Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice
and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The
little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as
an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table,
her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with
various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two
o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were
drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned
like stars.
The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the
house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the
perfumed couch.
Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English
Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her.
"It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another
woman."
"Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that
she had.
Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of
joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face.
"All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I
have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to
God."
Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a
high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner.
"You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner,
but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am
sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate
your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your
soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain."
But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her
worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral.
"Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little,
certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for
the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me
on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church
floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the
best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo."
Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart
felt sore.
Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured
body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more
and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular
face was snapping all round.
The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset,
but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A
band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with
the petitions of the "breathing forth."
Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was
on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.
The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it
fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesù,
Gesù, Gesù!"
The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and
the priest was praying fast and loud:
"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into
the bosom of Abraham."
At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her
diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the
counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her
head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in
her chest. At last she became delirious.
"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill
it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.
The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to
his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the
soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may
live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life
she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe
out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."
The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped.
A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted,
and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the
room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an
end.
Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.
The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down
behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.
"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last.
How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the
deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor,
unhappy fellow-sinner.
"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was
pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death
made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy
in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets
off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self
forgiven!...
"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for
you next time, great and serious news."