HERA found herself one of the hundreds of peaceful visitors shut out in company with the rabble that was eager to feed the furnace of rebellion. Awhile she sat her horse wondering what she might do to gain entrance to the city. There was no recourse but to make herself known to the guards and entreat them for leave to pass; and she was on the point of that appeal, which must have proved vain, when a burst of martial music and the acclaim a crowd gives marching men made her pause. She knew it must be the regiment of Colonel Rosario, and her heart leaped with gladness.
First the plumes and shining brass of the musicians came into view, then the figure of her father’s old comrade at the head of his men. For a minute she watched the Bersaglieri wheel into the broad highway and swagger toward the town; but when she saw the column halt before all of it had made the turning she rode as fast as she could through the ruck of men and vehicles to the Colonel’s side.
“Donna Hera!” the commander exclaimed, saluting her in military form and covering his amazement with a smile.
“They will not let me go on,” she told him without ado.
“And you are obliged to return to Villa Barbiondi to-night,” he added, as if comprehending. “That is a difficulty, to be sure, but one not insurmountable. For example, I will send Major Quaranta with you to the villa if you do not object.”
“No, no!” she said, impulsively. “You are kind, but—oh, I cannot go back to-night. I must enter the city at once. It is an affair—of life and death.”
Colonel Rosario was not the man to question when a lady—and the daughter of his life-long friend—spoke thus, although a king’s command and the wall of a besieged city stood between him and the attainment of her wish.
“If you do not mind helping me lead the regiment,” he said, his eyes beaming, “we shall manage it.”
He gave the order to advance. The drum-major’s baton went up, and the column moved, Hera riding beside the Colonel. The latter kept his eyes straight ahead, as if unconscious of the radiant woman whose skirts almost touched his stirrup, and Hera looked neither to right nor left. Her presence was a breach of military decorum that puzzled the officers’ minds, but pleased their eyes, as it did those of the crowd that flanked the way. Few jibes were hurled at the soldiers, and more than once a cheer was given for the beautiful signora. At the gate the musicians gave forth the national quickstep, to which the Bersaglieri march best, and the guards posted to maintain the siege marvelled to see a whole regiment escort one lady into Milan.
They passed to the inner side of the wall at the moment that Mario Forza, in response to the spurious call of Tarsis, set out from his house in Via Senato. As the head of the line wheeled into the Bastion drive by the Public Gardens Hera, with only a look into the Colonel’s face to speak her gratitude, kept on her way in the Corso. By this time Mario too had entered that street, and had she continued in it they must have met under the eyes of Tarsis and set at naught his scheme of revenge. As it was she turned into Via Borghetto, meaning to reach the hospital in a detour through by-ways. It could not have been more than two minutes after she had left the Corso when Tarsis, behind the window drapery, saw Mario pass on his way to the monastery.
From little Via Borghetto Hera moved into the Monforte Bastions and followed that broad highway to Via Cappuccini, the narrow street that bordered the rear gardens of Palazzo Barbiondi. She had gone a few paces beyond the gateway of the palace when the crackle of musketry not far off startled her senses. As the reverberations died out there rose in stronger volume a hoarse din of human voices sounding, it seemed, from a point between where she was and the General Hospital. And she wondered if she would be able, after all to reach the place where they said Mario lay.
At a crook in the street an unseen hand gave the bridle a violent pull and brought her horse to a standstill. The dusk of the narrow way had become heavy, but in the affrighted, yellow-bearded face of the man who had stopped her she recognised Signor Ulrich.
“A thousand pardons!” he began, out of breath. “There is great danger. Your Excellency had best go to the palace at once.”
Perceiving him unaware that the palace was no longer her abode, she thanked him and would have ridden on. “I must keep on my way,” she said.
But he held fast to the bridle rein.
“Excellency, go and warn your husband,” he entreated her. “In the face of his deadly peril he is alone—all alone. There is not a second to lose.”
While he spoke he turned her horse around.
“Of what would you have me warn him?” she asked, displeased with his meddling.
“Of that!” he answered, pointing to where the firing and human roar arose from the huddle of narrow streets. “It is no time for a lady to ride,” he added, offensively, “even—even if the Honourable Forza is not afraid to be abroad.”
“Signor Forza?” she repeated, puzzled to know his meaning.
“Yes, Excellency. Oh, I saw him not very far away,” he asserted, with an insolent effect of shrewdness.
A moment she looked him in the eye, conscious that in the lawless spirit of the hour, he had spoken as he would not have dared in a calmer day; but, eager for the news of Mario, she ignored the insult conveyed in the Austrian’s insinuating phrases and manner.
“The journals,” she said, “have it that Signor Forza is in the hospital, dying.”
“That is false. He is not in the hospital, and he is far from dying, if I am a judge.”
“When did you see Signor Forza?”
“Not five minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“In the Corso, going toward the Venetian Gate.”
“But he has been wounded.”
“Not enough to keep him from the saddle.”
“He was on horseback?”
“Yes, Excellency. Oh I beg you, go and warn your husband of his danger.”
“He must know,” Hera said, absently, her mind dwelling on the assurance that Mario was alive and would live.
“He does not know the worst,” the other told her. “I went to demand protection—soldiers to guard him. At the Questura they almost mocked me. The mob has broken through the military lines and is sweeping this way.”
“Will they attack the palace?”
“Attack! They have only to walk in.”
“Why do you think they mean to harm Signor Tarsis?”
“I heard them crying out for his life. Go, oh, go and save him! There is time for escape by the Corso gate.’”
“Why do you not go to him?” Hera asked.
“I! Oh, Excellency! If you had heard them cry out against us. They will burn and slay. None whom they hate will be spared.”
From her heart sprang a wish that dazzled with its splendid hope, but left her in the next instant filled with shame. “Addio, Excellency,” she heard the Austrian saying; “for me, I am off.” Then she was aware of his waving hand as he withdrew up a narrow way that cut through to Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Her eyes took in the bulk of his receding figure, but her thought was not with him. In the glimmer of an outhung lamp she saw him turn about and with a forefinger stab the air in the direction of Palazzo Barbiondi. She strove to rally the forces of her mind—to set some rule over her contending impulses.
With equal power the voice of moral obligation and that of pure desire made their plea. Now the duty of a wife pointed the way, now her love for Mario. Insistently the prospect of Tarsis dead mingled itself with a vision of her fetters struck off—her heart no longer bond, but free to obey the law it had broken. She had prayed that Mario’s life might be spared, and now she was tempted to leave her husband to his destiny, to go on to the love for which her soul hungered, to claim the happiness that seemed ordained of events. In the minute that she waited, a captive of warring emotions, shop-keepers up and down the street were putting shutters to their windows and shouting to her, “To your home, signora; to your home!” The air grew thick with the roar of the mob. A few seconds and it would be too late to save the life that meant death to her happiness.
“Down with Tarsis!” The cry was so near as to rise distinct out of the fearful dissonance. And in an impulse that came as the words fell upon her ears she gave her horse a stroke of the whip and galloped hard for the palace gates. In the court she sprang from the saddle, ran past the garage and stables, reached the main portico, and hurried up the grand staircase and through the gloom of the corridors, calling the name of her husband—“Antonio! Antonio!” There was no answer save the chuckling echo of the great halls. She gained the Atlantean chamber, and, thinking of the library where he spent so much of his time, made for the door of it, at the farther-most angle of the great room. Knocking stoutly, she called out again:
“It is I, Hera!”
On the other side there was the sound of movement, the striking of a match; then the door was opened, and she beheld Tarsis, a lighted candle in his trembling hand. In that moment all the bitterness he had planted in her soul gave way before a flood of pity.
“I knew your voice,” he said, weakly. “Why have you come back?”
“To tell you to fly! The mob will be here!”
He seemed to be in a stupor of fear. “I thought I heard them,” he said, huskily. “Are they coming to the palace?”
“Yes; they have broken through the military lines. Signor Ulrich told me.”
“Signor Ulrich! You saw him?”
“Yes; he has fled. He said that he heard them crying out against you!”
“What did they say at the Questura? Am I not to have my guard of carbineers?”
“There is no time for a guard,” she answered, taking hold of his sleeve. “I tell you that the mob is approaching up Via Cappuccini. Come! We can go out by the Corso gate.”
“Yes; let us go,” he said, and started across the vast apartment, Hera at his side, while the candle in his shaking hand made their shadows do a strange fandango. In their ears was the roar of human fury, sifted by the encompassing walls into a haunting murmur. They passed the picture of Heribert and his warriors and were at the point of setting foot in the corridor, when they halted and looked each other in the face.
“My God!” Tarsis breathed, and would have let fall the candle, but Hera caught it and held it still lighted. “It is too late!”
He was in the last extremity of fright, with a face the colour of clay and his limbs quaking as one who has an ague.
“We must go back,” Hera said, and drew at his coat sleeve, for he seemed to have lost power to move from where he stood. Her thought flew to the library as a harbour of safety.
“Come,” she said to him; “they may not think to look there.”
Across the field of tessellated marble they retraced their steps, he following her, clinging close to her, as a child might have clung to its guardian. A sudden horror had mastered him, a sense of retribution at hand. The monster of poverty, which he had belittled as a bogey of the demagogue, was speaking to him with no uncertain voice. He could hear the workers, whom he had never thought of before as an army of might, coming in their corporate strength to be his executioner.
Tarsis entered the library first, and would have taken no precaution other than to close the door and lock it; but Hera bethought herself to draw to the silken hanging that hid the entrance from view on the other side. Then she closed the door and turned the key. Silently, powerlessly, they awaited the hazard of events.