AMONG the chieftains of production who were leading Italy to prosperity and power Antonio Tarsis held the foremost place. Son of a shop-keeper in Palermo, he began life poor and without influence. It had taken him less than twenty years to build up a fortune so large that the journals of new ideals pointed to it as a terrible example. Cartoonists had fallen into the habit of picturing him with a snout and bristled ears. There was a serious portrait of him in the directors’ room of one of the companies he ruled. It was painted by a man whose impulse to please was stronger than his artistic courage. He told all that he dared. In full length, it showed a man under forty, black-bearded, with a well-turned person of middle height; small, adroit eyes heavily browed, prominent nose inclined to squatness, spare lips and broad jaws; the portrait, at a glance, of a fighter of firm grain, fashioned for success in the great battle.
So much for the Tarsis of paint and canvas. The one that faced you in the flesh had harder, crueler eyes; the living clutch of the lips was tighter; the faint yet redeeming human quality of the man in the picture was lacking. And in the hue of his skin, much darker than the painter had ventured, nature did not deny the land of his birth—Sicily. It was there, at the beginning of manhood, that chance threw him into the post of time-keeper for a silk-mill. He did his work so well that never a centesimo went to pay for moments not spent in the service of the company.
One morning Tarsis, at the door with book and pencil ready, waited in vain for the workers to arrive; and his career as a great factor in Italy’s industrial life may be dated from the week that followed, when he assembled gangs of strike-breakers to replace the men and women who had joined in a revolt against many wrongs. A strike-breaker he had been ever since. By laying low the will of others, men or masters of men, and setting up his own will, he had gained over human destinies a dominion so practical that he cared little for the theory of king and Parliament. Of small import was it who made the laws or who executed them so long as they did not take from him the power to decide what share a worker should have of the product of his hand.
For a year or two Tarsis worked at his trade of strike-breaking in the United States, and that was the making of him, so far as external things had to do with the man. He brought back to Sicily some money-winning ideas about manufacturing that lifted him into the place of superintendent of the silk-mill, and some notions about “high finance” that he picked up bore rich fruit. One day the company found itself reorganized, with Tarsis in command. That was his first big victory. He followed it up in due time by laying siege to the large silk makers of the North. His campaign took the form of a proposal to unite their works with those of the South. At first they greeted his project with smiles, but Tarsis played one company against the other so craftily that in the end, obeying the law of self-preservation, all were eager to join the union.
As master mind of the general company Tarsis smashed the idols of custom, tore down everything that retarded the making of money. The methods of generations went by the board. He struck out for new fields, and quickly Italy’s product of spun silk was feeding the looms of Russia, Austria, Great Britain, and the United States in quantities double those of the old days. Mills were set up at places easily reached by the farmer with his cocoons or near to shipping points. At Venice he turned an ancient palace into a buzzing hive and sent forth smoke and steam over the Grand Canal. There were unions of shoe factories, glass and carriage works, steamboat lines, and steel-mills; and never was Antonio Tarsis a factor unless a factor that controlled. The journals of the New Democracy muttered, and likened him to creatures of the brute world noted for their ability to reach or swallow.
One of the things Tarsis learned in the United States was that child labour in factories is a superior device for fattening stock dividends. Mario Forza, from his place in the National Parliament, once denounced him in a speech rebuking the Government for lack of interest in the toiling masses. The bodily health and moral being of thousands of children were ruined every year in Italy, he said, that men like Tarsis might pile up their absurd fortunes—an outburst that brought loud and long applause from the seats of the New Democrats. This speech was green in the memory of Tarsis that night on the riverside when he thanked Forza for the service rendered his promised wife.
A situation created by the want of money had brought Hera and Tarsis together. He had some cold-blooded reasons for wanting the beautiful patrician for his wife. She ministered to his sense of beauty, but it was the principle of success she typified that gave her greatest value in his eyes. The man of peasant blood looked to an alliance with the house of Barbiondi as the crowning triumph of his career. Hera was the fairest prize of the Lombard aristocracy. Men of noble blood and large fortune had failed to win her hand, because she could not rid herself of the conviction that to become the wife of a man for the sake of his fortune would be a mere bartering of her charms. Against such a step her whole being rose in revolt.
Tarsis had conceived the thought to possess her and had planned to do so as he had planned to gain control of the Mediterranean Steamship Line. His faithful ally was Donna Beatrice, Hera’s aunt, who strove mightily in the cause. But it was Hera’s love for her father—her wish to relieve him from the torments of poverty—that made it possible for Tarsis to attain his purpose. The sands of the Barbiondi were almost run. Their villa, built two centuries before Napoleon appeared on that side of the Alps, was all that remained of an estate once the largest in the North. Charts of old days show its forests and hillside fields bordering the river Adda from Lake Lecco in the mountains clear to the Bridge of Lodi. Like his forebears of many generations, Don Riccardo had seen the money-lenders swallow his substance. If in his own time the bites were of necessity small, they were none the less frequent. To Donna Beatrice’s skill in concealing the actual state of their purse was due the fact that the Barbiondi were able to spend a part of the winter in Milan, so that Hera, whom her aunt recognised as the family’s last asset, might be in evidence to the fashionable world. How she accomplished this never ceased to be a riddle to her brother; and he gave it up, as he gave up all riddles. His idea of a master stroke in contrivance was to go to his banker and arrange another mortgage. He was likely to go shooting or for a ride when there was a financial crisis to be met. It was at the moment that the mortgagee’s mouth watered for the last morsel that Hera, in the purest spirit of self-sacrifice, consented to a marriage with Tarsis.
Matchmakers of Milan’s fashionable world, who had known that the Tarsis millions were knocking at the Barbiondi gate, received the announcement of the betrothal as the extinguishment of their last hope, but in the world of creditors there was a wild rejoicing. The mortgagee lost his appetite for the last morsel of the estate. Milliners, makers of gowns and boots, purveyors of food and drink, sent in humble prayers for patronage instead of angry demands for pay. Everywhere the bloodhounds of debt slunk off the scent.
A day of mid-April was chosen for the wedding, and as it drew near Hera retained her studied air of cheerfulness, that Don Riccardo might not divine the price his peace of mind demanded of her. She rode about the countryside, sometimes with her father, oftener alone, while the task of preparation for the nuptials went forward under the willing hand of Aunt Beatrice. To that contented woman the bride-elect’s lukewarm interest in the affair was a source of wonder. With eyes uplifted and hands clasped she paused now and then to ask if ever Heaven had given an aunt a niece of such scant enthusiasm. Such was the situation the day that Hera had her adventure on the river. No experience of life had dwelt so pleasantly in her thought as the meeting and converse with Mario Forza. No coming event had ever interested her so warmly as that he was going to dine in Villa Barbiondi—that she was going to meet him again.
She spent the closing hours of Wednesday afternoon at her window looking over the river toward the fields and buildings of the Social Dairy. She saw one herd after another wind its way homeward up the pass and watched eagerly for the coming forth of Mario. When the file of poplars that bordered the highway by the river were casting their longest shadows she saw him ride out and begin the descent of the hill. For some time she was able to keep him in view as he trotted his horse along the level road. When he came upon the Bridge of Speranza—the waters had not ended their spree—she was conscious of a new anxiety, and when he had gained the nearer shore she felt a strange relief. A little while and the shadows of the poplars were neither short nor long, and darkness hid him from sight. Presently the voice of her father, raised in welcome, mingled with the most genial tones of Donna Beatrice, sounding up the staircase, told her that he had arrived.
“Ha, my friend!” she heard Don Riccardo saying, “this is the greatest of delights. Why, I knew your father, sir. The Marquis and I served the old king. And a gay service it was for blades who knew how to be gay. Magnificent old days!”
“I heard much of you, Don Riccardo, from my father,” Mario said.
“And I have heard much of you since you came to Milan,” the other returned. “But I never recognised you without the title; nor in the dim light of the other night did I see my old comrade in your face. But I see him now. By my faith! you take me back thirty years. And pictures of you—marvellous pictures—have I seen in the newspapers. I remember one in particular,” he ran on, a gleam in his eye. “It portrayed the Honourable Forza in action, if you please. I think he was performing a feat no more difficult than getting out of a carriage; but the camera immortalised him as an expert in the art of standing on one foot and placing the other in his overcoat pocket.”
Hera was with them now joining in the laughter. Donna Beatrice thanked Mario effusively for saving the life of Hera. The more she had reflected on the deed the more heroic it had grown in her sight. Her gratitude had its golden grain, for the fact loomed large to her mind that but for his timely action there might have been no forthcoming marriage with Antonio Tarsis, no saving of the Barbiondi ship. She was prodigal in her praise of his knightly valour, as she called it, and declared that the age of chivalry still lived. At this point a footman came to Mario’s rescue by announcing that the vermouth was served.
“And what of the progress toward peace in the human family, Honourable?” asked Don Riccardo, merrily, as they took their places at table.
Mario answered that the progress, as to the branch of the human family known as Italian, was for the time being somewhat backward. “The trouble with our party,” he said, “is that we can’t break ourselves of the habit of being right at the wrong time. Our foes are better strategists. They are wise enough to be wrong at the right time.”
“And what is this New Democracy all about, Signor Forza?” asked Donna Beatrice, as she might have asked concerning some doing on the island of Guam.
“It is an effort to mend a social machine that is badly out of repair,” he answered. “The hewer of wood is demanding a fire, the drawer of water a drink. The producer is striving to keep a little more of what he produces.”
He held up a side of the industrial picture that was the reverse of what Don Riccardo’s prospective son-in-law liked to present. His words did not square with Tarsis’s assertion that the heart of a statesman should be in his head. He gave reasons why some are rich and some are poor, and though new to those at the table, they felt that they were listening to no sentimental dreamer. He struck the key-note of the century’s new thought. If his head did lift itself toward the clouds at times, his feet remained firmly planted on the earth, and his ideals were those of a man determined to be useful in the world.
It was good, Hera thought, to look upon him; good to hear his voice, good to feel that one admired him. And Donna Beatrice, looking over the rims of her pince-nez, was seized with alarm. Their guest’s discourse might be interesting, she told herself, but she was positive there was nothing in it to command such wrapt attention on the part of her niece. When they had risen, and Mario and Hera were leading the way to the reception hall, she pulled at her brother’s coat sleeve to hold him in the alcoved passage; and, standing there amid the tapestries and trophies of shields and arms, the poor woman made known her doubts and fears.
“Riccardo, what does this mean? I say it is most extraordinary.”
“Yes, the coffee was not delicious,” he observed. “The cook is drinking absinthe again.”
“The coffee! I speak of Hera.”
“In what has she offended now?” he inquired, clasping his hands behind him and looking up at an ancestral portrait dim with the centuries.
“You ask that?” she rejoined sceptically. “But no; it is impossible that even a man could be so blind. I thank Heaven Antonio Tarsis was not present.”
“I always thank Heaven when he is not present,” Don Riccardo confessed, and his sister winced. “What crime has Hera committed?”
“On the eve of her marriage she is showing a scandalous interest in a man who is not to be her husband.”
Don Riccardo gave a low laugh of depreciation. “Mario Forza saved her life,” he reminded her. “If the fact has slipped your memory, it is not so with Hera.”
“I know,” Donna Beatrice argued, “but there are things to remember as well as things not to forget.”
“My dear sister, let our girl indulge this natural sentiment of thankfulness.”
“Thankfulness?” the other questioned, raising her brows.
“And what else? Come, my Beatrice, the strain of this wedding business has wrought upon your nerves. When the fuss is over you must go to the Adriatic for a rest.”
She said it was considerate of him, but she did not feel the need of rest. In a corner of the reception hall they found Hera at the piano, Mario beside her, turning the page. They asked him to sing, and he began a ballad of the grape harvest in Tuscany. It pictured the beauty of the rich clusters, the sun-burned cheeks and rugged mirth of the peasant maids, stolen kisses, troths plighted, and the ruby vintage drunk at the wedding feast. The song was manly and sung in a manly voice.
While his clear baritone filled the room and Hera played the accompaniment the feelings of Don Riccardo were stirred deeply. From his chair by the wall he looked sadly upon his daughter and his old comrade’s son, and hoped, for her sake, that what might have given him gladness at one time would not happen now. The words of his sister had moved him more than he let her know. What if Mario Forza had come into her heart? What if the marriage to which she was to go should prove the funeral of a true love? What if that were added to the price she was going to pay for helping her father? His impulse was to take her in his arms, tell her to accept any happiness that destiny had to offer, and defy the issue whatever it might be. Instead, he rang for a glass of cognac.
When Hera had sung a romance of old Siena Don Riccardo asked Mario about that “idealistic experiment,” the Social Dairy, and learned that it was no longer an experiment, but a prosperous object lesson for those willing to listen to the New Democracy. Mario told them a little of the life of the place, and Don Riccardo suggested that they all go and see for themselves.
“It would give me pleasure,” Mario assured him.
“I should like to go very much,” Hera said.
“Then we shall visit you to-morrow.” Don Riccardo decided, with an enthusiasm which Aunt Beatrice did not share.