The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma.
"MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,--It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown
and invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and
oughtn't to be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell
me that she is good and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would
have me believe that she loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and
that she could not give them up even for the sweetest thing that
ever comes into a woman's life. Out on her! What does she think a
wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be dressed up and danced
on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is, I know what I
should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and the point
of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have it
out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any
more about the bravery of a woman like that.
"The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what
that means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless
lengths of friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between
him and her, and differences of class do not exist for either of
them. Her pride died the instant love looked out of her eyes at
him, and if people taunt her with his poverty, or his birth, she
answers and says: 'It's true he is poor, but his glory is, that he
was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or mother to care for him,
and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him, and not all the
wealth of the world shall take me away.'
"One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be,
and that is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that
she is going to reconcile herself to your separation while she is
kept in the dark as to the cause of it. It is all very well for
you to pay compliments to her beauty and youth and the natural
strength of her mind to remove passing impressions, but perhaps
the impressions are the reverse of passing ones, and if you go out
of her life, what is to become of her? Have you thought of that?
Of course you haven't.
"No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In
my darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am
she and she is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't
for nothing I was a daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for
her and beaten you out and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go
to her?' You will--I know you will.
"My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine,
but I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul
was not there, and I was injuring the face at every touch.
"No further news of M----, and my heart's blood is cold at the
silence. But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?--Your
friend's friend, R."
X
Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma.
"My Dearest,--Bruno will take this letter, and I will charge him
on his soul to deliver it safely into your hands. When you have
read it, you will destroy it immediately, both for your sake and
my own.
"From this moment onward I throw away all disguises. The
duplicities of love are sweet and touching, but I cannot play
hide-and-seek with you any longer.
"You are right--it is you that I love, and little as I understand
and deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and
strength. I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is
madness to do so, for the obstacles to our union are just as
insurmountable as before.
"It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that
separates us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only
the inequality of our birth and social conditions, though that is
an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a
barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death.
"Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by
disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even
while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and
most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of
life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for
him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every
embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss
the chill breath of the tomb.
"Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her
miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of
God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things
well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable,
without hope or dreams.
"Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here
first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt
at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported
without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them
in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of
the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death.
"I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's
name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws
of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have
never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me
still, and though the court which condemned me was a military
court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I
see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in
five, ten, twenty years in a cell.
"What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor
consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late,
conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging
myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel,
it would be wrong and wicked.
"No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or
liberty is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament
and in public life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter
that you have written to me shows plainly that you know it. And
when you say your heart's blood runs cold at the thought of what
may happen when Minghelli returns from England, you betray the
weakness, the natural weakness, the tender and womanly weakness,
which justifies me in saying that, as long as we love each other,
you and I should never meet again.
"Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that
hangs over me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In
every true cause some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the
right, for humanity, to lay down all you hold most dear for the
sake of the poor and the weak and the down-trodden and God's holy
justice--it is a magnificent duty, a privilege! And I am ready. If
my death is enough, let me give the last drop of my blood, and be
dragged through the last degrees of infamy. Only don't let me drag
another after me, and endanger a life that is a thousand times
dearer to me than my own.
"I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is
certain; it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be
there; _it may come to me to-morrow_, or next day, or next year,
but it is coming, I feel it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly
away. But if I go on until my beloved is my bride, and my name is
stamped all over her, and she has taken up my fate, and we are
one, and the world knows no difference, what then? Then death with
its sure step will come in to separate us, and after death for me,
danger, shame, poverty for you, all the penalties a woman pays for
her devotion to a man who is down and done.
"I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It
would turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the
grave itself.
"Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting
myself with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams
like other men--dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man
for his support--the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm
and tempest, and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman
is equal to a lot like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all
women safe from it!
"Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on
reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied
at last that the obstacles to our union are permanent and
insuperable. The time is come when I am forced to tell you the
secrets which I have never before revealed to any human soul. You
know them now. _They are in your keeping, and it is enough._
"Heaven be over you! And when you are reconciled to our
separation, and both of us are strong, remember that if you want
me I will come, and that as long as I live, as long as I am at
liberty, I shall be always ready, always waiting, always near. God
bless you, my dear one! Adieu!
"DAVID LEONE."
During the afternoon of the following day a letter came by a flying
messenger on a bicycle. It was written in pencil in large and straggling
characters.
"DEAR MR. ROSSI,--Your letter has arrived and been read, and, yes,
it has been destroyed, too, according to your wish, although the
flames that burnt it burnt my hand also, and scorched my heart as
well.
"No doubt you have done wisely. You know better than I do what is
best for both of us, and I yield, I submit. Only--and therefore--I
must see you immediately. There is a matter of some consequence on
which I wish to speak. It has nothing to do with the subject of
your letter--nothing directly, at all events--or yet is it in any
way related to the Minghelli mischief-making. So you may receive
me without fear. And you will find me with a heart at ease.
"Didn't I tell you that if you wouldn't come to me I must go to
you? Expect me this evening about Ave Maria, and arrange it that I
may see you alone.
"ROMA V."