You had better sail boldly on in almost any direction than drift without any direction at all. You had better sail in the maddest storm that ever troubled your sea of life, than lie on the sea and drift with any wind that chooses to blow.
Murietta was utterly alone in Rome as far as anything like real friends were concerned, although he was petted and patronized and courted by the kind artists here; and many an old woman, and young one too for that, had made ineffectual efforts to draw and corkscrew him into their special clique and circle where sweet tea and strong scandal was dealt out with prodigal liberality. Yet he persistently held himself aloof, and with very few exceptions kept his friends and his place among the poor and lowly people of old Rome.
He seemed to have lost his spirit someow. He was drifting. He was not waiting for anything to turn up. He was not wanting anything to turn up. It seemed to him rather that there was now nothing else to be done. He felt that he had come to the end of his weary road, and was perfectly certain in his owvn mind, and perfectly satisfied, too, with the thought, that he should never live to leave Rome.
The warm, soft wind was in again from Africa as the artist opened his window next morning. The cats were on the wall asleep just as they were before. Possibly they had not left their posts on the battleent all this time. It was as warm and sweet as middle spring. Even the beggars affected the shade of the wall, and the people as they passed by sang low and dreamily if they sang at all, and all seemed languid and half asleep. The artist passed out of his room and crossed the little white hall and looked away to the hills beyond the Tiber and above the dome of St. Peter's. Monte Mario in almost a single night had mounted himself in green. He lifted his glass and saw that the side of the mountain turning to the sun was in places red with roses and in other places white with flocks of sheep.
"I can almost hear the songs and the pipes of the skin clad shepherds," said the man as he lowered his glass and turned back to the lonesome room. "I can almost hear the music of spring. The country seems to call to me across the mossy walls of Rome, and invite me to come forth and be glad."
He was walking slowly across the room asking himself what he should now do, for, despite his promise, he had more than half resolved to see the beautiful pink and rose countess no more for ever, when his eyes fell upon the picture half hiding away in the shadow of the door. He approached, lifted it tenderly to the light, and sat down before it in silence. What could he have been thinking of? At last he rose up with a sigh, set it back in its place, and then shook his head and shrugged his shoulders violently, as if he would shake off and throw off the load of thought that encumered him.
"I will go upon the Campagna." He took his hat as he said this, threw his cloak over his shoulders, and hastened down the narrow stone steps. He had been looking at Annette, loving her, worshipping her, talking to her, taking her into his heart. Therefore he almost hated the countess as he began to remember his promise the day before to be with her at the hour of twelve, which was now near at hand.
"There is truly a bad atmosphere about that palace of the pink countess, and what have I done that I must condemn myself to perpetually inhale it? She is in the meshes of some great grief and trouble," mused the man, "and now why, or what reason there is that I, I of all men, should take it upon myself to champion her, I canot understand. I will not! There!"
He snapped his fingers as if he had sundered the cord that bound him to her, and then threw back his head and began to whistle as he went on down the street, like a country ploughman.
Carriages were pouring past, up, and down, as he reached the Corso, and they were full of beautiful women, and fragrant with bouquets and enormous baskets of roses.
Sometimes these roses would be thrown in a perfect shower from carriage to cariage, and now and then some beautiful woman, in these little battles of the roses, would be almost covered with red and white and pink as she sat in her carriage. This to Murietta seemed to be the most beautiful and innocent thing of all the Carnival.
His spirits rose as he saw so much levity, such innocent diversion, and so many light hearted and happy people, and he began to despise himself for a morbid and a discontented man.
"I will join them," thought hei. "I can get a carriage there around the comer. I can get a carriage there under the palace around the corner; but where can I get a beautiful woman to sit by my side and challenge the volley of roses?"
The carriages rolled by as if they were inumerable. There were mounted cavaliers throwing roses and bantering the beautiful women, and lifting their hats and leaning from their horses to talk in whispers. All the air was full of the breath and fragrance of the country, and all things seemed as beautiful and full of life as if Rome was one great ball-room hung with flowers and filled with the beauty of the earth, and all were moving down the mazes of the dance.
The man lingered here a long time. He looked and peered into every carriage with an eagerness and concern and anxiety on his face that was not to be mistaken. Had he been asked what he was looking for he would have been angry even with his best friend. Had he asked himself what he sought there, he would have said "Nothing." He was looking for Annette. She was not there.
Suddenly he began to wonder if the countess was out in this glorious air, so full of life, and health, and happiness. Then he remembered his promise, and he remembered how he had kept her sitting and waiting in the cold damp court the day before.
He started for the palace in an instant. He was certain that she was sitting there in the damp and cold, away from the sun and air, and waiting for him still. And now that the man saw the situation in this light he was all penitence and regret. His heart was always steeped in sweets or biterness. He would break over on this side now and flow to an unreasonable extreme, and then would go as far the other way, and be at the same time perfectly sincere and feel certain that he was right, and that that was really the only course for him to take.
The restless horses had stamped so long and so hard on the stones of the court that the doves had all fluttered and flown away and up to the sun on the niches and arches of the palace, and little Sunshine had muffled himself up, and was sitting all a-shiver on the front seat; for nothing is more tantazing, and chilling, and cheerless than the courts of these damp, dismal palaces.
"You are so very fashionable," smiled the beautiful countess, as she half rose and drew her pink and rose robes to one side to give place to the artist.
"A thousand pardons, lady, I feel very guilty. But then," he added, as he sat down by the rustling robes of pink and silk and lace "you know it is always twelve until it is one in law."
"Yes, in law, but in love?"
The artist was glad the carriage and the horses' feet on the cobble stones of Rome precluded a reply, for he was certain the countess used the last word in the remark, not with any significance, but simply because it fitted in there and was a pleasant word, and in that place made a pretty alliteration.
This very often happens in conversation. Words do not always have the same weight and importance.
There was a beautiful but silent scorn of the gaieties of Rome on the part of the countess that day, wlich now more pleased the moody Murietta than anything that she said, or could have said. She had chosen this day, this "Feast of Flowers,"in quite another sense.
Turning down the Via Angelo Custoda they passed the Fountain of Trevi, reached the Corso, passed the resurrected and exhumed Forum of Trajan, and crossing the old Roman Forum, soon touched the Tiber under the steep and north side of Mount Aventine, and were on their way out to the Gate of St. Paul.
The countess never questioned Murietta as to whether this drive would please him or whether that would displease him." Whatever she may be, "mused the man to himself as they sat silent all the time "whatever she may be now, or whatever troubles encompass her, she is a lady who, once in her life at least, has known no will or whim or humour but her own."
As they rolled between the yellow Tiber to the left, and the steep Aventine covered with old ruins and new woods to the right, the lady looked up, and lifting her little pink hand to the top of the mountain, and following it with her great hazel eyes, said "There is a shrine up there, would you care to see it as we return?"
"Well, there are so many shrines in Rome," answered the artist "that one must be a little particular, else one will never get through with them all."
"But this one is very old."
"And pray what is it?"
"The Tomb of Remus. It was there he watched the flight of the birds, and there, says tradition, he was buried."
"No, I do not care to see it," said the artist "it is an old affair at best; besides I am not in a mood to visit tombs today."
"Not in a mood to visit tombs today? But you must be," said the lady, looking the least bit troubled "do you see that little mountain down the Tiber there with the great cross at the top?"
"Yes."
"That overlooks the Campo Santo. We are going there; it is the prettiest place in all Rome. We will visit the graves of Keats and Shelley."
After passing down a long avenue of elm and locust trees, they turned to the right through a broad gate and passed on to the south, toward the great marble pyramid built in the wall of Rome, and when almost against the wall stopped before a deep moat that runs around the old Protestant burying ground.
The sexton led across a little arched bridge, and there in one corner of the little island, as it were, with its few trees and many flowers, lifted a flat faded stone withut any name whatever. For that name has been "writ in water."
A few roses were blossoming pale and feebly on a few sickly bushes that had struggled ineffectually with the thick careting of grass, and here and there a bright margaretta starred the green covering, but the place was cheerless and lonesome, and cold from the shadows of the trees and the walls. The grave and the little stones had been restored but a few years before by an artist of Rome who had come from the New World, and the strange and mournful inscription on the head-stone without a name had been made once more legible.
That artist lies buried now up yonder, under the tall dark cypresses in the new ground against the wall of the city, and not so very far from the ashes of Shelley.
Murietta on first taking his seat in the carriage had thought that the countess conemplated a revel in the Carnival of Flowers on the Corso, for there in charge of the footman were two broad and splendid baskets of roses. They were destined for a better purpose, these flowers, than to be trodden under the feet of revellers.
The countess moved about the grave of the great boy poet as silent as the stone that stood nameless above his head. She turned to her footman at last, and made a sign. He brought the basket of flowers, and while he held it in his hand, she scatered the roses above his dust, and then departed in silence. She had not spoken one word.
It is but a stone's-throw from this buryng ground — which is now full and closed up — to the higher and more beautiful ground where Shelley has his last resting- place.
They passed through a great iron gate, and stood at once in one of the most beaudful flower gardens to be found in all that land of flowers.
The keeper knows perfectly well what the stranger wants who enters that iron gate. His hat is in his hand, and he leads at once slowly up through the garden of flowers, up the little hill between the long row of tall, dark cypresses, right against the very top of the wall of Rome. The old man knows full well that but two classes of people come to him there, and but for two purposes: one is the traveller who comes to visit the grave of Shelley, and the other is the man who has finished his travels and has come home to his own grave.
Whatever beautiful things Shelley may have said of the grave of Keats, it is not so beautiful now. It is beautiful, it is true, but it seems so very, very lonesome.
But here, by Shelley's grave, the birds sing. The sun is always here when it is anywhere in Rome; and then the spot is lifted so high and so much above all the other world that it really seems nearer to heaven than any other place. Even the dark and mournful trees look pleasant, for all about their feet are flowers of every clime and colour, and birds are in the bushes.
The flat stone that lies above the sacred ashes with its well known inscription, is nestled in blooming roses that nod and toss in the wind that blows in and softly around the wall from the Campagna.
Others had set flowers there that day. Ladies had come and left their little tokens, and their gifts lay still fresh and imwithered on the white stone.
The earth is almost level here with the top of the wall. The grave of Shelley looks over the Campagna, and you can, on a day of singular clearness, see the Mediterranean Sea from the port hole in which the grave is very nearly placed.
The silent countess, after scattering the roses on the ground and around the stone, taking care not to disturb the gifts of those who had come before her, lest they should be from nearer and dearer hands, passed through the little half open door that had been placed there at the mouth of this port-hole, and stood there and looked away to the south on the mighty edifice of St. Paulo and on to the spot where the apostle perished, but spoke no word.
The little room that had been cut off by this door and improvised out of this portole by the sexton, was a dingy little place full of flower pots and spades and mattocks. It was the place, in fact, where the grave digger kept his tools.
Birds and flowers and sunshine, and the songs of peasants bore in from the fields and over the walls; dark sweeping trees and pilgrims coming, and peering from under their shadows the whole year through. Surely this is the grave, if such a grave there be, to make a man "in love with death."
The artist followed in silence this silent and incomprehensible woman, and lifted her in the carriage and took his place by her side with a feeling almost akin to reverence. She seemed to him now to have something of that soul and sympathy which he had ever in his heart — demanded that every one should have before they entered his heart. Here was a woman cradled in the lap of wealth, a beautiful woman, too, the most beautiful woman in her way in all the wide world, a woman full of life and love, who had turned in contempt from the follies of the Corso, where all the world had met to bandy wit and challenge and mingle in the Battle of Flowers, and had gone aside in silence to scatter roses on the graves of strangers.
The sun was dropping down behind the great gold ball of the dome of St. Peter's, as the countess drove, with a thousand others, up the Pincian Hill.
It looked as if the whole world had climbed the Pincian; as if there had been a deluge and every one had come up here out of the dark shadows, to stand in the last bright rays of the sun and escape.
What a gregarious people these Italians are! They are like a flock of sheep; wherever the leader goes the rest will follow and not give it a thought or make any question. But this was the season, and the full blossom and flower of the season, on this little hill and around this little drive among the figures and around the fountains.
The music played under the great palm tree as the sun settled behind St. Peter's, with a melody and sweetness that Murietta had never known before.
A thousand handsome men, the handomest men by far in all the world, were there in their gorgeous uniforms glittering in the sun as they moved to and fro, mixed with the crowd, or passed from carriage to carriage lifting their hats to the ladies.
The band stopped playing for a moment, and the mass of carriages moved on, one, two, three, four abreast, and fast as the gay horses could whirl and spin about the little circle. The whole hill was blossomng with carriages, and every carriage was blossoming with beautiful women clad in every colour of the rainbow.
Then the band began to play again, and again the carriages drew up on the broad gravel before the great palm tree, and listened and looked at the sun hiding down behind St. Peter's, or laughed and talked and made love with their eyes.
The carriage of the countess, either by accident or by quiet and unobserved direcion, was kept well out on the edge of the immense crowd, and but few acquaintances were encountered; and these few the silent countess dismissed with well directed monosyllables, as if they had been little single handed stabs aimed at their vitals, and she was left much to herself. As for Murietta, probably he had not spoken ten words all day.
There was a hat fluttering in the air in the face of the countess, as if to attract her attention, for she was looking dreamily away toward the gold and fire of the falling sun.
She caught her breath as she saw this hat, and her little hands clutched in her rose and pink and lace, and her face was deadly pale.
The hat, however, was replaced, and the man with his old gesture, as if he would say "I am a blunt but honest sailor who carries his heart in his hand," passed on and joined the count and Prince Trawaska and a group of other gentlemen who stood beneath one of the little sycamores talking and watching the gay whirl of fashion in the carriages.
The countess was suffering terribly. The old admiral knew this too, for as he passed on he threw a glance over his shoulder, looked hard and steadfast for a second in her pale and pitiful face as if to be perectly certain that his arrow had gone to the heart, and then passed on with a swing and flourish of his cane and a leer of satisfaction on his iron face.
The lady put her hand to her throat, she clutched at her clothes, and was for a moment in great agony, and for a time it seemed doubtful if she could rally withut assistance. Murietta caught her hand, tore off the little pink glove, and began chafing it, and tried to coax the frightened blood back and out from her heart and into her hands and face again.
As he did this the old admiral again elbowed his way through the crowd near the carriage, and led the count and his friends, or followers, whichever they may have been, in his wake.
The admiral looked hard into the cariage at Murietta, half stooped, whispered to a man at his side, spoke to the count, who lifted his hat very civilly and respectfully to his wife, and so went on.
This time the countess was almost uterly overcome. She bit her lips till they bled. She sank back into the carriage, and it was with the greatest effort that she could be aroused.
"He will murder me yet." She whisered this to herself, and when Murietta asked her if she really feared this man would harm her, she would not answer, but looked away again at the sun dying in a sea of blood, and was very silent and very pale.
At last the carriages in front began to move. It would be but a few minutes till the carriage of the countess also must move on and give room.
She turned to the artist and looked at him with the same sad longing, the same lonely and pitiful expression he had seen in her face at Genoa, and said:
"I may be ill, very ill. I may be ill, and imprisoned, before I am out again. I must drive and get the air, and keep my strength, and prepare for something terrible. Will you do me one favour?"
"I will do anything in my power to serve you, lady," answered the artist, with all the earnestness and determination of a nature now feeling aroused and ready for much.
"No, not that much now," answered the lady, half smiling at his earnestness "not that now; it is only this. I am so situated that I am worse than alone. I must drive out, and dare not go out alone. That man will not murder me with a knife. He will not spill one drop of blood, but he will kill me as certainly as I meet him when alone, and he will do it delibertely and by inches."
"But, my dear lady, I do not understand."
"No, you do not understand, and you do not promise."
"I do, I do, I do promise. If you are in danger, or if any lady is in danger, or if you even imagine you are in danger, what better can I do, what else have I to do in this sullen, weary world" — the man was almost on his feet - "than to stand up and protect you?"
"Gently, gently," whispered the countess "you are wild, you will ruin everything. But listen. Some day I may be in trouble, what then?"
"Send for me," answered the artist firmly and emphatically.
"If I am ill," she began again, in a low voice "or if I should be imprisoned, do you understand"
"I— I think I—"
"No, no, you do not understand. Look here. If a lady should send to you — send her maid — could send nothing like a note or letter, or other message, and tell you she was a prisoner and required your help, what would you do?"
"Well, I suppose the correct thing to do would be to go to the consul representing the country from which the lady came and—"
"And get laughed at for your pains"
The carriages were moving off. The countess laid her little hand on the wm of Murietta, and again looked in his face. "If I some day send my maid to you, will you come to me, and at once, and contrive to get a message from me to my father?"
"Come to you! I will come to you for that purpose if I have to come through fire!"
She looked at the man's passionate and determined face, and seemed satisfied. She took her hand from his arm as the carriage whirled down the serpentine road between the rows of sycamore trees, and looking once more into his face, said softly:
"You will remember?"
"I will remember."
"No? you will not dine with me to day? Then tomorrow you will be sure to be with me by twelve, and we will find a new drive outside the walls."
Start reading Chapter 31 ofThe One Fair Lady