A CARRIAGE rumbled into the stone-paved courtyard of the Palazzo
Rosicorelli a good twenty minutes before six o’clock the next evening,
and the Copleys descended and climbed the stairs, at peace with Villa
Vivalanti and its thirty miles. Though it was still light out of doors,
inside the palace, with its deep-embrasured windows and heavy curtains,
it was already quite dark. As they entered the long salon the only
light in the room came from a seven-branch candlestick on the
tea-table, which threw its reflection upon Gerald’s white sailor-suit
and little bare knees as he sat back solemnly in a carved Savonarola
chair. At the sound of their arrival he wriggled down quickly and
precipitated himself against Mrs. Copley.
‘Oh, mamma! Sybert came to tea, an’ I made it; an’ he said it was lots
better van Marcia’s tea, an’ he dwank seven cups, an’ I dwank four.’
A chorus of laughter greeted this revelation, and a lazy voice called
from the depths of an easy chair, ‘Oh, I say, Gerald, you mustn’t tell
such shocking tales, or your mother will never leave me alone with the
tea-things again.’ And the owner of the voice pulled himself together
and walked across the room ta shake hands with the new-comers.
Laurence Sybert, as he advanced toward his hostess, threw a long thin
shadow against the wall. He had a spare, dark, clean-shaven face with
deep-set, sullen eyes; he was a delightfully perfected type of the
cosmopolitan; it would have taken a second, or very possibly a third,
glance to determine his nationality. But if the expression of his face
were Italian, Oriental, anything you please, his build was undoubtedly
Anglo-Saxon. Further, a certain wiriness beneath his movements
proclaimed him, to any one familiar with the loose-hung riders of the
plains, unmistakably American.
‘Your son slanders me, Mrs. Copley,’ he said as he held out his hand;
‘I didn’t drink but six, upon my honour.’
‘Hello, Sybert! Anything happened in Rome to-day? What’s the news on
the Rialto?’ was Mr. Copley’s greeting.
Marcia regarded him with a laugh as she drew off her gloves and lighted
the spirit-lamp.
‘We’ve been away since nine this morning, and here’s Uncle Howard
thirsting for news already! What he will do when we really get out of
the city, I can’t imagine.’
‘Oh, and so you’ve taken the villa, have you?’
Marcia nodded.
‘And you should see it! It looks like a papal palace. This is the
first time that Prince Vivalanti has ever consented to rent it to
strangers; it’s his official seat.’
‘Very condescending of him,’ the young man laughed; ‘and do you accept
his responsibilities along with the place?’
‘From the fattore’s account I should say that his responsibilities rest
but lightly on the Prince of Vivalanti.’
‘Ah—that’s true enough.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Only by hearsay. I know the village; and a more desperate little place
it would be hard to find in all the Sabine hills. The people’s love for
their prince is tempered by the need of a number of improvements which
he doesn’t supply.’
‘I dare say they are pretty poor,’ she conceded; ‘but they are
unbelievably picturesque! Every person there looks as if he had just
walked out of a water-colour sketch. Even Uncle Howard was pleased, and
he has lived here so long that he is losing his enthusiasms.’
‘It is a pretty decent sort of a place,’ Copley agreed, ‘though I have
a sneaking suspicion that we may find it rather far. But the rest of
the family liked it, and my aim in life——’
‘Nonsense, Uncle Howard! you know you were crazy over it yourself. You
signed the lease without a protest. Didn’t he, Aunt Katherine?’
‘I signed the lease, my dear Marcia, at the point of the pistol.’
‘The point of the pistol?’
‘You threatened, if we got a mile—an inch, I believe you said—nearer
Rome, you would give a party every day; and if that isn’t the point of
a pistol to a poor, worn-out man like me, I don’t know what is.’
‘It would certainly seem like it,’ Sybert agreed. And turning to
Marcia, he added, ‘I am afraid that you rule with a very despotic hand,
Miss Marcia.’
Marcia’s eyebrows went up a barely perceptible trifle, but she laughed
and returned: ‘No, indeed, Mr. Sybert; you are mistaken there. It is
not I, but Gerald, who plays the part of despot in the Copley
household.’
At this point, Granton, Mrs. Copley’s English maid, appeared in the
doorway. ‘Marietta is waiting to give Master Gerald his supper,’ she
announced.
Gerald fled to his mother and raised a cry of protest.
‘Mamma, please let me stay up to dinner wif you to-night.’
For a moment Mrs. Copley looked as if she might consent, but catching
sight of Granton’s relentless face, she returned: ‘No, my dear, you
have had enough festivity for one evening. You must have your tea and
go to bed like a good little boy.’
Gerald abandoned his mother and entrenched himself behind Sybert.
‘‘Cause Sybert’s here, an’ I like Sybert,’ he wailed desperately.
But Granton stormed even this fortress. ‘Come, Master Gerald; your
supper’s getting cold,’ and she laid a firm hand on his shoulder and
marched him away.
‘There’s the real despot,’ laughed Copley. ‘I tremble before Granton
myself.’
Pietro appeared with a plate of toasted muffins and the evening mail.
Mr. Copley settled himself in a wicker chair, with a pile of letters on
the arm at his right; and, as he ran his eyes over them one by one, he
tore them in pieces and formed a new pile at his left. They were
begging letters for the most part. He received a great many, and this
was his usual method of answering them: not that he was an ungenerous
man; it was merely a matter of principle with him not to be generous in
this particular way.
As he sat disposing of envelope after envelope with vigorous hands,
Copley’s appearance suggested a series of somewhat puzzling contrasts:
seriousness and humour; sensitiveness and force—an active impulse to
forge ahead and accomplish things, a counter-impulse to shrug his
shoulders and wonder why. He was a puzzle to most of his friends; at
times even one to his wife; but she had accepted his eccentricities
along with his millions, and though she did not always understand
either his motives of his actions, she made no complaint. To most men a
fortune is a blessing. To Copley it was rather in the nature of a
curse. He might have amounted to almost anything had he had to work for
it; but for the one field of activity which a fortune in America seems
to entail upon its owner—that of entering the arena and doubling and
tripling it—he was singularly unfitted both by temperament and
inclination. In this he differed from his elder brother. And there was
one other point in which the two were at variance. Though their father
had been in the eyes of the law a just and upright man, still, in the
battle of competition, many had fallen that he might stand, and the
younger son had grown up with the knowledge that from a humanitarian
standpoint the money was not irreproachable. He had the feeling—which
his brother characterized as absurd—that with his share of the fortune
he would like, in a measure, to make it up to mankind.
Howard Copley’s first move in the game of benefiting humanity had been,
not very originally, an attempt at solving the negro problem; but the
negroes were ever a leisurely race, and Copley was a man impatient for
results. He finally abandoned them to the course of evolution, and
engaged in a spasmodic orgy of East Side politics. Becoming disgusted,
and failing of an election, he looked aimlessly about for a further
object in life. It was at this point that Mrs. Copley breathlessly
suggested a year in Paris for the sake of Gerald’s French; the child
was only four, but one could not, as she justly pointed out, begin the
study of the languages too early. Her husband apathetically consenting,
they embarked for Paris by the roundabout route of the Mediterranean,
landed in Naples, and there they stayed. He had found a fascinating
occupation ready to his hand—that of helping on the work of good
government in this still turbulent portion of United Italy. After a
year the family drifted to Rome, and settled themselves in the _piano
nobile_ of the Palazzo Rosicorelli with something of an air of
permanence. Copley was at last thoroughly contented; he had no racial
prejudices, and Rome was as fair a field of reform as New York—and
infinitely more diverting. If the Italians did not always understand
his motives, still they accepted his services with a fair show of
gratitude.
As for Mrs. Copley, she had by no means intended their sojourn to be an
emigration, but she reflected that her husband had to be amused in some
way, and that reforming Italian posterity was perhaps an harmless a way
as he could have devised. She settled herself very contentedly to the
enjoyment of the somewhat shifting foreign society of the capital, with
only an occasional plaintive reference to her friends in New York and
to Gerald’s French.
Marcia, leaning back in her chair, watched her uncle dispose of his
correspondence with a visible air of amusement. He had a thin nervous
face traced with fine lines, a sharply cut jaw, and a mouth which
twitched easily into a smile. To-night, however, as he ripped open
envelope after envelope, he frowned oftener than he smiled; and
presently, as he unfolded one letter, he suppressed a quick exclamation
of anger.
‘Read that,’ he said shortly, tossing it to the other man.
Sybert perused it with no visible change of expression, and leaning
over, he dropped it into the open grate.
Marcia laughed outright. ‘Your mail doesn’t seem to afford you much
satisfaction, Uncle Howard.’
‘A large share of it’s anonymous, and not all of it’s polite.’
‘That is what you must expect if you will hound those poor old beggars
to death.’
The two men shot each other a look of rather grim amusement. The letter
in question had nothing to do with beggars, but Mr. Copley had no
intention of discussing its contents with his niece.
‘I find that the usual reward of virtue in this world is an anonymous
letter,’ he remarked, shrugging the matter from his mind and settling
himself comfortably to his tea.
The guest refused the cup proffered him.
‘I haven’t the courage,’ he declared, ‘after Gerald’s revelations.’
‘By the way, Sybert,’ said Copley, ‘I have been hearing some bad
stories about you to-day. My niece doesn’t like to have me associate
with you.’
Marcia looked at her uncle helplessly; when he once commenced teasing
there was no telling where he would stop.
‘I am sorry,’ said Sybert humbly. ‘What is the trouble?’
‘She has found out that you are an anarchist.’
Both men laughed, and Marcia flushed slightly.
‘Please, Miss Marcia,’ Sybert begged, ‘give me time to get out of the
country before you expose me to the police.’
‘There’s no cause for fear,’ she returned. ‘I didn’t believe the story
when I heard it, for I knew that you haven’t energy enough to run away
from a bomb, much less throw one. That’s why it surprised me that other
people should believe it.’
‘But most people have a better opinion of me than you have,’ he
expostulated.
‘No, indeed, Mr. Sybert; I have a better opinion of you than most
people. I really consider you harmless.’
The young man laughed and bowed his thanks, while he turned his
attention to Mrs. Copley.
‘I hope that Villa Vivalanti will prove more successful than the one in
Naples.’
Mrs. Copley looked at him reproachfully. ‘That horrible man! I never
think of him without wishing we were safely back in America.’
‘Then please don’t think of him,’ her husband returned. ‘He is where he
won’t trouble you any more.’
‘What man?’ asked Marcia, emerging from a dignified silence.
‘Is it possible Miss Marcia has never heard of the tattooed man?’
Sybert inquired gravely.
‘The tattooed man! What _are_ you talking about?’
‘It has a somewhat theatrical ring,’ Mr. Copley admitted.
‘It is nothing to make light of,’ said his wife. ‘It’s a wonder to me
that we escaped with our lives. Three years ago, while we were in
Naples,’ she added to her niece, ‘your uncle, with his usual
recklessness, got mixed up with one of the secret societies. Our villa
was out toward Posilipo, and one afternoon I was driving home at about
dusk—I had been shopping in the city—and just as we reached a lonely
place in the road, between two high walls——’
Mr. Copley broke in: ‘A masked man armed to the teeth sprang up in the
path, with a horrible oath.’
‘Not really!’ Marcia cried, leaning forward delightedly. ‘Aunt
Katherine, _did_ a masked man——’
‘He wasn’t masked, but I wish he had been; he would have looked less
ferocious. He came straight to the side of the carriage, and taking off
his hat with a very polite bow, he said that unless we left Naples in
three days your uncle’s life would no longer be safe. His shirt was
open at the throat, and there was a crucifix tattooed upside down on
his breast. You can imagine what a desperate character he must have
been—here in Italy of all places, where the people are so religious.’
The two men laughed at the climax.
‘What did you do?’ Marcia asked.
‘I was too shocked to speak, and Gerald, poor child, screamed all the
way home.’
‘And did you leave the city?’
‘As it happened, we were leaving anyway,’ her uncle put in; ‘but we
postponed our departure long enough for me to hunt the fellow down and
put him in jail.’
‘You may be thankful that they had the decency to warn you,’ Sybert
remarked.
‘It’s like a dime novel!’ Marcia sighed. ‘To be mixed up with murders
and warnings and tattooed men and secret societies——Why didn’t you
send for me, Uncle Howard?’
‘Well, you see, I didn’t know that you had grown up into such a
charming person—though I am not sure that it would have made any
difference. I had all that I could do to take care of one woman.’
‘That’s the way,’ she complained. ‘Just because one’s a girl one is
always shut up in the house while there’s anything exciting going on.’
‘If you are so fond of bloodshed,’ Sybert suggested, ‘you may possibly
have a chance of seeing some this spring.’
‘This spring? Is the Camorra making trouble again?’
‘Oh, no; not the Camorra. But unless all signs fail, there is a
prospect of some fairly exciting riots.’
‘Really? Here in Rome?’
‘Well, no; probably not in Rome—there are too many soldiers. More
likely in the Neapolitan provinces. I am sorry,’ he added, ‘since you
seem to find them so entertaining, that we can’t promise you a riot on
your own door-step; but I dare say, when it comes to the point, you’ll
find Naples near enough.’
‘I give you fair warning, Uncle Howard,’ she said, ‘if there are any
riots in Naples, I’m going down to see them. What is the trouble? What
are they rioting about?’
‘If there are any riots,’ said her uncle, ‘you, my dear young lady,
will amuse yourself at Villa Vivalanti until they are over,’ and he
abruptly changed the subject.
The talk drifted back to the villa again. Mrs. Copley afforded their
guest a more detailed description.
‘Nineteen bedrooms aside from the servants’ quarters, and room in the
stable for thirty horses!’ she finished.
‘The princes of Vivalanti must have kept up an establishment in their
pre-Riviera days.’
‘Mustn’t they?’ agreed Marcia cordially. The new villa was proving an
unexpectedly soothing topic. ‘We’ll keep up an establishment too,’ she
added. ‘We’re going to give a house-party when the Roystons come down
from Paris, and—I know what we’ll do! We’ll give a ball for my
birthday—won’t we, Uncle Howard? And have everybody out from Rome, and
the ilex grove all lighted with coloured lamps!’
‘Not if I have anything to say about it,’ said Mr. Copley.
‘But you won’t have,’ said Marcia.
‘The only reason that I consented to take this villa was that I thought
it was far enough away to escape parties for a time. You said——’
‘I said if you got nearer Rome we’d give a party _every_ day, while as
it is I’m only planning one party for all the three months.’
‘Sybert and I won’t come to it,’ he grumbled.
‘Perhaps you and Mr. Sybert won’t be invited.’
‘I don’t know where you’d find two such charming men,’ said Mrs. Copley.
‘Rome’s full of them,’ returned Marcia imperturbably.
‘Who are the Roystons, Miss Marcia?’ Sybert inquired.
‘They are the friends I came over with last fall. You know Mr. Dessart?’
‘The artist? Yes, I know him.’
‘Well, Mrs. Royston is his aunt, and she has two daughters who——’
‘Are his cousins,’ suggested Mr. Copley.
‘Yes; to be sure, and very charming girls. They spend a great deal of
time over here—at least Mrs. Royston and Eleanor do. Margaret has been
in college.’
‘And Mr. Royston,’ asked Copley, ‘stays in America and attends to his
business?’
‘Yes; Mrs. Royston and Eleanor go over quite often to keep him from
getting lonely.’
‘Very generous of them,’ Sybert laughed.
‘They’ve spent winters in Cairo and Vienna and Paris and a lot of
different places,’ pursued Marcia. ‘Eleanor,’ she added ruminatingly,
‘has been out nine seasons, and she has had a good deal of—experience.’
‘Dear, dear!’ said her uncle; ‘and you are proposing to expose all
Rome——’
‘She’s very attractive,’ said Marcia, and then she glanced at Sybert
and laughed. ‘If she should happen to take a fancy to you, Mr.
Sybert——’
The young man rose to his feet and looked about for his hat.
‘Goodness!’ he murmured, ‘what would she do?’
‘There’s no telling.’ Marcia regarded him with a speculative light in
her eyes.
‘A young woman who has been practising for nine seasons certainly ought
to have her hand in,’ Copley agreed. ‘Perhaps, after all, Sybert, it is
best we should not meet her.’
Sybert found his hat and paused for a moment.
‘You can’t frighten me that way, Miss Marcia,’ he said, with a shake of
his head. ‘I have been out thirteen seasons myself.’