Attila: A Romance. Vol. I.

by G. P. R. James

NEVA.

It is a strange and awful sensation, when, after having enjoyed to the full the powers and energies of manhood, we find ourselves suddenly reduced by the unnerving hand of sickness to the feebleness of infancy: when giant strength lies prostrate and busy activity is chained to the weary bed. It is strange and it is awful, for it shows us most sensibly how frail a thing is that vigour which, in our boisterous days of health, we madly think an adamantine armour against all adversity. It is strange and awful, for it leads us to the brink of that fatal precipice over which all must fall, and displays, as if from the very verge, the inside of our future grave.

From a stupor, in which all memory and every power of thought had been at an end, Theodore woke as feeble and incapable as when, in the nurse's arms, he moved his mother's heart by his first infant cry. The same feelings of tenderness; the same mingled emotions, where pity, and hope, and the pleasure of protecting, all unite; the same sensations of affectionate interest for the thing we rear, and guard, and watch for, as those which fill the breast of a mother towards her child, affected, though in a less degree, those who attended the couch of the young Roman during his illness and convalescence. It was but slowly he recovered: for the fever which had seized upon him had been fierce and powerful; and it had been only unfaded youth's tenacity of life and the natural vigour of his frame which had finally conquered that terrible assailant.

The persons who attended him were entirely women, except when his faithful Cremera took his daily turn to watch by his bedside; and though an elder and more matronly dame came in and out, and frequently remained in his chamber for an hour or more, still his principal attendant was the lovely girl whom he at first had seen, or a maiden who seemed to be her sister, still younger than herself.

Often would he keep his eyes closed, to listen, uninterrupted, to the sweet singing of the barbarian girl; often when he woke would he find that graceful form bending over him, and those deep, intense blue eyes gazing upon his countenance, as if to mark the outposts of victorious health, spreading life's rosy banner where the pale flag of sickness had been advanced so lately. As he recovered strength also, and his tongue became more capable of its office, he would converse with her from time to time in the language which she had used in singing and though she spoke it not as her native dialect, yet they could thus converse fluently.

With the matron it was different: she was kind, but not conversable; yet, when she did speak, it was always in the pure Alan tongue; and Theodore could almost have fancied that he heard once more the voice of his mother. Under kind care and skilful management he at length reached that point where his recovery became certain; and from that moment his convalescence proceeded rapidly. He was soon able to quit his chamber; and going forth, though with wavering and unsteady steps, he walked along, enjoying the fresh air of the morning, beneath the rude portico of unshaped stems of trees which shaded one side of that long low dwelling, while his heart was raised with fresh gratitude to Heaven at every sweet sound and sight that he was permitted again to enjoy. There had been a time, not very long before, when life had seemed to him a weary burden, which he desired not to retain; the earth a dreary and a desert dwelling-place, in which he was but little anxious to remain. But such feelings had only existed while the body remained in strength and vigour, oppressed and impatient under a mind overcharged with sorrows, anxieties, and cares. Now, however, the corporeal frame had been weakened and cast down; the body as well as the mind had been humbled and chastised; the blessings of life were more valued, the past could be regarded with resignation, and the future looked forward to with hope.

As he walked forth one day under the shadow of that portico, his eye wandered over the whole plain, on which, at a little distance, appeared some horsemen, whom he afterward found to be those who had attended him thither. In the shade, however, were collected a number of women, comprising all those whom he had hitherto seen; and Neva, the blue-eyed daughter of the house, smiled gayly to see his wavering steps. The next moment she greeted him with, "Come, sit you with the women till you have strength enough to join the men;" and she made room for him on the bench on which she sat between herself and her mother.

All were employed in some domestic occupation; and the distaff, and the spindle, and the wheel went on, while Theodore, sitting beside them, began to ask the first questions which he had hitherto ventured, regarding the place and the family in which he then was. He found that the village which he saw stretching along under the forest contained not less than two or three hundred wooden cottages; and his eye at once showed him that the one in which he had found shelter and received so much true kindness was by far the most extensive and most ornamented of the whole. When he came to ask, however, whose was the house in which he dwelt, and whose the family that tended him so carefully, they answered him at once that it was that of Bleda, the brother of Attila.

His countenance changed, and he asked no more questions. Ere he had sat long there the horsemen returned from the field, bringing with them some game which they had procured; and eagerly, and with signs of much regard, they gathered round Theodore, and wished him joy on his recovered health. Towards evening two herdsmen drove home from a distance a large flock of diminutive cattle, and a shepherd brought some sheep into the fold. Two or three other lesser flocks were driven slowly across the plain to different houses in the village; but the men who drove them formed the only male population, with the exception of his own attendants, which Theodore had yet seen since he entered Dacia.

As the days passed on, and he mingled more with the people, he found that this first view was fully confirmed, and that almost all the men of the land, except such as were too old or too young to bear arms, had gone forth with Attila in his invasion of the Roman empire.