The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 17 October 1918, Page 3

The Storyteller

(Bi Cabdinal Wiseman.)

FAB IOLA; 08, THE CHURCH OF THE CATACOMBS

Part Second—Conflict CHAPTER XXX.—THE SAME DAY : ITS THIRD PART. Tertullus hastened at once to the palace: fortunately or unfortunately for these candidates for martyrdom. There he met Corvinus, with the prepared rescript, elegantly engrossed in uni cal , that' is, large capital letters. He had the privilege of immediate admission into the imperial presence ; and as a matter of business reported the death of Agnes, exaggerated the public feeling likely to be caused by it, attributed it all to the folly and mismanagement of Fulvius, whose worst guilt he did not disclose, for fear of having to try him, and thus bringing; out what he was now doing; depreciated the value of Agnes’s property, and ended by saying that it would be. a gracious act of clemency, and one sure to counteract unpopular feelings, to bestow it upon her relative, who by settlement was her next heir. He described Fabiola as a young lady of extraordinary intellect and wonderful learning, who was most zealously devoted to the worship of the gods, and daily offered sacrifice to the genius of the emperors. “I know her,” said Maximian, laughing, as if at the recollection of something very droll. “Poor thing! she sent me a splendid ring, and yesterday asked me for that wretched Sebastian’s life,' just as they had finished cudgelling him to death.” And he laughed immoderately, then continued: “Yes, ves, by all means ; a little inheritance will console her, no doubt, tor the loss of that fellow. Let a rescript be made out, and I will sign it.” Tertullus produced the one prepared, saying he had fully relied on the emperor’s magnanimous clemency ; and the imperial barbarian put a signature to it which would have disgraced a schoolboy. The Prefect at once consigned it to his son. Scarcely had he left the palace when Fulvius entered. He had been home to put on a proper court attire and remove from his features, by the bath and the perfumer’s art, the traces of his morning’s passion. He felt a keen presentiment that he should be disappointed. Eurotas’ cool discussion of the preceding evening had prepared him; the cross of all his designs, and his multiplied disappointments that day, had strengthened this instinctive conviction. One woman, indeed, seemed born to meet and baffle him whichever way he turned; but, “thank the gods,” he thought, “she cannot be in my way here. She has this morning blasted. my character for ever; she cannot claim my rightful reward she has made me an outcast; it is not in her power to make me a beggar.” This seemed his only ground of hope. Despair, indeed, urged him forward; and he determined to argue out his claims to the confiscated property of Agnes with the only competitor he could fear, the rapacious emperor himself. He might as well risk his life over it, for if he failed he was utterly ruined. After waiting some time he entered the audience-hall and advanced with the blandest smile that he could muster to the imperial feet. “What want you here?” was his first greeting. “Sire,” he replied, “I have come humbly to pray your royal justice to order my being put into immediate possession of my share of the Lady Agnes’s property. She has been convicted of being a Christian upon my accusation, and she has just suffered the merited penalty of all who disobey the Imperial Edicts.” “That is all quite right; but we have heard how stupidly you mismanaged the whole business as usual.

and ' have ' raised \ murmurings , and discontent in the people against us. So, now,' the sooner you quit our presence, palace, and city the better for yourself. Do you understand r We don’t usually give such warnings twice.” : ‘‘l will obey instantly every intimation, of the supreme will. But I am almost destitute. Command what of right is mine to be delivered over to me and I depart immediately. ” “No more words,” replied the tyrant; “but go at once. As to the property which .you demand with so much pertinacity, you cannot have it. We have made over the whole of it, by an irrevocable rescript, to an excellent and deserving person, the Lady Fabiola.” Fulvius did not speak another word ; but kissed the emperor’s hand and slowly retired. He looked a ruined, broken man. He was only heard to say, as he passed out of the gate: “Then, after all, she has made me a beggar too.” When he reached home, Eurotas, who read his answer in his nephew’s eye, was amazed at his calmness. “I see,” he drily remarked, “it is all over.” “Yes; are your preparations made, Eurotas?” / “Nearly so. I have sold the jewels, furniture, and slaves, at some loss ; but, with the trifle I had in hand we have enough to take us safe to Asia. I have retained Stabio, as the most trusty of our servants ; he will carry our small travelling requisites on his horse. Two others are preparing for you and me. I have only one thing more to get for our journey, and then I am ready to start.” “Pray what is that?” “The poison. I ordered it last night, but it will only be ready at noon.” “What is that for?” asked Fulvius, with some alarm, “Surely you know,” rejoined the other, unmoved. “I am willing to make one more trial anywhere else; but our bargain is clear ; my father’s family must not end in beggary. It must be extinguished in honor.” Fulvius bit his lip, and said, “Well, be it as you like ; I am weary of life. Leave the house as soon as possible for fear of Ephraim, and be with your horses at the third mile on the Latin gate soon after dusk. 1 will join you there. For I, too, have an important matter to transact before I start.” “And what is that ?” asked Eurotas, with a rather keen curiosity. “I cannot tell even you. But if lam not with you by two hours after sunset give me up and save yourself without me.” Eurotas fixed upon him his cold, dark eye, with one of those looks which ever read Fulvius through; to see if he could detect any lurking idea of escape from his gripe. But his look was cool and unusually open, and the old man asked no more. While this dialogue was going on Fulvius had been divesting himself of his court garments and attiring himself in a travelling suit. So completely did he evidently prepare himself for his journey, without necessity of returning home, that he even took his weapons with him ; besides his sword, securing in his girdle, but concealed under his cloak, one of those curved daggers, of highest temper and most fatal form, which were only known in the East. Eurotas proceeded at once to the Numidian quarters in the palace, and asked for Jubala ; who entered with two small flasks of different sizes, and was just going to give some explanations when her husband, half drunk, half furious, was seen approaching. Eurotas had just time to conceal the flasks in his belt, and slip a coin into her hand, when Hyphax came up. His wife had mentioned to him the offers which Eurotas had made to her before marriage, and had excited in his hot African blood a jealousy that amounted to hatred. /The savage rudely thrust his wife out of the apartment, and would have -picked a quarrel with the Syrian, had not the latter, his purpose being accomplished, acted with forbearance, assured'the archer-chief that he should never more see him, and retired. -

“• ’lt is time, however, that we return to Fabibla. The reader is probably ’, prepared to hear us say that she returned home’'a"Christian ; r and yet it was not so; For what as yet did she - know of Christianity to be said to profess it? . In Sebastian and Agnes she had, indeed, willingly admired the virtue, unselfish, generous, and more than earthly, which now she was ready to attribute to that faith. She saw that it gave motives of actions, principles of life, elevation of mind,’courage - of conscience, and determination of virtuous will, such as no other system of belief ever bestowed. And even if, as she now shrewdly suspected, and intended in her calmer moments to ascertain, the sublime revelations of Syra, concerning an unseen sphere of virtue, and its all-seeing Ruler, came from the same source, to what did it all amount more than to a grand moral and intellectual system, partly practical, partly speculative, as all codes of philosophic teaching were ? This was a very different thing from Christianity. She had as yet heard nothing of its real and essential doctrines, its fathomless yet accessible depths of mystery ; the awful, vast, and heaven-high structure of faith, which the simplest soul may contain ; as a child’s eye will take in the perfect reflection and counterpart of a mountain, though a giant cannot scale it. She had never heard of a God, One in Trinity; of the coequal Son incarnate for man. She had never been told of the marvellous history of Redemption by God’s sufferings and death. She had not heard of Nazareth, or Bethlehem, or Calvary. How could she call herself a Christian, or be one, in ignorance of all this? How many names had to become familiar and sweet to her which as yet were unknown, or barbarous Mary, Joseph, Peter, Paul, and John? Not to mention the sweetest of all, His, whose name is balm to the wounded heart, or as honey dropping from the broken honeycomb. And how much had she yet to .learn about the provision fox* salvation on earth, in the Church, in grace, in sacraments, in prayer, in love, in charity to others ! What unexplored regions lay beyond the small tract which she had explored ! rvn>-. .-..v* - No; Fabiola returned home, exhausted almost by the preceding day and night, and the sad scenes of the morning, and retired to hex* own apartment,; no longer perhaps even a philosopher, yet not a Christian. .She desired all her servants to keep away from the court which she occupied, that she might not be disturbed by the smallest noise ; and she forbade any one to have access to her. There she sat in loneliness and silence for several hours, too excited to obtain rest from slumber. She mourned long over Agnes, as a mother might over a child suddenly carried off. Yet, was there not a tinge of light upon the cloud that overshadowed her, more than when it hung over her father’s bier? Did it not seem to her an insult to reason, an outrage to humanity, to think that she had perished , that she had been permitted to walk fox-ward in her bright, robe, and with her smiling countenance, and with her joyous, simple heart, straight on —into nothing ; that she had been allured by conscience, and justice, and purity, and truth, on, on, till with arms outstretched to embrace them, she stepped over a precipice, beneath which yawned annihilation? No, Agnes, she felt sure, was happy somehow, somewhere ; or justice was a senseless word. “How strange,” she further thought, “that every one whom I have known endowed with superior excellence men like Sebastian, women like Agnes, should : ‘ turn out to have belonged to the scorned race of Christians ! One only remains, and to-morrow I will interroWhen she turned from these and looked round upon the heathen world, Fulvius, Tertxxllus, the Emperor Calpurnius— nay, she shuddered _as she surprised herself on the point of mentioning her own father’s name— sickened her to see the contrast ol baseness with nobleness, vice with virtue stupidity with wisdom, and the sensual with the spiritual Her mind was. thus being shaped into a mould, which some form of practical excellence must be found to ml, or it must be broken ; her soul was craving as a parched

soil, which heaven must send its waters to refresh, or it must become an eternal desert. Agnes, surely, well deserved the glory of gaining, by her death, her kinswoman’s conversion; but was there not one, more humble, who had established a prior claim? One who had given up freedom, and offered life, for this unselfish gain ? While Fabiola was alone and desolate she was disturbed by the entrance of a stranger, introduced under the ominous title of “A messenger from the emperor.” The porter had at first denied him admittance; but upon being assured that he bore an important embassy from the sovereign he felt obliged to inquire from the steward what to do ; when he was informed that no one with such a claim could be refused entrance. Fabiola was amazed, and her displeasure was somewhat mitigated by the ridiculous appearance of the person deputed in such a solemn character. It was Corvinus, who with clownish grace approached her, and in a studied speech, evidently got up very floridly, and intrusted to a bad memory, laid at her feet an imperial rescript, and his own sincere affection, the Lady Agnes’s estates and his clumsy hand. Fabiola could not at all comprehend the connection between the two combined presents, and never imagined that the one was a bribe for the other. So she desired him to return her humble thanks to the emperor for his gracious act, adding, “Say that I am too ill to-day to present myself and do him homage.” “But these estates, you are aware, were forfeited and confiscated,” he gasped out, in great confusion, “and my father has obtained them for you.” “That was unnecessary,” said Fabiola, “for they were settled on me long ago, and became mine the moment” —she faltered, and after a strong effort at self-mastery, she continued—“the moment they ceased to be another’s : they did not fall under confiscation.” Corvinus was dumfounded ; at last he stumbled into something, meant for an humble petition to be admitted as an aspirant after her hand, but understood by Fabiola to be a demand of recompense for procuring or bringing so important a document. She assured him that every claim he might have on her should be fully and honorably considered at a more favorable moment; but as she was exceedingly wearied and unwell, she must, beg him to leave her at present. He did so quite elated fancying that he had secured his prize. After he was gone she hardly looked at the parchment which he had left open on a small table by her couch, but sat musing on the sorrowful scenes she had witnessed; till it wanted about an hour to sunset. Sometimes her reveries turned to one point, sometimes to another of the late events : and at last she was dwelling on her being confronted with Fulvius that morning in the Forum. Her memory vividly replaced the entire scene before her, and her mind gradually worked itself into a state of painful excitement, which she at length checked by saying aloud to herself : “Thank heaven ! I shall never behold that villain's face again.” The words were scarcely out of her mouth when she shaded her eyes with her hand, as she raised herself up on her couch, and looked towards the door. Was it her overheated fancy which beguiled her, or did her wakeful eyes show her a reality Her ears decided the question, by these words which they heard. “Pray madam, who is the man whom you honor by that gracious speech?” “You, Fulvius,” she said, rising with dignity. “A further intruder still; not only into the house, the villa, and the dungeon, but into the most secret apartments of a lady’s residence; and what is worse, into the house of sorrow of one whom you have bereaved. Begone at once, or I will have you ignominiously expelled hence.” “Sit down.and compose yourself, lady,” rejoined the intruder; “this is my last visit to you; but we have a reckoning to make together of some weight. As to crying out, or bringing in help, you need not trouble yourself your orders to your servants, to keep aloof, have been too well obeyed. There is no one within call.”

It was true. Fulvius found the way. prepared unwittingly for him by Corvinus; for upon presenting himself at the door, the porter, who had seen him twice dine at the house, told him of the strict orders given, and assured him that he could not be admitted unless he came from the emperor, for such were his instructions. That, Fulvius said, was exactly his case and the porter, wondering that so many imperial messengers should come in one day, let him pass. He begged that the door might be left unfastened in case the porter should not be at his post when he retired ; for he was in a hurry, and should not like to disturb the house in such a state of grief, lie added that he required no guide, for he knew the way to Fabiola’s apartment. Fulvius seated himself opposite to the lady, and continued — “You ought not to be offended, madam, with my unexpectedly coming upon you, and overhearing your amiable soliloquies about myself; it is a lesson 1 learnt from yourself in the Tullian prison. But i must begin my scores from an earlier date. When, for the first time, I was invited by your worthy father to his table, I met one whose looks and words at once gained my affections— need not now mention her name,and whose heart, with instinctive sympathy, returned them.” “Insolent man!” Fabiola exclaimed, “to allude to such a topic here ; it is false, that any such affection ever existed on either side.” “As to the Lady Agnes,” resumed Fulvius, “I have the best authority, that of your lamented parent, who more than once encouraged me to persevere in my suit, by assuring me that his cousin had confided to him her reciprocating love.” (To be continued.)