Chapter X: Friends Must Part

It was upon a beautiful summer’s morning that Mago embarked for Carthage. The country all around the Carthaginian camp was, after a shower on the previous night, looking its very best. The green leaves of the vines, all bedewed with the raindrops, glistening in their little hollows, dispensed a sweet odour in the clear, refreshing air. The verdant cornfields, waving before the gentle sea-breeze, softly rustled with a soothing sound, displaying, as they moved, the large red poppies previously hidden beneath their bending stems. In the dim distance, the peaks of the Apennines stood up purple and sharp to the azure sky, while here and there a fleecy white cloud softly rested upon some mountain crest, nestling around the hill-top, and embracing it lovingly, as a pure maiden softly enfolding her lover in the embrace of her snowy arms. Upon the groves of chestnut trees the morning sun, striking upon one side and lighting them up vividly, made all the more remarkable the contrast with the gloomy shades which hovered in long, dark streaks along the branches where the sunbeams had not yet fallen. Here and there from a belt of sweet-scented pine trees could be heard the soft, trilling notes of Philomel, the sad-voiced nightingale; while closer at hand, flowing past the fallen tree trunk, upon which two warriors were seated, there rippled merrily by a little streamlet, sparkling like silver in the morning rays.

At some distance in the foreground, as if to show that all in this world is not peace, there stood line upon line of snow-white tents, denoting the presence of an enormous camp, while behind the camp the blue and scarcely ruffled waters of the Adriatic faded away in the far distance into the blue of the sky, with which it seemed to merge its waters. It was a morning made for love, for all that should be sweet and delightful, a morning fit for heaven itself. But it was a morn that was witness of a great sorrow--the parting of two lifelong friends--who felt, they knew not why, that they were communing with each other for the last time on earth.

Mago and Maharbal, each, although quite young, the hero of a hundred bloody fights, sat upon the fallen tree, hand clasped in hand as though they were but two young children. For long they sat in silence, drinking in all the beauties of nature around, yet their hearts too full to speak. So great was the sorrow they felt, that a kind of awkwardness had fallen upon them both. They did not know what to say to each other now that the time had come for parting. These two, who, with bared sword and gleaming eye, so often had charged together side by side into the very jaws of death, to issue on the other side of some hostile squadron, with the warm blood dripping from their deadly blades, were now speechless. At length Mago spoke, while gripping his friend’s hand closer.

“I shall never forget it, Maharbal. I shall remember it all my life.”

“What?” said Maharbal, suddenly starting from his reverie, “remember what, Mago?”

“How thou didst save me from that most blood-thirsty Gaul, at whose mercy I was in that awful night of our second engagement on the Alps. I can see thee now, in my mind’s eye, casting him and his horse together over the precipice. By Moloch! but thou didst display a terrible strength with this right hand of thine, snapping his hand at the wrist like a carrot even as he was striking at me.”

“Tush, man! hold thy peace. I did not do one half for thee what thou thyself didst for me before Saguntum--ay, and once again at the Trebia, when three Romans had, owing to the slippery ground, unhorsed me, and would have slain me but for thy killing two of them and putting the third to flight. But him, thou wilt doubtless remember, I pursued and slew myself. He was a terrible black-looking scoundrel, but a very coward at heart, or he would not have fled when thou wast but one to three, standing over my prostrate body. I killed him easily.”

“Yea, I mind well the circumstance. But what shall we both do now when we can do no more slaying together? I loved thee always as thine elder brother, Maharbal, and feel inclined--laugh not at me, I pray--to weep when I think that no longer thou and I shall be with the thundering squadron in the thick of the same combat, oft times side by side. How oft have I watched thy gigantic form from afar, cutting and slaying, when thou knewest not that I was even observing thee.”

“And I too, Mago! How often have not I watched thy crimson and white plume floating from thy silver helmet. To my dying day I never shall forget the anxiety I felt on thy behalf that day of the fight on the Ticinus, when, myself left behind in the oak trees, I saw thee a dozen times in the clash of battle, surrounded by the enemy, but thank the gods, invariably issuing the victor. Ay, we have had grand times together! but now what shall I do without thee?”

“Hast thou not got Chœras?” asked Mago tentatively.

“Ay, I have Chœras,” answered Maharbal drily, “but is Chœras the Mago whom I have loved from boyhood?”

There was a silence again after this, for the last remark was one that admitted of no reply. Then Mago spoke again.

“Thou wilt succeed to the command of all the cavalry when I am gone, Maharbal; be careful of the Gallic horsemen; their chief, Vridomarchus, is not to be relied on--watch thou him well.”

“Ay, I will watch him, and slay him too, for thy sake, if he hath offended thee in aught.”

“Nay, slay him not, at least not yet, but rule him with a hand of iron; make him fear thee, and all will go well. Treat him ever like a dog, for kindness he doth not understand, and he is verily like the dog that biteth the hand that feeds him.”

“I thank thee, Mago, but I think I will slay him; he will be far less trouble that way.”

Another pause ensued, and then, looking his comrade straight in the face, the young General Mago asked the question that Maharbal had been expecting.

“And what about my niece Elissa? shall I tell her or no that Hannibal offered unto thee the chance of going to Carthage and then to Spain instead of me, or rather before me?”

“Ay, tell her, Mago--she may as well know me as I am. I love her deeply, ’tis true, but I love my duty to my country and to Hannibal more than all else.”

“And what about Eugenia? shall I mention that circumstance? I think, for mine own sake, ’twere wiser not, but ’twould vastly raise thee in Elissa’s esteem to know how thou hadst scorned another for her love’s sake.”

Maharbal sprung to his feet and covered his eyes with his hands as the remembrance of the dreadful tragedy with Eugenia flashed vividly across his mind. He turned and faced Mago.

“I would rather, oh my friend, my more than brother, that thou shouldst say nought of that matter. It is not that I fear that she should know that I have slain a woman, but I would not have her think that I seek or have sought to glorify myself by assuming for her sake a virtue that I have not felt. For, by the holy gods, Mago, it was, I truly believe, chiefly for thine own sake that I acted as I did. But thine honour and mine honour were at stake, Eugenia’s honour likewise. In truth I know not rightly whether I thought of Elissa or no, the whole affair hath been so horrible unto me. Therefore, Mago, while in no wise binding thee, I think that I would rather that that matter remained secret.”

“Ay, secret it shall be, but now tell me this; hast thou not a letter for Elissa? if so, let me have it now. I shall see her within the year.”

“Yea, I have a letter ready, and here it is. But stay a moment, I see a wild rose climbing yonder, I would enclose a blossom or two and a few leaves of the sweet briar within the folds. Tell her that I have pressed them to my lips, and send them to her with all my love. I have no other message to send; but I may never see her again, therefore tell her simply this, that I am faithful still.”

Maharbal plucked the wild roses and enclosed them within his scroll, which he gave to Mago. Then the two warriors and friends, who had seen so many bloody fields together, clasped each other in their brawny arms, all armour-clad as they were, even as they had been two weak, foolish girls. After this they descended the hill almost in silence to the camp.

Here there was great pomp and parade, and the great General Mago was escorted to his ship with much ceremony by a large guard of honour composed of men who had served under him in many a sanguinary conflict.

And now, with the departure of Mago, it is time that we turned our attention for awhile to what had been going on elsewhere.