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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 8. The King - Chapter 3 |
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_ PART EIGHT. THE KING CHAPTER III At ten o'clock on Saturday night the screamers in the Piazza Navona were crying the arrest of Rossi. The telegrams from the frontier gave an ugly account of his capture. He was in disguise, and he made an effort to deny himself, but thanks to the astuteness of the Carabineer charged with the warrant the device was defeated, and he was now lodged in the prison at Milan, where it was probable that he would remain some days. Roma's feelings took a new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past months and saw that the Baron was responsible for everything. He had intimidated her. His intimidation had worked upon her conscience and driven her to the confessional. The confessional had taken her to the Pope, and the Pope in love and loyalty and fatal good faith had led her to denounce her husband. It was a chain of damning circumstances, helped out by the demon of chance, but the first link had been forged by the Baron, and he was to blame for all. On Monday morning bands of music began to promenade the streets. Before breakfast the rejoicings of the day had begun. Towards mid-day drunken fellows in the piazza were embracing and crying, "Long live the King," and then "Long live the Baron Bonelli." Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing? There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen, smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted. Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the _Sunrise_, and it contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on Saturday--there were three lines for that incident. The King had made him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata--there was half a column on the new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President of the Council would be nominated Dictator. In another column of the _Sunrise_ she found an interview with the Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date, and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be encouraged. When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore one course only was left--to send him to the bar of God! When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them. One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal. Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light--and do it. In the drawer of a bureau she had found a revolver which Rossi had left with her on the night he went away. His name had been inscribed on it by the persons who sent it as a present, but Roma gave no thought to that. Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to the supreme tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the responsibility of fixing the moral weight of her motive in the scales of human justice. With these sublime feelings she began to examine the revolver. She remembered that when Rossi had given it to her she had recoiled from the touch of the deadly weapon, and it had fallen out of her fingers. No such fear came to her now, as she turned it over in her delicate hands and tried to understand its mechanism. There were six chambers, and to know if they were loaded she pulled the trigger. The vibration and the deafening noise shook but did not frighten her. The deaf old woman had heard the shot, and she came upstairs panting and with a pallid face. "Mercy, Signora! What's happened? The Blessed Virgin save us! A revolver!" Roma tried to speak with unconcern. It was Mr. Rossi's revolver. She had found it in the bureau. It must be loaded--it had gone off. The words were vague, but the tone quieted the old woman. "Thank the saints it's nothing worse. But why are you so pale, Signora? What is the matter with you?" Roma averted her eyes. "Wouldn't you be pale too if a thing like this had gone off in your hands?" By this time the Garibaldian had hobbled up behind his wife, and when all was explained the old people announced that they were going out to see the illuminations on the Pincio. "They begin at eleven o'clock and go on to twelve or one, Signora. Everybody in the house has gone already, or the shot would have made a fine sensation." "Good-night, Tommaso! Good-night, Francesca!" "Good-night, Signora. We'll have to leave the street door open for the lodgers coming back, but you'll close your own door and be as safe as sardines." The Garibaldian raised his pork-pie hat and left the door ajar. It was half-past ten and the _piazza_ was very quiet. Roma sat down to write a letter.
"Perhaps your great heart will be able to forgive me some day, but I shall never forgive myself or the man who compelled me to do what I have done. Before this letter reaches you in Milan a great act will be done in Rome. But you must know nothing more about it until it is done. "Good-bye, dearest. Try to forgive me as soon as you can. I shall know it if you do ... where I am going to--eventually ... and it will be so sweet and beautiful. Your loving, erring, broken-hearted ROMA."
Her heart was throbbing violently, and she was opening the bureau a second time when her ear caught the sound of a step on the stairs. She knew the step. It was the Baron's. She stopped, with an indescribable sense of terror, and gazed at the door. It stood partly open as the Garibaldian had left it. Through the door the Baron was about to enter. He was coming up, up, up--to his death. Some supernatural power was sending him. She grew dizzy and quaked in every limb. Still the step outside came on. At length it reached the top, and there was a knock at the door. At first she could not answer, and the knock was repeated. Then the free use of her faculties came back to her. There was more of the Almighty in all this than of her own design. It _was_ to be. God intended her to kill this guilty man. "Come in!" she cried. _ |
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