Roma had taken refuge in the council-room. There had been much business
that morning, and a copy of the constitutional statute lay open on a
large table, which had a plate-glass top with photographs under the
surface.
In this passionless atmosphere, so little accustomed to such scenes,
Roma sat in her wounded pride and humiliation, with her head down, and
her beautiful white hands over her face.
She heard measured footsteps approaching, and then a hand touched her on
the shoulder. She looked up and drew back as if the touch stung her. Her
lips closed sternly, and she got up and began to walk about the room,
and then she burst into a torrent of anger.
"Did you hear them? The cats! How they loved to claw me, and still purr
and purr! Before the sun is set the story will be all over Rome! It has
run off already on the hoofs of that woman's English horses. To-morrow
morning it will be in every newspaper in the kingdom. Olga and Lena and
every woman of them all who lives in a glass house will throw stones.
'The new Pompadour! Who is she?' Oh, I could die of vexation and shame!"
The Baron leaned against the table and listened, twisting the ends of
his moustache.
"The Court will turn its back on me now. They only wanted a good excuse
to put their humiliations upon me. It's horrible! I can't bear it. I
won't. I tell you, I won't!"
But the lips, compressed with scorn, began to quiver visibly, and she
threw herself into a chair, took out her handkerchief, and hid her face
on the table.
At that moment Felice came into the room to say that the Commendatore
Angelelli had returned and wished to speak with his Excellency.
"I will see him presently," said the Baron, with an impassive
expression, and Felice went out silently, as one who had seen nothing.
The Baron's calm dignity was wounded. "Be so good as to have some regard
for me in the presence of my servants," he said. "I understand your
feelings, but you are much too excited to see things in their proper
light. You have been publicly insulted and degraded, but you must not
talk to me as if it were my fault."
"Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she
said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an
expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no
reply, and his silence broke her answer.
"No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and
he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held
it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her
head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand.
"I suppose it is all over," she said.
"Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring
forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander
and justify you in the eyes of all."
At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to look beyond the
Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the
table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and
revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of
the Baron's castle in the Alban hills.
"Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno."
"I will discharge him this very day--I will! I will! I will!"
There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had
said must have come of what her own servant told him--that Bruno had
watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the
two men had discussed her between them.
"I could kill him," she said.
"Bruno Rocco?"
"No, David Rossi."
"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.
"How?"
"He shall be put on his trial."
"What for?"
"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime
Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow
has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."
"What good will that do?"
"He will be silenced--and crushed."
She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her
heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.
"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning
him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly
enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater
in his prison than the King on his throne."
The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again.
"Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on
trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public
will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was
punished for telling the truth."
The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache.
"Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a double injury. The
insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate
for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will
quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed
until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of
it."
The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale,
behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of
vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring.
"I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!"
"Well?"
"Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this
humiliating situation."
"Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already.
"If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no
good to the King."
"It's true."
"Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and
the King some service."
"No doubt."
"You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who
he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from
Rome."
"I would certainly give a good deal to know."
"You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his
fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he
belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether
he is in league with the Vatican."
She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips.
"Well?"
"Well, I will find it all out for you."
"My dear Roma!"
"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"--she laughed, a
little ashamed--"the inmost secrets of his soul."
She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into
her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy
sky.
The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms--to
draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he
has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do
nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He
should appear to regard them with contempt."
He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire.
The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the
only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm
of jealousy.
"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are
irresistible! But remember--the man is one of the incorruptible."
She laughed.
"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it
is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."
"I've seen him," she said.
"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."
She tossed her head and laughed again.
The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can
forgive."
"And what about Bruno?" he said.
"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."
"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"
"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has
turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of
his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'--he
shall fall."
The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes
catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of
vinegar. We shall see."
A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable
Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.
"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the
table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied
that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."
"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the
forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."
"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that
the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."
"Excellency!"
"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him
safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."
The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore
Angelelli backed out of the room.
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