TARSIS
AMONG the chieftains of production who were leading Italy to prosperity
and power Antonio Tarsis held the foremost place. Son of a shop-keeper
in Palermo, he began life poor and without influence. It had taken him
less than twenty years to build up a fortune so large that the journals
of new ideals pointed to it as a terrible example. Cartoonists had
fallen into the habit of picturing him with a snout and bristled ears.
There was a serious portrait of him in the directors’ room of one of
the companies he ruled. It was painted by a man whose impulse to please
was stronger than his artistic courage. He told all that he dared.
In full length, it showed a man under forty, black-bearded, with a
well-turned person of middle height; small, adroit eyes heavily browed,
prominent nose inclined to squatness, spare lips and broad jaws; the
portrait, at a glance, of a fighter of firm grain, fashioned for
success in the great battle.
So much for the Tarsis of paint and canvas. The one that faced you
in the flesh had harder, crueler eyes; the living clutch of the
lips was tighter; the faint yet redeeming human quality of the man
in the picture was lacking. And in the hue of his skin, much darker
than the painter had ventured, nature did not deny the land of his
birth--Sicily. It was there, at the beginning of manhood, that chance
threw him into the post of time-keeper for a silk-mill. He did his work
so well that never a centesimo went to pay for moments not spent in the
service of the company.
One morning Tarsis, at the door with book and pencil ready, waited in
vain for the workers to arrive; and his career as a great factor in
Italy’s industrial life may be dated from the week that followed, when
he assembled gangs of strike-breakers to replace the men and women who
had joined in a revolt against many wrongs. A strike-breaker he had
been ever since. By laying low the will of others, men or masters of
men, and setting up his own will, he had gained over human destinies a
dominion so practical that he cared little for the theory of king and
Parliament. Of small import was it who made the laws or who executed
them so long as they did not take from him the power to decide what
share a worker should have of the product of his hand.
For a year or two Tarsis worked at his trade of strike-breaking
in the United States, and that was the making of him, so far as
external things had to do with the man. He brought back to Sicily
some money-winning ideas about manufacturing that lifted him into the
place of superintendent of the silk-mill, and some notions about “high
finance” that he picked up bore rich fruit. One day the company found
itself reorganized, with Tarsis in command. That was his first big
victory. He followed it up in due time by laying siege to the large
silk makers of the North. His campaign took the form of a proposal to
unite their works with those of the South. At first they greeted his
project with smiles, but Tarsis played one company against the other
so craftily that in the end, obeying the law of self-preservation, all
were eager to join the union.
As master mind of the general company Tarsis smashed the idols of
custom, tore down everything that retarded the making of money.
The methods of generations went by the board. He struck out for new
fields, and quickly Italy’s product of spun silk was feeding the
looms of Russia, Austria, Great Britain, and the United States in
quantities double those of the old days. Mills were set up at places
easily reached by the farmer with his cocoons or near to shipping
points. At Venice he turned an ancient palace into a buzzing hive and
sent forth smoke and steam over the Grand Canal. There were unions
of shoe factories, glass and carriage works, steamboat lines, and
steel-mills; and never was Antonio Tarsis a factor unless a factor that
controlled. The journals of the New Democracy muttered, and likened him
to creatures of the brute world noted for their ability to reach or
swallow.
One of the things Tarsis learned in the United States was that child
labour in factories is a superior device for fattening stock dividends.
Mario Forza, from his place in the National Parliament, once denounced
him in a speech rebuking the Government for lack of interest in the
toiling masses. The bodily health and moral being of thousands of
children were ruined every year in Italy, he said, that men like
Tarsis might pile up their absurd fortunes--an outburst that brought
loud and long applause from the seats of the New Democrats. This speech
was green in the memory of Tarsis that night on the riverside when he
thanked Forza for the service rendered his promised wife.
A situation created by the want of money had brought Hera and Tarsis
together. He had some cold-blooded reasons for wanting the beautiful
patrician for his wife. She ministered to his sense of beauty, but it
was the principle of success she typified that gave her greatest value
in his eyes. The man of peasant blood looked to an alliance with the
house of Barbiondi as the crowning triumph of his career. Hera was the
fairest prize of the Lombard aristocracy. Men of noble blood and large
fortune had failed to win her hand, because she could not rid herself
of the conviction that to become the wife of a man for the sake of his
fortune would be a mere bartering of her charms. Against such a step
her whole being rose in revolt.
Tarsis had conceived the thought to possess her and had planned to do
so as he had planned to gain control of the Mediterranean Steamship
Line. His faithful ally was Donna Beatrice, Hera’s aunt, who strove
mightily in the cause. But it was Hera’s love for her father--her wish
to relieve him from the torments of poverty--that made it possible for
Tarsis to attain his purpose. The sands of the Barbiondi were almost
run. Their villa, built two centuries before Napoleon appeared on that
side of the Alps, was all that remained of an estate once the largest
in the North. Charts of old days show its forests and hillside fields
bordering the river Adda from Lake Lecco in the mountains clear to the
Bridge of Lodi. Like his forebears of many generations, Don Riccardo
had seen the money-lenders swallow his substance. If in his own time
the bites were of necessity small, they were none the less frequent.
To Donna Beatrice’s skill in concealing the actual state of their
purse was due the fact that the Barbiondi were able to spend a part
of the winter in Milan, so that Hera, whom her aunt recognised as the
family’s last asset, might be in evidence to the fashionable world.
How she accomplished this never ceased to be a riddle to her brother;
and he gave it up, as he gave up all riddles. His idea of a master
stroke in contrivance was to go to his banker and arrange another
mortgage. He was likely to go shooting or for a ride when there was a
financial crisis to be met. It was at the moment that the mortgagee’s
mouth watered for the last morsel that Hera, in the purest spirit of
self-sacrifice, consented to a marriage with Tarsis.
Matchmakers of Milan’s fashionable world, who had known that the Tarsis
millions were knocking at the Barbiondi gate, received the announcement
of the betrothal as the extinguishment of their last hope, but in the
world of creditors there was a wild rejoicing. The mortgagee lost his
appetite for the last morsel of the estate. Milliners, makers of gowns
and boots, purveyors of food and drink, sent in humble prayers for
patronage instead of angry demands for pay. Everywhere the bloodhounds
of debt slunk off the scent.
A day of mid-April was chosen for the wedding, and as it drew near Hera
retained her studied air of cheerfulness, that Don Riccardo might not
divine the price his peace of mind demanded of her. She rode about the
countryside, sometimes with her father, oftener alone, while the task
of preparation for the nuptials went forward under the willing hand
of Aunt Beatrice. To that contented woman the bride-elect’s lukewarm
interest in the affair was a source of wonder. With eyes uplifted and
hands clasped she paused now and then to ask if ever Heaven had given
an aunt a niece of such scant enthusiasm. Such was the situation the
day that Hera had her adventure on the river. No experience of life had
dwelt so pleasantly in her thought as the meeting and converse with
Mario Forza. No coming event had ever interested her so warmly as that
he was going to dine in Villa Barbiondi--that she was going to meet him
again.
She spent the closing hours of Wednesday afternoon at her window
looking over the river toward the fields and buildings of the Social
Dairy. She saw one herd after another wind its way homeward up the
pass and watched eagerly for the coming forth of Mario. When the file
of poplars that bordered the highway by the river were casting their
longest shadows she saw him ride out and begin the descent of the hill.
For some time she was able to keep him in view as he trotted his horse
along the level road. When he came upon the Bridge of Speranza--the
waters had not ended their spree--she was conscious of a new anxiety,
and when he had gained the nearer shore she felt a strange relief. A
little while and the shadows of the poplars were neither short nor
long, and darkness hid him from sight. Presently the voice of her
father, raised in welcome, mingled with the most genial tones of Donna
Beatrice, sounding up the staircase, told her that he had arrived.
“Ha, my friend!” she heard Don Riccardo saying, “this is the greatest
of delights. Why, I knew your father, sir. The Marquis and I served the
old king. And a gay service it was for blades who knew how to be gay.
Magnificent old days!”
“I heard much of you, Don Riccardo, from my father,” Mario said.
“And I have heard much of you since you came to Milan,” the other
returned. “But I never recognised you without the title; nor in the dim
light of the other night did I see my old comrade in your face. But I
see him now. By my faith! you take me back thirty years. And pictures
of you--marvellous pictures--have I seen in the newspapers. I remember
one in particular,” he ran on, a gleam in his eye. “It portrayed the
Honourable Forza in action, if you please. I think he was performing a
feat no more difficult than getting out of a carriage; but the camera
immortalised him as an expert in the art of standing on one foot and
placing the other in his overcoat pocket.”
Hera was with them now joining in the laughter. Donna Beatrice thanked
Mario effusively for saving the life of Hera. The more she had
reflected on the deed the more heroic it had grown in her sight. Her
gratitude had its golden grain, for the fact loomed large to her mind
that but for his timely action there might have been no forthcoming
marriage with Antonio Tarsis, no saving of the Barbiondi ship. She was
prodigal in her praise of his knightly valour, as she called it, and
declared that the age of chivalry still lived. At this point a footman
came to Mario’s rescue by announcing that the vermouth was served.
“And what of the progress toward peace in the human family,
Honourable?” asked Don Riccardo, merrily, as they took their places at
table.
Mario answered that the progress, as to the branch of the human family
known as Italian, was for the time being somewhat backward. “The
trouble with our party,” he said, “is that we can’t break ourselves
of the habit of being right at the wrong time. Our foes are better
strategists. They are wise enough to be wrong at the right time.”
“And what is this New Democracy all about, Signor Forza?” asked Donna
Beatrice, as she might have asked concerning some doing on the island
of Guam.
“It is an effort to mend a social machine that is badly out of repair,”
he answered. “The hewer of wood is demanding a fire, the drawer of
water a drink. The producer is striving to keep a little more of what
he produces.”
He held up a side of the industrial picture that was the reverse of
what Don Riccardo’s prospective son-in-law liked to present. His words
did not square with Tarsis’s assertion that the heart of a statesman
should be in his head. He gave reasons why some are rich and some are
poor, and though new to those at the table, they felt that they were
listening to no sentimental dreamer. He struck the key-note of the
century’s new thought. If his head did lift itself toward the clouds at
times, his feet remained firmly planted on the earth, and his ideals
were those of a man determined to be useful in the world.
It was good, Hera thought, to look upon him; good to hear his voice,
good to feel that one admired him. And Donna Beatrice, looking over the
rims of her pince-nez, was seized with alarm. Their guest’s discourse
might be interesting, she told herself, but she was positive there was
nothing in it to command such wrapt attention on the part of her niece.
When they had risen, and Mario and Hera were leading the way to the
reception hall, she pulled at her brother’s coat sleeve to hold him
in the alcoved passage; and, standing there amid the tapestries and
trophies of shields and arms, the poor woman made known her doubts and
fears.
“Riccardo, what does this mean? I say it is most extraordinary.”
“Yes, the coffee was not delicious,” he observed. “The cook is drinking
absinthe again.”
“The coffee! I speak of Hera.”
“In what has she offended now?” he inquired, clasping his hands behind
him and looking up at an ancestral portrait dim with the centuries.
“You ask that?” she rejoined sceptically. “But no; it is impossible
that even a man could be so blind. I thank Heaven Antonio Tarsis was
not present.”
“I always thank Heaven when he is not present,” Don Riccardo confessed,
and his sister winced. “What crime has Hera committed?”
“On the eve of her marriage she is showing a scandalous interest in a
man who is not to be her husband.”
Don Riccardo gave a low laugh of depreciation. “Mario Forza saved her
life,” he reminded her. “If the fact has slipped your memory, it is not
so with Hera.”
“I know,” Donna Beatrice argued, “but there are things to remember as
well as things not to forget.”
“My dear sister, let our girl indulge this natural sentiment of
thankfulness.”
“Thankfulness?” the other questioned, raising her brows.
“And what else? Come, my Beatrice, the strain of this wedding business
has wrought upon your nerves. When the fuss is over you must go to the
Adriatic for a rest.”
She said it was considerate of him, but she did not feel the need of
rest. In a corner of the reception hall they found Hera at the piano,
Mario beside her, turning the page. They asked him to sing, and he
began a ballad of the grape harvest in Tuscany. It pictured the beauty
of the rich clusters, the sun-burned cheeks and rugged mirth of the
peasant maids, stolen kisses, troths plighted, and the ruby vintage
drunk at the wedding feast. The song was manly and sung in a manly
voice.
While his clear baritone filled the room and Hera played the
accompaniment the feelings of Don Riccardo were stirred deeply. From
his chair by the wall he looked sadly upon his daughter and his old
comrade’s son, and hoped, for her sake, that what might have given him
gladness at one time would not happen now. The words of his sister had
moved him more than he let her know. What if Mario Forza had come into
her heart? What if the marriage to which she was to go should prove the
funeral of a true love? What if that were added to the price she was
going to pay for helping her father? His impulse was to take her in his
arms, tell her to accept any happiness that destiny had to offer, and
defy the issue whatever it might be. Instead, he rang for a glass of
cognac.
When Hera had sung a romance of old Siena Don Riccardo asked Mario
about that “idealistic experiment,” the Social Dairy, and learned that
it was no longer an experiment, but a prosperous object lesson for
those willing to listen to the New Democracy. Mario told them a little
of the life of the place, and Don Riccardo suggested that they all go
and see for themselves.
“It would give me pleasure,” Mario assured him.
“I should like to go very much,” Hera said.
“Then we shall visit you to-morrow.” Don Riccardo decided, with an
enthusiasm which Aunt Beatrice did not share.