A Friend of Caesar | Page 5

flashing its water beyond. In his recollection a bridge had here crossed the streamlet. It had been removed. Just across, swayed the huge cypress. Drusus stepped forward. At last! He pushed carefully through the thicket, making only a little noise, and glanced across the brook.
There were ferns all around the cypress. Ivies twined about its trunk. On the bank the green turf looked dry, but cool. Just under the tree the brook broke into a miniature cascade, and went rippling down in a score of pygmy, sparkling waterfalls. On a tiny promontory a marble nymph, a fine bit of Greek sculpture, was pouring, without respite, from a water-urn into the gurgling flood. But Drusus did not gaze at the nymph. Close beside the image, half lying, half sitting, in an abandon only to be produced by a belief that she was quite alone, rested a young woman. It was Cornelia.
Drusus had made no disturbance, and the object on which he fastened his eyes had not been in the least stirred out of a rather deep reverie. He stood for a while half bashful, half contemplative. Cornelia had taken off her shoes and let her little white feet trail down into the water. She wore only her white tunic, and had pushed it back so that her arms were almost bare. At the moment she was resting lazily on one elbow, and gazing abstractedly up at the moving ocean of green overhead. She was only sixteen; but in the warm Italian clime that age had brought her to maturity. No one would have said that she was beautiful, from the point of view of mere softly sensuous Greek beauty. Rather, she was handsome, as became the daughter of Cornelii and Claudii. She was tall; her hair, which was bound in a plain knot on the back of her head, was dark--almost black; her eyes were large, grey, lustrous, and on occasion could be proud and angry. Yet with it all she was pretty--pretty, said Drusus to himself, as any girl he had seen in Athens. For there were coy dimples in her delicate little chin, her finely chiselled features were not angular, while her cheeks were aglow with a healthy colour that needed no rouge to heighten. In short, Cornelia, like Drusus, was a Roman; and Drusus saw that she was a Roman, and was glad.
Presently something broke the reverie. Cornelia's eyes dropped from the treetops, and lighted up with attention. One glance across the brook into the fern thicket; then one irrepressible feminine scream; and then:--
"Cornelia!" "Quintus!"
Drusus sprang forward, but almost fell into the brooklet. The bridge was gone. Cornelia had started up, and tried to cover her arms and shake her tunic over her feet. Her cheeks were all smiles and blushes. But Drusus's situation was both pathetic and ludicrous. He had his fianc��e almost in his arms, and yet the stream stopped him. Instantly Cornelia was in laughter.
"Oh! My second Leander," she cried, "will you be brave, and swim again from Abydos to Sestos to meet your Hero?"
"Better!" replied Drusus, now nettled; "see!" And though the leap was a long one he cleared it, and landed close by the marble nymph.
Drusus had not exactly mapped out for himself the method of approaching the young woman who had been his child playmate. Cornelia, however, solved all his perplexity. Changing suddenly from laughter into what were almost tears, she flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him again and again.
"Oh, Quintus! Quintus!" she cried, nearly sobbing, "I am so glad you have come!"
"And I am glad," said the young man, perhaps with a tremor in his voice.
"I never knew how I wanted you, until you are here," she continued; "I didn't look for you to-day. I supposed you would come from Puteoli to-morrow. Oh! Quintus, you must be very kind to me. Perhaps I am very stupid. But I am tired, tired."
Drusus looked at her in a bit of astonishment.
"Tired! I can't see that you look fatigued."
"Not in body," went on Cornelia, still holding on to him. "But here, sit down on the grass. Let me hold your hands. You do not mind. I want to talk with you. No, don't interrupt. I must tell you. I have been here in Pr?neste only a week. I wanted to get away from Bai?.[17] I was afraid to stay there with my mother."
[17] The famous watering-place on the Bay of Naples.
"Afraid to stay at that lovely seashore house with your mother!" exclaimed Drusus, by no means unwilling to sit as entreated, but rather bewildered in mind.
"I was afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus, the consular[18] Domitius's second son. I don't like him! there!" and Cornelia's grey eyes lit up with menacing fire.
[18] An ex-consul was known by this title.
"Afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus!" laughed