[Illustration]
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
DEAR ENEMY
DADDY LONG LEGS
JUST PATTY
PATTY AND PRISCILLA
THE FOUR POOLS MYSTERY
JERRY
MUCH ADO ABOUT PETER
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
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THE
WHEAT PRINCESS
By
JEAN WEBSTER
Author of ‘Daddy Long Legs,’ ‘Just Patty,’ ‘Dear Enemy’
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
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O. HENRY
“The time is coming, let us hope, when the whole
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PROLOGUE
IF you leave the city by the Porta Maggiore and take the Via
Prænestina, which leads east into the Sabine hills, at some thirty-six
kilometers’ distance from Rome you will pass on your left a grey-walled
village climbing up the hillside. This is Palestrina, the old Roman
Præneste; and a short distance beyond—also on the left—you will find
branching off from the straight Roman highway a steep mountain road,
which, if you stick to it long enough, will take you, after many
windings, to Castel Madama and Tivoli.
Several kilometers along this road you will see shooting up from a bare
crag above you a little stone hamlet crowned by the ruins of a
mediaeval fortress. The town—Castel Vivalanti—was built in the days
when a stronghold was more to be thought of than a water-supply, and
its people, from habit or love, or perhaps sheer necessity, have lived
on there ever since, going down in the morning to their work in the
plain and toiling up at night to their homes on the hill. So steep is
its site that the doorway of one house looks down on the roof of the
house below, and its narrow stone streets are in reality flights of
stairs. The only approach is from the front, by a road which winds and
unwinds like a serpent and leads at last to the Porta della Luna,
through which all of the traffic enters the town. The gate is
ornamented with the crest of the Vivalanti—a phoenix rising out of the
flame, supported by a heavy machicolated top, from which, in the old
days, stones and burning oil might be dropped upon the heads of the
unwelcome guests.
The town is a picturesque little affair—it would be hard to find a
place more so in the Sabine villages, it is very, very poor. In the
march of the centuries it has fallen out of step and been left far
behind; to look at it, one would scarcely dream that on the clear days
the walls and towers of modern Rome are in sight on the horizon. But in
its time Castel Vivalanti was not insignificant. This little hamlet has
entertained history within its walls. It has bodily outfaced robber
barons and papal troops. It has been besieged and conquered, and, alas,
betrayed—and that by its own prince. Twice has it been razed to the
ground and twice rebuilt. In one way or another, though, it has
weathered the centuries, and it stands to-day grey and forlorn,
clustering about the walls of its donjon and keep.
Castel Vivalanti, as in the middle ages, still gives the title to a
Roman prince. The house of Vivalanti was powerful in its day, and the
princes may often be met with—not always to their credit—in the
history of the Papal States. They were oftener at war than at peace
with the holy see, and there is the story of one pope who spent four
weary months watching the view from a very small window in Vivalanti’s
donjon. But, in spite of their unholy quarrels, they were at times
devout enough, and twice a cardinal’s hat has been worn in the family.
The house of late years has dwindled somewhat, both in fortune and
importance; but, nevertheless, Vivalanti is a name which is still
spoken with respect among the old nobles of Rome.
The lower slopes of the hill on which the village stands are well
wooded and green with stone-pines and cypresses, olive orchards and
vineyards. Here the princes built their villas when the wars with the
popes were safely at an end and they could risk coming down from their
stronghold on the mountain. The old villa was built about a mile below
the town, and the gardens were laid out in terraces and parterres along
the slope of the hill. It has long been in ruin, but its foundations
still stand, and the plan of the gardens may easily be traced. You will
see the entrance at the left of the road—a massive stone gateway
topped with moss-covered urns and a double row of cone-shaped cypresses
bordering a once stately avenue now grown over with weeds. If you pause
for a moment—and you cannot help doing so—you will see, between the
portals at the end of the avenue, some crumbling arches, and even, if
your eyes are good, the fountain itself.
Any contadino that you meet on the road will tell you the story of the
old Villa Vivalanti and the ‘Bad Prince’ who was (by the grace of God)
murdered two centuries ago. He will tell you—a story not uncommon in
Italy—of storehouses bursting with grain while the peasants were
starving, and of how, one moonlight night, as the prince was strolling
on the terrace contentedly pondering his wickednesses of the day, a
peasant from his own village up on the mountain, creeping behind him,
quiet as a cat, stabbed him in the back and dropped his body in the
fountain. He will tell you how the light from the burning villa was
seen as far as Rocca di Papa in the Alban hills; and he will add, with
a laugh and a shrug, that some people say when the moon is full the old
prince comes back and sits on the edge of the fountain and thinks of
his sins, but that, for himself, he thinks it an old woman’s tale.
Whereupon he will cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the dark
shadow of the cypresses and covertly cross himself as he wishes you,
‘_A revederla_.’
You cannot wonder that the young prince (two centuries ago) did not
build his new villa on the site of the old; for even had he, like the
brave contadino, cared nothing for ghosts, still it was scarcely a
hallowed spot, and lovers would not care to stroll by the fountain. So
it happens that you must travel some distance further along the same
road before you reach the gates of the new villa, built anno domini
1693, in the pontificate of his Holiness Innocent XII. Here you will
find no gloomy cypresses: the approach is bordered by spreading
plane-trees. The villa itself is a rambling affair, and, though
slightly time-worn, is still decidedly imposing, with its various
wings, its balconies and loggia and marble terrace.
The new villa—for such one must call it—faces west and north. On the
west it looks down over olive orchards and vineyards to the Roman
Campagna, with the dome of St. Peter’s a white speck in the distance,
and, beyond it, to a narrow, shining ribbon of sea. On the north it
looks up to the Sabine mountains, with the height of Soracte rising
like an island on the horizon. For the rest, it is surrounded by laurel
and ilex groves with long shady walks and leafy arbors, with fountains
and cascades and broken statues all laid out in the stately formality
of the seventeenth century. But the trees are no longer so carefully
trimmed as they were a century ago; the sun rarely shines in these
green alleys, and the nightingales sing all day. Through every season,
but especially in the springtime, the garden-borders are glowing with
colour. Hedges of roses, oleanders and golden laburnum, scarlet
pomegranate blossoms and red and white camellias, marguerites and
lilies and purple irises, bloom together in flaming profusion. And
twice a year, in the spring and the autumn, the soft yellow walls of
the villa are covered with lavender wistaria and pink climbing roses,
and every breeze is filled with their fragrance.
It is a spot in which to dream of old Italy, of cardinals and pages and
gorgeous lackeys, of gallant courtiers and beautiful ladies, of Romeos
and Juliets trailing back and forth over the marble terrace and making
love under the Italian moon. But if there have been lovers, as is
doubtless the case, there have also been haters among the Vivalanti,
and you may read of more than one prince murdered by hands other than
those of his peasants. The walls of the new villa, in the course of
their two hundred years, have looked down on their full share of
tragedies, and the Vivalanti annals are grim reading withal.
And now, having pursued the Vivalanti so far, you may possibly be
disappointed to hear that the story has nothing to do with them. But if
you are interested in learning more of the family you can find his
Excellency Anastasio di Vivalanti, the present prince and the last of
the line, any afternoon during the season in the casino at Monte Carlo.
He is a slight young man with a dark, sallow face and many fine lines
under his eyes.
Then why, you may ask, if we are not concerned with the Vivalanti, have
we lingered so long in their garden? Ah—but the garden does concern
us, though the young prince may not; and it is a pleasant spot, you
must acknowledge, in which to linger. The people with whom we are
concerned are (I hesitate to say it for fear of destroying the glamour)
an American family. Yes, it is best to confess it boldly—are American
millionaires. It is out—the worst is told! But why, may I ask in my
turn, is there anything so inherently distressing in the idea of an
American family (of millionaires) spending the summer in a
seventeenth-century Italian villa up in the Sabine hills—especially
when the rightful heir prefers _trente-et-un_ at Monte Carlo? Must they
of necessity spoil the romance? They are human, and have their passions
like the rest of us; and one of them at least is young, and men have
called her beautiful—yes, in this very garden.
CHAPTER I
IT was late and the studio was already well filled when two new-comers
were ushered into the room—one a woman still almost young, and still
(in a kindly light) beautiful; the other a girl emphatically young, her
youth riding triumphant over other qualities which in a few years would
become significant. A slight, almost portentous, hush had fallen over
the room as they crossed the threshold and shook hands with their host.
In a group near the door a young man—it was Laurence Sybert, the first
secretary of the American Embassy—broke off in the middle of a
sentence with the ejaculation: ‘Ah, the Wheat Princess!’
‘Be careful, Sybert! She will hear you,’ the grey-haired
consul-general, who stood at his elbow, warned.
Sybert responded with a laugh and a half-shrug; but his tones, though
low, had carried, and the girl flashed upon the group a pair of vivid
hazel eyes containing a half-puzzled, half-questioning light, as though
she had caught the words but not the meaning. Her vague expression
changed to one of recognition; she nodded to the two diplomats as she
turned away to welcome a delegation of young lieutenants, brilliant in
blue and gold and shining boots.
‘Who is she?’ another member of the group inquired as he adjusted a
pair of eye-glasses and turned to scrutinize the American girl—she was
American to the most casual observer, from the piquant details of her
gown to the masterly fashion in which she handled her four young men.
‘Don’t you know?’ There was just a touch of irony in Sybert’s tone.
‘Miss Marcia Copley, the daughter of the American Wheat King—I fancy
you’ve seen his name mentioned in the papers.’
‘Well, well! And so that’s Willard Copley’s daughter?’ He readjusted
his glasses and examined her again from this new point of view. ‘She
isn’t bad-looking,’ was his comment. ‘The Wheat Princess!’ He repeated
the phrase with a laugh. ‘I suppose she has come over to marry an
Italian prince and make the title good?’
The originator of the phrase shrugged anew, with the intimation that it
was nothing to him who Miss Marcia Copley married.
‘And who is the lady with her?’
It was Melville, the consul-general, who replied.
‘Her aunt, Mrs. Howard Copley. They live in the Palazzo Rosicorelli.’
‘Ah, to be sure! Yes, yes, I know who they are. Her husband’s a
reformer or a philanthropist, or something of the sort, isn’t he? I’ve
seen him at the meets. I say, you know,’ he added, with an appreciative
smile, ‘that’s rather good, the way the two brothers balance each
other. Philanthropist and Wheat King!’
An English girl in the group turned and studied the American girl a
moment with a critical scrutiny. Marcia Copley’s appearance was
daintily attractive. Her hat and gown and furs were a burnished brown
exactly the colour of her hair; every little accessory of her dress was
unobtrusively fastidious. Her whole bearing, her easy social grace,
spoke of a past in which the way had been always smoothed by money. She
carried with her a touch of imperiousness, a large air of commanding
the world. The English girl noted these things with jealous feminine
eyes.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘I don’t see how she has the audacity to face
people. I should think that every beggar in the street would be a
reproach to her.’
‘There were beggars in Italy long before Willard Copley cornered
wheat,’ Melville returned.
‘If what the _Tribuna_ says is true,’ some one ventured, ‘Howard Copley
is as much implicated as his brother.’
‘I dare say,’ another laughed; ‘millionaire philanthropists have a way
of taking back with the left hand what they have given with the right.’
Sybert had been listening in a half-indifferent fashion to the
strictures on the niece, but in response to the implied criticism of
the uncle he shook his head emphatically.
‘Howard Copley is no more implicated in the deal than I am,’ he
declared. ‘He and his brother have had nothing to do with each other
for the last ten years. His philanthropy is honest, and his money is as
clean as any fortune can be.’
The statement was not challenged. Sybert was known to be Howard
Copley’s friend, and he further carried the reputation of being a warm
partizan on the one or two subjects which engaged his enthusiasm—on
those which did not engage it he was nonchalant to a degree for a
rising diplomat.
The two—Sybert and the consul-general—with a nod to the group
presently drifted onward toward the door. The secretary was bent upon
departure at the earliest possible opportunity. Teas were a part of the
official routine of his life, but by the simple device of coming late
and leaving early he escaped as much of their irksomeness as possible.
Aside from being secretary of the Embassy, Sybert was a nephew of the
ambassador, and it was the latter calling which he found the more
onerous burden of the two. His Excellency had formed a troublesome
habit of shifting social burdens to the unwilling shoulders of the
younger man.
They paused at Mrs. Copley’s elbow with outstretched hands, and were
received with a flattering show of cordiality from the aunt, though
with but a fleeting nod from the niece; she was, patently, too
interested in her officers to have much attention left.
‘Where is your husband?’ Sybert asked.
The lady raised her eyebrows in a picturesque gesture.
‘Beggars,’ she sighed. ‘Something has happened to the beggars again.’
Mr. Copley’s latest philanthropic venture had been the ‘Anti-Begging
Society.’ Bread-tickets had been introduced, the beggars were being
hunted down and given work, and as a result Copley’s name was cursed
from end to end of Rome.
The men smilingly murmured their commiserations.
‘And what are you two diplomats doing here?’ Mrs. Copley asked. ‘I
thought that Mr. Dessart invited only artists to his teas.’
Sybert’s gloomy air, as he eyed the door, reflected the question. It
was Melville who answered:
‘Oh, we are admirers of art, even if we are not practitioners. Besides,
Mr. Dessart and I are old friends. We used to know each other in
Pittsburg when he was a boy and I was a good deal younger than I am
now.’
His gaze rested for a moment upon their host, who formed one of the
hilarious group about Miss Copley. He was an eminently picturesque
young fellow, fitted with the usual artist attributes—a velveteen
jacket, a flowing necktie, and rather long light-brown hair which
constantly got into his eyes, causing him to shake his head impatiently
as he talked. He had an open, frank face, humorous blue eyes and the
inestimable, eager air of being in love with life.
The conversation showing signs of becoming general, the officers, with
visible reluctance, made their bows and gave place to the new-comers.
The girl now found time to extend a cordial hand to Melville, while to
the secretary she tossed a markedly careless, ‘Good afternoon, Mr.
Sybert.’ If Miss Marcia’s offhand manner conveyed something a trifle
stronger than indifference, so Sybert’s half-amused smile as he talked
to her suggested that her unkindness failed to hurt; that she was too
young to count.
‘And what is this I hear about your moving out to a villa for the
spring?’ he inquired, turning to Mrs. Copley.
‘Yes, we are thinking of it, but it is not decided yet.’
‘We still have Uncle Howard to deal with,’ added the girl. ‘He was the
first one who suggested a villa, but now that exactly the right one
presents itself, we very much suspect him of trying to back out.’
‘That will never do, Miss Marcia,’ said Melville. ‘You must hold him to
his word.’
‘We are going out to-morrow to inspect it, and if Aunt Katherine and I
are pleased——’ She broke off with a graceful gesture which intimated
much.
Sybert laughed. ‘Poor Uncle Howard!’ he murmured.
The arrival of fresh guests called their host away, and Mrs. Copley and
Melville, turning aside to greet some friends, left Miss Copley for the
moment to a _tête à tête_ with Sybert. He maintained his side of the
conversation in a half-perfunctory fashion, while the girl allowed a
slight touch of hostility to creep beneath her animation.
‘And where is the villa to be, Miss Marcia—at Frascati, I suppose?’
‘Farther away than Frascati; at Castel Vivalanti.’
‘Castel Vivalanti!’
‘Up in the Sabine hills between Palestrina and Tivoli.’
‘Oh, I know where it is; I have a vivid recollection of climbing the
hill on a very hot day. I was merely exclaiming at the locality; it’s
rather remote, isn’t it?’
‘Its remoteness is the best thing about it. Our object in moving into
the hills is to escape from visitors, and if we go no farther than
Frascati we shan’t do much escaping.’
This to the family’s most frequent visitor was scarcely a hospitable
speech, and a smile of amusement crept to the corners of Sybert’s mouth.
Apparently just becoming aware of the content of her speech, she added
with slightly exaggerated sweetness: ‘Of course I don’t mean you, Mr.
Sybert. You come so often that I regard you as a member of the
household.’
The secretary apparently had it on his tongue to retort, but, thinking
better of it, he maintained a discreet silence, while their host
approached with the new arrivals—a lady whose name Miss Copley did not
catch, but who was presented with the explanatory remark, ‘she writes,’
and several young men who, she judged by their neckties, were artists
also. The talk turned on the villa again, and Miss Copley was called
upon for a description.
‘I haven’t seen it myself,’ she returned; ‘but from the steward’s
account it is the most complete villa in Italy. It has a laurel walk
and an ilex grove, balconies, fountains, a marble terrace, a view, and
even a ghost.’
‘A ghost?’ queried Dessart. ‘But I thought they were extinct—that the
railroads and tourists had driven them all back to the grave.’
‘Not the ghost of the “Bad Prince”; we rent him with the place—and the
most picturesque ghost you ever dreamed of! He hoarded his wheat while
the peasants were starving, and they murdered him two hundred years
ago.’ She repeated the story, mimicking in inimitable fashion the
gestures and broken English of Prince Vivalanti’s steward.
A somewhat startled silence hung over the close of the recital, while
her auditors glanced at each other in secret amazement. The question
uppermost in their minds was whether it was ignorance or mere bravado
that had tempted her into repeating just that particular tale. It was a
subject which Miss Copley might have been expected to avoid. Laurence
Sybert alone was aware that she did not know what a dangerous topic she
was venturing on, and he received the performance with an appreciative
laugh.
‘A very picturesque story, Miss Copley. The old fellow got what he
deserved.’
Marcia Copley assented with a smiling gesture, and the woman who wrote
skilfully bridged over a second pause.
‘You were complaining the other day, Mr. Dessart, that the foreigners
are making the Italians too modern. Why do you not catch the ghost? He
is surely a true antique.’
‘But I am not an impressionist,’ he pleaded.
‘Who is saying anything against impressionists?’ a young man asked in
somewhat halting English as he paused beside the group.
‘No one,’ said Dessart; ‘I was merely disclaiming all knowledge of them
and their ways. Miss Copley, allow me to present Monsieur Benoit, the
last _Prix de Rome_—he is the man to paint your ghost. He’s an
impressionist and paints nothing else.’
‘I suppose you have ghosts enough in the Villa Medici, without having
to search for them in the Sabine hills.’
‘Ah, _oui_, mademoiselle; the Villa Medici has ghosts of many
kinds—ghosts of dead hopes and dead ambitions among others.’
‘I should think the ghost of a dead ambition might be too illusive for
even an impressionist to catch,’ she returned.
‘Perhaps an impressionist is better acquainted with them than with
anything else,’ suggested Dessart, a trifle unkindly.
‘Not when he’s young and a _Prix de Rome_,’ smiled the woman who wrote.
Mrs. Copley requiring her niece’s presence on the other side of the
room, the girl nodded to the group and withdrew. The writer looked
after her with an air of puzzled interest.
‘And doesn’t Miss Copley read the papers?’ she inquired mildly.
‘Evidently she does not,’ Sybert rejoined with a laugh as he made his
adieus and withdrew.
---------------------
Half an hour later, Marcia Copley, having made the rounds of the room,
again found herself, as tea was being served, in the neighbourhood of
her new acquaintance. She dropped down on the divan beside her with a
slight feeling of relief at being for the moment out of the current of
chatter. Her companion was a vivacious little woman approaching middle
age; and though she spoke perfect English, she pronounced her words
with a precision which suggested a foreign birth. Her conversation was
diverting; it gave evidence of a vast amount of worldly wisdom as well
as a wide acquaintance with other people’s affairs. And her range of
subjects was wide. She flitted lightly from an artistic estimate of
some intaglios of the Augustan age, that had just been dug up outside
the Porta Pia, to a comparison of French and Italian dressmakers and a
prophecy as to which cardinal would be the next pope.
A portfolio of sketches lay on a little stand beside them, and she
presently drew them toward her, with the remark, ‘We will see how our
young man has been amusing himself lately!’
There were a half-dozen or so of wash-drawings, and one or two outline
sketches of figures in red chalk. None of them was at all finished, but
the hasty blocking in showed considerable vigour, and the subjects were
at least original. There was no Castle of St. Angelo with a boatman in
the foreground, and no Temple of Vesta set off by a line of scarlet
seminarists. One of the chalk drawings was of an old chestnut woman
crouched over her charcoal fire; another was of the _octroi_ officer
under the tall arch of the San Giovanni gate, prodding the contents of
a donkey-cart with his steel rod. There were corners of wall shaded by
cypresses, bits of architectural adornment, a quick sketch of the
lichen-covered elephant’s head spouting water at Villa Madama. They
all, slight as they were, possessed a certain distinction, and
suggested a very real impression of Roman atmosphere. Marcia examined
them with interest.
‘They are extremely good,’ she said as she laid the last one down.
‘Yes,’ her companion agreed; ‘they are so good that they ought to be
better—but they never will be.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I know Paul Dessart well enough to know that he will never paint a
picture. He has talent, and he’s clever, but he’s at everybody’s
service. The workers have no time to be polite. However,’ she finished,
‘it is not for you and me to quarrel with him. If he set to work in
earnest he would stop giving teas, and that would be a pity, would it
not?’
‘Indeed it would!’ she agreed. ‘How pretty the studio looks this
afternoon! I have seen it only by daylight before, and, like all the
rest of us, it improves by candle-light.’ Her eyes wandered about the
big room, with its furnishings of threadbare tapestry and antique
carved chairs. The heavy curtains had been partly drawn over the
windows, making a pleasant twilight within. A subtle odour of linseed
oil and cigarette smoke, mingled with the fresh scent of violets,
pervaded the air.
Paul Dessart, with the _Prix de Rome_ man and a young English sculptor
of rising fame, presently joined them; and the talk drifted into Roman
politics—a subject concerning which, the artists declared with one
accord, they knew nothing and cared less.
‘Oh, I used to get excited over their squabbles,’ said the Englishman;
‘but I soon saw that I should have to choose between that and
sculpture; I hadn’t time for both.’
‘I don’t even know who’s premier,’ put in Dessart.
‘A disgraceful lack of interest!’ maintained the American girl. ‘I have
only been in Rome two months, and I am an authority on the Triple
Alliance and the Abyssinian war; I know what Cavour wanted to do, and
what Crispi has done.’
‘That’s not fair, Miss Copley,’ Dessart objected. ‘You’ve been going to
functions at the Embassy, and one can absorb politics there through
one’s skin. But I warn you, it isn’t a safe subject to get interested
in; it becomes a disease, like the opium habit.’
‘He’s not so far from the truth,’ agreed the sculptor. ‘I was talking
to a fellow this afternoon, named Sybert, who—perhaps you know him,
Miss Copley?’
‘Yes, I know him. What about him?’
‘Oh—er—nothing, in that case.’
‘Pray slander Mr. Sybert if you wish—I’ll promise not to tell. He’s
one of my uncle’s friends, not one of mine.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t going to slander him,’ the young man expostulated a
trifle sheepishly. ‘The only thing I have against Sybert is the fact
that my conversation bores him.’
Marcia laughed with a certain sense of fellow-feeling.
‘Say anything you please,’ she repeated cordially. ‘My conversation
bores him too.’
‘Well, what I was going to say is that he has had about all the Roman
politics that are good for him. If he doesn’t look out, he’ll be
getting in too deep.’
‘Too deep?’ she queried.
It was Dessart who pursued the subject with just a touch of malice.
Laurence Sybert, apparently, was not so popular a person as a diplomat
should be.
‘He’s lived in Rome a good many years, and people are beginning to
wonder what he’s up to. The Embassy does very well for a blind, for he
doesn’t take any more interest in it than he does in whether or not
Tammany runs New York. All that Sybert knows anything about or cares
anything about is Italian politics, and there are some who think that
he knows a good sight more about them than he ought. He’s in with the
Church party, in with the Government—first friends with the Right, and
then with the Left.’
‘Monsieur Sybert is what you call an eclectic,’ suggested Benoit. ‘He
chooses the best of each.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Dessart hinted darkly. ‘He’s interested in
other factions besides the Vatican and the Quirinal. There are one or
two pretty anarchistic societies in Rome, and I’ve heard it
whispered——’
‘You don’t mean——’ she asked, with wide-open eyes.
The woman who wrote shook her head, with a laugh. ‘I suspect that Mr.
Sybert’s long residence in Rome might be reduced to a simpler formula
than that. It was a very wise person who first said, “_Cherchez la
femme_.”’
‘Oh, really?’ said Marcia, with a new note of interest. Laurence Sybert
was not a man whom she had ever credited with having emotions, and the
suggestion came as a surprise.
‘Rumour says that he still takes a very strong interest in the pretty
little Contessa Torrenieri. All I know is that nine or ten years ago,
when she was Margarita Carretti, he was openly among her admirers; but
she naturally preferred a count—or at least her parents did, which in
Italy amounts to the same.’
The girl’s eyes opened still wider; the Contessa Torrenieri was also a
frequent guest at the palazzo. But Dessart received the suggestion with
a very sceptical smile.
‘And you think that he is only waiting until, in the ripeness of time,
old Count Torrenieri goes the way of all counts? I know you are the
authority on gossip, madame, but, nevertheless, I doubt very much if
that is Laurence Sybert’s trouble.’
‘You don’t really mean that he is an anarchist?’ Marcia demanded.
‘I give him up, Miss Copley.’ The young man shrugged his shoulders and
spread out his hands in a gesture purely Italian.
‘Are you talking politics?’ asked Mrs. Copley as she joined the group
in company with Mr. and Mrs. Melville.
‘Always politics,’ laughed her niece—‘or is it Mr. Sybert now?’
‘They’re practically interchangeable,’ said Dessart.
‘And did I hear you calling him an anarchist, Miss Marcia?’ Melville
demanded.
She repudiated the charge with a laugh. ‘I’m afraid Mr. Dessart’s the
guilty one.’
‘Here, here! that will never do! Sybert’s a special friend of mine. I
can’t allow you to be accusing him of anything like that.’
‘A little applied anarchy wouldn’t be out of place,’ the young man
returned. ‘I feel tempted to use some dynamite myself when I see the
way this precious government is scattering statues of Victor Emmanuel
broadcast through the land.’
‘If you are going to get back into politics,’ said Mrs. Copley, rising,
‘I fear we must leave. I know from experience that it is a long
subject.’
The two turned away, escorted to the carriage by Dessart and the
Frenchman, while the rest of the group resettled themselves in the
empty places. The woman who wrote listened a moment to the badinage and
laughter which floated back through the open door; then, ‘Mr. Dessart’s
heiress is very attractive,’ she suggested.
‘Why Mr. Dessart’s?’ Melville inquired.
‘Perhaps I was a little premature,’ she conceded—‘though, I venture to
prophesy, not incorrect.’
‘My dear lady,’ said Mrs. Melville impressively, ‘you do not know Mrs.
Copley. Her niece is more likely to marry an Italian prince than a
nameless young artist.’
‘She’s no more likely to marry an Italian prince than she is a South
African chief,’ her husband affirmed. ‘Miss Marcia is a young woman who
will marry whom she pleases—though,’ he added upon reflection, ‘I am
not at all sure it will be Paul Dessart.’
‘She might do worse,’ said his wife. ‘Paul is a nice boy.’
‘Ah—and she might do better. I’ll tell you exactly the man,’ he added,
in a burst of enthusiasm, ‘and that is Laurence Sybert.’
The suggestion was met by an amused smile from the ladies and a shrug
from the sculptor.
‘My dear James,’ said Mrs. Melville, ‘you may be a very good business
man, but you are no match-maker. That is a matter you would best leave
to the women. As for your Laurence Sybert, he hasn’t the ghost of a
chance—and he doesn’t want it.’
‘I’m doubting he has other fish to fry just now,’ threw out the
sculptor.
‘Sybert’s all right,’ said Melville emphatically.
The woman who wrote laughed as she rose. ‘It will be an interesting
matter to watch,’ she announced; ‘but you may mark my words that our
host is the man.’