There she sat in the carriage, as he entered the court of her palace the next morning, more beautiful, it seemed to him, than ever. She seemed to be a rose that opened and took colour and fragrance from the sun every day of the opening spring.
The dignified old Roman senator sat on his box with uplifted whip ready to obey the expected elbow of the footman beside him, who was expecting to be pulled by the string that looped about a great button of his uniform, and the doves fluttered and cooed, and made love around the court, and under the carriage, and about the horses' feet, as only Italian doves can, and the pretty brown girls went and came to and from the great well in a corner of the court, and the horses were tramping the cobble stones, and champing their bits as if eager to be off for the sunny hills of the Sabines beyond the Tiber.
"I have been waiting for you half an hour." said the countess smiling, as she half rose and drew her rich rose and pink robe closer in about her, and making place for the artist as if he had only that moment got out of the carriage, and was now reurning to his seat beside her.
"Good heavensr!" ejaculated the man in an undertone, as he took the proffered seat, "She talks as if I had come, and come only tardily, to an appointment."
Little Sunshine drew the string at a sign from his mother. The grave and reverend senator let off a fire cracker or two, the doves fluttered in a pretty little cloud about the horses' feet, as if they were a sort of white and purple dust, and the carriage whirled and wheeled out and up the street at a gay and rapid speed.
"Yes, I waited for you, and wasted a full half hour," said the lady half reproachfully.
"It is so beautiful this morning, and you know I must get out all I can and get the air, and as I don't like to go alone, and as the count will not go with me, you see it makes it a little awkward and hard on me sitting there in the carriage in the cold court unless you come a little earlier."
"By Jove! Have I lost my reason!" The artist put up his hand and rubbed his head nervously.
"There will be a perfect whirlpool of carriages on the Pincian today, and the Borghese will also be in a perfect state of ferment, so I have decided to drive in the cork woods beyond the Tiber, and escape the crowd, which must be fearful today, for this, you know, is the first day of the drive, since the opening of the Carnival."
Murietta drew a breath of relief such as he had not felt for a long time. He began to comprehend the breadth and something of the depth and dignity of the mind of the strange and beautiful being beside him.
She had made no allusion to his days of absence and neglect to call and inquire after her health, no reference whatever to the unpleasant evening he passed at the palace when last there. She simply had reached out her hand, reached it over all the days, and let them lie forgotten. She had the rare and wonderful good sense to never allude to an unpleasant subject if it could possibly be avoided.
There was a smell of flowers and fields as they drove between the row of officers in uniform near the exit of the great Porta Popolo. All Rome was passing out at the dozen gates of the city into the country for recreation.
The Secretary of the Legation would have said that the flood gates were being opened and Rome was being dried to the bottom of the reservoir.
The grass was long and green and luxuriant by the wayside across the yellow Tiber, and men in skins, with long pikes that have replaced the traditional shepherd's crook stood on the hill sides with their white woolly dogs beside them, watching their flocks and looking from under their dark brows at the splendid equipages that poured past and on and over the Sabine Hills.
Murietta was glad again as a child with a new toy. He was ever an impulsive man. Today he was a perfect boy. On little things and in little afiairs he constantly wavered, and had at least a dozen opinions at the same time. He never had been certain of but a very few things in all his life. Only two or three times in all his wandering bohemian life in Europe had he met with an occasion of sufficient importnce to arouse him to any decided course in life, or any real action. He was a sort of bow that was half unstrung and might be twanged many ways. He was a neglected harp that lay where the wind blew over the chords, and he gave out sweet notes which the wind provoked and carelessly called forth as it passed over.
He threw kisses at the peasant girls as he passed and tossed all his coppers out to the old women who went by with bundles of wood on their heads on their weary way to Rome.
And the countess laughed too. She never had seemed so light hearted before. He wondered how long this would last. He remembered having read somewhere that the French who were sentenced to be shot the very next morning at sunrise were the most lively and brilliant men the night preceding the execution that were to be found in all Paris, and then he looked at the bright and beautiful face of the countess and sighed.
At last they drew up at a great gate, and by special favour and previous arrangement were allowed to enter and drive up the narrow valley through the fields of waving grass, herds of cattle, and forests of green and curious little cork trees.
Farther and farther they drove, and narrower and narrower drew the hills about them till the oak and cork trees reached their crooked boughs into the carriage and played mischievously with the long bright hair of little Sunshine.
The whole land was full of fragrance. There were flowers under the horses' feet, on the hill sides, and in the meadows, and the road was soft with the white sand of the hills and the long grown and luxuriant grass. It was so warm that the shade of the trees was very welcome, and the cattle stood under the oaks and corks on the hill sides to the left, and lowed and called to their young and their loves on the hills to the right. There were some peasants playng on their reeds in the cove at the head of the valley, and under a clump of old and curly cork trees, at the bottom of the hill, a party of girls and boys all dressed in skins and feathers, who had not dared to enter the city of Rome, were playing their ancient instruments and dancing gracefully as in a dream, and holding their ancient rites as their fathers did in this delightful season thousands of years before the Carnival of the popes had name or place in Rome.
"Oh," said the countess "I might imagine I was in paradise."
"Or I," answered the artist "that I was once more in the vine and oak-clad footills of the^ Sierras."
The carriage drew up and little Sunshine went off with the footman to gather flowers, while the artist sat beside the countess and listened to the wild, sweet songs of the half wild people on the hill and in the cove, and drank in the perfect beauty and peace and calm delight of this paradise on earth in the Sabine Hills.
The countess sat silent as if she desired an hour's rest, and neither spoke. At last the sun fell down suddenly, as it always does in southern Italy when it drops into the Mediterranean, and the music on the hill and in the valley was done.
The little boy had gathered a basketful of flowers, and he poured them all over his mother's lap and at her feet as he clambered into the carriage and broke her reverie and dream with his pleasant chatter of his ramble among the many coloured hills.
The old Roman senator on his box snapped his fire crackers again, and again they whirled at a rapid rate back to the gates of the city, yet all the time as silent as before.
"You will dine here to-day," urged the countess, as they drew up at the bottom of the broad steps of the palace.
"No indeed, lady. Impossible."
"But I have something to tell you. I really have a great deal to tell you, and must tell you soon. I must tell you."
"Must tell me! and have been sitting silent all day at my side," said Murietta as he handed her from the carriage.
"You will not stay to dinner?"
"Not to-day, lady."
"Then you will be here at twelve to drive with me, and will remain to dinner tomorrow."
She said this with an imperiousness and at the same time with a tone of kindness that was to be neither disobeyed nor thought lightly of.
The artist passed her in through the great door and hastened to descend the steps. He half feared he should meet either the gentle count her husband, or the furious beast the admiral; though why he feared it, or what cause he had to fear either of these men, he could not have told even himself had he asked the question a thousand times.
"Something to tell me," he said as he gathered his cloak about him and moved down the street towards his home. "Somehing to tell me; always something of the deepest importance to tell me, and she never tells me a word"
Start reading Chapter 30 ofThe One Fair Lady