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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 2. The Republic Of Man - Chapter 9 |
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_ PART TWO. THE REPUBLIC OF MAN CHAPTER IX Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a voice still soft, but coming more from within: "I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are not the man I thought you were." "Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you." A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said: "Then you had never seen me before?" And he answered after a moment: "I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day." "Forgive me for coming to you," she said. "I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a mistake--let me ask your forgiveness." "You mean publicly?" "Yes!" "You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you to do that." "Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do--tell me, tell me." Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy. "There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult." "No matter! Tell me what it is." "I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter." "Tell me, I beg of you." He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason. "I thought if--if you would come to my house when my friends are there, your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything. But...." "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 Trinita de' Monti," she said. "Eighteen Trinita 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 _coupe_, 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. _ |
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