Complete works of hall c.., p.357
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 357
As Rossi crossed the bridge of St. Angelo the cannon was fired from the Castle, and he knew that it was meant for a signal. “No matter!” he thought. “It will be too late when the soldiers arrive.”
Notwithstanding the tumult in the city the Piazza of St. Peter’s was silent and deserted. Not the sound of a footfall, not the rattle of a carriage-wheel; only the swish-swish of the fountains, whose waters were playing in the lamplight through the falling snow, and the echoing hammer of the clock of the Basilica.
The porter of the Palazzo Leone was asleep in his lodge, and Rossi passed upstairs.
“I’ll bring the man to justice now,” he thought. “He imagined we were only tame cats and would submit to anything. He was wrong. We’ll show him we know how to punish tyrants. Haven’t we always done so, we Romans? He has a sharp tongue for the people, but I have a sharper one here for him.”
And he felt for the revolver in his breast-pocket to make certain it was there.
The lackey in knee-breeches and yellow stockings who answered the inside bell was almost speechless at the sight of the white face which confronted him at the door. No, the Baron was not at home. He had not been there since early in the evening. Had he gone to the Prefettura? Possibly. Or the Consulta? Perhaps.
“Which, man, which?” said Rossi, and to say something the lackey stammered “The Consulta,” and closed the door.
Rossi set his face towards the Foreign Office. There was a light in the stained-glass windows of the Pope’s private chapel — the Holy Father was at his prayers. A canvas-covered barrow containing a man who had been injured by the soldiers was being wheeled into the Hospital of Santo Spirito, and a woman and a child were walking and crying beside it.
The streets were covered with broken tiles which had been thrown on to the heads of the cavalry as they galloped through the principal thoroughfares. Carabineers, with revolvers in hand, were dragging themselves on their stomachs along the roofs, trying to surprise the rioters who were hiding behind chimney-stacks. Some one shouted: “Cut the electric wires,” and men were clambering up the tall posts and breaking the electric lamps.
The Consulta, the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stands in the Piazza of the Quirinal, and when Rossi reached it the great square of the King was as silent as the great square of the Pope had been.
Two sentries were in boxes on either side of the royal gate, and one Carabineer was in the doorway. The gardens down the long corridor lay dark in the shadows, but the fountain with sculptured horses, the splashing water, and the front of the building were white under the electric lamps as if from a dazzling moon.
Before turning into the silent courtyard of the Consulta, Rossi paused and listened to the noises that came from the city. Men were singing and women were screaming. The rattle of musketry mingled with the cries of children. And over all were the steady downfall of the snow and the dull rumble of distant thunder.
Rossi held his head between his hands to prevent his senses from leaving him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the Prime Minister might not be there.
The porter was not sure. The Baron’s carriage had just gone. Let him ask on the telephone.... No, there had been a messenger from the Minister of the Interior, but the Minister himself had not been there that night.
Rossi took a long breath of relief and went away. He had returned to the bright side of the piazza when the lights seemed to be wiped out as though by an invisible wing, and the whole city was plunged in darkness. At the next moment a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the Quirinal, and the gates of the royal palace and of the Consulta were closed.
Midnight struck.
For two hours the soldiers had been charging the crowds by the light of lanterns and torches. They had arrested hundreds of persons. Chained together, two and two, the insurgents had been taken to the places of detention, amid the cries of their women and children. “Who knows whether we shall see each other again?” said the prisoners, as they passed into the “House of Pain.” One old woman went on her knees to the soldiers and begged them to have pity on the people. “They are your brothers, my sons,” she cried.
One o’clock struck.
The streets were still dark, but a searchlight from Monte Mario was sweeping over the city like a flash of a supernatural eye. With tottering limbs and his head on his breast, David Rossi was walking down the Via due Macelli towards the column of the Immaculate Conception, when a young girl spoke to him.
“Honourable,” she said, “is it true that the little boy is dead?... It is? Oh, dear! I met him in the Corso, and brought him up as far as the Variétés, and if I had only taken him all the way.... Oh, I shall never forgive myself!”
The city was quiet and all was hushed on every side when Rossi found himself on a flight of steps at the back of Roma’s apartment. From these steps a door opened into the studio. One panel of the door was glazed, and a light was shining from within. Going cautiously forward, Rossi looked into the room. Roma was seated on a stool with her hands clasped in her lap and her hair hanging loose. She was very pale. Her face expressed unutterable sadness.
Rossi listened for a moment, but there was not a sound to be heard except that of the different clocks chiming the quarter. Then he tapped lightly on the glass.
“Roma!” he said in a low tone. “Roma!”
She rose up and shrank back. Then coming to the door, and shielding her eyes from the light, she put her face close to the pane. At the next moment she threw the door open.
“Is it you?” she said in a tremulous voice, and taking his hand she drew him hurriedly into the house.
XII
After the Baron was gone, Roma had sat a long time in the dark among the ruins of the broken bust. When twelve o’clock struck she was feeling hot and feverish, and, in spite of the coldness of the night, she rose and opened the window. The snow had ceased to fall, the thunder was gone, and the city was quiet.
At that moment the revolving searchlight on Monte Mario passed over the room. The white flash lit up the broken fragments at her feet, and brought a new train of reflections. The bust she destroyed had been only the plaster cast; the piece-mould remained, and might be a cause of danger.
She closed the window, took a candle, and went down to the studio to put the mould out of the way. She had done so, and was sitting to rest and to think when Rossi’s knock came at the door. In a moment all her dreams were gone. She was clasped in his arms and had put up her mouth to be kissed.
“Is it you?”
“Roma!”
It was not at first that she realised what was happening, but after a moment she recovered from her bewilderment, and extinguished the candle lest Rossi should be seen from outside.
They were in the dark, save at intervals when the revolving light in its circuit of the city swept across the studio, and lit up their faces as by a flash of lightning. He seemed to be dazed. His weary eyes looked as if their light were almost extinct.
“You are safe? You are well?” she asked.
“O God! what sights!” he said. “You have heard what has happened?”
“Yes, yes! But you are not injured?”
“The people were peaceful and meant no evil, but the soldiers were ordered to fire, and our little boy is dead.”
“Don’t let us speak of it.... The police were told to arrest you, but you have escaped thus far, and now....”
“Bruno is taken, and hundreds of others are in prison.”
“But you are safe? You are well? You are uninjured?”
“Yes,” he answered between his teeth, and then he covered his face with his hands. “God knows I did my best to prevent this bloodshed — I would have laid down my life to prevent it.”
“God does know it.”
“Take this.”
He drew something from his breast-pocket and put it into her hands.
It was the revolver.
“I cannot trust myself any longer.”
“You haven’t used it?”
“No.”
“Thank God!”
“I should have done so if I could have met the man face to face.”
“The Baron?”
“I searched for him everywhere, and couldn’t find him. God kept him out of my way to save me from sin and shame.”
With a frightened cry she put down the revolver and clasped her hands about his neck. He began to recover his dazed senses and to smooth the hair on her damp forehead.
“My poor Roma! You didn’t think we were to part like this?”
Her arms slackened, and she dropped her head on to his shoulder.
“Last night you told me to fly, and I wouldn’t do so. There was no man in Rome I was afraid of then. But to-night there is some one I am afraid of. I am afraid of myself.”
“You intend to go?”
“Yes! I shall feel like a captain who deserts his sinking ship. Would to God I could have gone down with her!... Yet no! She is not lost yet. Everything is in God’s hands. Perhaps there is work for me abroad, now that the paths are closed to me at home. Let us wait and see.”
They were both silent for a while.
“Then it’s all over,” she said, gulping down a sob.
“God forbid! This black night in Rome is only the beginning of the end. It will be the dawn of the resurrection everywhere.”
“But it is all over between you and me.”
“Indeed, no. No, no! I cannot take you with me. That is impossible. I couldn’t see you suffer hunger and thirst and the privations of exile, but....”
“Our marriage cannot be celebrated now, and that being so....”
“The banns are good for half a year, Roma, and before that time I shall be back. Have no fear! The immortality stirring beneath the ruins of this old city will give us victory all over Italy. I will return and we shall be very happy. How happy we shall be!”
“Yes, yes,” she brought out at intervals.
“Be brave, my girl, be brave!”
“Yes, yes.”
The revolving searchlight flashed through the room at that moment, and she dropped her face again.
“Dearest,” she said faintly, “if I should not be here when you come back....”
He started and seized her arm.
“Roma, you cannot intend to submit to the will of that man?”
She shook her head as it rested on his shoulder.
“The man is a monster. He may put pressure upon you.”
“It is not that.”
“He may even make you suffer for my sake.”
“Nor that either.”
“By-and-by he may require everybody to take an oath of allegiance to the King.”
“I have taken mine already — to my king.”
“Roma, if you wish me to stay I will do so in spite of everything.”
“I wish you to go, dearest.”
“Then what is it you fear?”
“Nothing — only....”
“But you are sad. Why is it?”
“A foreboding. I feel as if we were parting for ever.”
He passed his hands through her hair. “It may be so. Only God can tell.”
“It was too sweet dreaming. I was too happy for a little while.”
“If it must be, it must be. But let us be brave, dear! We, who take up a life like this, must learn renunciation.... Crying, Roma?”
“No! Oh, no! But renunciation! That’s it — renunciation.” She could feel the beating of her heart against his breast. “Love comes to every one, but to some it comes too late, and then it comes in vain.” She was striving to keep down her sobs. “They have only to conquer it and renounce it, and to pray God to unite them to their loved ones in another life.” She was choking, but she struggled on. “Sometimes I think it must be my lot to be like that. Other women may dream of love and home and children....”
“Don’t unman me, Roma.”
“Dearest, promise me that whatever happens you will think the best of me.”
“Roma!”
“Promise me that whoever says anything to the contrary you will always believe I loved you.”
“Why should we talk of what can never happen?”
“If we are parting for ever ... if we are saying a long farewell to all earthly affections, promise me....”
“For God’s sake, Roma!”
“Promise me!”
“I promise!” he said. “And you?”
“I promise too — I promise that as long as I live, and wherever I am and whatever becomes of me, I will ... yes, because I cannot help it ... I will love you to the last.”
Saying this in passionate tones, she drew down his head and he met her kiss with his lips.
“It is our marriage, David. Others are married in church and by the hand, and with a ring. We are married in our spirits and our souls.”
A long time passed, during which they did not speak. The searchlight flashed in on them again and again with its supernatural eye, and as often as it did so Rossi looked at her with strange looks of pity and of love.
Meantime, she cut a lock from her hair, tied it with a piece of ribbon, and put it in his pocket with his watch. Then she dried her eyes with her handkerchief and pushed it in his breast.
The night went on, and nothing was to be heard but the chiming of clocks outside. At length through the silence there came a muffled rumble from the streets.
“You must go now,” she said, and when the next flash came round she looked up at him with a steadfast gaze, as if trying to gather into her eyes her last memories of his face.
“Adieu!”
“Not yet.”
“It is still dark, but the streets are patrolled and every gate is closed, and how are you to escape?”
“If the soldiers had wished to take me they could have done so a hundred times.”
“But the city is stirring. Be careful for my sake. Adieu!”
“Roma,” said Rossi, “if I do not take you with me it is partly because I want your help in Rome. Think of the poor people I leave behind me in poverty and in prison. Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning, alone with her terrible grief. Some one should be here to represent me for a time at all events — to take the messages I must send, the instructions I shall have to give. It will be a dangerous task, Roma, a task that can only be undertaken by some one who loves me, some one who....”
“That is enough. Tell me what I can do,” she said.
They arranged a channel of correspondence, and then Roma began her farewells afresh.
“Roma,” said Rossi again, “since I must go away before our civil marriage can be celebrated, is it not best that our spiritual one should have the blessing of the Church?”
Roma looked at him and trembled.
“When I am gone God knows what may happen. The Baron may be a free man any day, and he may put pressure on you to marry him. In that case it will be strength and courage to you to know that in God’s eyes you are married already. It will be happiness and comfort to me, too, when I am far away from you and alone.”
“But it is impossible.”
“Not so. A declaration before a parish priest is all that is necessary. ‘Father, this is my wife.’ ‘This is my husband.’ That is enough. It will have no value in the eye of the law, but it will be a religious marriage for all that.”
“There is no time. You cannot wait....”
“Hush!” The clocks were striking three. “At three o’clock there is mass at St. Andrea delle Frate. That is your parish church, Roma. The priest and his acolytes are the only witnesses we require.”
“If you think ... that is to say ... if it will make you happy, and be a strength to me also....”
“Run for your cloak and hat, dearest — in ten minutes it will be done.”
“But think again.” She was breathing audibly. “Who knows what may happen before you return? Will you never repent?”
“Never!”
“But ... but there is something ... something I ought to tell you — something painful. It is about the past.”
“The past is past. Let us think of the future.”
“You do not wish to hear it.”
“If it is painful to you — no!”
“Will nothing and nobody divide us?”
“Nothing and nobody in the world.”
She gulped down another choking sob and threw both arms about his neck.
“Take me, then. I am your wife before God and man.”
XIII
It was still dark overhead, and the streets with their thin covering of snow were as silent as a catacomb. Through the door of the church, when the leather covering was lifted, there came the yellow light of the candles burning on the altar. The priest in his gold vestments stood with his face to the glistening shrine, and his acolytes knelt beside him. There was only one worshipper, an old woman who was kneeling before a chair in the gloom of a side chapel. The tinkle of the acolytes’ bell and the faint murmur of the priest’s voice were the only sounds that broke the stillness.
Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They parted at the church door.
“You will write when you cross the frontier?”
“Yes.”
“Adieu then, until we meet again!”
“If I am long away from you, Roma....”
“You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always.”
She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice.
He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. “If the result of this night’s work is that I am arrested and brought back and imprisoned....”
