Rome For Sale, page 27
“Why didn’t you come home at once?”
He pushed the subject away with opened hand. “Don’t speak of it again. I am ashamed. I failed utterly. I don’t mean the defeat at the elections. That was nothing really. My vanity was hurt, hurt to death, thank God. It’s dead now, and I’ve work to do.”
He came and knelt with one knee on the bed beside her. “Forgive me that I didn’t come home at once.” He touched her cheek and breast gently. “How beautiful you are.” He felt as he had felt when looking down on the Etruscan Plain in search of Voltumna. A beautiful earth, but in its veins were centuries of cruelty. In the blood of Orestilla who wanted only to be loved and to love. She was his earth, and last night he had returned to her.
His face closed again. The tensity of possession passed over it again, and Orestilla chilled to see the distance into which he withdrew. A moment before he had been so close; never in their married lives had he been so close; and now he was lost again. She hated his purpose. It was evil, or it could not come between them like this. But she felt thankful that there was no sign of last night’s delirium. At least this possession was controlled, understandable.
She heard the child crying in the next room, and rose from the bed, picking up a silken dressing-gown. Catalina did not notice her go. He rested thinking for a few moments, and then began mechanically dressing.
2
He called a meeting at his house: Lentulus, Cassius, Cethegus, Manlius, several of the lesser agents, and Labienus as the representative of Cæsar, who had won the prætorship. They were all somewhat ill at ease, as if each man expected to be blamed for the failure—all except Manlius.
“What did you expect?” he said, after asking leave to speak. “I told the general that it would be the best thing. Nothing can be done by politics. If he’d been elected, he’d only have got tangled in the schemes of these people that know how to twist words, and he might have spoiled everything. Then the poor folk would have turned on him. You’ll excuse me for speaking out. I mayn’t know much about politics, but I can get together an army for him.”
There was a silence, which Catalina broke:
“Thank you, Manlius. Now listen, all of you. The political test was no test at all. The present system rests on the force at the disposal of the propertied classes. There’s only one question. Do we give up, or do we meet force by force?”
“That puts it clear,” said Manlius.
The others looked uneasy. They were fully decided to continue with the challenge, but were afraid of the exposure of words. A thought was safe; but words were things, capable of being written down or repeated, hostages or weapons. It was one matter to talk half-jokingly of a coup, another thing to plan it in cold blood.
Cethegus shuffled in his seat. He could not bear to look at Catalina, so much now did he hate the man who had come from Orestilla’s bed; but for that very reason he felt impelled to reply, to show that he also could make decisions. By replying he took on himself the responsibility for all that came after; he dominated Catalina.
“I’m for fighting force with force,” he said in a dry voice.
The others breathed more easily. The word was spoken. “I can’t say I’m for fighting,” wheezed Cassius, “but I’ll arrange to have other people removed.”
“I suppose there’s no other way,” said Lentulus in an off-hand voice. “I vote for insurrection.”
The others chimed in. Labienus alone did not speak. He was against all such conspiracies; for in his heart he wanted only to cut a fine social figure, and he feared the consequences of a mob-upheaval. To use the mob was part of the political game, but a conspiracy was playing with fire.
“I’m not here merely for myself,” he said, seeing that all were eyeing him. “You know what I mean without mentioning names. But I’ll repeat what you say. All I can answer now is that you know you have our sympathy and that whatever happens this confidence will be respected.”
Lentulus lifted the little finger with which he had been pressing his check and pointed languidly at Labienus. “Come now, young man. Speak more to the point. No one can respect confidences in a matter of this sort unless he’s fully implicated. I’m not a Stoic, but I hold at this moment to their maxim that all degrees of guilt are the same—or rather I invert it, all degrees must be the same. A man who wrings a cockbird’s neck may be as bad as a parricide, but in the parricide’s club he has to kill his father as well as the bird. Are you with us or against us?”
“I’m with you,” said Labienus in a steady forceless voice. “But I can’t speak for my principal. What do you want me to do? Am I to treat with him or make no report? Am I to explain the situation or to tell him a parable about cocks?” His voice gained strength as he came to the sneer at Lentulus.
Lentulus tapped the table quietly and was about to speak again, but Catalina anticipated him. “What Lentulus says is true, but here alone we must make an exception. I ask you all to leave to me and Labienus the handling of this question. For the rest we have decided. We must make the coup. The next question is: When?”
“Now,” said Manlius.
“No. You must go back to Etruria and collect your men properly. If we begin an insurrection now, we’ll have a mere rabble that we can’t command. The forces that can be raised in Etruria must be our mainstay, for the men are good soldiers and determined. Besides, there are other arrangements to be made. I suggest that we provisionally fix on the first of January as the date.”
This was agreed on. Manlius promised to gather his veterans from the taverns and bawdy-houses and sheds where they slept, and send them back to Fæsulæ. There they would form the nucleus of an army. They would act also as recruiting-officers, and soon he would have several thousand first-class fighting men.
The meeting broke up. Catalina signed to Labienus to remain behind. He could not believe that Cæsar would desert the cause but the compact had been made only for the elections. Labienus sat with set face. He was resolved to break from the conspiracy and did not think for a moment that Cæsar would consider joining it.
Catalina felt his distrust for Labienus greater than ever. He could not speak frankly with him. “Will you tell Cæsar what we discussed?” he said at length.
“I will. But are you sure there’s no other course? Cæsar will be prætor next year, and Metellus Nepos and Bestia are tribunes.”
Catalina sat silent, then he said, “Tell Cæsar what we discussed.” He was angry that he could not placate this man on whom he had to rely as intermediary. “There is no other way.” His emotion burst forth. “I tell you that there isn’t. We’ve got to break things first. It had to come. Even if I’d been elected, it would have been the same. These men are set like stone. They laugh to see fools trying to tear down the walls of Rome with bleeding fingers. Fire and steel and battering-rams are needed, and by God I’ll bring them.” He hit the wall of the room so hard that he tore his knuckles, but did not feel or see the wound.
But the blow calmed him. “Tell Cæsar what we discussed,” he repeated, almost appealingly. “You’re a young man, Labienus, and you’ve got the selfishness of youth. You’ve much to learn, if you’re to learn anything.” He mastered himself. “Don’t come between me and Cæsar, that’s all. Do your duty and keep your mouth shut, and if you feel scared of this work of ours, stay out of it. I’ll see that the others don’t molest you.”
Labienus for one brief pulse wished to say that he would join; then he moved back, his lip lifting with contempt for himself. For Catalina he felt neither admiration nor contempt; he felt the man was mad; and he wanted to have nothing to do with him.
“You’ve spoken openly,” he said, “and I’ll give you what you gave. I mean to keep out, but I shan’t talk except to Cæsar, when I take him your message; and I’ll take that to him faithfully.” He rose and walked straight out.
3
It was hard to realise the change at first. Catalina did not realise it fully until Manlius called to say that he was leaving in an hour for Etruria. Then he felt how much Manlius had meant to him. The die was cast. He was the leader of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Every moment of his life henceforth must be hemmed with danger till the conspiracy succeeded; and if it failed, he must die. He envied Manlius. The man was going out into the open, but his master must stay to plot and scheme, and one false step would mean death, not a battle-death but a wretched execrated dungeon-death among jeering enemies, with the grinning face of Cicero as the last image on his eyeballs.
But there was compensation. This knowledge of environing danger meant that he was tied inescapably to the project, as the harvest-figurines thrown into the flowing Tiber were tied to their task of bringing the year once more to birth. He was a soldier in treacherous country. Behind every thicket lay an ambush; every stone concealed an archer aiming at his heart. He must be wary. The fight had begun. There was wine in his blood.
“You won’t forget her?” asked Manlius, and to Catalina’s look of disturbed questioning he answered, “The eagle. The eagle that flew over Marius when he smashed the northerners.”
“The eagle will be with me when I come,” said Catalina, despite himself longing once more for the day when swords would be unsheathed.
4
No word from Cæsar. Catalina was anxious. He had to force himself not to seek out Labienus, take him by the throat, and ask him what lies he had told. But Labienus had told no lies. He had coolly recounted to Cæsar what Catalina had said, and stood nonchalantly waiting to hear Cæsar’s ironical comments.
Cæsar had known that the information must come; there could be no other course for Catalina now; and yet the direct request for aid took him by surprise. For he had reached no decision. He was now prætor-elect as well as chief priest; through Nepos he had established friendly relations with Pompeius; personally he had much to gain by severing contact with Catalina. Yet he could not bring himself to do it. The man had stirred something too deep in him; that depth continued to utter its subtle note of appeal, spoiling all arguments based on ambition. Rome was indeed in drastic need of reconstruction; the ruling classes were irreconcilable; the break must come.
Things certainly looked as if either Catalina or Pompeius must become a dictator. Why shouldn’t the break come now—under Catalina? Catalina had awakened the people to a demand for justice greater than had ever spoken in them before; they loved and trusted him; throughout Italy the disaffection had spread, and the grievously burdened provinces were crying for a deliverer. Surely now the moment was ripe. Was Cæsar through fear or petty devotion to a career to miss the grand moment of Roman rebirth?
He felt uncomfortable as Labienus stared at him with the assurance of a man concerned only with known and computable things.
“They can’t succeed,” he compelled himself to say, “and yet I don’t see how anything else can succeed in this distracted world of ours, Titus.”
Labienus shook his head. “The only question that I can see is how to get away from these hot-heads before they betray themselves. I don’t mean to be ruined with them, and I told Catalina so.”
Cæsar sighed. “You are young, Titus, and so you know everything. If you had been your present age in the year that Sulla died, would you have prophesied that within ten years the tribunes would have regained their old powers and that in less than twenty years the capitalists would be the great supporters of the senatorial rule?”
Labienus was silent. It was a bad omen that both Cæsar and Catalina had made the same remark about his youth; the two men were thinking alike. “I can’t answer that,” he said. “But I have to believe that hot-heads are fated to ruin themselves, or I’d lose my faith in myself.”
Cæsar decided not to discuss Catalina any more with Labienus. The man was afraid and would become untrustworthy if pushed into a matter that he disliked. “Stick to your faith,” he replied lightly, “and we’ll leave Catalina to look after his own affairs. Here’s something more important. I want you to propose that Pompeius has the right on his return to wear the triumphal bay-crown for the rest of his life.”
Labienus was not entirely convinced; the change of attitude had been too sudden; but he took up the new subject with alacrity. It was the kind of thing that amused him endlessly. He respected a man like Cæsar who could win over a rival by such obvious tactics that conceded nothing of value. Of course the conservatives would be enraged at the proposal of the crown and would fight it almost as sternly as a serious matter like Catalina’s gang.
He paused with a frown. Yes, Catalina’s gang was a serious matter, but they couldn’t succeed. They were madmen. Politics were invented for clever strategists like Cæsar. Cæsar must have been trying out his pupil and henchman with that nonsense about Catalina. That was the explanation! Of course. Labienus was pleased and proud of having seen through the game; but Cæsar’s probes had undeniably shaken him for a moment. The man was a fox.
5
Cæsar continued to feel his will divided. He suffered; for he had never felt like this before. Always, despite the veering of developing impulses, he had been able to make a decision when action called, whether the decision was reckless or prudent, whether he rushed into some calculated defiance or withdrew into a corner of talk. Again and again his ideas and methods had changed, but he had never found himself stranded with a cleft impulse. Obstinately the cleft refused to mend. He could neither desert Catalina nor throw in his lot with him.
So he did nothing; and Catalina also waited.
Daily Cæsar felt born deeper within him the Roman pang, the cry of an undelivered world. This sensation was new. He had been used to the discussion of grievances from his earliest days; in boyhood he had heard his business-class relatives-by-marriage abusing the maladministration of the Senate; he had never lacked a quick sympathy for the suffering which he had met continuously; but the grievances, the perception of suffering had rebounded from his lively temperament. They had never penetrated to the depths. Now at last he felt the birth-throes of the age. Rome was with child and could not bring it forth. His ears were dinned with deep bestial cries of pain like those of a cow from which the calf has been taken. There seemed someone crying in the next room.
Catalina had awoken this realisation in him. Surely then his loyalty must turn to Catalina. Surely Catalina was the greater man? Cæsar struck down the hydra-heads of vanity, determined to reason the matter out. If Catalina was the greater man, then Cæsar would serve him without question. Catalina lived at the heart of the suffering age; it was his self-dedication that had rebuked Cæsar out of his absorbed delight in the mastery of a career. Cæsar, unless he turned to the teacher, was but another of the ungrateful scramblers for a bone of personal ambition.
He was jarred to the depths. All the efforts that he made to reason away the domination of Catalina left him feeling wretchedly perverse and mean-spirited. Danger? Of course, there was danger. Catalina moved in the centre of the storm. No one could shelter a feeble chamber-lamp of ambition there. The winds would snap the flame-blossom off. There were only elemental lights, moon and sun and stars. Otherwise darkness. Better darkness than a guttering little lamp fed with borrowed oil.
Cæsar’s mother Aurelia saw that he was torn with a deep conflict. She did not interfere, though she guessed what it was about. She believed that he would find his solution, but she was ready if she should detect the signs of defeat. Then she would speak; but it was well never to hurry things. He would come to her when it was necessary.
His wife Pompeia saw only that he was distant as usual. She cautiously made inquiries among her friends about Clodius. The man must have fallen ill. Or perhaps he had decided that she wasn’t worth loving after all. That must be it. What a relief, and yet it made life strangely dull. She could not settle down again to the routine of harp-playing and embroidering and reading with Julia.
6
The conservatives were carried away by their success. Catalina was finished, and nothing now remained but to squeeze him out of Rome as a bankrupt. Cicero, however, had other opinions. He had reacted too strongly with hate to Catalina’s hate, and he knew that the man had resources both in himself and among his followers that were far from being dissipated. Sestius had managed to compute through spies the number of veterans and active proletarians, and through Fulvia he had at least obtained the names of all who visited Catalina’s house, or promised support. Cicero was not carried away. On the contrary, after the first flush, he became frightened. Catalina was really a danger at last.
Fulvia was also frightened. She had now gone too far in betrayal to draw back, and her emotions found expression in alternate abuse and placation of Curius. He was drinking heavily, tortured by an inability to understand her. She had made excuses to keep Flavius away for the next few months, since she needed all her nerve to control Curius. He was growing obstreperous. Once he actually beat her, and in the morning crawled to her, kissing her feet and praying not to be sent away. She had had no intention of sending him away, even if she had not needed him to learn about Catalina. She had given up her plans of losing him and felt nothing but the need to escape the net of her spying. But she could not escape until she had fully betrayed Catalina. She hated herself, and found in the self-pitiful Curius a kinship which she abhorred.
She took to drinking a little herself, but not with Curius. The effects appeared only in a less careful toilet; her face looked faintly bloated; and the cosmetics became blotchy, no matter how she applied them.
She lent Curius money, and he lost it and came whining for more.
“Find out if Cæsar is with Catalina,” Sestius told her.
“Of course, he is,” blustered Curius, when she asked him. “Everyone’s in it. Everyone that owes money. That’s everyone.”
“But how are you so sure about Cæsar?”
