Complete works of hall c.., p.362
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 362
As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her. It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features hard as iron, made a painful impression.
“Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo,” he said, and then he added something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear.
“I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I would earnestly counsel you not to commit it.”
She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped her to enter it, and then said: “Remember, my attitude is the same as ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of need.”
When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the cortège was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages. Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins for to-morrow.
The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess’s friends, like herself, disliked the sight of churchyards.
The House of Deposit, a low-roofed chamber under a chapel, contained tressels for every kind and condition of the dead. One place was labelled “Reserved for distinguished corpses.” The coffin of the Countess was put to rest there until the buriers should come to bury it in the morning, the wreaths and flowers and streamers were laid over it, the priest sprinkled it again with holy water, and then the funeral was at an end.
“I will not go back yet,” said Roma, and thereupon the priest and his assistants stepped into the carriages. The drivers lit cigarettes and started off at a brisk trot.
It had been a gorgeous funeral, and the soul of the Countess would have been satisfied. But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the time, saying, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
Roma bought a wreath of wild flowers at a stall outside the cemetery gates, and by help of a paper given to her in the office she found the grave of little Joseph. It was in a shelf of vaults like ovens, each with its marble door, and a photograph on the front. They were all photographs of children, sweet smiling faces, a choir of little angels, now singing round the throne in heaven. The sun was shining on them, and the tall cypress trees were singing softly in the light wind overhead. Here and there a mother was trimming an oil-lamp that hung before her baby’s face, and listening to the little voice that was not dead but speaking to her soul’s soul.
Roma hung her wreath on Joseph’s vault and turned away. Going out of the gates she met a great concourse of people. At their head was a Capuchin carrying a black wooden cross with sponge, spear, hammer and nails attached. Two boys in blue and white carried candles by his side. The crowd behind were of the poorest, chiefly women and girls with shawls and handkerchiefs on their heads. It was Friday, and they were going to the Church of San Lorenzo to make the procession of the Stations of the Cross. Scarcely knowing why she did so, Roma followed them.
The people filled the Basilica. Their devotion was deep and touching. As they followed the friar from station to station they sang in monotonous tones the strophes of the Stabat Mater.
“Ah, Mother, fountain of love, make me feel the strength of sorrow that I may mourn with thee.”
Their prayer seemed hardly needful. They were the starving wives and daughters of men in prison, men in hospital, and reserve soldiers. Poor wrecks on life’s shore, thrown up by the tide, they had turned to religion for consolation, and were sending up their cry to God.
When they had finished their course and ended their canticles of grief they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross and a rosary hung from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through, and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their sufferings upon them for their sins, that they must confess their sins, in order that their holy mother, the Church, might save them from their sins, there was a deep hum in the air like the reverberation in a great shell.
A line of confessional boxes stood in each of the church aisles, and as the preacher described the sorrows of the man-God, His passion, His agony, His blood, the women and girls, weeping audibly, got up one by one and went over to confess. No sooner had one of them arisen than another took her place, and each as she rose to her feet looked calm and comforted.
The emotion of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face. She had seen it before somewhere — perhaps in the Pope’s procession.
At that moment a poor girl with a handkerchief on her head, who had knelt down crying, was getting up with shining eyes. Roma was shaken by violent tremors. An overpowering desire had come upon her to confess. For a moment she held on to a chair, lest she should fall to the floor. Then by a sudden impulse, in a kind of delirium, scarcely knowing what she was doing until it was done, she flung herself in the place the girl had risen from, and with a palpitating heart said in a tremulous voice through the little brass grating:
“Father, I am a great sinner — hear me, hear me!”
The measured breathing inside the confessional was arrested, and the peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic cheeks and blazing eyes.
“Wait, my daughter, do not agitate yourself. Say the Confiteor.”
She tried to speak, but her words were hardly audible or coherent.
“I confess ... I confess ... I cannot, Father.”
A pinch of snuff dropped from the old man’s fingers.
“Are you not a Christian?”
“I have not been baptized, but I was educated in a convent, and....”
“Then I cannot hear your confession. Baptism is the door of the Church, and without it....”
“But I am in great trouble. For Our Lady’s sake, listen to me. Oh, listen to me, Father, only listen to me.”
Although accustomed to the sufferings of the human heart, a measureless pity came over the old priest, and he said in a kind and tender voice:
“Go on, my daughter. I cannot give you absolution, for you are not a child of the Church; but I am an old man, and if I can help your poor soul to bear its burden, God forbid that I should turn you away.”
In a torrent of hot words Roma poured out her trouble, hiding nothing, extenuating nothing, and naming and blaming no one. At length the throbbing breath and quivering voice died down, and there was a moment’s silence, in which the dull rumble in the church seemed to come from far away. Then the voice behind the grating said in tender tones:
“My daughter, you have committed no sin in this case and have nothing to repent of. That you should be troubled by scruples shows that your soul is pure and that you are living in communion with God. Your bodily health is reduced by nervousness and anxiety, and it is natural that you should imagine that you have sinned where you have not sinned. That is the sweet grace of most women, but how few men! What sin there has been is not yours; therefore go home, and God comfort you.”
“But, dear Father ... it is so good of you, but have you forgotten....”
“Your husband? No! Whether you should tell him it is beyond my power to say. In itself I should be against it, for why should you disturb his conscience and endanger the peace of a family? Your scruples about Nature coming to convict you, being without grounds of reason, are temptations of the devil and should be put behind your back. But that your marriage was a religious one only, that the other person (you did right not to name him, my child) may use that circumstance to separate you, and that your confession to your husband, if it came too late, would come prejudiced and worse than in vain, these are facts that make it difficult to advise you for your safety and peace of mind. Let me consult some one wiser than myself. Let me, perhaps, take your secret to a high place, a kindly ear, a saintly heart, a venerable and holy head. Come again, or leave me your name if you will, and if that holy person has anything to say you shall hear of it. Meantime go home in peace and content, my daughter, and may God bring you into His true fold at last.”
When Roma got up from the grating of the confessional she felt like one who had passed through a great sickness and was now better. Her whole being was going through a miraculous convalescence. A great weight had been lifted off; she was renewed as with a new soul and her very body felt light as air.
The preacher was still preaching in his tremulous tones, and the women and girls were still crying, as Roma passed out of the church, but now she heard all as in a dream. It was not until she reached the portico, and a blind beggar rattled his can in her face, that the spell was broken, so sudden and mysterious was the transition when she came back from heaven to earth.
XII
By the first post next morning “Sister Angelica” received a letter from David Rossi.
“Dearest, — Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when
I think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read between the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some of your happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from rushing back to you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some day, my dear one. I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in the Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are still young and we shall live.
“Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees, correspondence early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest, and you shall hear all about it presently. I am proud that I judged rightly of the moral grandeur of your nature, and that it is possible to tell you everything.
“We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our organisation. Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united action. Europe seems to be ready for a complete change, but the first great act must be done in Rome. I find encouragement everywhere. The brotherly union of the peoples is going on. A power stronger than brute force is sweeping through the world.
“Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put upon him to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am troubled. It would be a lasting grief to me if his mind were poisoned. Charles Minghelli being in prison in the disguise of a prisoner means that anything may happen. When the man came to me after his dismissal in London, it was to ask help to assassinate the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the other side. The secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public trial is a hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been abolished in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and jails of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not a trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent to incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put upon treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from himself and the people whose only occupation in life is to secure convictions.
“And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save her from a disease of the soul.
“As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one opinion. I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the sin, where it exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has been pardoned in secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in
David. Christ pardoned it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the concealment, the lying and duplicity, these cannot be pardoned until they have been confessed.
“Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought of. There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your friend. If he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he may intimidate her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband.
This would make her miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her will being broken, it might even make her yield. Or the man may really tell her husband in order to insult and outrage both of them. If he does so, where is she? Is her husband to believe her story then?
“To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her husband’s love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will think, ‘Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,’ and he will love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, ‘She loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be struck at her it must go through me.’
“My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it was very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of you to be severe with her too, and to make her go through purgatorial fires. That is what good women always do with the injured of their own sex. It is a kind of pledge and badge of their purity, and it is a safeguard and shield, whatever the unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to the poor soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of gold. Until we meet again, my darling,
D. R.”
XIII
“MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI, — All day long I’ve been carrying your letter round like a reliquary, taking a peep at it in cabs, and even, when I dare, in omnibuses and the streets.
“What you say about Bruno has put me in a fever, and I have written to the Director-General for permission to visit the prison. Even Lawyer Napoleon is of opinion that Bruno is being made a victim of that secret inquisition. No Holy Inquisition was ever more unscrupulous. Lawyer N. says the authorities in Italy have inherited the traditions of a bad régime. To do evil to prevent others from doing it is horrible. But in this case it is doing evil to prevent others from doing good. I am satisfied that
Bruno is being tempted to betray you. If I could only take his place! Would their plots have any effect upon me? I should die first.
“And now about my friend. I can hardly hold my pen when I write of her. What you say is so good, so noble. I might have known what you would think, and yet....
“Dearest, how can I go on? Can’t you divine what I wish to tell you? Your letter compels me to confess. Come what may, I can hold off no longer. Didn’t you guess who my poor friend was? I thought you would remember our former correspondence when you pretended to love somebody else. You haven’t thought of it apparently, and that is only another proof — a bitter sweet one this time — of your love and trust. You put me so high that you never imagined that I could be speaking of myself. I was, and my poor friend is my poor self.
“It has made me suffer all along to see what a pedestal of purity you placed me on. The letters you wrote before you told me you loved me, when you were holding off, made me ashamed because I knew I was not worthy. More than once when you spoke of me as so good, I couldn’t look into your eyes. I felt an impulse to cry,
‘No, no, no,’ and to smirch the picture you were painting. Yet how could I do it? What woman who loves a man can break the idol in his heart? She can only struggle to lift herself up to it. That was what I tried to do, and it is not my fault that it is not done.
“I have been much to blame. There were moments when duty should have made me speak. One such moment was before we married. Do you remember that I tried to tell you something? You were kind, and you would not listen. ‘The past is past,’ you said, and I was only too happy to gloss it over. You didn’t know what I wished to say, or you would not have silenced me. I knew, and I have suffered ever since. I had to speak, and you see how I have spoken. And now I feel as if I had tricked you. I have got you to commit yourself to opinions and to a line of conduct. Forgive me! I will not hold you to anything. Take it all back, and I shall have no right to complain.
“Besides, there are features in my own case which I did not present to you in my friend’s. One of them was the fear of being found out. Dearest, I must not shield myself behind the sweet excuse you find for me. I did think of the other man. It wasn’t that I was afraid that he would intimidate me, and so corrupt my love. Not all the tyrannies of the world could do that now. But if from revenge or a desire to wrest me away from you by making you cast me off he told you his story before I had told you mine! That was a day-long and night-long terror, and now I confess it lest you should think me better than I am.
“Another thing you did not know. Dearest, I would give my life to spare you the explanation, but I must tell you everything. You know who the man is, and it is true before God that he alone was to blame. But my own fault came afterwards. Instead of cutting him off, I continued to be on good terms with him, to take the income he allowed me from my father’s estate, and even to think of him as my future husband. And when your speech in the piazza seemed to endanger my prospects I set out to destroy you.
