“Your Excellency, dinner is served,” announced the butler at the door of the salotto, bowing to Donna Arduina Fiore.
Donna Arduina put down her knitting of dark wool, a petticoat destined for some poor woman dying of cold in the winter. She asked—
“Has Don Marco returned?”
“No, Excellency, but his man Francesco has returned with a letter for Your Excellency,” and he advanced with a note on a silver tray. In the increasing gloom of the room, Donna Arduina raised her eyes to Heaven with a fleeting act of resignation, as she took her son’s letter. She had received many others in the far-off times, which it seemed to her ought never to have returned again with their habits, and now at the day’s fall Marco again writes to her as formerly. She read—
“Dear Mamma, excuse me, pardon me, but I am detained by friends for dinner at the club. If I can return early I will come and kiss your hand, if not, to-morrow. Bless me.—Marco.”
The tender mother sighed, blessing as usual in her heart her favourite son, even if absent and drawn away elsewhere by others. In her deep maternal egoism she is content that nobody and nothing have the power to make her son forget his mother entirely. Still she sighed, and said to the butler—
“Please inform Donna Vittoria that dinner is served, and that I am waiting for her in the dining-room.” It is not very long since Donna Arduina made common table with her children, Marco and Vittoria. In the early days of their marriage she said that she did not wish to change her usual time-table, little suitable for the young couple; but it was really an affectionate excuse to leave them in liberty. Little by little, however, she learnt that they not only desired her presence at the family table, but felt an intimate need of it, as if to prevent embarrassment, so great and frequent had become the coldness and silence between Marco and Vittoria. Once, with a boyish caress, which he knew how to give his mother, winning her as he had always won her from a little one, Marco had said to her—
“Mamma dear, don’t abandon us in the hour of our dinner as in that of our death!”
“Why? Why?”
“You know Vittoria more than ever at that hour seeks the solution of a philosophical problem, which has fatigued the mind of many philosophers. Hence I dare not disturb her. At least you have the habit of opening your mouth, mamma bella, and pronouncing a few words.”
Thus the new custom was assumed without Vittoria asking the reason. At table, to solve the question of places, the two ladies of the house were seated one opposite the other, the two places of honour separated by some distance. Marco’s place was on the right of his mother, but much nearer to her, in fact quite far from his wife. So Donna Vittoria Fiore seemed isolated down there in the place of honour on her high-backed chair with a carved coronet, which topped the ornamentation and stood out above the little head with its aureola of golden hair; but she seemed serene and tranquil. Mother and son often, when she was there, forgot her, and during dinner a conversation took place between the two without either directing a word to Vittoria, and as Vittoria never questioned either, neither replied. Sometimes as they talked they looked at her, as if to make her take part in the conversation, but, without opening her mouth, she would content herself with nodding her head to what they said, almost automatically. For two or three months now, with a plausible excuse but with increasing regularity, Marco was missing at the family meal. Sometimes he announced the fact the day before, sometimes he said so at luncheon, and at last, at the close of the season, he more often sent a little note to his mother to say that he was not returning to dinner: but always to his mother, never to Vittoria.
“But why don’t you write a word to her?” she asked, a little, but not very, shocked.
“Because Your Excellency is mistress of the house!” he proclaimed, embracing her like a child, and smiling and laughing.
“Still, she could be hurt about it,” observed the good woman.
“Vittoria? Never.”
When his absences became more frequent, she made some firm remonstrances to him.
“Why do you abandon us, Marco?”
“Do I, mamma?” he said, with an uncertain smile.
“Vittoria may be displeased by it.”
“You, mamma, you; not Vittoria.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ask her. Try and ask her. You will cut a poor figure, madre bella, since Vittoria will reply that it matters nothing to her.”
“Pretending?”
“Pretending? Who knows! For that matter I can’t endure people who pretend.”
“Even those who are hiding their sorrow?”
“Even them. A hidden sorrow doesn’t exist for me.
“You are cruel, Marco.”
“There, there, mamma, sweet as honey, you mustn’t think me cruel!”
The mother, a little thoughtful, was silent, but not convinced. This evening the absence of her son had worried her more than ever. She entered slowly the immense, solemn, gloomy dining-room of Casa Fiore just as Vittoria entered from the other side. The young woman read the pain on the good-natured old face.
“Isn’t Marco coming to dinner, mamma?” she asked indifferently, sitting down.
“No, dear. He has been kept at the club by friends.”
“Ah! and is he returning late?” and there was even greater indifference in this second remark.
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no,” added Donna Arduina, looking closely at her daughter-in-law.
Vittoria appeared not to have heeded her mother-in-law’s reply. The dinner proceeded in silence, slowly and peacefully, served by servants who made no noise in crossing the imposing space, where a single candelabra concentrated its light on the table, leaving the rest of the room obscure.
Donna Arduina Fiore had always had a holy terror of installing the electric light in the old palace full of carving, precious pictures, and objects of art. So the old aristocratic methods of illumination prevailed, large oil lamps and huge candelabra with wax candles.
“Where are you going this evening, Vittoria?” said Donna Arduina, interrupting the heavy silence.
“Nowhere, mother.”
“I thought you were going with Beatrice to the last performance of the Walkyrie?”
“Beatrice is going there. I said I wouldn’t.”
“Does it bore you?”
“It bores me.”
“Don’t you like the theatre?”
“So-so, you know.”
“Still, any way you prefer music?”
“Yes, I prefer music; but even that doesn’t make me enthuse.”
“It seems to me, Vittoria, that you enthuse for very few things in the world;” and she tempered the observation with a quiet smile.
“I enthuse over nothing, mamma; really over nothing,” replied Vittoria emphatically.
“But why, daughter? Why? There is good in enthusiasm.”
“I don’t enthuse, mother, by temperament, also by character: I am made so. I have been made very badly,” the young woman declared, with an expression of bitterness.
“Haven’t you tried to change yourself?—to interest yourself deeply in something?—to like something keenly? Have you tried?”
“I have tried and failed.”
“Still you must have thought and felt that something in the world deserves all our heart?”
“Yes, mother, I have thought and felt it,” the daughter-in-law replied firmly.
“What, my daughter?”
“Love, mother,” she replied firmly.
“Love?” repeated Donna Arduina, surprised.
“Exactly, my mother. School stories, follies of youth. Old stories!”
With a vague bow she seemed to greet these dreams and follies so old and far away, so dead and scattered. The mother-in-law was silent, wrapped in the ideas and sentiments suggested by her daughter-in-law, which crowded her mind. The dinner finished, Donna Arduina rose to take leave of Vittoria.
“Will you let me keep you company, mother?” Vittoria asked.
“Certainly, dear; do come.”
Presently both were seated in Donna Arduina’s ancient room, under the large oil lamp covered with a shade.
While the old lady persevered with her woollen petticoat for some poor woman, Vittoria resumed work on a bodice, also destined to clothe some poor unfortunate in winter. They remained a little without raising their eyes from the brown bundles of wool, which kept increasing under their hands.
“Vittoria!” cried Donna Arduina suddenly.
“Mother?”
“Are you displeased that Marco didn’t return to dinner this evening?”
“No.”
“Really; doesn’t it displease you?”
“Really!”
“In fact it matters nothing to you that Marco doesn’t put in an appearance at dinner?”
“Why do you ask me?”
“Tell me if it is true.”
“And who told you?”
“My son, your husband. He maintains that it matters nothing to you if he goes or comes, returns or doesn’t return.”
“He is right,” replied Vittoria, after a pause.
“Have you told him that, my daughter?”
“I have told him that.”
“Why? You have committed an imprudence. We must never show men that we do not value them.”
“Value or not value, show it or not show it, mother, what does it matter?” exclaimed the young woman, leaving off her work, with an accent of weariness and fastidiousness. “All that won’t change mine and Marco’s fate.”
“Christians don’t believe in fate, Vittoria!” murmured Donna Arduina.
“Perhaps I’m a bad Christian as well,” she replied, with a feeble smile; “but I know my fate and Marco’s now, as if I were a gipsy, a sorceress, a witch.”
“Vittoria!”
“Take no notice, mother, I was joking,” concluded the daughter-in-law, lowering her eyes on her work.
But the mother-in-law did not wish to be silent; it seemed to her that the hour ought not to pass without a more intimate and intense explanation.
“Do you, then, know everything, Vittoria?” she asked slowly.
“How is one not to know it? Even living as a creature abandoned in a corner of a palace, as an insignificant creature in a corner of a drawing-room, there is always somebody to tell you everything, mother,” replied Vittoria bitterly and coldly.
“Some one has told you?”
“Some one? Several; many, in fact. My friends have hurried to let me know that Marco has taken a violent fancy for an actress. I know every particular, mother. The actress is a Milanese, has magnificent red hair, and is tall. She is called Gemma Dombrowska, a Russian name, not her own, but assumed from some great family over there.”
The coldest bitterness was in Vittoria’s voice, and she continued mechanically to knit her bodice.
“And what do you say, Vittoria? What are you going to do?”
“I? I am going to say and do nothing, mother!” she exclaimed harshly.
“Aren’t you going to help yourself? defend yourself?”
“I can’t help myself, and nothing can defend me;” and she turned her head away, perhaps so that the mother of her husband might read nothing there.
“But at least you love your husband?” the mother-in-law cried.
“I love him,” proclaimed the young woman, with unexpected ardour in her accent. “I love him. It is he who doesn’t love me. So you see all is useless.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t love you? How do you know? How are you convinced of it?”
“Mother, mother, you are convinced of it, you have always been convinced of it,” replied the young woman with dignity.
Donna Arduina rose from her place, and stretched out a hand to touch Vittoria’s, with a sad, consoling caress.
“Poor Vittoria!” she murmured.
And she thought that the young woman ought to fall in her arms and break into tears and sobs. No. The blonde’s youthful mouth contracted like a flower which closes while the colours grow pale, but she did not move nor cry.
“Do you pity me, mother?” she asked strangely.
“Yes, dear, yes!”
“Like your son, then. It is a family habit,” replied Vittoria mockingly.
“Vittoria! Vittoria!”
“Excuse me, mother. My horrible destiny is caused from this horrible thing, pity.”
“What are you saying? What are you saying?”
“Nothing, mother mine; I’ll say no more. I don’t want to say anything more. Pardon me. I oughtn’t to have spoken. You asked me; in obedience I spoke. Let me be quite silent.”
“Oh daughter, daughter, what a difficult character is yours!” replied the elder lady, with a deep sigh.
“Difficult? Very bad, mother, a shocking character! I shall die, and no one will understand it.”
“You must live; you must begin your life again, Vittoria, and try to lead my son. He must love you.”
“He can’t.”
“He can’t?”
“No. He can’t love me.”
“But why?”
“Because he loved the other.”
“Can’t one love two women, one after the other?”
“It seems not.”
“Still he has always liked you.”
“Yes, he has liked me; but not loved me.”
“He has married you.”
“Through tenderness and pity—not through love.”
“He has continued to give you every proof of his affection.”
“Affection, certainly; no love.”
“What did you expect? What are you expecting?”
“An impossible thing, mother! To be loved with passion, with vehemence, like the other.”
“Oh, my daughter, it is impossible.”
“I have told you; it is impossible.”
“And did you marry Marco with that desire?”
“With that desire. If not, I shouldn’t have married him; if not, I shouldn’t have forgiven his betrayal.”
“You pardoned, then, conditionally? With selfish intent? With a selfish desire? Not as a Christian?”
“No, mother, not as a Christian. I pardoned him as a woman, as a woman in love; that is, imperfectly, badly.”
“Then the sin is yours, Vittoria.”
“Yes, it is mine. If I question my heart it seems I am right, if I question my conscience I am wrong and the sin is mine. Don’t you see? I am childless. God has punished me; I shall never be a mother, never, never.”
“What will you do, Vittoria? What do you want to do?”
“Nothing, mother. I have nothing to do on this earth, neither for myself nor others. I go on living here because suicide is a great sin. I shall go on living here, forgotten, in a corner as usual, like everybody who hasn’t known how to do right in life. I am wrong, mother, I am wrong. That is why I don’t complain, that is why I mustn’t complain. Why did you make me speak? Forget all I have told you, and repeat it to nobody. Don’t expose me again to the pity of anybody: your pity, mother, yes; but nobody else’s.”
She looked at her with such an expression of suffering, nobly born, with such desire of silence and respect for her suffering, that Donna Arduina was deeply moved.
“Mother, let me be forgotten in a corner. Promise me you will say nothing.”
“I promise you, my daughter, I promise you; still I deeply sympathise with you,” said Donna Arduina, with a big sigh.
Donna Vittoria rose, bent her golden head to kiss her hand, and disappeared silently, she disappeared like a soft shadow to be forgotten in a corner of the world, in a corner of the house, like a poor, soft, little shadow which has never been right, which can never, never be right—which must always be wrong till death and beyond.