The Man from Rome

by Max Pemberton

THE MAN FROM ROME.

BY MAX PEMBERTON,

Author of “Christine of the Hills,” “A Puritan's Wife,”
“The Iron Pirate,” &c.

OUR balconies lay as close together as two peas in a pod. I used to tell myself sometimes that it would be the easiest thing in the world to step across the intervening balustrade of marble and to sit at the feet of Bianca. But then—I did not know her, and even in Italy there is a law which sanctifies other people’s balconies.

I did not know Bianca, certainly; she was an utter stranger to me. It is true hat there were days when we sat long, interchanging those fugitive messages which only a great sympathy can compel the eyes to speak. Then I would say as plainly as possible, “You are a pretty child, worthy of this Venice which gave you birth.” She in turn would drop the needles from her hands to answer mutely, “I am perfectly aware of that, but we are strangers.” At other times she would turn her back upon the house of Caldogno where I lodged, and never once the long day through remember that an Englishman had come to the Rio do San Lorenzo. Those were the moments when I decided that Bianca’s hair was red and that her age was twenty.

I had been in Venice a month, sent there by a far-seeing editor in London to describe for him the precise circumstances under which Orso Cicogna, the tool of Crispi, was to be assassinated by the workmen of the Arsenal. The errand was not a little remarkable, insomuch as Orso was still alive and very active in reforming those abuses which Rome declared were spoiling the four thousand five hundred workmen in the ship-building yards. But we knew that such a state of things could not last. Your Italian laborer accepts no mean in politics. If he be in accord with you, he will rend the air with vivas. If he differ from you, there is the stiletto. In this case his difference of opinion with the agent of the Government was so pronounced that it did not require a deep prophetic insight to foretell the result. We were sorry for Orso—that was all. We had his obituary notices ready, so to speak; and I was sent to Venice to round off the corners, being reminded by my editor that time is money.

This is a sentiment which has always seemed to me wrong to the point of exasperation. Time which is money is no time at all. Sitting upon my balcony, with Bianca's dark eyes flashing upon me ever and anon like a welcome search-light from the sea, I found it an absurd conclusion. And, after all, I could not hasten things at the Arsenal. Impossible for me to urge upon the four thousand five hundred malcontents the necessity of despatching their enemy quickly in order that I might finish my article and return to London; futile to assure my chief in answer to his repeated question, What are you doing? that I was sitting at the feet of Bianca. Love's labor lost can be of no possible interest to your news editor—unless it be lost in the Divorce Court.

Bianca used to come out on her balcony at ten o'clock in the morning. I do not care to be forestalled by a woman: and for that reason alone was ever at my own window at a quarter before the hour. A mere observer might have thought our mute courtesies ridiculous. She with her knitting, I with my books and letters—we bowed gravely and took our places, Had Bianca chosen the evening hour for so pleasant an occupation, it is possible that we should have bridged the distance between the balconies more swiftly. As it was, I waited a month for the occasion, owed it at last to the wind: to a life-giving sweet breeze of spring, making little waves lap against the side of the house, casting blossoms from the gardens upon the pure air, above all blowing a paper from the hand of Bianca straight upon my balcony. Admirable wind. We were discussing the world and each other before the minute-hand upon my watch had come around again.

“A hundred thanks, Signore.”

“Por nolta. I thank the breeze, signorina.”

“You are staying long in Venice, Signore?”

“As long as my friends, new and old, remain here, signorina.”

“You love my city?”

“Oh, signorina, can you ask me that—when I am talking to you?”

She blushed deeply, the color showing even under her rich dark skin. In that moment I altered my opinion about Bianca's hair. It was not red, but auburn. And her age could not ha been more than eighteen.

“Love Venice!” I continued presently, seeing that she had no word of answer to my compliment. “Is not that to love all the color of life, to know all the joy of life, to be carried out of the world to the islands of rest? Indeed, I love Venice beyond any city I have seen, and could be very content, Signorina, to live and die here.”

She shook her head doubtingly.

“You think so now,” she said, “but wait a month, a year. The color you speak of will be faded then; the sirocco will blow; you will be like a caged bird that would lift its wings and fly across the waters. I am in Venice always, and I know. My life is all rest, and I hear nothing but the bells and the sound of the waters. I have no mother, Signor.”

She spoke pathetically, looking dreamily away to the old bridge and the green garden beyond. The role of comforter is pleasing to a man; the word of sympathy is easy to be found.

“Nevertheless,” said I, “there must be many in the city to love, Bianca.”

She laughed, tossing her curls back upon her pretty shoulders.

“Indeed,” she said, “there is only my father, and he is at the Arsenal all day. You have heard of Silvestro Celsi, Signore? They call him Silvestro the Magnificent, and he is worthy of it. I have his love always—but he has no time except for his books and his papers. He goes with the sun and comes with the night. I sit here all day, and imagine what it must be to cross the mountains and see the world beyond. The house is my prison, and the old dame, Nina, is my jailer.

“For the moment,” said I, anxious to console her; “but you are very young yet, and the day will come when your father will take you to see the world. Who knows, it may be this year, next year he may bring you to Paris or to my own city, London—and then. You will remember my name if you come to London, Signorina?”

She looked up at me with her pretty eyes.

“I will never forget, yet how shall I believe what you say? Oh! it will not be this year, when all the day the laborers starve and my father weeps for them, and the man from Rome grows more cruel every day. You have heard of the man from Rome, Signor?”

“I am here to get news of him?”

She started at this, looking at me with a little suspicion. It occurred to me that the admirable wind had done me a second service. Perfectly possible now to write to my editor and to say, “I am sitting at the feet of Bianca hearing news of the man from Rome.” And so I listened with ready ears when Bianca spoke again.

“Why should you interest yourself in Orso Cicogna?” she asked. “Have you not heard what cruel things he has done at the Arsenal? My father cannot sleep at night for thinking of them. He fears that the workmen will lose patience and kill the man who has brought such trouble upon them. Why do you wish for news of him?”

I turned the question as adroitly as possible.

“Your father’s sympathies are with the men, Signorina?”

“How could they be otherwise, Signore? Is he not their best friend? For thirty years now they have called him father. Will he cease to befriend them at the word of a stranger? Do not think that. Though he lose all else in the world, it will not be the affection of his children.”

“Then he does not love the man from Rome?”

Her dark eyes flashed at the suggestion. I said to myself that if the fate of Orso Cicogna lay in her hands a few hours would carry me out of Venice.

“Love him—Holy Virgin, what a thought! Yet what can he do? He is the servant of the Government and must obey. All day long he asks the men to be patient, and they listen to him. Oh, Signore, if Orso Cicogna is killed, my father will be ruined, and we shall live in Venice no more.”

There were tears of affection and pity in her eyes. It was sweet employment to comfort her—then, and later in the day, when returning from my habitual quest of news, I found her at sunset still upon the balcony. Admirable wind of night! It played gently with the curls of Bianca, tossing them about in its embrace until they seemed to touch my face like rain of silken threads. No longer did the balustrade thrust carved obstacles between us. She, on her side, resting her pretty arms upon the timeworn marble, I, on mine, bending down so that my lips could almost brush her ears, made that swift sudden friendship, possible only in a land where sunshine is in the heart of the People and love in their eyes, Pretty Bianca! I said then that her hair was of the purest gold, that her hand was the softest in all Italy.

“Your father has not returned, little one?”

She shook her head.

“He is very late to-night,” she said; “sunset should bring him back to me. Nina set supper an hour ago, and yet he has not come. I fear to think about it, Signore; I fear to ask myself what has kept him.”

I took her hand in mine and laughed at her foreboding

“What could keep him but the business of the day? Was not I at the Arsenal an hour ago to learn that all was well? It is the night which makes you fear, little one. I know the feeling well, a gray light upon the waters and a gray light above. That is the time for dreaming of misfortunes which never happen. To-morrow when the sun shines you will forget it all. Let us talk of other things—of our friendship. You will remember that, Bianca?”

She answered me prettily, letting her hand rest in mine and forgetting to draw back her face even when my lips touched the curls of her golden hair.

“I could not forget that,” she said: “you will be the friend of my father also, Signore? There is no one in Venice who does not love my father; there is no one so clever as he. All the great ships which sail out of Venice are his work. He is stronger than the King, for he has made his country great.

I had not the heart to rebuke her childish idea of Italy with a word of naked truth: and, for the matter of that, the cleverness of old Silvestro, who was one of the constructors at the Arsenal, was proverbial among those who build ships.

“Indeed,” said I, “it will be a great honor and privilege to know your father. If I mistake not, yonder is his gondola. I heard the splash of an oar some minutes ago.”

It was full dark noe, but the light from the windows of the canal enabled us to distinguish the black shape of a gondola shooting to the steps of Silvestro’s house. Little Bianca gave a cry of joy when she saw it, and ran instantly to the room to welcome her father. I saw her cast her arms about his neck, and exclaimed upon that restricting custom which denies a similar greeting to mere friendship. It would be sweet, I thought, to hold Bianca as old Silvestro then held her. And I was sure that she could not be sixteen years old.

There was but one lamp upon the supper-table at which father and daughter sat, and it was shaded. None the less it enabled me to observe closely the features of the shipbuilder for whom Venice had so great a love. A man who had attained the allotted span, I said to myself; a man with a white beard so long that it covered his vest as he sat; a man of rugged force, of face slightly Greek in mould, yet feminine in the kindness of the eye. A silent man, too, answering Bianca's chatter with monosyllables; a man upon whom the cares of life pressed heavily so that he ate with no appetite, but when he had tasted of the dishes set lovingly before him, came upon his balcony to drink a glass of red wine and to smoke the cursed cheroot which Austria still sends to Venice. It was then that Bianca presented me to him—with a pretty childish formality which made us friends at once.

“Signore, here is my father; he can answer all your questions. Father, here is my English friend.”

The old man laughed, but I saw that his eyes were reading me closely. I was glad that pretty Bianca introduced me as her friend, and I hastened to speak to old Silvestro of my business.

“I am correspondent of an English newspaper,” said I, “and I came to Venice to learn all about the troubles at the Arsenal. It seems that good fortune has made me the neighbor of one who is the best of authorities. It is not necessary to come to Venice to know the fame of Silvestro Celsi, Signore.”

He laughed again, silencing me with a gesture of the hand.

“Truly,” he exclaimed, “it was not necessary to come to Venice to understand our trouble at the Arsenal. Have you not laborers in your own country? Assuredly you have, and their humanity is our humanity—neither more nor less. Give them thorns when they ask for figs—and there is your problem.”

“It being understood that figs are their wage.”

“Exactly. I am no dutiful son of the priests; but I do not forget that the Master of all workmen taught us that man shall not live by bread alone. Here, in Italy, our children would be glad enough if their bread were assured to them. We are very poor, Signore—and the end is not yet. God knows what we must suffer before the days of our prosperity return to us. If you have any message from Venice to your countrymen, let it be this—that in our poverty we do not forget England and her friendship. And may your judgment be not hasty whatever the days may bring.”

“You fear a crisis, Signor Celsi?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“He who takes meat from the dog must beware of the dog's teeth, Signor. That is exactly what our Government is doing to-day. The men are starving in the yards while the law is feeding them with exhortations of patience. Does a man lend a willing ear to an exhortation like that when his children cry for bread? You know that he does not.”

“In that case your man from Rome would do well to try a change of air?” I suggested.

“I express no opinion,” he said, somewhat curtly, “though I pray God that harm may not befall him.”

It was plain to me that he did not wish to continue the discussion, and I turned to other subjects, sitting with him until the moonlight shone white and glorious upon the canal, and all the palaces were as temples of silver and of jewels. I found, to my pleasure, that he was ready to encourage my friendship for little Bianca, seeming content indeed that she should make a friend after the custom of the English, for whom he had so great a regard. It was pathetic to witness his affection for the child, his fear that the day would come when she would lack the love he gave to her so generously.

“She has no one else,” he would say, “and I am an old man. Age is very cruel, Signore, when it is linked to youth in the bonds of a father’s love.”

It was midnight when we left our balconies, and twelve hours passed before I saw little Bianca again. A long letter to London upon the business of the Arsenal kept me at my desk almost until daybreak. Thereafter, I slept heavily until the musical bells of the city tolling the Angelus. A little to my chagrin, Bianca was not at her window when I opened mine as usual; but when I had read through my papers and letters, she came tripping to the balustrade and blurted out her news.

“He is coming here to-day—to-night,” she cried gladly.

“You mean the man from Rome?”

“Who else should come? Have you not heard? They tried to kill him yesterday when he was leaving the Arsenal. My father says that there is only one house in Venice which can shelter him. And so he is coming here.

“”You think he will be safe at the Palazzo Celsi?”—that was the name of Bianca's house—“you think that he will consent to become a prisoner?”

She tossed her hair—it was auburn hair this morning—back upon her pretty shoulders.

“My father’s house is a sanctuary,” she said proudly. “Signor Orso will be as safe here as in his palace at Rome.”

“Let us trust so,” I replied dubiously, “if only for your father's sake.”

“Oh, indeed, for his sake I wish it,” she exclaimed, and I saw that tears misted her eyes again. “He has not slept for three days, Signore; he left the house this morning without a word to me.”

The sunlight falling generously upon the canal forbade that I should comfort her then. It was not until the man from Rome had come to her house and was held in talk by her father that she ventured again upon the balcony, and sat by me to tell me of the day’s work. And while she talked I could see the others; the old shipbuilder, worn and anxious and heavy-eyed; the young man whom Crispi had sent, pale and nervous, and apprehensive even in the sanctuary of Silvestro’s house. Thirty years he had lived, I judged—a weak man strong in another's authority. Nor could I help but ask myself if he would ever leave Venice alive. Had not a thousand men sworn to kill him? Your Venetian does not forget an oath like this.

It was a callous view, but I began to regard this man as a hare that is hunted. There was something almost stimulating in the idea that, at many a dark place, men watched, dagger in hand, to reckon with the enemy. To-day, to-morrow—would Orso Cicogna be alive then? And was old Silvestro honest in his desire to protect him? I had doubts even of that.

“I will save my people,” the shipbuilder had said to me. But how were they to be saved while the man from Rome lived among them? That he would go I never believed. His great square chin and bulging temples forbade the assumption. To intellectual blindness he added a determination born of ignorance. I was sure that he would remain in the city; I was equally sure that he would die there.

It may be that in this assumption there was the keen anticipation of the journalist who has heard the view halloo. Certainly, Orso Cicogna seemed secure from danger so long as he was under old Silvestro's roof. Cowed for the moment by the attack already made upon him, he never left the house for three days; and when again he went to the Arsenal, the police carried him there. For my part, I did not care how long the comedy or tragedy might last. Was there not little Bianca and the moonlight upon the water and the admirable wind to toss her curls against my cheeks? And what matter if the future were dark? There were moments when I said that I would dare even to carry this bewitching little Italian girl back to England as my wife. I made mention of her in letters to my friends; began to reckon up the possibilities and the problems of housekeeping—I who had never lived in a house when an hotel was to be found, or lingered in any city a day longer than the employment of the hour demanded. That she would return with me, I was sure. Though she protested that she would never leave her father, there was love in the protest. And the message of her eyes, spoken again and again upon the balcony, needed no dictionary to translate. She trembled when my lips touched hers—she lay still as a frightened thing when I held her in my arms.

A week passed in this pleasure of love and doubt. I began to think that I must speak plainly to old Celsi—to whom I thought my hopes would not be unwelcome. It seemed to me, when he shut his eyes to our delicious nights upon the balcony, that he was blind with good intent. Perhaps he was glad that someone would take his daughter away from the trouble and uncertainty then hovering upon his house. Be this as it may, the night was rare when he left his room to intrude upon the delights of our privacy. He, and Orso the doomed, would spend the hours in earnest indifference, as oblivious of the two who watched the dark waters outside as though they had never lived. I said that the old shipbuilder was an utter mystery. And there is but one thing to do with a mystery—it is to ask him to dinner.

The feast was to be upon the fifteenth day after I had first spoken to Bianca. I determined, after consultation with my Italian servant, Ottone, to give it in my own rooms. The man from Rome would come then and I could turn him into articles. I knew that he would not consent to dine at a restaurant, for he had become afraid of the night, afraid to show himself at the windows of old Silvestro’'s house lest a spy, lurking on the canal below, should shoot him as he stood. But in my room he would be safe. And Ottone was an excellent servant. Serve a dinner? He swore by St. Mark that no such banquet should have been held in Venice. I, on my part, looked forward with no little pleasure to the surprise prepared for pretty Bianca. A ring of diamonds and rubies, a rope of pearls for her little neck, burnt holes in my pocket the long day through. Would she laugh or cry when my fingers were upon the clasp? Would the jewels match the eyes she knew how to use so well?

We had fixed our dinner for the evening of Sunday. There had been unbroken sunshine since the dawn, a day full of the glory of an Italian spring. You heard the barcarolli’s love-songs from many a dark waterway when night fell. There was music of bells floating over a lagoon, a vision of distant islands canopied with young leaves, of whitened mountains crowned with lustrous lights, of a horizon now infinitely blue, now crimson, now dim with the glory of the purple arcs of evening. When, at last, the sun sank below Chioggia and the rolling mists settled upon the lagoon, a sea of fleecy billows was spangled with the fleck of the moon’s rays; a golden sea danced to the music of the wind. This was the hour when old Silvestro should have come to me. The great clock had struck eight; the flowers were white and odorous upon my table; the lights fell soft upon the crystal flasks of ruby wine. We lacked only our guests.

The clock struck a quarter past eight and still old Silvestro did not come. Twice I went out upon my balcony to peer into his room; but neither he nor Bianca was there. Orso, the man from Rome, appeared to be the only occupant of the chamber. He was writing at a table when first I saw him; he was still writing when the clock struck a quarter past the hour. Had he not been a stranger to me, I might have spoken a word through the window to ask of his host and of Bianca. As it was, I began to think the whole circumstance one of the strangest I had known. Here was dinner ready to be served, Ottone ready to serve it, the candles lighted, the flasks uncorked—yet of those for whom all this was done there was no sign. I asked myself if they played some jest; I said that Bianca would come running up the stairs presently, breathless and panting apologies. The clock struck nine and still my dinner waited.

The last note of the bell had scarce gone echoing over the water when I called to Ottone, meaning to send him, for the second time, across to old Celsi’s house. It was evident now that something had happened. The fact of the man Orso writing diligently at the table perplexed me. But this perplexity was as nothing to the strange suspicion and dread which possessed me when, upon calling for my servant, I had no answer. The man had vanished as mysteriously as Bianca and her father. Though the stairs echoed my summons, echo was the only answer vouchsafed to me. I was alone with the candles and the flowers and the gaudy draperies of the feast.

There are some situations in life, situations of danger or of peril, which a man refuses to take seriously. I have known one or two in the course of a changing career, but none which seemed to me, at first thought, so ridiculous as the one I faced that night in Venice.

Convinced, on reflection, that little Bianca had contrived a jest, and having the poorest appreciation of its excellence, I determined to go myself into her house and to seek for her. I thought it strange no longer that the Man from Rome should be writing at his table. That was a part of their plot. I said that little Bianca was watching me when I entered the great room and walked across it to speak to him whose name was then upon every tongue in Venice. I could hear, in fancy, her sweet laughter when, standing a little way from the man’s chair, I spoke to him—once.

I say once—for, in truth, I had scarcely spoken the word of greeting when it changed upon my lips to an exclamation of woe and horror. In that moment I saw that Orso Cicogna had written his last letter; the hand which held the pen in dreadful derision was stiff and powerless; the eyes which looked down upon the paper would see no more; the head which had fallen forward upon the breast would never again be raised. The Man from Rome was dead, and the stiletto with which they had stabbed him was still in his body.

For some instants I stood, almost blinded by the sight of the grim figure, still and white and rigid in death. There was no sound in all the Palazzo Celsi to stir my feet or break the spell. I heard the waters lapping outside, the distant cry of a boatman, the music of a voice; but in that room Death reigned and no voice answered, And then I recalled the words of old Silvestro, “I will save my people. And I thought that he had kept his promise to his children and that Venice would see him no more.

••••••

It is a year ago now since I saw Bianca Celsi. Idle to say that the events of the terrible night had been blotted from my mind or that I did not think often with feelings of a deep and lasting affection of the little Italian girl whose love I had won during those happy weeks in Venice. But I had no thought of Bianca that night in March when, chancing to pass the gaunt Italian church in Hatton Garden, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and turned around to see an ill-dressed pitiful creature regarding me with wistful eyes.

“You forget me, Signore,” she cried, in broken English. “Oh, but I shall remember always. Do not turn from me—we are not what you think—it was another who killed Orso Cicogna.”

“Another!” I exclaimed,

“Yes, yes,” she said quickly, “your servant Ottone—he had a brother at the Arsenal. We did not know then—but now, God pity us, it is too late.”

The woman, for such Bianca had become, released my arm and darted across the street. The dim light of evening soon hid her from my sight, but not before I had seen her take the hand of an old man who waited for her, and lead him into the shadows.

And as the woman went I shuddered to think that I had once held her in my arms.

THE END.