Few days after the last scene Murietta, with the secretary and Carlton, sauntered out of Rome for a walk in the Borghese. They passed through the Porto Populo, turned to the right, and passed under the extended wings of the great eagles that sit above the massive gates of the roads under the north east wall of the city.
This was the season for such a walk. It was just the thing to do. All Rome wa« daily pursuing the same thing; with the exception that half of Rome rode in carriages, and a portion still were on horse back, including the King of Italy, the Crown Prince, and a small army of officers of their suite.
The woods were in full leaf, the grass grew long and strong, and leaned in the soft wind that blew through the trees, and there was the sound of bees in the white blossoms of the locust boughs overhead, and birds and butterflies moved and wound through the air, and all things seemed full of life, and tranquil life and rest and peace.
Away out yonder on the lawn, under the wall, were a lot of monks in long red gowns playing at ball and shouting at each other like children. Some of these red monks were black, curly headed negroes.
Carriages were coming and going by hundreds. People passed on foot in light and airy dress, and horsemen galloped past in pairs, and men lifted their hats in silent respect as the royal party rode on under the waving boughs, and on by the many fountains.
Our friends reached the heart of the lonely wood, and there leaving the carriage road, went down a stair of stones together toward a little valley of deeper wood, with dark and mysterious walks, and fountains playing at every cross of the many interwinding walks through the silent and most romantic wood.
Some swans were floating idly around under the plash and fall of the fountain, and children were feeding them from their little hands whenever they could induce them near enough to the brink of the great stone basin in which they swam.
"Ah, this was a land to battle for," said Carlton, swinging his cane in the air, and catching a glimpse of the blue skies through the boughs and blossoms overhead.
"When Rome was Rome," said the secretary, "and there stood on every hill a new Jerusalem as it were, what wonder that men gave soul and body for the hope of holding her reins in hand but a single day."
"The skies are the same," said Murietta, "the woods are the same, the birds and the butterflies they blow about us the same as they did around the golden chariots of the Caesars. Ah, my friends, it is not the city that thrills you this morning. It is the wood, the air the sky, Nature. There needs to be no new Jerusalem on a hill to challenge your admiration this morning. This is perfection. Man will never make it finer, build his cities as he may!"
Thus admiring, talking carelessly, walking slowly on, they came soon to the carriage drive on the other side of the wood, for the place is limited, and the road makes a circuit around the little valley with the deep dense wood. Our friends had crossed the valley, and coming now out of the thick of the wood, they saw a number of carriages drawn up under the trees on the grass at the side of the drive by a plashing fountain. They drew near this fountain, for some tall dark men, in the costume of the desert, Arabs they were, had dismounted and, oddly enough, were leading their supple horses up to drink at the fountain; just as if they were out on a great desert, and had suddenly come upon a well.
Murietta's admiration for the horse was always great, but now to see these children of nature, here in this old civilization, dismount and devote their first care to their supple and sinewy friends, whom they talked to and treated as brothers, he was quite carried away, and noticed no one, nothing but these tall dark men, these Ishmaelites, with their strange history and wild life of the desert and their beautiful horses. He left his companions and passed at the back of the party of Arabs, and under the deeper hanging wood, where there were but one or two carriages, half hidden away, to get a better view of the splendid steeds as they stretched their necks and gratefully drank from the fountain.
"I have escaped from my prison, you see, ha, ha, ha!"
"Good heavens!" The man threw up his hand to his face like a child that is frightened, and took a step backward,
"Are you well? How are you? And how does it happen that you are on foot, when the king and all his court are so gaily mounted today, and riding through the woods?"
The lady laughed a little as she spoke, and raising her head, looked to the left down the wood as if she was expecting some one, and was in fear that he would come too soon.
The artist stepped forward mechanically, touched the little pink and pearl hand, and then, as it fluttered about and finally settled as it always did settle on the bed of rose and pink before the beautiful countess, he extended his fingers and lifted his hat, passed the compliments of the day, and was stepping back and away into the crowd.
The lady lifted her hand, leaned forward, looked very serious at the artist, and then glancing suddenly over her shoulder, as if to be sure she was not watched or overheard, she turned her great brown eyes, now half full of tears, full upon the artist, and said:
"I have something to tell you. Come here. For heaven's sake do not leave me. This may be the last time I shall see you I only managed to escape this morning from my prison by the skin of my teeth, Come!"
The man stepped back, and stood by the carriage very awkwardly, and very much concerned; for the lady seemed wild and excited beyond any reason.
She looked once more over her shoulder, nervously. "They are down there." The little pearl hand fluttered in the direction of the deep wood.
"They will be back in a minute. You see I cannot shake them off for a moment. They have got my little boy; my little Sunshine, as you call him."
The artist caught a feeling of nervous fear from the lady as if it had been a fever; and he, too, began to look down the wood and feel a dread that they would come. Perhaps this was in sympathy for the lady, who really seemed to suffer with terror at the thought of seeing them.
"Do you know," she lifted her finger to her lip, "do you know they are trying to get my little boy away from me, trying to turn him against me, and make him hate me?"
Murietta did not answer. He began to feel a sympathy that was tearing his heart out.
"Well, they are," she continued, still glancing now and then over her shoulder, and once more lifting her finger to her lips, "they are doing everything to turn him against me, and get him away, and to make him hate me. And that is not all, nay, that is not half. Half! that is nothing — that is nothing at all. Bat do you knoiv what fearful thing they are trying to do?"
The artist again looked blank, bnt did not answer, save with his eyes.
"I will tell you. Look here. Lean your head a little further."
The artist stepped close, and she reached out her face, now all aglow, and once more looking over her shoulder, she said excitedly:
"They are trying to make him a Catholic!"
Then the lady's face grew suddenly white, and she settled back in her bed of pink and rose, and the little pearl hand lay on her lap as dead and helpless as if it was to never rise up any more.
If there had been a grain of selfishness in the make up of this man, he now would certainly have lifted his hat and turned away. There are men who suffer more from the nervous fears and concerns of others than from their own. Murletta was such a man as this. He was a man who had suffered terribly and intensely all his life; yet he despised suffering when that suffering was his own. When the affair was one of his own, he would rise up, take the bit in his teeth if the occasion was great enough to demand it, and right things and revenge them, or else bear and be satisfied. But when it was another who suffered, a fair and a beautiful woman, full of soul and sentiment, and one whom he could not assist, then he, through this sympathetic nature of his, suffered too, and even more heavily than she.
Standing there before her, all the sunshine of the day was driven away. He became more utterly overcast. A cold moist wind seemed blowing on him, and rasping his nerves with a chill and damp that went to the marrow.
He wanted to get away, and yet his unselfish, sympathetic nature bade him stand there and suffer while she suffered.
He lifted his eyes and looked from under the boughs over and across the fountain, for the Arabs were now leading their horses away and mounting them in the edge of the open road. Watching these men, for want of something better to do, while he stood there, his eyes met the eyes of Carlton. He had been looking at him all this time. Glancing around the crowd he saw that others, too, were noticing him, and frowning or half sneering as if he had been caught in a crime.
It was his turn now to turn pale. The whole thing flashed on his mind in a moment. "Then they saw me put down my face to hers to hear her tell her trouble. They saw her rest her hand, saw her fall back in the carriage as if something terrible had been said or done." He pulled his cloak close about his shoulders, for he was growing chill, even in a Roman summer.
The countess half straightened in her seat, and looking up under the sweeping boughs down a sloping walk towards a fountain, she said, "They are coming," and then she smiled in the old half sad fashion, as if nothing had happened, for she caught sight of her little boy sailing along with his hat in his hand and his hair on the morning wind, as he ran in chase of a butterfly.
"How beautiful he is this morning," said Murietta.
"Do you know," said the countess, now quite recovered, "that I am perfectly certain that children come to us directly and immediately from among the angels?"
"And pray," smiled Murietta, "how came you by such pleasant knowledge?"
"0, I know it by the way they behave, by their actions. See — look at my little boy there as he runs in chase of the butterfly. How light and airy he is. He is hardly yet of the earth. You see he can almost fly even yet. He is more of heaven than earth, even though he has already been here for some years. He is much more like an angel in his movements than like a man."
The old admiral was glorious in his summer sailor's clothes and low crowned hat, with its immense band, just as we have seen him at Genoa. He walked with the same swagger through the beautiful avenue by the musical fountains as he did at the first. Beauty, melody, nature, had nothing in common with him, and took no hold on his hard and uncompromising souL
"Oh, that monster! Must I for ever remain in the power of that beast?" The lady hid her face as she said this, and shuddered and trembled.
Murietta's blood was in his face once more. He was about to speak, about to throw back his cloak and ask permission of the countess to fly at the throat of this man who was persecuting her, whomsoever he might be, and strangle him on the spot, when she went on kindly, as she imcovered her face:
"You made me a promise."
"Yes."
"You promised that when I sent my maid to you — sent any one with word to you that I needed you, you would come."
"Yes," he said, emphatically.
"Lift your hand."
He lifted his hand from out his cloak and in the air above his head.
"You swear to keep your promise?"
"I swear to keep my promise."
"There, that is well," and she sank back again as the men drew near. Then suddenly rising up and leaning forward, ahe said, "Here is a secret. My father is coming. My old, old father. He is old and he is dying, but he is coming to take me out of Italy and away from these people who hold me here, or die with me. He is coming. They will try to keep him from coming; they have kept him from me for years, but he will be here soon. They will try to keep him from seeing me when he comes. But you —"
The men were passing through the gate, but a few steps distant. The old admiral had his hat in his left hand, and was reaching the other to Murietta.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Murietta. You know I am a blunt but honest sailor."
The countess leaned forward, and almost hissed between her teeth, "Don't touch his hand, he is a murderer. I have something to tell you!"
Start reading Chapter 41 ofThe One Fair Lady