Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 336
“Yes — that is to say — yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi.”
At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.
“It’s the birds,” said the woman, and she threw open a window that was also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a gigantic bird-cage.
“Mr. Rossi’s?”
“Yes, and he is fond of animals also — dogs and cats and rabbits and squirrels, especially squirrels.”
“Squirrels?”
“He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some people who love animals — he loves children, too. He loves all children, and as for Joseph....”
“The little boy who cried ‘Uncle David’ at the door?”
“Yes, sir. One day my husband said ‘Uncle David’ to Mr. Rossi, and he has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since.”
“This is the dining-room, no doubt,” said the stranger.
“Unfortunately, yes, sir.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there’s not even a curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give the chicken off his plate if he hadn’t anything else. I have to scold him a little sometimes — I can’t help it. And as for father, he says he has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people away.”
“That will be his bedroom, I suppose,” said the stranger, indicating a door which the boy had passed through.
“No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers and so forth. Come in, sir.”
The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth, Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with incongruous furniture.
“Joseph, you’ve been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father’s fishing-rod, you see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his mace.” Then with a sweep of the arm, “All presents, sir. He gets presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this.”
“A phonograph?”
“It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island of Elba.”
“Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?”
“‘A dying man’s message,’ Mr. Rossi called it. ‘We must save up for an instrument to reproduce it, Sister,’ he said. But, look you, the very next day the carriers brought the phonograph.”
“And then he reproduced the message?”
“I don’t know — I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you may come in.”
It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass to keep it from the flies.
“How sweet!” said the stranger.
“It would be but for these,” said the woman, and she pointed to the other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from the herring net.
“I presume this is a present also?” said the stranger. He had taken from the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on his finger-nail.
“Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers.”
“And who is this?” said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.
“Some friend of Mr. Rossi’s in England, I think.”
“An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for all that.”
At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into the broad piazza. At the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door.
“They’re coming! It’s my husband! Bruno!” said the woman, and the ripple of her dress told the stranger she had gone.
III
Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi’s people had brought him home in triumph, and now they were crowding upon him to kiss his hand, the big-hearted, baby-headed, beloved children of Italy.
The object of this aurora of worship stood with his back to the table in the dining-room, looking down and a little ashamed, while Bruno Rocco, six feet three in his stockings, hoisted the boy on to his shoulder, and shouted as from a tower to everybody as they entered by the door:
“Come in, sonny, come in! Don’t stand there like the Pope between the devil and the deep sea. Come in among the people,” and Bruno’s laughter rocked through the room to where the crowd stood thick on the staircase.
“The Baron has had a lesson,” said a man with a sheet of white paper in his hand. “He dreamed of getting the Collar of the Annunziata out of this.”
“The pig dreamed of acorns,” said Bruno.
“It’s a lesson to the Church as well,” said the man with the paper. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with us. ‘I alone strike the hour of the march,’ says the Church.”
“And then she stands still!” said Bruno.
“The mountains stand still, but men are made to walk,” said the man with the paper, “and if the Pope doesn’t advance with the people, the people must advance without the Pope.”
“The Pope’s all right, sonny,” said Bruno, “but what does he know about the people? Only what his black-gowned beetles tell him!”
“The Pope has no wife and children,” said the man with the paper.
“Old Vampire could find him a few,” said Bruno, and then there was general laughter.
“Brothers,” said David Rossi, “let us be temperate. There’s nothing to be gained by playing battledore and shuttlecock with the name of an old man who has never done harm to any one. The Pope hasn’t listened to us to-day, but he is a saint all the same, and his life has been a lesson in well-doing.”
“Anybody can sail with a fair wind, sir,” said Bruno.
“Let us be prudent. There’s no need for violence, whether of the hand or of the tongue. You’ve found that out this morning. If you had rescued me from the police, I should have been in prison again by this time, and God knows what else might have happened. I’m proud of your patience and forbearance; and now go home, boys, and God bless you.”
“Stop a minute!” said the man with the paper. “Something to read before we go. While the Carabineers kept Mr. Rossi in the Borgo, the Committee of Direction met in a café and drew up a proclamation.”
“Read it, Luigi,” said David Rossi, and the man opened his paper and read:
“Having appealed in vain to Parliament and to the King against the tyrannical tax which the Government has imposed upon bread in order that the army and navy may be increased, and having appealed in vain to the Pope to intercede with the civil authorities, and call back Italy to its duty, it now behoves us, as a suffering and perishing people, to act on our own behalf. Unless annulled by royal decree, the tax will come into operation on the 1st of February. On that day let every Roman remain indoors until an hour after Ave Maria. Let nobody buy so much as one loaf of bread, and let no bread be eaten, except such as you give to your children. Then, at the first hour of night, let us meet in the Coliseum, tens of thousands of fasting people, of one mind and heart, to determine what it is our duty to do next, that our bread may be sure and our water may not fail.”
“Good!” “Beautiful!” “Splendid!”
“Only wants the signature of the president,” said the reader, and Bruno called for pen and ink.
“Before I sign it,” said Rossi, “let it be understood that none come armed. There is nothing our enemies would like better than to fix on us the names of rioters and rebels. We must defeat them. We must show the world that we alone are the people of law and order. Therefore I call on you to promise that none come armed.”
“We promise,” cried several voices.
“And now go home, boys, and God bless you.”
After a moment there was only one man left in the room. It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache.
“For you, sir!” said the young man, taking a letter from a pocket inside his waistcoat.
David Rossi opened the letter and read: “The bearer of this, Charles Minghelli, is one of ourselves. He has determined upon the accomplishment of a great act, and wishes to see you with respect to it.”
“You come from London?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You wish to speak to me?”
“I do.”
“You may speak freely.”
The young man glanced in the direction of Bruno and of Bruno’s wife, who stood beside him.
“It is a delicate matter, sir,” he said.
“Come this way,” said David Rossi, and he took the stranger into his bedroom.
IV
David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a sign to the man to take a chair that stood near.
“Your name is Charles Minghelli?” said David Rossi.
“Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise.”
“What is it?”
“That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own hands.”
The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence David Rossi replied as calmly:
“I will ask you to explain what you mean.”
The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, “You will permit me to speak plainly?”
“Certainly.”
“Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name to it. It is beautiful as a theory — most beautiful! And the Republic of Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!”
“Well?”
“But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to tug at it.”
“I will ask you to be more precise,” said David Rossi.
“With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then where are you?”
David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with more vigour.
“If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of the world!”
David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and forward with a step that was long and slow.
“Well, and what do you say we ought to do?” he said.
A flash came from the man’s eyes, and he said in a thick voice:
“Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation.”
“The Prime Minister?”
“Yes.”
There was silence.
“You expect me to do that?”
“No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right to resist violence.”
David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of introduction, and said:
“That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you come to me?” he said.
“Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the way to the Prime Minister’s room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the moment when he is to be found alone.”
“I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death.”
“A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight.”
“I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people.”
“On the day he dies, sir, the people will live.”
“Or that crimes — great crimes — have been the means of bringing about great reforms.”
“You are right, sir — but it would be no crime.”
The stranger’s face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned over to the desk and took up the dagger.
“See! Give me this! It’s exactly what I want. I’ll put it in a bouquet of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the word — may I take it?”
“But the man who assumes such a mission,” said David Rossi, “must know himself free from every thought of personal vengeance.”
The dagger trembled in the stranger’s hand.
“He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done — to know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the things; the actors, not the parts.”
The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open, and balancing the dagger on one hand.
“More than that,” said David Rossi; “he must be prepared to be told by every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy of liberty — that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight otherwise is to be on the level of the brute.”
The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
“I knew you talked like that to the people — statesmen do sometimes — that’s all right — it’s pretty, and it keeps the people quiet — but we....”
David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:
“Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end.”
“So you dismiss me?”
“I do,” said David Rossi. “It is such men as you who put back the progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal quarrel against an enemy.”
The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
“You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a liar and a cheat?”
David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
“Her name is Roma, certainly,” said the man; “that was the first thing that helped me to seize the mysterious thread.”
David Rossi’s face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
“Oh, I’m not talking without proof,” said the man. “I was at the Embassy in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy — she had been living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had turned out badly and run away.”
David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy stare.
“I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the magistrate’s office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we didn’t believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared entirely.”
David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into his shoulders.
“I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I saw her?”
David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:
“Where?”
“In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was lost in the streets of London.”
David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.
“You scoundrel!” he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.
The man staggered back and stammered:
“Why ... what....”
“I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant companion — she was the same as my sister — and her father was the same as my father — and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one word, but I won’t. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my path again I’ll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an assassin.”
Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled.
V
David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire.
“What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street,” said Bruno.
“A man whose room was better than his company, that’s all.”
“What’s his name?” said Bruno.
“Charles Minghelli.”
