Seated in an arm-chair of the most upright Empire style, a carved curial chair of darkest mahogany, with bronze bosses and ornaments, cushioned in a myrtle pattern, Vittoria sat upright before her Great Aunt and kept respectful silence. The bride in this third and last visit to the Duchess of Altomonte, a visit of thanks and farewell, wore a rich dress of pleated silver, gay with handsome embroidery; in her little ears she wore solitaires, a large hat with a silver-grey feather on her blond tresses, and amid the lace of her corsage an antique necklace of diamonds and emeralds. She was dressed so luxuriously because, on the first visit made to the proud and austere Bourbon grande dame, the Duchess had suddenly observed to her nephew that his wife was dressed too humbly, and not suitably to her position and the visit she had come to make.
“Vittoria is very simple in her toilette,” Marco had replied philosophically.
“It is one of the mistakes of society in modern times, this affectation of simplicity,” the Duchess had replied immediately.
So at the state dinner, which the Duchess had given to the young couple, to which had been asked all the old gentlemen and ladies who had remained faithful to the King of the Two Sicilies, and had followed him in exile to Paris, Vittoria had not only put on her most expensive evening dress, but wore in her hair the diadem given her by her mother-in-law, Donna Arduina, and round her neck a necklace, a gift from Marco.
Under the weight of the glittering jewels, in that respectable but melancholy society, the pretty bride had not pronounced a single word.
Now, a day before their departure, she had come to present her compliments to her Great Aunt, and intimidated by her surroundings, but especially by the Duchess of Altomonte, Vittoria sat on her Empire chair, with closed mouth and drooping eyes waiting for her great new relation to condescend a word and speak to her.
The Duchess of Altomonte, Donna Guilia de’ Masi, born of the family of Castropignano, had completed eighty years. Her abundant hair, which she preserved to that age, was of the finest shining white, and dressed in old-fashioned style, framing a face which in youth and maturity must have reflected a majestic and imperious beauty. Of the past it was true there remained only an expression of power in the still bright eyes, and the proud smile, wonderful in its energy at that age. Certainly the shoulders were bent and the step a little slow, but, even in this decadence of years and the signs of dissolution, the Duchess had known how to impress and be imposing. The great Empire chair, where she liked to sit for hours together, with a big embroidered cushion in the fashion of the period beneath her feet shod in black velvet, resembled a throne, and the very black ebony stick with the curved silver handle, on which she leaned her tottering steps, resembled a sceptre. Her whole person gave a sense of immense respect, of silent devotion, of a past of honour and fidelity to all promises and oaths, of a past of lofty sacrifice accomplished in silence without a request for compensation, of a life entirely rigid and firm, where perhaps there was wanting a sense of kindness and indulgence, but where all the other virtues had triumphed.
The Duchess had little by little seen her kindred disappear, some carried away by death, others by destiny, some far away returning now and again, some far away for ever. Her legitimate King was dead, buried in a lonely church in a lonely part of Austria, and every year she went to visit her Queen, a Queen full of sorrow supported with a most brave and admirable mind. The interview between them was usually short, sad, and austere. So everything of the past and present added grandeur to the figure of Guilia de’ Masi, Duchess of Altomonte.
“Marco!” she cried, in a still clear voice, in which there was always a tone of command.
“Yes, aunt,” he replied at once.
“Haven’t you something to see about for your departure? Go and see to it; leave me your wife and return for her.”
Without saying a word he bowed in obedience, and kissed the Duchess’s hand covered with large emerald and topaz rings. He kissed, too, lightly Vittoria’s little gloved hand, who shot him a beseeching glance secretly, and left.
“My daughter,” said the Duchess coldly, playing with her gold watch-chain, “I wanted to speak to you about something alone, so I sent Marco away.”
Without replying Vittoria Fiore kept her eyes fixed on the majestic lady, waiting for her words, not without secret emotion.
“I am very pleased that you have married my nephew, Marco Fiore. Even when your engagement was announced three or four years ago I approved, because I had heard much good of you and your virtues. The Fiore are certainly a greater house than your own, and your dowry hasn’t been so much; but that doesn’t matter. In marrying you Marco has turned his back on a past of folly, and has begun a new life.”
A profound expression of suffering was depicted on the bride’s face, but she kept silent.
“By the way, don’t delude yourself: you haven’t caused this miracle,” continued the imperious lady icily, “he was bound to have enough of the other. You will know later on how men tire of their most impassioned loves. Maria—er—Guasco—I think I am right—was a most beautiful and fascinating woman, and Marco raved about her. He is cured now.”
And her inquisitorial eyes, which had read into a thousand faces and a thousand souls and hearts, read on Vittoria’s face the deep, tormenting and incurable doubt. The old lady raised her eyebrows slightly, on discovering this hidden and torturing truth, and shook her head.
“You don’t believe in this recovery? You are torturing yourself with the fear of the past, my daughter? Your first matrimonial joys have been poisoned by it?”
Seeing that she was understood even to the innermost recess of her soul, Vittoria relaxed her face, and closed her eyes, as if about to faint.
“Well, well,” the Duchess said, in a stronger and harder voice, “why are you ashamed to confess your sufferings to me? Are you perchance a timid person? Have you, maybe, a jealous and reserved heart?”
“Yes, yes,” Vittoria murmured, with a sigh.
“Then you are preparing a sad existence for yourself. Timid characters and reserved and jealous hearts are destined to languish in pain and perish in suffering without the world being aware of it. Make a brave effort over yourself, conquer yourself, and tell your thoughts if they are worthy of being heard and understood; pour forth your feeling if it has truth in it.”
The great lady acquired an even more solemn aspect, and seemed the expression of virtue and nobility of life.
“Ah, I can’t, I can’t!” exclaimed Vittoria, placing her handkerchief to her mouth to repress herself.
“Why can’t you?”
“Because I love him,” she proclaimed.
“He loves you too, I suppose,” replied the Duchess, becoming glacial again.
What uncertain and sorrowful eyes Vittoria raised!
“You think he doesn’t love you?” the Duchess insisted.
The bride humbly and weakly replied, opening her arms—
“I don’t know; I don’t know.”
“You deceive yourself,” resumed the great lady slowly, “Marco is fond of you.”
A great disillusion showed itself on Vittoria’s face, a disillusion mixed with fear and sadness.
“Isn’t it enough for you, my daughter, that he is fond of you? What do you want more? What are you desiring? What are you seeking?”
“Oh, aunt, aunt,” she ventured to cry in the sudden familiarity of suffering, “I want him to love me, to love me with ardour and passion.”
“As the other, in fact.”
“As the other,” the unhappy woman ventured to cry.
“That is impossible,” stated the Duchess.
“Impossible, impossible?” and she placed her two little hands together convulsively.
“It is so. Marco can’t have for you, and you can’t ask it of him, a true and intense passion.”
“But why? But why? Am I not young? Am I not beautiful? Am I not his? Don’t I adore him?”
“All that is of no avail. Learn, my daughter, that one doesn’t have two passions one after the other, that there are entire existences which scarcely arrive at feeling one, that there are other existences, many others, which never feel one, not even the pretence of passion, not even its shadow. Passion is an exceptional thing, it is outside life.”
Terrified and pale the wretched bride listened to the voice which seemed that of her destiny, a grave voice and free from any interest which was not true, a voice which seemed cruel, but whose cruelty contained a lofty common-sense.
“For that matter don’t complain. You will know later on, when you are calm and wise, how rarely a man marries with passion in his heart and feelings for his bride. Men marry nearly always to be quiet, for security from all amorous tempests. Hasn’t Marco done this? I add, to reassure you, that in the rare cases in which marriage has taken place in obedience to passion it has always ended in unhappiness.”
Vittoria listened nervelessly.
“Thus God wills it,” the Duchess pronounced with a voice more profound and touching. “Christian marriage, which faith and the Church consecrate for life and death, ought not, and can not, serve for the satisfaction of the voracious flame of our senses. And if it be so it is a state of sin. We don’t marry, Vittoria, for the intoxication of a short time. It isn’t for this that the Lord calls us and chooses us in marriage blessed by Himself. If we reduce this sacrament to a profane pleasure, we violate a divine law.”
“It is horrible, it is horrible,” cried Vittoria, as if she felt herself suffocated.
“It isn’t so horrible,” cried the Duchess. “Be more Christian than woman in matrimony and more woman than sweetheart. Don’t commit the ugly sin and grave mistake of being your husband’s mistress! Vittoria, Vittoria, don’t degrade yourself in wishing to be like the other! After a little you would be betrayed and despised. Thousands of women have tried to be their husband’s mistresses, falling into a sentimental trap, and other thousands will try it after you, and all, my daughter, all have had, and will have, the same fate—they will be betrayed and despised.”
“But has the world always been so? Will it always be so? But you, you, my aunt,” Vittoria ventured to cry, “weren’t you ardently loved by your husband? You who shone with every virtue, rich, of a great family. Didn’t you love your husband, the Duke of Altomonte, ardently? That is what is known; tell me if it is true.”
The Duchess of Altomonte moved her hand vaguely and slowly, and for the first time a slight smile appeared on her lips.
“All that is so long, long ago!” and emotion rendered her dominating voice less firm, “from the day on which he knew me till that of his death, the Duke of Altomonte had a peaceful and equal tenderness for me, a strong moral sympathy, a tranquil and secure attachment.”
“Nothing more? Nothing more?”
“It was enough for me. I was quite content, and I thanked God for it every day, and even now it still forms the sweetest and pleasantest recollection of my life, now too long.”
“And you, and you, how did you love him?”
“As a Christian, Vittoria. I loved him with respect, devotion, and fidelity.”
“Nothing more? Nothing more?”
“Nothing more.”
“Did it satisfy your husband?”
“He never asked anything else from me. I always saw him serene; he died peacefully with his hand in mine.”
The blond bride, with her beautiful pale face, was silent for a moment, then she raised her eyes resolutely and desperately.
“I shall never have the strength for this renunciation—never, never.”
“Ask for strength, and you will have it.”
“Who will give it to me?”
“Pray, and you will have it.”
“Bless me, aunt,” murmured the unhappy woman, kneeling before the venerable figure and bowing her head.
The face of the Duchess seemed to shine with purest light. She touched Vittoria’s forehead lightly with her hand, and raising her eyes to Heaven, “Bless, O Lord, this my daughter. Give her strength, and she shall have peace.”
Vittoria arose, but neither the prayer nor the blessing had given consolation to her anguish.