Chapter XIII: Sunset Meeting Dawn

When Eleazar and Miriam had left, Fabricius took Baithene and the dog into quarters of their own; whilst Damaris led Ethne within into her own rooms.

“My child,” she said, “you have been used to be served by others, not to serve. The change must have been hard.”

“The service of our own people was always willing,” replied Ethne, the colour deepening on her fair cheek. “And I have tried to make my service willing; and then it is not hard.”

“You have heard of the Lord of all, Who became servant of all?” said Damaris, tenderly; and Ethne replied, her whole face lighting up—

“Patrick told us of the King of men, Who saw that all men were in bondage, and gave His life a ransom for all; and he told us how He came to serve us all, and that His sacrifice and His service were all willing. And our Patrick was himself once a slave, and knows what it means. Besides,” she added, “it could never be hard to serve Miriam, she was so good to us, and so sad.”

“Her name is Miriam?” Damaris asked.

“Yes,” said Ethne; “and I thought that name was the same as the blessed Mother’s name, and that made it sweeter to serve her.”

Damaris took the girl’s hand and pressed it to her heart as she replied—

“Thy Miriam looks very worn and sad.”

“Yes; and that, of course, makes me love her more. She has lost her only child, and she does not seem to have quite found our Christ.”

“Child,” said Damaris, “our Christ is everything to thee?”

“Yes,” replied Ethne, simply, “He is everything. We are Christians.”

“Could you not tell Miriam of Him?” said Damaris.

“I tried,” was Ethne’s answer; “and she wept, and said she saw I had found the Messiah, who is called the Christ, and that it gave me a wonderful joy. There was no need to say much. She saw. But,” she added, “Patrick told us there are two Testaments of God. And Miriam seems only to know the first, the beginning; she has not learned the end yet.”

“The Testaments of God are all your learning?” Damaris said.

“They are the only books we know,” Ethne replied.

“Happy child,” said Damaris, “to have had only the fountains to drink from.”

“But here, where the fountains have been overflowing, they say, so long,” replied Ethne, “we are hoping to learn so much! And then, if ever we go home again——” But there she stopped; the words would not come.

“You have a home, father and mother?” Damaris asked.

“We _had_,” sobbed Ethne; “and oh! I trust we have still! If only we could know! Patrick said in his letter, that the pirates killed many when they took us captive; and Dewi, the British sailor, who was one of them, promised to go home and tell our people of us, and then to come back and find us out, and tell us of them. And if God helps him he will.”

Damaris laid the fair head on her shoulder, and gradually the whole story came out. They were interrupted by a bell sounding from the oratory which had belonged to Marcella and the Ecclesia Domestica of the Aventine; and they all went thither, and knelt together for the morning prayer.

Afterwards, while the brother and sister had their morning meal together, Damaris and Fabricius consulted what should be done with them. It was clear from what Miriam had said, and Baithene confirmed, that the eyes of one of the officers of the Emperor’s household had rested covetously on the three, that is, the youth, the maiden, and the dog, and that they must as little as possible for the present be seen in public together.

It was decided, therefore, that Fabricius should take Baithene and the dog to a country house belonging to the family among the Sabine hills, near Nero’s villa of Sublacum (Subiaco), whilst Ethne should remain with Damaris and Lucia on the Aventine. To restore them to their home in the far-off Western isle, while so much of the intervening continent was ravaged by barbarian tribes, or infested by Imperial armies and officials, often worse than the barbarians, was at present out of the question. The safest course for the captives, it was concluded, was to treat them as part of the property and household of Fabricius, under such protection as his patrician and senatorial rank could give. This decision was communicated to the brother and sister as the only possible course to be taken at the moment.

“But peril is nothing to us,” Baithene said appealingly, “if only we could reach our own land again.”

“It is for your sister that the peril involved in such a journey cannot be encountered!” Fabricius replied.

“But surely,” Ethne ventured to plead, “if it is His way, God will guard us in it.”

“It is _not_ the Divine way,” rejoined Fabricius, with Roman imperiousness. “For it is not _ours_ for you. God has committed you to us, and we have to guard you as our own.”

And Damaris added—

“Who knows how soon your friend the British sailor may find you out, and bring you tidings which may guide us all?”

Baithene acknowledged the right of ransom and the law of honour, whilst Ethne felt the claim of gratitude and the persuasion of hope and loving-kindness. And so the two were gathered under the sacred _patria potestas_ of the father of the Roman household.

* * * * *

It was a wonderful time for Ethne, those months with Damaris and Lucia. From the limited past of her own Irish clan she was suddenly transferred into the past of the whole civilized world, Greek and Roman, besides the link with the ancient East through Miriam, whom she often saw.

And not less wonderful were those months to Damaris and Lucia. It was as if through a cleft in the far-off mountain walls of some Norwegian fiord they saw the sunset melting into dawn, the fading glory of the old world kindling into the fervent glow of the new.

“I understand what thou hast written,” Lucia wrote to Marius, still detained in Gaul. “I also have found the Fountain of Youth.”

The past of ancient Rome—Republican, Imperial, Pagan, Christian—stood visibly before the young Irish girl. On the Capitol, around the Forum, throughout the city, still rose the ancient temples, despoiled indeed of many of their statues and shrines, and no longer devoted to the worship of the ancient gods, but still standing, not turned to other uses. The temple where the Vestal Virgins had kept the fire of Vesta ever burning, the sacred hearth-fire of Rome, and the cells where they had lived, were still there. Only forty years before, the last of the Vestals had cursed, with a curse of which most men still believed the power, Serena, niece of the great Theodosius, when she dared, in the temple on the Capitol, to take the jewelled necklace from the neck of Rhea, Mother of the Gods, and place it on her own. The Vestal Virgins, the ancient gods and goddesses, all were gone, but the sacrilegious Serena, alas! people still said with awe, had been put to a violent death.

The palaces on the Palatine were still Imperial dwellings. The Pantheon was not yet consecrated to Christian worship. They were indeed empty of shrines and worshippers, those grand old temples; but they were still there, whether awaiting the return of the old gods, or the consecration of Christian worship, or mere destruction, not a few still doubted. August presences seemed to many still to hover round them, whether good or evil, still mighty to avenge if not to save.

And there stood the Coliseum, a continual gathering-place of all Rome, attracted thither day by day by the tumultuous excitement of the games and races.

Early one morning Damaris took Ethne there. With triumph she pointed out how that arena was never more to be stained with the blood of martyrs or gladiators. Eagerly Ethne drank in the stories of the Christian martyrs, rejoicing to go by any path to Christ, fearlessly awaiting the opening of the cages of the lions. Especially she delighted in the last martyr story of the Coliseum, which had closed the gladiatorial games for ever.

“I was a little child of seven,” Damaris said; “but I remember to this day how my father came back, and told us of the unknown Egyptian monk who had suddenly flashed on the world from the solitudes of his African deserts, and had stood in the arena between the combatants with outstretched arms pleading for the slaughter to cease; how for the moment there was a pause in the onset of the gladiators, a hush in the fierce shouts of the spectators; and then a fiercer yell than ever, showers of stones hurled at the monk, until he fell, crushed to death, until the last Christian martyr had fallen at what his martyrdom made the last gladiatorial show. The cry of wrong from the great city had pierced the monk’s heart in his African solitudes, and driven him, alone, across desert and sea, to stop it; and that great sacrifice of pity had pierced the heart of the Emperor. And so one more great wrong was swept out of the world for ever.”

“Do all the great wrongs die in that way,” asked Ethne, “by some one dying under them?”

“The Cross is on our Christian banners!” said Damaris. “Of what wrongs were you thinking?”

“I was thinking of Troyes,” Ethne replied, “of the young deacon falling under the spears of the Huns, of the aged Bishop Lupus giving himself up to Attila, and of the city being saved. And,” she added, softly, “I was thinking also of the great wrong of slavery, and of Patrick, who brought the freedom of Christ to our country, having been himself once a slave.”

Damaris looked at the girl very tenderly, but as if a new light had suddenly dawned on her. Slavery was so essential a part of that old civilization, Greek and Roman, that even to her it had scarcely occurred that it was anything but an inevitable natural evil, like earthquakes and storms; but she said nothing.

A very close sympathy bound these two to each other; they seemed so often to read each other’s thoughts, and in doing so to find their own grow clearer. Many were the galleries of the past through which Damaris led Ethne. The great poems of the ancient world were unlocked at her touch, one palace chamber after another; especially the great poems of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, the poems of the Battle and the Wandering. Ethne would say they explained so much, since the battles and the wanderings seem always there.

And Lucia would answer—

“Does not that make you sad?”

And Ethne would say—

“Why should it? We have the _key_, now! We know that the wanderings are pilgrimages to the home, and the battles may always be victories.”

“But we cannot always see the victory,” Lucia said.

And Ethne—“How could it be a battle still if we did?”

Then there was the story of Prometheus, the bound Titan, with its mighty entangled reverberations of the great revolt and the great redemption. So Ethne’s world of thought grew into order to the music of the great voices. Of the feeble, imitative echoes of the present happily she heard little.

Also in that memorable winter Ethne accomplished the great elementary step of learning to read. And the gentle strains of Virgil went deep into her heart, as afterwards into the hearts of so many of the saints of her own race. Fortunately for her there was only one literary language then to learn, and it was something to learn Latin as a household speech from those to whom it was the natural language of their infancy.

But dearest of all to Ethne was the translation of “the Testaments of God” into the vulgar tongue by Jerome, the Jerome who had written letters to the kindred of Damaris, and had prayed and preached in the oratory on the Aventine, where they worshipped every day.

One day Lucia entering Ethne’s chamber found her kneeling by a table entirely absorbed in a manuscript.

“What new treasure have you found?” Lucia asked.

“Another of the great poems,” said Ethne, with a smile in her luminous eyes. “Miriam told me something of it. It is about a great chieftain who was good to every one, and honoured by his clan and all the clans around, and beloved by God; and yet he lost everything, and every one he loved, because the devil hated him, and God listened to the devil, and seemed to forsake him.”

“You mean Job,” said Lucia, rather drearily. “We have all heard of the patience of Job.”

“But that is the interest of it,” Ethne said. “He must have been patient really, for God said so at the end. But there was no dullness in his patience. He said terrible things about the world and even about God in his anguish—just the things that come into every one’s heart in great anguish.”

“So it always seemed to me,” Lucia observed with some hesitation. “But how does that help us? We are not allowed to say such things.”

“It is all the help in the world,” said Ethne. “That old chieftain could not be untrue. The other chiefs preached at him in all his pain and anguish, and kept saying, ‘The world is all right, and every one gets what he deserves.’ And Job said, ‘The world is anything but right, and people don’t get what they deserve.’ And the delight is to see that God was pleased not with the chiefs who meant to flatter Him by saying His world was going on all right, but with poor tortured Job, who found fault with it—even, it almost seemed, with Himself. We do dare sometimes to say the hardest things to those we love best.”

“But,” said Lucia, coming out with a problem which had vexed her in secret long, “how can that comfort us? God did not explain. He only said, ‘I am strong, and wise, and eternal, and you are frail and blind, and but for a moment.’ Is that any comfort?”

Ethne was silent for a time, and then she said—

“I suppose it is, if we love Him enough! It seems to me God never does explain. But He said that poor old chieftain had spoken right for Him and understood Him, and He must have known. That certainly must have comforted Job. And God told Job to make sacrifices for his friends who were so pleased with themselves. And it _is_ a comfort to have people who are too much pleased with themselves set right; and the greatest comfort of all to be able to do good to those who have hurt us. Perhaps also it put the friends right too at last.”

“Job had also his riches back, and other children instead of those he had lost,” said Lucia.

“I do not see much comfort in that,” said Ethne; “the lost _things_ may be replaced, but we always want the _same_ lost _people_ back, not new ones.”

“Hast thou no room for any new people?” Lucia said. “Have you no room for us?” and she clasped Ethne’s hands.

Ethne returned the caress, but rather parenthetically; and with a far-off look in the deep grey eyes she resumed—

“Poor old chieftain! That poem does not seem finished; but _we_ have the end, you know,” she added.

“The end!” said Lucia. “Where?” wondering if Ethne had discovered a new book of the Holy Scriptures in her far country.

“In the Four Gospels,” said Ethne, “in the Cross. _We_ do not need, of course, that God should explain Himself. He has sent His Son.”

* * * * *

The winter passed rapidly away. At first they did not venture to take Ethne amongst the great congregations in the basilicas; but occasionally, as time went on, and also her Latin grew stronger, learned naturally in the every-day speech of the home, they took her to some quiet corner of the great churches, to hear one of the great sermons of Leo; and so, gradually, the conviction dawned on her as she stood among the hushed multitudes, and listened to the strong, plain words of the great Bishop, that Rome, like Troyes, had also her great living saint. The heresies he refuted were indeed unknown to her; to her his eloquent, clear exposition of the Faith in the Incarnate Lord was but an unfolding of what she had been taught in the simple creed and hymn of Patrick, guarded, as she felt, against foes she knew not; but guarded by simply strengthening wall and buttress of the great fortress of truth, within which she had already found rest.

The Christian catacombs also had the deepest interest for Ethne; they never seemed to have any gloom for the young girl. The radiance of the presence of the Good Shepherd, painted on the walls, seemed to make them warm and bright for her. The Shepherd with the sheep and lambs gathered around his feet, and in one place with the lost kid of the goats on His shoulder; the music of the young Orpheus (also on those frescoed walls), in his immortal youth, filled all the silent chambers.

“Christ, our Orpheus, is for ever gathering the living stones into the Holy City by His music,” Damaris said; “from the wildernesses of the far West, from the ruins of Rome, from the Egyptian deserts of Telemachus.”

“And for ever making the world young again,” said Lucia; “as He has now sent you into our old world to make it new again for us.”

“It does not seem old to me,” said Ethne.

“How should it?” said Lucia. “Does the spring-tide ever leave the world old? Do the fountains of living water ever know what drought means?”

They read to her from the rough old Greek letters the inscriptions, “_In peace_,” “_Thou livest_,” “Mayest thou live _in God_.”

“It is the story of the princesses of our race, the story of our Ethne the Fair and Fedelma the Ruddy. They said to Patrick, ‘Give us to see the Son, our Spouse,’ and they received the Eucharist of God, and they saw the Son, their Spouse, and they slept in peace.”

Once Miriam took the girl into one of the catacombs of her own people; and there also she saw in the square, strange characters the word which Miriam told her meant “Peace” in the Hebrew; also the dove with the olive branch as in the Christian tombs, and the rocky couch or ledge like that on which the angels called the Magdalene to look and see where they had laid the Lord.

“No more a tomb, but only a night’s resting-place for us since He laid there,” Ethne said.

And Miriam answered with mournful hesitation—

“They said the disciples stole Him away.”

“They did not steal Him away,” Ethne replied; “nor did He steal away from death! He met death and conquered it for us, for all, for ever.”

For Ethne, nothing was in the realm of death; there was no dead past for her; back through all the ages lived that immortal life of the living Word. There was no world of shades for her; the world of the dead had become “the land of the living.”