The Eternal City. Sir Hall Caine
The old lady had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.
"Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the police?"
"How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides. … "
"Well?"
"There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to anybody else while there was no judgment against your father."
"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of kin."
"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"
"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"
"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own right."
"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."
The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and said:
"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten the baker's shop in London—or was it a pastry cook's, or what?—where they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given you away?"
"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."
"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches! Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"
"I'm not defending my father, but still. … "
"Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be? Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had consigned you!"
The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had occurred.
"Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work, work, work!"
The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed.
"Everybody has heard that he is sitting to you, and everybody understands. That reminds me—I've a box at the new opera to-morrow night:—'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular Samson. … "
"Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the room, with the black poodle bounding before him.
"I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It followed me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day. … "
"Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.
The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night. … "
David Rossi glanced at Roma.
"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will. … "
"With pleasure, Princess."
"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel. Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer from it shockingly. Adieu!"
Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work afresh.
"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday," she said. "No, that way, please—eyes as before—thank you! About your old friend, I mean. He was a good man—I don't doubt that—but he made everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the world?"
"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.
"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter, for example. She was to lose everything—her father himself at last. How could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."
"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."
A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to gather itself up in the child."
The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.
"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways—a gleam of the sun from our sunny Italy."
She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.
"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she said.
"He did."
"How could he know what would happen?"
"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness! Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel, and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he did not love her."
Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
"He gave her away, you say?"
"Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take her with him was impossible. A neighbour came—a fellow-countryman—he kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm only a poor man,' he said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at last."
Roma listened with head aside.
"One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one, and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side."
Roma was holding her breath.
"The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too, and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said, 'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too—you'll be made triumvir like Mazzini,