Saxe Holm's Stories / First Series

by Helen Hunt Jackson

I ran down as fast as possible, but when I reached the spot she had fainted, and was utterly unconscious. She was alone; I could see no other human being in the Coliseum. The chanting monks had gone; even the beggars had not yet come. I tried in vain to rouse her. She had fallen so that the hot sun was beating full on her face. I dared not leave her there, for her first unconscious movement might be such that she would fall over the edge. But I saw that she must have shade and water, or die. Every instant she grew whiter and her lips looked more rigid. I shouted aloud, and only the echoes answered me, as if in mockery. A little lark suddenly flew out from a tuft of yellow wall-flower close by, and burst into a swift carol of delight as he soared away. At last, with great efforts, I succeeded in dragging her, by her feet--for I dared not venture out so far as the spot on which her head lay--to a safer place, and into the partial shade of a low bush. As I did this, one of her delicate hands was scratched and torn on the rough stones, and drops of blood came to the surface. In the other hand were crushed a few spikes of asphodel, the very flowers, no doubt, which had lured me so near the same dangerous brink. It seemed impossible to go away and leave her, but it was cruel to delay. My feet felt like lead as I ran along those dark galleries and down the stone flights of giddy stairs. Just in the entrance stood one of those pertinacious sellers of old coins and bits of marble. I threw down a piece of silver on his little stand, seized a small tin basin in which he had his choicest coins, emptied them on the ground, and saying, in my poor Italian, "Lady--ill--water," I had filled the basin at the old stone fountain near by, and was half way up the first flight of stairs again, before he knew what had happened.

When I reached the place where I had left the beautiful stranger she was not there. Unutterable horror seized me. Had I, after all, left her too near that crumbling edge? I groaned aloud and turned to run down. A feeble voice stopped me--a whisper rather than a voice, for there was hardly strength to speak,--

"Who is there?"

"Oh, thank God," I exclaimed, "you are not dead!" and I sprang to the next of the cross corridors, from which the sound had come.

She was there, sitting up, leaning against the wall. She looked almost more terrified than relieved when she saw me. I bathed her face and hands in the water, and told her how I had found her insensible, and had drawn her away from the outer edge before I had gone for the water. She did not speak for some moments, but looked at me earnestly and steadily, with tears standing in her large blue eyes.

Then she said, "I did not know that any one but myself ever came to the Coliseum so early. I thought I should die here alone; and Robert was not willing I should come."

"I owe you my life," she added, bursting into hysterical crying.

Then in a few moments she half laughed, as if at some droll thought, and said, "But how could you drag me? You are not nearly so big as I am. The angels must have helped you;" and holding up the poor crushed asphodels, she went on: "As soon as I came to myself, I saw the asphodels in my hand, and I said, 'Asphodel for burial;' and tried to throw them away, so that if Robert came he would not find me dead with them in my hand, for only yesterday he said to me, 'Please never pick an asphodel--I can't bear to see you touch one.'"

Slowly I soothed her and she recovered her color and strength. The owner of the basin, followed by a half-dozen chattering vetturini, had climbed up to us, but we had peremptorily sent them all away. It was evident that she was not seriously hurt. The terror, rather than the fall, had caused her fainting. It was probably a sudden dizziness which had come as she drew back and turned after picking the flowers. Had she fallen in the act of picking them she must have been dashed to the ground below. At the end of an hour she was so nearly well, that she walked slowly down the long stairs, leaning on my arm, and taking frequent rests by the way. I was about to beckon to one of the vetturini, when she said, "Oh no! my own carriage is near here, up by the gate of the Palace of the Cæsars. I rambled on, without thinking at first of coming to the Coliseum: it will do me good to walk back; every moment of the air makes me feel better."

So we went slowly on, up the solemn hill, arm in arm like friends, sitting down now and then on old fallen columns to rest, and looking back at the silent, majestic ruins, which were brightened almost into a look of life under the vivid sun. My companion spoke little; the reaction after her fearful shock had set in; but every few moments her beautiful eyes would fill with tears as she looked in my face and pressed my arm. I left her at her apartment on the Via Felice; my own was a mile farther on, in the Piazza del Popolo, and I would not let her drive so far.