Home > Authors Index > Hall Caine > Eternal City > This page
The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
||
Part 5. The Prime Minister - Chapter 10 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ PART FIVE. THE PRIME MINISTER CHAPTER X Ten was striking on the different clocks of the city. Felice had lit the stove in the boudoir and the wood was burning in fitful blue and red flames. There was no other light in the room, and Roma lay with her body on the floor, and her face buried in the couch. The world outside was full of fearful and unusual noises. Snow was still falling, and the voices heard through it had a peculiar sound of sobbing. The soft rolling of thunder came from a long way off, like the boom of a slow wave on a distant beach. At intervals there was the crackle of musketry, like the noise of rockets sent up in the night, and sometimes there were pitiful cries, smothered by the unreverberating snow, like the cries of a drowning man on a foundering ship at sea. Roma, face downward, heard these sounds in the lapses of a terrible memory. She was seeing, as in a nightmare, the incidents of a night that was hardly six weeks past. One by one the facts flashed back upon her with a burning sense of shame, and she felt herself to be a sinner and a criminal. It was the night of the royal ball at the Quirinal. The blaze of lights, the glitter of jewels, the brilliant throng of handsome men and lovely women, the clash of music, the whirl of dancing, and finally the smiles and compliments of the King. Then going home in the carriage in the early morning, swathed in furs over her thin white silk, with the Baron, in his decorations worn diagonally over his white breast, and through the glass the waning moon, the silent stars, the empty streets. Then this room, this couch, sinking down on it, very tired, with eyes smiling and half closed, and nearly gone already into the mists of sleep. And then the Baron at her feet, pressing his lips to her wrist where the pulse was beating, kissing her arms and shoulders.... "Oh, dear! You are mad! I must not listen to you." And then burning words of love and passion: "My wife! My wife that is to be!" And then the call of her aunt from the adjoining chamber, "Roma!" The sobbing sounds from outside broke in on Roma's nightmare, and when the chain of memory linked on again it was morning in her vision, and the Countess was comforting her in a whimpering voice: "After all, God is merciful, and things that happen to everybody can be atoned for by prayer and penance. Besides, the Baron is a man of honour, and the poor maniac cannot last much longer." The sobbing sounds in the snow, the cries far away, the crackle of the rifle-shots, the rumble of the thunder broke in again, and the elements outside seemed to whirl round her in the tempest of her trouble. For a moment she lifted her head and heard voices in the next room. The Baron was still there, and from time to time, as he wrote his despatches, messengers came to take them away, to bring replies, and to deliver the latest news of the night. The populace had risen in all parts of the city, and the soldiers had charged them. There had been several misadventures and many arrests. The large house of detention by St. Andrea delle Frate was already full, but the people continued to hold out. They had disconnected the gas at the gasometer and cut the electric wires, and the city was plunged in darkness. "Tell the electric light company to turn on the flashlight from Monte Mario," said the Baron. And when the voices ceased in the drawing-room there came the deadened sound of the Countess's frightened treble behind the wall. "O Holy Virgin, full of grace, save me! It would be a sin to let me die to-night! Holy Virgin, see! I have given thee two more candles. Art thou not satisfied? Save me from murder, Mother of God." Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face, which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to confess. Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented. "No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound of her voice, the Baron came into the room. "My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful eyes and be calm." She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she said: "I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ... it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but there is no help for it." The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her throat. "The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also. He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him. Perhaps he is in prison by this time." Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very natural and very womanly. But time was the great remedy for human ills. It would heal everything. "Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...." "I can never forget and I don't want to be great. I only want to be good. Leave me!" "You _are_ good. You have always been good. What happened was my fault alone, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I found you growing up to be a great woman, and passing out of my legal control, while I was bound down to a poor, helpless, living corpse. Some day you would meet a younger, freer man, and you would be lost to me for good. Wasn't it human to try to hold you to me until the time came when I could claim you altogether? And if meanwhile this man has interposed...." He pointed to the bust on the pedestal. She looked up at it, and then dropped her head. "Put the man out of your mind, my dear, and all will be well. Probably he is in the hands of the authorities already. God grant it may be so! No trouble about his arrest this time! It cannot be complicated by the danger of scandal. Nobody else's name and character will be concerned in it. And if it serves to dispose of a dangerous man and a subversive politician, I am willing to let everything else sleep." He paused a moment, and then added in his most incisive accents: "But if not, the law must take its course, and Roma Roselli must complete what Roma Volonna has begun." At that moment Felice's dark form stood against the light in the open door. "Commendatore Angelelli and Charles Minghelli, Excellency." As the Baron went back to the drawing-room Roma returned to the window. Scales of snow adhered to the glass, and it was difficult to see anything outside. But the masses of shadow and sheets of light were gone, and the city lay in utter darkness. The sobbing sounds, the crackle of musketry and the rumble of thunder were all gone, and the air was empty and void. At one moment there was a soft patter as of a flock of sheep passing under the window in the darkness. It was a company of riflemen going at a quick march over the snow, with torches and lanterns. Voices came from the next room, and Roma found herself listening. "Apparently the insurrection is suppressed, your Excellency." "I congratulate you." "The soldiers are patrolling the streets, and all is quiet." "Good!" "We have some hundreds of rioters in the house of detention, and the military courts will begin to sit to-morrow morning." "Excellent!" "The misadventures have been few and unimportant, the child I spoke of being the only one killed." "You have discovered whose child it was?" "Yes. Unluckily...." Roma felt dizzy. A thought had flashed upon her. "It is the child of Donna Roma's man, Bruno Rocco, and apparently...." A choking cry rang through the room. Was it herself who made it? "Go on, Commendatore. Apparently...." "The child was dressed in some carnival costume, and apparently he was on his way to this house." Roma's dizziness increased, and to save herself from falling she caught at a side-table that stood under the bust. On this table were some sculptor's tools--a chisel and a small mallet, with which she had been working. There was an interval in which the voices were deadened and confused. Then they became clear and sharp as before. "But the most important fact you have not yet given me. I trust you are only saving it up for the last. The Deputy Rossi is arrested?" "Unfortunately ... Excellency...." "No?" "He left home immediately after the outbreak and has not been seen since. Presently the flashlight will be turned on by a separate battery from Monte Mario, and every corner of the city shall be searched. But we fear he is gone." "Gone?" "Perhaps by the train that left just before the signal." Roma felt a cry rising to her throat again, but she put up her hand to keep it down. "No matter! Commendatore, send telegrams after the train to all stations up to the frontier, with orders that nobody is to alight until every carriage has been overhauled. Minghelli, go to the Consulta immediately, and ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to despatch a portrait of Rossi to every foreign Government." "But no portrait exists, Excellency. It was a difficulty I found in England." "Yes, there is a portrait. Come this way." Roma felt the room going round as the Baron came into it and switched on the light. "_There_ is the only portrait of the illustrious Deputy, and our hostess will lend it to be photographed." "Never!" said Roma, and taking up the mallet she struck the bust a heavy blow, and it fell in fragments to the floor. Half-an-hour afterwards Roma was sitting amid the wreck of her work when the Baron, wearing his fur-lined overcoat and pulling on his gloves, came into the boudoir. "I am compelled," he said, "to inflict my presence upon you for a moment longer in order to tell you what my attitude in the future is to be, and what feelings are to guide you. I shall continue to think of you as my wife according to the law of nature, and of the man who has come between us as your lover. I will not give you up to him, whatever happens; and if he tries to take you away, or if you try to go to him, you must be prepared to find that I offer every resistance. Two passions are now engaged against the man, and I will not shrink from any course that seems necessary to subdue either him or you, or both." A moment afterwards she heard the patrol challenging him on the piazza. Then "Pardon, Excellency," and the soft swish of carriage wheels in the snow. _ |
||