As Emilio Guasco helped his wife into her opera-cloak, she felt on her bare shoulders the sensation of something scorching. It was her husband’s hands that had touched her. She turned round quickly, never having seen him so pale. They were alone in the armoury of Casa Nerola, used as a cloak-room. No one is leaving, no one ought to be leaving at the moment when the festival is at its brightest, since the Emperor is dancing in the state quadrille. But Emilio had said to her, coming up unexpectedly, in a decided voice—
“Let us go.”
She obeyed at once. Two valets hastened to help her, but Emilio took the cloak and shawl. How hot the man’s hands felt on the woman’s cold white shoulders. Descending the staircase, with a silent bow he offered his arm to his wife, and, almost as if he feared to see her fall, he pressed hers against his as in a vice. They said not a word, nor did they look at each other. At the bottom of the stairs they waited while the porter called their carriage.
Slightly bending her beautiful head Maria entered the coupé drawn by a pair of grey horses, and the door closed behind Emilio with a dull sound. Emilio sat silently in his corner. Twice his wife looked at him in the half-light, and noticed that he was paler than she had ever seen him; his troubled eyes were brightly fixed on her.
She lowered her head. Suddenly he sought her gloved hand in the large velvet and lace sleeve of her mantle, and pressed it so hard that she gave a cry of pain.
“Emilio, you are hurting me!”
He threw the hand aside brutally and laughed loudly. They had reached Casa Guasco. She mounted the stairs rapidly, a prey to a singular trouble caused by an unknown fear, of an unknown shame and sorrow. She did not turn round, but she heard her husband following through the different rooms to the boudoir which preceded her own room, the room whose threshold Emilio had never crossed since she had returned home. In that little room they usually said good-night before separating. She stopped, turned round, and offered her hand to her husband.
“Good-night,” she said, in a feeble voice.
He did not reply, but looked at her strangely, and preceded her into the bedroom. At the threshold before entering she hesitated, and a feminine trembling caused her to vacillate. However, her pride and her courage came to her aid as she entered the room. The man and the woman stood near to each other, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Good-night, Emilio,” she said firmly.
“I want to speak to you,” he managed to say with difficulty, in a hoarse voice.
“Very good,” she replied firmly.
She allowed the shawl, mantle, gloves, and purse to be taken away by Chiara’s deft fingers, who was in the room in attendance on her, almost feeling the gloomy hour which was waiting for them. All these operations are done calmly and dexterously. Quietly Maria removed from her head the grand diadem of diamonds, the pearl collar and necklace, the bracelets from her arms, and poured them into Chiara’s hands, saying quietly—
“You may go.”
“Am I to wait?” whispered the faithful creature, with a timid glance.
“No,” exclaimed Emilio suddenly.
“No,” replied Maria quietly.
With a light step Chiara disappeared. Maria sat down in an arm-chair in her white ball dress, and waited patiently. Her husband stood before her in evening dress, with a flower in his buttonhole, but like a corpse in the face, except that his eyes were shining with an evil flame.
“Maria,” he broke out, “have you decided to make me commit a crime?”
For half-an-hour she had understood that a breath of madness was crossing her husband’s senses, and she believed and hoped she could conquer this madness by calmness and coldness.
“I don’t understand you; will you explain?” she asked in a harmonious voice.
“Don’t lie!” he cried, “don’t lie, as you always do! You know quite well what I am saying. You pretend and dissimulate. You lie, that’s it; and I shall kill some one to make you content.”
“Emilio, Emilio,” she murmured sweetly, “you are wronging me; but I can stand the wrong since I see you are very excited. Calm yourself, I beg of you. Make an effort over your impetuousness; conquer yourself and be tranquil.”
He replied with a horrible laugh.
“Make an end of it, Maria, make an end of this nauseating cataplasm of your pity! Your compassion exasperates me. Go and use it in some hospital. I am sure you understand; and I am going to kill some one. I am going to kill him.”
She shook her head. Her sweetness disappeared with his laughter, and she became thoughtful and sad. He had risen, and was walking up and down the room like a madman talking to himself.
“It shall not be allowed for a miserable woman, yes, for a miserable woman, without honour and without heart, to make a poor gentleman unhappy and ridiculous. An honourable man should not allow her.”
“Are you speaking of me?” she asked, getting up at once proud and erect before him, and forcing him to stop his mad perambulations.
“Exactly; I am speaking of you, dishonour of my life, misfortune of my life!” Emilio cried in her face.
She bent a little under the new injury, but still gathered all her strength not to retaliate or rebel, to dominate her pride, and to use only her goodness and her tenderness.
“Emilio, Emilio, you are raving!” she exclaimed, with immense sadness.
Again he burst into a harsh laugh, false and stridulous.
“So I am a madman, am I? And what are you, Maria? You who lost your head for three years for that waxen-faced doll, for that languishing idiot, for that perverse and mischievous-souled Marco Fiore? Oh yes, call me mad—you, you, who had neither shame nor honour for three years? You who are a spectacle for the laughter and contempt of the whole of Rome for your madness; and dare you tell me that I am raving?”
“Oh, Emilio, Emilio!” she exclaimed, trembling.
“Do you deny it? Do you deny it?” he yelled, almost stammering, so great was his fury.
She looked at her husband. The great danger she was in only made her a little paler and her lips a little drier. She kept silent.
“Haven’t you loved him?” he yelled, coming nearer to her, taking her two hands and squeezing them as in a vice.
She closed her eyes, as if face to face with death. Then she opened them wide, and replied simply—
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you run away from home for him, with him?”
She tried to free her hands, which were closed in his, but he did not let go. Again with simplicity, with loyalty, she had the courage to reply to the furious man—
“Yes.”
“There! there! Didn’t you adore him for three years?”
She tightened her lips, and bit them to conquer the pain of her tortured hands, and without a cry still replied—
“Yes.”
“And you still love him; you’ll always love him!” he cried, and in his anger this time there was mixed deep suffering.
He let go her hands. She fell back exhausted, but replied in a clear, precise voice—
“I do not love him.”
“It is false, it is false; you still love him.”
“If we had still loved each other we should not have left each other,” she declared without hesitation.
“When you returned to this house to laugh at me, to make a fool of your tortured husband, you were in love with Marco Fiore, and Marco Fiore was in love with you.”
“I should not have placed a foot in your house, understand, if I had still loved Marco,” she proclaimed, proudly and coldly.
“Cursed be that evening! Cursed be that hour!” the man exclaimed, mad with jealousy and suffering.
“You called me here,” she stated.
“If not, wouldn’t you have come? Wouldn’t you have come, eh, woman without soul or heart?”
“I should never have come,” she declared.
“You are a monster of pride and aridness!” he cried; but in his voice sorrow conquered anger.
“I have tamed my pride before you, Emilio, don’t forget it,” she replied.
“When? How? You humiliate yourself? You?”
“When I accepted the pardon you offered me. I could have refused it, but I conquered my pride. I bowed and almost prostrated myself before you, and you pardoned me. Remember that; remember that.”
“Cursed be those words; cursed the lips that pronounced them.”
Maria stretched out her hand involuntarily, as if to stop her husband from a mortal fall.
“Weren’t you sincere at that moment?” she asked in a dull voice.
“I was sincere,” he replied, with a gulp.
“Did that pardon come from the bottom of your heart?”
“From the bottom, from the very depths of my heart.”
“Why do you then curse that moment, those words and that sentiment?”
“Because you still love Marco Fiore.”
“No,” she replied.
“You keep his letters.”
“That is true; but I don’t love him. His letters are sacred, like those of one dead, like those of one dear to me.”
“You love him; you love him!” exclaimed Emilio, in a monotony of desperation; “you keep every gift of his.”
“I don’t love him; but what I have is dear to me as a funereal memory.”
“You love him, and he loves you. The house at Santa Maria Maggiore has remained as it was. It belongs to him and you.”
“But I have never been there again,” she replied disdainfully.
“I know, I know. I know where you go. But you will go there to-morrow perhaps, and he will come to-morrow. Oh, this evening, if I had never seen this evening!”
He turned, wringing his hands under a pain he could no longer resist.
“I saw your eyes, Maria; I saw his when you met at Casa Nerola. I saw all. And Vittoria Fiore, the poor unfortunate, saw you. She was as pale as death. This time, understand, I can’t endure the insult; I shall kill you and him. But endure this shame again—never, never!”
She made a supreme effort of courage, subduing her indignation, repressing it at the back of her atrociously offended mind. She remembered that she had returned home to be good, to be sweet, to restore peace and serenity there, to give back happiness to her husband, who had a right to it, to perform works of tenderness, even to the silence and death of her own heart.
“Emilio, Emilio,” she said softly, “tell me what I am to do to soften your mind and pacify your heart. You don’t believe me to-day, you must to-morrow. Tell me all. Shall we leave Rome together for ever?”
“No,” he replied gloomily; “I should think that you wanted to fly from Marco Fiore.”
“Shall we go for a long voyage together?”
“No; you have been everywhere together, that I know.”
“Do you want me to shut myself up at home, to see no one, as if I were dead?”
“No; I should think you were absorbed in memories of him.”
“Well, would you like us to lead a society life together, wild and full of pleasure?”
“No, no. We should meet him every day, every evening, and I should commit a crime, Maria,” and the fixed idea returned to him.
She felt lost for a moment.
“Then what am I to do?”
“There is one only means,” he replied, drawing much nearer to her, speaking with his hot breath in her face.
“What is it?”
“To love me as you loved him.”
The woman frowned two or three times without replying.
“I want to be loved passionately by you, do you understand? You must love me with passion as you loved Marco, as I love you. Have you understood? No more of this pale and flaccid affection, this loving friendship, which I despise and which exasperates me to frenzy. It must be passion. Have you perfectly understood me?”
She stood cold and rigid with staring eyes; but made no reply.
“You want to love me, don’t you? I am your husband, who spoke the first words of love to you, who gave you the first kiss. Remember, remember, you who want to love me. You must love me as I have loved you. Speak; reply.”
She closed her eyes, and replied in a choking and desperate voice—
“I will try; I will try.”
“When?” and the question is like a dull roar.
“Later on, later on,” she said, feeling herself lost, but unable to lie.
“No, no,” he roared. “No, this evening, this very evening, in which you have seen him again, in which you have looked at and understood each other.”
* * * * * * * *
It is late in the night, Maria is alone, stretched in her easy-chair, with dishevelled hair, which covers her face. Her hands hang limply with fingers apart, and her eyes are wide open, almost deprived of their glance. With a supreme effort of will she raised her hand and touched the bell. Her head fell back exhausted. The silence around was intense. No one came, and she had no strength left. But a little step draws near, a familiar face bends over her.
“I am dying,” she cries to the faithful girl.
Chiara suddenly becomes strong, lifts her in her arms, holds her up, and begins to take off her ball dress, while Maria every moment seems to be fainting.
“I am dying,” she repeats.
At last she is free of her gay garments, and the faithful girl tries to make her rise, with infinite patience and tact. At last she stands up, tall, rigid and pale as a ghost.
“I am dying!” she cries.
She grips Chiara with her hands for aid, totters, sways, and falls exhausted in the gloom and silence, as if dead.