Veranilda | Page 7

into tears when
reciting with passion the Lay of the Decii--felt content to owe his
sustenance to the delicate and respectful kindness of Maximus, who
sympathised with the great wrong he had suffered early in life. This
was no less than wilful impoverishment by his father, who, seeking to
atone for sins by fanaticism, had sold the little he possessed to found a
pilgrims' hospice at Portus, whither, accompanied by the
twelve-year-old boy, he went to live as monk-servitor In a year or two
the penitent died; Decius, in revolt against the tasks to which he was
subjected, managed to escape, made his way to Rome, and appealed to
Maximus. Nominally he still held the post of secretary to his benefactor,
but for many years he had enjoyed entire leisure, all of it devoted to
study. Several times illness had brought him to the threshold of death,
yet it had never conquered his love of letters, his enthusiasm for his
country's past. Few liked him only one or two understood him: Decius
was content that it should be so.

'Let us speak of it,' he continued, unrolling a manuscript of Virgil some
two hundred years old, a gift to him from Maximus. 'Tell me, dear lord,
your true thought: is it indeed a prophecy of the Divine Birth? To
you'--he smiled his gentle, beautiful smile--'may I not confess that I
have doubted this interpretation? Yet'--he cast his eyes down--'the
doubt is perhaps a prompting of the spirit of evil.'
'I know not, Decius, I know not,' replied the sick man with thoughtful
melancholy. 'My father held it a prophecy his father before him.--But
forgive me, I am expecting anxiously the return of Basil; yonder sail--is
it his? Your eyes see further than mine.'
Decius at once put aside his own reflections, and watched the
oncoming bark. Before long there was an end of doubt. Rising in
agitation to his feet, Maximus gave orders that the litter, which since
yesterday morning had been in readiness, should at once be borne with
all speed down to the landing-place. Sail and oars soon brought the
boat so near that Decius was able to descry certain female figures and
that of a man, doubtless Basil, who stood up and waved his arms
shoreward.
'She has come,' broke from Maximus; and, in reply to his kinsman's
face of inquiry, he told of whom it was he spoke.
The landing-place was not visible from here. As soon as the boat
disappeared beneath the buildings of the town, Maximus requested of
his companion a service which asked some courage in the performance:
it was, to wait forthwith upon the Lady Petronilla, to inform her that
Aurelia had just disembarked, to require that three female slaves should
be selected to attend upon the visitor. This mission Decius discharged,
not without trembling; he then walked to the main entrance of the villa,
and stood there, the roll of Virgil still in his hand, until the sound of a
horse's hoofs on the upward road announced the arrival of the travellers.
The horseman, who came some yards in advance of the slave-borne
litter, was Basil. At sight of Decius, he dismounted, and asked in an
undertone: 'You know?' The other replied with the instructions given
by Maximus, that the litter, which was closed against curious eyes,
should be straightway conveyed to the Senator's presence, Basil himself
to hold apart until summoned.
And so it was done. Having deposited their burden between two
columns of the portico, the bearers withdrew. The father's voice uttered

the name of Aurelia, and, putting aside the curtains that had concealed
her, she stood before him. A woman still young, and of bearing which
became her birth; a woman who would have had much grace, much
charm, but for the passion which, turned to vehement self-will, had
made her blood acrid. Her great dark eyes burned with quenchless
resentment; her sunken and pallid face told of the sufferings of a
tortured pride.
'Lord Maximus,' were her first words, as she stood holding by the litter,
glancing distrustfully about her, 'you have sworn!'
'Hear me repeat my oath,' answered the father, strengthened by his
emotion to move forward from the couch. 'By the blessed martyr
Pancratius, I swear that no harm shall befall you, no constraint shall be
put upon you, that you shall be free to come and to go as you will.'
It was the oath no perjurer durst make. Aurelia gazed into her father's
face, which was wet with tears. She stepped nearer to him, took his thin,
hot hand, and, as in her childhood, bent to kiss the back of the wrist.
But Maximus folded her to his heart.

CHAPTER II
BASIL'S VISION

Basil and Decius paced together a garden alley, between a