The Eternal City. Sir Hall Caine
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of one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask in return.
"It's rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to organise a system of secret police—and quite right, too. You remember my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma will only say a word for him. … Thanks! … What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome."
The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her aristocratic customers.
"Trust I am not de trop! I knew you wouldn't mind my calling in the morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn't true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved! … By the way, my dear, don't trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but … I'm giving a little reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend … you'll mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!"
"Count Mario," announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came tripping into the room. He was Roma's landlord and the Italian Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
"So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too, but I do hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!"
Then stepping to the window, "What a lovely view! The finest in Rome, and that's the finest in Europe! I'm always saying if it wasn't Donna Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here myself. … That reminds me of something. I'm … well, I'm tired of Petersburg, and I've written to the Minister asking to be transferred to Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me. … How sweet of you! Adieu!"
Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her aunt called to her from within.
The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its ribbon.
"Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!" she said in a withering whimper. "I thought you might have looked in last night, and I lay awake until after midnight."
"I had a headache and went to bed," said Roma.
"I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me," said the old lady, and Roma went over to the window.
"I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite that man in spite of all my protests?"
"He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time."
"Just so! It's no use speaking. I don't know what girls are coming to. When I was young a man like that wouldn't have been allowed to cross the threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime Minister."
"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I want to ask you a question."
"Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where's Natalina?"
"Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left home and became an exile?"
"Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina, give me my smelling salts. And why haven't you brought the cushion for the cat?"
"Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it right. … "
"Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?"
"I thought they went to the Baron, auntie."
"Roma, aren't you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too, in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience. He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to the mercy of others—and all for what?"
"For country, I suppose."
"For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why will you always forget to. … "
Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed her down to the studio.
Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face.
She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was Judas.
Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter.
"My dear Baron—Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great comfort in this household if only he can keep the peace with Monsignor Bruno, and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter's Lodge. Senator Tom-tit has been here to suggest some astonishing arrangement about my fountain, and to ask me to mention his nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and proper person to be chief of your new department of secret police. Madame de Trop and Count Signorina have also been, but of their modest messages more anon.
"As for D. R., my barometer is 'set fair,' but it is likely to be a stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my best bib and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down to his apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had gone to find out all about him, I hadn't been ten minutes in his company before he told all about me—about my father, at all events, and his life in London. I believe he knew me in that connection and expected to appeal to my filial feelings. Did too, so strong is the force of nature, and then and thereafter, and all night long, I was like somebody who had been shaken in an earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was not until I remembered what my father had been—or rather hadn't—and that he was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from the shock of D. R.'s dynamite.
"He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this morning!—Affectionately,
Roma.
"P.S.—My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a woman and has never been in love in his life, he has an astonishing way of getting at one. But I could laugh to think how little execution his fusillade will make in this direction."
"Honourable Rossi!" said Felice's sepulchral voice behind her, and at that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio.
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