THE HEART’S LAW-MAKING
AUNT Beatrice’s pride of blood was large and her sympathy for the
peasant folk small; yet, when it came to expressing a primary emotion
she was not above borrowing from the rugged phrases of her humbler
neighbours. Thus it fell out that when she had recovered from the shock
of Hera’s home-coming so far as to credit her bewildered senses, and
hold the appalling situation in perspective, she summed it up in this
wise:
“We have indeed returned to our muttons.”
It was in the solitude of her own apartment that she arrived at this
homely epitome, and saw, in despair, that the final crash of the House
of Barbiondi was near. By her niece’s eccentricity, as she chose to
call it, the future of ease her genius designed and made a reality had
been transformed into one of poverty, with the abominable insecurities
and detestable humiliations that had haunted nearly all her days. A
picture of money-lenders, dress-makers, tailors, and purveyors of meat
and drink, each with a bill in hand, marching in clamorous phalanx
through the villa gateway, rose to her excited fancy and made her flesh
creep. She knew that she would never be able again to play Amazon
against those storming hosts. Of courage and strategic skill she had
proved herself the abundant possessor throughout the family’s uncertain
career, but now her spirit lay crushed in the dust, like that of a
military commander who has seen a magnificent victory ruthlessly flung
away.
The frosty welcome that Hera received from her aunt did not surprise,
however it may have pained her; but she had comfort in the assurance
that her father’s arms would be open to greet her; she knew the loyalty
of his affection and sympathy as well as she comprehended the frailty
of his nature in other respects. When he entered the room she flew
to his outstretched arms, and without a word being spoken as to the
occasion of her return she saw in his eye a light of understanding.
“I have come home to stay, _babbo_,” was all she felt it needful to
tell him.
“Brava, daughter mine!” he said. “Ah, I have longed for the day. I
knew it must come.”
It was impossible for Aunt Beatrice to answer to the feeling of relief
and gladness that expressed itself in the countenance of father and
daughter; her thought turned rather to Tarsis, whom she could see in no
other light than that of a man cruelly wronged by his wife. She did not
deny herself the privilege of candid observations to this effect, which
Don Riccardo and Hera heard with patience. But when she urged Hera to
reconsider her act and begged her father to realise, before it might be
too late, that ruin to the family must result, Don Riccardo spoke his
mind. He had learned somewhat through suffering, and the example of his
daughter had quickened his latent strength.
He answered her that he did not care! Ruin or no ruin, he was glad that
events had taken this turn. The worst that could betide, he declared,
a trifle grandiloquently, was material want; starvation, perhaps. Was
not that a better fate than to live on with his daughter a hostage to
fortune, held in luxurious thraldom? Hera listened and rejoiced for the
sense of respect that came now to mingle with the love she had always
borne her father.
The scene was interrupted at this point by a servant’s announcement
that Colonel Rosario was in the reception hall. His regiment of
Bersaglieri, on the march to Milan in response to a call for
reinforcements, had halted near by. The Duke and his daughter went at
once to greet him.
“My men,” said the old soldier, “are at your gate, and their commander
is at your disposal for luncheon.”
“Bravo! A thousand welcomes!” exclaimed Don Riccardo, as he pressed the
other’s hand and checked an impulse to add, “You could not have arrived
at a more logical moment; when last you honoured our board we were
rejoicing for my daughter’s fancied escape; now we are glad for her
real one.” But no hint was given him of the reason for Hera’s presence
in the villa.
Donna Beatrice did not appear until just before the hour for luncheon.
In solitude she continued her struggle with the new predicament until
she had to acknowledge herself beaten. She could not cope at all with
this new-born spirit of disdain for consequences evinced by her
brother and his amazing daughter. The poor woman’s one hope was that
the resourceful Tarsis might find a way to save them from themselves.
When she had taken her place at the table opposite Colonel Rosario, it
seemed to her all the more urgent that some strong hand should curb
their reckless course. Here she found herself in an atmosphere of
cheerfulness, even gaiety, that was scandalously at odds with the gloom
demanded by the terrible situation. Actually, the wife who had forsaken
her husband because of some foible was able to sit there and eat and
drink, and laugh over the rugged jokes of an old soldier. And the
father of this disgraced daughter was so lost to shame that he outdid
the others in merriment. Misericordia! They were turning the calamity
into a jubilee! She breathed a thanksgiving when Colonel Rosario had
left the house and she saw the bayonets glinting in the sun, as the
Bersaglieri marched toward Milan.
Although convinced from the moment of Hera’s return that Mario Forza
was the _diabolus ex machina_, as she phrased it, Donna Beatrice, by a
heroic act of self-restraint, had refrained from speaking her mind to
that effect. Bitterly she regretted the omission an hour after luncheon
when she saw Hera riding forth alone, as she did in the old days. From
a window she watched her, now through breaks in the foliage, now over
the tops of the trees, while she moved down the winding road of the
park. She saw the white plume of her hat pass under the gateway arch
and caught a glimpse of her beyond the wall as she rode away.
“A tryst with Mario Forza!” she assured herself; and, stirred to action
by the abhorrent thought, she sent a servant for her brother, that she
might break a lance with him on this aspect of the case. The footman
informed her that his Excellency was having his afternoon nap.
“Napping!” she exclaimed, audibly; and then to herself: “At this
critical moment! Napping when his daughter is in danger!”
Hera followed the margin of Old Adda, light of heart, receiving the
joy of verdure, and forgetful of past trials in her new sensation
of freedom. She breathed in the fragrance that blossoms gave the
surrounding air. Bird voices, few the last time she rode that way,
sounded all about. The poplars on either side of the river--grim black
brushes a few weeks before--made two noble files of plumes quivering
silver or green in response to every wandering breeze. The river was
almost as quiet as the lake from which it flowed. Sparrows bathed in
the dust and chased one another on the wing close to the ground. White
vapours, floating in clearest blue, were motionless as painted clouds.
She passed idlers reclining on the greensward of the
roadside--sun-burned men and women who, by the immemorial law of the
season, should have been busy in the fields. She saw more idlers before
the village tavern. They were gathered about a comrade who read from
a big-headlined journal of Milan. The group would have received no
attention from her but for one boisterous fellow who crossed the road
calling out the news to a neighbour in his window. She heard distinctly
the name of Mario Forza, but more than this she was not able to make
out. Nevertheless, she had heard enough to send her back to the tavern.
As she drew rein the men turned from the reader and one and all bared
their uncombed heads. She asked the news from Milan, and the man who
had been reading came forward, clearing his throat for a speech.
“Most excellent signora,” he began, “the bugle call has sounded, and
throughout the length and breadth of our fair land the battalions of
labour are marching. The sun of the social revolution has risen. The
invincible industrial army--”
“Shut up, Pietro!” commanded a brawny blacksmith, snatching the journal
from the orator’s hand. “If your Excellency would like to read,” he
said, offering the paper to Hera.
While she cast her eye over the printed page some of the men gathered
about her horse, their bronzed faces upturned to hers and upon them a
dull expression of triumph in the story of riot and bloodshed that was
unfolded. Presently they saw her start with catching breath, drop the
paper to her side, and sit her saddle in silence a moment, oblivious of
the many eyes upon her, and staring off in the direction of Milan.
“It is a fine uprising, Excellency, neh?” one of the men said, but Hera
had only a nod of the head for reply.
She rode on, carrying an indistinct idea, gained from the huge
captions, of a situation with which the Government found itself all
but powerless to cope; of anarchy in Milan, of hundreds of men and
women laid low or killed by the troops; but the announcement that
loomed above all to her mind was that Mario Forza had been shot. “At
this hour,” ran the account, “exact details are not obtainable. From
what could be gathered concerning the deplorable incident, it appears
that the mob in Cathedral Square was at the time stampeding before
the charge of a detachment of the Ninth Cavalry. A woman whose name
could not be learned, but who is said to be one of the rioters, was
knocked down in the mad rush and would have been trampled to death by
the horses but for the timely appearance and intrepid action of the
Honourable Forza. He sprang in front of the advancing troopers, and
catching up the woman in his arms was bearing her out of harm’s way,
when a shot, evidently intended for the soldiers, was fired by one of
the mob. The mark that the bullet found was Signor Forza. It was not
known, however, that he was struck until he had borne the woman to a
point of safety. Then he was seen to sway as if swooning, but some
bystanders steadied him. He was conveyed to the General Hospital by a
friend whose carriage stood by.”
Her instinct to go to him became a mastering purpose. Although she
did no more than walk her horse for a while, she kept moving toward
Milan. She reflected that the remaining distance was little more than
two leagues and that she could travel it easily before dark. In a
minute she was resolved, and speaking to her horse she set forward at
a smarter pace. For the proprieties of the case she was in no mood to
borrow care. He was wounded, perhaps unto death, and her one thought
was to go to the hospital and be at his side. As she pursued her way,
now in the sunshine of open road, now in the shade of a wood, she had
time to consider what idle tongues might say, but it did not make her
slacken speed or think of turning back.
On every hand her eye met evidence of the social recoil that had set
in. Here, as in the neighbourhood of her father’s house, the farm
labourers had been caught in the wave of revolt that surged from Milan.
All the fields she passed were deserted. The taverns of the roadside
were busy, and, however true the cry of bread famine may have been,
there was no famine in juice of the grape and no scarcity of drinkers.
In the village of Bosco Largo she heard again the name of Mario Forza.
It fell from the lips of an impassioned ploughman haranguing a crowd of
excited men and women. Two stern-visaged carbineers stood by, but their
presence only fanned the flame of his speech.
“It was the military that shot him down,” he declared. “And would you
know why, my comrades? I will tell you: Because he is the friend of the
man or woman who toils. That’s why they wanted to kill him--because he
is the friend of labour. They don’t want labour to have any friends
except dead friends.”
“True, true!” came from the crowd.
“They are trying to tell us that one of the people shot Mario Forza,”
the orator went on. “Ha, ha! The capitalistic press wants to ram that
down our throats. But they can’t do it. I brand that assertion a lie.
The press and the Government are the slaves of capital, and they’ll do
anything, say anything to serve their masters. Bah! What right have
they to come to us who do the work and say, ‘You may keep one tenth
of what you produce; the rest you must hand over to us’? What right,
I ask, have they to tax the bread out of our children’s mouths and
the coats off our backs? And what do they do with the money that they
plunder us of? I will tell you: They use it to pay things like those
over there--those things with the carbines--they hire them to shoot us
down if we say that our souls are our own. That’s what they spend our
earnings for!”
There was a deluge of hisses for the carbineers. They made no reply, by
word, look or gesture, although some of the women shook their fists at
them and snarled in their faces like tigresses.
“On to Milan, comrades!” the ploughman cried, pointing dramatically
toward the city. “On to Milan and help our brothers pull down the
capitalistic Bastile!”
“Bravo! On to Milan! Down with the capitalistic Bastile!”
Repeating the cry, they scattered, men and women alike, to their homes,
to get rakes, hoes, scythes, shovels, axes, or any other implement with
which to arm themselves.
Hera had lingered to catch the words about Mario, and then, impelled
by the thought that she might arrive at the hospital only to find him
lifeless, she pressed forward, urging her horse to greater speed.
Behind her, more than a league, she had left the river, her course
lying now through a country green with maize, over a road that slanted
to the south-west from the town of San Michele; keeping to this she
would enter upon the Monza Road not far from Milan’s Venetian Gate.
She was one of the many now that fared toward the city. The road
swarmed with the peasantry, as on festal days, only it was plain that
this was no holiday throng. In groups the people moved onward, most of
them afoot, a few women on sorry nags, and others with their children
in rumbling farm carts. Beneath their sullen demeanour seethed a spirit
of contempt for established things. They called to one another in
the shrill _mezzo canto_ of their dialect, scoffing at authority and
boasting of what they would do to pull it down.
Once or twice Hera came upon a band of farm hands marching with a
semblance of line that bespoke service in the army. For weapons they
carried scythes and pitchforks. Here and there a woodman, shouldering a
glistening axe, swaggered along with fine assurance of success in his
mission to fell the oak of capitalism. “Long live the industrial army!”
was the cry that greeted the marching ones oftenest as they trudged on,
their faces set with determination.
It was an experience that asked a stout heart of Hera. In the
cross-currents of her thought she realised that a signora from the
world of ease and plenty was not a popular figure in that concourse.
But there must have been that in her face which had power to touch
those rugged hearts, angry though they were; and she met with no more
annoyance than an occasional black scowl.
In the suburb of Villacosa she overtook Colonel Rosario’s regiment. The
Bersaglieri were moving with the spirited swing that is their pride,
canteens clanking, the long plumes of their hats waving, and the dust
of the highway astir in their wake. By people who had a well-fed aspect
they were greeted with pleased countenances, but in discreet silence;
their less prosperous neighbours had only hisses and hoots for the
uniformed marchers. Mothers held up their babes and cried, “Fire now,
I beg of you.” Other women threw themselves on the roadside, pulled
up tufts of grass, and made as if to eat them--a bit of theatricalism
intended to typify the extremity to which they were reduced for food.
As Hera came up with the head of the column the Colonel chanced to look
round; their glances met, and he smiled a cordial recognition. But a
puzzled look succeeded the smile when Hera had passed ahead and he
had seen the foam that whitened the rings of her horse’s bit and the
flakes of it that dappled his chest. And she was riding yet as fast as
she could in that teeming road. The sun had set when she turned into
the Monza highway. An exodus from Milan had begun. She encountered a
stream of vehicles loaded with the fugitives and their baggage; most of
them were foreigners bound for the more tranquil air of near-by Swiss
cantons.
A little longer and she was in the quarter of Milan’s new rich, without
the walls--amid dwellings of an architecture that in Rome, Florence
or Turin produces much the same impression. Every portico gate was
bolted, no fountains leaped in the courts, blinds were drawn at the
windows; nowhere in any of the grand houses was there sign of life. She
could see the Venetian Gate a short distance ahead; but between her and
it rose a barrier of howling men and women that reached from side to
side of the road save for a narrow breach through which the refugees
passed. Over the heads of the crowd she caught the glitter of a line
of bayonets, and drawing near she heard the jibes and maledictions
that were poured upon the soldiers. She found that she could proceed
no farther. An hour earlier the King had declared Milan in a state of
siege.