Unwilling to leave the child longer alone, Lucius returned to the garden, and saw Domitia seated on the breastwork of the fountain.
Ten years seemed to have passed over her head, so altered was she.
She was not now weeping. The rigidity of the fainting fit seemed not to have left her face, nor relaxed the stony appearance it had assumed. Her eyes were lustreless, and her lips without color.
The young man was startled at her look.
Domitia! said he.
She raised her eyes to him, and said in reply,
Lucius! Then letting them fall, she added in hard, colorless tones, There is one thing I desire of thee. By some means or other, I care not what, bring me into the presence of the monster. I know how my father has come by his death as have so many others, the best and the noblest. I have but one ambition on earth, I see but a single duty before me to drive if it be but a silver bodkin into his heart.
Domitia!
Lucius, the last words my father used to me were to bid me look to the stars and to sail by them. I look and I see one only star. I feel but one only duty on earth to revenge his death.
My friend! said Lamia, in a low tone. Be careful of thy words. If overheard, they might cause your blood to be mingled with his.
I care not.
But to me it matters sovereignly.
Why? Dost thou care for me?
Above all in the world.
Then revenge me.
Domitia, my grief is little less than thine. If you would revenge the loss, so would I. But what can be done? He, the coward, is carefully guarded. None are suffered to approach him who have not first been searched, and even then are not allowed within arms length. Nothing can be done, save invoke the Gods.
The Gods! laughed the girl hoarsely. The Gods! They set up the base, the foul, and crown him with roses, and trample the noble and good into the earth. The Gods! see you now! They set a star in heaven, they grave a duty in my heart, and the star is unattainable, and the duty, they make impossible of achievement. Bah! There is no star. There are no duties on earth, and no Gods in heaven.
CHAPTER V.
THE SHIP OF THE DEAD
It is of no use in the world, Plancus, your attempting to reason me out of a fixed resolve, said the lady Longa Duilia, peevishly. My Corbulo shall not have a shabby funeral.
Madam, I do not suggest that, said the steward humbly, rubbing his hands.
Yes, you do. It is of no good your standing on one leg like a stork. Shabby it must be no ancestors present. As the Gods love me, you would not have me borrow ancestors of Asclepiades, our client, who has lent us this villa! He may have them or not, that is no concern of mine. Will you have done preening yourself like an old cockroach. I say it would be an indignity to have a funeral for my Corbulo without ancestors. O Times! O Morals! What is the good of having ancestors if you do not use them?
But, Madam, they are in your palace at Rome in the Carinæ or at the Gabian villa.
And for that reason they are not here. Without the attendance of his forbears, my Corbulo shall not be buried. Besides, who is there to impress here with the solemnity? Only a lot of wretched sailors, ship sutlers, Jew pedlers and petty officials, not worth considering. I have said it.
But, Lady, Lucius Lamia agrees with me
Lucius Ælius Lamia it will not exhaust your lungs to give him his name more fully is not as yet one of the family.
Madam, consider how Agrippina did with Germanicus she had his pyre at Antioch, and conveyed his ashes to Rome.
Agrippina was able to have the funeral conducted with solemn pomp at Antioch. There were the soldiers, the lictors, great officers and all that sort of thing. Here nothing at all. By the Immortals consider the expenses, and none to look on gaping but tarry sailors and Jew rag-and-bone men.
Madam!
Silence. Without ancestors! as impossible as without wood.
To understand the point made so much of by the widow, the Roman funeral custom must be understood.
On the death of a noble or high official, his face was immediately moulded in wax, into a mask, or rather, into two masks, that were colored and supplied with glass eyes. One was placed over the dead face, when the corpse lay in state, and when he was conveyed to his funeral pyre, and the first effect of the rising flames was to dissolve the mask and disclose the dead features.
The ancient Greeks before they burned their dead laid gold-leaf masks on their faces, and in a still earlier time the face of the corpse was rouged with oxide of iron, to give it a false appearance of life.
But the second mask was preserved for the family portrait gallery.
When a Roman gentleman or lady was carried forth to his funeral pyre, he was preceded by a procession of actors dressed up in the togas and military or municipal insignia of departed ancestors, each wearing the wax mask of him he personified. For these masks were preserved with great care in the atrium of the house.
Now as Longa Duilia saw, to have her husband burned at Cenchræa, without a procession of imitation ancestors, would be to deprive the funeral of its most impressive feature.
Plancus had advised the burning at the port, with shorn rites, and that the ashes should be placed in the family mausoleum at Gabii, and that the utmost dignity should be accorded to this latter ceremony sufficient to content the most punctilious widow.
But this did not please the lady. The notion of a funeral with maimed pomp was distasteful to her; moreover, as she argued, it was illegal to have two funerals for the same man.
That, said Plancus, hardly applies to one who has died out of Italy.
It is against the law, replied Duilia. I will give no occasion to objection, offer no handle to informers. Besides, I wont have it. The respect I owe to Corbulo forbids the entertainment of such an idea. Really, and on my word, Plancus, I am not a child to be amused with shadow pictures, and unless you are making a rabbit, a fish, or a pig eating out of a trough, I cannot conceive what you are about with your hands, fumbling one over the other.
Madam, I had no thought
I know you have none. Be pleased another time when addressing me to keep your hands quiet, it is irritating. One never knows where they are or will be, sometimes folding and unfolding them, then they disappear up your sleeves and project none can guess where like snails horns. Be pleased, and now pawing your face like a cat washing itself. Please in future hold them in front of you like a dog when sitting up, begging. But as to the funeral I will not have it cheap and nasty. Without ancestors a funeral is not worth having.
Then, said the harassed freedman, there is nothing for it but to engage an embalmer.
Of course one can be obtained at Corinth. Everything can be had for money.
As Plancus was retiring, the lady recalled him.
Here, said she, do not act like a fool, and let the man charge a fancy price. Say that I have an idea of pickling Corbulo in brine, and have brought an amphora large enough for the purpose. Dont close with his terms at once.
When the steward was gone, then Longa Duilia turned her head languidly and summoned a slave-girl.
Lucilla! The unfortunate feature of the situation is that I must not have my hair combed till we reach Gabii. It is customary, and for a bracelet of pearls I would not transgress custom. You can give my head a tousled look, without being dishevelled, I would wish to appear interesting, not untidy.