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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 4. David Rossi - Chapter 11 |
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_ PART FOUR. DAVID ROSSI CHAPTER XI As Ave Maria approached, David Rossi became still more agitated. The sky had darkened, but there was no wind; the air was empty, and he listened with strained attention for every sound from the staircase and the street. At length he heard a cab stop at the door, and a moment afterwards a light hurrying footstep in the outer room seemed to beat upon his heart. The door opened and Roma came in quickly, with a scarcely audible salutation. He saw her with her golden complexion and her large violet eyes, wearing a black hat and an astrachan coat, but his head was going round and his pulses were beating violently, and he could not control his eyes. "I have come for a minute only," she said. "You received my letter?" Rossi bent his head. "David, I want the fulfilment of your promise." "What promise?" "The promise to come to me when I stand in need of you. I need you now. My fountain is practically finished, and to-morrow afternoon I am to have a reception to exhibit it. Everybody will be there, and I want you to be present also." "Is that necessary?" he asked. "For my purposes, yes. Don't ask me why. Don't question me at all. Only trust me and come." She was speaking in a firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only answered, after a brief pause: "Very well, I will be there." "That's all. I might have written, but I was afraid you might object, and I wished to make quite certain. Adieu!" He had only bowed to her as she entered, and now she was going away without offering her hand. "Roma," he said, in a voice that sounded choked. She stopped but did not speak, and he felt himself growing hot all over. "I'm relieved--so much relieved--to hear that you agree with what I said in my letter." "The last--in which you wish me to forget you?" "It is better so--far better. I am one of those who think that if either party to a marriage"--he was talking in a constrained way--"entertains beforehand any rational doubt about it, he is wiser to withdraw, even at the church door, rather than set out on a life-long voyage under doubtful auspices." "Didn't we promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery. "Roma," he said again, "if you want me in the future you must write." Her face clouded over. "For your own sake, you know...." "Oh, that! That's nothing at all--nothing now." "But people are insulting me about you, and...." "Well--and you?" The colour rushed to his cheeks and he smote the back of a chair with his clenched fist. "I tell them...." "I understand," she said, and her eyes began to shine again. But she only turned away, saying: "I'm sorry you are angry that I came." "Angry!" he cried, and at the sound of his voice as he said the word their love for each other went thrilling through and through them. The rain had begun to fall, and it was beating with smart strokes on the window panes. "You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again there is something you ought to hear." She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on to her shoulders. The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was bubbling like a lake. "The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that you should hear it now." Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty. Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is," he thought. "What is the meaning of it?" He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet. "Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked. "That is all I do remember about my father. Why?" "It is here in this cylinder." She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again. "Tell me," she said. "When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The legal term of _domicilio coatto_ is from one year to five, but excuses were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the world outside." "Did he ever hear of me?" "Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send me a message." "Was it about...." "Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to." With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular cardboard-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust," and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only--to be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him." The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying fire he could see that her face had turned white. "And this contains my father's voice?" she said. "His last message." "He is dead--two years dead--and yet...." "Can you bear to hear it?" "Go on," she said, hardly audibly. He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain, lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the machine began. He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm. Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a clear, full voice: "David Leone--your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying message...." The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking whisper, Roma said: "Wait! Give me one moment." She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a ghostly presence. She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast. "I am better now. Go on," she said. The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came as before: "My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies, nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England _as_ Volonna--nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma." The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim. "Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for his treachery." "The Baron?" Rossi had stopped the phonograph. "Can you bear it?" he said. The pale young face flushed with resolution. "Go on," she said. When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and husky than before. "After he had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the name of my beloved child." The hand on Rossi's arm trembled feebly, and slipped down to his own hand. It was cold as ice. The voice from the phonograph was growing faint. "She is now in Rome, living in the name that was mine in Italy, amid an atmosphere of danger and perhaps of shame. My son, save her from it. The man who betrayed the father may betray the daughter also. Take her from him. Rescue her. It is my dying prayer." The hand in Rossi's hand was holding it tightly, and his blood was throbbing at his heart. "David," the voice from the phonograph was failing rapidly, "when this shall come to your hands the darkness of the grave will be over me.... In my great distress of mind I torture myself with many terrors.... Do not trifle with my request. But whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child.... I dream of her every night, and send my heart's heart to her on the swelling tides of love.... Adieu, my son. The end is near. God be with you in all you do that I did ill or left undone. And if death's great sundering does not annihilate the memory of those who remain on earth, be sure you have a helper and an advocate in heaven." The voice ceased, the whirring of the instrument came to an end, and an invisible spirit seemed to fade into the air. The pattering of the rain had stopped, and there was the crackle of cab wheels on the pavement below. Roma had dropped Rossi's hand, and was leaning forward on her knees with both hands over her face. After a moment, she wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and began to put on her hat. "How long is it since you received this message?" she said. "On the night you came here first." "And when I asked you to come to my house on that ... that useless errand, you were thinking of ... of my father's request as well?" "Yes." "You have known all this about the Baron for a month, yet you have said nothing. _Why_ have you said nothing?" "You wouldn't have believed me at first, whatever I had said against him." "But afterwards?" "Afterwards I had another reason." "Did it concern me?" "Yes." "And now?" "Now that I have to part from you I am compelled to tell you what he is." "But if you had known that all this time he has been trying to use somebody against you...." "That would have made no difference." She lifted her head, and a look of fire, almost of fierceness, came into her face, but she only said, with a little hysterical cry, as if her throat were swelling: "Come to me to-morrow, David! Be sure you come! If you don't come I shall never, never forgive you! But you will come! You will! You will!" And then, as if afraid of breaking out into sobs, she turned quickly and hurried away. "She can never fall into that man's hands now," he thought. And then he lit his lamp and sat down to his work, but the light was gone, and the night had fallen on him. _ |
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