It was a week, one full long week, before the time when the artist hoped to meet Annette in her own home. He could not sit there before her picture which he had not brought out into, the full light, and made a sort of shrine, and look at it all the time. What should he do? Finally, he found himself ascending the steps of the Hotel Ville, and heard a shout and a bounding step that was not to be mistaken.
"Bet your life, Oh bet your life I'm glad to see you, so glad to see you;" and the; honest, openrhearted little lady threw her arms about hia neck, and laughed till she cried.
"Why, Mollie, what in the world is the matter?" said he at last, as he, half smothered, disengaged himself from the girl, and stood smiling at her enthusiasm and easy habits.
"Matter! Nothing the matter at all, only I've — I've got something nice to tell you." She stood swinging her hat by the ribbons, for it had been pushed off in her haste to embrace her brother, as she sometimes called Murietta, and holding her head to one side, and looking very bashful and very mischievous.
"Well, Mollie, what is it?" said he, as they sauntered along the hall toward the parlour, while she still swung her hat, and held her head to one side, and looked the very picture of perfect happiness.
"No, I won't tell you," pouted the saucy girl. "It's my little secret. My own little bit of a secret, the only one I ever had in my life, and I intend to keep it. I intend to keep it all day to myself." Then she held her head still lower to one side, and swung her hat as if she intended to twist the ribbons off, and send it flying through the window.
"Come, come, Mollie, tell me. It must be something nice, you seem so very happy!"
"It is nice, and I am happy, bet your life!" Then she stopped swinging her hat, thought a moment, and then diving into her pocket and holding out her hand to Murietta, said, "Have some goodies?"
"Certainly, Mollie. But now, about that wonderful little secret that you are going to keep all day, and that you told me about the moment I came, and that you will tell me before ten minutes longer; what is it?"
"Well now, don't you tell. Mamma knows it, and papa knows it, and the Count Paolini knows it, and that is all. Won't tell?"
"No."
"Hope you may die if you tell?"
"Yes."
"Well, now listen, this is my little secret — all mine, you know, but I can't keep it. The count made me promise not to tell, and he was so very particular. Well, now, he's in there," pointing to the parlour, as they still sauntered up and around the hall looking at the pictures and the statuary, "and don't you let it out when you go in. Well, he don't want any big wedding either, but I do; bet your life I didn't come all the way from California to be married off like a dummy. Not much, bet your life. That ain't me. Have another goodie?"
"Yes, Mollie. I am so very well today I feel like I could almost eat you."
"Well, there you are, a whole handful. And now I am going to tell you my little secret."
She stood before him blushing, with her pretty lips pouted out and her mouth fiill of sugar plums. She laid her head to one side, swung her hat faster than before, and began.
"Now, you mustn't tell; hope you may die, and all that?"
"Yes; but Mollie, I know all about it."
"Shut up! you don't!"
"But I do."
The hat stopped swinging and the pretty lips pouted out, and then she stooped, reached into her pocket, and got another handful of candies.
After a moment the old michievous look came back into the eyes of the innocent girl, and she began:
"Now m bet you a forty dollar hoss to a gooseberry, that you don't know anything about it."
"I will bet you a whole herd of Mustang ponies to one kiss Miss Mollie, that I know all about it."
"Done!"
"Is it a bet?"
"Yes, it's a bet. Here's the stakes. Put up your Mustang ponies."
"The Mustangs are on the plains of Arizona; you must trust me."
"I will trust you. Now come, what is it?"
. The artist began a little thoughtfully, and quite slowly, for he felt more than half serious over this announcement of his, which in her happiness she had made without knowing it, and said:
"Tou are engaged to be married to Count Paolini."
"There! take the bet."
She reached forward her girlish face, and the man kissed his romping, sometime sister, and then said, more earnestly than was his custom when speaking to this half child,
"Mollie!"
"Murietta?"
"This is a very serious business."
"Oh ain't it though! Do you know, Mr. Murietta, I cried and cried and cried for half an hour; and then mother, she cried and cried; and even old papa, the good old governor, he cried too! Oh it's awful serious, ain't it? I declare it makes one feel real shaky." And here she stopped, reached into her pocket, and drew forth another handful of candies.
"You know, Mollie," said the artist, taking a handful of proffered candies, and dropping them down among the flowers by the wall, "you know I promised to take you to my little palace on the Tarpeian Rock."
"Yes; and like all the men, you forgot all about it, and never did it."
"No; but I have come this morning. Can you go?"
"Go? Oh won't it be jolly! But then," and her manner took on a mock gravity which she really meant to be real, "but then, you know, mamma must go too, for the count is awful particular. You know the count says we American girls are all too fast and loose, and all that, and are liable to get ourselves talked about, and now that I am engaged, you know, I must be particular, if only to please him."
"Well now, my good little Mollie, will you do one thing first to please me?"
"Yes, a dozen."
"No, only this one thing."
"Well, what is it? Come, let's get it done and be off, for ain't it just the bulliest weather you ever saw to be out?"
"Well, Mollle, this is it. Don't tell the count where you are going. We will go to the Capuchin monks — tell him that if you like — after that we will take in the Tarpeian Rock."
"Right; mum's the motto," and here Mollie laid her finger on her pouting lips, and reaching down for another handful of sweets, she led into the parlour.
Mrs. Wopsus burst into tears, as usual, and the general came forward quoting some snatches of poetry, which showed that his mind was not on his railroads, or anything of the kind, that day at least.
Paolini turned pale. Yet he recovered himself in an instant, and in the softest and sweetest voice, so well modulated that in the sweet Italian tongue it was music in itself, he passed the compliments of the day as he came up and reached his hand, for he was standing all ready as if waiting to go.
In a moment he was talking over the ordinary topics of the day, and showed no concern at all whatever he may have felt. And perhaps after the first flush of sudden apprehension he felt none, but leaned steadily upon fortune with all the confidence of youth and inexperience, and left all to the fates and his leaders who had this matter in hand. He tapped his sword hilt with his gloved fingers, dusted the least bit of down from off his sleeve, and lifting his cap, after one or two low soft sweet speeches to Mollie he passed out, promising to return in the evening.
In a few minutes more Murietta, Mrs. Wopsus, and Mollie left the old general on his shaded balcony with his papers, and taking the carriage at the door, were on their way to the strange and gloomy cave known as the monastery of the Capuchin monks.
It was a fearful place to take a young girl just contemplating her near wedding day, and yet for the purposes of Murietta was perhaps the best in all the world.
On their way they picked up the good Carlton, who was a great favourite with Mrs. Wopsus, and in fact with all the family.
Under some trees in a little square that opens on to the broad, desolate plaza of Barbarini, with its one hideous figure blowing a fountain in the centre, then under an arch, then up a wide court, and then, pulling a bell in a low wall to the left, they found themselves at the door of the Capuchins.
Very dark, and very damp and deathlike. Mushrooms grow here, and what is very strange and fearful to tell, these mushrooms that grow out of these bones and half rotten men are sometimes extremely like a death's head.
Here were lamps and dim lights, just light enough to see the dead men hanging up around the walls only half dried, as if the place had been a sort of Cincinnati smoke house for curing hams and whole hogs.
The monk who opened this was a brown monk in a brown gown and brown sandals. He kept coughing all the time, and was only skin and bone. Poor devil! what a desolate life was his!
He looked as if he had unhooked himself from a place on the wall alongside of another fellow who hung up there, all skin and bone, with his hair and beard hanging loose about his face, and his toes and finger bones hanging in strings down there, as if they were a sort of ornament to him, like an Indian's beads.
Now and then this poor lean monk, with a brown beard and a brown gown and a consumptive cough, would look back and up at the other fellow hanging there, and would look as if he was very tired, and would like to hang himself up there, and stay there all the time, and quit telling strangers about whose bones this sunflower was made of, and how many thigh bones it took to build this monk's monument sleeping there in the dust brought from Jerusalem, or just how many monks had to die and have their back bones wired together, in order to make this beautiful ornament now suspended from the low ceiling and doing service as a chandelier.
"I want some of this dirt from Jerusalem," said Carlton. "Will you not, good father, let me have just one little pinch of this dirt from Jerusalem?"
"Impossible!" cough, cough, cough.
Then the little bell rang again, and the monk went to the door, yet all the time kept looking back over his shoulder.
There was a commotion at the door, and a staring crowd poured in and began to deluge the monk with questions.
"Good gracious! was he a full grown man?"
"A full grown man, madam. You see he was bearded like a prophet," coughed the skin and bone monk who was not hanging on a hook on the wall, as he looked up at who was hangmg up on a hook against the walL
Then the Special Correspondent took out a carpenter's rule, and stepping across and straddling over the new graves, she carefully measured the length of the lean skin and bone monk on the wall, and still standing there straddling over a grave, she took out note book and pencil and wrote very rapidly for some time.
"Only three feet long!" she said to herself as she shut the note book and again strode over the new graves, and came forth and joined our party in the little vault at the feet of the graves, and under the curious piles and strange arrangements of bones and skulls about the walls.
"There is here somewhere, says tradition — " A tall man, in black threadbare clothes, set his umbrella down, and bent himself into a new moon. "There is somewhere here," he said, facing the Special Correspondent, who stood before him all attention, "a bone of Saint Francis, and I would give more to know where that bone is."
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like a very weak but very faithful dog at this sacrilegious piracy of unconsidered trifles.
Carlton began slowly and carelessly to roll a cigarette. In this cigarette was the sacred earth. The monk's little black eyes glistened. He had his suspicions, but was not certain that he was right. Would this Carlton go on with that cigarette — would he roll it up, turn down the end of it? Would he then dare place the sacred dust — still damp and reeking with dead men's flesh — between his teeth?
The monk's eyes glistened, and his outstretched hand trembled like a leaf in the wind.
Would he go on and finish the cigarette, and put the dust between his teeth?
Carlton, too, was more than nervous, he was pale; but he did not hesitate. His hands trembled and rattled the paper as he rolled it tight and smoothly, and then he slowly fastened down the end, and then slowly raised it up and deliberately set it between his teeth.
The monk was satisfied; or at least he felt that whether this man was guilty or not, he was too audacious to interfere with, and leaving a pile of bones rather to the right, he hastened around in that direction and began to look furtively at the missionary, who had also found these goods wired to the shop and impossible to purloin.
Mrs. Wopsus was all the time in tears. Mollie did not say one word, but kept all the time back in the dark and half hidden out of sight. Murietta sought her out at last, for he feared this unearthly sight might have an unpleasant influence on her young spirits, and possibly sit on her nervous nature too heavily.
She was leaning up against the damp wall eating a bun, and trying to count by the dim grating light the number of bones that there were in an exquisite figure worked on the ceiling just over her head.
Carlton seemed to be getting cold and chilly and nervous. The brown monk kept looking at him, too, as a dog will look and growl at a man he has seen doing some crime, and he wanted to go at once.
The monk went down to where the Special Correspondent was trying to measure the size of a dead monk's skull, and kindly pretended to help her in her enterprise; but it was observed that as soon as he got the party away he fell to counting his skulls and looking for this one and that, as a shoddy will count his spoons after a dinner to the Press or some great politician.
At last the party filed out through the narrow door of death into the open day, and once more breathed the open air, as the little monk stood by, taking his toll, as if they were passing on a bridge from one world to the other, and looking at the party all the time as if to warn them off the premises.
What possible sermon was this charnel house to preach? What lesson can these fantastic figures teach? Those dead men stand grinning at death!
What possible good can there be in the existence of this terrible place, except to teach men to thank God for the sunlight when they once more behold it.
Start reading Chapter 38 ofThe One Fair Lady