THE week following Easter proved rainy and disagreeable. It was not a
cheerful period, for the villa turned out to be a fair-weather house.
The stone walls seemed to absorb and retain the moisture like a vault,
and a mortuary atmosphere hung about the rooms. Mr. Copley, with
masculine imperviousness to mud and water, succeeded in escaping from
the dampness of his home by journeying daily to the ever-luring
Embassy. But his wife and niece, more solicitous on the subject of hair
and clothes, remained storm-bound, and on the fourth day Mrs. Copley’s
conversation turned frequently to malaria.
Marcia, who had taken the villa for better, for worse, steadfastly
endeavoured to approve of it in even this uncheerful mood. She divided
her time between romping through the big rooms with Gerald, Gervasio,
and Marcellus, and shivering over a brazier full of coals in her own
room, to the accompaniment of dripping ilex trees and the superfluous
splashing of the fountain. Her book was the _Egoist_, and the _Egoist_
is an illuminating work to a young woman in Marcia’s frame of mind. It
makes her hesitate. She knew that Paul Dessart in no wise resembled the
magnificent Sir Willoughby, and that it was unfair to make the
comparison, but still she made it.
As she stood by the window, gazing down on the rain-swept Campagna, she
pondered the situation and pondered it again, and succeeded only in
working herself into a state of deeper indecision. Paul was
interesting, attractive—as her uncle said, ‘decorative’; but was he
any more, or was that enough? Should she be sorry if she said ‘no’?
Should she be sorrier if she said ‘yes’? So her mind busied itself to
the dripping of the raindrops; and for all the thought she spent upon
the question, she wandered in a circle and finished where she had
started.
The Monday following Easter week dawned clear and bright again. Marcia
opened her eyes to a bar of sunlight streaming in at the eastern
window, and the first sound that greeted her was a joyful chorus of
bird-voices. She sat up and viewed the weather with a sense of
re-awakened life, feeling as if her perplexities had somehow vanished
with the rain. She was no nearer making up her mind than she had been
the day before, but she was quite contented to let it stay unmade a
little longer. The sound of horses’ hoofs beneath her window told her
that her uncle had started for the station. When he was away and there
were no guests in the house, Marcia and Mrs. Copley usually had the
first breakfast served in their rooms. Accordingly, as she heard her
uncle gallop off, she made a leisurely toilet, and then ate her coffee
and rolls and marmalade at a little table set on the balcony. It was
late when she joined her aunt on the loggia.
Mrs. Copley looked up from an intricate piece of embroidery. ‘Good
morning, Marcia,’ she said, returning her niece’s greeting. ‘Yes, isn’t
it a relief to see some sunshine again!—I have a surprise for you,’
she added.
‘A surprise?’ asked Marcia. ‘My birthday isn’t coming for two weeks.
But never mind; surprises are always welcome. What is it?’
‘It isn’t a very big surprise; just a tiny one to break the monotony of
these four days of rain. I had a note from Mrs. Royston this morning.
It should have come yesterday, only it was so wet that Angelo didn’t go
for the mail.’ She paused to rummage through the basket of silks. ‘I
thought it was here, but no matter. She says that owing to these
dreadful riots they have changed all their plans. They have entirely
given up Naples, and are going north instead, on a little trip of a
week or so to Assisi and Perugia. She wrote to say good-bye and to tell
me that they would get back to Rome in time for your party; though they
are afraid they can’t spend more than two or three days with us then,
as the change of plan involves some hurry. They leave on Wednesday.’
‘That is too bad,’ said Marcia, and with the words she uttered a sigh
of relief. Paul would go with them, probably; or, at any rate, she need
not see him; it would postpone the difficulty. ‘But where is the
surprise?’ she inquired.
‘Oh, the surprise!’ Mrs. Copley laughed. ‘I entirely forgot it. I was
afraid they might think it strange that I hadn’t answered the
note—though I really didn’t get it in time—so I asked your uncle to
stop at their hotel and invite them all to come out to the villa for
the night. I thought that since we were planning to drive to the festa
at Genazzano to-morrow, it would be nice to have them with us. I am
sure they would be interested in seeing the festa.’
Marcia dropped limply into a chair and looked at her aunt. ‘Is Mr.
Dessart coming too?’
‘I invited him, certainly. What’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased? I
thought you liked him.’
‘Oh, yes, I do; only—I wish I’d got up earlier!’ And then she laughed.
The situation was rather funny, after all. She might as well make the
best of it. ‘Suppose we send over to Palestrina and invite M. Benoit
for dinner,’ she suggested presently. ‘I think he is stopping there
this week, and it would be nice to have him. I suspect,’ she added,
‘that he is a tiny bit interested in Eleanor.’
A note was sent by a groom, who returned with the information that he
had found the gentleman sitting on a rock in a field, painting a
portrait of a sheep; that he had delivered the note, and got this in
return.
‘This’ was a rapid sketch on bristol-board, representing the young
Frenchman in evening clothes making a bow, with his hand on his heart,
to the two ladies, who received him on the steps of the loggia, while a
clock in the corner pointed to eight.
Marcia looked at the sketch and laughed. ‘Here’s an original
acceptance, Aunt Katherine.’
Mrs. Copley smiled appreciatively. ‘He seems to be a very original
young man,’ she conceded.
‘_Naturellement._ He’s _a prix de Rome_.’
‘When Frenchmen _are_ nice they are very nice,’ said Mrs. Copley; ‘but
when they are not——’ Words failed her, and she picked up her
embroidery again.
At the mid-day breakfast Marcia announced rather hopefully that she did
not think the Roystons would come.
‘Why not?’ her aunt inquired.
‘They’ve lost their maid, and there won’t be anybody to help them pack.
If they come out to the villa to-night they won’t be ready to start for
Perugia on Wednesday. Besides, Mrs. Royston never likes to do anything
on the spur of the moment. She likes to plan her programme a week ahead
and stick to it. Oh, I know they won’t come,’ she added with a laugh.
‘M. Benoit will be the only guest, after all.’
‘And I’ve ordered dinner for eight!’ said Mrs. Copley, pathetically. ‘I
am thinking of driving over to the contessa’s this afternoon—I might
invite her to join us.’
‘Oh, no, Aunt Katherine! Please, not to-day. If the Roystons should
come, there’ll be a big enough party without her; and, anyway, she
wouldn’t be particularly interested—Mr. Sybert isn’t here.’
‘The contessa comes to see us, not Mr. Sybert,’ Mrs. Copley returned,
with a touch of asperity.
Marcia smiled into her cup of chocolate and said nothing.
* * * * *
While the sun was sunk in its noonday torpor, she stood by her window,
gazing absently off toward the old monastery, engaged in a last valiant
struggle to make up her mind. She finally turned away with an impatient
shrug which banished Paul Dessart and his importunities to the bottom
of the Dead Sea. There was no use in bothering any more about it now;
Mrs. Royston’s mind at least was no weathercock. Marcia clung
tenaciously to the hope that they would not come.
It was a beautiful afternoon, fresh and sparkling from the week of
rain, and she suddenly decided upon a horseback ride to brush from her
mind all bothersome questions. She got out her riding-habit and jerked
the bell-rope with a force which set bells jangling wildly through the
house, and brought Granton as nearly on a run as was consonant with her
dignity and years.
‘It’s nothing serious,’ Marcia laughed in response to the maid’s
anxious face; ‘I just made up my mind to go for a ride, and in the
first flush of energy I rang louder than I meant. It’s a great thing,
Granton, to get your mind made up about even so unimportant a matter as
a horseback ride.’
‘Yes, miss,’ Granton agreed somewhat vaguely as she knelt down to help
with a boot.
‘How in the world do those soldiers in the King’s guard ever get their
boots on?’ Marcia asked.
‘I don’t know, miss,’ said Granton, patiently.
Marcia laughed. ‘Send word to the stables for Angelo to bring the
horses in fifteen minutes. I’m going to take a long ride, and I must
start immediately.’
‘Very well, miss.’
‘_Immediately_,’ Marcia called after her. In dealing with Angelo
reiteration was necessary. He was an Italian, and he had still to learn
the value of time.
She tied her stock before the glass in a very mannish fashion, adjusted
her hat—with the least perceptible tilt—and catching up her whip and
gloves, started out gaily, humming a snatch of a very much reiterated
Neapolitan street song.
‘“Jammo ‘ncoppa, jammo jà . . .
Funiculì—funiculà.”’
It ended in a series of trills; she did not know the words. At the head
of the stairs she met Granton returning. Granton stood primly
expressionless, waiting patiently for her to have done before venturing
to speak.
Marcia completed her measure and broke off with a laugh. ‘Well,
Granton, what’s the matter?’
‘Angelo has taken Master Gerald’s pony to Palestrina to be shod and
both of the carriages are to be used, so the other men will be needed
for them, and there isn’t any one left to ride with you.’
Marcia’s smile changed to a frown. ‘How stupid! Angelo has no business
to go off without saying anything.’
‘Mr. Copley left orders for him to have the pony shod.’
‘He’s not Mr. Copley’s groom; he’s mine.’
‘Yes, miss,’ said Granton.
Marcia went on slowly downstairs, her frown gathering volume as she
proceeded. She wished to take a horseback ride, and she wished nothing
else for the moment. She foresaw that her aunt would propose that she
ride into Tivoli and take tea with the contessa. If there was one thing
she hated, it was to ride at a steady jog-trot beside the carriage; and
if there was a second thing, it was to take tea with the contessa.
She heard Mrs. Copley’s and Gerald’s voices in the salon and she
advanced to the doorway.
‘Aunt Katherine! I’m furious! This is the first time in four days that
it has stopped raining long enough for me to go out, and I’m _dying_ to
take a gallop in the country. That miserable Angelo has gone off with
Gerald’s pony, and there isn’t another man on the place that can go
with me. You needn’t propose my riding into Tivoli to take tea with the
contessa, for I won’t do it.’
She delivered this outburst from the threshold, and as she advanced
into the room she was slightly disconcerted to see Laurence Sybert
lazily pulling himself from a chair to greet her—if she ever showed in
a particularly bad light, Sybert was sure to be at hand. He bowed, his
face politely grave, but there was the provoking suggestion of a smile
not far below the surface; and as she looked at him Marcia had the
uncomfortable feeling that her own face was growing red.
‘I’m sorry about Angelo, my dear,’ said Mrs. Copley. ‘I didn’t know
that you wanted to ride this afternoon. But here is Mr. Sybert who has
come out to see your uncle, and your uncle won’t be back till evening.
I’m sure he will be glad to go with you.’
Marcia glanced back at her aunt with an expression which said, ‘Oh,
Aunt Katherine, wait till I get you alone!’
‘Certainly, Miss Marcia, I should be delighted to fill the recreant
Angelo’s place,’ he affirmed, but in a tone which to her ear did not
express any undue eagerness.
‘Thank you, Mr. Sybert,’ she smiled sweetly; ‘you are very kind, but I
shouldn’t think of troubling you. I know that Aunt Katherine would like
to have you go with her to call on the contessa.’
‘If you will permit it. Miss Marcia, I will ride with you instead; for
though I should be happy to call on Contessa Torrenieri with Mrs.
Copley, I have just driven out from Tivoli, and by way of change I
should prefer not driving back.’
‘It’s awfully kind of you to offer, but I don’t really want to ride. I
was just cross with Angelo for going off without saying anything.’
‘Marcia,’ remonstrated Mrs. Copley, ‘that doesn’t sound polite.’
Sybert laughed. ‘There is nothing, Miss Marcia,’ he declared, ‘that
would give me more pleasure this afternoon than a gallop with you; and
with your permission——’ he touched the bell.
Marcia shrugged her shoulders and gave the order as Pietro appeared.
‘Send word to the stables for Kentucky Lil and Triumvirate to be
saddled at once.’
‘You may go upstairs and borrow as much of Howard’s wardrobe as you
wish,’ said Mrs. Copley. ‘I dare say you did not come prepared to play
the part of groom.’
‘I’ll try not to get them muddier than necessary,’ he promised as he
turned toward the stairs.
He reappeared shortly in corduroys and leather puttees. Marcia was
leaning on the loggia balustrade, idly watching the hills, while a
diminutive stable-boy slowly led the horses back and forth in the
driveway. Sybert helped her to mount without a word, and they galloped
down the avenue in silence. He appreciated the fact that she would have
preferred staying at home to accepting his escort, and the situation
promised some slight entertainment. A man inclined to be a trifle
sardonic can find considerable amusement in the spectacle of a pretty
girl who does not wish to talk to him, but finds herself in a position
where she cannot escape. As Sybert had been passing a very hard week,
he was the more willing to enjoy a little relaxation at Marcia’s
expense.
They pulled their horses to a walk at the gateway, and Sybert looked at
her interrogatively. She took the lead and turned to the left along the
winding roadway that led up into the mountains away from the Via
Prænestina. He rode up beside her again, and they galloped on without
speaking. Marcia did not propose to take the initiative in any
conversation; he could introduce a subject if he wished, otherwise they
would keep still. For the first mile or so he maintained the stolid
reserve of a well-trained groom. But finally, as they slowed the horses
to a walk on a steep hill-side, he broke the silence.
‘Are we going anywhere, or just riding for pleasure?’
‘Just for pleasure.’
He waited until they had reached the top of the hill before renewing
the conversation. Then, ‘It is a pleasant day,’ he observed.
Marcia regarded the landscape critically.
‘Very pleasant,’ she acquiesced.
‘Looks a little like rain, however,’ he added, anxiously fixing his eye
on a small cloud on the horizon.
Marcia studied the sky a moment with an heroic effort at seriousness,
and then she began to laugh.
‘I suppose we might as well make the best of it,’ she remarked.
‘Philosophy is the wisest way,’ he agreed.
‘Have you seen Gervasio?’
‘I have not yet paid my respects to him. He is well, I trust?’
‘He is simply a walking appetite!’
‘I thought he showed a tendency that way. Mrs. Copley says that you
have been suffering persecution for his sake.’
‘Did she tell you about his stepfather? That’s my story; she ought to
have left it for me. I can tell it much more dramatically. It was quite
an adventure, wasn’t it?’
‘It was. And you got off easily. It might have turned out to be more of
an adventure than you would have cared for.’
‘Oh, I like adventures.’
‘When they’re ended safely, yes. But these Italian peasants are a
revengeful lot when they get it into their heads that they have been
mistreated. I don’t believe you ought to drive about the country that
way.’
‘I should think that two boys and a groom might be escort enough—the
pony-carriage doesn’t accommodate many more.’
‘Nevertheless, joking apart, I don’t think it is safe. The country’s
pretty thoroughly stirred up just at present.’
‘You’re as bad as Aunt Katherine with her tattooed man! As for being
afraid of these peasants, I know every soul in Castel Vivalanti, and
they’re all adorable—with the exception of Gervasio’s relatives.’
‘If I were your uncle,’ he observed, ‘I should prefer a niece readier
to take suggestions.’
‘I am ready to take his suggestions, but you’re not my uncle.’
‘No,’ said Sybert, ‘I am not; and——’
‘And what?’ Marcia asked.
He laughed.
‘I believe we declared an amnesty, did we not? Do you think it is best
to reopen hostilities?’
‘It strikes me that there has been more or less light skirmishing in
spite of the amnesty.’
‘At least there has been no serious damage done on either side. I would
suggest, if heavy firing is to be recommenced, that we postpone it
until the ride home.’
‘Very well. Let’s talk some more about the weather. It seems to be the
only subject on which we can agree.’
Sybert bowed gravely.
‘It’s been rather rainy for the last week.’
‘Very.’
‘The villa must have been a little damp.’
‘Very.’
‘And rather monotonous?’
‘Very!’ Marcia laughed and gave the dialogue a new turn. ‘I spent the
time reading.’
‘Indeed?’
‘The _Egoist_.’
‘Meredith? Don’t you find him a trifle—er—for rainy weather, you
know?’
‘I found the _Egoist_,’ she returned, ‘a most suggestive work. It
throws interesting side-lights on the men one knows.’
‘Oh, come, Miss Marcia,’ he remonstrated. ‘That’s hardly fair; you
slander us.’
‘You mustn’t blame me—you must blame the author. It’s a man who wrote
it.’
‘He should be regarded as a traitor. In case he is captured and brought
into camp, I shall order him shot at sunrise.’
‘He doesn’t accuse all men of being Sir Willoughbys,’ she returned
soothingly. ‘I hadn’t thought of you in exactly that connexion. If you
choose to wear the coat, you have put it on yourself.’
‘We’ll say, then, that it doesn’t fit, and I’ll resemble the other
fellow—the Daniel Deronda one—what’s his name, Whitfield, Whitford?’
(Whitford, it will be remembered, was the dark horse who came in at the
finish and captured the heroine.)
Marcia laughed. ‘I really can’t say that the other fits any better. I’m
afraid you’re not in the book, Mr. Sybert.’
They came to a fork in the roads and drew rein again.
‘Which way?’ he asked.
She paused and looked about. They were already far up in the mountains,
and towering ahead, nearer and clearer now, on the crest of a still
higher ridge, rose the old monastery she could see from her window. She
pointed with her whip to the gaunt pile of grey stone against the sky.
‘Is that your destination?’ he asked.
‘Is it too far? I’ve been wanting to see it closer ever since we came
to the villa.’
He studied the distance. ‘I should judge it’s about seven kilometres in
a straight line, but there’s no telling how long the road takes to get
there. We can try it, though; and if you’re not in a hurry to get home,
we may reach it.’
‘At any rate, there’s nothing to prevent our turning back if we find
it’s too far,’ she suggested.
‘Oh, yes; one can always turn back,’ he agreed.
‘One can always turn back.’ The words caught Marcia’s attention, and
she repeated them to herself. They seemed to carry an inner meaning,
and she commenced weighing anew her feelings toward Paul. Could she
turn back? Was it not too late? No, if she were on the wrong road, the
sooner the better; but was she on the wrong road? There were no
guide-posts; the end was hidden by a turning. She rode on, forgetting
to talk, with a shadow on her face and a serious light in her eyes.
‘Well?’ Sybert inquired, ‘would you like my advice?’
‘I’m afraid it’s not a matter you can help me with,’ she returned, with
a quick laugh.
They pushed on farther up into the hills, between groves of twisted
olive trees and sloping vineyards, through fields dyed blue and scarlet
with forget-me-nots and poppies. All nature was green and glistening
after the rain, and the mountain breeze blew fresh against their faces.
Neither could be insensible to the influence of the day. Their talk was
light and free and glancing—mere badinage; but it occasionally struck
a deeper note, and holding it for an instant, half reluctantly let it
go. Marcia had never known Sybert in this mood—she had not, as she
realized, known him in any. In all their casual intercourse of the past
few months they had scarcely exchanged a single idea. He was an
unexplored country, and his character held for her the attraction of
the unknown.
Sybert, on his side, glanced at her curiously from time to time as she
flung back a quick reply. With him, first impressions died hard. He had
first seen Marcia at a tea, the centre of a laughing group, with all
the room paying court to her. She was pretty and attractive,
faultlessly gowned, thoroughly at ease. He had, in his thirteen
seasons, met many women who played many parts; and the somewhat cynical
conclusion he had carried away from the experience was that if a woman
be but young and fair she has the gift to know it. But as he watched
her now he wondered suddenly if she were quite what he had thought her.
It struck him that what he had regarded as over-sophistication was
rather the pseudo-sophistication of youth; her occasional crudeness,
but the crudeness that comes from lack of experience. She knew nothing
of life outside the carefully closed confines of her own small world.
And yet he recognized in her a certain reckless spirit of daring, of
curiosity toward the world, that responded to a chord in his own
nature. He had seen it the night they found Gervasio. It was in her
face now as she galloped along against the wind, with her eyes raised
to the half-ruined towers of the mediæval monastery. He had not been
very lenient toward her, he knew; and her scarcely veiled antagonism
had amused him. He felt now, as he watched her, a momentary impulse to
draw her out, to mould the direction of her thoughts, to turn her face
a new way.
After a wild gallop along the crest of a hill she drew up, laughing, to
steady her hair, which threatened to come tumbling down about her ears.
She dropped the rein loosely on the horse’s neck in order to leave both
hands free, and Sybert reached over and took it.
‘See here, young lady,’ he remonstrated, ‘you’re going to take a
cropper some day if you ride like that.’
She glanced back with a quick retort on her lips, but his expression
disarmed her. He was not watching her with his usual critical look. She
changed the words into a laugh.
‘Do you know what you make me feel like doing, Mr. Sybert? Giving Lil
the reins and galloping down that hill there with my hands in the air.’
‘Perhaps I would better keep the reins in my own hands,’ was his cool
proposition.
‘I never knew any one who could rouse so much latent antagonism in a
person as you can! You never say a word but I feel like doing exactly
the opposite.’
‘It’s well to know it. I shall frame my future suggestions accordingly.’
Marcia settled her hat and stretched out her hand. He returned the
reins with a show of doubt.
‘Can I trust you to restrain your impulses?’ he inquired, with his eyes
on the declivity before them.
She gathered up the reins, but made no movement to go on. Instead she
half-turned in the saddle and looked behind.
They were on the shoulder of a mountain. Below them smaller foothills
receded, tier below tier, until they sank imperceptibly into the level
plain of the Campagna. Ahead of them the bare Sabines stretched in
broken ridges, backed in the distance by two snow-peaks of the
Apennines. Everywhere was the warmth of colouring, the brilliant hues
of an Italian spring.
‘Italy is beautiful, isn’t it?’ Marcia asked simply.
‘Yes,’ he agreed; ‘Italy is cursed with beauty.’
She turned her eyes inquiringly from the landscape to him.
‘A nation of artists’ models!’ he exclaimed half contemptuously.
‘Because of their fatal good looks, the Italians can’t be allowed to be
prosperous like any other people.’
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘their beauty is a compensation. They are
poor, I know; but don’t you think they know how to be happy in spite of
it?’
‘They are too easily happy. That’s another curse.’
‘But you surely don’t want them to be unhappy,’ she remonstrated.
‘Since they have to be poor, shouldn’t you rather see them contented?’
‘Certainly not. They have nothing to be contented with.’
‘But I don’t see that it makes any difference _what_ you are contented
with so long as you _are_ contented.’
He looked at her with a half-smile.
‘Nonsense, Miss Marcia; you know better than that. When people are
contented with their lot, does their lot ever improve? Do you think the
Italian people _ought_ to be happy? You have seen the way they live,
or—no,’ he broke off, ‘you don’t know anything about it.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she returned. ‘I know they’re poor—horribly poor—but
they seem to get a good deal of pleasure out of life in spite of it.’
He shook his head. ‘You can’t convince me with that argument. Have you
never heard of a holy discontent? That’s what these people need—and,’
he added grimly, ‘some of them have got it.’
‘A holy discontent,’ she repeated. ‘What a terrible thing to have! It’s
like living for revenge.’
‘Oh, well,’ he shrugged, ‘a man must live for something besides his
three meals a day.’
‘He can live for his family,’ she suggested.
‘Yes, if he has one. Otherwise he must live for an idea.’
She glanced at him sidewise. She would have liked to ask what idea he
lived for, but it was a question she did not dare to put. Instead she
commented: ‘It’s queer, isn’t it, how the ideas that men used to live
for have passed away? Chivalry and crusading and going to war and
living as hermits—I really don’t see what’s left.’
‘The most of the old ideals are exploded,’ he agreed. ‘But we have new
ones to-day—sufficiently bad—to meet the needs of the present
century. A man can make a god of his business, for instance.’
Marcia shifted her seat a trifle uneasily as she thought of her father,
who certainly did make a god of his business. It may have struck Sybert
that it was not a propitious subject, for he added almost instantly—
‘And there’s always art to fall back upon.’
‘But you don’t object to that,’ she remonstrated.
‘No, it’s good enough in its way,’ he agreed; ‘but it doesn’t go very
deep.’
‘Artists would tell you then that it isn’t the true art.’
‘I dare say,’ he shrugged; ‘but at best there are a good many truer
things.’
‘What, for instance?’
‘Well, three meals a day.’
Marcia laughed, and then she inquired—
‘Suppose you knew a person, Mr. Sybert, who didn’t care for anything
but art—who just wanted to have the world beautiful and nothing else,
what would you think?’
‘Not much,’ he returned; ‘what would you?’
‘I think that you go a great deal farther in the other extreme!’
‘Not at all,’ he maintained. ‘I am granting that art is a very fine
thing; only there are so many more vital issues in life that one
doesn’t have time to bother with it much. However, I suppose it’s a
phase one has to go through with in Italy. Oh, I’ve been through with
it, too,’ he added. ‘I used to feel that Botticelli and Giorgione and
the rest of them were really important.’
‘But you got over it?’ she inquired.
‘Yes, I got over it—one does.’
Marcia laughed again. ‘Mr. Sybert,’ she said, ‘I think you are an
awfully queer man. You are so sort of unfeeling in some respects and
feeling in others.’
‘Miss Marcia, you strike me as an awfully queer young woman for exactly
the same reasons.’
They had come to a curve in the road, and under an over-hanging
precipice hollowed out of the rock was a little shrine to the Madonna,
and beside it a rough iron cross.
‘Some poor devil has met his fate here,’ said Sybert, and he reined in
his horse and leaned from his saddle to make out the blurred
inscription traced on the bars. ‘Felice Buconi in the year 1840 at this
spot received death at the hand of an assassin. Pray for his soul,’ he
translated. ‘Poor fellow! It’s a tragedy in Italy to meet one’s death
at the hands of an assassin.’
‘Why more in Italy than in any other place?’
‘Because one dies without receiving the sacrament, and has some trouble
about getting into heaven.’
‘Oh!’ she returned. ‘I suppose when Gervasio’s father wished that I
might die of an apoplexy he was not only damning me for this world, but
for the world to come.’
‘Exactly. An apoplexy in Italy is a comprehensive curse.’
‘I think,’ she commented, ‘that I prefer a religion which doesn’t have
a purgatory.’
‘Purgatory,’ he returned, ‘has always struck me as quite superior to
anything the Protestants offer. It really gives one something to die
for.’
‘I should think, for the matter of that, that heaven direct would give
one something to die for.’
‘What, for instance? Golden paving-stones, eternal sunshine, and
singing angels!’
‘Oh, not necessarily just those things. They’re merely symbolical.’
‘At least,’ said Sybert, ‘perfect peace and beauty and happiness, and
nothing beyond. You needn’t tell me, Miss Marcia, that you want to
spend an eternity in any such place as that. It might do for a
vacation—a villeggiatura—but for ever!’
‘Probably angels’ ideas of happiness are more settled than men’s.’
‘In that case angels must be infinitely lower than men. To be happy in
a place that has reached the end, that stands still, would require a
very selfish man—and I don’t see why not a very selfish angel—to
settle down contentedly to an eternity of bliss while there’s still so
much work to be done in the world.’
‘I suppose,’ she suggested, ‘that when you get to be an angel, you
forget about the world and leave all the sorrow and misery behind.’
‘A fools’ paradise!’ he maintained.
They were suddenly aroused from their talk by a peal of thunder. They
looked up to see that the sun had disappeared. Sybert’s small cloud on
the horizon had grown until it covered the sky.
‘Well, Miss Marcia,’ he laughed, ‘I am afraid we are going to get a
wetting to pay for our immersion in philosophy and art. Shall we turn
back?’
‘If we’re going to get wet anyway,’ she said, ‘I should prefer seeing
the monastery first, since we’ve come so far.’ She looked across the
valley in front of them, where, not half a mile away, the walls rose
grim and gaunt amid a cluster of cypresses.
‘You can see about as much from here as you could if you went any
nearer,’ he returned. ‘I should advise you to look and run.’
As he spoke a cool wind swept up the valley, swaying the olive trees
and turning their leaves to silver. A flash of lightning followed, and
a few big drops splashed in their faces.
‘We’re in for it!’ Marcia exclaimed, as she struggled to control
Kentucky Lil, who was quivering and plunging.
Sybert glanced about quickly. The flying clouds overhead, and an
ominous orange light that had suddenly settled down upon the landscape,
betokened that a severe mountain storm was at hand. They would be
drenched through before they could reach the monastery—which, after
all, might not prove a hospitable order to ladies. He presently spied a
low stone building nearer at hand on the slope of the hill they had
just left behind. ‘We’d better make for that,’ he said, pointing it out
with his whip. ‘Though it hasn’t a very promising look, it will at
least be a shelter until the storm is over.’