_ PART THREE. ROMA
CHAPTER XI
Felice met Roma at the door of her own apartment, and in more than usually sepulchral tones announced that the Countess had wished to see her as soon as she came home. Without waiting to change her riding-habit, Roma turned into her aunt's room.
The old lady was propped up with pillows, and Natalina was fussing about her. Her eyes glittered, her thin lips were compressed, and regardless of the presence of the maid, she straightway fell upon Roma with bitter reproaches.
"Did you wish to see me, aunt?" said Roma, and the old lady answered in a mocking falsetto:
"Did I wish to see you, miss? Certainly I wished to see you, although I'm a broken-hearted woman and sorry for the day I saw you first."
"What have I done now?" said Roma, and the radiant look in her face provoked the old lady to still louder denunciations.
"What have you done? Mercy me!... Give me my salts, Natalina!"
"Natalina," said Roma quietly, "lay out my studio things, and if Bruno has gone, tell Felice to light the lamps and see to the stove downstairs."
The old lady fanned herself with her embroidered handkerchief and began again.
"I thought you meant to mend your ways when you came in yesterday, miss--you were so meek and modest. But what was the fact? You had come to me straight from that man's apartments. You had! You know you had! Don't try to deny it."
"I don't deny it," said Roma.
"Holy Virgin! She doesn't deny it! Perhaps you admit it?"
"I do admit it."
"Madonna mia! She admits it! Perhaps you made an appointment?"
"No, I went without an appointment."
"Merciful heavens! She is on such terms with the man that she can go to his apartments without even an appointment! Perhaps you were alone with him, miss?"
"Yes, we were quite alone," said Roma.
The old lady, who was apparently about to faint right away, looked up at her little shrine, and said:
"Goodness! A girl! Not even a married woman! And without a maid, too!"
Trying not to lose control of herself, Roma stepped to the door, but her aunt followed her up.
"A man like that, too! Not even a gentleman! The hypocrite! The impostor! With his airs of purity and pretence!"
"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I was sorry I spoke to you as I did the other night, not because anything I said was wrong, but because you are weak and bedridden and suffering. Don't provoke me to speak again as I spoke before. I did go to Mr. Rossi's rooms yesterday, and if there is any fault in that, I alone am to blame."
"Are you indeed?" said the old lady, with a shrill, piping cry. "Holy Saints! she admits so much! Do you know what people will call you when they hear of it? A hussy! A shameless hussy!"
Roma was flaming up, but she controlled herself and put her hand on the door-handle.
"They _will_ hear of it, depend on that," cried the Countess. "Last night at dinner the women were talking of nothing else. Felice heard all their chattering. That woman let the dog out to follow you, knowing it would go straight to the man's rooms. 'Whom did it come home with, Felice?' 'Donna Roma, your Excellency.' 'Then it's clear where Donna Roma had been.' Ugh! I could choke to think of it. My head is fit to split! Is there any cognac...?"
Roma's bosom was visibly stirred by her breathing, but she answered quietly:
"No matter! Why should I care what is thought of my conduct by people who have no morality of their own to judge me by?"
"Really now?" said the Countess, twisting the wrinkles of her old face into skeins of mock courtesy. "Upon my word, I didn't think you were so simple. Understand, miss, it isn't the opinion of the Princess Bellini I am thinking about, but that of the Baron Bonelli. He has his dignity to consider, and when the time comes and he is free to take a wife, he is not likely to marry a girl who has been talked of with another man. Don't you see what that woman is doing? She has been doing it all along, and like a simpleton you've been helping her. You've been flinging away your chances with this Rossi and making yourself impossible to the Minister."
Roma tossed her head and answered:
"I don't care if I have, Aunt Betsy. I'm not of the same mind as I used to be, and I think no longer that the holiest things are to be bought and sold like so much merchandise."
The old lady, who had been bending forward in her vehemence, fell back on the pillow.
"You'll kill me!" she cried. "Where did you learn such folly? Goodness knows I've done my best by you. I have tried to teach you your duty to the baron and to society. But all this comes of admitting these anarchists into the house. You can't help it, though. It's in your blood. Your father before you...."
Crimson and trembling from head to foot, Roma turned suddenly and left the room. Natalina and Felice were listening on the other side of the door.
But not even this jarring incident could break the spell of Roma's enchantment, and when dinner was over, and she had gone to the studio and closed the door, the whole world seemed to be shut out, and nothing was of the slightest consequence.
Taking the damp cloth from the bust, she looked at her work again. In the light of the aurora she now lived in, the head she had wrought with so much labour was poor and inadequate. It did not represent the original. It was weak and wrong.
She set to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She was not afraid.
Time passed, but she did not heed it. She was working at lightning speed, and with a power she had never felt before.
Night came on, and the old Rome, the Rome of the Popes, repossessed itself of the Eternal City. The silent streets, the dark patches, the luminous piazzas, the three lights on the loggia of the Vatican, the grey ghost of the great dome, the kind stars, the sweet moon, and the church bells striking one by one during the noiseless night.
At length she became aware of a streak of light on the floor. It was coming through the shutters of the window. She threw them open, and the breeze of morning came up from the orange trees in the garden below. The day was dawning over the sleepy city. Convent bells were ringing for matins, but all else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep.
She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now. She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on the stars. She was happy, happy, happy!
Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome, the Rome of the Kings, awoke.
Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although the sunlight was streaming into the room.
"Been working all night, Donna Roma?"
"Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now."
She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet!
She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment, when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post, and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters.
One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life.
There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must!
"MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail! Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything! Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is _not_ David Rossi, but a _condemned man who has no right to live in Italy_! Prepare for a still greater surprise--_he has no right to live at all_!
"So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ... let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have begun...." Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and her face was pale and rigid.
"No, I will _not_ go on!" she thought. "I will _not_ betray him! I will _save_ him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I love him! I love him!" _