He will reform tomorrow," said Carlton, laughing, and looking very knowingly at the artist in the dusk, as he came down and led him through the hall to his room. "Yes, my dear Murietta, you are a cunning dog; but I forgive you, and am certain that, like myself, you will reform tomorrow, if tomorrow ever comes."
"But I do not understand you," answered the puzzled artist.
"But you will understand, perhaps, when she explains. Oh, you still are in the dark? Well, to be brief with you, there is a lady, or rather a lady's maid, waiting for you in my parlour."
"A lady's maid waiting for me?"
"Go along, go along. You understand. Keep your own secrets, if you like. Only be sure you reform tomorrow," laughed Carlton, as he led up to his rooms and pushed open the door.
There she sat in the dark and under the curtains, like a frightened bird that had fluttered in through the window. It was the faithful maid of the Countess Edna.
"Come! her keeper is drunk and asleep! It is the first time she could send to you, or I could escape. Come at once; he may awake. There is a secret passage in from the porter's lodge; we can get in by that, for the admiral and count are on the great stairway, and watching all the other doors. Come, there is not a moment to lose."
The excited girl laid hold of the artist, and still trembling with fright and anxiety, attempted to pull him to the door, as if to hasten his departure.
At the door he met Carlton, who had left him for a moment, returning.
"Look here, Carlton," he said hurriedly, while the terrified maid kept looking wildly about, as if afraid she was followed and watcted, " I am going to the Countess Edna. Take this, there is trouble in the wind." The artist handed him his pistol.
"Well, I thought men as a rule buckled on their armour when there is trouble in the wind; but you, it seems, lay it off!"
"The countess haa sent for me, and there may be trouble. I know how grave and serious a thing it is to attempt to see her; but see her I will, and I wish to harm no one. I will be with you yet tonight, if I live."
"Good, my boy; go, and reform tomorrow!"
He waved his hand and went into his rooms, as the artist went out at the back gate, followed by the maid.
"Bah! that Murietta is a rake," said Carlton, as he lighted a cigar and, seating himself on the sofa, lifted his legs to the table, and began to blow a cloud to the ceiling.
They reached the coffin like lodge at the side of the great portal or arch of the palace, and handing the little man a roll of francs, the door immediately and very slyly opened; and then the little Roman soldier at his post opened a black door behind him, and making certain that he was not observed, led the two through into a dark, stony passage, when he lighted a coil of wax taper, such as is used in the passage of the catacombs, and beckoned them forward.
They ascended a narrow stairway, damp and heavy with the smell of the grave, and then made a long detour to the right. Here they stopped and listened. The little porter laid his ear to the wall, but could hear nothing. Then he laid it down to the floor, and arose satisfied that all was clear, and led up another stairway as dark and dismal as the first.
Here they listened again. Not a sound save the rats nibbling at some leathern objects lying about on the floor.
The porter opened this door cautiously, and the three stood in a damp, dark vault, where there were piled bags of what might have been either chestnuts or walnuts, or any other thing of the kind, to all appearances.
There were dozens of rats running over and around these bags, and as they ran something rattled over the floor and rolled at the feet of the artist. He stooped and picked it up. It was a cartridge.
The porter listened again, and then led on rapidly, without looking to the right or the left. There was a smell of death not to be mistaken. The maid shrank close up to the side of the porter, and the porter hastened to unfasten the door.
"Have you ever been in this place before?" asked the artist, taking the coil of wax from his hand, and turning back to the bags of cartridges.
"No, no, never before; and please the blessed Virgin, I will not come again, even though the countess gave me her palace. It smells!"
"Look here! stop! lift that cloak!" said the artist, holding the light over a dark object heaped up in the comer.
The porter shrank back against the maid, and the maid against the wall.
The artist pushed the cloak aside with his foot. There lay the half decayed skeleton of a man close against the bags of ammunition.
He looked at the two cowering figures before him. Then he put his finger to his lips. They made signs that they would be silent.
"Swear it. Lift up your right hands, and swear it in the presence of the dead."
They lifted up their hands, and he swore them in the name of the Madonna.
"Now, mark you this. Your own lives depend on your secrecy. Tell of this dead man, and the law will demand of you some account of how he came here."
The porter saw the position, and again promised the profoundest secrecy as they replaced the cloak and once more passed on.
They entered an outer camera, where a dim light was burning on a little table where were flasks and bottles of wine.
There was a bed in a comer of this room, and on this bed lay a man muttering in a drunken sleep.
Passing on cautiously and swiftly as possible through another door, they entered a very neat and comfortable saloon, where evidently the hand of woman was not wanting to set things in order,
Passing through this saloon, the maid tapped gently at a door, till a voice, soft and sweet and sad, bade her come.
The countess opened her great brown eyes, looked at the party a moment, and then sprang into the arms of Murietta and burst into tears. She seemed as if her heart would break, yet all the time tried to restrain herself, and tried to speak and make herself understood.
"Here! take this; take it, and at once! Put it on your finger, turn it under, so — so that they will not see it. Take it, for heaven's sake!" she cried, as he hesitated. "Take it!" and she took his hand and almost forced it on his finger.
"It is my dead brother's ring. Listen! You know he had that ring on his hand when he disappeared. He has never been heard of since. But I went among them last month. I went out among the drunken, brawling brigands, that fill my palace and keep me a prisoner here. And what do you think? I found them lying drunk and asleep, and that ring — that curious and rich ring, that was on my dead brother's hand when last I saw him — was on the finger of the dark old admiral. Hush! I took it off. They missed it next morning. And what did they do? They took my little boy and threatened to destroy him too, body and soul, if I dared dare to say one word."
"Gods I I should have brought my pistols!" hissed the artist.
"Are you unarmed? Then heaven help you! But my husband, the count, is not so bad. No, no; he is not bad. It is the terrible society to which he belongs; and he has not the strength or will to escape."
"And where are these wretches now?"
"Here in my palace. I dare not lift a finger, or say one word, or they will destroy my little boy, as they did my brother. And they tell me that if I do not give up this ring, I shall never be allowed to get out again, or to see a friend. You are the first Christian I have seen for a month!"
The lady's face was flushed and on fire with excitement and rage.
"And your husband, the count, will he endure all this?"
"Oh, I have exhausted all hope — every resource in that direction. He tells me these are his friends; he is my husband, and they must be made welcome; and when I plead for my liberty, and protest against this imprisonment, he simply says the ring is not mine, that I have no right to it, and that if I want to go out, I have only to give it up and go. I will not give it up to him. It is the death-warrant of that monster. We must keep it. Keep it, Murietta, with your life!"
"I will keep it. By heaven, I will keep it!"
"I know you will keep it, and keep my secret till it is time to reveal it. Listen to me," — she sank down on a pink sofa, in a heap of rose and pink robes — "1 said I had something to tell you. You grow tired of hearing me say it. Well, this is it. My husband, the count, belongs to a strange society. 1 do not know what it is. I know it is something terrible, and that its members meet here, and make my palace the headquarters of their crimes. [undecipherable] he was sworn into their [undecipherable] too young to understand, and that he cannot now leave it and live. Listen! This, all this, has been going on for years. We have been here five years. At first I stood it well. Then they began to take all the money I had, to plunge me in debt, to try to take my little boy into strange churches, and to teach him terrible things; and then, at last, I managed to get the truth to my brother. He came at once. They treated him with all the civility possible; but when he determined to take me out of Italy to my father, my husband protested, and they — the brigands — told him, that I should never leave Italy, for through me came the money that kept the order together. I could not, I would not, then reveal to the world the truth of things. I was proud of being a countess, and all the time hoped for the best, and believed I would yet get the count out of the country, and away from these evil men and — "
There was a noise in the room through which the little party had just entered, and the porter laid hold of the bolt and key.
[undecipherable] be brief," whispered the countess, lifting her hand towards the door. "My brother determined to take me away, and at once. We were to start the next day. He went out to ride on the Campagna. He had that ring on his finger. A man at the Porto Popolo told me he saw him return and enter Rome; but I — I never saw him any more. I enquired everywhere. They said I was crazy mad, that I never had a brother. And now, here, this is what you must do. I must have help. Take this ring — get it to my father in the States, and — "
"But your father is in Rome; he is in Rome, and at the Russe Hotel."
"In Rome? Do you say in Rome? Oh, do you say in Rome?" She fell upon her knees, and took the man's hand in hers, and held it to her lips, and covered it with tears.
"Then go to him at once. Take that ring. No. Yes; take the ring; but do not show it to him. He is old, and very frail. He would know the ring, for it was our mother's, and it might affect him too much. But take it and [undecipherable] here at once. Go now, for God's sake. I hear voices! Here this way! They are coining through the secret passage! Go — go by the grand saloon and down the broad steps. Bring my father. Tell the Consul. Christ! is there not, in all Papal Rome, one man to protect a woman?"
The artist hurried through the grand saloon — through a door — through a hall — through an outer door, and was then in the ante-camera, and moving across to the great door that opened upon the broad stairway, where he would be safe and free from the hands or daggers of those who were watching his movements.
"Stop there I I am a man who carries his heart in his hand. A rough but honest sailor; and now I want to know what in hell you are doing here!"
He struck his fist on a great side-board where lay a lot of old arms, and the arms bounded and rattled as if the house was coming down.
This seemed to be a sort of signal of distress, for men, headed by the count,
[undecipherable] all more or less intoxicated, came staggering in through a door that opened deeper into the palace to the left.
"Let me pass" cried the artist. "Let me pass, I say."
The count rushed up, and seized him by the throat.
"What are you?"
I The words were driven back down his throat by a blow from Murietta in his mouth, and he fell back, and then gathered strength, and came up to his work like a man really fighting for his rights; but only to be sent back again with severer punishment.
"Open that door!" cried the artist, advancing towards the admiral, who had placed his back against it.
The count was down; the other men had retreated, and the old admiral had no disposition to enter the lists with this infuriated man, whose hand was bleeding and dripping with blood from his own wounds and from the face of the count. The admiral preferred to fight with women, and therefore proceeded to open the door. "There now, begone!" he cried, as he swung it wide open, "and beware how you again enter the palace of a gentleman uninvited!"
"Look here, my grey headed murderer! Mark you here," answered Murietta, as he stood in the middle of the floor, and lifted his fist towards the admiral. "One word before I go. You profess to be a blunt and an honest man. I will also be plain with you. I go; but I return. This door is to be opened for me. I bring the father of the countess to her. You can be discreet. I bring the old man to his daughter, who you have been telling him all the time is insane. Now, will this door be opened to me or not?"
"Opened to you? Ha, ha!"
"Yes; opened to me. Since you seem to be the captain of the castle," said Murietta, now looking at the count, who stood leaning on the table and wiping the blood from his face as he listened to the parley, "I will make my terms of capitultion with you. Shall I find this door "I — he advanced towards and wagged his fist in his face, "or shall I enter by the secret passage, and take the police with me, and show them the dead man by the magazine with which you expect to blow the palace to the moon. Answer me, yes or no!"
"Yes, yes," gasped the admiral, as he sank against the wall. "Let us be friends. What is the use?"
The artist was gone.
He found the father at the Hotel Russe, a little frail old man, with a beard white as snow.
"Your daughter, the Countess Edna, wants to see you. You are to come to her at once. I have just left her side, and she sends me to you to tell you to come to her as soon as possible."
"But my daughter is my daughter has my daughter cannot see me. I have been waiting and waiting. I have just come from the palace. The good old admiral, who is on watch, tells me that she is even worse."
"But you are to come," cried the eager and impulsive artist, "and to come at once. Only come and see; that will not take you long."
"Yes, yes, yes; that is quite true. I will go. I will go with you, Mr. — Mr. — "
"Murietta," said the artist.
"Murietta! Heaven help me! Is it you who have the audacity to come to me — you who have blighted my daughter's name, and driven her to madness? No, no. Get out of my sight! Do not speak to me!"
"But will you not go with me? Will you not go and see? Men have been telling lies. Come, I will prove to you that they have lied."
"No, no. Go, go. Will you not get out of my sight? Oh, that my son were alive that he might chastise you for your crime and your audacity!"
"Your son!" The artist thought of the dead man's ring. "Your daughter has just been speaking of your son. She has just received a ring — a ring he wore when last she saw him; and fearing you might be deterred from coming with me — a stranger - she bade me show it you, if that [undecipherable] necessary, to convince you of the message. See!"
[undecipherable] glittering jewel up on his forefinger before the old man's eyes under the lamp in the hall.
"It is — it is true! It is his! I had a dream. You will forgive me," he said, offering his hand. "I had a dream, and now my dream is coming true. Lead on — lead on — bring me to my child!"
"Double fare, and a fast drive," said the artist to the driver, as they entered a carriage at the door.
True to the old admiral's promise, he stood at the door, and it opened without a word.
"She has suddenly recovered her mind," he whispered to the old man, her father; "but still has strange illusions that you must not contradict or interfere with at all. That will make her worse."
They stood before the parlour door, which opened with some delay.
The countess lay exhausted upon her sofa. The excitement of the half hour with the artist had broken her down, for she was a weakly and over-nervous woman, and could not endure such tension of the mind long at a time.
To the dismay and disgust of Murietta, in the door opposite stood the sleek, cunning Giuseppe, and by the side of the countess stood the narrow browed doctor we have seen at the little cell by the Tarpeian Rock. Over in a corner sat the count, with his head bandaged, and his eyes closed from the frightful blow in his face. The ring had cut him like a lance.
The lady saw her father, and rising slowly, and with an air of authority, she waved the two villains out, or attempted to wave them out of the room. They retreated but a few steps, and still lingered.
"Are you the mistress here, or am I?" Then turning quietly to her father, she said, "You see, father, these men constitute themselves my keepers. I am a prisoner, and my husband is powerless to help me!" Then she put her arms about his neck and kissed him, and cried as if her baby heart would break, and she should never cease to weep.
At last she lifted her head, and the two keepers were gone. The count still sat there [undecipherable] and helpless and silent.
"And now you will never never leave me!" she said, as she still held on to her father as if she had been a child. "And now we can go all together and get away from this dreadful nightmare and the terrible men that have fastened upon the count!"
"No, no, I will never leave my child," said the feeble old man as he sank into a seat, "never part with my wayward little daughter, who would wed a stranger and in a strange land, anymore. No, no, we can all go home together as you say, and be glad and content again. Come count, my son! see, we are all right now. We can go tomorrow, for it is killing me in Rome."
"Tomorrow, let it be tomorrow!" cried the countess clasping her hands. "Do, do let it be tomorrow. Leave the palace, leave it all. It is haunted. There is a skeleton in the house."
The count started up and staggered towards the door as he tore the bandages from his face.
"Poor, poor count, and what is the matter now with, his face?" said the old man to the countess.
She looked up towards the door, saw the count passing out, and Murietta before him.
"Stand aside, Mr. Murietta! stand back, and let the count, my husband, pass! Why did you lift your hand against my husband? Was there no one else for you to lay your heavy blows upon? Is it thus that you would assist a lady in distress?"
"Lady," said the man sadly, as he drew a ring from his finger, "I leave you with your father and your husband. I am very sorry I raised my hand against the count. I see I am again misunderstood. But now you are safe, and I go. Goodbye, and God bless you!" He handed the ring to the old man as he said this, and hastened away. She did not call him back or say one word.
"Yes," he said, as he reached the street, "Carlton was right. I know nothing whatever about women, and very little indeed about men."
There was a dog crossing before him as he turned a corner, and he drew back his foot and kicked it with all his might.
"No matter." he said, as he climbed the [undecipherable] and found his friend Carlton. "No matter, I have done my duty to the living, and nothing ever helps the dead. I do not see what else remains or what I have to complain of. The old man will now care for his daughter and ..."
The artist thought a long time over what he had seen in the secret passage, and then said to himself, "Some day there will be a devil of an explosion in that palace, and the Papists will say it's the king's party trying to blow up good Catholics, and the Government will say it is the Pope trying to reestablish his tottered throne, while in truth it will be but a nest of brigands trying to conceal their crimes!"
The friends parted for the night very soon, for they had to be up with the sun on their way to Venice.
"We will reform tomorrow," said Carlton, laughing and looking back over his shoulder as he retired to his bed room, for he did not yet know anything that had transpired that evening at the palace.
How wide awake the day was that morning, as the two friends drove to the station for the four o'clock train. Italy was bathing her morning face in a golden shower of sunlight.
The artist thought only of Annette as they whirled through the ruins, and out and under the walls away towards the Alps pointing toward Como.
"Rome is the earth, the centre of the earth, but Como shall be my heaven," and the artist raised his hand in an eternal farewell to the Eternal City, as Carlton drew forth a red-backed book and began to read aloud of gondolas and palaces, and of "The Bridge of Sighs."
Start reading Chapter 48 ofThe One Fair Lady