Various - Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864

'Pah! What can I do?' retorted Porthenus, skilfully touching the chord of her sympathies, as he saw how sensitive she was to its vibrations. 'It is true that Polidorus is no fawning woman, and that he greets his slaves with the rod and the brand, and what not. It is true that he thinks but little of sending one of them to Hades through the avenue of his fishponds. But that, after all, is his affair, and if he chooses to destroy his property, what should it matter to me? Am I so rich that I can afford to lose a fair purchaser because he may incline to hang or drown his bargain? Such self-denial may suit the governor of a province, but should not be expected of a poor centurion.'

Ænone trembled, and again the impulse to make the purchase came upon her. Better to risk anything for herself—recognition, discovery, suspicion, or misconstruction, than that her friendship should so far fail as to allow this poor captive to fall into the hands of a brutish tyrant. There was a purse of gold in the half-opened drawer of a table which stood near her; and, in sore perplexity, she raised it, then let it fall, and again lifted it. As the centurion listened to the ring of the metal, his eyes sparkled, and he prepared to apply new arguments, when Cleotos himself sprang forward.

'I know nothing about this Polidorus of whom they speak,' said he, dropping upon one knee at her feet. 'And it is not to save myself from his hands that I ask your pity, most noble lady. There is much that I have already suffered, and perhaps a little more might make no difference, or, better yet, might close the scene with me forever. It is for other reasons that I would wish to be in this house—even as the lowest, meanest slave of all, rather than to live in the halls of the emperor Titus himself. There is one in this house, most noble lady, from whom I have long been cruelly separated, and who—what can I say but that if, when I was a free man, she gave me her love, now, in my abasement, she will not fail with that love to brighten my lot?'

Ænone started. At hearing such words, there could be but one thought in her mind—that he had actually recognized her, and that, without waiting to see whether or not she had forgotten him, and certainly knowing that in any event her position toward him had become changed, he was daring to covertly suggest a renewal of their old relationship. But the next words reassured her.

'We lived near each other in Samos, my lady. I was happy, and I blessed the fates for smiling upon us. How was I then to know that she would be torn away from me upon the very day when I was to have led her to my own home?'

'You say that she is here? Is it—do you speak of Leta?' cried Ænone.

'Leta was her name,' he responded, in some surprise that his secret had been so promptly penetrated before he had more than half unfolded it. 'And she is here.'

There was to Ænone perhaps one instant of almost unconscious regret at learning that she had been forgotten for another. But it passed away like a fleeting cloud—banished from her mind by the full blaze of happiness which poured in upon her at the thought that here at last was what would counteract the cruel schemes which were warring against her peace, and would thereby bring sure relief to her sorrow.

'And she is here,' repeated Cleotos. 'When at the first she was torn from my side, most noble lady, I would have died, if I could, for I did not believe that life had any further blessing in store for me. But, though the Roman armies were cruel, the fates have been kind, and have again brought us near. It was but a week ago that, as I looked up by the moonlight at these palace walls, I saw her. Can it be, that after so long a time, the gods meant I should be brought near, to have but this one glimpse of happiness, and then again be sundered from it?'

'It cannot be—it was not meant to be,' exclaimed Ænone, with energy; and again lifting the purse of gold, she placed it in the centurion's hand. 'There, I will purchase your slave,' she said. 'Take from this his proper price, and leave him with me.'

The centurion received the purse with ill-dissembled joy. Had he been fully able to control himself, he would doubtless have maintained a quiet air of dignified self-possession, befitting one giving full value for what he had received, and therefore not expected to exhibit any peculiarly marked or lively satisfaction. But the affair had been concluded so suddenly, and with such a liberal confidence in his discretion, that, for the moment, his hands trembled with excitement, and his face shone with avaricious pleasure.

Then he began to count out the gold pieces, gleefully dropping some into his pouch, and reluctantly putting others back into the purse. From the first he had established in his own mind the valuation which he would place upon the slave; and he had taken care to make his calculation upon such a liberal scale that he could well afford to consent to a large deduction, if it were required of him. Now he reasoned that, as his child had merely told him to take out what was proper, there could be no impropriety in paying himself at the highest possible price. She would never mind, and there were many comforts which he needed, and which an extra gold piece or two would enable him to procure for himself.

Then, as he weighed the purse and pondered over it, numerous wants and requirements, which he had hardly known until that time, came into his mind. He might supply them all, if he were not too timid or scrupulous in availing himself of an opportunity such as might never come to him again. Had even his first valuation of the slave been a sufficient one? He ought certainly to consider that the man could read and write, and was of such beauty and grace that he could be trained to a most courtly air; and it was hardly proper to sell him for no more than the price of a couple of gladiators, mere creatures of bone and brawn. And, in any event, it was hardly probable that Ænone knew the true value of slaves, or even remembered how much her purse had contained.

Thus meanly reflecting, the centurion dropped more of the gold pieces into his pocket, all the while eying the slave with keen scrutiny, as though calculating the market value of every hair upon his head. Then, with a sigh, he handed back the purse, most wofully lightened of its contents, and turned from the room, endeavoring to compose his features into a decent appearance of sober indifference, and muttering that he would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the house of Porthenus had never nourished mere traders to wrangle and chaffer over their property.

In one of his conjectures he had been correct. It was little that Ænone knew or cared about the price she was paying. Had the purse been returned to her entirely empty, she would have thrown it unheedingly into the drawer, and have never dreamed but that all had been rightly done. There was now but one idea filling her heart. She thought not about money nor any imprudence which she was committing, nor yet upon the chance of recognition. She only reflected that the day of her triumph had come—that at the sight of the long-absent lover, Leta would abandon the wrong path in which she had been straying, would throw herself into his arms, would tell him how, through the loss of him, she had become reckless, and had allowed her suffering mind to become perverted from the right—but that now all was again well; and thus confessing and being forgiven, would, in the ever-present joy of that forgiveness, lead for the future a different life, and, instead of a rival, become to her mistress a friend and ally.

Glowing with this bright hope, Ænone scarcely noticed the shuffling departure of the centurion, but, fixing her eyes upon the captive, keenly scrutinized his appearance. Not that it was likely that Leta, in the first flush of her joy at meeting him, would notice or care in what guise he was presented, so long as the soul which had so often responded to her own was there. But it was well that there should be nothing neglected which, without being directly essential to the production of a proper impression, might be tributary to it.