Complete works of hall c.., p.374
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 374
XXI
“Acqua Acetosa!” “Roba Vecchia!” “Rannocchie!”
The street cries were ringing through the Navona, the piazza was alive with people, and strangers were saluting each other as they passed on the pavement when Roma returned home. At the lodge the Garibaldian wished her a good Easter, and at the door of the apartment the curate of the parish, who in cotta and biretta was making his Easter call to sprinkle the rooms with holy water, gave her a smile and his blessing, while old Francesca, inside the house, laying the Easter sideboard of cakes, sausages, and eggs, put both hands behind her back, like a child playing a game, and cried —
“Now, what does the Signora think I’ve got for her?”
It was a letter, and as the old woman produced it she was glowing with happiness at the joy she was bringing to Roma.
“The porter from Trinità de’ Monti brought it,” she said, “and he told me to tell you there’s a lay sister called Sister Angelica at the convent now, and he is afraid that other letters may go astray.... Aren’t you glad you’ve got a letter, Signora? I thought Signora would die of delight, and I gave the man six soldi.”
Roma was turning the envelope over and over in her hands, thinking what a call to joy a letter of Rossi’s used to be, and wondering if she ought to open this one.
“Well, that was the way with me too when Tommaso was at the wars. But this is Easter, Signora, and the Blessed Virgin wouldn’t bring you bad news to-day. Listen! That’s the Gloria. I can always hear the church bells on Holy Saturday. The first time after I was deaf Joseph was a baby, and I took the wrappings off his little feet while the bells were ringing, and he walked straight away! Ah, my poor darling!... But I’m making the Signora cry.”
The letter was dated from Zürich. It ran: —
“MY DEAR ROMA, — Your letters and I seem to be running a race which shall return to you first. I was compelled to leave Berlin before my long-delayed correspondence could arrive from London, and now it seems probable that I must leave Zürich before it can follow me from Berlin. As a consequence I have not heard from you for weeks — not since your letter about your friend, you remember — and
I am in agonies of impatience to know what has happened to you in the interval.
“I came to Switzerland the day before yesterday, pushed on by the urgency of affairs at home. Here we hold the last meeting of our international committee before I go back to Italy. This will be to-morrow (Friday) night, and according to present plans I set out for Rome on Saturday morning.
“How different my return will be from my flight a few weeks ago!
Then I was plunged in despair, now I am buoyed up with hope; then my soul was furrowed by doubts, now it is braced up with certainties; then my idea was a dream, now it is a practical reality.
“O Roma, my Roma, it is a good thing to live. After all, the world is no Gethsemane, and when a man has a beautiful life like yours belonging to him he may be forgiven if he forgets the voices which assail him with fears. They have come to me sometimes, dearest, in this long and cruel silence, and I have asked myself hideous questions. What is happening to my dear one in the midst of my enemies? What sufferings are being inflicted upon her for my sake?
She is brave, and will bear anything, but did I do right to leave her behind? Bruno died rather than betray me, and she will do more — infinitely more in her eyes — she will see me die, rather than imperil a cause which is a thousand times more dear to me than my life.
“Addio, carissima! Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death. If there were any possibility of our love increasing it would increase after going through dangers like these. Keep well, dearest. Preserve that sweet life which is so precious to me that I cannot live without it. Do you remember, it was the 2nd of February when we parted in the darkness at the church door, and now it is Easter, and the day after to-morrow we shall hear the Easter bells! Spring is here, and in the unchangeable changeableness of nature I see the resurrection of humanity and listen to the Gloria of God.
“You cannot answer this letter, dear, because I shall already be on the way to Rome before it reaches you, but you can send me a telegram to Chiasso. Do so. I shall look out for the telegraph boy the moment the train stops at the station. Say you are well and happy and waiting for me, and it will be like a smile from your lovely lips and eyes on the frontier of my native land.
“My train is due to arrive on Sunday morning at seven o’clock.
Meet me at the railway station, and let your face be the first I see when the train draws up in Rome. Then ... let me hear your voice, and let my heart become a King.
“D.R.”
Roma had grown paler and paler as she read this letter. The man’s love and trust were crushing her. Tears filled her eyes and flooded her face. But her soul, which had been stunned and had fallen, recovered itself and arose.
PART EIGHT — THE KING
I
Early on the morning of Holy Saturday a little crowd of Italians stood on the open space in front of the platform at the Bahnhof of Zürich. Most of them wore the blue smocks and peaked caps of porters and street-sweepers, but in the centre of the group was a tall man in a frockcoat and a soft felt hat.
It was Rossi. He was noticeably changed since his flight from Rome. His bronzed face was paler, his cheeks thinner, his dark eyes looked larger, his figure stooped perceptibly, and he had the air of a man who was struggling to conceal a consuming nervousness.
The bell rang for the starting of a train and Rossi shook hands with everybody.
“Going straight through, Honourable?”
“No, I shall sleep at Milan to-night and go on to Rome in the morning.”
“Addio, Onorevole!”
“Addio!”
The moment the train started, Rossi gave himself up to thoughts of Roma. Where was she now? He closed his eyes and tried to picture her. She was reading his letter. He recalled particular passages, and saw the smile with which she read them. Peace be with her! The light pressure of her soft fingers was on his hands already, and through the tran-tran of the train he could hear her softest tones.
Nature as well as humanity seemed to smile on Rossi that day. He thought the lakes had never looked so lovely. It was early when they ran along the shores of Lucerne, and the white mists, wrapping themselves up on the mountains, were gliding away like ghosts. One after another the great peaks looked over each other’s shoulders, covered with pines as with vast armies crossing the Alps, thick at the bottom and with thinner files of daring spirits at the top. The sun danced on the waters of the lake like fairies on a floor of glass, and when the train stopped at Fluelen the sound of waterfalls mingled with the singing of birds and the ringing of the church bells. It was the Gloria. All the earth was singing its Gloria. “Glory to God in the highest.”
Rossi’s happiness became almost boyish as the train approached Italy. When the great tunnel was passed through, the signs of a new race came thick and fast. Shrines of the Madonna, instead of shrines of the Christ; long lines of field-workers, each with his hoe, instead of little groups with the plough; grey oxen with great horns and slow step, instead of brisk horses with tinkling bells.
Signs of doubtful augury for the most part, but Rossi was in no mood to think of that. He let down the carriage window that he might drink in the air of his own country. In spite of his opinions he could not help doing that. The mystic call that comes to a man’s heart from the soil that gave him birth was coming to him also. He heard the voice of the vine-dresser in the vineyard singing of love — always of love. He saw the oranges and lemons, and the roses white and red. He caught a glimpse of the first of the little cities high up on the crags, with its walls and tower, and Campo Santo outside. His lips parted, his breast swelled. It was home! Home!
The day waned, the sky darkened, and the passengers in the train, who had been talking incessantly, began to doze. Rossi returned to his seat, and thought more seriously about Roma. All his soul went out to the young wife who had shared his sufferings. In his mind’s eye he was reading between the lines of her letters, and beginning to reproach himself in earnest. Why had he imposed his life’s secret upon her, seeing the risk she ran, and the burden of her responsibility?
The battle with his soul was short. If he had not trusted Roma, he would never have loved her. If he had not stripped his heart naked before her, he would never have known that she loved him. And if she had suffered in his absence he would make it all up to her on his return. He thought of their joyous day on the Campagna, and then of the unalloyed hours before them. What would she be doing now? She would be sending off the telegram he was to receive at Chiasso. God bless her! God bless everybody!
The thought of Roma’s telegram filled the whole of the last hour before he reached the frontier. He imagined the words it would contain: “Well and waiting. Welcome home.” But was she well? It was weeks since he had heard from her, and so many things might have happened. If he had managed his personal affairs with more thought for himself, he might have received her letters.
Heavy clouds began to shut out the landscape. The temperature had fallen suddenly, and the wind must have risen, for the trees, as they flashed past, were being beaten about. Rossi stood in the corridor again, feeling feverish and impatient.
At length the train slackened speed, the noise of the wheels and the engine abated, and there came a clap of thunder. After a moment there was a far-off sound of church bells which were being rung to avert the lightning, and then came a downpour of rain. It was raining in torrents when the train drew up at Chiasso, but the carriages were hardly under cover of the platform when Rossi was ready to step out.
“All baggage ready!” “Hand baggage out!” “Chiasso!” “The Customs!”
The station hands and porters were shouting by the stopping train, and Rossi’s dark eyes with their long lashes were looking through the line of men for some one who carried a yellow letter.
“Facchino!”
“Signore?”
“Seen the telegraph boy about?”
“No, Signore.”
Rossi leapt down to the platform, and at the same moment three Carabineers, who had been working their heads from right to left to peer into the carriages as they passed, stepped up to him and offered a folded white paper.
He took it without speaking, and for a moment he stood looking at the soldiers as if he had been stunned. Then he opened the paper and read: “Mandate di Cattura.... We ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David Rossi....”
A cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead. Again he looked into the faces of the soldiers. And then he laughed. It was a fearful laugh — the laugh of a smitten soul.
The scene had been observed by passengers trooping to the Customs, and a group of English and American tourists were making apposite comments on the event.
“It’s Rossi.” “Rossi?” “The anarchist.” “Travelled in our train?” “Sure.” “My!”
The marshal of Carabineers, a man with shrunken cheeks and the eyes of a hawk, dressed in his little brief authority, strode with a lofty look through the spectators to telegraph the arrest to Rome.
II
When the train started again, Rossi was a prisoner sitting between two of the Carabineers with the marshal of Carabineers on the seat in front of him. His heart felt cold and his chin buried itself in his breast. He was asking himself how many persons knew of his identity with David Leone, and could connect him with the trial of eighteen years ago. There was but one.
Rossi leapt to his feet with a muttered oath on his lips. The thing that had flashed through his mind was impossible, and he was himself the traitor to think of it. But even when the imagined agony had passed away, a hard lump lay at his heart and he felt sick and ashamed.
The marshal of Carabineers, who had mistaken Rossi’s gesture, closed the carriage window and stood with his back to it until the train arrived at Milan. A police official was waiting for them there with the latest instructions from Rome. In order to avoid the possibility of a public disturbance in the capital on the day of the King’s Jubilee, the prisoner was to be detained in Milan until further notice.
“Seems you’re to sleep here to-night, Honourable,” said the soldier. Remembering that it had been his intention to do so when he left Zürich, Rossi laughed bitterly.
It was now dark. A prison van stood at the end of a line of hotel omnibuses, and Rossi was marched to it between the measured steps of the Carabineers. News of his arrest had already been published in Milan, and crowds of spectators were gathered in the open space outside the station. He tried to hold up his head when the people peered at him, telling himself that the arrest of an innocent man was not his but the law’s disgrace; yet a sense of sickness surprised him again and he dropped his head as he buried himself in the van.
On the dark drive to the prison in the Via Filangeri the Carabineers grumbled and swore at the hard fate which kept them out of Rome at a time of public rejoicing. There was to be a dinner on Monday night at the barracks on the Prati, and on Tuesday morning the King was to present medals.
Rossi shut his eyes and said nothing. But half-an-hour later, when he had been put in the “paying” cell, and the marshal of Carabineers was leaving him, he could not forbear to speak.
“Officer,” he said, fumbling his copy of the warrant, “would you mind telling me where you received this paper?”
“At the Procura, of course,” said the soldier.
“Some one had denounced me there — can you tell me who it was?”
“That’s no business of mine, Honourable. Still, as you wish to know....”
“Well?”
“A lady was there when the warrant was made out, and if I had to guess who she was....”
Rossi saw the name coming in the man’s face, and he flung out at him in a roar of wrath.
During the long hours of the night he tried to account for his arrest to the exclusion of Roma. He thought of every woman whom he had known intimately in England and America, and finally of Elena and old Francesca. It was useless. There was only one woman in the world who knew the secrets of his early life. He had revealed some of them himself, and the rest she knew of her own knowledge.
No matter! There was no traitor so treacherous as circumstance. He would not believe the lie that fate was thrusting down his throat. Roma was faithful, she would die rather than betray him, and he was a contemptible hound to allow himself to think of her in that connection. He recalled her letters, her sacrifices, her brave and cheerful renunciation, and the hard lump that had settled at his heart rose up to his throat.
Morning broke at last. As the grey dawn entered the cell the Easter bells were ringing. Rossi remembered in what other conditions he had expected to hear them, and again his heart grew bitter. A good-natured warder came with his breakfast of bread and water, and a smuggled copy of a morning journal called the Perseveranza. It contained an account of his arrest, and a leading article on his career as a thing closed and ruined. The public would learn with astonishment that a man who had attained to great prominence in Parliament and lived several years in the fierce light of the world’s eye, had all the time masqueraded in a false character, being really a criminal convicted long ago for conspiring against the person of the late King.
The sun shone, the sparrows chirped, the church bells rang the whole day long. Towards evening the warder came with another newspaper, the Corriere della Sera. It explained that the sensational arrest of the illustrious Deputy, which had fallen on the country like a thunderbolt, was not intended as punishment for an offence long past and forgotten, but as a means of preventing a political crime that was on the eve of being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish imagination to break out on the festival of the King’s Jubilee.
Rossi slept as little on Sunday night as on the night before. The horrible doubts which he had driven away were sucking at his heart like a vampire. He tried to invent excuses for Roma. She was intimidated; she was a woman and she could not help herself. Useless, and worse than useless! “I thought the daughter of Joseph Roselli would have died first,” he told himself.
The good-natured warder brought him another newspaper in the morning, the Secolo, an organ of his own party. Its tone was the bitterest of all. “We have reason to believe that the unfortunate event, which cannot but have the effect of setting back the people’s cause, is due to the betrayal of one of their leaders by a certain fashionable woman who is near to the person of the President of the Council. It is the old story over again, the story of man’s weakness and woman’s deception, with every familiar circumstance of humiliation, folly, and shame.”
There could be no doubt of it. It was Roma who had betrayed him. Whatever her reasons or excuse, the result was the same. She had given up the deepest secrets of his soul, and his life’s work was in the dust.
The marshal of Carabineers came to say that they were to go on to Rome, and at nine o’clock they were again in the train. People in holiday dress were promenading the platform and the station was hung with flags. A gentleman in a white waistcoat was about to step into the compartment with the Carabineers and their prisoner, when, recognising his travelling companions, he bowed and stepped back. It was the Sergeant of the Chamber, returning after the Easter vacation from his villa on one of the lakes. Rossi sent a ringing laugh after the man, and that brought him back.
“I’m sorry for you, Honourable, very sorry,” he said. “You’ve deceived us all, but now you are seen in your true colours, and apparently throwing off all disguise.”
