"Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?"—ST. JOHN I. 46.
Dea Flavia was standing beside a tall stool, on the top of which—on a level with her hands—was a shapeless mass of clay. Her fingers buried themselves in the soft substance or ran along the surface, as the exigencies of her task demanded.
Now and then she paused in her work, drew back a step or two from the stool, and with head bent on one side surveyed her work with an anxious frown.
Some few paces from her, at the further end of the room, a young girl sat on an elevated platform, with shoulders bare and head straight and rigid, the model for the proposed statue. Dea Flavia, in a simple garment of soft white stuff falling straight from her shoulders, looked peculiarly young and girlish at this moment, when she was free from all the pomp and paraphernalia of attendants that usually surrounded her wherever she went.
The room in which she indulged her artistic fancy was large and bare, with stuccoed walls on which she herself had thrown quaint and fantastic pictures of goddesses and of beasts, and groups of charioteers and gladiators, drawn with a skilful hand. The room derived its light solely from above, where, through a wide opening in the ceiling, came a peep of cloud-covered sky. There was little or no furniture about, and the floor of iridescent mosaic was innocent of carpet. Only in the corners against the wall stood tall pots of earthenware filled with flowers, with a profusion of late summer lilies and roses and with great branches of leaves on which the coming autumn had already planted its first kiss that turns green to gold.
"Hold thy head up, girl, a little higher," said Dea Flavia impatiently; "thou sittest there like a hideous misshapen bunch of nothing-at-all. Dost think I've paid a high price for thee that thou shouldst go to sleep all day upon that trestle?"
And the girl, roused from semi-somnolence, would pull herself together with a little jerk, would straighten her shoulders and lift her chin, whilst a quickly smothered sigh of weariness would escape her lips.
The air was heavy both within and without, with the presage of a coming storm. It had been terribly hot the last few days. The weather-wise—for there were many such at this time in Rome—had prophesied that Jupiter would send his thunders roaring before very long, and the feeling of thunder in the air caused the model to feel very sleepy, and on the forehead of Dea Flavia beads of perspiration would appear at the roots of tiny fair curls.
She was working with a will but with strange, fretful movements, like one whose mind seems absent from the present task. Short sighs of impatience escaped her parted lips at intervals and a frown appeared and disappeared fitfully between her brows.
"Chin up, girl ... shoulders straight!" came in curt admonitions once or twice to the drowsy model.
Whereupon from the furthest corner of the room Licinia would emerge, rod in hand, to emphasise the necessity of keeping awake when a beloved mistress so desired it.
"Let her be, Licinia," said Dea Flavia with angry impatience when for the fifth time now the model fell in a huddled heap, with nose almost touching her knees, and heavy lids falling over sleepy eyes. "It's no use ... there is something in the air to-day. I cannot work.... Phew!... methinks I feel the approach of thunder."
She threw down her modelling tools with a fretful gesture and then nervily began to destroy her morning's work, patting the clay aimlessly here and there until once more it became a shapeless mass.
"That lazy baggage hath spoilt thy pleasure," said Licinia gruffly; "but I'll teach her——"
"No, no, good Licinia!" interposed the young girl with a weary smile. "Teach her nothing to-day.... The air is too heavy for serious lessons. Send her away and bring me water for my hands."
Then as Licinia—muttering various dark threats—drove the frightened girl before her, Dea Flavia breathed a sigh of relief. Her hands were covered with clay, so she stood quite still waiting for the reappearance of Licinia with the water; and all the while the frown on her face grew darker and the look of trouble in her eyes more pronounced.
Soon the old woman returned with a basin full of water in her hands and a white cloth over her arm. With her wonted loving care she washed Dea's hands between her own and dried them on the towel. Dea allowed her to perform this kindly office for her, standing quite still and gazing absently out into vacancy.
"What can I do now for thee, my precious?" asked Licinia anxiously.
"Nothing, Licinia, nothing," replied Dea with a sigh. "Just leave me in peace.... I have a desire for solitude and silence."
It was the old woman's turn to sigh now, for she did not like this unwonted mood of her beloved. Dea Flavia, when in the privacy of her own house, was always gay and cheerful as a bird, prattling of all sorts of things, telling amusing anecdotes to her old nurse and playing light-heartedly with her young slaves, whenever she was not occupied with her artistic work. This frown upon the smooth, white brow was very unusual, and the fretful, impatient gestures were as unwonted as was that dreamy, absent gaze which spoke of anxious, troubled thoughts.
Dea Flavia herself could not understand her own mood. She could not have confided in the faithful old woman, even had she been so minded, for truly she would not have known what to confide.
Her thoughts worried her. They were so insistent, dwelling obstinately on one moment which had flitted by yesterday—the moment when she stood facing the praefect of Rome, and looking into his deep, dark eyes, which then and there had reminded her of a stormy sea suddenly lulled to rest. It seemed as if nothing now or ever hereafter would chase from her mind the memory of his look and of his rugged voice, softened to infinite gentleness as he said: "I told thee that He died upon the Cross."
She could hear that voice now, even as at this moment from afar a muffled sound of thunder went echoing over the hills, and, strive as she might, wherever she looked her eyes were haunted by the vision which he had conjured up of a man with arms outstretched upon a cross, whose might was yet greater than that of Rome.
At the time she had been greatly angered. The praefect had spoken traitorous words, and she had hated him—she hated him still—for that allegiance which he seemed to have given to another. Then, with a quick, elusive trick, memory showed her the massive shoulders bent humbly at her feet, tying the strings of her shoe—a simple homage due to the daughter of Cæsar—and the sharp pang of wrath once more shot through her heart with the remembrance that he had not deigned to press his lips against her foot.
The man's face and figure haunted her for it was the face and the figure of one whom she had learnt to hate. Yes! She hated him for his treason to Cæsar, for his allegiance to that rebel from Galilee; she hated every word which he had spoken in that arrogant, masterful way of his, when he smiled upon her threats and calmly spoke of immortality. She hated the voice which perpetually rang in her ear, the voice with which he spoke of his own soul being in the keeping of God—of One Whose Empire is mightier than that of Rome.
Yet vaguely still—for she was but a girl—the woman in her was stirred; the power and desire which exists in every woman's soul to conquer that which seems furthest from her reach. She hated the man, and yet within her inmost heart there had sprung the desire to curb and possess his; to disturb the perfect serenity that dwelt in his deep-set eyes, to kindle in them a passion which would make of that proud spirit a mere slave to her will.
There was in her just now nothing but the pagan desire to rule, and to break a heart if need be, if she could not otherwise subdue it.
Memory had fanned her wrath. She saw him now as she had seen him yesterday, arrogantly thwarting her will, his bitter tongue lashing her with irony; and now, as yesterday, the blush of humiliation burned her cheeks, and her pride and dignity rose up in passionate revolt against the one man who had ever defied her and who had proudly proclaimed his allegiance to a man who was not the Cæsar.
That allegiance belonged to Cæsar and to his might alone; beyond that there was the House of Cæsar, and failing that, nothing but rebellious treachery. And the troubled look grew deeper in Dea Flavia's face, and now she buried her hot cheeks in her hands, for the humiliation which she had endured yesterday from one man seemed to shame her even now.
"I'll break thy will," she murmured, whilst angry tears rose, burning, to her eyes. "I'll shame thy manhood and never rest until I see thee crawling—an abject slave—at the feet of Cæsar, who shall kick thee in the face. Cæsar and the House of Cæsar brook no rivalry in the heart of a Roman patrician."
Her hands dropped from before her face. She threw back her head, and looked straight before her into the darkest corner of the room.
"Jesus of Nazareth, he called thee!" she said slowly and as if speaking to an invisible presence. "And he said at thy call he would give up the world, and suffer death and torture and shame for thee!... Then so be it! And I do defy thee, O man of Galilee! even I, Dea Flavia Augusta, of the imperial House of Cæsar! For that man whom I hate and despise, for that man who has defied and shamed me, for that man whose heart and allegiance thou hast filched from Cæsar, for him will I do thee battle ... and that heart will I conquer; and it shall be Cæsar's and mine—mine—for I will break it and crush it first and then wrest it from thee!"
And even as she spoke, from far away over the hills and beyond the Campania the thunder rolled dully in response.