Complete works of hall c.., p.355
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 355
Roma raised her hands to her head as if to avert a blow.
“Stop! stop!” she cried in a choking voice, and lifting her face, distorted with suffering, tears rose in her eyes. To see Roma cry touched the only tenderness of which his iron nature was capable. He patted the beautiful head at his feet, and said in a caressing tone:
“Why will you make me seem so hard, my child? There is really no need to talk of these things. They will not occur. How can I have any desire to degrade you since I must degrade myself at the same time? I have no wish to tell any one the secret which belongs only to you and me. In that matter you were not to blame either. It was all my doing. I was sweltering under the shameful law which tied me to a dead body, and I tried to attach you to me. And then your beauty — your loveliness....”
At that moment Felice announced Commendatore Angelelli. Roma walked over to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost hoped he would not.
VIII
Behind her the Prime Minister, who had apologised for turning her house into a temporary Ministry of the Interior, was talking to his Chief of Police.
“You were there yourself?”
“I was, Excellency. I went up into a high part and looked down. It was a strange and wild sight.”
“How many would there be?”
“Impossible to guess. Inside and outside, Romans, country people, perhaps a hundred thousand.”
“And Rossi’s speech?”
“The usual appeal to the passions of the people, Excellency. An extraordinary exhibition of the art of flying between wind and water. We couldn’t have found a word that was distinctly seditious, even if we hadn’t had your Excellency’s order to let the man go on.”
“You have stopped the telegraph wires?”
“Yes.”
“When the meeting was over, Rossi went home?”
“He did, Excellency.”
“And the hundred thousand?”
“In their excitement they began to sing and to march through the streets. They are still doing so. After going down to the Piazza Navona, they are coming up by the Piazza del Popolo and along the Babuino with banners and torches.”
“Men only?”
“Men, women, and children.”
“You would say that their attitude is threatening?”
“Distinctly threatening, your Excellency.”
“Let your delegates give the legal warning and say that the gathering of great mobs at this hour will be regarded as open rebellion. Allow three minutes’ grace for the sake of the women and children, and then ... let the military do their duty.”
“Quite so, your Excellency.”
“After that you may carry out the instructions I gave you yesterday.”
“Certainly, your Excellency.”
“Keep in touch with all the leaders. Some of them will find that the air of Rome is a little dangerous to their health to-night, and may wish to fly to Switzerland or England, where it would be impossible to follow them.”
Roma heard behind her the thin cackle as of a hen over her nest, which always came when Angelelli laughed.
“Their meeting itself was illegal, and our license has been abused.”
“Grossly abused, your Excellency.”
“The action of the Government was too conciliatory, and has rendered them audacious, but the new law is clear in prohibiting the carrying of seditious flags and emblems.”
“We’ll deal with them according to Articles 134 and 252 of the Penal Code, your Excellency.”
“You can go. But come back immediately if anything happens. I must remain here for the present, and in case of riot I may have to send you to the King.”
Angelelli’s thin voice fell to a whisper of awe at the mention of Majesty, and after a moment he bowed and backed out of the room.
Roma did not turn round, and the Minister, who had touched the bell and called for pen and paper, spoke to her from behind.
“I daresay you thought I was hard and inhuman at the Palazzo Braschi yesterday, but I was really very merciful. In letting you see the preparations to enclose your friend as in a net, I merely wished you to warn him to fly from the country. He has not done so, and now he must take the consequences.”
Felice brought the writing materials, and the Baron sat down at the table. There was a long silence in which nothing could be heard but the scratching of the Minister’s pen, the snoring of the poodle, and the deadened sound through the wall of the Countess’s testy voice scolding Natalina.
Roma stepped into the boudoir. The room was dark, and from its unlit windows she could see more plainly into the streets. Masses of shadow lay around, but the untrodden steps were white with thin snow, and the piazza were alive with black figures which moved on the damp ground like worms on an upturned sod.
She was leaning her hot forehead against the glass and looking out with haggard eyes, when a deep rumble as of a great multitude came from below. The noise quickly increased to a loud uproar, with shouts, songs, whistles, and shrill sounds blown out of door-keys. Before she was aware of his presence the Baron was standing behind her, between the window and the pedestal with the plaster bust of Rossi.
“Listen to them,” he said. “The proletariat indeed!... And this is the flock of bipeds to whom men in their senses would have us throw the treasures of civilisation and hand over the delicate machinery of government.”
He laughed bitterly, and drew back the curtain with an impatient hand.
“Democracy! Christian Democracy! Vox Populi vox Dei! The sovereignty and infallibility of the people! Pshaw! I would as soon believe in the infallibility of the Pope!”
The crowds increased in the piazza until the triangular space looked like the rapids of a swollen river, and the noise that came up from it was like the noise of falling cliffs and uprooted trees.
“Fools! Rabble! Too ignorant to know what you really want, and at the mercy of every rascal who sows the wind and leaves you to reap the whirlwind.”
Roma crept away from the Baron with a sense of physical repulsion, and at the next moment, from the other window, she heard the blast of a trumpet. A dreadful silence followed the trumpet blast, and then a clear voice cried:
“In the name of the law I command you to disperse.”
It was the voice of a delegate of the police. Roma could see the man on the lowest stage of the steps with his tricoloured scarf of office about him. A second blast came from the trumpet, and again the delegate cried:
“In the name of the law I command you to disperse.”
At that moment somebody cried, “Long live the Republic of Man!” and there was great cheering. In the midst of the cheering the trumpet sounded a third time, and then a loud voice cried “Fire!”
At the next moment a volley was fired from somewhere, a cloud of white smoke was coiling in front of the window at which Roma stood, and women and children in the vagueness below were uttering acute cries.
“Oh! oh! oh!”
“Don’t be afraid, my child. Nothing has happened yet. The police had orders to fire first over the people’s heads.”
In her fear and agitation Roma ran back to the outer room, and a moment afterwards Angelelli opened the door and stood face to face with her.
“What have you done?” she demanded.
“An unfortunate incident, Excellency,” said Angelelli, as the Baron appeared. “After the warning of the delegate the mob laughed and threw stones, and the Carabineers fired. They were in the piazza and fired up the steps.”
“Well?”
“Unluckily there were a few persons on the upper flights at the moment, and some of them are wounded, and a child is dead.”
Roma muttered a low moan and sank on to the stool.
“Whose child is it?”
“We don’t yet know, but the father is there, and he is raging like a madman, and unless he is arrested he will provoke the people to frenzy, and there will be riot and insurrection.”
The Baron took from the table a letter he had written and sealed.
“Take this to the Quirinal instantly. Ask for an immediate audience with the King. When you receive his written reply, call up the Minister of War and say you have the royal decree to declare a state of siege.”
Angelelli was going out hurriedly.
“Wait! Send to the Piazza Navona and arrest Rossi. Be careful! You will arrest the Deputy under Articles 134 and 252 on a charge of using the great influence he has acquired over the people to urge the masses by speeches and writings to resist public authority and to change violently the form of government and the constitution of the State.”
“Good!”
Angelelli disappeared, the acute cries outside died away, the scurrying of flying feet was no more heard, and Roma was still on the stool before the fire, moaning behind the hands that covered her face. The Baron came near to her and touched her with a caressing gesture.
“I’m sorry, my child, very sorry. Rossi is a dreamer, not a statesman, but he is none the less troublesome on that account No wonder he has fascinated you, as he has fascinated the people, but time will wipe away an impression like that. The best thing that can happen for both of you is that he should be arrested to-night. It will save you so many ordeals and so much sorrow.”
At that moment a cannon-shot boomed through the darkness outside, and its vibration rattled the windows and walls.
“The signal from St. Angelo,” said the Baron. “The gates are closed and the city is under siege.”
IX
When, in the commotion of the household caused by the near approach of the crowd which brought Rossi home from the Coliseum, little Joseph slipped down the stairs and made a dash for the street, he chuckled to himself as he thought how cleverly he had eluded his mother, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, and those two old watch-dogs, his grandfather and grandmother, who were nearly always at the door.
It was not until he was fairly plunged into the great sea of the city, and had begun to be a little dazed by more lights than he ever saw when he closed his eyes in bed, that he remembered that he had disobeyed orders and broken his promise not to go out. But even then, he told himself, he was not responsible. He was Donna Roma’s porter now. Therefore, he couldn’t be Joseph, could he?
So, with his magic mace in hand, the serious man of seven marched on, and reconciled himself to his disobedience by thinking nothing more about it. People looked at him and smiled as he passed through the Piazza Madama, where the Senate House stands, and that made him lift his head and walk on proudly, but as he went through the Piazza of the Pantheon a boy who was coming out of a cookshop with a tray on his head cried, “Helloa, kiddy! playing Pulcinello?” and that dashed his worshipful dignity for several minutes.
It began to snow, and the white flakes on his gold braid clouded his soul at first, but when he remembered that porters had to work in all weathers, he wagged his sturdy head and strode on. He was going to Donna Roma’s according to her invitation, and he found his way by his recollection of what he had seen when he made the same journey on Sunday — here a tramcar coming round a corner, there a line of posts across a narrow thoroughfare, and there a fat man with a gruff voice shouting something at the door of a trattoria.
At the corner of a lane there was a shop window full of knives and revolvers. He didn’t care for knives — they cut people’s fingers — but he liked guns, and when he grew up to be a man he would buy one and kill somebody.
Coming to the Piazza Monte Citorio, he remembered the soldiers at the door of the House of Parliament, and the cellar full of long guns with knives (bayonets) stuck on the ends of their muzzles. One of the soldiers laughed, called him “Uncle,” and asked him something about enlisting, but he only struck his mace firmly on the flags and marched on.
At the corner of the Piazza Colonna he had to wait some time before he could cross the Corso, for the crowds were coming both ways and the traffic frightened him. He had made various little sorties and had been driven back, when a soft hand was slipped into his fat palm and he was piloted across in safety. Then he looked up at his helper. It was a girl with big white feathers in her hat, and her face painted pink and white like the face of the little Jesus in the cradle in church at Christmas. She asked him what his name was, and he told her; also where he was going, and he told her that too. It was dark by this time, and the great little man was beginning to be glad of company.
“Aren’t you tired of carrying that heavy stick?” she said.
It wasn’t a stick, and he wasn’t a bit tired of carrying it.
“But aren’t you tired yourself?” she said, and he admitted that perhaps it was so.
So she picked him up, and carried him in her arms, while he carried the mace, and for some minutes both were satisfied. But presently some one in the Via Tritone cried out, “Helloa! here comes the Blessed Bambino,” whereupon his worshipful dignity was again wounded, and he wriggled to the ground.
It began to thunder and there were some flashes of lightning, whereupon Joseph shuddered and crept closer to the girl’s side.
“Are you afraid of lightning, Joseph?” she asked.
He wasn’t. He often saw it at home when he went to bed. His mother held his hand and he covered up his head in the clothes, and then he liked it.
The girl took the wee, fat hand again, and the little feet toddled on.
After vain efforts to snatch a kiss, which were defeated by a proper withdrawal of the manly head in the cocked hat, the girl with the feathers and the doll’s face left him in the Via due Macelli under a bright electric lamp that hung over the door of a café-chantant.
Joseph knew then that he was not far from Donna Roma’s, and he began to think of what he would do when he got there. If the big porter at the door tried to stop him he would say, “I’m a little Roman boy,” and the man would have to let him go up. Then he would take charge of the hall, and when he had not to open the door he would play with the dog, and sometimes with Donna Roma.
With sound practical sense he thought of his wages. Would it be a penny a week or twopence? He thought it would be twopence. Men didn’t work for nothing nowadays. He had heard his father say so.
Then he remembered his mother, and his lip began to drop. But it rose again when he told himself that of course she would come every night to put him to bed as usual. “Good-night, mamma! See you in the morning,” he would say, and when he opened his eyes it would be to-morrow.
He was feeling sleepy now, and do what he would he could hardly keep his eyes from closing. But he was in the Piazza di Spagna by this time, and his little feet in their top-boots began to patter up the snowy steps.
There are three principal landings to the Spanish Steps, and the great little man of seven had reached the second of them when a noise in the streets below made him stop and turn his head.
A great crowd, carrying hundreds of torches, was marching into the piazza. They were singing, shouting, and blowing whistles and trumpets. It was like Befana in the Piazza Navona, and when Joseph blinked his eyes he almost thought he was at home in bed.
All at once silence — then soldiers — then a jump all over his body like that which came to him when he was falling asleep — then a sense of something warm — then a buzzing noise — then a boom like that of the gun of St. Angelo at dinner-time ... then a deep, familiar voice calling and calling to him, and his eyes opened for a moment and saw his father’s face.
“Good-night, papa! So sleepy! See you in the morning!”
And then nothing more.
* * * * *
While Elena waited for Bruno’s return with little Joseph, she went up and downstairs between David Rossi’s apartment and her own on all manner of invented errands. Meantime she tried to keep down her anxiety by keeping up her anger. Joseph was so worrisome. When he came home he would have to be whipped and sent to bed without his supper. It was true his verdura was already on the stove, but he must not be allowed to touch it. You really must be strict with children. They would like you all the better for it when they grew up to be men and women.
But every moment broke down this brave severity, until the desire to punish Joseph for his disobedience was all gone. She stood at the head of the stairs and listened for his voice and his little pattering feet. If she had heard them, her anxious expression would have given way to a cross look and she would have scolded both father and son all the way up to bed. But they did not come, and she turned to the dining-room with a downcast face.
“Where can the boy be? If I could only have him back! I will never let him out of my sight again. Never!”
David Rossi, who was walking in the sitting-room to calm his nerves after a trying time, tried to comfort her. It would be all right. Depend upon it, Joseph had gone up to Donna Roma’s. She was to remember what Bruno told them on Sunday. “The little Roman boy.” Joseph had thought of nothing else for three days, and this being his birthday....
“You think so? You really think....”
“I’m sure of it. Bruno will be back presently, carrying Joseph on his back. Or perhaps Donna Roma will send the boy home in the carriage, and the great little man will come upstairs like the Mayor. Meantime she has kept him to play with, and....”
“Yes, that must be it,” said Elena, with shining eyes. “The Signorina must have kept him to play with! He must be playing now with the Signorina!”
At that moment through the open door there came the sound of a heavy tread on the stairs, mingled with various voices. Elena’s shining face suddenly clouded, and Rossi, who read her thought, went out on to the landing. Bruno was coming up the staircase with something in his arms, and behind him were the Garibaldian and his old wife and a line of strangers.
