Part 2

Then she had called Valerius and asked if they wanted a story of the sea, and they had curled up in the hollows of her arms and she had told them about the Argo, the first ship that ever set forth upon the waters; of how, when her prow broke through the waves, the sailors could see white-faced Nereids dance and beckon, and of how she bore within her hold many heroes dedicated to a great quest. It was the first time Catullus had heard the magic tale of the Golden Fleece and in his mother's harp-like voice it had brought him his first desire for strange lands and the wide, grey spaces of distant seas. Then he had felt his mother's arm tighten around him and something in her voice made his throat ache, as she went on to tell them of the sorceress Medea; how she brought the leader of the quest into wicked ways, so that the glory of his heroism counted for nothing and misery pursued him, and how she still lived on in one disguise after another, working ruin, when unresisted, by poisoned sheen or honeyed draught. Catullus began to feel very much frightened, and then all at once his mother jumped up and called out excitedly, "Oh, see, a Nereid, a Nereid!" And they had all three rushed wildly down the beach to the foamy edge of the lake, and there she danced with them, her blue eyes laughing like the waves and her loosened hair shining like the red-gold clouds around the setting sun. They had danced until the sun slipped below the clouds and out of sight, and a servant had come with cloaks and a reminder of the dinner hour.

Now from the hill above Verona Catullus could see the red gold of another sunset and he was alone. Valerius, who had known him with that Nereid-mother, had gone forever. Because they had lain upon the same mother's breast and danced with her upon the Sirmian shore, Catullus had always known that his older brother's sober life was the fruit of a wine-red passion for Rome's glory. And Valerius's knowledge of him--ah, how penetrating that had been!

Across the plain below him stretched the road to Mantua. Was it only last April that upon this road he and Valerius had had that revealing hour? The most devastating of all his memories swept in upon him. Valerius had had his first furlough in two years and they had spent a week of it together in Verona. The day before Valerius was to leave to meet his transport at Brindisi they had repeated a favorite excursion of their childhood to an excellent farm a little beyond Mantua, to leave the house steward's orders for the season's honey.

What a day it had been, with the spring air which set mind and feet astir, the ride along the rush-fringed banks of the winding Mincio and the unworldly hours in the old farmstead! The cattle-sheds were fragrant with the burning of cedar and of Syrian gum to keep off snakes, and Catullus had felt more strongly than ever that in the general redolence of homely virtues, natural activities and scrupulous standards all the noisome life of town and city was kept at bay. The same wooden image of Bacchus hung from a pine tree in the vineyard, and the same weather-worn Ceres stood among the first grain, awaiting the promise of her sheaves. Valerius had been asked by his father's overseer to make inquiries about a yoke of oxen, and Catullus went off to look at the bee-hives in their sheltered corner near a wild olive tree. When he came back he found his brother seated on a stone bench, carving an odd little satyr out of a bit of wood and talking to a fragile looking boy about twelve years old. Valerius's sympathetic gravity always charmed children and Catullus was not surprised to see this boy's brown eyes lifted in eager confidence to the older face.

"So," Valerius was saying, "you don't think we work only to live? I believe you are right. You find the crops so beautiful that you don't mind weeding, and I find Rome so beautiful that I don't mind fighting." "Rome!" The boy's face quivered and his singularly sweet voice sank to a whisper. "Do you fight for Rome? Father doesn't know it, but I pray every day to the Good Goddess in the grainfield that she will let me go to Rome some day. Do you think she will?" Valerius rose and looked down into the child's starry eyes. "Perhaps she will for Rome's own sake," he said. "Every lover counts. What is your name, Companion-in-arms? I should like to know you when you come." "Virgil," the boy answered shyly, colouring and drawing back as he saw Catullus. A farm servant brought up the visitors' horses. "Goodbye, little Virgil," Valerius called out, as he mounted. "A fair harvest to your crops and your dreams."

The brothers rode on for some time without speaking, Valerius rather sombrely, it seemed, absorbed in his own thoughts. When he broke the silence it was to say abruptly: "I wonder if, when he goes to Rome, he will keep the light in those eyes and the music in that young throat." Then he brought his horse close up to his brother's and spoke rapidly as if he must rid himself of the weight of words. "My Lantern Bearer, you are not going to lose your light and your music, are you? The last time I saw Cicero he talked to me about your poetry and your gifts, which you know I cannot judge as he can. He told me that for all your 'Greek learning' and your 'Alexandrian technique' no one could doubt the good red Italian blood in your verses, or even the homely strain of our own little town. I confess I was thankful to hear a literary man and a friend praise you for not being cosmopolitan. I am not afraid now of your going over to the Greeks. But are you in danger of losing Verona in Rome?"

The gathering dusk, the day's pure happiness, the sense of impending separation opened Catullus's heart. "Do you mean Clodia?" he asked straightforwardly. "Did Cicero talk of her too?" "Not only Cicero," Valerius had answered gently, "and not only your other friends. Will you tell me of her yourself?" "What have you heard?" Catullus asked. Valerius paused and then gave a direct and harsh reply: "That she was a Medea to her husband, has been a Juno to her brother's Jupiter and is an easy mistress to many lovers."

After that, Catullus was thankful now to remember, he himself had talked passionately as the road slipped away under their horses' feet. He had told Valerius how cruel the world had been to Clodia. Metellus had been sick all winter and had died as other men die. He had belittled her by every indignity that a man of rank can put upon his wife, but she had borne with him patiently enough. Because she was no Alcestis need she be called a Medea or a Clytemnestra? And because the unspeakable Clodius had played Jupiter to his youngest sister's Juno need Clodia be considered less than a Diana to his Apollo? As for her lovers--his voice broke upon the word--she loved him, Catullus, strange as that seemed, and him only. Of course, like all women of charm, she could play the harmless coquette with other men. He hated the domestic woman--Lucretius's dun-coloured wife, for instance--on whom no man except her mate would cast an eye.

He wanted men to fall at his Love's feet, he thanked Aphrodite that she had the manner and the subtle fire and the grace to bring them there. Her mind was wonderful, too, aflame, like Sappho's, with the love of beauty. That was why he called her Lesbia. He had used Sappho's great love poem (Valerius probably did not know it, but it was like a purple wing from Eros's shoulder) as his first messenger to her, when his heart had grown hot as AEtna's fire or the springs of Thermopylae. She had finally consented to meet him at Allius's house. Afterwards she had told him that the day was marked for her also by a white stone.

If Valerius could only know how he felt! She was the greatest lady in Rome, accoutred with wealth and prestige and incomparable beauty. And she loved him, and was as good and pure and tender-hearted as any unmarried girl in Verona. He was her lover, but often he felt toward her as a father might feel toward a child. Catullus had trembled as he brought out from his inner sanctuary this shyest treasure. And never should he forget the healing sense of peace that came to him when Valerius rode closer and put his arm around his shoulder. "Diogenes," he said, "your flame is still bright. I could wish you had not fallen in love with another man's wife, and if he were still living I should try to convince you of the folly of it. But I know this hot heart of yours is as pure as the snow we see on the Alps in midsummer. That is all I need to know." And they had ridden on in the darkness toward the lights of home.

The wind rose in a fresh wail: "He is dead, he is dead." The touch of his arm was lost in the unawakening night. His perfect speech was stilled in the everlasting silence. A smile, both bitter and wistful, came upon Catullus's lips as he remembered a letter he had had yesterday from Lucretius, bidding him listen to the voice of Nature who would bring him peace. "What is so bitter," his friend had urged, "if it comes in the end to sleep? The wretched cannot want more of life, and the happy men, men like Valerius, go unreluctantly, like well-fed guests from a banquet, to enter upon untroubled rest. Nor is his death outside of law. From all eternity life and death have been at war with each other. No day and no night passes when the first cry of a child tossed up on the shores of light is not mingled with the wailings of mourners. Let me tell you how you may transmute your sorrow. A battle rages in the plain. The earth is shaken with the violent charges of the cavalry and with the tramping feet of men. Cruel weapons gleam in the sun. But to one afar off upon a hill the army is but a bright spot in the valley, adding beauty, it may well be, to a sombre scene. And so, ascending into the serene citadel of Knowledge and looking down upon our noisy griefs, we may find them to be but high lights, ennobling life's monotonous plain. My friend, come to Nature and learn of her. Surely Valerius would have wished you peace."

"Peace, peace!" Catullus groaned aloud. Lucretius seemed as remote as the indifferent gods. Valerius, who knew his feet were shaped for human ways, would have understood that he could not scale the cold steeps of thought. If he suffered in this hour, what comfort was there in the thought of other suffering and other years? If Troy now held Valerius, what peace was there in knowing that its accursed earth once covered Hector and Patroclus also, and would be forever the common grave of Asia and of Europe? What healing had nature or law to give when flesh was torn from flesh and heart estranged from heart beyond recall?

Rising, Catullus looked down upon the unresting river. As he walked homeward, clear-eyed, at last, but unassuaged, he knew that for him also there could never again be peaceful currents. Like the Adige, his tumultuous grief, having its source in the pure springs of childish love, must surge through the years of his manhood, until at last it might lose itself in the vast sea of his own annihilation.

In the capital a dull winter was being prophesied. Only one gleam was discoverable in the social twilight. The Progressives had shipped Cato off to Cyprus and society was rid for one season of a man with a tongue, who believed in economy when money was plentiful, in sobriety when pleasure was multiform and in domestic fidelities when escape was easy. But they had done irreparable mischief in disposing more summarily of Cicero. With the Conservative leader exiled to Greece and the Progressive leader himself taking the eagles into Gaul the winter's brilliance was threatened with eclipse. Pompey was left in Rome, but the waning of his political star, it could not be denied, had dimmed his social lustre. Clodius, of course, was in full swing, triumphant in Caesar's friendship and Cicero's defeat, but if society was able to stomach him, he himself had the audacious honesty to foregather in grosser companionship. Even Lucullus, whose food and wine had come to seem a permanent refuge amid political changes and social shifts, must now be counted out. His mind was failing, and the beautiful Apollo dining room and terraced gardens would probably never be opened again.

In view of the impending handicaps Clodia was especially anxious that a dinner she was to give immediately on her return from Baiae in mid-October should be a conspicuous success. During her husband's consulship two years ago she had won great repute for inducing men of all parties, officials, artists and writers, to meet in her house. Last year, owing to Metellus's sickness and death, she had not done anything on a large scale. This autumn she had come back determined to reassume her position. She was unaffected by the old-fashioned prejudice against widows entertaining and she had nothing to fear from the social skill of this year's consuls.

Her invitations had been hurried out, and now in her private sitting room, known as the Venus Room from its choicest ornament, a life-sized statue of Venus the Plunderer, she was looking over the answers which had been sorted for her by her secretary. The Greek, waiting for further orders, looked at her with admiring, if disillusioned, eyes. Large and robust, her magnificent figure could display no ungraceful lines as she sat on the low carved chair in front of a curtain of golden Chinese silk. Her dress was of a strange sea-green and emeralds shone in her ears and her heavy, black hair. An orange-coloured cat with gleaming, yellow eyes curved its tail across her feet. Above her right shoulder hung a silver cage containing a little bird which chirped and twittered in silly ignorance of its mistress's mood. Anger disfigured her beautiful mouth and eyes. The list of regrets stretched out to sinister length and included such pillars of society as Brutus and Sempronia, Bibulus and Portia. A cynical smile relieved Clodia's sullen lips. Did these braggarts imagine her blind to the fact that if lively Sempronia and stupid Bibulus could conveniently die, Brutus and Portia, who were wiping her off their visiting lists because her feet had strayed beyond the marriage paddock, would make short work of their mourning?

Aurelia's declination she had expected. Her inordinate pride in being Caesar's mother had not modified her arrogant, old-time severity toward the freedom of modern life. But that Calpurnia should plead her husband's absence as an excuse was ominous. Everyone knew that he dictated her social relations. Terentia had been implacable since that amusing winter when Clodia had spread a net for Cicero. For her own sex Clodia had the hawk's contempt for sparrows, but if Caesar as well as Cicero were to withdraw from her arena, she might as well prepare herself for the inverted thumbs of Rome.

On her list of acceptances, outside of her own sisters, who had won intellectual freedom in the divorce courts, she found the names of only two women--virtuous Hortensia, who was proud of her emancipated ideas, and Marcia, who was enjoying her husband's Cyprian business as much as the rest of the world. Men, on the other hand, bachelors and divorces, abounded. Catullus, luckily, was still in Verona, nursing his dull grief for that impossible brother. But she was glad to be assured that his friend, Rufus Caelius, would come. If Terentia and Tullia had tried to poison the mind of Cicero's protege against her, obviously they had not succeeded. He was worth cultivating. His years in Asia Minor had made a man of the world out of a charming Veronese boy and he was already becoming known for brilliant work at the bar. The house he had just bought faced the southern end of her own garden and gave evidence alike of his money and his taste.

And yet, in spite of Caelius's connections, he was still too young to wield social power, and it was with intense chagrin that Clodia realised that his was the most distinguished name upon her dinner list. Indifferent to the opinion of the world as long as she could keep her shapely foot upon its neck, she dreaded more than anything else a loss of the social prestige which enabled her to seek pleasure where she chose. Was this fear at last overtaking her swiftest pace? Her secretary, watching her, prepared himself for one of the violent storms with which all her servants were familiar. But at this moment a house slave came in to ask if she would see Lucretius. "Him and no one else," she answered curtly, and the Greekling slipped thankfully out as the curtains were drawn aside to admit a man, about thirty-five years old, whose face and bearing brought suddenly into the fretful room a consciousness of a larger world, a more difficult arena. Clodia smiled, and her beauty emerged like the argent moon from sullen clouds. An extraordinary friendship existed between this woman who was the bawd of every tongue in Rome, from Palatine to Subura, and this man whose very name was unknown to nine-tenths of his fellow-citizens and who could have passed unrecognised among most of the aristocrats who knew his family or of the literary men who had it from Cicero that he was at work on a magnum opus. Cicero was Lucretius's only close friend, and supposed he had also read every page of Clodia's life, but not even he guessed that a chance conversation had originated a friendship which Clodia found unique because it was sexless, and Lucretius because, within its barriers, he dared display some of his vacillations of purpose. The woman who was a prey of moods seemed to understand that when he chose science as his mistress he had strangled a passion for poetry; and that when he had determined to withdraw from the life of his day and generation and to pursue, for humanity's sake, that Truth which alone is immortal beyond the waxing and waning of nations, he had violated a craving to consecrate his time to the immediate service of Rome. And he, in his turn, who could penetrate beyond the flaming ramparts of the world in his search for causes, had somehow discovered beyond this woman's deadly fires a cold retreat of thought, where all things were stripped naked of pretence.

Their intercourse was fitful and unconventional. Clodia was accustomed to Lucretius's coming at unexpected hours with unexpected demands upon her understanding. He even came, now and then, in those strange moods which Cicero said made him wonder whether the gods had confused neighbouring brews and ladled out madness when they meant to dip from the vat of genius. At such times he might go as abruptly as he came, leaving some wild sentence reechoing behind him. But at all times they were amazingly frank with each other. So now Clodia's eyes met his calmly enough as he said without any preface: "I have come to answer your note. I prefer that my wife should keep out of your circle. You used to have doves about you, who could protect a wren, but they are fluttering away now and your own plumage is appalling." With the phrase his eyes became conscious of her emeralds and her shimmering Cean silks and then travelled to the nude grace of Venus the Plunderer. He faced her violently. "Clodia," he said, slaying a sentence on her lips, "Clodia, do you know that hell is here on this earth and that such as you help to people it? There is no Tityus, his heart eaten out by vultures, save the victim of passion. And what passion is more devouring than that frenzy of the lover which is never satisfied? Venus's garlanded hours are followed by misery. She plunders men of their money, of their liberty, of their character. Duties give way to cups and perfumes and garlands. And yet, amid the very flowers pain dwells. The lover fails to understand and sickness creeps upon him, as men sicken of hidden poison. Tell me," he added brutally, leaning toward her, "for who should know better than you? does not the sweetest hour of love hold a drop of bitter? Why do you not restore your lovers to their reason, to the service of the state, to a knowledge of nature?"

His eyes were hot with pity for the world's pain. Hers grew cold. "Jove," she sneered, "rules the world and kisses Juno between the thunderbolts. Men have been known to conquer the Helvetii with their right hands and bring roses to Venus with their left. Your 'poison' is but the spicy sauce for a strong man's meat, your 'plundering' but the stealing of a napkin from a loaded table. Look for your denizens of hell not among lovers of women, but among lovers of money and of power and of fame. Their dreams are the futile frenzies."

"Dreams!" Lucretius interrupted. Clodia shrank a little from the strange look in his eyes. "Do you, too, dream at night? I worked late last night, struggling to fit into Latin words ideas no Latin mind ever had. Toward morning I fell asleep and then I seemed to be borne over strange seas and rivers and mountains and to be crossing plains on foot and to hear strange noises. These waked me at last and I sprang up and walked out into the Campagna where the dawn was fresh and cool. But all day I have scarcely felt at home. And I may dream again to-night. This time my dead may appear to me. They often do." He walked toward her suddenly and his eyes seemed to bore into hers. "Do you ever dream of your dead?" A horrible fright took possession of her. She fell back against the Venus, her sea-green dress rippling upon the white marble, and covered her eyes with her hands. When she looked again, Lucretius was gone.

How terrible he had been to-day! Dream of the dead, he had said, the dead! And why had he talked of a hidden poison of which men might sicken and die? She felt a silly desire to shriek, to strike her head against the painted wall, to tear the jewels from her ears. The orange cat arched its back and rubbed its head against her. She kicked it fiercely, and its snarl of pain seemed to bring her to her senses. She picked the creature up and stroked it. The bird in the cage broke into a mad little melody. How morbid she was growing! She had been depressed by her ridiculous dinner and Lucretius had been most unpleasant. He was such a fool, too, in his idea of love. The brevity of the heated hours was the flame's best fuel. Venus the Plunderer seemed to smile, and there quickened within her the desire for excitement, for the exercise of power, for the obliterating ecstasies of a fresh amour. She had not had a lover since she accepted Catullus. How the thought of that boy sickened her! He had been so absurd that first day when she went to him at Allius's. After writing her that his heart was an AEtna of imprisoned fire, in the first moment he had reminded her of ice-cold Alps. He had knelt and kissed her foot and then had kissed her lips--her lips!--as coolly as a father might kiss a child. The unleashed passion, the lordly love-making which followed had won her. But that first caress and its fellow at later meetings was like crystal water in strong wine--she preferred hers unmixed. Of a poet she had had enough for one while; if she ever wanted him back she need only say so.

In the mean time it would be a relief to play the game with a man who understood it. Youth she enjoyed, if it were not too inexperienced. Caelius's smile, for instance, boyish and inviting, had seemed to her full of promise. He was worth the winning and was close at hand. Catullus had introduced him, which would add piquancy to her letting the din of the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian streams. Suddenly she laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought struck her. How furious and how impotent Cicero would be! If she could play with this disciple of his, and then divest him of every shred of reputation, she might feel that at last she was avenged on the man whom she had meant to marry (after they had sloughed off Metellus and Terentia) and who had escaped her. Calling back her secretary she ordered writing materials and with her own hand wrote the following note:

"Does Caelius know that Clodia's roses are loveliest at dusk, when the first stars alone keep watch?"

III

About seven o'clock on a clear evening of early November Catullus arrived in Rome. With the passage of the weeks his jealous grief had learned to dwell with other emotions, and a longing to be with Lesbia, once more admitted, had reassumed its habitual sway. Coming first in guise of the need of comfort, it had impelled him to leave Verona, and on the journey it had grown into a lover's exclusive frenzy. To-morrow he might examine the structure of his familiar life which had been beaten upon by the storm of sorrow. To-night his ears rang and his eyes were misty with the desire to see Lesbia. He had written her that he would call the following morning, but he could not wait. Stopping only to dress after his journey, fitting himself, he shyly thought, to take her loveliness into his arms, he started for the Palatine. The full moon illumined the city, but he had no eyes for the marvel wrought upon temples and porticoes. Clodia's house stood at the farther end of the hill, her gardens stretching towards the Tiber and offering to her intimates a pleasanter approach than the usual thoroughfare. To-night he found the entrance gate still open and made his way through the long avenue of cypress trees, hearing his own heart beat in the shadowed silence. The avenue ended in a wide, open space, dominated by a huge fountain. The kindly moonlight lent an unwonted grace to the coarse workmanship of the marble Nymphs which sprawled in the waters of the central basin, their shoulders and breasts drenched in silvered spray. Upon the night air hung the faint scent of late roses. It had been among summer roses under a summer moon that Catullus had once drunk deepest of Lesbia's honeyed cup. This autumn night seemed freighted with the same warmth and sweetness. He was hurrying forward when he caught sight of two figures turning the corner of a tall box hedge. His heart leaped and then stood still. A woman and a man walked to the fountain and sat down upon the carved balustrade. The woman unfastened her white cloak. The man laughed low and bent and kissed her white throat where it rose above soft silken folds. Clodia loosened the folds. Caelius laughed again.

Catullus never remembered clearly what happened to him that night after he had plunged down the cypress avenue, his feet making no sound on the green turf. In the mad hours he found his first way into haunts of the Subura which later became familiar enough to him, and at dawn he came home spent. Standing at his window, he watched the pitiless, grey light break over Rome. The magic city of the moonlit night, the creation of fragile, reflected radiance, had evanished in bricks and mortar. The city of his heart, also, built of gossamer dreams and faiths, lay before him, reduced to the hideous realities of impure love and lying friendship. In the chaos substituted for his accustomed world he recognised only a grave in Troy.