David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a
sign to the man to take a chair that stood near.
"Your name is Charles Minghelli?" said David Rossi.
"Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise."
"What is it?"
"That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own
hands."
The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence
David Rossi replied as calmly:
"I will ask you to explain what you mean."
The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will
permit me to speak plainly?"
"Certainly."
"Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name
to it. It is beautiful as a theory--most beautiful! And the Republic of
Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!"
"Well?"
"But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that
runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to
tug at it."
"I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi.
"With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest
against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your
principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and
without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then
where are you?"
David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines
with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on
the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with
more vigour.
"If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where
are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men
marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the
other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or
paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to
overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of
the world!"
David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and
forward with a step that was long and slow.
"Well, and what do _you_ say we ought to do?" he said.
A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice:
"Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation."
"The Prime Minister?"
"Yes."
There was silence.
"You expect me to do that?"
"No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right
to resist violence."
David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of
introduction, and said:
"That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?"
"Yes."
"Why do you come to me?" he said.
"Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of
Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the
way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the
moment when he is to be found alone."
"I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death."
"A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight."
"I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people."
"On the day he dies, sir, the people will live."
"Or that crimes--great crimes--have been the means of bringing about
great reforms."
"You are right, sir--but it would be no crime."
The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned
over to the desk and took up the dagger.
"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet
of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the
word--may I take it?"
"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know
himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."
The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.
"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done--to
know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the
things; the actors, not the parts."
The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open,
and balancing the dagger on one hand.
"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by
every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy
of liberty--that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight
otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."
The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
"I knew you talked like that to the people--statesmen do
sometimes--that's all right--it's pretty, and it keeps the people
quiet--but _we_...."
David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:
"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."
"So you dismiss me?"
"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the
progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of
authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the
destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as
one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal
quarrel against an enemy."
The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime
Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his
mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who
is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna
at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and
has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a
liar and a cheat?"
David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing
that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."
David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy
in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police
authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in
Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy--she had been
living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had
turned out badly and run away."
David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy
stare.
"I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the
magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we
didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month
later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared
entirely."
David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into
his shoulders.
"I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I
saw her?"
David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:
"Where?"
"In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the
Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and
one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her
I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was
lost in the streets of London."
David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.
"You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.
The man staggered back and stammered:
"Why ... what...."
"I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant
companion--she was the same as my sister--and her father was the same as
my father--and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous
wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one
word, but I won't. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my
path again I'll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an
assassin."
Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled.
V
David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and
tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire.
"What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street," said
Bruno.
"A man whose room was better than his company, that's all."
"What's his name?" said Bruno.
"Charles Minghelli."
"Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the
Embassy in London, and got dismissed."
"I thought as much!" said David Rossi. "No doubt the man attributed his
dismissal to the Prime Minister, and wanted to use me for his private
revenge."
"That was his game, was it? Why didn't you let me know, sir? He would
have gone downstairs like a falling star. Now that I remember, he's the
nephew of old Polomba, the Mayor, and I've seen him at Donna Roma's."
A waiter in a white smock, with a large tin box on his head, entered the
hall, and behind him came the old woman from the porter's lodge, with
the wrinkled face and the red cotton handkerchief.
"Come in," cried Bruno. "I ordered the best dinner in the Trattoria,
sir, and thought we might perhaps dine together for once."
"Good," said David Rossi.
"Here it is, a whole basketful of the grace of God, sir! Out with it,
Riccardo," and while the women laid the table, Bruno took the dishes
smoking hot from their temporary oven with its charcoal fire.
"Artichokes--good. Chicken--good again. I must be a fox--I was dreaming
of chicken all last night! _Gnocchi!_ (potatoes and flour baked).
_Agradolce!_ (sour and sweet). _Fagioletti!_ (French beans boiled)
and--a half-flask of Chianti! Who said the son of my mother couldn't
order a dinner? All right, Riccardo; come back at Ave Maria."
The waiter went off, and the company sat down to their meal, Bruno and
his wife at either end of the table, and David Rossi on the sofa, with
the boy on his right, and the cat curled up into his side on the left,
while the old woman stood in front, serving the food and removing the
plates.
"Look at him!" said the old woman, who was deaf, pointing to David
Rossi, with his two neighbours. "Now, why doesn't the Blessed Virgin
give him a child of his own?"
"She has, mother, and here he is," said David Rossi.
"You'll let her give him a woman first, won't you?" said Bruno.
"Ah! that will never be," said David Rossi.
"What does he say?" said the old woman with her hand at her ear like a
shell.
"He says he won't have any of you," bawled Bruno.
"What an idea! But I've heard men say that before, and they've been
married sooner than you could say 'Hail Mary.'"
"It isn't an incident altogether unknown in the history of this planet,
is it, mother?" said Bruno.
"A heart to share your sorrows and joys is something, and the man is not
wise who wastes the chance of it," said the old woman. "Does he think
parliaments will make up for it when he grows old and wants something to
comfort him?"
"Hush, mother!" said Elena, but Bruno made mouths at her to let the old
woman go on.
"As for me, I'll want somebody of my own about me to close my eyes when
the time comes to put the sacred oil on them," said the old woman.
"If a man has dedicated his life to work for humanity," said David
Rossi, "he must give up many things--father, mother, wife, child."
The corner of Elena's apron crept up to the corner of her eye, but the
old woman, who thought the subject had changed, laughed and said:
"That's just what I say to Tommaso. 'Tommaso,' I say, 'if a man is going
to be a policeman he must have no father, or mother, or wife, or
child--no, nor bowels neither,' I say. And Tommaso says, 'Francesca,' he
says, 'the whole tribe of gentry they call statesmen are just policemen
in plain clothes, and I do believe they've only liberated Mr. Rossi as a
trap to catch him again when he has done something.'"
"They won't catch _you_ though, will they, mother?" shouted Bruno.
"That they won't! I'm deaf, praise the saints, and can't hear them."
A knock came to the door, and seizing his mace the boy ran and opened
it. An old man stood on the threshold. He was one of David Rossi's
pensioners. Ninety years of age, his children all dead, he lived with
his grandchildren, and was one of the poor human rats who stay indoors
all day and come out with a lantern at night to scour the gutters of the
city for the refuse of cigar-ends.
"Come another night, John," said Bruno.
But David Rossi would not send him away empty, and he was going off with
the sparkling eyes of a boy, when he said:
"I heard you in the piazza this morning, Excellency! Grand! Only sorry
for one thing."
"And what was that, sonny?" asked Bruno.
"What his Excellency said about Donna Roma. She gave me a half-franc
only yesterday--stopped the carriage to do it, sir."
"So that's your only reason...." began Bruno.
"Good reason, too. Good-night, John!" said David Rossi, and Joseph
closed the door.
"Oh, she has her virtues, like every other kind of spider," said Bruno.
"I'm sorry I spoke of her," said David Rossi.
"You needn't be, though. She deserved all she got. I haven't been two
years in her studio without knowing what she is."
"It was the man I was thinking of, and if I had remembered that the
woman must suffer...."
"Tut! She'll have to make her Easter confession a little earlier, that's
all."
"If she hadn't laughed when I was speaking...."
"You're on the wrong track now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the
little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and
screeching like an old gandery goose."
Dinner was now over, and the boy called for the phonograph. David Rossi
went into the sitting-room to fetch it, and Elena went in at the same
time to light the fire. She was kneeling with her back to him, blowing
on to the wood, when she said in a trembling voice:
"I'm a little sorry myself, sir, if I may say so. I can't believe what
they say about the mistress, but even if it's true we don't know _her_
story, do we?"
Then the phonograph was turned on, and Joseph marched to the tune of
"Swannee River" and the strains of Sousa's band.
"Mr. Rossi," said Bruno, between a puff and a blow.
"Yes?"
"Have you tried the cylinder that came first?"
"Not yet."
"How's that, sir?"
"The man who brought it said the friend who had spoken into it was
dead." And then with a shiver, "It would be like a voice from the
grave--I doubt if I dare hear it."
"Like a ghost speaking to a man, certainly--especially if the friend was
a close one."
"He was the closest friend I ever had, Bruno--he was my father."
"Father?"
"Foster-father, anyway. For four years he clothed and fed and educated
me, and I was the same as his own son."
"Had he no children of his own?"
"One little daughter, no bigger than Joseph when I saw her last--Roma."
"Roma?"
"Yes, her father was a Liberal, and her name was Roma."
"What became of her?"
"When the doctor came to Italy on the errand which ended in his
imprisonment he gave her into the keeping of some Italian friends in
London. I was too young to take charge of her then. Besides, I left
England shortly afterward and went to America."
"Where is she now?" said Elena.
"When I returned to England ... she was dead."
"Well, there's nothing new under the sun of Rome--Donna Roma came from
London," said Bruno.
David Rossi felt the muscles of his face quiver.
"Her father was an exile in England, too, and when he came back on the
errand that ended in Elba, he gave her away to some people who treated
her badly--I've heard old Teapot, the Countess, say so when she's been
nagging her poor niece."
David Rossi breathed painfully.
"Strange if it should be the same," said Bruno.
"But Mr. Rossi's Roma is dead," said Elena.
"Ah, of course, certainly! What a fool I am!" said Bruno.
David Rossi had a sense of suffocation, and he went out on to the lead
flat.