Venice, who has consecrated and exalted in her soft and persuasive arms a thousand powerful loveknots, placed the wonderful peace of her mortal beauty round the grand flame of Maria Guasco and Marco Fiore; the silent caress of her glimmering lights, and the tenderness of her melancholy. The amorous fluid that thousands of lovers gathered wherever they lived, wherever they moved in Venice—that amorous fluid that emanates from her quiet waters, from the balconies of her palaces, from the veiled voices of those who sing in flowering gardens on quiet side canals, that emanates from the gloomy colour of her gondolas, from the whiteness of the marble which the water has left intact or obscured, which emanates from every lineament of the place and from every tint of the sky, enveloped Marco Fiore and Maria Guasco, and multiplied their flame into a precipitous tumult of their lives.
Their love had something mysterious, powerful, and troublous in that ardent renewal, which engulfed them as in a whirlwind. They seemed blind and deaf to every other aspect and every other sound of life which was not their amorous delirium.If no idyllic sweetness, if no sentimental tenderness brightened the passing of the days, the fever which caused them to palpitate, which singularly always gave them fresh fire, had aspects unknown to many, unknown even to themselves. A veil was over their eyes when they turned them away from the adored person; and the vision of Venice, where their days were slipping away, was like a dream around them, was like a scene unknown, appearing and vanishing just as in a dream. Never had Maria Guasco, whose beauty consisted above all in a lively, tender, and proud expression of countenance, never had she carried so clearly and openly those signs of amorous happiness which cause envy and regret to those who have never been in love, or who no longer love. Never, too, had Marco Fiore experienced a greater passion, or a larger sense of subjugation to a creature beloved.
Sometimes, however, passion in its violence seemed odious to him, and he would gaze at Maria with eyes sad and stern but still passionate, and he would speak to her shortly and commandingly, while his strong hands would press her soft hands so roughly as almost to cause her pain.
Then she would become silent, biting her lips to prevent a cry, and bowing her head as if conquered and crushed.
Long indeed were the silences of the lovers, and gladly were their lips dumb, as if words were useless to their understanding and thoughts weighedheavily on their hearts, or as if they felt it was profoundly dangerous to give life to their thoughts with a word. They remained side by side in their room in the Grand Hotel on the Grand Canal, silent and absorbed. Sometimes they stood together on the small marble balcony watching the canal winding among the magnificent palaces towards theSalute, with joined hands and fingers interlaced, and watched for a long time the bizarre reflections of the water changing colour beneath the light of the sky, always silent and oppressed. On the occasions when the gondola carried them in long excursions, left to the choice of the gondolier, to the more solitary canals and islands, Marco became more imperious in his lover’s exactions. If Maria drew aside from him even for a minute, he called her back with a sudden and almost angry gesture; if she had a bunch of flowers in her belt he snatched them one by one, kissed them, and threw them into the water, and he would continually take her handkerchief and gloves and press them to his face and lips.
They spoke seldom and subduedly, just their names, or a monosyllable uttered questioningly and repeated with an acquiescent nod and dropping of the eyes. Their passion, even in its greatest flame, was collected and gloomy, and just as they were not exuberant in words they were not exuberant in smiles. No puerile happiness or youthful gaiety enlivened its intensity. Their passion seemedgreater than they could endure, heavy and crushing in its force and vigour, and their souls and heart were too little to contain it; or its secret violence and immeasurable power seemed to surprise and dispirit them every instant, as if they were ignorant of its origin and end. Every now and then Maria, as if she could no longer endure his intense glances, placed her hands over Marco’s eyes, as against the light of the sun which vivifies and yet blinds, and sometimes he returned the gesture, placing his hand on her ruby mouth, to stop her rare words and continuous kisses, as if his fibres were relaxing beneath the ideal and sensual caress which was consuming him. Their memories, too, were wrapped in a veil, or they would have remembered their first journey; their flight in which in a thousand forms of joy their cry of liberty had broken out, in which a thousand smiles carelessly adorned their day, in which the song of the simplest and purest jollity overflowed their mornings, and the laugh which closed their day and sent them deliciously to sleep.
They remembered none of that. This other love, silent, without jests, without songs, without smiles; this turbid and gloomy love resembled a spell-bound spiritual imprisonment, a magical slavery of the senses, and a tyrannous voluptuousness which filled them with madness and deadly intoxication.
Their reason for leaving Rome was never mentionedby them. Perhaps once or twice the woman wished to allude to it, but immediately, pale with anger and jealousy, the man had cried out—“No!”
And he closed her again to his breast, where his heart beat as tumultuously as on the day in which he had nearly seen the hand of Emilio Guasco, her husband, take her hand in the shade and lead her away. Very often such pallor and such fury passed over Marco’s face as to give a greater clearness and heat to the flame of love. Often, too, when she seemed thoughtful and absorbed, and her soul was slipping away from the place and altar of passion he would lean over her, and, seized again by the madness of that day, would embrace her fiercely, and his breath on her forehead seemed as if it wished to devour the thought which was going towards Rome.
She understood at once, and exclaimed passionately—
“No, Marco, no!”
Then Marco would stammer a question brokenly in a monosyllable.
“Mine? Mine?”
“Thine! thine!” she answered, looking at him.
Nothing more. Nothing more than these two words, so monotonous, intense and inexorable. Not another demand, not another reply; not a promise, not an oath. The words of possession: thine and mine. The length of this delirium andthe passing of time left no impression on their minds. Others counted their days by their troubles or pleasures, not so Marco and Maria.
Four weeks had fled on a day at the end of July when, one morning, Maria rising from the old-fashioned chair, approached a table, and, taking a pen, dipped it in the ink as if to write. Then she trembled at her act, which drew her back to the fiery circle of her love, and she looked at Marco. He had seen all without showing surprise. Then she heard his voice, that voice of other times, a little tired, a little veiled, letting fall a question almost of politeness, but without any interest in a reply—
“Are you going to write, Maria?”
A fit of trembling caused her to hesitate. He did not notice her disturbance as his eyes were lowered. She sat down to write. But the tumult within her was so strong that her hand traced mechanically meaningless signs. Maria had no one to write to, and did not know what to write. Her hand fell upon the paper, and she bent her head. Still he noticed nothing.
“Marco?” she asked, in the cold clear voice of former times, “Marco, what is the matter?”
And truth was evoked from the depth of the man’s soul. Truth said simply and cruelly: “I am tired.”
So it was all that memorable day. Maria sawin Marco Fiore’s face nothing but an unspeakable weariness. On the marble balcony above the silver-grey water which he was looking at, his weariness lent a leaden colour to his lips and eyes, and a dense pallor to his face. A sad wrinkle of exhaustion was at each corner of his mouth. Again she asked, “Are you tired?”
Again he replied, cruelly and monotonously, “I am tired.”
She saw him stretch himself on the soft black cushions of the gondola, as if he wished to stay there for ever. He did not look to see if she was beside him and shut his eyes as if asleep, but without sleeping, nor did he issue from that silence and stupor till they landed from the gondola at the Palazzo Ferro. When at night he retired, after touching her hair with the lightest of kisses, when later in her soft night-garments she went to see him asleep, she stopped near the bed. Horrible sight! Marco was sleeping heavily, with his head buried in the pillows just as if it was his last sleep, and all his face was decomposed in its fatigue and pallor, even the lips were white beneath the moustaches, and his forehead had a crease of weariness and bitterness. Too long, indeed, did she gaze at that sight, and drink in its poison with her soul and eyes. She felt her heart like a stone within her breast, and her soul wound her person like a sharp rock with a tremendous spasm. She felt, too, the floods of bitterness likea poison diffuse themselves through her being. Falling on the bed in her white garments she lapsed into the same lead-like lethargy as her lover.
Of their exhausted forces of desire, of their weary and somnolent bodies, their spent phantasies and arid souls, of this cessation of spiritual life, on the following day, they understood the tremendous truth. They understood how, as in common people, that rude and fierce instinct, which is jealousy, had plotted against them; a jealousy physical and base, taking the appearance of a higher and more ardent love, of a passion larger and more consuming; and how like inexperienced and weak creatures they had been victims of a trivial deception of the senses, abandoning themselves to it, as to a renewing flame of love more youthful and more devouring. The man felt the shame mount to his face for having mistaken the impulse of a vulgar, fatuous, and virile affirmation of possession for a fresher and more vigorous desire of love’s happiness, and he experienced a great repentance for having surrendered to it their hope in a new future for their love. But more supreme was the woman’s shame for having fallen into the net of the senses, she so proud, so modest, and so chaste even in passion. Her sorrow was the more supreme for having ever believed that love can be reborn from its ashes.
For a day they hated and despised themselvesas never before. For a day they hated themselves fiercely. Then that shadow, that coldness, and that boredom ruled over them, whose signs they had piously hidden in Rome, but which at last in Venice they no longer dared conceal.
“Spello, October....“Dearest Maria,“Since you as ever appear to me what you are, a creature of truth, and since you tell me briefly and honestly—and in reading I almost seem to hear your voice—‘Marco, our dream is over,’ I ought to elevate my spirit to your moral height where a lie is impossible, and repeat loyally, ‘Maria, our dream is over.’ It was beautiful. No meanness disturbed its violent grandeur, no weakness spoiled its power, no hypocrisy disturbed its purity, and we indeed preferred to break the social knot rather than loosen it miserably. Moreover, we preferred to give a single sorrow to others rather than inflict ridicule and humiliation on them every day, and we preferred to exile and isolate ourselves than drag deception and fraud from drawing-room to drawing-room, from home to home. We lived so impetuously and ardently in a fulness and richness of life, which, darling Maria, neither of us will ever find again, which ought not to be found again because certain destinies have but one existence. Ours is past and the dream is ended. Nothing remainsfor us except the enduring memory of its beauty and intensity.“We believed this dream to be eternal; we believed that it would have led us hand in hand together, full of desire and hope, even to the hour of death. Such is the measured small eternity of man! Not even was this true, not even was this modest cycle of years, modest compared with Time, just the life of a man and a woman, given to our dream. The hours, days, and years were limited, not by us, not by our enthusiasm, not by our anxiety, but by the laws of passion themselves, those immutable laws, alas! which each believes he can change, which each hopes to elude, and by which we are all dominated.“Adored Maria, you have had from me all the love which a young man, impassioned and sincere, can give to an adorable woman such as you are; but love is a brief matter, with a brevity which frightens all desolate and tender souls, all faithful hearts and feeling fibres. He who says that he desires only one woman for all his life, either deceives or is deceived. We wished to be constant, faithful, and tenacious of our love, but it escaped us fatally, every day increasingly, till our devastated and cold hearts felt that that love had vanished, because thus it must be, since it is the law; since this brevity is the essential condition of its force and beauty, and this brevity is the reason of its perfidious fascination. We haveloved each other, dearest Maria, for three years. A cynic would tell you that they are many, that they are too many—three years. But remember that a cynic always conceals a soul desolated by the reality of things. I shall tell you that the time has been just what it had to be, and, in telling you this, how my heart overflows with an intense bitterness against love’s fall, against the misery of this sentiment and its fugacity. Otherwise I had hoped, lady mine, otherwise we had hoped together. We believed, too, and feared that unhappiness and sorrow would have come to us from outside, from those whom we had abandoned, from laws which we had violated, from society which we had offended. Instead, all the inconsolable sadness of this moment comes from ourselves, from our dead souls, from our dead hearts and senses, where our love has lived, but from whence it has disappeared, leaving colourless ashes which the wind will carry away. Maria, how I should like to rise against myself, against my mortal weariness and indifference. I should like to galvanise my spirit, resuscitate this corpse, and I torture myself in vain, while tears of useless anger course my cheeks. Maria, I am dying through not loving you, but I cannot live to love you.“O dear Maria, I hope you love me no longer. So it should be. Do you remember our first meeting, in a box at the theatre, one evening whenthe music of love and torture was filling the house—Les Huguenots? Do you remember the first long devouring glance in that box, and the first expressive pressure of the hands, as if they could not disentangle themselves? We loved each other at the same instant. We both abandoned ourselves to the vortex which was engulfing us, and neither hesitated. Neither dragged the other into the delirious circle of passion. Together we gave ourselves, blind, mute, conquered and infatuated. Both, without the one suggesting it to the other, decided to live alone, free, obscure, ignored and forgotten, and neither, in flying from everything, trembled at the mad plan or hesitated. So, Maria, I not only hope but believe that you do not love me.“In your house of love, lady mine, in that house where the magnificent flower of our passion sprouted and sent forth its celestial perfumes, in that house, which alone of the dream will remain uncancellable in our minds as the house of the most beautiful dream of our lives, I know you are weeping in despair because you no longer love me. I see you weeping about your barren heart, about your exhausted soul, your spent desire, about everything where love is dead. I see sighs swell your throat, and your head fall convulsively on your pillow.“It is the same with me, Maria; just the same. Never was love born with such consent, never didlove live in such equality, and never did love so disappear from two conquered and fettered beings.“Oh, if I had to think differently, Maria, I should kill myself! If I had to believe that this death of love had only struck me, and that while I no longer had the spark to give light and heat you were still burning; if I had to see you still in love with a man who no longer loved you, if this moral inferiority had to strike me, if I alone had to appear deserted by love, inept to love, inept to feel through my personal weakness of mind—Maria, Maria, I should kill myself. How could I live longer, near to you, far from you, loving you no more while you still loved me, inflicting on the dearest, best, most beautiful of women, upon her who alone for three years has seemed a woman to me, my indifference?“Maria, write to me, swear to me that you love me no more. I can’t bear the thought that you may still be burning with love for me; I can’t bear the thought of grieving you with the dumbness of my mind. Maria, I owe to you three years of perfect happiness. You have beautified my existence with every grace and charm of yours. You have lavished all the treasures of your heart with a generosity and magnificence which has no equal. You have given me all yourself, and I have known what exaltation a man can enjoy without dying of too much joy. And for this, my lady, gentle and proud, for all this that I owe you I cannotgive you a sorrow which has not its equal, that of loving still when one is not loved. Swear that your desolation is only for the dream which has vanished in you as in me; that your tears are of an infinite bitterness for love and not for me; that I am as a brother in sorrow and not a fickle and forgetful lover; that you can think of me without a shock, but with sadness for things which are extinct; that nothing glows in you; that your blood is without fever, and your phantasy is without visions—that you are like me.“And now, Maria, you have my life and your own in your hands, and not only these two lives: because in the step which you boldly and nobly took in abandoning the conjugal roof and your husband, in renouncing your splendid social position, and above all your intact virtue, you lost much more, and to many you lost all; because although in this union of passion we have both been happier than any others in such a union have ever been, you appear as my victim, and such perhaps you will be according to the judgment of the world. You, Maria, brave and good, have to decide what is to become of me, of you, of the others.“I am at your feet to obey you blindly, and do you take me by the hand and show me the road we ought to traverse, either separated or together. Whatever may be the moral sacrifice you ask of me to save you, I am ready to make it with enthusiasm. You have to order me to live or toperish, and I shall live as you wish; I shall perish by the death you choose.“So much I ought to do for you, darling Maria, who threw away everything to love and follow me, who looked not behind and sacrificed yourself to passion. Show me the way, lead it wherever it may; it is your task, and always was your task.“You know, you only know what is necessary. I have lived so madly in our dream that I have forgotten everything, and am now in life like an ignoramus, like a confused and disquieted child unable to avoid hesitation and to have a will. Be my will, you who are stronger than I. You have always been the stronger because you possess a virtue that is lacking in me, which is pride, that lofty and shining guide, which can be cruel yet is always lofty. You, Maria, know what is necessary, and you ought to impose it on me, after having imposed it on yourself. I shall be like matter in your hands and all will be well, since it will have been willed by you, and done by you, creature of strength, of goodness and beauty, sustained by your shining beacon, your pride.“Tell me all and show me the way. In following your commandments, the bitter tears which I shed for our dream will become slower and rarer, that mortal sadness which falls on those who have lost somebody or something dear to them will little by little be conquered. The immense bitterness will grow less because I shall have donemy duty towards you who have been my happiness, and towards the love which has been the reason of my being. Restore to me, Maria, the consciousness of being a man worth something. Show me my duty, and cause even this last gratitude towards you to be born in my spirit. Cause it that I owe you all my good, even this last of which I am ignorant, though it will be something just and worthy of you, since it comes from you, Maria, blessed to-day, and how I shall bless you for ever, even till my death.“Marco Fiore.”
“Spello, October....
“Dearest Maria,
“Since you as ever appear to me what you are, a creature of truth, and since you tell me briefly and honestly—and in reading I almost seem to hear your voice—‘Marco, our dream is over,’ I ought to elevate my spirit to your moral height where a lie is impossible, and repeat loyally, ‘Maria, our dream is over.’ It was beautiful. No meanness disturbed its violent grandeur, no weakness spoiled its power, no hypocrisy disturbed its purity, and we indeed preferred to break the social knot rather than loosen it miserably. Moreover, we preferred to give a single sorrow to others rather than inflict ridicule and humiliation on them every day, and we preferred to exile and isolate ourselves than drag deception and fraud from drawing-room to drawing-room, from home to home. We lived so impetuously and ardently in a fulness and richness of life, which, darling Maria, neither of us will ever find again, which ought not to be found again because certain destinies have but one existence. Ours is past and the dream is ended. Nothing remainsfor us except the enduring memory of its beauty and intensity.
“We believed this dream to be eternal; we believed that it would have led us hand in hand together, full of desire and hope, even to the hour of death. Such is the measured small eternity of man! Not even was this true, not even was this modest cycle of years, modest compared with Time, just the life of a man and a woman, given to our dream. The hours, days, and years were limited, not by us, not by our enthusiasm, not by our anxiety, but by the laws of passion themselves, those immutable laws, alas! which each believes he can change, which each hopes to elude, and by which we are all dominated.
“Adored Maria, you have had from me all the love which a young man, impassioned and sincere, can give to an adorable woman such as you are; but love is a brief matter, with a brevity which frightens all desolate and tender souls, all faithful hearts and feeling fibres. He who says that he desires only one woman for all his life, either deceives or is deceived. We wished to be constant, faithful, and tenacious of our love, but it escaped us fatally, every day increasingly, till our devastated and cold hearts felt that that love had vanished, because thus it must be, since it is the law; since this brevity is the essential condition of its force and beauty, and this brevity is the reason of its perfidious fascination. We haveloved each other, dearest Maria, for three years. A cynic would tell you that they are many, that they are too many—three years. But remember that a cynic always conceals a soul desolated by the reality of things. I shall tell you that the time has been just what it had to be, and, in telling you this, how my heart overflows with an intense bitterness against love’s fall, against the misery of this sentiment and its fugacity. Otherwise I had hoped, lady mine, otherwise we had hoped together. We believed, too, and feared that unhappiness and sorrow would have come to us from outside, from those whom we had abandoned, from laws which we had violated, from society which we had offended. Instead, all the inconsolable sadness of this moment comes from ourselves, from our dead souls, from our dead hearts and senses, where our love has lived, but from whence it has disappeared, leaving colourless ashes which the wind will carry away. Maria, how I should like to rise against myself, against my mortal weariness and indifference. I should like to galvanise my spirit, resuscitate this corpse, and I torture myself in vain, while tears of useless anger course my cheeks. Maria, I am dying through not loving you, but I cannot live to love you.
“O dear Maria, I hope you love me no longer. So it should be. Do you remember our first meeting, in a box at the theatre, one evening whenthe music of love and torture was filling the house—Les Huguenots? Do you remember the first long devouring glance in that box, and the first expressive pressure of the hands, as if they could not disentangle themselves? We loved each other at the same instant. We both abandoned ourselves to the vortex which was engulfing us, and neither hesitated. Neither dragged the other into the delirious circle of passion. Together we gave ourselves, blind, mute, conquered and infatuated. Both, without the one suggesting it to the other, decided to live alone, free, obscure, ignored and forgotten, and neither, in flying from everything, trembled at the mad plan or hesitated. So, Maria, I not only hope but believe that you do not love me.
“In your house of love, lady mine, in that house where the magnificent flower of our passion sprouted and sent forth its celestial perfumes, in that house, which alone of the dream will remain uncancellable in our minds as the house of the most beautiful dream of our lives, I know you are weeping in despair because you no longer love me. I see you weeping about your barren heart, about your exhausted soul, your spent desire, about everything where love is dead. I see sighs swell your throat, and your head fall convulsively on your pillow.
“It is the same with me, Maria; just the same. Never was love born with such consent, never didlove live in such equality, and never did love so disappear from two conquered and fettered beings.
“Oh, if I had to think differently, Maria, I should kill myself! If I had to believe that this death of love had only struck me, and that while I no longer had the spark to give light and heat you were still burning; if I had to see you still in love with a man who no longer loved you, if this moral inferiority had to strike me, if I alone had to appear deserted by love, inept to love, inept to feel through my personal weakness of mind—Maria, Maria, I should kill myself. How could I live longer, near to you, far from you, loving you no more while you still loved me, inflicting on the dearest, best, most beautiful of women, upon her who alone for three years has seemed a woman to me, my indifference?
“Maria, write to me, swear to me that you love me no more. I can’t bear the thought that you may still be burning with love for me; I can’t bear the thought of grieving you with the dumbness of my mind. Maria, I owe to you three years of perfect happiness. You have beautified my existence with every grace and charm of yours. You have lavished all the treasures of your heart with a generosity and magnificence which has no equal. You have given me all yourself, and I have known what exaltation a man can enjoy without dying of too much joy. And for this, my lady, gentle and proud, for all this that I owe you I cannotgive you a sorrow which has not its equal, that of loving still when one is not loved. Swear that your desolation is only for the dream which has vanished in you as in me; that your tears are of an infinite bitterness for love and not for me; that I am as a brother in sorrow and not a fickle and forgetful lover; that you can think of me without a shock, but with sadness for things which are extinct; that nothing glows in you; that your blood is without fever, and your phantasy is without visions—that you are like me.
“And now, Maria, you have my life and your own in your hands, and not only these two lives: because in the step which you boldly and nobly took in abandoning the conjugal roof and your husband, in renouncing your splendid social position, and above all your intact virtue, you lost much more, and to many you lost all; because although in this union of passion we have both been happier than any others in such a union have ever been, you appear as my victim, and such perhaps you will be according to the judgment of the world. You, Maria, brave and good, have to decide what is to become of me, of you, of the others.
“I am at your feet to obey you blindly, and do you take me by the hand and show me the road we ought to traverse, either separated or together. Whatever may be the moral sacrifice you ask of me to save you, I am ready to make it with enthusiasm. You have to order me to live or toperish, and I shall live as you wish; I shall perish by the death you choose.
“So much I ought to do for you, darling Maria, who threw away everything to love and follow me, who looked not behind and sacrificed yourself to passion. Show me the way, lead it wherever it may; it is your task, and always was your task.
“You know, you only know what is necessary. I have lived so madly in our dream that I have forgotten everything, and am now in life like an ignoramus, like a confused and disquieted child unable to avoid hesitation and to have a will. Be my will, you who are stronger than I. You have always been the stronger because you possess a virtue that is lacking in me, which is pride, that lofty and shining guide, which can be cruel yet is always lofty. You, Maria, know what is necessary, and you ought to impose it on me, after having imposed it on yourself. I shall be like matter in your hands and all will be well, since it will have been willed by you, and done by you, creature of strength, of goodness and beauty, sustained by your shining beacon, your pride.
“Tell me all and show me the way. In following your commandments, the bitter tears which I shed for our dream will become slower and rarer, that mortal sadness which falls on those who have lost somebody or something dear to them will little by little be conquered. The immense bitterness will grow less because I shall have donemy duty towards you who have been my happiness, and towards the love which has been the reason of my being. Restore to me, Maria, the consciousness of being a man worth something. Show me my duty, and cause even this last gratitude towards you to be born in my spirit. Cause it that I owe you all my good, even this last of which I am ignorant, though it will be something just and worthy of you, since it comes from you, Maria, blessed to-day, and how I shall bless you for ever, even till my death.
“Marco Fiore.”
This is the reply which reached Marco Fiore at Spello immediately.
“Rome, October....“Marco, I swear that I no longer love you. Come at once, and I will tell you all that is necessary.“Maria Guasco.”
“Rome, October....
“Marco, I swear that I no longer love you. Come at once, and I will tell you all that is necessary.
“Maria Guasco.”
A strong, cold, almost wintry wind was blowing through the streets of Rome on an afternoon of late October, and a low sky with a mass of whitish-grey clouds was hanging over the semi-circle of the Esedra di Termini. Little whirlwinds of dust rolled from the Esquiline and the Viminal towards ancient Rome, while dead leaves issuing from the gardens of the suburban villas, gyrating, and small squares, still rolled along.
Marco, who had just arrived, trembled with cold, as he crossed on foot the little distance which separated the Stazione di Termini from Santa Maria Maggiore. In spite of his courage, which he knew had been inspired by the soul of Maria Guasco, a dumb fear agitated him, a fear of the present, a fear of the future. He was experiencing the agonising terror of life, when in certain supreme moments a man seems conquered by all the hostile forces within and without him. However, he did not hesitate a moment to enter the villa. He went towards his destiny with a soul in trepidation but with a firm step. The profound faith which he had in Maria’s heart, a faith experienced apart from passion and love, alone sustainedhim, and once again he sought from her the source of his strength in the hour of sorrow and torment.
But when she appeared, and he understood that he was seeing her for the last time, dressed as she was in black, so exquisite, so noble in her mourning, so disdainfully proud as she looked at him with a glance of intense sorrow, his heart was tormented with an immense desolation, and holding and caressing her hands like a child, he wept bigger tears than he had ever wept. Holding his hands in hers and sitting beside him Maria wept without sobs, and her tears coursed silently down her face while she bowed her head in silence, as if unable to pronounce a single word.
“Everything is finished, Maria, everything,” sighed Marco.
She was silent. Her tears ceased the first, but her face was composed in a febrile pallor. He kept lamenting brokenly, “Finished, all is finished,” like the burden of a death agony. Slowly their embrace relaxed. For some moments they found nothing to say. But again her pale worn face agonised his heart.
“Maria, I have loved you deeply!” he exclaimed.
“I know it,” she replied gravely. “Your love has given sun to my life, and its reflection and warmth will remain with me till death.”
“I shall never love a woman again like you,Maria, who have been all mine,” he said desolately.
“None, Marco,” continued Maria, lowering her eyelids to hide the expression of her eyes, “and so it ought to be.”
“I shall never forget you, you who have been all my ardour and sweetness,” he added, still desolately.
“You ought not to forget me, dear love of mine, you ought not to.”
“Well then, Maria, why is everything ended?”
“For this reason,” she replied enigmatically.
“I want to love you all my life passionately.”
“It isn’t possible, it isn’t possible. Love doesn’t last for life. Life is so long, love is so short.”
“Oh, what sadness, Maria! what sadness! I shall never console myself.”
“I too shall never console myself, Marco, never.”
Again they were silent, desperate and bowed down beneath their fate, as if separated by an iron wall and divided in soul, incapable of passing over or breaking down that wall. They felt as well the weight of time which was falling on their heads, and the mortal tedium which was enveloping them in that so far profitless conversation.
He felt the uselessness of tears and words, and with a renewal of life said—
“What shall we do, Maria?”
“Our duty,” she replied severely.
“To whom have we a duty to fulfil, Maria? To what?”
“We have a duty first of all to ourselves, Marco. And that is to live in truth and liberty of soul. Since our love is ended and our dream of happiness isover, let us not lie an instant longer, and separate.”
“For ever, Maria?”
“For ever, Marco.”
“Shall I never see you again, my friend?”
“I shall not see you, and you will not seek me. We will fly as far as we can and ought from each other.”
“That is very cruel, Maria.”
“Yes, it is very cruel, but it has to be done.”
“I shall suffer very much, because, apart from passion and love, you are very dear to me.”
“You are very dear to me, my friend,” she added, with a fresh veil of sorrow in her voice, “but it is necessary.”
“But what will become of me, Maria? Tell me. What will become of me? What shall I do? Where shall I go to lie me down? How will my life go on? Where shall I tie it that the knot does not come undone?”
She did not reply at once. Her eyes were closed as if to concentrate her thoughts, and her mouth was firm as if to close her words; her hands, loaded with jewels, were crossed over her knees in a familiar gesture.
“Maria, Maria, I have come purposely to ask you this, because you ought to tell me, because I do not know and you do. What will become of me without you? What shall I do with my soul? What shall I do with my days? Maria, think of me. Succour me, my friend, my sister, source of all my comfort. Tell me, tell me.”
A shadow of a smile, a bitter shadow of a smile, traced itself on Maria Guasco’s lips at the uneasiness of the man’s convulsed conscience.
“Well,” she said, softly and slowly, “after doing our duty towards ourselves in separating, we have to accomplish it towards others, Marco.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked him squarely in the eyes, and said—
“You will marry Vittoria Casalta, Marco.”
“No.”
“You will marry her; she loves you.”
“I don’t love her.”
“What does it matter? Thousands of marriages are made so. She has loved you for years, and you were betrothed. You have betrayed her. She has waited, and she is a patient creature. She has waited, and, see, she was right to wait.”
“I can’t marry her with a heart devastated by passion, with an unconsolable regret.”
“Marco, hearts are healed. Yours will heal. Regrets go to sleep at the bottom of the soul, and one day you will wake up consoled. You ought to marry Vittoria Casalta.”
“Ought I to?”
“You ought to. She has suffered for you. She doesn’t deserve to suffer. She is good, they say; I don’t know. Anyhow, she has suffered. Since your heart is empty, and your spirit has no goal, since your soul has no pasture, fill your heart with charity towards a sufferer, give an affectionate scope to your existence, create a pleasing duty of reparation, and heal the wounds you have made by marrying Vittoria Casalta.”
Maria spoke in a low voice, slowly, but suggestively and persuasively. Marco’s face grew paler and his lips were white. He recognised that an immense effort was uplifting her courage to say all that she was saying, and he regarded her with profound admiration as he touched her hand lightly to kiss it, which he did almost timorously. A cry escaped his breast.
“Maria, I can’t be happy with Vittoria Casalta.”
“You can’t be; that is true. You have been happy, too happy perhaps. You can’t be happy again. And what does it matter? Content yourself in giving happiness to her who has suffered so much for you. That is a great deal.”
“That will not suffice for me, Maria.”
“You want too much from life, Marco,” she said, shaking her head; “you must give something instead. Vittoria Casalta has suffered secret torture for three years. You ought to marry her to sweeten her existence and render her happiness.”
He became silent and thoughtful, and she, who was used to reading almost the ideas of his mind on his forehead, saw the doubt there.
“Vittoria desires nothing else but to pardon you and open her arms to you, Marco.”
He looked at her, but did not reply. An almost definite silence fell between them. This part of their conversation was concluded. It seemed as if there was nothing else to be said; that they understood each other. Marco was the first to express this feeling.
“And you, Maria?”
“I, Marco?”
“Yes, you. What will you do?”
She shrugged her shoulders in an act of complete indifference, and did not reply.
“Will you return to your husband?”
“I shall return,” she said coldly.
“Will you return willingly, Maria?” he exclaimed sorrowfully, but without a trace of anger in his voice.
“Not willingly. I am going to return because I ought to.”
“Won’t you suffer in returning? Tell me, Maria.”
“I shall suffer, that is true,” she declared precisely, “but I ought to suffer, it seems. I have been intoxicated with happiness and liberty, my friend. One pays for such things. Here I am ready to pay.”
“How will you live with him?”
“As I can. I shall do my best, and shall try to do my duty. Emilio, too, has suffered through my betrayal. In returning to him I must do what I can to make him forget his suffering.”
“But you don’t love him.”
“I don’t love him, and I can’t love him again. I am exhausted. My heart has lived as much as it can, and it can do no more. But I can, however, have great pity for him, great sweetness, and great friendship to make him forget the torture I have inflicted on him.”
Again, before the force of energy which was exalting her and with which she was struggling, Marco felt a great emotion invade him, a melancholy enthusiasm for the moral martyrdom which she was enduring, and forgot his own immense pain. And anew a lament escaped his lips.
“Poor Maria!”
“Ah, pity me, pity me; you are right!” she cried, twisting her hands in agitation, “I am an unfortunate.”
“We are two unfortunates!” he exclaimed, taking her to his arms and kissing her on her hair and eyes.
She repelled him, and drying her tears composed herself.
But he, as he felt the moments of their last meeting flying, and the unsupportable pain of a farewell which was rending his soul, resisted the more.
“Maria, Maria, let us remain together, I implore you.”
“No, Marco, no.”
“I can’t live without you, my love.”
“You deceive yourself.”
“I see myself dying if I leave you, Maria.”
“You deceive yourself.”
“I still want you. I want you always.”
“You deceive yourself.”
“I love you, Maria. I swear it; I love you.”
“You lie!” she cried, with a voice vibrant with anger and with a heightened complexion.
“I love you, I love you,” he cried more weakly.
“You lie! You lie!”
“I love you,” he murmured, with lowered eyes.
“Have you understood that you are lying?” she said. “Be silent.”
So all was ended. Even this last rebellion of Marco’s soul evaporated, leaving him cold and dumb. His very torment, given its supreme grief, seemed to quieten into torpor. The large emotions which he had just experienced left him exhausted with a disgust of himself and life. White and done up he lay upon the sofa scarcely noticing the woman at his side. She herself, spent by the long spiritual struggle maintained with herself and him, lay with closed mouth, her beautiful chestnut hair with its deep shining waves had fallen about her neck, and her head had fallen forward listlessly.Each was far away, full of thought and sorrow for the new life so uncertain and doubtful which was presenting itself to their gaze, and each was trying to read the unknown words of their new fate.
Both felt themselves in the great obscurity to be without energy, to have spent everything, to have lost all in the high crisis of detachment.
How long this sad absorption lasted they did not know.
It was already dusk when Maria started, and desired that everything should be ended fittingly between them. Silently she rose and giving him her hand led him into the bedroom, to the room which had been theirs. Near the bed, upon a background of dark-blue velvet, an old crucifix of yellowish ivory was hanging, and the face of the Martyr was full of profound and yet serene sorrow.
She looked at the Christ who had died for love and duty, for the desire of the salvation of every suffering soul.
“Do you remember, Marco, we did not dare to invoke the blessing of Maria, the most pure, on our love, but before Him who understood all and pardoned all, who was God, but was also man, who sees all, and who raised all to heaven, we asked Jesus to consecrate our knot?”
“Yes, Maria,” he murmured, regarding the anguished but tranquil face of the Son of man.
“Before Him we united ourselves for life anddeath. I obtained your promise of love and fidelity, Marco.”
“I have kept it, Maria.”
“It is not our fault if the knot is undone, if our eternity has only lasted three years. That is outside us, Marco. But we were faithful, and if love has deserted us it means that life is fleeting, and that human forces are weak. We were as faithful as we could be. I have loved you, Marco, above everything and everybody.”
“And so have I loved you, Maria.”
“Well, let us release ourselves to-day before Him, suffering profoundly, but knowing that we have done what is possible to be worthy of our passion, having never lied, having never deceived. Let us release ourselves, suffering like Him, but with the knowledge that this suffering is not useless, dedicating it as we do to the consolation of others, to the happiness of others.”
“Let it be so, Maria,” he said piously.
They stood a little in silence before the crucifix, as if praying mentally. A sigh escaped Maria Guasco’s tired bosom.
“I shall keep all I have of yours, Maria,” he murmured in a weak and tremulous voice, “I could never separate myself from them.”
“Nor I, Marco.”
In truth their anguish had become unbearable, they had cruelly prolonged their martyrdom.
“Good-bye, Marco!” she exclaimed almost inaudibly, bending her head on his shoulder.
“Good-bye, Maria,” he said, with a short but almost frenzied embrace.
“Toujours,toujours, Marco,” she said once again brokenly.
“Toujours, Maria,toujours,” he replied desperately.
Then he left.
She heard nothing. She knew about herself, about the whole world revolving in its immense concentration around her, but every sense of persons, of space, and of time was ignored by her for several hours in that deserted room. When she awoke from this long absence from life, she found nothing within her but bitterness, such a great bitterness that it seemed as if her body and soul had been poisoned for ever. Since all that had seemed lasting to her and alone worthy to be lasting was dispersed and finished with, since the only lofty outstanding reason of life—love—was ended, she felt a nauseating disgust of that mediocre thing, existence, with its false and fugitive sensations.
Marco went as one mad through the streets of Rome, already gloomy with falling night, and swept by chilly winds beneath the low nocturnal clouds. For some time he wandered aimlessly, like a dead leaf detached from a tree, and felt himselfdispersed in the shadowy cold and solitude. He felt it useless to call for aid, since the only thing which could succour him—love—was dead. He felt that he too was dead, and that he could never rise again.
Whisperings, now slow now more frequent, filled the top of the church dedicated to Santa Maria del Popolo, where the guests invited to the wedding were gathered before the high altar, while the rest of the large central nave preserved the usual solitude and silence of Roman temples. Around the high altar were placed large clumps of palms, and white azaleas with such a wealth of bloom that they seemed as white as snow, without the shadow of a leaf between flower and flower. Some soft dark carpets descended from the altar as far as the first row of seats. The rest of the church, the greater part of it, which it would have been vain to decorate, kept its cold, marbled, and imposing aspect.
Now and then the guests, politely restraining their impatience, turned towards the great door, which was open to the limpid spring sky, to watch if the couple, already late, had arrived. Compared with the vastness of the church, and in spite oftheir large numbers, they seemed a very small group near the high altar in an oasis of plants and flowers.
All the relations of Casa Fiore were there, together with the Casalta, who are not Romans but Neapolitans, of remote Neapolitan origin but living in Rome for two or three generations. Many had come from the outskirts of Rome, from Umbria and Campania, to be present at the marriage of Marco Fiore and Vittoria Casalta, a marriage so resisted by fate that for a time it had seemed quite broken off, but which had at last become a reality. There was much whispering over the strange story, the lateness of the couple, and the great size of the church.
“How has the bridegroom behaved during this second betrothal?”
“Perfectly.”
“Is he very much in love?”
“Full of affection.”
“Enamoured?”
“With ideal delicacy.”
“How large this church is!”
“But beautiful.”
“The church of Lucretia Borgia, is it not?”
“Certainly. You know that Gregorovius has rehabilitated Lucretia?”
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Very cold; I would gladly go out.”
“Oh, they’ll come, they’ll come.”
“They are thirty-five minutes late.”
“Do you think that a lot? At the marriage of Giovanella Farnese we had to wait nearly an hour.”
“What bad form; don’t you think so?”
“Is it true that the bride is very happy?”
“Diamine! Hasn’t she waited four years for the faithless one!”
“Only patient women are right in this world.”
“Does she show her happiness? I want to see her face as she comes into church.”
“You will gather nothing from it; you know that Vittoria is most reserved.”
“Too reserved; she is icy, like this church.”
“But why not have the marriage in Santa Maria della Vittoria? It is a small church and beautiful.”
“It belongs to Casa Colonna, and the Colonna reserve it for their own marriages.”
“Hush! Hush! Here they come!”
Suddenly the whispering ceased; the notes of the organ sounded, heavy and sonorous, waking all the echoes of the church. It was an organ placed up above, on the epistle side of the altar, and the organist was invisible from below. He ought to have been signaled to, for from his invisible hands on the stops escaped the profound and solemn melody of Beethoven’s wedding march, so that every one rose to their feet to honour the bridal pair, who surely had reached the church doorat that moment, to be accompanied on their procession to the high altar by Beethoven’s music, which is a noble greeting and invitation, the expression of fine desire, and the satisfaction of a strong and calm affection.
The well-known notes rolled along among the arches of Santa Maria del Popolo. The guests stood silent and attentive behind their seats, but still no one entered. The march continued in its beauty and gravity; the tones grew less and were extinguished. Silence reigned again. With a noise somewhat louder and whisperings a little stronger, the guests—the Ottoboni, Savelli, Farnese, Aldrobrandini, Caracciolo del Sole, Carafa—reseated themselves. The top of the church took more than ever the familiar appearance of a drawing-room. Groups were formed and seats were turned round; there was even a little laughter. In the midst of the general distraction the couple and their escort quite suddenly passed up the church and reached the high altar, greeted by none and unaccompanied by the music.
“That’s an entry missed!” exclaimed Gianni Provana, with a slight and amiable grin.
* * * * * * * *
In the white cloud of her satin dress and in the fleecy white cloud of her veil, the bride knelt at aprie-dieuof brown carved wood on which had been placed a cushion of dark-red velvet. On this cushion she placed her bouquet of orange-blossomswith its long white satin ribbon, and while the religious rite proceeded read from her Prayer-book, a little book bound in white and silver brocade; and her blonde head was slightly bent as she read. The bridegroom was kneeling beside her at anotherprie-dieu, also with bent head, thoughtful and collected. The Fiore have a long reputation for religious piety in the family, and perhaps conquered by the moment he was praying like a Christian to his God.
After the function had begun he glanced two or three times at Vittoria almost questioningly, for according to Italian tradition he had not led her to the altar. As she had no father alive she had been brought by her eldest brother, and at the house he had only exchanged a rapid greeting in the presence of everybody. Marco looked at his bride to read her thoughts and measure her emotions, but Vittoria’s face, in its indefinably white and virginal purity, had the virtue of never, or scarcely ever, revealing the secret which was weighing on the mind. She kept her eyes bent over the pages of her Prayer-book, and, as she repeated the words of the prayers, her delicate and sinuous lips, accustomed to silence and mystery, scarcely seemed to move.
The special moment arrived. Interrupting the Mass, after the first Gospel, before the Elevation, the celebrant turned to the couple and summoned them to him. They rose from their knees, andmounted the two steps of the sanctuary, where they prostrated themselves. Fabrizio Ottobone, the master of the ceremonies, placed himself beside them, a tall, thin old man, with flowing whiskers, and in spite of his age a very good figure. The usual form of marriage rite proceeded very slowly. Vittoria’s right hand was still gloved, and at a word whispered in her ear by Fabrizio Ottobone, she tried to take the glove off quickly. Not succeeding she tore at it and stripped it off her fingers, and at last the little right hand was stretched on that of Marco Fiore’s. The priest pronounced the sacred words which demand the assent of the man and the woman, and when obtained he declared them united in the name of God. The little hand was closed in Marco’s; he felt it tremble like a leaf. He pressed it in vain, as if to give it the strength of a promise and the support of an oath, and yet the little hand trembled incessantly.
Marco looked at his wife intently. On her pure face, in every beautiful line, in the fold of the fine taciturn mouth, and in the limpid and clear eyes he read in a flash such anguish mixed with hope; he read there anxiety, uncertainty, and fear, so that all his man’s heart filled with pity for her loving, suffering, and fearing. An immense pity welled in his heart, and not being able at that moment to speak a single word to her, he bent his head and prayed with all his might to have the power to console the woman who loved him.
Meanwhile, after completing the nuptial union, the priest stepped back to the altar to continue the Mass, and the couple, now bound for life, returned to their places. The organ again played music well known to all feeling souls. After the first chords from the invisible organist had sounded a cantor took his place, also invisible, but whose sonorous voice diffused itself throughout the church, and was listened to with a sigh of satisfaction by those who recognised the sympathetic timbre of a well-known tenor. He sang thearia di chiesaof Alessandro Stradella. It is a prayer offered to a God of clemency and mercy, but it is one of those musical prayers more vibrant in its mortal sadness than the human voice in its emotional notes can pour forth. With the complacency of an artiste, and perhaps with sincerity, the famous singer lent to the lament of Stradella an emphasis more sorrowful and harrowing than ever. The listeners were taken and subdued by it. Some turned anxiously to the organ; several women in particular became pale with emotion, and their eyes were clouded by tears.
Behind her soft veil Vittoria Casalta let her tears fall silently one by one down her cheeks, nor did she make the slightest attempt to dry them, and only Marco could see that silent weeping. He leant towards her a little.
“Vittoria, don’t cry.”
She made no reply, only a slight movementof the hand to ask his silence, to ask him not to bother about her crying. He became silent. But up above the unseen, but not unknown, singer kept on singing passionately the prayer, so singular for a wedding-day, with its peculiar and painful words: “Pietà, Signore, di me dolente.” Again all hearts were touched and all souls secretly struck, for there were in that society, rich and almost scintillating with exterior happiness, and among those exquisitely dressed women covered with jewels, many who had suffered, and all such felt the power of the melody, where the soul cries to her God in waves of agony.
The bride continued to weep silently.
“Vittoria, you must not cry!” murmured Marco Fiore softly, but with virile energy in his low voice. She made a slight nod of obedience; gradually her tears dried, and her face became composed. Stradella’s air was finished, the song gave forth its last sobs, and silence reigned again. But in the silence there was a sigh of bitterness from some breast still oppressed; among the rest almost a feeling of relief and a subdued whispering.
“What a singer, that Varisco!”
“Divine.”
“He makes such an impression on me.”
“That air of Stradella’s is so beautiful.”
“But what an idea to sing such an air at a marriage!”
“It is sung everywhere.”
“But it is too, too sad.”
“Do you think matrimony such a gay matter?”
“Does this seem to you the moment to say such a thing?”
“Well, why did you cry?”
“Crying does one good every now and then.”
“In my time we laughed at weddings.”
“Now we manage better.”
“Be quiet, be quiet, it is the Elevation.”
At a hint which reached him the celebrant hurried the end of the Mass. It was late; the young couple had delayed so much, and the day had been completely disorganised thereby. A baritone sang in haste theO Salutaris Hostia, and was scarcely listened to; the special marriage prayers before the second Gospel were said with much rapidity. Every one had the air of wanting to get up and leave even before it was time to do so, since they had been in church nearly two hours. There was a sound of chairs being moved, and even some footsteps resounded on the marble pavement before the end. The procession was again formed at the high altar. This time the bridegroom gave his arm to the bride, and, after having kissed their nearest relations, they descended the steps of the altar together. Marco Fiore’s slightly fragile good looks had for some time assumed a more virile appearance, his physiognomy, which formerly was gracious and sweet with something feminine in it, was composedand settled in an expression of thought and peace. The bride beside him, tall, but not too tall, fairly slender with a white face beneath a shining wave of golden hair, with clear and lively eyes, over which now and then a cloud seemed to pass, with her little mouth like a closed flower, seemed made to be supported and protected by the man. As they proceeded slowly through the church to gather the congratulations and greetings, the organ sounded again for the last time to accompany them out.
It was another march, the one with which the knights and ladies of Thuringia accompanied Elsa of Brabant and Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, to the nuptial chamber. Involuntarily the procession regulated its step to the rhythm of Wagner’s music, while after it had passed the whispering began again.
“Marco Fiore is always sympathetic.”
“He doesn’t seem exuberantly happy to me.”
“Do you want him to start dancing?”
“How charming the bride is!”
“Poor thing!”
“Why do you pity her?”
“I always pity girls who get married.”
“Yes, she is very pretty, it is true, but I preferthe other.”
“The other? Which other?”
“Oh, you know quite well! Maria Guasco.”
“Sst! You might be overheard.”
“No, no; I liked the other very much. She was a woman.”
“Don’t raise your voice.”
“This one is a figure for a picture; I should place her in a frame and leave her there.”
“You are very naughty.”
“Is everything over, then, between Marco and Maria?”
“Everything, for six or seven months.”
“Do you believe in this ending?”
“I? What does it matter what I believe?”
“Poor girl!”
“There! You see I was right to pity her.”
The music, spreading through the large central nave, still followed the bridal couple and the long procession of guests with its sonorous and precise notes. No word passed between them, and they contented themselves with a handshake to the good wishes which accompanied their passage; only at a certain point it seemed to Vittoria as if Marco’s face was troubled by a secret idea crossing his spirit. Suddenly her little white-gloved hand imperceptibly held his arm on which she was leaning, as she asked him with a tremor in her voice—
“Marco, what is the matter?”
“Nothing,” he replied, seized by his secret and obscure thought.
Wagner’s music seemed to exhale a powerful and settled joy which rocked the deep love of Elsaand Lohengrin, and spoke to them of a future of soft and constant passion, even until death. But Marco’s face became more clouded, as if his secret imaginings had mastered him.
“What is the matter, Marco?” Vittoria asked again a little anxiously, holding him back almost at the threshold of the church, as if she was unwilling to proceed further without an explanation.
“It is the music!” he exclaimed, sadly turning his head the other way.
“Ah!” she exclaimed without further comment, becoming exceedingly pale.
Vittoria had to suppose, with her cruel and devouring internal suspicion, that the music brought recollections of a former time to her husband, of other things, of another person. Her fine and tender mouth closed as if sealed hermetically, and she assumed her aspect of a flower dead and closed.
Meanwhile outside the view spread itself beneath the caressing April sun. The bright, fresh, blue vault of the sky arched itself from the Via Flaminia to the grandiose Piazza del Popolo, and far away the cypresses of Monte Mario, from amidst the green of the Farnesina, bathed by the twisting Tiber, hurled themselves against the almost quivering firmament, while on the left rose the Pincio, with its groves already in leaf. The large fountain in the middle of the Piazza del Popolo raised its monumental marbles which time had obscurednobly, while its waters fell back into the basin in soft spray. In the background the three roads which lead to Rome spread out like a fan; the Corso in the middle, the via di Ripetta on the right, and on the left the via del Babuino.
The morning joy was so complete that the Piazza del Popolo and adjoining streets, often so austerely solitary, now showed a great animation with the movement of passers-by and carriages.
Even the newly-married couple, once outside the large and glacial temple and in the fresh air beneath the enchanting vault of the sky, felt a flutter of exaltation raise their hearts, on which life had already left its traces. That atmosphere of gaiety, so like their flourishing youth, encompassed them, and the usual magnificent allurement of the spring drew them and merged them in its gentle and fervid train. Every recollection vanished, all the wounds seemed healed, and together they began to believe again in life. Blushing Vittoria heard the people’s exclamation of admiration as she got into the carriage: her veil thrown back disclosed the white forehead, and a soft smile appeared on her lips.
To the tender pity which Marco Fiore felt for the comely girl he had married a quarter of an hour ago, by the rite which no human hand can dissolve till death, there was united a kind of feeling of masculine pride, a feeling as it were of a great mission to be accomplished worthy of anupright and affectionate heart. Their two hands joined and their glances spoke of a common hope, of a common faith.
The carriage entered the Corso and the ample and exultant view vanished, and only a little narrow strip of cloud appeared between the big austere palaces. They drove towards the Palazzo Casalta in via della Botteghe Oscure. They were silent now. The two hands little by little disentangled themselves naturally from their pressure, nor did they rejoin. Both looked out of the window. As if she were speaking in a dream, Vittoria asked—
“That last wedding music displeased you, Marco?”
He trembled, and replied suddenly, “Yes.”
“Will you tell me why, Marco?”
“Why do you ask so many things, little Vittoria?” he said sweetly; “it doesn’t do to ask so much.”
“Tell me, tell me, Marco,” she insisted anxiously.
“You are like Elsa,” he murmured, shaking his head.
“What did Elsa do, Marco? She loved Lohengrin passionately.”
“Yes, little Vittoria, passionately. But she was not content with loving him without asking anything more.She wanted to know.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed, growing pale.
“Instead of loving she wanted to know who her spouse was.”
“Wasn’t she right, perhaps?” said Vittoria, trembling a little.
“She was wrong,” replied Marco gravely; “she had to love—that was all—blindly and humbly. Wherefore Elsa’s imperfect and incomplete love led her to deception, to betrayal, and to abandonment.”
Vittoria bit her little lip silently, as if to restrain a secret sigh.
“Haven’t you ever heard Lohengrin, little Vittoria?” murmured Marco, as if speaking to an imaginary being; “at a certain point, in the nuptial chamber, near his loving and faithful wife, the valiant knight discovers the ambuscade of which Elsa is herself an accomplice. Have you never heard, Vittoria, Lohengrin’s lament, deceived and betrayed an hour after the marriage? His dumb cry of delusion and bitterness? The dream of love was over and had vanished. Vittoria, I never could hear that cry without feeling my heart break.”
“That is why, Marco, you suffered when that music accompanied us from the church?”
“That is why, Vittoria.”
“But why was that wedding march played? It is a funeral march, Marco. Why did they play it?” she asked convulsively, bending over him.
“I don’t know,” he replied desolately.
Afterdescending from the carriage in the noisy station among the crowd which the train from Florence was pouring forth, Donna Maria hesitated a moment, and behind her soft black veil her eyes seemed to be looking for some one. Her maid, carrying shawls and parcels, stood a few steps away from her. Discovering no one she made a resolute movement and opened a way for herself through the crowd, when a gentleman approached and greeted her, taking her hand to kiss it.
“Welcome, Donna Maria.”
“Good-evening, Provana,” she replied with cold courtesy, “what are you doing here?”
“I have come to meet you,” he said, surprised at the question.
“Very kind of you,” she replied, thanking him with a bow.
She approached the exit with him, followed at two or three steps’ distance by her maid. A servant of Casa Guasco was there; he touched his hat, and inquired after the luggage. Maria drily directed the man to her maid.
“The carriage is here too,” said Gianni fussily.
“You are very kind,” she said.
The great electric lights illuminated the arrival place, and Gianni looked at her intently. The morbid and slightly proud grace of Maria’s face seemed unchanged with its faintly rosy complexion, the large eyes were closed purposely as if absorbed in their interior life. Her undulating figure, even in its simple travelling costume, preserved its fascination. Perhaps her glance was less vivid, and the lines of her face were less decided, nor was the expression of the proud mouth quite so firm, little changes due to fatigue, which in fact gave her an air of languor, new and strangely attractive in her.
She did not speak to Gianni as he accompanied her to the coupé, a new and elegant carriage. Before entering she hesitated slightly, and turned to take leave of him. He bowed politely, and asked—
“Will you allow me to accompany you home?”
“Do you think it necessary?”
“To accomplish my duty,” he affirmed, with veiled insistence.
“If it is a duty, yes,” she consented coldly.
The door was closed on them. By the brightness of the electric light Maria discovered a bunch of flowers in the pocket in front of her.
“Are they yours?” she asked.
“No, I wouldn’t allow myself,” he murmured, with a smile. “They are Emilio’s; he hasthought of everything. For several days he has busied himself with nothing but your return.”
“You busy yourselves together, it seems to me,” she said, with a fleeting tinge of irony.
“If you like. Emilio considers me, perhaps unworthily, one of the authors of your return. Is he wrong?”
“He is wrong,” she replied precisely.
A silence fell between them. In spite of his wit and scepticism Gianni Provana always felt the distance at which the woman held him, and the confused repugnance, a repugnance sometimes cruelly apparent, with which he inspired her.
“Because of this false idea of his, then,” resumed Provana, “Emilio wished to organise your return with me.”
“And he sent you to the station?”
“He sent me to the station.”
“It was useless.”
“Ought you to have found no one?”
“I ought to have found Emilio,” she said in a low voice, as if to herself. There was a heavy moment of silence.
“Such a meeting, Donna Maria, in public after what has happened! You understand?” he murmured.
“I understand; be silent,” she rejoined, with a decisive gesture.
For some time the carriage proceeded on its way without either speaking. Perhaps, in spite of histenacity, hidden under an appearance of graciousness and indifference, the man repented of having been involved in thathistoire intime, and perhaps the perverse conception he had of life counselled him to be quiet, to be patient, and to wait. It was Maria who resumed the conversation, as the carriage was drawing near its destination.
“Is Emilio in Rome?”
“Yes.”
“Is he at home?”
“He is waiting for you.”
“You will leave me at the house door, Provana,” she added coldly.
“Of course, there is no necessity to order me to do it. I will come to-morrow to greet you.”
“No, Provana.”
“Within a few days, then.”
“The latest possible, and better never.”
“Never is a big word, Donna Maria. Why don’t you want to see me any more?”
“Do you believe that I am what I am, and what I shall always be, a creature of truth? Do you believe that I have come this evening to Emilio Guasco’s home, to my husband’s home, to accomplish a solemn act? Why, then, do you wish me to become a creature of lies? Why, then, do you wish to make grotesque, doubly grotesque, my act of humility, and my husband’s act of pardon.”
“But why ever do you suppose that, Donna Maria?” he asked, a little confused.
“I suppose what is, Provana; that it may please you hugely to be the lover of your best friend’s wife, that it may please you to preserve a friendship with the husband and love the wife; that you have a horror of scandal, of noise, of open and undeniable betrayal; that the miserable and nauseating betrayal of every day pleases you with all its lies and transactions; that for a long time you have known that you wished to do this to Emilio and to me; that no one upset your plan more than he whom you know—and in fact that you have begun to hope again in its success.”
“Every one is allowed to hope for what he ardently desires,” replied Gianni ambiguously.
“I shall only have had one love in my life,” she said, in a clear low voice, “and only one lover. Good-bye, Provana.”
The carriage had driven round the circle of the courtyard of the Guasco Palazzo, in via de’Prefetti, and stopped before the peristyle. Bowing deeply Gianni Provana took his leave, while Maria, preceded by the servants, mounted the stairs very slowly. An inexorable agitation pressed deeply on the soul of the woman who, after the intense love rhapsody in which she had thrown all that was good and bad in her existence as upon a pyre, was retracing her steps and invoking the pardon of him whom she had fatally and unjustly injured. Ah, she would never have returned to the honest, faithful man unless she had seen the magnificentpyre of her passion extinguished, and her life rendered mute and deserted by love!
She had preferred to take time to calm her sorrow, to mature in her conscience the act of remission and humility she had come to accomplish. She had passed five months away from Rome in a villa near Florence, without asking or giving news, and her heart and soul were immersed in a great contrition. They had felt all the weight of the evil done to others, of suffering inflicted undeservedly on the innocent. The sublime idea of reparation had become in Maria so lofty and irrevocable that, at the end of her exile, she was asking to touch the limit of every personal sacrifice, if only to console, heal, and make Emilio Guasco happy again.
In the solitude which she had imposed on herself, in which she had prepared herself for the great work—the greatest and most beautiful work the human soul can accomplish—of giving comfort and happiness, the figure of Emilio Guasco, by his sufferings and the dignity with which he had borne them, and the magnanimity with which he had recalled her to himself, stretching his arms to her in pardon, seemed greater than it had ever been. From the distance Emilio’s love for her seemed immeasurable, since it had resisted betrayal, abandonment, and dishonour. It seemed a different love to her—superior, immovable, eternal, a love which she had never experienced, and, infact, she felt herself unworthy of having inspired. Contrition was breaking, pulverising, volatilising Maria Guasco’s pride, that secret strength, sin, and virtue of her life.
Slowly she reached the head of the stairs, her heart beating more quickly, as she noticed again the well-known place where she had lived, where again she had to see the well-known face and hear again the familiar voice. She realised that she was holding in her convulsed hand two existences.
Maria had no other feeling as she placed her feet on the threshold of what had been her home, and was to become so again, except that of the humility of the repentant sinner. All her being was humility. She was begging pardon for the sin committed, and for the pardon was offering in exchange the dedication of a soul, the dedication of a life.
In the large ante-room, with its dark-carved panels, the two servants left their mistress, and retired to the other side of the living rooms. Once alone her trembling increased, and she seemed to be falling. Where, then, was Emilio, her husband and judge, her husband and her victim, who had not had the strength to meet her at the station, whom at any rate she had expected to find at the threshold? With an effort of will she kept her step firm, and crossed the drawing-room and the little drawing-room. Both rooms were deserted, and so was her bright boudoir.Where was Emilio? A singular thought crossed her brain, which she rejected as soon as she had accepted it, as she perceived him through the open door of his study, standing by his large writing-table holding in his hand, but not reading, a newspaper. The room was less illuminated than the others, and the lamps were shaded in green, but if it had been inundated with the light of the sun Maria would have noticed nothing, so veiled were her eyes and scattered her senses. However, she advanced towards him, where he was waiting silently for the proper word from her. In spite of her horrible trembling, she turned to him contritely with the sincerest repentance; bending her head and stretching out her hands to him. With a very white face, she exclaimed in unspeakable humility—
“Emilio, I ask your pardon.”
If her knees were not bent nor the body prostrated, the soul was prostrated, waiting for the complete pardon, for the word that absolves, the act that cancels, the gesture that redeems. The woman listened humbly without looking at him.
“I pardon you, Maria,” said the man.
Maria raised her eyes and fixed them on Emilio Guasco, and waited; but he did not look at her, neither did he move. An immense silence, an enormous distance seemed to have come between the man and the woman.