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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 9. The People - Chapter 6 |
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_ PART NINE. THE PEOPLE CHAPTER VI "Rise, my child! God knows if the Holy Father ought to give you his blessing. Far be it from me to add bitterness to your remorse in finding yourself in this place and guilty of this sin, but.... Are we alone?" "Quite alone, your Holiness." "Sit down. The Holy Father will sit beside you." He was trying to be severe with her, but it was very difficult. His hand strayed down to hers, and at every hard word there was a tender pressure. "The Baron is dead. He was a cruel, heartless tyrant, without mercy or humanity. His death has altered everything, and the load that lay on Italy has been lifted away. But none the less you did wrong, very, very wrong, and by the mad act of a moment.... My child! My poor child! God help you! God help this little lost one!" He patted the hand that lay in his as if he had been quieting a crying child. "My child, I cannot save you from the consequences of your sin. You must go where I cannot follow you. But since the Holy Father induced you to make that cruel denunciation--but let us be calm--let us be calm!" Roma was perfectly calm, but the Pope could barely control himself. "I see now that we made a mistake. The conspiracies of David Rossi were not criminal, and his aims were not unrighteous. I have been instructed on this subject, and now I see everything in a different light. Yes, a great mistake, although a natural and excusable one, and if that was the cause and origin of this terrible event, the Holy Father who led you so far...." "Your Holiness!" "Nay, you must not expect too much. It is little I can do. But now that governments are falling and parliaments are being dissolved, David Rossi must come back...." Roma made a cry of joy, and the Pope raised a warning finger. "Ah, you must never think of that, my child--you must never think of it. It is a pity, a great pity, but, alas! it cannot be otherwise now. If your husband is to come back, his name must be kept clean and unblemished, and you can never rejoin him whatever happens." Dizzy with a sense of the Pope's awful error, Roma turned away her face. "But if you tell me that what you did was due to the compulsion that was put upon you to denounce David Rossi, he must come forward, whatever the consequences, to defend you and plead for you. He must say to the world and to your judges: 'It is true that this poor lady has committed a crime--an awful crime, such as shuts the guilty one out of the fold of the human family--but she was provoked to it by a falsehood. The dead man deceived her. He was her betrayer, her assassin, for he tried to slay her soul. Therefore you will have mercy upon her as you hope for mercy, you will forgive her as you hope for forgiveness, and in the peace and penance of some holy convent she will wipe out the past of her unhappy life as Mary wiped out her sins in the tears with which she washed her Master's feet.'" He had risen in the exaltation of his emotion, and raised one hand over his head, but Roma, in the toils of the terrible error, had dropped to her knees at his feet. "Oh, I cannot die with a lie on my lips. Holy Father, let me make my confession." A vague foreshadowing of the coming revelation seemed to light on the Pope, and he sat down again without a word. Mechanically he prepared to receive the penitent into the Church, questioning her, instructing her, calling on her to repeat the profession of faith, and finally baptizing her conditionally. "Baptism wipes out all your sins, my daughter," he said, "but if for your soul's comfort you wish to make a full confession before I give you the Blessed Sacrament...." "I do. I have wished it ever since the end of my trial, and that was why I asked for Father Pifferi." "Then take care--accuse nobody else, my daughter." Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said: "Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another." "My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet. There was a moment of painful silence, and then the Pope sat down again with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice: "Go on, my daughter." Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out on her awful errand. "But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness, and then...." "In ... your own rooms?" "Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything." "How so?" "Somebody else came afterwards." "Somebody else?" "A friend." "A ... friend?" She hesitated for a moment, and then put her hand into her breast and drew out the warrant. "This one," she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible. The Pope took the paper, and it rustled as he opened it. There was no other sound in the prison cell except the rasping noise of his rapid breathing. "David Leone! You don't mean to say--to imply...." The Pope's eyes wandered vaguely around, but they came back to the face at his feet, and he said: "No, no! You cannot mean that, my child. Tell me I have misunderstood you and come to a wrong conclusion." Roma did not reply. Her head sunk lower and lower, and seeing this, the Pope rose again, and standing over her he cried: "Tell me! Tell me, I command you! You wish me to believe that it was he, not you, who committed the crime! Out on you! out on you!" But having said this in a hoarse and angry voice, he passed his arm over his eyes as if to brush away the clouds that had gathered there, and muttered in a broken and feeble way, "O God, Thou knowest my foolishness. I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God! Hide not Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble." Roma was crying at the Pope's feet, and after a moment he became aware of it, and stooped to lift her up. "My child! My poor, poor child! You must bear with me. I am an old man now. Only a weak old man. My brain is confused. Things run together in it. But I understand. I think I understand." She rose and kissed his trembling hand. He was still holding the warrant. "Where did this paper come from?" "The English Ambassador brought it this morning. He had found it in our rooms in the Piazza Navona." "The place where the crime was committed?" "Yes." The Pope straightened himself up, and said in a firm voice: "My daughter, you must permit me to keep this warrant." "No, no!" "Yes, yes! If I said before that your husband should come out and defend you, I say now that he shall come out and accuse himself." "Your Holiness!" "He shall go to the courts and say: 'This lady is innocent. She sacrificed herself to save my life. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for justice. Liberate her and arrest me.'" Roma had knelt again, and was fingering the skirt of the Pope's cassock. "But, Holy Father," she said, "there is something I have not told you. He who killed the Minister did so in self-defence...." "In self-defence!" "His act was an accident, and if it had not happened the Minister would have killed him, whereas I...." "In self-defence, you say?" "I am really guilty of the crime, because I intended to commit it." "But if it was done in self-defence it was no crime, and you must not and shall not suffer." Roma dropped the Pope's cassock and took hold of his hand. "Holy Father," she said, "how can I wish to live when he who loved me loves me no longer? I know quite well it is better that I should go, and that when he comes it should be all over. I dreamt of it last night, your Holiness. I thought my husband had come back and all the church bells were ringing. Only a dream, and perhaps you do not believe in such foolishness. But it was very sweet to think that if I could not live for my love I could die for him, and so wipe out everything." The Pope's white head was bent very low. "And then I cannot suffer very much, your Holiness. I am ill, really ill, and my trouble will not last very long. And if God is using what has happened to bring out all things well, perhaps He intends that I shall give myself in the place of some one who is better and more necessary." The Pope could bear no more. His lip quivered and his voice shook, but his eyes were shining. "It is not for me to gainsay you, my daughter. I came here to see Mary Magdalene, and find the soul of the saints themselves. The world's judgment on a woman who has sinned is merciless and cruel, but if David Rossi is worthy of his mother and his name, he will come back to you on his knees." "Bless me, your Holiness." "I bless you, my daughter. May He in whose hands are the issues of life and death cover your transgressions with the vast wings of His gracious pardon and bring you joy and peace." The Pope went out with a brightening face, and Roma staggered back to her couch. _ |
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