Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 340
“Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength to him. ‘Mothers!’ he used to say, ‘if you only knew your power! God be merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!’”
Roma’s throat was throbbing. “He ... he was married?”
“Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself.”
“Eyes the other way, at the window — thank you!... Did she know who he was?”
“Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho.”
“They ... they were ... happy?”
“As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty came....”
“He became poor — very poor?”
“Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now, one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them, but the misery of that woman’s outward circumstances never dimmed the radiance of her sunny soul.”
Roma’s bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. “She ... died?”
David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. “Her death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very cold and raw. We hadn’t too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll on the floor.”
His voice had enough to do to control itself.
“When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now — the child with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the wall.”
His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma’s eyes the tears were gathering.
“We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh, the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!”
Roma could not look at him any longer.
“It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed at the sights in the streets. Only six — and she had never been in a coach before!”
At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll not try to do any more to-day,” she said in a husky voice. “Somehow it isn’t coming right this morning. It’s like that sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow....”
“With pleasure,” said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.
She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.
“Not Thomas,” she thought. “John — the beloved disciple! That would fit him exactly.”
As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was missing.
“He must have followed Mr. Rossi,” said Roma, and without ado she read the letter.
“DEAR ROMA, — A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too, for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly.
Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your request and not come near you. — Affectionately,
“BONELLI.”
III
Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.
After coffee she went into the Countess’s room as usual. The old lady had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.
“Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the police?”
“How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides....”
“Well?”
“There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to anybody else while there was no judgment against your father.”
“So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of kin.”
“Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!”
“I didn’t say anything against the Baron, did I?”
“You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I’m tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own right.”
“Only for this exile I shouldn’t have been here at all, auntie, and somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me.”
The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and said:
“What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten the baker’s shop in London — or was it a pastry cook’s, or what? — where they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given you away?”
“Don’t speak so loud, Aunt Betsy.”
“Then don’t worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches! Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!”
“I’m not defending my father, but still....”
“Should think not, indeed! If it hadn’t been for the Baron, who went in search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father’s estates, and forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be? Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had consigned you!”
The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had occurred.
“Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You’ll come? No? Ah, work, work, work!”
The little lady tapped Roma’s arm with her pince-nez and laughed.
“Everybody has heard that he is sitting to you, and everybody understands. That reminds me — I’ve a box at the new opera to-morrow night:— ‘Samson’ at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular Samson....”
“Honourable Rossi,” said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the room, with the black poodle bounding before him.
“I must apologise for not sending back the dog,” he said. “It followed me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day....”
“Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared,” said Roma, and then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.
The little lady was effusive. “I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night....”
David Rossi glanced at Roma.
“Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will....”
“With pleasure, Princess.”
“That’s charming! After the opera we’ll have supper at the Grand Hotel. Good-day!” said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, “I leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer from it shockingly. Adieu!”
Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work afresh.
“I’ve been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,” she said. “No, that way, please — eyes as before — thank you! About your old friend, I mean. He was a good man — I don’t doubt that — but he made everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the world?”
“When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must reconcile themselves to that,” said Rossi.
“Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend’s daughter, for example. She was to lose everything — her father himself at last. How could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her.”
“Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except the one thing to which he had dedicated his life.”
A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
“When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to gather itself up in the child.”
The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.
“How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways — a gleam of the sun from our sunny Italy.”
She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.
“And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand,” she said.
“He did.”
“How could he know what would happen?”
“He couldn’t, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness! Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel, and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he did not love her.”
Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
“He gave her away, you say?”
“Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take her with him was impossible. A neighbour came — a fellow-countryman — he kept a baker’s shop in the Italian quarter. ‘I’m only a poor man,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your heart bids you!’ It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at last.”
Roma listened with head aside.
“One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for the stranger’s house, and in the twilight of the little streets happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one, and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father’s side.”
Roma was holding her breath.
“The baker’s shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a glassy light. ‘You are very good, sir,’ he said, ‘but she is good too, and she’ll be a great comfort and joy to you always.’ And the man said, ‘She’ll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you’ll be right too — you’ll be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then you’ll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.’ But I could see that the doctor was not listening. ‘Let us slip away now,’ I said, and we stole out somehow.”
Roma’s eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her hand.
There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns and children of Trinità de’ Monti were singing their Benediction — Ora pro nobis!
“I don’t think I’ll do any more to-day,” said Roma. “The light is failing me, and my eyes....”
“The day after to-morrow, then,” said Rossi, rising.
“But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?”
He looked steadfastly into her face and answered “Yes.”
She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone.
After dinner she replied to the Baron’s letter of the day before.
“DEAR BARON, — I have misgivings about being on the right track, and feel sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime
Ministers appoint people at the mere mention of their names by wards, second cousins, and lady friends generally? Wouldn’t it have been wise to make inquiries? What was the fault for which
Minghelli was dismissed in London?
“As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He doesn’t seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by way of my father was a fluke. At all events, I’m satisfied that it is going in the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail.
Leave him to me alone. — Yours,
ROMA.
“P.S. — Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to the new opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he will be seen with me in public!
“I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so wonderfully good-looking when you look at him closely.”
IV
The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house. This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the place with her opera-glass.
“Crowded already!” she said. “And every face looking up at my box! That’s what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be, though, when your illustrious friend arrives.”
At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess welcomed him effusively.
“So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you — Honourable Rossi, Don Camillo Luigi Murelli.”
Roma looked at him — he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma — she wore a white gown with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes twinkled.
“Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not sit back. You can’t mind observation — so used to it, you know.”
Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter.
He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it, and was taking it as a penance.
Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on talking. “These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and the stalls are filled by all sorts and conditions of people — political people, literary people, even trades-people if they’re rich enough or can pretend to be.”
“And the upper circles?” asked Rossi.
“Oh,” in a tired voice, “professional people, I think — Collegio Romano and University of Rome, you know.”
“And the gallery?”
“Students, I suppose.” Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below, “Gi-gi, there’s Lu-lu. Don’t forget to ask him to supper.... All the beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently they’ll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes.”
The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an almost unbroken chatter.
The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and there was a good deal of gossip and laughter.
The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess’s box.
“So you’re taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?” said Don Camillo.
“Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him — jaw-bones as well,” said the General. “The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if it was only as a jettatura.” And then in a low voice to the Princess, with a glance at Roma, “Your beautiful young friend doesn’t look so well to-night.”
The Princess shrugged her shoulders. “Of the pains of love one suffers but does not die,” she whispered.
Roma’s throat was throbbing. “He ... he was married?”
“Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself.”
“Eyes the other way, at the window — thank you!... Did she know who he was?”
“Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho.”
“They ... they were ... happy?”
“As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty came....”
“He became poor — very poor?”
“Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now, one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them, but the misery of that woman’s outward circumstances never dimmed the radiance of her sunny soul.”
Roma’s bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. “She ... died?”
David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. “Her death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very cold and raw. We hadn’t too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll on the floor.”
His voice had enough to do to control itself.
“When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now — the child with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the wall.”
His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma’s eyes the tears were gathering.
“We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh, the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!”
Roma could not look at him any longer.
“It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed at the sights in the streets. Only six — and she had never been in a coach before!”
At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll not try to do any more to-day,” she said in a husky voice. “Somehow it isn’t coming right this morning. It’s like that sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow....”
“With pleasure,” said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.
She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.
“Not Thomas,” she thought. “John — the beloved disciple! That would fit him exactly.”
As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was missing.
“He must have followed Mr. Rossi,” said Roma, and without ado she read the letter.
“DEAR ROMA, — A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too, for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly.
Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your request and not come near you. — Affectionately,
“BONELLI.”
III
Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.
After coffee she went into the Countess’s room as usual. The old lady had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.
“Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the police?”
“How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides....”
“Well?”
“There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to anybody else while there was no judgment against your father.”
“So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of kin.”
“Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!”
“I didn’t say anything against the Baron, did I?”
“You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I’m tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own right.”
“Only for this exile I shouldn’t have been here at all, auntie, and somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me.”
The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and said:
“What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten the baker’s shop in London — or was it a pastry cook’s, or what? — where they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given you away?”
“Don’t speak so loud, Aunt Betsy.”
“Then don’t worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches! Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!”
“I’m not defending my father, but still....”
“Should think not, indeed! If it hadn’t been for the Baron, who went in search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father’s estates, and forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be? Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had consigned you!”
The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had occurred.
“Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You’ll come? No? Ah, work, work, work!”
The little lady tapped Roma’s arm with her pince-nez and laughed.
“Everybody has heard that he is sitting to you, and everybody understands. That reminds me — I’ve a box at the new opera to-morrow night:— ‘Samson’ at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular Samson....”
“Honourable Rossi,” said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the room, with the black poodle bounding before him.
“I must apologise for not sending back the dog,” he said. “It followed me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day....”
“Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared,” said Roma, and then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.
The little lady was effusive. “I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night....”
David Rossi glanced at Roma.
“Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will....”
“With pleasure, Princess.”
“That’s charming! After the opera we’ll have supper at the Grand Hotel. Good-day!” said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, “I leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer from it shockingly. Adieu!”
Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work afresh.
“I’ve been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,” she said. “No, that way, please — eyes as before — thank you! About your old friend, I mean. He was a good man — I don’t doubt that — but he made everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the world?”
“When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must reconcile themselves to that,” said Rossi.
“Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend’s daughter, for example. She was to lose everything — her father himself at last. How could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her.”
“Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except the one thing to which he had dedicated his life.”
A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
“When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to gather itself up in the child.”
The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.
“How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways — a gleam of the sun from our sunny Italy.”
She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.
“And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand,” she said.
“He did.”
“How could he know what would happen?”
“He couldn’t, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness! Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel, and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he did not love her.”
Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
“He gave her away, you say?”
“Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take her with him was impossible. A neighbour came — a fellow-countryman — he kept a baker’s shop in the Italian quarter. ‘I’m only a poor man,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your heart bids you!’ It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at last.”
Roma listened with head aside.
“One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for the stranger’s house, and in the twilight of the little streets happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one, and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father’s side.”
Roma was holding her breath.
“The baker’s shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a glassy light. ‘You are very good, sir,’ he said, ‘but she is good too, and she’ll be a great comfort and joy to you always.’ And the man said, ‘She’ll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you’ll be right too — you’ll be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then you’ll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.’ But I could see that the doctor was not listening. ‘Let us slip away now,’ I said, and we stole out somehow.”
Roma’s eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her hand.
There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns and children of Trinità de’ Monti were singing their Benediction — Ora pro nobis!
“I don’t think I’ll do any more to-day,” said Roma. “The light is failing me, and my eyes....”
“The day after to-morrow, then,” said Rossi, rising.
“But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?”
He looked steadfastly into her face and answered “Yes.”
She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone.
After dinner she replied to the Baron’s letter of the day before.
“DEAR BARON, — I have misgivings about being on the right track, and feel sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime
Ministers appoint people at the mere mention of their names by wards, second cousins, and lady friends generally? Wouldn’t it have been wise to make inquiries? What was the fault for which
Minghelli was dismissed in London?
“As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He doesn’t seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by way of my father was a fluke. At all events, I’m satisfied that it is going in the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail.
Leave him to me alone. — Yours,
ROMA.
“P.S. — Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to the new opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he will be seen with me in public!
“I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so wonderfully good-looking when you look at him closely.”
IV
The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house. This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the place with her opera-glass.
“Crowded already!” she said. “And every face looking up at my box! That’s what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be, though, when your illustrious friend arrives.”
At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess welcomed him effusively.
“So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you — Honourable Rossi, Don Camillo Luigi Murelli.”
Roma looked at him — he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma — she wore a white gown with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes twinkled.
“Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not sit back. You can’t mind observation — so used to it, you know.”
Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter.
He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it, and was taking it as a penance.
Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on talking. “These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and the stalls are filled by all sorts and conditions of people — political people, literary people, even trades-people if they’re rich enough or can pretend to be.”
“And the upper circles?” asked Rossi.
“Oh,” in a tired voice, “professional people, I think — Collegio Romano and University of Rome, you know.”
“And the gallery?”
“Students, I suppose.” Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below, “Gi-gi, there’s Lu-lu. Don’t forget to ask him to supper.... All the beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently they’ll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes.”
The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an almost unbroken chatter.
The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and there was a good deal of gossip and laughter.
The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess’s box.
“So you’re taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?” said Don Camillo.
“Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him — jaw-bones as well,” said the General. “The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if it was only as a jettatura.” And then in a low voice to the Princess, with a glance at Roma, “Your beautiful young friend doesn’t look so well to-night.”
The Princess shrugged her shoulders. “Of the pains of love one suffers but does not die,” she whispered.
