USQUE AD MORTEM
I
The _Fragolata_[1] was the last festivity of the season, and, on account
of the originality and grace of the occasion and the charm of the late
Roman April, many strangers had delayed their departure after even a
very late Holy Week. Since the middle of March, in the first languors of
a spring laden with delicate perfumes, there had been daily gaieties in
gardens and the shady majestic parks, which still surround the Roman
villas. The poesy of such re-unions, in the soft, clear afternoon hours
in the avenues, when light steps have a seducing rustle; in the broad
meadows, covered in emerald green, which slope towards the wooded
distance, when the ladies’ bright dresses in the background make them
appear like nymphs;--this penetrating poesy tempts every soul, even the
most barren of feeling, and the least susceptible to visions of beauty.
[1] Strawberry feast.
In various ways Roman society, by fancy-dress balls, theatricals,
_kermesses_, had called on public charity, Italian and foreign, to help
in works of well-doing for so much of the suffering which society sees,
feels, and, grieving for and seeing, tries every fashionable and crafty
means to alleviate. In short, the idea had been hit on to close the
season with a _fragolata_ at the Villa Borghese on behalf of the
foundlings. The suggestion ran swiftly from the Court to the embassies,
from the tea-rooms to the big hotels, from the most select patrician
clubs to the sport clubs; and people, tired of balls in over-heated
rooms, of shutting themselves up in theatres, people fond of new
sensations, learnt at first with a curiosity and later with impatience
that a _fragolata_ was being arranged at Villa Borghese, and that the
most fascinating dames and damsels would sell the strawberries. Later,
it was known that, as well as baskets of strawberries, there would be
sold roses, since April was entering into May, and lovers of
strawberries are lovers of roses. So the discussion was great at the
last receptions and teas. The young men shrugged their shoulders with a
pretence at being bored at another charity festivity. Some declared that
they could not stand strawberries, some hated roses, and some declared
that they were leaving before the _fragolata_, while others added
maliciously that they would procure a false telegram to absent
themselves. But the ladies laughed, shaking their heads, knowing that
all their friends and lovers would come that afternoon under the
majestic trees of the Villa Borghese to take from their white hands a
leaf-full of strawberries or a bunch of fragrant roses. They only were
afraid of bad weather--the protectors of abandoned infancy--but not of
the hardness and indifference of the human heart before everything that
was attractive and pleasant; strawberries, roses, women, at a beautiful
time in lovely surroundings.
Nor was the sun’s smile wanting on that day for the _fragolata_; a sun
not too hot, a light not too strong, a sky not of an intense, but a
light blue, occasionally traversed and rendered whiter by a slow soft
cloud, melting towards an unknown horizon where all clouds go one never
sees again. On that day the Villa Borghese was not open to the public,
and on its broad, undulating paths, around its thick woods and spreading
lawns, around its fountains spouting and singing their lively and
crystalline measure, around its temples and little _casine_, with all
the windows closed as if no one had lived there for years, one heard no
more the dull and irritating rumbling of a hundred hired carriages,
which passed there five times a week, full of unknown faces where often
one reads idiocy and perversion, or often one wants to read it, in the
profound irritation of seeing the Villa Borghese, the sanctuary of
beauty and poesy, violated by strangers.
Towards four o’clock the carriages kept on increasing. The troop of
ladies dressed in white, in stuffs of spring-like softness, of young
girls in summerish muslin, in straw hats covered with flowers, became
thicker, and at that moment the _fragolata_ presented an enchanting
appearance. Under the wooded plateau of the Piazza di Siena, amidst
thick groups of tall trees, with their shining, almost metallic,
verdure, and yet transparent with the softness of May, a large counter
had been placed, on whose white cloth bunches of roses and baskets of
strawberries, most graceful rustic baskets, covered with favours and
ribbons of soft colours, and all sorts of strawberries, big and small,
were placed on broad fresh leaves. Behind the stall were five or six
ladies, Donna Flaminia Colonna, Margherita Savelli, the Princess della
Marsiliana, Countess Maria Santacroce, and Maria Guasco, whose care was
the sale of the baskets.
Other ladies, especially the young ladies, carried around baskets of the
early strawberries come from the mountain and the garden, offering them
to the groups which kept forming little by little in increasing numbers.
These amateur saleswomen are nearly all beautiful. There are Donna
Teresa Santacroce, the liveliest and most seductive of Roman society
girls; Miss Jenkins, an English girl, who seemed to have escaped from
one of Lawrence’s pictures; Mademoiselle de Klapken, an irresistible
Hungarian, and Stefania Farnese, with her white complexion, chestnut
hair, smiling eyes and mouth, dressed in white like a Grecian Erigone.
Amidst the trees, scattered everywhere, are little tables covered with
the whitest cloths, sprinkled with rose-leaves, and seats for the people
to sit and taste the strawberries, while ladies offer milk, cream, and
sugar. Little conversations take place politely without hurry or bustle,
just as at a promenade or a dance, and the groups round the stall and
the charming assistants around the little tables, which are gradually
filled, form a phantasmagoria of colours which is renewed every moment,
and assumes the most unexpected and delightful aspects for appreciative
eyes.
The little tables are now all taken, and the luscious fruit bathed in
cream and covered with sugar moisten beautiful lips. The men even yield
to the seductions of the fine, fresh food. Everywhere baskets are
offered and taken, and the fruit is poured into the plates and saucers.
The girls offer roses, and roses are in every lady’s hands and in every
lady’s waist. Bunches of roses are on every table, and every man has a
rose in his buttonhole. Several foreign ladies, lovers of flowers, have
their arms laden with them. One Frenchwoman has filled her parasol with
them; an English girl of eighteen has placed a cluster of the freshest
white roses under the rim of her straw hat and is the picture of happy
youth.
Nevertheless, Maria Guasco, at her place as patroness behind the stall,
bends her head of magnificent waving hair, beneath a large white hat
with white feathers, and her thoughtful face over a large bundle of red
roses, of intoxicating fragrance, which Stefania Farnese, the gay
Erigone, had just given her. Her face is hidden among the red roses
whose perfume she has always loved; that perfume, rich with every
memory, gives her a silent emotion which fills her eyes for a moment
with tears.
“What is the matter?” said Flaminia to Maria.
“Nothing,” she said, biting a rose-leaf.
“You are tired?”
“Yes, a little.”
“To-morrow you will rest.”
“And what shall I do after I have rested?” Maria asked, anxiously and
sadly.
Flaminia did not reply, and an expression of pain was diffused over her
beautiful, good-natured face. But again people throng round the
_fragolata_ stall and buy strawberries, and Donna Margherita Savelli,
quite blonde beneath her hat of white marguerites, gathers the money
into a purse of antique cloth of peculiar make, now quite full, whose
silver strings she cannot tie.
“See, see, Flaminia, what a lot of money!” she cried joyfully.
Gianni Provana, who had been walking round for about an hour and had
approached all the little tables a little superciliously and proudly,
without sitting by any one, came and leaned over the stall, exchanging
a word first with one and then with another of the lady patronesses,
always cold and composed, with his monocle in its place and a slightly
mocking smile on his mouth. He had no rose in his buttonhole, and his
eyes every now and then settled on those which Maria was smelling long
and silently.
“Well, Provana,” said Flaminia Colonna, “haven’t you tasted the
strawberries?”
“Not one, I assure you. I don’t want to ruin my health.”
“What a wretch you are! Don’t you like strawberries?”
“They don’t agree with me, Donna Flaminia. I am getting old, and my
digestion isn’t so good.”
“Are you in a bad temper, Provana?” Maria asked indifferently.
“Very, Donna Maria, and you too, I think?”
“Oh, I!” she said, with a nonchalant gesture.
“Still,” resumed Flaminia, to change the conversation, “you haven’t
given a penny, heartless man, to abandoned infancy.”
“Not a penny. I don’t like babies.”
“What a wretch! Heaven will punish you. You will die tyrannised over by
your housekeeper.”
“Certainly, Donna Flaminia. But I have still something to do before
dying,” he added enigmatically, looking at Maria.
“What?” asked Flaminia.
“Not to buy your strawberries, which ruin every one’s skin, but to pay
for a basket to please you.”
He extracts from his purse a note for a hundred francs, giving it to the
beautiful treasurer, Margherita Savelli, who gives a cry of joy.
“O Flaminia, how kind this sham knave Provana is!”
“Most kind,” Flaminia replied, and she gives him her hand, which he
touches with his lips gallantly.
Other people crowd round the stall, and Provana talks softly with Maria
Guasco. She replies without looking at him, as if wrapt in her own deep,
dominating thoughts, which are marked from eyebrow to eyebrow.
“Are you, too, interested in foundlings, Donna Maria?” he asked.
“Yes, very,” she replied vaguely.
“Well, will you give me one of those red roses, only one?”
The request is made with seeming disingenuousness, but she understood
that the man was waiting for the reply attentively. The woman was
silent, and smelled her roses.
“I will pay whatever price you like--for the foundlings,” he murmured
suggestively.
“Why do you value it so?” she asked, looking at him.
“Because it is yours; because it has been in your hands, because you
have put it near your face, and have placed it to your lips.”
The voice is lower and the expression more ardent. The woman had never
heard the like from him before. She looked at him with melancholy
curiosity, but free from anger.
“Maria, give me the rose,” and he attempted to take it gently from the
bunch.
Maria drew back and looked at him, protecting her flowers.
“For whom, then, do you wish to keep the roses, Donna Maria?” he asked,
half bitterly and ironically.
“I don’t know; I don’t know,” she replied, trembling.
“If you don’t give me one, to whom will you, Donna Maria?”
She let the roses fall and scatter on the table, all her face was
disturbed with sudden pallor. Gianni Provana quietly took a rose which
she had not given him--which he had gained in spite of her; but, instead
of placing it in his buttonhole, he placed it with care in the inside
pocket of his coat.
“Next to the heart,” he whispered.
A short, strident laugh was Maria’s only reply.
“How badly you laugh, Donna Maria!” he exclaimed, a little irritated.
“Like you,” she replied quietly.
“Come from behind the stall and let us take a walk together?” he asked.
His tone remained simple and disingenuous, but within there was a dull
agitation, which the man restrained with difficulty.
“No,” she refused drily.
“And why? Aren’t you bored there? Don’t you see that every one is
walking?”
“Yes: sweethearts with their lovers; girls with their flirts; wantons
with their courtiers. We belong to none of these classes.”
“_Hélas!_” he exclaimed in French, to hide his bitterness, and took out
his eye-glass and looked at her.
“Won’t you come then? The avenues are most beautiful, and it is a lovely
sunset.”
She laughed again, with a mocking, malicious laugh.
He looked at her.
“I will return later on,” he said, softly withdrawing.
When he had gone she lent her head against the arm of her rustic chair,
and shut her eyes as if mortally tired.
“What is the matter?” asked Flaminia.
There was no reply.
“Are you feeling ill, Maria?”
“No; I am sad and I am bored.”
“Are you very bored?”
“Immensely. I am bored and sad as no one has ever been bored and sad in
this world.”
“What should one do to distract you, to make you cheerful?” she said,
with sincere anxiety and pain.
“Nothing, dear, nothing,” replied Maria in a weak and monotonous voice;
“love me a little; there is no need for anything else. That will console
me.”
“However, that won’t amuse you,” said Flaminia frankly.
“But it helps me to live,” replied Maria sadly.
“Do you need help so much, dear?”
“So much, so much, to go on living!” the miserable woman replied
desperately.
But the lugubrious conversation was interrupted by people coming and
going. In the west the light took gentle sunset tints, and the whiteness
and brightness of the ladies’ dresses seemed almost vaporous and
transparent, while the beauty of their faces assumed a more indefinite
and mysterious aspect. A languor fell from the sky, which kept growing
whiter, and the voices became softer and slower.
“Come for a little walk,” said Gianni Provana, who had returned, waiting
with infinite patience.
“Do go,” said Flaminia to her friend. “Provana, tell her something brisk
and witty. Maria is so mortally bored.”
“Donna Maria, I will force myself to be full of wit!” he exclaimed, with
a bow.
The woman made a movement of fastidiousness and nonchalance. Then she
rose slowly from her place and replaced her cloak on her shoulders, and
taking her white parasol where she had introduced some roses, without
seeing if Provana was near or following her, started, after giving
Flaminia a little tender embrace, telling her to wait for her till she
should return.
Gianni Provana rejoined her and walked beside her. They went through the
long avenue on the left, which leads from the top of the wood of the
Piazza di Siena towards the back of the Villa Borghese. Others were
walking near and far off in couples and groups, some talking softly,
others joking and laughing, stopping to chatter better and laugh and
joke; others were silent. The sunset rendered the avenue more
melancholy, in spite of gay voices and peals of laughter.
Maria and Gianni Provana did not speak. She walked slowly, as if very
tired.
“I am incapable of any wit near you, Donna Maria,” said Provana, after a
little time.
“Don’t give yourself any trouble; it is useless.”
“Is it true that you are so mortally bored?”
“You know it, it seems,” she replied indifferently, far away.
“Once you told me that you found the strength to live in yourself, and
only in yourself. Those were your words, I think. I didn’t understand
them very well, but I remember them.”
“Yes, I said them once,” she murmured thoughtfully. “And it was true
then; but now it is no longer true.”
“Why?”
“I have nothing more within me,” she replied desolately.
But she seemed to say it to herself more than to him.
“Try to interest yourself in something outside yourself,” he suggested
insinuatingly and quietly, hiding the intense interest which agitated
him.
“I have tried various things; and I haven’t succeeded in binding myself
to anybody or anything.”
“How is that?”
“I have nothing to do with my life, that is all,” she concluded, coldly
and gloomily, looking at the gnarled trunk of a very old tree.
He was silent and troubled.
“Still, two years ago in returning to your home----” he resumed.
“That tragic and grotesque farce has ended with my husband as the
travesty of a hero, and with me as a travesty of a penitent!” she
exclaimed with a sneer.
“O Donna Maria!” he exclaimed, shocked.
“You already know that Emilio hates and despises me,” she continued,
with an increasingly mordant irony. “He must have told you. Among men
you discuss these things.”
Provana was silent, but he had an air of agreeing.
“All this for having wished to pardon me, dear Provana. Pardon wasn’t in
him, neither was it in me.”
“And why?”
“Because pardon is a great thing, when the soul remains great that
accords it--a pardon complete and absolute; but in the other case what a
miserable, humiliating, and insulting thing a pardon is!”
“In the other case?”
“Oh, Emilio is a poor creature!” she said, with a profound accent of
disdain, shrugging her shoulders, and adding nothing further, as if she
had said the last word about him.
“And you, and you, Donna Maria?”
“I? I owe to one of my usual exaltations having inflicted on my lively
being one of the most unsupportable humiliations feminine pride can ever
endure.”
She stopped, troubled and proudly pale, with eyes veiled in tears of
indignation.
“You understand, I asked his pardon humbly. I prayed humbly for him to
pronounce it with loyalty, to accord it fully and generously, I, Maria
Guasco; and I wept, yes wept, before him, and endured his pardon; which
was, instead of an absolution, an accusation, an inquiry, a daily
condemnation.”
Fortunately, the two were far away from the others, and the violet tints
of the sunset became deeper beneath the trees. The woman stopped, and
made a supreme effort to stifle her sighs, to repress her tears, and
compose her face.
“Please forget what I have told you,” she said imperiously to Provana,
putting a hand on his arm.
“Why, then, why?” he exclaimed, becoming suddenly heated; “why do you
like to treat me always as a man without a heart or a soul? Who gives
you the right to treat me thus? Why must I always be considered by you
as an enemy? Don’t you believe that I have fibre and feelings, like
other human beings? Am I a monster? Why don’t you believe that I can
understand you and follow you to the depths and speak a word of
consolation, even I? Am I unfit, then, to be your friend?”
She was stupefied at this cry of sorrow, new and unthought of.
“Oh, let me be, Maria, let me be your friend. Do let me, that together
our two souls may be healed, mine from cynicism and yours from
discomfort and desolation. I ask you to let me be your friend, nothing
else. I have been ill for so many years, from every mortal illness, and
I thirst for good. You, too, Maria, have been so ill; let us seek some
pleasure together.”
She felt that he was sincere at that moment, sincere as he had never
been, as he never would be again. But she knew that there are no
pleasures in life unless accompanied by devouring poisons. She knew that
there are no succours and comforts between man and woman without mortal
danger, and without fatal and mortal error. The truth, impetuous and
brutal, rose in the woman’s words.
“Are you asking me to be your lover?”
He at once became cold, and replied--
“Yes.”
“I don’t wish to be,” she replied, turning her back, and replacing her
cloak on her shoulders to resume their walk.
Gianni Provana did not frown nor change countenance.
“Still, it will be so.”
“Why?” exclaimed Maria disdainfully.
“Because now there is nothing else to be done,” he concluded composedly.
“Ah!” she interrupted; and she would have said more but kept silent,
becoming absorbed and gloomy.
“You already know that your husband will not change his behaviour to
you; your disagreement can’t help becoming intenser and deeper every
day.”
She assented with a nod, becoming gloomier.
“You already know, you will have been told, that Marco Fiore has become
enamoured of an actress, an actress with red hair, Gemma Dombrowska,
and that perhaps he will go off with her as with you ... as with you.”
Bitterness, sarcasm, anger vibrate in every word of Gianni Provana as he
follows the woman, persuading and persecuting her.
She bent her head in assent, because she knew.
“You see quite well!” he exclaimed in a hissing voice, “that there is
nothing else for you in life, but to become my lover.”
A sense of fatality seemed to weigh on the woman’s life, which oppressed
and squashed her. Evening had fallen in the avenues and it seemed like
night. All the ladies who had still remained in the wooded lawns and
avenues covered themselves with their cloaks and hurried their steps,
accompanied by their cavaliers.
Farewells are exchanged, light laughter, and small cries, while the
waiters denude the last tables, and the great stall of the _fragolata_
is covered with squashed strawberries and withered leaves. Every one
hurries to the gate in a kind of flight, leaving the wood behind filled
with night, fearful in its solitude, where it seemed to be peopled with
unknown phantoms.
Near the great gate Flaminia Colonna, Maria Guasco and Gianni Provana
meet face to face Donna Vittoria Fiore, accompanied by her sister
Beatrice. Marco Fiore’s wife had been at the _fragolata_ all the
afternoon, but as usual had kept herself in some far-off corner in the
shadow of her sister, and had not approached the patronesses’ stall, nor
had she participated at any of the little strawberry tables. She was
there, at the threshold of Villa Borghese, behind her sister, who had
advanced to call the carriage of Casa Fiore. She was there, with her
little white closed face and eyelids lowered over eyes too clear and
limpid, with the lower half of her face hidden in the feathers of her
white boa. But at a certain moment her eyes are raised and meet those of
Maria Guasco, pregnant with sadness and pride. Vittoria’s glance flashed
as never before in unspeakable hate. Maria Guasco smiled and laughed, as
bending towards Gianni Provana she said--
“Not so bad! not so bad! She at any rate has not pardoned me.”
II
“Your Excellency, dinner is served,” announced the butler at the door of
the _salotto_, bowing to Donna Arduina Fiore.
Donna Arduina put down her knitting of dark wool, a petticoat destined
for some poor woman dying of cold in the winter. She asked--
“Has Don Marco returned?”
“No, Excellency, but his man Francesco has returned with a letter for
Your Excellency,” and he advanced with a note on a silver tray. In the
increasing gloom of the room, Donna Arduina raised her eyes to Heaven
with a fleeting act of resignation, as she took her son’s letter. She
had received many others in the far-off times, which it seemed to her
ought never to have returned again with their habits, and now at the
day’s fall Marco again writes to her as formerly. She read--
“Dear Mamma, excuse me, pardon me, but I am detained by friends for
dinner at the club. If I can return early I will come and kiss your
hand, if not, to-morrow. Bless me.--MARCO.”
The tender mother sighed, blessing as usual in her heart her favourite
son, even if absent and drawn away elsewhere by others. In her deep
maternal egoism she is content that nobody and nothing have the power to
make her son forget his mother entirely. Still she sighed, and said to
the butler--
“Please inform Donna Vittoria that dinner is served, and that I am
waiting for her in the dining-room.” It is not very long since Donna
Arduina made common table with her children, Marco and Vittoria. In the
early days of their marriage she said that she did not wish to change
her usual time-table, little suitable for the young couple; but it was
really an affectionate excuse to leave them in liberty. Little by
little, however, she learnt that they not only desired her presence at
the family table, but felt an intimate need of it, as if to prevent
embarrassment, so great and frequent had become the coldness and silence
between Marco and Vittoria. Once, with a boyish caress, which he knew
how to give his mother, winning her as he had always won her from a
little one, Marco had said to her--
“Mamma dear, don’t abandon us in the hour of our dinner as in that of
our death!”
“Why? Why?”
“You know Vittoria more than ever at that hour seeks the solution of a
philosophical problem, which has fatigued the mind of many
philosophers. Hence I dare not disturb her. At least you have the habit
of opening your mouth, mamma bella, and pronouncing a few words.”
Thus the new custom was assumed without Vittoria asking the reason. At
table, to solve the question of places, the two ladies of the house were
seated one opposite the other, the two places of honour separated by
some distance. Marco’s place was on the right of his mother, but much
nearer to her, in fact quite far from his wife. So Donna Vittoria Fiore
seemed isolated down there in the place of honour on her high-backed
chair with a carved coronet, which topped the ornamentation and stood
out above the little head with its aureola of golden hair; but she
seemed serene and tranquil. Mother and son often, when she was there,
forgot her, and during dinner a conversation took place between the two
without either directing a word to Vittoria, and as Vittoria never
questioned either, neither replied. Sometimes as they talked they looked
at her, as if to make her take part in the conversation, but, without
opening her mouth, she would content herself with nodding her head to
what they said, almost automatically. For two or three months now, with
a plausible excuse but with increasing regularity, Marco was missing at
the family meal. Sometimes he announced the fact the day before,
sometimes he said so at luncheon, and at last, at the close of the
season, he more often sent a little note to his mother to say that he
was not returning to dinner: but always to his mother, never to
Vittoria.
“But why don’t you write a word to her?” she asked, a little, but not
very, shocked.
“Because Your Excellency is mistress of the house!” he proclaimed,
embracing her like a child, and smiling and laughing.
“Still, she could be hurt about it,” observed the good woman.
“Vittoria? Never.”
When his absences became more frequent, she made some firm remonstrances
to him.
“Why do you abandon us, Marco?”
“Do I, mamma?” he said, with an uncertain smile.
“Vittoria may be displeased by it.”
“You, mamma, you; not Vittoria.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ask her. Try and ask her. You will cut a poor figure, madre bella,
since Vittoria will reply that it matters nothing to her.”
“Pretending?”
“Pretending? Who knows! For that matter I can’t endure people who
pretend.”
“Even those who are hiding their sorrow?”
“Even them. A hidden sorrow doesn’t exist for me.
“You are cruel, Marco.”
“There, there, mamma, sweet as honey, you mustn’t think me cruel!”
The mother, a little thoughtful, was silent, but not convinced. This
evening the absence of her son had worried her more than ever. She
entered slowly the immense, solemn, gloomy dining-room of Casa Fiore
just as Vittoria entered from the other side. The young woman read the
pain on the good-natured old face.
“Isn’t Marco coming to dinner, mamma?” she asked indifferently, sitting
down.
“No, dear. He has been kept at the club by friends.”
“Ah! and is he returning late?” and there was even greater indifference
in this second remark.
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no,” added Donna Arduina, looking closely at her
daughter-in-law.
Vittoria appeared not to have heeded her mother-in-law’s reply. The
dinner proceeded in silence, slowly and peacefully, served by servants
who made no noise in crossing the imposing space, where a single
candelabra concentrated its light on the table, leaving the rest of the
room obscure.
Donna Arduina Fiore had always had a holy terror of installing the
electric light in the old palace full of carving, precious pictures, and
objects of art. So the old aristocratic methods of illumination
prevailed, large oil lamps and huge candelabra with wax candles.
“Where are you going this evening, Vittoria?” said Donna Arduina,
interrupting the heavy silence.
“Nowhere, mother.”
“I thought you were going with Beatrice to the last performance of the
_Walkyrie_?”
“Beatrice is going there. I said I wouldn’t.”
“Does it bore you?”
“It bores me.”
“Don’t you like the theatre?”
“So-so, you know.”
“Still, any way you prefer music?”
“Yes, I prefer music; but even that doesn’t make me enthuse.”
“It seems to me, Vittoria, that you enthuse for very few things in the
world;” and she tempered the observation with a quiet smile.
“I enthuse over nothing, mamma; really over nothing,” replied Vittoria
emphatically.
“But why, daughter? Why? There is good in enthusiasm.”
“I don’t enthuse, mother, by temperament, also by character: I am made
so. I have been made very badly,” the young woman declared, with an
expression of bitterness.
“Haven’t you tried to change yourself?--to interest yourself deeply in
something?--to like something keenly? Have you tried?”
“I have tried and failed.”
“Still you must have thought and felt that something in the world
deserves all our heart?”
“Yes, mother, I have thought and felt it,” the daughter-in-law replied
firmly.
“What, my daughter?”
“Love, mother,” she replied firmly.
“Love?” repeated Donna Arduina, surprised.
“Exactly, my mother. School stories, follies of youth. Old stories!”
With a vague bow she seemed to greet these dreams and follies so old and
far away, so dead and scattered. The mother-in-law was silent, wrapped
in the ideas and sentiments suggested by her daughter-in-law, which
crowded her mind. The dinner finished, Donna Arduina rose to take leave
of Vittoria.
“Will you let me keep you company, mother?” Vittoria asked.
“Certainly, dear; do come.”
Presently both were seated in Donna Arduina’s ancient room, under the
large oil lamp covered with a shade.
While the old lady persevered with her woollen petticoat for some poor
woman, Vittoria resumed work on a bodice, also destined to clothe some
poor unfortunate in winter. They remained a little without raising their
eyes from the brown bundles of wool, which kept increasing under their
hands.
“Vittoria!” cried Donna Arduina suddenly.
“Mother?”
“Are you displeased that Marco didn’t return to dinner this evening?”
“No.”
“Really; doesn’t it displease you?”
“Really!”
“In fact it matters nothing to you that Marco doesn’t put in an
appearance at dinner?”
“Why do you ask me?”
“Tell me if it is true.”
“And who told you?”
“My son, your husband. He maintains that it matters nothing to you if he
goes or comes, returns or doesn’t return.”
“He is right,” replied Vittoria, after a pause.
“Have you told him that, my daughter?”
“I have told him that.”
“Why? You have committed an imprudence. We must never show men that we
do not value them.”
“Value or not value, show it or not show it, mother, what does it
matter?” exclaimed the young woman, leaving off her work, with an accent
of weariness and fastidiousness. “All that won’t change mine and Marco’s
fate.”
“Christians don’t believe in fate, Vittoria!” murmured Donna Arduina.
“Perhaps I’m a bad Christian as well,” she replied, with a feeble smile;
“but I know my fate and Marco’s now, as if I were a gipsy, a sorceress,
a witch.”
“Vittoria!”
“Take no notice, mother, I was joking,” concluded the daughter-in-law,
lowering her eyes on her work.
But the mother-in-law did not wish to be silent; it seemed to her that
the hour ought not to pass without a more intimate and intense
explanation.
“Do you, then, know everything, Vittoria?” she asked slowly.
“How is one not to know it? Even living as a creature abandoned in a
corner of a palace, as an insignificant creature in a corner of a
drawing-room, there is always somebody to tell you everything, mother,”
replied Vittoria bitterly and coldly.
“Some one has told you?”
“Some one? Several; many, in fact. My friends have hurried to let me
know that Marco has taken a violent fancy for an actress. I know every
particular, mother. The actress is a Milanese, has magnificent red hair,
and is tall. She is called Gemma Dombrowska, a Russian name, not her
own, but assumed from some great family over there.”
The coldest bitterness was in Vittoria’s voice, and she continued
mechanically to knit her bodice.
“And what do you say, Vittoria? What are you going to do?”
“I? I am going to say and do nothing, mother!” she exclaimed harshly.
“Aren’t you going to help yourself? defend yourself?”
“I can’t help myself, and nothing can defend me;” and she turned her
head away, perhaps so that the mother of her husband might read nothing
there.
“But at least you love your husband?” the mother-in-law cried.
“I love him,” proclaimed the young woman, with unexpected ardour in her
accent. “I love him. It is he who doesn’t love me. So you see all is
useless.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t love you? How do you know? How are you
convinced of it?”
“Mother, mother, you are convinced of it, you have always been convinced
of it,” replied the young woman with dignity.
Donna Arduina rose from her place, and stretched out a hand to touch
Vittoria’s, with a sad, consoling caress.
“Poor Vittoria!” she murmured.
And she thought that the young woman ought to fall in her arms and break
into tears and sobs. No. The blonde’s youthful mouth contracted like a
flower which closes while the colours grow pale, but she did not move
nor cry.
“Do you pity me, mother?” she asked strangely.
“Yes, dear, yes!”
“Like your son, then. It is a family habit,” replied Vittoria mockingly.
“Vittoria! Vittoria!”
“Excuse me, mother. My horrible destiny is caused from this horrible
thing, pity.”
“What are you saying? What are you saying?”
“Nothing, mother mine; I’ll say no more. I don’t want to say anything
more. Pardon me. I oughtn’t to have spoken. You asked me; in obedience I
spoke. Let me be quite silent.”
“Oh daughter, daughter, what a difficult character is yours!” replied
the elder lady, with a deep sigh.
“Difficult? Very bad, mother, a shocking character! I shall die, and no
one will understand it.”
“You must live; you must begin your life again, Vittoria, and try to
lead my son. He must love you.”
“He can’t.”
“He can’t?”
“No. He can’t love me.”
“But why?”
“Because he loved _the other_.”
“Can’t one love two women, one after the other?”
“It seems not.”
“Still he has always liked you.”
“Yes, he has liked me; but not loved me.”
“He has married you.”
“Through tenderness and pity--not through love.”
“He has continued to give you every proof of his affection.”
“Affection, certainly; no love.”
“What did you expect? What are you expecting?”
“An impossible thing, mother! To be loved with passion, with vehemence,
like _the other_.”
“Oh, my daughter, it is impossible.”
“I have told you; it is impossible.”
“And did you marry Marco with that desire?”
“With that desire. If not, I shouldn’t have married him; if not, I
shouldn’t have forgiven his betrayal.”
“You pardoned, then, conditionally? With selfish intent? With a selfish
desire? Not as a Christian?”
“No, mother, not as a Christian. I pardoned him as a woman, as a woman
in love; that is, imperfectly, badly.”
“Then the sin is yours, Vittoria.”
“Yes, it is mine. If I question my heart it seems I am right, if I
question my conscience I am wrong and the sin is mine. Don’t you see? I
am childless. God has punished me; I shall never be a mother, never,
never.”
“What will you do, Vittoria? What do you want to do?”
“Nothing, mother. I have nothing to do on this earth, neither for myself
nor others. I go on living here because suicide is a great sin. I shall
go on living here, forgotten, in a corner as usual, like everybody who
hasn’t known how to do right in life. I am wrong, mother, I am wrong.
That is why I don’t complain, that is why I mustn’t complain. Why did
you make me speak? Forget all I have told you, and repeat it to nobody.
Don’t expose me again to the pity of anybody: your pity, mother, yes;
but nobody else’s.”
She looked at her with such an expression of suffering, nobly born, with
such desire of silence and respect for her suffering, that Donna Arduina
was deeply moved.
“Mother, let me be forgotten in a corner. Promise me you will say
nothing.”
“I promise you, my daughter, I promise you; still I deeply sympathise
with you,” said Donna Arduina, with a big sigh.
Donna Vittoria rose, bent her golden head to kiss her hand, and
disappeared silently, she disappeared like a soft shadow to be forgotten
in a corner of the world, in a corner of the house, like a poor, soft,
little shadow which has never been right, which can never, never be
right--which must always be wrong till death and beyond.
III
“Can I come in, Marco?” said a dear and well-known voice at the door.
“Always, always, mamma bella,” he cried vivaciously from his bed.
Donna Arduina entered, with slow and dignified tread, and approached the
bed where her son was smoking a cigarette after his coffee. He threw the
cigarette away at once to embrace her. Instinctively, with maternal
care, she adjusted the pillow, and pulled the counterpane over a little.
The son smiled as he let her do it. She looked at him, studied him, and
found his appearance tired and run down. He leaned again on his pillow,
as if still glad to repose. The mother sat by the bed quietly watching.
“You came home late yesterday evening?” she asked.
“A little late, it is true.”
“I waited for you till midnight, like I used to, Marco mio.”
“Fifteen years ago, madra mia: how old I am growing!”
“I want to preach you a sermon now as I used to. Do you remember? A
sermon on your too jolly and disordered life.”
“Oh, mother dear,” he protested, with a veil of sadness in the accent.
“Suppose I were to preach you a sermon this morning?” she added, still
tenderly.
“I don’t deserve it, mamma; I don’t deserve it.”
“Marco, you are again leading a too disordered and jolly life.”
“You are wrong. Few men in the world bore themselves more than I do.”
“Where do you go, when you don’t dine with us, Marco?”
“To some place where I can bore myself less than in Casa Fiore, madre
bella. Not on your account, see. You know I adore you.”
“Is it to fly from poor Vittoria?”
“Even you, mamma, say _poor_ Vittoria! Even you are moved with
compassion for her! And why aren’t you moved with compassion for your
son, for him whom you have placed in the world? Why don’t you say, _poor
Marco_? Don’t you see that I am unhappy?” And his exclamations were half
melancholy and ironical, while his face grew disturbed and sad.
“Alas, my son, what a cross for me to see all this, and to be able to do
nothing! It seems that all are wrong and all are right. What am I to do,
my God, what am I to do?”
“Pity your son. Love him more than ever; caress him as you used to four
or five years ago; try to make him forget his domestic unhappiness.”
“But why are you unhappy? Why is Vittoria unhappy? Is it through a
misunderstanding; through a hundred misunderstandings? Is it not so?”
Marco shook his head, and, without replying, lit another cigarette.
“Marco, why have you resumed your bachelor room? Why do you sleep here?”
And she threw a glance round the old room, where all around were large
and small portraits of Maria Guasco, with fresh flowers in some vases
before them.
“I sleep here because Vittoria wishes it,” he said, with a sarcastic
laugh.
“Vittoria?”
“Yes. Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another; sometimes for a
novena, sometimes because she is not well, sometimes because of my
departure or my return from hunting. In fact it is she, mamma, who has
given me liberty, so I have taken it, and I am naturally at present most
contented with it.”
“I am sure that she has suffered, and is suffering about this.”
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. At any rate she dissimulates perfectly, that
is to say, mother, she lies; I can’t go beyond appearances.”
“How sad, Marco!”
“Mamma, I have always been used to truthful women. You are one of them.
Vittoria is a hypocrite.”
“You are unjust and cruel to her.”
“Certainly. I recognise it. But she has done everything to make me so.
If only you knew, mamma, what I was to her at the beginning! If only you
knew! Suffering, weak and exhausted by an immense passion, I tried to
conquer myself. I searched for strength, for gaiety, for tenderness to
give them to Vittoria. Since it was said to me: _render this woman
happy, do this work of repentance and beauty_, I have tried to obey,
mamma; but everything has been useless. Vittoria has not understood me.”
“Perhaps you have not understood her. She loved you ardently from the
first moment of her engagement; she still loves you so.”
“No, mamma, no. Either Vittoria does not love me or she does not know
how to love.”
“So young, so inexperienced, and so ignorant!”
“Mother, mother, Vittoria knew everything. All my violent and brutal
betrayal has told her that my only and unique love romance has been with
Maria Guasco; the only one, mamma. She dreamed of making another in
matrimony, another romance of passion and madness, as if matrimony were
not a union wise and tender, sweet and profound, not passionate and
frenetic.”
“She deceived herself. She hoped for too much. She dared to hope too
much. Don’t punish her for that.”
“It is she who has punished me for having wished to make her happy. All
my affection has seemed little to her, all my tenderness has seemed mean
to her. But you know, mamma, how she and she only has spurned me. You
know that I have seen all my proofs of affection refused.”
“O Dio mio!”
“It is so. From the moment that I could not offer her passion, she did
not wish to know me. A silent drama, understand, a drama of matrimony
developed between us, and I have had ever before me a face as pale and
cold as marble; she is a soul closed, indifferent and scornful; she is a
spirit that is inattentive and bored, and hers is an iciness which
sometimes reaches the point of contempt.”
“Oh, Marco, in spite of that she adored you and does adore you!”
“It may be, it may be; but she adores me badly. Nevertheless, believe
me, this adoration is composed entirely of egoism, of _amour propre_,
and jealousy.”
“Even of jealousy?”
“Above all. I know it, I know this is so; Vittoria has lived, and lives,
with the incubus of Maria Guasco on her soul and heart. And all this
love of hers is the offended pride of a woman who would overcome her
supposed rival; all her love is exalted _amour propre_, is a monstrous
egoism.”
“O Marco, Marco!”
“Mother, I am suffering, let me say it, let me unburden myself. To whom
should I say it but to you? Who has placed me before this waxen doll,
this poor little animal of a body with cold blood, this dissembling
soul, all craftiness, all deceit, this heart full of a desire which it
is impossible for it to realise, full of cold anger; in fact this
creature without _abandon_, without loyalty and without fascination?”
“O Marco, my son!”
“Since you have come here this morning you must listen to me. I have, in
short, bound my life to her, I have given my name to her and I would
have given her all my existence, since they told me to give it to her.
Mother, see what she has done with it! Among other things she is
childless. We have no sons; we shall not have any; and this marriage is
another of those immoral and indecent unions between two persons of
opposite temperaments, of opposite character, hostile in fact to one
another, made not to understand each other, made not to fuse, made to
contradict each other, and at last to hate each other. I am perfectly
positive Vittoria hates me.”
“You are so unjust to her, my son.”
“She does not hate me to-day; but she will to-morrow. For her I
represent an immense disillusion of _amour propre_, a defeat of her
egoism, a real sentimental rout. You will see, you will see how Vittoria
will hate me.”
“But what should this unfortunate creature have done to please you, to
unite herself to you in spirit, to render to you the happiness you were
giving to her?”
“Love me, mother!”
“Doesn’t she love you?”
“To love me, mother, not for herself; to give all and ask nothing; to be
happy that a man delivered from the fatality of an unlawful passion is
in a haven of peace; to be serenity itself; to be, in short, the
Christian wife, the ideal companion of our hearth whose scope is every
soft desire of ours.”
“Oh, what a gulf, my son, what a gulf!”
“Between me and Vittoria? Immense, immeasurable, it is impossible to
bridge it, impossible to surmount it.”
“What is to be done, what is to be done?”
“Nothing, mother dear. You can do nothing. Let Vittoria execrate me
to-morrow; let her consider me as the cause of all her misfortune; let
me be an object of repulsion to her. It is better so.”
“But you already have a sweetheart, after two years of married life?”
“Who, I, a sweetheart? You are joking, mother?”
“But that woman, that actress.”
“Who, Gemma? Oh, what a saint you are, my mother! We don’t call those
sweethearts. They are a slight distraction; a home where there is a
different woman who greets you with constant good humour, who lets you
play or joke or sleep as you please; who asks you nothing, who
understands nothing, but who does not ask to be understood.”
“How awful, Marco!”
“O Saint Arduina! O sainted mother mine!”
“Your wife knows of this relation: they have told her of it as being a
great scandal.”
“You too; and are you scandalised?”
“I? very much.”
“If you like I will leave Gemma, mother dear.”
“You don’t love her, it is true?”
“If you were not an angel you would know that it is not a question of
love. But if it annoys you so much I will leave Gemma.”
“Do so, do so, my son.”
“Nevertheless, I shall soon take another. And after her a third and a
fourth.”
“You never used to be so, sonny! You have never before said such things
to me.”
Her tone was so sorrowful, that it smote the son. He half raised himself
in bed, exclaiming--
“It is true, it is true, mother! But there is nothing left for me to do
but to become a dissolute.”
“What horror!” and she hid her face in her hands.
“A horror, is it not? I cause you horror, my sainted mother, my angelic
mother! See to what life has brought me. A great, powerful, and
beautiful love has only lasted a short time with me, and has left my
heart dead to every fresh ardour. Mother, no one will take the place of
Maria Guasco in my existence; she has been all, and that all has
descended into the tomb. Afterwards I tried to attach myself to an idea,
to a sentiment, to a loving duty, but the creature herself for whom I
wished to live, for whom I wished to fight my life, spurned me and fled
from me. What more have I to do? I have no love, I have no affection, I
have no son, and I have no family risen from me. Nothing remains but to
become a vicious and perverse person, to allow all my wicked instincts
to pour from me; to give myself to women and play; to lose my fortune;
to abase my name; to be a trivial pleasure-lover, and to cause you
horror, my mother.”
Desperately the mother took him in her arms, pressed him to herself and
kissed him, as if to defend him against life itself.
“You are good, you are noble, you are loyal, and you will not do this.”
“I used to be that!” cried the son desolately; “and I deserved the love
of Maria Guasco; and I should have deserved that Vittoria Fiore knew
how to love me and become happy with me and in my dedication. But all
has been useless; I have been broken against this subtle, pallid, silent
and cold shadow of a woman. If I want to live I must be perverse and
dissolute.”
“No, my son, no.”
“There remains nothing else for me, mamma,” he repeated desolately.
IV
“Dress me quickly,” said Maria to Chiara distractedly.
Chiara gave a glance towards the balcony, concealed by the white lace
curtains, but said not a word. The dress for the races at Tor di Quinto
was on the bed, a costume of bright cream voile, trimmed with a sort of
silver lace, with a large belt of silver cloth, and a large black hat
covered with a black feather held by an antique silver buckle, together
with a very fine black veil, which surrounded it like a light cloud.
Chiara accomplished the work of dressing her beloved mistress rapidly,
without talking. Maria seemed wrapped in her thoughts, and mechanically
performed the successive acts by which a lady dresses herself.
“Give me the turquoise necklace,” she said, still distractedly.
Chiara went to the cupboard where the jewels were kept, and took a
bizarre necklace, in peculiar twisted gold, embellished with large
turquoises.
Maria fixed it, still mechanically. Then her eyes, wandering
indifferently and uncertainly, stopped at the balcony. She opened them
wide, as if at an unexpected spectacle, and listened.
“It is raining in torrents,” she said to Chiara, surprised and gloomily.
“Dreadfully,” replied Chiara, with a sigh.
Maria’s hands, which were fixing her hat, fell back as if tired.
“Then why have I dressed?” she asked, as if to herself, with an accent
of weariness and annoyance.
“Perhaps it will stop raining in a little while,” said the faithful
creature timidly.
“You’ll see, it will rain the whole day!” exclaimed Maria, discouraged.
She threw herself into a chair as if a sudden fatigue had mastered her.
Her face had the almost infantile sadness of disillusion, and with the
sadness flowed the sense of a tedium ever greater, while the pattering
rain beat upon the pavement, the marble balcony, and the windows. Chiara
retired discreetly at a call from another part, and in a few minutes
reappeared.
“The Principessa della Marsiliana is at the telephone, and is asking for
Your Excellency.”
With a great effort Maria arose and crossed the room to her husband’s
study. The study was deserted and gloomy with its almost black carved
furniture and the dark maroon, green, and red leather of its chairs and
sofas. The telephone was there in a corner.
“Well, Carolina, well?”
“No one is going to the races; they have been postponed. What a pity!”
exclaimed the gentle, and always a little nervous, voice of the
Principessa della Marsiliana.
“Well, then, what are you going to do?”
“Since it is raining, later on I shall get rid of a bothering duty. I am
going to the Sacro Cuore at Trinità dei Monti, to visit Guiglia
Strozzi’s daughter, who is ill. Will you come?”
“No, thank you.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Nothing; the usual--I shall bore myself. Au revoir, Carolina.”
“Au revoir. What a pity! I had a beautiful dress.”
“So had I. It doesn’t matter. Au revoir.”
The telephone was rung off.
Maria remained standing in the middle of the study, looking around so
uncertainly and fleetingly that it seemed as if she was almost seeking
help. Her eyes directed themselves to the chair which Emilio used behind
the writing-table, and she almost seemed to be looking for some one. But
suddenly she silently recrossed all the rooms she had first crossed, and
re-entered her room, where Chiara was replacing all the things in the
cupboard.
“Would you like to take off your dress, Excellency?” she asked.
“No, it tires me,” replied Maria exhaustedly.
She only took off her hat, drawing out the two pearl-headed pins, and
consigning them to Chiara. The rain poured incessantly and noisily.
Once more Maria made a gesture of indecision, looked at her watch, and
shook her head discouragedly.
It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. On that Sunday, with the rain
falling for nearly an hour, not a sound was to be heard in the streets;
not a step or a shadow came to break the silence or populate the desert
of Casa Guasco.
“Do you want me any more?” asked Chiara.
Maria hesitated for a minute, almost as if she wished to ask that human
being, that living creature, who was her servant, to remain with her to
keep her company; but she felt ashamed of her moral wretchedness, and a
motive of pride counselled her to immerse herself in solitude.
“No, you may go,” she replied.
Quite alone she passed into her boudoir, which was very light, papered
and furnished in an almost white stuff, with bunches of pale roses and
soft green grasses, with frames of pale gold, and a carpet of light
yellow, with cushions of a very pale colour. With its exquisite taste
toned to the surroundings, in that sunless afternoon and incessant rain,
the room seemed like that of a person dead for a long time, like a room
uninhabited for a long time. Maria sat down in her usual arm-chair,
placed her feet on a buffet, and leaned her head against a cushion,
letting her arms fall and closing her eyes to allow all the mortal
tedium of her soul to expand, to allow all the despair of her heart to
cross the lines of her beautiful and noble countenance.
Some time passed thus. Occasionally the rain diminished, becoming a dull
noise like steps in the distance, or increased with a pattering as if a
fresh whirlwind were spreading over the streets and houses. Maria in her
absolute silence started twice and raised her head, stretching her hand
towards a table. She took up a book bound in soft chamois leather, with
strange designs, and with troubled and indifferent eyes glanced through
several pages; even the noise of turning leaves in the silence of Casa
Guasco caused her to tremble. The poet whose verses she was slowly
reading was of all the most sorrowful, and amidst the gloomy sadness of
the sky and earth, of that house and her soul, Maria felt the ardent and
powerful words with which Sapho’s soul takes leave of life spreading in
her spirit. Her head sank on her breast, the book remained open on her
knees, and she thought bitterly of the grand lover of Mitylene, to whom
everything was unprofitable from birth till death, save her lofty
genius, which love had not conceded her; she thought of the most
sorrowful poet of all, whose bitterness was joined in that hour to her
own bitterness, of Giacomo Leopardi, to whom genius had not even
conceded love. An obscure anguish closed her heart in the profound
silence and solitude, in that mortally long hour of boredom and sadness.
Her hand almost involuntarily touched a bell concealed behind her chair.
After a moment a servant appeared.
“Has the post been?”
“Yes; there is nothing for Your Excellency.”
“Good; you may go.”
She was expecting no letters from any one. But every now and then in her
blackest crises of moral abandonment, of ineptitude to live or act, she
began to desire an unknown letter written by an unknown hand, she found
herself desiring an unexpected telegram, where might be contained from
destiny the secret which should help her to do something with her
useless life and useless days. While the time passed with desperate
slowness, while the soft persistent rain continued to fall on Rome and
envelope it in a grey veil of mist and water, she thought that there
were not so many mysterious letters written by far-off mysterious
persons containing powerful aid, that there are no unthought-of
telegrams where a word tells the way for those who have consumed the
forces of passion and goodness.
With a second familiar gesture she took a large work-bag of heavy
material from a basket, lined with white silk and covered with pretty
little bows of ribbon, and took out an embroidery of an old-fashioned
kind, with slightly archaic colours, of a charming and rather childish
design. Her beautiful hands sought among the tangled skeins of silk the
threads suitable for the continuation of the work, and began to pierce
the piece of silk with calm and regular movement. Two or three times her
hands, as if oppressed with fatigue, dawdled over the embroidery, and
she placed the piece of silk on her knees; two or three times a sigh
full of annoyance and impatience escaped her breast, and her head fell
back on the little cushion in silent exasperation; two or three times
she shot a glance round her of anger and hate, yes, of hate, but
mechanically her hands resumed the embroidery. The afternoon light began
to be obscured, the corners of the room were in shadow; she had to stoop
over her work to continue the embroidery.
Again a step approached.
It was the servant with the teapot and kettle. Without speaking he drew
a table near Maria’s chair and placed everything there, and lit the
spirit stove beneath the little kettle. Then, as it was getting darker,
he stretched his hand towards a large pedestal lamp to turn on the
electric light.
“No,” said Maria.
The sound of her voice after such an intense and mortal silence
surprised her. The man left. The little flame alone seemed to live and
breathe, a bluish little spirit flame, which licked the bottom of the
silver kettle. Maria, with her hands stretched along her person, kept
her eyes fixed on that poor form of life, a little passing light which
was consuming itself, a little form of passing heat which was
evaporating. The methodical work of preparing tea she accomplished in
half obscurity, bending over the table, while the slight noise of the
rain, with which the afternoon was lapsing into evening, still reached
her ears. While the warm beverage smoked in the little china cup, she
smiled silently with immense bitterness; for the servant had placed two
cups on the tray.
She threw herself back in her chair, crossed her two hands behind her
neck, stretched out her feet, closed her eyes and tried hard to sleep,
at least to sleep and forget her useless life; her useless days, her
hours of empty solitude, of savage impatience waiting for the person she
did not know who would never come, waiting for a deed she was ignorant
of which would never happen, for something strange, far off, unknown,
but which should be living and let her live: to sleep, at any rate,
since all this was no more possible when one has lived and loved too
much; to sleep since no one comes again from afar, since nothing happens
again when the heights of good and evil have been touched, and one has
descended into the obscure valley of indifference and aridity.
A sudden light and a harsh voice aroused her at once from her torpor.
Some one had suddenly turned on the electric light, and was before her
talking harshly. It was her husband.
“Are you here, Maria?”
“I am here, as you see,” she replied dully.
He had returned suddenly as usual, entering the house and crossing all
the rooms to reach her, as if he always wanted to surprise a visit, a
secret colloquy, or the furtive scribbling of a letter. He was still in
hunting costume, with his maroon velvet coat spattered and discoloured,
a big waistcoat with full pockets with bone buttons, and the breeches
stuffed in a pair of dirty riding-boots. Standing there, his face was
more than ever gloomy and distrustful, on his temple his hair was
completely white, which threw into stronger relief the olive darkness of
his face.
“What are you doing here, Maria?”
“Nothing,” she replied dully.
“Were you sleeping?”
“I have dozed.”
“Didn’t you go to the races with Carolina della Marsiliana?”
“No; it rained. The races have been postponed.”
“I know. I was told on entering Rome.”
“Ah! and why did you ask me?”
“Just,” he replied in a subdued voice, “to learn it from you.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed evenly.
The soft white hand played nervously with the gilt arm of her chair, but
the woman’s closed lips uttered no protest.
“Have you had tea?” He resumed his questions in the same cold,
suspicious tone.
“Yes. Would you like a cup? I can warm it up.”
“No, thanks. You know I hate tea. Did you have it alone?”
“Alone!” she replied, with a fleeting smile of bitterness.
“Hasn’t one of your usual courtiers been?”
“I haven’t many of them, and even those few have abandoned me,” she
murmured, with an accent of weariness.
“Still you were expecting some one?”
“I?” she said; “I? No. I never expect any one.”
There was something grievous in her words which the man, blind, deaf,
and insensible to other impressions which were not his own, did not
notice.
“I see two cups here,” he pointed, raising his eyebrows.
“One is clean!” she exclaimed, with a burst of laughter meant to be
jolly, but really gloomy.
“Yes; but the servant has brought two. He must know something, that
fellow; when I am hunting he brings two cups; he is bound to know
something.”
“Ask him, Emilio, ask him,” she said gleefully, with an increasingly
mischievous laugh.
“I shall do it, don’t doubt,” he said harshly; “but all the servants I
pay here adore you far too much. Hence they lie; they lie, the whole
lot of them, and I shall never know all the truth.”
“Oh, poor Emilio!” she exclaimed, pitying him, but without any
tenderness.
Emilio Guasco’s eyes blazed with anger; for an instant his face became
almost livid. He advanced with his heavy, dirty boots on the delicate
carpet, and in a vibrant and subdued accent, restraining himself with an
effort, but placing in every word, pronounced almost through his closed
teeth, all the hidden tempest of his tortured spirit--
“Tell me why you have compassion on me? Why ever you pity me? Do I seem
very ridiculous to you? You laugh at me in your mind, it is true, and in
speaking to me pretend to have pity on me.”
Maria was silent, with an air of glacial detachment on her face, nor did
she deign to reply to him. He sat on a chair near her, lowered his head,
so that speaking very softly she could hear him well, and continued--
“It is you, you know it, who are making me ill or mad: you have no right
to laugh at me. I have no right to accept your compassion. You are my
enemy. I am sick of you, of your presence, of your contact. You have
been my scourge. I have always thought everything of being calm and
content, if not happy. You appeared in my life, and my peace has been
destroyed and every joy.”
She leant her head against the back of the chair, on the little cushion
in the form of a heart, kept her lips closed, and the eyes slightly
contracted, her hands on the arms of the chair, like a person making a
great effort internally to restrain herself, not to reply, not to rebel,
to listen to the last word of what was thrown in her face.
“Yes, it is so,” he added fiercely, but subduedly; “no evil, no
disaster, could devastate my existence worse than you. It would have
been better if I had died on the day I knew you”--and he abandoned
himself on the seat heavily, so that it cracked beneath his weight.
She opened her eyes, and looked at the disturbed brownish face without
any emotion, and that great body on its chair, and asked quietly--
“Am I then, Emilio, as you say, an enemy of yours?”
He started, darted a contemptuous glance at her, and replied--
“Yes, an enemy of mine.”
“Does my presence exasperate you?”
“It exasperates me; that’s the word!”
“My contact causes you horror?”
“You know it,” he replied, looking peculiarly at her.
Maria understood in a flash to what Emilio was alluding. She grew pale,
and then blushed violently, her eyes for a minute filled with tears
which offended pride placed there, and which pride’s flame absorbed at
once. The injurious word, the ferocious word of outrage, which was about
to be disgorged from her lips, the mortal horror she had had of her
husband on the night of suffering and pain, in which he had wished to
possess her only by a cruel instinct of possession, a ferocious instinct
of jealousy, and after fleeing from her like a madman she had nearly
died of shame and sorrow; the word which would have expressed her
womanly horror she had the extreme pity not to pronounce. Then he
understood by that face where her lively expressions were depicted, by
the eyes which had nearly poured out the rare and scorching tears which
her wounded pride snatched from her soul, by the quick breathing in
which she seemed to have repressed her cry of rebellion, he understood
that in evoking that recollection he had made the disagreement between
them deeper and more invincible.
“I loved you--do love you perhaps,” he murmured, almost speaking to
himself. “I believe it is so. But your contact causes me horror.”
Every time he repeated the phrase fatal in its truth, insulting in its
brutality, he made a material movement of repulsion. Every time, too,
this expression made the woman’s face colour in an impetus of anger.
Then mastering herself with the singular courage of a strong soul, she
answered him with a proud calmness.
“Don’t delude yourself, dear Emilio, that you love me; love is quite
another thing. I know that. You do me the honour, like any other man,
even now, of desiring me; that is all. That would be very flattering to
me if this desire of yours--in fact it would be very simple, very common
and quite trivial--were not overcome by the horror with which my desired
and repugnant person inspires you. Would you tell me why, if you don’t
mind--out of simple curiosity, my friend, nothing else--I cause you
horror: now why?”
Gradually Maria’s tone became more disingenuous and frivolous, as if it
were a question of a fashionable conversation of very relative interest,
yes, although she was hearing words which tortured still more her
throbbing soul.
Emilio raised his eyebrows. He knew quite well how much more
intelligent, finer, and braver Maria’s character was than his, and how
he had almost struck her by reminding her of that night of violence and
sorrow, after which they had been divided like two enemies. Now he felt
he was in her power, which was loftier for defence, and better adapted
to conquer her own and another’s soul. Not attempting to wrestle with
her, as with truth itself in all its harshness and vulgarity, he replied
in a low voice without looking at her--
“You cause me horror, because I can’t forget.”
“What, please?” she asked, toying with her emerald rings.
“Your betrayal; your flight with Marco Fiore; your three years’ life
with him. It is impossible to forget all this, and this recollection
scorches me like a red-hot iron.”
“Still,” she said, with some disingenuousness, and the same frivolity in
which she had kept up the conversation politely from the beginning,
“still you desired my return to your house.”
“I confess it; I ardently desired it.”
“You condescended, then, to pardon an unfaithful wife,” she concluded,
with a gracious and slight smile, a conventional smile to conclude a
worldly discourse.
“It is true, I pardoned you,” he replied, still more gloomily: “but I
repented of it at once; I repent it every day.”
“You think you made a mistake?”
“Much more than a mistake; far more than a mistake!” he exclaimed,
raising his voice suddenly.
She motioned to him courteously with her hand, just as if she were
asking him to talk more quietly in a room where music was being played.
“I committed a cowardice in pardoning you. I was a fool and a coward.
Every one laughs at me; every one. You yourself will laugh at me. There
couldn’t be a bigger fool or coward than I was on that evening.”
Again she grew pale and blushed, as if the blood were moving in waves
from the heart to the brain, from the brain to the heart.
“Do you curse that evening?” she asked slowly.
“I curse it every instant, and despise myself for my mistake, for my
ineptitude, for my weakness. Every one, every one is laughing at me, who
have been dishonoured, who have enjoyed the dishonour, and retaken, as
if it were nothing, the woman who inflicted this incancellable dishonour
on me.”
“Other men have pardoned like you,” she said slowly, and somewhat
absorbed.
“Others! others!” he exclaimed, suddenly touched on the bleeding wound
of his heart, “men different, quite different to me. Perhaps they were
perfect cynics: I am not cynic enough, and I suffer for my dishonour, as
if it were yesterday, as it were to-day. Or perhaps they were simple
people. I also am not simple enough; I understand, I know, I measure,
and I remember everything. Perhaps they had children, these men, and it
was necessary at any cost to recompose the family: we have no children.
Or perhaps grave questions of interest came in between; money, you know,
money! _That_ had nothing to do with that stupid cowardly pardon I gave
you that evening; nothing. Certainly, certainly, many men have pardoned
their faithless wives, will pardon, and are pardoning them for so many
reasons and causes; but I should like to question them one by one, as
man to man, alone and with open heart, and you would see the reply would
always be the same from however many of them.”
“That is----” she said quietly.
“That it is cowardice to pardon this offence; that one ought not to
pardon betrayal in a mistress, but one _never_ pardons betrayal in a
wife.”
“Is that your idea?”
“It is mine.”
“When you pardoned you didn’t think so. Do you believe that now you can
again change your opinion?” she asked, as she strove in vain to hide a
little anxiety in the question.
“It is useless,” he replied desolately, “I know myself. I am a
straightforward man. I can’t change the idea which for two years has
caused me to suffer as I have never suffered. I am too straightforward,
and for this I pity you. I can’t change; when one is a man like I am one
can’t pardon dishonour and absolve betrayal.”
She lowered her eyes and said no more, though she seemed very calm and
indifferent.
“Well?” he said, questioning her anxiously.
“Well?” she questioned in turn.
“Haven’t you anything to say to me?”
“I? No,” she replied simply.
“What is your idea, then?”
“I have none,” she added, with the same simplicity.
“None? Nothing? Does nothing of this matter to you?” he cried,
surprised.
“It would matter very much to me, if I could bring you a remedy. Your
sufferings once moved me very much, you know, and I believed I could
cure them. I have not succeeded. You haven’t wished to know me as a
consoler. My mission here has failed completely. Instead of doing you
good I am doing you harm. And in exchange you load me every time you can
with expressions of your loathing and contempt. What is to be done?
There is no remedy.”
“If you had liked, there could have been,” he replied in a low voice.
“Exactly, exactly!” she exclaimed, smiling ironically. “I ought to have
had a great passion for you. That was necessary for your jealousy and
_amour propre_--a great passion;” and the smile became more ironical.
“And you did not succeed? Is it not so?” he cried, trembling.
“I haven’t even tried,” she replied, seriously and nobly. “I never
returned for that, I never promised it; I couldn’t give it.”
“Then it would have been better not to have returned;” and the man’s
fury increased.
“It would have been better,” replied the woman still more austerely.
“It would be better, then, for you to go away,” cried the man, blind
with fury.
“It would certainly be better,” she said austerely and finally.
She rose from her seat, crossed the room, and disappeared.
V
The long, strident whistle of the large white steamer, the
_Vierwaldstettersee_, had already sounded twice in a vain appeal. The
little landing-place at Fluelen was deserted. Every day, from the
beginning of July to the middle of September, a varied crowd had arrived
from Italy by the trains which cross the wonderful Gothard route, and
from Switzerland especially, for familiar excursions to Tellsplatz and
Altdorf, to take their places on the boat to cross to the winding
flowery shores of the lake of the four cantons, to the large and small
summer stations, and to the little villages gleaming white among the
trees with their red roofs. But now no longer. It is October; the last
travellers one by one have returned to their homes, and Fluelen is
deserted. The white steamer, too, has been deserted for a long time, and
performs a journey of obligation on a deserted lake among deserted
shores.
However, a third call sounded longer, more stridulous and melancholy. A
single traveller left the Hôtel de la Poste, directly opposite the
landing-place, and approached the gangway with leisurely steps. He was
still a young man, tall and slender, dressed not only neatly but
fashionably. Beneath his hat, which was lowered over his eyes, could be
noticed a handsome though slightly delicate physiognomy, a face a little
too pale, with very black hair and moustaches, lips still fresh and
vivid, and extremely soft eyes of a fascinating softness; but in general
the features resulted in firmness and perhaps in obstinacy.
An expression of indifference, and sometimes even of intense boredom,
passed over his face. A few paces behind, the hall-porter followed,
carrying two large portmanteaux and a travelling-bag. The traveller
crossed the gangway alone, and walked to the stern of the steamer,
where, wet with moisture, the flag of the Swiss Confederation was
hanging. He sat alone on one of the side benches, and slowly lit a
cigarette, while the porter deposited the luggage a little way off.
“How long to Lucerne?” he asked, tipping the man.
“Two and a half hours,” replied the man, thanking him.
The steamer had now left the bank, the pilot was at his wheel with eyes
fixed on the horizon, trying to penetrate the mist which was spreading
and growing thicker. The pilot was a robust little man, firmly planted
on two short legs encased in black oilskins, which seemed saturated with
humidity. His face was broad and rugged beneath a black cap with a peak.
For a little time he was the traveller’s only companion, who still sat
on the bench, lighting one cigarette after the other, looking at the
country now wrapped in clouds, now manifest through the broken edges of
the mist with black and rugged rocks, with great stretches of snow in
the clefts of the mountains, and in the far-off whiteness of the
glaciers. But the glance which he threw around from time to time gave no
sign either of curiosity or interest, the signs to be discovered were
those of a vague weariness, of a persistent boredom, above all of a
resigned and calm indifference.
The _Vierwaldstettersee_ threaded its way through the grey waters. The
white foam broke against the paddle-box, and the wake stretched behind
through the mist which seemed to be following the white vessel. Not a
human voice sounded on deck beneath the two large awnings from bow to
stern. The first station came to view with its little houses on the bank
among trees already bare, among little gardens where the flowers were
dead, and where the chairs were bathed in moisture. The houses had their
doors and windows closed, affording a glimpse, behind the tiny panes, of
some little plant drawn in-doors by a provident hand, so as not to let
it perish like the other plants; but not a person, not a voice, issued
from the houses and gardens of the little square before the
landing-place. The Crown Hotel, a little in the background, was
hermetically closed. With a precise and methodical movement a man from
the steamer threw a rope to another man on land, who had suddenly
appeared, and bound it to a large wooden pile. The steamer stopped for
some minutes, while the whistle sounded stridulously and in vain. The
two men exchanged almost empty bags containing the mail. After having
whistled, the _Vierwaldstettersee_ started again amidst the grey mist,
quite covered with moisture on its outerwork, brasses, sails and ropes,
and dripping moisture from all sides. Every quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes the halts were repeated, with the whistling, the throwing of the
rope, and the exchange of mail bags, without ever a traveller coming on
board. Gradually the solitary traveller had sunk at his place, ceasing
from smoking, his gloved hands buried in the pockets of his ulster, his
head fallen on his breast, and he himself, like the sky, the landscape,
like the lake, and the steamer, seemed wrapped in the greyish mist, now
of opaque silver, now transparent.
When half the voyage was over the steamer whistled twice and much longer
on nearing a station, and another man in uniform appeared on deck from
below, as well as a waiter, both, like everything else, enveloped in
moisture. The traveller seemed to be dozing, since he never turned his
head on seeing the deck populated with these two persons. The station
was Vitznau, that village so crowded and so brilliant and pleasant in
summer. It is the village whence the Rhigi is climbed, and is well
known to every tourist. Even Vitznau, with its group of denuded trees on
its gloomy bank, its two closed hotels, and its solitary funicular
station, did not seem different to the other stations touched at. Only
while the man threw the rope from the deck, and the other man of that
place mechanically tied it, a woman appeared on the landing-place coming
from the little funicular station. She was tall and elegant, in spite of
the long travelling-cloak which completely covered and enveloped her.
With a quiet step she crossed the gangway, climbed the few steps,
presented her ticket to the man in uniform, and, walking on deck, sat
down on the bench opposite to the other traveller. The man in uniform,
while the steamer was drawing away from Vitznau on its course to
Lucerne, approached her and asked her something, which she refused with
a nod of her head, and after a minute the waiter came up with a
question, and she answered him in the same way. Both the man in uniform
and the waiter disappeared below.
It was rather difficult to discover the new traveller’s face through her
veil, and for some time she kept her head towards the lake, gazing at
it. Then she turned towards the steamer. Her glance wandered round and
fixed itself on the traveller opposite so intensely, that he seemed to
wake from his dream and shake himself from his torpor. He looked at the
new traveller, looked at her much, and looked at her long. They were
quite alone on the steamer, which was sailing like a phantom ship upon a
lake of dreams and sadness, amidst the incomparably mournful clouds. The
man got up and crossed the deck decidedly. He bowed deeply, remaining
uncovered before her.
“Are you alone, Maria?”
“Alone, Marco; and are you alone?”
“Most alone.”
Their voices were calm, but so tired.
“May I sit beside you, Maria?” he asked, almost supplicatingly.
“Yes, do,” she replied, with a nod.
He placed himself beside her. Lightly and gently he took her gloved hand
and pressed it between his for a minute, placing it to his lips. She
bent her face just for a minute. The boat went on; the pilot fixed his
eyes still more sharply on the mist, because it was getting late and the
grey of sky and lake was becoming darker and even threatening.
“I didn’t know that you were travelling in these parts,” he said, trying
to discover her face through her veil.
“Nor I that you were, Marco,” she murmured.
Each looked at the other at the same moment, as if they were about to
say the same word to express the same idea thought by both, which each
left unpronounced.
“Have you been travelling for some time, Maria?” he asked, after a few
minutes’ silence.
“For more than three months, Marco,” she replied wearily.
“Always alone?”
“Always.”
“And where have you been, Maria, always alone? Tell me everything,
please.”
Marco questioned her with penetrating sweetness, in which, however,
weariness was mixed.
“I have been everywhere,” she replied, and he seemed to notice a tremor
in her voice, “everywhere. One can go to a good many places in three
months.”
“That’s true,” he added; “I started before you from Rome, a couple of
months before.”
“I know, Marco. I was told so. Have you always been alone on your
journey?”
“Like you, always.”
“Have you no regret for those you have left behind?” she asked in a
still sadder accent.
“I have regret,” he confessed, “for one person only, Maria.”
“For one only?”
“Always for the same person, for her of former days, for her of
always--for my mother,” and a rush of tenderness and sorrow pulsated in
the words.
She placed her hand on his arm quickly for a moment without speaking, to
calm him.
“Still I have left. I am far away, and I don’t want to return!” he
exclaimed impetuously.
“Don’t you wish to return? Don’t you wish to?” and the accent had
suddenly become spasmodical.
“I don’t wish to,” he rejoined gloomily, with decision.
She shook her head sorrowfully, and looked ahead among the fleeting
clouds which were rising from the still waters, as if asking the secret
of the riddle from those waves of vapour which were closing in on the
horizon. The prow of the _Vierwaldstettersee_ was directed to the last
station, towards a little place on the bank, where an occasional tree
was still in foliage, where among woods and meadows the white houses,
with their red roofs and little windows full of flowers, did not seem so
deserted and dead as the others. Two children, dressed in thick woollen
as a protection against the Swiss autumn, were playing outside the inn.
“Maria, Weggis,” said Marco, almost in her ear.
“Yes, Weggis,” she replied quietly.
Slowly she raised her white gauze veil over the rim of her hat, showing
her graceful, melancholy face, enchanting in every line, from the
thoughtful, proud, and yet sweet eyes, to the expressively sorrowful and
fresh mouth; showing the face which love had exalted to an invincible
beauty, which love had deserted, leaving there all the serene sadness
of things long dead, and all the proud melancholy of a brief, too brief,
passion. Marco looked at the face without its veil, and she looked at
him with her expression of calm sadness, finding in him singularly the
same expression--a death in life, a love dead.
“Weggis,” he murmured, with melancholy, while the boat drew further away
towards Lucerne.
“Weggis,” she murmured, with ever greater melancholy.
The image of the little flower-laden spot, where they had lodged
modestly one very hot summer in passionate solitude, seemed far away
amidst the autumn mists. It grew distant, and disappeared among the
things of the past, of time, and of space, like their love had vanished.
The gloaming was already descending to render the clouds browner and
closer; already a colder and more penetrating breath of air struck the
two travellers and caused them to shudder. A line of lights, lit for the
approaching evening, stretched itself in the background, indicating the
quay-side of Lucerne, and in the twilight the massive and bizarre
buildings of hotels and villas grew whiter. Side by side the two
travellers looked at the lights, and mechanically rose from their place
to leave the _Vierwaldstettersee_, which had already reached the pier.
The conductor of the omnibus of the Hôtel National took Marco’s luggage,
and after an exchange of words in a low voice threw it on to the
omnibus and drove off with it. The two travellers remained on a bench,
bathed in moisture, silently seized by all that was in their souls. They
were undecided and rather confused. At last Maria exclaimed, making an
attempt to get away, “Good-night, Marco.”
“Where are you going?” he asked sadly and anxiously.
“Up there;” and she pointed to a little hill with her finger.
“Where then?”
“To Sonnenberg; I have been there for two weeks,” she added.
“Won’t you stay a little with me?” he begged anxiously.
“O Marco, don’t ask that!” she exclaimed, turning her head.
“Maria, Maria, remain a little,” he said in his tender voice. “What does
a little time matter to you, Maria? What does it matter?”
She recognised that voice of a former time, the voice of moments of
desolation, the voice which formerly asked succour when his soul had
need of comfort; but it was not the voice of love but of sorrow.
“I am so wretched, and you mustn’t leave me this evening.”
She consented with a nod. Together in the evening’s shade, through the
cold dampness which arose from the water, through the roads where no
passer-by made his appearance; over the bridge, dripping in moisture,
under whose arches the doves were sleeping; on the promenade, no longer
shaded by the luxuriant foliage of the trees; among the lights distorted
by the mist, they went towards the large hotel, which also seemed
abandoned for some time with its hundred closed windows, with its
flowerless gardens, with its iron seats on which no one seemed to have
sat for years. The large hall was lit by a single electric lamp. Maria
remained standing, looking through the windows vaguely without seeing
anything, while Marco was discussing with the secretary. In that brief
moment the woman saw Marco again as he used to be, when for months
together they proceeded on their pilgrimage of love, and she marvelled
that, ever since they had met on the deck of the boat, he had been able
to accomplish the same acts; she marvelled that in all their actions
they had been as formerly while their souls were so changed.
“Come, Maria,” Marco said, approaching her.
How often she had heard that invitation! She smiled strangely as she
followed him, while they went up in the lift and entered a sitting-room,
which was immediately illuminated. The waiter silently opened a door on
the right and a door on the left, while they appeared not to notice.
“You would like some tea, wouldn’t you, Maria? it is so cold,” Marco
asked in the gentle insinuating voice she recognised in all its
modulations.
Maria smiled in consent. She drew a chair to the table and sat down. She
untied her veil and drew out the pins from her hat, undid the hooks of
her travelling-cloak and appeared in a close-fitting dress of pale
mauve, with the usual string of pearls at the neck, which she never left
off. Marco followed her with his eyes, and recognised again in Maria the
woman he had so often seen make those quiet harmonious gestures.
However, he felt that only the movements and the words were the same,
but not the ideas and sentiments. But he expressed no surprise at it.
“Give me a cup of tea, dear Maria,” he said, speaking softly. She took
off her gloves, poured out the tea and gave him a cup with a smile.
“Where is Sonnenberg, Maria?” he said.
“Over there, Marco, on the hill.”
“How does one get there?”
“It is a few minutes by the funicular.”
“It must be rather a sad place, Maria?”
“Yes, it is a little sad,” she murmured, raising her hair with her
fingers.
“Any people there?”
“Oh, no; four of five persons besides myself.”
“Do you bore yourself there, Maria?”
“A little, as everywhere.”
“Are you going to stop there?”
“Yes, I think I shall stop there.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know; I know nothing, Marco,” she said, with a slightly pained
expression.
“When will you return to Rome?” he asked, with a greater anxiety than he
wished to show.
“I don’t know, I don’t know at all,” she replied monotonously.
“Still, still ... you have somebody there.”
“_Somebody_,” she repeated, underlining the word, “prefers my absence to
my presence.”
“Really; is it really so?” Marco exclaimed.
“Yes,” she replied, with an expansive gesture of her hands.
“Have you left, Maria?”
“I have left. After having commented bitterly and brutally on my
departure, _somebody_ let me go free and alone without asking my
itinerary, without asking me when I was returning. It is true he was
tormented by my flight, but relieved that I had left alone. He was
tortured, I believe, by the idea of not seeing me, of not being able to
injure me, of not being able to throw my past in my face, but in fact
content that I was far away.”
“And you, Maria?”
“I?” she exclaimed harshly; “I? Probably I shall never return again. Why
should I return? I have nothing to do there for the good of any one. I
can only do evil there to others and myself. Certainly, Marco, I shall
never return--never.”
“Emilio will summon you; he will want you,” he said, with agitation.
“No,” she declared harshly, “he has driven me out.”
“Driven you out, Maria?”
“Not once, but many times, in moments of violence and coldness he said
it would have been better if I had never returned. Certainly, certainly,
Marco, I shall never return there. I shall go and live alone in a remote
corner of the earth, and I shall die there.”
She spoke with vehemence and harshness, but still subduedly; he, too,
spoke to her in the same subdued way. Their faces were pale and
strained. An immense silence reigned in the deserted summer town and the
equally deserted huge hotel. The flames flickered in the grate and the
logs crackled.
“Are you so unhappy, Maria?” he said, taking her hand tenderly.
“So unhappy, really so unhappy. I dare not kill myself; and why should
I? I should be ridiculous and grotesque. I am ashamed to kill myself. I
have nothing to do with my life, really nothing.”
“You were a magnificent lover, Maria!” he exclaimed, with infinite
regret.
“A soul of love like you, Marco, a heart of love,” she replied, with the
same regret.
“We should have died when our love was over, Maria,” Marco said.
“That is true; we ought to have died then. We missed a beautiful death,
Marco,” replied Maria gloomily.
“Now it is too late to die, too late.”
“It is too late.”
They were silent, with all the weight of their cold, arid, useless
lives, which was weighing down their souls, with all the enormous weight
of a dead love, dead after having done all the good which had vanished
with it, dead after all the evil which was still living.
“Are you going to stop at Lucerne?” asked Maria at last dreamily.
“A day or two; no more,” he replied, as if awakened from a dream.
“Where shall you go?”
“To far-off countries. To Holland, and Denmark, always to the countries
furthest off.”
“Why don’t you stay in Rome?” she asked.
“Not to debase myself under your eyes, Maria,” he replied seriously.
“There is nothing left but vice for me, and I am ashamed to defile that
which you have loved.”
“Your wife, Vittoria. What of her?”
“She is with my mother.”
“Surely she suffers by your absence?”
“Possibly; less, however, than she does by my presence.”
“Why did she suffer?”
“I suppose she suffered; but she has never told me she did, she never
showed me, and I have never seen her tears. She always repulsed any
consolation of mine for this supposed suffering of hers.”
“Poor Vittoria,” murmured Maria.
“She certainly deserves pity,” replied Marco coldly; “but she repulses
it.”
“Still she deserved happiness.”
“Certainly; but she repulsed happiness, because she is not capable of
being happy.”
“Why did you fly from her?”
“So as not to hate her, Maria; so as not to curse my marriage day as
that of my slavery.”
“Are you sure that you have done all your duty as a man, as a friend, as
a companion to Vittoria?”
“I am sure of it. I have done beyond my duty as a man, a companion, and
a friend. But she didn’t want that, she demanded that I should become
her lover.”
“And couldn’t you?”
“No, Maria,” he said seriously, “you know very well, you ought to know
very well, that I couldn’t.”
“When shall you return to Rome?”
“I shall never re-enter Rome.”
“Are you in exile, then?”
“It is exile without any time limit.”
“And your mother?”
“I shall see her at Spello where Vittoria does not go, and she will come
to Florence. It is very sad, but there it is.”
“And you?”
“If I were poor I should set to work to do something with my faculties
and time. Unfortunately I am not even poor. A dissolute life, since I
have loved you, fills me with horror.”
“We are two miserables, Marco,” she concluded gloomily; “far away in
Rome there are two others more miserable than we are, and neither you
nor I can do anything for them.”
“Neither you nor I can do anything for them,” he replied, like a dull
echo.
“No one can do anything for any one,” said Maria desperately.
All that was colossal and indestructible in the fatality of existence,
in its mysterious and rigorous laws, weighed upon them. In their youth,
in their strength and beauty they felt lost and blind, unable to die and
unable to live, groping in the shadows, their breasts full of sighs, and
their ears closed to the cries of the two who were suffering alone and
abandoned in Rome. They felt themselves incapable of being comforted and
giving comfort, and they felt as well that their burning tears were
useless, just as the tears of the two in Rome were as equally useless
and unconsolable.
The woman rose pale and upright.
“I am going, Marco,” she said.
“Can’t I accompany you, Maria?” he begged desolately.
“No, remain here. Let me go.”
“Shan’t I see you to-morrow?”
“Why do you wish to see me?” she asked in a tremulous accent.
“To see the face of a friend, to hear the voice of a friend, not to feel
myself so lonely and lost, to-morrow more than ever.”
“O Marco, wouldn’t it be better for us not to see each other to-morrow?”
she asked, trembling still more.
“No, Maria, no. You need to see me, you are so lonely and lost. I will
look for you to-morrow; and do you promise not to fly from me?”
A trembling seized her, which made her almost hesitate.
“Maria, promise that you won’t fly from me, only then will I let you
go?”
“I promise,” she replied weakly.
VI
On the morrow a keen and pungent wind had rid the lake of all the
vapours and clouds, which had robbed the hills and mountains of their
lines and colouring. The sky only was covered with a closely fitting
veil of clouds. It was a sky quite white, curving from the zenith to the
horizon behind the mountains in an immovable whiteness. Beneath this
immense inanimate whiteness the ice of the far-away peaks seemed whiter,
and the summits blacker and more rocky. Every now and then a gust of
wind crossed the quiet streets of Lucerne, and passed over the waters of
the lake, causing long, shuddering ripples, while a flight of pigeons
wheeled round the arches of the bridge. At the landing-stage the steamer
was whistling on its departure for Fluelen.
It was still early when a carriage brought Marco Fiore to Kriens, the
last suburb of Lucerne, at the foot of the Sonnenberg funicular. He had
the appearance of a man who had slept badly. Only one other person took
his place in the carriage, a German or perhaps a Lucernese, who placed
himself in a corner and began to smoke a short pipe. The conductor rang
his bell and whistled twice in vain; there were no other passengers for
Sonnenberg than Marco and the man with the pipe.
The large and rather melancholy hotel at Sonnenberg is a few paces away
from the station. Marco directed himself to the porter who was seated in
the empty vestibule, as deserted as the garden he had just passed
through. Donna Maria Guasco had just gone out, the man said, as she
usually did every morning, towards Gutsch, indicating the way with his
hand; then he added in a very German French, that it was a fairly long
walk. Scarcely listening to him, Marco set off through a broad wooded
path. He walked without looking before him with lowered eyes, completely
wrapped in his thoughts, without meeting any one, without looking at the
landscape, almost without seeing where he was going. Every now and then
the wind, which was freshening, caused the trees to rustle with an
almost human sound, beating on Marco’s face, and, passing on, it grew
weaker without disturbing his thoughts. He had lost count of the time he
was on the way. At last at a corner he read on a post, “Gutsch,”
indicated by a white arrow on a blue ground. He took the turning for
some fifty steps, and then stopped silent and surprised.
He found himself in a strange wood, formed of tall, colossal trees,
whose height the eye could not gauge. The trunks of the trees were
round, thin, and devoid of branches to a considerable height, like the
stems of bronze candlesticks; then the leafy branches mounted up so
intricately and thickly, hiding the sky, that an invincible gloom
reigned in the wood. The tall, colossal, upright trees, growing so close
together, seemed innumerable, and rose in two lines along a very
straight path in the middle, which lost itself in the calm, sad gloom,
which the rays of the sun seemed unable to penetrate. Never had a wood
seemed so strange and lugubrious to Marco’s wondering eyes, never had he
breathed an air so still and sepulchral, and never had he noticed a
silence so profound and gloomy. On either side of the path the dried
leaves were scattered, of every colour from light yellow to dark red,
but their colour had merged into one in that darkness of the tomb. A
sense of tragic and fatal horror conquered his heart while he advanced
under the ominous trees, like dismal funeral candles, in that wood
without the song of birds, without the perfume of flowers and the sun’s
rays. Terror surrounded him, and he seemed to be walking towards his
strange destiny, towards the wooden seat beneath a bronze tree trunk,
where Maria was seated and looking at him as he approached with sad but
sweet eyes.
“This wood is horrible, Maria!” he exclaimed a little petulantly, as he
sat down beside her.
“Yes, it is horrible,” she replied, looking around, “but I come here
every day to let myself be taken by its strong, calm horror. I think
that dead people must be here, and nobody knows of it.”
“Dead of love, or sorrow, or indifference,” he added, looking around,
believing himself a prey to an hallucination.
“Or perhaps they had enough of life.”
“Everything could have happened here,” he continued dreamily, “a bloody
duel, a murder ignored by all, a suicide which no one knew of. Doesn’t
it cause you horror, sweet Maria?”
“Life is more difficult than death,” she replied, shaking her head.
He took her hand, covered with a white glove, and with a slow, familiar
action took off the glove and kissed her fingers and palm two or three
times.
“Maria,” he said, “I have thought much during the night. At first I was
seized by a mortal disquietude, and I wanted to get up and leave, to
look for you in the night. Then little by little I entered into a great
peace, because I saw our way.”
“_Our_ way?” she asked in agitation.
“Ours, Maria. It is the only way, and there is no choice but for you and
me to follow it.”
“What are you saying, Marco?” she exclaimed, getting up.
With a gracious and tender action he made her sit down again.
“I say that we ought to live together till death,” he declared.
“Without love, Marco? Without love?” the woman cried, and such an utter
hopeless bitterness was in the cry.
“Yes, without love,” he continued courageously; “the great light and
flame of our passion is extinguished, it is true, but the tender
reflections can still weakly illuminate the shadows where we have lived;
even the rays of the heat, whose flame no longer exists, can rarefy the
cold which is conquering us.”
“You don’t love me, Marco!” she cried.
“I don’t love you with passion, and I ought not to deceive you; neither
of us will ever lie to the other. But you have been the chosen woman of
my heart, the only intense dream of my life. You have been my perfect,
only love. If the tabernacle is closed, if the idol has vanished, the
soul has in its memory the recollection of a unique adoration.”
“But I don’t love you!” she cried, convulsed.
“Yes, I know that you don’t love me with passion. But I know that I have
a beautiful and unforgettable place in your heart. I have been your only
lover.”
He spoke with a desperate sadness in his eyes and face, in every
expression and gesture.
“Is it true, that I am dear to you, Maria?”
“It is true, as you say, you are dear to me,” she replied desolately.
Marco drew her to himself and kissed her on the lips chastely. She
returned the kiss. But to both the kiss seemed to have the savour of
death.
“Let us live together till death,” he resumed sadly.
“Together, Marco, together? To reunite when we no longer have love as
the excuse of our betrayal, nor passion as an excuse for the sorrow we
are inflicting on others! Why? Why?”
“Because nothing else remains,” he said desolately.
“Is there really nothing else, Marco?” she cried, wringing her hands.
“Really, Maria, nothing else.”
“And that unfortunate at Rome? That unfortunate Emilio? What has he done
to be so disgraced? And why must I bring about his misfortune?” she
cried, with a sob, hiding her face in her hands.
“Pity him; let us pity him,” said Marco; “he is an unfortunate.”
“He will curse me.”
“He will be right to curse you, but he will also be wrong. All are right
and all are wrong confronted with love, Maria.”
“And Vittoria? Vittoria? the unlucky Vittoria? What will become of her?
What will she say of me? Marco, think, think, what a horrible business!”
“She will curse us justly,” resumed Marco, with deep sadness; “she will
be right, like Emilio, to curse us, but confronted with love she will
be wrong.”
“Who will console Vittoria, Marco?”
“I have tried to console her, but she despised my consolations. Like all
exigent people who ask too much from life, Vittoria has only gathered
delusion and bitterness.”
“You promised her everything.”
“I offered her everything, and she repulsed it. What she demanded was
not in my power, will never be in my power, and I shall never see her
again.”
“Who will console and comfort Emilio?”
“He is a man; he will forget you.”
“And Vittoria?”
“Religion will be able to do much for her. She will forget me.”
“But Emilio and Vittoria were not expecting this from us and from
existence.”
“The fault isn’t mine, and isn’t ours. If we are to blame we did it for
one supreme and invincible reason, which is love.”
“My God! my God!” she kept on lamenting, sobbing without tears.
“There is nothing else for us to do, but to live together till death.”
“Nothing else? Nothing else? Suppose we were to try again? Suppose we
were to return?”
The voice was as desperate as the proposal.
“Why do you want to try again, Maria?” he asked, with infinite
desolation; “do you wish to go to your husband who hates and loves you?
Do you wish to give yourself to him who is horrified at what you did? Do
you wish instead to stop in your home as a stranger and an enemy? Do you
wish to live and give yourself to him, as a courtesan whom he pays and
despises? Do you wish to live, if you refuse yourself to him, in an
inferno? To-morrow he will hate you, and you will be forced either to
fly again ridiculously or become the lover of Gianni Provana, and
afterwards of another Gianni Provana, descending to every abyss to make
something of your life.”
“No, no!” she cried, at the height of moral nausea.
“How can I try again with Vittoria? Must I return and fall at the feet
of my wife, simulating a passion I do not feel? Must I play a comedy, I
who despise a lie? Could I ever take my wife in my arms like you? Oh,
she knows, perhaps, and understands; at any rate she would soon
understand, that I was lying and deceiving her. Do you know that I
inspire her with repulsion? Do you know that she neither wants me as a
husband, a companion, or a friend? Do you know that she wants me as a
lover? Can I be the lover of Vittoria, Maria? I can’t, there, I can’t!
If I returned to Rome, if I re-entered Piazzo Fiore, I should only make
Vittoria more unhappy. In desperation I should hurl myself into
conviviality. You can’t wish the death of your dignity, nor I that of
my honour.”
“It is true, it is true!” she exclaimed, falling back in the seat as if
about to faint.
“Courage, courage, Maria,” he said sweetly.
A great silence, a great shadow, an ineffable solitude was around them
in that funereal wood.
“But couldn’t we go on as we did up to yesterday, each in our own way?”
she asked in a weak voice.
“Where, where, Maria?” he asked, with the shadow of a melancholy smile.
“I don’t know ... anywhere ... everywhere,” she said vaguely, “each our
own way, as up to yesterday.”
“We met yesterday,” he said sweetly.
“Let us separate to-day and resume our way.”
“We should meet to-morrow.” And his voice was very sweet and sad.
“Do you think so, Marco? Do you think so?”
“It is fate. Maria, it was fate our meeting yesterday; our fate would be
meeting to-morrow. A will which we are ignorant of, which is outside us,
which acts on us while it is foreign to us, has reunited us yesterday,
and would reunite us to-morrow. Let us accept it, Maria.”
“But what is this will, Marco?” she said, seized by a sudden fear.
“Maria,” he said gravely, “you know, you have known, that passion is
outside the usual limits of life, you have known and seen that it
forces souls and persons beyond all laws and duties, beyond all vows.
You have seen and known that it exalts and multiplies life. Well, Maria,
I believe that when once the ordinary limits of life have been passed
over, it is extremely difficult to turn back. I believe that when duties
are forgotten, vows unloosed, laws broken, it is extremely difficult for
people to re-enter the social orbit, to resume their proper place, and
to repair their conscience. I believe that for a life which has touched
the heights of passion, it is impossible to descend to the great, cold,
silent depths.”
All that he said was reflected sadly in its truth and irreparableness.
“Then,” she interrupted, “then whoever has sinned, in punishment for his
sin must continue to sin.”
“Yes, Maria; sin, but without fascination. Sin is a punishment in
itself. I believe, I am sure, that this is punishment.”
A heavy silence fell upon them. The woman’s head was bowed, and she had
crossed her hands over her knees. There was not a breath of air in that
atmosphere of a cemetery.
“At home they will say: ‘_She always loved him, and always lied in
denying that she loved him_.’”
“They will say that,” admitted Marco sadly.
“Your wife will say so, Marco,” Maria continued monotonously, “‘_Marco
never forgot her, and always lied_.’”
“Certainly she will say that.”
“And it will all be false, Marco, because we shall be again without
passion, without love, without rapture.”
“That is so, Maria.”
“Shall we rehearse our comedy together, Marco,” she asked
mournfully--“the comedy of love? Couldn’t we live like two companions,
like two friends? Say, couldn’t we live so, at least without lying?”
“No, dear, no,” he resumed, with a weak, sorrowful smile, “it isn’t
possible. You are a woman; I am a man. We are still young. What you say
is impossible.”
“O Marco, without love?” she murmured, turning her head aside in shame.
He was silent, feeling that she was right. But he could not deceive her.
“Even this, dear lady mine, is a punishment.”
“O Marco, Marco!” she cried, leaning her head on his shoulder, and
hiding her face in his breast.
He pressed her to himself sweetly, and kissed her on the eyes, which
were red without weeping, and upon her pale face and lips.
“At last,” he said, “we shall find some sweetness in this expiation. My
arms know you, Maria, and my breast is a haven for you. I know your
arms, and I know I can sleep peacefully, if not ecstatically, on your
heart.”
“The days will be long and silent,” she murmured, rising, passing her
arm under Marco’s, as they went down the straight path together.
“Yes, Maria,” he replied.
“Our souls will do nothing but secretly regret that which is no more.”
“Yes, it is true, Maria.”
“Happy we shall never be again.”
“Never again, Maria.”
“And so we shall go on till death, Marco,” she concluded, with an accent
of infinite melancholy.
“Together, Maria.”
“Towards death.”
“Step for step together.”
They were in the deepest part of the gloomy wood, like an immense tomb,
amidst the thousand bronze candelabra, which seemed to have been lit for
something great that was dead.
* * * * *
Marco entered the room where Maria was waiting for him, reading a book.
She lifted her eyes with a slightly melancholy smile.
“..._m’aimes?_” he asked in a puerile way, in French.
“..._t’aime_,” she replied colourlessly.
He kissed her, and she returned the kiss.
“..._toujours?_” she asked.
“..._toujours_,” he replied.
Their words and actions were the same as of a former time, which were
born again from the memory of their senses, re-born in an exterior,
strange form to them. Their souls were full of inconsolable regret,
their hearts of inconsolable grief.
THE END
* * * * *
_THE STUYVESANT PRESS, Publishers,_
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THE Tree of Knowledge
A DOCUMENT BY A WOMAN
The woman who dissects her soul in these vibrant pages is, so far as can
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* * * * *
Cynthia in the Wilderness
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THE YOKE
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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
devasted and cold hearts=> devastated and cold hearts {pg 61}
whe took a most pernicious fever=> who took a most pernicious fever {pg
155}
Carolina della Marsiliano=> Carolina della Marsiliana {pg 294}