Henry Wilton Thomas

“ Juno the sculptor had granted no touch of poetry, and it stood forth in all the cruel realism of coldest marble. While the terrified children clung to their mother’s skirts, Signor Tomato thrashed about the shop, beating his temples with loosely closed fists and crying, “Woe is me, woe is me!” He would not be comforted, nor could Bridget quiet him to the degree of telling her the cause of his mad goings-on until she caught him by the arm and commanded that he be a man and tell her his trouble. ”

“ Mario told her that what she had made known to him at Palazzo Barbiondi had lit up his world again. When the news of the wedding reached him, he said, his thoughts were black indeed. It was as if the sun had fallen just as it had begun to fill the east with glory. The love of her had given him a new heart, a [Pg 172] new mind, new senses. Suddenly all life had been transfigured with an infinite beauty. It was in the railway carriage returning to Milan that he learned of the wedding. ”

“ O poor Signorina Carolina! To come back just too late to keep out the Napolitana—the baggage above all others against whom she wished to close the door. She knew it, she knew it! In her dreams she had seen Juno the Superb queening it over her in the kitchen, ordering more garlic in this, more red pepper in that, and making everything fit only for Neapolitan pigs to eat. Maria have mercy, but she must obey. ”

“ Wherever the mob fought most savagely there was La Ferita, the long scar on her face dulled now by the grime of the struggle. Often it was her hand that applied the torch. With the women that followed her she urged on the men, or dashed alone in front of the soldiers, calling them cowards, assassins, “slaves of Tarsis, who killed little children.” Now and then the soldiers charged their tormentors. Although some of them stood their ground or were carried away wounded, La Ferita was never among the number.
“I can die!” she told her comrades. “But it is not time. I have work to do.” ”

“ It was the blatant hour when Mulberry’s street bazaar is in full cry; when the sham battle fought every morning between honeyed sellers and scornful buyers is in hot movement; when dimes and coppers are the vender’s prize against flounders, cabbages, saucepans, calicoes, apples, and shoestrings, as the stake that fires the housewife’s tongue and eye; when stout-lunged hucksters cut the din with the siren songs their kind have sung for ages in the market place.
Spick and span in the clean blouse of Monday, Signor Di Bello stood on his broad threshold ready for the day’s trade. ”

“ TARSIS ARRAIGNED
Half a minute more and they knew the mob had entered the Atlantean chamber. First they heard the howl of triumph and the trampling, rough-shod feet on the marble pavement; then the thud and crash of objects falling and the shattering of glass. They were able to guess that Demos was venting his fury on the Barbiondi portraits, the mirrors, and the carved Atlantes. But these incidents in the attempted remaking of Italy were of little moment to the man and woman in hiding. ”

“ Marriage had eaten up the savings brought from Italy and what he had earned since. When Signor Tomato told him that the Government would retain the marble until the impost were paid, he blotted out the poor lad’s fondest anticipations—his dreams of release from Signor Di Bello and the misery of his secret marriage, the freedom to say to his uncle, “Juno is my wife.” To the bust he had looked forward as to a loyal friend, who should come some day to lift him to the plane whereon a man ought to stand. ”

“ He remembered that he and Hera had watched them together more than once after a drive. At close range anxiety might have been read in the faces of some and heard in the voices of others; but from where he looked there was naught to suggest that in another part of the town riot and bloodshed had held the stage since sunrise. It was a peaceful enough concourse of citizens; and yet, the scene filled Tarsis with a shuddering dismay. That terror which makes of the stoutest heart a trembling craven was upon him—the terror of the mob. ”

“ The lips of the marchers scarcely moved as they gave forth their hymn of praise to the Genius of Spring. And there was the Queen, wabbling along in her push-cart chariot, the idol of Mulberry’s rabble—the “Presidentessa” whom her creator had dreamed—oh, so trustfully!—to see enthroned upon a porphyry pedestal in the White House, admired of the rich and great. Armando would have dived into the cortège, pushed aside the candle-bearers who guarded the Queen, and striven to reclaim his own, but the grip of Carolina’s hands on his arm held him back. ”

“ For a moment he held Tarsis in the regard of his kindly though keen eyes, as if studying him. “Much of the injustice that man does his neighbour is by reason of his seeing him through the glass but darkly,” he affirmed, in the manner of one who would dispel a misunderstanding. “It is not the first time that the Honourable Forza has been called a demagogue, but always it has been a calumny. I, who am his friend and know him, can do no less than say this. To be a demagogue, I take it, is to be at war with truth—to strive for popular favour by inflaming the selfish passions of men. ”

“ No, no; even these Sicilian pigs could not be making game of a dead man. Pulling the handkerchief from his mouth, he dashed across the street, breaking through the ranks and exploding a volley of hisses and wrathful epithets from marchers and bystanders.
“Aunt Carolina! Marianna! Armando!”
“Bertino!”
They all tried to hug and kiss him at once.
“Are you Juno’s husband?” were the first coherent words.
“Yes; miserable that I am!”
“Bravo!” exulted Carolina. “The Napolitana shall not enter.”
“And my uncle? He lives?”
“Lives! By the mass! He is too much alive.” ”

“ Signor Ulrich was the only man in Italy to whom Tarsis would have intrusted the errand—Ulrich the Austrian, as he was known to the toilers; superintendent of all the Tarsis silk works. As a crusher of labor revolts he had proved himself a master, and Tarsis, perceiving a sound investment of capital, had made him rich while making him loyal. He knew that the little device of the telegram would remain as deep a secret as if it were known to himself alone. ”

“ All Armando knew of sculpture he had learned from his uncle Daniello, a mountain craftsman who never chiselled anything greater than a ten-inch Saint Peter. At night in the tavern on the craggy height, with a flask of barbera before him, the old carver would talk grandly of his doings in art, while his comrades, patient of the oft-told tale, nodded their heads in listless but loyal accord. They all knew very well that it was young Armando who did most of the carving, yet they cried “Bravo!” for old Daniello’s wine was good. ”

“ He asked her what it meant, but she stood as one turned to stone.
“God!” exclaimed Don Riccardo. “He gives you up—puts justice before love! That is the meaning. Bah! Then you are well rid of him, my daughter. The bloodless reasoner! Ah, lovers did not so in my day. Indeed it is an age of machine-made men.”
For Hera it was a withering disappointment. Hers was no romantic schoolgirl’s attachment, but the full-powered, storm-surviving passion of a woman of twenty-four—a passion heeding no call before that of itself. And fondly she had dreamed that with Mario it was the same. ”

“ Though a good piece of acting, it did not gammon the keen wits of Sara the Frier of Pepper Pods. Taking up her bag of salt, she clattered from the shop, and before long stood the voluble centre of a group of eager women, into whose ears she poured the tidings of rival loves in Casa Di Bello. Meantime the grocer, waiting for Bertino, fanned his wrath. When the young man turned up at the shop this was his greeting:
“Satan the Pig!”
“Why?” asked Bertino.
“And you have the courage to ask? Very innocent for one who tries to rob me of the woman I love. O traitor!” ”

“ In the glimmer of an outhung lamp she saw him turn about and with a forefinger stab the air in the direction of Palazzo Barbiondi. [Pg 286] She strove to rally the forces of her mind—to set some rule over her contending impulses.
With equal power the voice of moral obligation and that of pure desire made their plea. Now the duty of a wife pointed the way, now her love for Mario. Insistently the prospect of Tarsis dead mingled itself with a vision of her fetters struck off—her heart no longer bond, but free to obey the law it had broken. ”

“ At length he discovered the Tenderloin, with its dazzling electric displays at the doors of theatres and drinking places, its phantom gaiety. Resolved to sound the depths of this ocean of lights, he went along with a current that flowed to the box office of the Titania, where the glittering Aztec spectacle, “Zapeaca” was the magnet, charged with “one hundred American beauties.”
“By Cristoforo Colombo, it is she!” the grocer exclaimed, as the woman he had hunted in a cityful marched across the stage, bringing up the rear of a long column of high-heeled warriors. ”

“ When he spoke again Hera, with quickening pulse, knew the calm of his character was going; and she was glad for the passion in his tone and the anger that hardened his voice.
“The sacrifice is divine!” he exclaimed. “But the demand for it, the permitting of it, that is monstrous! No human interest can justify the ruin of a life, the desecration of a soul!”
He drew closer to her, his studied control of the past all gone.
“Donna Hera!” he cried, “this must not be—this marriage to-morrow. It is hideous in the eye of God and man.” ”

“ But the broad smiles vanished from the signore’s face when they drew near to Casa Di Bello. Before the door stood a cab on whose top lay a trunk of ancient pattern that he knew too well. On the sidewalk, gesturing madly, were the leading families of the Torinesi, the Milanesi, and the Genovesi, with a scant sprinkling of southern tribes. They surrounded the barouche and shook their fists at the occupants. A fine trick, indeed! A joke, perhaps, but not the joke of a signore. Ask people to a wedding feast, and then have the door slammed in their faces! ”

“ They followed Donna Beatrice and Tarsis across the figured expanse of pavement, down the grand staircase and through the portico to the gardens. Beyond the yellow wall at the backward limit they could see the red roofs of Via Cappuccini—humble abodes of workmen partly screened by the trees. All about them nature had opened her poetry book. Plants in the great urns were dappled with snowy fairness, the maples showed richly green, the magnolias were unfolding their eager beauty, and the air was rapturous with the voices of birds. ”

“ From the market place Angelica bore the gossip that was fast reaching every niche and turn of Mulberry—the great tidings that Signor Di Bello and Juno the Superb had been seen the night before in the Caffè of the Beautiful Sicilian sitting at the same table eating a ragout of spiced pigskin.
“It must be stopped!” declared Carolina, setting her gold-patched teeth. The old bugaboo of a wife arose, as it did with any woman to whom the running voice of the colony linked her brother’s name. “He shall never bring that Neapolitan baggage to Casa Di Bello.” ”

“ Tarsis tossed his head and laughed mockingly. His studied decorum of the gentleman was forgotten, and he stood forth in the truth of his native self. A moment he eyed the man he hated in a vulgar effect of shrewdness, then shook an index finger sidewise before Mario’s face, as the Sicilian peasant uses to denote that he is not to be gammoned.
“Signori,” he began, turning to the astonished guests at his side, “this man knows how to play the traitor and at the same time act the innocent. He and I understand each other excellently. ”

“ But Armando had a soul that looked far above the gleaming tonsures of ten-inch Saint Peters. Wherefore he was unhappy. When his twentieth birthday dawned it seemed to him that his life had been a failure. One morning, after a night of much barbera and noisy gasconade, old Daniello did not wake up, and two days afterward they laid him to rest in the sloping graveyard in the gorge by the olive-oil mill. ”