Complete works of hall c.., p.360
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 360
Only those who love can know this law of the human heart, but how true it is and how beautiful!
“We reached London in the early morning, when the grey old city was beginning to stir after its sleepless rest. I had telegraphed the time of my arrival to the committee of our association, and early as it was some hundreds of our people were at Charing Cross to meet me. They must have been surprised to see a man step out of the train in the disguise of driver of a wine-cart on the
Campagna, but perhaps that helped them to understand the position better, and they formed into procession and marched to Trafalgar
Square as if they had forgotten they were in a foreign country.
“To me it was a strange and moving spectacle. The mist like a shroud over the great city, some stars of leaden hue paling out overhead, the day dawning over the vast square, the wide silence with the far-off hum of awakening life, the English workmen stopping to look at us as they went by to their work, and our company of dark-bearded men, emigrants and exiles, sending their hearts out in sympathy to their brothers in the south. As I spoke from the base of the Gordon statue and turned towards St. Martin’s
Church, I could fancy I saw your white-haired father on the steps with his little daughter in his arms.
“I will write again in a day or two, telling you what we are doing. Meantime I enclose a Proclamation to the People, which I wish you to get printed and posted up. Take it to old Albert
Pelegrino in the Stamperia by the Trevi. Tell him to mention the cost and the money shall follow. Call at the Piazza Navona and see what is happening to Elena. Poor girl! Poor Bruno! And my poor dear little darling!
“Take care of yourself, my dear one. I am always thinking of you.
It is a fearful thing to have taken up the burden of one who is branded as an outcast and an outlaw. I cannot help but reproach myself. There was a time when I saw my duty to you in another way, but love came like a hurricane out of the skies and swept all sense of duty away. My wife! my Roma! You have hazarded everything for me, and some day I will give up everything for you.
D. R.”
VII
“DEAREST, — Your letter to Sister Angelica arrived safely, and worked more miracles in her cloistered heart than ever happened to the ‘Blessed Bambino.’ Before it came I was always thinking,
‘Where is he now? Is he having his breakfast? Or is it dinner, according to the difference of time and longitude?’ All I knew was that you had travelled north, and though the sun doesn’t ordinarily set in that direction, the sky over Monte Mario used to glow for my special pleasure like the gates of the New Jerusalem.
“Your letters are so precious that I will ask you not to fill them with useless things. Don’t tell me to love you. The idea! Didn’t I say I should think of you always? I do! I think of you when I go to bed at night, and that is like opening a jewel-case in the moonlight. I think of you when I am asleep, and that is like an invisible bridge which unites us in our dreams; and I think of you when I wake in the morning, and that is like a cage of song-birds that sing in my breast the whole day long.
“But you are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off against those official telegrams. ‘Not a day with out a line,’ so my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box.
Let me bring my despatches up to date.
“Military rule severer than ever, and poverty and misery on all sides. Families of reserve soldiers starving, and meetings of chief citizens to succour them. Donation from the King and from the ‘Black’ Charity Circle of St. Peter. Even the clergy are sending francs, so none can question their sincerity. Bureau of
Labour besieged by men out of work, and offices occupied by
Carabineers. People eating maize in polenta and granturco with the certainty of sickness to follow. Red Cross Society organised as in time of war, and many sick and wounded hidden in houses.
“And now for more personal matters. The proclamation is in hand, and paid for, and will be posted first thing in the morning. From the printer’s I went on to the Piazza Navona and found a wilderness of woe. Elena has gone away, leaving an ambiguous letter behind her, saying that she wished her Madonna to be given to me, as she would have no need of it in the place she was going to. This led the old people to believe that for the loss of her son and husband she had become demented and had destroyed herself.
I pretended to think differently, and warned them to say nothing of their daughter’s disappearance, thinking that Bruno might hear of it, and find food for still further suspicions.
“Lawyer Napoleon F. has seen the poor soul again, and been here this evening to tell me the result. It will seem to you incredible. Bruno will do nothing to help in his own defence.
Talks of ‘treachery’ and the ‘King’s pardon.’ Napoleon F. thinks the Camorra is at work with him, and tells how criminals in the prisons of Italy have a league of crime, with captains, corporals, and cadets. My own reading of the mystery is different. I think the Camorra in this case is the Council, and the only design is to entrap by treachery one of the ‘greater delinquents not in custody.’ I want to find out where Charles Minghelli is at present. Nobody seems to know.
“As for me, what do you suppose is my last performance? I’ve sold my jewels! Yesterday I sent for one of the strozzini, and the old Shylock came this evening and cheated me unmercifully. No matter! What do I want with jewellery, or a fine house, and servants to follow me about as if I were a Cardinal? If you can do without them so can I. But you need not say you are anxious about what is happening to me. I’m as happy as the day is long. I am happy because I love you, and that is everything.
“Only one thing troubles me — the grief of the poor girl I told you of. She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel as if I were possessed by her secret. In fact, I’m afraid I’ll blab it out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her.
She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women are always saying, isn’t it? They draw this distinction when it is too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time, and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a minute of weakness — mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue, but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.
“Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I’m not so sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There is something in that, isn’t there?
“One thing I must say for the poor girl — she has been a different woman since this happened. It has converted her. That’s a shocking thing to say, but it’s true. I remember that when I was a girl in the convent, and didn’t go to mass because I hadn’t been baptized and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn’t be, I used to read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of ‘the drunkenness of sin’ were the instants of salvation. Who knows?
Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend, she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares nothing for the world and its vanities.
“Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands — why can’t I do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level, and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn’t quite blind. I’m not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that’s where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful!
ROMA.”
VIII
Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her immediately.
“I must have a doctor,” she said. “It’s perfectly heartless to keep me without one all this time.”
“Aunt Betsy,” said Roma, “you know quite well that but for your own express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along.”
“For mercy’s sake, don’t nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now.”
Fedi was the Pope’s physician, and therefore the most costly and fashionable doctor in Rome.
Dr. Fedi came with an assistant who carried a little case of instruments. He examined the Countess, her breast, her side, and the glands under her arms, shot out a solemn under-lip, put two fingers inside his collar, twisted his head from side to side, and announced that the patient must have a nurse immediately.
“Do you hear that, Roma? Doctor says that I must have a nurse. Of course I must have a nurse. I’ll have one of the English nursing Sisters. Everybody has them now. They’re foreigners, and if they talk they can’t do much mischief.”
The Sister was sent for. She was a mild and gentle creature, in blue and white, but she talked perpetually of her Mother Superior, who had been bedridden for fifteen years, yet smiled sweetly all day long. That exasperated the Countess and fretted her. When the doctor came again the patient was worse.
“Your aunt must have dainties to tempt her appetite and so keep up her strength.”
“Do you hear, Roma?”
“You shall have everything you wish for, auntie.”
“Well, I wish for strawberries. Everybody eats them who is ill at this season.”
The strawberries were bought, but the Countess scarcely touched them, and they were finally consumed in the kitchen.
When the doctor came a third time the patient was much emaciated and her skin had become sallow and earthy.
“It would not be right to conceal from you the gravity of your condition, Countess,” he said. “In such a case we always think it best to tell a patient to make her peace with God.”
“Oh, don’t say that, doctor,” whimpered the poor withered creature on the bed.
“But while there’s life there’s hope, you know; and meantime I’ll send you an opiate to relieve the pain.”
When the doctor was gone, the Countess sent for Roma.
“That Fedi is a fool,” she said. “I don’t know what people see in him. I should like to try the Bambino of Ara C[oe]li. The Cardinal Vicar had it, and why shouldn’t I? They say it has worked miracles. It may be dear, but if I die you will always reproach yourself. If you are short of money you can sign a bill at six months, and before that the poor maniac woman will be gone and you’ll be the wife of the Baron.”
“If you really think the Bambino will....”
“It will! I know it will.”
“Very well, I will send for it.”
Roma sent a letter to the Superior of the Franciscans at the Friary of Ara C[oe]li asking that the little figure of the infant Christ, which is said to restore the sick, should be sent to her aunt, who was near to death.
At the same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli, requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to see everything except Roma herself.
“I wish to sell up my furniture,” said Roma.
“All of it?”
“Except what is in my aunt’s room and the room of her nurse, and such things in the kitchen, the servants’ apartments, and my own bedroom as are absolutely necessary for present purposes.”
“Quite right. When?”
“Within a week if possible.”
The Bambino came in a carriage with two horses, and the people in the street went down on their knees as it passed. One of the friars in priest’s surplice carried it in a box with the lid open, and two friars in brown habits walked before it with lifted candles. But as the painted image in its scarlet clothes and jewels entered the Countess’s bedroom with its grim and ghostly procession, and was borne like a baby mummy to the foot of her bed, it terrified her, and she screamed.
“Take it away!” she shrieked. “Do you want to frighten me out of my life? Take it away!”
The grim and ghostly procession went out. Its visit had lasted thirty seconds and cost a hundred francs.
When the doctor came again the outline of the Countess’s writhing form had shrunk to the lines of a skeleton under the ruffled counterpane.
“It’s not the Bambino you want — it’s the priest,” he said, and then the poor mortal who was still afraid of dying began to whimper.
“And, Sister,” said the doctor, “as the Countess suffers so much pain, you may increase the opiate from a dessert-spoonful to a tablespoonful, and give it twice as frequently.”
That evening the Sister went home for a few hours’ leave, and Roma took her place by the sick-bed. The patient was more selfish and exacting than ever, but Roma had begun to feel a softening towards the poor tortured being, and was trying her best to do her duty.
It was dusk, and the Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit’s foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt’s toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils were pencilled with the rosy hues of health and youth.
Roma had turned on the electric light, but the glare oppressed the patient, and she switched it off again. The night had now closed in, and the only light in the room came from the little red oil-lamp which burned before the shrine.
The drug began to operate, and its first effect was to loosen the old lady’s tongue. She began to talk of priests in a tone of contempt and braggadocio.
“I hate priests,” she said, “and I can’t bear to have them about me. Why so? Because they are always about the dead. Their black cassocks make me think of funerals. The sight of a graveyard makes me faint. Besides, priests and confessions go together, and why should a woman confess if she can avoid it? When people confess they have to give up the thing they confess to, or they can’t get absolution. Fedi’s a fool. Give it up indeed! I might as well talk of giving up the bed that’s under me.”
Roma sat on a stool by the bedside, listening intently, yet feeling she had no right to listen. The drug was rapidly intoxicating the Countess, who went on to talk as if some one else had been in the room.
“A priest would be sure to ask questions about that girl. I would have to tell him why the Baron put me here to look after her, and then he would prate about the Sacraments and want me to give up everything.”
The Countess laughed a hard, evil laugh, and Roma felt an icy shudder pass over her.
“‘I’m tied,’ said the Baron. ‘But you must see that she waits for me. Everything depends upon you, and if all comes out well....’”
The old woman’s tongue was thickening, and her eyes in the dull red light were glazed and stupid.
Roma sat motionless and silent, watching with her own dilated eyes the grinning sinner, as she poured out the story of the plot for her capture and corruption. At that moment she hated her aunt, the unclean, malignant, unpitying thing who had poisoned her heart against her father and tried to break down every spiritual impulse of her soul.
The diabolical horse-laughter came again, and then the devil who had loosened the tongue of the dying woman in the intoxication of the drug made her reveal the worst secret of her tortured conscience.
“Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about the child. Didn’t you know I had a child? It was born when my husband was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror.”
The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow with a roaring in her ears.
“It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me.”
The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible. The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues, her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the innocence of sleep.
Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her to the depths of abasement.
The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now different.
“Roma! Is that you?”
“Yes, aunt.”
“Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You know that quite well.”
Roma turned on the lights.
“Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?”
Roma tried to prevaricate.
“You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was all a lie. You needn’t think because you’ve been listening.... It was a lie, I tell you....”
The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing so, she knelt by Elena’s little Madonna, which she had set up on a table by her bed.
Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one, some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother, and her tears had begun to fall.
It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of death — Amen!”
When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying and was comforted.
