Time went by with Murietta like a dream, or a great strong stream through a mighty forest that is silent and shadowy and sweet with the smell of pine and of spices and costly gums.
Night was a delight, and the morning brought no sense of loneliness or of weariness. A labourer is weary of an evening. A man who toils vith his mind und makes battle with invisible things in the fields of anywhere that have not name or place to common men, is weary in the morning, and he goes forth among men to try to labour with them in order that he may rest. This man was resting now, perhaps, for the first time in his life. He took something more than a morbid interest in men, and men's affairs.
He called often at the palace on the Corso, and was always well received and most courteously treated by all. Once the fair woman, Annette, arose from the side of a most illustrious gentleman who was paying her court, and came and sat down by the side of the artist in her easy, careless way, and began again to talk of Titian as on the occasion of his first meeting with her at her palace.
This filled the goblet full. Murietta asked no more at the hand of man, woman, God.
And he had never yet whispered a word of love. It is just possible he had not thought of it; nay, it is very probable. He was satisfied: he was happy. This was his first great happiness. He had nothing more to ask. And then again, there might have been a dormant fear deep down in his heart, in that fathomless somewhere where action is born of instinct, a fear to break this charmed life that now enveloped him.
One thing is certain: he had not thought of marriage. This is remarkable, but it is very true. He was the least selfish of men, and did not often think of himself. Yet he could not have endured that another should wed her. He was willing to live and worship her as she was. He was perfectly satisfied — satisfied from instinct, not from reason. The truth is, he had not yet come to reason at all on this matter: he did not want to do that. The man was a dreamer. He had come upon the airy gates of a fairy land that he had long dreamed of and hoped for. The gates had swung open and he had entered, and found it even more delightful and full of peace than his imagination had pictured, and he was not yet ready or willing to take a foot rule in his hand and proceed to measure it off, and make calculations, and to count the chances of making it his own.
Once, on an evening when he had dropped in and found her all alone, save with her own family, which was a rare thing indeed, he saw her, while he sat talking with the old general, who looked serenely down at him from out his battle cloud, sitting apart and alone with her hands pushed out and drawn together in a passionate sort of a manner, her black and abundant hair as if it was ready to drop its great folds like midnight curtains about her shoulders, and her face half turned and looking back over her shoulder.
"Good heavens!" he said to himself, "that is just as I have painted her a hundred times!"
She was not looking at him; not looking at anything. There was nothing remarkable in it all, eave her remarkable beauty, outside of the very singular fact, that this was exactly the attitude and there was just the expression that he had so often painted despite his repeated efforts to paint her otherwise.
The old general drew back his face when he found he was no longer the object of the artist's interest that evening, and drifted away on his battle cloud into his land of dreams.
Without designing it, without even knowing it, the artist arose and passed overs other side, and stood before the beautiful lady as she sat there alone, dreaming and looking anywhere.
She lifted her dark sweeping lashes, smiled, made a place beside her with a movement of her hand, and without a word the artist sat beside her on the lounge.
I have spoiled a picture," he said at length.
She looked at him in a grand, still way, as if but half awake, as if it was hardly worth wliile to come back to earth, or to speak at all, or to do anything anymore this side of paradise.
"I spoiled a picture for the world, but I have it in my heart. Hung on the walls of memory, your face as I saw you now, as I sat there, shall remain as long as I shall love the beautiful," said he with earnest and honest enthusiasm.
She heard this awkward compliment as one who knew the man meant just what he said, and as one, the one perhaps, who had the good sense to not profess to be disturbed by it, or to consider place or nature in any respect.
"If you would only paint it," she said with a touch of earnestness.
"But I have painted it. I have painted it, the same face, position, expression, dress, all, exactly — "
The artist found he had risen suddenly, and was all flushed and excited as the silent and dreamy old general laid his hand upon his shoulder, and stood there as if to listen, or in a careless, and casual way take part in the conversation.
"I was just saying," continued Murietta, with some embarrassment, "I was just saying that I had spoiled a beautiful picture, when I came up and disturbed the lady — your daughter, just now."
"Ah! and I, 1 fear I may have spoiled something more than a picture by disturbing you," said the old general, as he quietly noted the artist's embarrassment, and then went back into his battle cloud and again drifted away, in body at least, and perhaps in spirit.
Murietta, conscious that he had said too much and been at least imprudent, sat down again beside the lady and was silent. But she was now too much interested to let the subject drop, and again began about the picture.
"And you really have painted a fancy sketch or something, with which you have associated my name?"
"Not your name, lady, your face," said he earnestly.
"And then you will let me see it?"
"Would you care to see it?"
"Would I care to see it? Do you not know that I am human? Nay, I am not only human, but I am also woman, and would take a woman's delight in looking at any picture that even resembles me, whether it was meant for me or not."
"This was meant for you, and for you only," said he thoughtfully.
"Then I shall see it tomorrow. You will send it to me tomorrow. Or shall I drive —"
"No, no, no," he answered excitedly. "Do not drive to my studio. I have no studio fit to receive you in. I am an idle looker on in Rome. I am not at
"But you have done this one picture in Rome?" I " In Rome, in Naples, in —"
The great eyes opened wide and wondering, and looked at the man inquiringly and earnestly.
"Ah, I understand you now," she said, "you have been at work at this picture some time, and did a part of it at Naples, and a part of it here."
The artist had never been schooled in the fashionable and accomplished art of lying. Here he had, without intending it, aroused the beautiful woman's curiosity, and he saw that it was not to be satisfied by an evasion. Should he tell her the truth, the whole blunt history? He was very much embarrassed. Had he had the least bit of cunning in him or design, he might have told with good effect just so much of it as served his purpose and no more, and then at once produced the picture, soiled and pierced as it was, with splendid and possibly telling effect.
But no, the man thought only of his secret, the secret of his love. He did not stop to reason. He could not have told why, but somehow he feared that she would be oflfended or annoyed by his confession of his love for her or an hundredth part of it. So much for the poor man's knowledge of woman. As if any woman could be offended at such a thing!
The situation was very embarrassing for him. He reached, pulled a blossom from a rhododendron, as if he had been walking in a forest, and began to pull it to pieces, while his eyes were fixed on the floor.
The lady laughed the quiet old Latin laugh, and reached her hand and took the blossom which he was tearing to pieces from out his fingers, and arranged the crumpled leaves, and held it carefully as if it had to her a value.
"Then I am to see this picture tomorrow? You will send it to me here?"
"But it is not finished. That is, it is not fit to be seen. It is soiled, it is cut and warped and —" He stopped suddenly. He saw that he was once more exciting a woman's curiosity.
"Why, how strange!" she exclaimed, holding up the little flowers and still arranging the torn leaves and petals, "what a fate and what a misfortune my picture has met with to be sure. You certainly have had no care for it, else it would not now be soiled and warped and wounded, and goodness knows what not! Come, you are to tell me of this picture."
"I entreat you, lady, not tonight. I am going now. I shall speak to your parents, and — and, I am gone."
He gave her his hand hastily, found her parents drinking tea together in a little flowery part of the paradise, and, not at all satisfied with himself, was about to pass through the door and into the hands of the black and ebon block of chiselled midnight, when Annette, standing where he passed by, sad —
"But you really have a picture painted here in Rome which you say resembles me as I sat yonder this evening?"
"It is an exact and perfect picture of you, if ever I drew a perfect picture or a straight line. It is equally true that the picture has a history, and true also that it is now not fit to be seen."
"And am I never to see this picture, which no doubt anyone, a stranger, a peasant, anyone passing, can drop in and see?"
"You are to see it. You shall see it if you will so honour me, and it shall be yours if you will receive it as a gift, but not till it is repaired and repainted."
"Well, I must practise patience, I suppose. But I shall count the days that lie between me and the time I am to receive it. But you are not to repaint it. That will spoil the interest, however much you may improve the picture. Promise me you will not retouch it. It is but a new work, and if it has been once finished let it remain just as it is. Promise me that."
"Yes, I promise you not to retouch it, save to cover up a scar in the breast."
"A scar in the breast!" The glorious eyes were again wide open with wonder.
"I implore you, do not push me to the wall. I am not gifted with the art of escaping from the responsibility of my own blunt statements. Please leave something of the story to the future."
"To the future it is," ahe laughed, as she again noticed his embarrassment. "Pretty stories will always keep, and, like good wine, be none the worse for it. But when am I to have the picture? Come, we will make a covenant. I do promise and agree, as the law has it, to not ask you for the little story that I am dying to know, till you are ready to tell it, on condition," and here she smiled and looked very knowing, "that you send me this picture within a given time."
"It is a covenant," he said, extending I his hand, "and I promise to send you the picture at the end of a month."!"At the end of a month!" she exclaimed "why, we shall be on Lake Como."
"And you are going to Como for the summer, and soon?"
"We are going to Como. We start soon but are going to travel slowly, take in the little towns on the Adriatic, the Republic of San Marino, and possibly Venice, and shall reach Como about the time everybody else leaves it, in July; and, to get back to a subject of interest, how am I to get my picture?"
"I will have this picture sent me at Como. I will also be at Como in July. I will take pleasure, an untold pleasure, in presenting it to you there, and telling you the whole story of its creation."
"How delightful! Would that it were July!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands.
"Delightful! you will be disappointed. But I shall keep the covenant. And now, good night; remember, we meet at Como."
There was a look of earnestness in her face as he passed out, sajdng to himself, "We meet at Como. Shall Como be my fiite — my Philippi? Well, well, I shall tell her the story of the picture there, and the story of the roses in her path, and then it may be our souls will stand together in the pure white light on the hills of God!"
"Take care of her, my Californian lion. Show your teeth, my friend, to any man who dares to hold an evil thought of her."He tapped the beast on the head, opened the negro's mouth and saw two perfect rows of teeth for a few francs, and went down the stairs full of hope and the future.
Start reading Chapter 45 ofThe One Fair Lady