At ten o'clock on Saturday night the screamers in the Piazza Navona were
crying the arrest of Rossi. The telegrams from the frontier gave an ugly
account of his capture. He was in disguise, and he made an effort to
deny himself, but thanks to the astuteness of the Carabineer charged
with the warrant the device was defeated, and he was now lodged in the
prison at Milan, where it was probable that he would remain some days.
Roma's feelings took a new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the
degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an
intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and
triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past
months and saw that the Baron was responsible for everything. He had
intimidated her. His intimidation had worked upon her conscience and
driven her to the confessional. The confessional had taken her to the
Pope, and the Pope in love and loyalty and fatal good faith had led her
to denounce her husband. It was a chain of damning circumstances, helped
out by the demon of chance, but the first link had been forged by the
Baron, and he was to blame for all.
On Monday morning bands of music began to promenade the streets. Before
breakfast the rejoicings of the day had begun. Towards mid-day drunken
fellows in the piazza were embracing and crying, "Long live the King,"
and then "Long live the Baron Bonelli."
Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing?
There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It
was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of
clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had
prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen,
smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And
meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse
than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted.
Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the _Sunrise_, and it
contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on
Saturday--there were three lines for that incident. The King had made
him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata--there was half a column on the
new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held
at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President
of the Council would be nominated Dictator.
In another column of the _Sunrise_ she found an interview with the
Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who
conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the
Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King
would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date,
and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public
to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be
encouraged.
When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in
a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make
the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the
blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There
was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a
thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore
one course only was left--to send him to the bar of God!
When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the
moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive
justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress
of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them.
One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She
revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the
Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but
she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her
high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone
late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal.
Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the
shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as
the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light--and do
it.
In the drawer of a bureau she had found a revolver which Rossi had left
with her on the night he went away. His name had been inscribed on it by
the persons who sent it as a present, but Roma gave no thought to that.
Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely
indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she
would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of
justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her
only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to
the supreme tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the
responsibility of fixing the moral weight of her motive in the scales of
human justice.
With these sublime feelings she began to examine the revolver. She
remembered that when Rossi had given it to her she had recoiled from the
touch of the deadly weapon, and it had fallen out of her fingers. No
such fear came to her now, as she turned it over in her delicate hands
and tried to understand its mechanism. There were six chambers, and to
know if they were loaded she pulled the trigger. The vibration and the
deafening noise shook but did not frighten her.
The deaf old woman had heard the shot, and she came upstairs panting and
with a pallid face.
"Mercy, Signora! What's happened? The Blessed Virgin save us! A
revolver!"
Roma tried to speak with unconcern. It was Mr. Rossi's revolver. She had
found it in the bureau. It must be loaded--it had gone off.
The words were vague, but the tone quieted the old woman. "Thank the
saints it's nothing worse. But why are you so pale, Signora? What is the
matter with you?"
Roma averted her eyes. "Wouldn't you be pale too if a thing like this
had gone off in your hands?"
By this time the Garibaldian had hobbled up behind his wife, and when
all was explained the old people announced that they were going out to
see the illuminations on the Pincio.
"They begin at eleven o'clock and go on to twelve or one, Signora.
Everybody in the house has gone already, or the shot would have made a
fine sensation."
"Good-night, Tommaso! Good-night, Francesca!"
"Good-night, Signora. We'll have to leave the street door open for the
lodgers coming back, but you'll close your own door and be as safe as
sardines."
The Garibaldian raised his pork-pie hat and left the door ajar. It was
half-past ten and the _piazza_ was very quiet. Roma sat down to write a
letter.
"Dearest," she wrote, "I have read in the newspapers what took
place on the frontier and I am overwhelmed with grief. What can I
say of my own share in it except that I did it for the best? From
my soul and before God, I tell you that if I betrayed you it was
only to save your life. And though my heart is breaking and I
shall never know another happy hour until God gives me release, if
I had to go through it all again I should have to do as I have
done....
"Perhaps your great heart will be able to forgive me some day, but
I shall never forgive myself or the man who compelled me to do
what I have done. Before this letter reaches you in Milan a great
act will be done in Rome. But you must know nothing more about it
until it is done.
"Good-bye, dearest. Try to forgive me as soon as you can. I shall
know it if you do ... where I am going to--eventually ... and it
will be so sweet and beautiful. Your loving, erring, broken-hearted
ROMA."
A noisy group of revellers were passing through the piazza singing a
drinking song. When they were gone a church clock struck eleven. Roma
put on a hat and a veil. Her impatience was now intense. Being ready to
go out she took a last look round the rooms. They brought a throng of
memories--of hopes and visions as well as realities and facts. The
piano, the phonograph, the bust, the bed. It was all over. She knew she
would never come back.
Her heart was throbbing violently, and she was opening the bureau a
second time when her ear caught the sound of a step on the stairs. She
knew the step. It was the Baron's.
She stopped, with an indescribable sense of terror, and gazed at the
door. It stood partly open as the Garibaldian had left it.
Through the door the Baron was about to enter. He was coming up, up,
up--to his death. Some supernatural power was sending him.
She grew dizzy and quaked in every limb. Still the step outside came on.
At length it reached the top, and there was a knock at the door. At
first she could not answer, and the knock was repeated.
Then the free use of her faculties came back to her. There was more of
the Almighty in all this than of her own design. It _was_ to be. God
intended her to kill this guilty man.
"Come in!" she cried.