Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 377
“Yes.”
His pale face became ashen.
“Then it’s true,” he said in a voice that hardly passed his throat. “What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me against you from the first, but I wouldn’t believe them. I was a fool, and this is my reward.”
So saying he crushed the warrant in his hand and flung it at her feet.
Roma could bear no more. Making a great call on her resolution, she rose, turned towards the bedroom door, and, speaking in a loud voice in order that he who was within might hear, she said:
“David, I don’t want to excuse myself or to blame anybody else, whoever it may be, and however wickedly he may have acted. But, from my soul and before God, I tell you that if I denounced you I did it for the best.”
“The best!”
He laughed bitterly, but she forced herself to go on.
“When you went away you warned me that your enemies could be merciless. They have been merciless. First, they tempted me with the fear of poverty. I had been accustomed to wealth, comfort, luxury. Look round you, David — they are gone. Did I ever regret them? Never! I was rich enough in your love, and I would not have sacrificed that for a queen’s crown.”
She looked up at his tortured face and saw that it was full of scorn, but still she struggled on.
“Then they tempted me with jealousy. The forged letter which killed Bruno was intended to poison me. Did I believe it? No! I knew you loved me, and if you didn’t, if you had deceived me, that made no difference. I loved you, and even if I lost you I should always love you, whatever happened.”
Again she looked up into his face with her glistening eyes. It was not anger she saw there now, but an expression of bewilderment and of pain.
“Last of all, they tempted me with love itself. The treacherous tyrants deceived and intimidated the Pope — the good and saintly Pope — and through him they told me that your arrest was certain, your life in danger, and nothing could save you from your present peril but that I should denounce you for your past offences. The phantom of conspiracy rose up before me, and I remembered my father, doomed to life-long exile and a lonely death. It was my dark hour, dearest, and when they promised me — faithfully promised me — that your life should be spared....”
A faint sound came from the bedroom. Roma heard it, but Rossi, in the tumult of his emotion, heard nothing.
“I know what you will say, dear — that you would have given your life a hundred times rather than save it at the loss of all you hold so dear. But I am no heroine, David. I am only a woman who loves you, and I could not see you die.”
He felt his soul swell with love and forgiveness, and he wanted to sob like a child, but Roma went on, and without trying to keep back her tears.
“That’s all, dear. Now you know everything. It is not your fault that the love you have brought home to me is dead. I hoped that before you came home I might die too. I think my soul must be dead already. I do not hope for pardon, but if your great heart could pardon me....”
“Roma,” said Rossi at last, while tears filled his eyes and choked his voice, “when I escaped from the police I came here to avenge myself; but if you say it was your love that led you to denounce me....”
“I do say so.”
“Your love, and nothing but your love....”
“Nothing! Nothing!”
“Though I am betrayed and fallen, and may be banished or condemned to death, yet....”
Her heart swelled and throbbed. She held out her arms to him.
“David!” she cried, and at the next moment she was clasped to his breast.
Again there was a faint sound from the adjoining room.
“The woman lies,” said a voice behind them.
The Baron stood in the bedroom door.
VII
The Baron’s impulse on going into the bedroom had been merely to escape from one who must be a runaway prisoner, and therefore little better than a madman, whose worst madness would be provoked by his own presence; but when he realised that Rossi was self-possessed, and even magnanimous in his hour of peril, the Baron felt ashamed of his hiding-place, and felt compelled to come out. In spite of his pride he had been forced to overhear the conversation, and he was humiliated by the generosity of the betrayed man, but what humbled him most was the clear note of the woman’s love.
Knight of the Annunziata! Cousin of the King! President of the Council! Dictator! These things had meant something to him an hour ago. What were they now?
The agony of the Baron’s jealousy was intolerable. For the first time in his life his ideas, usually so clear and exact, became confused. Roma was lost to him. He was going mad.
He looked at the revolver which he had snatched up when Roma let it fall, examined it, made sure it was loaded, cocked it, put it in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat, and then opened the door.
The two in the other room did not at first see him. He spoke, and their arms slackened and they stood apart.
After a moment of silence Rossi spoke. “Roma,” he said, “what is this gentleman doing here?”
The Baron laughed. “Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to ask what you are doing here, sir?” he asked.
Then trying to put into logical sequence the confused ideas which were besieging his tormented brain, he said, “I understand that this apartment belongs now to the lady; the lady belongs to me, and when she denounced you to the police it was merely in fulfilment of a plan we concocted together on the day you insulted both of us in your speech in the piazza.”
Rossi made a step forward with a threatening gesture, but Roma intervened. The Baron gripped firmly the revolver in his pocket, and said:
“Take care, sir. If a man threatens me he must be prepared for the consequences. The lady knows what those consequences may be.”
Rossi, breathing heavily, was trying to retain the mastery of himself.
“If you tell me that the lady....”
“I tell you that according to the law of nature and of reason the lady is my wife.”
“It’s a lie.”
“Ask her.”
“And so I will.”
Roma saw the look of triumph with which Rossi turned to her. The terrible moment she had lived in fear of had come to pass. The letters she had written to Rossi had not yet reached him, and her enemy was telling his story before she had told hers.
What was she to do? She would have said anything at that moment and believed herself justified before God. But even lying itself would be of no avail. She remembered the Baron’s threat and trembled. If she told the truth her confession, coming at that moment, would be worse than vain. If she told a lie, Rossi would insult the Baron, the Baron would challenge Rossi, and they would fight with all the consequences the Baron had foretold.
“Roma,” said Rossi, “forgive me for putting the question, but a falsehood like this, affecting the character of a good woman, ought to be stopped in the slanderer’s throat. Don’t be afraid, dear. You know I will believe you before anybody in the world. What the man says is a lie, isn’t it?”
Roma stood for a moment looking in a helpless way from Rossi to the Baron, and from the Baron back to Rossi. She made an effort to speak, but at first she could not do so. At length she said:
“Can’t you trust me, David?”
“Trust you? Answer me on this one point and I will trust you on all the rest. Say the man speaks falsely, and I will stake my life on your word.”
Roma did not reply, and the Baron tried to laugh.
“If the lady can deny what I say, let her do so. If she cannot, you must come to your own conclusions.”
“Deny it, Roma! Deny it, and I will fling the man’s insult in his face.”
“David, if I could tell you everything....”
“Everything! It’s only one thing I want to know, Roma.”
“If you had received my letters addressed to England....”
“Letters? What matter about letters now. Don’t you understand, dear? This gentleman says that before you married me you ... had already belonged to him. That’s what he means, and it’s false, isn’t it?”
“My mouth is closed. If I could say anything one way or other....”
“Yes or no — that is all that is necessary.”
Roma looked up at him with a pleading expression, but seeing nothing in his face except the magistrate who was interrogating her, she turned her back and hung her head, and cried like a helpless child.
Rossi laid hold of her arm, twisted her about, and looked into her eyes.
“Crying, Roma? You don’t mean to tell me that I am to believe what the man says? Deny it! For God’s sake deny it!”
“I ... I cannot ... I cannot speak,” she stammered, and then there was a dead silence.
When Rossi spoke again his face was dark as a thundercloud, and his voice hoarse as a raven’s.
“If that is so, there is nothing more to say.”
She looked up at him with a pathetic remonstrance, but he met her eyes with the gaze of a relentless judge who had tried and condemned her.
“I was not to blame, David — I swear before God I was not.”
“Yet you allowed me to go on believing that falsehood. The woman who could do a thing like that could do anything. She could pretend to be poor, pretend to be tempted, pretend....”
“David, what are you saying?”
Rossi broke into a peal of mad laughter.
“Saying? That you have deceived me from the beginning, when you undertook to betray me to your master and paramour.”
“David!”
She tried to protest, but he bore her down with a laugh of scorn, and then wheeled round on the Baron, who had been standing in silence behind them.
“That’s why you are here to-night, I suppose. You didn’t expect to be disturbed, did you? You didn’t expect to see me. You thought I was stowed away in a cell, and you could meet in safety.... Oh, my brain! my brain! I shall go mad!”
“It isn’t true,” cried Roma. And turning to the Baron with flame in her eyes she said, “Tell him it isn’t true. You know it isn’t true.”
“True?” Again the Baron tried to laugh. “Of course it’s true. Every word the man has uttered is true. Don’t ask me to lie to him as you have done from first to last.” At that Rossi’s mad laughter stopped suddenly, and he stepped up to the Baron with fury in his face.
“You scoundrel!” he said. “You’ve succeeded, you’ve separated us, but I understand you perfectly. You have used this unhappy lady’s shame to compel her to carry out your infamous designs, and now that she is done with, she must lose the man who played with her as well as the man she has played with.”
Roma saw that the Baron was feeling for something in the side pocket of his overcoat, and she called to Rossi to warn him.
“One doesn’t quarrel with an escaped criminal,” said the Baron. “It is sufficient to call the police ... Police!” he cried, lifting his voice and taking a step forward.
Rossi stood between the Baron and the door.
“Don’t stir,” he said. “Don’t utter a word, I warn you. I’m a hunted dog to-night, and a hunted dog is dangerous.”
“Let me pass,” said the Baron.
“Not yet, sir,” said Rossi. “You have something to do before you go. You have to go down on your knees and beg the pardon of your victim....”
Roma saw the Baron draw the revolver. She saw Rossi spring upon him, and seize him by the collar of the Annunziata which hung over his shirt front. She saw the men go struggling through the door of the sitting-room into the dining-room. She covered her ears with her hands to shut out the sounds from the outer chamber, but she heard Rossi’s hoarse voice that was like the growl of a wild beast. Then came the deafening report of a pistol-shot, then the vibration of a heavy fall, and then dead silence.
Roma was still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and blistering words poured out of him in a torrent.
“He’s dead. D’you hear me? He’s dead. But it’s as much your work as mine, and you will never think of yourself henceforward without remorse and horror. I curse you by the love you’ve wronged and the heart you’ve broken. I curse you by the hopes you wasted and the truth you’ve outraged. I curse you by the memory of your father, the memory of a saint and martyr.”
Before his last words were spoken Roma had ceased to hear. With a feeble moan, interrupted by a faint cry, she had slowly retreated before him, and then fallen face downwards. Everything about her, Rossi, herself, the room, the lamp on the table and the shadows cast by it, had mingled and blended, and gone out in a complete obscurity.
VIII
When Roma regained consciousness, there was not a sound in the apartment. Even the piazza outside was quiet. Somebody was playing a mandoline a long way off, and the thin notes were trembling through the still night. A dog was barking in the distance. Save for these sounds everything was still.
Roma lay for some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and she wept bitterly.
But when the first tenderness was over the one feeling which seized and held her was hatred of the Baron. Rossi had told her the man was dead, and she felt no pity. The Baron deserved his death, and if Rossi had killed him it was no crime.
She was still lying where she had fallen when a noise as of some one moving came from the adjoining room. Then a voice called to her:
“Roma!”
It was the Baron’s voice, broken and feeble. A great terror took hold of her. Then came a sense of shame, and finally a feeling of relief. The Baron was not dead. Thank God! O thank God!
She got up and went into the dining-room. The Baron was on his knees struggling to climb to the couch. His shirt front was partly dragged out of his breast, and the Order of the Annunziata was torn away. There was a streak of blood over his left eyebrow, and no other sign of injury. But his eyes themselves were glassy, and his face was pale as death.
“I’m dying, Roma.”
“I’ll run for a doctor,” she said.
“No. Don’t do that. I don’t want to be found here. Besides, it’s useless. In five minutes a clot of blood will have covered the lacerated brain, and I shall lose consciousness again. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Let me call for a priest,” said Roma.
“Don’t do that either. You can do me more good yourself, Roma. Give me a drink.”
Roma was fighting with an almost unconquerable repugnance, but she brought the Baron a drink of water, and with shaking hands held the glass to his trembling lips.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Worse,” he answered.
He looked into her eyes with evident contrition, and said, “I wonder if it would be fair to ask you to forgive me? Would it?”
She did not answer, and he stretched himself and sighed. His breathing became laboured and stertorous, his skin hot, and his eyes dilated.
“How do you feel now?” asked Roma.
“I’m going,” he replied, and he smiled again.
The human soul was gleaming out of the wretched man at the last, and he was looking at her now with pleading eyes which plainly could not see.
“Are you there, Roma?”
“Yes.”
“Promise that you will not leave me.”
“I will not leave you now,” she answered in a low voice.
After a moment he roused himself with an effort and said, “And this is the end! How absurd! They’ll find me here in any case, and what a chatter there’ll be! The Chamber — the journals — all the scribblers and speechifiers. What will Europe say? Another Boulanger, perhaps! But I’m sorry for Italy. Nobody can say I did not love my country. Where her interest lay I let nothing interfere. And just when everything seemed to triumph....”
He attempted to laugh. Roma shuddered.
“It was the star of the Annunziata that did it. The man threw it with such force. To think that it’s been the aim of my life to win that Order and now it kills me! Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
Again he attempted to laugh.
“There’s a side of justice in that, though, and I’m not going to whine. The Pope tried to paint an awful end, but his nightmare didn’t frighten me. We must all bow our heads to the law of compensation — the Pope as well as everybody else. But to die stupidly like this...”
He was speaking with difficulty, and dragging at his shirt front. Roma opened it at the neck, and something dropped on to the floor. It was a lock of glossy black hair tied with a red ribbon such as lawyers used to bind documents together. Dull as his sight was, he saw it.
“Yours, Roma! You were ill with fever when you first came to Rome, you remember. The doctors cut off your beautiful hair. This was some of it. I’ve worn it ever since. Silly, wasn’t it?”
Tears began to shine in Roma’s eyes. The cynical man who laughed at sentiment had carried the tenderest badge of it in his breast.
“I used to wear some of my mother’s in the same place when I was younger. She was a good woman, too. When she put me to bed she used to repeat something: ‘Hold Thou my hands,’ I think.... May I hold your hands, Roma?”
Roma turned away her head, but she held out her hand, and the dying man kissed it.
“What a beautiful hand it is! I think I should know it among all the hands in the world. How stupid! People have been afraid of me all my life, Roma; even my mother was afraid of me when I was a child; but to die without once having known what it was to have some one to love you.... I believe I’m beginning to rave.”
The mournful irony of the words was belied by the tremulous voice.
“My little comedy is played out, I suppose, and when the curtain is down it is time to go home. Death is a solemn sort of homegoing, Roma, and if those we’ve injured cannot forgive us before we go....”
