Chapter XV: Part SIX: The Roman of Rome (2)

"Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror."

The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow with a roaring in her ears.

"It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me."

The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible. The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues, her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the innocence of sleep.

Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her to the depths of abasement.

The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now different.

"Roma! Is that you?"

"Yes, aunt."

"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You know that quite well."

Roma turned on the lights.

"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"

Roma tried to prevaricate.

"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a lie, I tell you...."

The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table by her bed.

Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one, some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother, and her tears had begun to fall.

It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of death--Amen!"

When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying and was comforted.

IX

For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were posted outside the street door announcing a sale of "Old and New Objects of Art" in the "Appartamento Volonna." Then came the "Grand Esposizione"--it was on Sunday morning--and the following day the auction.

Roma built herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of servility in his long face prevailed over the look of arrogance.

"Good-morning, Donna Roma. May I perhaps...."

"Come in."

The lanky person settled himself comfortably and began on a confidential communication.

"The Baron, sincerely sorry to hear of your distresses, sends me to say that you have only to make a request and this unseemly scene shall come to an end. In fact, I have authority to act on his behalf--as an unknown friend, you know--and stop these proceedings even at the eleventh hour. Only a word from you--one word--and everything shall be settled satisfactorily."

Roma was silent for a moment, and the Commendatore concluded that his persuasions had prevailed. Somebody else knocked at the door.

"Come in," said the Commendatore largely.

This time it was the auctioneer. "Time to begin the sale, Signorina. Any commands?" He glanced from Roma to Angelelli with looks of understanding.

"I think her Excellency has perhaps something to say," said Angelelli.

"Nothing whatever. Go on," said Roma.

The auctioneer disappeared through the door, and Angelelli put on his hat.

"Then you have no answer for his Excellency?"

"None."

"_Bene_," said the Commendatore, and he went off whistling softly.

The auction began. At a table on a platform where the piano used to stand sat the chief auctioneer with his ivory hammer. Beneath him at a similar table sat an assistant. As the men in red caps brought up the goods the two auctioneers took the bidding together, repeating each other in the manner of actor and prompter at an Italian theatre.

The English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her niece immediately. The invalid, now frightfully emaciated and no longer able to sit up, was lying back on her lace-edged pillows. She was plucking with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath. But the sound that came from her throat was like a voice shouted on a windy headland, and hardly louder than the muffled voices of the auctioneers as they found their way through the walls.

Roma sat down on the stool by the bedside, stroked the cat with the gold cross suspended from its neck, and listened to the words within the room and without as they fell on her ear alternately.

"Roma, you are treating me shamefully. While I am lying here helpless you are having an auction--actually an auction--at the door of my very room."

"Camera da letto della Signorina! Bed in _noce_, richly ornamented with fruit and flowers." "Shall I say fifty?" "Thank you, fifty." "Fifty." "Fifty-five." "Fifty-five." "No advance on fifty-five?" "Gentlemen, gentlemen! The beautiful bed of a beautiful lady, and only fifty-five offered for it!..."

"If you wanted money you had only to ask the Baron, and if you didn't wish to do that, you had only to sign a bill at six months, as I told you before. But no! You wanted to humble and degrade me. That's all it is. You've done it, too, and I'm dying in disgrace...."

"Secretaire in walnut! Think, ladies, of the secrets this writing-desk might whisper if it would! How much shall I say?" "Sixty lire." "Sixty." "Sixty-five." "Sixty-five." "Writing-desk in walnut with the love letters hardly out of it, and only sixty-five lire offered!..."

"This is what comes of a girl going her own way. Society is not so very exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the respectabilities. And quite right, too! Pity they could not be the only ones to suffer, but they can't. Their friends and relations are the real sufferers; and as for me...."

The Countess's voice broke down into a maudlin whimper. Without a word Roma rose up to go. As she did so she met Natalina coming into the room with the usual morning plate of forced strawberries. They had cost four francs the pound.

Some time afterwards, from her writing-table in the boudoir-bedroom, Roma heard a shuffling of feet on the circular iron stairs. The people were going down to the studio. Presently the auctioneer's voice came up as from a vault.

"And now what am I offered for this large and important work of modern art?"

There was a ripple of derisive laughter.

"A fountain worthy, when finished, to rank with the masterpieces of ancient Rome."

More derisive laughter.

"Now is the time for anti-clericals. Gentlemen, don't all speak at once. Every day is not a festa. How much? Nothing at all? Not even a soldo? Too bad. Art is its own reward."

Still more laughter, followed by the shuffling of feet coming up the iron stairs, and a familiar voice on the landing--it was the Princess Bellini's--"Madonna mia! what a fright it is, to be sure!"

Then another voice--it was Madame Bella's--"I thought so the day of the private view, when she behaved so shockingly to the dear Baron."

Then a third voice--it was the voice of Olga the journalist--"I said the Baron would pay her out, and he has. Before the day is over she'll not have a stick left or a roof to cover her."

Roma dropped her head on to the table. Try as she might to keep a brave front, the waves of shame and humiliation were surging over her.

Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Natalina with a telegram: "Letter received; my apartment is paid for to end of June; why not take possession of it?"

From that moment onward nothing else mattered. The tumultuous noises in the drawing-room died down, and there was no sound but the voices of the auctioneer and his clerk, which rumbled like a drum in the empty chamber.

It was four o'clock. Opening the window, Roma heard the music of a band. At that a spirit of defiance took possession of her, and she put on her hat and cloak. As she passed through the empty drawing-room, the auctioneer, who was counting his notes with the dry rustle of a winnowing machine, looked up with his beady eyes and said:

"It has come out fairly well, Madame--better than we might have expected."

On reaching the piazza she hailed a cab. "The Pincio!" she cried, and settled in her seat. When she returned an hour afterwards she wrote her usual letter to David Rossi.

"High doings to-day! Have had a business on my own account, and
done a roaring trade! Disposed of everything in the shop except
what I wanted for myself. It isn't every trades-woman who can say
that much, and I'm only a beginner to boot!

"Soberly, I've sold up. Being under notice to leave this
apartment, I didn't want all this useless furniture, so I thought
I might as well get done with it in good time. Besides, what right
had I to soft beds and fine linen while you were an exile,
sleeping Heaven knows where? And then my aunt, who is very ill and
wants all sorts of luxuries, is rather expensive. So for the past
week my drawing-room has been as full of fluting as a frog-pond at
sunset, and on Sunday morning people were banging away at my poor
piano as if it had been a hurdy-gurdy at an osteria.

"But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I
was selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have
laughed to hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was
so silly that I could have cried, but just at the moment when I
felt a wee bit badly, down came your telegram like an angel from
Heaven--and what do you think I did? The old Adam, or say the new
Eve, took possession of me, and the minute the people were gone I
hired a cab--a common garden cab, Roman variety, with a horse on
its last legs and a driver in ragged tweeds--and drove off to the
Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk that I _wasn't_ done, and
I did! They were all there, my dear friends and former
flatterers--every one of them who has haunted my house for years,
asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of
sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all
together for my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature
escape.

"Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and
between them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and
I might have been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the
consciousness they betrayed of my presence. Was I humiliated?
Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was proud. I knew the day would
come, the day was near, when they must try to forget all this and
to persuade themselves it had never been, when for my own sake,
even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they would come
back humble, so humble and afraid.

"So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them.
And when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band
stopped, and we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy
and unashamed. Oh, David Rossi! If you could have been there!

"I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news.
Lawyer Napoleon, who continues to go to Regina C[oe]li to see the
bewildering Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes!
If the God who settles the question of sex had only remembered to
make your wife the procurator-general, think how different the
history of the world would have been! The worst of it is he
mightn't have remembered to make you a woman; and in any case,
things being so nicely settled as they are, I don't think I want
to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the wind. It's
ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm. "ROMA.

"P.S.--My poor friend is still in trouble. Although not a
religious woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night
on going to bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would
commit suicide, so frightful are the visions that enter her head
sometimes. I've told her how wrong it would be to do away with
herself, if only for the sake of her husband, who is away. Didn't
I tell you he was away at present? It would hurt you dreadfully if
_I_ were to die before _you_ return, wouldn't it? But I'm dying
already to hear what you think of her. Write! Write! Write!"

X

When the King of Terrors could no longer be beaten back the Countess sent for the priest. Before he arrived she insisted on making her toilet and receiving him in the dressing-gown which she used to wear when people made ante-camera to her in the days of her gaiety and strength.

During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs.

The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said, "she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the Apostolic Blessing."

He went away to prepare for these offices, and the English Sister came to see Roma. "The Countess is like another woman already," she said, but Roma did not go into the sickroom.

The priest returned in half-an-hour. He had now two assistants, one carrying the cross and banner, the other a vessel of holy water and the volume of the Roman ritual. The Sister and Felice met them at the door with lighted candles.

"Peace be to this house!" said the priest.

And the assistants said, "And to all dwelling in it."

Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table, her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned like stars.

The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the perfumed couch.

Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her.

"It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another woman."

"Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that she had.

Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face.

"All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to God."

Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner.

"You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner, but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain."

But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral.

"Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little, certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo."

Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart felt sore.

Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular face was snapping all round.

The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset, but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with the petitions of the "breathing forth."

Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.

The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesù, Gesù, Gesù!"

The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and the priest was praying fast and loud:

"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into the bosom of Abraham."

At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in her chest. At last she became delirious.

"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.

The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."

The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped. A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted, and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an end.

Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.

The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.

"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last. How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor, unhappy fellow-sinner.

"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self forgiven!...

"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for you next time, great and serious news."

XI

Roma fulfilled her promise. The funeral pomps, if the Countess could have seen them, would have satisfied her vain little mind. On going to the parish church the procession covered the entire length of the street. First the banner with skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass, then a confraternity of lay people, then twenty paid mourners in evening dress, then fifty Capuchins at two francs a head with yellow candles at three francs each, then the cross, then the secular clergy two and two, then the parish priest in surplice and black stole with servitors and acolytes, then a stately funeral car with four horses richly harnessed, and finally four coaches with coachmen and footmen in gala livery. The bier was loaded with flowers and streamers, and the cost of the cortège was nearly a thousand francs.

As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her. It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features hard as iron, made a painful impression.

"Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo," he said, and then he added something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear.

"I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I would earnestly counsel you not to commit it."

She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped her to enter it, and then said: "Remember, my attitude is the same as ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of need."

When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the cortège was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages. Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins for to-morrow.

The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess's friends, like herself, disliked the sight of churchyards.

The House of Deposit, a low-roofed chamber under a chapel, contained tressels for every kind and condition of the dead. One place was labelled "Reserved for distinguished corpses." The coffin of the Countess was put to rest there until the buriers should come to bury it in the morning, the wreaths and flowers and streamers were laid over it, the priest sprinkled it again with holy water, and then the funeral was at an end.

"I will not go back yet," said Roma, and thereupon the priest and his assistants stepped into the carriages. The drivers lit cigarettes and started off at a brisk trot.

It had been a gorgeous funeral, and the soul of the Countess would have been satisfied. But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the time, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Roma bought a wreath of wild flowers at a stall outside the cemetery gates, and by help of a paper given to her in the office she found the grave of little Joseph. It was in a shelf of vaults like ovens, each with its marble door, and a photograph on the front. They were all photographs of children, sweet smiling faces, a choir of little angels, now singing round the throne in heaven. The sun was shining on them, and the tall cypress trees were singing softly in the light wind overhead. Here and there a mother was trimming an oil-lamp that hung before her baby's face, and listening to the little voice that was not dead but speaking to her soul's soul.

Roma hung her wreath on Joseph's vault and turned away. Going out of the gates she met a great concourse of people. At their head was a Capuchin carrying a black wooden cross with sponge, spear, hammer and nails attached. Two boys in blue and white carried candles by his side. The crowd behind were of the poorest, chiefly women and girls with shawls and handkerchiefs on their heads. It was Friday, and they were going to the Church of San Lorenzo to make the procession of the Stations of the Cross. Scarcely knowing why she did so, Roma followed them.

The people filled the Basilica. Their devotion was deep and touching. As they followed the friar from station to station they sang in monotonous tones the strophes of the _Stabat Mater_.

"Ah, Mother, fountain of love, make me feel the strength of sorrow that I may mourn with thee."

Their prayer seemed hardly needful. They were the starving wives and daughters of men in prison, men in hospital, and reserve soldiers. Poor wrecks on life's shore, thrown up by the tide, they had turned to religion for consolation, and were sending up their cry to God.

When they had finished their course and ended their canticles of grief they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross and a rosary hung from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through, and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their sufferings upon them for their sins, that they must confess their sins, in order that their holy mother, the Church, might save them from their sins, there was a deep hum in the air like the reverberation in a great shell.

A line of confessional boxes stood in each of the church aisles, and as the preacher described the sorrows of the man-God, His passion, His agony, His blood, the women and girls, weeping audibly, got up one by one and went over to confess. No sooner had one of them arisen than another took her place, and each as she rose to her feet looked calm and comforted.

The emotion of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face. She had seen it before somewhere--perhaps in the Pope's procession.

At that moment a poor girl with a handkerchief on her head, who had knelt down crying, was getting up with shining eyes. Roma was shaken by violent tremors. An overpowering desire had come upon her to confess. For a moment she held on to a chair, lest she should fall to the floor. Then by a sudden impulse, in a kind of delirium, scarcely knowing what she was doing until it was done, she flung herself in the place the girl had risen from, and with a palpitating heart said in a tremulous voice through the little brass grating:

"Father, I am a great sinner--hear me, hear me!"

The measured breathing inside the confessional was arrested, and the peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic cheeks and blazing eyes.

"Wait, my daughter, do not agitate yourself. Say the Confiteor."

She tried to speak, but her words were hardly audible or coherent.

"I confess ... I confess ... I cannot, Father."

A pinch of snuff dropped from the old man's fingers.

"Are you not a Christian?"

"I have not been baptized, but I was educated in a convent, and...."

"Then I cannot hear your confession. Baptism is the door of the Church, and without it...."

"But I am in great trouble. For Our Lady's sake, listen to me. Oh, listen to me, Father, only listen to me."

Although accustomed to the sufferings of the human heart, a measureless pity came over the old priest, and he said in a kind and tender voice:

"Go on, my daughter. I cannot give you absolution, for you are not a child of the Church; but I am an old man, and if I can help your poor soul to bear its burden, God forbid that I should turn you away."

In a torrent of hot words Roma poured out her trouble, hiding nothing, extenuating nothing, and naming and blaming no one. At length the throbbing breath and quivering voice died down, and there was a moment's silence, in which the dull rumble in the church seemed to come from far away. Then the voice behind the grating said in tender tones:

"My daughter, you have committed no sin in this case and have nothing to repent of. That you should be troubled by scruples shows that your soul is pure and that you are living in communion with God. Your bodily health is reduced by nervousness and anxiety, and it is natural that you should imagine that you have sinned where you have not sinned. That is the sweet grace of most women, but how few men! What sin there has been is not yours; therefore go home, and God comfort you."

"But, dear Father ... it is so good of you, but have you forgotten...."

"Your husband? No! Whether you should tell him it is beyond my power to say. In itself I should be against it, for why should you disturb his conscience and endanger the peace of a family? Your scruples about Nature coming to convict you, being without grounds of reason, are temptations of the devil and should be put behind your back. But that your marriage was a religious one only, that the other person (you did right not to name him, my child) may use that circumstance to separate you, and that your confession to your husband, if it came too late, would come prejudiced and worse than in vain, these are facts that make it difficult to advise you for your safety and peace of mind. Let me consult some one wiser than myself. Let me, perhaps, take your secret to a high place, a kindly ear, a saintly heart, a venerable and holy head. Come again, or leave me your name if you will, and if that holy person has anything to say you shall hear of it. Meantime go home in peace and content, my daughter, and may God bring you into His true fold at last."

When Roma got up from the grating of the confessional she felt like one who had passed through a great sickness and was now better. Her whole being was going through a miraculous convalescence. A great weight had been lifted off; she was renewed as with a new soul and her very body felt light as air.

The preacher was still preaching in his tremulous tones, and the women and girls were still crying, as Roma passed out of the church, but now she heard all as in a dream. It was not until she reached the portico, and a blind beggar rattled his can in her face, that the spell was broken, so sudden and mysterious was the transition when she came back from heaven to earth.

XII

By the first post next morning "Sister Angelica" received a letter from David Rossi.

"Dearest,--Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and
perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when
I think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read
between the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some
of your happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from
rushing back to you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some
day, my dear one. I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did
on that glorious day in the Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are
still young and we shall live.

"Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done
amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees,
correspondence early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest,
and you shall hear all about it presently. I am proud that I
judged rightly of the moral grandeur of your nature, and that it
is possible to tell you everything.

"We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our
organisation. Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united
action. Europe seems to be ready for a complete change, but the
first great act must be done in Rome. I find encouragement
everywhere. The brotherly union of the peoples is going on. A
power stronger than brute force is sweeping through the world.

"Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put
upon him to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am
troubled. It would be a lasting grief to me if his mind were
poisoned. Charles Minghelli being in prison in the disguise of a
prisoner means that anything may happen. When the man came to me
after his dismissal in London, it was to ask help to assassinate
the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the other side. The
secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public trial is a
hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been abolished
in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and jails
of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which
helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not
a trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent
to incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put
upon treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from
himself and the people whose only occupation in life is to secure
convictions.

"And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more
guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast
had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself
any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the
only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save
her from a disease of the soul.

"As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one
opinion. I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the
sin, where it exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has
been pardoned in secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in
David. Christ pardoned it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the
concealment, the lying and duplicity, these cannot be pardoned
until they have been confessed.

"Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought
of. There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your
friend. If he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he
may intimidate her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband.
This would make her miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her
will being broken, it might even make her yield. Or the man may
really tell her husband in order to insult and outrage both of
them. _If he does so, where is she? Is her husband to believe her
story then?_

"To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her
husband's love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will
think, 'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will
love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every
man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But
his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She
loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be
struck at her it must go through me.'

"My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it
was very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of
you to be severe with her too, and to make her go through
purgatorial fires. That is what good women always do with the
injured of their own sex. It is a kind of pledge and badge of
their purity, and it is a safeguard and shield, whatever the
unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to the poor
soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your
tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation
of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of
gold. Until we meet again, my darling, D. R."

XIII

"MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--All day long I've been carrying your
letter round like a reliquary, taking a peep at it in cabs, and
even, when I dare, in omnibuses and the streets.

"What you say about Bruno has put me in a fever, and I have
written to the Director-General for permission to visit the
prison. Even Lawyer Napoleon is of opinion that Bruno is being
made a victim of that secret inquisition. No Holy Inquisition was
ever more unscrupulous. Lawyer N. says the authorities in Italy
have inherited the traditions of a bad régime. To do evil to
prevent others from doing it is horrible. But in this case it is
doing evil to prevent others from doing good. I am satisfied that
Bruno is being tempted to betray you. If I could only take his
place! _Would their plots have any effect upon me?_ I should die
first.

"And now about my friend. I can hardly hold my pen when I write of
her. What you say is so good, so noble. I might have known what
you would think, and yet....

"Dearest, how can I go on? Can't you divine what I wish to tell
you? Your letter compels me to confess. Come what may, I can hold
off no longer. Didn't you guess who my poor friend was? I thought
you would remember our former correspondence when you pretended to
love somebody else. You haven't thought of it apparently, and that
is only another proof--a bitter sweet one this time--of your love
and trust. You put me so high that you never imagined that I could
be speaking of myself. I was, and my poor friend is my poor self.

"It has made me suffer all along to see what a pedestal of purity
you placed me on. The letters you wrote before you told me you
loved me, when you were holding off, made me ashamed because I
knew I was not worthy. More than once when you spoke of me as so
good, I couldn't look into your eyes. I felt an impulse to cry,
'No, no, no,' and to smirch the picture you were painting. Yet how
could I do it? What woman who loves a man can break the idol in
his heart? She can only struggle to lift herself up to it. That
was what I tried to do, and it is not my fault that it is not
done.

"I have been much to blame. There were moments when duty should
have made me speak. One such moment was before we married. Do you
remember that I tried to tell you something? You were kind, and
you would not listen. 'The past is past,' you said, and I was only
too happy to gloss it over. You didn't know what I wished to say,
or you would not have silenced me. I knew, and I have suffered
ever since. I _had_ to speak, and you see how I have spoken. And
now I feel as if I had tricked you. I have got you to commit
yourself to opinions and to a line of conduct. Forgive me! I will
not hold you to anything. Take it all back, and I shall have no
right to complain.

"Besides, there are features in my own case which I did not
present to you in my friend's. One of them was the fear of being
found out. Dearest, I must not shield myself behind the sweet
excuse you find for me. I _did_ think of the other man. It wasn't
that I was afraid that he would intimidate me, and so corrupt my
love. Not all the tyrannies of the world could do that now. But if
from revenge or a desire to wrest me away from you by making you
cast me off he told you his story before I had told you mine! That
was a day-long and night-long terror, and now I confess it lest
you should think me better than I am.

"Another thing you did not know. Dearest, I would give my life to
spare you the explanation, but I must tell you everything. You
know who the man is, and it is true before God that he alone was
to blame. But my own fault came afterwards. Instead of cutting him
off, I continued to be on good terms with him, to take the income
he allowed me from my father's estate, and even to think of him as
my future husband. And when your speech in the piazza seemed to
endanger my prospects I set out to destroy you.

"It is terrible. How can I tell you and not die of shame? Now you
know how much I deceived you, and the infamy of my purpose makes
me afraid to ask for pardon. To think that I was no better than a
Delilah when I met you first! But Heaven stepped in and saved you.
How you worked upon me! First, you re-created my father for me,
and I saw him as he really was, and not as I had been taught to
think of him. Then you gave me my soul, and I saw myself. Darling,
do not hate me. Your great heart could not be capable of a cruelty
like that if you knew what I suffered.

"Last of all love came, and I wanted to hold on to it. Oh, how I
wanted to hold on to it! That was how it came about that I went on
and on without telling you. It was a sort of gambling, a kind of
delirium. Everything that happened I took as a penance. Come
poverty, shame, neglect, what matter? It was only wiping out a
sinful past, and bringing me nearer to you. But when at last he
who had injured me threatened to injure you _through me_, I was in
despair. You could never imagine what mad notions came to me then.
I even thought of killing myself, to end and cover up everything.
But no, I could not break your heart like that. Besides, the very
act would have told you something, and it was terrible to think
that when I was dead you might find out all this pitiful story.

"Now you know everything, dearest. I have kept nothing back. As
you see, I am not only my poor friend, but some one worse--myself.
Can you forgive me? I dare not ask it. But put me out of suspense.
Write. Or better still, telegraph. One word--only one. It will be
enough.

"I would love to send you my love, but to-night I dare not. I have
loved you from the first, and I can never do anything but love
you, whatever happens. I think you would forgive me if you could
realise that I am in the world only to love you, and that the
worst of my offences comes of loving you more than reason or
honour itself. Whatever you do, I am yours, and I can only
consecrate my life to you.

"It is daybreak, and the cross of St. Peter's is hanging spectral
white above the mists of morning. Is it a symbol of hope, I
wonder? The dawn is coming up from the south-east. It would travel
quicker to the north-west if it loved you as much as I do. I have
been writing this letter over and over again all night long. Do
you remember the letter you made me burn, the one containing all
your secrets? Here is a letter containing mine--but how much
meaner and more perilous! Your poor unhappy girl, ROMA."

XIV

Next day Roma removed into her new quarters. A few trunks containing her personal belongings, the picture of her father and Elena's Madonna, were all she took with her. A broker glanced at the rest of her goods and gave a price for the lot. Most of the plaster casts in the studio were broken up and carted away. The fountain, being of marble, had to be put in a dark cellar under the lodge of the old Garibaldian. Only one part of it was carried upstairs. This was the mould for the bust of Rossi and the block of stone for the head of Christ.

Except for her dog, Roma went alone to the Piazza Navona, Felice having returned to the Baron and Natalina being dismissed. The old woman was to clean and cook for her and Roma was to shop for herself. It didn't take the neighbours long to sum up the situation. She was Rossi's wife. They began to call her Signora.

Coming to live in Rossi's home was a sweet experience. The room seemed to be full of his presence. The sitting-room with its piano, its phonograph, and its portraits brought back the very tones of his voice. The bedroom was at first a sanctuary, and she could not bring herself to occupy it until she had set upon the little Madonna. Then it became a bower, and to sleep in it brought a tingling sense which she had never felt before.

Living in the midst of Rossi's surroundings, she felt as if she were discovering something new about him every minute. His squirrels on the roof made her think of him as a boy, and his birds, which were nesting, and therefore singing from their little swelling throats the whole day long, made her thrill and think of both of them. His presents from other women were a source of almost feverish interest. Some came from England and America, and were sent by women who had never even seen his face. They made her happy, they made her proud, they made her jealous.

It was Rossi, Rossi, always Rossi! Every night on going to bed in her poor quarters her last thought was a love-prayer in the darkness, very simple and foolish and childlike, that he would love her always, whatever she was, and whatever the world might say or evil men might do.

This mood lasted for a week and then it began to break. At the back of her happiness there lay anxiety about her letter. She counted up the hours since she posted it, and reckoned the time it would take to receive a reply. If Rossi telegraphed she might hear from him in three days. She did not hear.

"He thinks it better to write," she told herself. Of course he would write immediately, and in five days she would receive his reply. On the fifth day she called on the porter at the convent. He had nothing for "Sister Angelica."

"There must be snow on the Alps, and therefore the mails are delayed," she thought, and she went down to Piale's, where they post up telegrams. There _was_ snow in Switzerland. It was just as she imagined, and her letter would be delivered in the morning. It was not delivered in the morning.

"How stupid of me! It would be Sunday when my letter reached London." She had not counted on the postal arrangements of the English Sabbath. One day more, only one, and she would hear from Rossi and be happy.

But one day went by, then another and another, and still no letter came. Her big heart began to fail and the rainbow in the sky of her life to pale away. The singing of the birds on the roof pained her now. How could they crack their little throats like that? It was raining and the sky was dark.

Then the Garibaldian and his old wife came upstairs with scared looks and with papers in their hands. They were summoned to give evidence at Bruno's trial. It was to take place in three days.

"Well, I'm deaf, praise the saints! and they can't make much of me," said the old woman.

Roma put on her simple black straw hat with a quill through it and set off for the office of the lawyer, Napoleon Fuselli.

"Just writing to you, dear lady," said the great man, dropping back in his chair. "Sorry to say my labour has been in vain. It is useless to go further. Our man has confessed."

"Confessed?" Roma clutched at the lapel of her coat.

"Confessed, and denounced his accomplices."

"His accomplices?"

"Rossi in particular, whom he has implicated in a serious conspiracy."

"What conspiracy?"

"That is not yet disclosed. We shall hear all about it the day after to-morrow."

"But why? With what object?"

"Pardon! Apparently they have promised the clemency of the court, and hence in one sense our object is achieved. It is hardly necessary to defend the man. The authorities will see to that for us."

"What will be the result?"

"Probably a trial in contumacy. As soon as Parliament rises for Easter Rossi will be summoned to present himself within ten days. But you will be the first to know all about it, you know."

"How so?"

"The summons will be posted upon the door of the house he lived in, and on the door of any other house he is known to have frequented."

"But if he never hears of it, or if he takes no heed?"

"He will be tried all the same, and when he is a condemned man his sentence will be printed in black and posted up in the same places."

"And then?"

"Then Rossi's life in Rome will be at an end. He will be interdicted from all public offices and expelled from Parliament."

"And Bruno?"

"He will be a free man the following morning."

Roma went home dazed and dejected. A letter was waiting for her. It was from the Director of the Roman prisons. Although the regulations stipulated that only relations should visit prisoners, except under special conditions, the Director had no objection to Bruno Rocco's former employer seeing him at the ordinary bi-monthly hour for visitors to-morrow, Sunday afternoon.

At two o'clock next day Roma set off for Regina C[oe]li.

XV

The visiting-room of Regina C[oe]li is constructed on the principle of a rat-trap. It is an oblong room divided into three compartments longitudinally, the partition walls being composed of wire and resembling cages. The middle compartment is occupied by the armed warder in charge who walks up and down; the compartment on the prison side is divided into many narrow boxes each occupied by a prisoner, and the compartment on the world side is similarly divided into sections each occupied by a visitor.

When Roma entered this room she was deafened by a roar of voices. Thirty prisoners and as many of their friends were trying to talk at the same time across the compartment in the middle, in which the warder was walking. Each batch of friends and prisoners had fifteen minutes for their interview, and everybody was shouting so as to be heard above the rest.