These profuse compliments which meant nothing, these professions of friendship which covered unfriendly designs, these plausible excuses for evils which should have been exposed, these smooth evasions of solemn engagements when their fulfilment became inconvenient,—they were the depth of dishonor.
"She drags me down! She drags me down!" he thought. "I am not the man I was. I feel that plainly. I live in an atmosphere of littleness, where a noble thought or motive never is suggested to me, nor believed in if I suggest it. In trying to please and be pleased by her in these years I have lowered my dignity and my standard of what a man and a gentleman should be. Oh, my poor mother! what would you have said if you had known that every generous sentiment you labored to implant in your son's mind his wife would labor to uproot?"
Some one was coming up the road. He turned impatiently away toward the near mountain that raised its gray front high over the city, following a path that led under tall trees bedded in flowers. His mind was confronted by that doubt which probably assails every person who finds himself ill mated: Is such a marriage binding? Am I obliged to fulfil a vow which, without making my companion happy, destroys all the pleasure of my life?
The answer is plain: There is no law but has its victims, and the right order of things cannot be broken because some have been foolish, mistaken, or deceived. Reason, will, and the experience of others were given you as a guard; and if you have not used them you must suffer the consequences. Every divorce is a pick-axe at the embankment which holds in restraint a ruinous and unclean flood. Indissoluble marriage is the honor and safeguard of woman; and the honor of woman is the honor of man and of society. In casting away the woman you despise, you render less honorable the woman you prefer; in freeing yourself from the man you hate, you teach the man you love that a solemn vow binds only while it pleases.
This is reason; but revelation sets a yet stronger stamp upon the seal.
But arguments on order and on righteousness fall but coldly on the tortured human soul which is called upon to sacrifice itself to the greatest good of the greatest number. To most persons some sweeter influence is needed, which shall stir the heart and warm into action the cold convictions of the intellect.
D'Rubiera climbed the rocks in long strides, and paused to take breath on a point called the Punto del Paradiso, a height which gave a distant view of mountain, hill, and plain, and a nearer one of Sassovivo, swathed in foliage and flowers. The old castle which had been the subject of his discussion with his wife stood out boldly on its rock toward the west. He looked at it, and recollected the few days he had passed in a pleasant chamber there. It was Aurora Coronari's chamber, and she had resigned it to him. His imagination entered it again and called up before him its every point,—the tinted walls, with a few graceful pictures, the Easter palms in a great star, braided ones from Koman basilicas, the long, waving feather from Granada, the gilded and braided palm of Madrid, and the olive-branch of country towns. He saw the niche with its Madonna under a brown Swiss crucifix, the floating flame that burned before them, and remembered the faint perfume that was everywhere about. How sweet and quiet it was, with its north light, its view of the villa and Monte Roccioso, and mountain after mountain lessening away at either hand, and blooming as they lessened, till they sank to a violet wreath at east and west!
He remembered that last evening in the castle after the rescue from the terrace, and how Aurora had sung, and that in parting she had said to him, "I have lighted a lamp for you, and that lamp is never to go out."
Was it burning still, that flame that gratitude had kindled before the crucifix and the Madonna for his safety? He felt that it was. Looking at the distant window, he could almost believe that he saw the point of golden fire
