He changed colour.
“I beg your pardon, Maria, I beg your pardon.”
He threw himself on a large sofa, without taking the hand she offered
him. The woman remained standing, and looked at him.
“Shall we go out together, Emilio?” she asked patiently.
“No.”
“Let us go outside the city where there is nobody.”
“No, no.”
“In the carriage to Villa Pamphily? It is such a beautiful morning, and
the air is so soft. Come, do.”
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed, without looking at her.
“Well, then, what ought I to do?” she asked patiently.
“Nothing.”
“What do you wish to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you wish me to remain? Do you wish me to go?” and the tone was one
of sublime patience.
He understood it and melted.
“Maria, you are treating me like a child. Do you think I am ill? I have
white hair, but I am not infirm.”
She noticed all the signs of anger and suffering.
“At times we are ill without knowing it, and we mustn’t repulse an
affectionate hand.”
“What charity!” he exclaimed, with irony.
“What are you irritated about, Emilio? Because of the sentiment or the
person?” she asked.
“For the two things,” he replied, with asperity.
“Ah!” she said, and her hand, trembling a little, found the handle of
her parasol. Again she made as if to go away without greeting him,
without turning round.
“Are you offended?” he cried to her back; “you will end by hating me.”
“I am not offended,” she replied, stopping with lowered eyes and
speaking slowly; “I have tamed my pride, Emilio, in the contact of life,
and I am not offended. I can hate no one.”
He looked at her peculiarly and gloomily, with the strange insistence of
a man who wished to extract a tremendous secret from a glance. But she
did not see it. The question which was trembling on Emilio’s lips
disappeared. He lapsed again into confusion and silence.
“Are you going to your bank?” she asked, to say something.
“Yes, for a moment,” he replied absently.
“Shall you come home to lunch?”
“Yes, at the usual hour.”
“What are you going to do afterwards?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“I am going to stay at home just now, and later----” she continued
monotonously.
“Later?” he asked, with a start.
“I have a meeting.”
“Ah!” he replied, looking at her.
“With Flaminia Colonna; a work of charity,” she explained, somewhat
coldly.
“Flaminia has always continued to love you.”
“She has continued to,” she answered bitterly, biting her lip, growing a
little pale, “like any other friend.”
“Do you go out together?”
“Yes,” she replied, still paler; “are you surprised?” and the question
was put harshly.
“No,” he said, speaking with difficulty, so great was his emotion;
“Flaminia Colonna is a woman and a friend ... while I----”
“While you?” she asked.
“I am a man, a husband.”
There was a deep silence between them.
“Is that the reason why you didn’t go to Cecilia Metella with me?” she
resumed.
“That is the reason,” he replied.
“What were you fearing?” in a voice still deeper.
“Ridicule. Every one would have laughed at me, seeing me with you.”
She fell back. Her eyes grew clouded, but she had the strength not to
open her mouth, to walk away without turning, leaving the man who had
told his secret stretched on the sofa like a miserable weakling.
XII
The ices were being served and the dinner was drawing to a close. All of
a sudden, in the midst of the slightly laboured and frivolous
conversation which occasionally gave place to the species of pompous
gravity, Francesco Serlupi, a young man celebrated for his blunders,
which assumed either a grotesque or dramatic aspect, again committed one
of them.
“Do you know that the Fiore couple have returned home from their
honeymoon? It seems that things are not going too well.”
A glacial silence fell on all.
Maria Guasco, behind the huge mass of white lilies and red roses, which
almost hid her, had not even moved an eyelid; Emilio, taciturn as ever,
had lowered his eyes. The other guests, Flaminia Colonna, Gianni
Provana, and the Senator, Fabio Guasco, seemed distracted.
“It seems that the Costanzi is to be closed for a week,” remarked Gianni
Provana, in an attempt to change the conversation.
But Francesco Serlupi stuck to his gaucherie, and proclaimed
obstinately--
“However, it is as I have said, Marco Fiore returned to the club
yesterday, the day following his return, and yesterday he was at the
races without Vittoria.”
Again a heavy silence. Maria, with a fervid glance, invoked the aid of
Flaminia. She promptly, with her penetrating voice, which was the
complement of her dark and proud figure, and of her beauty full of grace
and expression, said--
“I am not surprised at it. As a matter of fact Marco Fiore has always
liked a club life; his mother, Donna Arduina, had always complained to
me about it. Besides, Vittoria has such a reserved and timid character.”
She emphasised her slow and tactful remark, fixing her sweet grey eyes
on Francesco, to make him understand that he must say no more on the
subject. He, as usual, understood too late the mischief he had done, and
became silent, keeping his head bent over his plate, not daring to look
at his hosts, anxious to escape, as he always did, when he discovered he
had committed an enormous indiscretion.
“Are these delicious early peaches from Lama, Emilio?” asked Mario
Colonna, to divert the conversation better, alluding to the great
property of Casa Guasco near Terni.
“Yes,” replied his host immediately, glad to be able to open his mouth
and speak of something else; “my gardens there work miracles, and also
my gardeners. Every day new flowers and fruit arrive.”
“Oh, you must be very happy about it, Maria,” observed Flaminia, with a
good-natured smile on her lips.
“Oh, most happy,” she murmured.
“You ought to love La Lama, Donna Maria,” remarked Francesco Serlupi, in
an endeavour to mend matters; “it is some time since you were there?”
But the question was put in a low voice, besides, the dinner was
finished, so his hostess rose suddenly without replying to this latest
piece of stupidity, and leaning on the arm of Senator Fabio Guasco the
other guests followed her, Flaminia Colonna on the arm of Emilio, Gianni
Provana, Francesco Serlupi, and Mario Colonna in a group.
“However did it come into your head?” said Gianni Provana to Serlupi,
keeping him back a little with Mario Colonna. “No one will ask you to
dinner, my dear friend, if you start breaking the dishes in your host’s
face at dessert.”
“You are right; I am a proper stupid,” Serlupi declared, as they crossed
the two or three rooms before the drawing-room, “I shall go away at
once; I can’t stop here.”
“Worse and worse,” observed Colonna; “stop a moment or two longer.”
“You are going away with Donna Flaminia, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we can’t possibly stay. We are going to Madame Takuhira’s last
reception at the Japanese Legation.”
“Do me a charity and take me away with you,” begged Serlupi.
“Very well, very well,” said Colonna, laughing, “we will save you even
to the last indiscretion.”
A circle was formed in the large drawing-room, all gathering in a corner
of it where Maria had formed a little room from the larger with screens,
large plants, and furniture, which cut off the space. However, the
conversation proceeded languidly, the sort of coldness which had been
there since the beginning of dinner had become accentuated after
Francesco Serlupi’s escapade. It was the first dinner Emilio and Maria
had given after her return home, thus resuming their old custom of
giving, during the chief Roman season from December to the end of May,
two dinners a week, one to intimates, another of ceremony, the
traditional hospitality in Casa Guasco and high Roman society. It had
been Flaminia Colonna who had urged her friend to resume the habits of
life where they had been relaxed; it had been Flaminia, too, who had
said affectionately to Emilio Guasco, with a sweet smile, “Give us a
dinner like you used to.”
With a feeling of concealed timidity, Emilio had only dared to invite
persons of whom he was sure; his uncle, Fabio Guasco, the Colonna
couple, and finally that silly Francesco Serlupi, who was a gracious
youth incapable of an incivility, but more capable of committing a
disaster with a remark, the importance of which he did not understand
till later, much later. Maria, as hostess, had endeavoured to give an
air of continuity to this resumption of worldly life, decorating her
dining-room as formerly, receiving her friends as formerly in that
bright and flowery corner of the drawing-room, adorning her person with
that studied elegance which distinguished her, and with which she
satisfied her æsthetic tendencies, producing that impression of sympathy
and fascination on her surroundings which was so appreciated. That
evening she was dressed in black voile, affording a glimpse of neck and
bosom, white in their perfect lines. A cluster of fresh red roses was
placed at the opening, nestling on the whiteness of the skin, and
rendering it more intense. A tall, stiff collar of small pearls in ten
rows, with a clasp in front of rubies and diamonds, surrounded her neck;
the bodice of the dress had half-sleeves embroidered with black wavy
tulle, which did not reach to the elbow, and showed her magnificent
white round arms with their delicate wrists. Her hands were loaded with
rings, all in the ancient style, and in her hair, amidst its waves and
dark abundance, were two little bright red roses. A quite interior
exaltation had rendered more splendid her bright eyes, so often closed
and disturbed. That evening she had experienced a sudden pride of
energy and beauty.
But in spite of this a subtle sense of embarrassment and pain weighed on
the dinner, and all the ordered luxury of the table, the exquisiteness
of the viands, the richness of the surroundings, the serenity of the
hostess, and the solicitous courtesy of the host had not caused this
impression to be removed from the mind of their guests. This impression
after Francesco Serlupi’s imprudent words became stronger; every one
felt oppressed, and sought a decent and amiable excuse for leaving.
Donna Maria allowed smoking in her room after dinner; but the men
discreetly retired to a far corner, so, as they said, not to fumigate
the two ladies. For some minutes Maria and Flaminia Colonna remained
alone.
“What a bad experiment, eh, Flaminia, this dinner?” said Maria, with a
sneer and a bitter smile.
“One wants much patience, immense patience,” replied the friend, shaking
her expressive and gracious Roman head.
“Oh, not for me,” added Maria; “for myself I am ready to endure any
pain. It displeases me on Emilio’s account.”
“He suffers, doesn’t he?” asked Flaminia, in a subdued voice.
“He suffers too much,” Maria assented sadly. Then she got up suddenly to
serve the coffee and liqueurs, which had been placed before her. Her
tall, undulating person possessed a great charm, as she lightly crossed
the room, carrying a cup in her hands, while she offered it with a smile
on her beautiful mouth to the men. She could see the admiration in all
their eyes, and she seemed to see it mixed with confusion in her
husband’s. She looked at him rather long, and between them, in those
glances exchanged, it seemed as if a whole world of thoughts and
sentiments had passed. With her rhythmical step Maria returned to her
friend.
“Is it true what has been said?” she asked, sitting down.
“What?”
“That ... Marco and Vittoria already make a couple of doubtful
happiness.”
“What does it matter to you?” replied Flaminia, looking at her with
suspicion.
“It matters to me,” replied the other seriously; “I wished for their
happiness.”
“But what do you desire?” said Flaminia a little diffidently.
“I desire with all my soul that they may be happy,” said Maria.
The friend believed her, because she recognised her as a creature
incapable of lies or falseness.
“I believe that your desire of good for them cannot be a reality.”
“Do you know it then?”
“I know it.”
Maria sighed.
“Later on, with time,” concluded Donna Flaminia, with her sense of
justice and equilibrium.
“One wants such patience, immense patience,” rejoined Maria Guasco
dreamily.
The company began to break up. Flaminia and Mario Colonna had to go to
the Japanese Legation. Francesco Serlupi, silently occupied with his
flight, followed them, almost holding on to their shoulders, as if to
hide himself. When the Senator Fabio Guasco took his leave as well,
accustomed to early hours, he kissed his niece’s hand, bowing with much
gallantry as he begged her not to forget her old uncle in her
invitations. Emilio Guasco, who had not said a single word since dinner,
announced that he was going to accompany him. So only Gianni Provana
remained, immovable, always tranquil, with his monocle fixed in its
orbit. Quietly and tactfully Maria made her way to her husband, and
asked him in a low voice--
“Are you going out?”
“Yes,” he replied quietly.
“Why are you going?”
“To accompany uncle.”
“Are you returning soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take away Gianni Provana too,” she suggested.
“But why?” he asked, with a little irony; “I don’t want you to remain
alone.”
“Take him away; take him away,” she murmured, troubled and nervously.
“Are you afraid of him?” the husband asked mockingly.
“No,” she replied proudly, “I am not afraid of any one.”
She turned her back on him, greeting and kissing her friend, giving her
hand to the men to kiss, and to her husband as well. Did not his lips
seem to linger a little longer on her hand?
Gianni Provana remained as usual, the quiet and tenacious man, who
allows nothing to disturb the plan he has formed for his existence.
Without glancing at him, Maria threw herself into her favourite
arm-chair, took a book with uncut leaves from a table, looked for a
paper-knife, and, having found it, with the peculiar noise of cut paper,
occupied her beautiful hands.
“I don’t bore you, Donna Maria?”
“No,” she replied, without raising her head.
“You would have preferred me to go with the others?”
“Perhaps,” she replied absently.
“You can’t bear me, isn’t it so?” he asked.
“You are mistaken, Provana.”
“Am I very antipathetic to you?”
“You are not antipathetic to me.”
“At any rate I am not sympathetic?”
“Certainly not,” she replied.
“Then indifferent,” and he bit his lip.
“Exactly; indifferent,” she concluded in a monotonous voice.
He got up quickly.
“Are you going?” she asked, rather surprised.
“For what am I to remain here? To hear this from you? The worst you
could have told me you have told.”
The face of the worldling and pleasure-lover expressed at that moment
true suffering.
She looked at him.
“Why are you obstinate, Provana,” she asked coldly and courteously, “in
bothering about me, of what I think, of what I say, of what I do?”
“Because I am a fool,” he confessed, taking his monocle out of its orbit
and looking at her, a familiar trick of his.
“You are not a fool,” she replied, with a little smile; “you are eagerly
anxious to get something that seems necessary to you, which would
instead be useless and dangerous to you, and which, through your good
fortune, you will never obtain.”
“Everything has been said,” he murmured, offering her his hand,
“good-night, Donna Maria.”
“Good-night, Provana.”
She offered her hand. He took it and kissed it, holding it a little in
his own. In spite of his worldly composure, in spite of his mask of
good form, he showed that he was moved.
“Can’t you really manage, Donna Maria, to consider me a man worthy of
some attention and curiosity?” he asked, with some anxiety.
“Oh, I know you well!” she replied, shaking her head.
“You could be wrong.”
“No, I can’t be wrong. For several years you have been attempting the
conquest of my--attention--let us call it attention--a question of
self-love. You have possessed other women more beautiful, more elegant
than I. You are accustomed to succeed, so you are irritated and sad
because you can’t with me. You have begun to suffer because you can’t
succeed with me, and so you have got as far as believing that you are
really in love.”
“Alas, it is no supposition!” he replied melancholily, but with an
accent of truth.
“Let us not speak of love,” she declared; “I oughtn’t to listen any more
to such talk. My greedy ears are satiated with it, they are tired of it,
and have become deaf to it for ever and ever.”
“Nevertheless, some one loves you here, Donna Maria.”
“Whoever?”
“Emilio!”
“You are mistaken,” she said gravely; “Emilio no longer loves me.”
“Really?” he asked anxiously.
“Really.”
“Is he not an impassioned lover, an enamoured husband, and a tender
friend?”
“None of these things, Provana.”
“What is he, then?”
“An enemy perhaps,” she replied softly.
“But hasn’t he pardoned you?”
“He has pardoned me, yes. He has pardoned me, but nothing more.”
“I never would have believed it,” he said thoughtfully.
“Nor I.”
“But perhaps,” he resumed, questioning her with his glance, “you have
frightened him and kept him at a distance with your contempt.”
“I have done all that is possible; I am doing all that is possible,” she
said vaguely, as if speaking to herself.
“You don’t love him; he will have understood.”
“I am humiliated and humiliate myself every day!” Maria exclaimed in a
sorrowful voice; “and I break my pride every instant before him. But I
can’t tell him to love me; neither does he ask it of me. He asks me
nothing.”
“And if he were to ask it?” he said.
“He won’t; he won’t. He has understood I can’t lie.”
“Poor Emilio!” he exclaimed.
“Do you pity him? Even I pity him. He has had pity on me, and I return
it to him. But beyond this he can do nothing for me, and I can do
nothing for him.”
The conversation had suddenly become austere. The worldling appeared
preoccupied, the woman with her beautiful hands crossed on her knees was
telling her tale as if in a dream. Gianni Provana looked two or three
times at her. She was so young still, so flourishing in beauty, with
every womanly grace, and he said to her--
“Is it possible that Emilio has no eyes, no heart, no feelings, that he
doesn’t experience near you that invincible attraction which has made me
ridiculous for years?”
“Who knows! Who knows!” she exclaimed wearily.
“What, in fact, do you think about your life?”
“I think nothing, Provana. I live my life as I do as a duty neither
pleasant nor sad. I was hoping, and still hope, to give consolation for
the undeserving sorrow I have sown. Now I don’t seem to be walking
towards my goal. I don’t seem to be moving.”
“And how if your heart is elsewhere?” he said harshly; “you still love
Marco Fiore.”
“If I loved him still I shouldn’t have returned,” she rejoined
immediately, firmly. “I often think of him with tenderness and
sweetness, but without love.”
“Have you heard? He isn’t happy,” he continued tartly.
“The fault isn’t mine, nor is it his. It is impossible that either he or
I could ever be happy again. We knew it when we separated.”
“But Vittoria, it seems, is unhappy!” exclaimed Provana.
“Ah, that is very, very sad,” she said thoughtfully.
“Like your husband, for that matter,” added Provana.
“It is all immensely sad,” she concluded bitterly.
“The fault is neither yours nor Marco’s,” said Provana, with a sneer.
“You can only smile or laugh at all this,” and she glanced at him with
disdain.
“Better to smile or laugh, Donna Maria. I am an optimist in my cynicism.
Everything will gradually and slowly settle down.”
“How?” she asked, not without anxiety.
“Vittoria and Marco will end by adapting themselves to each other. He
will have a son--perhaps two or three--and she will not bother any more
about her husband. Marco will be older, and a monotonous frequenter of
the club, the races, and other noble pursuits. Perhaps he will have a
mistress or two whom he will not love, since he who has loved cannot
love another woman with passion.”
“And here?” she asked, with a mocking laugh.
“Here, too, time will do its work. Emilio’s pardon will be, shall we
say--active. He will love you tranquilly and faithfully as formerly, and
you will again be an exemplary couple. Remorse will have ceased to bite
yours and Marco’s heart; you may yet be two beautiful great souls. The
years will be passed, and the four of you will even be able to see each
other tranquilly.”
A strident and sardonic laugh punctuated the discourse, while he
replaced his monocle in its orbit elegantly.
“And you, Provana?” asked the woman, laughing, too, ironically.
“Oh, I!” he exclaimed, with false _bonhommie_; “I am the man who waits.
_Vice versâ_ in waiting will come old age and death. So I shall pass to
my ancestors with a beautiful and ridiculous epitaph: that of having
loved Donna Maria Guasco uselessly.”
“It is even a big something to be able to love,” she remarked
thoughtfully.
“That is what they say in novels and dramas; in life it is rather
boring. Above everything the man who loves alone is the greatest bore of
all. Good-night, Donna Maria.”
“Good-night,” she said, without detaining him.
An uncertain, melancholy, bitter dream settled on Maria’s soul.
* * * * *
A voice awoke her from this dream.
“Good-evening, Maria.”
“Good-evening, Emilio.”
Her husband had entered without her noticing his step. He sat on the
seat which Provana had left. It seemed to Maria that his face had become
grave and thoughtful. She put down her book, and leaned her head, as if
it were too heavy for her, on her beautiful hands. In the harmony of her
movements, her womanly grace and fascination, in the silence of the
moment, had something penetrating about it.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Provana went away a minute ago.”
“I met him near here, but he didn’t see me. What fine tales has he been
telling you?” he resumed, with a disingenuous accent.
“Nothing very fine,” she replied.
“However, you must have listened to him with interest.”
“What makes you think that?” she said, trembling.
“I suppose it. The conversation has not been short, nor have you cut it
short,” he added a little bitterly.
“Ah!” she exclaimed; “ought I to show the door to your Provana?”
“Mine? Mine? Isn’t he your friend?” he interrupted with agitation.
“No,” she replied precisely, “he is not my friend.”
“He makes love to you, however,” observed Emilio.
The tone was intended to appear indifferent, but if Maria had listened
carefully and had regarded her husband’s face better, she would have
understood that it was a question, and asked with anxiety. Instead, she
shrugged her shoulders, and let it go without a reply. He repeated it.
“He makes love to you, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, perhaps; I believe so,” she murmured, letting her reply fall
indifferently.
“He has always made love to you, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, he seems to have always done so,” she replied, with the same
indifference and distraction.
“And you?” he said, in a sharp, hard voice which hurt her. Was he really
Emilio who was questioning her so haughtily like a judge? Up to then the
conversation had seemed to Maria one of those usual monotonous
conversations in which every one speaks and thinks quite differently to
what he says, and the lips pronounce empty words mechanically. Instead,
she was suddenly aware that her husband wished imperiously to know the
truth of her heart.
“I?” she replied, at once becoming sad and proud.
“You, you,” he replied, without changing his tone.
“What do you want to know from me?”
“If Gianni Provana’s suit pleases you, if it has ever pleased you, if it
will ever please you?” he said coldly and cuttingly, drawing near to
her, and looking at her with eyes full of anger.
She stepped back a little, certainly not in fright, but to measure this
new sentiment of Emilio’s.
“What does it matter to you?” she asked slowly.
“It matters to me,” he replied, without changing either his accent or
the expression of his face.
“Gianni Provana’s suit has never pleased me, does not please me, and
never will please me.”
She pronounced the words slowly, letting them fall one by one, fixing
her husband with her eyes. She saw his face change distinctly, the anger
vanish which had transfigured him, and she heard his voice assume a
lower tone, veiled with unfamiliar emotion.
“Why?” he asked; “why?”
“Because I despise him,” she concluded honestly, retiring again into a
definite silence, as if she had nothing else to say, or wished to say,
on that subject.
“I beg your pardon, Maria,” he whispered, drawing near her, his voice
saddened and a little disturbed.
She glanced at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied.
“I am certain I have offended you,” he insisted, still troubled.
“Yes, a little, but it doesn’t matter,” she added, with some pride.
“I must have seemed a little bit brutal to you, Maria,” he exclaimed
remorsefully.
“A little,” she replied less proudly; “but it doesn’t matter.”
“Does nothing matter to you, then?” he asked, exasperated and sad.
She was silent and lowered her eyes, playing with her rings in a way
that Emilio remembered.
“Will you give me your hand in token of peace?” he asked, with a false
accent of easiness and frivolity.
“Yes,” she replied, giving him her hand.
“You bear me no rancour, Maria?” he continued with the same studied
disingenuousness.
“No.”
“So be it,” he said, and he kissed the hand, and afterwards tried to
keep it in his. She did not raise her eyes to his, and remained immobile
and silent.
“Otherwise,” he resumed, as if continuing a discourse, “I find it quite
reasonable that Gianni Provana should press his suit on you. Don’t get
angry again,” he said, pressing the hand which she tried to withdraw,
“his name annoys you; I won’t pronounce it again. I say finally that he
is right to press his suit on you.”
She listened to him silently.
“Why are you so seducing?” he exclaimed weakly.
Was it the deception of the light, or did a slight flush diffuse itself
over his face? But why did she say nothing to the man who was drawing
his face nearer to hers and speaking so softly? What thought was
restraining her? What sentiment was conquering her? The man was still
bending, as if to snatch her from her silence, to snatch a word from
her, which would not issue from the tightly closed lips.
“You are not yet thirty, Maria?” he asked, with a sigh.
“I am twenty-eight,” she replied softly.
“And I am old now,” he murmured melancholily, pressing her still hand,
“I am so old for you. Youth is a beautiful thing.”
“Youth is a magnificent thing,” she replied, raising her voice with
flashing eyes.
The incantation was broken. Violently Emilio let go of her hand. Getting
up and withdrawing apart he strode through the room two or three times
gloomily, almost blindly striking against the furniture. Sadly she
looked at him, seeing him a prey to a sudden access of fury, and before
this mystery her woman’s heart quailed anxiously.
“Emilio!” she called two or three times without his hearing.
“Maria,” he replied at last, in a kind of growl, without stopping.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing,” he replied, between his teeth.
Very gradually his violent perambulations amongst the furniture grew
calmer. He stopped near a table at a little distance away and sat there.
Leaning his elbows on it, he hid his head in his hands, immersed in deep
and terrible thoughts. Thus the time passed, while Maria herself seemed
wrapped in thought. At last she seemed to make a decision. She rose,
crossed the room, and bending over her husband, without touching him,
called him again: “Emilio.”
He only started, but said nothing.
“Emilio, my friend, reply,” she said softly and insinuatingly.
“What do you want?” was the gloomy reply.
“I want to know what is disturbing you.”
“Nothing is disturbing me.”
“Why do you lie? You are very troubled; tell me what is the matter?”
“You would laugh at me.”
“I have never laughed at any one,” she replied patiently.
“Who knows?” he said, looking at her in mad anger, and with the open
intention of offending her.
She stopped, and grew pale. But her moral energy was too great.
“He who laughs at the sufferings of another is a knave and a fool; you
would not consider me perverse or stupid, Emilio?”
“I am not suffering,” he replied gloomily, rising.
“You are mistaken, my friend. You want to deceive me or yourself. You
have some ill in your soul; tell me what it is.”
“I have nothing, and I am not suffering,” he replied gloomily.
She shook her head sadly.
“Perhaps I could give you some consolation, Emilio?”
“No.”
“Every human being who has a feeling heart, and soul, can give comfort.”
“No.”
“Am I not your friend, Emilio? Have you no faith in your friend?”
He sneered horribly.
“Friend? friend? You my friend? You, you? I should have faith in you?”
His laughter caused her to shudder.
“How you must be suffering, Emilio, to speak thus,” she said pityingly,
pressing her hands to her breast. The man’s heart at such words, and at
such a manifestation of pity, melted. He fell again into his seat and a
sigh escaped him.
“Oh, how I suffer!”
An immense compassion transfigured the woman. She bent over him and
lightly touched his shoulders with her fingers. He trembled and raised
his face, and fixed her with eyes so full of immense, measureless
sorrow that he seemed to Maria like the living image itself of anguish.
“Tell me why you suffer, Emilio?” she demanded, with such emotion that
his spasms seemed to increase.
“I can’t!” he said desperately.
“Whatever it is you can tell me; I can bear it. Speak, speak, Emilio;
don’t be afraid of offending me; don’t be afraid of saddening me.
Speak,” she said to him affectionately, at the height of her pity.
“I can’t, I can’t,” he said, in cold desperation.
“My friend, don’t be severe with yourself. Don’t be so implacable with
your wounded heart; don’t maltreat your wounded soul. Be more humane,
more tender, more compassionate with yourself, my friend, or those
bleeding wounds will never close, and you will never feel them heal. You
will then sigh away all your best blood, Emilio.”
“It is true,” he murmured, as if to himself.
“Friend, conquer your pride and your _amour propre_. All of us, all of
us, no one is excluded, have suffered, are suffering, and will suffer.
It is not a shame or a reproach to suffer. Those who hide their pain
proudly are not men, are not Christians, and do not feel the human
comfort of weeping.”
“That is true,” he murmured.
“Friend, I know the words that caress sorrow, that rock it and finally
send it to sleep. Later on, when it awakes in us, it is more tender and
weaker; it is a much duller torment.”
Like a suffering child, he looked at her anxiously.
“My friend, why do you suffer?” she asked, leaning over him with a face
transfigured with the grandeur of her loving charity, taking his hand
and caressing it like that of a sick child in pain. “You oughtn’t to
suffer. You have been an upright and just man. Your life has no
remorses; it was guided by a moral conscience, tranquil and firm. You
have not sinned--that I know; you have caused sorrow to none. Yours is a
life without remorse, and so beautiful that suffering ought not to touch
it.”
He looked at her ardently, almost drinking in her words like some divine
liquor.
“You ought not to suffer. You are no longer alone in life; your friend
is near you, near your heart, desiring one thing only, that you may not
suffer, that you may no longer feel lonely, that you may possess a soul
near you and for you----”
He looked at her passionately, and every one of her words seemed to
intoxicate him. She, too, seemed exhilarated with compassion,
tenderness, and devotion.
“Emilio, it is your Maria who is here,” she said solemnly.
Then like a madman he took her in his arms, pressed her madly to his
breast in a frenzied embrace, and kissed her long, while she, trembling
and lost, closed her eyes as before a mortal peril. But immediately, as
if the contact of her person had scorched him, as if the lips which had
not given him a kiss had scorched him, he pushed Maria brutally aside,
crying out at her--
“You cause me horror!”
“Emilio!” she exclaimed, in complete amazement.
“Go away, go away. You cause me horror!” he yelled in her face like a
madman.
She drew back, stupefied and terrified.
“You have pardoned me!” she exclaimed.
“It is true, it is true,” he yelled, “but I can’t forget. Go away, go
away; I can’t forget.”
So she went, bent, defeated, and broken by the incomparable weight of
the truth.
XIII
In one of the large reception-rooms of Casa Nerola, near a bank formed
of an enormous group of Hortense roses, two young girls stand talking
and smiling discreetly, slowly moving their little white fans. The one,
Theresa Santacroce, is dressed in light blue, with a silver belt, her
hair arranged high with a circlet of silver ivy leaves. The other,
Stefania Farnese, is dressed in ivory silk, and two large red roses in
her chestnut hair give her a Spanish appearance, although her beauty is
delicate.
“We thought we were going to be late with mamma.”
“Oh, we dined at seven on purpose.”
“That is why you haven’t been to the tea-room?”
“Of course. Here it is the same as at Court, one has to come before the
sovereigns arrive.”
“The most beautiful spectacle is, naturally, the entry of the Emperor.”
“Is it true that all the women are in love with him?”
“So they say. As for me I don’t like Germans.”
“O Stefania, let us be grateful to him. If he hadn’t come to Rome in
December we shouldn’t have had the first ball now.”
“Long live the Kaiser, then! Since without him we should have had to
wait till the end of February.”
“You are expecting Giovanni Altieri, aren’t you, Stefania?”
“Giovanni Altieri! I don’t want to hear him mentioned. No one is more
voluble or frivolous.”
“Really!”
“Certainly. Just think, he has been in love this summer three or four
times with foreigners--American, Russian, English. And now the wretch
does nothing but speak badly of Italian girls.”
“How all our sweethearts take away these foreign women!”
“Let us give them an exchange. Let us go abroad with our mammas and
marry Russian princes, English dukes and American millionaires.”
“A good idea; but our Italians are so sympathetic. Look at Marco Fiore
over there; what a handsome youth! I would have married him very
gladly.”
“And you would have done very badly.”
“Why?”
“Why ... do you know nothing? you are too simple.”
“Tell me why; tell me.”
“Another time. How late it is, and the ball can’t be opened till the
Emperor comes!”
“Shall we see a state quadrille danced?”
“They say he dances beautifully.”
“Will he dance with the Principessa di Nerola?”
“Naturally. You know she is German, and a mediatised princess. That is
why she is giving the ball and the Emperor is coming.”
“Are you engaged for the first waltz?”
“Yes, with De Goertz, of the Austrian Embassy.”
“Have you begun, then, with the foreigners?”
“Certainly; and you?”
“Oh, I am dancing with my cousin Roffredo.”
* * * * *
Two old ladies are seated on a sofa of antique brocade in another of the
rooms. Their age prohibits them from dancing. Their hair is white, their
faces are furrowed with wrinkles, and their bodies bent with senility,
so they seldom leave their patriarchal homes except on occasions of
great state. They are the Princess of Anticoli and the Duchess of Sutri.
Both are dressed in sumptuous dresses, trimmed with valuable lace; the
most precious family jewels adorn their white hairs, giving them a
certain majesty. Their necks, thin with age, wear scintillating diamond
necklaces, and emeralds of old-fashioned style.
The Duchess of Sutri has magnificent eyes, black and vivid, which form a
singular contrast to the old age depicted in her face and person. Both
their fans are closed in their hands, now so tired of moving them after
so many years of balls and festivities. They are talking together
slowly, watching with wandering eyes the elegant crowd which is coming
and going.
“It wanted an Emperor, Lavinia, to make me leave my home at night.”
“Oh, in other times I wouldn’t have come here at any cost; isn’t he a
Lutheran? But all that is changed. My Fabrizio has absolutely stated his
wish to enter the Italian army. How was I, a widow, to contradict him?
You understand me.”
“You have done well, my poor Lavinia. In fact, perhaps our sons and
nephews are more right to accustom themselves to the new state of things
than we are to protest. Now I am tired and sorry even of the discussion.
I look and smile; sometimes I even laugh.”
“As for me, on the other hand, so many things happen and cause my pity,
Livia. But to whom am I to say it? I should offend people by remarking
on certain misfortunes and losses.”
“What magnificence, do you remember, in our times?”
“We were all much richer then, Livia.”
“What a lot of us have fallen into the most terrible poverty; it is a
real shame.”
“Giovanna della Marsiliana.”
“Poor, poor thing! She lives on her little property near Perugia, just a
small house and a garden, I think.”
“Does she stay there summer and winter?”
“Always now.”
“It is a real exile then.”
“But her daughter-in-law, Carolina della Marsiliana, is here. I see her
over there.”
“Look, look, she is wearing the Marsiliana pearls!”
“Yes, she has rescued them from the moneylender, Labanchi, for a large
sum.”
“Naturally, her father has so many millions.”
“A wholesale boot-manufacturer!”
“Yes, it seems he wants to repurchase the whole of the Marsiliana
properties.”
“Carolina is speaking with Arduina Fiore.”
“Why isn’t Arduina wearing her diadem or necklace?”
“She has given them to her two daughters-in-law, Beatrice and Vittoria.”
“They are fortunate, those Casalta girls.”
“Do you think so? This evening they are wearing the jewels of Casa
Fiore. Do you notice the two daughters-in-law are following their
mother-in-law side by side?”
“Beatrice is very charming.”
“The other is insignificant.”
“A little pale and supercilious. She doesn’t like society, I suppose.
How long are you staying, Lavinia?”
“Don’t you know we can’t go away till this Emperor leaves?”
“I knew his grandfather very well at Berlin.”
“And I his father in London, when he came to fetch his bride, Victoria.”
“It is useless to remind him of that.”
“Oh dear, yes.”
* * * * *
Two gentlemen have withdrawn from the flow of people to an embrasure of
a window. One is Carlo Savelli, of the great house of Savelli, tall,
strong and nervous, looking as if he had dismounted from one of the
well-limbed horses of the Campagna, and had changed his large round
cow-boy cloak for the evening dress of society. The other is Guglielmo
Morici, pale and delicate, of the best Roman bourgeoisie, but allied by
business and relationship to the nobility. In the conversation of each
the Roman accent is very marked.
“When is the meeting fixed for?”
“For Saturday evening, Guglielmo. You are going to take part if you can
get off?”
“Yes, I can get off for two or three days, for the Monday or even till
Tuesday morning.”
“Good; we must pray Heaven that it doesn’t rain!”
“I don’t mind a little rain when one is out shooting, a little, but not
too much.”
“You are right. We train to Velletri, thence we drive for three hours to
Campiglione.”
“Do we get there at midnight?”
“Yes, and go to bed at once. At six o’clock we are off. Breakfast is at
a place called L’Æqua Morta, and at night we sleep at Fattino.”
“How I love these shooting trips, dear Carlo! For three days through
fields and woods, eating here and there, sleeping here and there. One
could believe oneself far away in Africa or Asia.”
“I swear to you, Guglielmo, that everything else is indifferent to me; I
rave about the chase. At first it was a hobby, but now it is a passion.”
“Oh, I have had it since a boy.”
“People who do not understand it laugh at us.”
“Let them laugh. Who is coming with us?”
“The usual lot; Mario Colonna, Giovanni Santacroce, and Emilio Guasco.”
“Splendid; have you fixed up everything?”
“This evening we must all meet here to arrange the time-table.”
“Is Emilio coming here too this evening?”
“I believe he is coming with his wife.”
“A beautiful woman!”
“I have always liked her.”
“You are not the only one who has liked her.”
“What are we to do? It is a misfortune for us husbands.”
“However, they are together again now--man and wife!”
“Oh, Emilio is a splendid fellow.”
“I wouldn’t have done it.”
“So one says. But then one has to find oneself in certain predicaments.
Watch if you can see them arriving.”
“I see him; Mario Colonna is there.”
“Beckon to him to look for us after the Emperor has entered.”
“He has winked ‘yes.’ Now I see Emilio Guasco.”
“Is he with his wife?”
“Yes, yes. She is more beautiful than ever this evening. Do you know
that even I think in looking at her that he was right to have pardoned
her.”
“Have you nodded to him?”
“Yes; but I suppose he hasn’t seen me.”
“We will find him as soon as the Emperor has passed. At that moment
every one will flock into the ball-room.”
“Is there to be much dancing afterwards?”
“Certainly, on account of the festivities the ladies have been
enthusiastic about the Kaiser. My daughter, Maria, will stop late.”
“I think my wife must be very late. She was still dressing when I went
out.”
“Oh, these ladies and their _toilette_!”
“Oh, I leave mine every liberty of being late by setting out first. Thus
there is no quarrelling.”
* * * * *
A telephone message from the German Embassy has warned the Principe di
Nerola that the Emperor of Germany with his suite has started for the
Palazzo di Nerola. It is half-past ten. Court ceremonial ordains that
the host honoured by a royal visit, receives His Majesty in the
courtyard of his palace, at the foot of the grand staircase. The
December evening is very cold. A slight frost covers the roads. The
Prince of Nerola is already seventy, and the waiting in the cutting
night air worries him secretly, in spite of the high honour which is
coming to him from the Imperial visit.
The Roman patrician descends the stairs of his majestic palace wrapped
in a fur coat, with his hat on his head. His three sons, Don
Marcontonio, Don Camillo, and Don Clemente follow him at a little
distance. On every step of the staircase, on right and left, are valets
of Casa Nerola in grand livery. At the foot of the staircase footmen,
with large lighted candelabra, form a circle round the group formed by
the Prince and his sons.
The Nerola palace, in the via Santi Apostoli, is imposing and solemn in
its exterior architecture. The courtyard is immense, with a fountain in
the middle with a green tiled circle round it. A portico opens on the
four sides of the courtyard. The internal architecture resembles the
Palazzo Borghese.
Paolo, fifteenth Prince of Nerola, is tall and thin, with flowing white
beard. His sons, between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age, all
resemble him, but their appearance is less aristocratic and proud than
his. Some minutes pass in silence, and suddenly the janitor of Casa
Nerola, a Colossus clothed in a livery resplendent with gold, strikes
the asphalt three times with his great gold-headed baton, while a dull
noise of carriage-wheels reaches from the street.
At once, with youthful agility, Don Paolo frees himself from his cape,
and remains in evening dress, his breast covered with decorations. The
first imperial carriage enters, containing the aides-de-camp, and stops
in front of the grand staircase. The imperial master of ceremonies and
three officials in German uniform descend. Salutes are exchanged, and
all four group themselves behind the Prince, in waiting. The second
carriage enters more slowly, the Prince advances to the door. The
Emperor alights, and uncovers at once before the Roman patrician, who
bows profoundly and thanks His Imperial Majesty for the honour he is
doing to Casa Nerola. The Emperor smiles beneath his light moustaches,
curled up proudly, and the procession is formed.
The footmen go slowly in front, holding the magnificent silver
candelabra, lit with sweet-scented candles. Behind, at a certain
distance, the Emperor. On his left the Prince walks a little apart, and
a little behind him a group is formed by the Prince’s sons and the
imperial suite. The procession mounts the stairs almost in silence, and
with great solemnity. The sovereign is very calm, and talks to his host
in German, looking around at the noble beauty of the house he is
entering. Above, in the last ante-room, at the entrance to the suite of
reception-rooms, the Princess of Nerola is waiting, born Princess Tekla
di Salm-Salm. Dressed in white brocade, she wears the closed crown of a
mediatised German princess; on her bodice is pinned a German order,
which is only given to German ladies of high lineage. Her hair, which
had been of the palest flaxen colour, is now quite white. She has that
opaque whiteness of colouring, and the rosy cheeks of the descendants of
Arminius. Though massive and big-boned, she looks quite the great lady.
Immediately her Emperor appears at the door she goes towards him, and
almost prostrates herself in profound reverence. Calmly, and almost
jokingly, the Emperor takes her hand, kisses it gallantly, and gives
her at once her title: “Your Serene Highness.”
The orchestra in the ante-room at once broke into the German National
Anthem, in which all the ardent and mysterious power of the German soul
is manifested. The procession is again formed, and William, King and
Emperor, tall and erect in his uniform of a colonel of the Garde du
Corps, gives his arm to the Princess to cross the rooms, glittering with
light and magnificently decorated with plants and flowers, showing in
all their refulgence the ancient beauty of their sculptural and
pictorial decoration, in all the richness of their artistic furniture,
an historic luxury, so calm and powerful. Behind the Emperor and the
Princess come the Prince, his sons, and the suite. All walk slowly,
regulating their step to his. He goes slowly, for he knows the secret of
these appearances, and speaks smilingly to the Princess, looking around
to right and left at the two lines of men and women who bow profoundly
to him, and lower their eyes, if he fixes them with his clear, flashing
eyes. It is a double hedge of women especially, in coloured and
brilliant gowns, in white and soft gowns, with bare shoulders and arms.
It is a double hedge of heads--blondes, brunettes, chestnuts, golden,
white--on which feathers flap, on which jewelled stars and shining
crescents tremble, on which strange flowers almost open: heads bowed
beneath the weight of their thickly dressed hair, little heads almost
childish beneath the wavy aureole of golden locks, heads which bow in a
salute of reverence, of admiration, of mute feminine sympathy, for this
Emperor of legend, of poesy, of ever-renewing self-will. He admires and
greets the women with a slightly haughty smile, continuing his way.
There is not a word or a whisper as he passes, nothing except the
rustling of silk and velvet, or the jingling of the sabres of the suite.
In this silence the passing of the Emperor-King acquires a more
impressive and imposing character.
Crowded one against the other, dame and damsel had not spoken while he
appeared and while he was passing, and indifferent to their surroundings
had only thought of seeing him and being seen, of greeting him and
receiving his greeting. Mixed among them are old men and young, also
intent on bowing to the sovereign. In the famous tapestry-room of Casa
Nerola, the room before the ball-room, in the great space cleared in the
middle of it to allow the Emperor-King to pass, opposite but far off,
divided by the big space and many people, a man and a woman have
recognised each other with their eyes, and have remained immobile and
silent to gaze at each other.
They are Maria Guasco Simonetti and Marco Fiore.
Since that sad autumn afternoon a year ago, when they had wept their
last tears together without either being able to console the other,
taking leave of each other for ever, and burying their dead dream of
love, they had never seen each other. It is a year ago since,
courageously and with broken hearts, they had separated, thinking in
that terrible moment that they would never see each other again till
death or old age; but so many singular circumstances had happened around
them during this time, the change of events has been great, and their
fate has changed all its course and aspect. Suddenly and unexpectedly on
that December evening, amidst sumptuous and splendid surroundings,
amidst flowers, women, jewels, music, and perfumes, the two who had
lived their passion of love together, and had placed it desolately in
its sepulchre, are face to face, divided by the crowd; but their
glances, greedily and intensely attracted, seem as if they never could
separate. For a long moment Maria Guasco and Marco Fiore gaze at each
other. In their eyes there is only one beautiful, simple, strong
expression, sadness free from every ardour, sadness free of every
desire; sadness without remorse or hope; a sadness which neither invokes
nor offers help. It is an incomparable and immeasurable sadness, which
can only be supported by lofty human strength in its humility and
innocence. Thus they look at each other and are only sad for that which
was and is no more, for that which can never return to them, since
nothing which is dead in the soul rises again.
Proud and smiling the Emperor passes, and a flock of people crowd behind
the suite and increases near the door, to get near him and surround him.
Marco and Maria are separated by the great crowd. But they do not seek
each other. Everything has been said in one long glance, in one long
moment of intimate understanding.
XIV
As Emilio Guasco helped his wife into her opera-cloak, she felt on her
bare shoulders the sensation of something scorching. It was her
husband’s hands that had touched her. She turned round quickly, never
having seen him so pale. They were alone in the armoury of Casa Nerola,
used as a cloak-room. No one is leaving, no one ought to be leaving at
the moment when the festival is at its brightest, since the Emperor is
dancing in the state quadrille. But Emilio had said to her, coming up
unexpectedly, in a decided voice--
“Let us go.”
She obeyed at once. Two valets hastened to help her, but Emilio took the
cloak and shawl. How hot the man’s hands felt on the woman’s cold white
shoulders. Descending the staircase, with a silent bow he offered his
arm to his wife, and, almost as if he feared to see her fall, he pressed
hers against his as in a vice. They said not a word, nor did they look
at each other. At the bottom of the stairs they waited while the porter
called their carriage.
Slightly bending her beautiful head Maria entered the coupé drawn by a
pair of grey horses, and the door closed behind Emilio with a dull
sound. Emilio sat silently in his corner. Twice his wife looked at him
in the half-light, and noticed that he was paler than she had ever seen
him; his troubled eyes were brightly fixed on her.
She lowered her head. Suddenly he sought her gloved hand in the large
velvet and lace sleeve of her mantle, and pressed it so hard that she
gave a cry of pain.
“Emilio, you are hurting me!”
He threw the hand aside brutally and laughed loudly. They had reached
Casa Guasco. She mounted the stairs rapidly, a prey to a singular
trouble caused by an unknown fear, of an unknown shame and sorrow. She
did not turn round, but she heard her husband following through the
different rooms to the boudoir which preceded her own room, the room
whose threshold Emilio had never crossed since she had returned home. In
that little room they usually said good-night before separating. She
stopped, turned round, and offered her hand to her husband.
“Good-night,” she said, in a feeble voice.
He did not reply, but looked at her strangely, and preceded her into the
bedroom. At the threshold before entering she hesitated, and a feminine
trembling caused her to vacillate. However, her pride and her courage
came to her aid as she entered the room. The man and the woman stood
near to each other, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Good-night, Emilio,” she said firmly.
“I want to speak to you,” he managed to say with difficulty, in a hoarse
voice.
“Very good,” she replied firmly.
She allowed the shawl, mantle, gloves, and purse to be taken away by
Chiara’s deft fingers, who was in the room in attendance on her, almost
feeling the gloomy hour which was waiting for them. All these operations
are done calmly and dexterously. Quietly Maria removed from her head the
grand diadem of diamonds, the pearl collar and necklace, the bracelets
from her arms, and poured them into Chiara’s hands, saying quietly--
“You may go.”
“Am I to wait?” whispered the faithful creature, with a timid glance.
“No,” exclaimed Emilio suddenly.
“No,” replied Maria quietly.
With a light step Chiara disappeared. Maria sat down in an arm-chair in
her white ball dress, and waited patiently. Her husband stood before her
in evening dress, with a flower in his buttonhole, but like a corpse in
the face, except that his eyes were shining with an evil flame.
“Maria,” he broke out, “have you decided to make me commit a crime?”
For half-an-hour she had understood that a breath of madness was
crossing her husband’s senses, and she believed and hoped she could
conquer this madness by calmness and coldness.
“I don’t understand you; will you explain?” she asked in a harmonious
voice.
“Don’t lie!” he cried, “don’t lie, as you always do! You know quite well
what I am saying. You pretend and dissimulate. You lie, that’s it; and I
shall kill some one to make you content.”
“Emilio, Emilio,” she murmured sweetly, “you are wronging me; but I can
stand the wrong since I see you are very excited. Calm yourself, I beg
of you. Make an effort over your impetuousness; conquer yourself and be
tranquil.”
He replied with a horrible laugh.
“Make an end of it, Maria, make an end of this nauseating cataplasm of
your pity! Your compassion exasperates me. Go and use it in some
hospital. I am sure you understand; and I am going to kill some one. I
am going to kill _him_.”
She shook her head. Her sweetness disappeared with his laughter, and she
became thoughtful and sad. He had risen, and was walking up and down the
room like a madman talking to himself.
“It shall not be allowed for a miserable woman, yes, for a miserable
woman, without honour and without heart, to make a poor gentleman
unhappy and ridiculous. An honourable man should not allow her.”
“Are you speaking of me?” she asked, getting up at once proud and erect
before him, and forcing him to stop his mad perambulations.
“Exactly; I am speaking of you, dishonour of my life, misfortune of my
life!” Emilio cried in her face.
She bent a little under the new injury, but still gathered all her
strength not to retaliate or rebel, to dominate her pride, and to use
only her goodness and her tenderness.
“Emilio, Emilio, you are raving!” she exclaimed, with immense sadness.
Again he burst into a harsh laugh, false and stridulous.
“So I am a madman, am I? And what are you, Maria? You who lost your head
for three years for that waxen-faced doll, for that languishing idiot,
for that perverse and mischievous-souled Marco Fiore? Oh yes, call me
mad--you, you, who had neither shame nor honour for three years? You who
are a spectacle for the laughter and contempt of the whole of Rome for
your madness; and dare you tell me that I am raving?”
“Oh, Emilio, Emilio!” she exclaimed, trembling.
“Do you deny it? Do you deny it?” he yelled, almost stammering, so great
was his fury.
She looked at her husband. The great danger she was in only made her a
little paler and her lips a little drier. She kept silent.
“Haven’t you loved him?” he yelled, coming nearer to her, taking her
two hands and squeezing them as in a vice.
She closed her eyes, as if face to face with death. Then she opened them
wide, and replied simply--
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you run away from home for him, with him?”
She tried to free her hands, which were closed in his, but he did not
let go. Again with simplicity, with loyalty, she had the courage to
reply to the furious man--
“Yes.”
“There! there! Didn’t you adore him for three years?”
She tightened her lips, and bit them to conquer the pain of her tortured
hands, and without a cry still replied--
“Yes.”
“And you still love him; you’ll always love him!” he cried, and in his
anger this time there was mixed deep suffering.
He let go her hands. She fell back exhausted, but replied in a clear,
precise voice--
“I do not love him.”
“It is false, it is false; you still love him.”
“If we had still loved each other we should not have left each other,”
she declared without hesitation.
“When you returned to this house to laugh at me, to make a fool of your
tortured husband, you were in love with Marco Fiore, and Marco Fiore was
in love with you.”
“I should not have placed a foot in your house, understand, if I had
still loved Marco,” she proclaimed, proudly and coldly.
“Cursed be that evening! Cursed be that hour!” the man exclaimed, mad
with jealousy and suffering.
“You called me here,” she stated.
“If not, wouldn’t you have come? Wouldn’t you have come, eh, woman
without soul or heart?”
“I should never have come,” she declared.
“You are a monster of pride and aridness!” he cried; but in his voice
sorrow conquered anger.
“I have tamed my pride before you, Emilio, don’t forget it,” she
replied.
“When? How? You humiliate yourself? You?”
“When I accepted the pardon you offered me. I could have refused it, but
I conquered my pride. I bowed and almost prostrated myself before you,
and you pardoned me. Remember that; remember that.”
“Cursed be those words; cursed the lips that pronounced them.”
Maria stretched out her hand involuntarily, as if to stop her husband
from a mortal fall.
“Weren’t you sincere at that moment?” she asked in a dull voice.
“I was sincere,” he replied, with a gulp.
“Did that pardon come from the bottom of your heart?”
“From the bottom, from the very depths of my heart.”
“Why do you then curse that moment, those words and that sentiment?”
“Because you still love Marco Fiore.”
“No,” she replied.
“You keep his letters.”
“That is true; but I don’t love him. His letters are sacred, like those
of one dead, like those of one dear to me.”
“You love him; you love him!” exclaimed Emilio, in a monotony of
desperation; “you keep every gift of his.”
“I don’t love him; but what I have is dear to me as a funereal memory.”
“You love him, and he loves you. The house at Santa Maria Maggiore has
remained as it was. It belongs to him and you.”
“But I have never been there again,” she replied disdainfully.
“I know, I know. I know where you go. But you will go there to-morrow
perhaps, and he will come to-morrow. Oh, this evening, if I had never
seen this evening!”
He turned, wringing his hands under a pain he could no longer resist.
“I saw your eyes, Maria; I saw his when you met at Casa Nerola. I saw
all. And Vittoria Fiore, the poor unfortunate, saw you. She was as pale
as death. This time, understand, I can’t endure the insult; I shall kill
you and him. But endure this shame again--never, never!”
She made a supreme effort of courage, subduing her indignation,
repressing it at the back of her atrociously offended mind. She
remembered that she had returned home to be good, to be sweet, to
restore peace and serenity there, to give back happiness to her husband,
who had a right to it, to perform works of tenderness, even to the
silence and death of her own heart.
“Emilio, Emilio,” she said softly, “tell me what I am to do to soften
your mind and pacify your heart. You don’t believe me to-day, you must
to-morrow. Tell me all. Shall we leave Rome together for ever?”
“No,” he replied gloomily; “I should think that you wanted to fly from
Marco Fiore.”
“Shall we go for a long voyage together?”
“No; you have been everywhere together, that I know.”
“Do you want me to shut myself up at home, to see no one, as if I were
dead?”
“No; I should think you were absorbed in memories of him.”
“Well, would you like us to lead a society life together, wild and full
of pleasure?”
“No, no. We should meet him every day, every evening, and I should
commit a crime, Maria,” and the fixed idea returned to him.
She felt lost for a moment.
“Then what am I to do?”
“There is one only means,” he replied, drawing much nearer to her,
speaking with his hot breath in her face.
“What is it?”
“To love me as you loved him.”
The woman frowned two or three times without replying.
“I want to be loved passionately by you, do you understand? You must
love me with passion as you loved Marco, as I love you. Have you
understood? No more of this pale and flaccid affection, this loving
friendship, which I despise and which exasperates me to frenzy. It must
be passion. Have you perfectly understood me?”
She stood cold and rigid with staring eyes; but made no reply.
“You want to love me, don’t you? I am your husband, who spoke the first
words of love to you, who gave you the first kiss. Remember, remember,
you who want to love me. You must love me as I have loved you. Speak;
reply.”
She closed her eyes, and replied in a choking and desperate voice--
“I will try; I will try.”
“When?” and the question is like a dull roar.
“Later on, later on,” she said, feeling herself lost, but unable to lie.
“No, no,” he roared. “No, this evening, this very evening, in which you
have seen him again, in which you have looked at and understood each
other.”
* * * * *
It is late in the night, Maria is alone, stretched in her easy-chair,
with dishevelled hair, which covers her face. Her hands hang limply with
fingers apart, and her eyes are wide open, almost deprived of their
glance. With a supreme effort of will she raised her hand and touched
the bell. Her head fell back exhausted. The silence around was intense.
No one came, and she had no strength left. But a little step draws near,
a familiar face bends over her.
“I am dying,” she cries to the faithful girl.
Chiara suddenly becomes strong, lifts her in her arms, holds her up, and
begins to take off her ball dress, while Maria every moment seems to be
fainting.
“I am dying,” she repeats.
At last she is free of her gay garments, and the faithful girl tries to
make her rise, with infinite patience and tact. At last she stands up,
tall, rigid and pale as a ghost.
“I am dying!” she cries.
She grips Chiara with her hands for aid, totters, sways, and falls
exhausted in the gloom and silence, as if dead.
XV
Donna Arduina stopped in the centre of the large hall of Palazzo Fiore,
with its dark carved wood, and red tapestry bearing the Fiore arms. In
spite of her years and life’s troubles she still preserved her noble
appearance. Marco bent and kissed her hand tenderly, while she kissed
him on the forehead affectionately.
“Good-night, Marco.”
“Good-night, mamma.”
Vittoria had stopped two or three paces behind, wrapped in a white
mantle, trimmed with gold, the large chinchilla collar of which suited
the delicacy of her face and slender figure. She had placed no shawl on
her hair, whose wavy gold was almost oppressed by the weight of the
diadem, which shone brightly in the gloom of the hall. Her white and
tranquil face is without expression, and her eyes have a distant and
dull glance. In her hands she held her shawl, and waited patiently.
“Good-night, Vittoria,” said Donna Arduina, approaching her
daughter-in-law.
“Good-night, mother,” she replied, stooping to kiss her hand. Then she
drew herself up naturally and avoided the kiss on her forehead which
Donna Arduina intended to give her.
Donna Arduina hesitated a moment as if she wished to say something,
then, turning her back, she walked slowly and imposingly towards her own
apartments. Marco had already started towards his, and his wife followed
him without saying a word. As they crossed the various rooms, Marco
looked two or three times at Vittoria as if he wished to question her
silent, reserved face. She appeared, however, not to notice his
questioning glance. Thus they reached their immense bedroom, the room
occupied by the eldest sons of Casa Fiore and their wives for more than
three hundred years, which modern taste and modern furniture had changed
very little, leaving the solemnity and austerity of the old Roman
patrician houses. In the majesty of her surroundings, the fragile woman
seemed but a fantastic shadow. She sat down, but did not take off her
cloak, opening it a little as if she felt warm.
“Aren’t you going to call your maid?” Marco asked, taking the gardenia
out of his buttonhole, as if about to undress.
“No,” she replied, “a little later. I must say something to you, Marco.”
He raised his eyebrows slightly, and jokingly sought to change the tone
of the conversation.
“We will talk in bed if you like, dear. It is an excellent place for
conversation, and I will listen to you with deep attention without
going to sleep.”
“No,” she replied dryly, “we must talk as we are.”
“As we are, dressed for society! As we were in Casa Nerola? Very well,
dear, but I find the Emperor is missing. We can telephone to him, if you
like, to assist at this colloquy?”
And he laughed mischievously. However, Vittoria paid no attention.
“I want to make a request of you, Marco.”
“What is it?”
“I want ten days’ freedom.”
“You, Vittoria?”
“I, yes.”
“To do what?”
“I want to make a retreat at Bambino Gesù now that Christmas is drawing
near,” she concluded, in a low voice.
“A novena!” he exclaimed, internally relieved, but not showing it; “and
what prevents you from doing it here?”
“It is impossible, Marco. It isn’t a question of prayer only. One must
retire for nine whole days to a convent.”
“To a convent? Are you going to become a nun like Ophelia?”
“Why Ophelia? What do you mean?”
“Nothing, nothing. Go then to your convent; which one?”
“That of the white nuns of Gesù Bambino in via Merulana.”
“Who put such a strange idea into your head, Vittoria? Doesn’t it seem a
little ridiculous to you?”
“It is neither ridiculous nor strange,” she added, shaking her head;
“other ladies go there to retire and pray.”
“Old ladies, I suppose?”
“No,” she insisted coldly; “young ladies, and beautiful too; young
married women especially.”
“Who are perhaps in mortal sin. Are you in mortal sin, though I didn’t
know it, Vittoria?” he laughed loudly, looking at her.
“I hope not,” she replied, lowering her eyes to hide a sudden flash;
“but so many people can be in mortal sin, prayers are necessary for us
and them.”
“Even for me, dear nun!” he exclaimed mischievously.
“For you also,” she replied expressionlessly.
“When must you enter?”
“To-morrow evening at eight. To-morrow is the fifteenth of December.”
“When do you come out?”
“On the evening of the twenty-fourth.”
“Have you told mamma this?”
“No; please tell her yourself to-morrow.”
“Perhaps mamma will not approve.”
“She knows what it is a question of,” murmured Vittoria; “all Roman
ladies know of this retreat in the monastery of Gesù Bambino. Get her to
tell you.”
She blushed slightly. He looked at her, and proceeded more gently with
the conversation.
“Are there special prayers in this convent, Vittoria? Are special graces
asked for?”
“One grace only,” she replied, with downcast eyes; “one grace only of
the Divine Son, Marco.”
“Ah!” he replied without further remark, understanding.
“Do you so very much want to have a son, Vittoria?” he asked in a
peculiar tone.
There was a deep silence between them.
“I desire it ardently,” she broke out suddenly, with an impetuous
accent, immediately recovering herself, “I desire nothing else now.”
“Also I want one for you,” he said, vaguely and absently.
“Not for yourself?” was the sharp question. But he did not heed the
intense expression.
“As for myself, you understand, my brother Giulio has three sons. The
house of Fiore has descendants.”
“Beatrice has been fortunate,” she murmured, with a sigh.
“There, there; you, too, will be fortunate,” he resumed jokingly and
laughingly; “you will have a quiverful of sons, too many, I tell you,
dear Vittoria, for many sons will give you much worry. Don’t doubt; you
are not sterile.”
“Who knows,” she said, with a sorrowful shudder.
“Go to your convent, dear, since you are set on it,” he said, laughing;
“the Bambino Gesù will content you, and when you return home He will
send you the little one.”
He drew near her to kiss and embrace her. With a cold gesture she
repulsed him.
“Hoighty, toighty! Hoighty toighty!” he exclaimed; “why all this
rudeness to your lawful husband, Don Marco Fiore?” He tried again to
draw her to himself and kiss her. Again still more coldly and hostilely
she kept him at a distance.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“We must live from to-day in prayer and mortification,” she replied in
glacial tones.
“Therefore?” he asked.
“You resume from to-night your bachelor bedroom.”
“Ah; and am I to keep it for ten days?” he said drily.
“Yes, for ten days, till my return.”
“Brava! Brava! And if I am bored in there all alone?” he continued, with
signs of annoyance.
“Oh, you won’t bore yourself there!” she replied, with a slightly bitter
smile.
He remembered that in that room everything had remained untouched since
he had married, that it was full of portraits, big and small, of Maria
Guasco, with recollections of their dead dream, their dead love. He
understood more than ever the depth of his wife’s thoughts and feelings;
he realised her intense pain. So he tried again in pity and tenderness
to make her speak, to make her weep.
“Vittoria, Vittoria!” he exclaimed in sad reproach, “you as usual are
dissimulating and lying, and that makes you suffer and becomes unfair to
me. I don’t want to be angry, and you should not suffer.”
“You are mistaken,” she replied coldly, “neither do I suffer nor need
you be angry. My confessor has told me that the scope of matrimony is
not love but children, that one must ask Heaven for children, and pray
very much. I am going to pray.”
“Ah!” he said, suddenly becoming cold, “you are convinced that the scope
of matrimony is not love?”
“Quite convinced,” she answered harshly.
“All the worse,” he exclaimed in a bad temper; “all the worse; and when
did you decide to enter the convent for the novena?”
The question was direct and sharp. She hesitated to reply.
“When, Vittoria? Think and tell the truth.”
“This evening,” she replied, with an effort.
“This evening? At the ball?” he insisted, still more sharply.
“This evening at the ball,” she assented, growing very pale.
But pity, sentiment without strength, was already extinguished in
Marco’s heart, and there was substituted, as in every heart unjustly
suspected, a dull and cruel indignation. He shrugged his shoulders, took
his fur coat and hat, and left with a dry, “Good-night, Vittoria.”
She had no strength to reply. With difficulty she closed the door of her
big room where she was alone, desperately alone. She dared not weep, for
fear that he might return and find her weeping, for fear that, not being
very far away, he might hear her weeping.
XVI
Maria Guasco wrote thus to Marco Fiore--
“Marco, this sudden and unexpected letter will not surprise you.
You know already that it is not a love letter, because our souls
united and understood themselves too intimately in that past which
can never return, and they were too much agreed in feeling the
irremediable end of their love for a sentimental misunderstanding
ever again to happen between us. If anybody else, a stranger, were
to lean over my shoulder, and read the first word written, he would
at once have no other thought but this: ‘_See, it was natural, she
is writing to her lover, she has never ceased to love him._’ Let it
be so. Not a short time has passed since we separated freely and
voluntarily, overcome by anguish, but stronger than anguish itself,
since the reason for our ardent and free union was at an end. Since
it is now May it is nearly two years ago. It is a year since you
married Vittoria, when, placing her little hand in yours, she will
certainly have pardoned your long infidelity and desertion. Well,
my friend, no one about me believes that I have ceased loving you
with passion, not even those who know me well, such, for instance,
as a faithful friend like Flaminia Colonna, not even a would-be
lover like Gianni Provana, to give another instance. No one, and
especially my husband, Emilio Guasco; he does not believe, can’t
believe, never will believe that I have ceased to love you
passionately.
“This is the cross that I have been carrying for a year, at first
with energy and Christian courage, sustained by a burning desire
for expiation, by a burning desire to repair the horrible suffering
inflicted on others, to heal all the deep evil inflicted on others,
and in fact with the great and lofty hope of giving all the
happiness possible to the man who deserved it. Marco, how happily I
embraced my cross at first, and how I suffered with humility and
simplicity, like a child that feels it deserves all its punishment,
or some self-effacing creature who performs every deep act of
contrition! You know my pride, Marco; you know that it has always
been my weapon of defence and attack in this war of life; you know
that my pride has taken the place of many virtues and that, as it
was perhaps too great and imperious, it formed also the source of
all my sorrows. Well, Marco, I swear it, and I know you believe me,
that I have every day thrown this pride at my husband’s feet, and
my heart has been prostrated in an almost continual prayer for
pardon. To accomplish what I had set myself for you, to accomplish
all my vow of reparation I suffered so joyfully, but so bravely.
At every fresh sting I did not bind the bleeding point, and from
every new wound I let my blood gush forth, glad to suffer, glad to
expiate, glad to be able by my secret and open sufferings to unfold
and complete all my expiation, rejoicing to reach the goal of being
a consolation to Emilio, of being, as of yore, the giver of his
happiness. I have been intoxicated with the sacrifice, Marco, but
now my intoxication has vanished. Alas, my friend, I see and know
that it has been useless! My repentance has been in vain, and so
have been all my acts of contrition, and the lowering of my pride.
In vain, too, has been my desire to do good. Emilio is unhappier
than ever, and I alone am the cause of his unhappiness. It is
impossible for me, I swear, to make him happy even if I lived a
hundred years, even if I died to-morrow. In life or death I can do
nothing more for him--nothing, nothing.
“Listen, Marco, and see if it be not all irreparable. I didn’t
understand at once, because I was infatuated with my fine hopes and
desires of doing good; but now I know that all is irreparable. Do
you know how long my husband’s pardon lasted? The fraction of an
April evening in which he pronounced the sacred words which should
absolve, cancel, and redeem. Immediately afterwards he despised
himself and me, and the act of pardon seemed to him one of
hypocrisy and lying humiliation. Later, when in one of our more
furious crises, on reminding him that a Christian pardon is an act
of renewed esteem, that Christian pardon should destroy the sin and
purify the sinner, and that such an one should be loved as a new
soul, he replied brutally: ‘Exactly; but Jesus who founded pardon
was not married to an adulteress.’ What am I to say to him, Marco?
The man loves me, longs for me, but at the same time he hates me.
Never for an instant, understand, can he forget that I betrayed and
abandoned him, and that for three years I was _yours_. He spies on
me and makes me spy. He scrutinises every glance, he watches every
action of mine. If I speak to him he doesn’t believe me; if I am
kind he refuses my kindness. If my pity breaks out he understands
at once, like all morbid hearts, that it is a question of pity and
not of love, and he rejects my pity. He wrongs me and you with
vituperation, and asks me to love him with passion as I loved you.
But I can’t lie; I can’t, I can’t. I have never lied, and if I were
to do so for a minute to save him and myself he wouldn’t believe
me. What am I to say; what am I to do, Marco? I have said all; I
have endured everything, and I don’t want to--I can’t--add anything
else, my friend. I can’t write everything; my mind refuses to raise
certain veils of shame. Let us leave it, let us leave it. My cross
is so heavy on my shoulders that I am on the ground and breathless.
What shall I say? What shall I do? Hasn’t all my repentance been
useless? Hasn’t all my dedication been useless? And useless every
abnegation? Whatever shall I do to-night? Whatever to-morrow? The
man whom I have returned to comfort is, as far as I am concerned,
in a state of sorrow and implacable agitation; this man whom I
imagined so ingenuously and sweetly to make happy again, in spite
of my sufferings, is still, and always will be, unhappy. After a
terrible year, Marco, after a year of every experiment and attempt,
in which I have consumed my will and weakened my energy, after a
year in which I have seen all the good which was accumulated in my
generous mind miserably dispersed, and day by day the sacred trust
of doing good dissipated, I cry to you in my sadness and impotence,
in my weariness and discouragement. I ask you whatever I shall do,
Marco, with myself and my life, since it is of no further use but
for evil? What shall I do with myself, inept for good, inept to
give joy, and so involuntarily and fatally capable of evil?
“I am so lonely, Marco. When he is here he regards me with desire
and anger. Both sentiments crucify and torture me, but I daren’t
repress or combat either sentiment. I have become what I never was,
a creature without will or object, a passive and resigned
creature--I! I! think, Maria Guasco, a creature of resignation!
Often he avoids me for days together, and I don’t know what to do
with my dried-up and deserted existence. I do nothing, never,
because I fear that all may be for the worse, even when he ignores
me--_ignores me!_ Sometimes he leaves Rome and goes away for two or
three days, for a week. I don’t know where--in his distrust he
won’t say. I don’t know when he returns, as he doesn’t wish it to
be known. He enters suddenly and looks for me, as if he must always
find me in sin, and I am always paralysed just as if my nerves had
been cut, just as if a single gesture of mine may be an offence, or
the pretext of an offence to him.
“I am so lonely, so lonely.
“In this Casa Guasco, in this Rome, in this world, Marco, I am more
lonely than ever woman was, and I cry to you, not as a lover, not
even as a friend, but as a soul which was once mine while mine was
yours, I cry out my impotence, anguish, and mortal solitude.
“Marco, I am afraid of myself: I know myself. If the hand even of
an enemy is stretched towards me with the impetus of unexpected
sympathy, my soul at once trembles with emotion and opens its
inviolate doors, and abandons itself with tenderness and
enthusiasm. If a person who loves me ill-treats me or offends me it
is impossible for me not to rebel; all my pride invests me
wonderfully and magically with a steel cuirass, and I feel I love
no longer, and I disdain the love of the other one who knows not
how to love. I am capable of breaking a heart, two hearts, my own
and the other’s, with a violence which nothing can stop. You know
me. You conquered me with your youthful grace, with your sincere
passion mixed with gentle languor, which conquers the proudest and
most reserved souls. Never once did you offend me, never once,
perfect friend and perfect lover, pleasant and sweet to dream of
and remember. In those three years, passed together, my simple and
impetuous character, so sincere and yet inflammable, found every
sentimental delight. Our short life was beautiful, beautiful with
unspeakable harmony, and we could separate full of sorrow, but
still without anger or a single bitter thought of each other.
“Marco, this unfortunate man for whom I returned a year ago, to
heal of all the poison he had absorbed on my account, not only is
he more poisoned than at first, but he vents all his revenge on me
by a love composed of suspicion, contempt, sensuality, and
jealousy. This man who seemed to me a hero, and was one for a
single moment when he pronounced the words of pardon, this hero
whom I had poetised proudly in my mind, and who deserved the lofty
place of poesy for a brief moment, when he pronounced the words of
pardon, is no longer a betrayed lover who must be made to forget
the betrayal by lavished caresses, is no longer an offended husband
whose pardon is asked and given, with whom a new, loyal, and
lasting peace is re-established. No, he is now an enemy, who now
loves and now hates, who now wants you and now spurns you, who
adores you by day and execrates you by night, who would keep you
eternally pressed to himself and who flies from you, who thinks you
capable of every black action, and makes you understand his
suspicions, and declares them. Emilio Guasco is an enemy to me,
Maria, an enemy whose name I bear, whose fortune I share; an enemy
in whose love I live, an enemy who now keeps me _because I have
returned_, an enemy who doesn’t wish to see me dead because he
would kill himself on my tomb, who wants me to be alive with him
and for him, to torture me and himself.
“O Marco, Marco, how terrified I have been lest all the good with
which my heart is filled be at an end! how deeply I feel that my
kindness which is not superhuman, since I am a woman and not an
angel, will dissolve like a cloud, and I may become a naked rock,
sharp and fierce of aspect--a rock!
“Marco, if he doesn’t calm himself and stop, if he doesn’t become
more humane, kinder, more generous; if he doesn’t become the man of
pardon and not him of _after the pardon_, that is sad and
contemptuous for having pardoned, how shall I pour the balsam over
him which ought to restore him to health, the jar of which is
perhaps already empty and wobbling in my hand? Marco, if he doesn’t
restore to me his esteem, his trust and his friendship, unless he
is affectionate and magnanimous with me, how shall I be able to
improve and exalt his life? What shall I do here if he continues to
be an enemy who loves me? O Marco, I tremble to the very roots of
my soul, even to the most mysterious essence of my spirit, lest all
my mission of peace, beauty, and affection, can never be
accomplished, and lest all my rebellious heart may revolt against
the enemy who loves me. Marco, what will become of me to-morrow, a
week hence, a year hence?
“MARIA.”
At the same time Marco wrote to Maria--
“Maria, my delight, do you know that there has not been a single
day since that fatal and tragic one on which we left each other,
that I have ceased to think of you, far away or near, deeply
separated from me by the depth of our divine dream of love,
separated for ever since we wished it to be so, but always present
to my spirit, which reflects itself in you as in the coolest and
most crystal mountain stream? I have thought of you, Maria, as a
dear mother, as a sister, as a friend, as a womanly creature who
has been and is most dear to me, wherever I have found myself,
whatever the idle words which left my mouth, whatever my careless
deeds, however intense my silence and immobility. I thought of you
then, soul of beauty, without ardour or desire, because that flame
which was so devouring is extinguished in me as in you, but I have
thought of you with sweet and melancholy moral sympathy, without
jealousy, without bitterness, without gall, without any of the
dregs which passion leaves in the heart, but with a measured and
calm recollection, as for a memory which will be ever dear. I have
never sought you; I have never thought of seeking you: I have never
avoided you or wished to avoid you, nor have I written to you. Only
your place has been, and is within me, high, unshakable, strong,
and you are like a mother, a sister, a friend, the inspirer of my
thoughts and sentiments. From the high extinguished pyre a slender
warmth of life prevents my heart from getting cold; a thin light,
that which they say remains after a star is dead in the firmament,
seems to guide me in my unstable and uncertain way.
“But at last, after such a long silence, Maria, on the anniversary
of my marriage, since you are always a source of warmth and light
to me, and since you can still give me light and tell me _what is
necessary_, I am writing to you and am breaking this division of
time, of place, of persons which seemed inseparable between us, and
I have come to implore help as formerly, as yesterday, as
to-morrow, as always. I come to ask moral help of you, because you
were always my conscience, even when we broke together the ties of
society and laws, since you taught me nobly the way of liberty and
truth, even in that which the world calls a mistake and the Faith a
mortal sin, but which we called, and shall call, by a single
word--Love--whatever it may be, from wherever it may come to us,
wherever it may drag us. Maria, you who in the supreme hour of
farewell, when I wept upon your hand the most burning tears of my
life, you who showed me what to do with my existence; you who
reminded me of a great duty to be accomplished; you who spoke no
more to me of happiness, no longer possible for me from the moment
that our love was ended, but of that which I could still give to a
human creature; you who exalted for me this duty even to making it
appear adorned with every attraction: Maria, to-day you must tell
me, if you know, if you will, _what is necessary_, since I no
longer know.
“Maria, the bridal veil which the young woman wore a year ago in
the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, when she knelt near me and
the priest pronounced over our heads and joined hands the words
which bind us till death, that soft veil which should be raised
after the wedding to show me openly and loyally the face of my
lady, where may be mirrored all her soul, which perhaps possesses
concealed the most precious spiritual and sentimental
treasures--but however light it was, neither my hands nor my kisses
succeeded in rarefying its aërial woof--Vittoria has never once
desired to liberate her face from it. I have always felt this
veil, between me and her, no longer a bridal veil but a veil of
life, in which she enveloped herself in the first vivid days of our
marriage; and as time passed--and sometimes its course seemed very
slow to me--it became closer and denser even to hiding my lady
completely, and as time still went on its course more slowly than
ever, I felt that this veil had become a seamless, opaque texture,
in which she is enclosed for ever. Maria, Maria, all the solemn
words of that last hour in which you enjoined me to assign this
deep and great object to my life, this of offering happiness
without equal to a woman who had suffered for me, I never forget,
when I am with Vittoria, for an instant; and in spite of the
unspeakable weariness of my soul, in spite of that mortal aridness
which succeeds to great passion, in spite of my hidden distrust of
myself, in spite of the fact that I doubted deeply of my success, I
have always endeavoured that Vittoria, my wife, should be happy.
Dear, dear Maria, if only you knew how often I have invoked you as
light, and heat, and guide, so as not to lose myself or falter on
the way! How often I have called on you, my conscience, to continue
my duty! Well, Maria, you and I have been deceived. Or perhaps you
were deceived, beautiful and magnificent soul, in thinking that
_that_ was the necessary thing, or very likely it is Vittoria who
has deceived you, me, and all of us.
“This creature is unable to be happy on my account, perhaps she is
unable to be happy on any account. She is a soul incapable of
happiness. Such souls, Maria, are to be met with. Heaven has sent
them thus on the earth to live a peculiar, cold, sad existence,
without joy, without hope and without desires; they are souls
incapable of reaching that extreme joy, even for a second, which is
called happiness; and probably the others only have it for a single
minute, but they do reach it and possess it, and through it feel
themselves children of God, near to Him, near to His throne of
splendour and glory. This moment you and I have possessed, Maria;
but we were born to possess it. Vittoria, my wife, is unable to
touch this height. Her hands are as white as her face and garments,
they are as cold as her forehead and her heart. Her life, too, is
white, cold, and immobile.
“O my conscience, secure and firm, do you know I have managed to
extract from Vittoria her secret. Do you know that her secret is
terror of you, terror of what you have been in my life, which has
been painted fantastically for her--simple, innocent girl--as
something horrible and tremendous. Her childish secret as
betrothed, bride, and wife, was this ferocious terror that I might
belong to you as a lover for ever, that through the mysterious
reasons of passion you would always keep me, and that from one day
to another I could again belong to you through the impetuous and
imperious reasons of desire. By pressing her cold white hands I
communicated a flame of life to her, by fixing my eyes on hers I
placed a gleam in those two bright eyes, and then I learnt her
secret. Hers is a soul sick with this terror. On your account, my
lofty pure conscience, on my own, since I am pledged to follow
every wish of yours, I have word for word, act for act, tried to
destroy in her this morbid terror of you; and believe me, believe
me in everything, any other woman would be convinced that her
terror was in vain, would have given me all her heart and soul for
recognition, affection, love. But the more I demonstrated to her
that the bonds of passion were undone through your will and mine,
the denser became the veil which surrounded her. Whatever was she
wanting, whatever was she asking, for her existence as a woman and
a wife; whatever was existence able to give her; more than the
affectionate and tender companionship of a man like me, dedicated
entirely to her, who desired nothing more than to see her smile in
her juvenile happiness, and himself to be the only origin of that
smile and that joy? Maria, my wife has smiled five or six times in
one year of matrimony, and hasn’t laughed once. Ah, I have tried to
tear the closely knit and invisible texture in which she is clothed
even because of this, and I have asked her whatever she could wish
from me beyond this certainty that I am no longer yours, whatever
else she could expect from a man, a companion and a husband beyond
this great and absolute dedication to her happiness which should be
sufficient for any woman. She lowered her eyelids, closed her
little mouth as usual, all her face became as marble. Oh, if only
once to see that white marble face flesh!--and she replied--
“I expect nothing and I wish nothing.”
“Maria, the limpid truth is that Vittoria can’t, won’t, and doesn’t
know how to become happy with me, because of her sentimental
ineptitude, and it has all been a generous mistake of ours. With
her I am sad, tired, and bored. Oh, how I bore myself, I can’t tell
you, Maria! On some days a mad rage comes over me against this
immense boredom. Why did I marry the girl? Why did I give myself
this duty of a husband and companion, which I have tried and am
trying to accomplish--so badly it seems, both for her and me? Why
did I swear to Heaven to make this woman happy, when I am not able
to keep the oath, though I want to? Perhaps she would have been
happy with another. Why did I bring her my wasted heart? Why have I
offered her a life where love’s harvest is gathered, and the earth
which had produced too violently has been left fruitless? Why have
I given her a soul which has done with love? Maria, Maria, we made
a mistake on that last day; our souls did not understand the truth
which is within us and not without. We have seen and understood
nothing beyond ourselves. Vittoria did not ask for a husband but a
lover, a lover like Maria Guasco had; she did not ask for happiness
but passion. You knew, Maria, that that was impossible, and I knew
it. Now I really begin to fear that I have torn the veil for ever
which encloses Vittoria’s soul and person, and that I know all
about her, and that I can do nothing now--never, never.
“MARCO.”
In reply to her letter Maria received this from Marco--
“Maria, good and brave, make an appeal to all your goodness and
strength. They are great, immense; you can’t measure them, but I
can. With your goodness and strength strive to conquer Emilio, the
enemy who loves you. Make a friend of him. That is the best way: do
it.
“MARCO.”
In reply to his letter Marco received this from Maria--
“Marco, try to love Vittoria. That is all. Try to love her.
“MARIA.”
For a long time neither heard from the other.