Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 339
“Is that all?” he said.
“Then you are not afraid?”
“Afraid?”
For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.
“I have thought of something else,” she said.
“What is it?”
“You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it....”
“It would be coals of fire on my head.”
“You would need to sit to me.”
“When shall it be?”
“To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon.”
“It will be years on years till then,” he said.
She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she turned her face away.
“Forgive me if I have stayed too long,” she said, making a feint of opening the door.
“I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner,” he answered.
“I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and bitterness.”
“If I ever had such a feeling it is gone.”
“Mine has gone too,” she said softly, and again she prepared to go.
One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look seemed to say, “Will you?” and his look replied, “May I?” and at the physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross the space that had divided them.
“Let me see you to the door?” he said, and her eyes said openly, “Will you?”
They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and almost touching.
“I forgot to give you my address — eighteen Trinità de’ Monti,” she said.
“Eighteen Trinità de’ Monti,” he repeated.
They had reached the second storey. “I am trying to remember,” she said. “After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere.”
“In a dream, perhaps,” he answered.
“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps in the dream I spoke about.”
They had reached the street, and Roma’s carriage, a hired coupé, stood waiting a few yards from the door.
They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light.
“Until to-morrow then,” she said.
“To-morrow morning,” he replied.
“To-morrow morning,” she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between them she seemed to say, “Come early, will you not? — there is still so much to say.”
He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door.
“Adieu!”
“Adieu!”
She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and bowed through the glass.
PART THREE — ROMA
I
The Piazza of Trinità de’ Monti takes its name from a church and convent which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill.
A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height, goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna, which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their stalls around a fountain.
At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it, the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was as a private apartment.
Donna Roma’s home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor, opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet. Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi.
On the morning after Donna Roma’s visit to the Piazza Navona a letter came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. “The man is a treasure and sees nothing,” he wrote. And he added in a footnote: “Don’t look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them send to you say nothing.”
But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in literature and love.
“I’m ‘Penelope,’” she said. “‘Penelope’ of the Day, you know. Come to see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi’s speech yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if you would like to reply through me to Olga’s shameful libels.... Haven’t you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady could allow them to pass unnoticed.”
“Nevertheless,” said Roma, “that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!”
Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with little twinkling eyes.
“Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It’s in all the newspapers — I’ve brought them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See— ‘A lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.’ Most damaging, isn’t it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny the statement. Ah, don’t be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets. Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and explain before publishing anything.”
Roma said nothing, and the great man backed himself out with the air of one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask in return.
“It’s rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to organise a system of secret police — and quite right, too. You remember my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma will only say a word for him.... Thanks!... What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome.”
The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her aristocratic customers.
“Trust I am not de trop! I knew you wouldn’t mind my calling in the morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn’t true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved!... By the way, my dear, don’t trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but ... I’m giving a little reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend ... you’ll mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!”
“Count Mario,” announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came tripping into the room. He was Roma’s landlord and the Italian Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
“So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too, but I do hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!”
Then stepping to the window, “What a lovely view! The finest in Rome, and that’s the finest in Europe! I’m always saying if it wasn’t Donna Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here myself.... That reminds me of something. I’m ... well, I’m tired of Petersburg, and I’ve written to the Minister asking to be transferred to Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me.... How sweet of you! Adieu!”
Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her aunt called to her from within.
The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its ribbon.
“Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!” she said in a withering whimper. “I thought you might have looked in last night, and I lay awake until after midnight.”
“I had a headache and went to bed,” said Roma.
“I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me,” said the old lady, and Roma went over to the window.
“I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite that man in spite of all my protests?”
“He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time.”
“Just so! It’s no use speaking. I don’t know what girls are coming to. When I was young a man like that wouldn’t have been allowed to cross the threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime Minister.”
“Aunt Betsy,” said Roma, “I want to ask you a question.”
“Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where’s Natalina?”
“Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left home and became an exile?”
“Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina, give me my smelling salts. And why haven’t you brought the cushion for the cat?”
“Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it right....”
“Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?”
“I thought they went to the Baron, auntie.”
“Roma, aren’t you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too, in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I’m out of patience. He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to the mercy of others — and all for what?”
“For country, I suppose.”
“For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven’t you given me my smelling salts? And why will you always forget to....”
Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed her down to the studio.
Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face.
She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was Judas.
Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter.
“MY DEAR BARON, — Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great comfort in this household if only he can keep the peace with
Monsignor Bruno, and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter’s
Lodge. Senator Tom-tit has been here to suggest some astonishing arrangement about my fountain, and to ask me to mention his nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and proper person to be chief of your new department of secret police. Madame de Trop and Count
Signorina have also been, but of their modest messages more anon.
“As for D. R., my barometer is ‘set fair,’ but it is likely to be a stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my best bib and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down to his apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had gone to find out all about him, I hadn’t been ten minutes in his company before he told all about me — about my father, at all events, and his life in London. I believe he knew me in that connection and expected to appeal to my filial feelings. Did too, so strong is the force of nature, and then and thereafter, and all night long, I was like somebody who had been shaken in an earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was not until I remembered what my father had been — or rather hadn’t — and that he was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from the shock of D. R.’s dynamite.
“He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this morning! — Affectionately,
ROMA.
“P. S. — My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a woman and has never been in love in his life, he has an astonishing way of getting at one. But I could laugh to think how little execution his fusillade will make in this direction.”
“Honourable Rossi!” said Felice’s sepulchral voice behind her, and at that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio.
II
In spite of her protestations, Roma was nervous and confused. Putting David Rossi to sit in the arm-chair on the platform for sitters, she rattled on about everything — her clay, her tools, her sponge, and the water they had forgotten to change for her. He must not mind if she stared at him — that wasn’t nice, but it was necessary — and he must promise not to look at her work while it was unfinished — children and fools, you know — the proverb was musty.
And while she talked she told herself that Thomas was the apostle he must stand for. These anarchists were all doubters, and the chief of doubters was the figure that would represent them.
David Rossi did not speak much at first, and he did not join in Roma’s nervous laughter. Sometimes he looked at her with a steadfast gaze, which would have been disconcerting if it had not been so simple and childlike. At length he looked out of the window to where the city lay basking in the sunshine, and birds were swirling in the clear blue sky, and began to talk of serious subjects.
“How beautiful!” he said. “No wonder the English and Americans who come to Italy for health and the pleasure of art think it a paradise where every one should be content. And yet....”
“Yes?”
“Under the smile of this God-blessed land there is suffering such as can hardly be found in any other country of the world. Sometimes I think I cannot bear it any longer, and must go away, as others do.”
“A little more this way, please — thank you! That doesn’t do much for them, does it?”
“For them? No! God comfort the poor exiles — their path is a bridge of sighs! Poor, friendless, forgotten, huddled together in some dingy quarter of a foreign city, one a music-master, another a teacher of languages, a third a supernumerary at a theatre, a fourth an organ-man or even a beggar in the streets, yet weapons in the hand of God and shaking the thrones of the world!”
“You have seen something of that, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“In London?”
“Yes. There’s an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district. It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty, has many bedfellows.”
“You lived there?”
“Yes.”
Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of the window. “And your old friend, Doctor Roselli — he lived in Soho?”
“In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and had a porch and trees in front of it.”
The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.
“A little more that way, please — thanks! Do you think your friend had a right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of his father — he would be broken-hearted.”
“He was — I’ve heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and forbade him to call himself his son.”
“There!”
“But he would never hear a word against the old man. ‘He’s my father — that’s enough,’ he would say.”
The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma’s fingers.
“How stupid! But his mother....”
“That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray him to come home. ‘You are the best of mothers,’ he would answer, ‘but I cannot do so.’”
“He never saw her again?”
