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From A Roman Reporter, by Arthur Aikin Brodribb, London: The Society for The Promotion of Christian Knowledge, New York: E. & J. B. Young & Co.; [c. 1893], pp. 124-128.
A ROMAN REPORTER
by A. A. Brodribb
[124]
CHAPTER VIII.
HREE years have passed. Florus and Lycas have been duly punished for their misdeeds, and Gaudentius, earnestly warned by Cassianus of the perils of the high road, has gone to Rome to seek employment and fortune. After three years, then, it was again a hot summer morning at Imola, and all things seemed unchanged and happy. Priscilla was reading, as usual, under her favourite plane-tree in the garden, and there was no sound in the warm air except the hum of bees and the voice of birds. In the schoolroom Cassianus was quietly teaching an orderly but diminished class of pupils. The school was languishing, and he had made up his mind, if ever Priscilla married and left him alone in the world, to give it up and retire. But Priscilla showed no inclination to do
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anything of the kind. She bore her late sorrows cheerfully, and was even able to speak of Marcellinus with serenity, but there was that in her manner which seemed an insuperable obstacle to all advances. Quiet as she was and beautiful, no young man had the least chance of breaking down the barrier of her reserve. So, day after day, she lived her life tranquilly and not unhappily, and all the nobler for her lost love.
She heard the garden door open and shut, and, turning round, she saw Gaudentius — Gaudentius returned after three years, more manly in appearance than before, but otherwise unaltered.
“Gaudentius,” she exclaimed, rising.
“Priscilla! And well, I hope? Geta told me you were here. You must pardon my coming.”
“My father will be glad indeed. School-time is nearly over. And how have you fared?”
“Nay, how have you fared? You were ill when I went away.”
“I am well now, and all goes on as usual with us and our neighbours, and we have all rejoiced in your success at Rome. Is Rome really so beautiful?”
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“I do not like it. Perhaps I shall not go back. To my mind, there is nothing in Rome so beautiful as this garden.” He looked wistfully at Priscilla as he spoke, and sat down on the remote end of the bench on which she was. He had much to tell her of his journey to Rome, and of the great city with its wonderful sights, and of his successful employment as a reporter.
“But perhaps I shall not go back,” he repeated, after a long conversation.
“But surely my father would advise it?” said she, fanning herself with her book.
The respectful distance between them grew a little less.
“Would you advise it?” he asked.
“I? How can I advise, knowing only our little world here?”
“Which is best, I wonder; the little world or the great one; the one with its peace and quiet and purity; or the other, with this bustle, its noise, its wealth, its ambition, and its worldliness?”
“Personally, I should like to see Rome, and come back to the country; but then I am not a
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rising young man, and I have no ambition. Perhaps nobody is much happier than your sister at the farm.”
“Happy farmers, if only they knew it, as Virgil and your father say.”
Then he paused, and went on, awkwardly.
“Priscilla, which shall it be? Shall I go or stay? It — it rests with you.”
She blushed crimson, well knowing what he meant; and without more ado he declared his love, and found it fully returned. The distance between them was speedily reduced to a minimum.
What more need be said? They lived happy ever after, in the most charming of hill farms, and Cassianus, abandoning his school, followed them to their rural retreat. In process of time, when Bassus and his wife came from Ravenna to spend a few days at the farm, they found the old man in the porch with a little boy at his knees, who toddled up to the strangers, and taking Bassus by the hand, said —
“I’m Marcellinus. I’m going to be a centurion.”
The End of the Online Text of
A Roman Reporter
by
A. A. Brodribb
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