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THE ETERNAL CITY
By Hall Caine
Author of "The Christian," etc.
"He looked for a city which hath
foundations whose builder and maker is
God."
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
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Copyright, 1901, 1902
By HALL CAINE
Popular Edition
Published October, 1902
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PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, to
condense it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, and
otherwise so to change it that to all outward appearance it is
practically a new book? I leave this point in literary ethics to the
consideration of those whose business it is to discuss such questions,
and content myself with telling the reader the history of the present
story.
About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwards
abandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial struggle
which culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities of
that country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which I
witnessed there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. The
sights of the day often followed me through the night, and after a more
than usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of a
Jewish woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russian
police under a promise that they would spare his life, which they said
he had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The husband
came to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his wife as his
worst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his safety had been
the only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her again. His cause was
lost, his hopes were dead, his people were in despair, because the one
being whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up to
his enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in the
morning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story of
Samson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of a
play with the incident of husband and wife as the central situation.
How from this germ came the novel which was published last year under
the title of "The Eternal City" would be a long story to tell, a story
of many personal experiences, of reading, of travel, of meetings in
various countries with statesmen, priests, diplomats, police
authorities, labour leaders, nihilists and anarchists, and of the
consequent growth of my own political and religious convictions; but it
will not be difficult to see where and in what way time and thought had
little by little overlaid the humanities of the early sketch with many
extra interests. That these interests were of the essence, clothing, and
not crushing the human motive, I trust I may continue to believe, and
certainly I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception of my
book at the hands of that wide circle of general readers who care less
for a contribution to a great social propaganda than for a simple tale
of love.
But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale
of love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of
producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and requested to
prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences at the
theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics and
religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests with
which alone the drama is allowed to deal. This has not been an easy
thing to do, and now that it is done I am by no means sure that I may
not have alienated the friends whom the abstract problems won for me
without conciliating the readers who called for the story only. But not
to turn my back on the work of three laborious years, or to discredit
that part of it which expressed, however imperfectly, my sympathy with
the struggles of the poor, and my participation in the social problems
with which the world is now astir, I have obtained the promise of my
publisher that the original version of "The Eternal City" shall be kept
in print as long as the public calls for it.
In this form of my book, the aim has been to rely solely on the
humanities and to go back to the simple story of the woman who denounced
her husband in order to save his life. That was the theme of the draft
which was the original basis of my novel, it is the central incident of
the drama which is about to be produced in New York, and the present
abbreviated version of the story is intended to follow the lines of the
play in all essential particulars down to the end of the last chapter
but one. H. C.
Isle of Man, Sept. 1902.
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THE ETERNAL CITY
PROLOGUE
I
He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or
twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one
shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a
grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad
had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his
short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was going
home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something fantastic
in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he was
dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the London
boys and the attentions of policemen.
Coming to the Italian quarter in Soho, he stopped at the door of a shop
to see the time. It was eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before
he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the
window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the
pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red
glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy
blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and
brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence.
Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not
a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to count,
but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic was not
at fault.
The air grew warmer, and it began to snow. At first it was a fine
sprinkle that made a snow-mist, and adhered wherever it fell. The
traffic speedily became less, and things looked big in the thick air.
The boy was wandering aimlessly through the streets, waiting for nine
o'clock. When he thought the hour was near, he realised that he had lost
his way. He screwed up his eyes to see if he knew the houses and shops
and signs, but everything seemed strange.
The snow snowed on, and now it fell in large, corkscrew flakes. The boy
brushed them from his face, but at the next moment they blinded him
again. The few persons still in the streets loomed up on him out of the
darkness, and passed in a moment like gigantic shadows. He tried to ask
his way, but nobody would stand long enough to listen. One man who was
putting up his shutters shouted some answer that was lost in the
drumlike rumble of all voices in the falling snow.
The boy came up to a big porch with four pillars, and stepped in to rest
and reflect. The long tunnels of smoking lights which had receded down
the streets were not to be seen from there, and so he knew that he was
in a square. It would be Soho Square, but whether he was on the south or
east of it he could not tell, and consequently he was at a loss to know
which way to turn. A great silence had fallen over everything, and only
the sobbing nostrils of the cab-horses seemed to be audible in the
hollow air.
He was very cold. The snow had got into his shoes, and through the rents
in his cross-gartered stockings. His red waistcoat wanted buttons, and
he could feel that his shirt was wet. He tried to shake the snow off by
stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could
scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light coming
from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his squirrel.
The little thing was trembling pitifully in its icy bed, and he took it
out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The
sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within
the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour
cast outward from the fanlight he could see nothing but the crystal
snowflakes falling wearily.
He grew dizzy, and sat down by one of the pillars. After a while a
shiver passed along his spine, and then he became warm and felt sleepy.
A church clock struck nine, and he started up with a guilty feeling, but
his limbs were stiff and he sank back again, blew two or three breaths
on to the squirrel inside his waistcoat, and fell into a doze. As he
dropped off into unconsciousness he seemed to see the big, cheerless
house, almost destitute of furniture, where he lived with thirty or
forty other boys. They trooped in with their organs and accordions,
counted out their coppers to a man with a clipped moustache, who was
blowing whiffs of smoke from a long, black cigar, with a straw through
it, and then sat down on forms to eat their plates of macaroni and
cheese. The man was not in good temper to-night, and he was shouting at
some who were coming in late and at others who were sharing their supper
with the squirrels that nestled in their bosoms, or the monkeys, in red
jacket and fez, that perched upon their shoulders. The boy was perfectly
unconscious by this time, and the child within the house was singing
away as if her little breast was a cage of song-birds.
As the church clock struck nine a class of Italian lads in an upper room
in Old Compton Street was breaking up for the night, and the teacher,
looking out of the window, said:
"While we have been telling the story of the great road to our country a
snowstorm has come, and we shall have enough to do to find our road
home."
The lads laughed by way of answer, and cried: "Good-night, doctor."
"Good-night, boys, and God bless you," said the teacher.
He was an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face,
a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his
manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a
black cloak with a red lining, and followed them into the street.
He had not gone far into the snowy haze before he began to realise that
his playful warning had not been amiss.
"Well, well," he thought, "only a few steps, and yet so difficult to
find."
He found the right turnings at last, and coming to the porch of his
house in Soho Square, he almost trod on a little black and white object
lying huddled at the base of one of the pillars.
"A boy," he thought, "sleeping out on a night like this! Come, come," he
said severely, "this is wrong," and he shook the little fellow to waken
him.
The boy did not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone,
"Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again.
Ninepence, sir, and Jinny is so cold."
The man paused a moment, then turned to the door rang the bell sharply.
II
Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the
doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a
shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off
and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and
moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a
saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and
legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the
eyelids and twitching of the mouth.
"He is coming to, mother," said the doctor.
"At last," said his wife.
The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood,
black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the
lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch,
and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape.
"Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a
little longer."
The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he
raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for
something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on
which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It
was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it
tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his
cheeks.
"Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and
after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted.
"Italiano--si?"
"Si, Signore."
"From which province?"
"Campagna Romana, Signore."
"Where does he say he comes from, doctor?"
"From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at
Maccari's in Greek Street--isn't that so?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long have you been in England--one year, two years?"
"Two years and a half, sir."
"And what is your name, my son?"
"David Leone."
"A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor,
smoothing the curly hair.
"A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?"
"Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some
institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that
name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?"
But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed
upon, and he made no answer.
"Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?"
"I have no father," said the boy.
"Carino! But your mother is alive--yes?"
"I have no mother."
"Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my
son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the
sun had shone on it.
"Listen, father!"
Two little feet were drumming on the floor above.
"Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the
boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently."
"Let her come down now," said the doctor.
The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a
bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a
little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy
black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a
train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and
carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was
coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit.
But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up
suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the
doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at
the stranger in silence and aloofness.
"Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the
mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a
brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has
brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this
was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly
child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly
frozen to death in the snow?"
But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in
search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow
there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second
suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still
holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to
anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's
side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for
sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to
proper overtures.
"Oo a boy?"
The boy smiled again and assented.
"Oo me brodder?"
The boy's smile paled perceptibly.
"Oo lub me?"
The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly.
"Oo lub me eber and eber?"
The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark
curls again, said:
"You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna
Romana--yes?"
"No, sir."
"Perhaps it's a brother?"
"I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last
word with a thud.
"You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor
softly.
"Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face
smote her instantly and she said no more.
"Time for bed, baby."
But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy,
and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say.
"Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat
pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other,
kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at
intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little
waif-and-stray hands together and said:
"Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be
done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and
forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And
lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and
eber. Amen."
The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the
surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the
fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and
listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at
length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat
of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the
little head on the pillow.
Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which
great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels--sweet,
soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna
Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death!
The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a
long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken
bondage.
"Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not
some day ... God forbid!"
The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like
the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of
painful reverie.
"Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles."
Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and
the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the
dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was
praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless
darling cast adrift upon the world!
The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the
doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had
ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were
casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the
yellow light of a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed
where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol.
"While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around."
Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his
lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed.
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PART ONE--THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
TWENTY YEARS LATER
I
It was the last day of the century. In a Bull proclaiming a Jubilee the
Pope had called his faithful children to Rome, and they had come from
all quarters of the globe. To salute the coming century, and to dedicate
it, in pomp and solemn ceremony, to the return of the world to the Holy
Church, one and universal, the people had gathered in the great Piazza
of St. Peter.
Boys and women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a
bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the
obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who were listening
to their cicerone.
"Yes, that is the Vatican," said the guide, pointing to a square
building at the back of the colonnade, "and the apartments of the Pope
are those on the third floor, just on the level of the Loggia of
Raphael. The Cardinal Secretary of State used to live in the rooms
below, opening on the grand staircase that leads from the Court of
Damasus. There's a private way up to the Pope's apartment, and a secret
passage to the Castle of St. Angelo."
"Say, has the Pope got that secret passage still?"
"No, sir. When the Castle went over to the King the connection with the
Vatican was cut off. Ah, everything is changed since those days! The
Pope used to go to St. Peter's surrounded by his Cardinals and Bishops,
to the roll of drums and the roar of cannon. All that is over now. The
present Pope is trying to revive the old condition seemingly, but what
can he do? Even the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee laments the loss of the
temporal power which would have permitted him to renew the enchantments
of the Holy City."
"Tell him it's just lovely as it is," said the girl on the obelisk, "and
when the illuminations begin...."
"Say, friend," said her parent again, "Rome belonged to the Pope--yes?
Then the Italians came in and took it and made it the capital of
Italy--so?"
"Just so, and ever since then the Holy Father has been a prisoner in the
Vatican, going into it as a cardinal and coming out of it as a corpse,
and to-day will be the first time a Pope has set foot in the streets of
Rome!"
"My! And shall we see him in his prison clothes?"
"Lilian Martha! Don't you know enough for that? Perhaps you expect to
see his chains and a straw of his bed in the cell? The Pope is a king
and has a court--that's the way I am figuring it."
"True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his
officers of state--Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies,
Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard,
as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the
precincts night and day."
"Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?"
"Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this
piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and
outrage--and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!"
"Well! this goes clear ahead of me!"
Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in
positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one
of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid,
fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his
carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly
dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up
moustache and cropped black mane.
"Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge
since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir.
'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and
even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where
it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for
instance--this one with the people in the balcony...."
The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on
the farther side of the piazza.
"Do you know whose palace that is?"
"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the
Interior."
"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"
"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted
the Papacy?"
"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir--old Baron Leone!"
"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the
grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say,
'will be the richest man in Rome some day--richer than all their Roman
princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"
"He has, apparently."
"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and
having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the
poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the
Prime Minister of Italy--an infidel, an Antichrist."
"So the Pope is a good man, is he?"
"Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in
life--the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation.
Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for
poor boys. Boys--that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything
tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut."
The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a
rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the
square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace.
It had one occupant only--a man in a soft black hat. He was quite
without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general
commotion, and all faces were turning toward him.
"Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in
the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?"
"David Rossi, the anarchist?"
"Some people call him so. Do you know him?"
"I know nothing about the man except that he is an enemy of his
Holiness."
"He intends to present a petition to the Pope this morning,
nevertheless."
"Impossible!"
"Haven't you heard of it? These are his followers with the banners and
badges."
He pointed to the line of working-men who had ranged themselves about
the cab, with banners inscribed variously, "Garibaldi Club," "Mazzini
Club," "Republican Federation," and "Republic of Man."
"Your friend Antichrist," tipping a finger over his shoulder in the
direction of the palace, "has been taxing bread to build more
battleships, and Rossi has risen against him. But failing in the press,
in Parliament and at the Quirinal, he is coming to the Pope to pray of
him to let the Church play its old part of intermediary between the poor
and the oppressed."
"Preposterous!"
"So?"
"To whom is the Pope to protest? To the King of Italy who robbed him of
his Holy City? Pretty thing to go down on your knees to the brigand who
has stripped you! And at whose bidding is he to protest? At the bidding
of his bitterest enemy? Pshaw!"
"You persist that David Rossi is an enemy of the Pope?"
"The deadliest enemy the Pope has in the world."
II
The subject of the Frenchman's denunciation looked harmless enough as he
sat in his hackney carriage under the shadow of old Baron Leone's gloomy
palace. A first glance showed a man of thirty-odd years, tall, slightly
built, inclined to stoop, with a long, clean-shaven face, large dark
eyes, and dark hair which covered the head in short curls of almost
African profusion. But a second glance revealed all the characteristics
that give the hand-to-hand touch with the common people, without which
no man can hope to lead a great movement.
From the moment of David Rossi's arrival there was a tingling movement
in the air, and from time to time people approached and spoke to him,
when the tired smile struggled through the jaded face and then slowly
died away. After a while, as if to subdue the sense of personal
observation, he took a pen and oblong notepaper and began to write on
his knees.
Meantime the quick-eyed facile crowd around him beguiled the tedium of
waiting with good-humoured chaff. One great creature with a shaggy mane
and a sanguinary voice came up, bottle in hand, saluted the downcast
head with a mixture of deference and familiarity, then climbed to the
box-seat beside the driver, and in deepest bass began the rarest
mimicry. He was a true son of the people, and under an appearance of
ferocity he hid the heart of a child. To look at him you could hardly
help laughing, and the laughter of the crowd at his daring dashes showed
that he was the privileged pet of everybody. Only at intervals the
downcast head was raised from its writing, and a quiet voice of warning
said:
"Bruno!"
Then the shaggy head on the box-seat slewed round and bobbed downward
with an apologetic gesture, and ten seconds afterwards plunged into
wilder excesses.
"Pshaw!" mopping with one hand his forehead under his tipped-up
billicock, and holding the bottle with the other. "It's hot! Dog of a
Government, it's hot, I say! Never mind! here's to the exports of Italy,
brother; and may the Government be the first of them."
"Bruno!"
"Excuse me, sir; the tongue breaks no bones, sir! All Governments are
bad, and the worst Government is the best."
A feeble old man was at that moment crushing his way up to the cab.
Seeing him approach, David Rossi rose and held out his hand. The old man
took it, but did not speak.
"Did you wish to speak to me, father?"
"I can't yet," said the old man, and his voice shook and his eyes were
moist.
David Rossi stepped out of the cab, and with gentle force, against many
protests, put the old man in his place.
"I come from Carrara, sir, and when I go home and tell them I've seen
David Rossi, and spoken to him, they won't believe me. 'He sees the
future clear,' they say, 'as an almanack made by God.'"
Just then there was a commotion in the crowd, an imperious voice cried,
"Clear out," and the next instant David Rossi, who was standing by the
step of his cab, was all but run down by a magnificent equipage with two
high-stepping horses and a fat English coachman in livery of scarlet
and gold.
His face darkened for a moment with some powerful emotion, then resumed
its kindly aspect, and he turned back to the old man without looking at
the occupant of the carriage.
It was a lady. She was tall, with a bold sweep of fulness in figure,
which was on a large scale of beauty. Her hair, which was abundant and
worn full over the forehead, was raven black and glossy, and it threw
off the sunshine that fell on her face. Her complexion had a golden
tint, and her eyes, which were violet, had a slight recklessness of
expression. Her carriage drew up at the entrance of the palace, and the
porter, with the silver-headed staff, came running and bowing to receive
her. She rose to her feet with a consciousness of many eyes upon her,
and with an unabashed glance she looked around on the crowd.
There was a sulky silence among the people, almost a sense of
antagonism, and if anybody had cheered there might have been a counter
demonstration. At the same time, there was a certain daring in that
marked brow and steadfast smile which seemed to say that if anybody had
hissed she would have stood her ground.
She lifted from the blue silk cushions of the carriage a small
half-clipped black poodle with a bow of blue ribbon on its forehead,
tucked it under her arm, stepped down to the street, and passed into the
courtyard, leaving an odour of ottar of roses behind her.
Only then did the people speak.
"Donna Roma!"
The name seemed to pass over the crowd in a breathless whisper,
soundless, supernatural, like the flight of a bat in the dark.
III
The Baron Bonelli had invited certain of his friends to witness the
Pope's procession from the windows and balconies of his palace
overlooking the piazza, and they had begun to arrive as early as
half-past nine.
In the green courtyard they were received by the porter in the cocked
hat, on the dark stone staircase by lackeys in knee-breeches and yellow
stockings, in the outer hall, intended for coats and hats, by more
lackeys in powdered wigs, and in the first reception-room, gorgeously
decorated in the yellow and gold of the middle ages, by Felice, in a
dress coat, the Baron's solemn personal servant, who said, in sepulchral
tones:
"The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some
of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia,
Excellency?"
"So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English
Ambassador.
"A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's
doings, I guess, and is urgent and important."
"A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true."
"Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you
regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is
the greatest man in the country--greater than the King himself--and a
statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who
carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are
bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn."
"And the other view?"
General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains,
from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and
then he said:
"A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and
cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant."
"Which view do the people take?"
"Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with
which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up."
"And the clergy, and the Court, and the aristocracy?"
"The clergy fear him, the Court detests him, and the Roman aristocracy
are rancorously hostile."
"Yet he rules them all, nevertheless?"
"Yes, sir, with a rod of iron--people, Court, princes, Parliament, King
as well--and seems to have only one unsatisfied desire, to break up the
last remaining rights of the Vatican and rule the old Pope himself."
"And yet he invites us to sit in his Loggia and look at the Pope's
procession."
"Perhaps because he intends it shall be the last we may ever see of it."
"The Princess Bellini and Don Camillo Murelli," said Felice's sepulchral
voice from the door.
An elderly aristocratic beauty wearing nodding white plumes came in with
a pallid young Roman noble dressed in the English fashion.
"_You_ come to church, Don Camillo?"
"Heard it was a service which happened only once in a hundred years,
dear General, and thought it mightn't be convenient to come next time,"
said the young Roman.
"And you, Princess! Come now, confess, is it the perfume of the incense
which brings you to the Pope's procession, or the perfume of the
promenaders?"
"Nonsense, General!" said the little woman, tapping the American with
the tip of her lorgnette. "Who comes to a ceremony like this to say her
prayers? Nobody whatever, and if the Holy Father himself were to
say...."
"Oh! oh!"
"Which reminds me," said the little lady, "where is Donna Roma?"
"Yes, indeed, where is Donna Roma?" said the young Roman.
"_Who_ is Donna Roma?" said the Englishman.
"Santo Dio! the man doesn't know Donna Roma!"
The white plumes bobbed up, the powdered face fell back, the little
twinkling eyes closed, and the company laughed and seated themselves in
the Loggia.
"Donna Roma, dear sir," said the young Roman, "is a type of the fair
lady who has appeared in the history of every nation since the days of
Helen of Troy."
"Has a woman of this type, then, identified herself with the story of
Rome at a moment like the present?" said the Englishman.
The young Roman smiled.
"Why did the Prime Minister appoint so-and-so?--Donna Roma! Why did he
dismiss such-and-such?--Donna Roma! What feminine influence imposed upon
the nation this or that?--Donna Roma! Through whom come titles,
decorations, honours?--Donna Roma! Who pacifies intractable politicians
and makes them the devoted followers of the Ministers?--Donna Roma! Who
organises the great charitable committees, collects funds and
distributes them?--Donna Roma! Always, always Donna Roma!"
"So the day of the petticoat politician is not over in Italy yet?"
"Over? It will only end with the last trump. But dear Donna Roma is
hardly that. With her light play of grace and a whole artillery of love
in her lovely eyes, she only intoxicates a great capital and"--with a
glance towards the curtained door--"takes captive a great Minister."
"Just that," and the white plumes bobbed up and down.
"Hence she defies conventions, and no one dares to question her actions
on her scene of gallantry."
"Drives a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and
threatens to buy an automobile."
"Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had
never known what it was to be poor."
"And has she?"
The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that
moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer.
"Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody
mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old
papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young
Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy
days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was
expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when
the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican,
conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel.
Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from
Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the
homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as
a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life
as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among
the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life
he came back to Italy as a conspirator--enticed back, his friends
say--was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the
island of Elba without a word of public report or trial."
"Domicilio Coatto--a devilish and insane device," said the American
Ambassador.
"Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?"
"Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared
from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his
daughter."
"Donna Roma?"
"Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and
going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English
wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out
of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent
her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established
her in an apartment on the Trinita de' Monti, under the care of an old
aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose
which has long since seen its June."
"And then?"
"Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by
what appears--Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best
milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome."
"And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess,
"and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her
extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated,
she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio,
full of nymphs and cupids and limbs."
"And all by virtue of--what?" said the Englishman.
"By virtue of being--the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!"
"Meaning by that?"
"Nothing--and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of
laughter.
"In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she
likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her."
"Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why
doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?"
"Because the Baron has a Baroness already."
"A wife living?"
"Living and yet dead--an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in
his castle in the Alban hills."
IV
The curtain parted over the inner doorway, and three gentlemen came out.
The first was a tall, spare man, about fifty years of age, with an
intellectual head, features cut clear and hard like granite, glittering
eyes under overhanging brows, black moustaches turned up at the ends,
and iron-grey hair cropped very short over a high forehead. It was the
Baron Bonelli.
One of the two men with him had a face which looked as if it had been
carved by a sword or an adze, good and honest but blunt and rugged; and
the other had a long, narrow head, like the head of a hen--a lanky
person with a certain mixture of arrogance and servility in his
expression.
The company rose from their places in the Loggia, and there were
greetings and introductions.
"Sir Evelyn Wise, gentlemen, the new British Ambassador--General Morra,
our Minister of War; Commendatore Angelelli, our Chief of Police. A
thousand apologies, ladies! A Minister of the Interior is one of the
human atoms that live from minute to minute and are always at the mercy
of events. You must excuse the Commendatore, gentlemen; he has urgent
duties outside."
The Prime Minister spoke with the lucidity and emphasis of a man
accustomed to command, and when Angelelli had bowed all round he crossed
with him to the door.
"If there is any suspicion of commotion, arrest the ringleaders at once.
Let there be no trifling with disorder, by whomsoever begun. The first
to offend must be the first to be arrested, whether he wears cap or
cassock."
"Good, your Excellency," and the Chief of Police went out.
"Commotion! Disorder! Madonna mia!" cried the little Princess.
"Calm yourselves, ladies. It's nothing! Only it came to the knowledge of
the Government that the Pope's procession this morning might be made the
excuse for a disorderly demonstration, and of course order must not be
disturbed even under the pretext of liberty and religion."
"So that was the public business which deprived us of your society?"
said the Princess.
"And left my womanless house the duty of receiving you in my absence,"
said the Baron.
The Baron bowed his guests to their seats, stood with his back to a wide
ingle, and began to sketch the Pope's career.
"His father was a Roman banker--lived in this house, indeed--and the
young Leone was brought up in the Jesuit schools and became a member of
the Noble Guard: handsome, accomplished, fond of society and social
admiration, a man of the world. This was a cause of disappointment to
his father, who has intended him for a great career in the Church. They
had their differences, and finally a mission was found for him and he
lived a year abroad. The death of the old banker brought him back to
Rome, and then, to the astonishment of society, he renounced the world
and took holy orders. Why he gave up his life of gallantry did not
appear...."
"Some affair of the heart, dear Baron," said the little Princess, with a
melting look.
"No, there was no talk of that kind, Princess, and not a whisper of
scandal. Some said the young soldier had married in England, and lost
his wife there, but nobody knew for certain. There was less doubt about
his religious vocation, and when by help of his princely inheritance he
turned his mind to the difficult task of reforming vice and ministering
to the lowest aspects of misery in the slums of Rome, society said he
had turned Socialist. His popularity with the people was unbounded, but
in the midst of it all he begged to be removed to London. There he set
up the same enterprises, and tramped the streets in search of his waifs
and outcasts, night and day, year in, year out, as if driven on by a
consuming passion of pity for the lost and fallen. In the interests of
his health he was called back to Rome--and returned here a white-haired
man of forty."
"Ah! what did I say, dear Baron? The apple falls near the tree, you
know!"
"By this time he had given away millions, and the Pope wished to make
him President of his Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, but he begged to be
excused. Then Apostolic Delegate to the United States, and he prayed
off. Then Nuncio to Spain, and he went on his knees to remain in the
Campagna Romana, and do the work of a simple priest among a simple
people. At last, without consulting him they made him Bishop, and
afterwards Cardinal, and, on the death of the Pope, he was Scrutator to
the Conclave, and fainted when he read out his own name as that of
Sovereign Pontiff of the Church."
The little Princess was wiping her eyes.
"Then--all the world was changed. The priest of the future disappeared
in a Pope who was the incarnation of the past. Authority was now his
watchword. What was the highest authority on earth? The Holy See!
Therefore, the greatest thing for the world was the domination of the
Pope. If anybody should say that the power conferred by Christ on his
Vicar was only spiritual, let him be accursed! In Christ's name the Pope
was sovereign--supreme sovereign over the bodies and souls of
men--acknowledging no superior, holding the right to make and depose
kings, and claiming to be supreme judge over the consciences and crimes
of all--the peasant that tills the soil, and the prince that sits on the
throne!"
"Tre-men-jous!" said the American.
"But, dear Baron," said the little Princess, "don't you think there was
an affair of the heart after all?" and the little plumes bobbed
sideways.
The Baron laughed again. "The Pope seems to have half of humanity on his
side already--he has the women apparently."
All this time there had risen from the piazza into the room a humming
noise like the swarming of bees, but now a shrill voice came up from the
crowd with the sudden swish of a rocket.
"Look out!"
The young Roman, who had been looking over the balcony, turned his head
back and said:
"Donna Roma, Excellency."
But the Baron had gone from the room.
"He knew her carriage wheels apparently," said Don Camillo, and the lips
of the little Princess closed tight as if from sudden pain.
V
The return of the Baron was announced by the faint rustle of a silk
under-skirt and a light yet decided step keeping pace with his own. He
came back with Donna Roma on his arm, and over his coolness and calm
dignity he looked pleased and proud.
The lady herself was brilliantly animated and happy. A certain swing in
her graceful carriage gave an instant impression of perfect health, and
there was physical health also in the brightness of her eyes and the
gaiety of her expression. Her face was lighted up by a smile which
seemed to pervade her whole person and make it radiant with overflowing
joy. A vivacity which was at the same time dignified and spontaneous
appeared in every movement of her harmonious figure, and as she came
into the room there was a glow of health and happiness that filled the
air like the glow of sunlight through a veil of soft red gauze.
She saluted the Baron's guests with a smile that fascinated everybody.
There was a modified air of freedom about her, as of one who has a right
to make advances, a manner which captivates all women in a queen and all
men in a lovely woman.
"Ah, it is you, General Potter? And my dear General Morra? Camillo mio!"
(The Italian had rushed upon her and kissed her hand.) "Sir Evelyn Wise,
from England, isn't it? I'm half an Englishwoman myself, and I'm very
proud of it."
She had smiled frankly into Sir Evelyn's face, and he had smiled back
without knowing it. There was something contagious about her smile. The
rosy mouth with its pearly teeth seemed to smile of itself, and the
lovely eyes had their separate art of smiling. Her lips parted of
themselves, and then you felt your own lips parting.
"You were to have been busy with your fountain to-day...." began the
Baron.
"So I expected," she said in a voice that was soft yet full, "and I did
not think I should care to see any more spectacles in Rome, where the
people are going in procession all the year through--but what do you
think has brought me?"
"The artist's instinct, of course," said Don Camillo.
"No, just the woman's--to see a man!"
"Lucky fellow, whoever he is!" said the American. "He'll see something
better than you will, though," and then the golden complexion gleamed up
at him under a smile like sunshine.
"But who is he?" said the young Roman.
"I'll tell you. Bruno--you remember Bruno?"
"Bruno!" cried the Baron.
"Oh! Bruno is all right," she said, and, turning to the others, "Bruno
is my man in the studio--my marble pointer, you know. Bruno Rocco, and
nobody was ever so rightly named. A big, shaggy, good-natured bear,
always singing or growling or laughing, and as true as steel. A terrible
Liberal, though; a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, and everything
that's shocking."
"Well?"
"Well, ever since I began my fountain ... I'm making a fountain for the
Municipality--it is to be erected in the new part of the Piazza Colonna.
I expect to finish it in a fortnight. You would like to see it? Yes?
I'll send you cards--a little private view, you know."
"But Bruno?"
"Ah! yes, Bruno! Well, I've been at a loss for a model for one of my
figures ... figures all round the dish, you know. They represent the
Twelve Apostles, with Christ in the centre giving out the water of
life."
"But Bruno! Bruno! Bruno!"
She laughed, and the merry ring of her laughter set them all laughing.
"Well, Bruno has sung the praises of one of his friends until I'm
crazy ... crazy, that's English, isn't it? I told you I was half an
Englishwoman. American? Thanks, General! I'm 'just crazy' to get him
in."
"Simple enough--hire him to sit to you," said the Princess.
"Oh," with a mock solemnity, "he is far too grand a person for that! A
member of Parliament, a leader of the Left, a prophet, a person with a
mission, and I daren't even dream of it. But this morning, Bruno tells
me, his friend, his idol, is to stop the Pope's procession, and present
a petition, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone--see my
man and see the spectacle--and here I am to see them!"
"And who is this paragon of yours, my dear?"
"The great David Rossi!"
"_That_ man!"
The white plumes were going like a fan.
"The man is a public nuisance and ought to be put down by the police,"
said the little Princess, beating her foot on the floor.
"He has a tongue like a sword and a pen like a dagger," said the young
Roman.
Donna Roma's eyes began to flash with a new expression.
"Ah, yes, he is a journalist, isn't he, and libels people in his paper?"
"The creature has ruined more reputations than anybody else in Europe,"
said the little Princess.
"I remember now. He made a terrible attack on our young old women and
our old young men. Declared they were meddling with everything--called
them a museum of mummies, and said they were symbolical of the ruin that
was coming on the country. Shameful, wasn't it? Nobody likes to be
talked about, especially in Rome, where it's the end of everything. But
what matter? The young man has perhaps learned freedom of speech in some
free country. We can afford to forgive him, can't we? And then he is so
interesting and so handsome!"
"An attempt to stop the Pope's procession might end in tumult," said the
American General to the Italian General. "Was that the danger the Baron
spoke about?"
"Yes," said General Morra. "The Government have been compelled to tax
bread, and of course that has been a signal for the enemies of the
national spirit to say that we are starving the people. This David Rossi
is the worst Roman in Rome. He opposed us in Parliament and lost.
Petitioned the King and lost again. Now he intends to petition the
Pope--with what hope, Heaven knows."
"With the hope of playing on public opinion, of course," said the Baron
cynically.
"Public opinion is a great force, your Excellency," said the Englishman.
"A great pestilence," said the Baron warmly.
"What is David Rossi?"
"An anarchist, a republican, a nihilist, anything as old as the hills,
dear friend, only everything in a new way," said the young Roman.
"David Rossi is the politician who proposes to govern the world by the
precepts of the Lord's Prayer," said the American.
"The Lord's Prayer!"
The Baron paraded on the hearthrug. "David Rossi," he said
compassionately, "is a creature of his age. A man of generous impulses
and wide sympathies, moved to indignation at the extremes of poverty and
wealth, and carried away by the promptings of the eternal religion in
the human soul. A dreamer, of course, a dreamer like the Holy Father
himself, only his dream is different, and neither could succeed without
destroying the other. In the millennium Rossi looks for, not only are
kings and princes to disappear, but popes and prelates as well."
"And where does this unpractical politician come from?" said the
Englishman.
"We must ask you to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed
to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country.
As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows
certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was.
Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his
mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never talks about himself,
and cannot be got to lift the veil which surrounds his birth and early
life. Came back to Rome eight years ago, and made a vast noise by
propounding his platonic scheme of politics--was called up for his term
of military service, refused to serve, got himself imprisoned for six
months and came out a mighty hero--was returned to Parliament for no
fewer than three constituencies, sat for Rome, took his place on the
Extreme Left, and attacked every Minister and every measure which
favoured the interest of the army--encouraged the workmen not to pay
their taxes and the farmers not to pay their rents--and thus became the
leader of a noisy faction, and is now surrounded by the degenerate class
throughout Italy which dreams of reconstructing society by burying it
under ruins."
"Lived in England, you say?"
"Apparently, and if his early life could be traced it would probably be
found that he was brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracy--perhaps
under the influence of some vile revolutionary living in London under
the protection of your too liberal laws."
Donna Roma sprang up with a movement full of grace and energy. "Anyhow,"
she said, "he is young and good-looking and romantic and mysterious, and
I'm head over ears in love with him already."
"Well, every man is a world," said the American.
"And what about woman?" said Roma.
He threw up his hands, she smiled full into his face, and they laughed
together.
VI
A fanfare of trumpets came from the piazza, and with a cry of delight
Roma ran into the balcony, followed by all the women and most of the
men.
"Only the signal that the cortege has started," said Don Camillo.
"They'll be some minutes still."
"Santo Dio!" cried Roma. "What a sight! It dazzles me; it makes me
dizzy!"
Her face beamed, her eyes danced, and she was all aglow from head to
foot. The American Ambassador stood behind her, and, as permitted by his
greater age, he tossed back the shuttlecock of her playful talk with
chaff and laughter.
"How patient the people are! See the little groups on camp-stools
munching biscuits and reading the journals. 'La Vera Roma!'" (mimicking
the cry of the newspaper sellers). "Look at that pretty girl--the fair
one with the young man in the Homburg hat! She has climbed up the
obelisk, and is inviting him to sit on an inch and a half of corbel
beside her."
"Ah, those who love take up little room!"
"Don't they? What a lovely world it is! I'll tell you what this makes me
think about--a wedding! Glorious morning, beautiful sunshine, flowers,
wreaths, bridesmaids ready; coachman all a posy, only waiting for the
bride!"
"A wedding is what you women are always dreaming about--you begin
dreaming about it in your cradles--it's in a woman's bones, I do
believe," said the American.
"Must be the ones she got from Adam, then," said Roma.
Meantime the Baron was still parading the hearthrug inside and listening
to the warnings of his Minister of War.
"You are resolved to arrest the man?"
"If he gives us an opportunity--yes."
"You do not forget that he is a Deputy?"
"It is because I remember it that my resolution is fixed. In Parliament
he is a privileged person; let him make half as much disorder outside
and you shall see where he will be."
"Anarchists!" said Roma. "That group below the balcony? Is David Rossi
among them? Yes? Which of them? Which? Which? Which? The tall man in the
black hat with his back to us? Oh! why doesn't he turn his face? Should
I shout?"
"Roma!" from the little Princess.
"I know; I'll faint, and you'll catch me, and the Princess will cry
'Madonna mia!' and then he'll turn round and look up."
"My child!"
"He'll see through you, though, and then where will you be?"
"See through me, indeed!" and she laughed the laugh a man loves to hear,
half-raillery, half-caress.
"Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of a line of princes, making love to a
nameless nobody!"
"Shows what a heavenly character she is, then! See how good I am at
throwing bouquets at myself?"
"Well, what is love, anyway? A certain boy and a certain girl agree to
go for a row in the same boat to the same place, and if they pull
together, what does it matter where they come from?"
"What, indeed?" she said, and a smile, partly serious, played about the
parted mouth.
"Could _you_ think like that?"
"I could! I could! I could!"
The clock struck eleven. Another fanfare of trumpets came from the
direction of the Vatican, and then the confused noises in the square
suddenly ceased and a broad "Ah!" passed over it, as of a vast living
creature taking breath.
"They're coming!" cried Roma. "Baron, the cortege is coming."
"Presently," the Baron answered from within.
Roma's dog, which had slept on a chair through the tumult, was awakened
by the lull and began to bark. She picked it up, tucked it under her arm
and ran back to the balcony, where she stood by the parapet, in full
view of the people below, with the young Roman on one side, the American
on the other, and the ladies seated around.
By this time the procession had begun to appear, issuing from a bronze
gate under the right arm of the colonnade, and passing down the channel
which had been kept open by the cordon of infantry.
Roma abandoned herself to the fascinations of the scene, and her gaiety
infected everybody.
"Camillo, you must tell me who they all are. There now--those men who
come first in black and red?"
"Laymen," said the young Roman. "They're called the Apostolic Cursori.
When a Cardinal is nominated they take him the news, and get two or
three thousand francs for their trouble."
"And these little fat folk in white lace pinafores?"
"Singers of the Sistine Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro
Mustafa--used to be the greatest soprano of the century."
"And this dear old friar with the mittens and rosary and the comfortable
linsey-woolsey sort of face?"
"That's Father Pifferi of San Lorenzo, confessor to the Pope. He knows
all the Pope's sins."
"Oh!" said Roma.
At that moment her dog barked furiously, and the old friar looked up at
her, whereupon she smiled down on him, and then a half-smile played
about his good-natured face.
"He is a Capuchin, and those Frati in different colours coming behind
him...."
"I know them; see if I don't," she cried, as there passed under the
balcony a double file of friars and monks. "The brown ones--Capuchins
and Franciscans! Brown and white--Carmelites! Black--Augustinians and
Benedictines! Black with a white cross--Passionists! And the monks all
white are Trappists. I know the Trappists best, because I drive out to
Tre Fontane to buy eucalyptus and flirt with Father John."
"Shocking!" said the American.
"Why not? What are their vows of celibacy but conspiracies against us
poor women? Nearly every man a woman wants is either mated or has sworn
off in some way. Oh, how I should love to meet one of those anchorites
in real life and make him fly!"
"Well, I dare say the whisk of a petticoat would be more frightening
than all his doctors of divinity."
"Listen!"
From a part of the procession which had passed the balcony there came
the sound of harmonious voices.
"The singers of the Sistine Chapel! They're singing a hymn."
"I know it. '_Veni, Creator!_' How splendid! How glorious! I feel as if
I wanted to cry!"
All at once the singing stopped, the murmuring and speaking of the crowd
ceased too, and there was a breathless moment, such as comes before the
first blast of a storm. A nervous quiver, like the shudder that passes
over the earth at sundown, swept across the piazza, and the people stood
motionless, every neck stretched, and every eye turned in the direction
of the bronze gate, as if God were about to reveal Himself from the Holy
of Holies. Then in that grand silence there came the clear call of
silver trumpets, and at the next instant the Presence itself.
"The Pope! Baron, the Pope!"
The atmosphere was charged with electricity. A great roar of cheering
went up from below like the roaring of surf, and it was followed by a
clapping of hands like the running of the sea off a shingly beach after
the boom of a tremendous breaker.
An old man, dressed wholly in white, carried shoulder-high on a chair
glittering with purple and crimson, and having a canopy of silver and
gold above him. He wore a triple crown, which glistened in the sunlight,
and but for the delicate white hand which he upraised to bless the
people, he might have been mistaken for an image.
His face was beautiful, and had a ray of beatified light on it--a face
of marvellous sweetness and great spirituality.
It was a thrilling moment, and Roma's excitement was intense. "There he
is! All in white! He's on a gilded chair under the silken canopy! The
canopy is held up by prelates, and the chairmen are in knee-breeches and
red velvet. Look at the great waving plumes on either side!"
"Peacock's feathers!" said a voice behind her, but she paid no heed.
"Look at the acolytes swinging incense, and the golden cross coming
before! What thunders of applause--I can hardly hear myself speak. It's
like standing on a cliff while the sea below is running mountains high.
No, it's like no other sound on earth; it's human--fifty thousand
unloosed throats of men! That's the clapping of ladies--listen to the
weak applause of their white-gloved fingers. Now they're waving their
handkerchiefs. Look! Like the wings of ten thousand butterflies
fluttering up from a meadow."
Roma's abandonment was by this time complete; she was waving her
handkerchief and crying "_Viva il Papa Re!_"
"They're bearing him slowly along. He's coming this way. Look at the
Noble Guard in their helmets and jackboots. And there are the Swiss
Guard in Joseph's coat of many colours! We can see him plainly now. Do
you smell the incense? It's like the ribbon of Bruges. The pluviale?
That gold vestment? It's studded on his breast with precious stones. How
they blaze in the sunshine! He is blessing the people, and they are
falling on their knees before him."
"Like the grass before the scythe!"
"How tired he looks! How white his face is! No, not white--ivory! No,
marble--Carrara marble! He might be Lazarus who was dead and has come
back from the tomb! No humanity left in him! A saint! An angel!"
"The spiritual autocrat of the world!"
"_Viva il Papa Re!_ He's going by! _Viva il Papa Re!_ He has
gone.... Well!"
She was rising from her knees and wiping her eyes, trying to cover up
with laughter the confusion of her rapture.
"What is that?"
There was a sound of voices in the distance chanting dolorously.
"The cantors intoning _Tu es Petrus_," said Don Camillo.
"No, I mean the commotion down there. Somebody is pushing through the
Guard."
"It's David Rossi," said the American.
"Is that David Rossi? Oh, dear me! I had forgotten all about him." She
moved forward to see his face. "Why ... where have I ... I've seen him
before somewhere."
A strange physical sensation tingled all over her at that moment, and
she shuddered as if with sudden cold.
"What's amiss?"
"Nothing! But I like him. Do you know, I really like him."
"Women are funny things," said the American.
"They're nice, though, aren't they?" And two rows of pearly teeth
between parted lips gleamed up at him with gay raillery.
Again she craned forward. "He is on his knees to the Pope! Now he'll
present the petition. No ... yes ... the brutes! They're dragging him
away! The procession is going on! Disgraceful!"
"Long live the Workmen's Pope!" came up from the piazza, and under the
shrill shouts of the pilgrims were heard the monotonous voices of the
monks as they passed through the open doors of the Basilica intoning the
praises of God.
"They're lifting him on to a car," said the American.
"David Rossi?"
"Yes; he is going to speak."
"How delightful! Shall we hear him? Good! How glad I am that I came! He
is facing this way! Oh, yes; those are his own people with the banners!
Baron, the Holy Father has gone on to St. Peter's, and David Rossi is
going to speak."
"Hush!"
A quivering, vibrating voice came up from below, and in a moment there
was a dead silence.
VII
"Brothers, when Christ Himself was on the earth going up to Jerusalem,
He rode on the colt of an ass, and the blind and the lame and the sick
came to Him, and He healed them. Humanity is sick and blind and lame
to-day, brothers, but the Vicar of Christ goes on."
At the words an audible murmur came from the crowd, such as goes before
the clapping of hands in a Roman theatre, a great upheaval of the heart
of the audience to the actor who has touched and stirred it.
"Brothers, in a little Eastern village a long time ago, there arose
among the poor and lowly a great Teacher, and the only prayer He taught
His followers was the prayer 'Our Father who art in Heaven.' It was the
expression of man's utmost need, the expression of man's utmost hope.
And not only did the Teacher teach that prayer--He lived according to
the light of it. All men were His brothers, all women His sisters; He
was poor, He had no home, no purse, and no second coat; when He was
smitten He did not smite back, and when He was unjustly accused He did
not defend Himself. Nineteen hundred years have passed since then,
brothers, and the Teacher who arose among the poor and lowly is now a
great Prophet. All the world knows and honours Him, and civilised
nations have built themselves upon the religion He founded. A great
Church calls itself by His name, and a mighty kingdom, known as
Christendom, owes allegiance to His faith. But what of His teaching? He
said: 'Resist not evil,' yet all Christian nations maintain standing
armies. He said: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' yet
the wealthiest men are Christian men, and the richest organisation in
the world is the Christian Church. He said: 'Our Father who art in
Heaven,' yet men who ought to be brothers are divided into states, and
hate each other as enemies. He said: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
on earth as it is done in Heaven,' yet he who believes it ever will come
is called a fanatic and a fool."
Some murmurs of dissent were drowned in cries of "Go on!" "Speak!"
"Silence!"
"Foremost and grandest of the teachings of Christ are two inseparable
truths--the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But in Italy,
as elsewhere, the people are starved that king may contend with king,
and when we appeal to the Pope to protest in the name of the Prince of
Peace, he remembers his temporalities and passes on!"
At these words the emotion of the crowd broke into loud shouts of
approval, with which some groans were mingled.
Roma had turned her face aside from the speaker, and her profile was
changed--the gay, sprightly, airy, radiant look had given way to a
serious, almost a melancholy expression.
"We have two sovereigns in Rome, brothers, a great State and a great
Church, with a perishing people. We have soldiers enough to kill us,
priests enough to tell us how to die, but no one to show us how to
live."
"Corruption! Corruption!"
"Corruption indeed, brothers; and who is there among us to whom the
corruptions of our rulers are unknown? Who cannot point to the wars made
that should not have been made? to the banks broken that should not have
broken? And who in Rome cannot point to the Ministers who allow their
mistresses to meddle in public affairs and enrich themselves by the ruin
of all around?"
The little Princess on the balcony was twisting about.
"What! Are you deserting us, Roma?"
And Roma answered from within the house, in a voice that sounded strange
and muffled:
"It was cold on the balcony, I think."
The little Princess laughed a bitter laugh, and David Rossi heard it and
misunderstood it, and his nostrils quivered like the nostrils of a
horse, and when he spoke again his voice shook with passion.
"Who has not seen the splendid equipages of these privileged ones of
fortune--their gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold--emblems of the
acid which is eating into the public organs? Has Providence raised this
country from the dead only to be dizzied in a whirlpool of scandal,
hypocrisy, and fraud--only to fall a prey to an infamous traffic without
a name between high officials of low desires and women whose reputations
are long since lost? It is men and women like these who destroy their
country for their own selfish ends. Very well, let them destroy her; but
before they do so, let them hear what one of her children says: The
Government you are building up on the whitened bones of the people shall
be overthrown--the King who countenances you, and the Pope who will not
condemn you, shall be overthrown, and then--and not till then--will the
nation be free."
At this there was a terrific clamour. The square resounded with confused
voices. "Bravo!" "Dog!" "Dog's murderer!" "Traitor!" "Long live David
Rossi!" "Down with the Vampire!"
The ladies had fled from the balcony back to the room with cries of
alarm. "There will be a riot." "The man is inciting the people to
rebellion!" "This house will be first to be attacked!"
"Calm yourselves, ladies. No harm shall come to you," said the Baron,
and he rang the bell.
There came from below a babel of shouts and screams.
"Madonna mia! What is that?" cried the Princess, wringing her hands; and
the American Ambassador, who had remained on the balcony, said:
"The Carabineers have charged the crowd and arrested David Rossi."
"Thank God!"
"They're going through the Borgo," said Don Camillo, "and kicking and
cuffing and jostling and hustling all the way."
"Don't be alarmed! There's the Hospital of Santo Spirito round the
corner, and stations of the Red Cross Society everywhere," said the
Baron, and then Felice answered the bell.
"See our friends out by the street at the back, Felice. Good-bye,
ladies! Have no fear! The Government does not mean to blunt the weapons
it uses against the malefactors who insult the doctrines of the State."
"Excellent Minister!" said the Princess. "Such canaglia are not fit to
have their liberty, and I would lock them all up in prison."
And then Don Camillo offered his arm to the little lady with the white
plumes, and they came almost face to face with Roma, who was standing by
the door hung with curtains, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and
parting from the English Ambassador.
"Donna Roma," he was saying, "if I can ever be of use to you, either now
or in the future, I beg of you to command me."
"Look at her!" whispered the Princess. "How agitated she is! A moment
ago she was finding it cold in the Loggia! I'm so happy!"
At the next instant she ran up to Roma and kissed her. "Poor child! How
sorry I am! You have my sympathy, my dear! But didn't I tell you the man
was a public nuisance, and ought to be put down by the police?"
"Shameful, isn't it?" said Don Camillo. "Calumny is a little wind, but
it raises such a terrible tempest."
"Nobody likes to be talked about," said the Princess, "especially in
Rome, where it is the end of everything."
"But what matter? Perhaps the young man has learned freedom of speech in
a free country!" said Don Camillo.
"And then he is so interesting and so handsome," said the Princess.
Roma made no answer. There was a slight drooping of the lovely eyes and
a trembling of the lips and nostrils. For a moment she stood absolutely
impassive, and then with a flash of disdain she flung round into the
inner room.
VIII
Roma had taken refuge in the council-room. There had been much business
that morning, and a copy of the constitutional statute lay open on a
large table, which had a plate-glass top with photographs under the
surface.
In this passionless atmosphere, so little accustomed to such scenes,
Roma sat in her wounded pride and humiliation, with her head down, and
her beautiful white hands over her face.
She heard measured footsteps approaching, and then a hand touched her on
the shoulder. She looked up and drew back as if the touch stung her. Her
lips closed sternly, and she got up and began to walk about the room,
and then she burst into a torrent of anger.
"Did you hear them? The cats! How they loved to claw me, and still purr
and purr! Before the sun is set the story will be all over Rome! It has
run off already on the hoofs of that woman's English horses. To-morrow
morning it will be in every newspaper in the kingdom. Olga and Lena and
every woman of them all who lives in a glass house will throw stones.
'The new Pompadour! Who is she?' Oh, I could die of vexation and shame!"
The Baron leaned against the table and listened, twisting the ends of
his moustache.
"The Court will turn its back on me now. They only wanted a good excuse
to put their humiliations upon me. It's horrible! I can't bear it. I
won't. I tell you, I won't!"
But the lips, compressed with scorn, began to quiver visibly, and she
threw herself into a chair, took out her handkerchief, and hid her face
on the table.
At that moment Felice came into the room to say that the Commendatore
Angelelli had returned and wished to speak with his Excellency.
"I will see him presently," said the Baron, with an impassive
expression, and Felice went out silently, as one who had seen nothing.
The Baron's calm dignity was wounded. "Be so good as to have some regard
for me in the presence of my servants," he said. "I understand your
feelings, but you are much too excited to see things in their proper
light. You have been publicly insulted and degraded, but you must not
talk to me as if it were my fault."
"Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she
said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an
expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no
reply, and his silence broke her answer.
"No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and
he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held
it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her
head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand.
"I suppose it is all over," she said.
"Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring
forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander
and justify you in the eyes of all."
At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to look beyond the
Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the
table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and
revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of
the Baron's castle in the Alban hills.
"Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno."
"I will discharge him this very day--I will! I will! I will!"
There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had
said must have come of what her own servant told him--that Bruno had
watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the
two men had discussed her between them.
"I could kill him," she said.
"Bruno Rocco?"
"No, David Rossi."
"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.
"How?"
"He shall be put on his trial."
"What for?"
"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime
Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow
has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."
"What good will that do?"
"He will be silenced--and crushed."
She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her
heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.
"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning
him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly
enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater
in his prison than the King on his throne."
The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again.
"Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on
trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public
will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was
punished for telling the truth."
The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache.
"Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a double injury. The
insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate
for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will
quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed
until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of
it."
The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale,
behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of
vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring.
"I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!"
"Well?"
"Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this
humiliating situation."
"Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already.
"If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no
good to the King."
"It's true."
"Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and
the King some service."
"No doubt."
"You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who
he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from
Rome."
"I would certainly give a good deal to know."
"You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his
fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he
belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether
he is in league with the Vatican."
She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips.
"Well?"
"Well, I will find it all out for you."
"My dear Roma!"
"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"--she laughed, a
little ashamed--"the inmost secrets of his soul."
She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into
her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy
sky.
The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms--to
draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he
has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do
nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He
should appear to regard them with contempt."
He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire.
The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the
only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm
of jealousy.
"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are
irresistible! But remember--the man is one of the incorruptible."
She laughed.
"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it
is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."
"I've seen him," she said.
"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."
She tossed her head and laughed again.
The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can
forgive."
"And what about Bruno?" he said.
"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."
"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"
"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has
turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of
his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'--he
shall fall."
The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes
catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of
vinegar. We shall see."
A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable
Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.
"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the
table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied
that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."
"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the
forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."
"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that
the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."
"Excellency!"
"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him
safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."
The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore
Angelelli backed out of the room.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PART TWO--THE REPUBLIC OF MAN
I
The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters
of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is
this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona
you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"
In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during
the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The
ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with
rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples
with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the
Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the
staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp,
which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.
In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie
hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red
handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's
apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the
front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to
the roof.
In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a
young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of
six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a
comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was
a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion.
"Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to
the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'"
But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the
mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square.
"Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?"
"Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran
home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him."
"Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley
of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came
unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great
strength lieth....' But, mamma...."
"Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'"
"'And she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man, and
she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head....'"
At that moment there came a knock at the door, whereupon the boy uttered
a cry of delight, and with a radiant face went plunging and shouting out
of the room.
"Uncle David! It's Uncle David!"
The tumultuous voice rolled like baby thunder through the apartment
until it reached the door, and then it dropped to a dead silence.
"Who is it, Joseph?"
"A gentleman," said the boy.
II
It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up
moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza
of St. Peter.
"I wish to speak with Mr. Rossi. I bring him an important message from
abroad. He is coming along with the people, but to make sure of an
interview I hurried ahead. May I wait?"
"Certainly! Come in, sir! You say he is coming? Yes? Then he is free?"
The woman's liquid eyes were glistening visibly, and the man's watchful
ones seemed to notice everything.
"Yes, madam, he is free. I saw him arrested, and I also saw him set at
liberty."
"Really? Then you can tell me all about it? That's good! I have heard so
little of all that happened, and my boy and I have not been able to
think of anything else. Sit down, sir!"
"As the police were taking him to the station-house in the Borgo," said
the stranger, "the people made an attempt to rescue him, and it seemed
as if they must certainly have succeeded if it had not been for his own
intervention."
"He stopped them, didn't he? I'm sure he stopped them!"
"He did. The delegate had given his three warnings, and the Brigadier
was on the point of ordering his men to fire, when the prisoner threw up
his hands before the crowd."
"I knew it! Well?"
"'Brothers,' he said, 'let no blood be shed for my sake. We are in God's
hands. Go home!'"
"How like him! And then, sir?"
"Then the crowd broke up like a bubble, and the officer who was in
charge of him uncovered his head. 'Room for the Honourable Rossi!' he
cried, and the prisoner went into the prison."
The liquid eyes were running over by this time, and the soft voice was
trembling: "You say you saw him set at liberty?"
"Yes! I was in the public service myself until lately, so they allowed
me to enter the police station, and when the order for release came I
was present and heard all. 'Deputy,' said the officer, 'I have the
honour to inform you that you are free.' 'But before I go I must say
something,' said the Deputy. 'My only orders are that you are to be set
at liberty,' said the officer. 'Nevertheless, I must see the Minister,'
said Mr. Rossi. But the crowd had pressed in and surrounded him, and in
a moment the flood had carried him out into the street, with shouts and
the waving of hats and a whirlwind of enthusiasm. And now he is being
drawn by force through the city in a mad, glad, wild procession."
"But he deserves it all, and more--far, far more!"
The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not
his wife--no?"
"Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered.
"But you live here?"
"We live in the rooms on the roof."
"Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?"
"Yes--that is to say--yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi."
At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by
a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical
noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.
"It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was
also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty
canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a
gigantic bird-cage.
"Mr. Rossi's?"
"Yes, and he is fond of animals also--dogs and cats and rabbits and
squirrels, especially squirrels."
"Squirrels?"
"He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some
people who love animals--he loves children, too. He loves all children,
and as for Joseph...."
"The little boy who cried 'Uncle David' at the door?"
"Yes, sir. One day my husband said 'Uncle David' to Mr. Rossi, and he
has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since."
"This is the dining-room, no doubt," said the stranger.
"Unfortunately, yes, sir."
"Why unfortunately?"
"Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there's not even a
curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to
everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give
the chicken off his plate if he hadn't anything else. I have to scold
him a little sometimes--I can't help it. And as for father, he says he
has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people
away."
"That will be his bedroom, I suppose," said the stranger, indicating a
door which the boy had passed through.
"No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in
Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers
and so forth. Come in, sir."
The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth,
Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been
furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with
incongruous furniture.
"Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a
porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father's fishing-rod, you
see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his
mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets
presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but
nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the
bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this."
"A phonograph?"
"It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island
of Elba."
"Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?"
"'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an
instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very
next day the carriers brought the phonograph."
"And then he reproduced the message?"
"I don't know--I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the
boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you
may come in."
It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white
counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass
to keep it from the flies.
"How sweet!" said the stranger.
"It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the
other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid
heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from
the herring net.
"I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from
the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on
his finger-nail.
"Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A
six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he
threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers."
"And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture
in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait
of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.
"Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think."
"An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for
all that."
At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great
crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into the broad piazza. At
the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another
voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door.
"They're coming! It's my husband! Bruno!" said the woman, and the ripple
of her dress told the stranger she had gone.
III
Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi's people had
brought him home in triumph, and now they were crowding upon him to kiss
his hand, the big-hearted, baby-headed, beloved children of Italy.
The object of this aurora of worship stood with his back to the table in
the dining-room, looking down and a little ashamed, while Bruno Rocco,
six feet three in his stockings, hoisted the boy on to his shoulder, and
shouted as from a tower to everybody as they entered by the door:
"Come in, sonny, come in! Don't stand there like the Pope between the
devil and the deep sea. Come in among the people," and Bruno's laughter
rocked through the room to where the crowd stood thick on the staircase.
"The Baron has had a lesson," said a man with a sheet of white paper in
his hand. "He dreamed of getting the Collar of the Annunziata out of
this."
"The pig dreamed of acorns," said Bruno.
"It's a lesson to the Church as well," said the man with the paper. "She
wouldn't have anything to do with us. 'I alone strike the hour of the
march,' says the Church."
"And then she stands still!" said Bruno.
"The mountains stand still, but men are made to walk," said the man with
the paper, "and if the Pope doesn't advance with the people, the people
must advance without the Pope."
"The Pope's all right, sonny," said Bruno, "but what does he know about
the people? Only what his black-gowned beetles tell him!"
"The Pope has no wife and children," said the man with the paper.
"Old Vampire could find him a few," said Bruno, and then there was
general laughter.
"Brothers," said David Rossi, "let us be temperate. There's nothing to
be gained by playing battledore and shuttlecock with the name of an old
man who has never done harm to any one. The Pope hasn't listened to us
to-day, but he is a saint all the same, and his life has been a lesson
in well-doing."
"Anybody can sail with a fair wind, sir," said Bruno.
"Let us be prudent. There's no need for violence, whether of the hand or
of the tongue. You've found that out this morning. If you had rescued me
from the police, I should have been in prison again by this time, and
God knows what else might have happened. I'm proud of your patience and
forbearance; and now go home, boys, and God bless you."
"Stop a minute!" said the man with the paper. "Something to read before
we go. While the Carabineers kept Mr. Rossi in the Borgo, the Committee
of Direction met in a cafe and drew up a proclamation."
"Read it, Luigi," said David Rossi, and the man opened his paper and
read:
"Having appealed in vain to Parliament and to the King against the
tyrannical tax which the Government has imposed upon bread in order that
the army and navy may be increased, and having appealed in vain to the
Pope to intercede with the civil authorities, and call back Italy to its
duty, it now behoves us, as a suffering and perishing people, to act on
our own behalf. Unless annulled by royal decree, the tax will come into
operation on the 1st of February. On that day let every Roman remain
indoors until an hour after Ave Maria. Let nobody buy so much as one
loaf of bread, and let no bread be eaten, except such as you give to
your children. Then, at the first hour of night, let us meet in the
Coliseum, tens of thousands of fasting people, of one mind and heart, to
determine what it is our duty to do next, that our bread may be sure and
our water may not fail."
"Good!" "Beautiful!" "Splendid!"
"Only wants the signature of the president," said the reader, and Bruno
called for pen and ink.
"Before I sign it," said Rossi, "let it be understood that none come
armed. There is nothing our enemies would like better than to fix on us
the names of rioters and rebels. We must defeat them. We must show the
world that we alone are the people of law and order. Therefore I call on
you to promise that none come armed."
"We promise," cried several voices.
"And now go home, boys, and God bless you."
After a moment there was only one man left in the room. It was the
fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache.
"For you, sir!" said the young man, taking a letter from a pocket inside
his waistcoat.
David Rossi opened the letter and read: "The bearer of this, Charles
Minghelli, is one of ourselves. He has determined upon the
accomplishment of a great act, and wishes to see you with respect to
it."
"You come from London?"
"Yes, sir."
"You wish to speak to me?"
"I do."
"You may speak freely."
The young man glanced in the direction of Bruno and of Bruno's wife, who
stood beside him.
"It is a delicate matter, sir," he said.
"Come this way," said David Rossi, and he took the stranger into his
bedroom.
IV
David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a
sign to the man to take a chair that stood near.
"Your name is Charles Minghelli?" said David Rossi.
"Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise."
"What is it?"
"That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own
hands."
The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence
David Rossi replied as calmly:
"I will ask you to explain what you mean."
The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will
permit me to speak plainly?"
"Certainly."
"Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name
to it. It is beautiful as a theory--most beautiful! And the Republic of
Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!"
"Well?"
"But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that
runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to
tug at it."
"I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi.
"With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest
against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your
principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and
without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then
where are you?"
David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines
with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on
the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with
more vigour.
"If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where
are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men
marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the
other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or
paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to
overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of
the world!"
David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and
forward with a step that was long and slow.
"Well, and what do _you_ say we ought to do?" he said.
A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice:
"Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation."
"The Prime Minister?"
"Yes."
There was silence.
"You expect me to do that?"
"No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right
to resist violence."
David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of
introduction, and said:
"That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?"
"Yes."
"Why do you come to me?" he said.
"Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of
Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the
way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the
moment when he is to be found alone."
"I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death."
"A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight."
"I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people."
"On the day he dies, sir, the people will live."
"Or that crimes--great crimes--have been the means of bringing about
great reforms."
"You are right, sir--but it would be no crime."
The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned
over to the desk and took up the dagger.
"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet
of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the
word--may I take it?"
"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know
himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."
The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.
"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done--to
know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the
things; the actors, not the parts."
The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open,
and balancing the dagger on one hand.
"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by
every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy
of liberty--that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight
otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."
The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
"I knew you talked like that to the people--statesmen do
sometimes--that's all right--it's pretty, and it keeps the people
quiet--but _we_...."
David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:
"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."
"So you dismiss me?"
"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the
progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of
authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the
destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as
one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal
quarrel against an enemy."
The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime
Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his
mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who
is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna
at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and
has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a
liar and a cheat?"
David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing
that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."
David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy
in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police
authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in
Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy--she had been
living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had
turned out badly and run away."
David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy
stare.
"I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the
magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we
didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month
later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared
entirely."
David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into
his shoulders.
"I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I
saw her?"
David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:
"Where?"
"In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the
Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and
one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her
I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was
lost in the streets of London."
David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.
"You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.
The man staggered back and stammered:
"Why ... what...."
"I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant
companion--she was the same as my sister--and her father was the same as
my father--and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous
wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one
word, but I won't. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my
path again I'll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an
assassin."
Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled.
V
David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and
tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire.
"What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street," said
Bruno.
"A man whose room was better than his company, that's all."
"What's his name?" said Bruno.
"Charles Minghelli."
"Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the
Embassy in London, and got dismissed."
"I thought as much!" said David Rossi. "No doubt the man attributed his
dismissal to the Prime Minister, and wanted to use me for his private
revenge."
"That was his game, was it? Why didn't you let me know, sir? He would
have gone downstairs like a falling star. Now that I remember, he's the
nephew of old Polomba, the Mayor, and I've seen him at Donna Roma's."
A waiter in a white smock, with a large tin box on his head, entered the
hall, and behind him came the old woman from the porter's lodge, with
the wrinkled face and the red cotton handkerchief.
"Come in," cried Bruno. "I ordered the best dinner in the Trattoria,
sir, and thought we might perhaps dine together for once."
"Good," said David Rossi.
"Here it is, a whole basketful of the grace of God, sir! Out with it,
Riccardo," and while the women laid the table, Bruno took the dishes
smoking hot from their temporary oven with its charcoal fire.
"Artichokes--good. Chicken--good again. I must be a fox--I was dreaming
of chicken all last night! _Gnocchi!_ (potatoes and flour baked).
_Agradolce!_ (sour and sweet). _Fagioletti!_ (French beans boiled)
and--a half-flask of Chianti! Who said the son of my mother couldn't
order a dinner? All right, Riccardo; come back at Ave Maria."
The waiter went off, and the company sat down to their meal, Bruno and
his wife at either end of the table, and David Rossi on the sofa, with
the boy on his right, and the cat curled up into his side on the left,
while the old woman stood in front, serving the food and removing the
plates.
"Look at him!" said the old woman, who was deaf, pointing to David
Rossi, with his two neighbours. "Now, why doesn't the Blessed Virgin
give him a child of his own?"
"She has, mother, and here he is," said David Rossi.
"You'll let her give him a woman first, won't you?" said Bruno.
"Ah! that will never be," said David Rossi.
"What does he say?" said the old woman with her hand at her ear like a
shell.
"He says he won't have any of you," bawled Bruno.
"What an idea! But I've heard men say that before, and they've been
married sooner than you could say 'Hail Mary.'"
"It isn't an incident altogether unknown in the history of this planet,
is it, mother?" said Bruno.
"A heart to share your sorrows and joys is something, and the man is not
wise who wastes the chance of it," said the old woman. "Does he think
parliaments will make up for it when he grows old and wants something to
comfort him?"
"Hush, mother!" said Elena, but Bruno made mouths at her to let the old
woman go on.
"As for me, I'll want somebody of my own about me to close my eyes when
the time comes to put the sacred oil on them," said the old woman.
"If a man has dedicated his life to work for humanity," said David
Rossi, "he must give up many things--father, mother, wife, child."
The corner of Elena's apron crept up to the corner of her eye, but the
old woman, who thought the subject had changed, laughed and said:
"That's just what I say to Tommaso. 'Tommaso,' I say, 'if a man is going
to be a policeman he must have no father, or mother, or wife, or
child--no, nor bowels neither,' I say. And Tommaso says, 'Francesca,' he
says, 'the whole tribe of gentry they call statesmen are just policemen
in plain clothes, and I do believe they've only liberated Mr. Rossi as a
trap to catch him again when he has done something.'"
"They won't catch _you_ though, will they, mother?" shouted Bruno.
"That they won't! I'm deaf, praise the saints, and can't hear them."
A knock came to the door, and seizing his mace the boy ran and opened
it. An old man stood on the threshold. He was one of David Rossi's
pensioners. Ninety years of age, his children all dead, he lived with
his grandchildren, and was one of the poor human rats who stay indoors
all day and come out with a lantern at night to scour the gutters of the
city for the refuse of cigar-ends.
"Come another night, John," said Bruno.
But David Rossi would not send him away empty, and he was going off with
the sparkling eyes of a boy, when he said:
"I heard you in the piazza this morning, Excellency! Grand! Only sorry
for one thing."
"And what was that, sonny?" asked Bruno.
"What his Excellency said about Donna Roma. She gave me a half-franc
only yesterday--stopped the carriage to do it, sir."
"So that's your only reason...." began Bruno.
"Good reason, too. Good-night, John!" said David Rossi, and Joseph
closed the door.
"Oh, she has her virtues, like every other kind of spider," said Bruno.
"I'm sorry I spoke of her," said David Rossi.
"You needn't be, though. She deserved all she got. I haven't been two
years in her studio without knowing what she is."
"It was the man I was thinking of, and if I had remembered that the
woman must suffer...."
"Tut! She'll have to make her Easter confession a little earlier, that's
all."
"If she hadn't laughed when I was speaking...."
"You're on the wrong track now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the
little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and
screeching like an old gandery goose."
Dinner was now over, and the boy called for the phonograph. David Rossi
went into the sitting-room to fetch it, and Elena went in at the same
time to light the fire. She was kneeling with her back to him, blowing
on to the wood, when she said in a trembling voice:
"I'm a little sorry myself, sir, if I may say so. I can't believe what
they say about the mistress, but even if it's true we don't know _her_
story, do we?"
Then the phonograph was turned on, and Joseph marched to the tune of
"Swannee River" and the strains of Sousa's band.
"Mr. Rossi," said Bruno, between a puff and a blow.
"Yes?"
"Have you tried the cylinder that came first?"
"Not yet."
"How's that, sir?"
"The man who brought it said the friend who had spoken into it was
dead." And then with a shiver, "It would be like a voice from the
grave--I doubt if I dare hear it."
"Like a ghost speaking to a man, certainly--especially if the friend was
a close one."
"He was the closest friend I ever had, Bruno--he was my father."
"Father?"
"Foster-father, anyway. For four years he clothed and fed and educated
me, and I was the same as his own son."
"Had he no children of his own?"
"One little daughter, no bigger than Joseph when I saw her last--Roma."
"Roma?"
"Yes, her father was a Liberal, and her name was Roma."
"What became of her?"
"When the doctor came to Italy on the errand which ended in his
imprisonment he gave her into the keeping of some Italian friends in
London. I was too young to take charge of her then. Besides, I left
England shortly afterward and went to America."
"Where is she now?" said Elena.
"When I returned to England ... she was dead."
"Well, there's nothing new under the sun of Rome--Donna Roma came from
London," said Bruno.
David Rossi felt the muscles of his face quiver.
"Her father was an exile in England, too, and when he came back on the
errand that ended in Elba, he gave her away to some people who treated
her badly--I've heard old Teapot, the Countess, say so when she's been
nagging her poor niece."
David Rossi breathed painfully.
"Strange if it should be the same," said Bruno.
"But Mr. Rossi's Roma is dead," said Elena.
"Ah, of course, certainly! What a fool I am!" said Bruno.
David Rossi had a sense of suffocation, and he went out on to the lead
flat.
VI
The Ave Maria was ringing from many church towers, and the golden day
was going down with the sun behind the dark outline of the dome of St.
Peter's, while the blue night was rising over the snow-capped Apennines
in a premature twilight with one twinkling star.
David Rossi's ears buzzed as with the sound of a mighty wind rushing
through trees at a distance. Bruno's last words on top of Charles
Minghelli's had struck him like an alarum bell heard through the mists
of sleep, and his head was stunned and his eyes were dizzy. He buttoned
his coat about him, and walked quickly to and fro on the lead flat by
the side of the cage, in which the birds were already bunched up and
silent.
Before he was aware of the passing of time, the church bells were
tolling the first hour of night. Presently he became aware of flares
burning in the Piazza of St. Peter, and of the shadows of giant heads
cast up on the walls of the vast Basilica. It was the crowd gathering
for the last ceremonial of the Pope's Jubilee, and at the sound of a
double rocket, which went up as with the crackle of musketry, little
Joseph came running on to the roof, followed by his mother and Bruno.
David Rossi took the boy into his arms and tried to dispel the gloom of
his own spirits in the child's joy at the illuminations.
"Ever see 'luminations before, Uncle David?" said Joseph.
"Once, dear, but that was long ago and far away. I was a boy myself in
those days, and there was a little girl with me then who was no bigger
than you are now. But it's growing cold, there's frost in the air,
besides it's late, and little boys must go to bed."
"Well, God is God, and the Pope is His Prophet," said Bruno, when Elena
and Joseph had gone indoors. "It was like day! You could see the
lightning conductor over the Pope's apartment! Pshew!" blowing puffs of
smoke from his twisted cigar. "Won't keep the lightning off, though."
"Bruno!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Donna Roma's father would be Prince Volonna?"
"Yes, the last prince of the old papal name. When the Volonna estates
were confiscated, the title really lapsed, but old Vampire got the
lands."
"Did you ever hear that he bore any other name during the time he was in
exile?"
"Sure to, but there was no trial and nothing was known. They all changed
their names, though."
"Why ... what...." said David Rossi in an unsteady voice.
"Why?" said Bruno. "Because they were all condemned in Italy, and the
foreign countries were told to turn them out. But what am I talking
about? You know all that better than I do, sir. Didn't your old friend
go under a false name?"
"Very likely--I don't know," said David Rossi, in a voice that testified
to jangled nerves.
"Did he ever tell you, sir?"
"I can't say that he ever.... Certainly the school of revolution has
always had villains enough, and perhaps to prevent treachery...."
"You may say so! The devil has the run of the world, even in England.
But I'm surprised your old friend, being like a father to you, didn't
tell you--at the end anyway...."
"Perhaps he intended to--and then perhaps...."
David Rossi put his hand to his brow as if in pain and perplexity, and
began again to walk backward and forward.
A screamer in the piazza below cried "_Trib-un-a!_" and Bruno said:
"That's early! What's up, I wonder? I'll go down and get a paper."
Darkness had by this time re-invaded the sky, and the stars looked down
from their broad dome, clear, sweet, white, and serene, putting to shame
by their immortal solemnity the poor little mimes, the paltry
puppet-shows of the human jackstraws who had just been worshipping at
their self-made shrine.
As David Rossi returned to the house, Elena, who was undressing the boy,
saw a haggard look in his eyes, but Bruno, who was reading his evening
journal, saw nothing, and cried out:
"Helloa! Listen to this, sir. It's Olga. She's got a pen, I can tell
you. 'Madame de Pompadour. Hitherto we have had the pleasure of having
Madame ----, whose pressure on the State and on Italy's wise counsellors
was only incidental, but now that the fates have given us a Madame
Pompadour....' Then there's a leading article on your speech in the
piazza. Praises you up to the skies. Look! 'Thank God we have men like
the Honourable Rossi, who at the risk of....'"
But with a clouded brow David Rossi turned away from him and passed into
the sitting-room, and Bruno looked around in blank bewilderment.
"Shall you want the lamp, sir?" said Elena.
"Not yet, thank you," he answered through the open door.
The wood fire was glowing on the hearth, and in the acute state of his
nerves he shuddered involuntarily as its reflection in the window
opposite looked back at him like a fiery eye. He opened the case of the
phonograph, which had been returned to its place on the piano, and then
from a drawer in the bureau he took a small cardboard box. The wood in
the fire flickered at that moment and started some ghastly shadows on
the ceiling, but he drew a cylinder from the box and slid it on to the
barrel of the phonograph. Then he stepped to the door, shut and locked
it.
VII
"Well!" said Bruno. "If that isn't enough to make a man feel as small as
a sardine!"
There was only one thing to do, but to conceal the nature of it Bruno
flourished the newspaper and said:
"Elena, I must go down to the lodge and read these articles to your
father. Poor Donna Roma, she'll have to fly, I'm afraid. Bye-bye,
Garibaldi-Mazzini! Early to bed, early to rise, and time enough to grow
old, you know!... As for Mr. Rossi, he might be a sinner and a criminal
instead of the hero of the hour! It licks me to little bits." And Bruno
carried his dark mystery down to the cafe to see if it might be
dispelled by a litre of autumnal light from sunny vineyards.
Meantime, Joseph, being very tired, was shooting out a pettish lip
because he had to go to bed without saying good-night to Uncle David; and
his mother, making terms with this pretence, consented to bring down his
nightdress, thinking Rossi might be out of the sitting-room by that
time, and the boy be pacified. But when she returned to the dining-room
the sitting-room door was still closed, and Joseph was pleading to be
allowed to lie on the sofa until Uncle David carried him to bed.
"I'm not asleep, mamma," came in a drowsy voice from the sofa, but
almost at the same moment the measured breath slowed down, the
watch-lights blinked themselves out, and the little soul slid away into
the darksome kingdom of unconsciousness.
Suddenly, in the silence of the room, Elena was startled by a voice. It
came from the sitting-room. Was it Mr. Rossi's voice? No! The voice was
older and feebler than Mr. Rossi's, and less clear and distinct. Could
it be possible that somebody was with him? If so, the visitor must have
arrived while she was in the bedroom above. But why had she not heard
the knock? How did it occur that Joseph had not told her? And then the
lamp was still on the dining-room table, and save for the firelight the
sitting-room must be dark.
A chill began to run through her blood, and she tried to hear what was
said, but the voice was muffled by its passage through the wall, and she
could only catch a word or two. Presently the strange voice, without
stopping, was broken in upon by a voice that was clear and familiar, but
now faltering with the note of pain: "I swear to God I will!"
That was Mr. Rossi's voice, and Elena's head began to go round. Whom was
he speaking to? Who was speaking to him? He went into the room alone, he
was sitting in the dark, and yet there were two voices.
A light dawned on Elena, and she could have laughed. What had terrified
her as a sort of supernatural thing was only the phonograph! But after a
moment a fresh tremor struck upon her in the agony of the exclamations
with which David Rossi broke in upon the voice that was being reproduced
by the machine. She could hear his words distinctly, and he was in great
trouble. Hardly knowing what she did, she crept up to the door and
listened. Even then, she could only follow the strange voice in
passages, which were broken and submerged by the whirring of the
phonograph, like the flight of a sea-bird which dips at intervals and
leaves nothing but the wash of the waves.
"David," said the voice, "when this shall come to your hands ... in my
great distress of mind ... do not trifle with my request ... but
whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child ... remember
that ... Adieu, my son ... the end is near ... if death does not
annihilate ... those who remain on earth ... a helper and advocate in
heaven ... Adieu!" And interrupting these broken words were half-smothered
cries and sobs from David Rossi, repeating again and again: "I will!
I swear to God I will!"
Elena could bear the pain no longer, and mustering up her courage she
tapped at the door. It was a gentle tap, and no answer was returned. She
knocked louder, and then an angry voice said:
"Who's there?"
"It's I--Elena," she answered timidly. "Is anything the matter? Aren't
you well, sir?"
"Ah, yes," came back in a calmer voice, and after a shuffling sound as
of the closing of drawers, David Rossi opened the door and came out.
As he crossed the threshold he cast a backward glance into the dark
room, as if he feared that some invisible hand would touch him on the
shoulder. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood on his
forehead, but he smiled, and in a voice that was a little hoarse, yet
fairly under control, he said:
"I'm afraid I've frightened you, Elena."
"You're not well, sir. Sit down, and let me run for some cognac."
"No! It's nothing! Only...."
"Take this glass of water, sir."
"That's good! I'm better now, and I'm ashamed. Elena, you mustn't think
any more of this, and whatever I may do in the future that seems to you
to be strange, you must promise me never to mention it."
"I needn't _promise_ you that, sir," said Elena.
"Bruno is a brave, bright, loyal soul, Elena, but there are times...."
"I know--and I'll never mention it to anybody. But you've taken a chill
on the roof at sunset looking at the illuminations--that's all it is!
The nights are frosty now, and I was to blame that I didn't send out
your cloak."
Then she tried to be cheerful, and turning to the sleeping boy, said:
"Look! He was naughty again and wouldn't go to bed until you came out to
carry him."
"The dear little man!" said David Rossi. He stepped up to the couch, but
his pale face was preoccupied, and he looked at Elena again and said:
"Where does Donna Roma live?"
"Trinita de' Monti--eighteen," said Elena.
"Is it late?"
"It must be half-past eight at least, sir."
"We'll take Joseph to bed then."
He was putting his arms about the boy to lift him when a
slippery-sloppery step was heard on the stairs, followed by a hurried
knock at the door.
It was the old Garibaldian porter, breathless, bareheaded, and in his
slippers.
"Father!" cried Elena.
"It's she. She's coming up."
At the next moment a lady in evening dress was standing in the hall. It
was Donna Roma. She had unclasped her ermine cloak, and her bosom was
heaving with the exertion of the ascent.
"May I speak to Mr. Rossi?" she began, and then looking beyond Elena and
seeing him, where he stood above the sleeping child, a qualm of
faintness seemed to seize her, and she closed her eyes for a moment.
David Rossi's face flushed to the roots of his hair, but he stepped
forward, bowed deeply, led the way to the sitting-room, and, with a
certain incoherency in his speech, said:
"Come in! Elena will bring the lamp. I shall be back presently."
Then, lifting little Joseph in his arms, he carried him up to bed,
tucked him in his cot, smoothed his pillow, made the sign of the cross
over his forehead, and came back to the sitting-room with the air of a
man walking in a dream.
VIII
Being left alone, Roma looked around, and at a glance she took in
everything--the thin carpet, the plain chintz, the prints, the
incongruous furniture. She saw the photograph on the piano, still
standing open, with a cylinder exposed, and in the interval of waiting
she felt almost tempted to touch the spring. She saw herself, too, in
the mirror above the mantel-piece, with her glossy black hair rolled up
like a tower, from which one curly lock escaped on to her forehead, and
with the ermine cloak on her shoulders over the white silk muslin which
clung to her full figure.
Then she heard David Rossi's footsteps returning, and though she was now
completely self-possessed she was conscious of a certain shiver of fear,
such as an actress feels in her dressing-room at the tuning-up of the
orchestra. Her back was to the door and she heard the whirl of her skirt
as he entered, and then he was before her, and they were alone.
He was looking at her out of large, pensive eyes, and she saw him pass
his hand over them and then bow and motion her to a seat, and go to the
mantel-piece and lean on it. She was tingling all over, and a certain
glow was going up to her face, but when she spoke she was mistress of
herself, and her voice was soft and natural.
"I am doing a very unusual thing in coming to see you," she said, "but
you have forced me to it, and I am quite helpless."
A faint sound came from him, and she was aware that he was leaning
forward to see her face, so she dropped her eyes, partly to let him look
at her, and partly to avoid meeting his gaze.
"I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to
disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me."
He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and
continued in the same soft voice:
"If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can
only come to you and tell you that you are wrong."
"Wrong?"
"Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong."
"You mean to tell me...."
He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly:
"I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was
false."
There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she
knew that he was looking at her still.
"If ... if...."--his voice was thick and indistinct--"if you tell me that
I have done you an injury...."
"You have--a terrible injury."
She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should
see something in her face.
"Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to
accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I
believe you will accept it."
"If ... if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said--what
I implied--was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it
is all a cruel and baseless calumny...."
She raised her head, looked him full in the face.
"I _do_ give it," she said.
"Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I
believe you."
She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on
her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed
with other men.
"I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have
lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so,
perhaps it has been partly the fault of the men about me. When is a
woman anything but what the men around have made her?"
She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first
man who has not praised and flattered me."
"I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and
perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to
struggle and starve."
She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face.
"I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a
man like you my life might have been different. I used to hope for such
things long ago--that a man of high aims and noble purposes would come
to meet me at the gate of life. Perhaps you have felt like that--that
some woman, strong and true, would stand beside you for good or for ill,
in your hour of danger and your hour of joy?"
Her voice was not quite steady--she hardly knew why.
"A dream! We all have our dreams," he said.
"A dream indeed! Men came--he was not among them. They pampered every
wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was
dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my
pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in
secret ... what you said in public this morning."
He was looking at her constantly with his wistful eyes, the eyes of a
child, and through all the joy of her success she was conscious of a
spasm of pain at the expression of his sad face and the sound of his
tremulous voice.
"We men are much to blame," he said. "In the battle of man with man we
deal out blows and think we are fighting fair, but we forget that behind
our foe there is often a woman--a wife, a mother, a sister, a
friend--and, God forgive us, we have struck her, too."
The half-smile that had gleamed on Roma's face was wiped out of it by
these words, and an emotion she did not understand began to surge in her
throat.
"You speak of poor women who struggle and starve," she said. "Would it
surprise you to hear that _I_ know what it is to do that? Yes, and to be
friendless and alone--quite, quite alone in a cruel and wicked city."
She had lost herself for a moment, and the dry glitter in her eyes had
given way to a moistness and a solemn expression. But at the next
instant she had regained her self-control, and went on speaking to avoid
a painful silence.
"I have never spoken of this to any other man," she said. "I don't know
why I should mention it to you--to you of all men."
She had risen to her feet, and he stepped up to her, and looking
straight into her eyes he said:
"Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never," she answered.
"Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you."
She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into
her face.
"You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you
something of mine."
She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be
pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge
from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands.
Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his
voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.
She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust
and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the
edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a
little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.
"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the
house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever
sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who
nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can
you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be
homeless, nameless, and alone?"
She looked up--a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not
seen there before.
"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who
has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I
never knew my mother."
The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her
knees.
"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied
to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name,
placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung
herself into the Tiber."
Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.
"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."
"_Your_ mother?"
"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in
the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope
was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo
Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a
child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."
"Oh!"
"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the
white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered
them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to
foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was
sent to London."
Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.
"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty
foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the
streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of
white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and
were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then
the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little
southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in
the darkness and the snow."
Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to
flow.
"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man,
a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor,
especially to the poor of his own people."
Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.
"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English
courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less
cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for
light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs
with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to
them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but
his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live."
Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her
throat was choking, but she said:
"What was he?"
"A doctor."
"What was his name?"
David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and
answered:
"They called him Joseph Roselli."
Roma half rose from her seat, then sank back, and the lace handkerchief
dropped from her hand.
"But I heard afterwards--long afterwards--that he was a Roman noble, one
of the fearless few who had taken up poverty and exile and an unknown
name for the sake of liberty and justice."
Roma's head had fallen into her bosom, which was heaving with an emotion
she could not conceal.
"One day a letter came from Italy, telling him that a thousand men were
waiting for him to lead them in an insurrection that was to dethrone an
unrighteous king. It was the trick of a scoundrel who has since been
paid the price of a hero's blood. I heard of this only lately--only
to-night."
There was silence for a moment. David Rossi had put one arm over his
eyes.
"Well?"
"He was enticed back from England to Italy; an English minister violated
his correspondence with a friend, and communicated its contents to the
Italian Government; he was betrayed into the hands of the police, and
deported without trial."
"Was he never heard of again?"
"Once--only once--by the friend I speak about."
Roma felt dizzy, as if she were coming near to some deep places; but she
could not stop--something compelled her to go on.
"Who was the friend?" she asked.
"One of his poor waifs--a boy who owed everything to him, and loved and
revered him as a father--loves and reveres him still, and tries to
follow in the path he trod."
"What--what was his name?"
"David Leone."
She looked at him for a moment without being able to speak. Then she
said:
"What happened to him?"
"The Italian courts condemned him to death, and the English police drove
him from England."
"Then he has never been able to return to his own country?"
"He has never been able to visit his mother's grave except by secret and
at night, and as one who was perpetrating a crime."
"What became of him?"
"He went to America."
"Did he ever return?"
"Yes! Love of home in him, as in all homeless ones, was a consuming
passion, and he came back to Italy."
"Where--where is he _now_?"
David Rossi stepped up to her, and said:
"In this room."
She rose:
"Then _you_ are David Leone!"
He raised one hand:
"_David Leone is dead!_"
There was silence for a moment. She could hear the thumping of her
heart. Then she said in an almost inaudible whisper:
"I understand. David Leone is dead, but David Rossi is alive."
He did not speak, but his head was held up and his face was shining.
"Are you not afraid to tell me this?"
"No."
Her eyes glistened and her lips quivered.
"You insulted and humiliated me in public this morning, yet you think I
will keep your secret?"
"I _know_ you will."
She felt a sensation of swelling in her throbbing heart, and with a slow
and nervous gesture she held out her hand.
"May I ... may I shake hands with you?" she said.
There was a moment of hesitation, and then their hands seemed to leap at
each other and clasp with a clasp of fire.
At the next instant he had lifted her hand to his lips and was kissing
it again and again.
A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and instantly died
away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not
what. But _David Leone is dead_ rang in her ears, and at the same moment
she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that
house.
Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly
away without uttering another word. _She_ could not speak, _he_ could
not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence
could they hold their heads.
"Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head
and trembling limbs she stepped to the door.
IX
Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a
voice still soft, but coming more from within:
"I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are
not the man I thought you were."
"Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you."
A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said:
"Then you had never seen me before?"
And he answered after a moment:
"I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day."
"Forgive me for coming to you," she said.
"I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against
you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to
right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a
mistake--let me ask your forgiveness."
"You mean publicly?"
"Yes!"
"You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you
to do that."
"Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once
started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the
man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do--tell
me, tell me."
Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy.
"There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult."
"No matter! Tell me what it is."
[Illustration: THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON A PRECIPICE.]
"I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter."
"Tell me, I beg of you."
He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze
as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.
"I thought if--if you would come to my house when my friends are there,
your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have
injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything.
But...."
"Is that _all_?" he said.
"Then you are not afraid?"
"Afraid?"
For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.
"I have thought of something else," she said.
"What is it?"
"You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the
Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it...."
"It would be coals of fire on my head."
"You would need to sit to me."
"When shall it be?"
"To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon."
"It will be years on years till then," he said.
She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming
eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she
turned her face away.
"Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of
opening the door.
"I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he
answered.
"I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and
bitterness."
"If I ever had such a feeling it is gone."
"Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go.
One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her
shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look
seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the
physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross
the space that had divided them.
"Let me see you to the door?" he said, and her eyes said openly, "Will
you?"
They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and
almost touching.
"I forgot to give you my address--eighteen Trinita de' Monti," she said.
"Eighteen Trinita de' Monti," he repeated.
They had reached the second storey. "I am trying to remember," she said.
"After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere."
"In a dream, perhaps," he answered.
"Yes," she said. "Perhaps in the dream I spoke about."
They had reached the street, and Roma's carriage, a hired _coupe_, stood
waiting a few yards from the door.
They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave
him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light.
"Until to-morrow then," she said.
"To-morrow morning," he replied.
"To-morrow morning," she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between
them she seemed to say, "Come early, will you not?--there is still so
much to say."
He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came
back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door.
"Adieu!"
"Adieu!"
She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and
bowed through the glass.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PART THREE--ROMA
I
The Piazza of Trinita de' Monti takes its name from a church and convent
which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill.
A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height,
goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna,
which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their
stalls around a fountain.
At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all
winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it,
the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music
of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two
floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and
entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was
as a private apartment.
Donna Roma's home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor,
opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in
red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by
lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet.
Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird
in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its
embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which
looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of
wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a
statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides
her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to
familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was
connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round
with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her
marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi.
On the morning after Donna Roma's visit to the Piazza Navona a letter
came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. "The man
is a treasure and sees nothing," he wrote. And he added in a footnote:
"Don't look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them
send to you say nothing."
But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady
journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in
literature and love.
"I'm 'Penelope,'" she said. "'Penelope' of the _Day_, you know. Come to
see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi's speech
yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if
you would like to reply through me to Olga's shameful libels.... Haven't
you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady
could allow them to pass unnoticed."
"Nevertheless," said Roma, "that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!"
Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove
up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with
little twinkling eyes.
"Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of
the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It's in all the newspapers--I've brought
them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See--'A
lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the
Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.' Most
damaging, isn't it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny
the statement. Ah, don't be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets.
Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy
your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and
explain before publishing anything."
Roma said nothing, and the great man backed himself out with the air of
one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask
in return.
"It's rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to
organise a system of secret police--and quite right, too. You remember
my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from
Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The
very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to
an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma will only say a word for
him.... Thanks!... What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A
masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome."
The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was
in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social
pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her
aristocratic customers.
"Trust I am not _de trop_! I knew you wouldn't mind my calling in the
morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody
is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn't
true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved!... By the way, my dear, don't
trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but ... I'm giving a little
reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend ... you'll
mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!"
"Count Mario," announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came
tripping into the room. He was Roma's landlord and the Italian
Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
"So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too,
but I _do_ hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account
of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!"
Then stepping to the window, "What a lovely view! The finest in Rome,
and that's the finest in Europe! I'm always saying if it wasn't Donna
Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here
myself.... That reminds me of something. I'm ... well, I'm tired of
Petersburg, and I've written to the Minister asking to be transferred to
Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me.... How sweet of
you! Adieu!"
Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the
person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a
room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her
aunt called to her from within.
The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent
of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded
mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony
fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A
cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its
ribbon.
"Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!" she said in a
withering whimper. "I thought you might have looked in last night, and I
lay awake until after midnight."
"I had a headache and went to bed," said Roma.
"I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me," said the old
lady, and Roma went over to the window.
"I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite
that man in spite of all my protests?"
"He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time."
"Just so! It's no use speaking. I don't know what girls are coming to.
When I was young a man like that wouldn't have been allowed to cross the
threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in
prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime
Minister."
"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I want to ask you a question."
"Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where's
Natalina?"
"Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left
home and became an exile?"
"Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was
broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the
palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina,
give me my smelling salts. And why haven't you brought the cushion for
the cat?"
"Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it
right...."
"Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only
son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?"
"I thought they went to the Baron, auntie."
"Roma, aren't you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too,
in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience.
He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to
the mercy of others--and all for what?"
"For country, I suppose."
"For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My
head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling
salts? And why will you always forget to...."
Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed
her down to the studio.
Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy
demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a
cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but
silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face.
She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her
own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off
by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had
roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles
around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit
for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but
it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed
her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was
Judas.
Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw
that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the
clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more
until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter.
"MY DEAR BARON,--Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great
comfort in this household if only he can keep the peace with
Monsignor Bruno, and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter's
Lodge. Senator Tom-tit has been here to suggest some astonishing
arrangement about my fountain, and to ask me to mention his
nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and proper person to be chief
of your new department of secret police. Madame de Trop and Count
Signorina have also been, but of their modest messages more anon.
"As for D. R., my barometer is 'set fair,' but it is likely to be
a stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my
best bib and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down
to his apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had
gone to find out all about _him_, I hadn't been ten minutes in his
company before he told all about _me_--about my father, at all
events, and his life in London. I believe he knew me in that
connection and expected to appeal to my filial feelings. Did too,
so strong is the force of nature, and then and thereafter, and all
night long, I was like somebody who had been shaken in an
earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was not until I
remembered what my father had been--or rather hadn't--and that he
was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the
cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from
the shock of D. R.'s dynamite.
"He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this
morning!--Affectionately, ROMA.
"P. S.--My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful
voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a
woman and has never been in love in his life, he has an
astonishing way of getting at one. But I could laugh to think how
little execution his fusillade will make in this direction."
"Honourable Rossi!" said Felice's sepulchral voice behind her, and at
that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio.
II
In spite of her protestations, Roma was nervous and confused. Putting
David Rossi to sit in the arm-chair on the platform for sitters, she
rattled on about everything--her clay, her tools, her sponge, and the
water they had forgotten to change for her. He must not mind if she
stared at him--that wasn't nice, but it was necessary--and he must
promise not to look at her work while it was unfinished--children and
fools, you know--the proverb was musty.
And while she talked she told herself that Thomas was the apostle he
must stand for. These anarchists were all doubters, and the chief of
doubters was the figure that would represent them.
David Rossi did not speak much at first, and he did not join in Roma's
nervous laughter. Sometimes he looked at her with a steadfast gaze,
which would have been disconcerting if it had not been so simple and
childlike. At length he looked out of the window to where the city lay
basking in the sunshine, and birds were swirling in the clear blue sky,
and began to talk of serious subjects.
"How beautiful!" he said. "No wonder the English and Americans who come
to Italy for health and the pleasure of art think it a paradise where
every one should be content. And yet...."
"Yes?"
"Under the smile of this God-blessed land there is suffering such as can
hardly be found in any other country of the world. Sometimes I think I
cannot bear it any longer, and must go away, as others do."
"A little more this way, please--thank you! That doesn't do much for
them, does it?"
"For them? No! God comfort the poor exiles--their path is a bridge of
sighs! Poor, friendless, forgotten, huddled together in some dingy
quarter of a foreign city, one a music-master, another a teacher of
languages, a third a supernumerary at a theatre, a fourth an organ-man
or even a beggar in the streets, yet weapons in the hand of God and
shaking the thrones of the world!"
"_You_ have seen something of that, haven't you?"
"I have."
"In London?"
"Yes. There's an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district.
It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer
of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of
Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty,
has many bedfellows."
"You lived there?"
"Yes."
Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of
the window. "And your old friend, Doctor Roselli--he lived in Soho?"
"In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and
had a porch and trees in front of it."
The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She
took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.
"A little more that way, please--thanks! Do you think your friend had a
right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of
his father--he would be broken-hearted."
"He was--I've heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and
forbade him to call himself his son."
"There!"
"But he would never hear a word against the old man. 'He's my
father--that's enough,' he would say."
The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma's fingers.
"How stupid! But his mother...."
"That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray
him to come home. 'You are the best of mothers,' he would answer, 'but I
cannot do so.'"
"He never saw her again?"
"Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength
to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be
merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!'"
Roma's throat was throbbing. "He ... he was married?"
"Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself."
"Eyes the other way, at the window--thank you!... Did she know who he
was?"
"Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho."
"They ... they were ... happy?"
"As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty
came...."
"He became poor--very poor?"
"Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then
his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to
be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now,
one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them,
but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the
radiance of her sunny soul."
Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ...
died?"
David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her
death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very
cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a
cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days
altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed
her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little
daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll
on the floor."
His voice had enough to do to control itself.
"When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a
blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now--the child
with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the
wall."
His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma's eyes the tears
were gathering.
"We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh,
the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!"
Roma could not look at him any longer.
"It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the
grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the
doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there
too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed
at the sights in the streets. Only six--and she had never been in a
coach before!"
At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the
Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.
"If you don't mind, I'll not try to do any more to-day," she said in a
husky voice. "Somehow it isn't coming right this morning. It's like that
sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow...."
"With pleasure," said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.
She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.
"Not Thomas," she thought. "John--the beloved disciple! That would fit
him exactly."
As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope
bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was
missing.
"He must have followed Mr. Rossi," said Roma, and without ado she read
the letter.
"DEAR ROMA,--A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I
sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too,
for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it
to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly.
Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your
request and not come near you.--Affectionately,
"BONELLI."
III
Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.
After coffee she went into the Countess's room as usual. The old lady
had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.
"Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the
police?"
"How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have
expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a
thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides...."
"Well?"
"There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to
anybody else while there was no judgment against your father."
"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of
kin."
"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"
"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"
"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm
tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of
your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own
right."
"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and
somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."
The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and
said:
"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if
you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice
person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up
for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten
the baker's shop in London--or was it a pastry cook's, or what?--where
they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given
you away?"
"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."
"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches!
Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"
"I'm not defending my father, but still...."
"Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in
search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to
go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and
now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and
forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be?
Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had
consigned you!"
The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the
drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had
occurred.
"Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work,
work, work!"
The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed.
"Everybody has heard that _he_ is sitting to you, and everybody
understands. That reminds me--I've a box at the new opera to-morrow
night:--'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but
if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular
Samson...."
"Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the
room, with the black poodle bounding before him.
"I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It followed
me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day...."
"Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and
then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.
The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that
if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night...."
David Rossi glanced at Roma.
"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...."
"With pleasure, Princess."
"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel.
Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I
leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so
well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer
from it shockingly. Adieu!"
Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work
afresh.
"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,"
she said. "No, that way, please--eyes as before--thank you! About your
old friend, I mean. He was a good man--I don't doubt that--but he made
everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has
anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the
world?"
"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must
reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.
"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter,
for example. She was to lose everything--her father himself at last. How
could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."
"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except
the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."
A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all
his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to
gather itself up in the child."
The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.
"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house
with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways--a gleam of the
sun from our sunny Italy."
She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her
after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.
"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she
said.
"He did."
"How could he know what would happen?"
"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant
fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was
stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness!
Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel,
and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be
led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he
did not love her."
Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
"He gave her away, you say?"
"Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist
it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break
down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take
her with him was impossible. A neighbour came--a fellow-countryman--he
kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm only a poor man,' he
said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two
sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your
heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at
last."
Roma listened with head aside.
"One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her
glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and
would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed
and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for
the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets
happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to
bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one,
and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side."
Roma was holding her breath.
"The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was
playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were
aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and
the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The
doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a
glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too,
and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said,
'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too--you'll
be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then
you'll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.' But I could see
that the doctor was not listening. 'Let us slip away now,' I said, and
we stole out somehow."
Roma's eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her
hand.
There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by
the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns
and children of Trinita de' Monti were singing their Benediction--_Ora
pro nobis!_
"I don't think I'll do any more to-day," said Roma. "The light is
failing me, and my eyes...."
"The day after to-morrow, then," said Rossi, rising.
"But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?"
He looked steadfastly into her face and answered "Yes."
She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to
atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp
cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone.
After dinner she replied to the Baron's letter of the day before.
"DEAR BARON,--I have misgivings about being on the right track,
and feel sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime
Ministers appoint people at the mere mention of their names by
wards, second cousins, and lady friends generally? Wouldn't it
have been wise to make inquiries? What was the fault for which
Minghelli was dismissed in London?
"As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He
doesn't seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by
way of my father was a fluke. At all events, I'm satisfied that it
is going in the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail.
_Leave him to me alone._--Yours, ROMA.
"P.S.--Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to
the new opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he
will be seen with me in public!
"I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so
wonderfully good-looking when you look at him closely."
IV
The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove
to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre
was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people
arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere
which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when
he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in
the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house.
This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the
place with her opera-glass.
"Crowded already!" she said. "And every face looking up at my box!
That's what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the
most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be,
though, when your illustrious friend arrives."
At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess
welcomed him effusively.
"So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you--Honourable Rossi,
Don Camillo Luigi Murelli."
Roma looked at him--he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as
comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma--she wore a white gown
with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful
white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes
twinkled.
"Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain
everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not
sit back. _You_ can't mind observation--so used to it, you know."
Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and
then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of
surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter.
He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it,
and was taking it as a penance.
Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on
talking. "These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society
generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and
the stalls are filled by all sorts and conditions of people--political
people, literary people, even trades-people if they're rich enough or
can pretend to be."
"And the upper circles?" asked Rossi.
"Oh," in a tired voice, "professional people, I think--Collegio Romano
and University of Rome, you know."
"And the gallery?"
"Students, I suppose." Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below,
"Gi-gi, there's Lu-lu. Don't forget to ask him to supper.... All the
beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently
they'll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes."
The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the
conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the
lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a
constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an
almost unbroken chatter.
The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera
had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the
lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in
the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each
other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors
below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and
there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful
young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and
there was a good deal of gossip and laughter.
The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his
character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General
Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess's box.
"So you're taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew
an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?" said Don Camillo.
"Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him--jaw-bones as well," said
the General. "The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if
it was only as a _jettatura_." And then in a low voice to the Princess,
with a glance at Roma, "Your beautiful young friend doesn't look so well
to-night."
The Princess shrugged her shoulders. "Of the pains of love one suffers
but does not die," she whispered.
"You surely cannot mean...."
The Princess put the tip of her fan to his lips and laughed.
Roma was conscious of a strange conflict of feelings. The triumph she
had promised herself by David Rossi's presence with her in public--the
triumph over the envious ones who would have rejoiced in her
downfall--brought her no pleasure.
The third act dealt with the allurements of Delilah, and was received
with a good deal of laughter.
"Ah, these sweet, round, soft things--they can do anything they like
with the giants," said Don Camillo.
The Baron, who had dined with the King, came round at the end of the
next act, wearing a sash diagonally across his breast, with crosses,
stars, and other decorations. He bowed to David Rossi with ceremonious
politeness, greeted Don Camillo familiarly, kissed the hand of the
Princess, and offered his arm to Roma to take her into the corridor to
cool--she was flushed and overheated.
"I see you are getting on, my child! Excellent idea to bring him here!
Everybody is saying you cannot be the person he intended, so his trumpet
has brayed to no purpose."
"You received my letters?" she said in a faltering voice.
"Yes, but don't be uneasy. I'm neither the prophet nor the son of a
prophet if we are not on the right track. What a fortunate thought about
the man Minghelli! An inspiration! You asked what his fault was in
London--forgery, my dear!"
"That's serious enough, isn't it?"
"In a Secretary of Legation, yes, but in a police agent...."
He laughed significantly, and she felt her skin creep.
"Has he found out anything?" she asked.
"Not yet, but he is clearly on the track of great things. It is nearly
certain that your King David is a person wanted by the law."
Her hand twitched at his arm, but they were turning at the end of the
corridor and she pretended to trip over her train.
"Some clues missing still, however, and to find them we are sending
Minghelli to London."
"London? Anything connected with my father?"
"Possibly! We shall see. But there's the orchestra and here's your box!
You're wonderful, my dear! Already you've undone the mischief he did
you, and one half of your task is accomplished. Diplomatists! Pshaw!
We'll all have to go to school to a girl. Adieu!"
All through the next act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where
the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the
Princess said:
"Everybody is looking this way, my dear! See what it is to be the most
talked-of girl in Rome!"
And then she felt David Rossi's hand on the back of her chair, and heard
his soft voice saying:
"The light is in your eyes, Donna Roma. Let me change places with you
for a while."
After that everything passed in a kind of confusion. She heard somebody
say:
"He's putting a good deal of heart into it, poor thing!"
And somebody answered, "Yes, of broken heart apparently."
Then there was a crash and the opera was over, and she was going out in
a crowd on David Rossi's arm, and feeling as if she would fall if she
dropped it.
The magnificent English carriage drew up under the portico and all four
of them got into it.
"Grand Hotel!" cried Don Camillo. Then dropping back to his place he
laughed and chanted:
"And the dead he slew at his death were more than he slew in his
life ... and he judged Israel twenty years."
V
A marshy air from the Campagna shrouded the city as with a fog, and
pierced through the closed windows of the carriage, but there was warmth
and glow in the Grand Hotel.
One woman after another came in clothed in diamonds under the fur cloak
which hung over her bare arms and shoulders, until the room was a
dazzling blaze of jewels.
People caught each other's eyes through lorgnettes and eye-glasses, and
there were constant salutations. The men chattered, the women laughed,
and there was an affectation of baby-talk at nearly every table. Then
supper was served, glasses were held up as signals, and bright eyes
began to play about the room, until the atmosphere was tingling with
electric currents and heated by human passion.
Roma sat facing the Princess. She was still confused and preoccupied,
but when rallied upon her silence she brightened up for a moment and
tried to look buoyant and happy. David Rossi, who was on her left, was
still quiet and collected, but bore the same air as before, of a man
going through a penance.
This was observed by Don Camillo, who sat on the right of the Princess,
and led to various little scenes.
"Very good company here, Mr. Rossi. Always sure of seeing some beautiful
young women," said Don Camillo.
"And beautiful young men, apparently," said David Rossi.
The beautiful young man called Lu-lu was there, and reaching over to Don
Camillo, and speaking in a whisper between the puff of a cigarette and a
sip of coffee, he said:
"Why doesn't the Minister buy the man up? Easy enough to buy the press
these days."
"He's doing better than that," said Don Camillo. "He's drawing him from
opposition by the allurements of...."
"Office?"
"No, the lady," whispered Don Camillo, but Roma heard him.
She was ashamed. The innuendoes which belittled David Rossi were
belittling herself as well, and she wanted to get up and fly.
Rossi himself seemed to be unconscious of anything hurtful. Although
silent, he was calm and cheerful, and his manner was natural and polite.
The wife of one of the royal aides-de-camp sat next to him, and talked
constantly of the King.
Roma found herself listening to every word that was said to David Rossi,
but she also heard a conversation that was going on at the other end of
the table.
"Wants to be another Cola di Rienzi, doesn't he?" said Lu-lu.
"Another Christ," said Don Camillo. "He'll be asking for a crown of
thorns by-and-by, and calling on the world to immolate him for the sake
of humanity. Look! He's talking to the little Baroness, but he is
fifteen thousand miles above the clouds at this moment."
"Where does he come from, I wonder?" said Lu-lu, and then the two hands
of Don Camillo played the invisible accordion.
"Madame de Trop says his father was Master of the House to Prince
Petrolium--vice-prince, you know, and brought up in the little palace,"
said the Princess.
"Don't believe a word of it," said Don Camillo, "and I'll wager he never
supped at a decent hotel before."
"I'll ask him! Listen now! Some fun," said the Princess. "Honourable
Rossi!"
"Yes, Princess," said David Rossi.
The eyes of the little Princess swept the table with a sparkling light.
"Beautiful room, isn't it?"
"Beautiful."
"Never been here before, I suppose?"
David Rossi looked steadfastly into her eyes and answered, "Oh yes,
Princess. When I first returned to Italy eight years ago I was a waiter
in this house for a month."
The sparkling face of the little Princess broke up like a snowball in
the sun, and the two other men dropped their heads.
Roma hardly knew what her own feelings were. Humiliation, shame,
confusion, but above all, pride--pride in David Rossi's courage and
strength.
The white mist from the Campagna pierced to the bone as they came out by
the glass-covered hall, and an old woman with an earthenware scaldino,
crouching by the marble pillars in the street, held out a chill, damp
hand and cried:
"A penny for God's sake! May I die unconfessed if I've eaten anything
since yesterday!... God bless you, my daughter! and the Holy Virgin and
all the saints!"
At the door of her house Roma parted from the Princess, and said to
Rossi, as the carriage drove away, "Come early to-morrow. I've not yet
been able to work properly somehow."
She was restless and feverish, and she would have gone to bed
immediately, but crossing the drawing-room she heard the fretful voice
of her aunt saying, "Is that you, Roma?" and she had no choice but to go
into the Countess's bedroom.
A red lamp burned before the shrine, and the old lady was in an
embroidered nightdress, but she was wide awake, and her eyes flashed and
her lips trembled.
"Ah, it's you at last! Sit down! I want to speak to you. Natalina!"
cried the Countess. "Oh, dear me, the girl has gone to bed. Give me the
cognac. There it is--on the dressing-table."
She sipped the brandy, fidgeted with her cambric handkerchief, and said:
"Roma, I'm surprised at you! You hadn't used to be so stupid! How? Don't
you see what that woman is doing? What woman? The Princess, of course.
Inviting you to share her box at the opera so that you may be seen in
public with that man. She hates him like poison, but she would swallow
anything to throw you and this Rossi together. Do you expect the Baron
to approve of that? His enemy, and you on such terms with the man? Here,
take back this cognac. I feel as if I would choke--Natalina...."
"You're quite mistaken, Aunt Betsy," said Roma. "The Baron was at the
opera and came into the box himself, and he approved of everything."
"Tut! Don't tell me! Because he has some respect for himself and keeps
his own counsel you are simple enough to think he will not be offended."
The old lady's voice was dying down to a choking whisper, but she went
on without a pause.
"If you've no thought for yourself, you might have some for me. You are
young, and anything may come to you, but I'm old and I'm tied down to
this mattress, and what is to happen if the Baron takes offence? The
income he allows us from your father's estates is under his own control
still. He can cut it off at any moment, and if he does, what is to
become of me?"
Roma's bosom was swelling under her heavy breathing, her heart was
beating violently and her head was dizzy. All the bitterness of the
evening was boiling in her throat, and it burst out at length in a
flood.
"So that is all your moral protestations come to, is it?" she said.
"Because the Baron is necessary to you and you cannot exist without him,
you expect me to buy and sell myself according to your necessities."
"Roma! What are you saying? Aren't you ashamed...."
"Aren't _you_ ashamed? You've been trying to throw me into the arms of
the Baron, and you haven't cared what would happen so long as I kept up
appearances."
"Oh, dear! I see what it is. You want to be the death of me! You will,
too, before you've done. Natalina! Where is...."
"More than that, you've poisoned my mind against my father, and because
I couldn't remember him, you've brought me up to think of him as selfish
and vain and indifferent to his own daughter. But my father wasn't that
kind of man at all."
"Who told you that, miss?"
"Never mind who told me. My father was a saint and a martyr, and a great
man, and he loved me with all his heart and soul."
"Oh, my head! My poor head!... A martyr indeed! A socialist, a
republican, a rebel, an anarchist, you mean!"
"Never mind what his politics were. He was my father--that is
enough--and you had no right to make _me_ think ill of him, whatever the
world might do."
Roma was superb at that moment, with her head thrown back, her eyes
flaming, and her magnificent figure swelling and heaving under her
clinging gown.
"You'll kill me, I tell you. The cognac ... Natalina...." cried the
Countess, but Roma was gone.
Before going to bed Roma wrote to the Baron:
"Certain you are wrong. Why waste time sending Charles Minghelli
to London? Why? Why? Why? The forger will find out nothing, and if
he does, it will only be by exercise of his Israelitish art of
making bricks without straw. Stop him at once if you wish to save
public money and spare yourself personal disappointment. Stop him!
Stop him! Stop him!
"P.S.--To show you how far astray your man has gone, D. R.
mentioned to-night that he was once a waiter at the Grand Hotel!"
VI
Next morning David Rossi arrived early.
"Now we must get to work in earnest," said Roma. "I think I see my way
at last."
It was not John the beloved disciple, John who lay in the bosom of his
Lord. It was Peter, the devoted, stalwart, brave individual, human,
erring but glorious Peter. "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my
church."
"Same position as before. Eyes the other way. Thank you!... Afraid you
didn't enjoy yourself last night--no?"
"At the theatre? I was interested. But the human spectacle was perhaps
more to me than the artistic one. I am no artist, you see.... How did
_you_ become a sculptor?"
"Oh, I studied a little in the studios of Paris, where I went to school,
you see."
"But you were born in London?"
"Yes."
"Why did you come to Rome?"
"Rome was the home of my people, you know. And then there was my
name--Roma!"
"I knew a Roma long ago."
"Really? Another Roma?"
There was a tremor in her voice.
"It was the little daughter of the friend I've spoken about."
"How interest ... No, at the window, please--that will do."
Roma was choking with a sense of duplicity, but save for a turn of the
head David Rossi gave no sign.
"She was only seven when I saw her last."
"That was long ago, you say?"
"Seventeen years ago."
"Then she will be the same age as...."
"The first time I saw her she was only three, and she was in her
nightdress ready for bed."
Roma laughed a little, but she knew that every note in her voice was
confused and false.
"She said her prayers with a little lisp at that time. 'Our Fader oo art
in heben, alud be dy name.'"
He laughed a little now, as he mimicked the baby voice. They laughed
together, then they looked at each other, and then with serious eyes
they turned away.
"You'll think it strange, but I date my first conscious and definite
aspiration to the memory of that hour."
"Really?"
"Ten years afterward, when I was in America, the words of that prayer
came back to me in Roma's little lisp. 'Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done
on eard as it is in heben.'"
For some time after that Roma worked on without speaking, feeling
feverish and restless. But just as the silence was becoming painful, and
she could bear it no longer, Felice came to announce lunch.
"You'll stay? I want so much to work on while I'm in the mood," she
said.
"With pleasure," he replied.
She ate hardly at all, for she was troubled by many misgivings. Did he
know her? He did; he must; every word, every tone seemed to tell her
that. Then why did he not speak out plainly? Because, having revealed
himself to her, he was waiting for her to reveal herself to him. And why
had she not done so? Because she was enmeshed in the nets of the society
she lived in; because she was ashamed of the errand that had brought
them together; and most of all because she had not dared to lay bare
that secret of his life which, like an escaped convict, dragged behind
it the broken chain of the prison-house.
_David Leone is dead!_ To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact
that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and
listening at the grating of the confessional!
No matter! She must do it! She must reveal herself as her heart and
instinct might direct. She must claim the parentage of the noblest soul
that ever died for liberty, and David Rossi must trust his secret to the
bond of blood which would make it impossible for her to betray the
foster-son of her own father.
Having come to this conclusion, the light seemed to break in her heavy
sky, but the clouds were charged with electricity. As they returned to
the studio she was excited and a little hysterical, for she thought the
time was near. At that moment a regiment of soldiers passed along under
the ilex trees to the Pincio, with their band of music playing as they
marched.
"Ah, the dear old days!" said David Rossi. "Everything reminds me of
them! I remember that when she was six...."
"Roma?"
"Yes--a regiment of troops returned from a glorious campaign, and the
doctor took us to see the illuminations and rejoicings. We came to a
great piazza almost as large as the piazza of St. Peter's, with
fountains and a tall column in the middle of it."
"I know--Trafalgar Square!"
"Dense crowds covered the square, but we found a place on the steps of a
church."
"I remember--St. Martin's Church. You see, I know London."
"The soldiers came in by the big railway station close by...."
"Charing Cross, isn't it."
"And they marched to the tune of the 'British Grenadiers' and the
thunder of fifty thousand throats. And as their general rode past, a
beacon of electric lights in the centre of the square blazed out like an
aureole about the statue of a great Englishman who had died long ago for
the cause which had then conquered."
"Gordon!" she cried--she was losing herself every moment.
"'Look, darling!' said the doctor to little Roma. And Roma said, 'Papa,
is it God?' I was a tall boy then, and stood beside him. 'She'll never
forget that, David,' he said."
"And she didn't ... she couldn't ... I mean.... Have you ever told me what
became of her?"
She would reveal herself in a moment--only a moment--after all, it was
delicious to play with this sweet duplicity.
"Have you?" she said in a tremulous voice.
His head was down. "Dead!" he answered, and the tool dropped out of her
hand on to the floor.
"I was five years in America after the police expelled me from London,
and when I returned to England I went back to the little shop in Soho."
She was staring at him and holding her breath. He was looking out of the
window.
"The same people were there, and their own daughter was a grown-up girl,
but Roma was gone."
She could hear the breath in her nostrils.
"They told me she had been missing for a week, and then ... her body had
been found in the river."
She felt like one struck dumb.
"The man took me to the grave. It was the grave of her mother in Kensal
Green, and under her mother's name I read her own inscription--'Sacred
also to the memory of Roma Roselli, found drowned in the Thames, aged
twelve years.'"
The warm blood which had tingled through her veins was suddenly frozen
with horror.
"Not to-day," she thought, and at that moment a faint sound of the band
on the Pincio came floating in by the open window.
"I must go," said David Rossi, rising.
Then she recovered herself and began to talk on other subjects. When
would he come again? He could not say. The parliamentary session opened
soon. He would be very busy.
When David Rossi was gone Roma went upstairs, and Natalina met her
carrying two letters. One of them was going to the post--it was from the
Countess to the Baron. The other was from the Baron to herself.
"MY DEAREST ROMA,--A thousand thanks for the valuable clue about
the Grand Hotel. Already we have followed up your lead, and we
find that the only David Rossi who was ever a waiter there gave as
reference the name of an Italian baker in Soho. Minghelli has gone
to London, and I am sending him this further information. Already
he is fishing in strange waters, and I am sure you are dying to
know if he has caught anything. So am I, but we must possess our
souls in patience.
"But, my dearest Roma, what is happening to your handwriting? It
is so shaky nowadays that I can scarcely decipher some of
it.--With love.
"B."
VII
"DEAR GUARDIAN,--But I'm not--I'm not! I'm not in the least
anxious to hear of what Mr. Minghelli is doing in London, because
I know he is doing nothing, and whatever he says, either through
his own mouth or the mouth of his Italian baker in Soho, I shall
never believe a word he utters. As to Mr. Rossi, I am now
perfectly sure that he does not identify me at all. He believes my
father's daughter is dead, and he has just been telling me a
shocking story of how the body of a young girl was picked out of
the Thames (about the time you took me away from London) and
buried in the name of Roma Roselli. He actually saw the grave and
the tombstone! Some scoundrel has been at work somewhere. Who is
it, I wonder?--Yours,
"R. V."
Having written this letter in the heat and haste of the first moment
after David Rossi's departure, she gave it to Bruno to post immediately.
"Just so!" said Bruno to himself, as he glanced at the superscription.
Next morning she dressed carefully, as if expecting David Rossi as
usual, but when he did not come she told herself she was glad of it.
Things had happened too hurriedly; she wanted time to breathe and to
think.
All day long she worked on the bust. It was a new delight to model by
memory, to remember an expression and then try to reproduce it. The
greatest difficulty lay in the limitation of her beautiful art. There
were so many memories, so many expressions, and the clay would take but
one of them.
The next day after that she dressed herself as carefully as before, but
still David Rossi did not come. No matter! It would give her time to
think of all he had said, to go over his words and stories.
Did he know her? Certainly he knew her! He must have known from the
first that she was her father's daughter, or he would never have put
himself in her power. His belief in her was such a sweet thing. It was
delicious.
Next day also David Rossi did not come, and she began to torture herself
with misgivings. Was he indifferent? Had all her day-dreams been
delusions? Little as she wished to speak to Bruno, she was compelled to
do so.
Bruno hardly lifted his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer.
"Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a
party he has enough to do, you know."
"Ask him to come to-morrow. Say I wish for one more sitting--only one."
"I'll tell him," said Bruno, with a bob of his head over the block of
marble.
But David Rossi did not come the next day either, and Bruno had no
better explanation.
"Busy with his new 'Republic' now, and no time to waste, I can tell
you."
"He will never come again," she thought, and then everything around and
within her grew dark and chill.
She was sleeping badly, and to tire herself at night she went out to
walk in the moonlight along the path under the convent wall. She walked
as far as the Pincio gates, where the path broadens to a circular space
under a table of clipped ilexes, beneath which there is a fountain and
a path going down to the Piazza di Spagna. The night was soft and very
quiet, and standing under the deep shadows of the trees, with only the
cruel stars shining through, and no sound in the air save the sobbing of
the fountain, she heard a man's footstep on the gravel coming up from
below.
It was David Rossi. He passed within a few yards, yet he did not see
her. She wanted to call to him, but she could not do so. For a moment he
stood by the deep wall that overlooks the city, and then turned down the
path which she had come by. A trembling thought that was afraid to take
shape held her back and kept her silent, but the stars beat kindly in an
instant and the blood in her veins ran warm. She watched him from where
she stood, and then with a light foot she followed him at a distance.
It was true! He stopped at the parapet before the church, and looked up
at her windows. There was a light in one of them, and his eyes seemed to
be steadfastly fixed on it. Then he turned to go down the steps. He went
down slowly, sometimes stopping and looking up, then going on again.
Once more she tried to call to him. "Mr. Rossi." But her voice seemed to
die in her throat. After a moment he was gone, the houses had hidden
him, and the church clock was striking twelve.
When she returned to her bedroom and looked at herself in the glass, her
face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling. She did not want to sleep
at all that night, for the beating of her heart was like music, and the
moon and stars were singing a song.
"If I could only be quite, quite sure!" she thought, and next morning
she tackled Bruno.
Bruno was no match for her now, but he put down his shaggy head, like a
bull facing a stone fence.
"Tell you the honest truth, Donna Roma," he said, "Mr. Rossi is one of
those who think that when a man has taken up a work for the world it is
best if he has no ties of family."
"Really? Is that so?" she answered. "But I don't understand. He can't
help having father and mother, can he?"
"He can help having a wife, though," said Bruno, "and Mr. Rossi thinks a
public man should be like a priest, giving up home and love and so
forth, that others may have them more abundantly."
"So for that reason...."
"For that reason he doesn't throw himself in the way of temptation."
"And you think that's why...."
"I think that's why he keeps out of the way of women."
"Perhaps he doesn't care for them--some men don't, you know."
"Care for them! Mr. Rossi is one of the men who think pearls and
diamonds of women, and if he had to be cast on a desert island with
anybody, he would rather have one woman than a hundred thousand men."
"Ah, yes, but perhaps there's no 'one woman' in the world for him yet,
Bruno."
"Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't," said Bruno, and his hammer fell
on the chisel and the white sparks began to fly.
"_You_ would soon see if there were, wouldn't you, Bruno?"
"Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn't," said Bruno, and then he wagged
his wise head and growled, "In the battle of love he wins who flies."
"Does _he_ say that, Bruno?"
"He does. One day our old woman was trying to lead him on a bit. 'A
heart to share your joys and sorrows is something in this world,' says
she."
"And what did Mr. Rossi say?"
"'A woman's love is the sweetest thing in the world,' he said; 'but if I
found myself caring too much for anybody I should run away.'"
"Did Mr. Rossi really say that, Bruno?"
"He did--upon my life he did!"
Bruno had the air of a man who had achieved a moral victory, and Roma,
whose eyes were dancing with delight, wanted to fall on his stupid,
sulky face and kiss and kiss it.
During the afternoon of the day following, the Princess Bellini came in
with Don Camillo. "Here's Gi-gi!" she cried. "He comes to say there's to
be a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow. If you'd like to
come I'll take you, and if you think Mr. Rossi will come too...."
"If he rides and has time to spare," said Roma.
"Precisely," said Don Camillo. "The worst of being a prophet is that it
gives one so much trouble to agree with one's self, you know. Rumour
says that our illustrious Deputy has been a little out of odour with his
own people lately, and is now calling a meeting to tell the world what
his 'Creed and Charter' doesn't mean. Still a flight into the country
might do no harm even to the stormy petrel of politics, and if any one
could prevail with him...."
"Leave that to Roma, and see to everything else yourself," said the
Princess. "On the way to that tiresome tea-room in the Corso, my dear.
'Charity and Work,' you know. Committee for the protection of poor
girls, or something. But we must see the old aunt first, I suppose. Come
in, Gi-gi!"
Three minutes afterwards Roma was dressed for the street, and her dog
was leaping and barking beside her.
"Carriage, Eccellenza?"
"Not to-day, thank you! Down, Black, down! Keep the dog from following
me, Felice."
As she passed the lodge the porter handed her an envelope bearing the
seal of the Minister, but she did not stop to open it. With a light step
she tripped along the street, hailed a _coupe_, cried "Piazza Navona,"
and then composed herself to read her letter.
When the Princess and Don Camillo came out of the Countess's room Roma
was gone, and the dog was scratching at the inside of the outer door.
"Now where can she have gone to so suddenly, I wonder? And there's her
poor dog trying to follow her!"
"Is that the dog that goes to the Deputy's apartment?"
"Certainly it is! His name is Black. I'll hold him while you open the
door, Felice. There! Good dog! Good Black! Oh, the brute, he has broken
away from me."
"Black! Black! Black!"
"No use, Felice. He'll he half way through the streets by this time."
And going down the stairs the little Princess whispered to her
companion: "Now, if Black comes home with his mistress this evening it
will be easy to see where _she_ has been."
Meantime Roma in her _coupe_ was reading her letter--
"DEAREST,--Been away from Rome for a few days, and hence the delay
in answering your charming message. Don't trouble a moment about
the dead-and-buried nightmare. If the story is true, so much the
better. R. R. _is_ dead, thank God, and her unhappy wraith will
haunt your path no more. But if Dr. Roselli knew nothing about
David Rossi, how comes it that David Rossi knows so much about Dr.
Roselli? It looks like another clue. Thanks again. A thousand
thanks!
"Still no news from London, but though I pretend neither to
knowledge nor foreknowledge, I am still satisfied that we are on
the right track.
"Dinner-party to-night, dearest, and I shall be obliged to you if
I may borrow Felice. Your Princess Potiphar, your Don Saint
Joseph, your Count Signorina, your Senator Tom-tit, and--will you
believe it?--your Madame de Trop! I can deny you nothing, you see,
but I am cruelly out of luck that my dark house must lack the
light of all drawing-rooms, the sunshine of all Rome!
"How clever of you to throw dust in the eyes of your aunt herself!
And these red-hot prophets in petticoats, how startled they will
soon be! Adieu!
"BONELLI."
As the _coupe_ turned into the Piazza Navona, Roma was tearing the
letter into shreds and casting them out of the window.
VIII
While Roma climbed the last flight of stairs to David Rossi's apartment,
with the slippery-sloppery footsteps of the old Garibaldian going before
her, Bruno's thunderous voice was rocking through the rooms above.
"Look at him, Mr. Rossi! Republican, democrat, socialist, and rebel!
Upsets the government of this house once a day regularly--dethrones the
King and defies the Queen! Catch the piggy-wiggy, Uncle David! Here goes
for it--one, two, three, and away!"
Then shrieks and squeals of childish laughter, mingled with another
man's gentler tones, and a woman's frightened remonstrance. And then
sudden silence and the voice of the Garibaldian in a panting whisper,
saying, "She's here again, sir!"
"Donna Roma?"
"Yes."
"Come in," cried David Rossi, and from the threshold of the open hall
she saw him, in the middle of the floor, with a little boy pitching and
heaving like a young sea-lion in his arms.
He slipped the boy to his feet and said, "Run to the lady and kiss her
hand, Joseph." But the boy stood off shyly, and, stepping into the room,
Roma knelt to the child and put her arms about him.
"What a big little man, to be sure! His name is Joseph, is it? And
what's his age? Six! Think of that! Have I seen him before, Mrs. Rocco?
Yes? Perhaps he was here the day I called before? Was he? So? How stupid
of me to forget! Ah, of course, now I remember, he was in his
nightdress and asleep, and Mr. Rossi was carrying him to bed."
The mother's heart was captured in a moment. "Do you love children,
Donna Roma?"
"Indeed, I do!"
During this passage between the women Bruno had grunted his way out of
the room, and was now sidling down the staircase, being suddenly smitten
by his conscience with the memory of a message he had omitted to
deliver.
"Come, Joseph," said Elena. But Joseph, who had recovered from his
bashfulness, was in no hurry to be off, and Roma said:
"No, no! I've only called for a moment. It is to say," turning to David
Rossi, "that there's a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow,
and to tell you from Don Camillo that if you ride and would care to
go...."
"_You_ are going?"
"With the Princess, yes! But there will be no necessity to follow the
hounds all day long, and perhaps coming home...."
"I will be there."
"How charming! That's all I came to say, and so...."
She made a pretence of turning to go, but he said:
"Wait! Now that you are here I have something to show to you."
"To me?"
"Come in," he cried, and, blowing a kiss to the boy, Roma followed Rossi
into the sitting-room.
"One moment," he said, and he left her to go into the bedroom.
When he came back he had a small parcel in his hands wrapped in a lace
handkerchief.
"We have talked so much of my old friend Roselli that I thought you
might like to see his portrait."
"His portrait? Have you really got his portrait?"
"Here it is," and he put into her hands the English photograph which
used to hang by his bed.
She took it eagerly and looked at it steadfastly, while her lips
trembled and her eyes grew moist. There was silence for a moment, and
then she said, in a voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was
the father of little Roma?"
"Yes."
"Is it very like him?"
"Very."
"What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on
the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?"
"Exactly."
The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she
lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath,
and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears
and said:
"That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my
little namesake."
David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said
with another nervous laugh:
"Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best
father a girl ever had, but she...."
"She was a child," said David Rossi.
"Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...."
"She was only seven, remember."
"Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a
little selfish?"
"You mustn't abuse my friend Roma."
Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a
sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther.
"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best.
And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father
had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..."
Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion.
"I want to give you that portrait," he said.
"Me?"
"You would like to have it?"
"More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?"
"Beyond anything I possess."
"Then how can I take it from you?"
"There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it,
and I am contented."
It was impossible to hear the strain any longer without crying out, and
to give physical expression to her feelings she lifted the portrait to
her lips again and kissed and kissed it.
He smiled at her, she smiled back; the silence was hard to break, but
just as they were on the edge of the precipice the big shock-head of the
little boy looked in on them through the chink of the door and cried:
"You needn't ask me to come in, 'cause I won't!"
By the blessed instinct of the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood
the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," she said.
"_Would_ you?" said Joseph, and in he came, with a face shining all
over.
"Hurrah! A piano!" said Roma, leaping up and seating herself at the
instrument. "What shall I play for you, Joseph?"
Joseph was indifferent so long as it was a song, and with head aside,
Roma touched the keys and pretended to think. After a moment of sweet
duplicity she struck up the air she had come expressly to play.
It was the "British Grenadiers." She sang a verse of it. She sang in
English and with the broken pronunciation of a child--
"Some talk of Allisander, and some of Hergoles;
Of Hector and Eyesander, and such gate names as these..."
Suddenly she became aware that David Rossi was looking at her through
the glass on the mantel-piece, and to keep herself from crying she began
to laugh, and the song came to an end.
At the same moment the door burst open with a bang, and the dog came
bounding into the room. Behind it came Elena, who said:
"It was scratching at the staircase door, and I thought it must have
followed you."
"Followed Mr. Rossi, you mean. He has stolen my dog's heart away from
me," said Roma.
"That is what I say about my boy's," said Elena.
"But Joseph is going for a soldier, I see."
"It's a porter he wants to be."
"Then so he shall--he shall be my porter some day," said Roma, whereupon
Joseph was frantic with delight, and Elena was saying to herself, "What
wicked lies they tell of her--I wonder they are not ashamed!"
The fire was going down and the twilight was deepening.
"Shall I bring you the lamp, sir?" said Elena.
"Not for me," said Roma. "I am going immediately." But even when mother
and child had gone she did not go. Unconsciously they drew nearer and
nearer to each other in the gathering darkness, and as the daylight died
their voices softened and there were quiet questions and low replies.
The desire to speak out was struggling in the woman's heart with the
delight of silence. But she would reveal herself at last.
"I have been thinking a great deal about the story they told you in
London--of Roma's death and burial, I mean. Had you no reason to think
it might be false?"
"None whatever."
"It never occurred to you that it might be to anybody's advantage to say
that she was dead while she was still alive?"
"How could it? Who was to perpetrate a crime for the sake of the
daughter of a poor doctor in Soho--a poor prisoner in Elba?"
"Then it was not until afterward that you heard that the poor doctor was
a great prince?"
"Not until the night you were here before."
"And you had never heard anything of his daughter in the interval?"
"Once I had! It was on the same day, though. A man came here from London
on an infamous errand..."
"What was his name?"
"Charles Minghelli."
"What did he say?"
"He said Roma Roselli was not dead at all, but worse than dead--that she
had fallen into the hands of an evil man, and turned out badly."
"Did you ... did you believe that story?"
"Not one word of it! I called the man a liar, and flung him out of the
house."
"Then you ... you think ... if she is still living...."
"My Roma is a good woman."
Her face burned up to the roots of her hair. She choked with joy, she
choked with pain. His belief in her purity stifled her. She could not
speak now--she could not reveal herself. There was a moment of silence,
and then in a tremulous voice she said:
"Will you not call _me_ Roma, and try to think I am your little friend?"
When she came to herself after that she was back in her own apartment,
in her aunt's bedroom, and kissing the old lady's angular face. And the
Countess was breaking up the stupefaction of her enchantment with sighs
and tears and words of counsel.
"I only want you to preserve yourself for your proper destiny, Roma. You
are the _fiancee_ of the Baron, as one might say, and the poor maniac
can't last long."
Before dressing for dinner Roma replied to the Minister:--
"DEAR BARON BONELLI,--Didn't I tell you that Minghelli would find
out nothing? I am now more than ever sure that the whole idea is
an error. Take my advice and drop it. Drop it! Drop it! I shall,
at all events!--Yours,
"ROMA VOLONNA.
"Success to the dinner! Am sending Felice. He will give you this
letter.--R. V."
IX
It was the sweetest morning of the Roman winter. The sun shone with a
gentle radiance, and the motionless air was fragrant with the odour of
herbs and flowers. Outside the gate which leads to the old Appian Way
grooms were waiting with horses, blanketed and hooded, and huntsmen in
red coats, white breeches, pink waistcoats, and black boots, were
walking their mounts to the place appointed for the meet. In a line of
carriages were many ladies, some in riding-habits, and on foot there was
a string of beggars, most of them deformed, with here and there, at
little villages, a group of rosy children watching the procession as it
passed.
The American and English Ambassadors were riding side by side behind a
magnificent carriage with coachman and tiger in livery of scarlet and
gold.
"Who would think, to look on a scene like this, that the city is
seething with dissatisfaction?" said the Englishman.
"Rome?" said the American. "Its aristocratic indifference will not allow
it to believe that here, as everywhere else in the world, great and
fatal changes are going on all the time. These lands, for example--to
whom do they belong? Nominally to the old Roman nobility, but really to
the merchants of the Campagna--a company of middlemen who grew rich by
leasing them from the princes and subletting them to the poor."
"And the nobles themselves--how are they faring?"
"Badly! Already they are of no political significance, and the State
knows them not."
"They don't appear to go into the army or navy--what do they go into?"
"Love!"
"And meantime the Italian people?"
"Meantime the great Italian people, like the great English people, the
great German people, and the people of every country where the
privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep
all this sea-wrack high and dry on to the rocks."
"And this wave of the people," said the Englishman, inclining his head
toward the carriage in front, "is represented by men like friend Rossi?"
"Would be, if he could keep himself straight," said the American.
"And where is the Tarpeian rock of friend Rossi's politics?"
The American slapped his glossy boot with his whip, lowered his voice,
and said, "There!"
"Donna Roma?"
"A fortnight ago you heard his speech on the liveries of scarlet and
gold, and look! He's under them himself already."
"You think there is no other inference?"
The American shook his head. "Always the way with these leaders of
revolution. It's Samson's strength with Samson's weakness in every
mother's son of them."
"Good-morning, General Potter!" said a cheerful voice from the carriage
in front.
It was Roma herself. She sat by the side of the little Princess, with
David Rossi on the seat before them. Her eyes were bright, there was a
glow in her cheeks, and she looked lovelier than ever in her
close-fitting riding-habit.
At the meeting-place there was a vast crowd of on-lookers, chiefly
foreigners, in cabs and carriages and four-in-hand coaches from the
principal hotels. The Master of the Hunt was ready, with his impatient
hounds at his feet, and around him was a brilliant scene. Officers in
blue, huntsmen in red, ladies in black, jockeys in jackets, a sea of
feathers and flowers and sunshades, with the neighing of the horses and
yapping of the dogs, the vast undulating country, the smell of earth and
herbs, and the morning sunlight over all.
Don Camillo was waiting with horses for his party, and they mounted
immediately. The horse for Roma was a quiet bay mare with limpid eyes.
General Potter helped her to the saddle, and she went cantering through
the long lush grass.
"What has your charming young charge been doing with herself, Princess?"
said the American. "She was always beautiful, but to-day she's lovely."
"She's like Undine after she had found her soul," said the Englishman.
The little Princess laughed. "Love and a cough cannot be hidden,
gentlemen," she whispered, with a look toward David Rossi.
"You don't mean...."
"Hush!"
Meantime Rossi, in ordinary walking dress, was approaching the horse he
was intended to ride. It was a high strong-limbed sorrel with wild eyes
and panting nostrils. The English groom who held it was regarding the
rider with a doubtful expression, and a group of booted and spurred
huntsmen were closing around.
To everybody's surprise, the deputy gathered up the reins and leaped
lightly to the saddle, and at the next moment he was riding at Roma's
side. Then the horn was sounded, the pack broke into music, the horses
beat their hoofs on the turf and the hunt began.
There was a wall to jump first, and everybody cleared it easily until it
came to David Rossi's turn, when the sorrel refused to jump. He patted
the horse's neck and tried it again, but it shied and went off with its
head between its legs. A third time he brought the sorrel up to the
wall, and a third time it swerved aside.
The hunters had waited to watch the result, and as the horse came up for
a fourth trial, with its wild eyes flashing, its nostrils quivering, and
its forelock tossed over one ear, it was seen that the bridle had broken
and Rossi was riding with one rein.
"He'll be lucky if he isn't hurt," said some one.
"Why doesn't he give it the whip over its quarters?" said another.
But David Rossi only patted his horse until it came to the spot where it
had shied before. Then he reached over its neck on the side of the
broken rein, and with open hand struck it sharply across the nose. The
horse reared, snorted, and jumped, and at the next moment it was
standing quietly on the other side of the wall.
Roma, on her bay mare, was ashen pale, and the American Ambassador
turned to her and said:
"Never knew but one man to do a thing like that, Donna Roma."
Roma swallowed something in her throat and said: "Who was it, General
Potter?"
"The present Pope when he was a Noble Guard."
"He can ride, by Jove!" said Don Camillo.
"That sort of stuff has to be in a man's blood. Born in him--must be!"
said the Englishman.
And then David Rossi came up with a new bridle to his sorrel, and Sir
Evelyn added: "You handle a horse like a man who began early, Mr.
Rossi."
"Yes," said David Rossi; "I was a stable-boy two years in New York, your
Excellency."
At that moment the huntsman who was leading with two English terriers
gave the signal that the fox was started, whereupon the hounds yelped,
the whips whistled, and the horses broke into a canter.
Two hours afterwards the poor little creature that had been the origin
of the holiday was tracked to earth and killed. Its head and tail were
cut off, and the rest of its body was thrown to the dogs. After that
flasks were taken out, healths were drunk, cheers were given, and then
the hunt broke up, and the hunters began to return at an easy trot.
Roma and David Rossi were riding side by side, and the Princess was a
pace or two behind them.
"Roma!" cried the Princess, "what a stretch for a gallop!"
"Isn't it?" said Roma, and in a moment she was off.
"I believe her mare has mastered her," said the Princess, and at the
next instant David Rossi was gone too.
"Peace be with them! They're a lovely pair!" said the Princess,
laughing. "But we might as well go home. They are like Undine, and will
return no more."
X
Meantime, with the light breeze in her ears, and the beat of her horse's
hoofs echoing among the aqueducts and tombs, Roma galloped over the
broad Campagna. After a moment she heard some one coming after her, and
for joy of being pursued she whipped up and galloped faster. Without
looking back she knew who was behind, and as her horse flew over the
hillocks her heart leaped and sang. When the strong-limbed sorrel came
up with the quiet bay mare, they were nearly two miles from their
starting-place, and far out of the track of their fellow-hunters. Both
were aglow from head to foot, and as they drew rein they looked at each
other and laughed.
"Might as well go on now, and come out by the English cemetery," said
Roma.
"Good!" said David Rossi.
"But it's half-past two," said Roma, looking at her little watch, "and
I'm as hungry as a hunter."
"Naturally," said David Rossi, and they laughed again. There was an
osteria somewhere in that neighbourhood. He had known it when he was a
boy. They would dine on yellow beans and macaroni.
Presently they saw a house smoking under a scraggy clump of eucalyptus.
It was the osteria, half farmstead and half inn. A timid lad took their
horses, an evil-looking old man bowed them into the porch, and an
elderly woman, with a frightened expression and a face wrinkled like the
bark of a cedar, brought them a bill of fare.
They laughed at everything--at the unfamiliar menu, because it was
soiled enough to have served for a year; at the food, because it was so
simple; and at the prices, because they were so cheap.
Roma looked over David Rossi's shoulder as he read out the bill of fare,
and they ordered the dinner together.
"Macaroni--threepence! Right! Trout--fourpence! Shall we have
fourpennyworth of trout? Good! Lamb--sixpence! We'll take two lambs--I
mean two sixpenny-worths," and then more laughter.
While the dinner was cooking they went out to walk among the eucalyptus,
and came upon a beautiful dell surrounded by trees and carpeted with
wild flowers.
"Carnival!" cried Roma. "Now if there was anybody here to throw a flower
at one!"
He picked up a handful of violets and tossed them over her head.
"When I was a boy this was where men fought duels," said David Rossi.
"The brutes! What a lovely spot! Must be the place where Pharaoh's
daughter found Moses in the bulrushes!"
"Or where Adam found Eve in the garden of Eden?"
They looked at each other and smiled.
"What a surprise that must have been to him," said Roma. "Whatever did
he think she was, I wonder?"
"An angel who had come down in the moonlight and forgotten to go up in
the morning!"
"Nonsense! He would know in a moment she was a woman."
"Think of it! She was the only woman in the world for him!"
"And fancy! He was the only man!"
The dinner was one long delight. Even its drawbacks were no
disadvantage. The food was bad, and it was badly cooked and badly
served, but nothing mattered.
"Only one fork for all these dishes?" asked David Rossi.
"That's the best of it," said Roma. "You only get one dirty one."
Suddenly she dropped knife and fork, and held up both hands. "I forgot!"
"What?"
"I was to be little Roma all day to-day."
"Why, so you are, and so you have been."
"That cannot be, or you would call her by her name, you know."
"I'll do so the moment she calls me by mine."
"That's not fair," said Roma, and her face flushed up, for the wine of
life had risen to her eyes.
In a vineyard below a girl working among the orange trees was singing
_stornelli_. It was a song of a mother to her son. He had gone away from
the old roof-tree, but he would come back some day. His new home was
bright and big, but the old hearthstone would draw him home. Beautiful
ladies loved him, but the white-haired mother would kiss him again.
They listened for a short dreaming space, and their laughter ceased and
their eyes grew moist. Then they called for the bill, and the old man
with the evil face came up with a forced smile from a bank that had
clearly no assets of that kind to draw upon.
"You've been a long time in this house, landlord," said David Rossi.
"Very long time, Excellency," said the man.
"You came from the Ciociaria."
"Why, yes, I did," said the man, with a look of surprise. "I was poor
then, and later on I lived in the caves and grottoes of Monte Parioli."
"But you knew how to cure the phylloxera in the vines, and when your
master died you married his daughter and came into his vineyard."
"Angelica! Here's a gentleman who knows all about us," said the old man,
and then, grinning from ear to ear, he added:
"Perhaps your Excellency was the young gentleman who used to visit with
his father at the Count's palace on the hill twenty to thirty years
ago?"
David Rossi looked him steadfastly in the face and said: "Do you
remember the poor boy who lived with you at that time?"
The forced smile was gone in a moment. "We had no boy then, Excellency."
"He came to you from Santo Spirito and you got a hundred francs with him
at first, and then you built this pergola."
"If your Excellency is from the Foundling, you may tell them again, as I
told the priest who came before, that we never took a boy from there,
and we had no money from the people who sent him to London."
"You don't remember him, then?"
"Certainly not."
"Nor you?"
The old woman hesitated, and the old man made mouths at her.
"No, Excellency."
David Rossi took a long breath. "Here is the amount of your bill, and
something over. Good-bye!"
The timid lad brought round the horses and the riders prepared to mount.
Roma was looking at the boy with pitying eyes.
"How long have you been here?" she asked.
"Ten years, Excellency," he replied.
He was just twelve years of age and both his parents were dead.
"Poor little fellow!" said Roma, and before David Rossi could prevent
her she was emptying her purse into the boy's hand.
They set off at a trot, and for some time they did not exchange a word.
The sun was sinking and the golden day was dying down. Over the broad
swell of the Campagna, treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping
like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath
of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except
the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like
the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of
cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies.
Here and there were wretched straw huts, with groups of fever-stricken
people crouching over the embers of miserable fires, and here and there
were dirty pothouses, which alternated with wooden crosses of the Christ
and grass-covered shrines of the Madonna.
The rhythm of the saddles ceased and the horses walked.
"Was that the place where you were brought up?" said Roma.
"Yes."
"And those were the people who sold you into slavery, so to speak?"
"Yes."
"And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!"
"What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders."
"No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you
could hate him for what he has made you suffer?"
David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the
saint who saved me from so much besides. 'Don't try to find out who
your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out,
don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world.
By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for
what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't.
Leave him to God!'"
"It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?"
said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply.
"And then--who knows?--perhaps some day you may discover that your
father deserved your love and pity after all."
"Perhaps!"
They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus
trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was
everywhere in this home of silence.
They went up on to the roof. From that height the whole world around
seemed to be invaded by silence.
It was the silence of all sacred things, the silence of the mass; and
the undying paganism in the hearts of the two that stood there had its
eloquent silence also.
Roma was leaning on the parapet with David Rossi behind her, when
suddenly she began to weep. She wept violently and sobbed.
"What is it?" he asked, but she did not answer.
After a while she grew calm and dried her eyes, called herself foolish,
and began to laugh. But the heart-beats were too audible without saying
something, and at length she tried to speak.
"It was the poor boy at the inn," she said; "the sight of his sweet face
brought back a scene I had quite forgotten," and then, in a faltering
voice, turning her head away, she told him everything.
"It was in London, and my father had found a little Roman boy in the
streets on a winter's night, carrying a squirrel and playing an
accordion. He wore a tattered suit of velveteens, and that was all that
sheltered his little body from the cold. His fingers were frozen stiff,
and he fainted when they brought him into the house. After a while he
opened his eyes, and gazed around at the fire and the faces about him,
and seemed to be looking for something. It was his squirrel, and it was
frozen dead. But he grasped it tight and big tears rolled on to his
cheeks, and he raised himself as if to escape. He was too weak for that,
and my father comforted him and he lay still. That was when I saw him
first; and looking at the poor boy at the inn I thought ... I thought
perhaps he was another ... perhaps my little friend of long ago...."
Her throat was throbbing, and her faltering voice was failing like a
pendulum that is about to stop.
"Roma!" he cried over her shoulder.
"David!"
Their eyes met, their hands clasped, their pent-up secret was out, and
in the dim-lit catacombs of love two souls stood face to face.
"How long have you known it?" she whispered.
"Since the night you came to the Piazza Navona. And you?"
"Since the moment I heard your voice." And then she shuddered and
laughed.
When they left the house of silence a blessed hush had fallen on them, a
great wonder which they had never known before, the wonder of the
everlasting miracle of human hearts.
The sun was sitting behind Rome in a glorious blaze of crimson, with the
domes of churches glistening in the horizontal rays, and the dark globe
of St. Peter's hovering over all. The mortal melancholy which had been
lying over the world seemed to be lifted away, and the earth smiled with
flowers and the heavens shone with gold.
Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung
to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and
then they smiled, but they did not speak.
The sun went down, and there was a far-off ringing of bells. It was Ava
Maria. They drew up the horses for a moment and dropped their heads.
Then they started again.
The night chills were coming, and they rode hard. Roma bent over the
mane of her horse and looked proud and happy.
Grooms were waiting for them at the gate of St. Paul, and, giving up
their horses, they got into a carriage. When they reached Trinita de'
Monti the lamplighter was lighting the lamps on the steps of the piazza,
and Roma said in a low voice, with a blush and a smile:
"Don't come in to-night--not to-night, you know."
She wanted to be alone.
XI
Felice met Roma at the door of her own apartment, and in more than
usually sepulchral tones announced that the Countess had wished to see
her as soon as she came home. Without waiting to change her
riding-habit, Roma turned into her aunt's room.
The old lady was propped up with pillows, and Natalina was fussing about
her. Her eyes glittered, her thin lips were compressed, and regardless
of the presence of the maid, she straightway fell upon Roma with bitter
reproaches.
"Did you wish to see me, aunt?" said Roma, and the old lady answered in
a mocking falsetto:
"Did I wish to see you, miss? Certainly I wished to see you, although
I'm a broken-hearted woman and sorry for the day I saw you first."
"What have I done now?" said Roma, and the radiant look in her face
provoked the old lady to still louder denunciations.
"What have you done? Mercy me!... Give me my salts, Natalina!"
"Natalina," said Roma quietly, "lay out my studio things, and if Bruno
has gone, tell Felice to light the lamps and see to the stove
downstairs."
The old lady fanned herself with her embroidered handkerchief and began
again.
"I thought you meant to mend your ways when you came in yesterday,
miss--you were so meek and modest. But what was the fact? You had come
to me straight from that man's apartments. You had! You know you had!
Don't try to deny it."
"I don't deny it," said Roma.
"Holy Virgin! She doesn't deny it! Perhaps you admit it?"
"I do admit it."
"Madonna mia! She admits it! Perhaps you made an appointment?"
"No, I went without an appointment."
"Merciful heavens! She is on such terms with the man that she can go to
his apartments without even an appointment! Perhaps you were alone with
him, miss?"
"Yes, we were quite alone," said Roma.
The old lady, who was apparently about to faint right away, looked up at
her little shrine, and said:
"Goodness! A girl! Not even a married woman! And without a maid, too!"
Trying not to lose control of herself, Roma stepped to the door, but her
aunt followed her up.
"A man like that, too! Not even a gentleman! The hypocrite! The
impostor! With his airs of purity and pretence!"
"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I was sorry I spoke to you as I did the other
night, not because anything I said was wrong, but because you are weak
and bedridden and suffering. Don't provoke me to speak again as I spoke
before. I did go to Mr. Rossi's rooms yesterday, and if there is any
fault in that, I alone am to blame."
"Are you indeed?" said the old lady, with a shrill, piping cry. "Holy
Saints! she admits so much! Do you know what people will call you when
they hear of it? A hussy! A shameless hussy!"
Roma was flaming up, but she controlled herself and put her hand on the
door-handle.
"They _will_ hear of it, depend on that," cried the Countess. "Last
night at dinner the women were talking of nothing else. Felice heard all
their chattering. That woman let the dog out to follow you, knowing it
would go straight to the man's rooms. 'Whom did it come home with,
Felice?' 'Donna Roma, your Excellency.' 'Then it's clear where Donna
Roma had been.' Ugh! I could choke to think of it. My head is fit to
split! Is there any cognac...?"
Roma's bosom was visibly stirred by her breathing, but she answered
quietly:
"No matter! Why should I care what is thought of my conduct by people
who have no morality of their own to judge me by?"
"Really now?" said the Countess, twisting the wrinkles of her old face
into skeins of mock courtesy. "Upon my word, I didn't think you were so
simple. Understand, miss, it isn't the opinion of the Princess Bellini I
am thinking about, but that of the Baron Bonelli. He has his dignity to
consider, and when the time comes and he is free to take a wife, he is
not likely to marry a girl who has been talked of with another man.
Don't you see what that woman is doing? She has been doing it all along,
and like a simpleton you've been helping her. You've been flinging away
your chances with this Rossi and making yourself impossible to the
Minister."
Roma tossed her head and answered:
"I don't care if I have, Aunt Betsy. I'm not of the same mind as I used
to be, and I think no longer that the holiest things are to be bought
and sold like so much merchandise."
The old lady, who had been bending forward in her vehemence, fell back
on the pillow.
"You'll kill me!" she cried. "Where did you learn such folly? Goodness
knows I've done my best by you. I have tried to teach you your duty to
the baron and to society. But all this comes of admitting these
anarchists into the house. You can't help it, though. It's in your
blood. Your father before you...."
Crimson and trembling from head to foot, Roma turned suddenly and left
the room. Natalina and Felice were listening on the other side of the
door.
But not even this jarring incident could break the spell of Roma's
enchantment, and when dinner was over, and she had gone to the studio
and closed the door, the whole world seemed to be shut out, and nothing
was of the slightest consequence.
Taking the damp cloth from the bust, she looked at her work again. In
the light of the aurora she now lived in, the head she had wrought with
so much labour was poor and inadequate. It did not represent the
original. It was weak and wrong.
She set to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began
to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was
audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She was not afraid.
Time passed, but she did not heed it. She was working at lightning
speed, and with a power she had never felt before.
Night came on, and the old Rome, the Rome of the Popes, repossessed
itself of the Eternal City. The silent streets, the dark patches, the
luminous piazzas, the three lights on the loggia of the Vatican, the
grey ghost of the great dome, the kind stars, the sweet moon, and the
church bells striking one by one during the noiseless night.
At length she became aware of a streak of light on the floor. It was
coming through the shutters of the window. She threw them open, and the
breeze of morning came up from the orange trees in the garden below. The
day was dawning over the sleepy city. Convent bells were ringing for
matins, but all else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep.
She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now.
She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on
the stars. She was happy, happy, happy!
Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams
tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome,
the Rome of the Kings, awoke.
Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his
work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although
the sunlight was streaming into the room.
"Been working all night, Donna Roma?"
"Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now."
She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did
that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet!
She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment,
when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post,
and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters.
One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for
Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his
translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking
her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over
her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an
immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life.
There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had
seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made
her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must!
"MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail!
Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the
dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything!
Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is _not_ David Rossi,
but a _condemned man who has no right to live in Italy_! Prepare
for a still greater surprise--_he has no right to live at all_!
"So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He
insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio
and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the
effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've
done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your
work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ...
let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have begun...."
Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped
out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the
sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and
her face was pale and rigid.
"No, I will _not_ go on!" she thought. "I will _not_ betray him! I will
_save_ him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I
love him! I love him!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PART FOUR--DAVID ROSSI
I
David Rossi was in his bedroom writing his leader for next morning's
paper. A lamp with a dark shade burned on the desk, and the rest of the
room was in shadow. It was late, and the house was quiet.
The door opened softly, and Bruno, in shirt-sleeves and slippered feet,
came on tiptoe into the room. He brought a letter in a large violet
envelope with a monogram on the front of it, and put it down on the desk
by Rossi's side. It was from Roma.
"DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--Without rhyme or reason I have been expecting
to see you here to-day, having something to say which it is
important that you should hear. May I expect you in the morning?
Knowing how busy you are, I dare not bid you come, yet the matter
is of great consequence and admits of no delay. It is not a
subject on which it is safe or proper to write, and how to speak
of it I am at a loss to decide. But you shall help me. Therefore
come without delay! There! I have bidden you come in spite of
myself. Judge from that how eager is my expectation.--In haste,
"ROMA V.
"P.S.--I open my envelope, to wonder if you can ever forgive me
the humiliations you have suffered for my sake. To think that _I_
threw you into the way of them! And merely to wipe out an offence
that is not worth considering! I am ashamed of myself. I am also
ashamed of the people about me. You will remember that I told you
they were pitiless and cruel. They are worse--they are heartless
and without mercy. But how bravely you bore their insults and
innuendoes! I almost cry to think of it, and if I were a good
Catholic I should confess and do penance. See? I do confess, and
if you want me to do penance you will come yourself and impose it."
It was the first letter that David Rossi had received from Roma, and as
he read it the air seemed to him to be filled with the sweet girlish
voice. He could see the play of her large, bright, violet eyes. The
delicate fragrance of the scented paper rose to his nostrils, and
without being conscious of what he was doing he raised the letter to his
lips.
Then he became aware that Bruno was still in the room. The good fellow
was in the shadow behind him, pushing things about under some pretext
and trying to make a noise.
"Don't let me keep you up, Bruno."
"Sure you don't want anything, sir?" said Bruno with confusion.
David Rossi rose and walked about the room with his slow step.
"You have something to say to me?"
"Well, yes, sir--yes, I have."
"What is it?"
Bruno scratched his shock head and looked about as if for help. His eyes
fell on the letter lying open in the light on the desk.
"It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the
monogram."
"Well?"
Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled
out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said:
"Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you."
"What are they saying, Bruno?"
"Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'?
Sun in the eyes--that's what they're saying, sir."
"So they're saying that, are they?"
"They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like
it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of
you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing."
David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro.
"'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right,
sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called
out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first
of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week we
hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet
they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house
of a bad woman?"
"Bruno!" cried Rossi in a stern voice, "what right have you to talk to
me like this?"
Bruno was frightened at what he had said, but he tried to carry it off
with a look of passion.
"Right? The right of a friend, sir, who can't stand by and see you
betrayed. Yes, betrayed, that's the word for it. Betrayed! Betrayed!
It's a plot to ruin the people through the weakness of their leader. A
woman drawn across a man's trail. The trick is as old as the ages. Never
heard what we say in Rome?--'The man is fire, the woman is tow; then
comes the devil and puts them together.'"
David Rossi was standing face to face with Bruno, who was growing hot
and trying to laugh bitterly.
"Oh, I know what I'm saying, sir. The Prime Minister is at the bottom of
everything. David Rossi never goes to Donna Roma's house but the Baron
Bonelli knows all about it. They write to each other every day, and I've
posted her letters myself. _Her_ house is _his_ house. Carriages,
horses, servants, liveries--how else could she support it? By her art,
her sculpture?"
Bruno was frightened to the bottom of his soul, but he continued to talk
and to laugh bitterly.
"She's deceiving you, sir. Isn't it as plain as daylight? You hit her
hard, and old Vampire too, in your speech on the morning of the Pope's
Jubilee, and she's paying you out for both of them."
"That's enough, Bruno."
"All Rome knows it, and everybody will be laughing at you soon."
"You've said enough, I tell you. Go to bed."
"Oh, I know! The heart has its reasons, but it listens to none."
"Go to bed, I tell you! Isn't it sufficient that by your tittle-tattle
you caused me to wrong the lady?"
"_I_ did?"
"_You_ did."
"I did not."
"You did, and if it hadn't been for the tales you told me before I knew
her, or had ever seen her, I should never have spoken of her as I did."
"She deserved all you said of her."
"She didn't deserve one word of it, and it was your lies that made me
slander her."
Bruno's eyes flinched as if a blow had fallen on them. Then he tried to
laugh.
"Hit me again. The skin of the ass is used to blows. Only don't go too
far with me, David Rossi."
"Then don't _you_ go too far with your falsehoods and suspicion."
"Suspicion! Holy Virgin! Is it suspicion that she has had you at her
studio to make a Roman holiday for her friends and cronies? By the
saints! Suspicion!"
"Go on, if it becomes you."
"If what becomes me?"
"To eat her bread and talk against her."
"That's a lie, David Rossi, and you know it. It's my own bread I'm
eating. My labour belongs to me, and I sell it to my employer. But my
conscience belongs to God, and she cannot buy it."
David Rossi's white and angry face broke up like a snow-flake in the
sun.
"I was wrong when I said that, Bruno, and I ask your pardon."
"Do you say that, sir? And after I've insulted you?"
David Rossi held out his hand, and Bruno clasped it.
"I had no right to be angry with you, Bruno, but you are wrong about
Donna Roma. Believe me, dear friend, cruelly, awfully, terribly wrong."
"You think she is a good woman."
"I know she is, and if I said otherwise, I take it back and am ashamed."
"Beautiful! If I could only believe in her as you do, sir. But I've
known her for two years."
"And I've known her for twenty."
"_You_ have?"
"I have. Shall I tell you who she is? She is the daughter of my old
friend in England."
"The one who died in Elba?"
"Yes."
"The good man who found you and fed you, and educated you when you were
a boy in London?"
"That was the father of Donna Roma."
"Then he was Prince Volonna, after all?"
"Yes, and they lied to me when they told me she was dead and buried."
Bruno was silent for a moment, and then in a choking voice he said:
"Why didn't you strike me dead when I said she was deceiving you?
Forgive me, sir!"
"I do forgive you, Bruno, but not for myself--for her."
Bruno turned away with a dazed expression.
"Forget what I said about going to Donna Roma's, sir."
Rossi sat down and took up his pen.
"No, I cannot forget it," he said. "I _will not_ forget it. I will go to
her house no more."
Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice:
"I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to
travel."
Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write.
"Good-night, Bruno."
"Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes.
II
The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to
Roma.
"MY DEAR R.,--You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard
to my poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if
the penalties had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the
cud of my bargain now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a
secret motive, and perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should
confess too, although not with a view to penance. Apparently, it
has come out well, and now that it seems to be all over, both your
scheme and mine, now that the wrong I did you is to some extent
undone, and my own object is in some measure achieved, I find
myself face to face with a position in which it is my duty to you
as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.
"The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason
that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much
interested, and because there are obstacles between that person
and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts
it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each
other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the
feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty
that I must give them up altogether.
"Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we
have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the
memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part
of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot
explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may
arise. Continue to think of me as your brother--your brother far
away--to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and
necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there.
"What you say of an important matter suggests that something has
come to your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities;
but when a man has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice,
the most urgent perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not
to be alarmed for my sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of
the atmosphere of danger I have always lived in--the glacier I
have always walked upon--and 'if it is not now, it is to come; if
it is not to come, it will be now--the
readiness is all.' Good-bye!--Yours, dear R----, D."
III
Next day brought Roma's reply.
"MY DEAR D.,--Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of
excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and
when Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you
dear, dear dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or
talked.
"I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you
can't mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you
can't, or my eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing
with delight.
"Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so
indefinite, and I have no right to understand anything. If you
cannot write by post, or even send messages by hand, if my man F.
is your enemy, and your housemate B. is mine, isn't that precisely
the best reason why you should come and talk matters over? Come at
once. I bid you come! In a matter of such inconceivable
importance, surely a sister has a right to command.
"In that character, I suppose, I ought to be glad of the news you
give me. Well, I _am_ glad! But being a daughter of Eve, I have a
right to be curious. I want to ask questions. You say I know the
lady, and am, unhappily, too deeply interested in her--who is she?
Does she know of your love for her? Is she beautiful? Is she
charming? Give me one initial of her name--only one--and I will be
good. I am so much in the dark, and I cannot commit myself until I
know more.
"You speak of obstacles, and say they are decisive and
insurmountable. That's terrible, but perhaps you are only thinking
of what the poets call the 'cruel madness' of love, as if its
madness and cruelty were sufficient reason for flying away from
it. Or perhaps the obstacles are those of circumstances; but in
that case, if the woman is the right one, she will be willing to
wait for such difficulties to be got over, or even to find her
happiness in sharing them.
"See how I plead for my unknown sister! Which is sweet of me,
considering that you don't tell me who she is, but leave me to
find out if she is likely to suit me. But why not let me help you?
Come at once and talk things over.
"Yet how vain I am! Even while I proffer assistance with so loud a
voice, I am smitten cold with the fear of an impediment which you
know a thousand times better than I do how to measure and to meet.
Perhaps the woman you speak of is unworthy of your friendship and
love. I can understand that to be an insurmountable obstacle. You
stand so high, and have to think about your work, your aims, your
people. And perhaps it is only a dream and a delusion, a mirage of
the heart, that love lifts a woman up to the level of the man who
loves her.
"Then there may be some fault--some grave fault. I can understand
that too. We do not love because we should, but because we must,
and there is nothing so cruel as the inequality of man and woman
in the way the world regards their conduct. But I am like a bat in
the dark, flying at gleams of light from closely-curtained
windows. Will you not confide in me? Do! Do! Do!
"Besides, I have the other matter to talk about. You remember
telling me how you kicked out the man M----? He turned spy as the
consequence, and has been sent to England. You ought to know that
he has been making inquiries about you, and appears to have found
out various particulars. Any day may bring urgent news of him, and
if you will not come to me I may have to go to you in spite of
every protest.
"To-morrow is the day for your opening of Parliament, and I have a
ticket for the Court tribune, so you may expect to see me floating
somewhere above you in an atmosphere of lace and perfume.
Good-night!--Your poor bewildered sister, ROMA."
IV
Next morning David Rossi put on evening dress, in obedience to the
etiquette of the opening day of Parliament. Before going to the ceremony
he answered Roma's letter of the night before.
"DEAR R.,--If anything could add to the bitterness of my regret at
ending an intercourse which has brought me the happiest moments of
my life, it would be the tone of your sweet and charming letter.
You ask me if the woman I love is beautiful. She is more than
beautiful, she is lovely. You ask me if she knows that I love her.
I have never dared to disclose my secret, and if I could have
believed that she had ever so much as guessed at it, I should have
found some consolation in a feeling which is too deep for the
humiliations of pride. You ask me if she is worthy of my
friendship and love. She is worthy of the love and friendship of a
better man than I am or can ever hope to be.
"Yet even if she were not so, even if there were, as you say, a
fault in her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? I am not
one of those who think that a woman is fallen because
circumstances and evil men have conspired against her. I reject
the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past, a woman
never can. I abhor the judgment of the world by which a woman may
be punished because she is trying to be pure, and dragged down
because she is rising from the dirt. And if she had sinned as I
have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I would pray for
strength enough to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we
stand or fall together.'
"But she is sweet, and pure, and true, and brave, and noble-hearted,
and there is no fault in her, or she would not be the daughter of
her father, who was the noblest man I ever knew or ever expect to
know. No, the root of the separation is in myself, in myself only,
in my circumstances and the personal situation I find myself in.
"And yet it is difficult for me to state the obstacle which
divides us, or to say more about it than that it is permanent and
insurmountable. I should deceive myself if I tried to believe that
time would remove or lessen it, and I have contended in vain with
feelings which have tempted me to hold on at any price to the only
joy and happiness of my life.
"To go to her and open my heart is impossible, for personal
intercourse is precisely the peril I am trying to avoid. How weak
I am in her company! Even when her dress touches me at passing, I
am thrilled with an emotion I cannot master; and when she lifts
her large bright eyes to mine, I am the slave of a passion which
conquers all my will.
"No, it is not lightly and without cause that I have taken a step
which sacrifices love to duty. I love her, with all my heart and
soul and strength I love her, and that is why she and I, for her
sake more than mine, should never meet again.
"I note what you say about the man M----, but you must forgive me
if I cannot be much concerned about it. There is nobody in London
who knows me in the character I now bear, and can link it to the
one you are thinking of. Good-bye, again! God be with you and keep
you always! D."
Having written this letter, David Rossi sealed it carefully and posted
it with his own hand on his way to the opening of Parliament.
V
The day was fine, and the city was bright with many flags in honour of
the King. All the streets leading from the royal palace to the Hall of
the Deputies were lined with people. The square in front of the
Parliament House was kept clear by a cordon of Carabineers, but the open
windows of the hotels and houses round about were filled with faces.
David Rossi entered the house by the little private door for deputies in
the side street. The chamber was already thronged, and as full of
movement as a hive of bees. Ladies in light dresses, soldiers in
uniform, diplomatists wearing decorations, senators and deputies in
white cravats and gloves, were moving to their places and saluting each
other with bows and smiles.
Rossi slipped into the place he usually occupied among the deputies. It
was the corner seat by the door on the left of the royal canopy,
immediately facing the section, which had been apportioned to the Court
tribune. He did not lift his eyes as he entered, but he was conscious of
a tall, well-rounded yet girlish figure in a grey dress that glistened
in a ray of sunshine, with dark hair under a large black hat, and
flashing eyes that seemed to pierce into his own like a shaft of light.
Beautiful ladies with big oriental eyes were about her, and young
deputies were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised
curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of
gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching
gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom.
The clock over the reporters' gallery showed seven minutes after the
hour appointed, when the walls of the chamber shook with the vibration
of a cannon-shot. It was a gun fired at the Castle of St. Angelo to
announce the King's arrival. At the same moment there came the muffled
strains of the royal hymn played by the band in the piazza. The little
gales of gossip died down in an instant, and in dead silence the
assembly rose to its feet.
A minute afterwards the King entered amid a fanfare of trumpets, the
shouts of many voices, and the clapping of hands. He was a young man, in
the uniform of a general, with a face that was drawn into deep lines
under the eyes by ill-health and anxiety. Two soldiers, carrying their
brass helmets with waving plumes, walked by his side, and a line of his
Ministers followed. His Queen, a tall and beautiful girl, came behind,
surrounded by many ladies.
The King took his seat under the baldacchino, with his Ministers on his
left. The Queen sat on his right hand, with her ladies beside her. They
bowed to the plaudits of the assembly, and the drawn face of the young
King wore a painful smile.
The Baron Bonelli, in court dress and decorations, stood at the King's
elbow, calm, dignified, self-possessed--the one strong face and figure
in the group under the canopy. After the cheering and the shouting had
subsided he requested the assembly, at the command of His Majesty, to
resume their seats. Then he handed a paper to the King.
It was the King's speech to his Parliament, and he read it nervously in
a voice that had not learned to control itself. But the speech was
sufficiently emphatic, and its words were grandiose and even florid.
It consisted of four clauses. In the first clause the King thanked God
that his country was on terms of amity with all foreign countries, and
invoked God's help in the preservation of peace. The second clause was
about the increase of the army.
"The army," said the King, "is very dear to me, as it has always been
dear to my family. My illustrious grandfather, who granted freedom to
the kingdom, was a soldier; my honoured father was a soldier, and it is
my pride that I am myself a soldier also. The army was the foundation of
our liberty and it is now the security of our rights. On the strength
and stability of the army rest the power of our nation abroad and the
authority of our institutions at home. It is my firm resolve to maintain
the army in the future as my illustrious ancestors have maintained it in
the past, and therefore my Government will propose a bill which is
intended to increase still further its numbers and its efficiency."
This was received with a great outburst of applause and the waving of
many handkerchiefs. It was observed that some of the ladies shed tears.
The third clause was about the growth and spread of anarchism.
"My house," said the King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my
duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to
Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but
throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most
devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and
divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the
most innocent and the most highly placed, which have sent a thrill of
horror into all humane hearts. My Government asks for an absolute power
over such criminals, and if we are to bring security to the State, we
must reinvigorate the authority to which society trusts the high mandate
of protecting and governing."
A still greater outburst of cheering interrupted the young King, who
raised his head amid the shouts, the clapping of hands, and the
fluttering of handkerchiefs, and smiled his painful smile.
"More than that," continued the King, "I have to deplore the spread of
associations, sodalities, and clubs, which, by an erroneous conception
of liberty, are disseminating the germs of revolt against the State.
Under the most noble propositions about the moral and economical
redemption of the people is hidden a propaganda for the conquest of the
public powers.
"My aim is to gain the affection of my people, and to interest them in
the cause of order and public security, and therefore my Government will
present an urgent bill, which is intended to stop the flowering of these
parasitic organisations, by revising these laws of the press and of
public meeting, in whose defects agitators find opportunity for their
attacks on the doctrines of the State."
A prolonged outburst of applause followed this passage, mingled with a
tumult of tongues, which went on after the King had begun to read again,
rendering his last clause--an invocation of God's blessing on the
deliberations of Parliament--almost inaudible.
The end of the speech was a signal for further cheering, and when the
King left the hall, bowing as before, and smiling his painful smile, the
shouts of "Long live the King," the clapping of hands, and the waving of
handkerchiefs followed him to the street. The entire ceremony had
occupied twelve minutes.
Then the clamour of voices drowned the sound of the royal hymn outside.
Deputies were climbing about to join their friends among the ladies,
whose light laughter was to be heard on every side.
David Rossi rose to go. Without lifting his head, he had been conscious
that during the latter part of the King's speech many eyes were fixed
upon him. Playing with his watch-chain, he had struggled to look calm
and impassive. But his heart was sick, and he wished to get away
quickly.
A partition, shielding the door of the corridor, stood near to his seat,
and he was trying to get round it. He heard his name in the air around
him, mingled with significant trills and unmistakable accents. All at
once he was conscious of a perfume he knew, and of a girlish figure
facing him.
"Good-day, Honourable," said a voice that thrilled him like the strings
of a harp drawn tight.
He lifted his head and answered. It was Roma. Her face was lighted up
with a fire he had never seen before. Only one glance he dared to take,
but he could see that at the next instant those flashing eyes would
burst into tears.
The tide was passing out by the front doors where the carriages and the
reporters waited, but Rossi stepped round to the back. He was on the way
to the office of his newspaper, and dipping into the Corso from a lane
that crossed it, he came upon the King's carriage returning to the
Quirinal. It was entirely surrounded by soldiers, the military commander
of Rome on the right, the commander of the Carabineers on the left, and
the Cuirassiers, riding two deep, before and behind, so that the King
and Queen were scarcely visible to the cheering crowd. Last in the royal
procession came an ordinary cab containing two detectives in plain
clothes.
The office of the _Sunrise_ was in a narrow lane out of the Corso. It
was a dingy building of three floors, with the machine-rooms on the
ground-level, the composing-rooms at the top, and the editorial rooms
between. Rossi's office was a large apartment, with three desks, that
were intended for the editor and his day and night assistants.
His day assistant received him with many bows and compliments. He was a
small man with an insincere face.
Rossi drank a cup of coffee and settled to his work. It was an article
on the day's doings, more fearless and outspoken than he had ever
published before. Such a day as they had just gone through, with the
flying of flags and the playing of royal hymns, was not really a day of
joy and rejoicing, but of degradation and shame. If the people had known
what they were doing, they would have hung their flags with crape and
played funeral marches.
"Such a scene as we have witnessed to-day," he wrote, "like all such
scenes throughout the world, whether in Germany, Russia, and England, or
in China, Persia, and the darkest regions of Africa, is but proof of the
melancholy fact that while man, as the individual, has been nineteen
hundred years converted to Christianity, man, as the nation, remains to
this day for the most part utterly pagan."
The assistant editor, who had glanced over the pages of manuscript as
Rossi threw them aside, looked up at last and said:
"Are you sure, sir, that you wish to print this article?"
"Quite sure."
The man made a shrug of his shoulders, and took the copy upstairs.
The short day had closed in when Rossi was returning home. Screamers in
the streets were crying early editions of the evening papers, and the
cafes in the Corso were full of officers and civilians, sipping vermouth
and reading glowing accounts of the King's enthusiastic reception.
Pitiful! Most pitiful! And the man who dared to tell the truth must be
prepared for any consequences.
David Rossi told himself that he _was_ prepared. Henceforth he would
devote himself to the people, without a thought of what might happen.
Nothing should come between him and his work--nothing whatever--not
even ... but, no, he could not think of it!
VI
Two letters were awaiting David Rossi in his rooms at home.
One was a circular from the President of the Chamber of Deputies
summoning Parliament for the day after to-morrow to elect officials and
reply to the speech of the King.
The other was from Roma, and the address was in a large, hurried hand.
David Rossi broke the seal with nervous fingers.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I know! I know! I know now what the obstacle is.
B. gave me the hint of it on one of the days of last week, when I
was so anxious to see you and you did not come. It is your
unflinching devotion to your mission and to your public duties.
You are one of those who think that when a man has dedicated his
life to work for the world, he should give up everything
else--father, mother, wife, child--and live like a priest, who puts
away home, and love, and kindred, that others may have them more
abundantly. I can understand that, and see a sort of nobility in
it too, especially in days when the career of a statesman is only
a path to vainglory of every kind. It is great, it is glorious, it
thrills me to think of it.
"But I am losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in
spite of all my pleading. You say she is beautiful--that's well
enough, but it comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true,
and charming--and I am willing to take it all on trust. But when
you say she is noble-hearted I respectfully refuse to believe it.
If she were that, you would be sure that she would know that
friendship is the surest part of love, and to be the friend of a
great man is to be a help to him, and not an impediment.
"My gracious! What does she think you are? A _cavaliere servente_
to dance attendance on her ladyship day and night? Give me the
woman who wants her husband to be a man, with a man's work to do,
a man's burdens to bear, and a man's triumphs to win.
"Yet perhaps I am too hard on my unknown sister that is to be, or
ought to be, and it is only your own distrust that wrongs her. If
she is the daughter of one brave man and really loves another, she
knows her place and her duty. It is to be ready to follow her
husband wherever he must go, to share his fate whatever it may be,
and to live his life, because it is now her own.
"And since I am in the way of pleading for her again, let me tell
you how simple you are to suppose that because you have never
disclosed your secret she may never have guessed it. Goodness me!
To think that men who can make women love them to madness itself
can be so ignorant as not to know that a woman can always tell if
a man loves her, and even fix the very day, and hour, and minute
when he looked into her eyes and loved her first.
"And if my unknown sister that ought to be knows that you love
her, be sure that she loves you in return. Then trust her. Take
the counsel of a woman and go to her. Remember, that if you are
suffering by this separation, perhaps she is suffering too, and if
she is worthy of the love and friendship of a better man than you
are, or ever hope to be (which, without disparaging her ladyship,
I respectfully refuse to believe), let her at least have the
refusal of one or both of them.
"Good-night! I go to the Chamber of Deputies again the day after
to-morrow, being so immersed in public matters (and public men)
that I can think of nothing else at present. Happily my bust is
out of hand, and the caster (not B. this time) is hard at work on
it.
"You won't hear anything about the M---- doings, yet I assure you
they are a most serious matter. Unless I am much mistaken there is
an effort on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely
sufficiently alarming. M---- is returning to Rome, and I hear
rumours of an intention to bring pressure on some one _here_ in
the hope of leading to identification. Think of it, I beg, I
pray!--Your friend,
"R."
VII
Next day Rossi's editorial assistant came with a troubled face. There
was bad news from the office. The morning's edition of the _Sunrise_ had
been confiscated by the police owing to the article on the King's speech
and procession. The proprietors of the paper were angry with their
editor, and demanded to see him immediately.
"Tell them I'll be at the office at four o'clock, as usual," said Rossi,
and he sat down to write a letter.
It was to Roma. The moment he took up the pen to write to her the air of
the room seemed to fill with a sweet feminine presence that banished
everything else. It was like talking to her. She was beside him. He
could hear her soft replies.
"If it were possible to heighten the pain of my feelings when I
decided to sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter
like your last would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you
deal with is not the one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a
very real impediment, not altogether disposed of by the sweet and
tender womanliness with which you put it aside. In that regard
what troubles me most is the hideous inequality between what the
man gives and what he gets, and the splendid devotion with which
the woman merges her life in the life of the man she marries only
quickens the sense of his selfishness in allowing himself to
accept so great a prize.
"In my own case, the selfishness, if I yielded to it, would be
greater far than anybody else could be guilty of, and of all men
who have sacrificed women's lives to their own career, I should
feel myself to be the most guilty and inexcusable. My dear and
beloved girl is nobly born, and lives in wealth and luxury, while
I am poor--poor by choice, and therefore poor for ever, brought up
as a foundling, and without a name that I dare call my own.
"What then? Shall such a man as I am ask such a woman as she is to
come into the circle of his life, to exchange her riches for his
poverty, her comfort for his suffering? No.
"Besides, what woman could do it if I did? Women can be unselfish,
they can be faithful, they can be true; but--don't ask me to say
things I do not want to say--women love wealth and luxury and
ease, and shrink from pain and poverty and the forced marches of a
hunted life. And why shouldn't they? Heaven spare them all such
sufferings as men alone should bear!
"Yet all this is still outside the greater obstacle which stands
between me and the dear girl from whom I must separate myself now,
whatever it may cost me, as an inexorable duty. I entreat you to
spare me the pain of explaining further. Believe that for her sake
my resolution, in spite of all your sweet and charming pleading,
is strong and unalterable.
"Only one thing more. If it is as you say it may be, that she
loves me, though I had no right to believe so, that will only add
to my unhappiness in thinking of the wrench that she must suffer.
But she is strong, she is brave, she is the daughter of her
father, and I have faith in the natural power of her mind, in her
youth and the chances of life for one so beautiful and so gifted,
to remove the passing impression that may have been made.
"Good-bye yet again! And God bless you! D.
"P. S.--I am not afraid of M----, and come when he may, I shall
certainly stand my ground. There is only one person in Rome who
could be used against me in the direction you indicate, and I
could trust her with my heart's blood."
VIII
Before two o'clock next day the Chamber of Deputies was already full.
The royal chair and baldacchino had been removed, and their place was
occupied by the usual bench of the President.
When the Prime Minister took his place, cool, collected, smiling,
faultlessly dressed and wearing a flower in his button-hole, he was
greeted with some applause from the members, and the dry rustle of fans
in the ladies' tribune was distinctly heard. The leader of the
Opposition had a less marked reception, and when David Rossi glided
round the partition to his place on the extreme Left, there was a
momentary hush, followed by a buzz of voices.
Then the President of the Chamber entered, with his secretaries about
him, and took his seat in a central chair under a bust of the young
King. Ushers, wearing a linen band of red, white, and green on their
arms, followed with portfolios, and with little trays containing
water-bottles and glasses. Conversation ceased, and the President rang a
hand-bell that stood by his side, and announced that the sitting was
begun.
The first important business of the day was the reply to the speech of
the King, and the President called on the member who had been appointed
to undertake this duty. A young Deputy, a man of letters, then made his
way to a bar behind the chairs of the Ministers and read from a printed
paper a florid address to the sovereign.
Having read his printed document, the Deputy proceeded to move the
adoption of the reply.
With the proposal of the King and the Government to increase the army he
would not deal. It required no recommendation. The people were patriots.
They loved their country, and would spend the last drop of their blood
to defend it. The only persons who were not with the King in his desire
to uphold the army were the secret foes of the nation and the
dynasty--persons who were in league with their enemies.
"That," said the speaker, "brings us to the next clause of our reply to
His Majesty's gracious speech. We know that there exists among the
associations aimed at a compact between strangely varying
forces--between the forces of socialism, republicanism, unbelief, and
anarchy, and the forces of the Church and the Vatican."
At this statement there was a great commotion. Members on the Left
protested with loud shouts of "It is not true," and in a moment the
tongues and arms of the whole assembly were in motion. The President
rang his bell, and the speaker concluded.
"Let us draw the teeth of both parties to this secret conspiracy, that
they may never again use the forces of poverty and discontent to disturb
public order."
When the speaker sat down, his friends thronged around him to shake
hands with him and congratulate him.
Then the eyes of the House and of the audience in the gallery turned to
David Rossi. He had sat with folded arms and head down while his
followers screamed their protests. But passing a paper to the President,
he now rose and said:
"I ask permission to propose an amendment to the reply to the King's
speech."
"You have the word," said the President.
David Rossi read his amendment. At the feet of His Majesty it humbly
expressed an opinion that the present was not a time at which fresh
burdens should be laid upon the country for the support of the army,
with any expectation that they could be borne. Misfortune and suffering
had reached their climax. The cup of the people was full.
At this language some of the members laughed. There were cries of
"Order" and "Shame," and then the laughter was resumed. The President
rang his bell, and at length silence was secured. David Rossi began to
speak, in a voice that was firm and resolute.
"If," he said, "the statement that members of this House are in alliance
with the Pope and the Vatican is meant for me and mine, I give it a flat
denial. And, in order to have done with this calumny once and for ever,
permit me to say that between the Papacy and the people, as represented
by us, there is not, and never can be, anything in common. In temporal
affairs, the theory of the Papacy rejects the theory of the democracy.
The theory of the democracy rejects the theory of the Papacy. The one
claims a divine right to rule in the person of the Pope because he is
Pope. The other denies all divine right except that of the people to
rule themselves."
This was received with some applause mingled with laughter, and certain
shouts flung out in a shrill hysterical voice. The President rang his
bell again, and David Rossi continued.
"The proposal to increase the army," he said, "in a time of tranquillity
abroad but of discord at home, is the gravest impeachment that could be
made of the Government of a country. Under a right order of things
Parliament would be the conscience of the people, Government would be
the servant of that conscience, and rebellion would be impossible. But
this Government is the master of the country and is keeping the people
down by violence and oppression. Parliament is dead. For God's sake let
us bury it!"
Loud shouts followed this outburst, and some of the Deputies rose from
their seats, and crowding about the speaker in the open space in front,
yelled and screamed at him like a pack of hounds. He stood calm, playing
with his watch-chain, while the President rang his bell and called for
silence. The interruptions died down at last, and the speaker went on:
"If you ask me what is the reason of the discontent which produces the
crimes of anarchism, I say, first, the domination of a Government which
is absolute, and the want of liberty of speech and meeting. In other
countries the discontented are permitted to manifest their woes, and are
not punished unless they commit deeds of violence; but in Italy alone,
except Russia, a man may be placed outside the law, torn from his home,
from the bedside of his nearest and dearest, and sent to _domicilio
coatto_ to live or die in a silence as deep as that of the grave. Oh, I
know what I am saying. I have been in the midst of it. I have seen a
father torn from his daughter, and the motherless child left to the
mercy of his enemies."
This allusion quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead
silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the
President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters
rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised,
pointing at the same time to the ladies' tribune.
One of the ladies had cried out. David Rossi heard the voice, and, when
he began again, his own voice was softer and more tremulous.
"Next, I say that the cause of anarchism in Italy, as everywhere else,
is poverty. Wait until the 1st of February, and you shall see such an
army enter Rome as never before invaded it. I assert that within three
miles of this place, at the gates of this capital of Christendom, human
beings are living lives more abject than that of savage man.
"Housed in huts of straw, sleeping on mattresses of leaves, clothed in
rags or nearly nude, fed on maize and chestnuts and acorns, worked
eighteen hours a day, and sweated by the tyranny of the overseers, to
whom landlords lease their lands while they idle their days in the
_salons_ of Rome and Paris, men and women and children are being treated
worse than slaves, and beaten more than dogs."
At that there was a terrific uproar, shouts of "It's a lie!" and
"Traitor!" followed by a loud outbreak of jeers and laughter. Then, for
the first time, David Rossi lost control of himself, and, turning upon
Parliament with flaming eyes and quivering voice, he cried:
"You take these statements lightly--you that don't know what it is to be
hungry, you that have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest
it. But _I_ know these things by bitter knowledge--by experience. Don't
talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and
comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a
poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the
miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the
Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At
the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living
lives of moral anaemia and physical atrophy more terrible by far than
those which made the pagan poet say two thousand years ago--_Paucis
vivit humanum genus_--the human race exists for the benefit of the few."
The silence was breathless while the speaker made this personal
reference, and when he sat down, after a denunciation of the militarism
which was consuming the heart of the civilised world, the House was too
dazed to make any manifestation.
In the dead hush that followed, the President put the necessary
questions, but the amendment fell through without a vote being taken,
and the printed reply was passed.
Then the Minister of War rose to give notice of his bill for increased
military expenditure, and proposed to hand it over to the general
committee of the budget.
The Baron Bonelli rose next as Minister of the Interior, and gave notice
of his bill for the greater security of the public, and the remodelling
of the laws of the press and of association.
He spoke incisively and bitterly, and he was obviously excited, but he
affected his usual composure.
"After the language we have heard to-day," he said, "and the knowledge
we possess of mass meetings projected, it will not surprise the House
that I treat this measure as urgent, and propose that we consider it on
the principle of the three readings, taking the first of them in four
days."
At that there were some cries from the Left, but the Minister continued:
"It will also not surprise the House that, to prevent the obstruction of
members who seem ready to sing their Miserere without end, I will ask
the House to take the readings without debate."
Then in a moment the whole House was in an uproar and members were
shaking their fists in each other's faces. In vain the President rang
his bell for silence. At length he put on his hat and left the Chamber,
and the sitting was at an end.
IX
The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma.
"MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,--It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown
and invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and
oughtn't to be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell
me that she is good and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would
have me believe that she loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and
that she could not give them up even for the sweetest thing that
ever comes into a woman's life. Out on her! What does she think a
wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be dressed up and danced
on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is, I know what I
should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and the point
of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have it
out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any
more about the bravery of a woman like that.
"The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what
that means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless
lengths of friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between
him and her, and differences of class do not exist for either of
them. Her pride died the instant love looked out of her eyes at
him, and if people taunt her with his poverty, or his birth, she
answers and says: 'It's true he is poor, but his glory is, that he
was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or mother to care for him,
and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him, and not all the
wealth of the world shall take me away.'
"One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be,
and that is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that
she is going to reconcile herself to your separation while she is
kept in the dark as to the cause of it. It is all very well for
you to pay compliments to her beauty and youth and the natural
strength of her mind to remove passing impressions, but perhaps
the impressions are the reverse of passing ones, and if you go out
of her life, what is to become of her? Have you thought of that?
Of course you haven't.
"No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In
my darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am
she and she is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't
for nothing I was a daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for
her and beaten you out and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go
to her?' You will--I know you will.
"My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine,
but I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul
was not there, and I was injuring the face at every touch.
"No further news of M----, and my heart's blood is cold at the
silence. But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?--Your
friend's friend, R."
X
Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma.
"My Dearest,--Bruno will take this letter, and I will charge him
on his soul to deliver it safely into your hands. When you have
read it, you will destroy it immediately, both for your sake and
my own.
"From this moment onward I throw away all disguises. The
duplicities of love are sweet and touching, but I cannot play
hide-and-seek with you any longer.
"You are right--it is you that I love, and little as I understand
and deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and
strength. I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is
madness to do so, for the obstacles to our union are just as
insurmountable as before.
"It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that
separates us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only
the inequality of our birth and social conditions, though that is
an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a
barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death.
"Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by
disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even
while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and
most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of
life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for
him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every
embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss
the chill breath of the tomb.
"Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her
miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of
God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things
well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable,
without hope or dreams.
"Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here
first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt
at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported
without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them
in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of
the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death.
"I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's
name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws
of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have
never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me
still, and though the court which condemned me was a military
court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I
see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in
five, ten, twenty years in a cell.
"What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor
consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late,
conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging
myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel,
it would be wrong and wicked.
"No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or
liberty is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament
and in public life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter
that you have written to me shows plainly that you know it. And
when you say your heart's blood runs cold at the thought of what
may happen when Minghelli returns from England, you betray the
weakness, the natural weakness, the tender and womanly weakness,
which justifies me in saying that, as long as we love each other,
you and I should never meet again.
"Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that
hangs over me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In
every true cause some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the
right, for humanity, to lay down all you hold most dear for the
sake of the poor and the weak and the down-trodden and God's holy
justice--it is a magnificent duty, a privilege! And I am ready. If
my death is enough, let me give the last drop of my blood, and be
dragged through the last degrees of infamy. Only don't let me drag
another after me, and endanger a life that is a thousand times
dearer to me than my own.
"I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is
certain; it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be
there; _it may come to me to-morrow_, or next day, or next year,
but it is coming, I feel it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly
away. But if I go on until my beloved is my bride, and my name is
stamped all over her, and she has taken up my fate, and we are
one, and the world knows no difference, what then? Then death with
its sure step will come in to separate us, and after death for me,
danger, shame, poverty for you, all the penalties a woman pays for
her devotion to a man who is down and done.
"I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It
would turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the
grave itself.
"Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting
myself with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams
like other men--dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man
for his support--the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm
and tempest, and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman
is equal to a lot like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all
women safe from it!
"Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on
reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied
at last that the obstacles to our union are permanent and
insuperable. The time is come when I am forced to tell you the
secrets which I have never before revealed to any human soul. You
know them now. _They are in your keeping, and it is enough._
"Heaven be over you! And when you are reconciled to our
separation, and both of us are strong, remember that if you want
me I will come, and that as long as I live, as long as I am at
liberty, I shall be always ready, always waiting, always near. God
bless you, my dear one! Adieu!
"DAVID LEONE."
During the afternoon of the following day a letter came by a flying
messenger on a bicycle. It was written in pencil in large and straggling
characters.
"DEAR MR. ROSSI,--Your letter has arrived and been read, and, yes,
it has been destroyed, too, according to your wish, although the
flames that burnt it burnt my hand also, and scorched my heart as
well.
"No doubt you have done wisely. You know better than I do what is
best for both of us, and I yield, I submit. Only--and therefore--I
must see you immediately. There is a matter of some consequence on
which I wish to speak. It has nothing to do with the subject of
your letter--nothing directly, at all events--or yet is it in any
way related to the Minghelli mischief-making. So you may receive
me without fear. And you will find me with a heart at ease.
"Didn't I tell you that if you wouldn't come to me I must go to
you? Expect me this evening about Ave Maria, and arrange it that I
may see you alone.
"ROMA V."
XI
As Ave Maria approached, David Rossi became still more agitated. The sky
had darkened, but there was no wind; the air was empty, and he listened
with strained attention for every sound from the staircase and the
street. At length he heard a cab stop at the door, and a moment
afterwards a light hurrying footstep in the outer room seemed to beat
upon his heart.
The door opened and Roma came in quickly, with a scarcely audible
salutation. He saw her with her golden complexion and her large violet
eyes, wearing a black hat and an astrachan coat, but his head was going
round and his pulses were beating violently, and he could not control
his eyes.
"I have come for a minute only," she said. "You received my letter?"
Rossi bent his head.
"David, I want the fulfilment of your promise."
"What promise?"
"The promise to come to me when I stand in need of you. I need you now.
My fountain is practically finished, and to-morrow afternoon I am to
have a reception to exhibit it. Everybody will be there, and I want you
to be present also."
"Is that necessary?" he asked.
"For my purposes, yes. Don't ask me why. Don't question me at all. Only
trust me and come."
She was speaking in a firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that
her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly
flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that
before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only
answered, after a brief pause:
"Very well, I will be there."
"That's all. I might have written, but I was afraid you might object,
and I wished to make quite certain. Adieu!"
He had only bowed to her as she entered, and now she was going away
without offering her hand.
"Roma," he said, in a voice that sounded choked.
She stopped but did not speak, and he felt himself growing hot all over.
"I'm relieved--so much relieved--to hear that you agree with what I said
in my letter."
"The last--in which you wish me to forget you?"
"It is better so--far better. I am one of those who think that if either
party to a marriage"--he was talking in a constrained way--"entertains
beforehand any rational doubt about it, he is wiser to withdraw, even at
the church door, rather than set out on a life-long voyage under doubtful
auspices."
"Didn't we promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then
their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself
and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery.
"Roma," he said again, "if you want me in the future you must write."
Her face clouded over.
"For your own sake, you know...."
"Oh, that! That's nothing at all--nothing now."
"But people are insulting me about you, and...."
"Well--and you?"
The colour rushed to his cheeks and he smote the back of a chair with
his clenched fist.
"I tell them...."
"I understand," she said, and her eyes began to shine again. But she
only turned away, saying: "I'm sorry you are angry that I came."
"Angry!" he cried, and at the sound of his voice as he said the word
their love for each other went thrilling through and through them.
The rain had begun to fall, and it was beating with smart strokes on the
window panes.
"You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again
there is something you ought to hear."
She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on
to her shoulders.
The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was
bubbling like a lake.
"The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the
matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that
you should hear it now."
Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her
lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy
hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty.
Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed
himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is,"
he thought. "What is the meaning of it?"
He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet.
"Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked.
"That is all I do remember about my father. Why?"
"It is here in this cylinder."
She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again.
"Tell me," she said.
"When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner
at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The
legal term of _domicilio coatto_ is from one year to five, but excuses
were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come
and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the
world outside."
"Did he ever hear of me?"
"Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David
Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised
David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send
me a message."
"Was it about...."
"Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out
by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a
way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to
one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet
at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were
certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the
time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the
cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to."
With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular
cardboard-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust,"
and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only--to
be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him."
The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying
fire he could see that her face had turned white.
"And this contains my father's voice?" she said.
"His last message."
"He is dead--two years dead--and yet...."
"Can you bear to hear it?"
"Go on," she said, hardly audibly.
He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the
instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain,
lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the
machine began.
He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm.
Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a
clear, full voice:
"David Leone--your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying
message...."
The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking
whisper, Roma said:
"Wait! Give me one moment."
She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a
ghostly presence.
She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast.
"I am better now. Go on," she said.
The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came
as before:
"My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled
faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was
meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long
a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was
the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies,
nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England _as_
Volonna--nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma."
The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim.
"Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has
happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter
which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the
police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for
his treachery."
"The Baron?"
Rossi had stopped the phonograph.
"Can you bear it?" he said.
The pale young face flushed with resolution.
"Go on," she said.
When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and
husky than before.
"After he had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity
prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all
hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the
streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the
guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to
the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the
name of my beloved child."
The hand on Rossi's arm trembled feebly, and slipped down to his own
hand. It was cold as ice. The voice from the phonograph was growing
faint.
"She is now in Rome, living in the name that was mine in Italy, amid an
atmosphere of danger and perhaps of shame. My son, save her from it. The
man who betrayed the father may betray the daughter also. Take her from
him. Rescue her. It is my dying prayer."
The hand in Rossi's hand was holding it tightly, and his blood was
throbbing at his heart.
"David," the voice from the phonograph was failing rapidly, "when this
shall come to your hands the darkness of the grave will be over me....
In my great distress of mind I torture myself with many terrors.... Do
not trifle with my request. But whatever you decide to do ... be gentle
with the child.... I dream of her every night, and send my heart's heart
to her on the swelling tides of love.... Adieu, my son. The end is near.
God be with you in all you do that I did ill or left undone. And if
death's great sundering does not annihilate the memory of those who
remain on earth, be sure you have a helper and an advocate in heaven."
The voice ceased, the whirring of the instrument came to an end, and an
invisible spirit seemed to fade into the air. The pattering of the rain
had stopped, and there was the crackle of cab wheels on the pavement
below. Roma had dropped Rossi's hand, and was leaning forward on her
knees with both hands over her face. After a moment, she wiped her eyes
with her handkerchief and began to put on her hat.
"How long is it since you received this message?" she said.
"On the night you came here first."
"And when I asked you to come to my house on that ... that useless
errand, you were thinking of ... of my father's request as well?"
"Yes."
"You have known all this about the Baron for a month, yet you have said
nothing. _Why_ have you said nothing?"
"You wouldn't have believed me at first, whatever I had said against
him."
"But afterwards?"
"Afterwards I had another reason."
"Did it concern me?"
"Yes."
"And now?"
"Now that I have to part from you I am compelled to tell you what he
is."
"But if you had known that all this time he has been trying to use
somebody against you...."
"That would have made no difference."
She lifted her head, and a look of fire, almost of fierceness, came into
her face, but she only said, with a little hysterical cry, as if her
throat were swelling:
"Come to me to-morrow, David! Be sure you come! If you don't come I
shall never, never forgive you! But you will come! You will! You will!"
And then, as if afraid of breaking out into sobs, she turned quickly and
hurried away.
"She can never fall into that man's hands now," he thought. And then he
lit his lamp and sat down to his work, but the light was gone, and the
night had fallen on him.
XII
Next morning David Rossi had not yet risen when some one knocked at his
door. It was Bruno. The great fellow looked nervous and troubled, and he
spoke in a husky whisper.
"You're not going to Donna Roma's to-day, sir?"
"Why not, Bruno?"
"Have you seen her bust of yourself?"
"Hardly at all."
"Just so. My case, too. She has taken care of that--locking it up every
night, and getting another caster to cast it. But I saw it the first
morning after she began, and I know what it is."
"What is it, Bruno?"
"You'll be angry again, sir."
"What is it?"
"Judas--that's what it is, sir; the study for Judas in the fountain for
the Municipality."
"Is that all?"
"All?... But it's a caricature, a spiteful caricature! And you sat four
days and never even looked at it! I tell you it's disgusting, sir.
Simply disgusting. It's been done on purpose, too. When I think of it I
forget all you said, and I hate the woman as much as ever. And now she
is to have a reception, and you are going to it, just to help her to
have her laugh. Don't go, sir! Take the advice of a fool, and don't
go!"
"Bruno," said Rossi, lying with his head on his arm, "understand me once
for all. Donna Roma may have used my head as a study for Judas--I cannot
deny that since you say it is so--but if she had used it as a study for
Satan, I would believe in her the same as ever."
"You would?"
"Yes, by God! So now, like a good fellow, go away and leave her alone."
The streets were more than usually full of people when Rossi set out for
the reception. Thick groups were standing about the hoardings, reading a
yellow placard, which was still wet with the paste of the bill-sticker.
It was a proclamation, signed by the Minister of the Interior, and it
ran:
"ROMANS,--It having come to the knowledge of the Government that a
set of misguided men, the enemies of the throne and of society,
known to be in league with the republican, atheist, and anarchist
associations of foreign countries, are inciting the people to
resist the just laws made by their duly elected Parliament, and
sanctioned by their King, thus trying to lead them into outbreaks
that would be unworthy of a cultivated and generous race, and
would disgrace us in the view of other nations--the Government
hereby give notice that they will not allow the laws to be
insulted with impunity, and therefore they warn the public against
the holding of all such mass meetings in public buildings,
squares, and streets, as may lead to the possibility of serious
disturbances."
XIII
The little Piazza of Trinita de' Monti was full of carriages, and Roma's
rooms were thronged. David Rossi entered with the calmness of a man who
is accustomed to personal observation, but Roma met him with an almost
extravagant salutation.
"Ah, you have come at last," she said in a voice that was intended to be
heard by all. And then, in a low tone, she added, "Stay near me, and
don't go until I say you may."
Her face had the expression that had puzzled him the day before, but
with the flushed cheeks, the firm mouth and the shining eyes, there was
now a strange look of excitement, almost of hysteria.
The company was divided into four main groups. The first of them
consisted of Roma's aunt, powdered and perfumed, propped up with
cushions on an invalid chair, and receiving the guests by the door, with
the Baron Bonelli, silent and dignified, but smiling his icy smile, by
her side. A second group consisted of Don Camillo and some ladies of
fashion, who stood by the window and made little half-smothered trills
of laughter. The third group included Lena and Olga, the journalists,
with Madame Sella, the modiste; and the fourth group was made up of the
English and American Ambassadors, Count Mario, and some other
diplomatists.
The conversation was at first interrupted by the little pauses that
follow fresh arrivals; and after it had settled down to the dull buzz of
a beehive, when the old brood and her queen are being turned out, it
consisted merely of hints, giving the impression of something in the air
that was scandalous and amusing, but could not be talked about.
"Have you heard that" ... "Is it true that" ... "No?" "Can it be
possible?" "How delicious!" and then inaudible questions and low
replies, with tittering, tapping of fans, and insinuating glances.
But Roma seemed to hear everything that was said about her, and
constantly broke in upon a whispered conversation with disconcerting
openness.
"That man here!" said one of the journalists at Rossi's entrance. "In
the same room with the Prime Minister!" said another. "After that
disgraceful scene in the House, too!"
"I hear that he was abominably rude to the Baron the other day," said
Madame Sella.
"Rude? He has blundered shockingly, and offended everybody. They tell me
the Vatican is now up in arms against him, and is going to denounce him
and all his ways."
"No wonder! He has made himself thoroughly disagreeable, and I'm only
surprised that the Prime Minister...."
"Oh, leave the Prime Minister alone. He has something up his sleeve....
Haven't you heard why we are invited here to-day? No? Not heard that...."
"Really! So that explains ... I see, I see!" and then more tittering and
tapping of fans.
"Certainly, he is an extraordinary man, and one of the first statesmen
in Europe."
"It's so unselfish of you to say that," said Roma, flashing round
suddenly, "for the Minister has never been a friend of journalists, and
I've heard him say that there wasn't one of them who wouldn't sell his
mother's honour if he thought he could make a sensation."
"Love?" said the voice of Don Camillo in the silence that followed
Roma's remark. "What has marriage to do with love except to spoil it?"
And then, amidst laughter, and the playful looks of the ladies by whom
he was surrounded, he gave a gay picture of his own poverty, and the
necessity of marrying to retrieve his fortunes.
"What would you have? Look at my position! A great name, as ancient as
history, and no income. A gorgeous palace, as old as the pyramids, and
no cook!"
"Don't be so conceited about your poverty, Gi-gi," said Roma. "Some of
the Roman ladies are as poor as the men. As for me, Madame Sella could
sell up every stick in my house to-morrow, and if the Municipality
should throw up my fountain...."
"Senator Palomba," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door.
The suave, oily little Mayor came in, twinkling his eyes and saying:
"Did I hear my name as I entered?"
"I was saying," said Roma, "that if the Municipality should throw up my
fountain...."
The little man made an amusing gesture, and the constrained silence was
broken by some awkward laughter.
"Roma," said the testy voice of the Countess, "I think I've done my duty
by you, and now the Baron will take me back. Natalina! Where's
Natalina?"
But half-a-dozen hands took hold of the invalid chair, and the Baron
followed it into the bedroom.
"Wonderful man!" "Wonderful!" whispered various voices as the Minister's
smile disappeared through the door.
The conversation had begun to languish when the Princess Bellini
arrived, and then suddenly it became lively and general.
"I'm late, but do you know, my dear," she said, kissing Roma on both
cheeks, "I've been nearly torn to pieces in coming. My carriage had to
plough its way through crowds of people."
"Crowds?"
"Yes, indeed, and the streets are nearly impassable. Another
demonstration, I suppose! The poor must always be demonstrating."
"Ah! yes," said Don Camillo. "Haven't you heard the news, Roma?"
"I've been working all night and all day, and I have heard nothing,"
said Roma.
"Well, to prevent a recurrence of the disgraceful scene of yesterday,
the King has promulgated the Public Security Act by royal decree, and
the wonderful crisis is at an end."
"And now?"
"Now the Prime Minister is master of the situation, and has begun by
proclaiming the mass meeting which was to have been held in the
Coliseum."
"Good thing too," said Count Mario. "We've heard enough of liberal
institutions lately."
"And of the scandalous speeches of professional agitators," said Madame
Sella.
"And of the liberty of the press," said Senator Palomba. And then the
effeminate old dandy, the fashionable dressmaker, and the oily little
Mayor exchanged significant nods.
"Wait! Only wait!" said Roma, in a low voice, to Rossi, who was standing
in silence by her side.
"Unhappy Italy!" said the American Ambassador. "With the largest array
of titled nobility and the largest army of beggars. The one class
sipping iced drinks in the piazzas during the playing of music, and the
other class marching through the streets and conspiring against
society."
"You judge us from a foreign standpoint, dear friend," said Don Camillo,
"and forget our love of a pageant. The Princess says our poor are always
demonstrating. We are all always demonstrating. Our favourite
demonstration is a funeral, with drums beating and banners waving. If we
cannot have a funeral we have a wedding, with flowers and favours and
floods of tears. And when we cannot have either, we put up with a
revolution, and let our Radical orators tell us of the wickedness of
taxing the people's bread."
"Always their bread," said the Princess, with a laugh.
"In America, dear General, you are so tragically sincere, but in Italy
we are a race of actors. The King, the Parliament, the Pope himself...."
"Shocking!" said the little Princess. "But if you had said as much of
our professional agitators...."
"Oh, they are the most accomplished and successful actors, Princess.
But we are all actors in Italy, from the greatest to the least, and the
'curtain' is to him who can score off everybody else."
"So," began the American, "to be Prime Minister in Rome...."
"Is to be the chief actor in Europe, and his leading part is that in
which he puts an end to his adversary amidst a burst of inextinguishable
laughter."
"What is he driving at?" said the English to the American Ambassador.
"Don't you know? Haven't you heard what is coming?" And then some
further whispering.
"Wait, only wait!" said Roma.
"Gi-gi," said the Princess, "how stupid you are! You're all wrong about
Roma. Look at her now. To think that men can be so blind! And the Baron
is no better than the rest of you. He's too proud to believe what I tell
him, but he'll learn the truth some day. He is here, of course? In the
Countess's room, isn't he?... How do you like my dress?"
"It's perfect."
"Really? The black and the blue make a charming effect, don't they? They
are the Baron's favourite colours. How agitated our hostess is! She
seems to have all the world here. When are we to see the wonderful work?
What's she waiting for? Ah, there's the Baron coming out at last!"
"They're all here, aren't they?" said Roma, looking round with flushed
cheeks and flaming eyes at the jangling, slandering crew, who had
insulted and degraded David Rossi.
"Take care," he answered, but she only threw up her head and laughed.
Then the company went down the circular iron staircase to the studio.
Roma walked first with her rapid step, talking nervously and laughing
frequently.
The fountain stood in the middle of the floor, and the guests gathered
about it.
"Superb!" they exclaimed one after another. "Superb!" "Superb!"
The little Mayor was especially enthusiastic. He stood near the Baron,
and holding up both hands he cried:
"Marvellous! Miraculous! Fit to take its place beside the masterpieces
of old Rome!"
"But surely this is 'Hamlet' without the prince," said the Baron. "You
set out to make a fountain representing Christ and His twelve apostles,
and the only figure you leave unfinished is Christ Himself."
He pointed to the central figure above the dish, which was merely shaped
out and indicated.
"Not only one, your Excellency," said Don Camillo. "Here is another
unfinished figure--intended for Judas, apparently."
"I left them to the last on purpose," said Roma. "They were so
important, and so difficult. But I have studies for both of them in the
boudoir, and you shall give me your advice and opinion."
"The saint and the satyr, the God and the devil, the betrayed and the
betrayer--what subjects for the chisel of the artist!" said Don Camillo.
"Just so," said the Mayor. "She must do the one with all the emotions of
love, and the other with all the faculties of hate."
"Not that art," said Don Camillo, "has anything to do with life--that is
to say, real life...."
"Why not?" said Roma sharply. "The artist has to live in the world, and
he isn't blind. Therefore, why shouldn't he describe what he sees around
him?"
"But is that art? If so, the artist is at liberty to give his views on
religion and politics, and by the medium of his art he may even express
his private feelings--return insults and wreak revenge."
"Certainly he may," said Roma; "the greatest artists have often done
so." Saying this, she led the way upstairs, and the others followed with
a chorus of hypocritical approval.
"It's only human, to say the least." "Of course it is!" "If she's a
woman and can't speak out, or fight duels, it's a lady-like way, at all
events." And then further tittering, tapping of fans, and significant
nods at Rossi when his back was turned.
Two busts stood on pedestals in the boudoir. One of them was covered
with a damp cloth, the other with a muslin veil. Going up to the latter
first, Roma said, with a slightly quavering voice:
"It was so difficult to do justice to the Christ that I am almost sorry
I made the attempt. But it came easier when I began to think of some one
who was being reviled and humiliated and degraded because he was poor
and wasn't ashamed of it, and who was always standing up for the weak
and the down-trodden, and never returning anybody's insult, however
shameful and false and wicked, because he wasn't thinking of himself at
all. So I got the best model I could in real life, and this is the
result."
With that she pulled off the muslin veil and revealed the sculptured
head of David Rossi, in a snow-white plaster cast. The features
expressed pure nobility, and every touch was a touch of sympathy and
love.
A moment of chilling silence was followed by an under-breath of gossip.
"Who is it?" "Christ, of course." "Oh, certainly, but it reminds me of
some one." "Who can it be?" "The Pope?" "Why, no; don't you see who it
is?" "Is it really?" "How shameful!" "How blasphemous!"
Roma stood looking on with a face lighted up by two flaming eyes. "I'm
afraid you don't think I've done justice to my model," she said. "That's
quite true. But perhaps my Judas will please you better," and she
stepped up to the bust that was covered by the wet cloth.
"I found this a difficult subject also, and it was not until yesterday
evening that I felt able to begin on it."
Then, with a hand that trembled visibly, she took from the wall the
portrait of her father, and offering it to the Minister, she said:
"Some one told me a story of duplicity and treachery--it was about this
poor old gentleman, Baron--and then I knew what sort of person it was
who betrayed his friend and master for thirty pieces of silver, and
listened to the hypocrisy, and flattery, and lying of the miserable
group of parasites who crowded round him because he was a traitor, and
because he kept the purse."
With that she threw off the damp cloth, and revealed the clay model of a
head. The face was unmistakable, but it expressed every
baseness--cunning, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality.
The silence was freezing, and the company began to turn away, and to
mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the
Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A
scarecrow!"
Roma watched them for a moment, and then said: "You don't like my Judas?
Neither do I. You're right--it _is_ disgusting."
And taking up in both hands a piece of thin wire, she cut the clay
across, and the upper part of it fell face downward with a thud on to
the floor.
The Princess, who stood by the side of the Baron, offered him her
sympathy, and he answered in his icy smile:
"But these artists are all slightly insane, you know. That is an evil
which must be patiently endured, without noticing too much the ludicrous
side of it."
Then, stepping up to Roma, and handing back the portrait, the Baron
said, with a slight frown:
"I must thank you for a very amusing afternoon, and bid you good-day."
The others looked after him, and interpreted his departure according to
their own feelings. "He is done with her," they whispered. "He'll pay
her out for this." And without more ado they began to follow him.
Roma, flushed and excited, bowed to them as they went out one by one,
with a politeness that was demonstrative to the point of caricature. She
was saying farewell to them for ever, and her face was lighted up with a
look of triumphant joy. They tried to bear themselves bravely as they
passed her, but her blazing eyes and sweeping curtseys made them feel as
if they were being turned out of the house.
When they were all gone, she shut the door with a bang, and then turning
to David Rossi, who alone remained, she burst into a flood of hysterical
tears, and threw herself on to her knees at his feet.
XIV
"David!" she cried.
"Don't do that. Get up," he answered.
His thoughts were in a whirl. He had been standing aside, trembling for
Roma as he had never trembled for himself in the hottest moments of his
public life. And now he was alone with her, and his blood was beating in
his breast in stabs.
"Haven't I done enough?" she cried. "You taunted me with my wealth, but
I am as poor as you are now. Every penny I had in the world came from
the Baron. He allowed me to use part of the revenues of my father's
estates, but the income was under his control, and now he will stop it
altogether. I am in debt. I have always been in debt. That was my
benefactor's way of reminding me of my dependence on his bounty. And now
all _I_ have will be sold to satisfy my creditors, and I shall be turned
out homeless."
"Roma...." he began, but her tears and passion bore down everything.
"House, furniture, presents, carriages, horses, everything will go soon,
and I shall have nothing whatever! No matter! You said a woman loved
ease and wealth and luxury. Is that all a woman loves? Is there nothing
else in the world for any of us? Aren't you satisfied with me at last?"
"Roma," he answered, breathing hard, "don't talk like that. I cannot
bear it."
But she did not listen. "You taunted me with being a woman," she said
through a fresh burst of tears. "A woman was incapable of friendship and
sacrifices. She was intended to be a man's plaything. Do you think I
want to be my husband's mistress? I want to be his wife, to share his
fate, whatever it may be, for good or bad, for better or worse."
"For God's sake, Roma!" he cried. But she broke in on him again.
"You taunted me with the dangers you had to go through, as if a woman
must needs be an impediment to her husband, and try to keep him back. Do
you think I want my husband to do nothing? If he were content with that
he would not be the man I had loved, and I should despise him and leave
him."
"Roma!..."
"Then _you_ taunted me with the death that hangs over you. When you were
gone I should be left to the mercy of the world. But that can never
happen. Never! Do you think a woman can outlive the man she loves as I
love you?... There! I've said it. You've shamed me into it."
He could not speak now. His words were choking in his throat, and she
went on in a torrent of tears:
"The death that threatens you comes from no fault of yours, but only
from your fidelity to my father. Therefore I have a right to share it,
and I will not live when you are dead."
"If I give way now," he thought, "all is over."
And clenching his hands behind his back to keep himself from throwing
his arms around her, he began in a low voice:
"Roma, you have broken your promise to me."
"I _don't_ care," she interrupted. "I would break ten thousand
promises. I deceived you. I confess it. I pretended to be reconciled to
your will, and I was not reconciled. I wanted you to see me strip myself
of all I had, that you might have no answer and excuse. Well, you have
seen me do it, and now ... what are you going to do _now_?"
"Roma," he began again, trembling all over, "there have been two men in
me all this time, and one of them has been trying to protect you from
the world and from yourself, while the other ... the other has been
wanting you to despise all his objections, and trample them under your
feet.... If I could only believe that you know all you are doing, all
the risk you are running, and the fate you are willing to share ... but
no, it is impossible."
"David," she cried, "you love me! If you didn't love me, I should know
it now--at this moment. But I am braver than you are...."
"Let me go. I cannot answer for myself."
"I am braver than you are, for I have not only stripped myself of all my
possessions, and of all my friends ... I have even compromised myself
again and again, and been daring and audacious, and rude to everybody
for your sake.... I, a woman ... while you, a man ... you are afraid ...
yes, afraid ... you are a coward--that's it, a coward!... No, no, no!
What am I saying?... David Leone!"
And with a cry of passion and remorse she flung both arms about his
neck.
He had stood, during this fierce struggle of love and pain, holding
himself in until his throbbing nerves could bear the strain no longer.
"Come to me, then--come to me," he cried, and at the moment when she
threw herself upon him he stretched out his arms to receive her.
"You do love me?" she said.
"Indeed, yes! And you?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
He clasped her in his arms with redoubled ardour, and pressed her to his
breast and kissed her. The love so long pent up was bursting out like a
liberated cataract that sweeps the snow and the ice before it.
All at once the girl who had been so brave in the great battle of her
love became weak and womanish in the moment of her victory. Under the
warmth of his tenderness she dropped her head on to his breast to
conceal her face in her shame.
"You will never think the worse of me?" she faltered.
"The worse of you! For loving me?"
"For telling you so and forcing myself into your life?"
"My darling, no!"
She lifted her head, and he kissed away the tears that were shining in
her eyes.
"But tell me," he said, "are you sure--quite sure? Do you know what is
before you?"
"I only know I love you."
He folded her afresh in his strong embrace, and kissed her head as it
lay on his breast.
"Think again," he said. "A man's enemies can be merciless. They may
watch you and put pressure upon you, and even humiliate you for my
sake."
"No matter, I am not afraid," she answered, and again he tightened his
arms about her in a passionate embrace, and covered her hair and her
neck and her hands and her finger-tips with kisses.
They did not speak for a long time after that. There was no need for
words. He was conquered, yet he was conqueror, and she was happy and at
peace. The long fight was over, and everything was well.
He put her to sit in a chair, and sat himself on the arm of it, with his
face to her face, and her arms still round his neck. It was like a
dream. She could scarcely believe it. He whom she had looked up to with
adoration was caressing her. She was like a child in her joy, blushing
and half afraid.
He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead. She threw back
her head that she might put her lips to his forehead in return, and he
kissed her full, round throat.
Then they exchanged rings as the sign of their eternal union. When she
put her diamond ring, set in gold, on to his finger, he looked grave and
even sad; but when he put his plain silver one on to hers, she lifted up
her glorified hand to the light, and kissed and kissed it.
They began to talk in low tones, as if some one had been listening. It
was the whispering of their hearts, for the angel of happy love has no
voice louder than a whisper. She asked him to say again that he loved
her, but as soon as he began to say it she stopped his mouth with a
kiss.
They talked of their love. She was sure she had loved him before he
loved her, and when he said that he had loved her always, she protested
in that case he did not love her at all.
They rose at length to close the windows, and side by side, his arm
about her waist, her head leaning lightly on his shoulder, they stood
for a moment looking out. The mother of cities lay below in its
lightsome whiteness, and over the ridge of its encircling hills the glow
of the departing sun was rising in vaporous tints of amber and crimson
into the transparent blue, with the dome of St. Peter's, like a balloon
ready to rise into a celestial sky.
"A storm is coming," he said, looking at the colours in the sunset.
"It has come and gone," she whispered, and then his arm folded closer
about her waist.
It took him half-an-hour to say adieu. After the last kiss and the last
handshake, their arms would stretch out to the utmost limit, and then
close again for another and another and yet another embrace.
XV
When at length Rossi was gone, Roma ran into her bedroom to look at her
face in the glass. The golden complexion was heightened by a bright spot
on either cheek, and a teardrop was glistening in the corner of each of
her eyes.
She went back to the boudoir. David Rossi was no longer there, but the
room seemed to be full of his presence. She sat in the chair again, and
again she stood by the window. At length she opened her desk and wrote a
letter:--
"DEAREST,--You are only half-an-hour gone, and here I am sending
this letter after you, like a handkerchief you had forgotten. I
have one or two things to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple
things, but I cannot think of them sensibly for joy of the
certainty that you love me. Of course I knew it all the time, but
I couldn't be at ease until I had heard it from your own lips; and
now I feel almost afraid of my great happiness. How wonderful it
seems! And, like all events that are long expected, how suddenly
it has happened in the end. To think that a month ago--only a
little month--you and I were both in Rome, within a mile of each
other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed
by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it!
"Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said
so savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your
anxiety about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of
the women who think that a wife should further a man's aims in
life if she can; and if she can't do that, she should stand aside
and not impede him. So go on, dear heart, without fear for me. I
will take care of myself, whatever occurs. Don't let one hour or
one act of your life be troubled by the thought of what would
happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am your beloved, but I
am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow where my captain
calls:
"'Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love!
Think thy thought.'
"And if I was not half afraid that you would think it bolder than
is modest in your bride to be, I would go on with the next lines
of my sweet quotation.
"Another thing. You went away without saying you forgive me for
the wicked duplicity I practised upon you. It was very wrong, I
suppose, and yet for my life I cannot get up any real contrition
on the subject. There's always some duplicity in a woman. It is
the badge of every daughter of Eve, and it must come out
somewhere. In my case it came out in loving you to all the lengths
and ends of love, and drawing you on to loving me. I ought to be
ashamed, but I'm not--I'm glad.
"I _did_ love first, and, of course, I knew you from the
beginning, and when you wrote about being in love with some one
else, I knew quite well you meant me. But it was so delicious to
pretend not to know, to come near and then to sheer off again, to
touch and then to fly, to tempt you and then to run away, until a
strong tide rushed at me and overwhelmed me, and I was swooning in
your arms at last.
"Dearest, don't think I made light of the obstacles you urged
against our union. I knew all the time that the risks of marriage
were serious, though perhaps I am not in a position even yet to
realise how serious they may be. Only I knew also that the dangers
were greater still if we kept apart, and that gave me courage to
be bold and to defy conventions.
"Which brings me to my last point, and please prepare to be
serious, and bend your brow to that terrible furrow which comes
when you are fearfully in earnest. What you said of your enemies
being merciless, and perhaps watching me and putting pressure upon
me to injure you, is only too imminent a danger. The truth is that
I have all along known more than I had courage to tell, but I was
hoping you would understand, and now I tremble to think how I have
suffered myself to be silent.
"The Minghelli matter is an alarming affair, for I have reason to
believe that the man has lit on the name you bore in England, and
that when he returns to Rome he will try to fix it upon you by
means of me. This is fearful to contemplate, and my heart quakes
to think of it. But happily there is a way to checkmate such a
devilish design, and it is within your own power to save me from
life-long remorse.
"I don't think the laws of any civilized country compel a man's
_wife_ to compromise him, and thinking of this gives me courage to
be unmaidenly and say: Don't let it be long, dearest! I could die
to bring it to pass in a moment. With all my great, great
happiness, I shall have the heartache until it is done, and only
when it is over shall I begin to live.
"There! You didn't know what a forward hussy I could be if I
tried, and really I have been surprised at myself since I began to
be in love with you. For weeks and weeks I have been thin and
haggard and ugly, and only to-day I begin to be a little
beautiful. I couldn't be anything but beautiful to-day, and I've
been running to the glass to look at myself, as the only way to
understand why you love me at all. And I'm glad--so glad for your
sake.
"Good-bye, dearest! You cannot come to-morrow or the next day, and
what a lot I shall have to live before I see you again! Shall I
look older? No, for thinking of you makes me feel younger and
younger every minute. How old are you? Thirty-four? I'm twenty-four
and a half, and that is just right, but if you think I ought to be
nearer your age I'll wear a bonnet and fasten it with a bow.
"ROMA.
"P.S.--Don't delay the momentous matter. Don't! Don't! Don't!"
She dined alone that night that she might be undisturbed in her thoughts
of Rossi. Ordinary existence had almost disappeared from her
consciousness, and every time Felice spoke as he served the dishes his
voice seemed to come from far away.
She went to bed early, but it was late before she slept. For a long time
she lay awake to think over all that had happened, and, when the night
was far gone, and she tried to fall asleep in order to dream of it also,
she could not do so for sheer delight of the prospect. But at last amid
the gathering clouds of sleep she said "Good-night," with the ghost of a
kiss, and slept until morning.
When she awoke it was late, and the sun was shining into the room. She
lay on her back and stretched out both arms for sheer sweetness of the
sensation of health and love. Everything was well, and she was very
happy. Thinking of yesterday, she was even sorry for the Baron, and told
herself she had been too bold and daring.
But that thought was gone in a moment. Body and soul were suffused with
joy, and she leapt out of bed with a spring.
A moment afterwards Natalina came with a letter. It was from the Baron
himself, and it was dated the day before:--
"Minghelli has returned from London, and therefore I must see you
to-morrow at eleven o'clock. Be so good as to be at home, and give
orders that for half-an-hour at least we shall be quite undisturbed."
Then the sun went out, the air grew dull, and darkness fell over all the
world.
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PART FIVE--THE PRIME MINISTER
I
It was Sunday. The storm threatened by the sunset of the day before had
not yet come, but the sun was struggling through a veil of clouds, and a
black ridge lay over the horizon.
At eleven o'clock to the moment the Baron arrived. As usual, he was
faultlessly dressed, and he looked cool and tranquil.
"I am to show you into this room, Excellency," said Felice, leading the
way to the boudoir.
"Thanks!... Anything to tell me, Felice?"
"Nothing, Excellency," said Felice. Then, pointing to the plaster bust
on its pedestal in the corner, he added in a lower tone, "_He_ remained
last night after the others had gone, and...."
But at that moment there was the rustle of a woman's dress outside, and,
interrupting Felice, the Baron said in a high-pitched voice:
"Certainly; and please tell the Countess I shall not forget to look in
upon her before I go."
Roma came into the room with a gloomy and firm-set face. The smile that
seemed always to play about her mouth and eyes had given place to a
slight frown and an air of defiance. But the Baron saw in a moment that
behind the lips so sternly set, and the straight look of the eyes, there
was a frightened expression which she was trying to conceal. He greeted
her with his accustomed calm and naturalness, kissed her hand, offered
her the flower from his button-hole, put her to sit in the arm-chair
with its back to the window, took his own seat on the couch in front of
it, and leisurely drew off his spotless gloves.
Not a word about the scene of yesterday, not a look of pain or reproof.
Only a few casual pleasantries, and then a quiet gliding into the
business of his visit.
"What an age since we were here alone before! And what changes you've
made! Your pretty nest is like a cell! Well, I've obeyed your mandate,
you see. I've stayed away for a month. It was hard to do--bitterly
hard--and many a time I've told myself it was imprudent. But you were a
woman. You were inexorable. I was forced to submit. And now, what have
you got to tell me?"
"Nothing," she answered, looking straight before her.
"Nothing whatever?"
"Nothing whatever."
She did not move or turn her face, and he sat for a moment watching her.
Then he rose, and began to walk about the room.
"Let us understand each other, my child," he said gently. "Will you
forgive me if I recall facts that are familiar?"
She did not answer, but looked fixedly into the fire, while he leaned on
the stove and stood face to face with her.
"A month ago, a certain Deputy, an obstructionist politician, who has
for years made the task of government difficult, uttered a seditious
speech, and brought himself within the power of the law. In that speech
he also attacked me, and--shall I say?--grossly slandered you.
Parliament was not in session, and I was able to order his arrest. In
due course, he would have been punished, perhaps by imprisonment,
perhaps by banishment, but you thought it prudent to intervene. You
urged reasons of policy which were wise and far-seeing. I yielded, and,
to the bewilderment of my officials, I ordered the Deputy's release. But
he was not therefore to escape. You undertook his punishment. In a
subtle and more effectual way, you were to wipe out the injury he had
done, and requite him for his offence. The man was a mystery--you were
to find out all about him. He was suspected of intrigue--you were to
discover his conspiracies. Within a month, you were to deliver him into
my hands, and I was to know _the inmost secrets of his soul_."
It was with difficulty that Roma maintained her calmness while the Baron
was speaking, but she only shook a stray lock of hair from her forehead,
and sat silent.
"Well, the month is over. I have given you every opportunity to deal
with our friend as you thought best. Have you found out anything about
him?"
She put on a bold front and answered, "No."
"So your effort has failed?"
"Absolutely."
"Then you are likely to give up your plan of punishing the man for
defaming and degrading you?"
"I have given it up already."
"Strange! Very strange! Very unfortunate also, for we are at this moment
at a crisis when it is doubly important to the Government to possess the
information you set out to find. Still, your idea was a good one, and I
can never be sufficiently grateful to you for suggesting it. And
although _your_ efforts have failed, you need not be uneasy. You have
given us the clues by which _our_ efforts are succeeding, and you shall
yet punish the man who insulted you so publicly and so grossly."
"How is it possible for me to punish him?"
"By identifying David Rossi as one who was condemned in contumacy for
high treason sixteen years ago."
"That is ridiculous," she said. "Sixteen months ago I had never heard
the name of David Rossi."
The Baron stooped a little and said:
"Had you ever heard the name of David Leone?"
She dropped back in her chair, and again looked straight before her.
"Come, come, my child," said the Baron caressingly, and moving across
the room to look out of the window, he tapped her lightly on the
shoulder:
"I told you that Minghelli had returned from London."
"That forger!" she said hoarsely.
"No doubt! One who spends his life ferreting out crime is apt to have
the soul of a criminal. But civilisation needs its scavengers, and it
was a happy thought of yours to think of this one. Indeed, everything
we've done has been done on your initiative, and when our friend is
finally brought to justice, the deed will really be due to you, and you
alone."
The defiant look was disappearing from her eyes, and she rose with an
expression of pain.
"Why do you torture me like this?" she said. "After what has happened,
isn't it quite plain that I am his friend, and not his enemy?"
"Perhaps," said the Baron. His face assumed a death-like rigidity. "Sit
down and listen to me."
She sat down, and he returned to his place by the stove.
"I say you gave us the clues we have worked upon. Those clues were
three. First, that David Rossi knew the life-story of Doctor Roselli in
London. Second, that he knew the story of Doctor Roselli's daughter,
Roma Roselli. Third, that he was for a time a waiter at the Grand Hotel
in Rome. Two minor clues came independently, that David Rossi was once a
stable-boy in New York, that his mother drowned herself in the Tiber,
and he was brought up in a Foundling. By these five clues the
authorities have discovered eight facts. Permit me to recite them."
Leaning his elbow on the stove and opening his hand, the Baron ticked
off the facts one by one on his fingers.
"Fact one. Some thirty odd years ago a woman carrying a child presented
herself at the office in Rome for the registry of births. She gave the
name of Leonora Leone, and wished her child, a boy, to be registered as
David Leone. But the officer in attendance discovered that the woman's
name was Leonora Rossi, and that she had been married according to the
religious rites of the Church, but not according to the civil
regulations of the State. The child was therefore registered as David
Rossi, son of Leonora Rossi and of a father unknown."
"Shameful!" cried Roma. "Shameful! shameful!"
"Fact two," said the Baron, without the change of a tone. "One night a
little later the body of a woman found drowned in the Tiber was
recognised as the body of Leonora Rossi, and buried in the pauper part
of the Campo Verano under that name. The same night a child was placed
by an unknown hand in the _rota_ of Santo Spirito, with a paper attached
to its wrist, giving particulars of its baptism and its name. The name
given was David Leone."
The Baron ticked off the third of his fingers and continued:
"Fact three. Fourteen years afterwards a boy named David Leone, fourteen
years of age, was living in the house of an Italian exile in London. The
exile was a Roman prince under the incognito of Doctor Roselli; his
family consisted of his wife and one child, a daughter named Roma, four
years of age. David Leone had been adopted by Doctor Roselli, who had
picked him up in the street."
Roma covered her face with her hands.
"Fact four. Four years later a conspiracy to assassinate the King of
Italy was discovered at Milan. The chief conspirator turned out to be,
unfortunately, the English exile known as Doctor Roselli. By the good
offices of a kinsman, jealous of the honour of his true family name, he
was not brought to public trial, but deported by one of the means
adopted by all Governments when secrecy or safety is in question. But
his confederates and correspondents were shown less favour, and one of
them, still in England, being tried in contumacy by a military court
which sat during a state of siege, was condemned for high treason to the
military punishment of death. The name of that confederate and
correspondent was David Leone."
Roma's slippered foot was beating the floor fast, but the Baron went on
in his cool and tranquil tone.
"Fact five. Our extradition treaty excluded the delivery of political
offenders, but after representations from Italy, David Leone left
England. He went to America. There he was first employed in the stables
of the Tramway Company in New York, and lived in the Italian quarter of
the city, but afterwards he rose out of his poverty and low position and
became a journalist. In that character he attracted attention by a new
political and religious propaganda. Jesus Christ was lawgiver for the
nation as well as for the individual, and the redemption of the world
was to be brought to pass by a constitution based on the precepts of the
Lord's Prayer. The creed was sufficiently sentimental to be seized upon
by fanatics in that country of countless faiths, but it cut at the roots
of order, of poverty, even of patriotism, and being interpreted into
action, seemed likely to lead to riot."
The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache, and said, with a smile,
"David Leone disappeared from New York. From that time forward no trace
of him has yet been found. He was as much gone as if he had ceased to
exist. _David Leone was dead._"
Roma's hands had come down from her face, and she was picking at the
buttons of her blouse with twitching fingers.
"Fact six," said the Baron, ticking off the thumb of his other hand.
"Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David
Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving
the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a
baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor
Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to Italy. They
told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried."
Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on
a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster.
"Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the
Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer,
propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New
York, and exciting the same interest."
"Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David
Rossi is David Rossi--there is no more in it than that."
The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and
said, in a slightly exalted tone:
"Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the
Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the
woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The
pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but
the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been
buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his
knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At
length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away."
Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her
chair.
"That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it
worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the
mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?--David
Rossi! Who was David Rossi?--David Leone! The circle had closed around
him--the evidence was complete."
"Oh! oh! oh!"
Roma had leapt up and was moving about the room. Her lips were
compressed with scorn, her eyes were flashing, and she burst into a
torrent of words, which spluttered out of her quivering lips.
"Oh, to think of it! To think of it! You are right! The man who spends
his life looking for crime must have the soul of a criminal! He has no
conscience, no humanity, no mercy, no pity. And when he has tracked and
dogged a man to his mother's grave--_his mother's grave_--he can dine,
he can laugh, he can go to the theatre! Oh, I hate you! There, I've
told you! Now, do with me as you please!"
The death-like rigidity in the Baron's face decomposed into an expression
of intense pain, but he only passed his hand over his brow, and said,
after a moment of silence:
"My child, you are not only offending me, you are offending the theory
and principle of Justice. Justice has nothing to do with pity. In the
vocabulary of Justice there is but one word--duty. Duty called upon me
to fix this man's name upon him, that his obstructions, his slanders,
and his evil influence might be at an end. And now Justice calls upon
you to do the same."
The Baron leaned against the stove, and spoke in a calm voice, while
Roma in her agitation continued to walk about the room.
"Being a Deputy, and Parliament being in session, David Rossi can only
be arrested by the authorisation of the Chamber. In order to obtain that
authorisation, it is necessary that the Attorney-General should draw up
a statement of the case. The statement must be presented by the
Attorney-General to the Government, by the Government to the President,
by the President to a Committee, and by the Committee to Parliament.
Towards this statement the police have already obtained important
testimony, and a complete chain of circumstantial evidence has been
prepared. But they lack one link of positive proof, and until that link
is obtained the Attorney-General is unable to proceed. It is the
keystone of the arch, the central fact, without which all other facts
fall to pieces--the testimony of somebody who can swear, if need be,
that she knew both David Leone and David Rossi, and can identify the one
with the other."
"Well?"
The Baron, who had stopped, continued in a calm voice: "My dear Roma,
need I go on? Dead as a Minister is to all sensibility, I had hoped to
spare you. There is only one person known to me who can supply that
link. That person is yourself."
Roma's eyes were red with anger and terror, but she tried to laugh over
her fear.
"How simple you are, after all!" she said. "It was Roma Roselli who knew
David Leone, wasn't it? Well, Roma Roselli is dead and buried. Oh, I
know all the story. You did that yourself, and now it cuts the ground
from under you."
"My dear Roma," said the Baron, with a hard and angry face, "if I did
anything in that matter, it was done for your welfare, but whatever it
was, it need not disturb me now. Roma Roselli is _not_ dead, and it
would be easy to bring people from England to say so."
"You daren't! You know you daren't! It would expose them to persecution
for perpetrating a crime."
"In England, not in Italy."
Roma's red eyes fell, and the Baron began to speak in a caressing voice:
"My child, don't fence with me. It is so painful to silence you.... It
is perhaps natural that you should sympathise with the weaker side. That
is the sweet and tender if illogical way of all women. But you must not
imagine that when David Rossi has been arrested he will be walked off to
his death. As a matter of fact, he must go through a new trial, he must
be defended, his sentence would in any case be reduced to imprisonment,
and it may even be wiped out altogether. That's all."
"All? And you ask me to help you to do that?"
"Certainly."
"I won't!"
"Then you could if you would?"
"I can't!"
"Your first word was the better one, my child."
"Very well, I won't! I won't! Aren't you ashamed to ask me to do such a
thing? According to your own story, David Leone was my father's friend,
yet you wish me to give him up to the law that he may be imprisoned,
perhaps for life, and at least turned out of Parliament. Do you suppose
I am capable of treachery like that? Do you judge of everybody by
yourself?... Ah, I know that story too! For shame! For shame!"
The Baron was silent for a moment, and then said in an impassive voice:
"I will not discuss that subject with you now, my child--you are
excited, and don't quite know what you are saying. I will only point out
to you that even if David Leone was your father's friend, David Rossi
was your own enemy."
"What of that? It's my own affair, isn't it? If I choose to forgive him,
what matter is it to anybody else? I _do_ forgive him! Now, whose
business is it except my own?"
"My dear Roma, I might tell you that it's mine also, and that the
insult that went through you was aimed at me. But I will not speak of
myself.... That you should change your plans so entirely, and setting
out a month ago to ... to ... shall I say betray ... this man Rossi, you
are now striving to save him, is a problem which admits of only one
explanation, and that is that ... that you...."
"That I love him--yes, that's the truth," said Roma boldly, but flushing
up to the eyes and trembling with fear.
There was a death-like pause in the duel. Both dropped their heads, and
the silent face in the bust seemed to be looking down on them. Then the
Baron's icy cheeks quivered visibly, and he said in a low, hoarse voice:
"I'm sorry! Very sorry! For in that case I may be compelled to justify
your conclusion that a Minister has no humanity and no pity. If David
Rossi cannot be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament, he must be
arrested when Parliament is not in session, and then his identity will
have to be established in a public tribunal. In that event you will be
forced to appear, and having refused to make a private statement in the
secrecy of a magistrate's office, you will be compelled to testify in
the Court of Assize."
"Ah, but you can't make me do that!" cried Roma excitedly, as if seized
by a sudden thought.
"Why not?"
"Never mind why not. You can't do it, I tell you," she cried excitedly.
He looked at her as if trying to penetrate her meaning, and then said:
"We shall see."
At that moment the fretful voice of the Countess was heard calling to
the Baron from the adjoining room.
II
Roma went to her bedroom when the Baron left her, and remained there
until late in the afternoon. In spite of the bold front she had put on,
she was quaking with terror and tortured by remorse. Never before had
she realised David Rossi's peril with such awful vividness, and seen her
own position in relation to him in its hideous nakedness.
Was it her duty to confess to David Rossi that at the beginning of their
friendship she had set out to betray him? Only so could she be secure,
only so could she be honest, only so could she be true to the love he
gave her and the trust he reposed in her.
Yet why should she confess? The abominable impulse was gone. Something
sweet and tender had taken its place. To confess to him now would be
cruel. It would wound his beautiful faith in her.
And yet the seeds she had sown were beginning to fructify. They might
spring up anywhere at any moment, and choke the life that was dearer to
her than her own. Thank God, it was still impossible to injure him
except by her will and assistance. But her will might be broken and her
assistance might be forced, unless the law could be invoked to protect
her against itself. It could and it should be invoked! When she was
married to David Rossi no law in Italy would compel her to witness
against him.
But if Rossi hesitated from any cause, if he delayed their marriage, if
he replied unfavourably to the letter in which she had put aside all
modesty and asked him to marry her soon--what then? How was she to
explain his danger? How was she to tell him that he must marry her
before Parliament rose, or she might be the means of expelling him from
the Chamber, and perhaps casting him into prison for life? How was she
to say: "I was Delilah; I set out to betray you, and unless you marry me
the wicked work is done!"
The afternoon was far spent; she had eaten nothing since morning, and
was lying face down on the bed, when a knock came to the door.
"The person in the studio to see you," said Felice.
It was Bruno in Sunday attire, with little Joseph in top-boots, and more
than ever like the cub of a young lion.
"A letter from him," said Bruno.
It was from Rossi. She took it without a word of greeting, and went back
to her bedroom. But when she returned a moment afterwards her face was
transformed. The clouds had gone from it and the old radiance had
returned. All the brightness and gaiety of her usual expression were
there as she came swinging into the drawing-room and filling the air
with the glow of health and happiness.
"_That's_ all right," she said. "Tell Mr. Rossi I shall expect to see
him soon ... or no, don't say that ... say that as he is over head and
ears in work this week, he is not to think it necessary.... Oh, say
anything you like," she said, and the pearly teeth and lovely eyes
broke into an aurora of smiles.
Bruno, whose bushy face and shaggy head had never once been raised since
he came into the room, said:
"He's busy enough, anyway--what with this big meeting coming off on
Wednesday, and the stairs to his room as full of people as the Santa
Scala."
"So you've brought little Joseph to see me at last?" said Roma.
"He has bothered my life out to bring him ever since you said he was to
be your porter some day."
"And why not? Gentlemen ought to call on the ladies, oughtn't they,
Joseph?"
And Joseph, whose curly poll had been hiding behind the leg of his
father's trousers, showed half of a face that was shining all over.
"See! See here--do you know who _this_ is? This gentleman in the bust?"
"Uncle David," said the boy.
"What a clever boy you are, Joseph!"
"Doesn't want much cleverness to know that, though," said Bruno. "It's
wonderful! it's magnificent! And it will shut up all their damned ...
excuse me, miss, excuse _me_."
"And Joseph still intends to be a porter?"
"Dead set on it, and says he wouldn't change his profession to be a
king."
"Quite right, too! And now let us look at something a little birdie
brought me the other day. Come along, Joseph. Here it is. Down on your
knees, gentleman, and help me to drag it out. One--two--and away!"
From the knee-hole of the desk came a large cardboard box, and Joseph's
eyes glistened like big black beads.
"Now, what do you think is in this box, Joseph? Can't guess? Give it up?
Sure? Well, listen! Are you listening? Which do you think you would like
best--a porter's cocked hat, or a porter's long coat, or a porter's mace
with a gilt hat and a tassel?"
Joseph's face, which had gleamed at every item, clouded and cleared,
cleared and clouded at the cruel difficulty of choice, and finally
looked over at Bruno for help.
"Choose now--which?"
But Joseph only sidled over to his father, and whispered something which
Roma could not hear.
"What does he say?"
"He says it is his birthday on Wednesday," said Bruno.
"Bless him! He shall have them all, then," said Roma, and Joseph's legs
as well as his eyes began to dance.
The cords were cut, the box was opened, the wonderful hat and coat and
mace were taken out, and Joseph was duly invested. In the midst of this
ceremony Roma's black poodle came bounding into the room, and when
Joseph strutted out of the boudoir into the drawing-room the dog went
leaping and barking beside him.
"Dear little soul!" said Roma, looking after the child; but Bruno, who
was sitting with his head down, only answered with a groan.
"What is the matter, Bruno?" she asked.
Bruno brushed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, set his teeth, and said
with a savage fierceness:
"What's the matter? Treason's the matter, telling tales and taking away
a good woman's character--that's what is the matter! A man who has been
eating your bread for years has been lying about you, and he is a rascal
and a sneak and a damned scoundrel, and I would like to kick him out of
the house."
"And who has been doing all this, Bruno?"
"Myself! It was I who told Mr. Rossi the lies that made him speak
against you on the day of the Pope's Jubilee, and when you asked him to
come here, I warned him against you, and said you were only going to pay
him back and ruin him."
"So you said that, did you?"
"Yes, I did."
"And what did Mr. Rossi say to you?"
"Say to me? 'She's a good woman,' says he, 'and if I have ever said
otherwise, I take it all back, and am ashamed.'"
Roma, who had turned to the window, heaved a sigh and said: "It has all
come out right in the end, Bruno. If you hadn't spoken against me to Mr.
Rossi, he wouldn't have spoken against me in the piazza, and then he and
I should never have met and known each other and been friends. All's
well that ends well, you know."
"Perhaps so, but the miracle doesn't make the saint, and you oughtn't to
keep me any longer."
"Do you mean that I ought to dismiss you?"
"Yes."
"Bruno," said Roma, "I am in trouble just now, and I may be in worse
trouble by-and-by. I don't know how long I may be able to keep you as a
servant, but I may want you as a friend, and if you leave me now...."
"Oh, put it like that, miss, and I'll never leave you, and as for your
enemies...."
Bruno was doubling up the sleeve of his right arm, when Joseph and the
poodle came back to the room. Roma received them with a merry cry, and
there was much noise and laughter. At length the gorgeous garments were
taken off, the cardboard box was corded, and Bruno and the boy prepared
to go.
"You'll come again, won't you, Joseph?" said Roma, and the boy's face
beamed.
"I suppose this little man means a good deal to his mother, Bruno?"
"Everything! I do believe she'd die, or disappear, or drown herself if
anything happened to that boy."
"And Mr. Rossi?"
"He's been a second father to the boy ever since the young monkey was
born."
"Well, Joseph must come here sometimes, and let me try and be a second
mother to him too.... What is he saying now?"
Joseph had dragged down his father's head to whisper something in his
ear.
"He says he's frightened of your big porter downstairs."
"Frightened of _him_! He is only a man, my precious! Tell him you are a
little Roman boy, and he'll _have_ to let you up. Will you remember? You
will? That's right! By-bye!"
Before going to sleep that night, Roma switched on the light that hung
above her head and read her letter again. She had been hoarding it up
for that secret hour, and now she was alone with it, and all the world
was still.
"_Saturday Night._
"MY DEAR ONE,--Your sweet letter brought me the intoxication of
delight, and the momentous matter you speak of is under way. It is
my turn to be ashamed of all the great to-do I made about the
obstacles to our union when I see how courageous you can be. Oh,
how brave women are--every woman who ever marries a man! To take
her heart into her hands, and face the unknown in the fate of
another being, to trust her life into his keeping, knowing that if
he falls she falls too, and will never be the same again! What
_man_ could do it? Not one who was ever born into the world. Yet
some woman does it every day, promising some man that she
will--let me finish your quotation--
"'Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and
spirit In thy hands.'
"Don't think I am too much troubled about the Minghelli matter,
and yet it is pitiful to think how merciless the world can be even
in the matter of a man's name. A name is only a word, but it is
everything to the man who bears it--honour or dishonour, poverty
or wealth, a blessing or a curse. If it is a good name, everybody
tries to take it away from him, but if it's a bad name and he has
attempted to drop it, everybody tries to fix it on him afresh.
"The name I was compelled to leave behind me when I returned to
Italy was a bad name in nothing except that it was the name of my
father, and if the spies and ferrets of authority ever fix it upon
me God only knows what mischief they may do. But one thing _I_
know--that if they do fix my father's name upon me, and bring me
to the penalties which the law has imposed on it, it will not be
by help of my darling, my beloved, my brave, brave girl with the
heart of gold.
"Dearest, I wrote to the Capitol immediately on receiving your
letter, and to-morrow morning I will go down myself to see that
everything is in train. I don't yet know how many days are
necessary to the preparations, but earlier than Thursday it would
not be wise to fix the event, seeing that Wednesday is the day of
the great mass meeting in the Coliseum, and, although the police
have proclaimed it, I have told the people they are to come. There
is some risk at the outset, which it would be reckless to run, and
in any case the time is short.
"Good-night! I can't take my pen off the paper. Writing to you is
like talking to you, and every now and then I stop and shut my
eyes, and hear your voice replying. Only it is myself who make the
answers, and they are not half so sweet as they would be in
reality. Ah, dear heart, if you only knew how my life was full of
silence until you came into it, and now it is full of music!
Good-night, again! "D. R.
"_Sunday Morning._
"Just returned from the Capitol. The legal notice for the
celebration of a marriage is longer than I expected. It seems that
the ordinary term must be twelve days at least, covering two
successive Sundays (on which the act of publication is posted on
the board outside the office) and three days over. Only twelve
days more, my dear one, and you will be mine, mine, mine, and
all the world will know!"
It took Roma a good three-quarters of an hour to read this letter, for
nearly every word seemed to be written out of a lover's lexicon, which
bore secret meanings of delicious import, and imperiously demanded their
physical response from the reader's lips. At length she put it between
the pillow and her cheek, to help the sweet delusion that she was cheek
to cheek with some one and had his strong, protecting arms about her.
Then she lay a long time, with eyes open and shining in the darkness,
trying in vain to piece together the features of his face. But in the
first dream of her first sleep she saw him plainly, and then she ran,
she raced, she rushed to his embrace.
Next day brought a message from the Baron:
"DEAR ROMA,--Come to the Palazzo Braschi to-morrow (Tuesday)
morning at eleven o'clock. Don't refuse, and don't hesitate. If
you do not come, you will regret it as long as you live, and
reproach yourself for ever afterwards.--Yours,
"BONELLI."
III
The Palazzo Braschi is a triangular palace, whereof one front faces to
the Piazza Navona and the two other fronts to side streets. It is the
official palace of the Minister of the Interior, usually the President
of the Council and Prime Minister of Italy.
Roma arrived at eleven o'clock, and was taken to the Minister's room
immediately, by way of an outer chamber, in which colleagues and
secretaries were waiting their turn for an interview. The Baron was
seated at a table covered with books and papers. There was a fur rug
across his knees, and at his right hand lay a small ivory-handled
revolver. He rose as Roma entered, and received her with his great but
glacial politeness.
"How prompt! And how sweet you look to-day, my child! On a cheerless
morning like this you bring the sun itself into a poor Minister's gloomy
cabinet. Sit down."
"You wished to see me?" said Roma.
The Baron rested his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand,
looked at her with his never-varying smile, and said:
"I hear you are to be congratulated, my dear."
She changed colour slightly.
"Are you surprised that I know?" he asked.
"Why should I be surprised?" she answered. "You know everything.
Besides, this is published at the Capitol, and therefore common
knowledge."
His smiling face remained perfectly impassive.
"Now I understand what you meant on Sunday. It is a fact that a wife
cannot be called as a witness against her husband."
She knew he was watching her face as if looking into the inmost recesses
of her soul.
"But isn't it a little courageous of you to think of marriage?"
"Why courageous?" she asked, but her eyes fell and the colour mounted to
her cheek.
"_Why_ courageous?" he repeated.
He allowed a short time to elapse, and then he said in a a low tone,
"Considering the past, and all that has happened...."
Her eyelids trembled and she rose to her feet.
"If this is all you wish to say to me...."
"No, no! Sit down, my child. I sent for you in order to show you that
the marriage you contemplate may be difficult, perhaps impossible."
"I am of age--there can be no impediment."
"There may be the greatest of all impediments, my dear."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean ... But wait! You are not in a hurry? A number of gentlemen are
waiting to see me, and if you will permit me to ring for my
secretary.... Don't move. Colleagues merely! They will not object to
_your_ presence. My ward, you know--almost a member of my own household.
Ah, here is the secretary. Who now?"
"The Minister of War, the Prefect, Commendatore Angelelli, and one of
his delegates," replied the secretary.
"Bring the Prefect first," said the Baron, and a severe-looking man of
military bearing entered the room.
"Come in, Senator. You know Donna Roma. Our business is urgent--she will
allow us to go on. I am anxious to hear how things stand and what you
are doing."
The Prefect began on his report. Immediately the new law was promulgated
by royal decree, he had sent out a circular to all the Mayors in his
province, stating the powers it gave the police to dissolve associations
and forbid public meetings.
"But what can we expect in the provincial towns, your Excellency, while
in the capital we are doing nothing? The chief of all subversive
societies is in Rome, and the directing mind is at large among
ourselves. Listen to this, sir."
The Prefect took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read:
"ROMANS,--The new law is an attempt to deprive us of liberties
which our fathers made revolutions to establish. It is, therefore,
our duty to resist it, and to this end we must hold our meeting on
the 1st of February according to our original intention. Only thus
can we show the Government and the King what it is to oppose the
public opinion of the world.... Meet in the Piazza del Popolo at
sundown and walk to the Coliseum by way of the Corso. Be peaceful
and orderly, and God put it into the hearts of your rulers to avert
bloodshed."
"That is from the _Sunrise_?"
"Yes, sir, the last of many manifestoes. And what is the result? The
people are flocking into Rome from every part of the province."
"And how many political pilgrims are here already?"
"Fifty thousand, sixty, perhaps a hundred thousand. It cannot be allowed
to go on, your Excellency."
"It is a _levee-en-masse_ certainly. What do you advise?"
"That the enemies of the Government and the State, whose erroneous
conceptions of liberty have led to this burst of anarchist feelings, be
left to the operation of the police laws."
The Baron glanced at Roma. Her face was flushed and her eyes were
flashing.
"That," he said, "may be difficult, considering the number of the
discontented. What is the strength of your police?"
"Seven hundred in uniform, four hundred in plain clothes, and five
hundred and fifty municipal guards. Besides these, sir, there are three
thousand Carabineers and eight thousand regular troops."
"Say twelve thousand five hundred armed men in all?"
"Precisely, and what is that against fifty, a hundred, perhaps a hundred
and fifty thousand people?"
"You want the army at call?"
"Exactly! but above everything else we want the permission of the
Government to deal with the greater delinquents, whether Deputies or
not, according to the powers given us by the statute."
The Baron rose and held out his hand. "Thanks, Senator! The Government
will consider your suggestions immediately. Be good enough to send in my
colleague, the Minister of War."
When the Prefect left the room Roma rose to go.
"You cannot suppose this is very agreeable to me?" she said in an
agitated voice.
"Wait! I shall not be long ... Ah, General Morra! Roma, you know the
General, I think. Sit down, both of you.... Well, General, you hear of
this _levee-en-masse_?"
"I do."
"The Prefect is satisfied that the people are moved by a revolutionary
organisation, and he is anxious to know what force we can put at his
service to control it."
The General detailed his resources. There were sixteen thousand men
always under arms in Rome, and the War Office had called up the
old-timers of two successive years--perhaps fifty thousand in all.
"As a Minister of State and your colleague," said the General, "I am at
one with you in your desire to safeguard the cause of order and protect
public institutions, but as a man and a Roman I cannot but hope that you
will not call upon me to act without the conditions required by law."
"Indeed, no," said the Baron; "and in order to make sure that our
instructions are carried out with wisdom and humanity, let these be the
orders you issue to your staff: First, that in case of disturbance
to-morrow night, whether at the Coliseum or elsewhere, the officers must
wait for the proper signal from the delegate of police."
"Good!"
"Next, that on receiving the order to fire, the soldiers must be careful
that their first volley goes over the heads of the people."
"Excellent!"
"If that does not disperse the crowds, if they throw stones at the
soldiers or otherwise resist, the second volley--I see no help for
it--the second volley, I say, must be fired at the persons who are
leading on the ignorant and deluded mob."
"Ah!"
The General hesitated, and Roma, whose breathing came quick and short,
gave him a look of tenderness and gratitude.
"You agree, General Morra?"
"I'm afraid I see no alternative. But if the blood of their leader only
infuriates the people, is the third volley...."
"That," said the Baron, "is a contingency too terrible to contemplate.
My prediction would be that when their leader falls, the poor, misguided
people will fly. But in all human enterprises the last word has to be
left to destiny. Let us leave it to destiny in the present instance.
Adieu, dear General! Be good enough to tell my secretary to send in the
Chief of Police."
The Minister of War left the room, and once more Roma rose to go.
"You cannot possibly imagine that a conversation like this...." she
began, but the Baron only interrupted her again.
"Don't go yet. I shall be finished presently. Angelelli cannot keep me
more than a moment. Ah, here is the Commendatore."
The Chief of Police came bowing and bobbing at every step, with the
extravagant politeness which differentiates the vulgar man from the
well-bred.
"About this meeting at the Coliseum, Commendatore--has any authorisation
been asked for it?"
"None whatever, your Excellency."
"Then we may properly regard it as seditious?"
"Quite properly, your Excellency."
"Listen! You will put yourself into communication with the Minister of
War immediately. He will place fifty thousand men at the disposition of
your Prefect. Choose your delegates carefully. Instruct them well. At
the first overt act of resistance, let them give the word to fire. After
that, leave everything to the military."
"Quite so, your Excellency."
"Be careful to keep yourself in touch with me until midnight to-morrow.
It may be necessary to declare a state of siege, and in that event the
royal decree will have to be obtained without delay. Prepare your own
staff for a general order. Ask for the use of the cannon of St. Angelo
as a signal, and let it be understood that if the gun is fired to-morrow
night, every gate of the city is to be closed, every outward train is to
be stopped, and every telegraph office is to be put under control. You
understand me?"
"Perfectly, Excellency."
"After the signal has been given let no one leave the city, and let no
telegraphic message of any kind be despatched. In short, let Rome from
that hour onward be entirely under the control of the Government."
"Entirely, your Excellency."
"The military have already received their orders. After the call of the
delegate of police, the first volley is to be fired over the heads of
the people, and the second at the ringleaders. But if any of these
should escape...."
The Baron paused, and then repeated in a low tone with the utmost
deliberation:
"I say, _if_ any of these should escape, Commendatore...."
"They shall not escape, your Excellency."
There was a moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt herself to be
suffocating, and could scarcely restrain the cry that was rising in her
throat.
"Let me go," she said, when the Chief of Police had backed and bowed
himself out; but again the Baron pretended to misunderstand her.
"Only one more visitor! I shall be finished in a few minutes," and then
Charles Minghelli was shown into the room.
The man's watchful eyes blinked perceptibly as he came face to face
with Roma, but he recovered himself in a moment, and began to brush with
his fingers the breast of his frockcoat.
"Sit down, Minghelli. You may speak freely before Donna Roma. You owe
your position to her generous influence, you may remember, and she is
abreast of all our business. You know all about this meeting at the
Coliseum?"
Minghelli bent his head.
"The delegates of police have received the strictest orders not to give
the word to the military until an overt act of resistance has been
committed. That is necessary as well for the safety of our poor deluded
people as for our own credit in the eyes of the world. But an act of
rebellion in such a case is a little thing, Mr. Minghelli."
Again Minghelli bent his head.
"A blow, a shot, a shower of stones, and the peace is broken and the
delegate is justified."
A third time Minghelli bent his head.
"Unfortunately, in the sorrowful circumstances in which the city is
placed, an overt act of resistance is quite sure to be committed."
Minghelli flecked a speck of dust from his spotless cuff and said:
"Quite sure, your Excellency."
There was another moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt her
heart beat violently.
"Adieu, Mr. Minghelli. Tell my secretary as you pass out that I wish to
dictate a letter."
The letter was to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
"Dear colleague," dictated the Baron, "I entirely approve of the
proposal you have made to the Governments of Europe and America to
establish a basis on which anarchists should be suppressed by means of
an international net, through which they can hardly escape. My
suggestion would be the universal application of the Belgian clause in
all existing extradition treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide
may be dealt with as common murderers. In any case please say that the
Government of Italy intends to do its duty to the civilised world, and
will look to the Governments of other countries to allow it to follow up
and arrest the criminals who are attempting to reconstruct society by
burying it under ruins."
Notwithstanding all her efforts to appear calm, Roma felt as if she must
go out into the streets and scream. Now she knew why she had been sent
for. It was in order that the Baron might talk to her in parables--in
order that he might show her by means of an object lesson, as palpable
as pitiless, what was the impediment which made her marriage with David
Rossi impossible.
The marriage could not be celebrated until after eleven days, but the
meeting at the Coliseum must take place to-morrow, and as surely as it
did so it must result in riot and David Rossi must be shot.
The secretary gathered up his note-book and left the room, and then the
Baron turned to Roma with beaming eyes and lips expanding to a smile.
"Finished at last! A thousand apologies, my dear! Twelve o'clock
already! Let us go out and lunch somewhere."
"Let me go home," said Roma.
She was trembling violently, and as she rose to her feet she swayed a
little.
"My dear child! you're not well. Take this glass of water."
"It's nothing. Let me go home."
The Baron walked with her to the head of the staircase.
"I understand you perfectly," she said in a choking voice, "but there is
something you have not counted upon, and you are quite mistaken."
And making a great call on her resolution, she threw up her head and
walked firmly down the stairs.
Immediately on reaching home she wrote to David Rossi:
"I _must_ see you to-night. Where can it be? To-night! Mind,
to-night. To-morrow will be too late. ROMA."
Bruno delivered the note by hand, and brought back an answer:
"DEAREST,--Come to the office at nine o'clock. Sorry I cannot
go to you. It is impossible. D. R.
"P.S.--You have converted Bruno, and he would die for you. As for
the 'little Roman boy,' he is in the seventh heaven over your
presents, and says he must go up to Trinita de' Monti to begin
work at once."
IV
The office of the _Sunrise_ at nine o'clock that night tingled with
excitement. A supplement had already gone to press, and the machines in
the basement were working rapidly. In the business office on the first
floor people were constantly coming and going, and the footsteps on the
stairs of the composing-room sounded through the walls like the
irregular beat of a hammer.
The door of the editor's room was frequently swinging open, as reporters
with reports, messengers with telegrams, and boys with proofs came in
and laid them on the desk at which the sub-editor sat at work.
David Rossi stood by his desk at the farther end of the room. This was
the last night of his editorship of the _Sunrise_, and by various silent
artifices the staff were showing their sympathy with the man who had
made the paper and was forced to leave it.
The excitement within the office of the _Sunrise_ corresponded to the
commotion outside. The city was in a ferment, and from time to time
unknown persons, the spontaneous reporters of tumultuous days, were
brought in from the outer office to give the editor the latest news of
the night. Another trainful of people had arrived from Milan! Still
another from Bologna and Carrara! The storm was growing! Soon would be
heard the crash of war! Their faces were eager and their tone was one of
triumph. They pitched their voices high, so as to be heard above the
reverberation of the machines, whose deep thud in the rooms below made
the walls vibrate like the side of a ship at sea.
David Rossi did not catch the contagion of their joy. At every fresh
announcement his face clouded. The unofficial head of the surging and
straining democracy, which was filling itself hourly with hopes and
dreams, was unhappy and perplexed. He was trying to write his last
message to his people, and he could not get it clear because his own
mind was confused.
"_Romans_," he wrote first, "_your rulers are preparing to resist your
right of meeting, and you will have nothing to oppose to the muskets and
bayonets of their soldiers but the bare breasts of a brave but peaceful
people. No matter. Fifty, a hundred, five hundred of you killed at the
first volley, and the day is won! The reactionary Government of
Italy--all the reactionary Governments of Europe--will be borne down lay
the righteous indignation of the world._"
It would not do! He had no right to lead the people to certain
slaughter, and he tore up his manifesto and began again.
"_Romans_," he wrote the second time, "_when reforms cannot be effected
without the spilling of blood, the time for them has not yet come, and
it is the duty of a brave and peaceful people to wait for the silent
operation of natural law and the mighty help of moral forces. Therefore
at the eleventh hour I call upon you, in the names of your wives and
children...._"
It was impossible! The people would think he was afraid, and the
opportune moment would be lost.
One man in the office of the _Sunrise_ was entirely outside the circle
of its electric currents. This was the former day-editor, who had been
appointed by the proprietors to take Rossi's place, and was now walking
about with a silk hat on his head, taking note of everything and
exercising a premature and gratuitous supervision.
David Rossi was tearing up the second of his manifestoes when this
person came to say that a lady in the outer office was asking to see
him.
"Show her into the private waiting-room," said Rossi.
"But may I suggest," said the man, "that considering who the lady is, it
would perhaps be better to see her elsewhere?"
"Show her into the private room, sir," said Rossi, and the man shrugged
his shoulders and disappeared.
As David Rossi opened the door of a small room at his right hand,
something rustled lightly in the corridor outside, and a moment
afterwards Roma glided into his arms. She was pale and nervous, and
after a moment she began to cry.
"Dear one," said Rossi, pressing her head against his breast, "what has
happened? Tell me! Something has frightened you. You look anxious."
"No wonder," she said, and then she told him of her summons to the
Palazzo Braschi, and of the business she saw done there.
There was to be a riot at the meeting at the Coliseum, because, if need
be, the Government itself would provoke violence. The object was to
kill _him_, not the people, and if he stayed in Rome until to-morrow
night there would be no possibility of escape.
"You must fly," she said. "You are the victim marked out by all these
preparations--you, you, nobody but you."
"It is the best news I've heard for days," he said. "If I am the only
one who runs a risk...."
"Risk! My dearest, don't you understand? Your life is aimed at, and you
must fly before it is quite impossible."
"It is already impossible," he answered.
He drew off one of her white gloves and kissed her finger-tips. "My dear
one," he said, "if there were nothing else to think of, do you suppose I
could go away and leave you behind me? That is just what somebody
expected me to do when he permitted you to witness his preparations. But
he was mistaken. I cannot and I will not leave you."
Her pale face was suddenly overspread by a burning blush, and she threw
both arms about his neck.
"Very well," she said, "I will go with you."
"Darling!" he cried, and he clasped her to his breast again. "But no!
That is impossible also. Our marriage cannot take place for ten days."
"No matter! I'll go without it."
"My dear child, you don't know what you are saying. You are too good,
too pure...."
"Hush! Our marriage is nothing to anybody but ourselves, and if we
choose to go without it...."
"My dear girl!"
"I can't hear you," she said. Loosening her hands from his neck, she had
covered her ears.
"Dearest, I know what you are thinking of, but it must not be."
"I can't hear a word you're saying," she said, beating her hands over
her ears. "I'm ready to go now, this very minute--and if you don't take
me, it is because you love other things better than you love me."
"My darling, don't tempt me. If you only knew what it costs me ... but I
would rather die...."
"I don't want you to die. That's just it! I want you to live, and I am
willing to risk everything--everything...."
Her warm and lovely form was quivering in his arms, and his heart was
labouring wildly.
"Dearest," he whispered over her head, "you are so good, so pure, so
noble, that you don't know how evil tongues can wag at a woman because
she is brave and true. But I must remember my mother--and if your poor
father is to rest in his grave...."
His voice broke and he stopped.
"See how much I love you," he whispered again, "when I would rather lose
you than see you lower yourself in your own esteem.... And then think of
my people! my poor people who trust me and look up to me so much more
than I deserve. I called them and they have come. They are here now,
tens of thousands of them. And they will be here to-morrow wherever I
may be. Shall I desert them in their hour of need, thinking of my own
safety, my own happiness? No! You cannot wish it! You do not wish it! I
know you too well!"
She lifted her head from his breast. "You are right," she said. "You
must stay."
"My sweet girl!"
"Can you ever forgive me for being frightened at the first note of
danger and telling you to fly?"
"I will always love you for it."
"And you will never think the worse of me for offering to go with you?"
"I will love you for that too."
"I must be brave," she said, drawing herself up proudly, though her lips
were trembling, her voice was breaking, and her eyes were wet. "Whether
you are right or wrong in what you are doing it is not for me to decide,
but if your heart tells you to do it you _must_ do it, and I must be
your soldier, ready and waiting for my captain's call."
"My brave girl!"
"It is not for nothing that I am my father's daughter. _He_ risked
everything and so will I, and if they come to me to-morrow night and say
that ... that you ... that you are...."
The proud face had fallen on his breast again. But after a moment it was
raised afresh, and then it was shining all over.
"That's right! How beautiful your face is when it smiles, Roma! Roma, do
you know what I'm going to do when this is all over? I'm going to spend
my life in making you smile all the time."
She gave him a sudden kiss, and then broke out of his arms.
"I must be going. I've stayed too long. I may not see you before the
meeting, but I won't say 'good-bye.' I've thought of something, and now
I know what I'm going to do."
"What is it?"
"Don't ask me."
She opened the door.
"Come to me to-morrow night--I shall expect you," she whispered, and
waving her glove to him over her head she disappeared from the room.
He stood a moment where she had left him, trying to think what she
intended to do, and then he returned to his desk in the outer office.
His successor was there, looking sour and stubborn.
"Mr. Rossi," he said, "this afternoon I was told at the Press Club that
the authorities were watching for a plausible excuse for suppressing the
paper; and considering the relations of this lady to the Minister of the
Interior, and the danger of spies...."
"Listen to this carefully, sir," interrupted Rossi. "When you come into
possession of the chair I occupy, you may do as you think well, but
to-night it is mine, and I shall conduct the paper as I please."
"Still, you will allow me to say...."
"Not one word."
"Permit me to protest...."
"Leave the room immediately."
When the man was gone, David Rossi wrote a third and last version of his
manifesto:
"_Romans.--Have no fear. Do not allow yourselves to be terrified by the
military preparations of your Government. Believe a man who has never
deceived you--the soldiers will not fire upon the people! Violate no
law. Assail no enemy. Respect property. Above all, respect life. Do not
allow yourself to be pushed into the doctrine of physical force. If any
man tries to provoke violence, think him an agent of your enemies and
pay no heed. Be brave, be strong, be patient, and to-morrow night you
will send up such a cry as will ring throughout the world. Romans,
remember your fathers and be great._"
Rossi was handing his manuscript to the sub-editor, that it might be
sent upstairs, when all at once the air seemed to become empty and the
world to stand still. The machine in the basement had ceased to work.
There was a momentary pause, such as comes on a steamship at sea when
the engines are suddenly stopped, and then a sound of frightened voices
and the noise of hurrying feet. Somebody ran along the corridor outside
and rapped sharply at the door.
At the next moment the door opened and four men entered the room. One of
them was an inspector, another was a delegate, and the others were
policemen in plain clothes.
"The journal is sequestered," said the inspector to David Rossi. And
turning to one of his men, he said, "Go up to the composing-room and
superintend the distribution of the type."
"Allow no one to leave the building," said the delegate to the other
policeman.
"Gentlemen," said the inspector, "we are charged to make a perquisition,
and must ask you for the keys of your desks."
"What is this?" said the delegate, taking the manifesto out of Rossi's
fingers, and proceeding to read it.
At that moment the editor-elect came rushing into the room with a face
like the rising sun.
"I demand to see a list of the things sequestered," he cried.
"You shall do so at the police-office," said the inspector.
"Does that mean that we are all arrested?"
"Not all. The Honourable Rossi, being a Deputy, is at liberty to leave."
"Thought as much," said the new editor, with a contemptuous snort. And
turning to Rossi, and showing his teeth in a bitter smile, he said:
"What did I say would happen? Has it followed quickly enough to satisfy
you?"
The inspector and the delegate opened the editors' desks and were
rummaging among their papers when David Rossi put on his hat and went
home.
At the door of the lodge the old Garibaldian was waiting in obvious
excitement.
"Old John has been here, sir," he said. "Something to tell you. Wouldn't
tell me. But Bruno got it out of him at last. Must be something serious,
for the big booby has been drinking ever since. Hear him in the cafe,
sir. I'll send him up."
Half-an-hour afterwards Bruno staggered into Rossi's room. He had a
tearful look in his drink-deadened eyes, and was clearly struggling
with a desire to put his arms about Rossi's neck and weep over him.
"D'ye know wha'?" he mumbled in a maudlin voice. "Ole Vampire is a
villain! Ole John--'member ole John?--well, ole John heard his grandson,
the d'ective, say that if you go to the Coliseum to-morrow night...."
"I know all about it, Bruno. You may go to bed."
"Stop a minute, sir," said Bruno, with a melancholy smile. "You don't
unnerstand. They're going t' shoot you. See? Ole John--'member ole John?
Well, ole John...."
"I know, Bruno. But I'm going nevertheless."
Bruno fought with the vapour in his brain, and said: "You don' mean t'
say you inten' t' let yourself be a target...."
"That's what I do mean, Bruno."
Bruno burst into a loud laugh. "Well, I'll be ... wha' the devil.... But
you sha'n't go. I'll ... I'll see you damned first!"
"You're drunk, Bruno. Go and put yourself to bed."
The drink-deadened eyes flashed, and to grief succeeded rage. "Pu' mysel
t' bed! D'ye know wha' I'd like t' do t' you for t' nex' twenty-four
hours? I'd jus' like--yes, by Bacchus--I'd jus' like to punch you in t'
belly and put _you_ t' bed."
And straightening himself up with drunken dignity, Bruno stalked out of
the room.
* * * * *
The Baron Bonelli in the Piazza Leone was rising from his late and
solitary dinner when Felice entered the shaded dining-room and handed
him a letter from Roma. It ran:
"This is to let you know that I intend to be present at the
meeting in the Coliseum to-morrow night. Therefore, if any shots
are to be fired by the soldiers at the crowd or their leader, you
will know beforehand that they must also be fired at me."
As the Baron held the letter under the red shade of the lamp, the usual
immobility of his icy face gave way to a rapturous expression.
"The woman is magnificent! And worth fighting for to the bitter end."
Then, turning to Felice, he told the man to ring up the Commendatore
Angelelli and tell him to send for Minghelli without delay.
V
Next day began with heavy clouds lying low over the city, a cold wind
coming down from the mountains, and the rumbling of distant thunder.
Nevertheless the people who had come to Rome for the demonstration at
the Coliseum seemed to be in the streets the whole day long. From early
morning they gathered in the Piazza Navona, inquired for David Rossi,
stood by the fountains, and looked up at his windows.
As the day wore on the crowds increased.
All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad,
ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen
began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the
principal streets with a band that played the royal march.
Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable
and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many
and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows
what might happen!
Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out
of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she
did so it was only on indifferent subjects.
Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was
very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him.
Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking
for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up.
"Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the
soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look.
Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi
spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters
and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but
he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and
characters on his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the
flames.
It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton
handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him
with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that
Bruno had told his story.
"Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your
stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know."
After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed
little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted
lip beginning to smile.
"Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for
the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it
is his birthday."
"Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David.
Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something
in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were
produced.
"Joseph will promise not to go out to-day; won't you, Joseph?"
And Joseph rolled his fists into his eyes and was understood to say
"Yes."
At four o'clock Bruno came home, looking grim and resolute.
"I was pretty drunk last night, sir," he said, "but if there's shooting
to be done this evening I'm going to be there."
The time came for the two men to go, and everybody saw them to the door.
"Adieu!" said Rossi. "Thank you for all you've done for me, and may God
bless you! Take care of my little Roman boy. Kiss me, Joseph! Again! For
the last time! Adieu!"
"Ah, God is a good old saint. He'll take care of you, my son," said the
old woman.
"Adieu, Uncle David! Adieu, papa!" cried Joseph over the banisters, and
the brave little voice, with its manly falsetto, was the last the men
heard as they descended the stairs.
The Piazza del Popolo was densely crowded, and seemed to be twice as
large as usual. Bruno elbowed a way through for himself and Rossi until
they came to the obelisk in the centre of the great circle. On the steps
of the obelisk a company of artillery was stationed with a piece of
cannon which commanded the three principal thoroughfares of the city,
the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babunio, which branch off from that
centre like the ribs from the handle of a fan. Without taking notice of
the soldiers, the people ranged themselves in order and prepared for
their procession. At the ringing of Ave Maria the great crowd linked in
files and turned their faces towards the Corso.
Bruno walked first, carrying from his stalwart breast a standard, on
which was inscribed, under the title of the "Republic of Man," the
words, "Give us this day our daily bread." Rossi had meant to walk
immediately behind Bruno, but he found himself encircled by a group of
his followers. No sovereign was ever surrounded by more watchful guards.
By the spontaneous consent of the public, traffic in the street was
suspended, and crowds of the people of the city had turned out to look
on. The four tiers of the Pincian Hill were packed with spectators, and
every window and balcony in the Corso was filled with faces. All the
shops were shut, and many of them were barricaded within and without. A
regiment of infantry was ranged along the edge of the pavement, and the
people passed between two lines of rifles.
As the procession went on it was constantly augmented, and the column,
which had been four abreast when it started from the Popolo, was eight
abreast before it reached the end of the Corso. There were no bands of
music, and there was no singing, but at intervals some one at the head
of the procession would begin to clap, and then the clapping of hands
would run down the street like the rattle of musketry.
Going up the narrow streets beyond the Venezia, the people passed into
the Forum--out of the living city of the present into the dead city of
the past, with its desolation and its silence, its chaos of broken
columns and cornices, of corbels and capitals, of wells and
watercourses, lying in the waste where they had been left by the
earthquake which had passed over them, the earthquake of the ages--and
so on through the arch of Titus to the meeting-place in the Coliseum.
All this time David Rossi's restless eyes had passed nervously from side
to side. Coming down the Corso he had been dimly conscious of eyes
looking at him from windows and balconies. He was struggling to be calm
and firm, but he was in a furnace of dread, and beneath his breath he
was praying from time to time that God would prevent accident and avert
bloodshed. He was also praying for strength of spirit and feeling like a
guilty coward. His face was deadly pale, the fire within seemed to
consume the grosser senses, and he walked along like a man in a dream.
VI
Half-an-hour before Ave Maria, Roma had put on an inconspicuous cloak, a
plain hat, and a dark veil, and walked down to the Coliseum. Soldiers
were stationed on all the high ground about the circus, and large
numbers of persons were already assembled inside. The people were poor
and ill-clad, and they smelt of garlic and uncleanness. "_His_ people,
though," thought Roma, and so she conquered her repulsion.
Three tiers encircle the walls of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a
great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of
Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the
soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement
beneath their jesting was deep and strong.
The low cloud which had hung over the city from early morning seemed to
lie like a roof over the topmost circle of the amphitheatre, and as
night came on the pit below grew dark and chill. Then torches were lit
and put in prominent places--long pitch sticks covered with rags or
brown paper. The people were patient and good-humoured, but to beguile
the tedium of waiting they sang songs. They were songs of labour
chiefly, but one man started the _Te Deum_, and the rest joined in with
one voice. It was like the noise the sea makes on a heavy day when it
breaks on a bank of sand.
After a while there was a deep sound from outside. The procession was
approaching. It came on like a great tidal wave and flowed into the vast
place in the gathering darkness with the light of a hundred fresh
torches.
In less than half-an-hour the ruined amphitheatre was a moving mass of
heads from the ground to its upmost storey. Long sinuous trails of blue
smoke swept across the people's faces, and the great brown mass of
circular stones was lit up in fitful gleams.
Roma was lifted off her feet by the breaker of human beings that surged
around. At one moment she was conscious of some one behind who was
pressing the people back and making room for her. At the next moment she
was aware that through the multitudinous murmur of voices that rumbled
as in a vault somebody near her was trying to speak.
The speaking ceased and there was a sharp crackle of applause which had
the effect of producing silence. In this silence another voice, a clear,
loud, vibrating voice, said, "Romans and brothers," and then there was a
prolonged shout of recognition from ten thousand throats.
In a moment a dozen torches were handed up, and the speaker was in a
circle of light and could be seen by all. It was Rossi. He was standing
bareheaded on a stone, with a face of unusual paleness. He was wearing
the loose cloak of the common people of Rome, thrown across his breast
and shoulder. Bruno stood by his left side holding a standard above
their heads. At his right hand were two other men who partly concealed
him from the crowd. Roma found herself immediately below them, and
within two or three paces.
After a moment the shouting died down, and there was no sound in the
vast place but a soft, quick, indrawn hiss that was like the palpitating
breath of an immense flock of sheep. Then Rossi began again.
"First and foremost," he said, "let me call on you to preserve the
peace. One false step to-night and all is lost. Our enemies would like
to fix on us the name of rebels. Rebels against whom? There is no
rebellion except rebellion against the people. The people are the true
sovereigns, and the only rebels are the classes who oppress them."
A murmur of assent broke from the crowd. Rossi paused, and looked around
at the soldiers.
"Romans," he said, "do not let the armed rebels of the State provoke you
to violence. It is to their interest to do so. Defeat them. You have
come here in the face of their rifles and bayonets to show that you are
not afraid of death. But I ask you to be afraid of doing an unrighteous
thing. It is on my responsibility that you are here, and it would be an
undying remorse to me if through any fault of yours one drop of blood
were shed.
"I call on you as earnestly as if my nearest and dearest were among you,
liable to be shot down by the rifles of the military, not to give any
excuse for violence."
Roma turned to look at the soldiers. As far as she could see in the
uncertain light, they were standing passively in their circle, with
their rifles by their sides.
"Romans," said Rossi again, "a month ago we protested against an
iniquitous tax on the first necessary of life. The answer is sixty
thousand men in arms around us. Therefore we are here to-night to appeal
to the mightiest force on earth, mightier than any army, more powerful
than any parliament, more absolute than any king--the force of moral
sympathy and public opinion throughout the world."
At this there were shouts of "Bravo!" and some clapping of hands.
"Romans, if your bread is moistened by tears to-day, think of the power
of suffering and be strong. Think of the history of these old walls.
Think of the words of Christ, 'Which of the prophets have not your
fathers stoned?' The prophets of humanity have all been martyrs, and God
has marked you out to be the martyr nation of the world. Suffering is
the sacred flame that sanctifies the human soul. Pray to God for
strength to suffer, and He will bless you from the heights of Heaven."
People were weeping on every hand.
"Brothers, you are hungry, and I say these things to you with a beating
heart. Your children are starving, and I swear before God that from this
day forward I will starve with them. If I have eaten two meals a day
hitherto, for the future I will eat but one. But leave it to the powers
that are over you to do their worst. If they imprison you for resisting
their tyrannies, others will take your place. If they kill your leader,
God will raise up another who will be stronger than he. Swear to me in
this old Coliseum, sacred to the martyrs, that, come what may, you will
not yield to injustice and wrong."
There was something in Rossi's face at that last moment that seemed to
transcend the natural man. He raised his right arm over his head and in
a loud voice cried, "Swear!"
The people took the oath with uplifted hands and a great shout. It was
terrible.
Rossi stepped down, and the excitement was overwhelming. The vast crowd
seemed to toss to and fro under the smoking lights like a tumultuous
sea. The simple-hearted Roman populace could not contain themselves.
The crowd began to break up, and the people went off singing. Rossi and
his group of friends had disappeared when Roma turned to go. She found
herself weeping and singing, too, but for another reason. The danger was
passed, and all was over!
Going out by one of the arches, she was conscious of somebody walking
beside her. Presently a voice said:
"You don't recognise me in the darkness, Donna Roma?"
It was Charles Minghelli. He had been told to take care of her. Could he
offer her his escort home?
"No, thank you," she replied, and she was surprised at herself that she
experienced no repulsion.
Her heart was light, a great weight had been lifted away, and she felt a
large and generous charity. At the top of the hill she found a cab, and
as it dipped down the broad avenue that leads out of the circle of the
dead centuries into the world of living men, she turned and looked back
at the Coliseum. It was like a dream. The moving lights--the shadows of
great heads on the grim old walls--the surging crowds--the cheers from
hoarse throats. But the tinkle of the electric tram brought her back to
reality, and then she noticed that it had begun to snow.
* * * * *
Bruno ploughed a way for David Rossi, and they reached home at last.
Elena was standing at the door of David Rossi's rooms, with an agitated
face.
"Have you seen anything of Joseph?" she asked.
"Joseph?"
"I opened the window to look if you were coming, and in a moment he was
gone. On a night like this, too, when it isn't too safe for anybody to
be in the streets."
"Has he still got the clothes on?" said Bruno.
"Yes, and the naughty boy has broken his promise and must be whipped."
The men looked into each other's faces.
"Donna Roma?" said Rossi.
"I'll go and see," said Bruno.
"I must have a rod, whatever you say. I really must!" said Elena.
VII
Roma reached home in a glow of joy. She told herself that Rossi would
come to her in obedience to her command. He must dine with her to-night.
Seven was now striking on all the clocks outside, and to give him time
to arrive she put back the dinner until eight. Her aunt would dine in
her own room, so they would be quite alone. The conventions of life had
fallen absolutely away, and she considered them no more.
Meantime she must dress and perhaps take a bath. A certain sense of
soiling which she could not conquer had followed her up from that
glorious meeting. She felt a little ashamed of it, but it was there, and
though she told herself "They were _his_ people, poor things," she was
glad to take off the clothes she had worn at the Coliseum.
She combed out the curls of her glossy black hair, put herself into a
loose tea gown and red slippers, took one backward glance at herself in
the glass, and then going into the drawing-room, she stood by the window
to dream and wait. The snow still fell in thin flakes, but the city was
humming on, and the piazza down below was full of people.
After a while the electric bell of the outer door was rung, and her
heart beat against her breast. "It's he," she thought, and in the
exquisite tumult of the moment she lifted her arms and turned to meet
him.
But when the door was opened it was the Baron Bonelli who was shown into
the room. He was in evening dress, with black tie and studs which had a
chilling effect, and his manner was as cold and calm as usual.
"I regret," he said, "that we must enter on a painful interview."
"As you please," she answered, and sitting on a stool by the fire she
rested her elbows on her knees, and looked straight before her.
"Your letter of last night, my dear, produced the result you desired. I
sent for Commendatore Angelelli, invented some plausible excuses, and
reversed my orders. I also sent for Minghelli and told him to take care
of you on your reckless errand. The matter has thus far ended as you
wished, and I trust you are satisfied."
She nodded her head without turning round, and bore herself with a
certain air of defiance.
"But it is necessary that we should come to an understanding," he
continued. "You have driven me hard, my child. With all the tenderness
and sympathy possible, I am compelled to speak plainly. I wished to
spare your feelings. You will not permit me to do so."
The incisiveness of his speech cut the air like ice dropping from a
glacier, and Roma felt herself turning pale with a sense of something
fearful whirling around her.
"According to your own plans, Rossi is to marry you within a week,
although a month ago he spoke of you in public as an unworthy woman.
Will you be good enough to tell me how this miracle has come to pass?"
She laughed, and tried to carry herself bravely.
"If it is a miracle, how can I explain it?" she said.
"Then permit me to do so. He is going to marry you because he no longer
thinks as he thought a month ago; because he believes he was wrong in
what he said, and would like to wipe it out entirely."
"He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly;
"that's why he is going to marry me."
At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed
before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her
own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as
from a tomb.
"Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he
could scarcely be heard.
"Told him what?" she said.
"The truth--the fact."
She caught her breath and was silent.
"My child, you are doing wrong. There is a secret between you already.
That is a bad basis to begin life upon, and the love that is raised on
it will be a house built on the sand."
Her heart was beating violently, but she turned on him with a burning
glance.
"What do you mean?" she said, while the colour increased in her cheeks
and forehead. "I am a good woman. You know I am."
"To me, yes! The best woman in the world."
She had risen to her feet, and was standing by the chimney-piece.
"Understand me, my child," he said affectionately. "When I say you are
doing wrong, it is only in keeping a secret from the man you intend to
marry. Between you and me ... there is no secret."
She looked at him with haggard eyes.
"For me you are everything that is sweet and good, but for another who
knows? When a man is about to marry a woman, there is one thing he can
never forgive. Need I say what that is?"
The glow that had suffused her face changed to the pallor of marble, and
she turned to the Baron and stood over him with the majesty of a statue.
"Is it you that tell me this?" she said. "You--you? Can a woman never be
allowed to forget? Must the fault of another follow her all her life?
Oh, it is cruel! It is merciless.... But no matter!" she said in another
voice; and turning away from him she added, as if speaking to herself:
"He believes everything I tell him. Why should I trouble?"
The Baron followed her with a look that pierced to the depths of her
soul.
"Then you have told him a falsehood?" he said.
She pressed her lips together and made no answer.
"That was foolish. By-and-by somebody may come along who will tell him
the truth."
"What can any one tell him that he has not heard already? He has heard
everything, and put it all behind his back."
"Could nobody bring conviction to his mind? Nobody whatever? Not even
one who had no interest in slandering you?"
"You don't mean that you...."
"Why not? He has come between us. What could be more natural than that I
should tell him so?"
A look of dismay came over her face, and it was followed by an
expression of terror.
"But you wouldn't do that," she stammered. "You couldn't do it. It is
impossible. You are only trying me."
His face remained perfectly passive, and she seized him by the arm.
"Think! Only think! You would do no good for yourself. You might stop
the marriage--yes! But you wouldn't carry out your political purpose.
You couldn't! And while you would do no good for yourself, think of the
harm you would do for me. He loves me, and you would hurt his beautiful
faith in me, and I should die of grief and shame."
"You are cruel, my child," said the Baron, speaking with dignity. "You
think _I_ am hard and unrelenting, but _you_ are selfish and cruel. You
are so concerned about your own feelings that you don't even suspect
that perhaps you are wounding mine."
"Ah, yes, it is too bad," she said, dropping to her knees at his feet.
"After all, you have been very good to me thus far, and it was partly my
own fault if matters ended as they did. Yes, I confess it. I was vain
and proud. I wanted all the world. And when you gave me ev |
