A MESSAGE FROM ROME
DON RICCARDO, from his secluded ground in the villa park, saw Tarsis’s
car pass in the twilight, and guessed that the message to Rome was on
its way. He thought the moment a good one, therefore, to take shelter
indoors from the dewy air. Hera greeted him with a more cheerful
countenance than he had seen her wear for many days, although she had
made a brave effort to conceal her feelings. She told him what he
already knew from the dialogue he had overheard a half-hour before.
He made no concealment of his delight that Tarsis, after all, was not
to be his son-in-law. Knowing that the blow was a heavy one for his
sister, he went to her apartments to console her with some news he
had heard that afternoon from his old friend Colonel Rosario, whose
regiment of infantry was stationed at Castel-Minore. Over cognac and
cigars in his quarters the commandant told Don Riccardo that Mario
Forza, having inherited the large estate of his father, the Duke of
Montenevica, was far from being a poor man--as yet.
“What do you mean by that ‘as yet’?” Don Riccardo had asked.
“It expresses the state of mind of certain of his heirs expectant,”
the Colonel explained. “You see, Forza has contracted the helping
habit--spends money for the good of others. His dreams for the
betterment of the under dog are expensive, and his poor relations are
alarmed lest he come to want.”
Don Riccardo suppressed the rumor of future destitution, and told
Beatrice only enough to show her that the exchange of bridegrooms
need not be attended by financial disaster. He found his sister down
with a headache, and as for consoling her, try as he would, that was
impossible with the hateful name of Mario Forza on his lips. The mere
pronouncing of it caused her face to wrinkle in an expression of deep
contempt.
“Oh, Riccardo!” she wailed. “Do you not feel the shame of it? Our house
will be disgraced forever!”
“Not forever, dear Beatrice,” he said in an effort to comfort. “It will
give the gossips a nine-day wonder, and then we shall hear of it no
more. Better a nine-day wonder than a lifetime of regret.”
“Regret?” she asked in genuine amazement. “For whom?”
“For all of us, my sister. With Tarsis Hera’s life could be no other
than one of misery. In the end you will be glad that matters have taken
this turn. Of that I am sure.” But the other only shook her head and
dried her eyes.
The dinner was not such a gloomy affair as it had promised to be,
although only three of the company of five expected were present--the
Duke, Hera, and Colonel Rosario. The hearty old soldier marvelled at
the absence of the bridegroom-elect, but Don Riccardo asked him how
Tarsis could go on being the richest man in Italy if he did not put
business before dinner. It was an explanation that did not satisfy the
Colonel, but he accepted it with a laugh and the comment, “Italy is no
longer a country; it is a machine for making money.” Donna Beatrice had
sent word that she would have a bowl of broth above stairs. It was well
for her feelings she was not there to witness the good spirits that
prevailed at the board. Don Riccardo called for one of the precious
bottles of Lacrimae Christi put in the cellar by his grandfather.
The Colonel gave the toast “To the wedding to-morrow,” but the Duke
secretly drank to Hera’s narrow escape.
The dinner ended, and the Colonel gone to his barracks, Hera, alone
with her father in a corner of the reception hall where the piano
stood, ran over, in a resurge of sweet memory, the ballad of the
vintage Mario gave that night. She remembered it all, and sang as one
whose soul overflowed with joy. For hours, awaiting the answer from
Rome--the answer their hearts had already given--they sat together in
the great old room, where portraits, one above the other, dimmed by
time, covered the walls. The wings of the broad, mullioned casements,
beneath their transoms of stained glass, stood ajar to the breath of
spring, and the mysterious night lispings of the new-born season toned
the silence at times, foretelling long sunny days, roses, and music in
the woods.
Hera was first to hear the clatter of hoofs, and she rose, keen for the
tidings. A footman entered with a message from the Castel-Minore bureau
of telegraphs. She held it under a light, read it first with puzzled
countenance, and again with clearer, too certain understanding. Her
father saw her catch her breath and press a hand to her side.
“What is it?” he asked, and she handed him the message.
“Justice gives him first claim,” he read. “Let justice be your guide.”
He asked her what it meant, but she stood as one turned to stone.
“God!” exclaimed Don Riccardo. “He gives you up--puts justice before
love! That is the meaning. Bah! Then you are well rid of him, my
daughter. The bloodless reasoner! Ah, lovers did not so in my day.
Indeed it is an age of machine-made men.”
For Hera it was a withering disappointment. Hers was no romantic
schoolgirl’s attachment, but the full-powered, storm-surviving passion
of a woman of twenty-four--a passion heeding no call before that of
itself. And fondly she had dreamed that with Mario it was the same.
But the message told her--what a different story! He confessed a love
stronger, higher than that which he bore for her--the love of justice,
a lifeless abstraction. Suddenly he became little in her eyes, and she
recoiled from the chill of such a nature. Here then was the desolate
ending of the sweet poem life had begun to read for her; the shattering
of a beautiful faith, the farewell to an ideal that had budded in
girlhood and blossomed with woman’s estate.
The sound of an affected cough startled her and Don Riccardo from their
gloomy reflections. They looked up and beheld Tarsis at the threshold,
but they were not in time to see the contented smile of comprehension
that had curved his lip.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, moving toward them. “The outer door was
open, and I took the liberty of entering unannounced. I did not know
you were here.”
Hera arose and walked to where her father stood surveying Tarsis
with eyes that betrayed an emotion of anger strange indeed to the
happy-go-lucky Duke. She asked him for the telegram, and absently he
placed it in her hand.
“It is better, I think, that you leave us for the present,” she said,
in a low voice.
“What shall you do?” Don Riccardo asked, his impulse to intercede
going the way it had gone often before.
“That which honor commands,” she answered, coldly, desperately. So Don
Riccardo, torn by warring impulses, but unable to be more than nature
had ordained, made off slowly, to wait in the library, with a glass at
his elbow and a cigar in his lips.
“The answer from Rome has arrived,” Hera said, and gave Tarsis the
message.
Without betrayal of his eagerness to know that his scheme had not
miscarried, he began to read it. “I was sure Signor Forza’s sense of
justice would prevail,” he said, looking up from the paper, not the
faintest note of triumph in his tone. “Believe me, Hera, it is better
so--better for you as well as me. You will be glad that he did not
counsel you to do me a wrong. I honor him greatly.”
It needed no words from her to tell him that his appreciation of such
heroism was not shared by the woman whom it sacrificed--a fact he had
counted upon to make his victory certain.
“Oh, it is impossible,” Hera exclaimed, as one yielding to an
unconquerable aversion. “Heaven help me! I cannot!”
Tarsis perceived that his victory was yet to be won. He drew nearer to
her, and stood by the table on which she leaned, head in hands.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“I cannot, oh, I cannot,” was all she could answer.
“Do you mean that you would break your last promise as well as the
first?” he asked, aggressively.
“My last promise?” she repeated, as if bewildered in mind.
“Yes. You gave me your word that you would accept Signor Forza’s
decision. He has pointed to you the right way. All the world will say
as much. Honor leaves you but one course. Unless you persist wickedly,
recklessly, in following your own desire, putting from you every
consideration of right or wrong, spurning justice, moral obligation,
and the wishes of all save yourself--unless you do all this, you will
keep your promise.”
The facts were driving Hera overhard. Her eyelids burned, but she kept
back the tears that wanted to flow. When she turned to Tarsis she felt
more like a supplicant for mercy than one asserting a right which
a few hours earlier had seemed not to be gainsaid--the right to be
happy in her love. With the solemnity of a woman laying bare the most
intimate secrets of her soul, she told him that all her being revolted
against surrendering herself without affection merely because of the
concurrence that marriage implied; it seemed a bestowal of authority to
destroy her spiritual existence.
“Having this sentiment,” Tarsis asked, “why did you promise yourself to
me?”
“It is true,” she answered, “that in the interest of others I consented
to become your wife; but that was before I knew the meaning of love.”
Frankly she told him that the thought of the union he wished was
hideous in her sight; it would be a sacrilege, the defilement of a
sacred emotion and her nature rebelled in a degree that was beyond her
control.
“Sincerely I wish to do all that honor requires,” she said, humbly,
“but to live in such a state I cannot, come what may.”
Tarsis comprehended fully the difficulty as it now presented itself,
and he was equal to it. An effectual method of his in business was to
make it easy for the other party to yield to his interest. It mattered
little to him on what terms she accepted him as her husband. He would
have given the greater part of his fortune to assure the performance of
the ceremony which the world awaited at noon.
“There is an alternative,” he said, solemnly, “that would satisfy the
obligation honor puts upon you and at the same time leave inviolate the
sentiment you have just expressed.”
“An alternative?” she repeated, wondering.
“Yes. I will be satisfied if you become my wife only in name--in the
eyes of society, the Church, and the civil law.”
Hera understood as she had not until then how desperate was the strait
to which her refusal had brought him. For a moment she did not answer
the entreaty in his eyes. She walked to the open window and looked out
on the night. Tarsis had planned shrewdly in keeping this for the last
card to play. In her state of mind it was the one appeal that could
have the effect he desired. To Hera the offer did seem the only way
that remained of serving honor as well as saving herself from what she
contemplated as a loathsome degradation. The inevitable misery of the
sort of relation he proposed rose before her mind; but of her happiness
she thought no more, so eager was she to mitigate in some degree the
wrong of which she perceived he must be the greater victim. Presently
Tarsis was at her side again, saying:
“Will you do this? Be my wife only in name. On these terms, if you
will, you may redeem your promise--you may save me.”
And wishing to do that--wishing to save him, to do him justice--swayed,
too, by pity for him and remorse for her broken promise, and crushed in
spirit by her disappointment in Mario--she yielded.
“There is no other way,” she said, turning to him, wearily--“no other
way to screen you--to meet the demand of honor.”
He caught up her hand and kissed it.
“You will never regret this act of justice,” he said, confident that
his complete triumph was only a matter of time. Perhaps he betrayed the
working of his mind in some unguarded gleam of the eye, some play of
the lip, for she said to him, her manner showing grave determination:
“Don’t think I shall change--that you can swerve me in the least from
this position. You must foster no false hopes. When I become your
wife I shall remain to the last only that in appearance--in the eyes
of the world. In reality I shall be as far removed from you as if I
were actually married to another. I tell you this as emphatically as
possible, because it is only just that you clearly understand what our
marriage will mean to both.”
“All is quite clear,” Tarsis returned, cunningly.
“Oh, it is a terrible deed!” she exclaimed, the consequences rising
to her mind and filling it with horror. “Think well, I beg of you. In
despoiling me of my life’s happiness you are going to ruin your own.
Perhaps you did not think I should make the conditions so absolute,
so irrevocable. If you wish to withdraw your offer do so, and save us
from a lot that can not fail to be one of misery so long as we both are
alive.”
She had only multiplied his motives for wishing to make her his wife.
She understood him even less than he understood her. At no time before
had her beauty made such a living appeal to him. Until now it had never
been his privilege to behold her when emotion was at play. Her outward
image of loveliness was all she had ever revealed to him. The voice she
gave him in the past was not the passionate one he had just heard; the
soul her eyes had mirrored was not the one that looked from them when
she spoke the name of Mario Forza. The heave of her bosom, the come and
go of carnation in her cheeks, the tides of tenderness that rose amid
her promises of a vehement strength, portrayed to him a Hera he had not
known before--a woman he would have given all his vast fortune to win.
“What you have said does not deter me,” he told her, “though I
apprehend the situation as fully as you wish me to. I accept.”
And thus the thread of the story took a new twist, but one of which
Aunt Beatrice never learned, nor did Don Riccardo.