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.

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—

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

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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 be judged, entirely frank.

This is not her only merit, for her delight in the flexibility of language lends an exotic charm which, like the scent of orchids, fatigues and delights the sense.

Her diary is “not for little people nor for fools.” It is a document to be studied with scientific curiosity by those whose interest lies in sounding the hidden depths of human character.

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Cynthia in the Wilderness

A NOVEL BY

HUBERT WALES

In this story Mr. Wales has taken for his theme another view of the sex problem.

Cynthia is a woman of exceptional attractiveness, mentally and physically. In her married state she finds herself in the delicate position of an intensely human Venus placed upon a pedestal of marble deference by a husband of intemperate and decadent proclivities.

There is a broad realism pervading the story; it is strong and poignant, yet it is straightforward psychology presented with an undeniable skill.

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THE YOKE

A NOVEL BY

HUBERT WALES

This is a story of the delicate problem which confronts the sexes: the moral attitude and welfare of men and women. The author has chosen an infrequently considered phase, and has dared to treat it graphically.

The characters are strong, attractive and always interesting. The problem of which the story treats is vividly and fearlessly laid before the reader. A more subtle insinuation of the question may have been possible, but the author has felt that there can be no indelicacy in a straightforward, serious discussion of an existing evil condition.

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Mr. & Mrs. Villiers

A NOVEL BY

HUBERT WALES

Man is naturally the aggressor in the connubial relations. His desires and passions are more positive than woman’s. Women of unusual mental and physical charms are often found renitent and lacking in the disposition which makes for perfect conjugal happiness. Such women have little difficulty in marrying, although entirely unfitted for the marriage relation. Mrs. Villiers is a woman of this type.

The story is a fair and legitimate study of opposite temperaments. It is intensely realistic, and the difficult problem, which is by no means rare in real life, has been handled with dignity and with such restraint as not to offend.

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