He wanted to fall at the feet of this dark, silent woman, and worship her as he had worshipped her in an ideal way for all his life.
They sat down away by themselves by the side of a table with photographs, pictures, and miniatures in oil. It was the most supreme moment of his life.
"I fear you do not sympathise greatly with my art," stammered the man at last, looking at a miniature instead of the lady.
"yes, I do," answered Annette. "I think too much of it. I am all the time wandering about among pictures and through the old homes of the masters."
"How delightful!" said Murietta, recovering himself at once. "And, do you know, I have had a fancy I should like to see the land of Titian? But then I hear it is so hard to reach."
"Well, it is hard," said Annette, "a long, hard road; but you are doubly paid for your trouble, and to me it is one of the sweetest spots in Italy."
"But you have not been to Cadore?"
"Oh yes, indeed, oftentime."
"Will you tell me of it? will you tell me of the home of the great good man and master?"
The soul of the beautiful lady came to the surface liklB a spirit called from the deep by a magician, and the great eyes opened and dawned upon the artist like a new sunrise. He began to understand her now. This silent woman, she too could talk, when there was a subject that touched her heart. Her soul was of another atmosphere. She sailed undiscovered seas. The gossip of a town had not even the dignity of her contempt.
She began as if she was about to tell a fairy tale to a child. Perhaps this proud, great woman, thought him but a child. Perhaps, after all, he was but a child.
"There is no prettier or sweeter dimple in all the fair face of mother earth, than this little slope or half valley, where the great master was born, and where he spent his early youth. And he knew it well, fot it is told of him that, no matter where the summer found him, after he became famous, even up to the year of his death, he turned to the home of his youth for his holiday."
Murietta did not speak. He only looked at her; but she seemed to understand his question, even though he had not opened his lips.
No — thanks to the sharp, fierce spurs of the Dolomite Peaks — you cannot yet reach 'Titian's Land,' as it is familiarly called in Italy, by rail. You can get two hours out from Venice towards the base of the Venetian Alps by rail, and then you take the post or a private carriage and, pushing up the Piave river, which has its source in Titian's Land, for nearly two days, you come upon Cadore, the little mountain town where the great master was bom. Here are great splintered peaks of granite all around you," and the lady's hand went up in the air. "These singular formations are known as the Dolomite Peaks. They look very much as if a mountain of stone had been set up on another mountain, and then the Titans had come by, and hacked and hewed and split it to its base."
He leant forward and listened in silence. "Your soul and mine stand nearer together than I had even dared to dream of," he was saying to himself, as she went on:
"Here, also, nearly all around you, are great banks and slopes of snow, for you are in the heart of the Venetian Alps; but there are no snowy peaks, as in the Rocky Mountains or the Sierras. In all these Alps there is not one thing that at all approaches or looks like the most insignificant of the snow cones and peaks of the West, but only slopes and slides of snow on the side of some ugly broken mountain.
"The first thing here in Titian's country that strikes one who is at all familiar with his great pictures, is the exact likeness and copy of these mountains, noticeable in all his backgrounds. Coming directly from Venice, on my first visits where I had been haunting 'Belle Arti' for a month, and feasting on his great pieces every day, I found that I had seen every great mountain that lay around me. Even in the picture of Jerusalem, where the Virgin is presented to the high priest — a picture counted, you know, as one of the three greatest pictures in the world — you see there the exact copy of the first mountain that ever met the master's eyes, even to the curling clouds that are for ever moving about its summit, even to the camp fire of the half wild woodman on the mountain's side.
"And to me there is a singular touch of tenderness in this. Born in obscurity, bred in the wildest part of the Alps, still, when he became the companion of kings and the most fortunate and favoured of men, he remembered his mountains all the time, and all the time set them before the world to be admired. And today, if you would see the mountains and the clouds — the very atmosphere — of Titian's land, you have only to look upon one of his great pictures!"
"Yes,"answered Murietta, "I have always been told that while it is true he painted only figures, still the backgrounds to these figures may be called the best landscapes, the faithfullest, the truest to nature, that can be found in all the world today!"
"What a smell of spruce and of pine in the air!" The lady looked away as if she stood on the mountains of which she spoke. "What fragrance of flowers and of new mown hay! What soft sweet songs of the peasant girls at work in the fields as we drove into Cadore! For it was harvest time in the Alps when first I was there, and all the sloping hills below the snow and below the pines, were yellow with fields of wheat and spotted with little patches of grain, no bigger oftentimes than little town lots! And there is not a level piece of land in all the country. A hard country indeed — and yet the hardiest and the happiest people in all Italy! No want in all the land — not one beggar to be met within a month. And this is a great relief to one coming directly from Venice.
"There are ten little towns in sight, all grouped close together, like herds on the hill sides. "Indeed, they could not be anywhere else, except on the hill tops!"
The artist leaned and listened without interrupting her by a word. She went on as if telling a story to a child.
"There was a pine slope just before our hotel. And the trees were planted and trimmed just as orderly as if they bore the choicest fruit. All the pines of these mountains are planted and nurtured by hand, for the lumber trade is the life of the place. And this muddy, foamy Piave river, plunging down in the canon away toward Venice, is the great artery of Cadore! All this pine slope is a meadow and a hay field. The women do the work of the fields and the men do the work of the woods. They plant, cut down, drag to the river, and drive to Venice, on great rafts, the black pine trees; and they are rarely seen out of the woods except on feast days or when some great occasion calls them down. You see them moving under the tail, well trimmed pines, a long line of mowers, from early morning till nearly noon — all women, barelimbed and bare headed, and often beautiful as Titian's own pictures; and about noon, they lie down and sleep in the hay for a time, and then arise and go on singing and swinging their short thick scythes until sundown"
"I could paint it," whispered Murietta.
"And how they do sing!" continued Annette. "It seems to me that these pretty, brown handed harvesters sing all the time that they are not asleep. There are other pretty brown women rolling the hay, and children blossoming about under every pine, and others taking up the hay in great broad baskets, and carrying it down the hill into the sun, and all the time singing like larks."
"And she too, this princess, this great souled woman, loves the poor!" thought the artist.
"We often climbed this pine hill at sunset, and studied the marvellous twilight colours — the soft blending of light and shade thrown from the higher Alps. One can easily believe that from these rare and lovely blended hues grew the fancies of Titian."
"I shall go to Titian's land and live," murmured Murietta.
The lady went on with her picture.
" All these little farms that dot the hill sides are tilled by women. The men are in the mountains or on the river, driving the lumber to the sea. There is nothing more splendid, more daring and exciting, than these bold fellows dashing over the falls on their long white rafts. They are stripped to the waist, tall and sinewy as Indians, and as the raft is borne over the steep foaming rapids, they quite disappear, but come to the surface again like corks, far below, and clinging securely to their rafts. Away up the mountain sides, miles and miles away, even against the clouds, you see little channels and openings through the wood running down towards the river. These are slides for the timber, and they are too steep and dangerous for the foot of man or beast.
"What a tall, sinewy, and splendid type of people the grand old painter sprang from! They are utterly distinct from the Italians of the valleys; and it is noticeable that in Titian's land there are many fair and yellow haired men to be found, and blonde women — Titian's types of beauty!"
There was a rustle in the room. The pretty birds, whose brilliant plumage ornamented this paradise, were fluttering up and down and hovering about the flowers as if about to take flight. The old general had come down from out his battle cloud of smoke for a moment, and was marching across the saloon to join his daughter and the artist.
Then a beautiful bird sang with a beautiful voice, while a dozen hung about her like bees around a flower. And these words were in her song: —
"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
And win or lose it all."
The little woman with the curls and cup of tea and spoon stood looking straight at Murietta as the song proceeded; but he was looking in quite another direction.
As soon as the song was finished, the artist, quietly and unobserved, reached his hand to the host and his daughter, and withdrew.
The little lady in corkscrew curls, who had cautioned the artist about his associates, and made him so miserable, waylaid him as he went out; but as she had set down her tea cup, she had no spoon to set her tongue going with, and so stood by the door shaking her curls in vain, and in a helpless attempt to revive her lecture about his conduct and the Countess Edna.
The accomplished and polished bit of chiselled midnight opened the outer door, and as he went back he showed at least twenty of his teeth in his grin of delight.
The artist was very happy; and he gave the negro enough to make him happy for a week.
"Take care of her, old California lion! Take care of her, my old friend of the Cordilleras!" said he, as he again stepped close and patted and stroked the stuffed beast on the head. "Take care of this beautiful lady like a true Californian! Fly at the throat of any man who dares to enter here with an evil thought! Take care of her, my savage and tawny old friend!"
He descended the broad tuffa steps between the walls of flowers, and then walked down the Corso at peace with all the world.
"Come what comes," he cried, as he went to rest that night,"I have been blessed! I can end the scene now satisfied, and dying, say that God has been good to me; and I have been for once, in my hard and eventful life, perfectly happy!"
And then he slept.
Poor soul! he had not stopped to consider that this lady had been only civil; that he had not said a word beyond the most common place expressions, and that notwithstanding the kind invitation to call often and at any time, he, among the multitude of her friends, might be forgotten in a month.
He slept, and he dreamed; and his dream was of a green serpent swinging from a cork tree as he and Annette rode by in silence under it, along the Sabine Hills.
Start reading Chapter 44 ofThe One Fair Lady