The Desire of Life

by Matilde Serao

CHAPTER XIX

All the morning, as every day, the bell of the entrance door of Vittorio Lante's pretty but modest apartments in Via de' Prefetti had done nothing but ring: and his housekeeper, his only servant, an old woman of very honest appearance, who had been settled with him by his mother, had done nothing but announce to her master the visits of the most diverse and strange people. This pilgrimage of friends, acquaintances, and strangers had begun directly after Vittorio had returned from Paris, in fact from Cherbourg, where he had accompanied his fiancée, Mabel Clarke, and his future mother-in-law, Annie Clarke, whence they had embarked on a colossal transatlantic liner. Scarcely had the newspapers announced, rather solemnly, the arrival of the Prince of Santalena, Don Vittorio Lante, who in the spring would depart for America, where would be celebrated, with marvellous sumptuousness, his marriage with Miss Mabel Clarke, than those apartments, usually calm and silent, had been invaded every day by people of all conditions and kinds. In December Don Vittorio Lante della Scala, whom everyone now complacently called the Prince of Santalena, although he had not yet been able to repurchase, shall we say, the right to bear this title, had gone to Terni to pass the feasts of Christmas and the New Year with his mother, Donna Maria Lante della Scala, who lived in great retirement in a few rooms of the majestic Palazzo Lante, and he did not return until the middle of January.

Again the oddest people, known and unknown, began to overflow the small but elegant abode of Don Vittorio, and as winter declined to spring, the people arrived in increasing numbers and besieged Vittorio at home. They waited for him at the door and went to look for him in the parloir of his club, where he lunched and dined; they ran everywhere he was wont to repair. Each morning and evening bundles of letters arrived for him, some of which were registered and insured to the value of a thousand and two thousand lire. One day, in fact, he had a letter with a declared value of five thousand lire. And all, intimate and ordinary friends, old and new acquaintances, strangers and unknown, wrote him letters, sent him enclosures, forwarded him documents, attracted by the immense fortune he was about to possess in marrying Mabel Clarke with a dowry of fifty millions—and some said a hundred millions. All desired and wished, all asked from him, with some excuse or other, with one pretext or another, a little part, a big part, a huge part of this fortune which was not yet his, but which would be his within six, four, or two months.

One sought a loan on his return from the honeymoon, a friendly loan, nothing else, through the ties of old affection, giving no hint as to the date or manner of repayment; someone asked a serious loan with splendid guarantees and first mortgages; another wished to sell him the four horses of his stage-coach; another wished to give up to him his kennels, another a villa, a castle, a palace, a property, another wished him to redeem from the Government an island in the Tyrrhennian Sea to go hunting there; while another wished him to acquire a yacht of two thousand tons.

Every day to all this were added the visits of vendors of jewels, of linen, of fashions for men and women, of fine wines and liqueurs, wanting him to buy from them for fabulous sums, offering all the credit possible, to be paid for a year after the marriage, so that they might have the honour of being his purveyors. To their visits and letters were added those of other strange beings, small and great inventors who asked much money to relinquish their inventions; discoverers of wonderful secrets which they would reveal for a consideration; girls who asked for a dowry to enable them to marry; singers who asked to be maintained at the Conservatoire for two or three years, the time that was necessary to become rivals of Caruso; widows with six sons who wished to lodge three or four with him; people out of employment who would like to follow him to America when he went to marry; other unemployed who asked for letters of introduction to John Clarke; adventurers who compared themselves with him and wanted to know how he had managed to please a girl with fifty millions; seamstresses who asked for a sewing-machine; students who wanted him to pay their university fees. All this was done in fantastic alternation, sometimes honest, sometimes false, but often grotesque and disgusting; for the saraband was conducted on a single note—money, which it is true he had not yet, as nearly everyone knew that he was poor, but that within six months or less he would have an immense fortune. In fact, some of the more cynical and shameless believed that he already had money, as if Mabel Clarke's millions, or million, or half a million, had already reached him as a present from the future father and mother-in-law, or from his fiancée herself. Indeed, an old mistress of a month asked for three thousand francs which she said would be of immediate use to her and which he could surely give her since he had so much money from America: in exchange she offered him some love letters which he had written her, threatening on the other hand to send them to his fiancée in America. He who had registered his letter to the value of five thousand lire sent him a copy of a bill of exchange of his father's, of thirty years ago, a bill which Don Giorgio Lante had never paid; and, as usual, the correspondent threatened a great scandal. During the first two months this strange assault at home, at the club, in the streets, in drawing-rooms, in fact everywhere he went, this curious assault of avarice and greed interested and amused him. He was supremely happy in those early days. He had taken leave of Mabel, certain of her troth; Annie Clarke, the silent idol, had smiled on him benevolently from the deck of the liner, and he was sure that John Clarke would give him his daughter. At that time he received gracious letters—a little brief it is true—from Mabel, and still more often cablegrams—a form she preferred—of three or four words in English, always very affectionate: and he replied at once. He was supremely happy!

The human comedy, the human farce which bustled, not around him, but around the money he was going to possess, was at bottom somewhat flattering. He enjoyed all the pleasures of vanity which an enormously rich man can have, although still poor. His nature was simple and frank, his heart was loyal. He loved Mabel ardently and enthusiastically; but the sense of power which he had for a short time came pleasantly to him. Therefore he was polite to all his morning and evening aggressors; he refused no one a hearing; he never said no. Only with a courteous smile he postponed to later any decision, till after the marriage or the honeymoon. Some sought for a bond or a promise in writing; amiably and firmly he refused, without allowing him who was so persistent to lose all hope. Vittorio Lante was never impatient with all those who asked of him from fifty lire to five hundred thousand, sometimes smiling and laughing as he kept the most eccentric letters to laugh at them with Mabel in America, when they should have some moments of leisure. In these annoyances of wealth there was a hidden pleasure, of which for some time he felt the impressions keenly.

Then a cablegram of the 3rd of December, from New York, told him that John Clarke had consented. Intoxicated with joy he telegraphed to Mabel, to Annie, even to John Clarke, and left at once for Terni, to announce the glad tidings to his noble and gentle mother. Still soon some shadows began to spread themselves over his life; light shadows at first and then darker. Like lightning the news of the betrothal of the great American millionairess with a young Roman prince had been spread and printed everywhere in all the European newspapers, and gradually there had begun witty and slightly pungent comments, then rather cutting remarks. Whoever sent the French, German, and English papers to him at Terni, to the Palazzo Lante, which first congratulated him ironically and afterwards, gradually complicating the news and redoubling the echoes, treated him as a broken noble of extinct heraldry, as a dowry-hunter, a seller of titles; whoever sent these witty, impertinent, often directly libellous papers had marked in red and blue, with marks of exclamation, the more trenchant remarks. Implacably, while he was away from Rome, away from every great centre, in the solitude of his ancient palace—with what sarcasm the ruin of this palace had been described in the papers and the necessity for restoring it with Papa Clarke's money!—he received whole packets of these papers and in his morbid curiosity and offended feelings he opened all, devouring them with his eyes, and read them through, to become filled with anger and bitterness.

But if a tender letter from Mabel reached him at Terni, if she replied with a tender expression to a dispatch of his, his anger calmed and his bitterness melted. His mother saw him pass from one expression to another, but she was unwilling to inquire too closely. With a tender smile and gentle glance she asked him simply:

"Does Mabel still love you?"