Every tomorrow is an unread romance. When that tomorrow means farewells, journeys, new lands, faces, scenes, it has for us a singular interest, and takes hold of us and fills the mind with a concern akin to sorrow. No man goes upon a journey with out growing older.
The two friends parted, and soon the artist, full of thought and hopes and plans, was packing up his little store of luggage in his two little cells on the side of the Tarpeian Rock.
When all was done he rang and pulled until he had pulled one of the dark and shadowy little ladies into his presence. He gave her a seat and then proceeded to set the other chairs in a row beside her. They came, and how kind and beautiful they were, and how they did talk — all at once, and deplored the Bad separation as an event big with consequence.
Then the good old prince came shuffling in, with the air of a man who feels that he is no longer a creature without a place or a niche in the statuary of the world. He was just a little bit stiff, just a little bit better dressed, and only the least bit more the prince in his manner, from having his new shop on the Corso and his son in law, his openly acknowledged son in law, an officer in the army of regenerate Italy.
Then the count himself came in and sat down and talked in a kind and contented manner, just as if he never had been a member of the Brothers of the Altar, and just as if he never in his lile bad aspired to the hand of an American heiress while his own wife, a young and beautiful countess, lived in the very city and saw his face every day of his life, and even consented to his contemptible sin.
The cool composure of these people in their little games and villainies has no counterpart outside of the serene and even placid Chinaman.
And yet these people here, the old prince and his four daughters, were not only very delightful people, but they were really honest people at heart, and kind and affectionate.
They looked upon such practices for obtaining money as legitimate commercial enterprises, and when they failed they simply considered it a bad investment, and so sat down uncomplaining and undisturbed in conscience.
Such is the result of a religion where indolent monks are keepers of the consciences of the people, and where they are forgiven their sins for a price!
The artist was pleasantly disappointed when the prince did not, according to the custom of Italy, and France as well, bring in a long bill for damages to the apartments, and in consideration of this forbearance he left his carpets and the like to the four pretty ladies sitting in a row against the wall before him.
He rolled up his picture carefully, wrote the address and the directions, and sent it to a man cunning in such things, to be repaired and forwarded to him at Como.
The ladies gave him their hands and expressed their gratitude with a touch of tenderness in their mode and manner, and then in the prettiest Italian way possible turned and looked, and silently shed tears.
The count himself, petty villain as he was, really felt grateful and kindly towards the stranger as he took his extended hand, and promised if ever it was in his power to serve him he would certainly do so. The man had been conquered by kindness.
"I have already," began the count, as he held the hand of the artist, "I mean we have already," and here he looked at the pretty countesses who had now risen up and were standing in a line, "done you a very considerable favour, which now, that you are about to leave us and we may not meet again, you may as well know."
"I should be delighted to know one or two things, if you may tell me without too much hazard," answered the artist, half evading the proffered narration.
"And I shall be delighted to tell you, if possible."
"Well, then, who placed Giuseppe, the man who was once set apart to assassinate the king, and whom I have often seen with the old admiral, under the blue Madonna there, to watch me and my movements?"
The ladies looked at each other with horror and terror in every feature. The Italian officer turned pale, and fairly trem- bled till his sword rattled in its sheath. He did not open his lips, but looked down to the carpet in silence.
"Well, then," continued the artist, letting go the hand and stepping back, "I now understand you. You are the same villain as before. Your good fortune has not changed your nature. You are simply resting on your laurels, eating up the money the good and brave-hearted little Californian threw in the way of this family, and when that is finished, you will be spreading other nets. You will pardon me, my gentle count; you see, you have kept much of this from these gentle people here, who look up to you as a head and leader, and it is well enough that I remind you of your sins, and let them see what you have been doing, so that they may know what you are equal to."
The count bowed his head like a reed in a gale. He knew this would soon blow over, and he had no ambition to lift his limbs like an oak and provoke the storm to its full strength, or invoke martyrdom.
"You can serve me," the artist went on bitterly, "in still another way."
The count ventured to lift his eyes, and Murietta went on.
"I should like to know where the doctor is all this time, and what you have done with your companion, the bold Prince Trawaska. Yea, more, I should like to know what has become of my countrywoman, the Countess Edna, and to know what her disappearance, and the disappearance of the doctor and the prince " —
The count threw up his hands, as men do in the West, as a sign of surrender. The shot had gone to the heart. The count staggered back, and almost fell into the arms of the women.
"You will not answer? Well, I have no other favour, no other questions to ask you. But you must remember, count, that I understand you now perfectly, and you must also remember that the Saxons often smile at your petty villainies and the practices of your cunning people, rather than take the trouble to correct them."
The artist took up his hat, bowed to the ladies, looked at the luggage, said "Hotel Russe," and went down the narrow stone steps, down under the blue Madonna with the perpetual lamp at her feet, and then up the Via Montenare for the last time, and for the last time passed out from under the shadow of the Tarpeian Rock.
The good natured African swung the door of the palace very wide, as the artist entered to say farewell. And the good old general was good enough to drift a long way off, even to the other side of the great saloon, on his cloud of battle smoke, as he took her outstretched hand, when he said he had come to say goodbye.
Very beautifrd was she that night, and [undecipherable] sun and sununer weather. She talked of Titian, as they stood there, and of great men and of great artists, but never a word was said of the petty strifes of life, or of the little world around her. She was all that she had seemed to this man from tlie first. She was as great and, as good as she had first appeared, and as he had imagined her all the years that he had dreamed of her and pictured her before he knew she was yet upon the earth.
"You have not forgotten the picture you promised me?"
"Forgotten it! Lady, I have thought of little else, save of that picture and the original, since I last saw your face. Do not fear; the picture is yours. It is yours, and I have it in hand only to repair it."
"I shall expect it at Como."
"I promise you the picture is yours, and besides that it shall not be touched further than to repair a rent in the canvas. But in the meantime, would it be too much to ask you for a photograph?"
"Oh! And so you intend to paint me from a photograph?"
"There! You see what a simpleton, what a helpless, foolish fellow I am. Always and for ever being misunderstood, because I have not the cunning and the address of men of the world. Permit me to repeat that the picture, such as it is, is finished. I asked for a photograph as a token, a keepsake, something to call mine, and to remind me of this beautiful home and its more beautiful queen."
"I believe you entirely; and to convince you - here, I will give you a picture, a photograph taken in a dress representing the unhappy queen whose name I bear."
The lady so saying took up a pen, and drawing a large photograph from an album, she wrote in a bold, clear, hurried hand her name in full at the bottom of the picture, and on the reverse side the date and the city. Then she handed it to the artist, who took it eagerly, and turned it up to the light.
"Good heavens! It is just the picture that I have painted."
The artist said this with a wild earnestness that for a moment half frightened the beautiful woman. But soon recovering herself, she smiled and said, "You mean that it is exactly like the picture you intend to paint?"
"Lady, it is the picture that I have I painted. It is as I have always seen you, looking back at me, moving away, leaving; me, and not saying one word. there is meaning, there i5 mystery here I do not understand. I have a story to tell you. That picture has a story. Lady, once upon a time, on a mountain of fire above the sad sweet sea, in the land where Virgil sang and died, a man strewed roses in the path of his queen, and then turned away, and could not look upon her face, because he had worshipped her, and made her even as his God." The artist stopped, startled at his own utterances.
The dark eyes drooped down. There was a tinge of rose in the beautiful face,, and a hand reached out and laid hold of a blossom, and plucked it, and dropped it on the carpet, and its petals were red like dropping blood.
She did not answer. She did not look up or lift her eyes at all. The artist grew terrified. He was certain he had done a fearful wrong. He felt that he had ruined all that he had hoped for. "O, if she would only speak, or lift her eyes, or stir," he said to himself as he stood there listening to his heart, "but this is intolerable."
He was standing by the half open door. Still, she did not speak, or stir, or lift her eyes, but the fingers kept plucking the crimson flowers and dropping blood upon the carpet as if from some mortal wound.
The man glided through the door like a spirit, passed from the suffocating palace to the sultry street, holding a photograph tight in his hand, and on down the Corso to his hotel, where Carlton stood waiting him from the balcony over the street.
Start reading Chapter 47 ofThe One Fair Lady