of life, as if it were no more than wind in the stops of a flute or sweet vibration from the strings of a lyre, aerial, elusive, never to be wholly imprisoned in any one form, but wandering, vocal, through the whole of creation, illuminating it to one exquisite moment, like light upon hill and sea, and then vanishing, fleeing away into darkness, never to be exactly repeated.

So to me, sitting apart and outwardly unmoved, there came that fierce hunger for things departed, that blind, bitter struggle against the unalterable conditions of life.

I hesitated, and delayed to set out on my adventure until well on into the night At last I went. A fresh wind was blowing from the north-west, it stung my face and eyes, and I saw that snow lay lightly upon the summit of Acrocorinth, silvery in the moonlight. As I passed into the Jews' quarter I began to meet little knots and groups of people talking with excited gestures, and I heard rumours of brawls and quarrels; but I reached the house of Caius without incident. The same boy who had brought me the message admitted me. He had fine clear-cut features, distinctive of no particular race, though with evidence of Roman blood somewhere. Caius was the son of a freedman I gathered later, and this boy was the eldest of his two children, the other being a girl. The boy told me that the meeting was over, but that Caius was with Paul and his travelling companions in an upper chamber; he led the way and I followed. I felt cold and suspicious, but curious. The boy drew back the curtain, whispered my name, and I went into the warmly-lighted room. Seated by the brazier was a thick-set, crook-backed man, ugly and mean, with a small head, much too small for his shoulders, a sallow skin and thick beard. As I entered he lifted his face; the eyebrows met above the beaky nose, and he regarded me for a moment in complete silence. The eyes were piercing, as though full of smouldering fires. They seemed to explore the most secret recesses of my soul; then to grow kinder, as if recognising something in it.

"Peace be with you, and light, and understanding," he said; and as he spoke there seemed to me a hesitation and an embarrassment in his manner. I murmured something in reply, at which, perhaps, a slight smile broke about his lips, and he turned away. Caius brought me the manuscript which I had looked at, gave me a chair in a warm corner by a lamp, and went back to the others. I began to read. Four men, besides Caius, and a woman were gathered at a table by Paul. One of the men was holding a pen. Then the voice of Paul broke the silence.

"For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. That the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.... And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness."