Roads from Rome | Page 4

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