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Vendetta

M >> Marie Corelli >> Vendetta



Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

VENDETTA

A STORY OF ONE FORGOTTEN

By MARIE CORELLI

Author of "ARDATH," "THELMA," "A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS," "WORMWOOD,"
etc., etc.






PREFACE

Lest those who read the following pages should deem this story at
all improbable, it is perhaps necessary to say that its chief
incidents are founded on an actual occurrence which took place in
Naples during the last scathing visitation of the cholera in 1884.
We know well enough, by the chronicle of daily journalism, that the
infidelity of wives is, most unhappily, becoming common--far too
common for the peace and good repute of society. Not so common is an
outraged husband's vengeance--not often dare he take the law into
his own hands--for in England, at least, such boldness on his part
would doubtless be deemed a worse crime than that by which he
personally is doomed to suffer. But in Italy things are on a
different footing--the verbosity and red-tape of the law, and the
hesitating verdict of special juries, are not there considered
sufficiently efficacious to sooths a man's damaged honor and ruined
name. And thus--whether right or wrong--it often happens that
strange and awful deeds are perpetrated--deeds of which the world in
general hears nothing, and which, when brought to light at last, are
received with surprise and incredulity. Yet the romances planned by
the brain of the novelist or dramatist are poor in comparison with
the romances of real life-life wrongly termed commonplace, but
which, in fact, teems with tragedies as great and dark and soul-
torturing as any devised by Sophocles or Shakespeare. Nothing is
more strange than truth--nothing, at times, more terrible!

MARIE CORELLI.

August, 1886.




VENDETTA!

CHAPTER I.


I, who write this, am a dead man. Dead legally--dead by absolute
proofs--dead and buried! Ask for me in my native city and they will
tell you I was one of the victims of the cholera that ravaged Naples
in 1884, and that my mortal remains lie moldering in the funeral
vault of my ancestors. Yet--I live! I feel the warm blood coursing
through my veins--the blood of thirty summers--the prime of early
manhood invigorates me, and makes these eyes of mine keen and
bright--these muscles strong as iron--this hand powerful of grip--
this well-knit form erect and proud of bearing. Yes!--I am alive,
though declared to be dead; alive in the fullness of manly force--
and even sorrow has left few distinguishing marks upon me, save one.
My hair, once ebony-black, is white as a wreath of Alpine snow,
though its clustering curls are thick as ever.

"A constitutional inheritance?" asks one physician, observing my
frosted locks.

"A sudden shock?" suggests another.

"Exposure to intense heat?" hints a third.

I answer none of them. I did so once. I told my story to a man I met
by chance--one renowned for medical skill and kindliness. He heard
me to the end in evident incredulity and alarm, and hinted at the
possibility of madness. Since then I have never spoken.

But now I write. I am far from all persecution--I can set down the
truth fearlessly. I can dip the pen in my own blood if I choose, and
none shall gainsay me! For the green silence of a vast South
American forest encompasses me--the grand and stately silence of a
virginal nature, almost unbroken by the ruthless step of man's
civilization--a haven of perfect calm, delicately disturbed by the
fluttering wings and soft voices of birds, and the gentle or stormy
murmur of the freeborn winds of heaven. Within this charmed circle
of rest I dwell--here I lift up my overburdened heart like a
brimming chalice, and empty it on the ground, to the last drop of
gall contained therein. The world shall know my history.

Dead, and yet living! How can that be?--you ask. Ah, my friends! If
you seek to be rid of your dead relations for a certainty, you
should have their bodies cremated. Otherwise there is no knowing
what may happen! Cremation is the best way--the only way. It is
clean, and SAFE. Why should there be any prejudice against it?
Surely it is better to give the remains of what we loved (or
pretended to love) to cleansing fire and pure air than to lay them
in a cold vault of stone, or down, down in the wet and clinging
earth. For loathly things are hidden deep in the mold--things, foul
and all unnameable--long worms--slimy creatures with blind eyes and
useless wings--abortions and deformities of the insect tribe born of
poisonous vapor--creatures the very sight of which would drive you,
oh, delicate woman, into a fit of hysteria, and would provoke even
you, oh, strong man, to a shudder of repulsion! But there is a worse
thing than these merely physical horrors which come of so-called
Christian burial--that is, the terrible UNCERTAINTY. What, if after
we have lowered the narrow strong box containing our dear deceased
relation into its vault or hollow in the ground--what, if after we
have worn a seemly garb of woe, and tortured our faces into the
fitting expression of gentle and patient melancholy--what, I say, if
after all the reasonable precautions taken to insure safety, they
should actually prove insufficient? What--if the prison to which we
have consigned the deeply regretted one should not have such close
doors as we fondly imagined? What, if the stout coffin should be
wrenched apart by fierce and frenzied fingers--what, if our late
dear friend should NOT be dead, but should, like Lazarus of old,
come forth to challenge our affection anew? Should we not grieve
sorely that we had failed to avail ourselves of the secure and
classical method of cremation? Especially if we had benefited by
worldly goods or money left to us by the so deservedly lamented! For
we are self-deceiving hypocrites--few of us are really sorry for the
dead--few of us remember them with any real tenderness or affection.
And yet God knows! they may need more pity than we dream of!

But let me to my task. I, Fabio Romani, lately deceased, am about to
chronicle the events of one short year--a year in which was
compressed the agony of a long and tortured life-time! One little
year!--one sharp thrust from the dagger of Time! It pierced my
heart--the wound still gapes and bleeds, and every drop of blood is
tainted as it falls!

One suffering, common to many, I have never known--that is--poverty.
I was born rich. When my father, Count Filippo Romani, died, leaving
me, then a lad of seventeen, sole heir to his enormous possessions--
sole head of his powerful house--there were many candid friends who,
with their usual kindness, prophesied the worst things of my future.
Nay, there were even some who looked forward to my physical and
mental destruction with a certain degree of malignant expectation--
and they were estimable persons too. They were respectably
connected--their words carried weight--and for a time I was an
object of their maliciously pious fears. I was destined, according
to their calculations, to be a gambler, a spendthrift, a drunkard,
an incurable roue of the most abandoned character. Yet, strange to
say, I became none of these things. Though a Neapolitan, with all
the fiery passions and hot blood of my race, I had an innate scorn
for the contemptible vices and low desires of the unthinking vulgar.
Gambling seemed to me a delirious folly--drink, a destroyer of
health and reason--and licentious extravagance an outrage on the
poor. I chose my own way of life--a middle course between simplicity
and luxury--a judicious mingling of home-like peace with the gayety
of sympathetic social intercourse--an even tenor of intelligent
existence which neither exhausted the mind nor injured the body.

I dwelt in my father's villa--a miniature palace of white marble,
situated on a wooded height overlooking the Bay of Naples. My
pleasure-grounds were fringed with fragrant groves of orange and
myrtle, where hundreds of full-voiced nightingales warbled their
love-melodies to the golden moon. Sparkling fountains rose and fell
in huge stone basins carved with many a quaint design, and their
cool murmurous splash refreshed the burning silence of the hottest
summer air. In this retreat I lived at peace for some happy years,
surrounded by books and pictures, and visited frequently by friends-
-young men whose tastes were more or less like my own, and who were
capable of equally appreciating the merits of an antique volume, or
the flavor of a rare vintage.

Of women I saw little or nothing. Truth to tell, I instinctively
avoided them. Parents with marriageable daughters invited me
frequently to their houses, but these invitations I generally
refused. My best books warned me against feminine society--and I
believed and accepted the warning. This tendency of mine exposed me
to the ridicule of those among my companions who were amorously
inclined, but their gay jests at what they termed my "weakness"
never affected me. I trusted in friendship rather than love, and I
had a friend--one for whom at that time I would gladly have laid
down my life--one who inspired me with the most profound attachment.
He, Guido Ferrari, also joined occasionally with others in the good-
natured mockery I brought down upon myself by my shrinking dislike
of women.

"Fie on thee, Fabio!" he would cry. "Thou wilt not taste life till
thou hast sipped the nectar from a pair of rose-red lips--thou shalt
not guess the riddle of the stars till thou hast gazed deep down
into the fathomless glory of a maiden's eyes--thou canst not know
delight till thou hast clasped eager arms round a coy waist and
heard the beating of a passionate heart against thine own! A truce
to thy musty volumes! Believe it, those ancient and sorrowful
philosophers had no manhood in them--their blood was water--and
their slanders against women were but the pettish utterances of
their own deserved disappointments. Those who miss the chief prize
of life would fain persuade others that it is not worth having.
What, man! Thou, with a ready wit, a glancing eye, a gay smile, a
supple form, thou wilt not enter the lists of love? What says
Voltaire of the blind god?

"'Qui que tu sois voila ton maitre,
Il fut--il est--ou il doit etre !'"

When my friend spoke thus I smiled, but answered nothing. His
arguments failed to convince me. Yet I loved to hear him talk--his
voice was mellow as the note of a thrush, and his eyes had an
eloquence greater than all speech. I loved him--God knows!
unselfishly, sincerely--with that rare tenderness sometimes felt by
schoolboys for one another, but seldom experienced by grown men. I
was happy in his society, as he, indeed, appeared to be in mine. We
passed most of our time together, he, like myself, having been
bereaved of his parents in early youth, and therefore left to shape
out his own course of life as suited his particular fancy. He chose
art as a profession, and, though a fairly successful painter, was as
poor as I was rich. I remedied this neglect of fortune for him in
various ways with due forethought and delicacy--and gave him as many
commissions as I possibly could without rousing his suspicion or
wounding his pride. For he possessed a strong attraction for me--we
had much the same tastes, we shared the same sympathies, in short, I
desired nothing better than his confidence and companionship.

In this world no one, however harmless, is allowed to continue
happy. Fate--or caprice--cannot endure to see us monotonously at
rest. Something perfectly trivial--a look, a word, a touch, and lo!
a long chain of old associations is broken asunder, and the peace we
deemed so deep and lasting in finally interrupted. This change came
to me, as surely as it comes to all. One day--how well I remember
it!--one sultry evening toward the end of May, 1881, I was in
Naples. I had passed the afternoon in my yacht, idly and slowly
sailing over the bay, availing myself of what little wind there was.
Guido's absence (he had gone to Rome on a visit of some weeks'
duration) rendered me somewhat of a solitary, and as my light craft
ran into harbor, I found myself in a pensive, half-uncertain mood,
which brought with it its own depression. The few sailors who manned
my vessel dispersed right and left as soon as they were landed--each
to his own favorite haunts of pleasure or dissipation--but I was in
no humor to be easily amused. Though I had plenty of acquaintance in
the city, I cared little for such entertainment as they could offer
me. As I strolled along through one of the principal streets,
considering whether or not I should return on foot to my own
dwelling on the heights, I heard a sound of singing, and perceived
in the distance a glimmer of white robes. It was the Month of Mary,
and I at once concluded that this must be an approaching Procession
of the Virgin. Half in idleness, half in curiosity, I stood still
and waited. The singing voices came nearer and nearer--I saw the
priests, the acolytes, the swinging gold censers heavy with
fragrance, the flaring candles, the snowy veils of children and
girls--and then all suddenly the picturesque beauty of the scene
danced before my eyes in a whirling blur of brilliancy and color
from which looked forth--one face! One face beaming out like a star
from a cloud of amber tresses--one face of rose-tinted, childlike
loveliness--a loveliness absolutely perfect, lighted up by two
luminous eyes, large and black as night--one face in which the
small, curved mouth smiled half provokingly, half sweetly! I gazed
and gazed again, dazzled and excited, beauty makes such fools of us
all! This was a woman--one of the sex I mistrusted and avoided--a
woman in the earliest spring of her youth, a girl of fifteen or
sixteen at the utmost. Her veil had been thrown back by accident or
design, and for one brief moment I drank in that soul-tempting
glance, that witch-like smile! The procession passed--the vision
faded--but in that breath of time one epoch of my life had closed
forever, and another had begun!

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Of course I married her. We Neapolitans lose no time in such
matters. We are not prudent. Unlike the calm blood of Englishmen,
ours rushes swiftly through our veins--it is warm as wine and
sunlight, and needs no fictitious stimulant. We love, we desire, we
possess; and then? We tire, you say? These southern races are so
fickle! All wrong--we are less tired than you deem. And do not
Englishmen tire? Have they no secret ennui at times when sitting in
the chimney nook of "home, sweet home," with their fat wives and
ever-spreading families? Truly, yes! But they are too cautious to
say so.

I need not relate the story of my courtship--it was brief and sweet
as a song sung perfectly. There were no obstacles. The girl I sought
was the only daughter of a ruined Florentine noble of dissolute
character, who gained a bare subsistence by frequenting the gaming-
tables. His child had been brought up in a convent renowned for
strict discipline--she knew nothing of the world. She was, he
assured me, with maudlin tears in his eyes, "as innocent as a flower
on the altar of the Madonna." I believed him--for what could this
lovely, youthful, low-voiced maiden know of even the shadow of evil?
I was eager to gather so fair a lily for my own proud wearing--and
her father gladly gave her to me, no doubt inwardly congratulating
himself on the wealthy match that had fallen to the lot of his
dowerless daughter.

We were married at the end of June, and Guido Ferrari graced our
bridal with his handsome and gallant presence.

"By the body of Bacchus!" he exclaimed to me when the nuptial
ceremony was over, "thou hast profited by my teaching, Fabio! A
quiet rogue is often most cunning! Thou hast rifled the casket of
Venus, and stolen her fairest jewel--thou hast secured the loveliest
maiden in the two Sicilies!"

I pressed his hand, and a touch of remorse stole over me, for he was
no longer first in my affection. Almost I regretted it--yes, on my
very wedding-morn I looked back to the old days--old now though so
recent--and sighed to think they were ended. I glanced at Nina, my
wife. It was enough! Her beauty dazzled and overcame me. The melting
languor of her large limpid eyes stole into my veins--I forgot all
but her. I was in that high delirium of passion in which love, and
love only, seems the keynote of creation. I touched the topmost peak
of the height of joy--the days were feasts of fairy-land, the nights
dreams of rapture! No; I never tired! My wife's beauty never palled
upon me; she grew fairer with each day of possession. I never saw
her otherwise than attractive, and within a few months she had
probed all the depths of my nature. She discovered how certain sweet
looks of hers could draw me to her side, a willing and devoted
slave; she measured my weakness with her own power; she knew--what
did she not know? I torture myself with these foolish memories. All
men past the age of twenty have learned somewhat of the tricks of
women--the pretty playful nothings that weaken the will and sap the
force of the strongest hero. She loved me? Oh, yes, I suppose so!
Looking back on those days, I can frankly say I believe she loved
me--as nine hundred wives out of a thousand love their husbands,
namely--for what they can get. And I grudged her nothing. If I chose
to idolize her, and raise her to the stature of an angel when she
was but on the low level of mere womanhood, that was my folly, not
her fault.

We kept open house. Our villa was a place of rendezvous for the
leading members of the best society in and around Naples. My wife
was universally admired; her lovely face and graceful manners were
themes of conversation throughout the whole neighborhood. Guido
Ferrari, my friend, was one of those who were loudest in her praise,
and the chivalrous homage he displayed toward her doubly endeared
him to me. I trusted him as a brother; he came and went as pleased
him; he brought Nina gifts of flowers and fanciful trifles adapted
to her taste, and treated her with fraternal and delicate kindness.
I deemed my happiness perfect--with love, wealth, and friendship,
what more could a man desire?

Yet another drop of honey was added to my cup of sweetness. On the
first morning of May, 1882, our child was born--a girl-babe, fair as
one of the white anemones which at that season grew thickly in the
woods surrounding out home. They brought the little one to me in the
shaded veranda where I sat at breakfast with Guido--a tiny, almost
shapeless bundle, wrapped in soft cashmere and old lace. I took the
fragile thing in my arms with a tender reverence; it opened its
eyes; they were large and dark like Nina's, and the light of a
recent heaven seemed still to linger in their pure depths. I kissed
the little face; Guido did the same; and those clear, quiet eyes
regarded us both with a strange half-inquiring solemnity. A bird
perched on a bough of jasmine broke into a low, sweet song, the soft
wind blew and scattered the petals of a white rose at our feet. I
gave the infant back to the nurse, who waited to receive it, and
said, with a smile, "Tell my wife we have welcomed her May-blossom."

Guido laid his hand on my shoulder as the servant retired; his face
was unusually pale.

"Thou art a good fellow, Fabio!" he said, abruptly.

"Indeed! How so?" I asked, half laughingly; "I am no better than
other men."

"You are less suspicious than the majority," he returned, turning
away from me and playing idly with a spray of clematis that trailed
on one of the pillars of the veranda.

I glanced at him in surprise. "What do you mean, amico? Have I
reason to suspect any one?"

He laughed and resumed his seat at the breakfast-table.

"Why, no!" he answered, with a frank look. "But in Naples the air is
pregnant with suspicion--jealousy's dagger is ever ready to strike,
justly or unjustly--the very children are learned in the ways of
vice. Penitents confess to priests who are worse than penitents, and
by Heaven! in such a state of society, where conjugal fidelity is a
farce"--he paused a moment, and then went on--"is it not wonderful
to know a man like you, Fabio? A man happy in home affections,
without a cloud on the sky of his confidence?"

"I have no cause for distrust," I said. "Nina is as innocent as the
little child of whom she is to-day the mother."

"True!" exclaimed Ferrari. "Perfectly true!" and he looked me full
in the eyes, with a smile. "White as the virgin snow on the summit
of Mont Blanc--purer than the flawless diamond--and unapproachable
as the furthest star! Is it not so?"

I assented with a certain gravity; something in his manner puzzled
me. Our conversation soon turned on different topics, and I thought
no more of the matter. But a time came--and that speedily--when I
had stern reason to remember every word he had uttered.




CHAPTER II.


Every one knows what kind of summer we had in Naples in 1884. The
newspapers of all lands teemed with the story of its horrors. The
cholera walked abroad like a destroying demon; under its withering
touch scores of people, young and old, dropped down in the streets
to die. The fell disease, born of dirt and criminal neglect of
sanitary precautions, gained on the city with awful rapidity, and
worse even than the plague was the unreasoning but universal panic.
The never-to-be-forgotten heroism of King Humbert had its effect on
the more educated classes, but among the low Neapolitan populace,
abject fear, vulgar superstition, and utter selfishness reigned
supreme. One case may serve as an example of many others. A
fisherman, well known in the place, a handsome and popular young
fellow, was seized, while working in his boat, with the first
symptoms of cholera. He was carried to his mother's house. The old
woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched the little procession as it
approached her dwelling, and taking in the situation at once, she
shut and barricaded her door.

"Santissima Madonna!" she yelled, shrilly, through a half-opened
window. "Leave him in the street, the abandoned, miserable one! The
ungrateful pig! He would bring the plague to his own hard-working,
honest mother! Holy Joseph! who would have children? Leave him in
the street, I tell you!"

It was useless to expostulate with this feminine scarecrow; her son
was, happily for himself, unconscious, and after some more wrangling
he was laid down on her doorstep, where he shortly afterward
expired, his body being afterward carted away like so much rubbish
by the beccamorti.

The heat in the city was intense. The sky was a burning dome of
brilliancy, the bay was still as a glittering sheet of glass. A thin
column of smoke issuing from the crater of Vesuvius increased the
impression of an all-pervading, though imperceptible ring of fire,
that seemed to surround the place. No birds sung save in the late
evening, when the nightingales in my gardens broke out in a bubbling
torrent of melody, half joyous, half melancholy. Up on that wooded
height where I dwelt it was comparatively cool. I took all
precautions necessary to prevent the contagion from attacking our
household; In fact, I would have left the neighborhood altogether,
had I not known that hasty flight from an infected district often
carries with it the possibility of closer contact with the disease.
My wife, besides, was not nervous--I think very beautiful women
seldom are. Their superb vanity is an excellent shield to repel
pestilence; it does away with the principal element of danger--fear.
As for our Stella, a toddling mite of two years old, she was a
healthy child, for whom neither her mother nor myself entertained
the least anxiety.

Guido Ferrari came and stayed with us, and while the cholera, like a
sharp scythe put into a field of ripe corn, mowed down the dirt-
loving Neapolitans by hundreds, we three, with a small retinue of
servants, none of whom were ever permitted to visit the city, lived
on farinaceous food and distilled water, bathed regularly, rose and
retired early, and enjoyed the most perfect health.

Among her many other attractions my wife was gifted with a beautiful
and well-trained voice. She sung with exquisite expression, and many
an evening when Guido and myself sat smoking in the garden, after
little Stella had gone to bed, Nina would ravish our ears with the
music of her nightingale notes, singing song after song, quaint
stornelli and ritornelli--songs of the people, full of wild and
passionate beauty. In these Guido would often join her, his full
barytone chiming in with her delicate and clear soprano as
deliciously as the fall of a fountain with the trill of a bird. I
can hear those two voices now; their united melody still rings
mockingly in my ears; the heavy perfume of orange-blossom, mingled
with myrtle, floats toward me on the air; the yellow moon burns
round and full in the dense blue sky, like the King of Thule's
goblet of gold flung into a deep sea, and again I behold those two
heads leaning together, the one fair, the other dark; my wife, my
friend--those two whose lives were a million times dearer to me than
my own. Ah! they were happy days--days of self-delusion always are.
We are never grateful enough to the candid persons who wake us from
our dream--yet such are in truth our best friends, could we but
realize it.

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