



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
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THE HEART OF ROME

A Tale of the "Lost water"

BY FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD Author of "Cecilia," "Saracinesca," "In the
Palace of the King," Etc.





THE HEART OF ROME






CHAPTER I




The Baroness Volterra drove to the Palazzo Conti in the heart of Rome
at nine o'clock in the morning, to be sure of finding Donna Clementina
at home. She had tried twice to telephone, on the previous afternoon,
but the central office had answered that "the communication was
interrupted." She was very anxious to see Clementina at once, in order
to get her support for a new and complicated charity. She only wanted
the name, and expected nothing else, for the Conti had very little
ready money, though they still lived as if they were rich. This did not
matter to their friends, but was a source of constant anxiety to their
creditors, and to the good Pompeo Sassi, the steward of the ruined
estate. He alone knew what the Conti owed, for none of them knew much
about it themselves, though he had done his best to make the state of
things clear to them.

The big porter of the palace was sweeping the pavement of the great
entrance, as the cab drove in. He wore his working clothes of grey
linen with silver buttons bearing the ancient arms of his masters, and
his third best gold-laced cap. There was nothing surprising in this, at
such an early hour, and as he was a grave man with a long grey beard
that made him look very important, the lady who drove up in the open
cab did not notice that he was even more solemn than usual. When she
appeared, he gave one more glance at the spot he had been sweeping, and
then grounded his broom like a musket, folded his hands on the end of
the broomstick and looked at her as if he wondered what on earth had
brought her to the palace at that moment, and wished that she would
take herself off again as soon as possible.

He did not even lift his cap to her, yet there was nothing rude in his
manner. He behaved like a man upon whom some one intrudes when he is in
great trouble.

The Baroness was rather more exigent in requiring respect from servants
than most princesses of the Holy Roman Empire, for her position in the
aristocratic scale was not very well defined.

She was not pleased, and spoke with excessive coldness when she asked
if Donna Clementina was at home. The porter stood motionless beside the
cab, leaning on his broom. After a pause he said in a rather strange
voice that Donna Clementina was certainly in, but that he could not
tell whether she were awake or not.

"Please find out," answered the Baroness, with impatience. "I am
waiting," she added with an indescribable accent of annoyance and
surprise, as if she had never been kept waiting before, in all the
fifty years of her more or less fashionable life.

There were speaking-tubes in the porter's lodge, communicating with
each floor of the great Conti palace, but the porter did not move.

"I cannot go upstairs and leave the door," he said.

"You can speak to the servant through the tube, I suppose!"

The porter slowly shook his massive head, and his long grey beard
wagged from side to side.

"There are no servants upstairs," he said. "There is only the family."

"No servants? Are you crazy?"

"Oh, no!" answered the man meditatively. "I do not think I am mad. The
servants all went away last night after dinner, with their belongings.
There were only sixteen left, men and women, for I counted them."

"Do you mean to say--" The Baroness stopped in the middle of her
question, staring in amazement.

The porter now nodded, as solemnly as he had before shaken his head.

"Yes. This is the end of the house of Conti."

Then he looked at her as if he wished to be questioned, for he knew
that she was not really a great lady, and guessed that in spite of her
magnificent superiority and coldness she was not above talking to a
servant about her friends.

"But they must have somebody," she said. "They must eat, I suppose!
Somebody must cook for them. They cannot starve!"

"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps they will starve."

The porter evidently took a gloomy view of the case.

"But why did the servants go away in a body?" asked the Baroness,
descending from her social perch by the inviting ladder of curiosity.

"They never were paid. None of us ever got our wages. For some time the
family has paid nobody. The day before yesterday, the telephone company
sent a man to take away the instrument. Then the electric light was cut
off. When that happens, it is all over."

The man had heard of the phenomenon from a colleague.

"And there is nobody? They have nobody at all?"

The Baroness had always been rich, and was really trying to guess what
would happen to people who had no servants.

"There is my wife," said the porter. "But she is old," he added
apologetically, "and the palace is big. Can she sweep out three hundred
rooms, cook for two families of masters and dress the Princess's hair?
She cannot do it."

This was stated with gloomy gravity. The Baroness also shook her head
in sympathy.

"There were sixteen servants in the house yesterday," continued the
porter. "I remember when there were thirty, in the times of the old
Prince."

"There would be still, if the family had been wise," said the Baroness
severely. "Is your wife upstairs?"

"Who knows where she is?" enquired the porter by way of answer, and
with the air of a man who fears that he may never see his wife again.
"There are three hundred rooms. Who knows where she is?"

The Baroness was a practical woman by nature and by force of
circumstances; she made up her mind to go upstairs and see for herself
how matters stood. The name of Donna Clementina might not just now
carry much weight beside those of the patronesses of a complicated
charitable organization; in fact the poor lady must be in a position to
need charity herself rather than to dispense it to others. But the
Baroness had a deep-rooted prejudice in favour of the old aristocracy,
and guessed that it would afterwards be counted to her for
righteousness if she could be the first to offer boundless sympathy and
limited help to the distressed family.

It would be thought distinctly smart, for instance, if she should take
the Princess, or even one of the unmarried daughters, to her own house
for a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and
ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the
way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was
probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime
ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband's
death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her
that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the
family had debts, why did he not borrow money and pay them? That was
what he was paid for doing, after all. It was true that he had not been
paid for a year or two, but that was a wretched detail. Economy? Had
not the Princess given up her second maid, as an extravagance? What
more did the man expect?

The Baroness knew all this and reflected upon what she knew, as she
deliberately got out of her cab at the foot of the grand staircase.

"I will go upstairs myself," she said.

"Padrona," observed the porter, standing aside with his broom.

He explained in a single word that she was at liberty to go upstairs if
she chose, that it was not of the least use to go, and that he would
not be responsible for any disappointment if she were afterwards not
pleased. There is no language in the world which can say more in one
word than the Italian, or less in ten thousand, according to the humour
of the speaker.

The Baroness took no notice as she went up the stairs. She was not very
tall, and was growing slowly and surely stout, but she carried her
rather large head high and had cultivated importance, as a fine art,
with some success. She moved steadily, with a muffled sound as of
voluminous invisible silk bellows that opened and shut at each step;
her outer dress was sombre, but fashionable, and she wore a long gold
chain of curious and fine workmanship to carry her hand-glass, for she
was near-sighted. Her thick hair was iron-grey, her small round eyes
were vaguely dark with greenish lights, her complexion was like weak
coffee and milk, sallow, but smooth, even and healthy. She was a strong
woman of fifty years, well used to the world and its ways; acquisitive,
inquisitive and socially progressive; not knowing how to wish back
anything from the past, so long as there was anything in the future to
wish for; a good wife for an ambitious man.

The magnificent marble staircase already looked neglected; there were
deep shadows of dust in corners that should have been polished, there
was a coat of grey dust on the head and shoulders of the colossal
marble statue of Commodus in the niche on the first landing; in the
great window over the next, the armorial crowned eagle of the Conti,
cheeky, argent and sable, had a dejected look, as if he were moulting.

It was in March, and though the sun was shining brightly outside, and
the old porter wore his linen jacket, as if it were already spring,
there was a cold draught down the staircase, and the Baroness
instinctively made haste up the steps, and was glad when she reached
the big swinging door covered with red baize and studded with smart
brass nails, which gave access to the grand apartment.

By force of habit, she opened it and went in. There used to be always
two men in the outer hall, all day long, and sometimes four, ready to
announce visitors or to answer questions, as the case might be. It was
deserted now, a great, dismal, paved hall, already dingy with dust. One
of the box-benches was open, and the tail of a footman's livery
greatcoat which had been thrown in carelessly, hung over the edge and
dragged on the marble floor.

The Baroness realized that the porter had spoken the truth and that all
the servants had left the house, as the rats leave a sinking ship. One
must really have seen an old ship sink in harbour to know how the rats
look, black and grey, fat and thin, old and young, their tiny beads of
eyes glittering with fright as they scurry up the hatches and make for
every deck port and scupper, scrambling and tumbling over each other
till they flop into the water and swim away, racing for safety, each
making a long forked wake on the smooth surface, with a steady quick
ripple like the tearing of thin paper into strips.

The strong middle-aged woman who stood alone in the empty hall knew
nothing of sinking vessels or the ways of rats, but she had known
incidentally of more than one catastrophe like this, in the course of
her husband's ascendant career, and somehow he had always been
mysteriously connected with each one. An evil-speaking old diplomatist
had once said that he remembered Baron Volterra as a pawn-broking
dealer in antiquities, in Florence, thirty years earlier; there was
probably no truth in the story, but after Volterra was elected a
Senator of the Kingdom, a member of the opposition had alluded to it
with piquant irony and the result had been the exchange of several
bullets at forty paces, whereby honour was satisfied without bloodshed.
The seconds, who were well disposed to both parties, alone knew how
much or how little powder there was in the pistols, and they were
discreet men, who kept the secret.

The door leading to the antechamber was wide open, and the Baroness
went on deliberately, looking about through her hand-glass, in the half
light, for the shutters were not all open. Dust everywhere, the dust
that falls silently at night from the ancient wooden ceilings and
painted beams of Roman palaces, the dust of centuries accumulated above
and sifting for ever to the floors below. It was on the yellow marble
pier tables, on the dim mirrors in their eighteenth century frames, on
the high canopy draped with silver and black beneath which the effigy
of another big cheeky eagle seemed to be silently moulting under his
antique crown, the emblem of a race that had lived almost on the same
spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute, but in
nearly uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered after
greatness, felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood still
before the canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege, the
invisible silk bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she wondered
whether there were any procurable sum which she and her husband would
grudge in exchange for the acknowledged right to display a crowned
eagle, cheeky, argent and sable, in their hall, under a canopy draped
with their own colours. She sighed, since no one could hear her, and
she went on. The sigh was not only for the hopelessness of ever
reaching such social greatness; it was in part the outward show of a
real regret that it should have come to an untimely end. Her admiration
of princes was as sincere as her longing to be one of them; she had at
least the melancholy satisfaction of sympathizing with them in their
downfall. It brought her a little nearer to them in imagination if not
in fact.

The evolution of the snob has been going on quickly of late, and
quicker than ever since vast wealth has given so many of the species
the balance of at least one sort of power in society. His thoughts are
still the same, but his outward shape approaches strangely near to that
of the human being. There are snobs now, who behave almost as nicely in
the privacy of their homes as in the presence of a duchess. They are
much more particular as to the way in which others shall behave to
them. That is a test, by the bye. The snob thinks most of the treatment
he receives from the world; the gentleman thinks first how he shall act
courteously to others.

The Baroness went on and entered the outer reception room, and looking
before her she could see through the open doors of the succeeding
drawing-rooms, where the windows had been opened or perhaps not closed
on the previous evening. It was all vast, stately and deserted. Only
ten days earlier she had been in the same place at a great reception,
brilliant with beautiful women and handsome men, alive with the
flashing of jewels and decorations in the vivid light, full of the
discreet noise of society in good-humour, full of faces she knew, and
voices familiar, and of the moonlight of priceless pearls and the
sunlight of historic diamonds; all of which manifestations she dearly
loved.

Her husband had perhaps known what was coming, and how soon, but she
had not. There was something awful in the contrast. As she went through
one of the rooms a mouse ran from under the fringe of a velvet curtain
and took refuge under an armchair. She had sat in that very chair ten
days ago and the Russian ambassador had talked to her; she remembered
how he had tried to extract information from her about the new issue of
three and a half per cent national bonds, because her husband was one
of the financiers who were expected to "manipulate" the loan.

A portrait of a Conti in black velvet, by Velasquez, looked down,
coldly supercilious, at the empty armchair under which the mouse was
hiding. It could make no difference, great or small, to him, whether
the Baroness Volterra ever sat there again to talk with an ambassador;
he had sat where he pleased, undisturbed in his own house, to the end
of his days, and no one can take the past from the dead, except a
modern German historian.

Not a sound broke the stillness, except the steady plash of the water
falling into the fountain in the wide court, heard distinctly through
the closed windows. The Baroness wondered if any one were awake except
the old porter downstairs. She knew the house tolerably well. Only the
Princess and her two unmarried daughters slept in the apartment she had
entered, far off, at the very end, in rooms at the corner overlooking
the small square and the narrow street. The rest of the old palace was
surrounded by dark and narrow streets, but the court was wide and full
of sunshine. The only son of the house, though he was now the Prince,
lived on the floor above, with his young wife and their only child, in
what had been a separate establishment, after the old Roman custom.

The Baroness went to one of the embrasures of the great drawing-room
and looked through the panes at the windows of the upper story. All
that she could see were shut; there was not a sign of life in the huge
building. Ruin had closed in upon it and all it held, softly, without
noise and without pity.

It was their own fault, of course, but the Baroness was sorry for them,
for she was not quite heartless, in spite of her hard face. The
gloomiest landscape must have a ray of light in it, somewhere. It was
all their own fault; they should have known better; they should have
counted what they had instead of spending what they had not. But their
fall was great, as everything had been in their prosperity, and it was
interesting to be connected with it. She faintly hoped Volterra would
keep the palace now that they could certainly never pay any more
interest on the mortgage, and it was barely possible that she might
some day live in it herself, though she understood that it would be in
very bad taste to occupy it at once. But this was unlikely, for her
husband had a predilection for a new house, in the new part of the
city, full of new furniture and modern French pictures. He had a
pronounced dislike for old things, including old pictures and old
jewellery, though he knew much about both. Possibly they reminded him
of that absurd story, and of his duel at forty paces.

Volterra would sell the palace to the Vatican, with everything in it,
and would look about for another lucrative investment. The Vatican
bought all the palaces in the market for religious institutions, and
when there were not enough "it" built the finest buildings in Rome for
its own purposes. Volterra was mildly anti-clerical in politics, but he
was particularly fond of dealing with the Vatican for real estate. The
Vatican was a most admirable house of business, in his estimation,
keen, punctual and always solvent; it was good for a financier to be
associated with such an institution. It drove a hard bargain, but there
was never any hesitation about fulfilling its obligations to the last
farthing. Dreaming over one of his enormous Havanas after a perfect
dinner, Baron Volterra, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, often wondered
whether the prosperity of the whole world would not be vastly increased
if the Vatican would consent to be the general financial agent for the
European nations. Such stability as there would be, such order! Above
all, such guarantees of good faith! Besides all that, there were its
cordial relations with the United States, that is to say, with the
chief source of the world's future wealth! The Senator's
strongly-marked face grew sweetly thoughtful as he followed his own
visions in the air, and when his wife spoke of living in an antiquated
Roman palace and buying an estate with an old title attached to it,
which the King might graciously be pleased to ratify, he playfully
tapped his wife's sallow cheek with two fat fingers and smiled in a way
that showed how superior he was to such weakness. It was not even worth
while to say anything.

Once more the Baroness sighed as she turned from the window. She meant
to have her own way in the end, but it was hard to wait so long. She
turned from the window, glanced at a beautiful holy family by Bonifazio
which hung on the opposite wall above an alabaster table, estimated its
value instinctively and went on into the next drawing-room.

As she passed through the door, a low cry of pain made her start and
hesitate, and she stood still. The degree of her acquaintance with the
members of the family was just such that she would not quite dare to
intrude upon them if they had given way to an expression of pardonable
weakness under their final misfortune, whereas if they were bearing it
with reasonable fortitude she could allow herself to offer her sympathy
and even some judicious help.

She stood still and the sound was repeated, the pitiful little tearless
complaint of a young thing suffering alone. It was somewhere in the big
room, hidden amongst the furniture; which was less stiffly arranged
here than in the outer apartments. There were books and newspapers on
the table, the fireplace was half-full of the ashes of a burnt-out
fire, there were faded flowers in a tall vase near the window, there
was the undefinable presence of life in the heavier and warmer air. At
first the Baroness had thought that the cry came from some small
animal, hurt and forgotten there in the great catastrophe; a moment
later she was sure that there was some one in the room.

She moved cautiously forward in the direction whence the sound had
come. Then she saw the edge of a fawn- cloth skirt on the red
carpet by an armchair. She went on, hesitating no longer. She had seen
the frock only a day or two ago, and it belonged to Sabina Conti.

A very fair young girl was kneeling in the shadow, crouching over
something on the floor. Her hair was like the pale mist in the morning,
tinged with gold. She was very slight, and as she bent down, her
slender neck was dazzling white above the collar of her frock. She was
trembling a little.

"My dear Sabina, what has happened?" asked the Baroness Volterra,
leaning over her with an audible crack in the region of the waist.

At the words the girl turned up her pale face, without the least start
of surprise.

"It is dead," she said, in a very low voice.

The Baroness looked down, and saw a small bunch of yellow feathers
lying on the floor at the girl's knees; the poor little head with its
colourless beak lay quite still on the red carpet, turned upon one
side, as if it were resting.

"A canary," observed the Baroness, who had never had a pet in her life,
and had always wondered how any one could care for such stupid things.

But the violet eyes gazed up to hers reproachfully and wonderingly.

"It is dead."

That should explain everything; surely the woman must understand. Yet
there was no response. The Baroness stood upright again, grasping her
parasol and looking down with a sort of respectful indifference. Sabina
said nothing, but took up the dead bird very tenderly, as if it could
still feel that she loved it, and she pressed it softly to her breast,
b