Complete works of hall c.., p.337
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 337
“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 café 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.”
