Donna Maria

“ Youth, primal and fresh, proceeded from all the whiteness in which she walked, like one of those dense, soft, white clouds which give a sense of spiritual voluptuousness to the eyes. Her beauty was illuminated by it, and beneath the transparency of her complexion her blood coursed more lively, rendering more rosy her delicate and expressive countenance. Only her eyes contained a tinge of disturbance in their colour, undecided between grey and blue. Something proud and sad concealed them, sometimes even extinguishing their glance. Donna Maria’s mouth, too, had not a shadow of a smile. ”

“ I will not say that Donna Maria may not have passed across the picture of my mind-drawn regrets; but if her form did indeed flit past, it was to breathe a hope of some future meeting, some bright time to come, the recompense of all our separation. And I thought with pride how much more worthy of her would I be as the prairie-hunter,—the fearless follower of the bear and buffalo, accustomed to the life of the wild woods,—than as the mere adventurer, whose sole stock in trade was the subterfuge and deceit he could practise on the unwary. ”

“ Formerly she did not care for the perfume of flowers in her bedroom, fearing its insidious poison; but the green of gardens and meadows, of fields and mountains, the healthy green of leaves and grasses pleased her simple open spirit, her sane and beautiful youth. The ink was fresh in the pen on the writing-table, just as if her last letter had been written an instant ago, and near by was a book in a dark-green binding, a book unfinished with the marker in its place—Salammbo, of Gustave Flaubert.
Thus Donna Maria had the feeling of the abolition of time. ”

“ However, the silence in Casa Guasco was supreme, and Donna Maria heard no step approaching. The boudoir, which preceded her room, was in half-darkness, lit by a single lamp. On the other side was her husband’s study, where they had met an hour ago, and where he had remained silent without following her. The study door was closed. No noise reached from there.
“He is working, perhaps,” she thought. Then suddenly a contradiction arose. “Working? At what? At this hour?”
Like a spectre Maria re-entered her room, praying for calm against the heavy disturbance which was again oppressing her. ”

“ But here Donna Maria interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of it. “Vamos!”
Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive and imploring attitudes at her little feet. The young girl looked mischievously from one to the other. ”

“ We sat down, I believe, full thirty to dinner, and had hardly got through the dessert, when Berti came in to tell me that Madame Ariaga, and a bevy of the palace damsels, were prancing about the quinta on palfreys and bouras. I hastened to join them. There was Donna Maria do Carmo, and Donna Maria da Penha, with her hair flowing about her shoulders, and her large beautiful eyes looking as wild and roving as those of an antelope. I called for my horse, and galloped through alleys and citron bushes, brushing off leaves, fruit, and blossoms. ”

“ Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness, Candida super nivem. This night of moonlight and snow then was under the dominance of Maria Ferrès as under some invincible actual influence. The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly on the spirit of the poet. ”

“ Donna Maria, although sufficiently adorned by her natural beauty, had passed the whole morning in adding to it all the charms that could be borrowed of art, so that she appeared indeed more lovely than usual. She proposed to play to pass the time, and won a hundred ducats of our visitor, which he was obliged to lose to her out of gallantry.
This was nothing to what followed; for beginning to be more liberal in proportion as he became deeper in love, he put himself to a frightful expense. He presented my wife with several magnificent dresses, and a{330} quantity of jewels. ”

“ She who suspected him, despised and considered him a liar and a hypocrite, was listening to him, while her face contracted with suffering and disdain.
“Donna Maria, you had the courage to offend and abandon your husband who had done nothing to you, because you did not care to live in deceit and treachery: have another courage, worthy of you, that of flying from Marco Fiore, since you love him no more and he does not love you. Leave the house where you live in heavy and gloomy silence; re-enter the world, re-enter society. ”

“ He was waiting for Donna Maria—she had chosen this night of supernatural purity on which to sacrifice her own purity to her lover's desire. All the white things about her, cognisant of the great sacrifice about to be accomplished, were waiting to cry Ave and Amen at the passage of their sister. The silence was alive.
And behold, she comes! Incedit per lilia et super nivem. She comes, robed in ermine; her tresses bound about with a fillet; her steps lighter than a shadow; the moon and the snow are less pale than she—Ave!
A shadow, azure as the light that tints the sapphire, accompanies her. ”

“ But Donna Maria had watched and warned and our Janus was already stealing far on his way to Alexandria, when Sir Tristan drew aside the curtains and plunged his dagger deep into the mass of pillows which in the darkness wore some semblance of a sleeping form. It was told that he howled with rage at such childish thwarting, for Donna Maria had men at hand who came running at the outcry and took Sir Tristan into safe keeping."
"Madre Sanctissima!" Caterina exclaimed in her excitement, and urging the recital with a quick motion of her hand. ”

“ While his bright eyeballs swim in filial tears, To hear the accents of his dying sire, Tenfold enhanc'd by thy descriptive tongue. Donna Maria
Maternal softness weakens my resolve, And wakes new fears---thou dearst, best of men, Torn from thy side, I'm levell'd with my sex. The wife---the mother---make me less than woman. (Maria opens an adjacent apartment, and shews the infant in the arms of his nurse)
Don Juan De Padilla
Let angel innocence lie soft and still, Nor call the dew drops to the infant eye By sympathetic, fond, parental tears. ”

“ Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over again. I am unstable as [247] water; incoherent, inconsistent, a very chameleon! All my efforts towards unity of purpose are for ever vain. I must resign myself to my fate. ”

“ Donna Gonsalva was exquisite in person and mind; she certainly loved him, but her love did not meet either the delicacy or the intensity of his: her feelings were obtuse in those trifles to which sensibility is tremblingly alive: she would often pursue her own sprightly pleasures with such eager forgetfulness of him, as to mortify and displease him. ”

“ The old woman still sharply surveyed her mistress as she observed, "I cannot abide that Donna Maria; she speaks the thing which is false."
"Teresa!" Inez began reprovingly; but the old domestic tyrant would have out her say.
"I heard this very morning that Donna Maria boasts that she possesses a silver reliquary holding a lock of the blessed Santa Veronica's hair" (here Teresa crossed herself devoutly) , "a reliquary once belonging to Philip the Second, our most Catholic [Pg 119] king,—the saints have his soul in their keeping!" ”

“ You will perhaps laugh at me for my resolution. But I have given you so much trouble, that it is only fair you should know it is not merely caprice that governs me—that you should know why your visit here is a barren one; why you—the great advocate—have [Pg 158] been obliged to waste your valuable time with my poor friend, Donna Maria, for nothing."
Arthur was too much pre-occupied to notice the peculiarly feminine significance with which the Donna dwelt upon this latter sentence—a fact that would not otherwise have escaped his keen observation. ”

“ To procure his freedom and restoration to Donna Gonsalva, this generous friend had consented to become the wife of a Grandee who had long solicited her of her father: by this time she was his and living far from Morocco. Immurred within the walls of a Harem, her noble and delicate soul had no other enjoyment left than the conviction of having sacrificed herself for the sake of him she loved. ”

“ But for Andrea Sperelli there is not only no march, no drama, there is not even a weakness to give him the semblance of dramatic, of plastic material; he is solidly, invariably, vulgarly strong, and not a bit more corrupt at the end of his disorders than at the beginning. His erudition, his intellectual accomplishments and elevation, are too easily spoken for; no view of him is given in which we can feel or taste them. Donna Maria is scarcely less signal an instance of the apparent desire on the author’s part to impute a “value” defeated by his apparently not knowing what a value is. ”

“ Poinsett's analysis of his own [Pg 412] mental condition on the receipt of Donna Maria's telegram. It was the cool self-examination of a man who believed himself cold-blooded and selfish, superior to the weakness of ordinary humanity, and yet was conscious of neither pride nor disgrace in the belief. Yet when he diverged from his direct road to the Mission, and turned his horse's head toward the home of Donna Dolores, he was conscious of a new impulse and anxiety that was stronger than his reason. ”

“ For I grieve to say that, far from taking Arthur's advice, the details of the adventure at the Point of Pines had been imparted by her own lips to most of her female friends, and even to the domestics of her household. In the earlier stages of a woman's interest in a man she is apt to be exceedingly communicative; it is only when she becomes fully aware of the gravity of the stake involved that she begins to hedge before [Pg 142] the public. The morning after her adventure Donna Maria was innocently full of its hero and unreservedly voluble. ”

“ While he uttered this sentence, a thrill of more genuine affection than had ever stirred his bosom for Donna Gonsalva, glided through his veins: perfect esteem, perfect admiration, perfect gratitude,—what are they, but the purest species of love?
To these sentiments were now added the conviction of no longer possessing any other source of happiness. [Pg 188]
Delicacy gives law to woman’s heart; Honor to that of man: woman blushes at the idea of entertaining a second passion, yet naturally tender, adheres too tenaciously sometimes to a changed object. ”

“ His companions were the Marchesa di Parenzo, the Roman wife of a gentleman of Bologna, and Donna Teresa Crescenzi, whose wild husband had been killed in a motor-car accident at last, and who was supposed to be looking [18] for another. The Marchesa di Parenzo was Maria Montalto’s most faithful friend, and Donna Teresa was one of the most accomplished gossips in Rome.
An accomplished gossip is one who tells stories which sound as if they might be true. This kind is very dangerous.
Neither of these two ladies knew all the truth about Maria and Castiglione ”

“ The eldest, Donna Marianna, was then a girl of twenty, who kept her father's house and was a mother to the two lads. She was not handsome or learned, and had no taste for the world; but she was like the lavender-plant in a poor man's window--just a little gray flower, but a sweetness that fills the whole house. Her brother, Count Roberto, had been ailing from his birth, and was a studious lad with a melancholy musing face such as you may see in some of Titian's portraits of young men. ”

“ She has developed from a girl into a woman, and we wonder if her mind, her soul, has had equal development, or has it slowly starved in her unlovely and commonplace surroundings?
It has not. Donna has never been away from San Pasqual since the day she entered it a babe in arms, but—she presides over the news counter in addition to her other duties. Here she has access to all the latest “best-sellers,” also the big national magazines, and through these means she has kept pace with a world that is continually passing her by in Pullman sleepers. ”

“ She was the recipient of confidences from waitresses engaged in the innocent pastime of across-the-counter flirtations with conductors and brakemen. She was the joy of the men and the envy of the women. In fact, Donna was an exemplified copy of that distinctive personality with which we unconsciously invest any young woman upon whose capable shoulders must fall such multifarious duties as those already described ”

“ Instinctively our gaze reverts to Donna, for the day's work is finished, she had proved her cash and is about to go home to the Hat Ranch.
She is a woman now, a glorious, healthy, athletic creature, with wavy hair, very fine and thick and black, and glossy as polished ebony. Her face is tanned and glowing, and the halo of brilliant black hair only serves to accentuate the glow and to remind us of an exquisite cameo set in jet. She is taller by three inches than the average woman, broad-shouldered, full-breasted, slim-waisted, a figure to haunt a sculptor's memory. ”