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