The Storyteller.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 110, 2 October 1914, Page 6

The Storyteller.

HIS AMERICAN WIFE,

(By Stephen Whitman.)

Now and then, when speaking of him some stranger will still enquire: "Was'nl he. at one time under a sort of cloud! Something about a duel?" The reply is ever tho same: "But that was the fault of his American wife."

So it was; and this is the story of her fault.

They had married for love, though Bertha's father was a steel magnate and Romolo the younger brother of the Duko of Rodano. She was tall and blonde, with the vivid, vigorous beauty of an Amazon. He was taller, swarthy, aquilinely handsome, with a faint suggestion of the effeminacy that appears at the least in the very old families. Physically, those two seemed made for eaeb other; temperamentally they appeared before wedlock in as fine accord as do Uio majority of affianced couples.

The Duke 'bestowed on them a handsome compartment in the Rodana Palace, a huilding splendidly impressive despite its truly Roman situation in a squalid neighborhood. Through its deep sixteenth century gateway one perceived a spacious Courtyard full of foliage and ancient statues. And in the keystone of that fame an artisan of Michael Angelo'a day had carved the Kodano escutcheon: Gules, three antique crowns, argent, with a bordure ermine. Donna Bertha and Don Romolo quickly got themselves two handsome children. They entertained more frequently and lavishly than is the general Roman custom. Nearly all admitted that his American bride was not bad, even at the start—though, of course, a few years of dutiful conformity to Roman custom wou'd improve her. The Bodano >:>: t. while it, m : g':t -' i:u times need n"W I- cod ;.nd uir.i:,;\. did not desire alien ideas.

I'.'.it Berlin found il harder to change her nature tha.'i tu influence her Tins—build'-,. In that paitnership she' was tlie positive, no the negative force. Behind lu-i were generations of dynamic personalities horn lo plunge through all obstacles to their de--irc. Behind him w.'.s a long line of aristocrat;, made indolent by the security of their possession-, their lives being given up to from one recreation to another. IV;sive, nn.hible, in love, he furnished f; I some time cue refutation of the: theory that wives of Italians must either bend themselves or l:r.-.ak.

Yet Donna Bertha was neither capricious nor tyrannical. Her temper was even; her processes of thought were generally logical; her aspirations were colored by the mingled commonsense and idealism of the New World. She was, in fact, a reasoning young woman. Had she not been so, this episode would have assumed a different form.

Oue winter afternoon, while Don Romolo was strolling on the Corso, a man rushed forward, let loose at him a flood of violent abuse, and slapped his face. The assailant was the young Marquis of Premetta, a wild character who had wildly dissipated his small fortune, and was now deeply in debt. His grievance was that Don Romolo had moved to exclude him from a fashionable gambling club. When bystanders had hustled the scapegrace away, and the shoeked faces ot the carriage folk were passing slowly on along the Corso, Romolo, putting aside tho friends who swarmed about him, quietly walked home. He was pale but inscrutable; only his largo black eyes betrayed the fury that blazed within him. And as he went in through the palace gateway, beneath the weatherworn eseutchoon on the Rodani, even the old door-porter, who had divined his every mood since infancy, saw nothing unusual in his appearance. Bertha, hatted, and fur-wrapped, was just leaving the apartment for her drive. Don Romolo led the way back into her boudoir, and closed the door on the children and their English governess, and related his adventure.

His wife's pitiable face expressed a momentary rage, then scorn. "What a pitiable fool!" she .said.

"A fool indeed," Don Romolo assented, with a smile she had never seen before, medieval in its cold cruelty. "A fool indeed, to sign his own death warrant.''

Her furs fell from her in a rippling cascade. She came swiftly to hint and stared into his face. "Lolo! Y'ou don't mean a duel?" "What else?" he asked her in surprise.

Then, his eyei, softening, he look h n r face, between his hands.

"Have no fear. Swurds or pistols, I am always in practice."

That was true: his constant recreation was fencing, and shooting at his masked and padded friends with bullets of wax. rShe had a feeling of strangeness ai'd or horror—the '"ieeling of fate" wbie'i one knows when some ominous siluutioi, that has always seemed meant for others only, appears suddenly in one's own li>. "1.010, you must never do that dreadful, futile thing!" "You call it futile to protect the honor of mv family."

"The honor of the family is not so frail as to be threatened by every creature with an insane impulse!" "Calm yourself, my dear. Even yet you do not quite understand such things." "1 understand them better than you; I see them without the prejudice of your traditions. It's not what others do to you that hurts your honor; it's what you do to others."

"Or what I might fail to tlo to others."

''mi'ini! and nodding grimly, he selected and lighted a cigarct'a —then, ...... a'-'lily, almost debonnairc: "I shall look in at Paris while it ia blowing over." She watched him as he gazed out of' tho window, sending smoke through his nose, rising on his toes, touching his cravat with his long fingers, exhibiting all the little mannerisms that came lo him when ho was anticipating some p.'easurable excitement. And even amid her distress she could not help admiring his quick recovery of nonchalance, his careless innate bravery, his whole evidence of "race." She was proud of him, but with the pride a mother takes in an incorrigible child.

"Lolo, you are not going to risk your life and my happiness " "But really, dearest, I rick nothing. I promise you 1 shall jnot take astratch."

"In that case it is not even a duel. It is practically a murder —to preserve the honor of the family!" He was silent for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and , retorted coldly:

"You do not understand." And to all her beseeching, he reiterated with growing assentment:

''No. It seems you do not understand at all."

Nevertheless, late that night. Bertha von a semi-victory over him. Perhaps is was when she had pictured his ussai'ant's youth and virtually neurotic flightiness, when she had talked of the mother already heart-broken by the son's scandalous career, that Romolo realised somewhat the cruelty of his intention. In the dim bed-chamber, at that hour when the passions of the daytime world so often are replaced by finer aspirations, did he himself not eonie to feel that greater honor might lie in magnanimity, than in revenge? He promised her, at least, to wait a week, and if offered an opportunity of reconciliation to embrace it.

Next morning, to be sure, when the material world again closed around him, doubts assailed him, regrets for that nceturnal softness, even vague premonitions. But the motto carved beneath the Rodano escutcheon read: "I keep my word."

Two, three, four days passed. The newspapers began their ironical comment. The more serious journals merely announced (hat the. "RodauoPremetta affair" was still without result. The more impudent publication? contained burlesques, of which, though no names were mentioned, everyone perceived the object. A certain comic weekly published a caricature that barely avoided being libellous. And beneath all this print ran an undercurrent of malice—tho revenge of people cheated out of sensation. When Don Romolo and Donna Bertha entered a saloon now, there was, for an instant, a. cessation of talk, a training of eyes, a silent, general impeachment. With Bertha the women suddenly became too gracious; to Romolo his friends exhibited a forced cordiality. In a gay night restaurant, tho Marquis of Premetta, half drunk amid a crowd of vaudeville actresses and young rakes, | declared, for all the world to hear, that anyone could slap the face of a Rodano. On the morning of the twenty-fifth day Don Romolo came to Bertha, pallid and- tense, demanding: "Do you release me from that promise?"

"Not yet," she answered, her face firm-set. ,

She was suffering perhaps no less than he, though from another cause. She seemed to see his friends in this world of her adoption falling rapidly away, and all her laborious efforts towards social popularity imperilled. But now, every hour, she expected a letter from the young Marquis of Premetta's mother tu whom she had secretly written imploring intervention with her son. Don Romolo Baid:

"By heaven, when this week of youn is up, at any rate! My children shall never hear that their father was a coward!" "You would rather luive'me tell them soma day that their father is a murderer." He did not leave the house that afternoon. Bertha, however, set out for her drive around the Pincian Hill. The servants who ushered her to her carriage smiled no longer. The old doorporter went back muttering to his sub-by-hole. These retainers of the House, o! Rodano felt keenly the shame in which they were included. As her carriage was re-entering the Palace gate, Bertha glanced up at the escutcheon of the Roihini. It was spattered all over with black mud. "How did that happen';" The old servitor, in his faded semimilitary livery, his long white whiskers straggling down on each side of his leathery face, looked up at her with furtive animosity gleaming in his eyes. He answered deep in his throat: "It was done in the night." "Why have you not had it cleaned?'' "Eli. It has happened three nights running. No doubt it will happen ev-jry night for ever. Shall we clean it each day?" "Each day."

As the old man turned away, she heard him growl: "Not easily made clean, the Rodano escutcheon." '

That night the Duke of Rodano arrived from Turin.

He was a burly man, tall and swarthy like Rombolo, but with full, ruddy cheeks, black beard, and a manner naturally domin«ering and arrogant. He was a personality vigorous and violet, that seemed to have leaped all the centuries from the day's when tho Rondani were marauding warriors.

He walked directly to his brother's department, where a diurnal dinner was in progress. The servants had hardly closed the door wlwui the storm 4ust forth: .

tell you that you Bhall regain them tonight, or I myself will fight this young jackanapes."

And, as Bertha made an involuntary movement:

'".Vladam, this affair was never at any time your business—though I, like everyone else, have ft shrewd suspicion you'v* taken pains to- make it yours. I am the head of this house; and I command you either to keep silence now or leave the room."

She raised her head proudly, and sent tn Rombolo a look that asked, "Do you permit such words'!" But Rombolo sat staring darkly into space, his faeo averted, his poso expressing only his chagrin, his new- hostility to her, his instinctive submission to tho elder brother. .Suddenly, tear..; of rage rushing into his eyes, he sprang to his feet. "(Jod is my witness that 1 have asked her a hundred times to release mo from this crazy promise of a week's delav!"

Tin; Duke of Rodano turned upon Bertha, his face congested, his bear! brist'.ing. "No promise is binding that involves the hunor of the Rodani. Besides, in this place, my word is the last one. So !, in; .-,■'!, Lolo, absolve you from that promise. You will send this animal of a l'r. metta your seconds to-night. Also, after this shilly-shallying, you should take good care to kill him outright." Romolo nodded with flashing eyes and lips compressed. The l):ike gave Bertha a look of aversion Hitch us lie had never shown before.

- ''Remember, henceforth, madam, that when you married my brother, he did not become an American—but you been me a Roman, a Rodano. That the whole .duty of the Rodano women is to bear children and keep their honor bright. That tho men of the Rodania attend to all that concerns the family honor outside these walls. Let us never have further cause to regret that we admitted you into this house." She returned his look steadily; but she realised that he might as well be living in the Middle Ages, so little could he have understood" what would she would have uttered in retort. There filled her poignant sensation of strange of isolation, of being lost in this vast old formal palace, amid these men into whose hearts she had' seen a 1 littlewav at last.

At the door she pased, looked back, and said:

".My children, at least, know bettes than to* kill their enemies." "Your children, madam, shall be Rodani, like their father, like my father, like all our forefathers clear back to tlie twelth- century. -And if there comes up ac any time a doubt of that, your children shall he taken from you."

■She. left the room. Not long afterwards u note was brought to her front young Premetta's mother. It was written on cheap paper, adorned with a printed coronet. In the tremulous, faint hand-writing of the agod: "Though I have done my best, it is only natural that my efforts should have failed. For just as we, Donna Bertha, hold ou,r honor precious, so do our sons and husbands theirs. Many sacrifices we mu3t all make, indeed, to hon-

And so on. -A gentle, proud letter, full of fear, yet brave', with a foolish bravery that should not have been ncces-

That night Don Romolo sent his seconds, who arranged for a duel with swords at daybreak, by the Tomb of Nero a few miles outsido the city. An hour before the dawn, Romolo, answering his valet's voice, rose, from ihe long-chair in the library wkere he had been dozing. Having bathed and changed his clothes, he tip-toed past the close-shut door of his wife's bedroom and entered the salon. His two seconds and a physician met him there; the motor-car awaited them in the courtyard. They put on fur coats and set forth, by the Porta Pia, for the rendez-

It was bitterly cold in the Campagnn, but on the market waggons trailing into town tho farmers, huddled in their sheepskin coats, were cheerily singing their wavering Romanesco ballads. Beyond the Anlo Bridge, as the sky '.vegan to pale, all the bare, russet undulations of the plain covered thick with frost. Aii this desolate picture one's spirits sank together with the vigor of the body, devitalised by these small hours of the morning. Romolo's seconds warned him not to take a, chill.. He, lying back in gloomy reverie, continually twisting his right wrist round and round to keep his sword-arm supple. The sun rose, Hooding the C'anipagua, I with a misty golden, radiance. The motor-ear turning in the by-road, stoppi d. Romolo and his friends walked down a hillock into a cup-shaped hollow. The others were already there.

Tile seconds developed their tragedy with tlu> swiftness; of professitmad executioners.. In a trice the ground raj measured,, the conditions arranged, the swords examined, the combatants stripped to their white shirts and posted. The blades grated together, and Komolo looked into iiis adversary's face. lie saw a young man, scarcely more than a boy, with a visage ravaged by many violent passions, yet now almost puerile, in its profound surprise and awe. If this was Romolo's first duel, so was it the other's; but, while Romolo was cool, Premetta seemed to express with his wide eyes a pitiable amazement that his foe had taken him seriously, after all—a sickly dread of the unknown ba'ancc which fate was immediately going to adjust. Don Uomolo had a pang of pity. Tie remembered Itcrlhn's cold, accusing face; he recalled this boy's old mother; he felt compunction because he had not gone in the first place to Tremetta, put his arm round his shoulder, and tried to make a -hum, and better friend, of him, • "You have lost your liet «W

i Surely, thai would have been ao easy, I and so noble! J Yet is was the nobil ; ly of the Rodani that he was hero defending'. J At such moments, with death perhaps | close by, one sometimes sees with a mysJ terious clairvoyance straight into the truth of things. Now oven Don Romolo j Rodano acknowledged: '"fcilie was right! Ting act is absolutely fufri'e, absolutely base!" And, just at that, moment, I'remetta made a desperate lounge, a oitd recovery, and Romolo's sword, mechanically profiting' by that Blip, passed through:.the young man's heart. j The victim sprawled in a heap upon the |foiind. Hlb seconds raised Mm up. He hung between them, gagging, staring vacantly at Romolo's feet, his breath coming in sonorous rattles from his open mouth. Then, slowly, tho" light faded from his eyes. They laid him !or. his back. "Your coat. Leave a'l this to iw. Your brother, of eoti'rsc, wiil make everyI thing right, back there. But, meanwhile, the first express to Paris." ■ \ As they hustled him up the hillock ■ they patted his 'shouldero reassuringly. Their eyes gleamed with excitement; l congratulatory grins wcra struggling with the solemnity they felt they should assume, "the motor-car set out at forty miles an hour towards Rome. In the courtyard of Ac Rodano Palae« the servants ran forth to him. Their hands furtively caressed his arms; their backs were bent in fawning adoration; their eyes glowed dog-liko with devotion. His valet had packed the bag's. Remained only to bid good-bye to nia wife and children. But at the door of the nursery, Komolo hesitated awhile, and lowered head then turned away. And perhaps he would have passed his wife's door, too; • but she came out to him. She stood on the threshold in a long, pale robe, her,face also pale, but calm. She noticed his travelling coat, the valines, the ■waiting- valet. Quietly sis asked: "You killed him?" He averted hia face. Her door closed softly. In the lower hall way, on the landing of the "noble floor." the Duke met him, wrung his hand, kissed on both cheeks. And no sooner had the motor-ear borne him oir that the door-porter himself brought out a ladder, leaned it against the gateway, mounted painfully with brush and bucket, and set to scrubbing clean the Rodano escutcheon. All the while he whistled a merry tune, and when his task was done: "Now, God bo praised," the faithful old fellow cried, '"we tan all hold up oui- iieads again.''