Complete works of hall c.., p.345
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 345
“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.”
