This last great novel of Hall Caine’s is not a picture of Life; it is Life. His characters are more real than those with whom we meet and talk to every day of our lives; for not only do we hear them speak, but we see into the thoughts of their hearts, and sometimes catch a glimpse of their very souls. It may be urged that real men and women are not so passionately pure and self-sacrificing as David Rossi and Roma, but they who speak thus forget that the world has produced as many saints, martyrs and heroes, as blackguards and criminals. David Rossi is a hero for the sake of his country, for the sake of the poor and oppressed; Roma, purified, ennobled, and uplifted by[201] Love, is a martyr for the sake of her betrothed. They are as passionate as Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca; and as pure as Dante and Beatrice.

The mise-en-scène of the story is, of course, Rome—Rome with its grandeur side by side with its misery; its ambitious men and fallen women; its Vatican, its theatres, its ruins and its shame. The time is the first months of the present century. The City is made to live; we breathe its air and walk its streets. David Rossi is a member of the Chamber of Deputies, a friend of the people, a conspirator, a hero; all his actions are for the material and spiritual elevation of the down-trodden and oppressed, and this book is the story of the martyrdom he has to undergo, and of his eventual success. This is his charter, a framed manuscript copy of which he keeps hanging by his bedside:—

“From what am I called?

From the love of riches, from the love of[202] honour, from the love of home, and from the love of woman.

To what am I called?

To poverty, to purity, to obedience, to the worship of God, and to the service of humanity.

Why am I called?

Because it has pleased the Almighty to make me friendless, homeless, a wanderer, an exile, without father or mother, sister or brother, kith or kin.

Hoping my heart deceives me not, with fear and trembling I sign my unworthy name.

D. L.—London.”

Roma is the ward of Count Bonelli, the young King’s Prime Minister; she is a beautiful, high-spirited, noble-hearted woman, who has little or no memory of either father or mother. She lives a life of extravagant luxury—happy, thoughtless and[203] frivolous, but always kind and generous. Still, her soul is asleep; she has never realised that Life is a serious matter, not to be trifled with or neglected. But when she meets David Rossi all is changed. She has called at his rooms with the idea of laying him in the dust. Ignorantly, and in the heat of the moment, he has publicly defamed her character, and she is intent on revenge.

“If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman I can only come to you and tell you that you are wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong.”

“You mean to tell me…”

He was stammering in a husky voice, but she said quite calmly:

“I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was false.”

There was a dry glitter of hatred and repulsion in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she knew that he was looking at her still.

“If … if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said—what I implied—was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it is all a cruel and baseless calumny…”

She raised her head, looked him full in the face, and without a quiver in her voice:

[204]

“I do give it,” she said.

“Then I believe you,” he answered. “With all my heart and soul I believe you…”

“This man is a child,” she thought. “He will believe anything I tell him.”

Soon, however, she has to acknowledge that no matter how childlike he may be, he is never for one moment childish; he gives her proof of his strength, his devotion, his manly purity.

“I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are not the man I thought you were.”

“Nor you,” he said, “the woman I pictured you.”

A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said:

“Then you had never seen me before?”

And he answered after a moment:

“I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day.”

“Forgive me for coming to you,” she said.

“I thank you for doing so,” he replied, “and if I have sinned against you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to right the wrong I have done you. I am ready to do it if I can, no matter at what self-abasement. I am eager to do it, and I shall never forgive myself until it is done. What I said was the result of a mistake—let me ask your forgiveness.”

“You mean publicly.”

“Yes! At ten o’clock they send for my article for the morning’s paper. To-morrow morning I will beg your pardon in public for the public insult I have offered you.”

[205]

“You are very good, very brave,” she said; “but no, I will not ask you to do that.”

“Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better can I do—tell me, tell me.”

Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy.

“There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult.”

“No matter! Tell me what it is.”

“I thought when I came here … but it is no matter.”

“Tell me, I beg of you.”

He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.

“I thought if—if you would come to my house when my friends are there, your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything. But …”

She waited for his answer with a beating heart, but at first he did not speak, and pretending to put away the idea, she said:

“But that is impossible: I cannot ask it. I know what it would mean. Such people are pitiless—they have no mercy.”

“Is that all?” he said.

“Then you are not afraid?”

“Afraid!”

For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining. She was proud of his power. This was no child after all, but a man; one who, for a woman’s sake, could stand up against all the world.

[206]

“I have thought of something else,” she said.

“What is it?”

“You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the municipality, and if I might carve your face into it…”

“It would be coals of fire on my head.”

“You would need to sit to me.”

“When shall it be?”

“To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon.”

“It will be years on years till then,” he said.

Her idea of revenge is entirely gone; she is at his feet, loving him, and aching to be loved in return. But he remembers his work: he must not allow worldly matters to interfere with its progress. So he will not see Roma again. Love is not for him; would that it were! And then follows a series of delightful letters: on his part serious, kind, and imbued with a high sense of duty; on her part, humorous, light, wistful, and sometimes sad. He tells her that he is in love, the object of his affections being a lady of beauty, wealth and virtue. The lady is herself, but the language is veiled, and at first she hardly guesses his meaning.

[207]

“My Dear, Dear Friend,—It’s all up! I’m done with her! My unknown and invisible sister that is to be, or rather that 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.’”

Eventually their love is confessed, and Baron Bonelli learns the truth. He sets to work immediately to compass the ruin or[208] death of Rossi, and jealousy lives in his heart every minute of the day, and all the night through. It is true he is married, but his wife is a maniac, and he expects to hear of her death at any time. It becomes necessary for Rossi to leave Rome: he is surrounded by a host of enemies ready at any moment to clap him into prison. So he says “Good-bye” to Roma, but before he leaves they are “religiously” married—that is to say, they take part in a ceremony recognised by the Church as a substitute for the marriage service proper, but which the State refuses to acknowledge. But they are man and wife for all that, and the thought sustains them through all the trouble they have to undergo. The moment the ceremony is over he leaves her, and she is alone to face the cunning and duplicity of Baron Bonelli.

“That you should change your plans so entirely, and setting out a month ago to … to … shall I say betray … this man Rossi, you are now striving to save him, is a problem which admits of only one explanation, and that is that … that you …”

“That I love him—yes, that’s the truth,” said Roma[209] boldly, but flushing up to the eyes and trembling with fear.

There was a death-like pause in the duel. Both dropped their heads, and the silent face in the bust seemed to be looking down on them. Then the Baron’s icy cheeks quivered visibly, and he said in a low, hoarse voice:

“I’m sorry! Very sorry! For in that case I may be compelled to justify your conclusion that a Minister has no humanity and no pity. It may even be necessary to play the part of the husband in the cruel story of the lover’s heart. If David Rossi cannot be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament, he must be arrested when Parliament is not in session, and then his identity will have to be established in a public tribunal. In that event you will be forced to appear, and having refused to make a private statement in the secrecy of a magistrate’s office, you will be compelled to testify in the Court of Assize.”

“Ah, but you can’t make me do that!” cried Roma excitedly, as if seized by a sudden thought.

“Why not?”

“Never mind why not. That’s my secret. You can’t do it, I tell you,” she cried excitedly.

He looked at her as if trying to penetrate her meaning, and then said:

“We shall see.”

And, indeed, Roma is not so secure as she imagines. She is relying on the fact that, according to the law of nearly every civilised nation, a wife is not permitted to[210] give evidence against her husband. The Baron is ignorant that Rossi and she are man and wife. But alas! she is not Rossi’s wife, not even according to the rules of the Church. She has not been baptised, and an unbaptised woman cannot be a daughter of the Church, and a woman who is not a daughter of the Church cannot claim the Church’s privileges.

Meanwhile Rossi is in London, Paris, Berlin, Geneva, addressing meetings, and organising a tremendous demonstration which is to take place in Rome. But his letters are necessarily vague—mere hints of what is about to come to pass; and gradually the thought grows in Roma’s mind that the secret work upon which he is engaged in is nothing more or less than a conspiracy to take the King’s life. Terror seizes hold on her and she knows not what to do. And all the time she is pursued by a terrible remorse: she has never told Rossi of the one dark stain on her life. She has never told him that, against her will, Baron Bonelli seduced her, and that she still remained his[211] friend. That brief, terrible hour has tormented her soul with the torments of hell. Ought she to tell the man she thinks is her husband? She cannot answer this question, so she confesses, and the priest refers her to the Pope himself. And then in an extraordinarily vivid and beautiful scene the Pope urges her to confess everything to Rossi; but this she has already done. However, her husband has not replied. The letters she has written have miscarried, but she imagines that her confession has killed his love, or roused his anger. The plot is too intricate and delicately handled at this point to be related in detail without great risk of damaging its interest............