Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her
immediately.
"I must have a doctor," she said. "It's perfectly heartless to keep me
without one all this time."
"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "you know quite well that but for your own
express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along."
"For mercy's sake, don't nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it
be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now."
Fedi was the Pope's physician, and therefore the most costly and
fashionable doctor in Rome.
Dr. Fedi came with an assistant who carried a little case of
instruments. He examined the Countess, her breast, her side, and the
glands under her arms, shot out a solemn under-lip, put two fingers
inside his collar, twisted his head from side to side, and announced
that the patient must have a nurse immediately.
"Do you hear that, Roma? Doctor says that I must have a nurse. Of course
I must have a nurse. I'll have one of the English nursing Sisters.
Everybody has them now. They're foreigners, and if they talk they can't
do much mischief."
The Sister was sent for. She was a mild and gentle creature, in blue and
white, but she talked perpetually of her Mother Superior, who had been
bedridden for fifteen years, yet smiled sweetly all day long. That
exasperated the Countess and fretted her. When the doctor came again the
patient was worse.
"Your aunt must have dainties to tempt her appetite and so keep up her
strength."
"Do you hear, Roma?"
"You shall have everything you wish for, auntie."
"Well, I wish for strawberries. Everybody eats them who is ill at this
season."
The strawberries were bought, but the Countess scarcely touched them,
and they were finally consumed in the kitchen.
When the doctor came a third time the patient was much emaciated and her
skin had become sallow and earthy.
"It would not be right to conceal from you the gravity of your
condition, Countess," he said. "In such a case we always think it best
to tell a patient to make her peace with God."
"Oh, don't say that, doctor," whimpered the poor withered creature on
the bed.
"But while there's life there's hope, you know; and meantime I'll send
you an opiate to relieve the pain."
When the doctor was gone, the Countess sent for Roma.
"That Fedi is a fool," she said. "I don't know what people see in him. I
should like to try the Bambino of Ara C[oe]li. The Cardinal Vicar had
it, and why shouldn't I? They say it has worked miracles. It may be
dear, but if I die you will always reproach yourself. If you are short
of money you can sign a bill at six months, and before that the poor
maniac woman will be gone and you'll be the wife of the Baron."
"If you really think the Bambino will...."
"It will! I know it will."
"Very well, I will send for it."
Roma sent a letter to the Superior of the Franciscans at the Friary of
Ara C[oe]li asking that the little figure of the infant Christ, which is
said to restore the sick, should be sent to her aunt, who was near to
death.
At the same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli,
requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little
beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to see
everything except Roma herself.
"I wish to sell up my furniture," said Roma.
"All of it?"
"Except what is in my aunt's room and the room of her nurse, and such
things in the kitchen, the servants' apartments, and my own bedroom as
are absolutely necessary for present purposes."
"Quite right. When?"
"Within a week if possible."
The Bambino came in a carriage with two horses, and the people in the
street went down on their knees as it passed. One of the friars in
priest's surplice carried it in a box with the lid open, and two friars
in brown habits walked before it with lifted candles. But as the painted
image in its scarlet clothes and jewels entered the Countess's bedroom
with its grim and ghostly procession, and was borne like a baby mummy to
the foot of her bed, it terrified her, and she screamed.
"Take it away!" she shrieked. "Do you want to frighten me out of my
life? Take it away!"
The grim and ghostly procession went out. Its visit had lasted thirty
seconds and cost a hundred francs.
When the doctor came again the outline of the Countess's writhing form
had shrunk to the lines of a skeleton under the ruffled counterpane.
"It's not the Bambino you want--it's the priest," he said, and then the
poor mortal who was still afraid of dying began to whimper.
"And, Sister," said the doctor, "as the Countess suffers so much pain,
you may increase the opiate from a dessert-spoonful to a tablespoonful,
and give it twice as frequently."
That evening the Sister went home for a few hours' leave, and Roma took
her place by the sick-bed. The patient was more selfish and exacting
than ever, but Roma had begun to feel a softening towards the poor
tortured being, and was trying her best to do her duty.
It was dusk, and the Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the
increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma
brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's
foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's
toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by
the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she
began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with
death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then
the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils
were pencilled with the rosy hues of health and youth.
Roma had turned on the electric light, but the glare oppressed the
patient, and she switched it off again. The night had now closed in, and
the only light in the room came from the little red oil-lamp which
burned before the shrine.
The drug began to operate, and its first effect was to loosen the old
lady's tongue. She began to talk of priests in a tone of contempt and
braggadocio.
"I hate priests," she said, "and I can't bear to have them about me. Why
so? Because they are always about the dead. Their black cassocks make me
think of funerals. The sight of a graveyard makes me faint. Besides,
priests and confessions go together, and why should a woman confess if
she can avoid it? When people confess they have to give up the thing
they confess to, or they can't get absolution. Fedi's a fool. Give it up
indeed! I might as well talk of giving up the bed that's under me."
Roma sat on a stool by the bedside, listening intently, yet feeling she
had no right to listen. The drug was rapidly intoxicating the Countess,
who went on to talk as if some one else had been in the room.
"A priest would be sure to ask questions about that girl. I would have
to tell him why the Baron put me here to look after her, and then he
would prate about the Sacraments and want me to give up everything."
The Countess laughed a hard, evil laugh, and Roma felt an icy shudder
pass over her.
"'I'm tied,' said the Baron. 'But you must see that she waits for me.
Everything depends upon you, and if all comes out well....'"
The old woman's tongue was thickening, and her eyes in the dull red
light were glazed and stupid.
Roma sat motionless and silent, watching with her own dilated eyes the
grinning sinner, as she poured out the story of the plot for her capture
and corruption. At that moment she hated her aunt, the unclean,
malignant, unpitying thing who had poisoned her heart against her father
and tried to break down every spiritual impulse of her soul.
The diabolical horse-laughter came again, and then the devil who had
loosened the tongue of the dying woman in the intoxication of the drug
made her reveal the worst secret of her tortured conscience.
"Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about
the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband
was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror."
The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow
with a roaring in her ears.
"It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the
Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me."
The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible.
The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues,
her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the
innocence of sleep.
Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with
sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly
rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her
to the depths of abasement.
The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now
different.
"Roma! Is that you?"
"Yes, aunt."
"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You
know that quite well."
Roma turned on the lights.
"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"
Roma tried to prevaricate.
"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug
to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was
all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a
lie, I tell you...."
The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did
not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing
so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table
by her bed.
Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one,
some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother,
and her tears had begun to fall.
It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the
prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of
death--Amen!"
When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying
and was comforted.