The sword of wealth

by Henry Wilton Thomas

When he rose from the table the servant was not too busy to take notice that he caught up the bit of writing and crushed it in his fist. What step this man of the South would take in the case at hand was a question of absorbing interest to the Northern men and maids of the household. They believed, one and all—and in hushed voices uttered their belief as a black forecast—that the life of some one would be demanded in payment of the bill, and that it would not be the life of their master. Every item of news that could be carried to the kitchen and stables was awaited avidly, and Beppe, there on the spot, knew that many ears yawned for the report of his observations. Tarsis was aware not only that the man’s eyes followed him when he moved from the breakfast room, but that a neck was craned to keep him in view as he made his way across the Atlantean chamber.

The splendours of that great room played upon his feelings with a strange subtlety. He felt the power for mockery which at certain moments resides in lifeless things. With its spell upon him the marble Atlantes began to breathe; their hollow eyes had the gift of sight, and from their high stations between the windows they looked down upon him with cynical interest. He noted for the first time that all the portraits of the Barbiondi were painted with a broad grin. The very walls of the palace chuckled in their re-echo of his solitary footfalls.

Entering the library, he closed the door and paced before the printed wisdom of ages; but no quieting message was there for him in all that treasury of placid thought, divine inspiration, human experience. It was as if no Greek had ever meditated, no Christ ever lived, no fellow-being ever suffered. In his own life the tragedy of ages was on for its hour, and the spirit that swayed him was the spirit of the cave-dweller robbed of his female in the dawn of the centuries. The events of the last two weeks rose before him. A vision of all that had come and gone grew vivid in his mind. At first Donna Beatrice and Don Riccardo and Hera were there, each standing in proper relation to the whole; but one by one these faded out to disclose with infuriating boldness the face and figure of Mario Forza.

A few minutes more and Tarsis ceased walking to take a seat at the Napoleonic table. He rested one arm on the mosaic and drummed meditatively with the tips of his fingers. There was naught in his bearing now to indicate the storm through which he had passed. Nor was there any sign that he had reached a terrible decision. Again he was the self-centred man of business, calmly at work upon the details of an important project. The prophecy of the kitchen and the stable yard was in the first stage of its realisation. To Mario Forza the account was to be rendered and payment demanded in full.

His native impulse was to present the bill in person, to exact a settlement with his own hand; it would be no more than the honouring of a law sacred to his island birthplace. By that method the honey of revenge was sweetest. Nevertheless, for a man of his estate its disadvantages were undeniably real. With a cool head he counted the possible cost and found it too great. An ancient Sicilian proverb ran with his thoughts—“’Tis easier to shed blood than to wash out its stains.” Here was a reasoning that appealed to his mind, accustomed as it was to weigh all in the balance of profit and loss; and so it fell out that he shaped a plan of vengeance that should enlist the service of another. Some one else, skilled in the art, but of smaller importance to himself and the world, should wait upon Signor Forza and—present the bill.

So much for the main design; that was clear. But there were indispensable details, and over these Tarsis puzzled until he opened his other hand—the one not resting on the table—and looked at the scrap of paper it had been clutching. It was Hera’s note crushed into a ball. A moment he weighed the thing on his open palm and regarded it in bitter reflection. Here lay the epitome of his fondest ambition, his capital disappointment. It was the first and only time she had written to him; and with the rising of this fact in his mind flashed an idea that grew and supplied the details. He dramatised the future on a stage set with the ruins of a cloister and an old church for the background; it was a scene redeemed from total darkness by the glimmer of a moon that hung far on the slope of the heavens and there was no sound save the breathing of him who watched and waited in the shadow, with a keen blade ready for work. The conception touched some artistic chord of his nature, and he smiled and told himself it was good. In the old monastery Mario Forza had contracted the debt; in the old monastery he should pay.

He picked open the crumpled paper and spread it flat on the marble. He smoothed out the creases as best he could, then got blank paper, a pen, and a well of ink. It may have been for an hour that he sat there copying again and again the few lines his wife had written. In the first essays his eye travelled often from the copy to the pen as he fashioned each letter after Hera’s hand observing minutely and matching the slightest peculiarity. Patiently he went over and over the precise curl of a y’s tail, the loop of an l, or the dot of an i. At length he was able to write off the missive, Hera’s signature included, to his satisfaction without once looking at the model.

His next step was to leave the library, locking the door to make sure that no one should enter and see the table littered with the evidence of his work; the next to go to the chamber that was Hera’s. There he took from a desk some of the dainty paper and envelopes that bore her monogram. A few minutes and he was back in the library making a copy of her note on that paper. He held the finished product at arm’s length, then at closer view, and pronounced it perfect. He was about to carry this part of his plan to its fruition by writing a note of his own wording in the hand of his wife when a knock stayed his purpose. Instead of calling to the visitor to enter he rose and opened the door a few inches, mindful of the scraps on the table. Beppe was there with a card on his tray.

“Ask Signor Ulrich to wait a few minutes,” Tarsis said, after glancing at the name. He appreciated the value of finishing his critical task while the knack of it was warm in his brain and fingers. With composure unaffected and care unrelaxed he wrote the letter that he had shaped in his mind. It began with “My Beloved Mario” and closed with the words, “Yours, though all the world oppose, Hera.” He inscribed the envelope, “To the Honourable Mario Forza, 17, Via Senato, Milan,” sealed it, and placed it in an inner pocket of his coat.

Beppe knocked again. “I beg your pardon, signore,” he began when Tarsis had swung the door no farther than before; “but the gentleman is so urgent. He says he must see you—that he has news which you ought to have at once. He seems very full of it, signore,” he added, gravely. “I am afraid the poor gentleman will explode if he is not admitted very soon.”