“What is her name—the child’s?”
“Her name?... I cannot,” said Valerian, “remember it.”
From the Rhine, from post to post, along the Roman roads, came with swiftness tidings that again the Marcomanni had risen in revolt. Back to his legion, encamped upon that river, hastened Valerian. Arrived, he made junction with an endangered legion stationed inland, and drove with twin eagles against the Marcomanni. These broke, these fled; a host was slain, a host taken. The brand of revolt, dashed against earth, had its fire put out. The auxiliaries who brought to Rome, over hundreds of leagues, over Roman roads, to slavery, to the games of the Amphitheatre, the huge many of prisoners, brought also praise of Valerian. The victory praised him, the safety of the legions praised him. The emperor nodded, looked aslant, made the sign that kept away evil. Said one under his breath to another in the house of Cæsar, “Do not win too much nor be liked too well, for that is the road to the Mamertine!”
Valerian, far from Rome and that savour of incense and look of danger, obeyed soldierly duty and something higher. Revolt subdued, he conciliated, organized, administered, and all was done well. It took time. Months rolled away in the northern forests, by the northern streams. The months became a year, the year two years, the two three. Valerian wrote to Rome, asking permission to return for a while to family and estate. Permission was denied. He had thought that it would be so, for letters told him that ever more and more Cæsar hated other men’s successes, and that, besides, certain foes of his worked against him in Rome. Upon the heels of that denial came an order to proceed to the command of a legion in Britain. That was to leave a famous legion for one not so famed. That was to leave captain and soldiers who engaged for victory wheresoever he led for others who knew him not. It was to leave a region that he knew for obscure struggles with the Caledonians at the edge of the world. Valerian sat with his chin in his hand, and pondered his own revolt—his own and the famed legion, drawing with it other legions. He shook his head; he consulted loyalty and the public good. Obeying the imperial word, he set his face to the west, he travelled long and far, and crossed the narrow sea and came to Britain and travelled the Roman road to the legion in the north. Here he stayed two years and did well, so well that at the end of that time he was sent to command not a legion, but auxiliary troops in a poor and drowsy corner of the empire where Opportunity might be expected never to show her face. Expectation was disappointed; in the third year Opportunity appeared with suddenness. Valerian took her by both hands. His name once more became sonorous. When he had been almost ten years from Rome he was summoned home. He was sure that it was to ruin.
There were lines in his forehead, a little silver in his hair and short beard. The rime, the breath of the fir wood clung about him. In Valeria’s hair there was silver. She met him alone, beneath the old olive tree, upon the slope before the villa in the Alban Hills. He had sent those with him another way; he came to her alone with, in his step, the eagerness of youth. She stood robed in white; she had for him who, in the wilderness, had increased in inward stature, a new beauty and majesty.
“Hail, Valerian!”
“Hail, Valeria!” Each held the other, embraced. “Long—long—long has it been!”
They climbed the hillside. “Are you safe, Valerian,—are you safe, here at Rome, where you should be so safe—”
“Not I! To-morrow, Cæsar may send to tell me, ‘Open your veins. Die, and ease me of a jealousy!’—Well, what odds? It comes one day. What matter which day?”
The old household slaves came about them. It was springtime and evening and loveliness. As they reclined at supper, as afterwards they walked the terrace, and at last in their chamber he watched Valeria. Love rekindled in him, but a graver love, a love that was beginning to think.