CHAPTER IX
A SEED OF GRATITUDE
IN the evening they departed from Charing Cross, and without interruption their journey to France was accomplished. When a day had come and gone the Alpine solitudes were behind them, and they beheld once more the Arcadian valleys of Vaudois. Soon after that they moved in the sunlight over stretches of Lombardian plain. Now the azure above them resembled the sky color of pictures in old missals. How beautiful it was to Hera’s eyes! She felt the irresistible charm of the prospect, even as the barbarians did in ancient days. She wondered if it was any different then. Through all time those plains seemed to have been under the husbandman’s rule, ever fruitful, ever smiling in their bright verdure.
Tarsis lowered a window and the breath of springtime fanned their faces. It brought a delicious freshness from the little man-made streamlets that, catching the heavens’ mood, wove a blue network over the land, and sparkled in the sun-play like great strings of precious stones. In their purpose of irrigation they crossed the white highroads and the by-paths, coursed in sluices under the railway, and cut the fields how and where they pleased, too well bent upon practical service to care for symmetry of form. They drew near one another, they rambled far apart, but in the end always meeting in the wide canal that bore elsewhere their enriching flood; and so forever running, yet never wasted. A few weeks, and this pampered soil would render its marvellous account; the meadows would yield their many harvests; the rice stalks would be crowded with ears; the clover would be like a blossoming thicket, the cornfields like canebrakes; but the men and women who toiled to produce this abundance would live on in their poverty. The clod-breakers were there again to-day—as they had been with the returning springtime for ages, about their work—boys digging trenches, ploughmen at their shafts, women and girls planting seed.
Hera noticed that the villages along the way had not the neat and cheerful look of the French and Swiss hamlets. Seen from afar, crowning a hilltop, their tiled roofs brightly red in the sun-glare, and the yellow walls gleaming like burnished gold, the pictorial expression of them was full of beauty; but when the train halted in the heart of one, and its wretchedness lay bare, her spirit was saddened by the grim reality.
“I mean to do something to help the poor of Milan,” she said to Tarsis, one of the gloomy pictures haunting her memory.
“You have chosen a wide field of good endeavour,” he returned, in a slight tone of banter.
“And I wonder why the field is so wide,” she pursued. “Milan is called our City Prosperous.”
“I think the reason is not difficult to find,” he said, with assurance.
“Do you mean that the poor are unworthy?”
“No; I should not give that as the first cause; it is a result. This sentimental nonsense called the New Democracy has turned working people’s heads. It gives them puffed-up notions of their value, and they will not work for the wages that the masters offer—the wages that it is possible for them to pay. They spend too much time talking about the dignity of labour. If only they would work for what they can get and not squander their wages in the wine-shops they would be well enough off. They want too much; more than they will ever get. Their warfare against capital only hurts themselves.”
“Do they want more than they need?” she asked.
“I am not familiar with their needs,” he answered, with a note of petulance. “I do know, however, that they often demand more than it is possible to pay. I am not a theorist. I happen to have gained my knowledge in the school of practice, as you may be aware.”
“Still, suffering exists among them,” she reasoned, “and, while the fault may be as you say, the families of these men—misguided though they may be—are the victims rather than the culprits. I suppose it would be only common humanity to give them help.”
“Oh, yes; that is true,” he acknowledged. “The women and children have to play martyr while the men indulge in what our new economists delight to call divine discontent. By the way,” he went on, “I am paying some charitable concern five thousand liras a year.”
His manner told her that it was a benefice ungraced by a sense of moral obligation; that he merely had followed the example of modern rich men by returning a part of his tremendous revenue in benefactions to the public.
“It is good to give heart to the disheartened, relief to the suffering,” she said, holding up a journal they had obtained at Turin. “Have you seen this account of disorders in the Porta Ticinese quarter? I fear there is a hungry mouth in Milan that will show its teeth some day.”
Tarsis could hear the voice of Mario Forza. He betrayed a twitching of the lips, but tried to carry it off with a careless smile, as he said:
“I suppose the money is put to good use. Precisely how they disburse it I do not know. The secretary sends printed reports, but I have not read them.”
There was a quality of absence in his manner, accounted for by the fact that his mind was busying itself with Hera’s remark about the hungry mouth. While in Paris he had received by post from unknown senders not one but many copies of the newspaper that contained the picture of his punched nose and its plenteous flow of gold pieces. Then the cartoon had seemed to him merely one more shaft of malice aimed at a successful man. In his career of achievement he had steeled his sensibility against criticism, rating it as the twin brother of envy, and borrowing no disquiet on either score; but now, grace to the chance observation of Hera, he saw the cartoon with a new and clearer eye. He perceived the force at work behind it—the popular ill-will, which gave such point to the product of the artist’s pencil; and he apprehended, as he never had before, that herein smouldered an ember easily fanned to flame.
He had accustomed himself to meeting difficulties promptly, and turning apparent disadvantage to a factor of self-service. Now he reflected—and the thought gleamed shrewdly in his half-closed eyes—that this ember of peril might be smothered with a few handfuls of those coins, which were his by right of conquest, though the growing madness of the time found them so ignoble. Indeed, it was an excellent idea—this one of his wife—to throw a bone to the snarling dogs. He would give her charitable whim his countenance, even his unstinted support. He would let his wife scatter largesse among the malcontents; let her shine as the doer of good deeds, but the world would know—the house of Barbiondi had no name for wealth—the workers would applaud Antonio Tarsis, friend of the poor. Moreover, this co-operation would place his wife under an obligation to him, give her one more proof of his desire to gratify her every wish. So he said to her, at the moment that the train entered the suburbs of Milan:
“I count it noble of you, Hera, to have a care for the unfortunate. A little thought convinces me that you are right in your view. There are times when we should not stop to reason why.”
“I am glad that we can see alike in this,” she said. “There is joy, I know, in giving.”
“And I wish to be in accord with you. Believe me, you have my warmest sympathy in whatever work you contemplate. As to funds, I need not tell you that my fortune is at your disposal.”
“You are most generous; I thank you,” she said, and told him of the plan conceived in London.
In the station they saw Don Riccardo and his sister coming down the platform to welcome them.
“Babbo!” Hera cried out before her father caught sight of her, and the next moment she was in his arms.
“Ah, truant!” he said, holding her hands and swinging them, while he looked into her eyes as if to read their secret. “I have you again. And you come to stay. Is it not so, my treasure?”
“You may be sure of that, babbo!” she laughed, and turned to receive her aunt’s caresses. “Here I am and here I stay. Long live Italia is my song, and I think Antonio will join in the chorus.”
“With all my heart!” Tarsis said genially, his hopes taking a sudden bound. It was the first time she had addressed him by his Christian name.
Never had anyone seen Hera in better spirits. It was good to be once more in the land she loved, to hear again the familiar “minga” and “lu” of her native patter; but the real inspiration of her gladness, although the fact did not appear to her mind, was that she had come to dwell in the city whose walls enclosed Mario Forza, and whose air he breathed. Aunt Beatrice accepted her lightness of heart triumphantly as a tribute to her own splendid work as a matchmaker. Tarsis’s automobile awaited them, and they got in, all four. Hera noted that the crest of her house was painted none too small on the olive green sides of the car.
Through the spick and span wide, modern streets they rolled to the Barbiondi palace. Milan was gayly picturesque in her springtime magic of light and colour. An impress of the Gothic feeling met the eye in buildings that recalled where they did not typify the pointed architecture of the north. They passed a procession of priests and acolytes following a crozier that flashed the sunlight. Here and there, at a street corner, a public porter slept peacefully while awaiting a call to work. For a minute or two they were in the busy movement of Via Manzoni. Cavalry officers in bright uniforms lounged at the outdoor tables of the cafés, or dragged their sabres lazily amid the throngs of civilians.
Then they entered a quieter way, that yielded vistas of courtyards with frescoed walls, arcades clad in climbing greenery, playing fountains; and at the next turning they were in sight of Palazzo Barbiondi. For two months artisans had been at work restoring the ancient family seat to life and splendour. In point of splendour Tarsis had done somewhat more than recall the past. As they approached the arched gateway Don Riccardo exclaimed at sight of the newly-coloured iron palings tipped with gilt. The fountain in the court was playing. Out of the pool rose an Apollo Musagetes, and from his crown a sparkling shower shot down in diverging lines to symbolise the sun’s rays, or—as the Greeks had it—the arrows of Apollo. The side walls of the court were frescoed with the Barbiondi crown and the “Lux in tenebras lucet” of the once haughty and powerful house.
A corps of domestics in livery of white and olive were waiting, lined on either side of the main entrance. The fountain statues and all the marble ornamenture of the court had been despoiled of their yellow patina, and showed once more in native white. The façade of the palace—accounted one of the noblest in the North—had been spared by the renovator, but its grand staircase, rising from one side of the wide portico, and its carved balustrade, were as white as St. Bernard’s peak. Everywhere that the artisans could turn back the clock they had done so by dint of scouring and scraping, painting and stuccoing, chiselling and carving, tearing out and building in.
Don Riccardo paused at the opening to the grand staircase and looked up at the armorial bearings of his house done in stone.
“Bacco!” he exclaimed, “we are the first Barbiondi to set foot here for more than a hundred years.”
It was in the Duke’s heart to denounce the fungous nobility and shop-keeping snobs who had from time to time violated his ancestral home with their occupancy; but in the presence of Tarsis he bridled his tongue.
“Yes, it is indeed more than a hundred years,” remarked Donna Beatrice, adjusting her lorgnette. “Our eighteenth Riccardo was the last of the line to dwell here. With this day, Antonio,” she added, beaming upon the bridegroom, “we may say with literal truth that the restoration begins. Ah, that eighteenth Duke was an open-handed nobleman—a lord of regal expenditure. Lombardy never had so liberal a patron of the beautiful arts. These mural paintings, I believe, are the fruit of his munificence.”
“Yes; our great grandfather,” mused the living Duke, casting his eye about the stairway. “Still, I should be none the less proud of him had he lavished less on his walls and more on his posterity.”
They ascended the broad steps, and Donna Beatrice, primed with the lore of the place, began to radiate her knowledge. The staircase, with its balustrade of richly carved Carrara, she announced was a product of Vanitelli, and the solitary work Milan possessed of that great architect. This acquisition, as well as many more to which she drew his attention, proved a surprise to the new lord of the palace. The idea of buying the mediæval pile came to Tarsis—so he believed—as an inspiration, and he had lost not a second in giving it practical form. Accompanied by the owner—a Genoese money-lender—he went there one morning, and spent something less than half an hour looking about the palace, the stables, and the grounds. Before the day was out he had bound the bargain with his check. Within twenty-four hours the contractor and his gang attacked the house, armed with authority to renovate and restore.
It was with a newly-awakened interest, therefore—not unmixed with an appreciation of its humorous side—that Tarsis listened to Donna Beatrice’s running talk. In a manner that made him think of the guides in the Brera Gallery she reeled off the history of this painting or that medallion, explained the frescoes of the ceiling, and identified the busts in the niches, with their age-old faces shining again like newly scrubbed schoolboys.
A sculptured frieze that bordered the staircase pictured a battle between the Lombards and the Barbiondi in the days of King Alboin. Above it, following the long flight of steps, unfolded a panorama of scenes from the life of Mary. At the top of the staircase, set in the wall, was a trophy that had been sawed out of a church by some conquering Barbiondi. It depicted St. Mark preaching at Alexandria. In the banquet hall were some less pious conceptions of beauty. Here the mural art found expression in a hunting scene and a mediæval dance with the hills of the Brianza in the background.
The grand saloon—a gorgeous chamber in marble and gold—was worthy of a royal abode. It had been known for centuries as the Atlantean chamber. Engaging the eye before all else were two rows of Atlantes supporting the ceiling on either side, all of heroic size. They were equal in number to the windows, between which they rested on pedestals of grained marble. A huge fist of each gripped a bronze candelabra of many lights. Their torsos were undraped, but the rest of them was lost in chiselled oak leaves. On the ceiling pink sea nymphs sported in silvery foam and gods and angels revelled in rosy vapours. Through the stained glass of a dome the sun flowed down upon the mellow fairness of the tessellated pavement.
They all paused before a large painting. It was a vivid picture of Italy’s chief industry during the era of her free cities—men slaying one another in furious combat. Where the glory of war shone brightest—where the blood flowed fastest—there could be seen a great car, drawn by oxen, flying the standard of Milan, and bearing an altar with the host. The leather-clad warriors of the time called it their caroccio. Like the Israelites’ ark of the covenant, it was a rallying point in battle, and reminded the artisans that they had a church as well as a city to fight for.
“It is the car of Heribert,” said Hera, for the enlightenment of Tarsis, “an Archbishop of Milan. He was of our race.”
“And the inventor of the caroccio,” added Donna Beatrice, proudly.
“And the first labour agitator. Isn’t that so?” put in Don Riccardo, keeping a straight face.
“I don’t know what that is,” replied his sister.
“Signor Tarsis can tell you, perhaps,” the other suggested.
“A labour agitator?” Tarsis repeated. “Why, I should define him as a breeder of discontent and a foe to the public peace.”
“If that definition be fair,” Hera rejoined earnestly, “Heribert was indeed a labour agitator. Undeniably he sowed discontent, but discontent against injustice.”
“And what was his particular method?” asked Tarsis, smiling as if to make light of her remark and keeping his eyes on the mimic warfare.
“He gave tongue to a hitherto voiceless people,” she answered, “and made them into an army, so that they were able not only to express their wrongs but to fight for their rights.” The words seemed to have a present-day meaning, and with her companions’ perception of the fact the name of Mario Forza leaped into their minds. It stirred them, one and all, to a fresh appreciation that the man she had made no secret of loving was still a prevalent force in her life; her thoughts were in sympathy with his, the colours he gave to the world were the colours in which she beheld it.
To her father’s face the incident brought a look of pity; it caused Donna Beatrice to screw up her little features into wrinkles of disgust, and in the changing glances of Tarsis it was easy to read a rising tide of resentment. When he spoke it was in the cold vein of mockery whereof on occasion he could be master.
“The rights of labour,” he said, “are, of course, the only rights that a nation should consider. We have a new wisdom in Italy—it has come in with the New Democracy—the wisdom that is blind to the rights of capital and laughs at the idea of its having any virtue; all the prosperity our country enjoys to-day, understand, is due to the champions of the horny-fisted—the dreamers of the Camera. Is not that the fact, Don Riccardo?”
“To be precise,” the Duke answered, “I don’t know.”
“Surely you must be aware,” his son-in-law asserted, “that it is not men like myself who are giving the country what she needed so long—the breath of industrial life. Oh, no; it is our critics who are doing this, the silver-tongued doctrinaires. They would give us a very different sort of industry—the sort you see in that picture. Strife and bloodshed were the business of that day, and will be in ours, depend upon it, unless a stronger hand rules at Rome.”
“What do you think ought to be done?” asked Donna Beatrice, frightened by the black forecast.
“Done? The thing is simple. The Government should take measures to silence these mischief-makers, these plotters against industrial peace. We build up the wealth of the nation, they would tear it down. They delude themselves with the notion that they are the only patriots. How delicious! They are Italy’s deadliest foes.”
“I tremble to think of the consequences,” said Donna Beatrice. “Why, our heads would not be safe. See how those blacksmiths and clod-hoppers lay about them with their pikes and terrible swords! I suppose the heads they are cracking are the heads that wouldn’t take in their new ideas! Ugh!”
“Still, the world is somewhat hard for many,” Don Riccardo observed, for the sake of a word in support of Hera, who had moved away, resolved not to join issue with her husband.
“I have always found the world what I made it,” Tarsis returned, and they passed on toward the door of the library. The contractor had stocked the massive oak shelves with volumes old and new, and supplied the room with modern leather furniture.
“Oh, the Napoleonic relic!” exclaimed Donna Beatrice at sight of a large oblong table of Florentine mosaic. Tarsis was all attention.
“Napoleonic relic?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Ah, you must know,” she told him, “that when the conqueror came to Milan he made the palace his headquarters. This table was once in Villa Barbiondi, and my great-grandfather gave it to Napoleon.”
Tarsis drew a chair to the table, and, with a nod of apology to the others, seated himself; resting his arms on the polished surface, he moved his right hand in simulation of the act of writing.
“It is of convenient height,” he said, “and I shall use it. I cannot tell you how pleased I am to find this relic. Napoleon Bonaparte is the man above all the world’s heroes whom I admire.”
“Truly a marvellous man, a matchless genius,” attested Donna Beatrice, gravely contemplative.
“From childhood his life has been my guiding star,” Tarsis continued. “And to possess, to use the table that he used, is a privilege I never thought to enjoy. And the work itself,” he added, rising and drawing back to admire it, with an interest which no other object of art in the palace had been able to awaken in him, “is it not magnificent?”
“Quite a treasure,” acquiesced Don Riccardo, showing more concern in the bookcases, which he was sweeping with his eyes; but for Hera—explain it she could not—the thing inspired a strange aversion—a feeling that came vividly to her mind in after days when that table played its tragic part in the destiny of the man she called husband.