Henry Wilton Thomas

“ For Hera, she gave no sign. When Tarsis was talking, somewhat heavily, with his air of a rich man, his small, keen eyes looking into hers now and then, she wondered what her life would be with such a companion; but when they were moving homeward past the darkened shop windows of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, out through the Venetian Gate, and speeding in the moonlight of the open country, her reflections took a different cast. Her soul cried out to be free, and to the cry for freedom came an answering call to revolt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So much for the Tarsis of paint and canvas. The one that faced you in the flesh had harder, crueler eyes; the living clutch of the lips was tighter; the faint yet redeeming human quality of the man in the picture was lacking. And in the hue of his skin, much darker than the painter had ventured, nature did not deny the land of his birth—Sicily. It was there, at the beginning of manhood, that chance threw him into the post of time-keeper for a silk-mill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Red Errico started a cry of ‘No more golden eggs for Tarsis and his gang!’ and joining in this every man left his loom and made for the door. Most of them did not wait to stop their machines. They rushed down-stairs and at each floor called to the others to follow. Every man, woman, and child of them ran pell-mell into the yard as if the mill were on fire. All the time they hissed and shouted, ‘No more golden eggs!’ The rabble of the quarter came up, joined the strikers, and before I knew it every window was smashed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It could not have been more than two minutes after she had left the Corso when Tarsis, behind the window drapery, saw Mario pass on his way to the monastery.
From little Via Borghetto Hera moved into the Monforte Bastions and followed that broad highway to Via Cappuccini, the narrow street that bordered the rear gardens of Palazzo Barbiondi. She had gone a few paces beyond the gateway of the palace when the crackle of musketry not far off startled her senses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The inarticulate voice of the crowd had grown to a roar and the ominous note Tarsis caught was now a distinct expression of horror. It rose above the tittle-chat, the tinkling of wine-glasses, the laughter and all the clack and fizzle of the gay assemblage, sending the guests to the windows and bringing the music to a stop. Hera took the arm of her husband, and they started for the staircase. A few steps and they were face to face with Sandro. ”

“ Matchmakers of Milan’s fashionable world, who had known that the Tarsis millions were knocking at the Barbiondi gate, received the announcement of the betrothal as the extinguishment of their last hope, but in the world of creditors there was a wild rejoicing. The mortgagee lost his appetite for the last morsel of the estate. Milliners, makers of gowns and boots, purveyors of food and drink, sent in humble prayers for patronage instead of angry demands for pay. Everywhere the bloodhounds of debt slunk off the scent. ”

“ Honor leaves you but one course. Unless you persist wickedly, recklessly, in following your own desire, putting from you every consideration of right or wrong, spurning justice, moral obligation, and the wishes of all save yourself—unless you do all this, you will keep your promise.”
The facts were driving Hera overhard. Her eyelids burned, but she kept back the tears that wanted to flow. When she turned to Tarsis she felt more like a supplicant for mercy than one [Pg 92] asserting a right which a few hours earlier had seemed not to be gainsaid—the right to be happy in her love. ”

“ His words did not square with Tarsis’s assertion that the heart of a statesman should be in his head. He gave reasons why some are rich and some are poor, and though new to those at the table, they felt that they were listening to no sentimental dreamer. He struck the key-note of the century’s new thought. If his head did lift itself toward the clouds at times, his feet remained firmly planted [Pg 31] on the earth, and his ideals were those of a man determined to be useful in the world.
It was good, Hera thought, to look upon him; good to hear his voice, good to feel that one admired him. ”

“ Then there were the amusing men and women who did not profess to be anybody in particular, yet the sort that fashionable Milan was glad to have at its receptions.
In time the clatter of tongues filled the broad corridors as well as the great chamber, and resounded cheerfully in the gardens, now rich with the foliage, the blossoms, and fragrance of May. Mario and the Cardinal joined those of the company who had sought the cooler air, where fountains played and magnolias cast their shadows on statuary. ”

“ You and your crew of demagogues are to blame for the King’s death. I charge you with it publicly. You poison the minds of ignorant people, set the workers against their betters, teach them to hate authority, incite them to riot and bloodshed. I say that you have plotted against the King’s life, and are just as much the taker of it as the miscreant who fired the shot.”
It was so different from what he had expected and dreaded that Mario felt more of relief than resentment. That Tarsis had omitted Hera’s name seemed a full requital for the wrong done him in that reckless accusation. ”

“ Every minute they were on the point of vaulting into the thicket or trying conclusions with a sturdy oak. They rocked and swayed at times as if their carrier was a boat in a choppy sea. Hera was occupied in holding fast, but Sandro seemed not to know that the experience was at all unusual. Forgetting himself and all the world except the road and the dangers that the lamps revealed, he became a part of the dodging, spinning thing, meeting emergencies with a passive certainty that was more automatic than human. ”

“ We have a new wisdom in Italy—it has come in with the New Democracy—the wisdom that is blind to the rights of capital and laughs at the idea of its having any virtue; all the prosperity our country enjoys to-day, understand, is due to the champions of the horny-fisted—the dreamers of the Camera. Is not that the fact, Don Riccardo? ”

“ I thank Heaven Antonio Tarsis was not present.”
“I always thank Heaven when he is not present,” Don Riccardo confessed, and his sister winced. “What crime has Hera committed?”
“On the eve of her marriage she is showing a scandalous interest in a man who is not to be her husband.”
Don Riccardo gave a low laugh of depreciation. “Mario Forza saved her life,” he reminded her. “If the fact has slipped your memory, it is not so with Hera.”
“I know,” Donna Beatrice argued, “but there are things to remember as well as things not to forget.” ”

“ Italy has no lovelier valley than the one where flowed the river on which she looked, and in the gentler season there is no water-course more expressive of serene human character. But the river was tipsy to-day. The springtime sun, in its passages of splendour from Alp to Alp, had set free [Pg 2] the winter snows, and Old Adda, flushed by his many cups, frolicked ruthlessly to the sea.
Peasant folk in that part of the Brianza had smiled a few days earlier to see the great stream change its sombre green for an earthy hue, because it was a promise of the vernal awakening. ”

“ Mario proclaimed, in a voice sounding above the growl of the mob. “When you wish to pull down this work of Leonardo it is your right to do so, and no one may say no. You are the people, and the people must rule!” ”

“ Hera remarked the air of well-being that pervaded the place—the neat apparel of the men and women, the interest they showed in their work, and the absence from their eyes of the driven look she had observed in a factory of Milan.
“How bright and fresh and—happy they are!” she said to Mario.
“They are not overworked,” he explained. “They have only themselves and their families to provide for.”
“I see nothing unusual in that,” observed Donna Beatrice.
“I mean,” Mario went on, “that there are no ladies and gentlemen to be fed and clothed out of the profits of their work. ”

“ An orator of the quarter, sowing discontent, once made use of the noble relic to point a moral. “There are two sorts of ruins, my comrades,” he said; “one is the work of time, the other of men.”
The place for which Tarsis was making lay a little farther on. It was a café of the cheap and gaudy grade; its large front windows bore the legend in yellow and green, “Café of the Ancient Colonnade.” Before he could traverse the Corso there swung into view from another street a vociferous collection of men and women marching without order of line. They were the striking silk-workers. ”

“ Anarchy has no more determined foe than Signor Forza. His war is upon offenders against human justice, and that is the same as war upon anarchy. No one loves his country more than he, no one loved the King more. I know that his public services are in harmony with the things that we all should hold best—the Church, which is of Christ, and Italy, which is our country.”
In the hush that reigned Mario said, “I thank your Eminence,” and Hera, silently, breathed a thanksgiving.
Tarsis had not spoken his last word. His lips were curving with the sarcastic smile that he could summon. ”

“ Nor was there any account of the doings of La Ferita, the woman of the scarred face, who shook her fist at Tarsis. Before he came from the church she had annoyed the Civil Guards by crying out: “Joy to the bridegroom! Death to the children in his factories!” The guards gave her a final warning, which she understood; and when Tarsis passed by her tongue was stilled, but the long scar glowed and her eyes looked savage hatred. Tarsis saw the woman shaking her fist at him, and so did Hera. ”

“ In the sudden impulse of his rage he threw himself against the door, crying, “Open, open! I am your husband! It is my right!”
But the door did not swing, and from the other side came no answer. With a Sicilian malediction on his lips, Tarsis moved away to the window to stand in the cool of the night air. The new conscript and his comrades, passing below, sent up a fresh gust of tipsy laughter. ”

“ The dinner was not such a gloomy affair as it had promised to be, although only three of the company of five expected were present—the Duke, Hera, and Colonel Rosario. The hearty old soldier marvelled at the absence of the bridegroom-elect, but Don Riccardo asked him how Tarsis could go on being the richest man in Italy if he did not put business before dinner. It was an explanation that did not satisfy the Colonel, but he accepted it with a laugh and the comment, “Italy is no longer a country; it is a machine for making money.” ”

“ The meeting, in itself a trivial occurrence, proved a source of much illumination for the Austrian. It explained what had puzzled his mind ever since the night he had performed for Tarsis the service of sending the message that made Hera listen to his plea. He had tried in vain to account for that affair as some ruse in a political game where his resourceful master had set his skill against that of the leader of the New Democracy. Now he divined that a woman—no other than she who became his wife—was the stake that Tarsis had won. ”

“ Some of the newspapers hailed the uprising as the birth of a new and glorious Italy. These were seized promptly. Men with swords sat at the desks where men with pens had done their work. The Queen of Holland, who was expected, was advised by the Minister of the Interior not to proceed to Milan. Wherever workmen were found grouped an unceremonious shower of bullets dispersed them.
It had been all fun for the rebels the night before, when Tarsis and the Panther, in the gloom of Piazza dell’ Armi, arranged to square the account against Mario Forza. ”