Helena Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing really.”

  “I’m not a sentimental man,” said Constantius, “but I love the wall. Think of it, mile upon mile, from snow to desert, a single great girdle round the civilized world; inside, peace, decency, the law, the altars of the Gods, industry, the arts, order; outside, wild beasts and savages, forest and swamp, bloody mumbo-jumbo, men like wolf-packs; and along the wall the armed might of the Empire, sleepless, holding the line. Doesn’t it make you see what the City means?”

  “Yes,” said Helena, “I suppose so.”

  “What d’you mean, then; must there always be a wall?”

  “Nothing; only sometimes I wonder won’t Rome ever go beyond the wall? into the wild lands? Beyond the Germans, beyond the Ethiopians, beyond the Picts, perhaps beyond the ocean there may be more people and still more, until, perhaps, you might travel through them all and find yourself back in the City again. Instead of the barbarian breaking in, might the City one day break out?”

  “You’ve been reading Virgil. That’s what people thought in the days of the Divine Augustus. But it came to nothing; from time to time in the past we’ve pushed a bit further East, taken in another province or two. But it doesn’t work. In fact, we’ve lately had to clear out of the whole left bank of the Danube. The Goths are delighted and it saves us a lot of trouble. There seems to be a natural division in the human race just where the present wall runs; beyond it they’re incurable barbarians. It takes all our time to hold the present line.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant couldn’t the wall be at the limits of the world and all men, civilized and barbarian, have a share in the City? Am I talking great nonsense?”

  “Yes, dear child.”

  “Yes, I expect I am.”

  *

  At length they reached Ratisbon, the largest town that Helena had ever seen; they stayed at Government House, the largest house Helena had ever entered.

  “I must leave you here for a week or two,” said Constantius. “You’ll be in good hands.”

  The hands were those of the Governor’s wife, a matron of Italy, of Milan, a patrician, half a head taller than Helena. She greeted her kindly.

  “Constantius is a great friend,” she said. “I hope you’ll allow us to be friends of yours, too. You must get some clothes,” she said. “You must get your hair and nails done. I can see Constantius has no idea of how to look after a bride.”

  So a steward was sent off on the first morning into the market and returned with half a dozen merchants and a train of slaves and soon the drawing-room looked like a corner of the bazaar, with stuffs and ribbons spread everywhere, and all the senior officers’ wives took a hand in fitting Helena out.

  They sat in Helena’s room while the barber did his work, commenting on the rare splendor of her hair as it mounted and rippled and took an alien shape under his hands.

  “My dear, you bite your nails.”

  “Only lately; never before I left home.”

  No one asked her where she came from, and, obedient to Constantius, she was silent when the chance was delicately offered.

  “She’s going to be perfectly presentable,” said the Governor’s wife when the ladies were together after dinner, and Helena seemed out of hearing, absorbed in a puppy.

  “Yes. Where do you think Constantius found her?”

  The lady who spoke had married well, none knew whence.

  “I make a point of never enquiring into the origin of army wives,” said the Governor’s wife. “I am glad enough if they conduct themselves properly once they are married. Young men get stranded in the service for years at a time in most out-of-the-way places—without the chance of meeting girls of their own kind. One does not blame them if they sometimes marry rather oddly; one makes allowances and one tries to help.”

  When Constantius and she were alone that night, Helena said: “Chlorus, why don’t you tell them who I am?”

  “And who are you?”

  “The daughter of Coel.”

  “They wouldn’t be impressed,” said Constantius. “You are my wife. That is all they need to know. What have you done to your hair?”

  “Not me. It was the Greek barber. The Governor’s wife made me have him. Don’t you like it?”

  “Not much.”

  “Neither do I, Chlorus; neither do I.”

  *

  On the eve of Constantius’s departure some functionaries from Moesia, old associates of his, dined at Government House and after dinner accompanied him to his quarters. Helena left them for bed but could hear them talking long into the night in the adjoining study, now in Latin, now in their own tongue, gossip, reminiscence. She dozed and woke to hear them still talking, in Latin now.

  “We heard you had been all over the place in Gaul.”

  “No, no; just a routine tour as far as the Swabian wall.”

  “Well, you’ve got a girl who’s unmistakably British, anyway.”

  “Nothing of the kind,” said Constantius’s voice. “As a matter of fact, if you must know, I picked her up last winter in the East, at a road-house on the way home from Persia. I couldn’t bring her with me then so I arranged to have her sent to Trèves. I’ve just collected her.”

  “She doesn’t look Asiatic.”

  “No, I’ve no idea where they got her from. She’s a good girl.”

  Then they lapsed into their own tongue and Helena lay awake in the darkness. It was near cock-crow when Constantius bade them good-bye and came to bed.

  *

  Then he departed on his high and secret errand and Helena remained at Ratisbon. Summer broke deliciously along the banks of the Danube; Helena languished in halls too lofty for her and a company too numerous. None of the ladies of Ratisbon seemed ever to go out of doors except in curtained litters to pay calls from street to street or, rarely, to drive in closed carriages to one or other of the riverside villas. They talked endlessly in rapid, allusive Latin that seemed always to mean more to them than to Helena; they laughed endlessly at jokes she missed. There were two sets among the ladies of Ratisbon over whom the Governor’s wife serenely and indifferently held sway—those concerned with love affairs, and the religious. Helena was no stranger to the laws of man’s desire; at home she had watched her father’s errant and exuberant fancies ring change after change in the precedence of his little household; in her reading she had followed all the crazy transmogrifications of desire, the incest, the cloud-kisses, the courting showers of coin, the swans and bulls, of ancient poetry; but here in the whispered confidences under the portico she found no part of her own steadfast and bruised passion. The religious, too, confounded her. In her own country the Gods had been honored in their seasons; Helena had prayed, year by year, devoutly and at ease at the altars of her household and her people, had greeted the returning spring with sacrifices, had sought to placate the powers of death, had honored the sun and the earth and the fertile seed. But the religious ladies of Ratisbon spoke of secret meetings, passwords, initiations, trances and extraordinary sensations, of Asiatics who floated about the room in half-darkness, of enigmatic voices, of standing stark naked in a pit while a bull bled to death on the lattice above them.

  “It’s all bosh, isn’t it?” she said to the Governor’s wife.

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “Yes, but it’s bosh, too, isn’t it?”

  “I never inquire,” said the Governor’s wife.

  Esteem, almost affection, had grown in Helena’s lonely heart for this great lady. To her, tremulously, she had confided the secret of her royal parentage, her Trojan descent. As Constantius had foretold, the Governor’s wife was not impressed.

  “Well, all that is over,” she said, as though Helena had confessed to a peccadillo. “You must study to fit yourself to be Constantius’s wife. You’ll find that a whole-time job, you know. He’s a very important young man. I sometimes wonder if you quite realize it. The Divine Aurelian thinks the world of him. What did you do all
day in Britain?”

  “I was being educated. I read poetry. I hunted.”

  “Well, you won’t be able to do that now. No lady is supposed to hunt, though I did sometimes when we were quartered in Spain, I’m ashamed to say, and enjoyed myself enormously.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Certainly not. You’ll never bear children if you hunt.”

  “I think I’ve got one now,” said Helena.

  “That’s just as it should be, my dear. I hope it’s a son. He may turn out to be someone of the Greatest Importance.”

  In all the exorbitant largeness of her new circumstances nothing appalled Helena so much as these predictions. The Governor’s wife was not the only one who frightened her in this way. A wealthy woman, whom blank plainness of mind and face excluded from both the religious and the smart sets of Ratisbon, was more explicit. From the moment they met she showed Helena marked attention; one day when Helena had refused to accompany her to a party she said: “I think you’re quite wise to be a little stand-offish.”

  “Me,” said Helena aghast, “stand-offish.”

  “Oh, Madame Flavius, I don’t mean anything the least disagreeable. But you do keep people at a distance, don’t you? And you’re quite right. It’s a great mistake in early life to tie yourself up with friends you may have to drop later.”

  “But why should I drop them? If you only knew how I long for a friend.”

  “Dear Madame Flavius, please don’t pretend with me. I admire so much the way that you are carrying off the situation. Don’t pretend you don’t know you’ve made the most brilliant match.”

  “Yes, I know, but what’s that got to do with dropping friends?”

  “Is it possible, Madame Flavius, you haven’t heard your husband is going to be given command of the whole West any day now? Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t; truly I didn’t. Pray God it’s not true.”

  “But it’s common knowledge. Everyone in Ratisbon is talking of it.”

  And it was suddenly borne in on Helena that those silences which fell when she entered the room, those glances she sometimes intercepted to see whether she was listening, were not, as she had supposed, due to her youth and foreignness, but to this more alarming cause.

  It was as though she had fallen asleep in the secure, child’s bedroom at Colchester—the low-raftered room that had been hers since first she slept alone, where sitting on the press she could toss her shirt to its peg on the opposite wall; where, dressing, she had countless times paced its length and breadth, two steps from press to looking-glass, four paces from glass to door—and had lived since in a nightmare where walls and ceiling constantly receded and everything but herself swelled to monstrous size and in all the remote corners dark shadows lurked.

  Days and nights grew heavy with the heat; the ladies of Ratisbon plied ivory and feather fans, whispered and peeped, while Helena looked only for the return of Constantius.

  He came at length early in August with the dust and stiffness of the road on him, and the lean look of the camp. There was a stir of deference and congratulation, for he was preceded, many days before, by reports of decisive action at Châlons, of the Army of Gaul destroyed and Tetricus in chains. He came in discreet triumph, full of the praises of Aurelian’s generalship, silent on his own part in the business. Helena, for whom the summer in vain had grown to fullness, welcomed him as the spring.

  “Everything went according to plan,” he said. “Now for Nish.”

  They traveled by water, for Constantius became solicitous when he heard of her pregnancy, in a barge, a vessel of state, carved and painted, deep-laden with furniture and provisions from the rich markets of Ratisbon. The slaves pulled slow on their oars. Constantius was in no hurry now. He and Helena lay like princes of India under an awning of yellow silk; idly, daylong, they watched the rushy banks sweep by, threw sweetmeats to the naked urchins who swam to salute them, to the birds who followed their passage and perched sometimes on the gilded prow; at night they eschewed the towns and tied up on the banks at the leafy islets, lit a fire on shore and feasted the villagers who often gathered to dance and sing in its light. The guards and the boatmen slept ashore, leaving the whole splendid ship to be a marriage-bed for Helena and Constantius. Often in the morning, when they cast off, their guests of the night before came with garlands of flowers which died at midday and then were thrown overboard to drift more slowly behind them towards Nish.

  Helena’s love, sprung of the mists and rain, grew tender and summer-sweet while the new life ripened imperceptibly within her; in those soft days of Constantius’s holiday, her honeymoon deferred, Helena rejoiced to feel that she was loved.

  They came to the whirlpool at Grein where, to humor Helena, Constantius ordered the helmsman to steer straight for the vortex of swirling, encumbered water; the leisurely slaves were caught unawares and the boat swung broadside across the stream; for a minute there was confusion on board, helmsman, master and pilot shouted to one another, the oarsmen awoke from their dreams of freedom and pulled furiously, and Helena laughed loud and clear as she used to laugh at Colchester. For a minute it seemed they were out of control and must spin helpless as the eddying driftwood about them; then order was restored, the boat was righted, drew clear, and resumed her course.

  Presently they came to the sunless gorge of Semlin and there, awed by the vast precipices and momentarily recalled by them to the mood of Ratisbon, Helena said:

  “Chlorus, is it true what they are saying in Ratisbon: that you are going to be Caesar?”

  “Who say that?”

  “The Governor’s wife, the widow of a banker, all the ladies.”

  “It may be true. Aurelian and I have spoken of it before. After the battle he spoke of it again. He has to go to Syria now, to tidy up the trouble there. After that he will return to Rome for his triumph. Then we shall see.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “It’s not what I want, ostler; it’s what Aurelian wants that counts, he and the army and Empire. It’s nothing to be shy of, just another, larger command—Gaul, the Rhine, Britain, possibly Spain. The Empire’s too big for one man; that’s been proved. And we need a secure succession, a second-in-command who’s been trained to the job, knows the ropes, can step in straight away when the command falls vacant; not leave each army to declare for its own general and fight it out as they’ve done lately. Aurelian is going to talk to the senators about it when we go to Rome.”

  “Oh Chlorus, what will become of me then?”

  “Of you? I haven’t really thought, my dear. Most women would give their eyes to be Empress.”

  “Not me.”

  “No, I don’t believe you would.” He searched her with a long scrutiny. Her hair was still tiered in the height of fashion—a slave from Smyrna was attached to their party for this purpose alone; all that the dressmakers and kindred tradesmen could do, had been done to transform her; new beauties had been discovered, old beauties hidden, by their crafts; but as Constantius gazed he felt bonds of the British spell still strong about him, he felt himself seduced from his cold intentions and transfixed anew as he had been that uncanny night in Coel’s banqueting hall.

  “There’s no need to worry yet, ostler,” he said, “Aurelian’s good for many more years.”

  But later she said: “Tell me about the battle. Were you in great danger? I never felt anxious about you while you were away. Should I have done?”

  “There was no need. It was all arranged beforehand.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There was nothing to do on the day. Tetricus rode over with his staff and gave himself up. He had put his army just where we wanted them. All we had to do was wade in and cut them to pieces in our own time.”

  “Were many killed?”

  “Not of ours, though the Gauls fought it out surprisingly well. There was nothing much else they could do. We had them surrounded.”

  “And Tetricus?”

  “He�
��ll be all right. We shall keep our bargain.”

  Helena asked no further questions. It was enough, in the sunshine, that Constantius was with her and complacent; but that night, when the golden canopy was black against the stars and the water lapped placidly on the sides of the boat; as the sentry ashore paced to and fro in the firelight and Constantius lay asleep, sated, as he had turned from her, as he always did, curtly without tenderness or gratitude, chilling her crescent ardor and leaving her lonely at his side as in the empty bedroom at Ratisbon; and often later at Nish when the leaves had fallen and the guards under the window stamped and chafed their hands in the first cold winds of winter—then the grim story haunted her. Something had died in her heart that had lived there from her earliest memories. Her nurse’s father, that redoubtable sergeant, was dead, had died in vain, and his grave had been dishonored. This was Chlorus’s victory, this his mystery; for this his journey, his furtive interviews, his fox-like doubling on his tracks, his lies and silences; this butchery of a betrayed army, this traffic with the betrayer; this and herself were his joint prizes.

  *

  At length they reached the confluent Morava and, turning south, rowed upstream towards the mountains. As he approached his homeland Constantius grew impatient once more, forced the pace, stood for hours at the prow searching for familiar landmarks. The men strained and sweated, the non-commissioned officers grew peremptory and Helena felt the chill of loneliness return to her heart.

  They turned again from the main stream up another tributary; the hills closed in until one day at evening they reached the town that was to be Helena’s new home. Officers, officials and a shabby crowd assembled to greet them. Since they left Strasbourg, Constantius had discarded the insignia of his assumed, modest rank; now before landing he donned the full finery of his command. All was not ready for their reception. Functionaries came on board and talked obsequiously while a carpet was spread on the rough wharf; the guard-of-honor marched up, resplendent but late; one sedan-chair and, after delay, a second were set down between the rigid ranks. Only then, to a salute of trumpets, did Constantius lead Helena ashore.