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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 3. Roma - Chapter 2 |
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_ PART THREE. ROMA CHAPTER 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?" "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.
Affectionately, |
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