The soft thick air of the ball-room swayed rhythmically to the swell and
fall of the violins; the perfume of roses and lilies was whirled into
waves of sweetness, and the beating of many young hearts seemed to
tremble musically through the nameless harmony of instrument and voice,
and rustling silk, and gliding feet. In the passionately moving symphony
of sound and sight and touch, the whole weal and woe and longing of life
throbbed in a threefold pace.
The dwellers in an older world did well to call the dance divine, and to
make it the gift of a nimble goddess; truly, without a waltz the world
would have lacked a very divine element. Few people can really doubt
what the step was that David danced before the ark.
The ball was at a house where members of various parties met by common
consent as on neutral ground. There are few such houses in Rome, or,
indeed, anywhere else, as there are very few people clever enough, or
stupid enough, to manage such an establishment. Men of entirely inimical
convictions and associations will occasionally go to the house of a
great genius or a great fool, out of sheer curiosity, and are content
to enjoy themselves and even to talk to each other a little, when no one
is looking. It is neutral ground, and the white flag of the ball-dress
keeps the peace as it sweeps past the black cloth legs of clericals and
the grey cloth legs of the military contingent, past the legs of all
sorts and conditions of men elbowing each other for a front place with
the ladies.
Conspicuous by her height and rare magnificence of queenly beauty was
Madame de Charleroi, moving stately along as she rested her fingers on
the arm of a minister less than half her size. But there was a look of
weariness and preoccupation on her features that did not escape her dear
friends.
"Diana is certainly going to be thin and scraggy," remarked a
black-browed dame of Rome, fat and solid, a perfect triumph of the
flesh. She said it behind her fan to her neighbour.
"It is sad," said the other, "she is growing old."
"Ah yes," remarked her husband, who chanced to be standing by and was in
a bad humour, "she was born in 1844, the year you left school, my dear."
The black-browed lady smiled sweetly at her discomfited friend, who
looked unutterable scorn at her consort.
Donna Diana glanced uneasily about the room, expecting every moment to
see her brother appear with Miss Carnethy. She was very unhappy about
the whole affair, though she could not exactly explain to herself the
reason of what she felt. Miss Carnethy was rich, had a certain kind of
distinguished beauty about her, was young, well-born,--but all that did
not compensate in Madame de Charleroi's mind for the fact that she was a
heretic, a freethinker, a dabbler in progressist ideas, and--and--what?
She could not tell. It must be prejudice of the most absurd kind! She
would not submit to it a moment longer, and if the opportunity offered
she would go to Miss Carnethy and say something pleasant to her. Donna
Diana had a very kind and gentle Italian heart hidden away in her proud
bosom, and she had also a determination to be just and honest in all
situations,--most of all when she feared that her personal sympathies
were leading her away.
The diplomat at her side chatted pleasantly, perceiving that she was
wholly preoccupied; he talked quite as much to himself as to her, after
he had discovered that she was not listening. And Donna Diana determined
to do a kind action, and the swinging rhythm of the straining, surging
waltz was in her ears. She was just wondering idly enough what the
little diplomat had been saying to her during the last ten minutes, when
she saw her brother enter the room with Miss Carnethy on his arm. They
had met in one of the outer drawing-rooms and had come in to dance.
Donna Diana watched them as they caught the measure and whirled away.
"She is terribly interesting," remarked the little man beside her as he
noticed where she was looking.
"She is also decidedly a beauty," answered Madame de Charleroi, with the
calm authority of a woman whose looks have never been questioned.
People who are in love are proverbially amusing objects to the general
public. There is an air of shyness about them, or else a ridiculous
incapacity for perceiving the details of life, or at least an absurd
infatuation for each other, most refreshing to witness. There is no
mistaking the manner of them, if the thing is genuine.
The sadness that had been on Donna Diana's face, and which the
resolution to be civil to Miss Carnethy had momentarily dispelled,
returned now, as she watched the young couple. She remembered her own
courtship, and she fancied she saw similar conditions in the wooing now
going on under her eyes. Marcantonio was furiously in love, after his
manner, but she thought Leonora's face looked hard. How could she let
her brother marry a woman who did not love him? Her resolution to be
civil wavered.
But just then, as luck would have it, the waltz brought the pair near to
her. Marcantonio was talking pleasantly, with a quick smile that came
and went at every minute. Leonora stood looking down and toying with her
fan. One instant she looked up at him, and Donna Diana saw the look and
the quick-caught heave of the snowy neck.
"I do not know what it is," she said to herself, "but it is certainly
love of some kind." She moved towards them, steering her little
diplomat through the sea of silk and satin, jewels and lace.
"How do you do, Mademoiselle Carnethy?" she said, in a voice that was
meant to be kind, and was at least very civil.
Leonora stood somewhat in awe of the Vicomtesse de Charleroi, who was so
stately and beautiful and cold. But she was very much pleased at the
mark of attention. It was an approval, and an approval of the most
public kind. The few words they exchanged were therefore all that could
be desired. The vicomtesse nodded, smiled, nodded again, and sailed away
in the easy swinging cadence of the waltz. Marcantonio looked gratefully
after her. The air was warm and soft, and the light fluff from the linen
carpet hung like a summer haze over the people, and the hundreds of
candles, and the masses of flowers.
Marcantonio was silent. Something in the air told him that the time had
come for him to speak,--something in Miss Carnethy's look told him
plainly enough, he thought, that he was not to speak in vain. The last
notes of the waltz chased each other away and died, and the people fell
to walking about and talking. Marcantonio gave Leonora his arm, and the
pair moved off with the stream, and on through the great rooms till they
reached an apartment less crowded than the rest, and sat down near a
doorway.
The young man did not lack courage, and he was honestly in love with
Leonora. He felt little hesitation about speaking, and only wished to
put the question as frankly and as courteously as might be. As for her,
she was obliged to acknowledge that she was agitated, although she had
said to herself a hundred times that she would be as calm as though she
were talking about the weather. But now that the supreme moment had
come, a strange beating rose in her breast, and her face was as white as
her throat. She looked obstinately before her, seeing nothing, and
striving to appear to the world as though nothing were happening.
Marcantonio sat by her side, and glanced quickly at her two or three
times, with a very slight feeling of uncertainty as to the result of his
wooing,--very slight, but enough to make waiting impossible, where the
stake was so high.
"Mademoiselle," he said, in low and earnest tones, "I have the
permission of monsieur your father, and of madame your mother, to
address you upon a subject which very closely concerns my happiness.
Mademoiselle, will you be my wife?"
He sat leaning a little towards her, his hands folded together, and his
face illuminated for a moment with intense love and anxiety. But Miss
Carnethy did not see the look, and only heard the formal proposition his
words conveyed. She saw a man standing in the door near them; she knew
him--a Mr. Batiscombe, an English man of letters--and she wondered a
little whether he would have used the same phrases in asking a woman to
marry him,--whether all men would speak alike in such a case.
She had looked forward to this scene--more than once. Again the figure
of the ideal lover of her dreams came to her, and seemed to pour out
strong speech of love. Again she involuntarily drew a comparison in her
mind between Marcantonio and some one, something she could not define.
On a sudden all the honesty of her conscience sprang up and showed her
what she really felt.
A thousand times she had said to herself that she would never marry a
man she did not love; and for once that she had said it to herself, she
had said it ten times over to her friends, feeling that she was
inculcating a good and serviceable lesson. And now her conscience told
her that she did not love Marcantonio,--at least not truly, certainly
not as much as she would have liked to love. Then she remembered what
she had thought that afternoon. How was it possible that she could have
thought of him for a moment as her husband, if she did not love
him,--especially with her high standard about such things? Oh, that high
standard! With a quick transition of thought she made up her mind; but
there was a strange little feeling of pain in her, such as the prince
might have felt in the fairy tale when the ring pricked him.
Nevertheless, her mind was made up.
"Yes," she said very suddenly, turning so that she could almost see his
eyes, but not quite, for she instinctively dreaded to look him in the
face; "yes, I will be your wife."
"Merci, mademoiselle," he said. The room was nearly empty at the moment,
and Marcantonio took her passive hand and touched her fingers with his
lips, being quite sure that no one was looking. But the man who stood at
the door saw it.
"Such a good match, you know!" said some people, who had no prejudices.
"Such a special grace!" said the resident Anglo-American Catholics; "he
is quite sure to convert her!"
"Such a special grace!" exclaimed the resident Anglo-American
Protestants; "she is quite sure to lead him back!"
"Il faut toujours se méfier des saints," remarked Marcantonio's uncle,
concerning his nephew.
"Never trust red-haired women," said the man who had stood at the door.
The engagement made a sensation in Rome, a consummation very easily
attained, and very little to be desired. In places where the intercourse
between young marriageable men and young marriageable women is so
constrained as it is in modern Europe, a man's inclinations do not
escape comment, and a very small seed of truth grows, beneath the magic
incantations of society tea parties, to a very large bush of gossip.
Nevertheless these good people are always astonished when their
prophecies are fulfilled, and the bush bears fruit instead of vanishing
into emptiness; which shows that there is some capacity left in them for
distinguishing truth and untruth. Marcantonio's marriage had long been a
subject in every way to the taste of the chatterers, and though Madame
de Charleroi had accused her brother of hastiness, for lack of a better
reproach, it was nearly a year since his admiration for Miss Carnethy
had been first noticed. During that time every particular of her
parentage and fortune had been carefully sought after, especially by
those who had the least interest in the matter; and the universal
verdict had been that the Marchese Carantoni might, could, should, and
probably would, marry Miss Leonora Carnethy. And now that the engagement
was out, society grunted as a pig may when among the crab-oaks of
Périgord he has discovered a particularly fat and unctuous truffle.
Probably the happiest person was Marcantonio himself. He was an honest,
whole-souled man, and in his eyes Leonora was altogether the most
beautiful, the most accomplished, and the most charming woman in the
world. That he expressed himself with so much self-control and propriety
when he asked her to marry him was wholly due to the manner of his
education and training in the social proprieties. That a man should use
any language warmer or less guarded than that of absolutely respectful
and distant courtesy toward the lady he intended to make his wife was
not conceivable to him. In the privacy of his own rooms he worshipped
and adored her with all his might and main, but when he addressed her
in person it was as a subject addresses his sovereign; a tone of
respectful and submissive reverence and obedience pervaded his actions
and his words. He would have pleased a woman who loved sovereignty,
better than a woman who dreamed of a sovereign love.
But she was never out of his thoughts, and if he wooed her humbly, he
anticipated some submission on her part after marriage. He had no idea
of always allowing her mind to wander in the strange channels it seemed
to prefer. He thought such an intelligence capable of better things, and
he determined, half unconsciously at first, and as a matter of course,
that Miss Carnethy, the philosopher, should be known before long as the
Marchesa Carantoni, the Catholic. Gradually the idea grew upon him,
until he saw it as the grand object of his life, the great good deed he
was to do. His love consented to it, and was purified and beautified to
him in the thought that by it he should lead a great soul like hers to
truth and light. He was perfectly in earnest, as he always was in
matters of importance; for of all nations and peoples Italians have been
most accused of frivolity, heartlessness, and inconstancy, and of all
races they perhaps deserve the accusation least. They are the least
imaginative people on earth, apart from the creative arts, and the most
simple and earnest men in the matter of love. Northern races hate
Italians, and they fasten triumphantly on that unlucky Latin sinner who
falls first in their way as the prototype of his nation, and as the butt
of their own prejudice. In the eyes of most northern people all Italians
are liars; just as a typical Frenchman calls England "perfide Albion,"
and all Englishmen traitors and thieves. Who shall decide when such
doctors disagree? And is it not a proverb that there is honour among
thieves?
Marcantonio never spoke of these ideas of his to his friends when they
congratulated him on his engagement. He only looked supremely happy, and
told every one that he was, which was quite true. But his sister was to
him a great difficulty, for she evidently was disappointed and
displeased. He debated within himself how he should appease her, and he
determined to lay before her his views about Leonora's future. To that
intent he visited her in the boudoir, where they had so often talked
before the engagement.
Madame de Charleroi received him as usual, but there was a look in her
eyes that he was not accustomed to see there,--an expression of protest,
just inclining to coldness, which had the effect of rousing his instinct
of opposition. With his other friends he had found no occasion for being
combative, and his old manner had sufficed; but with his sister he found
himself involuntarily preparing for war, though his intentions were in
reality pacific enough. Marcantonio was very young, in spite of his nine
and twenty years. His manner now, as he met his sister, was a trifle
more formal than usual, and he bent his brows and pulled his black
moustache as he sat down.
"Carissima Diana," he began, "I must speak with you about my marriage,
and many things."
"Yes,--what is it?" asked his sister, calmly, as she turned a piece of
tapestry on her knee to finish the end of a needleful of silk.
Marcantonio had somehow expected her to say something that he could take
hold of and oppose. Her bland question confused him.
"You are not pleased," he began awkwardly.
"What would you have?" she asked, still busy with her work. "I am sure I
told you what I thought about it long ago."
"I want you to change your mind," said Marcantonio, delighted at the
first show of opposition. Madame de Charleroi raised her eyebrows, gave
a little sigh of annoyance, and turned towards him.
"I will always treat your wife with the highest consideration," she
said, as though that settled the matter and she wished to drop the
subject. But her brother was not satisfied.
"I wish you to love her, Diana; I wish you to treat her as your sister."
Donna Diana was silent, and Marcantonio shifted his position uneasily,
for he did not know exactly what to do, and he saw that he was failing
in his mission. But in a moment his heart guided him. He went and sat
beside her, and laid his hand on hers.
"We cannot quarrel, dear," he said. "But will you love her if I make her
like you--if I make her thoughts as beautiful as yours?"
Donna Diana's face softened as she turned to him and affectionately
pressed his hand.
"I will try to love her for your sake, dear boy," she answered gently;
and he kissed her fingers in thanks.
"Dear Diana," he said, "you are so good! But you know she is really not
at all like what you fancy her. She is full of heart, and so wonderfully
delicate and lovely,--and so marvellously intelligent. There is nothing
she does not know. She has read all the philosophies"--
"Yes, I know she has," interrupted his sister, as though deprecating the
discussion of Miss Carnethy's wisdom.
"But not as you think," he protested, catching the meaning of her tone.
"She has read them all, but she will take what is best from each, and I
am quite sure she will be a good Catholic before long."
"I really hope so," said Donna Diana seriously.
"Not that I should love her any the less if she were not," continued
Marcantonio, who was loth to feel that there could be any condition to
his love. "I should love her just as much if she were a Chinese,--just
as much, I am sure. But of course it would be much better."
"Of course," assented Diana, smiling a little at his enthusiasm.
Somehow the peace was made,--it is so easy to make peace when each can
trust the other, and knows it! Just as Madame de Charleroi had
determined to say something pleasant on the evening when her brother
offered himself to Leonora, so now she made up her mind to stand by
Marcantonio, and to help him in his married life by being as sympathetic
and as kind as possible.
In due time Marcantonio obtained the permission of the Church to unite
himself with his Protestant wife, and after a great many formalities the
wedding took place in the late spring, after Easter.
Weddings are tiresome things to talk about, and even the principal
persons concerned in them always wish them over as soon as possible.
What can be more trying for a young girl than to be set up to be stared
at by the hour, be-feathered and be-rigged in a multiplicity of
ornaments, made flimsy with tulle and lace, and ghastly with the
accumulation of white things, when she is pale enough already with the
acute fever of an exceedingly complicated state of mind? Or how can a
man possibly enjoy being envied, hated, loved, despised, and considered
a fool, by his rivals, his bride, the woman he has not married, and his
bachelor friends,--all in a breath? It is absurd to suppose that any one
with an intelligence above that of the average peacock can enjoy playing
a leading part in a matrimonial parade.
Marcantonio Carantoni and Leonora Carnethy were married, and one of her
intimate friends shed a tear as she observed how extremely empty a form
it was. But the other looked a little pale, and said she was quite sure
she could have chosen someone "better than that."